Google to bid for spectrum

Google's interest in the 700MHz spectrum auction has not been a secret. Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said back in August that the company would "probably" bid in the auction, and Google announced several weeks ago that it was preparing all the necessary materials to make a bid. Now, at last, Google is making it officially official.

The company will file the required documents with the FCC on December 3, but the documents will remain confidential and Google won't speak further about the issue in public. That's due to FCC anti-collusion rules that prohibit bidders from discussing strategy with each other in private or through public channels.

Chris Sacca, Google's head of special initiatives, stressed again in a blog post what Google has been saying throughout the year: "open access" rules on some of the spectrum will make this auction one of the most important in recent memory.

So long as the $4.6 billion reserve price on the 22MHz of C block spectrum is met, the auction winner must support any application running on any device across the network it eventually builds. Should that reserve threshold not be met, however, the spectrum will be auctioned again, this time without the rules in place. Google's presence in the auction should ensure that the auction exceeds the reserve, as the company is unlikely to let the bidding remain under the reserve price unless Google is wining the auction.

Assuming that the bids exceed the reserve, though, it's not clear yet that Google's interest lies in owning spectrum and building out a major wireless network. Google has already had great success with its lobbying efforts, in large part being responsible for getting the FCC to impose the open access rules in the first place. The pressure of the auction has already led Verizon Wireless to

Is all of this enough for Google, or does the company truly want to win a chunk of spectrum? We won't know for a while. Although the auction starts on January 24, 2008, bidding could last several months before a winner is announced.

Google announces mobile phone OS, Android

The Google Phone has arrived, sort of, but not in the long-rumored embodiment that many had expected. Google announced this morning that it has developed a new mobile OS called "Android"—a result of its acquisition of a mobile software company of the same name in 2005—that will allow the company to get Google's mobile apps into as many hands as possible starting in mid-2008. Android is Linux-based and open source, and aspects of the platform will be made available to handset manufacturers for free under the Apache license.

Google's handset partners upon launch will include Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG, confirming many of the recent rumors that Google would not be developing the hardware on its own. Google has a number of carrier partners worldwide as well, such as T-Mobile and Sprint in the US, T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom in Europe, and China Mobile in China, to name a few. The whole thing comes as part of the Open Handset Alliance—also announced by Google today.

Google has chosen to launch Android in this way is because it wanted to put its focus on the platform for development of its mobile applications. Although Java is widely available on many handsets worldwide, it still operates differently from phone to phone and can't provide the type of flexibility that Google wants for itself and its partners. In addition to rolling out its own suite of mobile apps, Google also plans to make a "full" SDK for Android available next week, making the platform even more attractive to third-party developers (and perhaps delivering a slight ice burn to Apple on the side). And the more third-party apps there are available for the platform, the more attractive it will be for customers.

One obvious goal of Google's is to create not only a platform for its mobile apps, but for its mobile advertising platform. However, Google said during its press conference this morning that we "won't see a completely ad-driven cell phone for some time." Android and Google's mobile ad platform is still young though, and the two will likely evolve together over time.

Java Kernel plan proceeds

Sun continues to work on the Java Kernel, the idea of which is to provide a subset of the Java Runtime Environment tuned to particular programs.

Formerly known as Java Browser Edition, the Java Kernel is planned for release as part of Java Standard Edition (SE) 6 update 4, probably in early-2008, a Sun representative said on Friday. Developers will have early access to the code to provide feedback.

An original intent was to make Java like a Flash plug-in and enable a resurgence of Java on the browser. Applications would specify which features they need, such as Swing and XML parsing, said Sun staff engineer Ethan Nicholas, who is working on the project.

"The basic idea was that the current Java Runtime Environment is simply too big, and most programs require only a small subset of the functionality," Nicholas wrote in September 2006 on his blog. "The 'browser edition' that I suggested would enable you to install exactly the subset of Java that your particular program required, but you would be able to download all of the other functionality on demand (and thus be fully compatible with J2SE)."

Some Sun employees doubted the project would fly, according to Nicholas. Even a detailed analysis of the idea painted a bleak picture, he said.

"The feature did in fact get submitted as a proposal for Java 7 under the name "Java Kernel" (the idea being that you download a small "kernel" of Java functionality, which is in turn capable of downloading the rest of it)," Nicholas said.

Nicholas said he developed a stripped-down JRE installed containing only enough functionality to run "System.out.println," or "Hello World."

To determine which files were necessary for the project, Nicholas wrote a program to iterate through the JRE files.

"After going through all of the files in this fashion, I was left with an extremely minimal JRE that could run Hello World and ... well, that's about it. But it at least provided a starting point. Building a working installer from this JRE was itself a challenge because several of the files that weren't necessary to run Hello World were still necessary to successfully install the JRE, but I persevered and now have a fully functioning, minimal JRE," Nicholas said.

Comments about the project posted on Nicholas's blog varied.

"I also believe modularization of the JRE is the solution. Not just for the size of the download, but also for different other issues," one commenter said in 2006.

"The problem here is that Java isn't just a browser based technology, it's a platform. When I write a Java applet or application, I expect the platform to be there," said another respondent.

Yahoo Updates Mail

Yahoo Inc. will close an almost two-year public test for its new version of Yahoo Mail on Monday with several new enhancements, as the Sunnyvale, California, Internet giant boosts this Webmail service that is key to both its usage and advertising growth.

Yahoo will remove the beta tag from the new Yahoo Mail version on Monday and will roll it out to all of the service's 254 million active users worldwide in the coming six weeks.

Because the new Yahoo Mail has been available to all of the service's users for almost a year in beta form, its enhancements aren't a secret, but Yahoo is announcing some new improvements.

For example, all users will see an improvement in performance and speed with this "general availability" version of the new Yahoo Mail, as well as an expansion of the search refinement features.

In addition, the capability to initiate an instant messaging session with Yahoo Messenger users from within Yahoo Mail has been extended to include Microsoft Windows Live Messenger users and will be available worldwide as well.

