Virtual Whistler

Apple has NOT banned Facebook

2009-02-16T03:50:00.000-08:00

How do these rumors get started? Or, more to the point, how do they get perpetuated?

Late Thursday, a site called tinycomb (”Hand-Picked Tech News”) reported that Facebook had been banned “for life” from every Apple (AAPL) store in the United States — some 207 retail outlets in all, by my count.

This must have been one of those facts that was too good to check, because I’m pretty sure none of the half-dozen newspapers and blogs that repeated and embellished the story bothered to do any legwork to confirm it.

It certainly seems that most of the readers who applauded the reported ban — a couple dozen at tinycomb, nearly 40 at Digg, more than 120 at MacRumors — took it as fact.

“Why has this been kept under the radar?” asked SherwinNero at tinycomb.

“Has it really been kept under the radar,” answered Max, “or was it considered ‘not significant enough’ to put it on the front pages everywhere?”

Or is, just possibly, not true?

I know from experience that some Apple stores put limits on where on the Web you can take their demo machines — sometimes restricting Safari to Apple’s promotional pages.

And it’s certainly possible that individual stores have blocked Facebook — as MySpace has been blocked since May 2007 — because some of its members were hogging the machines.

Indeed, Ars Technica quotes an unnamed Apple employee who says his store has been blocking Facebook for about a month.

“It’s just trying to find a balance between letting people try out the computers, but not tying them up so others can try them as well,” he told Ars.

But a person at Apple headquarters in a position to know assures me that there is no nationwide ban on Facebook in effect — permanent or otherwise.

I’m headed to the nearest Apple store to check it out. If you’re in one now, let us know in the comment stream where you are and whether the demo machine you’re using will let you get to your Facebook page.

First woman to receive Nobel Prize

2008-12-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

Radium was discovered by Marie Curie. She is the first woman to receive Nobel Prize.

Marie Curie, daughter of a teacher was born at Warsaw (Poland). After her studies she started her career with Prof. Becquerel the discoverer of radioactivity.

He had left some pieces off uranium in his table drawer. Marie used them to weigh photo plates. When, those photo plates were developed. She saw few lines there and suspected that some rays had emanated from the Uranium.

Marie had marries Pierre Curie, physicist. The couple started conducting experiments on their own. They found abundant Uranium pitchblende in the country of Bohemia. They obtained about 10,000 Kilograms from the government on request.

They extracted "Radium" from it. The radium delivered a strange blue light when it was kept in a test tube in a dark room. Marie curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the isolation of Radium and Polonium.

To honor Marie curie a chemical element 'Curium' and a unit of radioactivity 'Curie' have been named after her.

Father of nuclear physics

2008-11-28T07:20:00.000-08:00

Enrico Fermi invented nuclear reactor. He is known as the father of nuclear physics. He discovered the chain reactions.

Fermi was born on September 26, 1901 in Rome. He obtained his PhD degree in the field of X-rays. He made research and discovered that when the element is bombarded by a slow moving neutron, it becomes radio active and starts emitting radiations.

In this process one element changes into the other element. He also discovered that a fundamental particle named neutrino and produced 80 new artificial nuclei by neutron bombardment.

He succeeded in splitting the uranium nuclei by the bombardment of neutrons. He had worked on the controlled chain reactions.

After several years of arduous research and hard work he designed the nuclear reactor in Chicago. In this reactor he generated the energy by nuclear fission.

Origin of vaccination

2008-11-25T06:26:00.000-08:00

Edward Jenner was the discoverer of small pox vaccination. Vaccination prevents men from falling sick. Small pox was a very dreaded disease in 18th century and earlier. Cow pox was a milder disease with similar symptoms. It was a disease of cows.

A milkmaid came to Jenner seeking his advice. She told him that she suffered from cow pox. Jenner took some fluid from a cow pox sore on the milk maid's finger. Then he injected it into an eight year old boy who had mild attack of cow pox.

After seven weeks, Jenner took some fluid from the sore of a man suffering from small pox and injected into the arm of the boy. The boy was not affected by small pox germs.

This proved that he had become immune to small pox due to cow pox. Jenner went on collecting cow pox fluid consistently for the formulation of small pox vaccination. Thus the practice of vaccinating for the prevention of small pox became wide spread.

Jenner's vaccinations helped wipeout this harmful disease which prevailed at that time. Vaccinations are injected into our body making its natural defense system to produce antibiotics which kill germs and protects white blood cells that combat that type of infection. If the body in case be invaded by these germs, it would be ready to destroy them immediately.

Wright brothers and aircraft

2008-11-24T02:35:00.000-08:00

Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright were brothers born to Milton Wright, a Bishop of Dayton, Ohio USA. One day he brought a toy which spurred the brothers to build to a large sized model of the same so that they could climb on and reach the clouds.

Naturally, the idea was superb. The toy was flying up to the ceiling of the room. It was made of paper, bamboo and cork. A rubber band rotated a propeller and made the toy to fly straight in the air.

Wilbur noticed in his shop where the used to work, a box which had bent edges. He felt that the wings of the flying plane could be made in this form. He thought that wings should be designed in such a way that they could be moved up and down during the flight.

The brothers made a model of a plane in 1899. It was kite shaped. They went to Carolina for conducting its trial. Then for four years they continued the trials.

It was December 17, 1903 Orville Wright made the first controlled successful flight. He took it off from Kill Devil Hill at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina on 12 horse power by plane. It was built by the brothers.

The plane reached a height of 10 feet and covered a distance of 37 meters. The fourth and last flight made by Wilbur flied a distance of 850 feet in 60 seconds. But a gust of air crushed it.

However Wilbur made many flights up to a height of 91 meter. He died in 1912. Orville continued his work and made 57 flights. On his self built plane he reached a height of 27 meters.

He lived till 1947 when the flying machine or aircraft had already started flying at supersonic speeds. Today we travel in aero planes to long distances with comfort at the speed of the sound .

These two inventors are remembered as the Wright Brothers.

Story of penicillin

2008-11-23T02:07:00.000-08:00

Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) the famous Bacteriologist discovered penicillin and shared the noble prize for medicine in 1945 with two other British scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain.

Penicillin is an antibiotic drug useful in the prevention and treatment of infections. Antibiotics are themselves made from bacteria, molds or larger plants. Fleming discovered Penicillin while he was doing research on another subject.

He successfully isolated and described an antibacterial agent, which he called Iysozyme and which is an enzyme found in tears and mucus secretions. He continued furthering his work and in 1928 discovered Penicillin. It was discovered accidentally all because the scientist has neglected to clean his culture dish.

It seemed to inhibit the growth of bacteria. Fleming isolated that particular culture dish and grew it into a pure culture. The green mould that grows on bread is Pencillium glancum. A like of it is found in the soil called Pencillium notatum from which we get Penicillin.

Fleming's discovery helped other scientists to search for other antibiotics. Today we have several antibiotics like streptomycin, aureomycin etc. These antibiotics are saving the lives of millions of people all over the world.

Discovery of paper

2008-11-22T23:52:00.000-08:00

Paper is common today. Starting from school we use paper for writing and printing till we become old. Paper is a mat of tiny fibers felted together. These fibers are small particles of cellulose. Plants yield cellulose.

The ancient Egyptians about 4000 years ago used paper in a different way. They took the stems of the paper in a different way. They took the stems of the papyrus plant and peeled them apart and flattened them.

They laid them cross wise and pressed them down to stick them together. Soon they become dry; this made a sheet of Papyrus and could be written on.

Actually the real paper was invented by Chinese in 105 A.D. The person who invented is Ail Un. He used stringy inner bark of the mulberry tree to make paper.

He pounded the bark in water to separate the fibers, and then poured the soup mixture on a tray with a bottom of thin bamboo strips. The water was drained away and the soft mat was laid on a smooth surface to dry. Bamboo and old rags were also used.

The paper was later improved by brushing starch on it. Then the art of paper making spread all over Europe.

Morse's Telegraph

2008-11-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

Samuel Finley Breeze Morse (1791- 1872) pioneered the development of the Morse code and the telegraph machine. He was an artist too.

With the assistance of Leonard Gale, he constructed a model of a telegraph machine and gave the first real demonstration on 2 September 1837.

What is telegraphy? It is the obsolescent term for communication at a distance of documentary matter such as written, printed or pictorial matter or the reproduction at a distance of any kind of information. Now a part of telecommunication.

The most important feature of Morse's telegraph was the use of an electromagnet at the receiver. The first message was sent by Morse on 24 May 1844, using a new era of long distance transmission.

The message read: "What hath God wrought"

Tags: Morse's Telegraph, telecommunication, Breeze Morse, Morse code

End to second world war by atom bomb

2008-11-20T23:17:00.000-08:00

The second World War (1939 - 1945) ended after USA dropped atom bombs on the two cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki of japan. Japan was not ready to surrender. So American dropped an atom bomb on August 6, 1945 at Hiroshima.

This bomb was equivalent to 20 kilo ton of T.N.T and was dropped from a height of 1800 feet. It killed 80,000 and 70,000 people were injured due to its impact. Again on August 9 at Nagasaki, Americans dropped another bomb made of plutonium which killed 40,000 men and injured about 25,000 people.

Who made this bomb? Who invented it? It is attributed to J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904 - 1967), the American scientist. He neither made the bomber develop the formula for making it. A team of scientists led by him developed the bomb.

In 1941, Oppenheimer joined the American project on the development of atom bomb. He supervised the team in Los Alamos. He was appointed as the chief science director of the Manhattan project.

Under his guidance scientists worked and successfully made the atom bomb and tested it on July 16, 1945 in the northern desert 320km away from Los Alamos.

System of coinage

2008-11-19T09:06:00.000-08:00

The study of Numismatics deals with coins. Collection of coins is an exciting hobby.

The invention of coinage is attributed to the Lydian's, now a part of Turkey. During the 7th century B.C the coins were stamped and had a guaranteed weight. Those coins were made of electrum, an alloy of gold and silver. Crosus of Lydia issued the first gold and silver coins in the 6th century B.C.

Greeks as well as Bulgarians began coinage from the 6th century B.C. Later copper was used for making coins. Greek coinage lasted for 500 years. The Romans learned it from them. The Celtic and German tribes began the coinage system by the 2nd century B.C.

The Chinese made bronze coins in the shapes of knives and hoes.

When metals were available in plenty, the skilled artists made good coins. By the 15th century the art of coinage was improved.

Coins are made by punching a piece of metal with design of a coin on it. Moulds were used by Chinese.

'Mint' is the place where coins are made. Usually coins have pictures and a little writing on them. The milled edge is essential.

India has produced varieties of coins at various times.

Ancient time surgeries

2008-11-19T07:43:00.000-08:00

Surgery was not new to the ancient people. Indian scientist Susruta has carried surgery. Ancient people all over the world used flints as surgical instruments. The difficulty was with flints.

In fact, they were also used to open abscesses and to let blood. The teeth of fish and sharp thorns were other instruments. Saws were used in amputation and they were made from flints and bones. Several mummies have shown the results of such operations.

In the bronze and iron age tools were made of those metals. They include scissors, iron needles etc. Even complicated surgical instruments were used. The relics of Pompeii have shown such instruments. But in ancient times even for thousand year's surgery was performed without anesthesia.

Today modern surgery has become possible due to the discovery of anesthesia and prevention of infection.

'Sustra Samhita' an Indian treatise gives facts about surgery practiced in olden days.

Submarine the modern water species

2008-11-18T07:12:00.000-08:00

Submarines move under water. Man's desire to travel under water resulted in the development of submarines. Dutch inventor Cornelius Van Drebbel invented the submarine in 1620.
Earlier to him, in 1578 William Bourne indicated the design of a completely enclosed boat which could be submerged and rowed under the surface by reducing its volume by contracting its slides through hands vises. It was to be made of wood covered with water proof leather. But the Bourne did not actually build it.

Drebbel launched his submarine for James. He took it at depths of 3 to 4 meters underwater in the river Thames. The submarine had greased leather over a wooden frame and oars that came out through the sides and were sealed with leather flaps.

The first proper submarine was "Turtle". It was an egg shaped wooden vessel built by Dairel Bushnell, an American engineer. It was mainly used to attack British boats during the American war of independence in 1776. It was one man submarine.

The turtle tried to sink a British man of war in New York labor. Nautilus a submarine was designed by Robert Fulton for Napoleon. By 1727 there were 14 different types of submarine. In 1875 the Irish emigrant to US John built a series of submarines which were used by the Americans and British.

Today submarines are used by the navy all over the world.

Check mate in chess

2008-11-17T07:09:00.000-08:00

Chess means ' king'. The word check mate is derived from Persian Shah Mate, meaning "The King is dead".

It is believed that chess was originated in India among Buddhists. They invented chess as a substitute of war because killing of one's fellow is forbidden in their religion.

Chess is a popular game all over the world. Have you heard the names of Bobby Fischer, Viswanathan Anand the famous chess players?

A guide for travelers

2008-11-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

A compass guides a traveler in which direction he has to go or is going. A common compass consist a magnetic needle supported on a pivot so that it can swing freely in all directions.

The needle (N) points to the north of earth's magnetic pole. As the location of earth earth's magnetic poles is known, directions of the other places can be determined.

The Chinese invented the compass about 4500 years ago. Later Arabs, the traders introduced compass.

The sailors who used the compass discovered that the North magnetic pole and the geographical North Pole are not located at the same place.

World's first oil well

2008-11-16T06:34:00.000-08:00

The oil and petroleum were discovered by Edwin L. Drake, an American is 1859. He was an illiterate.

Oil is a sticky, muddy substance found in the earth at a depth of half a mile to four miles. Without oil we cannot imagine this world. About 90% things of modern world are made up of mineral oil.

The first oil well of the world was dug by Drake in 1852 in Titusville in Pennsylvania where oil struck at a depth of 21 meters only.

The local people ridiculed him. But Edwin pumped out 20 barrels of oil from this well every day. By 1867 the coal oil was completely replaced by kerosene oil. Oil became the mainstay of America's industrialization after the civil war.

How oil was discovered in India?

The first oil well in India was dug at Nahar Pang in assam in 1866. But it did not yield oil. Oil was stuck first in 1867 at a place called Makum in Assam.

An oil factory was set up in Digboi in 1901 for processing crude oil. Assam oil company had dug 80 oil wells and was pumping 14,000 gallon mineral oil per day by 1920.

Science and Technology

2008-11-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

When Ferdinand Magellan, the great explorer sailed across the Pacific Ocean he took almost hundred days. But today we can have our breakfast in India and lunch in London. Again we can have our dinner in India.

We can sit in our homes and watch the cricket match being played some where thousand kilometers away. We are enjoying the results of great inventors and discoverers. We are living in a fascinating world. The world has changed tremendously in the past two centuries.

