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Qtrax music service delays debut

2008-01-28T20:13:00.000-08:00

CANNES, France (AP) -- A distributor of Internet file-swapping software has abruptly postponed the launch of its free online music service until it can finalize music licensing deals.

Qtrax says it will offer more than 25,000,000 songs available for free.

Qtrax omitted that detail when it threw a star-studded coming-out party over the weekend.
The ambitious, ad-supported music service promised unlimited music downloads with the blessing of the major recording companies.
But that claim began to unravel just hours before Qtrax's scheduled debut Monday when Warner Music Group issued a statement that it had not authorized the firm to distribute its artists' music.
Universal Music Group and EMI Group PLC later confirmed they did not have licensing deals in place with Qtrax, noting discussions were still ongoing. A call to Sony BMG Music Entertainment was not immediately returned.
Qtrax's president, Allan Klepfisz, says the launch of the service will be put off "for a short time." He also maintained that the service had the support of "rightsholders."
Qtrax did not provides users with the codes needed to download music through its software, but it says users were still able to use other features built into the application, including browsing the Internet and playing media files.
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Qtrax Web site
The development marked an inauspicious start for Qtrax, the latest online music venture counting on the lure of free music to draw in music fans and on advertising to pay the bills, namely record company licensing fees.
The service was among several peer-to-peer file-sharing applications that emerged following the shutdown of Napster, the pioneer service that enabled millions to illegally copy songs stored in other music fans' computers.
Qtrax shut down after a few months following its 2002 launch to avoid potential legal trouble.
The company said it latest version of the service still lets users tap into file-sharing networks to search for music. Downloads however come with copy-protection technology known as digital-rights management, or DRM, to prevent users from burning copies to a CD and calculate how to divvy up advertising sales with labels.
Qtrax downloads can be stored indefinitely on PCs and transferred onto portable music players, however.
The company also promises that its music downloads will be playable on Apple Inc.'s iPods and Macintosh computers until April 15. That's unusual, as iPods only playback unrestricted MP3s files or tracks with Apple's proprietary version of DRM, dubbed FairPlay.
In an earlier interview, Klepfisz declined to give specifics on how Qtrax will make its audio files compatible with Apple devices, but noted that "Apple has nothing to do with it."
Apple has been resistant in the past to license FairPlay to other online music retailers. That stance has effectively limited iPod users to loading up their players with tracks purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store, or MP3s ripped from CDs or bought from vendors such as eMusic or Amazon.com.
Phone and e-mail messages left for Apple on Sunday night were not immediately returned.
Rob Enderle, technology analyst at the San Jose-based Enderle Group, said he expects Apple would take steps to block Qtrax files from working on iPods.
Last fall, the company issued a software update for its iPhones that created problems for units modified by owners so they would work with a cellular carrier other than AT&T Inc. As a result, some modified phones ceased to work after the software update.

Energy, wealth and wildlife: Wyoming looks for harmony

2007-07-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

PINEDALE, Wyoming (CNN) -- Call it modern horse-trading. Balancing the nation's energy needs with its interests in protecting wildlife and habitats.

The practice is playing out in Wyoming, where energy companies pumped 2.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from the ground last year -- produced in 20 of the state's 23 counties. That's enough gas to heat every home in Michigan for seven years.
And good-paying jobs, public works projects and money for higher education have benefited Wyoming.
But there's a trade-off: Wildlife populations are taking a hit.
Populations of the West's iconic mule deer are down where drilling is prevalent; the sage grouse, a bird which conservationists consider a harbinger of how other wildlife are faring, has seen adult populations plunge near gas rig sites.
If grouse aren't surviving, biologists say, that means bad news for animals like antelope, bighorn sheep and pygmy rabbits.
Five years ago, there were about 10,000 wells spread across Wyoming. By the end of 2007, the federal Bureau of Land Management estimates that 30,000 wells will be pumping natural gas. Watch a bird's eye view of a natural gas field »
Companies such as Shell, EnCana, BP and Questar operate the rigs.
"The West is the last unexploited frontier for gas reserves in the U.S.," said Fadel Gheit, an Oppenheimer and Co. senior energy analyst. "Market prices are skyrocketing. We've drilled the Gulf of Mexico down to Swiss cheese."
But Gheit concedes, "It's not good for the environment, no question."
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On a June morning, standing in the middle of one of Wyoming's largest gas fields, Brian Rutledge, a wildlife biologist and the executive director of the Audubon Society of Wyoming, surveys acres of endless sage brush and rigs in the distance.
"These lands are some of the last vestiges of the American West we have, home to hundreds of species who won't survive if their habitat is fragmented by rigs," he said. "Once it's gone, it's gone. A boom goes bust eventually."
"We have to ask ourselves, 'Is getting cheaper gas now worth the future cost to the land?' "
Recent studies have shown the sage grouse and mule deer are in jeopardy, their habitat hurt by gas drilling, biologists say. Power lines are convenient places for raptors and other grouse predators to perch. Rigs sit on sagebrush, the grouse's primary food source. And loud activity disrupts the grouse's mating rituals.
Mule deer are down by 42 percent in areas where drilling is prevalent, according to a 2006 study conducted by independent ecologists and biologists and paid for by gas corporation Questar.
Gas corporations are required to perform wildlife analysis of lands where they intend to drill. Between 2001 and 2005, University of Montana biologist David Naugle attached radio collars to birds in and outside gas fields in northeast Wyoming.
He found as much as an 80 percent reduction in adult birds inside the Powder River Basin, a hot spot of gas production.
Matt Holloran performed his doctoral thesis at the University of Wyoming on the effect of gas drilling on the grouse on the Pinedale Anticline.
"It's getting worse over time," said Holloran, now a senior ecologist with a private conservation firm.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opted not to classify the bird as endangered in 2005. But a representative said the recent numbers are alarming and the agency may move to reassess the decision. See a sample of endangered species around the country »
So concerned by the grouse's dwindling numbers, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal called a summit on the bird last month, drawing hundreds of conservationists, scientists and gas industry executives.
"We have a bull's-eye on our back," Freudenthal said. "I see it as an imbalance. The BLM has one objective and that is drilling. It wasn't always this way. There used to be some concern for habitat preservation, and I'm worried that's gone out the door."
Freudenthal's comments were echoed in more than 90,000 letters the public submitted to the BLM in June objecting to the agency's plan to allow 8,000 more gas wells on 1.6 million acres in a field near Pinedale.

Endeavour moves to launch pad

2007-07-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Space shuttle Endeavour arrived at its launch pad early Wednesday for a flight to send teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan and six crewmates to the international space station.

It's been a nearly five-year wait for Endeavour, and the shuttle has nothing on Morgan: She's been waiting 22 years.
In 1985, Morgan was picked as Christa McAuliffe's backup to become the first teacher in space under a special NASA program.
Then the shuttle Challenger carrying McAuliffe exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986, and Morgan returned to teaching. In 1998, she was selected as a full-fledged astronaut.
On her first mission, set for August, Morgan will operate the shuttle's robotic arm, coordinate the transfer of cargo and talk from space to students at three schools, if the mission is extended.
The shuttle crew will also deliver a new truss segment, 5,000 pounds of cargo and fix a gyroscope which helps control the station's position.
"It has a little bit of everything," said Matt Abbott, lead shuttle flight director.
Endeavour's 3.4-mile journey aboard the massive crawler-transporter from the Vehicle Assembly Building took seven hours, getting the shuttle to its launch pad shortly after 3 a.m. It was a day late because the weather had nixed plans to move it early Tuesday.
Its launch is scheduled for August 7 as NASA's second shuttle flight this year.
The last time Endeavour was at the launch pad was in November 2002, before its launch on a construction mission to the space station. It was the last shuttle flight before the Columbia disaster killed seven astronauts and grounded the space shuttle program for 2 ½ years.
Endeavour has since undergone a major tune-up. The shuttle's structure was inspected for corrosion. Filter and seals were replaced. More than 1,900 thermal blankets were examined, and two windows were replaced with thicker panes.
"We're really excited to have Endeavour fly again," Kim Doering, NASA's deputy manager of the space shuttle program, said Tuesday. "Obviously, having brand new belts and hoses and having just checked the structure and replaced all the tiles -- they're brand new -- makes this a very nice vehicle to climb on to."
Endeavour also has a new system which allows power from the space station to be transferred to the shuttle while docked. If the new system works properly, the 11-day mission will be extended by an extra three days.

U.S. buyers snap up iPhones from coast to coast

2007-06-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Brandon Saunders, 16, had been saving his allowance and birthday money for months to get one of Apple Inc.'s coveted iPhones.
He waited in line with his 70-year-old grandmother for about eight hours Friday in front of a San Antonio AT&T store and left sunburned but grinning, shopping bag in hand.
"It's worth it," he said. "It's like Christmas in June."
The teen was among the first to get his hands on the coveted gadget from Apple, joining throngs destined to become braggarts of and guinea pigs for the latest must-have, cutting-edge piece of techno-wizardry.
Apple is banking that its new, do-everything phone with a touch-sensitive screen will become its third core business next to its moneymaking iPod music players and Macintosh computers.
The doors of East Coast Apple and AT&T stores opened promptly at 6 p.m. EDT with cheers from employees and eager customers. Stores farther west followed suit as the clock struck 6 in each time zone. In San Francisco, customers sang "Auld Lang Syne" following a countdown, as if heralding a new era in telecommunications. (Watch people wait at a New York Apple store to be the first to own an iPhone )
Patrons at the Apple store in Palo Alto, California, were treated to a very brief appearance by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. He momentarily posed for pictures before leaving.
"I'm glad it's over," said Carlos Sanchez, 19, at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York City, clutching shopping bags containing two iPhones -- the maximum allowed per person. "I don't have to sleep outside anymore."
Techies, exhibitionists and luminaries -- even the co-founder of Apple and the mayor of Philadelphia -- were among the inaugural group of iPhone customers.
The handset's price tag is $499 for a 4-gigabyte model and $599 for an 8-gigabyte version, on top of a minimum $59.99-a-month two-year service plan with AT&T Inc., the phone's exclusive carrier.
Customers ready to get started
Because Apple designed a new way for customers to activate the cell phone service from AT&T, by logging onto Apple's iTunes software from their computers, many buyers headed straight home to christen the device.
In Newton, Massachusetts, Khu Duong, 30, said he was excited but "afraid to open it. You want to sit down and relax."
Fellow customer Nick Seaver, 21, couldn't wait. He flipped open his Mac laptop right in the mall and paid $5 to use the wireless network and activate it. But because his current service contract with Verizon was set to expire the next day, Seaver got a computer message from iTunes that he would have to wait 24 hours before his iPhone worked.
Will all the waiting have been worth it? For many, it didn't seem to matter.
"I just love getting new stuff," said retiree Len Edgerly, who arrived at 3 a.m. Friday to be first in line outside an Apple store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It's the best new thing that's come along in a long time. It's beautiful."
Even Steve Wozniak, the ex-partner of Jobs, showed up at a Silicon Valley, California, mall at 4 a.m. aboard his Segway scooter. He helped keep order in the line outside the Apple store.
The other customers awarded the honorary first spot in line to Wozniak, who planned to buy two iPhones on Friday even though he remains an Apple employee and will get a free one from the company next month. He said the device would redefine cell phone design and use.
"Look how great the iPod turned out," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "So who wants to miss that revolution? That's why there's all this big hype for the iPhone."
A bumpy beginning for some
Apple's media blitz wasn't without its glitches.
On NBC's "Today" show, co-host Meredith Vieira ran into problems trying to get the iPhone to work, laughing that "this is why gadgets drive me crazy."
With a team of Apple representatives hovering off-screen, Vieira was supposed to receive a call from co-host Matt Lauer in London. The iPhone -- billed by Apple as the most user-friendly smart phone ever -- displayed the incoming call, but she couldn't answer it.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment.
The gadget, which Jobs has touted as "revolutionary," has been the focus of endless anticipatory chatter and has been parodied on late-night TV. Since its unveiling in January, the expectation that it will become yet another blockbuster product for Apple has pushed the company's stock up more than 40 percent.
Apple has set a target of selling 10 million units worldwide by 2008, gaining roughly a 1 percent share of the cell phone market. It's expected to go on sale in Europe later this year and in Asia in 2008.
In addition to the cost of the phone, for those currently using another cellular provider, there's also the cost of switching carriers.
Some bullish Wall Street analysts have predicted sales could hit as high as 45 million units in two years.
"That's nuts," said Rob Enderle, an industry analyst with The Enderle Group. "Over-hyping this thing just puts it at risk of being seen as a failure.
"Apple will break [sales] records for a phone of this class," he said, "but selling tens of millions of units so quickly is going to be tough. First-generation products always have problems that you don't know about until the product ships."
More likely, Enderle and other analysts said, Apple will grow iPhone sales by refining its models and improving the software features -- much as it did with the iPod, which has fueled record profits for the company.
But unlike its foray into digital music players, Apple faces competition in cell phones from deep-pocketed, well-established giants, such as Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc.
Apple has not disclosed how many iPhones were available at launch. But analysts expect them to sell out by early next week -- between sales rung up at retail stores and online through Apple's Web site, which has been a major distribution outlet for other Apple products.

Google wants U.S. help fighting censorship

2007-06-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide.
The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.
Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.
"It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office several times this year to discuss the issue.
"If censorship regimes create barriers to trade in violation of international trade rules, the USTR would get involved," USTR spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel said. She added though that human rights issues, such as censorship, typically falls under the purview of the State Department.
While human rights activists are pleased with Google's efforts to fight censorship, they harshly criticized the company early last year for agreeing to censor its Web site in China, which has the second-largest number of Internet users in the world.
The company defends its actions, saying the Chinese government made it a condition of allowing Chinese users access to Google Web pages. China has an Internet firewall that slows or disrupts Chinese users from accessing foreign uncensored Web sites.
Censorship on the rise
Censorship online has risen dramatically the past five years, belying the hype of the late 1990s, which portrayed the Internet as largely impervious to government interference.
A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship. That's a dramatic increase from the two or three countries guilty of the practice in 2002, says John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, who helped prepare the report.
China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and Thailand, among others, are increasingly blocking or filtering Web pages, Palfrey says.
Governments "are having more success than the more idealistic of us thought," acknowledges Danny O'Brien, international outreach coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Still, even government filtering isn't always successful. In a brutal regime like Iran, which filters Web content, there are nearly 100,000 bloggers, making Farsi "one of the most blogged languages in the world," says Palfrey.
Google's YouTube has become a common target for thin-skinned rulers. Turkey in March blocked the video-sharing site for two days after a complaint that some clips insulted Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Thailand continues to block YouTube after several videos appeared in April, criticizing the country's monarch.
Bloggers in Morocco said in late May that they could not access YouTube shortly after videos were posted critical of that nation's treatment of the people of Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco took control of in 1975. A government spokesman blamed a technical glitch.
Law school paper may have sparked idea
One likely source for Google's censorship idea is a paper written two years ago by Timothy Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, who argues that downloading a Web page hosted in another country effectively imports a service.
Drawing on that concept, Google envisions using trade agreements to fight back. The negotiated pacts would include provisions guaranteeing free trade in "information services." As is true of most trade pacts, the provisions would call for arbitration if there are violations.
The U.S. has a trade agreement with Morocco and began negotiating one with Thailand in 2004, although those talks were suspended early last year after a military coup.
Columbia's Wu said the trade pact approach is likely to be more effective when governments are guilty of blocking entire Web sites or applications, such as Internet phone-calling, than when they filter specific content.
Under World Trade Organization rules, countries can limit trade for national security or public moral reasons, Wu said, exceptions that authoritarian governments would likely cite when filtering politically sensitive material.
The company's trade initiative reflects Google's increasing acceptance of the value of federal lobbying. The company didn't hire a lobbyist until 2003, according to public filings, but paid the high-powered Washington-based Podesta Group $160,000 last year to work on Internet free-speech, tax and other issues.
Effort seems sincere
Human rights groups say Google's censorship efforts seem sincere, albeit motivated by bottom-line incentives.
"Free expression is a unique selling point" for a company like Google, O'Brien said. Filtering and censorship "diminishes the value of their product."
Yet last month at the company's annual meeting, Google's board recommended investors vote against a shareholder resolution urging Google to renounce censorship.
The resolution was defeated, although Google is already acting on some of the proposal's ideas, including working with other technology leaders, such as Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc., to develop a set of principles on how companies should respond to censorship and other human rights violations when doing business abroad.
Human rights advocates, academics and corporate social responsibility groups are involved in the project, announced earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Google's global growth efforts continue. YouTube said Tuesday that it plans to expand into nine other countries, including Brazil, France, Spain and Poland, offering local-language Web sites and highlighting videos of domestic interest.
In China, where Google is the No. 2 search engine behind the domestically based Baidu.com, the company said in April it will increase its investment as it works to create more content of interest to Chinese users.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Fathers and kids bond playing video games

2007-06-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

(AP) -- When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.'s Wii and play a few rounds of "Wii Sports" or "Mario Party 8."
"It's kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling," says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Alabama.
He's certainly not alone.
The generation that grew up with "Pac-Man" and "Pong" are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond.
Many fathers say the games bring them closer to their kids by providing a safe, convenient way to stay in touch and talk to their children on their own terms.
A national survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry group, found that 35 percent of parents play video games, of which 80 percent play with their children. Mothers, too, were part of the study.
Though he considers himself a lifelong gamer, Nickelson said the time spent with his daughter, Sara, matters much more than the games themselves.
"It's more of a chance to have time with her," he said. "Being a divorced dad, I don't get the time that I would like with her. It's just fun to sit down together and try to have fun together."
Sara says the friendly competition doesn't hurt, either.
"I like the Wii baseball because it's just so fun because I always beat him," she said. "Sometimes I beat him at Wii bowling. He gets kind of mad."
One expert said video games equalize the physical size differences between fathers and their kids. That means children often have the edge in a video game, and they may feel more willing to communicate.
"You're on the kid's turf," said Dr. Arminta Jacobson, director of the Center for Parent Education at the University of North Texas. "Anything that's fun between fathers and their kids I think is a really good thing."
But Jacobson also warned that limits are necessary because video games don't encourage reflective thinking skills, language development, social skills or physical activity.
"Fathers could set aside a time each week to play video games but also set aside times to read, take walks and just talk," she said.
Some dads have made a career out of video games and parenting.
"This is a way to bond for the people who don't go out in the sun so much," joked Andrew Bub, a father of two whose Web site, Gamerdad.com, reviews video games from a parent's perspective. "Taking an interest in what your kids do will always make you a better parent. And, you'll have a better idea about what to buy them for Christmas."
For Guy Buckmaster, a marketing director in Clearwater, Florida, gaming with his six children began in the late 1990s with "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction."
He still plays with them about two nights per week on another game, "Guild Wars," where they can chat, hash out personal issues _ and yes -- defeat others in online computer battles.
"It's allowed me to be a continuing influence and provide guidance in their life, and that's important to me," said Buckmaster, 55. "This has been an instrument that is unparalleled."
At John Idler's home in Moorestown, New Jersey, a dining room has been converted into a gaming center with three computers linked to the Internet, so he and his sons can play online PC games while sitting side-by-side.
It's also right next to the TV room, so the whole family can still talk, even if his non-gaming wife and daughter would rather watch television.
He said the fun of video games is certainly part of the lure, but it's really just an excuse to spend time together.
"How many parents complain they don't have anything to talk about with their kids? It may be geek talk, but we're still communicating," he said. "How many parents sit down and do things on a consistent basis with their kids? I think it's a great way to share some time."
One of his sons, 19-year-old Matthew Idler, plans on keeping video games a family tradition for years to come.
"It will be something I do with my kids when I have them," he said, "and my dad will be invited to play with us, of course."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google to digitize Big Ten school books

2007-06-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Twelve major universities will digitize select collections in each of their libraries -- up to 10 million volumes -- as part of Google Inc.'s book-scanning project. The goal: a shared digital repository that faculty, students and the public can access quickly.
The partnership involves the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the University of Chicago and the 11 universities in the Big Ten athletic conference (yes, there are 11): Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.
"We have a collective ambition to share resources and work together to preserve the world's printed treasures," said Northwestern Provost Lawrence Dumas.
The committee said Google will scan and index materials "in a manner consistent with copyright law." Google generally makes available the full text of books in the public domain and limited portions of copyrighted books.
Several other universities, including Harvard and California, already have signed up to let Google scan their libraries.
But Google still faces a lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild over its plans to incorporate parts of copyrighted books.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Apple iPhone available June 29

2007-06-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Apple Inc.'s highly anticipated iPhone will be available June 29 in the U.S., according to TV commercials broadcast Sunday and posted on the company's Web site.
The combination cell phone, media player and wireless Web-surfing device will retail for $499 and $599, depending on configuration. It will be offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T Inc.'s wireless division, formerly known as Cingular.
The iPhone, which sports no keypad but instead a touch-sensitive screen, was unveiled with great fanfare in early January by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
He said it would appear in stores in June but gave no specific date.
Sunday night's ads showed off several of the gadget's features and ended with the pronouncement that the phone will be available "Only on the new AT&T" and "Coming June 29."
Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, confirmed the June 29 sale date. An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately return a phone call.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Robot grooves to its own beat

2007-06-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A Japanese robot twists and rolls to music from an iPod in an intricate dance based on complex mathematics, a technology developers say will enable robots to move about spontaneously instead of following preprogrammed motions.
Tokyo-based venture ZMP Inc.'s 14-inch long Miuro robot -- which looks like a white ball wedged between two halves of an egg -- wheels about in time with music from the iPod player that locks into the machine.
At a demonstration in Tokyo on Thursday, the 11-pound Miuro pivoted about on a stage in time to beats of a pop music track played through its speakers. The dance wasn't preprogrammed, but generated by the robot itself.
Scientists involved in the robot's development believe the technology could lead to robots capable of spontaneous motion. Miuro uses algorithms, or mathematical rules, to analyze music and translate the beats into dances, said ZMP President Hisashi Taniguchi.
"We aim to create a new form of life that moves freely and spontaneously in ways human beings can't predict," Taniguchi said. "We're hoping to turn Miuro into the ultimate virtual pet."
Unlike older Miuros, which hit stores last August, the prototype is fitted with software based on what scientists call chaotic itinerancy, a mathematical pattern similar to the movements of a bee circling from flower to flower as it collects nectar.
That allows the new Miuro to act spontaneously and unpredictably -- "just like a child playing," said Tokyo University researcher Takashi Ikegami, who developed the software.
Other improvements will let users set the Miuro like an alarm clock so it wheels into the bedroom and blasts music at a certain time. Future versions of the Miuro will also use built-in sensors to seek out people to play tunes to, Taniguchi said.
ZMP has already shipped 500 units of the original Miuro, which isn't equipped with the intelligent software but instead responds to a remote-control handheld manipulator.
The 108,800 yen ($895) original Miuro can also receive wireless signals from a personal computer to play iTunes and other stored digital files. Separately sold options add a camera that beams images to PCs or lets owners control their Miuros by mobile phone.
Miuro, short for "music innovation based on utility robot technology," is only on sale in Japan. ZMP did not give a date for the release of the prototype.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google defends data policy

2007-05-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Google will tell Brussels it needs to hold on to users' search data for up to two years for security and commercial reasons after being warned it could be violating European privacy laws by doing so.
The world's top Internet search engine on Friday said it would respond by June 19 to a letter from a European Union data protection advisory group expressing concern it was keeping information on users' searches for too long.
"The concern of EU law is that a company that collects data on its customers should keep it as long as it is necessary, but not longer," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, told Reuters in a telephone interview.
With every search, Google gathers information about a customer's tastes, interests and beliefs that could potentially be used by third parties such as advertisers, but the company stresses it never passes it on.
Google last week received a letter from the Article 29 working party, a group of national advisory bodies that counsels the EU on privacy policy, which asked the company to justify its data retention practices.
"I will tell the working party that Google needs to hold on to its log database to protect itself and the system from attacks and refine and improve the effectiveness of our search results," Fleischer said.
He said Google, at its own initiative, had decided in March to limit the time it kept engine search information to between 18 and 24 months. The company previously had no set time limit.
He called on rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft to clarify their data retention practices and policies.
"Will the working party focus on other players in the industry?" Fleischer asked.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Citywide Wi-Fi struggles to reach users