Meanwhile, users in the U.S., India, Canada, and the Philippines will get the capability to send text messages to mobile phones from within an e-mail message window, a feature Yahoo expects to extend elsewhere as it secures agreements with local mobile operators.

Although the new Yahoo Mail will now become the service's primary version, users will be able to continue using the "classic" version. "We'll continue to offer both products for the foreseeable future and we'll let our users decide what's the right Yahoo Mail experience for them," said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

With competition heating up from Google, Microsoft and others, Yahoo has to continually boost Yahoo Mail, which drives a lot of Web traffic for the company.

Apple anti-theft system

Nearly everyone has heard of "iPod muggings"—thieves targeting unsuspecting users on the street because of the presence of those signature white headphones that indicate there's an expensive gadget on the other end. Of course, iPod users aren't the only ones who have ever had gadgets stolen—everything from CD players (yes, some people still use those) to PDAs to GPS units to cell phones have been attractive targets for thieves for years now. And while there have been some attempts to dissuade thieves from stealing our things, most have been pretty easy to get around. But what if a thief knew that if he (or she) stole that iPod, it would only have one charge cycle left before it became useless?

A recently-published patent filed by Apple (and dug up by the New Scientist) could provide one such deterrent. The patent, titled "Protecting electronic devices from extended unauthorized use," outlines a technique that would allow a particular device to authenticate itself with certain, user-approved power supplies and devices so that it can only be charged by those devices. In a lot of ways, it's a lot like DRM, but for electronic devices.

According to the patent, when the device suspects unauthorized use, the recharging mechanism of the device itself is disabled. "Consequently, normal use and enjoyment of the device can be significantly reduced when the recharger is disabled." Thanks, Apple. Suspected unauthorized use, however, could include any number of user-defined conditions. The owner could set a timer for the authorizations to expire, the device could be connected to an unapproved power supply, or—this one is particularly interesting—the device is being used "outside a determined geographical boundary." Under any of those conditions, the device would be alerted that it's being subject to suspect activity and ask the user for its preassigned security code. If authorization succeeds, then everything will continue on as expected. If not, the device won't be rechargeable until it is authorized once again by the owner.

The patent does not discuss what happens in the event of a device reset or when a password is lost. In order to be effective, the system would need to be difficult to get around, but not so difficult that users might accidentally render their iPods useless after being a little too forgetful. There would obviously need to be some sort of back door for Apple to somehow reset the device, but we're left to speculate about those details.

Naturally, some of us might think upon first blush that this is merely a guise for Apple and other manufacturers to lock out third-party chargers, but the patent insists that this is not so. The lawful owner of the device would be able to configure the gadget to work with any authorized devices he or she desires. Of course, that doesn't mean that devices couldn't just "mysteriously" not accept authorizations when hooked up to certain types of chargers.

As today's DRM mess has proven, such a system could easily be subject to compatibility issues. If so, it would result in frustrated users who might just choose to authorize everything instead of fight with it, thus negating the point of the system in the first place. But as long as that option exists—the ability to turn it off altogether if one chooses—then the idea is kind of a cool one. Locking out unauthorized chargers wouldn't exactly help someone get a stolen iPod back, but perhaps if enough potential thieves knew of the limitations, they wouldn't be so eager to steal the gadgets in the first place. Maybe.

Future plans for WiFi on Zune and iPod

On the Microsoft side, the patent takes the Zune's currently-limited music-sharing capabilities a step further and offers more options to Zune users looking to participate in "the social." Microsoft is taking the commerce-driven approach to music sharing with this patent, believing that there is an entire "offline economy" that could benefit both the copyright holder and the user when Zune users squirt music to one another. Under the system described by the patent, users would be able to essentially purchase copies of songs off of other users without the involvement of a Microsoft media server at all. The original sharer's device would store the purchase information until the next time he or she syncs up with a computer, for example, and proceeds from the sale would go to both the copyright holder, with a (presumably small) cut the person who squirted the music.

This would offer a huge incentive for Zune users to start walking around, squirting music to everybody in sight. And according to the patent, the sale system would even "work" in the case of sharing pirated music, which would allow the copyright owner to still recoup the costs of his or her music being shared.

Music labels shouldn't worry just yet, though, as the patent describes at least one implementation that would involve the attachment of an advertisement to the pirated content. How the device will be able to tell the difference between truly pirated content and files ripped from the user's home collection of CDs, however, is very unclear. Such a system looking that carefully into the content on the device could also raise privacy concerns.

Apple's patent describes a wireless sharing system oddly similar to that already built into the Zune. Under the patent, a device with wireless capabilities, such as the iPhone or future iterations of the iPod, would be able to wirelessly detect similar devices on the same network. These similar devices do not have to be other iPods, either, as Apple specifies that it could be a media player, PDA, or some other type of wireless device. The users would be able to share various types of data, which naturally includes music and other media files, but also entire albums, photos, computer games, audio/video presentations, news reports, and more. The media could be transferred to the second device either by full transfer (making a copy of the file on the new device) or by streaming.

Apple's patent also addresses part of the system that would allow the user to purchase media from a server directly from the device. The user could either purchase something on the spot or mark it for purchase later (like when he or she gets home to sync with a computer, for example). It could even involve a "shopping list," which would function as a sort of wish list that can be synced with multiple devices and computers. For those of us who have been looking forward to buying directly from iTunes on our iPods or iPhones, the patent sounds very promising.

Apple's patent is a curious one, as it seems to directly overlap some of the Zune's functionality. Apple's patent cites several other patents ranging from media sharing to wireless communications to media players, with application dates falling as early as 2003. Companies are obligated to search for prior art before filing patent applications, and so this could be a case where Apple's patent differs enough from Microsoft's that there is no technical overlap. Another possibility is that a patent examiner will determine that Apple's filing is too similar to Microsoft's and therefore will have to pay to license the content from Microsoft, like it does with Creative over the iPod UI. Similarly, under the first-to-invent system used in US patent filings, Apple may be end up controlling the IP used in the Zune.

