Hulu subscription service could come next week

Some of you may finally get a chance to pay for Hulu. The video Web site is finalizing its plans to launch its subscription service, and people familiar with the company say a beta test of "Hulu Plus" could launch as early as next week. If you're in a select group, that is. One person familiar with the site, owned by a joint venture of broadcasters and Providence Equity Partners, says the initial test could be limited to 10,000 people. The Hulu Plus pitch, as I've previously reported: $9.95 a month for access to a deeper catalog of shows than the free service currently offers, plus the ability to watch it on devices other than a laptop or PC, including Apple's iPad. Other reports this month indicate that the service may also be available on Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PS3 game consoles. I'm also told that Hulu's network owners--GE's NBC, Disney's ABC, and News Corp.'s Fox--are still hammering out rights deals for particular shows. So it's possible that the launch could be pushed back, or that the service will have weird gaps in its catalog when it does launch. One example of a possible programming stumbling block: Viacom's Comedy Central, for instance, has rights to older episodes of NBC's "30 Rock." Hulu says it is already turning a profit from ad sales, and is on track to generate more than $200 million in revenue this year. And a successful subscription service would beef up those numbers. But it would also accomplish an equally important goal for CEO Jason Kilar--mollifying his network owners who worry that Hulu is cutting into their existing businesses, including licensing fees, DVD sales, and conventional TV advertising. Hulu and its network partners would split the $10 per head fee, I'm told, though I don't know the formula the JV will use to split up the dollars. No comment from Hulu. The Wall Street Journal is also reporting on Hulu's plans. Story Copyright (c) 2010 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Utilities try to get smarter about selling smart grid

WASHINGTON--It's probably not news to their customers, but utility company executives are now realizing that they're not great at marketing. For years, the smart grid has been touted by policymakers, tech companies, and utilities as a way to make the grid more reliable, efficient, and cleaner. But for the most part, surveys show that consumers are still struggling to understand how a digital grid and two-way smart meters matter to them. Having seen the backlash from smart meter installations in California, utilities are now acutely aware of how important it is to convey the benefits of new grid technologies, according to executives at the Kema Utility of the Future conference here on Thursday.

(Credit: PG&E)

In many discussions, speakers said consumers need to come along for the years-long ride of adding new technology to the grid. To get consumers involved, utilities need to shift from treating them like a monolithic block of ratepayers to customers they want to retain. "The relationship with homeowners is just beginning," Michael Morris, the CEO of utility AEP, said during a panel discussion. "There is no sex appeal to (playing) around with an electricity meter as there is streaming a baseball game on their iPhone or iPad, so we need to be a bit respectful of what that relationship is." Utility customers in the U.S. expect reliable service and power when needed. But going forward, consumers will want better ways to manage and reduce their energy use for economic reasons, said Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Although electricity prices have dropped significantly in the past two years because of the recession, the pressure on prices is upward given the worldwide demand on energy resources and growing electricity use in general. Helping consumers manage those price increases with efficiency measures is in the interest of utilities, too, since customers will feel more in control, Rogers said. But just installing smart meters without a good informational and marketing campaign is a mistake, particularly if it's seen as taking choice away from consumers, he said. "To make smart meters work, you have to follow up quickly with an audit and provide a suite of products that provide some benefit and make clear this isn't a 'Mother knows best' world. You can choose," Rogers said. "That reduces the chance of blowback." Not about technology
Many of the features promised by smart-grid advocates can be done with existing technologies, but they do require participation from customers, as well as customer education. So rather than rush headlong into the smart grid, some companies are treading lightly and slowing. Michigan utility Consumers Energy this month will roll out two programs geared at cutting back electricity usage in homes and in both cases, it's using relatively old technology to get it done. "The intent is not to figure out if the technology works, it's more about the customer marketing message," said Stephen Hirsch, the manager of demand response programs at Consumers Energy. "The biggest barrier was the suspicion on the part of the customer as to why we are doing this. There seems to be a problem with the consumer understanding our business model."

A model of the smart grid, where energy flows in two directions and consumers have more control.(Credit: EPRI)

In one demand-response program in the Grand Rapids area, the utility will reduce load on the grid during about 10 hot summer days a year by remotely controlling consumers' air conditioners. A signal sent over the utility's existing network will shift central air conditioners from running at 100 percent to 50 percent for four hours in the afternoon, which will result in a one- or two-degree temperature increase, Hirsh explained. In exchange for shedding load during a time of stress on the grid, the customer gets a rebate. The benefit for the utility is that it does not have to purchase expensive electricity, which is often made with polluting "peaking plants," or have to build new transmission lines to meet peak demand. Cutting the utility's energy accrues to the consumer as it lowers its operating costs, Hirsh said. Most consumers say they are willing to use a smart device, such as a smart meter, appliance, or thermostat, if it will help them better manage their energy, according to a recent poll by General Electric. And the combined impact of thousands of efficiency events can mean avoiding the construction of new power plants and power lines. But for these products and programs to work, it has to be simple and easy to use for customers, and there need to be variable pricing that reflects the cost of energy on the wholesale market. "We've got to make it simple so that it's programmable and you just set it once," said Terry Boston, the CEO of grid operator PJM. "We have to see how well the customer can interface with the grid and how their use patterns can impact the grid." Finding what works
Emerging smart-grid technologies pave the way for people to have more control over their energy, letting a person, for example, use a smart phone to monitor electricity or turn on the air conditioning just before getting home. How quickly the utility providers can adapt their businesses to deliver that sort of capability is a big question, said David O'Brien, the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Service.

Photos: GE's smart grid kitchen of the future

"For a 100 years, utilities have been responsible for running the grid on our behalf. I've seen reticence to go into this very dynamic environment where customers are making thousands of choice on how to use electricity based on information," O'Brien said. New technologies, such as smart meters, home energy dashboards, or microgrids with community storage, are also expensive and can be difficult to get regulators to sign off on. Baltimore Gas & Electric was shocked this week when the Maryland regulators rejected a smart-grid investment proposal because it did not demonstrate enough benefit. In the meantime, utilities are experimenting with smart-grid programs, which received a boost from billions of dollar in stimulus spending. Beyond what the technology can do, utilities are eager to see how consumers react to a life where using energy means more than writing a check for a monthly bill. Municipal utility Chattanooga Electric Power plans to let consumers view their electricity usage on a TV using IPTV, said David Wade, the executive vice president and chief operating officer. "One of challenges is to understand how to implement software to provide options to customers where they don't have to sacrifice comfort and convenience and help them manage energy costs," he said.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Wallops Flight Facility, NASA's hidden launch shop

At the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, NASA designs rockets and high-altitude scientific balloons. It also launches the rockets, and maintains the ability to destroy them if they pose a threat to the public. (Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va.--Imagine a football stadium floating high in the sky, enclosed in material not much thicker than a sandwich bag. Take away the physical part of the football field, but leave the volume, and you get a sense of the size of the high-altitude balloons that NASA uses to conduct scientific experiments. Those balloons, as well as the design and manufacture of sub-orbital rockets and the launching into space of government satellites, are among the mandates of the Wallops Flight Facility, a NASA center based here on the Atlantic coast about 160 miles southeast of Washington, D.C. I got a chance to visit the facility on Thursday, the first stop on Road Trip 2010, my fifth annual geek-centric journey around a region of the U.S. And though I knew that it had a reputation as a center for research into high-altitude balloons, I had no idea just how mammoth the mega-vessels can be. The biggest balloons can reach 40 million cubic feet of volume and require 20 acres of material, according to Magdi Said, a researcher in NASA's scientific balloons program at Wallops. Those, he added, are for standard zero-pressure balloons that tend to stay aloft for a few days before changes in temperature drain away the gasses that keep them up. But the agency is also working on new, super pressure balloons that don't lose gasses that are meant to stay in the air for up to 100 days anywhere in the world.

