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Upgrade your iPod touch to 2.0 for Free

2008-07-20T06:50:00.000+08:00

The iPhone Software 2.0 update is free for iPhone users, but is $10 for those who have iPod touch. I found out you can get it for free.

Upgrade your iPod Touch to 2.0 for Free
Apple released their newest software update for both iPhone and iPod touch just about a week ago, July 11. It includes bug fixes and the anticipated App Store, which allows you to purchase and download third-party applications right to your iPhone or iPod. The update is free for iPhone users, but is $10 for those who own an iPod touch.

But I recently came across this method of upgrading your iPod to the latest version of the software (firmware, too). It involves tricking iTunes into restoring your iPod to software 2.0. However, it also involves wiping out your music and video collection in your iPod. Hence, the word 'restoring' your iPod. If you don't mind this, or if you have complete backup of your music collection in your PC, then this won't be an issue for you.

For this to work, you need a legitimate iPod Software 2.0 Restore file. Back in July 11 or 12, a link that directly points to an unrestricted Apple Phobos site leaked on the internet. A backdoor to the Apple Software server was available, which allowed the free download (and fast, too, as the file sharing sites give you a measly 5 kbps download rate) of the restore file. However, it's now currenly patched (as well as the link I used to get the file) and locked, and the only way to get the software restore file, iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw, is through torrents or file sharing sites. I got one from the Apple server itself, so I'm sure it's legit. I'm not so sure about those circulating in torrents and file sharing sites.

When you plug in your iPod, the little iPod window appears in iTunes. That's where the device info is shown - the iPod model, how much space it has, and how your music, videos, and photos take up that space, shown as a bar at the bottom. You'll also see two buttons - the Check for Updates and the Restore button. We're interested in the Restore button, since the Check for Update only prompts us to buy the update. We don't. We want it free!

If you hold Shift on your keyboard while clicking on Restore, a little window will appear that allows you to select which Restore file iTunes will use to restore your iPod to. Get it now? By selecting the Software 2.0 version (iPod1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw) as a restore file, iTunes inadvertently updated your firmware version to version 2.0.

It will take a long time to prep your iPod for the restore, so be patient. There won't be any disk activity or CPU usage for that matter - just a window telling you that it's preparing your iPod for restore. Be patient.

After that, the restore (or upgrade) will happen - your iPod will reboot, and an Apple logo with a spinning throbber will appear. Wait until it's finished, and your done!

Reboot your iPod, and viola! An App Store icon right on the Home screen! Check the firmware version by going to Settings > General > About. Mine says Version 2.0 (5A347). It's only a matter of restoring your music and video files back to the iPod (as well as a restore from a backup) and you're good to go.

If you have an iTunes account, you can now purchase or download free applications for your iPod touch. Just go to the iTunes Store and download those applications.

Great! I just feel bad that Apple is forcing you to buy an upgrade now. Before (think iPod mini and nano), the updates for the firmware is free. And the discrimination between the iPhone and the iPod touch (remember, the update is free for the iPhone, original and the 3G version) is just wrong. But then again, it's just $10.

Apple Quietly Releases iPod Touch Update

2008-07-18T09:06:00.002+08:00

If you own an iPod touch that hasn't been updated to version 2.0, Apple quietly released a free iPod touch 1.1.5 update, but we haven't seen much improvement yet.

Apple Quietly Releases iPod Touch 1.1.5 Update

While some forward-thinking individuals were dropping US$10 to purchase the iPod touch 2.0 software update, Apple quietly issued a free iPod touch 1.1.5 update. If you own an iPod touch that hasn't been updated to version 2.0 and would like the update, just plug your iPod touch into your Mac and decline the 2.0 update. iTunes will then inform you that the 1.1.5 update is available for download and installation.

Some across the Internet have suggested that the 1.1.5 update improves the touch's performance. However, applications launched in the same amount of time, Safari pages loaded identically, YouTube videos downloaded and displayed in approximately the same period of time, and stocks and weather between the two versions of the iPod software.

What purpose does this update serve? So far, Apple is mum on the subject as it hasn't issued any technical notes on the update. Therefore, until we hear differently, we'll assume that all changes take place "under the hood."

iPhone 2.0 Software Jailbroken

2008-07-16T08:17:00.002+08:00

The iPhone Dev Team has unlocked the iPhone 2.0 system on older iPhones

iPhone 2.0 Software Jailbroken

The iPhone Dev Team has announced that they can unlock and jailbreak the iPhone 2.0 system. This is on the old iPhones it seems, not on the new ones.

The unlocking is unsurprising. Apple seems incapable of stopping the unlocking, and there are reports that a huge percentage of iPhones are unlocked and run on other networks, especially in the Far East.

But at first the jailbreak may seem like an odd accomplishment; why would you want to jailbreak the iPhone now that they have the App Store? Because you might want to run applications not in the store I guess. Because you might want to show that nobody's telling you want you can and can't run on your phone. Stuff like that.

And the punch line is that the hack is not yet available. But this group has published these same hacks on earlier versions in the past, so I don't doubt them now.

Apple sells 1 million iPhones in first 3 days

2008-07-15T07:40:00.002+08:00

Apple has sold 1 million iPhones in the three days after releasing the latest model last Friday.

Apple sells 1 million iPhones in first 3 days

Apple said Monday it has sold 1 million iPhones in the three days following the release of the latest model on Friday.

"iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend," said Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, in a statement Monday.

But the launch was plagued by software problems. All the new iPhones had to connect to Apple's servers for activation, which quickly overloaded them. Lines of customers built in stores as employees were unable to get the phones working.

Additionally, new software was released for the old iPhone, which required reactivation of those phones. Many owners of the older phone were left with unusable units.

The iPhone 3G was launched simultaneously in 21 countries, including the U.S.

Apple had sold about 6 million units of the first-model iPhone since it launched in the U.S. a year ago. The company has set a goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

Shares of Apple rose $5.32, or 3.1 percent, to $177.90 in morning trading.

Thinking of Nabbing an iPhone Today? Wait.

2008-07-12T12:13:00.002+08:00

Welcome to the iPocalypse.

Thinking of Nabbing an iPhone Today? Wait.

Reports are flooding in from Gizmodo (which posted that clever Apple meets Armageddon phrase), TechCrunch, the IDG News Service and pretty much any other iPhone-manic news outlet that stalwart Apple fans who rushed to buy their new iPhone today are left holding beautifully designed bricks that can't be activated.

Apple's network reportedly can't handle the huge flood of phones hitting it today to activate and pull down the 2.0 firmware. Sounds an awful lot like what happened with Firefox's Download Day last month - I bet the Mozilla folks are nodding their heads knowingly.

CrunchGear has two potentially helpful posts for eventually getting the update and fixing an iPhone that's stuck in a reboot cycle after a failed update that might help you out if you're an unlucky iBrick holder.

For the rest of us (yep, I'm jumping on the bandwagon), your best bet is to hold off until the traffic spike dies down before heading off to buy your own new iPhone. And when you do go, head to an Apple store instead of AT&T - according to Silicon Alley Insider, the AT&T stores they checked in NYC were all out, while the Apple store was still stocked. Might be just chance, or it might indicate that Apple stocked its own stores better (as SAI suggests).

iPhone Activation Woes Hit Early Buyers

2008-07-12T12:05:00.000+08:00

Some of the first people in the U.S. to purchase the iPhone 3G walked out of an Apple Store in New York disappointed Friday when Apple's plan to activate the new devices in stores backfired.

iPhone Activation Woes Hit Early Buyers

Problems with the iTunes server caused some enthusiasts who had waited in line for hours to walk out of the store unable to use their new iPhones, according to the disgruntled customers.

"I've got two phones on me and neither of them work," said Adolfo Peralta, a Brooklyn resident who lined up to purchase the iPhone 3G at 6:30 a.m. local time for the 8 a.m. SoHo store opening. "I have to go find a pay phone to make a phone call."

Apple Store employees deactivated his original iPhone to activate his new one, but the activation could not be completed because they could not connect to iTunes, he reported.

Peralta said he felt cheated by the fact he didn't have a working iPhone when he left the store. "You wait all this time," he said. "I don't think it's worth it."

Still, he said he was "thrilled" to have been one of the first to get the 3G device.

Other enthusiasts reported similar issues as they left the store on Prince Street at around 10:30 a.m.

Anoele Perillo, who got in line at 7 a.m. outside the SoHo store to purchase her iPhone, stood outside around 10:30 a.m. smoking a cigarette while she waited for problems inside the store to be fixed.

"All of the systems are down," Perillo said, adding that she had finished two crossword puzzles while waiting for her iPhone activation to be complete. She said employees were shutting down some computers at the store to try to fix some of the problems with the iTunes network the store was experiencing.

Jason Pinsky, a chief technology officer of a clothing company in New York, also attributed the activation problems he experienced at the SoHo store to the iTunes network.

While he could make phone calls with his new iPhone 3G -- a feature he demonstrated outside the store -- Pinsky couldn't use the iPod functionality because the iTunes part of the activation couldn't be completed in the store due to the network "bailing."

Pinsky had bought the original iPhone last year and said he didn't feel cheated by paying the premium for the original product. "I'm an early adopter," he said. "There's always a price to pay" for being first.

Apple requires customers to activate the iPhone 3G in stores where they were purchased. This was not a requirement for the original iPhone, which was released a little more than a year ago.

Apple did not immediately return requests for comment Friday morning. An Apple Store employee at the SoHo store said no one there was qualified to comment on the problem, but said that to him, things "appeared to be going smoothly."

Some customers did leave the store with their iPhones successfully activated and reported no activation problems, they said.

As customers waited for their iPhones to be activated at the SoHo store, more continued arriving to purchase the phone. The line snaked for several blocks by 11 a.m. local time.

The activation process was also slow at Apple's flagship New York store on Fifth Avenue and at the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco, customers reported.

An environmental activist group called Waiting for Apples, who were the first in line at the Fifth Avenue store -- having camped out for a week to purchase their iPhone 3Gs -- were still awaiting activation at about 11:30 a.m., reported a group member, who asked not to be named.

He added that Apple Store employees were calling the activation problem a "hiccup" and that activation would go smoothly for awhile before another hiccup occurred.

At 7:30 a.m. local time in New York at the flagship store, about 1,000 people were in a line that stretched around the corner on the same block where the famous FAO Schwarz toy store is located.

One person standing in line, who asked not to be named, said the crowd was about half the size of the throng that waited for the first iPhone. One reason for the smaller crowd, noted a few passersby, was that last year the launch was at the end of the day, giving people time to get out of work and check out the scene.

(continued)

iPhone Activation Woes Hit Early Buyers (Part 2)

2008-07-12T12:04:00.003+08:00

Some of the first people in the U.S. to purchase the iPhone 3G walked out of an Apple Store in New York disappointed Friday when Apple's plan to activate the new devices in stores backfired.

iPhone Activation Woes Hit Early Buyers

(continued)
The consensus of about a half dozen people standing in line was that most users want the new iPhone mainly for the 3G (third-generation) speed. Several people said they own an iPhone, but want the speed of the new version. That was also the issue at the top of mind for some first-time iPhone buyers.

"It's 3G now, it's faster," said Ryan Tracy, the president of Cheech and Chong dot com, a retail and marketing company and Web site for the Cheech and Chong comedy team. Tracy said he was standing in line for several hours before the store opened.

"There's also a lot of other goodies you can download," Tracy said, referring to the iPhone 2.0 platform that lets users download applications from the iTunes service.

He also agreed with other people in line that the lower price was not the biggest issue. Asked whether the combination of applications, speed and lower price will make the new iPhone into a hot product, Tracy said "It's already a hit product, everyone's talking about it, everyone's here."

Software problems with the network of telecommunications operator O2 at Apple's London flagship store also caused activation delays, where the iPhone 3G also went on sale at 8 a.m. local time. O2 is the exclusive network operator for the iPhone in the U.K.

Problems with activation could affect the number of iPhone 3Gs Apple sells over the weekend if people decide to wait a few days for the problems to be resolved before making their purchases.

RBC Capital Markets projected that Apple may sell more than 1 million phones worldwide over the first weekend to meet pent-up demand, according to a report by analyst Mike Abramsky. The number could be four times more than the 270,000 iPhones that were sold at launch last year, he wrote.

But limited supplies could frustrate buyers as Apple shipped only 1.5 million iPhone 3Gs, Abramsky wrote. As supplies normalize, iPhone 3G is set for long-term success, and the company could ship up to 5.1 million iPhones in the quarter, according to the report.

More than half of current iPhone owners are likely to upgrade to iPhone 3G, according to a study from ChangeWave Research. Around 55 percent of current iPhone buyers said they are likely to upgrade to 3G iPhone, with more than half of them not planning to wait long, according to the research.

Vista Cleans Mac OSX's Clock

2008-07-05T07:25:00.002+08:00

In absolute numbers, figures from Net Applications are not particularly impressive.

New Survey: Vista Cleans Mac OSX's Clock

Apple fans have made much of the fact that the newest figures from Net Applications show that Apple's share of the operating system market has jumped almost 32% in the past year. But they're ignoring a simple fact: Vista's market share during that same time leaped more than 355%. When you add in other Windows versions, Microsoft owns more than 90% of the market.

Net Applications reports that the Mac had 7.94% market share in June, up from 6.03% a year ago. Going from a little more than 6% to just under 8% may be a big gain when measured as a percentage of growth. But when seen in absolute numbers, it's not particularly impressive.

Vista, by way of contrast, showed far more explosive growth. In June, 2007, it had 4.54% market share. In June, 2008, it had reached 16.14% --- more than a 355% gain. Those numbers are substantial not just in percentage terms, but in raw terms as well. Apple would sell the first-born children of most of its employees if it could ever get to a 16% market share.

Net Applications says that in June, all versions of Windows were on 90.89% of computers, down from 93.34% a year ago. Both Windows XP and Windows 2000 market share shrunk, while Vista's skyrocked.

It's true that in the last year, Mac OSX has made some small inroads into the operating system market. But Windows is still on more than 90% of computers. Shaving a point or two here and there won't change Microsoft's domination.

For a chart of overall operating system trends, according to Net Applications, click here. For a chart that includes version numbers, click here.

Google's Free Web Application Security Scanner

2008-07-04T07:34:00.000+08:00

Google has made public a beta version of one of its internal tools used for testing the security of Web-based applications.

Google Gives Away Free Web Application Security Scanner

Google has released for free one of its internal tools used for testing the security of Web-based applications.

Ratproxy, released under an Apache 2.0 software license, looks for a variety of coding problems in Web applications, such as errors that could allow a cross-site scripting attack or cause caching problems.

"We decided to make this tool freely available as open source because we feel it will be a valuable contribution to the information security community, helping advance the community's understanding of security challenges associated with contemporary web technologies," wrote Google's Michal Zalewski on a company security blog.

Ratproxy -- released as version 1.51 beta -- is quick and less intrusive than other scanners in that it is passive and does not generate a high volume of attack-simulating traffic when running, Zalewski wrote. Active scanners can cause problems with application performance.

The tool sniffs content and can pick out snippets of JavaScript from style sheets. It also supports SSL (Secure Socket Layer) scanning, among other features.

Since it runs in a passive mode, Ratproxy highlights areas of concern that "are not necessarily indicative of actual security flaws. The information gathered during a testing session should be then interpreted by a security professional with a good understanding of the common problems and security models employed in web applications," Zalewski wrote.

Google has posted an overview of Ratproxy as well as a download link to the source code. Code licensed under the Apache 2.0 license may be incorporated in derivative works, including commercial ones, but the origin of the code must be acknowledged.

IBM Develops Audio-masking Technology

2008-07-03T07:37:00.000+08:00

IBM India has developed audio masking technology that could protect confidential information in audio recordings.

IBM Develops Audio-masking Technology

IBM's India Research Laboratory (IRL) has developed technology that automatically detects and masks sensitive information in audio recordings.

The technology is expected to be useful for call center operations which record conversations between call center staff and customers for a number of reasons, including monitoring of service quality, said Guruduth Banavar, director of IRL, in a telephone interview on Wednesday. Some of these audio recordings are also used to train new staff, he added.

The technology utilizes a combination of speech analytics and metadata to locate and mask portions of an audio recording during playback to individuals that are not authorized to hear the sensitive information, according to Banavar. The information that is to be masked can be configured depending on the requirement, and the masked portions can be presented in many ways, such as white noise, silence or an announcement that the information has been edited, he added.

The ability to maintain customer trust requires organizations to be able to ensure the security of their customer's private information, such as credit card numbers, personal identification numbers (PIN), social security numbers and other information collected through interactions between call center staff and customers, IBM said.

IBM is currently running pilots of the technology within the company. A decision on commercializing the technology will be taken by the business units in IBM, Banavar said. The technology has applications in a number of other areas, such as medical diagnosis, where recorded information collected in one context is later used for training people, he added.

Mozilla's Firefox 3 Sets Geeky World Record

2008-07-02T07:41:00.000+08:00

Mozilla is successful in setting the world record for most software downloads in one day with Firefox 3.

Mozilla's Firefox 3 Sets Geeky World Record

It's official: Mozilla has set possibly the geekiest world record ever with the release of Firefox 3.

The open-source company said Wednesday that the browser's 8,002,530 downloads in its first 24 hours of release set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in that period of time.

Mozilla Vice President of Marketing Paul Kim thanked Firefox fans in a statement, calling them "instrumental in achieving this record."

"Our community members came together and not only spread the word, but also took the initiative to help mobilize millions of people to demonstrate their belief that Firefox gives people the best possible online experience," he said.

Mozilla unveiled a campaign on May 28 to set the record, which previously did not exist.

The company asked Firefox enthusiasts to pledge to download the browser on the day it was released -- June 17, which it dubbed "Download Day."

Mozilla also hosted a Download Day event, the Camp Firefox BBQ, at its offices in Mountain View, California, and asked other Firefox fans to host similar download parties. It also encouraged people to place "Download Day" buttons on their Web sites as reminders of the big day.

Despite its eventual success, Firefox 3 Download Day didn't go off without a hitch. Interest in the endeavor crippled Mozilla's servers on the day of the release, so the U.S. part of the download process started about two hours later than originally planned when Mozilla's site wouldn't work properly.

The European leg of the effort began a little more than an hour later than planned and marked the start of the download-logging process. There were no more problems reported once the U.S. site was back up and running.

Blizzard Announces Diablo III

2008-07-01T07:52:00.000+08:00

The rumors were true: Blizzard Entertainment has announced Diablo III. The game is currently in development for Mac OS X and Windows.

Blizzard Announces Diablo III

Blizzard unveiled Diablo III at a worldwide invitational gaming event held in Europe over the weekend, and has posted details to its Web site, including a cinematic trailer and gameplay video that offers an in-depth look at some of the game's new capabilities and features.

A new sequel to Blizzard's action role-playing game series, this is the first new Diablo game to be announced since Diablo II was released in 2000. Since then the company has turned its attention to its Warcraft franchise, first with Warcraft III and more recently with World of Warcraft; the company is also working on StarCraft II, a followup to its enormously popular real time strategy game series.

Diablo III is set in a fantasy world populated by vicious monsters and demons. It's the world of Sanctuary, a land saved twenty years prior by the heroes of the first two games -- heroes who lost their minds by facing the armies of the Burning Hells. The game retains the familiar isometric (three-quarters perspective) view of previous installments, though graphics and gameplay have, of course, been updated to suit modern computer systems. Blizzard confirms that the game is being developed simultaneously for both Mac OS X and Windows, as the company has long done for its games.

Five character classes will be included in the game, and players who tire of single-player action will be able to participate online using Blizzard's Battle.net service.

System requirements have not yet been announced, nor has a release date or pricing -- Blizzard famously tells the public that its games will be released when they're done. Look for many more details to be offered prior to the game's release.

Microsoft Patches its XP Patch

2008-06-30T07:55:00.000+08:00

A free tool repairs PCs impaired by the XP SP3 update and a conflict with Symantec's software.

Microsoft Patches its XP Patch

Nearly three weeks after security vendor Symantec Corp. released a free tool to clean up PCs crippled by the Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) update, Microsoft Corp. issued a fix that should reestablish lost Internet and wireless connections.

Last week, Microsoft posted a hotfix for a problem users first reported in mid-May. Users of Symantec's consumer security software said that after updating their PCs to XP SP3, a bug emptied Windows' Device Driver and deleted network connections.

Although Symantec initially blamed Microsoft for the snafu, it later accepted some responsibility. In late May, Symantec acknowledged that Microsoft's updating process and a security feature in its own Norton-branded software combined to swamp the Windows registry with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of bogus and corrupted keys. That security feature, dubbed "SymProtect" by Symantec, was designed to protect the company's security software from attack by guarding against unauthorized changes to the registry.

Although Microsoft had previously declined to comment on the episode, the support document that accompanied the hotfix fingered Symantec's software. "This problem occurs when the Fixccs.exe process is called during the Windows XP SP3 installation," said Microsoft. "This process creates some intermediate registry subkeys, and it later deletes these subkeys. In some cases, some anti-virus applications may not let the Fixccs.exe process delete these intermediate registry subkeys."

The hotfix replaces the Fixccs.exe file with an updated version, but it can only be applied if the user has booted into Windows' Safe Mode, according to the support document.

