Monday, February 21, 2011

SENNHEISER MM 70 IP

SENNHEISER is one of the biggest names in headphones and deservedly so--headphone geeks have frequently called full-size models of the company (e.g. 650 HD and HD 800) headphones the best available, and there are lots of other gems in the wide product line of Sennheiser. A few years ago, the company entered the market canalbud with $ 79 CX 300 (Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice, currently available updated CX 300-II); New $ 130 MM 70 Sennheiser's iP shares design elements with the CX 300 and now-aborted CX 400-II, but adds a form of remote control and microphone three buttons. (As with most headphones Sennheiser, pi 70 MM can be found for significantly less than the official price).

As mentioned, the iP of 70 MM is a canalbud style headset. Canalbuds divided essentially the difference in price between design and traditional earbuds and models--the ear canal ("canalphone"). (See our primer in-ear canal headphones-for more details). As part of, fit into the ear canal, canalbuds block some external noise and form an acoustic seal that enhances bass performance. However, they do not block both sound like real models in-ear canal and, as with templates in-ear canal, getting a good fit can be difficult, the cable can produce unwanted noise in ear microphone of a listener and using the headset may seem strange to the occlusion effect of having linked ears while talking.

The iP of 70 MM using hemispherical, black-and-chrome earphones with silicone eartips. The headphones are connected to a cable break unevenly shaped J, an agreement that makes it easier to wear the headphone wire behind the neck. The speaker is typical of canalbuds--each speaker sits just inside the ear canal, blocking only a moderate amount of external noise. However, the iP 70 MM headsets are easy to insert and, in my testing, more comfortable than those of most models of canalbud.

The form of three-button remote mic/inline sits on the left side, shortest cable Division of iP 70 MM, with the microphone located on the top of the form--most inline mic modules, we have tested the microphone on the side. The volume buttons two small protuberances on them to distinguish them from the Play/Pause/Call center, but the three buttons are very close together; I found it difficult to be sure that I was pushing the button correctly and avoid accidentally pressing buttons anymore. The microphone is more or less on par with the iPhone-internal microphone 4-70 MM mic of iP is a bit easier, but less detailed that the iPhone 4--and sounds very good in General.

Packaging of iP 70 MM includes a simil, a clip of shirt, six pairs of eartips (single and dual-flange styles in small, medium and large sizes, respectively), and a unique cable wrap that, unfortunately, would work better with a divided equally cable.

Initially I found the sound of Nice iP 70 MM and harmless, if unimpressive. Various tools in the bass, midrange and treble ranges were easy to hear and moderately detailed. But as I listened, I noticed some low-mid and top-bass boom that obscured detail below, as well as weak low frequency performance that made bass tones lack authority and visceral impact. I also noticed a pervasive iP vacuity to the sound of 70 MM, and I found that acute playback of iP 70 MM has a tendency to sound tough with recordings that have exhibited these qualities when played through other headphones and fragile.

Switching to the iP-595 Maximo iMetal $ 80 earphones (Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice) solidified my doubts about 70 MM low iP's and high-frequency performance. Low iP-595 is tougher, but with a handful more at lower frequencies, and frequencies are more relaxed and natural, but also more detailed. In general, the audio quality of iP 70 MM is more comparable to that of the Vortex Moshi $ 80 (Macworld rated 3.5 mice out of 5), although the two have some differences of sonic. The Moshi sounds more natural, but pi 70 MM has more "space" between tools, making it easier to distinguish between these instruments.

MacWorld buying advice

I found it easy to get along with the iP of 70 MM, but hard to love, even considering the retail price of $ 100--there are a number of canalbuds in the range from $ 50 to $ 100 that offer a better overall sound. However, although the sound quality of iP 70 MM falls short of some of the best models, a few of these competing models offer the performance of microphone and comfortable fit, superficial del PI 70 MM.


For other Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

When will we see a Windows phone from Nokia?

Nokia announced earlier this month that it was switching to Windows phone as its primary smartphone platform. The two companies have not yet reached a final agreement; that will be signed in the coming months. In the meantime, we're asking when we'll see the first Windows phone device from Nokia, creator of the world's largest phone for volume.

If Nokia wants to push out Windows phones in mass, the hardware you will need to come down in price, since Windows Phone 7 has minimum specifications to be met by all OEMs. Microsoft has already convinced Nokia that this is possible,

according to Reuters: Elop, said one of the key topics in talks to make a deal with Microsoft was convincing Nokia that it can achieve "a very low price point." "We have become convinced that we can do it very quickly," Chief Executive Stephen Elop said at a meeting with journalists of Finnish affairs.

While selling millions of Windows phones will help Microsoft gain market share in the mobile space and convince so developers can start pushing apps, it will deteriorate slightly the mark if hundreds of Nokia devices is achieved with the minimum as well as to third-world target markets willing to buy cheap Smartphone.

It is important to note that nowhere in Nokia-Microsoft Windows Phone 7 ad is mentioned: the two simply refer to your Windows. It is therefore possible that Nokia will push out 8 phone Windows on its high-end devices.

Regardless of when we will see the first Windows phone from Nokia, the Finnish company is already working on courting developers to Microsoft mobile platform. An email sent to the members of the Nokia Launchpad program obtained from Slashgear shows that they are being promised a free Nokia E7 together with "a free Nokia WP7 device.", when it is available the Launchpad is the program of development of Nokia mobile app, usually at a price of 300 each year but currently free for the first year. The full email is below:

Dear members, Launchpad

In the light of the strategy announcement made by Nokia and Microsoft last week, we are writing to you today to ensure that our commitment to you and your work to develop innovative applications for Nokia devices remains stronger than ever.

We have lots of questions and we want to reassure you that we understand, and we are here to listen to your feedback and provide you with information. Please visit Nokia conversations where you can find a lot of information about new products and http://conversations.nokia.com that may help answer some initial questions.

We are very excited by recent developments, and believe the opportunities of development for Nokia devices are as exciting and lucrative today as ever were. In addition to opportunities in the near future with Nokia and WP7, we have several new benefits to share with you today, intended to help accelerate your business app to reach the 225 million hungry app Nokia smartphone owners throughout the world today.

Today, the Qt developers can drive more than 100 million Nokia devices for their applications, and we announced that we intend to sell another 150 million Symbian devices. Nokia will continue to provide free Qt trainings, to help you learn how to make the most of this sophisticated cross-platform development. We re with enthusiasm so demand, please let us know if you'd like a training set up in your area.

We are also pleased to offer you a free entrance to the forthcoming Summit Developer World/Nokia Nokia this year. We will take care of registration costs.

To assist you with your development tasks in the short term, we will send you a free device Nokia E7 to all members of the program. In addition, we'll send you one free Nokia WP7 device as soon as it becomes available.

To accelerate the development of mobile app, we provide free technical support on all Nokia technologies for the next three months (up to 10 tickets). Similarly, if you want to take advantage of a free evaluation of the User Experience for one of your apps, please let us know and we will work with you to make such agreements.

We will also extend our business development support to all Nokia developer and members of the programme content that they are currently developing applications for Nokia devices, and we will assist you in publishing applications in Nokia's Ovi Store. We will continue to offer ideas and guidelines for ways to promote fully published applications so that you can reap the rewards of your hard work.

If you have any questions, or need help from us in the coming days, we want you to know that you can count on us to be there for you. We are really excited to work with you to discover new opportunities that will lead to future successes.



Internet pioneer wants to take the Net via planet

Vint Cerf takes seriously its title of Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He is floury in different projects to bring the next version of the Internet in the world--or in some cases, beyond the world and in the solar system. One of his pet projects includes an extraterrestrial Internet that uses a protocol other than IP.

Cerf sat down with Cisco Subnet editor of network world, Julie Bort, at the annual Conference of the digital broadband migration in Boulder, Colo., to discuss the interplanetary Internet, cloud computing standards, the Semantic Web and other topics.

PART 1: Cerf: future of the Internet does not include a IPv7

Interview: Podcast and transcript

About a year ago, she started talking a lot about a concept called "Interplanetary Internet" stretching the Internet so that it can reach outer space. What can you share about that project?

Photo: courtesy of GoogleIt happenings. It's not using the Internet Protocol. Is using the new Protocol package that was developed as part of the more general concept of delay-and disruption-tolerant network-.

Since 1998 we have recognized that traditional Internet design was implicit in the idea that there was good and relatively low latency connectivity, while in an environment of space, when it comes to interplanetary distances, there are delays and the speed of light can be minutes to days. We need this new Bundle Protocol to overcome the latencies and disconnects that occur in, from celestial movement [and by] orbit satellites.

