http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum en Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:47:40 GMT vBulletin 60 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3929&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:54:49 GMT After the wikipedia, the wikicar. "eCars - Now!" is a Finnish Internet community seeking to apply the collective approach taken by online collaborators like the authors of Wikipedia to start converting used petrol-fuelled cars to electric ones, with the first roll-out due this year.

The Finnish-language forum claims to be first of its kind in the world, and wants to provide an alternative to what its members perceive as foot-dragging in the oil and auto industries.

The group is working in the tradition of 'open source' projects laid down by information technology -- like the Linux computer operating system which was started by a Finn and challenged Microsoft's dominance.

"If we succeed very well it will create similar projects across the world with whom we can share what we know," said project participant Jukka Jarvinen, adding that a similar scheme was launching in Denmark.

"We're hoping to create a global movement."

Electric cars have struggled to shake off a quirky image with tiny sales of often fantastical vehicles at prohibitive prices, or economy-sized "golf carts" with limited range.

But because they are charged from the power grid and make more efficient use of energy, they produce fewer emissions and are seen as a promising clean-air alternative to petrol-powered vehicles.

When it comes to promises, auto-makers are keen to capitalise on mounting consumer concern about high gasoline prices which is prompting trade-ins of gas-guzzling SUVs.

Chrysler LLC was one of the latest to say it plans to launch all-electric vehicles in the next three to five years.

General Motors is rushing to complete the design of its Chevy Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid, Mitsubishi Motors plans to launch its electric compact car "i-MiEV" in Japan in 2009, and in Europe Daimler's electric Smart and Mercedes models are touted for 2010.

But the Finnish group offers an outlet for fans who have so far been disappointed by the car industry. Some experts say it will still take 5-10 years for alternatives to petrol-fuelled cars to take root, given the capacity challenge for an auto industry that is adding 65 million new cars a year to a fleet of 1 billion.

OPEN SOURCE

The group is starting small. It has identified demand for more than 500 electric conversions in Finland and its Web site aims to begin introducing potential buyers to sellers of suitable used cars and components, and mechanics who can make the conversion with an electric motor and lithium batteries.

Its first conversion model will be a Toyota Corolla -- it aims to produce a few dozen finished eCorollas this year -- which it says would have a range of 150 kilometers per charge and a top speed of 120 km/h.

This compares with Oslo-based specialist car producer Think's model City, which travels up to 180 kilometers with a top speed of 100 km/h.

The forum expects the used car and mechanics' work in total to cost roughly 25,000 euros ($38,000), close to the price of a new Corolla in Finland, and will make the conversions using commercially available components.

On the forum, participants feed ideas to the site's discussion boards and email lists, the best of which the non-profit community will put into use.

The community believes 500 orders would be sufficient for mass conversions: Think plans a batch of 8,000 electric cars next year at 20,000 euros each.

Its experts are volunteers who negotiate prices for the components and car conversions. End-users will pay for the car, the component costs and the mechanic.

"We are not trying to jealously build any sort of corporation out of this," Jarvinen said. "This kind of an unorganized organism that grows in small cells across the world cannot be bought out."

OBSTACLES

The old common problem of electric cars -- heavy batteries with a limited life-span -- has mostly been overcome with lithium battery technology, although limits to the range remain.

Infrastructure for power is a hurdle: there are few public spots where one can charge an electric car in Finland, but they can also be charged at home.

Renault and Nissan have signed a deal with Portugal to make the country one of the first to offer consumers the possibility of nationwide electric car charging stations. The two makers have also said they will mass-market electric cars in Israel and Denmark in 2011.

The e-group's intentions are good, says researcher Juhani Laurikko of the Technical Research Centre of Finland, but they are not yet approaching the issue in a sustainable way.

"Frankly, there is not much potential here, but these are moves in the right direction. Converting petrol-fuelled cars that are only a few years old is a waste of natural resources," he said.

"I would rather see conversions done on used cars older than 10 years with older petrol-engine technology."

The community says it is best for the electric car's image to start with new cars rather than tired models.

Finland's Vehicle Administration said the community's cars could be admitted to the roads in Finland.

"They may well be admitted, as long as they fulfill the legally set criteria," said Erik Asplund, senior officer at the vehicle inspection unit. "There are a few of these criteria but probably nothing that couldn't be overcome."

(http://www.sahkoautot.fi/) ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3929 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3928&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:51:52 GMT Chinese police have arrested a prominent Internet dissident for violating his probation terms, a rights group said, as the country steps up a... Chinese police have arrested a prominent Internet dissident for violating his probation terms, a rights group said, as the country steps up a pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent to ensure the Games go smoothly.

Du Daobin, from the central province of Hebei, was given a suspended sentence for subversion in 2004 having been detained by police in Wuhan for posting online essays in support of fellow dissident, Liu Di.

Du was then released into house arrest, Reporters Without Borders said in an emailed statement, but was arrested this week having been accused of posting articles on overseas websites and receiving guests without permission.

"Du was living under a permanent threat," the group said. "He could have been imprisoned at any time under the sentence he received more than four years ago. He is the third leading cyber-dissident to be imprisoned in the run-up to the Olympic Games, after Hu Jia and Huang Qi."

Chinese police arrested Huang in the country's southwest for "possession of state secrets" after he offered help to parents of children killed in the Sichuan earthquake in May.

Hu, a prominent AIDS activist, was jailed for 3-½ years earlier this year for inciting subversion and criticizing the ruling Communist Party.

A fourth dissident, Ye Guozhu, jailed in 2004 for organizing protests against forced evictions, was due for release on Saturday but he was taken from the prison where he was being held and his whereabouts were unknown, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said.

