Seagate drops SSD patent lawsuit against STEC

Seagate Technology LLC today said it has dropped its lawsuit and all claims alleging STEC Inc. misappropriated its hard disk drive (HDD) technology as it related to the development of solid-state disk (SSD) drives.

Santa Ana, Calif.-based STEC subsequently said it dropped its rhetorical lawsuit that alleged Seagate misappropriated STEC's intellectual property as it related to SSDs.

As part of the dismissal, no money was exchanged and neither party licensed its technology to the other, STEC stated.

"This is an important development in light of the mass adoption of SSDs," STEC CEO Manouch Moshayedi said in a statement. "We have always contended that SSD does not borrow from existing hard drive technology but rather offers an all-together new approach to storage. We view the dismissal as a vindication of our technology."

Seagate said it dropped the lawsuit because economic conditions didn't make pursuing the case worthwhile.

"The economic conditions today are drastically altered from those that existed when we filed the litigation, and the impact of STEC's sales of SSDs has turned out to be so small that the expenditures necessary to vindicate the patents could be better spent elsewhere," Seagate said in an e-mail response to Computerworld.

STEC makes high-end, single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory-based SSDs that it sells to original equipment manufacturers such as EMC Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., which in turn use them in their storage arrays as a top-tier disk drive. SLC memory stores one bit per flash memory cell, while multilevel cell (MLC) memory stores two or more bits per cell. While MLC memory offers higher capacities, natively, it is less reliable and slower than SLC. However, specialized software is narrowing the performance gap between the two flash memory types.

Moshayedi said that with the lawsuit over, STEC can use its resources to take full advantage of the market opportunities for selling its SSDs.

Seagate brought the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in April 2008. It claimed that several STEC products, including SSDs and some DRAM (dynamic RAM) devices, infringed on as many as four Seagate patents. The lawsuit had threatened to raise SSD prices.

Gregory Wong, an analyst at Forward Insights, however, believes just the opposite.

"I don't think it slowed STEC's momentum. STEC has had quite a few [reseller] wins: EMC, Sun, Hitachi, and I believe about a week or two ago, IBM," he said.

Wong said Seagate's lawsuit was an attempt to slow STEC's production of SSDs because the company is the main supplier of high-end single-level cell NAND flash SSDs in the enterprise market. However, he said the lawsuit was too far off base to be effective.

"If you really look at what Seagate was alleging in terms of the patents infringements they were asserting, it has nothing to do with SSD. There was one infringement that was packaging related, a couple of others related to hard disk drives and one even mentioned platters, and SSDs don't have platters," he said.

While Seagate has stated it will produce an SSD product, it has yet to go to market with one. Seagate CEO Bill Watkins has said the company will produce one sometime this year. Seagate spokesman David Szabados said the company plans to release an SLC SSD product targeting Tier 0 storage in the second half of the year. Szabados said Seagate also plans a hybrid SSD product that combines SLC NAND with MLC NAND. That product will be targeted at the notebook PC market.

Intel goes to court in licensing spat with Nvidia

Intel Corp. went to court this week to resolve a licensing dispute with Nvidia Corp. over the latter's plan to build chip sets compatible with Intel's latest Nehalem processors.

In a filing in the State of Chancery Court in Delaware, the chip maker on Tuesday asked a judge to rule that Nvidia is not licensed to produce chip sets that are compatible with any Intel processors with integrated memory-controller functionality, such as Intel's Nehalem microprocessors.

Intel launched its first Nehalem chips in November, when it introduced the Core i7 chips. The new chips integrate memory controllers inside the chip, which helps the CPU communicate with the memory faster. Future Intel laptop and desktop processors are also expected to include integrated memory controllers.

Intel had discussions with Nvidia for more than a year attempting to resolve the matter, but the talks were unsuccessful, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Intel had to go to court to resolve this dispute, Mulloy said.

In response to the court filing, Nvidia on Wednesday said that a four-year-old bus license with Intel allowed it to build chip sets based on Intel CPUs with integrated memory controllers.

"We are confident that our license, as negotiated, applies," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia president and CEO, in a statement.

The license revolves around usage of a bus, or point-to-point interconnect, that helps the CPU communicate with components in a PC. Nvidia is "aggressively developing" new products for Intel's current interconnect and Intel's future DMI (direct media interface) bus.

Nvidia makes chip sets -- a set of integrated circuits -- for Intel and for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s CPUs to help processors communicate with components like network and storage controllers.

As CPUs integrate more capabilities like graphics, Intel may be trying to gain more control over its future chip technology, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight64. Intel plans to integrate graphics in a two-chip package it is expected to start shipping later this year.

"Intel [could] be saying 'We gave you some technology to go into old processors ... now we're not going to let you do that anymore,'" he said.

But Nvidia CEO Huang said Intel's CPU business is decaying, and the court filing is an attempt to save it.

"At the heart of this issue is that the CPU has run its course and the soul of the PC is shifting quickly to the [graphics processing unit]. This is clearly an attempt to stifle innovation to protect a decaying CPU business," Huang said.

Nvidia is trying to push GPUs as an alternative to CPUs, because GPUs execute advanced tasks like video encoding and decoding much quicker. It is also pushing the CUDA parallel programming architecture, a software tool kit that allows programmers to take advantage of the processing speeds of GPUs.

Both CPUs and GPUs are important and neither is going away soon, Brookwood said. However, CPUs are gaining more importance with GPUs taking on the role of a subordinate on laptops and desktops.

"Nvidia basically for the last year has been arguing that all the hard work is in the GPU and nobody's going to care about the CPU. Intel's been going in the opposite direction," Brookwood said.

As better graphics capabilities are integrated into CPUs, a smaller number of buyers will pay extra for a separate graphics card. That strikes at the heart of Nvidia, which is known for its graphics cards. The general computing trend is not on Nvidia's side, which is already facing a problem on how to grow its discrete graphics business during the recession, Brookwood said.

Analyst: HP financial results could mean bad news for Microsoft

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s financial results could mean more trouble for Microsoft Corp. as the PC market continues to struggle, a financial analyst said Thursday.

HP's "weak systems results" and fiscal outlook suggest the "PC market remains challenging and unlikely to improve over near-term," said a research note by Barclays Capital analyst Israel Hernandez.

HP on Wednesday posted declines in all of its businesses except its EDS services business for its fiscal first quarter, ended Jan. 31. The company, like most others in the technology and other business sectors, is being affected by the global economic recession.

"HP's results and commentary suggest that PC, as well as server demand, remains subdued, a condition that is likely to persist given slowing global macro conditions that are rapidly affecting both consumer and enterprise sales amid mounting corporate layoffs," Hernandez wrote.

As a result, analysts will likely lower consensus estimates for Microsoft's fiscal third quarter, which the company is in now, he wrote.

It's HP's PC results that will affect Microsoft the most, especially if the market continues to decline.

Microsoft blamed lagging PC sales for missing estimates for its fiscal second quarter, the results of which it announced on Jan. 22. The company also said it would lay off up to 5,000 workers, an unprecedented move for Microsoft.

Microsoft did not warn Wall Street or investors that it would not meet expectations prior to announcing its first-quarter results, as some had expected. However, it did announce results and layoffs before the U.S. markets opened that day, which it typically does not do.

Microsoft had expected the PC market to grow between 10% and 12% in the first quarter, but the market was flat. The company also blamed the increased interest in netbooks, or low-cost mini-notebooks, for its financial shortfall.

Barclays' Hernandez noted that netbooks are the only category of PCs showing growth, but that this is detrimental to Microsoft's client operating margin and its Windows average selling prices. Selling Windows XP on a netbook means less money for Microsoft than selling Windows Vista on a full-featured PC, he wrote.

Indeed, Microsoft's problem with netbooks lies with Vista, which has too big a hardware footprint to run reliably or well on netbooks. XP runs fine, so XP and Linux are what original equipment manufacturers are preinstalling on most netbooks.

Microsoft hopes to alleviate the Vista problem and take more advantage of the netbook market in the future with Windows 7, the next version of its client operating system. Microsoft has said all versions of Windows 7 will run well on netbooks. Windows 7 is expected to be available before the end of the year or, at the latest, the beginning of 2010.

