Google Answers decides to close up shop

Google announced today that it is bidding farewell to one of its first side projects (and incidentally, one of the few Google projects to ever come out of beta), Google Answers. Google Answers will stop accepting new questions by the end of this week and will stop accepting answers to existing questions by the end of this year.

For those not in the know, Google Answers allows anyone on the web to submit any question, be it deep and intriguing or silly and curious, via Google's interface. The question would then be answered by one of over 500 "carefully screened" researchers within 24 hours. This was a good method for getting fairly definitive, expert answers on oddball topics that might not otherwise be easy to find via searching the internet with Google. For example, how many tyrannosaurs are in a gallon of gasoline? Non-researchers were allowed to comment on questions and answers as well, so that input from other web users was also included.

The interesting part about Google Answers was that there was a cost involved to the user, something that is relatively uncommon with Google services these days. Users with questions could post payment amounts of their choice, starting at $2.50 and up, depending on how difficult the question was and much they valued the answer from an expert. When the question was answered, the researcher (an independent contractor hired by Google) would receive 75 percent of the payment while Google would receive 25 percent—higher-paid questions were usually answered first for obvious reasons. Those whose questions got answered were also allowed to leave tips of up to $100 if they were particularly satisfied with the answer.

Why would such a seemingly useful service close up shop? There could be several reasons for Google to pull the plug on Google Answers, the simplest of which is that they want to move engineers to bigger and better projects. However, in the four years that Google Answers was open for business, it fell under some criticism that may have affected its popularity. Some said that Google was making money off of otherwise free services provided by librarians, and others were concerned about Google Answers enabling plagiarism by students. More controversially, however, some of the researchers involved were unsatisfied with the unruliness of Google's process.

Intel jumps on 802.11n bandwagon with Centrino

On Tuesday, at the IEEE Globecom 2006 Expo in San Francisco, Intel announced that the company is planning to put a pre-standard version of 802.11n wireless networking into the next release of the Centrino chipset. Alan Crouch, director and general manager at Intel's Communications Technology Lab, told the crowd of engineers and technologists that the new WiFi technology was slated for inclusion in the Centrino chips as early as next year.

802.11n is the latest revision of the wireless networking standard, which has already gone through two major standards: 802.11b at 11 megabits per second, and 802.11g at 54 Mbps. However, 802.11n has not yet completed the standardization process, and will not receive its final blessing from the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee until the first half of 2008.

Other companies have jumped the gun on producing 802.11n cards and adapters before. Dell started offering the high-speed wireless networking option back in June, along with Linksys, Belkin, and D-Link.

New Opera makes music on cell phones

Opera has announced a major new version of their web browser for mobile phones. Dubbed Opera Mini 3.0, the new version is available as a free download from the Opera web site. The new browser works with a variety of phones (a complete list is available at the site) and can be downloaded in three ways: as an SMS attachment, a WAP download, or downloaded to the user's PC and then transferred over via Bluetooth or USB attachment. The download comes in the form of a Java-based application separated into .jar and .jad files.

Opera Mini comes in two different versions to accomodate phones with different hardware resources. New features in Mini 3.0 include an RSS reader, HTTPS support for secure web sites, the ability to share photos taken by the camera, and a content-folding feature that compresses long menus to a [+] button that can be expanded as necessary. The company has set up a remote server that preprocesses web pages, compressing the content before it is sent to the phone. This makes browsing faster and lowers bandwidth charges. Opera claims that Mini 3.0 is even faster at rendering pages than the previous version.

Its small size, modest hardware requirements, standards compatibility, and raw speed have won it much critical acclaim, but the browser has not met with much success on the desktop—most web surveys put its usage at around 1 percent, compared with 10-12 percent for Firefox and 80-odd percent for Internet Explorer. The folks at Opera have decided to focus on the embedded market for their future growth, and have already scored deals with Nintendo to provide a browser for the DS and Wii game consoles (the latter is not available just yet).

