Google, Microsoft look beyond mobile search for voice interaction

Organizing all of the world's information is no good unless that information can be accessed, and Google's recent move into free 411 searches shows that the company is serious about voice search. But Google's plans appear to extend far beyond finding local businesses. In a patent issued last year, the company outlined a full-blown natural language voice search platform, and Microsoft's own recent acquisition of TellMe indicates that a voice search war could be brewing.

The Google patent, issued in April 2006 and naming Sergey Brin as an inventor, describes a system for providing search results from voice queries, but it goes well beyond the system currently implemented as GOOG-411. In the patent, the inventors recognize the problems inherent in this sort of searching: lack of context and very short queries. "There is very little repetition in queries, providing little information that could be used to guide the speech recognizer," they note. "In other speech recognition applications, the recognizer can use context, such as a dialogue history, to set up certain expectations and guide the recognition. Voice search queries lack such context."

Nevertheless, Google believes that it can solve the problem, and the fruits of that effort appeared to be on display in GOOG-411, which can take moderately constrained input data (a business or business category, constrained by city) and return useful results. Though limited to business search at the moment, the system can handle a huge variety of accents and ways of requesting the same information, and pairing voice queries with the eventual search results is an excellent way to build up a database of useful voice snippets. This is exactly what Tim O'Reilly thinks is going on: Google is using an early implementation of the system to gather enough data to improve its voice recognition algorithms before a broader launch.

Voice search has been heating up in the last few months; one of Microsoft's largest buyouts this decade was made earlier this year, when the company acquired TellMe, which develops voice-recognition applications for use over the telephone. One of its most successful products is an automated 411 system; could Google's launch of a similar service less than a month after the Microsoft acquisition be pure coincidence? It certainly could, but it could just as easily be a show of strength from Google, which wants to make clear that Microsoft's expensive purchase can already be generally replicated by Google engineers.

New patent hints at Apple TV 2.0

A new Apple patent may give some foresight to the company's plans for offering a "true" multimedia center experience for the living room, as either enhancements to the Apple TV or an entirely new device. The patent is for a "Multi-media center for computing systems" and describes a system involving a central multimedia hardware hub that can make use of a number of external "modules," all controlled through a centralized menu system on the device.

These external modules can consist of anything that a multimedia center might want to read from, be that a computer, iPod, external DVD player, or hard drive. However, the module could also (speculatively) be something like a recording device or something to stream from/with, like a Slingbox. According to the patent, the modules would not interact with each other at all but would be managed dynamically by the central multimedia center through a main user interface. The device will also be able to function as a traffic manager, with the ability to "instantiate and keep track of media-modules, route events associated with user input, and control what is displayed."

The patent text also says that the system could take inputs from a variety of different things, such as a keyboard and mouse, over the network from another computer, or remote devices (such as a "media-player with remote control capabilities"). Some have theorized that perhaps the iPhone—or really any type of mobile phone—may be able to control the media center's menu capabilities via Bluetooth or some other wireless option.

Reading through the patent, there seems to be no limit to the number of modules that could be connected, opening up the doors for a truly versatile Apple TV solution with the simplicity of the current Front Row-like interface. The clear benefit to the segmented system with external modules—as opposed to an all-in-one device—is that it would allow customers to add on whatever extra functionality they prefer to the main device. This would allow power users to have all variety of extra modules for storing, playing, and streaming media—all through a centralized control hub—while more "average" users could settle for the simplicity of the main Apple TV-like device and just one or two extra modules as they see fit for their lifestyles.

It would seem to make the most sense to add these features onto the current Apple TV rather than launch a new device, as the Apple TV could make use of these technologies with just a few software updates and a hub for connecting the modules. The true question would be whether Apple would allow third party manufacturers to design modules for connection with the Apple TV, or whether the company would want to sell them with the Apple name themselves.

The patent describes a plugin system that would allow each of the modules to interface with the main multimedia hub in order to offer a consistent user experience on the receiving end. If Apple were to make the software available, third party manufacturers would likely fall all over themselves to make products to function with the Apple TV, just as they have for the iPod. This would save Apple the hassle of being tied into creating and maintaining the modules themselves. And with the potential to generate another thriving accessory ecosystem that revolves entirely around another Apple product, perhaps the Apple TV will end up becoming the "iPod for your TV" after all.