Microsoft is scheduled next week to give analysts an update on its current quarter on a conference call, which should give a better sense of how its quarter is shaping up.

Take Windows 7 for a spin with VirtualBox

Everyone likes to try new and shiny technology toys like the Windows 7 beta, but when the price is having to replace your existing operating system, that's too much for most people. That's when being able to use a virtualization program can come in darn handy.

To test out how well Windows 7 works on a virtualized system, I decided to use Sun's VirtualBox software. While there are, of course, other virtualization programs out there, such as VMware's Workstation and Parallels Desktop, VirtualBox has two significant advantages over the others. First, it's free. Second, you can use it with several operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris.

In my case, I decided to use VirtualBox to run Windows 7 on two Dell Inspiron 530S systems, one running Windows XP Pro SP3 and the other running MEPIS 7 Linux. Each PC came with a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive and an Integrated Intel 3100 Graphics Media Accelerator. While not powerful systems, these proved to have more than enough CPU power to run both their native operating system and Windows 7.

Running VirtualBox

VirtualBox comes in two editions. The full VirtualBox is free for personal use and evaluation, but doesn't come with the complete source code. VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition), also free, does come with the source code and includes several enterprise-level features, such as an RDP (Remote Display Protocol) Server and USB support. (Other virtualization applications, like Xen, require tweaking before they'll support USB.) Both versions can run Windows 7.

In general, you'll need at least 1GB of RAM to run VirtualBox and a guest operating system. More RAM is always better. In my testing, I found that Windows 7 would actually run on as little as 512MB, while Vista really needs at least 1GB of its own.

VirtualBox should run on any recent CPU, but it does best with high-end processors that support hardware virtualization enhancements such as Intel's VT-x and Advanced Micro Devices' AMD-V.

The first step is to download a copy of VirtualBox. To run Windows 7 successfully, you'll need at least VirtualBox 2.1.0 -- I ran it on the latest version, VirtualBox 2.1.2.

VirtualBox lets you run Windows 7 on a Linux system.
Click to view larger image

If you're a Linux or OpenSolaris user, you can also obtain a copy using your software package manager program. VirtualBox supports openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLE (SUSE Linux Enterprise) and Xandros. You can also find additional support, both for specific operating systems and in general, in the FAQ file and in the User Manual (PDF).

On Windows and Mac OS X, installation requires little more than clicking on the installation file and letting it run. It's a bit more complicated on Linux and OpenSolaris. On Solaris, you need to compile the program. On Linux, you'll need to follow some additional steps, which are described in the Linux download section.

Finally, if you need more guidance, you can find step-by-step instructions for VirtualBox 2.1.0 at the Two Guys Tech site.

Setting up the VM

Your next step is to set up a new virtual machine for Windows 7. You do this by clicking the New button, which will then ask you how big a hard drive you want for the operating system. The default is to give it a 20GB virtual hard drive. With Windows 7, I decided to give it a more generous 40GB. You can also let VirtualBox dynamically determine how much hard drive room an operating system can have, but I prefer to decide for myself.

This done, you set up how much RAM and video memory Windows 7 can have. I prefer to give the operating system an ample 1GB of RAM and 128MB of video memory. You can get by with less, but you'll start noticing system delays.

VirtualBox also lets you set up 3-D graphics acceleration and access optical discs, USB devices, shared drives and so on through its main interface. You can set this up after you have Windows 7 installed, but I prefer to get this basic configuration out of the way first.

Laptop face-recognition tech easy to hack, warns Black Hat researcher

WASHINGTON -- The face-recognition technologies offered by some laptop vendors as a way for users to securely log onto their systems are deeply flawed and can be relatively easily bypassed, a security researcher warned today at the Black Hat security conference here.

Nguyen Minh Duc, a researcher at Bach Khoa Internetwork Security Centre, a Hanoi-based security organization, showed how attackers could break into laptops from Lenovo, Toshiba and Asus featuring face-recognition technologies, simply by using digitized images of the actual user of the systems in each case. The attacks were conducted on a Lenovo system with its Veriface III technology, an Asus system featuring its Smart Logon software and a laptop using Toshiba's Face Recognition technology.

The attacks are possible because the underlying technology used by the vendors for face authentication can be easily fooled -- meaning it cannot be trusted for secure log-on purposes, Minh Duc said. He claimed that each of the vendors has been notified of the issue and urged them to reconsider the use of face recognition as a secure log-in option until the problem has been fixed.

Toshiba, Lenovo and Asus are among a handful of vendors currently supporting face authentication as a secure log-in option. The idea is to let a user's face serve as a password for gaining access to a system. Instead of logging in with a username and password, users simply sit in front of a built-in camera on the system that captures an image of their face and compares selected features from the image with those previously registered by the user. Users are granted access only if the images match.

Laptop vendors have touted the technology as safer and easier than relying on usernames and passwords.

The problem, according to Minh Duc, is that face-recognition algorithms cannot tell the difference between a digitized image and a real face. Because the algorithms, in effect, process digital information sent via the camera, it is possible to trick the software with an image of a registered user of a system, he said.

An attacker could obtain a photo of the user and tweak the lighting and viewpoint with commonly available image-editing tools, he said. Because a hacker is unlikely to know what the face stored in the system looks like, he might have to create a large number of digital facial images -- each with different lighting and viewpoints -- to fool the face-recognition technology. An attacker would need to have a reasonable amount of experience with image editing and regeneration to successfully carry out such attacks, Minh Duc added.

At Black Hat, Minh Duc showed how to access laptops from each of the three vendors simply by placing digitized images of actual users in front of the built-in laptop cameras. The approach worked even when the face-recognition software was set to its highest security setting. With the Toshiba face-recognition technology, Minh Duc had to move the images a bit to fool the technology because it looks for facial movement. It is also possible to use black-and-white images to fool one of the systems, he added.

What makes the vulnerability in laptop face-recognition technology particularly dangerous is that compromises are harder to spot, Minh Duc said. An attacker could gain access to a system without the real user ever knowing about it, he claimed.

Intel Eyes Cloud Computing With New Hardware, Software

Intel is making a push into cloud computing with forthcoming changes in its Nehalem server line aimed at large data-center deployments.

As part of that initiative, the company earlier this week outlined hardware and software updates that it said will lead to energy savings and offer the scalability necessary for cloud-computing services.

Intel hopes to provide technology for low-range and midrange servers that can share workloads effectively if demand for a cloud application spikes, said Jason Waxman, general manager of high density computing at Intel. Server deployments would depend on resources needed by each cloud, with some requiring faster network connections or more memory. For example, hardware needs of a multimedia-intensive service like Google Earth would differ from those of an e-mail service like Gmail, Waxman said.

In addition to providing servers that deliver efficient cloud services, Intel wants the servers to be power-efficient. Waxman said that power consumption and cooling accounts for up to 23 percent of server deployments, so the company is building motherboards that could help cool systems efficiently while reducing energy costs.

Intel is developing a new motherboard, designed for servers used in cloud computing, that reduces power drawn to 85 watts in idle compared to 115 watts for standard Nehalem-based boards. A reduction of 30 watts per server could save up to US$8 million in three years in a deployment of 50,000 servers, Intel said.

The upcoming Nehalem-based boards will use Xeon processors due for release later this quarter. Intel will provide the motherboards through partners like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Specific motherboards can help cool down systems efficiently, which could reduce energy costs. Some of the redesigned motherboards remove slots to discourage use of power-hungry components and peripherals like graphics cards and hard drives. Users can instead access centralized storage over a network. Intel is also bunching together hot components so less would be needed to cool a system.

"We've actually worked with certain cloud service providers to ... change the fundamental settings to come up with something in the silicon -- whether it's the chipset or CPU -- to meet a particular optimized need," Waxman said.

The motherboards will include voltage regulators and work with software tools to monitor power consumption. One such software tool, called Dynamic Power Node Manager, will cap and balance power consumption between servers to cut energy costs. Intel tested Node Manager with Chinese search engine Baidu, which saved 40 watts per server during a cloud implementation.

