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Are laptop bags to blame for rising thefts?
2007-05-19 22:57:00
Carrying a laptop in a laptop bag could increase your chances of joining the growing number of people falling prey to laptop thieves.Just consider these police reports from some of the laptop thefts in the UK.- While walking along the road [the victim] is approached from behind and knocked against a wall banging his head. Offender then pulls [the victim's] laptop case off his shoulder making good his escape.- During the hours of darkness two unknown male offenders approach from behind, remove laptop case containing laptop and mobile phone from [the victim's] right hand. Offenders then make good escape with same in unknown direction.- Offenders during darkness hours approach [the victim] while getting out of his vehicle and proceed to snatch laptop bag from his shoulder and make off.
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Even Yahoo! Gets The Blues
2007-05-19 22:56:00
CEO Semel's next turnaround task: Boost morale and keep employees from leavingIt was a bit of good news that Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel really needed: Following a lengthy search, the Internet company on May 15 hired a new chief financial officer to succeed Susan Decker, now head of Yahoo's key advertising group. But the appointment of Blake Jorgensen, co-founder of investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners Group Inc., also fueled renewed speculation that Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO ) might be seeking to shed assets or even get acquired as it struggles to catch up with runaway rival Google Inc. (GOOG ) Yahoo's stock fell 1.7% on an up day for the market.
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'Shrek's' Princess Fiona lends a hand to HP's ad
2007-05-19 22:56:00
What does Princess Fiona, Shrek's fairy tale heroine, do with her personal computer? Tracks auctions on YeBay.DreamWorks Animation SKG teamed with Hewlett-Packard Co. to promote both "Shrek the Third," which hits theaters today, and computers. Their unusual marketing campaign demonstrates the lengths to which companies are going to find customers in the fragmented media landscape."We're witnessing a shift in entertainment consumption and how people want to immerse themselves," said Anne Globe, head of worldwide marketing and consumer products at DreamWorks.Palo Alto-based HP featured Princess Fiona in an ad for notebook computers that began airing May 10 on television — and on YeTube, a Shrek-inspired channel it bought on the video-sharing service YouTube.But the YeTube channel also features other cross-promotions that use the movie's characters to subtly sell technology gear.There's the usual YouTube fare — but this time it's performed by Shrek characters. DreamWorks anima...
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Internet Increasingly Censored
2007-05-19 22:55:00
The first comprehensive global survey of Intern et filtering shows that online repression is on the rise worldwide.A report released today by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) concludes that the scale, the scope, and the sophistication of state-based Internet filtering have all increased dramatically in recent years. The survey highlights the tools and techniques used by countries to keep their citizens from viewing certain kinds of online material.ONI is a collaboration among four leading universities: Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. The group's testing was carried out during 2006 and early 2007. ONI used a combination of tools that can remotely test filtering conditions within given countries. The group also relied heavily on local researchers who evaluated Internet conditions from inside certain countries. Some countries, such as Cuba and North Korea, were deemed too dangerous for either remote or in-country testing. But of the 41 different countries tested by ONI, 25 were fo...
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Google creates uber search site
2007-05-19 22:54:00
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--In its biggest revamp ever to its home page, Googl e on Wednesday launched its version of universal search, a redesign that will list in one place search results from a variety of media.Combined with its other new features, universal search not only makes it easier to find relevant information in one place, it will put even more pressure on Google's competitors.Instead of using separate search pages for photos, video, news, archived news, scanned books and other sources relevant to, say, "Steve Jobs," Google's universal search users will find links to all of those sources in a single search attempt."Now with universal search we can provide a more holistic answer," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, said during a "Search ology" media event at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.
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HDTV is lame...
2007-05-19 21:29:00
Highdefinition Television already has got a follower: In 2015 the first test broadcasts of Super Hi-Vision starts in Japan. Unlike the Full HD resolution of 1920x1200 pixel, Super Hi-Vision supports awesome 7680x4320 pixel.
