8 February 2006 Technology News

last SG · 2006-02-09T09:55:45+00:00

Lost an IPod or Wallet? Look for It Online BOSTON - Maureen Silliman felt her empty pocket and gulped: Her new $300 iPod must have bounced out as she ran t...

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EA cuts debut prices on some games

Electronic Arts said on Tuesday that it will debut its "Godfather" and "Black" games at $39.95, a 20 percent discount to previous debut prices.

The move comes as video game publishers grapple with a console technology transition that is denting sales.

The world's biggest video game publisher on Monday shipped "Fight Night Round 3" to retailers with a suggested price of $39.95 for current-generation PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles.

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Kragen Auto offers battery recycling

Kragen Auto Parts has installed drop-off boxes where people can recycle rechargeable batteries from mobile phones, laptops, cameras, power tools, cordless phones or other electronic devices, the retailer said Tuesday.

The recycling program is run in conjunction with the nonprofit Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation. Other retailers offering the service include Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe's, Office Depot, RadioShack, Sears and Target, the recycling organization said.

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Apple teases launch of mysterious, 'fun' products

Apple Computer confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to introduce some "fun new products" next week, but declined to say more about what those products might be.

In an e-mail sent to journalists, the company merely said the invited scribes should come to Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters next Tuesday to learn more.

"Come see some fun, new products from Apple," the company said in its invitation.

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Report: In-car navigation systems can be dangerous

Fiddling around with in-car satellite navigation systems is causing motorists to lose concentration on the road, according to a survey on Tuesday.

The new technology, rather than helping motorists, could be even more distracting than trying to read a map at the wheel, it added.

One in 10 motorists with navigation systems set off on their journeys without bothering to program their route, and more than half admitted they had then had to take their eyes off the road to input the details while driving.

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Wearable game weaves clues into cloth

If you find yourself wearing clothes from a new company called Edoc Laundry, beware: Strangers may walk up to you on the street to examine the intricacies of your shirt's patterns.

That's because Edoc Laundry's first line, expected to launch March 1, literally weaves an episodic, multimedia game into the fabric of the garments. The Seattle-based company is believed to be the first to attempt such a fashion feat.

The idea is an extension of so-called alternate-reality games, or ARGs, in which people try to solve puzzles that are propagated online but require players to team up to find clues in the real world. Usually, the games are promotional vehicles for other products, including video games and movies.

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Podbop nets big prize at MashupCamp

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--After two days of demonstrations at MashupCamp here, the prize for the best merger of application programming interfaces went to one of the simplest projects on display.

According to a vote by MashupCamp attendees, the best mashup was a project called Podbop, which tells people the bands that are playing in their cities and which offers free, legal MP3s of most of them.

Befitting the democratic, nontraditional and altogether nascent nature of the event, which concluded Tuesday, Podbop's co-creator Taylor McKnight, was, at 22, among the youngest in attendance.

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MSN loses top executive

Microsoft needs someone new to manage the company's challenge to Google while MSN's top executive takes a yearlong leave of absence starting in April.

Senior Vice President David Cole assured employees in a memo issued Friday that he hasn't lost faith in MSN's direction, and that the decision to take time off was his alone, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which obtained a copy of the memo.

"While our progress in the market doesn't completely show it yet, I feel strongly that our strategy, our investments and our leadership is on track to get us to a winning market position," Cole said in his memo, according to the Post-Intelligencer.

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Nude-photo site wins injunction against Google

A federal judge has ruled that portions of Google's popular image search feature, which displays small thumbnail versions of images found on other Web sites, likely violate U.S. copyright law.

U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled Friday that Perfect 10, an adult-oriented Web site featuring "beautiful natural women" in the nude, has shown that Google image search probably infringes copyright law "by creating and displaying thumbnail copies of its photographs."

The Los Angeles judge said he would award Perfect 10 a preliminary injunction against Google, and gave lawyers for both sides until March 8 to propose the injunction's wording.

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Justice Department's assault on Google to backfire?

The U.S. Department of Justice's attempt to compel Google to divulge millions of search records could backfire on police and prosecutors.

If Google convinces California courts that a federal privacy law protects Internet users' search terms from a subpoena, it would become more difficult for law enforcement to seek such records in future criminal investigations, legal experts are saying.

That's "absolutely" a concern, said Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor who now teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "There's a lot of precedent for that kind of thing."

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Home Depot moves to expand online sales

Home Depot is on a mission to give its stores endless aisles.

The top home improvement retailer has a bold vision to expand its online sales, including plans to broadcast live product demonstrations and how-to infomercials on its Web site, automation of special-order sales, and new catalogs focused on categories such as outdoor living.

The plan includes company-branded kiosks where consumers can surf www.homedepot.com and buy goods at any time wherever they are, be that a Home Depot store, mega-mall or maybe even an airport. Such self-service kiosks are already being tested in 50 Home Depot stores and at two Georgia malls.

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Google denies license problem in China

Search giant Google rejected Chinese newspaper reports on Tuesday that the company does not have the correct license to operate in that country.

The Beijing News reported on Tuesday that Google.cn, the recently launched service that accommodates China's censorship demands, has not obtained the Internet content provider (ICP) license needed to operate in China.

The Ministry of Information Industry, which regulates China's Internet, was "concerned" and investigating the problem, the newspaper said.

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Can Yahoo do content?

Early in Lloyd Braun's tenure at the helm of Yahoo's media group, he ran a quirky idea past his colleagues: a plan to add pizzazz to the company's Internet news site by creating a show anchored by animated puppets.

Braun discussed the puppets and other new ideas in hallway talks with executives from Yahoo's media team, according to people familiar with the conversations. Despite Braun's enthusiasm, however, the puppets were politely ignored.

