Technology News: Jun 30, 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Apple antenna issue a 'physics problem,' not a software problem

Almost a week after the iPhone 4's launch, questions remain over why users experience signal loss when gripping the phone in a particular way. Apple has called this a "non issue," despite users being able to repeatedly reproduce the problem. In the meantime, it's been suggested that it might be a problem that can be fixed with a software update. Others have said, and Apple has suggested, that users buy a case to prevent fingers from coming in direct contact with the antennas built into the metal band surrounding the iPhone 4.

The antenna being built into the iPhone 4's exterior casing is the reason for signal loss, and can't be fixed with a software update, Anandtech reports.

The antenna built into the iPhone 4's exterior casing is the reason for signal loss, and can't be fixed with a software update, Anandtech reports.(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Isadore is back, one of four Mimobot great-great grandparents being rereleased.

Nearly half the population is more worried about computer viruses than real ones(Credit: Centers for Disease Control)

Facebook announced Wednesday that it's beginning to institute a new interface that will pop up when users connect their Facebook accounts to third-party services--one which the social-networking company says will bring more "transparency" (yes, that word again) to how much information its nearly 500 million users are sharing across the Web.Consequently, when a third-party application that connects to Facebook asks a user for permission to do so, it has to stipulate exactly what parts of a user profile it'll be accessing: photos, friend list data, basic public information, and so forth. This is something that the company initially announced last year following criticism on behalf of privacy officials in Canada and expanded upon at its F8 developer conference this spring in San Francisco."In order for these applications and websites to provide social and customized experiences, they need to know a little bit about you," a post on the Facebook blog by chief technology officer Bret Taylor read. "We understand, however, that it's important you also have control over what you're sharing. With this new authorization process, when you log into an application with your Facebook account, the application will only be able to access the public parts of your profile by default. To access the private parts of your profile, the application has to explicitly ask for your permission."

If this query was entered in Google inside China, searchers would be unable to generate any results if they selected one of the suggestions from the drop-down menu.(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google users inside of China are unable to use Google's search suggestions feature, as Google awaits word on its ultimate fate in China.Ever since Google announced it would offer Chinese language search out of Hong Kong rather than mainland China, it has maintained a "Mainland China service availability" page to track which Google services can be accessed from inside The Great Firewall and which have been blocked. At some point on Wednesday China began blocking searches done through Google Suggest, according to the company, which prompted Google to update that page with a little yellow wrench symbolizing a partial block of its Web search services.

Web copyright: YouTube up, Lime Wire down

While YouTube managers do victory dances following their massive courtroom win in the copyright case brought against the video service by Viacom, the triumph appears to have done little to buoy file-sharing service Lime Wire.

Lime Wire, the Web's largest and most popular file-sharing service, has fended off allegations that it violated the copyrights of the four largest recording companies for four years, but U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood last month granted summary judgment in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America. The court found Lime Wire and founder Mark Gorton liable for copyright infringement and that decision is likely "fatal" to Lime Wire, legal experts have said. On Monday, Wood denied Lime Wire's request to rethink her summary judgment decision, saying the file-sharing service offered no new arguments or information. Lime Wire claimed that Wood erred in some of her findings. Now, Wood has turned her attention to written arguments filed last week by both parties on whether it's proper for Wood to issue a permanent injunction against Lime Wire, a move that would mean the company would be forced to shut down.

Firefox's Jetpack extensions get 2010 goal

Mozilla had to restart an effort to overhaul Firefox's extension technology, but the Jetpack reboot is steadily coming together. Mozilla has released five beta versions of the Jetpack Software Developer Kit, a package that puts a friendly face on Firefox's inner workings so that extensions can do things such as open new tabs, add menu items, and modify Web pages. And the latest schedule was announced this week: its goal is to release Jetpack 1.0 by the end of 2010. "We've been working on the SDK for almost a year now (and the Jetpack project as a whole for over a year), and we've done a bunch of great work that we should get into the hands of developers who could benefit from it," said Mozilla Jetpack team member Myk Melez in a mailing list message. Jetpack takes a page from the Google Chrome playbook by letting programmers write extensions that use Web technologies such as HTML and JavaScript. That's the same direction Apple went with its new Safari 5 extensions, too.