Photos: High-altitude work flourishes at NASA

Getting vessels of many kinds aloft, of course, is a main NASA mission, and at Wallops, that's no different. Here, away from the glare and the spotlight that shines on places like the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, or the Johnson Space Center in Houston, research can get done without everyone watching. And that means, in an environment where quick turnaround research and development is the main way of life, that projects usually go from concept to high altitude in two years or less. On Thursday morning, students and their advisers participating in an annual program called RockOn launched their own research rocket, a sub-orbital shot that went as high as 75 miles before falling back to Earth. The program is a "crash course" in rocketry for university students, according to NASA spokesperson Keith Koehler. And sub-orbital launches are a big part of what goes on at Wallops. On average the facility launches something about once a month, be it a sub-orbital research-oriented rocket or one intended to put a Department of Defense satellite into space. Since 2001, Wallops has been launching Minotaur I rockets--vehicles that retain the first and second stage from old Minuteman missiles--in order to put satellites in space. But in 2011, the facility will add the new Taurus 2 rocket with the goal of flying supplies to the International Space Station. Those launches will be done by commercial companies, like Orbital and SpaceX. In order to send up those Taurus 2s, Wallops' partner, the Mid-Atlantic Region Spaceport (MARS)--a consortium run by the commonwealth of Virginia and the state of Maryland--is building a new launch pad. Known as Pad 0A, it will accompany the nearby 0B and employ a new system for constructing rockets.

A rocket being launched at the Wallops Flight Facility.(Credit: NASA)

Koehler explained that the Taurus 2s will be built on their side rather than having their stages stacked, as is the case with rockets at Kennedy Space Center. Then, having been put together on a newly constructed ramp, they will be moved--still on their side--to an as-yet built gantry and then lifted into vertical position. At the same time, the gantry at Pad 0B is being raised a few levels so that it can accommodate its own new rocket, the Minotaur 5, which in 2013 will be used for the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), a lunar mission to analyze the moon's atmosphere and dust environment. That project, Koehler said, will be the first launch from the Wallops Flight Center to go beyond the Earth's orbit. Launch sheds
Then, there's a third way that rockets are launched at Wallops. Sub-orbital rockets, like the RockOn vehicle, are sent up from one of three white, unassuming sheds located along the same north-south close-to-waterfront path as Pads 0B and, soon, 0A. Here, the rockets are constructed by bringing in motors and other elements through the roll-up doors of the sheds. When finished and ready to shoot into the sky, the rockets aren't moved. Instead, it's the sheds that get out of the way, moved away from the rockets on rails. Then the rockets are raised and launched. This area is shared by NASA and the U.S. Navy, which originally set up a Naval station along this piece of the Atlantic coast--not far from the former Langley Aeronautical Laboratory. The Navy needed a site not far from the lab that was also close to water. And that's why the site here was chosen. Koehler explained that in 1945, NASA began sharing the space for rocket launches, and when the Navy left in 1959, it took over as the sole resident. But in 1985, the Navy returned and now has a series of missions on the base, including the training of personnel who will be heading out onto one of various kinds of ships. Not far from the launch sheds, the Navy maintains three buildings, two of which look suspiciously--in profile, at least--like ships. One is used to train personnel on the systems and technology of aircraft carriers; a second is for training those headed for Aegis cruisers and destroyers; and the third is intended for those who will eventually be deployed on next-generation Naval ships.

The U.S. Navy also maintains facilities at Wallops, including this building, which is used to train personnel on the Aegis cruiser and destroyer.(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

All told, NASA keeps about 1,000 people busy at Wallops, while the Navy has around 300 people there. And there are also 90 members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who are on hand to man command-and-control of that agency's weather satellites. Many projects
In the middle of the Wallops site is the Sounding Rocket Facility, a "one-stop shop" for building sub-orbital rockets, explains Koehler. Here, rockets are built more or less from the ground up, often using surplus military motors that cost NASA little or nothing. At any given time, the facility may be working on as many as 60 different projects, whether they're in the design, fabrication, testing, launch, or analysis stages. The rockets built here have altitude ranges of between 25 and 800 miles and can serve just about any research purpose one can imagine. Plus, while many of the rockets are launched here, NASA also takes Wallops-designed vehicles on the road, for example, to Alaska to study the science of the aurora borealis. Similarly, the balloons being designed at Wallops--they're made and launched at separate facilities in Texas--have a wide range of missions, and sizes. They can be as tall as the Washington Monument, and, as mentioned above, contain the volume of a football stadium. Currently, the super pressure program is working on ramping up to the size of the zero-pressure balloons. Already, in 2009, NASA put a 7 million cubic foot super pressure balloon up for 100 days and is now looking into another flight that would be double the size, or 14 million cubic feet. And the goal, according to Said, is to craft and launch a 26 million cubic foot super pressure balloon that would be capable of carrying a payload of as much as 8,000 pounds for 100 days. In general, the balloons designed here are used in astrophysics missions meant to gather data on gamma rays, X-rays, and similar particles, explained Said. Wallops is also working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on designing "planetary balloons" that could probe the surfaces of Mars or Venus, but it will likely be at least five years before that research bears fruit. In the interim, the typical client for such a balloon is a university professor or a NASA scientist. "They build the payload and we give them a lift," joked Said. For the next few weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2010. After driving more than 18,000 miles in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last four years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more throughout the American Northeast. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. In the meantime, you can follow my progress on Twitter @GreeterDan and @RoadTrip and find the project on Facebook. And you can also test your knowledge of the U.S. and try to win a prize in the Road Trip Picture of the Day challenge.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