Symantec has contended that other security software with registry-change monitoring defenses also caused similar problems for users updating to Windows XP SP3, but there have been few reports logged to Microsoft's support forums. Microsoft, however, intimated that Symantec might not be alone when it used the generic, and plural, "some antivirus applications" in its explanatory document.

Users can download the hotfix from the Microsoft site.

Microsoft has not yet begun serving up Windows XP SP3 via Windows Update's Automatic Updates feature, and conceivably could prevent machines that have specific security programs installed from receiving the update. It's already done exactly that by blocking other systems, notably those running AMD processors, from getting XP SP3 to sidestep an endless reboot bug.

Intel Backstabs Microsoft by Abandoning Vista

2008-06-28T08:27:00.004+08:00

The news that Intel has decided it won't upgrade its PCs to Vista - is this the kind of payback that Microsoft expected?

Intel Backstabs Microsoft by Abandoning Vista

The news that Intel has decided it won't upgrade its PCs to Vista must be especially
bitter for Microsoft because court documents show that Microsoft may have launched its ill-fated "junk PC" Vista scheme at the behest of Intel. Is this the kind of payback that Microsoft expected?

According to the New York Times, Intel has decided that it won't upgrade the PCs of its 80,000 computers to Windows Vista. The Times reports:

the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

Microsoft has good reason to feel bitter about the decision. Microsoft's "Vista Capable PC" scheme may have been launched specifically to help Intel meet its quarterly earnings by selling older Intel chipsets that couldn't properly run Vista.

A refresher for those who might not remember the "Vista Capable PC" scheme: It was a marketing scheme in which people claim that Microsoft misled consumers into buying the Windows Vista Capable PCs, even though the PCs couldn't run the most important features of Vista.

According to court documents released in a suit related to the scheme, Microsoft's John Kalkman sent an email to Scott Di Valerio, who was in charge of the company's relations with PC makers, noting that the Vista Capable PC scheme was being launched on behalf of Intel:

In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded. This in turn did two things: 1. Decreased focus of OEMs planning and shipping higher end graphics for Vista-ready programs and 2. Reduced the focus by IHV's to ready great WHQL [Windows Hardware Quality Labs] qualified graphics drivers. We can see this today with Intel's inability to ship a compelling full featured 945 graphics driver for Windows Vista.

Kalkman makes clear in the email that it was a mistake to try and bail out Intel:

So Microsoft went out on a limb to bail out Intel, and this is the payback it gets? They're not doubt talking about back-stabbing at Redmond these days.

Expect Firefox 3.1 in July

2008-06-27T08:26:00.001+08:00

Mozilla just released the final version of Firefox 3.0, but an alpha update is already scheduled.

Expect Firefox 3.1 in July

Just a week after Mozilla Corp. shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009.

According to a draft schedule discussed at a Tuesday meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview, or alpha, ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009. A month ago, when Mozilla first started discussing Firefox 3.1 internally, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said the upgrade's target ship date was the end of 2008.

If Mozilla holds to that plan, Firefox 3.1 would be its first fast-track update, with a development timeline significantly shorter than usual. Firefox 3.0, for instance, launched approximately 20 months after its predecessor, Firefox 2.0.

Previously, Mozilla said that it would be able to meet the shorter deadlines because Firefox 3.1 would be composed of features that didn't make it into Firefox 3.0, but were "nearly complete," Schroepfer said.

In the meeting notes published online Tuesday, Mozilla listed some of the improvements it hopes to slot into Firefox 3.1, including changes to the revamped bookmarking that debuted in 3.0 and modifications to the new amped-up location bar.

Several of the proposed changes, however, rely on improvements to the Gecko engine that underpins Firefox, as well as other applications, such as Mozilla Messaging's Thunderbird e-mail client. Developers are working on Gecko 1.9.1 at the same time as Firefox 3.1, and programmers on the latter project expect some of those refinements will make it into the browser's next upgrade, including additional improvements in JavaScript performance and better compliance with the Acid3 test, which checks how closely a browser follows certain Web standards.

In March, when both Apple Inc. and Opera Software ASA touted gains in matching Acid3's requirements with their Safari and Opera browsers, respectively, Mozilla called the race to a perfect score "a puzzle game" and said it wouldn't divert resources from the still-under-construction Firefox 3.0 to match its rivals.

Since the June 17 launch, more than 21.8 million copies of Firefox 3.0 have been downloaded, according to Mozilla's own counter.

Firefox 3 Download Day Stumbles

2008-06-18T07:31:00.002+08:00

Mozilla hyped today's Firefox 3 launch with a 'Download Day', but some network difficulties handling that huge rush of traffic is keeping Mozilla from reaching that goal.

Firefox 3 Download Day Stumbles

Mozilla hyped today's Firefox 3 launch with a 'Download Day' appeal to Firefox users to all come get the new version at once and shoot for a new Guinness World Record. But some network difficulties handling that huge rush of traffic is keeping many visitors from helping Mozilla reach that goal.

Mike Schroepfer of Mozilla wrote on the Mozilla developer center blog that you should head to http://getfirefox.com/ for the new browser (you can't yet get it by going to Help Check for Updates within Firefox 2). That page appears to be coming up now, but for a good while the site was unresponsive. After a few tries on the download link on that page I was just able to start a download.

Per Melissa Shapiro on a Mozilla blog posting from earlier today, "Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly."

Kristen Whisenand, PR for Mozilla, said their servers are churning out 14,000 downloads a minute. At 7.8MB per download that's one giant flood of data, and most companies try to spread out the traffic instead of encouraging people to focus the spike. Here's hoping Mozilla gets a better grip on the reins of this digital bucking bronco.

So if you're trying to download and can't get through, or maybe get an "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" error, keep at it. Whisenand says some individual requests may not get through because the systems are so busy, but that the servers are up.

Sony working on 'break apart' motion PS3 pad

2008-06-16T09:27:00.002+08:00

Sony Computer Entertainment is working on a new controller for the PlayStation 3which contains an accelerometer for 'Wiimote-like' motion-sensing functionality

Sony working on 'break apart' motion PS3 pad

Sony Computer Entertainment is working on a new controller for the PlayStation 3, which features the ability to 'break apart' into two separate units, each of which contains an accelerometer for 'Wiimote-like' motion-sensing functionality, GamesIndustry.biz reports.

It's not clear when the pad will be officially announced, but it is believed that working units have already been supplied to certain developer partners, according to sources.

The potential for new game types to be developed with the additional motion-sensing functionality should open up the PlayStation 3 to the sorts of gaming audiences that the Nintendo has been so successful at gathering with its Wii console.

Sony Computer Entertainment will therefore hope that, with the ongoing development of the PlayStation Network, the success of Blu-ray as the de facto next generation standard of video, the gradual roll-out of Home later in the year and the release of additional high definition titles over time, it will be able to overwhelmingly position the PS3 as the best all-round home entertainment unit on the market.

The original controller released with the PS3, the Sixaxis, did contain some motion-sensing ability, although it came at the expense of the popular 'rumble' functionality and was nothing like as free as the movement that the Wiimote offered. The Corporation later released a DualShock pad for the console.

PS3 Beats Xbox 360, but Wii Outsells All

2008-06-15T14:32:00.001+08:00

Sony eeks out another win over Microsoft's Xbox 360 console in the month of May, while Nintendo reigns supreme with Wii and DS sales.

PS3 Beats Xbox 360, but Wii Outsells All

NPD figures for the month of May show PlayStation 3 outsold Xbox 360. A mere 22k separated the two consoles, hardly putting a dent in Microsoft's huge lead over the battle for total sales. 208,000 PS3 consoles were purchased last month and 186,000 Xbox 360s were snatched up by gamers. To date, 19 million Xbox 360s have sold worldwide compared against 13 million PlayStation 3s.

Unsurprisingly, both consoles were obliterated by Wii at 675,000. Even Nintendo DS performed better than either PS3 or Xbox 360, generating more sales than both consoles combined with 452,000 handhelds sold. Nintendo pushed through over a million game systems during May, which nearly doubles PS3, Xbox 360, and PSP sales combined. Counting PlayStation 2 sales and Nintendo still boasted larger sales.

Hand-in-hand with Wii and DS were solid game sales. Seven of the top ten selling games in May were on either platform. Mario Kart Wii took second place with 787,000 copies in a photo-finish behind the Xbox 360 version of Grand Theft Auto IV with 871k. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of GTA IV were the only games to make the list for those consoles.

Game Console Choice Shows Generation Gap

2008-06-09T18:27:00.001+08:00

How much time do gamers spend playing Xbox 360, Wii, and PS3? A Nielsen consumer report takes a crack at the answer with a new technology called "polling."

Game Console Choice Shows Generation Gap

According to Nielsen respondents (via IGN), gamers between the ages of 10 and 26 spend most their time playing Xbox 360 by 63 percent, followed by 25 percent total console time playing Wii, and 12 percent playing PlayStation 3.

Conversely, gamers 27 and older spend a majority of their console time on PS3 by 52 percent, followed by Wii with 28 percent, and Xbox 360 at 20 percent.

In both demographics, both Xbox 360 and PS3 were played more consistently than Wii and for longer periods of time, supporting the widespread belief that Nintendo's latest console is lacking in deep, entrenching games.

In any case, suffice it to say that gamers love consoles.

Public's Still Not Buying Blu-ray

2008-06-08T08:05:00.001+08:00

Despite resolution of the standard battle, the high-def DVD players and discs are posting slow sales.

Blu-ray Won, But the Public's Still Not Buying

Consumer awareness about the Blu-ray high-definition DVD format is rising, but adoption of the technology still faces challenges, according to data released last week by research company NPD Group.

Until earlier this year, consumers seeking sharper movies on high-definition DVDs had to choose between two competing standards -- Blu-ray backed by Sony Corp and the rival HD DVD, backed by Toshiba Corp.

The standards war ended in February when Toshiba threw in the towel, but NPD said Blu-ray player manufacturers still face hurdles due to price and perceptions among consumers who are content with standard-definition DVD players and content.

Hollywood and consumer electronics makers are hoping the technology would ignite a slowing $24 billion home DVD market.

NPD said 45 percent of U.S. high-definition television owners now claim to be familiar with Blu-ray, up from 35 percent in June 2007.

While just 6 percent of all consumers surveyed said they plan to buy a Blu-ray device, 9 percent of high-definition TV owners plan to buy one in the next six months, NPD said. An earlier NPD study had actually showed a drop in sales earlier in the year.

"With HDTVs now in approximately 40 million U.S. households, that percentage translates to a pool of almost 4 million potential BD (Blu-ray) player buyers," according to Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD.

Earlier in the week, Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it was now aggressively promoting sales of Blu-ray players by offering from June 8-14, a $100 Wal-Mart gift card with the purchase of any Blu-ray player in its stores.

Wal-Mart has also increased the brands of Blu-ray players it sells, adding Magnavox, Samsung and Panasonic, and will sell select Blu-ray movie titles for $15 starting June 8, including "3:10 to Yuma," "Shooter" and "300."

Microsoft Plans to 'fix' Its Online Branding

2008-06-07T07:44:00.000+08:00

Microsoft is moving quickly to "fix" its online branding problem.

Microsoft Plans to 'fix' Its Online Branding

Now that a Yahoo acquisition is off the table, Microsoft is moving quickly to "fix" its online branding problem, an executive said Tuesday.

Microsoft has been criticized for the introduction of the Live brand, particularly because it didn't fully replace the MSN brand. That has created some confusion in the market, because some services from Microsoft, like Hotmail and Messenger, have both brands and it's difficult to determine if there is a difference between the differently branded services.

Now that Microsoft has pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo, it plans to focus on solving its branding problem, said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platform and services division, speaking in Seattle on Tuesday at the Search Marketing Expo conference.

"When we made the bid for Yahoo, the full combination of those companies would have created a whole different set of brand opportunities for our marketing teams to solve," he said. "Since we've moved forward in not pursing a full combination at this time, our marketing teams are liberated to go solve that brand problem."

He suggested that his marketing executives essentially have free rein in deciding what to do. "Fix means fix," he said. The marketers may decide to build a new brand, and spend money to do so, and he'll support that decision, he said.

While a Yahoo acquisition is off the table, the companies do continue to discuss other alternatives, he said, despite very little comment from either company since acknowledging that talks about a more limited deal were happening. "We'll see where that dialogue leads, but there's nothing new to report," Johnson said.

Johnson also reiterated some of the themes that Microsoft executives have been talking about since the company pulled the Yahoo bid. "When you have a competitor that is entrenched, you have to focus on disruptive ways to change the paradigm," he said, referring to Google. Those changes could be in the form of user experience, the business model or the way consumers connect to the service, he said.

Microsoft has begun executing on this vision already, he said. The company's recently introduced Cashback service gives online shoppers money when they buy products from advertisers in Live Search. That's an effort to change the business model and the user experience.

In addition, on Monday Microsoft announced a deal with Hewlett-Packard that will result in a Live Search toolbar on HP PCs sold in North America starting next year. That deal will help distribution of the service, Johnson said.

Bluetooth, IE to Get Critical Microsoft Patches

2008-06-06T19:56:00.001+08:00

Microsoft plans to issue seven sets of security patches next week for Windows.

Bluetooth, IE to Get Critical Microsoft Patches

Microsoft plans to issue seven sets of security patches next week, including critical fixes for DirectX, Internet Explorer and Bluetooth wireless software for Windows.

The updates are due Tuesday, the day Microsoft had previously scheduled to release its security patches. Fixes are also slated for Active Directory, the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) and the Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) protocol, used by Windows to stream media to many recipients. These updates are all rated "important."

A seventh update, rated "moderate," is listed as a "Kill Bit" update for Windows. This type of patch will disable code that is known to have a security bug.

"The Kill Bit will more than likely be for a third-party application," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with security vendor nCircle.

Lately, Microsoft's security group has had to pay more attention to software that runs on top of Windows, as attackers have increasingly looked to products like QuickTime, Adobe's Flash and other media players when devising their attacks.

Last Friday, Microsoft warned that a widely publicized flaw in Apple's Safari browser could be combined with another Microsoft bug to let attackers run unauthorized software on a victim's PC.

It's not clear whether Microsoft plans to patch that bug. The IE update could include a fix, although it's unlikely that Microsoft has had enough time to run this software through its testing process, Storms said.

It is unusual for Microsoft to patch Bluetooth, a protocol used to connect devices like headsets to Windows, but added that "the more interesting question is will this patch and/or the bug extend into Windows mobile where it will more than likely have a greater impact?"

Microsoft announced the planned patches in a note posted to its Web site on Thursday.

World's Most Dangerous Domain

2008-06-06T09:26:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong's ".hk" is now the world's most dangerous domain for surfing according to a report released by McAfee

McAfee Names '.hk' World's Most Dangerous Domain

Hong Kong's ".hk" is now the world's most dangerous domain for surfing and searching, according to a report released Wednesday by security company McAfee, but the survey's methodology may mean it is not as risky as its seems.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) moved from number 28 in 2007 to the top of the company's "Mapping the Mal Web" survey, edging out its northern neighbor China's ".cn," which placed second. Finland's ".fi" was the safest, followed by Japan's ".jp."

Just over 19 percent of ".hk" contain malware, viruses, have a high rate of spam or feature aggressive pop-up ads, McAfee said, as determined by a survey of 74 top-level domains using its SiteAdvisor software. Over 11 percent of ".cn" sites for China were similarly found to be dangerous. Comparatively, only 0.05 percent ".fi" sites were found to be hazardous.

However, one Hong Kong-based security analyst said the survey did not demonstrate any real risk as emanating from the SAR. "McAfee are only looking at the top-level domain bit, they are not looking at the location of the server," said Richard Stagg, director and managing consultant at Handshake Networking, a vendor-independent security consultancy. "They're not paying attention to where sites are actually hosted."

The report is also not specific on the degree of "badness" of the sites using the ".hk" domain, Stagg said, as McAfee puts risks such as malware and annoyances like pop-up ads together.

Malware purveyors and spammers choose their top-level domain registrations based in part on where it is difficult to get a domain name shut down, Stagg said. There are "huge, huge numbers of organized crime Web sites and porn Web sites are registered with .cn domains, but most of them are not hosted in China," he said.

Purveyors of malware and spam choose top-level domains in part based on how difficult it is to shut those domains down. For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation can ask Network Solutions to close a .com domain, hosted in the U.S., within days, Stagg said, whereas it would have no jurisdiction with foreign domain registrars.

PDF May Embed Flash Content

2008-06-05T19:28:00.003+08:00

Adobe announced that the next iteration of its Acrobat line of product, but may be taking the wrong direction by adding the ability to add Flash Content to PDFs.

Has Adobe Taken a Wrong Turn with Acrobat 9?
Niel McAllister

This week, Adobe announced details of the next iteration of its Acrobat line of products, due in late June or early July. Perhaps the most prominent new feature of Acrobat 9 will be the ability to embed live Flash animation and video directly into PDF documents.

But while this capability sounds appealing, I can't help but be skeptical. PDF stands for Portable Document Format. It seems to me that this new direction that Adobe is taking in some ways flies against the original idea of what PDF is all about.

For starters, adding Flash to PDF documents is instantly going to make them a whole lot less portable. Flash support is nearly ubiquitous on the Windows and Mac OS platforms, but Adobe's track record with Flash on Linux leaves something to be desired. Also, there are a whole lot of handhelds and other devices that can render PDF documents just fine, but lack the power to render video animation.

Second, if something is moving, dancing, and singing across the screen, is it still a "document"? Historically, PDF has been a way to deliver nicely formatted, graphically rich pages in an electronic way. One of the most popular uses of PDFs, in fact, is to print them out on plain, old-fashioned paper. What happens when you go to print a document with embedded video? If nothing else, the printout will not be an accurate representation of the original file.

One of PDF's strengths has been that it has been somewhat less of a moving target than online file formats, such as Flash. By wedding the two, Adobe risks lessening the value of one of its strongest properties.

What's more, if Adobe is now positioning PDF as primarily an online (or mixed-media) file format, what message does that send to the print publishing community, which has long relied on PDF to manage prepress workflows? Will Adobe continue to act with their best interests at heart?

Though the distinctions are subtle, the new features of Acrobat 9 seem likely to create confusion about PDF in the minds of customers. I wonder if, in its zeal to be viewed as a major player in the online content creation business, Adobe might be taking a wrong turn here.

Source: www.pcworld.com

Microsoft Clarifies XP SP 3 Flash Issue

2008-06-04T07:16:00.004+08:00

Amid concerns that users of its Window XP SP 3 may be vulnerable to online attacks, Microsoft has finally explained XP users need to upgrade Adobe Flash Player

Microsoft Clarifies XP SP 3 Flash Issue

Amid concerns that users of its Window XP Service Pack 3 operating system may be vulnerable to online attacks, Microsoft has finally broken its silence and explained which XP users need to upgrade their Adobe Flash Player software.

The confusion started Monday, when handlers at the Internet Storm Center pointed out that Microsoft had quietly noted that the recent XP SP 3 was vulnerable to five Flash bugs patched in November 2006. Some took this to mean that if an XP system was updated to Service Pack 3, it would somehow wind up with an older, buggy, version of the Flash Player.

Microsoft originally declined to comment on the matter, but on Tuesday it reconsidered and said that this is not the case.

"Microsoft does not ship any version of Flash in the Windows XP Service Pack 3 update that customers use to update existing SP2 machines," the company said in a statement.

However some people who build new XP systems using SP3 will need to update their software. "A new system built using a copy of Windows XP with SP3 integrated will install the original Flash 6 that shipped with Windows XP Gold and will need MS06-069 installed from Windows Update," Microsoft said.

They should, however, be running the latest version of the player, 9.0.124.0, which includes bug fixes that protect against an attack currently being used by criminals.

Just last week Symantec mistakenly reported that attackers had discovered an unpatched zero-day flaw in the Flash Player. The bug turned out to be something patched in April, but nevertheless, it is being exploited in a fairly widespread attack, so having a vulnerable version of Flash is a dangerous proposition.

But that incident, combined with Microsoft's initial silence on the XP SP 3 issue, has made things tough for Windows users, said Susan Bradley, a Windows blogger who is chief technology officer with Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun, Accountancy Corp. "It is very confusing," she said. "First we were really freaking out because we thought we had a zero-day," she said, "Now we've got this bulletin that says if you apply this, you're [in trouble]."

Users can find out if their PCs are running the latest version of the player by checking with this Adobe Web site.

Microsoft Extends XP Deadline for Low-Cost PCs (Part 1)

2008-06-03T09:26:00.001+08:00

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP so that computer makers can include the operating system on low-cost PCs

Microsoft Extends XP Deadline for Low-Cost PCs
Part 1

Microsoft has further extended the life of Windows XP so that computer makers can include the operating system on low-cost desktop PCs, the company announced at the Computex trade show on Tuesday.

Microsoft has been under pressure from computer makers to provide a version of its OS for an emerging class of very low-cost laptops and desktops. Its new Windows Vista OS is widely seen as too resource-hungry for those machines.

In April Microsoft extended its deadline for selling Windows XP licenses for low-cost laptops like the Asus Eee PC. It had originally planned to stop selling most XP licenses on June 30.

At Computex on Tuesday it said it has now also extended the deadline for low-cost desktops. PC makers can now include Windows XP in those systems until 2010, the same as the deadline for low-cost laptops, said Rob Young, a senior director with Microsoft's OEM group.

