Nokia, Intel Partnership Facing Market Challenges

n announcing a mobile computing partnership with Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has gotten a big boost into a market the chipmaker has been unable to penetrate. But it remains to be seen whether the collaboration will lead to Internet-enabled devices that are as popular with consumers as today's smartphones.

The companies announced their "technology collaboration" Tuesday, saying it would lead to a new class of mobile-computing devices. However, if the companies knew how these devices would be different than what's available on store shelves currently, they were not saying.

"We will talk about product when we are ready to talk about product," Anand Chandrasekher, senior VP and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, told reporters during a joint teleconference with Nokia.

What the companies were willing to talk about pointed to a big win for Intel. Besides increasing market access through a deal with the world's largest mobile-phone maker, Intel also got a license for Nokia's HSPA/3G radio technology.

Such technology was missing from Intel's chipsets, which currently support Wi-Fi and WiMax, a wireless wide area network technology that Intel is hoping will someday be a challenger to carriers' future 4G data networks. However, with no guarantee WiMax will ever be successful, Intel needed technology to get on carriers' existing networks.

The partnership also gave a boost to Intel's Linux-based Moblin operating system for mobile Internet devices. Nokia agreed to work with Intel on developing Moblin, which is tailor-made for Intel's Atom processor, for future gadgets. The two companies also agreed to optimize Nokia's Linux-based OS, Maemo, to run on Intel's microarchitecture.

Beyond the technology agreements, little is known about the product direction Nokia and Intel are headed. Intel chips today are too power hungry for anything smaller than a netbook, which are mini-laptops with screen sizes ranging from 8 to 10 inches.

However, that's expected to change when Intel releases the next-generation Atom-based mobile platform, code-named Moorestown, which Intel claims consumes 10 times less power when devices are in idle mode. Intel is expected to start shipping the platform in 2010.

source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218100945

Verizon boosts FiOS network speeds, but talks mostly about uploads

Verizon has just boosted speeds across its FiOS (fiber-optic connections) network, but the focus is not on downloads so much as it is on uploads. Verizon believes it can set itself apart by appealing to those customers who want to "fully participate in today's interactive, multimedia Web."

Download speeds are increasing today; the base-level 10Mbps package gets a bump to 15Mbps, and the 20Mbps plan jumps to 25Mbps.

But the real action is on the upload side of the equation. The base-level plan came with a 2Mbps upstream connection, but today that's being boosted to 5Mbps. The 20Mbps plan will see upload speeds increase from 5Mbps to 15Mbps.

"Verizon has good news for people who want to enjoy interactive applications like video chat, quickly back up their hard drives, upload photos and videos to e-mail and social networking sites, or send large files to co-workers or clients," said the company today. "The ultra-fast downstream and upstream speed you need every day is here. It is widely available, affordably priced, and there are no artificial limits placed on how much you can use."

"No artificial limits," of course, is a not-so-subtle dig at the cable industry, which has tried on occasion to limit the use of its limited upstream bandwidth.

And, in case you did not catch the trash talking, Verizon's announcement then makes it perfectly clear. "The average upstream connection speed used by cable broadband customers is 2.68Mbps," it says. "Verizon is offering speeds 2-to-7 times faster than this typical cable upload speed."

Are "upload speeds" the new "download speeds"? This is certainly an easy point for Verizon to emphasize, since it costs them almost nothing to up these limits and they don't share the same constraints on upstream bandwidth that some cable systems have.

Whether customers truly care about moving from a 2Mbps to 5Mbps upload is not clear, though the kind of person who signs up with FiOS seems more likely to use their connection for uploading media files.

source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/verizon-boosts-fios-speeds-but-talks-mostly-about-uploads.ars

Greece's New Acropolis Museum opens to visitors in London

Greece opened its long-awaited Acropolis Museum in Athens on Saturday with a lavish ceremony attended by 400 guests, including many heads of state, and drawing thousands on the heavily policed streets leading to the building.

But for many Greeks, the celebrations were marred by a sense of loss.

"We cann't dedicate this magnificent new museum with full hearts," Greek Culture Minister Antonis Samaras said Friday, on the eve of the opening ceremony.

"We cann't illuminate fully the artistic achievement created in 5th-century [BC] Athens because almost half of the sculptures from the Parthenon were taken from here 207 years ago to reside in enforced exile 4,000 kilometres away."

Samaras was referring to the Parthenon marbles on display in the British Museum. British Ambassador Lord Elgin began removing artifacts from the Acropolis in 1799 when Greece was under Ottoman rule and sold 75 metres of the original 160 metres of the frieze that ran around the Parthenon's inner core to the British Museum for £35,000 ($72,000).

The return of the artifacts to Athens has been an issue of national pride in Greece, and successive governments have waged high-profile campaigns for their return.

Conspicuously, there were no government officials from Britain at Saturday's opening festivities.