Bundle protocols are running onboard the international space station. I am running into a number of locations around the United States, in the laboratories of NASA and in academia. There is something called the bone Bundle, which is the backbone of IPv6, which connects a lot of these research activities, one to another. There is at least somewhat experimental Bundle Protocol implementation for the Android operating system, but is not production quality, so that he really needs to be redone/revisited.

There is one called EPOXI spacecraft called the probe Deep Impact (it fired a penetrator in a comet in a few years ago, in order to expose the internal analysis with spectrographic oils analysis). The probe is still in orbit around the Sun and just visited comet Hartley 2 November 2010. We have uploaded the interplanetary probe and protocols that we did their tests to about 80 seconds.

So in 2011, our initiative you qualify "space" protocols in order to standardize them and make them available to all interplanetary space faring countries. If you have chosen to adopt them, and potentially every probe launched by that time will be weaved from a communications standpoint. But perhaps more important, when the spacecraft have completed their primary missions, if they are still functionally operable--have power, computer, communications--can become nodes on an interplanetary backbone. So what can happen over time, is that we can literally grow an interplanetary network capable of supporting both human and robotic exploration.

Part of the motivation for everything that has more space exploration until now has been supported by links to radio point-to-point. We see much more complex missions that need a richer communications environment. We also found that due to the tolerance for delay-and-disruption, we can get data back from the scientific mission.

Here on Earth, Google is engaged in numerous projects of speeding up Internet "such as the new Internet Protocol called SPDY. Should we pay attention to SPDY and there is much support for it?

Yes, you should pay attention. These are efforts by Google to make more efficient implementations of the Internet. A lot of this stuff is available via open source. You don't need many people to Google to make something happen, that is what's so cool about Google. You have a little "Sherpa Team" that actually does this job.

There must be a lot of talk about the Semantic Web is used. It is still hot--or not?

Well, I don't know if it's still hot. I can tell you that Tim Berners-Lee is still very, very determined. He calls "deep linking" now and is related to how you identify data on the network so that we can converge or Conjoin data from disparate sources and still make sense. My impression is that it's a hard slog, and is going for almost a decade now. But Tim has been successful in the past, so it would not exclude this as a potential successful, but it's a long way.

Last year, you were talking about very standard cloud, and now it seems that OpenStack Rackspace had a groundswell of support. You can declare a winner?

It does not declare a winner yet, and it's not because I have no preference for something else. By my count, there must be 25 or 30 different groups that are looking at cloud-based standards. The real problem is going to be implementing and testing. Until we get some serious experience in the clouds to interact with others in various ways, I think we don't know what works and what doesn't.

All these efforts are laudable, but they are going to have to be in the real world before we can declare any winner. There is a real issue of features we're looking for.

Read more on the lan and wan LAN & WAN section of the network in the world.

For more information on the corporate network, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2010 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

What works

The user calls this pilot fish with a problem: assistance is owned his laptop.

"You say that you can't get logged because as soon as you keep typing in the password field and sound," says fish. "She explains that she is going to a meeting and may fall off the track.

"Check it out and everything seems fine. Are able to log in as an administrator and do what I want, without problems. She comes back and tell you it sounds like a key may have been blocked and if it happens again, we might have to look at replacing the keyboard.

"She calls again five minutes later and still says he is doing and you have another meeting. Say that I'll check it out in your Office while she is out.

"We get and the laptop is playing like crazy. I noticed it is on a docking station with an attached external keyboard and laying on your desk, with a book on it. Remove the book from the SPACEBAR and everything is fixed.

"I tell his colleagues what happened and to give you a hard time.

"She calls later to say you're very embarrassed and explains that she never uses the keyboard dock. I suggest that you remove it. "

Sharky wants to use the true story of life. Send it to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll score a strong shark shirt if it is published. Add your comments below, and read some great old Sharkives stories in.

The Best of Shark Tank includes more than 70 tales of it woe inserted by you, our readers, since 1999. Which all goes to show, conclusively, that users and hapless idiot boss are phenomena in the world. Free registration is all that is required Download for the best of Shark Tank (PDF).



Gameloft: Mobile game development could hit seven figures (Appolicious)

Last week, mobile game maker Gameloft has released StarFront: collision, later in his thin veneer take on the popular PC strategy game StarCraft franchise. StarFront to $ 6.99 for the full version and has great graphics, sound control, a lot of missions and online multiplayer support for up to four players.

Gameloft is known for the level of Polish puts in its mobile games (even if the concepts are not very original), and its games, it becomes very clear: make StarFront was not an undertaking economically.

Pay for Gameloft, though. Its games are constantly getting great reviews and a lot of good press and are often considered as some of the best in their genre available on the Apple platform for iOS. They usually "New and notable Apple" section on the iTunes App Store and get featured as the game of the week--StarFront currently holds both these honors now. And Yes, it's a pretty great game.

But Gameloft is already seeing the mobile space and the App Store, in particular, becoming a bit flaky. Is a study of big-time, making the games to multiple platforms, including Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Google Android, and works more on the traditional model of a study of play. The mobile platform, on the other hand, has been opened and not enough tested that extremely small developers have been able to make a big splash with tight games, small, simple. And many of these games have been at extremely low prices

According to VP of Gameloft publishing worldwide, Gonzague de Vallois, developers will struggle to maintain the level of premium games if prices continue to remain so low. Could mean larger developers moving out of space or abandoning their games bigger, or it could mean a change in the entire system that leads to an increase in prices that could eliminate many smaller developers.

Speaking to the Pocket Gamer at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, de Vallois these costs for developing titles of quality furniture--at least for Gameloft--are already increasing, while the consumer is always used for triple-a titles like those created by large companies like Gameloft game, Electronic Arts and Capcom for bargain-bin price--$ 0.99, actually.

Gameloft is by boat is a precarious. On the one hand, and other major games publishers are creating premium games for the iPhone. Most new games of great Gameloft are bigger than many other iPhone and launch games for the price of $ 6.99. That accepts implicitly its games out of competition with things like angry birds--users looking to buy StarFront at least know something about video games. Angry birds, meanwhile, draws people that aren't necessarily the players and its low price point is a part of this.

But de Vallois thinks that Apple and other developers must do more to highlight premium purchases and push away from the App Store present a picture of mobile gaming that should be super-cheap, small and mostly forgettable. He remembered the Christmas sale of EA in 2010, the company slashed an enormous number of its games up to $ 0.99 for the holidays, partly to boost sales and partly to grab waiting for a huge portion of the Top 10 charts of App Store while they were frozen for about a week. Apple has approved the sale, and Gameloft thinks it's the wrong move. Here's a quote from de Vallois in history of Pocket Gamer:

"This is what we have to go forward because the new generation of games, there will be booting is evidence of seven digits. It is not profitable to sell these games at 99 c. we have a bit of time before giving the power of PS3, but yes, will increase the cost. Will reach 30, 40 million as Black Ops? Not tomorrow, but maybe some day. "

It is an interesting point, to be sure. Something to keep in mind, however, is that Gameloft could be regarded as a member of the "old school" gaming developers. Makes games for iOS which are like video games--in fact, actually takes video games ' other concepts, such as StarFront and turns them into iPhone games--but you could argue that really doesn't do mobile games.

Games for mobile phones are more akin to the offerings of titles such as Ninja fruit and cut the rope, or The Halfbot blocks Cometh. Developer of blocks, Halfbot, is only two guys. The games that these developers are not really as the types of games that you get on other systems--they're a bit unique in their concepts and presentation at the mobile space. That's not really the kind of games Gameloft, EA and Capcom create (although this is not always the case). Larger developers are making games for players of video; smaller developers are creating them for iPhone owners. That is a great distinction.

Research firm IHS has recently announced that the mobile app is a market of $ 2.2 billion, with Apple dominates the 82 percent of it and games that make up just better than half of the total volume. That makes the mobile gaming a billion dollar market now, according to Pocket Gamer.

Boils down to a difference of markets for Gameloft. The company must recognize that people want to sell video games--standard players who happen to own and like to play on a smartphone--is not huge as a demographic as the casual crowd, or you must find a better way to market to those players are less well paid in video games. But it is doubtful that Apple is going to change things, because they're pulling the 30% market share of iOS 1.76 billion dollars, if they come from StarFront or angry birds.

Success of the App Store was built largely on accessibility applications--is unlikely going to change. If Gameloft wants to keep producing its triple-a titles, high cost, is going to have to live with that, or find a way to make the random phone player in type of player who can appreciate and spend lots of time, with a title more involved as StarFront.



