Global Information Systems @ FIU

Google buys JotSpot, dips into wiki world and creates some more millionares

2006-10-31T19:01:00.000-05:00

JotSpot co-founder and CEO Joe Kraus announced the acquisition on a blog Tuesday morning, saying that being part of search giant Google will give JotSpot access to "world-class" data centers and engineers.
"We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online," he wrote.
JotSpot's product is a platform for building wiki-based applications. For example, the company has an online spreadsheet and calendar that multiple people can edit.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has sold its wiki system primarily to business customers as hosted collaboration software. Wikis are catching on within businesses as lightweight alternative to large-scale document management systems.
Kraus said that the first order of business as part of Google is to move JotSpot's software to Google's software architecture.
In an interview Tuesday morning, Kraus indicated that that the JotSpot team will work to link its wiki software with Google's current hosted applications.
"We see tons of possibilities between JotSpot and great products like Writely and Google Spreadsheet," he said. "I can't talk specifics but it's pretty clear they have a bunch of best-of-breed products."
Google will also help JotSpot expand its audience and make wikis more widely used, he said. "Our goal has always been to bring this technology to a very large audience, and there's not a better way to do that than with Google."

Ref:
http://www.jot.com/
www.news.com
www.google.com

Mozilla Looks Ahead To Firefox 3.0

2006-10-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

With Firefox 2.0 out the door earlier this week, Mozilla Corp. will turn its attention to version 3.0, said company executives, with a goal to deliver the new browser in 2007.

Officially Firefox 3.0 but code named "Gran Paradiso," the application will pick up where Firefox 2.0 leaves off, said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's director of engineering. Among the features Mozilla wants to get into 3.0 is "Places," the revamped bookmarks tool which was dropped from Firefox 2.0 in April.

"Places just wasn't ready to go [in Firefox 2.0]," said Schroepfer. "We definitely didn't want to add it until it was ready for prime time."

That time, he added, would be Firefox 3.0. Places, a major redesign of the bookmark model, will store both bookmarks and browsing history in a database, then let users search the database for sites they want to revisit.

"Bookmarks and [browsing] history haven't changed in years," Schroepfer said. "We have a number of ideas of how people can manage their own section of the Web."

Mozilla has already begun work on a new rendering engine to debut in Firefox 3.0 -- it will swap out the aging "Gfx" graphics infrastructure for something called "Cairo 2D" -- and next year's browser will use the Gecko 1.9 code base. Both Firefox 2.0 and 2005's Firefox 1.5 relied on Gecko 1.8 code. Mozilla's switching to the Cairo 2D graphics library to add hardware-accelerated 2D graphics capabilities to the browser.

A side effect to moving to Cairo in Firefox 3.0 will be dropping support for Windows 95, 98, and Millennium. The shift away the older operating systems was announced in June, and collected substantial criticism from users.

Recently, Mozilla asked developers and users to brainstorm new features for Firefox 3.0 and later editions, then posted a large document containing the ideas. "It's meant to be a way to catch these [ideas]," said Mike Beltzner, the company's user interface designer. At the beginning of the week, over 1,100 contributions had been filed with Mozilla.

"We're trying to make sure that we're not feature driven," said Beltzner "We try to figure out what people are doing with the Web. This is a seed list of what's possible."

Among the items in the wish list are requests for more enterprise control, a "remind-me-later" feature for the browser's updates, and JavaScript restrictions.

Also on the table, said Schroepfer: lowered rights for Firefox when it runs on Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. This fall, Microsoft Corp. invited Mozilla engineers, including Schroepfer, to its Redmond, Wash. headquarters to work with the Windows Vista team. One of the things Mozilla came away with was the idea to implement some of Vista's low rights features in Firefox on other operating systems. "We may try it out on Mac and Linux, too," said Schroepfer. "But it's too early to really comment on."

Mozilla's shooting for the end of next year as a delivery date for Firefox 3.0. "About every year is about the right cycle for a major upgrade," said Schroepfer. "Anything less just doesn't give us enough time."

That schedule would jibe with what Mozilla's done the last two years; it released Firefox 1.5 in November 2005, and Firefox 2.0 in October of this year.

"But it's really too early" to give a deadline, added Schroepfer.

"Right. The release, as always, will be driven by the quality bar," said Beltzner.

Hacker Unlocks Apple Music Download Protection

2006-10-25T23:21:00.000-04:00

ReutersTuesday, October 24, 2006; 9:55 PM

Below is an article from today's Washington Post

SAN FRANCISCO - A hacker who as a teen cracked the encryption on DVDs has found a way to unlock the code that prevents iPod users from playing songs from download music stores other than Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, his company said on Tuesday.
Jon Lech Johansen, a 22-year-old Norway native who lives in San Francisco, cracked Apple's FairPlay copy-protection technology, said Monique Farantzos, managing director at DoubleTwist, the company that plans to license the code to businesses.
"What he did was basically reverse-engineer FairPlay," she said. "This allows other companies to offer content for the iPod."
At the moment, Apple aims to keep music bought from its iTunes online music store only available for Apple products, while songs bought from other online stores typically do not work on iPods.
But Johansen's technology could help rivals sell competing products that play music from iTunes and offer songs for download that work on iPods as they seek to take a bite out of Apple's dominance of digital music.
ITunes commands an 88 percent share of legal song downloads in the United States, while the iPod dominates digital music player sales with more than 60 percent of the market.
Cupertino, California-based Apple, whose profits have soared in recent years on the strength of the iPod, declined to comment.
Johansen, known as DVD Jon, gained fame when at the age of 15 he wrote and distributed a program that cracked the encryption codes on DVDs. This allowed DVDs to be copied and played back on any device.
His latest feat could help companies such as Microsoft Corp., Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which have all announced plans over the past few months for music download services combined with new devices to challenge Apple.

It Salaries on The Rise

2006-10-25T15:30:00.000-04:00

In lieu of Professor Cousins email in regards to IT employment opportunities, I thought I would include this news story that was in Information News yesterday. Here is a couple of exerps to peak your interest:

"IT professionals are to receive on average in 2007 a 2.8 percent salary increase over this year, an employment firm said Tuesday.

Business expansion and increasing investments in technology were the drivers behind the overall salary increases, Katherine Spencer Lee, executive director of Robert Half Technology, said. "To attract top candidates, many companies are raising compensation levels for new hires to ensure their salaries remain competitive with their local markets."

Project managers were expected to see a 4.1 percent jump to a range of $72,750 to $106,250 per year; quality assurance analysts, also 4.1 percent, to $52,250 to $74,500 annually; applications architects, 4 percent, $80,000 to $112,750; network security administrators, 3.7 percent, $69,750 to $98,500; and IT auditors, 3.1 percent, $69,250 to $97,000.

Industries predicted to have particularly strong demand for IT professionals next year include financial and business services, insurance, technology, healthcare and manufacturing."

HAPPY JOB HUNTING! Congrats guys, we are 1/3 of the way there!

-Kazmira

Details trickle out about EC Vista probe

2006-10-25T14:11:00.000-04:00

Microsoft and the Commission have been in protracted discussions regarding Vista since March, over regulators' concerns that parts of Vista may violate anticompetition laws.

"There were four different areas where the Commission gave feedback on Vista: two security components and two other components," said Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of Microsoft's security technology unit. The Commission was concerned that Windows Security Center would give Microsoft an unfair advantage by flashing up alerts, which would guide consumers to buying Microsoft or Microsoft-endorsed security products.

"The EC wanted vendors to have the ability to disable alerts in Security Center. They are satisfied that we've provided those APIs (application programmable interfaces) to all of our security partners. We're completely open to that," Fathi told CNET News.com sister site ZDNet UK in an interview at the RSA security show here Tuesday.
The second Vista security area causing the Commission concern is PatchGuard, the kernel protection code in 64-bit versions of the operating system. Security vendors McAfee and Symantec have protested about what they see as being banned from accessing the kernel. The Commission wanted Microsoft to disable the technology, but Microsoft refused.
"Kernel patch protection really is something we do not want to disable," Fathi said. "We told the EC this is something we are working on with our partners, going forward." Microsoft has agreed to supply its security partners with APIs for any parts of Vista, he said.
"The (provision of the) APIs was executed on promises made to the EC," Fathi said.

The Commission was also concerned about XML Paper Specification (XPS) which describes the Microsoft format and rules for distributing, archiving, rendering and processing documents created in it.
The EC wanted to make XPS an open standard. However, Microsoft brokered a compromise, whereby anyone can read or write documents using XPS. It is being distributed under a royalty-free copyright license, meaning that it can be distributed freely, once a license has been obtained. License holders must agree to a "covenant not to sue" people who use XPS.

Ref:
www.news.com
www.microsoft.com
www.cnet.com

Check out my comment under Vatican 10/23

2006-10-25T11:03:00.000-04:00

Identity thieves hit Ameritrade, E-Trade

2006-10-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

Hackers broke into customers account that lead at least $22 million in losses.

The attacks, which took place during the last three months, were launched by identity thieves in Eastern Europe and Asia who primarily used keylogging software delivered via Trojan horses or other malware to steal users' confidential information as they logged onto public computers or their own infected machines, TD Ameritrade CIO Jerry Bartlett said in an interview today.
The hackers then logged into existing customer accounts -- or created dummy accounts -- to buy shares in little-traded stocks, driving prices up so they could sell their own previously purchased shares for a profit.

Hakcers deteriorate the trust people have in e-business

Let the Browser Wars Begin—Again

2006-10-25T01:57:00.000-04:00

News Analysis: With new browser versions from both Mozilla and Microsoft on their way, we can expect to see dramatic changes in the overall browser market. (DesktopLinux.com)
Firefox 2.0 is almost here, and Microsoft is expected to start pushing out Internet Explorer 7 to users via the Windows Automatic Update software-distribution mechanism by year's end. In short, the browser wars are about to begin again.
Depending on whose numbers you believe, Firefox has been continuing to erode IE's lead.
According to Janco Associates, Internet Explorer has continued to lose market share in 2006. It bottomed out to 75.88 percent share in July, which was down from 77.01 percent in January, and from 84.05 in July of 2005.
OneStat.com, meanwhile, reported earlier this week that the global usage share of IE has grown to 85.85 percent. That's a jump of 2.8 percent since July, by their counting. Firefox, on the other hand, is at 11.49 percent, a decrease of 1.44 percent since the web analytics specialist reported its July data. The rest of IE's gain came at the expense of Opera and the other browsers.
NetApplications, however, sees a very different picture. According to Ars Technica's reporting, IE hit a two-year low at 82.10 percent in September, while Firefox grew to a 12.46 percent market share. Safari, the Mac OS X browser, came in third with 3.53 percent.
As for Linux and browsers, DesktopLinux's recent survey of Linux users found that Mozilla's Firefox browser dominates the field. Firefox came in with 58.2 percent usage, followed by Konqueror at 16.3 percent, and Opera at 12 percent. Of all the other browsers, only Mozilla, at 4.7 percent and Epiphany, GNOME's default browser, at 2.7 percent, grabbed more than 2 percent of the users.
With new browser versions coming out from both Mozilla and Microsoft in the coming weeks, however, we can expect to see dramatic changes in the overall browser market.

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Google Adds Customized Search Engine

2006-10-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

Enjoy!

Tabea

Like Yahoo, Google Adds Customized Search Engine

New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23 — Google introduced a tool Monday that allows Web sites and blogs to offer visitors a customized version of its search engine, narrowing down its vast index so the results are more relevant for users.

Called the Google Custom Search Engine, the new product lets Web site owners choose which pages they want to include in their index and rank the pages as they like.

Yahoo has introduced a similar product, called Search Builder, but Google says its service allows more customization.

“We have some features we feel are quite unique,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience. “We allow people to restrict or prioritize search results based on the sites they’ve chosen.”

The new service is free. Web site publishers split the revenue from the text advertisements that Google places on the search results through its AdSense program. Nonprofit organizations, government agencies and educational institutions are not required to include ads.

“The trouble with Google is you do get a lot of noise,” said Andrew Frank, a research director in New York with Gartner, a market research firm. “Stuff gets through that isn’t really relevant, either intentionally, or there are sometimes ambiguities. This definitely helps improve the relevance and skip the noise.”

Mr. Frank said the new service had benefits for Google and its advertisers. “For people in the AdSense network, it’s a way to increase inventory,” he said, “and for Google it’s an extension of reach.”

Custom search engines are already up and running on a dozen or so sites. Macworld.com has been using a preliminary version of the product for the last month, customized to cover several Mac-oriented sites owned by Mac Publishing, a unit of IDG.

Jason Snell, vice president and editorial director at Macworld, said his site had been paying to use a search program by another company. But users had been unhappy with the results, and “in the last month, we made the decision to drop it like a rock,” Mr. Snell said. “We pulled it out and put Google in its place. There’s no barrier to switching to Google because Google already knows about all our pages.”

Mr. Snell said the customization tool was easy to configure. “I think you’ll see a lot of people switch their search engine from whatever it might be to this,” he said. “I think people have a comfort zone with Google searches.”

To build a customized index, users fill out a few Web-based forms, and are then given the code for a search box that they can cut and paste into their own Web pages.

“I think what’s going to drive usage is that it’s really easy for users to come up with a search engine in a matter of minutes,” Ms. Mayer said.

Shares of Google hit a record intraday high of $484.64 on Monday, after a strong earnings report last week. The stock closed at $480.71, up $21.11, or 4.6 percent.

Google said Thursday that its third-quarter profit nearly doubled from a year earlier.

The growth came as Google’s largest rival, Yahoo, has suffered from weak sales of search and display advertising. The profit report prompted several Wall Street analysts to raise their ratings on Google stock.

Check out this free music site...

2006-10-24T12:09:00.000-04:00

Hey, I assume that the 'official blogging' is over. But, I thought this would be interesting. This is a free music site (beta version only). Had lot of my favorite songs in there......Look for yours too!!!

..... www.blogmusik.net

Researchers See Privacy Pitfalls in No-Swipe Credit Cards

2006-10-24T00:08:00.000-04:00

If you guys haven't already heard, there's security and privacy risks associated with the new "no swipe" credit cards. I first heard about the problems on the news, then later came across this article in the New York Times. People (not just anybody, but people who have the right equipment/tools and knowledge - hackers) might be able to get information from your credit cards without having to physically take the card from you. It's definately something to think about. Read the article, its a bit lengthy - but you'll find it very informative.

Is it fair?

2006-10-23T19:38:00.000-04:00

Today the CEO of Enron was sentenced to 24 years in prison for his role in the collapse of Enron. However, Kenneth Lay's, former enron executive, fraud and conspiracy conviction was thrown out Oct 17th and prevents the seizure of $43.5 million by the government. Due to the change in verdict, the government is trying to force Jeffrey Skilling to pay the whole amount of $182.8 million dollars instead of $139.3 million. What I would like to know is if anyone thinks its fair that Kenneth Lay's estate cannot be touched by the government? Both men were convicted in court but since Kenneth Lay unfortunately died of heart failure while vacationing in Colorado he is no longer being held responsible for giving back the money he stole from Enron. Do you think this is fair?

Here is the two links: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/business/24enroncnd.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/business/18enron.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fL%2fLay%2c%20Kenneth%20L%2e

The Vatican

2006-10-23T01:39:00.000-04:00

In an effort to evolve with modern technology, the Vatican has developed a website that gives you virtual access of their entire library, virtual tour of the Sistine chapel and hi-definition images of featured artwork from famous artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli and Reffaello. All this with your choice of six different languages of German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian.

Check it out: www.vatican.va

MS Vista Licensing Issues has everyone Jittery

2006-10-20T23:49:00.000-04:00

Microsoft's Vista is still months away from formal release, but the next version of Windows is already raising the hackles of many consumers.
Under changes to Microsoft's licensing terms, buyers of retail copies of Vista will be able to transfer their software to a new machine only once. If they want to move their software a second time, they will have to buy a new copy of the operating system. In the past, those who bought a retail copy of Windows needed to uninstall it before moving it to another machine, but there was no limit to how many times this could be done.

It is precisely because of actions like these that Microsoft products will be hacked more than ever and this will rise in countries like China and India where people will hack the OS and come up crackz to get around this issue.
Already people may be underway trying to get a warez/crackz for this security feature of Vista.

Security companies also have been crying foul over the new operating system--and they might have been heard if only they had gotten into a meeting scheduled to field their complaints. Microsoft had set up such a meeting with security companies to discuss some of the changes it has promised to make to Windows Vista in response to competitive concerns. But the conference, which used Microsoft's Live Meeting technology, crashed after 15 minutes it started, and both Symantec and McAfee were unable to log back in.

Ref:www.news.com

Virtual Labs

2006-10-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/education/20online.html?ref=technology

Classmates,

here is an article about the use of virtual classes for science to include dissecting animals and all. It has sparked a debate with the College Board.

enjoy,
Agustin

Virtual Labs

2006-10-20T15:53:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/education/20online.html

Classmates,
this is an interesting article in the NY Times that talks about virtual laboratories being used for science classes and the debate it has caused with the College Board.

enjoy,
Agustin

Tech Boom All Over Again for Some.

2006-10-19T21:49:00.000-04:00

I don't think I will write alot about this, because the article says it all. I must say one thing...incredible! Can you imagine the pace of growth Google is still experiencing. It seems like Yahoo is taking a beating. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are getting richer every day and they haven't even reached 35 yet. Last February there net worth stood at close to $13 billion each!

Google's Net Nearly Doubles As Ad Sales Continue to Sizzle
By KEVIN J. DELANEYOctober 19, 2006 5:53 p.m.

