Mousetrap Technology - Times Online - WBLG

Apple's latest gadget breaks down, trapping schoolkids

Engadget picks up on a citizen journalism scoop from the Ranex blog:

"Not eight days after Apple's new flagship store was unveiled, Stevie J.'s fantastical glass elevator began acting a bit wonky, first opening and shutting its doors, then finally sealing in its passengers on the upper level. Apple store employees worked their hardest to release the bunch, but eventually the NYPD had to be called; the elevator's hydraulic system had to be drained, and the confined group was let out in the store's bowels (i.e. lower level)."

And no, David Blaine was nowhere too be seen.

CNET gets "disruptive"?

Techcrunch has a piece on CNET's new image hosting service, AllYouCanUpload. "At first glance it doesn’t appear to be very special or disruptive. But it is," it says.

Why are they disruptive? "Because they’ve made this service as painfully easy to use as humanly possible," says searchenginejournal.com.

Mozilla and Google go fishing for phishers

Mozilla looks to be getting even tighter with Google as it moves to incorporate anti-phishing technology from the search giant into its Firefox browser.

New calling plan: watch ads, earn minutes

Would you watch, no, study, a series of adverts in exchange for 75 free minutes of mobile phone usage? Richard Branson is betting that some of you will. The consummate marketer is introducing in the United States what's believed to be the first-ever advertising-subsidised mobile phone calling plan geared towards cash-strapped twenty-somethings and teens. The idea of matching advertisers with the elusive on-the-go demographic of young mobile phone users has long been predicted as a business model likely to be adopted by mobile phone operators. But the hard part, as always, was signing up the advertisers and finding willing customers. Under a plan called SugarMama, Virgin Mobile USA believes it will find enough willing participants to satisfy both consumers and advertisers. Pepsi and Microsoft's Xbox are two of the first advertisers to join the programme, Virgin says.

Start-ups worth watching

Red Herring's annual list of tech start-ups worth watching was published over the weekend. It's worth a look, even if all you're going to do is beat yourself up wondering "why didn't I come up with that first?"

Also gives an insight into what the venture capitalists think will be the next big things. Instant Mousetrap overview as follows:

"Using the power of a website’s community as a marketing tool ... Optical network equipment is back ... Allows online shoppers to undergo a fast credit check, then sends them a bill in the mail ... Wikis as platforms for applications like project management, shared spreadsheets ... Bringing VoIP services to the gaming, dating, social networking, and online community spaces."

"I'm not actually that clever"

"Amir, if you want to refund my money you know where to contact me, and this page will disappear forever."

One very compelling demonstration of why it's never a good idea to sell your old - possibly highly embarassing - laptop on eBay unless you're sure - really, really sure - that the hard drive has been well-and-truly wiped.

http://www.amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/

What's in a name?

Irony of ironies: it looks as if somebody is trying to copyright the term "Web 2.0". That's right, the same "Web 2.0" tag used to refer to the currently modish collection of websites that explore ways in which users can collaborate on projects and share content, thus sidestepping the evils of - yeap, you've got it - conventional notions of copyright

From The New York Times: "Web 2.0, a term that has come to represent the latest incarnation of the internet, a place where web sites are more dynamic and interactive, has a certain internet utopianism at its heart. But that image took a hit last week when a dispute broke out over who was allowed to use the term."

It's time to get a Second Life

The interesting thing about reading science fiction and writing about technology over a few decades is that eventually it does all come true. When I read Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.I was captivated by his portrait of people living inside 3D animated virtual worlds, wearing animated representations of them self called avatars, working, buying, selling and generally hanging out. I remember going online to check out such a world about ten years ago and it was very disappointing: clunky graphics and way too slow. Reading that the online community Second Life has received $11 million (£6 million) in funding, I decided to try again, and ladies and gentleman, the hairs went up on the back of my neck. The connections are faster. The PCs are more powerful. We're there. Virtual worlds have arrived.

A transparent motive

“The [invisibility] cloak would act like you’ve opened a hole in space.”

IBM's blogger in chief

A few days ago Times Online caught up with Christopher Barger, IBM's official "blogger in chief". He's been charged with keeping the 20,000 people inside the IBM firewall up to date with the latest state of the blogosphere, so we thought we'd ask him for a briefing.