In a statement, Microsoft said the extension applies to "nettops," a term coined by Intel to refer to low-cost desktops that have limited system configurations and are intended for simple tasks like surfing the Internet and sending e-mail. Examples include the upcoming Asus Eee Box, which is on show here at Computex.

It was unclear what limitations Microsoft may put on PC makers to prevent them from installing Windows XP on more capable machines. Young said Microsoft and PC vendors are in general agreement over what constitutes a nettop and suggested that Microsoft won't specify the hardware configurations that vendors can use with XP.

Microsoft said it was responding to the growing popularity of nettops and netbooks, and to demands from PC makers to provide a suitable OS for those machines.

"We've had a lot of feedback from customers and partners, and they're very interested in seeing these devices with Windows on them," said Steve Guggenheimer, the head of Microsoft's OEM business, during a speech at Computex.

continued

Microsoft Extends XP Deadline for Low-Cost PCs (Part 2)

2008-06-03T07:33:00.000+08:00

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP so that computer makers can include the operating system on low-cost PCs

Microsoft Extends XP Deadline for Low-Cost PCs
Part 2

continued

It was unclear what limitations Microsoft may put on PC makers to prevent them from installing Windows XP on more capable machines. Young said Microsoft and PC vendors are in general agreement over what constitutes a nettop and suggested that Microsoft won't specify the hardware configurations that vendors can use with XP.

Microsoft said it was responding to the growing popularity of nettops and netbooks, and to demands from PC makers to provide a suitable OS for those machines.

"We've had a lot of feedback from customers and partners, and they're very interested in seeing these devices with Windows on them," said Steve Guggenheimer, the head of Microsoft's OEM business, during a speech at Computex.

Microsoft's statement was ambiguous, saying only that it would extend the deadline for "the Windows offering" to include nettops. Young confirmed that the extension applies to Windows XP.

"We have seen much demand for Windows on the Eee PC," Jerry Shen, CEO of Asustek Computer, said in the statement. "It is great that Microsoft is addressing this customer demand and providing a Windows solution on these devices, which will provide a familiar computing experience."

Intel has said nettops and netbooks are intended as a second PC for the home or for people in developing countries who can't afford a full-featured PC. However, Guggenheimer acknowledged Tuesday that no one knows yet where the devices will prove popular.

"We've had standalone Internet devices come out before, not too many of them have been successful, but now we are getting towards the right price points," he said. "How they'll land and who will buy them we don't really know yet, but we'll wait and see."

Netbooks and nettops are intended to be powerful enough to consume content, such as streaming video, but not powerful enough for content creation tasks like video editing. Many will use Intel's new Atom chips or Via's low-power C7 processor.

The Eee Box is due to go on sale in July for about $300 and will be offered with Windows XP or Linux. It will come with a maximum hard drive capacity of 250GB and use 802.11n Wi-Fi for Internet access.

Safari Flaw Worse Than First Thought

2008-06-02T07:40:00.000+08:00

Microsoft is warning that a previously disclosed flaw in Apple's Safari browser could have dire consequences for Windows users.

Safari Flaw Worse Than First Thought, Microsoft Warns

The Safari bug, originally disclosed on May 15 by security researcher Nitesh Dhanjani, allows attackers to litter a victim's desktop with executable files, an attack known as "carpet bombing."

It turns out that if this flaw is exploited in combination with a second unpatched bug in Internet Explorer, attackers can run unauthorized software on a victim's computer, according to Aviv Raff, a security researcher. Raff says he originally reported the IE flaw to Microsoft more than a year ago, and then told them about how it could be combined with the carpet bombing bug just over a week ago.

IDG News Service tested Raff's demonstration attack code, which runs Windows Calculator on a victim's system. For the attack to work, a victim must first visit a maliciously crafted Web page with the Safari browser, which in turn will trigger the carpet bombing attack and exploit the IE flaw.

Both the Safari and IE bugs "are moderate vulnerabilities that, combined, produce a critical flaw, which allows remote code execution," Raff said in an instant message interview.

Microsoft is taking the issue seriously. It released a security advisory on the problem late Friday, a sign that it may be working on a patch for the IE flaw. The advisory says that the vulnerability has to do with the way Windows handles desktop executables and recommends that Windows users "restrict use of Safari as a web browser until an appropriate update is available from Microsoft and/or Apple."

The attack reportedly affects all versions of Windows XP and Vista, Microsoft said.

Apple may not be rushing out to patch this bug, however. Dhanjani says that Apple has told him that it is not treating the Safari bug as a security issue, a response that has generated criticism from the security community. Last week, for example, the consumer advocacy group Stopbadaware.org urged Apple to reconsider this stance.

According to Raff, unless Apple patches the bug, more attacks like the one he found in IE are likely to pop up. "This is not the only issue that can be combined with the Safari vulnerability," he said. "If Microsoft fixes this, Safari users will still be vulnerable."

Mozilla Shooting for Record Books With Firefox 3 Release

2008-05-31T14:45:00.003+08:00

The company started a campaign asking users to pledge to download the next full release of its browser on the day it is available so the release can set a Guinness World Record

Mozilla Shooting for Record Books With Firefox 3 Release

Mozilla is aiming to create what may be the geekiest world record ever with its upcoming Firefox 3 browser release.

The company on Wednesday started a campaign asking users to pledge to download the next full release of its browser on the day it is available so the release can set a Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.

Mozilla has not yet unveiled exactly when Firefox 3 will be available, but expects it could be as soon as mid-June. A test release of Firefox 3 is currently available online.

The company is deeming the day of its release "Download Day" and is asking fans to not only pledge to download Firefox 3, but to host parties to encourage friends to download with them, and place "Download Day" buttons on their Web sites as reminders of the big day.

Currently there is no world record for software downloads; Mozilla is trying to create one with Firefox 3 and its Download Day festivities.

According to the campaign's Web site, once Download Day is over, Mozilla plans to provide the Guinness Book of World Records a signed statement of authentication from its judges showing that it followed rules for breaking records; the company also will confirm download numbers.

Mozilla also plans to send video footage and photographs of Mozilla users hosting download parties as well as download logs for a sample size of Firefox 3 downloads to prove it has set a world record.

While the fanfare may seem a bit geeky, Firefox -- released in November 2004 -- has inspired a significant and rather fervent fan base. This is in part because it was the first browser in years to give Microsoft's Internet Explorer viable competition. The browser even has its own fan page (sign-in required) on the Facebook social-networking site, with 79,174 fans signed up and counting.

According to Mozilla, there are more than 175 million users of Firefox, which is available in more than 45 languages and used in more than 230 countries.

More information about how users can participate in Download Day is available on the campaign's Web site.

Windows 7 to Include Multitouch

2008-05-29T06:54:00.008+08:00

Microsoft is finally opening up about when Windows 7 will ship, but the company continues to share just a few, yet tantalizing details of what the eagerly anticipated OS update will be all about.

Microsoft Windows 7 to Include Multitouch Features

The latest tidbit to drop is multitouch interface support. At the Wall St. Journal's D Conference Tuesday evening in Carlsbad, Calif., company founder and chief software architect Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer are scheduled to unveil a laptop with a touchscreen that accepts multiple, simultaneous touches. The effect is quite reminiscent of what's possible with the world's most popular, commercially available gesture-based interface device: the iPhone.

Officially, Windows 7 is scheduled to ship three years after the general availability of Windows Vista, according to Microsoft. Vista's business editions launched on Nov. 30, 2006, which would mean the software could ship as early as that date in 2009, with a beta release in advance. Vista's editions for the home market launched Jan. 29, 2007.

To be fair, this is not Microsoft's first foray into the multitouch arena. The company's innovative "Surface" computing platform, which combines cameras to sense the gestures and touches of either a single user or multiple users, allowing them to interact with a table-top full of digital objects. Surface then uses a projector to project the image onto a screen. Windows 7 would use touchscreen technology to achieve similar effects.

Microsoft would not say specifically whether the OS will support gestures as well as multitouch support, like Surface does. Given the gesture support in Apple's products, however, something similar is likely.

A video posted on Microsoft Windows Client Communications Team Director Chris Flores' blog shows the interface on a laptop and table-mounted LCD screen. During that demonstration a user edits and manipulates photos with his fingertips, navigates a map and plays a virtual piano.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is "working closely with OEMs, IHVs and ISVs to bring the best touch experiences to Windows PCs. The Windows and Surface teams are also working together closely to deliver the best and most innovative touch experiences to customers."

"Touch is quickly becoming a common way of directly interacting with software and devices," Flores wrote on his blog, in something of a validation of the touch and gesture based platform introduced on Apple's iPhone. "Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere including laptop touch pads, cell phones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more."

LaCie Doubles Blu-ray Burner Speed

2008-05-28T07:54:00.002+08:00

The d2 Blu-ray Drive features dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and is compatible with the Mac and Windows

LaCie Doubles Blu-ray Burner Speed

LaCie has introduced a faster version of its d2 Blu-ray Drive, available now for US$649.99.

The d2 Blu-ray Drive features dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and is compatible with the Mac and Windows. It ships with Roxio's Toast Titanium software for Mac OS X and Easy Media Creator for Windows, and it lets you burn Blu-ray, DVD and CD media.

In addition to the faster drive mechanism -- which now operates at 4x Blu-ray burning speed -- LaCie has also augmented the drive with an updated aluminum alloy case and better software.

Blu-ray Disc is the high-capacity optical medium used by the Sony PlayStation 3 and other high definition drives. It's the successor to DVD and the heir apparent to the HD throne following Toshiba's withdrawal of HD DVD from the market earlier this year. Double-layer Blu-ray Discs can store up to 50GB, more than 10 times the capacity of a single-layer DVD disc.

Future Apple Devices May Be Solar-Powered

2008-05-27T09:43:00.003+08:00

Employees at Apple have filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices

Future Apple Devices May Be Solar-Powered

Employees at Apple have filed a patent for integrating solar cells into portable devices by placing them underneath the layers of a touch-sensitive display, according to the filing.

Solar power could help make devices truly portable, freeing from the need for wires to connect them to a power supply.

When generating electricity from solar panels, the larger the panel the better -- but as the patent "Solar cells on portable devices" warns, after allowing space for buttons, screens and a way to hold the device, only a small area is left on most devices for solar cells.

One of the ways around that suggested in the patent is to stack a touch-sensitive layer, a display and solar panel on top of one another. That could make Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch good candidates for such a power supply, as the display occupies almost the entire face of those devices.

The use of solar powered charging in portable devices is starting to get more attention, for more immediate consumer use as well.

When Vodafone announced its plan in April to reduce its emissions of the greenhouse gase CO2 by 50 percent by 2020, it also announced plans for solar-powered phone chargers and universal phone chargers for Vodafone-branded handsets.

At the recent ITU Telecom Africa 2008 conference, Ugandan Minister for Communications and Information and Communication Technologies Ham-Mukasa Mulira talked about trials of solar-powered charging conducted there, which had showed promise.

Newest Firefox Beta has Critical Flaws

2008-05-26T07:26:00.004+08:00

Mozilla has identified 10 high-priority bugs in Firefox 3.0 but won't decide until next week whether to release the browser or issuing a second release candidate (RC2).

Newest Firefox Beta has Critical Flaws, Mozilla Admits

Mozilla has identified 10 high-priority bugs in Firefox 3.0, three of them pegged "critical," but won't decide until next week whether to release the browser anyway or restart the final stretch by issuing a second release candidate (RC2).

"We are making a go/no go decision early next week, as we are still collecting feedback [on Release Candidate 1]," Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, said in an e-mail Thursday.

Firefox 3.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) launched a week ago, but Mozilla has not yet committed to RC2. Previously, the company has only said it is targeting June as the release window for the final code.

On the "mozilla.dev.planning" newsgroup, Schroepfer also said that on May 27 Mozilla will either call Firefox 3.0 finished with RC1, or build RC2 with fixes for the 10 bugs that have been collected.

In the meantime, testing will begin on the 10 bugs. "If we need to do an RC2, they'll be ready to go," he said. "If we ship RC1, we can get them in the 3.0.1."

The bug list includes three marked "critical" on Bugzilla, Mozilla's bug-tracking database and management system. Eight of the bugs affect Firefox on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, while two afflict only Linux.

One of Linux bugs has caught the eye of some Firefox users, in part, because of a short blog post that garnered attention on Digg.com . The blogger, Jason Clinton, who works for Advanced Clustering Technologies Inc., a Kansas City company that specializes in cluster-based systems and Linux servers, took Mozilla to task.

On Tuesday, Clinton called Mozilla's support for Linux "second-class" and blasted the open-source developer over a bug. "Release managers just made the call that Firefox 3.0 will release with a known bug which brings Linux systems to their knees."

The bug Clinton referenced, tagged as "421482" in Bugzilla, is one of the 10 on the list that Mozilla's using to decide whether to release Firefox 3.0 as is or craft RC2 for another go towards final code.

In Bugzilla, developers argued over the extent of the problem -- which some Linux users said seriously affected Firefox's performance, as well as their systems overall -- and where the fault lay -- in the browser or in SQLite, the database Firefox uses for its revamped bookmark and history feature, dubbed "Places."

On Wednesday, in a separate e-mail, Schroepfer said that Mozilla developers were looking into the bug and were confident a solution had been found. "You can see that a couple different issues have been accidently confused," he said. "Overall, I think we have some good options to make this work well."

Firefox 3.0 will be the first major upgrade to the browser since October 2006. But Mozilla may ship another version before the end of the year, Schroepfer has said, in order to add features that weren't ready in time for Firefox 3.0.

Firefox 3 RC1 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in 41 languages from Mozilla's site.

Google Steals Search Share From Rivals

2008-05-25T07:49:00.001+08:00

Extending its dominance in the search market, Google grew its share of queries in April at the expense of rivals Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Ask.com.

Google Steals Search Share From Rivals

Google's U.S. search query share in April grew to 61.6 percent, up from 59.8 percent in March, comScore announced Thursday. Google accomplished this although the number of search queries dropped 2 percent overall in April to 10.58 billion, compared with March, comScore said.
So even with the overall monthly decline, Google managed to increase its search queries by 1 percent, from 6.44 billion to 6.51 billion.

Meanwhile, the other four major search-engine players saw their queries and their market share drop in April, compared with March, not a great situation for them to be in, considering that search advertising accounts for about 41 percent of U.S. online advertising, according to the latest report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Yahoo's market share of queries dropped to 20.4 percent, and its number of queries fell 6 percent. Microsoft's market share shrunk to 9.1 percent, while its queries fell 5 percent. AOL, down to a 4.6 percent share, saw its queries drop by 6 percent. Ask.com, whose share slid to 4.3 percent, had the biggest fall in queries percentage-wise with 9 percent.

A desire to improve its position in search was a primary driver for Microsoft's now-abandoned acquisition bid for Yahoo. However, Microsoft is reportedly trying to strike a search deal with Yahoo, which is also in similar negotiations with Google. It's not clear whether Yahoo would be open to selling its search-advertising business outright or instead seek a deal to outsource part of it to Microsoft or Google.

Whatever happens, comScore's figures for April leave no doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo have resoundingly failed to slow down Google in search, and that Google remains well-positioned to use its search dominance to continue boosting its revenue and profits.

In a research note commenting on the comScore report, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote: "As Google continues to take share, we continue to believe a deal between Yahoo and Microsoft would be necessary -- though not sufficient -- to compete effectively with Google."

Yahoo Postpones Board Meeting, Director Resigns

2008-05-24T07:46:00.000+08:00

Facing a battle for its board, Yahoo on Thursday pushed back its annual meeting until the end of July and announced the resignation of a board member.

Yahoo Postpones Board Meeting, Director Resigns

The annual meeting, during which the entire board is up for re-election, had been scheduled for July 3. Yahoo did not yet set a particular date for the annual meeting but said that it will be around the end of July.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been scooping up Yahoo shares and has told the company he is nominating 10 candidates to replace the entire board. He has said that in doing so he hopes to reignite talks with Microsoft, which recently pulled its acquisition bid for Yahoo.

In addition to the change in the annual meeting, Yahoo said Edward Kozel resigned from the board. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Yahoo said Kozel had planned to leave the board in February but decided to stay on following the acquisition proposal from Microsoft.

As a result of his resignation, Yahoo has reduced the size of its board to nine directors, it said.

ODF Wins the Office Document Format War?

2008-05-23T07:41:00.001+08:00

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will bring improved XML support to the office suite -- but it will be ODF, and not Microsoft's own format.

ODF Wins the Office Document Format War?

Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft today announced that Office 2007 will support ODF (Open Document Format), the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.

Even more surprising, however, was the corollary to the announcement. While the Office programmer bees are busy buzzing away at ODF, OOXML (Office Open XML) is being put on the back burner. Don't expect Office to support a fully ISO-compliant version of OOXML until the next major release of the suite, currently codenamed Office 14, release date unknown.

Exactly why Microsoft is backpedaling its support for OOXML is not known. But open standards maven Andy Updegrove blogs that it may have something to do with Microsoft's current regulatory troubles in Europe and with the standards bodies that now govern OOXML. It appears likely that Microsoft actually can't implement a fully-compliant version of the standard just yet.

Instead, according to reports, users of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will have the option to make ODF the default file format for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, the same way they can choose Office 2003 or several other formats. Office users can already import and export ODF files using third-party filters, but it doesn't make sense when only a small number of users have installed the filters or even know that they exist. Having support for ODF "baked in" to the Office suite will mean that everyone will be able to save and access these files with no extra effort.

Any way you slice it, this is a big step toward shaking off Microsoft's dominance of the office software market and ensuring that we can all preserve our files for years to come.

Phishers Point Scam at Apple's iTunes

2008-05-22T16:49:00.001+08:00

Phishers have targeted users of Apple's music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time

Phishers Point Scam at Apple's iTunes

Phishers have targeted users of Apple Inc.'s iTunes music store with sophisticated identity theft attacks for the first time, a security company said Tuesday.

People began receiving spammed messages Monday telling them that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account, said Andrew Lochart, an executive with e-mail security vendor Proofpoint Inc.

A link in the spam leads to a site posing as an iTunes billing update page; that phony page asks for information including credit card number and security code, Social Security number and mother's maiden name.

The theft attempt is a new twist on the usual phishing attack, said Lochart. "We've gotten used to seeing the usual companies and brands attacked," he said, "like PayPal, eBay and Citibank. But we've never seen Apple as the target."

In a way, said Lochart, the phishing campaign is almost a compliment. "It's probably indicative that the bad guys see Apple's online presence as large enough to be a target. It's part and parcel of the success that Apple has enjoyed lately."

Lochart also speculated that the identity thieves aimed the new attack at iTunes users because of the service's perceived demographics. "I wonder if the bad guys are thinking that [iTunes users] are younger than those for some of the other phished sites, like banks and eBay," said Lochart. "The way that teenagers and young adults use the Internet, they show a certain level of trust or openness when they post their name and age and school on MySpace."

On one hand, Lochart added, young people who grew up with the Internet are considered technologically savvier than their elders. "But then you see the way they use something like MySpace in a way that's considered risky behavior."

Although the phoniness of the link to the bogus iTunes account page might be overlooked in the spam e-mail, the URL is clearly not part of the official iTunes domain. "They've actually done a pretty poor job," Lochart, said of the phishers.

Google Holds Meeting on Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

2008-05-21T08:24:00.002+08:00

Executives of Google Inc. held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the implications of revived talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

Google Holds Meeting on Revived Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

Executives of Google Inc. held an emergency meeting last night to discuss the implications of revived talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., according to a report in The Times in the U.K.

Over the weekend, Microsoft said it might be interested in buying part of Yahoo, but not all of it.

For the past month or so, Google has been in talks with Yahoo to extend a two-week test whereby Yahoo would deliver Web advertising from Google alongside its own search results. According to various reports, that deal could be solidified this week.

Google and Yahoo could not be reached for comment at deadline. Microsoft declined comment

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire, which was hosted by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company CEO Eric Schmidt said, "After this press conference, the three of us will meet and decide what our response is," according to The Times.

The renewed talks between Microsoft and Yahoo come as billionaire investor Carl Icahn gears up to launch a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board of directors. Icahn and other investors are angry that Yahoo snubbed Microsoft's initial offer to purchase the company for US$44.6 billion.

In addition, according to The Times, Brin said Monday that he would give Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, "refuge within Google" if he were forced out of the company. Brin also said Google had not yet ruled out a deal with Yahoo, The Times said.

source:
For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld.

GTA IV Sales Set Guinness Record

2008-05-20T10:19:00.000+08:00

A week after Take-Two announced that GTA IV had broken launch day records, the Guinness Book of World Records confirmed.

GTA IV Sales Set Guinness Record

According to Guinness, Grand Theft Auto IV sold an impressive 3.6 million units in its first 24 hours, totaling a record-setting US$310 million in gross sales.

The figures easily push the Rockstar game above all other entertainment record holders, including Halo 3 with $170 million in day one sales, Spiderman 3 with $60 million, and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows at $220 million.

"The record establishes GTA IV as the most profitable entertainment release of all-time, far surpassing other video game, film and book releases," said Guinness.

Last week, GTA publisher Take-Two purported, "we believe [GTA IV] retail sales levels surpass any movie or music launch to date."