Google Inc. said third-quarter profit rose 92% and revenue soared 70%, as international operations and the Internet company's own sites boosted its online advertising sales.
Google's stock climbed 7% in after-hours trading, after the company's results showed little sign of the slowing growth in online advertising sales that has afflicted rival Yahoo Inc. lately. Yahoo Tuesday reported a 38% decline in third-quarter net income and lowered its full-year financial forecasts.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., this year has forged a number of deals to extend the reach of its online ad system to other places on the Web. It announced a $1.65 billion agreement to buy video site YouTube Inc., and ad-brokering pacts with others including Dell Inc., News Corp. and Intuit Inc.
Google places the ads -- usually targeted based on keywords such as "Chicago car rental" -- on partner sites and keeps a commission. Some investors view Google's expanding its reach on the Web in this way as a key driver of its future growth.
But ad revenue from Google's own sites, such as its flagship Web search engine, generated 60% of its third-quarter revenue, rising 84% to $1.6 billion from a year earlier compared to a 54% increase in revenue from partner publishers. Google's international sales contributed 44% of its third-quarter revenue, rising from 39% a year earlier. The company has long had a very strong market share in Web search in many markets outside the U.S., and in recent years has pushed to boost overseas revenue through new offices and sales staffs.
CHEAT SHEETS

Read up on what to expect in the earnings reports of other major corporations.
"We had an excellent quarter in all respects, especially including international," said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, in a conference call with analysts.
Google posted net income of $733.4 million, or $2.36 a share, up from $381.2 million, or $1.32 a share, a year earlier. Excluding factors such as stock-based compensation, Google said profit was $2.62 a share, well above the $2.42 a share that Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson First Call forecast on the same basis.
"The numbers were significantly higher than expected and demonstrate that Google continues to outperform the market," said Marianne Wolk, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group, whose firm makes a market in Google shares. While Google traditionally has been strong in the United Kingdom, "you're starting to see momentum throughout the rest of Europe and we think there's also starting to be some traction in Asia, which has not been their stronghold," added Ms. Wolk.
Revenue rose to $2.69 billion from $1.58 billion. Excluding commissions paid to marketing partners, revenue was $1.87 billion, up from $1.05 billion in the year-earlier period.
LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST

Listen to today's edition of the Tech News Briefing, a daily podcast from the Online Journal.• RSS Feed iTunes More info
Google reported results after the close of regular stock-market trading. At 4 p.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, the stock was at $426.06, up $6.75. Shares jumped to $459.74 in after-hours trading.
Investors have been on guard for any signs of slowing growth at Google as it matures, and the company's sales grew slightly more slowly than in previous quarters, though still at a fast clip. The 70% growth in revenue during the third-quarter from a year earlier compared to 79% and 77% in the first and second quarters and 96% in the third quarter of 2005. Google said its spending on capital expenses, such as computer and networking equipment and facilities, would continue to increase at a substantially faster pace than its revenue this year.
Separately, the three music companies that have licensed their content to YouTube received small equity stakes in the company as part of the negotiations. People familiar with the talks said Warner Music Group Corp. Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG's Sony BMG received the equity in lieu, effectively, of cash advances against future revenue. These people characterized the stakes as warrants that would convert to cash when Google's acquisition of YouTube closes.
The equity stakes were reported Thursday by the New York Times, which estimated their collective value at $50 million -- or 3% of YouTube's value in the Google deal. One person familiar with the talks suggested that figure might be too high.

Confronting the Nanotech Health Risks

2006-10-19T06:26:00.000-04:00

Environmental and health risks stemming from nanomaterials are real and need to be addressed head on by both industry and regulatory bodies, experts said this week at a conference.
Lux Research hosted two talks Tuesday on environmental and health safety issues related to nanotechnology here at its Lux Executive Summit, which brings together business people and investors

Speakers did not address specific hazards that could stem from nanomaterials. Rather, they recognized that there are potential risks--some involving public perceptions--and urged business people to address them early in product development, rather than as an afterthought.
Nanotechnology is the science of working with materials at the nanoscale. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide.

But even as these nanomaterials become used in commercial products, there is still not a great deal of understanding of the environmental and health safety risks, said Michael Holman, a Lux Research analyst who specializes in the area.
"We don't know enough," Holman said. "There is a lot of confusion that isn't going to be resolved quickly or easily."
Holman cited the example of fullerenes, a carbon-based molecule that is used in products such as eye cream. One test, meant to measure the impact of disposed fullerenes, found that the substance damaged the brains of largemouth bass.
Later, however, that result was disputed with some researchers arguing that fullerenes could even have a beneficial effect on those fish, he explained.

More data needed Because of a lack of reliable data on safety issues, a panel of experts said that businesses should test for toxicity at every stage of product development. In addition, they urged companies developing new materials to work closely with federal regulatory bodies and academics.
"Environmental and health safety issues are not only part of the business cases for start-up companies, it's fundamental to the business," said Mark Mansour, a partner at law firm Foley & Lardner.
"I've seen companies go through an incredible amount of research and development and investment without consulting regulators. And then you have a business plan that doesn't work," he said.
Regulatory bodies in the U.S. are looking ot fund further research on the health safety and environmental effects from nanomaterials. But right now there aren't any laws or standards in place and efforts to establish them could take years.
A Nanotechnology Environmental and Health Implications Working Group, which includes several government agencies, is now working on a paper outlining research priorities.
One of the first tasks of this group is to define what should be considered nanomaterial, said Norris Alderson, the chairman of that working group and the associate commissioner for science at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ref:www.news.com

Social Intelligence

2006-10-19T00:49:00.000-04:00

The big business of advertisement is getting a new ally, “the social intelligence”, and it is going to hit us.

Everyone Has an IPod

2006-10-18T23:33:00.000-04:00

Why does everyone have an Ipod? Ipod are so restrictive… oh well!! Apple is swing in cash now.

"Apple Inc. reported a 27% increase in its fiscal-fourth-quarter profit on strong back-to-school sales of iPods and Macintosh computers.
However, Apple emphasized that its financial results were preliminary and might be significantly adjusted because of a likely restatement of past financial results. The company has previously identified 15 stock-option grants made between 1997 and 2002 that had grant dates that preceded the approval of those grants, and Apple warned yesterday that the company and its auditors could conclude that a larger number of grant dates than it previously identified were backdated.
The latest results defied concerns among some analysts and investors that the iPod, which dominates the market for MP3 players, was seeing weak sales in the market. The company sold 8.7 million of the devices in the quarter, for $1.56 billion in revenue, up from 6.5 million iPods and $1.21 billion in revenue a year earlier.
Apple's Mac business shined brightly, too. The Cupertino, Calif., company sold 1.6 million Macs, for revenue of $2.21 billion -- its best selling quarter for the computers ever. Apple this year completed one of the most complex technological transitions in its history as it shifted its entire line of computers to microprocessors made by Intel Corp., a move that enabled the company to make faster machines that run at cooler temperatures --nobody ever reads these blog post lol- a crucial factor in the notebook computer market.
The transition seems to have had an especially positive impact on Apple's notebook business. The company's notebook unit sales, propelled by new models of its MacBook line of computers, rose 56% in the quarter from a year earlier, compared with 4% unit growth for desktop Macs. Apple remains a niche player in the overall personal-computer market compared with rival Microsoft Corp., but the company has been waging a fierce battle to persuade Windows users to switch to Macs."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116103005217194248.html?mod=home_whats_news_us

VoIP.... sweet bitter deal

2006-10-18T21:59:00.000-04:00

Since I first heard about it, I tought that it would be the best thing that the internet revolution could bring me, personally. Living away from my family and friends, I valued highly all forms of communication with them. Then, I heard of VOiP. And as my telephone bills went higher and higher, my thoughts about changing to VoIP grew stronger and stronger. The last drop in the bucket came in the form of a $268 bill from BellSouth, that included several phone calls to my daughter studying in London charged at $3 per minute, calls to where BellSouth has blocked the access of discount numbers such as 101 6868. So I started to look at VoIP companies, and my attention was obviously drawned to the one that invests more in advertising: VONAGE.
This company charges $25 at month, a value that includes all national calls and calls to six European countries.... but of course with limitations. One of those limitations, as I found out, was that none of my daughter's telephones (one fixed and one mobile) in London are covered by the "free" rate, and I have to pay 6 cents and 36 cents per minute, respectively. The same price will apply to calls to Portugal, my home country, to where I was able to pay 19 cents a minute through one of those discount lines (101 6868), no matter whether I was calling a fixed or a cell phone. But meanwhile I find out about two more options : Skype - an internet base instant message sistem through which one can even see video images of the person to whom one is talking - and "telephone for free" (712 858 8883) by which one can call any fixed phone in many foreign countries. This process, I assume, involves some form of VoIP, but the site has expired and no information is available. The telephone number works, though. Try it! It's free !!
Vonage also requires that you have a (very) fast internet line, which comes at a cost of $50 or so, even though one also gets, of course, internet access.
The conclusion therefore, is that the internet has brought about a selection of choices that are now open to one 'isolated' expatriate student like me to communicate with long distance relatives, so that I can finally say goodbye to BellSouth and their monopilistic tricks.

VPN

2006-10-18T21:58:00.000-04:00

Virtual Private Network allows a physically remote user to connect to a corporate network and act as if they are actually there. The communication is secure because all the data is encrypted. This is an innovation in the IT world that will allow companies to increase their market and diversify their services. Netgear Prosafe Small Business VPN routers, for example, have VPN capabilities, but VPN clients must also be on the VPN router or gateway. This technology should be a definite consideration for all of us as we enter the business world.

More Comp from Mr. Softee

2006-10-18T21:56:00.000-04:00

Microsoft's (Mr. Softee) has its new improvement to IE which may bring tough times to both Firefox and Google who have made clear strides in formulating a web browser to rival that of IE. IE has gained close to 89% of the market share and with its new improvements may continue to grow.

Some 18 months after Bill Gates pledged to revamp Internet Explorer, Microsoft is ready with the final version of Internet Explorer 7. The new Web browser, which has been in testing for months, is now available for download microsoft's Web site. Microsoft is playing catch-up in many areas. It has added support for Web standards, RSS Web feeds and tabbed browsing. The new browser also offers protection against phishing sites--malicious Web sites designed to trick users into handing over their personal information.
Microsoft has gained back a bit, according to the most recent statistics from OneStat. IE now has 85.9 percent of the market, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since July. Firefox has 11.5 percent of the market, down 1.4 percentage points compared with July. The Mozilla Foundation is getting closer to launch of its own revamp. Firefox 2, which has hit the "release candidate" stage.
Chris Beard, vice president of products for Mozilla, said that Mozilla expects to release the final version 2 of Firefox late this month or early next month. As for IE 7, he said that his organization sees a lot in IE 7 that other modern browsers have had for a while. "We're continuing on our path of how can we continue to improve upon the experience," Beard said.

More encouragement by Microsoft
Microsoft is encouraging even Firefox users to install the IE update, promising them that it won't make IE the default browser--or even ask them if they want to switch. "There are advantages to having it there, even if you are not a daily user," said Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of IE product management.
Earlier, on Wednesday, Yahoo has its own custom version of IE7, which sports Yahoo as the default search engine, Yahoo home pages and a Yahoo toolbar. Microsoft has also offered a tool for businesses that lets them indefinitely block users from getting automatically updated to IE7. Schare declined to say how many businesses have downloaded the tool.

The software maker has primarily been touting the security enhancements that come as part of the new browser. However, Schare said anecdotally, the most popular feature among beta testers has been improved printing of Web pages.
Schare said Microsoft started focusing on trying to make the browser more secure when it updated IE as part of Windows XP Service Pack 2.
"That certainly helped a lot--clearly not enough," Schare said. "We're not done. We've already started thinking about the next one."

Schare said the company is in the planning stages for another update, which is likely some 18 months out. Among the features Microsoft will consider adding are things that it wanted to include this time around, but opted against. Among the features in that camp are a download manager and improved searching within the current Web page.

It will also likely need more security improvements, though it is hard to say at this point what those changes will need to be. With SP2, the focus was on malicious software, while IE 7 is largely focused on social threats.
"We don't yet know what the next one is," Schare said.
It remains to be seen whether that update will come as part of an update to Windows Vista or on its own. "It may line up," Schare said. "It may not. We're willing to have it not line up."

Rivals are not standing still either. The new version of Mozilla adds, among other things, its own anti-phishing abilities, which were co-developed with Google. Beard said Firefox is looking to improve further its lead on patching holes. Already, he said, Mozilla's patches are released in "days, not weeks or months," Beard said. "With (version) two, we're looking to make that hours or minutes."

Indian firms on the rise

2006-10-18T21:54:00.000-04:00

Indian software firms continue posting robust profit as western firms continue to use their services back office support and software development. Wipro Ltd. , India's 3rd largest software exporter by sales said its second quarter profits rose by 46%. The growth of the Indain tech sector is impressive to say the least. Check out the following article that goes into more detail on Wipro's recent success.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116115455241096229.html?mod=OATE

Turning social network traffic into dollars

2006-10-18T21:53:00.000-04:00

This interesting article talks about how popular social websites like MySpace and Facebook are becoming, but the advertisers are sometimes reluctant to flock to them because of the sometimes inappropriate material. Although MySpace and Facebook aren't finding this to be a big problem, they are some of the most traffic websites out there. For example an Australian start up has been finding the advertising dollars a little harder to come by. My personal opinion, I think advertisers see how MySpace and Facebook are dominating the market and wouldn't want to advertise on these start up websites because they aren't going to last too long.

Chinese Government Relaxes Its Total Ban on Wikipedia

2006-10-18T20:34:00.000-04:00

It is good news that the Chinese government last week appeared to cancel the block on the English version of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. I used Wikipedia for my study and it is very useful to explain some professional terms. Most of these professional terms come from some professional literature, so the explanation for these professional terms is very exact. In addition, the native language of most of its contributors is English, or they are very familiar with English, so there are fewer misunderstandings in the English version of Wikipedia than in the English version of other online dictionaries which I used in China.

Why does the Chinese government still block the Chinese version of Wikipedia? Different people have different opinion. In my opinion, it is not because Chinese government wants to use the way to prevent Chinese people from getting more information about all over the world. Or else, Chinese government can also continue to block the English version of Wikipedia. And now, the information and communication technology has had a large department in China. By online, telephone and other ways, we can get all information about all over the world conveniently and it is difficult to block any information to China. More and more Chinese people get good education and they have knowledge and capacity to tell what is correct and what is wrong. But how can one person make a correct judgment? I think the most important thing is that he or she must get full and all-sides information. If the information he or she gets is not enough, it is not possible for him/her to make a correct judgment. It is not smart to block the part of information. I guess that the reason that Chinese version of Wikipedia doesn’t get the approval of Chinese government is the Chinese version of Wikipedia is not suitable as an online encyclopedia. What is encyclopedia? The English version of Wikipedia defines as a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, the articles in Wikipedia shouldn’t be similar to common news with authors’ likes and dislikes. The contributors for Wikipedia should have an equitable and adiaphorous attitude. I don’t think that the Chinese version of Wikipedia has met the requirement.

Anyway, I am very glad to know that my friends in China can use the English version of Wikipedia.

Microsoft also gets into the e-Book initiative

2006-10-18T18:51:00.000-04:00

We recently got some postings about the e-book initiative carries out by Sony. Microsoft is now following the same path in another attempt of the company to get rid of its large Windows dependency for business success. Have a look at the following article published on the Financial Times about this new adventure.

Cheers,

Angel.

Microsoft in digital book deal

By Rebecca Knight in Boston
Published: October 18 2006 03:26 Last updated: October 18 2006 03:26

Microsoft on Tuesday took another step into Google’s terrain by announcing a deal with a digital scanning company to produce digital books.

Kirtas Technologies, which makes high-speed scanners and the software to edit and organise books, will scan works for Microsoft’s Live Book Search Web-based application. The books will become available early next year.

The Windows Live book project is part of a broader push by Microsoft to make up ground lost to Google and other search groups.

Windows Live is intended as a response to an array of popular web-based applications, such as Google’s e-mail, online mapping and spreadsheet programmes, which have threatened to unseat Microsoft’s dominant position in desktop software.

Last year, Google announced plans to put online 15m volumes from the libraries of Stanford, Michigan and Harvard universities, in addition to the New York Public Library – and has since been engulfed in a storm of controversy over copyright issues.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new partnership to scan books from Cornell University’s library. Microsoft has already agreed partnerships with the British Library and libraries at the University of California and the University of Toronto.

It has sought to avoid the criticism directed at Google’s project by limiting its initiative to books whose copyrights have lapsed and are now in the public domain. The company has also created a tool for publishers wishing to make in-copyright material available.

Microsoft’s agreement with Kirtas will considerably increase the pace of the digitisation process. Kirtas has developed the fastest robotic scanner in the world that allows up to 2,400 pages to be digitally scanned and stored per hour. This represents a speed of about eight minutes per book.
Lotfi Belkhir, chief executive officer of Kirtas Technologies, said his company’s speed and quality will give Microsoft a competitive edge. “We deliver a speed and quality that neither Google nor any other company can match,” he said.

Additional reporting by Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Sansa Rhapsody Player

2006-10-18T15:08:00.000-04:00

There is a new player well relatively new that is loaded with potential problems. I recently bought an Mp3 player but it was a different brand. So, I think its good to know about the player since they dont seem to last that long. Anyways, there has been some complaints with this player. First, half of the player comes with music already installed in the player. That could be a hassle since everyone is going to have different tastes in music. Also, the article points out that upon connecting this player to your computer it automatically starts to install music into your player. The article also mentions that separate software is needed that confused the writer of the article to be confused. Personally, I have not tried this player, but I believe that it would be nice to get away from buying the IPOD stuff. The player that I recently bought was not an IPOD, and I have no complaints about it.

iPod Virus

2006-10-18T15:05:00.000-04:00

Apple: Some iPods infected with virus

Less than 1% of video players made after Sept. 12 infected with virus affecting Windows users.

October 18 2006: 2:23 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A number of video iPods are infected with a virus, Apple said on its support site Wednesday, and was quick to take aim at archrival Microsoft for the problem.

The RavMonE.exe virus, which affects only computers running Microsoft's (down $0.07 to $28.37, Charts) Windows operating system, is on less than 1 percent of video iPods shipped after Sept. 12, Apple said.

Taking aim at the iPod

It is unknown exactly how many video iPods are affected.

"So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem," Apple said on its support site. "The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free."

Apple has issued instructions on removing the virus - which can be done with free anti-virus software - available on its Web site.

In addition to Microsoft programs, Symantec (Charts)'s Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee (Charts) anti-virus can be used, according to the site.

The iPods were infected with the virus at one of Apple's contract manufacturers.

The virus does not affect Mac customers.

"As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it," Apple said on its site.

An Apple spokesman declined further comment.

Shares of Apple (up $0.67 to $74.96, Charts) rose modestly Wednesday afternoon.

Avnet, Microsoft Team On ERP Solutions

2006-10-18T14:55:00.000-04:00

Avnet, Microsoft Team On ERP Solutions
By Jennifer Lawinski, CRN11:35 AM EDT Wed. Oct. 18, 2006

Avnet Technology Solutions is partnering with Microsoft to deliver ERP solutions based on Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software.

The solutions available to VARs will integrate JD Edwards EnterpriseOne software with Microsoft platforms, including SQL Server 2005 and 2000, Microsoft Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. Avnet also will offer partner education, sales and marketing support, financing, managed services and implementation services.