Microsoft on track to develop glass-less 3D display?

Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group sure has some good ideas. By positioning a Webcam behind a transparent OLED or ultrathin LCD screen, The Wedge project allows a smart display to detect hand movements and interpret them as commands. If this sounds a little familiar, that's because this feature is similar to Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox 360. While that's no big deal, what really caught our attention was the claim that by tracking body position, one smart display can stream different images to individual viewers based on the body location. Hence, someone standing to the right may see a different picture compared with another viewer on the left. But that's not all. If different images are sent to each eye, the smart display may be able to achieve a stereoscopic 3D effect without the user having to wear polarized or active shutter glasses. This may hold the answer to mainstream 3D adoption. So for a glimpse into the future, check out the below videos demonstrating this technology.

Are supply issues putting Apple at risk?

Early demand for the iPhone 4 that exceeded supply could put Apple at risk and is prompting frustrated customers to consider competing smartphones, according to a new report from iSuppli.

The iPhone 4(Credit: Apple)

Quanp Flick File(Credit: Quanp)

Ricoh, the Japanese digital office solutions company, is announcing a new iPhone app from its Quanp subsidiary. The app provides 10GB of free cloud-based storage, the ability to share files up to 500MB, uploading and management of photos and videos taken on an iPhone, and a potentially cool local sharing function with other nearby iPhone users. The Quanp app rose to No. 2 on the Japanese App Store in the Productivity category after its release in Japan earlier this month. It's now available in the App Store for users in the U.S.

An offshore wind demonstration farm with GE turbines.(Credit: General Electric)

General Electric has plans to install four 4-megawatt wind turbines off the coast of Norway, and one in Sweden.In March GE said it would invest $450 million over the next 10 years to expand its European wind turbine business. At that time the company said its investment would include plans to install its largest megawatt offshore wind turbines to date, but few details were released.

YouTube users who want to add music to their uploaded videos can now buy lifetime licenses for certain songs thanks to the company's new deal with Rumblefish.

Google Docs delivers presentation basics

Google Docs wouldn't open my test PPTX file, but the service lets you create and edit presentations in the older PowerPoint PPT format, albeit without most of the desktop app's formatting options. You won't find much in the way of transitions, effects, and other advanced features in Google Docs, either. The best feature of Google's online presentation tool is its clean interface, which isn't a surprise considering the company behind the service.

A promotion designed to show off the speed of Google's Chrome browser got off to a rocky start Wednesday morning.(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Famed baseball announcer Bob Uecker might have described a Wednesday promotion for Google's Chrome as "just a bit outside."Google posted a link Wednesday morning on Twitter and its official blog to a cute little Flash game called FastBall, designed to promote the latest version of Google's Chrome browser with its built-in Flash player. Unfortunately for Google, for the first hour after it was live, the game was still having trouble loading in various browsers on YouTube, although it did finally starting loading without incident about an hour and a half after Google launched the promotion.

If you know what this is and where it is located you could win a prize in the CNET Road Trip Picture of the Day Challenge. (Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

iPhone 4 video embodies new-tech aesthetic

It's easy to see how the iPhone 4's high-definition 1280x720 video would be a handy feature. It's an entirely different thing to see just how impressive it can be in the right hands. In this case, those hands belong chiefly to Michael Koerbel and Anna Elizabeth James, students at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, who wrote a short video called "Apple of My Eye." Koerbel recorded it with an iPhone 4, and James edited it on the same hardware with Apple's new iMovie app--all in less than 48 hours.

