Internet News from The Industry Standard

Blair tries to allay fears over ID card database

U.K. Prime Minster Tony Blair attempted to quell growing concern over the security of the country's national identity program by threatening jail time for anyone caught tampering with the project's massive database. Anyone found guilty of tampering with the database will face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and anyone involved in ID card administration who improperly discloses information could be hit with a two-year sentence, Blair said Monday at his monthly news conference in London.

The Identity Cards Bill, published on Monday, seeks to create by 2010 a system of ID cards with embedded chips that carry personal information and biometric identifiers. The information will include name, address and biometric information such as fingerprints, facial scans and iris scans, all of which will be included in the database.

Blair said that the biometric ID cards would be a powerful weapon in the government's fight against terrorism, identity fraud, illegal workers, illegal immigration and illegal use of government entitlement programs such as the National Health System, though he acknowledged that the system would not be a "silver bullet."

"We know false identities are important to terrorists and criminals because of the frequency they use them," Blair said, adding that of the 6.4 million people recorded on the U.K.'s police criminal records database "over a quarter have an alias."

But as security experts have pointed out, the police criminal records database is known to be riddled with inaccuracies. Ovum Ltd. analyst Graham Titterington warned the government doesn't appear to have learned its lessons from various IT projects, like the police criminal records database. The Identity Cards Bill lacks measures that ensure the accuracy of the data being entered or allow individuals to check their information in the database, according to Titterington.

Beginning next year, passports will include biometric facial identifiers. The ID card program will then receive the information and technology. The U.K. government hopes to make carrying the ID card compulsory for everyone living in the country by 2011 or 2012.

Though a number of countries, like Belgium, Sweden and Latvia, have ID cards with databases of information, they are used on a much smaller scale than the U.K.'s proposal and are primarily related to accessing government e-services.

"I believe this is responsible government, not as some have called it 'Big Brother government,'" Blair said. "It is responsible to do what we can to enhance security and ensure that public services are only used by those who are actually entitled to use them."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:24 AM

DoCoMo, mmO2 confirm I-mode deal

Mobile phone carrier mmO2 PLC will launch versions of NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s I-mode mobile Internet service in the U.K. and Ireland in the second half of 2005 and in Germany in early 2006, the companies said in a statement on Tuesday. DoCoMo will license I-mode for mmO2's 22 million customers on 2G (second-generation), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and 3G (third-generation) networks, the companies said.

I-mode offers a package of content, e-mail, games, online shopping, video clips, ticketing services and other applications and services designed for packet-based network technologies in a format that is nearly identical to regular Web pages.

In the U.K. and Ireland, mmO2 will have exclusive use of I-mode technology. In Germany, mmO2 will launch a service and handsets under its own brand through existing independent retail channels. MmO2 in Germany will use I-mode-capable handsets that incorporate mmO2 Germany's Genion HomeZone product, the companies said.

This will mean that for the first time, I-mode will be competing with itself; E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG already offers the service in Germany.

MmO2 also will have the right to sell I-mode through its own channels in Ireland, Germany and the U.K., according to the companies.

Offering I-mode will boost the revenue mmO2 gleans from its subscribers each month, the company said. Nearly 22 percent of its service revenues already come from data services and the company claims it has 3 million customers using its WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) technology.

News of the deal between mmO2 and NTT DoCoMo first surfaced on Nov. 25 when sources said the two companies were negotiating to introduce I-mode to the U.K.

The U.K. had remained one of the last major European markets without DoCoMo's service, after an earlier attempt to introduce the I-mode in the U.K. with Hutchison 3G UK Ltd. fell through.

I-mode was launched in 1999 and is popular in Japan, where DoCoMo has more than 42 million I-mode subscribers. The service has more than 3 million subscribers outside Japan, according to DoCoMo.

The deal with mmO2 is the eleventh I-mode partnership between DoCoMo and a carrier outside of Japan, and it is the third partnership announced this year.

Other I-mode partners are Cellcom Israel Ltd. in Israel; Cosmote Mobile Communications SA in Greece; KPN Mobile NV in the Netherlands; Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. Ltd. in Taiwan; BASE N.V./S.A in Belgium; Bouygues Telecom S.A. in France; Telefonica Móviles SA in Spain; Telstra Corp. Ltd. in Australia; and Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA in Italy.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:24 AM

November 29, 2004

SCO Web site hack mocks company's legal claims

Malicious hackers have compromised The SCO Group Inc.'s Web page twice in as many days, posting messages that appear to mock the company's claims to own parts of the Linux operating system. On Monday, hackers compromised the site and inserted a banner image that reads "We own all your code. Pay us all your money." The image was removed on Monday morning in the U.S., but the incident followed a similar attack on Sunday.

SCO acknowledged that its Web site "experienced two intrusions by a malicious hacker that temporarily altered two web pages." The Lindon, Utah, company acted quickly to restore the hacked pages and patch a vulnerability that the hackers used to compromise the site, according to an e-mail statement from Blake Stowell, the company's public relations director.

IDG News Service could not confirm the nature of the attack on Sunday, but open source news Web site Newsforge.com on Sunday claimed that the SCO site was altered to say that the company would be making intellectual property claims against Microsoft Corp.'s software. That hack displayed the signature "hacked by realloc(," according to Newsforge.com. The same signature was displayed in the background of the altered banner image in Monday's attack.

SCO has been a frequent target of online attacks since it filed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against IBM Corp. in March 2003, charging the company with misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. Among other things, SCO claims that IBM violated SCO's copyright on Unix System V, which SCO purchased from Novell Inc., by copying elements of that operating system into Linux, which is distributed for free.

SCO's legal claim to own parts of Linux, and its threats to enforce its ownership through patent infringement lawsuits against Linux users, raised the ire of open source enthusiasts. The company's legal actions are seen as a threat to the spread of Linux, which many consider a possible rival to the dominance of Microsoft's proprietary desktop and server operating systems. The lawsuits have prompted companies, including Novell and Hewlett-Packard Co., to offer customers protection against copyright infringement suits.

Despite the serial attacks, SCO believes that it addressed security issues on its site to prevent future intrusions, Stowell said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:53 PM

UK's patient e-booking system falls behind schedule

One of the centerpiece projects in the massive IT infrastructure upgrade of the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) is running behind schedule due to "early stability problems with the central system," according to the agency. The project, an e-booking system called Choose and Book, is currently being tested by four early adopter sites in a pilot program that began in August. The system is intended to let users schedule out-patient hospital appointments,

Currently, "fewer than 100" live bookings had been made on the system, a spokesman for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) said on Monday. The spokesman declined to specify what the target number for the system is, other than to say, "though there have been fewer bookings than we had aimed for, we are not widely off our mark and are not behind for achieving the roll out."

The NPfIT declined to be more specific about the problems with the Choose and Book system other than to say that the core technology for the system is now in place and has been tested to manage 500 million appointments a year. "Bookings are being made by all the early adopters," the NPfIT spokesman said.

Though a second set of early adopters planned to participate in the program in the fourth quarter, that will most likely be postponed until January at the earliest, the spokesman said.

NPfIT will not name the four current participants. However, the Barnsley Primary Care Trust is a known participant. Representatives for the hospital group could not immediately be reached for comment.

Atos Origin International BV, based in Hoofddorp, the Netherlands, won the primary contract for the e-booking system last year, and Cerner Corp., of Kansas City, Missouri, provided the software. Representatives for Atos Origin and Cerner could not immediately be reached for comment.

The system is designed to handle 13 million outpatient consultations, 4 million emergency admissions and 617 million prescriptions, according to Cerner. The NHS serves 52 million people in England and employs 1.3 million people.

Choose and Book is part of an overall NHS IT program that is forecast to cost U.K. taxpayers between £15 billion (US$28.4 billion) and £30 billion by 2013. The U.K. government's Department of Health raised that estimate last month from its previous estimate of £6.2 billion.

The British Medical Association (BMA) added to the NPfIT's Choose and Book headaches when it expressed its concerns with the overall privacy of the e-booking system. The BMA on Monday warned that general practitioners (GPs) may boycott the system if they are not convinced that the confidentiality and security of patient records are beyond reproach.

"A Choose and Book appointment cannot be concluded until an electronic referral has been made by the GP. At the moment it would be impossible to do so confidentially as electronic referrals are not yet coded in a way that keeps them secure," Dr. Laurence Buckman, deputy chairman of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

The NPfIT claims the system is secure but conceded that more needs to be done to engage the doctors and other staff who will use the technology.

The chairman of the BMA's IT committee said earlier this month at the eHealth Conference in London that the NPfIT's engagement and consultation with the medical profession has been inadequate.

At the same conference, a hospital administrator who asked not to be named said that she and her group were having difficulty working out various kinks in the system due in large part to a lack of communication between all of the parties involved. She said that since her department started using the e-booking system in May, there's been a lack of consultation between the NPfIT and those using the system on a grassroots level.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:52 PM

JFK reloaded game causes controversy

A controversial new video game that has drawn harsh criticism from both politicians and the general public asks players to test their theories about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Traffic Management Ltd., a Scottish video game company, released JFK Reloaded last week. The game re-creates the assassination of JFK, and lets players take the role of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The game depicts the presidential limo as it cruises through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, and allows the player to fire at the president from Oswald's perch in the school book depository building. After shooting at Kennedy, the player sees a slow motion replay and an analysis of where -- and who -- the bullets hit.

Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), brother of the late president, has condemned the game. His spokesperson calls it "despicable."

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) has spoken out against it, too. Lieberman "was sickened by the game," says his spokesperson Casey Aden-Wansbury.

Kirk Ewing, the managing director of Traffic, says the purpose of the game is to provide a realistic environment for users to test the lone gunman theory. The gamer who can most accurately replicate Oswald's shooting on November 22, 1963, can win up to US$100,000, according to the Web site.

"We genuinely believe that if we get enough people participating we'll be able to disprove once and for all any notion that someone else was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy," Ewing says in a press release.

But Christy Glaubke of Children NOW, an organization that promotes safer media for children, dismisses the claimed educational merits of JFK Reloaded. "I would think the only (lesson it teaches) is how to be an assassin," Glaubke says.

She also worries that, despite the registration policy that restricts JFK Reloaded to people over 18, kids will find a way to play Oswald on their computers.

"I would think any kid (who) has access to a debit card or prepaid credit card would have access to this," she says.

The release of JFK Reloaded, which coincides with the 41st anniversary of the assassination, follows the recent appearance of Riot UMass, another contentious reality game.

Riot UMass, created by freshman Grant Cerulo, depicted University of Massachusetts students beating police officers, re-creating the riots that occurred in Amherst after the Boston Red Sox won the World Series last month. That game site has been taken off the Internet.

Jason Della Rocca, program director for the International Game Developers Association, says that these two releases don't signify a trend. "This is not necessarily representative of the mainstream gaming industry," Della Rocca says.

At the same time, however, he defends quasi-reality games such as 9-11 Survivor, a game that challenges players to escape from the World Trade Center in New York before the building collapses, as helping the public "better understand a topic or issue."

Similarly, Ian Bogost, a game designer at Persuasive Games, considers JFK Reloaded "an attempt to frame a news event."

But not everyone appreciates these games' use of emotionally charged historical events to generate sales.

"I think it's awful that they're turning something as tragic as that into a game, for children especially," says Rebecca Sizelove, a graduate student of political management at George Washington University.

Jason Tuohey writes for the Medill News Service.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:28 PM

Low-cost easyMobile service hits UK, eyes Europe

Danish telecom company TDC A/S is teaming up with T-Mobile UK Ltd. to launch a low-price, no-frills mobile service in the U.K. under the easyMobile brand. TDC said Monday that, beginning in March 2005, it will offer a Web-based telephony service, in which customers buy a prepaid SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card for their existing handheld and manage their account online. TDC experienced some success with a similar service in Denmark dubbed Telmore, which claimed 10 percent of the market within four years of launching.

The company is now planning to dial into other markets by leveraging the easyMobile brand, which it has licensed from easyGroup (U.K.) Ltd., to use in up to 12 European countries. First it's testing the U.K. market, however, where it is using the network infrastructure of T-Mobile. Telmore founder Frank Rasmussen will serve as chief executive officer of the new business.

The easyMobile service offers voice and SMS (Short Messaging Service) capabilities and is available for all mobile customers who use second-generation handsets, a spokesman for TDC said.

Prices are yet to be announced but are expected to be lower than those offered by the U.K.'s major mobile providers.

To give a comparison of the possible price difference, the TDC spokesman said that Telmore charges 0.80 krone (US$0.14) per minute for voice, compared to the average mobile voice charge in Denmark of 1.10 krone per minute.

The easyMobile service could lead to an overall reduction in U.K. mobile tariffs, according to a report by analysts at Ovum Ltd. The offering is likely to put pressure on other mobile operators, the analysts said, and won't win many industry friends for T-Mobile.

T-Mobile, which is the U.K. wireless arm of German telephone giant Deutsche Telekom AG, already has a wholesale deal with Virgin Mobile in the country, but easyMobile will give it added revenue without taxing its network, the analysts said.

Like Telmore, the easyMobile concept is based around lean operations, a small marketing budget and no physical store locations.

Although the service is basic, TDC is hoping that customers appreciate the cost savings. In Denmark, Telmore customers called to complain that the company was wasting money when it ran a TV ad for the service, the spokesman said.

Now it remains to be seen if U.K. customers are as thrifty.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:28 PM

Satellite failure hits US broadband services

The failure of a communications satellite on Sunday has knocked out broadband services supplied by StarBand Communications Inc., according to a statement posted on the company's Web site. The irreparable failure of Intelsat Americas-7 at 2:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Sunday is forcing StarBand to move customers to a different satellite. Meanwhile, the company is attempting to provide temporary dial-up service to customers affected, the statement said.

The satellite owner, Intelsat Inc., said the craft had suffered a sudden and unexplained electrical anomaly and that it was permanently lost. The satellite was built by Space/Systems Loral and launched in September 1999. From its orbital position at 129 degrees West it covered North America, Central America, and parts of South America. The satellite was self-insured by Intelsat, according to the company.

StarBand did not say how many subscribers were affected.

StarBand serves residential customers at download speeds of 150k bps (bits per second) to 500k bps and small business customers at speeds up to 1M bps. Its services are available throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Subscribers use a 90 centimeter satellite dish to send and receive signals.

Intelsat said its IA-8 satellite, scheduled for a Dec. 17 launch, may take over some of the lost services. The IA-8 will provide 36 Ku-band and 24 C-band transponders according to the company.

The loss of the satellite could affect plans to sell the company, Intelsat said. A consortium led by Zeus Holdings Ltd. has bid for the company, but under an agreement with Intelsat, the total loss of the IA-7 satellite gives Zeus the right to cancel the deal. Zeus has advised Intelsat that it is evaluating the impact of the IA-7 failure, according to a statement by Intelsat.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:28 PM

The battle against cyberterror

The arsenal of modern weapons that terrorists might someday use to disrupt power grids, gas lines and other parts of the nation's critical infrastructure includes conventional weapons as well as bits and bytes -- in other words cyberterror attacks. The cyberthreat to the electricity we use and the water we drink is real, experts say, but there's no need to panic -- at least not yet. "Our research shows that terrorist groups are definitely interested in attacking critical infrastructures," says Eric Byres, research director at the Internet Engineering Laboratory of the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Burnaby. "The good news is that we don't think they have the technical ability yet -- in other words, the combined IT and control system skills needed to penetrate a utility network. The bad news is that they're beginning to acquire some of these skills."

Confidential documents about supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, for instance, have been found in al Qaeda hiding places in Afghanistan, while the Irish Republican Army has said it plans cyberattacks on crucial supply systems, according to Justin Lowe, principal consultant with PA Consulting Group.

Equally disturbing, talented hackers in many parts of the world are willing to peddle their expertise for the right price or political cause, according to DK Matai, chairman of Mi2g Ltd., a London security service provider. "We have evidence of Russian hackers selling their skills to radical Islamic groups," he says.

Few, if any, of the industrial control systems used today were designed with cybersecurity in mind because hardly any of them were connected to the Internet. For the most part, these companies viewed their infrastructures as secure from cyberattacks because of their isolated structure.

However, utilities and factories are now using the Internet to carry SCADA messages from an increasing number of Web-enabled, remote-control systems, according to Joe Weiss, who served as security director at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, and its Enterprise Infrastructure Security Initiative before joining KEMA Consulting.

Not only that, but also many of their "private" networks now are built with the help of competitively priced fiber-optic connections and transmission services provided by telecom companies, which have become the frequent target of cyberattacks.

Last year, a power utility crash that was caused indirectly by the Slammer worm paralyzing a leased telecom service. For its SCADA communications network, the utility used a frame relay service, which a carrier provided over its ATM backbone. The ATM network was overwhelmed by the worm, blocking SCADA traffic to substations.

"In some sense, we're always under attack," says Vint Cerf, senior vice president of technology strategy for MCI Inc. "The wonderful thing about the Internet is that everything is connected. The horrible thing about the Internet is that everything is connected."

And if terrorist groups fail to mount an attack from the outside, they can always take the insider approach, finding disgruntled employees who know the vulnerablities, say, of a power grid control network, according to PA Consulting's Lowe.

That's why Cerf insists on access controls at every host in every internal network. "The notion of inside and outside shouldn't confer a great deal of authority on anybody," he says. "My recommendation: every host should have its own firewall and require authentication that should be very strong."

So where does the U.S. stand in terms of vulnerability, compared with other countries?

Byres says protection varies in critical infrastructures around the world, but the level isn't directly linked to the national economy. In other words, it isn't necessarily better in rich countries and worse in poor countries. For instance, deregulation of the energy market in the U.S. has led to cost-cutting that has affected investments across the board, including security systems and services, he says.

And what about the Internet, which is a critical infrastructure all of its own?

"Sure, if gangsters are using cyberattacks as weapons, why shouldn't terrorists?" says Steve Cocke, director of the security and stability advisory committee at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. But Cocke argues that the distributed architecture of the Internet makes it a difficult target to bring down. "When the World Trade Towers came down, local telephone service was severely impaired but disruption of the Internet was minimal," he says.

The disturbing fact is that the world's utility and industrial infrastructures remain vulnerable to cyberattacks not only by terrorists but also by disgruntled employees and even script kiddies, experts agree. The challenge now, they say, is to minimize this vulnerability -- before it's too late.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:28 PM

November 26, 2004

UK government hit with another large computer failure

IT system failures continued to plague the U.K. government this week, when as many as 80,000 civil servants working for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had to deal with what is being described in the local press as the biggest computer crash in government history. The DWP was carrying out a "routine software upgrade" on Monday when the system crashed, leaving around 80 percent of the department's 100,000 desk machines disrupted or completely shut down, a DWP spokeswoman said Friday. The problems lasted through most of Thursday, but the "majority of our system is up and running now," she said.

Microsoft Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) run the DWP's network as part of a £2 billion (US$3.8 billion) information technology contract.

Microsoft issued a short statement on Friday saying that it worked closely with its partners to help rectify the situation and support the DWP, but declined any further comment. Representatives from EDS could not immediately be reached for comment.

The head of the DWP, the government secretary Alan Johnson has promised an internal inquiry into the systems failure and the role Microsoft, of Redmond, Washington, and EDS, of Plano, Texas, played in the crisis.

The DWP, which is responsible for providing a variety of state benefits to about 24 million people, attempted to downplay the effect the computer problems will have on its customers, saying that the department's mainframe computers were not affected. "There will be delays with new and amended benefit claims, but we have been dealing with the problems though our contingency plans and the disruptions will be minimal," the DWP spokeswoman said.

It is believed that the crash was caused when an incompatible system was downloaded on to the entire network, forcing employees to send faxes because they couldn't access their e-mail accounts and to fill out some payment checks by hand.

The IT failure was only the latest in a string of serious computer system problems experienced by the department. The DWP's Child Support Agency (CSA) has been struggling with a £456 million system from EDS that has made payments to only one in eight single parents awaiting them. Last week, Johnson told a House of Commons Parliamentary Select Committee that he is considering shutting down the child-support case management and telephony system, and Doug Smith, the chief executive of the CSA, resigned from his job.

On Friday the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, Mark Serwotka, called on the government to hold off on its plans to cut 30,000 jobs in the DWP on the basis of IT improvements, in light of the computer crisis. Earlier this year, the government announced it plans to eliminate 104,000 civil servant jobs across the government based in part on increased efficiencies gained though new IT systems.

Since 2001, the DWP has spent around £4.25 billion on various IT projects, including the CSA system. According to a report it submitted to a Parliament Select Committee, the department has spent £306.7 million on management and IT consultancy, £51.5 million on staff substitutions and contractors and £54.3 million on professional services.

The U.K.'s public sector IT projects in 2003/4 are expected to cost more than £12.4 billion, but U.K. government IT projects have often been accused of being over-ambitious and prone to disastrous delays and cost overruns.

Beyond the DWP, further examples include the benefit-payment card program from the Post Office, the Department of Social Security and International Computers Ltd. (ICL), which fell apart after three years and £300 million; software problems that delayed the Swanwick air traffic control center and have since been blamed for a near collision between two airplanes; the disruption wrought on thousands of people with travel plans in 1999 by the Passport Office's new computer system, and the National Probation Service's case-record and management system which was abandoned in 2001 after it was revealed the project was expected to be two years late and 70 percent over budget.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:19 PM

Hamburg city pushes mobile phone ticketing

Hamburg, one of Germany's largest cities, is showing consumers how they can check into soccer games, museum exhibitions, musicals and more with their mobile phones as part of a two-day mobile phone ticketing initiative beginning Friday. Soccer fans attending the Friday evening match between FC St. Pauli and Hertha BSC Amateure will be able to avoid long lines at ticket booths by displaying their mobile phones with a message containing a bar code, which is scanned at the gate. The same service will be available on Saturday to those attending the musical "Dance of the Vampire," or live music performances in several bars in Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn district.

Mobile Ticketing Days is an initiative of the City of Hamburg in collaboration with several technology partners, including T-Mobile International AG, Matrix Solutions GmbH and Teltix GmbH. The two-day program is being managed by Hamburg@work, a public-private organization involving the Hamburg city economic development agency and a group of local multimedia technology companies.

"Earlier this year, we conducted a survey of local business people and consumers and asked them what they view as the key technology trends in 2004 and 2005," said a spokesman from Hamburg@work. "Many of them viewed mobile phone applications as an important trend. That's what prompted this two-day mobile application event and others to follow next year."

Matrix has developed a mobile ticketing system, called PicTicket. Customers can either purchase their ticket online by going to the PicTicket Web site or calling the automated PicTicket call center. They must provide both their mobile phone number and the type of phone they use.

Customers pay either by credit card or direct debit. Once payment is verified, the ticket is sent electronically to their handset as an SMS (Short Message Service) text, which contains an encrypted code.

The ticket is issued to one phone only, according to the spokesman. "So it can't be copied or forwarded," he said.

The Teltix service is similar except for the scanning option. Customers can call a number from a list to purchase tickets to different events. An SMS is sent to their phones, displaying information which they show at the gate. Before customers can purchase tickets, they must become registered users of the Mobile Wallet payment program, which is run by T-Mobile.

Teltix has also developed a mobile ticketing application for the public transit sector as well. Several German cities, including Bonn and Osnabrück, now offer commercial mobile ticketing services.

In addition to a mobile gaming event slated for March, the City of Hamburg plans to host a program for 3G (third-generation) content technology later in the year, according to the Hamburg@work spokesman. The city is home to some of Germany's biggest publishers, including the news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur (dpa), he said.

The agency's information service subsidiary, dpa-infocom GmbH, is a founding member of the mobile content project MINDS (Mobile Information and News Data Services). The project aims to develop new information services for 3G mobile networks and define necessary technical and commercial standards.

Additional MIND members include the national newspaper agencies of Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Hungary, as well as the Hamburg-based software company CoreMedia AG and the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems in Berlin. The project is funded by the European Commission through its eContent program.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:18 PM

UK online music sales to be included in singles charts

The U.K. music industry plans to take into account the sale of legal online music downloads in preparing its traditional weekly top 40 singles sales list from early next year. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a trade group representing U.K. record companies, the market for legally downloaded music is helping to revitalize the ailing music single market. In the third quarter of this year, about 1.75 million download tracks were sold, compared with 7.3 million singles, the BPI said Friday.

The market for legal downloads has taken off in the last year, fuelled in large part by the success of digital music players such as the iPod from Apple Computer Inc. and the launch of online music stores like Apple's iTunes, Connect from Sony Corp. and Napster LLC. Download sales are currently running at around 250,000 a week, the BPI said, and are expected to grow even faster around the holiday season as people give digital music players as gifts.

According to the BPI, if the sale of online music singles had been included in its figures, the overall singles market would have grown by 9 percent when compared to the second quarter. Instead, it posted a 12 percent decline for the period.

As with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the U.S., the BPI has been aggressive in its campaign against individuals illegally sharing music online. Last month, the BPI successfully sued a number of U.K. ISPs (Internet service providers), forcing them to disclose the names and addresses of 28 people it believed to have uploaded music files on to filesharing networks.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:18 PM

November 25, 2004

MmO2 to offer DoCoMo's I-mode in UK

NTT DoCoMo Inc. is negotiating an agreement in which it will help mmO2 PLC launch an I-mode-based mobile Internet service in 2005 in the U.K., said an industry source familiar with the discussions between the two companies. The companies are working on a deal, which has yet to be finalized, in which DoCoMo will provide mmO2 with data distribution, content development services and other know-how. MmO2 will introduce a version of the I-mode service on its GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) handsets next year, and later, on 3G (third-generation) handsets, according to the source, who declined to be named.

In an official statement released Thursday, DoCoMo said it was studying the possibility of offering an I-mode service in the U.K. and was conducting various studies about how to advance the service in the U.K., but that no agreement had been reached. The statement did not mention mmO2.

However, one analyst said the deal had been completed.

"It's a done deal," said Kirk Boodry, telecom analyst with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (Japan) Ltd. in Tokyo.

The agreement won't provide DoCoMo with much revenue, but it will extend the company's brand image in Europe, Boodry said. For mmO2, the move will give the carrier an easy route to provide mobile Internet services, taking advantage of DoCoMo's extensive experience with the I-mode technology and software, he said.

"Over the last two or three years, the mobile Internet has been seen as a big opportunity for European carriers," Boodry said.

I-mode offers an easy-to-use package of content, e-mail, games and other applications and services designed for packet-based network technologies, with a format that is nearly identical to regular Web pages.

The move plugs a gap in DoCoMo's efforts to promote the service throughout Europe.

After investing a 20 percent stake in Hutchison 3G UK Ltd. (H3G) in 2000, DoCoMo had hoped that H3G UK would introduce I-mode on its 3G high-speed network. But after H3G UK failed to roll out the service, DoCoMo sold the stake back to H3G's Hong Kong parent company, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., in May and has been looking for another U.K. partner ever since.

Meanwhile, U.K.-based carriers have been rolling out rival mobile Internet services.

I-mode was launched in 1999 and is popular in Japan, where DoCoMo has over 42 million [m] I-mode subscribers. As of July, the service had more than 3 million subscribers outside Japan, according to DoCoMo spokesman Takumi Suzuki.

A deal with mmO2 would be the eleventh I-mode partnership between DoCoMo and a carrier outside of Japan.

This year, DoCoMo has announced a string of deals to promote I-mode use by carriers outside of Japan. Earlier this month, the company said it was partnering with Cellcom Israel Ltd. to launch I-mode in Israel. That service will start in 2005, according to Suzuki.

In June, DoCoMo said it was partnering with Telstra Corp. Ltd. to offer the service on the Australian carrier's mobile phones. The service will be launched before year-end on Telstra's 2G (second-generation) network and later on a 3G network. Also in June, TOKYO (11/25/2004) - Cosmote Mobile Communications SA launched a wireless Internet service based on the I-mode platform in Greece.

Other I-mode partners are: E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG in Germany; KPN Mobile N.V. in the Netherlands; Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. Ltd. in Taiwan; BASE N.V./S.A in Belgium; Bouygues Telecom S.A. in France; Telefonica Móviles SA in Spain; and Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA in Italy.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:52 PM

Industry group might buy Commerce One patents

A move is afoot to form an industry consortium to buy about 40 patents that are among the assets of bankrupt Commerce One Inc. The CommerceNet industry group met on Monday with representatives of major technology vendors to discuss forming a foundation to buy the patents, which cover Web services technology, according to Lee Van Pelt, an attorney at Van Pelt & Yi LLP, in Cupertino, California, who attended the meeting. That purchase could prevent speculators from acquiring the patents and launching expensive lawsuits to enforce them, he said.

Software patents have become a hot topic in IT, an industry rife with patent lawsuits. The government of the European Union is currently embroiled in debate over a proposal to codify software patents there.

The Commerce One patents cover methods for companies to communicate with each other and provide certain types of information when carrying out machine-to-machine transactions over the Internet, Van Pelt said. Patents from the Santa Clara, California, company, which was a pioneer of electronic marketplaces, could cover technologies widely used by other companies, said Zapthink LLC analyst Ronald Schmelzer.

A speculator might capitalize on the broad use of the technology by taking those vendors to court for infringement, possibly consuming more time and litigation costs than the patents are worth, according to Van Pelt. He estimates the patents, most of which are still pending, will fetch between US$1 million and $10 million.

"Probably the least efficient way for these patents to be used by the industry would be for a speculator to buy them and aggressively enforce them against the industry," Van Pelt said. "A lot of the companies who have expressed interest in this are not necessarily companies that would be targets."

The concept of a public foundation buying "orphaned" patents and essentially retiring them is one that Van Pelt and other attorneys have been advocating for a while, he said. A key challenge is raising the money to buy patents. No vendor has pledged money to support a buy-out of the Commerce One patents, and CommerceNet has not yet committed itself to take action, according to Van Pelt. Time is tight: The auction hearing is scheduled to take place Dec. 6, he said.

CommerceNet, based in Mountain View, California, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:37 AM

November 24, 2004

Phishing on the increase

Online phishing schemes increased significantly in October as financial institutions struggled to combat attempts to steal private account information from online consumers, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). Last month, 1,142 sites were used for phishing, up 110 percent from the 543 sites reported in September, according to the report issued this week by the APWG, a consortium of law enforcement, financial institutions and computer-security firms that tracks the online attacks.

Almost 6,600 different phishing messages were reported to the group in October. The number of unique phishing e-mails has grown an average 36 percent each month since July, said Peter Cassidy, secretary general for the group. "Organized crime has embraced this technology and automation has increased the availability of phishing technology. They've become much more sophisticated," he said.

Phishing occurs when scam artists send fraudulent e-mails to consumers to lure them to Web sites that appear to be the home page of a well-known financial institution. The e-mails instruct the consumer to leave account information on the site, which the scammers then use for identity theft. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, more than 10 million Americans were the victims of identity theft last year, with an estimated 57 million Internet users receiving a phishing e-mail.

The financial services industry has been the hardest hit. A phishing e-mail making the rounds last month was designed to appear to be from Citicorp, one of the nation's largest banks. Last year phishing scams cost banks and credit-card companies $10.2 billion, according to a recent Gartner report.

Banks are trying to combat phishing by educating their consumers about "spoof" e-mails. Several banks include information about phishing on their Websites and in monthly statements. The APWG has been expecting the phishers to begin targeting regional and local banks with their attacks, but that has yet to occur, noted Cassidy. "The phishers have not really broadened their attacks beyond established brands such as Citicorp and Bank of America," he said. The number of brands subjected to the largest numbers of phishing attacks did increase, rising from four in July to six in October. "Yet, you would really expect it to be more. We think that will happen, but that is taking a little longer than we expected," said Cassidy.

The APWG is also warning companies and users of a new form of fishing that runs a script just when an e-mail is opened. The new technique has only been detected in Brazil, but is probably being tested for wider deployment, said Cassidy.

In August, the Justice Department said it had arrested, charged or convicted more than 150 people related to criminal activity on the Internet. Many of the cases centered on phishing schemes. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has reorganized its efforts to combat cyber crime, in large part because much of the illegal internet activity comes from international crime rings.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:09 PM

EBay launches Philippine portal

Online auction giant eBay Inc. has launched its Philippine portal but the company has yet to decide what single payment system to use. EBay uses PayPal, a company it acquired in 2003, as its online payment unit. PayPal, however, does not yet cover users from the Philippines.

The local portal will undergo enhancements based on user feedback, said Frederic De Bure, eBay managing director for Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.

"We don't want to force a single payment system ・whether online payment or through SMS," De Bure said during the launching of eBay.ph last week.

According to him, eBay was encouraged to put up a Philippine portal because of the large number of Filipinos using its main site.

"If we don't have a big business here in the Philippines, we wouldn't build a local portal," De Bure answered when asked how many Philippine-based users are trading in the main site.

However, in putting up its Philippine portal, eBay, at best, is trying to build a local community of buyers and sellers. Unlike the company's main site, eBay.ph does not charge users a fee for buying or selling goods on the site.

While there are several existing local auction sites already, eBay is counting on its strong brand to give it a substantial edge. Its global trading platform now covers 30 countries worldwide, nine of which are in the Asia Pacific.

According to De Bure, eBay currently has more than 125 million users trading items in more than 50 categories, from consumer electronics to memorabilia. At the end of 2003, eBay reported more than $24 billion in total value of goods traded on its site.

EBay.ph is hosted in Singapore along with local portals in other Southeast Asian countries. Each local portal, servicing 30 different countries and connected to the main site, shares a single database, according to De Bure.

Asked how eBay intends to earn revenues from its local portal, De Bure replied: "From a cost basis, it is something we do not worry about. We are not thinking of charging fees, it is not relevant to us at the moment."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:46 PM

Valve cracks down on Half-Life 2 CD hacks

Valve Corp. has reportedly been cracking down on those who have downloaded illegal copies of the game or those who've tried to bypass Steam with a CD key--allegedly banning up to 20,000 users from playing the critically acclaimed PC shooter. "The number of people who actually had bought HL2 and used the CD key cheat was very small. Very small. Most people just tried to rip off the game and not bother buying it," said a Valve spokesperson.

The company's heavy-handed approach has been understandable--piracy has plagued the PC industry for years, with games being available within days before or after release. Valve also suffered a blow with the source code leak last year, forcing the company to delay the game by a year.