256GB paper storage claims simply don't add up

A story first posted on ArabNews.com has been making the rounds on the Internet, involving an Indian student who has allegedly found a method of storing compressed digital information on a regular sheet of paper. Sainul Abideen claims that his technique, dubbed Rainbow Technology, can store between 90 and 450 GB on a single sheet of paper.

The system allegedly works by encoding data into small geometrical shapes (circles, squares, and triangles) in various colors, then printing them out on a piece of paper. A scanner is used to read the data back in to the computer. Abideen claims that his storage method is more environmentally friendly due to the biodegradable nature of paper, and envisions magazine publishers printing tear-out sheets of paper containing demos and programs, replacing the traditional plastic-wrapped CD or DVD.

Storing digital information on paper dates back to the earliest days of computing. Anyone remembers Punched Cards? The cards had 80 columns - an artifact that remains with us today as the default width for console-mode applications - and could only store a maximum of 120 bytes (about one-eighth of a kilobyte) per card.

However, despite technological advances in scanning and printing technology since those days, Abideen's claims quite simply do not hold water. A little bit of math is in order here. Starting with a scanner with a maximum resolution of 1,200 dots per inch, this leads to a maximum of 1,440,000 dots per square inch, or just over 134 million dots on a sheet of standard 8.5" by 11" paper (excluding margins).

Getting a scanner to accurately pick up the color of a single dot on a page is a difficult affair (it would take near-perfect color calibration, for example, and be prone to errors from ambient light and imperfections in the paper) but let's be generous and say that the scanner can accurately pick out 256 shades of color for each dot. That's a single byte per dot, making the final calculation easy: a maximum theoretical storage of 134MB, which would likely go down to under 100MB after error correction.

It's a decent amount of storage, but several orders of magnitude smaller than the 450GB claimed by Abideen. The claim that "circles, triangles, and squares" can achieve these extra orders of magnitude can be easily challenged. There is a word for using mathematical algorithms to increase the storage space of digital information: it's called compression. No amount of circles and triangles could be better than existing compression algorithms: if it was, those formulas would already be in use! Compression could easily increase the 100MB theoretical paper storage by a factor of two or three, but so could simply compressing the files you wished to store into a .zip archive before converting them to a color printout.

Ultimately, storage is about bits, and the smaller the bits are physically, the more storage can be packed into a given space. The magnetic bits on hard drive platters and the tiny pits in optical media are orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest dot that can be recognized by any optical scanner, and this is the simple reason why they store orders of magnitude more information. Even if a much higher-density printer were used (such as an expensive laser printer or offset printing process) the limiting factor is still the scanner required to get the information back into the computer. In the end, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it cannot be worth half a thousand megabytes.

Castle built for .Net

Castle, which is an open source project to ease development on Microsoft's .Net platform, is nearing its general release.

Spawned out of the defunct Apache Avalon object-oriented framework, Castle is built as a set of programming libraries. In addition to .Net, it also will work with Mono, an open source implementation of .Net.

"Castle's goals are avoid code repetition, use convention instead of configuration whenever it's possible, and handle common tasks on the programmer's behalf," said project creator Hamilton Verissimo, founder of the Castle Stronghold consultancy in Brazil.

A second release candidate of Castle 1.0 is available as of several weeks ago. A general release is targeted for January.

Castle can be used for enterprise and Web application development. It features tools including MonoRail, which is a Web framework inspired by Ruby on Rails. MonoRail uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern for application flow, data, and views. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is featured as well.

Also in Castle are ActiveRecord, for mapping objects to databases, and Windsor, which is an object lifecycle container for making code more maintainable.

"[Castle is] a collection of many different tools and features primarily designed for easing development and reducing development time," said Kevin Williams, who is a developer involved in Castle.

Ease of use and intuitiveness are the primary draws of Castle, Williams said.

"Of all the software that I've used over the years in .Net, I've never seen anything as easy to use or powerful as the Castle tools," Williams said.