Anyone can afford a Supercomputer that IBM Watson? (Yes)

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While Watson certainly impressed the nation with its sweeping victory on the game show Jeopardy last week, the medical community -- which IBM hopes will be first to use the technology -- may eventually become even more impressed with its affordability.

After showcasing Watson's ability to ingest Jeopardy questions and spit out near real-time answers, IBM is now preparing the supercomputer for a full-time gig as a data analytics engine for the medical community.

IBM announced this week it is working with speech and imaging recognition software provider Nuance Communications to produce a system that can help physicians and other healthcare professionals cull through gigabytes or terabytes of patient healthcare information to determine how to best treat illnesses.

"Combining our analytics expertise with the experience and technology of Nuance, we can transform the way that healthcare professionals accomplish everyday tasks by enabling them to work smarter and more efficiently," said John E. Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. "This initiative demonstrates how we plan to apply Watson's capabilities into new areas, such as healthcare with Nuance."

For example, a doctor treating a patient could use Watson's analytics technology, in conjunction with Nuance's voice and clinical language understanding software, to rapidly consider all the related texts, reference materials, prior cases, and latest knowledge in journals and medical literature. This could help medical professionals confidently determine the best options for diagnosis and treatment.

IBM is working with Dr. Eliot Siegel, professor and vice chairman of the University of Maryland School of Medicine's department of diagnostic radiology, to bring that Watson project to fruition in the healthcare industry.

Siegel told Computerworld that patient information tends to be written in free form by physicians, who use abbreviations and short-text explanations. So it could take well over 10 minutes to an hour for another physician, radiologist or specialist to understand the intricacies of a patient's malady.

The ability to deliver a single, precise answer from these documents could go a long way in transforming the healthcare industry. Watson, the IBM computing system designed to play Jeopardy!, could deliver such a solution.

Now multiply one person's medical record by the thousands that a hospital or medical group might have, and the difficulty in finding best practices from healthcare trends becomes even more daunting.

Enter Watson.

IBM hopes that in about two years, Watson can be tweaked and go commercial to help hospitals and physicians take data from electronic health records (EHRs) and churn it into predictive modeling to determine the most likely outcomes from various treatments.

While there are many hurdles to achieving that goal -- such as the continuing lack of widespread EHR deployment -- Watson could one day save untold dollars and lives, IBM hopes.

Cost shouldn't be a significant factor as Watson is relatively cheap compared to medical technology routinely purchased by healthcare organizations.

The Watson supercomputer that appeared on Jeopardy last week was made up of 90 IBM Power 750 Express servers powered by 8-core processors -- four in each machine for a total of 32 processors per machine. The servers are virtualized using a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) implementation, creating a server cluster with a total processing capacity of 80 teraflops. A teraflop is one trillion operations per second.

According to Tony Pearson, master inventor and senior consultant at IBM, a Power 750 server retails for $34,500. Thus the 90 that make up Watson would cost about $3 million.

"That's not bad. You're going to spend $3 million on an MRI machine," Pearson said. "If you look at how expensive hospital equipment is, cost is not the issue."

A hospital, or even physician's office, doesn't necessarily have to buy the full clustered Watson computer system. The original compute algorithm single threaded on a single core processor took two hours to scan memory and produce an answer to a question. IBM technologists just added 2,880 CPUs, which produced the ability to answer the Jeopardy questions in three-seconds.

If a hospital or physician is willing to wait 30 seconds for an answer, then you'd only need one-tenth of that compute power or nine machines.

"So you're in the $300,000 range," Pearson said. "It's quite possible [to wait two hours] if you run it on your Power 750 at home. I'd bet there are some people who'd say, 'heck, I can't even get my doctor to call me back in two hours.' I think it's reasonable that larger hospital systems will have the bigger machines and smaller hospitals might settle for waiting a little longer for an answer."

"Watson seems amazing, but I'm not sure how it can take all that unstructured data and process it," said Marc Probst, CIO of Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, which services close to half the population of Utah.

Probst said he's skeptical because Watson's structured database is very dissimilar to the unstructured data in an EHR format.

"I don't know how well Watson works with Nuance, but there's so much detailed data in healthcare," Probst said. "It's known that the human mind can process 7 to 9 data items and consistently. The average clinical decision application uses over 40 data items to make a decision. So, there's much more data involved."

Last week, Intermountain Healthcare opened a 10,000-square-foot informatics research center supported by two data centers. Intermountain's Homer Warner Center for Informatics Research staffs 65 physicians and PhDs charged with providing decision support functions to clinicians, as well as provide input on the best possible care options.

For example, several years ago the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the findings of a study that showed a correlation between the number of babies that wind up on ventilators in neonatal intensive care units (NIC) and at what point physicians induced labor.

"Using the practices and technologies in place at the Homer-Warner Center, we were able to change behavior. It had a dramatic impact on the health of babies," he said. "We were at about 30% of births induced prior to 39 weeks." Now, he said, "about 3%" are induced that early.

Probst said reducing the number of babies in NIC units saves "millions and millions" of dollars per hospital in his system. "We've got hundreds of such examples," he said.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and healthcare IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at Twitter@lucasmearian, or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed Mearian RSS . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

Read more about Mainframes and Supercomputers in Computerworld's Mainframes and Supercomputers Topic Center.


For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright © 2010 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved.



Try and use: Gamer jobs open to Taiwan Game Show

Over a dozen companies bandaged together with a job service online in Taipei during the weekend to try people for computer games and online sectors on the island. Some of the work also pay players to play full time.

Many of the jobs offered by 15 companies to 2011 Taipei Game Show were for research and development, game design, graphic arts and software engineering. But some jobs offered the possibility to play computer games to live with a salary of NT $ 35,000 (US $ 1.194) around a month, which is about average in Taiwan.

"We are trying for about 50 people, including gamers, programmers, graphic artists, research and development," said Jamesina Lin, a representative Chinese Gamer International, one of the largest online gaming companies in Taiwan.

People hired to play the games would be heavily involved in the development of games, he said.

Chinese Gamer and other companies working with Taiwanese employment websites, job bank, to host the work of Taiwan game fair at the same time as the largest game exhibition in Taipei.

"We had over 2,000 people apply over 2,600 applications around, and the job fair on Saturday," said Charlene Chang, spokesperson for the Bank, who ran the job right.

Taiwanese companies are serious about their work.

Although the local game of Taiwan market is growing at a fast clip, the end goal for most Taiwanese companies is reaching the massive audience in China, which shares a language and a culture similar to Taiwan.

Taiwan game industry was worth NT $ 42.2 billion last year, up nearly 20 percent in 2009, when he reached NT $ 35.4 billion, according to figures from the Office for industrial development of the Taiwan Government. The range of ways to consume games has stimulated the growth in the industry, PC, game console and online games for smartphones, games on social networking sites like Facebook and more.

Potential market of Taiwan game is much lower in China. While all the people of Taiwan is estimated at just over 23 million, China is 1.33 billion, with 457 million Internet users at the end of last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.



Clearwire WiMax struggles to profit on

Clearwire gained 1.5 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2010 and more than doubled its revenue, but lost 128 million, the mobile WiMax operator announced last week.

The company ended the year with 4.4 million subscribers, up from a year earlier 688,000. Approximately 1.1 million of those were customers of the retail service of Clearwire, called clear, while 3.3 million acquired the WiMax network service through partners such as Sprint Nextel and Comcast. The company gathers much less revenue from wholesale to retail subscribers and previously revealed disputes with Sprint over that of revenue. Financial in its press release, Clearwire said it believes that a solution of those problems with Sprint is imminent.

Because the company is focused on preserving cash, his plans for a brand smartphone remain pending, executives said in a conference call following the report. Clearwire plans only modest network expansion this year, but aims to double its subscribers to 8.8 million by early 2012, they said.

Possible new partners

Clearwire has had discussions with various parties interested in acquiring some of the spectrum of society, making a strategic investment, or both, said CEO Bill Morrow. Would strictly a strategic investment. The company has put off a decision on these deals in order to concentrate on the resolution of the dispute wholesale revenue, but intends to announce a decision in the second quarter, said Morrow.

The quarterly report came amid indications that Sprint, the majority owner of Clearwire and the largest retailer of its 4 G services, may be planning to build a 4 G network using LTE (Long Term Evolution). Clearwire has tested LTE and hinted it could deploy technology in addition to WiMax, but recent comments by networks of Sprint Chief indicated that Sprint is interested to go it alone.

Morrow neglected suggestions a rift, saying that he often speaks with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse.

"The relationship is strong and healthy," Morrow said. "We are working very well together and we share a common vision for the future". If Sprint embark on an expansion of the network apart from Clearwire, will have no effect on the relationship between carriers, he said.