Online authentication has received mixed feedback from consumers, namely due to longer load times and the complications that arise when facing busy servers. However, if Valve's approach proves to be successful in warding off piraters, more game companies will likely follow suit.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:43 PM

November 23, 2004

UK deploys electronic image archiving in all hospitals

General Electric Co. and EMC Corp. announced this week that they have won a US$200 million contract to install electronic image archiving systems in 70 hospitals in the U.K., as part of an effort to centralize communications and modernize technology throughout the national health system. The contract, part of an $18 billion IT upgrade to the U.K.'s health care system, will combine GE's picture archiving and communication system (PACS) technology with four models of EMC's storage systems.

"They're going to be able to streamline their patient data and images -- put all the patient records in one location," said Jerry Layden, EMC global account manager for GE.

Layden said the U.K. government contract is one of the largest for EMC with respect to storage systems supporting PACS attached.

PACS technology allows X-rays, MRIs and other medical images to be digitized, stored and transmitted electronically, avoiding the need for film development processes and delivery by mail or by hand to physicians and technicians.

Earlier this month, EMC announced that it had tightly integrated its low-end AX100 array with GE's Centricity PACS system for smaller hospitals. The U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) project will be using two types of EMC's midrange Clariion storage-area network arrays and EMC's Celerra network-attached storage arrays. It will also involve EMC's Centera content-addressed storage array.

Each hospital site will have two Clariion arrays supporting the GE Centricity PACS Enterprise Edition application. There will also be two data centers in each of five regions with clustered Centera arrays that will hold archived medical images two years old or older for the 70 hospitals. Critical application data will also be replicated between both data centers in each region.

The U.K. government announced in May that the NHS in England would install nationwide digital imaging systems that allow patients medical images and records to be transmitted via a Web portal from a centralized data center to remote sites for medical diagnosis.

Vendors including Perot Systems Corp., Cerner Corp., IBM Corp. and Accenture Ltd. have already been awarded two major contracts valued at nearly $4 billion as part of the IT upgrade. Fujitsu Services Ltd. is the designated local service provider for the NHS project.

The overall project has been split into five districts throughout the U.K. EMC and GE won the southern district, which is the largest.

"We believe the networks now being established will greatly improve health care in England and will be imitated worldwide as health systems move the management of patient care into the 21st century," said William Castell, vice chairman of GE and CEO of U.K.-based GE Healthcare.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:36 PM

Observers find 201 e-voting problems in Maryland

Poll observers in about 6 percent of Maryland's precincts recorded 201 problems with electronic voting machines during the Nov. 2 general election, according to a report released Tuesday by TrueVoteMD.org. Poll watchers trained by the voting integrity activist group reported 42 cases of crashed e-voting machines, 37 cases of access card or encoder problems, and 30 screen malfunctions, according to the report. More than 400 TrueVoteMD poll watchers observed the elections at 108 of the state's 1,787 voting precincts.

TrueVoteMD poll watchers saw problems that were "easily observable" and not problems that may have happened inside the electronic voting machines, said Linda Schade, co-founder of TrueVoteMD. While the problems observed in the precincts where the poll watchers were stationed may not be typical of all precincts, they were likely a "small fraction" of the actual problems with e-voting machines in Maryland, Schade said.

"One of our greatest resources is the widespread common sense of Maryland voters, and also their passion to defend our democracy from what we see is a clear threat, which is nontransparent elections, unverifiable elections using error-prone secret software with gaping security holes and with a history of election failures," Schade said at a press conference. "They are in complete agreement about one thing -- that is that blind faith has no place in the voting booth."

TrueVoteMD, along with several national groups, has called for electronic voting machines to include voter-verified paper trails, which are printouts of each voter's choices that can later be used to recount ballots. E-voting critics say independent recounts are impossible without such paper trails; when a recount is demanded, most e-voting machines will spit out the same electronically generated set of disputed numbers again and again.

Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Verified Voting Foundation announced late Monday they have sent letters asking voting officials in eight counties across the U.S. to allow independent testing of their e-voting machines.

Those counties were identified by the groups as encountering significant e-voting problems on Nov. 2. The problems were listed on a Voteprotect.org database after voters called in problems to a toll-free telephone number on Election Day. The counties contacted were Broward and Palm Beach in Florida; Mahoning and Franklin in Ohio; Mercer and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Harris in Texas; and Bernalillo in New Mexico.

The Election Verification Project, a coalition of e-voting critics, recorded more than 1,800 voting machine problems through the Voteprotect.org database, although the Maryland reports are not yet included. About 900 of the 1,800 reported machine problems related to paperless e-voting machines, according to Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation.

E-voting advocates have defended the machines as accurate and voter friendly. Linda Lamone, administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, said the TrueVoteMD poll watchers found a handful of problems in 16,000 e-voting machines used in the state Nov. 2. Replacement machines were available in case of breakdowns, she added. Maryland uses Diebold Inc. e-voting machines.

"By all (Board of Elections) accounts, we had a successful election," Lamone said. "We planned for equipment issues this election just like we do in every election. You can't expect everything to work perfectly."

Two poll workers attending the TrueVoteMD press conference disputed that the problems described in the group's 18-page report were typical. Along with the 201 e-voting machine problems identified by TrueVoteMD poll watchers, another 330 nontechnical problems, including long lines and registration problems, were reported by the poll watchers.

But Judy Dein, an election judge in Ann Arundel County, said her precinct experienced no problems. "Our experience was different," she said after hearing about e-voting machine and registration problems from Schade and three poll watchers.

An estimated 40 million U.S. voters used about 175,000 e-voting machines on Election Day, said Bob Cohen, senior vice president at the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group that has e-voting machine vendors as members.

"You have a handful of incidents reported," Cohen said. "The electronic voting issues were extremely small compared to the big picture."

Among the incidents reported in Maryland were a voter in Montgomery County who said the machine went dark and spit out her ballot card before she finished voting. Another voter reported the machine shutting down while she was trying to correct her vote, and another voter in Montgomery County said the machine switched her choices and she was directed to another machine.

A poll watcher in Montgomery County reported two e-voting machines at one precinct crashing less than 75 minutes after polls opened.

TrueVoteMD's Schade called for the Board of Elections to adopt "systematic" quality control measures. Because of the secret software inside e-voting machines and the lack of TrueVoteMD volunteers at every precinct, the group doesn't know how many e-voting problems there were, Schade said.

"At a certain point, if we don't know the scope of the problems, we don't know if it's a legitimate election or not," Schade said. "Any rational organization would institute a quality-control program."

Nancy Almgren, a former candidate for Maryland House of Delegates, questioned why it was TrueVoteMD's responsibility to track e-voting problems. "I think the question is why is a citizens group doing this?" Almgren said. "Why isn't it being done by the state? If they're investing our money in this system, why aren't they verifying the results?"

The Board of Elections conducts an extensive review of voting issues, countered Lamone, the state elections administrator. "They take far too much credit," she said. "We have a huge process in place to monitor what's going on."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:20 PM

Queen calls for UK biometric ID card

The U.K. government's high-tech plans for ID cards using biometric technology was announced Tuesday in the Queen's Speech, amid the traditional pomp and pageantry of the annual opening of the U.K. Parliament. Queen Elizabeth II read the government-written speech, which unveiled plans for 32 proposed laws, including the Identity Cards Bill, to be considered in the newest session of Parliament. The Queen's Speech set out the government's agenda ahead of the next general election, which the leader of the Labour government, Prime Minster Tony Blair, is widely expected to call for May 5, 2005.

The legislation proposes a system of ID cards that carry biometric identifiers in an embedded chip, and are linked to a "secure national database" to be created by 2010. Secretary of State for the Home Department David Blunkett proposed the new system last year.

The government is working to make the ID cards compulsory for everyone living in the U.K. by 2011 or 2012, Blunkett said Tuesday in an interview broadcast by the British Broadcasting Co. after the Queen's Speech. The national database will hold personal information for each person carrying the ID card. The information will include name, address and biometric information such as fingerprints, facial scans and iris scans.

Blunkett said that the database is the "crucial part" of the program and will eventually be linked to the European Union's (E.U.) proposed registration program.

The European Commission has produced draft regulations to introduce, by 2005, biometric data (fingerprints and facial images) on visas and resident permits for non-E.U. nationals. The information would then be stored on national and E.U. databases that will be accessible through the Visa Information System held on what is called the Schengen Information System.

Ovum Ltd. analyst Graham Titterington agreed that the database is the key aspect of the system. "It is quite unique what the U.K. government is proposing and would be absolutely vast," Titterington said. "A number of European countries like Belgium and Latvia have ID cards with databases of information, but those are used primarily as an entry to e-services where as the U.K. plan is primarily about law and order."

Titterington warned that it is unclear how much information or what types of information could eventually be entered into the database, or even who would be given access to the database. "Just what will be in the database and who can use it needs tying down because already, you are seeing 'function creep' becoming a problem," he said.

Blunkett has repeatedly hailed the biometric ID cards as a powerful weapon in the government's fight against identity fraud, illegal workers, illegal immigration, terrorism and illegal use of government entitlement programs such as the National Health System. The Queen echoed that sentiment in her speech.

"My Government recognizes that we live in a time of global uncertainty with an increased threat from international terrorism and organized crime. Measures to extend opportunity will be accompanied by legislation to increase security for all," the Queen said. "My Government will legislate to introduce an identity cards scheme, and will publish proposals to support the continuing fight against terrorism in the United Kingdom and elsewhere."

The biometric facial identifiers will first be included in passports beginning next year, and will then "build the base" for the ID card plan and its "clean database," Blunkett said.

But many security experts question whether such a vast database could ever be free of errors. "By its very nature, a database of that size could never be truly clean. Just in terms of data entry, how do you ensure the accuracy of the data being entered?" Ovum's Titterington said.

Titterington pointed to the U.K.'s police criminal records database, which is known to have built up numerous inaccuracies over the years. "That is a database of a much smaller scale than the one the government is proposing and it only allows access to law enforcement officials with the highest levels of clearance," Titterington said. "How on earth do you control legitimate access to the ID card database, let alone keep it protected from hackers and terrorists?"

Should the Identity Cards Bill become law, a new agency will incorporate the functions of the U.K. passport service and begin issuing ID cards from 2008.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:42 PM

Law may snag Philadelphia Wi-Fi rollout

A proposed Pennsylvania law now on its way to the governor's desk could pose a hurdle for the city of Philadelphia's ambitious plan to provide broadband service throughout the city via Wi-Fi. One provision of House Bill 30 (HB30), a wide-ranging telecommunications regulation bill that earned final approval by the state House and Senate on Friday, would prohibit a government or any entity it creates from offering broadband for a fee.

Philadelphia's city government is studying plans to deploy Wi-Fi wireless LAN access points throughout the city, each offering IEEE 802.11b access and linked to others via a wireless mesh network, said Dinanah Neff, the city's chief information officer. Deployment is set to begin in June 2005 and should be completed by June 2006.

The US$7 million to $10 million project is intended to encourage economic growth and help poor residents access the Internet with a broadband service priced at an estimated $15 to $25 per month, she said. About 60 percent of Philadelphia's neighborhoods, primarily poorer neighborhoods and less densely populated ones, don't have access to broadband services, according to Neff.

HB30 would eliminate three of the five possible business models being studied by Neff and the Wireless Philadelphia Executive Committee, according to Neff.

"It will make it more difficult. It will not kill the project," Neff said.

The city could provide the service for free, but it is unlikely to find a funding source for that, she said. Alternatively, it could offer the service through a consortium of private companies that would sell it to the public -- probably at a higher price, Neff believes.

The language on government-supplied broadband in the bill would hand a big favor to Verizon Communications Inc., the incumbent regional telecommunications carrier in Philadelphia, according to Gary Tuma, press secretary to state Senator Vincent Fumo, a Democrat who opposed the bill. Verizon has fallen short on its promises to build a more up-to-date network over the past 10 years, contributing to the lack of broadband availability, he said.

"It's one of many efforts being made by Verizon to prevent competition," Tuma said. "What was going on here was an intense lobbying effort by Verizon to get a version of the bill they were happy with."

Verizon disputed that charge. The carrier has invested $8.5 billion in infrastructure in Pennsylvania over the past 10 years, and competition is thriving in the state, said company spokeswoman Sharon Shaffer.

Local governments that get into the broadband business risk pouring taxpayer dollars into projects that don't pay off, Shaffer said. In addition, they enjoy competitive advantages that include having access to public funds and not having to pay taxes, she added.

Verizon, as well as a state senator who supported the bill, dismissed the perceived threat to Philadelphia's planned network. A "grandfather" clause in the bill would exempt from the ban any service that is already operational on Jan. 1, 2006. To qualify, the service would only have to have one paying subscriber by that time, according to Don Houser, chief of staff for state Senator Jake Corman, a Republican.

However, Philadelphia CIO Neff believes the language isn't clear enough for comfort. The project might have to be accelerated so the network was fully in place by the cut-off date, she said.

Governor Edward Rendell, a Democrat, had ten days to act on the bill, said Tuma, who would not speculate whether it will be signed or vetoed.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:42 PM

HP unveils Blog experiment

Hewlett-Packard Co. has become the latest IT vendor to dip its toes in the wild world of Web logging, or blogging. Over the last few weeks, a handful of developers in the company's software development group have quietly begun publishing their regular musings on such technical issues as service-oriented architectures and XML (Extensible Markup Language). But the company is now showing signs of following competitors like Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. and opening up its blogging efforts to a wider range of company employees.

HP's blog experiment was launched Nov. 8, as a way to better communicate with the technical community, said David Gee, vice president of marketing for HP's management software organization. "We wanted to foster communication with particular audiences," he said. "In this case, it's with the developers and the managers in the technical space."

The company rolled out the blogs in a very low-profile fashion, Gee said. "We buried it in the developer section by design because we want to get our feet wet."

Within the next few months, however, Gee expects employees working on a number of different areas to get involved in blogging. "I think the compiler guys, the OS (operating system) guys, and the Linux guys within HP will use this medium much more aggressively," he said.

HP comes late to the corporate blogging game. Microsoft began publishing employee blogs on its MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) Web site in January, and Sun followed suit a few months later with the launch of a Web site where any Sun employee can create a public-facing Web log. In April, IBM Corp. opened up part of its DeveloperWorks Web site to a small number of technical bloggers.

Blogging has become a way of reaching audiences that may be unreachable with conventional marketing techniques, said Amy Wohl, president of Wohl Associates, an industry analyst firm based in Narberth, Pennsylvania. "This is all about getting to an audience who ordinarily wouldn't read anything that you put out there," she said. "They don’t read marketing material."

Sometimes that audience is reached by making statements that would not normally appear on corporate Web sites. IBM engineer Bill Higgins, for example, recently dissected some widely publicized comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, accusing the software giant's chief executive officer of making "specious" arguments against open source "to bolster Microsoft and spread (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about Open Source."

HP and Sun are both experimenting with blogs that target less technical audiences as well. Andy Lark, Sun's vice president of global communications and marketing, regularly posts his observations on media issues. And the blog of Sun President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Schwartz, the most prominent of Sun's blog sites, has become a must-read for members of the press and analyst community looking for Schwartz's views on industry events.

Competitors have also taken notice. Schwartz's Sept. 16 comments on the "death" of HP's Unix operating system, HP-UX, elicited a Sept. 28 letter from HP's legal department calling on Sun to retract Schwartz's comments. Sun's lawyers responded with a letter of their own, arguing that the contents of Scwhartz's blog were merely his opinion.

HP is also toying with the idea of executive blogs. Last week, HP Linux Vice President Martin Fink launched a blog of his own, not on the HP.com Web site, but on the Linuxcio.com domain instead. The first post on Fink's blog was a critique of Sun's Solaris operating system strategy, something much more controversial than the highly technical musings on the HP.com blogs.

Still, HP's Gee said the company may move Fink's blog over to the HP.com Web site. HP executives Nora Denzel, senior vice president of the company's software unit, and Gilles Bouchard, the company's chief information officer and executive vice president of global operations, may also begin blogs, he said.

While corporate blogs may eventually expand beyond their technical audience and become useful ways of addressing partners and customers, analyst Wohl does not recommend that other companies follow Schwartz's example and send their senior executives into the fray. This is a bad idea because the frankness needed for effective blogging may ultimately be in conflict with the legal restrictions on statements from executives at publicly-traded companies, she said.

"I sometimes think that (Schwartz) goes a little bit too far," she said. "When you're talking about your feelings about the computer industry, which your company happens to do business in, then I think it's very difficult for you to claim, 'that was only my personal point of view.'"

Regular blogs from company executives may not be squelched by legal liabilities so much as by the fact that the grassroots popularity of the blogging medium may ultimately be undone by overexposure, said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard University, and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

"Every time I look at blogging, I see the seeds within it of CB radio in the 80s," he said. While the CB radio turned out to be useful for commercial trucking, the idea that it would be ubiquitous turned out to be false. "We look back and say, what were we thinking? We were all like 'Breaker 1-9'"

HP's blogs can be found at http://devresource.hp.com/blogs/index.jsp.

IBM's DeveloperWorks blogs are located at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/.

Microsoft's blogs can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalHome.mspx.

Sun's blogs can be found at: http://blogs.sun.com/roller/

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:41 PM

Skulls Trojan attacks Symbian mobile phones

Users of Nokia Corp.'s 7610 smart phone and possibly other phones running Symbian Ltd.'s Series 60 software should be aware of a new Trojan program on the Internet. "We have located several freeware and shareware sites offering a program, called Extended Theme Manager, that contains a Trojan horse," Mikko Hyppönen, director of antivirus research at Helsinki-based F-Secure Corp., said Monday in an interview. "The virus writer is going by the name Tee-222."

The malicious code, called Skulls, deactivates all links to Symbian system applications, such as e-mail and calendar, by replacing their menu icons with images of skulls, according to Hyppönen. Users of affected phones can only send or receive calls, he said.

F-Secure issued a warning on Friday.

Hyppönen said that the Extended Theme Manager program looked "pretty convincing" as a freeware maintenance tool and that many sites had not bothered to verify it or even try it out. Most monitored sites, he said, have since removed the program.

When installing the file "extended theme.sis," Symbian phone users are informed by the operating system (OS) that the software is not Symbian Signed -- a trusted software application program initiated by the OS developer -- and asked if they want to continue, according to Hyppönen.

"This is definitely a good warning but the problem is that any advanced PC user who downloads software regularly sees this kind of warning 99 percent of the time and simply clicks OK," he said. "So the warning isn't really protecting much."

One way to correct the problem, Hyppönen said, is a hard reset, which restores affected phones to their default factory setting. Unfortunately, all private data, such as phone books and calendars, is lost in the process.

Earlier this year, the Symbian operating system software was the target of the Cabir virus, which, like Skulls, transmits a .sis file. But unlike Cabir, which scans for accessible phones within Bluetooth range and makes a copy of itself, Skulls is not self-replicating.

MORE LINKS:

• InfoSync
• The Register
• Symbianblast

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:20 AM

November 22, 2004

Google appoints new European head

Google Inc. named its first vice president outside of the U.S. on Monday, tapping a former mobile telecommunications company executive as its new head of European operations. Nikesh Arora, former chief marketing officer and member of the management board at T-Mobile, the mobile arm of Deutsche Telekom AG, will move to Google in early December, the Mountain View, California, company said.

Based in London, Arora will be charged with managing and developing Google's European business as the company moves into a new phase of growth, Google said.

At T-Mobile, Arora was charged with product development and brand and marketing activities in Europe. Previous to that he founded T-Mobile's multimedia subsidiary T-Mobile PLC, and held management positions at Putnam Investments and Fidelity Investments, Google said.

Arora's appointment comes a few months after Google listed itself as a public company, and signalled its intention to further grow its international presence.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:41 PM

Ad server hack spreads worm

Web site visitors who clicked on banner ads on a number of popular European Web sites this weekend could have infected their computers with variants of the Bofra worm, experts warned on Monday. The attacks take advantage of an unpatched buffer overflow flaw in the way Internet Explorer 6 (IE) handles the IFrame tag, and has been confirmed on PCs running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000, according to a warning posted Sunday on the SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute Web site. Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) is not vulnerable, it said.

The vulnerability allows attackers to gain complete control of a user's computer.

Also on Sunday, U.K. technology news Web site The Register reported that its third party ad serving company Falk AG became infected with the Bofra/IFrame exploit, forcing the Web site to suspend its ads from Falk.

"If you may have visited the Register between 6 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. GMT on Saturday, Nov. 20 using any Windows platform bar XP SP2 we strongly advise you to check your machine with up to date anti-virus software, to install SP2 if you are running Windows XP, and to strongly consider running an alternative browser, at least until Microsoft deals with the issue," The Register said on its Web site.

According to SANS, there were also reports of sites in Sweden and the Netherlands being compromised by the malicious code.

In the Netherlands, the country's biggest news site, NU.nl, with over 450,000 unique visitors per month, was infected through the ad system of Falk eSolutions AG and served the code to its visitors. Additionally, the other sites of Ilse Media BV, including one of the largest Dutch sites Startpagina, distributed the Trojan horse as well.

Adserver tags and link addresses were manipulated in order to install and execute the malware. User requests were redirected from Falk's servers to the URL (uniform resource locator) "search.comedycentral.com" (199.107.184.146), from where the malicious code was delivered, Falk said in a statement.

Falk denied that its advertisement serving systems were hacked. It said that an attack on a Web-traffic, load-balancing system spread the code. The compromised load balancer redirected about every 30 requests for the Falk's advertisement distribution servers to compromised Web sites that served the malicious code, the company said in the statement.

At least one security expert disputed that claim.

"We saw HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code that included the exploit code distributed from (Falk's) servers," said Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at LURHQ, a managed security services provider (MSSP) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Either Falk's ad serving systems were compromised by the hackers, or malicious hackers found another way to have their attack code distributed by the German company, perhaps by disguising the code as a legitimate advertisement, then paying Falk to run it, he said.

Given that the attackers may have compromised Web sites like those at comedycentral.com, there's no reason to think that they wouldn't compromise Falk's, as well, Stewart said.

Without more information from Falk or other companies involved in the attacks, including Viacom Inc. , which owns the comedycentral.com domain, it is unlikely the public will know how the malicious code was hidden in advertisements on legitimate Web sites, said Daniel Frasnelli, manager of the technical assistance center at NetSec, a MSSP in Herndon, Virginia.

Falk's competitor Adtech AG released its own statement saying that its adserving system Helios was not affected by the problem.

The attacks all make use of the same vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer Web browser. A problem with the way IE processes Web pages with long strings of characters encoded with the IFRAME HTML tag allows malicious hackers to create a buffer overflow condition and run their own code on vulnerable Windows machines, Stewart said.

IFRAME attacks can be carried out behind the scenes, using IE or Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs. Windows users have no indication or warning that their systems are being compromised, he said.

"It's about as bad is you can get for IE exploits," Stewart said.

Microsoft has yet to issue a patch for the IE IFrame hole for users who have not installed SP2. However, some "unofficial" patches have been released, including one from a German security researcher at the Web site, cherryware.de.

The attacks are more bad press for Microsoft's Web browser, which is facing competition from a new generation of browsers such as the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox and Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari browser. Changing to an alternative Web browser is one way to avoid exploitation using the latest attack, according to security experts.

"Microsoft cannot be pleased with something like this," Frasnelli said.

The hit against Falk's service is very similar in style to a June attack on approximately 100 Web sites by a Russian hacking group known as the "hangUP team." The group used a recently patched buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft's implementation of SSL (secure sockets layer) to compromise vulnerable Windows 2000 systems running IIS Version 5 Web servers, said Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer at the SANS Internet Storm Center.

Those attacks also used two vulnerabilities in Windows and the Internet Explorer Web browser to run the malicious code distributed from the IIS servers on machines that visited compromised sites. The code redirected users to Web sites controlled by the hackers and downloaded a Trojan horse program that captures keystrokes and personal data.

These attacks and others, including a September denial of service attacks against Lightbridge Inc.'s payment processing service Authorize.Net, highlight the vulnerability of the Internet to security "choke points." Such choke points comprise low-profile but highly connected Web sites and services that serve content that is trusted by thousands or even millions of other Web sites, Ullrich said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:40 PM

ICQ joins webmail battles with new service

The increasingly competitive webmail market has a new player: Instant messaging provider ICQ now offers a fee-based service that includes 2G bytes of storage, a calendar feature, task manager, notepad, wireless access and support for both POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). ICQ, owned by America Online Inc., on Monday will announce the service, which costs US$19.99 per year, said Ronen Arad, ICQ director of product management.

The service also includes spam filtering and blocking, protection against viruses and a 20M-byte ceiling on files sent or received. The service offers a feature that translates messages into seven languages, the ability to compress large attachments and WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) support for access from a mobile device. The features in this webmail service make it a real competitor to services from other providers, such as Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., whose Gmail webmail is still in beta test.

The ICQ webmail service also has features available for additional fees. One such extra-cost feature lets users send e-mail messages to wireless devices that support SMS (Short Message Service). Another one is a video e-mail service that can be used by subscribers who have a webcam attached to their PCs; the webmail interface has VCR-like controls to record the message, which recipients in turn can play back without additional software on Windows-based PCs.

Meanwhile, ICQ will also announce Monday that its existing free webmail service, which used to be a generic and bare-bones offering, has undergone a significant revamping, Arad said. It now features enhanced message search functionality, virus and spam protection, more ways to manage inbox messages, such as a new folder for drafts and a sent-mail confirmation feature. However, inbox storage for the free service, at only 6M bytes, is low compared with other providers.

ICQ, based in Tel Aviv, is partnering with Mail2World Inc., based in Los Angeles, to provide these webmail services. ICQ signed up Mail2World several months ago, Ronen said. ICQ's former webmail partner was San Francisco-based Critical Path Inc.

More details about ICQ's webmail services are available at http://www.icq.com.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:40 PM

DoCoMo develops Linux-based 3G phones

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest mobile operator, has developed a common software platform that can run on both the Linux and Symbian operating systems used in its 3G (third generation) mobile phones, the company said Thursday. Three new handsets announced on Wednesday by the company are compatible with the new platform. The N901iC by NEC Corp. and the P901i by Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. use a Linux version of the platform, while the F901iC by Fujitsu Ltd. uses Symbian OS version, according to DoCoMo.

The common platform is designed to cut costs and speed development of difficult-to-make 3G phones, according to DoCoMo. The platform consists of middleware for common services and functions, customized modules for the operating systems, sample device drivers, sample application software, handset emulator software for personal computers, and development guidelines, the company said.

From now on, DoCoMo expects that most or all of its new 3G handsets will run on either Linux or Symbian OS, spokesman Takumi Suzuki said Thursday. Vendors will be able to decide which operating system they adopt.

The company is not pushing development of any other operating systems, he said.

"To tell you the truth, we don't like ... (and) we don't have a plan to invest in (Microsoft Corp.'s) Windows," he said. "Windows is not for the mobile space, the files are big."

The handsets announced this week are the end results of two joint projects to develop phones based on the common software program: one between DoCoMo, NEC and Panasonic; and one between DoCoMo and Fujitsu, according to Suzuki.

The N901iC is the first mobile phone made by NEC that uses Linux, according to spokeswoman Akiko Shikimori. The common platform will help NEC more easily add third-party application software into future 3G mobile phones. NEC is also considering placing Linux on future 3G handsets for the international market, she said.

"We can't say that every single 3G phone from now on will have Linux, but most of them will," she said.

Panasonic's future Linux-based phones will be primarily for the Japanese market, but the company also plans to use Linux for models for international sale, said spokesman Wilson Solano.

"Linux is for phones for the domestic market first and foremost, then for phones for overseas," he said.

MORE LINKS:

• News.com
• Slashdot
• Linux News

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:55 AM

November 20, 2004

Nintendo and Sony battle for the handheld

It's the fight computer gamers have been waiting for. But the latest duel between wise old master Nintendo and challenger Sony is not taking place on a TV screen. This real-life fight begins on Sunday and pits Nintendo against Sony Computer Entertainment. Their weapons of choice: for Nintendo it's the DS (Dual Screen) and for Sony, the PSP (PlayStation Portable).

Nintendo has effectively owned the portable gaming space with its Game Boy for the last several years but that position is now facing a threat. Sony is attempting to do with the PSP what it did in the console gaming space with the PlayStation: enter as a newcomer and ascend to the top position.

The console fight played out in the latter half of the 1990s--a time when Nintendo and Sega dominated the console gaming market with positions that seemed unassailable. Like a fast-action move in one of its video games, Sony went for the jugular of both companies and in the end only Nintendo was left standing. Sega was ousted from the hardware side of the market in 2001 and earlier this year announced it was merging with Sammy, a Japanese Pachinko pinball machine maker.

The Nintendo DSThere's a lot riding on the success of the DS. Consumers will get their first chance to pass judgment on the system on Sunday, when it makes its world debut in the U.S.

The DS is a clamshell device that unfolds to reveal a pair of 3-inch LCD screens, one of which is touch-sensitive. Together with a microphone that's embedded into the device, Nintendo is hoping the two will add new angles to game-play by allowing feedback by touch and voice in addition to using the control pads.

Nintendo has already demonstrated a game called Nintendogs that features a digital dog and involves the player calling out instructions such as to roll over or sit. If the dog obeys, the player can reward it be stroking its head or rubbing its belly using the touch-sensitive screen.

Look a little deeper into the system and you'll also find support for wireless LAN. This can enable the creation of ad hoc networks reaching up to 30 yards from the device. Depending on software support, two or more users with the same game can play against each other via the wireless link. An innovative feature is game sharing which allows two users to share a single game cartridge and play against each other. This is only available on certain titles.

The network also supports a chat function. An application called PictoChat, built into each DS, allows up to 16 users within wireless range to create an ad hoc network and participate in a group discussion. A stylus and on-screen keyboard are used to type messages into the system.

But what of the challenger?

Sony has promised to launch the PSP in the U.S. before the end of March, but in Japan it will go on sale on December 12, less than two weeks after Nintendo launches the DS there. Sony has already been showing it to prospective users.

The PSP is easy to hold, with control pads located either side of its bright, wide-screen 4.3-inch display. Sony is promising users all of the performance of the PlayStation 2 console but in a handheld form. Users at the Tokyo Game Show were impressed.

Like Nintendo, Sony has also built in a wireless LAN function that can be used for wireless games.

Games in the PSP will be packaged on a new format called UMD (Universal Media Disc). UMDs are 2.4-inch diameter optical discs encased in cartridges, and can hold up to 1.8GB of data.

The PSP will support versions of UMD discs for games, audio content and video content. UMDs featuring mixed game, audio, and video content are expected on the market during the second quarter of 2005, Sony says.

Already, one of the hottest discussion points among potential users is the PSP's battery life. Staff on the company's booth at the Tokyo Game Show who were demonstrating the device said they were getting a battery life of around 2 hours--much shorter than the 6 to 10 hours for the Nintendo DS. Sony later said that it had measured the battery life at 4 to 5 hours--so all eyes will be on the real-world performance reported by its first users next month.

Nintendo's DS will cost $150 in the U.S. Sony has yet to announce U.S. pricing for the PSP, but it will cost the equivalent of about $190 in Japan. That's quite a bit lower than analysts had originally predicted, and will no doubt be welcomed by users who usually have to pay a premium for early versions of new products.

MORE LINKS:

• Reuters
• Houston Chronicle
• CNNMoney

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 07:49 PM

FCC approves first software-defined radio

A technology that could transform wireless communications got a boost on Friday when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced its first approval of a software-defined radio. The Vanu Software Radio GSM Base Station from Vanu Inc. can support multiple cellular technologies and frequencies at the same time and can be modified in the future without any hardware changes, according to Vanu Chief Executive Officer Vanu Bose. Software-defined radios like Vanu's could lower costs and provide new flexibility in wireless networks, IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi said Friday.

Traditional radios are hardware components built for a particular frequency range, modulation type and output power. Software-defined radios (SDRs) consist of a flexible radio controlled by software running on a computer or device. The concept goes beyond cellular base stations to other types of radios, such as handheld devices that can switch from one network to another to suit a particular application or environment.

The FCC applauded the technology in a Friday statement on the approval. Software-defined radios can help users share limited airspace and prevent interference, the FCC said.

Vanu's GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) base station is a Hewlett-Packard Co. ProLiant server running Linux, coupled with an ADC Telecommunications Inc. Digivance radio subsystem. Using an off-the-shelf server and standard operating system allows Vanu to ride the declining cost curve for processing power, Bose said. Though the price of the current product is close to that of conventional base stations, according to Bose, the equation is expected to change.

"It is going to change the entire cost structure over time," IDC's Bakhshi said. In fact, the new approach is so revolutionary that it's hard to know what benefits will come of it, he said, comparing it to the change from analog to digital cellular networks. Though large operators will not make the switch quickly from their conventional radio networks, some have signaled interest in the technology, Bakhshi said. Cingular Wireless LLC, Orange PCS Ltd. and NTT DoCoMo Inc. all are members of the SDR Forum industry group, along with Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and other infrastructure companies.

Vanu, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is first targeting small, rural operators, Bose said. Those carriers want to support multiple cellular technologies so they can secure roaming agreements with more than one major operator, he said. Software-defined radios let them do that without investing in new hardware each time they add a new technology. For customers of the major operators, that should mean better coverage, Bose said. Vanu launched a trial with Mid-Tex Cellular Ltd. last year and is now installing its base stations on the De Leon, Texas-based operator's network. Bose believes the company is two years away from a direct sale to a top-tier U.S. carrier.

The FCC was supportive during the approval process, according to Bose. Its main concern was ensuring that software-defined radios don't cause harmful interference, he said.

Outside the U.S., software-defined radios could be a boon to mobile operators in less-developed countries, Bose said. The technology provides the flexibility to combine different grades of hardware and software to strike the right balance between cost and network resiliency. Most cellular systems today ensure 99.999 percent, or "five nines," reliability, he said.

"For certain areas, such as rural or developing areas, five nines is overkill because it prices the network right out of the market," Bose said. "Now they can make a choice.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:23 AM

November 19, 2004

Internet tax moratorium clears Congress

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved a compromise version of a moratorium on Internet-only taxes, the last step needed before the bill is sent to President George Bush. The compromise, worked out with the Senate earlier this week, extends for three years an Internet tax ban that expired Nov. 1, 2003. The original version of the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, passed by the House in September 2003, would have permanently extended a five-year congressional moratorium on taxes unique to the Internet, such as taxes on access or bandwidth.

