Unwrapping HTC's Touch Diamond

Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC) revealed its new Touch Diamond handset early last month to rave initial reviews, and it beat Apple to announcing a 3G (third-generation telephony) handset.
I received an HTC Touch Diamond on loan from the company for a trial.
The company, the world's largest maker of Microsoft Windows Mobile smartphones, put a lot of effort into the sleek design of the handset, which sports a 2.8-inch touchscreen on one side and has a back contoured like the shape of its namesake, a diamond.
The package design is fairly compact.
The thin cardboard outer box is shaped like a pyramid with a flat top instead of a point. Inside is a hard, black plastic box that holds everything.
Space inside the box is well-used. Opened, the first sight is a Touch Diamond handset with stereo headphones on each side. Underneath lay the remaining accessories, a battery, an extra stylus, an AC adapter, screen protector, USB sync cable, and a Quick Start Guide and TouchFlo 3D guide at bottom.
What's easy to miss is the two CDs under a flap in the top of the box. These contain instructions and software. It took me a while to figure out they were there and it would have been nice if had HTC pointed them out in the Quick Start Guide.
There's also an extra stylus with the handset, which is important because it fits into the "diamond" shape of the back. Losing it would mean leaving a hole in the back-bottom of your handset.
The size of the Quick Start Guide -- about 2x2 inches (about 50.8 x 50.8 millimeters) -- was comforting. I feared this, my first smartphone, would make me feel dumb as a new user. And it did, at some points.
First, it shows how to open the back casing and install the battery. It snapped off easily, and I installed the battery and SIM card.
One pet peeve of mine is that the HTC Touch Diamond doesn't come with an extra battery. Are you kidding me? For NT$23,900 (US$786) you can't provide an extra battery on a handset built for uses that all suck the battery dry?
Samsung Electronics is the only major company I know of that includes a second battery with its handsets and it's a nice touch. Any heavy phone user needs one.
Charging the battery is a bit of an art. I wasn't sure how to tell when it was fully charged until I read the instructions. When I first plugged it in, nothing noticeable came on to let me know it was charging. On this point, the Quick Guide was no help.
I had to look at the 268-page user's manual (page 26) to learn that a white light circling the navigation controller (mouse) would "breathe" as it was charging, then turn into a fully-lit ring once the battery was full.
The picture in the manual also shows just a standard phone charger, but the one that came with my Touch Diamond isn't standard. It's cool! It's a USB (universal serial bus) that connects to the AC adapter, or can fit into your laptop, for example, for a recharge on the road. Now that's a nice touch.
After that, the initial start-up is easy. Turn the phone on and it prompts you to set the date and time, then asks if you want it to set up the phone connection on its own, to which I answered yes and then it found my carrier and other information.

Oracle Still Top Dog in Tough Database Market

The field of commercial relational database vendors is a lot less crowded than it used to be, and it's no surprise, considering the players have to contend with a massive software juggernaut like Oracle. According to the latest numbers from research firm IDC, Oracle still ruled the roost in databases in 2007, capturing in excess of 44 percent of the overall market.
Not even Oracle can afford to rest on its laurels, however; not when the database market remains this competitive. In addition to pressure from the other two top proprietary vendors -- IBM and Microsoft -- Oracle must contend with increasing competition from open source software. For example, last week Sun Microsystems, which acquired MySQL in January, announced an aggressive new pricing structure that allows customers to install as many instances of the open source database as they want, including enterprise-class service and support, for a single, flat rate.
Included in the deal is Sun's GlassFish Java application server, which can be used to host custom enterprise applications that store their data in the database. Pricing reportedly begins at US$65,000 per year and scales up based on the number of employees in the organization. (Sun already uses similar, headcount-based pricing for much of its software portfolio.)
If that sounds like a lot of money, consider that the latest pricing for the Oracle 11g database starts at around $47,500 per CPU, following a price hike that took effect earlier this month. By comparison, Sun is offering site-license pricing -- you can install MySQL on as many CPUs as you want for the one rate.
MySQL can't compete with Oracle on a feature-for-feature basis, especially when it comes to the advanced capabilities needed by heavy enterprise users, such as data integrity and replication. But many applications don't need the high-end features offered by top-tier database. For example, many Web applications need nothing more than simple data storage, which MySQL offers in spades.
It can be difficult to properly analyze MySQL's true market share, because you don't have to be a Sun Microsystems customer to use it. MySQL is open source, so you can generally download and use the database for free (although some licensing restrictions may apply). Even if it were possible to count every single instance of MySQL that is currently in use, there's no way of knowing how many of those users represent potential business for Sun.
As a rule, however, users who have extensive experience using open source software for prototype or "off the record" projects are good candidates to become paying customers of open source vendors in the future. What they get for their money is commercial-grade support, which can be invaluable when open source software is used to power mission-critical applications. Open source support contracts usually come at much lower price tags than equivalent offerings from proprietary software vendors, such as Oracle.
MySQL isn't the only low-cost contender on the market, either. PostgreSQL is similarly open source, and offers a feature set that's more comparable to Oracle, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL Server. Given how easy it has become to install and use a database for free, it's entirely possible that relational databases may soon become a commodity market, especially among those mid-tier customers who don't need the most advanced capabilities.
What do you think? Are the major relational database vendors already locked into a race to the bottom? Or is Oracle's recent price increase evidence that the market is alive and thriving? Sound off in the PC World Community Forums.

Accenture Report Upholds EPA Data-center Findings

A report from Accenture that looks at the impact of emerging technologies on reducing power consumption in data centers has largely upheld the findings in a study published last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Some of the more forward-looking projections in the EPA report were based on forecasts and estimates from industry experts and had limited real-world data to back them up.

The Accenture report, a summary of which was released Thursday, used data from 17 case studies carried out over 18 months by some large data centers that tested emerging technologies and practices.

"I am really glad, and quite relieved, that the numbers we came up with are not pie-in-the sky and in fact are fairly achievable," said Andrew Fanara, head of the EPA's Energy Star program, after the Accenture results were released.

Fanara, who headed the team that put together the EPA report, spoke briefly at the end of the Data Center Energy Summit in Santa Clara, California, where the findings from the case studies were presented.

He said he was not aware of any plans by the U.S. government to impose regulations that mandate energy efficiency for data centers, although he said some broader regulations for climate protection may affect big users of electricity.

"I'm not aware of anyone that's contemplating any legislation for data centers," he said.

Most of the data centers that conducted the tests are operated by high-technology companies, which raises questions about whether other data centers will get the same results. But Accenture believes the results broadly confirm the EPA's findings, said Teresa Tung, the senior researcher at Accenture who compiled the report.

The EPA report said data centers accounted for about 1.5 percent of the electricity consumed in the U.S. in 2006, and it said the energy consumed would double over five years based on current trends at the time.

It offered some more optimistic projections if certain best practices and "state of the art" technologies are widely adopted, such as virtualizing servers, turning on power management tools and using variable speed fans. It was those projections that the Accenture report helped to validate.

That doesn't mean there isn't an energy crunch in data centers, only that data centers can take steps to mitigate it.

"We can do all these initiatives, but at the end of the day data centers still consume a lot of energy," Tung said

Data Centers Explore Novel Ways to Cut Energy Use

Putting data centers on decommissioned ships and reusing hot water from cooling systems to fill the town swimming pool were among the wackier ideas floated at the Data Center Energy Summit on Thursday.

Data center operators came together to compare notes about the best ways to tackle rising energy consumption at their facilities. Ideas ranged from the exotic to the more down to earth, like improving air-flow management and using outside air in colder climates to cool equipment.

After a brief lull a few years ago, a new wave of data center construction and expansion is under way, stretching the power and cooling capacities of existing facilities and putting pressure on utilities' electrical grids, speakers here in Santa Clara, California, said.

Subodh Bapat, vice president for energy efficiency at Sun Microsystems, described a perfect storm of factors that are forcing data centers to become more power efficient.

The electricity consumed by microprocessors is increasing by 16 percent per year as they become more powerful, he said, which contributes to a 14 percent increase in the power consumed by each new generation of servers. At the same time, energy prices in the U.S. have increased by about 12 percent on average for the past three years and are expected to keep climbing.

