First Preview of Windows 8 Seamlessly Integrates Touch, Desktop, Web [Video]

First Preview of Windows 8 Seamlessly Integrates Touch, Desktop, Web [Video]

  1:23:00 AM    Science Lover

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Windows pulls back the veil on its next OS, and it's a doozy.

"This is the new version of Windows. It's going to run on laptops, it's going to run on desktops, it's going to run on PCs with a mouse and keyboard, it's going to run on touch slates, it's going to run on everything. Hundreds of millions of Windows PCs powered by this new interface  and new platform."




Notable:

* Windows 8 apps are a new class that will be built with HTML 5.

* But existing Windows apps will continue to work in Windows 8.

What does this tell us? That Microsoft recognizes the power of tapping Web developers directly. Through intermediaries like Appcelerator, Apple's iOS ecosystem has already benefitted from this trend. In the future, developers move seamlessly from the Web to the desktop, just like their apps.

Read more: Previewing 'Windows 8'

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Microsoft Browser Would Offer Personalization along with Privacy Protection

Microsoft Browser Would Offer Personalization along with Privacy Protection

  10:28:00 AM    Science Lover

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Today, many websites ask users to take a devil's deal: share personal information in exchange for receiving useful personalized services. New research from Microsoft, which will be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May, suggests the development of a Web browser and associated protocols that could strengthen the user's hand in this exchange. Called RePriv, the system mines a user's behavior via a Web browser but controls how the resulting information is released to websites that want to offer personalized services, such as a shopping site that automatically knows users' interests.

An experimental system would tighten the
limits on information provided to websites.

Today, many websites ask users to take a devil's deal: share personal information in exchange for receiving useful personalized services. New research from Microsoft, which will be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy in May, suggests the development of a Web browser and associated protocols that could strengthen the user's hand in this exchange. Called RePriv, the system mines a user's behavior via a Web browser but controls how the resulting information is released to websites that want to offer personalized services, such as a shopping site that automatically knows users' interests.

"The browser knows more about the user's behavior than any individual site," says Ben Livshits, a researcher at Microsoft who was involved with the work. He and colleagues realized that the browser could therefore offer a better way to track user behavior, while it also protects the information that is collected, because users won't have to give away as much of their data to every site they visit.

The RePriv browser tracks a user's behavior to identify a list of his or her top interests, as well as the level of attention devoted to each. When the user visits a site that wants to offer personalization, a pop-up window will describe the type of information the site is asking for and give the user the option of allowing the exchange or not. Whatever the user decides, the site doesn't get specific information about what the user has been doing—instead, it sees the interest information RePriv has collected.

Livshits explains that a news site could use RePriv to personalize a user's view of the front page. The researchers built a demonstration based on the New York Times website. It reorders the home page to reflect the user's top interests, also taking into account data collected from social sites such as Digg that suggests which stories are most popular within different categories.

Livshits admits that RePriv still gives sites some data about users. But he maintains that the user remains aware and in control. He adds that cookies and other existing tracking techniques sites already collect far more user data than RePriv supplies.

The researchers also developed a way for third parties to extend RePriv's capabilities. They built a demonstration browser extension that tracks a user's interactions with Netflix to collect more detailed data about that person's movie preferences. The extension could be used by a site such as Fandango to personalize the movie information it presents—again, with user permission.

"There is a clear tension between privacy and personalized technologies, including recommendations and targeted ads," says Elie Bursztein, a researcher at the Stanford Security Laboratory, who is developing an extension for the Chrome Web browser that enables more private browsing. "Putting the user in control by moving personalization into the browser offers a new way forward," he says.

"In the medium term, RePriv could provide an attractive interface for service providers that will dissuade them from taking more abusive approaches to customization," says Ari Juels, chief scientist and director of RSA Laboratories, a corporate research center.

Juels says RePriv is generally well engineered and well thought out, but he worries that the tool goes against "the general migration of data and functionality to the cloud." Many services, such as Facebook, now store information in the cloud, and RePriv wouldn't be able to get at data there—an omission that could hobble the system, he points out.

Juels is also concerned that most people would be permissive about the information they allow RePriv to release, and he believes many sites would exploit this. And he points out that websites with a substantial competitive advantage in the huge consumer-preference databases they maintain would likely resist such technology. "RePriv levels the playing field," he says. "This may be good for privacy, but it will leave service providers hungry." Therefore, he thinks, big players will be reluctant to cooperate with a system like this.

Livshits argues that some companies could use these characteristics of RePriv to their advantage. He says the system could appeal to new services, which struggle to give users a personalized experience the first time they visit a site. And larger sites might welcome the opportunity to get user data from across a person's browsing experience, rather than only from when the user visits their site. Livshits believes they might be willing to use the system and protect user privacy in exchange.

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A Search Engine for the Human Body

A Search Engine for the Human Body

  2:12:00 AM    Science Lover

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Microsoft software recognizes organs and other structures in medical images.

A new search tool developed by researchers at Microsoft indexes medical images of the human body, rather than the Web. On CT scans, it automatically finds organs and other structures, to help doctors navigate in and work with 3-D medical imagery.

Inside out: A close up of a CT processed by new software from Microsoft.
Credit: Microsoft Research

CT scans use X-rays to capture many slices through the body that can be combined to create a 3-D representation. This is a powerful tool for diagnosis, but it's far from easy to navigate, says Antonio Criminisi, who leads a group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, U.K., that is attempting to change that. "It is very difficult even for someone very trained to get to the place they need to be to examine the source of a problem," he says.