"We believe that the police took him away to silence him during the Games, and that he will not be released until after the Olympics when most foreign journalists will have left Beijing," the group quoted his brother, Ye Guoqiang, as saying.

Ye Guoqiang said police told him they had taken Ye Guozhu from the prison, but did not say where he was being held or for how long.

Human Rights in China said the government was using the slogan of a "peaceful Olympics" to target rights activists.

"The current state of affairs is intolerable," said the group's China executive director, Sharon Hom, in a statement.

"Under the banner of a 'peaceful Olympics,' authorities continue to employ contradictory and counterproductive security methods, which only serve to exacerbate the human rights crisis and provoke greater instability in China," she added.

The government says the charges of a pre-Olympic campaign against dissidents are groundless.

Last week, the official Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed Games' spokesman as saying the Olympics were actually improving China's human rights record, and defended security measures.

"To ensure the hosting of a successful Olympic Games, and to ensure the safety of foreign athletes and visitors, China has indeed taken a series of necessary, legitimate and reasonable security measures," the spokesman said.

"lt's unnecessary to arrest so-called 'dissidents' for the sake of the Olympic Games. The accusation is untrue."

Still, the swirl of bad publicity in the run-up to the Games, which open on August 8, appears not to have dampened Chinese people's enthusiasm, though censorship means little foreign criticism is reported domestically.

More than 90 percent of Chinese surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Pew Global Attitudes Project said they thought the Olympics would help China's global image, and almost everyone thought the Games would be a success. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3928 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3927&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:49:48 GMT The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is close to securing the final vote needed to get majority support for giving conditional... The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is close to securing the final vote needed to get majority support for giving conditional approval to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's purchase of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc, a source familiar with the merger review said on Wednesday.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is near an agreement to get the support of fellow Republican commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, which would give him the three votes needed for approval of the deal on the five-member commission, the source ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3927 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3926&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:47:45 GMT Video games sold in New York state must clearly label ratings for violent content under a law signed on Tuesday, which rights groups criticized as... Video games sold in New York state must clearly label ratings for violent content under a law signed on Tuesday, which rights groups criticized as likely unconstitutional.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said that it planned to mount a legal challenge against the law, signed on Tuesday by New York Gov. David Paterson, as it raised free speech concerns.

The group said that similar laws in California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington state have been thrown out as unconstitutional.

The U.S. video gaming industry submits to ratings on a voluntary basis, and the system is similar to movie ratings.

The new law says that is it compulsory for games that are already rated to be labeled and also requires that new video game consoles are installed with parent-controlled lockout features by 2010.

"This legislation will provide information and educate consumers to help them make better choices for their children," said state Sen. Andrew Lanza, a bill sponsor.

Robert Perry, the NYCLU's legislative director, said the new law was a "back-door" way of regulating video game content.

The law also establishes an advisory council to study "the connection between interactive media and real-life violence in minors exposed to such media" and to evaluate the ratings issued by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3926 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3925&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:44:28 GMT Ehssan Dariani, founder of German social network studiVZ, never made any secret of his admiration for Facebook, which is now suing studiVZ for... Ehssan Dariani, founder of German social network studiVZ, never made any secret of his admiration for Facebook, which is now suing studiVZ for copying its ideas and look.

When he and two of his friends launched studiVZ (www.studivz.net) in October 2005, it was modeled after the U.S. network that began as a way for college students to keep in touch and became an online phenomenon.

In fact, studiVZ is so close to the original, the German network for students has been dubbed "fakebook".

Dariani is reported originally to have wanted to create a men's cosmetics line. But that endeavor failed to take off and he found inspiration instead in U.S. social networks Facebook and MySpace.

He managed to persuade two friends to launch studiVZ. The founders of online T-shirt shop Spreadshirt provided initial funding of 5,000 euros ($7,960) and within months studiVZ turned into Europe's largest student social networking site.

Facebook filed a complaint last Friday accusing studiVZ of copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook, ultimately seeking to put an end to the German site.

The name studiVZ is an abbreviation of "Studienverzeichnis", which means "students' directory" in German, and the site -- while it visually resembles Facebook, only in red instead of blue -- is more practical than playful in its features.

It has since branched out into SchuelerVZ for school pupils and MeinVZ for graduates and non-students.

Industry experts attribute some of studiVZ's success to the fact that Facebook waited too long to make its site available in foreign languages. Facebook launched a German version in March.

Facebook's deputy general counsel, Mark Howitson, says: "We... are very disappointed that studiVZ has unfairly used our creativity, innovation and effort by building a 'clone' site to compete directly against us."

StudiVZ's Chief Executive Marcus Riecke is unruffled: "Their strategy appears to be: 'If you can't beat them, sue them'."

PRIVACY CONCERNS

According to data on its website, studiVZ currently has more than 10 million members in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and continues to add hundreds of thousands of users every week.

Despite its popularity and success, studiVZ has had its share of negative headlines in privacy-conscious Germany.

Aiming to become more attractive to advertisers, studiVZ changed its terms and conditions at the end of last year and began categorizing its users so that advertisers could target them more accurately.

That provoked fierce criticism from users and German consumer association VZBV, as the new terms allowed studiVZ to obtain consent for the use of personal data through a single click but did not give sufficient details as to how it gathered information or how it would be used.

Facebook has also felt compelled to give users more control over who can see their data in response to privacy concerns.

StudiVZ later issued a statement saying it did not pass on information about users to third parties.

Founder Dariani has come under attack himself for a party invitation on a website modeled after the Voelkischer Beobachter, a notorious Nazi propaganda newspaper. Dariani said it was meant to be a Nazi satire and later apologized.

