aaron spelling

Over the last 10 years, IT has moved further and further outside the firewall. Starting with ASP (application service providers) and moving to multitenant SaaS (software as a service) on-demand applications, and now into cloud-computing environments, the status of on-premise IT has shifted from being a necessity to an option.

An interesting factor in this shift is the customer assumption that SaaS, like open source,aaron spelling has an assumed value, but ultimately, the fact that it's cheaper to run and manage is what will continue to drive adoption.

I had a good conversation at the SaaS Summit on Thursday with Treb Ryan and John Rowell, respectively CEO and CTO of OpSource, a provider of SaaS and Web applications for companies offering on-demand services.

The big question for me was, what is SaaS when cloud is all the rage? Is it a subset or just another classification for the same thing?

Ryan told me that "SaaS is the business version of cloud computing," meaning that cloud services such as Amazon.com's EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) offer great value but lack features required in the enterprise. Service-level agreements and compliance are simple examples.

Cloud versus SaaS in the enterprise

According to Ryan, the multitude of big vendor announcements of cloud services haven't filled the enterprise gaps. In the last six months, vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems have announced private or on-premise clouds, but you can't actually buy cloud services from any of them.

This isn't just about being cheaper and faster. It's about the way people interact with technology. User expectations are dramatically different for cloud services:


Immediacy
Ubiquitous access on any platform
API--if you can access data on the human level, you need to be able to access it via API
The ability to collaborate on data

So how does this change over time?

According to Ryan, "we're still talking about stuff at the hardware level--its much more about data and integration of applications. The underlying infrastructure shouldn't matter, as long as there is a programmatic and human way to get to the data."

Disaster recovery, compliance, and enterprisey features are where the growth is in the near term. You have to have an SLA and support for true enterprise-class applications. Amazon will probably do this over time, but right now, you have no real option. Rowell pointed out that for Amazon to offer these services would add significantly overhead and likely cause the price point to rise significantly.

More mature enterprise applications will all move to the cloud eventually, but the process will take time. Developers will get better about developing around the limitations of cloud computing.

As Web companies get decimated by the economy, developers who have the cloud-scale experience will end up with "real jobs" and connect with more formally trained software developers. The enterprise will become empowered as developers become better trained.

omni national bank

This is part four of a four-part series. Here are part one (the launches), part two (the panels), and part three (the parties).

So there are just a few hours left before I have to head to the airport and hop a flight to Austin for this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival, and I wanted to take up just one more blog post to talk about what the week's big trends are going to be. Remember last year when everyone kept asking, "So what's this year's Twitter?" and then it didn't happen? Yeah. It won't happen this year, either.

The breakout Web app at SXSWi 2008 was arguably Sched.org, which one of the founders of music blog aggregator The Hype Machine created as a way to let conference-goers organize their agendas. But its event-centric focus meant that it didn't catch on the way Twitter did in 2007. I'm pretty sure we won't see another Twitter-like breakout this year, and I think most veteran SXSWi-goers would agree. That was a case of the perfect time and the perfect place, and two years later it's still the dot-com du jour. You don't see something like that every year.

That said, we may see some moderate SXSWi stars: Loopt, Brightkite, Whrrl, and FourSquare are all going to be gunning for the top spot in location-based social networking at a conference where finding out where everyone goes after-hours is crucial.

Expect a lot of talk about the future of media and entertainment. Newspapers are dying, Twitter's all over the news as a form of media consumption, and the digital TV and movie wars are raging like 300. You'll be hearing more from me on this one.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I wouldn't be surprised if the economic recession took a back burner at SXSWi. omni national bank At a more buttoned-up conference like the Web 2.0 Expo, which is happening later this month in San Francisco, I imagine it'll be front and center. But SXSWi is full of innovators and dreamers, and the what's-next focus may mean that many speakers and panelists opt to simply accept the fact that budgets are tight and times are hard, and instead target the future. Whether that comes across as hardy optimism or just out-of-touch, well, we'll have to see.

See you in Austin!

kron4.com

OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there's interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world.kron4.com

And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That's the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge.


(Credit: CNET News)
Good idea but, well, maybe another day.

As I sat in a cavernous ballroom in San Francisco's Westin St. Francis Hotel scribbling down notes, it dawned on me that I was one of, literally, a handful of people listening to the lecturer. At most, there were 10 or 15 of us--a pity because as he faced a sea of mostly empty seats, Randy Bias, a technology strategist for GoGrid, a supplier of cloud computing infrastructure,kron4.com offered up a convincing brief on the energy-saving advantages of virtualization and why it makes sense to offload server functions to the cloud.

He was followed on stage by Adrian Bowles, a director at Datamonitor, who was equally eloquent about why there are compelling business reasons to rip up the procedures of hardware provisioning that IT followed until the recession (some call it a depression) hit. "The old days of 'buy it, plug it in, and run it' are probably gone forever," Bowles said, proceeding to lay out a hard-headed case on behalf of going green.

By then, I counted eight people--eight--in the ballroom (not including the speaker). Most of the folks attending this two-day kaffeeklatsch couldn't be bothered with a topic that obviously bored them silly. No matter that green tech at its most basic is technology done with a low environmental impact. For some reason, a discussion of low-energy technologies, virtualization, and improved cooling techniques weren't enough to hook them.

As they used to say back in my Brooklyn neighborhood, whaddya gonna do? But truth be told, I was puzzled by all the no-shows. It wasn't as if the other sessions being held at the same time--"SaaS marketing in a downturn" and "Architecting and delivery for SaaS success"--were so much more thrilling.

Could it be that "green" remains too squishy a concept for most of these red-blooded show-me-the-money types? I buttonholed one attendee in a hallway, who agreed as he was munching down a free ice cream provided by the show's sponsors.kron4.com But the proverbial man on the street interview doesn't suffice.

I heard it said at one of the sessions how IT compensation plans now hinge on how successful you are doing projects faster and doing them more inexpensively. That's why SaaS advocates believe their timing couldn't be any better. Maybe that's misplaced optimism; we'll see as the year progresses.

muff

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Gartner has tallied the global smartphone sales by operating system, and the results put Symbian as the top dog with market share of 47.1 percent with RIM's BlackBerry OS a distant second at 19.5 percent. muff

Here's a look at the figures for the fourth quarter:




And 2008:




The statistics are a very relevant followup to my post on Wednesday trying to sort out what platforms developers will ultimately pick. After all, each of these platforms will have marketplaces and there are only so many developers. And all of these platforms will be vying for share in what is expected to be a down market. IDC said Thursday that it expects global mobile phone shipments to fall 8.3 percent in 2009. So-called converged device shipments are expected to increase 3.4 percent globally.

What's notable is that our unscientific poll revealed that few people saw Symbian as an operating system worth betting on.

Based on market share it appears that developers should be focused on creating applications for Symbian,muff Research in Motion, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone and iPod Touch as a turbo charge for growth. Palm remains too much of a wild card.

However, that decision isn't all that easy to make. Excluding Symbian, the mobile operating systems are bunched together in market share. For 2008, Mac OS X had growth of 245.7 percent, according to Gartner. The BlackBerry platform had the second best growth at 96.7 percent. Clearly, growth dictates focusing efforts on those two platforms.

Other notable points from Gartner's tally:

Fourth quarter global smartphone units were 38.1 million, up 3.7 percent from a year ago. For 2008, 139.3 million smartphones were sold, up 13.9 percent from a year ago.

Nokia had market share of 40.8 percent in the smartphone market at the end of the fourth quarter with RIM second at 19.5 percent. Apple had 10.7 percent.

In the fourth quarter, Linux-based smartphone sales were up 19 percent from a year ago due to Android-based T-Mobile phones.

steam down

Amidst the crowd of peer-to-peer file-sharing options comes an attempt to return file-sharing to its utilitarian roots and away from legal quagmires by emphasizing file-publishing. Free and open-source, LittleShoot is the brainchild of Adam Fisk, a LimeWire developer who wants LittleShoot to be "like Google for files instead of Web pages." steam down


LittleShoot manages torrents as well as scouring the Web for most major file formats.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
Where most P2P programs are standalone clients, LittleShoot is a browser plug-in like QuickTime or Shockwave that should work with all major browsers. It utilizes an AJAX-based interface at LittleShoot.org to search, publish, and download files. Once you've downloaded and installed the plug-in, it will take you to the LittleShoot.org search page unless you opt out. From there, entering any search term will return results with hits from YouTube, IsoHunt, Flickr, Yahoo, and LimeWire. A SafeSearch option attempts to restrict inappropriate content.

The most recent version introduces torrent-handling abilities. Check out any torrent site, download the torrent, and LittleShoot will automatically start downloading it. LittleShoot lacks advanced features like throttling, but for a basic set-it-and-forget-it torrent client, it's not too shabby. Helpful links on the side make it easy to Twitter or Facebook the torrent, and a drop-down menu gives you access to dozens more sharing options.

Non-torrent files found by LittleShoot will open in a new window, but can't be downloaded directly.

Unfortunately, the publishing option wasn't working when I tested it.steam down When you click "Browse," you can search your hard drive for files to share. Once you've chosen a file, you can tag it--however, the JPG and WMV files I tried to upload didn't work. Even with these drawbacks, LittleShoot looks like an interesting attempt to demystify file-sharing by making it more accessible than it's been so far.

the national society of high school scholars

Is it already 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee authored "Information Management: A proposal" and set the technology world on fire?