2007-05-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

(AP) -- Adam DuVander likes to surf the Internet from his laptop wherever he happens to be -- at home, a coffee shop or a neighborhood park. He has been able to do so in recent years thanks to wireless hotspots set up by networking activists in Portland, Oregon.
So when Portland announced it would try to blanket the entire city with similar Wi-Fi technology, the Web programmer and blogger got excited -- until he tried using it.
"For me ubiquitous access means I don't have to base my life around wherever my office is," DuVander said. "I tried it out as soon as I could and found that it wasn't for me. The quality of the connection is not up to my standards."
Blame physics and the use of a short-range technology designed for smaller quarters, not citywide deployments.
Simply put, signals don't travel far or penetrate building walls well.
That's fine for a coffee shop. The equipment is indoors, as are its users. That's also fine for a park. There are enough users concentrated there to justify installing lots of wireless antennas.
But it wouldn't be economical to place an access point inside every home and on every street lamp.
Portland's contractor, MetroFi Inc., is putting roughly 25 access points per square mile, so that users would generally be no farther than 500 feet from the nearest one, said Logan Kleier, the city's manager for the Unwired Portland project.
Cutting that distance in half, to 250 feet, would require about four times as many access points, because they need to be installed in all four directions.
"The network cost gets completely out of whack," he said. "The business model breaks in its entirety."
Network operators, meanwhile, are recommending signal boosters for as much as $150 to get indoor coverage. Many people in Portland and elsewhere plan to stick with their existing DSL or cable provider instead.
An emerging technology called WiMax -- promising much longer ranges -- might be able to blanket a larger area more easily than Wi-Fi can. Sprint Nextel Corp. already has announced plans to offer WiMax service in several cities by next year, with initial deployments this year in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
But Wi-Fi still has its advantages. It's been around longer so the technology is stable and equipment relatively cheap.
And although Wi-Fi continues to evolve -- an industry group will soon start certifying products under its emerging, faster "n" flavor -- devices made tomorrow will likely work with networks built today. On the network side, some equipment can be upgraded by pushing new software remotely, said Esme Vos, an expert on municipal Wi-Fi systems.
Regardless of the specific wireless technology, though, wired services remain a better choice over wireless for many basic needs. Wired networks are generally faster and have fewer security risks. Prices for DSL, in particular, have dropped.
Wireless networks are good as backups during emergencies and away from home, but "it's very hard to have a wireless network compete as a primary connection," said Dave Burstein, editor of the industry newsletter DSL Prime.
"Where you have a choice, DSL or cable compared to wireless, you are going to go for DSL or cable unless it's ridiculously overpriced."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

MySpace will turn over names of sex offenders

2007-05-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- MySpace.com will provide a number of state attorneys general with data on registered sex offenders who use the popular social networking Web site, the company said Monday.
Attorneys general from eight states demanded last week that the company provide data on how many registered sex offenders are using the site and where they live. MySpace initially refused, citing federal privacy laws.
MySpace obtained the data from Sentinel Tech Holding Corp., which the company partnered with in December to build a database with information on sex offenders.
"We developed 'Sentinel Safe' from scratch because there was no means to weed them out and get them off of our site," said Mike Angus, MySpace's executive vice president and general counsel.
Angus said the company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp. had always planned to share information on sex offenders it identified and has already removed about 7,000 profiles out of a total of about 180 million.
"This is no different than an offline community," he said. "We're trying to keep it safe."
Angus said the company had also made arrangements to allow law enforcement to use the Sentinel software directly.
MySpace is owned by media conglomerate News Corp.
Attorneys general in North Carolina, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania asked for the Sentinel data last week.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper's office said in a statement the information could potentially be used to look for parole violations or help in investigations.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Inventor: Camera phone evolution has only just begun

2007-05-18T10:05:00.000-07:00

SANTA CRUZ, California (AP) -- The chilling sounds of gunfire on the Virginia Tech campus; the hateful taunts from Saddam Hussein's execution; the racist tirade of comedian Michael Richards.
Those videos, all shot with cell phone cameras and seen by millions, are just a few recent examples of the power now at the fingertips of the masses. Even the man widely credited with inventing the camera phone in 1997 is awed by the cultural revolution he helped launch.
"It's had a massive impact because it's just so convenient," said Philippe Kahn, a tech industry maverick whose other pioneering efforts include the founding of software maker Borland, an early Microsoft Corp. antagonist.
"There's always a way to capture memories and share it," he said. "You go to a restaurant, and there's a birthday and suddenly everyone is getting their camera phones out. It's amazing."
If Kahn feels a bit like a proud father when he sees people holding up their cell phones to snap pictures, there's good reason: He jury-rigged the first camera phone while his wife was in labor with their daughter.
"We were going to have a baby and I wanted to share the pictures with family and friends," Kahn said, "and there was no easy way to do it."
So as he sat in a maternity ward, he wrote a crude program on his laptop and sent an assistant to a RadioShack store to get a soldering iron, capacitors and other supplies to wire his digital camera to his cell phone. When Sophie was born, he sent her photo over a cellular connection to acquaintances around the globe.
A decade later, 41 percent of American households own a camera phone "and you can hardly find a phone without a camera anymore," said Michael Cai, an industry analyst at Parks Associates.
Market researcher Gartner Inc. predicts that about 589 million cell phones will be sold with cameras in 2007, increasing to more than 1 billion worldwide by 2010.
Mix in the Internet's vast reach and the growth of the YouTube generation, and the ubiquitous gadget's influence only deepens and gets more complicated. So much so that the watchful eyes on all of us may no longer just be those of Big Brother.
"For the past decade, we've been under surveillance under these big black and white cameras on buildings and at 7-Eleven stores. But the candid camera is wielded by individuals now," said Fred Turner, an assistant professor of communications at Stanford University who specializes in digital media and culture.
The contraption Kahn assembled in a Santa Cruz labor-and-delivery room in 1997 has evolved into a pocket-friendly phenomenon that has empowered both citizen journalists and personal paparazzi.
It has prompted lawsuits -- a student sued campus police at UCLA for alleged excessive force after officers were caught on cell-phone video using a stun gun during his arrest; and been a catalyst for change -- a government inquiry into police practices ensued in Malaysia after a cell-phone video revealed a woman detainee being forced to do squats while naked.
On another scale, parents use cell-phone slideshows -- not wallet photos -- to show off pictures of their children, while adolescents document their rites of passage with cell phone cameras and instantly share the images.
One of the recipients of Kahn's seminal photo e-mail was veteran technology consultant Andy Seybold, who recalled being "blown away" by the picture.
"The fact that it got sent wirelessly on the networks those days -- that was an amazing feat," Seybold said.
Kahn's makeshift photo-communications system formed the basis for a new company, LightSurf Technologies, which he later sold to VeriSign Inc. LightSurf built "PictureMail" software and worked with cell phone makers to integrate the wireless photo technology.
Sharp Corp. was the first to sell a commercial cell phone with a camera in Japan in 2000. Camera phones didn't debut in the U.S. until 2002, Kahn said.
Though Kahn's work revolved around transmitting only digital still photographs -- video-related developments were created by others in the imaging and chip industries -- his groundbreaking implementation of the instant-sharing via a cell phone planted a seed.
"He facilitated people putting cameras in a phone, and he proved that you can take a photo and send it to someone with a cell phone," Seybold said.
Kahn, 55, is well aware of how the camera phone has since been put to negative uses: sneaky shots up women's skirts, or the violent trend of "happy slapping" in Europe where youths provoke a fight or assault, capture the incident on camera and then spread the images on the Web or between mobile phones.
But he likes to focus on the technology's benefits. It's been a handy tool that has led to vindication for victims or validation for vigilantes.
As Kahn heard the smattering of stories in recent years about assailants scared off by a camera phone or criminals who were nabbed later because their faces or their license plates were captured on the gadget, he said, "I started feeling it was better than carrying a gun."
And though he found the camera-phone video of the former Iraqi dictator's execution disturbing, Kahn said the gadget helped "get the truth out." The unofficial footage surreptitiously taken by a guard was vastly different from the government-issued version and revealed a chaotic scene with angry exchanges depicting the ongoing problems between the nation's factions.
Kahn also thinks the evolution of the camera phone has only just begun.
He wouldn't discuss details of his newest startup, Fullpower Technologies Inc., which is in stealth mode working on the "convergence of life sciences and wireless," according to its Web site.
But, Kahn said, it will, among other things, "help make camera phones better."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google unifies search results

2007-05-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) -- Google Inc. said on Wednesday it is combining its different Web search services into one "Universal Search" service that will present Web sites, news, video and other results on one page.
The move, a significant overhaul of Google's most-used function, will take effect on Wednesday and be improved over time, executives told reporters at the company's "Googleplex" headquarters.
"I think of it as a pretty natural evolution, with the one interesting thing being the video side of it," said Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Global Crown Capital.
"The thing everyone is wondering right now is what will an advertiser be willing to pay for a video link," Pyykkonen said. "From the advertiser standpoint, I think they will be interested in how to hook their customer better."
Universal Search means that standard Google searches will draw results from separate properties covering books, local information, images, news, and video, said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search and user experience.
"It's breaking down the silos of information that have been built up. It's a broad, long-term vision that will unfold over the next few years," Mayer said. "We are really excited about what Universal Search could evolve to in the future."
The combined search includes any site indexed by Google's services. On the video side, for example, it will include YouTube, Google Video and independent sites like Metacafe.com.
Mayer did not directly discuss advertising plans, but she indicated the new service could open the door to more relevant ads on search result pages, which accounted for roughly half of the $10.6 billion in revenue Google did last year.
"For us, ads are (search) answers as well. I would hope that we can bring some of these same advances, in terms of richness of media, to ads," Mayer said.
In addition, the company is introducing new navigation features at the top of every Google page that let users to quickly hop between its different properties.
For example, users of Google's e-mail service, Gmail, can jump instantly to search, calendar, documents, and other services, according to a demonstration at the briefing.
The company also is preparing a translation service that converts queries into other languages, allowing a user to comb a broader swath of the Web, Google's Vice President of Engineering, Udi Manber, said at the event.
The technique will translate queries in any of a dozen languages into English, find additional search results, then automatically translate those back into the language of the original query. This will give users in any supported language a broader view of information on the Web.
"That by itself will open the whole Web to different languages," Manber said.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google: 10 percent of sites are dangerous

2007-05-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Google is warning Web users of the increasing threat posed by malicious software that can be dropped onto a computer as a Web surfer visits a particular site.
The search giant carried out in-depth research on 4.5 million Web sites and found that about one in 10 Web pages could successfully "drive-by download" a Trojan horse virus onto a visitor's computer. Such malicious software potentially enables hackers to access sensitive data stored on the computer or its network, or to install rogue applications.
Google's report (PDF: The Ghost in the Browser: Analysis of Web-based Malware), published last week, said the rise in Web-based malicious software has been aided by the increasing role that the Internet plays in everyday life, along with the ease in setting up Web sites.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said Google is highlighting a worsening trend and "a considerable problem" for businesses and individual Web navigators.
An average of 8,000 new URLs containing malicious software emerged each week during April, Cluley said, adding that the notion that such software resides only in the darker corners of the Internet is very outdated. Seventy percent of Web pages hosting rogue software are found on legitimate sites targeted by hackers, according to Sophos.
To place malicious software on Web sites, hackers are manipulating Web server security, user-posted content, advertising and third-party widgets, Cluley said. "They used to spread malware by e-mail attachment. What they do now is spam out URLs."
Cluley warned businesses that they "cannot protect users by restricting what sites they go to. You need to start protecting your Web access as well as your e-mail gateway."
Tim Ferguson of Silicon.com reported from London.

Study: iPods can make pacemakers malfunction

2007-05-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- iPods can cause cardiac implantable pacemakers to malfunction by interfering with the electromagnetic equipment monitoring the heart, according to a study presented by a 17-year-old high school student to a meeting of heart specialists on Thursday.
The study tested the effect of the portable music devices on 100 patients, whose mean age was 77, outfitted with pacemakers. Electrical interference was detected half of the time when the iPod was held just 2 inches from the patient's chest for 5 to 10 seconds.
The study did not examine any portable music devices other than iPods, which are made by Apple Inc.
In some cases, the iPods caused interference when held 18 inches from the chest. Interfering with the telemetry equipment caused the device to misread the heart's pacing and in one case caused the pacemaker to stop functioning altogether.
The study was held at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University. The results were presented at the Heart Rhythm Society annual meeting in Denver.
Jay Thaker, lead author of the study and a student at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan, concluded that iPod interference can lead physicians to misdiagnose actual heart function.
Thaker, whose father is an electrophysiologist and whose mother is a rheumatologist, said he asked his dad about a potential interaction between pacemakers and iPods.
"We looked online but didn't see anything. Then, one of his patients asked him if there would be a problem, so (my father) put me in touch with Dr. Krit (Jongnarangsin)," Thaker said in a telephone interview.
Jongnarangsin, a long-time friend of Thaker's father, is the senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Michigan.
"Most pacemaker patients are not iPod users," Jongnarangsin said. For that reason, he said, it is unclear how often iPods cause misdiagnosis.
"This needs to be studied more," Jongnarangsin added.
Thaker said he is interested in doing a similar study about how implantable cardioverter defibrillators, known as ICDs, are affected by iPods.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

The supermarket of the future

2007-05-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Standing in a long line at the grocer soon might get you through the checkout faster.
That's because a British company has designed a system to track and predict the movements of supermarket shoppers using thermal imaging. A computer analyzes data from infrared cameras, then advises when and where additional cashiers are needed.
"The idea is that the more pleasant the checkout experience, the more you will buy," said Nick Stogdale, senior sales manager for InfraRed Integrated Systems' SMARTLANE product. The system is being tested by two U.S. chains.
The SMARTLANE was one of many new food-related technologies on display at this week's Food Marketing Institute show, where speed, ease, sanitation and a touch of theater ruled.
Take the case of rotisserie chicken, one of the most popular items in the fast-growing prepared foods category: The latest crop of chicken roasters -- those ubiquitous ovens that endlessly twirl crisp, golden chickens at grocers across the nation -- are designed not just to cook, but also to capture your attention with good looks and funky design.
Hence, the Multisserie, an upright, clear cylindrical oven by Netherlands-based Fri-Jado that spins the chickens on end, like a giant top. "We try to bring a very high show element to it," marketing director Ernst Goettsch said Sunday.
The same thinking also influenced the design of Montreal-based Hardt's Inferno Rotisserie, which offers a crowd-pleasing self-cleaning function that looks like a sprinkler gone wild.
"The more a supermarket can do to create a show or to create a restaurant-style experience, the more sales they make," said Michael Griffin, a vice president of sales for Hardt.
For those who prefer their food slightly pixelated, food industry analyst Phil Lempert has teamed with Kraft Foods and the National Grocers Association to launch a virtual supermarket in the online fantasy world known as Second Life.
Though visitors to Phil's Supermarket can't actually buy groceries, they can guide their avatars (online parlance for a user's digital personification) through the store to explore products, watch cooking demos and see the latest food and health news.
The idea is to help people navigate the real world of food by letting them "pre-shop," accessing nutritional data and other information on various products, previewing a showcase of just-launched items or scoring coupons.
"The average consumer only spends 22 minutes food shopping," said Lempert, who launched the site Monday. "That's not a whole lot of time to see new products. But what I hear from consumers is that they want to hear about what's new and exciting."
Lempert expects to have 100,000 products on the site by the end of summer. Visitors can "taste" many of the products, then offer reviews. How meaningful those reviews are, of course, depend on whether users have tried the product in the analog world.
Beyond wanting to know more about their food, consumers also want to know more about its safety.
On display this week are products such as G & K Services' line of ProSura clothing. Intended for food service workers such as meat cutters and chefs, these clothes are like hand sanitizer you can wear.
Though the clothing resembles the white cotton garments common to butcher shops and professional kitchens, ProSura products have chlorine chemically bonded to the fibers, claiming to kill microbes that touch them.
G & K marketing manager Christine Fischer says that for many companies this level of sanitation probably isn't necessary, but they see it as a way of demonstrating to customers that they are willing to spend extra to ensure the safety of their food.
And spending on sanitation might be smart money. According to a Harris Poll Online released Monday by FMI, just 66 percent of consumers feel at least somewhat confident in the safety of supermarket food, down from 82 percent in 2006.
The food industry has been hit by a number of recent food safety problems, including E. coli in spinach and melamine contamination of pet food and animal feed, and FMI spokesman Bill Greer says the study reflects that.
Which means business could boom for companies such as PureCart, which makes a sort of disinfecting car wash for shopping carts. But despite consumer concerns, PureCart president Jim Kratowicz says products such as his still have a tough sell.
That's because even though consumers want clean carts, companies worry about sending the wrong message.
Consumers might wonder, "What are grocers telling me? They're telling me they have dirty carts," he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

NYC cabbies not sold on touch-screens

2007-05-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- To taxi officials, the touch-screen monitors popping up in cabs help passengers make the most of the 13 New York minutes spent on an average ride.
Passengers can pay by credit card -- no more fumbling for cash and tip. As a cab heads through Greenwich Village, for example, passengers can find ads and reviews for neighborhood bars and restaurants. They can also view news stories and an electronic map of their cab's progress.
The monitors are now in 200 city cabs as an experiment, but a plan to put them in all 13,000 cabs has angered many drivers. They see the technology as an expensive imposition that would cost them money and allow taxi owners and officials to check up on them.
The issue has a delicate history: A 2003 experiment with touch-screen television in taxis ended within months, amid passenger antipathy. And the drivers' group leading the opposition to the monitors notes that it carried out a crippling one-day taxi strike over other issues in 1998.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission is scheduled Thursday to consider an October 1 deadline for all of the city's cabs to start installing the systems.
"This project is nothing short of revolutionary and evolutionary for the taxi industry," Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matthew W. Daus wrote in a recent agency newsletter.
The commission called for the technology while approving a 26 percent fare increase in 2004, and the agency argues that both riders and drivers stand to benefit.
The credit-card option is expected to prove popular with customers in what is now a mostly cash, $1.8 billion-a-year business. Officials say it could translate to bigger tips and more fares from riders short on cash.
The global positioning system in the technology will also automate required record-keeping and give drivers crucial information about traffic or lost items. If a customer reports losing a wallet, for example, the taxi commission could send alerts to drivers in the neighborhood where the customer was dropped off to be on the lookout.
The commission has approved tests of four systems and may endorse them for sale within days. Taxi owners would choose from the four systems, at a maximum three-year cost of $7,200 for equipment and various fees, although commission officials expect the cost will be far less in many cases. Vendors say advertising can offset at least some of owners' costs.
Objecting drivers have raised concerns about the costs of the hardware, credit-card fees and potential working time lost if the systems need repair. Some worry that the global-positioning system will be used to track their movements, although the taxi commission says it will record only the pickup and drop-off points and fare, which drivers already are required to log.
"It's trampling on our constitutional rights, and it will cut deeply into our income," said Bill Lindauer, who drove a cab for 30 years and is a member of the organizing committee of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers' advocacy group with more than 7,000 members.
The alliance held a rally in March to protest the new systems, and Lindauer said this month that the group was exploring legal and political avenues for trying to block the plan.
But some drivers embrace the technology, which came free for those who offered their cabs as proving grounds.
Cesar Norena, a 17-year taxi driver testing a system made by Englewood, New Jersey-based TaxiTech, says passengers have made liberal use of its features, and he believes the credit-card option will boost business.
"People really like it," he said, "and as a driver, I really like it, too."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Hacker accesses students' personal information

2007-05-09T08:49:00.000-07:00

COLUMBIA, Missouri (AP) -- A computer hacker accessed the Social Security numbers of more than 22,000 current or former students at the University of Missouri, the second such attack this year, school officials said Tuesday. The FBI is investigating.
University officials said campus computer technicians confirmed a breach of a database last week by a user or users whose Internet accounts were traced to China and Australia.
The hacker accessed personal information of 22,396 University of Missouri-Columbia students or alumni who also worked at one of the system's four campuses in St. Louis, Kansas City, Rolla or Columbia in 2004.
The hacker obtained the information through a Web page used to make queries about the status of trouble reports to the university's computer help desk, which is based in Columbia. The information had been compiled for a report, but the data had not been removed from the computer system.
In January, a hacker obtained the Social Security numbers of 1,220 university researchers, as well as personal passwords of as many as 2,500 people who used an online grant application system.
The university is contacting people affected by the latest breach and providing instructions on how to monitor their credit reports and other financial records for suspicious activity, officials said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Apple seeking end to music copy restrictions

2007-05-08T08:16:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The last time Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs took on major recording companies, he refused to budge on his 99-cent price for a song on iTunes.
As a new round of talks ramp up this month, however, Jobs has opened the door to higher prices -- as long as music companies let Apple Inc. sell their songs without technology designed to stop unauthorized copying.
Jobs contends that would "tear down the walls" by allowing consumers to play music they buy at Apple's iTunes store on any digital music player, not just the company's iPods.
Although most of the major labels insist that safeguards are still needed to stave off online piracy and make other digital music business models work, one company has already struck a deal with Apple.
Last month, Britain's EMI Music Group PLC, home to artists such as Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone, agreed to let iTunes sell tracks without the copy-protection technology known as digital-rights management. The DRM-free tracks cost 30 cents more than copy-restricted versions of EMI songs and feature enhanced sound quality.
The other major labels -- Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi's Universal Music Group, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG -- will be watching closely to see how the unrestricted EMI tracks sell.
"At this point, no one can ignore Apple or what Apple wants, given its position in the marketplace," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. "The fact that they were able to do this deal with EMI puts more pressure on some of the other labels to follow suit."
For their part, at least two of the recording companies will ask Jobs to sell a wider variety of content in digital bundles of songs, videos and other multimedia, according to two recording company executives familiar with their companies' plans. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the negotiations.
Apple already sells some bundled tracks, but the music companies hope expanding those offerings will boost online revenue and help offset lagging CD sales.
Apple and the recording companies declined official comment on their negotiations.
Four years ago, the majors bought into Jobs' one-price-fits-all vision and agreed to such licensing terms at a time online music services were failing to attract significant interest from music fans.
Since then, the popularity of Apple's iPods has swelled and the sleek devices now dominate more than 70 percent of the digital music player market, by some estimates.
While studies have suggested that only a fraction of the music on most iPods is actually purchased on iTunes, the service has ridden the iPod's coattails and helped cement its position as the top-selling online music service and one of the biggest music retailers overall.
That's given Apple considerable leverage in its dealings with the recording industry.
Last year, the main issue that dominated iTunes licensing talks was pricing, as some of the big music companies urged Jobs to entertain charging more for some songs than others.
The dispute percolated for months, but Jobs didn't budge, not wanting to complicate iTunes' simple pricing scheme for singles.
Eventually, the music companies each agreed to one-year deals, which expire this spring.
Now, Apple is facing pressure in Europe to license its brand of DRM technology to rivals, so consumers can play the music they buy on iTunes on any digital music player, not just iPods.
Critics of the recording industry have argued for years that the labels are alienating customers by placing copy restrictions on legal music downloads, especially as many CDs have been sold without them.
The technology behind such measures differs, depending on the retailer and the music device. Apple, for example, has its own version, called FairPlay, that only works with iPods, making it cumbersome for consumers to transfer songs they bought across other portable digital devices. Likewise, DRM systems used at other online stores won't work with iPods.
Many music fans who don't want to deal with the hassle simply turn to online file-sharing networks to download no-strings tracks for free.
The recording industry has argued that copy protection software itself is not what makes some songs incompatible with some digital players, but the fact that there are different versions of the technology in use. The music companies have called on Jobs to license out FairPlay to makers of rival devices.
Jobs has countered that the best way to get rid of technological barriers is for record labels to strip the copy safeguards from their music. He defends keeping FairPlay closed, saying that if it was widely available, it would become easier for hackers to figure out how to bypass it.
No matter what, Apple plans to continue selling standard, copy-restricted versions of songs for 99 cents each. With the EMI deal, Apple will this month start selling $1.29 premium tracks that are not only DRM free but also of higher quality, compressed at twice the usual bit rate.
John Heard, an iTunes user in Santa Monica, said he would jump at the chance to buy no-strings download, even if it costs more.
"If I have the choice between something that doesn't have copy protection or it does, I'm always going to choose the thing that doesn't have copy protection," said Heard, 28, a television producer who spends about $300 a year on music, almost all on iTunes.
Buying a better-sounding track is appealing to David Sholle, 54, of Long Beach, a college professor who has purchased several hundred songs from iTunes.
"I'd be willing to pay for that," he said.
Anticipating a more competitive market, other companies are looking to break into online music sales. Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. first approached the major recording companies 18 months ago about launching an online music store.
A recent meeting prompted speculation that Amazon might begin selling unrestricted MP3s and other music downloads as early as this month. The company has declined to comment.
David Pakman, president and CEO of eMusic, said the elimination of copy protection could help his company mine the rare, catalog recordings owned by major labels but not typically available on iTunes.
EMusic already sells music from independent labels in the MP3 format and boasts some 300,000 subscribers.
Pakman believes the major record labels will also eventually relent on requiring copy restrictions.
"We really think the market is breaking our way," Pakman said. "A noteworthy major will probably take some steps in this direction later this year."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Americans Divided on Gadget Use