For more experienced ERP solution providers, Avnet will offer marketing, integration and financing support. And for resellers new to ERP, the distributor will do more integration work to bring ERP to the solution provider's customer base.

"It's just a natural evolution of the value model we have on behalf of our partners and helping to make everything more simplified ... and to give them choices that are consistent and reliable and that they can feel good about," said Scott Abbott, vice president of enterprise applications for Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. "What's nice is that our reseller partners, both the ones that are currently reselling JD Edwards [and new ones], is that they have a more specific solution thanks to the Microsoft partnership we're bringing about."

Tony Brackett, president of The iConsortium, a JD Edwards EnterpriseOne solution provider in New Boston, N.H., said the Avnet-Microsoft alliance makes a lot of sense. Midmarket customers looking for Oracle's ERP software are typically running Windows platforms, and for those that aren't, iConsortium usually recommends migrating their databases to SQL Server, he said.
"[The customers] realized that their internal skill sets are better-suited for SQL, because so much of their business is running on it," Brackett said. "For us, this is fantastic. Not so much for opportunities to implement, but it gives us six more items on our menu list for the customer to take advantage of. It's what we've been looking for, in that sense."

The agreement with Microsoft comes about a year after Avnet began offering JD Edwards EnterpriseOne to its customers.

"When we decided to go into business together, we knew it would take us a few months to really button things up," Avnet's Abbot said. "ERP is a hard sale. It takes time. We're not kidding anybody. It's the most important decision that any enterprise makes, SMB or not."

Siemens Announces Traffic sign recognition technology

2006-10-18T14:41:00.000-04:00

Brandon Hill - October 16, 2006

Siemens puts a stop to "Officer, I didn't realize I was going that fast" excuses
It seems as though technology is further creeping into our automobiles and there's no end in sight for how far it will go. We've got semi-automatic transmissions like BMW's SMG, VAG's DSG and Ferrari's F1 which can out-shift a traditional manual transmission, lane departure systems which vibrate your seat if you drift out of your lane, adaptive cruise control and the Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) which can steer your vehicle for you at highway speeds. And we can't forget Toyota's Intuitive Park Assist found on the new Lexus LS460 which can park your vehicle.
Siemens is looking to add yet another technology item to vehicles in a bid to make them safer through automation. The company's new Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) system scans the road ahead and can recognize road signs. For example, when used in conjunction with adaptive cruise control, the TSR system could recognize a speed limit of 65MPH, warn the driver if he/she is driving too fast and automatically match the vehicle to the posted speed limit without driver input.
Siemens says that the system will soon go into production although it did not mention which auto manufacturers would adopt the system. If history is any indication, we'll start seeing systems like this employed on high-end Mercedes, BMW and Lexus models and then later see them filter down to "lesser" vehicles. We've already seen adaptive cruise control systems filter down to $30,000 Toyota Avalons so the technology encroachment is slowly coming to the masses.

Yahoo Faces Pressure From Rivals

2006-10-18T13:11:00.000-04:00

This WSJ article describes the shift in online advertising and its major players. Up until the past 5 years, Yahoo and Google dominated the market. Now sites catering to the younger generations such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube are all growing at a much faster pace in terms of advertising revenue. The increased pressure that Yahoo is facing to stay as one of the major internet advertising players is growing by the day. Google continues to grow more and more by acquiring new upcoming sites and bettering them in the long run. Unless some changes in Yahoo's acquisition practices and intuitions occur, one has to wonder how much longer it can be considered a major competitor to Google and the empire it is building.

Gaming Consoles moving Online

2006-10-18T12:55:00.000-04:00

Battleground for Consoles Moves Online

By JOHN MARKOFF and MATT RICHTEL - Published: October 18, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17 — Sony has prevailed in the game wars so far, with consoles judged largely on their power and graphics, and a big library of games. But as it prepares to introduce its PlayStation 3, the battlefield is expanding.

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Test driving the PlayStation 3 at an expo in New York.

Having spotted Microsoft’s Xbox 360 a one-year head start, Sony must also show that its new machine can hold its own in Internet-based gaming, its rival’s sweet spot.

With the arrival of its PlayStation 3 less than a month away, Sony is embarking on a worldwide marketing campaign that will collide directly with an equally ambitious effort by Microsoft. And both will face a challenge from the Nintendo Wii.

“This is the start of a long-term battle,” said David Cole, president of DFC Intelligence, a market research firm based in San Diego.

Sony will contend that the PlayStation 3’s powerful hardware makes it the best investment, even at a higher price. The PlayStation 3’s base price will be $499, compared with $299 for the Xbox 360 and $249 for the Wii.

Thought the class gamers would like this one ; )

Cheers,
Philip

India Report:Data Theft and IT Security for Outsourcing Industry

2006-10-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

IT Act: Rs 5 crore fine for data leak

Any company found leaking sensitive information will be liable to pay damages of up to Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million) to the affected party, says an amendment to the Information Technology Act, 2000. This will cover all sensitive data or information which a company may own, possess, control, or operate.
The decision of the Union Cabinet to amend the Act has come at a time when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured investors abroad about India's sensitivity to their concerns on data theft.
The scope of Section 72 of the Act is also being expanded to provide for criminal liability in case of leak of information.
"This will prevent any intermediary and service provider, that has secured any material or information from a user entering into a contract with it, from passing it on to others without the consent of the user. Violations will invite imprisonment for a term of up to two years or fine of up to Rs 5 lakh (Rs 500,000) or both," an official of the department of information technology said.
The Cabinet has also approved a proposal to amend Section 43 of the IT Act, under which a person involved in hacking of computers will be liable for punishment of up to two years or fine of up to 5 lakh or both.
The department of information technology is also keen to reduce crime like e-commerce frauds through digital signatures and impersonation such as phishing, and identity theft.
It has proposed to insert a new section in the Indian Penal Code, under which the punishment for identity theft may be extended to two years and a fine, while the penalty for impersonation may be extended to 5 years and a fine.
Similarly, publication of sexually explicit material through computers or any other communication instrument will result in imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million). Repeated violations will result in imprisonment of up to seven years and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh.
The government has also proposed new rules for electronic signatures.
Further, the strength of the Cyber Appellate Tribunal is being increased to three from one member at present.

Ref:www.rediff.com

Comment on Sony Trying to Make Books Obsolete

2006-10-18T01:32:00.000-04:00

I would like to know why e-books flopped the first time around. Also, if it is possible to copy pictures, texts, and music to a memory card, then how will publishers and authors profit more from this? One person can purchase text on this new device and can send it to five other friends since it allows a person to read the e-book on a total of six machines.
What happens when the person is done reading it? They cannot sell it or give it away, so then how many books will be stored on this device? Will textbook publishers also use this device? If so, will spending so much money on a book, and not being able to sell it back be worth it? I am uncertain if this innovation will flop again, but with all of these new devices, it seems like this too will become a very common tool to have around. However, I am very certain that if it does become popular, people should expect new stylish cases for the leatherette covers.

SMART Houses

2006-10-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

After today's in class discussion, I thought you guys might find this interesting. My husband and I bought a unit in this building about 2 years ago in Brickell. It was considered the first of its kind, as it is a SMART house. We are very excited to see it when it is finally built!

"Featuring I.R.I.S (information. resource .interactive. solution) interactive touch panels in EVERY residence, 500 BRICKELL is positioned, in the ever-competitive condominium market as having truly exceptional values and features that will attract today’s discerning buyers."

Enjoy!
Kazmira

Doctors Slow to Adopt E-Records for Patients

2006-10-17T11:05:00.000-04:00

After watching the video today in class (on IT in the future, focusing on the medical field), I remembered reading about electronic records for the patients, privacy issues, and other things related to where this technology is heading. The article was in the Washington Post last Thursday, October 12th. I've attached the link to the title, so feel free to check it out.

The IT Profession: 2010

2006-10-17T10:54:00.000-04:00

This article discusses the issue that IT professionals in the US have a unclear future because the role of outsourcing, the H1 visa debates in Congress and India!!!.
"Here's a certainty: IT workers will have to adapt to stay employed in 2010. Among other things, this special report aims to help you place your career bets, show you which skills will be hot and teach you how to turn globalization to your advantage" said Ellen Fanning a special project editor at Computerworld. Another issue is keeping up to date with all the advances and changes.

Luis Pellerano

Chinese Government Relaxes Total Ban on Information

2006-10-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

The Chinese Government decided last week to stop blocking access to Wikipedia Encyclopedia online in English. The version in Chinese is still blocked, but many people see this as a step in the right direction. It is reported that access to many controversial subjects are now available to the people in China written in English, however some articles are still being blocked. There are people in China that say some access is better than no access. It is unclear why the Government has decided to allow some access to English versions while still blocking the Chinese version from being accessed. However, I would guess it is because the majority of the public may not be able to read English, at least the uneducated people in the country. The Chinese Government must believe that if the uneducated people in the country have access to more information, they may choose to not be as controlled. I am not sure whether or not China will loosen its grip on information control in the country, but allowing at least limited access to information may be an indicator that the regulations will be diminishing.

New Sony Reader makes books obsolete ...

2006-10-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

Here is an interesting article from the NYT about the new Sony Reader ... trying to make books obsolete.

Enjoy!

Tabea

State of the Art
Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete

“The market for downloadable books will grow by 400 percent in each of the next two years, to over $25 billion by 2008,” predicted the keynote speaker at the 2001 Women’s National Book Association meeting. “Within a few years after the end of this decade, e-books will be the preponderant delivery format for book content.”

The Sony Reader uses a new technology that renders text on a screen with more crispness. Its battery is good for 7,500 “page turns” and the size of the text is adjustable.
Whoops.

The great e-book fantasy burst shortly after that speech, along with the rest of the dot-com bubble. In 2003, Barnes & Noble shut its e-book store, Palm sold its e-book business to a Web site and most people left the whole idea for dead.

Not everybody, however. Some die-hards at Sony still believe that, properly designed, the e-book has a future. Their solution is the Sony Reader, a small, sleek, portable screen that will be introduced this month in some malls, at Borders bookstores and at sonystyle.com for $350.

E-books may have flopped the first time around, but you can’t deny that they offer some intriguing advantages. You can add dozens of them to your luggage without adding any more weight or bulk. You can adjust the type size. You can search the whole book in seconds, or insert an infinite number of bookmarks. No trees are destroyed to make e-books. And you can read during lunch without having to prop open your novel with a dangerously full can of soda.

If you’re sold on the idea, then you’ll find a lot to like in the Sony Reader — and a few things to dislike.

It’s a handsome half-inch-thick nine-ounce slab, a bit smaller than 5 inches by 7 inches, “bound” in a protective leatherette cover. You can turn pages individually, or jump ahead 10 percent of the book at a time. A “mark” button produces a visual dog-ear on the page corner.

What distinguishes Sony’s effort from all the failed e-book readers of years gone by, however, is the screen.

The Reader employs a remarkable new display technology from a company called E Ink. Sandwiched between layers of plastic film are millions of transparent, nearly microscopic liquid-filled spheres. White and black particles float inside them, as though inside the world’s tiniest snow globes. Depending on how the electrical charge is applied to the plastic film, either the black or white particles rise to the top of the little spheres, forming crisp patterns of black and white.

The result looks like ink on light gray paper. The “ink” is so close to the surface of the screen, it looks as if it’s been printed there. The reading experience is pleasant, natural and nothing like reading a computer screen.

There’s no backlight, however; you can read only by ambient light. Sony would probably argue that this trait makes the Reader even more like a traditional book, but it also means that you can’t read in bed with the lights off, as you can with a laptop or palmtop.

On the other hand, once those microspheres have formed the image of a page, they stay put without consuming any power. Amazingly enough, that means that you don’t have to turn the Reader off, ever. When you’re done for the night, just lay it on your bedside table; the current page remains on the screen without draining any battery power. (According to Sony, one prototype Reader in Japan has been displaying the same page for three years on a single charge.) Every instinct in your body will scream against leaving your gadget turned on all the time, but you’ll get over it.

The only time the Reader uses electricity, in fact, is when you actually turn a page. One charge is good for 7,500 page turns. That’s enough power to get you through “The Da Vinci Code” 16 times (electrical power, anyway). You can recharge the battery either from its power cord or from a computer’s U.S.B. jack.

The Reader can also display digital photos — they look surprisingly good, considering they’re being depicted using only four shades of gray — and play music files (noncopy-protected MP3 or AAC format) through headphones. With a good deal of preparation, you could even read along as the same audio book plays.

There are two ways to load up the Reader. You can copy your texts, photos and music to a memory card (Memory Stick or SD), which goes into a slot on the left side. That’s also how you can expand the Reader’s built-in storage (64 megabytes, enough for 80 books).

The other option is to import files into a somewhat buggy Windows program called Sony Connect. It’s the home base for the Reader in much the way iTunes is the home base for the iPod, although Sony Connect requires you to drag files manually; it doesn’t offer automatic synchronizing with the Reader.

This software is also the gateway to the Reader’s online bookstore. The catalog includes more than 10,000 books from a variety of publishers. Some, like “Freakonomics,” are priced like hardcover editions ($16); others, like “The Devil Wears Prada,” are priced like the paperbacks ($8). If you buy a Reader before the end of the year, Sony will include a coupon for $50 worth of books.

These books are copy-protected, of course. You can read them on a total of six machines, counting Readers that you own and Windows computers. You can’t give away or sell a book when you’re done with it, much less return it to the store.

Singing the Praise of the Non-Nano (Oct. 5, 2006) The Reader also accepts standard plain text files and Word documents (only basic formatting survives), which means that you can help yourself to the 19,000 free, out-of-copyright books at Gutenberg.org. The Windows software can also download Web news stories (RSS feeds), which you can copy to the reader for daily train reading. PDF documents open on the Reader, too, but most are too big for the Reader screen, so the text winds up shrunk down to illegibility.

That’s not the only fine print, though. The Sony Reader has a few kinks to be ironed out.

Like an Etch A Sketch, the Reader’s screen has to wipe away each page before drawing the next one. Unfortunately, the result is a one-second white-black-white blink that quickly becomes annoying.

Tapping the “size” button cycles through three font sizes; holding it down rotates the page 90 degrees. The largest type is soothing to over-40 eyes, but also means that you have to turn pages more often, enduring even more of those distracting double blinks.

Sony has dreamed up some fairly baffling controls, too — not an easy feat on what should be a very simple machine. For example, the next/previous page buttons are at 2 and 8 o’clock on a dime-size desk. A circular control might make sense if it had buttons at all four points of the compass — but only two?

There’s no search function, video or clickable links, either. So much for those key e-book advantages.

Still, Sony got the big stuff right: the feel of the machine, the pleasantness of reading, the clarity of type. It’s not the only company hoping to resurrect the dream of electronic books, either. A spinoff from Royal Philips Electronics, iRex Technologies, sells a “work in progress” called the iLiad, which uses the same E Ink technology but offers wireless networking, a bigger screen, 16 shades of gray and a touch screen for scribbling notes, for $700. And last month, bloggers discovered that Amazon.com is working on an e-book reader (and store) of its own. (Search Google for “Amazon Kindle.”)

Is that it, then? Is the paper book doomed? Was it only a transitional gadget, a placeholder that came between stone tablets and e-books?

Not any time soon. The Sony Reader is an impressive achievement, and an important step toward a convenient alternative to bound books. It will make certain niche groups very happy: gadget freaks, lawyers with massive document stashes, doctors and pilots who check hefty reference texts, high school students with 35-pound backpacks and anyone who likes to read by the pool for 20 weeks at a time.

The masses, however, may continue to prefer the more established portable-document format. Those older reading machines never run out of power, cost about 2 percent as much and don’t break when dropped. You know: p-books.

Microsoft Tries to Raise 'Candiosity,'

2006-10-17T10:27:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Tries to Raise 'Candiosity,'
Aims at Kid Market with 'Viva Piñata'

By CHRISTINA BINKLEY and SUZANNE VRANICA
October 17, 2006; Page B1

Fox Television last month began airing a new Saturday morning cartoon called "Viva Piñata," about a world where colorful piñatas compete to be chosen for children's birthday parties. But the real force behind the TV show -- and an onslaught of affiliated ventures -- is Microsoft Corp., which hopes the piñatas can help it crack open the secret to selling more Xbox 360 game consoles to young children.

The Silicon Valley giant has created a broad viral-marketing strategy involving a team of corporate partners to augment the holiday-season release of the "Viva Piñata" Xbox 360 videogame. The TV show -- whose half-hour time slot is fully paid for by 4Kids Entertainment Inc., the New York company behind the Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh kids' trading card and toy phenomena -- is part of that broader strategy. The show and the game, both of which the company helped launch, represent Microsoft's first foray into marketing Xbox games to small children ages 6 to 11.

Characters from "Viva Piñata," a new animated TV program for children.

The broad push behind the piñatas is now coming into full view. New TV ads for game and the Xbox 360 start airing this week that feature a purple and green piñata horse named Horstachio trying to persuade a group of children to let him down from a tree. The segments are part of Xbox 360's big holiday campaign that promotes game titles and the console on TV, in print and online.

And in the New York showroom of Playmates Toys Inc. on Wednesday, 70 or so tradable Viva Piñata figurines and a hand-held electronic game -- made by Playmates -- will be unveiled. The toys offer more avenues for marketing partnerships that would connect Viva Piñata with kids when they step away from their TVs and are designed to link the components of a piñata universe that has been carefully concocted to boost the videogame.

It's all a sharp contrast to past Xbox efforts, which have often been dark and violent. After years of focusing primarily on young adult males ranging from teens to thirtysomethings, Microsoft wants to broaden Xbox's market by going after kids, women and even people over 40. It's a risky move because it could alienate Xbox 360's core audience.

Yet children ages 6 to 11 represent a promising market for Xbox growth and one that Microsoft has so far missed out on. The company is counting on Viva Piñata to expand the customer base of its Rare videogame development division, which developed such games as Donkey Kong 64 and GoldenEye 007 prior to being purchased by Microsoft in 2002. "The younger audience is certainly our future business because they turn into our hard-core gamers," says Ed Ventura, Microsoft's vice president of franchise development.

"We need to lighten the brand up and make it more accessible," says Mike Harris, global planning director at the San Francisco office of Interpublic Group's McCann Worldgroup, one of the ad firms behind the global Xbox ad effort.

The campaign is the first salvo in what is likely to be one of the biggest holiday ad battles in years. Xbox 360 ads will begin airing just weeks before rivals Sony Corp.'s PlayStation and Nintendo Co. launch massive ad efforts to hype their new consoles, the PS3 and Wii, respectively. Microsoft plans to spend about $50 million on its holiday push, according to a person familiar with the matter. Analysts and ad executives expect videogame makers to spend about $100 million between them promoting consoles and game titles during the fourth quarter.