The museum, spreading across 5 levels at the foot of the Acropolis hill in central Athens, has been the centrepiece of Greece's efforts to repatriate its missing sculptures.

Some smaller pieces were recently returned from Italy, the Vatican and Germany, and are on display in the new building. But the British Museum has steadfastly refused to give up Lord Elgin's treasures.

One of its main arguments against their return had been the lack of an appropriate place to house them in Greece. But the $185-million glass-and-concrete museum, designed by U.S.-based architect Bernard Tschumi, has a special gallery for the Parthenon marbles on its third floor. The glass hall displays the section of the Parthenon frieze that Elgin left behind next to plaster casts of the works in London.

The copies are stark white plaster, in contrast with the brownish weathered marble of the originals.

At the opening ceremony, Greek President Karolos Papoulias renewed the call for the missing works. "The whole world can now see the most important sculptures from the Parthenon together," he said.

"But some are missing. It is time to heal the wounds on the monument by returning the marbles that belong to it."

Earlier this month, British Museum spokeswoman Hannah Boulton said the London institution would consider lending the marbles to Greece for 3 months for the opening of the new museum.

Samaras said his government could not accept the offer. "Accepting it would legalize the snatching of the marbles and the monument's carving up 207 years ago," he said.

The Acropolis Museum, with its panoramic views of Acropolis hill, holds more than 4,000 works from the golden age of Athenian democracy in 14,000 square metres of display space.

Antique ceramics and sculptures are displayed on the 1st floor.

The Caryatids — columns sculpted as female figures that held up a porch roof on the southern side of the Erechtheum temple — dominate the top of a ramp leading to the second floor.

The 2nd floor features sculptures from the Temple of Athena and the Propylaea entrance to the Acropolis.

Tschumi has said the proximity of the Acropolis itself was a major challenge in designing the building.

The Parthenon "is one of the most perfect buildings… in Western architecture," the French-Swiss architect said.

The museum will be open to the public for a nominal one euro ($1.42) admission, or the price of a bus ticket in Athens, until the end of this year.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2009/06/20/acropolis-museum-opening.html

Britain Parliament posts expense claims online

An expense claim made by Conservative Party Leader David Cameron is seen on a British parliament website June 18, 2009. Details of MPs' expenses were officially published on Thursday, although with key information like addresses blacked out. Copies of every receipt submitted by MPs from 2004 to 2008 can be viewed on parliament's website.

Heavy deletion marks inserted into the material make it hard to determine what many of the claims are or whether there was an attempt to manipulate Parliament's rules

Britain's Parliament posted copies of lawmakers' expense claims online today, but censored almost all of the juicy details that have triggered public anger and forced dozens of legislators to resign.

Copies of the claims, and about 1.2 million receipts, were posted on the Internet following a 4 year legal battle by freedom of information advocates and concerted efforts by the House of Commons to block publication of the details.

But the addresses of lawmakers' 2nd homes, the destinations on train tickets, the hotels used, the numbers on phone bills and other details have been blacked out. The heavy deletion marks inserted into the material make it impossible to determine what many of the claims are - or whether there was an attempt to manipulate Parliament's rules.

Even the most notorious claim, a 1,645-pound ($2,666 U.S.) charge for an ornamental duck house for a pond, made by an opposition Conservative lawmaker, has been blacked out.

Posted allowances by British MPs

Details of the claims have been disclosed over the past month after an uncensored copy was leaked to Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

The revelations have led dozens of lawmakers to quit ministerial jobs, or announce they will soon leave Parliament. The outraged British public paid back the country's major political parties by voting in large numbers for fringe groups in recent local and European elections.

Details disclosed by the newspaper showed how some lawmakers manipulated rules by routinely switching the designation of their second home — enabling them to furnish and improve several properties over a number of years. Some of those homes were sold during Britain's housing boom. But the sections cannot be found in the public data, because all addresses have been removed.

Lawmakers are supposed to use their allowances to fund the essential cost of a home near Parliament, but in some cases used public money to furnish houses elsewhere — sometimes later selling them at a profit.

Police and prosecutors have said they'll not pursue criminal investigations into allegations against most of the lawmakers, but some allegations must be reviewed further before that determination can be made.

Kitty Ussher, a junior Treasury minister, quit her government job Wednesday night — only a week after Prime Minister Gordon Brown reassigned ministers in the wake of the scandal — following allegations that she switched the designation of her homes to avoid taxes.

The newspaper also proved how some lawmakers had made bogus claims for mortgage payments on home loans that had already been paid off, another practice not revealed by the public data.

Details of legislators' claims were leaked to the Daily Telegraph by former special forces soldier John Wick, who said he acted as a middleman for another person, but has not revealed his source. The Times newspaper said Mr. Wick had offered to sell it the information for $486,000. The Daily Telegraph has declined to say whether it paid for the data.