GPL 3 officially released

After four drafts, broad discussion, and extensive public review, the FSF has finally published the official, much-anticipated GPL revision 3 (GPL 3). The new version aims to clarify aspects of the previous version, strengthen unencumbered redistribution by imposing new patent licensing requirements, and protect the user's right to modify GPL software on embedded systems.

The GPL is the most popular open-source software license, and it is used by many high-profile open-source software projects, including the Linux kernel. Unlike proprietary software licenses, the GPL explicitly guarantees users the right to modify, repurpose, and redistribute software. "Since we founded the free software movement, over 23 years ago, the free software community has developed thousands of useful programs that respect the user's freedom," says FSF president Richard Stallman in a statement. "Most of these programs use the GNU GPL to guarantee every user the freedom to run, study, adapt, improve, and redistribute the program."

Many contentious issues addressed in the GPL 3 caused controversy and debate throughout the draft process. An unexpected patent agreement between Microsoft and Novell compelled the FSF to revise the patent licensing language in a late GPL 3 draft in an effort to block similar deals in the future.

Despite the controversy and debate, the highly transparent draft process has ensured that the GPL 3 is the product of broad consensus. "By hearing from so many different groups in a public drafting process, we have been able to write a license that successfully addresses a broad spectrum of concerns," says FSF executive director Peter Brown in a statement. "But even more importantly, these different groups have had an opportunity to find common ground on important issues facing the free software community today, such as patents, tivoization, and Treacherous Computing."

Now that the GPL 3 has been released, it is likely that it will be broadly adopted within the open-source software community. Although Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds initially rejected the possibility of migrating the kernel from the GPL 2 to the GPL 3, the developer has recently stated that the possibility is once again under consideration.

Google Desktop Finally Out for Linux

Google Inc. launched a Linux version of Google Desktop on Wednesday, almost three years after the product's launch for the Windows operating system.

The application, designed for indexing and finding data in PCs, as well as for searching the Web, also comes in a Mac OS X version, introduced in April of this year.

Like the Mac OS X version, Google Desktop for Linux is a beta, or test, product. The Windows version shed its beta tag already, meaning Google considers it a more stable and mature product.

At this point, Google Desktop for Linux does not feature the Sidebar and Gadget features present in the Windows version.

Gadgets are mini-applications that display things such as e-mail, weather data, photos and news on the desktop. The Sidebar is a vertical panel where the Gadgets can be organized.

This Linux version, developed by Google's Beijing engineering team, is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

Google Desktop for Linux runs on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, SUSE 10.1, and Red Flag 5.

Users can download it for free from this Web site

Plans for Ubuntu 7.10 revealed

Development plans for Ubuntu 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon) were announced last night on the Ubuntu development mailing list. Scheduled for official release in late October, Gutsy Gibbon will include version 2.6.22 of the Linux kernel, GNOME 2.20, and Xorg 7.3. Kubuntu 7.10 will feature KDE 3.5.7 and offer optional packages for KDE 4.0 RC2. Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition will feature some nice additions, including support for Novell's AppArmor security framework.

Ubuntu 7.10 will be the first Ubuntu release to offer a complete mobile and embedded edition built with the Hildon user interface components, which are also used by the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet's Maemo platform. The Ubuntu mobile and embedded edition is most likely intended for use on upcoming portable computing devices being developed by Intel. This will also be the first Ubuntu release to include compositing support by default by fully integrating OpenCompositing, a window manager that merges elements of Compiz and Beryl.

Xorg 7.3, which includes RandR 1.2 and supports hotplugging for monitors and input devices, will vastly simplify Xorg configuration in Ubuntu 7.10 and significantly reduce the need for manual xorg.conf manipulation for some users. Ubuntu 7.10 will also include a new graphical display configuration utility that aims to reduce the complexity of configuring support for two displays. Unfortunately, users who want to run more than two displays by using multiple video cards will have to continue to manage their configuration by hand and endure the serious deficiencies of Xinerama, which still isn't compatible with RandR.

Tribe 1 (the first Ubuntu 7.10 development prerelease) was officially released on June 7th. According to the official release schedule, Tribe 2 is officially scheduled for release late this month shortly after the Debian import freeze. Additional Tribe prereleases will be issued at the rate of one or two per month until October. Assuming that circumstances don't necessitate a deviation from the schedule, Ubuntu 7.10 release candidates will be available mid-October and the final official release is scheduled to take place on October 18.

Favored by prominent hardware companies like Dell and Intel, Ubuntu is rapidly becoming one of the most important distributions in the Linux ecosystem. The addition of the new mobile and embedded edition in the 7.10 release represents the next major step in Ubuntu's evolution and portends broader Ubuntu adoption in the context of portable computing.

Lotus Vs Microsoft

Rivals IBM/Lotus and Microsoft Tuesday used the Enterprise 2.0 conference to push their social networking agenda with Lotus releasing its previously announced suite of services and Microsoft building around its SharePoint Server.

In January, IBM/Lotus introduced Lotus Connections as part of its push to develop social software for business users. Tuesday, the company released Connections and said Lotus Quickr, IBM's rework of its Lotus QuickPlace team sharing platform, would ship next week. Connections is an integrated bundle of social networking tools including blogging, bookmark sharing, user profiles and software to track activities and build online communities.

IBM also introduced Info 2.0, a way for companies to extract data from applications and databases using syndication technology and use it in mashups.

Microsoft Tuesday unveiled some of its social software efforts, although they are a bit rougher around the edges than the two finished products Louts unveiled.

Microsoft's foundation for its social software is Office SharePoint Server 2007. On Tuesday the company made available early releases on its Codeplex Web site, and its Community Kit for SharePoint that includes Enhanced Blog, Enhanced Wiki, ChatterBox Ajax and Tag Cloud. The tools are designed to let users create community Web sites.

In addition, Microsoft said it is committing to build 100 social networking business applications before June 2008 for use inside the company. One currently in development is SharePointPedia, which helps users find SharePoint technical and support information from both Microsoft and other sources. The company also is using personal Web sites call My Site, wikis and mash ups to foster collaboration.