2007-05-07T08:41:00.000-07:00

(NEW YORK) — A broad survey about the technology people have, how they use it, and what they think about it shatters assumptions and reveals where companies might be able to expand their audiences.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones.
But Americans are divided within each group, according to a Pew analysis of 2006 data released Sunday.
The high-tech elites, for instance, are almost evenly split into:
• "Omnivores," who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages.
• "Connectors," who see the Internet and cell phones as communications tools.
• "Productivity enhancers," who consider technology as largely ways to better keep up with their jobs and daily lives.
• "Lackluster veterans," those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it.
John Horrigan, Pew's associate director, said he started the survey believing that the more gadgets people have, the more they are likely to embrace technology and use so-called Web 2.0 applications for generating and sharing content with the world. "Once we got done, we were surprised to find the tensions within groups of users with information technology," Horrigan said.
Many longtime Internet users, the lackluster veterans, remain stuck in the decade-old technologies they started with, Horrigan said. That a quarter of high-tech elites fall into this category, he said, shows untapped potential for companies that can design next-generation applications to pique this group's interest.
The moderate users were also evenly divided into "mobile centrics," those who primarily use the cell phone for voice, text messaging and even games, and "connected but hassled," those who have used technology but find it burdensome.
Mobile companies, he said, can target the mobile centrics with premium services, especially once faster wireless networks become available.
The Pew study found 15 percent of all Americans have neither a cell phone nor an Internet connection. Another 15 percent use some technology and are satisfied with what it currently does for them, while 11 percent use it intermittently and find connectivity annoying.
Eight percent — mostly women in the early 50s — occasionally use technology and might use more given more experience. They tend to still be on dial-up access and represent potential high-speed customers "with the right constellation of services offered," Horrigan said.
The telephone study of 4,001 U.S. adults, including 2,822 Internet users, was conducted Feb. 15 to April 6, 2006, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

'Monitor Queen' of Malaysia gives computers a new life

2007-05-06T07:50:00.000-07:00

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- In her native Malaysia, Mary Tiong developed a reputation for selling leftover computer monitors for a large manufacturer behind the industry's best-known brands. She earned a nickname: The Monitor Queen.
From her new base in Pittsburgh, Tiong continues to move large quantities of monitors. But now, she ships thousands of discarded models with computers back to Malaysia, where they are rebuilt and sold in poor countries, mostly in Southeast Asia.
Tiong, 41, says her company, Second Life Computer Remanufacturing, has environmental and philanthropic goals: It helps stem a rising tide of electronic waste in the United States and fulfills a need for basic computer equipment in the developing world.
But she hopes to expand her operations by establishing a training program to teach local students how to rebuild aging computers, which often can be used for office work, Web surfing and e-mail -- and saved from the scrap heap.
The program would create jobs and demonstrate that "somebody's junk is another person's treasure," Tiong said.
Her office is in a small warehouse jammed with monitors and PCs wrapped in plastic and stacked on wooden pallets. The computers and monitors, some plucked from U.S. classrooms, law offices or pharmacies, might have been donated to or purchased by Tiong for $10 or less a piece.
"But I know that if you can make it work and get somebody to use it, the value is much better than a few dollars," she said.
Since 2005, Tiong's firm has sent 35 shipping containers to remanufacturing facilities in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, Malaysia. One container holds as many as 2,000 computers, or between 800 and 1,000 monitors.
In Malaysia, workers test and repair the equipment, perhaps cracking open computers to replace parts or polishing monitor tubes and repainting their plastic cases in bright hues.
In many cases, the devices are returning to their country of origin -- Malaysia. Tiong, who was born in Malaysia's Sarawak state on Borneo Island, says that gives her a unique perspective on the discarded technology.
"Because I'm from Asia ... I know where they come from," she said.
After working as a distributor for the Taiwanese electronic parts maker Lite-On Technology Corp., Tiong began traveling on her own to the United States in 1998. She bought containers loaded with monitors and shipped them back to Malaysia, where she had a factory that rebuilt or refurbished them. She then sold the equipment to customers in Singapore, Russia and Papua New Guinea.
The following year, Tiong began dealing in computers as well, buying old PCs in Atlanta, Georgia, Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California, among other cities. In 2000, she expanded to suppliers in Australia and, in 2004, to Canada.
She came to Pittsburgh in 2004 and formed Babylon Industries, the parent company of Second Life Computers. She said her company's revenue fluctuates, but that it probably averages about $500,000 annually.
The units are sent to schools and other customers in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Argentina; Tiong's distributors are hoping to tap into markets in Peru and South Africa. Some equipment is sold at minimal cost -- less than $100 -- to rural villagers, she said. Some have been refurbished in Pittsburgh and donated to local schools.
Jim Rapoza, chief technology analyst for the publication eWeek, said "getting rid of old equipment is a big issue" for many businesses.
"Usually, you can't find anyone interested in buying this stuff," though the pace of computer technology has slowed enough that slightly older machines are still useful for many tasks, including Web surfing and e-mail, he said.
Tiong tries to avoid recycling -- destroying the machines or breaking them down for parts -- saying her mission is to restore them so they can be used by people who are unable to afford the latest technology.
She is not alone. Many U.S.-based groups collect and refurbish computers and send them abroad, according to Rob Zopf, vice president of operations at the National Cristina Foundation, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based group that distributes donated computers to schools and charities across the country.
"The other side of the issue is there are people who collect equipment here in the U.S. (and) send it overseas in the name of reuse, although they're really sending it as a way of disposing of e-waste in a much less environmentally friendly way than one might like by taking components we might not want in our landfills and giving them to the Third World," he said.
Second Life says on its Web site that less than 1 percent of its refurbished equipment, 2 percent of its remanufactured equipment and 5 percent of its recycled equipment goes to the landfill. Tiong said little is wasted because even small parts, such as chips, can be reused.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Review: 'Spider-Man 3' video game a blockbuster

2007-05-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- With the video game version of "Spider-Man 3" and its theatrical counterpart hitting the United States on Friday, we're not just seeing the continuation of a hugely successful movie franchise.
We're seeing the continuation of a video game franchise that's hugely successful in its own right.
"As popular as 'Spider-Man' is in the movie world, he's as popular in the video game world," says Bryan Intihar, Previews Editor for the video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Activision's video game versions of the last two "Spider-Man" movies have grossed a staggering $462 million in the United States, according to market research firm NPD.
That's almost $100 million more than what the "Spider-Man 2" movie took in at the box office.
Usually, Intihar points out, you only see video game legends like "Grand Theft Auto" or "Halo" pulling those kinds of numbers.
The "Spider-Man" games have won commercial and critical kudos for their mostly faithful re-creations of the movies, and for a unique "open environment" that allows players to fight bad guys and swing through a dizzyingly accurate virtual recreation of Manhattan.
Activision's Neven Dravinski also credits the cooperation his "Spider-Man 3" team received from the movie's director, studio and stars (most of the film's cast, including, Tobey McGuire, do voice work for the game).
Dravinski says early in the film's production the gamemakers were able to see storyboards and initial special effects shots from some of the "Spider-Man 3" film's more memorable action sequences, including Peter Parker's nighttime aerial battle with the Green Goblin and Spider-Man's subway confrontation with Sandman. (Watch "Spider-Man 3: The Game" merge movie, video game )
Both sequences are featured in the game.
"Thankfully," Dravinski says, "we were able to see a lot of these sequences early and get a sense of what [the filmmakers] were doing."
The new "Spider-Man 3" game includes enhanced powers and new combat moves for Spidey; a bigger and more lifelike rendering of Manhattan; and storylines that diverge from the movie, including Spidey's battles against three elaborate street gangs that threaten to take over parts of New York (think "Spider-Man" meets "The Warriors").
Sure, the "Spider-Man" games can never match the popular action shooters for edge-of-your seat, pulse-pounding thrills (Spidey's gaming appeal has always been more "Wee!" than "Wow!").
But their re-creations of some well-loved movies, and of one well-loved character, may be what set them apart.
Still bleary-eyed after having unveiled the game at "Spider-Man 3" movie premieres in London, England, and Japan, Activision's Dravinski brightens at the memory of the reception the game got from fans. "At every premiere, I was the most popular guy because every kid, and every 40-year-old kid, would be like: 'Oh, my God -- Spider-Man!' "
It's that kind of international enthusiasm that makes for successful video game franchises.

Couple uses MySpace in adoption search

2007-05-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

TAYLOR, Michigan (AP) -- A Michigan couple who spent five years trying to conceive has turned to MySpace.com in search of birth parents so they can adopt a child.
Sherry and Karl Dittmar already have a biological son and two adopted sons, but they also want a little girl.
"Dear birthmother," their MySpace posting begins. "We cannot imagine how difficult making an adoption plan for your child must be. ... Thank you for including our profile in your search for the right family to raise your baby."
The MySpace page had not drawn any offers of a baby by Wednesday morning, although the couple got a lead on a pregnant teen who was considering adoption, Sherry Dittmar told The Associated Press. She said she had received more than 1,700 messages since Monday alone.
"It's crazy," said the 31-year-old homemaker.
It was not clear if others had used the social site, popular primarily with young people, to find pregnant women considering adoption. Other Web sites specifically about adoption also post hopeful adoptive parents' profiles.
On the Web site, the Dittmars urged prospective birth parents to choose them.
"We would be thrilled to welcome a baby girl ... to our home," their posting says. "We hope you feel our family is the right family for your child."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Digg mobbed by its own crowd

2007-05-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- "Letting users control your site can be terrifying at first," said Kevin Rose, the cofounder of popular news-aggregator site, Digg, told Business 2.0 Magazine recently.
But yesterday, Rose learned just how terrifying it can really be. Thousands of users rose up in protest over the site's decision to ban articles and comments that contained a 16-digit code that can be used to crack anti-copying technology on HD-DVDs.
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After users bombarded the site with more articles containing the offending code, Digg decided to yield to the power of the crowd.
Digg founder Kevin Rose announced on his blog that the site had changed its stance and has re-instated the offending articles after reading thousands of comments from angry users complaining about censorship.
Can HP revolutionize the DVD?
"You've made it clear," Rose writes. "You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be." Rose added, "If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."
The trouble started when lawyers for the format's digital rights management technology sent cease and desist letters to Digg, warning the site that that making the code public violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
Digg began removing articles and comments that contained the code, but then the site was met with a furious backlash, as users began flooding the site with stories containing the code.
At one point, the top ten tech stories on Digg were stories that mentioned the banned code, and the torrent of posts temporarily crashed Digg's servers.
Digg at first defended its decision to remove stories containing the code, saying it was only obeying the law. Jay Adelson, the site's CEO, wrote in a posting to users, "Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law." But by the end of the day when user protests reached a fever pitch, Digg decided to reverse course.
As Digg told Business 2.0 last December when he gave readers advice about how to succeed in business: "It's about allowing users to define the site and police the site themselves."
Yesterday, following his own advice turned out to be harder than Rose might have imagined.
Tom McNichol is a senior writer at Business 2.0 Magazine. Read his blog at The Other End of the Telescope.

Google expands personalization with iGoogle

2007-05-02T11:30:00.000-07:00

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) -- Google Inc. is stepping up efforts to allow its users to personalize how they search the Web, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all approach to search it already offers.
Officials told reporters at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters on Monday of moves to allow users to share their own writings, photos, lists and other creative efforts, as well as to give consumers personalized views of the Web through use of their geographical location and search history.
The world's top provider of Web search services is bringing together the more idiosyncratic approach to finding information on the Internet under the umbrella term "iGoogle," the new name for its enhanced personalized home page services.
"We want to personalize the traditional notion of search," Sep Kamvar, lead engineer for the personalization push, told reporters. "I am an eclectic person. But everyone is. We can't go about designing products for the average person."
Reinventing the classic Google.com home page -- with its simple, uncluttered design -- the company is introducing features that range from colorful new Web page designs to helping users publish their own creative content.
Google is borrowing or reinventing ideas that have already become popular features on many social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and Photobucket, where users are encouraged to share their own creative work with friends.
To help users create personalized features on iGoogle, the company introduced "Gadget Maker," which allows any user who knows how to upload a photo and fill out a simple Web form to publish their content without knowing computer coding.
Google introduced seven templates for creating personalized "gadgets" -- publishing features -- that include tools for publishing photos, sending virtual greeting cards or creating personal profiles or lists of favorite songs or films.
"I look at personalized search and I think it is one of the biggest advances we have had in the last couple of years," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president in charge of search and user experience, told a news briefing.
Google's personalized home page, introduced two years ago, offers users the ability to choose from thousands of regularly updating Web features on one page. Tens of millions of users have signed up so far for the personalized approach to search and they are some of Google's most active users, Mayer said.
Last week, Google introduced the ability for users to refer back to their personal Web search history over the past several years. The history feature is optional and only for users who give permission to Google to store their Web surfing activity.
Google officials were asked whether users might be shocked to see how much information Google stores on searches.
"Web history tells the user what we (Google) know about you," Mayer replied. "You actually have full insight into what we know," she said, adding that users can delete any personal information they do not want to be recorded from searches.
Google is moving cautiously to avoid the mistakes of a decade ago, when the first wave of Web portals used personalization features on their sites to help marketers target ads rather than giving the user greater control.
"At some point we will turn our attention to advertising," Mayer said, but stressed that iGoogle will remain non-commercial for the foreseeable future.
Google is also introducing a geographic aspect to search results based on the location that users select as their home location on Google Maps.
Users who accept this option will see Google search results that are tailored to their location, so a search for "pizza" will return links to nearby pizza restaurants, not just the most heavily visited pizza sites across the Web.
The company is also expanding the number of countries and languages in which it will offer personalized search services.
This week, iGoogle personalized Web search will be available in 40 countries and 26 languages, up from 22 nations and 15 languages where personalization is now offered, said Jessica Ewing, the product manager for iGoogle.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Next-generation toys read brain waves

2007-05-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- A convincing twin of Darth Vader stalks the beige cubicles of a Silicon Valley office, complete with ominous black mask, cape and light saber.
But this is no chintzy Halloween costume. It's a prototype, years in the making, of a toy that incorporates brain wave-reading technology.
Behind the mask is a sensor that touches the user's forehead and reads the brain's electrical signals, then sends them to a wireless receiver inside the saber, which lights up when the user is concentrating.
The player maintains focus by channeling thoughts on any fixed mental image, or thinking specifically about keeping the light sword on. When the mind wanders, the wand goes dark.
Engineers at NeuroSky Inc. have big plans for brain wave-reading toys and video games. They say the simple Darth Vader game -- a relatively crude biofeedback device cloaked in gimmicky garb -- portends the coming of more sophisticated devices that could revolutionize the way people play.
Technology from NeuroSky and other startups could make video games more mentally stimulating and realistic. It could even enable players to control video game characters or avatars in virtual worlds with nothing but their thoughts.
Adding biofeedback to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour," for instance, could mean that only those players who muster Zen-like concentration could nail a put. In the popular first-person shooter "Grand Theft Auto," players who become nervous or frightened would have worse aim than those who remain relaxed and focused.
NeuroSky's prototype measures a person's baseline brain-wave activity, including signals that relate to concentration, relaxation and anxiety. The technology ranks performance in each category on a scale of 1 to 100, and the numbers change as a person thinks about relaxing images, focuses intently, or gets kicked, interrupted or otherwise distracted.
The technology is similar to more sensitive, expensive equipment that athletes use to achieve peak performance. Koo Hyoung Lee, a NeuroSky co-founder from South Korea, used biofeedback to improve concentration and relaxation techniques for members of his country's Olympic archery team.
"Most physical games are really mental games," said Lee, also chief technology officer at San Jose-based NeuroSky, a 12-employee company founded in 1999. "You must maintain attention at very high levels to succeed. This technology makes toys and video games more lifelike."
Boosters say toys with even the most basic brain wave-reading technology -- scheduled to debut later this year -- could boost mental focus and help kids with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and mood disorders.
But scientific research is scant. Even if the devices work as promised, some question whether people who use biofeedback devices will be able to replicate their relaxed or focused states in real life, when they're not attached to equipment in front of their television or computer.
Elkhonon Goldberg, clinical professor of neurology at New York University, said the toys might catch on in a society obsessed with optimizing performance -- but he was skeptical they'd reduce the severity of major behavioral disorders.
"These techniques are used usually in clinical contexts. The gaming companies are trying to push the envelope," said Goldberg, author of "The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older." "You can use computers to improve the cognitive abilities, but it's an art."
It's also unclear whether consumers, particularly American kids, want mentally taxing games.
"It's hard to tell whether playing games with biofeedback is more fun -- the company executives say that, but I don't know if I believe them," said Ben Sawyer, director of the Games for Health Project, a division of the Serious Games Initiative. The think tank focuses in part on how to make computer games more educational, not merely pastimes for kids with dexterous thumbs.
The basis of many brain wave-reading games is electroencephalography, or EEG, the measurement of the brain's electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp. EEG has been a mainstay of psychiatry for decades.
An EEG headset in a research hospital may have 100 or more electrodes that attach to the scalp with a conductive gel. It could cost tens of thousands of dollars.
But the price and size of EEG hardware is shrinking. NeuroSky's "dry-active" sensors don't require gel, are the size of a thumbnail, and could be put into a headset that retails for as little as $20, said NeuroSky CEO Stanley Yang.
Yang is secretive about his company's product lineup because of a nondisclosure agreement with the manufacturer. But he said an international toy manufacturer plans to unveil an inexpensive gizmo with an embedded NeuroSky biosensor at the Japan Toy Association's trade show in late June. A U.S. version is scheduled to debut at the American International Fall Toy Show in October.
"Whatever we sell, it will work on 100 percent or almost 100 percent of people out there, no matter what the condition, temperature, indoor or outdoors," Yang said. "We aim for wearable technology that everyone can put on and go without failure, as easy as the iPod."
Researchers at NeuroSky and other startups are also building prototypes of toys that use electromyography (EMG), which records twitches and other muscular movements, and electrooculography (EOG), which measures changes in the retina.
While NeuroSky's headset has one electrode, Emotiv Systems Inc. has developed a gel-free headset with 18 sensors. Besides monitoring basic changes in mood and focus, Emotiv's bulkier headset detects brain waves indicating smiles, blinks, laughter, even conscious thoughts and unconscious emotions. Players could kick or punch their video game opponent -- without a joystick or mouse.
"It fulfills the fantasy of telekinesis," said Tan Le, co-founder and president of San Francisco-based Emotiv.
The 30-person company hopes to begin selling a consumer headset next year, but executives would not speculate on price. A prototype hooks up to gaming consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360.
Le, a 29-year-old Australian woman, said the company decided in 2004 to target gamers because they would generate the most revenue -- but eventually Emotive will build equipment for clinical use. The technology could enable paralyzed people to "move" in virtual realty; people with obsessive-compulsive disorders could measure their anxiety levels, then adjust medication accordingly.
The husband-and-wife team behind CyberLearning Technology LLC took the opposite approach. The San Marcos-based startup targets doctors, therapists and parents of adolescents with autism, impulse control problems and other pervasive developmental disorders.
CyberLearning is already selling the SmartBrain Technologies system for the original PlayStation, PS2 and original Xbox, and it will soon work with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The EEG- and EMG-based biofeedback system costs about $600, not including the game console or video games.
Kids who play the race car video game "Gran Turismo" with the SmartBrain system can only reach maximum speed when they're focused. If attention wanes or players become impulsive or anxious, cars slow to a chug.
CyberLearning has sold more than 1,500 systems since early 2005. The company hopes to reach adolescents already being treated for behavior disorders. But co-founder Lindsay Greco said the budding niche is unpredictable.
"Our biggest struggle is to find the target market," said Greco, who has run treatment programs for children with attention difficulties since the 1980s. "We're finding that parents are using this to improve their own recall and focus. We have executives who use it to improve their memory, even their golf."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google pushes U.S. states to open public records

2007-04-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- By providing free consulting and some software, Google is helping state governments make reams of public records that are now unavailable or hard to find online easily accessible to Web surfers.
The Internet search company hopes to eventually persuade federal agencies to employ the same tools -- an effort that excites advocates of open government but worries some consumer-privacy experts.
Google plans to announce Monday that it has already partnered with four states -- Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia -- to remove technical barriers that had prevented its search engine, as well as those of Microsoft and Yahoo, from accessing tens of thousands of public records dealing with education, real estate, health care and the environment.
These newly available records will not be exclusive to the search engines owned by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than 65 watchdog groups that advocate greater government openness and accountability, lauded Google's efforts. Since the September 11 attack on the United States, many public agencies have tried to restrict certain data from the Internet due to concerns about national security.
Despite the obvious benefits of this Google initiative for those conducting Web searches, privacy advocates said they are worried about unintended consequences, cautioning that some records may contain personal and confidential information that should not be widely available.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said many public health and financial records should not necessarily be widely available because they often contain citizens' Social Security numbers. Such information should be redacted from records regardless of whether they're viewed online or in person at a government office, he said.
Rotenberg also said Google has a "checkered past" on privacy, noting that the company tracks Internet search users who access government data in order to target ads at them. EPIC recently filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission urging it to investigate Google regarding such activities, as well as its proposed acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick.
Officials from states partnering with Google are hopeful that the education and tools provided to them by the Mountain View, California-based company will make it easier for average citizens to navigate agency Web sites.
"Unless you had a master's degree in government administration, you probably wouldn't find the actual information you're looking for," said Chris Cummiskey, Arizona's chief information officer.
J.L. Needham, who manages Google's public-sector content partnerships, said at least 70 percent of visitors to government Web sites get there by using commercial search engines. But too often, he said, Web searches do not turn up the information people are looking for simply because government computer systems aren't programmed in a way that allows commercial search engines to access their databases.
Still, if users can't get the information they're looking for, they blame the search engine, not the government, Needham lamented. The remedy, which Google has been working on with state technology officers for roughly six months, is to create virtual roadmaps by which search engines can find the databases that store public records.
"We have a vested interest in ensuring that the results we provide in every area, including government services, are high quality, authoritative and trustworthy," he said. Google has had discussions with several federal agencies, including the departments of Education and Energy, about making their data easier to access, Needham said.
Not all government officials have responded favorably to Google's effort, Needham said, sometimes because they assume Google is trying to sell them a new service.
California's chief information officer, Clark Kelso, said he is concerned about the consumer-privacy issues raised by this initiative and he has directed all state agencies to redact Social Security numbers and other confidential information from documents that will now be available online.
Time Warner is the parent company for CNN.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Review: Sega serves an ace with 'Virtua Tennis 3'

2007-04-29T06:40:00.000-07:00

What better way to unwind after a tough day at the office than by playing tennis against the likes of Roger Federer, Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova and Andy Roddick?
You can -- virtually speaking, of course -- if you own a Microsoft Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3, and the latest sports title from Sega. In fact, the new "Virtua Tennis 3" looks so realistic that TV passers-by might think it's a televised match.
From the main menu, players can choose from a number of game modes: World Tour, where you can create your own player and begin to compete around the globe to achieve top ranking; Tournament, a five-match singles or three-match doubles game against computer-controlled players; Exhibition, a single match mode for one to four players on the same television; Court Games, a collection of 12 minigames for two to four players (including the fun arcade-style Alien Attack ); and Tennis Academy, a tutorial mode with training tips and challenges.
In the Xbox 360 version, the one played for this review, you also can engage in online matches with up to eight friends in cyberspace (via Xbox Live; $49.99 a year), but this option is curiously absent from the PlayStation 3 version. The PS3 version, however, offers "true" high-definition graphics (1080p support), though the Xbox 360 looks about as good.
Both games offer near photorealistic visuals with incredibly detailed players and courts, authentic "camera" angles and ultra-fluid animation.
Serving, lobbing, slicing and smashing the ball are fairly easy. You use the left analog stick to move the player around the court, anticipating where the ball will land and then pressing a button for the desired shot: A for topspin, B or X for a defensive slice or Y for a lob shot when the opponent is near the net.
After pressing the shot button, use the left stick again to determine the shot's direction. When playing doubles with A.I. (artificial intelligence) players, you can give offensive or defensive instructions to your computer-controlled partner with one of the four "trigger" buttons on the shoulders of the Xbox 360 controller.
The World Tour mode is the meat and potatoes of "Virtua Tennis 3," which lets players first build a male or female pro by selecting from hundreds of options for facial features and color, hair, height and weight, racket color and uniform, and even play style (left- or right-handed, backhand style and posture).
Then it's time to create a name and select a home base by rotating the world and picking a country. After that, it's game time: Travel around the world and take on competitors, view your tour calendar and read incoming e-mail from within the game (with advice from your coach and the odd, snarky remark from rival players).
As you win matches and master your volleys and footwork, you also can earn apparel and equipment and unlock other goodies.
The game contains 25 courts to play on (grass, carpet, clay or hard), in countries such as the United States, France, England, Australia, Argentina, Canada and Japan. It features 20 tennis stars, including Federer, Amelie Mauresmo, Roddick, Tommy Haas, Williams and Sharapova.
There's a lot to love about "Virtua Tennis 3" as Sega has served up a gorgeous and challenging tennis game with plenty of modes and customizability.

Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters

2007-04-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

MERIDIAN, Idaho (AP) -- Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.
Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
"It doesn't take long to get out of the loop with teenagers," said Mountain View High School Principal Aaron Maybon. "They come up with new and creative ways to cheat pretty fast."
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
"A teacher overheard a couple of kids talking about it," Maybon said.
Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said she does not have hard statistics on the phenomenon but said it is not unusual for schools to ban digital media players.
"I think it is becoming a national trend," she said. "We hope that each district will have a policy in place for technology -- it keeps a lot of the problems down."
Using the devices to cheat is hardly a new phenomenon, Kemp said. However, sometimes it takes awhile for teachers and administrators, who come from an older generation, to catch on to the various ways the technology can be used.
Some students use iPod-compatible voice recorders to record test answers in advance and them play them back, 16-year-old Mountain View junior Damir Bazdar said.
Others download crib notes onto the music players and hide them in the "lyrics" text files. Even an audio clip of the old "Schoolhouse Rock" take on how a bill makes it through Congress can come in handy during some American government exams.
Kelsey Nelson, a 17-year-old senior at the school, said she used to listen to music after completing her tests -- something she can no longer do since the ban. Still, she said, the ban has not stopped some students from using the devices.
"You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you're resting your head on your hand," Nelson said. "I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them."
Still, schools around the world are hoping bans will at least stave off some cheaters.
Henry Jones, a teacher at San Gabriel High School in San Gabriel, California, confiscated a student's iPod during a class and found the answers to a test, crib notes and a definition list hidden among the teen's music selections. Schools in Seattle, Washington, have also banned the devices.
The practice is not limited to the United States: St. Mary's College, a high school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, banned cell phones and digital medial players this year, while the University of Tasmania prohibits iPods, electronic dictionaries, CD players and spell-checking devices.
Conversely, Duke University in North Carolina began providing iPods to its students three years ago as part of an experiment to see how the devices could be used to enhance learning.
The music players proved to be invaluable for some courses, including music, engineering and sociology classes, said Tim Dodd, executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity at Duke. At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, he said.
"Trying to fight the technology without a dialogue on values and expectations is a losing battle," Dodd said. "I think there's kind of a backdoor benefit here. As teachers are thinking about how technology has corrupted, they're also thinking about ways it can be used productively."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Social-networking sites link Hispanic youth

2007-04-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Indie rocker Eric Monterrosa checks his ElHood.com Web page at least three times a day, answering fans, surfing for other new Latin artists and keeping in touch with friends from his native Colombia.
ElHood is sort of a bilingual MySpace promoting the latest in Latin music, and for Miami-based Monterrosa, it has become a personal and professional lifeline. It is also the latest in a wave of Hispanic social-networking sites building links across the U.S., Latin America and Spain, all hoping to capture coveted advertising dollars.
"A lot of Latin artists are plugged in," Monterrosa said. "So if you want to find them it's easy. If you go to sites like MySpace, you have to go through all sorts of genres, types of music, and languages."
About 56 percent of Hispanics in the United States use the Internet, compared with 71 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 60 percent of non-Hispanic blacks, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But the number of Hispanics online jumps to 67 percent among 18- to 27-year-olds -- the group most likely to visit social-networking sites and one coveted by advertisers.
The online gathering spots allow users to post profiles and keep in touch with friends, as well as expand their circle of acquaintances. Ads and partnerships that help spread new music keep the sites afloat.
ElHood's easy-to-use tools make it a breeze for first-time surfers -- artists and fans -- who often mix Spanish and English in their profiles.
Other Hispanic sites to pop up in the last year or so include the entertainment-oriented Quepasa.com, the mostly English MiGente.com, and a Spanish version of the global networking site Hi5.com.
This week, News Corp.'s MySpace announced it's jumping into the market with a new Spanish-language site for U.S. Hispanics and a pan-regional site for Latin Americans.
Another site, Vostu.com, presents itself as an alternative to Facebook.com, where students post profiles of themselves visible to a mini-network of their college or high school classmates. A group of mostly Hispanic Harvard business students launched Vostu in February, targeting prep schools and universities across the Spanish-speaking world.
Dan Kafie, the 24-year-old Honduran native who co-founded Vostu, believes his site can compete with the larger ones because it's specially tailored to the needs of a relatively small but affluent group.
"There's similar types of sites, but they don't capture the cultural subtleties," Kafie said. "We thought there's an opportunity."
For example, Facebook has relied mostly on e-mail addresses provided by schools, something academic institutions in Latin America don't necessarily offer. Then there's the language issue. Some larger sites let users perform basic tasks in Spanish, but drill down and the more advanced tools are still in English.
Vostu takes extra security measures, a nod to concerns in countries where kidnappings are common. It limits the initial number of members on each school network to 100 people and requires additional checks for those seeking to join.
Because texting is especially popular among Latin American teens, the site also offers its own integrated version of instant messaging, Kafie said.
But are technology, culture and language enough to draw people away from MySpace, Facebook or Google Inc.'s YouTube?
These days, Hispanic youth in the U.S. are already creating their own communities in mainstream sites. Students in California recently used a section of MySpace to organize walkouts to push for the creation of a federal holiday honoring farmworker advocate Cesar Chavez.
Tamara Barber, a Forrester Research analyst who focuses on Hispanic consumer technology, believes the smaller Hispanic social-networking sites can compete, even with MySpace stepping into the ring.
"I don't think MySpace in Spanish is going to put all these sites out of business," she said. "The Hispanic market online is largely untapped. The fact that MySpace is coming out right now shows that Hispanics are a significant opportunity."
ElHood co-founder, Argentinean-born wunderkind Demien Bellumio is already tapping. The 30-year-old, bicultural, tech-savvy hipster represents exactly the demographic his site targets.
Bellumio talks in rapid-fire -- English or Spanish, you choose -- about his company, Hoodiny Inc., which owns the site. Thanks to a deal with the Warner Latin America label, Hoodiny also offers complete artist catalogues online and develops Web sites for top artists such as Mexico rockers Mana, Miami-based rapper Pitbull and Ricky Martin.
To Bellumio, it makes sense that the social-networking sites would be among the first Internet sites to successfully market to Hispanics.
"Music is a huge part of our culture. And people are looking for a way to come together," Bellumio said. By tracking the demographics of his users for record labels and artists, he also provides important marketing data that other, larger sites do not.
Monterrosa, who performs under the name Monte Rosa, believes there's growing need for services targeting the Latino population in the United States.
"More young people come to this country and don't have a family," Monterrosa said. "They are here to strive or to study and they need contacts. They don't have money to go to shows or clubs, but they can reach out to people who also like the same things," he said. As for those in Latin America, they can connect with music and youth scenes that are difficult to find outside the big cities.
To succeed in the long term, the sites will need to meet the expectations of a new breed of Hispanic Internet users, said Richard Chabran, head of the nonprofit California Community Technology Policy Group, which has studied Hispanic use of the Internet.
"The youth, they want it to be fast. They want it to be hip, and they want to see themselves in it -- but not just themselves," he said. "People who are serious about the Hispanic market realize that if you put up a site in Spanish and it's not done well, they're going to get you."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Jobs: Apple customers not into renting music

2007-04-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs indicated Wednesday he is unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to Apple's wildly popular iTunes online music store.
"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far." (Full story)
His comments come as the company he co-founded gears up for contract renewal negotiations with the major record labels over the next month.
Since Apple launched iTunes in 2003, it has sold more than 2.5 billion songs and now offers increasing numbers of television shows and movies.
Many in the music industry hope iTunes will ultimately start, in effect, renting music online, so record companies can make more money from recurring income. But Jobs said he had seen little consumer demand for that.
"People want to own their music," he said.
Industry executives and analysts told Reuters last week that they expect Apple to push for further concessions from record companies on selling music without copy-protection software known as digital rights management (DRM).
In February, Jobs urged all four major record labels to drop DRM, a move that some observers at the time said was sparked by the pressure Apple faces from European regulators to open the iPod/iTunes family to other technology platforms.
Already Apple, owner of the market-leading iPod digital media player as well as iTunes, has cut an early deal with EMI Group Plc, the third largest-record company, to sell music without copy protection software.
"There are a lot of people in the other music companies who are very intrigued by it," Jobs said of the move to sell songs without copy-protection software. "They're thinking very hard about it right now."
The Apple/EMI deal leaves Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment -- a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann -- and Warner Music Group Corp. in a tough spot, analysts say.
"We've said by the end of this year, over half of the songs we offer on iTunes we believe will be in DRM-free versions," Jobs said. "I think we're going to achieve that."
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Report: Attacks using Microsoft Office

2007-04-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- A rising number of cyberattacks are taking aim at specific individuals at critical government agencies and corporations using e-mails with corrupted Microsoft Office files, according to a published report.
USA Today reported that opening up one of the corrupted files that is attached to an e-mail relinquishes control of the PC without the user's knowledge. The cyberattacks are targeting federal agencies and defense and nuclear contractors, according to the report.

Security firm MessageLabs says it has been intercepting a series of attacks from PCs in Taiwan and China since November, the paper reports. In early 2006, there were one or two such attacks a week, but by March MessageLabs intercepted 716 e-mails carrying corrupted Office files. They were sent to 216 different agencies and companies, according to the paper.
"The attacks are working," Alan Paller, research director at security think tank The SANS Institute, told the paper. "Penetrations are deep and broad."
The Office file attacks are "very targeted and very limited," Mark Miller, director of security response for Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500), told the paper.
Microsoft warns of security holes

How the Wii is creaming the competition

2007-04-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- A year ago it looked like game over for Nintendo's storied console business. The Kyoto-based gamemaker--whose Nintendo Entertainment System ushered in the modern age of videogames--was bleeding market share to newer, more powerful systems from Sony and Microsoft.
Even as the videogame business grew into a $30 billion global industry, Nintendo saw its U.S. hardware sales shrink to almost half of what they had been nearly 20 years earlier.

Today, as anybody within shouting distance of a teenager knows, Nintendo is the comeback kid of the gaming world. Instead of joining Sony (Charts) and Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500) in the arms race to pack their consoles with ever-higher-performance graphics chips (to better attract sophisticated gamers), Nintendo built the Wii--a cuddly, low-priced, motion-controlled machine that broke the market wide open by appealing to everyone from grade-schoolers to grandmas.
Unorthodox? Maybe. Effective? You bet.
The Wii is a pop culture smash of such dimensions that Nintendo still can't make consoles fast enough. Even so, it's outselling Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360--at least since January. (The Xbox had blowout pre-Christmas sales.) And while its competitors lose money on every console they build, expecting to make it back selling high-margin games, the Wii was designed to sell for a profit from the get-go.
Nintendo blows by forecasts
Nintendo's turnaround began five years ago, when the company's top strategists, including CEO Satoru Iwata and legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, zeroed in on two troubling trends: As young consumers started careers and families, they gradually cut back on game time. And as consoles became more powerful, making games for them got more expensive.
Studios thus became more conservative, putting out more editions of Madden NFL and fewer new, inventive games that might actually grow the market.
Iwata and Miyamoto eventually concluded that to gain ground, Nintendo would have to do something about the game controllers, whose basic design had hardly changed since the first NES paddles. Changing how the controllers interacted with the consoles would mean changing how engineers designed a system's electronics and casing and eventually the games themselves.
The first product to test the new strategy was not the Wii but the DS handheld game system, released in 2004. To appeal to a broader audience, Nintendo abandoned the kid-friendly Game Boy name it had given its other popular handhelds, while building in Wi-Fi networking, voice recognition, and two touch-screens.
The idea was not to load the DS with technology but to help draw in new gamers by offering options other than the old button-based controls. Some DS games would work through the tap of a pen and simple voice commands.
The trouble with gee-whiz gadgets
The $150 gadget got off to a tepid start. Until gamers tried it, they tended to be wary. "People thought it was weird," says Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America. "It took about two years for people to warm up to it."
But warm up they did, largely thanks to Miyamoto. The creator of Nintendo's blockbuster franchises--Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda-- offered up Nintendogs, a Tamagotchi-like simulation in which players use every feature of the DS to nurture virtual puppies. The game struck a chord with female gamers in particular, says John Taylor, an analyst at Arcadia Research.
During the first holiday season after Nintendogs hit the market, Nintendo sold 5.6 million DS units--a standout performance that was nearly twice its total for the rest of the year.
Soon after Nintendogs, the company released Brain Age, a game designed for more mature players in which they solve a series of puzzles by filling in answers or speaking phrases aloud. "That further bolstered the market by attracting older boomers and even senior citizens," Taylor says. The DS surge encouraged Nintendo executives, who saw their strategy to grow the market taking shape.
They wouldn't have to wait long to put it to a bigger test. Work had already begun on the console, code-named Revolution, that would become the Wii.
Club Penguin, Webkinz corner the tween market
Nintendo's top strategists knew early on that they wanted to build a machine with a wireless, motion-sensitive controller. But equally important was the chip that would be the brains of the Wii console itself. The more powerful processors that Sony and Microsoft were using would make the screen action look better but would also guzzle more electricity.
What if Nintendo used a cheaper, lower-power chip instead? After all, the DS, with its efficient mobile processor, had already proven that you could create new gaming experiences without the fastest chips. A low-power chip also meant that the machine could be left on overnight to download new content.
It was settled: The design team made the risky decision to build the Wii around a chip similar to the one that powered the GameCube, an earlier Nintendo entry that posted disappointing sales. If the Wii succeeded, it wouldn't be on the strength of breathtaking graphics.
Next, engineers settled on a new approach for the Wii's looks. Just as the DS shunned the Game Boy name to appeal to a broader audience, the Wii would adopt a sleek white exterior instead of the toylike loud colors used on the GameCube. Even CEO Iwata got involved in the design process; at one point he handed engineers a stack of DVD jewel cases and told them the console should not be much bigger.
Why so small? To work with the motion-sensitive wireless controller Nintendo planned, Iwata reasoned, the console would have to sit directly beside the TV. Make it any larger and customers would hesitate to leave it there.
Videogames get real
While the console team worked on the shell, Miyamoto and another team perfected the controller. He was determined that its design be as simple as possible--he insisted on several revisions that enlarged the "A" button to make its importance obvious.
When design work was done, players could arc the Wii remote to throw a football in Madden NFL 07, tilt it to steer off-road vehicles in Excite Truck, and swing it to play sports like Wii tennis and baseball. Market tests suggested that the product was everything its designers hoped: engaging enough that nongamers might give it a go, and simple enough that newbies could quickly get up to speed.
Finally it came time for Nintendo to market the Wii to the world. In addition to its standard TV campaigns targeting schoolkids, the company pumped 70 percent of its U.S. TV budget into programs aimed at 25-to 49-year-olds, says George Harrison, senior vice president for marketing at Nintendo of America.
He even put Wii ads into gray-haired publications like AARP and Reader's Digest. For Nintendo's core users, he took a novel, Web-based approach: "To reach the under-25 audience," he says, "we pushed our message through online and social-networking channels" including MySpace.
But Nintendo's most effective marketing trick was to give away its killer app, Wii Sports, with every $250 console. It was a calculated attempt to speed up the process that brought success to the DS. And because Nintendo makes about $50 in profit on every Wii sold, it can afford to give away a game.
To be sure, not everything has gone according to plan. Although Nintendo shipped more than 3 million Wiis in 2006, supply-and-demand problems have plagued the machine since its launch. Demand continues to outpace supply and may continue to do so until summer.
It's a problem many businesses wouldn't mind having, but it means that Nintendo might be leaving money on the table--something no company can afford to do for long, not even the newly revived Nintendo.
John Gaudiosi is a freelance journalist in Raleigh, N.C.

China aims to further tame Web

2007-04-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country's sprawling Internet of "unhealthy" content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, state television reported.
With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo -- its 24-member inner council -- discussed cleaning up the Internet, state television reported. The meeting promised to place the often unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.
"Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance," said a summary of the meeting read on the news broadcast.
"Internet cultural units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of encouraging development of a system of core socialist values."
The meeting was far from the first time China has sought to rein in the Internet. In January, Hu made a similar call to "purify" it, and there have been many such calls before.
But the announcement indicated that Hu wants ever tighter controls as he braces for a series of political hurdles and seeks to govern a generation of young Chinese for whom Mao Zedong's socialist revolution is a hazy history lesson.
"Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere," the party meeting urged, calling for more Marxist education on the Internet.
The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this year that is set to give Hu another five-year term and open the way for him to choose eventual successors. In 2008, Beijing hosts the Olympic Games, when the party's economic achievements will be on display, along with its political and media controls.
In 2006, China's Internet users grew by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, year on year, to reach 137 million, Chinese authorities have estimated.
That lucrative market has attracted big investors such as Google and Yahoo. They have been criticized by some rights groups for bowing to China's censors.
The one-party government already wields a vast system of filters and censorship that blocks the majority of users from sites offering uncensored opinion and news. But even in China, news of official misdeeds and dissident opinion has been able to travel fast through online bulletin boards and blogs.
Authorities have also launched repeated crackdowns on pornography and salacious content. The latest campaign against porn and "rumor-spreading" was announced earlier this month.
The meeting also announced that schools and sports groups would be encouraged to use healthy competition as a way to shape youth, the report said.
"Sports plays an irreplaceable role in the formation of young people's thinking and character, mental development and aesthetic formation," the meeting declared.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Yahoo sued for informing China on dissidents

2007-04-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- A human-rights group sued Yahoo Wednesday on grounds the U.S. search company assisted China's communist government with torture by revealing information that led to the arrest of dissidents.
The World Organization for Human Rights USA is seeking unspecified damages and wants Yahoo to actively secure the release of any detainees.
The group said businesses that operate abroad need to be more aware of their responsibilities.
"They should not be participating actively in promoting and encouraging major human-rights abuses," said Morton Sklar, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based organization.
Yahoo has acknowledged turning over data on its users at the request of the Chinese government, saying company employees face civil and criminal sanctions if they ignore local laws.
Without commenting directly on the federal lawsuit the human-rights group filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan said such a matter is "better suited for diplomacy than it is in the legal forum."
He said that although company officials are "distressed that citizens in China have been imprisoned for expressing their political view on the Internet," Yahoo plans to keep offering services in China out of a belief the Internet can promote change and transform lives in that country.
Dissidents reluctant to join complaint
The lawsuit cites federal laws that govern torture and other violations of international law. Plaintiffs included jailed dissident Wang Xiaoning and his wife, Yu Ling, who was visiting San Francisco this week as part of the group's campaign.
Sklar said he knew of three other cases, but the dissidents were reluctant to join the complaint for fear of harm to their families living in China. Among those three dissidents is journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced in 2005 to 10 years in jail.
Part of the lawsuit's goal will be to determine how widespread Yahoo's assistance was, Sklar said, "and to stop this practice of U.S. corporations being complicit."
Yahoo rivals Microsoft and Google also have been accused of helping the Chinese government crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets, but only Yahoo has been accused of directly assisting in a dissident's arrest.
Google has offered a censored version of its popular search engine, while Microsoft shut down, at Beijing's request, a popular Chinese blog that touches on sensitive topics such as press freedoms.
Activists, meanwhile, have criticized Cisco Systems for selling computer-networking equipment that could potentially be used to monitor Internet use.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Review: 'Ms. Pac-Man,' 'Sudoku' join iPod games lineup

2007-04-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

Apple's popular iPod mobile media device, with 100 million units sold since 2001, has evolved from a music machine to a digital photo album, video player and podcast platform.
Most recently, fifth-generation iPod owners have begun downloading games from Apple's iTunes Store for $4.99 apiece, ranging from tile and card classics, such as Mahjong and Texas Hold 'Em, to newer puzzle favorites Tetris and Bejeweled.
All family-friendly games are controlled using the iPod scroll wheel and are viewed on the iPod's 2.5-inch color screen. You can listen to music while playing a game.
Two new titles have just been added to the lineup -- "Ms. Pac-Man" and "EA Sudoku" -- bringing the total number of games to an even dozen.
Here's a look at each offering:
'EA Sudoku'
Now you can take all the fun of this wildly popular number puzzle with you wherever you go. If you haven't yet tried your hand at a game of Sudoku, the goal is to fill in the blank squares on a 9-by-9 grid with numbers -- but the catch is that each row and column must contain numbers 1 though 9, with no repeats.
What's more, the nine 3-by-3 boxes that make up the grid must also contain numbers 1 through 9. Sudoku puzzles start with some numbers in the grid so you can begin the deduction process to fill in the rest.
In "EA Sudoku" for the iPod, users turn the scroll wheel around to select a spot on the grid by pressing the middle button, before turning the wheel again to select a number from 1 through 9. If you're not sure which number goes in this square you can "pencil" in possible answers, such as a 6 or 7, which shows up in a smaller font.
"EA Sudoku," which offers a tranquil Japanese Zen garden theme, lets you choose the level of difficulty, including optional tutorial and help. It also lets players select how to navigate around the grid (scrolling or four-way touch, or both) and provides stats such as how long it takes to finish the game and total number of grids completed.
As an interesting feature, players also can enter a Sudoku puzzle from a publication in the Newspaper Mode to play on the iPod or help solve the puzzle with the computer's assistance.
'Ms. Pac-Man'
What better way to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ms. Pac-Man, which first debuted in noisy arcades in 1982, than by having the game playable on your iPod?
You probably remember how to play "Ms. Pac-Man" -- move the hungry heroine around a maze so that she can eat all the dots to complete the level, but she must avoid the four roaming ghosts who are after her. If Ms. Pac-Man devours one of the four power pellets per level, the chase is temporarily reversed so she can eat the ghosts to gain points.
Complete with retro graphics, sound effects and the cute "coffee break" animations that reward you with between-level story sequences, "Ms. Pac-Man" is a somewhat faithful reproduction of the arcade hit -- down to the four unique maze designs and 256 levels. Players can choose to play in Original, Normal or Easy mode, select which stage they'd like to start at or learn the rules and controls with the optional tutorial.
But a word of warning: It may take a while to get used to the iPod scroll wheel to move the ghost-chomping Ms. Pac-Man around. You must gently tap the iPod wheel in one of four directions to move Ms. Pac-Man around -- and not press the buttons down, or else the game pauses to return to the menu screen.