StudiVZ also made headlines with a case of mass cyberstalking and users complaining about security leaks. The site was forced to reset members' passwords after hackers cracked the system.

German publisher Holtzbrinck Verlag -- which owns Macmillan books, Scientific American and a stable of newspapers including Die Zeit -- is convinced of studiVZ's potential.

Last year, its Holtzbrinck venture arm bought studiVZ for a reported 80 million euros.

But German Internet entrepreneur Alexander Samwer, who with his two brothers is best known for founding the Crazy Frog ringtone company Jamba that was later bought by News Corp., is placing his bets on Facebook.

"Facebook is light years ahead of studiVZ," Samwer told Spiegel magazine in an interview.

In January, the Samwer brothers invested in Facebook after selling their stake in studiVZ last year. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3925 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3924&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:39:44 GMT Coffee Republic's contactless trial a success The caffeine-purveyors are to rollout Barclaycard's contactless payment system to more of their shops.

The coffee shop chain will be using the ‘OneTouch’ Barclaycard Business system initially at 16 company-owned outlets, and is in discussions with its franchises to expand the tech to their locations.

The system enables payments under £10 to be made just by touching the card to a terminal, without having to enter a PIN or sign a receipt. The tech is also in use for London’s underground system, and is expected to be used in taxis.

Last month, a payments association body said that such technology will soon become widespread.

The Canary Wharf trial, which ran until April, saw about a hundred contactless payments made each month, about 18 per cent of all credit card transactions. While that may not sound like many payments, Coffee Republic said the tech helped cut the time it took those customers to pay for their orders, helping boost service during busy times.

Martin Townshend, operations director at Coffee Republic, said that “OneTouch has helped us to remain ahead of the game amongst our competitors and serve customers as quickly as possible at the till.”

The coffee seller seems tech-happy, as it recently announced a plan to offer free Wi-Fi in all its shops. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3924 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3923&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:36:59 GMT The number of surveillance requests made by public officials for telephone and internet details exceeded 500,000 last year, according to new... The number of surveillance requests made by public officials for telephone and internet details exceeded 500,000 last year, according to new figures.

The 520,000 requests, equivalent to around 1,400 per day, represent a huge increase on 2006 and 2005 which recorded an average of fewer than 350,000.

Requests from police, security services and other public bodies for billing details and other information are legitimate under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Existing powers allow public officials to see details such as website records and itemised phone bills, although the monitoring of conversations is not permitted.

Local authorities were singled out for their perceived misuse of existing legislation, even though they accounted for a small number of the overall requests.

Interception of Communications Commissioner Sir Paul Kennedy said in his report that local authorities "could make much more use of communications data as a powerful tool to investigate crime".

In a separate report Chief Surveillance Commissioner Sir Christopher Rose called for improvements in the way local councils use the powers.

Sir Christopher said that some local authorities had a "tendency to expose a lack of understanding of the legislation" and demonstrated a "serious misunderstanding of the concept of proportionality". ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3923 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3922&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:35:03 GMT ASA reprimands ISP for traffic shaping Redten has been brought to book by the Advertising Standards Authority after making misleading claims of... ASA reprimands ISP for traffic shaping

Redten has been brought to book by the Advertising Standards Authority after making misleading claims of 'unlimited broadband' and 'unlimited internet downloads'.

The watchdog ruled that Redten had misled customers in advertising its packages as 'unlimited' because the ISP slowed broadband connections to dial-up speed once a 5GB or 15GB cap had been reached.

The ISP, which gives away a free PC when customers sign up for its broadband services, was also found wanting in a separate advert that offered a 'free upgrade to 24Mbps broadband'.

"Because we had not seen evidence to show that the download cap excluded only atypical users, or that customers were able to obtain an upgrade to 24Mbps free of charge, we concluded that the claims 'unlimited broadband', 'unlimited downloads' and 'free upgrade to 24Mbps broadband' were misleading," the ASA said in its ruling.

The ASA also reprimanded the ISP for its lack of response in dealing with the complaints, and an apparent "disregard for the Code".

The watchdog reminded Redten of its obligations under the Code and told it to respond promptly in future.

The ruling is the latest in a spate of problems to bedevil the ISP, including a week-long internet outage in March which left all customers without access.

Redten was recently taken over by Fatcat Communications after going into administration. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3922 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3921&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:33:13 GMT Putting together laptops and mobile broadband could become a regular occurance, as Orange reveal new 'connected' packages.

Orange is working with HP and Asus to release a range of ‘connected’ laptop packages for the business and consumer markets.

The bundled packages will all offer laptops with mobile broadband for a fixed monthly rate and is part of a strategy in which Orange pledged to ‘evolve’ the communications market.

Small and medium business customers will be offered three new packages which range from £35 to £45 per month and all have a laptop and mobile connection.

The £35 per month package will offer a HP 6730s Laptop with an Intel Celeron processor while £40 package will get the same laptop with an upgraded Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The £45 bundle has a HP 6730b laptop, also with Intel 2 Core duo processing power.

The two cheapest packages will offer an Option ICON 225 dongle while the £45 package offers an Orange SIM modem embedded into the laptop. All will carry Microsoft Windows Vista.

All will include a ‘Business Everywhere Unlimited’ bundle which will have an ‘unlimited’ data allowance (although subjected to a 5GB fair use policy) and 500 free Wi-Fi minutes which can be used in various hotspots. However, users will need to sign a 24-month contract. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3921 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3920&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:31:25 GMT The statistics show that web attacks are increasing with no hope of relief in sight - with SQL injections looking to be a particular threat. In the... The statistics show that web attacks are increasing with no hope of relief in sight - with SQL

injections looking to be a particular threat.
In the first six months of 2008, one webpage was infected every five seconds, Sophos said in its Security Threat report.