The company plans to build its social networking capabilities such as expertise search, blogs, RSS feeds, and profiles into the SharePoint platform, according to company officials.

Analysts say both vendors are starting to moves corporate users from the buzz stage into bleeding edge adoption but that deployments are measured.

"We are seeing adoption among business units but not corporate wide," says Josh Holbrook, And right now were seeing a lot of one-off or point solutions, but not adoption of a broad suite of services."

Holbrook says he see IBM/Lotus moving out front with Connections and Microsoft as a fast follower.

Connections pulls together IBM's BluePages, an end-user directory for profiles; Dogear, a bookmark sharing application, Activities, a sophisticated to-do list, Communities, for pulling together groups of users and Roller, a blog server developed within the Apache Software Foundation. Connections is a set of server-based services, so it is not a new platform to install but one that can be added to existing tools through integration with the forthcoming Notes 8 and Sametime 7.5.1 clients that are based on the Lotus Expeditor and Eclipse client frameworks.

In addition, IBM also said Info 2.0 would bring "mash-up like" capabilities to enterprise data. The technology is coming from IBM's data management division.

"What they are working on is starting to go get data out of applications, databases and other enterprises data sources and make that available in things think RSS and Atom feeds and open up the data and make it available to mix and match," said Carol Jones, an IBM fellow.

Google opens up malware blacklist API

Google employees from the Antiphishing and Antimalware Teams have announced that the company is opening up its Safe Browsing API to the public. The Safe Browsing API allows easy access to Google's updated blacklist of suspected phishing and malware-infested web pages. The blacklists are the same ones used in Google's antiphishing plug-in for the Firefox web browser, as well as Google Desktop.

Anyone with a Google account can sign up for an API key, which is a 58-character string used to authenticate the user. It also allows Google to disable access to certain users if they violate the terms of service agreement. Applications that use the Safe Browsing API must limit the number of times they poll Google's servers for updates to the blacklists, which Google updates every 30 minutes. There is also a limitation on the number of users an application using the Safe Browsing API is allowed to service: the license agreement states that if more than 10,000 users are expected to send regular requests to the API, an e-mail must be sent to Google to lift the cap. In addition, applications that use the API are required to inform users that the service does not provide 100 percent malware protection.
Google has been working on making the web safer for Internet surfers for some time now. The recent purchase of the web security firm GreenBorder, combined with the opening of their Safe Browsing API to the public, shows that Google is serious about wanting to improve the public's perception of the safety of the web, and in particular of web-based applications. The effort has not always gone smoothly. Google had to quickly patch their blacklisting software when it was revealed that some of the URLs it listed contained user names and passwords. Google maintains that the Safe Browsing API is still "experimental" and subject to change. The company hopes to improve the API in the future, making it easier for small developers to integrate it into their applications.

Wireless electricity test completed

The day may be coming when PCs, cell phones and many other devices will be run without a battery or electrical cord.

Last week, an MIT research team announced that it had juiced up a 60-watt light bulb using "WiTricity," the name it has given a wireless electricity source it is developing.

The team generated the WiTricity using two copper coils, one attached to a power source. The power coil emitted a field of magnetism to the unpowered coil, stimulating it to generate a current that powered the light bulb from seven feet away, said Andre Kurs, a graduate student in MIT's physics department who worked on the project.

The team has been testing WiTricity options over the past year. The WiTricity generated by the coils powered the light bulb in a way similar to magnetic induction, which is used in power transformers so that one coil carries power to another.

Using an energy converter, any object near the WiTricity generating coils could be powered, and the technology could, in the future, be used to replace cords and bulky batteries, which often contain toxic chemicals.

Kurs contended that WiTricity is safer than electricity or batteries and will "run forever if you take care of it."

Depending on how the coils are configured, a single WiTricity source could provide power for several laptops or dozens of cell phones.

The team plans to expand the tests with a goal of covering greater distances and generating more power

Microsoft Surface

After five years of keeping the project shrouded in secrecy, Microsoft today revealed its plans for Microsoft Surface, the first product in a category the company calls "surface computing." The technology, formerly code-named Milan, lets Microsoft turn a seemingly ordinary surface, such as a tabletop or a wall, into a computer. Introduced today at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California, Microsoft Surface is a "multi-touch" tabletop computer that interacts with users through touch on multiple points on the screen.

The concept is simple: Users interact with the computer completely by touch, on a surface other than a standard screen. "It will feel like Minority Report," promises Pete Thompson, general manager of Microsoft's surface computing group. "Very futuristic--but it will be here this year."

The product unveiled today will be Microsoft branded and available to the company's four partners--Harrah's Entertainment, International Game Technologies, Starwood Hotels, and T-Mobile--in November. Starwood Hotels plans to put Microsoft Surface devices in common areas, to provide functions such as a virtual concierge; T-Mobile will use them to enhance the cell phone shopping experience. Microsoft expects to deploy dozens of units with each of its partners by year's end.
Microsoft Surface couples standard PC components with the cameras and projectors necessary to enable surface computing. The demo unit employed a 3-GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB of RAM, and an off-the-shelf graphics card with standard drivers (and Microsoft's own application layer to allow the GPU to help with sensing touch).

The images the PC outputs are displayed on the tabletop surface through a short-throw DLP projector contained inside the table; the lens is just 21 inches from the surface. The rear-projection system produces a 30-inch-diagonal, 4:3-aspect-ratio image at a resolution of 1024 by 768 at 60 Hz.

The table also houses a power supply, stereo speakers, an infrared illuminator, and five overlapping cameras that sense movement on its surface. The cameras feed images of objects on the surface--be they fingers or tagged objects such as game pieces, a Wi-Fi camera, or a digital audio player--back into the computer, where they're processed mostly in the GPU, according to Nigel Keam, one of Microsoft's architects behind Surface.

The specially treated surface's multi-touch capability has no implicit limit, says Keam. "We optimize it for 52 [points of touch], based on the most extreme reasonable scenario we could come up with: Four people with all fingers down, and 12 game pieces in the center."

