msmobiles.com - Windows Mobile podcasts - meet new, massive, grassroots movement !: "Windows Mobile podcasts - meet new, massive, grassroots movement !
April 19, 2005 [General]
Some issues can't just be swept neatly under the carpet. Some trends can't be ignored because later on it will be too difficult to catch up with competition. Meet podcasting - the next, after blogging, Internet revolution in progress!
Make no mistake: Podcasting is not just a technical solution to deliver audio content automatically to mobile devices (so that existing audio content can be exposed as podcast feeds):
"
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Monday, April 18, 2005
Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves
Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves: "SBSH PocketBreeze 4.3 Released
Posted by Darius Wey @ 03:30 AM
'PocketBreeze - a Today screen plug-in for Pocket PC devices allowing you to view appointments, tasks, and email accounts status directly on your Today screen. Giving you a more intuitive interface to manage your daily agenda with up to 30 days agenda display, appointments and tasks in a joint display, advance tasks management and your contacts' birthdays and anniversaries. PocketBreeze integrates seamlessly with Agenda Fusion, Pocket Informant, and the default PIM. PocketBreeze new major version is out! with version 4.3 you will find lots of new features and improvements making PocketBreeze the most powerful Today screen plug-in.'"
Posted by Darius Wey @ 03:30 AM
'PocketBreeze - a Today screen plug-in for Pocket PC devices allowing you to view appointments, tasks, and email accounts status directly on your Today screen. Giving you a more intuitive interface to manage your daily agenda with up to 30 days agenda display, appointments and tasks in a joint display, advance tasks management and your contacts' birthdays and anniversaries. PocketBreeze integrates seamlessly with Agenda Fusion, Pocket Informant, and the default PIM. PocketBreeze new major version is out! with version 4.3 you will find lots of new features and improvements making PocketBreeze the most powerful Today screen plug-in.'"
The New York Times > Technology > When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?
The New York Times > Technology > When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?: "April 18, 2005
April 18, 2005
When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs.
Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork - an appropriation of a "loose lips sink ships" World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log.
But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy's employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down.
"The past day has been a huge wake-up call," Mr. Kennedy wrote soon afterward. "I see now that the voice of a company is not limited to top-level executives, vice presidents and public relations officers."
As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites.
They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity.
As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it, "What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how employers are responding to blogging."
A rising tide of employees have recently been reprimanded or let go for running afoul of their employers' taste or temperament on personal blogs, including a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines who learned the hard way that the carrier frowns on cheeky photos while in uniform and a Google employee who mused on the company's financial condition and was fired.
Some interpreted these actions as meaning that even in their living rooms, even in their private basement computer caves, employees are required to be at least a little bit worried about losing their jobs if they write or post the wrong thing on their personal Web logs.
"I would have expected that some of the louder, more strident voices on the Internet would have risen up in a frenzy over this," said Stowe Boyd, the president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector. "But that didn't happen."
In Mr. Boyd's opinion, everything about what Mr. Kennedy did was protected speech. The use of trademarks was fair use in a satirical work, Mr. Boyd said, and it seemed unlikely that the company would be somehow liable for the off-duty actions of an employee, as Technorati executives argued. It was, in Mr. Boyd's eyes, an indication that corporate interests were eclipsing individual rights.
"I don't know what else to say," he declared. "I'm astonished."
But Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states are considered "at will" states - meaning that employees can quit, and employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would have to be proved).
"There really are no laws that protect you," Ms. Newitz said.
Martin H. Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said there were only a few exceptions.
"It depends on what the blog is," he said, "what the content is, and whether there's any contractual protection for the employee."
Those who work for the United States Postal Service, for instance, or a local sanitation department may have some special blogging privileges. That is because, depending on the circumstances, the online speech of public employees can be considered "of public concern," and enjoys a measure of protection, Professor Malin explained.
Employees protected under some union contracts may also be shielded from summary dismissal for off-duty activities, at least without some sort of arbitration. "Lifestyle law" trends of the late 1980's and early 90's - sometimes driven by tobacco and alcohol lobbies - created state laws that protected employees from being fired for engaging in legal, off-duty activities, though no one is likely to be fired simply for blogging, but rather for violating some policy or practice in a blog.
And bloggers who are neither supervisors nor managers and who can demonstrate that they are communicating with other workers about "wages, hours or working conditions" may warrant some protection under the National Labor Relations Act, Professor Malin said - even in nonunion enterprises.
None of this, of course, answers the question of where the status of employee ends and that of private citizen begins.
Some companies, like Sun Microsystems, have wrapped both arms around blogging. Sun provides space for employees to blog (blogs.sun.com), and while their darker impulses are presumably kept at bay by the arrangement, there are hundreds of freewheeling and largely unmonitored diaries supported by the company.
Microsoft, too, has benefited from the organic growth of online journaling by celebrity geeks now in its employ, like Robert Scoble, whose frank and uncensored musings about the company have developed a loyal following and given Microsoft some street credibility.
But other companies are seeing a need for formalized blogging policies.
Mark Jen, who was fired from Google in January after just two weeks, having made some ill-advised comments about the company on his blog (Google would not comment on Mr. Jen's dismissal, but confirmed that he no longer works for it), is now busy helping to draft a blogging policy for his new employer, Plaxo, an electronic address book updating service in Mountain View, Calif.
"It was a very quick education for me at Google," Mr. Jen said. "I learned very quickly the complexities of a corporate environment."
With Plaxo's blessing, Mr. Jen is soliciting public comment on the new blogging policy at blog.plaxoed.com.
Most of the points are the kinds of common-sense items that employees would do well to remember, particularly if they plan on identifying themselves as employees in their blogs, or discussing office matters online: don't post material that is obscene, defamatory, profane or libelous, and make sure that you indicate that the opinions expressed are your own.
The policy also encourages employee bloggers to use their real names, rather than attempting anonymity or writing under a pseudonym.
Bad idea, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Two weeks ago, the group published a tutorial on "how to blog safely," which included tips on avoiding getting fired. Chief among its recommendations: Blog anonymously.
"Basically, we just want to caution people about how easy it is to find them online," Ms. Newitz said, "and that they are not just talking to their friends on their blogs. They're talking to everyone."
But does that means that Mr. Kennedy, a short-timer, a product manager and by no means an executive at Technorati, carries the burden of representing the company into his personal blog?
Technorati's vice president for engineering, Adam Hertz, responded: "It would be antithetical to our corporate values to force Niall to do anything in his blog. It's his blog."
Yet with the spread of the Internet and of blogging, Mr. Hertz said, it would be foolish for companies to not spend some time discussing the art of public communications with their employees, and even train and prepare lower-level staff for these kinds of public relations situations.
That said, Mr. Hertz stressed that the company had no interest in formalizing any complicated policies regarding an employee's activities outside the office.
"I had a high school teacher," he recalled, "who used to say 'I have only two rules: Don't roller-skate in the hallway and don't be a damn fool.' We really value a company where people can think for themselves."
April 18, 2005
When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene?
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs.
Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork - an appropriation of a "loose lips sink ships" World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log.
But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy's employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down.
"The past day has been a huge wake-up call," Mr. Kennedy wrote soon afterward. "I see now that the voice of a company is not limited to top-level executives, vice presidents and public relations officers."
As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites.
They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity.
As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it, "What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how employers are responding to blogging."
A rising tide of employees have recently been reprimanded or let go for running afoul of their employers' taste or temperament on personal blogs, including a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines who learned the hard way that the carrier frowns on cheeky photos while in uniform and a Google employee who mused on the company's financial condition and was fired.
Some interpreted these actions as meaning that even in their living rooms, even in their private basement computer caves, employees are required to be at least a little bit worried about losing their jobs if they write or post the wrong thing on their personal Web logs.
"I would have expected that some of the louder, more strident voices on the Internet would have risen up in a frenzy over this," said Stowe Boyd, the president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector. "But that didn't happen."
In Mr. Boyd's opinion, everything about what Mr. Kennedy did was protected speech. The use of trademarks was fair use in a satirical work, Mr. Boyd said, and it seemed unlikely that the company would be somehow liable for the off-duty actions of an employee, as Technorati executives argued. It was, in Mr. Boyd's eyes, an indication that corporate interests were eclipsing individual rights.
"I don't know what else to say," he declared. "I'm astonished."
But Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states are considered "at will" states - meaning that employees can quit, and employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would have to be proved).
"There really are no laws that protect you," Ms. Newitz said.
Martin H. Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said there were only a few exceptions.
"It depends on what the blog is," he said, "what the content is, and whether there's any contractual protection for the employee."
Those who work for the United States Postal Service, for instance, or a local sanitation department may have some special blogging privileges. That is because, depending on the circumstances, the online speech of public employees can be considered "of public concern," and enjoys a measure of protection, Professor Malin explained.
Employees protected under some union contracts may also be shielded from summary dismissal for off-duty activities, at least without some sort of arbitration. "Lifestyle law" trends of the late 1980's and early 90's - sometimes driven by tobacco and alcohol lobbies - created state laws that protected employees from being fired for engaging in legal, off-duty activities, though no one is likely to be fired simply for blogging, but rather for violating some policy or practice in a blog.
And bloggers who are neither supervisors nor managers and who can demonstrate that they are communicating with other workers about "wages, hours or working conditions" may warrant some protection under the National Labor Relations Act, Professor Malin said - even in nonunion enterprises.
None of this, of course, answers the question of where the status of employee ends and that of private citizen begins.
Some companies, like Sun Microsystems, have wrapped both arms around blogging. Sun provides space for employees to blog (blogs.sun.com), and while their darker impulses are presumably kept at bay by the arrangement, there are hundreds of freewheeling and largely unmonitored diaries supported by the company.
Microsoft, too, has benefited from the organic growth of online journaling by celebrity geeks now in its employ, like Robert Scoble, whose frank and uncensored musings about the company have developed a loyal following and given Microsoft some street credibility.
But other companies are seeing a need for formalized blogging policies.
Mark Jen, who was fired from Google in January after just two weeks, having made some ill-advised comments about the company on his blog (Google would not comment on Mr. Jen's dismissal, but confirmed that he no longer works for it), is now busy helping to draft a blogging policy for his new employer, Plaxo, an electronic address book updating service in Mountain View, Calif.
"It was a very quick education for me at Google," Mr. Jen said. "I learned very quickly the complexities of a corporate environment."
With Plaxo's blessing, Mr. Jen is soliciting public comment on the new blogging policy at blog.plaxoed.com.
Most of the points are the kinds of common-sense items that employees would do well to remember, particularly if they plan on identifying themselves as employees in their blogs, or discussing office matters online: don't post material that is obscene, defamatory, profane or libelous, and make sure that you indicate that the opinions expressed are your own.
The policy also encourages employee bloggers to use their real names, rather than attempting anonymity or writing under a pseudonym.
Bad idea, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Two weeks ago, the group published a tutorial on "how to blog safely," which included tips on avoiding getting fired. Chief among its recommendations: Blog anonymously.
"Basically, we just want to caution people about how easy it is to find them online," Ms. Newitz said, "and that they are not just talking to their friends on their blogs. They're talking to everyone."
But does that means that Mr. Kennedy, a short-timer, a product manager and by no means an executive at Technorati, carries the burden of representing the company into his personal blog?
Technorati's vice president for engineering, Adam Hertz, responded: "It would be antithetical to our corporate values to force Niall to do anything in his blog. It's his blog."
Yet with the spread of the Internet and of blogging, Mr. Hertz said, it would be foolish for companies to not spend some time discussing the art of public communications with their employees, and even train and prepare lower-level staff for these kinds of public relations situations.
That said, Mr. Hertz stressed that the company had no interest in formalizing any complicated policies regarding an employee's activities outside the office.
"I had a high school teacher," he recalled, "who used to say 'I have only two rules: Don't roller-skate in the hallway and don't be a damn fool.' We really value a company where people can think for themselves."