In the meantime, Clearwire is working with silicon vendors to promote the development of multimodal chipset that could work with both WiMax and LTE. Clearwire expects new phones with the ability to be on the market later this year. Some observers believe that t-Mobile USA may be interested in becoming a wholesale partner of Clearwire and/or purchase some of its excess spectrum.

Expansion on target

Clearwire said that his network reaches 119 million potential subscribers around the United States, almost meeting the company's target of 120 million by the end of 2010. Clearwire has been struggling to continue the expansion of its network while losing money. After his report of the third quarter, the company announced it would lay off 15 percent of its staff, delaying the introduction of its first smartphone brand and cut marketing and advertising efforts, among other cost reduction measures. Those moves came after Clearwire reported almost a doubling subscribers and a gain of 114 percent of revenue.

Despite this growth in the third quarter, Clearwire lost 139 million in the quarter. The company raised approximately $ 1.4 billion through a debt offering in early December, but kept its austerity measures in place.

The carrier expects its network to cover the 130 million people in the United States by mid of this year, with further expansion depends more on the raising of capital. The buildouts occurs mainly in rural areas, partially due to the requirements of its spectrum licences, but the company said that it can also add some ability in large cities as needed.

Clearwire expects to obtain positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in 2012, he said.

The financial report was the first to Clearwire under its new President, John Stanton, who was elected by the Board of Directors of the company in January. By Craig McCaw, who founded the company broadband wireless Clearwire original.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile technologies, storage and networking for the IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @ sdlawsonmedia. E-mail address of Stephen is stephen_lawson@idg.com



Where is my wrist to Apple?

You cannot purchase one of the coolest gadget of Apple: an Apple Design Award. They hand them each year at the Worldwide Developers Conference, honoring "applications that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation, adoption of superior technology, high performance and outstanding design.

Is the Apple version of Oscar, the Stanley Cup, the cup of the world's largest grandmother. Like the rest of these incredible honors, the iconic trophy award requires a and boy, did the design team to nail it. ADA is a grey cube that is practically nude on each face, except for the side with a big white Apple logo on it. Has some electronics inside that only do one function: makes the Apple logo glow brightly when the cube is touched.

This item is 100% design and virtually zero percent of the engineering function, and is designed to make you think about how awesome Apple is in the eyes of most critics of society, then, is the latest Apple product.

I like it because it's probably the silliest piece of Apple hardware ever been involved with. (Assuming that the iPod Socks don't count. I don't think they do. Textile goods cannot be classified as technology until it's possible for them to fail and precipitate a disaster without warning.)

I wish that Apple did more things that they were stupid. The Macintosh Portable don't count, either. For those of you who have joined us late, the laptop was Mac before mobile Apple Was as cumbersome as a concert accordion, heavy as a concert accordion ... and the masses are the portable Mac just as unpalatable.

No, the folks at Apple--God loves 'em--I honestly thought they had a winner with that. What I want are Apple products that are pure expression of society's ability to design things and its employees take pride in producing an object causing a spike in galvanic skin response of the individual.

Every Apple product has at least one component of that concept. I don't like the new iPod nano (I think its design is only practical if you do not have almost never choose the tracks or playlists), but man alive: a computer medium color multitouch, the size of a postage stamp are almost unbearably cool.

(Image Caption: LunaTik (lunatik.com) is a iPod nano wristwatch add-on.)

A friend of mine has started to wear your Nano on a custom belt which turns it into a wrist (very chunky) that just tell the time after you wake the display. Here's how cool his design. The new Nano is so cool that Apple fans want an excuse to stare at it longingly and lovingly several times an hour during the day.

What happens if Apple decided to cut out the middleman and actually design a wristwatch?

Not an "iPod wrist." Not "a clock which can also check with any device that is streaming music or video through AirPlay." These concepts smack of integration. In the past, I praised Apple for not introducing mai the main products that enhance and support another Apple product or service in some way. That's great. But I'll never win an Apple Design Award. If you want to own something that Apple designed exclusively for the sake of design, it must be a wristwatch.

Or a bottle opener. Or a bookstand. It doesn't really matter. I just want to see what they can do if Apple engineers are exempt from the mandates of universes, long-range strategies and commercial viability.

Are partially inspired by the work of artists and designers employed by second-most-famous Steve Jobs ' company: Pixar. You are familiar with the fantastic job that make feature films, but of course, do not cease to be creative when you climb back into their cars at the end of the day. They are still drawing and painting and building, taking the ideas that might not be enough viable as a basis for a movie of 1.2 billion-dollar-banking but worth the time.

Check out the blog of the artist Josh Cooley history, for example. It is equipped with sketch wonderful work, including an impressive array of art in progress in which he paints scenes of iconic films as would be represented in little Golden book a child version of flick. Never is the discovery of a human head in a window or the birth of a xenomorphic alien explosive from the breast of a man was so fascinating.

The difference between Apple and Pixar is that an artist can purchase art supplies and knock out a sketch killer for under five dollars. If your specialty is technology to display high-density low-power, you can't follow a flight of fancy without stopping off at Dragon's Den for $ 120,000 Angel funding and then spend a month touring factories in China.

So Apple is going to have to act as sponsor their designers. Once a year, let someone any silly product they want, as long as it can be sold in Apple stores for $ 50 or less. Let's not lose our heads here. I have been playing history of Apple's product and the product just really silly that I can think of was the 20th anniversary of the Mac. It was definitely cool for the sake of coolness, but at an MSRP of $ 7,500, was only an impulse purchase.

I suppose that Apple could afford to do a silly computer Back in 1997. The company was on the ropes, desperately shooting out all his ammunition remaining in every direction possible, hoping that something would score a great success. Now that you back up the Hill, every move making it has been carefully dissected and observed, creates ripples. If it produces a new type of can openers that doesn't immediately grab the market share to double digits and cause many people to rethink their definition of the word "may", this will affect the price of whimsical actions.

Still: I want a clock from Apple. I want a baseball cap that bill always points to magnetic north. I want an egg beater that is sometimes gets all get mopey from seasonal affective disorder.

I have great confidence in Apple. IPad, iPod, and MacBook line show a confident team of designers who understand how to fuse human unity and instincts to next-generation technology. However, underneath everything, feel a fool absolutely barking-mad struggling to be heard.

Macworld senior contributor Andy Ihnatko is also a technology columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.


For other Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Glimpses of Apple CEO feeds Rumors

One of the first things I did on Friday morning, when I saw coverage of President Obama's meeting with tech leaders in California Thursday night was the search for images or videos. Eric Schmidt, not Obama or Mark Zuckerberg. I wanted to see how Steve Jobs looked.

As most of us, I read that the National Enquirer was publishing pictures of jobs outside of a cancer treatment center in Palo Alto, trying to weak and emaciated. (The photo was published in the edition of the magazine print Wednesday.) Jobs announced last month that he was taking an indefinite leave to focus on his health. The co-founder of Apple he had pancreatic cancer in 2004, undergoing surgery and had a liver transplant in 2009.

(See also: while jobs focuses on its health, Board of Directors of Apple must focus on its responsibility)

What I wanted to see from the event on Thursday night was a picture of jobs not taken by a guy in a parking lot with a zoom lens, something that might, well, tell me something about the condition of the legend tech.

But there was just a picture from that pictured jobs. In it you can see the CEO of Apple, seated to the left of President Obama. The image is taken from behind and to the left, then in terms of offering a taste of jobs, was unnecessary. You can't help but wonder why there are more pictures of jobs from the event.

Ghoulish feels this way of thinking, but it's human nature. I am not alone. Since the National Enquirer published Wednesday alleged images of jobs, shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) have abandoned the 3.5 percent.

Granted, Apple Wednesday hit another all-time high of 364.90 a share and stocks bounce off ceilings. In addition, there were other problems. The company endured a storm of criticism, not to mention possible interest by antitrust regulators, for its online content subscription policy.

But through those situations. This feels different.

Steven Burke, CRN has a good piece on the Apple business problems faced because of concerns over the health of Jobs. In it he quotes Jeff Matthews, general partner of Ram Partners LP, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund that "holds a significant amount of shares Apple":

"There is nothing good about this. It is fun to talk about, but as an investor in the real world you have to watch everything. Jobs is the reason that Apple is where it is. This is something that you need to pay attention to and understanding ".

That pretty much says it all, especially the first part: there is nothing good about this.

Chris Nerney writes about the business side-to-market strategies and technology trends, legal issues, management changes, mergers, venture capital, IPOs and technology stocks. Follow him on Twitter @ ChrisNerney.