When a scan is loaded into Criminisi's software, the program indexes the data and lists the organs it finds at the side of the screen, creating a table of hyperlinks for the body. A user can click on, say, the word "heart" and be presented with a clear view of the organ without having to navigate through the imagery manually.

Once an organ of interest has been found, a 2-D and an enhanced 3-D view of structures in the area are shown to the user, who can navigate by touching the screen on which the images are shown. A new scan can also be automatically and precisely matched up alongside a past one from the same patient, making it easy to see how a condition has progressed or regressed.

Criminisi's software uses the pattern of light and dark in the scan to identify particular structures; it was developed by training machine-learning algorithms to recognize features in hundreds of scans in which experts had marked the major organs. Indexing a new scan takes only a couple of seconds, says Criminisi. The system was developed in collaboration with doctors at Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge, U.K.

The Microsoft research group is exploring the use of gestures and voice to control the system. They can plug in the Kinect controller, ordinarily used by gamers to control an Xbox with body movements, so that surgeons can refer to imagery in mid-surgery without compromising their sterile gloves by touching a keyboard, mouse, or screen.

Body search: This CT image shows organs and other features identified by the Microsoft software. A list of these features appears at left.
Credit: Microsoft Research

Kenji Suzuki an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, whose research group works on similar tools, says the Microsoft software has the potential to improve patient care, providing it really does make scans easier to navigate. "As medical imaging has advanced, so many images are produced that there is a kind of information overload," he explains. "The workload has grown a lot."

Suzuki says Microsoft's approach is a good one, but that medical professionals might be more receptive to the design if it indexed signs of disease, not just organs. His own research group has developed software capable of recognizing potentially cancerous lung nodules; in trials, it made half as many mistakes as a human expert.

Criminisi sticks by the notion of using organs as a kind of navigation system but says that disease-spotting capability is also under development. He says, "We are working to train it to detect differences between different grades of glioma tumor"—a type of brain tumor.

The Microsoft group also intends the tool to be used at large scales. It could automatically index a collection of 3-D scans or other images, making possible new ways of tracking medical records, says Criminisi. Today, records are kept as text that describes scans and other information. A search tool that finds the word "heart", for example, would not know if that meant it appeared in a scan or was mentioned in another context. If a hospital's computer system indexed new scans, the Microsoft software could automatically record what was imaged in a person's records and when.

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Microsofts 3-D Strategy Microsoft's Craig Mundie describes how the company's vision of 3-D gaming could extend to all computer interactions.

Microsofts 3-D Strategy Microsoft's Craig Mundie describes how the company's vision of 3-D gaming could extend to all computer interactions.

  10:01:00 AM    Science Lover

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Microsoft has joined the wave of companies betting that 3-D is the next big thing for computing. At a recent talk at MIT, chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie said he sees the technology as an innovation that "will get people out of treating a computer as a tool" and into treating the device as a natural extension of how they interact with the world around them. Microsoft plans to introduce consumers to the change through its gaming products, but Mundie outlined a vision that would eventually have people shopping and searching in 3-D as well.

The future of 3-D: During a talk at MIT last week, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, showed how a natural 3-D interface could let users manipulate and examine products--like the disassembled motorcycle in the background.
Credit: Microsoft/Technology Review

The combination of better chips, better displays, and better sensors, Mundie said, is finally making it possible to move computing from today's graphical user interfaces to the "natural user interface," by allowing people to interact with 3-D content through the gestures they normally use. Today's interfaces require users to learn about menu bars and double-clicks, but Mundie believes natural user interfaces, which work through gesture and voice, will be faster and easier to learn, and will prove more flexible in the long run.

Mundie also argued that natural user interfaces would reduce the mental effort required for people to operate software. Even people who are good at using controllers, keyboards, and mouses might find that a natural interface frees up attention and concentration so that they can focus better on the task at hand, he said. He believes that natural interfaces will make it easier to introduce software to people unfamiliar with computers, as well as make software generally easier to use, and therefore more attractive to consumers.

He also noted that today many programs come with what is essentially "an application-specific prosthetic"--for example, some driving games come with a steering-wheel device. Natural user interfaces may require some peripherals, such as depth-sensing cameras that can detect users' movements, but Mundie sees these as ultimately having broader purpose than most of today's devices.

The first step in this strategy, Mundie said, is Microsoft's release next month of the Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 gaming console; Kinect incorporates a depth-sensing camera and voice recognition and will cost about $150. It will allow users to play games by gesturing, without the need for a controller or additional equipment. This opens the way to 3-D interaction with games that Mundie hopes will lead to broader use of 3-D displays.

Mundie demonstrated how Kinect would allow a user to interact with 3-D game content through hand gestures, virtually picking up clues to examine them or show them to friends. "We're trying to create a genre of games where you don't have to think about how what you would do naturally would map to the controls," Mundie said.

He also showed a concept video for a real-time 3-D multiplayer game called "The Spy from the 2080s" that included a TV show and a game that players could interact with using multiple devices. For example, they might watch an episode in 3-D on TV, then log in through a gaming console to work with friends to solve clues from the show. Mobile devices might provide additional updates. In the video, the outcome of gameplay even influenced the course of the TV show.