Forget e-mail, spammers target blogs

Are spammers turning a new trick, abandoning e-mail for the fertile grounds of the blogosphere? According to a new tally by an open-source spam filter developer known as Akismet, spam peddlers are now targetting blog posts at an alarming rate. At the time of writing, some 91 per cent of all blog comments come from spammers hawking such things as sexual aides, online gambling offers and tips on debt restructuring, the Akismet filter reports. In other words, for every ten responses a blog post generates, just one is legitimate.

Playing vinyl with a laser…

Is this the ultimate toy for the the music junky in your life?

"Laser Turntable ... features an absolutely contact-free optical pickup system. Play a record thousands of times with no damage to the record. Get the same sparkling sound on the thousandth play as on the first play," say the manufacturers. 

And in the US, it'll set you back around $15,000. Plus taxes.

"Brain Machine Interface"

Hot off the Japanese wires: “Honda has developed technology that uses brain signals to control a robot's moves, hoping to someday link a person's thoughts with machines in everyday life.”

The "Brain Machine Interface" allows users to “manipulate robots using brain activity signals … without an invasive incision of the head and brain.” Which, considering the alternative, sounds like good news if you work on one of Honda’s robotic assembly lines.

What's wrong with JPEGs?

"If it is up to Microsoft, the omnipresent JPEG image format will be replaced by Windows Media Photo."

There's more on the story, fresh from Microsoft's hometown of Seattle, here.

"Once again, MS reinvents the wheel because they didn't invent it first," says one Digger, which sounds a little harsh – but arguably sums up Microsoft's strategy over the past 30 years. And on that basis, I guess there's a good chance we'll see WMP (haven't we seen that acronym before?) taking the lion's share of the market...

Missing: 1.5 million ".co.uk" websites

Nominet, the “.co.uk” domain name registry, is celebrating reaching the five-million mark for .uk domain name registrations.

The "landmark registration" was Hosepipebanbuster.co.uk. This probably seemed like an excellent idea for a website after the deluge of warnings earlier this year about parts of Britain suffering a drought this summer. You can insert here your own grievance about the actual weather we've been treated to so far. Mine is too rude to appear on a family website.

Google Zeitgeist: mobile, measurement and mass communication

Mobile access to the internet is set to explode across the world, particularly in developing economies… Advertisers will demand ever greater "measurability" of their spending from internet publishers… Citizen journalism is an unstoppable force in which the internet has become the means for an outpouring of the desire to communicate.

Those were three key themes which emerged from Google’s Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire this week – the first of the search engine’s brainstorming sessions for web executives to be hosted in Europe.

The pay-as-you-go PC is here

Microsoft and Lenovo, the Chinese company that bought IBM's laptop business last year, are to launch market trials for "pay-as-you-go" purchases of computers in China and India.

For sure, it's an interesting application of an idea usually associated with mobile phones.

But is it really an innovative plan to bring computing power to the deserving masses, or a way of extending credit under another name to people who can ill-afford to be in debt?

Germans targeted by anti-P2P operation

The music industry announced on Tuesday its biggest operation yet against illicit file-swappers, targetting 3,500 German users of the eDonkey peer-to-peer network. The culprits were allegedly uploading up to 8,000 music files to the popular file-sharing network for others to download freely, according to a statement released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a music industry trade group. Germany has long been cited as one of Europe's hotbeds for digital piracy.

Google far from reaching its limits

Google is far from reaching the limit of either its core search business or in claiming its potential share of world advertising, its co-founder and chief executive said.

"People make an assumption that we are kind of done with search and that is very very far from the case," Larry Page, who founded the world's largest search engine company with Sergey Brin, told a conference of internet industry executives at a country club north of London.

Google targets China, India and mobile

Google plans new products specifically tailored to exploit the fast-growing Chinese and Indian markets, and it looks most likely to do it in the mobile phone area.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, urged co-founder Larry Page not to be explicit in describing new products aimed at those two markets in a presentation to internet executives outside London on Monday, but made clear that Google was ready to take on those fiercely competitive markets. "When we have a competitive issue Google comes up with a product," Mr Schmidt said at the Zeitgeist conference at a country club resort in Hertfordshire.

Doing no evil pays top dollar

David Cameron's suggestion at a Google-sponsored conference that money does not buy happiness (see below) could have been better timed. A Silicon Valley newspaper revealed yesterday that one of Google's executives earned more than $288 million (£153m) last year to become the world's best rewarded dot-com employee.

Cameron tries to talk the internet talk

David Cameron slipped into the net lingo at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Hertfordshire on Monday, talking about putting "well-being" at the heart of economic thinking.

