Byte Into It - 15 Jul 09

Better Gmail 2 Updated for Gmail’s Label Enhancements - Better Gmail - Lifehacker

Firefox only: Google's recent improvements to Gmail's labels broke one of Better Gmail 2's most-loved features: Folders4Gmail. Grab the newest version 0.8.3 of Better Gmail 2 to get back Folders4Gmail functionality as well as Hide Spam Count. Until Mozilla Add-ons approves the newest version of Better Gmail 2, check off "Let me install this experimental add-on" next to version 0.8.3 at Mozilla Add-ons.

Inside Gazelle, Microsoft Research's "browser OS" - Ars Technica

It builds on the concept of multiprocess browsing but uses more fine-grained isolation to expand on the security advantages that are already delivered by existing multiprocess browsing models. But is it an operating system, Microsoft Research's analogue to Google's Chrome OS? Not quite.

Wang's characterization of Gazelle as a "multi-principal operating system" for the Web has been widely misinterpreted by the press. Although Gazelle's architecture is loosely modeled on the underlying concepts of operating system design, it is not actually an operating system, it's not intended to replace Windows, and it won't compete with Chrome OS. It is a browser prototype that runs on Windows Vista, is coded in C#, and has a conventional user interface that is built with .NET's WinForms framework.

Multiprocess browsing, which is supported in Google's Chrome Web browser and recent versions of Internet Explorer, uses separate operating system processes to isolate the rendering of individual pages. As we have recently discussed in our coverage of multiprocess browsing, this approach generally boosts security and stability. It prevents a rendering bug that affects a specific page or plugin from tanking the whole browser.

Multiprocess browsing is advantageous, but it does have some downsides. Processes tend to generate a lot of resource overhead, especially on Windows. In order to minimize the impact of using multiple processes, Chrome and IE try to use some number of processes that provides a good balance between resource efficiency and stability. For example, if you have multiple tabs open that show different pages from the same website, the browser might put them all into one process.

The Gazelle project casts aside that balance and aims to maximize security and stability by using more processes. Instead of just using a separate process for each site or tab, it will use separate processes for individual page content elements that originate from other domains. For example, if you have an iframe in a page, the iframe will be managed and rendered in its own process separate from the rest of the page.

How Much Does Google Like Twitter?

That’s 44 accounts by my count. Where are all those Jaiku accounts?

Still think they have no interest in the micro-messaging service? Of course they do. It just may cost them more than a billion dollars to satisfy their fixation. And Microsoft is starting to get a fixation too. Remember when the two had a bidding war over a stake in Facebook?

The Future is Now: Multi-touch Wall Comes to Cannes (Video)

Just in time for the 2009 Cannes Advertising Festival, Schematic, an interactive agency who helped come up with the futuristic advertising seen in Minority Report, is debuting their large multi-touch wall. It's a 12-foot by 5-foot display

Best Party Trick Ever: Multi-Device Wireless Broadband from Sprint MiFi

It's the length and width of a credit card. It's the thickness of a couple nickels. It'll let you and a few friends get an Internet connection just about anywhere with no wires whatsoever.

It's a MiFi, Sprint's new wireless broadband device - when do we see these things in Oz?

Weave Now Syncs Firefox Preferences, Auto-Logins - Weave - Lifehacker

Firefox 3.5: Weave, Mozilla's add-on to synchronize bookmarks, passwords, and now preferences and automatic logins across Firefox browsers, updated to a 0.4 beta, just in time for the release of 3.5.

We've previously covered Weave's major release, albeit still as an experimental product, and found ourselves intrigued at its plans to provide automatic web site logins. This release includes those automatic logins and OpenID support, for sites that support it, and can sync your browser preferences across systems, giving it a leg up on cross-browser solutions like Xmarks. This version of Weave also works with the Fennec mobile browser 1.0 beta 2, just released for (touchscreen) Windows Mobile and Maemo devices. The big missing feature is syncing for add-ons and their preferences, but you can get halfway there by creating your own add-on collection and using the Add-on Collector to keep it updated.

Mozilla Weave is a free download, works wherever Firefox 3.5 does.

Speed Up Firefox 3.5 Start-Up on Windows - Firefox 3.5 - Lifehacker

Firefox 3.5 pulls data from certain file locations for randomized security purposes. Sometimes, though, that can lead to annoying slow start-ups in Windows. You can speed things up by cleaning out certain folder locations.

For whatever reason, having too many temporary, history, or recent document files sitting in your Windows locations slows down Firefox 3.5's data generation processes, as has been reported as a bug. The Mozilla Links blog recommends cleaning out these folders to move the browser's work along:

C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\History
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\My Recent Documents
C:\Documents and Settings\*user*\Temp\

On Vista or Windows 7 systems, simply replace "Documents and Settings" with "Users." Setting up Firefox to automatically clean out your temporary files after browsing, as explained at the link below, helps prevent the accumulation from building again, but users who trade browsing time with Internet Explorer may have to occasionally work this manual method to wipe out those files.

Australian anti-censorship video trying to get on Qantas - Boing Boing

Itsumishi sez, "Remember that absurd Internet Filtering Scheme Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government has been continuing to push onto the Australian population? Well GetUp the amazing organisation that has been involved in a lot of great campaigns in Australia has created a very hilarious advertisement they're hoping to get onto every Qantas flight in the country while for next sitting in Parliament. The idea is that most politicians will be flying at some time during this time and they'll be a captive audience. Anyway, the ad is brilliant and they need donations to get it on air, please help!"

Creative Commons comes to Google Image Search - Boing Boing

Fred sez, "Image search on Google has just become a bit easier and a little less scary: Google officially launched the ability to filter search results using Creative Commons licenses inside their Image Search tool. Searches are also capable of returning content under other licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation License, or images that are in the public domain."

Universal/TuneCore deal opens major doors for indie artists - Ars Technica

Independent musicians who want to retain the rights to their own songs will now have the opportunity to do so while marketing their offerings through a major label—Universal Music Group. UMG announced a partnership today with TuneCore, a company that represents independent artists and allows them to sell their music directly to fans through major online stores. The deal will let artists essentially have their cake and eat it too by letting them call all the shots while having access to major opportunities.

Apple proposes HTTP streaming feature as IETF standard - Ars Technica

When Apple discussed the new features of the forthcoming iPhone OS 3.0, SVP of iPhone Software Engineering Scott Forstall said that the iPhone would be capable of streaming video and audio directly over HTTP. Apple also advertised HTTP streaming as a feature of QuickTime X, the update of its media architecture coming in Snow Leopard. What it failed to explain, at least publicly, is how this streaming would be accomplished. Fortunately, Apple submitted its proposed protocol last month to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the hopes that it will become a ubiquitous standard.

Apple identified what it considers a few issues with standard streaming, which generally uses the Real Time Streaming Protocol originally developed by Netscape and Real in the late '90s. The biggest issue with RTSP is that the protocol or its necessary ports may be blocked by routers or firewall settings, preventing a device from accessing the stream. As the standard protocol for the Web, though, HTTP is generally accessible. Furthermore, no special server is required other than a standard HTTP server, which is more widely supported in content distribution networks, and more expertise in optimizing HTTP delivery is generally available than for RTSP.

Cameras: a solution for multiple cameras in Mac OS X - Ars Technica

If you have multiple cameras and a Mac and are tired of having the same software launch for your different uses, Flexbits may have a solution for you. Cameras acts as a preference pane that lets you decide which app to launch for which device—very helpful for people who use point-and-shoots, DSLRs, and iPhones all on the same machine.

20 Totally Overused Words in Game Names - Video Game Features, PC Game Features

There are roughly a million officially recognized words in the English language, but these 20 crop up everywhere when it comes to naming video games. Is it due to a lack of originality or just a set of universal themes? Flip open your dictionaries and join us for a definitive look at the most overused words in game names.

Australias Net Will Filter MA15+ Games

I was feeling bad for Germans as there was a proposed banning for all violent games but Australia is about to take it much harder. To further complicate things, Australia does not have even have a R18+ rating. For video games, MA15+ is as high as it goes while movies and such has R18+ and X18+. Games will be required to modify the their content to meet the MA15+ guidelines in order for distribution.

So far, this has only applied to local stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to the net and the filter will be set at the ISP level blocking all flash games, downloadable games and all web games that does not meet the MA15+ standards.

From our understanding, if a website hosts questionable content the Classification Board believes exceeds the MA15+ standard, it’ll be blocked. Same goes for MMOs and even worst, overseas online retailers. I wonder how this would effect sites such as eBay, GameStop and all the large distributors.

Businesses will get Windows 7 'by end of July' - News - PC Authority

Windows 7 will be available to business users who have bought volume licenses with Software Assurance contracts, before the end of July, according to reports overseas.

A ZDnet.com report cites a tweet by Microsoft enthusiast “Deeper2K”, who posted a picture on the micro-blogging site of an official Microsoft mailing to its reseller partners, in Russian.