The great inventors worked hard with supreme confidence in their own abilities and displayed their inherited talents. The entire mankind has been benefited by their work.

Many inventors have spent their lives in their venture. We need more than a life time to understand the inventions and discoveries of the great inventors.

So the posts for next few weeks will be about scientists and their inventions.

A computer 55,000 times faster than your PC

2008-11-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - How fast is the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory? If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.

That makes the $100 million computer, nicknamed "Jaguar" by scientists, the fastest in the world for unclassified scientific research. At more than 1 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, it is about 55,000 times faster than your typical PC.

Only one other supercomputer is faster, and it's devoted to classified research on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Global climate change, space matter that can't be seen, and alternative energy — everything from improved gasoline combustion to fusion — are some of the subjects Jaguar will be used to research.

In June, Jaguar, a Cray Inc. system, was rated fifth-fastest in the world by researchers who track the 500 top supercomputers. The Oak Ridge lab, a Department of Energy facility, announced Monday that it had upgraded Jaguar since then, and achieved its four-year goal of 1 quadrillion calculations per second — or 1 "petaflop" — six months ahead of schedule.

Jaguar recently achieved sustained performance of more than 1.3 petaflops while churning out calculations on superconductivity and has hit a peak speed of 1.64 petaflops, the lab said.

It is still undergoing final trials but should be ready for research by January. Thomas Zacharia, Oak Ridge's associate director for computing, anticipates a waiting list of proposals and near full-time operation when the computer begins work. All users must share their results with the broader scientific community.

Heartbeats May Power Future Pacemakers

2008-11-11T18:05:00.000-08:00

LONDON (Reuters) - Pacemakers and defibrillators of the future may generate an extra power boost from a surprising energy source: The heart itself.British researchers say future pacemakers and ICDs may be powered, at least partially, by heartbeats.

Using a microgenerator powered by heartbeats, a British team said on Monday their experiment produced nearly 17 percent of the electricity needed to run an artificial pacemaker.

This means the next era of pacemakers could incorporate this technology and result in longer-lasting devices with more added functions to help manage the heart, they said.

"This was a proof-of-concept study, and we provided the concept," Paul Roberts at Southampton University Hospital in Britain said in a statement.

A pacemaker sends electrical impulses to the heart to speed up or slow cardiac rhythm while an implantable cardioverter defibrillator signals the heart to normalize its rhythm if it gets too fast or slow.

The devices save lives and are incorporating evolving technology to become increasingly sophisticated. But the devices are now so small, the only way to produce more power needed to run more functions is to increase battery size.

SIZE OF THE DEVICE

The problem is this would also increase the size of the devices implanted under the skin, making them uncomfortable and cosmetically less appealing, the researchers said.

"The small devices now are really very good, but power consumption must increase if we want to take them to the next level," Roberts said.

The researchers, who presented their findings at the American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans, tested a generator that helps the heart produce more than enough energy with each beat to pump blood.

The device uses two compressible bladders and a microgenerator mounted on the lead of a pacemaker or defibrillator, the wire that connects the device to the heart.

"Harvesting surplus energy might be a major transition in implantable pacemakers and defibrillators because engineers will have more energy to work with."

This lead is attached to the end of the right ventricle, and the bladders relay the energy from the pressure of each heartbeat to the microgenerator, which transforms it into electricity for use by the battery, the researchers said.

The researchers are now working with different materials in the microgenerator, which they believe will produce significantly more power in their next-generation device.

"While at the moment we see about 20 percent harvesting, we're anticipating that will be significantly more in the next iteration of the device," Roberts said.

A consortium of companies including InVivo Technology, Perpetuum and Zarlink Semiconductor developed the microgenerator using British-government funds.

Tags: Pacemaker, heartbeat powers Pacemaker, heart

Seagate intros 500 GB self-encrypting laptop drives

2008-11-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

Seagate on Monday announced new full disk encryption (FDE) Momentus self-encrypted drives with capabilities of up to a half-terabyte, along with software from McAfee for encryption management. Although standalone editions of the 5,400 RPM and 7,200 RPM drives are available to consumers and organizations of all sizes, Seagate is also selling the FDEs to OEMs, starting with Dell. In the US alone, a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds, said Joni Clark, product marketing manager for Seagate's Personal Computer Business Unit, in a briefing for BetaNews. About 97 percent of these laptops are never recovered, Clark added, citing FBI statistics.

As of January of 2005, more than 245 million records had been breached on laptops, with 50% of these breaches occurring in Fortune 1000 corporations, 25% in the military, 16% in higher education, and 9% in the medical field, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. To protect military and other government documents, Seagate's third-generation self-encrypted drives comply with NSA security guidelines. The two drives have also achieved FIPS 197 algorithm certification, with FIPS 140-2 certification now in progress. The drives use AES 128-bit encryption.

But small businesses and consumers, too, are increasingly worried over data theft, said Clark. Papagino's Pizza, for example, will use Dell Latitude laptops containing Seagate's self-encrypting drives.

Numbers from the Ponemon Institute show that 80% of businesses experienced some sort of data breach in 2007.Accordingly, Seagate is offering two modes for the drives. Many businesses and other organizations will use bundled McAfee software for hard disk drive detection, encryption policy management, authentication, and security auditing.

Consequently, they'll be able to prove compliance with laws in 44 states requiring encryption of customer information, Clark maintained.

Consumers, on the other hand, will typically run the Momentus hard drives without the McAfee software, to save on performance overhead. Once the self-encrypted hard drive is installed, the user will simply enter a BIOS password and then log on as usual.

The 320 GB versions of the Momentus encrypted hard drives are shipping already, while the 500 GB editions are slated for availability next year.

IPhone Crowned Top Cell Phone In U.S.

2008-11-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

Apple's iPhone 3G was the best-selling mobile phone in the United States in the third quarter, surpassing former champion the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Razr, which fell to second place, a market research firm said Monday.

Nevertheless, iPhone's popularity among U.S. consumers failed to lift the overall market. Handset purchases overall declined 15% from the same period a year ago to 32 million units, The NPD Group said. Handset revenues fell 10% to $2.9 billion, even though the average selling price rose 6% to $88.

The Razr was ranked the top-selling consumer handset for 12 consecutive quarters. The iPhone ascension represented a "watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality," NPD analyst Ross Rubin said in a statement.

"Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features," Rubin said, an indication that there was a growing "data divide" among handset buyers.

"Those who see the value in wireless Internet access are justifying the investment, whereas voice-centric users have little incentive to upgrade, which is obviously detrimental to operators who seek to sell data plans and media-access services to their subscribers," Rubin said.

Rounding out the top five handset models were Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)'s third-place Blackberry Curve, followed by the LG Rumor and the LG enV2. In terms of features that attracted buyers, 43% of people surveyed by NPD cited the need for a camera and 36% noted the ability to send and receive text messages.

Mobile phones with a QWERTY keyboard experienced the greatest year-over-year rise in sales, accounting for 30% of all handsets sold in the third quarter, up from just 11% a year ago. Also in the quarter, 83% of mobile phones purchased were Bluetooth enabled, versus 72% a year ago; and 68% of phones were music enabled, versus 49% a year ago.

NPD's findings are based on more than 150,000 online consumer research surveys completed each month.

Tags: apple, iphone, apple iphone, apple iphone in US, latest iphone news

Intel Launches Health Gadget to Monitor Illnesses

2008-11-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

Intel has taken a somewhat shocking step away from its roots in the chip industry with its new Health Guide, a small tabletop gadget that Intel will build, sell, and manage through a suite of backend services.

Intel will develop pilot programs with several healthcare organizations, including Aetna, to assess how the Health Guide works in the home. The chip giant is also working with the American Heart Association to develop care plans for patients who have suffered heart attacks.

The Health Guide is being deployed now, after being approved by the FDA as a Class II device this past summer. It will be supplied by healthcare organizations. "This product is ready to go, end to end," said Louis Burns, general manager of the Digital Health division at Intel.

A small device about the size of a small-form-factor PC, the Health Guide PHS6000 is a small white box with a flip-up 10.4-inch LCD touchscreen, a webcam with privacy shield, and a touchscreen. Inside it is an undisclosed Intel processor and motherboard, together with Bluetooth and four USB ports.

The Health Guide requires a broadband connection, which it uses to connect to doctors and healthcare professionals, and to download content onto its small hard drive. Intel designed the interface, which is both spare and functional, allowing users to access contact numbers for their doctors, schedule appointments, and upload new medical data via a small line of connected health devices, such as glucose meters and blood-oxygen sensors, that are already on the market from third-party suppliers. The webcam also allows the patient to videoconference with a nurse or healthcare provider, possibly its most important function.

The overarching goal, Burns and other Intel executives explained, is to provide a means for both patient and doctor to monitor a chronic condition, such as diabetes, without the need to constantly stop by a doctor's office for updates and new tests. Data uploaded by the device is automatically plugged into a mathematical model customized for the patient, where signs of an impending heart attack or other life-threatening condition can be analyzed and assigned treatment before a patient is forced to enter an emergency room.

While the Health Guide represents a sea change for Intel, it's also true that the company has done almost everything but ship its own PCs and other devices. The company manufactures chipsets, and publishes reference designs for both motherboards and guidelines for the PCs they form the heart of. Intel also has pushed OEMs to manufacture Mobile Internet Devices, developed a Viiv PC initiative mixing software and entertainment services, sold an electronic microscope, and designed or co-designed smartphone and in-vehicle entertainment reference platforms. Intel's design efforts have had some success, but generally influenced the design of existing platforms.

This is actually Intel's second step into integrating IT into healthcare; in 2006 and 2007, Intel helped develop a tablet-based device called a mobile clinical assistant, which Motion Computing backed. Just last week, Panasonic launched a ruggedized Toughbook that conformed to the mobile clinical assistant standard.

The culmination of about three and a half years of work, the Intel Health Guide didn't start out as a healthcare product at all.

According to Eric Dishman, an Intel fellow in its health group and its director of product research and innovation, the Health Guide evolved from a 1999 study of 100 homes in the U.S., evaluating the "future of fun" with a pre-TiVo DVR-like device and a portable MP3 player. What the study's participants kept asking for, however, was a device to help manage aging parents and their diseases.

Dishman and Intel see the problem as something akin to the transition to mobile computing. "Healthcare today is largely a mainframe model," Dishman said, dating back to 30 years ago where hospitals were basically single massive resources timeshared across large urban centers.

But as more and more people enter the healthcare system, baby boomers begin retiring and an estimated 240 million uninsured stress the system further, an estimated $4 trillion to $5 trillion in treatment costs will need to be spent over the next five years, Dishman said.

"We can't afford mainframe healthcare today," Dishman said. "We're about to double or triple the number of people coming into the system… We want to create, foment the transition from mainframe healthcare to personal healthcare."

"Personal healthcare," however, still requires back-end monitoring by nurses and doctors, Intel executives said, as well as self-education. Intel will license video content and other educational material from the Mayo Clinic, Burns said.

The HealthGuide includes a clinician-facing suite of services that allows access to a patient's healthcare data and vital information, allows a nurse to schedule appointments and followup visits, and set alerts in case a patient's blood pressure, glucose levels, or other key indicators indicate a dangerous trend.

Several FDA-approved peripherals are already on the market, which can connect to the Health Guide. They include blood-pressure cuffs; weight scales; blood-glucose monitors; SPO2 monitors, which measure the oxygen saturation in blood; and pulse oximeters, which perform roughly the same function. All can connect to PCs and the Health Guide through a special serial cable.

A healthcare professional can set up a series of questions to guide a patient through a self-diagnosis, with questions about his sleep habits or general state of health. Finally, the integrated webcam can also permit a personal consultation without the need for an on-site visit.

"All this information can help me know what's going on with the patient before a videoconference," said Julie Cherry, a registered nurse and director of product marketing for Intel. According to Cherry, the U.S. healthcare market is plagued by "intermittent acute care," where patients are treated, and then "fall into a black hole, a disconnected space, until they have a reason to go into the healthcare system again."

Pilot studies within the U.S. are planned with Aetna, Erickson Retirement Communities, Providence Medical Group in Oregon, and the SCAN Health Plan. SCAN, a nonprofit that has helped manage patients with chronic conditions for 30 years, will try out the Health Guide with 25 patients suffering from heart disease, according to Hank Osowski, SCAN's senior vice president of corporate development.

"If this works effectively, we hope to roll it out to several hundred patients with chronic diseases," Osowski said. In a year's time, SCAN could extend the Health Guide to its 105,000 members in Arizona and California, he said.

Osowski said he was "excited" about the device, which would allow healthcare professionals to intervene "early and appropriately". Both Osowski and Dishman said that patients would appreciate the feedback the Health Guide provides, which would allow them to work toward a goal.

Some patients used the Health Guide's flip screen to hide the small box from guests to protect their privacy; others were proud that they could show how off how they managed their condition, they said. But for the most part, the reaction has been positive, Dishman said in a followup email.

"Most of the folks undergoing chronic disease management programs today are writing stuff down on paper and calling in to a phone-based menu to report their results, with no feedback, coaching, content, or personalization," Dishman said. "So when we focus group the Intel Health Guide, they are usually saying things to us like 'Thank god we can stop the sticky note and phone tag nightmare with my health coach!' or 'This lets me do my care routine at my own time and my own pace – I hate it when a nurse calls me during a lunch party or while I am watching Oprah."

"They have had mostly positive responses to the physical appearance of the device with phrases like 'friendly' and 'innovative' and 'trustworthy' – they trust it more because it looks more like a medical device than a personal computer," Dishman added. "Their biggest complaint has been that it is too large to pack up and take with them on trips – people clearly want another more portable version to take with them to their vacation home or weekend trip."

To solve that particular problem, Intel showed off the Health Guide in a portable format, running as an application on the T-Mobile G1, powered by Google's "Android" operating system, as well as a Sharp MID. In both cases, users would be limited by the hardware constraints of the mobile device, but could manually upload data and access some of the other features of the device, such as video content.

Portable healthcare also makes more sense in Europe, where even the elderly have mobile phones. Even simple things like an accelerometer in a mobile phone can provide clues about a person's stride, which can be slowed by an adverse reaction to medication, Dishman said. One of the best ways to judge the onset of a neurological condition is to examine how people type, he said; Intel already has three year's worth of data to that effect by monitoring how people interact with PCs in Europe, he said.

That has also prompted concerns about privacy. Some elderly patients in Intel's trials said that they don't want to be reminded of their conditions on their phone, which they regard as an entertainment device, Dishman said.