Microsoft Puts New Yahoo Deal on the Table

2008-05-19T14:56:00.002+08:00

Microsoft said on Sunday that it has raised the possibility of a new deal with Yahoo, one that may involve buying a part of the company but not all of it.

Microsoft Puts New Yahoo Deal on the Table

"Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo," Microsoft said in a brief statement.
The company did not elaborate on the proposal. It said it did not plan at this time to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo, but that it was continuing to explore its options to expand its online services and advertising businesses.

Microsoft withdrew its offer to buy Yahoo on May 3 after the two sides failed to agree on a price. Since then, the activist investor Carl Icahn has said he will launch a proxy battle to replace Yahoo's board and force it back to the negotiating table with Microsoft.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment, although published reports said the company is not discussing its plan further in public.

"There of course can be no assurance that any transaction will result from these discussions," Microsoft said in its statement. It said it reserved the right to reconsider its decision not to buy Yahoo outright, depending on any future talks with Yahoo, third parties or the shareholders of either company.

Meanwhile, Yahoo issued a statement later on Sunday confirming that Microsoft isn't at this time interested in acquiring the entire company.

"Yahoo and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders," the statement said. "Yahoo's Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value."

That Microsoft is discussing a new deal could be a sign that Yahoo's leadership wants to avoid the spectacle of a proxy battle ahead of its annual meeting on July 3, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Yahoo responded to Icahn's threats on Friday, arguing that its own board has gave Microsoft's offer fair consideration, and that the current board, led by Chairman Roy Bostock, can best manage Yahoo's future.

It was unclear Sunday what type of alternative deal Microsoft has in mind. It said it issued its statement "in light of developments" that have taken place since it withdrew its offer.

Microsoft indicated earlier that it had moved on from the deal and that it was looking for other ways to grow its online business, internally or through smaller acquisitions.

Wii Expected to Beat Xbox 360 U.S. Sales in May

2008-05-18T15:04:00.000+08:00

With Nintendo's 714,200 units sold in April it would need to sell only 500,000 consoles this month to surpass Microsoft's self-imposed milestone

Wii Expected to Beat Xbox 360 U.S. Sales in May

It appears as though the Wii will surpass the Xbox 360 in North America a bit earlier than expected, as Nintendo announced last week that 9.5 million units have sold in the U.S. alone since launch.

The announcement puts a new light on Microsoft's peculiar chest-thumping press release from earlier in the week, when that company said it had reached an arbitrary 10 million unit sold boundary and would therefore "win" the console war. With Nintendo's 714,200 units sold in April, according to NPD, it would need to sell only 500,000 consoles this month to surpass Microsoft's self-imposed milestone, in less time. The Xbox 360 launched a year before the Wii or Sony's PlayStation 3 console.

A total of 188,000 Xbox 360s were sold in April, meaning that Nintendo would need only sell approximately 688,000 units in May to equal its rival's numbers. WiiFit also launches this month, and many analysts believe the balance board peripheral it is bundled with will inflate Nintendo's sales number even more. The console outsold all non-Nintendo systems in April, combined, according to NPD.

Overall, hardware sales were healthy at US$426 million, which was up 26% from $339 million in April 2007.

source: www.pcworld.com

Flash Player 10 Available for Public Testing

2008-05-17T15:12:00.000+08:00

For those of you who love your cutting-edge Flash content, Adobe made a prerelease test version of the Flash 10 Player

Flash Player 10 Available for Public Testing

For those of you who really, really love your cutting-edge Flash content, Adobe made a prerelease test version of the Flash 10 Player available today. You can download an installer for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux from the Adobe Labs Web site.

Because this is a testing version, you're not likely to see any content that requires the new player in the wild just yet. But if you design or maintain Web pages yourself, it might be a good idea to give them a whirl with the beta player, just to make sure that all your old content still renders the way it should with the new version.

Among the new features in this edition of Flash Player are support for new 3D rendering effects, Adobe Pixel Blender filters, new drawing APIs, and an advanced text rendering engine. What's more, Flash Player 10 has expanded use of hardware graphics acceleration, so Flash content should be a little snappier.

Don't expect it to be completely without bugs, though. In fact, it's safe to assume that not everything will work exactly as expected -- this is a public beta release, after all. When you do encounter abnormal behavior, be sure to submit feedback to Adobe and/or discuss your issues in the public forums.

As for when we can start authoring content for use with Flash Player 10, expect an announcement from Adobe regarding the next version of Creative Suite on May 27.

Birthday Post: Pokemon Platinum Version Leaked

2008-05-13T08:19:00.004+08:00

A low-resolution cell phone photo appears that announces Pokémon Platinum that features Giratina.

Pokemon Platinum Version Leaked

A low-resolution cell phone photo appears to show a page from the June issue of CoroCoro that announces Pokémon Platinum, a new Nintendo DS game that features Giratina. Because the magazine has not yet been released, the authenticity of the photo has not been confirmed.
The page offers screen shots from the game that show a new overworld scene and a new in-battle scene for Giratina. The male protagonist from Diamond and Pearl is wearing a blue outfit.
According to a rumor quoted by blue skY, the game will be released in Japan in September. Those who reserve the game in advance will receive a ticket to get an egg that will hatch into a Shinx that knows a special move. The eighth gym leader, Volkner, will be replaced, and a Battle Frontier-like area will be added.

EA Games Plans to Develop for Wii

2008-05-12T07:33:00.002+08:00

Special versions of Madden football, NBA Live and others are in the works for the Wii.

EA Plans New Sports Games for Wii

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc unveiled two initiatives last week to breathe new life into its sports business by making games that are easier to play and customized for Nintendo Co Ltd's popular Wii console.

Key games such as "Madden" football, "NBA Live" and "FIFA" soccer will come out in special versions for the Wii, which has become the best-selling game system by drawing in older and female players with friendly graphics and simple motion-sensing controls.

EA is also starting a sub-brand dubbed Freestyle that will be home to a new set of games not tied to any existing league and therefore free of expensive licensing rights. The first game will be "Facebreaker," a cartoonish and whimsical boxing game due out in September.

"We can't be blind to the fact that different consumers are coming into games now and shame on us if we can't evolve and develop something for that crowd," Peter Moore, head of EA Sports, told Reuters.

EA expects to have sold about $1.3 billion worth of sports games in its fiscal year just ended in March, accounting for more than a third of total revenue.

Known for their sharp graphics and attention to detail, EA's sports games are among the industry's best-selling titles each year. But many gamers have criticized them for including few groundbreaking new features and increasingly complex controls that make them tough to play.

Showing off this year's lineup of sports titles at a new conference in EA's Vancouver studio, Moore said the company had not forgotten about its core fans who want the most realistic experience.

"While we have no intention whatsoever of dumbing down the experience that we all love and that drives this multibillion

dollar business ... we need to make sports games more approachable," Moore said.

Caught off guard by the Wii's success following its launch in late 2006, EA tried to adapt its sports games to the Wii, an effort Moore admitted amounted to basically tacking on the motion controls without changing the core game.

Moore, who joined EA from Microsoft Corp's games division to head up the sports business last September, said the new approach to the Wii marked a dramatic rethinking of what those players wanted from a game.

The model was "Wii Sports," a title from Nintendo included with every Wii that took bowling, baseball, golf, tennis and boxing and reduced them to a handful of simple motions.

"We learned some hard lessons. That was the type of sports experience they were looking for and we saw that and decided we needed to redefine what our sports games were about," Moore said. This year, EA's top sports games for the Wii will have "All-Play" added to their titles.

While versions for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 will be similar to previous years, the "All-Play" titles will have options to use simpler controls and quicker games.

"It's like how swimming pools have a deep end and a shallow end. EA Sports has really only built a swimming pool with a deep end. It's intimidating for a lot of people to jump right in the deep end. With All-Play, we're building a shallow end," Moore added.

(Editing by Andre Grenon)

Copyright 2007 Reuters.

Office 2007 SP1 Via AU

2008-05-11T07:25:00.000+08:00

Microsoft's Automatic Update service will push out Office 2007 Service Pack 1 starting June 16, which adds stability to the office suite as well as a few new features including support for Windows Server 2008

Microsoft to Offer Office 2007 SP1 via Automatic Update

Microsoft's Automatic Update service will push out Office 2007 Service Pack 1 starting June 16.

What does this mean for Office 2007 and Microsoft users in general? Well, it obviously means that Microsoft is finally ready to say that the Office 2007 SP1 is ready for the masses. It's been available for months now, but the software giant has been reluctant to use Automatic Update to dump it to the masses. Late last year Microsoft accidentally distributed the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically confusing Vista and XP users.

The service pack adds stability to the office suite as well as a few new features including support for Windows Server 2008 and beefed up compatibility between 2007's native file format, Office Open XML and the formats used by earlier editions of the suite.

If anything, this also proves that Microsoft indeed knows that there are flaws releasing updates in an automatic update manner and is addressing that by almost testing the patches and service packs on voluntary downloaders before putting in on the Automatic Update service.

It will also reportedly come as a rolling release, meaning not everyone will have access to Office 2007 SP1 by way of Automatic Update at first. The first rollout will begin on June 16. Microsoft did a similar rolling release with Office 2003 SP3 which gave the customers time to provide feedback and Microsoft to make adjustments before further pushing out the release.

People rip on Microsoft pretty hardcore, but I think the company deserve at least a little credit for taking the necessary steps to ensure a successful software update. It won't always work, but Microsoft sure does try to do everything it can to make the roll-outs work.

Microsoft Won't Pursue Other Partnerships

2008-05-10T10:54:00.000+08:00

Microsoft won't be pursuing tie-ups or takeovers to replace its failed Yahoo bid, Bill Gates said in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Microsoft Won't Pursue Other Partnerships, Says Gates

Gates, who cofounded the software maker and serves as its chairman, said Microsoft had "put a lot of effort into talking to Yahoo."

Referencing comments made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Gates said that "now at this point, Microsoft is focused on its independent strategy."

Microsoft spent three months courting Yahoo but dropped its pursuit on Saturday after the two sides failed to reach agreement on a takeover price. Microsoft had initially offered US$31 per share and raised it to US$33 per share to try and entice Yahoo but the search engine operator held out for $37 per share.

After final negotiations late last week Ballmer signaled to Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang that it was throwing in the towel.

"We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a statement distributed early Saturday evening.

On Monday Yang, facing pressure from shareholders, signaled that Yahoo is still open to an offer from Microsoft or another company as long as the company is not "undervalued."

"We've always felt the Yahoo platform has been undervalued or underappreciated by the marketplace,'' he told Bloomberg News.

Gates was speaking in Tokyo and announced two programs from Microsoft Japan. One promotes Windows Media Center and the other will provide Microsoft's software development tools at no charge to student developers.

Photoshop Express Public Beta Update

2008-05-09T09:18:00.001+08:00

Adobe Systems on Wednesday announced the pending release of an update to its Photoshop Express Web-based service for image editing.

Photoshop Express Public Beta Adds Flickr Support

Adobe Systems on Wednesday announced the pending release of an update to its Photoshop Express Web-based service for image editing. The update is expected to go live at 9:01 PM Pacific Time (12:01 AM Eastern Time).

Photoshop Express leverages Web 2.0 technologies like Adobe's own Flash software to provide users with an online service for store, sort, edit and show off digital photos. It's compatible with Safari, Firefox and other Web browsers. Adobe notes that more than 60,000 Web albums have been created using Photoshop Express during the first month of public operation. Users receive 2GB of online storage for free.

The enhancements to Photoshop Express include the ability to access to photos through the popular Flickr service. You can upload or download photos into Photoshop Express, edit and add effects then send them back to Flickr.

A new "Save As" feature has been added. It allows you to save multiple versions of an image. An embeddable player can now be used to post slideshows to Facebook MySpace and other social networking Web sites.

Firefox Plugin Shipped with Malicious Code

2008-05-08T08:50:00.000+08:00

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware.

Mozilla: Firefox Plugin Shipped With Malicious Code

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. "Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," she wrote. "Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload."

Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.

The malware in the language pack is from the Xorer Trojan, according to discussion on Mozilla's Bugzilla developer Web site, which indicates that Mozilla developers first discovered the issue on Tuesday.

"I think it (happened) just because the author's local network was infected with the virus, so it modified HTML files," wrote developer Hai-Nam Nguyen. "The infected code just display(s) annoying banner but it can't propagate."

The open-source browser maker does not know how many people were infected with the adware, but the plugin was downloaded more than 1,200 times in the past week and has been downloaded 16,667 times since November.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Web page for the plugin was off-line as Mozilla scrambled to come up with a new, adware-free version of the language pack. In the meantime, users of the software should disable the plugin, Snyder said.

HTC Beats iPhone with MS-based Phone

2008-05-08T07:55:00.001+08:00

The new handset is the next generation of HTC's popular Touch smartphone, which has sold over 3 million units in the 10 months since its launch, beating rival Apple to the punch again.

HTC Beats Apple to 3G With Microsoft-based iPhone Rival

High Tech Computer announced the HTC Touch Diamond on Tuesday, a smartphone running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and with a touch screen designed for one-handed use.

The new handset is the next generation of HTC's popular Touch smartphone, which has sold over 3 million units in the 10 months since its launch. The Touch Diamond updates the series to 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications), beating rival Apple to the punch again.

Last year, HTC launched its first Touch handset nearly a month ahead of the iPhone. The Touch Diamond will be available throughout Europe starting in June, followed by Asia and the Middle East. The handset will hit North and South America in the second half of the year.

Apple has not said when it will launch a 3G iPhone, but industry analysts expect one within the next few months.

The HTC Touch Diamond works on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) networks and offers data rates up to 7.2M bits per second using HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) thanks to a chipset from Qualcomm.

HTC CEO Peter Chou is so excited about the Touch Diamond that he predicts it will be an even bigger seller than the original Touch. "This is going to be the biggest product of my life," he said by phone from London.

HTC's focus on improving touch-screen technology on the Touch Diamond's 2.8-inch, 640 pixel by 480 pixel display pays testament to how serious it is about competing against the iPhone.

The company revamped its TouchFlo software to make give a 3D effect to screen images. People can access photos, music, messages, use push-e-mail and more on the touch screen.

The company also upgraded the Web browser, which is built on an engine from Opera Software but was designed specifically for HTC. The browser fits the screen, and users can zoom and pan Web sites with one hand. Turn the device sideways, and the view automatically rotates as well.

The Touch Diamond includes customized applications for watching YouTube videos and using Google Maps for map and traffic data. The handset has a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver.

The 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus allows video-calling.

Despite the big screen size, camera and other features, the Touch Diamond is small, just 102 millimeters by 51mm by 11.33 mm.

The HTC Touch Diamond also boasts Bluetooth for wireless data transfer, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g for wireless Internet access. The battery on the device is rated for 4 hours of talk time.

One area where Apple's iPhone still has the edge is in data storage: the Touch Diamond has only 4G bytes of flash memory for storing music and videos, compared to the iPhone's 8G bytes or 16G bytes

source: http://www.pcworld.com/

XP SP3 Good to Go

2008-05-07T07:46:00.002+08:00

Windows XP Service Pack 3 is now available for download from Microsoft's Download Center, and is also being released via Windows Update.

Windows XP SP3 Available for Download

Microsoft released the third service pack for Windows XP on Tuesday to the Web after last week delaying its scheduled release because of an incompatibility with one of its other software applications. It also resumed automatic distribution of Windows Vista, Service Pack 1 (SP1), which had been halted because of a similar problem.

Windows XP SP3 is now available through Windows Update and also on the Microsoft Download Center. Microsoft had expected to release the software on April 29; however, it discovered it conflicted with an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS. The problem also affected Windows Vista SP1. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and midsized businesses.

In announcing the release of SP3 for XP, Microsoft said it had addressed this problem by deploying a Windows Update filter that would keep the service packs from being offered to customers who use Microsoft Dynamics RMS, and advised these users to contact Microsoft's support services for more information.

Microsoft has also resumed automatic distribution of Vista SP1, which was suspended following discovery of the RMS incompatibility.

Microsoft still is not offering either service pack to Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers, having put in place a filter on Windows Update to prevent distribution to those customers. The company is still working on a fix it expects to have available later this month, it said.

Microsoft still recommends that Dynamics RMS customers running Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1 contact their Microsoft Customer Support Services for more information.

Microsoft Learns From Itself

2008-05-06T07:54:00.001+08:00

Microsoft has delayed the release of the Windows XP Service Pack 3 indefinitely and Microsoft deserves a little credit for doing so.

Microsoft Learns From Itself By Delaying XP SP3

The third service pack was expected to be available to the consumers earlier this week, but that release has been suspended indefinitely due to flaws with Windows Dynamics Retail Management System.

Microsoft deserves some recognition, sarcastic or not, because this delay has proven that Microsoft is learning from its prior mistakes. Microsoft pushed Vista out the doors far too soon and has paid the price with a plethora of bad public relations, and now the software giant is making the right decisions ensuring that kind of a catastrophe doesn't happen again.

When SP3 is finally made available to the masses, it will hopefully come without a problem in the world, which will be a nicety for Microsoft, who has been known for not being able to handle software releases in the recent years.

What is Backscattering? Part 1

2008-05-05T08:02:00.001+08:00

Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you're a prime candidate for backscattering.

100 E-mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered

The bounceback e-mail messages come in at a trickle, maybe one or two every hour. The subject lines are disquieting: "Cyails, Vygara nad Levytar," "UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL, apparently from you."

You eye your computer screen; you're nervous. What's going on ? Have you been hacked? Are you some kind of zombie botnet spammer?

Nope, you're just getting a little backscatter -- bounceback messages from legitimate e-mail servers that have been fooled by the spammers.

Spammers like to put fake information in their e-mail messages in order to sneak them past e-mail filters. Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you're a prime candidate for backscattering.

The spammer finds your address, or sometimes even guesses it, and then puts it in the "from" line of his messages, sending them out to hundreds of thousands of recipients. When the spam gets sent to an address that is no longer active, it can sometimes be bounced back ... to you.

Although Sophos estimates that backscatter makes up just two percent or three percent of all spam, antispam vendors say these messages are on the rise lately.

Users often think that the backscatter may be a sign that their computer has been hacked and is sending out spam messages, said Brad Bartman, a global support manager with Text 100, a public relations consultancy. "They look at it and they're like, 'Whoa, is my PC infected with a virus?'" he said.

Backscatter rarely hits more than one or two employees at the same time, so it isn't particularly disruptive. But it does worry users, he said. "It's mostly a psychological thing."

With their e-mail addresses widely circulated on press releases, Text 100's PR specialists are the ideal candidates for backscatter.

Because backscatter comes from legitimate mail servers, it can cause special problems. In fact, some security researchers believe that the spammers have been intentionally sending messages that will be bounced back as a way to sneak around spam filters. That's because some mail servers bounce back the original message as part of their notice.

Continued

What is Backscattering? Part 2

2008-05-05T08:00:00.000+08:00

Because e-mail filters now just delete messages that come from nonexistent domains, the spammers like to make their messages look like they come from real e-mail addresses. That means, if your e-mail address has been published on the Web somewhere, you're a prime candidate for backscattering.

100 E-mail Bouncebacks? You've Been Backscattered

Continued

Dan Wallach, like Text 100's Bartman, was hit with a flood of backscatter messages earlier this week. Wallach, an associate professor with Rice University's Department of Computer Science, said that many of the messages he received contained links to suspicious executable files hosted on different Web sites.

"I'll bet that some spammer is rationally thinking 'error messages! Maybe I can get my message through via error messages!'" Wallach said in an e-mail interview. "They don't need many responses before this sort of tactic could be considered to be a success."

At its worst the phenomenon can even wipe Internet servers off the map.

Last month, Stephen Gielda, president of Packetderm, upset a fraudster who was trying to use his anonymous Internet service. Soon his servers were inundated with a tidal wave of backscatter messages. At one point, he was being hit by 10,000 bounceback messages per second, enough to throttle the server's Internet connection.

Gielda had to take his site off-line for five days as he waited for the problem to abate. "I'm used to backscatter, but I'd never seen it at this level before," he said.

While backscatter is extremely hard to filter out, it is a problem that can be fixed.

Backscatter comes in three varieties: messages from mail servers, saying that there is no such user available; "out of office" automated reply messages; and so-called challenge-response messages, which tell the sender that his message will be delivered only once he responds to the bounceback and confirms that the e-mail is coming from a legitimate address.

Security experts say that people should simply stop using these last two types of bounceback messages.

As for "no such user" bouncebacks, that can be fixed too. There are a few e-mail standards that could help with the problem: Variable Envelope Return Path(VERP) and Bounce Address Tag Validation (BATV), for example.

But the problem would largely disappear if server administrators configured their mail servers to immediately reject mail that is sent to nonexistent users, rather than accepting it and then bouncing it back to the faked addresses. Some ISPs (Internet service providers), AOL for example, have done this and have largely eliminated their role in the problem.

If there is spam in the backscatter message, antispam software should filter it out, but if a message has an ambiguous subject line, like "Hey" and the spam message stripped out, the backscatter will look like a legitimate bounceback and is probably going to get through, said Dmitry Samosseiko, manager of Sophos Labs Canada.

"This is a serious problem that is hard to deal with, to be honest," he said. "We can blame spammers for causing the issue in the first place, but it exists because of the mail servers that are not configured to deal with spam."