Bush expressed support for an Internet tax moratorium during the recent presidential campaign and is expected to sign the bill into law. Bush and other supporters of the moratorium say it is needed so the Internet will continue to grow and to help the U.S. economy.

The version of the bill that will go to Bush addresses an issue that held the legislation up in the Senate. The new version allows states and cities to continue to collect taxes on telephone services, even if the calls are made over the Internet.

After the House passed the first version of the bill, a group of senators lead by Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, criticized the bill for potentially allowing telecommunications carriers to avoid billions of dollars in taxes as they move more traffic to VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) services.

The compromise version of the bill also allows states already collecting taxes on Internet access to continue that for up to four years, according to a press release from Alexander.

"The end result isn’t perfect, but it is a big victory for states and for enhancing the development of the Internet," Carper said of the compromise bill in a statement released this week. "More than a year ago, the Senate was prepared to pass legislation that would have done irrevocable harm to state and local governments. But the compromise we worked out will do minimal harm to states, while also protecting consumers from taxes on their monthly Internet bills."

Several tech-related trade groups praised the bill's passage after more than a year of debate, but the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) called on Congress to make the ban permanent and to prohibit telecommunications taxes on VOIP. The bill is "a good start, but a starting point nevertheless" for the 109th Congress that begins in early 2005, CompTIA group director of U.S. public policy Roger Cochetti said in a statement.

The passage of the bill is a "huge win for consumers," added Walter B. McCormick Jr., president and chief executive officer of the United States Telecom Association. "In today’s information-based economy, this legislation ensures that consumers will benefit from more competition, increased investment and new innovative services," McCormick said in a statement.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:18 PM

Firefox lights up Web browser world

Firefox 1.0 appears to have sparked new activity in the Web browser market. The release of the open-source Web browser by the Mozilla Foundation last week prompted Microsoft Corp. to break the silence about Internet Explorer (IE) and America Online Inc. (AOL) is breathing more life into the Netscape brand with a preview of a new Firefox-based browser scheduled to be unveiled on Nov. 30.

Microsoft has no plans to release a new version of IE until the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, due out in 2006. Still, the Redmond, Washington-based company says it has the option to add features to IE by way of the browser's add-on technology, said Gary Schare, director of Windows product management at Microsoft.

"It is an option for the Internet Explorer team to add functionality in between releases. We do not have specific plans at this point to use it, but it is an option," Schare said. Microsoft's MSN group already uses the add-on mechanism for its MSN Toolbar.

Microsoft has not released a completely new version of IE in years. Windows XP users recently got a browser upgrade with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP. SP2 included features such as pop-up blocking and security enhancements, but those updates won't be made available for IE on earlier Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft has said.

While some people working on IE at Microsoft are maintaining the current version of the browser, most of the team members are focused on IE for Longhorn, Schare said. The Longhorn browser will include new features, improved security and privacy features and better support for third-party developers, he said.

For end-user features, Microsoft is looking at better ways to manage favorites and tabbed browsing, a feature to improve the browsing experience by consolidating multiple Web pages into a single window organized with tabs, Schare said. "Basically making IE a more functional and feature rich browser," he said. Firefox and other browsers that compete with IE already offer tabbed browsing.

Meanwhile AOL's browser unit Netscape Communications is preparing to preview a new browser based on Firefox. "It is based on Firefox, but will be Firefox Plus, it has got improvements beyond Firefox," AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.

The preview, a so-called alpha release, is due on Nov. 30. The new browser and a new e-mail client will eventually replace the current Netscape offering, Weinstein said. He declined to detail product details.

AOL released Netscape 7.2 in August, but that product is based on Mozilla 1.7, a suite of products that includes a browser, e-mail client, Internet Relay Chat client and Web page editor.

Riding a continued high, the Mozilla Foundation keeps counting Firefox downloads, which hit 4.7 million on Friday morning, a spokesman said.

The rise of Firefox, first introduced in February this year when Mozilla renamed its Firebird project, has been remarkable. The browser held 3 percent market share at the end of October, according to WebSideStory Inc. The Mozilla Suite, Netscape and Firefox together held 6 percent of the market at the end of October, up from 3.5 percent in June.Though losing share, IE still dominated with 92.9 percent of the market, according to the San Diego Web metrics company.

Firefox is the Mozilla Foundation's stand-alone browser. The Mozilla open-source project was started in early 1998 by Netscape, which was acquired later that year by AOL. Last year, the people behind Mozilla created a foundation, largely funded by a $2 million pledge from AOL, to build, support and promote Mozilla products. MORE LINKS:

• InformationWeek
• LinuxInsider
• InfoWorld

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:17 PM

Yahoo, SBC extend partnership, plan new services

Yahoo Inc. and SBC Communications Inc. will collaborate to extend to cell phones and home entertainment devices some of the online services and content they currently provide to PC users. The two companies, which have provided co-branded DSL (digital subscriber line) and dial-up Internet service since 2002, announced Thursday they have agreed to continue that partnership and extend it with new services that will be available next year.

Subscribers to the co-branded DSL and dial-up services receive not only Internet access, but also a variety of complementary services, such as e-mail, security tools and multimedia content.

The planned new services include:

-- Project Lightspeed and Home Entertainment, for extending to home entertainment devices, such as television sets and stereo equipment, Yahoo-SBC services and content, such as video on demand, Internet radio and online photos.

-- Cingular Wireless LLC, for extending Yahoo-SBC content and services to Cingular Wireless subscribers.

-- SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi, for integrating Yahoo-SBC content and services with the SBC Wi-Fi service.

The companies' initiative is a clear attempt to move Internet services and broadband content beyond a PC's boundaries. Users increasingly expect to have access to Internet services and content from wireless devices and consumer electronics products.

A race is brewing in the IP (Internet protocol) television segment between Yahoo and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, with Yahoo grabbing an early lead, one analyst said.

"I see IP TV as a venue for all types of new content," said Allen Weiner, a Gartner Inc. analyst. Weiner predicted that Yahoo would begin "creating all kinds of new content" in the future, both as a TV producer and as a TV network.

Microsoft's MSN is in a position to challenge Yahoo, but "Yahoo is well ahead of MSN" in this space right now, Weiner said.

The companies didn't provide information on when next year these services might be available or at what price.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

Google sees benefits in corporate blogging

Google Inc., which implemented an internal Web log system behind its firewall about 18 months ago, has seen tremendous benefits from it and may in the future consider providing tools and expertise for this purpose to interested clients, a Google executive said. Google deployed an internal blog for its employees shortly after acquiring the blogging service Blogger in early 2003, and since then Google staffers have found many useful and creative ways for the internal blog, said Jason Goldman, Blogger product manager at Google.

"Since then, we have seen a lot of different uses of blogs within the firewall: people keeping track of meeting notes, people sharing diagnostics information, people sharing snippets of code, as well as more personal uses, like letting co-workers know what they're thinking about and what they're up to," Goldman said. "It really helps grow the intranet and the internal base of documents."

Google executives have talked in the past about the company's internal Blogger implementation, called Blogger in Google (BIG), and a Google employee even posted a screenshot of a BIG page last year at http://www.shellen.com/gallery/big_screenshot800px.gif.

Asked if Google would be open to providing software and consulting to companies interested in deploying an internal Blogger version, Goldman was non-committal but didn't close the door on the possibility either. "Sure, it may. If the right business relationship existed, that could be a great opportunity. But it's not something we have specific plans around right now," he said.

It's unlikely that Google will develop a version of Blogger that would compete head-to-head against enterprise document management products, but it's very possible Google will give Blogger some features in the future to make it more attractive for business use, said Allen Weiner, a Gartner Inc. analyst.

Ultimately, vendors will approach the emerging enterprise blogging market from two angles, Weiner said. First, there will be the enterprise document management vendors and the enterprise publishing software vendors tweaking their industrial-strength products to support blogging functionality. These companies will cater to organizations that need security, rich functionality and IT control. Second, there will be more lightweight products such as Blogger, which will do just fine for organizations that approach blogging from a more casual perspective.

What is undeniable is that there is a growing interest among businesses towards blogs as business communication tools, particularly among IT departments, Weiner said. "The mandate of IT organizations today is to do more with less, so the better they can communicate and share things, the more efficient their operations will be," he said. "There's a huge benefit in blogging for companies implementing IT projects. It's going to be a growing trend over the next couple of years."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

Study finds e-voting irregularities in Florida

Voting irregularities in three Florida counties that used electronic voting machines may have awarded more than 130,000 votes to President George Bush in this month's election, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The Berkeley researchers claimed on Thursday that their findings raise questions about the accuracy of voting results in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, all of which have more voters registered as Democrats than Republicans. According to statistical models, voters in those three counties delivered more than 130,000 votes to Bush than were expected by a post-election analysis, the researchers maintain.

"Something went awry with electronic voting in Florida," said Michael Hout, a sociology professor, who led the research effort.

Hout said that the odds of the Florida irregularities happening by chance were less than one in a thousand and he called for an examination of the results. "It's like a smoke alarm and it's beeping," he said. "We call upon the voting officials in Florida to determine whether there's a fire."

The irregularities did not account for enough votes to give the state to Democratic challenger John Kerry, who lost to Bush in Florida by more than 377,000 votes.

To obtain their results, the Berkeley researchers analyzed publicly available voting data from all of Florida's counties using a technique called multiple-regression analysis, which accurately identified butterfly ballot problems in Palm Beach County during the 2000 election, Hout said.

The technique involves building a statistical model to predict voting patterns based on a number of factors, including history of voting, median family income, age and race. Hout's team conducted their study using data compiled from the Nov. 2 election.

"We noticed that three counties stood out from those expectations," Hout said. "These were counties that had a significant departure from what we would expect, statistically, given the patterns in all those other counties."

Using their statistical model, Hout's team forecast that Bush should have received 28,000 fewer votes in Broward County than he received there in 2000. However, Bush received 51,000 more votes than he did four years ago. In Palm Beach County, where Bush gained 41,000 votes, the Berkeley research suggested a loss of 8,900 votes. For Miami-Dade County the research showed Bush should have gained 18,400 votes. In fact, he gained 37,000 votes.

The counties in question used e-voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.

The model found an even larger discrepancy when certain factors weighing the data in Bush's favor were removed, Hout said.

The team did not, however, find this level of irregularity in 12 other Florida counties that used e-voting machines, he said.

Hout was unable to explain why some e-voting counties would experience irregularities while others did not, but he said that the irregularities were more likely to occur in counties that voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000. "This becomes an important clue that investigators who know something about both the software and the hardware can use," he said.

The Berkeley study also appeared to debunk speculation about voting irregularities in several heavily Democratic counties that voted Republican in the 2004 election. After applying the statistical model to Dixie County and Baker County, both of which bucked party affiliations and voted overwhelmingly for Bush, Hout's team found nothing amiss. These counties, which used paper ballots that were optically scanned, have historically voted Republican in national elections, Hout said.

Hout's researchers also examined the election results in the hotly contested state of Ohio and found no irregularities there. "Our results do indicate that Ohio probably did get it right," Hout said.

A spokesman for the Information Technology Association of America, (ITAA) an IT vendor group, dismissed the Berkeley results, saying that the study appeared to ignore the political, social and economic factors that affected the vote. "It is unclear to us that the technology, which is the one factor the authors appear to have focused on for this study, should be viewed as causal above the many other factors that could affect a voter's decision," said Charles Greenwald, an ITAA spokesman in an e-mail interview.

Greenwald also criticized the study for not being peer reviewed.

The Berkeley research has already been informally reviewed by academics at Harvard University, and will no doubt be scrutinized now that the results are posted on Berkeley's Web site, Hout said. He declined to provide the names of researchers outside of Berkeley who were familiar with the results, saying they asked not to be identified. The results can be found at http://ucdata.berkeley.edu.

Because there is no paper audit trail for the e-voting machines used in Florida, it may be difficult to ultimately explain the irregularities. "Our statistical approach is just about the only way we have to uncover what went on in Florida or in any other state that uses e-voting as it exists today, except Nevada where there is a paper trail," Hout said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

Sohu.com's president to step down next year

Victor Koo, the president and chief operating officer of Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com Inc., will step down from his position next year, the company said Friday. Koo, who has held a variety of senior positions at Sohu.com since joining the company in 1999, has resigned to pursue "entrepreneurial business opportunities," the company said in a statement.

Koo's resignation will become effective on March 31, 2005, the statement said. Following that date, Koo will remain an advisor to Sohu.com for six months, it said.

During his tenure at Sohu.com, Koo was credited with helping to grow the company's advertising business and expanding the company's business scope, the statement said.

Instead of appointing a replacement for Koo, the company will divide his current responsibilities among the heads of each of Sohu.com's business lines, such as advertising and online gaming, said Caroline Straathof, a spokeswoman for the company in Beijing.

Under this structure, the heads of each business group heads will now report directly to Charles Zhang, the company's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), she said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

Vodafone, Optus agree on shared 3G network in Australia

The Australian mobile carrier units of Vodafone Group PLC and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. have agreed to roll out a combined third-generation (3G) cellular network in the country, they said Friday. The deal between Vodafone Australia Ltd. and SingTel Optus Pty. Ltd. builds on a preliminary agreement reached in August this year and will see the two companies jointly share frequency spectrum and about 2,000 base stations, they said in a statement.

The two carriers hope to save money by sharing the cost of building the WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) network. The initial build-out of the 2,000 base-station network covering six major Australian cities is estimated to cost about A$435 million (US$339 million) and Optus said it expects its investment to drop by around A$100 million as a result of working with Vodafone.

Construction has already begun with a view to launching the network in the third-quarter of 2005. It will initially be available in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and then be rolled out in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, they said.

The network will use a system from Nokia Corp. called Multi-Operator Radio Access Network (MO-RAN) that enables a single 3G network to be shared by more multiple operators.

The agreement is conditional on necessary regulatory approvals and clearances, including authorization from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

November 18, 2004

RIAA files 761 new file-trading lawsuits

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed new lawsuits against 761 people who allegedly use peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software to trade music files without permission, the trade group announced Thursday. The lawsuits included users of the eDonkey, Limewire and Kazaa services, as well as 25 people using university Internet connections to distribute music files. American University in Washington, D.C., Boston College, Iowa State University and the University of Massachusetts were among the college networks used by those sued.

The RIAA believes that partnerships between universities and pay-for-music download services have in part come about because of the trade group's legal strategy, RIAA president Cary Sherman said in a statement. At least 20 U.S. universities signed agreements with pay-for-music services as of August, and more signed agreements since then, according to the RIAA.

"The lawsuits are an essential educational tool," Sherman said in a statement. "They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives."

Since September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 7,000 lawsuits, including more than 2,200 lawsuits announced since Oct. 1, against alleged file traders.

The new RIAA lawsuits come on the heels of another group of lawsuits announced this week by the Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA). The undisclosed number of MPAA lawsuits were aimed at P-to-P users who allegedly distributed movies without permission.

MORE LINKS:

• CNet
• Collegiate Presswire
• The Standard

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:14 PM

Microsoft, Yahoo extend contract for Web ads

Microsoft Corp. has extended its partnership with Yahoo Inc. to deliver sponsored search results on its U.S. and international MSN sites, despite the software maker's recent declarations that it intends to be a major force in the search market. Microsoft has extended until June 2006 its agreement with Yahoo subsidiary Overture Services Inc. to deliver the pay-for-performance results, it said Thursday.

The agreement was initially undertaken in 2001 and was due to expire in June 2005, an Overture spokeswoman said. There has been no changes to the terms of the contract, the spokeswoman said. Financial details were not disclosed.

Microsoft's decision to lengthen its search partnership with Yahoo comes at a time when the software maker is sharpening its own tools and expertise in the area. Microsoft rolled out a beta of its long-awaited search technology last week, while company executives proclaimed their intentions to take on search leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo.

Experts have said that the Redmond, Washington, company's search technology as still in callow form, however, and this factor may have contributed to the decision to extend its agreement with Yahoo.

Under the extension, Overture will continue to provide sponsored results to MSN sites in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:25 PM

New Google Scholar search service aimed at academics

Google Inc. on Thursday formally launched a new search service aimed at scientists and academic researchers. Google Scholar is a free beta service that allows users to search for scholarly literature like peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports, the Mountain View, California, company said.

The new service accesses information from resources such as academic publishers, universities, professional societies and preprint repositories, it said.

Because the service automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, users can find references to older works that may only exist offline in books or other publications.

A query for "Albert Einstein" and "relativity," for example, pulls up 2,920 references along the left-hand side of the page, clearly identified as articles from the Web, or pointing to offline material such as citations or books, which when clicked on are presented much in the same manner as a library card catalog.

There are currently no online advertisements accompanying the search results.

Topics covered include medicine, physics, economics and computer science. Documents in the Google Scholar search index are written in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, the company said.

Google Scholar is located at http://scholar.google.com.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:24 PM

Petco settles charge it left customer data exposed

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has reached a settlement with pet food retailer Petco Animal Supplies Inc. of charges that the company's Web site violated federal law by making deceptive security claims. A security flaw in Petco's Web site left customers' credit card numbers exposed to attackers. The FTC alleges that Petco did not take reasonable measures to protect its Web site and made deceptive claims in stating that customers' credit card numbers would be "shielded from unauthorized access."

This flaw was exploited in a June 2003 attack on Petco.com in which a visitor was able to read customer data stored in Petco's database. According to Petco, the attack was perpetrated by an independent security consultant named Jeremiah Jacks, who immediately informed Petco of the vulnerability.

The vulnerability exposed only a limited amount of customer information, a Petco spokesman said. "What he got was credit card numbers, but there was no other customer information accompanying those numbers," he said.

Under the terms of the settlement, announced Wednesday, Petco is prohibited from misrepresenting the security of its Web site and must establish a comprehensive security information program, which will be subject to independent audits for the next 20 years, said Alain Sheer, an attorney in the FTC's Division of Financial Practices.

Petco could be held in contempt of court if it violates the agreement, Sheer said.

It should help to deter other companies from ignoring and misrepresenting security vulnerabilities on their Web sites, he added. "Obviously there's some pretty bad publicity here," Sheer said. "We think that should be a deterrent."

The FTC has reached similar settlements with Eli Lilly and Co., Microsoft Corp., Guess Inc. and Tower Direct LLC, Sheer said.

"Petco is committed to keeping all customer information obtained through our Web site and stores private and secure," the Petco spokesman said.

MORE LINKS:

• CNN/Money
• KGO

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:36 AM

Burst.com says Microsoft destroyed evidence

Top managers at Microsoft Corp. told employees to destroy evidence contained in old e-mail during 2000, even as the company faced several antitrust lawsuits at the time, court documents filed by Burst.com Inc. charge. Burst.com, suing Microsoft for alleged patent and antitrust violations, accuses Microsoft managers of telling employees in 2000 to delete most or all e-mail after 30 days, in court documents made public this week. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice was in the midst of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, and the software giant faced dozens of class action lawsuits.

"Given this array of litigation, Microsoft had a concrete duty to preserve relevant documents," Burst.com's lawyers wrote in a motion filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. "But it did not. Instead, it implemented ... practices to make sure that incriminating documents disappeared."

A Microsoft spokeswoman disputed Burst.com's allegations. "Over the past several years, we have produced literally millions and millions of documents and e-mails for the various legal cases we’ve been involved in, and we’ve been completely forthcoming in all document requests in this case as well," spokeswoman Stacy Drake wrote by e-mail in response to questions about the Burst.com motion. "We have provided more than half a million pages of documents from more than 60 employee files specifically in response to Burst’s broad discover requests."

Burst.com's motion asks Judge Frederick Motz to instruct the jury when the case goes to trial that because Microsoft failed to retain documents relating to Burst.com's lawsuit, "the jury is free to infer that Microsoft did so because the contents of the documents were adverse to Microsoft."

Burst.com filed its lawsuit against Microsoft in June 2002, alleging that Microsoft stole patented technology and trade secrets concerning Internet-based video-on-demand for its Windows Media Player product. Microsoft learned all about Burst.com's technology in two years of meetings and discussions, although it signed a nondisclosure agreement with Burst prior to those meetings, Burst.com alleges.

Burst.com's new motion asks Motz to exclude former Microsoft executive Eric Engstrom as a witness during trial. Engstrom, the former general manager of MSN's dial-up service, was a key employee in Microsoft negotiations with Intel Corp., after which Intel ceased development of its Java Media Framework Player in 1998, according to Bruce Wecker a lawyer representing Burst.com. Burst.com's Burstware media player relied on the Intel Java framework.

With no e-mail to back up his testimony, Engstrom is "free to remember history in a way most convenient for Microsoft," Burst.com's lawyers write in the new motion. "We don't think he should be able to appear in court and make up stuff," added Wecker, with San Francisco law firm Hosie Frost Large & McArthur.

Burst.com's motion accuses Microsoft of not allowing employees to archive e-mail and accuses James Allchin, group vice president of Microsoft’s Platforms Group, of ordering employees in January 2000 to destroy e-mail after 30 days. "This is not something you get to decide," Allchin wrote to employees, according to the Burst.com motion. "Do not archive your mail. Do not be foolish. 30 days."

But company policy is to retain e-mail relating to continuing legal actions, and Allchin's instructions on deleting unneeded e-mail is consistent with company policy, Drake said.

"No company retains every e-mail or document it generates and there is no obligation to do so, particularly given the severity of the inefficiencies it would create," Drake wrote. "Microsoft does keep those documents and e-mails that are necessary to retain for legal reasons – as has been shown throughout the U.S. antitrust and other legal cases. No party has ever previously claimed that Microsoft did not comply with its discovery obligations, and we have spent millions of dollars in doing so."

MORE LINKS:

• Seattle Post Intelligencer
• Internetnews.com
• Kansas City Star

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:36 AM

Salesforce.com continues strong customer growth

Hosted sales management software provider Salesforce.com Inc. is closing in on 200,000 paying subscribers, an 80 percent gain in its customer base from this time last year, the company said Wednesday as it announced its third-quarter financial results. Salesforce.com edged past analyst expectations with quarterly revenue of US$46.4 million, up 82 percent from last year's third quarter, and net income of $2.2 million. The San Francisco company reported per-share earnings of $0.02. The consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson First Call was for $0.01 in per-share earnings.

Salesforce.com expects revenue of $172 million to $174 million in its 2005 fiscal year, which ends Jan. 31. While that's small compared to others in the CRM (customer relationship management) market -- market leader Siebel Systems Inc. had revenue of $1.4 billion last year -- Salesforce.com's rapid customer growth has drawn attention to its hosted, subscription sales model. Its customer base is tilted toward smaller companies: As Salesforce.com grows, its average deal size remains around 15 licensed users.

Salesforce.com said it ended the quarter with 195,000 paying subscribers. For its 2006 fiscal year, the company projected revenue of $275 million to $285 million.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:36 AM

November 17, 2004

MPAA files first suits against movie file-swappers

The Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA) Tuesday announced that it has begun filing lawsuits against people who use peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software to trade movie files without permission over the Internet. The MPAA filed an unspecified number of lawsuits in courts across the U.S., seeking damages and injunctions against the P-to-P users. Under the U.S. Copyright Act, people can be liable for as much as US$30,000 for each movie traded over the Internet, and as much as $150,000 per movie if the infringement is proven to be willful. The trade group announced earlier this month it would begin to sue file traders.

The MPAA also announced it will soon offer to computer users a free program that identifies movie and music titles stored on a computer, along with any installed P-to-P software. The information collected by this program would be available only to the computer's user, according to the MPAA.

Users can ask the program to remove infringing movies or music files and any P-to-P software, the MPAA said in a press release.

"Our ultimate goal is to help consumers locate the resources and information they need to make appropriate decisions about using and trading illegal files," Dan Glickman, MPAA president and chief executive officer said in a statement. "Many parents are concerned about what their children have downloaded and where they've downloaded it from."

The MPAA also announced a new P-to-P ad campaign, to be distributed to about 10,000 U.S. video stores. The Rated I: Inappropriate for All Ages video-store campaign is similar to an ad campaign that appeared in theaters, newspapers, magazines and on the Internet.

"Litigation alone is not the solution, but it is part of a broader MPAA effort that includes education and new technological tools among other components," Glickman said.

MORE LINKS:

• Ecommerce Times
• Washington Post
• ABC News
• MacNewsWorld

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 07:17 PM

Ebay launches in the Philippines

Ebay Inc. has open a local version of its online auction service for users in the Philippines, the company said Wednesday. Ebay Philippines, at www.ebay.ph, is an English-language Web site that supports transactions in the Philippine Peso. At present, users can buy and sell products through the site at no charge.

Elsewhere in Asia, the company operates sites in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. It also operates sites in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:15 PM

SBC switches on Microsoft in major IPTV deal

Microsoft Corp. has turned the channel on its slow-moving television software business by winning a key contract for its new Internet-based TV platform from SBC Communications Inc. SBC, the second-largest network operator in the U.S., agreed to a 10-year licensing deal, worth US$400 million, to use Microsoft's new IP Television (IPTV) software, the companies announced Wednesday.

The IPTV deal, among the largest to date, is part of SBC's plan to compete with cable operators for TV customers.

SBC has been testing an IP (Internet Protocol) TV service built on the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition platform since June 2004. The San Antonio, Texas, operator plans to begin field trials in mid-2005 and offer commercial service by the end of the year.

In the first quarter of 2005, SBC plans to begin construction of a new high-speed network that will provide IPTV, VOIP (voice over IP) and Internet access. The company expects to connect 18 million homes to the network by the end of 2007.

Microsoft technology will let SBC compress digital signals and send them over its high-speed network. The software also will provide voice and data services simultaneously, the operator said. The technology also provides a comprehensive security system, including subscriber and end-to-end digital rights management technology, to protect content across multiple devices.

As part of its IPTV offering, SBC plans to include customizable channel lineups, video on demand, digital video recording, multimedia interactive program guides and event notifications, it said.

Microsoft has landed deals for its IPTV platform with several operators outside of the U.S., including Bell Canada International Inc., Swisscom AG, Telecom Italia SpA and India's Reliance Infocomm Ltd. In the second quarter Microsoft also announced a deal with U.S.-based Comcast Corp. for related TV software.

MORE LINKS:

• SmartMoney
• PCWorld
• NewsFactor Network
• Internetnews.com
• Reuters
• MSN Money
• SFGate.com

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:14 PM

Five Across introduces server, adds RSS to IM client

Five Across Inc. has upgraded its workgroup instant messaging client by adding RSS support and developed its first workgroup instant messaging server, the Palo Alto, California company plans to announce Wednesday. Five Across customers will now have the option of bringing instant messaging (IM) traffic in house behind the firewall by purchasing the new Five Across Workgroup Server. The server is for companies that want to have a tighter handle on their IM communications' security and performance than is possible using Five Across' IM network. The server also has features for logging and auditing IM sessions.

"We're providing the server for security-conscious businesses," said Kathy Englar, Five Across' marketing director.

The company aims to provide businesses with an IM alternative that has more workgroup features than consumer-oriented IM services, such as America Online Inc.'s AIM, Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Messenger and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger, but that is less expensive and easier to manage than enterprise IM platforms such as Microsoft's Live Communications Server and IBM Corp.'s Sametime.

Five Across, founded in late 2003, released its first product in August. The InterComm 1.0 IM client is offered via download in a free and a fee-based version, both of which are meant to be run on Five Across' proprietary IM network. Although the fee-based version, which costs US$29 for a one-time fee, has more features than the free version, both are designed with a workgroup architecture in mind. This lets users organize their buddy lists by groups and store group documents in a server-based repository for sharing and collaboration.

On Wednesday, Five Across also will upgrade the InterComm client software to version 1.1, which features support for RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a technology for distributing and aggregating online information, typically news articles. InterComm 1.1 lets users set up RSS feeds for their groups.

Tris Hussey, a consultant specializing in collaboration and business blogging, uses InterComm and recommends it to clients he thinks might find it useful. Although he wouldn't be interested in the workgroup server for himself, since he is the sole employee in his company Larix Consulting, he thinks the product will appeal to companies that don't feel comfortable conducting their IM communications over the Five Across external network.

Meanwhile, he's personally interested in the InterComm RSS support, saying it has "a lot of potential" and is a feature that complements the other workgroup capabilities of the product. Hussey creates InterComm groups with his business partners and clients.

In future InterComm upgrades, Hussey would like Five Across to add the capability to lock a shared document, so that while a user is editing it, others can't modify it simultaneously. "If someone is doing a major revision of a document, you don't want other people to work on it, so if there was a way to lock it that would be helpful," he said.

For companies that don't buy the workgroup server, Hussey hopes Five Across will further enhance InterComm's security beyond what is offered now via password protection and the safeguards that are available when InterComm runs on the company's proprietary network. "Making sure that the product has a good security model is important. It has a pretty good one now, but it's always something that can be worked on and improved," he said.

"It would be nice to move to a point where everything is encrypted," he said, while acknowledging that might require a lot of processing power and thus not be entirely viable. If end-to-end encryption can't be implemented, Hussey would encourage Five Across to explore some other security technology or approach to "make sure that the controls are put in place so that it's difficult for an unauthorized person to get access to files or IM conversations."

The Five Across Workgroup Server and InterComm 1.1 are both available now. Pricing for the server is based on simultaneous users and starts at US$3,490 for a 20-user license. Meanwhile, the InterComm 1.1 client is available via download from the Five Across Web site for free, while a version with more features called InterComm 1.1 Pro costs $29 for a one-time fee. InterComm 1.1 comes in Microsoft Windows and Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS versions.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:22 AM

Australian ISP trials network-locked ADSL modem

An Australian Internet service provider has become the first ISP to trial a prototype of network locked ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) modems from local networking vendor NetComm Ltd. Similar to the SIM-locks used on pre-paid mobile phones, the modem will be locked into the service provider, Adelaide-based Adam Internet Pty. Ltd., rendering it unusable on any other network.

Adam Internet operations officer, Carl Noutz, said the hardware would be a way to increase customer loyalty.

"If we give a customer a modem setup free on our network, then we want to be able to ensure that a customer accesses our service with the equipment that we supplied and not a competitor's," he said.

He said the ISP was two months into a three-month beta test of the modem.

NetComm managing director, David Stewart, said the new technology was also a way for ISPs to cut down high subscriber churn rates.

"The ISP is going to invest money in the product up-front, then give it away, but that will attract customers," he said. "They will make the money back over a twelve-month contract and the consumer will be happy because they get the product for free."

The quality of plan offerings could also increase as a result of the technology, Stewart said.

"I think this could change the nature of the contracts that ISPs offer," he said. "The more ISPs that look at this innovation and think about it, the more will follow through."

IDC research director for telecommunications, Landry Fevre, said network locking modems was not the way to reduce customer churn.

"Whether you are locked into a contract or not, the value is in whether you are getting a good quality connection," he said. "This is really a marketing mechanism to avoid churn, but it's completely artificial. If people are happy with their service, then they will stay."

End-users were better off buying their own modem, then shopping around for a connection, Fevre said.

Stewart conceded that there would likely be people unhappy about the lock-in.

"I'm cynical enough to know that there will always be someone who is not happy that they can't use the modem on another network, but it is no different from the pre-paid mobile phones you can buy today," he said. "If you are getting the hardware for free, you should be loyal and honest to the ISP which provided it for you."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:20 AM

Motorola to acquire MeshNetworks

Motorola Inc. has agreed to buy MeshNetworks Inc., a developer of technology and products for rapidly deployed, self-creating wireless mobile networks. Motorola already licenses software and distributes products from the privately-held Maitland, Florida, company. Its Motorola Ventures investment arm invests in the company. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close by the end of this year, were not disclosed.

Mesh networking has its roots in military applications but is beginning to move into the civilian arena. It lets users of mobile devices create self-forming and self-healing wireless networks that can reach beyond the range of established wireless hot spots. The technology has potential applications ranging from enterprises to home entertainment, for delivering data, video, voice and location information, Motorola said in a statement.

"We're looking to use this technology broadly across all our businesses," said Kelly Mark, director of business development at Motorola. Potential uses for mesh technology include public safety, wireless data, home entertainment and cellular networks, he said.

Mesh technology overcomes the distance limitations of wireless networks by using a series of clients or access points as repeaters, said Rick Rotondo, vice president of technical marketing at MeshNetworks. If a radio's data-carrying capacity falls off beyond a short distance, the network can send signals over greater distances by using many radios spaced at close intervals.

"I'm a big fan of meshes, and I suspect they'll be broadly influential in wireless for the foreseeable future," said industry analyst Craig Mathias, founder of Farpoint Group, in Ashland, Massachusetts. The technology can be applied to many different types of wireless networks layered on top of the particular radio standard in use, he said. One limitation of mesh networks is that using many hops in a network can introduce delays that can degrade the quality of real-time traffic such as voice, Mathias said.

MeshNetworks makes communications systems with a proprietary technology called QDMA (Quadrature Division Multiple Access), primarily for public safety and municipal networks. Though it can operate in the same radio spectrum as Wi-Fi, around 2.4GHz, QDMA can send and receive data in vehicles traveling up to 200 miles per hour, compared with about 30 miles per hour for Wi-Fi, Rotondo said. Its range can vary with terrain but is generally between one-tenth of a mile and one mile. With this technology, teams can set up peer-to-peer networks on the fly, he said, giving the example of firefighters who have to respond to a fire outside the coverage area of a public safety wireless network.

The company also sells a chip for QDMA as well as software that could add mesh capabilities to standard Wi-Fi products, Rotondo added.

In a current application, mesh technology can slash the cost of metropolitan-scale wireless data networks, according to Motorola's Mark. It does this by eliminating the need for a wired backhaul (generally a digital subscriber line or leased T-1) at every access point, one of the biggest costs of a wireless hotspot. With a mesh, data can travel through many access points to a handful that have wired connections, he said.

This could be an ideal way to deploy Wi-Fi across a metropolitan area, Mathias said. Rather than having to invest in a DSL connection or T-1 approximately every 300 feet just to provide Wi-Fi coverage, a service provider could buy just a few wired connections and add in more as customers joined and usage grew, he said.

The technology might play a similar role in cellular networks. Mobile operators have approached MeshNetworks about providing wireless backhaul from base stations, according to Rotondo.