Back in 1989, Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside of Geneva, Switzerland. On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs.the national society of high school scholars People were coming and going at such a clip that an increasingly frustrated Berners-Lee complained that CERN was losing track of valuable project information because of the rapid turnover of personnel. It did not help matters that the place was chockablock with incompatible computers people brought with them to the office.


"When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost. The introduction of the new people demands a fair amount of their time and that of others before they have any idea of what goes on. The technical details of past projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a detective investigation in an emergency. Often, the information has been recorded, it just cannot be found."

So he got to work on a document, which is amazing to read with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. But it would take Berners-Lee another couple of years before he could demo his idea. the national society of high school scholars Even then, the realization of his theory had to wait until the middle of the 1990s when Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen popularized the notion of commercial Web browsing with Netscape.

gainesville sun

I honestly don't know whether Om Malik's blog site, GigaOM, is intended to be informative or merely entertaining. I pointed out a previous example of the overwrought rhetoric that permeates that site last September (in the context of Comcast's then-new usage cap policy), but generally, I try to ignore the nonsense there for the same reasons that I ignore talk radio.gainesville sun

But like it or not, GigaOM is widely read, and sometimes when a post there bears directly on a market that's important to me, I can't bear to let it go. This is one of those times.

On Thursday, a GigaOM staffer wrote a piece titled "Can Intel Thrive in a Post x86 World?"



A slide from Fred Weber's keynote presentation at Microprocessor Forum 2003 showing how x86 will evolve into systems from big servers down to handheld consumer devices.

(Credit: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.)
The headline is preposterous from beginning to end. It has two implications just in the eight words of the title: that Intel's ability to "thrive" faces any imminent threats, and that the importance of the x86 architecture is declining.

In January, the same staffer wrote a piece titled "Netbooks and the Death of x86 Computing" which reached the fantastic conclusion that Netbooks would "destroy the hegemony of x86 machines for personal gainesville sun computing."

Well, as I pointed out just a few weeks later (in "The Netbook is dead. Long live the notebook!"), when the Netbook phenomenon ran up against the dominance of Intel and Microsoft in the PC market, it was the Netbook that died instead. Even at a $300 price point, people still want full PC compatibility.

Yes, there are companies like Freescale (the subject of the January post on GigaOM) and Nvidia that are looking to push the ARM architecture into the Netbook space. But that idea never made much sense, and now that Intel and TSMC are working together to get Intel's Atom x86 core into lower-cost SoC (system on chip) products, the ARM architecture will eventually have to retreat into the shrinking niche for supersmall, supercheap phones and consumer electronics gizmos for which x86 compatibility is of negligible value.

See, we learned a long time ago--those of us who cover this industry professionally, not just as a random assignment for some random blog--that the instruction set architecture (ISA), per se, doesn't matter any more.

The choice of ISA was a big deal in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the extra complexity of an x86 instruction decoder was a large fraction of the total complexity of a microprocessor. That's where the conflict between RISC and CISC came from.

But by the turn of the century, ISA complexity was almost a dead issue, and that coffin's final nail was pounded in by the keynote speech of then-Advanced Micro Devices CTO Fred Weber at Microprocessor Forum 2003, an event I had the honor of hosting.

In his talk, "Towards Instruction Set Consolidation," Weber made a simple point: "Technology has passed the point where instruction set costs are at all relevant."

Even then, three generations of process technology ago, the "x86 penalty" was down to a couple square millimeters of silicon. Today, the comparable figure is about 0.25 square millimeters. Not zero, certainly, but not a significant concern for chips that are a hundred times larger.

In short, ARM chips aren't cheaper or more power-efficient because of their instruction sets; they're like that because they're designed to be. And anything that an ARM chip can do to save cost or power can also be done by an x86 chip.

So there can't ever be a time when the world moves beyond x86.gainesville sun That's 1980s thinking, just plain ignorance of what may be the most important trend in the microprocessor industry.

The rest of Thursday's GigaOM post is a hopelessly self-contradictory muddle that fails to reach any clear conclusions. I'll just quote one more line near the end: "But the PC will be just one small (and shrinking) battleground to keep x86 relevant, amid a more mobile, visual, and power-sensitive world."

Current economic woes aside, the PC market is hardly shrinking. You know what's shrinking? The PC! As the PC shrinks, the PC market will grow. The MID (mobile Internet device) market isn't much to speak of right now, for example, but once MID makers figure out what to build, MIDs will become more popular.

And seriously, is anyone really not clear on the fact that the Apple iPhone is a computer? It isn't an embedded system. An embedded system is one in which the presence of a microprocessor is functionally irrelevant to the user. When a gizmo exposes its programmability to the user, it's a computer.

What else is the App Store but the visible manifestation of the iPhone's programmability?

Now, ARM isn't dead yet. The iPhone uses an ARM processor because there's no x86 processor that would work as well in that system. ARM processors will probably see at least two more generations in cell phones just because there's so much ARM-based software out there (including all the software on the App Store).

But somewhere around 2012, we're going to see x86 chips poking into that space. The value of instruction set compatibility with the PC market will persuade developers of new cell phone platforms to go with x86 chips, and eventually even established systems like the iPhone will switch over.

So not only are x86 chips selling into a growing PC market, they'll eventually start eating into ARM's own strongholds. That can't be bad for Intel.

ktvu.com

Editor's note: This guest post by Drexel University researcher Keith Sevcik is in response to statements made by California assemblyman Joel Anderson in a Q&A conducted earlier this week with CNET News.
ktvu.com
California Assemblyman Joel Anderson wants to censor Google Earth and other satellite mapping services from providing detailed images of sensitive areas.

Under the guise of preventing terrorist attacks, the bill seeks to blur satellite imagery of government buildings, medical facilities, schools, and places of worship to remove "air duct"-level detail from the images. If Mr. Anderson's claim--that only "bad people" want to know that level of detail--is true, then count me among them.

I am a robotics researcher at the Drexel Autonomous Systems Lab (DASL) in Philadelphia. At DASL, we develop flying robots and ground vehicles to help emergency responders in disaster recovery and search and rescue.

One of the biggest challenges facing urban rescue robots is navigating city streets, and flying in and around buildings. Satellite images and pictures of buildings were once hard to come by. We often used street maps or low-resolution terrain maps to plot the path of our robots.

With these maps, you could easily tell that your robot was driving through the parking lot behind the school. However, they don't show the street lamp in the robot's way or the telephone wires it's about to fly into. Google Earth and similar programs put these tools at our fingertips, allowing us to focus on building and programming robots. ktvu.com

Without a doubt, these services have advanced the field. Publicly available images are used in computer simulations to make realistic-looking buildings and pinpoint a robot's location. Robotic planes can match onboard camera views to satellite images, showing the extent of damage to a disaster area. Robotic helicopters use them to test window-tracking algorithms in realistic environments.

These are a few of the many applications that have aided in cleanup after hurricane Katrina, fighting wildfires, and building the world's first autonomous cars.

By saying "there are no other uses for knowing on a map where there are air shafts," Mr. Anderson simply ignores the widespread use of these technologies by academia. Enacting this bill would effectively set robotics research back 10 years--to times before realistic photos were readily available. In trying to prevent terrorism, he is actually preventing the advance of search-and-rescue technology.

wlex

British adventurer and bank dynasty heir David de Rothschild plans to sail from San Francisco to Australia--in a boat made from discarded soft-drink bottles. wlex

No sharp epoxy smells greet us on San Francisco's Pier 31 when we go to visit de Rothschild on a sunny weekday afternoon. Instead, popping sounds from bottles being re-inflated echo like a huge popcorn machine in the northern end of a hangar. This is where the strange vessel, called "Plastiki," is being built.

In part of this hangar the size of a football field, 12,000 recycled bottles donated by the Waste Management company are being washed, cleaned, and pressurized for their new role--acting as flotation devices in the two pontoons of the 60-foot high-tech catamaran.

"If we really want to move from Planet 1.0 to Planet 2.0, we need to really start taking action and stop just talking," de Rothschild says as he arrives at the construction site.

The tall, bearded 30-year-old--a charismatic scion of the British Rothschild bank dynasty and the youngest British person to ever reach both the North and South poles--demands attention as he circles the busy site.

He runs the Adventure Ecology educational organization and is the mastermind behind the Plastiki project, which, among other things, aims to change people's perception of garbage. Today, most plastic bottles in the U.S. are not recycled, according to environmental organizations, and instead end up in the world's landfills and oceans.

"Thirty-nine billion plastic bottles are consumed in the U.S. every year," de Rothschild says. "Only 20 percent are recycled. Imagine what that is in terms of resources."

The lofty goal of a voyage to Australia has spurred a number of inventions. The skeletal hull, decks, and cabin of the boat, for example, are made of composite Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic panels consisting of layers of self-reinforcing PET skins, a woven fabric made of reused plastic. wlex

"What we have been exploring with is biocomposites, bioglues, biopolymers," de Rothschild says, "things that are not just going to be positive for this project, but have ongoing implications."

But isn't it risky to experiment with these new advanced solutions while floating in the Pacific Ocean?

Plastic at a glance
15 billion pounds of plastic are produced in the U.S. every year. Only 1 billion are recycled.
Read more

Making a year's worth of plastic water bottles in North America alone requires about the same amount of oil needed to fuel 100,000 cars.
Read more (PDF)

Plastics could take over as the dominating material in the oceans. In the Central Pacific, there are up to 6 pounds of marine litter to every pound of plankton.
Read more

In the oceans, plastics kill at least 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles each year.
Read more
"Everything is tested with engineers," says de Rothschild, who in 2007 was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. "To really change our planet, to become a smart planet, we have to see leadership, passion, and people taking certain risks."