Next to the twitpic Deeper2K writes, “Yay! Windows 7 RTM will be available to SA customers by the end of July!”

According to the report, Deeper said that Microsoft will extend a special Windows 7 promotion, whereby users who purchase SA before 31 August will “have the rights to upgrade to Windows 7 on PCs they purchased starting on August 1, 2008”, with 15 per cent off. At the time of writing Microsoft Australia had not made any announcements regarding this.

For its part, Microsoft said last week that it is still on track to release its new operating system to manufacturing before the end of July.

Internet is broken says original designer - News - PC Authority

Lawrence (Larry) Roberts, who designed the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, has said that the current system of packet data isn't suitable for the uses to which the internet is being used currently. Rather than viewing data as packet it needs to be seen as a flow, and this will require fundamental retooling.

“The Internet is broken. I should know: I designed it,” he writes in the IEEE's Spectrum.

“Directing traffic in terms of flows rather than individual packets improves the utilization of networks. By eliminating the excessive delays and random packet losses typical of traditional routers, flow management fills communication links with more data and protects voice and video streams. And it does all that without requiring changes to the time-tested TCP/IP protocol.”

Traditional routing technologies are unsuited to modern applications like VoIP or video transmission he says because the routing protocols were never designed to handle that kind of traffic

Microsoft releases Office 2010 details, test code | Beyond Binary - CNET News

However, the release of the software will be limited. Attendees of this week's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, as well as the recent TechEd show, will gain access to the desktop versions of Office 2010. Microsoft has also been taking sign-ups via its Office 2010: The Movie teaser Web site.

Also, it won't show off the program's biggest change--the addition of browser-based versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote.

Those so-called Office Web Applications are being demonstrated on Monday, but the technical preview of the Web apps won't come until later this year. For consumers, Microsoft plans to make the browser-based versions a free part of Windows Live next year, but hasn't decided whether they will include advertising.

The applications, which run in Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, are aimed at both expanding the number of Office users within businesses as well as holding the ground threatened by Google Docs and other Web-based productivity programs.

On the desktop side, Microsoft plans a broader beta of the software later this year, with a final release in the first half of 2010

TwInbox Adds Twitter To Microsoft Outlook | Lifehacker Australia

Windows only: Microsoft Outlook add-on TwInbox lets you update, reply, search, and archive your Twitter messages right from your Outlook inbox.

Once you’ve installed the add-on into Outlook, you’ll need to take a trip to the Options panel to enter your Twitter account details, and you’ll probably want to choose a new folder to place incoming Twitter messages so they don’t get mixed in with your regular email. Once you’ve completed that step, you should be able to start sending, replying, or retweeting messages easily—but the really interesting feature is the ability to track keywords with a search term, and filter through those messages locally.

A tech bill of rights to curb public gadget faux pas - Jul. 10, 2009

If a recent survey by Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) is any guide, the first commandment of cell phone behavior would be "Thou shalt not use text or email while driving."

According to a poll conducted for the company by Harris Interactive, more than 90% of us are frustrated with how our neighbors use their phones. Almost three quarters of the 2,000 people surveyed said they were most annoyed by people who text or email while driving. More than 60% said people talk too loudly in public. More than half have been annoyed by people on phones in restaurants, and close to half felt the same way about what transpires in movie theaters.
0:00 /2:39Almost mobile TV

Forty one percent mentioned use of phones in grocery stores as a pet peeve, and 26% were grossed out by others who talk and text in public restrooms. (Interestingly, only 38% of respondents admitted to having any annoying cell phone habits of their own.)

Google Apps to become OpenID provider - Software - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

The move will allow web users to sign into numerous sites using their Google Apps login details.

"Google Apps can now become an identity and data hub for multiple software-as-a-service [SaaS] providers," said Eric Sachs, senior product manager for Google security, on a public OpenID board.

"The service is important not only to the individuals in those organisations who can interact with a variety of consumer web sites with a single credential, but to the organisations themselves who are increasingly reliant on multiple SaaS solutions from different vendors.

"The Google Open ID Federated Login API enables a single Google Apps login to provide secure access to services like Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors and WebEX, as well as business-to-business partners, internal applications and, of course, consumer web sites."

3 Reveals iPhone 3GS Pricing | Lifehacker Australia

On 24-month contracts, you can choose between $39, $49 or $79 caps, but you’ll pay an extra per-month charge for the phone on everything except the $79 cap, and even on that option you can’t have a 32GB model for nothing.

The extra data packs (priced per month and only available with a new phone) cost $6 for 500MB, $10 for 1GB or $20 for 3GB. The latter seems a reasonable deal if you plan on tethering.

At $929 for the 16GB 3GS or $1,129 for the 32GB, outright prices are again a little higher than from Apple itself.

3 is also allowing customers who pre-registered for its deals to buy the phones on July 16, while existing customers can migrate their existing plan to an iPhone for between $35 and $45 a month, depending on model. (This is a lousy deal for an older 3GB iPhone, frankly, especially if you’re near the end of your contract, but OK for the newer 3GS models.)

Swiss Postal Service lets users check snail mail online - Ars Technica

Imagine a world where your snail mail would be converted to digital form before cluttering up your mailbox, allowing you to trash those coupon and credit card offers with a single click while having the important stuff forwarded directly to you. If you live in Switzerland, this dream is even closer to a reality thanks to a partnership between the Swiss Postal Service and a startup called Earth Class Mail.

First, an explanation of what Earth Class Mail does. The company allows customers in 170 countries (including the US) to sign up for an address where they will have their mail delivered. When the mail starts coming in, its outer packaging/envelopes are scanned—without being opened—and an image is e-mailed to you. From there, you can decide to recycle the junk (according to the New York Times, Earth Class Mail customers recycle 90 percent of their mail), have the mail forwarded, or have it opened and the contents scanned.

live-android - Google Code

Welcome to LiveAndroid, a LiveCD for Android running on x86 platforms.

Byte Into It - 08 Jul 09

China backs down from web filter plan

In a rare reversal, China's government has given in to domestic and international pressure and backed down from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have internet-filtering software.

Just hours before the rule was to have taken effect on Wednesday, the government said it would postpone the requirement for the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it made the decision partly because some PC makers were having difficulty meeting the deadline. It did not say whether the plan might be revived.

The change of course averted a possible scuffle with Washington. Senior US officials had protested against the plan after it was imposed abruptly in May, calling it a barrier to trade. Angry web users circulated online petitions condemning Green Dam, while industry groups warned the software might create computer security problems.

Joost, Meet The Competition. Magnify.Net Sees Growth In White Label Video Platform

Magnify.net. The video hosting and sharing platform, which launched in 2007, is rapidly growing its white label service and is expected to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year, according to co-founder Steve Rosenbaum.

Magnify has recently partnered with several sites to power their video aggregation platforms, including deals with Etsy, CarsonDaly.TV, and Bicycling.com. Magnify has also created white label video channels for Zappos, New York Magazine and The Weather Channel.

Bicycling.com recently decided to shift from Magnify’s competitor Brightcove to power its platform for original content. The cycling site is launching its Magnify-powered site in conjunction with its coverage of the Tour de France, which starts July 4th. It was attracted by Magnify’s social features, such as the ability to pull UGC videos from sites like YouTube and updates from Twitter. Bicycling.com online editor David L’Heureux plans to integrate Twitter streams onto the platform from cycling all-stars like Lance Armstrong. Magnify also allows the online magazine to aggregate a mix of videos and makes it easy for the site to offer readers external videos and internal media that is created by Bicycling.com.

How wide is the world's digital divide, anyway? - Ars Technica

it's worth taking a step back every once in a while to consider the global picture: much of the world has broadband penetration rates under 20 percent, and the largest single group of countries has penetration rates of between 0 and 5 percent.

The consultants at TeleGeography track broadband deployment in 127 countries and have released a chart that shows world broadband deployments by percentage of households that have service. Out of the 127, only 10 countries are above 80 percent—mostly small places like Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, and South Korea. Together, the ten countries in this bracket account for only two percent of the world population.

Fifty-three countries fall into the next two categories, with household penetration rates of between 20 and 80 percent (most are on the lower side of that range).
telegeography-world-broadband.png

But it's the final two categories that are most enlightening. 64 countries—just over half of all countries tracked—have broadband penetration rates of under 20 percent (most are in the 0-5 percent category).

Eighty-eight more countries aren't even tracked by TeleGeography, since they have essentially no home broadband deployment at all.

"Broadband represents the most extreme example in the gulf between the 'haves' and the 'have nots'," said TeleGeography Executive Director John Dinsdale. "Less than 2 percent of African households have broadband compared with 68 percent of North American homes."

How To Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments « iRevolution

Nonviolent resistance movements are typically driven by students, i.e., young people, who are increasingly born digital natives. With expanding access to mobile phones, social networking software and online platforms for user-generated content such as blogs, the immediate financial cost of speaking out against repressive regimes is virtually nil. So resistance movements are likely to make even more use of new communication technology and digital media in the future. In fact, they already are.

