Technology latest news

The Business Software Alliance wants the U.S. Congress to pass a patent reform bill and executives at the trade group say they're optimistic that the legislation will move forward in the Senate soon.

Patent reform heads up a list of five legislative priorities the trade group released Thursday. The BSA wants Congress to approve the Patent Reform Act, which the House of Representatives passed back in September, but the legislation has been stalled in the Senate due to objections from inventors, pharmaceutical companies and some small tech firms.

Revisions Stuck

The Patent Reform Act would overhaul the U.S. patent system. Among other things, it would create a new way to challenge patents after they've been granted, and it would allow courts to change the way they assess damages in patent-infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent. The legislation would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece.

That so-called apportionment of damages provision has been a major hang-up for the bill in the Senate. But Robert Holleyman, BSA's president and CEO, said the Senate may be moving toward passage of the bill in the coming weeks. Some changes may still happen to the bill, he said.

“We are optimistic it will be considered in the Senate, and we are optimistic that the final solution will address the inadequacies in the current patent system that have been well identified,” Holleyman said.

Many large tech vendors, including BSA members Microsoft, Symantec and Apple, say it's too easy for patent holders to claim that a small piece of a tech product infringes a patent and to collect huge court awards. But some small tech vendors, independent inventors and pharmaceutical companies have opposed the Patent Reform Act, saying it would water down the value of patents and give small companies fewer protections against large companies that steal their ideas.

Late last month, more than 170 California businesses and organizations sent a letter to California's senators, saying they opposed the Patent Reform Act in its current form. “California's high-tech industries lead the world in innovation across numerous sectors,” the letter said. “The cutting edge research they do is extremely risky and expensive, and strong patent protections form the basis upon which they are able to attract the investment necessary to commercialize a new product. This is especially the case for the hundreds of smaller, venture capital-backed firms in the state, many spun out of California's world-class research universities and private research institutes.”

The Patent Reform Act would “increase costs to obtain and maintain patents, undermine patent certainty, incentivize infringement, and weaken the enforceability of patent rights and intellectual property protections,” said the letter, signed by companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, California Wireless and Mi5 Networks.

But the U.S. patent system is “antiquated,” BSA countered. “The Senate can take a giant stride toward stimulating innovation, spurring job growth, helping consumers and boosting U.S. competitiveness by completing action” on the patent bill, the group said in a position paper released Thursday.

Chief technology officers of several BSA members will come to Washington, D.C., next week to lobby for patent reform and other issues.

Other Priorities

Among the BSA's other legislative priorities:

– Legislation that protects consumers' data while providing a technology-neutral framework for businesses that handle such data.

– Funding for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to improve its IT focused on intelligence gathering, counterterrorism and information sharing.

– Support for free trade agreements, which have come under fire in the U.S. presidential race, particularly from Democratic Senator Barack Obama. For most BSA members, more than half of revenues come from outside the U.S., Holleyman said.

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - The midseason return of “American Idol” helped double Fox Broadcasting's online traffic in January compared with December.

Nielsen Online said Fox had 4.6 million unique visitors in January, up 101% from December, surpassing CBS (4.5 million, down 24%) for the month. But both network sites still are behind ABC.com and NBC.com, which had 8.1 million and 7.9 million visitors, respectively.

In addition to “Idol,” the Fox site benefited from the return of “Prison Break” and the premiere of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” according to Bill Bradford, senior vp content strategy at Fox.

Although Fox does not stream episodes of “Idol” on its site, it still was the most-visited part of the property, with an estimated 1.1 million visitors.

ABC.com's month, which saw an 11% increase, was keyed by “Lost's” January 31 return. Even though the streaming numbers for “Lost” count toward February's numbers, the network aggressively promoted the show on the site through the month.

The strategy involved making “Lost's” first three seasons available and showcasing features connected to the show. The popular ones included “Lost Theories,” where fans uploaded videos to the site attempting to decipher the mysterious series, and an offering in which an automated version of the wisecracking Sawyer gave users customized nicknames.