In a speech to about 200 of Google's European partners and net "thinkers", Cameron played to his audience, saying he had tracked his own net performance with Google's new Trends device – an application which lets you see how many people are searching for given words or phrases, such as "David Cameron". He noted that his search appeal peaked on the day of his appointment last December and "it's been downhill ever since".

Bringing down digital barriers

Leading charities’ websites are failing to meet the needs of people with visual or physical impairments, according to a study conducted by AbilityNet, a disability and computing specialist. Sites belonging to Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation were among those that gained only one star for accessibility, while Cancer Research UK achieved the maximum grade of three stars.

Liner notes and lyrics return to iTunes for Keane release

For all the obvious merits that this buy-in-a-click era of digital downloads affords, there are some music rituals that have been all but eradicated by the likes of iTunes and Napster. The obvious include the ability to scan the liner notes and album art or follow along with the lyrics on the first listen. Today, a typical album release on a digital download service comes with a snapshot of the cover art, a description of the release and customer reviews. But other details once regarded as essential, such as writing credits, accompanying session musicians – and of course, the lyrics – have been noticeably absent from the digital release. Until now.

The Cloud, the Screen and the Hand, or where's my stuff?

Here are some principles that govern how digital stuff should flow in our lives. The first is that when something goes wrong, all the stuff we care about should automatically have been backed up to the internet cloud so that we don't lose it forever. The second is that the only kind of data entry anyone really wants to do is while sitting at a full-size keyboard in front of nice big screen, whether PC or TV. The third is that there is some information we want to have in our hands when we're on the go: phone numbers, diary, some e-mail, the odd map or address or photo or video. That's it: the Cloud, the Screen and the Hand. When they work together seamlessly, the digital part of our lives will explode.

WMP 11 - not catchy, but deadly?

Microsoft has released Windows Media Player 11. This is something we might not have mentioned were it not for Urge, the much vaunted "iTunes killer" which the software developer has built in conjunction with MTV and which was recently unveiled amid much fanfare.

For once, could the hype be deserved?

Immature, but quite funny

If you are of a sensitive disposition you might like to look away now. If not, try searching for "f***wit" (without the asterisks) in Google. Another triumph for search engine optimisation.

MSN's nice line in Google sideswipes

The portals seem to be engaging in a media offensive. Yesterday evening, Times Online was invited for a chat with Adam Sohn, MSN’s global director of public relations. There was lots of emphasis on how Microsoft is upping its game in search and how easy it should be to wean users off other (more) popular engines...

The MacBook cometh

It wasn't the best kept secret. But now it's official. Apple today unveiled the MacBook, a long-awaited replacement for its now-defunct iBook laptop model and the latest in its new generation of machines powered by Intel processors.

Seven per cent of British robots are on drugs

So claims the headline on a University of Warwick press release. The story itself is less interesting (69 robots out of the 1,085 sold last year in the UK are now working in the pharmaceuticals industry), but full marks for effort.

Bloggers on the beat for the LAPD

Chris Ayres, Los Angeles Correspondent of The Times, writes today in his LA Notebook about the Los Angeles Police Department's attempts to reform itself – by blogging. "You get the feeling, however, that [public comments] are put through an industrial-grade sanitation process – especially the ones about why immigrants should be denied constitutional rights," he writes. Click here to read the full story.

The iPod has created a nation of IP outlaws

OK, it's quiz time. How many of you are aware that it is illegal in Britain to copy your CDs onto your computer or onto your iPod?  The truth is surprisingly few of you – 19 per cent, to be exact – knew this fact about Britain's Byzantine copyright laws. What's more, says a new survey by National Consumer Council and YouGov, more than half of British consumers break this law daily.Gulp!

Just keep taking the Googles

"Of all the inept diagnoses handed out by practitioners of the NHS, this one takes the biscuit for its sheer impertinence," writes Carol Sarler in today's Thunderer.

Apparently, "cyberchondria" is "a condition causing great concern to GPs as increasing numbers of us have the temerity to research our own ailments on the internet."

For more polemic, click here.

Virgin Atlantic trials RFID technology

The era of the smart baggage chip moved a step closer today, as Virgin Atlantic completed a trial of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The trial involved only the airline’s support operations and not the baggage-handling division, but using the tags to monitor the supply chain for spare parts could give Virgin Atlantic an edge when the time comes to introduce them more widely.