Mesh could also help short-range, high-bandwidth UWB (ultrawideband) technology span a large home, Motorola's Mark said. A mesh of UWB radios could create connectivity around the home to deliver entertainment content, he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:00 AM

November 16, 2004

HotMail founder plans antispam startup

Sabeer Bhatia is a man not short on ideas. The man who extracted $US400 million from Microsoft by selling it HotMail is planning to launch a new venture countering his creation's biggest curse to date - spam. Speaking to an audience of technology entrepreneurs in Sydney last week, HotMail co-founder Bhatia revealed he will shortly unleash a new product to liberate inboxes of unsolicited offers of sex, drugs and scams.

"I have invested in a [counter] spam company," Bhatia said, adding that spam had become a "real problem" and that "if someone could create spam-free e-mail, that would be revolutionary".

However, Bhatia remained wary of giving away any substantive detail on his new project, saying only that he considered there to be "intelligent solutions by putting an appliance at a network level".

"You have to give a powerful system to users without taking away [functionality]," Bhatia said before dismissing outright Microsoft's spam-killing proposal that users pay a nominal fee to send mail.

Asked how he saw the future of outsourcing, particularly offshoring, Bhatia dismissed talk of US laws to stem the loss of white-collar jobs to Indian destinations such as his home town of Bangalore.

"No US government can pass legislation to ban offshoring - maybe for local government ... but that's a small segment of [the overall] market," he said.

Bhatia also told the ABC's 7.30 Report that while the offshoring phenomenon was frightening for white-collar workers, it was also an inevitability.

"It is frightening that so many jobs are going there on the one hand, but I think a lot of the very high-end, research-oriented jobs and design-oriented jobs still remain. It is a question of retraining the workforce. This is inevitable. It is going to happen," Bhatia said.

Speaking about the factors that helped technology organizations succeed, Bhatia said developers and entrepreneurs selling to enterprises needed to accept real success was more about "the last man standing" rather than who was the first to market.

Bhatia also warned hiring the wrong people to run a business, no matter what the pressures, invited disaster - as he discovered when his immediate post-HotMail venture hit the rocks.

"I fell into a trap, I rushed to market... I hired the wrong people. If you hire B-grade people, they [in turn] will hire C-grade and D-grade people," he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:20 PM

Spain sprouts WiMax network

Europe appears to be fertile ground for new WiMax networks. Spain is the latest country to embrace the emerging high-end broadband wireless technology, following recent deployments in France, Ireland and the U.K. Spanish wireless operator Iberbanda SA has begun to install WiMax systems supplied by Alvarion Ltd., according to Bridget Fishleigh, a spokeswoman for the Tel Aviv, Israel, manufacturer.

"Iberbanda has been using proprietary wireless local loop technology from Alvarion since 2001 but has now decided to expand its growing network in Spain with WiMax," Fishleigh said Tuesday.

WiMax technology, based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.'s 802.16 standard, can provide broadband wireless over longer distances and at higher speeds than current Wi-Fi systems. Its access range is up to about 48 kilometers, compared to Wi-Fi's 90 meters. It supports data transmission speeds up to 70M bps (bits per second), compared to the popular Wi-Fi 802.11b standard's 11M bps or Wi-Fi 802.11a's 54M bps.

The WiMax Forum, established in 2001 by a number of industry heavyweights, has been working on standards certification and interoperability testing. The first generation WiMax systems, based on the 802.16-2004 standard, are expected to be certified by the middle of next year.

Alvarion is a founding member of the WiMax Forum.

Numerous operators, including Iberbanda, plan to deploy WiMax mostly in rural areas, where high-speed cable infrastructure is either poor or nonexistent.

Iberbanda is targeting small and medium-size enterprises and residential customers in Andalusia, Spain's second largest and most highly populated region, and Catalonia.

Alvarion's customer premises equipment currently costs around US$200 a unit, but the company expects the price to drop below $50 when new chips from Intel Corp. become available, Fishleigh said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:19 PM

Vodafone adds users on slight revenue decline

U.K. mobile phone giant Vodafone Group PLC on Tuesday reported a loss and a 1 percent decline in global revenue for the first half of its 2005 financial year, but touted its ability to add new users across its global customer base. Group revenue for the Newbury, England, company fell slightly to £16.8 billion (US$30.2 billion as of Sept. 30, the last day of the period reported), compared to £16.9 billion a year earlier. Vodafone said the decline could be attributed to unfavorable exchange rates and the effects of acquisitions and disposals, mainly the sale of its Japanese fixed-line arm, Japan Telecom Co. Ltd.

Vodafone made a net loss of £3.2 billion, or £0.0477 per share, in the first six months of its financial year, dragged down by its goodwill amortization charge of £7.3 billion, the company said. This compares to a net loss of £4.3 billion, or £0.0624 per share, in the same period last year, the company said. Nevertheless, the company doubled its dividend to £0.0191 pence, based, it said, on strong underlying half-year results.

The mobile operator continued to add new users across its global customer base. Over the year, proportionate customer numbers increased by 17 percent from 125.3 million to 146.7 million, the company said. Vodafone counts subscribers in proportion to its holding in companies it does not wholly own. Organic growth, rather than growth through acquisitions, added 7.4 million customers in the period, up from a gain in the same period last year of 5.7 million, Vodafone said.

Vodafone said it expects to deliver 10 percent growth in its customer base for the year ending March 31, 2005, resulting in high single-digit revenue growth. For the year to the end of March 2006, the company said it expects high single-digit growth in customers and revenues.

The company said it also expects to double last year's final dividend of £0.0108.

"Our confidence in the growth prospects of Vodafone is reflected in the increase in shareholder returns,'' said Arun Sarin, Vodafone's chief executive officer (CEO) in a press conference that was also broadcast over the Web.

Nonvoice revenue for the first six months of its fiscal year was £2.4 billion, up from £2.2 billion in the same period last year, the company said. Most of that revenue was derived from its text messaging services, it said.

Sarin pointed to last week's launch of its 3G (third-generation) mobile communication products and services as an area that would provide solid growth for Vodafone. "Following the successful launch of 3G services, we are excited about our growth opportunities and ability to leverage global scale and scope advantages," he said.

The use of such 3G services as video calls, music downloads and games will "absolutely'' increase revenue, Sarin said. Last week, Sarin said that the company estimates its 3G service will be used by 10 percent of its customer base within the next 15 months.

Vodafone said it had strong customer growth in the U.K., Spain, Germany and the U.S. On the down side, in Japan, the company continued to suffer from a highly competitive 3G market, and experienced a 5 percent decline in service revenue when compared to the previous year, it said.

Average revenue per user (ARPU) rose in the U.K. by 6 percent and by 11 percent in Spain, though ARPU declined in Germany by 3 percent and by 1 percent in Italy.

Vodafone pegged the declines in ARPU on the fact that newer customers are spending less than existing ones, but the company said it was focusing on gaining high-value customers in both Italy and Germany.

In the U.S., where Vodafone owns a 45 percent share of Verizon Wireless Inc., ARPU rose 5 percent, from US$50.60 to $53.20, as a result of higher phone usage and the rise in use of nonvoice services such as picture messaging.

After Vodafone lost to Cingular Wireless LLC in its bid to buy AT&T Wireless Services Inc. last February, it indicated it would focus its attentions on Verizon Wireless with an eye towards increasing its share of the company. Unfortunately for Vodafone, its partner, Verizon Communications Inc., has expressed the same desire.

The situation is similar with French mobile operator, Société Francaise du Radiotéléphone SA (SFR). Over the last year, Vodafone repeatedly stated it is keen to increase its 32 percent share in SFR (20 percent of which it owns directly, with the rest coming from its 15 percent stake in France's biggest private telecom operator, Groupe Cégétel SA), but Vivendi Universal SA repeatedly says it does not want to sell its stake in the company.

If Vodafone's CEO has a plan for breaking the impasse with either Verizon Wireless or SFR, he wasn't sharing the details. "That's an interesting conundrum that we find ourselves in," Sarin said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:19 PM

France Télécom, Thomson team on digital home

In the first move of its kind in Europe, French network operator France Télécom SA and electronics manufacturer Thomson SA have agreed to jointly develop a range of products and services targeting the market for home networks. The two companies aim to draw on their expertise in several areas, including video compression, wireless technology, content security and digital rights management, they said Tuesday. They have also agreed to set up and finance joint research and development teams, and share intellectual property.

The partnership will focus on developing portable terminals and platforms that connect home multimedia applications, including video phone products and services.

France Télécom and Thomson have already been collaborating in the digital home market prior to their announced joint venture. Thomson is a major supplier of IP (Internet Protocol) video decoders for the French operator's MaLigne TV service, based on ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) technology.

The announcement comes as numerous telecom operators around the world seek to tap new revenue streams in the budding market for home networks.

Nearly 20 million households in the U.S. alone will own a networked entertainment device by 2008, according to a recent report from The Yankee Group.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:18 PM

Nokia demos first mobile call using IPv6

Nokia Corp. has developed a prototype handset that supports Mobile IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a version of the protocol that will help to improve the quality of VOIP (voice over IP), streaming video and other applications delivered to wireless devices, the company said Tuesday. In its booth at the 3G World Congress show in Hong Kong, Nokia showed a video clip being streamed to its IPv6 phone, which also supports the current version of the protocol, IPv4. It was the first public demonstration of a call being made to a phone using IPv6, according to Nokia.

The technology offers several advantages over IPv4. Most importantly, it can accommodate a vastly increased number of network addresses, the identifying numbers assigned to devices on a network. New addresses from IPv4 are already in short supply, and the introduction of 3G (third-generation) phones, with their powerful data capabilities, is only likely to increase demand.

Service providers have come up with various technology tricks to compensate for the shortage, including network address translators, or NATs. But NATs cause a slight latency that can affect the performance of real-time applications such as VOIP and streaming video. It also makes it more difficult to link handsets together directly in a peer-to-peer fashion, said Joseph Krenson, a Nokia software engineer.

Mobile IPv6 should help to eliminate the problems, he said. The technology will also allow handsets to stay continuously connected as they move between networks with different access technologies, such as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and wireless LANs. And it should allow for improved data security, Nokia said.

T-Mobile International AG is among the operators that are already testing IPv6 phones in their networks, said Lutz Schade, an executive vice president with the German operator. "We need to have it," he said, in part because of the shortage of IPv4 addresses. IPv6 can also help operators to cut their costs by helping them make their networks more efficient, he said.

Still, operators are unlikely to invest heavily in the technology until there is clear demand from users for VOIP, streaming video and other services that could benefit from it, said Adam Gould, Nokia's chief technology officer for CDMA. "Realistically, it will probably be a couple of years" before operators support Mobile IPv6 in their networks, he said.

In its demonstration here, Nokia showed how a video clip streamed to its IPv6 handset was uninterrupted as the handset moved from one network access point to another. With IPv4, the application would have had to be restarted as the phone moved between the two access points, Krenson said.

Nokia's IPv6 phone is still undergoing tests, but the company will have phones ready for market by the time operators decide to adopt the technology, Gould said.

The 3G World Congress, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, continues until Friday.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:17 PM

Sun takes page from Linux playbook with Solaris 10

Executives from Sun Microsystems Inc. outlined their response to the growing popularity of Linux, speaking at the launch on Monday of the most significant update of the Solaris operating system in over two years. Key to the effort is a plan to release Solaris under an open source license with a new subscription pricing model, as well as a software updating system similar to those used by Linux vendors Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc. Though Sun executives say they have yet to chose a software license for the open source version of Solaris, this announcement will be made within the next 45 to 60 days, according to Sun. In addition to the release of Solaris source code, which must be compiled into machine-readable binary code before it can be used, Sun also plans to release a binary version of Solaris, free of charge, by Jan. 31, the company said.

For systems with four processors or fewer, Solaris revenue will come from subscription pricing, which will cost between US$120 per processor per year and $360 per processor per year, depending on the level of support. Also expected in January is an automatic software updating system, called the Sun Update Connection, which will be available to Solaris subscribers. A version of the system that will let users create and distribute their own Solaris updates via a proxy server is planned for later in 2005, Sun said.

Pricing for Solaris 10 on systems with more than four processors has yet to be determined.

Sun's efforts to promote itself as an open source provider have been greeted with skepticism by many developers, in part because of Sun's historical antagonism toward Linux. On Monday, Sun executives continued their pattern of both dismissing Linux, while at the same time promising to interoperate with it.

With the first release of Solaris 10, expected in January, Sun will add support for the Solaris version of the standard Linux compiler, called the GNU (GNU's Not Unix) C Compiler. Follow-up releases in 2005 will include a Solaris version of the Linux boot loader, called GNU GRUB (Grand Unified Boot Loader), which will speed up the Solaris booting process on x86 machines. The company is also readying technology called Janus, which is designed to let Linux applications run, unchanged, on Solaris.

To ease application migration from Linux to Solaris, Sun expects to announce shortly that Solaris is compliant with the Linux Standard Base, a specification designed initially to encourage interoperability between software written for different Linux distributions, said Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and chief operating officer. "If you write to Red Hat, you'll be very easily able to move that application ... into our environment," he said.

Despite the talk of Linux interoperability, there was also criticism of the open source operating system at Monday's event. Hardware makers have been frustrated with their inability to get the approval necessary to have their code submissions accepted as part of the Linux kernel, Schwartz said.

In choosing the model for open source Solaris, Sun will build on the lessons it has learned in developing the Java Community Process, which standardizes and advances development of Sun's Java platform, Schwartz said. "The Linux community model currently is much freer, but there is a single conduit," he said referring to Linus Torvalds, the founder of the Linux kernel project who has ultimate say in what software gets added to the kernel. "The challenge is trying to build the best of both worlds together."

Schwartz was also critical of Red Hat's Open Source Assurance program, which protects Red Hat customers in the event of intellectual property disputes over the Linux source code. "If you look at what Red Hat does, Red Hat ships their product and then says, 'We can't vouch for the IP (intellectual property).'" Sun will be able to use its massive software patent portfolio and cross licensing deal to protect open source Solaris users, he said.

"We plan on making open source safe," he said. "Do we think that will be a competitive advantage against Red Hat? Yes."

Sun has good reason to be focused on open source. According to research company IDC, Linux server shipments grew by 38.2 percent during the second quarter of 2004, the last period for which data is available. But, though the Santa Clara, California, computer maker has lost ground to Linux over the past three years, the volume of Sun's Solaris-based servers also rose quickly during the second quarter of 2004, growing at a respectable 33.8 percent rate, according to IDC.

Sun's announcement reflected a renewed embrace of the x86 processors shipped by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Sun is shipping a range of x86 systems itself, and the company has now signed up 35 equipment manufacturers to distribute Solaris x86 on their systems, including blade vendor Egenera Inc. and Founder Group Ltd., China's second largest PC manufacturer. "They used to not want to push Solaris for x86, but we've really seen a departure from that," said Jean Bozman, an analyst with IDC.

A number of software vendors, including Oracle Corp., BEA Systems Inc., and Computer Associates Inc., have thrown their support behind Solaris x86 and on Monday, Sun executives even expressed optimism that major U.S. manufacturers such as Dell Inc. or Hewlett-Packard Co. may some day support Solaris in the same way they've embraced the Linux operating system. "We'll get them, it's just a matter of time," said Schwartz.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:16 PM

China Airlines scales back in-flight Internet plans

Taiwan's largest airline, China Airlines Ltd., has scaled back plans to offer The Boeing Co.'s in-flight Internet service on its fleet of aircraft, saying it first wants to see how the Connexion by Boeing service is received by passengers before considering a wider roll-out. China Airlines plans to sign a deal on Wednesday with Boeing that will clear the way for the Connexion by Boeing in-flight Internet service to be offered on board one of its Boeing 747-400 aircraft used on routes from Taiwan to North America, said Cheryl Yeh, a spokeswoman for the company in Taipei. The in-flight Internet service will gradually be extended to other Boeing 747-400s in China Airlines' fleet of aircraft, she said.

The Connexion by Boeing service uses a wired or wireless LAN on board the aircraft to connect users via satellite to the Internet. The connection is shared among all passengers and has a downstream bandwidth to the aircraft of 5M bps (bits per second) and upstream bandwidth of 1M bps.

The deal with Boeing will make China Airlines the fifth airline to sign up for the Connexion by Boeing service. However, China Airlines' plans to offer the service have been scaled back from plans first announced in January 2003, Yeh said. At that time, China Airlines announced it would offer in-flight Internet access on its fleet of Boeing 747-400 and Airbus A340-300 aircraft before the end of this year.

"For now, we don't have any plans to install this on the Airbus (planes)," Yeh said. "We want to do this gradually, one aircraft at a time."

China Airlines operates 13 Boeing 747-400s and seven A340-300s, according to its Web site.

In-flight Internet access via the Connexion service from Asian skies has been available since June this year, when Lufthansa AG launched the service on its flights between Munich and Tokyo.

The first regular service on an inter-regional Asian flight began on Monday when Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd. (ANA) started offering it on flights between Tokyo and Shanghai. ANA is offering wireless LAN access to the service throughout the aircraft and passengers in first and business class also have to option of connecting via a wired connection.

The service, dubbed ANA@Air by the airline, will be charged at the regular Connexion rates, which are US$19.95 for the duration of the flight, or $7.95 for the first 30 minutes of use and $0.25 for every minute thereafter. ANA said it will take delivery of an additional five Boeing 777-300ER aircraft between now and the end of March 2007 that will be equipped with the service. The airline will begin retrofitting its intercontinental 747-400 jumbo jets from April next year and plans to offer the service on flights to North America as soon as satellite coverage above the Pacific Ocean is available.

In addition, Boeing has also received firm orders for the system from Japan Airlines System Corp. and SAS AB's Scandinavian Airline Systems. South Korea's Asiana Airlines Inc. and Korean Air and Singapore Airlines Ltd. have also signed preliminary agreements to install the service.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:15 PM

South Korea allocates wireless broadband spectrum

South Korea's government allocated bandwidth on Monday for a new breed of portable Internet service that will be able to deliver a broadband connection to devices traveling at moderate speeds, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) set aside a chunk of spectrum in the 2.3GHz band and said it plans to offer licenses to three companies to operate services using the frequencies, the statement said.

The new system will be based on a technology called WiBro (Wireless Broadband), which is part of the IEEE802.16 family of wireless Internet specifications, and is expected to offer a signal of around 1M-bps (bit per second) bandwidth to devices traveling at up to 70 kilometers per hour. WiBro is closely related to but different from the WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) system that has been developed to send a higher-bandwidth signal of several tens of megabits per second to fixed receivers over a distance of several tens of kilometers.

The ministry said it hopes to see commercial services based on WiBro launched sometime in 2006 and expects the market for such services to total 10 million customers and be worth 4 trillion won (US$3.7 billion) by 2011.

The licenses will be awarded in March next year, said the MIC.

Three companies have signaled their intent to bid for the licenses, according to local media reports. They are KT Corp., SK Telecom Co. Ltd. and Hanaro Telecom Inc. A fourth company, Dacom Corp., had earlier said it also intended to bid for a license but recently acquired fixed broadband Internet supplier Thrunet Co. Ltd. and said it planned to concentrate its work in fixed-line services.

The government's spectrum allocation came on the same day the chief executive officers of Intel Corp. and LG Electronics Inc. met in Seoul to discuss ways to merge the WiBro and WiMax technologies and avoid market segmentation. Craig Barrett and Kim Ssang-soo met on Monday morning and reached a basic verbal agreement that their companies would work together to create a single international standard for wireless broadband Internet access, LG Electronics said on Monday.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 02:55 AM

November 15, 2004

Blogger goes multilingual

The Blogger Web-logging service broke away from its English-only status on Monday, becoming available in 9 other languages in what Google Inc. is calling the first phase of the service's internationalization. Now, key Blogger sections, such as its sign-in and account pages, are available in Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Brazilian Portuguese, Google announced.

The Blogger posting interface will be translated into these 9 languages "soon," as Blogger's international expansion continues in coming months, Google said.

Google acquired the Blogger service last year when it bought the service's creator, Pyra Labs Inc.

Google, which operates the world's most widely-used Internet search engine, has been busy building up a suite of complementary Internet services, such as the Gmail Web mail service and the Picasa image management and sharing tool.

Industry observers have pointed out that by offering services that complement its core Internet search engine, Google can build more loyal and lasting relationships with users, something that will be key for Google to complete against rivals Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in the consumer Internet services market.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 08:40 PM

UTStarCom to put cell networks on IP

Network infrastructure maker UTStarCom Inc. says it has figured out a way to keep local cell phone calls local -- even over enterprise LANs. The Alameda, California, company announced on Monday a set of products that bypass the traditional long-distance wired circuits used as backhaul for traditional cellular networks. Instead, it will let them go over IP (Internet protocol) data connections. The technology allows carriers to bring service to remote, unserved communities and allows enterprises to use the "free" bandwidth on their LANs for calls within a campus, according to Jack Mar, president of UTStarCom's CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) division.

The MovingMedia 2000 product line makes up an infrastructure in which calls travel directly from the base station onto an IP packet network. That gets the mobile operator's call traffic off the expensive long-distance leased lines they use today between cities and lets the operator consolidate network elements. The result for the operator can be vastly lower operating expenses, according to Mar.

Current cell phone networks switch calls at an MSC (mobile switching center) that may be hundreds of miles from some of the communities it serves. After reaching a local base station, the calls get to the MSC over expensive leased lines on a traditional circuit-switched phone network.

MovingMedia 2000 replaces that MSC with an MSC Server that does not switch the call but only handles management functions such as caller identification and call setup. After a brief setup process, the call travels over IP data connections between base stations, eliminating most of the cost of long-distance dedicated circuits, Mar said.

The new infrastructure also can offer benefits to mobile carriers' enterprise customers, he said.

Using IP phones, enterprises today can make voice calls over building and campus data networks they already own. However, mobile phone calls from one end of a campus to the other generally still go over a service provider's network and show up on a bill. An alternative just beginning to emerge is the use of dual-mode Wi-Fi and cell phones with an automatic handoff from cell network to LAN when an employee comes into the office. UTStarcom's system could offer a simpler solution, Mar said. Subscribers' existing CDMA phones will work with MovingMedia 2000, according to the company.

At an enterprise, the mobile operator could set up picocells -- cells about the size of a notebook computer, designed for coverage over a small area -- in the building or campus. The enterprise LAN would provide the IP connectivity between them, Mar said. The network could also be connected to a local server with an enterprise directory so employees could take advantage of enterprise phone features such as office extensions. While the enterprise would benefit from greater ease of use and lower bills, the mobile operator could cut its own costs and gain the business customer's loyalty.

The idea has implications for other users as well.

"Operators can now afford to run operations where they could not afford to before because of backhaul charges ... (In) a lot of communities where there is not coverage today, they could put in coverage," Mar said. In addition, the MovingMedia system bypasses a conversion of voice traffic between the CDMA and circuit-switched phone networks that can cause delays and degrade sound quality, Mar said. In addition, because the system can use any kind of IP data connection to carry voice calls, it could be applied to cell phone service on airliners, using a satellite data connection, he added.

Also Monday, UTStarCom will announce deals with operators in Bangladesh and Angola to deploy MovingMedia2000.

The product line to be introduced Monday, called MovingMedia 2000, is designed only for CDMA and CDMA 2000, but UTStarcom could make a similar system for GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) networks, Mar said.

The MovingMedia lineup, which includes radio access, core voice network and core data network equipment for 450MHz, 800MHz and 1900MHz CDMA and CDMA 2000 networks, is set to ship by the end of 2004.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 08:35 PM

Blinkx fills Smart Folders with search results

Blinkx released over the weekend an improved version of its search software that now creates special folders in users' PCs about specific topics and automatically populates them with documents grabbed from users' hard drives and from the Internet. The feature, called Smart Folders, is the highlight of Blinkx 2.0, the newest version of this Internet and desktop search tool, which is available as a free download from the start-up company's Web site at http://www.blinkx.com. Blinkx 2.0 also has a feature called SIS, an acronym for the phrase Stuff I've Seen, which maintains a record of viewed files. Blinkx 2.0 also adds support for querying peer-to-peer networks.

The first version of Blinkx was launched in July and generated significant interest among users and industry watchers because of its unique approach to search. Instead of relying only on keyword-based queries, Blinkx reads users' screens and, based on that contextual information, flags documents from their PCs and from the Internet. Blinkx works unobtrusively in the background and displays search results when prompted by the user.

Blinkx also gained attention for its ability to index files on a user's hard drive, the so-called desktop search capability that big vendors such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are also pursuing.

Blinkx 2.0's Smart Folders are automatically populated with PC and Internet documents that are contextually related. Users can configure Smart Folders in various ways to narrow the types of documents and files that can be included. Smart Folders can contain pictures, music and video clips, text and Web pages. Blinkx 2.0 also can alert users when it has updated the content of a Smart Folder.

Hard-drive files Blinkx 2.0 can index and retrieve include Microsoft Office documents, such as Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel worksheets; Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat documents; text documents; images; HTML pages; MP3 files; and e-mail messages and attachments from Microsoft Outlook and Qualcomm Inc.'s Eudora e-mail applications, according to information on the company's Web site. On the Internet, Blinkx 2.0 can index and retrieve things such as Web pages, blogs and video clips.

Blinkx 2.0 is available only for Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:49 PM

Adobe aims at workgroups with Acrobat 7

Adobe Systems Inc. by the end of the year will release version 7.0 of its Acrobat products, including a new free Acrobat Reader that now includes reviewing capabilities, the company plans to announce Monday. With the updates, San Jose, California-based Adobe is underscoring its focus on workgroups and document management. The client products all tie in to the company's Intelligent Document Platform, a set of elements Adobe wants to use to make PDF (Portable Document Format) with XML (Extensible Markup Language) additions a common way to get data in and out of enterprise systems.

Acrobat 7.0 Professional users can create PDF (Portable Document Format) files and allow those to be reviewed and commented on by Acrobat Reader 7.0 users. The reader features a new reviewing toolbar that can be enabled when the PDF file is created in Acrobat Professional, according to Adobe.

Included with Acrobat 7.0 Professional is Adobe LiveCycle Designer, a tool to design PDF forms that work with back-end enterprise systems using XML. These special forms allow organizations to automatically process data sent in PDF forms, so there's no need to re-enter the information into their own back-end systems.

Adobe's Intelligent Document Platform goes up against Microsoft Corp.'s XML plans for Office and InfoPath and competes with products from several smaller vendors.

Catering to its traditional audience of design professionals, Adobe has enhanced the Acrobat applications to display PDF files that include "live" 3D computer-aided design (CAD) content as opposed to a static 3D picture, the company said.

The high-end Acrobat 7.0 Professional is targeted at technical and creative professionals and is priced at US$449. An upgrade from selected preceding versions is available for US$159.

Acrobat 7.0 Standard is aimed at business professionals and costs $299, with the upgrade version priced at $99. Acrobat Elements is available only through Adobe's volume licensing program as a PDF creation tool and costs $39 per seat for a 100-seat license.

Acrobat 7.0 Standard and Professional will be available in English, French, German and Japanese by the end of the year for Microsoft's Windows and Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh operating systems. Acrobat Reader 7.0 will be available for Windows and Mac by year's end and next year for Linux, Pocket PC, Palm OS and Symbian, according to Adobe.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:39 PM

Yahoo implements DomainKeys in its mail service

Yahoo Inc.'s e-mail service will use the company's DomainKeys authentication technology starting Monday, almost a year after Yahoo first unveiled this anti-spam project. "This is a really big milestone for us, because with this authentication solution in place, we're increasing protection from ID (identification) theft and phishing," said Terrell Karlsten, a Yahoo spokeswoman.

DomainKeys attempts to tackle a practice called spoofing, in which a spammer changes an e-mail message's header information to deceive recipients into believing the message was sent by a known and trusted personal acquaintance or legitimate business, such as a bank or credit card company.

With spoofing, spammers try to increase the chances that recipients will open and reply to their e-mail messages. Very often, spammers' ultimate goal with spoofing is to trick recipients into revealing confidential information, such as social security numbers, bank account information and passwords, scams often referred to as "phishing."

Yahoo's DomainKeys uses cryptography to let receiving e-mail systems validate that an incoming message originated from a user authorized to send e-mail for the domain stated in the header. The receiving e-mail system uses a public key to validate a private-key signature in the incoming message.

Other providers of Internet and e-mail services, such as Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc., are also involved in individual and collaborative initiatives to combat spam. For example, EarthLink Inc., a big U.S. ISP, is announcing Monday that it will begin testing DomainKeys.

In other related webmail news, Yahoo is announcing that it is increasing the inbox storage space for users of its free webmail service from 100M bytes to 250M bytes, as a result of user feedback. This puts Yahoo on par with Microsoft's free Hotmail webmail service.

However, both Yahoo and Microsoft still lag far from the 1G byte Google Inc. is offering with its Gmail free webmail service, which is still in testing phase and available only by invitation to a limited amount of users. It was Google's Gmail announcement in April that jolted webmail providers to increase storage sizes almost across the board. Yahoo used to provide 4M bytes for its free webmail users, while Microsoft provided 2M bytes, before they respectively increased their inbox storage in recent months.

Meanwhile, Yahoo, in Sunnyvale, California, is also announcing Monday an increase in the maximum attachment size for its fee-based webmail users to 20M bytes from 10M bytes. These users pay US$19.99 per year for more features than are available to the free service users, including inbox storage of 2G bytes.

Other enhancements to Yahoo's webmail service to be announced Monday are:

-- an improvement to the feature that automatically completes a recipient's e-mail address while a user is typing it into the e-mail message's address field;

-- tools to make it easier for users switching to Yahoo's webmail from another provider to transfer their contacts to the Yahoo address book, and to notify their contacts of their new e-mail address;

-- a more prominent placement of buttons for searching both the Web and the user's e-mail inbox.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:38 PM

DoCoMo to release 3G/WLAN mobile phone

NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's biggest mobile phone carrier, will put its first dual-mode 3G (third generation) and WLAN (Wireless LAN) phone on sale on Nov. 16, the company said on Monday. The N900iL handsets, made by NEC Corp., will enable free calls and instant messaging over IEEE802.11b WLANs that are part of corporate intranets, and standard cellular calls, at regular rates, on DoCoMo's WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) 3G network, said DoCoMo Spokesman Takumi Suzuki.

The handsets will be sold as a packaged service that includes servers and related equipment, and are designed for corporate use. A "minimum" package of five handsets and a single server will cost about ¥500,000 (US$4,760) and a larger package of 300 handsets and about 20 servers will cost about ¥50 million, said Suzuki.

The system can be scaled up to include more handsets and servers. DoCoMo said it can also sell larger systems involving more than 1,000 phones and several dozens of servers.

The N900iL weighs about 120 grams and offers a continuous talk time of 140 minutes on WCDMA mode, about 160 minutes on the WLAN-supported VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) mode, and about 90 minutes usage in video calling mode. The phone's main liquid crystal display (LCD) is a 2.2 inch screen with QVGA (240 pixels by 320 pixels) resolution. The model has two cameras: a main CCD (charge-coupled device) camera with one megapixel resolution, and an inner CCD camera with a 110,000 pixel resolution, said the company.

Users can set the phones to receive incoming calls via the 3G network only, the WLAN network only, or both networks in dual mode. The N900iL's browser can access schedules, Web mail and documents saved on intranet servers from both inside and outside the office, according to DoCoMo.

NEC is also providing servers and other network equipment for the system, but companies buying into the service will also have the choice of other server vendors, Suzuki said.

"Those interested in the service can contact us and, basically DoCoMo chooses the best system for your company, and it depends on what your company needs," he said.

DoCoMo has not announced cost of the N900iL handset alone. However, an industry source who declined to be named said each handset cost about ¥50,000 to ¥60,000. Companies will also have to pay variable fees to DoCoMo for using the systems they buy, and the prices depend on the scale of the system, according to DoCoMo, which did not detail the costs.

Despite the growing number of WLAN hot spots in cafes, restaurants and public spaces in Japan, the handsets will be only be able to connect to the dedicated systems set up by DoCoMo. This is because calls made on other networks would be free and thus deprive DoCoMo of revenue, Suzuki said. However, DoCoMo is looking into the possibility of developing combination WLAN and W-CDMA mobile phones that could connect to hot spots, he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:34 PM

McAfee takes on more spyware

McAfee Inc. on Monday plans to announce an add-on for its enterprise antivirus products to offer increased protection against spyware. Users of McAfee VirusScan Enterprise Edition versions 7.1 or 8.0i next month will be able to purchase a new McAfee Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition Module for US$15 per desktop to better protect their systems against spyware, said John Bedrick, group marketing manager at McAfee, in Santa Clara, California.

The spyware module is offered in addition to the protection that McAfee already offers in VirusScan Enterprise Edition 8.0i, the latest version of its antivirus product released in August. Protection in that product is limit to the top 200 types of spyware that represent real security threats, Bedrick said.

"Essentially, if it is not capturing information to be sent out or retrieved (by a hacker), or if it is not allowing people to take control of the computer, it is not covered in 8.0i," Bedrick said. "This add-on program is specifically for those customers who want to move beyond the top-200 security threats and want to get rid of all the junk."

For example, the spyware module also cleans PCs of annoying adware that continually pops up ads on to users' machines, Bedrick said. Spyware includes everything from adware to malware-like Trojans and keyloggers.

McAfee plans to include the functionality of the spyware module in a future version of VirusScan Enterprise Edition, possibly by the end of next year, Bedrick said.

McAfee is not alone in targeting spyware. Computer Associates International Inc. in August acquired antispyware software vendor PestPatrol Inc. and last week announced the availability of eTrust PestPatrol Anti-Spyware r5, which it acquired through the buyout.

Other antivirus vendors, including F-Secure Corp., Trend Micro Inc. and Symantec Corp., also are taking on spyware. Microsoft Corp. has said it plans to address the problem of spyware, though it has not provided many details.

Aside from the security risk, spyware can slow down computer performance significantly. It is an increasing burden on IT departments, eating up expensive help desk time, analysts and users said.

"It is probably 40 percent of our help desk calls," said Thomas Smith, manager of desktop engineering at a large Houston-based company. "Spyware is a terrible thing. It is the worst thing out there right now."

Smith manages about 5,000 Windows desktops. In several cases a PC required a new Windows installation because of spyware, he said. The company uses McAfee's VirusScan and is in the process of upgrading to version 8.0i with the included spyware protection, Smith said.

