Information Technology News Blog

Spinning a good tale: Economist

2008-10-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

Quantum mechanics may hold the key to a hand-held biology laboratory

BIOTECHNOLOGISTS have long dreamed of creating a “lab on a chip” that would pack the power of a full-scale analytical laboratory into an object as small and as easy to use as the hand-held scanners familiar to fans of science fiction. Such a device might detect biological weapons, run genetic tests or sniff out contaminants. Staff at clinics could use it to screen people for infectious diseases. Police could perform on-the-spot drug tests; paramedics, roadside diagnoses.

Many designs have been proposed for such a device, but none has really taken off. The latest, though, sounds promising. It uses a quantum-mechanical effect called giant magnetoresistance (GMR), which is also the basis of a computer’s hard drive. And prototypes made in laboratories in Europe and America have indeed been able to detect everything from deadly toxins to illegal drugs and markers of disease.

Giant magnetoresistance relies on devices called spin valves. These are made by interleaving thin sheets of magnetic and non-magnetic metals to form a sandwich composed of layers mere nanometres (billionths of a metre) thick. If a nanoscale sandwich is exposed to a magnetic field, the quantum spin of its electrons, and thus its electrical resistance, will change in a way that is easily detectable—which is why they are used in the heads of hard-disk readers.

In 1998, however, it occurred to David Baselt of the United States’ Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, that spin valves might also make excellent biosensors. Biological materials themselves are not usually magnetic, but they are often chemically specific. To Dr Baselt this suggested that tiny magnetic particles might be attached to molecules using either antibodies (which will bond to proteins, sugars and so on) or single-stranded DNA (which will bond to a complementary DNA strand to form the famous double helix). To search for a target molecule, then, all that would be needed would be to sprinkle a sample thought to contain it with magnetic nanoparticles coated with the appropriate antibody or DNA and then run it over a spin valve.

A simple idea. It has, though, taken Dr Baselt and his colleagues, along with researchers in several other organisations, ten years to turn his insight into a practical technology. Now that they have, things are about to go mainstream.

Though the details of the prototypes differ, the principles are similar. Both the spin valves and the paraphernalia of channels needed to feed a sample to them are built onto silicon wafers using the same techniques employed to make microprocessors. The wafer is then cut up into chips.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Spinning a good tale: Economist

How your laptop will just keep getting faster: CNN

2008-10-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

(PopSci.com) -- Since the invention of the transistor, silicon semiconductors have been king. But now silicon-based transistors are nearing the limit of their potential. Excess heat and manufacturing hurdles are impeding the development of ever-faster and smaller processors.

Advances in materials and chip design to resist extreme heat and move huge amounts of data, quickly, will be crucial. Experts are exploring three technologies to overcome these challenges: spintronics, graphene and memristors. They are what will someday make ultra-energy-efficient supercomputers small enough to fit anywhere -- even in the palm of your hand.
Rebuilding RAMMemristors will store large amounts of data and could make your computer boot instantly
Accessing data, whether stored in a spinning hard drive or in flash-based memory, is a time-suck and a power hog. The dynamic RAM that rapidly delivers data to the processor is almost maxed out.
"Both technologies for the magnetic hard disk and D-RAM are within a few generations of hitting brick walls," says R. Stanley Williams of HP Labs's Information and Quantum Systems Lab. He believes that circuits called memristors could be the solution. Memristors recently joined the resistor, capacitor and inductor as the fourth fundamental circuit element.
But unlike the others, a memristor has the unusual ability to remember the last resistance it held, even when the power is turned off. When the current starts up again, the resistance of the circuit will be the same as it was before, providing instant-on computers. After the memristor had spent some 30 years as a theory, Williams and his team designed the first one earlier this year. Five years from now, he says, the chips could sit in computers between D-RAM and hard disks to eliminate the boot-up process. Further down the road, memristors, which have higher storage densities than the best flash memory and faster write times than D-RAM, could supplant both technologies in one fell swoop.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: How your laptop will just keep getting faster: CNN

Fraudsters’ bugs transmit credit card details to Pakistan: Daily Times

2008-10-16T02:52:00.000-07:00

* UK customer details cloned with help of new sophisticated bugs planted in supermarket card readers
* US counter-intelligence official says bugs transmit information via wireless technology to Lahore
* US National Security Agency is tracking case because of its links to Pakistan

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Detectives are investigating a sophisticated credit card fraud against customers of some of Britain’s biggest supermarkets that may be linked to extremists in Pakistan, a Sunday Times report said. Fraudsters have targeted more than 40 stores in Britain, including those of Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, in an elaborate scam that police say involves tiny devices inserted into the stores’ ‘chip and PIN (personal identification number)’ credit card readers, according to the report.

Specialists say the technology is the most advanced they have seen and is being used in supermarket chains across Europe. The devices, which are reported to have been made in China, are reading and storing selected customers’ Mastercard and personal identification numbers as the cards are inserted into readers at supermarket checkout tills.

Pakistan: The bugs transmit the information by wireless technology to Lahore, Pakistan, according to a senior American counter-intelligence official. Customers’ cards are then cloned and used to steal money from their credit and current accounts and to pay for items such as airline tickets on the Internet.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Fraudsters’ bugs transmit credit card details to Pakistan: Daily Times

Commies in Washington?: Economistan

2008-10-15T01:28:00.000-07:00

FREE MARKETS:Trend of nationalization and government intervention in free markets is eroding consumer confidence.


END OF FREE MARKETS
By Saad Sarwar Muhammad
Monday, September 22, 2008

When Pakistan’s central bank blocked foreign currency accounts to control the flight of capital to foreign banks in the aftermath of nuclear tests that it conducted, it was considered as interventionist and the measures were considered anti-economy and opposed to what free markets were all about. A similar thing happened again early this year when Pakistan’s main stock market shed more than $36 billion dollar of market capital in a very short span, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan put a floor on the points to curtail flight of money. Pakistani rupee also suffered at the hands of the flight of capital and the exchange rate fell from roughly Rs. 60 to a dollar to Rs. 78 to a dollar within a span of a few months. All these measures were criticized around the world because of the interventionist policies of Pakistani institutions who wanted to keep the economy in check.

The collapse of the investment banks like Lehman brothers and Meryl Lynch and firms like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with the imminent fall of the US insurance giant AIG put the global markets in a tailspin. UK responded with a ban on short selling of stocks to arrest the fall of FTSE its main index. The US followed suit with the ban on short selling of stocks for a month. Short selling is speculative in nature with investors betting on a company’s stock to fall driving the whole market down. Even profitable investment banks like Morgan Stanley were feeling the pinch because of the short sale. The measures worked and the stock markets around the world recovered within a day with a long and wayward week coming to an end. In the process, the Fed also ended up bailing out the insurance company AIG for a big sum of $85 billion dollars and it is estimated the cost of the Fed’s intervention to the US taxpayer might amount to $700 billion dollars overall driving the domestic debt even higher to upwards of $11 trillion dollars. All these measures, with no clear and definitive answer to whether they will work or would be enough to save the ailing US economy.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Commies in Washington?: Economistan

Shake it all about: Economist

2008-10-15T01:19:00.000-07:00

How to use your laptop to locate an earthquake

IF YOU drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. A group of researchers led by Jesse Lawrence of Stanford University are putting the same accelerometer chip to an intriguing new use: detecting earthquakes. They plan to create a network of volunteer laptops that can map out future quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers manage.

Seismometers are large, expensive beasts, costing $10,000 or more apiece. They are designed to be exquisitely sensitive to the sort of vibrations an earthquake produces, which means they can pick up tremors that began halfway around the world. By contrast, the accelerometer chips in laptops, which have evolved from those used to detect when a car is in a collision and thus trigger the release of the airbags, are rather crude devices. They are, however, ubiquitous. Almost all modern laptops have them and they are even finding their way into mobile phones. The iPhone, for example, uses such a chip to detect its orientation so that it can rotate its display and thus make it easily readable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Shake it all about: Economist

Virtual carnivores: Economist

2008-10-15T01:06:00.000-07:00

Struggling to protect privacy behind the great firewall

UNTOLD legions police the internet in China to block information deemed politically threatening. But the world’s biggest online population still has a wild streak. Worries are growing about internet vigilantes who mount “renrou sousuo”, or “human-flesh searches”, to ferret out perceived wrongdoers.

Zhou Zhenglong, a peasant in the north-western province of Shaanxi, began a 30-month jail term on September 27th after internet-users exposed his faking of photographs of a rare Chinese tiger in the wild. Senior Shaanxi officials, eager to attract tourists to the area, had backed the pictures’ authenticity for several months. They were eventually fired amid an internet outcry. Some posters on Chinese bulletin boards and blogs have argued that Mr Zhou was perhaps merely a hapless tool in a hoax perpetrated mainly by bureaucrats.

In the absence of a free press in China, the internet, despite attempts at censorship, can sometimes put the brakes on official abuses of power. But it can also go too far. As the state-run news agency, Xinhua, put it, “You may find yourself up before a kangaroo court of angry netizens and receive a virtual lynching.” “Human-flesh searching” is known less dramatically in English as “crowdsourcing”—using inputs from a large number of people (usually internet users) to solve problems. But often in China the practice involves mobilising people online to hunt down ordinary citizens whose only alleged sin is that of being objectionable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Virtual carnivores: Economist

China 'spying on Skype messages': BBC

2008-10-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

China has been monitoring and censoring messages sent through the internet service Skype, researchers say.

Citizen Lab, a Canadian research group, says it found a database containing thousands of politically sensitive words which had been blocked by China.

The publically available database also displayed personal data on subscribers.

Skype said it had always been open about the filtering of data by Chinese partners, but that it was concerned by breaches in the security of the site.

Citizen Lab researchers, based at the University of Toronto, said they discovered a huge surveillance system which had picked up and stored messages sent through the online telephone and text messaging service.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: China 'spying on Skype messages': BBC

Know-alls: Economist

2008-10-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Electronic snooping by the state may safeguard liberty—and also threaten it

Kobal Collection

IF A Muslim chemistry graduate takes an ill-paid job at a farm-supplies store what does it signify? Is he just earning extra cash, or getting close to a supply of potassium nitrate (used in fertiliser, and explosives)? What if apparent strangers with Arabic names have wired him money? What if he has taken air flights with one of those men, with separate reservations and different seats, paid in cash? What if his credit-card records show purchases of gadgets such as timing devices?

If the authorities can and do collect such bits of data, piecing them together offers the tantalising prospect of foiling terrorist conspiracies. It also raises the spectre of criminalising or constraining innocent people’s eccentric but legal behaviour.

In November 2002 news reports revealed the existence of a big, secret Pentagon programme called Total Information Awareness. This aimed to identify suspicious patterns of behaviour by “data mining” (also known as “pattern recognition”): computer-driven searches of large quantities of electronic information. After a public outcry it was dubbed, perhaps more palatably, Terrorism Information Awareness. But protests continued, and in September 2003 Congress blocked its funding.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Know-alls: Economist

Footloose capitalism: Economist

2008-09-15T00:15:00.000-07:00

China’s largest Brazilian community enjoys the benefits of globalisation

IN DONGGUAN, a city of some 7m people situated 90km (56 miles) north of Hong Kong, factories abound producing everything from furniture to car parts, helping to fuel China’s economic boom. But take a closer look and you may spot something rather less familiar: a thriving community of Brazilians, estimated to number 3,000, most of them working in the footwear industry.

They trace their roots to southern Brazil, which was the bustling centre of their country’s shoe-export business until the early 1990s, when a sharp reduction of Brazil’s trade barriers, an appreciating currency and pressure from cheap Chinese labour combined to cause exports to stagnate. In 2007 Brazil exported 177m pairs of shoes, 12% below the early-1990s peak of 201m. Many firms that survived moved north, to parts of the country where labour costs less. Meanwhile China powered ahead, with its share in world shoe exports, already the largest, doubling to two-thirds over the same period. Dongguan is now China’s footwear capital, exporting 600m pairs a year. And many more are made elsewhere in China on behalf of Dongguan firms.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Footloose capitalism: Economist

Warning sounded on web's future: BBC

2008-09-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

The internet needs a way to help people separate rumour from real science, says the creator of the World Wide Web.
Talking to BBC News Sir Tim Berners-Lee said he was increasingly worried about the way the web has been used to spread disinformation.
Sir Tim was speaking in advance of an announcement about a Foundation he has helped create that he hopes will improve the World Wide Web.

