Enter the Kilobots. These small and simple robots are about the size of a US quarter that moves around on a set of vibrating legs. These small robots are able to communicate with each other by blinking lights mounted on their cases. While each individual unit may not seem that advanced or impressive the real impact is what happens when the robots work as a system.
Swarms of hundreds or thousands of these robots, which each cost about $14 and take roughly fine minuets to assemble, are not designed to be used on an individual basis. The first group to be used by a research group at Harvard University is starting out with a group of 25. While this may not be the stuff of the nightmare scenarios of a thousands of horror movies as of yet these robots could easily be swarmed by the 1000's if the small scale testing goes well.
Enter the Kilobots. These small and simple robots are about the size of a US quarter that moves around on a set of vibrating legs. These small robots are able to communicate with each other by blinking lights mounted on their cases. While each individual unit may not seem that advanced or impressive the real impact is what happens when the robots work as a system.
Swarms of hundreds or thousands of these robots, which each cost about $14 and take roughly fine minuets to assemble, are not designed to be used on an individual basis. The first group to be used by a research group at Harvard University is starting out with a group of 25. While this may not be the stuff of the nightmare scenarios of a thousands of horror movies as of yet these robots could easily be swarmed by the 1000's if the small scale testing goes well.
Read More..
Showing posts with label Technology News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology News. Show all posts
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Boeing hosts Paris Air Show preview
In two days the annual Paris Air Show opens at Le Bourget Airport just outside the French capital. Aviation geeks of all stripes know the event is the biggest and best air show in the world, with just about every airplane you can imagine. And as it has always done, Boeing will be making the flight from Seattle to Paris to show off its newest aircraft, like the 747-8 and the 787 Dreamliner. There, the company will face off with rival Airbus and a number of smaller manufacturers like Bombardier and Embraer.
As part of his Road Trip 2011 CNET's Daniel Terdiman will be on site in Paris early next week to bring you the sights of the show. As a confirmed aviation geek, I'm insanely jealous, much like I envied his trip to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen, Germany, last week. Yet, Daniel's European trip also offered me the opportunity to attend Boeing's Paris Air Show Preview in Seattle earlier this month.
Boeing invited journalists to two days of briefings and tours at the company's factories in Everett and Renton, Wash. The tours showed the production lines for the company's 747, 737, 777, 767, and 787 aircraft (I even got to go inside a 747-8 under construction), while the briefings offered an advance scoop on the company's news for the coming week. Much of the information concerns aircraft production rates, delivery schedules, and airliner orders--Boeing is not expected to announce any new aircraft in Paris--but I'll offer a few highlights here. And of course, Daniel will have more insights after the show starts.
Just across the factory floor was a 787 for Japan Airlines.
(Credit: Kent German/CNET)
787 Dreamliner
After more than three years of delays, Boeing's groundbreaking aircraft will finally be delivered to launch-customer All Nippon Airways in the third quarter of this year. The 787's composite materials, along with a sharper nose and curved, upswept wings, promise greater fuel efficiency, quieter engines, and longer range. It first took to the air in December 2009 and has been performing flight testing and pilot training in the subsequent months.
Currently, 10 test aircraft are undergoing "functionality and reliability" training, which is designed to simulate real-world commercial passenger use. Just as an airline would, Boeing conducts a series of flights within hours of each other. The company also is conducting longer-range "ETOPS" tests (extended twin engine operations) to ensure that the aircraft has enough time and fuel to divert to an airport if one of the engines needs to be shut down. Boeing says it has completed most of the tests necessary for certification by the Federal Aviation Administration. After everything is done, the FAA will then inspect the materials and decide whether to certify the 787 for passenger flights.
The huge building also houses the 747-8 production line.
(Credit: Kent German/CNET)
747-8
The company's newest member of the iconic 747 family made its first flight last March after an official unveiling weeks earlier. The 747-8 also is undergoing functional and reliability testing with five 747-8 Freighter models and two 747-8 Intercontinental passenger versions.
So far, Boeing has built a total of 20 aircraft and completed 25 percent of all FAA certification tests. Earlier tests revealed some flutter and wing vibration, but the company says those issues have been addressed. Boeing has announced 114 orders, with the first delivery to launch-customer Lufthansa set for later this year.
Of course, I'm guessing you're really here to peruse the photo galleries from the factory tours (indeed, putting the galleries together was my main reason for being in Seattle). So, by all means, please take a look.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-20072031-76/boeing-hosts-paris-air-show-preview/#ixzz1PgbVVZH3
Read More..
Pandora, a good service but poor investment
Pandora is one of the Web's most popular and beloved music services, and smart investors shouldn't go anywhere near the company's stock.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PgabnMda
Shares of the profitless radio service began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange as part of an initial public offering, the latest technology play with a questionable business model to test the public equity markets.
In early morning trading, Pandora, which trades under the ticker symbol P, was up 28 percent to $20.37 a share but then began to level off. Investors began pulling back not long after and the stock closed the day at $17.42, up 8 percent. According to Bloomberg, Pandora sold 14.7 million shares yesterday at a price of $16 a share, giving the company a valuation of $2.6 billion. Pandora isn't worth $2 billion and here's why:
Where are the ads?
The way Pandora works is that the company's 80 million users choose their favorite artists and musical genres and the Oakland, Calif.-based company delivers songs over the Internet based on those choices. Pandora offers an ad-supported service that is free of charge to users but limits them to 40 hours of free listening per month. Another service, called Pandora One, costs $36 annually and offers unlimited commercial-free listening.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PgahXYhs
Since most of the users choose the free-of-charge service, advertising is vital to Pandora. Up to now, however, the company doesn't appear to to be very effective at drawing ad dollars. In documents Pandora filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company saw $119 million in ad revenue for fiscal year 2011, or 87 percent of total revenue. That's more than twice the ad revenue Pandora saw the previous year, but not enough to cover costs, which are also growing. (We'll get to those later.)
"Because the rate they pay is based on per-spin, more listeners doesn't make them more profitable. It doesn't solve their problems. They have to make each listener more profitable."
--SoundExchange spokeswoman
The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday that one likely indication that Pandora is struggling to sell ads is that users frequently hear the same ads. Another is that only 1 percent of listener hours are devoted to ads, compared to traditional radio, which generates about 20 percent. The Journal noted that mobile ads are less lucrative and the percentage of music Pandora delivers to portable devices rose from 1 percent in 2009 to 60 percent last quarter.
Another stumbling block is that Pandora has failed to tap into local advertising effectively. According to music industry sources, Pandora executives have complained that the company has not been able sell the kind of ads to, say, regional car dealerships, department stores, and other local businesses that are the bread and butter of traditional radio broadcasting.
For Pandora to slice off a piece of this market, it would have to snatch away share from hundreds of local radio stations across the country and their individual ad sales teams, who have established relationships with local advertisers over decades.
Music expenses to grow
When you talk about fixed costs, that's when Pandora's stock really begins to look dicey.
Every time someone listens to a song on Pandora's ad-supported service, the company must pay about a tenth of a penny to copyright owners. Actually, Pandora pays SoundExchange, the performance rights group that collects music royalties from Internet radio and satellite services.
"For our fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, we incurred SoundExchange related content acquisition costs representing 45 percent of our total revenue," Pandora said in SEC filings. That's not all. The statutory rate, which is set by Congress, is scheduled to go up almost every year until 2015. There are estimates that Pandora will pay half of total revenue to SoundExchange for fiscal 2012.
"If we are unable to reach a new agreement with SoundExchange," Pandora wrote, "our operating costs may significantly increase, which could harm our financial condition and inhibit the implementation of our business plan."
Related links
• Why Google should acquire Pandora
• Web radio, music industry reach agreement on royalties
• Michael Robertson: Digital music's bad boy was right
So what does a tenth of a penny per play cost Pandora over a year? Laurie Anderson, a SoundExchange spokeswoman, broke it down this way: Pandora allows users of the ad-supported service 480 hours per year of free play (40 hours x 12 months). She said that if a user listens to 15 songs an hour, this is the equivalent of 7,200 songs per year. She said the 2011 rate Pandora pays is a "PurePlay Webcaster rate" of $0.00102 per spin. Assuming all these users max out their 40 hours of free listening each month, this means each of them costs Pandora $7.35 per year.
As Pandora bulls on Wall Street wax on about how the company should be able turn its large audience into gold, Anderson painted a picture of what Pandora has to overcome just to break even.
"Everyone will be watching to see if they can figure out how to monetize their users in other ways," she told CNET today. "Because the rate they pay is based on per-spin, more listeners doesn't make them more profitable. It doesn't solve their problems. They have to make each listener more profitable."
One high-profile critic of Pandora's business model for the past several years has been Michael Robertson, the founder of pioneering music service MP3.com. This is what he told me in 2009 about Pandora and pay-per-stream business models:
"It's just simple math that you can't make enough with ad banners and click-through keywords to pay a penny per song," Robertson said. "Simple math, ask anybody who knows Internet advertising. Somebody sits there, listens to 20 songs, the royalties pile up with each tick of the clock. Those songs may or may not have ads at any given time and even if they do you can't charge enough for those ads to cover the royalty payments, much less all the other engineering fees and bandwidth, sales and all of the other costs. There's no question that today, Webcasting is not a business."
And what about digital music overall? Surely, this is an area where lots of companies are raking in big bucks, right? On the contrary, this is a sector that over the past five years has seen most of the top players shut their doors, satisfy themselves with niche markets and small profit margins or, in Apple's case, use music to sell phones and digital music players. What's one of the worst performing areas? You guessed it, ad-supported music services. They have taught us that music remains popular and you can attract large audiences by offering free music. But it doesn't equal a profitable business.
