Sony Ericsson today lifted the curtain on the world’s very first motion-sensitive headphones. The MH907 headphones possess a special sense for motion and automatically become active when they are comfortably deposited inside the listener’s ears. One can start listening to music by simply plugging in both earphones and pause it by pulling one of them out. Phone calls can be answered and terminated in much the same fashion.
But if the listener wishes to switch from an active music-listening session to an incoming phone call, they have to first remove both earphones and then plug in just one. The MH907 headphones are sensitive to body contact, which prevents inadvertent operation. The MH907 is only meant to be used with Sony Ericsson phones that feature the propriety Fast Port connector. The headphones will go on sale across the globe this week. Sony Ericsson did not reveal their price, however.
Microsoft opened its gates to public beta testers for its free antivirus solution, Microsoft Security Essentials, on June 23, 2009. Within a day, it managed to get rid of the 75,000 public beta downloads it had made available on a first-come-first-serve basis in the United States, China, Israel and Brazil.
If you missed the bus then, probably due to an obstinate disposition to miss buses, you will soon be able to download the final version of the free antivirus software. The final version will be made available in the next few weeks, according to a note Microsoft sent to beta testers.
“The final version of Microsoft Security Essentials will be released to the public in the coming weeks. If you are running the older version of the beta (1.0.1407.0), we encourage you to upgrade to a newer version of the beta (1.0.1500.0),” Microsoft informed testers on Sunday.
Of late, Google has found it very difficult to be in the vicinity of an agreement with people from the publishing industry. The trend persisted on Thursday, when Google CEO Eric Schmidt again spurned Rupert Murdoch’s stated plan to begin charging for all online content owned by News Corp. He believes that it is highly unlikely that internet users will be willing to pay for accessing general news items on the internet given the nimiety of free news sources on the internet.
"In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity. So my guess is for niche and specialist markets ... it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news," Schmidt said while addressing the Royal Televison Society Convention in Cambridge, England, via video link. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch had said in August that News Corp. websites may become paid by the middle of next year.
Now, according to Taiwanese trade publication Commercial Times, HP and Dell have placed orders for 3D notebooks with original design manufacturer (ODM) Wistron. The same ODM is also said to be in talks with Sony and Lenovo. The report went on to add that Wistron’s patented 3D technology ensures that the cost of its 3D notebooks doesn’t exceed that of ordinary notebooks by much.
The attack proceeds in a routine way with unsuspecting online banking customers being led to a phishing page designed to extract their account details. After these gullible visitors are through with the first page, instead of being sent to another phishing page or to the genuine website, they are lead to a fake live-chat support window. The fraudster at the other end, posing as a customer support personnel, then tries to extract more account details from them through social engineering.
According to RSA, the fake live chat support window is powered by Jabber, an open source instant messaging protocol. “While at this point RSA has witnessed only a single instance of this attack, we are recommending extra vigilance to operators of all online banking websites and other websites where user credentials are targeted,” RSA wrote on its blog.
Entertainment Weekly has debuted video ads in its latest print edition. It is the first print publication in the world to do so. The magazine features a very thin TFT LCD screen, which can be charged via a USB cable, to display video ads for Pepsi Max and CBS shows. The technology has been developed by a company called Americhip.
It uses chip technology to store up to 40 minutes of video content. The video ads begin playing when the page is turned. The chip technology that turns readers into viewers in the blink of an eye is said to be comparable to that found in singing cards. Entertainment Weekly has limited the circulation of this special version of its current issue to Los Angeles and New York only.
Rajesh Mirchandani, BBC News' Los Angeles correspondent, criticized the embedded video screen for being too bulky. "And when you do open up the relevant page, the actual advert takes several seconds to load and play and that's a lifetime's lag in the advertiser's world," he said.
A couple of weeks after eBay agreed to sell 65% of Skype to a group of investors, the founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, contrived to gatecrash eBay’s party. Joltid, a company in which the two Skype founders are stakeholders, filed a copyright lawsuit on Wednesday against Skype. Skype's founders retained control over the peer-to-peer technology at the VoIP client’s core even after selling Skype to eBay for $2.6 billion. They had agreed to license the source code to eBay.