Future proof

Sir Tim talked to the BBC in the week in which Cern, where he did his pioneering work on the web, turned on the Large Hadron Collider for the first time.
The use of the web to spread fears that flicking the switch on the LHC could create a Black Hole that could swallow up the Earth particularly concerned him, he said. In a similar vein was the spread of rumours that the MMR vaccine given to children in Britain was harmful.
Sir Tim told BBC News that there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Warning sounded on web's future: BBC

Touching the future: Economist

2008-09-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Computing: Touch screens are becoming an increasingly popular way to control mobile phones and other devices. How does the technology work, and where is it heading?

THE proliferation of touch screens in electronic devices over the past two or three years has been so rapid that you may have found yourself trying to press an on-screen button or icon when sitting at your computer only to realise, much to your frustration, that it is not a touch screen. Many mobile phones, most famously Apple’s iPhone, now have touch-screen interfaces, as do satellite-navigation systems and portable games consoles. Confusingly, however, most computers do not—so far.

But that may be about to change. Microsoft has already demonstrated a prototype of Windows 7, the next version of its flagship operating system, based around “multi-touch” capabilities, which allow a touch screen to sense more than one finger at once. As well as being able to press buttons, tap icons, call up menus and scroll windows, users will be able to rotate and stretch on-screen objects using two fingers at a time, as they already can on the iPhone. For its part, Apple is rumoured to be working on new versions of its desktop and laptop computers with touch screens. It has already taken a half-step in this direction by putting multi-touch trackpads into its laptop computers.

So the touch screen could be on the verge of becoming a standard part of computer interfaces, just as the mouse did in the 1980s. Many people thought that would never happen: surely switching between keyboard and mouse would slow people down and make them less productive? In fact, mouse-driven interfaces can be far more efficient, at least for some tasks. The same seems likely to be true of touch-screen interfaces. The touch screen will probably not replace the mouse and keyboard, but will end up being used for some tasks.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Touching the future: Economist

Thanks for the memory: Economist

2008-09-14T23:57:00.000-07:00

A mathematical trick may allow people to scatter their computer files across the world's hard disks

IF YOU have lots of unused storage space on your hard disk, then why not share it with others on the internet? The benefit could be distributed storage for your own files, making them available any time via the web, even if you are nowhere near your computer—indeed, even if your computer is switched off. That desideratum is what a Zurich-based firm called Caleido is aiming to provide, with a free online storage service known as Wuala that was recently introduced to the public.

Though the idea underlying it is simple, Wuala requires some nifty technology to make its distributed system work reliably. In particular, its developers, Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, have used a clever mathematical trick to compensate for the fact that the participating computers will come and go from the internet in an unpredictable way.

The challenge is how to minimise the number of copies of the same file that have to be distributed. Copying costs participants both storage space and bandwidth. Yet there have to be enough copies to ensure that there is at least one available most of the time. If, for example, each computer is online 25% of the time, then a quick calculation shows that you would have to copy each file to 100 different computers to ensure that 999,999 times out of a million there is at least one copy available when a user looks.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Thanks for the memory: Economist

Postmodern wriggle: Economist

2008-09-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

To save Microsoft, Bill Gates adjusts his shorts

THE self-appointed marketing experts of the blogosphere immediately pounced on the opening shot of what will probably be this year’s most discussed advertising campaign. Microsoft, the huge but boring software company that has been pummelled by the advertisements of its smaller and cooler rival, Apple, is fighting back. How? By having Bill Gates, its co-founder, chairman and arguably its personification, buy shoes with Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian, as his adviser. Just look, the bloggers are screaming: further proof, if any were needed, that Microsoft just doesn’t get it.

Admittedly, the first television spot of the campaign is bizarre. All that Messrs Gates and Seinfeld seem to talk about is, well, shoes. How they “run tight”. How best to stretch them. Windows and Office, Microsoft’s ubiquitous flagship products, are not mentioned at all. The word “Microsoft” is mentioned exactly once. Computers come up only insofar as Mr Seinfeld wonders whether they might someday become “moist and chewy”. Mr Gates replies with a subliminal hint, a subtle wriggle of his boxer shorts. What does any of this, the critics ask, have to do with the purpose of the ad campaign, which is to salvage the reputation of Vista, the latest version of Windows?

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Postmodern wriggle: Economist

Pakistan's Energy Crunch: American Chronicle

2008-09-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Saad Sarwar

Cheap and reliable sources of energy are the driving force for any economy. In the current climate of the world where the limited supply of fossil fuels and the high energy demands is already causing havoc to the world economy, it is about time we thought of alternate sources of energy as the only real option left.

A developing country like Pakistan can ill afford to ignore the importance of alternate sources of energy and the role hydel power can play for Pakistan if harnessed properly. Pakistan is naturally blessed with a terrain that boasts some of the highest mountain ranges in the world which also serve as the sources for all of its rivers. Pakistan possesses K2 which is the second highest point on the earth with the water going all the way to sea level through a course of hundreds of miles. Water coming from such high sources serves as huge repositories of potential energy which can be harnessed not only to produce cheap energy but also as water conservation projects for agriculture. Right now millions of cusecs of water is wasted in our rivers and thrown out straight to the sea without much use. It is high time Pakistan thought of constructing small dams and water reservoirs for electricity production and agricultural purposes all over the country. Even rain water should be conserved in special reservoirs purpose built for the monsoon season which can also serve to make deserts and vast areas of Baluchistan green. Pakistan should go all out for these energy projects so that none of the industrial units or houses and businesses in Pakistan are ever out of energy. Pakistan should set its energy target as double its actual needs in order to be the best growing economy in the world. Which it could easily be, if the cost of factors of production are lowered. Pakistani textile industry always complains of power outages and high costs of energy. If we use hydel power and alternate sources of energy we can even lower cost of utilities for all Pakistanis and give something back to our populace through better energy management thereby becoming a true welfare state.

Pakistan should also think about requiring all vehicles operating in Pakistan to run on electric power by the year 2010. Many countries have started initiatives of using electricity to power vehicles. In Nepal many companies have mushroomed that offer vehicles run on electricity using multiples of car batteries. Britain has submarines that are powered by batteries. Honda has introduced its very efficient Fuel Cell Vehicle that utilizes alternative fuel technologies. Pakistan should set itself a target of being oil free by the year 2020. If steps are taken right now for generating hydel-power along with alternate sources of energy, being oil free by 2020 is not too much to ask for.

Alternate sources of energy like wind and solar power have been exploited by many countries. China even offers a full range of wind turbines, from home turbines of various production capacities to industrial wind turbines. Pakistan can easily import and employ these on mass level to help the local populace develop energy for home use in their very own homes. Some can even sell excess capacity of electricity to the government like is done in the United States thereby lowering costs of production for the government. Most wind turbines only require sustained winds at low wind speeds which are suitable for many areas in Pakistan.

Pakistan is also blessed with plenty of sunshine which can be harnessed to produce solar energy. The first and foremost use of solar panels apart from home use in Pakistan could be the conversion of all the street lights with those powered by solar panels. Installing a solar panel with each street light would not only reduce the burden of the government to produce energy but would also result in saving costs associated with wiring of the street lights as lights with solar panels do not require an exorbitant amount of wiring due to the distance between the source(solar panel) and use(light) being small. Pakistan's main artery, motorway M-2 is already fitted with solar panels that power emergency phones every few kilometers.

With the way the oil prices are rising everyday the day is not far away when we would be driving solar cars on highways lighted by solar energy into homes powered by alternate sources of energy like wind and solar power. The sooner Pakistan recognizes the potential of wind,hydel and solar power along with electric powered vehicles, the sooner Pakistan would become a world class economy whose citizens would enjoy cheap power and the country would rid itself of high current account deficits associated with high oil imports costs and low exports due to high utility costs.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan's Energy Crunch: American Chronicle

The second browser war: Economist

2008-09-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Google's new web browser is its most direct attack on Microsoft yet

SEVERAL years ago, Silicon Valley was rife with rumours that Google, then primarily a search engine, might be building a new web browser to rival that of Microsoft, called Internet Explorer, or even an operating system to rival Microsoft's Windows. Google mocked those rumours and they died down. But if Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, is to be believed, the speculation itself made him think that "maybe it's not a bad idea". And so this week Google did launch a new browser, called Chrome, that is also, in effect, a new operating system. The rumours, says Mr Brin cheekily, "just happened to migrate from being false to being true".

Chrome amounts to a declaration of war—albeit a pre-emptive one, in Google's mind—against Microsoft. So far, Google has been coy about admitting the rivalry (whereas Microsoft, especially its boss, Steve Ballmer, is obsessed with it). In web search and advertising, Google dominates—roughly as Microsoft does in operating systems and office applications. To the extent that Google has challenged Microsoft's core business, it is through Google Docs, its online word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. But these, so far, have few users.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The second browser war: Economist

How secure is your card info?: BBC

2008-08-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley

In light of the biggest identity theft case ever prosecuted in America, the spotlight is being turned on just how secure is our credit and debit card information?

The question is a simple one but the answer might appear to be a bit harder to pin down.

VeriSign, a firm that secures websites for e-commerce, told the BBC that credit and debit card information is "vulnerable" but they are working with retailers to change that.

"Credit and debit card information is just not incredibly secure," said Perry Tancredi, VeriSign's senior product manager for fraud detection.

"But it is counterbalanced by the amount of fraud losses due to cheque fraud and direct debit fraud which is much greater than credit card fraud."

Mr Tancredi said: "Regardless of how strong the security measures, and how vigilant, the weak part of the chain is there is always a human who is responsible and who has overall control over the information."

He suggested the best bet was for all consumers to "assume that there will be some sort of fraud on your account sooner or later" and put in place a plan to deal with it.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: How secure is your card info?: BBC

The computer says no: Economist

2008-08-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Image processing could help to identify artists by their brushstrokes

THE ability of computers to analyse complex digital images is growing rapidly. Robots are being fitted with powerful vision systems that allow them to recognise and hold things. Satellite images of the Earth can be scanned for tiny features, or pictures from deep space searched for strange objects. Medical images can be analysed to find out what might be going on inside a human body. Now digital imaging is learning how to spot art forgeries too.

Scientific methods have long been used to help authenticate works of art: for instance, paint can be dated from its chemical composition or canvasses X-rayed to reveal what lies below the surface. In recent years, however, the art itself has come under more scientific scrutiny, especially through the analysis of brushstrokes. The idea is to establish the equivalent of an artist’s “handwriting” to help experts attribute paintings.

One of the most comprehensive studies using such methods was published recently in Signal Processing Magazine from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It involved analysing the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and was carried out by James Wang of Penn State University and his colleagues from other universities. It was done with the help of the Van Gogh and Kröller-Müller museums in the Netherlands.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The computer says no: Economist

Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks: WSJ

2008-08-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

August 7, 2008; Page D1

Even with the advent of tabbed browsing, which allows you to keep multiple Web pages open in the same window, Web multitasking can be a pain. You have to constantly click back and forth among tabs if they contain fast-changing material you check often, like the status of your friends in social-networking services, or updates to news feeds.

Trying to share information with people on your Web-based networks can introduce another layer of digital jujitsu. It can be awkward to snag a photo or a snippet of text from one Web site and send it to a friend in a social network on another, or post it to your own blog.

But I've been testing a little-known Web browser that attempts to solve these problems. It's called Flock, and it bills itself as "the social Web browser." I found that it worked well, but it isn't for everyone, and it has some important downsides.

Flock is a modified version of the excellent Firefox Web browser that tacks on some special features for social networkers and bloggers. It's available free at flock.com in essentially identical versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Flock adds a special vertical "sidebar" at the left of the browser that keeps your social networks, photo sites or news feeds visible at all times, regardless of what page you're viewing in the main browser window.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking: WSJ

Say goodbye to the computer mouse: BBC

2008-07-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

t's nearly 40 years old but one leading research company says the days of the computer mouse are numbered.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years.

Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices.

"The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice.

He told BBC News that his prediction is driven by the efforts of consumer electronics firm which are making products with new interactive interfaces inspired by the world of gaming .

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Say goodbye to the computer mouse: BBC

Look for the silver lining: Economist

2008-07-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Claudio Munoz
Piracy is a bad thing. But sometimes companies can turn it to their advantage

"MERCHANT and pirate were for a long period one and the same person," wrote Friedrich Nietzsche. "Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality." Companies, of course, would strongly disagree with this suggestion. Piracy is generally bad for business. It can undermine sales of legitimate products, deprive a company of its valuable intellectual property and tarnish its brand. Commercial piracy may not be as horrific as the seaborne version off the Horn of Africa (see article). But stealing other people's R&D, artistic endeavour or even journalism is still theft.