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Top 10 HDTV Myths: Fact vs. Fiction, Hi-Def Style
2007-05-19 21:03:00
High-definition television (HDTV) has evolved from an early-adopter indulgence to a mainstream technology in less than a decade. Enthusiasm for HD everything is driving the sales of flat-panel TVs and has inspired a next-gen DVD format war. It’s showing up in camcorders and on your local TV news.Yet HDTV remains a widely misunderstood technology, muddled with misconceptions and half-truths born of marketing mumbo jumbo and senseless jargon. The advertised specifications read like bewildering math­ematical equations with “variables” such as 1080i, 720p, 4:3, 1080p and 16:9. To clear the air of confusion we’ve examined some of the most wrongheaded bits of received wisdom in the world of HD.
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'What is a Web site?' judge says he's fully computer literate
2007-05-19 21:01:00
A British judge who said he didn't really understand the term "Web site" is fully computer literate and was merely trying to clarify complex evidence for the benefit of the court, the judiciary said on Friday.The remark by Judge Peter Openshaw during a trial on Wednesday made headlines around the world."The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a London court during the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.In a statement, the Judicial Communications Office did not dispute that Openshaw had been accurately quoted. But it said the remark by the judge, now in his fifth week presiding over the trial, had been taken out of context."Trial judges always seek to ensure that everyone in court is able to follow all of the proceedings. They will regularly ask questions, not for their own benefit, but on behalf of all those following a case, in the interests of justice," it said.
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Digital tech for the disabled
2007-05-19 21:01:00
Every year since 2003, the South Korean government has commissioned designers to come up with technologies to help enable people with physical disabilities to work with computers and other electronics devices. The government then picks the most promising prototypes and builds more prototypes to conduct feasible testing.These are the 10 prototypes chosen this year by the Ministry of Information and Communication and Korea Agency for Digi tal Opportunity & Promotion. If testing goes well, they could make their way to homes and offices.This is the SenseView, an enlarged-view tabletop reader, which produces an extra-large view of images and documents on a computer screen monitor for people with low vision.
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Software for kindergarten Beethovens
2007-05-19 21:00:00
Child prodigies are rare in any artistic pursuit, but new music composition software is making it easier for parents and teachers to raise a little Beethoven .Sibelius, a well-known maker of software that's used by musicians as well as composers on Hollywood films like Casino Royale, last week released the latest in a line of music software designed for children ages five to 11. With a game-like design and graphics, the software teaches children the basics of instruments, music theory, notation and composition, and then lets them create their own songs by dragging and dropping musically infused shapes, instruments, characters or animations.It's so easy that a kindergartner can compose a song, say educators, and that's something they believe will go far to make music aficionados of kids. That shift could have ripple effects on an already transformed music industry thanks to the digital age. Instead of downloading pirated music, more kids may begin to create their own sounds, educat...
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YouTube doubtful of Pentagon explanation for blocking sites
2007-05-19 18:01:00
YouTube's co-founders on Thursday challenged the Pentagon 's assertion that soldiers overseas were sapping too much bandwidth by watching online videos, the military's principal rationale for blocking popular Web sites from Defense Department computers."They said it might be a bandwidth issue, but they created the Internet, so I don't know what the problem is," CEO Chad Hurley said with a hearty laugh during an interview with The Associated Press.Hurley, Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen and YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan emphasized that the online video company is trying to work with the Pentagon in hopes the military will reverse course or at least partially repeal the ban.
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NBC strikes deal with YouTube
2007-05-19 17:59:00
Just months ago, NBC Universal was demanding that clips of its shows be removed from YouTube. In the time since, YouTube has emerged as an Internet tour de force, and now NBC has changed its tune.A network representative confirmed a report Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal that NBC has plans to upload promotional video clips of some of its TV shows, including "Saturday Night Live" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." The entertainment company, owned by General Electric, will advertise on YouTube and promote the site on some of its TV shows. Financial details were not disclosed. A YouTube representative did not return calls for comment.The craze over sharing homemade videos on the Internet is beginning to draw some big-time Hollywood players. On Monday, Warner Bros. announced that Internet video site Guba has started selling downloads of the studio's movies and TV shows. Guba is the first among the video-sharing sites to offer full-length movies.