Maurice Frankel, of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said without the leak, the public would still be unaware of some abuses of the allowance system. “The most serious abuses revealed by the Daily Telegraph would never have come to light,” Mr. Frankel said.

Alistair Graham, former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life - which scrutinizes standards at Parliament - said he still expected that scrutiny of the public data would expose more outrageous charges.

“I don't think we are at the end of this story at all. We may not even be at the beginning of the end. I think this is going to run and run.”

source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/britain-posts-expense-claims-online/article1186785/

V-Vehicle To Build High-Efficiency combustion-engine cars In Louisiana

After weeks of mystery and speculation, today V-Vehicle Company (VVC), a San Diego firm backed by oil man turned environmentalist T. Boone Pickens finally revealed that it is the manufacturer setting up shop in Monroe, Louisiana to build a range of high-efficiency combustion-engine cars.

Earlier reports and rumors had a range of electric or hybrid cars being built at the former plant of industry supplier Guide. Instead, 1,400 jobs will be created to build regular gasoline-powered cars that focus on high mileage, reports local Monroe newspaper The News Star.

It is a bizarre announcement in the midst of the current economic and automotive crisis. But it is evidence that even as the old guard fades, a crop of new companies is rising to meet the changing face of today's market.

Whether VVC will have any better luck than its predecessors, however, has yet to be seen. There is no doubt that these are tough and often tricky times for carmakers as they fight to balance countervailing concerns for safety, efficiency, power and performance.

What balance will VVC strike? And will it be a winning one? We will know for sure when the cars start rolling off the production line, but Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal says the team behind VVC is 'first class', and that VVC's presence is a 'game changer' for Louisiana and important for the country as a whole.

VVC was founded in 2006 by CEO Frank Varasano, previously executive VP of Oracle Corp., while former Mazda designer Tom Matano will head up the vehicle design department. Matano was responsible for the design of the MX-5, RX-7 and 929 Miata M-Coupe among other projects.

"I am delighted to see our vision for a new American car company coming to life here in Monroe, La.," said Varasano. "We have designed and engineered this car from start to finish to give the U.S. consumer a quality car with great value made right here in America."

source: http://blogs.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1021550_v-vehicle-to-build-high-efficiency-cars-in-louisiana

Snow Leopard new features hint at Apple tablet

Though Apple is not saying whether it is working on a touchscreen tablet, the company may have shown its hand at its Worldwide Developers Conference last week.

Of course, the Apple tablet has become the Apple press corps' version of a Bigfoot hunt. Some believe the evidence is overwhelming. Others are, well, underwhelmed. And Apple does not discuss products before it is ready to.

However, based on the features demonstrated at the developer conference last week, the newest version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.6, dubbed Snow Leopard, could turn out to be the most touchscreen-friendly Mac OS the company has ever built. Snow Leopard won't be available until September, and so far, Apple doesn't sell a touchscreen notebook or tablet. But some of the features in the upcoming OS at least show a path on which Apple could be headed toward offering a larger touchscreen device.

At the developer event, a list of new features of OS X 10.6 was rattled off by Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet. But most of the upgrades to the operating system from the previous build, OS X 10.5, known as Leopard, are gentle tweaks aimed at easier usability and faster processing, things the average user may or may not notice.

After a closer look, however, the unifying theme of several of the new features of Snow Leopard is that they are now extremely easy to navigate without a keyboard, or without a lot of mouse clicking. That also happens to be one of the keys to a successful mobile interface:

keeping steps to opening applications and performing tasks to a minimum.

Expose in Dock Starting with the Finder, the addition of Expose to the dock is a great example. Expose is a feature that is used for organizing all your open windows at once, or just the windows from a particular application you were running. Putting Expose directly into the dock now cuts out the need to first switch to the specific application you want before activating Expose. It also cuts out the need to use a keyboard, or use a trackpad gesture to call it up. Clicking and holding an app's icon will bring all windows open that are associated with that program to the front. Being able to tap and hold on a touchscreen would make it that much easier.

Stacks There's also Stacks, a feature that keeps shortcuts to chosen files in the dock, which has been updated to be more useful without forcing users to enter the Finder. In Leopard, the amount of thumbnail previews of files shown in a stack was limited, and to see the all files, you had to go into the Finder. Now in Snow Leopard, all items in Stacks can be viewed simply by dragging the scroll bar, precluding the need to open the Finder. That might seem like a small change, but it is important if you're browsing with just a finger on a touch-sensitive surface.

Quicktime X The new version of Apple's video application QuickTime is also more touch-friendly. The player controls (play, pause, forward, backward) are now quite similar to what's found on the iPhone. Also, in order to edit videos, there's a ribbon timeline of scenes from the video that appears under the player. The ribbon can be moved forward and backward in time for editing just by dragging. The same interface is what users of the new iPhone 3G S will be using when they want to trim video clips they have captured on the device. Prior to this, you had to set the beginning and end points with little arrows that provided no indication of what segment of the clip you were editing besides the time.