"It's very intuitive to use and you have a lot of control over things and it's very extensible," Williams said. Users can mold Castle to their environment or use it with the Visual Studio IDE.

"Probably the best thing I can say is that as developers improve their practices and learn about new methodologies and techniques and design patterns and all these things, sometimes it's difficult to put all these tool together and make it work," Williams said. "Castle fits all those pieces together for you and gives you a jumpstart in what you want to build."

Castle began as an attempt to bridge Avalon to .Net. Planning already is under way for version 2.0 of Castle. The MonoRail component in version 2.0 may be enabled to work with many view engines at the same time. A domain language to generate JavaScript also is eyed, as is a better template engine in the vein of Ruby. Performance improvements also are planned for MonoRail.

Initialization and mapping improvements are expected for ActiveRecord in Castle 2.0. The IoC (Inversion of Control) microkernel in Castle may be more configurable as well.

Internationalized domain names coming next year

The recent Internet Governance Forum in Athens featured lots of talk about the way that the 'Net is run, but nothing generated more discussion than internationalized domain names (IDNs). In many parts of the world, frustration has built up for years over the need to use Latin characters to access most top-level domains (TLDs), even when they reference sites that are in languages like Tamil, Farsi, or Mandarin. Change is coming, but it's slower than many would like.

ICANN has been urging patience, arguing that if certain countries introduce proprietary systems of their own, the interoperable nature of the Internet could be broken permanently. Systems that are not well-implemented could also cause general confusion and security concerns.

At a recent event in Sydney, ICANN CEO Paul Twomey said that the "political pressure" his organization faces will not make ICANN move any faster. "The Internet is like a fifteen story building, and with international domain names what we're trying to do is change the bricks in the basement," he said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. "If we change the bricks there's all these layers of code above the DNS... we have to make sure that if we change the system, the rest is all going to work."

ICANN's roadmap for IDNs shows that a workable system should be ready by the end of 2007, with live root zone tests to be conducted in December 2006. The group has already contracted with a Swedish firm named Autonomica to do lab testing of the new system, which is currently underway. ICANN has actually been developing the IDN system for three years, leading us to believe that their timetable has a good chance of being met. If you've been holding out on that new domain registration until you could have it in Hindi, you've only got a year left to wait.

Samsung Tells Future of Cell Phones

Mobile phones will undergo a dramatic transformation over the next few years, incorporating more powerful processors and more storage, as well as new technologies, a Samsung Electronics research and development executive said today.

The addition of these technologies will dramatically expand the capability of mobile handsets, which will have sensors to monitor a user's health and offer a wider range of entertainment and online services, such as shopping, said Kang-Hun Lee, vice president of Samsung's Next-Generation Terminals Team. Voice will remain a "basic capability" of these devices, he said.

By 2010 or so, handsets will use flexible or holographic displays and could have processors that run at clock speeds up to 5GHz, Lee said. In addition, they may pack up to 10GB of flash memory or hard disks that can hold 20GB of data or more.

Future handsets will also include more advanced cameras, capable of capturing 3-D and holographic images, and rely on fuel cells or solar panels for power. Future handsets will switch seamlessly from one network to another, moving between cellular networks, mobile WiMax, and other networks.

While much of the new technologies have yet to move beyond the R&sD lab, Samsung anticipates the gradual addition of new technologies and capabilities into its handsets. For example, Samsung will next year put a 1GHz StrongArm processor inside a mobile phone.

In June, Samsung revealed it plans to add mobile Wimax support to a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) handset. That handset is due to hit the market during the first half of 2007, said Hwan Woo Chung, a vice president at Samsung's Mobile WiMax Group, speaking at that time.

Sun opens Java under the GPL

After years of speculation followed by years of waiting, Java has finally, truly been opened. Sun announced today that Java has made the jump to "open source," as Sun says that parts of the Java platform it owns are being licensed under the GPL open source license (version 2). The use of the GPL is surprising, because it puts any and all modifications back into the public source code, and not all software developers are eager to share their contributions. Nevertheless, in adopting the GPL, Sun is being aggressive in its move into open source. Solaris, for instance, is distributed under the far more restrictive Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which is mostly based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL).