Sony alone will spend about $150 million on its PS3 ad campaign over the next year, according to people familiar with the matter. The ad push, via Omnicom Group's TBWA\Chiat\Day, will break next month and will carry the tagline: "Play Beyond." PS3 hits store shelves Nov. 17 while Wii goes on sale two days later.

Horstachio's starring role in the Xbox 360 ad campaign is a direct assault on Nintendo's territory, which has dominated games for young children. "Clearly Nintendo has owned that space," says Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for Microsoft Interactive Entertainment. "But we are now going after that space."

After buying the concept from private designers, Microsoft developed Viva Piñata, creating characters that would appeal to boys, girls and their parents alike. Their colors are vibrant. They have personalities and flaws. They're all based on animals and have wacky names like Franklin Fizzlybear and Langston Lickatoad. Most piñatas love to go to children's birthday parties so they work to raise their "candiosity" in order to be invited. They plant things and grow lush gardens.

In the game on both the Web and Xbox, kids will build their own Viva Piñata worlds, plant gardens, and grow plants that will attract or repel piñata characters. On the Web, kids will be able to play in each others' worlds.

The role of the toys is to tie together the Viva Piñata universe with technology and people's innate urge to collect stuff. Playmates Toys is a Costa Mesa, Calif., toymaker best known for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well as its Amazing Amanda dolls, which use voice-recognition technology and animatronics to create virtual daughters for girls.

When it comes out in about a year, the electronic Viva Piñata toy will serve as a game that can be played alone, plugged into a computer to connect with the Web, or with other hand-helds via infrared beams. It's expected to cost about $45 in stores.

The piñata figurines -- priced from $6.99 to $14.99 -- are an electronic-age equivalent of Pokemon cards. The idea is to plug them into the hand-held device to download and upload "powers" and other attributes that can be spent in the piñata game world.

The hand-held device will also contain a bar-code reader that will be used to draw kids and their parents into stores. If kids scan the bar codes of various retail items, like breakfast cereals, or even in-store posters in places like fast-food restaurants, they'll be able to get virtual goodies -- powers and other attributes for piñata characters -- for their toys and games.

"We're really connecting the dots of the physical world with the digital world where they haven't been connected before," says Lou Novak, president of Playmates, a unit of Hong Kong-based Playmates Holdings Ltd.

The television show is the first line in this marketing strategy. Beyond making kids familiar with the piñata universe, it includes clues and hints that kids can use to play the game. The TV creators say they have been careful not to violate federally imposed restraints on embedding advertising in children's television; hints and clues about the game are not deemed advertisements.

When Microsoft approached 4Kids about 18 months ago, 4Kids Chairman and Chief Executive Al Kahn says he was attracted to the combination of a TV show and videogame, which could meet kids in two major entertainment zones. Mr. Kahn, Mr. Novak and Microsoft's Mr. Ventura each say they aim to make Viva Piñata a minieconomy worth billions of dollars in annual sales. "We're trying to build a world," says Mr. Ventura.

Even so, Xbox's new strategy isn't without peril. By going broader, Xbox could dilute the brand, say gaming and ad experts. "It's very risky for them to spread themselves over a broader market," says Kelly O'Keefe, director of executive education at Virginia Commonwealth University's Ad Center. "They risk having the young adult males saying 'this isn't our brand,'" he adds.

Microsoft's advertising representatives say that they aren't worried. "We knew all the challenges," adds Mr. Harris from McCann. It's about "being more inclusive."

Write to Christina Binkley at christina.binkley@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com

Microsoft limits Vista transfers

2006-10-17T01:43:00.000-04:00

Under changes to Microsoft's licensing terms, buyers of retail copies of Vista will only be able to transfer their software to a new machine once. If they want to move their software a second time, they will have to buy a new copy of the operating system.
In the past, those who bought a retail copy of Windows needed to uninstall it from any machine before moving it to another machine, but there was no limit to how many times this could be done.
"It was something that had been abused from a piracy perspective before," said Shanen Boettcher, a general manager in Microsoft's Windows Vista unit. "We're just being clear it's one move from machine to machine that you are licensed for."
The software company will use its antipiracy programs, including its recently announced Software Protection Platform, to enforce the new changes, Boettcher said.
Separate rules apply for the versions of Windows installed on new PCs, which is how most people get their copy of the software, Boettcher said. In most cases, copies of Windows purchased on a new PC cannot legally be transferred.
The license changes also apply to virtualization, in which a computer runs multiple operating systems, or multiple copies of the same operating system, at the same time. Customers can only transfer the copy of Windows once, including a transfer from one physical machine to a virtual machine, or from a virtual machine on one PC to a virtual machine on another PC.
"Virtualization is a new technology," Boettcher said. "We are going to learn more about the use cases as we move forward."
People who have specific questions can call customer support, he said.
Microsoft is also making some other changes as far as virtualization goes. Although any Windows version can serve as the primary, or host, operating system, only the Business and Ultimate versions of Vista can run as guest operating systems in virtualization. In Windows XP, each virtual instance of the OS required a separate license, but there were no restrictions on which versions could act as guests.

Boettcher said that Microsoft has heard some concerns regarding virtual machine issues, but doesn't think the license changes represent a threat to Vista sales. "It hasn't come up as any kind of a blocker for adoption," he said.

Ref:www.news.com(CNET)

Digital age may bring total recall in future

2006-10-17T00:54:00.000-04:00

This is something cool. A software engineer invented a device that could potentially remember every detail about your memory. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to remember everything that happened in the past years from now. It's amazing how innovative some technologies are. Take a look at the article.

IT Privacy at Work

2006-10-17T00:45:00.000-04:00

Touching on some of the other postings regarding privacy and our rights, this article provides some interesting information regarding workplace IT privacy. Take a look...

Employers want to be sure their employees are doing a good job, but employees don't want their every sneeze or trip to the water cooler logged. That's the essential conflict of workplace monitoring.
New technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees' jobs, especially on telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are using the Internet. Such monitoring is virtually unregulated. Therefore, unless company policy specifically states otherwise (and even this is not assured), your employer may listen, watch and read most of your workplace communications.
Recent surveys have found that a majority of employers monitor their employees. They are motivated by concern over litigation and the increasing role that electronic evidence plays in lawsuits and government agency investigations. A 2005 survey by the American Management Association found that three-fourths of employers monitor their employees' web site visits in order to prevent inappropriate surfing. And 65% use software to block connections to web sites deemed off limits for employees. About a third track keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. Just over half of employers review and retain electronic mail messages. Over 80% of employers disclose their monitoring practices to employees. And most employers have established policies governing Internet use, including e-mail use (84%) and personal Internet use (81%). For additional findings from the AMA's 2005 survey, visit www.amanet.org/research/pdfs/EMS_summary05.pdf.

-Howard Chase

Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon

2006-10-16T22:18:00.000-04:00

This is a survey conducted by the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers Magazine. Several specialists tried to predict which types of technology will be available and/or developed some years from now. Being an earlier adopter of technology, I found this article very interesting, questions such as “Will household robotics be widely adopted?” have the following answers: Unlikely 17.8% , Equal chances 29.5% Likely 48.8% and “When is this likely to occur? 10 years or less 16.1% 11 to 20 years 50%”. According to this survey, it seems that “The Jetsons” era is far away from happening… So if you were thinking about getting a robotic maid, wait for the next 15 years or so...

Stolen cell phones give thieves ear bashing

2006-10-16T21:59:00.000-04:00

Stolen cell phones give thieves ear bashing
Monthly Remote XT service backs up then destroys data, sounds alarm

LONDON - A new service that makes mobile phones emit a piercing electronic scream if stolen and automatically blocks access to sensitive data was launched in Britain on Monday.
The product, called Remote XT after the company that created it, is designed for application on smart handsets.
It is primarily targeted at the high-end of the market, typically business-users who may hold confidential data, such as emails, on their phones.
"By making mobiles unusable to anyone but the rightful owner the phones become worthless and we will see the market for stolen handsets stamped out once and for all," said Mark Whiteman, managing director of Remote XT.
"Theft-proof phones spell disaster for the huge criminal industry that has profited from mobile theft for too long," he said in a statement.
With the Remote XT security package, which costs subscribers 9.99 pounds a month, a signal is sent to the phone as soon as it is reported stolen. All the phone's data --- like contact numbers, emails or images -- is wiped and an ear piercing alarm also sounds.
Until now network providers were able to disable stolen phones from being used but could not necessarily provide data from being accessed.
The software, which backs up any wiped data, can also be used to scan for viruses as the latest generation of phones increasingly has capabilities similar to those offered on laptop computers.
About 700,000 mobile phones are reported stolen each year, although many will actually have been lost and many are not smart phones -- devices which integrate applications such as Internet access or GPS navigation software -- in addition to telephone functions.
The industry body charged with tackling mobile phone crime said any step aimed at deterring theft was to be welcomed.
"Anything that adds an additional level of security, we will encourage," said Jack Wraith, chief executive of Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF).
MICAF represents mobile network operators in Britain, some high

Reuters opens virtual news bureau in Second Life

2006-10-16T20:10:00.000-04:00

Back to the S.L. isuue, the following article appears today in the news, seems that SL is becoming an important tool for all kind of companies.
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Reuters Group Plc is opening a news bureau in the simulation game Second Life this week, joining a race by corporate name brands to take part in the hottest virtual world on the Internet.
Starting on Wednesday, Reuters plans to begin publishing text, photo and video news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real world readers who visit a Reuters news site at: http://secondlife.reuters.com/
Created by Linden Lab in San Francisco, Second Life is the closest thing to a parallel universe existing on the Internet. Akin to the original city-building game SimCity, Second Life is a virtual, three-dimensional world where users create and dress up characters, buy property and interact with other players.
THE 21st CENTURY IN PICTURES Global Issues: View Slideshow
More than 900,000 users have signed up to build homes, form neighborhoods and live out alternative versions of their lives in the 3D, computer-generated world. Players spend around US$350,000 a day on average, or a rate of $130 million a year. Usage is growing in rapid double-digit terms each month.
Players buy and sell goods and services using a virtual currency, known as Linden Dollars. An online marketplace allows users to convert the currency into real U.S. dollars, enabling users to earn real money from their activities.
Adam Pasick, a Reuters' media correspondent based in London, will serve as the news organization's first virtual bureau chief, using a personal avatar, or animated character, called "Adam Reuters," in keeping with the game's naming system.
"As strange as it might seem, it's not that different from being a reporter in the real world," Pasick said. "Once you get used to it -- it becomes very much like the job I have been doing for years."
Car maker Toyota, music label Sony BMG, computer maker Sun Microsystems, and technology news company Cnet are among the companies taking part in Second Life. Adidas and American Apparel sell clothes and accessories for people to dress their avatars. Starwood Hotels has built a virtual version of "aloft," a new hotel chain it plans to open in the real world in 2008.
Reuters will have journalists reporting and writing financial and cultural stories within and about Second Life as part of the London-based company's strategy to reach new audiences with the latest digital technologies.
"In Second Life, we're making Reuters part of a new generation," Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said in a statement. "We're playing an active role in this community by bringing the outside world into Second Life and vice versa."
Second Life citizens can stay tuned to the latest headlines by using a feature called the Reuters News Center, a mobile device that users can carry inside the virtual environment. Stories will focus on both the fast-growing economy and culture of Second Life and also include links to Reuters news feeds from the outside world, ranging from Baghdad to Wall Street.
Pasick said Reuters was not bending any editorial rules to operate in a world that blends fiction with reality.
THE 21st CENTURY IN PICTURES Global Issues: View Slideshow
"Being unbiased, being accurate, being fast, all the things that Reuters strives for, they hold true in just about any environment in which you would want to report the news," he said.
Residents of Second Life who read a Reuters story that interests them can, with the click of a button, go to a community center called Reuters Atrium to meet others to discuss the latest events in both the real and virtual worlds.
(Read an interview with Pasick at: http://tinyurl.com/yfnswt)
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

India:Some happenings on the IT Front

2006-10-16T19:35:00.000-04:00

With incidents of data pilferage threatening India's image as an outsourcing destination, the government on Monday approved amendments in the IT Act, 2000 to check information theft and online frauds.
The decision at the Union Cabinet's meeting follows Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's assurance to investors abroad that India was sensitive to their concerns about data theft and would plug the loopholes.
"Concerns have been raised both within the country as well as by the customers abroad regarding adequacy of data protection and privacy laws in the country," Parliamentary Affairs Minister P R Dasmunsi said, while briefing reporters on the Cabinet meeting.
"A need is, therefore, felt to strengthen the legislation pertaining to data protection and privacy," he said, adding that security practices and procedures would be prescribed to be followed by organisations and to enquire personal information of customers.
The Amendment in the IT Act, 2000 would be presented in Parliament in the coming winter session, he said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had last week, while visiting London, assured British investors of India's excellent standards for information protection. The reassurance came in the wake of a UK-based channel's allegations about data theft from Indian call centres.
Further, the amendments are aimed at preventing computer misuse like video voyeurism, identity theft, e-commerce frauds like phishing, frauds on online auction sites, sending offensive emails and multimedia offences, Dasmunsi said.
The Act was originally enacted in the year 2000 and primarily aimed at boosting e-commerce in the country and also to create an enabling environment for e-governance.
With proliferation of e-governance and other IT applications, security practices and procedures relating to such applications are proposed to be prescribed, Dasmunsi said.
There is also an emerging view that IT laws should be technologically neutral in line with the recommendations made by UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law) Model Law on Electronic signature.
Such a proposal will promote development of alternative technologies for authentication of electronic records and will not warrant legislative changes each time a new and equally effective technology is evolved, Dasmunsi said.
Keeping in view the above, the amendments have been proposed in the Information Technology Act, 2000 by amending some of the existing sections and proposing to insert new sections to address various issues as discussed above, the minister added.

Ref:www.rediff.com

Ask.com Launches Mobile Web-search Service

2006-10-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

NEW YORK -- IAC/InterActiveCorp's search engine, Ask.com, has launched a new and free mobile service that enables users to search the Web on any Web-enabled device including cellphones, Blackberries and PDAs.
Called Ask.com Mobile, the new service is designed to minimize keystrokes on cellphones, increase navigability on small displays and accelerate page loads by offering a special interface and search tools to help users find what they are looking for faster.
Using the new service, people looking for the weather in a specific area, for example, can now type in the area code immediately into a toolbar without having to search for the weather link, click the link, type in the area code, and then click another link to check the weather.
"We know that consumers are increasingly looking for search offerings while they are on the go," said Doug Leeds, vice president of product management at Ask.com. "Ask.com wanted to develop an offering that would help to minimize thumb strokes so that consumers find what they are looking for faster."
The new mobile service has a special interface developed specifically to save consumers significant keystrokes while surfing the Internet on their mobile devices. It also provides direct access to other mobile search categories from the home page including Web Search, Directions, Images, Business Listings, Maps, Weather, Bloglines, Area Codes, Currency Conversion, Horoscope and Time Zones.

After patches, Microsoft warns of PowerPoint attack

2006-10-16T09:55:00.000-04:00

Just days after patching four bugs in PowerPoint, Microsoft Corp. is warning of a new attack targeting its presentation software. "We've been made aware of proof of concept code published publicly affecting Microsoft Office 2003 PowerPoint," wrote Microsoft Security Program Manager Alexandra Huft in a Thursday blog posting. "The reported proof of concept may allow an attacker to execute code on a user's machine by convincing them to open a specially-crafted PowerPoint file." Huft said that Microsoft is not aware of any attacks that take advantage of the bug, but with code now in circulation on public Web sites like Securitydot.net, the attack is easily available to attackers.Security vendor Secunia rates the flaw as highly critical because it could be exploited to gain accessed to a fully patched Windows system.
The flaw affects PowerPoint 2000, PowerPoint 2002 and PowerPoint 2003, as well as many versions of the Office suite.

Better together: Docs & Spreadsheets

2006-10-15T21:02:00.000-04:00

I found this article in Google's official blog!! Read on about Google's new feature: Docs and Spreadsheets!!

Check the screenshots i have included below.

-----"Did you ever notice that some things are just better together? For example, vanilla ice cream: on its own, it's good, but throw some strawberries or chocolate jimmies on it and all of a sudden you've got something truly tasty. I've noticed this combo superiority effect quite a lot lately because, well, I'm pregnant with twins (there's a bit more on our official D&S blog.)

This idea of superior combos is also how I think of the new Google beta service that we've just launched. We took Writely, the Web word processor, and integrated it with Google Spreadsheets. The result is Google Docs & Spreadsheets -- one place where you can create, store, share and publish your documents and spreadsheets online. (Bookmark this: docs.google.com.) Keeping your documents and spreadsheets online is a treat because you can access them from anywhere via a Web browser. You can also get feedback and contributions from others you invite without having to email around copies of files, because the current version is always online.

Get a taste of the Google Docs & Spreadsheets combo with our mini tour. Really, though, the best way to get a flavor is to sample it for yourself. Anyone can use it -- after you log in just click on the links for New Document, New Spreadsheet, or Upload(lets you upload your desktop files) to get going. Help yourself and let us know (via this new D&S Google Group) what you think.--"

by Jen Mazzon, Senior Product Marketing Manager.

Politicians discover their Space

2006-10-15T20:43:00.000-04:00

The following link will take you to a Wall Street Journal article that talks about how politicians are using MySpace to reach out to Generation Y (18-30 year olds) voters and as a source for donations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116078551947392672.html?mod=e-commerce_primary_hs

Google/YouTube and more...

2006-10-15T20:34:00.000-04:00

Class,

below is an article dealing with internet takeovers and acquisitions this year focusing on Google and YouTube but also focusing on the big taking over the small in Yahoo/Facebook and eBay/Skype, all deals of at least $1 billion. It is interesting that Google would pay that amount of money for YouTube considering it doesn't make money and has many questions surrounding copyright issues.