This was worse than in the figure in 2007, when one infected webpage was found every 14 seconds. The 2008 figure meant that Sophos found 16,173 malicious webpages every day, with 90 per cent being on legitimate sites which had been the victim of hacking.

The report said that SQL injections had been one of dominant malware trends in the first six months of 2008, according to Sophos. The attacks exploit security vulnerabilities and insert malicious code (script tags) into a database which runs a website.

“There’s been a concerted campaign to infect people,” said Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley. “If you were to paint a picture of what the first six months of 2008 were all about when it came to malware, it was about SQL injections hitting websites.”

Cluley said this was becoming the trend for malware rather than attachment on emails which were usually filtered before getting to the user. He also said that it was also popular because legitimate sites which were already getting traffic were getting hit.

“It is easy using Google to find vulnerable webpages,” he said. “It is easy to find websites which haven’t been constructed properly, and to inject your code. It’s relatively trivial to do, but really effective.”

Cluley said that web development teams could look at code and harden it, but smaller companies were not usually able to do it. However he said that there were tools available from companies like Microsoft and HP which would look at code and attempt to find and warn about vulnerabilities.

He said that website attacks such as SQL injections would only increase in the next six months: “There are many companies out there who haven’t done enough to defend their websites. They need to start scanning users’ web access as well as their emails.” ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3920 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3919&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:29:57 GMT In early July BT announced that it was going to invest £1.5bn in fibre optic cables, bringing access to faster broadband to up to 10 million UK... In early July BT announced that it was going to invest £1.5bn in fibre optic cables, bringing access to faster broadband to up to 10 million UK homes.

But there will be large swathes of the country untouched by super-fast broadband and, for some, the answer is a more DIY, community-based approach to fibre.

Fibre might be some way off being rolled out on a national scale in the UK but individual community projects promise to have networks up and running, possibly by the end of 2008.

The community-based approach to net connectivity is nothing new. While BT prevaricated about how far it was going to roll out broadband at the beginning of the millennium, local communities took the bull by the horns and rolled out their own - often powered by wi-fi.

Impatient for speed

One of the first of these was CyberMoor, a co-operative which brought wireless broadband to remote parts of Cumbria.
Now the head of the project, Daniel Heery, is looking at how to bring fibre to Alston in Cumbria.

Regulator Ofcom has questioned whether the UK needs super-fast broadband and what applications will drive such networks.

Mr Heery thinks there is a huge market in e-health and e-learning projects, providing remote patient care and streaming lessons to kids.


"I think people are impatient for more speed and are fed up of hearing from the big companies that we can't do it," he said.

"For example it costs £500 per night to keep someone in hospital so tele-medicine has great cost-saving benefits."

The telemedicine project, which is run in conjunction with the local health authority, aims to use video links to aid nurses in the diagnosis of minor injuries, as well as provide set-top boxes which will allow people to book GP appointments and arrange repeat prescriptions via their TVs, and equipment that will enable users to have their chronic diseases monitored from home.

Start experimenting

Wide-scale fibre projects involve either a huge amount of road-digging in order to lay the cables or a deal with a utility company to use existing pipes.
But the logistics of a DIY fibre network are relatively straightforward, according to Mr Heery.

The basic engineering will be put out to tender while another co-operative has been set up in conjunction with the Community Broadband Network to negotiate with content companies such as Sky.

For Malcolm Corbett, who heads up the Community Broadband Network (CBN), the decision to tackle the next-generation of broadband at grassroots level is obvious.

"While BT has been sitting on its hands the public sector is going to start experimenting," he said.

The CBN is working with about 10 local authorities around the UK, including Walsall, Nottingham and Manchester, to bring super-fast broadband to a diverse range of communities.

"It represents about 20% of the UK population," he said.

"We want to show that alternative approaches to the issue of next-generation broadband can work. And the hope is that they will prove the business case for others," he said.

Around Europe community-based fibre projects sit alongside larger rollouts.

Some, such as the OnsNet fibre project in Holland, are being used by CBN as benchmarks of what is possible.

If you offer people a more resilient and faster service for the same price they currently pay for broadband it starts to look very attractive
Malcolm Corbett, CBN

The co-operatively owned fibre network links 8,000 homes in the Dutch town of Neunen and the founders of the profit-making project have recently been honoured by Queen Beatrix.

The rollout of fibre is often talked about as being prohibitively expensive. It is estimated that to fibre the entire nation would cost in the region of £15bn.

For Mr Corbett, fibre is actually pretty cheap - costing between £500 and £1,000 per household, according to CBN calculations.

"When you put it in those terms it sounds more doable. Fibre is guaranteed to last 24 years and the money could be repaid over a period of 15 years," he said.

What's more, he thinks the cost to consumers will be very attractive.

"There is no price premium and it can be as cheap as copper. If you offer people a more resilient and faster service for the same price they currently pay for broadband it starts to look very attractive," he said.

Risky

BT itself leveraged the power of grass root broadband rollouts when it increased the footprint of its first generation broadband network.

"BT was really innovative, asking communities and residents to pre-register and then prioritising the areas where the demand was greatest," said Ian Fogg, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

Fibre initiatives such as that being offered in Bournemouth and Dundee by fibre-through-the-sewers firm H2O is currently using the same technique of asking people to pre-register for the service in an effort to drum up interest.

While such community schemes could play a role in kick-starting next-generation access in the UK, they aren't without risk.