But while the company may plan to start with gaming, Mundie envisions 3-D eventually becoming a key part of many computer interfaces and online content. In one example, he demonstrated shopping using a 3-D natural interface; his hand gestures spun a 3-D image of a product, displaying it from a variety of angles, and opened it up to look at the parts inside.

He acknowledged, however, that there are challenges that need to be solved before 3-D can become ubiquitous. "We need a lot more computer than we currently have," Mundie said, noting that processing high-definition, 3-D video in real time would strain the capabilities of most home computers today. He also admitted that companies still need to refine how users would interact with computers through gesture and voice--for example, distinguishing between when a gamer is issuing commands to the computer and when the same user is conversing with another player.

Microsoft is wise to focus on games initially, says Norbert Hildebrand, business development manager for Insight Media, a marketing research firm that covers emerging display technologies. With 3-D technologies, providing enough content is a huge issue today, he explains. Games are already created in 3-D and then rendered to work on a 2-D screen, which makes it easy to convert them for 3-D displays and other types of interfaces.

For other types of 3-D interaction, such as shopping or advertising, Hildebrand says content creators will need to be persuaded to invest the necessary money and resources. As far as Mundie's vision of 3-D shopping, Hildebrand says, "at this point, it's marketing talk only." He points out that today's 3-D displays don't display text well, so marketers would have to come up with a hybrid approach to display both product images and information.

For now, Hildebrand believes that the average person views 3-D technology as something used on special occasions, not as a day-to-day technology. Some people have interpreted sales figures for 3-D-enabled televisions as a sign that consumers are adopting the technology, he adds, but these can be misleading, since most high-end televisions today have 3-D capabilities. It's much harder to determine whether people are actually using 3-D and how often, he says.

3-D is on the way, Hildebrand says, but before Mundie's vision of day-to-day 3-D becomes viable, "a lot of things have to come together." This includes more 3-D content, better bandwidth for delivering it to users, faster processors to render it, and particularly, he believes, the next generation of display technology--one that doesn't require special glasses.

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PCs that Work While They Sleep

PCs that Work While They Sleep

  9:47:00 AM    Science Lover

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SleepServer creates a virtual copy of a dozing machine.

Software that lets desktop computers continue to function in sleep mode could reduce the energy consumption of office networks by around 60 percent.

Networked PCs are increasingly being left on 24/7 to allow for out-of-hours access by employees, says Yuvraj Agarwal, at the University of California, San Diego. "The administrator may want to do a backup, or the user may want to be able to connect into it," he says. But most of the time these PCs remain idle, wasting significant amounts of energy, he says.

Energy saver: Yuvraj Agarwal
demonstrates the SleepServer control
software.
Credit: UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen

Agarwal's solution, developed with two UCSD professors, Stefan Savage and Rajesh Gupta, is to create a stripped down, virtual copy of a machine. Software running on a remote server maintains a version of a PC's operating systems and applications. The software, called SleepServer, carries on tasks on behalf of the desktop machine while it is put into a low-energy sleep mode.

This lets SleepServer perform basic tasks on behalf of the PC, such as downloading files or staying logged into voice communications or instant-messaging software. When more complex activity is required, the software wakes up the computer, says Agarwal, a process that typically takes less than 10 seconds.

"Normally if I put my computer to sleep, then Skype is going to show that I'm offline, or I won't be able to continue downloading a large file from the Internet," says Agarwal. SleepServer maintains a fast connection, over the internal network, to each desktop, so any files it has downloaded on behalf of a PC can be transferred quickly.

The energy savings come from the fact that each server can host up to 500 virtual machines. Even the latest low-power computers consume around 45 watts of power when idle. In contrast, a single SleepServer machine runs at just 300 watts, Agarwal says. Using fully functional virtual machines and low power "thin client" desktop machines could reduce power consumption further still.

In trials, details of which were presented at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston last week, 30 PCs used SleepServer for two weeks. The energy they consumed was dropped by between 27 and 86 percent--an average reduction of 60 percent, says Agarwal. With up to 80 percent of electricity consumption in modern offices coming from computing equipment, the savings a SleepServer offers could be roughly equivalent to $60 per computer each year, he says. Fifty PCs in the computer science building of UCSD are now running SleepServer.

Other software can be used to wake up sleeping computers, such as Apple's Wake-on Demand and Microsoft's Sleep Proxy. But these applications do not carry out tasks on behalf of a sleeping machine.

"It's a clever approach," says Howard Noble, principle investigator of the Low Carbon Information and Communication Technology Project, at the University of Oxford, in the U.K.

But Noble says it would be preferable to be able to power down computers completely. Modern computers can still consume as much as five watts when asleep. "We have never found it to be reliable, because often they don't stay asleep," he says.

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Software that Learns by Watching

Software that Learns by Watching

  8:38:00 PM    Science Lover

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KarDo learns how to perform common IT support tests by observing what the experts do.

Overworked and much in demand, IT support staff can't be in two places at once. But software designed to watch and learn as they carry out common tasks could soon help--by automatically performing the same jobs across different computers.

Task manager: A screenshot 
shows KarDo performing administrative jobs 
via a graphical interface.
Credit: KarDo

The new software system, called KarDo, was developed by researchers at MIT. It can automatically configure an e-mail account, install a virus scanner, or set up access to a virtual private network, says MIT's Dina Katabi, an associate professor at MIT.

