Posted 11/20/2009 at 04:43:18pm

For those who have expressed the need to streak a glossy, high resolution, 17-inch display with your greasy fingers, Dell has just made your dream come true. Today, Dell announced a multitouch display version of its Studio 17 laptop.

According to Anne C at the Direct2Dell community blog, the Studio 17 will come equipped with a suite of touch software applications. You’ll be able to finger your way through photo editing, music playlists, manage video playback, and paint. Naturally, you’ll need forearms like Popeye the Sailor to reach across the keyboard for any length of time, but that’s a small price to pay for way-cool technology.

The Studio 17 has a number of processor options for you: starring from the Pentium Dual Core T4300, running at 2.1Ghz, all the way up to the Core i7-720QM quad core, running at 1.6Ghz. You also can pile in up to 4Gb of DDR memory, a 640Gb SATA 5400 RPM hard drive, an ATI Mobility RAdeon HD 4650 with 1Gb of video memory, and a 17.3-inch high definition (900p) LED display. There’s also an option for a blu-ray player, if you are so inclined.

Multitouch, unfortunately, will be paired with the Core i7 processor only. Anne C says the multitouch system will be available in a few weeks. And the starting price will be $899.

Posted 11/20/2009 at 04:11:40pm

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye: to YouTube’s API access. From now on, it’s through the front door or you’re not getting inside.

The word comes from Syabas, the maker of the Popcorn Hour set-top box. They, along with pretty much every set-top box maker, used YouTube’s API access to video’s which provides a neater integration to video than the regular Flash-based web interface. Besides better video, advertisements were also avoided. Good deal all around.

But no more. Google has changed the agreement for using API access--which it has a right to do. Google has decided to cut off access, except perhaps to a few of the powerful set-top makers, like Sony or Nintendo. Could be Google has figured out a new way to generate revenue, which certainly wasn’t coming from those who skipped the ads.

Final farewells take place on December 2.

Posted 11/20/2009 at 03:46:07pm

Someone was bound to connect the dots, even if the dots weren’t intended to make a pattern. With Microsoft working with the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation’s biggest, most top-secret spy agency, some suspicious were bound to be raised. But, not to worry, Microsoft assures us: It did not plant deep in Windows 7 code a backdoor for the NSA to spy on you.

Microsoft’s story is the NSA helped Microsoft with the “Security Compliance Management Toolkit.” The toolkit, which rolled out after Windows 7, allows enterprises, government agencies, and large-scale organizations the ability to manage levels of security risk beyond those of regular users. The NSA is a happy partner in such ventures because of its concerns for cybersecurity.

But there lurks behind the story the NSA’s need for gathering intelligence, which a backdoor into an OS would greatly aid. Cisco, for example, has built into it’s products, such as its Internetworking Operating system (ISO) and VoIP lines, lawful intercept capabilities. (Which require a court order.) It’s not a big leap to conclude that perhaps Microsoft might have done the same.

Some have questioned the wisdom of Microsoft’s working with the NSA, including Marc Rothenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Said Rothenberg: “The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance.” He added that it might be tough for any company, even Microsoft, to turn down an NSA “suggestion” for a backdoor.

Roger Thompson, chief research officer of AVG, sides with Microsoft. “I can't imagine NSA and Microsoft would do anything deliberate, because the repercussions would be enormous if they got caught,” said Thompson.

For now, Microsoft says it isn’t there. Whether that curbs your paranoia or not is another matter entirely.

Posted 11/20/2009 at 03:06:30pm

You curiosity can now be slaked: Google’s Chrome OS is now ready for download and review. The bad news is you’ll need VMWare to run it. The good news is you can run it on OS X, Linux, or Windows.

But will it be worth the effort? If it’s something you really, really got to do, then yes, it will be worth the effort. For the rest of us, with episodes of The Colbert Report to catch up on, maybe not. Our colleagues over at Engadget have tried it out and report Chrome OS is “really a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa.”

Chrome OS is browser-like in its construction, and Internet oriented. There are minimal app launcher options. And the more interesting apps, says Engadget, required a Google.com account to access. Without one you will be stuck playing with Gmail and Calendar (which Engadget reports suffer from “significant lag and choppiness”).

Still, with a Thanksgiving weekend to kill, Chrome OS might give you an option other than family, food, or football. You’ll find a download link for Chrome OS at gdgt.com.

Posted 11/20/2009 at 02:24:59pm

Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles got a sneak preview of IE9 yesterday. From what was presented it’s not really clear what type of personality IE9 will take on.

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, stated Microsoft want’s IE9 to be “a good balance between things we know and have to do and moving the whole notion of browsing forward.” The task of delivering the “most world class browsing experience we can develop,” he added, has to be done “in the most responsible way.” Which suggests IE9 will be brought into line with existing browser potential, but won’t be pushing any cutting-edge technology.

Changes and improvements are plenty. First off, IE9 will use the Trident rendering engine, running on DirectX instead of GDI. DirectX will shift graphic processing from software to hardware, which will boost the display of graphics and text, and provide smoother rendering of animation and video.

While DirectX adds advantages, apparently it also tosses up some roadblocks. Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team, says DirectX is hard to get right: “there's a huge benefit but it takes a lot of work to get all of the details right – like how do controls like Flash work and what about printing?” Being best positioned to “get all the details right”, DirectX helps Microsoft, but may not help out cross-platform browsers, which may not want to make the commitment.

Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks put IE9 about five times faster than IE8. And IE9 scores 32 out of 100 on the ACID 3 test. That’s faster than IE6, but still seems a bit pokey. I’m using my PC-inferior Mac to write this, and Firefox 3.5 scores 92, while Safari 4 hits 100. Steven Sinofsky, Windows senior vice president, concedes: “that’s a test we need to do a better job on.”

IE9 will better support standards, such as CSS, including CSS3. IE9 scores 574 out of 578 on the CSS3 selectors test--much better than the 330 out of 578 scored by IE8. (Again, Safari and Firefox on my Mac both score perfect 578s.)

IE9 is at best a work in progress. Right now there is no canvas or SVG support, and no real commitment to HTML 5 standards. But, with no release date yet announced, and a technical preview not available until sometime next year, it’s a good bet IE9 will evolve into something a bit different than what we’re seeing today.

Posted 11/19/2009 at 05:18:24pm

Just keep telling yourself: “It’s the safest way to travel. It’s the safest way to travel.” Provided no one else is trying to occupy your exact same piece of airspace.

It didn’t happen, of course, but the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reported that the system it uses to keep track of airlines’ flight plans sort-of, kind-of hiccuped, leading to the widespread flight cancellations and delays nationwide. This is the second instance of such a hiccup in the past 15 months.

The four to five hour downtime, cased by the failure of a single circuit board in a piece of networking equipment in Salt Lake City, prevented air traffic controllers around the country from talking with each other. Controllers had to manually type in complicated flight plans each time an plane entered their air space, and had to keep planes separated by greater distances, which lead to a slow down of flight capacity.

The outage was keenly felt on the east coast, with Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest, hardest hit. Washington National, Baltimore/Washington, and Newark Liberty airports also experienced severe flight delays. A few airlines have reported cancellations, with AirTran among the first with 22 flights cancelled and dozens delayed.