Media Frenzy
A Loopy Deal That Actually Makes Sense

By RICHARD SIKLOS
Published: October 15, 2006
IS Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of the video Web site YouTube another milestone in the annals of the Internet? Or is it evidence of a second silly season? The answer to both questions: Yep, you’d better believe it.
The terms of this all-stock deal are a marvel, given YouTube’s age (18 months), revenue (negligible) and profitability (nil). As we were in the dot-com bubble a few years ago, we are back in a moment of “metrics” that can make the acquisition appear quite reasonable — a bargain even — when measured by nonfinancial considerations like “uniques” and “trailing 12-month page views.”
There is also the nagging question of whether YouTube can keep its party going and cut workable deals with the copyright holders whose material populates much of the video that people post on the site. Or how long it will be before one or two of them tries to shut down the place — or to extract a huge toll from its new moneybags owners. But never mind.
Another question raised by Google’s move is whether the Internet land grab is different this time. The answer, again, is yes. The last go-round, of course, was a broad stock market mania for Internet and technology stocks and initial public offerings. This time, the leading companies being snapped up are clearly onto something as a business, but are not even yet contemplating going public.
Above all, one glaring difference amplifies the reverberations that “GoogTube” is sending through the tech and media worlds: this time around, big conventional media are largely on the sidelines of the deal flow, at least where the biggest prizes are concerned.
This is a marked shift in the dance of so-called old and new media. For one thing, YouTube was not some clever techie thing invented by people in lab coats. It is the biggest online outlet in a realm that every media giant knows well: video. Yet the biggest traditional media companies — even those with newfound religion over their Web strategies — couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
If Yahoo ends up buying Facebook for about $1 billion — the two sides are reportedly talking — the deal would be the third of at least that amount this year in which a Web company bought a coveted Internet media property. The other was eBay’s purchase of the Internet phone service Skype for $2.6 billion up front and the potential for a further $1.5 billion down the road.
YouTube, Skype and Facebook — a social networking site built around college students — have existed for a grand total of around seven years. In each case, media companies that have been around in one form or another for decades sniffed around these businesses and decided that they could not make the non-numbers of these newbie titans work. Dinosaur imagery does come to mind.
There are obvious reasons for this, given the carnage of the last boom and previous online efforts of media’s giants. We needn’t recite the saga of AOL- Time Warner yet again, but it is worth recalling that lesser degrees of digital pain were felt across the media spectrum: from the wayward Go network at Walt Disney and the Snap.com and NBCi fizzles at NBC to the great Seagram- Vivendi-Universal debacle.
Even the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch, whose purchase of MySpace for around $580 million appears to be the hallmark old-new media deal of the modern era, has a long way to go before he balances out the ledger from past digital letdowns, chief among them the meltdown of Gemstar-TV Guide International.
The full implications of big media’s pragmatic approach toward large Internet endeavors are, at best, murky. Media chieftains may be kicking themselves a few years from now because they didn’t step up to pay whatever it took to own the emergent first mover in online video. Or they may be reminiscing about YouTube they way they do about much-praised but now faded game-changers like Napster and Friendster.
Given Google’s $130 billion market capitalization, one could argue that paying $1.65 billion in stock is an easy nut to swallow, even if it doesn’t pan out.
Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the president of Time Warner, told me in an interview that YouTube made perfect sense for Google — even at $1.65 billion — because the deal had to be viewed in the context of Google’s ambitions to extend and evolve its search advertising platform, rather than as a media play.
Thus, no sane chief executive of a traditional media conglomerate would have been able to sell the YouTube deal at that price to his or her shareholders or board.
That includes the risk-friendly Mr. Murdoch, whose attempts to get in the middle of the YouTube-Google talks were ignored. But a person close to Mr. Murdoch who spoke on background because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter says the News Corporation would not have stepped up with the kind of price Google was offering, even though it has the financial wherewithal.
Now, even if traditional media companies are passing up the biggest prizes of the day, they aren’t exactly sitting on their hands. NBC Universal has bought iVillage, Mr. Murdoch has bought several smaller Web businesses beyond MySpace, AOL has quietly beefed up its service with a series of add-on acquisitions and Viacom has made a series of smaller deals.
Viacom’s supposed lack of aggressiveness in moving online — in particular, losing MySpace to Mr. Murdoch — was cited as a main reason that its respected chief executive, Tom Freston, recently lost his job. His successor, Philippe P. Dauman, has decried making acquisitions that can’t be justified financially.
Mr. Dauman has said that the company is looking for the next-generation Web hits before they break from the pack. “We need to create a process to identify these opportunities early,” he said at a conference last month.
In other words, buy up all the garages in Silicon Valley.
SO for now, it looks as if the big, loopy Internet deal will remain the province of the big Internet players for as long as their stock prices allow it. It is hard to say whether Google is being foolhardy or prescient.
It is worth remembering that the company’s founders rebuffed reported overtures from Microsoft before they went public — and look what they’re worth and doing today.
On the other hand, the survival skills of the media moguls may be hardier than some people give them credit for. After all, the dinosaurs ruled for more than 150 million years — and some even became birds that still flap around today.

Rethinking IT strategy

2006-10-15T19:44:00.000-04:00

IT executives know that the right investments in technology can deliver a significant competitive advantage. Over the past 50 years, companies such as American Airlines, Apple Computer, Frito-Lay, Google, and Wal-Mart Stores have changed the competitive rules in their respective sectors by introducing technology-enabled innovations. But at many companies today, CIOs and their departments struggle against the perception of their business peers that their job is simply to keep the e-mail working and deliver narrowly scoped projects, not to champion investments in innovation. This limited view of IT's role became prominent as the e-business boom of the late 1990s ended and business executives tried to rein in spending and to ensure that IT investments served business goals. More recently, it has been nurtured by the popular argument that IT is a commodity like electricity, to be managed at minimal cost. "Do more with less" has become a popular mantra.
Focusing exclusively on bottom-line costs, however, limits the top-line potential. By forgoing investments in IT innovation, companies are passing up opportunities to gain a competitive advantage or to change the rules in their industries fundamentally. Yet some companies with a broader vision have pursued IT opportunities. To understand how they invest in innovation and manage the accompanying risks while running their basic IT functions as efficiently as possible, we assessed the IT strategies of ten leading global companies. We found that IT can be used as a competitive weapon, but managing IT to deliver on that promise requires a differentiated approach that many companies find difficult to implement—either because they fail to see the potential or because they don't distinguish between commodity IT services and innovation.
Specifically, companies should manage their investments in IT as they manage their financial investments, categorizing them as low, medium, and high risk. Typically, most of a company's IT investments (up to 60 percent, depending on its market position and aspirations) should focus on maintaining and enhancing basic IT services, including core business applications, systems to meet regulatory demands, e-mail, and Web services.
An additional 10 to 30 percent of a company's IT investments (or more, depending on its aspirations) should aim to help it win the race currently played in its sector. These investments help a business operate at significantly lower cost or higher productivity than competitors do—for example, automating online lending-approval processes or automatically providing call center agents with each customer's service history. Such investments yield cost advantages over rivals—at least until they implement similar systems and processes.
More difficult to manage is a smaller category of high-risk, high-reward investments that focus on changing the race within the sector: innovations that open new markets or make it possible to offer new products or services that are substantially different from and more desirable than those of competitors.
By differentiating the way these categories are managed, companies can run their daily IT operations cost effectively while making limited, targeted investments in new and promising technologies.
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1840&L2=13&L3=13

Group puts $100 laptops in poor countries

2006-10-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

Ladies and Gents,

This article from MSNBC talks about a companies goal of providing cheap laptop computers to families living in imporvershed communities:

In a rural Cambodian village where the homes lack electricity, the nighttime darkness is pierced by the glow from laptops that children bring from school. The students were equipped with notebook computers by a foundation run by MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte and his wife Elaine.
"When the kids bring them home and open them up, it's the brightest light source in the home," said Negroponte. "Parents love it."
Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are hard at work on a project they hope will brighten the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions of developing world kids. It's a grand idea and a daunting challenge: to create rugged, Internet- and multimedia-capable laptop computers at a cost of $100 apiece.

That's right, the price of dinner for four at a moderately priced Manhattan restaurant can buy a Third World kid what Negroponte considers an essential tool for making it in the 21st century.
The laptops would be mass-produced in orders of no smaller than 1 million units and bought by governments, which would distribute them.
Ambitious projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world at low cost have had a shaky track record. Perhaps the best example is the Simputer, a $220 handheld device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and isn't selling well.
But Negroponte and MIT colleagues Joe Jacobson and Seymour Papert aren't deterred. For one, three corporate partners have committed an initial $2 million apiece to the initiative and pledged to serve as suppliers for the "one laptop per child" project: Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which will bring expertise in processors; "Do No Evil" search engine king Google; and News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media company with global satellite capabilities.
The mission: to make laptops as ubiquitous as cell phones in technology-deprived regions. Negroponte's pitch: The cost of a laptop comes in far lower than a child's textbook expenses for the computer's lifespan.
"It's a way of having the children be the agents of change," Negroponte told The Associated Press. "They bring the device home, and then the parents look over their shoulder." He thinks it's extremely important that individual children own laptops; it will ensure they'll be well-maintained.
In design and function, Negroponte wants the $100 laptop to "be so close to the current laptops as to be nearly indistinguishable," but acknowledges that the machine will have a relatively slow processor and modest storage capacity paired with barebones software.
The biggest challenge, he says, is designing a display that doesn't put the price out of reach or drain the battery too quickly.

Details are still being worked out, but here's the MIT team's current recipe: Put the laptop on a software diet; use the freely distributed Linux operating system; design a battery capable of being recharged with a hand crank; and use newly developed "electronic ink" or a novel rear-projected image display with a 12-inch screen. Then, give it Wi-Fi access, and add USB ports to hook up peripheral devices.
Most importantly, take profits, sales costs and marketing expenses out of the picture. "The technology challenge is real, and you need to make some breakthroughs, but most of the money is saved in other ways," said Negroponte, who pitched the project in January at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the annual confab of global powerbrokers.
Negroponte has also met with Chinese and Brazilian officials to discuss expected orders and production in those countries, which would create local jobs. Two prototypes have been built, and test units could be shipped by the middle of next year. The project would essentially be nonprofit, with about $90 covering hardware for each computer and an extra $10 for contingencies or a small profit margin depending on how each government's order is structured.

Answer to digital divide?Yet even if all those hurdles are surmounted, some question whether a $100 laptop project is the answer to bridging the global digital divide. "Even if you give the laptops out for free, Internet access and even electricity are huge problems," said Marc Einstein, an analyst with Pyramid Research Inc., a Cambridge-based telecommunications consulting firm.
Negroponte and Co. have part of that solved, at least in theory: Out of the box, the $100 laptops will be able to communicate with one another using peer-to-peer mesh networking. That doesn't directly solve the Internet or electricity problem, though.
Al Hammond, director for the nonprofit World Resources Institute's Digital Dividend project in Washington D.C., worries about customer support in poor, rural areas. "The key is to create something affordable and sufficiently robust to protect against voltage surges, against dust, and against being dropped, and against all the perils of the Internet," Hammond said. "Those things are more important if the nearest computer tech is three villages away and you don't have an air-conditioned office to work in."
Like Hammond, Andy Carvin, director of the Newton-based nonprofit Digital Divide Network, applauds the project's goals, calling an extremely low-cost, durable laptop "one of the holy grails of bridging the digital divide."
But he said increasingly sophisticated and versatile wireless handhelds may gain favor over laptops as the developing world's online tools of choice. "That's not to suggest we should not have an inexpensive laptop," Carvin said. "They're parallel tracks, and it's probably a healthy competition to have both."
The digital divide remains vast: The technology research firm IDC examined 53 countries and determined that a household in Canada was 131 times more likely to own a personal computer than one in Indonesia - hardly the world's least tech-oriented country.
The United States trailed Canada at No. 2 by that measure in rankings that examined computer use in countries that fall in the top third for advanced technology use.
Negroponte says his promotion of the $100 laptop project at the World Economic Forum meeting has helped it gain momentum. "People are now calling me saying, 'We'd like to participate, and not only can we participate, but we can do it cheaper, or we can create better performance in this laptop,'" he said.
"People are saying, 'My God, this is real."

Microsoft makes changes to Vista

2006-10-15T15:14:00.000-04:00

They officially agreed to make changes so it seems that any delay of releasing Vista in the EU is no more. But when it will actually be released here in the U.S. is a mystery.

-------------------------------------------

Microsoft makes changes to Vista

Software giant cites 'constructive dialogue' with EC, South Korean regulators, says it won't delay shipment of operating system to Europe.
October 13 2006: 9:56 AM EDT

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp said it had made changes to its new operating system Vista after what it called "constructive dialogue" with the European Commission and South Korea over regulatory concerns.
"Microsoft agreed to make a number of changes to Windows Vista in response to guidance the company received from the European Commission," the company cited its general counsel Brad Smith as saying.
He said Microsoft had agreed to all changes required by the EU to its new operating system Vista after what the company called a "constructive dialogue" with the European Commission and South Korea on regulatory concerns.
"The very good news today is that following the positive conversations and positive dialogue with competition authorities, we will be releasing in Korea and the EU," Smith in a conference call.
After a years-long antitrust case against Microsoft and a record fine of close to half a billion euros (almost $630 million) for anti-competitive behavior, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes warned Microsoft last March that she had concerns about Vista.
The European Commission was worried that the operating system would package features such as an Internet search function like Google's (Charts) and software similar to that of Adobe's (Charts) PDF fixed document formats.
The "bundling" of such software in an operating system that is used by more than 90 percent of the world's PCs may create a disincentive for customers to then buy Adobe's and Google's products.
Microsoft also plans to tie-in security features with Vista, a move that raised concerns at companies such as McAfee (Charts) and Symantec (Charts), which again offer similar products.
No European delay for Vista
In early September, the software company raised the possibility of delaying the launch of Vista in Europe alone on the concerns of the Commission, saying it was unsure what the regulator required of its new product.
But on Friday, Kroes said Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had told her it would not delay shipping Vista.
"He announced that they have the intention to ship it [Vista] globally," she told reporters on the sidelines of a competition conference in Italy.
In a separate statement, the Commission said it would closely monitor the effects Vista had on the market and any complaints relating to it, reiterating that it was not up to the EU executive to give Vista a "green light."
The Commission has long said it is up to a company to ensure that its products comply with European Union laws.
"He [Ballmer] was aware that he shouldn't ask me if I could give a green light to it [Vista] and rightly so," Kroes said of her conversation with the Microsoft executive.
"Microsoft has to be aware that they have a responsibility to take into account the European regulations and European rules and I am expecting that they are doing that," she said.
The stand-off between the software-maker and the Commission is the latest in a lengthy spat between the two.
In 2004, the Commission found Microsoft had abused its market dominance in audiovisual software players and office servers. It forced the U.S. firm to strip out Windows Media Player from its ubiquitous operating system.
The Commission levied a record &euro497 million fine. In July, EU regulators fined the company a further &euro280.5 million for defying the ruling, which required it to share information on its servers with rivals.
Microsoft faces a further fine of up to 3 million euros a day if found still not in compliance with the ruling.
Microsoft (Charts) shares were up nearly 1 percent in early Friday trade on Nasdaq.

Bono, Oprah promote new iPod to fight AIDS

2006-10-15T14:43:00.000-04:00

Hey Fabiana, I just saw your post about iPod and the wireless headphones. Well, along with that, Oprah Winfrey and humanitarian rocker Bono raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. They're participating in a shopping spree to promote a new line of clothing, accessories and gadgets, including a special-edition iPod, that will raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. A number of red products will go on sale, manufacturers and other companies will contribute a portion of money from each item sold to raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. If we know all know how powerful and inspiring Oprah is, we know that this will make a difference (just take a look at how her book lists in the past have contributed to book sales). Well, it's all for a good cause, I hope they're able to raise a lot of money. Among those participating in the event will be Gap Inc., Apple Computer Inc., Motorola Inc., Converse Inc. and Emporio Armani.

Just click on my title to read the whole story.

Wisconsin Library Joins Google Book Project

2006-10-15T14:41:00.000-04:00

I found yet another article about Google. I came across it on Friday while I was at the library. It's about how google started an online book project - where libraries around the world scanned books and provided information to users online. The books were of historical, medical, scientific, and artistic/musical importance (just to name a few). The project started about a year ago with libraries from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University. The University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California and Spain's Universidad Complutense de Madrid have just recently decided to participate in the project. Some of the books' actual text will not be able to be published, due to copyright issues - therefore, information on where to locate them will be provided. Google is also conducting a pilot project with the Library of Congress. All of this information will be very useful to all of us; I honestly don't think I've had to check out more than five or six books in the past two years because of the usefulness of the information on the internet. Technology is soo amazing. Hopefully Google doesn't get itself into any trouble with the copyright issues (especially after their latest purchase of uTube).

The article's from CNN, just click on the headline (title) to read more about it.

Call all lazy people

2006-10-15T13:59:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/technology/12basics.html?ref=technology

For those of you who have houses, and not studios with bad 1930's plumbing, then maybe this is for you.

Basically it's an automated house, which is made possible by of course, buying 5 trillion accessories which hook up to all of your appliances and then act as one single unit via your computer and multiple signals.

According to the inventor, the signals are 95 percent efficient. But basically, if you're getting ready to watch a movie you could press on button and your dvd player, tv would turn on, as well as the light dimmer, as well as the popcorn machine, coffee maker and the airconditioning, as well as the blinds lowering... blah blah. Etc.

I think it's a little rediculous, but I guess if you have a lot of space and it takes a lot of time walking to each appliance then maybe you should buy this. I seem to remember hearing of this technology before though; I thought bill gates discovered it. I don't know, maybe this is just a wee bit more efficient or something.

I think it's just going to make more people fat.

Wireless Headphones That Aren’t Just for iPods

2006-10-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

Technology is simply amazing...they cannot stop thinking of ways to make things better!
I just love it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/technology/12headphones.html?ref=technology
By STEPHEN C. MILLER

"The iPod may be the market leader in portable music players, but it has plenty of competitors. In recognition of that, some companies are delivering products that work with both iPods and other MP3 players.

Among them is Logitech’s new FreePulse Wireless Bluetooth headphones, which also eliminate the headphone cord. Because few music players have built-in Bluetooth, the FreePulse comes with a Bluetooth transmitter that fits into a standard headphone jack.

The headset, made of very light carbon spring steel, fits behind the head rather than over it. Logitech says that you can hear music up to 33 feet away from the player, but in informal tests the range was much farther. Unfortunately you can’t control your music from the headphones, just the volume. The FreePulse is available for less than $100 at www.logitech.com and major retail and online outlets.

As with all devices with rechargeable batteries, the headphones require yet another power plug, but a dual-headed cable lets you charge both the headset and the transmitter simultaneously."

The Cost: Privacy?

2006-10-14T21:13:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was reading an article on CNN.com which related to two of our classes and I found it very interesting because it's quite scary as to what the future holds for us. Although I can't wait to see what the technology of the future will provide to us but with that will our freedom be gone?