That principle is worth defending. Yet companies have to deal with the real world—and, despite the best efforts of recorded-music companies, luxury-goods firms and software-industry associations, piracy has proved very hard to stop. Given that a certain amount of stealing is going to happen anyway, some companies are turning it to their advantage.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Look for the silver lining: Economist

Review: iPhone 3G lives up to the hype: CNN

2008-07-18T02:48:00.000-07:00

By Kent German and Donald Bell
Decrease font Decrease font
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CNET.com

(CNET) -- Just over a year after Apple birthed the first iPhone, the long-awaited, next-generation iPhone 3G has arrived bearing a mildly tweaked design and a load of new features.

With access to a faster 3G wireless network, Microsoft Exchange server e-mail, and support for a staggering array of third-party software from the iPhone App Store, the new handset is the iPhone we've been waiting for.

It still lacks some basic features but when compared with what the original model was year ago, this device sets a new benchmark for the cell phone world.

With the iPhone 3G, Apple appears to have fixed some call-quality performance issues we had with the previous model--in our initial tests, the volume is louder with less background buzz than before. Music and video quality were largely unchanged, but we didn't have many complaints in that department to begin with.

We're worried about battery life--some early reviews indicate that the iPhone 3G lasts only a day--but we'll run full tests over the next couple of days and report our results on this page.

Price may well remain our largest concern. New AT&T customers and most current AT&T customers can buy the iPhone 3G for $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. If you don't qualify for that price--check your AT&T account to find out--you'll pay $399 and $499 respectively.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Review: iPhone 3G lives up to the hype: CNN

Enigma variations: Economist

2008-07-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

Kobal

Jul 10th 2008
From The Economist print edition
A device that counts photons will secure optical data networks from prying eyes

REMOVE the outer coating from a strand of optical fibre, bend it and attach a sensor to detect the tiny amount of light that will leak out. Hacking into an optical network like this is the modern equivalent of a wire tap. But now a laboratory in Cambridge, England, has found a way to turn a hacker's screen instantly blank if he infiltrates the network. This is because the data are being encrypted in a new and probably unbreakable way with one of the first practical devices to be developed for quantum information technology.

The idea of using the more arcane aspects of quantum theory to do things that standard information technology cannot manage has been around for a while. One branch of the field is quantum computing. This, if it can be made to work routinely, promises machines that can do lots of calculations in parallel instead of one at a time, and thus solve problems existing computers cannot manage. The other branch is quantum cryptography, which promises unbreakable codes for messages.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Enigma variations: Economist

Mobile web reaches critical mass: BBC

2008-07-15T00:07:00.000-07:00

The mobile web has reached a "critical mass" of users this year, according to a report by analysts Nielsen Mobile.

The US is the most tech savvy nation with nearly 40 million Americans - 16% of all US mobile users - using their handset to browse on the move.

The UK and then Italy come a close second and third in the 16 countries surveyed by the analyst firm.

Indonesia has the lowest take-up with just 1.1% of mobile subscribers using their handsets for surfing the web.

The firm believes the growth of the mobile web is a combination of increasing numbers of user friendly handsets, higher speed networks and unlimited data packages.

"The adoption and the experience are improving at an impressive rate," said Nic Covey, Nielsen Mobile's director of insights.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Mobile web reaches critical mass: BBC

Google must divulge YouTube log: BBC

2008-07-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Google must divulge YouTube log: BBC

Free speech is thorny online: CNN

2008-07-08T00:32:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services -- from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video -- become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Free speech is thorny online: CNN

Asian invasion: Video Games: Economist

2008-07-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

Jun 26th 2008
From The Economist print edition

A new business model: give away the game and charge avid players for extras

FOR millions of East Asians, online gaming is not so much a hobby as a way of life. "Massively multiplayer" online games such as "Legend of Mir 3" and "MapleStory" have legions of devoted fans who spend an alarming proportion of their waking hours sitting in front of their PCs, at home or in internet cafés, doing battle with elves, wizards and mythological beasts. Some players take their parallel gaming lives very seriously: one man murdered a friend in a dispute over a stolen virtual sword.

Many of these games rely on a business model that is different from the way the video-games industry works in the West. Rather than selling games as shrink-wrapped retail products which can then be played on a PC or games console, the Asian industry often gives away the software as a free download and lets users play for nothing. Revenue comes instead from small payments made by more avid players to buy extras for their in-game characters, from weapons to haircuts. In this way, a minority of paying customers subsidise the game for everyone else.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Asian invasion: Video Games: Economist

Huawei to deploy WiMAX network for Mobilink in Pakistan: Telecom Paper

2008-07-03T03:23:00.000-07:00

Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies has been selected by Pakistani mobile operator Mobilink to deploy a commercial WiMAX 16e network. The network will cover central business districts and hot spots in Pakistan's six major cities of Islamabad, Karachi, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Under the terms of the contract, Huawei will provide Mobilink with a WiMAX system including distributed base stations, an access service network-gateway and a network management system.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Huawei to deploy WiMAX network for Mobilink in Pakistan: Telecom Paper

Pakistan's IT exports reach $175 million in 2007-08: PSEB MD: Online News

2008-06-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

ISLAMABAD:Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) has reached the figure of USD 175 million annual IT exports during the financial year 2007-08 about USD 13 million more than the USD 162 million target set for the said year.

"We are satisfied with the pace of progress of the local IT sector and ambitious about its further growth in future as this is the only industry in Pakistan that has registered a remarkable growth during the last five years," MD PSEB Talib Baloch said in a recent statement issued here.

Pakistan IT exports of US$116 million for the FY06-07 were also in excess to the set target of US$108 million, he disclosed. "This sector has consecutively registered 50 per cent annual growth in exports for the last five years showing its tremendous potential. If nurtured fully the IT industry could result in voluminous economic and commercial benefits."

He was of the view that the country's annual IT related exports could have been over USD 220 million had the power crisis not hit the national economy. "Longer load shedding hours have adversely affected the productivity of many ICT companies. However, despite these odds, PSEB is hopeful to exceed the targeted volume of exports in the forthcoming year(s)," he added.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan's IT exports reach $175 million in 2007-08: PSEB MD: Online News

Internet overhaul wins approval: BBC

2008-06-30T03:21:00.000-07:00

A complete overhaul of the way in which people navigate the internet has been given the go-ahead in Paris.

The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names.

A second proposal, to introduce domain names written in Asian, Arabic or other scripts, was also approved.

"We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated," said Roberto Gaetano, a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Internet overhaul wins approval: BBC

Speak up: Economist

2008-06-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

Translation systems

Jun 25th 2008
From Economist.com

Devices and programs are getting better at translating languages

WARS often boost technological development. In Iraq the armed forces have faced a shortage of translators, both from within their own ranks and from bilingual locals whose lives can be put in peril if they are found to be working for the foreigners. This has created a demand for machines that can translate between Arabic and English. Although some experimental devices have proved unreliable, they are now improving.

A number of two-way translating devices have been under development as part of the Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use (TRANSTAC) programme run by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA. There are three main participants: IBM, BBN Technologies and SRI International.

SRI said recently that it had sold 150 machines to the American government for use in Iraq. IBM has provided troops with 1,000 of its devices which run MASTOR, its multilingual automatic speech translator. Both systems can translate tens of thousands of words between Iraqi Arabic and American English, even when people are speaking outside the laboratory.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Speak up: Economist

Why the future is in your hands: BBC

2008-06-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.

Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.

"Converged devices are always with you and always connected," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Why the future is in your hands: BBC

eBay's legal woes: Handbagged: Economist

2008-06-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

Jun 19th 2008 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition
The online auctioneer braces itself for some court decisions in France

HIGHFASHIONX, a retailer on the American website of eBay, an online auctioneer, is offering 52 handbags, belts, necklaces, rings and pairs of shoes from the house of Chanel. It also displays something even more exclusive: an apology from Chanel's lawyers. The luxury-goods firm had accused HighFashionX of selling fakes, but its wares were in fact all genuine.

The incident is part of a war between luxury-goods firms and eBay over counterfeit goods—a war that is about to intensify. On June 30th a French court will rule on a lawsuit brought against eBay in 2006 by LVMH, the world's biggest luxury-goods firm, which is demanding damages of €20m ($31m). Further rulings are expected on court cases brought against eBay by Dior Couture, a fashion house, and by L'Oréal, a cosmetics firm. For its part, eBay is launching a campaign in Brussels against firms that, it says, are stifling the development of e-commerce in Europe.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: eBay's legal woes: Handbagged: Economist

Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon: The three survivors: Economist

2008-06-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

Jun 19th 2008 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by David Simonds
What the diverging fates of Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon say about the internet

AND so Yahoo! survives. The internet company—which, at the age of 14, is one of the oldest—appears in the end to have rebuffed Microsoft, the software Goliath that wanted to buy it. It has done so, in part, by surrendering to Google, the younger internet company that is its main rival. In a vague deal apparently designed to confuse antitrust regulators, Yahoo! is letting Google, the biggest force in web-search advertising, place text ads next to some of Yahoo!'s own search results. Google thus controls some or all of the ads on all the big search engines except Microsoft's. Yahoo! lives, but on the web's equivalent of life support.

Yahoo!'s descent, first gradual then sudden, during this decade marks a surprising reversal of the fates of the only three big internet firms to have survived since the web's earliest days. Back in 1994 Jerry Yang and David Filo, truant PhD students at Stanford, started to publish a list, eventually named Yahoo!, of links to cool destinations on the nascent web. Around the same time, Jeff Bezos was writing his business plan for a website, soon to be called Amazon, for selling books online. The following year, Pierre Omidyar, a French-born Iranian-American, put an auction site on the web that would become eBay.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon: The three survivors: Economist

'Shake-up' for internet proposed: BBC

2008-06-25T04:16:00.000-07:00

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

The move could also see the launch of .xxx, after years of wrangling.

Top level domains are currently limited to individual countries, such as .uk (UK) or .it (Italy), as well as to commerce, .com, and to institutional organisations, such as .net, or .org.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: 'Shake-up' for internet proposed: BBC

Pakistan Ranks Above Iran and Indonesia in the Newest E-readiness rating by The Economist Intelligence Unit

2008-06-25T04:08:00.000-07:00

By Saad Sarwar

Pakistan ranked sixty fourth in the latest e-readiness ranking released by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Pakistan's ranking has come down one spot from 2007 when it was ranked sixty third. However, Pakistan is ranked above Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Indonesia, Azerbaijan and Iran. India is ranked fifty fourth while the top spot goes to the US, followed by Hong Kong, Sweden, Australia, Denmark and Singapore.

For the complete report on E-readiness by EIU please click here.

LinkedIn raises $53m in funding: BBC

2008-06-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals, has raised $53m (£27m) of new funding from investors.

The financing by venture capitalists values the Silicon Valley start-up at more than $1bn, reflecting investor confidence in online communities.

Bain Capital Ventures led the site's latest round of funding, giving investors a 5% stake in the firm.

Existing partners Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Greylock Partners also invested in the site.

The company has so far raised a total of $80m in funding after the latest round of money-raising, the site's fourth so far.

The company, which is profitable, makes money from advertising and premium subscriptions.

LinkedIn's European chief executive Kevin Eyres said the firm's business model was different to that of many start-ups of the dotcom boom of the late 1990s.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: LinkedIn raises $53m in funding: BBC

Firefox fans download 9,000 copies a minute: CNN

2008-06-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- In just five hours, the new version of the Firefox Web browser had as many downloads as its predecessor got during its entire first day, the software's developers say.

Firefox 3 reached 1.6 million downloads by early evening Tuesday to match Firefox 2's first-day downloads.

In the opening hours, Firefox's Web site was distributing nearly 9,000 copies of the free software every minute.

Downloads continued Wednesday as Firefox supporters sought to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The category is new, and Guinness World Records must certify it, a process that could take a week or longer.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Firefox fans download 9,000 copies a minute: CNN

Honda makes first hydrogen cars: BBC

2008-06-16T00:31:00.000-07:00

The Japanese car manufacturer Honda has begun the first ever commercial production of a hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle.

The medium-sized four-seater, called the FCX Clarity, runs on hydrogen and electricity, emitting only water vapour.

Honda claims the vehicle offers three times better fuel efficiency than a traditional, gasoline-powered car.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Honda makes first hydrogen cars: BBC

Samsung's Instinct Doesn't Ring True As an iPhone Clone: WSJ

2008-06-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

The parade of iPhone lookalikes continues. Soon after Apple announced the first iPhone a year ago, factories in Asia, at the behest of U.S. phone carriers, were asked to respond to the sleek, touch-screen device. Some already have reached America; more are coming.

The latest to arrive is the Samsung Instinct, to be introduced by Sprint on June 20. I've been testing the Instinct, and while it isn't a bad phone and has some features the Apple product lacks, it's no match for the iPhone. The manufacturers haven't replicated the iPhone's greatest strength: beautiful, powerful, breakthrough software.

