Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse, and its top executives reaffirmed interest in joining forces with Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer unveiled the iPhone-like touch-screen feature at The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference, calling it "just the smallest snippet" of the Windows 7 operating system slated for release in late 2009.

A Microsoft employee showed possible applications like enlarging and shrinking photos and navigating a map of San Diego by stroking the screen.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) Chairman Bill Gates framed the new feature as an evolution away from the mouse.

"Today almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse," Gates said. "Over years to come, the role of speech, vision, ink - all of those - will be huge."

The software company's top two executives defended its last operating system, Vista, while acknowledging missteps. Gates said he has never been 100% satisfied with any Microsoft product, and that the company prides itself on fixing shortcomings in later versions.

"Vista has given more opportunity to exercise our culture than some products," he deadpanned.

The former Harvard University classmates fielded a range of questions for more than an hour, sharing the stage as Gates prepares to relinquish daily responsibilities at the company in July to focus more on philanthropic work.

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NASA has successfully landed its Phoenix probe on the surface of planet Mars.

The Mars Phoenix Lander, completing a 296-day journey of 680 million kilometres, closed in on the Red Planet with a 50-50 chance of a successful touchdown on its arctic plains, NASA officials told CNN.

The landing — dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" — was a nerve-wracking experience for mission managers, who have witnessed the failure of similar missions. Fifty-five percent of all Mars missions so far have failed.

The Phoenix's 90-day mission is to analyse the soils and permafrost of Mars' arctic tundra for signs of past or present life. It will also make vital measurements of water on the Red Planet.

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Moblin.org is an open source community for sharing software technologies, ideas, projects, code, and applications to create an untethered computing experience across Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), Netbooks, and embedded devices.

Now, Intel and Wind River Systems have teamed up to create a Linux/x86 platform for car electronics, which will debut at the Telematics Detroit 2008 conference today (May 20). The offering is based on Intel's low-power Atom processor and a new variant of Wind River's embedded Linux.

Wind River announced that its Linux Platform for Infotainment, optimized for Intel's Atom, should be available in August. It will include speech-recognition and speech-to-text software from Nuance Communications, Bluetooth and noise reduction from Parrot, music management from Gracenote, networking from SMSC and DVD playback from Corel.

The software will provide connectivity with Apple iPods and support 3D interfaces. It will also support the Controller Area Network and Media-Oriented Systems Transport buses used to link electronics in many cars.

More information: Wind River, Intel ride Linux into car market

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Microsoft Corp withdrew its offer for Yahoo Inc on Saturday as negotiations fell through on price, even after the software giant raised its bid by about $5 billion to $47.5 billion.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said his company increased its offer to $33 per share, from the $31 per share cash-and-stock bid that it initially made on January 31. But Yahoo was looking for $37 a share, Ballmer said.

"Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo has not moved toward accepting our offer," Ballmer said in a statement. "After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal," said Ballmer.

Yahoo has also courted a possible deal with Time Warner Inc's AOL Internet division and a search advertising partnership with Google Inc. In a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, Ballmer said he was concerned such plans would hurt Yahoo's own search and display advertising strategies, and impair its ability to retain talented engineers.

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The notebook and motherboard manufacturing company has announced its new laptop M70 in India. The great new feature for the M70 is the 1TB harddrive that this laptop will support.

Although there is still no launch date which has been fixed yet for this product, but we expect to see this soon in stores. The Asus M70 comes with a 17inch widescreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and a 16:9 aspect ratio.

In addition to these, the laptop has a 1.3 megapixel built-in swivel web camera, Altec lansing speakers and home theatre system.

The processors in which this model will be available are the latest Core 2 Duo ones from Intel. Right from the T7500 to the T9300 chipset.

There is also a 256 MB graphics card from ATI (Radeon HD3650). Upto 4GB of RAM is supported on this.

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The Compenion concept notebook, designed by Felix Schmidberger, eschews the familiar clamshell design in favor of two superbright organic LED panels that slide into place next to each other, making the notebook just three-quarters of an inch thick.




The Canova concept notebook from V12 Design features two touch-sensitive displays. It can be oriented as a traditional laptop for typing or writing, laid flat as a sketch pad or turned on its side as an e-reader.



Siafu

Who needs a screen at all? Long Beach, Calif.-based independent designer Jonathan Lucas' eccentric Siafu concept can touch you, literally. That's because Siafu is for the blind and has no screen.

"The idea was to open a new realm of digital interface for the visually impaired by enhancing and even surpassing existing technologies that currently cater to this group," said Lucas.