Microsoft tries to outshine Flash with Silverlight

Microsoft is preparing to announce the first public release of Silverlight, the new name for what was formerly Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or WPF/E. The technologies will be formally announced at the Mix07 conference, which starts on April 30 in Las Vegas.

Silverlight is a set of technologies that are based on the Windows Presentation Foundation programming interfaces that shipped with Windows Vista. Formerly codenamed Avalon, the WPF toolkit allows all sorts of different multimedia types to be displayed on the screen, including vector graphics and video files. The language used to construct WPF objects is Microsoft's XAML, a XML-based user interface composition language. The idea behind WPF was to cleanly separate the user interface from the program itself. WPF/E was intended to be a cross-platform version of WPF that didn't have all the features of WPF, such as 3D acceleration support.

Now, with the fancy new Silverlight name, Microsoft is planning on positioning Silverlight as a replacement for other web-based graphics technologies, such as Adobe's Flash. Microsoft is pushing the fact that Silverlight can deliver streaming videos encoded with its own VC-1 codec, which can be delivered in up to 720 lines of resolution. Flash, currently the king of streaming video on the Internet thanks to YouTube, is limited to 576 lines.

Microsoft's plan is to entice web developers over to Silverlight gradually, emphasizing that they can leverage existing skills with HTML, Javascript, AJAX, and XAML. The company plans to release a suite of Silverlight development tools to make this process easier. Tools such as Microsoft's Expression XAML builder (currently in beta) can also be used to create Silverlight presentations. While Silverlight is cross-platform in terms of web browser support, the development tools are Windows-only.

On the server side, Silverlight applications will work fine with Linux-based web servers, but Microsoft is encouraging people to use Windows-based servers by bundling extra tools to make the process easier. Windows Server "Longhorn"—the server version of Vista expected to ship later this year—will come with Streaming Media Services for deploying VC-1 video for Silverlight clients.

Wi-Fi Bug Found in Linux

A bug has been found in a major Linux Wi-Fi driver that can allow an attacker to take control of a laptop -- even when it is not on a Wi-Fi network.

There have not been many Linux Wi-Fi device drivers, and this is apparently the first remotely executable Wi-Fi bug. It affects the widely used MadWi-Fi Linux kernel device driver for Atheros-based Wi-Fi chipsets, according to Laurent Butti, a researcher from France Telecom Orange, who found the flaw and released the information in a presentation at last month's Black Hat conference in Amsterdam.

"You may be vulnerable if you do not manually patch your MadWi-Fi driver," said Butti. Before making it public, he shared the flaw with the MadWi-Fi development team, who have released a patch. However, not all Linux distributions have yet built the patch into their code, said Butti.

The kernel stack-overflow bug lets an attacker run malicious code, and can be used even if the machine is not actively on a Wi-Fi network, according to Butti, who used "fuzzing" techniques which had been shown by David Maynor and "Johnny Cache" Jon Ellch, at last year's Black Hat USA conference, and previously exploited on Windows and Macintosh systems.

Butti has previously developed the RAW series of proof-of-concept hacker tools. He also found the Windows Wi-Fi flaw by fuzzing, during the Month of Kernel Bugs last year.

Fuzzing is a blessing, according to Butti, because it is a low-cost way for security researchers to uncover obvious bugs that may get overlooked, and exploited by hackers. In future, he expects fuzzing to reveal bugs in other wireless technologies like WiMax, and wireless USB, as well as many more bugs in the extensions that are regularly added to Wi-Fi.

Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 billion

Google will buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in an all-cash deal, the company announced today. The acquisition of the privately-held firm marks Google's biggest acquisition yet, eclipsing the $1.65 billion in stock the search and advertising giant paid for YouTube.