After nearly 15 months on the job at Yahoo, there have been more awkward moments like the puppet-news pitch than success stories for Yahoo's media group and Braun, a marquee Hollywood executive who's supposed to be turning the Internet search heavyweight into an entertainment industry player.

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MashupCamp--a new kind of get-together

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--It's 7:54 a.m., and I'm nine minutes late for MashupCamp.

No matter, though. MashupCamp--two days of discussions about the custom applications that come from the merger of application program interfaces--isn't like a normal conference. So showing up a few minutes late? Par for the course.

Given that the event has drawn representatives and sponsorships from many of the titans of technology, including Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Adobe and the like, it may not be immediately apparent how it's different. That is, besides the fact that the main topic of discussion involves applications--such as Paul Rademacher's HousingMaps, a blend of Google Maps and Craigslist's geographic rental listings--that are generally available to the public for free.

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Bush pushes wind, solar power, cutback on oil use

President George W. Bush called on Tuesday for tapping renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to contend with surging energy costs, but environmental groups questioned his commitment to easing U.S. oil dependence.

Bush also told employees at a key laboratory for renewable energy research that he regretted "mixed signals" that had led the Golden, Colo., facility to announce job cuts earlier this month because of budget cuts.

He visited the National Renewable Energy Laboratory a day after his administration rushed the transfer of $5 million to the lab to enable it to restore the jobs and resolve what could have been an embarrassing situation.

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RFID tweaked for item-level tracking

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) specialist Impinj has devised a way to make it easier for manufacturers and stores to put RFID tags on shirts, CDs and other consumer items, a move that should please corporations but could raise the hackles of privacy advocates.

The company has extended the reach of its GrandPrix RFID product suite with a new set of tags. GrandPrix consists of a reader, RFID tags and software. The tags used in the current GrandPrix suit are designed to go on pallets and crates. The tags--which rely on electromagnetic propagation for communication--can be read about 30 feet away. The antenna's length is about 3.5 inches.

"It is a fairly big thing to put on a tube of toothpaste," said Impinj CEO Bill Colleran.

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Is Mac OS as safe as ever?

Apple Computer fans have long loved to point out the safety of using Mac OS X, which has mostly been left to its own devices by hackers. But the arrival of three threats has some asking: Is the software's charmed security life over?

In the past two weeks, a pair of worms that target Mac OS X have been discovered, along with an easily exploitable, severe, security flaw. The vulnerability exposes Mac users to risks that are more familiar to Windows owners: the installation of malicious code through a bad Web site or e-mail.

While these represent a sea change, there is no need for Mac owners to worry, experts said, as the published attacks are still mainly theoretical and not widespread. But they caution that Apple fans should not be smug: Now that it's been done, other malicious code writers are likely to turn their attention to the operating system.

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He helped build the iPod; now he has built a rival

When Samsung, the consumer electronics giant, decided to mount a serious challenge to Apple Computer's iPod music player early last year, it turned to a little-known Silicon Valley software start-up with a cluttered one-room office tucked away in a Palo Alto, Calif., building above a mortgage title company.

The result of that partnership is Samsung's newest Z5 portable MP3 player, which will appear on store shelves March 5. The software inside the player was forged at Iventor by a small team of programmers led by Paul Mercer, 38, a veteran Apple Macintosh software designer.

Samsung's decision to hire Mercer is significant because Apple, in designing the original iPod four years ago, turned to Pixo, the company Mercer founded after he left Apple in 1994 to create software for handheld devices.

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Matsushita to debut digital SLR camera

Matsushita Electric Industrial plans to introduce its first digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera later this year, aiming to grab a slice of the fast-growing market.

The world's biggest consumer electronics maker, which makes the Panasonic brand, has been developing technologies and devices for digital SLR cameras jointly with Japanese precision equipment maker Olympus, the companies said Monday.

A Matsushita representative said the company had not decided on a price range for the LUMIX DMC-L1, a prototype of which is being exhibited at this week's Photo Marketing Association International's 2006 trade show in Orlando, Fla. Other major players in the camera industry, including Canon and Nikon, are also using the trade show as a backdrop to unveil new or revamped products. Olympus has already introduced its E-330 digital SLR camera using the jointly developed mirror box unit and sensor.

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Old Sun management once stalled Project Orion

MENLO PARK, Calif.--Project Orion, Sun Microsystems' strategy of charging server software at $140 per employee per year, was a novelty when it arrived in late 2003. But if Sun President Jonathan Schwartz had had his way, the pricing scheme would have arrived several years earlier.

The reason it didn't catch on sooner: Sun's overcautious senior managers, said CEO Scott McNealy during an interview with reporters here Friday. But those managers who had insisted on a standard business model, such as that employed by IBM and BEA Systems, have been replaced.

The Java server-software business models that worked for Sun's competitors didn't bring Sun the same profits. And, McNealy said, executives who supported that approach would have been too timid to aggressively push Sun's UltraSparc T1 "Niagara"-based servers.

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HP: We're still big on OpenView

SYDNEY, Australia--Hewlett-Packard has melded Peregrine's asset management technology with its OpenView management software, an HP executive said, dismissing a Gartner report that it is losing its traction in this market segment.

The product integration, announced Monday, comes three months after HP completed its $425 million acquisition of Peregrine last December.

Peregrine's AssetCenter, combined with HP's OpenView Service Desk, will provide businesses with greater insight and control over their information technology assets, including software, workstations and servers, said Todd DeLaughter, general manager of HP's OpenView business unit. He was speaking at the HP Software Forum here, the first such event held in the Asia-Pacific region.

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