Crucially, the software just needs to watch an administrator perform this task once before being able to carry out the same job on computers running different software. Businesses spend billions of dollars each year on simple and repetitive IT tasks, according to reports from the analyst groups Forrester and Gartner. KarDo could reduce these costs by as much as 20 percent, Katabi says.

In some respects, KarDo resembles software that can be used to record macros--a set sequence of user actions on a computer. But KarDo attempts to learn the goal of each action in the sequence so it can be applied more generally later, says MIT post-graduate Hariharan Rahul, who codeveloped the system.

When IT staff want KarDo to learn a new task, they press a "start" button beforehand and a "stop" button afterwards. During a "learning phase," KarDo will attempt to map each of the actions performed in the graphical user interface, such as clicking on particular icons or buttons, with system-level actions, such as starting or closing a program, or opening a Web page. This allows a task to be applied across machines running different software, says Katabi. "I can go to my desktop, click on the Internet Explorer icon, go to a website, and then click on a particular link to download a file," she says. The same actions could then be applied by KarDo on a machine running a different Web browser like FireFox or Chrome. KarDo compares actions performed during the learning phase with a database of other tasks.

KarDo is able to reliably infer how to reproduce each of the subtasks after watching it being performed just once, says Rahul. For example, after watching an e-mail account being set up using Microsoft Outlook, it can do the same on other computers running different e-mail software. KarDo has been tested on hundreds of combinations of real tasks by IT staff at MIT and was found to get tasks right 82 percent of the time. When KarDo doesn't perform a task correctly, the results aren't serious, Katabi says.

The ultimate goal is for KarDo to intervene completely automatically, although this has not yet been tested. The idea is that when a user sends a request to the IT department , KarDo would perform the task automatically.

This sort of "programming by demonstration" is not a new idea, says Stephen Muggleton, an expert in machine learning at Imperial College London. But the approach has remained very much a research curiosity, he says. "An obvious concern from a user point of view will be the accuracy of the learned model," says Muggleton. Normally it takes relatively large amounts of data to generate error-free machine learning models, he notes.

"There's a great deal of promise in learning procedures and plans by watching," says Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA. However, in general, this is very challenging to pull off. It is usually hard to do anything useful without constraining the nature of the task, says Horvitz.

KarDo was announced last week as the winner of the Web/IT track of MIT's $100K Entrepreneur Competition.

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Microsoft Threw Out the Playbook for Windows Phone 7

Microsoft Threw Out the Playbook for Windows Phone 7

  12:54:00 AM    Science Lover

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One of the biggest stories of the Mobile World Conference was the unveiling--finally--of Windows Mobile 7, rebranded as Windows Phone 7. The story within the story is how Microsoft abandoned the foundation established with the waning Windows Mobile platform, went back to the drawing board, and started from scratch for the latest incarnation of its mobile operating system.

The result is a completely new mobile platform from Microsoft which, at least from initial feedback and reviews, seems to be worthy of further consideration once Windows Phone 7 devices start hitting the streets.

Given the delays experienced by Microsoft in developing Windows Phone 7, expectations were high. Any minor, incremental improvement on the existing platform would have been virtually guaranteed to fail.

Microsoft's approach with Windows Phone 7 seems to borrow some from the Apple business model that has proven so successful with the iPhone. Like Google, with the Nexus One, Microsoft is reining in oversight of the hardware for Windows Phone 7 devices.

Microsoft has been accused of stealing a variety of design elements and features from Apple over the decades, but one thing it has steered clear of is emulating Apple's strict control of the end-to-end user experience. However, with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft seems to be embracing that philosophy to some degree.

Traditionally, the best Windows Mobile phones have been the devices built by HTC, and the reason they have been the best is because HTC took the Windows Mobile platform as a foundation, and branded it with its own unique design and interface elements. With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has spelled out strict hardware and software design guidelines that will restrict such unique development by HTC, but hopefully deliver a more consistent experience for Windows Phone 7 users regardless of manufacturer.

By exerting more control over the hardware and software specifications, Microsoft can ensure that apps developed for Windows Phone 7 will not only work, but will work the same way, across all Windows Phone 7 devices. That level of consistency across Windows Phone 7 devices will help to increase adoption and improve perception of the Windows Phone 7 platform.

What Google seems to have learned from Apple--the same lesson that Microsoft appears to be grasping as well--is that maintaining control of the end-to-end user experience creates a more stable environment for developers to work with, and enables it (Google, Microsoft, or Apple as the case may be) to maximize the potential of the operating system without being handicapped by variations in capabilities from one handset to the next.

Of course, one of the things customers have come to expect from Microsoft is a more open and flexible platform than what Apple offers. Users want the ability to configure and customize their Windows devices--whether PC's or smartphones--and typically abhor the sort of "dummy-proof-our-way-or-the-highway" approach taken by Apple.

IT administrators enjoy the increased flexibility and capabilities of a more open platform like Windows Phone 7 or Android. One of the issues standing in the way of Apple iPhone adoption in the enterprise is the lack of control provided for IT administrators to be able to configure and manage the devices the way they would like to.

Businesses stand to benefit from the more consistent user experience of Windows Phone 7 as well, though. Rather than having to test and develop for each individual Windows Mobile handset in use, any configuration settings or custom apps will be able to function regardless of the Windows Phone 7 devices in use.