One of the inspirations behind not only the name Plastiki, but the adventure itself, was Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon Tiki expedition across the Pacific in a reproduction of an ancient Inca raft. wlex

But the Heyerdal connection goes deeper. One of six crew members for a leg of the 11,000-mile journey across the Pacific to Sydney, Australia, is actually Heyerdahl's granddaughter, Josian Heyerdahl.

An array of green gadgets will fill the catamaran: flexible solar panels, two wind turbines, and a trailing turbine generation and propulsion system. The vessel will also house a vacuum water evaporator for desalination and a urine-to-water recovery system.

De Rothschild says the crew probably doesn't need all that equipment, but the raft can nonetheless serve as a platform for showcasing solutions to ecological problems. He says the Plastiki project costs more than he would like (he doesn't want to disclose figures), but he is getting full sponsorship from watch manufacturer IWC Schaffhausen and skin products company Kiehl's, as well as computer technology from Hewlett-Packard.

"HP shares David's belief that through greater awareness of our global environment, people can be inspired to rethink how they can live their lives in a more sustainable, environmentally responsible way," Hewlett-Packard spokeswoman Marlene Somsak said in a statement.

The expedition, which is due to take off in "a few months," according to de Rothschild, will be accompanied by the launch of a global design competition, sponsored by Adventure Ecology's Sculpt the Future Foundation. The contest will solicit recycling solutions, with winners getting grants. De Rothschild wants people around the globe to see used plastic as a resource. wlex

"The expedition of going from A to B is only the beginning," he says. "If I can build a boat made entirely of materials that are fully recyclable materials and cross the ocean, why can't we build everyday household items that are cradle to cradle, rather than cradle to grave?"

jack dreyfus

David Nelson, the 15-year-old co-founder of the free site Muziic, idealizes Napster creator Shawn Fanning. But that doesn't mean he's going to run his business the same way. jack dreyfus

Muziic, which launched two weeks ago, is a music service that piggybacks on YouTube. Nelson's software rounds up YouTube's music videos and enables users to sort and add them to playlists as if they were MP3s. There's no messing around with YouTube's search engine, videos, or advertisements.

There's little about Muziic that compares to Napster, the peer-to-peer service that helped demolish the traditional music business and usher in a new digital era. Yet, Napster in its original trailblazing form didn't last long. The site, some would argue, doomed itself by defying copyright law. For Muziic, Nelson has more modest goals and higher hopes.

Nelson, who lives with his parents in Bettendorf, Iowa, about 60 miles east of Iowa City, said: "We knew when we started out that the key was to develop something legal."

But the question of the site's legality is still unanswered. Mark Nelson, David's father and Muziic's co-founder, acknowledged this week that Muziic was built without the consent of YouTube or any of the major recording companies. What's unclear is whether Muziic complies with the terms of service for YouTube's API or whether the big record companies will object on the basis of copyright.

Last weekend, a YouTube spokesman said that after a preliminary review of the site, Muziic appears to violate its terms of service. The spokesman didn't specify how. On Thursday, Mark Nelson, 45, said he and David were contacted by YouTube and talks between the companies have begun.

Later in the day, a YouTube spokesman issued a statement about Muziic that at best was noncommittal: "We encourage people to leverage the power of our open API to embed YouTube videos in creative and innovative ways that comply with our terms of service."

Representatives from the three largest labels still doing business on YouTube, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and the EMI Group, either declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests.jack dreyfus

"We're not scared of Google. Those guys know a good idea when they see one, and I think they're going to recognize our service is a great way to listen to music."
--David Nelson, Muziic's 15-year-old co-founderWhat is clear is that a teenager--armed only with a good idea and precocious coding skills--has plopped himself into a rapidly shifting and legally shaky digital music climate. The record companies, perennially struggling with the digital world, may just now be developing serious doubts about sites like Muziic.

During the past two years, the big labels partnered with ad-supported streaming services such as Imeem, MySpace Music, and Last.fm (owned by CBS, parent company of CNET News). They hoped the sites would one day generate big advertising bucks and spur download sales, according to record industry sources. Recent studies show, however, that free streaming may compete with sales, the sources said.

'Can you do that?'
"We don't have anything against sharing with the music industry," said Mark Nelson when asked whether he worries about lawsuits or paying licensing fees.

If some in the music sector think the elder Nelson sounds arrogant, on the phone he sounds more naive than confident. One must remember there's no public relations rep coaching the Nelsons during interviews. There are no MBAs, no lawyers, not a dime of venture capital money.

There's nothing but father and son.

Nearly a year ago, Mark and David were watching "Star Trek" in their living room when Mark suddenly asked: "Wouldn't it be great if we could use YouTube's API to build a music site?"
jack dreyfus
David got excited. "It needs to be a desktop app," he told his father. "It's got to be something that anybody can open up in Windows. Imagine if you took YouTube and could play the videos in a media player."

"Can you do that?" Mark asked.

David paused to consider what it would take. "Yes," he said.

He was 14 at the time.

David taught himself how to write code, he says. At age 8, he started messing around with HTML. He moved up to JavaScript, PHP, and finally Visual Basic. He said while other kids were outside playing, he was inside reading manuals on scripting languages. His father, who works nights operating machinery at U.S. aluminum giant, Alcoa, says he knows his way around a PC, but doesn't know how to write code. "David did all the coding," Mark says.

What does David do for fun? Like most teens, he hangs out with friends. But he also enjoys reading about two of his other heroes, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "I'm into Google history," David said. "I like learning about business."

Besides helping his son generate ideas for the site, Mark Nelson's biggest contribution to Muziic is paying the bills. According to David, the entire Muziic project has cost the Nelson family less than $10,000.

Those costs are likely to rise, however. A story about the service published last Saturday by CNET blogger Matt Rosoff helped raise the site's profile. Muziic now sees a total of 70,000 visitors per day, says Mark. Before Rosoff's story, the site received about 4,000 daily visits. In the two weeks since the site's launch, Muziic's software app has been downloaded more than 500,000 times.

Managing this kind of growth isn't easy for a two-man operation (in David's case "man" is used loosely). On Wednesday, Muziic saw some performance issues as a result of making too many queries to YouTube's API servers, David said. YouTube limits the amount of traffic from developer sites.

David said he solved the problem by caching queries made by Muziic's users so information can be pulled from his site's servers instead of YouTube's. It's obvious by the way David explains the fix that he enjoys trouble-shooting tech problems.

Other challenges may prove less fun.

Navigating the music sector
When Fanning unleashed Napster in 1999, the record companies were still very much in the dark about digital music, file sharing, and the power of the Web to transmit songs.

In some ways, it was easier then to launch a disruptive music service than for today's start-ups. Music executives have a greater understanding of technology. They also can be more wary. They still cut plenty of deals with digital services, but negotiations can be complex. The costs of obtaining licenses from a major label can run into the millions. For companies that don't negotiate, litigation can be just as expensive. jack dreyfus

In Muziic's case, the Nelsons also have to worry about television networks and film studios. On YouTube there are a lot of music performances recorded from television or film. Do YouTube's licenses cover sites like Muziic?

Mark and David may have had some of these questions answered prior to launch had they spoken with YouTube. They said one reason they didn't was to avoid exposing their work to other developers. The other reason was David and his father didn't want to risk getting shutting down, David said.

That could rankle some label executives. One of their major complaints about digital music services over the past several years is that many launched first, built followings--enticing visitors with free music--and then told the labels "we're here, so there's nothing to do but negotiate a licensing deal with us."

Often the labels do just that. But music execs say using their libraries to draw an audience and then later ask for rights can undermine potential partnerships. They also emphasized that a site with a big following isn't guaranteed a deal. Just ask Project Playlist, a service that launched first, got sued by the recording industry, and as a result has been bounced off the top social networks.

The Nelsons say that they want to deal in good faith with the labels and they suspect the record companies will welcome them. "We think we solve a lot of the problems confronting digital music," Mark said.

One thing the Nelsons say they don't worry about is YouTube.

ktvu

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Cisco Systems on Monday is widely expected to launch network servers in a move that will put it in the virtualization business and potentially at odds with players like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. ktvu

How widely expected is this Cisco data center announcement Monday? Very expected. TheStreet.com cites analysts that have been briefed about Cisco's plans, which could revolve around switch-server hybrid boxes. Reuters confirmed that the March 16 announcement is related to a data center strategy to improve efficiency. According to Network World, Cisco will launch a "Unified Computing System" that includes backing from Microsoft, Intel, BMC, EMC and VMware:




Microsoft, Intel, BMC, EMC Smarts and VMware are expected to endorse Cisco's "Unified Computing" data center strategy at next Monday's launch in New York. Sources say these companies will be on the roster of partners Cisco is lining up for its strategy, which is also expected to include the introduction of the company's 'California' blade servers.

Last month, InternetNews' Andy Patrizio had a detailed story on Cisco's virtualization plans. ktvu

Patrizio wrote:


Cisco's efforts in virtualization focus primarily on the launch of its new blade system. According to a source familiar with the products, the blades will be based on Intel's Core i7 processors and come with up to 192GB of memory, well above the maximum capacity of 128GB in today's blades. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) recently announced it would begin shipping Core i7 Xeon processors, codenamed Nehalem-EP, as part of its Xeon 5000 series.

The blades include a PCI-Express connection, allowing them to connect to Cisco's high-speed Unified Fabric architecture. These connections also give the blades very fast Ethernet access to both the network and storage devices and eliminate the need for a storage-area network (SAN). Instead, the blades would talk directly to the storage servers.