Intel is also providing software tools like compilers and debuggers to improve performance and analyze software code. Optimizing code helps execute tasks more quickly and efficiently while using fewer system resources. That could save up $20 million over three years in a 50,000 server deployment, Waxman said.

The company has worked on optimizing search codes for most of the major search providers, Waxman said.

"We actually have people ... on site with these large cloud service providers doing hands-on tuning -- looking at their workloads ... to get more performance out of it," Waxman said.

One thing Intel can't control is the bottleneck of data throughput caused by slow network connections. Intel hopes to cut that with the VMDQ (Virtual Machine Device Queues) feature, which speeds up data throughput over virtual machines by intelligently queueing up server traffic. Hypervisors on servers with the queueing software work together to split traffic -- like storage and Web traffic -- to balance the traffic over multiple virtual machines. The feature cuts bottlenecks that typically affect a 1G bps network, Waxman said.

"In the past one virtual machine could hog up all the traffic. What you really want to be able to do is put things in a queue," Waxman said.

Taking advantage of virtualization technology, Intel also hopes to standardize the deployment of the DCMI (Data Center Management Interface) protocol across virtualized hardware and software environments to ease data-center task management. The specifications include features to measure power consumption to effectively share resources across a large-scale server deployment. For example, DCMI can cap power consumption on servers and monitor temperature to prevent servers from overheating.

Intel said that about 14 percent of servers purchased today go into a cloud deployment, Waxman said. That number will rise to 25 percent by 2012, with more cloud deployments going in large data centers of 50,000 servers or more, Waxman said.

Company Demos Development of Turn-by-turn IPhone GPS App

A friend of mine has been longing for a smartphone for years, but he's continued to hold off on the hopes that when he does eventually get one, it will do absolutely everything from making phone calls to preparing grilled cheese sandwiches. Phones these days have gotten pretty close to his ideal, but they still lack one key ingredient for him (besides the sandwich-making), and that's GPS-based turn-by-turn directions.

The iPhone's built-in Google Maps are serviceable for many purposes, but if you've ever used an in-car GPS system with automatic rerouting and a snide British voice telling you when you've taken a wrong turn, you'll know that it falls short in many places. Last July, Apple VP Greg Joswiak said that he expected that hole in the iPhone's functionality to be filled eventually, but that there were technical obstacles.

The obstacles appear not to be just technical either, as some reports indicate that Apple's SDK terms prohibit such features on the iPhone, though some of this may possibly be because of Google's own terms of use for Google Maps, which restrict using the information for "real time navigation or route guidance, including but not limited to turn-by-turn route guidance."

This doesn't appear to have stopped some developers. At this year's Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona, Sygic showed off a prototype turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone, including voice prompts and automatic route recalculation, though it only contained maps for Europe. Sygic--which has developed similar applications for a number of other platforms, including many cell phones--says that it plans on submitting the program to the App Store, just to see how the cookie crumbles.

Sygic's not the only company interested in the GPS market, either. A company called XRoad has had two GPS applications on the iTunes Store for a couple of months now; however, the apps don't feature voice prompts or live turn-by-turn directions, and the user reviews of the product have been heavily mixed. Last June, GPS unit maker TomTom also said that it had an iPhone app ready to go, but as of yet, that software has yet to materialize.

It would seem likely, per Joswiak's comments if nothing else, that some sort of official turn-by-turn direction system is coming to the iPhone eventually, whether it be via Apple or a partnering company.

7 Technologies that Changed the World

Today life without a cell phone, a laptop, or an Internet connection seems unthinkable. Tech has infiltrated daily life in so many ways that it's hard to remember entire generations found ways to reach others, stay up-to-date, and do their jobs without the technology innovations we take for granted.

PBS Nightly Business News took a close look at tech innovations and innovations from other fields. To celebrate its 30th year on television, the news show partnered with Knowledge@Wharton to select the top 30 innovations in the past 30 years -- innovations that may seem standard now, but whose creation changed the way business is conducted, directly affected quality of life, broke new ground, and more.

Here are seven technology innovations from that list.

RFID and applications (#23)

Long before Nike+ used radio frequency device to tell you how fast you're running, the technology was being used in World War II radar systems. In the '80s it was put to use in automated toll payment systems, enabling speedsters everywhere the ability to fly through the tolls.

GUI (#21)

The first graphical user interface was invented by Douglas Englebart in 1968, and in the late '70s and early '80s GUI design advanced, largely thanks to Apple. Because of these pioneers, we can take it for granted that we interact with our computer using a mouse and have easy-to-understand icons and other graphical controls instead of having to remember a bunch of computer commands.

Social networking via internet (#20)

Internet-based social networks really are very new. SixDegrees.com (1997) is the earliest social network site, according to PBS, but it wasn't until MySpace, which launched in 2003, that social networks began to appeal to the masses. Now, of course, there's Facebook, which gives you endless opportunities to have worlds collide, and Twitter, which empowers you to become your own paparazzi by dropping life tidbits, wisdom, and your comings and goings to your anxious followers.

Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions (#15)

Where would we be without Amazon, eBay and other online stores? Stuck in traffic on the way to the mall, that's where. Thanks to the Internet being opened up to commercial use, the ability for companies to capitalize on electronic transactions took off. As did our hunger for a more peaceful shopping experience.

Mobile phones (#3)

Take a look at your tiny little cell phone and be thankful. The first mobile phones, which Motorola unleashed on the market in 1983, were confined to the car (until a few years later when they became more mobile) and were the size of a briefcase.

PC/ laptop computers (#2)

1981 was a big year for computers: IBM launched the 5150 model (which it called a "personal computer") and the Osborne 1 became the first portable computer. Weighing in at 24 pounds, it challenges our current notion of laptop.

Internet/broadband/WWW (#1)

Coming in at #1 is the Internet. Our slavery to Google, our addiction to Twitter, our ability to keep up-to-date on any given news topic, our ability to send and receive far too many e-mails...The Internet enabled so many other phenomenon that it's startling to realize the Internet as we know it only arrived in the '90s. But it didn't take long to change our lives forever.

Adobe Flaw Heightens Risk of Encountering Malicious PDFs

Security companies are warning of a new flaw in two Adobe Systems programs that could compromise a PC merely by opening a malicious PDF (Portable Document Format) file.

Hackers are exploiting the flaw in the wild, although attacks are not widespread yet, according to Symantec and the Shadowserver Foundation.

The flaw affects version 9 of Reader and Acrobat as well as earlier versions, according to Adobe's advisory. A buffer overflow condition can be triggered by opening a specially-crafted PDF, which gives the attackers control of the computer. Shadowserver wrote that the flaw could be exploited on systems running Microsoft's Windows XP SP3.

Adobe called the flaw "critical," it's most severe rating, and said it will release a patch for Reader 9 and Acrobat 9 by March 11. The company said patches for version 8 of Reader and Acrobat will follow, then finally for version 7 of Reader and Acrobat.

In the meantime, hackers will quickly try to use the flaw. PDF vulnerabilities are especially dangerous since the file format is widely used.

"Right now we believe these files are only being used in a smaller set of targeted attacks," Shadowserver wrote in its advisory. "However, these types of attacks are frequently the most damaging, and it is only a matter of time before this exploit ends up in every exploit pack on the Internet."

There are a couple of defenses PC users can employ until the patch arrives. Users should not open PDFs from untrusted sources, Symantec said. Also, since the attack relies on JavaScript, users can disable that function in Acrobat and Reader, Shadowserver advised.

"You have the choice of small loss in functionality and a crash versus your systems being compromised and all your data being stolen," the organization wrote. "It should be an easy choice."

Norway Pushes to Boot Microsoft's IE6 Browser off the Web

A prominent Norwegian Web site is spearheading a movement to get users to abandon Microsoft's widely-used but aging Internet Explorer 6 browser.

IE6 doesn't follow established standards for presenting Web pages and has security problems, according to online marketplace FINN.no, which is asking users to upgrade to IE7, Mozilla's Firefox or Opera Software's browser.

FINN.no ("finn" means "find" in Norwegian) has to spend disproportionate effort tweaking its site to make it work with IE6, time that would be better spent introducing more tools for the site, wrote Erlend Schei, a Web developer for FINN.no.