For more information, visit ITworld news. Story copyright © 2010 ITworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Mount Hood rescuers search for missing snowboarder (AP)

PORTLAND, ore. – Oregon, rescuers have re-established a cellphone in connection with a 26-year-old man who apparently got lost while snowboarding on Mount Hood.

His name was not released, but he was reported from South-East and visit a friend in Hood River.

County Sheriff's Office Clackamas said Monday that search crews have been speaking with missing man, which he called a friend Sunday afternoon to say that he was lost in heavy snow.

MEPs say weather and visibility have improved significantly on the mountain, which should help rescuers in research. A crew of helicopter Oregon Army National Guard was also ready to join the search.



California School District Truancy battles with GPS (PC World)

Students with a trend of truancy in California Anaheim Union High School District shall be assigned GPS unit to make sure they're going to school on time, according to The Orange County Register. GPS units are the size of a mobile phone (chunky) and have been developed by Dallas goal truancy solutions, which operates in more than 100 middle and high schools in three States.

The Anaheim Union High School District is part of a voluntary pilot program for six weeks that is staging the seventh and eighth grade students who have more than three truancy with these devices. In Austin, Texas, where he also ran this experiment, was used for students in middle and high school who had racked up between 20 and 25 absences.

When asked why the Orange County Register are handheld devices rather than tied to Regional Director of students, Sylvan Miller, solutions to truancy goal, he said, "we don't want to criminalize children or have them wearing a bracelet or something around their ankle that he would have fired them."

Every school day, participants will receive an automated call reminding them to get to school on time. Then must enter a code which keeps track of their location during their departure for arrival at school, at school, during lunch, departure from school and at 8 p.m., the Register reports.

The cost between $ 300 and $ 400 apiece. All together, the six-week program costs about $ 8 per day per student or $ 18,000. It is estimated that schools lose $ 35 per day for every absent student, so program objective truancy solution is a cost savings.

Some parents were thrilled with the program. "This makes us seem like common criminals," a parent whose child has accumulated six unjustified absences, told the register.

But perhaps carrying a GPS unit and regularly logging path is better than the alternative: police investigator told the register that Armando Pardo if the District Attorney prosecutes, truant students may be sent to juvie and get sa with a nice $ 2,000.

"Nearly two-thirds of students in order [during the fall semester of 2010] made perfect attendance while the initial program and all students combined average 97 percent," according to a press release.



Congress tinkers with Internet regulations

If you were wondering, as I was, that in Washington planned to do something to protect the interests of individuals and companies that use Internet services--rather than ones that sell them--the answer is descended from Campidoglio Friday: none.

Friday the Republican-dominated House has approved a bill that included a provision prohibiting the FCC by using its budget to ensure compliance with the rules concerning Internet of government funding.

The FCC ruled last December are ridiculously weak and favourable for telcos who are the backbone of the Internet. At least, make the case that the FCC should be able to regulate ISPs, if only to ensure that consumers and businesses using the Internet legally can do it according to their own desires, rather than on the basis of their policies Hobbes Internet provider.

There is a role that the House you recognize immediately, however.

Among the 67 amendments that tacked on to the Government Finance bill include many who prohibit federal agencies to spend the money that Congress is giving them.

It does not directly counter the Obama health care plan, but deny the salaries to employees of the Government to take him out, or agencies to fund programs to make it work, for example.

They prohibit the Department of Defense to finance political parties for the defense of senior officials. But prohibit expenditures to apply regulations of pollution of air and water regulations, mining or for carrying out the inspections and regulation of food supplies.

Prohibit expenditures for things that are issues of bumper sticker for the Conservatives, as the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change--which is responsible for the creation of scientific assessments on global warming that many conservatives regarded as false as evolution and to the rent or the restructuring of the United Nations

Judged by the principle that the Government should have no role in ensuring that its citizens have access to clean air, water and food that is relatively unpoisoned, makes perfect sense to tell you that the FCC should not have any role in regulating the industry that was created to regulate.

ISP Gone Wild?

The company that built and own the backbone of the Internet are mainly suppliers of telecommunications--which But Bell anti-consumer monopolistic behavior made it impossible for clients even use a phone sold by a third party, let alone obtain services But Bell herself has not provided.

FCC's right to regulate was based on the enormous resources that has benefited from AT&T (and other telcos and cable companies) after AT&T was demolished.

The wires as well as costly phone and Internet service stream bump into public lands benefit from priority granted by the Federal Government, were often paid directly from funding to extend telephone service in rural America. Communications that run through them are regulated under federal law, as letters or packages transported by the U.S. Postal Service.

So saying the FCC should not be able to regulate anti-competitive behaviour on the Internet because communications are in the form of data instead of voice--even though both are often very same cables, or at least those held by the same--is circular and contradictory.

Not that the regulations themselves are so great. The FCC pussy longipes around the whole issue for years before issuing regulations are based largely on suggestions from the telcos.

Theoretically create a level playing field by the carriers prohibited by block or impede traffic from competitors, but allow you to manage your network "reasonable," meaning block or impede traffic from competitors, in order to keep their networks running up to speed.

Theoretically, Comcast should be prohibited from limiting traffic videos from Netflix just to make sure your video-on-demand is more attractive to consumers. In fact, any traffic from outside qualifies to be managed, as Comcast can continue its policy of long years of slowing traffic as it goes through the infrastructure of Comcast.

That seems to be primarily a matter of consumer and one that could get you more if you were at home a Comcast Subscriber (in which case you would have a lot of reason to be annoyed).

Applies to business Internet connections, as well, however, including the mobile networks that are almost completely exempt from even the weak FCC regs already released.

Bandwidth needs attention

Carriers are running full tilt to expand their networks of mobile and attract new customers by cash on the Mania/iPad/iNeed-another-Wireless-device iPhone, so you're adding, subtracting not speed. In a year if growth slows, mobile data begin swamping the existing networks or are business customers aren't buying services with the highest margins, which are free of butterfly back.

If you want to buy a certain amount of bandwidth used by Verizon mobile and other providers of mobile VoIP, VPN, security, data or other services, would be free to say no. Or charge you if you were using its services in order to run concurrent versions somewhere else.

Not that Verizon would squeeze customers for a few dollars extra using dirty tricks like that, of course.

With no permanent regulate the Internet, the FCC may not be able to respond to situations like this, as it did with the Verizon apparently intentional creation of a revenue stream from "bad data costs."

In addition to providing much of the input for net neutrality regulations the FCC loopholed, Verizon is suing the FCC in Federal Court to try to determine the law that the FCC has no jurisdiction over capacity to gouge customers Verizon online.

If the Senate approves the bill, House financing or fails to remove net-neutrality amendment, the FCC could it also be able to pay lawyers to defend in court the right to do the job already is, let alone adding Internet explicitly his portfolio.

Washington D.C. Circuit Court, which ruled in the past in favor of telephone operators, will be the only thing standing between those who use the Internet and an era of predation laissez-faire full Internet providers.

Anything you do online should have been in accordance with public policy set by your ISP and the ISP that you connect (all).

Sure it would be better, the House would agree, because the Government would be outside the regulatory activities of the Internet.

Because public policy established by the company with a financial interest to either allow or deny the right to do what you want online is more fair than rules created by an elected Government whose goal is supposed to be serving and protecting the people who elected him.

Kevin Fogarty writes about enterprise to ITworld. Follow him on Twitter @ KevinFogarty.

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For more information, visit ITworld news. Story copyright © 2010 ITworld Inc. All rights reserved.

Fujitsu to launch Windows 7 Tablet Business (PC World)

Fujitsu, Japan will soon launch a tablet for business users that the security feature is not available in most consumer machines.

The Q550 style will get its official unveiling at next week's Cebit in Germany and has a fingerprint reader, smartcard slot and-trusted platform module (TPM), the company said. (See the tablet's video on YouTube).

Your computer will run Windows 7 Professional, and uses an Intel Atom "Oak Trail". It has a 10-inch LED touchscreen. Unlike previous stylistic tablet that required a stylus, the touch interface on the new model also works with a finger.

Other features include front and rear cameras, 32 or 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) drive, an optional 3 G module and a USB port.

Fujitsu says a combination of low power processor and LED backlit screen helped to extend the battery life for about eight hours.

Should appear in Europe in April.

Security features of tablet PC might respond to requests for some companies, but it remains to be seen if the tablet PC will take off among business users. Tablet PCs have been tried several times in the last decade and have failed to find widespread adoption every time.

The current boom in the Tablet-PC between consumers will probably again some companies facing products.