And even Cisco's rivals are in on the act. I received an e-mail from Brocade representatives telling me they'll have a response to Cisco's move on Monday so be ready. Given the players lined up with Cisco (notably EMC) it's not surprising that Brocade, which acquired Foundry Networks, would have a response:


Brocade is aware of the impending news from Cisco on its proposal of its next-generation, virtualized data center architecture. While we are withholding any comment of this proposal until we have had a chance to review Cisco's announcements, please note that I will follow up with you. ktvu

Why is everyone so wound up? It's all about the converged box scenario in the data center. As we moved to converged boxes--switches and storage meet servers and virtualization--the architecture of the data center is going to change. And you know what? The architecture of the data center has to change. A few ripple effects:

• Cisco will enter the server market with boxes that will play nice with its networking gear;
• HP and IBM are likely to enter the networking market;
• Virtualization will be embedded everywhere as a commodity software layer;
• Ultimately, storage, servers, switches and even routers will all be lumped in a multi-purpose box in the data center that will save space.

The competition should be fun--and if it improves data center performance all the better--but it's going to be interesting to watch the profit margin implications from this hardware battle.

justin timberlake clothing line william rast

CNET tends to review products from the outside looking in (see Donald Bell's full review of the new Shuffle). But the good folks over at iFixit make it habit to start right from the inside. In the case of the third-generation Shuffle teardown, like with all recent iPods, Apple doesn't make it easy to crack the case. And although only one screw had to be removed, iFixit describes how it had to insert a "metal spudger into a crevice between the rear cover and the rest of the Shuffle" to get the device open. As you might expect, things are pretty simple--and tiny--under the Shuffle's hood. justin timberlake clothing line william rast

There are a couple more pictures after the jump, but the full dissection (with lots more photos) is available at iFixit, where one unsatisfied reader writes:

"Have you disassembled the headphones with remote yet? Have you figured out, how the buttons work? Do they work by connecting two lines with a resistor? Is it possible to add such a remote to other headphones?"

As always, feel free to comment.

lexington herald leader

Mac users long ago discovered the incredible power of Adium, the open-source, multiprotocol instant-messaging application for the Mac. The next time someone suggests that open source can't innovate, is not user-friendly, etc., point them to Adium. It's simply incredible.lexington herald leader

What Adium isn't, however, is a good Twitter client. That's about to change, starting with Adium's next version (1.4), when sophisticated Twitter functionality will be integrated into Adium.

Sure, it has been possible to integrate Adium with Twitter with things like TwitterAdium, but those have involved a little more heavy lifting than most users want to give to their desktop applications.

Now, as Adium has announced, this leading instant-messaging client is about to get serious Twitter integration, which is no mean feat, considering that Twitter shut down IM access in 2008 and has no announced plans to resurrect it.lexington herald leader

The integration is accomplished using Matt Gemmell's MGTwitterEngine, a library used to communicate with the Twitter API. While the service won't initially be as full-featured as, say, TweetDeck, it sounds like a great first attempt at replicating the basic Twitter functionality in an IM client. Full details on how it will work are on the Adium blog.

university of kentucky press conference

Sirius XM is planning to launch an iPhone application by June in a move to expand its market, the satellite service provider said Thursday during an analyst conference call. university of kentucky press conference

The iPhone application will be available to Apple's U.S. iPhone users and Sirius XM customers, as well as to iPod Touch Wi-Fi users.

Sirius XM charges $12.95 per month for its Internet radio service. It is not immediately clear whether iPhone and iPod users will incur the same service fees.

A Sirius XM representative declined comment, other than to refer to the statement made by President Jim Meyer during the fourth-quarter conference call with analysts. In it, Meyer said:


On another exciting front we have been testing a number of initiatives to make the Sirius XM content and experience more ubiquitous. As noted during our shareholders' meeting in December, Sirius XM has been working on an application that will allow subscribers to stream our Internet content to their iPhones and iPod Touch devices. When released, this application will permit an estimated 7 million U.S. iPhone users and additional iTouch users to access Sirius and XM Internet content.

This will allow existing subscribers with a paid streaming subscription to access our content. This will also allow new customers to subscribe to our service without having to buy a radio. This is a large and interesting opportunity that will maintain our subscription-based economics while providing customers easier access to our content through means other than our traditional satellite-based platform. We are currently in rigorous applications testing and plan to launch in the second quarter." university of kentucky press conference

For Sirius, the Apple deal is something its been working toward for at least four years. Back in 2005, Sirius expressed interest in partnering with Apple to put its satellite service on the iPod. But Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn't reciprocate.

In securing a deal with Apple, Sirius may be able to expand its market by riding on the popularity of the iPhone and iPod.

sternutation

IBM on Friday disclosed the elements of an initiative to sell technology and services to better manage fresh water, often referred to as the "oil of the 21st century."

The company said it has technology, now being tested at the SmartBay project in Galway, Ireland, to gather and analyze data to improve water conservation. It also announced a membrane for purifying saltwater that was developed by IBM in collaboration with other researchers. sternutation

The water strategy, part of IBM's Big Green Innovations project started two years ago, is set to be officially announced at the World Water Forum, which starts Monday in Istanbul, Turkey.

Managing fresh water is increasingly becoming a concern for governments and industries around the world, with the ongoing droughts in Australia and California being prominent examples.

IBM expects that water conservation can be improved by using sensors to gather data and analyzing the data on high-end computers. It has developed a suite of water-management offerings that combine consulting services and computing, including water metering for utilities.

The SmartBay research program around Galway Bay, for example, monitors wave conditions, marine life, and pollution levels and uses IBM's "cloud" computing services to predict water conditions. sternutation

"Regardless of industry or geography, smarter water management is an issue faced by every business and government on the planet," Sharon Nunes, vice president for Big Green Innovations at IBM, said in a statement. "Without sufficient insight into near- and long-term factors affecting your water supply and usage--complex issues such as access, quality, cost and re-use--you increasingly run the risk of failure."

To date, however, there hasn't been a great deal of investment in water-related technologies. Investors and entrepreneurs have been wary of trying to sell new technology, such as purification membranes, to the cash-strapped and conservative municipalities that manage fresh water.

There is also a close tie between energy and water as pumping fresh water or purifying seawater are very energy-intensive. Twenty percent of California's energy use is said to be tied to water.

The membrane filter that IBM and collaborators designed is relatively energy efficient and resistant to degradation by chlorine, a typical problem of membrane filtration.

john nash biography

While Microsoft Office is actively used by roughly 50 percent of U.S. Internet users, according to a 2,400-strong survey administered by ClickStream Technologies, 5 percent of U.S. Web users also actively use the open-source productivity suite OpenOffice.org.john nash biography

Importantly, ClickStream wasn't measuring installations. It was measuring use. The company actually installed client-side software that tracked which applications the users were running. To have OpenOffice in use across 5 percent of U.S. Internet users is pretty amazing.

How many people does this translate into? According to recent data, there are 303 million people living in the United States, 72.5 percent of which have Internet access. This suggests that of a population of 219 million U.S. Internet users, nearly 11 million actively use OpenOffice.

In other words, OpenOffice is not a niche geek phenomenon. With more than 46 million downloads of version 3.0 alone, OpenOffice could prove unpleasantly disruptive to Microsoft's desktop business.

While Microsoft Office is actively used by roughly 50 percent of U.S. Internet users, according to a 2,400-strong survey administered by ClickStream Technologies, 5 percent of U.S. Web users also actively use the open-source productivity suite OpenOffice.org.

Importantly, ClickStream wasn't measuring installations. It was measuring use. The company actually installed client-side software that tracked which applications the users were running. To have OpenOffice in use across 5 percent of U.S. Internet users is pretty amazinWhile Microsoft Office is actively used by roughly 50 percent of U.S. Internet users, according to a 2,400-strong survey administered by ClickStream Technologies, 5 percent of U.S. Web users also actively use the open-source productivity suite OpenOffice.org.john nash biography

Importantly, ClickStream wasn't measuring installations. It was measuring use. The company actually installed client-side software that tracked which applications the users were running. To have OpenOffice in use across 5 percent of U.S. Internet users is pretty amazing.

How many people does this translate into? According to recent data, there are 303 million people living in the United States, 72.5 percent of which have Internet access. This suggests that of a population of 219 million U.S. Internet users, nearly 11 million actively use OpenOffice.

In other words, OpenOffice is not a niche geek phenomenon. With more than 46 million downloads of version 3.0 alone, OpenOffice could prove unpleasantly disruptive to Microsoft's desktop business.

g.

How many people does this translate into? According to recent data, there are 303 million people living in the United States, 72.5 percent of which have Internet access. This suggests that of a population of 219 million U.S. Internet users, nearly 11 million actively use OpenOffice.

In other words, OpenOffice is not a niche geek phenomenon. With more than 46 million downloads of version 3.0 alone, OpenOffice could prove unpleasantly disruptive to Microsoft's desktop business.

billy gillispie

Taking a different approach to Google's Latitude software, Yahoo has released a Facebook application called Friends on Fire that lets people share their location with each other. billy gillispie

Google Latitude is an island unto itself, using Google's own technology for cell phone-based location detection and for managing who gets access to your location. Friends on Fire, though, stitches together a variety of services: Yahoo's Fire Eagle, a service that can store and share your location with authorized applications, and Facebook, which handles the issue of identifying who your friends are and granting them permission to see your location.