The problem with IE goes back years. Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS, were developed. As IE become dominant, Web developers wrote applications to work with IE rather than to Web standards.

The playing field changed as browsers such as Firefox came on the market in 2004, striving to accommodate World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. But since the majority of Web users were using IE, it meant developers spent lots of time to ensure their pages were compatible with all browsers.

Microsoft said when it released IE7 that it adhered more closely to W3C standards such as CSS, but critics complained the company didn't go far enough, and older Web pages still didn't render right.

Microsoft is claiming that its latest browser, IE8, will be the most standards-compliant one it has ever released. IE8 is in release candidate 1 status, with a final release due in a few months.

IE6 was introduced with Microsoft's XP operating system in 2001 and had hung around for a surprisingly long time. Many new netbooks and other PCs that ship with XP still come with a copy of IE6, even though IE7 was released in October 2006.

FINN.no said around 17 percent of its 4.2 million users are still on IE6. According to figures from NetApplications, which tracks browser market share by version, IE6 holds 19.21 percent of the market, still more than the latest version of Firefox, 3.0, which holds an 18.3 percent share.

FINN.no said it appears companies have lagged behind home users in upgrading the browsers on their systems.

Other Norwegian Web sites are also picking up on the idea, posting notices encouraging people to upgrade. An "IE6 Warning Campaign" has also been launched on Facebook, with links to other Web sites that let Web developers cut and paste code that puts a warning on their own site.

A wiki page is also keeping track of information and Web sites worldwide advocating the upgrade.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for a comment.

Microsoft unveils mobile apps store, backup service

Microsoft will introduce an application store with its newest version of Windows Mobile software, it planned to announce at Mobile World Congress, where it also was to formally open a limited beta for its My Phone data backup offering.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile will come with Windows Mobile 6.5, the newest version of the operating system, and will give users access to thousands of applications, said Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile. Microsoft also introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 at MWC on Monday, saying the software should become available on phones early in the second half of the year.

While applications stores have been around for some time, Apple's easy-to-use App Store, accessible from the iPhone, popularized the idea of buying and downloading mobile applications. Now, independent companies, operators and mobile phone makers are building stores that are accessible from handsets and that offer wireless downloads.

Nokia also planned to announce at MWC a new application store that will carry content and programs for users of its phones that run the S60 and S40 operating systems.

Offering an applications store is "table stakes" these days, said Sean Ryan, an analyst at IDC. However, Microsoft hasn't disclosed a lot of details about its store, such as how easy it will be to use. "So there are still a lot of factors out there. But as a concept it's a good thing and something they need to do," he said.

While Windows Mobile phones come in many different form factors, Microsoft offers developers a module they can use to ensure their applications work across all the phones, Rockfeld said. That means most applications in the store should work on most phones.

He sought to minimize the potential conflict between Microsoft and its device-maker customers and operator partners, some of which may also be building application stores. "This isn't the end-all be-all," Rockfeld said. "Handango will be there, mobile operators will have their stores. We're not forcing anyone to make the decision to come to us."

In addition to the Handango mobile application Web site, PocketGear launched a store for Windows Mobile applications last week. PocketGear also runs a store for Palm applications.

Microsoft has already begun doing outreach to the developer community to let them know how the store works and how they can get their applications into it, Rockfeld said.

Another new service that Microsoft will offer and that the company planned to discuss at MWC is My Phone. Details about the mobile backup service leaked out in early February. It is now available in a limited invitation-only beta, Rockfeld said.

New Loan May Clear DRAM Maker ProMOS

A consortium of eight banks led by the Bank of Taiwan reached a tentative agreement to loan DRAM maker ProMOS Technologies the money it needs to make payments on a convertible bond, the bank said in a statement late Monday.

The deal, should it be made final, would ensure ProMOS's survival past a major bond redemption this week and keep DRAM prices from rising. Last month, German DRAM maker Qimonda filed for bankruptcy protection, sending DRAM prices up over 25 percent in a week. DRAM makers have suffered from a nearly 2-year downturn caused by a chip glut, and many companies have posted losses for at least a year.

The Taiwanese banks plan to loan ProMOS NT$3 billion (US$88.2 million), a smaller figure than the NT$5 billion ProMOS was seeking. The deal will not be finalized until boards of directors at each bank approve their respective portion of the loan.

The Bank of Taiwan has pledged NT$700 million of the total amount.

ProMOS needs the cash to pay up to US$330 million in expected redemptions of a convertible bond. The redemption was originally due to begin on Feb. 14, but since that date fell on a Saturday, it was delayed. Since Monday was a U.S. holiday, the redemption officially began Tuesday. ProMOS has seven days to make the payments.

Failure to meet the payment schedule could leave the chip maker with few alternatives but to seek protection from its creditors, analysts say. ProMOS has already lobbied business partners and the Taiwan government for funds to help it through this crisis, and only this eleventh-hour deal with banks may have saved the day.

A few forces may be compelling the banks to help ProMOS, analysts say. For one, the Taiwan government pledged late last year to help domestic DRAM makers by working with banks to delay loan repayment schedules and ease lending.

The banks may also have made the loan out to keep a major borrower afloat. ProMOS held NT$89.5 billion in debt owed to Taiwanese banks as of the middle of last year, according to an estimate by the island's economics ministry. Were ProMOS to file for insolvency, the repayment of those loans would be jeopardized.

Acer Takes on Smartphone Market

Acer has jumped head first into the smartphone market with its Tempo family of devices. They are all touch-enabled and based on Windows Mobile, the company announced on Monday.

The Tempo family is to a large extent the result of Acer buying Taiwanese smartphone maker E-Ten last year. Developing its new smartphones wouldn't have been possible without the R&D know-how it got via that deal, according to Aymar de Lencquesaing, the head of Acer's Smart Handheld Business Group.

The first set of devices will be based on the existing version of Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Included is, for example, the M900, which comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.8-inch screen, and a fingerprint scanner for authentication. It also has HSDPA (High-Speed Download Packet Access) support, built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), and a 5-megapixel camera.

For users who aren't fond of QWERTY keyboards there is the F900, which also comes with 3.8-inch screen. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera, and you also get faster uploads using HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) and support for Wi-Fi.

Both phones will start shipping at the end of March or the beginning of April, according to Acer. Pricing will be announced at the time of launch.

The company is also working on a second set of smartphones that will be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, which was also announced on Monday, and come out by the end of the year.

De Lencquesaing also dropped hints about Acer working on smartphones based other operating systems than Windows Mobile, including Android, but didn't provide any details.

Acer's goal is to become one of the top five smart phone vendors, which means it would at least have to displace Sharp from the fifth spot and sell about 1.3 million units per quarter, according to third quarter sales statistics from Gartner.

Norton Online Family Safety Service Launches

Symantec has announced the public beta launch of Norton Online Family, a new Internet safety service that's compatible with both the Mac and PC.

Norton Online Family provides a way for parents to monitor their kids' online behavior and encourages communication, according to Symantec. It does so by letting kids know when Norton Online Family is active, and it encourages parents to talk with their kids about online safety and Internet usage.

Parents create an account on the Norton Online Family Web site then download "Norton Safety Minder," an application that goes onto each child's computer. The service, in conjunction with the software, then tracks each child's Internet usage in real-time.

Parents can track what kids are searching for online, and provides listings that show step-by-step where each search leads. Norton Online family can filter out extra URL's from particularly media-heavy Web sites, and is compatible with most social networking sites, to help parents gauge where their children are logging in and displaying name and age. Parents can also activate a time management feature that limits each child by imposing a "curfew."

In related news, Symantec has formed the Norton Online Family Advisory Council, comprising educators, pediatric specialists and others. They'll help test the beta and will provide feedback on issues relevant to the service's continued development.

Vodafone to Sell Second HTC Google Phone

High Tech Computer (HTC) unveiled its second Google Android-based smartphone, the HTC Magic, with mobile service provider Vodafone on Tuesday.