Many of the wireless broadband schemes that filled the gaps when broadband was not nationwide have fallen by the wayside now broadband is almost universally available and the same could happen to community-based fibre, thinks Mr Fogg.

"What happens to those who roll out fibre today when the ISPs start rolling out alternatives?" he asked. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3919 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3918&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:23:29 GMT The world's top cellphone maker Nokia said the German Federal Patent Court ruled on Wednesday that a Qualcomm GSM patent asserted in a case against Nokia is invalid.

"This is the third court to conclude that Qualcomm's patent claims against Nokia are without merit," Nokia said.

Qualcomm has filed 11 lawsuits on three continents against Nokia claiming the Finnish firm has infringed its patents in mobile phones based on the widely used GSM technology.

So far the U.S. International Trade Commission and Britain's High Court have decided the patents have been either invalid or not infringed.

"Today's decision is further evidence that Qualcomm does not have relevant and valid GSM patents and that it overstates its role as a wireless innovator," Nokia said.

No one at Qualcomm was immediately available for comment.

A hearing on the second Qualcomm patent in the German court case is scheduled for October.

The companies have been at legal loggerheads since failing to renew a technology license pact that expired on April 9, 2007. Analysts estimate that Nokia pays around $500 million a year for use of Qualcomm patents and it wants to reduce the sum.

A key court case between the two is scheduled to start in Delaware later on Wednesday. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3918 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3917&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:22:07 GMT Nintendo said on Wednesday that it would offer new online photo services together with Fujifilm Holdings Corp, enabling users to upload and print... Nintendo said on Wednesday that it would offer new online photo services together with Fujifilm Holdings Corp, enabling users to upload and print photos via the Internet.

Game players can now compile photo albums of their snapshots and even order business cards that display their favorite Mario Cart character or Mii, the user's Wii alias. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3917 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3916&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:20:07 GMT AT&T announced Tuesday it will expand its GPS-based navigation services to provide directions beyond the shores on the United States.
The service, AT&T Navigator Global Edition, will let customers with GPS-capable smartphones receive turn-by-turn directions in 20 countries. While companies like Verizon Wireless and Sprint have their own navigation products, AT&T is the only U.S. mobile operator to provide international navigation capabilities.


More Telecom InsightsWhite PapersWeb 2.0 in the Enterprise VoIP--Voice Over Internet Protocol WebcastsHow Can Financial Firms Build a Better Data Center? ReportsIT Survival Guide Find The Right Path To SOA, UC Convergence "AT&T not only gives customers the ability to use their mobile phones in more countries than any other U.S. carrier, they now can use our robust GPS-based navigation offering whether at home or abroad to easily get from point A to point B or to find and directed to a local business or service," said Jeff Bradley, senior VP of AT&T's mobility marketing and operations division, in a statement.
The new coverage area will include most countries in Western Europe, North America, and the U.S. Caribbean as well as six cities in China. Users will be able to be able to get spoken turn-by-turn directions in three languages

Additionally, subscribers will be able to click a button to search for and discover nearby businesses and services, including hotels, ATMs, and gas stations. The service, including domestic navigation, will cost $19.98 per month, and it's available on select smartphones like the BlackBerry Pearl, and the BlackBerry Curve.

As more cell phones sport built-in GPS chips, wireless operators and handset manufacturers are increasingly offering data-heavy navigation services. Nokia has almost wrapped up its acquisition of Navteq, paving the way for the Finnish company to offer navigation services as well.

To counter this upsurge in competition, Garmin will be throwing its hat into the mobile phone ring later this year with the Nuvifone. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3916 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3915&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:18:23 GMT The Trading Standards Office has issued a recall notice on third party Chinese chargers designed for use with the Nintendo DS and DS Lite gaming... The Trading Standards Office has issued a recall notice on third party Chinese chargers designed for use with the Nintendo DS and DS Lite gaming consoles.

The chargers have been found to be poorly built and can give users electric shocks. The chargers are typically being sold by online retailers and via eBay.

“One of the chargers causing concern can be identified by the product code: DE 62347066 which is marked on the black label attached,” said the recall notice.

“However, the other charger carries no identifying product code on the silver label and is simply called 'Travel Charger'. On the body of the 'Travel Charger' the abbreviation 'USB' is also visible.”

Many consumers turn to third party suppliers for spare chargers because the price set for branded hardware is so high. An unofficial charger will typically cost around half as much and branded hardware, but quality varies widely. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3915 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3914&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:17:07 GMT Convicted spammer Edward "Eddie" Davidson has escaped from a federal prison camp after serving just five weeks of a 21 month sentence.

Davidson was convicted of sending millions of spam messages promoting penny stocks which he then traded when the price rose. Police estimate he made over three million dollars before he was caught.

After his conviction for tax evasion and falsifying email headers Davidson was fined $714,139 and had gold coins and property seized by the authorities. Coincidentally the coins are being auctioned off by the IRS today.

Davidson was being kept in a minimum security facility in Florence, Colarado and absconded on Sunday.

"He jumped in the car with his wife," Will Cochenour of Lakewood police told The Rocky Mountain News.

"When they were leaving, he forced her in the car, brought them home and left after a change in clothing. He's still at large."

U.S. Marshals are leading the search for Davidson, with the FBI, IRS and the Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force assisting. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3914 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3913&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:16:06 GMT As the days of oil and coal draw to a close, developments in renewable energies are coming thick and fast, with the latest being a powerhouse of a... As the days of oil and coal draw to a close, developments in renewable energies are coming thick and fast, with the latest being a powerhouse of a fuel cell that has the potential to supply electricity for tens of thousands of hours at a time.

The so-called Solid-Oxide fuel cell comes from the Energy and Environmental Systems Laboratories of NTT, a Japanese telecoms company we've come across before.