At the same time, however, the likelihood and consequences of getting caught are high, especially for those political activists without any background or training in digital security. Indeed, recent research by Digital Democracy research suggests that organizational hierarchies are being broken down as youth adopt new technologies. While this empowers them they are also put at risk since they don’t tend to be as consequence-conscious as their adult counterparts.

Bing Keeps Its Foot On The Gas, Adds Tweets To Results

Bing is something of a rarity for Microsoft these days: It’s a product that actually has good natural buzz. And for good reason too, it’s a solid product. For certain queries, it seems more useful than even, yes, Google. (And not just porn queries.) And Microsoft isn’t squandering away this opportunity, it’s keeping its foot on the gas, today attacking what is perceived to be Google’s weakness: Real-time search results.

While that’s a little misleading — Google actually does have plenty of data that gets into its system almost immediately — what everyone seems to mean by real-time results these days is Twitter results. And that’s exactly what Bing is adding. Kind of. As it notes on its blog:

Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres.

But it’s important to note that Bing will not be crawling every tweet that runs through Twitter. Instead, it will focus on only those from people it deems important based on follower counts and volume of tweets. As they note:

We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets. We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search. We’d love to hear your feedback as we think through future possibilities in real time search.

Sarah Palin, via Twitter: God told me to sue the internet - Boing Boing

the point seems to be that a "higher calling" has directed her to file anti-defamation lawsuits against a number of news websites for having reported the news that she quit her post as governor of Alaska

Windows 7 testers have long path to upgrade | Beyond Binary - CNET News

the upgrade versions of the Windows operating system (the cheapest way to move to the final version) check for a previous paid version of Windows on the drive. That means, if a user did a clean installation of Windows 7 on their test system (as recommended by Microsoft), that same user will have to back up their data, reinstall their original operating system (XP or Vista), then install Windows 7, restore their data, and then reinstall their applications.

For testers who were running XP, that means doing a clean installation of Windows XP over their Windows 7 test build and then a clean installation of Windows 7 over that. Vista users have the option of reinstalling that operating system and then doing an in-place upgrade or a clean installation of Windows 7.

Testers looking to move from a test version of Windows 7 to the final product may find the move not only costly, but time consuming.
(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft says that, for what it's worth, that's roughly the same thing that was required for those moving from pre-release versions of Windows Vista to the final release.

Even so, it's an unfortunate burden for those who have provided lots of feedback and indeed been some of the operating system's biggest champions. Users were also pushed to do a fresh installation when moving from Windows 7 beta to the latest test version, although some users found ways around having to do this.

Robot invented to crawl through veins - News - PC Authority

Scientists from Israel's Technion University have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person's veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer.

The little robot - with a diameter of just one millimeter - has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient's body.

Controlling the tiny bot externally means boffins have been able to shrink it to a previously impossibly tiny scale, allowing it to crawl its way through the typical human body's veins and arteries using miniscule outstretched arms which grip the vessel walls. Yes, that made us shudder too.

Scientists reckon the mini bot can even withstand massive blood flow and is able to push forward regardless of the magnetic field actuation direction, doing away with any need for exact localisation and direction retrieval.As if getting under people's skin wasn't enough, Technion researchers say they're also looking at putting the ant-like creature to work in urban water distribution systems, to look for any leaks that need plugging.

Google Maps | property | real estate | search | Australia

Google wants a bigger slice of the real-estate search business
An example of a property search in the US version of Google Maps.

An example of a property search in the US version of Google Maps.
Stephen Hutcheon
July 6, 2009

In a move that has raised eyebrows among established players in the classified real-estate business, Google Australia has unveiled a new tool on its mapping service that will directly link buyers and renters to available property.

The Google Maps feature, which launched today in Australia and New Zealand, will host free listings supplied by real-estate agents and publishers.

Although many existing publishers and real-estate agents offer map-based searching, the maps on Google's new service will reflect real-time changes in search criteria and location.

The technology behind this enhancement was developed by engineers at Google's Sydney office and is also being rolled out on the company's existing property search service in the United States.

Google's offering is open to all comers, potentially giving renters and buyers a much bigger choice.

But this development is likely to be viewed by existing publishers as a grab for their business at a time when margins are under pressure and paid listings are being affected by the prevailing economic climate.

The service is launching with listings provided by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia and homehound.com.au, the free property listing service owned by Michael Hannan's Independent Print Media Group.

Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate - Ars Technica

One of the harbingers of the open Web renaissance is HTML 5, the next major version of the W3C's ubiquitous HTML standard. Although HTML 5 is still in the draft stage, several of its features have already been widely adopted by browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Among the most compelling is the "video" element, which has the potential to free Web video from its plugin prison and make video content a native first-class citizen on the Web—if codec disagreements don't stand in the way.

In an article last month, we explored the challenges and opportunities associated with the HTML 5 video element. One of the most significant of these challenges is the lack of consensus around a standard media codec, a contentious issue that has rapidly escalated into a major controversy. The debate has now stalled without a clear resolution in sight.

The HTML 5 working group is split between supporters of Ogg Theora and H.264. Their inability to find a compromise that is acceptable to all stakeholders has compelled HTML 5 spec editor Ian Hickson to "admit defeat" and give up on the effort to define specific codecs and media formats in the standard itself. This is problematic because the lack of uniform codec availability will make it impossible for content creators to publish their videos in a single format that will be viewable through the HTML 5 video element in all browsers.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft offers free anti-virus

A trial version of Microsoft's free anti-virus software has been launched in the US, China, Brazil, and Israel.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) promises to provide people with basic protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.

The software giant has been criticised in the past for failing to include free security software with Windows.

Its first security package, Windows Live OneCare, failed to attract many customers and will be discontinued.

VirtualBox 3 brings 3D graphics support - Ars Technica

Sun announced this week the availability of VirtualBox 3, the latest version of its open source virtualization solution. The new version introduces experimental 3D graphics support and the ability to expose multiple CPUs to guest operating systems.

VirtualBox was originally developed by InnoTek, which was acquired by Sun last year. InnoTek launched an open source edition of VirtualBox in 2007, releasing most of the program's code under the GPL. Alongside the open source version, the company has continued to sell a commercial version that has additional features, such as a built-in RDP server and full USB support. VirtualBox is cross-platform compatible and is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Be patient with NBN investment returns: Hackett - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Economic contributors to the National Broadband Network should view their return on investment over a 50-year timeframe, Internode managing director Simon Hackett has said.

Speaking at the AFR broadband conference in Sydney, Hackett urged investors to expand their view from a "five-to-10 year dotcom return to a 50-year utility return".

"The new network will have a 50 year plus lifespan," Hackett said.

"People that think this is a 10 year investment aren't thinking about the lifecycle [of this type of infrastructure]. In the utility context, a $43 billion investment is cheap."

Hackett said his "cynical side" suggested the network would take ten years alone to be built. And he said the case study of ADSL in Australia showed that saturation of NBN connections could take just as long.

Vale Internode Unwired customers - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

The ISP resold Unwired until August, 2006, after which it said customers would be supported.

The final day for Internode customers of the wireless internet service is 17 August.

"We've written to the few remaining Internode customers left on an Unwired tail circuit to inform them that we'll be shutting the service down fully by August this year," said Internode managing director Simon Hackett.

Internode offered those affected discounts on its ADSL and a $50 credit on its NodeMobile 3G services.

Hackett said Internode may again resell Unwired.

"We'll be very happy to consider returning Unwired to the Internode service portfolio should [it] be successful with [its] long-mooted, wide-scale deployment of mobile WiMAX services," he said.

Apple sued over iTunes pricing and "fraudulent" gift cards - Ars Technica

An Illinois couple has filed a class action suit against Apple for selling "fraudulent" iTunes gift cards. At issue is the language printed on some cards that reads, "Songs are 99¢," and as we all all know, a variety of tracks on the iTunes Store are now sold for $1.29.

The couple alleges that such language constitutes deception and fraud on Apple's part, and that the gift cards end up being "worth less than what was represented" because some songs after April 7 of this year cost more than the 99¢ price.

Mobile uploads to YouTube up 400% after iPhone 3GS launch - Ars Technica

Mobile uploads to YouTube have increased by 400 percent since last Friday's release of the iPhone 3GS, Google announced today. The device is the first iPhone with video capabilities and is able to upload videos directly to MobileMe or YouTube, even over the 3G network. With the ability to send videos to the Internet almost immediately, it's no surprise that users are taking the opportunity to upload videos on-the-spot from their iPhones.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Twitter to give bushfire alerts

Australia is to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to give people early warning of bushfires.

Aussie firm sells Twitter followers - Strategy - Business - News - iTnews.com.au

Australian media marketing firm uSocial is offering a new paid service allowing organisations to buy Twitter followers to aid their marketing campaigns.

According to the firm, a single Twitter follower could be worth $0.10 a month. It is selling followers in various packages, starting at 1,000 for $87, which is delivered in seven days, and going all the way up to 100,000 followers at a cost of $3,479, delivered over a year.