There are indications that the situation may have bottomed out. Instead of a free fall, overall music sales appear to be flat. Online music piracy appears to be under siege thanks to some recent court victories and government action.
For Pandora, it's hard to believe that SoundExchange will try to drive the company's costs higher. It wants Pandora to stick around and generate cash for artists, which could mean a break on the royalty rates. Other things Pandora has going for it are an excellent brand and an experienced management team. I have written that Pandora could make a nice acquisition for Google and others.
But as a standalone investment, Pandora is too dependent on its music suppliers. The company faces too much competition for listeners from other Web music services, such as Google's YouTube, which also is a popular ad-supported music discovery service. Pandora must also fight for regional ad dollars with terrestrial radio stations. And any investor should remember Pandora isn't a start-up. The company has been unprofitable at this for 10 years, and there's little reason to think it will suddenly turn into a great business.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PganUibZ
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/?tag=topStories3 Read More..
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PgabnMda
Shares of the profitless radio service began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange as part of an initial public offering, the latest technology play with a questionable business model to test the public equity markets.
In early morning trading, Pandora, which trades under the ticker symbol P, was up 28 percent to $20.37 a share but then began to level off. Investors began pulling back not long after and the stock closed the day at $17.42, up 8 percent. According to Bloomberg, Pandora sold 14.7 million shares yesterday at a price of $16 a share, giving the company a valuation of $2.6 billion. Pandora isn't worth $2 billion and here's why:
Where are the ads?
The way Pandora works is that the company's 80 million users choose their favorite artists and musical genres and the Oakland, Calif.-based company delivers songs over the Internet based on those choices. Pandora offers an ad-supported service that is free of charge to users but limits them to 40 hours of free listening per month. Another service, called Pandora One, costs $36 annually and offers unlimited commercial-free listening.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PgahXYhs
Since most of the users choose the free-of-charge service, advertising is vital to Pandora. Up to now, however, the company doesn't appear to to be very effective at drawing ad dollars. In documents Pandora filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company saw $119 million in ad revenue for fiscal year 2011, or 87 percent of total revenue. That's more than twice the ad revenue Pandora saw the previous year, but not enough to cover costs, which are also growing. (We'll get to those later.)
"Because the rate they pay is based on per-spin, more listeners doesn't make them more profitable. It doesn't solve their problems. They have to make each listener more profitable."
--SoundExchange spokeswoman
The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday that one likely indication that Pandora is struggling to sell ads is that users frequently hear the same ads. Another is that only 1 percent of listener hours are devoted to ads, compared to traditional radio, which generates about 20 percent. The Journal noted that mobile ads are less lucrative and the percentage of music Pandora delivers to portable devices rose from 1 percent in 2009 to 60 percent last quarter.
Another stumbling block is that Pandora has failed to tap into local advertising effectively. According to music industry sources, Pandora executives have complained that the company has not been able sell the kind of ads to, say, regional car dealerships, department stores, and other local businesses that are the bread and butter of traditional radio broadcasting.
For Pandora to slice off a piece of this market, it would have to snatch away share from hundreds of local radio stations across the country and their individual ad sales teams, who have established relationships with local advertisers over decades.
Music expenses to grow
When you talk about fixed costs, that's when Pandora's stock really begins to look dicey.
Every time someone listens to a song on Pandora's ad-supported service, the company must pay about a tenth of a penny to copyright owners. Actually, Pandora pays SoundExchange, the performance rights group that collects music royalties from Internet radio and satellite services.
"For our fiscal year ended January 31, 2011, we incurred SoundExchange related content acquisition costs representing 45 percent of our total revenue," Pandora said in SEC filings. That's not all. The statutory rate, which is set by Congress, is scheduled to go up almost every year until 2015. There are estimates that Pandora will pay half of total revenue to SoundExchange for fiscal 2012.
"If we are unable to reach a new agreement with SoundExchange," Pandora wrote, "our operating costs may significantly increase, which could harm our financial condition and inhibit the implementation of our business plan."
Related links
• Why Google should acquire Pandora
• Web radio, music industry reach agreement on royalties
• Michael Robertson: Digital music's bad boy was right
So what does a tenth of a penny per play cost Pandora over a year? Laurie Anderson, a SoundExchange spokeswoman, broke it down this way: Pandora allows users of the ad-supported service 480 hours per year of free play (40 hours x 12 months). She said that if a user listens to 15 songs an hour, this is the equivalent of 7,200 songs per year. She said the 2011 rate Pandora pays is a "PurePlay Webcaster rate" of $0.00102 per spin. Assuming all these users max out their 40 hours of free listening each month, this means each of them costs Pandora $7.35 per year.
As Pandora bulls on Wall Street wax on about how the company should be able turn its large audience into gold, Anderson painted a picture of what Pandora has to overcome just to break even.
"Everyone will be watching to see if they can figure out how to monetize their users in other ways," she told CNET today. "Because the rate they pay is based on per-spin, more listeners doesn't make them more profitable. It doesn't solve their problems. They have to make each listener more profitable."
One high-profile critic of Pandora's business model for the past several years has been Michael Robertson, the founder of pioneering music service MP3.com. This is what he told me in 2009 about Pandora and pay-per-stream business models:
"It's just simple math that you can't make enough with ad banners and click-through keywords to pay a penny per song," Robertson said. "Simple math, ask anybody who knows Internet advertising. Somebody sits there, listens to 20 songs, the royalties pile up with each tick of the clock. Those songs may or may not have ads at any given time and even if they do you can't charge enough for those ads to cover the royalty payments, much less all the other engineering fees and bandwidth, sales and all of the other costs. There's no question that today, Webcasting is not a business."
And what about digital music overall? Surely, this is an area where lots of companies are raking in big bucks, right? On the contrary, this is a sector that over the past five years has seen most of the top players shut their doors, satisfy themselves with niche markets and small profit margins or, in Apple's case, use music to sell phones and digital music players. What's one of the worst performing areas? You guessed it, ad-supported music services. They have taught us that music remains popular and you can attract large audiences by offering free music. But it doesn't equal a profitable business.
There are indications that the situation may have bottomed out. Instead of a free fall, overall music sales appear to be flat. Online music piracy appears to be under siege thanks to some recent court victories and government action.
For Pandora, it's hard to believe that SoundExchange will try to drive the company's costs higher. It wants Pandora to stick around and generate cash for artists, which could mean a break on the royalty rates. Other things Pandora has going for it are an excellent brand and an experienced management team. I have written that Pandora could make a nice acquisition for Google and others.
But as a standalone investment, Pandora is too dependent on its music suppliers. The company faces too much competition for listeners from other Web music services, such as Google's YouTube, which also is a popular ad-supported music discovery service. Pandora must also fight for regional ad dollars with terrestrial radio stations. And any investor should remember Pandora isn't a start-up. The company has been unprofitable at this for 10 years, and there's little reason to think it will suddenly turn into a great business.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/#ixzz1PganUibZ
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20071325-261/pandora-a-good-service-but-poor-investment/?tag=topStories3 Read More..
Google announces host of search improvements
Google held a special search event in San Francisco this morning to discuss several improvements to its Web and mobile search products.
Though details surrounding the Inside Search event were slim leading up to it, the company promised journalists it would give them "an under-the-hood look at Google Search, share our vision, and demo some of our newest technology and features."
At a similar event last year, Google unveiled its Instant Search feature, allowing users to see results as they type queries into the search box.
This time around, the company focused first on mobile search. It reported that Web searching volume declines over the weekend after staying high during the workweek. With mobile search, however, Google's traffic jumps on the weekend. The company also said that with mobile search traffic, there is no slowdown during the summer or holidays like there is for traditional Web searches. In fact, the company's mobile search has been enjoying strong, consistent growth over the last few years.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1PgZqxL00
To keep that going, the search giant unveiled several mobile search improvements, including a new set of icons on the company's mobile search page, allowing users to find local establishments, including restaurants, coffee shops, attractions, and even gas stations. Upon clicking one of those items, users can scroll through different locales and see their placement on a map. After clicking an establishment, users will find relevant information, including its address and phone number.
Google also discussed instant search suggestions to help users get answers to their queries more quickly. In addition, the company has added "plus" icons next to suggestions to let users efficiently modify their queries. For example, if a user starts typing "Hilton," and chooses the plus icon to add that to the search box, the search suggestions will change to queries related to Hilton, such as "Hilton Garden Inn," for example.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1PgZxFmqw
Finally, Google showed off a new search user interface for tablets that makes better use of those devices' large displays. People sifting through images in a tablet search also can now scroll without being forced to skip to other pages.
Google's mobile search improvements are available now on the company's mobile Web page.
Bringing mobile features to the Web
Google also said it wanted to bring some of its "mobile innovations" to its Web-based search service.
As such, it unveiled voice search for the Chrome browser. Users will soon find a microphone icon when accessing Google search from their Chrome browser, allowing them to speak a query. That service was previously only available through the company's mobile search application. Google is beginning to roll that out to Chrome users today.
Google has also added a new Search By Image feature to its image search tool that delivers results based on a photo. Users can drag and drop an image into the search box, or instead choose to upload it or copy and paste it into the field.