Because the blind can't see what's on the screen, Siafu converts images into corresponding 3-D shapes that are created with Magneclay, an oil-based synthetic material that instantly forms shapes in response to electrical fields.




The Solar Laptop Concept, designed by Nikola Knezevic, has an extra hinged lid covered with solar cells that can be adjusted to get the most out of the sun.



The Cario concept notebook from Anna Lopez can be carried around by its handle, positioned like an easel or placed on a car's steering wheel. When the car's not in motion, the Cario can project maps, video conferences and more onto the windshield.

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Many of you have been eagerly waiting for the Ad Review Center to arrive in your accounts, and we're happy to tell you that this feature is now available for all publishers. By enabling you to review all ads placement-targeted to your site, the Ad Review Center gives you more transparency and control, and ensures that ads are relevant to your site's content and users.

We wanted to share a publisher's thoughts about the Ad Review Center, so we chatted with Jennifer McDonald, Account Manager at RealNetworks for sites such as rollingstone.com and film.com. Before using it, Jennifer says that "the concerns Real had... were mainly concerns about running competitive ads on our sites." But she says that by using the Ad Review Center, her team has been able to keep competitive ads from running. As she notes, "We are able to quickly review the ads before they run on our sites and block any ads that are considered competitive to our services."

The Ad Review Center is now available for all publishers utilizing placement targeting. You can get started with this feature by visiting your 'Competitive Ad Filter' page, located under the 'AdSense Setup' tab.

Before getting started, we strongly recommend keeping your review preference set to the default of 'Run ads immediately.' This will let you allow or block ads after they have run. If you choose the other option of 'Hold ads,' the ads will await review for 24 hours before being allowed to run automatically. Using the 'Hold ads' setting will keep ads from participating in the auction while they await review, potentially lowering winning bids and your AdSense earnings. Ads that you have blocked can't compete in the auction either, so we ask that you keep in mind the revenue impact of blocking ads or switching from the 'Run ads immediately' setting.

For more information about using the Ad Review Center, please visit our Help Center, and to start using it, please log in to your account.

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Format war may be over in the Toshiba HD-DVD, but it seems that the next goal in the list of victims will be victorious Blu-Ray. Those of you who are already ready to toss in the Blu-Ray movie titles and the transition to the new format in the bandwagon, it is advisable to wait a bit longer, as the new format was still in diapers.

Powerful Red-Ray format is a new standard, was able to deliver "Apart from the HD-quality video, films, namely the impressive 4096 x 2048 pixels screen.

Blu-ray players also sold as "extra-HD", but does this label, at the very least misleading, since high-definition specifications say that the standard is achieved at 720p HD (1280 x 720), 1080i (1920 x 1080i) and 1080p (1920 x 1080p) resolutions. In the Blu-Ray standard is only able to deliver 1080p, which is in the range of HD.

In "Over-HD" image quality is achieved by increasing the basic standard specifications, namely: to provide resolutions. The only format can support "Over-HD" is one of definitions supporting the Red. Her playback device can display video works on the blaring 4K resolutions (4096 x 2048), 2K (2048 x 1024) and the regular 16:9 4K (3996 × 2160).
However, the Red-Ray player can not work with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD discs, but instead, it allows users to playback video content from SD and Compact Flash memory media. The player is still under development and is expected to press the market in 2009, just in time to make the transition from Blu-Ray to another standard HD.

The device has some important disadvantages sports, such as his rather salty cost. The new players will come with the price of $ 1000, and it is almost futile, given the fact that the film does not have a name to offer 4K screen. In fact, such resolutions can be caught only in digital supported through the Red One camera, which is rather expensive ($ 25,000).

Provided that you have a device and the accompanying title of the movie, there is one question remained unanswered. Average HDTV screens can be operated with video content to 1080p resolutions, but only Quad-HD TV sets can be operated at maximum resolution 3840 x 2160 pixels. Such displays are not only difficult to find, but they are also expensive.

However, a lot can change before 2009. Let us not forget that when the Pentium 4 chips hit the market, they cost a fortune, and now they have power in the kitchen toaster.

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Are you ready for a fun brain teaser? What currently has over 300 million accounts, is free of charge and brags about 230,000 new members daily? If you guessed Myspace, then you are correct!

The social networking site, Myspace, was first launched in 1999 by Intermix Media. Social networking sites concentrate on building online social “communities” for people who share the same interests, friends, politics and so forth. Some of Myspace’s well-known competitors include Facebook, Bebo and Skyblog. But exactly happens when you have a Myspace account?

Myspace is basically a profile about you, including interests, hobbies, embedded video or music, a blog and more. You can look at it as a multimedia resume of yourself that you share with others of your choice. Friends leave messages on your profile while you leave messages on theirs.