USocial says it profiles Twitter users to ensure a good fit with their clients, then suggests they follow the Twitter feed of that client – the user then decides whether to follow or not.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers

The new owners of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay say users will be paid for sharing files.

Global Gaming Factory (GGF) paid 60m kronor (£4.7m) to take over the site.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF's Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.

"We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money," he said.

According to Mr Pandeya, GGF's chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference - at least in terms of content - would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.

"We're a listed company so everything we do has to be legal; content providers need to be paid and have their wishes and demands met," he said.

Dell launches digital forensics service for police - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Dell, the world's second-biggest maker of personal computers, launched a package of hardware, software and services on Tuesday designed to help police convict more criminals as digital evidence proliferates.

The company said its digital-forensics package would help police reduce backlogs that can be as long as two years as it would allow multiple analysts to work simultaneously on the same data while preserving an audit trail of evidence-handling.

The package, launched with partners including Intel, gives customers tools to build and host their own data centre, meaning they can have the convenience of so-called cloud computing while keeping control of it themselves.

Jammie Thomas challenges "monstrous" $1.92M P2P verdict - Ars Technica

It was only a matter of time: Jammie Thomas-Rasset has asked the federal judge overseeing her file-sharing lawsuit to toss the $1.92 million damage award, reduce it to the statutory minimum of $18,000, or grant her a new trial.

The motion, filed today in Minnesota federal court, is blunt. "The verdict in this case was shocking," it begins. "For 24 songs, available for $1.29 on iTunes, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per song—a ratio of 1:62,015. For 24 albums, available for no more than $15 at the store, the jury assessed statutory damages of $80,000 per album—a ratio of 1:5,333. For a single mother's noncommercial use of KaZaA, and upon neither finding nor evidence of actual injury to the plaintiffs, the judgment fines Jammie Thomas $1.92 million. Such a judgment is grossly excessive and, therefore, subject to remittitur as a matter of federal common law."

These shocking ratios—1:62,015 and 1:5,333—appear throughout the filing, though they're largely irrelevant. Thomas-Rasset wasn't sued simply for violating the "reproduction right" found in the Copyright Act; she was also accused of violating the "distribution right" by putting the songs up on KaZaA for millions of others to download. How many people did so? No one knows—which is one sort of situation that statutory damages were created to address. The real ratios can never be known.

That doesn't change the fact that the jury's verdict was nuts—or, in the words of the filing, "excessive, shocking, and monstrous." (Richard Marx, who wrote and performed one of the 24 songs at issue in the case, agreed.) Thomas-Rasset's lawyers argue that the $1.92 million damage award is, on its face, an unconstitutional breach of the Due Process clause and should be thrown out or reduced to the $750 per song minimum.

Phone ringtones a "public performance"? EFF, AT&T say no - Ars Technica

It isn't often that you find AT&T and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in agreement, but consensus has been reached on one matter: ASCAP's demand that wireless companies pay it license fees for ringtones is, well, ridiculous.

On Wednesday EFF called the move "outlandish" and "a ploy to squeeze more money out of the mobile phone companies." The advocacy group filed a friend of the court brief with the United States District Court for the Southern District New York this week, which is hearing the dispute between ASCAP, AT&T, and Verizon over whether the telcos have to pay the music licensing body royalties for wireless ringtones. Joining the amicus brief are Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Meanwhile CTIA - The Wireless Association, to which the big telcos belong, has also filed an amicus brief in the case.

Prezi - The zooming presentation editor

Create a map of your ideas, images, videos, then show overview, zoom to details, amaze, convince, take the day.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web.

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Byte Into It - 01 Jul 09

Web filters to censor video games

Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board, unless they are modified to remove the offending content.

So far, this has only applied to local bricks-and-mortar stores selling physical copies of games, but a spokesman for Senator Conroy confirmed that under the filtering plan, it will be extended to downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.

This means that even Australians who are aged above 15 and want to obtain the adult-level games online will be unable to do so. . It will undoubtedly raise the ire of gamers, the average age of which is 30 in Australia, according to research commissioned by the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia.

Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the Government clearly went far beyond any mandate it had from the public to help parents deal with cyber-safety.

Pirate Bay founders launch beta of "The Video Bay" - Boing Boing

The developers behind the Pirate Bay team have been developing a video streaming site for the past two years, and they've just opened up an "extreme beta" version of the project (meaning, in their words, "Don't expect anything to work at all"). Users can share video clips here without having to fear concerns they may be removed over copyright claims, as with the current dominant video-sharing service, YouTube.

Update: Boing Boing team member Dean Putney points out:

I highly discourage people from signing up on this site just yet. Not because of the content, but for a technical reason:

I just registered with a username and password that I don't use very often, really just for beta sites like this that I'm just looking at. I'm very glad that I did. The site sent me an email response containing both my username and the password I just typed into the site. This is really bad news. Getting emails with passwords for sites in them, unless they're temporary passwords, is bad for security. It also implies that they're storing their passwords in plain text, which means that if anyone got a hold of their databases all of their users' passwords and usernames are compromised. The Pirate Bay does some really great and interesting stuff, but I won't use their site seriously until I can be reasonably sure that they're hashing and salting my password. Obviously they're still working on it, so hopefully this will be repaired soon.

Microsoft to charge Europeans double for Windows 7

European customers will pay up to twice as much for Windows 7 compared to U.S. users, even though the new operating system will ship without a browser in Europe, according to Microsoft.

When the company launches Windows 7 on Oct. 22, it will price Windows 7 Home Premium, likely the most popular of the three editions available at retail, at €119.99 in the European Union (EU) and charge £79.99 in the U.K., an EU member that has retained its own currency. Those prices are the equivalent to $168.66 and $132.14 U.S., respectively, at Saturday's exchange rates.

U.S. consumers will pay only $119 for the same software after a two-week pre-order sales discount expires July 11. That means EU residents will pay 41% more, and U.K. consumers 10% more, than U.S. buyers for Home Premium Upgrade.

Official: Windows 7 Australian pricing announced, see how it compares to Vista - News - PC Authority

The good news is that the costs are pretty similar to buying Windows Vista. Windows 7 Ultimate's RRP is $30 more (Upgrade) or $20 more (Full version) than the equivalent Vista product, but a full version of Windows 7 Home Premium works out $50 cheaper than Vista Home Premium.

Windows 7 pricing nitty gritty

Upgrade pricing:

* Home Premium $199
* Professional $399
* Ultimate $429

Full Version pricing

* Home Premium $299
* Professional $449
* Ultimate $469

Windows 7 Upgrade Promotion

If you buy a new computer with Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate any time between now and 31 January 2010, you can upgrade to Windows 7 for nothing, or for a small cost, thanks to a special Microsoft promotion.

The upgrade can be redeemed from October 22, when Windows 7 is released, until 28 February 2010.

Take care though: only certain PCs are eligible for the promotion.Check in-store stickers on PCs before you purchase and visiting www.windows.com/upgradeoffer to check if the system you are planning to buy . You can also asking in-store if a system is eligible for the Windows 7 Upgrade.

HTC Hero Android phone launches - News - PC Authority

HTC has launched a brand spanking Android handset overseas, in the G1-esque shape of the Hero.

However, although it picks up the love-it-or-hate-it angled bottom of its predecessor, it boasts a much more slimline body due to no slide out keyboard.

The phone comes packing a full 3.2-inch anti-fingerprint touchscreen, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, AGPS, digital compass and that all important 3.5mm headset jack.

It is also features 512MB on-board memory (expandable up to 16GB via microSD) and a dedicated search button that will allow you to look for things thorough out your whole phone, including emails and on Twitter.

The Hero will also debut HTC's new UI called HTC Sense, boasting intuitive features like the ability to view all your communication channels – Facebook, emails, texts, photos and phone calls – in one view.

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? - LinuxWorld

HTML 5, a groundbreaking upgrade to the prominent Web presentation specification, could become a game-changer in Web application development, one that might even make obsolete such plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX.

HTML 5 technologies such as Canvas, for 2-D drawing on a Web page, are being promoted by heavyweights in the Internet space such as Apple, Google, and Mozilla. (Although Microsoft itself has given a thumbs-up to certain aspects of HTML 5, it has not backed Canvas.)

"HTML 5 features like Canvas, local storage, and Web Workers let us do more in the browser than ever before," says Ben Galbraith, also co-founder of the Ajaxian Web site and co-director of developer tools at Mozilla. Local storage enables users to work in a browser when a connection drops and Web Workers makes "next generation" applications incredibly responsive by pushing long-running tasks to the background, he says.

Web applications will become more fun, says Ian Fette, project manager at Google for the Chrome browser: "They're going to be faster and they're just going to provide overall a better user experience and make the distinction between online apps and desktop apps blurred."

Apple agrees to industry standard mobile phone charger - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

10 mobile phone manufacturers and chip producers, including Apple, have signed up to an initiative to produce standard mobile phone chargers.