Study: Teens protecting their profiles

2007-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- Teens generally don't think twice about including their first names and photos on their personal online profiles, but most refrain from using full names or making their profiles fully public, a new survey finds.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported Wednesday that two-thirds of teens with profiles on blogs or social-networking sites have restricted access to their profiles in some fashion, such as by requiring passwords or making them available only to friends on an approved list.
The study comes amid growing concerns about online predators and other dangers on popular online hangouts like News Corp.'s MySpace and Facebook, which encourage their youth-oriented visitors to expand their circles of friends through messaging tools and personal profile pages.
Social-networking sites have responded by offering users more controls over how much they make public and warning them about revealing too much.
According to Pew, fewer than a third of teens with profiles use their last names, and a similar number include their e-mail addresses. Only 2 percent list their cell phone numbers.
But 79 percent have included photos of themselves, with girls more likely to do so. Eighty-two percent use their first names, and half identify their schools.
"Teens are manifesting the tension between wanting to keep themselves safe online and wanting to share themselves with their friends and potentially make new ones," said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist at Pew. "Teens, particularly girls and younger teens, have gotten the message about protecting themselves on social networks, but the fun of these networks is the ability to share yourself with others on them."
Dashiell Feiler, a 16-year-old high school junior, said he keeps his profiles open, but uses at most his first name and last initial. He said people who find him tend to be friends anyway, but he left off his full name as a precaution.
"I just thought I didn't want anybody to figure out where I live," he said.
According to Pew, 45 percent of online teens do not have profiles at all, a figure that contradicts widespread perceptions that the nation's youths are continually on MySpace. Lenhart said younger teens, in particular, tend to stay away, some because they fail to meet a site's minimum age requirements.
Most of the teens with profiles say they use the sites to stay in touch with existing friends. Only half of teens with social-networking profiles say they use the sites to make new friends.
A third of teens online say they have been contacted by strangers, not necessarily through social-networking sites. Of those, 21 percent say they responded to learn more about that person, and 23 percent say they felt scared or uncomfortable by the encounter.
The telephone study of 935 American youths, ages 12 to 17, and their parents was conducted October 23 to November 19 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Virtual vines grow on world wine web

2007-04-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- David Dain Smith lives in Missouri, but his California winery is just a click away, waiting to spring to life in the dim glow of his computer screen.
Smith is making wine through Crushpad, a winery where the grapes are real but the experience is as virtual as members want it to be with e-mail updates, live chat and Web cams.
For Smith, a 49-year-old microbiologist working in pharmaceutical sales, the dream of making wine seemed like it would have to wait until retirement.
"Do you have $3 million sitting around? Well, I don't," Smith said.
He's now making Dain wines, to some acclaim, while keeping his day job.
At $5,000 to $10,000 to make the minimum one barrel a year, Crushpad costs more than stomping grapes in a garage. But it's far from the financial plunge of setting up a winery.
The meeting of technology and enology has democratized other areas as well, New York musician Lane Steinberg said.
Years ago, wine criticism was for a privileged few. Today, Steinberg is one of scores of keyboard connoisseurs who rate wines on his Red Wine Haiku Review Web site, which rates wine by poetry. ("Berry jangle jumps/Through a hoop of a sunrise/A swinger's breakfast" was his description of one pinot noir.)
San Francisco-based Crushpad was started by businessman Michael Brill after he noticed that neighbors were fascinated by the vines he planted in his backyard and realized there was a market ready to be tapped.
Members sign up to make at least one barrel of wine per year (300 75- milliliter bottles) and decide what style of wine they want and what grapes they want to buy from numerous suppliers available.
Winery staff keep their virtual vintners up to date with e-mails and Web postings. When the fruit comes in, Web cams show the crush, complete with live chat so viewers can question the workers, who respond to computers equipped with voice-recognition software.
Further along in the process, members can participate in blending and bottling decisions and design their own labels.
Staff, including Crushpad winemaker Mike Zitzlaff, are there to make sure enthusiasm doesn't triumph over experience.
"The client is never wrong, but there are varying degrees of wrongness," he explained.
Interaction isn't all by Internet. Several members take vacation time to take part in key events, such as bottling, or to just hang out.
Smith is one of those who visits often, but when he can't get out to California, "the Web cam is pretty neat."
He's got about 500 cases of wine in barrel this year and has even received a 92 (out of 100) rating from influential wine critic Robert Parker.
On the opposite side of the world, Australian winemaker Stuart Bourne sees online wine as a way to reach a big audience and shake some of the stuffing out of traditional venues in the process.
"Wine is not to be sat on a table and stared at," he said.
Bourne, winemaker at the Barossa Valley Estate winery in South Australia, recently held an online tasting in which tasters had been sent samples ahead of time so they could sniff and sip along.
Tasting at the computer just doesn't have the romance of cozying up to a tasting room bar, so Bourne took a deliberately informal approach.
When it came time to pour, he cheerfully told his unseen guests, "Why don't we have a bit of a snort?" -- which is something you almost never hear in Napa -- before going on to discuss the winery's 2003 E&E Black Pepper shiraz.
Live chat meant he could answer questions directly.
"It was an amazing experience to know that you can be sitting in Australia in front of a camera and know that around the world there's a whole lot of other people sitting there watching and participating with you," he said.
Still, having to be on camera at 4 a.m. to be in sync with tasters in the United Kingdom and North America led to a less than palatable pairing: toothpaste and wine.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Internet radio broadcasters dealt setback

2007-04-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists.
A broad group of public and private broadcasters, including radio stations, small startup companies, National Public Radio and major online sites like Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, had objected to the new royalties set March 2, saying they would force a drastic cutback in services that are now enjoyed by some 50 million people. (Time Warner is also the parent company of CNN.)
In the latest ruling, the Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions for rehearing and also declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the new royalties will have to be collected.
However, they did grant leniency on one point, allowing the webcasters to calculate fees by average listening hours, as they had been, as opposed to the new system of charging a royalty each time every song is heard by an online listener. That exemption counts for last year and this year. After that, the new per-song, per-listener fee structure goes into effect.
Many webcasters say the sharply higher royalty fees will put them out of business. Talk of the ruling dominated a one-day meeting of Internet radio broadcasters being held in Las Vegas alongside the annual conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, a group representing local radio and TV stations.
N. Mark Lam, the CEO of Live365 Inc., a privately held company that aggregates audio streams from thousands of radio stations and other small webcasters, said that under the new royalty rules, "there is no industry."
Lam, who joined the venture capital-backed company about two years ago, said Live365 just barely broke even last year and had about 4.5 million unique listeners every month.
Also on Monday, several Internet radio broadcasters announced a campaign to raise awareness of the issue and encourage listeners to write to their representatives in Congress.
Small broadcasters have received relief from Congress in the past, benefiting from a law passed five years ago that gave them a break on royalty rates. The legislation allowed them to pay about 12 percent of their revenues instead of having to calculate per-song, per-hour rates like larger companies had to.
David Oxenford, a lawyer representing several webcasters, said the next step was likely an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but he noted that process could take at least a year. Meanwhile, he said, the prospects of successfully getting a court to block the decision of the royalty board judges is slim.
SoundExchange, a nonprofit group that collects the online royalties from webcasters and distributes them to record labels and artists, hailed the ruling in a statement and said it looked forward to working with Internet radio companies in order to ensure that the industry succeeds.
Jonathan Potter, the head of the Digital Media Association, which represents several large webcasters including Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN network, said his group was not currently in talks with SoundExchange but may be soon. He said his group and other webcasters would be turning to Congress, where he said he sees "a lot of legislative support."
The royalties in question only cover digital transmissions of music, and don't apply to terrestrial radio stations, as traditional radio play is seen as a benefit for record labels by promoting sales of recorded music. Both digital broadcasters and regular radio stations pay a separate royalty to the publishers and composers of music.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google, Clear Channel In Pact To Sell Radio Ads

2007-04-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- In Google Inc.'s (GOOG) latest foray into traditional advertising, the Internet giant will begin selling radio commercials on stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. (CCU), the country's largest radio chain.
Under a multi-year partnership to be announced Monday, Clear Channel will set aside about 5% of the ad spots on more than 675 radio stations for Google to sell through its online-purchasing system.
The deal for the first time gives Google access to prime radio air time and popular major-market stations, marking an important step in Google's inroads into the $20 billion radio business. Beyond radio, the relationship also could be Google's most significant opportunity to date in its elusive efforts to extend online supremacy into traditional advertising markets.
For Clear Channel, the pact has the potential to tap thousands of Google's Internet ad partners who don't buy commercial airtime on radio. The relationship could be an important revenue source as traditional ad sales for over-the-air broadcasts stagnates amid competition for listener attention and marketing budgets.
The Google pact also adds a twist to Clear Channel's beleaguered private- equity buyout. The $19 billion sale is scheduled for a shareholder vote Thursday, giving Clear Channel investors just days to assess how the new relationship might affect the radio company's prospects.
Tens of thousands of advertisers already use Google's online-auction system to price, target and purchase ad sales across the Web, and the company has made no secret of its ambition to become a hub for advertising in newspapers, magazines, radio and television. Google last year started tests of ad sales on radio and in newspapers, and recently Google agreed to sell TV ad spots through satellite provider EchoStar Communications Corp. (DISH).
Early efforts have been mixed. Google has signed on prominent partners like the New York Times Co. (NYT) and has drawn new advertisers to existing media. Deals have been slow to deepen, however, as many media players remain unsure skeptical about Google's promises of driving up advertising rates and wary of a partner perceived to be eroding traditional media's foothold in advertising spending.
In one of Google's first offline targets, Google last December began a test program to create, target and sell radio ads using an automated-advertising platform. To supporters, Google has brought simplified ordering, lower costs and transparency to the arcane and clubby world of radio advertising.
So far, though, Google has been able to offer advertisers spots on roughly 900 of the 12,000 U.S. stations - too few to be a major player in radio sales. Most large radio companies, reluctant to undercut their own ad sales efforts or cede control over how advertising time is sold on their stations, also has given Google most "remnant" inventory, or commercial spots sold at the last minute at relatively low prices.
The deal with Clear Channel expands Google's push into radio. It nearly doubles the number of stations on which Google can sell ads, even as the radio giant is sheds about 450 of its current 1,100 radio stations. And, unlike Google's ongoing partnerships with radio chains such as Emmis Communications Corp. (EMMS), Clear Channel also has opened up ad slots at all times of day and across its stations in the country's biggest markets, including powerhouses such as KIIS-FM in Los Angeles and Z-100 in New York.
Drew Hilles, national director of audio sales for Google, acknowledged that media companies have been cautious about Google's "ambiguous" plans to spread into traditional advertising. He said, though, that the Mountain View, Calif., company wants to become a cherished supporter for media companies to draw more advertisers, and at the same time, provide Google's existing ad partners more venues to market their businesses. Hilles said he hopes eventually to open the Clear Channel partnership to Google's entire advertising base.
Clear Channel may be making a bigger leap than other radio companies, but it is still proceeding cautiously. The San Antonio company agreed to partner with Google only after several months of negotiations, and Clear Channel retains a broad measure of control over its ad sales. Google will focus primarily on advertisers who are new to radio, while Clear Channel's existing sales forces will maintain responsibility for the company's relationships with its most lucrative advertisers and complex ad packages.
Even with the tentative scope of the deal, John Hogan, president and chief executive of Clear Channel's radio operations, said he believes Google is key to broadening the advertiser base for radio, which should spur ad demand and in turn higher prices for commercials in an industry where ad rates largely have been stagnant.
"This is an opportunity to bring what we hope is a significant number of new advertisers to Clear Channel radio," Hogan said. "We feel we're putting the hottest sales organization in media today to work selling our radio stations."
Hogan is expected to join Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt Monday at a National Association of Broadcasters conference to announce the partnership. The companies expect Google-brokered ad sales to start at the end of June.
Clear Channel and Google declined to detail financial terms of their relationship, including how they would split revenue from ads Google sells. Radio industry executives have said Google expects to keep half the revenue from its brokered radio ads, though Clear Channel likely received a more favorable split.
Once the program is running, advertisers will bid for 30-second commercial spots through Google's online ad-buying system, which will be made compatible with Clear Channel's advertising-sales technology. Bidders can design a commercial and then specify the time of day a commercial will air, the station format and part of the country where the ad will appear - all without a sales representative. Advertisers will be able to choose whether they want ads to air in New York or Cincinnati, for example, but won't be able to pick individual radio stations for their spots.
If the radio advertising sales prove successful, Clear Channel eventually could give Google a greater slice of its commercial inventory.
For Clear Channel, the Google deal could introduce new advertising revenue at a time when growth in the industry overall is flat or slow as a tide of entertainment and information options keep consumers from tuning into radio as much as they used to.
At Clear Channel, which derives roughly half its revenue from radio and the other half from billboard advertising, radio revenue grew 6% last year, outpacing the industry as the company cut back on the amount of commercial time to push up ad rates.
The drain on broadcasting revenue and the public market's dissatisfaction with the radio industry were reasons the San Antonio-based company agreed to a $19- billion buyout last November from Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners L.P.
In recent months, key Clear Channel shareholders have derided the price of $ 37.60 a share as too low. For their part, the private-equity buyers have resisted raising the price because of concerns about the prospects of the radio industry.
It remains to be seen if the pact with Google can be a significant growth catalyst for Clear Channel's radio business, but the timing of the partnership could complicate the shareholder vote on the company's sale, which seems likely to be defeated at current terms. Hogan, though, said the Google deal was part of "business as usual" at the radio giant. "This is a partnership that has been in the work for a lot longer than the potential merger has been in the works," he said.
-By Shira Ovide, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5287; shira.ovide@dowjones.com

Robotic trio wins 'Super Bowl of Smarts'

2007-04-16T00:45:00.000-07:00

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- After six weeks of strategy and sweat, a coalition of high school teams from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Nevada took the top prize at the FIRST Robotics competition, otherwise known as the "Superbowl of Smarts."
Bobcat Robotics from South Windsor, Connecticut, Highrollers from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Gompei and the HERD from Worcester, Massachusetts, won before thousands of screaming high-school participants.
"It was absolutely amazing. We had our ups and downs, but for the most part our robot performed flawlessly," said Colin Roddy of the Worcester team.
"We didn't expect to win at first, but it got better as the matches progressed," said Christopher Jelly from the Bobcat Robotics team.
A good arm is golden for a robot as well as a baseball pitcher.
"We have our arm that we were able to score pretty quickly with, to pick up the inner tubes off the ground," said Alex Sambvani of the Highrollers.
Building a good machine is not enough to make it to the final rounds. Team members had to scout other players to come up with a three-team coalition where there is strength in offense, defense and technique.
These young people had six weeks to perfect their machines. And they had the enthusiasm of any athletic competition. From tie-dyed shirts to human hair dyed in school colors, competitors from 23 countries showed that math, science and brains can provide a lot of excitement. (Watch why building robots is only part of the experience )
The students' creations are made with the same basic parts. Students must construct robots that can complete simple, and sometimes goofy, tasks -- such as shooting balls or stacking inner tubes.
Inventor Dean Kamen, best known as creator of the Segway transporter, began the competition in 1989 to rev up interest in math and science. "To sit passively in a classroom is a 19th-century format," Kamen said.
Ryan Gula of Milton High School in Alpharetta, Georgia, was hooked on the challenge after his first robotics club meeting.
"It's kind of like a puzzle that you have to put together, and you have to work with each group, to make sure everything fits together. And there's a lot of communication that way," said Gula, whose team made it to the final rounds of the larger FIRST robots.
Milton High adviser Suzy Crowe, a self-described geek and math teacher, said, "I don't think a lot of people think of science and technology as creative. There's nothing more creative."
Whether it is computer programming, wiring a motor or scouting rivals to develop strategy, students said the skills they develop often go beyond the contest. Clearly, the event has piqued the interest of major sponsors such as NASA, which will broadcast webcasts of the competitions.
"People look at robotics and think, yeah, it's just a big technology thing, and if you don't go into engineering, you're never going to use the stuff. Before I joined the club, I didn't know how to use a power drill," Milton senior Bryce Taylor said.
"It's just a simple skill that it's nice to know how to do it. I've learned a lot of stuff like that, that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life even if I don't go into something like engineering."
In its 18 years, FIRST has aimed at getting young women interested in technology careers. For Milton freshman Erin McPherson, it's working.
"When I came into eighth grade, I was more language-arts focused, and I thought that was what I wanted to do. I really didn't think I was very good at math or science, and then I started doing this, and pretty much my focus has shifted entirely," she said.
Now, she said, "I want to go to Georgia Tech and probably major in computer science or something like that."
Milton sophomore Stephanie Kosturik concentrated on checking out the competition during the preliminary battles.
"We sit in stands and take notes about all the groups, about whether they are offensive or defensive, what their strengths and weaknesses are," she said. "So if we get to a final in our competition and we can choose an alliance, we know who to choose that will work with us so we can win."
Robotics team members from Atlanta's Carver School of Technology set up a square playing field with goals at each corner. Their smaller Vex robot earned points by scooping up softballs and shooting them into goals.
In his first year with the robotics club, Thomas Hayes is captain of the "Hypnobots" team. A few days before the finals, he and other team members were doing some final tweaking.
"I want to be an engineer or a game designer, so this year I found out they were starting a robotics team," he said. "I was very excited. This is a very good opportunity for me to get 'hands on' and also see my creations at work."
It's the first year of coaching for Carver math teacher Regene Logan and biology teacher Kelsey Holec.
"They convinced me with their smiles and their stories from last year and just their dedication and their excitement about robotics," Holec said.
Figuring out glitches has led to some long nights and a real passion to build a better bot.
"They are taking engineering to a new level, " Logan said. "If they see something wrong, they take the initiative. They don't wait for someone to tell them to do something different."
Hayes said that not finishing first at one tournament turned out to be one of the best things that happened to the team.
"Our previous tournament, we came in second place. If we had won first, we would have sat down and said, 'Oh, our robot kicks butt, there's nothing else for us to do.' So second place made us sit down and realize what really was wrong and how to make a better robot," Hayes said.
One "Hypnobots" driver, team member Akanimo Effang, said he looked forward to meeting competitors from around the world as much as the competition itself
"Even though we feel that our robot is very efficient when scoring, and very maneuverable, our opponents are from around the world," Effang said. "We don't know what to expect."

Google Earth maps out Darfur atrocities

2007-04-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- If you Google the word Darfur, you will find about 13 million references to the atrocities in the western Darfur region of Sudan -- what the United States has said is this century's first genocide.
As of today, when the 200 million users of Google Earth log onto the site, they will be able to view the horrific details of what's happening in Darfur for themselves.
In an effort to bring more attention to the ongoing crisis in Darfur, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has teamed up with Google's mapping service literally to map out the carnage in the Darfur region.
Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million more have been displaced since the conflict flared in 2003, when rebels took up arms against the central Sudanese government.
The new initiative, called "Crisis in Darfur," enables Google Earth users to visualize the details in the region, including the destruction of villages and the location of displaced persons in refugee camps. (Interactive: See how the new technology works)
Elliot Schrage, Google's vice president of global communications and public affairs, joined museum director Sara J. Bloomfield to make the official announcement about the new feature.
"At Google, we believe technology can be a catalyst for education and action," Schrage said. " 'Crisis in Darfur' will enable Google Earth users to visualize and learn about the destruction in Darfur as never before and join the museum's efforts in responding to this continuing international catastrophe."
The Google Earth mapping service combines 3-D satellite imagery, aerial and ground-level maps and the power of Google, one of the Internet's most widely used search engines, to make the world's geographic information user friendly. Since its inception in June 2005, nearly 200 million people have downloaded the free program.
Using the high-resolution imagery of Google Earth, users will be able to zoom into the Darfur region for a better understanding of the scope of the destruction. (Interactive: See where Darfur is located)
More than 1,600 damaged and destroyed villages will be visible, as will the remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by the Janjaweed militia and Sudanese forces.
The Holocaust museum also has compiled a collection of photos, data and eyewitness testimony from its archives and number of sources, including the U.S. State Department, nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations and individual photographers. That material also will be available when Google Earth users visit the Darfur site.
The "Crisis in Darfur" initiative is the first of what is expected to be several collaborations between the museum and Google Earth to highlight the dangers of genocide around the world.
The museum also announced Tuesday the creation of a mapping project with Google Earth on the Holocaust, when Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II.
That project will use Google Earth to map key Holocaust sites, such as Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka, Warsaw and Lodz with historic content from its collections to illustrate the enormous scope and impact of the Holocaust. Each place links to a featured article with related historical photographs, testimony clips, maps, artifacts and film footage.
"Educating today's generation about the atrocities of the past and present can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth," Bloomfield said.
"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most."