In search of geek treasures in Washington

This 'Bond Car,' from the International Spy Museum, is a potential Road Trip 2010 stop. Got any other must-visit ideas for a geek visiting Washington, D.C.? (Credit: International Spy Museum)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va.--I've just begun Road Trip 2010, my annual journey in search of the best geek-centric spots this country has to offer, and I've got a hole in my schedule. Can you help? Starting Sunday, I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. I'm booked up through Monday, but on Tuesday, I'd like to give the nation's capital one more day of my reporting time--and I'd love to get your help in deciding where to go. I'm looking for spots that are very geek-friendly and that photograph well. I'm already considering all the obvious spots--the major memorials, the White House, the Capitol, and a few others, but Washington is so jam-packed with great stuff--and amazingly, I've never been there before--that I have no idea what else I should check out. But I bet you can help me sift through the riches. So if you have a suggestion of a great place to go in Washington, D.C., please let me know. I want to hear about it. And if I end up going to a spot that you suggest, and that I wasn't already considering, I'll offer you my thanks with a small token of my appreciation. So, let's hear it, folks. What must a geek absolutely not miss on a weekday in D.C.? If you have an idea, please e-mail it to me (with "Washington, D.C." in the subject line) at daniel--dot--terdiman--at--cnet--dot--com. You can also leave your ideas in comments, but I'll only be able to offer tangible thanks to those who e-mail me. And, please understand if I don't respond to you. I get dozens of emails related to these requests. For the next few weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2010. After driving more than 18,000 miles in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last four years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more throughout the American Northeast. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. In the meantime, you can follow my progress on Twitter @GreeterDan and @RoadTrip and find the project on Facebook. And you can also test your knowledge of the U.S. and try to win a prize in the Road Trip Picture of the Day challenge.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Flash arrives in Google's Chrome browser

Google has fulfilled a promise to build Adobe Systems' Flash Player into Chrome, a move that helps keep the beleaguered plug-in relevant despite significant efforts to replace it. Chrome 5.0.376.86, the stable version of Chrome released Thursday, extends the plug-in to the mainstream version of Google's browser. Previously it was only in the developer and beta releases, and because of some hiccups it was disabled for a time there.

The new version also fixes five security bugs, including one involving a cross-site scripting vulnerability that had been fixed earlier but that recurred. Flash has been a dominant component for building the richer aspects of the Web, notably games and streaming video, and programmers have relied on it to bridge compatibility and feature differences among browsers. But browser makers have long chafed at how Flash programs could crash the browser and confuse its user interface, and long-running work to reproduce many Flash abilities in Web standards is steadily maturing. Google is among those pushing this work, which sometimes loosely is called HTML5 but which in fact also includes Cascading Style Sheets for formatting, and JavaScript for processing, and other elements of the Hypertext Markup Language for Web pages beyond the upcoming HTML5 version. Apple has been most vocal about opposition to Flash, including a strongly worded letter from CEO Steve Jobs enumerating what he sees as Flash shortcomings and a ban that keeps Flash off iOS devices--the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Despite Flash's drawbacks and mixed reputation, though, it's unarguably widely used on the Web, and Adobe is working to keep it relevant, most recently through the Flash Player 10.1 release that works on mobile phones as well as computers. Here, Adobe and Google have a tight alliance: Android phones are the first to get Flash support, and Chrome now has it built in. That means among other things that it will automatically be updated through Chrome's behind-the-scenes upgrade technology. To reduce Flash problems in Firefox, Mozilla just released Firefox 3.6.4 that walls off plug-ins into a separate area of computer memory where they can do less harm. The feature is enabled only on Windows and Linux so far but is under developent for Mac OS X. Update 6:32 a.m. PDT: Those who like Chrome but not Flash can type "about:plugins" into the Chrome address bar to see a list of plug-ins and a "disable" button to shut down what isn't wanted. In addition, in the "under the hood" section of the control panel, the "content settings" options lets people selectively block or enable various plug-ins for specific Web sites.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Nokia picks MeeGo over Symbian for iPhone rival

Nokia's N8 will be the last of the N-series phones to use the Symbian OS. Replacing it will be the Linux-based MeeGo software from Nokia and Intel.(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Despite years of investment in its Symbian operating system, Nokia has picked the Linux-based MeeGo instead to go head to head with Apple's iPhone and other higher-end smartphones. The Nokia N8 will be the last of the flagship N-series smartphones to use Symbian, Nokia told CNET Australia, and confirmed the move in a Reuters interview. "Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo," a Nokia spokesman said, though it will continue to offer Symbian lower down the product line. Years ago, Nokia was the dominant phone maker, but it's struggled to reclaim its past glory. The N-series change indicates the company's bets on Symbian--including Nokia's acquisition of full Symbian control from other partners and its subsequent release as open-source software--weren't sufficient to make the operating system a top-end competitor. In contrast, the iPhone 4 appears to be increasing Apple's considerable clout in the mobile market, and application developers' products also run on the iPod Touch and iPad devices that also use the iOS operating system. At the same time, Google has been making steady gains with its Android operating system, with 160,000 new Android phones activated daily, and various partners plan Android-baesd tablets and other devices. Android and iOS, while geared for mobile devices, stem more from a personal computer lineage compared with Symbian's mobile roots. That change arguably befits the new era of mobile devices, which resemble small general-purpose computers more than single-purpose phones. Customers use the phone not just for calls and text messaging, but also for e-mail, Web browsing, and games. They add new software picked from application stores rather than using a limited list of applications supplied with the phone. MeeGo falls into this general-purpose category as well. MeeGo is an operating system born earlier in 2010 of the combination of two other Linux efforts, Nokia's Maemo effort and Intel's Moblin.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Report: iPhone 4 is like an iPad Nano

The iPhone 4, at its core, is tantamount to Apple offering a handheld version of the iPad, according to a report. The iPhone 4 has so many internal similarities to the iPad that it could, in this respect, be labeled an iPad Nano, according to analysts from TechInsights cited in an article from EE Times. In a teardown of the iPhone 4, TechInsights found "at least seven chips from the...Apple tablet," according to the report. TechInsights will come out later with a full report on the teardown of iPhone 4. TechInsights is a division of United Business Media, the publisher of EE Times.

TechInsights says the iPhone 4 is, at its core, tantamount to Apple offering an iPad Nano(Credit: TechInsights)

While it's well know that, like the iPad, the iPhone 4 uses the A4 chip, Apple's latest phone also reuses a number of other iPad parts including a Broadcom Bluetooth FM radio combo chip (the BCM4329), Broadcom GPS device (the BCM4750), and Cirrus Logic audio codec (the 338S0589), according to EE Times. The iPhone 4 and iPad also share common flash chips--a Samsung 256 Gbit NAND flash device (the K9TFG08U5M) and a combo device from Numonyx, EE Times said. "Design reuse is clearly a big focus for Apple these days. For example, the iPhone 4 continues Apple's use of baseband and transceiver chips from Infineon despite a highly competitive market for such chips. The handset also uses the same Dialog power management chip Apple put in the iPad," EE Times said.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Apple acknowledges antenna issue in iPhone 4

The iPhone 4's antenna placement is hindered by holding the phone in a certain way, Apple acknowledged Thursday.(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

Apple has finally acknowledged that the way you hold the iPhone 4 can hinder the device's cellular reception.Complaints about weakening or disappearing signals when the iPhone 4 is gripped in a particular way--usually by touching two seams of the antenna band on the exterior of the phone simultaneously--began popping up late Wednesday night, and continued to appear Thursday.While Internet commenters and bloggers spent most of the day trying to figure out if the problem was related to the phone's hardware or software, Apple released a statement late in the day to PC Magazine."Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."There are two antennas on the iPhone, which are built into the steel band on the exterior of the phone. The one running on the left side of the phone is for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, the one on the right is for cellular reception. That means how a left-handed person holds the phone will affect it differently than how most right-handed people would hold it. Steve Jobs said at WWDC the exterior antenna was supposed to help reception--he didn't mention there was a particular way you had to avoid touching it. However, if you don't feel like spending more for a case for the phone, it sounds like that's the cheapest solution.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Lab-engineered lung tissue lives on in rats