Windows Phone 7 appears to be a significant departure from previous Windows Mobile operating systems. At first glance it seems the Microsoft is heading in the right direction and could recapture some of the lost market share of the waning Windows Mobile platform. We'll have to wait until the Windows Phone 7 devices hit the streets to see how it really plays out.

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Windows Phone 7: No Multitasking, Stricter Microsoft QA

Windows Phone 7: No Multitasking, Stricter Microsoft QA

  9:13:00 AM    Science Lover

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Later this month, Microsoft will most likely unveil Windows Mobile 7 Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress. Rumours abound, and the latest set of rumours paint a rather dramatic turnaround for Microsoft's mobile platform - no more multitasking, application distribution limited to official channels, and a whole lot more.

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Microsoft Office 2010 RC available for download

Microsoft Office 2010 RC available for download

  7:34:00 PM    Science Lover

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Microsoft just sent an e-mail stating that Office 2010 Release Candidate (RC) is now available for download to Connect users. Users beta-testing the suite can go ahead to Microsoft Connect and download the latest builds – v4734.1000 for 2010 client and build v4730.1010 for server products.

However, one important thing to know is that you’ll need to request new product key as beta keys won’t be allowed to activate the RC.

This probably will be the only RC as a RTM build is expected to hit this June.

Microsoft Connect

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Muziic turns YouTube into source for songs

Muziic turns YouTube into source for songs

  8:48:00 AM    Science Lover

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A screenshot of the free-to-download Muziic Player

A schoolboy and his father have developed a new software that lets people listen to YouTube’s vast collection of music videos as if it were a private collection.

Created by 15-year-old David Nelson, Muziic enables computers to mine the video-sharing site’s rich database of songs and play customised lists of tunes free of charge.

“The Muziic player is a pretty cool little thing,” said analyst Matt Rosoff of technology industry tracking firm Directions On Microsoft. “It looks and works a lot like iTunes, in that it is a downloadable desktop application; but you get all the content from YouTube. You have an all-in-one-place library of music for free.”

The program searches by using Content ID software that YouTube incorporated to enable owners of music to more easily locate copyrighted works.

Google, which owns YouTube, said that it is checking if Muziic conforms to the YouTube terms of service.

The company has been trying to develop ways to make money off of YouTube and that goal could be undermined by the Muziic Player, which lets users tap into the video-sharing Web site’s music while avoiding advertisements.

As for Muziic and YouTube, “hopefully, they will work something out,” said Rosoff. “Muziic is analogous to a subscription music service, but it’s free.”

If you like this post, buy me a beer at $3!

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Fone-Tastic!

Fone-Tastic!

  12:39:00 AM    Science Lover

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The Mobile World Congress 2009 expo in Barcelona – being held from February 16 to 19 – has thrown up quite a few surprises: The beginnings of a war between different operating systems for cellphones; the world’s first phone that acts as a projector; and a stylish handset with a transparent keypad.

INTERFACE TIME

Rival developers are battling to create the dominant operating system (OS) for mobile phones, with Google’s open-source Android system competing against Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6.5,Nokia’s Symbian, a Linux-based project, and RIM’s Blackberry OS.

The biggest event on Tuesday was Taiwanese manufacturer HTC unveiling the Android-based ‘Magic’ – a slim, tablet-shaped device with a 3.2-inch touchscreen that bears a resemblance to the Apple iPhone.

Equipped with a 3-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, and other connectivity options, the gadget will be available exclusively through Vodafone in Britain, France, Germany and Italy; however, no plans were announced for an India release.

On Monday, Chinese manufacturer Huawei had revealed its first cellphone to run on Android, meaning there are at least three ‘Google’ phones now developed.

Australian firm Kogan had previously announced the ‘Agora’ handset in December, but its launch has been postponed indefinitely. LG and Samsung have also promised their versions this year.

“For a new, open-source platform, I am impressed with the momentum growing behind Android,” said Gavin Byrne, an analyst at telecom research group Informa.

He said that he still expected Nokia’s Symbian to remain dominant in the next five years, but that Android would soon establish itself as an alternative.

Also on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the latest version of the company’s mobile OS,Windows Mobile 6.5,promising an improved touch-screen inter-face as well as a dashboard-like experience to items such as new emails, texts, missed calls, and calendar appointments.

“We’re going to work with the guys who build phones that are exciting... that are hot and tell the story of their Windows phone,” Ballmer said, announcing tie-ups with phone makers HTC, LG and Samsung.

Image via Wikipedia

TINY PHONE, BIG SCREEN

Meanwhile, Samsung – in association with US-based technology firm Texas Instruments – showed off a new mobile phone with a built-in projector that turns any surface into a screen.

Dubbed the ‘i7410’, the handset is fitted with the DLP Pico chipset, which lets users project images in excess of 50 inches, depending on the ambient light conditions, the company said.

“These Samsung mobile phones instantly turn any situation into a media-viewing opportunity,” said Frank Moizio, Manager, DLP Emerging Markets business.

Equipped with audio speakers, the i7410 is a touchscreen phone that comes with a 5-megapixel camera.

The projection feature can be used to share Powerpoint slides, view emails and pictures, watch videos, and even act as a flashlight.

The device will hit Korean markets this month, and international markets shortly thereafter.

Texas Instruments also showed off a newer iteration of the DLP Pico chipset, which boosts the current HVGA (480x320 pixels) resolution to a higher WVGA (800x480 pixels).

A SEE-THROUGH CELLPHONE!