Without integrated suites of virus and spyware protection available, many organizations have adopted personal spyware programs such as the free Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware from LavaSoft, said David Friedlander, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Certainly there is demand for McAfee, Symantec, CA to offer antispyware products for enterprise use," Friedlander said. "As antispyware features get integrated in the antivirus suites, organizations will adopt those in place of the consumer and the free scanning tools."

The Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition Module plugs in to the VirusScan Enterprise Edition 7.1 and 8.0i products and can be installed remotely using McAfee's ePolicy Orchestrator and ProtectionPilot management tools. The product is due out in the second half of December.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:33 PM

November 13, 2004

Coalition asks US Congress to kill file sharing bill

A coalition of technology and advocacy groups on Friday asked the U.S. Senate to kill copyright legislation that might result in jail time for people who trade copyrighted files online. The coalition, led by civil rights group Public Knowledge, voiced their opposition to the Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act, a bill passed by the House of Representatives in March. The bill, a combination of other copyright legislation introduced in the House, includes prison sentences of three to 10 years for the electronic distribution of copyrighted works worth more than US$1,000 for willful violations, or in some cases, the distribution of more than 1,000 copies of a copyrighted work.

Combined with a lower standard to define criminal copyright violations, the bill would target many peer-to-peer (P-to-P) file traders for jail time, said Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon Communications Inc.

"(The bill) represents an overkill in intellectual property enforcement," Deutsch said during a press conference. "Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will face liability."

The groups opposing the bill raised several other objections. The bill, sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, would allow the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to file civil lawsuits against copyright violators, and the version of the bill passed by the House may outlaw the practice of using technologies such as VCRs or digital recorders to skip commercials. A spokesman for Smith wasn't immediately available for comment.

A section of the bill called the Family Movie Act would allow people watching movies at home to use technology to edit out obscenities, nudity or other objectionable content. But that section of the bill allows such changes to movies as long as "no changes, deletions or additions are made ... to commercial advertisements, or to network or station promotional announcements, that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture."

That provision in the bill appears to outlaw the common practice of skipping commercials with devices such as TiVo Inc.'s digital video recorder, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. "We could not support that," she said. "The bill, in its current form, is anticonsumer and anticompetitive."

The groups opposed to the bill, including the Consumer Electronics Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, also objected to the bill's language to allow the DOJ to sue file traders and other copyright violators in civil court. The groups objected to taxpayer money being used in government lawsuits on behalf of the recording or movie industries.

"It's plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood's law firm," said Stacie Rumenap, deputy director of the American Conservative Union.

The Motion Picture Association of America Inc. (MPAA) called the objects to the bill overblown. While the bill does expand criminal copyright violations to include online distribution of files, that provision in the bill simply updates copyright violation penalties to include new technologies such as P-to-P, said David Green, vice president and counsel for technology and new media at the MPAA. Users of P-to-P shouldn't be exempted from a law that other copyright violators already face, he said.

The law also lowers the legal standard of criminal copyright violations from "willfully" violating the law to "knowing distribution with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement." Deutsch said that expansion of the definition of a criminal copyright violation could mean Internet service providers or grandmothers who own computers that their grandchildren use to trade files could be prosecuted.

But the new standard only applies to copyright violators who trade 1,000 or more files, $10,000 worth of copyrighted works, or works not yet released to the public, Green noted. The more narrow "willful" standard allows criminal violations for distribution of $1,000 worth of works. "It adapts the criminal law to go after the most egregious offenders," he said. "I think it is fair and reasonable."

Green also disagreed with the bill's opponents who questioned whether the bill would outlaw the skipping of commercials. The Family Movie Act section of the bill allows home viewers to use technology to delete racy scenes in movies, but only prohibits home users from skipping commercials when they are also skipping scenes, he said.

The provision to allow the DOJ to file civil lawsuits against copyright violators gives prosecutors a tool to go after violators when criminal charges aren't appropriate, added Green.

"I find it ironic, because these are the same people who are saying, 'Don't file criminal prosecutions against these file traders," Green said. "It just gives the Department of Justice another option when neither criminal prosecution nor doing nothing is an appropriate response."

Congress comes back in session Nov. 16, and opponents of the CREATE Act urged the Senate to hold a series of hearings to focus on the issues raised in the bill. The House bill had one hearing before it was passed, noted Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association. "There was no discussion, no debate ... I personally have a problem with that," he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:07 AM

November 12, 2004

ICANN domain transfer policy takes effect

The new transfer policy for inter-registrar domain names went into effect on Friday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said. Domain name owners will now be able choose registrars much in the same fashion that telephone numbers can be moved between carriers, ICANN said. The idea behind the policy is to allow users to find the services and prices that best suit their needs, to increase competition between registrars and to drive down costs, it said.

ICANN, the Marina del Rey, California, group that oversees Internet technical matters, originally announced the policy in July, after it had received unanimous approval by both ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization and its board of directors.

The group said it has also moved to provide strong protections against unauthorized transfers of domain names so now requires registrars to verify the identity of the domain name registrant and must use a clear standardized form of authorization to gain prior consent from that person or group before any changes are made.

As part of the policy, ICANN has also implemented a dispute resolution process to clear up conflicts that may arise between registrars when inter-registrar domain names transfers are requested.

Additionally, ICANN put in place a Redemption Grace Period Service that provides a 30-day period for domain name holders to reclaim their names if deleted unintentionally from a registry database, it said.

According to ICANN, the new policy will increase competition in the generic top-level domain name market, and could drive costs down by as much as 80 percent due simply to the separation of the registry and registrar functions.

The global nonprofit organization has recently come under fire for rasing the fees it charges domain registrars as a way to boost its coffers, but has contended that it needs the increased budget if it is to carry out work such as reforming the market structure for the registration of generic top level-domain names.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:16 PM

AOL sets sail into travel search market

America Online Inc. (AOL) is aiming to get a piece of the travel search market, announcing plans Friday to introduce a new Web-based property to compete with the likes of Travelocity.com and Expedia Inc. The Internet company is making a minority investment in interactive services company Kayak Software Corp. to get the travel search site off the ground. The Kayak.com search engine will power the new travel comparison site, and the two companies will work in partnership on marketing and technology, AOL said.

AOL did not say exactly when the new property would launch, but said that it would complement its existing offerings, and mark the beginning in a series of new travel offerings from the company.

AOL, in Dulles, Virginia, forecast strong growth in the online travel sales market, adding that a vast majority of these sales will be done with the aid of searches.

Search has become the new killer application for the major Internet players. AOL, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have all signalled their intentions to get a bigger piece of the growing market. The travel search segment is one that AOL believes has particular potential and will be a primary category focus for the company, it said.

The news comes as AOL is looking to tighten up its ship, in part by slashing costs and realigning its business from being focused on Internet access to greater revenue-generating Net services.

Kayak, created by the founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia, offers fares and rates from over 60 online sites in addition to user-generated content relevant information, AOL said.

Kayak, in Norwalk, Connecticut, currently has a beta travel comparison site up at http://www.kayak.com.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:14 PM

UN creates Internet governance working group

Preparations are in full swing for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) later next year. The United Nations (U.N.), which is hosting the follow-up event in Tunis, Tunisia in November 2005, has selected members of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), the organization said Thursday.

The group, which will be chaired by Nitin Desai, special advisor to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, will include 40 members from governments, the private sector and civil society, a term collectively applied to nongovernmental organizations representing a wide variety of interests from human rights to free software. A list of the members is available at the WGIG Web site at: www.wgig.org.

The first of between four to five meetings is scheduled to take place in Geneva from Nov. 23, 2005 to Nov. 25, 2005. A preliminary report is planned for July.

Delegates at the initial WSIS in Geneva last December agreed to set up a working group to discuss management of the Internet at both technical and policy levels after failing to reach a consensus on this contentious issue.

Many countries, particularly the U.S., U.K. and members of the European Union (E.U.), support the private sector-led Internet management arrangement provided under the aegis of the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). But others, notably Brazil, China and numerous developing countries, see a need for some soft of inter-governmental framework, preferably under a U.N. umbrella.

WGIG has its work cut out, according to the group's executive coordinator Markus Kummer.

"We will have to discuss a wide range of contentious issues, beginning with a basic question like: What is the Internet?" Kummer said. "The answer isn't as easy as you would think because we need to determine whether we are talking about just a set of protocols or also about IP (Internet protocol) services, which can lead to a whole other dimension."

Developing countries, in particular, are concerned about the delegation of country-code top-level domain names being left to a privately-run organization, according to Kummer. "Many countries want a greater say in this process," he said. "They view the issue as one of national sovereignty -- almost akin to their national flag and anthem."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:12 PM

November 11, 2004

SBC details plans for fiber network, IP-based TV

SBC Communications Inc. plans to offer IP (Internet Protocol) TV over a fiber-based network by the end of next year, the carrier announced Thursday. The fiber network will reach 18 million potential customers by the end of 2007 and will be able to deliver to a household four simultaneous streams of TV, including high-definition TV, in addition to IP-based data and voice services, the company said.

Like the other major U.S. telecommunications carriers, SBC aims to compete against a growing menu of services from cable operators by bringing fiber closer to homes and small businesses, thereby dramatically boosting network capacity. Verizon Communications Inc. earlier this year started rolling out a commercial FTTP (fiber-to-the-premise) service that brings fiber in to customers' homes.

SBC's rollout, called "Project Lightspeed," has an aggressive goal: Within five years, SBC hopes to be the No. 2 video provider in areas where it has fiber, said Lea Ann Champion, senior executive vice president of IP operations and services, in a conference call Thursday. It plans to leapfrog traditional cable services with features such as interactive guides and multiple camera angles, according to SBC.

SBC plans to save time and money by laying fiber in most cases only to neighborhood nodes. This FTTN (fiber to the node) strategy will allow the carrier to roll out its service in one-fourth the time and on one-fifth the capital expense that would have been required to bring fiber all the way to homes, Champion said. It will use FTTP in new housing developments as well as in multiple tenant dwellings and some areas where the network needs to be rehabilitated, she said. The rollout will cost about US$4 billion, coming in at the low end of an earlier estimate that ranged up to a possible $6 billion, Champion said.

FTTN will deliver most of the capabilities of FTTP, according to SBC. It will bring fiber to a node less than 5,000 feet from homes and use advanced forms of DSL (digital subscriber line) and data compression to maximize the capacity of the remaining copper lines, delivering 20M bps (bits per second) to 25M bps of bandwidth downstream. FTTP can offer as much as 39M bps, according to SBC's presentation.

FTTN will make up most of the deployment, with 17 million homes reached via that technology vs. 1 million reached with FTTP, SBC said. Lab and field trials are already under way and construction is set to begin in the first quarter of 2005, the company said.

SBC's primary operating areas are California, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Connecticut.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:58 PM

Red Hat opens China office

Red Hat Inc. is opening this week its first office in China, as part of its effort to tap demand for low-cost software in developing markets. Staff in Red Hat's Beijing office plan to work closely with other vendors in the region, including IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Dell Inc. and Oracle Corp. Establishing local support for the company's university training program on open source development and Linux usage is one of Red Hat Beijing's first initiatives. The company said it is working with work with Tsinghua University and Nanjing University.

A company spokeswoman declined to say how many employees Red Hat has in China. Beijing marks the 28th worldwide office opened by the Raleigh, North Carolina, based open-source software maker. Red Hat's other facilities in the Asia-Pacific region include offices in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:32 PM

Intel board appoints Otellini as CEO (Update)

Intel Corp.'s board of directors Thursday elected current president and chief operating officer (COO) Paul Otellini as the company's next chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Craig Barrett who was named new chairman of the board. The changes will become effective at the company's next stockholders meeting, slated for May 18, 2005.

Barrett will replace Andrew Grove as chairman and Grove will assume the role of senior advisor to the board and senior management, Intel said. He will no longer serve on the board.

The move was widely expected. Intel has a mandatory retirement age of 65, and Barrett passed that milestone this year.

Otellini and Barrett are the right team to lead Intel, Grove said in a statement released Thursday, adding that he is looking forward to his new advisory role.

Company executives will likely remember 2004 and 2005 as a turning point in Intel's history in several ways. The company abandoned its clock-speed focused marketing strategy in favor of a more diverse set of metrics to measure performance, struggled with several product cancellations and delays, and, perhaps most uncharacteristic of all, endured a number of manufacturing problems including glitches and poor capacity planning.

Barrett and Otellini's promotions mean that Intel's founding generation will no longer have a hand in the strategic decisions made at the world's largest vendor of PC and server processors. Otellini will be the first CEO at Intel to not have ascended through the engineering ranks.

Additionally, Intel is facing perhaps its strongest competition in years from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) After years of denigrating AMD's approach to 64-bit technology, Intel was forced to follow suit with a similar product after server vendors such as IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Sun Microsystems Inc. all embraced the Opteron chip's 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set developed at Intel. The smaller microprocessor firm is now in a position of challenging Intel for corporate server accounts, something that Intel's old guard never had to deal with.

Only five men have held the primary leadership roles at Intel since the Santa Clara, California, company was founded in 1968. Robert Noyce founded Intel along with Gordon Moore in 1968, hiring Grove as the first employee. Moore took over as president and CEO in 1975, and in 1979 relinquished the president's role to Grove and became chairman and CEO.

Moore and Grove ran Intel until 1997 when Barrett was brought on board as president. Moore still holds the title of chairman emeritus.

Otellini has been with the Santa Clara, California, chip maker since 1974, holding a variety of positions. He was elected company president and COO in January 2002. Barrett also joined Intel in 1974 and has served as CEO since 1998.

Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney is widely seen by analysts and company observers as the front-runner to replace Otellini as president and COO. Maloney is currently responsible for Intel's Communications Group, which makes flash memory and wireless chips.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:37 PM

EBay buys top Dutch classified-listings site

Online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. has scooped up Dutch classifieds Website Marktplaats.nl as part of an effort to expand its classifieds trading activities and grow internationally, it said Thursday. EBay said it paid €225 million in cash, or approximately US$290 million, to the site's owner, Het Goed Beheer BV.

The San Jose, California, company said that it plans to increase its e-commerce activities in the Netherlands with the acquisition but will continue to operate the Web site as a separate business.

Marktplaats.nl, based in Emmeloord and founded in 1999, has become the leading classifieds site in the Netherlands, offering more than a million listings at any given time, eBay said. It added that the Netherlands is a growing Internet market, with business-to-consumer e-commerce expected to reach US$15 billion by 2007, according to researcher IDC.

The acquisition is just the latest in a series of investments that eBay has made in the classifieds market. In August, the company took a 25-percent stake in popular San Francisco-based classifieds site Craigslist and in January it bought German automobile classifieds site Mobile.de.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:33 PM

Microsoft trots out MSN Search beta

A beta version of the search engine Microsoft Corp. is developing went live Thursday, offering users an interface and a set of features that make the product begin to resemble established search engines from competitors Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc. and America Online Inc. (AOL). A less developed version of the MSN Search service that Microsoft began making available for public tryouts in July, was simply a search box without special features or functionality that returned results grabbed from an index of about 1 billion documents, a Microsoft official said.

But the beta version released Thursday has an index of over 5 billion documents and lets users narrow and customize their queries in a variety of ways, said Justin Osmer, an MSN Search product manager.

The MSN Search service is expected to be ready in final release in 2005 and will eventually replace the search engine technology that Microsoft currently licenses from Yahoo to power the MSN portal's search feature, he said. "Our overall goal with this beta and eventually with the final product is to help users find whatever information they want faster," Osmer said.

Charlene Li, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst, has tested the search engine and described the relevance of its results as being "not fantastic" but definitely adequate and "on par" with its competitors. The most significant thing is that Microsoft is getting close to having its own search engine, which will be the foundation for future enhancements, new features and integration with existing Microsoft products and services, Li said.

"It's good enough. It gets the job done. And it puts Microsoft at the table to play with everybody else," Li said. "The most important thing is Microsoft owns it, and because of that they can do lots of different things" going forward with it.

Some of the MSN Search beta service highlights are its ability to:

-- return specific answers, such as facts, definitions, conversions and calculations, to certain direct questions by tapping content from Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia;

-- launch specific actions from the MSN Search interface, such as listening to song samples and buying and downloading songs from MSN Music;

-- narrow search results according to various parameters, such as geographic location, news content, language, images, Internet domains, Web site address and Web pages' popularity or creation date.

Overall, the MSN Search beta service's features are generally available from other search engines, and Osmer acknowledged that Microsoft is hard at work to enhance these features and add new ones."We view this beta as just a starting point for us," he said.

A desktop search tool will be unveiled before the end of the year, and the plan is to have it tightly integrated with this search engine, to let users look for information as seamlessly as possible in their PCs and the Internet, Osmer said.

A beta version of the MSN Messenger instant messaging client already has a search bar built into it, an integration "we'll continue to expand upon as well," Osmer said. A comparison shopping feature wouldn't be out of the question, he said.

Also likely is enabling users to access the MSN Search service from wireless devices, Osmer said. "It's certainly our intention to make search available no matter where our customers are and where that information may reside, so down the road mobile devices absolutely could be a part of the strategy," he said.

With the unveiling of this beta service, Microsoft continues its march towards the front lines of the search engine battles, as it attempts to snatch search users and search advertising revenue away from its competitors.

In the second quarter, total U.S. Internet ad spending was about $2.37 billion, a 42.7 percent increase over the same period in 2003, according to a report issued in September by the Internet Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhousecoopers LLP. Search-related ads were the largest category with $947 million, according to the report.

Search-related ads are those that advertisers buy to have them run along with search engine query results that are contextually related to the ads. For example, a sporting goods store might buy this type of ad to have them run when users query a search engine using keywords such as "baseball" or "football."

Meanwhile, in August, Google had the biggest share of Internet searches in the U.S. with 36.1 percent, according to comScore Networks Inc. It was followed by Yahoo with 30.6 percent. MSN came in a distant third with 14.4 percent. Rounding out the top-five were Time Warner Inc., which includes AOL, with 10.6 percent, and Ask Jeeves with 5.9 percent.

The beta of MSN Search is available at http://beta.search.msn.com.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:33 PM

BT gets Q2 revenue bump from broadband, services

BT Group PLC reported a slight increase in revenue for its second quarter of 2004 on Thursday, but cited strong growth in its "new wave" technology segments, including broadband, mobility and managed services, saying they drove underlying growth at the company. The U.K. telecommunications giant reported group revenue of £4.6 billion (US$8.3 billion as of Sept. 30, the last day of the period reported), up 1 percent from the £4.57 billion earned in the same quarter last year. Net profit before taxation, goodwill and exceptional items came in at £549 million, an increase of 4 percent from the £528 million reported for the year-ago period, the London company said.

Earnings per share before goodwill and exceptional items were also up, at £0.048, a 9-percent increase from the £0.044 BT reported in the second quarter of 2003.

BT Chief Executive Ben Verwaayen said in a statement that new wave revenues helped the company post the best underlying revenue growth it has seen in three years, despite the ongoing decline in the company's traditional fixed-line business. That underlying growth is allowing the company to give shareholders an interim dividend of £0.039, Verwaayen added.

Revenue from new wave segments added £1 billion to BT's coffers in the quarter, up 36 percent from a year-ago, the company said. New wave revenues accounted for 22 percent of the group's total second-quarter revenues, BT said.

The company said that it had an installed base of 3.3 million wholesale broadband lines by September, an increase of 146 percent over last year.

Additionally, BT's Retail division said that it saw its broadband revenue jump 81 percent in the quarter, to £123 million. BT Retail has been notching down prices on its BT Broadband and cobranded BT Yahoo services in recent months to lure customers.

BT's traditional businesses, including its fixed-voice offerings, declined 6 percent, however, due to increased competition, price reduction and regulatory intervention, it said.

The company expects to see continued challenges in its traditional business, but is optimistic about benefits from its investments in new wave technologies. Additionally, it sees strong growth potential in the IT and networking services category as it banks on its buy earlier this month of U.S.-based Infonet Services Corp. Infonet has operations in over 70 countries and BT hopes the buy will also aid its global expansion efforts.

BT is also working on driving down its net debt, which decreased to £8.3 billion at the end of the second quarter from around £8.8 billion a year ago.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:31 PM

Deutsche Telekom doubles Q3 profit, raises forecast (Update)

Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe's largest telecommunications operator, expects 2004 net profit to be higher than previously forecasted and plans to resume paying dividends after its third-quarter profit more than doubled, spurred by growth in its mobile and Internet operations, the company said Thursday. Third-quarter net income rose to €1.4 billion (US$1.7 billion as of Sept. 30, the last day of the period being reported) from €508 million in the same period the year before, the Bonn, Germany company said.

Deutsche Telekom said net income will more than double to €3.2 billion in 2004 from €1.3 billion, up from its original target of €2.5 billion.

Net revenue for in the third-quarter increased to €14.5 billion from €14.1 billion the same quarter of last year. Under Chief Executive Officer Kai-Uwe Ricke, Deutsche Telekom has seen its revenue grow faster than many of its European rivals thanks largely to its U.S. mobile subsidiary, T-Mobile USA Inc., which the German operator said was buoyed by continued subscriber growth.

In in the first nine months of this year, T-Mobile USA added 3.2 million customers, of whom 900,000 were in the third quarter. The U.S. unit's customer base is now around 16.3 million, Ricke said in news conference.

The company's wireless arm as a whole, T-Mobile International AG, increased revenue by 9.4 percent to €6.5 billion, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) -- adjusted for special items -- rising 24 percent to €2.2 billion.

The division added 6.2 million customers in the past three quarters, bringing its total customer base to 73.4 million. It is currently developing a program to reduce subsidies on mobile phones in a move to lower costs by about €1 billion by 2006, Ricke said.

Deutsche Telekom is reorganizing its operations into three major areas: broadband and fixed network; mobile communications; and business customers.

For the business customer segment, the reorganization involves merging operations that belonged to the carrier's separate Internet subsidiary, T-Online International AG, and its fixed-line unit, T-Com.

Under the planned merger, T-Online will remain a separate organization responsible for developing IP (Internet Protocol) services and applications, while T-Com will focus on network management, integrated platforms and the development of open standards, in addition to providing circuit-switched telephone service.

Two new business customer units will be launched next year, with a core focus on broadband telecommunications and IT networking services. The T-Systems Enterprise Services unit will serve around 60 multinational businesses, while the T-Systems Business Services unit will target approximately 160,000 large and medium-size enterprises.

With an eye to the residential market, Deutsche Telekom plans to launch a range of convergence products based on its "triple-play" strategy, which combines telephony, high-speed Internet and TV via a broadband connection. In the process, the operator aims to increases its average revenue per user to counter the decline in traditional circuit-switched telephone calls.

Calling revenue was down 13.5 percent in the third quarter, a slight improvement over the 15 percent decrease in the two previous quarters, according to Chief Financial Officer Karl-Gerhard Eick.

At the end of the third quarter, Deutsche Telekom's net debt was less than €40.8 billion, down €6 billion since the end of 2003.

At the end of October, Deutsche Telekom cut net debt to slightly less than €40 billion -- the first time in nearly five years that the group's net debt dropped below this figure, Eick said.

Ricke's predecessor, Ron Sommer, invested more than €70 billion on international expansion that let to a loss of nearly €25 billion in 2002, the largest ever by a European company.

Deutsche Telekom said it aims to pay a dividend of up to €0.62 a share in 2004.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:30 PM

November 10, 2004

Google gives Gmail POP3 support

Google Inc. will roll out POP3 (Post Office Protocol) support gradually over the coming weeks to Gmail users, who will be able to use the feature to download e-mail messages from Gmail servers to e-mail applications on devices such as PCs and wireless devices. With POP3 support, users will be able to transfer their server-based Gmail messages to a client-side e-mail application such as Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook and have the messages stored on their local hard drive and thus accessible when they are offline. Users with wireless devices that have POP3-compliant e-mail clients will also be able to download their Gmail messages to personal digital assistants or cell phones.

Google is also working on adding an antivirus scanning feature to the Web mail service, possibly by licensing an existing technology, and developing an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) interface that would make Gmail compatible with browsers that don't support JavaScript. Currently, only JavaScript-enabled browsers can access Gmail, which uses JavaScript extensively.

These and other possible enhancements, such as adding further wireless device support through WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) or XHTML (Extensible HTML), are part of Google's attempt to eventually make Gmail, which is still being beta tested, the most feature-rich Web mail service available, a Google executive said.

"We want to make it the best e-mail service in every single dimension so you have absolutely no reason to use any other," said Georges Harik, who is in charge of new projects at Google and whose title is director of Googlettes, the term the company uses to refer to this type of effort.

While the POP3 support is an important feature to have, Gmail must gain calendaring and schedule-management features, which competitors already offer to complement Web mail services, said Teney Takahashi, an analyst at The Radicati Group Inc. For example, Yahoo Inc.'s Web mail service offers a calendaring system that integrates with various versions of Microsoft's Outlook, Takahashi said.

"Right now, Gmail is very good at managing mail but I'd like to see the service extended to other areas of your daily life: managing your schedule and possibly being able to synchronize that with your desktop client, like Outlook, would be very valuable," Takahashi said.

Google should also consider moving Gmail out of its beta-testing phase and into final release soon, so that it's generally available and not only by invitation from the company, which is the only way to get a Gmail account right now, Takahashi said. The POP3 support may signal that Google is getting close to the final-release stage, he said.

Google considers POP3 support a must-have for Gmail.

"This is a very important feature that every e-mail system should provide. We're going to make it easy both to transition into and out of Gmail so you can use the best possible e-mail reading interface," Google's Harik said.

"We're making our way down the list of things so in the end you'll be able to access Gmail on everything," he said.

While Gmail users are served up text ads that appear next to the messages' body text, ads will not appear with messages that are downloaded via POP3 to the client e-mail applications, a Google spokesman said.

Also in the works is beefed-up antivirus protection. Currently, Gmail protects users against viruses by blocking messages that have certain files attached to them, such as exe., or executable, files. But a full-fledged virus-scanning feature is on the horizon for Gmail, Harik said.

"We block executables and other things that are usually carriers of viruses so most viruses don't go through, but there are always weird file types. So we're working on getting a full antivirus scanning solution to add to the current list of things that we do. We're likely to possibly license one (from a third party)," Harik said.

Also a possibility for Gmail would be support for IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), a protocol similar to POP3 but more sophisticated, he said.

Google will also continue to sharpen Gmail's spam blocking and filtering capabilities, which are based on technology the company develops internally, Harik said. Now, for example, Gmail detects spam messages that are phishing scams, and provides a button to report them as such to Google. "We intend to develop the best spam filter in the industry," Harik said.

These efforts show Google is taking the threat of spam and phishing very seriously, Radicati's Takahashi said. "They have been very closed about what technology they're using for antispam filtering but it seems to be very effective," he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 08:34 PM

Skype comes to Siemens' cordless phones

Skype Technologies SA is teaming with Siemens AG to offer cordless phone users the ability to make Internet telephony calls, in addition to traditional calls, from their handsets. On Wednesday Siemens introduced a USB (Universal Serial Bus) adaptor fitted with Skype software that allows users of several models of its new cordless phones to access Skype offerings such as free calls, buddy lists and conference calling. The functionality is only being offered in Europe.

The Gigaset M34 USB adaptor plugs into a user's PC and communicates with the phone's base station to make or receive Skype calls. Skype, based in Luxembourg, has become a leading provider of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) by offering software that allows users to make free worldwide calls to other Skype users, and cut-rate calls to nonusers. The company says its free software has been downloaded 32 million times since August.

Skype's partnership with Siemens pushes it into a new direction, off of the desktop and into more traditional telecom areas. The Siemens adaptor was developed using Skype's recently released API (application programming interface), and is expected to be the beginning of a wave of applications built to integrate Skype.

The new adaptor works with Siemens' Gigaset C340/345, Gigaset CX340/345isdn, Gigaset S440/445, Gigaset SX440/445isdn, Gigaset S645 and Gigaset SL440 phones. The adaptor is priced at about €99 (US$128.) and is available in local retail outlets.

A Siemens representative said that while the offering is currently only available in Europe, the company is testing in other regions.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:47 PM

Microsoft to launch new search engine technology

Microsoft Corp. is set to unleash its much-anticipated search technology on Thursday, as it ramps up efforts to take on market leader Google Inc. The new search engine will go live on the company's MSN Web site, a representative for the company said.

The software giant has made clear its plans to conquer the lucrative search market, teasing industry watchers with Web and desktop search previews. In June, Microsoft upgraded its MSN Search site and it has been posting new search technology prototypes at its testing site http://sandbox.msn.com. Meanwhile, company executives have stated their intentions to take Google to the mat.

Now Web users will be able to test-drive the company's latest search efforts. Although details of the new search engine weren't available on Wednesday, SearchEngineWatch.com Editor Danny Sullivan said that he had been playing around with search betas on Microsoft's Sandbox site earlier this week.

"From what I've seen on Sandbox, the technology is still pretty unremarkable," Sullivan said. Although he acknowledged that the search tools he sampled did not have all the "bells and whistles" that are expected with the full release, Sullivan said that some test searches did not bring up authoritative sites that one would expect from a search engine.

"From what I've seen so far, they haven't been savvy in terms of search optimization," Sullivan said.

This could be a major problem for the Redmond, Washington, company if it expects to leap past Google and Yahoo Inc. According to Sullivan, to stand out a new search technology needs to serve up incredibly relevant results, possibly delivered in a new way, such as being able to tap separate databases for different types of searches.

Otherwise, new search engines should build in a set of good features if they want to lure in users. "It could be victory by a bunch of little cuts instead of one sword," Sullivan said.

Whatever approach Microsoft ends up taking, it appears determined to pierce the top of the market. MSN Search is already number three in the market, according to Sullivan, so the company is building from a solid user base.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:46 PM

Vodafone launches new 3G phones, services

Vodafone Group PLC formally rolled out its 3G (third-generation) mobile communication products and services in 12 European countries and Japan on Wednesday. The company expects 3G to begin gaining mass market acceptance next year, and forecasts over 10 million customers will be using its Vodafone Live portal with 3G services by March 2006 in it subsidiaries. "Our rough estimate is that the 3G service will be used by 10 percent of our base within the next 15 months," said Vodafone Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Arun Sarin in a press conference that was also broadcast over the Web.

Vodafone is seeking to make back its massive investment in 3G, including the £16.6 billion (US$30.8 billion) it spent on spectrum licenses four years ago. Competitors like Orange SA and the mobile arm of Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Mobile International AG, are taking a slightly more cautious approach with the launch of their 3G services, which are expected by the end of the year. Overall, Europe's major mobile phone operators have spent more than €100 billion (US$129 billion) on 3G licenses.

The Newbury, England, company is presenting 3G as an enhancement to its existing Vodafone Live portal, originally launched in October 2002, and is promoting 10 new 3G handsets, seven of which are exclusive to Vodafone, and services such as video calling, 3-D arcade games, mobile TV and music downloads as part of that existing brand.

Seven of the 3G handsets will be available in Japan, with nine available in Europe, Vodafone said. Not all handsets will be available in every country, with about six handsets offered in each of the European countries where the Vodafone Live service is offered: Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K.

The 3G phones will be able to roam between Vodafone's European markets and Japan, Sarin said.

Vodafone announced in September that it would begin offering several new 3G mobile phones to customers by the end of the year, including Europe's first 3G 2-megapixel camera phone, from handset makers Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Nokia Corp., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sharp Corp., Motorola Inc. and NEC Corp.

Vodafone has altered its pricing model for the 3G service, with users charged for individual content purchases, rather than according to volume as it had previously done, the company said. Additionally, browsing will be free or included in a bundle of services.

Vodafone's pricing for 3G will include two basic packages, said Bill Morrow, chief executive of Vodafone U.K., at the news conference. The £40 a month bundle offers 500 minutes of voice calls, 100 text messages, 50 minutes of video calls and £0.60 for sending each prerecorded video message. The £60 a month bundle increases those offers, for example, offering 1,000 minutes of voice calls.

According to Ovum Ltd. analysts John Delaney and Dario Betti, it is important that Vodafone is also offering a prepay option at launch, in addition to two contract tariffs, as it helps to encourage first-time users to the service. They also praised the company's decision to charge users for the content itself, as opposed to paying for the time it takes to find and download the content, which they believe will appeal to users and have the knock-on effect of causing a shake-up in business models.

Vodafone wants new revenue-sharing deals with its content providers, to "partly offset" the lost traffic revenues, Delaney and Betti said in an e-mail assessment of the Vodafone service, and other operators will undoubtedly follow Vodafone's lead.

But the analysts warned that Vodafone's decision to target its coverage area within heavily populated areas may prove to be risky if its 3G services prove not to be robust enough to cover such a large segment upon launch.

If the services offered by Live 3G are really compelling, then people will want to be able to use them wherever they are, Delaney and Betti said. If the services aren't accessible, then Vodafone risks annoying the customers they can least afford to annoy, the analysts said.

Vodafone's CEO brushed off those concerns on Wednesday. "We have been in this business for 20 years and are confident in CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), the core technology that is being used here," Sarin said. "We're not expecting any roadblocks in being able to power through and provide for our targeted market."

That market is primarily the consumer market, but Sarin added there are plenty of 3G services, such as video calling, that the enterprise market would find appealing.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:44 PM

EU objects to Microsoft-Time Warner ContentGuard deal

The European Commission has issued a formal set of objections to Microsoft Corp. and Time Warner Inc. taking control of ContentGuard Holdings Inc., a digital rights management (DRM) company, according to sources familiar with the case. The Commission, the European Union's antitrust regulator, sent the two firms a "statement of objections" which they received on Friday, setting out the reasons why it thinks the joint venture might create or strengthen a dominant position in the market.

However, sources familiar with the case doubt the Commission will block the move, predicting instead that it will be cleared as long as the companies allow third parties to access the technology through licensing.

In August, the Commission began an in-depth investigation of the acquisition of ContentGuard by the two companies, saying: "Under Microsoft's and Time Warner's joint ownership, ContentGuard may have both the incentives and the ability to use its (intellectual property rights) portfolio to put Microsoft's rivals in the DRM solutions market at a competitive disadvantage."

It added that the acquisition could also slow development of open interoperability standards and would allow the DRM solutions market to "tip" towards the current leading provider, Microsoft.

Despite the Commission's concern about the impact on the market, sources familiar with the case said that a settlement between the Commission and the two companies was likely and would involve access to ContentGuard technology under fair licensing terms.