That's forcing some data centers to consider unusual solutions. One large health-care center is looking at reusing hot water expelled by its cooling systems to do its laundry, Bapat said. A hosting company in the Northeast is freezing water overnight, when the cost of electricity is cheaper, and then blowing air over the ice during the day to provide cold air for cooling systems.

Another company hopes to put portable data centers on ships docked at port, giving it "the biggest heat sync in the world [the ocean] to get rid of waste heat," Bapat said.

Most people at the summit here were looking for more down-to-earth solutions. They were offered by several large data centers who discussed results from pilot tests designed to help show the real-world savings offered by from various energy-saving techniques.

One of the most effective is better air-flow management, so that cold air pumped in to cool equipment doesn't mix with hot exhaust air coming out, said Bill Tschudi of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Many data centers use alternating hot and cold aisles to keep warm and cold air separate, but that method is only partially effective because the air mixes in the spaces above the aisles, Tschudi said.

Oracle tested "hot-aisle containment" at a data center in Austin, Texas, which involves building an enclosure around server racks so that the hot exhaust can be siphoned off. Cooling systems account for as much as half the energy consumed by some data centers, said Mukesh Khattar, who heads Oracle's energy efforts.

The hot-aisle containment allowed Oracle to reduce the fan speed in its cooling system by 75 percent, which reduced the fan's power consumption by 40 percent, Khattar said. It installed a variable frequency drive to control the fan and got payback for the investment in nine months, he said.

Yahoo tested cold-aisle containment, and then installed a wireless sensor network to monitor temperature and humidity around the room. The sensor network allowed Yahoo to gradually increase the temperature in its data center without creating heat spots that could damage equipment. The set-up can reduce cooling energy costs by 25 percent, said Christina Page, head of Yahoo's energy and climate strategy.

There are up-front capital costs to consider. Sensor networks cost US$6 to $8 per square foot to implement, said Troy Mitchell, sales director with SynapSense, which sells the sensor equipment. Doing hot-aisle containment in a big, 43,000-square foot data center like Yahoo's would cost $250,000 to $300,000, he said.

The containment systems must not interfere with sprinkler systems. Yahoo used flame-retardant PVC connected to the racks with "fusible links" that would collapse at 130 degrees Fahrenheit in the event of a fire, allowing the sprinklers to operate, Mitchell said.

Another case study looked at air-side economizing, which is "basically just a fancy name for opening the windows" and using outside air for cooling, Bapat said. The air must be filtered and de-humidified, but in cooler climates like San Francisco it can be used for most of the year, he said.

Dean Nelson of Sun said data centers should consider raising their overall temperatures. Sun tested modular cooling systems on five-year-old servers and they operated without any problems even when aisle temperatures reached 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

"It makes me wonder," he said, "why are we running our cold aisles at 65 degrees?"

Accenture is publishing the resultsfrom the case studies on its Web site, along with an overview that compares their effectiveness

Bill Gates Retires, Symbian Goes Open Source

Microsoft, usually a source of software patch updates and claims about Vista adoption rates, produced a bit of sentimental news this week as Bill Gates stepped away from his daily corporate duties on Friday. Gates, who founded Microsoft at age 19, will now devote his time to philanthropic work. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate discussed the issue of laptop searches and seizures at the nation's borders and also decided to delay a vote on a controversial spy bill. While on the topic of controversial plans, an ISP (Internet service provider) suspended a program that would have served up ads based on a user's Internet history after the move sparked privacy concerns. Yahoo, a perennial name in this space, defended its Google ad deal on Wednesday and the next day launched yet another reorganization. Finally, Oracle wants at least US$1 billion from SAP due to infractions supposedly committed by a subsidiary.

1. Gates may change direction of philanthropy: Helping solve some of the world's health issues will now occupy Bill Gates's working hours as the IT icon retired from Microsoft on Friday. Two years ago Gates announced that he was leaving the software world to devote his time to the philanthropic organization he started with his wife in 2000. The group's work involves funding malaria and HIV research, among other causes. The task of running one of the most powerful companies now falls to CEO Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie, among others. Gates will not completely exit Redmond, though. He will continue serving as Microsoft chairman and dedicate one day a week to company business.

2. ICANN board opens way for new top-level domains: Look for new TLDs (top-level domains), including some written in Chinese scripts, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers board approved a policy that will form the rules for developing and managing the new TLDs. The board's actions could result in the creation of at least 70 million generic TLDs. The board also backed creating a small number of IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names). This measure, for example, would permit Chinese companies to register domain names that end in the Chinese symbols for China.

3. It's Official: Microsoft Hyper-V Now Available: Microsoft entered the virtualization arena with the release of its Hyper-V technology on Thursday. After installing Hyper-V, hardware with Windows Server 2008 can run multiple OSes, like Linux, on the same machine. Hyper-V was slated for release with Windows Server 2008 in February. Microsoft then decided to remove some of the product's features, which delayed its launch by 180 days. However, reports surfaced on Wednesday that Hyper-V's would debut this week, making its arrival early, but still late. Microsoft will face market leader VMware in the virtualization space, which is growing in popularity as enterprises look to reduce data center costs by running several OSes on one server.

4. Senators question border laptop searches: U.S. Senators Russell Feingold and Patrick Leahy on Wednesday called on U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop seizing and searching laptops and other electronic devices of people who are entering the country. After taking the devices, CBP officers allegedly search Web histories, copy hard drives and read documents. One witness at the hearing said the CBP's actions disrupt businesses while another testified that electronic copies warrant no special treatment compared to their physical counterparts.

5. Nokia buys rest of Symbian, will make code open source and Report: Google faces Android handset delays: Open-source software will soon run over half of the world's smartphones after Tuesday's news that the Symbian mobile OS is going open source. Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone and other telecom players formed the Symbian Foundation to distribute the OS under a royalty-free license. Experts believe Symbian's 60 percent share of the smartphone market and decade of development will foster more growth. Symbian's move to open source came on the same week as reports that Android, Google's open-source mobile OS, is progressing slowly due to conflicts with mobile carriers.

6. ISP backs off of behavioral ad plan: Charter Communications suspended plans to place ads based on a customer's Internet use in Web pages after the ISP's customers voiced concerns about the service, the company said. Charter, a major U.S. broadband provider, also drew the ire of two digital rights groups that claimed serving ads based on information gleamed from Web use amounted to spying and violated security practices. Two U.S. legislators also raised concerns in a letter to the company. In May Charter said it planned to team with NebuAd, a behavioral advertising company, on a pilot program.

7. Google introduces tool for planning online ad campaigns: Google also attempted to tackle the issue of targeted ad placement on Web sites, but with a tool for media planners, who determine where to place their client's ads. Media planners enter their desired audience's demographic information into Ad Planner, which generates a list of appropriate sites. According to Google, Ad Planner allows users to get information on searches related to a certain site and other, more detailed demographic data. News of the service prompted talk of Google expanding into the Web analytics business against the likes of comScore and Hitwise.

8. Senate delays vote on surveillance bill until July: On Friday the U.S. Senate announced that it will delay a vote on a controversial surveillance bill until July 8. An earlier spy program allowed the government to monitor without warrants phone calls and electronic communications between supposed terrorist groups and people outside the U.S. Major telecom carriers, which supposedly granted the government access to their systems, now face lawsuits for their role in the program. The bill, seen as a compromise between the White House and congressional Democrats, would allow the program to continue but with court oversight and have a court review if the telecom lawsuits warrant dismissal.

9. Oracle seeking billions in damages from SAP: Oracle reckons that SAP owes the company at least $1 billion for damages caused by its TomorrowNow subsidiary. Oracle sued SAP and TomorrowNow in 2007, claiming that TomorrowNow staff illegally accessed Oracle's Web site and pilfered information to use for courting Oracle customers. A court document filed Tuesday marked the first time that Oracle assigned a dollar figure to the incident, which the company labeled "corporate theft on a grand scale " in its original complaint. The case goes to trial in February 2010.

10. Yahoo defends Google deal to shareholders and Yahoo trumpets reorganization: Another week, another chapter in the Yahoo-Microsoft-Google saga. Yahoo shareholders received a letter on Wednesday justifying the company's Google advertising deal. The tie-up, which places Google ads beside some of Yahoo's search results, will generate $250 million to $450 million in cash flow in the first year. Allowing Microsoft to purchase Yahoo's search business would have ceded too much control to Microsoft, including the right to block a sale of the company, wrote Chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang. Yahoo executives denied Microsoft's original two offers to purchase the company, upsetting investors who believed that Yahoo abandoned its fiscal duties by not negotiating a buyout. Yahoo made news again on Thursday when it announced yet another reorganization, its latest in the last 18 months. This revamp will centralize its product development operations and create a business region for U.S. advertising, users and Web publishers.