Freehand drawing And then there's the addition of freehanding via the touchpad. Apple said Snow Leopard will allow users to draw Chinese characters freehand onto a Mac notebook track pad, and the OS will predict characters for faster writing. This feature could clearly transfer from trackpad input to direct onscreen input if Apple engineers wanted. They already have a similar feature in the iPhone for Chinese characters based on the technology from Hanwang.

Safari 4 updates New Safari 4 features would also accommodate easier navigation by touch. The new Coverflow option to browse through past sites visited as well as sites you visit most often would be easy with the drag of a finger. And on a screen larger than an iPhone, the effect would work marvelously.

These are just a few of the feature upgrades of OS X 10.6 that seem it indicate a trend toward touch capabilities.

True, Steve Jobs said at an Apple event last fall that putting touchscreens on traditional laptops "has not made a lot of sense" to Apple. His point is a good one: even companies that embrace touchscreen laptops admit that it is an awkward posture to sit and point at a laptop screen. HP's CTO of its PC group, Phil McKinney, has indicated that's why the company's Windows touchscreen laptops are convertible to tablet PCs. But Jobs' comment doesn't rule out a different form factor with a touchscreen, like a tablet.

While it would seem like Apple could use the ready-made iPhone operating system for a tablet instead of a touch-friendly version of Mac OS X users, that could limit the device. Most users expect the freedom of having a Finder and the ability to download directly from the Web and not through the App Store only, as with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If Apple does end up making a tablet that were to run Snow Leopard or some version of it, that means it probably would not be announced until after Snow Leopard's official release in September. Others have speculated that it won't be ready until at least early 2010.

source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10265214-37.html

Windows Azure OS - Microsoft plans to announce next month

Microsoft plans to announce next month more of the business details behind its Windows Azure operating system (OS).

The software maker unveiled the cloud-based operating system at a developer conference last year. It has said that some of the services, currently in free testing, will be released in final form this year. The company has said that it'll run Azure applications in its data centers and will charge users based on the computing resources they need.

In an interview on Monday, Corporate Vice President Allison Watson said that the company will get concrete about the financial details and say how partners can help sell Azure at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference which runs July 13-16 in New Orleans.

Until now, Microsoft has said merely that it plans to be "competitive with the marketplace" when it comes to pricing Azure.

Microsoft has also talked about perhaps having partners run Azure data centers in other locations, but Watson said that announcements on that front are probably further out.

"The economics of running a giant hosted business are different," Watson said. "They are interesting."

Microsoft is still trying to figure out exactly which businesses it wants to be in and which should be left to partners, she said. When Microsoft announced Azure, it said that all of the applications would be run from its data centers. However, Watson said the company is also looking at ways that partners can host cloud-based solutions.

"We have had some interesting conversations," Watson said.

Microsoft already competes directly with its hosting partners in other parts of its services business. For example, Microsoft offers online versions of SharePoint and Exchange, but also has partners that host their own copies of those products for customers.

Even in a world where Microsoft is selling services as much as software and using the Internet to deliver many of those products, Watson says that partners remain key to Microsoft's strategy.

"Partners have been our secret ingredient for how we grow and how we get things done," Watson said.

She noted that some of the key growth areas of technology - virtualization, mobility, and unified communications are places where customers need the skills of a partner as opposed to buying a software or service "off the shelf."

Even many of Microsoft's longtime competitors, folks with big internal sales efforts like IBM and Oracle, are starting to place more emphasis on the role of partners, she said. Even Google, she said, is starting to get in the partner game, announcing a program earlier this year.

For Microsoft, it continues to invest in that area despite the economy, Watson said.

While Microsoft has cut some from its internal field sales ranks, Watson said the company has actually added some to its partner sales channel in hopes that 3rd parties might be able to pick up some of the slack on the sales front.

And while the overall enterprise software business is projected to be roughly flat this year, Watson notes that rate is better than on the hardware side. Since last October, Microsoft has been trying to convince partners that selling Microsoft's software can be a bright spot in an otherwise tough economy.

As for the Azure push, Watson did not want to give away too much more. In the mean time, below is an interview I did with Ray Ozzie when Azure was unveiled. He also spoke about his cloud-based vision in a recent speech at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.

source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10264906-56.html

Honda hopes variety will lead to win in U.S

Honda is ready to offer bigger vehicles in North America should demand return for such models, as well as the small cars viewed as the Japanese automaker's forte, a senior executive said Thursday.

Honda Motor Co. Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said working to please the customer has been "a basic company stance" over its half-century history in the U.S. market. Honda reached its 50th anniversary in the U.S. Thursday.

What's so difficult to predict is whether American consumers will revert to their old tastes, he said in an interview with The Associated Press at Honda's Tokyo headquarters. When gas prices dropped after a surge in the 1970s, Americans returned to buying big models, said Kondo, who headed Honda's U.S. operations from 2003 to 2007.