... Making government information easier to access and enabling individuals to access personal data could undermine privacy. In particular, coupling the delivery of health benefits with the release of personal information compromises privacy, said Janlori Goldman, director of the Health Privacy Project at Georgetown University. Individuals have little say in whether personal data is released if they want benefits, Goldman said. Within the next decade, privacy will cease to exist because commercial firms will be able to tap into the federal databases that hold troves of personal information, said David Banisar, a lawyer, privacy advocate and consultant to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

DOD already collects DNA code on new recruits, and although the Pentagon has vowed not to release such data, Banisar views its release to insurance carriers as inevitable. The companies then could use the data to refuse health and life insurance to individuals who are genetically predisposed to certain diseases.

If the future of government includes more use of wireless communications, recently passed digital wiretap statutes could threaten the privacy of the transmissions, Banisar said. A new Federal Communications Commission regulation, which will go into effect in 2001, requires all cellular telephone carriers to install technologies that will enable law enforcement agencies to pinpoint the location of every wireless phone in the country, ostensibly to aid law enforcement officials to determine the locations of people calling 911 for assistance.

But federal IT officials said they are confident that privacy will be closely guarded in the digital future. Agencies probably will issue private encryption keys to the citizens they deal with online. The keys will let people encrypt information, such as a tax return, and send it in a form so thoroughly scrambled it would take a supercomputer years to decode.

But if the past is any predictor of the future, mounds of personal information in federal databases will be at risk in the future. Security has been a low priority on the Hill, which has not provided funding, and in agencies, which have offered little training. As with any bureaucracy, it will be hard to change. Ultimately, the government likely will put privacy protections in place, said Evan Hendricks, who publishes a newsletter about electronic privacy. But "it will take a Chernobyl-type privacy disaster" to prod the government to protect individual privacy, he said.

IBM''s Data Center Offerings - Series on Outsourcing IT functions-Part I

2006-10-13T18:07:00.000-04:00

In light of our discussions in class on OUTSOURCING,here's some info onIBM's DATA CENTER offerings:

Here's my series on ousourcing IT functions to vendors who have best-of-breed service offerings in their respective competencies...

The first is on Data Centers:

Company :IBM Global Services(www.ibm.com)

IBM Data Center Outsourcing Services provides customized outsourcing solutions to help relieve your company from the task of managing computing resources, allowing you to focus on your core business. Data Center Outsourcing Services furnishes the flexibility needed to expand your data processing capabilities on a seasonal or ongoing basis, adopt new technologies, migrate key applications to new platforms and quickly develop, test and deploy new applications. It also provides the technical skill and support to supplement your in-house staff as needed.

Highlights

Matches computing resources to changing business requirements
Helps minimize your technology investment by leveraging IBM's expertise
Provides flexibility to adopt and deploy new technology
Offers control over your information systems
Allows application re-engineering, development and testing without affecting current systems

Refer their technical specifications at:

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering/so/a1000379/dt006

IBM also has some case studies on DataCenter Services(Outsourcing)

Check up:
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/offering_cases/so/a1000379

For those who do not imagine it possible. Here is the future! React!!!!

2006-10-13T09:47:00.000-04:00

Tracking devices for Medical Purposes
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice of injecting humans with tracking devices for medical purposes. (ZDNet News - 2004-10-13).
The computer chips, which are about the size of a grain of rice, are designed to be injected into the fatty tissue of the arm. Using a special scanner, doctors and other hospital staff can fetch information from the chips, such as the patient's identity, their blood type and the details of their condition, in order to speed treatment.
Medical data is not stored on the devices, also known as radio frequency identification chips. Rather, it's stored in a database that links the chips' unique serial numbers with patient data.

Infant Protection System
VeriChip's "Hugs" Infant Protection System sounded an alarm when the parents of an infant attempted to remove their baby without authorization from a hospital's nursery.Radio-frequency identification technology from VeriChip Corp., a provider of security and identification technology, prevented the abduction of a baby late last week from the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, N.C. VeriChip's "Hugs" Infant Protection System sounded an audible alarm and flashed a warning on the screen at the seventh-floor nurses' station when the parents of an infant attempted to remove their baby without authorization from the hospital's nursery. Staff quickly responded to the "Code Pink" alert, and security officials were able to stop the abduction, recover the infant unharmed, and return him safely to maternity ward staff. The parents, who have two other children in the supervision of social services, were concerned this child, too, would be removed from their care, according to a spokesman for Presbyterian Healthcare, the parent company of the hospital.The "Hugs" system includes monitoring software and an ankle bracelet that contains a tiny radio transmitter designed to prevent infants from being removed from a health-care facility without authorization. Every infant who is born at the Presbyterian Hospital receives a Hugs tag on the ankle or wrist to monitor movement around the hospital. Exit points throughout the hospital also are electronically monitored to detect unauthorized removal of an infant.In the last 22 years, there have been 233 infant abductions in the United States -- half of these abductions occurred from health-care facilities, according to VeriChip.Its RID infant-protection system is designed to combat not only infant abductions, but also accidental infant mismatching. VeriChip's infant-protection systems currently are installed in approximately 900 U.S. hospitals.

Personally, I think this is a great idea to protect those who do not have anything to fear from someone else knowing their identity. As stated by the company the only thing this chip carries is a number and not the personal information as many people think.

In order to know your personal information, someone would need:
1) A scanner (only sold to verified and secure locations)
2) Be close enough to scan your chip
3) The database with your information to match the number in the scanner (also only available to secure customers – like banks, hospitals, etc.)

Because of this, I think that if someone would like to know your identity it would be easier for them to simply steal your wallet.

I hope you are able to see the benefits of this technology for those who have done no harm and need to be protected from actual criminals. And always remember it is optional and can be removed at any time.

Taiwan's NRI ranking advances to 7th in world

2006-10-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

The following is an article about Networked Readiness Index (NRI). I also found the top 10 countries ranking in 2006. 1st is United States. 2nd is Singapore. 3rd is Denmark. 4th is Iceland. 5th is Finland. 6th is Canada. 8th is Sweden. 9th is Switzerland. 10th is United Kingdom.

Taiwan's NRI ranking advances to 7th in world

Taiwan's Networked Readiness Index (NRI) has advanced to the 7th spot in the world from the 15th ranking in 2005, surpassing such developed countries as Sweden, Switzerland and Great Britain, according to the "2006 Global Information Technology Report" announced by the World Economic Forum.

The World Economic Forum conducts a global information technology survey annually and the NRI check is based on three indicators, namely network environment, network readiness and network use. On network environment, Taiwan has advanced by 24 spots to reach a much higher ranking.

The NRI grading is made according to points amassed in two secondary indexes, including network use and enabling factors. Network use covers network availability rate, network population, number of mobile phone users, network server and public network facilities. Enabling factors, on the other hand, include network access, network policy, network society, networked economy.

IBM plans to relocate key unit base to China

2006-10-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

IBM, one of the U.S.'s leading technology companies and the second-largest software provider in the world, is planning to shift its global outsourcing operations (the division maintains relationships between suppliers and IBM's businesses worldwide) headquarters to Shenzhen.
IBM also recently expanded its presence in India. Last month, it announced plans to open a software-development center in Calcutta that will house the company's second-largest pool of workers after its Bangalore office. The company plans to become more efficient through cost savings by shifting its major core operations to fast growing Asian countries.
China already overtook U.S. in 2004 as world's largest exporter of high-tech goods such as laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras.

Open Source IT... In our derams.

2006-10-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

Hello guys, as my last posting in the blog I would like to share with you a very interesting issue regarding the efforts of the UN to make information technology available worldwide and the efforts of some (or better said ONE) country to impede it.

The United Nations World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) was established by the United Nations general assembly in a resolution passed in January 2002. Building upon the goals of its earlier Millennium Declaration, the UN set up the WSIS to "harness the potential of knowledge and technology" and to "find effective and innovative ways to put this potential at the service of development for all."

In spite of the lofty goals articulated in its formative resolutions, by the time the WSIS met in Geneva, it had settled for something much closer to home: business as usual. Between January 2002 and December 2003, concern shifted away from the needs of those the WSIS was created to assist to those most responsible for creating the digital divide in the first place.

During the preparatory phase prior to the meetings in Geneva, the focus of the United States team (at least that evidenced by public comment) was almost exclusively on the "protection of intellectual property" and an abiding insistence that the WSIS not say or do anything that might prevent profiteering on the needs of the disadvantaged, now or in the future. Nowhere in the WSIS documents was it deemed permissible to state the obvious: that free/open source software is the logical choice in achieving affordable solutions.

The United States position, formed at the behest of the Business Software Alliance, CompTIA, and other organizations dedicated to maintaining the status quo and curtailing the growth of free software, is that no software development methodology (closed and proprietary versus open source) be recommended over any other.

The United States position on free/open source software at WSIS is remarkably similar to the United States position on the use of generic AIDS drugs at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the case of generic AIDS drugs for impoverished nations, its thinking is that it's better that millions perish from AIDS than the drug companies risk losing a penny on their bottom line.

So… The United Nations World Summit on Information Society has been doomed to failure from the start. That may seem odd, given both the abundance of free and open source software and the apparent interest by the UN in making such tools available to the impoverished.

Summarizing, there are two primary reasons why WSIS is doomed. The first is the United States' position that profit -- or even the potential for profit -- is more important than the goals of the WSIS. The second reason is procedural. The United Nations prefers to operate by consensus. So as long as any one member of the WSIS objects to a portion of the plan, the plan cannot move forward. Put those two impediments together, and add the fact that the Microsoft/proprietary software/IP lobbies refuse to let the government do anything that they perceive as even a remote threat against future profits, and you have a greater barrier to WSIS success than the digital divide it attempts to span.

So once again, we see the struggle between economic performance and ethics, and in this case I will not exert a personal opinion, I will leave that to you all…

It was a pleasure to participate in this activity and I hope that you all have enjoyed my writings.

Have a nice week.

Source: News Forge, October 12, 2006.

sony's e-books

2006-10-12T11:21:00.000-04:00

I happen to go through this in New York Times

Trying Again to Make Books Obsolete
By DAVID POGUE
Published: October 12, 2006
“The market for downloadable books will grow by 400 percent in each of the next two years, to over $25 billion by 2008,” predicted the keynote speaker at the 2001 Women’s National Book Association meeting. “Within a few years after the end of this decade, e-books will be the preponderant delivery format for book content.”

I think that this is fantastic idea on the part of Sony. Though, once the project has failed earlier, but if this technology works, students can enjoy its advantages: No carrying of heavy books and reading as per your convenience. I think that students will enjoy the change.

How To Measure ROI of Public Value Initiatives

2006-10-12T10:58:00.000-04:00

We are working in our Final project, so I found this article very interesting.....

How To Measure ROI of Public Value Initiatives
By Jill R. Aitoro , VARBusinessVARBusiness, Wed. October 11, 2006 -->

In accordance with the government's "best value" approach to buying, the Center for Technology in Government, in collaboration with SAP, has released a framework for assessing public return on investment (ROI) for IT initiatives. Whether such a concept becomes standard in government rides on whether procurement policies change to define value by more than dollars and cents.
The framework, detailed in a white paper released in September, defines the two sources of public returns as value to the public that results from improving the government itself, and value that results from delivering specific benefits directly to persons or groups. Conceptual in nature, the framework essentially identifies the public's point of view as the basis for assessing the return for IT investments, rather than technology development and implementation. Public stakeholders include citizens, as well as businesses and community organizations.
"We refer to the [concept] as 'line of sight,'" said Tony Cresswell, deputy director of the Center for Technology in Government during a press and analyst briefing Tuesday. "It's about being able to see from idea through to public value, including the linkages to get there."
In that sense, the framework acts as a valuable tool for assessing IT initiatives that carry benefits not easily translated into a fiscal return; building a public park, for example, won't necessarily pad the budget of a state or city government, but carries value to the community just the same. In terms of IT, a Web portal that provides agency information to citizens may seem limited in its payback or cost savings, but can do wonders for approval ratings and efficiency. So, if a state chief information officer has 20 IT projects on the table, but budget for only five, the framework provides a means of assessing that kind of public value for proper consideration.
Washington is one success story highlighted in the white paper. The state informally used this type of process to green light a digital archiving system for government records, emphasizing not the technology for digitizing documents, but rather the need to preserve and provide access to records of enduring legal and historical significance.
"What we did wasn't about money; we had to go in and explain why this is important and why the public would benefit," says Adam Jansen, digital archivist at the Washington State Digital Archives. "It's about education early on. How do you sell it?"
Similarly for the channel, the framework acts as a sales tool for demonstrating to the government customer potential benefits of an enterprise solution that might not cut costs, but could improve efficiency and satisfaction of constituents.
Acknowledgement of "public value" of IT initiatives by vendors, solution providers and government customers themselves is the first step; next, the Center for Technology in Government and SAP hope government will execute the framework when evaluating possible IT programs and, in turn, drive change in how procurements are structured. The challenge, however, is overcoming the tendency for requests for proposals (RFPs) to not consider any bigger picture -- focusing squarely on cost savings derived by specific IT solutions.
"We lack good standards and practices about how to specify this kind of ROI in the procurements," Cresswell said. "That's the missing piece of the puzzle."
Rand Blazer, SAP's president of public services, agrees.
"There needs to be linkage, because until you can quantify the softer areas [of ROI], you will run into problems with procurement," he says. "Part of the problem is they define these [IT initiatives] as projects rather than transformations."

With YouTube, Grad Student Hits Jackpot Again

2006-10-12T10:52:00.000-04:00

I found this article about Jawed Karim, who is one of the individuals that will be receiving a large sum of money from the YouTube acquisition by Google. As a graduate student, he is basically one of our peers, this could be one of us!!
____________________________________________________________

With YouTube, Grad Student Hits Jackpot Again

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 11 — For Jawed Karim, the $100,000 or so he would have to spend on a master’s degree at Stanford was never daunting. He hit an Internet jackpot in 2002 when PayPal, the online payment company he had joined early on, was bought by eBay.

On Monday, still early in his studies for the fall term, he got lucky again. This time he may have hit the Internet equivalent of the multistate PowerBall.

Mr. Karim is the third of the three founders of the video site YouTube, which Google has agreed to buy for $1.65 billion. He was present at YouTube’s creation, contributing some crucial ideas about a Web site where users could share video. But academia had more allure than the details of turning that idea into a business.

So while his partners Chad Hurley and Steven Chen built the company and went on to become Internet and media celebrities, he quietly went back to class, working toward a degree in computer science.

Mr. Karim, who is 27, became visibly uncomfortable when the subject turned to money, and he would not say what he stands to make when Google’s purchase of YouTube is completed. He said only that he is one of the company’s largest individual shareholders, though he owns less of the company than his two partners, whose stakes in the company are likely to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to some estimates. The deal was so enormous, he says, that his share was still plenty big.

“The sheer size of the acquisition almost makes the details irrelevant,” Mr. Karim said.

On Wednesday, during a walk across campus and a visit to his dorm room and the computer sciences building where he takes classes, Mr. Karim described himself as a nerd who gets excited about learning. Nothing in his understated demeanor suggests he is anything other than an ordinary graduate student, and he attracted little attention on campus in jeans, a blue polo shirt, a tan jacket and black Puma sneakers.

Mr. Karim said he might keep a hand in entrepreneurship, and he dreams of having an impact on the way people use the Internet — something he has already done. Philanthropy may have some appeal, down the road. But mostly he just wants to be a professor. He said he simply hopes to follow in the footsteps of other Stanford academics who struck it rich in Silicon Valley and went back to teaching.

“There’s a few billionaires in that building,” he said, standing in front of the William Gates Computer Science Building. But his chosen path will not preclude another stint at a start-up. “If I see another opportunity like YouTube, I can always do that,” he said.

David L. Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford, said Mr. Karim’s choice was unusual.

“I’m impressed that given his success in business he decided to do the master’s program here,” Mr. Dill said. “The tradition here has been in the other direction,” he said, pointing to the founders of Google and Yahoo, who left Stanford for the business world.

Mr. Karim met Mr. Hurley and Mr. Chen when all three of them worked at PayPal. After the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion, netting Mr. Karim a few million dollars, they often talked about starting another company.

By early 2005, all three had left PayPal. They would often meet late at night for brainstorming sessions at Max’s Opera Café, near Stanford, Mr. Karim said. Sometimes they met at Mr. Hurley’s place in Menlo Park or Mr. Karim’s apartment on Sand Hill Road, down the street from Sequoia Capital, the venture firm that would become YouTube’s financial backer.

Mr. Karim said he pitched the idea of a video-sharing Web site to the group. But he made it clear that contributions from Mr. Chen and Mr. Hurley were essential in turning his raw idea into what eventually became YouTube.

A YouTube spokeswoman said that the genesis of YouTube involved efforts by all three founders.

As early as February 2005, when the site was introduced, Mr. Karim said he and his partners had agreed that he would not become an employee, but rather an informal adviser to YouTube. He did not take a salary, benefits or even a formal title. “I was focused on school,” he said.

The decision meant that his stake in the company would be reduced, Mr. Karim said. “We negotiated something that we thought was fair.”

Roelof Botha, the Sequoia partner who led the investment in YouTube, said he would have preferred if Mr. Karim had stayed.

“I wish we could have kept him as part of the company,” Mr. Botha said. “He was very, very creative. We were doing everything we could to convince him to defer.”

Mr. Karim was born in East Germany in 1972. The family moved to West Germany a year later and to St. Paul, Minn., in 1992. His father, Naimul Karim, is a researcher at 3M and his mother, Christine Karim, is a research assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.

“To develop new things and be aware of new things, this is our life,” Ms. Karim said, explaining her son’s interest in technology and learning.

After graduating from high school, Jawed Karim chose to go to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in part because it was the school that the co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, and others who gave birth to the first popular Web browser attended.

“It wasn’t like I wanted to be the next Marc Andreessen, but it would be cool to be in the same place,” Mr. Karim said. In 2000, during his junior year, he dropped out to head to Silicon Valley, where he joined PayPal. He later finished his undergraduate degree by taking some courses online and some at Santa Clara University.

Armed with a video camera, Mr. Karim documented much of YouTube’s early life, including the meetings when the three discussed financing strategies and the brainstorming sessions in Mr. Hurley’s garage, where the company was hatched.

In his studio apartment in a residence hall for graduate students, he showed one of them, which he said was filmed in April 2005. In it, Mr. Chen talked about “getting pretty depressed” because there were only 50 or 60 videos on the YouTube site. Also, he said, “there’s not that many videos I’d want to watch.” The camera then turns to Mr. Hurley, who grins and says “Videos like these,” referring to the one Mr. Karim is filming.