Will the Health Guide make money for Intel? In the short term, probably not. Intel lumps its NAND Products Group, Flash Memory Group, Digital Home Group, Software and Services Group, and the Digital Health Group into an "All Other" group within its balance sheet. Revenue for that category is primarily related to the sale of NOR and NAND memory products, Intel has said. The "All Other" segment recorded a loss of $519 million on revenue of $218 million for the third calendar quarter.

Burns declined to comment on when the product might have a material effect on Intel's revenue. But he said that the product has had the backing of Intel senior executives, including chief executive Paul Otellini, who apparently shares Burns' view that the Health Guide can put a chunk of that $5 trillion in U.S. healthcare costs into Intel's pocket.

But even at Intel, which reported a record third quarter, times are tough. Intel has divested so-called non-core assets, such as its optical networking business, when it failed to deliver. In the nine months from Dec. 2007 through Sept. 2008, Intel burned through about half of its on-hand cash, which decreased from $7.3 billion to $3.7 billion.

But when asked if in two years the Health Guide was destined to be spun off or discontinued, Burns' response was, well, sanguine. "It'll be here," he said. "Come talk to me in two years."

Tags: Intel, health gadget, latest gadget, intel gadget

Octopuses had Antarctic ancestor

2008-11-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

Many octopuses evolved from a common ancestor that lived off Antarctica more than 30 million years ago, according to a "Census of Marine Life" that is seeking to map the oceans from microbes to whales.

Researchers in 82 nations, whose 10-year study aims to help protect life in the seas, found a mysterious meeting place for white sharks in the eastern Pacific Ocean and algae thriving at -25 degrees Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) in the Arctic.

"We are approaching a picture of the oceans ... from micrcobes to whales," said Ron O'Dor, co-senior scientist of the census of the 2007-08 findings by up to 2,000 scientists.

The $650 million census is on track for completion in 2010, assessing about 230,000 known marine species, a statement said. It has identified 5,300 likely new species, of everything from fish or corals. So far, 110 have been confirmed as new.

Among the findings, genetic evidence showed that the tentacles of the octopus family pointed to an Antarctic ancestor for many deep sea species. A modern octopus called adelieledone in Antarctica seemed the closest relative of the original.

Octopuses apparently spread around the world after Antarctica became covered with a continent-wide ice sheet more than 30 million years ago, a shift that helped create oxygen-rich ocean currents flowing north, a report said.

"Isolated in new habitat conditions, many different species evolved; some octopuses, for example, losing their defensive ink sacs -- pointless at perpetually dark depths," the census said.

SHARK CAFE

Other findings showed that white sharks traveled thousands of kilometers to spend six months at what researchers called the "White Shark Cafe" in the Pacific between Hawaii and California.

"During this time, both males and females make frequent, repetitive dives to depths of 300 meters" it said. Researchers said the purpose was unknown but may be linked to food or reproduction.

Mapping the oceans is helping researchers to work out how to protect marine life from threats including over-fishing, pollution and climate change. The census could identify areas needing conservation, or help define rules for seabed mining.

At one extreme, scientists found algae thriving in Arctic waters of -25 Celsius, kept from freezing because salt concentrations were six times more than in normal sea water.

And in the mid-Atlantic, researchers found anemones, worms and shrimp around the world's deepest known active hot volcanic vent, over 4,100 meters deep.

Among other findings were a predatory comb jelly anchored to the seabed in waters 7,217 meters (23,680 ft) deep near Japan. "It was found at a depth thought incapable of supporting predators like this one," a statement said.

The discovery of a wealth of new species was not a sign that the oceans were healthier than thought.

"The things that we're discovering ... are not the kind of things you want to see on your plate very often," O'Dor said, adding that people had fished the big, attractive species.

Even so, 95 percent of the ocean was unexplored. The census "will synthesize what humankind knows about the oceans, what we don't know, and what we many never know," Ian Poiner, chair of the census's steering committee, said in a statement.

Tags: Antarctic, octopus, ancestor

Chandraayan - I launch videos and details

2008-11-07T18:03:00.001-08:00

India's dream mission to moon has come true now. The first unmanned rocket to moon has been successfully launched by Indian scientists. Chandrayaan-1 blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in AndhraPradesh...[read full story]

Honda's walking device helps with heavy tasks

2008-11-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

TOKYO - Imagine a bicycle seat connected by mechanical frames to a pair of shoes for an idea of how the new wearable assisted-walking gadget from Honda works.

The experimental device, unveiled Friday, is designed to support bodyweight, reduce stress on the knees and help people get up steps and stay in crouching positions.

Honda envisions the device being used by workers at auto or other factories. It showed a video of Honda employees wearing the device and bending to peer underneath vehicles on an assembly line.

Engineer Jun Ashihara also said the machine is useful for people standing in long lines and for people who run around to make deliveries.

"This should be as easy to use as a bicycle," Ashihara said at Honda's Tokyo headquarters. "It reduces stress, and you should feel less tired."

To wear it, you put the seat between your legs, put on the shoes and push the on button. Then just start walking around.

In a test-run for media, this reporter found it does take some getting used to. But I could sense how it supported my moves, pushing up on my bottom when I squatted and pushing at my soles to help lift my legs when I walked.

The system has a computer, motor, gears, battery and sensors embedded in it so it responds to a person's movements, according to Honda Motor Co.

Pricing and commercial product plans are still undecided. Japan's No. 2 automaker will begin testing a prototype with its assembly line workers later this month for feedback.

The need for such mechanical help is expected to grow in Japan, which has one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world.

Other companies are also eyeing the potentially lucrative market of helping the weak and old get around. Japan is among the world's leading nations in robotics technology, not only for industrial use but also for entertainment and companionship.

Earlier this year, Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp. showed a Segway-like ride it said was meant for old people.

Japanese robot company Cyberdyne has begun renting out in Japan a belted device called HAL, for "hybrid assistive limb," that reads brain signals to help people move about with mechanical leg braces that strap to the legs.

Honda has shown a similar but simpler belted device. It has motors on the left and right, which hook up to frames that strap at the thighs, helping the walker maintain a proper stride.

That device, being tested at one Japanese facility, helps rehabilitation programs for the disabled, encouraging them to take steps, said Honda official Kiyoshi Aikawa.

Honda has been carrying out research into mobility for more than a decade, introducing the Asimo humanoid in 2000.

Ex-Intel Engineer Accused Of Stealing $1 Billion In Trade Secrets

2008-11-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

A former Intel (NSDQ: INTC) engineer who left the chipmaker to work for rival Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) has been indicted on federal charges accusing him of stealing $1 billion worth of trade secrets from Intel.

Biswamohan Pani, 33, was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Massachusetts on four counts of wire fraud, which were added to charges of trade-secret theft filed against the defendant in August in U.S. District Court in Boston. If convicted, the Worcester, Mass., engineer would face up to 10 years in prison for the theft charge and a maximum of 20 years for each wire fraud charge. Pani was free on $100,000 bail.

Pani worked as a design engineer at Intel's Hudson, Mass., chipmaking plant when he was hired by AMD in June. Pani, however, didn't tell his Intel supervisors that he was resigning to join the competitor, and remained on Intel's payroll while he burned unused vacation time, The Associated Press reported. During a four-day stretch, Pani allegedly downloaded from Intel's computers in California more than a dozen confidential documents.

The information allegedly stolen from Intel included details about the company's processes for designing its latest generation of microprocessors, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported. The indictment alleges the documents were worth $1 billion in research and development costs.

Federal prosecutors say Pani planned to use the information at his new job at AMD, the newspaper reported. Pani, however, told investigators that the documents were for his wife, who is an Intel employee. AMD did not know about Pani's alleged theft and did not benefit from the information, prosecutors said.

Pani's lawyer, B. Bradford Bailey of Boston, told the Worcester Telegram that the indictment was not a surprise. "We knew it was coming. We will enter a plea of not guilty when an arraignment date is set, and he will vigorously contest the charges because he is innocent," the lawyer said.

In the third quarter, Intel accounted for 80% of the worldwide market for microprocessors and AMD 12%. Competition between the two companies is fierce, and design information is a closely guarded secret.

Study finds women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men

2008-11-02T15:17:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Wash your hands, folks, especially you ladies. A new study found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of bacteria than the researchers expected to find.

"One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between individuals, and also between hands on the same individual," said University of Colorado biochemistry assistant professor Rob Knight, a co-author of the paper.

"The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women," added lead researcher Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in Colorado's department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

The researchers aren't sure why women harbored a greater variety of bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to so with the acidity of the skin. Knight said men generally have more acidic skin than women.

Other possibilities are differences in sweat and oil gland production between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness or hormone production, he said.

Women also may have more bacteria living under the surface of the skin where they are not accessible to washing, Knight added.

Asked if guys should worry about holding hands with girls, Knight said: "I guess it depends on which girl."

He stressed that "the vast majority of the bacteria we have on our body are either harmless or beneficial ... the pathogens are a small minority."

The researchers took samples from the palms of 51 college students — that's 102 hands — and tested the samples using a new, highly detailed system for detecting bacteria DNA.

They identified 4,742 species of bacteria overall, only 5 of which were on every hand, they report on Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The average hand harbored 150 species of bacteria.

Not only did individuals have few types of bacteria in common, the left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17 percent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.

The differences between dominant and non-dominant hands were probably due to environmental conditions like oil production, salinity, moisture or variable environmental surfaces touched by either hand of an individual, Fierer said.

Knight said the researchers hope to repeat the experiment in other countries where different hands are assigned specific tasks.

While the researchers stressed the importance of regular hand washing, they also noted that washing did not eliminate bacteria.

"Either the bacterial colonies rapidly re-establish after hand washing, or washing (as practiced by the students included in this study) does not remove the majority of bacteria taxa found on the skin surface," the researchers said in their report.

While the tests could determine how many different types of bacteria were present, they could not count the total amount of bacteria on each hand.

The research was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

NASA chooses Nov. 14 launch for Endeavour

2008-10-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla: With a visit to the Hubble Space Telescope off until next spring at the earliest, NASA on Thursday chose Nov. 14 for its next space shuttle launch, a flight by Endeavour to the international space station.

The Hubble repair mission had been planned for this month, but was postponed until next year because of problems with the orbiting telescope. The telescope is beaming back pictures again, but the spare part needed to completely resolve the issue won't be ready to fly before May, officials said Thursday.

As Hubble managers were announcing the setback, shuttle officials finalized plans to launch Endeavour with enough household items to increase the size of the space station crew from three to six next year, hopefully around May or June.

Endeavour will deliver equipment for a new water reclamation system, as well as an extra kitchen, toilet and sleeping compartments.

During the 15-day flight, the astronauts also will conduct four spacewalks to clean and repair a solar wing rotating joint that has been jammed for a year and hindered energy production. And another astronaut will take up residence at the space station, replacing Gregory Chamitoff, who has been on board since June.

Liftoff would be at 7:55 p.m.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's space operations chief, said the only difference of opinion in the daylong review involved pump inspections in the shuttle main engines. This new inspection will be conducted in the future before the engines are installed, but there's no urgency for doing it before Endeavour's upcoming flight, he said.

Gerstenmaier said the Hubble repair mission could be inserted anywhere in the space shuttle flight lineup, and that it would have little if any impact on space station operations. Ten shuttle missions remain until the entire fleet is retired in 2010 to make way for a new rocketship.

IBM Launches Next-Generation Mainframe for Midsize Customers

2008-10-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a new mainframe to help midsize companies and customers in emerging markets jumpstart new application development efforts, consolidate IT server sprawl, and give qualified organizations a "pay-as-you-grow" financial platform to build the mainframe as the foundation of their new enterprise data center.

The IBM System z10 Business Class (z10 BC) mainframe was introduced today at press conferences in Johannesburg, South Africa; Zurich, Switzerland; and Singapore. Additionally, in support of clients' needs for attractive financing options, IBM Global Financing is now offering "Why Wait," a no-interest, no-payments program for 90 days deferral to support qualified customers acquiring the new z10 BC now through the end of 2008.

Designed as a powerful, entry-level version of the IBM System z10 Enterprise Class (z10 EC) mainframe announced earlier this year, the IBM z10 BC provides midsize clients with all the unique attributes of an IBM mainframe. For example, companies in emerging markets (such as South Africa and Singapore) or in hot industries (such as social networking or mobile commerce) -- can now afford IBM's flagship mainframe technology for under $100,000.

For customers seeking server consolidation options to cut costs, the IBM z10 BC delivers the capacity of up to 232 x86 servers, with 83% smaller footprint, up to 93% lower energy costs, and a much higher level of security, control and automation -- allowing for up to 100% utilization.

Clients can also look to the IBM z10 BC as one of the industry's most flexible architectures for today's newest business and consumer applications, which are often created on different operating systems and various programming languages. With up to 130 capacity settings for running permanent and temporary workloads such as application hosting or testing efforts, the IBM z10 BC can give administrators an upgradeable system to manage business growth. For peak seasons, administrators can temporarily increase the system's capacity for cost management. The IBM z10 BC also offers unique processors known as "specialty engines" that expand the use of the mainframe for popular SAP, Linux, Java applications, among others.

From a performance standpoint, the IBM z10 BC is nearly 40% faster, has over 50% more total capacity and nearly four times the maximum memory compared to its predecessor, the largest IBM z9 BC. Continuing with the lineage of the IBM System z10 EC, the new IBM z10 BC holds most of the same technology innovations as the EC model -- such as the Enterprise Quad Core z10 processor chip with hardware accelerators and cryptographic functions that are highly useful for commercial and financial applications.

For more general but critical workloads like email, the IBM z10 BC can support an incremental 1,000 e-mail users with the energy of a 100 watt light bulb.(4) Specifically, IT simply activates one Domino "specialty engine" for up to 7,500 users. More importantly, both IT managers and end users will welcome the mainframe's stellar availability and security benefits for seamless and fast email communications.

"Clients are continuing to invest in mainframe technology, as evidenced in IBM's Q308 earnings, as revenues for IBM System z mainframe server products increased 25 percent compared with the year-ago period, with double-digit growth in all geographies," said Anne Altman, general manager, IBM System z. "Now with the introduction of our new z10 business class mainframe, clients have an incredibly efficient consolidation platform that is smart, cool, and very affordable. There's no comparison when you consider the legendary reliability and security of System z.

Midsize Clients Embrace The New Mainframe

Today's news comes on the heels of IBM's recent midmarket findings from the IBM Global CEO Study, the largest study of 1,130 chief executives ever conducted across 40 countries. The study noted that nine out of 10 midmarket CEOs expect dramatic change, and 75% are changing business models to go global, drive growth and attract new customers. As a highly-efficient and flexible computing system, the IBM z10 BC is an ideal platform for growth and can easily scale to accommodate rapid expansion.