Martyn Williams covers the Japan and General technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. Follow me on Twitter @ Martyn martyn_williams. E-mail address of the Martyn is martyn_williams@idg.com



United Kingdom takes the Census Online

Following the popularity of the BBC show that Do You Think You Are genealogy are never been more popular in the United Kingdom, which is perfect timing for the 2011 Census of England and Wales which will take place on 27 March.

For the first time, British owners will have the opportunity to submit their responses to Census online.

The United Kingdom is posting 25 million household questionnaires, based on a newly developed national address, in the run-up to the 2011 Census. These should arrive in each residence by mid March.

The United States still collects data from the census in the mail and then followed by staff hired for census recruitment season. However, the Census 2010 involved some first movement towards data collection online, including a project to address verification. The Census Bureau is always a push toward more transactions online, however.

But the Internet has revolutionized the industry of family history, is at the forefront of new data collection.

People will be able to complete the questionnaire online from March 4. The card has a code on the front. This will be the key to unlock the online questionnaire.

Owners should go to www.census.gov.uk, ' Click ' to fill it out and follow the on-screen instructions.

New web services were created for the online questionnaire and an online Help Center will provide advice and guidance for completing the questionnaire.

An area of accessibility on the site will provide audio and video, in English and Welsh, for the people who are visually impaired or hearing impaired.

A census is a count of the population, and one in the United Kingdom takes place every 10 years since 1801 (with the exception of 1941).

Gives a detailed snapshot of the population as it is in a day.

There will be separate surveys throughout the United Kingdom on 27 March 2011--organized by the Office for national statistics (ONS) in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland and Northern Ireland statistics and Research Agency.

Besides being a valuable resource for historians of the results of a census family play a vital role in calculating the allocation of resources to service providers of regional and local government.

Is a legal requirement for all families return census questionnaires or submit online.

People who have not returned their questionnaire from 6 April will be called immediately after a collector of the census.

One month before the 2011 census is largest event of family history of the United Kingdom which Do You Think You Are? LIVE 2011, sponsored by Ancestry.co.uk, the Telegraph, takes place at Olympia in London later this week: 25-27 February 2011.

The event is a One-Stop-genealogy-shop where visitors can discover the landscape of their past led by over 200 exhibitors; ranging from the society of Genealogists, and the National Trust, The Royal Artillery Museum and family tree DNA.

Celebrity speakers include actor Hugh Quarshie, who will tell stories from their past and horticulturalist Monty Don and television presenter. Blackadder archaeologist and actor Tony Robinson will also be included to the show to discuss the 1911 Census and how it can be used to put together a family tree.

Although it is a relatively new instrument, DNA test is now used to confirm the family links where there is no conventional records. The exhibition, renowned international experts will discuss how to apply the most recent advances in genetics to help put together a family tree.


More PC news and reviews about PC Advisor. Copyright © 2010 story, PC Advisor. All rights reserved.

MacBook Pro coming says: what buyers should know Apple

If you were planning on heading to the Apple store this President's day to go shopping for a new MacBook Pro, you might want to hold off until at least Thursday. Apple should announce a MacBook Pro updates this week with machines that are thinner and lighter and have zippy new Intel processors and better screens, according to the latest entries. The favorite date for the new line-up of MacBook Pro is Thursday 24 February, according to MacRumors.

Now that I've ruined vacation plans and Apple theme you've got nothing better to do, here's a rundown on the latest rumors and allegations surrounding the upcoming update to Apple's MacBook Pro.

Suspicions of Apple

Apple has reportedly been launching its retail partner party to prepare for a product launch this week. The company said some of its European partners expect shipments of sealed new products this week, and perhaps already Monday, according to Apple Insider.

Shipping time for new Apple MacBook Pro, via its online store also has slipped from 24 hours three to five business days, a potential sign of an impending MacBook Pro. $ 1000 MacBook white is still listed as shipping within 24 hours, so don't expect an update to the device.

Rumored Specs

At the moment are pretty sketchy Rumors about features and improvements for the new MacBook. Most Apple watchers expect Apple to unveil new MacBook Pro sporting Intel processors Sandy Bridge. New Intel chips offer improved graphics performance and efficiency. Apple MacBook Pro lineup should not be affected by the recently discovered design flaw in Intel Sandy Bridge chips.

Apple may unveil a redesigned frame for unibody MacBook Pro line, according to DigiTimes Taiwan-based. Also, most of the entries indicate typical improvements like improved screen of a resolution, improved battery life and a laptop thinner and lighter.

Fueling Apple Rumors

Cult of Mac has an interesting story about how Apple's exclusive agreement may turn up in use Liquidmetal fuel cells power Apple laptops and mobile devices.

Fuel cells used in laptops could make the devices last for 20 hours or more without recharging, says Cult of Mac.

Liquidmetal is a metallic alloy corrosion resistant Liquidmetal technologies produced by twice that is as strong as titanium, but can be modeled as plastic during the manufacturing process. Apple was recently awarded a patent for an internal component of a fuel cell "-amorphous alloys solidifying mass", something that sounds very much like Liquidmetal.

Apple in August has purchased exclusive rights to use Liquidmetal in electronic products. The League has been around since 2003 and first used in a variety of consumer products including SanDisk Cruzer USB thumb drive. It is not clear whether fuel cells would in Liquidmetal says Apple devices any time soon.

When Apple is about to announce new products is to provide always a little guess--earlier reports said the new MacBook Pro would not be coming up in March, as soon as possible. Regardless, if you're thinking of getting a new Mac this week, should probably hold off until Friday.

Connect with Ian Paul (@ ianpaul) and Today @ PCWorld on Twitter for the latest technology news and analysis.



EgretList for IPhone

Although productivity applications and to-do list manager seem to be the new trend, EgretList from MindsMomentum seems to put their own spin on the typical world of to-DOS, basing its backbone platform Evernote.

One of the first things that catch your attention at EgretList is over-the-top design $ 3 to the application. It is very beautiful and, most of the time, functional. However, some design choices can actually impede the speed at which a user can understand EgretList or its many features.

But EgretList has some interesting features, especially his relationship with the service of storage of information to Evernote. It is a rarity to have an iPhone app that lets you synchronize task items with a service to take notes, but why Synchronize with Evernote, EgretList can be easily updated from any Internet-connected device, not just a device iOS. Create new to-do items as completely new notes which can be text, photos and videos added to them, which you can then access by a client to Evernote or EgretList.

That said, there are too many other unique features of EgretList, and the distinction between elements and activities is difficult to make lists.

If you're an avid user of Evernote, or simply need access to the list of commitments from a variety of platforms, EgretList is a fantastic solution. However, the application is not as feature rich as some users would probably and design choices can annoy others. However, EgretList is a useful purchase for existing users of Evernote, or for someone who needs to store and access various means of communication with every thing to do.

John Fuller is a freelance designer and writer from Texas.


For other Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

China blocks Microblogs "Revolution Jasmine"

China has suspended searches for content on popular microblog, an apparent move to stifle the mention of a "revolution" Jasmine "that had to be staged on Sunday in Chinese cities.

In the afternoon of Sunday, Chinese search for the word "Jasmine" was blocked on a service similar to Twitter operated by Sina. But the evening appeared Sina, pause, search for all content on microblog, only allowing users to query the screen names, events, and other criteria. Another microblog operated by Tencent blocked also research relating to the word "Jasmine" or "Jasmine Revolution".

Mention of a "revolution" Jasmine "seems to have started on the Web, saying the Chinese to show users in 13 cities across the country, including the capital Beijing. The call for demonstrations seem to be inspired by anti-Government protests in Egypt and Tunisia, but it is unclear who or what group has begun. A site China Boxun.com reportedly was the first to post the call to protest.

China's Internet blockade extended to other social networking sites in the country. Renren.com, a service like Facebook popular, does not permit users to post using the words "Jasmine Revolution." These attempts have returned a message, "Please don't release politically sensitive content, salacious content, commercials or any other inappropriate content."

Together with censorship on the Internet, China responded to the call for protests reported retaining activists and increasing the number of police. As of Sunday night, it seemed that he had not materialized no real protest.

Censorship on microblogs China has become increasingly restrictive in recent weeks, as anti-Government protests broke out in Egypt last month. The microblog Sina searchesfor and others had blocked the word "Egypt".

Earlier this week, were stuck in Chinese search "Hillary" and "Hillary Clinton" Sina microblog. The move seemed to be in response to a speech that Clinton US Secretary of State gave call to Governments, like China to end censorship of the Internet.

China has the largest Internet population in the world to 457 million users. The country has 63 million users of microblog, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.



How to resize digital images for print

How is the quality of digital cameras, so does the volume of pixels that are able to capture. These days, shooting in the highest quality of the camera can produce an image larger than actually can print the printer. While most image editing programs are happy resize your photos for you in their respective dialog boxes, Printing, knowing how to do it yourself gives you more control.