Mr. Karim, who has remained in frequent contact with the other co-founders, said he was first informed of the talks with Google last week. On Monday, he was called in to the Palo Alto law offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to sign acquisition papers, and he briefly got to congratulate Mr. Chen and Mr. Hurley, he said.

Asked what he thought of the acquisition price, Mr. Karim said: “It sounded good to me.” When a reporter looked puzzled, he raised his eyebrows and added: “I was amazed.”

Next Article in Technology (1 of 18) »

Need to know more? 50% off home delivery of The Times.

New Palm "Smart Phone"

2006-10-12T01:24:00.000-04:00

Palm Adds a Branch to Treo Line

Smart Phone for Consumers
Will Be Introduced This Year
In Effort to Expand Market

By PUI-WING TAM
October 12, 2006

Palm Inc., aiming to break out of its niche as a maker of smart phones for corporations, today will unveil a new smart phone targeted at the general public.

The debut of the Treo 680, Palm's fourth smart-phone model launched this year, is the Sunnyvale, Calif., company's latest attempt to rev up its growth. Palm, which started as a maker of hand-held-organizer devices in the 1990s, began making the transition to smart phones -- which combine functions of a hand-held organizer with a cellphone, wireless email and other features -- several years ago. Until now, Palm's smart phones, sold under the name Treo, had largely been designed for corporate customers.

Gaming geeks

2006-10-11T23:42:00.000-04:00

I cant believe people can afford to buy PS3 for nearly $600.00.

LOS ANGELES — GameStop Corp. ,said on Tuesday its 3,600 GameStop and EB Games stores in the United States have sold out their quota of pre-orders for Sony Corp.'s new PlayStation 3 video game console.
Each store had no less than eight and no more than 13 of the anticipated next-generation players available on pre-order, GameStop spokesman Chris Olivera told Reuters.
"In some stores they sold out in 10 minutes, in some stores hours, for others it was the afternoon," Olivera said, declining to say how many units the biggest video-game retailer in the United States had been allotted.
Sony will begin selling the PS3 on November 17 in the United States.
The Japanese electronics company will offer $500 and $600 versions of its hotly anticipated video game console, which includes a high-definition Blu-ray Disc DVD player.
The company has allotted 400,000 PS3 units for its U.S. launch, compared with its PlayStation 2 launch supply of just under 500,000.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,219818,00.html

IBM To Host Virtual Block Party

2006-10-11T23:20:00.000-04:00

I chose to post this article because of all the previous comments about second life.

By K.C. Jones, TechWeb Technology News

Using the same technology that is brining three-dimensional tours of China's Palace Museum to online visitors, IBM will host a virtual alumni block party.
IBM announced Tuesday that it plans to hold the first-of-its-kind virtual party in Second Life, a virtual world, built and owned by the people who join it.
The block party is part of a larger program, Greater IBM, which maintains connections between IBM alumni worldwide. It relies on technology similar to that used in other IBM virtual projects.
IBM plans to release more information about the event later this week.

Kodak, go figure....er... or maybe not!

2006-10-11T23:06:00.000-04:00

During our discussion on Eastman Kodak's cost cutting IT outsourcing strategy today I thought about an old client at the bank where I used to work who had a photographic finishing lab facility in Toronto. We decided to cancel his operating line sometime in the middle of 2004 and asked him to find funding elsewhere. The reasons seemed fairly obvious to me, essentialy the old style of photography as we once knew it had been replaced by the digital world and if you don't adjust to the times there's no place for you in the world (his profits were non-existent and sales lower every year).

Reading the case on Kodak made me realize the similarities, something of which Kodak seemed to initiate along time ago as the article was based around the 1980's. When I figured Eastman Kodak stock must have been a great stock to short sell over the years, I looked online and sure enough this baby's share price had been sinking for the last few years ($100 to $20). Hindsight is 20/20. Check for yourself on the link.

Ironically, or not so ironically, a new announcement today with LG provided a technology update showing the effort Kodak has been making to get with the times. The share price shot up over 4% while we were in class today, not a bad return for 1 day. I say it will be short lived, cost cutting is still the name of the game in this industry. Martha Stewart can't help them either. If only....

Here's the story

Motley FoolDead Pixels at LG.Philips
Wednesday October 11, 2:33 pm ET
By Anders Bylund

LCD display manufacturer LG.Philips LCD (NYSE: LPL - News) posted third-quarter results last night, though management probably would have preferred to power the screen down this time. Costs related to a new manufacturing plant combined with falling end-product prices led to a whole lot of red ink, despite increased demand.
The company, an independently run and traded joint venture between LG Electronics and KoninklijkePhilips (NYSE: PHG - News), is planning to offset some of the expense of the new plant by sharing 20% of its capacity with Toshiba. It has also slowed down production a bit -- in order to reduce its bulging inventories -- and the upcoming holiday quarter is expected to power a full recovery to positive full-year earnings.
It's awfully hard to turn a profit when your cost of goods sold exceeds revenues, and that's how bad things are at LG.Philips right now. Management is taking the situation seriously and doing what it can to tighten up operations. "We are now at a crucial inflection point," says CFO Ron Wirahadiraksa. "Without additional measures relating to product mix, cost, and productivity, we will not be able to deliver value to our shareholders."
On the plus side, operating cash flow remains positive on the back of large depreciation items, though the company is spending more than that on capital expenses to build the business for future needs. The LCD market is tough enough that Sony (NYSE: SNE - News) has decided to withdraw from it, and competition from plasma screens and projection TVs with Texas Instruments' (NYSE: TXN - News) digital light processor (DLP) systems only adds to the pricing pressure.
The future will be tougher still, with new technologies expected to enter the market in the coming days. Examples include organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens powered by technology from Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK - News), Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL - News), and others, as well as carbon nanotube-based field emission displays (FED) from the likes of Samsung. The way to survive in the LCD business appears to be cutting costs and improving manufacturing efficiency. LG.Philips seems to be on the ball, but it's a risky place to invest your hard-earned dollars today.
Universal Display is a Motley Fool Rule Breakers recommendation.

IT at FIU

2006-10-11T21:50:00.000-04:00

As me, all of you have been using some sort of web site operated by FIU, be it the webCT system, the FIU Webmail services or the FIU Panther site.
How would you classify the IT at FIU? Playing neutral? Let me then bring to your attention some of the situations that I have gone through since the beginning of our course, which I remind you, started just two months ago.
First case, while we were still doing the pre-requisite courses in August, through the webCT system. Just after completing the second of four quizzes in Quantitative Analysis, the test disappeared along with all registers of its existence. Solution: do it again !!
After school started, the system went down for a couple of days, loosing all the information that had been posted in the student pages. The same happen again on a second occasion, and even though the IT services assured everyone that the information would be reinstated, it never did. Solution: do it again, in this case, the student profiles, TWICE.
Have you tried to send an email to the Administrative Office regarding your financial situation? Don't bother. They don't reply or even act on the mistake brought to their attention. The email is simply ignored. It took IT services a month to get me an email account anyway, so I am probably sending messages to an email account that nnobody reads, anyway.
And have you paid your tuition through the Panther link? I did. But now I found out that there have been breaches in security and the information (PRIVATE AS WELL AS FINANCIAL) has been accessed by parties not connected to the university. And don't bother to look for a certificate or information assuring you of the confidentiality and security of the site. It's not there!
Let's see what the rest of the year will bring us ! I love surprises, anyway !!
Solution: Fire everyone at the IT services and OUTSOURCE! Just follow the guidelines provided by Professor Cousins on MAN 6803, pages 103 to 137 of our book. Have no doubt that everything will improve !

Robotic whiskers

2006-10-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

Megan Fellman Source: EurekAlert! Further information: http://www.northwestern.edu/
10.10.2006

Many mammals use their whiskers to explore their environment and to construct a three-dimensional image of their world. Rodents, for example, use their whiskers to determine the size, shape and texture of objects, and seals use their whiskers to track the fluid wakes of their prey.
Two Northwestern University engineers have been studying the whisker system of rats to better understand how mechanical information from the whiskers gets transmitted to the brain and to develop artificial whisker arrays for engineering applications.
Mitra J. Hartmann, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Joseph H. Solomon, one of Hartmann's graduate students, have now developed arrays of robotic whiskers that sense in two dimensions, mimicking the capabilities of mammalian whiskers. They demonstrate that the arrays can sense information about both object shape and fluid flow. A paper about the arrays, which may find application on assembly lines, in pipelines or on land-based autonomous rovers or underwater vehicles, was published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Nature. "We show that the bending moment, or torque, at the whisker base can be used to generate three-dimensional spatial representations of the environment," said Hartmann. "We used this principle to make arrays of robotic whiskers that in many respects closely replicate rat whiskers." The technology, she said, could be used to extract the three-dimensional features of almost any solid object. Rat whiskers move actively in one dimension, rotating at their base in a plane roughly parallel to the ground. When the whiskers hit an object, they can be deflected backwards, upwards or downwards by contact with the object. The mechanical bending of the whisker activates many thousands of sensory receptors located in the follicle at the whisker base. The receptors, in turn, send neural signals to the brain, where a three-dimensional image is presumably generated. Hartmann and Solomon showed that their robotic whiskers could extract information about object shape by "whisking" (sweeping) the whiskers across a small sculpted head, which was chosen specifically for its complex shape. As the whiskers move across the object, strain gauges sense the bending of the whiskers and thus determine the location of different points on the head. A computer program then "connects the dots" to create a three-dimensional representation of the object. The researchers also showed that a slightly different whisker array -- one in which the whiskers were widened to provide more surface area -- could determine the speed and direction of the flow of a fluid, much like a seal tracks the wake of prey.

Skype lands Wi-Fi access deal in Europe

2006-10-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

VoIP keeps gaining market share, It seems that finally the days of cheaper phone bills will soon arrive, and we will be able to have international phone calls at resanable prices

Skype lands Wi-Fi access deal in Europe

Agreement will let Skype users in Europe access VoIP whenever they're in range of a Cloud hot spot.
By David Meyer
Special to CNET News.com

Published: October 11, 2006, 5:25 AM PDT
TalkBack E-mail Print del.icio.us Digg this
Skype's Internet calling service will soon be accessible at the Cloud's Wi-Fi hot spots across Europe, according to the two companies.

Although normal online access to Skype's voice over Internet Protocol services is free to those connecting via PC, access to the Cloud's Wi-Fi network will require the use of a Skype-enabled phone from SMC Networks and a monthly payment of about $13 (6.99 pounds).

Niall Murphy, the Cloud's chief technology officer, said Tuesday that the deal "marks the start of a real low-cost alternative to traditional telecoms services."

The service will launch in the U.K. this month and spread to other European countries by the end of the year. The Cloud operates more than 8,500 hot spots across Europe.

At the moment, the only handset capable of being used in the service is the SMCWSKP100 model, which costs about $277. But a Cloud representative confirmed to ZDNet UK that the company is "actively working with handset and other types of device providers to ensure these products work well in the public Wi-Fi environment."

Wi-Fi hot spots are available in retail outlets, hotels and airports. The Cloud has also started adding outdoor hot spots in nine cities across the U.K.

David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Data centers eye power costs

2006-10-11T16:50:00.000-04:00

Conducted by Harris Interactive, the study found that IT executives are increasingly aware of energy, with three quarters of the nearly 200 executives queried saying energy efficiency has become a buying priority.
On the other hand, the study found that many IT directors--38 percent of respondents--do not know how much they are spending on electricity.
David Douglas, Sun’s vice president of eco-responsibility, said that there are people out there running out of power in their data centers and thinking about energy but have not yet moved to the next stage--managing power consumption, which is a sizable piece of their budget.
The Sun-commissioned study validates Sun's decision to focus on energy efficiency in its server product design and marketing.
Internally, the company has also taken a number of energy-saving steps, such as reducing energy consumption of its own data centers and having employees work at home.
He said the majority of technology consumers are driven by practical concerns in regards to energy rather than environmental goals.
Many companies are maxing out the power equipment in their data centers, which is needed to run and cool computing gear. Some companies spend nearly 20 percent of their IT budget on electricity.
A very small percentage of respondents, comprised of very large corporations, is energy-conscious for both economic and environmental reasons. These companies measure their "carbon footprint," or the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that they emit.
The company is looking at ways to bring cooling devices closer to the computing gear that generates the most heat.
It is also looking at ways that virtualization can be used, he added. Virtualization technology will allow customers to potentially power down under-used resources and consolidate the computing load on other servers.
In addition, Sun is in negotiations with several utility providers in the United States to replicate a rebate program around Sun servers that the company established with California's Pacific Gas and Electric.

H-P in India

2006-10-11T15:15:00.000-04:00

Hewlett-Packard plans to build a factory in India with an initial capacity of 300,000 units that will be produced in March. The plan is to benefit the subcontinent’s growth with its abundant supply of low-cost, highly skilled workers. HP already has a facility in Bangalore that is producing 80,000 computers a month.
H-P is going to invest one billion rupees, which is $22 million in US dollars. This company will be this country’s second computer-manufacturing facility to meet their demands. This plant will be built in the northern state of Uttaranchal to manufacture the latest range of desktop computers, workstations, notebooks and servers. It expects to have 1000 employees.

This article can be found in the Wall Street Journal (October 11, 2006 issue)

Oracle over charging for ERP

2006-10-11T13:06:00.000-04:00

Oracle ordered to pay $98.5M for PeopleSoft overcharging its clients for ERP services. ERP's are expensive as it is, and now companies are trying to overcharge. Software is getting more and more expensive. Good thing the government is watching over our backs.

The New iPod

2006-10-11T13:03:00.000-04:00

i can't wait for it to come out.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115991621664281682.html?mod=technology_columns_featured_lsc

Electronic Network to Pool Information About HIV

2006-10-11T09:21:00.000-04:00

A network to monitor the treatments of HIV and AIDs patients around the country is currently being set up. This network will start with kiosks in seven clinics around the country. Patients will answer a series of questions about their treatment, as well as have a blood sample drawn and add this information to their profiles. A system like this is good because it allows doctors to track thousands of cases in real time, verse the current system that only tracks around 100 individuals a year. New drugs to help aids patients are being created and used regularly. Unfortunately, many of these drugs have side effects like high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. Tracking more individuals will allow doctors to recommend treatments for patients based on how well other patients with similar conditions are doing. This real time network will effectively allow doctors to do their job better and be more informed about what is happening with different treatment plans.
Another benefit of this program is that it is setting up a system for people suffering from other diseases to use. It is my hope, and the hope of many others I a sure, that systems like this get set up to begin gathering information on many other diseases and treatment plans. As more information is obtained, computers can make recommendations to doctors on what medications to prescribe, and what treatment options might work best for particular patients. This is an exciting project, and I hope that it receives the funding it needs to become widespread and widely used. Hopefully in years to come these networked information gathering kiosks will be in clinics around the world.

Changing with the times, adapting to the new scene…the key for the leaders to remain the leaders.

2006-10-11T00:42:00.000-04:00

Living aside the hard time the EU is giving to Microsoft, we are witnessing to the strategy of the company to open new paths for business growth while still remaining the leaders on its current markets. An article from the Wharton School from 10/4/2006 brings us the movements of Microsoft into new emerging markets. You may find below some highlights of this article. For the full text version click at:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/signup.cfm?CFID=1433932&CFTOKEN=64578011look at u

“The Move to Vertical Product Integration: Can Microsoft Succeed Here, Too?”

The common thread: Microsoft, well known as a software giant, is increasingly dabbling in hardware and playing a bigger role in product design. The big question is: Why? …Microsoft wants more control over integrating its software with the gadgets that could open new markets. Its real mission: Find new vertical markets to dominate so it can continue to grow even if its Windows monopoly erodes

Werbach notes that what Microsoft is attempting -- integrating everything from software to hardware to services in a particular market -- has been tried repeatedly in the technology industry, with mixed results. "The history of the computer industry is littered with the remains of companies that tried to integrate hardware, software and services, but lost out to more focused competitors," says Werbach. "But with newer, specialized platforms like mobile devices and home media centers, there may be more benefits to integration."

Perhaps one of the larger questions revolving around Microsoft is whether it can succeed at everything. "Can a tech company really have multiple core competencies, as Microsoft says it can?" asked Merrill Lynch analyst Kash Rangan in an August 2 research note. "Microsoft has a breadth of products and markets. Competing and winning in all of them seems to be a dizzying proposition that could tax even the most competent of management teams."

Given Microsoft's recent activities, it seems clear that the company is anticipating a time when Windows yields to something Whitehouse calls the "webtop." "Microsoft is preparing for the day when it doesn't have control of the dominant software platform," Rangan noted a host of new markets for Microsoft, including enterprise servers, databases, games, online advertising and television. "Microsoft is attacking vastly different markets, seeding a variety of potentially large opportunities," he suggests. In these new markets, integration becomes more important since software that can't connect with other devices can become irrelevant. That means that Microsoft has to become more of a "glue" company focusing on middleware, or software that is used to connect disparate applicationsAccording to Whitehouse, this is a new focus for Microsoft. "Instead of trying to put the PC operating system everywhere, the new challenge becomes synchronizing everything."

Among the signs Microsoft is changing:
It's increasingly focused on hardware and software integration with efforts like Zune;
It doesn't try to fit full-blown Windows into every device. For instance, the Xbox doesn't use Windows software;
It's increasingly focused on web services through initiatives like Windows Live.

It's hard to count Microsoft out, Clemons says. "The right question is whether or not Microsoft's current dominance of the operating system market can be preserved over time and extended into different areas. So far the answer has been yes

According to Rangan, it will be unprecedented if Microsoft can win in multiple markets. "Success in multiple 'core' businesses would be significant -- something never really seen before from a technology company,"

Inside Toyota's hybrid factory

2006-10-11T00:14:00.001-04:00

This is an interesting article on one of Toyota's assembly plants in Japan. The article talks about how Toyota is trying to become the worlds leading manufacturer of cars. Also it talks about how Toyota was one of the pioneers of just-in-time manufacturing, like Dell. An interesting part of the article was when it talked about the andon cord, which is a cord used by employees to stop production if they see a problem. In America workers are strongly encouraged not to stop production unless it is a very serious problem, and there would be alarms sounding if production was stopped. However at Toyota, workers are encouraged to stop production if they see a problem and if the production line is stopped music will play. Toyota wants to correct possible problems in the plant rather than have a major recall.

Teleportation

2006-10-11T00:14:00.000-04:00

Like a Jules Verne´s book, we are closer and closer to do, what a lot of people have dreamed about, teleportation, this will save time, money and will be cool.