Witnessing the Human Face of Mobile in Malawi

It may not seem like much to you and me -- indeed, it's unlikely to make a lot of sense -- but for the person who sent it, and more importantly the one who received it, it represents the dawn of a new era in rural health care in the region.

The first message read, "Ineyo ndinayenda mapesent awiri sakupeza bwino amenewa ndiavuto lakhasa," meaning, "There are two patients, very sick of cancer." It was quickly followed by another. "Mai laulentina adamwalira pa sabata kwa chamoto omweanali pa pa h.b.c." This one - "Laulentina, a patient in the Home Based Care program, died on Saturday." These messages, in Chichewa -- the local language -- represent the beginnings of a new mobile-phone-based health care initiative, centered around the humble SMS (short messaging service), which is set to revolutionize communication for doctors, nurses, staff and volunteers working to improve the health of a quarter of a million Malawians within a hundred-square-mile radius of St. Gabriel's, the hospital running the pilot.

In the development sector, technology projects are better appreciated when they have a powerful human slant, allowing them to be seen in context. The context can rarely be any greater than when they're positively impacting the lives of some of the poorest and most marginalized members of society. As a result of the first text message, a nurse will take the hospital motorbike and head up to Chilembwe, about 60 kilometers away, to check on the cancer patients. And the second? Well, despite the terrible news, it saved the hospital a daylong trip to Chamoto to administer more morphine to the patient. Where time, money, staff and resources are at a minimum, these text messages -- and many more besides -- are having a hugely positive impact.

Josh Nesbit is a senior in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University. I met him last year during my time at Stanford, and he was excited about the potential for mobile phones to revolutionize the work of this communications-starved hospital in Malawi, which he had visited the previous year. He had heard about my work, and we met and talked about what he wanted to do. Later, he returned to Malawi with the first version of my messaging platform -- which was designed for the very communication challenges he was trying to solve -- along with a laptop computer and a Nokia 6100 mobile phone. Not a huge amount happened, but the hospital staff and management were truly inspired and motivated by the possibilities, and talked about how mobile phones could help them with tasks such as patient follow-up, TB and HIV drug adherence monitoring, and fielding the community's medical questions.

St. Gabriel's Hospital -- where Josh will be spending the best part of his summer, armed with a couple more laptop computers, one hundred mobile phones and the new version of FrontlineSMS -- is no stranger to assaults on well-being spread by disease and illness. Located in Namitete, Malawi, it lies within a country with a national HIV prevalence rate of 15%-20%. Children orphaned by AIDS will represent as much as one-tenth of the country's population by 2010. With tuberculosis (TB), malaria, malnutrition and pneumonia ravaging immuno-compromised populations, the health system -- including St. Gabriel's Hospital -- faces a disquieting burden. Malawi's health challenges are compounded by its devastatingly low GDP per capita, by some measures the lowest in the world.

With just two doctors and a handful of clinical officers, St. Gabriel's Hospital is strikingly understaffed. This perennial state of affairs explains the shift of primary health care toward Community Health Workers (CHWs), trained for specified tasks. Through the hospital's antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program -- drug therapy for HIV/AIDS -- more than 600 volunteers have been recruited. These volunteers are spread throughout villages in the hospital's catchment area. Some CHWs are HIV and TB drug adherence monitors, while others accompany patients during long journeys -- up to a hundred miles, often by foot -- to the hospital.

A few of the more inspired volunteers record their activities in notebooks and travel to the hospital to have their good work acknowledged. The vast majority, however, remain disconnected from hospital activities, interacting with hospital staff only to pick up their drugs. It's not that they don't want to play a legitimate role in a community health system; there's just no communication to foster such a role. This is true of hundreds, if not thousands, of health centers in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, but so often, it needn't be that way.

FrontlineSMS is now the cornerstone of a new, text-based communications initiative at St. Gabriel's Hospital. Funded by the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University and the Donald A. Strauss Foundation, Josh is currently knee-deep in the pilot program. According to Josh, "FrontlineSMS is being used to connect the hospital with its CHWs, expanding the role of the volunteers. Drug adherence monitors are able to message the hospital, reporting how local patients are doing on their TB or HIV drug regimens. Home-Based Care volunteers are sent texts with names of patients that need to be traced, and their condition is reported. 'People Living with HIV and AIDS' (PLWHA) Support Group Leaders can use FrontlineSMS to communicate meeting times. Volunteers can be messaged before the hospital's mobile testing and immunization teams arrive in their village, so they can mobilize the community. Essentially, FrontlineSMS has adopted the new role of coordinating a far-reaching community health network."

The hospital sees intense promise in the formidable duo of FrontlineSMS -- which is provided free to the nonprofit community -- and the cell-phone-yielding health worker. The usefulness of a well-managed communications network is undeniable, particularly when the information is so vital. In the first few hours of the pilot program, a deceased patient's extra ARVs were secured, the Home-Based Care Unit was alerted of ailing patients, and meetings were arranged (and subsequently re-arranged!).

Solutions to these types of communication problems needn't cost vast amounts of money or take months or years to develop. After all, the mobile phone network provides the communications platform, and thanks to the rapid spread of the technology, that's usually already there. All that's usually missing are the tools to do the job -- in this case a piece of free software and a bag full of second-hand, recycled mobile phones. Heaven knows, we have plenty of those in the West.

If a hospital such as St. Gabriel's can be empowered with a relatively small investment of time and money, imagine what else could be possible if we were just able to get these tools into the hands of others. Sadly, there's no shortage of hospitals and clinics out there that desperately need them.

Ken Banks devotes himself to the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world, and has spent the past 15 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS, a field communication system designed to empower grassroots nonprofit organizations. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honors in social anthropology with development studies and currently divides his time between Cambridge (UK) and Stanford University in California on a MacArthur Foundation-funded fellowship. Further details of Ken's wider work are available on his Web site.

Yahoo Trumpets Reorganization

Under fire from angry shareholders and rocked by a stream of high-profile executive departures, embattled Yahoo on Thursday announced another reorganization, its latest attempt to snap out of its years-long technology and financial funk.

Stressing its goals of being the "starting point" for most Web users and a "must buy" for most online advertisers, as well as the most attractive platform for developers, Yahoo will now centralize its product development operations.

It will also create a business region just for the U.S. and its end-users, advertisers and Web publishers. In addition, Yahoo will form what it calls an "insights strategy team" and enhance its technology infrastructure so that product designers and engineers will communicate and collaborate better.

"These moves accelerate the ability of our deep and talented team to build great products, grow our audiences and improve monetization globally," said Jerry Yang, Yahoo's CEO, in a statement.

Reorg Details

Reporting to President Sue Decker will be three new teams:

-- the Audience Products Division, which will oversee product strategy and product management and will be led by Ash Patel, former manager of Yahoo's Platforms & Infrastructure group;

-- the U.S. region, which will be led by Hilary Schneider, previously chief of the company's Global Partner Solutions group; and

-- Insights Strategy, which is in charge of centralizing and executing "a common strategy for the use of data and analysis across Yahoo," and the chief of which will be named later.

The new organizational structure will improve Yahoo's products and speed up decisions, the company said.

In technology and infrastructure, Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh will be in charge of developing a "world class" cloud computing and storage infrastructure, unifying platforms and improving the communication between product developers and engineers.

As a result, Yahoo will create a Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group, and move all the teams that work on end-user services and sites to the Audience Technology Group under the guidance of Venkat Panchapakesan

Effects of the Reorganization

On paper, the reorganization looks like it could help simplify and streamline key processes in order to help Yahoo achieve its key goals, said industry analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence. However, it's hard to predict whether the plan will have its intended effects, because there are a lot of internal elements and dynamics that drive reorganizations but remain shrouded to outsiders, Sterling said.

"Reorganizations are very hard to second-guess because you don't necessarily know the people who are getting promoted or shifted around, and you don't see a lot of the internal considerations driving the decisions," Sterling said. "There's a lot of opacity there."