Companies signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will harmonise chargers in Europe on the basis of the micro-USB connector, in order to cut down on electronics manufacturing and waste.

Apple's involvement in the scheme comes as a surprise. When plans for a standard mobile phone charger were announced at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona earlier this year, Apple was noticeably absent from the list revealed by the GSM Association (GSMA), the trade body that represents the mobile phone industry.

However, some companies that were on the initial list, such as 3, Orange, T-Mobile, AT&T and Vodafone, now appear to be absent.

Apart from Apple, the companies that have signed the MoU are LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Texas Instruments.

Linux first to support usb 3.0 - The Inquirer

USB 3.0 is supposed to be the next big thing for wires out the back of PCs and hardware manufactures are falling all over themselves to make stuff for them. However so far there has been no operating system that supports the new standard.

The Vole and Apple are not including the new standard in the Windows 7 or Snow Leopard operating systems. But it looks like Intel's open sauce community is rushing to fill the gap.

Sarah Sharp, a self-styled "geekess" and Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Centre has been working on the Linux USB subsystem.

Writing in her bog, Sharp writes that the xHCI (USB 3.0) host controller driver and initial support for USB 3.0 devices is now publicly available on her kernel.org git tree.

She said that this means that Linux will be the first operating system with official USB 3.0 support and she is working with Keve Gabbert, who is the OSV bloke at Intel, to make sure that Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat pick up the xHCI driver.

Why social media is like punk - mUmBRELLA

Why social media is like punk

Melbourne-based PR consultant Gerry McCusker - author of the PR Disasters blog, presented at the International Association of Business Communicators conference in San Francisco last week.

His topic was Why Are CEOs Scared of Social Media? As part of the presentation he created this two minute presentation on the similarities of social media to punk rock

WARNING: Twittersblogs is Another Twitter Phishing Scam

A new week, and a new scam to attempt to steal our social networking passwords is underway. Today, the target is TwitterTwitterTwitter, and the scam involves fake Twitter blogs.

Over the past hour, hundreds of tweets have gone out with the message “omg!! is it true what they wrote about you in their twit blog?” and linking to a subdomain of the site twittersblogs.com. When clicked, the linked site looks exactly like Twitter’s homepage. However, if you provide it with your username and password, it tweets out the message, and hence, the scam spreads.

The Pirate Bay Goes Legit -- InformationWeek

Swedish tech company Global Gaming Factory X said Tuesday that it has reached an agreement to acquire controversial file sharing outfit The Pirate Bay for about $7.7 million.

Global Gaming said it would introduce legitimate business models to Pirate Bay's Web site, which had become a haven for illegal file sharing. Pirate Bay's Swedish founders in April were ordered jailed for one year and fined $3.6 million.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," said Global Gaming CEO Hans Pandeya, in a statement.

Padeya said Pirate Bay draws enormous amounts of Internet traffic but added that it needs to adopt legitimate business models to stay in operation.

"The Pirate Bay site is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies that requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary," said Pandeya.

"Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers need faster downloads and better quality," he added.

The deal could see The Pirate Bay evolve in a manner similar to that followed by Napster. A nexus for illegal peer-to-peer swapping several years ago, Napster was acquired by a string of legitimate vendors that instituted pay-to-play business models on the site.

Also Tuesday, Global Gaming said it agreed to acquire Peerialism, a Swedish company that specializes in the development of p2p file sharing technology. The move is not unrelated to Global Gaming's buyout of The Pirate Bay.

"Peerialism has developed a new data distribution technology which now can be introduced on the best known file sharing site—The Pirate Bay," said Peerialism CEO Johan Ljunberg, in a statement.

Byte Into It - 24 Jun 09

China carries on with censorship plan, as Google capitulates | Technology | guardian.co.uk

China has said it will continue with its plans to force every computer in the country to run a controversial filtering program that will further restrict the activities of web surfers.

Officials at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said they would be going ahead with plans to make the software - known as Green Dam - compulsory.

Despite claims that it had decided to shelve Green Dam - which is intended to prevent access to pornographic material - the government "will not back away" on its plans for the software, an official told China Daily.

The move follows a string of controversies over the plan, and after internet giant Google agreed to filter its search results in China to screen out pornographic or explicit material

Hands-on: Google Voice dialing up for launch - Ars Technica

The Google Voice service launched in March for closed testing with a limited audience that consisted of existing GrandCentral users. Google introduced a number of highly impressive features such as automatic message transcription and free SMS delivery. The transcription feature will convert voicemails to text and make them searchable. The service can also automatically forward voicemail transcripts directly to your preferred e-mail account.

There are signs that Google is preparing to open the service to a broader audience. Reports indicate that Google has recently obtained over one million new phone numbers from backbone operator Level 3. PC World speculates that the number grab could be a prelude to the full public launch of Google Voice, but it was unable to get official confirmation from the search giant. There are also reports that Google will offer number portability, enabling consumers to move their existing phone numbers to Google's infrastructure.

Ars recently began testing Google Voice as part of the closed beta program. The service is remarkably powerful and easy to use. It has a number of killer features, such as support for switching between lines during the middle of a call and recording incoming calls by simply pressing a button. Recorded calls and voicemails can be heard directly in the browser through a streaming playback interface and can also be downloaded as MP3 files.

It also offers a simple scheduling system that can be used to control when calls will be routed to specific numbers

Fight over German filtering law sends MP into Pirate Party - Ars Technica

After seeing Swedish voters send the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, the German branch of the group has now gotten a seat in the lower house of that nation's parliament, the Bundestag. But the seat didn't come about through an electoral triumph; instead a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Trauss, changed allegiances, claiming his decision was driven by his former party's support for a mandatory Internet filtering scheme. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the filtering would target child porn, and Trauss is under investigation for possession of that material (he claims it was for investigative purposes).

The legislation in question would implement a scheme that's somewhat similar to the one under consideration in Australia.

BBC NEWS | Technology | The rise of Hate 2.0

The number of hate and terrorist websites has increased by a third in the past year, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organisation put the figure at more than 8,000 in its 2008 report Hate 2.0. It said the presence of such sites "demeans and threatens African Americans, Jews, immigrants, gays and virtually every religious denomination".

And the number of so-called hate sites is growing fast, while the use of social networks to push controversial messages is also on the rise.

In May this year, Facebook became embroiled in a row after a number of Holocaust denial groups were set up on the site.

Critics said Facebook was propagating anti-Semitism, others said that free speech was a cornerstone of society and Facebook should keep its hands off.

At the time, Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook, said it should be "a place where controversial ideas can be discussed".

"The bottom line is that, of course, we abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive and ignorant," he said.

"However, we believe people have a right to discuss these ideas."
Don Black
The Home Office says Don Black's actions could "lead to inter-community violence in the UK".

A few days later, the site had closed two of the groups, Holocaust is a Holohoax and Based on the facts... there was no Holocaust. It said they had breached the firm's terms of service.

But there are still plenty of other Holocaust denial groups on Facebook

Telstra bumps Next G uplink to 5.8 Mbps - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Telstra has increased peak network uplink speeds on its Next G network to 5.8 Mbps, meaning customers will achieve at least 300 kbps up to 3 Mbps in real-use terms.

Customers in metropolitan and "selected" regional areas will achieve uplink speeds anywhere within that range.

Other areas will still receive a minimum 300 kbps but the upper limit will be 1 Mbps.

Telstra said existing users of Turbo 21 modems manufactured by Sierra Wireless can download a software upgrade for their devices from the Sierra website to take advantage of the speed increase.

The same software upgrade will be pushed out automatically to users "over the air" this weekend.

In addition, business customers using the Telstra Turbo 21 mobile broadband USBs can upgrade their device.

"Upgrades to selected other Telstra and BigPond devices will be available in coming weeks," said executive director of Telstra product management, Ross Fielding.

Minchin claims there is no need for NBN - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

Shadow Communications Minister Nick Minchin has seized on an ACMA report showing most Australians are satisfied with their ISP to claim the country does not need a National Broadband Network (NBN).

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) report, released today, concludes that most Australian households and businesses are generally satisfied with the level of service they receive from their Internet Service Provider (ISP), "with the great majority expressing reluctance to switch ISPs."

Minchin said the study "raises serious questions about the Minister's sweeping claims of fundamental market failure" in the telecommunications industry.

Questions over survey

The ACMA report is based on a number of sources.

The primary two surveys from which broadband satisfaction was measured was a Roy Morgan survey of 1396 fixed line customers and 241 mobile users that don't use a fixed line services, plus a survey of 1800 small business users conducted by Sensis, a subsidiary of the country's largest ISP, Telstra.

The annual Whirlpool broadband user survey, by contrast, includes the opinions of some 20,000 users.

In both 2007 and 2008, around 75 per cent of Whirlpool respondents said the customer service they get from their ISP is either "good" or "excellent", 62 per cent were "very happy" with the reliability of the connection and 77 (2007) to 79 per cent (2008) would recommend their ISP to others.