Also, the timing of the Instinct is unfortunate. It was designed to go up against the first iPhone. Sprint even has a Web site (nowisgood.com) comparing the two devices. But the Instinct will go on sale only three weeks before Apple and AT&T start selling the new 3G iPhone, the second-generation model announced earlier this week. This second iPhone model corrects some of the first model's main weaknesses, wiping out some advantages Sprint hoped the Instinct would have.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Samsung's Instinct Doesn't Ring True As an iPhone Clone: WSJ

Your number's up: Economist

2008-06-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Belle Mellor

Networking: The internet will run out of addresses unless a new numbering system is adopted. After years of inaction, there are now signs of progress

NOBODY would expect a city water system designed for 1m residents to be able to handle a 1,000-fold increase in population in just a few years. Yet that is what the internet's fundamental addressing scheme has had to accommodate. When the network was first established there were only a handful of computer centres in America. Instead of choosing a numbering system that could support a few thousand or million addresses, the internet's designers foresightedly opted for one that could handle 4 billion. But now even that is not enough.

The addressing system, called internet protocol version 4 (IPv4), cannot keep up with the flood of computers, mobile phones, hand-held gadgets, games consoles and even cars and refrigerators flooding onto the network. Nearly 85% of available addresses are already in use; if this trend continues they will run out by 2011, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a think-tank for rich countries, warned in May.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Your number's up: Economist

As Microsoft Walks Away,Yahoo Enters Google Ad Pact: WSJ

2008-06-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

Moves May Prompt
Industry Scramble,
Regulator Scrutiny
By MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
June 13, 2008; Page B1

Microsoft Corp. abandoned its pursuit of Yahoo Inc., opening the way for Yahoo to complete a search-advertising pact with rival Google Inc. that pits the industry's two biggest forces against Microsoft.

Microsoft told Yahoo that it was no longer interested in pursuing a takeover, even at the $33 a share it offered for the Internet company last month. That price would have valued Yahoo at nearly $50 billion.

Microsoft also unsuccessfully floated an alternative proposal to acquire Yahoo's search business. It isn't clear how Microsoft valued the business, but as part of that deal, Microsoft said it was prepared to acquire an additional 16% of Yahoo for $35 a share, or about $7.73 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: As Microsoft Walks Away,Yahoo Enters Google Ad Pact: WSJ

So much for the scare stories: Economist

2008-06-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Jun 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Illustration by David Simonds

New evidence shows that the gains outweigh the losses

BRITONS have long been fairly sanguine about traditional forms of globalisation such as trade and international investment. But the outsourcing of work formerly done in Britain to foreign countries has aroused fears, not least because it opens up the protected underbelly of services to international competition. Until now hard evidence of its overall impact on the British economy has been elusive. New research* should dispel most of the anxiety for those who prefer crunchy facts to scary myths.

Economists at Nottingham University's Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre delved into the accounts of over 66,000 firms in order to trace the effects of offshoring. Big companies with overseas affiliates are the most assiduous offshorers. Accordingly, the study paid particular attention to 2,850 British multinationals with foreign subsidiaries.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: So much for the scare stories: Economist

Pakistan joins world’s lowest telecom tariff club: The Post

2008-06-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Associated Press of Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: India can no longer claim of being amongst the world's lowest telecom tariffs", as Pakistan boasts of far more competitive mobile services, especially for international (ISD) calls.
So while Indian telecom consumers have been celebrating the benefits of competition and low calling rates, they can now happily push operators and telecom regulators to lower their tariffs further.
The international calls to some of the most frequently called countries from India and Pakistan - such as United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Germany and Hong Kong - present a stark comparison of how Pakistani mobile users are so much better-off than the Indians.
"Pakistani operators offer such ISD calls at rates as low as (Pakistani) Rs 1-1.99 per minute. In comparison, Indian mobile subscribers are still paying Rs. 5-6 per minute to call these countries.
In some cases, the ISD rates from Pakistan while calling mobile phones in these countries are slightly higher, but far lower than those available to Indian consumers," says Shalini Singh, a renowned journalist of India, wrote in an article recently published in a leading Indian newspaper.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Pakistan joins world’s lowest telecom tariff club: The Post

The Worlds Biggest IT Tower to be in Pakistan: Daily.pk

2008-06-09T00:14:00.000-07:00

The multi-million rupee IT Tower project will take about 2 years to complete after which it will be the biggest call center in the world, said City Nazim Mustafa Kamal.

The call center in Sydney is presently regarded as the biggest with 8,000 call seats but the IT Tower in Karachi will have 10,000 call seats under one roof.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The Worlds Biggest IT Tower to be in Pakistan: Daily.pk

City unveils huge wireless network: CNN

2008-06-08T02:39:00.000-07:00

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (AP) -- When Oklahoma City firefighters received a report that a body had been buried in a shallow grave at Lake Overholser, they consulted detailed topographical maps from the field as they pinpointed where to look.

That wouldn't have been possible without access to the city's new Wi-Fi mesh network, said fire Capt. Jim Kruta, who held a display of the network applications with police and other city officials outside City Hall.

"We pulled up a topographical map and were able to see where the water had receded and where someone might try to bury a body," Kruta said, adding, "We actually did find it."

The $5 million Wi-Fi network system covers a massive 555-square-mile area and was funded with money from a public safety sales tax and city capital improvement funds.

City officials say it's the largest city-owned and -operated Wi-Fi network in the world.

The network, which is used only for public safety and other city operations, includes 1,200 nodes, or routers, attached to street lights, utility poles and other spots across the city.

It's structured as a "mesh," meaning that if one node or router goes down, another fills its purpose.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: City unveils huge wireless network: CNN

Rummaging through the internet: Economist

2008-06-08T02:33:00.000-07:00

Jun 5th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Computing: New techniques to navigate and gather information online promise to revolutionise web browsing

THE web has changed in many ways since it first emerged in the mid-1990s. The first web pages contained only text, and there was a big debate about whether pictures should be allowed. Today, by contrast, it is quite normal for pages to be bursting with photos, animated graphics, video clips, music and chunks of software, as well as text. In one respect, however, the web is unaltered: the clickable hyperlinks between pages are still the way users get from one page to another.

But now a Norwegian computer scientist named Frode Hegland has cooked up a new sort of navigation. His free software, a browser add-on called Hyperwords, makes every single word or phrase on a page into a hyperlink—not just those chosen by a website’s authors. Click on any word, number or phrase, and menus and sub-menus pop up. With a second click, it is possible to translate text into many languages, obtain currency or measurement conversions, and retrieve related photos, videos, academic papers, maps, Wikipedia entries and web pages fetched by Google, among other things.

All that information, of course, can already be accessed by web users willing to root around, opening a series of new browser windows or tabs. The goal of Hyperwords, Mr Hegland says, is “reducing the threshold” of satisfying curiosity, by making the quest faster and easier. Later this year he will release a new version that extends this trick beyond the web browser, turning any word in any window into a clickable “hyperword”.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Rummaging through the internet: Economist

Battlechips: Economist

2008-06-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

Jun 5th 2008 | SANTA CLARA

From The Economist print edition

As once-distinct markets start to overlap, chipmakers come to blows

FOR YEARS the chip industry had only one story: AMD's David pitted against Intel's Goliath, as the two Silicon Valley firms fought it out in the market for microprocessors that power PCs and servers. But a flurry of announcements this week shows that things are no longer so simple, and chipmakers that once ruled separate markets have started to come into conflict.

Intel has long dominated the market for PC and server chips, but there are two other big classes of processors: those for high-end graphics and for mobile phones. Most graphics chips are made by ATI Technologies (now part of AMD) and Nvidia; most mobile handsets are powered by processors based on technology from ARM Holdings, a British chip-design company.

These markets have been largely separate because different processors need to be good at different things: PC chips must be able to run ever more complex software; graphics chips have to be good at rapidly crunching data in parallel streams; and handset chips must balance performance with power consumption. But the borders between these markets are blurring as the PC matures and portable devices become more elaborate and capable.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Battlechips: Economist

IBM aims to cool chips with water: BBC

2008-06-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

A network of tiny pipes of water could be used to cool next-generation PC chips, researchers at IBM have said.

Scientists at the firm have shown off a prototype device layered with thousands of "hair-width" cooling arteries.

They believe it could be a solution to the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components.

The technology was demonstrated in IBM's 3D chips, where circuits are stacked one on top of the other.

Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel , enhancing performance and saving critical space.

"As we package chips on top of each other....we have found that conventional coolers attached to the back of a chip don't scale," explained Thomas Brunschwiler at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory.

"In order to exploit the potential of high-performance 3D chip stacking, we need interlayer cooling."

For more on this article, please click on the following link: IBM aims to cool chips with water: BBC

From blueprint to database: Economist

2008-06-08T02:08:00.000-07:00

Jun 5th 2008

From The Economist print edition

Computing: Aircraft and cars are designed using elaborate digital models. Now the same idea is being applied to buildings

THE advent of powerful computers has enabled architects to produce stunning images of new buildings and other structures. No proposal for a big project is complete without a photorealistic rendering of how the final design will look, or even a virtual walk-through. Perhaps surprisingly, however, those fancy graphics tend to be used only for conceptual purposes and play no role in the detailed design and construction of the finished structure. For the most part, this is still carried out with old-fashioned two-dimensional elevation and plan drawings, created by hand or using computer-aided design (CAD) software. “It’s still a 2-D profession,” says Shane Burger, an associate architect at Grimshaw, the firm that designed the Eden Project, a domed botanical garden in Cornwall, at the south-western tip of England.

And therein lies a problem, for even when it is generated by computer, a 2-D line drawing is just that: a bunch of lines. “There’s no structure that tells you that this line is a wall, stair or window,” says Chuck Eastman, a professor of architecture and computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. “If you changed a window you would have to rebuild the wall around it to make it bigger or smaller.” Given that even a small building can require thousands of drawings, and producing drawings traditionally accounts for a big chunk of an architect’s fee, making changes can be a costly and time-consuming business. “If you adjust the shape of a building late in the game, you would have a lot of drawing to do,” says Mr Burger. Moreover, such drawings give no indication of the cost of construction. Instead, architects have to keep a schedule of materials that they continually update as the design progresses. Alter the design, and you also have to alter the entire schedule.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: From blueprint to database: Economist

Google accused over privacy law: BBC

2008-06-05T00:18:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
BBC News, Silicon Valley

Privacy groups are accusing Google of violating California law in its reluctance to provide a direct link to its privacy policy on its homepage.

The search engine giant is being asked to write the word "privacy" alongside other information links.

"It's a short, seven-letter word and in the world of privacy it's a very important word," said Beth Givens of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

Google says its policy is easy to find and it gives "accessible information".

'Not rocket science'

The issue has been building momentum following a series of blogs in the New York Times questioning Google's compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003.

The law requires any commercial website that collects personal information about its users to "conspicuously post its privacy policy on its website".

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Google accused over privacy law: BBC

Intel faces $25.4M antitrust fine: CNN

2008-06-05T00:13:00.000-07:00

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korea's antitrust regulator said Thursday it will order Intel Corp. to pay 26 billion won ($25.4 million) for violating fair trade rules.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission said in a statement Thursday that it was issuing the order because the semiconductor giant offered rebates to South Korean computer companies and undercut competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel immediately criticized the ruling and said it would consider its options, including a possible appeal.

"We're disappointed and we completely disagree with the findings," Bruce Sewell, Intel senior vice president and general counsel, said in Seoul.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Intel faces $25.4M antitrust fine: CNN

Rewired: Economist

2008-06-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

May 29th 2008 | HONG KONG

From The Economist print edition

The long-awaited reorganisation of China's vast telecoms industry begins

BY ANY measure—revenues, employees, customers—it is the largest industrial reorganisation ever. And, reflecting how business is done in China, it was announced in the most modest way, with a posting on a government website on May 24th. The country's telecoms industry, with nearly 600m mobile subscribers, 360m fixed-line customers and $244 billion in revenue, will be reconfigured. Six companies will be collapsed into three, each spanning mobile, fixed and broadband services.

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator by subscribers, will merge with China TieTong, the smallest fixed-line operator. China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line operator, will acquire one of the mobile networks run by China Unicom, which will merge its remaining mobile operations with China Netcom, another fixed-line operator. A sixth operator, China Satcom, will be taken over by China Telecom.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Rewired: Economist

Dell joins cut-down laptop market : BBC

2008-06-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dell is joining the burgeoning ranks of companies offering cut-down laptops, called netbooks, aimed at the developing world and general consumers.