One of the hardest things about working with the technology was to get the touch surface right. Developers had to walk a fine line in creating a surface that's opaque enough to hold a rear-projected image but translucent enough for cameras to see through it. "You need a strong diffuser on the topmost surface," Keam notes, "but the camera wants to see straight through the diffuser to what's on the surface. So it's a balancing act. We had to research a lot of different ways to make the surface look right, feel right, and be tough. Everything meets at this one layer."

The device's infrared capability means you can do more than just use your fingers on the tabletop surface. Tags on a Wi-Fi camera or a digital audio player, for example, could be used to transfer images, music, or playlists. Or perhaps a card could store your account information and let any Microsoft Surface unit grab your images from a central server. Tagged pieces might generate special effects for drawings or images, and puzzle pieces could act as props in interactive games.

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.

Yahoo Opens Web Mail to Developers

Yahoo Inc. is opening up its Web mail platform to external developers, so that they can create plug-ins, utilities and applications for the popular Yahoo Mail service.

Late on Wednesday, Yahoo plans to deliver application programming interfaces (APIs) for Yahoo Mail, said Chad Dickerson, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. The move comes on the heels of an announcement to offer unlimited storage capacity for Yahoo Mail users starting from May.

Yahoo officials had indicated in September of last year their intention to let external developers write applications for Yahoo Mail, and the tools will now be available at the Yahoo Developer Network Web site.

Yahoo provides similar development tools for other of its services, like the photo sharing site Flickr, the Yahoo search engine and the Yahoo Shopping product comparison site.

Yahoo rivals like Google Inc. also offer tools to third-party developers to build applications for their sites and online services. Companies like Yahoo, eBay Inc. and Google believe that it is to their benefit if external developers come up with useful and interesting applications for their online services that their internal developers don't have the time or resources to create.

With about 250 million users, Yahoo Mail has a gigantic audience, and the company is confident external developers will be very interested in writing applications for it, Dickerson said.

"By opening up our APIs, we'll begin to tap into the world's ideas about mail," said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

As an incentive for developers to use the Yahoo Mail Web Service to create applications, Yahoo will pay a commission of US$10 for every Yahoo Mail Plus account created as a result of a referral from an approved developer. Yahoo may come up with other monetary incentives and business models for developers, partners and independent software vendors.

Sugar-powered fuel cells

Advances in lithium batteries have made possible the multitude of portable gadgets that we take for granted these days, from the laptop I'm writing this article on to the cellphone beside me that keeps ringing. But batteries aren't terribly environmentally friendly, and even rechargeable ones have finite lifespans. Now scientists at Saint Louis University have developed a special fuel cell that might replace them, and just like you or I, it runs on sugar.

Sugar is useful stuff. It's made by plants from sunlight and carbon dioxide (photosynthesis), and powers just about every living creature on earth. The oxygen we need to breathe is a by-product of photosynthesis that happened several billion years ago by early life, and the oil we burn to power our cars and cities used to be sugar (amongst other things) millions of years ago, before heat and pressure worked their magic.

This new fuel cell uses sugar, which is very energy dense, to produce electricity with the help of an enzyme. Although this trick isn't new, Dr. Shelley Minteer, the lead investigator, claims that this this new creation has longevity and power not seen before. In comparison with other fuel cells, the sugar fuel cell is biodegradable. Dr. Minteer has tested it with glucose in solution, flat soda, and tree sap. Carbonated drinks weren't so good, as the bubbles affected the fuel cell's efficiency, and plain table sugar in water gave the best results.

The work is of great interest to the US Department of Defense, who funded the study. A sugar-powered fuel cell could be used to charge the multitude of electronic gadgets US soldiers take into the battlefield, from night sights to radios. But the technology obviously has even greater potential in the wider consumer electronics market, and would help better the environmental credentials of an industry that is responsible for a fair amount of heavy metals and other hazardous waste as devices become obsolete.

EVDO Rev. B promises more than 9Mbps down

EVDO Revision A is already old and busted—get ready for EVDO Revision B.

Chipset maker Qualcomm has announced its roadmap to upgrade EVDO chipsets—both with new hardware and software updates to offer backward compatibility in older models. The company claims that during its tests on EVDO Rev. B they saw an average data rate of 9.3Mbps down, via the 5MHz spectrum—a drastic increase over Rev. A's 800kbps download speed.

The evolution of CDMA2000 networks from EVDO Rev. A to EVDO Rev. B allows network operators to remain leading-edge in their service and performance offerings without the need for any infrastructure hardware changes. The key is the lack of significant infrastructure hardware change, which means that uptake in the US should be good.

If Rev. B is truly this good, streaming video to mobile phones could potentially become an enjoyable experience. Qualcomm has another usage in mind, too: VoIP.

9.3Mbps download would be a dream come true to many mobile users—particularly traveling businesspeople who rely on EVDO for the constant net connection—but we know very well that actually achieving that kind of download speed anywhere outside of Fantasy Island is unlikely in the near future. Verizon, which currently supports EVDO Rev. A, says that users should expect perfomance to be lower than the theoretical maximum, going down as far as 450kbps down—just a hair above the halfway mark of the advertised max (800 kbps) for Rev. A. But even half of the advertised speed for Rev. B, roughly 4.6Mbps, would still be a major upgrade from EVDO Rev. A.

Gadget puts GTalk on web pages

A new Google Inc. gadget lets users embed the company's Talk instant-messaging service in Web pages, expanding the reach of this product, originally introduced as a downloadable PC application.

The Google Talk Gadget, released Wednesday, displays a Flash-based interface on Web pages for users to exchange text messages with people on their Google Talk contacts list. Unlike the Talk PC application, the gadget requires no software download. It loads automatically with the Web page it's on.

By inserting a line of code, the gadget can be added to Web pages, including Google's Personalized Home Page, a customized Web portal users can tailor with Google and third-party online services and information sources. For the gadget to work, users must have version 8 or above of Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash Player.

In addition to text messaging, people can use the gadget interface to initiate a voice chat, but the Talk application is needed to host the conversation, said Mike Jazayeri, Google Talk product manager. However, Google hopes to extend this functionality so that voice chats can happen within the gadget interface, he said.