The New York Times > Opinion > A New Leader's Thoughts on NASA
The New York Times > Opinion > A New Leader's Thoughts on NASA: "April 18, 2005
April 18, 2005
A New Leader's Thoughts on NASA
The Bush administration's choice to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Michael Griffin - sailed through the confirmation process last week.
In hearings before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, only Senator George Allen of Virginia was churlish enough to raise concerns about cuts in the aeronautics budget that could lead to job losses in his home state. The other members seemed intent on whisking Dr. Griffin through as fast as possible so that he could take the helm of the space agency as it prepares to resume shuttle flights. There is little doubt that the agency needs a firm hand at the top as it struggles to rebound from the Columbia tragedy, and Dr. Griffin, who has held a variety of jobs in the aerospace industry, looks eminently qualified.
In his love fest with the senators, Dr. Griffin showed an encouraging independence of mind and a willingness to abandon past NASA decisions that look increasingly myopic. Of immediate importance, he said he would not be bound by the decision of his predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, to abandon as too risky a planned astronaut servicing mission to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope, the agency's premier scientific instrument.
Cancellation of the astronaut mission on safety grounds never made much sense. Astronauts have already serviced the telescope several times without incident, and the revamped shuttles should be safer than in the past thanks to upgrades after the Columbia accident.
For the longer term, Dr. Griffin put his finger on a gaping hole in the nation's future space plans that has received little public attention. The aging shuttle fleet is scheduled to be retired in 2010 if not sooner, and the successor, known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle, is not expected to fly before 2014. That leaves a gap of four or more years when the country would have no independent means of sending astronauts aloft. We would be forced to rely on other nations, just as we now rely on Russia to ferry American astronauts to the space station and back. It took the fresh eye of Dr. Griffin to declare it unacceptable that this advanced technological nation, which in past years has developed major new spacecraft in just three to six years, would now dawdle nine years before being ready to launch the new one.
By definition and inclination, Dr. Griffin wholeheartedly supports the president's long-range space exploration plan, which would send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars. But he seems to think that NASA has ample funds to pursue more than one mission and calls it crucial to protect the agency's outstanding science programs. The test will come when budgetary choices have to be made.
April 18, 2005
A New Leader's Thoughts on NASA
The Bush administration's choice to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - Michael Griffin - sailed through the confirmation process last week.
In hearings before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, only Senator George Allen of Virginia was churlish enough to raise concerns about cuts in the aeronautics budget that could lead to job losses in his home state. The other members seemed intent on whisking Dr. Griffin through as fast as possible so that he could take the helm of the space agency as it prepares to resume shuttle flights. There is little doubt that the agency needs a firm hand at the top as it struggles to rebound from the Columbia tragedy, and Dr. Griffin, who has held a variety of jobs in the aerospace industry, looks eminently qualified.
In his love fest with the senators, Dr. Griffin showed an encouraging independence of mind and a willingness to abandon past NASA decisions that look increasingly myopic. Of immediate importance, he said he would not be bound by the decision of his predecessor, Sean O'Keefe, to abandon as too risky a planned astronaut servicing mission to extend the life of the Hubble Space Telescope, the agency's premier scientific instrument.
Cancellation of the astronaut mission on safety grounds never made much sense. Astronauts have already serviced the telescope several times without incident, and the revamped shuttles should be safer than in the past thanks to upgrades after the Columbia accident.
For the longer term, Dr. Griffin put his finger on a gaping hole in the nation's future space plans that has received little public attention. The aging shuttle fleet is scheduled to be retired in 2010 if not sooner, and the successor, known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle, is not expected to fly before 2014. That leaves a gap of four or more years when the country would have no independent means of sending astronauts aloft. We would be forced to rely on other nations, just as we now rely on Russia to ferry American astronauts to the space station and back. It took the fresh eye of Dr. Griffin to declare it unacceptable that this advanced technological nation, which in past years has developed major new spacecraft in just three to six years, would now dawdle nine years before being ready to launch the new one.
By definition and inclination, Dr. Griffin wholeheartedly supports the president's long-range space exploration plan, which would send astronauts back to the Moon and on to Mars. But he seems to think that NASA has ample funds to pursue more than one mission and calls it crucial to protect the agency's outstanding science programs. The test will come when budgetary choices have to be made.
Akihabara News : Your Leading News provider on Gadgets and Hi-Tech stuff from Akihabara in Tokyo Japan and in other Asian Countries
Akihabara News : Your Leading News provider on Gadgets and Hi-Tech stuff from Akihabara in Tokyo Japan and in other Asian Countries: "Hands free" for Skype
Posted by Daimaou on 18-04-2005 07:35
Skype is the VoIP revolution of these past years. It works really really well on PC, Mac, Linux and PocketPC! It's a normal evolution to see devices appear that are designed to use with the software, and Datago's VC-1 PLUS is one of them. The device is available through Synnex in Japan and connects to your PC's USB and Mic-in ports, and it allows you to use Skype without a headset and even as a "conference-call" tool.
The package will cost less than 80 EUR.
Posted by Daimaou on 18-04-2005 07:35
Skype is the VoIP revolution of these past years. It works really really well on PC, Mac, Linux and PocketPC! It's a normal evolution to see devices appear that are designed to use with the software, and Datago's VC-1 PLUS is one of them. The device is available through Synnex in Japan and connects to your PC's USB and Mic-in ports, and it allows you to use Skype without a headset and even as a "conference-call" tool.
The package will cost less than 80 EUR.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
CBS 46 Atlanta - More controversy in Cobb plan to buy student laptops
CBS 46 Atlanta - More controversy in Cobb plan to buy student laptops: Marietta
More controversy in Cobb plan to buy student laptops
Apr 16, 2005, 10:38 PM
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) -- A much-debated plan by Cobb County educators to spend more than 100 (m)million dollars on student laptops ran into more controversy when a local newspaper revealed that a study on the proposal is being funded by Apple Computer.
The county school board voted last Wednesday to order an evaluation study by the University of Georgia to decide whether the county should spend 100-point-eight million dollars to give laptop computers to every high school student in the suburban county.
Cobb Superintendent Joe Redden pitched the study, but left out one detail: a computer company arranged for U-G-A to conduct the study and not the school district. The Marietta Daily Journal reported the Apple financing in today's editions.
The school board voted four-to-two to start buying laptops in phases. At first, according to the plan, 71 hundred teachers and 87 hundred students at four of Cobb's 14 high schools would get Apple G-four iBooks at an estimated cost of 25 million dollars.
More controversy in Cobb plan to buy student laptops
Apr 16, 2005, 10:38 PM
MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) -- A much-debated plan by Cobb County educators to spend more than 100 (m)million dollars on student laptops ran into more controversy when a local newspaper revealed that a study on the proposal is being funded by Apple Computer.
The county school board voted last Wednesday to order an evaluation study by the University of Georgia to decide whether the county should spend 100-point-eight million dollars to give laptop computers to every high school student in the suburban county.
Cobb Superintendent Joe Redden pitched the study, but left out one detail: a computer company arranged for U-G-A to conduct the study and not the school district. The Marietta Daily Journal reported the Apple financing in today's editions.
The school board voted four-to-two to start buying laptops in phases. At first, according to the plan, 71 hundred teachers and 87 hundred students at four of Cobb's 14 high schools would get Apple G-four iBooks at an estimated cost of 25 million dollars.
Monday, March 28, 2005
The New York Times > Technology > A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing
The New York Times > Technology > A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing: "The New York Times
March 28, 2005
A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing
By SAUL HANSELL and JEFF LEEDS
For someone whose business is under attack in the United States Supreme Court, Mark Gorton was remarkably serene last week, sprawled on a couch in his Manhattan office.
Mr. Gorton's company, the Lime Group, publishes LimeWire, one of the most popular software programs used to trade music, video and other files over the Internet.
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case in which the recording and film industries seek to hold makers of file-sharing software liable for the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted material online. The case is against other file-sharing services, Grokster and Morpheus, which won in lower courts, but Mr. Gorton said that if those rulings were overturned, it could make LimeWire vulnerable.
"If the Supreme Court says it is illegal to produce this software, LimeWire the company will cease to exist," Mr. Gorton said. "But LimeWire the software will continue to be on the Net no matter what we do in this business."
The case, M.G.M. v. Grokster, is in many ways the culmination of five years of escalating legal, technical and rhetorical attacks against file-sharing systems and their users by the music industry. It is being eagerly followed by a range of media and technology companies because the court may use this case to redefine the reach of copyright in the era of iPods and TiVo.
But no matter how the court rules, both music executives and file-sharing advocates like Mr. Gorton agree that it will probably always be possible for fans to find loads of free music with a few clicks of a mouse.
Still, the case will determine whether file sharing can continue to be promoted by companies like LimeWire and Sharman Networks, which makes Kazaa, that operate in public and earn profits from advertising and software sales, or whether the software will be written and distributed by shadowy players on the fringes of the law.
"I think this court decision is a game changer. It will dramatically affect behavior, and behavior will dramatically affect how music is sold and distributed and consumed," said Andrew Lack, chairman of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which releases music by stars like Usher and Bruce Springsteen. "It will clarify the law and establish right from wrong."
If the music industry loses, it will likely redouble its efforts to sue individuals trading files and intensify its technical efforts to disrupt the networks. So far, those tactics have been modestly effective at best, and a loss in the Supreme Court may well erode the industry's control of copyrighted material further.
Yet, since the court can do little to alter the spread of technology or the interests of copyright owners to protect their material, many expect something resembling a permanent war.
"We are guerrillas fighting the despotic regime," said Alan Morris, the executive vice president of Sharman Networks, the Australian company behind Kazaa, once the leading file-sharing network and the recording industry's leading target, which is being sued by the music industry in both American and Australian courts. "They have some quite heavy guns, but we can see where they are firing from, " Mr. Morris said.
There are some who say that a court ruling, in any direction, may also help define the terms of a cease-fire. The end of litigation could rekindle the back-channel negotiations between some music labels and some file-sharing services to create ways for users to trade some files free while paying for others.
Some executives have discussed a plan in which users could download free, low-quality tracks with an offer to buy higher-quality versions.
The two biggest music companies, Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi Universal, and Sony BMG, for example, recently signed deals to provide music through Snocap, a software package intended to control the swapping of unauthorized songs.
Snocap also happens to be the creation of Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, the original file-sharing, or peer-to-peer, service. "Peer-to-peer is the way that people access content," said Mr. Fanning. "There is a void in the marketplace, there are people who are willing to pay for it."
Of course, getting people to pay anything is an enormous challenge. There are about 60 million people using file-sharing services in the United States, with roughly 8.5 million logged on at a time, said Eric Garland, chief of BigChampagne, which studies traffic on file-sharing networks.
While some surveys have suggested that file-sharing activity slowed in 2003, when the Recording Industry Association of America began to sue individual users for trading copyrighted songs, Mr. Garland said that the number of people logging on to file-sharing networks had risen steadily and that he expected the number to increase by 10 percent or more this year.
The music industry, meanwhile, is recovering from a long slump. It sold 814 million CD's, cassettes and units of music in other formats last year in the United States, up 2 percent, its first increase in five years, the recording industry association said. It also sold 140 million digital tracks in the United States, the association said. But the industry says it thinks it would have seen a bigger sales rebound had it not been for online piracy.
The recording industry is exploring ways to release new CD's with technology that will restrict copying. Sony BMG is expected to use such technology on at least half their new recordings in the United States by the end of this year.
Some independent record labels are taking a less confrontational stance and trying to tap into the popularity of file-sharing networks by selling their music on them, often alongside pirated versions of the same songs.
Kazaa has been pursuing that idea for several years through an affiliated company called Altnet, which allows labels to put authorized files of songs on its networks. These files are either offered for sale, or they are free for promotional purposes, often with technology that restricts their use to a certain time period.
Altnet is still small, with revenues of less than $1 million in 2004, but it has been used by some independent labels, including V2, the label of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
V2 sells songs by its acts like the Stereophonics and Moby through Altnet for 99 cents each because file-sharing networks have eclipsed MTV and radio as the place fans discover new music, said Jeff Wooding, its director of marketing and new media. He said that the move would not stop piracy, but could be used to promote the bands' merchandise and concert tickets as well as earn something for download sales.