Myspace starts you off with a general palette that you can fill in. Some of these sections include “about me,” “who I’d like to meet,” and “details.” Areas that are not filled in will be left out of the profile your friends see. You can also add pictures, and select one to be the default of your name.

Once your profile is to your liking, you can then begin to invite “friends” to your space. You will soon accumulate a nice list of friends, who are then networked together. For instance, you may have Joe and Mary as friends. When Joe visits your site, he can see you have a friend named Mary and visit her space by clicking on her default picture from your location.

Safety is an issue for parents whose children have Myspace accounts. If your child has a Myspace profile, it is important to teach him or her basic internet safety rules. For instance, never give out a name, age, city, school or any other personal information to strangers (or to those on other friends’ profiles). Kids should not use their full names, and if they do, their accounts should be flagged as “invite only.” This means the general public cannot view their profile. In order to gain access to your child’s account, they must request and be given permission to the profile.

As a parent, you may wish to create your own account and add your child as a friend. Sound funny? Actually this is an excellent way to keep tabs on what your child is saying, what friends he or she has, and what THOSE friends are saying. Children often think of themselves as anonymous on the internet, and post things they think parents will never come across.

But Myspace in general can be a fun way to send messages to friends and demonstrate a bit of personal creativity. You can enter basic HTML to your profile to include paragraphs, pictures and more. And for those who do not know HTML, there are thousands of websites that have created pre-made layouts, graphics, comment boxes and more for Myspace profiles. These usually have backgrounds, and can cover almost any “look,” from animals to skateboard layouts or even Christian backgrounds. Simply visit one of these sites, pick out a fun layout and copy it into your profile.

Author:sverdlow

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U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet’s current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010. Speaking at a Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T, warned that the current systems that constitute the Internet will not be able to cope with the increasing amounts of video and user-generated content being uploaded.

“The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today,” he said. “In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today.” Cicconi, who was speaking at the event as part of a wider series of meetings with U.K. government officials, said that at least $55 billion worth of investment was needed in new infrastructure in the next three years in the U.S. alone, with the figure rising to $130 billion to improve the network worldwide. “We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010,” he said.

He claimed that the “unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic” would increase 50-fold by 2015 and that AT&T is investing $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade its backbone network. Cicconi added that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing strain on the Internet infrastructure. “Eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute. Everything will become HD very soon, and HD is 7 to 10 times more bandwidth-hungry than typical video today. Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today,” he said.

The AT&T executive pointed out that the Internet exists, thanks to the infrastructure provided by a group of mostly private companies. “There is nothing magic or ethereal about the Internet–it is no more ethereal than the highway system. It is not created by an act of God, but upgraded and maintained by private investors,” he said.

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The business world is going paperless, and the print world may soon go inkless. Zink Imaging, which stands for zero ink, is taking Polaroid's instant-print model and digitizing it. Zink's technology focuses principally on the paper, embedding heat-sensitive dye crystals within it, and removing the need for cartridges. This adjustment allows for vastly smaller, different shape printers to be realized, which could soon lead to an array of digital products - digital cameras, camcorders, televisions, etc. – sporting an applied Zink printer.

The paper is the key to Zink printing. Each sheet contains cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals. When moved through the printer, the dye crystals heat up and emit the image colors. A water resistant layer coats the surface, protecting the photo and ensuring that prints come out dry and smudge-free.

"At Zink Imaging, we are insisting on the impossible to deliver a revolutionary digital printing experience to the world. Zink technology does not require ink to print, provides a magical user experience, can transform any device into a printer, is good to the environment and most importantly, makes people smile," said Wendy Caswell, president and CEO of Zink Imaging, in a company press release.

Zink paper is reasonably priced at 20 to 25 cents for a 2 x 3-inch sheet, significantly more affordable than the $1 or so prints of older, analogue Polaroid cameras.

Free from conventional form, the removal of the ink cartridges offers environmental gains, with no wasteful ink cartridges to dispose of. It also opens up exciting design possibilities. According to Paul Baker, Zink Imaging, this adjustment paves the way to "transform almost any digital device into a printer."

Below is a video produced by Zink, displaying a combined digital camera/printer.

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More than a year after Windows Vista was introduced, hackers have finally developed a clean crack of Windows Vista. There have been a variety of workarounds for Vista's copy protection before now, but this is the first time someone has figured out a way to install a cracked version that would pass all of Microsoft's various anti-piracy checks. It seems that certain OEMs found the activation process too burdensome and persuaded Microsoft to provide them with a way to bypass it in order to save their own customers the hassle. Hackers figured out how to activate this special "no activation" mode on cracked copies of Vista. I think this is one of the biggest reasons copy protection schemes fail: they almost always creates serious inconveniences for customers, and irritating customers hurts the bottom line. Companies may talk a tough line about fighting piracy, but when push comes to shove, they're not willing to cut off their own nose to spite their face by insisting on enforcing a copy protection scheme that would put their product at a disadvantage in the marketplace.