The LG GD900 ‘Crystal’ see-through phone and the Android-powered HTC Magic (top) were launched at MWC

Adding oomph to the proceedings was LG’s GD900 ‘Crystal’ phone, which is billed as “the world’s first transparent design phone”.

When opened, its sliding, translucent keypad illuminates a cool glow that reflects the phone’s sleek and polished silver body.

“This crystal, glass-like phone proves that stylish design can be achieved not only with the use of vivid colours, but also by revealing the handset in its purest form,” the company said.

Packaged with a Bluetooth headset for music playback, the GD900 will be released internationally later this year.

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How to boost your PC speed

How to boost your PC speed

  4:51:00 PM    Science Lover

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Frustrated with slow computer speed? Hate it when your computer slows down while you access the Internet.

And you simply bang your head when your computer takes ages to search your files. You desperately wish that your PC could gain some speed.

Don't worry. You can easily overcome this.

Here are some easy-to-do tips which can boost up your PC speed.

Clean up disk errors

Whenever a programme crashes or you experience some power outage, your PC may create some errors on hard disk. This slows down computer speed.

For this, check and clean any errors on the computer hard disk.

To run Disk Check go to My Computer. Now, right-click on the drive you want to check for errors and click Properties.

In Properties dialogue box, click on the Tools tab. In the Error-Checking section, press the Check Now button. Access Check Disk to check for errors on your computer.

Depending on the errors, it may take up to an hour to check and clean. This must be followed at least once a week.

Remove temporary files

Your PC stores temporary files whenever you browse through the Web. Also, your PC stores temporary files when you work on programmes like Microsoft Word or Excel.

This ends up slowing down your PC speed. To overcome it you can use the Windows Disk Cleanup screen to rid your PC of these dead files.

To run Disk Cleanup go to My Computer. Right click on the drive you wish to check for errors and click Properties. In the Properties dialogue box, click Disk Cleanup. You can also use Disk Cleanup to clear unused files from your PC.

After scanning, the Disk Cleanup dialogue box lists the files you can remove from your computer.

Organise your data 

Often when you search files your PC takes a lot of time to track them. This is because computer breaks files into pieces to increase the speed of access and retrieval.

However, once updated, computer saves these files on the space available on the hard drive, which results in fragmented files. This makes your PC go slow because it then searches for all of the file's parts.

You need a Disk Defragmenter programme to needle all your files back together.

For this, go to My Computer and right click on the drive you want to check for error and click Properties.

In the Properties dialogue box, click the Tools tab, and then in the Defragmentation section, click Defragment. In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, select the disk and then click Analyse.

After analysing your PC, the Disk Defragmenter pops up a message asking whether you need to defragment your computer or not. Once you defragement your PC, it will reorganise files by programme and size.

Install anti-virus 

Biggest culprits behind slow PC performance are viruses and spyware. Both end up reducing your PC speed. Not only this they can also destroy your data and tamper files.

Also, with the 24X7 online environment, it is important to have anti-virus and anti-spyware programmes installed for secure online experience.

These programmes need to be frequently updated to avoid any attack on your computer.

You can do a recee of the Net for popular anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions. There are also several paid options like McAfee, Norton Anti-virus and Trend Micro.

Reduce page history 

Is your PC giving you trouble while accessing the Internet? Don't worry. For Internet Explorer users, Microsoft has some rescue options for faster Web browsing.

To improve your PC speed, first reduce the size of your Web page history. For this go to Internet Explorer, and on the Tools menu click on Internet Options. Then go to the History section and type in the number of days you want to keep pages in history.

Preferably reduce the number of days as this will reduce the size of your Web page history.

Automate Microsoft updates 

For Windows users, Microsoft frequently release updates which may help boost up your PC speed. For this activate automate Microsoft Update so that your computer downloads and installs all the latest updates without giving you any trouble of finding any new releases.

Go to Start menu and click Control Panel. In the Automatic Updates dialog box, check the Automatic check box. If your PC finds any new updates, it will automatically download and install them. This will help you keep your computer up to date. 

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Think Tank Topic; Digital Libraries and the Future of Books

Think Tank Topic; Digital Libraries and the Future of Books

  4:08:00 PM    Science Lover

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We have all heard a lot on the news recently about books being made digital for all to read. Microsoft is doing a 20-million dollar project in Great Britain and Google is doing several libraries in the United States. There has been some controversy on this issue from authors who receive royalties and booksellers. It is for this reason our Think Tank brought up the topic.

A prominent member in our Think Tank “Swift” said; “I was looking into your idea of the digital library and Goggle's attempt at putting all existing books on the Internet. I really like this idea as only a small percentage of books remain in print. I have been looking for an out of print book for decades called the Rose and the Labyrinth and have had book searches done all over the world. I have found out that there were 5 books with this title. The one I am looking for dealt with the time Carl Jung spent with minors and his reactions to them. He didn't write it, but I no longer have the information on the book so don't remember who the writer is. There are some really wonderful out of print books and no way to access them. I am having problems with the publishing companies who are worried about the copyright infringement issues and the interpretation of "fair use."

They wouldn't start with the newest books, I would think; but the books that were no longer protected. What in the heck are they being protected from? No one is going to pretend they wrote them for crying out loud. After this length of time, I'll read any book names the Rose and the Labyrinth and pretend it was the book that was referred to me by Jung's last student before he died. I really like the idea of a mine being a labyrinth--so did my father.