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Analysts: Microsoft's after Google's ad business
2007-05-19 15:54:00
SAN FRANCISCO--Micro soft may be older and bigger than Google, but it's Microsoft nipping at Google's heels and not the other way around, according to two Gartner analysts who closely follow the moves of the companies.By offering free Web-based productivity applications, Google is looking for an additional vehicle for advertising revenue and trying to distract Microsoft from focusing on its own core search advertising business rather than hoping to grab Microsoft's big corporate IT dollars, David Smith, a vice president and Gartner Fellow at research firm Gartner, said during a session at the Gartner Symposium ITXPO conference here on Wednesday.Despite reports to the contrary, Google isn't going after Microsoft as much as Microsoft is gunning for Google, he said."Microsoft is clearly going after the advertising world" and has pledged to invest $2 billion to do so, he said. But he said the company is at a "critical point."
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Microsoft opens up on Web strategy at Mix '07
2007-05-19 15:54:00
Microsoft's strategy in the new world of ad-supported online software is, in some ways, business as usual: use aggressive business terms to undercut rivals, and cozy up to developers.At the company's Mix '07 conference in Las Vegas on Monday, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie and other Microsoft executives are scheduled to lay out the elements of Microsoft's "software plus services" push, its approach to making money from hosted Web services while keeping customers tied to its desktop software.
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Wired but not Web 2.0? That's normal, study says
2007-05-19 15:53:00
Although most U.S. adults have a cell phone, a computer and Internet access, a study says only a small percentage are participating in Web 2.0 activities.The Pew Internet & American Life Project released on Sunday a study (PDF: A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users) of people's "evolving relationships to cyberspace."Pew found in a survey that 73 percent of U.S. adults own a cell phone, 68 percent have a desktop computer, 30 percent possess a laptop, and 73 percent connect to the Internet, but that very few use them to express themselves publicly via Web 2.0 applications.The study defines Web 2.0 users as people who take advantage of technology "to express themselves online and participate in the commons of cyberspace," including maintaining a personal Web site, blogging, vlogging, remixing media or sharing new-media creations.Only 8 percent of U.S. adults are "deep users" of Web 2.0 features, the study found, though many American adults do own the gadgets tha...
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Ad giant to scoop up 24/7 Real Media
2007-05-19 14:04:00
WPP Group plans to buy 24/7 Real Media in a $649 million cash deal, bringing the latter's digital marketing technologies to the advertising giant.WPP's announcement on Thursday comes just one month after Google said it will acquire online ad company DoubleClick in a $3.1 billion deal. Google's deal led to speculation that there would be an acquisition boom in the advertising technology market. Earlier this month, there were rumors that Microsoft would buy 24/7.The deal will tie WPP's traditional mix of marketing, advertising, public relations and branding with 24/7's search-based ad serving, monitoring and analytics technologies. "Our clients and therefore our industry are becoming more technology driven," Martin Sorrell, WPP chief executive, said in a statement. "24/7 Real Media significantly enhances our capabilities, technological resources and talent."
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Ads that are too fast for a fast-forward button
2007-05-19 14:03:00
A broadcast network will soon offer advertisers two more ways to try holding the attention of viewers throughout those commercial breaks that consumers love to hate.One idea is to run quickie commercials of only 5 seconds each. The other is to schedule a series with no commercial breaks at all and instead incorporate sponsors' products into each episode.Executives of The CW Television Network outlined their plans yesterday as they offered Madison Avenue a preview of their prime-time lineup for the 2007-2008 season.The proposals are the most recent to be advanced by the major networks, broadcast and cable, as they grapple with the problem of keeping viewers from changing channels during commercials--or, if the viewing is being done on digital video recorders, from fast-forwarding through the spots.