Scale the key

Residing in the 1-kilowatt class, the new cell is for an office or small factory, rather than a house, but could be developed in the domestic direction if needed.

The material inside the new cell is a lanthanum-nickel-iron oxide compound, which allows NTT to build it sufficiently large to deliver substantial quantities of energy.

Years of electricity

Older cells of this type relied on zirconium, a material that restricted cell size and capacity as it could not be scaled up.

If the device is ever commercialised – NTT has no plans yet – uptimes measured in years, rather than hours, have a clear appeal for an oil-free future. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3913 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3912&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:14:42 GMT For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site,... For eight years, Arnold Kim has been trading gossip, rumor and facts about Apple, the notoriously secretive computer company, on his Web site, MacRumors.com.

It had been a hobby — albeit a time-consuming one — while Dr. Kim earned his medical degree. He kept at it as he completed his medical training and began diagnosing patients’ kidney problems. Dr. Kim’s Web site now attracts more than 4.4 million people and 40 million page views a month, according to Quantcast, making it one of the most popular technology Web sites.

It is enough to make Dr. Kim hang up his stethoscope. This month he stopped practicing medicine and started blogging full time.

“In some ways I’ve neglected the site for so long,” he said in a telephone interview. “Now that I actually have a chance to work on it full time, there’s a good chance it can grow more.”

Dr. Kim epitomizes the home-grown publishers whose wealth has been enabled by the Internet. Although few of the millions of blogs ever make their creators rich, the ones that do provide all the incentive necessary to fuel the medium.

A question Dr. Kim often fields from friends and associates is, “How does that make money?” He answered the question in an entry on his personal blog last month. It can all be “boiled down to one simple accomplishment: building traffic,” he wrote. “That’s it. If you have a site that attracts a lot of visitors, you will be able to make money. On the Internet, traffic equals power, which subsequently equals money.”

When Dr. Kim, who lives just outside Richmond, Va., began blogging about Apple in 2000, the word blog had not entered the lexicon. Creating anything beyond a bare-bones Web site required programming skills and tech knowledge. Dr. Kim, a computer science major at Columbia University, had the know-how. He also knew that almost everyone enjoys an advance look at future products.

He envisioned MacRumors as an aggregator of all the rumors and hints that appeared on message boards and other Web sites. “The rumor reports have probably been more right than wrong over the years,“ he said.

Given Apple’s penchant for secrecy, the company inspires a lot of speculation in the technology industry. Apple enthusiasts dissect every product rumor the way political pundits do political sound bites.

As one of the original Web sites about Apple, MacRumors was well positioned to become a destination for users and a clearinghouse for gossip. MacRumors “knows more about Apple than Apple management does,” the blog 24/7 Wall St. declared last spring.

The site placed MacRumors No. 2 on a list of the “25 most valuable blogs,” right behind Gawker Media and ahead of The Huffington Post, PerezHilton.com, and TechCrunch. Two of the other tech-oriented blogs on its list, Ars Technica and PaidContent, were sold earlier this year, reportedly for sums in excess of $25 million.

Ars Technica reaches an estimated three million people a month, according to Quantcast. PaidContent and its three associated blogs reach about half a million people, but earn additional revenue through conferences and seminars. Since MacRumors attracts a far larger audience, those valuations would suggest Dr. Kim has created a very valuable piece of Web real estate.

Dr. Kim is not a millionaire blogger yet, and given the slumping online advertising market, he faces some hurdles as he expands the site. But he has reason to be optimistic.

Stepping away from medicine felt somewhat strange, he admits. Dr. Kim was bringing home a six-figure income as a doctor, but he recognized that blogging was becoming more lucrative. He says the site also yields a six-figure income for him.

About three years ago, through a combination of Google text advertising, banner ads and commissions on product sales, MacRumors started turning a substantial profit. While Apple is obviously not an advertiser, other technology-oriented companies are, including Verizon, the online audio-book store Audible.com and the information technology products company CDW.

Still, he hesitated to make it a full-time job because he enjoyed medicine — and he had invested almost $200,000 in his education. But he finally concluded that “on paper, it was an easy decision.” He also had a practical reason for wanting the ability to work from home. Her name is Penelope, and she is 14 months old.

When he told his father, also a doctor, about the decision, Dr. Kim was pleased that “he was very supportive of it, which was sort of surprising to me.”

For Dr. Kim, figuring out which rumors are real and which are mere dreams is the fun part.

“It is sort of a gut feeling,” he acknowledged, adding that most of the images of future Apple products that circulate on message boards are fakes. Sometimes he will post suspicious images with a caveat about their authenticity.

On one memorable occasion, he said, Apple accidentally raised the curtain on a new Mac on its Web site a week ahead of the official announcement, leading to a free-for-all on MacRumors’ message boards and some urgent phone calls from the company.

Dr. Kim has worked in relative anonymity. For many years, readers knew him only by his user name, “arn.” (“If I really wanted to hide, I could have done a better job,” he said. He eventually added his full name so he could receive media credentials for conferences.)

Dr. Kim is branching out beyond MacRumors. He helps run a spinoff Web site, Touch Arcade, that tracks the new games available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. But he is remaining coy about his other expansion plans. Apple, it seems, is not the only company trying to keep secrets. ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3912 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3911&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:13:25 GMT Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was skeptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with... Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was skeptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with a group of colleagues in London. But the videoconferencing technology, known as telepresence, delivered an experience so lifelike, Ms. Smart recalled, that “10 minutes into it, you forget you are not in the room with them.”

Accenture, a technology consulting firm, has installed 13 of the videoconferencing rooms at its offices around the world and plans to have an additional 22 operating before the end of the year.