Based on their track records, the people being put in charge as part of the reorganization seem capable and respected, and it will be key for them to inspire confidence in the employees and generate enthusiasm among them, Sterling said. "You can reorganize and reorganize, but if you don't have strong leaders and engaged employees, then you won't get the desired results," he said.

The announcement of the cloud computing and data infrastructure group left Gartner analyst Allen Weiner scratching his head and wondering if that means Yahoo plans to enter the market for hosted IT services like Google and Amazon have done.

Asked for clarification about this point, a Yahoo spokeswoman indicated that this is a possibility but didn't offer more details.

This new group will consolidate and extend the company's considerable resources and talent in cloud computing, including Yahoo's ongoing support of the Hadoop open source grid computing project, she said in an e-mailed statement.

The resulting "next generation cloud computing and data infrastructure" at Yahoo will not only power the company's existing and future sites and services, but also "any services ultimately extended to customers," she said. "However we are not discussing any such details today."

Innovation Problems

For Weiner, the most interesting piece of the reorganization is the creation of a centralized product development group. One of Yahoo's main weaknesses in recent years has been its inability to create and release truly innovative products and services, having instead to rely on acquisitions to fill that internal gap, he said.

"They haven't had a great, formal process for innovating and getting products out," Weiner said. "Now that they have this (centralized) product group, they better start releasing some pretty damn good products, like the next Twitter or YouTube, products that will get people to say 'Yahoo is back.'"

This problem has been evident in the apparent disconnect between Brickhouse -- Yahoo's internal innovation incubator unit -- and the commercial product development teams, he said. Brickhouse has come out with some interesting, early stage prototypes that have gotten the thumbs-up from industry experts but that, for some reason, have gotten stuck on the way to a mass release, Weiner said. "There's been no process to link Brickhouse into a product development and release cycle," he said.

The reorganization also calls for Prabhakar Raghavan to direct search strategy and Tuoc Luong to act as interim chief of the search product team. David Ku will be in charge of the Advertising Technology Group for search.

The reorganization will not touch Yahoo's Marketing Products Division, Connected Life and Corporate Marketing groups.

This reorganization is the latest of several major ones that the company has implemented in the past 18 months or so, and comes at a thorny time, as Yahoo deals with the aftermath of the failed attempt by Microsoft to acquire it.

The three-month pursuit, which ended in early May, has led shareholders to sue the company, saying its directors and managers failed in their fiduciary duty to shareholders by, allegedly, sabotaging Microsoft's acquisition attempt. Investor Carl Icahn has nominated an alternate slate of candidates to oust Yahoo's current board. In addition, Yahoo has seen many high-profile executives abandon the company in the past two months.

Add More Folders to the Media Browser

One of the features of iWork applications--and certain applications in OS X 10.5--is an integrated Media Browser. In Pages, Numbers, or Keynote, the browser appears when you click the Media button in the toolbar (or use View -> Show Media Browser if you prefer). In certain media-aware applications (Safari or TextEdit, for example) in OS X 10.5, the browser appears in the Media section of the sidebar when you use File -> Open command.

What you see in the Media Browser depends on which program you're using, and what media capabilities it has. In the iWork applications, the Media Browser has three tabs--Audio, Photos, and Movies--and each tab is split into an upper file browser area and a lower preview area. In non-iWork applications, you may not have all these choices available. In Safari, for instance, the Media section of the sidebar shows only Photos, while TextEdit's browser shows all three media types.

But you may very well know all of this--the Media Browser isn't a deeply-hidden feature of the OS or its applications. What you may not know, however, is that you can add your own folders to the list of locations show in the Media Browser. Not only can you add your own folders, but you can add different folders for Audio, Photos, and Movies, and the added folders are program-specific.

Adding folders to the Media Browser is as easy as drag-and-drop, with one minor difficulty for the iWork applications. Ignoring iWork for now, here's how you'd add a folder to the Media Browser in something like Safari or TextEdit. Select File -> Open in the chosen application, then click on the relevant entry in the Media portion of the sidebar to display the Media Browser. Switch to the Finder, and navigate to the folder containing the folder you'd like to add to the Media Browser. Position the Finder window such that you can see both the target folder and the Media Browser, then just drag the target folder into the top portion of the Media Browser window. When the cursor changes to the green plus sign, drop the dragged folder.

Switch back to the Media Browser, and scroll to the bottom of the file list portion of the window. You'll find a new entry titled Folders; click the triangle to the left of Folders, and a folder will open, showing the folder you dragged and dropped.

You can add as many folders as you like, and they'll all show up in the new Folders folder. As noted earlier, folders you add are unique to each program, and unique to each category of media.

For iWork applications, the process is basically the same, except for the difficulty I mentioned earlier. The difficulty is caused by the fact that the Media Browser in iWork applications is a floating palette, and it vanishes when you switch to the Finder. So how can you add a folder to something you can't see? The answer is simple, if not obvious. First, in your iWork program, make sure the tab of the Media Browser that you'd like to modify is selected, then switch to the Finder. Find the folder you'd like to add, and start dragging it. Now press Command-Tab--while still dragging the folder--and switch to your iWork application. When the iWork program becomes active, your floating palettes will show up, and you can then drop the dragged folder into the Media Browser. (You can do the same thing using Exposé instead of Command-Tab, if you prefer.)

To remove folders you've added, Control-click on the folder in the Media Browser and select Remove Folder from the pop-up menu. You can only remove top-level folders, not folders within folders, in this manner. To get rid of all the folders you've added, Control-click on the Folders folder, and select Remove Folders from the pop-up menu.

Microsoft Sees Little Data Centers Everywhere

Portable data centers will be key to supporting the surging demand for online services, but equipment vendors need to start designing products especially for them, a Microsoft engineer said Wednesday.

Microsoft has already shown its enthusiasm for portable data centers, which cram hundreds of servers into a standard 20-foot (6.1 meter) shipping container that can be delivered wherever it's needed, so long as there is a power supply and network connection.

The company has said it will put more than 200 of them on the first floor of a data center it's building in Chicago, and it is already operating at least one of its online services, Virtual Earth, from a portable data center in Colorado.

"The idea of modular, portable data centers is key to the industry's future," said Daniel Costello, Microsoft director of data center research, in a presentation at GigaOM's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco. "That's why I'm here to talk about data centers, not just for Microsoft but for our customers as well."

Buying these boxes from server vendors can be more energy-efficient and cost-effective than building a new, traditional data center, he said, and Microsoft sees them as more than just a way to add extra computing capacity at short notice. "We see them as a primary packaging unit," he said.

Using shipping containers is part of an effort by Microsoft to radically rethink its data centers, as it tries to add more computing capacity in a way that is cost effective and power efficient. "At Microsoft, we're questioning every component in the data center, up to and including the roof," Costello said. That includes "eliminating concrete from our data center bills."

"The definition of a datacenter has changed. It's not just bricks and mortar any more, and moving forward, we think it can be a lot more energy efficient," he said.

But vendors building portable data centers today are filling them with equipment that was designed for traditional data centers. "Moving forward, we need to design systems specifically for this form factor. If we look at the containers, that form factor will change over time as well."

Microsoft has approached every major server vendor about providing it with equipment, Costello said. He said he thinks "all major vendors" will offer portable data centers within the next two years. Vendors offering them today include Sun Microsystems, Verari Systems, Rackable Systems and American Power Conversion.

The cost benefits come partly from economies of scale. Shipping 2,000 servers in a container is more cost-effective than shipping and installing separate racks, and portable data centers don't require raised floors or as much wiring.

They can offer a better "power unit efficiency" ratio than do traditional data centers, he said. PUE is a measure of a data center's power efficiency. If a server demands 500 watts and the PUE of a data center is 3.0, the power from the grid needed to run the server will be 1500 watts, according to a definition from the Green Grid industry consortium.

"We've seen PUE at a peak of 1.3" in modular data centers, Costello said, compared with between 1.6 and 2.0 for a traditional data center.

The containers can accommodate 1,000 watts per square foot, allowing companies to power a lot more servers in a given area, he said. Many companies are unable to add more equipment to their data centers because power supplies and cooling equipment are at maximum capacity. The portable data centers are an alternative to building new facilities or extending old ones.