The laptop was shown by Michael Dell to the editor of website Gizmodo at the All Things Digital Conference.

According to the official Dell blog, Michael Dell "positioned it as the perfect device for the next billion internet users".

Dell has not released pricing or specifications for its first netbook.

A number of firms are expected to enter the netbook market this year.

The market is being driven in part by the work of the One Laptop Per Child programme, the success of the Asus Eee PC and the availability of chips, made by companies like Intel and Via, designed for low-cost, low power consumption devices.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a cut-down laptop which will be powered by Via's processors, and Acer is also entering the market.

More than 3.6 million netbooks, which cost less than $500, are expected to be sold this year.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Dell joins cut-down laptop market : BBC

Facebook 'violates privacy laws': BBC

2008-06-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

A Canadian privacy group has filed a complaint against the social networking site Facebook accusing it of violating privacy laws.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic has listed 22 separate breaches of privacy law in its country.

Clinic Director Phillipa Lawson told the BBC that, with over 7 million users in Canada, "Facebook needs to be held publicly accountable".

Facebook rejects the charge, claiming some of the highest standards around.

The basis of the complaint, filed with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, states that Facebook collects sensitive information about its users and shares it without their permission.

It goes on to say that the company does not alert users about how that information is being used and does not adequately destroy user data after accounts are closed...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Facebook 'violates privacy laws': BBC

Latest Web Bloggers Give Cooking: WSJ

2008-05-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

PORTALS By LEE GOMES

Generic food blogs are the scrambled eggs of culinary blogging. They require little in the way of skill and next to nothing in terms of equipment -- just a digital camera and a broadband connection.

A particular kind of food blog, however, has become the genre's Canard a la Presse Tour d'Argent. These are "cook-through" blogs, in which someone picks a cookbook and then doesn't stop cooking and blogging until the dishes for every recipe have been washed and put away.

The necessary ingredient: You need to be a little crazy.

Carole Blymire, a Washington, D.C., public-relations consultant, for example, has been writing "French Laundry at Home" since last year. With no real cooking experience beyond Thanksgiving dinner, she is tackling the 130 or so recipes in Thomas Keller's "French Laundry Cookbook," which may be the most technically challenging American cookbook ever written.

No matter, says Ms. Blymire, "I just opened it up and said to myself, 'Let's see what happens.' "

The site has become a huge hit in the food blogosphere, winning awards and attracting 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day. It also has become the template for many other such cook-along blogs, with pictures of the dish at various stages of development and a rating of the final result. Personal asides are often folded in as well. (These are, after all, blogs.) Ms. Blymire uses a Miss Smartypants persona and often brags of her two loves: New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and bacon.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Latest Web Bloggers Give Cooking: WSJ

Tall tales: Economist

2008-05-28T02:03:00.000-07:00

May 22nd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The rollercoaster, rags-to-riches story of a remarkable animation studio

PIXAR'S characters—whether the heroic toys of “Toy Story”, the father and son fish of “Finding Nemo”, the insects in “A Bug's Life” or the rat-chef of “Ratatouille”—are full of yearning; for a child to play with, a lost family member, or to become something that seems far out of reach. The small company that imagined them is just the same. Right from the beginning, Pixar, officially a computer-hardware business, secretly dreamed of a more creative life making feature films.

Ed Catmull's ambition at school had been to become an animator at Disney, but he gave up because he couldn't draw. Computer animation, he realised, having graduated in computer science and physics, could be a way to overcome this. So Mr Catmull brought together a small group of people to form a computer-graphics group, which later became Pixar. Their early attempts were uninspiring, however. Two years in the making, the 1977 film, “Tubby the Tuba”, looked bad and the story did not work. Mr Catmull and his colleagues quickly realised that fancy technology was not enough, and that story-telling was just as vital to computer animation as to the hand-drawn sort. Under John Lasseter, a young animator rejected by Disney, Pixar started to develop a new kind of cartoon, which eschewed fairy-tale plots and entertained adults as well as children...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Tall tales: Economist

Here we go again?: Economist

2008-05-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

May 22nd 2008

From The Economist print edition

A new boom in cable-laying—but this time it is rational

EVEN as data centres pop up all over the globe to support “cloud computing”, another construction boom is taking place below the waves. After years without much investment in undersea fibre-optic cables, dozens of new cables will be constructed over the next three years, at a total cost of about $7.1 billion, according to TeleGeography, a market-research firm (see chart). And this is likely to be an underestimate, since other projects are being planned.

You may be thinking: will they never learn? This new investment boom comes only a few years after a spectacular telecoms crash. In the late 1990s internet gurus convinced financial markets that worldwide data-traffic would double every 100 days; this led them to bet billions building global fibre-optic networks. In 2001 alone, network operators such as Global Crossing spent nearly $13.5 billion laying undersea cables. But when the deluge of traffic failed to materialise, the boom swiftly turned to bust...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Here we go again?: Economist

Microsoft demos 'touch Windows': BBC

2008-05-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, in Silicon Valley

Microsoft's next operating system (OS) will come with multi-touch features as an alternative to the mouse.

It is hoped the successor will have a better reception than the much-maligned Vista OS, released last year.

Scheduled for release in 2009 the new fingertip interface lets users enlarge and shrink photos, trace routes on maps, paint pictures or play the piano.

"The way you interact with the system will change dramatically," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

Speaking at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, the Microsoft Chairman said Windows 7 would incorporate new forms of communication and interaction.

"Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse. Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink - all of those things - will be huge."

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Microsoft demos 'touch Windows': BBC

Down on the server farm: Economist

2008-05-28T01:43:00.000-07:00

May 22nd 2008 | SEATTLE

From The Economist print edition

The real-world implications of the rise of internet computing

EVEN when the sky is blue over Quincy, clouds hang in the air. The small town in the centre of the state of Washington is home to half a dozen huge warehouses that power the global “computing clouds” run by internet companies such as Yahoo! and Microsoft. The size of several football pitches, these data centres are filled with thousands of powerful computers and storage devices and are hooked up to the internet via fast fibre-optic links.

Yet even more intriguing than the buildings' size is their location. Quincy is literally in the middle of nowhere, three hours' drive from the nearest big city, Seattle. But it turns out to be a perfect location for data centres. As computing becomes a utility, with services that can be consumed from everywhere and on any device, ever more thought is being put into where to put the infrastructure it needs...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Down on the server farm: Economist

Buy our stuff, save the planet: Economist

2008-05-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

May 22nd 2008

From The Economist print edition

The internet could become as ungreen as aviation. A self-serving solution beckons

IN COMPUTING, buzzwords are in most cases just that. But the latest, “cloud computing”, stands for a real trend: computing is increasingly being supplied as a service over the internet (depicted as a “cloud” in many charts). Still, there is something wrong with the term.

It implies that by moving into the ether, computing is becoming weightless, with no connection to the resource-constrained real world. In fact the opposite is true. The corollary of more computing in the sky is more and bigger data centres on earth. These are warehouses packed with humming electronic gear, and in particular thousands of servers, the powerful computers that crunch and dish up data. The biggest facilities are the size of half a dozen football pitches and house as many as 80,000 servers (see article). They are huge energy hogs...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Buy our stuff, save the planet: Economist

Doctor on call: Economist

2008-05-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

Mobile-phone microscopes
May 15th 2008 | BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
From The Economist print edition

Simple accessories could turn mobile phones into useful medical devices

ROBI MAAMARI stares intently at the screen of his mobile phone. The student is not squinting to tap out yet another daft text message, but looking carefully for the faint blue dots that are the tell-tale diagnostic signature of malaria.

Mr Maamari is a member of a research team led by Dan Fletcher, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, which has developed a cheap attachment to turn the digital camera on many of today's mobile phones into a microscope. Called a CellScope, it can show individual white and red blood cells, which means that with the correct stain it can be used to identify the parasite that causes malaria. Moreover, by transmitting an image directly over the mobile network, the CellScope could greatly help with the remote diagnosis and monitoring of many illnesses.

The project, which began as a challenge by Dr Fletcher to his undergraduate students to turn their mobile phones into microscopes, gained momentum when they came up with some practical designs. Although the first prototype covered a tabletop, the latest uses commercially available lenses fitted inside a tube that snaps directly onto the phone. One end has a clip for holding a sample slide, and different levels of magnification are possible. The team thinks the attachments, if mass-produced, could be made smaller and tougher, and sell for less than $100.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Doctor on call: Economist

'$100 laptop' platform moves on: BBC

2008-05-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

An independent effort to develop the software originally designed for the $100 laptop has been launched.

Sugar Labs will take the laptop's innovative interface, known as Sugar, to the "next level of usability and utility", according to its founders.

It is intended that the free software will be made available on other PCs, such as the popular Asus Eee.

The launch comes after the announcement that the group behind the $100 laptop has joined forces with Microsoft.

The deal means that One Laptop per Child (OLPC) will now offer the low cost laptops with Windows XP, as well as an open source alternative...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: '$100 laptop' platform moves on: BBC

From literacy to digiracy: Economist

2008-05-20T09:46:00.001-07:00

May 16th 2008
From Economist.com

Will reading and writing remain important?

THE Macintosh has a lot to answer for. The first time your correspondent clapped eyes on its graphical user interface (GUI), he realised the game was up. The use of icons instead of written words seemed the final admission that we had given up trying to read and write, and had entered a post-literate age.

The Apple Macintosh wasn’t the first computer to have a GUI based on windows, icons, menus and pointing devices (known collectively as “wimp”). Back in the early 1970s, Xerox pioneered most of the wimp features with its legendary Alto personal computer for researchers, and later its Star computer for office use.

But Apple brought the dumbed-down pictorial interface to the rest of the world. And once Microsoft followed suit, by grafting a friendly Windows face on its crusty old MS-DOS operating system, it became the norm.

No question, without a wimpy GUI, computers would never have become as popular as they are today. The command-line interface—with its forbidding prompt and blinking cursor—required mastering a whole catechism of arcane instructions that only a priesthood of computerdom could cherish.

When “root@computername:~# shutdown -h now” could be replaced by a simple click of a mouse to switch off a computer, novices of all ages and backgrounds could climb aboard the digital bandwagon...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: From literacy to digiracy: Economist

Greetings from Pakistan: NetSol Delivers Solid Gains for US Investors: SeekingAlpha.com

2008-05-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

My biggest percentage gainer of the year is from…Pakistan? Hard to believe, but NetSol (NTWK), a Pakistani business process outsourcing and lease management software company, is up 90% from where I bought it less than two months ago!

The rise wasn’t entirely unexpected. The shares were dirt cheap, and the company had a strong cash position and its financial results showed signs of improvement.

NetSol’s first quarter report confirms that the company has turned the corner. Revenues increased 19% year-over-year to $9.1 million, driven by improvement in all three of NetSol’s business lines (service, licensing, and maintenance). Gross margin rose from 48% to 56%. For the quarter, NetSol earned $2.3M, or $.09 per diluted share, on a GAAP basis, and $3.2M, or $.13 per diluted share, on an EBITDA basis. Both measures were dramatic improvements over the prior year results.

Just as importantly, NetSol reiterated guidance for fiscal year 2008 of 25-30% growth in annual revenues, and diluted EPS of $.28-$.32.

Chairman and CEO Najeeb Ghauri stated:

Our third quarter results provide an excellent start to the second half of fiscal 2008, which is historically NetSol’s stronger half-year period. With double-digit year-over-year growth in services, licenses, and maintenance fees translating into a significant rise in profitability, we remain on track to achieve our full year top and bottom line financial objectives….

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Greetings from Pakistan: NetSol Delivers Solid Gains for US Investors: SeekingAlpha.com

Apple lines up iPhone Asia deals: BBC

2008-05-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Apple has signed deals with four mobile phone networks in the Asia-Pacific region, and the firms will offer the iPhone in their respective markets.

SingTel will sell the gadget in Singapore, while Bharti Airtel will introduce it in India.

Globe Telecom has the rights to the iPhone in the Philippines, and Optus will offer it in Australia.

The iPhone was launched in the US and Europe last year. Apple chose a single network provider in each country.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Apple lines up iPhone Asia deals: BBC

Cores of the problem: Economist

2008-05-16T00:06:00.000-07:00

May 14th 2008

From Economist.com

The latest processing chips require a new approach to writing software

Picture from Intel

COMPUTER makers talk a lot about a coming wave of software that will change the way people behave towards their machines. Rich three-dimensional virtual worlds and multimedia applications that mimic the experience of a live concert in a living room will, they say, become commonplace. But there is a problem. Although hardware makers are producing PCs, laptops and portable devices with ever increasing processing power, the software industry is falling behind in its capacity to write programs that can make use of all this power.