The BBC: Absolutely Fabulous or Balderdash and Piffle?

The BBC is standing on its tippy-toes, looking down into the internet abyss. It’s an uncomfortable position for anyone to maintain for long, and a particular strain for battle-scarred warrior like dear old Auntie. In the cyber age, people must be able to find, play, and share the BBC's content with their own mash-ups, blogs, and viral videos entries. The rules have changed. However, I believe that the Beeb can adapt and survive. Here's how.

Can digital cinema end ticket-price inflation?

If you wonder why it costs so much to take your date to the cinema, consider this piece of accounting wisdom: It will cost Paramount Pictures roughly $5 million (£2.7 million) in print production costs alone for Mission: Impossible 3. Yep, that's the going rate for 4,000 reels of celluloid. Add in the cost to FedEx 4,000 reels to neighbourhood cinemas, and that £9.50 movie ticket begins to add up. Of course it doesn't have to be this way. This is the age of digital media. If BitTorrent has taught us anything it is that massive movie files can zip from party to party with no need to bother our friends at the Post Office. Celluloid served us well the past 100 years, but it's time for Hollywood to join the 21st century. Right? Well, not so fast. Studios still prefer the analogue way. But there is some good news: despite Hollywood's inertia, cinema chains are rapidly investing in digital projectors, a development that could have a dramatic impact on our future trips to the cinema.

Icann votes against '.xxx' porn domain

Will ICM sue Icann, the American body that controls the internet, over its decision to vote against the creation of an online red-light district?   

The overnight vote means the Icann board has rejected ICM's proposal to group pornography sites under the ".xxx" suffix, reversing the preliminary approval it granted in June.

Hackers urged: "Switch to safer hobby"

Gary McKinnon, the Briton accused by Washington of the world's "biggest military hack of all time" can be extradited to the United States, a British court ruled today.

McKinnon was arrested last June after US prosecutors said he illegally accessed 97 US government computers - including Pentagon, US Army, Navy and NASA systems - causing $700,000 worth of damage.

The £425 PS3 - strictly for grown ups?

You can almost hear the collective wince of Britain’s parents. Sony today announced that the PlayStation3 will hit Britain’s high street’s on November 17 – with a price tag expected to start between £340 and £425.

You can read Chris Ayres weblog on the US launch of the console here.

The pricing – which could see the most expensive model hit £425 – represents a significant gamble by Sony. Microsoft’s rival Xbox 360 console is currently retailing online for just £280 and could drop in price in the run-up to the key Christmas period. The games market will become even more competitive later this year when Nintendo unleashes its own contender, recently dubbed "Wii" (pronounced "we").

Politics 2.0

After Boris Johnson "footballing" antics gave British politics its first web 2.0 outing, through youtube.com, the Wikocracy site is uping the stakes by making everybody a (potential) lawmaker.

The people behind Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, have launched an experiment "to see what happens when everyone can write and revise the law."

They admit that “it may sound like a free-for-all. But that's exactly the point - to make the process of law-making free for all."

Gulp! Mac users in the crosshairs

Here's some unsettling news for fans of Apple computers. The recent resurgence in Mac sales apparently has attracted the attention of malware writers. Researchers at McAfee Threat Center report this week that digital exploits targetting Macs have risen dramatically between 2003 and 2005. Those digital vandals who tinker in their hovels all day long, manipulating computer code to prey upon unsuspecting PC users everywhere are astutely turning their attention to the fastest-growing segment of the home computer market: Mac OSX users. Is nothing sacred?

Money (That's What I Want)

Apple Computer will be able to use the word "Apple" in connection with its music business after a High Court judge ruled its iTunes download site had not breached a trademark agreement made 15 years ago with the Beatles' Apple Corps.

At least, it will unless Apple Corps wins the appeal it's already said it will make.

You can read music-producer-turned-solicitor, Tom Frederikse's comment on the judgment at Times Online's Law Weblog. For the full story click here.

The web's Asian users, American suppliers

ComScore has set up a new global survey on global internet usage, which it says is the first to use the same methodology across all countries. The "first true estimate of global online audience size and behavior based on activity from the world’s largest online behavioral research panel" kicks off with an estimate that 694 million people, age 15 or higher, used the internet in March - that's around 14 per cent of adults.