For new mainframe clients like Transzap, founded in 1999, the company needed a computing platform that would scale to support its operations without requiring additional monthly costs in extra hardware, software or human capital. For Transzap, the IBM mainframe brings technology planning and controlled power and energy allocation to its former "rack and stack" distributed server environment.

"Transzap operates Oildex, the energy industry's top ePayable system and digital data exchange. Our business and reputation rest on promising a fast, reliable and secure service to our clients," said Peter Flanagan, CEO of Transzap. "We're a small company but our transaction data volumes are growing upwards of 100 percent, annually. We couldn't trust our business to any competitive product other than the IBM System z."

For more than 40 years, Utah-based DHI Computing Service has been using IBM System z technology as the central means to process billions of electronic data records. With the guidance of IBM Business Partner Sirius Computer Solutions, who has been helping DHI for 10 years, DHI is now currently using the IBM System z10 business class mainframe running the z/VSE operating system and homegrown applications ranging from telecommunications to database technology.

"The IBM mainframe has been part of the DHI family for more than 40 years and we can't think of a more stable, faster technology platform anywhere in the world today," said Dirk Baum, CTO, DHI Computing Service, Inc. "When we looked at the new z10 Business Class mainframe, the processor speed was key for us -- we're getting all the enterprise class features scaled to a more attractive price point for our specific business. Scalability and speed combined with a proven technology platform -- that's the z10 Business Class and its perfect for our business needs."

Based in Switzerland, Osys is an Independent Software Vendor who has been working with IBM on developing applications to resell on IBM System z to clients for more than 20 years. Osys is itself an IBM System z mainframe customer, running Linux on z for its large mails and web server needs. Osys has the latest IBM mainframe offering, the IBM z10 business class (BC) mainframe and is currently testing and porting applications over to the new system.

"As a service provider for large customers in Switzerland, it is imperative that our System z specialists are highly skilled and adopt the latest innovative technology," said Gerard Luechinger, CEO, Osys AG. "We have had tremendous success with the IBM System z9 Business Class mainframe and expect even more success with the z10 BC. As a long-time IBM mainframe customer ourselves, we have been driving the mainframe business for more than twenty years because we believe that the technology platform is rock solid with all the best of breed qualities."

Mainframe Momentum Spurs Business Partner, System Integrator, and ISV Growth

Interest from business partners, system integrators and ISV's continues to grow in 2008 validating growth around the System z platform.

IBM today announced next generation information infrastructure offerings DS8000 disk storage and TS7700 tape storage, to work in conjunction with the new IBM System z10 Business Class mainframe, helping customers simplify their storage infrastructures, support business continuity, safeguard their information and extract more value from their System z environments. More information can be found here: http://www.ibm.com/systems/storage/news/press/20081021.html.

IBM Global Financing Available For Clients

IBM Global Financing now offers "Why Wait," a no interest no payments program for 90 days deferral plan to support eligible customers acquiring the new IBM System z10 BC now through the end of 2008. The promotion financing structure is a 36 month fair market value lease. Customers installing the new server under the promotion terms make no payments for 90 days, and then make 36 even monthly payments (33 payments in some countries). Customers must be credit qualified, lease the eligible equipment with IGF for the promotional term and structure, and install the product in participating countries by Dec 31, 2008, See your local IGF representative for details or visit: http://www.ibm.com/financing/us/whywait. For international details, visit http://www.ibm.com/financing/whywait.

Novell and Red Hat Offers Now Available

For customers interested in additional IBM z10 BC "specials," available immediately until December 31, 2009 -- from Novell Inc. -- customers can get an IBM z10 BC Linux promotional price for one Free SUSE Self Study Kit per registered customer ($1095 Retail Value) and 40% discount to IBM and BP's off current SLES pricing. Details are available at http://www.novell.com/partners/ibm/mainframe.

Red Hat Inc., the leading provider of open source solutions, has teamed with IBM through the Linux-on-Mainframe Program since May 2007 to expand the growth of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM System z mainframes. Red Hat is offering a compelling IBM z10 BC Linux promotional 50% price reduction that is available immediately through June 30, 2009. For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux on IBM z10, visit http://www.redhat.com/rhel/server/mainframe/promo.

About IBM

For more information on the IBM System z10 Business Class or z10 Enterprise Class mainframes, please visit http://www.ibm.com/mainframe.

To connect with professors, clients and students who work with the mainframe as the future of the data center, please visit the System z's Facebook page http://www.facebook.com keyword: systemz mainframe.

To read the latest industry blog on the world of the mainframe, visit http://www.mainframe.typepad.com/.

Footnotes:

[1] All performance information was determined by IBM in a controlled environment. Actual results may vary. Performance information is based on customer studies.

[2] Specialty engines and up to 16 GB memory per specialty engine on z10 BC are priced at least 50% less than on z9 BC. ICF excluded.

[3] The z10 BC offers up to 120GB of available real memory per server -- nearly 2 times the maximum memory available on z9 BC. In June 2009, memory options up to 248GB is planned to be available providing nearly four times the available memory of the z9 BC.

[4] Source: September 2008 Domino R8.5 64 Bit and Linux on System z Benchmark conducted at Washington System Center

India launches Chandrayaan-I successfully

2008-10-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

India has successfully launched a lunar satellite which will conduct a two-year mission to map the Moon.

The Chandrayaan-I lifted off from the Indian spaceport in Sriharikota on a domestically produced PSLV-C11 rocket. Once in orbit it will orient itself and begin the sustained burn needed to get into lunar orbit.

"Chandrayaan-1 is India's first spacecraft mission beyond Earth's orbit. It aims to further expand our knowledge about the Moon," said the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

"With well-defined objectives, Chandrayaan-1 intends to put an unmanned spacecraft into an orbit around the Moon and to perform remote sensing of our nearest celestial neighbour for about two years using 11 scientific instruments built in India and five other countries."

India is joining the Asian space race, as the satellite will join those of China and Japan orbiting the Moon. The country has said it wants to put men on the Moon in the next decade.

Part of the Indian mission will include attempts to locate deposits of Helium 3, which is being touted as the fuel for a new generation of fusion reactors.

NASA Returns to The Moon With Instruments on Indian Spacecraft

2008-10-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

Two NASA instruments to map the lunar surface will launch on India's maiden moon voyage. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper will assess mineral resources, and the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar, or Mini-SAR, will map the polar regions and look for ice deposits. The Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, is scheduled to launch its robotic Chandrayaan-1 on Oct. 22 from Sriharikota, India.

Data from the two instruments will contribute to NASA's increased understanding of the lunar environment as it implements the nation's space exploration policy, which calls for robotic and human missions to the moon.

"The opportunity to fly NASA instruments on Chandrayaan-1 undoubtedly will lead to important scientific discoveries," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said. "This exciting collaboration represents an important next step in what we hope to be a long and mutually beneficial relationship with India in future civil space exploration."

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer that will provide the first map of the entire lunar surface at high spatial and spectral resolution, revealing the minerals that make up the moon's surface. Scientists will use this information to answer questions about the moon's origin and geological development, as well as the evolution of terrestrial planets in the early solar system. The map also may be used by astronauts to locate resources, possibly including water, that can support exploration of the moon and beyond.

The Mini-SAR is a small imaging radar that will map the permanently shadowed lunar polar regions, including large areas never visible from Earth. The Mini-SAR data will be used to determine the location and distribution of water ice deposits on the moon. Data from the instrument will help scientists learn about the history and nature of objects hitting the moon, and the processes that throw material from the outer solar system into the inner planets.

The spacecraft also will carry four instruments and a small lunar impactor provided by ISRO, and four instruments from Europe. ISRO will launch the vehicle into a lunar polar orbit for a two-year mission.

In addition to the two science instruments, NASA will provide space communications support to Chandrayaan-1. The primary location for the NASA ground tracking station will be at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

For more information about Chandrayaan-1, visit:

http://www.isro.org/Chandrayaan

IBM Builds a Bluehouse in the Cloud

2008-10-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

Quick, everyone to the cloud.

IBM today unveiled a services lineup to help businesses of all stripes adopt cloud computing as a way to reach workforces and business partners outside the bounds of the traditional office.

One of the most prominent themes is controlling costs -- a very touchy topic in this economy -- by going the software as a service (SaaS) route. Another is a shortage of IT personnel and resources, especially in smaller enterprises.

It is against this backdrop that the company today announced the free open beta of Bluehouse.

The workforce collaboration service is imbued with social networking features and is a place (figuratively speaking) where workers can store and share documents; create visualizations from raw sets of data; chat; or host or attend online meetings via a Web browser. Taking a cue from popular social networking sites, much of the functionality revolves around contacts or profiles. From there, workforces and business partners can form groups and interact in an environment with the interconnectedness and real-time messaging of social networks but in a business setting.

Along the same lines, IBM is also offering the web meeting platform Lotus Sametime Unyte. On the project management side of the coin is Telelogic Focal Point.

Apart from the collaboration aspect, IBM is targeting other areas like Web site privacy and compliance in the form of services like IBM Rational Policy Tester OnDemand and Web application security via IBM Rational AppScan OnDemand. Secure online backup is a natural, and the company is putting its Arsenal Digital Solutions acquisition to work with Onsite Data Protection and Remote Data Protection.

A robust lineup to be sure, but will businesses bite?

IBM is betting they will by seeding its efforts with programs to get ISVs on board. One is the establishment the SaaS Enablement Network with members like Terremark, Rackforce, and iTricity in tow and with the goal of driving interoperability and open standards.

Tivoli also plays a role by providing a technological foundation for web services providers. According to the company, these include Request-Driven Provisioning, Dynamic Workload Management, Usage and Accounting and Security features in IBM's systems and infrastructure management software.

Also in the cards are online resources, which include code and whitepapers, filled with IBM technical know-how on building and maintaining web services. Lastly, IBM is sweetening the deal by giving business partners free access to Lotus Sametime Unyte in addition to marketing assistance.

Holographic television to become reality

2008-10-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Picture this: you're sat down for the Football World Cup final, or a long-awaited sequel to the "Sex and the City" movie and you're watching all the action unfold in 3-D on your coffee table.

The future of television? This image is an impression of what 3D holographic television may look like.

It sounds a lot like a wacky dream, but don't be surprised if within our lifetime you find yourself discarding your plasma and LCD sets in exchange for a holographic 3-D television that can put Cristiano Ronaldo in your living room or bring you face-to-face with life-sized versions of your gaming heroes.

The reason for renewed optimism in three-dimensional technology is a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems made earlier this year by researchers at the University of Arizona.

Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university's Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.

"This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images," he said.

The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

To create television sets the images would need to be changing multiple times each second -- but Peyghambarian is very optimistic this can happen.

He said the University of Arizona team, which is now ten-strong, has been working on advancing hologram technology since 1990 -- so this is a major step forward. He believes that much of the difficulty in creating a holographic set has now been overcome.

"It took us a while to make that first breakthrough, but as soon as you have the first element of it working the rest often comes more rapidly," he said. "What we are doing now is trying to make the model better. What we showed is just one color, what we are doing now is trying to use three colors. The original display was four inches by four inches and now we're going for something at least as big as a computer screen."

There are no more great barriers to overcome now, he said.

The breakthrough has made some long-time researchers of the technology believe that it could now come to fruition.

Tung H. Jeong, a retired physics professor at Lake Forest College outside Chicago who had studied holography since the 1960s told NJ.com; "When we start talking about erasable and rewritable holograms, we are moving toward the possibility of holographic TV ... It has now been shown that physically, it's possible."

And what might these holographic televisions look like?

According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.

So, if this project is realized, you really could have a football match on your coffee table, or horror-movie villains jumping out of your wall.

Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.

However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian.

Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.

"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.

Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic that more resources will be channeled into developing this technology more quickly.

The Japanese Government is pushing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual-reality television, and the country's Communications Ministry is aiming at having such technology available by 2020.

Peyghambarian said there are no major sponsors of the technology at present, but as the breakthroughs continued, he hopes that will change.

Even if no major electronics company commit themselves, there is hope that backers could come from outside of the consumer electronics industry, he said.

"It could have some other applications. In training it's useful to show people three-dimensional displays. Also it would be good to show things in 3-D for defense command and control and for surgery," he said.

Hollywood Aims To Block RealNetworks' DVD Software

2008-10-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) ― Hollywood's six major movie studios on Tuesday sued RealNetworks Inc. to prevent it from distributing DVD copying software that they said would allow consumers to "rent, rip and return" movies or even copy friends' DVD collections outright.

The studios stand to lose key revenue from the sale of DVDs, estimated by Adams Media Research at $15 billion in the U.S. this year, if consumers stop buying DVDs and instead copy rental discs from outlets like Netflix and Blockbuster.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges RealNetworks' RealDVD program, which launched Tuesday, illegally bypasses the copyright protection built into DVDs.

"The incentive for the consumer is obvious and all but overwhelming," the studios said in a request for a temporary restraining order. "'Why,' he or she may ask, 'should I pay $18.50 to purchase a DVD when I can rent it for $3.25 and make a permanent copy?'"

For $30, consumers can buy RealDVD and use it to copy DVDs to computers or portable hard drives, though the program prevents them from transferring the files to other users. The maker calls RealDVD "100 percent legal" on its Web site.

"This is not a product that enables Internet piracy," said Bob Kimball, general counsel for RealNetworks.

Real has said the software enables DVDs to be copied onto up to five computers — with the purchase of up to four extra program licenses for $20 each — and does not alter the discs' encryption technology meant to prevent wide-scale piracy.

The software locks the copy to the hard drive where it is copied and to the program it was copied with, Kimball said, and he asserted that copying one's personal collection of DVDs amounts to "fair use" allowed by law.

Kimball said the company discourages using the program to rip rental DVDs, but he acknowledged there's nothing to prevent consumers from doing that.

"We are very open to coming up with solutions to that problem that will require industry participation," he said.

The studios had asked the company not to launch the product last week.

The studios argued that the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent technology that prevents copying without the express permission of the copyright holders.

In a motion for a restraining order, the studios argued that a ruling by a California state court last year in favor of a company that sells entertainment centers that allow DVD copying is irrelevant to their case.

The plaintiffs in the suit against RealNetworks include Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures, News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co.'s Universal, The Walt Disney Co.'s Disney studio, and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros.

Hadron Collider undergoing repairs

2008-09-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

Scientists will have to wait until spring to use the world's largest particle collider for groundbreaking research because previously announced repairs will run into the normal Swiss winter shutdown, the operators said.

Experts have been down into the 27 km tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider to see what they could determine about the damage caused last Friday when an electrical connection between two magnets apparently melted, said James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

But they will still have to wait several weeks before the temperature can be raised from near absolute zero so that they can go inside the equipment to examine the extent of the damage, Gillies said.