A diagram shows the path of the regenerated lung tissue. (Credit: Yale University)

Bioengineered organs, still largely the stuff of sci-fi, may have just moved a step closer to reality with reports that scientists have successfully implanted lab-made lung tissue into living rats. The fully functional tissue can exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, the key role of the lungs. The scientists--led by a team at Yale University--used a chemical treatment to remove all existing cells from adult rat lungs, keeping the structure of the airways and vascular system intact to later serve as a sort of "scaffold" for the growth of new lung cells. They then cultured a combination of lung cells using a bioreactor designed to mimic the fetal lung environment and repopulated the "decellularized" rat lung with the engineered cells. When implanted into rats for short intervals of 45 to 120 minutes, the new tissue exchanged gas in a manner similar to that of natural lungs. The scientists, who detail their work in a Thursday issue of the journal Science, acknowledge that it may be some time before scientists can generate fully functional lungs in vitro, but they nonetheless are touting their research as a promising development in the quest to regenerate lung tissue. "This is an early step in the regeneration of entire lungs for larger animals and, eventually, for humans," said Laura Niklason, a Yale professor and vice chair of the Departments of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Engineering and lead author of the study, which was funded by Yale and the National Institutes of Health. (Decellularization has also been used in experiments to rebuild a human heart). Adult lung tissue, for its part, has limited regeneration capacity, so the primary therapy for severely damaged lungs is transplantation. That procedure is highly susceptible to organ rejection and infection and achieves only 10 percent to 20 percent survival at 10 years, according to some statistics.

Harvard University scientists have developed a microdevice that mimics real lungs. (Credit: Harvard University)

Lung disease, including lung cancer, emphysema, and cystic fibrosis, accounts for about 400,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to figures provided by Yale. Lung cancer is still the most common cause of cancer death, according to the American Lung Association. Meanwhile, in other promising artificial-lung-related news, a separate group of scientists has created a coin-size "lung on a chip" that mimics real lungs and could be used to test drugs and toxins. The researchers, Don Ingber and his team at Harvard University, detail their dual-chambered microdevice in the same issue of Science, saying it could provide a low-cost alternative to animal and clinical studies for drug screening and toxicology applications.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Google Street View's 'horse-boy' mystery

Do you feel the "Scent of Danger?" Could it be the "Centaur of Danger?"There are unearthly beings in our midst. And I am not referring specifically to any unearthly being that Stephen Hawking is so keen for us to avoid.Please look at the image from Google Street View that I have been brave enough to present here.It is the body of a man. It is the head of a horse. They are on the very same being. You try and tell me that this not something from out there, rather than in here.

Who will invite him to the Kentucky Derby?(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

The BBC says that this "horse-boy," as he has become known, has become a regular on the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland, where the days are cold and the nights echo with foreboding.People from all over Europe have allegedly been contacting Britain's most august news organization in order to claim they have met him. Though none so far has claimed to have ridden him or fed him carrots.Horse-boy, it seems, moves very quickly all around the European continent. Perhaps, behind his purple shirt, he has wings.There are those who reportedly claim that you can find more footage on Google Street View that shows him to be a real human being putting on a cheap horse mask.I cannot accept this. Horse-boy is surely real and will shortly been seen on Oprah's couch, in the stables of the Prince of Wales, or playing the fine game of C-E-N-T-A-U-R with Shaquille O'Neal.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Tiered data plans can help close digital divide

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Robert J. Shapiro's bio below.

The familiar, one-size-fits-all flat monthly fee for Internet use is likely headed for the technology junk pile--and it's a good thing for most consumers. One fee for unlimited broadband access--and the same fee for everybody signing up for a particular service--helped drive the extraordinarily rapid spread of broadband, especially as those fees declined over the last decade. But broadband has changed the Internet, particularly by enabling the spread of bandwidth-intensive video and voice applications. New analysis shows that as Internet providers ramp up their investments to accommodate the surge in bandwidth demand, the old, one-price-for-everybody model would slow our progress toward universal adoption, especially by lower-income Americans. The first reaction of many Internet users to this news may well be disbelief. How can it be that a pricing approach that has worked so well for so many years can suddenly become obsolete and even counterproductive? The answer is that technological advances have changed what many of us do online, which, in turn, has changed the economics. A techno-ecosystem once dominated by e-mail and text now is increasingly characterized by high-definition video that claims up to 1,000 times as much network capacity and bandwidth as simple text. The way we currently pay for the infrastructure required to keep the network humming also will have to change.

Those who consume more bandwidth--or at least those who claim many times the bandwidth of the average Internet user--will have to pay a little more. Otherwise, the price for everyone else will increase so much that lower-income Americans will be priced out of broadband.

As with virtually every other good and service in our economy, those who consume more bandwidth--or at least those who claim many times the bandwidth of the average Internet user--will have to pay a little more. Otherwise, the price for everyone else will increase so much that lower-income Americans will be priced out of broadband. To keep pace with the fast-growing appetite for advanced video and other data-hungry Internet services, Internet service providers expect to invest an additional $300 billion or more over the next 20 years to expand their infrastructure. The resources for this additional investment have to come from broadband users--subscribers, content providers, or both. A new analysis by Kevin Hassett and me (PDF), supported by the Georgetown University Center for Business and Public Policy, has established that if these costs are recovered through the old, flat-fee pricing models that assess each household equally, prices will go so high that we will be unable to achieve universal access to broadband in the next decade. With this flat-rate pricing approach, for example, almost one in five African Americans would still lack home broadband connectivity in 2020. A nearly comparable share of Hispanics and lower-income white Americans also would remain offline. In the face of rising bandwidth demand and the rising cost to accommodate it, the flat-fee pricing approach will perpetuate digital divides based on income, race, and ethnicity. There is an alternative which, our analysis found, can achieve virtually universal broadband adoption by 2018. This alternative is a flexible-pricing approach that would enable ISPs to recover the bulk of their additional infrastructure investments from the providers of bandwidth-intensive content and the small share of consumers--online gamers, for example, and those who watch high-definition TV, movies, and videos online for hours every day--who claim a disproportionate amount of broadband capacity. Two of the world's most wired societies, Korea and Norway, have adopted variations of this approach, and thereby managed to substantially expand their infrastructure commitments without raising prices for most broadband users. Moreover, President Obama's goal of achieving universal broadband adoption, which such flexible pricing can promote, is quickly becoming an essential factor in advancing economic opportunity. Increasingly, job openings are posted only online, and the ability to work productively in offices and factories dense with Internet and information technologies, is virtually a necessity for those intent on improving their economic position. Beyond that, access to information on educational opportunities, political activities, health care, and even many government services increasingly depends on broadband access. As the Federal Communications Commission prepares its recommendations for meeting the president's goal, it is critical that it recognizes that future broadband access, especially for many minority and lower-income households, may well depend on the ability of ISPs to flexibly price access. The process of change has already started. Several broadband providers recently initiated trials of usage-based pricing in selected areas, to help accelerate broadband adoption in a way that can finance the infrastructure build-out required to avoid online congestion. Apart from all of these social and economic concerns, it also makes no sense to preserve a flat-fee pricing system that effectively forces the vast majority of Internet users to subsidize a small minority of high-bandwidth consumers and content providers. The burden on policymakers is not to mandate an end to flat-fee pricing but simply to preserve the ability of ISPs to adopt new pricing approaches that can maximize consumer benefits.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Yahoo search exec Larry Cornett moving on