The upshot is this: not only has Sun open-sourced Java, but they've adopted a license that they hope will please the "free software" folks along with the hordes of commercial software developers that have been using Java for almost a decade. Java will be distributed with what is known as a "Class path exception" which will allow Java libraries to link to non-GPLed code, making it possible to continue to use Java with closed-source commercial development projects. Sun hopes it's a win-win situation. Only time will tell.

Sun calls the move "one of the largest source code contributions under the GPL license," but the company is also quick to point out that this is big is another way, too. With 3.8 billion devices using Java, it's the single largest platform for unifying software development for devices. Sun will also continue to sell Java-based software packages despite the licensing change.

All of the source code relating to Java is expected to be opened by the end of March 2007. For now, Sun has made available the first pieces of source code for Sun's implementation of Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) and a buildable implementation of Java Platform Micro Edition (Java ME). More details are available at Sun's new open source Java landing.

More coverage of interest to developers can be grokked at InfoQ, which has a great run-down on the licensing ramifications.

Yahoo to embed instant messaging into e-mail

E-mail was arguably the first killer application of the Internet, but recently it has become somewhat less useful as the war between spammers and antispammers has left some Internet users feeling like innocent victims in a battle between good and evil. The younger generation tends to eschew e-mail in favor of instant messaging. Now, Yahoo has decided to bring the two technologies together for a new version of Yahoo Mail.

Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of communications at Yahoo, said that the reason for the move was to improve the overall user experience, something he claims is lacking from many "Web 2.0" applications. "I would argue that many Web 2.0 applications are already dead," he said. "Web 2.0 as an application is leaving tremendous value on the table for consumers and for us as businesses."

So is the new Yahoo Mail an example of Web 2.5? The company is not the first to have the idea of integrating e-mail and instant messaging. For almost as long as there has been MSN Messenger, Microsoft has enabled access to its contact list within Outlook Express. Google also recently added chat features to its Gmail application. However, the new Yahoo Mail is even more integrated with instant messaging. It does not require any separate instant message program, allowing direct chatting within its web-based interface.

Yahoo and Microsoft recently announced that they would be making their IM services interoperable, so MSN users will have a new method of keeping track of their friends while online. Will the IM integration and MSN compatibility help push Yahoo's services over the top? The battle for instant messaging supremacy has not been a close one, at least in the United State, where AOL Instant Messenger continues to hold a strong lead. However, the web is increasingly international, and the race outside the US is much closer. What prizes await the victor? Untold riches in the form of ad revenues.

Firefox 1.5 support ending April 24

Users of Firefox 1.5 should plan to upgrade their browser by April 24 of next year at the very latest, according to Mozilla Corp. That's because April 24 is the date developers plan to stop issuing security and stability fixes for the open-source browser, Mozilla said Wednesday in a note posted on the Mozilla.com Web site.

This notice was included in an alert advertising the latest upgrade to Mozilla 1.5. Released Tuesday, the 1.5.0.8 update includes three critical security fixes for the browser. Firefox users should already have begun receiving the software through the browser's automatic update process.

The April 24, 2007, date means that Firefox 1.5 users are being given a six-month window to move over to the Firefox 2.0 browser, released last month. This is the same amount of time that Firefox 1.0 users were given before updates for that product ceased.

Version 1.5.0.8 also includes new software that will eventually allow Mozilla to push out its version 2 of the browser via Firefox's automatic update mechanism.

Although Firefox 1.5 includes an automatic updater, it does not allow users to decline these software updates. So Mozilla has decided to add this capability in the 1.5.0.8 patch before offering the Firefox 2.0 as an automatic update. That way, users who are not ready to make the move to 2.0 will be able to decline the upgrade.

Firefox representatives could not say when they planned to begin pushing version 2.0 as an automatic update.