Everyone is familiar with how Intel, AMD and other chipmakers churn out faster and faster processors. But in the past few years the design of these chips has changed. Instead of making chips faster by making their components smaller and running them at higher speeds, makers have started building multiple processing engines, or “cores”, onto each chip. Each core can run at a lower speed, which requires less energy and produces less heat, and the overall number-crunching power of the chip continues to increase...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Cores of the problem: Economist

Web 2.0 debates internet's future: BBC

2008-05-15T13:05:00.000-07:00

By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Opening up internet programming was a central theme of Web 2.0

San Francisco's Web 2.0 Expo conference brought together thousands of people responsible for crafting the future direction of the internet, and the world of applications - or apps - was front and centre.

Everyone from Microsoft to Yahoo to MySpace was on a mission to woo developers to create exciting applications for their devices.

Jennifer Pahlka of Techweb, one of the conference's co-chairs, said the carrot these big Silicon Valley companies were dangling to entice developers to get involved was that of openness and allowing people to devise programmes without constraints.

"Yahoo was talking about opening up advertising platforms, Mozilla was talking about opening up the mobile web and John Zittrain from Oxford University was talking about openness to drive innovation and creativity so we don't go into this closed system where every application has to be approved by someone else," said Ms Pahlka.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Web 2.0 debates internet's future: BBC

Ex-gambler turns software ace: BBC

2008-05-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

By Michael Dempsey

Business reporter, BBC News

Like all successful businessmen, Yuchun Lee is passionate about his experience of making money. The 42-year-old Taiwanese-American gushes about "big players", "advanced techniques" and "ace tracking".

None of these exotic terms relate to Unica, the software house based in Waltham, Massachusetts, that he founded in 1992.

Mr Lee is reminiscing about gambling tactics and his time with the Amphibians, a gang of top-grade students and graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Amphibians took on casinos and other gambling dens using a disciplined mathematical model of card-counting to lower the odds in their favour.

Today, their exploits form the backdrop for 21, the Hollywood movie starring Kevin Spacey and based on the book Bringing Down The House by Ben Mezrich.

The card-counting technique works only in blackjack, where the player bets against the casino, hoping to be dealt cards that add up to 21...

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Ex-gambler turns software ace: BBC

Take two: Economist

2008-05-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

May 1st 2008

From The Economist print edition

Michael Dell pioneered a new business model at the firm that bears his name. Now he wants to overhaul it

"THE second time round, the stakes are twice as high, particularly in the unforgiving world of computing. Bosses who take the helm again at firms they founded can either polish a gilded reputation, as Steve Jobs did after taking up the reins again at Apple, or they can tarnish one, the likely fate of Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, who will probably see the firm sold to Microsoft less than a year after taking over.

So why, after three years of relative distance as chairman of the board, did Michael Dell take charge again early last year at Dell, the company he had founded in his dorm room at the University of Texas at the age of 19? “When you start a company, it's a very personal thing,” answers Dell, who is now 43. “I will care about what happens to the company even after I'm dead. I just can't let it go.”

Mr Dell's tenacity seems to be paying off. His firm, which used to be the world's biggest maker of personal computers, but had lost its crown to Hewlett-Packard, is beginning to regain market share. In the first quarter, it made 15.7% of PCs sold globally, compared with 14.8% a year ago, according to IDC, a market research firm. But there is still much to do if he is to achieve his goal of turning his company, commercially speaking, from a Texan unilateralist into a global multilateralist.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Take Two: Economist

Scope exists for boosting IT ties with Canada: Dawn

2008-05-03T02:16:00.000-07:00

By Latafat Ali Siddiqui

TORONTO, May 2: There is a big scope of cooperation between Ottawa and Islamabad in the field of information technology, said the leader of Pakistan’s IT delegation here on Thursday.Headed by Aon Ashraf Rana, Director, Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB), the 21-member delegation comprised representatives of 16 leading Pakistani IT and software development companies.The delegation visited Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto where they met parliamentarians and officials of leading Canadian IT firms and banks.While in Toronto, the delegation met John Wilkinson, the Provincial Minister for Research and Innovation, and Dr Shafiq Qaadri and Yasir Naqvi, members of Ontario’s Provincial Parliament.The delegation also attended a reception hosted by Canada-Pakistan Business Council (CPBC).Ashraf Rana told Dawn that Pakistan was making rapid progress in the field of information technology. “Our fast growing IT industry will be worth $11 billion in 2011,” he said.He also said Pakistan had been promoting the brand image of its IT industry globally through participation in trade fairs and specialised exhibitions.These fairs and exhibitions, he added, provide an interactive platform to PSEB member companies to practically demonstrate their capabilities and simultaneously promote Pakistan as an “attractive outsourcing gateway of the global IT industry”.Speaking at a reception held here in honour of the delegation, Pakistan’s Consul General Tassaduq Hussain said his country was an attractive destination for IT services, especially for outsourcing as IT and telecommunication were among the fastest growing sectors in Pakistan.

Original Link: http://www.dawn.com/2008/05/03/ebr20.htm

AT&T to cut iPhone price by $200, says report: Computerworld

2008-05-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

Apple won't object, adds analyst

By Gregg Keizer

"April 30, 2008 (Computerworld) AT&T Inc. will subsidize $200 of the purchase price for new iPhones this summer, according to a story posted by Fortune today, reducing consumers' out-of-pocket expense for the popular device to as low as $199.

Apple Inc. may not publicly say "thanks" to its wireless partner, a researcher said, but it could hardly object. "Apple will be saying 'Okay with us if you want to increase our sales' to AT&T if they do this," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc."

For the complete article, please click on the following link:
AT&T to cut iPhone price by $200

Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail: CNN

2008-04-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2008

By Mallory Simon

CNN

James Karl Buck helped free himself from an Egyptian jail with a one-word blog post from his cell phone.

Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.
On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.
The message only had one word. "Arrested."
Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt -- the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier -- were alerted that he was being held.
Twitter is a social-networking blog site that allows users to send status updates, or "tweets," from cell phones, instant messaging services and Facebook in less than 140 characters.
Hossam el-Hamalawy, a Cairo-based blogger at UC-Berkeley, was one of the people who got word of Buck's arrest.
"At first I was worried about his safety," el-Hamalawy said.
Then, el-Hamalawy took to the Web and wrote regular updates in his own blog to spread the information Buck was sending by Twitter. Nobody was sure how long Buck would be able to communicate.

See Buck describe what he saw and captured on film during the protests »
Don't Miss
James Karl Buck's Twitter page
Buck's Web site, statement and petition

But Buck was able to send updates every couple of hours saying he was still detained, he had spoken to the prosecutor, he still had not been charged, and he was worried about Maree.
"Usually the first thing the police go for is the detainees' cameras and cellular phones," el-Hamalawy said. "I'm surprised they left James with his phone."
Twitter is normally used to keep groups of people connected in less urgent situations. Watch how Twitter works »
But Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said he and others knew that the service could have wide-reaching effects early on, when the San-Francisco, California-based company used it to communicate during earthquakes.
Stone said that as the service got more popular, they began to hear stories of people using Twitter during natural disasters with a focus on activism and journalism.
Buck's urgent message is proof of the value of Twitter, Stone said. Buck's entry set off a chain of events that led to his college hiring a lawyer on his behalf.
"James' case is particularly compelling to us because of the simplicity of his message -- one word, 'arrested' -- and the speed with which the whole scene played out," Stone said. "It highlights the simplicity and value of a real-time communication network that follows you wherever you go."
Initially, the Twitter message was a precaution -- something people could trace in case anything went wrong, Buck said.
"The most important thing on my mind was to let someone know where we were so that there would be some record of it ... so we couldn't [disappear]," Buck said. "As long as someone knew where we were, I felt like they couldn't do their worst [to us] because someone, at some point, would be checking in on them."
Buck began using Twitter as a way to keep up in touch with the bloggers at the heart of his project and the events going on in Egypt that he intended to cover. Buck was working on a multimedia project on Egypt's "new leftists and the blogosphere" as part of his master's degree thesis.
Buck found out from a Twitter message that a planned protest against rising food prices and decreasing wages in Mahalla had been shut down by Egyptian authorities April 6.
The next day, tensions rose as family and friends of protesters who had been detained took to the streets, eventually throwing Molotov cocktails and setting tires on fire, he said.
On April 10, Buck returned to Mahalla, where protests continued.
"I was worried about getting arrested, so I made sure to stay at a distance from the protest so there was no way I could be accused of being part of it," Buck said. "Mohammed and I had a bad sense; it was really tense."
When the men tried to escape, they were detained. That's when Buck thought of Twitter and sent out his message.
Buck and Maree were interrogated, released and then detained again by the same police officers.
"We are really worried that we are off the radar now," Buck said.
Eventually Buck was released, but Maree was transferred to another police station.
As he left the station, Buck reached into his pocket, as he did less than 24 hours earlier.
Another one-word blog entry said it all: "Free."
As happy as he was to be free, Buck said, his biggest frustration was leaving behind the translator who helped protect him during the riots.
Although the Twitter message helped him find contacts to get out of prison, he says it was more the power of the network he had as an American that enabled him to be released so quickly.
"Mohammed was sitting next to me," he said. "But he didn't have the network to call. I tried to use my network to shield him until they tore us apart."
Twitter may not have been able to secure Maree's release, but Buck hopes his initial reason for using Twitter will help find his missing friend.
"It was my big hope that people would get [the message] right away and at least put a thumbtack on the map as far as our location," Buck said.
There has been no official confirmation regarding Maree's whereabouts.
Attiya Shakran, press counsel for the Egyptian Consulate in San Francisco, said Maree was released April 13.
Maree's brother Ahmed Maree said that he had not heard from his brother and that he believes he is still in jail.
Government officials in Egypt could neither confirm nor deny Maree's release, despite repeated requests for comment.
Buck is now using his story and Twitter page as a way to rally people looking for answers about Maree's status. He's gone as far as publishing the phone number of the press counsel of the Egyptian Consulate in San Francisco and posting a petition for Maree's release.
For Buck, the main story is no longer about his quest for freedom from jail; it's a quest to find answers and, eventually, find his friend.

CNN Cairo's Housam Ahmed and Aneesh Raman contributed to this report.

Original Link: Student 'Twitters' his way out of Egyptian jail

Delivering the bits: Economist

2008-04-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Apr 18th 2008

From Economist.com

"Fear not, the dumb old internet can still cope

A DOZEN years have passed since David Isenberg, then a distinguished engineer at AT&T Labs, wrote his seminal essay “The Rise of the Stupid Network”. In it, he outlined how a new philosophy and architecture were changing the communications business, and pointed to some of the cataclysms ahead.
Far from being a scarce resource used intermittently, Dr Isenberg argued that future networks would be “always on”, with their intelligence located in the end-user’s equipment rather than within the network itself. They would make no fancy routing or traffic-management decisions; they would just “deliver the bits”.
Unlike the telephone circuits of the day, which used their built-in smarts to determine where messages were to be delivered, the data would tell the network where they wanted to go. In short, the data would be boss.

The stupid network Dr Isenberg had in mind was, of course, the internet we know today. Central to his vision was the radical notion that end-users—or customers—would be free to do as they pleased, and the network would make no assumptions about the kind or content of data being transmitted.
The engineering community applauded the idea. The phone companies (AT&T especially) thought it stank. And Dr Isenberg wound up working for himself.
Dr Isenberg will likely be watching this week’s deliberations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with interest. As your correspondent was scribbling away, the FCC was preparing for its second hearing on network-management practices. The meeting, held at Stanford University on April 17th, concerns whether internet service providers (ISPs) should be allowed to shape, filter or even block content travelling over their networks.
The hearing stems from a complaint filed last autumn alleging that Comcast, America’s largest cable-TV company and one of its biggest ISPs, was blocking a perfectly legal file-sharing program called BitTorrent. Ever since, Comcast has been scrambling to prevent the FCC from rewriting its rules about peer-to-peer (P2P) software like BitTorrent, which is widely used to download video and other large multimedia files."

For more on this article please click on the following original link: Delivering the bits

Photo from Shutterstock

Semantic video analysis, Finding the right picture: Economist

2008-04-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

Apr 22nd 2008

From Economist.com

"Engineers are making progress with the old problem of getting computers to recognise what they are looking at

A PICTURE may be worth a thousand words, but as far as a computer is concerned it is worth exactly none. One of the biggest impediments to the web-video revolution has been computers' reluctance to understand images. To a microprocessor, a photograph of James Bond might as well depict a cat in a tree. That can make tracking down a video on the web or searching through a film archive a painstaking task, unless someone has written a full and accurate description of each item being examined. Anyone who has tried to find a clip on YouTube will know how rare that is."