After a photo is added to the search box, Google delivers relevant results related to it. So, if a person drops a picture of a location in the search box, for example, Google will return information about the place, as well as any Web results on the same topic. Chrome and Firefox extensions are also available to help users search for information on images they find around the Web.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1Pga1Gbdh
Faster load times
Finally, Google unveiled a new improvement to its Web search that will help users get to their desired destinations sooner.
Dubbed Instant Pages, the offering instantly renders a destination page. According to Google, users currently need to wait 5 seconds to get to a destination page from its search service. With Instant Pages, they won't need to wait at all. In one example, Google said that The Washington Post's homepage loaded in 3.2 seconds without help from Instant Pages, and took 0.0 seconds to load with the new feature's help.
Like Google's other Web search improvements, Instant Pages will only be available to Chrome users when they launch. The company will be making that new feature available this week in Chrome beta.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1Pga6S781
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/?tag=topStories2 Read More..
Though details surrounding the Inside Search event were slim leading up to it, the company promised journalists it would give them "an under-the-hood look at Google Search, share our vision, and demo some of our newest technology and features."
At a similar event last year, Google unveiled its Instant Search feature, allowing users to see results as they type queries into the search box.
This time around, the company focused first on mobile search. It reported that Web searching volume declines over the weekend after staying high during the workweek. With mobile search, however, Google's traffic jumps on the weekend. The company also said that with mobile search traffic, there is no slowdown during the summer or holidays like there is for traditional Web searches. In fact, the company's mobile search has been enjoying strong, consistent growth over the last few years.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1PgZqxL00
To keep that going, the search giant unveiled several mobile search improvements, including a new set of icons on the company's mobile search page, allowing users to find local establishments, including restaurants, coffee shops, attractions, and even gas stations. Upon clicking one of those items, users can scroll through different locales and see their placement on a map. After clicking an establishment, users will find relevant information, including its address and phone number.
Google also discussed instant search suggestions to help users get answers to their queries more quickly. In addition, the company has added "plus" icons next to suggestions to let users efficiently modify their queries. For example, if a user starts typing "Hilton," and chooses the plus icon to add that to the search box, the search suggestions will change to queries related to Hilton, such as "Hilton Garden Inn," for example.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1PgZxFmqw
Finally, Google showed off a new search user interface for tablets that makes better use of those devices' large displays. People sifting through images in a tablet search also can now scroll without being forced to skip to other pages.
Google's mobile search improvements are available now on the company's mobile Web page.
Bringing mobile features to the Web
Google also said it wanted to bring some of its "mobile innovations" to its Web-based search service.
As such, it unveiled voice search for the Chrome browser. Users will soon find a microphone icon when accessing Google search from their Chrome browser, allowing them to speak a query. That service was previously only available through the company's mobile search application. Google is beginning to roll that out to Chrome users today.
Google has also added a new Search By Image feature to its image search tool that delivers results based on a photo. Users can drag and drop an image into the search box, or instead choose to upload it or copy and paste it into the field.
After a photo is added to the search box, Google delivers relevant results related to it. So, if a person drops a picture of a location in the search box, for example, Google will return information about the place, as well as any Web results on the same topic. Chrome and Firefox extensions are also available to help users search for information on images they find around the Web.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1Pga1Gbdh
Faster load times
Finally, Google unveiled a new improvement to its Web search that will help users get to their desired destinations sooner.
Dubbed Instant Pages, the offering instantly renders a destination page. According to Google, users currently need to wait 5 seconds to get to a destination page from its search service. With Instant Pages, they won't need to wait at all. In one example, Google said that The Washington Post's homepage loaded in 3.2 seconds without help from Instant Pages, and took 0.0 seconds to load with the new feature's help.
Like Google's other Web search improvements, Instant Pages will only be available to Chrome users when they launch. The company will be making that new feature available this week in Chrome beta.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/#ixzz1Pga6S781
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20071058-17/google-announces-host-of-search-improvements/?tag=topStories2 Read More..
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
'GTA: Chinatown Wars' - Lots of Power, Nice Lines, Lousy Handling
"Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" was designed for portable platforms like the Nintendo DS, so it doesn't lose much in the jump to iPhone and iPod touch. It has the action, grittiness and humor of the "GTA" series, along with a suitably complex story of underworld crime, but play control during the driving sequences -- which make up no small part of the game -- contribute to a high frustration factor.As gaming devices, the iPhone and the Nintendo Wii both face a similar problem. Game publishers often seem to believe that a game that's popular on the Xbox, PlayStation or PC should also be made to fit on the iPhone or Wii, even though you're really dealing with two very different kinds of platforms.
Game makers can and have created games that fit small touchscreens and motion-controlled devices perfectly. But when they take a game that was designed for use with a stationary controller that has more buttons than the average human has fingers, then try to shoehorn it into something with a totally different control design, the results can be a little off-putting. Sometimes that's due to unrealistic expectations; other times it's because the end result is just plain frustrating to play.
Granted, "Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars" isn't exactly an Xbox game retrofitted for a portable device. This edition in the "GTA" series was designed from the get-go for the hand-held screen, though it was originally released on Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. That's made its transition to iPhone/iPod touch very smooth in some ways, less so in others.
Welcome to Liberty City, Now Get Busy Stealing
Our protagonist in "GTA: CTW" is Huang Lee, a spoiled young man from a family of oddball gangsters, to put it nicely. He arrives in Liberty City acting as a courier, delivering a family heirloom to his uncle. Of course, nobody visiting Liberty City can avoid falling in with organized crime within a few short minutes, and Lee is soon rolled into his uncle's underworld dealings, despite his apparently sheltered upbringing and a total lack of training in the field of professional gangsterism.
Perhaps the first thing that those familiar with the "GTA" series will notice is the player's perspective. It's still a third-person view, but instead of a camera that stays on the character's back at all times, you're given a rotating camera pointing down on you at what I'm guessing is about 45 degrees. It's sort of a cross between the original "GTA's" top-down perspective and the design in "GTA III" and onward. It's not as engaging as standing directly over the shoulder of your character, and I found myself much less inclined to cause random mayhem when not at street level. It's also not always convenient when you're navigating through alleyways between tall buildings, but a double-tap on the control pad will at least put the camera behind you for a clearer view.
I was impressed with how smooth loading and graphics were on my 3G iPhone. Nothing felt jerky; in fact, the only time I noticed lag was when the music would start to get choppy in the middle of some very crazy driving, and I'd rather that happen than sacrifice play control. Cut scenes use still illustrations rather than animated characters, but Rockstar's typical "GTA" sense of humor shines through in the dialog.
You're given a fairly massive amount of Liberty City to explore, and your missions will take you all over the place. The mission and communication systems rely on the old PDA standby, and it's relatively easy to pick up quickly. The GPS that guides you through town is well-integrated into mission assignments, or you can use it to guide you anywhere you'd like to explore.
In short, rather than feeling like a game that developers had to hack away at in order to fit it into a mobile box, "GTA: CTW" feels well-suited for a pocket device. It's not too bloated with unnecessary or weird design afterthoughts, but the parts that make it interesting -- lots of missions, lots of territory, an actual plot -- are present.
However, when it comes time to actually drive, play control issues get in the way of the fun.
Hurts to Drive
Ever since "GTA III," the games in this series have seemed to strive toward a fairly realistic portrayal of automotive physics. You can't stop on a dime, most of the vehicles you steal do not accelerate like turbocharged sports cars, and your turning radius is generally pretty sad. This seems to work fine on a regular console, where you can feel the buttons under your fingers and see what's happening on a big TV screen. It's not exactly like driving a real car, but having real buttons and knobs under your fingertips eases the transition.
Trying to roll around Libery City in "GTA: CTW" on iPhone is like driving without your glasses while your hands are shot full of Novocaine. Since the iPhone has no physical buttons (except for that one that'll just exit the application for you), you rely on a set of virtual left/right buttons and accelerator/brake buttons, none of which you can feel. Worse, they put the brake button above the accelerator, rather than to the left. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like a left=brake, right=gas placement is more intuitive, if only because that's the way it is in real cars.
Instead, the "fire weapon" button is to the left of the accelerator. Many innocent pedestrians on Liberty City's streets paid a tragic price for that awkward control arrangement, and I think someone owes their families an apology.
Add in the fact that you're controlling a tiny car on a small screen, all the while being followed by an angled camera that doesn't always show the angle you want to see, and frustration levels rise even further. I just wonder whether Rockstar could have compromised a little on the physical realism of driving, considering this platform's no-buttons limitation.
"GTA: CTW" for iPhone also falls prey to a common video game sin: the pointless minigame. "Fallout 3" does it when you have to pick a lock or hack a computer; "Call of Duty 3" for Wii does it when you have to set a charge. In "GTA: CTW," the madness starts when you have to hotwire your first car -- you have to spin your little screwdriver this way and that to get the ignition going. That's the easy way. Later, you'll have to turn four screws individually to remove a dashboard panel, separate two ignition wires, splice them together and twist. It's just as tedious to do as that last sentence was to read.
Bottom Line
"GTA: CTW" benefits from not being a retrofit -- it was born for the small screen, and it uses its limited resources well. It's also pure "GTA"; the story, hijinks and mayhem are exactly what fans of the series should expect.
But when it comes to actually driving, the play control seems capable of aggravating even a patient player. No doubt you'll get the hang of it after a while, but the frustration factor may be considerable, especially since driving a car is one of the main things you're doing in this game.
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'Wet' computing systems to boost processing power
A new kind of information processing technology inspired by chemical processes in living systems is being developed by researchers at the University of Southampton, UK.Dr Maurits de Planque and Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) are working on a project which has just received €1.8 million from the European Union’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Proactive Initiatives, which recognises ground-breaking work which has already demonstrated important potential.
