Konica Minolta shows wearable display prototype

Konica Minolta is developing a lightweight, holographic wearable display, a prototype of which was on display this week at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan.

The Holographic See-Through Browser prototype resembles a pair of eyeglasses and uses a prism with a thickness of 3.5 millimeters and a holographic element to reduce the weight of the display to 27 grams.

Konica Minolta has just begun development of the lightweight display and is looking for an application where the device could be useful, said Hiroshi Itou, an assistant manager at the business development group of Konica Minolta Technology Center Inc. Possible applications under consideration include giving workers access to an instruction manual or allowing commuters to watch a video while riding a train, he said.

In a video demonstration of the technology, Konica Minolta showed how a user could watch a motorcycle race on the display while walking around their house. In this demonstration, the see-through image of the game appeared to be float in the user's line of sight.

The display image is produced by a small attachment above the glasses, which contains an LED (light-emitting diode) that projects the image through a condenser lens and a prism. Once the image travels through the prism, it passes through the display where it is projected onto the holographic element.

The display attachment on the glasses is connected by a cable that leads to a small, wearable device.

Best Buy launches iTunes competitor

Best Buy, in cooperation with SanDisk and RealNetworks, is the latest company to join the growing list of competitors to Apple Computer's iTunes music service.

Best Buy unveiled on Thursday a online music service, called Best Buy Digital Music Store, that allows customers to find, manage and purchase music online. It is powered by RealNetworks' Rhapsody 4.0 music service and lets users purchase and permanently download songs and albums, as well as subscribe monthly to listen to an unlimited number of songs, the company said.

As part of the offering, Best Buy also will carry and promote SanDisk Sana e200R Rhapsody MP3 players, which have been optimized to work with its new music service. Both the players and the service will be available starting Oct. 15, the company said.

Jennifer Schaidler, vice president of music for Best Buy, said the company is differentiating its service from Rhapsody by offering exclusive artist content and tailoring that to what Best Buy customers are purchasing.

"Look at it as Rhapsody 4.0 plus," she said. "You get all the stuff that's there [on Rhapsody], plus more exclusive content."

Selling CDs and MP3 players in its stores and online is already a successful part of Best Buy's business, so offering a music service was a logical next step for the company, Schaidler said. "Customers expect Best Buy to provide them with quality entertainment in an easy way," she said.

Songs on the Best Buy Digital Music Store will cost $0.99, with monthly subscriptions that allow users to play an unlimited number of songs for $14.99 a month

The news comes on the heels of the formal unveiling last week of the availability and pricing for Microsoft's forthcoming Zune Player and Zune Marketplace service. Microsoft will make the digital media players and service available in the U.S. on Nov. 14.

Like Best Buy's new service, songs on the Zune Marketplace will cost about $0.99 each, though the charges will be according to a points system (i.e., 79 points a song) that will allow users to purchase items on other Microsoft properties, such as Xbox Live. Zune Marketplace's unlimited monthly subscription also costs $14.99 a month. Songs on Apple's iTunes service cost $0.99, but there is no monthly subscription available.

Firefox JavaScript security "a complete mess"?

Firefox is loaded with security flaws, according to a hacker duo that presented at this year's ToorCon. Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi used a session at the show to highlight what they have called "a complete mess" that is "impossible to patch" in Firefox's JavaScript implementation. According to the pair, the implementation is home to at least 30 possible exploits, all of which they plan to keep to themselves. CNet's Joris Evers brought the story to light this past weekend, but reports are surfacing everywhere.

The presentation, dubbed "Lovin the LOLs, LOL is my will," actually only focused on one flaw, which the presenters said affects Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. The exploit reportedly causes a stack overflow by merely including a small snippet of JavaScript code on a webpage. Spiegelmock and Wbeelsoi have declined to fully detail the exploit, however, leaving Mozilla a bit in the dark. In fact, after a Mozilla employee exhorted them to report the flaw and collect a $500 reward, Wbeelsoi said "what we're doing is really for the greater good of the Internet, we're setting up communication networks for black hats."

Mozilla's head of security, Window Snyder, indicated that Mozilla believes the exploit to be real. She has also said that the presentation given at the conference contained enough information that other hackers may be able to reproduce the exploit before it can be patched.

Reports of the flaw come less than a week after Symantec's biannual Internet Security Threat Report indicated that the number of browser vulnerabilities is on the rise. Firefox led the pack both in terms of absolute number of vulnerabilities disclosed on the last six months, and in terms of percentage growth over the year. The report also noted that Firefox had the lowest "window of vulnerability," meaning that the time between identification and fix was comparatively shorter that for other browsers. Nevertheless, the current state of affairs has led many readers to start joking, "Firefox: the next Internet Explorer."