"It's difficult to see who will emerge the winner, but we want to be a winner," he said of the troubled U.S. industry, which has seen General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC file for bankruptcy protection.

For now, Honda is focusing on smaller fuel-efficient products like the Insight hybrid, which has been a hit because of its affordable price of $19,800 in the U.S. and 1.89 million yen ($19,300) in Japan - cheaper than Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius, the global top-seller.

Honda is promising a sporty CR-Z hybrid for early next year in the U.S., European and Japanese markets, which Kondo said would cost more than $20,000. A hybrid version of the subcompact Fit will follow, he said.

Kondo said he was pushing his engineers to further cut costs for hybrids by several hundred dollars per car and boost mileage by 10 per cent to make the usually higher pricing of a hybrid worth it for the consumer.

Honda - which makes motorcycles, the Asimo human-shaped robot, as well as Accord sedans - will focus on a limited number of global models to achieve cost savings by producing more of each product, including hybrids, he said.

Kondo said Honda hopes to reach 500,000 hybrid sales around the world in the next year or so.

Kondo said there were some signs the U.S. auto downturn may be bottoming out, but he said a full recovery could not be expected for another couple of years.

Like other Japanese manufacturers, Honda has been battered by the global slump and the strong yen, which slashes overseas earnings. But it has fared relatively better than bigger rivals Toyota and GM.

Analysts say Honda can stage a recovery, partly because it has a strong motorcycle division. Honda has less excess production capacity in Japan, and has a better lineup of small energy-efficient models than its competitors, they say.

"Honda's earning power is proving resilient," said J.P. Morgan analyst Takaki Nakanishi. "Honda is reaping the benefits from the speed and diligence with which it is matching its corporate structure to the changing business environment."

Kondo - who has worked for a decade in the U.S., about a quarter of his 40-year career at Honda - acknowledged that staying nimble was a challenge as Honda grew. What it needs to remember is its roots as a tiny newcomer in the U.S., he said.

When Honda started selling the Civic hatchback in the U.S. in 1973, it made a major error because it was not prepared for the car body rusting from antifreeze salts on winter roads.

It exchanged all the damaged parts, although that cost more than all of Honda's group profits then, and that won respect from dealers and customers, Kondo recalled.

"It may sound like we are trying to sound cool. But the reason Honda is where it is today is because we have always sided with the customer," he said.

Today, it sells and makes more cars in the U.S. than in Japan.

"We are an American company," Kondo said.

source: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090611/AUTOS_honda_products_090611/20090611?s_name=Autos

City H1N1/swine flu Death Toll Rises To 15

The Department of Health confirmed 3 more deaths linked to H1N1/swine flu Thursday, bringing the city's death toll to 15, as the World Health Organization(WHO) declares a swine flu pandemic.

According to the DOH, one victim was under the age of 4, one was between 5 and 24 years old, and the other was between 25 and 54. No other details have been released.

On Wednesday, 3 other deaths were confirmed.

Most of the serious cases and deaths have been in people with established risk factors for flu complications.

The news came as the Health Department released statistics showing that one in 7 New Yorkers had reported flu-like symptoms during the first 3 weeks of last month.

Officials say a telephon of those polled said they had symptoms like fever and cough or a sore throat between May 1 & May 20, meaning more than a half-million New Yorkers could have been sick with the H1N1 virus.

In response to flu concerns, New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn is restricting visits to the maternity and pediatric wards.

Only a husband or significant other will be allowed in to the maternity ward. And only parents can visit the pediatric ward.

A hospital spokeswoman says there was no H1N1 incident at the hospital, but since it is highly contagious, they wanted to limit the number of visits into units where patients are more vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the city's public safety, health, and governmental operation committees met Thursday to discuss the virus.

City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley, as well as education and emergency management officials, testified before City Council members.

Department of Education and Department of Correction representatives were also on hand to answer questions, but did not testify.

During the hearing, Farley was asked several pointed questions, including why the city has limited its sharing of details about those who have died from the flu strain.

"The information that the vast majority people who have died have had underlying conditions is important for people to know and that we have provided information about the frequency of underlying conditions that are important," said Farley.

"You have a panic with the failure to have information, you have less of a panic the more information that is out there," said United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

The hearing also aired concerns over how the city decides to close schools when a high number of flu absences are reported.

"We did not have and we still do not have an absolute set of criteria, by which you can go down the list and check things off to determine whether a school should be closed," said NY City Deputy Health Commissioner Adam Karpati.

Looking ahead, Farley said the greatest challenge the city faces is making policy decisions in the face of medical and scientific uncertainty.

On a global level, H1N1 continues to spread.

In a statement sent to member countries, WHO said it decided to raise the pandemic warning level from phase 5 to 6 - its highest alert – after holding an emergency meeting on swine flu with its experts.