The researchers, Dr de Planque, a biochemist, and Dr Zauner, a computer scientist, will adapt brain processes to a 'wet' information processing scenario by setting up chemicals in a tube which behave like the transistors in a computer chip
“What we are developing here is a very crude, minimal liquid brain and the final computer will be ‘wet’ just like our brain,” said Dr Zauner. “People realise now that the best information processes we have are in our heads and as we are increasingly finding that silicon has its limitations in terms of information processing, we need to explore other approaches, which is exactly what we are doing here.”
The project, entitled Artificial Wet Neuronal Networks from Compartmentalised Excitable Chemical Material, which is being co-ordinated by Friedrich Schiller University Jena with other project partners, the University of the West of England, Bristol and the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, will run for three years and involves three complementary objectives.
The first is to engineer lipid-coated water droplets, inspired by biological cells, containing an excitable chemical medium and then to connect the droplets into networks in which they can communicate through chemical signals. The second objective is to design information-processing architectures based on the droplets and to demonstrate purposeful information processing in droplet architectures. The third objective is to establish and explore the potential and limitations of droplet architectures.
“Our system will copy some key features of neuronal pathways in the brain and will be capable of excitation, self-repair and self-assembly,” said Dr de Planque.
from http://www.physorg.com
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'FarmVille' Provides a Sugar-Coated Taste of the Ag Biz
Zynga's "FarmVille" has reached hit status on Facebook. In the game, players manage a cartoon-esque patch of land to grow crops and livestock, interacting with other players in a world where the weather's always just right and crop disease is unknown. Even real farmers have gotten into it, though they hope the game doesn't spread the notion that running an actual farm is simple or easy.Even while calling Chicago home, Laura Hawkins Grimes is a country bumpkin. Her scenic rural spread has three dairy farms, two ponds and a log cabin, all skirted by a white picket fence as scarecrows stand sentry over her blackberries.
The best part is the 40-year-old sex therapist never has to leave her computer to tend to it all.
She's one of tens of millions of occupants of "FarmVille," a near-utopian, wildly popular online fantasy game where folks rush to another neighbor's aid, ribbons readily come as rewards, plants don't get diseased and there's never a calamitous frost, flood or drought.
Since its launch last summer, the cartoonish simulation game seeming to meld "Leave It to Beaver" and "Green Acres" has become a Facebook phenomenon, luring in everyone from urbanites like Grimes to actual farmers while gently nudging people to think more about where their food comes from.
"It's kind of what you don't see every day," Grimes said of "FarmVille" by Zynga, a San Francisco-based developer of games widely played at online hangouts such as Facebook. "I have to say, living in Chicago, what appeals to me about 'FarmVille' is it's not urban."
Pimp My Combine
"FarmVille" -- with more than 72 million monthly users worldwide, the most talked-about application in Facebook status updates -- heads a growing stable of simulated agriculture that also includes SlashKey's "Farm Town" on Facebook and PlayMesh's recently launched "iFarm" for the iPhone.
Purposely simplistic, "FarmVille" lets players build and trick out their farms, starting with a tiny parcel they till and seed with a range of crops including berries, eggplant, wheat, soybeans, artichokes and pumpkins. Players can add pigs, cows and chickens and accouterments such as barns, chicken coops, windmills and greenhouses.
As on real farms, attentiveness in "FarmVille" is vital. Players who diligently tend to their crops see their farms flourish and their bank balances balloon. Those late with their harvests may see their crops -- and their investment -- shrivel and die.
Neighbors get rewarded with points and gold for scaring away pests, fertilizing or feeding chickens on another player's spread.
"One thing we feel we got right is it has extremely broad appeal," said Bill Mooney, Zynga's vice president and general manager. "Everybody likes farming, whether you're a gardener, whether you grew up on a farm or your grandparents did. It's literally something everyone can relate with."
With "FarmVille," "there's an appeal that's just cute, with the amazing ways people take the farms and develop them out as their own."
In the end, he hopes, "people will see this as a fun little escape."
A Farm of Their Own
Grimes sure has. The transplanted Oklahoman who detests video games and has no farm background razzed her "FarmVille"-loving friends before her sister successfully prodded her to join.
Now, she admits, "I'm a total 'FarmVille' freak."
A mother of a 3-year-old daughter and the wife of a paramedic, Grimes squeezes in simulated farming between appointments and parenting. She devotes less than an hour each day "in little bitty spurts" to eventually max out her "FarmVille" spread to resemble a whimsical menagerie -- black sheep, pink calves, penguins, reindeer with flashing Christmas lights in their antlers.
"It was completely mindless and just mine," she said. "I could decide where everything went, I could decide when it happened. I got to move things around. I got to make it look nice."
She loves getting rewards at every turn, often for helping a neighbor. She credits "FarmVille" with hastening her reconnection with old friends, including a fourth-grade schoolmate who's now living next door to her in this online agricultural experience.
"I don't know anything about her life except she's a really nice neighbor -- she leaves me little posts, she sends me nice gifts, harvests my crops. And it makes me feel better about people in my life," Grimes said. "What's so nice about this is it's really about camaraderie, like you depend on people to do things for you.
"I really would have never thought this would have been something I do," she said.
Reality Bites
Even actual farmers are digging it. In his central Illinois farmhouse near Windsor, 31-year-old bachelor Darin Doehring started playing months ago with the game he credits with helping him wait out sogginess that hampered harvesting of his 2,000 acres of real corn and soybeans.
"There were more times this past fall I was doing my crops more on there ('FarmVille') than I was in the field because of the rain and mud outside. I enjoy it," Doehring said, noting that he wished the fantasy game posed more challenges mimicking real-life ones farmers face, including weather events.
Mooney of Zynga says that isn't likely: "We don't want it to be a punishing experience. We want this to be a positive."
To John Reifsteck, a corn-and-soybean grower in Champaign County, Ill., there are parallels between virtual and actual farming. "Success at 'FarmVille' requires foresight, persistence and a willingness to help others -- just like farming in the real world," he wrote in an online column last month.
While he doesn't play "FarmVille" -- "I work in the fields for a living" -- he understands those who do and welcomes "FarmVille's" popularity.
"It's a healthy sign for agriculture -- but only if players don't come to think that running a farm is as easy as 'FarmVille' makes it seem," he wrote. "If 'FarmVille' was as difficult and complicated as actual farming, probably no one would play it."
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Security chip that does encryption in PCs hacked
(AP) -- Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks.The attack can force heavily secured computers to spill documents that likely were presumed to be safe. This discovery shows one way that spies and other richly financed attackers can acquire military and trade secrets, and comes as worries about state-sponsored computer espionage intensify, underscored by recent hacking attacks on Google Inc.
The new attack discovered by Christopher Tarnovsky is difficult to pull off, partly because it requires physical access to a computer. But laptops and smart phones get lost and stolen all the time. And the data that the most dangerous computer criminals would seek likely would be worth the expense of an elaborate espionage operation.
Jeff Moss, founder of the Black Hat security conference and a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's advisory council, called Tarnovsky's finding "amazing."
"It's sort of doing the impossible," Moss said. "This is a lock on Pandora's box. And now that he's pried open the lock, it's like, ooh, where does it lead you?"
Tarnovsky figured out a way to break chips that carry a "Trusted Platform Module," or TPM, designation by essentially spying on them like a phone conversation. Such chips are billed as the industry's most secure and are estimated to be in as many as 100 million personal computers and servers, according to market research firm IDC.
When activated, the chips provide an additional layer of security by encrypting, or scrambling, data to prevent outsiders from viewing information on the machines. An extra password or identification such as a fingerprint is needed when the machine is turned on.
Many computers sold to businesses and consumers have such chips, though users might not turn them on. Users are typically given the choice to turn on a TPM chip when they first use a computer with it. If they ignore the offer, it's easy to forget the feature exists. However, computers needing the most security typically have TPM chips activated.
"You've trusted this chip to hold your secrets, but your secrets aren't that safe," said Tarnovsky, 38, who runs the Flylogic security consultancy in Vista, Calif., and demonstrated his hack last week at the Black Hat security conference in Arlington, Va.
The chip Tarnovsky hacked is a flagship model from Infineon Technologies AG, the top maker of TPM chips. And Tarnovsky says the technique would work on the entire family of Infineon chips based on the same design. That includes non-TPM chips used in satellite TV equipment, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 game console and smart phones.
That means his attack could be used to pirate satellite TV signals or make Xbox peripherals, such as handheld controllers, without paying Microsoft a licensing fee, Tarnovsky said. Microsoft confirmed its Xbox 360 uses Infineon chips, but would only say that "unauthorized accessories that circumvent security protocols are not certified to meet our safety and compliance standards."
The technique can also be used to tap text messages and e-mail belonging to the user of a lost or stolen phone. Tarnovsky said he can't be sure, however, whether his attack would work on TPM chips made by companies other than Infineon.
Infineon said it knew this type of attack was possible when it was testing its chips. But the company said independent tests determined that the hack would require such a high skill level that there was a limited chance of it affecting many users.
"The risk is manageable, and you are just attacking one computer," said Joerg Borchert, vice president of Infineon's chip card and security division. "Yes, this can be very valuable. It depends on the information that is stored. But that's not our task to manage. This gives a certain strength, and it's better than an unprotected computer without encryption."