Of course, the obvious question is why companies implement copy protection schemes in the first place if they invariably wind up compromising them. The reason, I think, is that these trade-offs are almost never made explicit to corporate decision makers ahead of time. When the copy protection plan is being pitched to management, its developers only talk about how great it will work. Only later, once it's actually being implemented, do people start noticing that it will also cause a lot of problems. But by that time, the copy protection system is too far along the development process to be canned, so instead exceptions are added. These exceptions prevent the copy protection system from crippling the product, but they also undermine its effectiveness as an anti-piracy measure. So customers have to deal with annoying restrictions and the product still gets pirated.

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Google has been testing out TV ads for a while now, and is about to open it up to the general public sometime within the next few weeks. The service lets advertisers put spots on popular television networks like A&E, Bravo, CNBC, CNN, Discovery, ESPN, Fox News and MTV. Though these types of ads aren’t geared toward the average company with moderate budgets, it could become a valuable tool for larger companies looking to deploy and monitor their television ad campaigns.

It’s unclear how businesses are going to react to this new service, since it’s targeted at companies with very large budgets, but the actual date for it’s release is still up in the air as Google is working on scalability issues.

To make this type of advertising more affordable for the average person, I would like to one day see Google create set-top boxes that are connected to a user’s Google account. Google could then sell targeted television spots rather than blanket ones — potentially making the cost of placing ads much easier to swallow for businesses with smaller budgets. Of course, implementing a system like this would require full cooperation from many television networks — something I can’t see happening right away.

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Websense says that hackers have streamlined their anti-CAPTCHA tools and can attack Microsoft’s Live Hotmail service in about 6 seconds.

Websense has been on the CAPTCHA case for a while and the latest attack on Microsoft’s Hotmail is an evolutionary leap because hackers’ tools are automated and operating almost instantaneously. CAPTCHAs are viewed as a spam defense and a way to distinguish humans and computers. Google says CAPTCHAs are still useful, but others beg to differ.

The steps of the CAPTCHA eluding attack are similar to previous attacks, according to Websense. A bot hooks into Internet Explorer, observes account names, uses IE to sign up for Hotmail accounts, grabs CAPTCHA and breaks it, creates multiple accounts and then spams away.

The big difference: “Unlike Live Mail Anti-CAPTCHA and Gmail Anti-CAPTCHA operations in the past, the current attack is aggressive and instantaneous in terms of CAPTCHA breaking host turn-around time,” said Websense. Total response time? Six seconds.

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Google engineers have adapted a software programme to help track child sex predators and search for patterns in images of abuse on the web.

Google created the technology for the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).

It was originally developed to block copyrighted videos on the company's YouTube division.

The programme uses pattern recognition to enable analysts to sort and identify files containing child sex abuse.

Google says its aim in teaming up with the centre's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography is to develop solutions that would make it harder for people to use the web to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used to do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real," said Google research scientist Shumeet Baluja.

Overwhelming task

Mr Baluja, who was also the technical leader of the project, said that as more and more predators use the web to ensnare children, "analysts were getting overwhelmed by all of the data they had to sift through".

Since 2002 the NCMEC has pored over 13 million child sex abuse images and videos in an effort to help police identify and rescue children from harm.

In the last year they have looked at five million pictures.

Google says the new tools will enable the centre's analysts to search their systems more quickly and easily as they try to sort and identify files that contain images of child sex abuse victims.

"The programme uses pattern recognition and will work even if the pattern has been modified," explained technology analyst Larry Magid.

"So if police can identify a pattern such as a calendar on the wall or a t-shirt logo, they have a much better chance of finding the exploited child and catching the suspect."

Hi-tech solutions

The technology is an outgrowth of the anti-piracy software Google developed to helps its YouTube division ferret out videos of suspected of being posted without the agreement of copyright holders.

"Criminals are using cutting edge technology to commit their crimes of child sexual exploitation, and in fighting to solve those crimes and keep children safe, we must do the same," said NCMEC President and CEO Ernie Allen.

Google engineers and scientists were able to work on the project on what the company calls "20% time", which allows all employees to dedicate that amount of time to projects they initiate.

Some of those projects benefit stockholders or end users, but in this case the benefit could be to thousands of children.

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