The two companies have two weeks to respond to the Commission's statement and may request a hearing to present their arguments.

The companies will have to present any settlement terms ahead of the Jan. 6 deadline for the Commission's final decision on whether to clear the merger.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:43 PM

Microsoft to indemnify most customers from legal threats

In a bid to further differentiate itself from open-source rivals, Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday said it will expand its indemnification program to cover the vast majority of its customers. The move, experts said, is great marketing but will have little impact on users. For several years, Microsoft has indemnified, or protected, its volume license customers from possible legal threats stemming from their use of Microsoft software. Last year, Microsoft lifted the monetary cap on that protection. The vendor is now extending protection to virtually all users of its products.

"This expansion will cover several million more people," said David Kaefer, director of business development at Microsoft. "We performed a review of the indemnification we offer today and came to the conclusion that there really is no reason why we would not offer it to anybody."

Microsoft's indemnification program protects customers from exposure to legal costs and damage claims related to patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark claims, the company said.

Vendor indemnification programs have emerged as part of users' risk mitigation strategies, especially in the U.S., which is widely seen as a litigious society. This is particularly true for users of Linux as The SCO Group Inc. threatened them with copyright infringement lawsuits.

"When we evaluate companies and software products, indemnification is one of the first things we look at," said Ken Meszaros, assistant vice president and infrastructure manager at LandAmerica Financial Group Inc., a real estate transaction services provider in Richmond, Virginia.

"It is important that the vendor is willing to stand up for the integrity of its products," Meszaros said. "Microsoft offering indemnification for all its products, regardless of licensing strategy, is a positive change and helps to protect us from intellectual property issues."

While having a form of free insurance is always nice, Microsoft's expanded indemnification appears to be mostly a marketing move, said David Elkins, a partner in the intellectual property practice of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP, in Palo Alto, California. Customers who could ever need protection, the largest corporations, were already covered, he said.

"Microsoft is using its financial power to enhance its marketing advantage in this particular area," Elkins said. Smaller Linux vendors can't match Microsoft's blanket indemnification because they don't have the financial means, he said.

Indeed, Microsoft plans to make indemnification a more visible part of its Get the Facts campaign, a marketing effort by the Redmond, Washington, software vendor that favorably compares Windows with Linux, Kaefer said.

"Indemnification is one element in overall platform value, just like total cost of ownership, security or reliability," Kaefer said. "If you compare the leading Linux vendors to what we're offering, those vendors really have much narrower indemnification."

Several Linux vendors including Hewlett-Packard Co., Novell Inc. and Red Hat Inc. offer indemnification programs with varying restrictions. IBM Corp. does not indemnify its Linux customers.

Al Gillen, a research director at IDC, said that Microsoft's indemnification program expansion won't mean much to software buyers in a practical sense. "The chances are that if a customer was sued over intellectual property violations by Microsoft software there is a pretty good chance that Microsoft would have to step into the fray anyway," he said.

According to IDC research, medium-sized businesses are most worried about protecting themselves against potential legal threats, Gillen said. Large corporations protect themselves with legal staff while small companies feel they are flying under the radar, he said.

The degree of concern depends on the line of business, Gillen said. Risk-adverse companies, such as financial services firms, are more concerned about indemnification than companies in other industries, he said.

Microsoft's indemnification program covers all products except for the embedded products such as, for example, Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded. Microsoft has less control over those products because partners can modify the source code, Kaefer said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:42 PM

Cisco boosts Q1 net income, revenue

Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday reported significant gains in earnings and revenue for its fiscal 2005 first quarter that met analyst expectations. Cisco earned net income of US$1.4 billion or $0.21 per share in the quarter, which ended Oct. 30. That marked a gain of 28.5 percent from $1.1 billion, or $0.15 per share, a year earlier.

The San Jose, California, networking giant reported revenue of $6 billion, which was up 17.1 percent from $5.1 billion a year earlier.

For the second fiscal quarter, Cisco projected revenue up 1 percent to 3 percent. After seeing the economic outlook of enterprises shift from optimism to slight pessimism several times since August 2003, President and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers said on a conference call that it was too early to predict the level of business confidence over the next four months. In the longer term, over the next several years, Chambers is optimistic.

About $5 billion of Cisco's revenue in the quarter came from products, with $938 million coming from services, including technical support and advisory services, Chambers said. Routers made up 21 percent of sales, switches 43 percent, services 16 percent and advanced technologies 16 percent, with other revenue making up 4 percent. Cisco's advanced technologies include home networks, IP (Internet Protocol) telephony, optical, security, storage area networks and wireless.

The quarter saw Cisco complete five acquisitions. It closed deals to buy storage software vendor Actona Technologies Inc., VOIP (voice over IP) software maker Dynamicsoft Inc., traffic routing software vendor Parc Technologies Ltd. and traffic control software vendor P-Cube Inc. It also closed a deal to buy certain assets of core router vendor Procket Networks Inc. for $92 million.

There were few surprises and no major variations in growth across geographic regions, though results in China were slightly soft, bucking generally strong growth in Asian countries, Chambers said. However, Cisco had especially strong results in that country the previous quarter, he said.

Cisco expects significant competition worldwide in the next ten years from emerging Asian competitors, Chambers said, but the company has mapped out strategies for gaining advantage.

For one thing, the company's move to build more intelligence into network infrastructure will set it apart from newcomers that attempt to compete on equipment price, said Charlie Giancarlo, senior vice president and chief technology officer, in an interview following the conference call.

"We really do believe that the network has an endless opportunity to continue to absorb and incorporate functionality," such as encryption, storage virtualization and other things, Giancarlo said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:41 AM

November 09, 2004

Mozilla mulls desktop search integration for Firefox

Having launched the much-awaited version 1.0 of the Firefox browser on Tuesday, the Mozilla Foundation is busy planning future enhancements to the open-source product, including the possibility of integrating it with a variety of desktop search tools. The Mozilla Foundation also wants to place Firefox in PCs through OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deals with PC hardware vendors and to continue to sharpen the product's pop-up ad blocking technology. These and other enhancements, such as graphics display improvements, will help Firefox to continue building the already considerable momentum it has generated so it can capture between 10 percent and 12 percent of the Web browser market by some point next year, said Chris Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation's engineering director. "We believe there's room for a lot of growth for Firefox's market share and there's a number of things we need to do to continue on this growth curve," Hofmann said.

For the past several years, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) had held around 95 percent of the browser market, but this year it has been slowly but consistently losing ground, while Firefox has emerged as a fast-growing product, WebSideStory Inc., a San Diego Web metrics company, reported last week. At the end of October, IE had a 92.9 percent market share, while Firefox had secured a 3 percent share through its preview versions, according to WebSideStory.

Regarding integration with desktop search tools, the idea would be to offer Firefox users a choice of third-party tools for searching information stored on their PCs, Hofmann said. "We see a lot of growth with the integration of searching Web sites and searching your desktop ... so we'll be looking at ways to try and integrate that search within the browser, to make more seamless how users go searching for information, whether on the Internet or their computer," Hofmann said.

Desktop search is one of the hottest areas in the search market currently, as users look for tools that let them find information on their PCs with the same ease and speed of Internet search engines. Thus, multiple high-profile vendors either provide or plan to provide tools for conducting desktop searches.

For example, Google Inc. recently introduced one such tool, while America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have separately acknowledged they are developing their own wares. Microsoft for years has bundled hard-disk searching functionality with its Windows operating system, but the technology has been considered generally clunky and Microsoft is expected to offer an enhanced alternative in the near future. In the meantime, vendors such as X1 Technologies Inc., Copernic Technologies Inc. and Blinkx already offer desktop search tools.

"There are a variety of companies that are working on that technology and we may just try and identify a way for Firefox to plug into a variety of desktop search engines and enable users to pick and choose," Hofmann said.

The Mozilla Foundation will also continue to boost Firefox's pop-up ad blocker, a key feature to make users' browsing experiences better, he said. These types of disruptive ads are generally considered a nuisance by browser users. "We want to stay ahead of the curve of Web sites that like to inject pop ups, so we'll continue to improve our pop-up blocker" in future Firefox upgrades, he said.

Clearly, signing OEM deals with PC makers to bundle Firefox with their machines would be important in accelerating the distribution and adoption of the browser, and the Mozilla Foundation is working on getting such deals done, Hofmann said, although he declined to comment further on which PC vendors might be involved.

Beyond Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation will continue to work on other Internet software, such as its Thunderbird e-mail client, which is in preview version 0.9 right now and whose 1.0 version should ship later this month, Hofmann said. Also in the works is calendar software.

The Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, California, is a nonprofit organization founded in July 2003 to support the Mozilla open source software project, launched by Netscape Communications Corp. in 1998. Firefox 1.0 can be obtained from www.mozilla.org as a free download or in CD format with a manual for US$14.95.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:06 PM

FCC frees VOIP from regulations

A VOIP (voice over IP) service offered by Vonage Holdings Inc. is not subject to the public utility regulations of individual U.S. states, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) declared Tuesday. Vonage's DigitalVoice service can't be governed by dual state and federal rules because it can't practically be separated into intrastate and interstate components, the FCC said in a statement. Because DigitalVoice customers can use the service to make a call from a broadband connection anywhere in the world, it's hard to determine whether a call is local, interstate or international, the statement said. The opinion extends to other similar services, such as those offered by cable operators.

The decision has potentially broad implications for increasingly popular VOIP services, which convert voice calls into packets for transmission over data networks. Lower cost, portability and advanced usability features are among the benefits promised by VOIP. The technology also has opened up new opportunities for cable operators to offer a "triple play" of voice, video and data services in competition with traditional telecommunications and broadband providers.

However, the commission did not rule Tuesday on whether DigitalVoice should be classified as telecommunications service or an unregulated information service, nor did it address public safety issues, namely the requirement for 911 emergency services over the VOIP service. Those issues will be addressed in the FCC's IP-Enabled Services Proceeding, which began in February.

In a separate statement, FCC Chairman Michael Powell called VOIP a revolutionary service, citing lower prices, personalization, and global service as key benefits. Internet-based applications such as VOIP belong alongside long-distance and mobile telecommunications as interstate services, he wrote.

"If we let competition and innovation rage, unencumbered by the high cost of regulation, consumers can expect more of the same -- lower prices, more choice, and more innovative offerings," Powell wrote.

Vonage had asked the agency to preempt a 2003 order by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission that said Vonage's DigitalVoice service should be regulated like a traditional telecommunications service. The rules required Vonage to get a certificate of authority from the state, provide emergency 911 service and meet other requirements.

Preempting the state agency is consistent with the federal government's policies to promote the continued development of the Internet, broadband and interactive services, the statement said. In addition, the rules Minnesota would have imposed were inconsistent with the FCC's deregulatory policies, the agency said.

States still have a role to play with VOIP in protecting consumers from fraud, responding to complaints and enforcing fair business practices, the FCC said.

Vonage applauded the unanimous opinion in a statement attributed to Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Citron.

"This forward-thinking decision from the FCC assures that competition from VOIP is here to stay. . . . Because the FCC has acknowledged the reality of the Internet -- which knows no state boundaries and no borders -- more people will enjoy the benefits of Internet phone service," Citron said in the statement.

The decision did not come as a surprise to LeRoy Koppendrayer, chairman of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, but he sees a bright spot in that the FCC encouraged Vonage to keep working on 911 service. Because VOIP service is not tied to a particular location, existing 911 systems can't automatically pinpoint the caller's location. This was the Minnesota commission's main reason for regulating DigitalVoice under traditional telecommunications rules, according to Koppendrayer.

"In allowing them to be a telecommunications service provider, we wanted them to comply with the 911 safety issues," Koppendrayer said. Following the FCC's order Tuesday, "I'm confident that (Vonage) will work with us to resolve our concerns about 911," he said.

CompTel/Ascent, a group representing competitive telecommunications providers, welcomed the order.

"By declaring VOIP traffic as interstate in nature, the FCC is taking an important step to encourage competitive telecom service alternatives for consumers and to foster entrepreneurship by those willing to explore new businesses and deploy cutting-edge technology," CompTel/Ascent said in a statement.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:04 PM

Tom Siebel to sell company shares

Siebel Systems Inc. founder Tom Siebel plans to sell up to 18 percent of his company stock over the next two years, the company said Tuesday. He has adopted a trading plan to cover the gradual sale of up to 10 million shares of stock, including some that will be acquired through the exercise of stock options set to expire in March 2006, the company said. If Siebel completes all of his planned sales, he'll be left with 45 million company shares and vested options, representing around a 9 percent ownership stake in the company.

Siebel Systems cast the stock sell off as part of its founder's asset diversification strategy. Tom Siebel expects to begin selling his shares no earlier than February 2005, and will disclose the sales through filings required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Financial analyst Donovan Gow cast the planned share sales as routine. Other tech titans, including Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, have sold stock under similar diversification plans.

"It's sizable, but given that he has been pulling back from his leadership role in the last several months, I don't think it's totally unexpected," Gow said of Siebel. Gow is with American Technology Research Inc.

Siebel's eponymous creator stepped down earlier this year as chief executive officer of the company he had lead since its inception in 1993. Siebel, 51, remains the company's chairman.

Siebel shares ended trading Monday on the Nasdaq exchange at US$9.44. In its most recent report on the 400 richest Americas, Forbes magazine estimated Tom Siebel's personal net worth at $1.2 billion.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:43 PM

Mozilla launches Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation has released version 1.0 of its Firefox browser, an open-source product that has generated lofty expectations that it will offer real competition to Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous Internet Explorer. A preview release of Firefox available since last month has been downloaded over 8 million times, the Mozilla Foundation said in a press release Tuesday.

The buzz surrounding Firefox has been fueled by several factors, including the product's quality, said Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter Research analyst. "The Mozilla team has done a really good job with the browser. It's lean and mean," Wilcox said.

Then there's the widespread perception that Microsoft's IE is vulnerable to security breaches, Wilcox said. "There's the fear surrounding IE over potential exploits," he said. "We hear a lot about the potential vulnerabilities (of IE) but not so much about the exploits of those vulnerabilities."

Finally, Firefox's emergence has been enabled by Microsoft's decision to limit IE's development in the past three or four years, Wilcox said. "It's as if Microsoft fought hard to win the browser wars and then abandoned the territory," he said, adding that during the height of the browser wars, Microsoft cranked out three significant IE upgrades in 18 months. "Now we've been sitting essentially on the same version of IE for the past three or four years. Just because Microsoft isn't advancing (its browser technology) there's no reason why (browser technology) shouldn't advance."

The Mozilla Foundation expects Firefox to own a browser market share of between 10 percent and 12 percent at some point next year, and to continue growing strongly thereafter, said Chris Hofmann, the Mozilla Foundation's engineering director. Convinced that a majority of users are dissatisfied with their browsing experience, the Mozilla Foundation sees "a huge opportunity" for Firefox, he said.

Firefox backers maintain it is inherently more secure than IE, but, according to Wilcox, it is still too early to say because Firefox hasn't been around long enough yet to be targeted by malicious hackers. "To IE's advantage, Microsoft is investing huge amounts of money and resources in tracking down and plugging the security holes. In theory, that means IE has gone through its worst shakedown and that it's pretty safe," he said. "Firefox has yet to face the foxes and their fire."

However, the Mozilla Foundation's Hofmann said that there are concrete architectural differences that make Firefox more secure than IE, including the decision to not include in Firefox support for Microsoft's ActiveX technology on the belief that such support makes a browser very vulnerable to spyware, viruses and malicious hackers.

"Firefox doesn't have that (ActiveX) technology built into it, so we think it will be quite a while before malicious hackers figure out a potential way to insert spyware into Firefox. We think we have a head start against malicious hackers and hope to continue that lead in the future," Hofmann said.

Firefox 1.0 is available in 12 languages for Microsoft's Windows, Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X and Linux. The product can be obtained through Mozilla's Web site (www.mozilla.org) as a free download or in CD format with a user's manual for US$14.95.

The result of an open-source project, Firefox became a reality "thanks to the tireless efforts of hundreds of community volunteers and developers around the world," the Mozilla Foundation said.

Firefox 1.0 features an integrated pop-up ad blocker, and safeguards against online scams such as phishing and spoofing by displaying secure sites' identities, the Mozilla Foundation said.

The product also attempts to improve the browsing experience by consolidating multiple Web pages into a single Window and organizing them with tabs, a feature the Mozilla Foundation calls "tabbed browsing."

For those concerned about a bumpy migration to Firefox from other browsers, the product can import bookmarks, passwords and cookies, the Mozilla Foundation said.

Firefox 1.0 also solves a security vulnerability recently identified in its tabbed browsing feature, Hofmann said.

The Mozilla Foundation, based in Mountain View, California, is a nonprofit organization founded in July 2003 to support the Mozilla open source software project, launched by Netscape Communications Corp. in 1998. It has about a dozen full-time staffers, Hofmann said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:26 PM

Trojan spams Russian mobile phones

An ingenious new Trojan is circulating that hijacks PCs and uses them to send SMS-based spam to mobile phones. After a PC has been infected, the Delf-HA Trojan contacts a website for details on which spam campaign to run and then randomly generates a series of Russian mobile numbers beginning with the prefix +7921 or +7911. It uses the “send email� function of a number of Russian mobile network websites to actually deliver the mail sent from the infected machines.

That many of the numbers will not have been allocated to customers is of no consequence as enough real ones can be targeted randomly. The contents of the spam are believed to vary but one message shown to Techworld appeared to promote the download of MP3 music files from a named Russian website.

Although Delf-HA targets only Russian mobile networks, experts have warned that the same technique could be used to send spam to subscribers of networks in other countries.

"Now SMS spammers are taking a leaf out of the book of email spammers, and using unprotected innocent PCs to pass on their unwanted messages," said Graham Cluley of anti-virus vendor Sophos PLC, which uncovered the Trojan.

Spam is not a new phenomenon on mobiles but the volumes remain low compared to PC-based email. Delf-HA could signal a depressing turning point.

To date, most of the concern has centered around the possibility of viruses such as Cabir infecting mobiles themselves. Nokia Corp. also announced in the summer that it would offer antivirus software for its 6670 smart phone.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:09 PM

MS settles antitrust cases with Novell, CCIA

Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced antitrust settlements with Novell Inc. and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), ending years of legal wrangling. The settlement with CCIA ends an eight-year investigation and antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. CCIA was the final group challenging a November 2002 settlement ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

Novell and CCIA were also two major Microsoft opponents in an antitrust case before the European Commission. RealNetworks Inc. is the last remaining company with a broad-based complaint in the European Commission case, although the Free Software Foundation and other groups continue to be part of that case, said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, during a conference call Monday.

The agreement with CCIA "removes the most substantial obstacle" to a settlement in the European case, Smith said. "We believe this sends a strong message that we and other companies in our industry do have the capacity now to sit down face to face and resolve the kinds of thorny antitrust issues that in the past were left instead to the government to resolve," he added.

Microsoft will pay Novell US$536 million under the agreement, in which Novell will resolve all antitrust claims relating to Novell's NetWare product, and any other products it owns. The agreement came out of private mediation between the two companies, according to a joint news release. The payment to Novell brings the total amount of antitrust settlements Microsoft has paid to just under $3 billion, Smith said.

Novell will end its antitrust claims under U.S. and all other national and state laws concerning its products. Novell will also withdraw from participation in the European Commission’s case with Microsoft and will no longer participate as an intervener on behalf of the European Commission in Microsoft’s appeal of the commission’s March 24 ruling.

Microsoft will also end its counterclaims to those antitrust claims regarding NetWare. The agreement does not obligate Microsoft to license or otherwise share any of its technology or intellectual property rights with Novell, nor does it include any admission of wrongdoing by Microsoft.

"These agreements represent another substantial milestone in Microsoft resolving the issues that have divided our industry over the past decade," Smith said. "Today's settlement means that the long-standing antitrust litigation in the U.S. is now over. The litigation phase is now complete."

The two companies were not able to reach agreement concerning Novell’s antitrust claims related to its ownership of the WordPerfect word-processing software package between June 1994 and March 1996. Novell retains the right to pursue those claims, and the company announced Monday that by the end of the week, it will file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Utah seeking unspecified damages related to WordPerfect.

The antitrust agreement "settles some potential litigation to our advantage," said Novell spokesman Hal Thayer in an interview. "We think this is very straightforward."

Microsoft restated its first-quarter results, announced Oct. 21, to compensate for the settlement.

As part of the CCIA settlement, Microsoft will join the trade group. The company will also pay CCIA for some legal expenses for some cases in the past decade.

CCIA agreed not to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review its challenge to the antitrust settlement in the U.S. Department of Justice's case against Microsoft. CCIA has also agreed that it will no longer participate as an intervener on behalf of the European Commission in Microsoft’s appeal of the commission’s March 24 antitrust ruling, and it will also withdraw its complaint with the European Commission filed in February 2003 on issues related to Microsoft Windows XP. Specific financial terms of the agreement are confidential.

The CCIA, in a press release, said the settlement allows the trade group to focus its resources on other issues facing the industry.

“While there may be times when we and Microsoft will not agree on every issue, we are looking forward to developing a stronger relationship," Ed Black, president and chief executive officer of CCIA, said in a statement. "We believe that CCIA has an important opportunity to help unite the industry more effectively on key issues such as broadened Internet access, strong support for R&D, and ensuring that we act as an effective engine for economic growth around the world.�

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:06 PM

New MyDoom variant exploits IE flaw

A new variant of the MyDoom worm that exploits an unpatched flaw in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) browser is in the wild and posing particular risk to home and small business users, security experts warned this week. The worm, which security firms dubbed MyDoom.AF, MyDoom.AH and MyDoom.AG, spreads by e-mail and exploits a recently discovered buffer overflow vulnerability in IE.

Internet users should avoid opening suspicious e-mail with the subject headers "funny photos :)," "hello," "hey!" and blank headers, according to security firm iDefense Inc. Users who open the infected e-mail and click on links in the message body will be directed to destinations from which an attack may be launched.

Microsoft issued a statement saying that it was aware of the new variant and an investigation is underway. According to early reports the vulnerability does not exist on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) so customers running the security update are at a reduced risk of the threat, Microsoft said. The software maker and security experts advised users to install SP2 if they have not already.

Users less likely to have a perimeter defense, such as those in homes and small offices, are more vulnerable to attack, security experts warned. The variant exploits a flaw in the way IE handles "iframe" and "frame" HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tags. Code that takes advantage of the flaw began circulating last week and researchers warned that several new codes exploiting the vulnerability may appear in the next few weeks since it is still unpatched.

Microsoft said however that it believes the current threat is low and that it is not aware of any significant customer impact. The company added that it will decide what further action to take upon completing its investigation and said it could issue a patch ahead of its regular monthly security update.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:05 PM

November 08, 2004

Silicon Valley comes to London for brighter outlook

You know Silicon Valley companies have endured some stormy weather over the past several years when they show up in London looking for brighter skies. But that was the mood when a host of California's IT companies gathered with potential European investors and partners at the ninth annual Cal-IT Europe Forum on Monday. Although the dot-com shakeup is behind them, California's IT companies, which arguably were at the epicenter of the quake, are still coping with lingering effects, such as a lack of confidence and investment in the industry.

"The last four years have been some of the most difficult for those in the industry," said Eric Benahamou, chairman of 3Com Corp. and PalmOne Inc. during a keynote address. "But optimism is starting to rise ... a new kind of sober optimism."

Perhaps this sober optimism is why Silicon Valley startups and old hats are looking anew to Europe, where they see markets made up of more practical and cautious customers.

"European customers are more focused on return on investment, more risk averse and have a higher propensity to do lots and lots of pilots," Lee Roberts, chairman and chief executive of content management provider FileNet Corp., said in a panel discussion focused on the buying differences between U.S. and European customers. His colleagues on the panel agreed.

While a more conservative European buying attitude may not generate the unbridled enthusiasm that marked the dot-com heyday, many industry experts in attendance believe that a more cautious approach is better for the industry because it reduces the amount of hype around technology, and makes companies focus more on providing solid products and reliable services.

What's more, European companies are more open to trying new, foreign technologies and stick with a technology once they have invested in it, the panelists said.

"U.S. buyers are much more promiscuous," said Allyson Stewart-Allen, director of International Marketing Partners Ltd.

But to break the European market and court its more fickle buyers, U.S. tech companies have to show their commitment by establishing a local presence and partners, the panelists said.

"You have to have people here and a genuine investment into infrastructure," said William Archer, president of AT&T Corp. for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, who moved to Europe 10 months ago to solidify his company's presence in the region.

For companies willing to set sensible targets and make a commitment to new markets, there does appear to be reason for renewed optimism in the growth of the IT sector, industry experts said. However, another sobering element of this market turnaround is that it's not for everyone.

"This is not the case where a common tide will raise all boats," said Benhamou. He predicted that sectors such as security, storage, smart phones, the convergence of voice, data and video and wireless local area networks would drive the market.

Benhamou added that he believes that the industry is in the first cyclical upgrade cycle since Y2K, which will help a wide array of tech businesses.

Barry Sedlik sure hopes so. As California's undersecretary and senior advisor for the Economic Development, Business, Transport and Housing Agency, Sedlik is partly responsible for kick-starting the state's IT industry.

"One of the things we are most concerned with is the competitiveness of California's IT industry," Sedlik said. "Despite the success they have had in the past, tech companies in California face some daunting challenges."

While the administration of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is working on removing obstacles such as bureaucratic red tape, outside investment is being more than welcomed, he said.

"Please take a look at the companies here today and buy their stuff. It will certainly help our tax revenues in the future," Sedlik told forum attendees. His plea come after mentioning California's fiscal woes more than six times in a 20-minute speech, prompting the moderator to suggest that a tin be passed around for donations to the state.

Although experts are predicting a turnaround, some IT industry players, particularly from California, are apparently still shaken from the dotcom bubble burst.

"Losses loom larger than gains ... so we are not as optimistic as we should be," explained Benhamou. "But if we could take a step back and look at where we came from we would feel a lot better today than we do."

The Cal-IT Europe Forum runs through Tuesday in London.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:59 PM

Novell launches desktop Linux for enterprises

Novell Inc. will begin shipping on Tuesday a desktop version of its open source Linux operating system aimed squarely at enterprise users. Linux Desktop 9 is built on the same code base as SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9, a product used by a growing number of enterprises to run their back-office computers, Novell said Monday. The product, which will be available through channel partners, will cost US$50 per system, which includes upgrades and updates for one year.

To lure companies to the new offering, Novell has bundled several products, including its own version of OpenOffice, an open-source based office application that is compatible with Microsoft Corp.'s Office files. The bundle also includes Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser, Novell's Evolution collaboration software, which incorporates e-mail, a calendar, a contact database and task lists into one application, and the company's ZENworks Linux Management product, which allows administrators to easily deploy, configure and manage Linux desktops from a central location.

Novell has lined up microprocessor makers Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. to support the new desktop product.

The product is not about a wholesale replacement of Windows-based systems but rather about identifying where and when an open-source desktop product can be a sensible, cost-effective alternative, Novell said.

Linux Desktop beta users have included call center operators and service counter personnel, according to Novell. The company said users of traditionally high-cost Unix-based technical workstations have also shown substantial interest.

Novell has been intensively promoting Linux as an alternative to Windows ever since the company acquired Germany's SuSE Linux AG last November.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:18 PM

BT buys Infonet in key global expansion move

In a move to strengthen its position as a global provider of IT and networking services, BT Group PLC has agreed to buy U.S.-based Infonet Services Corp., the companies announced Monday. Under the deal, which is still subject to regulatory and stockholder approvals, London-based BT will pay approximately US$965 million [m] to acquire Infonet of El Segundo, California. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2005, the companies said.

Infonet, with operations in more than 70 countries, is a provider of value-added global communication services, such as VPN (virtual private networks) and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode), to thousands of multinational companies, including Bayer AG, Nestlé SA and Hitachi Ltd.

The U.S. service provider's major shareholders are six network operators: the Netherlands' Koninklijke KPN NV, Switzerland's Swisscom AG, Spain's Telefónica SA, Australia's Telstra Corp. Ltd., Sweden-Finland's TeliaSonera AB and Japan's KDDI Corp. All have agreed to sell their stakes, according to a statement released by Swisscom.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:17 PM

Cellcom to launch I-mode in Israel

Cellcom Israel Ltd. and NTT DoCoMo Inc. signed a deal on Monday that will lead to the Japanese carrier's I-mode mobile Internet service being launched in Israel, NTT DoCoMo said the same day. No other details of the alliance were announced.

The deal is the 10th partnership between NTT DoCoMo and a carrier outside of Japan covering the I-mode service and its underlying technology. I-mode was first launched in Japan in February 1999 and currently has about 42 million subscribers in Japan.

Other partners are: E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co. KG in Germany; KPN Mobile N.V. in the Netherlands; Far EasTone Telecommunications in Taiwan; BASE N.V./S.A in Belgium; Bouygues Telecom S.A. in France; Telefonica Moviles Espana in Spain; Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA in Italy; Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications S.A in Greece, and Telstra Corp. Ltd. in Australia.

Cellcom was founded in 1994 and operates a network based on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and is also building a 3G (third-generation) network based on WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access). It has a total of about 2.4 million customers and its two largest shareholders are Bell South Corp. and Safra Group, each of which holds a 34.75 percent stake in the company.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:16 PM

November 07, 2004

Novell Vice Chairman Chris Stone leaves company

After helping Novell Inc. reinvigorate itself last year through the endorsement of Linux and the acquisition of vendor SUSE Linux AG, Vice Chairman Chris Stone has left the company. In a tersely worded announcement Thursday, Waltham, Mass.-based Novell said Stone had "left the company to pursue other opportunities." A Novell spokesman refused to comment further on Friday.

Stone, who was second in command at Novell to Chairman and CEO Jack Messman, was responsible for engineering, product management and alliances. His duties will be taken over by Messman for now, according to the company.

Stone couldn't be reached for comment on Friday.

In a statement issued by Novell, Stone said, "It is with some regret that I have decided to leave Novell and pursue other professional opportunities. I am proud of my work and accomplishments at Novell, but now is the time in my career to do something else, and I look forward to new challenges."

Dion Cornett, a financial analyst at Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC in Chicago, in an e-mail message today called the departure "a negative for both [Novell] and the industry."

"We believe that Mr. Stone was instrumental in pushing Novell toward a strategy of capturing value from open-source software, as opposed to other members of management maybe more inclined toward giving away Linux to fuel demand for [Novell's] other offerings, such as identity management and directory services," Cornett said. "We believe that the latter is a flawed strategy in that [Novell's] other products will eventually face commoditization as well, and giving away the operating system not only sets a poor business precedent, but may even accelerate the commoditization of products higher in the stack."

Cornett wrote that the $2 million severance package, plus health care, given to Stone "suggests that Mr. Stone was asked to resign." The severance details were unveiled in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Novell users were surprised by the move.

George Raetzke, senior systems programmer at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, said, “Hopefully, there is a plan and direction� accompanying the departure.

John Falsetti, senior vice president of information services at Kids Hope United in Chicago, a nonprofit social service agency, said Stone's departure won't matter much to him as a heavy Novell user. He called the move "just more of the same. How many guys have come and gone in the last four years over there?"

Laura Didio, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston, said Stone's departure was "obviously some sort of shakeup ... since Stone was hired back as the heir apparent to be CEO in 2002.

"This spells bad news for Novell, because Stone was obviously well respected and a well-known entity in networking,� she said. “Another theory is that perhaps SUSE is taking over at Novell, but clearly something happened and happened quickly."

Hal Thayer, a Novell spokesman, said the departure doesn’t spell a change in strategic direction by Novell with regard to technology.

Stone joined the company in March 2002 and has been a key leader in moving Novell into the world of open-source software and identity management. He had also worked at Novell previously, joining the company as senior vice president of strategy and corporate development in August 1997 before leaving later for another job.

"We thank Chris for his service to Novell over the past two and one half years," Messman said in a statement. "He made significant contributions to changes in our strategic direction, and his vision and energy will be missed. We wish him well."

Stone was an integral part of Novell's decision a year ago to buy SUSE as it headed in a new business direction. After years of watching Novell lose market share to Microsoft Corp. and other vendors, many Novell users and industry analysts saw the acquisition as a bold attempt to revitalize its middle-aged NetWare line.

Before acquiring SUSE, Novell also purchased Linux desktop vendor Ximian Inc. as it began building its open-source and Linux holdings.

Computerworld 's Matt Hamblen contributed to this report.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 07:39 PM

November 05, 2004

Votes lost and extras counted in e-voting errors

Electronic voting machine problems caused more than 4,500 votes to be lost in one North Carolina county during Tuesday's general election, and gave U.S. President George Bush more than 3,800 extra votes in an Ohio county, according to reports by the Associated Press. In North Carolina's Carteret County, apparent confusion over the storage capacity of UniLect Corp. e-voting machines caused the county to lose 4,530 votes, according to a report by the Associated Press. County officials apparently believed the model of e-voting machine they were using held 10,500 votes, but that model of the machines held only 3,005 votes.

The 4,530 votes lost cannot be recovered, according to an Associated Press story. UniLect owner and President Jack Gerbel was not immediately available for comment Friday. The county Board of Elections issued a short statement saying an investigation by the North Carolina State Board of Elections is continuing.

In the Ohio incident, a glitch in e-voting machines made by Danaher Controls Inc. caused Bush to receive an extra 3,893 votes, more than five times the votes actually cast in the precinct in question.

Unofficial results in Franklin County had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes the precinct. Elections records showed that only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct, according to the Associated Press. Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry by about 136,000 votes in Ohio, according to unofficial results.

A county elections official was not immediately available to comment.

Tuesday's presidential race was close, and was decided when enough votes in Ohio had been tallied for Bush to be declared the winner there.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:29 PM

Nokia plans 40 new handsets to fight sales slip

Nokia Corp. hopes to distinguish its products and regain lost market share by leading the mobile-device market in delivering cutting-edge bells-and-whistles on its new handsets, company executives said Thursday during a daylong meeting in New York with analysts. Next year, Nokia expects 15 percent of the overall mobile phones on the market to include MP3 music players, but it plans to include MP3 players in half of the models it ships. Likewise, it expects two-thirds of its new models to incorporate digital cameras.