"They're going to have to open up and really investigate what went on there," Gillies said. "So that's going to be two or three weeks before we can put out something that we're sure of."

It is clear that it is going to take at least two months for the whole procedure, and for the equipment to be re-chilled to take advantage of "superconducting" - operating without resistance where it is colder than outer space.

"We are not going to be done with this before the winter shutdown, so there will be no more beam in the LHC this year," Gillies said.

"The winter shutdown will go according to schedule, which means that we start up the accelerator complex in the spring months."

Only then will the Large Hadron Collider be able to collide protons, revealing how the tiniest particles were first created after the "big bang," which many theorise was the massive explosion that formed the stars, planets and everything.

CERN has previously said the meltdown released a large amount of liquid helium into the tunnel.

The laboratory usually shuts down in mid-November and resumes at the end of March or early April so that it can save electricity during the winter months of high demand for power.

After that the operators will go through the process of restarting the "accelerator chain" which prepares the beams of protons to be fired through the machine to make possible the collisions that physicists use to study the makeup of matter and the universe.

That, said Gillies, "is something that we do every year and it's something we have a lot of experience in doing, so there's no reason to think that would not go rather quickly. I suspect that the priority for the restart next year will be to get LHC beams as quickly as possible."

The new collider, launched with great fanfare on September 10, had an auspicious beginning, firing beams of protons from the nuclei of atoms first at the speed of light in a clockwise direction though a fire-hose-sized tube in the tunnel, then through the counterclockwise tube.

Then a transformer failed about 36 hours after dawn. That was relatively easy to fix because it was outside the cold zone. The machine was ready to go again when the electrical fault occurred.

Scientists expected teething problems in getting the extremely complex machine running at full power, but the controlled, warm up-cool down procedure added extra time to repair what would have been fixed fairly quickly on a smaller, room temperature machine.

Scientists hope the powerful Large Hadron Collider will reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time.

They could also find evidence of a hypothetical particle - the Higgs boson - which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Scientists once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but experiments have shown that protons and neutrons are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.

Some sceptics have expressed fears that the high-energy collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes - subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and leading physicists dismiss the fears and maintain the project is safe.

Sony Ericsson announces launch dates for Xperia™ X1

2008-09-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

London, UK – 10 September 2008 – Sony Ericsson today announces 30 September 2008 as the official launch date for the highly anticipated Xperia™ X1 – initially available to consumers in the UK, Germany and Sweden. The handset will be available in other markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America throughout Q4 2008.

APAC

Indonesia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam

Western Europe

Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Portugal

Central Europe

Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic

Middle East

UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait

Africa

South Africa

Latin America

Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia

Availability dates for North America, China, Australia and Russia along with other countries not mentioned above will be announced by local markets in the coming months.

Webcast
To start the countdown to the launch of Xperia™ X1, Sony Ericsson will host a live global webcast on September 15 at 13:00 GMT + 1, offering viewers the first in-depth demonstration of the handset. The web cast will also premiere the first episode of an alternative reality thriller Johnny X. To register to view the web cast and Q&A session with Xperia™ X1 Senior Product Manager Magnus J Andersson, please visit: www.sonyericsson.com/premiere.

“We are extremely pleased with the innovation and new user experience we have created for consumers on the Xperia™ X1,” said Rikko Sakaguchi CVP and Head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson. “The in-depth demonstration on the web cast will showcase how this handset is truly unique. The nine panel eco system puts the user in total control of the primary experiences available on the phone and allows consumers to personalise the panel interface to suit their needs and lifestyle. The Xperia™ X1 has the highest quality screen on the market, four-way navigation keys and optical joy stick to give a stressless browsing experience and, with its super fast processor and network speed the Xperia™ X1 really bridges the gap between personal, entertainment and work mobile needs.”

Johnny X Alternative Reality Thriller
Johnny X is about a young man with amnesia desperately piecing together his identity. The webisodic thriller comprises of nine episodes, created to demonstrate the rich, immersive and experiential elements of the Xperia™ X1.

The storyline follows Johnny X on his mission to rediscover his identity. As he finds out more about his lost life in a race against time, he updates his Xperia™ X1 with new content to piece together his personality and identity, reflecting how the phone can be personalized to suit users’ individual lifestyle and needs. Will Johnny X find out who he really is before it’s too late?

“Producing the Johnny X thriller has given us an engaging platform to demonstrate all the capabilities and features a user can experience with the Xperia™ X1 phone,” said Lennard Hoornik, Head of Marketing at Sony Ericsson. “The panel interface is a perfect way to reflect your personality and can be tailored and changed to suit your exact needs at any given time. No two Xperia™ X1 will ever have the same combination of panels on the phone; we are all individuals and deserve to have a phone that reflects that. ”

Over a three week period, one new episode of Johnny X will be posted online at www.sonyericsson.com/Johnnyx every Monday, Wednesday and Friday starting on Monday, September 22. Check out the trailer for the series at www.whoisjohnny-x.com

Global Launch
The official global launch of the Xperia™ X1 will take place at Tent London as part of London Design Week between September 18 – 21st. Journalists are invited to attend the official Tent London opening party on Friday evening 19 September 2008 to see the Xperia™ X1 and meet with Sony Ericsson spokespeople. To register, please email: sonyericsson@bm.com

Tent London is one of the most comprehensive and diverse design events of the year. It is a multi-disciplinary event in an exciting location that will appeal equally to designers, media and consumers - embracing art to architecture, vintage to contemporary and raw talent to established trend-setters.

Open to general public from 18-21st September, from 10am, with admission prices starting at:

Public & Students £7.50 in advance £10.00 on the door
Child (under 16) £5.00
Child (under 5) FREE

For advance ticket purchases, visit: www.tentlondon.co.uk
Address: Circa at Tent London, The Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, E1

Xperia™
The Xperia™ X1 is the first product under Sony Ericsson’s new premium sub-brand Xperia™. Designed to meet consumers’ needs for a converged entertainment and mobile web communication experience, the Xperia™ X1 is an extremely stylish handset encased in a real stainless steel body, with a striking arc-slider design, supported by a powerful multimedia ecosystem.

Consumers can access a world of experiences by tapping on one of the unique customisable panels on the three-inch high resolution touch-widescreen. Windows Mobile® lets you choose from a dynamic range of activities anytime and anywhere; from enjoying your music, watching a video, checking email, shopping online or working with Windows Mobile Office on-the-move. The full QWERTY keyboard and quality metal casing completes this premium handset. For more information please visit: www.sonyericsson.com/x1

About Sony Ericsson

Sony Ericsson is a top global industry player with sales of over 100 million phones in 2007. Diversity is one of the core strengths of the company, with operations in over 80 countries including manufacturing in China and R&D sites in China, Europe, India, Japan and North America. Sony Ericsson was established as a 50:50 joint venture by Sony and Ericsson in October 2001, with global corporate functions located in London.

Sony Ericsson XperiaTM X1 – At A Glance

Camera

Auto focus
3.2 megapixel camera
Photo light
Video recording

Music

Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
Media player
Music tones
Windows Media Player™ Mobile
3D games
FM radio
Java
Video streaming
Video viewing

Internet

Internet Explorer Mobile
Opera 9.5 browser
RSS feeds

Communication and Messaging

Polyphonic ringtones
Speakerphone
Vibrating alert
Video calling
Email
Picture messaging (MMS)
Predictive text input
Text messaging (SMS)

Design

Xperia™ panels
Optical Joystick navigation
Navigation key
Picture wallpaper
Touch navigation

Organiser

Alarm clock
Calculator
Calendar
Document editors
Document readers
Flight mode
Handwriting recognition
Notes
Phone book
Tasks
Touchscreen

Connectivity

aGPS
Bluetooth™ technology
Modem
Synchronisation
USB support
WLAN

Windows® Mobile® Operating System 6.1

Microsoft® Outlook Mobile: email, contacts, calendar, tasks
Microsoft® Office Mobile: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
Internet Explorer® Mobile
Windows Media Player™ Mobile
Windows Live™
Exchange ActiveSync®
Utility Applications: file explorer, calculator, pictures & video, notes

Facts and Figures

Size: 110 x 53 x 16.7 mm
Weight: 158 grams

Available colours: Solid Black and Steel Silver

Main screen: 65,536 color TFT
Resolution: 800 X 480 pixels
Size: 3 inches

Memory
Phone memory: up to 400 MB
microSD™ memory card support

Availability and Versions
Networks

UMTS 900/1900/2100
UMTS 850/1900/2100
EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
HSUPA/HSDPA

Legal Information
1) Facts and features may vary depending on local variant.
2) Talk and standby times are affected by network preferences; type of SIM card, connected accessories and various activities e.g. games. Kit contents and color options may differ from market to market. The full range of accessories may not be available in every market.

Tags: Sony Ericsson Xperia™ X1, launch dates for Xperia™ X1, Sony Ericsson, Xperia™ X1

HP EliteBook 6930p review

2008-09-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

For mobile pros, skimping on a laptop purchase could certainly prove penny wise and pound-foolish. Budget notebook PCs are fine if you only occasionally tote the machine in a padded bag, but they lack the durable construction and security features offered by a higher-end model aimed at road warriors. That could spell disaster if your machine takes a hit—or takes a walk—when you’re traveling.

So if you spend most of the time out of the office, you need a notebook like the HP EliteBook 6930p. This business-rugged machine has features to keep its components safe from knocks, as well as hardware and software security measures to keep your data secure.

The impressive HP EliteBook 6930p begs to be on a road warrior's short list.

Sleek, Handsome Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the EliteBook 6930p is its anodized aluminum skin. The brushed metal looks tasteful, gives the 4.7-pound machine a solid feel, and it conveys a professional, polished air to clients. Vanity aside, the aluminum cladding also protects the notebook’s 14.1-inch screen better than the typical plastic lid. The aqua LEDs used sparingly around the unit add to the machine’s modern feel.

For added strength, HP employs lightweight magnesium alloy for the chassis, which makes the notebook less prone to bending and thus better protects interior components. The hard drive's accelerometer senses if the machine falls or bounces (as during turbulence on a flight) and parks the hard drive heads. This keeps the heads from impacting the drive surface, avoiding potential data loss.

Add in a spill-resistant keyboard that can help the machine withstand a few ounces of errant liquid, and you have a machine that is as tough as it is handsome. In fact, HP notes that the EliteBook 6930p meets Military Standard 810F for drops from 30 inches, vibration, dust, high and low temperature and humidity.

Peace of Mind

The EliteBook 6930p also has the latest security features to keep your data safe. You can set the machine so that it requires a password, a swipe of your fingerprint, or both before it will boot or resume to Windows. You can also use the included Privacy Manager utility to automatically encrypt e-mail and instant messages.

HP has also included its File Sanitizer applet to let you be sure that deleted files are truly and completely deleted. When you delete a file In Windows, its name is removed from the hard drive directory and its space is made available for new files. But until a new file is actually written in that space—and with today’s large hard drives, that could be a while—the deleted file continues to reside on the hard drive and can be recovered. File Sanitizer overwrites a deleted file up to seven times with random data, permanently expunging the file.

Helpful Software

Beyond the security utilities, HP has included other thoughtful software that makes your life a little easier, especially if you don’t have a dedicated IT department. Press the “i” icon above the keyboard to launch the HP Info Center. Here you’ll find links to a host of useful applets, including the

HP Connection Manager and HP Wireless Assistant for easily setting up network connections
HP ProtectTools Security Manager to help you set backup and recovery options, fingerprint authentication, data encryption, passwords and more
Presto BizCard electronic Rolodex

Another button above the keyboard launches the Presentation Settings utility to help you quickly set the machine for use with a projector or other external display. In addition to the components that come with the computer’s Windows Vista Business operating system (you can also opt for Windows XP), HP includes

Roxio Creator Business for creating CDs and DVDs
InterVideo WinDVD for plying DVDs
PDF Complete for creating documents in that format

A Pleasure to Use

In our hands-on evaluation, the EliteBook 6930p proved a pleasure to use. Its full-size keyboard has a crisp feel ideal for long bouts of typing, and HP has included both a pointing stick nestled in the keyboard and a touchpad below. Because of the two sets of mouse buttons, the touchpad is a tad smaller than usual on a machine this size, but it’s still usable. Above the keyboard you’ll find a touch-sensitive strip for controlling the volume for the notebook's stereo speakers.

The brushed-aluminum skin on the HP EliteBook 6930p feels great, looks even better and adds a layer of strength.

The EliteBook 6930p uses a 14.1-inch widescreen LCD, and the high-resolution (1440x900 pixels) panel is bright and exceedingly crisp. You can even read tiny on-screen text, although the high resolution means default text sizes on some Web sites and in Windows’ menus (like the All Programs list) can be pretty small. The LCD delivered vibrant colors in Windows apps, as well as good motion reproduction for video.

Above the screen you’ll find an integrated Webcam, ideal for video chat, video e-mail and videoconferencing applications. HP’s easy-to-use utility lets you set the camera’s resolution to eight different levels ranging from 160x120 (good for grabbing a tiny snapshot of yourself to append to your e-mail signature line) all the way up to 1600x1200 (for taking a photo as good as a 2-megapixel camera might). At the default 640x480 resolution, the camera showed good color accuracy, though lots of motion resulted in lots of blur. Icons at the bottom of the utility let you take a still picture, capture video or capture audio only.

Choose Your Hardware

The EliteBook 6930p has all the requisite ports and connectors, including three USB ports, a memory card reader, a FireWire connector, LAN and modem jacks and an ExpressCard/54 slot. It includes 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, and the platform supports the addition of an integrated wireless broadband module to let you connect to the leading high-speed 3G cellular data networks.

Starting at $1,199, the base configuration includes an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor (running at 2.26-GHz), 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chip and a multi-format DVD burner. Those components have more than enough power to run even demanding business applications without breaking a sweat. If you need even more speed, the top EliteBook 6930p configuration comes with a 2.4GHz processor and dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics.

HP backs the EliteBook 6930p with a generous three-year warranty on parts and labor and toll-free 24/7 tech support. That alone goes a long way to making the few hundred extra dollars you’ll spend on an EliteBook worth it compared to a budget laptop. Figure in the powerful components, extra security and durability features plus the great looks, and the machine begs to be on your short list.

What's the use of old cell phones?

2008-09-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Cell phone users typically get new handsets every 18 to 24 months. What do they do with the old devices? Sometimes they're retired to desk drawers, never to be seen again. Even worse, sometimes they end up in landfills, bleeding toxins into the environment. Options for recycling old handsets exist. Sometimes they're disassembled for parts and scrap, other times they're sold in foreign markets.

Pity that old cell phone languishing in a drawer. It's missing out on a fascinating afterlife.