Well I certainly see Swift’s point on this issue and we know that currently we are very busy digitizing humankind’s written knowledge from books to the digital so it can be made available to the world. This is a very wise move as books can decay over years and out of print books are not available to all. By digitizing the known human written knowledge to the world we can conquer the opportunity barriers of those hard chargers who may not have the resources to achieve the upward mobility they seek. As we conquer the digital divide we will be well on our way to giving back the knowledge of the world from the entire Library of Commerce to the human race in an easy to read, search and retrieve format available to all. That will be an excellent day for the human race indeed. Imagine a digital library of the Library of Commerce able to use Super Computer speeds to retrieve all the world’s written books online at a speed of Google or MSN.com. That is to say any book written in any language, anywhere in the world, at anytime, think on that for a second.

By using knowledge and experience this way we can leverage this to prevent failure through understanding results. Those who do not learn from their mistakes, tend to keep from making them. Those who remember the lessons learned from their mistakes successes tend to reason better thru analyzing of their mistakes and trying to figure a way around their problems.

Now then, let me tell you why I believe a society needs digital libraries hooked to all civilizations for faster advancement of the human species as a whole or as one. If you had a problem that needed solving for the betterment of your civilization and you had all the world’s knowledge at your finger tips; that is to say a computer hooked to a system like a World Wide Digital Library, then you would have enhanced your personal knowledge and memory by a million fold. This could help your intelligent quotient at the speed of computer and that coupled with the speed of thought is a major component needed to take mankind to the singularity of an all-knowing, never ending being in this dimension. Think on this.

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Microsoft, Google fight over Yahoo

Microsoft, Google fight over Yahoo

  7:57:00 PM    Science Lover

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WASHINGTON: Google and Microsoft will spar today at a congressional hearing called to examine whether Google's revenue-sharing deal with No 2 search rival Yahoo will harm competition. Google, with more than 60 per cent of the Web search market, and Yahoo, with 16.6 per cent, announced a deal on June 12 that would allow Yahoo to place Google advertisements on its site and collect the revenue.

The deal, which the firms have said would garner Yahoo at least $250 million in the first year, was widely seen as an effort by Yahoo to fend off Microsoft's on-again, off-again efforts to buy all or part of Yahoo.

Microsoft's most recent offer to acquire Yahoo's search business was rejected by Yahoo. Google chief legal officer David Drummond, defending his company's deal with Yahoo in written testimony for Tuesday's hearing, took a shot at Microsoft's 90 per cent share of the personal computer operating system market.

"Dominance of the desktop can let one company favor its own products and services and obstruct the interoperability of competing products or services, overriding the desires of consumers," said Drummond in testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith hit back, saying Google's deal would reduce Yahoo's incentive to compete against Google, would push Yahoo's search advertising platform into a downward spiral and establish an illegal price floor.

"When it comes to the issues before this subcommittee, Google should not be allowed to achieve an outcome through an agreement that it would not be permitted to achieve otherwise," said Smith in his written testimony.

The revenue-sharing deal has not been implemented by Google and Yahoo while they wait for an opinion from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. Several state attorney generals have expressed concern about the arrangement.

"Microsoft believes the Google/Yahoo deal harms competition in several critical ways. Advertisers and online content providers would be harmed through price coordination that will establish higher prices and limit choice," said Smith. "Consumers would be put at risk as Google expands its ability to collect the personal information of users passing through its search gateway. On an even more fundamental level, Google's monopoly power would increase its ability to shape what people get to see and experience online."

The House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee will hold a similar hearing later on Tuesday.

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How to Backup Your Computer if You Are Using Vista

How to Backup Your Computer if You Are Using Vista

  10:31:00 AM    Science Lover

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With each version of the Windows operating systems the backup process has improved. In prior versions I relied on third party backup solutions. With the Vista operating system I found that the Backup program that comes with Vista is dependable, and there is no need to buy another backup program.

The above statements are true if you are backing up your data to a USB external drive. I have a 250Gb external drive and I backup my computer at least once a month. You can use DVDs, but you would need multiple DVDs.

If you have a home network you can also backup one computer to another. If you only have a wireless network I would not recommend it because it will be a very slow process.

To start the backup process click on the Start menu and select the All Programs button, then select the Accessories folder, then Systems Tools folder and click on Backup Status and Configuration menu option. You have three options here:

· Backup Files

· Restore Files

· Complete PC Backup

Backup Files is when you want to backup your data only. No programs or operating files will be backed up. This would be good if you have the Vista DVD and CDs for all of your application. You would then just have to re-install the operating system and the applications, then restore your data.

You can also set this for automatic and as long as the device that you back up to is connected, it will perform the backup automatically.

Restore Files if you needed to restore the files from step one discussed above. Restore Files will allow you to recover an individual file, or a backup made on another computer, or restore files made from this computer.

The Complete PC Backup will copy the entire contents of your hard drive. I usually backup my computer once a month using the data as the file name. You basically select the Complete PC Backup and click on Create a backup now. Make sure the hard drive you are backing up to is attached. It will take some time to backup your entire system, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Advanced Restore will allow you to transfer the entire contents of your backup to a new hard drive or computer. This is done through the Advanced Restore option after you click on the Restore Files button.

Backing up to another computer running Vista may cause problems with Windows authentication. If it is only the hard drive that is different, you will need to re-authenticate the computer, but it can be done in about ten minutes.