As with Vincent Laforet's "Reverie," shot with Canon's first video-capable SLR, the EOS 5D Mark II, the appeal of "Apple of My Eye" isn't the acting or plot. Instead, it's the demonstration that a new generation of relatively mainstream equipment can achieve what only professional gear could earlier.

Hulu CEO: We're no cable killer

If you're planning on swapping out your expensive cable TV service for Hulu's $10 a month subscription offering, Jason Kilar has advice for you: Don't do it! The Hulu CEO insists that his "Hulu Plus" service, which gives subscribers a deep catalog of shows they can watch on their computers or on gadgets like the iPad, isn't meant to replace cable. Instead, he says, it's meant to augment cable. Just like your iPhone doesn't replace your PC. And he's right. Hulu Plus is designed explicitly not to threaten the cable business. That's why it doesn't offer any news or sports, and why it only offers shows that air on three broadcast networks, and almost nothing that runs on cable networks.

Louvre Pyramid with its original low-voltage 100W halogen lamps that were installed when it was constructed in the 1980s.(Credit: Erco)

The Louvre Museum is planning an overhaul to replace its current lighting with more energy-efficient and cost-effective LED lighting.To that end, the Louvre Pyramid, designed by architect I.M. Pei, will be refitted.

(Credit: Warner Music Group)

MTV will soon start to sell ads for music videos owned by Warner Music Group, the companies announced on Wednesday. MTV will have exclusive rights to Warner Music's video ad inventory, Warner said in a statement. The move comes less than a year since Warner signed a similar agreement with Outrigger Media. Rumors began circulating last week that Warner Music was shopping for a new means to sell ads. A music industry source said that Warner Music had spoken to music video portal Vevo about the possibility of that service selling Warner's ads.

Sony Vaio CW series laptop(Credit: Sony)

Roomba vs. NaviBot: High-tech hygiene hoedown

The AOC e2237Fwh; you can see right through it.(Credit: Josh P. Miller)

Get a 1.5-terabyte SATA hard drive for $69.99

Seriously, how much cheaper can giant hard drives get? Here's one for the record books: SuperBiiz (no points for spelling, guys) has a 1.5TB Samsung EcoGreen F2 SATA2 internal hard drive for $69.99 shipped. That's after applying coupon code JULY4TH, which cuts the already impressive $79.99 sale price by another 10 bucks.

This 1.5-terabyte internal hard drive can be yours for the impossibly low price of 70 bucks shipped.(Credit: SuperBiiz)

Richard Branson at a Virgin America press conference at San Francisco International Airport on Tuesday morning.(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Virgin Group CEO and entrepreneurial icon Richard Branson promised "one hell of a party" for the kickoff flight for air carrier Virgin America's first international route from San Francisco to Toronto on Tuesday, and if the trays of mimosas and acai-cranberry cocktails that kept getting toted past his first-class seat were any indication, his promise would not be broken.Branson, a British national who was knighted in 1999, has become one of Silicon Valley's icons of late for his enterprises in green energy and the fledgling Virgin Galactic space company, and Virgin America is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the press conference to kick off the new route, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were on hand to talk up how Virgin America's ongoing expansion will bring more jobs to the state and a forward-thinking attitude to the airline industry.

What the Windows 8 leak tells us

A leaked series of Windows 8 presentations offers insight not just into what Microsoft wants to accomplish with Windows 8 but also how it plans to go about developing the next Windows. The company appears to be following much the same blueprint it did with Windows 7--talking early with computer makers but saying next to nothing publicly until the company is sure what it will be able to deliver. Of course, the leaked documents have thrown a bit of a wrench in that plan. That said, while there is quite a bit to learn by reading through the leaked Windows 8 planning documents, it would be wrong to just assume that Windows 8 will be the sum of those PowerPoint presentations. Microsoft has a long history of shipping Windows products that are very different than their initial incarnations. Windows Vista, for example, was a significantly different operating system than the original Longhorn plan unveiled at the 2003 Professional Developers conference. It's also possible that the gang in Redmond also may yet have a trick or two up its sleeve that aren't part of these documents, which were designed to be a starting point for a dialogue with computer makers rather than a feature list for customers.