Windows XP SP3 Delayed

2008-05-04T07:51:00.000+08:00

Microsoft has delayed the release of a third service pack for Windows XP, blaming a "compatibility issue" between the software and a retail-chain-management application.

Microsoft Delays Release of Windows XP SP3

Microsoft had said last week that it completed development on Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and that it would be available via its software-update services on Tuesday. However, incompatibilities discovered in the past several days between an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will force the company to hold off on releasing the software. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and mid-sized businesses.

Microsoft said it is putting filtering in place to prevent its Windows Update service from offering both service packs to systems running Microsoft Dynamics RMS. Once that filtering is in place, Microsoft will release Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and Download Center for users not running the application causing the problem. The company on Tuesday did not say how long putting in filters would take.

Microsoft is recommending that Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers not install Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1. For more information, those customers should contact Microsoft Customer Support Services, the company said.

A fix to the Dynamics RMS problem is being tested and "will be available as soon as that process is complete," Microsoft said. The company did not provide a time frame for completion of the testing and recommends customers visit its TechNet Forums for more information regarding Windows XP SP3.

Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Acquisition

2008-05-03T10:46:00.000+08:00

Microsoft has dropped its pursuit of Yahoo, ending an acquisition attempt whose failure takes Microsoft back to square one in its quest to boost its online business to better compete against Google.

Microsoft Abandons Yahoo Acquisition

Microsoft has dropped its nearly three-month-long pursuit of Yahoo, ending a historic acquisition attempt whose failure takes Microsoft back to square one in its quest to boost its online business to better compete against Google.

"We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for Microsoft, Yahoo and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a combination with Yahoo was to provide greater choice and innovation in the marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and employees," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a statement distributed early Saturday evening.

Microsoft had raised its initial bid by about US$5 billion, but that didn't convince Yahoo to accept the revised offer, Microsoft said. "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," said Ballmer.

In response, Yahoo issued a statement reiterating its position that Microsoft's offer was too low, and saying that many Yahoo shareholders agreed with its position.

"Yahoo is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market," Roy Bostock, the chairman of Yahoo's board, said in the statement.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said that "with the distraction of Microsoft's unsolicited proposal now behind us" Yahoo can continue with "the most important transition in our history."

All parties with a stake in the deal had been waiting for Microsoft to announce its next move, after Yahoo failed to agree to a deal by last Saturday, the deadline Microsoft had set three weeks earlier.

But Microsoft stayed silent for days, as observers speculated whether it would walk away or prepare a hostile takeover. However, on Friday anonymously sourced reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times said that Microsoft and Yahoo had turned a corner and were for the first time negotiating merger terms in earnest.

Microsoft and Yahoo Reviews the Deal

2008-05-02T07:42:00.000+08:00

Microsoft and Yahoo have turned a corner and are finally negotiating in earnest about their possible merger.

Microsoft and Yahoo Try to Work It out

Microsoft and Yahoo have turned a corner and are finally negotiating in earnest about their possible merger, although a deal is far from imminent, according to media reports.

In anonymously sourced stories published online midafternoon Friday, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that talks between the companies have suddenly gathered steam.

It has been three months since Microsoft announced its cash-and-stock bid for Yahoo, valued then at $44.6 billion but now worth about $42 billion because Microsoft's stock has lost value.

At the time, Microsoft's management sounded confident that the acquisition would proceed swiftly, but Yahoo's board threw back the offer in Microsoft's face, saying it undervalued the company.

Since then, talks between the companies have reportedly been few and unproductive, as Yahoo sought alternative deals and Microsoft threatened to go hostile or, lately, to walk away.

As Yahoo let lapse Microsoft's deadline to wrap up negotiations on Saturday, everyone with a stake in the deal has been anxiously awaiting Microsoft's next move.

As recently as Friday morning, consensus was that Microsoft would announce a hostile takeover strategy, such as launching a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's directors with its own slate of candidates that shareholders could elect at their next annual meeting.

However, now it appears that the companies have made progress over the so far apparently insurmountable disagreement over price, prompting Microsoft to stay at the negotiating table in the hopes of reaching a friendly deal.

According to The Journal, Microsoft indicated this week it would be willing to raise its bid to as much as $33 per Yahoo share, below the $35-per-share minimum that major shareholders are hoping for.

Microsoft's offer is currently valued at about $29.30 per share, according to The Times, whose sources said that a $34 per share offer could be a happy medium and get the deal done.

Blu-Ray Sales Still Low?

2008-05-02T07:33:00.001+08:00

A Blu-ray win over HD-DVD in the bloody format war hasn't translated into a sales victory for the next generation DVD technology.

Consumers Not Buying Blu-Ray Format Despite Format Win

A recent study by the NPD Group has shown that Blu-ray sales only increased by 2 percent from February to March and that Blu-ray sales dropped 40 percent from January to February.

That's a big disappointment for supporters of Blu-ray. After all Toshiba announced in February that it would cease production of HD DVD players, essentially killing off the next-generation media format and leaving Blu-ray as the lone next-generation format.

One conclusion that could be reached is that despite the format war being over and a winner being crowned, people still aren't ready to ditch the traditional DVD in favor of the next-generation Blu-ray. Any hopes Blu-ray had of a giant sales increase due to the end of the format war proved otherwise.

At least now the focus in terms of promotion and advertising can be placed upon one format, which might resonate better with the general public and slowly begin to sway that public into the next-generation world.

Microsoft Board Meets Over Yahoo Bid

2008-05-01T12:09:00.003+08:00

Microsoft's board is meeting to decide how to proceed in the company's bid to acquire Yahoo.

Microsoft Board Meets Over Yahoo Bid

Microsoft's board is meeting on Wednesday to decide how to proceed in the company's bid to acquire Yahoo, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Quoting anonymous sources, The Journal reported that the meeting could yield a concrete announcement.

Microsoft's next move is something that all parties with a stake in the deal have been waiting for since Yahoo failed to agree to a deal by Saturday, the deadline Microsoft had set three weeks earlier.

Many observers had expected a reaction from Microsoft first thing Monday morning, but as the silence stretched into Wednesday afternoon, the media speculation mill has gone into overdrive.

The major stumbling block in the negotiations has been the price, which Microsoft is willing to increase to up to US$33 per share, but not to the $35 to $37 range that major Yahoo shareholders, management and board members want, The Journal reported. Microsoft's original cash-and-stock offer, made on Feb. 1 and valued at $44.6 billion at the time, stood at $29.12 as of Tuesday's market close, the paper said.

This week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been personally lobbying big Yahoo shareholders so they, in turn, will pressure the board to accept Microsoft's bid, since Microsoft would prefer not to have to launch a hostile takeover, The Journal reported.

In the meantime, Yahoo and Time Warner have continued exploring the possibility of Yahoo merging with AOL in exchange for a 20 percent stake in Yahoo for Time Warner, The Journal reported.

In addition to attempting a hostile takeover, Microsoft has other options, such as raising its bid to a level agreeable to Yahoo's board or walking away, a possibility first floated by Ballmer last week.

Certainly, Microsoft expected the acquisition process, now nearing its third month, to flow much more smoothly and quickly, given the company's urgency to boost its Internet unit so it can better compete against Google and capitalize on the growth of the online advertising market.

source: www.pcworld.com

Nintendo Still Racking Profilts

2008-04-26T09:44:00.004+08:00

Nintendo racked up a record operating and net profit in the fiscal year ended in March

Japan's Nintendo Operating Profit More than Doubles on Strong Game Sales

With still strong demand for its portable and home-use video game consoles and game software, Japanese video game maker, Nintendo, racked up a record operating and net profit in the fiscal year ended in March. The company's operating profit jumped to 487.22 billion yen, or $4.7 billion, from 226.02 billion yen in the previous year.

Although the growth in net profit was much slower than operating income due to the company incurred foreign exchange losses, the Kyoto-based maker of Wii and DS said net profit rose 47.7 percent to 257.34 billion yen. A rapid appreciation of yen hurts Nintendo as it reduces the value of foreign currency-denominated assets, which it reevaluates according to the exchange rate at the end of each fiscal year.

Revenue increased 73 percent to a record 1.67 trillion yen.

Nintendo said global sales of its Nintendo DS dual-screen portable game consoles rose to 30.31 million units from 23.56 million. The company also delivered 18.61 million Wii consoles, up from 5.84 million units in the previous year. Sales of both consoles exceeded the company's targets.

Accumulated sales of Nintendo DS reached 70.6 million units, making it the world's best-selling portable game machine. Wii had accumulated sales of 24.45 million units, making it the top-selling home-use game console, above Microsoft's Xbox360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

Sony has long dominated the global home-use, standalone game console market with its PSOne and PlayStaion2, but due to the lack of strong game titles and relatively high price, PS3 has so far lagged behind the rival formats in terms of sales.

For the current year to March 2009, Nintendo aims to achieve another set of record earnings and sales.

Nintendo is expecting net profit to rise 26.3 percent to 325 billion yen, operating profit to climb 8.8 percent to 530 billion yen, and sales to be up 7.6 percent to 1.80 trillion yen.

The forecast assumes that the dollar will stand at 100 yen at the end of March 2009, down from 100.19 yen at the end of March 2007, and the euro will stand at 155 yen, compared to 158.19 yen. Based on those rates, the company expects a forex loss of 12 billion yen. Nintendo aims to sell 28 million Nintendo DSs, and 25 million Wiis this fiscal year.

'Because the sales of Nintendo Wii have already topped what is considered to be the up-limit line, it is not realistic to see any further growth in Japan,' spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa told Thomson Financial News. 'But given the fact that DS is in a state of supply shortage outside Japan, we can expect sales growth in overseas markets,' he said.

Microsoft Antipiracy Detection Tool for Office

2008-04-23T07:36:00.000+08:00

An update for Microsoft's antipiracy tool for Office hit a snag when it was distributed too widely and under a "critical" label that's usually reserved for important software fixes.

Microsoft Bungles Antipiracy Detection Tool Update

An update for Microsoft's antipiracy tool for its Office software suite hit a snag last week when it was distributed too widely and under a "critical" label that's usually reserved for important software fixes.

Last week, Microsoft said it would add a notification component to Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) , which warns people through pop-up messages, dialog boxes and other visual cues if their copy of Office is unlicensed.

OGA was widely launched around October 2006. If the tool identifies a copy of Office as unlicensed, it blocks free downloads from Microsoft's Web site such as templates, available to customers with valid software.

Microsoft meant to push out the OGA notifications update only to customers in Italy, Spain, Turkey and Chile. However, the update was published on April 15 to users outside of those countries via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), which distributes patches and security updates for the company's server products and other software.

The update was available for about 24 hours before it was removed, according to the WSUS blog. Some users had problems with the tool.

The update was labeled "critical," as "OGA notifications are designed to alert customers who are using non-genuine software, and are thus more vulnerable to activation exploits and the risks of counterfeit," the blog posting said.

The labeling of the update seem odd considering the trouble Microsoft had with its other pirate software detection tool, Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notifications. The company got into trouble in 2006 for classifying WGA Notifications, which detects unlicensed Windows operating systems and warns users, as a "critical" update and bundling it with other true security fixes.

Users complained that the WGA tool did not provide a fix for a security problem, and labeling it as critical was misleading. People can now opt out of downloading WGA, which is designed to nudge those with a rogue version of the company's OS to buy a licensed version.

eBay Members Plan Boycott

2008-04-22T07:34:00.000+08:00

EBay is facing a backlash from its users in the form of a global boycott on May 1.

Unhappy eBay Members Plan Global Boycott

Founded in 1995, eBay last year generated £3.8 billion (US$7.6 billion) in revenue. However, president and chief executive John Donahoe, who joined the company in March this year, has implemented a number of changes that have made users so disgruntled they have resorted to boycotting the service for one day.

Previously, sellers were able to leave comments about buyers. Under Donahoe's new rules, however, sellers can only leave positive but not negative or neutral feedback. Although some users are concerned that these changes will make it difficult to alert other users to fraudulent or malicious buyers, eBay claims it will make it easier for sellers to report 'bad' buyers and will remove unfair feedback.

And while users have seen listing fees reduced, the fee eBay charges on completion of a sale has risen to 7.25 percent of the total sale price, from 5.25 percent.

"We are a marketplace founded on trust. If people have a bad experience on our site, caused by a poor seller, then they will no longer use the site. The changes we announced recently are unashamedly focused on protecting buyers," an eBay spokesman said .

Sony Shows Prototype OLED

2008-04-21T19:38:00.002+08:00

Sony has managed to make an OLED screen that's just one-fifth of a millimeter thick that ranks as the thinnest yet developed.

Sony Shows Razor-thin Prototype OLED Screen

Sony has managed to make an OLED (organic light emitting diode) screen that's just one-fifth of a millimeter thick. The prototype screen was on show at last week's Display 2008 exhibition in Tokyo and ranks as the thinnest yet developed.

The prototype 3.5-inch panel, which has QVGA resolution (320 pixels by 240 pixels), started out as a normal OLED screen, but Sony ground down the glass substrate on which it was made to reduce the thickness to just 0.2 millimeters.

Typically OLED screens are pretty thin -- about a millimeter or two thick. That's because OLED pixels emit their own light and so don't require additional illumination. It's this additional illumination, usually in the form of a backlight, that adds to the thickness of LCD (liquid crystal display) panels and means they can't compete with OLED on thickness, at least using current technology.

Due to their thinness, OLED panels consume less power than LCDs, handle fast-moving images better and offer good color reproduction. For these reasons many display makers are developing OLED technology with an eye to it replacing LCD in the future.

At the end of last year Sony began sales of the world's first OLED television. The XEL-1 is based on an 11-inch panel that's 1.4 millimeters thick. Sony has stashed most of the TV's electronics in its base, so the set thickens to only 3 millimeters with a plastic case around the screen.

Using the same glass-grinding trick it could be made even thinner. Sony also showed an 11-inch panel that was 0.3 millimeters thick -- more than a millimeter thinner than the commercial panel it's using in the XEL-1.

The panels aren't Sony's first thin OLED screens. Last year it developed a prototype OLED built onto a plastic substrate, which has the benefit of allowing the screen to be flexible. The screens shown in Tokyo last week, while thin, were brittle because they are glass-based.

There was no word on when or if the thin OLED screens on show might be commercially available.

Wii Outsells Xbox360, PS3 in March

2008-04-20T08:45:00.000+08:00

Super Smash Bros. Brawl boosted Wii sales last month, according to the NPD Group.

Wii Outsells Combined Xbox 360, PS3 Sales in March

Super Smash Bros. Brawl boosted Wii sales to abnormal heights last month, according to official console ware bean counter, the NPD Group.

"Across hardware, software, and accessories, the Wii contributed the most to total industry sales, representing 31% of total industry dollars for the month," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

"Super Smash Brothers Brawl along with a greater supply of inventory helped the Wii to capture the highest single month unit sales of any platform outside the holiday timeframe," she added.

As far as hardware numbers go, Nintendo sold 720,000 Wiis last month; more than double that of combined Xbox 360 and PS3 sales, and almost enough to match the combined sales of all other consoles when including PS2.

The Nintendo DS was the second best-selling system in March with 698,000 units sold, followed by the PSP at 297,000 units, the Xbox 360 with 262,000, PS3 at 257,000, and the PS2 bringing up the rear with 216,000 units sold.

"Nintendo systems represented 58 percent of all video game hardware sold in March in the United States," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's VP of sales and marketing. "We expect our momentum to continue with big upcoming game launches like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, Mario Kart Wii and Wii Fit."

On the software side, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was the top-selling game in the U.S. last month at 2.7 million copies sold. Other top-sellers included Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (360), Army of Two (360), Wii Play, God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP), Guitar Hero III (Wii), MLB 2K8 (360), Call of Duty 4 (360), and Army of Two (PS3) in that order.

"All platforms, aside from the PS2, showed significant increases when compared with March 2007," concluded Frazier. "The industry realized great growth last year and so far this year, that momentum is carrying through."

Wii Fit in May

2008-04-19T08:17:00.001+08:00

First announced way, way back in July of last year, the nifty, wireless balance board accessory for the Wii finally has a North American release date: May 19. Get ready to engage those abs.

Wii Fit coming to U.S. in May
Yahoo! Tech

The Wii Fit bundle (available in Japan since last December) will sell for $89.99, according to Crave—not exactly cheap, but at least it'll come bundled with a battery of exercises—involving yoga, aerobics, strength training, and balance—that’ll get you off the couch and, with any luck, make you break a sweat.

IGN (via Yahoo! Games) has a thorough preview of Wii Fit, but I’ll tick off some of the main points: You get the wireless, plastic balance board (which, apparently, supports a whopping 660 pounds, although it stops measuring over 330 pounds) plus the battery of 40 mini-games and exercises.

Among them: strength-training exercises, including a push-up/yoga combo (which sounds devilishly difficult), single-leg extensions, arm/leg lifts, a variety of squats and lunges, and side planks (ouch). There’s also plenty of aerobic action, including steps, runs, and rhythm boxing. Then there’s the yoga, complete with your standard deep breathing, half moons, a potpourri of poses, you name it. This ain't no button-mashing on the couch.

What makes Wii Fit more fun than your standard exercise DVD is the on-screen trainer (either male or female, as IGN notes) who critiques your form and doles out encouragement, as needed.

Of course, the coolest element of Wii Fit is the wireless balance board, which incorporates two plastic pads—one for each foot—that precisely measure you weight and balance.

From the demos I’ve seen, the board does an uncanny job of detecting your overall stance and posture; indeed, based on your weight and balance, it’ll compute your body mass index (BMI) and tell you if you’re overweight, underweight, or just right. The Wii Fit software will also track your BMI daily and tell you your progress over time.

Early reviews have been generally positive; for example, Chris Kohler at Wired News tried Wii Fit for about a month and came away pretty happy, calling it a "convenient and helpful way for me to get back in shape." Keep in mind, however, that Kohler didn't so much lose weight as build muscle (not such a bad thing, considering that you're playing a video game).

I haven't had a chance to try Wii Fit myself, but the demo during last year's E3 gaming conference looked pretty impressive; I especially liked the soccer ball head-butting game, which lets you (natch) head-butt a torrent of virtual soccer balls, all from the comfort of the balance board—nice. (Hmmmm...how about a surfing game? Or skateboarding?)

source: tech.yahoo.com

Apple Stops Pushing Safari to PCs

2008-04-18T08:38:00.003+08:00

A new version of Apple's Update utility lets you choose which components to install and which to ignore.

Apple Stops QuickTime Nagging About Safari

Apple made my pet-peeves list recently with its decision to push Safari out to Windows customers via its QuickTime Update software, and I certainly wasn't the only one. The good news is that Apple seems to have finally relented.

A new version of QuickTime Update, available beginning today, uses a two-pane interface to separate legitimate updates to your currently-installed components from any new applications that Apple would like you to install. Shockingly, that even includes iTunes, for those of us who use our PCs mainly for business. And, though the option isn't easy to find, the new version even lets you opt out of Safari and iTunes downloads completely.

To get it, first run your existing QuickTime Update software. You can find it by opening the QuickTime control panel from your Start menu, selecting the Update tab, then pressing the button marked "Update..." You should see an application called "QuickTime Update 2.1" -- leave the box next to that checked, but uncheck all the others.

Inexplicably, installing the new QuickTime Update requires you to restart your computer. Once you're back up and running, launch QuickTime Update again (the same way you just did) to see the new interface.

By default, all the current updates are checked (including Safari and iTunes), but you might notice that you can now download the latest version of the standalone QuickTime software, without iTunes. Hooray for that.

Here's the kicker, though. With the new division of software, it's relatively painless to opt out of Apple's iTunes and Safari nagging for good. Make sure that you've installed the QuickTime updates that you need, then launch QuickTime Update again. You should now see only the updates that you don't want. Now go to the Tools menu and choose "Ignore Selected Updates." (You can always reset your ignored updates later if you change your mind.)

Voila! You should now have a functioning Apple Software Update that does what it was intended to do -- update your software, not push multi-megabyte applications that you don't really want.

The Modern Browser Wars

2008-04-17T07:48:00.002+08:00

Apple's Safari, Mozilla's Firefox 3, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 duke it out to be the program you use most on your PC.

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

Back when the earliest programs for viewing Web content simply browsed flat pages of images and text, the name browser truly fit the software.

But yesterday's amateur pages have evolved into dynamic, content-rich portals and powerful online programs. For many online habitués, the do-it-all browser has become a PC's single most important program.

Recognizing that fact, Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Mozilla's Firefox are battling to win the nod as your browser of choice. So which one should you use--Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, or Internet Explorer 8?

Apple's latest offering, Safari 3.1, preserves the company's signature focus on clean design and smooth usability, but it lacks any phishing or malware filters.

For its part, Mozilla should have applied the finishing touches to Firefox 3 by the time you read this. From under-the-hood memory improvements to a major reworking for bookmarks, version 3 represents a big step forward.

Whereas the new Firefox and Safari browsers are ready to roll, Microsoft's early beta of Internet Explorer 8 remains a work in progress. Bugs and rough edges are to be expected in a first beta intended for developers and testers. But IE 8 beta 1 provides a glimpse of new features such as WebSlices (which let sites create widgety snippets of information that you can view by clicking a bookmark button) and Activities (which add right-click menu options for looking up selected text and pages on map, translation and other sites) that will distinguish the browser Microsoft eventually releases.