The Trusted Computing Group, which sets standards on TPM chips, called the attack "exceedingly difficult to replicate in a real-world environment." It added that the group has "never claimed that a physical attack - given enough time, specialized equipment, know-how and money - was impossible. No form of security can ever be held to that standard."
It stood by TPM chips as the most cost-effective way to secure a PC.
It's possible for computer users to scramble data in other ways, beyond what the TPM chip does. Tarnovsky's attack would do nothing to unlock those methods. But many computer owners don't bother, figuring the TPM security already protects them.
Tarnovsky needed six months to figure out his attack, which requires skill in modifying the tiny parts of the chip without destroying it.
Using off-the-shelf chemicals, Tarnovsky soaked chips in acid to dissolve their hard outer shells. Then he applied rust remover to help take off layers of mesh wiring, to expose the chips' cores. From there, he had to find the right communication channels to tap into using a very small needle.
The needle allowed him to set up a wiretap and eavesdrop on all the programming instructions as they are sent back and forth between the chip and the computer's memory. Those instructions hold the secrets to the computer's encryption, and he didn't find them encrypted because he was physically inside the chip.
Even once he had done all that, he said he still had to crack the "huge problem" of figuring out how to avoid traps programmed into the chip's software as an extra layer of defense.
"This chip is mean, man - it's like a ticking time bomb if you don't do something right," Tarnovsky said.
Joe Grand, a hardware hacker and president of product- and security-research firm Grand Idea Studio Inc., saw Tarnovsky's presentation and said it represented a huge advancement that chip companies should take seriously, because it shows that presumptions about security ought to be reconsidered.
"His work is the next generation of hardware hacking," Grand said.
from http://www.physorg.com/
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Opera's Bid to Become an iPhone Browser
The Norwegian software maker will soon press Apple to allow a competing Web browser, Opera Mini for iPhone, on the iPhone and iPod touch
By Douglas MacMillan
Technology
Apple's willingness to let competing Web browsers onto the iPhone will soon be put to the test. Norwegian software maker Opera (OPERA:NO) said on Feb. 10 that it has created a version of its mobile browser that works with Apple handsets and that it would soon try to get a green light from Apple to put the browser on the iPhone and iPod touch.
Apple's response will be closely watched by customers and competitors. A "yes" from Cupertino (Calif.)-based Apple (AAPL) would open the door for other software makers to try to get their browsers on the popular smartphone, which now features only versions of Apple's Safari. Some rivals might view rejection as an attempt to squelch competition. "One way to look at the decision is: Are they offering people a miniature computer or a few features on a device?" says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow with the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology & Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. "Will they be opening up all of the possibilities that users can imagine for it or locking a subset of functionalities and limiting what people can do with it?"
Executives at Opera will demonstrate their product, Opera Mini for iPhone, at a mobile industry conference in Barcelona beginning on Feb. 15. They say they've taken steps to ensure that the application meets App Store standards on quality, safety, looks, and other criteria. Yet Apple may have grounds for rejecting the app because it replicates or otherwise competes with Safari, already on the iPhone. "It's a coin flip whether the company accepts or rejects it," says Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company.
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment on Opera's browser, which has yet to be submitted for approval. The company allows other browsers, such as Bolt, into the App Store if they adhere to a software code called WebKit, which also underlies Safari. That requirement has kept browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox off the device.
App Store Inaction over Google Voice
Developers have been turned down for other applications, including a book-reading app that Apple said contained "inappropriate sexual content" from the Kama Sutra; an app that lists telephone numbers for members of Congress because it contained "offensive" caricatures of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others; and a podcast-managing app, which broke rules against downloading podcast files to phones.
Apple has refrained from approving Google Voice, an application that lets users be reached on multiple calling devices with a single number, because it might interfere with, or replace, certain features on the iPhone. The Federal Communications Commission opened an inquiry into the matter in July. Critics have said that Apple dawdled because it doesn't want a competing voice-calling service on the iPhone. The application is still unavailable on the iPhone, although a version can be accessed through the iPhone's browser.
Browsers serve as the main gateway from a computing device onto the Web. In the 1990s, Microsoft (MSFT) was accused of anticompetitive behavior by the U.S. Justice Dept., which said Microsoft harmed rivals such as Netscape by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.
In 2007, Opera complained to European regulators about Microsoft's bundling efforts. After Opera's complaint received support from Mozilla and Google (GOOG)—which makes the Chrome browser—EU regulators began an investigation and urged compromise. Microsoft has since agreed to include a so-called ballot screen that gives users a choice among browsers.
Opera: No. 2 mobile browser, at 25.5%
The antitrust implications if Apple were to reject Opera's application are less clear. Regulators at the Justice Dept. or Federal Trade Commission may ask about the reasoning behind such a decision, says David Balto, a former policy director for the FTC and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. "It would be the kind of thing the Justice Dept. and the FTC would want to look at," Balto says. FTC spokesman Mitchell Katz declined to comment, as did Justice Dept. spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.
Building an anticompetitive case wouldn't be easy, legal experts say. Regulators would have to prove that Apple has a monopoly in a market and that it's using that position to thwart competition. There's a slew of competition in smartphones and the iPhone isn't considered its own market. Customers with a strong preference for Opera's browser could find a version of it on other handsets; the company counts more than 50 million users of its mobile browsers and serves 25.5% of the mobile-browser market, according to data tracker StatCounter. Apple's browser leads the pack with 34.4% of the market. Nokia browsers make up 11.7%, while Research In Motion's BlackBerry has 10.1%.
Mobile devices also aren't held to the same legal standards as computers because they have more limited capabilities, says Michael Gartenberg, vice-president of strategy and analysis at tech research firm Interpret. "Phones are not desktops and I don't think you're going to see the same issues regarding browser choice on phones," he says.
Opera expects its application to get approved and hasn't made contingency plans in the event of rejection, says Opera spokesman Ted Miller. "There's really not much we can do," he says. "There's obviously a chance some regulatory bodies may get involved."
Google and Microsoft: disinterested?
Other browser makers may be encouraged by an acceptance. "As we've seen with Web browsers on the PC, choice leads to competition and innovation, and that's good for everybody," says Jay Sullivan, vice-president of mobile at Mozilla. Mozilla has not developed Firefox for Apple's handsets because "of constraints with the [operating system] environment and distribution," Sullivan says. The company is giving the iPhone some thought, Sullivan says.
Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya says of his company's Chrome browser: "We're really focused on the desktop." Sarah Keeling, a spokeswoman for Microsoft at Waggener Edstrom says Microsoft has no plans to create an Internet Explorer application for the iPhone.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Opera will use an unofficial, or "jailbroken" iPhone, to try to convince show-goers that its Opera Mini browser runs faster than Safari because it load Web pages with computing power from remote servers, rather than a phone's hardware. New features such as "speed dial"—a way to navigate quickly between favorite Web sites—will help Opera stand out to people who are accustomed to Apple's Safari, says Christen Krogh, Opera's chief development officer. "We are really genuine about this," Krogh says. "We are in the business of giving people access to the Web."
Read More..
By Douglas MacMillan
Technology
Apple's willingness to let competing Web browsers onto the iPhone will soon be put to the test. Norwegian software maker Opera (OPERA:NO) said on Feb. 10 that it has created a version of its mobile browser that works with Apple handsets and that it would soon try to get a green light from Apple to put the browser on the iPhone and iPod touch.
Apple's response will be closely watched by customers and competitors. A "yes" from Cupertino (Calif.)-based Apple (AAPL) would open the door for other software makers to try to get their browsers on the popular smartphone, which now features only versions of Apple's Safari. Some rivals might view rejection as an attempt to squelch competition. "One way to look at the decision is: Are they offering people a miniature computer or a few features on a device?" says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow with the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology & Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. "Will they be opening up all of the possibilities that users can imagine for it or locking a subset of functionalities and limiting what people can do with it?"
Executives at Opera will demonstrate their product, Opera Mini for iPhone, at a mobile industry conference in Barcelona beginning on Feb. 15. They say they've taken steps to ensure that the application meets App Store standards on quality, safety, looks, and other criteria. Yet Apple may have grounds for rejecting the app because it replicates or otherwise competes with Safari, already on the iPhone. "It's a coin flip whether the company accepts or rejects it," says Charlie Wolf, an analyst at Needham & Company.
Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller declined to comment on Opera's browser, which has yet to be submitted for approval. The company allows other browsers, such as Bolt, into the App Store if they adhere to a software code called WebKit, which also underlies Safari. That requirement has kept browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox off the device.
App Store Inaction over Google Voice
Developers have been turned down for other applications, including a book-reading app that Apple said contained "inappropriate sexual content" from the Kama Sutra; an app that lists telephone numbers for members of Congress because it contained "offensive" caricatures of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others; and a podcast-managing app, which broke rules against downloading podcast files to phones.
Apple has refrained from approving Google Voice, an application that lets users be reached on multiple calling devices with a single number, because it might interfere with, or replace, certain features on the iPhone. The Federal Communications Commission opened an inquiry into the matter in July. Critics have said that Apple dawdled because it doesn't want a competing voice-calling service on the iPhone. The application is still unavailable on the iPhone, although a version can be accessed through the iPhone's browser.
Browsers serve as the main gateway from a computing device onto the Web. In the 1990s, Microsoft (MSFT) was accused of anticompetitive behavior by the U.S. Justice Dept., which said Microsoft harmed rivals such as Netscape by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system.