The gadget has some features the PC application lacks, like the ability to organize multiple text chats with tabs and to share and watch photos and videos within the Talk interface from Google's Picasa photo manager and YouTube video site, he said. When asked if the Talk application will gain these features, he declined to comment.

Conversely, the gadget lacks some of the PC application's features, including the ability to transfer files and the voicemail functionality.

Meet cGrid, the real-time P2P punisher

There's a tool in the war on piracy that's picking up steam, and its proponents are thrilled with what it can do. Dubbed "cGrid," the application is powerful and daunting to those caught in its snares, for it can boot users off the network in real-time if it suspects that they are engaging in P2P file sharing, or even if they are using so-called darknets. As you might expect, the entertainment industry loves it.

cGrid's developer Red Lambda hopes that the current imbroglio between the RIAA and America's colleges will turn into a business opportunity.

cGrid's developers describe it as "the industry's most advanced P2P and file-sharing mitigation technology." It uses undisclosed techniques to monitor and record traffic at the packet-level and also uses proprietary behavioral analysis to determine whether individual users are participating in illegal file sharing. It monitors local networks and keeps historical logs on users according to their MAC addresses. In this way, cGrid can also monitor private file sharing such as that done with invitation-only FTP servers and other normally closed "networks."

The software provides detailed usage reports to administrators which can then be used to discipline students who have had multiple infractions. However, one of the most distinct features of the software is its ability to instantly kick users off of the network for engaging in suspicious behavior.

Red Lambda says that cGrid monitors "a large variety of different P2P clients, in addition to other avenues of file-sharing including Windows file sharing, FTP, IM, and others," and that cGrid does not perform content inspection but instead focuses on the behavior of the protocols being monitored. But the company does not expand on how it differentiates between legitimate uses of those technologies and illegal ones, raising questions of its effectiveness in an academic setting where students may be using P2P and other services potentially flagged by the system for legitimate, academic reasons.

cGrid is lauded by the RIAA and MPAA because of its ability to automatically determine usage patterns and remove offenders' Internet access on the spot, without the lag of involving bureaucracy. The University of Florida, where the cGrid was first developed under the name "Icarus," itself reports that it has been monitoring its dorm networks since 2003 with some success.

While students have been finding ways around the service (as discussed, perhaps not too wisely, on Facebook), UF's interim CIO Marc Hoit told Gainesville.com that the university has seen a dramatic reduction in downloading. Instantly kicking students off the network for suspected infractions seems to work, too: "The first and second warnings are sufficient" in scaring students straight about piracy, Hoit said.

Feature List for Firefox 3.0

When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month.

While the final feature set hasn't been determined, Firefox 3.0 will also contain elements for its 4.0 release and beyond, said Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering for Mozilla Corp., during a stop in London on Tuesday. The browser is due out in the second half of the year.

Perhaps most exciting could be Firefox's ability to support writing an e-mail in, for example, Gmail while offline, with the data sent later when a user is connected to the Internet again. Ultimately, Mozilla engineers are aiming for an integration between the browser and Web-based services that is as smooth running as a desktop application, Schroepfer said.

So far, engineers have made Firefox work with Zimbra, an open-source e-mail, messaging and VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) application. With a bit of code from Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., it would be possible to integrate with Gmail and Hotmail and other e-mail services.

Firefox 3.0 will also have a small, embedded database -- SQL Lite -- that will eventually be used for full-text indexing of the browser's "history." Users could search for images and text and see the cached page. The feature, however, may not make it into the 3.0 release.

Most importantly, Firefox has to be fast and standards compliant. Some users have complained about Firefox sucking up processing power because of add-ons or extensions, a popular aspect of Firefox where small programs can be downloaded and used into the browser to add new functions.

But extensions sometimes tax system resources, in part because it's often part-time hobbyists doing the coding.

Firefox 4.0 will support the JavaScript 2 language, now under development in part by Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich and the ECMA International standards body. The idea behind the JavaScript revamp is to make high-performance Web applications easier to write and assemble for people with less coding expertise.

Sony's answer to SlingCatcher

More details have emerged about Sony's planned Internet media streaming device, which the company first announced last month. The device, dubbed the "BRAVIA Internet Video Link," is designed to stream free standard and high-definition videos directly from the Internet onto a television, specifically Sony's 2007 BRAVIA line of displays. Sony plans to ship the unit in July for a retail price of $300.

"Internet video popularity has reached an all-time high, but until now there was no easy way to bring it into the living room," said Randy Waynick, senior vice president of the Home Products Division at Sony Electronics, who was seemingly unaware of solutions such as Sling Media's SlingCatcher, which was announced in January at CES and may ship before Sony's product.

The device attaches to the back of the television set using a metal bracket. It gets its power by plugging into a USB connector on the set itself and connects to the Internet with a standard Ethernet cable. There appears to be a cable-out connector on the back of the unit, so in theory it could work with any television set with a powered USB port, but it remains to be seen whether or not this will work in practice. Sony, for their part, says that the unit is designed to work on the BRAVIA HDTV line, including the KDL-46S3000, KDL-40S3000, KDL-32S3000, and KDL-26S3000 models. It will also work with Sony's V-series and their new XBR flat-panel LCD line.

The unit is configured to display free online videos from sites including AOL, Yahoo, and Grouper, as well as Sony itself. The user interface is the familiar Xross Media Bar first seen on the Sony PSP and later on the PlayStation 3.

The limitations of the unit (configured specifically for Sony televisions, the high price, and limited selection of videos) make it a less attractive proposition than something like the $200 SlingCatcher, which allows users to view anything their computer can display on any television. The Sony device seems designed mainly to increase sales of Sony television sets, although it may also serve as an answer to the Apple TV. While Apple TV is primarily a device to play back purchased, protected video content from iTunes, one can imagine Sony offering paid downloads for the Internet Video Link in addition to the free videos—they certainly have the content available.