'Virtual' money buys a real dinner

Players of online fantasy games could soon be able to withdraw the “virtual money” they earn on the web through high-street cash points, according to the New York Times. The news that the makers of the game Entropia will soon release an ATM card that works in the real world comes as online gamers start to throw serious money at their “immersive” hobbies.

Bloggers caught in DDOS crossfire

A mysterious, crippling outage that knocked out a large chunk of the blogosphere this week appears to be the dirty work of spammers, those pesky peddlers of sexual potency elixirs and get-rich-quick schemes. For close to eight hours, beginning at 4pm PDT (11pm GMT) on Tuesday, an overwhelming swarm of data knocked out Six Apart's network, silencing blogs on the TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com. Six Apart is one of the leading blog publishing and hosting firms. Times Online uses TypePad for its Mousetrap technology blog and LiveJournal currently has 1.9 million active users. For those eight hours, many of us could not get our regular fix of blog wisdom.

Why is the good TV in the shed?

About five years ago I broke down in Tottenham Court Road and bought myself a huge widescreen Sony Trinitron TV set: gun-metal grey with a stunning picture, it cost more than a thousand pounds, an astonishing sum for what is basically a toy. I bought it on a credit card with the sweaty panic of someone who knows he'll be in a lot of trouble when he gets his purchase home. At 28 inches, it was my LDAU: that is, the Largest Domestically Acceptable Unit – meaning that my significant other would complain bitterly about the way it ruined the aesthetic of our living room, but would enjoy the picture and not make me take it back to the shop. A key to ensuring that the TV was allowed to stay was getting it delivered when only I was home: that way I could conceal the staggeringly large box and the fact that it took four men to carry it into our living room. It's now somewhere else, and its journey tells us an awful lot about technology in our homes.

Video on the go

I'm not entirely sure who wants portable video players - they seem an awful lot of money for not much more fun than an iPod or a Nintendo DS can offer - but the market is certainly growing. Last week saw the US launch of the Samsung Q1 ultra-mobile PC which we first saw at the CeBIT trade show in March, a chunky device with a 7-inch touch screen and Windows XP. Now Archos, who makes the portable video devices that have impressed us the most, has hit back with a dual-tuner model called the AV700TV.

Craving a new phone? Get Chocolate

"Technology does not exist anymore without design." So says LG, the South Korean electronics company that has just launched its KG800 phone, known universally as Chocolate. Why? "Chocolate is sensual and people crave it," says John Barton, the company’s UK sales director.

He hopes the same can be said for the phone, and it looks as if he’s probably going to be right. Once you’ve held the sleek, black unit in your hands you want it, and you don’t want anyone else to have it either. That could be a problem: LG has sold 400,000 of the phones in its home market since its launch at the end of last year, and immediate demand in the UK is such that customers are already being warned of delivery delays.

Weblogs trusted by just one in four

A reality check for bloggers: just one in four members of the general public trust what bloggers have to say, according to a study released today. Despite the explosion in blogs (doubling every six months) and a series of high-profile blogging scoops that have cost CEOs and news anchors their jobs, the citizen journalism phenomenon continues to suffer a credibility problem. Citizen blogs lag well behind mainstream media. No doubt, dear sceptical reader, this comes as no surprise.

But don't dismiss citizen scribes out of hand. While they may not yet be a trusted news source, the public is willing to give them a chance. “The jury is still out on ‘blogs’ – just as many people distrust them as trust them,”  explained Doug Miller, president of Globescan, the firm hired to conduct the study. Young readers in particular – an evasive demographic for newspapers, magazines and TV stations – are turning to blogs, wikis and podcasts at an increasing rate for news and entertainment.

Hypercompetition - Google and Microsoft slug it out

The “hypercompetition”  between Google and Microsoft looks to have been stepped up a notch in recent days.

After Google acquired Writely, the web-based word processor, staking out a claim to a massively important part of Microsoft's marketplace, the world’s largest software company struck back by making an important inroad into Google's core search business.

Is 'slightly different' Skype the same company eBay bought into?

Skype, the voice over internet protocol company now owned by eBay, will reveal a major upgrade to its service tomorrow. It is not the only change that the company will have to tackle if it's going to compete in the brave new bundled world of telecoms. Another is the metamorphosis of its rivals.

"I don't think free music is a hard sell" - Chris Gorog, Napster CEO

Napster, the one-time illegal download site now gone legit, has returned to its roots, sort of. 

The company - now publicly traded in New York - has launched a revamped site in the US that allows limited, free, on-demand access to more than two million songs.