"No one's kidding themselves that we expect to convert a whole lot of users," Mr. Wooding said, but he added that he thought many file sharers would buy merchandise and concert tickets from bands they liked and that some might eventually purchase a CD.
Altnet is also experimenting with an advertising-driven format developed by Intent MediaWorks, which buys rights to songs from artists for distribution in a special file format. The first time a user tries to play the song, the file opens a Web page with an advertisement on it. Intent MediaWorks is also working on ways to insert audio commercials into the songs.
"The idea for the advertising model is to transform file-sharing networks into radio," said Lee Jaffe, president of Altnet, which is distributing Intent MediaWorks' files. "But unlike radio where artists and labels don't get paid, they will be able to share the revenue."
Major recording labels, however, have been very resistant to doing deals with Altnet and similar systems, fearing that such alliances might undercut their lawsuits against the file-sharing networks. They have demanded that the networks remove all the unauthorized songs before they do any business with them.
Shawn Fanning's Snocap system is an attempt to help file-sharing networks do just that. It creates a way for copyright owners to register the songs they own. The networks, using a technology called acoustic fingerprinting, can identify whether a file being downloaded is in a copyrighted registry. The copyright owner can choose to block the download, offer the song for sale or offer a limited-use version of the song as substitute.
Snocap, in addition to endorsements from Universal Music and Sony BMG, will also be used by Mashboxx, a new file-sharing service started by Wayne Russo, the former president of Grokster, which is based in Nevis, West Indies.
But it still faces some significant challenges. First, the company has not released a working version of the software, and many file-sharing advocates dismiss the concept as thoroughly unworkable.
"Snocap will fail miserably in the market," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of StreamCast networks, which makes Morpheus.
"If I was looking for a download, and I got some sort of truncated file with a message that says buy this or do that, I don't see why anybody would embrace that," he said. "If you wanted to buy music, you could go to the online stores that are doing a great job like iTunes."
Mr. Russo said that his approach did not need to win over all file-sharing users to make some money for him and the record companies.
"There are 2.5 billion music files traded every month," he said. "If we can capture 1 percent of that, 25 million files, and we convert 5 to 10 percent of those to paid, I am very happy."
Aside from these attempts to reach détente with the free file-sharing networks, the recording industry knows it also needs new products and new avenues for distribution.
It has, for instance, placed a hefty bet on DualDiscs, a new two-sided CD format that features music on one side and video on the other. "We are committed to giving consumers what they want, legitimately and in a way that fairly compensates those that work so hard to create content," said Zach Horowitz, president of Universal Music Group, which releases music by acts like U2 and 3 Doors Down.
"If we win the case," Mr. Horowitz said, "all the efforts we are making to launch compelling legitimate alternatives will gain traction. There will be no turning back the clock in terms of the countless ways we are making our music available to take advantage of the new technologies."
March 28, 2005
A Supreme Court Showdown for File Sharing
By SAUL HANSELL and JEFF LEEDS
For someone whose business is under attack in the United States Supreme Court, Mark Gorton was remarkably serene last week, sprawled on a couch in his Manhattan office.
Mr. Gorton's company, the Lime Group, publishes LimeWire, one of the most popular software programs used to trade music, video and other files over the Internet.
Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case in which the recording and film industries seek to hold makers of file-sharing software liable for the illegal copying and distribution of copyrighted material online. The case is against other file-sharing services, Grokster and Morpheus, which won in lower courts, but Mr. Gorton said that if those rulings were overturned, it could make LimeWire vulnerable.
"If the Supreme Court says it is illegal to produce this software, LimeWire the company will cease to exist," Mr. Gorton said. "But LimeWire the software will continue to be on the Net no matter what we do in this business."
The case, M.G.M. v. Grokster, is in many ways the culmination of five years of escalating legal, technical and rhetorical attacks against file-sharing systems and their users by the music industry. It is being eagerly followed by a range of media and technology companies because the court may use this case to redefine the reach of copyright in the era of iPods and TiVo.
But no matter how the court rules, both music executives and file-sharing advocates like Mr. Gorton agree that it will probably always be possible for fans to find loads of free music with a few clicks of a mouse.
Still, the case will determine whether file sharing can continue to be promoted by companies like LimeWire and Sharman Networks, which makes Kazaa, that operate in public and earn profits from advertising and software sales, or whether the software will be written and distributed by shadowy players on the fringes of the law.
"I think this court decision is a game changer. It will dramatically affect behavior, and behavior will dramatically affect how music is sold and distributed and consumed," said Andrew Lack, chairman of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which releases music by stars like Usher and Bruce Springsteen. "It will clarify the law and establish right from wrong."
If the music industry loses, it will likely redouble its efforts to sue individuals trading files and intensify its technical efforts to disrupt the networks. So far, those tactics have been modestly effective at best, and a loss in the Supreme Court may well erode the industry's control of copyrighted material further.
Yet, since the court can do little to alter the spread of technology or the interests of copyright owners to protect their material, many expect something resembling a permanent war.
"We are guerrillas fighting the despotic regime," said Alan Morris, the executive vice president of Sharman Networks, the Australian company behind Kazaa, once the leading file-sharing network and the recording industry's leading target, which is being sued by the music industry in both American and Australian courts. "They have some quite heavy guns, but we can see where they are firing from, " Mr. Morris said.
There are some who say that a court ruling, in any direction, may also help define the terms of a cease-fire. The end of litigation could rekindle the back-channel negotiations between some music labels and some file-sharing services to create ways for users to trade some files free while paying for others.
Some executives have discussed a plan in which users could download free, low-quality tracks with an offer to buy higher-quality versions.
The two biggest music companies, Universal Music Group, a unit of Vivendi Universal, and Sony BMG, for example, recently signed deals to provide music through Snocap, a software package intended to control the swapping of unauthorized songs.
Snocap also happens to be the creation of Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster, the original file-sharing, or peer-to-peer, service. "Peer-to-peer is the way that people access content," said Mr. Fanning. "There is a void in the marketplace, there are people who are willing to pay for it."
Of course, getting people to pay anything is an enormous challenge. There are about 60 million people using file-sharing services in the United States, with roughly 8.5 million logged on at a time, said Eric Garland, chief of BigChampagne, which studies traffic on file-sharing networks.
While some surveys have suggested that file-sharing activity slowed in 2003, when the Recording Industry Association of America began to sue individual users for trading copyrighted songs, Mr. Garland said that the number of people logging on to file-sharing networks had risen steadily and that he expected the number to increase by 10 percent or more this year.
The music industry, meanwhile, is recovering from a long slump. It sold 814 million CD's, cassettes and units of music in other formats last year in the United States, up 2 percent, its first increase in five years, the recording industry association said. It also sold 140 million digital tracks in the United States, the association said. But the industry says it thinks it would have seen a bigger sales rebound had it not been for online piracy.
The recording industry is exploring ways to release new CD's with technology that will restrict copying. Sony BMG is expected to use such technology on at least half their new recordings in the United States by the end of this year.
Some independent record labels are taking a less confrontational stance and trying to tap into the popularity of file-sharing networks by selling their music on them, often alongside pirated versions of the same songs.
Kazaa has been pursuing that idea for several years through an affiliated company called Altnet, which allows labels to put authorized files of songs on its networks. These files are either offered for sale, or they are free for promotional purposes, often with technology that restricts their use to a certain time period.
Altnet is still small, with revenues of less than $1 million in 2004, but it has been used by some independent labels, including V2, the label of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.
V2 sells songs by its acts like the Stereophonics and Moby through Altnet for 99 cents each because file-sharing networks have eclipsed MTV and radio as the place fans discover new music, said Jeff Wooding, its director of marketing and new media. He said that the move would not stop piracy, but could be used to promote the bands' merchandise and concert tickets as well as earn something for download sales.
"No one's kidding themselves that we expect to convert a whole lot of users," Mr. Wooding said, but he added that he thought many file sharers would buy merchandise and concert tickets from bands they liked and that some might eventually purchase a CD.
Altnet is also experimenting with an advertising-driven format developed by Intent MediaWorks, which buys rights to songs from artists for distribution in a special file format. The first time a user tries to play the song, the file opens a Web page with an advertisement on it. Intent MediaWorks is also working on ways to insert audio commercials into the songs.
"The idea for the advertising model is to transform file-sharing networks into radio," said Lee Jaffe, president of Altnet, which is distributing Intent MediaWorks' files. "But unlike radio where artists and labels don't get paid, they will be able to share the revenue."
Major recording labels, however, have been very resistant to doing deals with Altnet and similar systems, fearing that such alliances might undercut their lawsuits against the file-sharing networks. They have demanded that the networks remove all the unauthorized songs before they do any business with them.
Shawn Fanning's Snocap system is an attempt to help file-sharing networks do just that. It creates a way for copyright owners to register the songs they own. The networks, using a technology called acoustic fingerprinting, can identify whether a file being downloaded is in a copyrighted registry. The copyright owner can choose to block the download, offer the song for sale or offer a limited-use version of the song as substitute.
Snocap, in addition to endorsements from Universal Music and Sony BMG, will also be used by Mashboxx, a new file-sharing service started by Wayne Russo, the former president of Grokster, which is based in Nevis, West Indies.
But it still faces some significant challenges. First, the company has not released a working version of the software, and many file-sharing advocates dismiss the concept as thoroughly unworkable.
"Snocap will fail miserably in the market," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of StreamCast networks, which makes Morpheus.
"If I was looking for a download, and I got some sort of truncated file with a message that says buy this or do that, I don't see why anybody would embrace that," he said. "If you wanted to buy music, you could go to the online stores that are doing a great job like iTunes."
Mr. Russo said that his approach did not need to win over all file-sharing users to make some money for him and the record companies.
"There are 2.5 billion music files traded every month," he said. "If we can capture 1 percent of that, 25 million files, and we convert 5 to 10 percent of those to paid, I am very happy."
Aside from these attempts to reach détente with the free file-sharing networks, the recording industry knows it also needs new products and new avenues for distribution.
It has, for instance, placed a hefty bet on DualDiscs, a new two-sided CD format that features music on one side and video on the other. "We are committed to giving consumers what they want, legitimately and in a way that fairly compensates those that work so hard to create content," said Zach Horowitz, president of Universal Music Group, which releases music by acts like U2 and 3 Doors Down.
"If we win the case," Mr. Horowitz said, "all the efforts we are making to launch compelling legitimate alternatives will gain traction. There will be no turning back the clock in terms of the countless ways we are making our music available to take advantage of the new technologies."
Thursday, March 10, 2005
The New York Times > Technology > Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
The New York Times > Technology > Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
March 10, 2005
The New York Times
March 10, 2005
Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
By STEVE LOHR
The Bush administration has completed a national security review of the planned sale of I.B.M.'s personal computer business to Lenovo of China, clearing the way for the deal, I.B.M. announced yesterday.
The unusual scrutiny given to the deal mainly reflects the ambivalence in Washington toward China, and its rising economic and military power.
Other Chinese companies are expected to follow Lenovo's example by shopping for acquisitions in the United States. "The lesson from the I.B.M. experience is that the government is going to be difficult on them all," said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a former trade official in the Clinton administration.
The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a multiagency group, reviews purchases of American businesses by overseas corporations for any impact on national security. The I.B.M. inquiry was a full investigation, which occurs in far fewer than 1 percent of cross-border deals, according to former committee members.
The committee's proceedings are secret, and I.B.M. would not say what steps it took to address the concerns of the group, which includes representatives from the Homeland Security, Defense, Justice, Treasury and Commerce Departments. Two people who have been told of the committee's inquiry said I.B.M. made more in the way of commitments and assurances than concessions, which might restrain its sales or product development.
The steps, they said, included agreeing to separate Lenovo's American employees, mainly in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, from I.B.M. workers there who work on other products, like larger server computers and software.