The new smartphone will soon battle its predecessor, the T-Mobile G1 (also called the HTC Dream) in Europe. Vodafone plans to launch the HTC Magic in the U.K., Spain, Germany, France and Italy and several other Vodafone markets over the next few months, the company said in a statement. T-Mobile has said it would roll out the G1 in continental Europe in the first quarter of this year.

Vodafone did not provide pricing information, nor nail down a specific launch date.

HTC isn't the first company to show off an Android phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona so far this week. Chinese handset maker Huawei revealed its first Android-based smartphone on Monday. The device, which resembles an iPhone, will be available in the third quarter of this year.

The HTC Magic will launch much sooner than Huawei's device. HTC has a jump on most other smartphone developers when it comes to Android because the company worked closely with Google to make the first smartphone based on the new OS and software, the G1.

The new Android smartphone shares several similarities with the G1, judging by the specifications.

The two handsets sport 3.2-inch touchscreens with 320x480 resolution. They both have 3.2-megapixel digital cameras and both handle many of the same wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS (Global Positioning System) and 3G (third-generation) signals via WCDMA (Wideband CDMA) as well as high speed data via HSPA (High Speed Packet Access). The also both use track balls and enter buttons as means of navigation.

The HTC Magic differs mainly in its sleeker design and lack of a QWERTY keypad.

The device is smaller and lighter than the G1 despite the same size screen, at 113 millimeters by 55mm, compared to the G1's 117.7mm by 55.7mm. The HTC Magic is thinner at 13.65mm versus 17.1mm thick for the G1, likely due to the lack of the keypad. The Magic is also lighter at 118.5 grams (4.18 ounces) with the battery, compared to 158 grams (5.6 ounces) for the G1.

The HTC Magic will be available in white in the U.K., Spain and France, black in Germany and both colors in Italy, Vodafone said.

Toshiba to Acquire Fujitsu's Hard-disk Drive Business

Toshiba and Fujitsu have signed a provisional agreement under which Toshiba will acquire Fujitsu's loss-making hard-disk drive business.

A value for the deal, which is expected to close during the April to June quarter, was not disclosed.

As a first step towards the acquisition Fujitsu plans to bring its hard-disk drive operations together in a single company in which Toshiba will acquire an 80 percent stake. Fujitsu will hold the remaining 20 percent stake for an unspecified length of time after which it will become a wholly-owned unit of Toshiba, the two said in a statement.

Toshiba already has a hard-disk drive business although it's not focused in the same area as Fujitsu. Toshiba's drives are targeted at laptop PCs, mobile devices, consumer electronics and automotive applications while Fujitsu aims its products primarily at the enterprise space. It has a roughly 25 percent share of that market, according to IDC.

Through the acquisition Toshiba said it intends to enter the market for server and data storage system applications.

The deal will also mean Toshiba will build-up its solid-state disk (SSD) business.

SSDs are hard-disk drive-like devices that store data on flash memory, of which Toshiba is a leading producer, instead of a revolving magnetic disc. The drives have several advantages over HDDs although are more expensive, which has led to limited use.

Around 10.1 million SSDs were shipped last year, according to an estimate from IDC, and the market is set for big growth over the next few years as performance improves and they get cheaper. In 2012 IDC expects SSD shipments to hit 89.3 million units.

The deal covers Fujitsu's HDD design, development, manufacturing, sales and other related functions carried out by the company except its hard-disk head production and media business. Fujitsu will sell its hard-drive media business to Japan's Showa Denko and plans to closedown its head production operations.

Fujitsu's hard drive operations have been on the block for several months and at one point local media reports said Western Digital was close to acquiring the business.

Nokia Will Ship N97 Loaded With Skype Calling Software

Skype is developing a VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software client for Nokia's top-of-the-range N97 smartphone, executives of both companies said Tuesday.

Nokia will load the application onto phones before they ship. It will be integrated into the phone's address book, making it as easy to place a call to a contact's Skype username as to their regular phone number, said Skype Chief Operating Officer Scott Durchslag.

The Skype application will allow users to make voice calls, send instant messages and also to select it as a widget so they can see which of their friends are online, all the time, said Jose-Luis Martinez, Nokia's Vice President for Nseries phones. It will use Wi-Fi or cellular connections, as available.

The N97 runs Nokia's S60 software platform, but the application under development is specific to the N97 and will not initially be available for other S60 phones, Durchslag said.

Skype is still just designing the user interface, and the application code hasn't been written, said Durchslag. He expects to have something ready to demonstrate by June, with the final application ready for release some time in the third quarter.

That makes it likely that Skype will be missing from the first batch of N97 phones. Those will be in stores in June, Nokia Executive Vice President Kai Öistämö said at a Nokia event on Monday.

Including an application for a service like Skype is a good fit with Nokia's design philosophy for the N97.

"What makes it our flagship is the tight integration with services," Öistämö said, pointing to the way the applications on the phone work with Nokia's online navigation, entertainment and e-mail tools.

Skype has already developed applications for other mobile phones. Two are distributed exclusively by 3G (third generation) mobile network operator Three, under the 3 Skypephone brand. A third, the INQ1, is also sold through Three but its developer Inq Mobile hopes to find other operators interested in selling it this year.

On Monday, Skype announced an update to its Windows Mobile application. Version 2.5 is now final, after months in beta, while a new beta version, 3.0, is available with two new features: file transfer, and the ability to send SMS (Short Message Service) text messages at Skype rates abroad or while roaming.

In addition to Windows Mobile version, the forthcoming N97 application and the dedicated Skype phones, mobile Skype is also available as a "lite" version for Android phones and about 100 other Java-enabled mobile phones from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. The lite version, still in beta testing, offers only basic Skype features including voice calling, instant messaging and presence notification, and won't work over Wi-Fi connections, making a flat-rate data service indispensable.

For the full featured application on the N97, "We are starting at the high end," said Durchslag, "but you will see it in the mid-tier. Below that it's hard to deliver a good quality experience," he said.

Nevertheless, when it comes to extending Skype calling to low-end phones, "Time is on our side. Processing power will have to move down market," he said.

Nokia, Qualcomm to Work on Smartphones Together

The world's largest mobile phone vendor and the biggest cellular chip developer said Tuesday they plan to make 3G (third-generation) mobile devices together for the North American market.

Nokia and Qualcomm, which ended a long running patent battle in the middle of last year, will co-develop advanced devices based on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), which is designed to succeed the most common mobile phone airwave standard in the world, GSM (Global System for Mobile communications).

The partners will design mobile devices based on S60 software, which uses the Symbian OS. The devices will also use advanced chipsets from Qualcomm.

The first devices from the two companies are expected to launch in the middle of next year. They will be compatible with the upcoming Symbian Foundation platform, the companies said in a statement.

Last July, Nokia agreed to pay Qualcomm a multi-billion dollar amount in back payments and future royalties after a long court battle over wireless patents. At the same time, the companies said they would work together in the future.

How-To: Use Your iPhone as a Wireless Laptop Modem

I travel a lot. And if you’re a geek like me, you can’t go a full day sans internet access without experiencing some severe withdrawal symptoms. Luckily, my iPhone, with all its WiFi and 3G goodness, has been instrumental in feeding my addiction while on the road. But though Apple’s smartphone provides the best mobile browsing experience out there, the small screen and touch controls still don’t compare to the pixel real estate and tactile qwerty speed of a laptop. Not to mention such luxuries as Flash compatibility, page caching, and tabbed browsing.

So the next time you’re stranded without an open WiFi network (but your 3G signal is going strong), you’ll be glad you installed Addition’s iPhoneModem 2 (free to try, full license is $9.99). Unfortunately, Apple has apparently deemed the app to be in conflict with its App Store Terms and Conditions, so it is only available for jailbroken phones via Cydia. Here’s a quick guide:

1) Jailbreak your iPhone.
Download and install QuickPwn, an easy-to-use jailbreaking application for Windows and Mac (the latest version works with iPhone OS 2.2.1). Run the software and follow the onscreen instruction very carefully!

2) Install iPhoneModem by Addition.
QuickPwn installs an app on your phone called Cydia, which is essentially the App Store for apps that were rejected from the official App Store (or, for whatever reason, the developer chose not to release through Apple). Run Cydia, search for iPhoneModem by Addition and install it. Keep in mind you can only delete Cydia installed apps via Cydia’s Manage-Sources function. Now download and install the helper app on your laptop and you’re almost ready to go.