Most discarded phones in the U.S. are simply forgotten amid household clutter. A smaller number of handsets make it to a collection center for recycling or a reselling facility. For those phones, their fates can vary from being sold to consumers in developing countries to being melted down for metals like gold and copper.

But getting more consumers to think about their old phones the way they look at an empty soft drink can, as a product to be recycled, isn't so easy.

Low Recycling Rate

According to industry estimates, nearly 200 million cell phones will be sold in the U.S. this year. A large number of these buyers are already wireless subscribers with handsets, so more than 100 million phones will be retired. If improperly dumped in a landfill, they can release toxic materials from their batteries, small fluorescent lights and other parts.

These handsets also represent a lost opportunity, because discarded phones often are still functional, and parts of non-working ones are reusable. Persuading consumers to recycle their phones is part of a larger "e-waste" problem that environmental activists, governments and companies are trying to address as they grapple with a tide of unwanted consumer electronics.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the U.S. cell phone recycling rate at 10 percent, a figure that's been flat for the last couple of years. In contrast, 2006 data show that American households recycled 51.6 percent of their paper and 45.1 percent of their aluminum cans.

Despite industry-sponsored collection programs, "most consumers still do not know where or how they can recycle their cell phone," said EPA spokesperson Latisha Petteway. "Most people hang on to their old cell phones thinking they may use them again. ... [But] the result is that many people end up with an unused cell phone that could be recycled sitting in a drawer."

In the U.S., consumers tend to replace their handsets every 18 months or two years, partly because the industry offers upgrade incentives and also because cell phones have become fashion accessories that can quickly lose their cachet. The reality is that with a little refurbishing, many phones can last another few years beyond their initial use.

"The more important issue with e-waste is resource conservation," said Jennifer Bemisderfer, a spokesperson for the Consumer Electronics Association. "Electronics contain a lot of reusable, valuable raw materials that are a benefit to everyone."

New Life Overseas

ReCellular, a Michigan-based reseller and recycler of mobile phones, expects to process more than 6 million handsets this year, said Vice President Mike Newman. That's double the 2007 amount, "but it's nowhere near where it could be."

ReCellular sends just under half of the handsets it receives to be recycled for materials. The others are resold in their current condition or passed on to refurbishing companies.

Discarded U.S. phones are often sold in overseas markets where consumers might not be able to afford a new handset. Colorado-based Collective Good auctions about 55 percent of the 8,000 to 10,000 phones it receives every month to refurbishers and resellers, some of which sell the used handsets abroad.

The chain of players is long and murky, and CollectiveGood President Seth Heine acknowledges that it's a "challenge for us to find out where the phones go." But he maintains that for the same price as a basic handset produced for developing markets by companies like Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) , consumers in those countries can buy a used American cell phone with more-advanced features.

Chewed Up, Spat Out, Recycled

Those in the e-recycling business say some phones are diverted to smaller, overseas scrap operations with unsafe labor conditions and improper disposal practices. ReCellular gets "calls from people every day who want to buy our scrap," Newman said, adding that high prices for such commodities as gold have prompted increased interest in electronic waste. "You can bet it's someone who wants to send it over to China. But we're in the business of reuse first."

CollectiveGood sends its end-of-life handsets to Umicore, a Belgian company that reclaims metals from electronics. ReCellular ships its obsolete phones to Sims Recycling Solutions, an Australian conglomerate with facilities in West Chicago and Franklin Park.

The local Sims plants process about 200,000 pounds of cell phones every year. There are between four and six phones in a pound, and each pound can fetch US$2-$3 in reclaimed precious metals at current prices. Still, cell phones make up a minute portion of the 35 million pounds of electronics -- everything from TVs to bulky mainframe computers -- that the Chicago-area Sims facilities process annually.

Amanda Hale, Sims' West Chicago-based vice president of marketing, even recalls a shipment of MRI machines that had to be dismantled with blowtorches.

At West Chicago, smaller electronics such as cell phones and computer monitors are fed through a shredder that reduces the devices into tangles of copper wire and paint-chip-size pieces of aluminum and steel. The metals are later blended into alloys and sold. Bulkier items go through a much larger shredder that chomps up electronics in three stages, resulting in the same colossal piles of metal bits.

Hale said awareness of electronic recycling needs to be higher. The company will run advertisements in advance of the digital TV transition in February, encouraging consumers who are getting rid of their analog sets to bring them in for safe disposal.

CollectiveGood lets people who donate phones choose a charity to receive proceeds from the recycled handset. There are other programs, such as Verizon Wireless HopeLine initiative, that use proceeds from the sale of refurbished handsets to provide phones and minutes to victims of domestic violence.

Heine of CollectiveGood also runs a program that pays consumers for their old phones.

"Our mission is to protect the environment," he said. "You can recycle your phones for love or for money, and we have a little mousetrap for each of them."

Tags: mobile phone, old cell phone, use of old cell phone

iPod nano 4G original photo and details

2008-09-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

MacNN can confirm the existence of the fourth-generation iPod nano and has obtained a verified authentic photo of the Apple music player. The device exactly matches claims by Digg founder Kevin Rose of a tall, tapered design and is enclosed in wrap-around aluminum, as with the second-generation model.

It also has the same offset Dock Connector placement of the 2006 version and marks the return of at least one color that had previously disappeared from the iPod lineup: the example shown to MacNN comes in the same metallic orange as the early 2007 iPod shuffle update.

Other colors will be more vibrant than the pale hues from the third-generation nano, according to the sources. Similar packaging to earlier low-end iPods will also accompany the nano and are visible in the shot.

Most other details of the device are unknown, though people familiar with the update say the new player will be shipping as of next week, likely almost immediately after the "Let's Rock" event, and will be exempt from the last week of the back-to-school promo that provides a free iPod along with the purchase of a Mac.

Most observers expect Apple to maintain similar pricing to the outgoing models but double capacity to 16GB in high-end trim. (Note: image deliberately obscured)

ESA spacecraft completes flyby of Steins asteroid

2008-09-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

DARMSTADT, Germany: A deep space probe launched by the European Space Agency successfully completed a flyby of an asteroid millions of miles from earth on Friday.

Rosetta rendezvoused with the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867 — currently in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter — just after 8:45 p.m. (1845 GMT) Friday at a distance of just less than 500 miles (805 kilometers).

As planned, the spacecraft lost signal for about an hour and a half, as engineers turned it away from the sun and because the craft was moving too fast for its antennae to transmit any signal.

At around 10:14 p.m (2014 GMT), the craft resumed signal transmission to the cheers of ESA engineers and technicians.

"We're extremely happy that it worked," said the mission's manager Gerhard Schwehm, sipping a glass of champagne after the announcement from the control room.

"It's a big relief. People can relax a bit now and everything seems fine."

The images and data from the deep space craft — which was launched in March 2004 from French Guyana, and is 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) from Earth — have begun beaming back to the earth.

Schwehm said the agency would work to get the data and images processed as soon as possible, but said there was a minor glitch.

He said the data must first be sent to antenna stations far away from Europe because of signal issues created by the present position of the satellite and the curvature of the earth.

One of those stations, a NASA laboratory in Goldstone, California was having issues cooling one of its antennae Friday, and was forced to switch the ESA project to another of its antennae.

That switch would delay the analysis of some of the data until 1 a.m. German time (2300 GMT), but Schwehm said that probably wouldn't affect the release of the images to the world on Saturday.

The other antenna station where Rosetta data is streaming is in New Norcia, near Perth, Australia.

"The operation went very well," said Paolo Ferri, the head of the solar and planetary missions division and Rosetta flight operations director in a short speech after the announcement.

"The spacecraft is in exactly the condition we expected, which is good. All indications are that everything was super successful."

The timing of the flyby ensured the asteroid would be illuminated by the sun, making it likely the transmitted images will be clear and sharp. Experts will parse the data from the 3-mile (4.6 kilometer)-diameter irregularly shaped asteroid for keys that could help unlock some of the mysteries of the creation of the solar system.

"Dead rocks can say a lot," Schwehm said.

Astronomers have had to work with limited data from brief flybys, such as when ESA's Giotto probe swept by Halley's Comet in 1986, photographing long canyons, broad craters and 3,000-foot hills.

Steins is Rosetta's first scientific target as it makes its incursion into the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter en route to its destination, the comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is scheduled for 2014. Between now and then it will do some gravitational experiments and then go into a hibernation, ESA said.

The European Space Agency is supported by 17 countries, including Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. It cooperates with the NASA, the European Union, European national space agencies and international partners. It's expected that the ESA will become the space agency of the EU in the near future.

Dell now selling XP Home ultra-light laptop

2008-09-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

Dell Thursday started selling a mini-notebook with Microsoft's Windows XP Home preinstalled, the first time that the world's largest computer maker has had a PC to sell with that operating system since Microsoft retired XP from general service in June.

The 2.28-pound Inspiron Mini 9 starts at $399 when equipped with XP Home, and sports an 8.9-inch display, 512MB of memory, an 8GB solid-state drive (SSD) composed of flash RAM and 802.11g wireless capability. A pricier $499 configuration boosts memory to 1GB and the SSD to 16GB.

Dell is also selling a $349 model with 512MB of memory and a 4GB SSD that comes with Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, in place of Windows XP.

All Mini 9 configurations are powered by a 1.6GHz Atom processor that Intel debuted in early June.

The Inspiron Mini 9 is Dell's first system to pack Windows XP Home since June, when the Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker yanked the operating system from its lines. Microsoft had set June 30 as the retirement deadline for Windows XP -- it would stop shipping copies to large computer manufacturers and cease selling to retail -- and Dell complied by ending sales June 26.

However, in early April Microsoft announced that it would let makers of small, inexpensive laptops -- which it labeled as ULCPCs, short for "ultra-low-cost PCs," a name that never stuck -- install XP Home through June 2010, possibly longer.

At the time, Microsoft maintained that it offered the loophole not to stymie Linux, which was the only available OS for the tiny, cheap computer, but because users and hardware vendors alike had demanded XP.

"One thing we've heard loud and clear, from both our customers and our partners, is the desire for Windows on this new class of devices," said Michael Dix, general manager of Windows client product management, in a Q&A posted on Microsoft's Web site.

Dell and other big-brand computer sellers, including Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, have continued to preinstall Windows XP Professional on business-oriented machines by taking advantage of Windows Vista's downgrade rights. According to data from PC metrics vendor Devil Mountain Software, a third of new PCs are downgraded from Vista to XP Professional, either at the factory or by users after they buy.

The Inspiron Mini 9 can be purchased from Dell's online store. Dell is also running a special beginning Friday for U.S. customers only; people who purchase a Studio 15, XPS M1530 or XPS M1330 laptop through early Tuesday, Sept. 9, can also buy a Mini 9 for $99.

Microsoft to slash price of Xbox 360

2008-09-04T06:56:00.000-07:00

SEATTLE--Microsoft said on Wednesday it plans to cut the U.S. prices of its Xbox 360 video game machine, lowering the price of its entry-level console to $50 below Nintendo's top-selling Wii.

The move makes the Xbox 360 the first game machine of this generation of consoles to sell for less than $200, a key mass-market price that Microsoft said historically has accounted for more than 75 percent of all machine sales.

The lower prices ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season--a period of time when the video game industry racks up most of its sales--puts pressure on rivals Nintendo and Sony to cut the prices of their machines.

The company said it will cut prices for its entry-level Xbox 360 Arcade, which comes without a hard drive, to $199 from its current price of $279 and it also will lower the prices of its mid-range and high-end Xbox 360 consoles by $50 each.

The new prices will go into effect on September 5.

Nintendo's Wii sells for $249 while Sony's least expensive PlayStation 3, which comes with an 80-gigabyte hard drive and a Blu-ray high-definition video disc player, retails for $399.

"Microsoft wants to drum up demand for the holiday. Microsoft's long-term vision for the Xbox is not to turn a profit today," said Toan Tran, analyst with Morningstar. "It's a way to get a foothold into people's living rooms."

Microsoft said it will cut the price of its Xbox 360 Pro, its best-selling version which comes with a 60-gigabyte hard drive, to $299 from $349 and reduce the price of its top-end Xbox 360 Elite with a 120-gigabyte hard drive to $399 from $449.

The U.S. price cut comes on the heels of a similar price cut for the Xbox 360 in Japan where Xbox sales have been slow.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has sold over 20 million Xbox 360 consoles worldwide since its introduction in late 2005 compared to 14.4 million units for the PlayStation 3 and nearly 30 million Wii units since debuting in November 2006.

In recent months, the PlayStation 3 has outsold the Xbox 360 in the United States.

"Microsoft recognized it needed to do something and I think they also can afford it," said Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Morgan. "They've got to make it up by penetrating more households and selling more software."

After losing roughly $5 billion since it entered the video game console business in 2001, Microsoft turned a $426 million profit in fiscal 2008 at its entertainment and devices division, comprised mainly of the Xbox business.

The price cuts were reported earlier by BusinessWeek on its Web site.

Verizon Wireless Rolls Network Crews in Wake of Hurricane Gustav

2008-09-02T06:49:00.000-07:00

HOUSTON, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of Hurricane Gustav, Verizon Wireless continues to dispatch teams of network technicians and generators to impacted areas in Louisiana.

While 90 percent of the Verizon Wireless Gulf Coast network is up and running, technicians are now working to restore cell sites into service and to deploy mobile transmission units to boost network capacity in areas where residents and rescue workers must rely on wireless communications in the storm's wake. In addition, network teams pre-deployed COWs (Cells on Wheels), COLTs (Cells on Light Trucks) and several dozen mobile generators to strengthen the network in the Gulf Coast.

Verizon Wireless Provides Emergency Service. Verizon Wireless is also preparing to quickly set up Wireless Emergency Communication Centers (WECCs) to serve residents and rescue agencies in the areas of greatest need. Residents who have lost landline phone service and/or coverage from their wireless carriers may also visit a local Verizon Wireless Communications Store to make free phone calls and charge their wireless phones.

To aid in emergency operations, Verizon Wireless also has provided hundreds of phones to government agencies, emergency organizations and shelters in the Gulf Coast and surrounding evacuation cities.

"Our solid network performance during and after Hurricane Gustav was strong as expected," said Kay Henze, Houston/Gulf Coast region president for Verizon Wireless. "We prepare year-round for severe weather. Verizon Wireless has the nation's most reliable wireless network, and our advance preparation for any situation is a key component of our reliability."

Hurricane Preparedness Efforts
Since the beginning of the year, Verizon Wireless has spent more than $137 million in the Gulf Coast region to strengthen and enhance its wireless network. Additional highlights of the Verizon Wireless 2008 Hurricane Season preparation and network enhancement include:

-- A comprehensive emergency response plan, including preparing emergency command centers across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida in the case of a crisis.