"Beaming people in "Star Trek"-fashion is still in the realm of science fiction. But physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter, bringing quantum communication and computing closer to reality."

To get more information, go to the link.

You Tube and Google

2006-10-10T23:12:00.000-04:00

$1.65 billion agreement makes Google to acquire You Tube Inc. $1.65 billion is not a small investment. Why did Google do that after the competition of several months? The answer is technology and marketing.
Though it is just nineteen months that You Tube enter into the market, but it looks that You Tube has occupied a leading role in this field. Even though other competitors, like Google, want to defeat the You Tube, in a short time it can’t become true.
There are some advantages for You Tube as follows:
1. You Tube has a very good interface to construct some communities online. According to different favorites, you can make comments and friends to build up a community.
2. You Tube is easy to use and more attractive. You can share the video and tell a friend easily. And the users of You Tube can use code to play You Tube’s video directly from their own blog and website.
3. YouTube videos always load and play faster than Google videos on two different computers in multiple locations.
4. You Tube displays the number of times each video has been played to creators and viewers. The uploaders pride for the data.
5. YouTube's user account system is more robust. It's also easier to use and filled with more data than Google's.
6. YouTube can sort search returns by date added, title, view count and rating. Google Video's search sort is by date and title. YouTube's search functionality is better than Google's.
7. YouTube displays three random images from each video for search returns. That makes it considerably easier for users to find specific video files from large batches of results. Google Video just displays the first frame of each video file.
8. YouTube helps users find the obvious: related videos. It's a great tool for users trying to build video evidence related to a subject. For instance, go to the comments of this video to see the "related video" functionality.
Because You Tube is the first one who uses the technology and enters into the market, it occupies the market preemptively. And You Tube’s main users are some private users, but most of its competitors just focus on some big content providers. When its competitors found huge benefits in the market for private users, You Tube had occupied a leading role. After the hard fight of several months, Google decided to buy You Tube for a huge benefit which can be brought from the market in future.
But how does Google find a good way to make money by You Tube? Time will tell…

Campus Network Risks

2006-10-10T21:45:00.000-04:00

As many of us are already wary to put much of our personal data on the Web, I find it interesting to know that universities housing a great deal of OUR personal information are at a great risk from hackers . When you think of students' safety being at risk, generally we think of physical safety, but as the Internet continue to evolve, it turns out we will need to be protected by IT as well. Read on:

"Fifty-eight percent of higher education IT directors in a recent survey reported at least one security incident last year, and nine percent reported a loss or theft of students' personal information.

More than 3 million students could be at risk, according to CDW Government, Inc. and Eduventures, which reported Tuesday that IT security continues to be a major concern on college campuses.

"Our higher education institutions have always placed a high value on protecting the safety of their students, faculty and facilities. Today, that extends into protecting an ever-expanding volume of personal and institutional data, as well as a growing number of networked devices, from increasingly sophisticated security threats," Julie Smith, director of higher education for CDW-G, said through a prepared statement. "Our second annual survey found that while higher education IT directors recognize IT security as a major priority, they are stretched thin for the vital resources they need to prevent a devastating loss of critical data."

-Kazmira

Divide and Conquer: Rethinking IT Strategy

2006-10-10T21:02:00.000-04:00

According to this study, most of the IT initiatives aim not only a more competitive edge but also cost reduction and improvement of quality of service provided. The article shows that “successful organizations like this bank tend to group their investments into three categories:

1) Scale IT investments. Such stay-in-the-race projects involve the most familiar applications of information technology—those that are necessary to compete in a market and must be managed for cost. The IT priorities in this category should be to reduce operational costs and to ensure service and quality levels, but these investments alone will not create a competitive advantage.

2) Competitive-advantage investments. Win-the-race investments improve service, cut prices, and increase the effectiveness of decision making or the efficiency of operations. Companies should select and manage such projects in close alignment with other business and operational investments. In the 1990s Wal-Mart linked its suppliers' warehouses and stores in a single supply chain system, which allowed it to operate with significantly less inventory while reducing the incidence of stock-outs. For several years these achievements gave the retailer a significant cost advantage over its similarly scaled competitors, fueling its growth while they attempted to catch up by developing similar systems

3) Rule-changing innovations. Change-the-rules investments deliver a competitive advantage by creating new and unique products or services or by generating a hard-to-replicate cost or performance advantage. In 2004 Barclays Capital launched Barx, a global 24-hour electronic trading platform, for financial products. Barx not only cut costs and response times by removing the phone and paper parts of the processing chain but also created a new electronic marketplace for interest rate swaps and subsequent offerings—a marketplace that has become the norm for the electronic trading of these products. In this case Barclays Capital was a successful attacker, taking market share away from bigger investment banks.

Most companies today manage information technology against short-term performance rather than long-term health. But organizations that focus only on stay-in-the-race or win-the-race priorities that can be realized in the short term miss out on IT investments that could help deliver a strategic competitive advantage. By distinguishing among different IT investments, companies can use technology for more than simply attaining competitive parity; this approach can help deliver significant top-line growth and market advantages."

Innovation Is Not Always Easy - Not Even For Google

2006-10-10T20:02:00.000-04:00

I'm sure everybody's talking about Google at this point. Especially from a law perspective - copywright infringements etc., well here's an article I found on the issue of Google and innovation, the article is from ITBusinessEdge.com and it was posted today, October 10, 2006. Here it is:

Innovation — loosely defined as coming up with ideas for new products and services — is widely assumed to come naturally to tech companies, especially those with an entrepreneurial bent.

Yet even Google, the 800-pound gorilla of innovation, appears to be struggling with it.

As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the search giant is asking its engineers to focus on making existing products more usable rather than cranking out new products at a breakneck pace.

At last count, Google had more than 50 new products in development. At least some of them are “a bunch of crap that they have no idea what to do with,” says an especially blunt analyst.

Indeed, the dizzying array of new products flies in the face of the vaunted simplicity that Google employed for its famed search engine. Tellingly, none of them have been very successful.

Google isn’t alone in experiencing innovation “issues.” Some companies are so eager to find the “next big thing” that they are turning to previously untapped resources like consumers for help in creating new products.

------

and also, for more information about Google's purchase of uTube (copywright infringements,etc.) here's another article from the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100900546.html

Google Blog Hacked

2006-10-10T16:20:00.000-04:00

I was reading computer world and I came across this title "Google Blog Hacked" and since we are using a blog to post messages I thought it would be interesting posting this article. The main issue is that the Google Blog was hacked and a false message was written in it. The problem is that the company issues this blog to release important information. Do not belive anything you read in a blogger, not even this one. If a hacker could hack Google it can definitly hack this blog.
"A hacker broke into Google Inc.'s main official blog on Saturday and posted a false message saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay Inc.The intrusion marks the second time this year that Google's official blog has fallen into unauthorized hands. In March, Google staffers deleted the so-called Google Blog by mistake and someone briefly took control of the Web address. The Google Blog is one of the company's main communication tools. As official corporate messages similar to press releases, its postings often trigger news reports, analyst recommendations and investor decisions."

Luis Pellerano

Maximize your iPod's battery life

2006-10-10T12:37:00.000-04:00

Your iPod's battery is a lithium polymer that's rated for 500 or more charging cycles. (A charging cycle is a full discharge--that is, when you run the battery all the way down until it has no charge left and follow it with a full charge.) If you recharge your iPod's battery every other day, 500 charges should last you the best part of three years (though some claim you'll get only about 18 months). If you recharge your iPod's battery less frequently, there's a good chance the battery will outlast the hard drive. Here's how to get the longest life possible.

Don't let the battery die completely

To get the most life out of your battery, don't let it discharge fully--that is, don't run it until it's dead. However little you use your iPod, recharge it fully at least once every three weeks to prevent the battery from going flat. If you go on vacation for a month, you should take your iPod with you and recharge it during that time. (But you were going to take your iPod with you on vacation anyway, weren't you?)

Reduce demands on the battery

Play your music by album or by playlist, rather than hopping from one track to another. Remember that your iPod can cache an album or playlist to minimize the time the hard disk is spinning. But when you ask your iPod to produce another track it hasn't cached, it has to spin up the hard disk and access the song.

Use AAC or MP3 files rather than WAV or AIFF (Mac users only) files. Because WAVs and AIFFs are uncompressed and, therefore, much bigger than compressed files, they prevent your iPod from using its cache effectively, so the hard disk has to work much harder.

Minimize your use of the backlight or turn it off completely. To control the backlight, go to Settings > Backlight Timer. Here, you can designate the amount of time you want the backlight to remain on (2, 5, 10, or 20 seconds), set it to Always On (not recommended, obviously, for saving your battery), or for maximum conservation, just turn it off.

Ref:
www.cnet.com

Marketing

2006-10-10T12:29:00.000-04:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116043165293787312.html?mod=e-commerce_primary_hs

This is an interesting article about how RipeTV does a good job of targeting their customers for advertising purposes, maybe some of their lessons can be applied on our final projects.

Agustin

Electronic Network to Pool Information About H.I.V.

2006-10-10T12:26:00.000-04:00

I found it interesting that these medical centers are using IT technology to help more in the medical field. This is something that will help a lot of people in the country and hopefully can expand to the world.

October 10, 2006
Electronic Network to Pool Information About H.I.V.

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

To help determine the best therapies for patients with H.I.V., seven medical centers around the country will create the first electronic network to pool information about such care through a federal grant being announced today.
“It’s the first formal way to track H.I.V./AIDS treatments and outcomes on a broad, comprehensive scale and in real time,” said Dr. Michael Saag, the principal investigator of the project, which is based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. A chief aim of the network is to determine the effectiveness of therapies for the thousands of patients in everyday practice compared with a hundred or so selected for clinical trials.
Extrapolating findings from clinical trials to individual patients can be difficult. One reason is that there are restrictions on the kinds of other ailments that participants in the trials can have. A second is that such trials are usually conducted on a short-term basis — weeks or months. Doctors say that while short-term information is crucial for starting therapy, they need more data about the long-term benefits and dangers of such treatments.
“Just when we think we know that what we are doing is right, we get surprised” by the recognition of a new problem, Dr. Saag said in an interview.
For example, soon after the marketing of newer antiretroviral drugs in 1996, AIDS experts were surprised to learn that a complication of the treatments, known as lipodystrophy, caused a change in the body shape of many patients. In some, the back of the neck resemble a buffalo hump from disfiguring deposits of fat.
And as newer antiretroviral drugs have allowed H.I.V.-infected patients to live longer, many are developing high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments that become increasingly common with advancing age.
The network will track patients who receive various treatments for such ailments to determine if and how they adversely interact with those for H.I.V./AIDS. Steps will be taken to keep the identities of the 15,000 patients in the project confidential.
At kiosks in waiting rooms in each center, patients will be asked to spend about 10 minutes answering questions about their symptoms, body image, adherence to medication regimens and other areas. When necessary, doctors can try to validate certain answers as they examine the patients.
The patients will be asked to give blood samples, from which various laboratory tests can be performed, including ones to determine whether the patients were taking their drugs as prescribed and as they stated.
Computers can make calculations to determine what treatments have the best chances of working based on what has helped other patients with similar problems, Dr. Saag said.
The information could be a valuable resource to researchers. For example, answers to questions could provide clues to the presence of often-difficult-to-detect disorders like mental depression, and doctors could then treat them. Basic research scientists could also work with clinicians to learn how H.I.V. infection can progress to AIDS.
In addition to a center at Birmingham, the six others in the project are at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland; Harvard University in Boston; Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; the University of California, San Diego; the University of California, San Francisco; and the University of Washington in Seattle.
The $2.45 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute can cover up to five additional centers, Dr. Saag said.
The seven current centers had pre-existing databases that tracked the clinical outcomes of their individual patients but lacked a collaborative, interactive information-sharing network. The centers were selected in part because they had shown the reliability of their data.
“Collecting data is one thing — making sure it is accurate is another,” Dr. Saag said, adding that entering inaccurate data into outcome studies could lead to erroneous, even dangerous findings.
Dr. Saag said he hoped that the H.I.V./AIDS project would be a successful pilot to develop similar networks for other diseases.

Alternatives to iPod

2006-10-10T11:52:00.001-04:00

What if you bought a portable music player and found that it was already loaded with hundreds of songs selected by an online digital music service? You might be delighted to be getting all this content with no effort, or you might be annoyed that a huge portion of your new player's storage capacity has been taken up with music you may not want.

That's the issue with the Sansa Rhapsody, the latest portable music player to challenge Apple's iPod hegemony. This is the first player to be specifically designed to work with RealNetworks' Rhapsody music-subscription service, and it's no mere iPod clone. The player, made by SanDisk, is designed to show off the Rhapsody music-rental model, which is about music discovery rather than individual song or album purchases.

Movies available from Itunes and Amazon Unbox

2006-10-10T11:52:00.000-04:00

Apple announced last month that they would be allowing downloaded movies at extremely low prices. The films are available for downloads through Itunes. Movies are available from 7.99 to 14.99 or movies can be rented for 3.99. Amazon.com has offered downloadable movies from Amazon Unbox. Unfortunately, there has been some issues with using Amazon to download movies. The complaint has been that downloading movies took 45 minutes longer than using Itunes. The time was based on a DSL connection. This is very important since Itunes could lose alot of potential clients. The only advantages that have been noticeable is that Amazon Unbox movies tend to have a sharper picture.

Sharing in Pennsylvania

2006-10-10T11:23:00.000-04:00

Sharing data

Starting in 2000, Pennsylvania began to design the Home and Community Services Information System (HCSIS), a Web-based system that provides agencies within the state’s Public Welfare Department with electronic access to critical health and social-services program data. The system has modules for quality management, financial management and claims processing, and incident management.

HCSIS’ users include county organizations and provider agencies who offer services to people with developmental or physical disabilities, the elderly and people in the state’s mental health system, said Rossman, project manager of HCSIS. The 900 providers who use HCSIS include residential group homes, community day services, therapists, in-home support agencies and even some YMCA facilities.

Each individual enrolled in HCSIS has a support plan that can be called up by authorized users. Before HCSIS, if someone called the regional office with a complaint, the regional office would have to call the county, which would contact the supports coordinator, the person who works directly with the individual.
Ellie Myers, deputy mental retardation administrator for the Dauphin County Office of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Program, said HCSIS’ incident management module has brought “a dramatic improvement” in countY services. Myers, who has worked for the county for 30 years, calls HCSIS “invaluable.”

HCSIS uses the state’s existing Medicaid Management Information System as its claims processing component, Rossman said. In 1999, the Pennsylvania auditor general’s office discovered evidence of substandard care in several group homes for people with mental retardation.

Google YouTube Deal

2006-10-10T11:20:00.000-04:00

Google Inc. agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.
The question arises whether it is sensible enough for Google to go for this deal. YouTube, based in San Mateo, California, specializes in serving up short videos created by everyday people. It is popular among more than 100 million video showings daily. But YouTube has also come under scrutiny because users often post copyrighted material, including music videos produced by well-established artists. Anyone (GOOGLE!!) who comes to buy may also have to face lawsuits for copyright violations. So, I think Google LAWYERS will have a busy time ahead.

Downloadable movies from Itunes and Amazon Unbox

2006-10-10T11:12:00.000-04:00

HP's e-mail tracer in widespread use

2006-10-10T11:01:00.000-04:00

The tracer software that Hewlett-Packard Co. investigators used to try to sniff out boardroom leaks sounded like it had been ripped from the pages of a bad science-fiction novel. That is, until the company began talking about it in detail at a congressional probe into the spying scandal.
The technology tool the company used, called a Web bug, is designed to allow e-mail senders to track the path a message takes, including whether a recipient opens the message and forwards it to another party. And it turns out the technology is widely used in e-mail newsletters to track readers and also by law enforcement in investigations, security experts say.
A spokesman for the California attorney general's office said that HP's use of Web bugs is not linked to the Oct. 4 charges of five people, including former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and contractors, on allegations that they used false pretenses to access individuals' phone records. That case is about the practice of so-called pretexting.
Hewlett-Packard's boardroom leak investigation used technology called a Web bug attached to an e-mail message. It was part of an unsuccessful attempt to trick a journalist for CNet Networks Inc. into revealing her confidential source on the company's board of directors, HP Security Investigator Fred Adler told a congressional subcommittee at a hearing on Sept. 28. (Adler was not one of those named in the California charges.)
Prior to Adler's testimony, it was not clear what technique HP had used.
Richard Smith, an information security expert who founded Boston Software Forensics, said that most people who use the Internet have been subject to Web bugs. "Any kind of commercial e-mail is probably going to have them in there," he said.
HP turned to a small Australian company called ReadNotify.com to help track the e-mail messages. ReadNotify tracks both e-mail and Microsoft Office documents. It will tell when the e-mail you sent was read, and will guess the location of the recipient, based on the reader's IP address.
The ReadNotify service is popular in law enforcement and also in industrial espionage investigations, said Chris Drake, ReadNotify's chief technology officer.
In an e-mail exchange, Drake said he was informed of the HP case by the media, adding, "This is an extremely common and effective use of our technology." Drake said his company also believes it's legal, in its home country of Australia as well as the United States.
Here's how Web bugs work: The bug's author puts an image on a Web server with a unique website address, or URL, and then sends an e-mail that contains a link to this image. The image can be hidden from sight or within plain view--a corporate logo, for example.
When the e-mail is opened, the subject's computer looks up the image and in doing so sends the information to the Web server. Another way of doing this is for ReadNotify users to add ".readnotify.com" to the end of the recipient's e-mail address.
While Drake characterized ReadNotify's e-mail tracking tools as sophisticated, security consultant Smith noted it uses the same techniques as other Web bugs.

Bright future for Human Capital Management

2006-10-10T10:46:00.000-04:00

HCM is responsible for a broad range of activities, including identifying and recruiting the best available talent, and partnering with managers to retain, develop and motivate our people to reach their fullest potential.

Most vendors, including large enterprise resource planning (ERP) firms such as SAP and Oracle, anticipate "big opportunities" in the market for human capital management (HCM) applications, according to new research.

IDC estimates that the HCM market was worth $1bn in 2005 in western Europe, growing a healthy eight per cent compared to 2004. The $630m payroll applications market grew at a moderate 4.1 per cent during 2005.

Al Ralsky

2006-10-10T10:35:00.001-04:00

I just to comment some features about the bulk e-mail king..As future managers, we have to think about it and measures we should take in order to control and filter spam. Actually, I imagine Ralsky a young person,but he is not..see the link..very interesting.
Yngrid