DoubleClick is one of the largest online advertising companies and certainly the most powerful. When word spread that the company was looking for a buyer, speculation about the identity of the bidders centered around Microsoft, as DoubleClick would give the Redmond, WA-based company some much-needed ammunition in its battle against Google for online advertising dominance. In fact, when it was also rumored that Google was in talks with DoubleClick, the common interpretation was that Google was merely driving the price up for Microsoft. So much for that theory.

Microsoft is now faced with the prospect of building its own service from scratch if it wants to get into the same markets as DoubleClick or acquiring a lesser-known (and less valuable) competitor. Yahoo was also rumored to be in the race for DoubleClick.

DoubleClick went public in 1998 and saw its share price rise and fall with the rest of the dot-com sector. In April 2005, it was acquired by Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, for $1.1 billion. Since that acquisition, Hellman & Friedman have spun off parts of DoubleClick to other companies.

The deal will extend Google's online advertising reach even further, combining Google's ad platform and publisher monetization services with DoubleClick's ad campaign management skills. More importantly, it gives the company access to DoubleClick's formidable roster of customers, including MTV and Sports Illustrated. It should add even more depth to Google's revenue stream.

The transaction has been approved by the boards of both companies and is expected to close by year end.

Visuals of Darfur tragedy on Google Earth

Stark visuals of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan -- including maps showing where millions of refugees have gone -- are now available on Google Earth in a partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The museum works to stop current genocide in addition to educating people about the history of the Jewish holocaust, and Google Earth can help the museum demonstrate the destruction in Darfur in new ways, said Sara Bloomfield, museum director.

While people can find information about the crisis in Darfur, more information in new formats is needed to spur more people to action, she said during a launch of the Crisis in Darfur project at the Washington, D.C., museum. Although information about recent and past genocides has been available, many people have had trouble comprehending and responding to the tragedies, she added.

"We learned the difference between information and understanding," she said. "Adequate response requires both understanding and empathy -- understanding of the scope and the magnitude of the situation and empathy for these victims as individuals."

The museum's partnership with Google presents a "unique opportunity" to show the scope of the problem in Darfur, she said.

Daowd Salih, a refugee from Darfur, agreed, saying more people need to be aware of the crisis. "People around the world need to see what genocide looks like," he said. "It's not about numbers, it's about people, people like my brothers and sisters who are still in Darfur. We need people to understand what is happening."

As many as 400,000 Darfurians have been killed in the conflict, according to numbers from aid organizations. The government and Janjaweed troops have killed "innocent children, women, and elders," Salih said.

The Sudanese government disputes the death estimates from aid organizations and has denied backing the Janjaweed militia.

One map available on Google Earth uses flame symbols to show the location of more than 1,600 Darfurian villages that have been damaged or destroyed by Sudanese troops or the Janjaweed militia. By zooming in on the map, Google Earth users can see markers for the tens of thousands of homes that have been destroyed since mid-2003.

By selecting a 3D option, Google Earth users can see the population of camps where the 2.5 million displaced Darfurians have gone. Another map shows areas where it's too dangerous for aid workers.

Along with the maps and charts, there are photographs and videos showing the situation on the ground. One photograph shows an infant with a bullet exit wound in her lower back after being shot by raiders. The maps and other media on Google Earth also link to pages telling users what they can do to get involved.

Google sees the project as an important part of the company's social responsibility, said Elliot Schrage, the company's vice president for global communications and public affairs. Schrage called the crisis in Darfur a "global catastrophe."

"We believe technology can be catalyst for education, for understanding, and importantly, for action," he added.

Get iPhone Look... on Your Pocket PC

Pocket PC users can get the look and feel of the iPhone before the iPhone even hits the shelves.

Despite efforts by Apple Inc. to block it, a small software program that gives Microsoft Corp. Pocket PCs a user interface that looks much like the iPhone's is still available online.

A blogger who says he's a lawyer in Poland has posted the software on his Web site, offering it to anyone who wants to download and use it.

The move follows an incident that has unfolded over the last few weeks. It started when a software developer, who goes by the name Youmolo and appears to live in Malaysia, posted a video on YouTube in late February of how his software works. On March 2, he wrote on his blog that after he posted the video, his blog received almost 5,000 visitors in five hours, too much for the site to handle.