Larry Cornett, formerly vice president of consumer products for Yahoo Search(Credit: Cornett Experience)

One of Yahoo's key search executives, who sought to put the best light on its decision to outsource back-end search crawling to Microsoft over the last several months, is leaving the company.Larry Cornett, formerly vice president of search consumer products, announced his departure from Yahoo on his personal blog, as spotted by Search Engine Land. Cornett was one of the more visible search executives at Yahoo over the past year, as he sought to gain respect for Yahoo's search technology at the same time as defending the company's decision to cut a search deal with Microsoft.Yahoo has tried to bolster its sagging search market share by emphasizing the work it has done in improving the presentation of search results, an effort in which Cornett often served as lead spokesman. The company has stabilized its share in recent months, but only after resorting to gimmicks such as turning news photo galleries into "search" queries.While Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz continues to insist the company is committed to search in that respect--search results as a user-experience design problem--that's exactly the kind of background Cornett possessed, having led software design teams at eBay and Apple, among other stops, according to his LinkedIn profile. Cornett plans to work on a newly launched consulting business, but also said in his blog post that he's working on a start-up in stealth mode.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Facebook boosts D.C. ranks with public policy hire

A Facebook profile photo for Marne Levine of Washington, D.C.(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook announced Thursday the hire of Marne Levine as its first-ever vice president of global public policy. She'll start at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech company next month, but will remain based in Washington, D.C.Currently, Levine serves as chief of staff for the White House National Economic Counsel; previously, following a background in the online payments space, she worked in the Department of the Treasury's Office of Legislative Affairs and Public Liaison, and was chief of staff to former Treasury head Larry Summers when he was president of Harvard University."I'm excited that Marne is joining my team as vice president, global public policy," a statement from Facebook vice president of communications Elliot Schrage read. "With over 70 percent of our users living outside the United States, her unique mix of government and Internet industry experience will be invaluable to help Facebook address some of the most interesting questions at the intersection of technology and public policy."As Facebook draws ever closer to the half-billion-member milestone, the company increasingly finds itself dealing with international governments and legislative bodies, both inside and outside of the U.S. Part of Levine's job will be to help build public policy teams in Asia, Europe, and the Americas; Facebook's existing D.C. branch head, Tim Sparapani, will continue to manage the company's relationship with the U.S. government.Levine's background--connections to Harvard University, the Treasury Department, and Larry Summers--makes her sound at least in part like another Facebook executive, chief operating officer and former Google sales exec Sheryl Sandberg, who was Summers' chief of staff when he was at the Treasury Department. Sandberg was one of Facebook's first prominent employees to come from a government background rather than Silicon Valley.Facebook's existing D.C. connections also run deep thanks to Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, who serves on Facebook's board of directors. The Washington Post was also the outlet for an op-ed penned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the company's most recent privacy controversy, indicating Facebook's desire to further permeate the close-knit world of D.C. influence and deal making.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

RIM: Sales and profits on the upswing

Research in Motion on Thursday reported first-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates but missed the analysts' targets on revenue. The company also announced a share repurchase plan. (Statement, in PDF.) For the quarter, the company reported revenue of $4.24 billion, up 24 percent from the year-ago quarter. Net income came in at $768.9 million, or $1.38 per share, up from the $1.12 per share reported in the year ago quarter. Analysts had been expecting earnings of $1.34 a share on revenue of $4.36 billion. Looking ahead, the company projected second-quarter revenue of between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion, in line with Wall Street's estimates of $4.5 billion for the quarter. Second-quarter earnings are expected to be between $1.33 and $1.40 per share. Gross margin for the second quarter is expected to be approximately 44 percent, and net subscriber account additions are expected to be between 4.9 million and 5.2 million. Read more of "RIM earnings: Sales and profits rise; share repurchase plan announced" at ZDNet's Between the Lines.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Inside the Motorola Droid X

The Motorola Droid X, which debuted this week to mostly a chorus of accolades, gets its zip from silicon provided by Texas Instruments.

Droid X uses a fast 1GHz Texas Instruments processor. (Credit: Motorola)

Inside the rival to the Apple iPhone 4 is a new TI OMAP 3630 chip, a big upgrade from the 3430 silicon used in the current Motorola Droid. TI got almost a two-fold speed spike from the new OMAP 3630 chip via design modifications and by moving to an advanced 45-nanometer manufacturing process, according to Brian Carlson, OMAP product line manager at Texas Instruments. "We increased both the graphics and processor performance by over 80 percent," Carlson said in a phone interview, adding that the new process along with chip design tweaks allowed TI to also lower power consumption between 30 percent and 50 percent, depending on what the user is doing. "The first thing you'll notice is that the Droid X is much snappier, much faster. Web browsing is one of the key areas. Running a (graphics intensive) Web page, comparing the Droid to the Droid X, it goes from about eight seconds down to below five seconds," he said. Carlson also explained that other factors come into play beyond reaching the 1GHz milestone. "It's not just about the gigahertz. It's about your memory subsystem. Our memory bandwidth and how we feed these (processing) engines make an incredible difference," he said. Droid X main features:

• Processor: 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP3630 processor (45-nanometer)
  
• Memory: 512MB
  
• Graphics chip: Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530
  
• Mobile Wi-Fi hot spot: TI Mobile Wireless LAN: WiLink 6.0
  
• Storage: 8GB onboard, 16GB microSD preinstalled, total memory expandable up to 40 GB
  
• Operating system: Android 2.1
  
• Display: 4.3-inch WVGA (854 x 480), WVGA display houses 400,000 pixels
  
• Camera: 8.0 megapixel, Auto Focus, Dual LED Flash
  
• Browser: Webkit HTML5-based browser; Adobe Flash 10.1 after update, pinch-to-zoom
  
• Video: 720p HD Capture, HD Playback via HDMI or DLNA, H.263, H.264, MPEG4, WMA v10
  
• Playback: 30 frames per second encode and decode
  
• Talk and standby time (specified): Talk time 480 minutes, standby time 220 hours
  
• Connectivity: Bluetooth Version 2.1+EDR, USB 2.0 HS, OTA, HDMI, DLNA
  
• Location services: aGPS (assisted), sGPS (stand-alone), Google Maps
  
• Battery: 1540 mAh
  
• Dimensions:: 65.50 (x) 127.50(y) 9.90(z) mm, 2.6 (x) x 5.0 (y) x 0.4 (z) inches
  
• Price, availability: $199 after a $100 rebate; on sale July 15
  

TI also supplies the silicon that enables the built-in Wi-Fi hot spot, which allows the Droid X to connect up to five devices, much like the portable credit-card-size Verizon MiFi access point. This is a "killer" feature also found in a few newer high-end phones such as the HTC EVO 4G and obviates the need for a separate device like the Verizon MiFi.