Joltid has accused eBay of unlawfully modifying and sharing the source code. An adverse decision could even force eBay to shut down Skype until it can come up with an alternative version. The San Jose-based internet company has said that it is making arrangements to face any such eventuality. However, the presence of a contingency plan should not be construed as a lack of confidence on its part. “We remain on track to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of 2009,” an eBay spokesperson said.
Analyst Jeffrey Lindsay of Sanford C. Bernstein believes he has pinned down Joltid’s real motive behind the lawsuit. According to Jeffrey, Joltid is still smarting from its failed bid to buy back Skype earlier this year. And that it now wants to preclude the sale of Skype until it is presented with “a financial settlement or the opportunity to buy the business back themselves at a lower price than Silver Lake, et al are offering."
This lawsuit is an extension of Joltid’s legal onslaught against eBay – and Skype’s potential buyers. It fired the first salvo in March, when it filed a similar case against eBay in a London court.
Aviary has pulled of a coup of sorts by partnering with APM Music. The move has made it possible for Aviary to offer the latter’s Quantum Tracks library, containing 3,000 professional loops, stems and beats, to Myna users. Adobe Flash is required in order to run the tool. You can use the tool for free as long as you are willing to make your creations available to other free members. If you are too possessive about your work to do that, you can buy an annual subscription for $25.
Aviary now plans to release a web-based video editor, according to its cofounder and head of product development Michael Galpert. "But to get the video right, we needed to get the audio, as well. As Flash, memory, and browsers improve, we try to be at the front of that technological curve,” Galpert told ReadWriteWeb.
The most defining feature of Web 2.0 is arguably its enhanced level of interactivity. But “the very aspects of Web 2.0 sites that have made them so revolutionary” have also made them highly vulnerable to abuse, according to web security firm Websense. The San Diego-based company published its biannual “State of the Internet” on Tuesday.
The report (PDF) reveals that 95% of comments that appear on blogs, chat rooms and online forums fall into two broad categories: spam and malicious content. Cyber scoundrels now seem more focused on targeting Web 2.0 websites with user-generated content than ever before. Many of the most frequented internet properties are sites that tolerate user-generated content. And 61% of the top 100 sites either host malicious content or link to it, according to the report.
Spam and malicious content seem to go hand in hand, for Websense Security Labs found that 85.6 of spam mails in circulation during the first half of 2009 contained links to malicious sites.
Cablevision will soon be rolling out a new service, called Optimum Select, for delivering interactive TV ads. It plans to begin serving interactive ads in early October, the company announced today.
The viewers will first be confronted with a transparent banner at the bottom of their screens asking them to “Click SEL for More.” If a viewer chooses to know more, the ongoing program will be downsized by three-quarters and banished to the top right corner of the screen. The rest of the screen will then be used to display the information requested by the viewer.
"This is all about giving consumers the ability to explore more content, realize more savings and have more fun while creating a deeper and more meaningful viewing experience," Gemma Toner, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Cablevision, said in a press release.
The company announced Tuesday that AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon will begin offering phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 on October 6 itself, the very day they will be released globally. “These are going to be fabulous phones that meet the customers' needs for their whole life,” said Stephanie Ferguson, general manager at Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit. Beginning with the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5, all WinMo-toting phones will be sold under the “Windows Phone” brand.
With this announcement, MetroPCS has stolen a march on Verizon, as the latter plans to offer such a LTE handset only in 2011, although it too plans to launch its LTE service in 2010.
“As the Internet goes ‘mobile’ we are excited to be at the forefront of this wireless evolution with the building out of our 4G broadband data services. We anticipate to begin offering our 4G LTE services and a dual-mode LTE/CDMA smartphone in our major metropolitan markets in late 2010,” said Roger D. Linquist, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of MetroPCS.
Users will have to download a plug-in before they can begin using the voice chat service, a Vivox undertaking independent from Facebook. Non-Facebook users will also be able to join conversations using free dial-in numbers. The company will provide its technology to any third party apps developer willing to integrate it in its Facebook apps.