The people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. also agreed to ensure that the chips and other parts in desktop PC's and notebooks were stamped with the name of their manufacturer and country of origin. Such labeling is fairly common among PC makers.
Steven M. Ward Jr., an I.B.M. senior vice president who will become chief executive of Lenovo, said he met with more than a dozen senior government officials to explain the sale for $1.75 billion in cash, stock and debt, announced in December. He said the steps I.B.M. took to gain the approval of the committee would not hobble the business.
"I'm delighted with getting this approval," Mr. Ward said. "And we expect to sell Lenovo PC's and ThinkPads to businesses, governments and individuals around the globe."
Some committee members were concerned that the sale to Lenovo, which is partly state-owned, could result in technology with important military uses being passed to the Chinese, but the people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. addressed that in briefings and demonstrations in Washington in mid-February.
I.B.M. engineers and executives, they said, dismantled a desktop PC and a ThinkPad notebook for the committee, identifying where the components were produced and explaining how the machines were assembled. Most I.B.M. PC's are made in China. They contain Intel microprocessors and are assembled with chips and parts made around the world, though mostly in East Asia.
The I.B.M.-Lenovo episode should prompt Congress to review the authority of the investment committee, which dates from the cold war, said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group established by Congress.
Representative Donald A. Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, said yesterday that he planned to push for hearings to see if the committee's role should be expanded to "take more account of economic security as well as military security."
March 10, 2005
The New York Times
March 10, 2005
Sale of I.B.M. Unit to China Passes U.S. Security Muster
By STEVE LOHR
The Bush administration has completed a national security review of the planned sale of I.B.M.'s personal computer business to Lenovo of China, clearing the way for the deal, I.B.M. announced yesterday.
The unusual scrutiny given to the deal mainly reflects the ambivalence in Washington toward China, and its rising economic and military power.
Other Chinese companies are expected to follow Lenovo's example by shopping for acquisitions in the United States. "The lesson from the I.B.M. experience is that the government is going to be difficult on them all," said William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council and a former trade official in the Clinton administration.
The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a multiagency group, reviews purchases of American businesses by overseas corporations for any impact on national security. The I.B.M. inquiry was a full investigation, which occurs in far fewer than 1 percent of cross-border deals, according to former committee members.
The committee's proceedings are secret, and I.B.M. would not say what steps it took to address the concerns of the group, which includes representatives from the Homeland Security, Defense, Justice, Treasury and Commerce Departments. Two people who have been told of the committee's inquiry said I.B.M. made more in the way of commitments and assurances than concessions, which might restrain its sales or product development.
The steps, they said, included agreeing to separate Lenovo's American employees, mainly in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, from I.B.M. workers there who work on other products, like larger server computers and software.
The people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. also agreed to ensure that the chips and other parts in desktop PC's and notebooks were stamped with the name of their manufacturer and country of origin. Such labeling is fairly common among PC makers.
Steven M. Ward Jr., an I.B.M. senior vice president who will become chief executive of Lenovo, said he met with more than a dozen senior government officials to explain the sale for $1.75 billion in cash, stock and debt, announced in December. He said the steps I.B.M. took to gain the approval of the committee would not hobble the business.
"I'm delighted with getting this approval," Mr. Ward said. "And we expect to sell Lenovo PC's and ThinkPads to businesses, governments and individuals around the globe."
Some committee members were concerned that the sale to Lenovo, which is partly state-owned, could result in technology with important military uses being passed to the Chinese, but the people close to the inquiry said I.B.M. addressed that in briefings and demonstrations in Washington in mid-February.
I.B.M. engineers and executives, they said, dismantled a desktop PC and a ThinkPad notebook for the committee, identifying where the components were produced and explaining how the machines were assembled. Most I.B.M. PC's are made in China. They contain Intel microprocessors and are assembled with chips and parts made around the world, though mostly in East Asia.
The I.B.M.-Lenovo episode should prompt Congress to review the authority of the investment committee, which dates from the cold war, said Michael R. Wessel, a member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group established by Congress.
Representative Donald A. Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, said yesterday that he planned to push for hearings to see if the committee's role should be expanded to "take more account of economic security as well as military security."
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
From oddity to commodity | Perspectives | CNET News.com
From oddity to commodity | Perspectives | CNET News.com
From oddity to commodity
March 9, 2005, 12:01 AM PT
By Michael Kanellos
TrackBack Print E-mail TalkBack
While sitting around a campfire about two weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew told me that he discovered something recently: Every person, everywhere, is important.
Naturally, I was floored and elated, and I asked him how he came to that conclusion.
"It's when I was playing 'Halo 2,'" he replied. "When someone gets killed, the Covenant starts to gain the upper hand. If you lose two people really quickly, forget it."
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
A number of the monumental successes in this marketplace in recent years were largely unanticipated. Google? Consumers already had a wealth of search options. Word of mouth made it a global phenomenon. Conversely, the Moxi box sunk. Taste remains difficult to predict, and it's complicated by the fact that you have Harvard-educated MBAs trying to anticipate the needs of 13-year-olds in Missouri.
To get around the problem, venture capitalists often place smaller investments in a wider variety of companies, said Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock Partners. This week, a number of small start-ups pitched their ideas at the iHollywood Forum in San Mateo, Calif. Here's a brief look at some companies that might either rock your living room or get on the next train to oblivion. Please vote with your comments on which might succeed.
• EZTakes. If the Easthampton, Mass.-based company has its way, it will now be a lot easier to get DVDs of award-winning foreign films or discs with outtakes from "The Beverly Hillbillies." EZTakes has developed software that lets consumers legally download movies from authorized sites to their PC and burn them to a standard DVD disc.
The idea is to circumvent the problems with the other video-on-demand ideas, founder Jim Flynn said. Consumers get to own a hard copy of the movie. "They also don't have to buy a new box," he said.
Conversely, producers can cut distribution and packaging costs in selling DVDs, which, in turn, permits them to offer a wider range of content. One film distributor is tinkering with the idea of using this as a way to disseminate the 250 movies and documentaries on the film festival circuit that rarely reach the public. Two film distributors are currently conducting trials. A formal launch will begin this spring.
• Pepper Computer. The Internet appliance is back for another sequel. The company is marketing a Linux-based device for searching the Web, viewing photos and sending e-mail.
The 2-pound gadget comes with a 20GB hard drive, an 8.4-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi, a QUERTY keyboard, an ARM processor and speakers covered with Gore-Tex (to protect from spills).
CEO Len Kawell says he's familiar with the many failures in this market but that things for his company might be different. Consumers are now acclimated with digital entertainment, and Linux provides better security. Still, the lap-size pad costs more than the budget $699 laptops circulating these days. Pepper is taking pre-orders now and will start selling them in a few weeks.
• Powergrid Fitness. Crossbreed a joystick with a Bowflex, and you get the Kilowatt from Powergrid, a machine that lets you work out while playing video games like "Blood Wake" or "Smuggler's Run." Instead of pushing buttons, the user pushes against a shoulder-high rod to play a game.
"Sixty-three percent of the population wants to lose 20 pounds or more, but fewer than one-third exercise," CEO Greg Merril said. The company sold 250 units last year and hopes to sell 7,700 this year. It's unusual, noted George Zachary of Charles River Ventures, but so was the George Foreman Grill, when it first came out. Models range in price from $1,199 to $799.
• GalleryPlayer. Now bring the treasures of the Musee d'Orsay to your big-screen TV. The company has licensed paintings and photographs from Corbis, National Geographic, Time-Life and others, and delivers them to plasma and LCD TVs, CEO Craig Husa said. It sounds dopey, yes, but it is sort of cool to see the photos of Dorothea Lange on the big screen. The service starts at $4.99 a month. While testing it as an on-demand option, a major cable provider found that 4 percent of viewers tried it out.
And if there isn't a market for art, other things might sell. A source from a video-on-demand company added that one of his customers, an adult publisher, is interested in the technology.
• DigitalDeck. The company sells a home-networking system that lets you watch a DVD in one room and then watch it in a different room without moving the disc. A three-room system costs $4,500. But that's a bargain compared with the $10,000 systems now on the market, said Marin Levine, vice president of strategic development. The systems mostly will be built into new homes, but the price could be a challenge. You could probably decorate your lawn with 45 burl-wood bears for that kind of money.
• Streamload. The San Diego, Calif.-based company has come up with a way to let users send e-mails that contain 2GB worth of files, making it a lot easier to send video clips. For $4.95 a month, consumers get unlimited storage on the company's servers and an xStreamMail account.
• Orb Networks. This is sort of the opposite of Streamload. Rather than send a file, Orb's service transforms a PC into a server. With a password, you can watch a video clip or view photos from a remote location, so the file never has to travel or get copied. The tough part for the company is that it seems that there are a million people out there promoting the same thing.
biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time-share resort, among other occupations.
From oddity to commodity
March 9, 2005, 12:01 AM PT
By Michael Kanellos
TrackBack Print E-mail TalkBack
While sitting around a campfire about two weeks ago, my 10-year-old nephew told me that he discovered something recently: Every person, everywhere, is important.
Naturally, I was floored and elated, and I asked him how he came to that conclusion.
"It's when I was playing 'Halo 2,'" he replied. "When someone gets killed, the Covenant starts to gain the upper hand. If you lose two people really quickly, forget it."
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
Unpredictability remains the hallmark of the consumer world. You develop a game to stimulate compulsive hand-eye coordination, and the kids come away with philosophical insights.
A number of the monumental successes in this marketplace in recent years were largely unanticipated. Google? Consumers already had a wealth of search options. Word of mouth made it a global phenomenon. Conversely, the Moxi box sunk. Taste remains difficult to predict, and it's complicated by the fact that you have Harvard-educated MBAs trying to anticipate the needs of 13-year-olds in Missouri.
To get around the problem, venture capitalists often place smaller investments in a wider variety of companies, said Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock Partners. This week, a number of small start-ups pitched their ideas at the iHollywood Forum in San Mateo, Calif. Here's a brief look at some companies that might either rock your living room or get on the next train to oblivion. Please vote with your comments on which might succeed.
• EZTakes. If the Easthampton, Mass.-based company has its way, it will now be a lot easier to get DVDs of award-winning foreign films or discs with outtakes from "The Beverly Hillbillies." EZTakes has developed software that lets consumers legally download movies from authorized sites to their PC and burn them to a standard DVD disc.
The idea is to circumvent the problems with the other video-on-demand ideas, founder Jim Flynn said. Consumers get to own a hard copy of the movie. "They also don't have to buy a new box," he said.
Conversely, producers can cut distribution and packaging costs in selling DVDs, which, in turn, permits them to offer a wider range of content. One film distributor is tinkering with the idea of using this as a way to disseminate the 250 movies and documentaries on the film festival circuit that rarely reach the public. Two film distributors are currently conducting trials. A formal launch will begin this spring.
• Pepper Computer. The Internet appliance is back for another sequel. The company is marketing a Linux-based device for searching the Web, viewing photos and sending e-mail.
The 2-pound gadget comes with a 20GB hard drive, an 8.4-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi, a QUERTY keyboard, an ARM processor and speakers covered with Gore-Tex (to protect from spills).
CEO Len Kawell says he's familiar with the many failures in this market but that things for his company might be different. Consumers are now acclimated with digital entertainment, and Linux provides better security. Still, the lap-size pad costs more than the budget $699 laptops circulating these days. Pepper is taking pre-orders now and will start selling them in a few weeks.
• Powergrid Fitness. Crossbreed a joystick with a Bowflex, and you get the Kilowatt from Powergrid, a machine that lets you work out while playing video games like "Blood Wake" or "Smuggler's Run." Instead of pushing buttons, the user pushes against a shoulder-high rod to play a game.
"Sixty-three percent of the population wants to lose 20 pounds or more, but fewer than one-third exercise," CEO Greg Merril said. The company sold 250 units last year and hopes to sell 7,700 this year. It's unusual, noted George Zachary of Charles River Ventures, but so was the George Foreman Grill, when it first came out. Models range in price from $1,199 to $799.