Accenture figures its consultants used virtual meetings to avoid 240 international trips and 120 domestic flights in May alone, for an annual saving of millions of dollars and countless hours of wearying travel for its workers.

As travel costs rise and airlines cut service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — and business travel as well. At the same time, the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive to move digital bits instead of bodies.

The emerging trend, analysts say, goes well beyond a reaction to rising travel costs and a weakening economy. “These technology tools are going to change the way corporations think about travel and work in the long run,” an analyst at Forrester Research, Claire Schooley, said.

Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been frequent and premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise. No single breakthrough explains the progress, but rather a series of step-by-step advances — and steady investment — in telecommunications networks, software and computer processing.

The results can be seen not only in the expensive new telepresence systems like those from Cisco Systems or Hewlett-Packard, but also in more mainstream collaboration technologies — Web conferencing, online document sharing, wikis and Internet telephony. The audio and desktop presentations in Web-based meetings, for example, are now more likely to be in sync and interactive.

Companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales presentations. “Only in the last two years has the technology gotten to point where it really makes sense to use it,” said Alan Minton, vice president for marketing at Cornerstone Information Systems, a 60-person business software company in Bloomington, Ind.

With his sales force doing many product demonstrations online, Mr. Minton estimates the group’s travel costs of have been cut by 60 percent and the average time to close a new sale has been reduced by 30 percent.

No one suggests that the face-to-face meeting is becoming obsolete, or that it is time for a requiem for the road warrior. Companies talk about using digital tools mainly as a way of making business travel more selective and more productive.

Still, the potential for digital displacement of business travel is substantial. A report last month by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, a group of technology companies, and the Climate Group, an environmental organization, estimated that up to 20 percent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.

The most dedicated business travelers tend to be management consultants, investment bankers, accountants, lawyers and technology services consultants. Much of their work has to be done in person with clients. But these professionals are increasingly using online collaboration tools for work within their firms.

At I.B.M., Michael Littlejohn, a work force and technology expert in the company’s global services unit, said two years ago, he was on the road 13 to 15 days a month. These days, he says, he travels 8 or 10 days a month. “But my time spent with clients is not less,” he said. “To really understand a client’s problems or to close a deal, you need face to face.”

Corporate training and education is a field many companies are moving online, in part to trim travel costs. Darryl Draper, the national manager of customer service training for Subaru of America, used to travel four days a week, nine months of the year, presenting educational programs at dealers nationwide. Today, Ms. Draper rarely travels and nearly all of her training is done online.

Previously, Ms. Draper estimated, in six months she would reach about 220 people at a cost of $300 a person. She said she now reaches 2,500 people every six months at a cost of 75 cents a person.

A range of companies offer the mainstream online communications and collaboration tools, including WebEx, Citrix, Microsoft, I.B.M. and others. The most rarefied offering, though, is telepresence videoconferencing. Today, it is an elite product supplied by a few companies, including Cisco, H.P. and Polycom.

Completed telepresence rooms, typically with three huge curved screens (and a fourth screen above for shared work), custom lighting and acoustics, cost up to $350,000 — though that is down from $500,000, when H.P. sold its first system in early 2006.

The resolution on telepresence screens is even sharper than on high-definition televisions, and images can be magnified to inspect products. Engineers at the far-flung labs of Advanced Micro Devices, for example, scrutinize the microcircuitry on new chip designs using the company’s telepresence systems. And the images of people on screen are life-size.

Cisco, which has more than 200 telepresence rooms, figures it is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs, and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from air travel by 10 percent. H.P. says air travel among its offices with telepresence rooms is down 25 percent.

When used regularly, the rooms pay for themselves within a year, analysts estimate. Sales of telepresence systems will more than double this year to 627, estimates the market research firm IDC, and reach more than 8,000 by 2012.

There is a certain paradox in telepresence, in that it is all to simulate the richest form of human interaction: people talking to each other, face to face.

And it is not a perfect substitute. Ms. Smart, the chief of human resources for Accenture, still travels about 10 days a month. “You don’t learn about other cultures in telepresence,” she said. “You get things from being there, over breakfast and dinner, building relationships face to face.” ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3911 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3910&goto=newpost Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:11:37 GMT John Davis, a chemist in Bloomington, Ill., knows about concrete. For example, he knows that if you keep concrete vibrating it won’t set up before... John Davis, a chemist in Bloomington, Ill., knows about concrete. For example, he knows that if you keep concrete vibrating it won’t set up before you can use it. It will still pour like a liquid.

Now he has applied that knowledge to a seemingly unrelated problem thousands of miles away. He figured out that devices that keep concrete vibrating can be adapted to keep oil in Alaskan storage tanks from freezing. The Oil Spill Recovery Institute of Cordova, Alaska, paid him $20,000 for his idea.

The chemist and the institute came together through InnoCentive, a company that links organizations (seekers) with problems (challenges) to people all over the world (solvers) who win cash prizes for resolving them. The company gets a posting fee and, if the problem is solved, a “finders fee” equal to about 40 percent of the prize.

The process, according to John Seely Brown, a theorist of information technology and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating” enabled by the interactivity so characteristic of the Internet. It is sometimes called open-source science, taking the name from open-source software in which the source code, or original programming, is made public to encourage others to work on improving it.

The approach is catching on. Today, would-be innovators can sign up online to compete for prizes for feats as diverse as landing on the Moon (space.xprize.org/lunar-lander-challenge) and inventing artificial meat (www.peta.org/feat_in_vitro_contest.asp).