The service is intriguing, though as with any service that has to tiptoe carefully around a lot of privacy landmines, it can be somewhat burdensome to set up. It's great that Yahoo is making something real out of its Fire Eagle service, which previously was more about plumbing than a faucet.

Fire Eagle is an intermediary. It relies on other services to tell it where you are and on other services to do something useful with that location data; only services you specifically authorize may do anything at all with Fire Eagle.

"There are services that are more immediate than Fire Eagle, but as we get more apps, the value of updating once and having it shared across all your services is more important," said Fire Eagle leader Tom Coates in an interview just before he headed to the SXSW conference to announce the new technology.


Friends on Fire can be used to set and show your location and share it with friends.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)billy gillispie
At the same time Yahoo is releasing Friends on Fire to consume Fire Eagle location data, it's also releasing a Firefox plug-in to update Fire Eagle with your location through the browser. The plug-in, which uses Firefox's Geode plug-in to actually determine your location based on nearby wireless networks and other data, adds a toolbar button that lets you tell Fire Eagle where you are. You have to specifically enable Fire Eagle to accept data from the plug-in, just as you have to authorize Fire Eagle to share data with Friends on Fire.

Mobile Friends on Fire?
One big advantage Google Latitude has over Friends on Fire is that it works on mobile phones. For what seems to be everybody's favorite example of such services--meeting your friends at the bar--it's hardly convenient to lug around a laptop and hope you can find a wireless network to use Friends on Fire.

Coates said Yahoo is working on a mobile version, though.

"We are interested in a mobile site, though we aren't launching any mobile aspect," he said. "We are looking into mobile stuff for Friends on Fire."

The Web-based application uses advanced JavaScript technology such as Ajax, so at least theoretically, it should be able to run on an advanced mobile device's Web browser at some point.

Privacy concerns?billy gillispie
Google Latitude raised hackles among those worried the company already knows too much about people or that it might enable covert tracking. Friends on Fire has similar issues, but as with Google, Yahoo is trying to be overt about what's shared.

When you activate the application, you first have to authorize Fire Eagle to share data with it. Next, you can set what level of detail you want to share--nothing, exact location, neighborhood, zip code, city, county, state, or country. It also lets you enable Friends on Fire to set your location.

Next, the Facebook application shows a list of your Facebook friends who already have Friends on Fire installed. Clicking each one turns their icon green to enable sharing.

I found the application workable but imperfect. It was hard to say whether the fault lay with Facebook, Fire Eagle, or something else, but there seemed to be long waiting periods sometimes before information that should have been available actually arrived. One friend of mine in the Boston area appeared at first to be somewhere on a fishing boat off the coast of Gloucester, but I think that was an artifact of him not sharing his precise location.

Also, I didn't care for the signals feature of Friends on Fire, which lets you drop a note on the map--"here's where we're meeting," for example. It sounds useful in theory, but I couldn't figure a way to respond to another person's signal. It would have been a good place to spawn a conversation, but the closest I could come to that was sending a message through Facebook to the person who wrote the signal.

pulse pen

Intel is accused of monopolistic business practices pretty much all of the time. So much so that the big bully boilerplate isn't worth repeating. pulse pen

The latest reports of charges against Intel are interesting because of the timing. According to this March 10 headline, the Korean Fair Trade Commission has ruled against Intel. That would be news if it hadn't been news eight months ago. Here's an English-language summation of the case that was news in June 2008.. (CNET News report here.)

Not that all complaints about Intel business practices are unfounded. Certainly not. But how many times do we have to hear the "news" that Intel leveraged its market position to finesse a deal? (Answer: ad nauseam.) In this case, the American Antitrust Institute selectively translated text from an old 133-page report to show that Intel coerced Samsung (and others) into using Intel chips instead of those from Advanced Micro Devices.

Again, worth putting out there eight months ago but probably not today.

And let's remember that, of course, Nvidia and AMD never do this in the graphics chip market when they're trying to reel in a customer. No enticements, no sweeteners to close the deal. Absolutely not. Perish the thought.

But I shouldn't rush too quickly to Intel's defense. There will be plenty of real news related to Intel's market dominance in the coming years. The intensified focus now on Intel's business practices is happening against the backdrop of the severe financial straits of its sole competitor. No one wants to see AMD go away. (No stronger advocate of this than AMD itself.) pulse pen

That said, the question should always be asked: is it really unfair competition or is it merely unfair as Intel's less-successful rival sees it? The grumblings I most often hear about are MDF and bundling. Different parties' interpretations of Intel business practices (real or imagined) connected to Market Development Funds and bundling are too varied and too byzantine to cover here. But that two-second Intel jingle at the end of a Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or Sony TV commercial can have, for AMD, an ominous ring to it.

All of the above gets (very) complicated because of Intel's dominant market position. One question is, where does MDF end and alleged brass-knuckles, restrictive bundling begin?

"So, Mr. Computer Maker, want some peppier graphics in that Netbook? We got this thing called the GN40...So you might want to reconsider that Ion thing." Nvidia may have a point here. But are they being out-bundled or simply out-maneuvered by Intel? You decide.

a beautiful mind

Diddit, a site that allows users to share life experiences with others, announced Friday that its "diddits" and "wanna dos" can now be shared with other social networks. Users will be able to deploy new Diddit widgets, showing their lists of what they've done ("diddits") and would like to do ("wanna dos") on their blogs or personal Web sites. With the help of Twitter integration, Diddit users will be able to automatically tweet any of their "diddits" to their followers. Users will also be able to sign in through Facebook Connect.a beautiful mind

Search Cloudlet, a Firefox add-on that adds tag clouds to Google results, announced Friday that it has launched the same feature for Twitter. Once installed in Firefox version 2.0 and up, the add-on inserts a tag cloud at the top of Twitter Search results, showing the most common keywords in the results. Users can click a particular tag and filter results based on that keyword. The same cloud feature is also available in individual user profiles.

Online discovery site StumbleUpon is set to launch a URL-shortening service called su.pr, TechCrunch is reporting. According to the report, StumbleUpon will be used to share links on Twitter and Facebook. So far, no launch date has been confirmed, but the service should be available in the next few weeks, the publication says.

Openfilm.com, a video-sharing network for independent filmmakers, announced Friday that it has launched an ad revenue-sharing program for all OpenFilm content providers. According to the company, it will share 50 percent of advertising revenue with filmmakers. Every filmmaker on the site is automatically eligible to participate in the revenue-sharing deal and users will be able to track their earnings through a new reporting interface on the site. All funds will be transferred through PayPal or accepted alternatives that were not disclosed. The revenue-sharing program is live now.a beautiful mind

MySpace has launched its second annual MySpace Bracket Challenge, the company announced Friday. This year, MySpace users will able to "go head-to-head" predicting the outcome of the NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament. Users will need to create their own brackets and choose the winners in each round. The person with the most correct game outcomes will receive $10,000. To participate, MySpace users will need to "friend" the Bracket Challenge profile and create a bracket. They have until Game 1 on March 19 to participate.

blake griffin girlfriend

Web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee says he is making sure the Semantic Web will respect the privacy of online communications and allow people to control who can use their data.

The Semantic Web, an ongoing project overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), seeks to enable the Web to intelligently interpret what people are seeking when they search the Net. blake griffin girlfriend

In one example, computers will data-tag photographs and combine those tags with information from a desktop calendar, so people can ask the Web what the people in the photograph were doing on a particular day.

However, researchers have warned that the combination of such personal information could lead to privacy compromises, including increased data mining.

Berners-Lee, who is director of W3C and the person credited with creating the World Wide Web, told ZDNet UK this week that the teams working on the Semantic Web project are making sure privacy principles are included in its architecture.

Semantic Web technology "certainly" will enhance privacy, Berners-Lee said. "The Semantic Web project is developing systems which will answer where data came from and where it's going to--the system will be architectured for a set of appropriate uses." blake griffin girlfriend

Another principle of the Semantic Web is that people who make a Web request for personal information being held by third parties, such as companies and government agencies, will be able to see all the data those organizations hold on them, according to Berners-Lee.

"W3C wants to help make sure data use is appropriate," he said. "Sometimes, it's a serious question who should have what access" to information.

In addition, the project will include accountable data-mining components, which let people know who is mining the data, and its teams are looking at making the Web adhere to privacy preferences set by users. The whole project is geared toward privacy enhancement, Berners-Lee said. The teams "are building systems to be aware of different data uses," he said.

ZDNet UK spoke to Berners-Lee at an event at England's House of Lords designed to draw attention to the use of deep-packet inspection by Internet service providers and third parties. The technique intercepts data packets sent over the Internet to analyze their content, which Berners-Lee likens to the postal service opening the mail it is charged with delivering.

"When people built the Internet, it was designed to be a cloud," said Berners-Lee. "When routing packets, the system only looks at the envelope--it's an important design principle. Now people find out what you write in your letters."

401 area code

Microsoft has cut the price of leasing software by as much as 25 percent.

Companies can sign up for discounts on SQL Server, SharePoint, and other Microsoft software, or two bundles of client-access licenses, according to notices posted on the Microsoft Incentives Web site. 401 area code

One special promotion is "Simplify and Save," which offers savings of 15 percent for those who consolidate at least two existing license agreements into an Open Value agreement. Microsoft said the discount will run for the entire length of a three-year license deal.

Another offer is for between 15 percent and 25 percent off the price of the license and the Software Assurance costs of running Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, SQL Server, Office SharePoint Server, Visual Studio, Office Project, and other Microsoft software.