But also in 2008, about one in three Whirlpool survey respondents said their ISP plan was too expensive.

The Whirlpool survey also showed that three in four respondents (75 per cent) favour a Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) National Broadband Network (2008), and 69 per cent would prefer the Federal Government to build it (2007).

Newlyweds Vodafone and 3 to compete on iPhone - Telco/ISP - Technology - News - iTnews.com.au

The newly-merged VHA has signed an agreement with Apple for its '3' brand to sell the new iPhone 3G S.

Hutchison 3, which carries the iPhone in other regional markets such as Hong Kong, had until now avoided the iPhone market, leaving larger competitors Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to fight over the popular mobile device.

But according to a spokesperson for 3, the mobile carrier began conversations with Apple to carry the iPhone just prior to the merger with Vodafone being approved.

These discussions were taken over by VHA, who agreed it in the best interest of the merged entity to offer the iPhone under the 3 brand just as it does under the Vodafone brand.

No pricing or plan details are available as yet, but a spokesperson for 3 confirmed with iTnews that Vodafone and 3 will offer the iPhone under differentiated plans.

FTC to crack down on undisclosed "sponsored" blogging - Ars Technica

Do your favorite mom and pop blogs secretly accept cash or gifts in exchange for product mentions? They might, and the FTC wants to make sure they disclose their conflicts of interest with a new set of guidelines that it hopes to implement later this year.

Meet Melody: Movable Type's open-source sibling | Webware - CNET

Community members of Six Apart's Movable Type platform (MT) are launching a new blogging service on Tuesday. Dubbed "Melody," it's an open-source version of MT that community members are free to build on and change.

Unlike previous open-source efforts though, this one is the first to break off (or "fork") from the main product, allowing for much faster and drastic changes. In many ways it's an answer to WordPress, a competitor of Six Apart that began as an open source project and has benefited from rapid development because of it.

What’s New in Firefox 3.5?

Mike Beltzner gives a quick preview of what’s new and exciting in Firefox 3.5, coming soon from Mozilla

Lifehacker - Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features - Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it's just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release:
- Firefox 3.5 implements a restore feature for both tabs and windows from the History menu, which would (hopefully) also restore any text you've typed into them.
- Firefox 3.5's history browser offers a convenient "Forget this site" option, erasing your browser's memory of particular domains. It doesn't cover subdomains, and your network traffic and Flash memory would still hold some details, but it's a handy tweak however you cut it.
- Google Chrome and Safari somewhat stole the thunder out from under this feature, but it's still a nice one: Grab a tab and drag it out a bit to create a new browser window from it. Drag windows into tabs again.
- Firefox 3's AwesomeBar/address bar offers a speedy list of suggestions to complete whatever you're typing,that list comes from your page history, bookmarks, and tags, and can be matched by URL or name. Special character filters in the next Firefox allow you to restrict matches to a particular category for instance.
- Firefox's developers took a cue from the users and turned the session restore feature into more of a crash recovery tool, allowing users to select which tabs should come back. If you don't know who's the culprit, here's a hint: It's probably the one with Flash on it.
- Private Browsing mode,already in a number of competing browsers, has uses beyond the prurient. Beyond obvious situations, like gift buying and sensitive research, logging onto a friend's browser for a quick email check or bill pay is made a lot more secure if you can get to the private mode.
-Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.
- Even if TraceMonkey (javascript engine) is ultimately outpaced by Chrome and/or Safari, its innovations push the whole browser market forward and give us all a bit less load time to complain about.
- Integrated geo-location, powered by Google's Wi-Fi triangulation and simple IP address information, looks to know roughly where you are and help you when you're looking for something local. You can disable it if you'd like, but, realistically, signing on from any IP address reveals a bit about where you are anyways.
- If you're viewing a page coded in HTML 5 with video in an open-source format like Ogg Vorbis or Theora, Firefox 3.5 treats that video like it's just part of the page, not a separate little island of Flash content. That means instant commenting on videos. It could also mean offering links from inside a tutorial video that offer more details on what's being shown

Lifehacker - Microsoft's Browser Comparison Chart Offends Anyone Who's Ever Used Another Browser - Internet Explorer 8

This browser comparison chart pits IE8 against Firefox and Chrome and puts IE8 on top time after time, but in very dubious categories. Each row comes with its own ridiculous set of comments justifying the seemingly meaningless checkmarks

Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Now Integrated With Microsoft SharePoint

Zoho Suite, a web-based software suite comprised of document, project and invoicing management tools, has launched an add-on that allows Zoho Office to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint.

Zoho users can now create new documents and save them to SharePoint in MS Office formats, view existing documents within SharePoint using Zoho apps, and edit existing documents with Zoho Apps and save them back to SharePoint. The new add-on also provides collaborative editing functionality in Zoho with the integration with SharePoint. Zoho says the add-on costs $2/user/month on an yearly subscription or $3/user/month for monthly subscription

EFF kills another stupid internet patent - Boing Boing

EFF's patent-busting project has put another notch in its belt: today they killed a truly outrageous patent on the use of subdomains for navigation and content management, as with jwz.livejournal.com. Can you believe that the patent office granted that patent in 2004, based on a 1999 application? Can you believe that the people who filed the patent claimed (with a straight face) that they didn't know of any other prior art that made this invalid?

It's hard to know whether to be happy for and grateful to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for killing this abomination, or pissed off with the patent office for creating it.

Obama's USPTO choice supports patent reform - Ars Technica

Last Thursday, the Obama administration finally named its choice to head the Patent and Trademark Office: David J. Kappos, who is currently serving as IBM's assistant general counsel. Kappos has a long history in the field of intellectual property law, and has been an advocate of patent reforms, having testified in favor of a reform bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Normally, a public record of that sort provides plenty of opportunities for people to identify problems with a candidate, but, so far at least, response to Kappos' nomination has been generally positive.

Researchers conclude piracy not stifling content creation - Ars Technica

File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they've posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music. As such, they argue it's worth analyzing the deeper question of whether file sharing is putting a damper on music creation. Their conclusion is that this is a much more complicated question, but the answer seems to be "probably not." The authors construct a bit of a causal chain between file sharing and the intent of copyright law to foster creative works. First, you'd need to know that file sharing was harming music sales, and that the music industry wasn't finding alternative ways of generating income. Then you'd need to show that the loss of income provided a disincentive to musical creativity. They recognize that this calculus might seem a bit heartless, though: "It might seem curious to some of our readers that we do not consider the welfare of artists and entertainment companies in our calculus. Our approach, however, reflects the original intent of copyright protection, which was conceived not as a welfare program for authors but to encourage the creation of new works."...If the first two links in the chain are tenuous, the last one pretty much gets demolished. There's essentially no indication that the more challenging economics are slowing down creative content production. In the five years prior to 2007, film production is up 30 percent, album releases have doubled, and book releases are up by two-thirds.

The authors also cite statistics that suggest that finances aren't (or at least, shouldn't be) the primary motivator for creative musical works. Because of the structure of the music business, even a gold record doesn't guarantee a windfall to artists, and the ratio of gold records to all records suggest that success is distributed by a system that most resembles a lottery. People clearly seem willing to put time into producing music even if it's not paying off, as the authors note, "even among those who spent at least thirty hours a week on music-related activities, only 22 percent derived at least four-fifths of their income from music."

Given that all the links in the causal chain are, at best, tenuous, the authors conclude that, while copyright infringement may be hurting the music business, that shouldn't be taken as an indication that it's affecting the theoretical basis of copyright law, the fostering of creative works.

Anti-Piracy Lawyers Lose License To Chase Pirates | TorrentFreak

Just days after Norway’s data protection department told ISPs they must delete all personal IP address-related data three weeks after collection, it’s now become safer than ever to be a file-sharer in Norway. The only law firm with a license to track pirates has just seen it expire and it won’t be renewed.

DX11 is AMD's weapon - News - PC Authority

t certainly is interesting to see AMD putting most of its energy into DX11 leadership while Nvidia focuses maniacally on GP-GPU with its C for Cuda and Open CL. So even though NV will likely be behind ATI in DX11, ATI lags behind NV in the GP-GPU battle, which is not insignificant in the slightest.

The lines have been drawn and now it is left to the customer to ultimately decide who's approach is right

Does Intel have a deal with Nokia? | Technology | guardian.co.uk

The speculation is that Nokia will use a next-generation Atom chip in some kind of device, possibly even a mobile phone

Flash Player 10 beta coming to most smartphones this fall | Crave - CNET

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed that Adobe will release a beta version of Flash Player 10 in October for a number of smartphone browsers, including Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm WebOS, and Symbian.

Mobile stars of the show

A collection of mobile manufacturers unveiled their latest phones at the glamour-studded CommunicAsia 2009 event held last week in Singapore.

Some mobiles will bring real innovations to the handset market such as Sony Ericsson's new gesture gaming phones that let you box or do yoga in front of them and LG's GD900 Crystal that can recognise symbols and handwriting on its transparent alphanumeric keypad.