The latest entrant will be the largest stakeholder in the new business with a 66 percent stake, while Casio and Hitachi will hold 17.34 percent and 16.66 percent, respectively. The three are not only eyeing the jam-packed Japanese market, but also the global market. Japanese handset makers have not been able to have an impact on the world stage. Though they seem to posses the goods to shatter their global jinx to smithereens, the world has never really warmed up to the relatively more advanced Japanese cellphone technology.
The Japanese have pioneered many advancements in mobile technology, from e-mail to electronic payments. All said, their lack of success is not entirely incomprehensible. The fact is that Japanese handset makers have never tried to tailor their products to international tastes.
Samsung today launched a mobile apps store in the UK. The prosaically named Samsung Application Store currently only features around 300 applications for the company’s Omnia and Omnia HD phones, however, the company expects that count to rise to around 2,000 by the end of this year. The apps store will soon feature apps for other Omina phones, namely the Omnia II, OmniaLITE and Omnia Pro. To access the apps store, users will have to download a software update. Though paid apps can only be bought using a credit card at this time, Samsung plans to also support carrier billing in the future.
The San Francisco leg of the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) 2009 will kick off on September 22. The chipmaker is expected to make some key announcements regarding its 32nm “Westmere” chips and the keenly anticipated Larrabee platform. According to PCMag, Intel is expected to announce that the manufacturing of the 32nm die shrink of its Core microprocessor line is underway.
Its next-generation microprocessors, which are based on its Westmere microarchitecture, are codenamed Clarkdale (desktop version) and Arrandale (notebook version). The “Dales” chips are a multi-chip solution featuring 45nm integrated graphics cores. Intel is also expected to shed light on a new system-on-chip technology, besides announcing transistor improvements. The event might also feature some updates on the company’s Larrabee platform.
Google is working on new mirror technology that could make solar thermal energy more affordable. Its current efforts are focused on the development of radical materials for the mirrors – both for the reflective surface and the substrate - used in the generation of solar thermal energy.
"In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range," Google’s green energy Czar told Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
The current cost of solar thermal energy ranges between 12-18 cents per kilowatt hour. Besides mirrors, it has plans to develop solar-powered gas turbines, a solution that could further lower the cost of electricity.
A couple of days after an anonymous forum poster, who claimed to be a Best Buy employee and a Linux aficionado, exposed Microsoft’s surreptitious anti-Linux training material for Best Buy employees, it has now become apparent that Redmond is providing them with anti-Mac training material as well.
The training material is part of its ExpertZone training courses, which are aimed at sifting bitter facts from popular myths about Mac computers and Linux. AppleInsider was the first to post screenshots of the Mac-centric training material. Upon their successful completion of the course, Best Buy employees are handed close-to-free Windows 7 retail copies.
Swedish company Global Gaming X first announced in June that it was interested in acquiring The Pirate Bay. Its majority stakeholder and CEO, Hans Pandeya, also claimed that the company had the backing of some mysterious Russian investors. Despite relentless palaver and numerous promises, Global Gaming X and its cash-strapped CEO have not been able to produce convincing evidence of their ability to pull off the deal.
They may still not have any substantial evidence to underpin their claims, but they now have some substantial trouble to contend with. AktieTorget, a Swedish stock exchange, has delisted Global Gaming X with immediate effect after a disciplinary group concluded its investigation into the company’s acquisition claims. It had earlier suspended the trading of the company’s stock. The disciplinary group found the company guilty of providing erroneous information.
Ninth graders at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, were greeted by some social networking advice from President Obama on Tuesday. He advised them to not let their guard down on social networking sites such as Facebook, for the ghosts of their gay abandon could come back to haunt them later.
“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook,” Obama told a group of 40 ninth graders. “Because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. And when you’re young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. ”
Recent studies have shown that an increasing number of hiring managers closely examine the social networking profiles of job candidates. So, a bit of caution on the part of these kids will at least ensure that they don’t remain unemployed because of social networking gaffes.
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