For more please click on the following original link: Finding the right picture

Pain in the aaS: Economist

2008-04-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Online crooks adopt the software industry's new service-based model
IT WAS bound to happen. One after another, pieces of software have been moving online in a trend towards “software as a service” (SaaS). You can now manage your e-mail, write documents and edit spreadsheets using online services that run inside a web browser. This month Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, an accounting program, said more Americans filled out their tax returns this year using the online version of its product than the traditional one in a box. But now the trend has reached the darker corners of the software universe. Computer-security firms say criminals have adopted the new model too, and are offering “crimeware as a service” (CaaS).
Once the remit of malicious hackers vying for bragging rights, cybercrime is now about making money. “Criminal attacks are moving upmarket—they're now real businesses,” says Bruce Schneier, a security guru. A few years ago online outlaws started selling e-mail addresses, credit-card numbers and other personal information. Then they began trading information about weaknesses in computer systems and selling software kits to exploit them, complete with technical support and updates. More recently they have taken to setting up and then renting out “botnets”—huge groups of hijacked computers, infected with malicious software, that can be activated remotely to flood a website with bogus requests or send millions of “spam” e-mails.

The new offerings, which go by names such as NeoSploit and 76service, take commercialisation to the next level by allowing criminals to use and pay for such nefarious services via a web browser. Just as companies that adopt SaaS no longer need armies of support technicians, says Yuval Ben-Itzhak of Finjan, a computer-security firm, criminals using CaaS no longer need to be hackers. One web-based service he found even allows customers to specify a target group, such as British lawyers or American doctors. Once enough of their machines have been infected, documents and other data are siphoned out of them.
Renting a website that distributes malware to personal computers costs a few cents per target machine; access to a computer infected with software that grabs personal information (such as credit-card details) can cost $1,000 or more a month. How much money is made through such services is anybody's guess, says Raimund Genes of Trend Micro, another computer-security firm, but he has no doubt that the market will grow. Yet as in the case of benevolent SaaS, there may be a limit to the business model for CaaS. Many companies are wary of SaaS for security reasons: they do not want an outside firm looking after their customer lists, for example. Similarly, some criminals may be reluctant to use CaaS providers, which need to market their services—and hence may attract the attention of the authorities.
One thing seems clear. CaaS is proof that everything and anything computer-related will end up being offered “as a service”. There are now at least a dozen kinds of “aaS”, including data mining (DMaaS), virtualisation (VaaS) and even hardware (HaaS). Perhaps, as with the “.com” suffix, overuse of the term will put people off. A revolt is already brewing. Nicholas Carr, author of “The Big Switch”, a book about how computing power is turning into a utility, vowed recently on his widely read blog that he would no longer use the term “aaS” at all. “Join me in this crusade,” he wrote: “Death to aaS!”

Original Link: Pain in the aaS

Pakistan: Where Billions Vanish : Dawn

2008-04-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

GEN (retd) Pervez Musharraf, aided by his trusted lieutenant and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, lays claim to a ‘revolutionary programme’ that has reversed the decades-old decline of Pakistan’s universities.The higher education budget shot up from Rs3.9bn in 2001-02 to an astounding Rs33.7bn in 2006-07. But, in fact, much of this has been consumed by futile projects and mega wastage. Fantastically expensive scientific equipment, bought for research, often ends up locked away in campuses.An example: a Pelletron accelerator worth Rs400m was ordered in 2005 with HEC funds. It eventually landed up at Quaid-i-Azam University, and was installed last month by a team of Americans from the National Electrostatics Corporation that flew in from Wisconsin. But now that it is there and fully operational, nobody — including the current director — has the slightest idea of what research to do with it. Its original proponents are curiously lacking in enthusiasm and are quietly seeking to distance themselves from the project.Now for the full story: in his article published in Dawn (June 25, 2005), Dr Atta-ur-Rahman announced the HEC would fund a ‘5MW Tandem Accelerator’ for nuclear physics research with an associated laboratory at Quaid-i-Azam University. It was shocking news. First, nowhere in the world of science is a major project approved without a detailed technical feasibility study, and without full participation of those scientists who would be expected to use it for their research.Second, this machine — whose original form dates back to the 1940s — had long become practically useless for decent nuclear physics research. Whereas it can still be used in certain narrow sub-areas of materials science and biology, to my knowledge there are almost no active researchers in those specialties anywhere in Pakistan.Immediately upon reading Dr Atta-ur-Rahman’s article, I telephoned him. His answer: Dr. Riazuddin, director of the National Centre for Physics, had approved the machine. That was stunning! The soft-spoken and diffident Dr Riazuddin, at 77 years of age, is not only Pakistan’s best nuclear and particle physicist, but also a man of great integrity. How could he have agreed to such folly? Why did he sign a flaky PC-1 proposal put together in less than an afternoon?The answer was to come soon. On Sept 8, 2005, a nation-wide meeting was held in the physics department of Quaid-i-Azam University to look into the possible uses of the Pelletron. But the project’s proponents clearly had something else in mind, and probably not a work plan. They bussed in supporters who filled the auditorium. Most had no clue of what a Pelletron was but they seemed to have had instructions to hoot down all who questioned the need to buy one.And so, when Dr Riazuddin expressed his reservations, and sorrowfully admitted to having signed the PC-1 under pressure, the assembled crowd burst into taunts and jeers. Some demanded that he resign as director. It was depressing to see Pakistan’s best scientist and a decent man thus humiliated.The sad part of this story is not that the machine has arrived, but that in the intervening 30 months the original proponents gave no thought to making use of it or to assembling a group of scientists who could be persuaded to do research using the Pelletron. Still sadder, a second Pelletron was purchased, again with HEC money, for Government College University Lahore. No one can fathom what to do with it either.The equipment fetish can be followed all the way to the much-advertised HEJ Institute for Chemistry. HEJ consumes the lion’s share of research funding in Pakistan today and boasts of the finest and most expensive equipment. For example, even good chemistry departments in the US rarely have more than one or two NMR spectrometers but the HEJ Institute has 12. Well, why not, if that is the price of excellence? Aren’t the 3,000+ research papers proof of public money well spent?The answer is, no. There is little evidence to support HEJ’s claim that it has strongly impacted the Pakistani pharmaceutical industry. Readers may have more luck than I did in searching the otherwise elaborate HEJ website for its role in discovering new drugs or processes. But without this, all else is hot air. Only one international patent, registered in the UK and Germany, is listed. Two processes are mentioned as submitted for a US patent. This is not a high record for an institution that has been in existence for over 40 years and claims to be world-class. A good US or European applied science university department typically files several patents every year.As for the thousands of HEJ research papers, the question is how many of these really matter? A paper is considered important by other scientists only when it contains new ideas or facts. Significant papers are cited frequently in professional journals. But an overwhelming number of HEJ publications, which are largely based upon routine aspects of natural products chemistry, have zero or few citations. The reader may find citation counts by accessing the free database scholar.google.com, or other more comprehensive databases.My point is not to denigrate the HEJ, or other academic research in Pakistan, but to make the case that such research is consuming a disproportionate amount of resources at the cost of a desperately impoverished educational system. The real problem is that Pakistani students in government schools, colleges, and universities — as well as their teachers — are far below internationally acceptable levels in terms of basic subject understanding.Current salaries militate against improvement. As a result of Dr Atta’s determined intervention, a professor at a government university can earn up to Rs325,000 per month but a government school teacher has a maximum salary of less than Rs10,000. This is highly unwise. Similarly, funds-starved government colleges and schools lack basic infrastructure such as laboratories and libraries but most government universities are awash in so much money that they do not know what to do with it. At QAU, for example, so many air-conditioners have been purchased with HEC research funds that the electricity bill has shot up by 50 times over the last six years.A balance is desperately needed. Instead of over-funding universities and research, we need to focus resources on creating good quality schools and colleges. We need to encourage creative and skilled people to become school and college teachers, and for this we need to pay them well. We need teachers who can educate young people into becoming good citizens and with skills valued in the economy, and who can train the few going on to higher education.The winds of change are blowing across the country. The Musharraf years are over. It is now time for parliament to carry out a full and complete public inquiry into the irresponsible and crazy policies that have hitherto been the hallmark of decision-making. Finally, there is a chance to reset priorities and use resources for a comprehensive reform of our education system. nThe author is chairman of the physics department at Quaid-i-Azam University.

Source: Pakistan: Where Billions Vanish

Has Economy Hurt Google Search Ads?: WSJ

2008-04-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

First-Period Net, Out Today, Will Show Whether Worries Affecting Stock Are Justified
By KEVIN J. DELANEYApril 17, 2008; Page B1

When Google Inc. reports first-quarter earnings after the market close Thursday, investors will find out whether their worries about the impact of the softening economy on Google search ads are justified.
Data from research firm comScore Inc. showing a drop in the number of times people click on the ads have fueled the jitters, which have already knocked almost $75 billion off Google's market value since the beginning of the year.
ComScore released new data late Tuesday estimating that U.S. consumer clicks on Google search ads in the first quarter declined 9.3% from 2007's fourth quarter, and rose just 1.8% from the 2007 first quarter. That compares with the 30% increase in fourth-quarter clicks from the year before that Google reported in January and a roughly 50% average increase during the previous four quarters. This "paid click" volume matters because Google gets paid for the small text ads it shows on Web search results pages only when a user clicks on one of them.
Investors worry that the Mountain View, Calif., Internet giant has finally grown to the point where its core U.S. search-ad business is more vulnerable to swings in the economy and less capable of producing the outsized growth that boosted the company and its shares in the past. That issue also has implications for the outlook for online advertising revenue in general, as well as Microsoft Corp.'s effort to double down on its exposure to Internet ads with an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo Inc.
Some analysts have concluded that U.S. consumers are clicking on ads less frequently because economic problems have made them less willing to buy things. "It's very similar to the shopping mall, where it's full of traffic and you see people window shopping but they're not buying anything," says Sandeep Aggarwal, senior Internet analyst at Collins Stewart LLC. He says people are using the Internet for email and reading news, but they're doing fewer searches for things like "cruise to Bahamas."
ComScore says its data don't support the idea that the economy is significantly affecting consumer search-ad clicking. "If it is, it's to a minor degree," says comScore Chief Executive Magid Abraham. (Google, like other Internet companies, is a paying client of comScore, though Mr. Abraham says comScore didn't have any contact with Google during the first quarter to discuss its search-ad data.)
Instead, Mr. Abraham and some analysts cite Google-initiated efforts that are affecting the number of clicks, such as a change that made it harder for consumers to accidentally click on ads. They also note that the click data don't take into account other factors affecting Google's revenue, such as the price paid for each click and international activity, which represents close to half of Google's revenue.
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Mr. Abraham says comScore's data are "compatible" with first-quarter Google revenue growth of 5% to 10% from the fourth quarter, depending on such factors. According to analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, Google is expected to report first-quarter revenue of $3.61 billion when certain payments to partners are factored out, a 6.5% increase from $3.39 billion on that basis in the fourth quarter.
Google declined to comment on the comScore data or its earnings report. When it posted its fourth-quarter earnings on Jan. 31, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company hadn't seen any impact from macroeconomic softening. In public comments since then, Google executives have said it isn't clear yet whether those problems will hurt its business.
Since going public in 2004, Google has sworn off giving any detailed public earnings guidance, which increases the difficulty of assessing any risks to its performance. That's a major reason investors turn to comScore's search-ad click data, despite analysts' warnings that the data haven't always predicted Google's results reliably in the past.
"The comScore click data has been a huge focus for the investment community and probably has been one of the bigger influences on the stock this quarter," says John Aiken, managing director of Majestic Research in New York.
ComScore's Mr. Abraham says some people have jumped to conclusions that comScore's data don't support. "People automatically assumed Google's revenue is going to be missing their target," he says. "People were assuming we said something we didn't say."
In 4 p.m. trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market Wednesday, Google shares rose 1.8%, or $8.19, to $455.03. They are down about 34% since the start of the year.
Mr. Aiken says his analysis of search-ad activity and conversations with search-ad buyers indicate that small- and medium-sized search advertisers are pulling back. Such a development would probably drag on Google's search-ad revenue, because about 99% of its more than one million advertisers and the majority of its revenue come from that category, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Aiken says large search buyers are spending the same or more, and ad firms that work with large advertisers support that idea. "We don't really have any instances where we're seeing clients pull back their search ads," says Steve Governale, senior vice president and managing director of SMG Search, a unit of Starcom MediaVest, itself a unit of Publicis Groupe. If anything, big advertisers are shifting dollars to search ads because it can be easier to measure the revenue generated by them than it is for ads like glossy magazine spreads, some ad executives say.
Still, some analysts say ad spending is dropping in some industry areas most affected by economic problems, such as financial services. Spending by advertisers in the financial, travel and retail areas declined or grew more slowly in the fourth quarter, compared with a year earlier, Yahoo President Susan Decker told analysts in January, though she said that overall the company had seen "a solid start to the year."
It remains unclear how online advertising beyond search is affected by any consumer slowdown. Search advertising is the largest category of U.S. online ad spending, expected to account for 40% this year, according to research firm eMarketer Inc. Other forms of online advertising, such as graphic display ads and video ads, are generally priced using different models than per-user clicks.
EMarketer last month reduced its 2008 forecast for U.S. online spending because of concerns about the softening economy. U.S. advertisers will spend $25.8 billion on Internet ads, eMarketer says, down 6.2% from earlier estimates but up 23% from $21.1 billion in 2007.