• GalleryPlayer. Now bring the treasures of the Musee d'Orsay to your big-screen TV. The company has licensed paintings and photographs from Corbis, National Geographic, Time-Life and others, and delivers them to plasma and LCD TVs, CEO Craig Husa said. It sounds dopey, yes, but it is sort of cool to see the photos of Dorothea Lange on the big screen. The service starts at $4.99 a month. While testing it as an on-demand option, a major cable provider found that 4 percent of viewers tried it out.
And if there isn't a market for art, other things might sell. A source from a video-on-demand company added that one of his customers, an adult publisher, is interested in the technology.
• DigitalDeck. The company sells a home-networking system that lets you watch a DVD in one room and then watch it in a different room without moving the disc. A three-room system costs $4,500. But that's a bargain compared with the $10,000 systems now on the market, said Marin Levine, vice president of strategic development. The systems mostly will be built into new homes, but the price could be a challenge. You could probably decorate your lawn with 45 burl-wood bears for that kind of money.
• Streamload. The San Diego, Calif.-based company has come up with a way to let users send e-mails that contain 2GB worth of files, making it a lot easier to send video clips. For $4.95 a month, consumers get unlimited storage on the company's servers and an xStreamMail account.
• Orb Networks. This is sort of the opposite of Streamload. Rather than send a file, Orb's service transforms a PC into a server. With a password, you can watch a video clip or view photos from a remote location, so the file never has to travel or get copied. The tough part for the company is that it seems that there are a million people out there promoting the same thing.
biography
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas. He has worked as an attorney, travel writer and sidewalk hawker for a time-share resort, among other occupations.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing :: February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing :: February 2005
February 2005
February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing
By Bibhu Choudhary and Suvarna Singh
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The year is 2009 and Robert is the head of California Design Studio, a multi-million dollar architectural firm in San Diego. His firm is competing with three others for the prestigious commercial complex proposed near O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Robert takes the morning flight to Chicago. He reviews the materials he is carrying on his Pocket PC, which consists of a PowerPoint presentation on the credentials of his firm, the concept design of the proposed plan in AutoCAD, a walk through simulation of the proposed complex in 3-D, and video clips from his firm's previous projects in Phoenix and Seattle.
His is a renowned West Coast firm, and this is his first attempt to expand his business to the middle of the country. He realizes that his presentation could shape the future of his firm. He notices a few mistakes in the presentation. He activates a laser projector built into his Pocket PC and the image of a keyboard is projected on the seat-back tray table. As his fingers touch the key images, the finger motion is recognized and translated into keystrokes. He makes some final changes to the presentation and changes the lighting effects on the 3-D model of the proposed complex. Then he pulls out his flexible display screen to get a panoramic view of the entire presentation.
Robert meets his clients the next morning. He pulls out his Pocket PC and hooks it to an external monitor in the boardroom and makes his presentation. As he opens a media player to display the video of his earlier projects, his Pocket PC automatically detects the wireless speakers in the board room. Robert chooses to use the speakers to make the commentary audible to the whole room.
The potential clients are impressed with the presentation but not sure that the proposed design will work well with the school building that they just completed in the neighboring plot. Robert asks for the AutoCAD drawing of the school building, downloads it to his Pocket PC, drops it into his onboard CAD program, and adjusts its position to fit the overall layout. It turns out that the proposed granite faade of the commercial complex is too bright for the surroundings. Robert taps on the paint-brush tool and quickly gives the faade the look and feel of exposed concrete. The final request is for the inclusion of an information kiosk in the design. Robert notes it down and heads back to his hotel room.
From his hotel room, Robert uses his Pocket PC to audio conference with his office and explains the clients' requests to his support staff. His California team works on the requested changes and sends him the updated designs. Robert presents these to the clients the next day. During the meeting he uses his Pocket PC to video conference with his team in California. When it's time to explain the innovative pile foundation used to support the complex, Steve, the structural engineer, takes over control of Robert's Pocket PC using terminal services and makes free hand sketches to explain the vertical section of the columns.
There are questions about the project schedule and completion dates. Robert pulls up his copy of Microsoft Project on his Pocket PC to refer to his Gantt charts. His VBA macro-enabled Microsoft Excel workbooks do the complex calculations for him and make accurate estimations of building materials and pricing. The clients are happy with Robert's presentation and he wins the contract.
In this futuristic story, we see a Pocket PC totally replacing the bulky notebook PC among mobile information workers. The truth is that many of the innovations described in this story are already available today as third-party add-ons, and others are in development. By 2009, most of these capabilities will be built into the Pocket PC.
Increased storage capacity lets you bring everything you need with you
The advent of high-capacity storage cards will make it possible for Robert to bring all the information he needs with him. This includes his e-mail, reference material, documents, presentations, high-resolution graphics, video files, additional applications, and more. Toshiba recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records by introducing the world's smallest hard disk drive-a 0.85 inch device with a 4 GB capacity! (Fig. 1) In five years, storage capacity will be even higher and the prices even lower. All this is set to change the storage paradigm on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. We can expect hard disk drives to be built into future mobile devices.
Fig.1: Toshiba's 0.85 inch hard disk drive can store 4 GB of data.
Input innovations make data entry easier
We already have a variety of external keyboards and alternate input software available for Windows Mobile devices. In the near future we'll see more innovative solutions like the projection keyboards being developed by Canesta (Fig. 2). This solution combines a laser "pattern projector" to display a keyboard on a flat surface and "electronic perception technology" to recognize and translate finger movements into keystrokes.
Fig 2. Laser projection keyboard by Canesta
In addition to laser keyboards, improved voice-to-text capability and advanced transcriber technology will make it possible for Robert to create or edit data easily while on the move. Robert's phone-enabled Pocket PC will be able to translate conversations with his engineers into text format and save them as document files for later reference, or to cut and paste portions of them into a presentation. In addition to the soft input panel, the applications will come equipped with voice recognition capabilities which will let Robert drive his applications with his voice.
Enhanced display technology
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition already supports resolutions of 480x640, but few devices have VGA screens. In the future, VGA screens will be common and Pocket PCs will be able to support even larger monitors and duplicate monitors (i.e., displaying on two screens at the same time). You can also expect to see flexible screen technology similar to Universal Display Corporation's innovative "Flexible Organic Light Emitting Device" (Fig. 3). This lightweight, ultra-thin display can be rolled up, or laminated onto just about any surface. Flexible screen technology can potentially put larger, more durable screens in handheld devices without increasing the size or weight of the device.
Fig. 3: Flexible screen technology developed by Universal Display.
In the future, the Pocket PC will have resolution and orientation-aware applications that will support multiple external monitors. Pocket PC applications will detect the presence of attached external monitors and automatically change the image resolution, shape and contents to optimize and suit the available display. One new tool, IA Screen Mirror 2.0, lets you project multiple Pocket PC screens on to an external monitor. With all these enhancements, Robert will be able to display his presentation on a variety of screens without compromising the quality of the picture.
Faster processors support feature-rich applications
The Intel PXA27x is the most recent processor series for Windows Mobile devices. It not only provides speeds up to 624 MHz, it is also more energy efficient. In addition, it includes Intel's Wireless MMX technology, which brings desktop-like multimedia performance to Pocket PC-based clients while minimizing the power needed to run rich applications. This better supports full motion video conferencing on mobile phones, as well as DVD-quality video playback on PDAs.
In five years Pocket PCs will have even more power, making it even easier for Robert to use the terminal services capability of his Pocket PC to access and control feature-rich programs running on his office server, like AutoCAD, 3D Studio, Microsoft Project and macro-enabled Microsoft Excel. Full versions of these programs may also be available for mobile devices. As Pocket PCs become more capable, the developers of these PC programs will add features to support these new mobility scenarios.
Stay connected with faster, more ubiquitous wireless
You can expect cellular data networks to expand and become faster in the next five years. AT&T's EDGE ("Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution") is expected to achieve speeds of about 130-200Kbps. 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps. Nokia's High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is said to be capable of boosting 3G speeds to 10Mbps or even more. All this will make it faster, easier, and less expensive for Robert to access the Internet and check his e-mail while he's on the road.
However, when Robert is in his hotel room or at the client's office, he will be using Wi-Fi access points to connect to the Internet and conference with his team. All peripheral devices like mouse, speakers, microphone, keyboards, and monitors will connect to his Pocket PC via Bluetooth. If a particular device is not equipped with the required driver, it will automatically look for the driver on the Web, download, and install it.
Enhanced battery capacities and more power-efficient devices
Faster processors, increased dependence on wireless connectivity, and increased use of feature-rich applications all require more power and drain the Pocket PC's battery more quickly. Fortunately, we've seen a corresponding increase in battery capacities. Most developers of ruggedized/industrial Pocket PCs offer high-capacity battery options, and many consumer-oriented Pocket PCs have "extended battery" options that can double the battery capacity (and the time between recharges).
To further conserve power, the Intel PXA27x processor family incorporates Wireless Intel SpeedStep technology, which allows the CPU to dynamically adjust its performance and the power it draws based on the needs of the application that is running.
Over the next five years we can expect the Pocket PCs processors to become more efficient, and battery capacity to increase. Robert will be able to work uninterrupted throughout the day on his Pocket PC, checking his e-mail, taking notes, and giving rich presentations and demos to his clients without having to search for an available place to plug in his charger.
Portable processing power
Today, the mobile information professional expects a conference room to be equipped with an overhead projector and little else. If he needs speakers or a microphone, he makes arrangements for them in advance or brings them with him, along with his notebook PC, a power adapter, a variety of cables, etc.
In five years, fully-equipped conference rooms will be the norm, and mobile professional will carry a Pocket PC and nothing more. The Pocket PC will "sniff out" the available wireless peripherals, the user will tap on the screen to select them, and the presentation will begin. Of course, he'll still have to make a good presentation and close the deal. But he'll have all the portable processing power he needs-sitting in his pocket.
February 2005
February 2005
The Bright Future of Mobile Computing
By Bibhu Choudhary and Suvarna Singh
Search site
Search Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories
Browse Encyclopedia
The year is 2009 and Robert is the head of California Design Studio, a multi-million dollar architectural firm in San Diego. His firm is competing with three others for the prestigious commercial complex proposed near O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Robert takes the morning flight to Chicago. He reviews the materials he is carrying on his Pocket PC, which consists of a PowerPoint presentation on the credentials of his firm, the concept design of the proposed plan in AutoCAD, a walk through simulation of the proposed complex in 3-D, and video clips from his firm's previous projects in Phoenix and Seattle.
His is a renowned West Coast firm, and this is his first attempt to expand his business to the middle of the country. He realizes that his presentation could shape the future of his firm. He notices a few mistakes in the presentation. He activates a laser projector built into his Pocket PC and the image of a keyboard is projected on the seat-back tray table. As his fingers touch the key images, the finger motion is recognized and translated into keystrokes. He makes some final changes to the presentation and changes the lighting effects on the 3-D model of the proposed complex. Then he pulls out his flexible display screen to get a panoramic view of the entire presentation.
Robert meets his clients the next morning. He pulls out his Pocket PC and hooks it to an external monitor in the boardroom and makes his presentation. As he opens a media player to display the video of his earlier projects, his Pocket PC automatically detects the wireless speakers in the board room. Robert chooses to use the speakers to make the commentary audible to the whole room.
The potential clients are impressed with the presentation but not sure that the proposed design will work well with the school building that they just completed in the neighboring plot. Robert asks for the AutoCAD drawing of the school building, downloads it to his Pocket PC, drops it into his onboard CAD program, and adjusts its position to fit the overall layout. It turns out that the proposed granite faade of the commercial complex is too bright for the surroundings. Robert taps on the paint-brush tool and quickly gives the faade the look and feel of exposed concrete. The final request is for the inclusion of an information kiosk in the design. Robert notes it down and heads back to his hotel room.