Motorola Droid X(Credit: CBS Interactive)

Another marquee feature TI includes in its silicon is support for DLNA, or Digital Living Network Alliance, which enables the Droid X to stream video to a home consumer electronics device, such as a TV. "With a high-definition video recorder, HDMI output, and with wireless (DNLA) streaming directly from the device, this is going to change how these devices are used," Carlson said. And what's coming down the pike from TI? A dual-core OMAP 4430 chip will begin shipping in the fourth quarter, Carlson said. This should make its way into phones in the first half of 2011. All smartphones are currently powered by single-core central processing units, or CPUs, which limits the number of tasks users can do simultaneously. When smartphones finally move to dual-core designs next year, a lot will change, according to Carlson."What you have to do is look at the workload. These aren't just phones anymore. You have a lot of different services and social networking going on behind the scenes. If you have one processor, it thrashes [slows down] a lot because you have to keep refilling the cache [memory]. With two processors [each with their own cache], you alleviate that. You actually see a boost in performance, a boost in page load times. We're seeing page load times of two seconds," Carlson said.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Off-the-shelf digital camera sees cancer in real time

The cable at the end of the camera is as wide as a pencil lead and can be applied to the side of a cheek.(Credit: D. Shin/Rice University)

Using a $400 Olympus E-330 digital camera, Rice University biomedical engineers and University of Texas cancer researchers report in PLoS ONE this week that they are able to distinguish between healthy and cancerous cells with only a little tweaking."Consumer-grade cameras can serve as powerful platforms for diagnostic imaging," says lead author and Rice professor Rebecca Richards-Kortum in the school's news release. "Based on portability, performance, and cost, you could make a case for using them both to lower health care costs in developed countries and to provide services that simply aren't available in resource-poor countries."The team captured images of cells using a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached to the E-330. They then applied a fluorescent dye that makes the nuclei of cells glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic cables.

In healthy tissue (top), the nuclei are small and widely spaced, while the nuclei of cancer cells (bottom) are abnormally large and close together.(Credit: D. Shin/Rice University)

The nuclei of precancerous and cancerous cells are visibly distorted, so much so that the abnormal cells were visible even on the camera's small LCD screen. The team used tissue samples from resected tumors and cancer cells grown in a lab and compared them to the healthy tissue samples from patients' mouths."The dyes and visual techniques that we used are the same sort that pathologists have used for many years to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells in biopsied tissue," says study co-author Mark Pierce, a Rice faculty fellow in bioengineering. "But the tip of the imaging cable is small and rests lightly against the inside of the cheek, so the procedure is considerably less painful than a biopsy and the results are available in seconds instead of days."Richards-Kortum, Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering as well as professor of electrical and computer engineering, heads a lab that has developed fluorescent dyes and targeted nanoparticles that let doctors zero in on the molecular hallmarks of cancer.She says software could be written that would allow medical professionals who are not pathologists to use the device to distinguish healthy from non-healthy cells. The device could then be used for routine cancer screening and to help oncologists track how well patients were responding to treatment.While a Rice spokesman says it could still be a while before additional testing and approvals come through to bring this technology to market, he adds that Richards-Kortum has already used it on herself, in front of an audience, showing the healthy nuclei of the cells in her mouth.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Oracle earnings show profit for Sun

Oracle delivered a better-than-expected fourth quarter courtesy of strong hardware sales--notably an operating profit at Sun and strong sales of Exadata database machines. The company reported earnings of $2.4 billion, or 46 cents a share, on revenue of $9.5 billion (statement, preview). Non-GAAP earnings were 60 cents a share, well ahead of the 54 cents a share expected by Wall Street. Sales were in line with expectations, but Oracle's profit got a boost from better-than-expected hardware sales. Sun contributed about $400 million in non-GAAP operating income. You could call the performance Oracle's Sun miracle. In a statement, Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein said Sun had $1.2 billion in systems revenue. Oracle president Safra Catz said in a statement:

Now that Sun is profitable, we have increased confidence that we will meet or exceed our goal of Sun contributing $1.5 billion to non-GAAP operating income in FY2011, and $2.0 billion in FY2012.

Read more of "Oracle: Sun profitable; Exadata sales pipeline nears $1 billion" at ZDNet's Between the Lines.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

iPhone 4 is out, complaints are in

Though the iPhone 4 is flying off store shelves, the just-released device is already gathering complaints from early buyers. Apple's latest phone hit stores Thursday to lines of people--some who were waiting 6 hours to buy one. But almost as soon as the device arrived on the doorsteps of customers who placed early preorders came reports of reception problems, discolored spots on the screen, easily scratched exteriors, and issues with third-party accessory connections. The most prominent complaint on Thursday is customers noticing that touching the seams of the antenna band that runs around the iPhone 4--particularly when holding the iPhone 4 in their bare left hand--interrupts reception, slowly causing the phone to lose its signal. Some iPhone 4 owners may find they strangle 3G reception after a minute or so if their hands are positioned touching the bottom bar and the side bar of the phone. Others are having trouble re-creating the problem, but it appears to vary by device, person, and location. Boy Genius Report posted a YouTube videoThursday afternoon that showed the problem might be software-related. The person who posted the video was able to re-create the signal loss while gripping an iPhone 3G upgraded to iOS 4. CNET Labs continues to look into it. It's been suggested that using the rubber bumper case that Apple sells separately for $29 is solving the problem because it prevents a user's fingers from coming in contact with the antenna band. It's unclear if this is why Apple for the first time decided to make its own case. The company has previously left that up to third-party manufacturers.

Discolored spots are appearing on the screen of some new iPhone 4s.(Credit: Gizmodo)

Apple has not responded to requests for comment. This isn't the first time reception problems have followed soon after an iPhone's initial release. In 2008 a month after the iPhone 3G debuted, reports that the device would randomly switch between AT&T's 3G and EDGE networks, and that signals bars on the phone would appear to disappear even though reception remained, poured in. It turned out to have nothing to do with the hardware, but was a software glitch, which Apple fixed with an update about two months later. But antenna issues weren't the only complaints about the iPhone 4. By Wednesday afternoon Gizmodo and MacRumors had reports from more than 20 people with a brand new iPhone 4 who said there was a yellow discolored area on the screen, or an overall yellow hue to the display even after adjusting the phone's display settings. The iPhone 4 also scratches easily, according to reports. On Wednesday, Engadget released photos of a five-day-old demo unit with some very discernible scratches on the back side of the iPhone 4. That's despite Apple's claims that the new iPhone has hardened glass on both the front and back because it's better at resisting scratches. Some Bluetooth accessories made by third-party manufacturers appear to be working inconsistently with the iPhone 4. Certain Bluetooth headsets are pairing as normal with the iPhone, while others seem to require an extra step to get music or podcast playback over Bluetooth. Apple support forums are also filling with reports from users whose new iPhone 4s are not connecting properly with their car stereo adapters that worked fine for previous model iPhones.If you just picked up an iPhone 4, let us know if you're experiencing these or other problems in the comments below.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