Still, those visitors who managed to get through may have been disappointed to find that he wasn't distributing the software. "A lot of people have asked me to send them the iPhone software that was featured in the video. The short answer is no. I cannot do that because I'll get sued," he wrote on his blog.

The next day, Youmolo wrote that the video had been removed from YouTube. He later posted a letter he said he received from YouTube, saying that the video had been taken down due to a request from Apple.

Youmolo has also posted a letter that purports to be from an Apple lawyer, requesting that he stop developing and distributing the software, remove postings of the software or videos featuring the software from any Web sites and destroy any portions of the software that infringe on Apple's rights.

But on April 1, a Polish blogger and lawyer, Tomasz Rychlicki, began hosting the software on his site, inviting anyone to download it. He argues that Apple doesn't have a right to claim copyright on the icons or wallpaper images included in the software. He also says that because the iPhone isn't available yet, the software programmer couldn't have copied it.

Even though YouTube has removed the video from its site, users have repeatedly re-posted it. In the video, Youmolo says he has written software to make a Pocket PC phone have the look and feel of the iPhone. "Hello everyone. Today I am going to show you the Pocket PC version of the iPhone," he says at the start of the video.

He shows a phone called the E-TEN M600 that has a start page that looks like the screen shots Apple has released of the iPhone. Users run their finger along a bar at the bottom of the screen to unlock it. The next screen is full of icons, also similar to those released of the iPhone, that when touched lead to various phone functions such as calendar, camera, clock, notes and a phone touchpad for dialing calls. Youmolo wrote the program using Pocket PC software, he said.

The iPhone isn't available until June but since its introduction early this year has caused a frenzy of anticipation among consumers as well as potential competitors in the mobile phone industry.

Palm on Linux Platform for Future Smartphones

Palm Inc. will unveil a platform before the end of 2007 that runs the Palm OS on top of a Linux kernel, allowing the company to improve the performance and stability of its handhelds and smartphones, CEO Ed Colligan said Tuesday.

Palm will also continue to use Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Mobile OS, which is in high demand by business customers and global telephony carriers. By continuing to develop applications on both tracks, Palm will extend its ongoing transition from selling PDAs (personal digital assistants) to smartphones, Colligan said at the company's annual analyst and investor day in New York. The event was also webcast.

Since Palm developed the original Palm Pilot handheld organizer in 1996, the company has come to rely heavily on the Treo smartphone as its top seller, available as the 700w (running Windows), 700p (running Palm OS) and other models.

Palm does not intend to license the new Linux-based platform to other handheld vendors, but will use it to upgrade the Palm OS, allowing it to handle simultaneous voice and data traffic while preserving its instant-on and instant application-switching abilities.

Palm also plans to increase the number of new products it launches in 2007 and 2008. Palm designers have created a reference design for a common smartphone platform, allowing them to slash development schedules even as they save money through high-volume purchases of shared components.

New attack cracks WEP in record time

Your home or office WiFi network may be even less secure than you think. Researchers have now shown that they can break 104-bit WEP, a common 802.11b/g/n security mechanism, in as little as one or two minutes. A team at the Technische Universität Darmstadt said that they can grab the key with a 95 percent probability of success in as little as two minutes using a 1.7GHz Pentium-M machine to do the calculations.

Here's how the attack works: in order to find the key, a would-be attacker has to have enough traffic to analyze. Therefore, the researchers forced the protected network to start generating packets. Once they have 40,000 packets to analyze, they have a 50 percent success rate in grabbing the key; an additional 20,000 packets nudges the success rate up to 80 percent. Reaching the 95 percent threshold requires 85,000 data packets. As they were able to generate 764 packets per second, they were able to hit the 85,000 mark in 1:51. At this time, the researchers' tool, aircrack-ptw (source code)—which they say is similar to aircrack-ng—does not work on 256-bit WPA.

The attack itself is nothing new. As early as 2001, researchers demonstrated vulnerabilities in the RC4 stream cipher that forms the basis for WEP. It wasn't long before 40-bit WEP was cracked; by 2004, 104-bit WEP could be broken with as few as 500,000 recovered packets.