From his hotel room, Robert uses his Pocket PC to audio conference with his office and explains the clients' requests to his support staff. His California team works on the requested changes and sends him the updated designs. Robert presents these to the clients the next day. During the meeting he uses his Pocket PC to video conference with his team in California. When it's time to explain the innovative pile foundation used to support the complex, Steve, the structural engineer, takes over control of Robert's Pocket PC using terminal services and makes free hand sketches to explain the vertical section of the columns.
There are questions about the project schedule and completion dates. Robert pulls up his copy of Microsoft Project on his Pocket PC to refer to his Gantt charts. His VBA macro-enabled Microsoft Excel workbooks do the complex calculations for him and make accurate estimations of building materials and pricing. The clients are happy with Robert's presentation and he wins the contract.
In this futuristic story, we see a Pocket PC totally replacing the bulky notebook PC among mobile information workers. The truth is that many of the innovations described in this story are already available today as third-party add-ons, and others are in development. By 2009, most of these capabilities will be built into the Pocket PC.
Increased storage capacity lets you bring everything you need with you
The advent of high-capacity storage cards will make it possible for Robert to bring all the information he needs with him. This includes his e-mail, reference material, documents, presentations, high-resolution graphics, video files, additional applications, and more. Toshiba recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records by introducing the world's smallest hard disk drive-a 0.85 inch device with a 4 GB capacity! (Fig. 1) In five years, storage capacity will be even higher and the prices even lower. All this is set to change the storage paradigm on Pocket PCs and SmartPhones. We can expect hard disk drives to be built into future mobile devices.
Fig.1: Toshiba's 0.85 inch hard disk drive can store 4 GB of data.
Input innovations make data entry easier
We already have a variety of external keyboards and alternate input software available for Windows Mobile devices. In the near future we'll see more innovative solutions like the projection keyboards being developed by Canesta (Fig. 2). This solution combines a laser "pattern projector" to display a keyboard on a flat surface and "electronic perception technology" to recognize and translate finger movements into keystrokes.
Fig 2. Laser projection keyboard by Canesta
In addition to laser keyboards, improved voice-to-text capability and advanced transcriber technology will make it possible for Robert to create or edit data easily while on the move. Robert's phone-enabled Pocket PC will be able to translate conversations with his engineers into text format and save them as document files for later reference, or to cut and paste portions of them into a presentation. In addition to the soft input panel, the applications will come equipped with voice recognition capabilities which will let Robert drive his applications with his voice.
Enhanced display technology
Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition already supports resolutions of 480x640, but few devices have VGA screens. In the future, VGA screens will be common and Pocket PCs will be able to support even larger monitors and duplicate monitors (i.e., displaying on two screens at the same time). You can also expect to see flexible screen technology similar to Universal Display Corporation's innovative "Flexible Organic Light Emitting Device" (Fig. 3). This lightweight, ultra-thin display can be rolled up, or laminated onto just about any surface. Flexible screen technology can potentially put larger, more durable screens in handheld devices without increasing the size or weight of the device.
Fig. 3: Flexible screen technology developed by Universal Display.
In the future, the Pocket PC will have resolution and orientation-aware applications that will support multiple external monitors. Pocket PC applications will detect the presence of attached external monitors and automatically change the image resolution, shape and contents to optimize and suit the available display. One new tool, IA Screen Mirror 2.0, lets you project multiple Pocket PC screens on to an external monitor. With all these enhancements, Robert will be able to display his presentation on a variety of screens without compromising the quality of the picture.
Faster processors support feature-rich applications
The Intel PXA27x is the most recent processor series for Windows Mobile devices. It not only provides speeds up to 624 MHz, it is also more energy efficient. In addition, it includes Intel's Wireless MMX technology, which brings desktop-like multimedia performance to Pocket PC-based clients while minimizing the power needed to run rich applications. This better supports full motion video conferencing on mobile phones, as well as DVD-quality video playback on PDAs.
In five years Pocket PCs will have even more power, making it even easier for Robert to use the terminal services capability of his Pocket PC to access and control feature-rich programs running on his office server, like AutoCAD, 3D Studio, Microsoft Project and macro-enabled Microsoft Excel. Full versions of these programs may also be available for mobile devices. As Pocket PCs become more capable, the developers of these PC programs will add features to support these new mobility scenarios.
Stay connected with faster, more ubiquitous wireless
You can expect cellular data networks to expand and become faster in the next five years. AT&T's EDGE ("Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution") is expected to achieve speeds of about 130-200Kbps. 3G networks are expected to reach speeds of more than 2Mbps. Nokia's High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is said to be capable of boosting 3G speeds to 10Mbps or even more. All this will make it faster, easier, and less expensive for Robert to access the Internet and check his e-mail while he's on the road.
However, when Robert is in his hotel room or at the client's office, he will be using Wi-Fi access points to connect to the Internet and conference with his team. All peripheral devices like mouse, speakers, microphone, keyboards, and monitors will connect to his Pocket PC via Bluetooth. If a particular device is not equipped with the required driver, it will automatically look for the driver on the Web, download, and install it.
Enhanced battery capacities and more power-efficient devices
Faster processors, increased dependence on wireless connectivity, and increased use of feature-rich applications all require more power and drain the Pocket PC's battery more quickly. Fortunately, we've seen a corresponding increase in battery capacities. Most developers of ruggedized/industrial Pocket PCs offer high-capacity battery options, and many consumer-oriented Pocket PCs have "extended battery" options that can double the battery capacity (and the time between recharges).
To further conserve power, the Intel PXA27x processor family incorporates Wireless Intel SpeedStep technology, which allows the CPU to dynamically adjust its performance and the power it draws based on the needs of the application that is running.
Over the next five years we can expect the Pocket PCs processors to become more efficient, and battery capacity to increase. Robert will be able to work uninterrupted throughout the day on his Pocket PC, checking his e-mail, taking notes, and giving rich presentations and demos to his clients without having to search for an available place to plug in his charger.
Portable processing power
Today, the mobile information professional expects a conference room to be equipped with an overhead projector and little else. If he needs speakers or a microphone, he makes arrangements for them in advance or brings them with him, along with his notebook PC, a power adapter, a variety of cables, etc.
In five years, fully-equipped conference rooms will be the norm, and mobile professional will carry a Pocket PC and nothing more. The Pocket PC will "sniff out" the available wireless peripherals, the user will tap on the screen to select them, and the presentation will begin. Of course, he'll still have to make a good presentation and close the deal. But he'll have all the portable processing power he needs-sitting in his pocket.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum Unofficial Upgrade By John H. Armwood
H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum Upgrade
I performed the unofficial upgrade the day that it was posted online H6315 PDAPhone.Com Forum as an executable file. The upgrade went smoothly. I immediately knew the device was upgraded because I saw an HP splash screen, like I had on my hp 5555 and not the T-Mobile splash screen I was used to seeing on my h6315 prior to the upgrade.
I then made a contravershal decision to reinstall my many third party applications by using the restore function found in the basic HP ROM based operating system instead of doing a clean, brand new installation. My reasoning was quite simple. In theory a clean installation is the ideal way to go but it would take me at least five or six hours to install my many programs. I figured that if the restoration of my back up did not go well I could always do a hard reset and then do a clean installation.
I was fortunate. My clean restoration worked. I did not have the problems getting the T-Mobile mail triggers to work that many who performed a clean installation encountered. For some it took at least a day to resolve this issue. All I had to do was copy the T-Mobile application folders that had been in the old ROM into the program files directory and then edit the registry to identify the new location of the files. This allowed the T-Mobile Today screen plug in to appear and work. This was a simple process.
I am very happy with the update. My device runs faster without any real problems. The device does not crash. Web surfing is noticibly faster. My Jabra 250headset and my Logitech Mobile Freedom both work flawlessly. The sound level of both headsets is louder. The sound level of alarms and the phone ringer seem louder. The update however did not improve the performance of my HP Blue tooth Stereo Headset. The popping noises remain.
The promise of the h6315 has been finally realized. Other than the issue with the blue tooth headset the h6315 is working flawlessly. I am a happy man. The contributors to the PDAPhone.Com forum who worked collectively, on line, to make this unofficial update work, should feel happy that their contributions have benifitted many. Like many others I want to convey to them a heart felt thanks for a job well done.
La
Friday, February 25, 2005
nickbair.net >HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release.
nickbair.net: "ickbair.net
ickbair.net
HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release. Use at your own risk.
Primary Upgrade Links
PDAPhoneHome.com Thread
The original thread regarding this upgrade. Do not perform this upgrade without thoroughly reading this information. This is also where to go if you have questions. Do you see a link to my email address on this page? No. "Okay, I'll just go to the root domain and find his email link there." Well don't. I will ignore any personal help requests. Thanks.
ROM Patch
The modified ROM patch as described in the forum thread. Do not install this patch without reading the above link.
T-Mobile Install Pack
All the necessary files to restore many T-Mobile-specific apps. Restores the Battery Monitor, SIM Phone Book, Today Screen plugin, and email trigger functionality. Instructions included in .zip file.
Miscellaneous Files
T-Mobile Extended ROM Bundle
The unsupported group of files removed from the original h6315 ROM by dmc874 in the forum. It is available here for whatever purposes. Use the T-Mobile Install Pack above for a cleaner installation.
T-Mobile Email Trigger Apps
More unsupported files available for whatever. If you simply want to reactivate email triggers following the ROM upgrade, use the T-Mobile Install Pack listed above.
Some other files of interest for h6315 users are available here.
ickbair.net
HP iPAQ h6365 Pocket PC ROM Update version 1.00.38 (14 Feb 05) Modified to update ROM on HP iPAQ h6315. This is not an official release. Use at your own risk.
Primary Upgrade Links
PDAPhoneHome.com Thread
The original thread regarding this upgrade. Do not perform this upgrade without thoroughly reading this information. This is also where to go if you have questions. Do you see a link to my email address on this page? No. "Okay, I'll just go to the root domain and find his email link there." Well don't. I will ignore any personal help requests. Thanks.
ROM Patch
The modified ROM patch as described in the forum thread. Do not install this patch without reading the above link.
T-Mobile Install Pack
All the necessary files to restore many T-Mobile-specific apps. Restores the Battery Monitor, SIM Phone Book, Today Screen plugin, and email trigger functionality. Instructions included in .zip file.
Miscellaneous Files
T-Mobile Extended ROM Bundle
The unsupported group of files removed from the original h6315 ROM by dmc874 in the forum. It is available here for whatever purposes. Use the T-Mobile Install Pack above for a cleaner installation.
T-Mobile Email Trigger Apps
More unsupported files available for whatever. If you simply want to reactivate email triggers following the ROM upgrade, use the T-Mobile Install Pack listed above.
Some other files of interest for h6315 users are available here.
PDA Phone.Com Forum Unofficial h6315 Rom Update Instructions
....::Welcome to my domain::....
ROM Update for 6315 *un-official*
Use at own risk!!! Any suppliers of this unofficial ROM update including myself will and shall not be held responsible for any action that may arise.
By downloading this unofficial ROM update you agree to to the terms above. (Instructions?)
New ROM
OldROM
HP/T-Mobile people, if you don't want this here then I suggest you make one available to us, or contact me via e-mail
More goodies http://www.lvlolvlo.net/pda
Many thanks goes to the following evil geniuses who got this to work
beaups
dmc874
lgingell
Mashie
njbair
splintercell
And of course the one who made this unit bearable until the above mentioned got the patch to work
mswlogo
Instructions
1. Download the NewRom
2. Unzip it using your unzip program (i.e. WinRAR, WinZip, 7zip, etc...)
3. Double click on the hpRUU to run the program
4. View the Readme and if you wish to proceed Agree to the Terms and Conditions
5. Click Next
6. Click Next again to flash the device with the new ROM
7. Sit back relax and grab yourself something to drink while it handles its business.
If you want the SIM Contacts Manager, Battery Status, and T-Mobile today plug-in then do the following after completing the ROM upgrade.