Firefox, IE, and Safari are the three most popular browsers, according to Internet usage statistics, but they aren't the only ones available.

(SIDEBAR: This is my 100th post in this blog! Kudos to me :))

Yahoo's Answer to YouTube

2008-04-10T08:56:00.003+08:00

Flickr, the well known photo sharing site, has announced that it will begin offering video Streaming in an effort to rival the dominant market leader, YouTube.

Flickr to add video streaming

Flickr, which is owned by Yahoo!, made the announcement today but with a hitch. Movies will be Limited to only 90 seconds long and 150 MB in size. The movies will be shown as thumbnails next to user's uploaded photos.

All Flickr visitors "will be access all of the tools for videos that they can currently for photos - namely users can add comments, captions, comments, geotags, and privacy restrictions so only friends or family may view their videos." The videos can also be embedded on other sites.

Flickr's staff said the new decision was based on the fact that an increasing number of digital cameras and DSLRs offer video recording. Although it will now offer video streaming, the company insists it does not want to be the next YouTube and instead wants a more personal touch for friends and family to upload short movies.

"People aren't using YouTube to share their personal short-form video clips", said a Flickr spokesperson.

"Ninety seconds helps us define that rebroadcasting commercial content is not what this site is for", added Neilson.

The only other hitches are that only "pro" subscribers will have the ability to add videos and the site only supports AVI, MPEG, and MOV formats.

Windows 7 Due in 2009

2008-04-06T07:21:00.003+08:00

Microsoft hints that the next version of its Windows operating system will arrive in 2009.

Will Microsoft Deliver Windows 7 Next Year?

Microsoft has dropped two strong hints in the past two days that the next version of its Windows operating system will arrive in 2009, shaving up to a year off previous expectations.

It could also be a signal that Microsoft intends to cut its losses with Windows Vista, which has been poorly received or shunned by customers, especially large companies.

Microsoft has long said it wants to release Windows 7 about three years after Vista, which was released to manufacturing in November 2006 but not officially launched until January 2007. Given Microsoft's recent track record - Vista arrived more than five years after XP - most outsiders had pegged some time in 2010 as a safe bet for Windows 7's arrival.

But News.com reported Friday that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates answered a question at a business meeting in Miami about Windows Vista by saying "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version."

And during its announcement Thursday that it would extend the availability of Windows XP Home for low-cost laptops, Microsoft said it would retire the operating system only after June 30, 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever comes later.

That implies that Microsoft is targeting the middle of next year for some sort of release milestone for Windows 7 - the only codename known at the moment - though whether that would be a final release to consumers or an RTM, which allows businesses and OEMs to start installing it, is unknown.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, in an e-mail, said the company "is in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA." She said the company was providing early builds of the new operating system to gain user feedback, but otherwise was not providing further information.

Gates also said that he was "super-enthused about what [Windows 7] will do in lots of ways" but didn't elaborate.

What could those be? Microsoft has divulged a few things. Responding to criticism that Windows has become unnecessarily bloated, the company has 200 engineers developing a slimmed-down kernel called MinWin that uses 100 files and 25MB, compared to Vista's 5,000 files and 4GB core and is so small it lacks a graphical subsystem.

Microsoft has also confirmed that the operating system will come in consumer and business versions and in 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Screenshots of early betas of Windows 7 are also appearing. Blogger Paul Thurrott yesterday put up screenshots from build 6519 of Windows 7 released in December, which he said looks like "a slightly enhanced version of Windows Vista."

Microsoft needs to start generating excitement about its software months or years in advance in order to prepare its millions of reselling partners.

But if it talks up Windows 7 too much, it runs the risk that large companies -- Microsoft's most profitable customer segment -- will hold on to their Windows XP machines and skip Vista entirely in favor of Windows 7.

That appears to be happening. A recent enterprise survey by Forrester Research Inc. showed that only 6.3% of enterprises were running Vista at the end of December, with most of the upgrades coming at the expense of aging machines running Windows 2000, not XP.

The vast majority of the 100 million copies of Vista that Microsoft has sold so far have gone to individuals and small businesses purchasing new PCs.

The least-loved version of Windows has long been Windows Millennium Edition (ME), a buggy minor upgrade that was superseded by XP within a year of its release. Despite its far greater - some would say, too great - technical ambition, Vista may end up lumped together with ME as one of the blips on Windows' long-term roadmap.

Symantec Has Bugs in Software

2008-04-05T07:40:00.000+08:00

Symantec confirms flaws in its most popular consumer security software.

Symantec Confirms ActiveX Bugs in its Own Consumer Software

Symantec has confirmed flaws in its most popular consumer security software that could give attackers the means to hijack the Windows PCs that the programs are supposed to protect.

The vulnerabilities are in an ActiveX control that ships with several products, including Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks and Norton 360.

Ironically, Symantec analysts have both cited the popularity of ActiveX bugs and urged caution when using the controls in comments about other companies' product flaws.

According to alerts released Wednesday by VeriSign Inc.'s iDefense, the ActiveX control "SymAData.dll" sports two vulnerabilities that could be used "to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the currently logged in user" by attackers able to entice victims to malicious Web sites.

Symantec confirmed the vulnerabilities Wednesday in its own advisory, and said the buggy control has shipped with Windows versions of Norton AntiVirus 2006-2008, Norton Internet Security 2006-2008, Norton SystemWorks 2006-2008 and Norton 360 version 1.0.

While it acknowledged the bugs, Symantec also downplayed the threat, saying that attacks would only succeed from specially crafted sites. "To successfully exploit either vulnerability, an attacker would need to be able to masquerade as the trusted Symantec Web site, such as through a cross-site scripting attack or DNS poisoning," read the company's advisory .

However, cross-site scripting attacks have become common, and although DNS (domain name system) "poisoning" -- fooling a DNS server into thinking the bogus routing directions it's received are authentic -- is less common, it's not unheard of.

Symantec said it was unaware of any attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities.

The flawed ActiveX control is used by Symantec's AutoFix tool, which is included with some of the company's software and may also be downloaded to a PC during a live chat with a Symantec technical support representative. AutoFix diagnoses PC problems and offers up solutions.

Previously, Symantec researchers have called on the company's statistics to point out widespread problems with ActiveX. In February, for example, Oliver Friedrichs, director of the company's security response team, reported ActiveX composed 89% of all the browser plug-in vulnerabilities his team had counted in the first half of 2007.

That same month, Symantec joined with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and other security vendors to urge caution when using ActiveX controls after a wave of bugs were revealed in several other software makers' products, including those from Yahoo Inc., Facebook and MySpace.

Symantec has updated the affected consumer security software with new detection definitions designed to block any exploit of the ActiveX flaws, but will not automatically patch everyone's copy of the flawed control.

"An updated (non-vulnerable) version of the AutoFix tool will be automatically installed if customers participate in an online Chat session with Symantec Technical Support," Symantec said. Alternately, users can manually download and install a patched AutoFix from its Web site.

Storm Worm is Back

2008-04-02T07:36:00.001+08:00

E-mail with an April Fool's Day theme is serving up the latest round of Storm worm attacks.

April Fool's Storm Worm Attack Hits

A new Storm worm with an April Fool's Day theme is targeting the Web, according to security software firm PC Tools.

"The Storm worm gang has done it again. This time e-mails are being circulated, which are associated with the April Fool's Day theme," said PC Tools chief threat officer, Kurt Baumgartner.

The e-mail messages contain links that direct users to Web sites that contain malware. Once the files are downloaded and executed on the computer it sets a firewall exception rule and then attempts to 'phone home' using various outgoing ports.

According to Baumgartner, the packer and major sections of executable code have changed significantly, indicating that it could be another variant and AV detection for this threat is close to nonexistent.

"The most effective way users can protect against these new threats is with antimalware products that use behavioral technology. Traditional AV products, which use signature detection are simply not equipped with this behavioral technology and the threat is currently evading those users' defenses," he said.

"Always exercise caution and don't just click on random links sent to your account via e-mail. Exercise even more caution when that random link is attempting to download a file to your system," adds Baumgartner.

Vista Hack Up for Bidding

2008-03-31T07:42:00.000+08:00

The winner of a recent hacking contest is offering the laptop he broke into on eBay, likely with the Vista attack code intact.

Laptop With Vista Attack Code Listed on eBay

The winner of a recent hacking contest is offering the computer he broke into for sale on eBay, possibly with the Microsoft Vista attack code he used intact.

In a Monday listing, Shane Macaulay is selling the Fujitsu U810 laptop he won last Friday during the CanSecWest PWN 2 OWN contest. His listing claims that exploit code could probably still be extracted from the machine. Although he make no guarantees, he wrote, "My successfull [sic] exploitation of Vista SP1 remotely, is most likely still present."

"This laptop is a good case study for any forensics group/company/individual that wants to prove how cool they are, and a live example, not canned of what a typical incident responce sitchiation [sic] would look like."

Starting bid? $0.01.

Macaulay, a researcher with the Security Objectives consultancy, claims that his Adobe Flash exploit will affect 90 percent of computers worldwide.

He was one of two hackers to claim laptops and cash prizes for penetrating systems during last week's contest. Organizers offered Vista, Mac OS, and Linux-based laptops for the taking, along with prizes that varied from $5,000 to $20,000, depending on the difficulty of the exploit. By Friday, however, only the Linux laptop remained unbreached.

Although he listed his laptop just hours before April 1, a date that is usually met with widespread Internet pranking, Macaulay said the listing is no joke. According to him, he's simply looking to see what an unpatched exploit might fetch in the open market."I figure this is a good way to see... [what] an exploit for something that only a limited amount of people know about, is worth," he said in an e-mail interview.

"The system was delivered to me as my prize. I'm free to use it as I see fit," he added.

One hacker who knows Macaulay said that the April 1 listing is "a bit coincidental," but that he may not be worried about forfeiting the $5,000 in prize money TippingPoint paid him for his hack. "He makes good money," said Marc Maiffret, an independent security researcher, in an instant message interview. "It's all just funny to him."

If he's not playing an April Fool's joke, Macaulay may be running afoul of both the PWN 2 OWN contest rules, which prohibit disclosure of bug information prior to a patch. He may also be violating eBay's user agreement, which say that users may not "distribute viruses or any other technologies that may harm eBay, or the interests or property of eBay users."

Macaulay had some funny answers when asked about these issues.

On the eBay terms of service problem, he said that he knew "some highups," at the company and was "confident, when I speak with eBay they will grant me a waiver."

And does TippingPoint know about what he's doing? "I believe at some level," he answered. "I'm sure things might change as the word percolates to the executives. Maybe I shouldn't have sold the [TippingPoint] bag with the laptop!!"

Wii Leading in Japan's Game Market

2008-03-29T07:19:00.001+08:00

Console sales grow 13.4 percent in 2007, led by the cheaper Wii, says a new report.

Wii Leads Jump in Japan's Game Market

The console game market in Japan grew 13.4 percent in 2007 thanks largely to the popularity of Nintendo's Wii, according to a report due to be published on Friday.

The entire game console market was worth ¥685 billion (US$6.9 billion) in 2007, with the hardware and software markets about evenly matched. In the previous year the software side of the market had led the industry but the sector was rebalanced last year due to the availability of the Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3, said Media Create in its annual "Game Market White Paper."

The PlayStation 3 launched on Nov. 11, 2006, and the Wii hit store shelves in Japan on Dec. 2, 2006, but early popularity of the consoles meant that many sales were delayed until 2007. Price cuts for the PlayStation 3, which was criticized early on for being too expensive, also helped boost sales later in 2007.

Total hardware sales rose 31 percent to $3.48 billion and software sales were virtually unchanged at $3.39 billion, according to the report. The estimates are based on point-of-sales system data gathered by Media Create from hundreds of retailers in Japan.

"Sales of Wii software rose strongly but those for the PlayStation 2 fell so they offset each other," said Kenichi Chiba, an analyst at the Tokyo company.

The Wii has been credited with revitalizing Japan's console game market and expanding the gaming population -- the number of people who regularly play video games. Its innovative wireless and motion sensitive controller and a low price have been key to attracting many people who might otherwise not have bought a game console. The Wii currently sells in Japan for $250, versus $400 for the PlayStation 3.

Sales of the console totaled 1.1 million in the few weeks of 2006 during which it was on sale, and 3.9 million during 2007 to take total Japan sales to 5 million units by the end of the year, Nintendo said.

The Wii remains popular. In the week from March 10 to 16 the Wii was the number two-selling games device in Japan with sales of 55,845 units, according to Media Create. In first place was Nintendo's handheld DS with sales of 57,651 units.

YouTube Video Usage Analytics

2008-03-28T07:13:00.000+08:00

YouTube account holders now have the ability to check usage statistics for the videos they upload.

YouTube Rolls Out Usage Analytics

YouTube account holders will now be able to access usage statistics for the videos they upload, such as where viewers are geographically located and how they found the clips.

The feature, called YouTube Insight, had been in high demand from partners that use the video-sharing site to market their products and services and, as such, want detailed metrics to determine the efficacy of their YouTube campaigns.

The announcement, made early Thursday, wasn't a complete surprise. Earlier this month, YouTube sales team manager Brian Cusack said that the Google unit was planning to provide its members with more data about video viewership.

"YouTube has enormous amounts of data, but not great reporting on that data yet," Cusack said during a keynote speech at the eRetailer Summit in Miami.

Now, marketers will have a better understanding of clips' reach and effectiveness at boosting brand awareness and sales, according to YouTube.

"With YouTube Insight, we've turned YouTube into one of the world's largest focus groups. Insight will help advertisers optimize their marketing efforts, determine how successful they were, and discover previously unknown marketing opportunities," an official YouTube blog posting reads.

The metrics will also give a better understanding of clips' popularity and viewership to people who upload videos for fun without commercial or marketing purposes.

YouTube Insight doesn't collect or display personally identifiable information on viewers, but rather provides uploaders with aggregated data on viewers' geographic location and on the time and day when clips were viewed, a Google spokesman said via e-mail. Google will "soon" turn a feature to let uploaders discover how viewers found a clip, such as via a Google search, browsing YouTube's "related videos" suggestions or clicking on an e-mail or Web site link, he said.

Firefox Should Ship in June

2008-03-27T07:10:00.000+08:00

Also confirms that it will release the final beta of Firefox 3.0 shortly.

Mozilla Expects to Release Firefox 3.0 Final in June

Mozilla Corp. Thursday confirmed that it will release the final beta of Firefox 3.0 shortly, and that it expects to deliver the finished browser to users in June.

Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 has been code-frozen, said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, and is working its way toward release. "That will be the last beta for Firefox 3.0," he said. Once Beta 5 is out of the way, developers will move to the Release Candidate (RC) stage.
Release Candidate 1 (RC1) should be ready sometime in early May, said Schroepfer, assuming Mozilla meets its current schedule. "The release candidates will move a little slower than beta," he continued, noting that the company must make allowances for public feedback.

Mozilla typically tries to dissuade most users from trying betas, calling them fit only for developers and testing, but in the past has encouraged the public to try out its RC builds.

Although plans are flexible, Schroepfer said he expects version 3.0 to hold true to past Firefox form and cycle through three release candidates before Mozilla signs off on the code. The RC period is also useful to extension developers, he said, many of whom wait until the code is at that stage before tweaking their add-ons.

If all goes according to plan, Firefox 3.0 will wrap up and ship in June.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 about two and a half weeks ago. According to its online schedule, Beta 5 will probably hit the company's download servers sometime early next week.

The open-source Firefox currently accounts for about 17.3% of the browser market, according to Net Applications Inc.'s most recent data. Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer rules the roost with 74.9%, while Apple Inc.'s Safari holds down third place with 5.7%.

Mac Gets Hacked

2008-03-26T07:17:00.000+08:00

A MacBook Air goes down first at the CanSecWest security conference's hacking contest.

Gone in 2 Minutes: Mac Gets Hacked First in Contest

It may be the quickest $10,000 Charlie Miller ever earned.

He took the first of three laptop computers -- and a $10,000 cash prize -- Thursday after breaking into a MacBook Air at the CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.

Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed "0day" attack.

Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages.

Miller, best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple's iPhone last year, didn't take much time. Within 2 minutes, he directed the contest's organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on.

He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems.

Miller was quickly given a nondisclosure agreement to sign and he's not allowed to discuss particulars of his bug until the contest's sponsor, TippingPoint, can notify the vendor.

Contest rules state that Miller could only take advantage of software that was preinstalled on the Mac, so the flaw he exploited must have been accessible, or possibly inside, Apple's Safari browser.

Last year's contest winner, Dino Dai Zovi, exploited a vulnerability in QuickTime to take home the prize.

Dai Zovi, who congratulated Miller after his hack, didn't participate in this year's contest, saying it was time for someone else to win.

Windows 7 For Review

2008-03-13T19:05:00.001+08:00

The next-generation version of Windows (code name Windows 7) will face an antitrust review by U.S. regulators.

Microsoft Submits Windows 7 for U.S. Antitrust Review

Microsoft has submitted the follow-up to Windows Vista to the committee that oversees its U.S. antitrust compliance, to ensure the operating system is meeting the terms of the company's agreement with the government.

According to last week's status report on the U.S. antitrust case, Microsoft "recently supplied" the Technical Committee (TC) with a build of the OS, code-named Windows 7, and the TC will "conduct middleware-related tests on future builds" of the software. The move was revealed in papers filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The filing was part of regular status reports aimed at tracking Microsoft's compliance with the 2002 antitrust settlement, which requires the company to ensure its own applications do not have an unfair advantage over competitive software that runs on Windows. The agreement also requires Microsoft to make sure its software can work well with third-party applications. Lack of compliance with a 2004 antitrust agreement in the European Union has cost Microsoft nearly US$2.6 billion to date; the E.U.'s most recent fine against the company last month was $1.3 billion.

Those on the TC so far are the only ones privy to what the follow-up to Vista will look like. Microsoft is mum on details of the software. But recent company moves and revelations hint at what can be expected from the software, which is due for release in late 2009 or early 2010.
At the MIX 08 conference in Las Vegas last week, Microsoft revealed Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) -- technology that likely will be a part of Windows 7, though Microsoft has not linked the two products yet.

Microsoft demonstrated IE 8, showing mainly developer improvements, but also some new end-user features such as one called "Activities." Activities allows users to highlight any word or phrase on a Web site and then choose from a drop-down box list of further actions they can take around that information, such as doing a Live Search or searching MSNBC for more information.

Aside from IE 8, little on the record is known about Windows 7, and the word from Microsoft is that it will talk about the OS when it's good and ready. Analyst warn against expecting Windows 7 to be a blockbuster release, given the fallout Microsoft is still dealing with from delivering a late and, to many, disappointing Windows Vista.

Recent court papers in a class-action suit over Microsoft's "Vista Capable" sticker program revealed that even Microsoft executives such as Steven Sinofsky, the senior vice president of Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, were having driver- and application-compatibility problems with Vista after its release. In those papers, revealed in e-mails made public in what has become a class-action suit in a Seattle U.S. District Court, executives made statements to the effect that they won't let the delays and myriad problems associated with Vista happen again.

Mike Cherry, an analyst with research group Directions on Microsoft, said that for Windows 7, Microsoft will likely keep the bells and whistles to a minimum so they can deliver "something reasonable they can complete by a reasonable date ... Their goal will be to try to put Vista behind them," he said.

Because of its compatibility problems and hardware requirements, Microsoft is still struggling to inspire businesses to move from XP to Vista. Some business users have even suggested that companies may skip Vista altogether and hold on to Windows XP for a little longer so they can migrate from that to Windows 7.

On the consumer side, Microsoft already had to extend the length of time it would allow OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and retail outlets to sell XP-based PCs by five months. The deadline for retailers and OEMs is now June 30, but that may be extended, as chip maker Intel expects low-cost desktops and notebooks running its Atom processors to hit the market in the third quarter. Given Vista's hardware requirements, those computers presumably will run XP, though Microsoft maintains it is committed to the June deadline to take the OS off the market.

To remedy these problems, Cherry suggested that Microsoft might serve itself well by making Windows 7 a stable release for business users by using the same code base as the recently released Windows Server 2008. He said Microsoft's mistake with Vista was to try to serve consumers and business customers with a flashy release that added a host of multimedia functionality instead of taking into consideration practical concerns that would affect performance and compatibility.

"It would seem to me that what we really need [is] for a business edition to be built off of that server code, so it would look much less fancy than Vista, much more austere with not a lot of wasted functionality," he said.

Windows Hacked by Firewire

2008-03-08T07:50:00.000+08:00

Security researcher describes how an intruder on site can break into a Windows system using a Firewire port.

Windows Hacked in Seconds via Firewire

A New Zealand security researcher has published a software tool allowing attackers to quickly gain access to Windows systems via a Firewire port.

The tool, which can only be used by attackers with physical access to a system, comes shortly after the publication of research on gaining access to encrypted hard drives via physical access to memory.

Researcher Adam Boileau, a consultant with Immunity, originally demonstrated the access tool at a security conference in 2006, but decided not to release the code any further at the time. Two years later, however, nothing has been done toward fixing the problem, so he decided to go public.

"Yes, this means you can completely own any box whose Firewire port you can plug into in seconds," said Boileau in a recent blog entry.

An attacker must connect to the machine with a Linux system and a Firewire cable to run the tool.