It is the 1st global flu pandemic in 41 years.

source: http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/100582/city-council-holds-hearing-on-response-to-h1n1/Default.aspx

Facebook username: coming soon

From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity was not reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=3141592"That soon will change.

We are planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your Pages or profile on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy to remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

facebook.com/profile.php?id=3141592

acebook.com/Joseph.Letzelter

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings on facebook.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you will be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You will also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least 5 characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop ("."). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we are looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future.

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it is been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we have taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names.

Be sure to check out this FAQ for answers to common questions, and if you are an administrator of Facebook Pages. If you want to ensure you keep the rights for a trademark or other protected name.

source: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

Sims 3 sales 1.4 million copies in first week

LOS ANGELES - ELECTRONIC Arts Inc says that 1.4 million copies of The Sims 3 were sold the first week, making it the best-selling PC game launch in the company's history.

The company also said on Tuesday that over 7 million user-designed items - such as home furnishings and clothing - were downloaded from the game's website.

The third installment of the life-simulating game was released June 2 and features a new movie-making tool and additional ways to customise the personalities of the game's virtual townsfolk.

EA announced last year that the original Sims passed the 100 million sales mark since its launch in 2000, making The Sims the world's best-selling computer game. -- AP

asource: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_388341.html

Bing Isn't Google, but it might be better than you think

Microsoft has been trounced in the search engine business, but it hasn't given in, and its third try might enjoy better luck

Microsoft admits it missed the importance of search - more accurately, it didn't realise there was so much money in it, until Google started piling up billions. It's trying to catch up. First, it converted MSN Search into Live Search, and now it has launched a new version, Bing, with a TV advertising campaign.

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer said Bing was one of the few available short names that worked on a worldwide basis. The company hasn't confirmed that it stands recursively for Bing Is Not Google, but that's the sort of joke software engineers enjoy.

So far, the "full" Bing is only available in the US. Bing's benefit - and its major problem - is that it does more than simple search, and some extra features depend on local data. The British version is being developed by more than 60 Microsoft engineers in the UK.

Microsoft says Bing goes beyond today's search engines by providing "intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business." For example, if you search for BA48, Bing recognises it's a flight number and tells you the arrival time and terminal at Heathrow. In many cases, you can find the information you need without leaving Bing.

No doubt more "vertical areas" will be added, but each one requires a lot of work.

Bing has some useful features. For example, if you position the mouse cursor towards the right of a result, a thin vertical line appears, and Bing fetches text from the site. That can help you decide whether or not to visit it. Bing also lists your previous searches down the left hand side.

Some of Bing's innovations were already present in Live Search, but not widely known. These include the excellent image search, playing videos on the results page when you hover the mouse over them, and the xRank celebrity tracker.

Whether Bing's search results are as good as Google and Yahoo is open to doubt. However, this weekend, someone put up a "blind test" page that showed results from all three and invited you to pick the best, without knowing which was which. Bing took an early lead, then ran level with Google. At the time of writing, Google was in the lead (40%), with Yahoo and Bing about level (30%).

I'd expect Google to win the vote because we're familiar with its results, and people generally like what they know. However, two friends who are respectively Linux and Mac fans overwhelmingly chose Bing results, while my results were mixed but slightly favoured Yahoo.

This suggests that Google does not provide dramatically better results than its rivals, which its market dominance might suggest. It's worth trying all three to see which search engine suits you best. You might be surprised.

I doubt whether Bing can overtake Yahoo, let alone Google, but having more innovation in the search market should benefit everyone.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/08/netbytes-microsoft-bing

Yahoo adds new widgets on Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail, TV widgets, and Zimbra are the newly-incorporated apps into the Yahoo homepage, as a result of the expansion of the company's Open Strategy - a push that enables third-party apps into the company's e-mail service.

In fact, Yahoo on Friday added over a dozen widgets to its Webmail service, also integrating with PayPal, YouTube, eBay, and Mint.com. These apps are aimed at providing more services to users within Yahoo Mail, thereby eliminating the requirement of shuffling between Websites and services.

The new widgets that Yahoo has incorporated on Yahoo Mail include Zumo Drive; Picnik; Showtime; WordPress; and Food & Wine Pairing.

Talking about the inherent benefits of the assimilation of new widgets, Tapan Bhat, a Senior VP at Yahoo, said in a blog post: "We've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can ease the pain of site-hopping to help you do more things at once."

However, the new Yahoo Mail widgets give the app developer has the leeway to both access as well as store the content of your e-mail messages and any personal information you make available to the apps.

Though the new Mail additions are presently in beta, users can still sign up by visiting the site my.yahoo.com; entering their Yahoo ID; and getting listed as interested users, with Yahoo to notify them when the tools are live!

source: http://topnews.us/content/25498-yahoo-incorporates-new-widgets-yahoo-mail

Air France jet flight control system under investigation

A sophisticated flight-control system that relies on electronic instruments and computers came under growing scrutiny Thursday as investigators tried to unravel the mysterious crash of an Air France Airbus 330 into the Atlantic.