1. Copied the entire "T-Mobile" folder from the oldROM to the Program Files directory /program files/
2. Then copy all of the .dll files from the T-Mobile Directory to the /windows directory
3. Lastly, create a shortcut to vsbattery.exe in the /windows/startup folder
If you want the Mail triggers to work then do the following
1. Download this and unzip it.
2. Copy tmo-IM.CAB to your device and run it. When prompted to overwrite, choose "No to All".
3. Copy all other files directly to the root directory of your device. The folders should merge where necessary. When prompted to overwrite, choose "Yes to All".
4. Run tmo.cpf in your root directory. There is no confirmation for this file, but you will see it disappear from the list once it is completed.
5. Remove your device from the cradle and perform a soft-reset.
6. In File Explorer, navigate to the /Windows/Start Menu/ directory. Delete the "Instant Messaging" shortcut, then delete the three shortcuts in the /Programs/ subfolder for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo.
Voila! You now have email triggers.
You can configure your POP account via the T-Mobile website or by hand.
Enjoy E-Mail Triggers!
If you want the T-Mobile today plug in to work then do the following:
1. Download this registry editor
2. Browse to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items
3. And Remove the "\IPAQ ROM" from the path entries for both T-Mobile and Mail
If you want the original T-Mobile Theme the do the following:
1. Download this and unzip it
2. Copy both files to the \Windows directory on the PPC
3. Go to Start----Settings----Today
4. Choose which one you like
That's it I think now that concludes just about everything! Once again much thanks to mswlogo, beaups, dmc874, lgingell, Mashie, njbair, splintercell and PDAPHONEHOME.COM for everything.
-lvlolvlo
ROM Update for 6315 *un-official*
Use at own risk!!! Any suppliers of this unofficial ROM update including myself will and shall not be held responsible for any action that may arise.
By downloading this unofficial ROM update you agree to to the terms above. (Instructions?)
New ROM
OldROM
HP/T-Mobile people, if you don't want this here then I suggest you make one available to us, or contact me via e-mail
More goodies http://www.lvlolvlo.net/pda
Many thanks goes to the following evil geniuses who got this to work
beaups
dmc874
lgingell
Mashie
njbair
splintercell
And of course the one who made this unit bearable until the above mentioned got the patch to work
mswlogo
Instructions
1. Download the NewRom
2. Unzip it using your unzip program (i.e. WinRAR, WinZip, 7zip, etc...)
3. Double click on the hpRUU to run the program
4. View the Readme and if you wish to proceed Agree to the Terms and Conditions
5. Click Next
6. Click Next again to flash the device with the new ROM
7. Sit back relax and grab yourself something to drink while it handles its business.
If you want the SIM Contacts Manager, Battery Status, and T-Mobile today plug-in then do the following after completing the ROM upgrade.
1. Copied the entire "T-Mobile" folder from the oldROM to the Program Files directory /program files/
2. Then copy all of the .dll files from the T-Mobile Directory to the /windows directory
3. Lastly, create a shortcut to vsbattery.exe in the /windows/startup folder
If you want the Mail triggers to work then do the following
1. Download this and unzip it.
2. Copy tmo-IM.CAB to your device and run it. When prompted to overwrite, choose "No to All".
3. Copy all other files directly to the root directory of your device. The folders should merge where necessary. When prompted to overwrite, choose "Yes to All".
4. Run tmo.cpf in your root directory. There is no confirmation for this file, but you will see it disappear from the list once it is completed.
5. Remove your device from the cradle and perform a soft-reset.
6. In File Explorer, navigate to the /Windows/Start Menu/ directory. Delete the "Instant Messaging" shortcut, then delete the three shortcuts in the /Programs/ subfolder for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo.
Voila! You now have email triggers.
You can configure your POP account via the T-Mobile website or by hand.
Enjoy E-Mail Triggers!
If you want the T-Mobile today plug in to work then do the following:
1. Download this registry editor
2. Browse to the following path:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Today\Items
3. And Remove the "\IPAQ ROM" from the path entries for both T-Mobile and Mail
If you want the original T-Mobile Theme the do the following:
1. Download this and unzip it
2. Copy both files to the \Windows directory on the PPC
3. Go to Start----Settings----Today
4. Choose which one you like
That's it I think now that concludes just about everything! Once again much thanks to mswlogo, beaups, dmc874, lgingell, Mashie, njbair, splintercell and PDAPHONEHOME.COM for everything.
-lvlolvlo
Friday, February 11, 2005
Ipaq HQ Forums - Carly Fiorina And HP Part Company
Ipaq HQ Forums - Carly Fiorina And HP Part Company: "arly Fiorina And HP Part Company
The move has been rumored for weeks -- HP's embattled CEO Carly Fiorina and HP have parted ways over unreconcilable differences.
'While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision,' Fiorina said in a statement. 'HP is a great company and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future.'
According to Patricia C. Dunn, an HP director, 'Looking forward, we think the job is reliant on hands-on execution, and we thought that a new set of capabilities was called for.'
In January, sources told the Wall Street Journal the company's board is tired of HP's inconsistent earnings and second billing to IBM. HP has been frustrated by its inability to clearly articulate its Adaptive Enterprise strategy as it relates to IBM's e-business on-demand plan for next-generation computing.
__________________
Mike Lohsl
News Editor & Mobile Evangelist"
The move has been rumored for weeks -- HP's embattled CEO Carly Fiorina and HP have parted ways over unreconcilable differences.
'While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision,' Fiorina said in a statement. 'HP is a great company and I wish all the people of HP much success in the future.'
According to Patricia C. Dunn, an HP director, 'Looking forward, we think the job is reliant on hands-on execution, and we thought that a new set of capabilities was called for.'
In January, sources told the Wall Street Journal the company's board is tired of HP's inconsistent earnings and second billing to IBM. HP has been frustrated by its inability to clearly articulate its Adaptive Enterprise strategy as it relates to IBM's e-business on-demand plan for next-generation computing.
__________________
Mike Lohsl
News Editor & Mobile Evangelist"
Saturday, January 15, 2005
WGCLTV.com > Probe Finds Liquid on Titan
Probe Finds Liquid on Titan
This is one of the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe during its successful descent.
January 14, 2005
DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) -- A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.
One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.
"Clearly there is liquid matter flowing on the surface of Titan," said scientist Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, which made the probe's camera.
He said the liquid appeared to be flowing into a dark area at the right side of the image.
"It almost looks like a river delta," he said. "It could be liquid methane, or hydrocarbons that settled out of the haze" that envelops Titan.
Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.
A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks - boulders or blocks of water ice - in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.
"There aren't too many planets with liquid," Tomasko said. "There's Earth, and now there's Titan."
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.
"I think all of us continue to be amazed as we watch our solar system unveil," NASA science administrator Alphonso Diaz said as the extraordinary images were displayed on screens at mission control in Darmstadt.
"It challenges all our preconceptions that all these planets are static places. Seeing a planet emerge that has dynamics and complexity to it is just amazing."
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before its descent to the surface of Titan. The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency.
Scientists say they received more than three hours of data from Huygens' descent, and more than 10 minutes of data from the surface itself.
"I'm shocked. It's remarkable," said Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Imaging Center. "There are river channels. There are channels cut by something ... a fluid of some sort is my best guess."
"This mission has been like a fantasy come true," she told CNN. "It's a great moment not only for science but for humankind."
Applause erupted at mission control in Darmstadt at news of the data transmission from the probe.
"The scientific data we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's general director. "This is a fantastic success for Europe."
The heart of the mission was the probe's 2 1/2-hour parachute descent, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
Early signals confirmed it had powered up for entry and deployed the parachute, and officials were confident it had made a safe landing because Huygens was designed to go on transmitting from the surface for at least three minutes before its batteries died - a total transmission of less than three hours. But the signal kept coming for more than five hours.
Mission officials - who have waited since 1997 for Huygens to reach its destination - had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating the probe was transmitting to the Cassini mother ship.
Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore Titan's atmosphere and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.
Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.
The probe was designed to shed its heat shield during descent and use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere for transmission back to Cassini and relay to NASA's Deep Space Network in California and to ESA controllers in Darmstadt.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.
Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on Earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on Earth."
Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.
---
On the Net:
http://saturn.esa.int
http://saturn.jpl.nasa .gov
http://www.nasa.gov /cassini
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and CBS 46. All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
This is one of the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe during its successful descent.
January 14, 2005
DARMSTADT, Germany (AP) -- A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.
One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.
"Clearly there is liquid matter flowing on the surface of Titan," said scientist Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, which made the probe's camera.
He said the liquid appeared to be flowing into a dark area at the right side of the image.
"It almost looks like a river delta," he said. "It could be liquid methane, or hydrocarbons that settled out of the haze" that envelops Titan.
Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.
A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks - boulders or blocks of water ice - in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.
"There aren't too many planets with liquid," Tomasko said. "There's Earth, and now there's Titan."
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.
"I think all of us continue to be amazed as we watch our solar system unveil," NASA science administrator Alphonso Diaz said as the extraordinary images were displayed on screens at mission control in Darmstadt.
"It challenges all our preconceptions that all these planets are static places. Seeing a planet emerge that has dynamics and complexity to it is just amazing."
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before its descent to the surface of Titan. The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian space agency.
Scientists say they received more than three hours of data from Huygens' descent, and more than 10 minutes of data from the surface itself.
"I'm shocked. It's remarkable," said Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Imaging Center. "There are river channels. There are channels cut by something ... a fluid of some sort is my best guess."
"This mission has been like a fantasy come true," she told CNN. "It's a great moment not only for science but for humankind."
Applause erupted at mission control in Darmstadt at news of the data transmission from the probe.
"The scientific data we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's general director. "This is a fantastic success for Europe."
The heart of the mission was the probe's 2 1/2-hour parachute descent, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
Early signals confirmed it had powered up for entry and deployed the parachute, and officials were confident it had made a safe landing because Huygens was designed to go on transmitting from the surface for at least three minutes before its batteries died - a total transmission of less than three hours. But the signal kept coming for more than five hours.
Mission officials - who have waited since 1997 for Huygens to reach its destination - had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating the probe was transmitting to the Cassini mother ship.
Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore Titan's atmosphere and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.
Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.
The probe was designed to shed its heat shield during descent and use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere for transmission back to Cassini and relay to NASA's Deep Space Network in California and to ESA controllers in Darmstadt.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.
Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on Earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on Earth."
Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing.
The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.
---
On the Net:
http://saturn.esa.int
http://saturn.jpl.nasa .gov
http://www.nasa.gov /cassini
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
All content © Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and CBS 46. All Rights Reserved.
For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Friday, January 14, 2005
PC Magazine > Spy Sweeper 3.5 REVIEW DATE:Â 01.12.05
Spy Sweeper 3.5
REVIEW DATE: 01.12.05
Total posts: 2
$29.95
By Konstantinos Karagiannis
The best just keeps getting better. Webroot's Spy Sweeper, which shared the spotlight with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Plus as our picks for the best antispyware products of 2004, is now the sole champ of the antispyware arena. The latest version, 3.5, with its slight but effective improvements, is easily the best choice for protecting PCs from spyware and for cleaning infected machines.
Scan time is improved in the new version. We ran both versions 3.0 and 3.5 against the same test system, and verified that Spy Sweeper 3.5 is approximately 30 percent faster, in line with Webroot's claims. Accuracy is up as well; the program got perfect scores on all but one of our tests.
Other improvements include the ability to remove both CoolWebSearch and TV Media completely. Older versions of Spy Sweeper required manual removal stages that proved difficult. We found one pest that remains less than fully curable, however. Spy Sweeper was unable to delete a key component of Istbar, although it did block the spyware bar from working. Spy Sweeper wrongly suggests that a user can delete the file; Windows claims Istbar is in use, making deletion via Explorer impossible. You need to kill Istbar either via a command line, by removing dependencies on the file, or with Spybot Search & Destroy. Even the best occasionally needs a little extra help.
Of course, with all its Shields active, Spy Sweeper will prevent Istbar and almost every other pest from getting on your system in the first place. If version 3.0 got on your nerves with frequent requests for user interaction, you'll like 3.5's ability to block browser-hijack attempts without constantly asking for advice.