During the past decade, airlines have been keeping passengers' eyes focused on the seat backs in front of them, filling in-flight entertainment systems up with satellite TV, real-time maps, and movies on demand. But does the proliferation of devices like the iPad mean people will stop paying attention?It's a particularly compelling question for Virgin America, which runs an in-flight entertainment system called Red that's inarguably the fanciest out of any U.S. airline. Virgin is still on its way to profitability--it recently posted a first-quarter loss of $35.5 million, narrower than last year's--and while trying to keep fares low it has continued to invest in edgy niches of the travel business like in-flight Wi-Fi and power outlets at every seat. (It hasn't been conclusively proven, for example, that the availability of Wi-Fi, especially if it isn't free, is a deciding factor in choosing an airline.)Conveniently, sitting two rows behind me on Tuesday's inaugural Virgin America flight to Toronto was somebody who could offer the company's perspective: James Weatherson, in-flight entertainment engineer.

YouTube: Why the Flash era isn't over

Google is among the biggest proponents of a collection of Web technologies that reproduce many important features of Adobe Systems' Flash, but it's not yet time for regime change at YouTube. One of the most important parts of the upcoming HTML5 standard is support for video that can be built directly into Web page without requiring a plug-in such as Flash Player. Other open standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and Web Open Font Format (WOFF) for typography can mimic Flash features, but Flash's ability to deliver streaming video to multiple browsers is one of the main reasons it's got such a strong incumbent advantage.

"While HTML5's video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don't support Flash Player, it does not yet meet all of our needs," said YouTube programmer John Harding in a blog post Tuesday. "Today, Adobe Flash provides the best platform for YouTube's video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it."

Amazon.com experienced a widespread outage on Tuesday that lasted, at least for many customers, more than three hours and displayed blank or partial pages instead of product listings. By mid-afternoon, Amazon's home page was devoid of any product photographs and showed only a list of categories on the left of the screen. Searching for items often didn't work, and customers' shopping carts and saved item lists were temporarily displayed as empty. At an annual revenue of nearly $27 billion, Amazon faces a potential loss of an average of $51,400 a minute when it's site is offline. Amazon shares closed down 7.8 percent, a sharper fall than the Nasdaq index.

FAA floats a break to flying car

This 4th of July weekend, you might, either at its beginning or its end, find yourself wishing your car could fly.Thanks to a new FAA decision, this wish might seem slightly less Peter Pan and slightly more Peter Perfect.It seems that the soaring minds behind the Terrafugia Transition have secured a remarkable weight exemption from the FAA, allowing it to carry such vital necessities as crumple zones, airbags, and a structural cage on its revolutionary flying car.No, the airbags won't help much in the air. But road safety is just as vital for this dual-purpose flying machine. And road safety can be quite heavy.

Where are all the iPad competitors?

Several launches are planned for fall and winter 2010, but the iPad, on track to sell 16 million units, according to some, will be the iPod of tablets by then. If anything, iPad 2G will have been announced and everyone will be queuing up for the version with the camera on the front. Heck, I'm even considering rebuying the darned thing because I want the battery life and movie-viewing for traveling, and I'm sick of waiting for the Android-tablet hordes to get their collective act together.

Dating site tries to out-Facebook Facebook

As I understand it, Facebook was largely created so that boys who perhaps hadn't enjoyed the greatest success with girls could somehow make themselves look somehow desirable online.As I also understand it, many people these days still join Facebook in the hope of extending their ability to find The One, or even A One, through friends, extended friends, or merely people they have talked and stalked into being their pretend friends.Now a dating site for sad singles called Pirate Date claims to be "a dating trust-network for friends."I am not sure whether, in a word-association game insisted upon by my psychiatrist, I would immediately on hearing the word "trust" offer the word "pirate." Still, perhaps it is merely a description of our times, a description of the love that the Pirate Bay has created in so many hearts, that "trust" and "pirate" are as one.