In this article you will learn how to resize large images from your digital camera, for print using Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Fortunately, the steps are exactly the same in both programs.

Document size and resolution

To begin, you need two numbers: the document (or rather, print) size and resolution. When you print a photo per page, the size of the document are most often the same as the size of the paper.

The next number refers to the size of the pixel and, as discussed in our primer of image resolution, the resolution is a measure that controls it. The goal in the press is to make the pixels too small to be seen individually (otherwise the print will look blocky). This is higher resolution than that to which the camera was set (usually 72 or 150 ppi, depending on the manufacturer and model). If you are printing on an inkjet printer at home, the resolution should fall somewhere between 240 and 480 ppi if you're using matte or glossy paper or 180 and 240 ppi for regular or textured paper.

Resize the image size dialogue box

If the image does not need to be cropped, you can use the image size dialogue box for scaling. This dialog is also useful to learn how large can I print the image with a resolution Date. (For example, if you used a lower quality setting on your camera, the image may not contain enough pixels to print a photo 8-by-10 inch high resolution.)

You can call this dialog box in Adobe Photoshop (any version) by opening a photo and choosing image > image size-(in Photoshop Elements, choose Image > Resize >--the size of the picture, or press command-option-I in both programs). In the dialog reveals all sorts of information about your photo as file size (the amount of space it occupies on the hard disk), the pixel dimensions, and more important for printing-the size of the document section that tells you how great the photo would be if you printed the current resolution.

First, you need to lock the size in pixels of your photos if you disable the resample image checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box. This allows you to experiment with resolution and size of the document without affecting the number of pixels that contains photos (which preserves the quality of the photos).

Next, enter the size of the document you want in the width field; both the height and resolution will change automatically to maintain the aspect ratio (the ratio between width and height). If the resulting resolution falls within the guidelines mentioned above, press OK and the picture will be scaled accordingly. If the resolution is too low, then enter the size of the document. Alternatively, you can enter the desired resolution and Photoshop will recalculate the size of the document for you.

Resizing with the cropping tool

If the picture needs cropping-or if you cannot get exactly the right dimensions using the image size dialogue box-you can use the cropping tool and settle the width, height and resolution right in the options bar.

In Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, open the photo and press c on your keyboard to activate the crop tool. Trotting up to the options bar at the top of the screen and enter "10" to "8" width and height (you must include the unit of measure, even if you do not need to use quotation marks). In the resolution field, enter 240.

Tip: If you want to crop a photo, while preserving the original aspect ratio, draw a crop box around the entire photo and then hold down SHIFT while you drag a corner handle inward diagonally. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move the crop box in place.

When you've just to the right of the crop box, press enter or double click inside the box to accept it. If the image is displayed to enlarge once accepted the crop, have entered too big of physical dimensions and/or too high of a resolution for the number of pixels that contains the image. In this case, pressing Command-Z to undo the crop and enter a smaller print size or lower resolution or both.

Lesa Snider, author of Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual (Pogue Press/O'Reilly) and coauthor of iPhoto imminent 11: The Missing Manual or ' (Pogue Press/Reilly), recordings training videos for KelbyTraining.com and Lynda.com, is Chief Evangelist for iStockphoto.com, a long-time member of the Photoshop World Dream Team instructor and founder of GraphicReporter.com.


For other Macintosh computing news, visit Macworld. Story copyright © 2010 Mac Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Brits say Cybercrime costs billions

Cybercrime is leeching U.K. economy of a terrifying 27 billion pounds (43.5 billion) per year, according to new estimates published by the Government.

The headline number to put out by the Office of Cyber Security & information assurance and consultancy Detica includes a cost of £ 21 billion to the business, the results of 9.2 billion pounds by the theft of intellectual property (IP) and 7.6 billion pounds from industrial espionage.

Extortion against U.K. company accounts for another 2.2 billion pounds, the loss of customer data 1 billion pounds, with £ 2.2 billion in tax evasion ' transferred ' against the Government itself.

Cyberfraud conventional against ordinary citizens is considered to be 3.1 billion pounds in total, comprising £ 1.7 billion from identity theft and another 1.4 billion pounds from online scams. Fake anti-virus scams only accounts for 30 million pounds of useless software sold to the public.

"Estimates of the cost of cybercrime so far are not able to provide a defensible estimate the economic impact and have failed to address the extent of the problem," say the authors of the report, dry.

Skeptics--and there will be some--will point to the rather vague, methodology used to calculate these figures but there is no doubt that cybercrime is still a phenomenon was born. Put a figure on it is inherently difficult, not helped by underreporting, and ignorance of the organizations that don't necessarily realize that have suffered.

To summarize, the Internet has proved to have some big downsides don't underestimate the pathetic aiute of importance of the protection from powerful technology companies over the last decade. Low adhesion to orthodoxy regulation that defined the last quarter century, Governments've twiddled their thumbs as all expanse. Until now.

Symantec, meanwhile, has produced a very low citizen cybercrime figure of 1.9 billion pounds per year--a huge discrepancy in the amounts to be estimated. A key theme of the study is that cybersecurity is the protection of businesses and citizens, not just the Government itself. Until now formally recognize this has taken the decision makers.



Weekend tech reading: Libya cuts Internet between protests

Libya goes off the Internet and the killing begin Firstly, Libya blocked news sites and Facebook. Then, start on Friday night, according to Arbor Networks, network security and Internet monitoring company, has announced that Libya had cut off from the Internet. Hours later welds Libyan dictator's protesters began to slaughter. East of the United States as of Sunday afternoon, now the number of deaths was above 200 only the city of Benghazi. ZDNet

Microsoft downplays the threat of new Windows zero-day Microsoft yesterday downplayed the threat to Windows users from vulnerability revealed recently, saying that it was unlikely that the bug can be exploited to compromise a computer. The flaw in the Windows Network Server Message Block (SMB) file sharing protocol and was disclosed Monday ... Computerworld

U.S. House votes to enable providers of cable Internet gas House Republicans have managed to pull off a high profile refusal of a key component of tech related initiatives of the Obama administration. In the control of the House for the first time in four years, Republicans have voted to overturn the rules of the so-called "net neutrality" earlier this year, Obama has proposed by the administration. DailyTech

Intel to invest more than $ 5 billion to build the new factory in Arizona Intel today announced plans to invest more than 5 billion dollars to build a new chip plant at its site in Chandler, Arizona production the announcement was made by Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini during a visit by President Barack Obama at an Intel plant in Hillsboro, Oregon

Goodbye, HD component video: Hollywood hastens the ' analog ' sunset Listen do you feel that the creaking sound? Don't be too alarmed. It is only the lid of the coffin closing slowly on your ability to obtain high-definition video using analog component video connections on your Blu-ray player. Consumer Reports

researchers aim to ' print ' skin Researchers are developing a system of "print" leather specialized which could be used in future to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for regenerative medicine are inspired to inkjet standard found in many domestic offices. CNN

cut from Windows Home Server to return through the add-on One of the features of Windows Home Server, Microsoft announced that it had cut as part of the next major version of the operating system, Crown is set to return with the help of some third-party software. CNET



Barcelona Baby!

Last week, I attended my first Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  All told, was charming, but the night before the show began, I was pickpocketed on a crowded metro train in town.

It wasn't all that bad, given that the most important thing I lost was taken from my backpack for connections that would do to file stories and surf the Web a portable 3 G dongle.   Theft made me think about how dependent I've become on modern communication technologies.

The pick-pocketing occurred, apparently, while I was standing up and talking with a colleague in crowded subway.  How exited the train occupied, a gentle woman told me in a Spanish accent that my backpack, carried on my back, you unzipped.

When I looked, was right.  In fact, the backpack you unzipped in almost all places where there are hinges, something would never allowed to happen.   To my relief, my laptop was still inside, and I got my ID and wallets stuffed in my front pocket pants.

Do not report anything missing, because I knew that I could understand a backup to send stories about Wi-Fi or Ethernet, the press room with the possibility of purchasing or hiring another dongle from a local wireless carrier.

Still, anyone who has heard my story said that Barcelona was famous for pickpockets.  "Pickpocket capital of Europe," said a colleague. A German journalist said "The pickpocket capital of the world!".

The MWC warned visitors to bring their own bags carefully and do not wear their restraint neck MWC's registered to not attract attention. MWC even offered pickpocket victims in his note welcoming the opportunity to get a ride on a motorcycle to police station to report a theft!

Without the dongle, I discovered that Wi-Fi zones, that I needed to file stories and connect to the Internet were not trivial and that the Newsroom was usually too busy to make an Ethernet connection.