-- Enhancements to its regional switching facilities, which doubled its traffic capacity and back-up power redundancies.

-- Erected 59 new cell sites across the Houston/Gulf Coast region since the start of the year, of which about 85 percent have their own on-site generators.

-- A fleet of Cells on Wheels (COWs) and Cells on Light Trucks (COLTs), and Generators on Trailers (GOaTs) that can be rolled into hard-hit locations or areas that need extra network capacity.

-- Pre-arranging fuel delivery to mobile units and generators to keep the network operating at full strength even if power is lost for an extended period of time.

-- The company has expanded its EV-DO wireless broadband network, including launching its highest-speed Rev. A network throughout the region. This allows the most advanced wireless services (downloads, location-based applications, video messaging, etc.) and makes the network more reliable for usage by residents and emergency agencies.

These new technologies, facilities and other network-strengthening efforts are part of our hefty multi-million dollar investment in the region over the past year. Nationally, Verizon Wireless has invested an average of $5.5 billion annually to enhance its digital wireless network and a total of more than $45 billion since 2000.

Xbox 360 price drops to $182 in Japan

2008-09-01T06:42:00.000-07:00

Japan's Nikkei is reporting what we've been hearing Stateside for weeks: Xbox 360 price cuts across the board. Expected to go official sometime later today, the Japanese Xbox 360 Arcade will drop to just ¥19,800 or about $182 (tax inclusive, presumably) in hopes of boosting sales.

The new pricing represents a near 30% drop from its previous ¥27,800 (about $256) price and undercuts the Wii sold locally for ¥25,000. Nikkei's sources also claim that Microsoft will cut the prices on all three Xbox 360 models without going into specifics. If true then this bodes well for the US price cuts expected on September 7th.

Update: It's official. Microsoft also announced a new ¥29,800 (about $277) price for the Xbox 360 with 60GB hard disk while the top-end Elite will now sell for ¥39,800 (about $369). The new prices go into effect on September 11th.

Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.

2008-08-31T19:54:00.000-07:00

Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given country also passed through the United States.

Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central point of control.

And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and conceivably military — consequences.

American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. “Because of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,” Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “We also need to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to us.”

Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications.

Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.

“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”

Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable. Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures, Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with larger international Internet service providers.

This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in which traffic between two cites in one country will flow through other nations. In January, when a cable was cut in the Mediterranean, Egyptian Internet traffic was nearly paralyzed because it was not being shared by local I.S.P.’s but instead was routed through European operators.

The issue was driven home this month when hackers attacked and immobilized several Georgian government Web sites during the country’s fighting with Russia. Most of Georgia’s access to the global network flowed through Russia and Turkey. A third route through an undersea cable linking Georgia to Bulgaria is scheduled for completion in September.

Ms. Claffy said that the shift away from the United States was not limited to developing countries. The Japanese “are on a rampage to build out across India and China so they have alternative routes and so they don’t have to route through the U.S.”

Andrew M. Odlyzko, a professor at the University of Minnesota who tracks the growth of the global Internet, added, “We discovered the Internet, but we couldn’t keep it a secret.” While the United States carried 70 percent of the world’s Internet traffic a decade ago, he estimates that portion has fallen to about 25 percent.

Internet technologists say that the global data network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside the control of American companies. They decided not to invest in lower-cost optical fiber lines, which have rapidly become a commodity business.

That lack of investment mirrors a pattern that has taken place elsewhere in the high-technology industry, from semiconductors to personal computers.

The risk, Internet technologists say, is that upstarts like China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network, with investment, innovation and profits going first to overseas companies.

“Whether it’s a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand,” said Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is Google’s Internet evangelist and who, with Robert Kahn, devised the original Internet routing protocols in the early 1970s. “Suppose the Internet was entirely confined to the U.S., which it once was? That wasn’t helpful.”

International networks that carry data into and out of the United States are still being expanded at a sharp rate, but the Internet infrastructure in many other regions of the world is growing even more quickly.

While there has been some concern over a looming Internet traffic jam because of the rise in Internet use worldwide, the congestion is generally not on the Internet’s main trunk lines, but on neighborhood switches, routers and the wires into a house.

As Internet traffic moves offshore, it may complicate the task of American intelligence gathering agencies, but would not make Internet surveillance impossible.

“We’re probably in one of those situations where things get a little bit harder,” said John Arquilla, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who said the United States had invested far too little in collecting intelligence via the Internet. “We’ve given terrorists a free ride in cyberspace,” he said.

Others say the eclipse of the United States as the central point in cyberspace is one of many indicators that the world is becoming a more level playing field both economically and politically.

“This is one of many dimensions on which we’ll have to adjust to a reduction in American ability to dictate terms of core interests of ours,” said Yochai Benkler, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. “We are, by comparison, militarily weaker, economically poorer and technologically less unique than we were then. We are still a very big player, but not in control.”

China, for instance, surpassed the United States in the number of Internet users in June. Over all, Asia now has 578.5 million, or 39.5 percent, of the world’s Internet users, although only 15.3 percent of the Asian population is connected to the Internet, according to Internet World Stats, a market research organization.

By contrast, there were about 237 million Internet users in North America and the growth has nearly peaked; penetration of the Internet in the region has reached about 71 percent.

The increasing role of new competitors has shown up in data collected annually by Renesys, a firm in Manchester, N.H., that monitors the connections between Internet providers. The Renesys rankings of Internet connections, an indirect measure of growth, show that the big winners in the last three years have been the Italian Internet provider Tiscali, China Telecom and the Japanese telecommunications operator KDDI.

Firms that have slipped in the rankings have all been American: Verizon, Savvis, AT&T, Qwest, Cogent and AboveNet.

“The U.S. telecommunications firms haven’t invested,” said Earl Zmijewski, vice president and general manager for Internet data services at Renesys. “The rest of the world has caught up. I don’t see the AT&T’s and Sprints making the investments because they see Internet service as a commodity.”

Tags: Internet, america, verizon

HTC's Android-driven Dream revealed in glorious spy photos

2008-08-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

Sure, we've seen some blurry videos and managed a few stolen glimpses when Andy Rubin demonstrated this beast, but now we've gotten our hands on a slew of pictures showing off a very real T-Mobile-branded Dream in all its Android-running glory. Not only does this confirm the design spied in those FCC docs as well as show off that nearly-done version of Android, but it seems to confirm the fact that this will be headed to T-Mobile, and sooner rather than later judging from the looks of the above device. Needless to say, our inner-geeks are completely geeking out right now. Hit the gallery below for a handful of other views of the phone. [Warning: read link is a forum, requires registration, and is in Chinese]

MetaRAM now pumping 288GB of memory into Intel boxes

2008-08-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

Super-charging memory shop MetaRAM has started talking up its beefy DDR3 modules.

MetaRAM's top customer Hynix has already taken delivery of the DDR3 MetaSDRAM, which allows server customers to pack far more memory inside their standard systems. For example, Hynix is hyping "the world's first" 16GB 2-rank DIMMs, which it demonstrated this week at the Intel Developer Forum. And it's going to ship 8GB 2-rank DIMMs based on the MetaRAM technology as well.

All told, you're looking at, oh, a tripling of the amount of memory than can slot into workstations and servers.

MetaRAM is led by Fred Weber, the former CTO at AMD. The company launched in February with its unique brand of memory stuffing technology.

To shove more memory on each DIMM, companies such as Hynix pick up the MetaSDRAM chipset, which slots in between a memory controller and DRAM. As a result, memory makers can pack up up to four times as many DRAMs onto standard DIMMs."The major benefit of DDR3 MetaSDRAM technology is that it enables this larger memory capacity without negatively impacting the operating frequency of the DDR3 memory channel like standard R-DIMMs," MetaRAM said in a statement. "It is the only technology that has been shown publicly to run 24GB of DDR3 SDRAM in a channel at 1066 million transactions per second (MT/s).

"Using three 16GB DIMM modules, users can achieve 48GB per channel, while other cost-effective solutions max out at 16GB per channel." MetaRAM, which sells DDR2 technology today, is offering up 4GB, 8GB and 16GB modules to interested memory makers. The 4GB and 8GB units go into full product in Oct., while the 16GB unit hits the streets in Dec.

You can expect to see Intel-based servers with between 144GB and 288GB of memory thanks to the technology.

Great iPhone App Review Sites

2008-08-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

The iTunes App Store is a bit of a big deal these days. Several new applications pop up in the iTunes store every day. With hundreds of apps to download from it can be time consuming to sort through them all. Unfortunately, there is no try before you buy option for any of the iTunes apps. So, if you happen to see one that looks interesting, but requires you to shell out your hard earned cash, app reviews really come in handy. While the iTunes App Store features reviews from others, sometimes you just want a second opinion. Today, ReadWriteWeb brings you 4 iPhone/iPod app review sites.

What's On iPhone?

What'soniphone is not only a great iTunes apps review site, but also a great web apps review site. With a team of engineers, writers, medical professionals, culinary artists, home makers, What's on iPhone will help anyone decide on an app. Reviews start off with an overview of the application and follows up with their personal take on the app, a mini review, and the final verdict.

iUseThis

If you not only want reviews of an app, but also want to know how many people are really using it, iUseThis is your site. You can register for iUseThis to keep a log of all the apps you're using. However, the site is best for finding out the most popular of two apps. For example, if you're trying to make a decision between two or three note-taking applications and wanted to know which one may have been downloaded the most, iUseThis is a great place to find out.

AppVee

AppVee is a recently launched application review site. AppVee aims to do things a little differently by providing users with a personal review of the app and also ratings for the apps. Ratings range from ease of use and features to the app's user interface. I've already spotted quite a few app reviews that I haven't seen elsewhere on AppVee.

Apple iPhone School

Apple iPhone School is a great app review site for both the App Store apps and jailbroken apps via Cydia. There's a great selection of app reviews currently available for both sources. If you're looking for a particular app review check out the site's sidebar for categories and more.

Iphone app reviews

Iphone app review is an another great website for getting reviews about iphone. Don't miss to check this site.

More Than Enough

Now you'll never have to complain about needed more reviews for an app. With over 4 sources including the iTunes App Store itself, you're all set to make a safe decision on whether or not to buy a particular app. Did we miss any sites? Let us know what your favorite iTunes App review sites are!

Tags: Iphone, Iphone review, Iphone review site, AppVee, Apple iPhone School, iUseThis

Indie Game Developer Finds Success On Xbox 360

2008-08-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

Console game developers -- people who make games for the Xbox, PlayStation, etc. -- have mostly been big companies -- EA, Activision, etc. -- because of the high cost of game development and retail distribution. But that’s changing thanks to new Internet distribution platforms, and some indie console-game developers are starting to build big businesses.

The latest example: Jonathan Blow, developer of the game Braid, an Xbox game that's somewhat similar to early 'Mario' games for Nintendo. His game has only been on sale for a week, but he estimates it’s already sold 55,000 copies for the Xbox 360. At $15 per game, that’s $825,000 in first week gross sales. Microsoft takes a cut -- we don't know how much -- but that's still a really impressive debut.

Jonathan released his game on the Xbox Live Arcade, the three-year-old virtual store on the Xbox 360 console where users can download older classic games or new games that have been specifically developed for the store. The download store removes a lot of the barriers of entry for an independent developer because they don't have to come up with an expensive distribution strategy.

Both Nintendo and Sony also have their own virtual stores that independent developers can use to distribute downloadable games.

Jonathan said that with his projected sales (which he didn’t break out), he should be able to make game developing a full-time gig. And while not everyone will be as successful as he's been, it's solid evidence that indie developers can now build a substantial business making games for consoles.

Problems in monitoring mobile phone

2008-08-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

Mobile content regulation won't keep our kids safe, says regular commentator Bill Thompson.

When the MPs on the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport called for greater control over online content to protect young people from exposure to inappropriate material they were roundly criticised for failing to understand how the internet works.

Suggestions that content-hosting sites like YouTube and Flickr should review material before they were posted were especially ridiculed. Observer columnist John Naughton pointed out that at Flickr, "uploads have been between 1,400 and 4,500 images a minute", making the task somewhat less manageable than the committee seemed to realise.

But a couple of weeks later telecoms regulator Ofcom has agreed that content delivered to mobile phones should continue to be restricted. It suggested that although the current self-regulatory scheme managed by the Independent Mobile Classification Body is working it could be made a bit stronger in some ways.

Yet nobody is writing angry blog posts about how foolish Ofcom is, or how the mobile operators are taking away our online freedoms by limiting access to some types of material, and in fact the general view is that Ofcom and the mobile industry are doing it right, and the system just needs to be tweaked.

The reason is that the filters and controls Ofcom is talking about only apply to content that is provided by the mobile operators themselves, either directly or through third party providers they have done deals with.

Age-based filtering of these games and videos and news services was introduced four years ago when content providers such as Bango realised that self-regulation in this area was not only politically astute but also morally the right thing to do.

It persuaded the mobile operators to sign up to a scheme through which it flags "adult" content it provides, with networks restricting access unless the phone is registered to someone over 18.

It's not a perfect system, as contract phones are unrestricted so parents who give them to their kids need to tell the network operator to block them, but it has certainly been effective in keeping the mobile operators out of trouble with the regulator.

And of course it doesn't apply to "user-generated" content such as photos taken with phones and exchanged by MMS and Bluetooth, so the mobile safety advice from children's charities like Childnet International is still needed.

But it provides a model for reasonably sensible content management that seems to offer a good degree of protection without constraining other users.

Unfortunately the guidance comes from a time when most mobiles were not up to running a proper web browser and the "mobile web" meant access to the relatively small number of websites inside the network providers own "walled garden".

The image quality available on the average phone would have left even hardcore pornographic images as an exercise in imaginative interpretation of a pixellated blur, if they were accessible at all.

With today's smartphones these constraints have gone, and as the differences dissolve and every phone turns into just another network node it may be difficult to retain the good aspects of the mobile content model.

he Mobile Broadband Group's code of practice recognises the problem, noting that "mobile operators have no control over the content that is offered on the internet" and agreeing only to "offer parents and carers the opportunity to apply a filter to the mobile operator's Internet access service so that the Internet content thus accessible is restricted".

But as we know from many years of painful experience, web filtering does not work. The filters either let through material that we would like blocked or, far more often, block material that is perfectly acceptable but happens to disagree with the political, cultural or religious standards of the companies behind the filtering tool chosen.

As we move from mobile content provided by the network operators to the content available over the internet all the carefully devised plans break down, and we are left with exactly the same problems that face parents who give their children laptops or let them use home computers. There are filters available, but they do not the job, yet turning them off means our children can look at sites we may not want them to see.

History seems to demonstrate that the way things work on a handset doesn't easily transfer across to the fuller browsing experience, as we've seen when it comes to paying for data and content.