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Google CEO talks new media politics
2007-05-19 14:02:00
NEW YORK--During a keynote address at the 2007 Personal Democracy Forum Friday morning, Google CEO Eric Schmidt looked up at the crowd and said, "This looks like a Google meeting."The reason, he said, was the abundance of open laptop screens, BlackBerrys and other gadgets among the audience. "At most Google meetings no one is actually looking at the speaker; they're all basically online," he said."Speaking as an older person, this bothers me, but I have given up."This always-on nature of the Internet generation and its effect on the global political landscape was the focus of Schmidt's presentation, which was held in the form of a conversation with Thomas L. Friedman, a New York Times columnist and author of The World Is Flat."George Bush never could've been elected president if he'd been at Yale now and there'd been cell phone cameras around."--Thomas L. Friedman, columnistWhile the discussion ranged from the Thai government's ban on YouTube earlier this year to the widely ci...
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Fake E-Mail Results in Angry Apple Shareholders
2007-05-19 00:45:00
Apple stock dropped 2.2% today in mid-afternoon trading as Engadget published news based on a faked e-mail inside Apple. 'Apparently an internal memo was sent to several Apple employees--and forwarded to Engadget--around 9am CT today saying that Apple issued a press release with the news that the iPhone was now scheduled for October, and Leopard was delayed until January. About an hour and a half after that e-mail went out, a second e-mail was sent--this time officially from Apple--saying the first e-mail was a fake, and that the delivery schedule for the iPhone and Leopard had not changed.
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INQUIRER Top 10 Greatest Ever Technology Names
2007-05-19 00:36:00
NOW THAT Windows Server 2008 has been officially named, the codename Longhorn will retreat to being just another future slab of steak, one more leather jacket.That’s a shame because Longhorn is an outstanding name. It’s evocative, American, masculine, muscular, traditional, rural. It’s a name that communicates with the solar plexus like Sibelius’s second or the sudden glimpse of a mountain when mist clears.Unlike Windows Server 2008, although to be fair to Microsoft, it recognises its essential dullness in a mockumentary video.Why do companies ditch these powerful codenames? It’s a shame because there have been some corkers, so let’s recall them as part of our Top 10 Greatest Ever Technology Names.10. Compaq’s Wildfire. Wildfire was the codename for a range of Alpha-based servers. Good name, except for INQUIRER founder Mike Magee, who, in another plaice, was on the receiving end of a cease-and-desist letter from Messrs. Sue, Grabbit and Run suggesting the moniker coul...
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Google's new Universal search
2007-05-19 00:33:00
Google made an announcement a couple days ago that they've released what they call Univ ersal Search . Univers al Search is basically a tighter integration of image, video, blog, news, and other search services into the main search results. Marissa gives more background on the concept here. For those of us paying attention to this space on a daily basis, it's not really anything too earth shattering. They've been integrating different types of results into the main search off and on for years. This announcement simply lets us know that they're serious about it and will continue to try to deliver the best results possible, regardless of whether it's a web page, video, product search, or whatever.As a searcher, I think this is great--as long as they get it right. I don't want a bunch of irrelevant or useless stuff, but if it's what I'm looking for, that's perfect. As a search marketer, this emphasizes the importance of optimizing your presence in not just the Google web page res...
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Layer-Ads
2007-05-19 00:10:00
Geld verdienen mit Layer -Ads.

First-quarter digital camera shipments up 6 percent
2007-05-19 00:03:00
Digital camera shipments increased 6 percent to 4.9 million in the first quarter of 2007, market researcher IDC said Wednesday.Top leaders were Canon at 21 percent of the market, Sony at 16 percent and Kodak at 13 percent. Samsung jumped from 4 percent in the year-earlier quarter to 11 percent this year, propelling it to a fourth-place finish, IDC said.Kodak fared better, shipments increasing 5 percent--the first growth in five quarters, attributable to its emphasis on compact cameras costing between $200 and $300, IDC said. Nikon, though, didn't fare as well."Nikon was seventh with a share of 7 percent, down from 13 percent a year ago," said IDC analyst Christopher Chute. "They did well with DSLRs (digital single-lens reflex cameras), but no so well with compacts."