Picking up on what it sees as demand for smaller and more modern handsets, Nokia said half of its models next year will be of the clamshell design or have sliding covers. Earlier this year Nokia began adding more clamshell phones to its lineup, after being caught without a mid-range handset with the increasingly popular design.

Espoo, Finland-based Nokia repeated its long-term goal of capturing 40 percent of the mobile device market. Research firm IDC pegs Nokia's current market share at 30 percent, nearly twice that of its closest rival, Motorola Inc.

Nokia forecast overall unit growth in the mobile device market next year of 10 percent, to around 690 million units. Nokia Chief Executive Officer Jorma Ollila said the company intends to grow faster than the market, but did not specify a target. It plans to release 40 new models next year.

Meanwhile, Nokia is trying to trim its development expenses to below 10 percent of net sales within two years, while also accelerating its product development cycles and lowering its overall operating expenses. Nokia started 2004 by missing revenue expectations, as its mobile phone handset sales fell.

"We were able to adjust our operation to the new (industry sales) level -- with some pain, yes, but compared to the whole industry with a very reasonable amount of pain," Ollila said. "When we look forward, I think 'stability' would be the word."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:34 PM

Netease founder no longer China's richest man

William Ding, the founder and chief architect of Chinese Internet portal Netease Inc., is no longer China's richest man after his personal fortune took a substantial hit over the last year, according to a list of China's wealthiest individuals published Friday. With an estimated personal net worth of US$668 million, down from $1.1 billion last year, Ding now ranks No. 6 among China's richest, according to Forbes magazine's China's Richest 200 list.

Ding's diminished fortune cleared the way for Larry Rong, the chairman of conglomerate Citic Pacific Ltd. and formerly ranked China's second wealthiest person, to take the top spot with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion, up from $934 million last year.

The wealthiest technology entrepreneur among the 10 richest people in China is Chen Tianqiao, chairman and CEO of online games provider Shanda Networking Development Co. Ltd., who came in at the No. 3 spot on the list this year, with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. Last year, Chen came in at No. 6 on the list, with an estimated net worth of $490 million.

Chen and Ding were the only two technology entrepreneurs among China's 10 richest. The list of the 10 richest also included people who are involved in real estate, auto parts, animal feed and retail industries.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:30 PM

Nine years in the slammer for convicted spammer

A brother and sister were convicted yesterday of three felony charges of sending thousands of junk e-mails through servers located in Virginia, according to Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The convictions of Jeremy Jaynes, who was sentenced to nine years in prison, and his sister, Jessica DeGroot, who was fined $7,500, were the nation's first-ever felony spam convictions, Kilgore said in a statement. A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was found not guilty, the attorney general said. The cases were heard in Loudoun County Circuit Court.

The case was prosecuted by members of the attorney general's Computer Crimes Unit under Virginia's new antispam law, which took effect last year.

"This is a major victory for Virginians and all Americans," Kilgore said in the statement. "Spam is a nuisance to millions of Americans, but it is also a major problem for businesses large and small because the thousands of unwanted e-mails create havoc as they attempt to conduct commerce."

Jaynes was rated the world's eighth-most prolific spammer by the Register of Known Spam Operations, Kilgore said.

DeGroot was convicted after prosecutors proved she had used her credit card to purchase domain names for the purpose of sending spam. Jaynes surrendered to authorities in Raleigh, N.C., last December. DeGroot turned herself in to authorities in April.

According to the indictment, the spam was sent in 2003 between July 11 and August 9. And spam sent on July 16, 19 and 26 of that year exceeded 10,000 messages during each 24-hour period, according to the statement. Kilgore said those numbers don't reflect the total number of messages sent, because they were based solely on actual complaints made by customers to their Internet service providers.

The indictment also alleged that the sender falsified transmission or routing information to prevent recipients from knowing who had sent the messages and how to contact the sender.

This falsified information is what makes such spam a crime in Virginia, and the volume of e-mails sent during the period is what elevated the charge to a felony, according to the statement.

Jaynes' Virginia attorney, David Oblon, could not be reached for comment.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:46 AM

MSN Music challenges iTunes in Europe

Hot on the heals of Apple's extension of iTunes Music Store across Europe, Microsoft has extended the reach of its MSN music download service to eight more European countries. According a Reuters report, Microsoft now has a music download presence in 17 countries, including 13 in Europe.

Apple currently has coverage in 12 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, as well as UK, France and Germany.

Microsoft is launching download stores in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, and Switzerland. Microsoft launched services in UK, France and Germany in August. MSN music download is also available in Italy and Belgium.

Microsoft MSN's Arndt Salzburg said: "If you take all the new countries, we expect to overtake iTunes very soon because we will have a larger user base to tap."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 12:16 AM

November 04, 2004

Movie studios to launch file-sharing lawsuits

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will begin suing online file-traders this month, pursuing a strategy similar to one employed by the recording industry during the past year. The MPAA's member companies will begin suing people who have swapped digital movie files starting Nov. 16, the MPAA announced Thursday. The MPAA will find people who distribute movies on peer-to-peer (P-to-P) by identifying them through their IP (Internet Protocol) addresses on those P-to-P services, according to the trade group.

The MPAA did not disclose Thursday how many people it plans to sue this month. The Recording Industry Association of America has filed more than 6,200 lawsuits against alleged traders of music files since September 2003.

Dan Glickman, the MPAA's president and chief executive officer, called unauthorized file-trading the "greatest threat" to the profits of the movie industry in its 110-year history.

"People who have been stealing our movies believe they are anonymous on the Internet, and wouldn't be held responsible for their actions," Glickman said in a statement. "They are wrong. We know who they are, and we will go after them, as these suits will prove."

The MPAA lined up support from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America. In a statement, he called for people to use the Internet "responsibly and ethically."

The lawsuits to be filed will seek orders to stop file trading and also will ask for monetary damages, according to the MPAA. Under the U.S. Copyright Act, the MPAA can seek damages of up to US$30,000 for each movie distributed, or up to $150,000 if the copyright infringement is proven to be willful.

Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group focusing on intellectual property law, encouraged the MPAA to pursue only "strategically targeted, appropriate legal action."

"Public Knowledge also firmly believes that simply bringing lawsuits against individual infringers will not solve the problem of infringing activity over P-to-P networks," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement. "First and foremost, it is crucial that the motion picture industry develop new business models that treat the low cost, ubiquity, and speed of the Internet as an opportunity, not a threat."

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties advocacy group, called on the MPAA to pursue reasonable settlements, to focus only on "egregious" infringers and to step up alternatives to lawsuits, including public education efforts. CDT Associate Director Alan Davidson, in a statement, called the lawsuits "an unfortunate, but appropriate, part of protecting artists in the digital age."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:31 PM

Microsoft, Intel team set to conquer U.S. living rooms

Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are joining forces to conquer U.S. living rooms and make further inroads into the coveted consumer electronics space. The two companies on Nov. 8 plan to launch a joint consumer-electronics marketing campaign aimed at selling customers PCs with Intel processors running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, Intel and Microsoft said Wednesday.

The "Digital Joy" campaign includes commercials on TV and in movie theatres as well as a Web site and special living-room setups in 38 malls in and around large cities where shoppers can try out systems supplied by Hewlett-Packard Co., according to the two companies.

The campaign is set to run through December and will cost "tens of millions of dollars," said Shannon Love [cq], an Intel spokeswoman. The tab will be split between Intel and Microsoft, she said.

Windows XP Media Center Edition is a premium version of Windows XP, designed to make the PC the media and entertainment hub for the home, traditionally the turf of consumer electronics makers such as Sony Corp.

Microsoft introduced the 2005 version of Media Center Edition in October and is positioning the software as its best operating system for consumers. In addition to traditional PC tasks, the system can serve music, pictures, video and live television to portable devices, stereos and TVs. Users can use Media Center-based PCs with a traditional monitor and with a remote control and a special user interface on their TV.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:51 PM

Novell counters Ballmer's anti-Linux email

Countering the latest salvo of Microsoft Corp.'s Get the Facts campaign against open-source software, Novell Inc. Wednesday launched a Web site devoted to "unbending the truth" about Linux in the enterprise. Novell Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jack Messman is also in the process of sending an e-mail to Novell customers. In that e-mail, Messman debunked a memo that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent to customers last week. In his e-mail, Ballmer wrote that Windows has economic and security advantages over open-source software and warned that Linux users are fair game for intellectual property lawsuits.

Ballmer's widely publicized e-mail came at the one-year anniversary of Microsoft's Get the Facts campaign, a marketing effort by the Redmond, Washington, software giant that compares Windows favorably with Linux . In the e-mail, as Microsoft has done throughout the campaign, Ballmer cited passages from studies conducted by industry analyst firms that show Windows to be superior to Linux.

In response, Novell accused Microsoft of cherry picking from the analyst reports.

"Microsoft is being very selective in what they are pulling from these studies," said Bruce Lowry, a Novell spokesman. "Microsoft is trying to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the market place with incomplete arguments."

Indeed, contrary to the message Microsoft is trying to get across, the studies don't chide Linux at all, according to Novell. For example, a Yankee Group report comparing the cost of Windows to Linux also says Linux provides "excellent performance, reliability, ease of use and security," Novell's Messman wrote in his e-mail.

However, Yankee Group Senior Analyst Laura DiDio, author of the report, cautioned that Novell may now be quoting selectively from her report to show Linux in a favorable light. You can make a case for either operating system depending on what the individual user's environment looks like, she said.

"Unless you read the whole report, you can take things out of context. ...Novell is trying to use it for their own purposes," DiDio said.

Novell also took issue with Ballmer's comments that no vendor today stands behind Linux with full intellectual-property indemnification. "In fact, it is rare for open source software to provide customers with any indemnification at all," Ballmer wrote. That's wrong, according to Messman. Novell does offer its customers protection from copyright claims.

"If the world were as Microsoft states, Linux would not be the world's fastest growing operating system," Messman wrote.

Novell is not alone in critiquing Microsoft's campaign and Ballmer's e-mail in particular. Dion Cornett, an analyst with Decatur Jones Equity Partners LLC, an equity research firm based in Chicago, wrote in a research note on Monday that Ballmer obviously selected portions of the analyst reports to make his case.

"If the 'independent studies' are as accurate as Ballmer claims, then AOL (America Online Inc.), Amazon (Inc.), Google (Inc.) and Linksys -- all companies that are standardizing on Linux -- must be wrong in how they operate their massive IT infrastructures," Cornett wrote.

Additionally, Cornett believes Microsoft's campaign may have an adverse effect on the company and little impact on open source vendors such as Red Hat Inc. and Novell. "In fact (the campaign) may have the opposite effect of validating Linux as a viable threat to Microsoft's business," he wrote.

Novell entered the Linux business last year with the acquisitions of Ximian Inc. and SuSE Linux AG. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company, for now, is limiting its public response to "Get the Facts" to the Web site and Messman e-mail, Lowry said.

Microsoft officials were not immediately available for comment.

Novell's Unbending the Truth Web site is at: http://www.novell.com/linux/truth/ Ballmer's e-mail is at: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/ Microsoft's Get the Facts Web site is at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts/default.mspx

Robert McMillan in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:44 PM

Japan nets 6,000 drivers using cell phones in 3 days

Japanese police have caught more than 6,000 people using cell phones while driving in the first three days since a new law banning the practice was introduced, Japan's National Police Agency said Thursday. Since Monday, a revision to the country's Road Traffic Act has made the use of cell phones for voice or e-mail illegal while driving unless the driver is using a hands-free system. Police agencies across the country have deployed a total of 35,100 personnel to spot and catch offenders, who are then issued fines. Along with a fine, the traffic violation also comes with a penalty point against the offender's driving license.

Moped riders face a ¥5,000 (US$47) penalty, motorcycle riders and car drivers are penalized ¥6,000 and drivers of trucks and other large vehicles are penalized ¥7,000. Offenders face a ¥50,000 fine should they ignore the penalty.

Police issued traffic violation tickets to 3,645 drivers on Monday, 1,697 on Tuesday and 679 people up to 3 p.m. local time Wednesday to take the total number of those now facing fines to 6,021 drivers, said Isaka, a spokesman for the National Police Agency who declined to give his first name.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:39 PM

MCI reports US$3.4B loss, but says it's back on track (Update)

MCI Inc. reported a $3.4 billion third-quarter loss on Thursday, due mainly to a write-off of the value of its assets, as the company's efforts to recover from its bankruptcy were hampered by stiff competition in the long-distance telephone service market. As the company had warned last month, it took a $3.5 billion noncash charge. The Ashburn, Virginia, company emerged from bankruptcy in April and changed its legal company name to MCI from WorldCom Inc.

The $3.4 billion loss for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compares to a loss of $55 million in the third quarter 2003, it said. Net loss for the quarter totaled $10.65 per share, it said. MCI didn't report a per-share figure for 2003's third quarter because the company was in bankruptcy at the time and its shares were not being traded.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call predicted third-quarter earnings of $0.04 per share.

The telecommunications company reported revenue of $5.1 billion, a decline of 15 percent from the same period last year when it reported revenue of $6 billion.

Nevertheless, MCI said that its cost reduction initiatives are working and that revenues are stabilizing in key business segments. An emphasis on operational execution had produced solid improvements in the third quarter, it said.

The company said its future focus would be on delivering new products and services that use IP (Internet Protocol) technology and continuing its cost-cutting program.

"Pricing is starting to stabilize, quite frankly because there was such severe write-downs last year," Michael Capellas, MCI president and chief executive officer, said in a conference call Thursday. "Secondarily, the take-up of new technology is starting to hit the enterprise space first."

Capellas added that MCI will concentrate on selling Internet, phone and network security services to large corporate customers, while stepping back from residential phone services as prices drop.

"We are not haphazardly exiting markets. We are systemically trying to back off new customer acquisition. How fast the decline comes is a very difficult question to answer," Capellas said.

Sales in the division that serves global corporate customers fell 8 percent to $1.2 billion in the third quarter, while revenue in the division that sells services for homes and U.S. small businesses fell 17 percent to $2.2 billion, MCI said.

MCI's international and wholesale division also fell by 17 percent year-over-year, posting revenue of $1.6 billion.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:38 PM

Symantec pushing into mobile space

Symantec Corp. is making a major push to get its security products into more mobile phones as 3G (third-generation) services and smart phone use spreads internationally, company executives said in Tokyo on Thursday. "The growing levels of adoption of mobile devices mean that we need to protect these with the level of capability that you see in the desktop world," said John Thompson, Symantec's chairman and chief executive officer.

On Nov. 3 the company announced availability of its Symantec Client Security software for two Nokia Corp. phones, the Nokia 9500 Communicator and the 9300 smartphone model, which use the Symbian operating system.

In Japan, where 3G services are already widespread and are continuing to grow, the company is now talking to carriers and handset makers to offer them as yet undisclosed Symantec products, Thompson said in an interview.

"We've met several times with a number of potential partners to show them how to protect their 3G phones. We're working on a broad strategy," he said.

The software for the Nokia handsets provides antivirus and firewall software that is preloaded in the phones' memory cards, and can be undated wirelessly, Symantec said in a statement.

"Small form factor devices as well as PCs need to be protected, and so will 3G phones," said Robert Clyde, Symantec's vice president and chief technology officer.

"Nokia is an acknowledgement of the high importance of this," he said.

Japan's biggest carrier, NTT DoCoMo Inc. is investing heavily in Symbian OS. In December 2003, the operator announced that it was giving ¥37 billion (US$349 million at the time) to Fujitsu Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Motorola Japan Ltd., NEC Corp., Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Sharp Corp. to develop mobile phones with the operating system.

Fujitsu was first Japanese company to launch a Symbian-based 3G handset in the domestic market when it put its F2051 model on sale its in early 2003.

More Japanese makers are coming out with Symbian-based phones. Mitsubishi and Fujitsu said earlier this year they were working together to produce models with the operating system, and in October, Panasonic said it would be selling its X700 model, based on the Symbian OS and Series 60 platform, in Asia.

Both Thompson and Clyde declined to say which Japanese companies they were talking to and declined to comment on the status of the negotiations.

The push into 3G and smart phones comes as part of the company's recently announced "information integrity" strategy that seeks to arm both enterprises and individuals with early warning of and accurate information about potential threats as well as patches and protection, said Thompson and Clyde.

A series of new products announced over the past week by Symantec will be available in Japan next year, but Thompson and Clyde declined to say when.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:30 PM

November 03, 2004

E-voting backers see success, but issues linger

Critics of electronic voting security conceded Wednesday that the number of glitches reported with e-voting machines likely didn't have an impact on the U.S. presidential race. As supporters of e-voting technology trumpeted the apparent success of electronic voting technology for an estimated 40 million U.S. voters in Tuesday's election, Will Doherty, executive director of e-voting watchdog Verified Voting Foundation, noted however that the 1,181 e-voting related incidents reported to the group's Voteprotect.org database may have affected other close races, if not the presidential race.

"So there weren't enough e-voting problems to shift the results of the presidential elections," Doherty said. "Does that mean it's OK to disenfranchise voters?"

In the presidential race, Republican President George Bush defeated Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry, with Bush winning the popular vote by about 3.5 million votes, according to unofficial numbers. More than 114 million votes were cast.

Even though predictions of massive e-voting problems seem not to have come true, e-voting critics won't stop raising concerns, Doherty said. His foundation will use the incidents reported to Voteprotect.org to push for better e-voting machine security, he said.

"(The database) will be helpful moving forward with negotiations with elections officials ... and lawmakers," Doherty said. "Verified Voting Foundation will focus on how we can make voting systems more secure and reliable."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), another group that is critical of e-voting security, will move forward with plans to file requests with election officials to check the accuracy of e-voting machines, said EFF staff attorney Matt Zimmerman.

The relatively small number of reported problems Tuesday won't stop the EFF effort, Zimmerman said. "What we've been trying to say rather forcefully over the past couple of months is the things we're worried about are the things you can't see," Zimmerman said. "A mechanism needs to be put in place where we can see what's going on (inside the machines)."

Zimmerman and Doherty questioned whether voting officials are able to perform independent audits on e-voting machines, rather than simply printing out the same voting numbers as originally reported.

E-voting proponents, however, hailed Tuesday's vote as secure and accurate. The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a vendor trade group, estimated that 40 million U.S. voters used about 175,000 e-voting machines in the election, and said the machines performed with a "minimum of disruptions."

With the performance of e-voting machines this week, questions about the machine's security will "diminish," predicted Bob Cohen, senior vice president of ITAA. "I think the American people accept the benefits of digital technology," Cohen added. "They see that the technology will be put to use to ensure secure and accurate elections, and that's what happened yesterday."

ITAA President Harris Miller, in a statement, said a "small number of largely unsubstantiated reports of problems with machine implementation by self-appointed and often overtly political critics of reform" did not hurt the reputation of e-voting machines.

The reports of e-voting problems in the Voteprotect.org database are unverified, and in some cases, do not appear to be directly related to e-voting technologies. Among the 115 incidents of supposed e-voting problems in Ohio was a report of "rude" voting inspectors and a report of insufficient voting machines available for the people in line in Cuyahoga County.

But the database also contains dozens of reports of e-voting machines breaking down and people leaving without voting because of resulting long lines. People leaving polling places without voting may have had a significant effect on some races, Doherty said.

But the ITAA isn't aware of any significant delays directly caused by problems with e-voting technology, and the number of problems reported are small compared to the votes cast on e-voting machines, said the ITAA's Cohen. "When you consider the fact that you had 40 million voters casting an average of maybe 10 votes, what you're taking about is huge numbers of successful votes," he said.

Most problems related to voting Tuesday seemed to be more "process-based" than technology-related, added Mike Alvarez, co-director of the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project (VTP). Many of the long lines reported Tuesday were caused by issues other than e-voting technologies, including lengthy check-in procedures and record numbers of voters in some precincts, Alvarez said.

"One should be concerned with the entire security of the election process," added Jonathan Katz, a professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology and a member of VTP. "(E-voting machines) make some things easier. They are no panacea -- there are security issues -- but there are security issues with all technology."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:04 PM

Salesforce.com expands integration and customization

At the Dreamforce 2004 Salesforce.com user conference on Monday, the company that says "just say no to packaged applications" continued to expand on its strategy of tightly integrating its hosted solution with in-house enterprise applications. Customforce.com, a new component of the Salesforce.com release, will give corporate developers a toolkit to customize a company’s CRM- or any service-based solution. The toolkit is targeted at those developers who are looking for ways to integrate, track, and manage data and business processes from other enterprise applications -- such as marketing, human resources, or IT -- into the Salesforce.com solution.

Customizations created using the toolkit are accessible through a Web service API for additional integration.

With this release Salesforce.com is also continuing to promote new ways to leverage itself as the core component in an on-demand ecosystem of services. To that end, the company announced a program dubbed On-Demand Marketplace, which amounts to an approved list of 60 vendors and their catalog of hosted services.

All of the vendors on the approved list use Salesforce.com Sforce platform for integration.

The Marketplace will include an interactive rating and user review section and an Sforce certification designation.

Services offered include data warehousing, contact center, e-mail, marketing, ERP, integration, and social networking, to name a few.

The Winter '05 core CRM solution has also been upgraded with a new Installed Products component that will allow a sales rep to capture and store company and competitive product data and services as well as a customer’s previous buying history.

Analytics have been upgraded as well with a Snapshots and Trends component that allows managers to view historical trends.

Sforce, the heart of its customization engine, now includes a lead management API and additional metadata capability to aid developers in designing mobile applications.

Winter '05 Salesforce.com CRM solution and its components will become available on Nov. 15.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:56 PM

Hackers reopen stolen code store with Cisco wares

An anonymous group of malicious hackers reopened an online store that sells the stolen source code of prominent software products and is offering the code for Cisco Systems Inc.'s PIX firewall software to interested parties for US$24,000, according to messages posted in online discussion groups. The Source Code Club reappeared online Monday, using messages to online security discussion groups to announce that it was back in business. The group is using e-mail and messages posted in a Usenet group to communicate with customers and receive orders for the source code of several security products, including Cisco's PIX 6.3.1 firewall and intrusion detection system (IDS) software from Enterasys Networks Inc., the group said.

Cisco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The club first surfaced in July, using a Web page with an address in the Ukraine and messages posted to the Full-Disclosure security discussion list to advertise its wares. Initially, the Source Code Club said it was selling "corporate intel(ligence)" to its customers, along with other unnamed services, according to a message posted in July to the Full-Disclosure mailing list by a group or individual using the name "Larry Hobbles."

The club offered the Enterasys Dragon IDS 6.1 source code for $16,000 and the code for file sharing software from Napster LLC, now part of Roxio Inc. for $10,000. However, the group was forced to shutter its operations just a few days later, citing the need to redesign its business model.

In its latest incarnation, the Source Code Club is still marketing itself as a corporate espionage service, but is also playing on domestic security fears, appealing to "intelligence agencies (and) government organizations" that want to understand exactly what products like Cisco's PIX firewall do.

The group raised the price on the Enterasys and Napster code, to $19,200 and $12,000 respectively, according to the group's message, which was also posted by someone using the name "Larry Hobbles."

The Source Code Club is also offering private membership for those who buy one full copy of product source code, with the promise of access to a list of more source code "deemed to (sp) sensitive to put up," the message said.

Cisco PIX is one of the most commonly deployed corporate firewalls. Version 6.3.1 was first released in March 2003. The current version of the PIX firewall software is 6.3.4, which was released in July.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:55 PM

Nokia trials wireless ticketing in Germany

Some German bus commuters should soon try using their mobile phones as electronic wallets when a new trial of the technology called Near Field Communications (NFC) gets underway. On Tuesday, Nokia Corp. and Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV announced a wireless ticketing trial with RMV, a public transportation authority in Germany. The trial will focus on using a new clamshell Nokia phone, the 3220, that features embedded NFC technology in its cover, and contactless smart card ticketing infrastructure, the companies said in a statement.

The Nokia-Philips announcement follows a flurry of other recent NFC moves by companies such as NTT DoCoMo Inc., Motorola Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

NFC has evolved from a combination of RFID (radio frequency identification) and interconnection technologies. It enables any two devices to connect and exchange information or access content and services simply by bringing them together over a distance of a few centimeters. Operating in the 13.56 MHz range, NFC is also designed to work on other protocols, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, allowing devices to communicate at longer ranges or transfer data at higher rates.

Philips and Sony Corp., which jointly developed NFC technology, teamed in March with Nokia to launch the NFC Forum in a move to promote the standardization and implementation of this new short-range wireless technology.

At the Frankfurt, Germany, trial, RMV customers will use 3220 phones with the NFC shell to buy, store and use bus tickets. The electronic ticketing application, which has been developed together with the Association of German Transport Operators, is stored in an integrated smart card in the phone. Users simply touch their phones against a contactless reader as they enter the bus.

Nokia plans to offer one version of the 3220 model in Europe and Asia, and another for the Americas, the company said. Phones will be available in Europe in the first quarter of 2005 and during the second quarter in the Americas and Asia.

Several other companies hope to tap NFC's potential. Last month, Motorola announced plans to test mobile phones equipped MasterCard International Inc.'s PayPass contactless payment technology. The phones will enable customers to make payments by positioning their handsets next to a PayPass reader equipped with NFC technology.

In August, Samsung said it was teaming with Philips to manufacturer mobile devices that use Philips' NFC chips. Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. have also joined the NFC fray.

The push to develop a wireless noncontact payment system received a big boost at the end of last year when NTT DoCoMo announced a string of trials. The Japanese operator has worked closely with Sony to integrate the latter's Felica noncontact smart card system into a form factor that can be integrated into a mobile phone. The project has tied the two companies under a new joint venture, Felica Networks Inc., that is responsible for developing and licensing the technology interested companies.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:48 PM

Time Warner sees profit dip; may restate AOL figures

Time Warner Inc. reported revenue growth of 5 percent for its third quarter, but net income declined and the company may have to restate its financial results for 2002 in connection with the investigation of accounting practices at its America Online Inc. (AOL) division, the company said Wednesday. It has set aside US$500 million to cover its expected legal costs. Revenue for the three months to Sept. 30 climbed to $9.97 billion, from $9.50 billion a year earlier, driven largely by increased advertising sales. All of its divisions produced slight growth, including its AOL, cable, movie and network TV groups.

Consolidated net income for the quarter declined, however, to $499 million, or $0.11 per share, compared to $541 million, or $0.12 per share, for the third quarter of 2003, Time Warner said in a statement.

Revenue from its AOL division inched up 1 percent from a year earlier, to $2.14 billion. This was helped by a 44 percent increase in advertising sales -- driven in turn by a 70 percent hike in revenue from domestic paid search services. The advertising gains helped offset a 3 percent decline in AOL subscription revenue, Time Warner said.

AOL had 22.7 million subscribers in the U.S. at the end of September, down 646,000 from the prior quarter and down 2 million from the third quarter of 2003. In Europe, the service had 8,000 fewer subscribers than at the end of the second quarter, but 33,000 more than at the same time in 2003.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice continue their probe of Time Warner, mainly over concerns about past accounting practices at the AOL division. The concerns focus on advertising arrangements, the way AOL reported subscriber numbers and the way it handled accounting for AOL Europe.

In connection with the concerns at AOL Europe, Time Warner said Wednesday that it may have to restate its financial results for 2002.

Time Warner also reaffirmed its previously stated financial targets for 2004.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:46 PM

Over 1,100 e-voting glitches recorded

U.S. voters calling in to a toll-free number had reported more than 1,100 separate incidents of problems with electronic voting machines and other voting technologies by late Tuesday during the nationwide election. In more than 30 reported cases, when voters reviewed their choices before finalizing them, an electronic voting machine indicated they had voted for a different candidate.

E-voting backers called the number of reported problems minor in the context of almost 50 million U.S. voters projected to use e-voting machines on Tuesday.

In a majority of cases where machines allegedly recorded a wrong vote, votes were taken away from Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, or a Democratic candidate in another race, and given to Republican President George Bush or another Republican candidate, said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

As of 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, the U.S. presidential race was too close to call.

In all the cases of misrecorded votes reported to Voteprotect.org, the voters were able to change their votes back to the candidates they wanted before casting the final ballot, Cohn said. But in some cases, voters had to correct their ballots multiple times, and in other cases, voters may not have noticed that their votes were miscast, Cohn said.

"We're only hearing from people who caught it," Cohn said during a press conference hosted by a coalition of nonpartisan groups that have questioned the security of e-voting machines. "It gives us this uneasy feeling we're seeing the tip of the iceberg."

The reports of misvoting happened on a variety of brands of e-voting machines, Cohn said. In some cases, e-voting machines may have misread voter intentions when the voter accidentally brushed the computer touch screen, she said.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), representing e-voting machine vendors, called the number of reported e-voting problems insignificant compared to the millions of voters using the systems during Tuesday's election.

Unlike with some other voting systems, such as paper ballots, voters using e-voting machines were able to catch misvotes before casting their ballots, said Bob Cohen, senior vice president at ITAA. "The machines helped them catch the error," Cohen said in response to the reports. "With other forms of equipment, that probably can't happen. It's a great credit to the technology."

Most complaints during Tuesday's election referred to long lines and other problems not related to e-voting technology, Cohen added. Most reports "have very little to do with the performance of the voting machines themselves," he said.

Among the problems reported Tuesday were e-voting machines not booting in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, which caused polls to open several hours late, said the EFF's Cohn. The EFF and other groups filed a lawsuit in Louisiana Tuesday to keep the polls there open later, she said.

Reports of late poll openings came from six to eight precincts in Orleans Parish, Cohn said.

Multiple telephone calls to the Orleans Parish Board of Elections were not answered late Tuesday, and the telephone line to the Louisiana Secretary of State's Office was busy. A representative of Sequoia Voting Systems, the vendor of the e-voting machines in Orleans Parish, didn't immediately return a telephone call.

Elsewhere, 21 ES&S iVotronic machines in Broward County, Florida, failed during the day, said Gisela Salas, deputy supervisor of elections for the county, which was at the center of a presidential election controversy in 2000. However, the county had 5,283 iVotronic machines in place, and the county was prepared for a small number of malfunctions, Salas said. The votes on the malfunctioning machines were recovered, she added.

"There's nothing truly wrong with the machines," Salas said. "We have not lost any votes."

Not all of the more than 1,100 technology-related incidents reported to Voteprotect.org as of 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time were related to e-voting machines. Some related to optical scanners or other technologies, said Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation.

But Doherty and other e-voting critics watching the growing number of incidents suggested that only a small fraction of voters with problems reported them to Voteprotect.org. It may be a number of days before e-voting critics know the extent of the problems, said Ed Felten, a Princeton University computer science professor.

Voters may not know for days about problems such as voting machine numbers not matching the number of voters counted at a precinct, Felten said. E-voting critics may file open-records requests after the election to look for those types of problems, Cohn said.

"The problems I, for one, worry about are the problems that are not yet evident," Felten said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:44 PM

Feds Issue Test Copies of E-voting Software

Federal officials last week released a set of software files submitted by five vendors of e-voting systems and voting verification tools, saying that election officials can use the code and related digital signatures to check whether the software they have bought has been modified without their knowledge. But the so-called reference data set issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology will likely be of little use to state officials for verifying the integrity of e-voting systems being used in tomorrow's election. And the future value of the files could be limited for states that have customized their e-voting software.

The National Software Reference Library's (NSRL) Web site said the files typically can be used only to check software that has yet to be installed on a voting machine. The notice added that "with limited exceptions," e-voting software can't generate digital signatures after it has been installed.

The NSRL notice also said that election authorities using software that has been legitimately altered won't be able to use the reference data set to compare digital signatures. Only signatures derived from the identical product releases submitted by the five vendors are available on the NSRL's Web site.

Vendors that had provided software to the NSRL as of Oct. 22 include Diebold Inc., Election Systems & Software Inc., Hart InterCivic Inc., Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and VoteHere Inc. Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia said it has made several submissions over the past two weeks.

Bellevue, Wash.-based VoteHere said in late June that it had submitted a reference source-code implementation for inclusion in the NSRL. Omaha-based ES&S made a similar announcement in August, and Austin-based Hart InterCivic followed suit in mid-October. North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold couldn't be reached for comment.

The submissions were made after the U.S. Election Assistance Commission called on all e-voting software vendors to provide code to the NSRL. In a letter dated July 13, commission Chairman DeForest Soaries Jr. said having access to the code would "facilitate the tracking of software version usage." Some observers have claimed that vendors have installed patches and upgrades prior to elections without letting officials inspect the code first. Sequoia spokesman Alfie Charles said the NSRL is storing "pristine copies" of vendor-submitted software "to help prepare for the inevitable challenges that take place whenever there are close elections."

But Avi Rubin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who has criticized e-voting security controls, called the NSRL "smoke and mirrors." Rubin said that if e-voting software "is already rigged, storing the [digital signature] hashes only guarantees that the malicious code will be there if the hashes match."

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, called the vendor submissions good news, but only if there are no last-minute changes to the software. "If there are technical problems with software vote counts on election night, it's possible that vendors will, as they have in the past, install patches or upgrades to get the vote count started again," she said.

Election officials will have to keep a public audit log of all software testing and installations to ensure that there's no appearance of impropriety, Alexander added.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:06 AM

November 02, 2004

Surge in interest clogs election monitoring Web site

Election monitors and technology experts at the Verified Voting Foundation expected that their Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) would be a popular source of information about voting mishaps as millions of U.S. citizens took to the polls in the Nov. 2 presidential election -- but maybe not quite so popular. Besieged by requests for access to its sophisticated database of field reports of voting irregularities from across the nation, the public face of EIRS, www.voteprotect.org, slowed to a crawl Tuesday. By Tuesday afternoon, Eastern Standard Time (EST), systems administrators were rushing to bring additional servers on line to accommodate the crush of activity, according to Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation.

EIRS was hastily created by a collection of groups including Verified Voting and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility to help voter protection organizations identify and respond to voting irregularities, according to the Verified Voting Web site.

The system was developed in a "code sprint" during June and July and used for the first time for the primary election in Florida on Aug. 31. Hotline operators at call centers in Florida and Washington, D.C., recorded about 300 incidents at polls that day, according to the Web site.

But that test paled in comparison to Tuesday, when EIRS began collecting information from 23 call centers and 40 legal assistance centers around the country, noting everything from malfunctioning electronic voting machines to voter intimidation and long lines, Doherty said.