First Amendment extends to MySpace, court says

2007-04-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (AP) -- A judge violated a juvenile's free-speech rights when he placed her on probation for posting an expletive-laden entry on MySpace criticizing a school principal, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled.
The three-judge panel on Monday ordered the Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against the girl, referred to only as A.B. in court records.
"While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech," Judge Patricia Riley wrote in the 10-page opinion.
In February 2006, Greencastle Middle School Principal Shawn Gobert discovered a Web page on MySpace purportedly created by him. A.B., who did not create the page, made derogatory postings on it concerning the school's policy on body piercings.
The state filed a delinquency petition in March alleging that A.B.'s acts would have been harassment, identity deception and identity theft if committed by an adult. The juvenile court dropped most of the charges but in June found A.B. to be a delinquent child and placed her on nine months of probation. The judge ruled the comments were obscene.
A.B. appealed, arguing that her comments were protected political speech under both the state and federal constitutions because they dealt with school policy.
The Court of Appeals found that the comments were protected and that the juvenile court had unconstitutionally restricted her right of free expression.
There was no number for Shawn Gobert in publishing phone listings. The Associated Press left a message seeking comment Monday at Greencastle Middle School.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

New 3-D movies more than a gimmick

2007-04-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- By the end of the decade, Darth Vader could be rattling sabers with his enemies above the heads of moviegoers, and Buzz Lightyear could be flying off the screen on his way to infinity and beyond.
A growing number of blockbuster, live-action films and animated movies are expected to be offered in 3-D in the next few years, as thousands of theaters around the country are outfitted with the special projectors and screens needed to show the films.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation SKG, is so gung-ho about 3-D that he has said his studio might start exclusively releasing movies in the format as early as 2009 with its "Monsters vs. Aliens" movie.
"For Memorial Day weekend 2009, I would like to see 3,800 locations and 6,000 screens that we can put our movie on. And if they are there, then we will be exclusive in 3-D," Katzenberg said at a recent investors conference.
So far, moviegoers have reacted positively to the few 3-D films that have been released in recent years.
"Meet the Robinsons" from The Walt Disney Co. debuted March 30, earning $25.1 million in its opening weekend.
More than a quarter of that revenue came from the 581 screens across the country that showed the film in 3-D, the company said. Those moviegoers were even willing to pay a few extra bucks to don special glasses and watch characters leave the screen.
A number of high-profile filmmakers have 3-D project in the works, including Peter Jackson, Robert Zemeckis and James Cameron.
Walt Disney Co. has released 3-D versions of three animated films and recently signed a deal with Zemeckis to produce more. The studio is also rumored to be making the sequel "Toy Story 3" in 3-D, a report the studio declined to confirm.
These days, 3-D films are more than just a gimmick.
For theaters owners and studios, the technology could be a lifesaver, luring people back to multiplexes for an experience that cannot be matched by sophisticated home theater systems or stolen by pirates with hidden camcorders.
The theater industry is also battling competition from video games and other alternative entertainment along with Internet downloads that will soon deliver high-definition films directly to homes.
Film exhibition companies looking to protect their business believe 3-D will boost revenue. Some industry executives think theaters can add as much as 50 percent to the cost of a ticket for a 3-D feature.
"If we can sell 10 percent to 15 percent of our tickets annually at a higher price point, that's a real mover of the needle," Mike Campbell, chief executive of Regal Entertainment Group, the nation's largest theater chain, said at the investors conference.
About 700 theaters across the country are now outfitted with 3-D technology, with thousands of others moving to spend the $17,000 needed to install the equipment.
Moviemakers, meanwhile, estimate that making a movie in 3-D can add as much as $15 million to the cost.
Today's 3-D technology is far more advanced than that used in the 1950s, the heyday of gimmicky 3-D films.
Previous 3-D systems projected two images on the movie screen, one for each eye. That required the use of red and blue lenses or even glasses with mechanized shutters that opened and closed quickly to separate the images.
With newer systems, moviegoers still need to don special glasses but not the cheap cardboard variety with blue and red lenses.
Instead, special polarized lenses will separate the stereo images projected on specially coated screens.
RealD, a Beverly Hills company, is the leader in modern 3-D with systems that will be operating on about 1,000 screens by the end of the year.
Its technology uses a special movie screen painted with a silver oxide to direct more light back to the viewer instead of scattering wavelengths the way normal screens do.
The theaters also use digital projectors that show movies stored in bits on a computer hard disk rather than traditional film.
Dolby Laboratories Inc. recently unveiled plans to market its own 3-D technology that would work with existing movie screens.
"The momentum is gathering, and I think this is probably the most exciting thing from a filmmaking and filmgoing experience that has happened in my time in the business," Katzenberg said. "There's nothing more compelling than this."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google gag: Free Internet through your toilet

2007-04-08T18:12:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Presiding over a company with a market value of $143 billion apparently gives Silicon Valley's most famous billionaires a good sense of humor -- and a case of corporate potty mouth.
Senior executives at Google Inc. launched their annual April Fools' Day prank Sunday, posting a link on the company's home page to a site offering consumers free high-speed wireless Internet through their home plumbing systems.
Code-named "Dark Porcelain," Google said its "Toilet Internet Service Provider" (TiSP) works with Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows Vista operating system. But sorry -- septic tanks are incompatible with the system's requirements.
The gag included a mock press release quoting Google co-founder and president Larry Page, a step-by-step online installation manual, and a scatological selection of Frequently Asked Questions. On some Google sites, the company's official logo -- a multicolored "Google" that changes according to the season and on holidays -- substituted a commode for the second "g."
"There's actually a thriving little underground community that's been studying this exact solution for a long time," Page said in the facetious statement. "And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and -- splat -- right onto your PC."
Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, called TiSP a "breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."
TiSP is the latest April Fools joke at the Mountain View, California-based company, where hijinks pervade cubicles all year long. In blogs, Google employees joke about the recent injection of green dye into milk in the cafeteria, while another talks about zany underlings filling the vice president of engineering's office with sand.
Eric Raymond, a software developer in Malvern, Pa., and author of the New Hacker's Dictionary, said TiSP nailed several important tenets of hacker humor.
The concept of free wireless access parallels a legitimate, four-year deal between Google and EarthLink Inc. to provide free wireless Internet service throughout San Francisco starting in early 2008.
As part of the spoof, Google said TiSP would be offered in three speeds: Trickle, The No. 2, and Royal Flush. That's a reference to "Net Neutrality," a big political battle over tiered pricing that Google and other e-commerce companies are waging in Congress against cable and telephone companies.
"The leitmotif of hacker humor is precise reasoning from utterly bizarre premises, and once you're in that groove, you're absolutely fearless about going deeper," Raymond said. "We also have a tendency to deliberately zigzag between highly intellectual humor and utter slapstick. The more zigzags you can manage in a single spoof, the funnier it is."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Turkey to block 'insulting' Web sites

2007-04-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- A parliamentary commission approved a proposal Thursday allowing Turkey to block Web sites that are deemed insulting to the founder of modern Turkey, weeks after a Turkish court temporarily barred access to YouTube.
Parliament plans to vote on the proposal, though a date was not announced. The proposal indicates the discomfort that many Turks feel about Western-style freedom of expression, even though Turkey has been implementing widespread reforms in its bid to join the European Union.
On Thursday, lawmakers in the commission also debated whether the proposal should be widened to allow the Turkish Telecommunications Board to block access to any sites that question the principles of the Turkish secular system or the unity of the Turkish state -- a reference to Web sites with information on Kurdish rebels in Turkey.
It is illegal in Turkey to talk of breaking up the state or to insult Ataturk, the revered founder of modern Turkey whose image graces every denomination of currency and whose portrait hangs in nearly all government offices.
Ataturk is held to be responsible for creating a secular republic from the crumbling, Islamic Ottoman Empire.
Several prominent Turkish journalists and writers, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, have been tried for allegedly insulting Ataturk or for the crime of insulting "Turkishness."
European calls for free speech have angered some nationalist Turks, who view the recommendations as interference in their internal affairs.
Last month, Turkey blocked access to the popular video-sharing site YouTube after a complaint that some videos insulted Ataturk. The ban was lifted two days later.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Tech-savvy marathons keep racers connected with fans

2007-04-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Brendan Burke's cell phone was beeping within minutes of the start of his wife's marathon in San Diego. A text message arrived with her latest time as she crossed the six timing mats around the course.
It didn't matter that he was across the country at home in New Jersey.
Pushing to make the 26.2-mile races more friendly to fans and runners alike, marathon officials are increasingly offering free online tools to help spectators and loved ones back home track runners along courses that can span entire cities.
"At each point I could see what her time was and I would figure out her pace to see how she was feeling," Burke, 33, said of his wife's debut marathon in 2005. "It really gave me a sense that I was there running with her."
The systems aren't flawless, but they do help fans monitor runners via a Web site, a cell phone text message or e-mail.
No longer must family and friends take their best guesses and wait. And wait. And wait.
During the April 16 Boston Marathon, for instance, the curious can use their computers to check on the progress of up to five runners at a time. Last year, 10,232 Boston marathon runners, or about half, signed up for alerts, up from 9,836 in 2005.
In Chicago, meanwhile, fans can stop by participating Starbucks coffeehouses along the course and ask marathon volunteers with laptops to look up runners on the spot.
Runners are provided with radio-frequency identification chips that attach to shoelaces. As they cross large rubber mats along the course, a radio transmitter inside the chip sends a unique ID number to an antenna, which routes the information to a central database.
From there, depending on which options a runner has chosen, the information is sent to the cell phone or e-mail address on file. Elapsed time: two to four seconds.
Some races put restrictions on who can receive alerts but not on tracking runners online.
As Nadine Valco ran through the streets of New York last fall, her fan base followed her progress closely at home in Columbus, Ohio.
"My friends and family and co-workers were really encouraging with my training, but obviously with the expense and time of getting to New York, they couldn't be there," said Valco, who has run seven marathons. "But they could say, 'Cool, there she is at 5K."'
New York started using the chips seven years ago to track its runners for timing and online viewing of an athlete's splits. Today, transmitters send automatic updates to the address of your choice -- whether on a computer, cell phone or BlackBerry -- from 11 points along the course.
"We need to make our events as attractive, as exciting as possible to continue to meet the demands of the marketplace," said Richard Finn, New York City Marathon spokesman. "You've always got to keep on freshening up your event."
A series of triathlons sponsored by consulting firm Accenture sends automated voice updates from several points to spectators signed up for alerts. Last year, the marathon in Green Bay, Wisconsin, posted online splits for runners every mile.
One of the most tech-savvy races is the Houston Marathon, which started an alert system in 2001 and has since added an online map of a runner's progress, an elaborate post-race summary of a runner's results and video clips searchable by a runner's name.
Houston's offerings -- free with the $75 entry fee -- benefit participants while pleasing corporate sponsors because of high traffic on the marathon's Web site, spokesman Steven Karpas said.
The systems aren't foolproof. Running her first marathon in New York last year, Lara Kail registered her own e-mail address, her brother's cell phone and her aunt and uncle's e-mail.
Kail, 30, got the correct updates which she wanted for posterity's sake. But her brother received just one blank message. Her aunt and uncle: nothing.
"It was a little disappointing," the New York market researcher said. "Lucky for me, I had a good day, but what would have happened if I'd fallen way off my target and they had no clue where I was on the course?"
Keeping track of a runner can also be costly, a factor as race fees for some marathons top $100. Systems can cost $1 to $2 per runner -- charged as part of the entry fee -- or up to $20,000 for a marathon with 10,000 competitors.
Major vendors include chip company ChampionChip, of Nijmegen, Holland, and timing companies Active.com of San Diego and Mika Timing of Cologne, Germany.
After introducing text messaging in 2005, the San Diego and Nashville marathons didn't offer any alerts or online tracking last year because of the expense.
This year, both races plan an experiment with real-time tracking of phone-carrying runners via Global Positioning Satellite technology, and they may reintroduce traditional alerts and online tracking after turning to sponsors for help.
The updating adds a space-age twist to an event that legend dates to ancient Greece. The modern race started at the reborn Olympics in Athens in 1896, and early marathons consisted of a few dozen runners at best.
Today's larger races can feature 30,000 or more athletes, all having fans who want results quickly if not instantaneously.
Computer chips were introduced in the mid-1990s to replace results manually compiled from tags ripped from runners as they finished. They also serve as checkpoints as race directors hope to avoid fiascos like the 1980 Boston Marathon, where Rosie Ruiz was crowned female champion after jumping into the race less than a mile from the finish.
The biggest challenge is managing a complex system of electronics within a short amount of time, said Harald Mika, founder of Mika Timing, which times Chicago and about 200 other races a year.
"If you do have a problem, you'd better fix it within two minutes," he said.
In some cases, rubber mats aren't placed correctly; in other instances, a timing company doesn't send the information properly. Sometimes a phone company or e-mail service blocks messages as spam, although race officials try to notify companies that tens of thousands of e-mails may be coming on race day.
While the systems can misfire, sending blank or delayed messages, they can also work too well -- coldly updating friends with the details of a poor race.
That's a lesson Valco learned as stomach cramps slowed her time in New York. The chip, she realized, added insult to injury.
"Even while on the New York course I was thinking, 'Everyone in Columbus knows it just wasn't the race I had hoped it would be,"' she said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google turns to users for online maps

2007-04-05T18:53:00.001-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is calling upon its millions of users to chart a new direction for its online maps.As part of an initiative being launched Thursday, the Internet search leader will provide free tools designed to make it easy for people to share their knowledge about their neighborhoods and other favorite places by creating customized maps that can assemble information from a variety of sources.The map creators will be given the option to make the content public or keep it private.Thousands of hybrid maps, often called 'mashups,' are already available on the Web, documenting everything from local housing markets to active volcanos.But cobbling together an online map typically requires some computer coding skills.Google has tailored its tools for a mass audience, making map mashups as easy to produce as pointing and clicking a computer mouse. The Mountain View-based company is hoping the simplicity will generate millions of highly specialized maps that can be stored in its search index.Until now, Google's two-year-old maps had primarily been used for driving directions and finding local businesses. The more personal maps should open up new avenues as users share insights about their favorite vacation spots or a wide range of academic subjects, said Jessica Lee, product manager of Google maps.'This is a big change,' Lee said. 'Even if we cut loose all our developers, we could never create maps with the same depth and quality as our users can.'While testing the new tools, Google's own engineers created maps focused on U.S. Route 66, the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Major League Baseball stadiums and voting patterns in the 2004 presidential election.If Google succeeds in its effort to build a vast storehouse of customized maps, its Web site could become an even more popular Internet destination. Achieving that goal would give Google even more opportunities to display the online ads that accounted for most of its $3.1 billion profit last year.The feature also could drive more traffic to Google's YouTube because the new toolkit also includes an option to embed video into the customized maps.Google's maps already are a big draw, with 22.2 million U.S. visitors during February, according to the most recent data available from comScore Media Metrix. That ranked Google maps third in its category, trailing AOL's Mapquest (45.1 million visitors) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) (29.1 million visitors).The concept of mapping mashups was popularized by a computer animation engineer, Paul Rademacher, who charted apartment listings from Craigslist. Google has since hired Rademacher to work in its mapping department.Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Solar bursts may threaten GPS

2007-04-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Global Positioning System, relied on for everything from navigating cars and airplanes to transferring money between banks, may be threatened by powerful solar flares, a panel of scientists warned Wednesday.
"Our increasingly technologically dependent society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to space weather," David L. Johnson, director of the National Weather Service, said at a briefing.
GPS receivers have become widely used in recent years, using satellite signals in navigating airplanes, ships and automobiles, and in using cell phones, mining, surveying and many other commercial uses.
Indeed, banks use the system to synchronize money transfers, "so space weather can affect all of us, right down to our wallet," said Anthea J. Coster, an atmospheric scientist at the Haystack Observatory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The cause for their concern, Johnson said, was an unexpected solar radio burst on December 6 that affected virtually every GPS receiver on the lighted half of Earth. Some receivers had a reduction in accuracy while others completely lost the ability to determine position, he said.
Solar activity rises and falls in 11-year cycles, with the next peak expected in 2011.
If that increasing level of activity produces more such radio bursts the GPS system could be seriously affected, the researchers said.
And protecting the system is no simple task, added Paul M. Kintner Jr., a professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University, who monitored the December event.
There are two possible ways to shield the system, he said, both very expensive. Either alter all GPS antennas to screen out solar signals or replace all of the GPS satellites with ones that broadcast a stronger signal.
That's why it's essential to learn more about the sun's behavior quickly in an effort to find ways to predict such events, the researchers said.
In addition to the GPS system, the December solar flare affected satellites and induced unexpected currents in the electrical grid, Johnson said.
"The effects were more profound than we expected and more widespread than we expected," added Kintner.
Dale E. Gary, chairman of the physics department of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said the burst produced 10 times more radio noise than any burst previously recorded.
The difference between that burst and normal solar radio emissions "was like the difference between the noise level of a normal conversation and the noise level in the front row of a rock concert," he said.
"This is a wake-up call" to improve technology, commented Anthony J. Mannucci, group supervisor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Patricia H. Doherty, co-director of the Institute for Scientific Research at Boston College, said the burst affected but did not shut down the Federal Aviation Administration's Wide Area Augmentation System, which uses GPS signals to assist in navigation.
Most of the WAAS ground stations were able to maintain contact with enough satellites to continue working, though their accuracy was somewhat affected, she said.
The stations have to maintain contact with at least four satellites to work, but usually monitor at least 10 to increase their accuracy, she said. Most were able to meet the minimum, she said.
The briefing came at a Space Weather Enterprise Forum convened by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to discuss the effects of solar activity. Because of its increasing importance, Johnson said, the Weather Service's Space Environment Center was converted from a mainly research center in 2005 to an operational center reporting on solar activity and its impacts.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Virtual feds visit Second Life casinos

2007-04-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- FBI investigators have visited Second Life's Internet casinos at the invitation of the virtual world's creator Linden Lab, but the U.S. government has not decided on the legality of virtual gambling.
"We have invited the FBI several times to take a look around in Second Life and raise any concerns they would like, and we know of at least one instance that federal agents did look around in a virtual casino," said Ginsu Yoon, until recently Linden Lab's general counsel and currently vice president for business affairs.
Second Life is a popular online virtual world with millions of registered users and its own economy and currency, known as the Linden dollar, which can be exchanged for U.S. dollars.
Yoon said the company was seeking guidance on virtual gaming activity in Second Life but had not yet received clear rules from U.S. authorities.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for Northern California declined comment.
Hundreds of casinos offering poker, slot machines and blackjack can easily be found in Second Life. While it is difficult to estimate the total size of the gambling economy in Second Life, the three largest poker casinos are earning profits of a modest $1,500 each per month, according to casino owners and people familiar with the industry.
The surge in Second Life gambling coincides with a crackdown in the real world by the U.S. government, which has arrested executives from offshore gambling Web sites.
Most lawyers agree that placing bets with Linden dollars likely violates U.S. anti-gambling statutes, which cover circumstances in which "something of value" is wagered. But the degree of Linden Lab's responsibility, and the likelihood of a any crackdown, is uncertain.
"That's the risk; we have a set of unknowns and we don't know how they're going to play out," said Brent Britton, an attorney specializing in emergent technology at the law firm Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Tampa, Florida.
Britton said Linden Lab could potentially face criminal charges under the 1970 Illegal Gambling Business Act or the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The latter law, passed last year, takes aim at credit card companies and other electronic funds transfers that enable Internet gambling.
"What they did was go after the processors, and made it a crime to process payments that relate to online gambling sites. Linden could potentially be held as the same sort of processor," said Sean Kane, a lawyer at New York's Drakeford & Kane who has studied the legal issues of virtual worlds.
"If you're buying money on the Lindex (a virtual currency exchange) and utilizing it for gambling purposes, Linden could have a much higher level of responsibility," he added. "If they would be found in violation, that's difficult to say, but I can see a much stronger case being made."
Linden Lab's rules prohibit illegal activity.
"It's not always clear to us whether a 3-D simulation of a casino is the same thing as a casino, legally speaking, and it's not clear to the law enforcement authorities we have asked," Yoon said.
Even if the law were clear, he said the company would have no way to monitor or prevent gambling in Second Life.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Google goes back to maps showing Katrina damage

2007-04-03T19:48:00.000-07:00

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Google Inc. is once again showing this city in ruins after the company came under fire for replacing post-Hurricane Katrina imagery on its popular map portal with views of the city as it existed before the storm.
An Associated Press article on Thursday highlighted the changes, leading a U.S. House subcommittee to accuse Google of "airbrushing history" for depicting a New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast without hurricane damage.
The new satellite imagery, which offers a bird's eye view of the world, now shows post-Katrina New Orleans dotted by blue protective tarps on damaged roofs and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood covered in debris.
Still, the new images are outdated. For example, there is no sign of the massive floodgates that the Army Corps of Engineers built on three drainage canals. Google is still using pre-Katrina pictures for some small coastal towns on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Places like Waveland, Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian were obliterated by Katrina but were intact on Google maps.
John Hanke, Google director for satellite imagery, said in an entry on Google's blog Monday that the imagery was changed last September "with pre-Katrina aerial photography of much higher resolution as part of a regular series of global data enhancements."
"Given that the changes that affected New Orleans happened many months ago, we were a bit surprised by some of these recent comments," Hanke wrote in his blog. "Make no mistake, this wasn't any effort on our part to rewrite history."
Late Sunday, Google replaced the pre-Katrina imagery with aerial views from 2006, Hanke said.
Meanwhile, Google is expected to brief the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on investigations and oversight on the changes. Edith Holleman, the subcommittee's staff counsel, said that briefing has not been scheduled yet.
The subcommittee chairman, Democratic Rep. Brad Miller, wrote Google CEO Eric Schmidt to say that "Google's use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

EMI-Apple pen deal to sell songs

2007-04-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

LONDON, England (AP) -- Breaking from the rest of the recording industry, EMI Group said Monday it will begin selling songs online that are free of copy-protection technology through Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store. The deal, however, doesn't include music from the label's biggest act, The Beatles.
ITunes customers will soon be able to buy songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top-selling artists for $1.29, or 30 cents more than the copy-protected version. The premium tunes also will be offered in a higher quality than the 99-cent tracks.
EMI Chief Executive Eric Nicoli said The Beatles music catalog is excluded from the deal, but said the company was "working on it." He declined to set a time frame for negotiations over the catalog.
The announcement followed calls by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this year for the world's four major record companies, including EMI Group PLC, to start selling songs online without copy-protection software.
The technology, known as digital rights management, or DRM, is designed to combat piracy by preventing unauthorized copying or sharing, but it also can be a consumer headache. Some music players, for instance, support one type of DRM software but not others.
The DRM used by Apple does not work with competing services or devices, meaning that consumers can only download songs from iTunes to work on their computers or iPod music players.
The lock between the download services and players has drawn criticism from European industry regulators, who argue that it limits buyer choice.
"Doing the right thing for the customer going forward is to tear down the walls that impede interoperability," Jobs told a London news conference.
He has previously argued there was little benefit to record companies selling more than 90 percent of their music without DRM on compact discs, then selling the remaining percentage online with DRM.
Some analysts suggest that lifting the software restrictions could boost sales of online music, which currently account for around 10 percent of global music sales.
Jobs said that he planned to offer around half of all music in the iTunes store under the premium package by the end of the year, but declined to say whether the company was in discussions with other leading record companies.
"Consumers tell us overwhelmingly that they would be prepared to pay a higher price for digital music that they could use on any player," Nicoli said. "It is key to unlocking and energizing the digital music business."
The iTunes music store will begin offering EMI's entire catalog -- apart from The Beatles -- without DRM software starting next month, he said.
EMI has acted as the distributor for The Beatles since the early 1960s, but The Beatles' music holding company, Apple Corps Ltd., has so far declined to allow the Fab Four's music on any Internet music services, including iTunes.
The situation was exacerbated by a long-running trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps. That legal feud was resolved in February when the two companies agreed on joint use of the apple logo and name, a deal many saw as paving the way for an agreement for online access to the Fab Four's songs.
Apple Corps was founded by the Beatles in 1968 and is still owned by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, the widow of John Lennon and the estate of George Harrison.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Brazil to offer free Internet access to Amazon tribes

2007-04-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil's government said it will provide free Internet access to native Indian tribes in the Amazon in an effort to help protect the world's biggest rain forest.
The environment and communications ministers signed an agreement Thursday with the Forest People's Network to provide an Internet signal by satellite to 150 communities, including many reachable only by riverboat, allowing them to report illegal logging and ranching, request help and coordinate efforts to preserve the forest.
The goal is to "encourage those peoples to join the public powers in the environmental management of the country," Francisco Costa of the Environment Ministry said in a statement. "The government intends to strengthen the Forest People's Network, a digital web for monitoring, protection and education."
The ministry said city and state governments must first install telecenters with computers in selected areas, including indigenous lands. The federal government then will provide the satellite connection.
The areas in 13 states, including the Pantanal wetlands and the poor northeast, were chosen by the Environment Ministry, the National Indian Foundation, or Funai, and the government environmental protection agency Ibama, the ministry said.
Francisco Ashaninka, a native Indian from the Ashaninka tribe who works for the western Acre state government, said the arrival of the Internet was a success for the Forest People's Network, created in 2003.
He said there are currently a few telecenters on the outskirts of cities, but that the new ones will be built deep in the forest and will allow Indians easy access to public officials so that they can alert them of illegal miners, loggers and ranchers.
"It will be a real chance for the indigenous communities to acquire, share and provide information to public officials," Ashaninka said. He added the Internet would "strengthen indigenous culture by linking them and providing environmental education."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Porn '.xxx' address rejected

2007-04-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- The agency that sets the Internet addressing guidelines influencing how people navigate the Web defeated a proposal Friday to give adult Web sites their own ".xxx" domain.
Many in the adult-entertainment industry and religious groups alike had criticized the plan, which the Canadian government also warned this week could leave the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in the tricky business of content regulation.
The 9-5 decision by ICANN's board came nearly seven years after the proposal was first floated by ICM Registry LLC. It was the third time ICANN has rejected such a bid. One member abstained from voting.
Many of the board members said they were concerned about the possibility that ICANN could find itself in the content regulation business if the domain name was approved. Others criticized that, saying ICANN should not block new domains over fears like that, noting that local, state and national laws could be used to decide what is pornographic and what is not.
It was not immediately clear if ICM would revise its proposal again, abandon the bid or perhaps appeal the decision or take action through the courts.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

House panel: Why did Google 'airbrush history?'