Mozilla developers are now beginning discussions on what to include in the Firefox 3.0 browser, which they hope to release one year from now, according to the Firefox road map.

Skype 3.0 beta released

Windows-using Skype fans can now download beta 3 of the venerable VoIP application. Skype 3.0 sports a handful of new features, including Skypecasts, Public Chats, Click-to-call, and a redesigned user interface.

Public Chats allow Skype 3.0 users to create and join large text chatrooms that appear to operate much like IRC chatrooms. Moderators can direct conversation topics, kick users, and determine who can participate in chats and to what extent. Public Chat links can be included on web pages, allowing surfers to jump into conversations via Skype.

Still in beta, Skypecasts are conference calls handled over Skype's network that can handle up to 100 users. Like Public Chats, Skypecasts allow moderators to control the flow of the conference calls with mute and "eject" buttons. Like Public Chats, Skypecast links can appear on web pages to enable 'Netizens to join calls.

Click-to-call is an extension of a feature first found on eBay. It works with both Internet Explorer and Firefox, using a phone number recognition feature to enable one-click Skype calls directly from a web page.

Other improvements include a redesigned UI, tweaks to some of the language files, support for the Lithuanian language, and improved video device detection. As of now, Skype 3.0 beta is for Windows only, and that will likely remain the case for the next several months. The official Mac OS X client just hit 2.0 last month, and Skype for Linux is currently at version 1.3.

Adobe contributes Flash code to Mozilla

Adobe has opened the source code of the ActionScript Virtual Machine, the high-performance ECMAScript implementation used in Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player. Adobe has made the source code available under three prominent open source licenses, and contributed it to Mozilla for eventual inclusion in Firefox.

Mozilla has responded to Adobe's contribution by creating the Tamarin Project. Named after a species of tiny arboreal monkeys, the project aims to develop a complete ECMAScript 4 implementation based on Adobe's virtual machine. The Tamarin Project team includes developers from both Mozilla and Adobe.

The Tamarin project roadmap also involves integration of the new virtual machine into SpiderMonkey, the open source JavaScript interpreter used by Firefox. Developed from scratch by Adobe for the recently released Flash Player 9, the virtual machine features a unique Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler that converts ECMAScript bytecode into native machine code.

The JavaScript interpreter currently used in Firefox has been the subject of some criticism, and although it beats Internet Explorer in many benchmarks, it doesn't even come close to matching the performance of Opera's JavaScript implementation. The Tamarin Project developers plan to alter the SpiderMonkey compiler so that it can leverage the native code generation functionality of the new virtual machine, dramatically increasing the runtime performance of JavaScript in Firefox on many platforms. High-performance JavaScript execution facilitated by native code generation could enable web developers to produce rich web applications with an unprecedented level of sophistication.

A trend towards development of interactive web applications with dynamic scripting techniques has recently increased the relevance of JavaScript on the web.

Mozilla developers hope to integrate Tamarin into Firefox in 2008. Source code is already available in the Mozilla CVS, and independent open source developers are encouraged to participate. More information is available from the Tamarin FAQ and on the Tamarin mailing list.

Microsoft beats Apple to the TV

It has been some time in the making, but Microsoft has finally announced their online video entertainment strategy for the Xbox 360.

Beginning on November 22, Xbox 360 owners will be able to buy and rent over 1,000 hours of programming using the new Xbox Live Video Marketplace. The Marketplace will see Microsoft selling programming from CBS, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. "CSI," "South Park," "Batman Forever," and "Nacho Libre" are a few of the titles that will be offered by year's end. At launch, TV shows will be offered as download-to-own, while movies will only be available as 24-hour rentals.

Microsoft's arrival in this emerging market brings with it some impressive firsts. The company has narrowly beaten Apple in the race to find a practical set top box-like solution to get commercial video downloads to the family room TV without having to move hardware around. Apple is expected to launch its own wireless set top box solution, dubbed iTV, some time in the first quarter of 2007. Apple has already announced a retail price of $299.