Other makers like Nokia and Samsung are ramping up the touch functions, screen resolution and speed of smartphones to ensure people who use their device primarily for work don't miss out on iPhone-like features. Samsung's new Jet is one new model that looks impressive in this category. Its screen resolution is four times higher than previous Samsung models and it has a new user interface that supports motion, customisable widgets, multitasking and simultaneous downloads.

iPhone In-App Purchases Already Leading To The Dreaded Two Words: Bait And Switch

the old practice of luring customers with a shiny price, only to reveal the real cost after (in this case, the download), could find its way to the App Store, thanks to in-app purchases.

Let me be clear: I think in-app purchases are potentially the most exciting thing about the new iPhone 3.0 SDK for developers. I believe it will mean a boatload of money for a great many of them as well as Apple, which takes its 30% cut. But where there is money to be made, there is money to be taken. And we’re likely to see a rise in apps that seem priced way too good to be true — because they are, until you download them.

Hands on review: iPhone OS 3.0 chock full of changes - Ars Technica

Sure, the iPhone 3G S is exciting—who doesn't like new hardware?—but more important than the hardware itself is the software that runs on it. As a bonus for all iPhone users, iPhone OS 3.0 won't just run on the new iPhone 3G S; it will run on iPhone 3Gs and even the original iPhone. There are elements to iPhone OS 3.0 that only run on the iPhone 3G S, however, and we will address those in our iPhone 3G S review. This part of the review, however, will focus on features that are generally available to all iPhone users (but focused mostly on the iPhone 3G, since that's the device with the widest reach at the moment).

Review: iPhone 3GS lives up to its speedy claims - Ars Technica

this review will mostly focus on changes to the device that differentiate it from previous versions.

Byte Into It - 17 Jun 09

Telstra split is needed: ACCC

THE AUSTRALIAN Competition and Consumer Commission has told the Federal Government the structural separation of Telstra is essential to its planned $43 billion national broadband network.

But Telstra in its submission to the Government's review of telecommunications regulation argues that no further separation of its operations is necessary as the new network, which will be wholesale only, would deliver structural separation.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy yesterday published more than 120 submissions, which he said supported the Government's conviction that regulatory reform was "urgently required" in the sector.

Telstra's submission is conciliatory in tone, restating its commitment to "engaging constructively" with the Government on the broadband project, which it described as a "vital investment for the nation, the telecommunications industry and Telstra".

Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

We know that our readers are distracted and sometimes even overwhelmed by the myriad distractions that lie one click away on the Internet, but of course writers face the same glorious problem: the delirious world of information and communication and community that lurks behind your screen, one alt-tab away from your word-processor.

PC Pro: News: BT wants BBC to pay-up for iPlayer

BT is tired of the BBC and other video sites getting a "free ride" on its networks.

Last week a row erupted between BT and the BBC, after it emerged that BT was choking iPlayer streams on some of its broadband packages, which the broadcaster said was hurting viewers' ability to watch television online.

John Petter, managing director of BT Retail's consumer business, has now accused the BBC of getting a "free ride".

"We can't give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect," he told the Financial Times, adding it wasn't only the BBC that was the burden, but any sites offering streaming video.

The iiNet twenty: AFACT go after individual downloaders in court - News - PC Authority

According to a story at ITnews, iiNet has been called upon by the court to give up the account details of twenty unlucky downloaders. Perhaps twenty of the unluckiest downloaders you're likely to hear about in the next few weeks. The iiNet twenty are going to be made an example of; originally AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) sought the records of 300-400 account holders.

Considering AFACT has half succeeded in their battle to order the names and details of any number of iiNet customers, let alone twenty - is still a very scary thought for privacy activists.

However, those twenty symbolic iiNet users shouldn't feel alone. A recent Torrentfreak report suggested that Aussies downloaded as many as 6 million files in April across the auspicious P2P/Bittorent network, with most of those being directed through Bittorrent site, Mininova.

Top French Court Declares Internet Access 'Basic Human Right' - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com

France's highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.

The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy's law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.

The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy's scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web.

Mr Sarkozy and Christine Albanel, his Culture Minister, forced the law through parliament despite misgivings from many of the President's centre-right MPs. It was rejected in its first passage through Parliament.

The law innovated by creating an agency, known by its initials HADOPI, which would track abusers and cut off net access automatically to those who continued to download illicitly after two warnings.

The law was supported by the industry and many artists. They saw it as a model for the USA and Europe in the fight to keep earning a living from their music and film. Net libertarians saw it as the creation of a sinister Big Brother. Many called it technically unworkable. Some artists saw it as hostile to the young consumers who are their main customers.

AACS license finalized; managed copy coming to Blu-ray - Ars Technica

The managed copy feature is designed to allow an owner to make at least one full-resolution backup copy of AACS-protected content. It has been a mandatory part of the Blu-ray specification since 2005, and we were told that support was coming by the end of 2007. Of course, that was contingent on the finalized AACS licensing agreement, which was just published earlier this month. AACS licensees have until the end of this year to sign the agreement, and due to a number of factors support won't likely be available until sometime early next year.

Among those issues is the fact that current Blu-ray hardware doesn't support managed copy, and most likely can't be enabled by a firmware upgrade, so it will mean at a minimum a hardware upgrade for users to take advantage of the feature. Also, capable Blu-ray devices will have to be able to connect to an authorization server to track whether a managed copy has been made, or if the number of copies made has reached the allowable limit. Those servers aren't expected to be online until sometime in the first quarter of 2010. And finally, content providers have to encode a URL to the necessary authorization server when mastering the disc.

Virgin and Universal to roll out music service - News - PC Authority

Virgin and Universal Music have signed a new deal overseas to launch an unlimited music download service.

The new service will be offered as part of Virgin's UK broadband service will allow unlimited downloads of Universal artists for a monthly fee as well as a second option for limited downloads at a lower price.

The companies vowed that the service will not use any DRM protection software and users will be able to keep the downloaded tracks for as long as they wish. However, Universal also said that it would work with Virgin to keep the downloaded songs from being redistributed to other users.

The move is a first between a major label and an ISP.

Adobe challenges Google Docs with launch of Acrobat.com - Ars Technica

Adobe has finally (well, sort of) taken the beta tag off of Acrobat.com, shedding more light on Adobe's software as a service strategy first revealed with Photoshop Express. Along with online PDF creation tools, file sharing, online meeting and collaboration, Acrobat.com also includes Adobe's Buzzword word processor for online and collaborative document creation. Adobe is also giving a first peek at the less-cleverly-named Tables spreadsheet app and Presentation... presentation app. The move seems like a shot across Google's bow.

The collection of tools is aimed at replicating many of the functions for which most office workers use Microsoft Office. It also offers some services similar to Google Docs. Adobe describes the design focus behind Acrobat.com as being on ubiquity, collaboration, and user experience. Ubiquity is powered by (of course) the Internet, and collaboration comes from group document creation, editing, and sharing. Collaboration is also facilitated by ConnectNow, which includes and online meeting space as well as screen sharing facilities. The user experience is naturally fueled by Flash and AIR.

Though Adobe is launching Acrobat.com today, taking the beta tag off of the service itself, Buzzword still appears to be in beta status. And, while the previews for Tables and Presentation available from Adobe Labs are quite functional, and offer all the basic features one would expect from such apps, Adobe doesn't seem ready to even label them as betas.

Google adding microblog indexing to its search results - Ars Technica

Though Twitter has its own search capabilities, Google will be soon offering a way to search it as well as and other microblogging services. A reference to "MicroBlogsearch" turned up recently in the Google In Your Language localization service, suggesting that Google plans to launch the feature soon.

Twitter's own search system merely shows recent results containing the search terms, with the most recent first. Older results can be viewed by clicking on "Older," and a small sidebar shows the top ten "trending topics," but that's about the extent of it. And of course it doesn't have results from other micro-blogging platforms, such as Indenti.ca, Tumblr, or BrightKite.

Google's system, on the other hand, would work more like its current Blog Search, sorting results by relevance using its constantly evolving algorithms. If a particular string of search terms has relevance to keywords in tweets or other micro-blogging messages, then Google will show them along with other results under the heading "Recent updates about...."

Opera Unite

Share your stuff with your friends over the Web without handing it over to anyone else — total privacy and complete control. We are changing the game. Explore Opera Unite services.
Opera Unite

Opera Unite gives developers access to powerful APIs to develop amazing Opera Unite services. We have detailed documentation to get your started at http://dev.opera.com/articles/unite/.
Opera Unite: a Web server on the Web browser

With Opera 10, we are introducing a new technology called Opera Unite, radically extending what you are able to do online. Opera Unite harnesses the power of today's fast connections and hardware, allowing all of us to help define the future landscape of the Web, one computer at a time. Read about how Opera Unite is going to change the way we interact on the Web on labs.opera.com.
Take control of what you share online
Opera Unite allows you to easily share your data: photos, music, notes and other files. You can even run chat rooms and host entire Web sites with Opera Unite. It puts the power of a Web server in your browser, giving you greater privacy and flexibility than other online services.