Everyone thinks that they are safe until their computer stops working. Hard drives fail on 35% of the computers within the first year. Why take a chance. Make sure you backup your computer today.

There are also on-line backup locations offered on the Internet. Some are inexpensive. If something happened to the backup device, you are still out of luck. Having an online backup might be the right solution because these companies have a lot of redundancy. Go to the newsletter section of my site where I recommend a vendor for backups.

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`Red ring of death': What's wrong with Microsoft's Xbox?

`Red ring of death': What's wrong with Microsoft's Xbox?

  5:41:00 PM    Science Lover

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There are seven stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, bargaining depression, testing and acceptance. But with the Xbox 360, which has been giving a significant number of its owners grief, Microsoft last week moved directly from the first stages to the last -- from denying any problems with it to admitting a US$1 billion problem that potentially affects all 11.6 million consoles sold so far.

Three weeks ago Todd Holmdahl, vice president of the gaming and Xbox products group, said repeated problems where people had to take back up to 11 consoles came from "a vocal minority" (tinyurl.com/yqtm4w) and dismissed suggestion of endemic problems.

Then last week Microsoft abruptly announced that it would set aside between US$1.05 billion and US$1.15 billion, charged against the just-finished 2007 fiscal year, to cover the costs of extending the warranty for every machine from one to three years, and to fix the many which show the "red ring of death" -- three red lights on the front panel control ring, indicating a general hardware failure.

How many? Unfortunately, Microsoft still isn't ready to deal with that issue.

PS3 surge

"When you look at the financial implication, obviously it's not a small number," said Robbie Bach, president of its entertainment and devices unit.

Sony, which last week had denied it would cut the price of its struggling PlayStation 3, saw an opening and snipped US$100 off the US retail price, prompting a surge in sales there.

Microsoft repeatedly declined to talk to me about precisely what problems the failed consoles suffer from. However, Peter Moore, head of the Xbox division, told Gamesindustry.biz: "There are a lot of different issues that eventually could all combine to create the three flashing red rings that appear on the power button on the console; no [one] specific issue."

He was repeatedly evasive in interviews, leaving the impression that the problems were either profound -- or embarrassingly simple.

The financial problems, though, are stark. The sum being set aside amounts to between US$90 and US$99 for every console sold -- extra loss on machines that are already sold at a loss. On its launch, analysts reckoned that each Xbox contained US$525 worth of components; but the machine sold for, at most, US$499, and more price cuts are rumored to be on the way to keep ahead of Sony. On average, Microsoft took a US$126 loss on each console sold at its starting price -- US$1.4 billion so far.

The billion-dollar figure also indicates that Microsoft's repeated insistence that the failure rate was about average for such hardware -- that is, between 3 percent and 5 percent -- cannot have been true. The real failure rate is probably about five times greater than the company has admitted, which would put repair costs at between US$330 and US$660 per console. At that upper limit, it would be cheaper for Microsoft simply to send a cheque for a brand new console. So what are the causes?

overheating

Owners and analysts have made their own investigations. The most obvious suggestion is that parts overheat; the Xbox 360 draws 160 watts, which has to be dissipated via two large heatsinks and two fans. One suggestion is that when the machine gets hot, the motherboard warps and pushes the graphics processing unit (GPU) off its board. Another is that some of the soldering is imperfect and so cracks at high temperature. A Microsoft support document (tinyurl.com/2qnefa) also suggests, improbably, that surge protectors and extension strips contribute to the problem by preventing the current surge needed for the fans to turn on; this seems unlikely, since that surge would be too small to trip them.

In desperation, some owners have turned to home-grown cures, including wrapping a towel around the machine, blocking the fan vents. This may -- depending who you believe -- either cause the solder to reflow or the GPU to reseat. (Microsoft has not commented.) The fixes sometimes work, at least temporarily.

We can deduce some of the reasons from the fact that Microsoft is declaring that the problems are sorted out -- just as it is moving from 90-nanometer to 65nm chips, which should reduce its power consumption significantly, and using a two-part heat sink in the new designs.

The key question though is whether these flaws will put off future customers, and how badly they have annoyed existing ones. The principal problem for the latter is that any content bought online must be re-enabled for a replacement console.

dream over?

Does the admission mean that Microsoft's dream that the Xbox will form the centerpiece of a strategy to put Microsoft software and hardware into everyone's living room has been permanently sunk?

A report this week from Jupiter Research suggests that there is now everything to play for.

"Jupiter Research anticipates the competitive field will be much closer than in the past; at the end of the current [console] cycle in 2012, the range in market shares is projected to be just under 10 percent compared with the 33 percent range in market shares at the end of the last cycle in 2005. Then, the PS2 dominated, and Nintendo was nowhere. Now, Nintendo's Wii is rocketing towards the Xbox 360 total; sales data suggests it is selling nearly three times faster than the Xbox 360 or PS3," the report said.

The optimistic forecast -- written before the Xbox's problems were admitted -- suggests that the Xbox will continue to sell. Moore repeated his insistence that the Xbox division will move into profit next year; having shovelled the billion-dollar faults back into the last fiscal year, it can look for profits from its online service, peripherals and games. The strategy remains untouched. All that has changed is the time it will take to pay back. But Microsoft is prepared to play the longest of games -- even when it has no chance of winning.

source : TAI PEI TIMES

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