A series of messages sent automatically by the jet moments before it plunged into the ocean late Sunday with 228 passengers and crew members aboard has raised speculation that the crash might have involved a malfunction of the automated system that flies the plane most of the time.

One of the messages reported that one of the plane's navigational control units had failed and that, almost simultaneously, the autopilot system had disengaged.

The sequence of events forced the crew of Flight 447 to fly the jet manually, a difficult task on an Airbus traveling at high altitude near its maximum speed, aviation experts said. Any significant change in airspeed could have caused the plane to lose lift or stability, both potentially deadly conditions.

Meanwhile, new analysis of the weather in the vicinity at the time of the crash appears to cast doubt on earlier reports that the plane encountered severe thunderstorms, lightning and wind gusts. Though there were storms, they were almost certainly less intense than those sometimes encountered above the United States, and lightning was at least 150 miles away, said Greg Forbes, severe-weather expert for the Weather Channel.

Forbes said an examination of weather data for Sunday, including satellite images, indicated updrafts of perhaps 20 mph, far from the initial reports of 100 mph.

"I wouldn't expect it to be enough to break apart the plane," Forbes said.

Though experts generally agreed Thursday that weather alone did not explain the crash, USC aviation safety expert Michael Barr said the investigation was still wide open.

"You can never disregard any possibility until you can prove what happened," Barr said. "The key here is to determine what the crew could have done after the initial event. Or was there nothing they could have done and they were just along for the ride?"

Air France executives said the plane had sent out a series of messages indicating technical failures, confirming news reports in Brazil and data that U.S. aviation experts had already gained access to.

A series of serious electronic breakdowns occurred on the Airbus over a four-minute period before the jet plunged into the sea, said Robert Ditchey, an aeronautical engineer, pilot and former airline executive.

The sequence started with an autopilot failure and a loss of the air data inertial reference unit, a system of gyroscopes and electronics that provides information on speed, direction and position. That system has been involved in two previous incidents that caused Airbus jetliners to plunge out of control, though the pilots were able to recover.

The automated messages then indicate that a fault occurred in one of the computers for the major control surfaces on the rear of the plane. Such a failure would have compounded the problems, particularly if the pilots were flying through even moderate turbulence.

The last message indicates that multiple failures were occurring, including pressurization of the cabin. Such a message would have reflected either a loss of the plane's pressurization equipment or a breach of the fuselage, resulting in rapid decompression.

All of these issues would have made the plane difficult to control.

When cruising at high altitude, a plane must fly within a fairly small window of speed, said Robert Breiling, an aviation safety expert in Florida. If speed drops even slightly, the plane can lose lift. If the speed is too high, it causes instability over the control surfaces.

"Flying a big jetliner at high altitude without autopilot, you have your hands full," Breiling said.

Ditchey said the Airbus software would have left the crew with a very small margin of error, where even minor buffeting could have boosted the risk of losing control.

"As they got into a degraded regime, they probably got into a bigger and bigger pickle," Ditchey said.

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-brazil-crash5-2009jun05,0,6741218.story

The 10 most dangerous web search terms revealed

Melbourne, June 3: Web searches including terms like lyrics, free music downloads are most likely to put your computer at risk of virus or even malicious software, for security firm McAfee, Inc. has listed these words as some of the most dangerous search terms on the internet.

In a recent report, McAfee has revealed Web search terms that put users most at risk for accidentally downloading unwanted or malicious software.

The report, titled "The Web's Most Dangerous Search Terms", reveals that the researchers analysed over 2,600 of the most popular search terms of 2008 from a range of sources, including the Google Zeitgeist and the Yahoo! 2008 Year in Review.

"Search engines are our on-ramp, our highway and our off-ramp -- they''re everything for Web travel. The hacking community is very smart -- they can spot a trend as well as any trendspotter," the Telegraph quoted Shane Keats, the research analyst with McAfee who led the study, as saying.

After analysing the search terms, the researchers found that hackers looking for crowds.

They are also attacking Internet surfers who are ready to take an online action, like downloading a ringtone or logging in to a site with a name, address and social security number.

For example, people searching for free music downloads are easy targets for hackers because they are expecting to download an mp3.

In order to evaluate the risk associated with each keyword, the researchers looked at the search results generated by each keyword, and then calculated the percentage of links that would take users to Web sites with unwanted adware, spyware or other malicious software.

For example, the term "lyric," had an average risk of 14.8 percent, meaning that nearly 15 out of 100 search results would take users to risky sites.

The most dangerous categories of search terms include online games, free downloads, song lyrics, and screensavers.

Search terms involving online games were among the riskiest because online games often prompt users to install plug-ins or register with a name or e-mail address.