It is a condition of some Microsoft license agreements that companies take out schemes such as Microsoft Software Assurance in order to keep their software properly licensed, and therefore eligible for upgrades and promotions. Industry estimates suggest this situation can add as much as 100 British pounds a year per PC to the cost of running applications. 401 area code

The cuts are similar to those that Microsoft has made on the cost of licensing specific products. The Microsoft Office Project Assurance Pack's price has been cut by 25 percent, and Microsoft Project Server 2007 has seen a similar price fall.

According to one analyst, when it comes to special offers, Microsoft does not tell enough people about them. "This is good news for users but Microsoft should be shouting about offers like this," said Tony Lock, analyst with Freeform Dynamics. "Software Assurance is not widely recognized and deals like this, which seems pretty much across the board of Microsoft software, should be better known."

shamwow guy

The Liv Inizio, an all-electric sports car with specs similar to the Tesla Roadster, is making its debut at the 2009 New York auto show. This new electric car is made by EV Innovations, formerly called Hybrid Technologies, which showed off the Liv Wise, a Toyota Yaris converted to an electric power train, at last year's New York auto show.

EV Innovations claims a 200-mile range for the Liv Inizio and a 0 to 60 mph acceleration time of 5 seconds. Top speed: 150 mph. About 15 inches longer than the Tesla Roadster and 6 inches wider, the Liv Inizio still manages to come in 300 pounds lighter. It uses a lithium ion battery pack to power its midmounted motor, and it has a recharge time of about 8 hours. A touch-screen LCD in the cabin displays trip information such as remaining range. shamwow guy

With corporate headquarters in Las Vegas and development done in North Carolina, EV Innovations uses its own battery management technology to offer electric conversions of existing cars, such as the Toyota Yaris, Smart ForTwo, PT Cruiser, and Mini Cooper, and original cars and two-wheelers.

uk press conference

Norway's pioneering electric-car maker, Think, plans to open a new manufacturing plant and technical center in the United States. The company is currently in discussions with eight states, including Michigan and California, hoping to host the facility, which will initially employ about 300 workers with a starting capacity of 16,000 cars per year. The company has not announced the other six states.

The technical center will provide jobs for another 70 engineers and electric-drive specialists. Plans ultimately call for up to 900 employees and a capacity of 60,000 electric vehicles per year, the company said in a statement.

The plant will build the innovative Think City, a sophisticated, high-tech compact electric vehicle recently nominated for England's prestigious Britt Design Award. The all-electric car, which can travel up to 112 miles on a single charge, is designed, engineered, and produced to have the lowest-possible carbon footprint, with recyclable plastic body panels and a fully recyclable interior. uk press conference

U.S. production of the Think City is expected to start in 2010, with the first-year volume of 2,500 units being available to pilot and demonstration fleet projects.

Think CEO Richard Canny and other officials from the company's subsidiary, Think North America, are in Ann Arbor, Mich., this week, meeting with representatives from the eight states to discuss manufacturing options. A ride-and-drive event is featuring the production-level version of the Think City electric car currently selling in Europe.

morgellons disease

When employees at Sony's operation in France didn't get severance packages they considered fair, they took matters into their own hands.

On Friday, union workers freed Serge Foucher, CEO of Sony France, and Roland Bentz, head of human resources, from the company's factory in southwest France where they had been held since Thursday afternoon, according to a report by the Associated Press. Employees were angry over the terms of their severance, and kept the two from leaving as a way of protest. morgellons disease

The union representing the employees freed the two executives on the condition that Sony management restart discussions regarding the pay packages. The employees say they want vocational training to help them find new jobs, as well as relocation packages if necessary.

Sony announced it would be closing the plant, along with several others worldwide in an attempt to save the company $1.1 billion annually by 2010.

egypt carrying the light to asia

SanDisk shares rose sharply Friday morning, as speculation surfaced that Samsung and Toshiba are interested in a buyout of the company.

SanDisk soared 11 percent to close at $11.05 a share, following a report in the EETimes.

The article, citing unnamed sources, said Samsung, which last year launched an unsuccessful bid for the company, and SanDisk's joint-manufacturing partner Toshiba are both interested in making a bid for the flash memory maker. egypt carrying the light to asia

Last year, when Samsung made an unsolicited bid for the company, it offered SanDisk $5.85 billion for the company. SanDisk had rejected Samsung's overtures, citing the $26 a share offer as inadequate.

In late October, Samsung withdrew its offer, saying it had made no progress in its six-month effort to acquire the company.

60 foot phallus

In these tough economic times, everyone is looking for a good deal.

And Sascha Segan at PC Magazine seems to have found a darn good bargain if you're looking for a cheap wireless plan that offers unlimited data and voice calling. The service, which costs only $70 a month with no monthly contract, is offered by a new mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO, called Zer01 Mobile.60 foot phallus

The company also offers unlimited international calling to 40 countries for an additional $10 a month.

Segan reports in his story posted on Thursday that the company is using a form of a roaming agreement with AT&T and T-Mobile to provide access to their cellular networks. But instead of using the 3G wireless network to carry voice and data traffic, Zer01 sends the voice and data traffic over its own IP backbone.

The company's CEO explained to Segan that instead of buying wholesale cellular minutes from AT&T and T-Mobile the way other MVNOs have done, it has bought its own IP backbone and only uses the carriers' networks to interconnect or roam. Carriers throughout the world, such as Verizon Wireless or Sprint Nextel, use these interconnection agreements to provide coverage to their customers when they are not in their own coverage area.

The devices on the Zer01 network get fixed IP addresses and they each open a separate VPN session to the company's servers when a call is placed, according to the article. By using interconnect agreements, Zer01 can keep costs low and get around the carriers' 5GB per month data caps, Segan points out.60 foot phallus

The service uses a proprietary voice over IP application that today only works with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 phones. But the application will eventually work on other phones such as Google's Android devices, Research In Motion's BlackBerry, Symbian phones, and perhaps even jailbroken Apple iPhones.

Unlike other mobile VoIP services, the Zer01 service allows users to dial from the phone's keypad without launching a separate VoIP application.

The service isn't yet available to the public. But the company is expected to provide details about a launch date around the wireless industry's CTIA tradeshow in Las Vegas, which starts April 1, so stay tuned.

wkyt lexington

Apple has been sued by the mother of a 15-year-old boy who said his 16GB iPod Touch exploded in his pants pocket, burning his leg.wkyt lexington

Ars Technica spotted the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Apparently one day in class the boy "heard a loud pop and immediately felt a burning sensation in his leg," according to a copy of the complaint. (Click here for a PDF copy.)

According to the complaint, the boy "realized his Apple iTouch (sic) had exploded and caught on fire in his pocket. ....Plaintiff A. V. immediately ran to the bathroom and took off his burning pants with the assistance of a friend. The Apple iTouch had burned through Plaintiff A. V.'s pants pocket and melted through his Nylon/Spandex underwear, burning his leg."

The plaintiff suffered second-degree burns as a result of the explosion, according to the complaint, and is seeking in excess of $225,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. An Apple representative said the company does not comment on pending litigation.

Mobile device explosions causing injuries are unfortunately an old story, but in many cases those explosions can be traced to faulty mobile phone batteries that are often cheap knock-offs added by the user. The battery on the iPod Touch, however, is not replaceable by the user.wkyt lexington

There are an awful lot of facts that must come to the surface before we know exactly what happened with this particular iPod Touch, but the case bears watching.

oakland police funeral

Location-based social network Whrrl has a new application for iPhone users called Whrrl 2.0. It lets you post photos and status updates that are tied to a geographical location. It includes integration with Facebook Connect and Twitter, meaning you can sign up and use the service with your Facebook credentials, and have your location updates and status updates from Whrrl cross-posted to both your social-networking profile and Twitter page.oakland police funeral

Built-in privacy features let you pick how much of an update you want certain groups of people to see. For instance, when posting your location you can choose whether to give a certain group of people an approximation of where you are, or the exact location--complete with street number. You can also differentiate between the people you've added to your friends list, considering them as friends or "trusted friends," the latter of which can be given more information.

Instead of providing coordinates, or a little pin on a big map, the service will cross reference your locations with publicly listed buildings and locations which may save you a keystroke or two. It also remembers places you've been and will let you pick from a list of favorites.

The app packs all sorts of eye-candy goodness. Vibrantly color-laced menus pulse and pop up and over a large, user friendly map that you're able to zoom around on to see what other people are up to. It's not too over the top and gives it a very organic feeling. That said, the application is largely limited to your immediate surroundings. You can't search to see what people are doing in other cities without first befriending them, and the map only zooms out so far that attempting to cross to other parts of the country does not work. In other words a Loopt, this is not. oakland police funeral

It is, however, possible to discover people in other cities from within the application although this requires digging through posted notes (usually the featured ones since you can't find these on the map) to find something interesting enough to warrant a friend request. In a dense urban setting this may prove useful, but I think the developers could go a long way in making the global stream of information easier to parse.

3 day potty training

Nothing against Google or any other big search engine, but I think my friends are smarter than the rest of the world. When I want advice on a restaurant, a product I'm thinking of buying, or where to take my kid on a rainy Saturday, it's my circle of contacts I want that info from. That's social search, and I think it's got a big future. I've covered a few interesting products in that space, and today I'm looking at another one that's rolling out during SXSW: Aardvark. 3 day potty training

Aardvark is social search meets instant messaging, which is a clever marriage. You send a query to Aardvark via your instant-messenger client. The system figures out which people in your network (friends and friends of friends) might be able to answer it for you, sends them messages, and then forwards you the replies.


Aardvark does a good job of find people to answer your questions.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)It archives everything on the Aardvark Web site, where you can also manage your friends and the topics you're interested in helping people with.