N.J. county going solar with unique financing

Morris County, N.J., plans to install 3.2 megawatts of solar panels on county property roofs with the help of some creative financing, the Morris County Improvement Authority (MCIA) announced Wednesday.Self-dubbing it the "Morris Model," county officials said in a statement that the project was funded with a unique two-prong approach. Part of it will be paid for with $30 million in county-guaranteed bonds. The rest will be financed in conjunction with the energy utility Tioga Energy, which qualifies for federal solar tax incentives through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).The incentives are not available to municipal renewable energy projects directly, but Tioga Energy will pass on its savings to the county. Through a 15-year power-of-purchase agreement with Tioga Energy, Morris County will purchase any electricity generated from the solar panels at a 35 percent reduced rate.SunDurance Energy will provide the solar panels and installation services. The installation will consist of 19 properties, including 14 schools, with 1.57 megawatts worth of solar panels to be installed atop the William G. Mennen Sports Arena, a 2,500-seat arena that includes three ice rinks, and an outdoor rugby field.In addition to the Mennen Arena roof, SunDurance will also install an elevated roof of solar panels to cover its 500-space parking lot. The installation is estimated to supply the arena with 30 percent of its electricity.When the total solar installation on all buildings is complete, the MCIA predicts the average annual savings in energy bills will be 35 percent for the involved school districts, at least 20 percent for the county.New Jersey may seem to some an unlikely place to find solar projects. But the state is, in fact, a leader in solar development and clean-tech investment, according to national statistics.The greater New York metropolitan area (which includes northern New Jersey and Long Island) was ranked No. 3 for clean-tech job activity in 2009, and N.J. itself was ranked 7th by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2009 for states doing the most to wean their residents off oil.In July 2009, New Jersey approved a program that would install over 200,000 Petra Solar photovoltaic solar panels on existing utility polesowned by utility Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G). As of November 2009, regulators had also approved a total of $248 million in solar loans that PSE&G could offer, which translates into an estimated 81 megawatts worth of solar systems available to interested parties across the state including homeowners.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

HP buys mobile music company Melodeo

Computer giant Hewlett-Packard has acquired Melodeo, a Seattle-based start-up that specializes in music applications and services for mobile devices, the companies confirmed on Wednesday. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but an anonymous source told TechCrunch that the price was around $30 million. The acquisition vaults HP into the battle for mobile music services.

Shown here, Melodeo's Nutsie for Android lets users access iTunes playlists on their mobile phone. HP has acquired the company, and now could bring the service to its WebOS mobile platform.(Credit: Melodeo)

I've written about Melodeo's products a couple of times, most recently in January, when I got a demo of a forthcoming update to Melodeo's Nutsie app for Android phones. Nutsie (the name is an anagram of iTunes) runs on several mobile platforms, and gives users a way to get music from the iTunes library on their computer to a mobile device over the air. Unfortunately, the current version of Nutsie only allows users to transfer iTunes playlists, not full libraries, and users can't navigate to single songs. It's more like Internet radio based on each user's personal iTunes library than true portability. This was supposed to be fixed in the update I saw, which would let users upload their entire iTunes libraries to Nutsie's servers, then let Android phones access those full libraries over the air. Basically, Melodeo was building an online music locker, like what MP3Tunes offers. It sounded like a great solution for Android's weak spot in music, and I even speculated that Google might acquire Melodeo. But the updated Nutsie app hasn't come out yet, and when I contacted a spokesman about two weeks ago, he told me that Melodeo had some big news coming up that was delaying its product plans. This was it. So what's HP going to do with Melodeo? My guess: it's going to build a music streaming service for the WebOS mobile device platform, which HP gained in its acquisition of Palm earlier this year. All of the big mobile players are positioning themselves for a world in which consumers stream music from the cloud rather than downloading it directly to their devices. Apple bought streaming music company Lala in 2009 and shut the standalone service down in May, and it's reportedly in negotiations with record companies about using Lala's technology to build some sort of online music service. Google announced big music ambitions for Android at its I/O conference in May, including the acquisition of Simplify Media (which had an application for users to stream iTunes libraries directly from their computer to a mobile phone, with no online service in between), as well as plans to build an online iTunes competitor. Microsoft's Zune Pass subscription service is coming to Windows Phone 7 later this year, and the company could build a music locker service on top of SkyDrive, which offers 25GB of free online storage. HP has technology called iStream for streaming music from its MediaSmart Server (based on Microsoft's Windows Home Server technology) to an iPhone. HP also teamed up with U.K.-based Omnifone in January to offer a subscription-based music service to PC users in Europe. But Melodeo ups the ante: HP now has the technology and people to help build its own online music service, competing with whatever the other big mobile players come up with. The acquisition also has implications for smaller companies trying to come up with similar solutions, like HomePipe, which lets users stream music from their home computers to various mobile devices, and ParkVu, which just today announced its Music WithMe BlackBerry app that lets users upload iTunes music directly to their BlackBerry phones. Consolidation is underway, and companies like these may have to find a big benefactor to thrive in the coming mobile music battle.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Adobe to fix critical Reader hole next week

(Credit: Adobe)

Adobe will release updates for Reader and Acrobat on Tuesday that will fix critical security issues, including plugging a hole that could be used to take control of computers and which has been exploited in the wild, the company said on Thursday. Adobe warned about that vulnerability, which also affected Flash Player, about three weeks ago and plugged the hole in Flash on June 10. The security updates coming on Tuesday are for Adobe Reader 9.3.2 for Windows, Mac, and Unix, Adobe Acrobat 9.3.2 for Windows and Macintosh, and Adobe Reader 8.2.2 and Acrobat 8.2.2 for Windows and Mac, the company said in a blog post. These updates will take the place of the next quarterly security update that was scheduled for July 13, Adobe said.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Twitter, FTC reach agreement on security

An investigation that the Federal Trade Commission launched into Twitter's allegedly lax security practices following two high-profile hacking incidents last year has been settled, the company announced Thursday.Twitter general counsel Alexander MacGillivray, who joined the company last summer after serving as a member of Google's legal team, posted an entry on the company blog Thursday explaining the situation. "Early in 2009, when Twitter employed less than 50 people, we faced two different security incidents that impacted a small number of users," the post explained. "Put simply, we were the victim of an attack and user accounts were improperly accessed."In January and April of 2009, Twitter was subjected to first a hack that targeted celebrities' accounts and then a data breach that made private information (including internal Twitter documents) accessible to the attackers. The FTC claimed that these security breaches highlighted the fact that Twitter wasn't implementing adequate measures to protect its users: requiring hard-to-guess passwords, requiring employees to change their passwords every few months, and restricting internal access to potentially sensitive data, among other charges.A release from the FTC on Thursday explained that Twitter will form an "independently audited information security program" as a result of the settlement, which must be assessed by a third party every other year, and that for 20 years it's barred "from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information."Keeping a company on its toes with regard to transparency about user security sounds like a no-brainer. But some independent critics think the FTC may be going too far."The FTC's complaint against Twitter makes reference to a number of password protection practices that the FTC would consider to be best practices," explained Paul Bond, an attorney with law firm Reed Smith who specializes in data privacy and digital-media security. "However, those practices are not in fact explicitly mandated by any federal law or regulation. The FTC is essentially regulating through consent order without going through the normal channels of rulemaking."The burden on Twitter, which is still a relatively small company with around 300 employees, could make a big impact."This very entrepreneurial company will be essentially under the FTC's microscope," Bond explained, "and therefore it's going to require Twitter to devote a significant amount of resources to make sure that they're complying not just with the law but with the FTC's evolving rules of what's fair and unfair in consumer privacy."Twitter, meanwhile, says that it was stepping up its security arsenal already: "Even before the agreement, we'd implemented many of the FTC's suggestions and the agreement formalizes our commitment to those security practices," MacGillivray's post read.The PR embarrassment over fake tweets coming from celebrity accounts with tens of thousands of followers may have, in fact, been enough.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