There are some drawbacks and plenty of questions to be answered, he said. Some of the cons include a higher cost of failure if the power to a container is cut off, as well as new risks in terms of regulatory compliance. In addition, portable data centers offered today can't accommodate servers from multiple vendors, he said.

There may also be issues with patents. The idea of putting standard equipment into a standard shipping container probably can't be patented, according to Costello, but "what happens inside the unit, in terms of airflow and how it's laid out, is definitely patentable."

There are also questions about the lifecycle of a portable data center, such as whether it can be refurbished after its 10-year life-span or will need to be discarded. "The financial models are still being worked out," Costello said.

But he thinks portable data centers will be deployed widely to provide services to end users. "We used to talk about a PC on every desk," he said. "But how about a data center in every town?"

The company is looking at green energy sources to power them, including wind, solar and hydroelectric, he said.

The Structure conference is about the infrastructure equipment needed for "cloud computing," which refers to hosted services such as Amazon's S3 storage service and Google's App Engine, but can also include online services such as MySpace and Salesforce.com.

Yahoo Defends Google Deal to Shareholders

Yahoo on Wednesday sent a letter to its shareholders justifying its deal with Google, saying it will enhance the company's profitability and provide more shareholder value than the offer put forth by Microsoft to invest in Yahoo's search business.

The deal with Google will generate US$250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow for Yahoo in the first year, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang wrote in the joint letter.

Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo's search business for $1 billion and invest another $8 billion required Yahoo to commit to a 10-year exclusive arrangement that "would have made us dependent on Microsoft for all of our search business," Bostock and Yang wrote.

It would also have given Microsoft a powerful role in determining Yahoo's future, including the right to veto the sale of Yahoo, they wrote.

Microsoft announced an unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo on Feb. 1 for $44.6 billion. Yahoo's board rejected that offer, saying it undervalued the company. Microsoft increased its offer to $47.5 billion, but on May 3, Microsoft abandoned talks after the two sides failed to agree on a price.

At the time, investors criticized Yang and Yahoo's board for allegedly not negotiating in good faith and failing to look out for shareholders' best interests.

Since then, Microsoft has repeatedly denied an interest in acquiring all of Yahoo, but offered to buy Yahoo's search advertising business. Those negotiations fell through. Yahoo instead signed a deal with Google to outsource part of its search ad business.

Under the deal with Google, Yahoo will run sponsored search ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo's search results. Google will pay Yahoo a fee based on revenue from click-throughs generated by Google's ads on Yahoo.

Kiss VMware's Rump Good-Bye

A perfect storm is brewing ahead and, like a fishing captain who doesn't get that a plummeting barometer means stay at port, VMware is persisting in sailing into disaster.

Yes, I know, VMware as recently as last fall owned the virtualization market. Then, 85% of all virtualization users were running VMWare. So what. I'm sure there was a company that had 85% of the buggy-whip market... just before Henry Ford decided that Americans wanted a cheap, dependable car in any color they wanted so long as it was black.

Here are my reasons why VMware's future looks just as bright as the buggy whip manufacturers.

First, there's the meta-problem that VMware faces. Everyone who's a player in the virtualization space, and I mean everyone, is either offering a free as in beer virtualization program or they're baking it for me into their chip sets or operating systems.

VMware offers its low-end offerings for free, but it makes it money exclusively from selling high-end virtualization and virtualization management software. What happens to that model when you can get a virtualization solution every bit as good for free? I'll tell you what happens to it, it dies.

Let's look more closely at this shall we?

Number one with a bullet, Microsoft is about to roll out its Hyper-V virtualization in Server 2008 this August. I am no friend to Microsoft, but every now and again, as they did with Excel, the boys from Redmond get something right. I've used beta of Hyper-V on Server 2008. In a word, it's 'impressive.' And, it will come to Windows shops ready to go in the server.

That will spell the end of VMware for businesses that believe they can do no wrong so long as they buy Microsoft.

Some people think that will lead to big trouble for IT because they'll be presented with a choice between incompatible virtualization systems. Yeah, right, you really think the Microsoft club members are going to shell out cash for VMware when they can use Hyper-V for 'free?' I don't think so.

Next, there's the idiot assumption, beloved by VMware that "We have never believed that the hypervisor would be commoditized. To imply that it's a commodity would imply that there's no differentiation," said Ben Matheson, director of marketing at VMware. Sorry Ben, we're getting to the point where there's no differentiation. Oh I can tell you in painful detail about the differences between virtualization and para-virtualization, but all an IT guy cares about is getting as many virtual machines running right on as few processors as possible.

Indeed, Red Hat's new virtualization plan is to use KVM, Linux's new built-in virtualization, to make virtualization completely and, I mean completely, generic. As far as Red Hat is concerned, virtualization is going to be like refrigerators. That is to say, 'everyone has to have one, but no one really thinks that much about their exact specifications.' And, oh yes, Red Hat executives know darn well that if they're successful with this approach, VMware is going to be wrecked.

But, it's not just Red Hat. Microsoft is partnering up with Novell and Citrix to use Xen to deliver cheaper virtualization. Even kids, well the people who run Sesame Street anyway, can figure it out. As Noah Broadwater, vice president of information services for Sesame Street Workshop, said in explaining why they went with Novell's Xen package. "VMware has a great solution, it's just very expensive."

Isn't it though?

Worse still, if you're a VMware share holder, there are purely open-source virtualization programs, like ProxMox that does all the heavy lifting for a would-be virtualization user. I can set up KVM and/or Xen from bare-metal. Most IT people can set them, or Hyper-V, up with the operating systems, such as RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) or Windows Server 2008, that support them.

ProxMox, funny name and all doesn't really add anything new to the VMware's challengers, it just takes the best of the open-source virtualization programs, cleans them up, and turns them into a CD that makes setting up VMs (virtual machines) a snap. I've been working with virtualization since not long after IBM released VM/370 for mainframes. ProxMox, while it still has teething problems, is already the easiest way I've ever seen to setup and run VMs. Oh, and it's free both as in speech and as in beer.

If you really think a company built around a proprietary and pricey program is going to be able to handle getting stormed with low-cost and free software from both the proprietary world-Microsoft--and the open-source world, Red Hat, Novell, and non-commercial offerings to boot... well would you cash this $800,000.00 US dollars bank draft for me since I'm now in Paraguay?

Vodafone India Pre-registering Customers for IPhone 3G

Vodafone India has started pre-registering customers for the iPhone 3G from Apple, promising that the device will be available soon, but the company will as yet not disclose when the device will be offered to customers.

The Indian government has as yet to issue final guidelines on the auction of 3G (third generation telephony) spectrum and licenses in India. One of the issues holding up a final decision is whether foreign companies can bid for the license.

Vodafone is however already an operator in India following its acquisition of a majority stake in mobile services company Hutchison Essar, renamed as Vodafone Essar. Vodafone announced earlier this year that the iPhone 3G will be available in India during the year.

In an advertisement Wednesday in The Times of India and on its Web site, the company is offering to pre-register customers for the iPhone 3G. The company however cautions that the device offered by Vodafone is currently compatible only with 2G networks, and some of its features may not work in India.

A Vodafone India spokesman declined to comment further on the company's offering.

Bharti Airtel, another large Indian operator, has also said it will launch the iPhone 3G in India later this year. The company has not specified the date for the availability of the phone to its customers. Vodafone's offer to pre-register customers reflects significant market interest in the Apple iPhone, and may be an attempt to get a marketing edge over Bharti Airtel.

HP, Hitachi Boost Blade Server Offerings

Hewlett-Packard and Hitachi boosted their existing blade server offerings on Tuesday, with Hitachi upgrading its systems with the latest Intel chips and Hewlett-Packard combining blades to create a specially configured appliance that can handle demanding data-warehouse workloads.

HP's BladeSystem for Oracle Optimized Warehouse includes existing HP blade servers and chassis, and is configured to boost database performance and provide faster response times on Oracle's database software. Though Oracle is a longtime partner, this is the first time HP has worked with Oracle to design data-warehousing hardware.

Customers can start using the appliance straight out of the box and create a data warehouse in hours instead of weeks, according to Rich Ghiossi, director of business intelligence portfolio marketing at HP.