This year, researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of Washington began recruiting computer gamers to an online competition, named Foldit, aimed at unraveling one of the knottiest problems of biology — how proteins fold (http://fold.it).

And in a report last year, a panel appointed by the National Research Council recommended that the National Science Foundation, the major government financing agency for physical science research, offer prizes of $200,000 to $2 million “in diverse areas” as a first step in a major program “to encourage more complex innovations” addressing economic, social and other challenges. (The report is available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11816).

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has proposed that the government offer $300 million to whoever invents a battery compact enough, powerful enough and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels.

Offering prizes for scientific achievements is hardly new. “It has been around for centuries,” said Karim R. Lakhani, a professor at Harvard Business School who has studied InnoCentive. One early example was the work of John Harrison, the 18th-century clockmaker who, in response to a prize offered by the British Parliament, solved the problem of determining longitude at sea by inventing a clock that would keep good time even in heavy weather.

But, Dr. Lakhani said, “most laboratories, most R & D endeavors still work on the premise ‘we can accumulate and make sense of all the knowledge that is relevant.’ The open-source models and a model like InnoCentive show that other approaches can help.”

Dwayne Spradlin, president and chief executive of InnoCentive, said in an interview that the company had solved 250 challenges, for prizes typically in the $10,000 to $25,000 range. According to the Web site (www.innocentive.com), the achievements include a compound for skin tanning, a method of preventing snack chip breakage and a mini-extruder in brick-making.

“Odds are one or more products in your home has been innovated in our network,” Mr. Spradlin said. “Procter & Gamble has products that were innovated on the InnoCentive network.”

InnoCentive began in 2000 as e.Lilly, an in-house innovation “incubator” at the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Mr. Spradlin said, with the company posting problems that its employees had been unable to solve. From the beginning the results were good, he said. “Most of our companies tell us they have a one-third or better solve rate on their problems and that is more cost-effective than anything they could have done internally.”

The company says solvers come from 175 countries. More than a third have doctorates, Mr. Spradlin said, and while motivated by money, they also have a desire to solve “problems that matter.”

The company, with offices in Waltham, Mass., has a staff of scientists who work with seekers and solvers, reviewing challenges to make sure they are clear and detailed, and guiding would-be solvers who may have a solution.

That specificity is crucial to InnoCentive’s operation, people who have studied the company say. “If you say, ‘find me a cure for cancer’ it may not work,” Dr. Lakhani said. But if problems can be “decomposed” into what he called modular questions, like “find me a biomarker for this condition, these questions may be more tractable.”

The idea that solutions can come from anywhere, and from people with seemingly unrelated work, is another key. Dr. Lakhani said his study of InnoCentive found that “the further the problem was from the solver’s expertise, the more likely they were to solve it,” often by applying specialized knowledge or instruments developed for another purpose.

For example, he said, the brain might be thought of as a biological system, but “certain brain problems may not be solvable by taking a biological approach. You may want to cast it as an electrical engineering approach. An electrical engineer will come in and say, ‘Oh, here’s the answer for you.’ They have not thought of themselves as being neuroscientists but now they can approach the problem from the point of view of electrical engineering.”

The oil-flow problem was solved by an outsider, said Scott Pegau, its research program manager. If it could easily have been solved “by people within the industry, it would have been,” he said. Instead, Mr. Davis approached it with knowledge he picked up at a friend’s concrete business.

One critical element is encouraging organizations to take novel innovation approaches in the first place. That was the task that drew the Rockefeller Foundation to the company, said Maria Blair, an associate vice president there.

Ms. Blair said the foundation was nearing the end of an 18-month pilot program after which the success of the partnership would be assessed. Anecdotal evidence so far suggests the arrangement can be useful, she said, citing as an example a challenge to devise a reliable, durable solar-powered light source that could function as a flashlight and as general room illumination.

“The solver ended up being a scientist from New Zealand,” she said, and his light is now being made in China.

“What we want to do,” she added, “is connect the nonprofits to the platform, to InnoCentive.”

The nonprofits get a break on InnoCentive fees, Mr. Spradlin said, and Ms. Blair said the foundation could subsidize access to innovation platforms. But she said many nonprofit organizations had difficulty dealing with intellectual property rights and related issues.

InnoCentive deals with these issues, in part, by requiring winning solvers to transfer intellectual property rights to the seekers, whose identities are secret, before they can claim an award.

Dr. Lakhani said some companies worried that by posting information about their problems they risk giving valuable information to competitors. Another fear, he said, is that a solver will devise a useful solution, but refuse to turn it over for the prize or even patent it to keep it out of the hands of the organization that originally sought it.

“We have not observed yet any of these kinds of games,” Dr. Lakhani said.

By contrast, the Foldit contest is a volunteer effort. It began as Rosetta@home, a project using down-time of computers throughout the world to do the laborious calculations needed to determine the shapes of proteins, strings of amino acid crucial to the cells of every living thing. The way these molecules work depends on how the strings fold, but calculating the folding is, as the Foldit researchers put it, “one of the pre-eminent challenges of biology.”

In Foldit, players will compete online to design proteins, and researchers will test designs to see if they are good candidates for use in drugs. The researchers who worked to design it say results will also be interesting because people’s intuition for protein folding does not seem necessarily to be tied to formal training or laboratory experience.

“Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize,” said Zoran Popovic, a computer scientist and engineer at the University of Washington.

Mr. Spradlin’s goal for InnoCentive is at least as ambitious. By 2011, he hopes InnoCentive participants will have answered at least 10,000 challenges.

When companies and organizations have a problem, Mr. Spradlin said, “I want us to be the first place they go.” ]]> Techno News Guy00 http://forum.meetthegeeks.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3910