3)Set up the network.
Run the helper app and hit Connect. The helper app sets up an ad hoc wireless network that can be accessed via iPhone. The default network it creates is called “iPhoneModem” and does not have a password (you can change this in the Preferences of the helper app). Now open up your iPhone’s Settings and tap WiFi. Make sure WiFi is turned on and select the network “iPhoneModem” (or whatever you called it). Type the password if you assigned one. Open up the Modem iPhone app and everything else will configure automatically. After a few moments the helper app and the iPhone app will confirm that a connection has been established and you can browse away with all the comforts of your laptop!

Shortcomings:
While 3G seems plenty fast on a phone, it feels a little slow on a laptop. Also, most major web browsers work but not all are supported. In addition, a lot of other internet applications aren’t supported, but for all intents and purposes, you should be able to browse just fine.

*Note: If you haven’t already discovered, jailbreaking your iPhone opens up a world of possibilities, including themes and apps that aren’t allowed in the App Store. While it technically voids the warranty, you can easily return your device to its original state with the “Restore” feature in iTunes, wiping all traces of the jailbreak hack.

Sony Unveils "Smarter" Cyber-shot Cameras

After unveiling a handful of new Cyber-shot point-and-shoot cameras at CES earlier this year, Sony today further bulked up its camera line with six more additions to the Cyber-shot line. The new T-, W-, S-, and H-series cameras are not yet available, but will be showcased at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) tradeshow at the beginning of March.

Although the new cameras span from lower-end pocket cams to touchscreen cameras to a bulkier, high-zoom model, most of them have one thing in common: An intelligent auto mode. According to Sony, the new intelligent auto mode is enabled by default, and the cameras will optimize the scene mode, facial recognition, lighting settings, and image stabilization accordingly.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 and Cyber-shot DSC-T90

The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-T900 will offer a whopping 3.5-inch-diagonal LCD touchscreen, optical image stabilization, and the aforementioned intelligent auto mode. In addition to automatic shot optimization, the new T-series cameras also recognize and tag faces in the images, and on-camera images can be automatically sorted depending upon who's in the shot. Other key features include 720p HD movie mode with HDMI-out and a stereo mic, in-camera photo-editing features, ISO equivalencies of up to 3200, and a range of color options (black, silver, red, and bronze). The T900 will be available in March for $380.

The other addition to the T series is the Cyber-shot DSC-T90, which has almost identical specs but a slightly smaller 3-inch-diagonal LCD touchscreen and no stereo mic for its 720p HD movie mode. The T90 will be available in April for $300 in five colors: black, silver, blue, pink, and brown.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H20

New to Sony's high-zoom H series is the Cyber-shot DSC-H20, a bulkier 10-megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom. However, it only offers a 38mm film equivalent on the wide-angle end. Making up for that somewhat is its HD movie mode, which shoots 720p clips and offers optical zoom while taking video. A 3-inch LCD screen, intelligent auto mode and face recognition, in-camera editing apps, and ISO equivalencies up to 3200 round out the H20's specs. It will be available starting in April for $280.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 and Cyber-shot DSC-W230

Two new cameras are also being added to the mid-range W series of Cyber-shots. The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot W290 offers the new intelligent auto and face-recognition features, optical image stabilization, 720p HD movie mode, a 5x optical zoom that starts at 28mm on the wide-angle end, and a 3-inch LCD screen. It will be available in April for $250 in black, silver, blue, and bronze.

The slightly lower-end DSC-W230 has similar specs, but lacks the wide-angle lens (4x optical zoom starting at 30mm) and doesn't shoot HD video (only standard-definition MPEG1 clips). The W230 hit stores in April for $200 in four colors: black, silver, red, and blue.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S980

The lowest-end of the new product is the only new Cyber-shot that doesn't offer the intelligent auto functions. The 12-megapixel Cyber-shot DSC-S980 has a 2.7-inch LCD, a 4x optical zoom starting at 33mm, and digital-only image stabilization. It comes in at just $150, available in April.

Intel Looks to Bring HD Video to Handheld Gadgets

Intel researchers are trying to create small, integrated chips that will be able to run high-definition 1080p video on portable devices, though it could take them five to eight years to do so, a senior Intel engineer said Monday.

One of the main issues the researchers have to overcome is that of power leakage in processors, said Shekhar Borkar [CQ], an Intel fellow, during an interview Monday. Intel engineers are trying to reduce that power leakage while also scaling graphics performance on chips to bring richer multimedia content to smartphones and other portable devices.

Intel aims to boost graphics performance by using an on-chip accelerator that will allow multiple streams of graphics data to be processed simultaneously, using a technique called SIMD, or Single Instruction, Multiple Data. Rendering high-definition video is best done using SIMD techniques, Borkar said.

SIMD is already used in some graphics processors and CPUs. For example, Intel used SIMD with the MMX extensions it introduced for its Pentium processor in the 1990s, which allowed that chip to better handle video on desktops.

However, chip circuits that enable SIMD acceleration have high power leakage and don't scale down very well to low voltages, Borkar said. As video gets more popular on handheld devices, with the arrival of applications like mobile TV, engineers need to come up with new ways to manage power.

At the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, Intel is presenting a paper about a SIMD accelerator that scales smoothly to ultra-low voltages and has circuits that are up to 8 times more energy efficient than what exists today. The technology could find its way into mobile chips such as Intel's Atom processor in five to eight years, Borkar said.

"There's a lot of recent interest in how to reduce power consumption of SIMD operations so that we can take this technology and use it for really low-power graphics," he said.

Circuits that do SIMD processing today draw 1.1 to 1.2 volts, but Intel thinks it can come up with a design that will offer equal performance and draw only about 300 millivolts, Borkar said.

He hopes to apply the technology to server chips as well, to bring greater power efficiency to high-performance computing.

In some ways Intel is just now getting its feet wet in the market for small portable devices. Last year it introduced its Menlow platform for what it calls mobile Internet devices, which are somewhere between a sub notebook and a cell phone. Handset makers adopting Menlow chips have expressed concerns about their poor battery life, however. The Menlow platform has a set of components, including the low-power processor code-named Silverthorne and the Poulsbo chipset.

Intel hopes to fix Menlow's ills with the Moorestown platform, which will consume up to 10 times less power and is due for release in late 2009 or 2010, according to the company.

IBM, Juniper Join in Cloud Strategy

IBM and Juniper on Monday provided a sneak peek at technology that lets enterprise IT managers easily reallocate computing resources between a private and a public cloud.

Using cloud management software from IBM's Tivoli division and a Juniper network, the companies demonstrated a drag-and-drop interface for managing a hybrid cloud infrastructure. It was the first time IBM had shown off technology for shifting work within a hybrid setup, which the company believes will be the dominant form of cloud architecture. IBM was set to announce the capability on Tuesday, along with several other new cloud-related offerings.

Cloud computing, along with virtualization, can give IT departments more flexibility by letting them separate applications or data from particular sites and equipment. Enterprises are beginning to explore public cloud services, in particular, partly as a way to avoid some investments in fixed assets, according to Nemertes Research analyst Andreas Antonopoulos.

At its Silicon Valley Research Center in San Jose, California, on Monday an IBM executive demonstrated how the IBM Cloud Management Console, which already could be used to control a private cloud, can now control a remote cloud as well. The console displayed virtual machines as small boxes color-coded to show whether they were being used and what for. Identifying one application as less critical than another, he dragged several boxes from the private cloud to a public one. Then, with computing resources freed up on the private cloud, he allocated the empty boxes to the more critical function in order to meet the IT department's service-level agreement for it.

IBM will be unveiling that capability and others to selected customers alongside partner Juniper Networks on Tuesday. The company has tapped in to Juniper APIs (application programming interfaces) for networks that better serve the needs of hybrid cloud computing, executives of the companies said. Among other things, Juniper technology will help to allow easier remote management of clouds over long-distance MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) networks. Enterprises won't need a single-vendor Juniper network to take advantage of the partners' technology, however, because Juniper uses standards such as MPLS, they said.