In 2007, Opera complained to European regulators about Microsoft's bundling efforts. After Opera's complaint received support from Mozilla and Google (GOOG)—which makes the Chrome browser—EU regulators began an investigation and urged compromise. Microsoft has since agreed to include a so-called ballot screen that gives users a choice among browsers.
Opera: No. 2 mobile browser, at 25.5%
The antitrust implications if Apple were to reject Opera's application are less clear. Regulators at the Justice Dept. or Federal Trade Commission may ask about the reasoning behind such a decision, says David Balto, a former policy director for the FTC and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. "It would be the kind of thing the Justice Dept. and the FTC would want to look at," Balto says. FTC spokesman Mitchell Katz declined to comment, as did Justice Dept. spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.
Building an anticompetitive case wouldn't be easy, legal experts say. Regulators would have to prove that Apple has a monopoly in a market and that it's using that position to thwart competition. There's a slew of competition in smartphones and the iPhone isn't considered its own market. Customers with a strong preference for Opera's browser could find a version of it on other handsets; the company counts more than 50 million users of its mobile browsers and serves 25.5% of the mobile-browser market, according to data tracker StatCounter. Apple's browser leads the pack with 34.4% of the market. Nokia browsers make up 11.7%, while Research In Motion's BlackBerry has 10.1%.
Mobile devices also aren't held to the same legal standards as computers because they have more limited capabilities, says Michael Gartenberg, vice-president of strategy and analysis at tech research firm Interpret. "Phones are not desktops and I don't think you're going to see the same issues regarding browser choice on phones," he says.
Opera expects its application to get approved and hasn't made contingency plans in the event of rejection, says Opera spokesman Ted Miller. "There's really not much we can do," he says. "There's obviously a chance some regulatory bodies may get involved."
Google and Microsoft: disinterested?
Other browser makers may be encouraged by an acceptance. "As we've seen with Web browsers on the PC, choice leads to competition and innovation, and that's good for everybody," says Jay Sullivan, vice-president of mobile at Mozilla. Mozilla has not developed Firefox for Apple's handsets because "of constraints with the [operating system] environment and distribution," Sullivan says. The company is giving the iPhone some thought, Sullivan says.
Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya says of his company's Chrome browser: "We're really focused on the desktop." Sarah Keeling, a spokeswoman for Microsoft at Waggener Edstrom says Microsoft has no plans to create an Internet Explorer application for the iPhone.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Opera will use an unofficial, or "jailbroken" iPhone, to try to convince show-goers that its Opera Mini browser runs faster than Safari because it load Web pages with computing power from remote servers, rather than a phone's hardware. New features such as "speed dial"—a way to navigate quickly between favorite Web sites—will help Opera stand out to people who are accustomed to Apple's Safari, says Christen Krogh, Opera's chief development officer. "We are really genuine about this," Krogh says. "We are in the business of giving people access to the Web."
Read More..
Rethinking networking
Today, data traveling over the Internet are much like crates of oranges traveling the interstates in the back of a truck. The data are loaded in at one end, unloaded at the other, and nothing much happens to them in between.About 10 years ago, electrical engineers suggested that bundles of data could be transmitted over a network more efficiently if, instead of passing unaltered from one end to the other, they were scrambled together along the way and unscrambled at the end. In 2003, MIT electrical engineering professor Muriel Médard and her colleagues proved the counterintuitive result that, in many cases, the best way to scramble data together was to do it randomly.
Last year, the paper in which the researchers presented their findings received an award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which recognized its seminal contributions to the field that’s come to be known as “network coding.” But the same year, the IEEE honored another network-coding paper, in which MIT researchers played the leading role: the paper that, in 2006, presented the first practical implementation of network coding.
The first article in this two-part series presented a simple example of how network coding increases efficiency. Suppose that two laptops are trying to send each other messages simultaneously over the Wi-Fi network in a coffee shop. Ordinarily, the first laptop would send its message to the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi router, which would forward it to the second laptop. The second laptop would send its message to the router, which would forward it to the first laptop. That’s four total transmissions.
But with network coding, the router would instead combine the two laptops’ messages into a hybrid message, which it would broadcast to both laptops, reducing the total number of transmissions to just three. Each laptop would then subtract the message it had sent from the hybrid to recover the message intended for it.
Stingy senders
Dina Katabi, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science; Médard; MIT grad students Sachin Katti and Hariharan Rahul (Katti now teaches at Stanford; Rahul still works with Katabi at MIT); and Cambridge University’s Jon Crowcroft and Wenjun Hu generalized this approach to a network with many different transmitters and receivers.
The researchers blanketed two floors of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab with wireless routers programmed to execute their network coding scheme. They then used wireless devices to exchange test data over the network. Like all information sent over modern networks, the test data were broken up into smaller “packets” of information for transmission. And as is typical with most wireless networks, electromagnetic interference, physical obstacles, and sheer distance from the wireless devices meant that no one router received all the packets. Unlike conventional routers, however, the ones in the MIT network mixed the packets’ content before forwarding them; they even mixed bytes in packets that belonged to different communication streams.
In the MIT network, routers told their neighbor routers which packets they had heard over the wireless medium. A router would use that information when preparing mixed (or coded) packets to send to its neighbors. Consider a router that has four packets in its memory, A, B, C and D. It knows that one of its neighbors also has A and C; another neighbor has A and D; and a third neighbor has C and D. So it creates a single mixed packet that combines packets A, C and D. The first neighbor uses that packet to recover D; the second neighbor uses it to recover C; and the third neighbor uses it to recover A. A single packet thus conveys three times as much information as it would have in an ordinary wireless network. Interestingly, such mixed packets, which combine information about multiple original packets, have the same size as the original packets, and hence can be transmitted over the wireless medium using the same resources as if they were normal unmixed packets.
In experiments, the coding scheme significantly increased the amount of data that the network could carry without requiring any more bandwidth. Although the precise figure varied according to the number of wireless devices accessing the network, which of them were sending information to which others, and the amount of interference they encountered, “in general,” Katabi says, “you can see, let’s say, threefold improvements.”
Chris Ramming, who as a program manager for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded several projects that investigated network coding, says that the two papers honored by the IEEE “are two very seminal papers, for completely different reasons.” According to Ramming, who’s now director of the Corporate External Research Office for chip manufacturer Intel, Katabi and Médard’s paper “was a practical result. It took a completely different kind of network coding and showed in a real wireless network on the MIT campus that it can make an important difference.”
Short gestation
Both Katabi and Médard have continued to work on network coding, sometimes apart, but frequently as collaborators. “We exactly complement each other,” says Katabi. “Muriel has the theoretical foundation, while I come to it from, ‘Let’s make it work, let’s make it practical. How can we actually make it work over an actual wireless channel?’ ”
Indeed, Katabi has found a way to make networks even more efficient by exploiting the physical characteristics of actual wireless channels. In the network described in the award-winning paper, wireless routers received electromagnetic signals, translated them into bits, mixed the bits together, and then translated the bits back into electromagnetic signals. But signals sent from different transmitters naturally blend together physically. That blending is usually a nuisance: the signals have to be separated before data can be extracted from them. But Katabi built another experimental wireless network in which routers don’t disentangle blended signals; they just amplify and forward them. It turns out that the network coding techniques that work at the level of the bit can be extended to reconstruct the original signals, without lots of intermediate translations.
Médard, too, has been concerned with the practical implementation of network coding, if at a higher level of abstraction. The Internet is designed so that a computer or phone receiving information will generally acknowledge the arrival of data packets. If an acknowledgment fails, the sender knows that it has to resend the missing packet. But if, as with network coding, all the packets are mixed together, which packet does the receiver acknowledge? Médard and her colleagues have found a practical way to answer that question, a system wherein each hybrid packet identifies the source packets it combines. The receiver then keeps the sender apprised of the source packets represented in the hybrids it’s received.
Médard and her colleagues are also working on applications of network coding in streaming video, where different means of combining data can be tailored to the different image resolutions of receiving devices. And they’re considering cases where network coding can be applied to several different networks at once. If, for instance, your phone can connect to both Wi-Fi networks and the cellular network, then for large files, you might want to download data over both networks at once. But the cellular network could be significantly more expensive to use than a local Wi-Fi network, so you would want to minimize the amount of data transmitted over it. Network coding can help coordinate transmissions over the two networks, to maximize efficiency while minimizing cost.
Although a young field, network coding has already sparked corporate interest. Defense contractor BAE built the equipment for the DARPA projects that Ramming funded, and Microsoft used network coding in a file-sharing program called Avalanche. Médard says that she is currently working with France Telecom, the French technology company Technicolor (formerly Thomson SA) and the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei on network coding applications. Katabi adds that Cisco, a maker of networking equipment, and South Korean conglomerate Samsung have also expressed interest in the MIT researchers’ work. “Network coding is a very cool idea,” says Katabi. “There are so many things you can do with it.”
from http://www.physorg.com/
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US toys in 2010 are 'green,' high-tech... and cheap
US toy makers are coming out of a long recession tunnel this year, hoping to ride the recovery wave with new lines of classic, "green" and high-tech toys, and a sales pitch centered on affordability.
The American International Toy Fair 2010, underway in New York until Wednesday, is sounding out market tendencies after a disastrous 2008 and an encouraging upswing in 2009 that promises further improvements this year in a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Toy manufacturers have hit the fair with exhibits ranging from classic erector sets by Lego and Playmobil to spanking new offers like a Twitter collar for pets and the perennial doll favorite Barbie, who this year is decked out as a television anchorwoman.
Santa Claus will have toys for all tastes next Christmas, but above all he will be concerned with keeping the price tag down, even at the expense of quality.