Aardvark's intelligence is the parsing and networking. It assigns categories to your natural-language queries and matches them to people who've indicated they can answer questions in them. I won't be getting fashion queries, for example, but I might get questions on places to take 2-year-olds in San Francisco. I also set it up so I only get questions when I'm online (per my IM status), so I don't get questions stacking up in my account. 3 day potty training

In its early stage of development, it connects to AIM, GTalk, and Windows Live Messenger, but not to Yahoo IM. It also connects to Facebook. That's great--you don't have to start your Aardvark network from scratch. I found that 20 of my Facebook friends were already on Aardvark, and when I sent out my first query, I got replies back in minutes from people on that list as well as from friends of the person who invited me to Aardvark, co-founder and ex-Googler Nathan Stoll.


Who told Aardvark what I know?

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)I was impressed by the speed and quality of the answers I got back to my sample queries. Also, Aardvark expanded on the three topic areas I put down that I was knowledgeable about with several more that were accurate. I think it got them from my Facebook profile.

You could of course use Twitter to send questions to your circle of friends, but Aardvark is better, since it sends queries to friends of friends, doesn't spam all your followers with questions they may not be able to answer, and collects and organizes the replies for you. Aardvark doesn't yet work with Twitter, but that's coming, as are Yahoo IM and SMS connections.

dana carvey

AUSTIN, Texas--I'm in Austin for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, finally. And I'm exhausted. Last night, some friends convinced me that it would be a good idea to watch the Syracuse-University of Connecticut basketball game on TV until the end, and if you read the sports section this morning, you'll know that it went into six overtimes. I was able to get, oh, three hours of sleep.dana carvey

Apparently, "nerd bird" is SXSWi slang for an Austin-bound plane coming from a city like New York or San Francisco, where there would be plenty of geeks flocking to the conference. It's totally true.

My early-morning JetBlue flight from New York contained folks from Gawker, Mashable, AllThingsD, and CrunchGear. However, unlike a Thursday flight from San Francisco that happened to host Digg founder Kevin Rose, there was no flight attendant encouraging us all to Twitter upon arrival.

So what's the buzz right now? The weather is unseasonably chilly and rainy. The line to pick up conference badges is screamingly long, and I'm about to go deal with that. Friday has only a limited number of panels and discussions.

Beyond that, everyone seems particularly eager to just have some fun. And some cool SXSWi-centric games are popping up. A few days ago, something called SXSW Bingo started making the rounds. It's a sort of Bingo scavenger hunt for which players are tasked with taking mobile photos of targets that range from Robert Scoble to a Snuggie. dana carvey

I've also heard that Paparazzi, an iPhone game from Socialbomb that attempts to rank players by fame stemming from how many times they show up in mobile photos, may be another time-waster of choice.

I wonder if wacky games, scavenger hunts, and other outside-the-conference shenanigans will have a bigger presence at SXSWi 2009 than they may have in the past. My reasons for thinking so are twofold.

First, given the economic conditions we're all dealing with, a lot of people in the tech and media industries are looking for something to ease the stress. I think that any out-of-work geek would smile at the fact that blogger Ariel Waldman is sporadically twittering the locations where she is giving away free cupcakes.

Second, SXSWi was big last year, and it's bigger this year. The quirky digerati who have traditionally dominated SXSWi's core may be looking for new ways to hang out, now that the conference has grown increasingly corporate.

My CBS Interactive colleague Andrew Mager is also at the conference, and he is currently playing a Twitter-organized game of "Assassins." I'm not quite sure how it works, but he has reported that he was kidnapped by rival players. Eek!

dylan ratigan

FriendFeed has a new way for users to keep track of conversations in real time, and it may be the first thing the company has done that I just plain don't like. It runs in Adobe AIR and pops up with small notifications every time there's activity on your home feed or a selected friends list. If you can catch the notification window in time, it even lets you post a response without having to fire up your browser.
dylan ratigan
The company introduced a similar system that does the same thing through instant messaging back in November of last year. However, this new version is not nearly as advanced, nor is it set up to handle the avalanche of information most of its users are bound to face.



Pop-up notifications come up wherever you put the window. In this case it's above my Windows Start button.

(Credit: CNET Networks)
Its major shortcoming is that it doesn't let you pick the types of activity you want to see notifications for. In my case, I use the IM notifier tool to see activity around items I've just posted. This lets me respond to questions, or comments about something I've just posted to my home feed either directly, or from one of my feeds from another service.

With this tool you get the entire fire hose of information which, if you've ever viewed in real time you know, can be too fast to keep up with. On the desktop, that amounts to a never-ending parade of pop-up notifications, something I could only put up with for about 15 minutes before turning the application off.dylan ratigan

On the other hand, some users may love this. The tool lets you stay abreast of new content without having your browser window up, or opening yourself up to conversing with people in your IM contact list. For some that may be a good reason to keep it installed. Me? Not until I can whittle down the information stream to something a little more reasonable.

a new way forward

Nintendo's Wii may follow Microsoft's Xbox and Sony PS3 into the film market.

On Thursday, entertainment trade publication Variety reported that an executive from film studio Lionsgate said the Wii could be equipped to stream movies as early as this year.


Are movies next?

(Credit: GameSpot)"The thing that is clearly a force in digital are the game devices," Curt Marvis, president of digital media for Lionsgate, told Variety. "I think when we see the Wii come into the market with the ability to stream movies, which I think is maybe going to happen as soon as this year, I think that's going to be a big marketplace for digital distribution." a new way forward

A Nintendo representative said the company doesn't comment on rumor or speculation.

The major film studios are fans of game consoles. People are used to thinking of the boxes as entertainment devices. The devices are connected to televisions so they own choice living room real estate.

wkyt

Nintendo's Wii may follow Microsoft's Xbox and Sony PS3 into the film market.

On Thursday, entertainment trade publication Variety reported that an executive from film studio Lionsgate said the Wii could be equipped to stream movies as early as this year.


Are movies next?

(Credit: GameSpot)"The thing that is clearly a force in digital are the game devices," Curt Marvis, president of digital media for Lionsgate, told Variety. "I think when we see the Wii come into the market with the ability to stream movies, which I think is maybe going to happen as soon as this year, I think that's going to be a big marketplace for digital distribution." wkyt

A Nintendo representative said the company doesn't comment on rumor or speculation.

The major film studios are fans of game consoles. People are used to thinking of the boxes as entertainment devices. The devices are connected to televisions so they own choice living room real estate.

indicted

SAN FRANCISCO--Memristors are arguably the most important thing HP Labs is working on--it could fundamentally change the memory chip industry--but its director has no problem talking about it openly. indicted

While most hardcore research on future products is kept under heavy guard until it can be patented, HP Labs is insisting that forward-thinking technology research has to be done collaboratively and (mostly) in the open.

HP Labs underwent a major overhaul a year ago, shortly after bringing in new director Prith Banerjee. He whittled down the vast number of projects his researchers were devoted to, and laid out eight very specific areas of focus. Banerjee also impressed upon HP scientists the importance of working with both government researchers and universities to collaborate on future projects, like memristors.


An atomic force microscope view of a circuit with 17 memristors.

(Credit: J.J. Yang/HP Labs)A year later, HP Labs is now ready to discuss specific projects it is pursuing with partners at universities around the world, and in some cases with government funding. They will be officially released Monday in HP Labs' Annual Report. All of the selected projects are beyond near-term products set to debut from HP, but are usually three to seven years out, according to Rich Friedrich, director of the Open Innovation Office at HP. Forty-five professors from 35 worldwide academic institutions are involved.

The application for the projects ranges from cool consumer tech like the "Multimodal Command-and-Control By Integrating Two-Handed Gestures and Speech" collaboration with academics in India and New York to looking at new ways of harnessing information for commercial enterprise like "Workload Management for an Operational Business Intelligence Supercomputer" under research by a German professor. indicted

It's unusual for large IT companies to work so closely with those outside of the company's own labs, and more so for them to announce exactly which projects they'll be tackling.

"These are very hard problems," Banerjee said to a gathering of reporters Friday morning. He insists that his way is the only way to make significant progress in what is clearly a global market for innovation: "We can't build everything ourselves."

But all of this takes money, and when the economy is in turmoil, it's easy to imagine that anything that doesn't impact a company's bottom line immediately might be de-emphasized. Banerjee insists that is not the case at HP. While the HP Labs' annual budget of $150 million pales in comparison to HP's total research-and-development funding allotment of $3.5 billion, CEO Mark Hurd is "very supportive" of the Labs group, Banerjee said.

The Open Innovation Office has seen that firsthand. "We have more money this year than last year, even though the economy is tough," Friedrich said, because HP sees that the collaborative research "is the pipeline of growth for the company."

vince shlomi

Dancing with the Astaires, it isn't.

But Monday's "Dancing with the Stars" will see the next step in Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's hop to be hip. And it will be a quickstep. Or at least as quick as the Woz can muster.

In his latest detailed outpouring of sweat-by-syllable to his Facebook Support Group, Wozniak lays bare the pain and gain.vince shlomi

His fractured foot is responding well. He went four days without Aspirin and only took an Aleve on Saturday night in order to appease his aching, breaking body.

Typing many, many words with a sore shoulder, the Woz wrote, "As the day progresses, I need longer and longer rests to have a body that can get through what seems like a short dance. But I can do my best when I've had a long rest, and that's the case before the dress rehearsal and the real live routine, so I will definitely have the strength then."