The tool, called Winlockpwn, allows users to bypass Windows authorization, was originally demonstrated at Ruxcon in 2006 at a talk called "Hit By A Bus: Physical Access Attacks With Firewire".

At the time, Boileau also demonstrated some of the malicious uses of the tool, but said he wouldn't be releasing the code for those attacks.

The attack takes advantage of the fact that Firewire can directly read and write to a system's memory, adding extra speed to data transfer. According to Boileau, because this capability is built into Firewire, Microsoft doesn't consider the problem a standard bug.

On the other hand, Boileau said he feels PC users need to be more aware of the fact that their systems can be unlocked via Firewire.

"Yes, it's a feature, not a bug," Boileau stated. "Microsoft knows this. The OHCI-1394 spec knows this. People with Firewire ports generally don't."

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment. In the past the company has downplayed security problems that require physical access.

Firewire has become common on Windows systems in the past few years, and is especially prevalent on laptops.

Researcher Maximillian Dornseif demonstrated a similar exploit on Linux and Mac OS X systems at the CanSec conference in 2005, connecting to those systems via a malicious iPod and Firewire.

According to security researchers, the problem can be remedied by disabling Firewire when not in use.

source: techworld.com

Heads up on IE8 Beta 1

2008-03-05T07:47:00.001+08:00

Microsoft today unveiled Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and welcomed users, as well as developers, to download and install the preview.

Microsoft Unveils IE8 Beta 1

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Internet Explorer 8, and posted links to what the company called "Beta 1 for developers." Anyone, however, can download and install the preview. (As did PC World's Melissa Perenson and Editor in Chief Harry McCracken.)

"I am pleased to announce that Beta 1 for developers is available now," said Dean Hachamovitch, the IE group's general manager, in a presentation from MIX08, a Microsoft Web development conference that opened today in Las Vegas, Nev.

According to the download page published early today, IE8 Beta 1 will be available in separate versions for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

Although Hachamovitch pegged Beta 1 as fit for developers, there's nothing to stop the general public from downloading and installing the browser. "This beta release is available to everyone," Microsoft's download notes read, "but is primarily for Web developers and designers to test the new tools, layout engine, and programming enhancements."

Among the new features Microsoft touted in other sections of the sub-site dubbed "Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit," were tools called "WebSlices" and "Activities." The former somewhat resembles the "Web Clip" feature introduced in Apple Inc.'s Safari Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard;" the latter appears to be a small-scale mash-up tool. Both will be developer-, not user-created.

WebSlices (IE8) and Web Clip (Safari) let users designate content within a page -- dynamically-updated stock prices, for example, -- and then monitor changes to that content. But while Safari's Web Clip lets users create desktop widgets for easier access, IE8's WebSlices only allows users to add them to the Favorites bar or to a new row below the browser's address bar. In other words, IE8 users must still click to see the content after they're notified that changes have occurred.

Activities, meanwhile, are pre-designed mash-ups that Microsoft and third-party sites and services will offer free of charge. A dedicated Activities page currently lists a dozen samples, ranging from one that helps users find and preview items on the eBay auction site to another that maps addresses on Windows Live Maps.

"Activities are how developers can integrate the content of their sites with the Web," said Hachamovitch.

Other enhancements and additions to IE8 include a revamped Favorites bar, automatic crash recovery and an improved anti-phishing filter. By comparison, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox and Apple's Safari both currently offer crash of one sort or another, while Firefox also sports anti-phishing protection.

Earlier this week, Microsoft's IE development team announced that IE8 would support a new "super standards" mode by default , rather than optionally, to stress Web standards over backward compatibility.

"The Web gets better when developers spend less time on interoperability [problems] and more time on innovating," said Hachamovitch. "Long term, this is the right thing to do for the Web."

Although Hachamovitch pegged Beta 1 as fit for developers -- "Please try it out," he urged the MIX08 audience at the end of his presentation -- anyone can grab it. The client-side 32-bit downloads weigh in at 14.4MB for the Windows XP version, and 11MB for the Windows Vista edition.

"We're only part way done with IE8," said Hachamovitch. "But you can see where we're focused."

source: computerworld.com

FireFox 3.0 in the Oven

2008-02-28T20:07:00.002+08:00

For the second time in the past four weeks, Mozilla has announced a "code freeze" as it prepares another public release of the open-source browser.

Mozilla Freezes Firefox 3.0 Beta 4

For the second time in the past four weeks, Mozilla Corp. has announced a "code freeze" for a beta version of Firefox 3.0 -- this time, Beta 4 -- as it prepares another public release of the open-source browser.

The freeze was announced late Tuesday. Earlier in the day, the company's chief engineer hinted that the number of outstanding bugs at that point -- 66 that could block the release of Firefox 3.0 -- meant a fifth beta will likely be needed.

"We reviewed the remaining number of P1 [Priority 1] and P2 [Priority 2] blockers on our lists and decided that we would go ahead with tonight's Firefox 3 Beta 4 code freeze and then bake nightly builds for a few days before handing off the code to the build and quality assurance teams," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's interface designer, in a message posted to the company's developer center.

Between now and Friday, Beltzner continued, developers will be looking over the blocking bugs to decide which, if any, require another beta release and which would prevent the final release of Firefox 3.0 if they went unfixed.

Meanwhile, Mike Schroepfer, the company's vice president of engineering, said he is leaning toward a fifth beta to give developers a chance to quash potential blockers. "As of this writing, there are 66 P1 bugs, which implies we either will not meet code freeze tonight or will need to add another milestone," he said hours before Mozilla held its weekly status meeting on Firefox 3.0. "Given the number of improvements between Beta 3 and today's nightly, I'd strong prefer we meet the freeze and talk about doing an additional Beta."

However, Schroepfer also pushed for releasing Firefox 3.0 soon. "Given the amazing positive feedback and the fact that we have [500,000] daily active users of Firefox 3 (with basically hockey-stick growth of usage) I think we should push to final as fast as possible," he wrote in a message posted to the mozilla.dev planning newsgroup early yesterday.

Previously, Schroepfer had refused to specify a release date for the final version of Firefox 3.0, although he had pointed to early March as the goal for Beta 4. Another beta would push out final delivery of a finished Firefox by approximately four weeks, based on the last interval between previews.

Mozilla froze Firefox 3.0 at Beta 3 on Jan. 29, and released that build two weeks later, on Feb. 12.

Firefox currently accounts for about 17% of the browser usage share, according to Net Applications Inc., an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Web measurement company. The most recent data available, for January, pegged Firefox 3.0's part of the browser market at just 0.1%, in comparison with Firefox 2.0's 16.02%.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2007 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved

Microsoft to Google: You Owe Us

2008-02-27T20:14:00.000+08:00

Google has succeeded partly because Microsoft built up the business, an exec says.

Microsoft to Google: You Owe Us

Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said Tuesday that competitor Google owes its business in part to Microsoft, and that his company is not concerned about losing its position as an innovator in the technology market to the search and advertising leader.

"If we didn't succeed at the PC, they wouldn't have a business," Mundie said of Google, in comments made via Webcast at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

He said Google was able to grow so quickly because it introduced a new business model for the Web at just the right time. "It wasn't that many years ago that Google didn't exist," Mundie said. But now that the industry and competitors like Microsoft are catching up to Google's online advertising strategy, "I don't think they can do anything we can't do," he said.

In fact, Microsoft's longevity versus its relatively new competitor gives it a substantial advantage long term over Google, Mundie said. "I'd like to think we're strategically open-minded, we've made adjustments [to our business model]," Mundie said. "I'd like to see Google and someone else come up with something that really threatens our business model."

Part of that business model is to combine forces with Yahoo to compete with Google in the advertising market. Microsoft is currently in the middle of what could end up becoming a hostile takeover of Yahoo, after the company rejected the software giant's US$44.6 billion cash and stock offer. Microsoft is now rumored to be mounting a proxy fight for Yahoo.

While Mundie acknowledged that he couldn't discuss much about the ongoing Yahoo proceedings publicly, he did concede that Microsoft is eager to acquire the company and move ahead on the Web. "Right now we'd just like to close the Yahoo deal," he said.

Even if the deal does not go through, however, he said Microsoft is confident its own Web strategy, fueled by a combination of software and services rather than an entirely Web-based portfolio, will eventually help the company catch up to Google -- barring a "major screw-up" on Microsoft's part.

Moreover, Microsoft has a multiyear lead on Google in providing software in mobile phones, another area where the Internet company aims to compete. "They're sort of late to the cell-phone thing," Mundie said, noting Microsoft's success with its Windows Mobile OS, which powers millions of smart phones worldwide

Apple's Mailing List Blunder

2008-02-27T19:36:00.001+08:00

Emails from the Apple's Weekly-kbase-changes flooded my inbox, containing not the updates I was used to receiving, but confused emails from Apple subscribers.

Re: Confirm Emails

I was surprised today, seeing that I got about 30 emails in my mailbox. Curious who emailed all of these, I checked it out.

As it turns out, they were a collection of messages, all with the same subject: "Re: Confirm." They were all from people on Apple's Weekly-kbase-changes mailing list, to which I have a subscription.

Apple's weekly-kbase-changes emails contain some of the recent changes in, well, their knowledge base changes. At the bottom of each email from Apple, it states that "Do not post admin request to the list. They will be ignored." Apparently, someone ignored the request and did reply. This led to further replies, and somehow, was sent to everyone in the Apple's mailing list.

By the end of the day, I wasn't receiving any of those email, but like I said, I received about 30 of them. Here's some of the lines in the email:

“I was wondering the same thing.” Robert

“I am curious as well.” Richard

“Beats me, Apple mail list got hacked I guess.” Kerry

“I echo the same question. I think it has something to do with KBase updates … or lack thereof.” Steve

“I have received two such messages, and am at a loss to know why.” Adair

“Hmm. I think that I didn’t realize this was a public list, that anyone could post to, and a couple of folks were trying to confirm subscriptions, perhaps. My bad? I guess so. Didn’t mean to set off a storm, haha.” John

“SPAM. All on this list - PLEASE DO NOT SEND ANY REPLIES TO THE GROUP.” Scott

“Gentlemen: I got a notice regarding the weekly kbase changes. I assume that I am being sent this email to see if I wish to continue. The answer is yes I enjoy the articles very much.” Jim

“Please make the changes to prevent this from happening!!!” Greg

“Be interesting to know how many thousands around the world are receiving these emails.” Tim

“Confirm what? Please advise.” Liu

“JUST STOP REPLYING!!!” David

“Sorry guys, I do not have a clue what is going on…it feels like a Microsoft-Gates thing.” Robert

“Will you please all stop replying. Let the situation get resolved and leave it alone. Thank you.” Shane, Mac Genius

Not a big deal. I just thought that you might want to know.

P.S. Please do not confirm.

Microsoft Merger: Assures Jobs

2008-02-24T07:59:00.000+08:00

A merger would still leave plenty of jobs to go around, a Microsoft exec reassures staffers of both firms.

Microsoft Pledges Job Security for Yahoo Workers

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp suggested on Friday that it had no plans to make major lay-offs if it succeeded in buying Yahoo Inc, saying there were plenty of employee opportunities throughout the company.

Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, said in an e-mail to employees in his unit that the company would dedicate "significant rewards and compensation" to retain Yahoo and Microsoft employees.

"While some overlap is expected in any combination of this size, we should remember that Microsoft ... has hired over 20,000 people since 2005, and we would look to place talented employees throughout the company as a whole," Johnson wrote in the e-mail that was posted on Microsoft's Web site.

"We have no shortage of business and technical opportunities, and we need great people to focus on them."

The e-mail sought to ease some of the concerns expressed by Microsoft and Yahoo employees about a potential merger.

Yahoo said earlier this week that it had put in place generous severance benefits that would be given to all employees who might be laid off if the company was sold. Analysts said it was common for a company in play to provide "golden parachutes" to take care of employees.
The companies are at a stand-off in Microsoft's $41.2 billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo. Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $31 a share in cash and stock, which Yahoo's board rejected, saying it undervalued the company.

Separately, two pension funds sued Yahoo Inc and its board for rejecting Microsoft's offer. The suit said Yahoo was pursuing other deals that were not as beneficial to its shareholders.
Lawsuits by Yahoo shareholders have multiplied in the wake of Yahoo's February 11 refusal to entertain the offer, which represented a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's share price at the time.

Johnson, whose division would ultimately absorb most of Yahoo, said the company would be "pragmatic" in how to address Yahoo's computer systems since they are not Windows-based.
In some acquisitions, Microsoft has prioritized continuity, according to Johnson, and the company has worked to make sure the acquired company's existing systems worked with Microsoft's own technology infrastructure.

He also downplayed the cultural differences between the two companies, seen as a hurdle to a smooth integration, saying some aspects of the two cultures will merge quickly, while others will remain unique.

Yahoo would bring a Web-centric view, media expertise and advertising talent to Microsoft, according to Johnson, who said Microsoft plans to maintain Yahoo's presence in Silicon Valley if a deal goes through.

(Reporting by Daisuke Wakabayashi; additional reporting by Gina Keating in Los Angeles. Editing by Braden Reddall, Leslie Gevirtz).

The New Silverlight 2

2008-02-23T07:48:00.000+08:00

A Microsoft official's blog sheds new light on the company's Silverlight 2 browser plug-in technology.

Microsoft Readies Silverlight 2 Beta

Shedding new light on the company's Silverlight 2 browser plug-in technology, a Microsoft official wrote a blog post today that emphasized RIA (rich Internet application) development capabilities planned for an upcoming beta release.

Microsoft's Scott Guthrie, general manager in the Microsoft Developer Division, provided a list of features planned for Silverlight 2 and the beta in his blog. A Microsoft representative subsequently described the blog as the most detail provided to date on Silverlight 2.

With the Silverlight platform, Microsoft is expected to tackle Adobe and its popular Flash technology in the RIA space. Microsoft's Mix08 conference in Las Vegas in two weeks seems like the obvious place to introduce the beta as Silverlight was the star attraction at the Mix07 conference last year. The Microsoft representative would not comment on whether this would actually be the case but did acknowledge plans to ship the beta during the first quarter of this year.

Featured in version 2 is a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .Net Framework, Guthrie said. Developers can write Silverlight applications using a .Net language, such as Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython, or IronRuby. Microsoft plans to ship support for developer/designer workflow and integration for Silverlight in its Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tools.
The introduction of Silverlight 2, which had previously been named Silverlight 1.1, is critical to Microsoft as it battles Adobe, an analyst stressed.

"That's the one that uses the .Net Framework for programming so it can leverage all of Microsoft's developer tools," said analyst Rob Helm of Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm. "Developer tools could become Microsoft's secret weapon," since many developers already are familiar with Visual Studio and .Net Framework, he said.

The 1.0 version of Silverlight has been more geared to video, while Silverlight 2 adds .Net development and transactional capabilities. To bolster RIA development, the Beta 1 release will include a Windows Presentation Foundation UI framework for building rich Web applications. It offers a "powerful" graphics and animation engine plus support for higher-level capabilities, such as controls, layout management, data-binding, and template skinning, Guthrie said.

The Beta 1 release is 4.3 MB in size.

"Once Silverlight 2 is installed, you can browse the Web and automatically run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice," Guthrie said. This includes such browsers as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and others.

Rich controls in the Silverlight 2 beta include core form controls, such as TextBox and RadioButton. Built-in layout management panels, such as Grid and Panel, are offered as well. Functionality controls like Calender and DatePicker as well as data manipulation controls also are part of the beta. "The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions," Guthrie said.

For networking, Silverlight 2 backs REST (Representational State Transfer), WS-*, and SOAP as well RSS, POX, and HTTP services. Cross-domain network access in Silverlight 2 enables Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the Web. Built-in sockets networking also is included in the beta release.

Silverlight 2 features a rich .Net base class library of functionality, such as collections, generics threading, globalization, XML, and local storage. Rich APIs in the product enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .Net code

Also featured is Microsoft's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology, which provides native query syntax for C# and Visual Basic, and LINQ to XML library support. This enables easy transformation and querying of data, Guthrie said. Local data caching and storage support are highlighted as well in Silverlight 2.

Net APIs in Silverlight "are a compatible subset of the full .Net Framework," Guthrie said.
"Silverlight 2 does not require the .Net Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features (and more we'll be talking about shortly) on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine," Guthrie said.

Silverlight 2 applications can be migrated to become a desktop application using Windows Presentation Foundation and the full .Net framework.

For more IT analysis and commentary on emerging technologies, visit InfoWorld.com. Story copyright © 2007 InfoWorld Media Group. All rights reserved.

Firefox Increasingly Popular

2008-02-22T07:42:00.000+08:00

The 500 millionth download of the Firefox browser happened last night, evidence of the immense popularity of the little browser that could.

Firefox: On Its Way to Web Domination?

According to the folks at Mozilla, the 500 millionth download of the Firefox browser happened last night. That doesn't, of course, represent a half billion people--I've probably downloaded various versions of the browser thirty times myself, for one computer or another--but it's still a whole lotta downloads, and evidence of the immense popularity of the little browser that could.

I like to do periodic reports of usage of Firefox on PCWorld.com, and these numbers too show Firefox getting more and more popular. The trend for Firefox usage is still trending upwards over time. In fact, January 2008 was the first month during which a third of site visitors--34.36 percent, to be overly exact--used Firefox.

Internet Explorer remains the most-used broser at PCWorld.com, but total usage for IE 7, IE 6, and the dregs of previous versions has fallen below sixty percent. (Back in September 2004, when Firefox was still an obscure beta, just one percent of visitors used it--and around 90 percent of visitors used IE.)

PCWorld.com users are a lot more likely than garden-variety Internet types to use Firefox--here's a report that has overall usage at around 17 percent. (Such data tends to vary a lot from source to source, though--here's another site saying that Firefox usage is around 25 percent.)

I hesitate to make any predictions here, but given that Firefox is no longer an unknown newcomer and its share is still creeping upward, and Microsoft seems to have lost the will to radically upgrade IE, here's a scenario that no longer seems wholly implausible: Firefox may eventually hit 51 percent usage, making it the Web's dominant browser by any definition.
If it happens...well, in that case I'll just pretend I predicted it rather than saying it could happen.

Firefox and Opera Tells More

2008-02-19T18:58:00.002+08:00

An intruder could manipulate a flaw in how the browsers handle image files to see where the user has been surfing.

Opera, Firefox Bug Could Reveal Web Travels

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

A flaw in the way the Firefox and Opera browsers handle an image file could allow an attacker to see what Web sites a person has visited.

The problem concerns how the two browsers handle a ".BMP," or bitmap, image file, according to an advisory written by Gynvael Coldwind of Vexillium.org, who posted a video illustrating the problem.

A malicious bitmap file can be created that pulls other information from the browsers' memory. Some of the information that can be captured is random, but at other times could be valuable, the advisory said.

"The harvested data contains various information including parts of other Web sites, users' favorites and history and other information," Vexillium.org said.

Using the "canvas" HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tag supported by the browsers, an attacker can capture the data. Then, using JavaScript, the information can be sent to a remote server.

The flaw could also crash Firefox. The vulnerability affects Firefox 2.0.0.11 and previous versions of that browser as well as the beta version of Opera 9.50.

source: www.pcworld.com

Yahoo Explains the Rejection

2008-02-15T20:18:00.000+08:00

CEO Jerry Yang explains to shareholders why Yahoo rejected Microsoft's acquisition bid.

Yahoo Sends Letter to Shareholders Over Microsoft Bid

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang cited the growing online advertising market and his company's position to take advantage of that growth as reasons for shareholders to reject Microsoft's acquisition bid, he said in a letter to shareholders Wednesday.

The letter, the contents of which Yahoo made public Wednesday, stated that Microsoft's February 1, US$44.5 billion [b] unsolicited takeover offer was too low. Yang said that Yahoo is the most visited site in the United States, held the top position in online display advertising, and counted almost one out of two of the world's Internet users as its members. He also said Yahoo is the top mobile destination in the U.S.

Yang did not cite sources for most of his claims. However, comScore Networks research from November 2007 confirmed Yahoo's online display advertising leadership, with almost 19 percent of the market.

The online ad market is expected to grow from $45 billion last year to $75 billion in 2010, Yang said, and that Yahoo wanted "to take advantage of what we see as a unique window of time in the growth -- and evolution -- of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders."

The company plans to grow visits to its properties "by 15 percent per year over the next several years," although did not specify how. He also said that Yahoo's own search marketing system, Panama, along with two 2007 acquisitions -- Right Media and Blue Lithium -- would "complement and enhance Yahoo!'s existing capabilities and will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy and sell advertising online."

Both Yahoo and Microsoft have struggled to compete with Google's success in online advertising, specifically its paid search and Adwords programs. Based on the same comScore data, Microsoft captured only 6.7 percent of online display ads. That poor performance is seen as the main impetus behind its move for Yahoo.

The letter made no mention of talks with News Corp. for some sort of share swap, intended either to offset Microsoft's interest or force the software company to boost its bid for Yahoo, as reported late Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal.

Storm Worm Reappears this Valentine

2008-02-14T09:09:00.003+08:00

Security vendor McAfee warns of a Valentine come-on that downloads a virus instead of a greeting.

Storm Worm Reappears as Malicious Valentine

Carrie-Ann Skinner, PC Advisor

A Valentine's themed outbreak of the Storm worm has been detected.