Microsoft's plan to combat Apple's offering rests in the added value of the complete Xbox 360 package. iTV's features are not yet known, but a premium Xbox 360 with an additional wireless network adapter is $480, $180 more than iTV, but considerably more capable. Yet, even if they have beaten Apple to the punch, Microsoft's biggest concern will be deflating Sony's offering which will likely debut next year.

There's another trick up Microsoft's sleeve, as well. The company says that much of the content will eventually be available in High Definition—a welcome development for those of us who don't like paying full price for low resolution video. No other commercial service currently sells HD video, although sources have told us that Sony is planning to launch with HD. Microsoft says that 20 percent of the offerings will be in HD at launch, with more to follow.

Microsoft has also said that users will be able to re-download content for free, in the event that users delete content to make space for new purchases, or even if users want to sign in to Xbox Live and download the show on another console. Shows will be attached to a user's Xbox Live gamertag.

For now, the service will launch in the United States, but Microsoft plans to expand it to other territories over the coming year.

Apple Releases 8GB RED nano

Apparently response to Apple's RED nano has been so impressive that the company announced a new 8GB model on Friday. The first model, released in mid-October had 4GB.

The RED nanos were designed by U2 lead singer Bono (who was not at the DEMO show) and Bobby Shriver of the Kennedy/Shriver family. It is part of the RED campaign currently being endorsed by GAP, Converse, Emporio Armani, American Express, Motorola, and Apple. Each sponsoring company has its own RED products, which raise money for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. For each RED nano sold, Apple will contribute $10 to the fund.

"Customer response to the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition has been off the charts," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of Worldwide iPod Product Marketing in a statement. "We're thrilled to add a second model with 8GB of capacity, enough for 2,000 songs, so customers have yet another choice in supporting this important cause."

The new 8GB model will sell for $249, while the 4GB model will remain $199. Both models have a red aluminum enclosure and a claimed 24-hour battery life.

For more information on (PROJECT) RED, go to www.joinred.com.

YouTube downloads for mobile devices by 2007?

Speaking at the OgilvyOne Verge Digital Summit in New York yesterday, YouTube founder Chad Hurley said that he hopes to "have something on a mobile device" by the end of 2007. "It's a huge market and with our video lengths, it's a natural."

It's one of Hurley's first public outings after the Google acquisition of his YouTube service. YouTube already has a mobile service, but only for uploading videos, not watching them. Hurley wasn't sure he could figure out a way to make money from mobile downloads, since it's tricky to insert advertising on small screens without ruining the user experience. "It would be great to make the ad model work on a mobile device," he said. "I haven't seen that work."

Dell Launches First AMD-Based Laptop

Dell launched its first notebook PC powered by a processor from Advanced Micro Devices instead of an Intel chip.

With the Inspiron 1501, Dell offers users a choice between AMD's low-end Sempron, mobile Turion 64, and dual-core Turion 64 X2 chips. The product is aimed at home entertainment and small business users, offering a baseline configuration of the Sempron chip, widescreen 15.4-inch display, 80GB hard drive, and 512MB of memory for a starting price of $549.

Dell launched the product today without fanfare, simply listing it on the company Web site without the usual flurry of press releases. The company did not return calls for comment.

Dell had announced in May that it would began selling AMD-based servers, after remaining loyal to Intel processors for so long that it was the only major PC vendor not offering its customers a choice. By then, AMD had eaten significant chunks of Intel's enormous market share, riding the success of its efficient Opteron server chip to acclaim for its full range of chips. Indeed, by September Dell had also launched AMD-powered desktops.

Dell has shown great confidence in AMD by choosing to use the new chips in its notebook line, the one segment of the PC industry that has been fighting a recent slump in sales growth. Now that AMD has finally climbed aboard the Dell sales machine, it can claim a presence with nearly every vendor in the U.S. notebook market. The only remaining bastions of purely Intel notebooks are Lenovo Group, Sony, and Toshiba.