Work begins on 1Gbps Mobile WiMAX spec

Even though WiMAX has yet to arrive in full force, that isn't keeping the IEEE from starting work on 802.16m. It's an ambitious plan: bump WiMAX speeds up to 1Gbps while maintaining backwards compatibility with 802.16e-2005, better known as Mobile WiMAX.

The IEEE is setting out an aggressive timeline for the development of "gigabit WiMAX." The standards-setting group hopes to have the technology development phase wrapped up by the end of 2007. Balloting would then take place during much of 2008, with the standard ratified by the beginning of 2009 and finalized by the end of that year.

802.16m will use multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology similar to current Mobile WiMAX technology. Those backing the new spec plan to increase bandwidth by using larger MIMO antenna arrays.

Cellular companies are eyeing the proposed new spec as a "convergence" 4G technology that would merge two parallel streams of wireless technology, 3G and 802.16, into a single standard. 802.16m would also enable wireless providers to offer the same breadth of services possible on wired networks, like streaming video, IPTV, and VoIP.

Although current 802.16e-2005 and planned 802.16m services are targeted towards mobile users, there is no reason why they couldn't be marketed as a fixed solution for those dissatisfied with their current broadband offerings.

Wind River acquires RT Linux from FSMLabs

Wind River Systems has acquired technology that lets it provide an embedded Linux OS for devices that need responses in real time.

Wind River has completed the acquisition of real-time technology, called RT Linux, from FSMLabs to complement its Linux-based embedded OS, said Glenn Seiler, director of Linux platforms for Wind River. Real-time capabilities allow a device or application to respond to an external event immediately as it occurs. The company's Linux-based embedded OS, Wind River Linux, didn't have these capabilities before, he said.

Wind River acquired only RT Linux, not all of FSMLabs, Seiler said. FSMLabs will license RT Linux back from Wind River for sale in the enterprise market, so it will not compete with Wind River, he said. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

FSMLabs is available as an add-on technology immediately for both Wind River Linux and the Wind River Workbench developer tools, and it will be integrated into both of those products by the end of the year.

Wind River did not have a Linux-based embedded OS until three years ago. The company's main source of revenue in its more than 20-year history has been its Wind River VxWorks real-time embedded OS for devices in various markets, such as aerospace, defense, automotive, industrial, and networking.

GMail opens its doors to the world

GMail, the popular web-based e-mail service provided by Google, is going global. Today Google announced that new GMail accounts will now be available to anyone on the planet.

"In keeping with our tradition of Gmail holiday announcements—Gmail was launched on April Fool's Day—we're inviting everyone worldwide to share the love this Valentine's Day," said a spokesperson from Google. "Good relationships require good communication, after all, and we think Gmail is a great tool for staying in touch."

GMail was launched as a beta service on April 1, 2004, and was initially available by invitation only. A select group of initial users were given a number of invites in their mailbox that could then be sent to friends and family members. The invite-only system allowed Google to fine-tune the system and helped to keep away spammers.

In 2005, GMail opened itself to the general public for the first time, but new users had to provide a mobile phone number capable of receiving SMS text messages in order to sign up. This restriction was also touted as a way for Google to limit abuse by spammers.

So does the lifting of the mobile phone requirement mean that GSpam is now inevitable? Not according to a Google spokesperson. "Since we launched Gmail, we've paid particular attention to combating abuse of the system," the company official said, "including building tools for spam detection and taking measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages and getting these messages delivered."

GMail has been touted not only for its unusual user interface, which keeps chains of messages organized in threads, but also for its large storage capacity. GMail changed the competitive webmail landscape when they launched by providing 1GB total storage per user. Other free webmail services, such as Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, were forced to match this capacity to stay competitive. However, GMail has since upped the ante by continuing to increase their maximum storage on accounts, which is now nearing 3GB. GMail also offers the ability to check e-mail from a mobile phone, as well as a POP forwarding feature that allows desktop mail clients such as Outlook to check their mail. Other small niceties include a quick search bar to scan through your entire message store, and an "Update conversation" feature that checks to see if new mail has come in while you were busy typing in a reply to an older message.

While GMail was not the first free webmail application, it has certainly shaken up the competition.

Yahoo Mail Links With IM

Yahoo will soon start to fulfill a promise it made to users several months ago to tie its new Web mail service with its instant messaging application.

Starting this Monday and continuing over the coming months, Yahoo will activate this feature for users of the new version of Yahoo Mail, which is in beta, or test, phase but available to all users of the service.

Yahoo officials demonstrated the integration of the Yahoo Mail beta with Yahoo Messenger in November at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The audience reacted enthusiastically to the plan.

The new feature alerts Yahoo Mail beta users if their contacts are logged on to Yahoo Messenger and gives them the option of starting a text chat session from within the mail interface. If the user is composing an e-mail message but wants to chat instead, Yahoo Mail can grab the text and paste it into the text chat window. Likewise, the chat session can be automatically imported to an e-mail message form.

This integration with Yahoo Messenger is the first of several tie-ups the company plans to implement in the (Yahoo Mail beta), because it wants the service to offer multiple communication options to its users, said John Kremer, Yahoo Mail's vice president.

Although he declined to confirm future plans, he acknowledged it would make sense to let Yahoo Mail users launch voice conversations and to create links to the company's social networking service, Yahoo 360. Another likely development would be to extend Yahoo Messenger's interoperability with Microsoft Windows Live Messenger into the Yahoo Mail beta, he said.

The beta version, a free service, offers a number of improvements over the current version, including a more agile interface based on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that works like a desktop application. The beta was introduced in September 2005. Unlike typical Web mail services, it lets users drag and drop messages into folders, provides a pane to preview messages' content and offers the ability to have multiple message windows open.

Canonical and Linspire team up

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced today a new partnership with commercial Linux distributor Linspire. The partnership will primarily entail technical collaboration. Linspire's commercial distribution—which is currently based on Debian—will become an Ubuntu derivative, and Canonical will integrate Linspire's Click-n-Run (CNR) software distribution system into Ubuntu.