He might have strength, but I am worried about his possible costume choices. He appears to be lobbying to wear Buddy Holly's glasses during his quickstep. Oh, and plaid pants and Keds.

And did I mention that halfway through his latest message to the masses, his swim trunks started to sag? "Please get me a ticket to Saga, Japan" might be your first thought, but wait.


Put a beard on him (and a little more weight), and he's a dead ringer for Steve.

(Credit: CC Marestra)
"Three times, in a jumping part near the end, the heavy microphone on my swim trunks started pulling them down, under my shirt," Wozniak confessed. "Each of those times, the chance of my pants falling in front of a video camera took my entire focus, and even if my pants wouldn't likely fall off, I either forgot the coming steps, or I just stopped to avoid embarrassment."

Avoiding embarrassment is a noble goal. So I think that the swim trunks will be beneath the plaid pants. I think.vince shlomi

But hang on: "During our practice on the real stage, there was one time that my swim trunks started falling on their own, without even a microphone," he said. "Maybe my body, like my hips, are rearranging themselves."

Before you decide to rearrange yourselves to foreign lands, or, indeed, anywhere that doesn't receive ABC television on a Monday, please consider this: the reality (yes, let's talk reality show reality) is that the Woz should probably survive this week's exertions. As the Woz reveals, rodeo rider Ty Murray, husband of Jewel, is not very happy.

And the likes of Belinda Carlisle, David Alan Grier, and even former Hugh Hefner girlfriend Holly Madison do not necessarily have a huge constituency among those who watch this Baroque little show. In addition, Steve-O (of "Jackass" and rehab) and Gilles Marini (naked bloke from "Sex and the City") are both injured.

And, well, you're all going to vote, aren't you? Even though the Woz's Facebook Support Group still numbers barely more than 2,000, there seem to be more than 17,000 tech souls whose hearts and fingers are all a-Twitter at the thought of voting for him.

You don't need to watch the show (airing on Monday at 8 p.m. EST and PST, and 7 p.m. in the early-to-bed Midwest) to actually vote. You can find all the details here. And, what fun, you can vote 13 times.

So even if you loathe this show more than you loathe chewing the bark of a sycamore, even if you look down upon it as the most superficial tripe since James Joyce, think of this as a scientific experiment. Can the tech-savvy beat the underhumans at, well, something that is, in essence, a technological exercise?vince shlomi

Or think of it as cryogenics. Yes, you can be one among the millions who brought Buddy Holly back to life.

(I will, naturally, be writing about the Woz's quickstep, as soon after the performance as I am able to place my fingers to my Apple computer--as opposed to my Adam's apple.)

capricorn one

Muziik is a new free music service--started by a 15-year-old and his dad--that uses music from YouTube clips. CNET News intern Erik Palm talks to reporter Greg Sandoval about how it works and what some of the obstacles could be. capricorn one

Plus, the mother of another 15-year-old boy has sued Apple because her son's 16GB iPod Touch allegedly blew up in his pants pocket, leaving him burned.

kron 4

This is a story about Jerry Jalava, a Finnish software developer who lost part of his finger in a motorcycle accident last July. According to his friend, Henri Bergius, when the surgeon assigned to work on Jalava's prosthetic finger discovered his hacking history, he made a clever suggestion: incorporate a USB key into the new digit.

The prosthetic finger contains a 2GB USB key, and Jalava also loaded it with Billix distribution, CouchDBX, and Ajatus to run off the drive, throwing even more geek cred into the mix. kron 4

When Jalava needs the drive, he simply pulls it off his left hand, plugs it in, and comes back to pick it up after the transfers are finished. That dispels any parallels to that scene in "Robocop" when he uses the giant spike that comes out of his hand to transfer data from the OCP criminal database to the computer in his head.

Check out more pictures of Jalava's cybernetic finger in the slideshow below, and be sure to listen to Thursday's episode of The 404 Podcast to hear 30 jokes in a row about what would happen if this were to go on another part of the body.

amanda knox

The authors of the latest variant of the Conficker worm are upping the ante against security vendors who are working to stop the spread and threat of the persistent program. amanda knox

Conficker.C shuts down security services, blocks computers from connecting to security Web sites, and downloads a Trojan. It also is programmed to begin connecting to 50,000 different domains on April 1 to receive updated copies or other malware, as opposed to connecting to 250 domains a day as previous versions are doing, Ben Greenbaum, senior research manager for Symantec Security Response, said on Friday.

The authors of the code are "strengthening their hold on their collection of infected machines at the same time they are attempting to strengthen their ability to control those machines by moving to 50,000 domains," he said.

A self-described "cabal" of companies, including Microsoft, Symantec, and a host of domain registration providers, have been trying to thwart the efforts of Conficker by pre-registering and locking up the domain names being used by the worm to distribute updates.

Now that Conficker.C is targeting 50,000 domains, the group has its work cut out for it, Greenbaum said. Regardless, "it's unknown at this point whether (boosting the domains) is an effective sidestep around the cabal's actions," he said.

The worm, also called Kido or Downadup, was first detected in November and is believed to have infected more than 10,000 computers. The first two versions exploit a vulnerability that Microsoft patched in October. amanda knox

The second variant, Conficker.B, was detected last month. It added the ability to spread through network shares and via removable storage devices, like USB drives, through the AutoRun function in Windows.

Among the domains targeted by Conficker was that of Southwest Airlines, which was expected to see an increase in traffic from the botnet on Friday, Sophos said last week. However, a Southwest spokesman said there had been no impact to the site from any additional traffic as a result of Conficker.

Experts are urging computer users to apply the Microsoft patch and update their antivirus software. And this week, Enigma Software Group and BitDefender announced free Conficker removal tools.

Conficker has proved to be such a nuisance that Microsoft has even offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the Conficker case.

job listing

There is now a lot more about Mars to view in Google Earth than there was just a month ago.

Google announced Friday a major update to show more details of Mars both in its history and the present day. Originally the 3D maps of Mars were available with the release of Google Earth 5.0, just a little more than a month ago. The update shows how our knowledge of Mars, and our study of astronomy, has evolved over time. job listing

According to Google, the new update allows us to travel back in time to see the antique maps originally drawn by astronomers Giovanni Schiaparelli, Percival Lowell, and others. It also show present-day Mars with a "Live from Mars" layer, which is a continuous stream of the latest imagery, including those from NASA's THEMIS camera aboard the Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

Users can have the feel of flying along with Odyssey as well as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to see what the two crafts have been observing lately and where they are headed next.

Without having used the original release of Mars 3D map, I tried the new update and loved it. After selecting Mars from the toolbar in Google Earth, I could do a 3D flight around the Red Planet.

The new update now makes the surface of Mars covered with informational layers, imagery, and terrain. I could also zoom in and out, change the camera view, or click on icon to read more about certain locations and events, most of which I didn't know that they exist before.job listing

What I haven't been able to find, however, is Dr. Manhattan's girlfriend, Silk Spectre, but that would probably take more than just one update.

tom izzo

Killzone 2 is being celebrated by video game journalists as one of the greatest first-person shooters ever released, but the game--which takes place on Planet Helghan as war erupts all over the world--is catching some fire of its own here on Earth, around Toronto.tom izzo

According to a report in The Star, a Toronto newspaper, Pauline Johnson Junior Public School officials e-mailed Sony Canada after seeing more than 300 Killzone 2 ads placed on bus shelters near their school. Citing poor placement and suspect images, the officials demanded Sony remove the ads immediately out of concern for students.

"My kids, who come from a lot of different countries, who have to experience violence, who basically come here to seek shelter and safety, that's the stuff they don't need to see," Davis Mirza, a fourth and fifth grade teacher at the school, told The Star.

According to Mirza, the ads featured a "menacing head with glowing eyes" that was wearing a mask with a breathing tube as a war zone "like Iraq" was depicted behind the figure. Citing Sony's responsibility to the community, Mirza told The Star that he was upset the company wasn't doing its part to "promote any kind of community renewal or even responsibility."

Once Sony Canada received the e-mail, the ads were taken down immediately, company officials told The Star, and from now on, it will establish an advertising-free radius around schools. Sony representatives didn't indicate how far that radius would reach, but the company wants to be "sensitive to community concerns."

The idea of moving ads away from schools is probably a smart decision on the part of Sony and every other video game developer that doesn't want to upset an entire community. School officials have a point when they complain about violent video game ads around kids who aren't even old enough to buy them and Sony did the right thing by bringing the ads down and in effect, admitting it was wrong.tom izzo

But if Sony will start creating an advertising barrier around schools, how far away should it be? Some might say that one mile is far enough, since most kids will be on the bus by then. Others might say the advertisements can be placed within a few hundred yards from a school.

How far should violent video game ads be kept from schools?
100 feet
100 yards
1 mile
5 miles
Put them anywhere you want!
Other:

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Polldaddy.comEither way, Sony has made the pledge to keep violent video game ads away from schools. But developing the proper radius might be difficult, since there are so many schools in most communities, leaving only certain areas available to ads. And then there's the likelihood that ads placed in these areas won't be effective because they won't be viewed by the target demographic. After all, the ads in the bus shelters were placed there for a reason: kids would see them and want the game.tom izzo

While I applaud Sony for taking the ads down over community unrest, I wonder how it plans to implement its advertising-free zones, since a standard distance probably won't work around every school. In fact, I'm not even sure what a fair distance would be. Does Sony know something we don't?

In trying to do good, I wonder if Sony has hindered its ability to effectively advertise.

Do you have a good idea of how far Sony should keep violent video game ads away from schools? Vote in the poll here and let us know.