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FCC approves the iPhone
2007-05-19 00:02:00
Apple's iPhone took one step closer to launching Wednesday, as the company received permission from the Federal Communications Commission to sell it in the U.S.t's not like that permission was ever really in doubt. But the FCC requires anyone who makes a phone or wireless device for use in this country to pass some basic tests that ensure the device isn't putting out harmful radiation, or death rays, or other emissions that could cause problems. The FCC also publishes those documents on its Web site, which has led to the discovery of unannounced products in the past. That's part of the reason why CEO Steve Jobs preannounced the iPhone in January.The iPhone is known as the "A1203," at least for testing purposes. All those years of homework must have paid off, for the iPhone A1203 passed the tests with flying colors. An Apple representative told Reuters that the iPhone remains on track for a late June arrival.
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Console mods find dead end at Xbox Live
2007-05-19 00:01:00
Microsoft is cracking down on Xbox owners who modify their consoles.The company is blocking modified Xbox 360 systems from connecting to its online multiplayer video game service, Xbox Live .According to a blog posting from Microsoft's Games Global Marketing team, when owners of a modified console try to log onto the service, they will be blocked, although they will not have their accounts banned."We will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of our service, the protection of our partners and the benefits of our users," the blog states....read the full article [ here ]
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Podcast: What's behind Microsoft's Aquantive grab?
2007-05-19 00:00:00
In its largest deal ever, Micro soft announced plans Friday to acquire digital marketing and services company Aqua ntive for $6 billion. CNET News.com's Leslie Katz talks with reporter Ina Fried about what the buy could mean for Redmond.Plus, Hewlett-Packard is adding two new members to its board; Advanced Micro Devices is prepping a new energy-efficient notebook chip and chip platform that could help it compete with Intel; and a professor at Purdue University is working to produce hydrogen from a reaction between water and an alloy of aluminum and gallium.
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Quantifying Microsoft's biggest purchase ever
2007-05-18 23:59:00
Aquantive who? The company Micro soft is acquiring for its highest purchase price ever may not even register on the radar of most consumers.But it's a well-known entity in the online advertising industry and can give Microsoft some much-needed--even if pricey--ad-serving technology, some industry experts said. Microsoft said it was buying Aquantive early on Friday, shocking many observers with a $6 billion purchase price, which is three times the amount it has paid for any other company and an 85 percent premium on Aquantive's closing stock price on Thursday. It is also double what Google agreed to pay for DoubleClick last month. Aquantive's stock rose nearly 80 percent after the deal was announced....read the full article [ here ]
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SimExchange aims to predict video game market
2007-05-18 23:58:00
Last week, Brian Shiau sent out an e-mail predicting what the NPD Group, the perceived authority on the performance of the video game market, would report about the industry's April console sales when it delivered its assessment Thursday.It turned out that Shiau's predictions weren't perfect--on average he was about 15 percent off on the sales of Nintendo's DS and Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable and Microsoft's Xbox 360. But he also wasn't that far off predictions from Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter, one of the most quoted industry analysts, who himself had been about 10.6 percent off sales on the same consoles.And a month earlier, Shiau's predictions had actually been better than Pachter's. Shiau had been off by about 15.8 percent, while Pachter had missed by 34.9 percent. ...read the full article [ here ]
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Microsoft to buy Aquantive for $6 billion
2007-05-18 23:49:00
In a bid to boost its presence in advertising, Micro soft said Friday that it will pay $6 billion to acquire Aqua ntive, a digital marketing and services company.The deal is Microsoft's largest ever, highlighting the importance of supporting more-advanced advertising products and technologies across areas including media planning, video on demand and Internet Protocol television. Aquantive produces the Atlas Media Console and Drive PM tools for advertisers and publishers, and owns interactive ad agency Avenue A Razorfish."The advertising industry is evolving and growing at an incredible pace, moving increasingly toward online and IP-served platforms, which dramatically increases the importance of software for this industry," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. "Today's announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to ...
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Technology 'fingerprints' valid credit cards, flags bogus ones
2007-05-18 23:47:00
The way the particles land on a given credit card magnetic stripe are as unique as individual snow flakes or human fingerprints. So says a Magtek, a company that has developed a product, MagnePrint, for recording the unique magnetic media signature for all credit and debit cards scanned through its readers. The first scan by a MagnePrint reader creates a template against which all subsequent scans are compared.... read the full article on cnet news
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