2007-03-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- Google's replacement of post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its map portal with images of the region before the storm does a "great injustice" to the storm's victims, a congressional subcommittee said.
The House Committee on Science and Technology's subcommittee on investigations and oversight on Friday asked Google Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why his company is using the outdated imagery.
The subcommittee cited an Associated Press report on the images.
"Google's use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history," subcommittee chairman Brad Miller, D-North Carolina, wrote in a letter to Schmidt.
Swapping the post-Katrina images and the ruin they revealed for others showing an idyllic city dumbfounded many locals and even sparked suspicions that the company and civic leaders were conspiring to portray the area's recovery progressing better than it really is.
Andrew Kovacs, a Google spokesman, said the company had received the letter but Schmidt had no immediate response.
After Katrina, Google's satellite images were in high demand among exiles and hurricane victims anxious to see whether their homes were damaged.
Now, though, a virtual trip through New Orleans via Google Maps is a surreal experience of scrolling across an unscathed landscape of packed parking lots and marinas full of boats.
Reality, of course, is very different: Entire neighborhoods are now slab mosaics where houses once stood and shopping malls, churches and marinas are empty of life, many gone altogether.
John Hanke, Google's director for maps and satellite imagery, said "a combination of factors including imagery date, resolution, and clarity" go into deciding what imagery to provide.
"The latest update from one of our information providers substantially improved the imagery detail of the New Orleans area," Hanke said in a news release about the switch.
Kovacs said efforts are under way to use more current imagery.
It was not clear when the current images replaced views of the city taken after Katrina struck August 29, 2005, flooding an estimated 80 percent of New Orleans.
Miller asked Google to brief his staff by April 6 on who made the decision to replace the imagery with pre-Katrina images, and to disclose if Google was contacted by the city, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey or any other government entity about changing the imagery.
"To use older, pre-Katrina imagery when more recent images are available without some explanation as to why appears to be fundamentally dishonest," Miller said.
Edith Holleman, staff counsel for the House subcommittee, said it would be useful to understand how Google acquires and manages its imagery because "people see Google and other Internet engines and it's almost like the official word."
Google does provide imagery of New Orleans and the region following Katrina through its more specialized service called Google Earth.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Robots sniff out bombs

2007-03-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) -- As it increases its use of robots in war zones, the military will begin using an explosive-sniffing version that will allow soldiers to better detect roadside bombs, which account for more than 70 percent of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
Fido is the first robot with an integrated explosives sensor. Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot Corp. is filling the military's first order of 100 in this southwest Ohio city and will ship the robots over the next few months.
There are nearly 5,000 robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from about 150 in 2004. Soldiers use them to search caves and buildings for insurgents, detect mines and ferret out roadside and car bombs.
As the war in Iraq enters its fifth year, the federal government is spending more money on military robots and the two major U.S. robot makers have increased production.
Foster-Miller Inc., of Waltham, Mass., recently delivered 1,000 new robots to the military. IRobot cranked out 385 robots last year, up from 252 in 2005.
The government will spend about $1.7 billion on ground-based military robots between fiscal 2006 and 2012, said Bill Thomasmeyer, head of the National Center for Defense Robotics, a congressionally funded consortium of 160 companies, universities and government labs. That's up from $100 million in fiscal 2004.
Fido, produced at a GEM City Manufacturing and Engineering plant, represents an improvement in bomb-detecting military robots, said Col. Terry Griffin, project manager of the Army/Marine Corps Robotic Systems Joint Project Office at Redstone Arsenal, Ala.
The bomb-sniffing sensor is part of the robot, with its readings displayed on the controller along with camera images. Otherwise, a soldier would have to approach the suspect object with a sensor or try to attach it to a robot. The new robot has a 7-foot manipulator arm so it can use the sensor to scan the inside and undercarriage of vehicles for bombs.
Officials would not release details of how the sensors work because of security concerns.
"The sniffer robot is a very good idea because we need some way of understanding ambiguous situations like abandoned cars or suspicious trash piles without putting soldiers' lives on the line," said Loren Thompson, defense analyst with the Washington-based Lexington Institute.
Philip Coyle, senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, said the robots could be helpful if they are used in cases where soldiers already suspect a bomb. But he said explosive-sniffing sensors are susceptible to false positives triggered by explosive residues elsewhere in the area, smoke and other contaminants.
"The soldiers can begin to lose faith in them, and they become more trouble than they're worth," he said.
Thompson said all military robots have limitations. Their every move must be dictated by an operator, they can be stopped by barriers or steep grades, they are not highly agile and they can break down or be damaged, he said.
Robots range in size from tiny -- 1.5-pound ones carrying cameras are tossed into buildings to search for insurgents -- to brute -- 110-pound versions move rubble and lift debris.
Fido is an upgrade of PackBot, a 52-pound robot with rubber treads, lights, video cameras that zoom and swivel, obstacle-hurdling flippers and jointed manipulator arms with hand-like grippers designed to disable or destroy bombs. Each costs $165,000.
Army Staff Sgt. Shawn Baker, 26, of Olean, New York, has helped detect and disable roadside bombs during two tours in Iraq. Before the robots were available, he and fellow soldiers would stand back as far as possible with a rope and drag hooks over the suspect devices in hopes of disarming or detonating them.
Two soldiers were killed that way, Baker said. No one in his unit has been hurt or killed while disarming bombs since the robots arrived.
"The science and technology of this has been way out in front of the production side," Thomasmeyer said. "We're going to start to see a payoff for all the science and technology advancements."
IRobot posted $189 million in sales last year, up 33 percent from 2005. Its military business grew 60 percent to about $76 million.
Bob Quinn, general manager of Foster-Miller, said his company has contracts of $320 million for military robots and that its business has doubled every year for the past four years.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Students give up social networks for Lent

2007-03-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

By Katie HawkinsCNN
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(CNN) -- For some, it's chocolate. For others, it's coffee or cigarettes. But as this Easter approaches, some young and devout Christians are anxious to return to what they gave up for Lent: Internet sites Facebook and MySpace.
Many users describe the popular social networking sites as addictive, which is why they say giving up these 21st-century temptations is a sincere sacrifice. Members on both sites create profiles and add each other as friends. They can also share messages, photos, videos and personal blogs.
"It's been hard, especially in the beginning," said Kerry Graham, who says she gave up Facebook for Lent. Her boyfriend challenged her to do so, describing her as a "Facebook fiend."
During the first days of Lent, the 23-year-old graduate student admits she had to stop herself from typing the site's Web address nearly every time she checked her e-mail.
Graham, who was raised Catholic, is studying theology at the University of Nottingham in England. She's far from her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and said the distance has made the sacrifice more difficult.
"If I'm missing someone, there's no real way to let them know," she said.
Catholics and others who observe Lent typically make sacrifices as a way to show religious devotion. Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday to Easter and correlates with the 40 days and 40 nights that the Bible says Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and resisting temptation.
"Some of my friends think it's silly, since people usually give up food," said 16-year-old Emily Montgomery, who says she's given up her access to MySpace. "I wanted to give up something that's really hard for me."
MySpace and Facebook are the largest social networking sites on the web. According to comScore Networks, an online measurement firm, MySpace attracted 64.4 million unique visitors in February. Facebook was the Internet's second-most visited site, with 23.6 average visits per visitor during February.
Montgomery says she spent an average of two hours a day on MySpace, logging onto the site at least four times a day. She's using Facebook as a substitute during the 40-day period.
"Not because Facebook is special -- I think it's boring," she said, explaining that the site helps her to still "feel connected."
"People try to be clever with Lent," said the Rev. Michael J. Dolan, college chaplain at Trinity College and the University of Hartford in Connecticut. "It makes sense that students are giving up these things. By giving up something, you hope to gain something."
Dolan himself has a Facebook account. He says he's friends with more than 130 other members at Trinity and 80 in the Hartford network, and has spoken with many students who have given up social networking sites or online messaging for the Lenten season.
"It's a form of spiritual awareness that allows you to reconnect with God," said Jocelyn Chiu, an Emory University sophomore and active member of her Presbyterian church. "By giving up something that used up so much of my time, I realized that I had been leaving my spiritual life behind."
Chiu gave up Facebook for Lent in 2006 and went one step further this year -- vowing to avoid the Internet altogether. She has only allowed herself to check Emory's internal e-mail for school-related messages.
"I realized how much time I was spending on the Internet," said Chiu. "I needed to make myself focus on schoolwork more."
Too much time online?
Limiting the amount of time spent on social networking sites can be beneficial, according to clinical psychologist Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, director and founder of the Computer Addiction Study Center at Harvard's McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.
She said students who demonstrate compulsive Internet or computer use often neglect schoolwork. In some cases, this behavior results in a lack of sleep, missed meals, poor hygiene and, in some extreme situations, seizures.
Graham said giving up Facebook has helped her distinguish between her real friends and those of "convenience." Montgomery says she now plays tennis and focuses on schoolwork more often, and Chiu has been studying, reading the Bible and spending time with friends.
"It's a nice change," said Chiu. "The human interaction is so much more personal than anything you could have on the Internet."
As Dolan observed, "People are realizing that reality involves people, not pixels."

Review: Microsoft's new mouse offers wrist relief

2007-03-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

(CNET.com) -- In 2004, 3M came out with a product called the Ergonomic Mouse. More like an upright handgrip with a tracking pad attached to the bottom, the 3M mouse was notable because it kept the palm of your hand perpendicular to your work space.
That design supposedly relieves the pressure on your wrist's median nerve, the focal point of carpal tunnel syndrome. Microsoft's new Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 is more of a happy medium between 3M's unique design and that of a typical mouse.
Serious sufferers of repetitive stress-related injuries should definitely consult a doctor before using this or any other nonqualified review for medical advice.
We will say that as an alternative input device, we found Microsoft's new mouse comfortable and easy to use, but a few design miscues make us wish Microsoft had given this mouse more thought.
The most obvious feature of the Natural Wireless 6000 is that, unlike standard mouse designs, this model's buttons, wheel, and palm rest upward to the right.
It lends the mouse a unique shape, but it also has the effect of rolling your wrist up off your desk.
Your reviewer will refrain from commenting on any therapeutic benefits this mouse might have, but I'll simply rely on my credentials as a longtime mouse user and say that this design feels less stressful on my wrist.
I also found it easy to adjust to the nonstandard hand position. Once I tweaked the cursor sensitivity in the included software, using the Natural Wireless 6000 became, well, natural.
The only problematic feature about the mouse itself is the location of the thumb buttons. Rather than leaving them next to your thumb, where you'll find them on the standard mice that have them, Microsoft instead elevated them with the plane of the main buttons.
This puts them in the dead zone between your thumb and forefinger, which means you have to move either your thumb or your main finger to get to them. Making such a move interrupts smooth mouseflow, and takes some getting used to to feel which of the two buttons you're actually going to press. Placing the buttons on the thumbrest would have been much more logical.
If the thumb buttons are irritating, the scroll wheel is actually one of the best we've encountered outside of Logitech's superior MX Revolution mouse (Read review) and its flywheel design.
The scroll wheel on the Natural Wireless 6000 feels sturdier than the wheel on Microsoft's Intellimouse 3.0, and its thick, rubberized coating makes the wheel feel satisfying to move. It also has responsive side-to-side tilt-based scrolling, which you'll appreciate if you spend time with wide spreadsheets or other large files.
The Natural Wireless 6000 takes two included AA batteries. We prefer rechargeable wireless mice, and since Microsoft's suggested price for this mouse is $80, it's a little cheap that it uses only standard alkalines.
Fortunately, you can find the mouse for less money from the retailers that sell it. We're also amused by the USB RF receiver, which is almost as big as the mouse itself. We've seen full-sized mouse and keyboard sets that only require a thumb drive-sized USB receiver, so we're not sure why the receiver in this model needs to be so big.
It's certainly not a major issue, and we found set up easy and the connection strength generally reliable, but the design feels like a clunky throwback.
Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Xbox 360 gets a bigger hard drive

2007-03-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

REDMOND, Washington (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. will sell a version of its Xbox 360 with a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a souped up high-definition video connection, in a bid to broaden the appeal of its popular console beyond video games.
Earlier versions of Xbox 360 came with 20 gigabytes of storage. But that filled up too quickly with movies, TV shows and games from the Xbox Live Marketplace online store, said Peter Moore, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment group.
The new Xbox 360 Elite will sell for $479.99. Consumers who already own the $399.99 20-gigabyte model will be able to buy a snap-on 120-gigabyte hard drive for $179.99.
Both the new console and the drive are expected to hit U.S. shelves April 29.
Microsoft also added an HDMI connection, which sends high-definition content from the console to the TV without losing picture or sound quality, while also helping prevent piracy.
Xbox 360 was the No. 2 U.S. video game console after Nintendo Co.'s Wii in January and February, according to data from market researcher NPD Group. The Xbox outpaced Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, a $599.99 console that plays Blu-ray DVDs.
Microsoft's decision to upgrade the Xbox 360 is the latest of many steps the software maker has taken to position its products at the center of home entertainment.
Microsoft has incorporated Media Center software, which can turn a computer into a digital video recorder, movie and music player, into all but the most basic version of its new Windows Vista operating system.
And Xbox 360 users can connect the console to their home network, then stream movies, music and other content from computer to the Xbox and television. Unlike Sony, Microsoft hasn't added a high-def DVD player to the console, but consumers can buy an external HD DVD player for the Xbox for $199.99.
On Wednesday, Microsoft also announced deals to bring new high-def video to the Xbox Live Marketplace, including New Line Cinema's film "Snakes on a Plane" and upcoming releases from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's direct-to-video division.
Microsoft's focus on downloadable high-def video sets the effort apart from the competition, said Moore. He said the content fills a gap between cable companies' DVR services for fresh TV episodes, Tivo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.'s standard-definition content available over the Web, and Apple Inc.'s recent move to send iTunes movies and music to the TV from a Mac.
At the core, though, video game players aren't going to choose their system based on its ability to play movies or television shows, said Anita Frazier, an analyst for NPD Group.
"To the extent (the consoles) do other things, it's great, but this industry is all about the games," she said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

iPhone casts shadow over wireless show

2007-03-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

ORLANDO, Florida (AP) -- It says something about the state of the cell phone industry that the product looming largest over the annual wireless show doesn't even exist yet. Never mind that it's coming from a company that's never even made a cell phone.
Indeed, the "preverberations" from Apple Inc.'s plan to bring its addictive design simplicity and elegance to wireless with the iPhone is palpable across a good many announcements slated for CTIA Wireless 2007, which opened on Tuesday.
While the prototype that Apple unveiled back in January instantly drew drools with its slender, sleek looks, the real test will be whether the iPhone's large touch-screen interface rewrites the rules for ease of use when it becomes available in June. As Motorola Inc.'s boom-and-bust fortunes with the Razr show, style isn't everything.
There's sure to be plenty of hyperventilation about mobile video and music at the show. So a core theme emerging among this week's planned product launches is how to make these devices less confusing as they get crammed and cramped with multimedia capabilities.
One such offering comes from a small, youth-oriented cellular service named Helio, a joint venture between Earthlink Inc. and Korea's SK Telecom Co. that on Monday unveiled a $295 handset called Ocean.
Billed as the first "dual-slider," the Ocean marks one of the more radical attempts to help clean the messy intersection between phone calls, text communications, portable media players and mobile Web access.
For making calls, the screen-side of the device can slide vertically to expose a number pad. For typing e-mail, text messages and instant messages, the Ocean can be turned horizontal and slide up along a different track to expose a full typewriter keyboard.
The handset, designed by Helio and made by Pantech, sports some other notable innovations intended to improve the user experience and combat the clunky factor. There's a separate microprocessor to run the media player, an efficiency Helio claims will allow 15 hours of music listening on a single battery charge.
There's also an integrated inbox to display all forms of written communication, combining e-mail, text messaging and instant messaging from the major portals in one place, instead of forcing users to toggle between applications. And while the full keyboard makes for easier text input, the Ocean also features an automatic search function triggered whenever you start typing.
"If you want to search, you want to search. The idea that you have to bring up a search box I think is counterintuitive," said Sky Dayton, Helio's chief executive.
He recalled that at a recent celebrity poker tournament, the people next to him were looking at actress Morgan Fairchild, who was seated at a nearby table. They wondered aloud how old she was, and Dayton got the answer for them within seconds. Without opening any applications, "I just typed into my device, 'How old is Morgan Fairchild?"' he said.
Also trying their hands at cobbling an easier-to-use combination phone and music player are Samsung Electronics Co. and Sony Ericsson.
Samsung's lightweight "UpStage," offered in the United States by Sprint Nextel Corp., is a "flip" phone, though not in the normal sense. The device is actually a two-sided candy bar that looks like a phone on one side and an MP3 music player on the other. A "flip" button on the phone's edge is pressed to switch between the two sides.
The phone side has a number pad and small screen for dialing calls and typing text messages, while the reverse features a large screen and touch-sensitive controls to navigate through song lists and view digital photos, video and Web pages.
The $299 UpStage, available for $149 with a two-year Sprint contract, also attempts to address the battery life issue that arises whenever handset makers try to balance size with power capacity. In this case, the price includes a "battery wallet" to slip the device into, providing up to 16 hours of music listening, the companies claim.
Without the wallet, the UpStage weighs just 2.6 ounces and is less than 0.4 inch thick.
Sony Ericsson, owned jointly by Japan's Sony Corp. and Sweden's LM Ericsson, introduced the latest addition to its Walkman phone lineup.
The W580, the first slider Walkman phone, is 0.55 inch thick and weighs 3.3 ounces. Sony Ericsson says the W580 offers up to 30 hours of music play time.
The company didn't announce a price or say which service provider will offer the phone, though it's based on a wireless technology that's only used by AT&T Inc.'s Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA among the major U.S. carriers.
Like the vast majority of new devices, all three of these handsets come with Bluetooth wireless to connect with a cordless headset.
Thankfully, the industry group that oversees the Bluetooth standard is using the CTIA show to announce a long-needed simplification in the often frustrating process of "pairing" two Bluetooth-enabled devices to communicate with one another.
Though sometimes it goes smoothly, the initial setup for Bluetooth pairing varies from device to device, with inconsistent menus and security code inputs often tripping up users.
The new specification reduces the number of steps in the pairing process while making the process more intuitive, improving security to prevent wireless intruders and also reducing power consumption, according to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.
Under the new procedure, for example, when pairing a headset and phone both configured for the updated standard, all a user would need to do is turn on the headset, select "Add Headset" from the phone menu, and then watch the phone confirm it has found and connected with the headset through an encrypted link.
The improvement, however, won't begin to arrive in products until later this year.
In Apple time, that means after the iPhone.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

TV Guide to launch Internet video search engine

2007-03-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- TV Guide, which has helped viewers navigate through thousands of TV shows for 53 years, now wants to do the same for Internet video.
Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. will launch a test version next month of an online video search tool that allows viewers to find clips and full episodes of TV shows now being posted on the Web. A formal launch is planned for September.
The tool will not try to aggregate the thousands of user-generated videos featuring pet tricks, skits and other antics being posted on sites such as YouTube and Revver.
Instead, it will scour about 60 Web sites from major networks such as ABC and Fox and other video portals such as AOL and Google to find network and original programming produced by major media companies.
"Everybody says, 'Who's going to be the TV Guide of online video?' and we say, why shouldn't it be us?" said Richard Cusick, senior vice president of digital media at Gemstar-TV Guide. "We're making a bet, but we think it's a safe bet and consistent with our mission."
The company hopes to make money by selling ads on the new search site as well as licensing its technology.
The effort comes amid an explosion of video content on the Web. Sites such as YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., Revver, Grouper, which is owned by Sony Corp., and others attract millions of visitors and feature short clips uploaded by users.
Meanwhile, TV networks and film studios are searching for new ways to distribute their content and grab the attention of online viewers.
On Thursday, NBC Universal, which is owned by General Electric Co., and News Corp., which runs the Fox network, among others, formed a joint venture to distribute their shows across the Web.
The new company will run its own Internet site and syndicate programs to such popular portals as Yahoo, MSN and AOL.
The move reinforced Gemstar's belief that Internet viewers want quick access to high-quality network shows, and there is money to be made by providing a tool to sift through such content.
TV Guide is coming late to the video search game. The head start enjoyed by other companies, most notably Google, could be difficult to overcome, said Rob Enderle, a technology analyst.
"If they don't want to become obsolete, they have to get into the search business," Enderle said, adding that the strength of the TV Guide brand could be a key to attracting users.
But Google is likely to expand its own video search capabilities.
"Today, TV Guide can be better," Enderle said. "But fast-forward two years from now, and you wonder if TV Guide has the resources to compete with Google long term."
The company hopes to learn lessons from the Web that can be applied years from now when video is delivered directly to TV sets through high-speed Internet connections. And it hopes its electronic guide, which already is used on most TV sets and cable systems, will serve to organize both traditional TV content and Web-based shows.
The company is also planning search tools for mobile devices.
"For us, the notion of guidance has changed dramatically," Gemstar chief executive Richard Battista said. "It used to be about TV guidance, but now its about video guidance and TV Guide needs to be the leading provider of video guidance."
Other companies are also entering the nascent field of online video search. Time Warner Inc.'s AOL launched its own search tool using technology from Truveo Inc., which crawls the Web and looks for information surrounding a video on a Web page to make the search more relevant.
Search company Blinkx uses voice recognition and transcription software to find clips, then automatically sends them to subscribers.
Google and Yahoo also provide video search tools. But those are either too broad, returning irrelevant and, in many cases, pirated results, or concentrate too much on user-generated content, TV Guide contends.
The often simple titles of TV shows also complicate search. Someone looking for clips from the Fox show "House" might have to wade through pages of results about homebuilding or mortgage rates.
The TV Guide video search technology, like some other search engines, looks for descriptive words, called "metadata," surrounding a video.
It then marries that information with the vast database compiled over the years for TV Guide's print magazine and Web site. That kind of cross-referencing is designed to provide more relevant results and also allow TV Guide to group results by celebrity, network or genre.
"We can take relatively unstructured Web data, combine it with our very structured TV data and get much more relevant results and start to draw those connections," Cusick said.
The TV Guide search tool will also allow users to save videos in an application that can be 'detached" from the site and sit on the computer screen, allowing viewing at any time.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

'Ask a Ninja,' OK Go win YouTube Awards

2007-03-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- The video series "Ask a Ninja" and OK Go's treadmill-choreographed music video are among the winners in the first YouTube Video Awards.
The video-sharing site announced the seven winners from its inaugural awards on Monday, a week after the nominees were put forth for voting.
Each category included 10 nominated videos, which users could rank in order of their liking.
"These individuals put the first stitches in the fabric of the YouTube community," said Jamie Byrne, head of product marketing for YouTube.
"Instead of seeing a way to share videos, they saw an opportunity for worldwide visibility and through their success have changed the landscape of how a 'star' is defined."
The power pop band OK Go, perhaps the most professional of the mostly amateur nominees, won most creative video for their "Here It Goes Again" music video. "Ask a Ninja," the popular comedy created by Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, won for best series.
"Ask a Ninja" triumphed over perhaps YouTube's biggest celebrity: Lonelygirl15. That bedroom production finished fourth, behind "Ask A Gay Man" and "Chad Vader."
Terra Naomi won for best music video for her song "Say It's Possible," a one-shot clip of her playing acoustic guitar and singing. Naomi has parlayed her online success into a record deal with Island Records, and will release her debut album this summer.
Best commentary was one of the most hotly contested categories, as it pitted several of YouTube's most high-profile personalities against one another. A vlogger known as "The Winekone" won over Peter Oakley ("Geriatric1927") and Paul Robinett ("Renetto").
A video calling for a "Free Hugs Campaign" won for most inspirational video. Australian Juan Mann's video set off an online wildfire of similar "Free Hugs" campaigns.
Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, also known as Smosh, won for best comedy video. Dony Permedi's animated video "Kiwi!" -- which began as a master's thesis on animation, won for most adorable video.
The winners and nominees are compiled in a gallery at http://www.youtube.com/YTAwards. YouTube says it will later unveil what a YouTube Video Award will look like.
Google-owned, San Bruno, California-based YouTube Inc. was founded in February 2005. Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. recently sued YouTube for $1 billion, claiming the site infringes on copyrights on a "huge scale." Several other media companies have reached agreements to supply YouTube with clips.
According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide in January.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Dating site asks 'are you hot enough?'