Around the world, malicious e-mail messages are being received that contain a link that directs users to a website where they can supposedly download a Valentine's card, but in fact are infected with the Storm bug. The virus mirrors the fake Christmas and New Year messages seen in previous months.

According to Greg Day, security analyst at McAfee, the virus will try to steal personal information from your PC, bring down its security defenses and use your PC to send out millions of junk emails.

"There are about 10 million PCs worldwide infected with the Storm worm. These threats have suddenly spiked from 0 percent of all spam emails to 1.5 percent and they are continuing to rise as we draw closer to Valentine's Day and more people are fooled into downloading the malicious file," he commented.

"With all the hype that surrounds Valentine's Day, it was only to be expected that they (the people behind Storm) would use a similar tactic and exploit people's eagerness to receive Valentine's cards," added Diego d'Ambra of email-security company SoftScan.

source: PCWorld

Microsoft Releases Patches

2008-02-13T09:12:00.001+08:00

Eleven security updates are released today that fix a number of critical flaws in Microsoft products, including Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Releases Massive Set of Security Updates

Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

Microsoft released 11 security updates today that fix critical flaws in its products, including a publicly known ActiveX bug that affects users of the Visual FoxPro database.

In total, 17 individual software flaws were patched in the updates. Microsoft rates six updates as critical, meaning they should be installed as soon as possible, while the remaining five updates are considered "important." Last month was an easier month on IT administrators, when Microsoft released just two updates.

Microsoft surprised some by releasing one less update than expected. Last Thursday the software vendor had said that it was readying a fix for critical VBScript and JScript flaws in Windows 2000, XP, and Windows Server 2003. That update wasn't included in this week's patches, but Microsoft today wouldn't confirm that it had actually dropped the update because "this could put customers at risk," according a spokeswoman for the company's public relations agency.

Security experts said Tuesday that the MS08-010 update, which fixes four bugs in Internet Explorer, should take top priority this week. "There are four vulnerabilities within that particular patch and all of them are remote-code executable," said Jonathan Bitle, director of technical account management with Qualys.

"The way we're looking at it, our prioritization would put MS08-010 at the top followed by MS08-007," said Don Leatham, director of solutions and strategy with Lumension Security.
MS08-010 fixes a publicly disclosed ActiveX bug that affects Visual FoxPro users. Although hackers have already posted code showing how to exploit this vulnerability, the buggy ActiveX control is not included in Internet Explorer 7's default list of controls, so the flaw should not affect most users.

The MS08-007 update fixes a critical flaw in the Windows XP and Vista WebDAV redirector software. WebDAV is a Web-based document sharing protocol. The flaw is rated important for Windows Server 2003 users.

Microsoft's Office products are also a major source of patches this month.
Tuesday's updates include critical fixes for Microsoft Word, Office Publisher and in Office itself.
There is also a critical update for Windows' Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Automation software.

The remaining updates, rated important, are for Active Directory, the Vista TCP/IP stack, the Microsoft Works file converter and two bugs in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server.

The Patch Tuesday updates show that client-side bugs continue to be a much higher risk than server-side vulnerabilities, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle. "One would have assumed that the IIS and Active Directory vulnerabilities would have been the most serious because they stand at the core of an enterprise and provide more critical services" he said via instant message. "But with this month's patches, the hacker's best bet is to take advantage of the client-side attacks."

source: PCWorld

What's Behind Yahoo's Rejection of Microsoft Bid

2008-02-11T20:22:00.000+08:00

Experts see the bid rejection as a negotiating strategy to elicit a higher offer and not as an attempt to resist a deal at all costs.

What's Behind Yahoo's Rejection of Microsoft Bid?

Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's acquisition bid is likely a negotiating strategy to elicit a higher offer and shouldn't be seen as an attempt to resist a deal at all costs, according to analysts.

Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo has many options to improve their position in online services and advertising, and combining forces is their best bet against common rival Google, analysts said.

"It's part of a larger negotiation that's occurring. Clearly, Yahoo should be and is seeking a higher bid, and this is part of that process," said Clayton Moran, a financial analyst with Stanford Group.

Yahoo is unlikely to find a company willing to bid as much as Microsoft for it, while Microsoft will not be able to attain its Internet goals by acquiring a company other than Yahoo. "While they need to negotiate and go through the process, at the end of the day this deal will happen," Moran said.

Yahoo today rejected Microsoft's bid, saying it undervalues the company. Microsoft offered to pay $31 per share for half of Yahoo's outstanding shares and 0.9509 of a Microsoft share for the other half.

At the time of the offer, Microsoft's stock stood at $32.60 and the bid was valued at $44.6 billion, a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's stock price at the time. However, the bid's value has dropped with Microsoft's sliding stock price, which at press time was $28.10. At the same time, Yahoo's stock price has risen from a close of $19.18 on the day before the bid to $29.75 at press time.

Moran predicted that Microsoft will adjust its offer so that it ends up at $35 per share, probably increasing the fixed cash portion and reducing the variable stock portion so that value is less vulnerable to Microsoft stock fluctuations. A $35-per-share offer would be a midpoint between the original bid and the $40 per share Yahoo is reportedly seeking.

"We continue to view a Yahoo sale to Microsoft as the most likely outcome," Citigroup financial analysts wrote in a note published Sunday after press reports over the weekend that Yahoo would reject the Microsoft bid. The rejection isn't surprising, but rather consistent with Yahoo's board job to "extract maximum value" for shareholders, the Citigroup analysts wrote.

Yahoo has reportedly held talks with Google and AOL to explore alternatives to a Microsoft acquisition. One scenario being floated would be for Yahoo to outsource its search advertising business to Google, while another, reported Monday by The Times of London, has Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL discussing a possible merger.

However, neither option would match the potential benefits of an acquisition by Microsoft, Moran said. "A combined Yahoo-AOL wouldn't be particularly strong, and Yahoo's stock wouldn't react favorably to that deal," Moran said. A search partnership with Google would boost Yahoo's revenue but it wouldn't address larger problems within the company, he said.

For Moran, if Yahoo has approached AOL, it has done so probably to send a message to Microsoft that it has other options and that Microsoft has to sweeten its offer. Meanwhile, Google's intervention is probably directed at complicating and lengthening the negotiation process between Microsoft and Yahoo, and thus delaying the formation of a stronger rival, Moran said.

While merging with AOL is unlikely to give Yahoo the boost it needs, such a deal would probably be more palatable to Yahoo's management, because Yahoo would be the strongest party in the fusion, according to industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.

"Yahoo sees its own demise in a Microsoft acquisition. My sense is that Yahoo's management believes that Yahoo's soul wouldn't survive as part of Microsoft," Sterling said.

At this point, the situation is very complicated for both Microsoft and Yahoo. If Yahoo is intent on fending off Microsoft's advances at all costs, Microsoft could opt to walk away empty-handed and face a public embarrassment, or attempt a hostile takeover, which could alienate and scare away Yahoo employees it would want to retain, Sterling said.

At the same time, Yahoo can't simply wave away a generous Microsoft offer if it doesn't have an alternative to it, Sterling said. "There is a great deal at stake for both sides, and it's very complicated," he said.

Microsoft declined to comment about Yahoo's rejection. AOL didn't immediately reply to a request for comment about its reported merger talks with Yahoo.

Microsoft Tries Absorbs Yahoo

2008-02-04T07:38:00.002+08:00

Analysis: The pairing gives Microsoft a needed outlet, but the outcome could quash Yahoo.

Would Merger Demote Yahoo to a Microsoft Front End
Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

While dealing logistically and technically with their overlapping online offerings will certainly prove troublesome if its bid to purchase Yahoo succeeds, Microsoft will at least have an immediate outlet for bringing more of its traditional desktop portfolio to the Web and to a broader customer base.

Microsoft has been trying for more than two years to find a critical mass to adopt new online services beyond search, e-mail and instant messaging under the Windows Live brand -- with little success. Its early MSN e-mail and IM offerings are popular enough with Web users; however, users of Google and Yahoo online services have been loathe to adopt the revamped Windows Live offerings in favor of the ones they're already using.

Not only could that change if the company purchases Yahoo, but Microsoft also will have a ready-made Web front end for rolling out more of its desktop applications as services, said Paul Fox, CIO of Guy Carpenter, a New York-based reinsurance company.

"The Yahoo platform is really what they're buying," he said. "With Yahoo they're tapping into the base culture of the Internet online community that's matured over the last 10 years. It's going to make it easier for people to take a look at and try their services, whereas before it had to be a more conscious effort."

Aside from the usual raft of consumer applications like search, e-mail, maps and the like, Microsoft already has brought some of its many business desktop applications -- such as Office and CRM -- online in hosted, though often scaled-down, versions.

Access to Yahoo's estimated 500 million visitors per month will give it a new channel to deliver what the company now calls its "software plus services" strategy, as well as buy the company time to bring more competitive versions of applications that were originally coded for the desktop to the Web.

Indeed, in the conference call discussing the Yahoo bid Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a pointed reference to efforts to shed its desktop legacy and move even aspects of its Windows OS to the Web, a trend the company started with some features in the latest version, Windows Vista.

"The Windows user wants to be live, the Windows experience needs to increasingly embrace the Internet," he said. "There will be a Windows Live, there will be an Office Live, as we continue to bring out innovations in which Office transforms and is transformed by the Internet."

Ballmer also likely had the rising popularity of Web-hosted productivity software such as Google Apps, Zoho and Yahoo's Zimbra in mind when considering how to Web-enable Microsoft's desktop software. So far, Microsoft's Office Live has been more of a way for small businesses to get up and running with a Web site and basic hosted business applications like accounting and CRM; however, bringing a full productivity suite to the Web has been Microsoft's plan for some time.

Microsoft also can leverage its own strength among business customers to bundle and technically link applications so customers buy an all-in-one package rather than individual products. For instance, Microsoft has created tight links between a new unified communications product, Office Communications Server, and its Office and SharePoint collaboration software so customers must buy them all together to create comprehensive infrastructure. Microsoft can make similar attachments between online versions of its applications -- or just bundle them together in creative ways -- and market them to a broader audience.

"If Microsoft does something well, it's bundling products and services," said Ned May, director and lead analyst of marketing research firm Outsell. He joked that if Microsoft purchases Yahoo, there might come a day when you start up Windows and "up pops Yahoo and it takes you three days to remove that functionality."

"Yahoo provides a platform in many regards -- an audience of 500 million people to which you can bundle products and new offerings," May said.

Doing quick math, May figured that at "500 million a month for about $44 billion" it will cost Microsoft about $86 a head for acquiring each member of its new audience of Web users. "Not a bad deal," he said.

source: www.pcworld.com

Apple Mac Ads on Websites

2008-01-26T11:38:00.000+08:00

Apple's funny 'Buy a Mac' ads are popular nowadays, that those ads are now seen on several tech websites.

The Buy a Mac Ads

"Hi, I'm a Mac - And I'm a PC"
Those are almost always the first line in the popular Buy-a-Mac ads. Famous for pointing out the blunders of Windows and promoting the Mac, these ads are found on the Apple website. With people representing the machines (the pudgy guy as PC, and the younger guy a Mac), they talk about each other's differences and advantages, but usually ends up with the Mac guy the winner.
Now, these ads are seen on several tech websites, including PCWORLD.com. The ad consists of two parts; the broad large part on the top, and the tall, narrow part on the right (or left) of the screen. PC and Mac are on the narrow part, and usually, the characters 'breaks the ceiling' and interacts with the banner on the top.

They are simply hilarious, and fun to watch. Ads on the websites, however, are not available on the Apple website. Still, there are a handful of Mac ads available at www.apple.com/getamac/ads.

Sonicsoft Release: SSGINA

2008-01-16T18:08:00.000+08:00

Sonicsoft releases another useful plugin that provides a secure way to identify and authenticate users.

Sonicsoft Releases Sonicsoft GINA

Sonicsoft has released another plugin, the Sonicsoft GINA, that provides developers a way to securely identify and authenticate users on a system. It provides a graphical interactive log-on so that users can enter their credentials. Once the credentials are validated, the control is passed to the host system, including all the user credentials. SSGINA also provides useful functions, such as changing user's password, or resetting a forgotten password.

Sonicsoft GINA handles password securely, including the ability to hash passwords so that they are never revealed in plaintext. It also exposes several methods, like computing the MD5 of a text (useful for passwords). Sonicsoft also has self-checking that warns the host system of any possible flaws.

iPhone's First Trojan

2008-01-14T06:58:00.000+08:00

The Trojan specifically targets users that have modded their iPhone so they can install third-party applications.

First Trojan Reported for the iPhone

While not a huge risk, the first Trojan for the iPhone has been discovered. The first reports came from iPhone enthusiast site Modmyifone.com and were later confirmed by security research company F-Secure.

The Trojan specifically targets users that have modded their iPhone so they can install third-party applications. The application masks itself as an update to Erica's Utilities and is labeled as "113 prep."According to Modmyifone.com all the app does is say "shoes."

However, when uninstalled, the application removes files from the /bin directory on the iPhone, breaking valid apps like Sendfile and Erica's Utilities.The Web site hosting the application was taken offline soon after it was discovered, reports F-Secure.

"Hopefully this serves as a warning for those who have opened their iPhones using a security hole in the system and then installing unverified software without a second thought to what they are doing," said F-Secure on its Web site.F-Secure reported that it was an 11-year-old kid playing with XML files who created the Trojan. "Next time it might be someone else with more skills and with specific target," they said.

QuickTime Flaw Found

2008-01-13T06:29:00.000+08:00

Another flaw in Apple's QuickTime player found, putting users at risk

New QuickTime Flaw Found

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has found a new buffer overflow vulnerability with Apple's QuickTime media software.

The flaw affects both Windows and Mac operating systems. And since QuickTime is a part of iTunes, Apple's popular jukebox software, iTunes is also affected, said the researchers.

The vulnerability is found in the way QuickTime handles RTSP response messages. When attempting to display a specially crafted Reason-Phrase, QuickTime Player crashes at a memory location that can be controlled by an attacker, according to US-CERT.
The organization also said that they are aware of publicly available proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability.

US-CERT offers several solutions to the problem including uninstalling QuickTime, Blocking the RTSP protocol and disabling the QuickTime plug-ins in your Web browser.

Attackers targeted QuickTime in December in a separate RTSP vulnerability that Apple later fixed with a software update.

WiiWare Launching this March

2008-01-12T06:47:00.000+08:00

Finally, Nintendo's answer to XboxLive Arcade and the PlayStation Store will be available within two or three months.

Developer Says WiiWare Launching this March

Nintendo's answer to Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store will launch within 2-3 months, says Netherlands-based Engine Software.

The tentative debut of Wii's original download service was named by Engine while announcing their first WiiWare game on Wednesday, reports Shack News.

Project Bang!, as it is currently called, is described as "a casual game type with very addictive gameplay" for one or two players using the Wii Remote.

Engine Software's previous works include High Scool Musical: Livin' The Dream for GBA, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: Circle of Spies on DS, and contributing work on the DS version of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.

Nintendo previously said WiiWare would launch in "early 2008." The company denied comment when pressed by Shack News for further confirmation.

PS3 40GB Model Pushed by Sony

2008-01-11T17:26:00.000+08:00

Sony will discontinue selling the 20GB and 60GB models of PS3 for a 40GB one.

Sony Favors 40GB Model of PS3

Sony said that it will discontinue selling 20GB and 60GB models of PS3s in Japan this month to emphasize a single, more cost-efficient 40GB model.

The 40GB model, which excludes backward compatibility, sells for less in the country than the already discounted and outgoing models; US$362 for the 40GB compared to $410 for the 20GB and $501 for the 60GB.

In the U.K., similar plans are under way where Sony has began selling 60GB inventory at a discounted price in favor of the single 40GB model.

Of the three major game territories, North America is the only location supporting a multiple SKU lineup. Sony of America abandoned the 20GB and 60GB PS3 models last year, leaving two available models: 40GB ($399) and 80GB ($499) versions.

So is a single, worldwide PS3 model in the future cards? Sony says it's open to change.

"We will continue to read and evaluate market trends and communicate with consumers to determine appropriate configurations for each territory," a company official said on Thursday.

As it appears, maybe gamers only want one model.

The Queen and Wii

2008-01-10T13:37:00.000+08:00

Queen Elizabeth is reportedly playing with Nintendo's Wii

She's Now Playing the Wii

Queen Elizabeth II is reportedly enamored with Nintendo's Wii.

According to a tabloid source close to UK's The People, The Queen is showing signs of becoming a "Nintendo addict" after getting her aging hands on her grandson's newly gifted Wii.

"When she saw [Prince] William playing a game after lunch at Sandringham... she begged to join in," the unnamed contact alleges. "She played a simple ten-pin bowling game and by all accounts was a natural... William was in fits of laughter. He was enormously impressed at having such a cool gran."

Since 2001, Her Majesty has regularly upgraded her cell phone before deciding on a Blackberry which she uses today. She sends e-mail (queen@england.gov maybe?), and listens to an iPod.

Microsoft's First Roundup of Patches

2008-01-09T18:39:00.001+08:00

The first set of patches for 2008 was released by Microsoft this Tuesday, fixing a pair of networking flaws in the Windows kernel.

Microsoft Releases a New Set of Patches

Microsoft has released a patch to fix a security flaw in Windows that could be used by criminals to create as self-copying computer worm attack. The patch fixed a pair of networking flaws in the Windows Kernel. Another patch was also released for a less-serious Windows flaw that would allow attackers to steal passwords or run Windows software with elevated privileges.

The critical bug lies in the way Windows processes networking traffic that uses IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) and MLD (Multicast Listener Discovery) protocols, which are used to send data to many systems at the same time. Microsoft says that an attacker could send specially crafted packets to a victim's machine, which could then allow the attacker to run unauthorized code on a system.

No known code exploits this flaw, security experts say, but now that the patch has been posted, hackers can reverse-engineer the fix and create their own attack code. Since IGMP is enabled both in Windows XP and Vista by default, the bug could be used to create a self-copying worm attack, Microsoft has disclosed.

"Theoretically this is wormable and that's why this is rated critical," said Tim Rains, security response communications lead with Microsoft. However, Microsoft does not believe that hackers will have an easy time developing attack code that will work reliably. "We've done a thorough analysis of the vulnerability and we've come to the conclusion that there are several technical mitigating factors that make it unlikely to get reliable remote code execution," Rains said.

Windows uses the IGMP protocol for many popular consumer applications such as streaming video, multiplayer games and universal plug-and-play, but the protocol is usually blocked at the router. A derivative of IGMP, MLD is the multicast protocol used by IPv6 systems and is enabled on Vista by default

"If it became a worm it could take over an internal network pretty quickly, or at least all the machines where multicast is enabled," said Eric Schultze, chief technology officer with Shavlik Technologies. "But this one is going to be mitigated because a lot of people have blocked multicast."

Microsoft Will Not Release iPhone Killer

2008-01-08T06:50:00.000+08:00

Microsoft won't be releasing a phone that will rival with Apple's big hit iPhone

No iPhone Killer from Microsoft

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that Microsoft will not be releasing a phone that will rival Apple's already famous iPhone.

"No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program," Gates was quoted as saying in the interview published on Wednesday.

"We have partnerships with a lot of device manufacturers from Samsung to Motorola and this variety brings us significantly more than if we would make our own mobile phone," he added.

Microsoft may be learning from it's Zune digital music player, who said it was going to be the iPod killer.

The Search Wikia

2008-01-07T07:10:00.000+08:00

The widely-awaited open-source search engine, from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, makes it debut today.

Wikia Search Engine Goes Live Today

Search Wikia, the widely-awaited search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is slated to make its official debut today, Monday. It's been said that this open-source, community-driven search engine will eventually place it in competition with Google.

The search engine is still in very early alpha stage, and users who want to test-drive the engine shouldn't expect a Google-killer. It still needs time, and will need participation from volunteers to grow and be refined, Wales said.

With that in mind, Search Wikia is expected to be developed and refined, similarly to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia written and edited by a community of volunteer collaborators, who have expanded it and improved it over the years.

"Search Wikia is an extremely alpha project. It's a project to build a search engine and not a full-fledged competitor to Google yet. We want to make sure people understand that it's in its very early days," Wales said.

Wales expects the project to provide an alternative to commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft.

"I don't know how long it will take to reach industry-standard quality search results, but I'd say at least two years," he said.

People interested in volunteering will find a variety of options at Search Wikia, including working with the software to improve and extend it, as well as suggesting pages for the index and evaluating and rating search results.

Those who register to participate in the project will join a social networking environment where they can have a list of friends, upload photos, build profiles and be notified of friends' actions.

Users of the search engine will be presented with what Wales calls a "mini article" at the top of the results list. This can be a photo, a text definition, an external link or whatever else has been determined is the best answer to that particular query.

Below the "mini article" will be the list of results, picked from the Search Wikia index, which on Monday will have anywhere between 50 million and 100 million Web pages. Wales concedes that number is small, but said it will continue to grow over time.

Users will be able to rank the quality of individual search results, and Search Wikia will factor in that feedback when solving future queries. "That way, people will be able to influence the algorithmic search results," he said.

Those who try to abuse the system for, say, search engine spamming purposes, are bound to be quickly noticed by administrators and other community members, and they will swiftly be blocked and banned, Wales said.