Labeled toy of the year by the Toy Industry Association (TIA), the cuddly Zhu Zhu pet hamster robots from Cepia are still top of the list for young kids -- and parents -- for under 10 dollars.
"The trend this year is affordability. You will see a lot of green products under 25 dollars, also active games for the body or the minds, and affordable high tech," TIA spokeswoman Reyne Rice told AFP.
"Parents are looking for toys or games they can play with their children, and not necessarily with too much technology," said Playmobil USA Marketing Manager Michelle Winfrey.
The toy industry is worth 75 billion dollars in annual sales worldwide, with more than one-quarter, or 21 billion, in the United States alone, according to TIA figures.
This year's environmentally friendly exhibits include toys made of wood and innovative offers like a 20-dollar caterpillar farm that, with all the supplied proper care, turns into a butterfly factory in only three weeks.
Giant toy maker Mattel is hitting the high-tech market in mid-2010 with "Puppy Tweet," a Twitter-enabled dog collar for around 30 dollars that broadcasts your pet's actions on micro-blogging site Twitter.
Another wallet-friendly smart toy starting at 10 dollars is "Hexbug," micro-robotic creatures resembling cockroaches, spiders or crabs that respond to touch, sound and even light and are capable of navigating mazes or their own nano habitat set.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Rubik's Cube, Techno Source offers "Rubik's Touch" for easy solving of the puzzle with just a swipe of the finger, and "Rubik's Slide" -- coming out in the third quarter of this year -- with light-and-sound effects for 18 dollars.
"It is easy to understand, it has a physical aspect and it is addictive," said Techno Source assistant marketing manager Amy Bogin.
Barbie 2010 has also gone high-tech with its 50-dollar "Video Girl," sporting a small video camera that can send everything the blond doll sees onto a computer screen.
Toy giant Mattel surveyed its Barbie followers to determine what the doll's 125th profession should be. By majority consent, Barbie this year is a reporter and star news anchorwoman on television.
And steering away from her traditional pink outfits, the new Barbie comes with a choice of 12 predominantly black wardrobes.
The toy fair has some 100,000 products on show for its 32,000 visitors at the Javits convention center. The list, of course, also includes sophisticated and expensive toys.
"Beamz," is a laser beam musical instrument for 200 dollars apt for children of all ages, including dad.
A notch above is "Bioloid," a 1,200-dollar robot from South Korea's Robotis that is billed as the first educational robot kit based around "smart serially controlled servos." It can be programmed and made to move in astonishingly realistic fashion.
From http://www.physorg.com/
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Google Adds a Little Sparkle to Chrome for Linux
By Katherine Noyes
LinuxInsider
Part of the ECT News Network
02/16/10 5:00 AM PT
The Linux version of Google's Chrome browser has received a tuneup. Updates fix a handful of bugs; they also bring in better support for custom fonts and improvements in GTK theme mode. The Linux and Mac versions of Chrome still trail the Windows version in terms of development, though it's interesting that some Chrome features are appearing in Linux before they show up in Mac.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has updated the beta version of its Chrome for Linux with a variety of fixes designed to make the browser more reliable, the company announced Thursday.
Version 5.0.307.7 of Chrome for Linux addresses several bugs that were problematic in the previous version. One fix, for example, changes an out of memory (OOM) killer mechanism so that it terminates runaway tabs before it closes the browser when memory is low.
The upgrade was released in tandem with a similar update to the Mac version that adds extensions, bookmark sync and other features that had previously been absent on that platform.
Better Support for Complex Text
"We've been adding many of the features that were missing on the Mac, and working hard on making Google Chrome on both platforms more reliable," wrote the Chrome team's Mark Larson in the announcement. "We've spent a lot of time making plug-ins like Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash Player more reliable."
The Chrome for Linux beta supports Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. It was first released in December along with the Mac version, both trailing the Windows version by more than a year.
Also added to the Mac version are a bookmark manager, a task manager and a cookie manager. Fixes in the Mac version add support for pinch-to-zoom capabilities, for example.
Other enhancements in the latest upgrade to the Linux version, meanwhile, include improved performance on Web sites that use custom fonts and better support for complex text such as in Hebrew, Arabic and Hindi. Improvements in GTK theme mode, on the other hand, mean that it now uses system colors in more places, such as highlights and scroll bars.
GTK, or GIMP Toolkit, is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.
'Welcome' Improvements
Though the improvements included are "actually relatively minor," they're still "welcome because the reliability of the browser on the Linux platform has been down of late," RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady told LinuxInsider.
What's particularly interesting about the announcement, however, "is the fact that features such as extensions are appearing in Linux before they do on the Mac," O'Grady added.
In fact, Chrome on Linux "seems to be accelerating," he asserted. "It still lags Windows, but is ahead of the Mac as mentioned above, and it's really not too far behind."
'The Timing Is Indicative'
When Chrome originally came out, 451 Group analyst Jay Lyman wrote a blog post on why it didn't seem to make sense that the browser was only for Windows.
"I guess I figured a company such as Google that is heavily using Linux and employs large numbers of Linux developers should be able to come up with a Linux version alongside the Windows release," Lyman told LinuxInsider.
Of course, "the timing is also indicative of how the Chrome browser is intended to compete primarily with Internet Explorer on the many Windows PCs out there," he added.
'Continued Traction for Chrome'
Now that improved versions of Chrome for Mac and Linux are beginning to appear, "it will be interesting to see the impact on Safari and Firefox," Lyman said.
Indeed, in a year-end report released last month, market researcher Net Applications found that Chrome had already edged past Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Safari to take third place in the browser market.
Chrome now accounts for 4.63 percent of the market, Net Applications found, while Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer holds 62.69 percent, Mozilla Firefox claims 24.61 percent and Safari accounts for 4.46 percent.
"I expect we'll see some movement and continued traction for Chrome," Lyman predicted, "but also response from the other browser developers and communities."
from http://www.technewsworld.com/
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China Unicom Group Bids $2.5 Billion for Nitel
By Paul Okolo and Mark Lee
Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. and its bidding partners may buy 75 percent of Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd. for $2.5 billion to enter the fastest- growing phone market in Africa.
New Generation Telecom Ltd., the group made up of Unicom, Minerva Group and GiCell Wireless Ltd., was selected as the preferred bidder for the state-owned phone company, Taiwo Osipitan, an official at the National Council on Privatization, told reporters in Abuja yesterday. Unicom, based in Beijing, is China’s second-biggest mobile phone company.
Unicom’s group outbid a $956 million offer from Omen International Ltd. and four shortlisted suitors including MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest phone company. The market in the continent’s most populous nation has room to grow as more than half of Nigerians still don’t have mobile phones. India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. is bidding for African wireless assets including in Nigeria as mounting competition at home pressures profit.
“It’s a good price for Nigeria,” Titi Ommo-Ettu, chief executive officer of Telecom Answers Associates, a Lagos-based research company, said in a phone interview.
Nigeria’s fixed-line and mobile-phone customers increased to 67.9 million in June from 65.5 million in January 2009, according to the Abuja-based Nigerian Communications Commissio
Financial Partners
“We have strong financial partners ready to fund” the business, Usman Gumi, an official from the New Generation group, said in an interview, without giving other details. Sophia Tso, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Unicom, said she couldn’t immediately comment on the deal.
Nitel, as the company is known, has lost market share to private operators licensed since 2000, including MTN Nigeria Ltd., and its employees are currently owed 17 months of wages, according to the Bureau of Public Enterprises. A previous attempt to sell the company was annulled after Transnational Corp., a Lagos-based investment company, failed to comply with sale conditions.
Unicom shares rose 1.6 percent to HK$9.04 as of the 12:30 p.m. trading break in Hong Kong, compared with a 1.8 percent gain by the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Bharti, South Asia’s biggest mobile-phone company, this week offered $10.7 billion to buy most of Kuwait-based Zain’s African assets, a deal that would create one of the largest emerging-markets wireless carriers.
African Subscribers
The proposal, which doesn’t include Zain’s Morocco or Sudan businesses, would give New Delhi-based Bharti access to an estimated 42 million customers across 15 African countries from Nigeria to Uganda. The Indian company’s plan can’t include Zain’s Celtel Nigeria B.V. unit until an ownership dispute with Econet Wireless Holdings Ltd. on that business is resolved, Econet Chief Executive Officer Strive Masiyiwa said on Feb. 15.
New Generation beat five other bids for Nitel. On Feb. 8, the government announced that South Africa’s MTN, Globacom Ltd., Nigeria’s second-largest mobile operator, Brymedia (WA) Ltd., Spectrum Group and Omen International were short-listed as preferred bidders.
Bids unsealed yesterday were for 75 percent of Nitel and its mobile unit, known as M-Tel, according to a BPE statement. Omen’s $956 million was the next-highest after that of New Generation, it said.
New Generation must pay 30 percent of the purchase price 10 days after the winner is approved by the National Council on Privatization, headed by acting President Goodluck Jonathan, according to the BPE. The remainder must be paid 60 days after Jonathan’s approval.
The government plans to warehouse Nitel’s debt and settle it later using the proceeds from the sale of the company, Christopher Anyanwu, director-general of BPE, told reporters in Abuja yesterday.
From http://www.businessweek.com/
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Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -- China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. and its bidding partners may buy 75 percent of Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd. for $2.5 billion to enter the fastest- growing phone market in Africa.