The GSM Association, which runs at MWC, helped me to set a backup using a dongle device Sierra Wireless network Vodafone Spain.  It finally worked fine, but it took three hours to two days to set up, in part because i and my helpers maintained dominating a number of network connections in my Macbook. Still, set-up could be easier, but we all know that just about everything involving technology can be made easier and we're all good Monday morning quarterbacks!

I missed some talks and keynotes at MWC, partly because of theft dongle and partly because of a cold really terrible, that was not helped by the cold and rainy climate in Barcelona almost all week.  It was hard to Miss things, given the excitement in the industry, especially with Smartphones and tablets that are popping up all over the place.  I'm planning to try to write some retrospectives at MWC later in this space.

I don't know how directly related to the theft of backpack and my problems were communications for a meeting I had at MWC with a stranger, but what the alien said made me think.

The story goes like this: I was walking in the rain continued to one of the pavilions rise when a man was holding back the crowd by using a stalemate escalator while making a call on his phone. He was obviously asking for help, but another man next to me laughed and said: "look, he is using his phone to correct the escalator" sort of like a remote control device.

I said back to him, "more technology acting up," only to be friendly.

And the man said to me, "well, we all blame technology for our problems, when there are other people around.  «But it is funny how we blame other people when there are none other than machines around.

People and machines--always battling each other or trying to achieve. Seems to be the driving force in my life these days.



Alibaba.com CEO and COO to resign after fraud investigation

The head of Alibaba.com, an operator of e-commerce and more in China, has resigned following an internal investigation has found that an increase in fraudulent transactions at the company.

CEO David Wei has resigned from Alibaba.com, Business-to-business commercial platform group Alibaba Chinese e-commerce giant. Replacement of Wei will be Jonathan Lu, CEO of the largest online retailer, Taobao.com, China's Alibaba. Alibaba.com also chief operating officer Elvis Lee has resigned.

The investigation established that Wei and Lee were not involved in any fraudulent activity.

From resignation, Wei Lee wanted to take responsibility for fraudulent activities carried out by users on the site.

Monday, Alibaba released a statement saying that the senior management at the company had noticed an increase in claims of fraud by buyers against its customers China Gold supplier.

Fraud had begun at the end of 2009 and continued throughout the year. The number of suppliers engaged in fraud including 1219 who had signed in 2009 and 1107 who had signed in 2010. The company has taken steps to end the virtual shop suppliers.

"In general, the sites offered the high consumer demand at very interesting prices, minimum order quantity and less reliable methods of transferring payment." Alibaba said in a statement. "The average value per claim by buyers against fraudulent vendors was less than US $ 1, 200".

Sales of about 100 people, a number of sales managers and supervisors had allowed fraud to circumvent the measures of control of the company intentionally or negligently, Alibaba added. Fraudulent activities had no "material financial impact on society.

Under the leadership of Wei, Alibaba.com had worked to expand its services globally. Last year the company had made acquisitions of two e-commerce company, and in the United States. The objective was to use them to help pave the way for U.S. small businesses source their products through the resources of the e-commerce Alibaba.



Fujitsu to launch Windows 7 Tablet Business

Fujitsu, Japan will soon launch a tablet for business users that the security feature is not available in most consumer machines.

The Q550 style will get its official unveiling at next week's Cebit in Germany and has a fingerprint reader, smartcard slot and-trusted platform module (TPM), the company said. (See the tablet's video on YouTube).

Your computer will run Windows 7 Professional, and uses an Intel Atom "Oak Trail". It has a 10-inch LED touchscreen. Unlike previous stylistic tablet that required a stylus, the touch interface on the new model also works with a finger.

Other features include front and rear cameras, 32 or 64 GB solid state drive (SSD) drive, an optional 3 G module and a USB port.

Fujitsu says a combination of low power processor and LED backlit screen helped to extend the battery life for about eight hours.

Should appear in Europe in April.

Security features of tablet PC might respond to requests for some companies, but it remains to be seen if the tablet PC will take off among business users. Tablet PCs have been tried several times in the last decade and have failed to find widespread adoption every time.

The current boom in the Tablet-PC between consumers will probably again some companies facing products.

Martyn Williams covers the Japan and General technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. Follow me on Twitter @ Martyn martyn_williams. E-mail address of the Martyn is martyn_williams@idg.com



NASA to launch latest-Earth observation satellite (AP)

LOS ANGELES – NASA is set to launch its Earth orbiting satellite-latest on a mission of 424 million for analyzing airborne grana spewed from volcanic eruptions, forest fires, chimneys and exhaust.

The satellite is expected to explode glory out before dawn Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base aboard a Taurus XL rocket. Once upgraded to an altitude of 440 kilometres, will join a fleet of satellites that collected data on climate change for years.

His main task will be to study known as aerosols airborne particles. Less than the diameter of a human hair, these ubiquitous specks can track distances around the world and are largely responsible for the production of Misty sky.

Scientists know little of aerosols and their effects on climate. A better understanding is essential to improve climate models.

"We need to know about these particles much better than us," said Michael Mishchenko project scientist of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

In the last century, average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the world. Scientists blame carbon dioxide, principally from the combustion of coal, oil and other fossil fuels, such as the root cause of global warming.

Unlike greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that linger for years, aerosols are ephemeral — staying for weeks — so is much more difficult to measure their carbon dioxide.

Most aerosols — about 90 percent — comes from natural sources such as volcanic ash, desert dust and smoke from forest fires. The rest is from human activity.

Aerosols may influence both the heating and cooling the Earth depending on their color and chemical composition. They may involve cooling scattering sunlight back into space; are also capable of absorbing the solar heating of the atmosphere.

Dozens of satellites have been studying aerosols over the past 50 years. But the glory is designed to make more accurate measurements of aerosols from space by studying how widely they are deployed and their various properties.

In addition to tracking aerosols in the atmosphere, Glory will also changes in solar activity to determine the effect of the Sun on the climate.

Gloria will be launched aboard a Taurus XL rocket built by four phases Orbital Sciences Corp. The mission marks the return of the Taurus XL flight after a bankruptcy in 2009 that resulted in the loss of a global warming NASA satellite.

Glory, which weighs about half a Volkswagen Beetle, will run for at least three years. The chassis of the spacecraft was recycled from a mission that never flew and had to be adapted to accommodate the two key tools.

The mission was to fly last November, but a problem with solar panels launch delayed by three months. Once in low Earth orbit, glory will join a convoy of satellites already gathering information climate.

Unusual name probe stemmed from an atmospheric phenomenon caused by the dispersion of sunlight by water droplets in a cloud.



Hard sell: Motorola $ 800 Tablet Xoom, no Flash support

Xoom Motorola Tablet is seen by many as the first big iPad competitor, but its steep $ 800 price and lack of support for Adobe Flash suggest otherwise.

The forthcoming Motorola Xoom fell at the first hurdle in the fight against the dominance of Apple's iPad? After Motorola announced that its contestant iPad will cost more than a promo to iPad, Verizon discovered that Xoom doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology up sometime this spring.

Support for Adobe Flash technology has been a topic for the operating system Android because Apple's CEO Steve Jobs famously said that Flash is a dying technology and that it will not make up iOS devices for several reasons. Flash support in Android appeared with version 2.2 and Google even ostentatious as a killer feature for tablets running honeycomb (3.0), how the Motorola Xoom.

But it seems that Adobe and/or Google have yet to put the finishing touches on the implementation of Flash on Android 3.0. An advertisement for the Verizon website Xoom says (in section 6 below) that support Adobe Flash on Xoom is expected in the spring of 2011, which means that this feature will not be available at launch of the first tablet Honeycomb on 24 February. Considering how carriers and manufacturers are slow when it comes to software updates, this 2011 spring update could mean more like late spring 2011 ETA.

Meanwhile, Adobe said last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that is still working on Flash 10.1 for Smartphones and tablets running Android. The company promised users dual core tablets and phones will benefit of HD Flash video, and up to 30 frames per second performance. Flash 10.1 for Windows and Mac was released earlier this month, but Adobe gave no clear indication when the mobile version of the plug-in will actually be available to users.

So far, despite initial positive responses from reviewers, the Motorola Xoom doesn't have two tests against iPad. Despite better specifications of Xoom, the Tablet is still the most expensive iPad matching. IPad 32 GB 3 G costs $ 729, while the equivalent of Xoom is $ 800, plus any contracts which may need to sign up with Verizon. Add that to the fact that the Flash will initially support, a feature is missing in the war against iPad, and do not accumulate possibility of Xoom to be suddenly a great success, that's okay.

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