--Emily Steel contributed to this article.

Write to Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com

Source: Has Economy Hurt Google Search Ads?

Semi-connected: Economist

2008-04-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

Apr 17th 2008From The Economist print edition
British politics is missing out on the potential of new media
Illustration by David Simonds

EVEN the least fogeyish of politicians have been flummoxed by the internet. Tony Blair, champion of all things modern, paid no end of lip service to the potential of new media as prime minister but was comically technophobic himself. Still, the internet plays a role in huge areas of British public life: party politics, punditry and government itself. But web aficionados lament a yawning gap with America, and with the most go-ahead corners of Europe.
The official websites of the main political parties—Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats—get less web traffic than the most popular political blogs, and much less than even the far-right British National Party. No surprise, say cyber enthusiasts; they do a passable job as repositories of information but offer little scope for users to get involved beyond signing up for e-mail distribution lists.

The Tories want to transform their online presence, and Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has recruited new staff to overhaul Labour's. Both parties have wised up, it seems, to foreign examples of what new media can do for fund-raising and campaigning. Ron Paul, a former candidate for this year's Republican presidential nomination in America, raised a record of nearly $6m online in one day in December—recalling Howard Dean's spectacular efforts in the 2004 Democratic race. NSTV, the video website run by Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, proved hugely popular during his campaign for the Elysée Palace last year. By contrast, Webcameron, a video blog starring the Tory leader, David Cameron, has run out of steam since it was launched in 2006.
More vitality can be found in the British blogosphere, which has changed how many people tap in to punditry. But shortcomings remain. Whereas there is broad parity between right and left in the American blogosphere, in Britain the left has yet really to get going. There is no agreement on the best way of measuring web traffic but few dispute that right-wing websites such as Conservative Home, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's Diary are more popular than left-wing rivals such as Liberal Conspiracy, Labour Home and Bloggers4Labour (see table). Some say this is because the party in opposition can usually count on more motivated activists than the party in power. Others contend that right-wing politics are more suited to the punchy, pithy medium of blogging.
And true “civilian journalism” has been slower to emerge in Britain than in America: Britain's main political blogs are mostly written by insiders, such as former party staffers and established journalists. Blogs also seem to scrutinise politicians and the mainstream media less fiercely in Britain than in America, where senior politicians and big newspapers sense the blogosphere's watchful eye on their every remark and news report. Guido Fawkes, roughly speaking the British equivalent of America's Drudge Report, boasts of breaking stories and is certainly resented by some mainstream journalists. But few major scalps have been claimed.
One area where Britain is showing tentative signs of stealing a march is in the use of the internet by government to involve citizens and improve policy-making. Since 2006 the Downing Street website has allowed the public to create and sign online petitions. In amongst the calls for the drummer from The Stranglers to be honoured, Jeremy Clarkson (a mouthy motoring journalist) to become prime minister and Arsenal football club to be “closed down” have been some serious and hugely popular petitions. One in 2006 calling for the government's road-pricing policy to be scrapped ended up attracting 1.8m signatures.
Mr Brown is not much more web-savvy than his predecessor but some of Westminster's rising stars are evangelical about the internet's potential for government. In a speech to the Google Zeitgeist conference in London last year, David Miliband, the blogging foreign secretary, looked forward to the internet allowing people control over public services, not merely access to them. Policy wonks talk excitedly of “Public Services 2.0”.
George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is another who is thought to “get it”. He wants much more information put online, including American-style crime maps and every item of government spending over £25,000 ($49,000). More radically, he is flirting with “open-sourcing” policy: some companies now go online to solicit solutions to stubborn problems, so why not the public sector?
Of course, there are caveats to all this fervour. One reason why American political parties have snazzy websites is that they can afford to; there is far less money sloshing around in British politics, and few regret that. America's vibrant blogosphere has emerged partly in response to relatively staid mainstream media, whereas Britons seeking partisanship and wit can get it from a host of newspapers. Some also say that the publicly funded BBC's well-nourished website crowds out other potential players. And online consultation still leaves the structural political problem of how to respond. A million people moderately interested in a particular issue may have less influence on the government than a smaller but more passionate bunch willing to lobby in the old way.
Yet web gurus insist that British politics could be doing much more with the internet, and the idea of open-sourcing policy particularly intrigues them. Government efforts to solicit the public's ideas are often clunkingly non-specific: asking people what they think should be done about, say, crime is unlikely to result in much new thinking. Narrowing the question to particular problems, often in particular locations, is cannier. “You may only get one truly workable idea out of a thousand,” says Tom Steinberg, a former government-policy adviser who set up the e-petitions website and now runs mySociety, a charity operating websites designed to foster civic engagement. “But that one idea makes it worthwhile.”

Original Link:

Semi-connected

Paypal to block 'unsafe browsers' : BBC

2008-04-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

Web payment firm Paypal has said it will block "unsafe browsers" from using its service as part of wider anti-phishing efforts.
Customers will first be warned that a browser is unsafe but could then be blocked if they continue using it.
Paypal said it was "an alarming fact that there is a significant set of users who use very old and vulnerable browsers such as Internet Explorer 4".
Phishing attacks trick users into handing over sensitive data.
Paypal said some users were still using Internet Explorer 3 , released more than 10 years ago. It lacks many of the security and safety features needed to protect users from phishing and other online attacks.
Legitimate sites
Paypal said it supported the use of Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Browsers which support the technology highlight the address bar in green when users are on a site that has been deemed legitimate.
The latest version of Internet Explorer support EV SSL certificates, while Firefox 2 supports it with an add-on but Apple's Safari browser for Mac and PCs does not.
"By displaying the green glow and company name, these newer browsers make it much easier for users to determine whether or not they're on the site that they thought they were visiting," said Paypal.
The steps were outlined in a white paper on managing phishing, written by the firm's chief information security officer Michael Barrett and Dan Levy, director of risk management.
In it, they said: "In our view letting users view the PayPal site on [an unsafe] browser is equal to a car manufacturer allowing drivers to buy one of their vehicles without seatbelts."
Paypal described the battle against phishing as a "fast-moving chess match with the criminal community".

Original Link:

Paypal to block 'unsafe browsers'

Nano switch hints at future chips: BBC

2008-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website

Researchers have built the world's smallest transistor - one atom thick and 10 atoms wide - out of a material that could one day replace silicon.
The transistor, essentially an on/off switch, has been made using graphene, a two-dimensional material first discovered only four years ago.
Graphene is a single layer of graphite, which is found in the humble pencil.
The transistor is the key building block of microchips and the basis for almost all electronics.
Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester have been leading research into the potential application of graphene in electronics and were the first to separate a sheet of the material from graphite
Super material
Graphene has been hailed as a super material because it has many potential applications. It is a flat molecule, with only the thickness of an atom, and both very stable and robust.
The researchers are also looking at its use in display technology - because it is transparent.
The Manchester-based scientists have shown that graphene can be carved into tiny electronic circuits with individual transistors not much larger than a molecule.
Dr Novoselov told BBC News that graphene had many advantages over silicon because it could conduct electricity faster and further.
Silicon will be replaced by graphene
Dr Kostya Novoselov
"These transistors will work and work at ambient, room temperature conditions - just what is required for modern electronics," he said.
Dr Novoselov said graphene was a "wonderful conductor", making it a perfect material for chip applications.
"It is already superior to silicon by an order of magnitude and comparable to the best samples of other materials.
"We believe we can increase this mobility of electron flow 10-fold."
Graphene is a hot topic among semiconductor researchers at the moment because it is an excellent conductor of electricity. Unlike silicon graphene transistors perform better the smaller they become.
Leak electricity
The global semiconductor business is currently built on sand; stamping out microchips from large silicon wafers.
Companies like Intel have a roadmap to reduce the size of circuits on the silicon wafer, down to about 10 nanometres - 10,000 times smaller than the width of a single human hair.
Many researchers believe that producing circuits smaller than 10 nanometres in silicon will be too difficult because they start to leak electricity at that size.
That current silicon roadmap is expected to end in 2020, making the race to find alternative materials potentially very lucrative.
Producing graphene sheets big enough to be used as wafers for chip production remained the biggest hurdle, said Dr Novoselov.
"We can control the cut down to 20 nanometres. And then when we have to scale down to one nanometre we use a bit of luck.
"The yield of the working devices is about 50%."
Many researchers around the world are working on creating large wafers of graphene.
In order to produce microchips wafers would need to be at least 10 centimetres across. The biggest wafer produced so far is 100 microns across, just a tenth of a millimetre.

Short and narrow constrictions in graphene can act as high-quality transistors
"I do believe we will find the technology to do this. And when we do silicon will be replaced by graphene," said Dr Novoselov.
Professor Bob Westervelt, in an assessment of the material and its future application in the journal Science, wrote: "Graphene is an exciting new material with unusual properties that are promising for nanoelectronics.
"The future should be very interesting."
Dr Novoselov added: "Given the material was first obtained by us four years ago, we are making good progress."
He said the process of using graphene to build circuits was very compatible with silicon technology.
"At the moment we use all the same steps to make a transistor as is done by the silicon industry. So once we have large wafers of graphene it should be straightforward to use the same process."
But it might be another 10 years before the first integrated circuits on graphene chips appear, he said.
Shorter term
In the shorter term graphene could be used in LCD displays to replace materials used to create transparent conductive coatings.
"The computer screen relies on good transparent conductors. But current materials are expensive and hard to produce.
"Graphene is only one atom thin so is absolutely transparent - it's a really wonderful conductor.
"We propose to use it as a transparent conductor, using small interconnecting graphene sheets all together."
The material is also being touted for use in solar panels, transparent window coatings and also for sensing technologies.
Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester presented their findings in the 17 April issue of Science.

Original Link:

Nano switch hints at future chips

Action urged to keep net neutral: BBC

2008-04-23T08:36:00.000-07:00

Tough action is required by US regulators to protect the principles that have made the net so successful, a leading digital rights lawyer has said.
Professor Lawrence Lessig was speaking at a public meeting to debate the tactics some net firms use to manage data traffic at busy times.
He said the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) should act to keep all net traffic flowing equally.
The FCC said net firms had a duty to tell customers about data management.
No more rules
The seven-hour public meeting was held at Stanford University and featured presentations from Prof Lessing, songwriters, network administrators and net engineers.
Prof Lessig said one of the principles that guided the foundation of the net was that all traffic should flow equally across it.
This principle of net neutrality, he said, was being eroded as net firms manage traffic and place restrictions on what their domestic broadband customers can do.
Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing
Kevin Martin, FCC
The meeting was called by the FCC in reaction to the news that US net firm Comcast had been exposed as managing traffic by stopping some of its 13m customers uploading files to BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks.
The FCC has started a formal investigation to see if Comcast merits a fine for its actions.
In response to the publicity surrounding its actions, Comcast has said it would change its policy.
In the UK many net firms manage traffic at peak times in a bid to ensure that everyone gets the highest broadband speed possible.
Prof Lessig said there had to be clear rules, perhaps involving financial incentives, to force net firms to respect net neutrality. Current rules, he warned, meant that many firms were tempted to manage traffic to protect profits.
At the meeting the two Democrats who sit on the five-strong FCC board said it needed new powers to make sure net firms complied with net neutrality principles.
But the two Republican commissioners on the board warned against over-burdening net firms with more rules.
Summing up, FCC chairman Kevin Martin said its net policies were powerful enough but just needed to be properly enforced.
He said there was nothing wrong with net firms managing traffic as long as they kept customers fully informed.
"There must be adequate disclosures of the particular traffic management tools," said Mr Martin. "Consumers must be fully informed of the exact nature of the service they are purchasing."

Original Link:

Action urged to keep net neutral