New Generation Telecom Ltd., the group made up of Unicom, Minerva Group and GiCell Wireless Ltd., was selected as the preferred bidder for the state-owned phone company, Taiwo Osipitan, an official at the National Council on Privatization, told reporters in Abuja yesterday. Unicom, based in Beijing, is China’s second-biggest mobile phone company.
Unicom’s group outbid a $956 million offer from Omen International Ltd. and four shortlisted suitors including MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest phone company. The market in the continent’s most populous nation has room to grow as more than half of Nigerians still don’t have mobile phones. India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd. is bidding for African wireless assets including in Nigeria as mounting competition at home pressures profit.
“It’s a good price for Nigeria,” Titi Ommo-Ettu, chief executive officer of Telecom Answers Associates, a Lagos-based research company, said in a phone interview.
Nigeria’s fixed-line and mobile-phone customers increased to 67.9 million in June from 65.5 million in January 2009, according to the Abuja-based Nigerian Communications Commissio
Financial Partners
“We have strong financial partners ready to fund” the business, Usman Gumi, an official from the New Generation group, said in an interview, without giving other details. Sophia Tso, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Unicom, said she couldn’t immediately comment on the deal.
Nitel, as the company is known, has lost market share to private operators licensed since 2000, including MTN Nigeria Ltd., and its employees are currently owed 17 months of wages, according to the Bureau of Public Enterprises. A previous attempt to sell the company was annulled after Transnational Corp., a Lagos-based investment company, failed to comply with sale conditions.
Unicom shares rose 1.6 percent to HK$9.04 as of the 12:30 p.m. trading break in Hong Kong, compared with a 1.8 percent gain by the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.
Bharti, South Asia’s biggest mobile-phone company, this week offered $10.7 billion to buy most of Kuwait-based Zain’s African assets, a deal that would create one of the largest emerging-markets wireless carriers.
African Subscribers
The proposal, which doesn’t include Zain’s Morocco or Sudan businesses, would give New Delhi-based Bharti access to an estimated 42 million customers across 15 African countries from Nigeria to Uganda. The Indian company’s plan can’t include Zain’s Celtel Nigeria B.V. unit until an ownership dispute with Econet Wireless Holdings Ltd. on that business is resolved, Econet Chief Executive Officer Strive Masiyiwa said on Feb. 15.
New Generation beat five other bids for Nitel. On Feb. 8, the government announced that South Africa’s MTN, Globacom Ltd., Nigeria’s second-largest mobile operator, Brymedia (WA) Ltd., Spectrum Group and Omen International were short-listed as preferred bidders.
Bids unsealed yesterday were for 75 percent of Nitel and its mobile unit, known as M-Tel, according to a BPE statement. Omen’s $956 million was the next-highest after that of New Generation, it said.
New Generation must pay 30 percent of the purchase price 10 days after the winner is approved by the National Council on Privatization, headed by acting President Goodluck Jonathan, according to the BPE. The remainder must be paid 60 days after Jonathan’s approval.
The government plans to warehouse Nitel’s debt and settle it later using the proceeds from the sale of the company, Christopher Anyanwu, director-general of BPE, told reporters in Abuja yesterday.
From http://www.businessweek.com/
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Microsoft Builds Zune, Xbox Into New Windows Phone Platform
By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld
02/16/10 10:48 AM PT
Microsoft showed off its upcoming mobile platform at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, but it's not calling the OS "Windows Mobile 7." Instead, it's breaking away from the WinMo moniker and dubbing the new product "Windows Phone 7 Series." The interface appears to be completely revamped, and it's tied in Zune and Xbox Live functionalities.
With the demonstration of its newest mobile platform Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) vastly extended its mobile platform and at the same took it in a new direction, at least from a naming and branding perspective. It's dubbed the new platform "Windows Phone 7 Series."
For the new platform, Redmond is bringing together Xbox Live games, the Zune music and video experience, social networking, mobile apps, access to Microsoft Office and photographs.
It has already lined up several partners worldwide, and the first smartphones with Windows Phone 7 Series will be available in time for the holiday buying season, Microsoft announced.
What's Inside?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's introduction of Windows Phone 7 Series seemed to echo what HTC, Samsung and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) have said recently when introducing their new phone families -- the platform "marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people's lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences," he stated.
The "Start" screens of Windows Phone 7 Series devices will have dynamically updated "live tiles" that show real-time content updates. When a user creates a tile of a friend, up-to-date info, such as that friend's latest pictures and posts online, will show up on the screen.
Windows Phone hubs will bring together related content from the Web, applications and services into a single view to simplify common tasks. There are six such hubs: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office.
All Windows Phone 7 Series phones will have a dedicated hardware button for Bing, and a special implementation of Bing Search will provide the most relevant Web or local results as required.
The People hub includes live feeds from social networks and photo sites; the Pictures hub lets users share pictures and videos on social networks; and the Games hub offers Xbox Live games on a phone.
Music + Video brings Zune functionality -- including content from users' PCs, online music services and a built-in FM radio -- into one location. Marketplace lets users discover and load the phone with certified mobile apps and games, and the Office hub gives users access to Microsoft Office, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace.
Breaking Down the Phone 7 Series
That hardware button for Bing may restrict users' choice to a certain degree. It's doubtful that upcoming Windows phones would outright forbid access to other search engines, but it's possible that only Bing will enjoy one-button access.
Also, instant linking to social networks raises questions about privacy. Google has already been burned on its Buzz project by critical privacy advocates, and Microsoft could run into similar problems if it builds in too many automated processes.
As for mobile apps, Microsoft's decision to build Xbox Live and Zune capabilities into Windows Phone 7 Series may be an attempt to catch up with the popularity of functions available through competitors like Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store. Microsoft has long allowed third-party developers to create applications for Windows Mobile, but Apple was able to generate significant new consumer interest by building a central mobile app storefront inside its already popular iTunes platform. Other smartphone software makers, including Microsoft, have since also built centralized application stores.
Still, incorporating games and other hubs into Windows Phone 7 Series may be more than just a defensive move; it might let Microsoft leverage existing products to maximize potential returns. "This is Microsoft saying 'We have all these other services -- Xbox, Zune, the marketplace -- and we want to integrate that with our smartphone," Chris Hazelton, a research director at The 451 Group, told TechNewsWorld.
Redmond has lined up partners worldwide to support the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. They include mobile operators AT&T (NYSE: T), Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) and its American child T-Mobile USA, Orange, Sprint (NYSE: S), Telecom Italia, Verizon Wireless and its European parent Vodafone (NYSE: VOD).
Manufacturers include Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), HTC; HP (NYSE: HPQ), LG, Samsung, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY), Toshiba and Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM).
Sidestepping the WinMo Curse?
Since Windows Phone 7 Series is the latest version of Microsoft's mobile phone platform, why not call it "Windows Mobile 7" to maintain continuity?
That's possibly because Microsoft wanted to avoid the bad connotations of the WinMo name, Carl Howe, director, anywhere research at the Yankee Group, pointed out. "The name change is an admission that Windows Mobile wasn't successful," he told TechNewsWorld. "If you have a product that's a break from the past, you don't want to burden it with a brand that has a checkered past."
Windows Mobile's past wasn't just checkered; it was cross-hatched and polka-dotted. Smartphone consumers and even some manufacturers turned their backs on the Windows Mobile 6 series of updates, yet many held out hope for WinMo 7. However, the next version of Microsoft's mobile OS been delayed several times since 2008, and up until Monday, there was speculation that it might be put off yet again until 2011.
Nokia, Intel Unveil MeeGo
Not to be outdone by Microsoft, Nokia (NYSE: NOK), whose Symbian Foundation recently transitioned the Symbian platform to open source, jointly unveiled a new, open source platform with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) on Monday.
Meego, as the new platform will be called, is a combination of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin platforms. It is being hosted and administered by the Linux Foundation.
MeeGo will support multiple hardware architectures across a broad range of mobile devices, from pocketable mobile computers to netbooks to tablets to mediaphones to connected television sets to in-vehicle infotainment systems.
It offers the Qt application development environment. This is a cross-platform application and user interface framework that lets developers write an app once and deploy it across multiple platforms without having to rewrite the source code. Qt is used in Google Earth, KDE, Opera, Skype and VirtualBox. It was created by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in 2008.
Apps developed with Qt will be marketed through Nokia's Ovi Store and Intel's AppUpSM Center. The first release of MeeGo is expected in the second quarter of this year, and devices running the platform are scheduled for launch later in the year.
Living Together in Harmony?
Right now, MeeGo and Windows Phone 7 Series are not exactly competing with each other head-on. "MeeGo is really meant for a wide variety of devices, and Windows Phone 7 Series is targeted at consumer smartphones," Hazelton said.
Also, MeeGo may not get off the ground unless Intel and Nokia put some elbow grease into the project. "I don't see MeeGo getting any traction yet; it depends a lot on what Nokia and Intel do with it," the Yankee Group's Howe said. "Making something open source isn't enough to guarantee its success Download Free eBook - The Edge of Success: 9 Building Blocks to Double Your Sales; you also have to market it with real products."
Windows Phone 7 Series is a good effort, Howe said, but it also needs a lot of work. "Microsoft gets a lot of credit for dumping Windows Mobile's legacy feature and starting over to build a good consumer-centric experience," he said. "But we won't know if they're successful until we see actual devices."
Whether or not those devices make any headway depends on how they'll measure up against the iPhone. "They'll be competing with the iPhone [version] 4," Howe pointed out. "Still, I have to give Microsoft an A for ambition. Let's hope they extend that A to execution as well -- demos are easy, but shipping products is hard."
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