Millions of us pay over the odds for the few bits that make up a text message, or the odd megabyte of e-mail downloaded to the phone, and the ringtone market was, for a while, a classic example of how to create value from nothing, while we refuse to shell out for even the best online news service.

When it comes to content filtering the problem is not that the audience won't pay, it is that all of the many arguments against regulating online content start to apply to mobile access.

Ofcom may just have given its approval to a system that will soon become irrelevant to the vast majority of mobile users, leaving parents still with no effective way to manage their children's access to online material.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Tags: mobile phone, problems in mobile phone, monitoring problem

Surfing Google may be harmful to your security

2008-08-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

Defcon A well-known researcher specializing in website security has strongly criticized safety on Google, arguing the world's biggest search engine needlessly puts its millions of users at risk.

"Google is and will be and always has been vulnerable," Robert Hansen, CEO of secTheory, told a standing-room-only audience at the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas. "They haven't been open with consumers. Ultimately, this all comes down the the fact that they just want to track you guys."

At issue is Google's policy of hosting untested third-party applications that users can automatically embed into personalized Google home pages. During a talk titled "Xploiting Google Gadgets: Gmalware & Beyond," Hansen and fellow researcher Tom Stracener laid out a variety of attacks that can be unleashed using the programs.

The most devastating is the ability of Google gadgets to immediately redirect victims who log into iGoogle.com to a page under the control of an attacker. This creates a phishing hazard, particularly for less tech-savvy users who don't know to check the browser bar. Even if they do, the bar shows up at gmodules.com, an address many mistakenly believe is safe because it is maintained by Google.

Hansen, who frequently goes by the moniker Rsnake, said he discussed the vulnerability with Google security engineers, and they told him the redirection was a feature rather than a flaw.

Google gadgets make other attacks possible, including: the ability to:

carry out port scanning on a victim's internal network to conduct surveillance

use cross-site request forgery techniques to force victim PCs to follow links to malicious sites (for instance, those that host child pornography) and

cause a victim's browser to access a home router and change domain name system server addresses or other sensitive settings.

Hansen and Stracener acknowledged that in-the-wild attacks that use Google gadgets are rare, but they said that's likely to change.

"Once money actually starts flowing through, once the financial incentive for malware exists, then you're going to start seeing more of this type of thing pop up," Stracener said.

Google representatives didn't respond to an email requesting comment for this story. They told the Associated Press that the company regularly scans gadgets for malicious code, and in the "very rare" occasions bad applications are found, they are immediately quarantined.

The speakers took strong exception to Google's claim. They've had several proof-of-concept gadgets hosted for months on Google, and so far they've never been removed, they said.

Apple launches 'nano' iPhone in Christmas

2008-08-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Apple is about to launch a 'nano' version of the hugely successful iPhone. It is expected to be in the shops in time for Christmas.

The product will be launched in the UK at up to £150 for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain's Telefonica. 'This will be a big one,' said an industry source.

'The iPhone 3G has been the fastest-selling phone ever in the UK, but it is too expensive to be a realistic proposition in the pay-as-you-go market.

'However, a cut down version, with the candy bar shape of iPod nano music players, would be a huge hit as a Christmas gift.'

One expert suggested the nano phone would have a touch wheel on the back and display on the front so that numbers would be dialled from behind.

Tags: apple, nano, nano iphone, nano iphone prive, iphone 3G

Microsoft to sell "Equipt" for $70 per year

2008-08-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has chosen the name "Equipt" for a forthcoming package of products that includes its Office suite, Internet security software and other services, and will sell it for an annual subscription fee of $69.99.

Equipt, which was formerly known by its code name, Albany, includes Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare, Office Live Workspaces, Windows Live Mail, Live Messenger and Live Photo. Microsoft plans to begin selling it in the U.S. on July 15 through Circuit City, with other outlets to follow. It will be offered in other countries at about the same time, though pricing elsewhere was not announced.

The name comes from the idea that the package will help customers "equip their PC with a core set of services," said Bryson Gordon, a group product manager for Microsoft Office. "It resonated well with customers in testing."

Indeed, the name is more succinct than Microsoft has used for some other Office products, including unwieldy names like Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook with Business Contact Manager.

Rumors began circulating in March that Microsoft was devising a new way of packaging Office to help it better compete with Google Docs and other free or low-cost productivity suites. The company sent out invitations to a select few, asking them to test a mysterious new project code-named Albany.

The company asked people to sign nondisclosure agreements just to sign up for the test. In April, Microsoft confirmed the products that would be available in the package.

Gordon played down the effort to compete with Google Docs and other free office suites, such as IBM Symphony. He said Equipt is aimed at people who are interested in purchasing a PC security suite -- such as Windows Live OneCare -- and might forgo buying Office as well in favor of using an older copy they might already have, or that they might pirate. "We're lowering the barrier to entry" for those customers, he said.

Because Equipt is such a "complicated value proposition" to understand, Microsoft is selling it first through Circuit City because the store's staff has been trained to explain it to customers, and because it has successfully handled other Microsoft product campaigns, Gordon said.

Microsoft determined the $69.99 subscription rate by taking into account the pricing for Windows Live OneCare, which costs $49.99 a year, and the pricing for Office Home and Student 2007, which has a one-time license fee of $149.99, Gordon said. It also took input on pricing from the beta testers, he said.

Customers can load Equipt on up to three PCs for the yearly subscription fee.

A photo that can steal your Facebook account

2008-08-01T18:49:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2008 (IDG News Service) At the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas next week, researchers will demonstrate software they've developed that could steal online credentials from users of popular Web sites such as Facebook, eBay and Google.

The attack relies on a new type of hybrid file that looks like different things to different programs. By placing these files on Web sites that allow users to upload their own images, the researchers can circumvent security systems and take over the accounts of Web surfers who use these sites.

"We've been able to come up with a Java applet that for all intents and purposes is an image," said John Heasman, vice president of research at Next Generation Security Software Ltd.

They call this type of file a GIFAR, a contraction of GIF (graphics interchange format) and JAR (Java Archive), the two file types that are mixed. At Black Hat, the researchers will show attendees how to create the GIFAR but omit a few key details to prevent it from being used immediately in any widespread attack.

To the Web server, the file looks exactly like a .gif file. However, a browser's Java virtual machine will open it up as a Java Archive file and then run it as an applet. That gives the attacker an opportunity to run Java code in the victim's browser. The browser then treats this malicious applet as though it were written by the Web site's developers.

Here's how an attack would work: A bad guy would create a profile on a popular Web site -- Facebook, for example -- and upload his GIFAR as an image on the site. Then he'd trick a victim into visiting a malicious Web site, which would tell the victim's browser to go open the GIFAR. At that point, the applet would run in the browser, providing the hacker access to the victim's Facebook account.

The attack could work on any site that allows users to upload files, potentially even on Web sites that are used to upload banking card photos or Amazon.com, they say.

Because GIFARs are opened by Java, they can be opened in many types of browsers.

There is one catch, however. The victim would have to be logged into the Web site that is hosting the image for the attack to work. "The attack is going to work best wherever you leave yourself logged in for long periods of time," Heasman said.

There are a couple of ways that the GIFAR attack could be thwarted. Web sites could beef up their filtering tools so that they could spot the hybrid files. Alternatively, Sun Microsystems Inc. could tighten the Java runtime environment to prevent this from happening. The researchers expect Sun to come up with a fix not long after its Black Hat talk.

But researchers say that while a Java fix may disable this one attack vector, the problem of malicious content being placed on legitimate Web applications is a much larger and thornier issue. "There will be other ways to do this, with other technologies," said GIFAR developer Nathan McFeters, a researcher at Ernst & Young LLP's Advanced Security Center.

"In the long term, Web applications are going to have to take control of the content," McFeters said. "It's a Web application issue. The Java attack that we're currently using is just one vector."

He and his fellow Black Hat presenters have entitled their talk "The Internet Is Broken."

Ultimately, browser makers will have to make some fundamental changes to their software, too, said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security Inc. "It's not that the Internet is broken," he said. "It's that browser security is broken. 'Browser security' is really an oxymoron."

NASA confirms Saturn's moon Titan has liquid on its surface

2008-07-31T18:19:00.000-07:00

NASA confirms Saturn's moon Titan has liquid on its surface.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — At least one of many large, lake-like features on Saturn's moon Titan studied by the international Cassini spacecraft contains liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface, NASA said Wednesday.

Scientists positively identified the presence of ethane, according to a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the Cassini mission exploring Saturn, its rings and moons.

Liquid ethane is a component of crude oil.

Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan, a giant planet-sized satellite of the ringed world.

Scientists had theorized that Titan might have oceans of methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, but Cassini found hundreds of dark, lake-like features instead, and it wasn't known at first whether they were liquid or dark, solid material, JPL's statement said.

"This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid," Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini's visual and mapping instrument, said in the statement.

The instrument was used during a December flyby to observe a feature dubbed Ontario Lacus, in the south polar region, that is about 7,800 square miles, slightly larger than North America's Lake Ontario.

Cassini reached Saturn in mid-2004 and at the end of that year launched a probe named Huygens that parachuted to the surface of Titan the following January.

The mission is a project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Coveo Announces Limited Availablilty G2B for CRM

2008-07-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Coveo Solutions Inc. announced the limited availability of Coveo G2B for CRM. Coveo G2B for CRM provides designated users with a single view of all relevant customer data instantly from a wide variety of CRM applications and other data sources including salesforce.com, Siebel, corporate intranet, tech support emails, customer support databases, and ERP systems.

Coveo G2B for CRM also provides users with advanced content analytics, allowing management and workers to quickly develop a visual analysis of customer data and present it graphically, such as in a spreadsheet or pie chart.

In doing so, G2B for CRM allows businesses to make better decisions for planning, forecasting and resource management. Coveo G2B for CRM is part of the Coveo G2B Information Access Suite, which provides knowledge workers with an unrivaled ability to obtain a total view of the information they need to drive business.

Built on the Coveo Enterprise Search-platform technology, Coveo's search-powered business applications deliver competence and consumer-style ease of use, an implementation that takes "less than 24-hours, and black-belt" level customer support.

http://www.coveo.com

IBM Extends Enterprise Content Management Software Portfolio with Business Content Services

2008-07-06T18:03:00.000-07:00

IBM announced enhancements to their social networking tools for business. Lotus Connections 2.0 and IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections feature a mix of new capabilities that blend IBM's expertise in business software with the Web 2.0 capabilities popular in consumer social networking Web sites.

The new home page streams feeds from various components of Lotus Connections and shows people what is happening within their network. Widgets let people customize the main page and add links to external communities such as Facebook or custom business applications used within the organization.

IBM is expanding the tagging abilities of Lotus Connections to include people tagging. With the latest version, people can tag themselves or others based on a key topic or area of expertise. This allows individuals to instantly identify and retrieve live intellect on any given topic and tap into the collective wisdom of a larger group or pinpoint rare, niche expertise from the general population.

Tag clouds are displayed on a person's profile and throughout communities, making it easy to associate people with areas of expertise. Additional new features in Lotus Connections include the ability to send or receive notifications to others about interesting social bookmarks, discussion forums and integration with wiki providers Atlassian and Social Text.

http://www.ibm.com/lotus/connections

Twitter is the target for Hi-tech criminals

2008-07-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

Micro blogging site Twitter is the latest target of cyber criminals who are increasingly finding fertile ground on social networks.

A fake Twitter profile with a malicious payload has been spotted by security firm Kaspersky.

It purports to link to a pornographic video but downloads a fake version of Adobe Flash which installs programs capable of stealing data.

The attack is believed to be the first to target Twitter.

Social net

The attack is believed to have originated in Brazil because of the language it uses, the servers it calls on to download trojans and the e-mail address used to collect stolen data.

The fake profile has a name that means "pretty rabbit" in Portuguese. It tries to convince users to download the fake Flash video viewer in order to watch the associated video.

It comes as Kaspersky also releases details about two worms that target social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. More variants of these worms are also starting to turn up.

The worms transformed victims' machines into zombie computers, used by criminals to send spam, launch phishing attacks and harvest data.

They were disguised as a link to YouTube which also installed a fake version of Flash Player.

"Unfortunately users are very trusting of messages left by friends on social networking sites so the likelihood of a user clicking on a link like this is very high," said Alexander Gostev, a senior virus analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

Only those using Microsoft Windows are vulnerable to infection from these malicious programs.

IPhone outsells smartphones

2008-07-04T00:45:00.000-07:00

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Apple Inc's iPhone outsold all smartphones in the United States in July, its first full month on sale, accounting for 1.8 percent of all U.S. mobile handset sales, research group iSuppli said on Tuesday.

ISuppli reiterated its forecast that Apple would sell 4.5 million iPhones this year, rising to more than 30 million in 2011.

The two models of the iPhone on the market sold more than Research in Motion's Blackberry series, the entire Palm portfolio and any individual smartphone model from Motorola, Nokia or Samsung.

Sales equaled those of LG Electronics' Chocolate, the most popular feature phone on the U.S. market, iSuppli said.

ISuppli classifies the iPhone as a crossover phone that competes with both smartphones, which have personal computer-like functions such as e-mail, and feature phones, which have extras such as cameras and music players.

"While iSuppli has not collected historical information on this topic, it's likely that the speed of the iPhone's rise to competitive dominance in its segment is unprecedented in the history of the mobile-handset market," iSuppli said.

"Apple achieved this in the face of numerous, well-entrenched competitors."

Most buyers of iPhones in the United States in July were male, under 35 and had a college degree, iSuppli said.

A quarter of those who bought an iPhone switched to operator AT&T, which has an exclusive service agreement for the iPhone in the United States.

The iPhone will go on sale in Europe later this year.

ISuppli gathered its data through a consumer survey of 2 million participants in the United States that it carries out online once a month.

Samsung to reduce NAND flash in Apple orders

2008-07-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Samsung Electronics has informed downstream customers it will start reducing its supply of NAND flash chips to them from July as its key customer Apple has placed a large batch of orders, according to sources at the company's customers.

The sources indicated that Samsung recently informed them it has secured orders for 50 million 8Gb-equivalent NAND flash chips mainly for use in Apple's iPhone. Amid the new orders, Samsung said it would sharply cut supply to other customers in July, they added.

In addition to the Apple orders, supply will also be reduced because of a capacity adjustment Samsung made in May. The chip maker allotted less capacity for NAND flash production during April and May in attempts to reduce oversupply, which should be reflected in actual output in July, the sources said.

Despite an apparent sharp drop in NAND flash, the sources said industry players are still doubtful about the impact from the Apple orders. They noted that Apple already landed a batch of 25 million 8Gb-equivalent NAND flash chips from Samsung in June and commented that ongoing procurement will depend largely on iPhone sales.