2007-03-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) -- Jason Pellegrino (an 8.2 on the attractiveness scale) says the problem with Internet dating services is not enough really hot-looking people.
So he and a business partner have created HotEnough.org, a sort of online version of Studio 54, the exclusive '70s disco where gaining admission was a pitiless Darwinian exercise. HotEnough.org is for "fit, good-looking" people.
Prospective members must submit pictures and must be rated an 8 or higher by people already in the club. Once they are in, they are permitted to e-mail other "hotties" for $9.95 a month.
"It's definitely hard to get through that rope, but once you're in, you're in and you're part of the party," Pellegrino said. "But you know there's going to be a lot of people outside waiting."
The 33-year-old said he and his partner, Sean Cohen, created the site after concluding that Internet dating sites attract a lot of brave and desperate people but not particularly attractive ones.
A few months after its launch, membership is just under 1,000, Pellegrino said. In the beginning, only 8 percent of those who applied made the grade, but now about 25 percent of applicants do, he said.
Candidates must send in three pictures, including one full-body shot. Active members rate the pictures online without knowing anything else about the people in them.
"People can say that the site is shallow, they can say it's superficial, but I think we're all a bit superficial when it comes to dating," Pellegrino said.
One of the "hotties" accepted into the club is Jimmy Ziomek, a 29-year-old from New York City who rated an 8.2. Ziomek, who said his job in real estate keeps him from going out much, has blue eyes and light brown hair and goes to the gym four to five times a week.
Using HotEnough.org "saves time and it does the searching for you, narrows it down to the people that you are interested in meeting," he said.
Among those who did not make the cut was Jeanette Ponder, a 28-year-old Internet blogger from East Orange, New Jersey who considered herself an 8 or 9. She said she applied because she thought it would make a good story.
"I got rated at like 5.7," she said. "When you put yourself out there in any situation, even if it's one which you're not taking seriously, it's going to sting."
But she also reasoned: "You cannot make a relationship by being arm candy."
Like it or not, HotEnough.com operates according to a principle that watchers of the singles scene have long recognized: "People tend to end up with partners who match them in physical attractiveness," said Margaret Clark, a professor of psychology at Yale University.
Pellegrino, whose day job as a project manager for a construction company in Maplewood leaves little time for dating, has brown eyes and a bright smile, goes to the gym at least three times a week and gets his stylish haircut touched up every two weeks. He was happy to make it onto his own Web site.
"I see myself more in like the 7.5 range," he said.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

NBC, News Corp. gang up against YouTube

2007-03-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

Media giants pooling resources to create an online video site that will take on Google's YouTube.
By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com editor at large
March 22 2007: 4:31 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Media giants News Corp. and NBC Universal announced Thursday that they will create an online video site that will rival the popular YouTube.
News Corp. (Charts), which owns the Fox television and movie studios, and GE (Charts)-owned NBC Universal said their site will include online videos from the company's two film and TV libraries.
Springfield 2.0: "The Simpsons," as well as other hits from Fox, will be a part of the new online joint venture between Fox parent News Corp. and NBC Universal.
Video
More video
Media giant Viacom is suing Youtube over illegal content on its Web site. CNN's Maggie Lake reports (March 13)
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Executives from the two companies added during a conference call Thursday afternoon that the site will allow users to create their own videos as well but that the main focus will be on their copyrighted content.
"There will be user-generated videos but the emphasis here is on the premium content and we think that's the value proposition here," said NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.
Fox and NBC's wrongheaded approach
YouTube has quickly become the most popular online video site thanks in large part to quirky short videos submitted by users. YouTube does offer videos from professional media firms as well.
The companies said the new site would feature personalized play lists, social networking functions as well as mashups, which let users create their own videos based on copyrighted content.
News about the joint venture was originally reported in The Los Angeles Times Thursday morning.
The announcement comes a week after another big media firm, Viacom (Charts), said it was suing YouTube and its parent company Google (Charts) for copyright infringement and seeking more than $1 billion.
In a statement, Viacom said that it backed the new site.
"A new online video distribution platform that respects copyrights is a welcome addition to the industry. The venture supports our view that upholding the rights of content creators is the only logical and legitimate path for the creative and technology communities to come together and bring great new online experiences to consumers," the company said in a statement.
Viacom was in talks with News Corp. and NBC late last year about joining the venture but decided to back down, according to reports. But one person familiar with the situation said Viacom may decide to contribute content from its cable channels and film studio to the new site later on.
Viacom sues YouTube for $1 billion
NBC and News Corp. said they will also be working with other YouTube rivals such as Yahoo!, (Charts) Time Warner's (Charts) AOL, Microsoft's (Charts) MSN and News Corp.-owned MySpace to distribute their videos on those Web sites as well. (Time Warner also owns CNNMoney.com.)
"This is a game-changer for Internet video," News Corp. President Peter Chernin said in a statement. "We'll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want - professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live."
During the conference call, Chernin added that News Corp. and NBC were in discussions with both more media companies as well as more Web sites to distribute the videos.
Chernin even said that News Corp. and NBC were talking with Google about having them distribute videos from the News Corp.-NBC joint venture.
"This is obviously not a YouTube killer," Chernin said.
The two companies said that full episodes and clips from hit NBC and Fox shows such as "Heroes," "Saturday Night Live," "24" and "The Simpsons" will be available for free when the site launches in the summer.
Chernin added during the call that consumers would have to pay to watch most full-length movies and that prices would be similar to prices charged on other movie download sites such as CinemaNow, Movielink and Apple's iTunes, where movies typically cost between $9.99 and $14.99.
YouTube rivals: Thanks, Viacom!
The TV videos will include ads, however, and the two companies said that Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco Systems, Intel and General Motors have already signed on as advertisers.
"This venture supercharges our distribution of protected, quality content to fans everywhere. Consumers get a hugely attractive aggregation of a wide range of content, and marketers get a novel way to connect with a large and highly engaged audience," Zucker said in a statement.
Major media companies have been aggressively building up their own video sites to compete with Google and YouTube as they try to cash in on the potentially lucrative online video advertising business. Some companies also have partnerships with Google and YouTube.
Still, it's uncertain if the new site will be able to make significant inroads against YouTube. Some jokingly referred to the NBC-News Corp. joint venture as "Me Too Tube."
The death of the 30-second TV commercial
One media expert said the NBC-News Corp. venture makes sense but disputed Chernin's contention that it was ground-breaking.
"What these guys are talking about is extending TV over the Internet. What they are building is kind of a fraction of a Comcast - it's like an Internet-based cable company with multiple channels," said Todd Dagres, general partner of Spark Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm focused on media and technology. "How revolutionary is that? I can do that right now with my TV. It's just evolutionary in terms of using other media to distribute content."
Another technology executive said the NBC-News Corp. site needs to do more than just focus on copyrighted content in order to have any chances at success.
"The power of YouTube is that I'm selecting clips and slicing and dicing. It will be interesting to see if this site has the Wild Wild West feel that YouTube does," said Daren Gill, senior vice president of product development for the entertainment group at ChoiceStream, a company which develops software that sets up personal recommendations for users of prominent Web sites like AOL and Yahoo.
"The user experience will be really key as to whether or not this is going to be an also-ran or a major force in online video," Gill added.
But given the marketing dollars that major media companies like NBC and News Corp. can use to promote their online video site, there is no reason why the joint venture couldn't quickly become a top player in user-generated content if the two media firms choose to embrace this market.
"User-generated content needs to be part of anybody's online media offering and YouTube has no corner on the market on that," said Alex Laats, CEO of PodZinger, an online audio and video search engine. "The media companies' advantage is they have large advertising sales forces and marketing departments."
NBC and News Corp. said NBC Universal's chief digital officer George Kliavkoff will lead the joint venture for now until a permanent management team, and a name for the new site, are announced. Zucker added during the conference call that a separate online ad sales force will be created for the site.

Laptops feature secure hard drives

2007-03-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Seagate Technology LLC, the world's largest hard drive maker, announced Monday the first manufacturer to sell laptop PCs with its new built-in encryption technology.
The hard drives, to be available in laptops made by ASI Computer Technologies, will include a chip that makes it impossible for anyone to read data off the disk, or even boot up a PC, without some form of authentication.
ASI, which manufacturers laptops under its own brand and builds systems for lesser-known PC makers, is expected to put the new technology in its machines within a few months. Other major PC makers are expected to introduce computers with Seagate's secure hard drives later this year.
Lost or stolen employee laptops have cost businesses and government agencies millions of dollars and hurt their credibility, while putting the sensitive information in the hands of identity thieves and other criminals. Dozens of U.S. states require businesses to encrypt computer data.
"I can't help but think that this kind of hard drive would become a standard issue on corporate laptops," said Dave Reinsel, a storage industry analyst at market research firm IDC.
Seagate's DriveTrust technology differs from existing security options, which usually include placing firewalls around computer networks and installing encryption software on systems.
The new technology is embedded directly in the hard drive -- the computer's storehouse of data. It requires users to have a key, or password, before being able to access the disk drive or boot up the machine. Without the password, the hard drive would be useless, Seagate officials said.
Seagate teamed with security software provider Wave Systems Corp. to add an additional layer of tools to make the systems easier for corporations to manage the new kind of security technology.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Analysts: YouTube lawsuit may boost rivals

2007-03-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Viacom's billion-dollar legal gambit against Google could lead to more media industry lawsuits and give a boost to rival online video services in the emerging marketplace.
Media executives and analysts are awaiting the outcome of the lawsuit against Google and its video-sharing site YouTube, which Viacom said is intended to defend the notion of intellectual property and the concept of the Internet media marketplace.
Viacom, owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, demanded in February that YouTube pull more than 100,000 video clips uploaded by users on to the online video-sharing service. Google and Viacom had tried and failed to negotiate a deal to allow some of Viacom's content on to YouTube and split the advertising revenues.
On Tuesday, Viacom sued Google and YouTube for more than $1 billion, accusing them of "massive intentional copyright infringement."
"I think that most media companies will let Viacom do the initial heavy lifting," said HDNet owner Mark Cuban, a vocal critic of YouTube, in an e-mail. Cuban has subpoenaed Google for the identities of YouTube users who uploaded unauthorized clips of movies produced by his firm.
"If it becomes apparent that there will be damages, then the floodgates to more suits will open," he said in response to questions about the impact of Viacom's actions.
Google is protected by a law designed to give Web hosts "the safe harbor we need in order to be able to do hosting online," said Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property.
Other media conglomerates declined to say whether they are also considering legal action against Google, but at least two openly supported Viacom's defense of its copyrights.
Seminal case
"It is clear from this lawsuit that it is time for YouTube to remove unauthorized material from its site," a Time Warner spokesman said. "We are in talks (with YouTube) and hopeful we can work together toward a solution that would effectively identify and filter out unauthorized material and license copyrighted works for an appropriate revenue share."
A spokesman for News Corp., whose Fox TV division earlier subpoenaed YouTube to learn the identities of users who had uploaded copies of "24" ahead of the live broadcast, said: "We support Viacom's rights to protect its own content in whatever way it needs to."
UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff described Viacom's lawsuit as "a seminal event" in relations between the media and Internet industries and in determining how content will be valued online.
What's at stake?
For Viacom, it is "the entire concept of markets and intellectual properties," said its general counsel Michael Fricklas. "YouTube wants to take first and negotiate later. You can't have markets in that scenario," he said in an interview.
But without Google, Viacom would have to go it alone on the Web or turn to start-up sites that are dwarfed by YouTube, the single biggest aggregator of viewers online with 100 million video streams per day.
For its part, YouTube could lose its position as the Web's most popular video site if other media companies band with Viacom and support smaller rivals in the nascent market.
"Google has the potential to lose its dominance in the video market," said Forrester Research's James McQuivey. "AOL Video and Yahoo video are cheering ... This is their chance."
Cuban said there are many alternatives to YouTube that could form partnerships with the media companies while these companies keep control of their content and advertising.
"There isn't any level of promotion on YouTube that Viacom couldn't just purchase outright if they felt there was value to being seen on YouTube," Cuban said in the e-mail.
Viacom, which is revamping its Web strategy, struck a deal in March with Joost, an online video service created by the founders of eBay's Skype and of file-sharing network Kazaa.
Online video service Metacafe's chief executive, Erick Hachenburg, said he sees more opportunities to work with media companies arising out of the dispute.
"It can be good for us," he said. "We haven't built our business on the backs of piracy."
Google shares down
Some analysts say Google needs to do more to reach some accommodation with media companies and other copyright owners.
"Google as the owner of YouTube has way too much invested in its position to not do something," Gartner analyst Allen Weiner said. "This could cost them on Wall Street."
The share reaction was relatively muted on Tuesday, with Google falling 2.58 percent to $443.03 on Nasdaq. Viacom shares fell 0.23 percent to $39.48 on the New York Stock Exchange.
"It's the kind of thing that's more of a press event than an investor event," said associate portfolio manager Larry Haverty of Gamco, a Viacom investor. He added, "If Google wants to get into the entertainment business, they need to play according to rules."
But the delicate balance of power could shift back to Google if it lands a deal with a big media company, RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan said.
Viacom's "tactics will work until one of its biggest competitors -- Walt Disney or News Corp. -- sign a deal with YouTube, at which point Viacom will be open to compromise," he said.
Yankee Group analyst Michael Goodman said media companies need to strike deals with YouTube and that lawsuits on piracy just delay the inevitable.
"In the long run, the media companies are going up the river without a paddle," Goodman said. "They're fighting a battle they can't win."
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Viacom slaps Google with $1 billion lawsuit

2007-03-24T07:35:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) -- MTV owner Viacom Inc. sued the popular video-sharing site YouTube and its corporate parent, Google Inc., on Tuesday, seeking more than $1 billion in damages on claims of widespread copyright infringement.
Viacom claims that YouTube has displayed nearly 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube and represents the biggest confrontation to date between a major media company and the hugely popular video-sharing site, which Google bought in November for $1.76 billion.
YouTube's soaring popularity has been a cause of fascination but also fear among the owners of traditional media outlets, who worry that YouTube's displaying of user-uploaded clips from their programs -- without compensation -- will lure away viewers and ad dollars from cable and broadcast TV.
Viacom is especially at risk because many of its shows, which include "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report" and "South Park" are aimed at younger audiences who also are heavy Internet users.
The lawsuit came nearly six weeks after Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips after several months of talks over licensing arrangements broke down. YouTube agreed at the time to comply and said it cooperates with all copyright holders to remove programming as soon as they're notified.
But since then, Viacom has identified more than 50,000 additional unauthorized clips, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig said.
In a statement, Viacom lashed out at YouTube's business practices, saying it has "built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others' creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google."
Viacom said YouTube's business model, "which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws."
Viacom said YouTube has avoided taking the initiative to curtail copyright infringement on its site, instead shifting the burden and costs of monitoring the video-sharing site for unauthorized clips onto the "victims of its infringement."
In a statement, Google said it believed the courts will agree "that YouTube has respected the legal rights of copyright holders."
"We will certainly not let this suit become a distraction to the continuing growth and strong performance of YouTube and its ability to attract more users, more traffic and build a stronger community," Google said.
Other media companies have also clashed with YouTube over copyrights, but some, including CBS Corp. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, have reached deals with the video-sharing site to license their material. CBS Corp. used to be part of Viacom but has since split off into a separate company.
Universal Music Group, a unit of France's Vivendi SA, had threatened to sue YouTube, saying it was a hub for pirated music videos, but later reached a licensing deal with the company.
Bruce Sunstein, co-founder of intellectual property law firm Bromberg & Sunstein in Boston, said YouTube was still in the early stages of what was likely to be a "very long working-out of arrangements" with the owners of broadcast copyrights.
"Finding a way of peaceful coexistence is quite a struggle," Sunstein said. "Google's motto is 'Don't be Evil,' and you could argue that with YouTube that motto is wearing a little thin."
Besides damages, Viacom is also seeking an injunction prohibiting Google and YouTube from using its clips.
While YouTube has yet to generate much revenue, its online traffic has been growing rapidly. According to comScore Media Metrix, YouTube attracted 133.5 million visitors worldwide in January, up from 9.5 million a year earlier.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Retirees find Wii not just for the grandkids

2007-03-24T01:40:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Until two weeks ago, Ruth Ebert never had the slightest interest in the video games favored by her one and only granddaughter.
"I'm 82 years old, so I missed that part of our culture. Soap operas, yes. Video games, no," chirped Ebert, who recently started playing a tennis game on Nintendo Co. Ltd.'s new Wii video game console at the Virginia retirement community she calls home.
"It was funny, because normally I would not be someone who would do that," said Ebert, who picked up the console's motion-sensing Wiimote and challenged the machine to a match.
"I played tennis, if you can call it that, as a high school student. I had such fun doing it," she said.
Ebert swung the Wiimote just like a tennis racquet and said playing the game reminded her of the feeling she had all those years ago.
While she took the early on-court lead, the Wii beat her in the end. Still, it hurt less than her real-world losses: "I didn't mind losing to a video game. It couldn't rub it in."
Japan's Nintendo has been on a mission to expand the $30 billion global video game market far beyond the children and young males who make up its core consumers.
And the company, a former underdog best known for fun, high-quality games based on off-beat characters like plumbers -- think Mario Bros. -- has sent shock waves through game industry with the unexpected and runaway success of the Wii.
That $250 console has been stealing the show from Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, higher-powered consoles that are much more expensive than the Wii.
While those rivals focused on cutting-edge graphics and high-tech bells and whistles, Nintendo focused on making game play easier, more intuitive and more appealing to a mass market.
That bet paid off.
The Wii outsold the new Microsoft and Sony consoles in January and February and is generating its own buzz with everyone from nuns to cancer patients to toddlers.
There are Wii parties and Wii bowling contests. Players, who often look quite silly and occasionally injure themselves in fits of overzealous play, upload video of their Wii antics to a variety of technology Web sites like GameTrailers.com and Google's YouTube.
"I thought it was tremendous," said Ted Campbell, 77.
Last week he played the Wii for the first time at Springfield, Virginia's Greenspring Retirement Community, where Ebert is also a resident.
The community hasn't yet decided where to keep the Wii, although Ebert has volunteered her one-bedroom apartment, with its big-screen TV.
Flora Dierbach, 72, chairs the entertainment committee at a sister facility owned by Erickson Retirement Communities in Chicago and helped arrange a Wii bowling tournament -- the latest Wii craze.
"It's a very social thing and it's good exercise ... and you don't have to throw a 16-pound bowling ball to get results," said Dierbach, who added the competition had people who hardly knew each other cheering and hugging in the span of a few hours.
"We just had a ball with it. You think it's your grandkids' game and it's not," she said, noting that Erickson paid for the Wiis in its facilities.
Greenspring resident and long-time bowler Sim Taylor said his grandchildren are also great fans of video games.
"I never could understand it," said Taylor, who at 81 has surprised himself by adding video games to his list of hobbies.
That isn't the case with Millicent, his wife of 55 years.
"She sticks with bridge," Taylor said.
Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistribute

Chatroom users 'egged on father to kill himself live on webcam'

2007-03-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

A father-of-two hanged himself live over the internet in Britain's first 'cyber suicide'.
Kevin Whitrick, 42, took his life after being goaded by dozens of chatroom users from across the world who initially believed he was play acting.
But as they watched in horror, Mr Whitrick climbed onto a chair, smashed through a ceiling and then hanged himself with a piece of rope.
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Kevin Neil Whitrick, 42, was found dead by police in Wellington, after being alerted by a web user who is thought to have watched in horror as the man harmed himself
Stunned by what they had witnessed - broadcast on a popular chatroom website used by millions of people across the globe - chatroom users immediately contacted the police.
Officers rushed to the electrician's home in the Wellington area of Shropshire within minutes, smashing down the door to try to save him.

Kevin Whitrick had two 12-year-olds who he visited regularlyBut despite their efforts to save him, he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Last night it emerged that Mr Whitrick had been suffering from depression after being badly injured in a car crash last year.
Friends said that the breakdown of his marriage with wife, Paula - with whom he had 12-year-old twins - and the recent death of his father had also been causing him some distress.
Mr Whitrick told users of web-chat site PalTalk what he was going to do two hours before he killed himself on Wednesday night.
He was logged on with around 50 other users to a special "insult" chatroom where people "have a go at each other".
Today distraught users of the site said that they felt sick and had previously thought the web broadcast was a hoax.
They confirmed Mr Whitrick told friends in the internet chat room of his plans to kill himself but, thinking he was joking, they egged him on telling him to make sure the his webcam was on.
Mr Whitrick, using the user-name Shyboy-17-1, switched on his webcam and went ahead with his grisly plan.
One anonymous user said: "He tied a rope around an uncovered ceiling joist and stood on the chair as he tied the rope around his neck.
"Some of us chatroom users, talking to Kevin over text chat, microphones and video tried to convince him to step down, but others egged him on telling him to get on with it.
"We just couldn't believe he was doing it - it was surreal.
"One chatter said: 'F***ing do it, get on with it, get it round your neck. For F***'s sake he can't even do this properly'."
Another user who did not wish to be named said: "When Kevin stepped off the chair and was left dangling, the mood in the chatroom changed and people began to realise what they had just seen.
"We started asking if anyone knew where he lived and saying they should contact the police.
"I think someone contacted the police in their local area but sadly no one could get to him in time."
Shortly after, moderators on the site closed the feed from Kevin's webcam.
'Considerate and kind'
Mr Whitrick had been living in his flat, a converted house, after splitting from his wife Paula two years ago.
The couple, who married in 1988, had 12-year-old twins Lewis and Melissa who live with their mother in a three-bedroom, semi-detached home close by.
They are said to have visited their dad, who worked at family firm RMW electrical services in Shrewsbury, at weekends. His older brother Malcolm Whitrick is an associate director at Shrewsbury Town Football Club.

Kevin Whitrick's sparse profile on the paltalk websiteLast night Mrs Whitrick said: "Kevin was a loving father and family man. He was always the life and soul of the party, an extremely considerate and kind person and loved by many, he will be so sadly missed by us all.
"Unfortunately Kevin had a very serious car accident in July 2006 and had never fully recovered back to full health."
Mr Whitrick's stepmother Betty Whitrick, 74, told the Mail: 'Kevin was a bubbly kind of person, full of fun. I just don't know why he would do this.
"He lived alone but he always cheerful when I saw him. I knew he was very into computers and he also used to like playing bowls."
Detective Chief Inspector Jon Groves who is leading the investigation said: "Our enquiries to date have revealed that Mr Whitrick was using a chat room with a number of other people at the time of his death.
"We are liasing with the internet service provider at this time to contact other users who were online at the time of this incident and who may have information that could assist our enquiries.
"We are also working to ensure that witness support facilities are available to those who may have been affected by what they saw."
Sharon Atwal, who works in a cornershop opposite Mr Whitrick's flat, described him as "subdued" the last time she saw him.
She said: "Every night he'd take eight cans of Boddington's bitter from the fridge and re-stock it with the cans from the shelf. He always seemed quite cheerful.
"On Wednesday night, though, he didn't seem himself and it was the first night that he did not re-stock the fridge. It was as if he knew he wouldn't be coming back.
"He always struck me as very happy, he was friendly and had two perfect kids. I cannot believe he has done this."
Her brother Bobby added: "Kevin has lived in the flat for the past year and I have seen him every day without fail.
"Last week, he told me about his chat room. He was excited and said he had set it up himself. He said he had been speaking to people in Australia on his webcam.
"His two children used to visit at weekends. He had a very good relationship with them and always gave them lots of money to buy sweets."
The case appears to echo that of Brandon Vedas, a 21 year-old from Phoenix, Arizona, who committed suicide online using a mix of alcohol and prescription medication.
In that case people in the chat room egged the young man on, while others tried desperately to find his address.
Local MP for the Wrekin, Mark Pritchard, said: "This is a very sad and rare incident. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family.
"It is important that the use of the internet in this death is fully investigated."