Microsoft's Browser Unbundling Puzzles Europe - PC World

Microsoft's plan to dump Internet Explorer (IE) from Windows 7 for the European market is a move to discredit antitrust regulators by tying its proposal to a failed enforcement effort from 2005, a noted antitrust expert said today.

microsoft windows internet explorer legal"It's sort of a puckish thing to do, when you think about it," said William Page, co-author of The Microsoft Case: Antitrust, High Technology, and Consumer Welfare (University of Chicago Press, 2009). "Their solution is a little bit like Windows XP [and Vista] 'N,' which dramatizes that the EU essentially wants the same thing this time. But everyone knows that 'N' was a total flop."

Windows XP N, and later, Windows Vista N, were special editions that omitted Windows Media Player, which Microsoft was forced to create for Europeans after losing an earlier antitrust case. By all accounts, Windows XP and Vista N have been major busts, with few copies sold and no computer makers installing them on new PCs.

Microsoft's obvious attempt to tie its solution to the failed "N" editions of 2005 -- it went so far as to say it will slap the letter "E" on the Windows 7 editions that omit IE -- is probably one reason why the EU has turned a cold shoulder to the company's plan, said Page.

"The Commission had suggested to Microsoft that consumers be provided with a choice of Web browsers," EU regulators said today in a statement. "Instead Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a Web browser at all. Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less."

Opera and Mozilla unimpressed by IE unbundling plans - Software - iTnews Australia

Browser makers have spoken out against Microsoft's latest proposal to open up competition in the market by shipping copies of Windows 7 without Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) bundled in.

Opera's chief technology officer, Hakon Wium Lie, said that he was "not impressed at all" by the latest proposal from Microsoft, which would let computer manufacturers choose which browser or browsers to include on new Windows 7 PCs.

"If this had happened in 1997 when the competition case was first being heard in the US, maybe it would have helped in creating a level playing field," Lie said.

"But this is too little, too late. It won't restore competition in the browser market."

Lie added that, although IE8 would not be bundled into Windows 7 as standard by Microsoft, computer makers would choose the Microsoft browser anyway as this was the easy option.

"[Microsoft is] putting all the pieces into place for OEMs to put in IE8 anyway," he said.

Instead of the Microsoft proposal to ship browser-free copies of Windows 7 in Europe, Lie supported the European Commission's (EC's) recommendation of a 'ballot screen'.

This would present users with a choice of browsers when first starting up their new PC, along with an explanation of what each one offers.

Linux News from Linux Loop » Blog Archive » Firefox 3.5 Preview Shows New Hope For Open Media Standards

The preview release of Firefox 3.5 is showing some neat tricks relating to online video, but not the kind that comes in a little proprietary bubble of Flash.

For example, the new Firefox 3.5 will be able to smoothly resize videos on the fly within the page. The interesting part, though, is that these videos are in OGG format – in other words, entirely open. With such a mainstream browser showing off what can be done with open video formats, there is a good chance that flash will lose its dominant position, or at least have to share a little. I’m not one to say “death to Flash” just because it happens to be proprietary, but an open video standard would allow for so much innovation. Already numerous projects are attempting to unify our media-watching experience. Just imagine the sudden freedom to create an even better experience if all that media was available in open formats.

Flash has been essential to the rise of sites like YouTube, but it might be time for something more flexible to replace it.

Google's Rich Snippets Starts the Semantic Snowball Effect | Digital Media Buzz

some things that were seen as being enabled by the Semantic Web in 2001 are already here without it. For many Americans, persistent mobile connection is a reality — e-mail and SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, and Web-enabled phones are common. But the full power of machine-understood data, linked across the entire body of information in one global Web, with “agents” focused on personal service to humans, is only in its infancy. The Semantic Web vision is the other part of Web 3.0, which vertically integrates data from a diverse set of sources, according to the W3C’s Semantic Web group.

The challenges to the Semantic Web
The Web, as of July 2008, included one trillion distinct URLs, by Google’s count. The search giant is estimated to actually index less than 5 percent of those, still a matter of tens of billions of Web pages. The overwhelming majority of these pages are meant to be read and understood by humans. The content of the pages isn’t meant to be understood by computers. Search engines can index keywords, but without context.

Semantic Web experts have collected the toolkit of languages and metadata markup systems that will allow machines to understand key words and the relationships between them. Such metadata is already being used in many places. A microformat called hResume, for example, allows LinkedIn.com to tag appropriate resume fields of its public profiles so that the resume data can be understood and reused elsewhere.

Persuading websites to recode Web pages to Semantic Web specifications — or even to do so going forward — will take a powerful motivator.
Google may have provided such a motivator with its May 12 announcement of Rich Snippets. “Snippet” is the name Google uses for the short block of text appearing below a search result, giving more information about the Web page. Google announced in its Webmasters Central Blog (a bookmark for anyone interested in making his or her website more visible to the leading search engine) that it is now applying Google’s algorithms to “highlight structured data embedded in web pages.” Translation, content marked for the Semantic Web. The “rich snippets” will be based on the structured data.

This is a major event for a couple of reasons. First, Google is the poster child for machine learning, which in Web terms means teaching machines to scan plain-language Web pages and cull meaning from them. This is the other end of the spectrum from the Semantic Web vision of coding pages in a special way so they have meaning to machines. Google’s announcement, which explicitly discussed plans to extend support for structured data in new ways as well as to recognize metadata coding developed elsewhere on the Web, puts the company on a course for a synergy between machine learning and Semantic Web practices.

Yahoo searchmonkeyGoogle isn’t the first major search company to focus on structured data. Yahoo’s Search Monkey platform for Web developers supports a robust package of metadata formats, and urges developers to have at it. But the reality is that Google is the one people are paying attention to where it counts.

This brings us to the second reason this is a major step: self-interest. It’s important to harness the force that created those tens of billions of indexed Web pages in the first place. And Google’s announcement means money.

Ars toasts English language as Web 2.0 named millionth word - Ars Technica

The Global Language Monitor says that the one millionth word entered the English language today at 10:22am GMT. Setting aside the preposterous nature of the claim, let's celebrate the language that brought us everything from "cloud computing" to "nincompoop."

Ars Reviews the Palm Pre, part 1: the BlackBerry killer - Ars Technica

Most of the gadget press is obsessing over whether the Palm Pre is an iPhone killer, but they're asking the wrong question. We've been testing one for the past few days, and it's clear to us that the real target of Palm's new phone is the BlackBerry. Here's how Palm will use the webOS to tackle the enterprise market.

Cisco report: the exaflood will be televised - Ars Technica

More and more technology companies are adopting an Internet-scale variant on the "give away the razors, sell the blades" model to stimulate demand for their products, and they're doing so in order to ride the one demand curve that's set to keep going up despite any global slowdown: the demand for bandwidth. Cisco's acquisition of video gadget maker PureDigital is a case in point, though the idea there is really more like "invest in razor development to stimulate global blade demand." The networking infrastructure giant made it known at the time of the acquisition that this purchase was about one thing: boosting the amount of video traffic flowing over everyone's pipes, so that it can sell newer, larger pipes to bandwidth providers.

Ultimate BIOS Guide: Every Setting Decrypted and Explained!

Power users routinely punch into the BIOS in order to fine tune their system, but it can be an intimidating place to go exploring if you've never before burrowed beneath the surface. Here is your go-to guide for everything you've ever wanted to know about the BIOS.

E3 2009: Who won? Who lost? Who wins a golden Ars? - Ars Technica

This was a big show filled with games, parties, lines, headaches, and, of course, celebrities. What rates as a Golden Ars? Here are our picks.

IGN: IGN's Overall Best of E3 2009 Awards

These are the games that got the IGN editors talking last week and haven't been able to shut up about since

Prototype review: One thing you can't destroy is yourself - Ars Technica

It's an interesting question to ask while playing: why did Prototype fail? Yes, it did fail, although for hours while playing I couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly missed the mark. It's a fun failure, in places, with a sense of power that feels almost unearned. The game begins with the worst cliche of this sort of game: you have all your powers straight up, and get to tear-ass around the city for a few minutes before the game shoves you back in time to explain how you got there. The problem—and this is a big problem for a superhero game—is that this approach makes you feel powerful, and then weak. Since you've already lost most of your humanity, what's the point of feeling like a weak monster?

Sydney Morning Herald | Technology | Iran | Twitter | Tehran | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Mir Hossein Mousavi | protests | riots

An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police.

As Iran's government cracks down on traditional media after the country's disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have turned to the micro-blogging site Twitter.

Its use to organise and send pictures and messages to the outside world - in real time as events unfolded - was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.

Cyberwar guide for Iran elections - Boing Boing

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP's over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don't retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become 'Iranians' it becomes much harder to find them.

5. Don't blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don't publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don't signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind...

Twitter reschedules maintenance to avoid clobbering Iranian dissidents - Boing Boing

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).