Long lines mark the arrival of iPhone 4 in stores

The line for those with reservations for an iPhone 4 was longer than the line for walk-in customers in San Francisco.(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--As the iPhone 4 made its debut across the U.S. Thursday, people came out in droves to be some of the first to buy one in stores. Even several hours after stores opened, queues remain long, and supply appears to be thinning in some places. But overall, the official first-day sales of the iPhone 4 appear to be going as smoothly as can be expected. Apple stores opened at 7 a.m. first to customers who had reserved an iPhone ahead of time, and employees slowly began working in a separate line of customers who queued up without a preorder reservation. Many people were unable to submit preorders when Apple and AT&T's system crashed repeatedly the first day preorders were available. The line remains hundreds of people deep at the Stockton Street store in San Francisco, wrapping around two city blocks. The line is significantly longer for those who had already reserved a device. But at two stores in New York, it was the line of walk-in customers that extended longer. Brian Yin stood a block and a half from the entrance to the Stockton Street store at 8 a.m. as an employee told him he was looking at a wait of about four hours since he didn't have a reservation. He looked relieved. "I was going to leave by noon or 1 p.m., but I can wait."

Apple-branded umbrellas were handed out when a rainstorm appeared over the Palo Alto, Calif., Apple store.(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

And while the sheer number of people hoping to walk away with an iPhone Thursday is greater than any of the past iPhone launches, the mood is different. The hoopla and the party atmosphere from previous iPhone launches seems to be missing, but so too is the disorganization and activation delays of prior years, at this point. As with past iPhone and iPad launches, Apple tried to keep the eager customers satiated, passing out coffee, bottled water, and pastries. When a brief rainstorm passed over the Palo Alto, Calif., Apple store, Apple-branded umbrellas were handed out to line dwellers. But preference was being given to those who planned ahead. "They're telling us the coffee and donuts are only for (people with) reservations," complained Joe Lobato, who camped out in front of the San Francisco store for two nights. While the flagship stores in New York and San Francisco are still making sales, other stores are already out of stock. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reported in a research note Thursday that he had called 20 Apple stores in the morning and found nine already out of iPhone 4s.New York's Upper West Side Apple store ran out of 32GB devices around 10 a.m., and Apple employees have been turning away new people trying to line up without reservations. Some, like Patrick van Rosendaal, who's waited for every iPhone since the original in 2007, said he was done waiting after six hours, and got out of line. Many customers who tried to buy phones at Radio Shack and Best Buy experienced disappointment. Those retailers received very small allotments of iPhone 4s for first-day sales. In Brooklyn Heights, the Radio Shack had eight iPhone 4s available, and were sold to people who placed preorders. Best Buy stores were hit-and-miss on Thursday. Only if a store received more iPhone 4s than preorders then it would sell to walk-in customers. A manager at Best Buy in Manhattan said he didn't expect to have iPhone 4s in stock until next week at the earliest, or the first week of July.

Scenes from iPhone 4 launch (photos)

Those who were able to get their hands on one Thursday even after waiting since the wee hours of the morning seemed pleased. "Of course," it was worth the wait, crowed one enthusiastic fan named Ray upon emerging from the San Francisco store. "I'd wait hours. Days." Not everyone on the street shared his enthusiasm. One bewildered passerby upon seeing the line stretching around two blocks said to no one in particular, "This line is for the iPhone? What, are they giving it away for free?" CNET's Caroline McCarthy, Marguerite Reardon, and Josh Lowensohn contributed to this report.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)

IBM chief scientist seeks patterns in patterns

Jeff Jonas, chief scientist, IBM Entity Analytics(Credit: IBM)

Despite what is often considered to be a conservative approach to business, IBM has no shortage of big thinkers who use their skills both internally and externally to influence the way the company thinks about technology and how it applies to business processes. This week I met with Jeff Jonas, chief scientist, IBM Entity Analytics, to talk about how predictive analytics is moving into new realms of big data and how companies are using software to deal with the deluge of information.Jonas joined IBM in 2005 when Big Blue acquired SRD, a company he founded to develop so-called extraordinary systems with specific data analysis tasks, such as facial recognition and analysis systems casinos use to catch cheating gamblers.The main thrust of Jonas' research right now is trying to figure out ways to better take advantage of as much data as possible as fast as the transaction is happening--with an eye toward real-time predictive analytics. This is basically pattern detection in real-time, based on patterns that may or may not exist already.Jonas explained that you may not know of a pattern, but you want to find one, and that many might be interesting but they don't always matter. In the casino example, bad guys are looking to perform channel separation by mixing and matching, people, places, and things, but the casino needs to do channel consolidation to aggregate information and determine an immediate course of action.Another example is the interest in analyzing social media data. Jonas contends that if you can't count, you can't predict--for example, a government watching for a SARS outbreak needs to comingle channels to better ascertain geolocation as well as the gravity of the data. Counting and pattern matching the data leads to better decision making. From a recent Jonas blog post:

The single most fundamental capability required to make a sensemaking system is the system's ability to recognize when multiple references to the same entity (often from different source systems) are in fact the same entity. For example, it is essential to understand the difference between three transactions carried out by three people versus one person who carried out all three transactions. Without the ability to determine when entities are the same, it quickly becomes clear that sensemaking is all but impossible.

And, according to Jonas, the more data the better. If you can reduce the number of puzzle pieces with solid blocks you are able to eliminate noise, however, systems need to be smart enough to re-examine themselves and determine if information that was discounted is now valuable.Data visualization certainly helps with sense-making but it's the ability to consolidate the channels and have non-obvious relationship awareness to determine threats--inside and outside.At the moment the majority of this type of analytical software is on-premise but will move to the cloud as soon as IT staff and large corporations become totally comfortable with the privacy and data integrity issues. After all, you don't want your entire trail of GPS movements to be exposed to the entire Internet or hackers who might use the data against you.That said, the amount of data coming from cloud-based and mobile systems is growing exponentially, and the ability to process the data at the edge, is another way to get the best possible real-time analytics to be able to look back on decisions and analysis in the past and ensure accuracy and reliability.
Source: CNET News (http://cnet.com/)