Keywords that include lyrics were risky because Web sites featuring the words to songs sometimes host links that take users to sites with unwanted pop-up ads or spyware.

The 10 Most Dangerous Web Searches in the United States are:

1. Word Unscrambler
2. Lyrics
3. MySpace
4. Free Music Downloads
5. Phelps, Weber-Gale, Jones and Lezak Wins 4x 100m Relay
6. Free Music
7. Game Cheats
8. Printable Fill in Puzzles
9. Free Ringtones
10. Solitaire (ANI)

source: http://breakingupdate.com/news/10-most-dangerous-web-search-terms-revealed-43685.html

Joseph Letzelter - New Zealand judged most peaceful place on earth

If it is peace you are looking for, New Zealand is the place to be.

Our Pacific neighbor has been named the most peaceful country on earth in the latest Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of 144 nations on the basis of how peaceful they are.

Australia was 19th, sandwiched between Switzerland at 18th and Chile at 20th, and an 8 -spot improvement on last year.

New Zealand scored top position thanks to its relatively low rate of violence, decrease in military spending and the election of a conservative coalition government last year.

"The centre-right National Party has a strong popular mandate and a robust parliamentary majority by New Zealand's standards, putting the new Prime Minister, John Key, in a good position to push through his agenda," the report states.

The Kiwi nation also got top marks for its homicide rate and the level of respect for human rights.

It replaces Iceland, which has seen an increase in violence and violent demonstrations following the banking collapse that engulfed its economy in September.

Nordic nations dominated the top of the chart, with Denmark, Norway and Iceland coming second, third and fourth, followed by Austria and Sweden.

Professor Kevin Clements, director of New Zealand's National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, said the index was a pretty good reflection of countries people want to live in.

"If you look at the top 20, they are all small nations based on strong welfare principles, all with good and relatively uncorrupt governance," Clements said.

Securely nailed to the bottom of the list was Iraq, which has claimed the wooden spoon 3 years running.

It sits below Afghanistan, Somalia and Israel, followed by Sudan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, Pakistan, Russia and Zimbabwe.

Britain made 35th place, a slight improvement on last year, while the United States came in 83rd, 6 places up the ladder from 2008.

source: http://livenews.com.au/feature/nz-judged-most-peaceful-place-on-earth/2009/6/3/208698

CANCER specialists New Approach For Advanced Lung Cancer

ORLANDO - CANCER specialists, gathered for an annual meeting, are reporting progress in the fight against lung cancer, the most common and deadliest form of cancer, but little progress in treating colorectal cancer.

Doctors and researchers at the 45th gathering of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) - the world's main cancer conference - on Saturday learned of two studies showing progress in the battle against lung cancer.

The first study showed how the combination of two anti-cancer treatments following standard chemotherapy can slow the advance of lung cancer. Patients treated with a combination of Tarceva, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Roche, and Avastin, a drug by Roche's Genentech unit, saw their cancer growth slow more than a control group treated with Avastin.

More than 750 patients were randomised to receive Avastin and a placebo, or Avastin and Tarceva. Those in the Tarceva group survived an average of 4.8 months before the cancer started growing again, compared to 3.7 months for the control group, said Vincent Miller, the study's main author. The numbers translated to a 29 per cent reduced risk of disease progression for patients who took a combination of Tarceva and Avastin.

'This is the first study to show that adding erlotinib (Tarceva) to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin) delays disease progression in patients who have already received bevacizumab as part of their initial chemotherapy,' said Mr Miller.

A second study with 663 patients with advance lung cancer were given the drug Alimta, from US pharmaceutical Eli Lilly, which blocks cell growth. Preliminary results showed that patients who took the drug lived 26 percent longer compared to a control group that took a placebo: 13.4 months against 10.6 months. As in the first study, all the patients had already received four standard chemotherapy sessions.

'This study will change the overall standard of care,' said Chandra Belani, the deputy director of the Penn State Cancer Institute, as she presented the research. 'Maintenance therapy with Alimta (permetrexed) offers a new paradigm for patients who have advanced lung cancer, because it has a low toxicity and can be given on an ongoing basis over a prolonged period of time to extend patients' lives,' she said.

However there were few advances to report in the fight against colorectal cancer, the fourth most common in the United States and the second deadliest type of cancer. Research on 2,710 patients with Phase Three colorectal cancer taking the drug Avastine along with standard chemotherapy treatment showed no difference in the survival rate or the recurrence of the tumor after three and a half years when compared to those not taking the drug.

Another study conducted in Italy among 747 patients with advanced colorectal cancer showed that the drug Eloxatine from the French firm Sanofi did not reduce the size of the tumor when combined with standard treatment used ahead of cancer surgery.

On Sunday, several sessions at the ASCO event, scheduled to end on Tuesday, will focus on the result of clinical tests on female breast and uterus cancer. -- AFP

source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Tech%2Band%2BScience/Story/STIStory_384034.html