The preconfigured appliance comes with four HP BladeSystem c7000 chassis, which run HP ProLiant BL460c and ProLiant BL465c blade servers. The servers support Intel Xeon and Advanced Micro Devices Opteron processors, with each chassis capable of storing up to 1T byte of data. The appliance runs the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 OS and Oracle Database Enterprise Edition 10G.

It will be available worldwide through HP distributors including Avnet. The partners will determine exact pricing, but prices could start in the US$400,000 range, Ghiossi said.

Hitachi also upgraded its blade servers to support Intel's latest chips. The servers perform 25 percent better than their predecessors and reduce power consumption by up to 30 percent, according to Hitachi.

The upgraded BladeSymphony 1000, a high-end blade server, will use dual-core models of Intel's Itanium 9100 series processors, as well as versions running dual-core Xeon 5200 processors and quad-core Xeon 5400 processors.

The upgraded BladeSymphony 320 will also support the new Intel Xeon chips. The system can pack up to 560 cores into a 42U rack, according to the company. Both the blades support Windows and Linux OSes. Pricing for the updated servers was not immediately available.

Remote Access to Home Media Extends to Phones

A network management system that lets users get to the video, music and other files on a home or small-business LAN will soon offer that remote access from mobile phones.

SingleClick Systems said Tuesday that its SingleClick Remote Access technology, which was announced earlier this year, will work with Apple iPhones, Research In Motion Blackberrys and about 7,000 other types of mobile phones starting July 15. The company is set to show the new capability at the Connections 2008 conference in Santa Clara, California, beginning Tuesday evening.

Without installing software on the phone, users will be able to get to their media via a password-protected Web portal and then view or listen to it, according to SingleClick CEO Scott Zarkiewicz. But there's a catch: It has to stream over the mobile network. In addition, some mobile operators place restrictions -- not always enforced -- on the use of mobile data connections for streaming media.

SingleClick has been making management systems for small LANs for several years, and Dell began including its software on selected PCs as Dell Network Assistant in 2005, according to Zarkiewicz. Customers can view, monitor and repair their networks with the software and designate one computer as the network's media server, then install special software on it. Any system on the network can then access multimedia content from that server.

With a remote-access offering introduced earlier this year for US$10 per month, that content is available on customer's own remote PCs or those of friends and relatives who have been given password access to an individual Web portal. Starting July 15, that same service will include access from mobile phones. The service initially will be available from SingleClick's Web site, and the company is seeking other channels for it.

After the user chooses the files they want to enjoy, the software on the media server will transcode them for delivery on the phone. The system uses the open-source Wireless Universal Resource File (WURFL) database for information about particular phone models and their multimedia capabilities. Based on what kind of media player is on a particular phone model, the media server software will transcode the content. It will also gauge the speed of the wireless network connection and adjust the quality of the media to play over that connection.

For example, if an iPhone user tried to watch any kind of video that resided on his media server PC, the server software would transcode it into Apple's QuickTime format and first show the user a sample of what the video would look like at the best possible quality, Zarkiewicz said. The video would play on the iPhone's Quicktime player rather than through the browser, he said.

However, the new capability is intended less for iPhones than for other handsets, such as BlackBerrys, that may not have good media players built in, Zarkiewicz said. And while video may frequently be degraded by the available cellular connection, music often plays fine with just 32K bps (bits per second) or so, he said. Also, consumers who want to show photos on their phones will be able to easily get to whatever images they have on their home network and view them on the phone, he said.

The mobile feature can also act as a VPN (virtual private network) for viewing shared files within a small business, according to SingleClick.

Sony, Sony Ericsson Top Latest Greenpeace Ranking

Sony and Sony Ericsson have come out on top of the latest Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics, although most companies saw their scores drop due to a new ranking system based on wider criteria.

"A lot of companies in the industry are taking steps towards greener electronics, but it's about time we raised the bar and challenged the companies to race towards a greener industry," said Omer Elnaiem, a Greenpeace spokesman in Amsterdam.

Until now, Greenpeace has ranked companies on issues related to the use of hazardous chemicals in their products and the responsibility they take, through take-back and recycling schemes, for obsolete products. The new list widens the focus beyond the products themselves and to encompass corporate policies and practices toward climate change and energy issues.

Specifically, Greenpeace is looking at whether companies show political support for global mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, whether they disclose greenhouse gas emissions and whether they commit to an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from their operations. The amount of renewable energy used by a company is also reflected in the ranking, as is the energy efficiency of new products.

Sony Ericsson, which shared first place overall with Sony, became the first company to score almost top marks in the chemical sector, having removed PVC, antimony, beryllium and phthalates from its products. It missed a perfect score because of "unreasonably high threshold limits for brominated flame retardants in products that are allegedly BFR-free."

It also scored well on energy efficiency, but scored badly on other issues such as recycling. Greenpeace labeled its recycling rate of between 1 and 13 percent as "pitiful."

Sony scored lower on the chemicals criteria because it has fewer models on sale that are free of the substances targeted by Greenpeace. It did relatively well on voluntary recycling (its recycling rate on old TVs and PCs is 53 percent) and scored points for disclosing externally verified greenhouse gas emissions for more than 200 sites.

Nokia was ranked third, and once again would have come first were it not for inconsistencies in its product take-back and recycling program. Despite having a program in place, it is not working well in India. Greenpeace previously found problems in India, the Philippines, Thailand, Argentina and Russia. The program is now working well in the latter four countries, but the one-point penalty remains because of continuing problems in India.

Samsung and Toshiba, which led the previous edition of the guide, fell due to low scores in the new energy criteria. Samsung discloses emissions from its operations in South Korea, but none of the other information requested by Greenpeace. Toshiba ranked slightly better on energy due to its commitment to an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

As with previous surveys, companies don't score any points if they don't disclose the information Greenpeace requests -- the guide is as much about promoting transparency in reporting as it is about encouraging greener products.

It's partly for this reason that game maker Nintendo came in last place again. The company scored just 0.8 points out of a possible 10, and was criticized for not providing any information on issues such as its energy use, the energy efficiency of products, the amount of electronic waste it recycles and the amount of plastic recycled across all its product lines.

In a report published earlier this year, Greenpeace found game consoles from Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all contained toxic or undesirable chemicals such as beryllium, PVC, phthalates and bromine.

The Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics was first published in August 2006. It ranks the 18 biggest makers of PCs, mobile phones, TVs and game consoles.

Nokia Buys Rest of Symbian, Will Make Code Open Source

Nokia on Tuesday announced it plans to acquire all of Symbian, which develops an operating system for mobile phones. The Finnish phone giant currently owns about 48 per cent and will pay €264 million (US$410 million) for the rest.

It has received thumbs up from Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Siemens, which represents about 91 percent of the Symbian shares subject to the offer, according to a statement from Nokia.

Samsung Electronics, a partial stakeholder in Symbian, hasn't commented yet, but Nokia said it expects the company to agree to the sale.

The deal doesn't come as a surprise to Geoff Blaber, an analyst at CCS Insight.

"Nokia paid out more than $250 million in Symbian license fees last year, so it makes commercial sense to buy Symbian for about $410 million, rather than keep paying what is effectively a subsidy to the other shareholders," Blaber wrote in a company blog.

But that isn't the only explanation: Competition in the mobile phone market is intensifying.

"I think Nokia was more worried about the risk that Symbian's structure would erode its competitive position," said Blaber.

Symbian is being challenged by a number of new contenders, including the open-source operating system from the LiMo Foundation and Google's Android platform, which are challenging existing commercial models, according to Blaber.

Also announced on Tuesday was the formation of the Symbian Foundation, with members Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone Group. All will get access to the Symbian operating system under a royalty-free license.

The deal will unite Symbian's OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP (which is the software platform for NTT DoCoMo's FOMA service) to create one open mobile software platform and a stronger competitor in the battle with other platforms.

To compete with Google and LiMo on an equal footing, the Symbian Foundation will make some parts of the operating system available as open-source code at launch. More code from the project will be made available over the next two years under the Eclipse Public License, according to a statement.

If Nokia's new approach works, it could greatly benefit the Symbian platform, Blaber said. With wider input from network operators and chip manufacturers as well as closer integration of the operating system and user interface, Symbian's operating system could become more stable and attractive to operators, developers and consumers, Blaber said.

Nokia expects the acquisition to be completed during the fourth quarter of 2008.