Volunteers fielded 50,000 calls in just the first few hours after polls opened on the East Coast of the U.S., logging more than 7,400 incidents before 2 p.m. EST, including about 500 incidents linked to electronic voting technology, he said.

"We're doing triage," Doherty said at the time.

Verified Voting plans to eventually enter all the events reported to its call centers in the EIRS system, but on Tuesday it was focusing on those that required immediate response, he said.

Voteprotect.org offered curious Internet surfers an interactive, color-coded map of the United States that tracked reported incidents of various types of voting irregularities. Visitors could drill down to individual states and counties to see what kinds of problems have been reported to EIRS phone operators.

By Tuesday evening, Eastern Standard Time, response time at Voteprotect.org had improved.

Doherty hopes that the Web site and the efforts of volunteers in the field relieve popular anxiety about the integrity of the election system.

"It's encouraging to see voter protection efforts help by responding to specific incidents and by creating an atmosphere in which people feel the rights of voters are being protected," he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:57 PM

Reports of e-voting problems on voting day

Reports of problems with electronic voting technology cropped up across the country Tuesday, including the key states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, as millions of U.S. citizens flooded polling places for the country's presidential election. Reports of malfunctioning machines, ill-trained poll workers and an inadequate supply of voting terminals were some of the problems reported to state election officials and to a host of groups monitoring the election.

The Verified Voting Foundation logged more than 500 reports of problems with electronic voting machines as of 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and more reports were expected from the western U.S., according to Will Doherty, executive director of the foundation.

Reports of problems were evenly spread across states leaning either toward Democratic challenger John Kerry or Republican President George Bush, as well as in states that could go either way, Doherty said from Arlington, Virginia, where Verified Voting set up an "election protection nerve center" that fielded more than 50,000 calls by mid-day Tuesday.

In Philadelphia, rumors spread quickly that electronic voting machines were showing vote totals before the start of counting on Tuesday, prompting state Republican party officials to cry foul and threaten litigation. Those reports were false because observers misinterpreted an odometer-style vote counter that records all votes cast on each machine and is not reset for each election, said Kenneth Rapp, deputy secretary for regulatory programs for Pennsylvania.

However, at least four polling places in Philadelphia reported malfunctioning of older voting machines from Danaher Controls Inc., Doherty said.

In Columbus, Ohio, overcharged batteries on Danaher Controls ELECTronic 1242 systems kept machines from booting up properly at the beginning of the day. Election workers quickly resolved the problem and those systems were brought online. No polling place had to suspend voting because of the problem, said Jeff La Rue, a spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections.

In Louisiana, state election officials received about 200 complaints of problems with machines, including two confirmed reports of Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines in New Orleans Parish that were not working, according to Scott Madere, press secretary for the Louisiana Secretary of State. New Orleans has about 800 electronic voting machines in use, he said.

Additional problems with Election Systems & Software (ES&S) iVotronic machines occurred in Louisiana after officials improperly formatted ballots so that systems labeled nonprovisional ballots as provisional, and vice versa, he said. Provisional ballots are being given to voters whose registration is found to be in doubt when they go to vote.

The formatting problem will not affect how votes were recorded, and poll workers were instructed to tell voters to fill out the ballots as-is. Election officials will be able to discern the difference between the two groups because there will be far fewer provisional ballots, Madere said.

Poll-worker training was also an issue in Louisiana and other states, according to those interviewed.

In Louisiana, some polling commissioners were not adequately trained to set "lockouts" on electronic voting machines for first-time voters unable to prove their identities at the polls. Under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), such a voter must cast a paper provisional ballot for federal offices until their identity can be confirmed. State laws don't bar such voters from casting ballots for state and local races. Voting machines must be configured to lock out votes for federal offices, but to allow them to cast other votes, Madere said. The confusion over lockouts may have led some voters to conclude that voting machines were being tampered with, or that the machines were preventing them from voting for president, he said.

In other parts of the country, high voter turnout overwhelmed polling places that had just a few voting machines.

In Lake County, Ohio, voters were waiting for about 15 or 20 minutes to vote Tuesday morning -- a rarity in the county -- because there were not enough Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. AVC Advantage electronic voting machines to accommodate a voter turnout that was expected to approach 80 percent, said Linda Hlebak, deputy director of elections for Lake county in Painesville, Ohio.

"We knew we didn't have enough. But we could have doubled the number of machines and still not had enough," she said.

In other parts of the country, including heavily populated Florida, New York and California, wait times were an hour or longer.

But in Florida, where the 2000 election turned into a long-running drama that eventually was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, there did not appear to be widespread e-voting problems by late afternoon in Miami Dade County or Palm Beach County, said Matthew Zimmerman, a staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, who is monitoring the situation with other volunteers in Miami.

The two main problems in those counties, which were at the center of the 2000 election controversy, have been incorrect votes being recorded by the machines and detected by voters when examining the ballot review screen; and the unwillingness of election officials to resort to paper ballots in precincts with long lines to alleviate the demand for the touch-screen machines.

"We're getting a number of cases where people are calling saying their votes got changed on the review screen. That's been the primary machine issue that's going on," he said. "The counties have continued to refuse to let people vote on paper ballots. The problem is people are still waiting in lines that are far too long and some of them are leaving."

Election officials agreed that strong emotions surrounding this year's presidential election and heightened media attention over voter fraud elevated voter sensitivity to anything out of the ordinary.

"These folks are contacting the media as rapidly as they're contacting (state election officials), so reports of voting machine problems are getting out there right away," Madere said.

Despite some "kinks" as voting commenced Tuesday morning, reports of problems were expected to dwindle as the day continued, he said.

"We haven't had any precincts shut down because of voting machine problems. There have been some procedural problems, but nothing that would jeopardize the integrity of the election," he said.

Doherty at Verified Voting disagreed.

"We're seeing a widespread pattern of failures with electronic voting machines. Basically, in at least half the states with e-voting technology there are reports of problems with these machines," he said.

Voters who are using electronic voting machines should review their ballots carefully before casting them. If voters encounter problems, they should request that the machine be taken out of service and ask for a paper ballot, he said.

Juan Carlos Perez in Miami contributed to this report.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 11:22 PM

Qualcomm to build $800M US wireless media network

Mobile multimedia content will get its own nationwide network in the U.S. by 2006 if an US$800 million project by Qualcomm Inc. goes according to plan. The San Diego-based wireless technology company, pioneer of CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), plans to build towers around the country to beam music and video to several types of 3G (third-generation) handsets: CDMA2000-1x, 1xEV-DO (Evolution-Data Only) and WCDMA (Wideband CDMA). The network will use 700MHz radio spectrum for which Qualcomm already owns licenses, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

Cellular operators expect mobile multimedia to be a key driver of 3G use. Qualcomm aims to save them the trouble and expense of building their own infrastructures for delivering those multimedia services.

Through a subsidiary called MediaFLO USA Inc., Qualcomm plans to offer the network as a shared resource for mobile operators and to provide interactive multimedia services in conjunction with the operators. In addition to aggregating and distributing content from TV stations and networks, cable and satellite operators and other providers, MediaFLO will integrate unique content that each cellular carrier would offer to distinguish itself from competitors, according to Qualcomm.

The use of spectrum in the relatively low-frequency 700MHz band will allow MediaFLO to build a network with far fewer towers than are required for conventional cellular systems -- 30 times to 50 times fewer towers, according to Qualcomm. The system will be based on Qualcomm's FLO (Forward Link Only) technology, and the company expects to start operating the network commercially in 2006. It will require about $800 million of investment, some of which may be funded by third parties, the company said. Qualcomm plans eventually to spin off the MediaFLO business to its shareholders.

The MediaFLO network will be able to support 50 to 100 channels of national and local content, including as many as 15 live streaming channels in addition to ones featuring video clips and audio. Qualcomm expects to beat current mobile multimedia quality, offering audio in stereo and video in QVGA (Quarter Video Graphics Array) format at 30 frames per second, according to the statement.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 08:19 PM

AOL to cut 700 jobs

America Online Inc. (AOL) plans to lay off 700 employees, about 5 percent of its U.S. workforce, by the end of the year, several news organizations reported Tuesday. Most of the layoffs will be at AOL's Dulles, Virginia, headquarters, according to the Washington Post, which said some employees have already been warned of the coming cuts.

An AOL spokesman declined comment. AOL's corporate parent, Time Warner Inc., is scheduled to report its third-quarter results Wednesday morning.

AOL has struggled to maintain its subscriber base, as rivals cut access costs and telephone and cable companies compete for customers with dedicated ISPs (Internet service providers). As of June 30, the end of Time Warner's second quarter, AOL had 23.4 million subscribers, down 668,000 from its total a year earlier. The unit has eked out operating income growth in the first two quarters of 2004 despite essentially flat revenue.

Late last year, AOL cut 450 jobs in California, where it closed offices in San Francisco and San Diego.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 06:44 PM

SCO delays Groklaw rebuttal

The SCO Group Inc. is reconsidering its plans to launch an alternative to the Groklaw.net Web site that had been scheduled to go live this week, a company spokeswoman said Monday. Nearly one month after promising to launch the Web site, which was to provide information on SCO's various legal disputes, a number of undisclosed issues are causing the company to have second thoughts on the project, said Janielle Fernandes, a spokeswoman for the Lindon, Utah software vendor. "It's still up for debate whether the Web site will ever go up," she said.

Fernandes cited "legal and management concerns about the content of the Web site" as precipitating the review, but declined to comment on specifics.

After having its every legal move dissected on the Groklaw.net Web site for more than a year, SCO executives last month decided to launch a Web site of their own, devoted to providing information and legal filings about SCO's various legal disputes. The site had been scheduled to go live on Monday, Nov. 1, SCO said at the time.

"We will be launching a Web site in a few weeks to tell our side of the story," said Darl McBride, SCO's president and chief executive officer, while announcing the Web site at the Etre conference in Cannes last month.

In October, SCO officials said the site would use the domain name Prosco.net. That name has now been dropped in favor of SCOinfo.com, should the project go forward, Fernandes said. "The name was changed to support the purpose of the Web site," she said. "The purpose is to provide factual information regarding SCO's litigation, thus the name SCOinfo.com."

On Monday afternoon, SCOinfo.com displayed the identical one-page boilerplate as the Prosco.net Web site. Billing itself as "the right place for SCO intellectual property information," the page provided links to information on SCO's lawsuits with IBM Corp. and Novell Inc. and said, "SCO is anticipating that it will use this site as the future home for all information relating to SCO's pending lawsuits and related issues."

Whether and when SCOinfo.com will ever contain this information is still up for debate within the company, Fernandes said.

SCO is presently involved in a number of legal disputes related to contract claims as well as its assertion that Linux violates its intellectual property, including suits with IBM Corp., Novell Inc., Red Hat Inc., Autozone Inc., and DaimlerChrysler AG.

Started shortly after the 2003 launch of SCO's multibillion dollar lawsuit against IBM, Groklaw began as a Web log for Linux enthusiast Pamela Jones, a paralegal working for a law firm at the time. It has evolved into an open-source project itself, where legal filings are meticulously dissected by an army of volunteers.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 05:36 PM

Ghana gets wired

Having fine-tuned its billing system, Busyinternet Ghana Ltd. is set to publicly launch its Wi-Fi internet access service. "We've sorted part of it," said Bless Adomako, Busyinternet senior IT consultant of their billing software. "(We're) using a shrink-wrapped, commercial off-the-shelf package and customizing and integrating it into our present billing software."

Busyinternet, a cybercenter in Accra, Ghana, hosts new-technology startups as well as conference facilities, a restaurant, a bar, a copy center and an Internet café. It provides Internet broadband access for the startups, and started a free Wi-Fi hotspot service in its restaurant over a year ago.

According to Adomako, the service started as a promotion and allowed Busyinternet to research how people respond to the service, while buying time to correct the billing system. People prefer an automated billing system to a manual one, Adomako said.

Busyinternet plans to launch the service between Nov. 15 and the year's end, Adomako said. The company is also readying the service for roll out in other public facilities.

Wi-Fi may soon start to come of age in Africa. Telkom South Africa Ltd. is nearing the completion of a Wi-Fi feasibility study, including a 15-month pilot project operating in over 100 South African sites. Billing issues were also central in Telkom's feasibility study, according to Steven White, Telkom's product development executive. The company's feasibility study covered technical, deployment and billing issues, he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:02 PM

Nokia to compete in PDA market

Nokia Corp. introduced a new handset with organizer functions and a wide, touch-sensitive screen on Tuesday, opening the door for it to compete in the personal digital assistant (PDA) market. The 7710 will be Nokia's first handset featuring a screen that lets users access functions with a stylus, pitting it against PDA rivals such as PalmOne Inc. But the handset will also function as a souped-up smart phone, featuring a digital camera, radio, Internet browser and music player, and will run using Symbian Ltd.'s operating system. It boasts multimedia functions, such as a pre-installed eBook reader, and a mobile Weblog client that users can view on a 8 centimeter by 4 cm, 65,536-color display.

With its organizer functions and smart phone capabilities, Nokia is hoping the 7710 will allow it to compete in several markets simultaneously.

The 7710 will be available in Asia later this year and in Europe and Africa early in 2005, Nokia said. It's priced at €500 (US$638).

The new multifunction handset was unveiled at the Nokia Mobility Conference in Monaco, along with a number of other products and announcements aimed at filling out the Finnish cell phone maker's product portfolio.

Although Nokia is the world's largest handset maker, it has seen its profits slide in recent quarters as it faces increased competition from rivals offering improved handsets at reduced prices. Additionally, Nokia executives have admitted that they came late to the game for camera phones, and the company has been trying to climb back with a range of camera phone offerings.

On Tuesday the company introduced two more camera phones, in fact -- the 6020, which allows users to send animated multimedia messages, and the 3230, which offers mobile video recording and editing. Both are aimed at the midmarket, and will begin shipping in the first quarter of next year.

Nokia is also courting business users, and in addition to offering a PDA-like handset, the company also announced Tuesday that it is offering a new camera phone with a Near Field Communication (NFC) shell that allows users to access services and exchange information with a touch gesture. The service uses contactless Radio Frequency Identification and interconnection technologies, and allows users to access text message and browsing services by touching tags with shortcuts to the service.

The NFC shell and accompanying 3220 triband phone will be available in Europe during the first quarter of next year, and in Asia and the Americas in the second quarter of 2005.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:18 PM

AOL to personalize search

America Online Inc.'s (AOL) plans to improve and expand its search offerings include moving into personalized search, said Gerry Campbell, vice president and general manager of AOL Search. "We're very focused on search as a company," Campbell said. "We're moving very aggressively in defining new ways for people to search, interact with and store information. It's a gigantic part of the company's focus. There's lots more to come."

One logical area for AOL to move towards in search is personalization, or giving users the capability to customize their search activities, save queries and manage, manipulate and store results, he said. "Personalization is on the horizon. That's a given," he said.

At this stage in the game, it's clear personal search is an interesting space, but it has yet to be proven if it's truly useful for users, Campbell said. While recognizing that competitors such as Yahoo Inc., A9.com Inc. and Ask Jeeves Inc. have made strong moves in personal search recently, Campbell said users can expect AOL to follow suit "in a few months."

"There still has to be some proof as to whether personalizing search is hype," he said. "It's definitely interesting but it still bears proof to see whether it's actually useful, but we're charging after it."

Another area that Dulles, Virginia-based AOL is looking to extend search is towards its AIM instant messaging service. "We're innovating in every way you can imagine with respect to search," he said. "We're leaders in the instant messaging market and there should be some significant offerings there" in the future.

AOL is also working to further integrate into its overall search experience the multimedia search capabilities it acquired when it bought the company Singingfish in November 2003 , Campbell said. "We've done a very simple integration just to get moving. We're applying that technology internally so that we can get a more seamless integration of audio and video search results."

Although AOL has been quiet on the wireless search front, an area in which competitors Yahoo and Google Inc. have made moves recently, it is a segment AOL is paying close attention to, he said. "We don't have anything out in the (wireless search) market yet, but that belies the amount of concentration that we have on it as a company," Campbell said. "You can expect us to have the amount of activity (in wireless search) that is commensurate with a company our size."

The technical capabilities to tap search engines via a mobile device, such as a cell phone, have existed at least since the late 1990s, but the problem has been a lack of consumer demand, Campbell said. "There is still time to get this right. What's going to crack it is someone coming up with a completely new and fantastic experience that people can't live without," he said. "There's an opportunity to create the wireless killer app when it comes to looking for information."

AOL is currently very happy with its arrangement with competitor Google to use Google's search technology to power AOL Web searches, Campbell said. Google is the best at crawling and indexing the Web, and AOL doesn't see any value for itself in trying to duplicate what Google does so well already, he said. However, AOL is continually improving and expanding its own search technologies that it uses to package and add value to the results it gets from Google, he said. "We're applying for (search) patents at almost blinding rates," he said. AOL also displays sponsored-search ads from the Google ad network.

AOL's search efforts apply both to its fee-based online service and to its free Web sites, such as the AOL.com portal, although the company is generally able to offer more search content within its fee-based service, he said. AOL already offers local search, multimedia search, image search, news search and product search, and has acknowledged it is developing a desktop search product which is now in beta.

Overall, AOL, which is owned by media giant Time Warner Inc., has shifted its stance on search in the past several years. Four years ago, search was considered an important albeit not critical area, but in the past two years or so, executives have realized that search needs to be a priority for the company, he said.

"AOL is investing in search because search is the chosen mode for users to navigate the Internet. They don't necessarily want to browse. They want to come in, get what they're looking for and do whatever they'd like to do with it and move on. That's the need we'll be meeting. A year from now, search will be a very familiar but more powerful experience," he said.

As a media company that specializes in establishing tight links with its clients through a broad palette of online services and content, AOL is in a very good position to leverage its customers' interest in search and provide a distinct search experience to them, Campbell said. "We sit at the central spot where we can bring together the worlds of our (Web) users and (online service) members and the media assets we have and the content on the Web," he said.

This is why now at AOL, search is called "the perfect business," Campbell said.

"It's perfect because AOL's legacy of being very consumer, member-centric is well served at the same time the revenue model is well served. When members find what they're looking for, they're happy, and most of the time they're looking for things that can be monetized. There's a tremendous focus on this company at doing this," he said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:02 PM

November 01, 2004

Online identity theft: Many medicines, no cure

As the incidence of online identity theft has steadily climbed in recent months, banks and online retailers have struggled to stay on top of the problem and to protect their customers, whose personal financial information and online account details are coveted by criminals. But as problems like phishing scams change from e-crime phenomenon to endemic online threats, technology companies -- both large and small -- are bringing products and services to market that they claim can end, or greatly reduce, the threat of online identity theft. These are some of the technologies aimed at curbing online identity theft:

• Antiphishing toolbars: These lightweight applications, or applets, were some of the first tools specifically created to stop online scams like phishing. These free programs have been offered to customers by eBay Inc., Internet service providers (ISPs) EarthLink Inc. and America Online Inc. (AOL), and other companies, including GeoTrust Inc. and CoreStreet Ltd. The programs are usually plug-ins adding an extra toolbar to a user's Web browser interface. The programs verify Web site URLs (uniform resource locators) and warn about Web sites that hide their true addresses. Antiphishing tools are effective against phishing scams that use spam to direct Internet users to Web sites controlled by thieves, but designed to look like legitimate e-commerce sites. However, such tools do nothing to secure sensitive financial information online.
• Antiphishing services: Phishing prevention services are designed to spot and thwart new threats, including brand monitoring services such as FraudProtect by MarkMonitor Inc., Symantec Corp.'s Online Fraud Management Solution, VeriSign Inc.'s AntiPhishing Solution and services by NameProtect Inc. Most of these services use a distributed network of sensors to monitor e-mail traffic, news groups and Web domain registrations, spotting new scams, such as phishing attacks. The services promise to enable companies to move quickly to crack down on fraudulent Web sites that use their names and also give customers advanced warning about scam e-mail messages making the rounds.
• Payer authentication and smart cards: Online security advocates often cite smart cards as a cure-all for online fraud. The cards combine traditional plastic credit cards with microprocessor chips that can store far more information about the cardholder than older, magnetic-strip cards. Among other things, smart cards can store PINs (personal identification numbers) or biometric identifiers that could be used at the point of purchase to verify the purchaser's identity, making theft of an account number or credit card inconsequential.

  Smart cards are ubiquitous in Europe, and the U.K. banking industry has recently launched a major, nation-wide rollout of smart card technology through its "Chip and PIN" program, which will replace magnetic-strip cards and do away with signed receipts for "card present" purchases. But banking officials in the U.S. cite a number of obstacles to widespread smart card use, including an existing infrastructure of millions of card readers that do not support the new cards.

• Fraud screening and prevention: Lacking strong authentication at the point of purchase, most credit card companies and merchants in the U.S. name fraud screening technology as their first and best defense against fraud. Companies in this space, including VeriSign, ClearCommerce Corp. and CyberSource Corp., use a variety of filters to analyze transaction patterns for individual consumers or groups of consumers, and to spot suspicious activity. For example, companies might flag a pattern of rapid, high-value transactions and spot discrepancies between the geographical location from which the order was placed and the billing address, or look askance at transactions with different billing and ship-to addresses, according to Julie Ferguson, co-founder and vice president of emerging technologies at ClearCommerce.
• Consumer authentication services: Recent deals between security technology companies and major ISPs and consumer software vendors could bring multifactor authentication technology into the mainstream. In September, RSA Security Inc. and AOL announced a new program called "AOL PassCode" that will encourage AOL customers to use RSA SecurID tokens to protect account information. On the same day, VeriSign announced its Unified Authentication program, which it said will reduce the cost of "strong authentication," such as one-time passwords or hardware smart cards. In October, RSA announced the availability of SecurID for Windows, a secure token that will make it easier for users to log on and off to Windows machines using multifactor authentication, while VeriSign and AOL said they would investigate ways to extend the Unified Authentication program to AOL members.

For now, Passcode and SecurID for Windows haven't been expanded to protect access to online banking or e-commerce services, such as Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes, with which AOL has a relationship through its AOL Music service. But such applications aren't out of the question in the future, according to Ned Brody, senior vice president of premium services at AOL.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:42 PM

Big test for e-voting Tuesday

Tuesday's U.S. general election will not only be a test for the presidential candidates, but also for electronic voting machines. An estimated 30 percent of the U.S. voting population in 27 states and the District of Columbia will use electronic voting machines in the election, in which President George Bush faces Democratic challenger John Kerry. The list of states at least partially using e-voting machines reads like a who's who of critical presidential swing states: the big three of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, plus Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.

With most national polls showing a statistical dead heat between Bush and Kerry, problems with voting technology could play a major role in the election. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have thousands of lawyers ready to swoop in to areas where there is voting controversy. Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation, agrees with pundits who say it could take several days for the U.S. to sort out the winning presidential candidate because of potential problems with e-voting machines.

The Verified Voting Foundation and other groups critical of e-voting machines, often called direct electronic recording machines or DREs, say voting officials have no way to recheck votes cast on the machines. DREs don't give voters any indication of what's going on inside the machine, and without paper trails unavailable in most states Tuesday, voting officials have no way to conduct independent recounts, critics say.

"Election officials are not able to show us the work," said Andy Stephenson, associate director of BlackBoxVoting.org, a group critical of e-voting machines.

While e-voting proponents note that ballot stuffing is not a new trend in U.S. elections, e-voting technology could allow large-scale cheating by changing a few lines of code, Stephenson said. "It's the scale of the stuffing," he added. "It'd be a hell of a lot harder for you to carry in a bag with a million (paper) votes. It's the economy of scale."

Although voting doesn't open up in all 50 states until Tuesday, early voting has been available in several states, and problems with voting technology have already been reported in 16 states, according to the Election Incident Reporting System, operated by the Verified Voting Foundation and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Volunteers reporting e-voting incidents have identified 96 separate incidents, including 44 separate incidents in Florida and 20 in Texas as of Monday, according to the site. No other state had more than five e-voting problems reported.

Among the alleged incidents in Florida so far: voting machines crashing and causing long lines, and voters reporting they'd voted for Kerry but had the machine show them they voted for Bush during the review process. That process allows voters to correct mistakes. More than 300 volunteers will monitor elections for e-voting problems for the Verified Voting Foundation, Doherty said.

But the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), which counts e-voting machine vendors among its members, called e-voting among early voters a "success."

"Returns suggest nothing but the accurate and secure operation of electronic voting machines," ITAA President Harris Miller, said in a statement. "In fact, what we have seen is that the early voting phenomenon, supported by electronic voting systems, continues to grow. People like it, and they have the opportunity to do it because this innovative technology provides election officials with the ability to support numerous ballot types at precincts set up at shopping malls, government offices and other high traffic areas."

Most problems with early voting have not been caused by e-voting machines, added Bob Cohen, senior vice president at ITAA. "What I've heard and seen is the issues have more to do with voter registration and people showing up and not being on the voter logs," Cohen said. "Our contention is (e-voting machines) are very accurate."

Although there were some reports of crashes for computers holding lists of voter registrations in the first days of early voting in Florida, that wasn't an issue with e-voting machines, Cohen added. "That's not a voting machine," he said. "Certainly, computers crash."

One remedy to voting controversy is a landslide election, said Doherty, whose group is monitoring potential e-voting problems. A large turnout could swing the election and undercut any problems with e-voting machines, Doherty noted. Some pollsters and political scientists are predicting a record turnout for a U.S. presidential election.

"If there's overwhelming turnout for one candidate, the problems with the machines are lessened," he said. "The more people who vote, the less likely there will be problems."

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:37 PM

Oracle increases 'final offer' to $24 per share

Oracle Corp. extended what it called its "best and final offer" for rival PeopleSoft Inc. on Monday, increasing its bid from US$21 a share to $24 a share and at the same time eliminating some of the conditions. The Redwood Shores, California, enterprise software provider said the offer, which expires at midnight EST on Nov. 19, would be its last bid for PeopleSoft, potentially ending the 17-month takeover saga. Oracle said its fifth offer would value the acquisition at $9.2 billion.

In addition to offering the cash bid, Oracle said that it would develop and introduce a next generation of PeopleSoft products under the new offer -- PeopleSoft 9 -- and maintain an engineering organization at PeopleSoft's Pleasanton, California, campus.

Oracle said that it's dropping many conditions from its previous offer but keeping its demand that PeopleSoft's board eliminate the so-called "poison pill" provision and related legal barriers. The provision is a mechanism in PeopleSoft's bylaws that lets it inflate its number of outstanding shares, therefore dramatically increasing the cost of an acquisition. Oracle has challenged the legality of PeopleSoft's poison pill in a Delaware Court, and a ruling is expected in coming weeks.

If over 50 percent of the shares are tendered by its deadline, and PeopleSoft's board annuls the poison pill, Oracle said it will complete the acquisition. If it does not receive 50 percent of the shares, Oracle said it will withdraw its offer and walk away from the proposed buy.

However, if the company receives over 50 percent of tendered shares and PeopleSoft's board has not annulled the poison pill, Oracle said it would take the case to the Delaware Court for a decision.

"On November 19 we will see a resolution of this situation," Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley said during a conference call Monday. "We are presenting our best and final offer."

PeopleSoft issued a statement in response Monday, urging its stockholders to take no action until its board meets to consider the amended offer. The board has already rejected four previous offers.

The $24 a share bid is a 60 percent premium on the price of PeopleSoft's stock prior to its offer, Oracle said.

"We believe it represents a substantial premium to the price at which those shares would trade were it not for our offer," Henley said.

The latest bid is below an earlier offer of $26 a share, however. Henley explained the reduction, saying that since the $26 bid PeopleSoft's value has "degenerated" and Oracle has taken into account the cost of PeopleSoft's "customer assurance program" (CAP). The program offers to compensate customers if PeopleSoft is bought by a company that disrupts its product development and support, and was introduced soon after Oracle's initial bid in an effort to fend off the unsolicited acquisition.

The cost of the CAP has been factored into Oracle's latest offer, Henley said.

Following the European Commission's decision not to block the proposed takeover, and the U.S. Department of Justice's failed bid to do so, Oracle called PeopleSoft's board of directors its only obstacle to shareholders considering its offer.

"The time has come to bring this matter to a conclusion by allowing the stockholders to decide," Oracle said in a letter to PeopleSoft's shareholders sent on Sunday.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 09:39 PM

NEC to sell TV-equipped cell phone in China

NEC Corp. announced plans on Monday to begin selling a TV-enabled cellular handset next year in China. The N940 handset will let cell-phone users watch up to 60 minutes of analog television while making and receiving phone calls, said Akiko Shikimori, a spokeswoman for NEC in Tokyo. NEC expects the phone to be the first of its kind to be made available in China, she said.

The N940 will work with GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) networks. It has a 2.1-inch touch-screen LCD (liquid crystal display) that can display 260,000 colors and comes with a stylus, Shikimori said. It will be available in China before the end of March 2005, she said.

NEC also plans to introduce the N840 in China, a cell phone equipped with a 2-megapixel camera, Shikimori said. Due to hit stores before the end of the year, the N840 features a 2.2-inch 260,000 color TFT (thin film transistor) LCD and has a 1-inch secondary screen that supports 65,000 colors. The N840 also has an MP3 player function, supports short-range Bluetooth wireless connections and has a miniSD Card slot, she said.

Pricing for the N940 and N840 handsets has not been finalized, but Shikimori estimated both handsets will be priced around 3,000 renminbi (US$362).

The introduction of these two handsets comes as NEC aims to double the number of cell phone models it sells in China within the next five months. It currently sells around 10 handset models in China and aims to expand that to more than 20 models, including the N940 and N840, by the end of March, Shikimori said.

While NEC has typically focused its products at the high-end of the cell phone market with models like the N940, the company plans to increasingly broaden its range to address the middle-range of the market, Shikimori said. NEC does not plan to offer low-end handsets in China, she said.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 04:01 PM

Macromedia introduces publishing tool for eBay

Macromedia Inc. plans to announce Monday a special version of its Contribute Web publishing desktop application designed to automate and simplify the creation and modification of eBay Inc. eBay Stores. Developed by WebAssist.com Corp., a creator of extensions for Macromedia products, Contribute 3 for eBay is designed to let eBay Store owners create, update and customize their stores' content and design through a visual editing interface designed for non-technical users, said Erik Larson, director of product management at San Francisco-based Macromedia. At eBay Stores, eBay users can feature in an online storefront the products they have for sale at the giant auction site.

WebAssist.com used the eBay API (application programming interface) to create this special version of Contribute. The eBay API lets developers link applications directly with the eBay database through XML. With the eBay API, developers can create eBay applications that feature a custom interface, special functions and operations beyond the regular eBay interface.

Contribute 3 for eBay requires no programming skills and leads users through step-by-step wizards for designing an eBay Store's logos, images, product categories and product search, among other things. The product features about 800 templates for eBay Store pages.

Ken Mullinax, who runs two eBay Stores with his wife from Fort Smith, Arkansas, has been beta-testing the product and finds that it lets him perform certain Web publishing tasks more quickly and to do things he didn't know how to do manually, such as featuring dynamically changing information regarding the status of active bids. "It's very useful, especially for people who don't really know anything about making Web pages or about HTML," he said.

Ultimately, how truly useful this product is for him will be determined by the effect it has on his sales. After testing the product for several weeks, he said it is too early to know. "That's really the bottom line: being able to sell more because of the features in this software," said Mullinax, whose store, Doc of the Bay Auctions specializes in leather goods. His wife's store, Sandy's Mid-America Leather-n-More, also sells leather goods.

One thing Macromedia should fix as soon as possible is matching its color themes with those provided by eBay, Mullinax said. "My store's color theme is green, and the greens they offer (in Contribute 3 for eBay) don't match, so I had to go in after I made the page with their product and manually change all that code. That was a pain in the butt. The same thing with my wife's store," he said.

Mullinax reported the issue to Macromedia and got an e-mail response saying they realized it would be a very good idea to match the color themes of the product with the color themes of eBay Stores, but as of Friday of last week the issue hadn't yet been addressed in the latest beta version, he said. "Other than that, it's fabulous," he said.

An analyst sees the product fulfilling a need for a tool to help eBay Store owners improve the look of their stores.

"This has the potential to be a fairly significant product, because one of the central issues for the eBay Store (owners) is a strong interest in selling products online but a lack of awareness about how Web page design actually works," said Eric Peterson, a Jupiter Research analyst. "What you end up with is lots of things to buy and sell, but poorly presented in the Web pages. The average eBay seller would benefit dramatically from the Contribute product."

Contribute 3 for eBay is slated to ship in mid-November. It will cost US$99 for eBay Store owners and will be available at the Macromedia Online store. It will also be available as a free upgrade for existing Contribute 3 customers as a download from the WebAssist Web site.

WebAssist is developing a similar eBay extension to Macromedia's Dreamweaver, an application for building sophisticated Web sites and online applications. That Dreamweaver extension will be available also in mid-November, directly from WebAssist, for less than $200, a Macromedia spokesman said.

Macromedia will make the Contribute 3 for eBay announcement at its Max 2004 conference in New Orleans.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:36 PM

Crackdown closed 18,000 Internet cafes in China

A high-profile government crackdown on Internet cafes in China resulted in the temporary closure of 18,000 Internet cafes between February and August, but few cafes were closed permanently, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The crackdown on Internet cafes that took place earlier this year was led by China's Ministry of Culture and was principally targeted at those cafes that illegally admitted juveniles, operated without a license, or allowed users to access or spread information deemed undesirable by authorities.

In their hunt for Internet cafes that were violating Chinese law, officials inspected 1.8 million [M] cafes, Xinhua reported, quoting a ministry official. Of that number, 18,000 Internet cafes were cited for violations and ordered to close their doors until the problems had been fixed. A smaller number of Internet cafes -- 1,600 -- were shut permanently by officials as part of the crackdown, it said.

Officials also levied fines totalling 100 million [M] renminbi (US$12.1 million [M]) on Internet cafes for allowing children to play violent computer games, Xinhua reported.

Internet cafes are a popular means of accessing the Internet in China. The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) estimated in a July report that 22 percent of the China's 87 million [M] Internet users rely on Internet cafes as their primary means of getting online.

That percentage is up slightly since January, when CNNIC estimated that 20.3 percent of China's Internet users, which then totalled 79.5 million [M], relied on Internet cafes as their primary means of accessing the Internet.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at 03:34 PM