The demonstration took place in the data center of the Silicon Valley facility, which also serves as one of nine Cloud Labs around the world where IBM can construct proof-of-concept systems for customers interested in cloud computing. Those customers could be either enterprises exploring private or hybrid clouds, or service providers that want to build their own public clouds as a business, said Jay Subrahmonia, director of IBM Cloud Labs.

Monday's demonstration did not include moving data between public and private clouds, but that could be a future direction, Subrahmonia said.

IBM was set to unveil a wide variety of cloud offerings on Tuesday, including the following:

- The Service Management Center for Cloud Computing, a set of products that IBM's clients can use to build and deliver cloud services. At its center are Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.1 and Tivoli Service Automation Manager, designed to automate cloud deployment and management. The Service Management Center will include at least nine different products this year.

- IBM Rational AppScan 7.8, which helps enterprises ensure that the Web services they publish into a cloud are secure and comply with regulations and company policies. Rational AppScan OnDemand allows continuous monitoring of those services.

- IBM Design and Implementation for Cloud Test Environments, which lets customers build a cloud inside their own environments for testing. It can save as much as 20 percent through quicker provisioning, IBM said.

- Tivoli Storage as a Service, providing Tivoli data protection technologies on an online, pay-as-you-go basis. It will be offered through IBM's Business Continuity & Resiliency Services cloud beginning later this year.

Like IBM, Antonopoulos of Nemertes Research believes almost all enterprises that use cloud computing will take a hybrid approach. IT infrastructure is like an investment portfolio, which shouldn't be dominated by one type of asset and has to be tailored to each organization's needs, he said. In addition, enterprises need to consider not just the ongoing cost of going to a third-party cloud service, such as subscriptions and bandwidth, but the cost of migrating to the service and later moving on to another approach, he said.

"Anything you do in IT is temporary," Antonopoulos said.

Managing the different pieces of a cloud infrastructure is one of the major stumbling blocks to adopting the technology, so there is room for better solutions such as what IBM is constructing, Antonopoulos said. The companies that come to Nemertes for consultation are looking for seamless continuity between public and private clouds, but today they see the line between those as not very permeable, he said.

IBM is one of the main vendors that Nemertes clients are exploring for cloud technology, along with Amazon.com and Sun Microsystems, Antonopoulos said. On Tuesday, IBM is set to announce beauty supply company Elizabeth Arden, life-science data management vendor Indigo BioSystems, financial software and services company Nexxera and the U.S. Golf Association as cloud computing customers.

Sega Chops 560 Jobs, Nixes 110 "Amusement Facilities"

Sega hasn't responded swiftly enough to turbulent business conditions, says the company, so they're reducing "fixed cost" and axing upwards of 560 jobs.

Ouch.

Company revenues were reportedly down across the board, resulting in a revised fiscal forecast and losses of over $235 million when things wrap next month.

Before Sega gets to what it's calling "voluntary redundancies across [their] workforce," they plan to close 110 of their least profitable amusement facilities, aka "arcades." After that, they'll dip heavily into their 3,000-plus employee pool and slash nearly 20 percent.

Voluntary reductions? Probably severance packages, though in this climate, that's no doubt cold comfort to the one-fifth soon to be unemployed.

Commensurate with those cuts, Sega's shrinking R&D by 20 points and consolidating its titles in development.

No word on which titles those cuts could affect, but games currently in development include:

The House of the Dead: OVERKILL (Wii)
Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (PS3, 360)
Empire: Total War (PC)
MadWorld (Wii)
OutRun Online Arcade (360, PS3)
Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii)
BLEACH: Dark Souls (DS)
Stormrise (PS3, PC, 360)
Phantasy Star Portable (PSP)
Virtual Tennis 2009 (PS3, PC, 360)
The Conduit (Wii)
Let's Tap (Wii)

Matt Peckham misses both his Saturn and Dreamcast. You can reminisce with him at twitter.com/game_on.

Tata Sets up Cisco Technology Lab in India

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest outsourcer, has set up a Cisco Technology Lab, that will focus on developing network-based data center technologies, test frameworks, and train and certify employees on Cisco Systems data center technologies.

The lab will also allow Cisco and TCS to illustrate proofs of concepts, and IT and networking methodologies for client-specific business processes, TCS said on Tuesday.

The lab is an offshoot of an agreement announced Tuesday by the two companies. Under the agreement, TCS will set up a technology practice around Cisco's data center networking and security technologies.

A number of technology companies have announced partnerships in India, to take advantage of the services delivery capability of large Indian outsourcers, and also get access to customers. Microsoft, for example, announced last month that it was working with Infosys Technologies, India's second largest outsourcer, to help manufacturers manage their increasingly complex global supply chains.

Cisco has announced previously similar go-to-market partnerships with other Indian outsourcers, including Wipro and Satyam Computer Services.

The alliance between Cisco and TCS will initially focus on India, as well as common enterprise customers in the U.S. and the U.K. in the banking and financial services, telecom, government, and small and medium business segments of the market.

Google's PowerMeter Lets You Know If the Lights Are on

Google is testing software that will let consumers get detailed information on how much electricity they're using, which could help households reduce consumption by as much as 15 percent, the company said Monday.

The software, Google PowerMeter, integrates into the company's iGoogle platform, where users create a customized page with lightweight Web-based applications. The PowerMeter is designed to show a granular, real-time view of electricity-consuming devices.

Although just a prototype now, consumers will eventually be able to opt in to use it, and no personal information will be shared between Google and utilities, the company said. The electricity data will be stored securely, and users will be able to tell their utility to stop sending data to the PowerMeter, Google said.

Most consumers don't have much data or context regarding their electricity consumption, according to Ed Lu of Google's engineering team.

Google's PowerMeter takes data from so-called "smart meters," or advanced electricity meters and other electricity management devices. About 40 million smart meters are in use worldwide, with that number expected to rise to 100 million in the next few years, Lu said.

U.S. President Barack Obama's economy stimulus plan includes investments to put up to 40 million smart meters in U.S. homes.

Google takes data from a home's smart meter and displays it in a graph. It can show the current day's electricity consumption compared to the day before, but the graph can be expanded to get a historical view of peaks and troughs in electricity usage, Google said.

Google also plans to release APIs (application programming interfaces) for PowerMeter that would let other software developers build applications around it.

Google is making a strong push for agreements with utilities on how to standardize the data that's available from smart meters. In a position paper dated Monday sent to California's Public Utility Commission, Google said that "the data from the smart meter needs to be available to the consumer in real-time and in a non-proprietary format."

California has been pushing ahead with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) plans, which call for new meters that show real-time data well as pricing information to consumers.

So far, Google is letting its own employees test PowerMeter. The insights gained include at least two revelations about the electricity used to make toast and the inefficiency of 20-year-old refrigerators.

"One morning I noticed that my energy consumption was higher than normal," wrote Kirsten, a Google program manager, who didn't give her last name. "I went into the kitchen and found that the dial on our toaster oven was stuck and had been on all night.

"It was already burning and the once white exterior was now brown. If I hadn't seen my energy consumption and known where to look, my apartment could have been toast," she wrote.

Microsoft reveals 'My Phone' backup, sync service

Just hours after Microsoft Corp. accidentally launched, then yanked, a Web site promoting its new "My Phone" backup and sync service, the company restored the site and posted more information about the free service.

Late Friday, Microsoft restored the My Phone site, which said the service is "coming soon." In a separate announcement posted to several Web sites, the company said that more information about the invite-only beta would be given out at the GSMA World Mobile Congress, which opens Feb. 16 in Barcelona, Spain.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is slated to give a keynote speech at the trade show on Feb. 17.

Earlier, Engadget Mobile had reported that the My Phone site was live at the Getskybox.com domain. Later, Microsoft acknowledged the screwup. "Today, Microsoft's My Phone Web site went live prior to its scheduled debut," the company said, several sites reported. Currently, Getskybox.com -- a reference to the "SkyBox" code name of the service -- shunted users to the My Phone site.

READ THIS WHITEPAPER: How to Tame Digital Content - Avoid the frustrations of a turn-key approach to ECM.