Endpoint Security Gets a Failing Grade

My Dear Old Mum phoned the other day to ask my advice on a computer problem. Ever since she got broadband, she said, whenever her PC started up it would nag her about installing some Windows security update or another. She'd press cancel but it would just nag her again later. Then she'd restart and it would nag her yet again. It was driving her crazy. "Hey Mum," I said. "Instead of pressing cancel, did you ever think to just let it install the updates?"

Don't laugh. It's always easier to pick on those less computer-literate than ourselves. But my Mum's predicament actually points to a problem of much greater significance. As it turns out, failure to install security updates isn't limited to individual home users. According to recent research by security vendor Sophos, an alarming number of business desktops are out of date, too.

Among the findings of the Sophos report: More than half of the 583 business systems surveyed were missing at least one Microsoft security update. More than half had disabled their local firewalls. And almost half had actually disabled their own endpoint security software, which otherwise would have monitored for potential attacks by worms, viruses, and Trojan horse software.

Obviously, these figures, if accurate, are completely unacceptable. The question is what to do about it? It seems clear that more user education is necessary, but IT admins will have an uphill battle convincing users not to disable endpoint security software if their basic security update policy is so lax that they're not installing regular updates. Worse, if users aren't aware of the need to install security updates on their work computers, how will they learn to perform the same updates on their PCs at home?

If you've got a solution, I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, I can only offer the advice I gave my Mum: The next time Microsoft recommends that you install a critical security update, just click "OK." It may mean some temporary inconvenience for now, but it will be nothing compared to what you could face if you leave your PC vulnerable to attack.

ECS Eyes 1M Netbook, Intel ClassMate PC Sales

Taiwan computer maker Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) estimated it will ship a total of 1 million netbooks and ClassMate PCs this year, despite a late start for its netbook lineup.

The company is the contract manufacturer for the ClassMate PC, Intel's answer to the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's (OLPC) XO laptop. Both laptops are designed as low-cost laptops aimed at kids in developing nations.

The two laptops have also spawned the new product category known as netbooks, or mini-laptops, such as Asustek Computer's Eee PC. The Eee PC has been so successful in its short time on the market that now almost all PC vendors are selling their own mini-laptop.

ECS designed the G-series G10IL as its rival in the mini-notebook arena, and is also offering a lower cost series with similar components, its J-series. The top-end G-series model comes with a 10.2-inch screen and has a 3G (third generation mobile telecommunications) module on board so people can connect the Internet wirelessly over mobile phone networks. The mini-laptop also connects to Wi-Fi networks.

The G10IL runs on Intel's Atom microprocessor and buyers can choose between Microsoft Windows XP or a Linux OS.

The J-series differs in a number of ways, including options for smaller screens, such as an 8.2-inch screen, smaller hard drives, and less expensive batteries.

ECS started manufacturing ClassMate PCs last year, said Jerry Yang, a senior associate vice president at the company. The experience of building the ClassMate prompted the company to look into its own mini-laptop design, resulting in the G10IL.

The G10IL won't ship until August or September of this year, so in terms of the company's 1 million unit target, the ClassMate has a head start.

"I can't say for sure what the split will be, maybe 50-50 or perhaps more for the ClassMate," said Yang.

Intel verified that ECS was the contract manufacturer for the ClassMate PC in the Asia Pacific, but did not have a shipment target.

The ClassMate PC is being sold around the world by local PC vendors. In the Philippines, for example, Neo Manufacturing and Services is selling the ClassMate, while in Vietnam, they are being sold by CMS and in Indonesia, Zyrex and Axioo.

Microsoft Security Fix Clobbers 2 Million Password Stealers

Microsoft's June security updates were bad news for online criminals who make their living stealing password information from online gamers.

The company's Malicious Software Removal Tool -- a program that detects and removes viruses and other bad programs from Windows machines -- removed game password-stealing software from more than 2 million PCs in the first week after it was updated to detect these programs on June 10.

One password stealer, called Taterf, was detected on 700,000 computers in the first day after the update. That's twice as many infections as were spotted during the entire month after Microsoft began detecting the notorious Storm Worm malware last September.

"These are ridiculous numbers of infections my friends, absolutely mind-boggling," wrote Matt McCormack, a spokesman with Microsoft's Malware Response Center, in a Friday blog posting.

Between June 10 and June 17, Microsoft removed Taterf from about 1.3 million machines, he said.

Microsoft's September detections seriously hobbled the Storm Worm botnet, once considered a top Internet threat.

Password stealers such as Taterf are among the most common types of malicious software on the Internet. That's because there's big money to be made selling the virtual currencies used in online games for real-world cash.

Once a criminal learns a gamer's username and password, he can log into the game and sell the victim's virtual possessions for virtual gold coins. Those coins are then handed to another character in the game who sells the gold for real-world dollars at an online exchange such as IGE, said Greg Hoglund, CEO of HBGary and a co-author of the book "Exploiting Online Games."

"There's no way to audit that money transfer, so effectively they're doing money laundering," he said. "There's almost zero risk for the attackers."

The password-stealing programs are often installed via Web-based attack code that exploits flaws in multimedia programs such as Adobe's Flash Player or Apple's QuickTime Player, Hoglund said.

The attacks are often technically sophisticated, exploiting previously undisclosed bugs in Windows software, said Roger Thompson, chief research officer with AVG Technologies. "The 'World of Warcraft' password stealers have provided most of the innovation over the last twelve months," he said via instant message.

Microsoft's McCormack provided some data on where most of the password stealer detections occurred. Not surprisingly, China was the top country, with 529,003 detections.

Security experts say Chinese games are frequently the target of these attacks. Rounding out the top five countries for detections were Taiwan with 279,428, Spain with 235,381, the U.S. with 213,374 and Korea with 184,306.

About 330 million copies of the Malicious Software Removal Tool update were downloaded during this June period.

Gamers can make easy targets for criminals because some of them disable antivirus software to boost gaming performance, while others download free "cracked" versions of games, which can contain malware, McCormack said.

"So how does one avoid being infected?" he asked. "Running an up-to-date anti-virus solution is a good start. Running an up-to-date, patched browser is another necessity," he said. "Enabling Automatic Updates helps a whole bunch, too."

NYPD to FCC: Don't Re-auction Safety Spectrum

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission should not attempt to re-auction a piece of wireless spectrum that failed to sell earlier in the year, but instead should give that spectrum to emergency-response agencies, the New York City Police Department said Friday.

The FCC nearly doubled its congressionally mandated goal of raising US$10 billion in the 700MHz spectrum auctions, and instead of re-attempting to sell the so-called D block of spectrum, the agency should turn the 10MHz block over to public safety agencies, wrote NYPD Deputy Chief Charles Dowd in a filing to the FCC.

The FCC had wanted the D block to be paired with another 10MHz of spectrum already controlled by public-safety agencies in a nationwide voice and broadband network shared by public safety and commercial users. Under the original FCC plan, the winning bidder would have had to build the multi-billion-dollar nationwide network, but the FCC failed to get the $1.3 billion minimum bid it had designated, receiving only one bid for $472 million.

"There is simply no business case for a commercial wireless network operator to build a nationwide network that will meet public safety coverage and survivability standards," Dowd wrote in the filing. "Potential bidders are reluctant to bid due to the enormous costs to construct the network coupled with the uncertainty of the public safety requirements that they would be required to meet."

Friday was the deadline for groups to file comments to the FCC on what to do with the D block.

Dowd noted that New York and Washington, D.C., have already moved forward on their own new public safety networks. The cities have "elected to construct their own broadband public safety data networks rather than to wait for the deployment of a Nationwide network that may never materialize," he wrote.

Meanwhile, the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), the nonprofit group of public safety agencies that control the second 10MHz block, took a different approach from the NYPD. The PSST called on the FCC to reduce or eliminate the minimum price of the D block in a new auction. The FCC should also allow the second-place bidder to take control of the spectrum if the winner is unable to build the network, the PSST said in its filing.

Finally, the FCC should ensure that the PSST can raise operating money, the nonprofit group said. In the first auction, there was controversy about the PSST asking for lease payments from potential bidders for its 10MHz block of spectrum, with some critics saying that drove away bidders. But lease payments remain the most likely way to raise money, wrote PSST chairman Harlin McEwen.