Freespire 2.0, the next major version of Linspire's community-driven distribution, will be Linspire's first release to be based on Ubuntu. Early Freespire 2.0 releases will be available in the first quarter of 2007, and the final release will occur after the release of Ubuntu Feisty in April. Linspire will continue to incorporate its own proprietary components, but at this time it is still unclear whether Linspire will switch to GNOME or use Kubuntu packages to provide KDE.

As part of the deal, Canonical plans to adopt Linspire's CNR system for commercial software distribution. CNR enables users to purchase, install, update, and manage proprietary codecs and commercial Linux applications through a single cohesive interface. The system, which supports approximately 20,000 applications, includes free proprietary applications like Google Earth and RealPlayer 10 as well as commercial applications like LinuxCAD.

Google to create web-based presentation program?

A localization data file found at docs.google.com allegedly contained references to Presently, which some have speculated is an office presentation program similar to Google Writely. Although the references have since been removed, the original version of the file was copied and is still circulating around the Internet. Google has not yet confirmed or denied the existence of Presently, but the evidence in question seems to indicate that the product is at least planned, if not under active development.

Based on the contents of the localization file, Presently appears to be a presentation application modeled after Microsoft Powerpoint with support for features like full-screen viewing and the ability to convert data between presentation and document formats. The localization file also seems to indicate that the Presently program is unsupported in Opera.

The addition of a presentation application to Google's current productivity offerings could put Google in a position to compete more directly with Microsoft in the integrated office suite arena. Although Google's word processing and spreadsheet applications lack much of the functionality found in Microsoft Office, some Office users take advantage of only a fraction of the software's features. Ease of use and the ability to leverage Internet storage and easily collaborate on documents could give Google's productivity apps enough appeal to disrupt the office suite market, which has traditionally been one of Microsoft's more profitable spaces.

Google defuses Googlebombs

Google has finally had it with Googlebombing, the act of hundreds of Internet users linking up specific words with certain web sites in order to produce a desired (and usually comical) search result. The company announced today via its corporate blog that they have finally altered their search engine algorithm to minimize the impact of Googlebombs by improving the way they analyze link structures on web sites.

Google's previous stance on this type of Internet pranking was just that—it was a prank and that they didn't want to get involved in manually altering otherwise-harmless antics on the web. Also called "linkbombing," the most famous Googlebomb was of course the search for the phrase "failure" that produced a link to the current US President, George W. Bush. Some other Googlebombs included associating the search term "waffles" with Senator John Kerry and "talentless hack" with Adam Mathes, but not all Googlebombs were created to slander—some users Googlebombed the word "Jew" to stop pointing to a hate site and instead directed the term to point to the Wikipedia entry on Jewish people.

Google says that there have been less than 100 "well-known" Googlebombs since 2001 and most were for very off-the-wall phrases which, in the eyes of such a large corporate entity, were not a high priority to fix. Googlebombing seems harmless, but Google should have been concerned that relatively small groups of web users could so easily alter search results. However, Google claims that the reason that the company has decided to finally give in and fix the algorithm was because too many people had begun to assume that the negative associations—particularly the political ones—were Google's own opinions and that the company was intentionally associating the terms with various parties.

And now comes... iPhone

Apple turned 30 on April 1, 2006—quite a milestone for a technology company that, for much of its life, has provided endless fodder for an army of pundits who have made a living out of writing its obituary.

And after months (if not years) of speculation it unvieled the iPhone at MacWorld. The new iPhone is a essentially a combination of three devices: a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator. It does not have a keyboard.

Apple's new iPhone could do to the cell phone market what the iPod did to the portable music player market: crush it pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority. This is unfortunate for anybody else who makes cell phones, but it's good news for those of us who use them.

The device is 11.6 millimeters thick--thinner than the Motorola Q and Samsung's BlackJack--and has controls on its side. It incorporates a wide, 160-pixel-per-inch touch screen, a single "home" button, 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi capability and cellular service. The phone automatically switches from a cellular network to Wi-Fi if it detects a signal.

The iPhone also comes loaded with Apple's Safari Web browser and fully incorporates Google's search and mapping services. Users can make phone calls directly from Google Maps.

The phone also makes use of the same kind of motion detection that powers Nintendo's Wii controller. Photos with a landscape orientation can be switched to portrait simply by turning the phone sideways, or iTunes can move into CoverFlow mode using the same motion. And in another novel interface move, photos and web pages can also be zoomed in and out by squeezing the sides of the phone.

The phone's Mail client can render rich HTML email, and connect to any IMAP or POP server. In a move that will make the iPhone a viable Blackberry competitor, Yahoo has announced free push IMAP to the phone. Indeed, Google and Yahoo both provide integrated search capabilities on the phone.

The iPhone's media capabilities are impressive, and it essentially gives you iPhoto and iTunes in the palm of your hand, complete with CoverFlow. The 3.5mm headphone jack outputs clear sound, and the movies and photos displayed on the phone are very sharp.

While the price tag might be out of range for many teenagers and their parents, Apple loyalists will probably be interested in the new iPhone, even though Apple has no phone expertise, said Chris Crotty, a consumer electronics analyst at iSuppli.

Gmail users report vanishing e-mail

A number of Gmail users are complaining that their e-mail has mysteriously vanished. After TechCrunch picked up the story, Google issued a public apology, stating that the problem affected only 60 users. There don't seem to be any noticeable patterns in the group of affected users.

Google seems confident that it is the result of an "isolated problem", but so far no specific details have been provided. Some of the affected users report that Google has restored a week or two of e-mail, but most of their messages were unrecoverable.

One could point to the little "beta" sigil below the Gmail logo and say that such problems are to be expected, but that doesn't change the fact that instances of significant data loss will create at least some uncertainty about the service. This incident also serves as a warning for those that use web-based mail interfaces exclusively. Gmail users should consider using the service's POP functionality for backup purposes. For those of us that depend on consistent and reliable mail access for business; mail backups are as important as document backups, if not more so. Let's hope that this really is an "isolated problem" and that it doesn't recur in the near future.