Many antispyware packages offer users the ability, on a case-by-case basis, to block a program from running. However, users may find this tiresome and end up simply deleting the pesky app. This poses a problem should the deleted program be needed by another app, such as one for file-sharing. As a safeguard against this, Spy Sweeper gives users the option of blocking apps permanently instead.
When looking at traces found during a scan, you can still take advantage of the expandable tree view, complete with summary information about each threat. A previous gripe of ours has been resolved, too: You can now ignore tracking cookies, thereby making it easier to focus on the more immediate threats posed by spyware apps.
We're eager to see the next incremental revision. We'd like to see Spy Sweeper update its abilities to handle Istbar and a couple of other pests that weren't part of our official test batch, and get better at cleaning annoying desktop shortcuts and folders deposited by adware. This product is so close to five stars we can taste it.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1750883,00.asp
REVIEW DATE: 01.12.05
Total posts: 2
$29.95
By Konstantinos Karagiannis
The best just keeps getting better. Webroot's Spy Sweeper, which shared the spotlight with Lavasoft's Ad-Aware SE Plus as our picks for the best antispyware products of 2004, is now the sole champ of the antispyware arena. The latest version, 3.5, with its slight but effective improvements, is easily the best choice for protecting PCs from spyware and for cleaning infected machines.
Scan time is improved in the new version. We ran both versions 3.0 and 3.5 against the same test system, and verified that Spy Sweeper 3.5 is approximately 30 percent faster, in line with Webroot's claims. Accuracy is up as well; the program got perfect scores on all but one of our tests.
Other improvements include the ability to remove both CoolWebSearch and TV Media completely. Older versions of Spy Sweeper required manual removal stages that proved difficult. We found one pest that remains less than fully curable, however. Spy Sweeper was unable to delete a key component of Istbar, although it did block the spyware bar from working. Spy Sweeper wrongly suggests that a user can delete the file; Windows claims Istbar is in use, making deletion via Explorer impossible. You need to kill Istbar either via a command line, by removing dependencies on the file, or with Spybot Search & Destroy. Even the best occasionally needs a little extra help.
Of course, with all its Shields active, Spy Sweeper will prevent Istbar and almost every other pest from getting on your system in the first place. If version 3.0 got on your nerves with frequent requests for user interaction, you'll like 3.5's ability to block browser-hijack attempts without constantly asking for advice.
Many antispyware packages offer users the ability, on a case-by-case basis, to block a program from running. However, users may find this tiresome and end up simply deleting the pesky app. This poses a problem should the deleted program be needed by another app, such as one for file-sharing. As a safeguard against this, Spy Sweeper gives users the option of blocking apps permanently instead.
When looking at traces found during a scan, you can still take advantage of the expandable tree view, complete with summary information about each threat. A previous gripe of ours has been resolved, too: You can now ignore tracking cookies, thereby making it easier to focus on the more immediate threats posed by spyware apps.
We're eager to see the next incremental revision. We'd like to see Spy Sweeper update its abilities to handle Istbar and a couple of other pests that weren't part of our official test batch, and get better at cleaning annoying desktop shortcuts and folders deposited by adware. This product is so close to five stars we can taste it.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1750883,00.asp
Friday, January 07, 2005
Pocket PC Magazine > The Emergence of True Convergence, and Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
The Emergence of True Convergence, and Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
ARTICLE DATE: 01.06.05
By Alice Hill and Bill O'Brien
Not wishing to disillusion any of those who believe pundits typically talk for their own benefit, we decided the first column of the new year deserved some forward-looking guesstimation. See that PC you're sitting in front of? Don't get too accustomed to it. You won't have it for very long.
Maybe we should begin at the beginningÂ….
For several years now, IBM and Microsoft have been hard at work in back rooms, redefining personal computing. Actually, they've been trying to erase it. Personal computing is a "masses" approach that promotes hardcore consumerism, which in turn enforces competition, discounting, and low profit margins. (Trust us, IBM isn't selling its PC business because it's making money with it.) Can we prove this? Only by inference.
IBM has been making a massive push to promote grid computing. By its nature, grid computing removes the restriction of individual system performance, relying on the aggregate resources of a grid, or network, of computers to achieve ultimate processing power. There is no larger grid than the entire population of computers.
Microsoft, slowly but surely, has been redefining Windows from an operating system for single PCs to an OS capable of embracing the Internet. You have Web views for your desktop; you can carry your desktop with you, and if it's properly configured, sit at any PC, making it look like your own. The automatic operations a PC can perform in the background—software updates and e-mail transfers to mention just two—make user intervention less than essential. And the Internet is just a huge grid of computers.
Convergence ad infinitum
For the idea to work, the current PC must become an essential item, in a closed loop, but also disappear as an "item." Why not imbed a "mainboard" in each house and apartment, then use something like Wi-Fi to connect televisions, e-mail and game stations, refrigerators, telephones, lighting, environmental controls, even cars.
Don't laugh. Using technology like RFID to help your car identify you will surely cut down on theft. And if reprogrammed for multiple IDs, the settings of a car's equipment—from radios to seats to mirrors—will automatically adjust for each individual. Travel directions? Forget traditional GPS. Your car can download them. If you need a "computer" in the traditional sense, you just pick up a keyboard and sit down in front of any screen in your house or apartment. Naturally, the keyboard will have an imbedded trackball or mouse for navigation.
The mainboard (or mainboards, depending on how large a spread you have) handles everything, and its dual-core processors will give it immensely expanded capacity. When your domicile's asleep or running at lower-than-peak levels, its unused capability is added to the grid. (The system is a lot like the one used for distributing electricity, but not quite.) That, in fact, is one of the ways this technology makes a profit. You're charged for your usage, and you and others are charged additionally for "shared" processing. Better still, once your place is built and configured, you're not going to upgrade via mail order. You'll have a contract and a service fee, and all those other good revenue producing items.
Continue reading...
Is Speed-Boosting Firefox Wrong?
When you live on the tech edge, especially in the online world, you take chances. Last column, for example, we discussed what happened when we accidentally violated Google's AdSense policy by asking users to click on our blog's ads. (Short answer: it made Google very, very angry and got a lot of our readers here up in arms as well.)
SoÂ…what if we told you that this week we found a way to boost browser performance in Firefox (and Mozilla) to a level you literally won't believe? The update takes two minutes, requires no add-ins or purchases, and blows your hair back when you surf even the most dog-slow Web sites.
The instructions are being posted as we speak on blogs all over the Internet. I saw them on ForeverGeek.com, but the exact text is posted on blog after blog, so my apologies to the original author. Here's the bottom line. To boost Firefox, simply do the following after launching your browser.
1. Type "about:config" into the address bar (no spaces) and hit Return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
--network.http .pipelining
--network.http.proxy .pipelining
--network.http .pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request at a time to a Web page. When you enable pipelining, the browser will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining " to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy .pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining .maxrequests" to some number like 30. (This tells the browser to make 30 requests at once.)
3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint .delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before acting on received information.
Okay. That's all it takes. But now let's dig into the controversy that is foaming up discussion boards across the land. The term the hard core use for opening 30 server calls at one time is not pretty, but says it all: server raping. Taking up 30 simultaneous sessions is a major don't, since most servers bomb out at around 100. If four people using this tweak hit a page at the exact same time, they would crash everything, warned many a geek.
But not so, according to the other camp, who explain that pipelining is not about opening multiple sessions but simply changing how a single session pulls down information. The irony is that most developers gave up on pipelining after broadband became more widespread, and browsers today ship with this default set to "Off" or "False" to protect servers from throwing up bugs during a rapid pipeline burst.
We have to say that we have been using our jacked-up Firefox and have not crashed sites or been denied access because our browser's action was confused for a flood attack. We did see some bad code, though in third-party ads, mostly. Not in Google ads—and whatever you do, don't think we just told you to click on them!
So, give this a try, and report back in the discussion areas. We would love to hear from some hardcore pipeline guys and gals and figure this out once and for all. Is the hysteria just hype as we suspect, or is boosting Firefox technically bad for the Internet?
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Wall Street Journal > Security, Cool Features Of Firefox Web Browser Beat Microsoft's IE
December 30, 2004
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser is one of the most important, and most often used, programs on the world's personal computers, relied upon by more than 90% of Windows users. But Microsoft hasn't made any important functional improvements in Internet Explorer for years.
The software giant has folded IE into the Windows operating system, and the browser only receives updates as part of the "Windows update" process. In recent years, most upgrades to IE have been under-the-hood patches to plug the many security holes that have made IE a major conduit for hackers, virus writers and spyware purveyors. The only visible feature added to IE recently: a pop-up ad blocker, which arrived long after other browsers had one.
Meanwhile, other people have been building much better browsers, just as Microsoft itself did in the 1990s, when it challenged and eventually bested the then-dominant browser, Netscape Navigator. The most significant of these challengers is Firefox, a free product of an open-source organization called Mozilla, available for download at www.mozilla.org. Firefox is both more secure and more modern than IE, and it comes packed with user-friendly features the Microsoft browser can't touch.
Firefox still has a tiny market share. But millions of people have downloaded it recently. I've been using it for months, and I recommended back in September that users switch to it from IE as a security measure. It's available in nearly identical versions for Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and the Linux operating system.
There are some other browsers that put IE to shame. Apple's elegant Safari browser, included free on every Mac, is one. But it isn't available for Windows. The Opera browser is loaded with bells and whistles, but I find it pretty complicated. And NetCaptor, my former favorite, is very nice. But since it's based on the IE Web-browsing engine, it's vulnerable to most of IE's security problems.
Firefox, which uses a different underlying browsing engine called "Gecko," also has a couple of close cousins based on the same engine. One is Netscape, now owned by America Online. The other is a browser called Mozilla, from the same group that created Firefox. But Firefox is smaller, sleeker and newer than either of its relatives, although a new Netscape version is in the works.
Firefox isn't totally secure -- no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which has major security problems and is the world's top digital target. But Firefox has better security and privacy than IE. One big reason is that it won't run programs called "ActiveX controls," a Microsoft technology used in IE. These programs are used for many good things, but they have become such powerful tools for criminals and hackers that their potential for harm outweighs their benefits.
Firefox also has easier, quicker and clearer methods than IE does for covering your online tracks, if you so choose. And it has a better built-in pop-up ad blocker than IE.
But my favorite aspect of Firefox is tabbed browsing, a Web-surfing revolution that is shared by all the major new browsers but is absent from IE. With tabbed browsing, you can open many Web pages at once in the same browser window. Each is accessed by a tab.
The benefits of tabbed browsing hit home when you create folders of related bookmarks. For instance, on my computer I have a folder of a dozen technology-news bookmarks and another 20 or so bookmarks pointing to political Web sites. A third folder contains 15 or so bookmarks for sites devoted to the World Champion Boston Red Sox. With one click, I can open the entire contents of these folders in tabs, in the same single window, allowing me to survey entire fields of interest.
And Firefox can recognize and use Web sites that employ a new technology called "RSS" to create and update summaries of their contents. When Firefox encounters an RSS site, it displays a special icon that allows you to create a "live" bookmark to the site. These bookmarks then display updated headlines of stories on the sites.
Firefox also includes a permanent, handy search box that can be used to type in searches on Google, Yahoo, Amazon or other search sites without installing a special toolbar.
And it has a cool feature called "Extensions." These are small add-on modules, easy to download and install, that give the browser new features. Among the extensions I use are one that automatically fills out forms and another that tests the speed of my Web connection. You can also download "themes," which change the browser's looks.
There is only one significant downside to Firefox. Some Web sites, especially financial ones, have chosen to tailor themselves specifically for Internet Explorer. They rely on features only present in IE, and either won't work or work poorly in Firefox and other browsers.
Luckily, even if you switch to Firefox, you can still keep IE around to view just these incompatible sites. (In fact, Microsoft makes it impossible to fully uninstall IE.) There's even an extension for Firefox that adds an option called "View This Page in IE."
So Firefox is my current choice of a Windows Web browser. It is to IE in 2004 what IE was to Netscape in 1996 -- the upstart that does a better job.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com
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