The news here is not that WEP isn't especially secure—that fact is already well-known. What is important to note is the speed with which someone with a Centrino laptop and the proper tools can compromise a WEP-protected network.

If you want the most–secure wireless network possible, WPA2 is the way to go. It's part of the 802.11i standard, which specifies security mechanisms for 802.11 networks. Enterprise users can use an authentication server, while home or small business users can use a passphrase. Neither WPA nor WPA2 are subject to known cryptographic attacks, but WPA2 is recommended due to the additional security it offers, including support for infrastructure and ad-hoc networks, preauthentication, and the CCMP encryption mechanism.

Mozilla add-on flies the coop

Social networking tools are being integrated into every facet of our Internet lives, whether we like it or not. The latest evidence of this trend comes from Mozilla—yes, you read that right—who announced this week an experimental project that will add social tools to Firefox. "When people think of tools for social interaction, e-mail and instant messenger are at the top of their list, not web browsers," wrote one of the Mozilla Labs team members on the Mozilla Labs Blog. The lab is working to change that with a new project called "The Coop," which will allow users to share interesting links with each other through a sort of browser buddy list.

The current mockup of The Coop involves a listing of friends down the side of the web browser, complete with avatars and a listing of each friend's "recently added Flickr photos, favourite YouTube videos, tagged web sites, composed blog posts, updated Facebook status," among other things. It would ultimately serve as an aggregator for all of the web-based information about that particular friend, pulling from multiple sources to show what that person is interested in on the web at any given time. Sharing content with a friend in the list involves dragging a link, photo, video, or something else to that person's avatar in the list, which the browser will then transmit to him or her. On the receiving end, the friend will see the sender's avatar "glowing," indicating that the sender had just sent something to check out.

For now, The Coop is merely in its (very early) stages of development and is not available yet to the public to test. The blog page links to a prototype on the Firefox Add-ons page, but clicking the link currently leads nowhere. According to the product page wiki, the initial proof-of-concept of The Coop will include basic functionality such as setting up information for various services, adding friends, and support for URL dragging, with the hope of adding more functionality (such as groups and previews for received URLs) in future revisions.

WiFi (again) flies the friendly skies

When AirCell won an FCC spectrum auction last July, CEO Jack Blumenstein said that WiFi would soon be coming to a plane near you. "Receiving this exclusive air-to-ground broadband license is a historic event in the airborne telecommunications industry," he said. "In just over a year, the flying public will have the ability to use their own WiFi-enabled laptops and PDAs to communicate just like they do on the ground." The project looks to be on schedule, with deployments scheduled for early 2008. Frequent fliers will once again be able to access the Internet while in the air, a feature that US airlines have not offered for nearly a year.

The AirCell system will cover the continental US on launch, and should shortly expand to cover Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean. It will provide DSL speeds over standard WiFi links aboard the plane, though the Wall Street Journal reports that VoIP calls will intially be blocked.

Given the prevalence of WiFi, it seems almost amazing that in-flight options are so limited. Boeing launched a service called Connexion all the way back in the dark ages of 2001, but it was costly and sometimes slow. Connexion folded last year. Wireless networking was also supposed to be a hallmark of the new Boeing 787, used for both Internet access and in-flight entertainment, but that system too was axed back in January.

Since then, times have been tough for network-addicted travelers. AirCell managed to pick up the bandwidth formerly used by in-flight phone services and has installed towers across the country that will communicate with planes that are above 10,000 feet. The system is a modified 3G cellular link between the ground station and the WiFi antenna aboard the plane. Keeping this connection alive poses a special challenge, but the company claims it is up to the task. "Obviously, connecting to a plane moving 600 miles an hour, flying up to seven miles above the Earth’s surface, requires some special technical capability," AirCell says, but notes that "AirCell’s patented airborne technology was demonstrated last year with resounding success."

The Journal says that the system is expected to cost $100,000 to install, but that airlines will recoup some of that cost through revenue-sharing agreements with AirCell.