According to the information now posted to the site, users of My Phone will be able to back up contacts, calendar appointments, text messages, photos and other information online. They will also be able to share those photos with others, update the information from a computer using a Web-based interface and use the stored data to restore a phone or transfer it to a new device.

Microsoft said it would give each user 200MB of storage space, but it warned that only phones powered by Windows Mobile 6 or later would be compatible with the service. In fact, it hedged. "Most phones that run the Windows Mobile 6 operating system are compatible with My Phone service," said the service's site.

Although not strictly billed as a phone-to-PC sync service, My Phone will synchronize Windows Live contacts -- assuming Windows Live has been installed on the phone -- with those on the Windows Live Web site. However, My Phone will not sync contacts, e-mail messages or to-do tasks with an Exchange mail server. Phone data will be backed up to the remote servers automatically once per day, said Microsoft, although users can manually trigger a backup at any time.

My Phone is a potential competitor to Apple Inc.'s MobileMe, which debuted last July but got off to a very rocky start. However, MobileMe costs $99 annually, while My Phone will be free, said Microsoft.

MobileMe offers considerably more storage space -- 20GB -- and synchronizes e-mail, contacts and tasks between not only Apple's iPhone and a PC or Mac, but also multiple computers.

Review: Apple's iWork '09 gets online sharing, 'evolutionary' updates

The last time Apple updated its iWork productivity suite, it included a number of revolutionary advances over previous versions -- especially the inclusion of the Numbers spreadsheet application. By contrast, this year's move to iWork '09, unveiled at last month's Macworld Expo, feels much more evolutionary than revolutionary. All three applications in the suite -- the Pages word processor, Numbers, and Keynote, Apple's presentation app -- received notable updates, but they tended to fine-tune and complement the existing feature set rather than introduce radical changes.

While the updates may not wow current iWork users, each application got some worthy changes, easily justifying the $79 price tag on iWork '09 -- or the $49 charge if you're buying it along with a new Mac. One interesting note: The updates are largely application-specific, unlike the iWork '08 release, which included general interface updates across all three apps.

iWork '09's template browser makes it easy to choose from a variety of document templates.
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One major addition to the suite is iWork.com, a Web-based collaboration tool that allows users to share documents created in any one of the three iWork applications. iWork.com allows multiple users to view and comment on documents through a slick Web interface and download shared documents in iWork, Microsoft Office or PDF formats. For now, iWork.com is available for free, as Apple says it's in public beta testing. Eventually, though, it will be a paid service.

Another update across all three applications is the template browser, which got several new templates. Like previous iWork releases and the iWeb application included in Apple's iLife suite, all three applications offer users a wide range of document templates. The browser for choosing a template when creating a new document has now been tweaked to allow easy viewing of all pages in multipage templates by simply moving the cursor over the template thumbnail -- much like events in iPhoto can quickly display multiple photos.

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As with past releases, the available templates are striking and cover a variety of home and business projects, offering new users excellent starting points. Numbers, for example, includes several spreadsheet templates for purposes users might not even think about, such as tracking their diets or workouts, creating a home inventory or even building a math quiz. Third-party templates that extend the features built in by Apple are also available, and users can create and save their own.

As with last year's iWork, however, most of templates have sample data included, making them more like demo files than actual templates. Some might see that as helpful; I tend to find it a little frustrating if I'm creating a new project or document.

HP says its netbooks will likely run three versions of Windows 7

In a vote of confidence for Windows 7's suitability for use on netbook PCs, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it will likely offer at least three different editions of the upcoming operating system on future models of its Mini netbooks.

That includes the Professional and Home Premium editions, which Microsoft Corp. last week said will be the two primary versions of Windows 7, and the low-end Starter edition, which will limit users to running three applications at a time.

Kyle Thornton, category manager for business notebook PCs at HP, said in an interview late last week that the vendor also has been testing the beta version of Windows 7 Ultimate — an edition aimed at gamers and PC enthusiasts — on the Mini netbook line.

Windows 7 is being built on the same code base as Windows Vista, prompting some fears that the new operating system may prove to be too bulky to run well on modestly powered netbooks. But despite such concerns, "we see it running very well on the [Minis], even with Aero turned on," Thornton said, referring to the compute-intensive graphical user interface offered in both Vista and Windows 7.

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While Microsoft will focus its marketing of Windows 7 on the Professional edition for corporate users and Home Premium for consumers, it will continue to offer a total of six flavors — the same as with Vista. That, the company said, is necessary to meet the needs of PC makers as well as users.

As part of last week's announcement, Microsoft confirmed that there will be no special "netbook SKU" of Windows 7. Instead, PC makers will be allowed to install the Starter edition, formerly consigned to developing countries only, on netbooks and other low-end PCs for sale in markets worldwide. Microsoft officials expect, though, that the majority of netbooks will actually ship with Windows 7 Home Premium.

HP is even more ambitious. Besides the three editions of Windows 7 that it plans to support, the vendor hopes that it will be able to continue to pre-install both Windows XP Professional and Vista Business on its business-oriented netbooks even after the new operating system ships, Thornton said. (Vista Business is the product-line equivalent of the planned Windows 7 Professional edition.)

In the Mini 2140 system that it introduced last month, HP offers three operating systems for business users: XP Pro, Vista Business and Novell Inc.'s SUSE Enterprise Linux. No other netbook maker "supports business operating systems because, frankly, they are not being supported by Intel or Microsoft at all," Thornton claimed. "We went out on a limb to put XP Pro and Vista Business on the 2140 and make sure it runs fine."

Mac clone maker wins legal round against Apple

A federal judge last week ruled that Psystar Corp. can continue its countersuit against Apple Inc., giving the Mac clone maker a rare win in its seven-month-old battle with Apple.

He also hinted that if Psystar proves its allegations, others may then be free to sell computers with Mac OS X already installed.

In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave Psystar the go-ahead to amend its lawsuit against Apple. According to Alsup, Psystar may change that countersuit, which originally accused Apple of breaking antitrust laws, to instead ague that Apple has stretched copyright laws by tying the Mac operating system to its hardware.

Alsup had tossed Psystar's antitrust charges in November 2008 but left the door open to a modified complaint. Psystar took advantage of the opportunity and filed a revised lawsuit in mid-December. Apple, however, had hoped to quash Psystar's revision, saying that the Miami-based company "attempts to repackage its dismissed antitrust allegations under the guise of copyright misuse."

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On Friday, Alsup said that Psystar could continue to press its once-dismissed case. "Psystar may well have a legitimate interest in establishing misuse [of copyright] independent of Apple's claims against it -- for example, to clarify the risks it confronts by marketing the products at issue in this case or others it may wish to develop," Alsup said in his ruling.

Apple started the legal wrangling in July when it said Psystar broke copyright and software-licensing laws by selling Intel-based computers with Mac OS X 10.5 preinstalled. Psystar has been selling machines equipped with Apple's operating system since April 2008.

Alsup also said that if Psystar proves that Apple abused copyright laws, some of Apple's charges against the company would be moot. He also seemed to say that that others would then be free to follow in Psystar's footsteps. "Moreover, if established, misuse would bar enforcement (for the period of misuse) not only as to defendants who are actually party to the challenged license but also as to potential defendants not themselves injured by the misuse who may have similar interests," said Alsup in his ruling.

The judge did not name the "potential defendants," but in previous filings, Apple has claimed that Psystar was not acting alone. "Persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar's unlawful and improper activities described in this amended complaint," said Apple in a November filing. At the time, Apple only referred to those individuals or corporations as John Does 1 through 10.

Apple said it would reveal the names when it uncovered them.

Alsup also acknowledged Apple's argument that it had the right to decide how its software was licensed and used, but said that that would have to be decided as the case plays out. He did reject Psystar's attempt to include state unfair-competition charges in its countersuit, however.

Psystar has a week to submit its altered counterclaims, after which Apple must answer within 20 days. Alsup also told the two parties to get to work. "Both sides should be taking discovery and preparing themselves for trial and/or summary judgment," the judge concluded.

The case is currently scheduled to begin trial on Nov. 9.