(Credit: Google)

On the heels of Google introducing automatic updating for the Adobe Flash plug-in, a future version of Google Chrome will include technology that blocks out-of-date plug-ins and helps users update them, Google said.

preGAME 20: Singularity

Android users can decline to participate in Google's wireless hot-spot data gathering, but they'll have to forgo getting their location information via hot spots, a reliable and battery-friendly method.(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

There's a reason Google can shut down its Street View cars and still maintain a quality geolocation service on mobile devices: it's crowdsourcing the data.Mobile-phone and some laptop users who use Google applications to get a fix on their position or share their location with friends are helping Google build out a database of Wi-Fi hot spots, the company confirmed Tuesday. Users generally understand when they are sharing their own location with Google or its partners, but they may not realize they are also helping Google match Wi-Fi hot-spot location data with GPS coordinates by transmitting the location of any Wi-Fi access point in wireless range.

Microsoft: Azure's showing business allure

Microsoft's cloud-computing push, Windows Azure, was only launched six months ago and while it is still early days for the technology, Azure has already attracted thousands of users and could prove central to the software giant's technology plans. Azure is Microsoft's cloud-computing platform, which provides its users with scalable computing power and storage, as well as a number of other online services hosted on Microsoft data centers. While Microsoft has offered online services for some time with consumer products such as Hotmail and Windows Live, Azure aims to boost its software-as-a-service presence to cater to its enterprise customers who are looking to push their computing infrastructure out into the cloud. Azure was launched as a paid-for service in February and although Microsoft isn't giving exact uptake figures, President of Server and Tools Bob Muglia recently told Silicon.com that many businesses are continuing to use the service after its initial period as a free service ended.

Tesla's IPO speeds past expectations

Tesla Motors shares zoomed upward to a closing price of $23.89 on Tuesday, handing the electric-car maker the second-best gain in an initial public offering this year. Even as the broader stock market declined, with the Nasdaq falling by 3.85 percent, investors propelled Tesla shares to a 41 percent gain over its initial price of $17. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based automaker has benefited not just from Wall Street enthusiasm for a plug-in car company, but also from a $465 million loan from U.S. taxpayers and favorable tax incentives from the federal and state governments. Tesla's $109,000 electric Roadster, which can accelerate from zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds and claims a 236-mile range, has received favorable reviews. Tesla has begun taking orders for its $57,400 Model S five-person sedan, which it plans to start building in 2012.

Send in your questions for Facebook's Chris Cox

We've got a blockbuster summer on CNET Conversations, and the next big release is Chris Cox, vice president of product at Facebook and second-in-command under CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who, we can only imagine, is taking a break from interviews after a rough outing last month). I'm looking forward to a fresh face from Facebook and, hopefully, a good conversation and some solid answers.

Chris Cox, VP of Product at Facebook(Credit: Steve Maller )

The Octiv Mini will be available in July for $59.99.(Credit: Altec Lansing)

There's a growing trend in iPhone/iPod speaker docks. Instead of building in a bunch of features like an LCD display for the clock, an AM/FM radio, or fancy alarm systems, companies like Altec Lansing are bringing out simple speakers that leverage the iPhone or iPod Touch's impressive capabilities that include the ability to run custom-designed alarm apps.

The iPhone 3GS is now running iMovie.(Credit: Apple)

That was fast. After less than a week of iPhone 4 availability, hackers have found a way to get Apple's iMovie application running on an iPhone 3GS.Apple's iMovie app, which costs $4.99, is officially available only to iPhone 4 owners. But hackers tipped off tech blog Redmond Pie that they were able to get the app running on the iPhone 3GS. The process, according to tipster David Romhan Torres, starts with users jailbreaking an iPhone 3GS running iOS 4. From there, they need to modify a few items in the app's files to get it running.