"Because the bulk of the spectrum likely will be used by the D Block licensee to provide services from which it expects to realize a profit, the PSST believes it logically should obtain most of its funding from the lease payment," McEwen added.

The D block auction was watched closely because many U.S. lawmakers and public-safety officials pushed for a nationwide network to be created after many emergency responders couldn't communicate with each other during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Police and fire departments in neighboring cities often use different communication devices on different blocks of spectrum and a nationwide network for them has been a top priority of the FCC and several lawmakers.

Rivada Networks, a company that currently builds broadband and voice networks for public-safety agencies, encouraged the FCC to allow the public-safety agencies to begin building networks in the 700MHz spectrum before a new auction is completed.

"These public safety deployable systems must have priority over any eventual D-block licensee that may seek to build network infrastructure in the public safety 700 MHz spectrum," Rivada said in its filing on Friday. "The commission should make clear -- prior to any re-auction-- that the D-Block licensee will have no more than secondary access to the public safety 700 MHz spectrum. That is, the D-Block licensee may not cause any interference to, and must accept any interference from, public safety deployables operating in the public safety 700 MHz spectrum."

Put a Browser in Your Pocket

The Mozilla developers are still racking up downloads since Firefox 3.0 was released on June 17, but the early adopters are already putting it to good use. For starters, Tipping Point has already spotted a vulnerability in the software.

One of the more interesting third-party efforts, however, is the "portable version" of Firefox 3.0 from PortableApps.com, which shipped the same day as the main branch. Portable, in this context, doesn't mean that the code runs on multiple operating systems -- the Firefox developers have taken care of that already. Instead, it literally means that you can take this version of Firefox anywhere. All you need is a CD-R, a digital memory card, or a USB keychain drive to store it on.

Ordinarily, when you install an application onto your hard drive it puts its files all over the place. Configurations files go here, databases go there, bookmarks get stored someplace else, and you can't very easily move them around. Once installed, that application is effectively tied to that one computer.

What the PortableApps crew does is modify open source applications, such as Firefox, so that they expect all of their associated configuration and data files to reside in the same place -- the portable drive that the software itself lives on. You plug in the drive, launch Firefox, and all of your options, bookmarks, and personal data is there, just the way you like it. Better still, when you quit the program and remove the drive, all of your personal data comes with you; none is left on the computer.

Picture bringing one of these along on an extended European vacation, where your Net access is limited to occasional brief stops at Internet cafes, and you'll see how useful they can be. The only caveat: If you happen to lose the drive, the cookies and passwords stored on it can be a serious liability. You'll want to explore disk encryption technologies before you make a habit of carrying one of these around.

The best part is that, because Firefox and the other applications on PortableApps.com are open source, the portable applications are 100 percent free of charge, and free of ads or spyware, too. The portable version of Firefox 3.0 runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless Headset

For massive multiplayer online games like the popular World of Warcraft, it's helpful to have a headset if you're trying to coordinate efforts with other members of a team or guild. Rather than tangle up your desk with messy wires, a wireless headset is a nice option. For US$100, Logitech sells the ClearChat PC Wireless, a headset that's lightweight, comfortable, and sounds good.

The ClearChat PC Wireless headset works with Mac OS X and Windows. It has a USB dongle about the size of a flash thumb drive as a transmitter, and communicates using the 2.4GHz radio frequency, similar to band used by a cordless phone.

The headset features a plush, padded headband and ear pads that are comfortable to wear for hours at a stretch. The right headphone integrates audio controls; you can adjust volume up and down and also mute the microphone by tapping the outside of the headphone.

The microphone rests on a boom that can swivel up and out of the way when not in use. When you swing it away from your mouth it will briefly light up with a built-in red LED to show you that it's muted. The boom is flexible so you can bend it closer to your mouth; the microphone is noise-canceling.

The headphones have a built-in battery that recharges using an included USB cable, and Logitech also included a stand to mount the USB dongle if plugging it directly in to your Mac blocks an adjacent USB port. An on/off switch lets you save power when you're not using the headphones; a built-in LED shows you the device's power status (it also lights up when you're charging the battery).

Installation is plug-and-play: No software is included, nor is it required (Logitech says 10.2.8 or later is needed, however). All you need to do to get the system to recognize the ClearChat headphones is to open up the Sound system preference and select it in the Output and Input tabs. Configuring the headphones to be used in-game is a similar procedure.

I tried the headphones with Voice over IP applications as well, and noticed that there's more buzz or static with audio recorded using this headset than "wired" headsets; I wouldn't rule out interference from other products I have in my home office (the 2.4GHz band is getting pretty crowded these days). But the quality was good, and certainly suitable for in-game audio, which is where it counts. Logitech says the headphones will work up to 33 feet away from the transmitter; my experience was more like 20.

The bottom line

Bluetooth might be preferable for some users who don't want a dongle sticking out of their Mac's USB port, but for those who don't mind another device plugged into an available jack, the ClearChat PC Wireless headset offers good quality and comfort at a fair price, with plug-and-play simplicity.

Microsoft's Post-Gates Management Team

Though Bill Gates leaves his full-time duties at Microsoft on Friday, he remains nonexecutive chairman and will participate in select projects at the direction of Microsoft's current executive management team. Below is a rundown of who they are and what some of their near-term challenges are in Microsoft's post-Gates world.

-- Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer and the man in charge of it all. Ballmer's main challenge at the moment is to figure out a way for Microsoft to put a dent in Google's advertising dominance now that the Yahoo deal has fizzled. Ballmer also must help Microsoft diversify its revenue base, which still mainly comes from Windows and Office. He also must lead Microsoft through Gates' transition and prove to everyone that he can carry Microsoft forward even without Gates by his side.

-- Ray Ozzie, chief software architect and the new "Bill Gates." Ozzie is responsible for transforming Microsoft from a packaged-software vendor to a formidable Web 2.0 player in its own right. He is in charge of architecting the company's Web-based services strategy and attacking Google head-on. Ozzie obviously has the brains and visionary mettle to create technology that is forward-thinking and can change the way people live and work, but does he have the eye of the tiger when it comes to competing as a business man? Another question surrounding Ozzie's position as Gates' heir apparent is whether CEO Ballmer will let him have as much free rein to execute on his vision as longtime pal Gates did.

-- Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Mundie is to Microsoft's long-term innovation and research what Ozzie is to the short-term strategy of capitalizing on the Web. Entrusted with helping Microsoft compete overseas, particularly in emerging markets, Mundie faces pressure from Linux and open source in regions where Microsoft's products are too expensive to buy. He also is pressured to inspire Microsoft's brain pool to continue to innovate and come up with new ideas for future groundbreaking technologies.

-- Kevin Turner, chief operating officer. Turner is responsible for global execution and field alignment worldwide. In an interview, he said he slowed down Microsoft's transition to hosted services because he wanted to make sure customers were ready for it. Now he must prove that was a good idea. Turner is also challenged to help guide customers and Microsoft's own sales teams through the transition as Microsoft undergoes the fundamental business-model changes required to pull it off.

In addition to Microsoft's top companywide executives, the presidents of each of Microsoft's three divisions also are key players in architecting Microsoft for life after Gates.

The chief challenge for Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division, is to make Microsoft's Xbox business, which has been enormously expensive for the company, pay off in revenue. There's no doubt Xbox has been a successful product in the consumer market, but it has to start reaping in cash for Microsoft as the company tries to diversify its revenue beyond its core businesses.

Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms and Services Division, must continue to defend Microsoft against fallout from the disappointment Windows Vista has been among customers, and help the company transition its OS to a world where the Web is becoming more important than the PC. Johnson also has Microsoft's weak Online Services business under his care and is pressured to turn that segment around for the company in its quest to compete with Google.

Finally, a new player, Stephen Elop, who joined Microsoft in January as president of its Microsoft Business Division, will have to pick up where longtime Microsoftie and predecessor Jeff Raikes left off. Like Gates, Raikes is flying the coup for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: He will take over as CEO of the philanthropic foundation when he leaves Microsoft in September. Elop has under his charge the successful Office business, but is challenged to live up to Raikes' impressive legacy and continue to move Office beyond mere productivity into collaboration. The Business Division also oversees Microsoft's business applications, which remain locked in a constant battle for market share with powerful rivals Oracle and SAP.