Even though NBC's numbers dipped slightly from December, the network said it had expected the Hollywood writers' strike to have a deeper impact on traffic.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

If you've watched “The Lord of the Rings” or many other visual effects-driven Hollywood films, you have seen Massive Software's 3-D animation software at work.

The New Zealand company's technology is the reason why the hordes of orcs and warriors who cross swords in the screen versions of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic tales do so in such a remarkably lifelike, non-uniform way.

The software allows developers and designers to give 3-D characters– dubbed “agents” in Massive's parlance– the ability to react to their surroundings based on factors including sight, touch and hearing. When scaled into a crowd, the agents interact with each other, creating a more realistic result.

Smart Software, New Uses

The company showcased its software at the recent Cebit show in Hanover, Germany. The appearance at was the company's “soft launch” into new potential areas of business, which for now include engineering, architecture and robotics, according to CEO Diane Holland.

Massive sees the software being used for safe-building design, disaster scenarios, traffic and municipal planning, and possibly for scientific research into the behavior of species.

At heart, the software is an “AI authoring system,” Holland said. “There is no actual, wired-in AI that comes in Massive. It's a blank canvas, because we wanted to use it for any kind of character and didn't want it to be constrained whatsoever by some predetermined AI.”

A number of the program's tools center on 3-D design tasks like the characters' appearance, but the agents' AI (artificial intelligence) characteristics get fined-tuned through a node-based interface called a “Brain Editor.”

Massive also employs fuzzy logic to make characters' reactions more natural “than the on/off robotic results of binary logic,” the company's Web site notes, as well as “rigid body dynamics,” which the site describes as “a physics-based approach to facilitating realistic stunt motion such as falling, animation of accessories, and projectiles.”

Massive claims it can run simulations using hundreds of thousands of simple agents. “Large numbers of more complex agents, such as typical humanoid agents, can be done in multiple passes, by simulating agents in groups of about 10,000 to 20,000, with each subsequent group able to see and react to the previously simulated groups,” its site states.

New Markets, New Features

Anticipating its push into new verticals, the company added a 'memory' capability to its software, Holland said. Agents running within a short film or TV clip don't need to recollect much, she said, “but when we're talking about a 45-minute fire-evacuation scenario, you've got to have them be able to remember 'what was the exit I came in, where did i come from, what sign did I see,' and that sort of thing.”

While Holland stressed the extensibility of the Massive platform, the company sees a need for some prebuilt agents. They will have a “pedestrian” model ready for market within a year, she said.

“We realized that architects don't have the time to build all these characters and put them in,” she said. “They can certainly modify it, but we've got some basic behaviors that are already built in.”

It's unclear how many markets Massive's technology could serve, according to Holland. “If you can accurately simulate what we as human beings think and do, [the possibilities are] absolutely endless.”

For example, someone planning a grocery store could build a simulation using the behavior and motion patterns of retail customers to determine how best to place certain products on the shelves, she said.

In the meantime, the software is helping power a robot, Zeno, now in development as a consumer product.

The trend toward users buying notebook computers instead of desktop PCs is helping boost market share for companies that have a strong retail presence, such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer, according to analysts.

The trend is dovetailing with the interests of retailers because notebooks deliver a better profit margin and take up less shelf space than desktops, said John Jacobs, director of notebook research at DisplaySearch. The falling prices of notebooks are also attracting buyers. A notebook with plenty of storage, graphics and performance can be bought for US$999, and prices continue to fall, Jacobs said.

Until a few years ago, 70 percent to 80 percent of the laptops shipped were to enterprises, but now it's equally split between enterprises and consumers, Jacobs said. That has raised the importance of retail stores to computer makers, redefining the distribution strategy of companies like HP, Acer and Dell, Jacobs said.

HP outpaced Acer and Dell in notebooks shipped in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to research from DisplaySearch released on Wednesday. HP shipped 6.6 million notebooks, growing 42 percent from the previous year and representing a 20.1 percent market share. Acer overtook Dell for second place, shipping 5.25 million units, growing 32 percent with a 15.9 percent market share. Dell shipped 4.64 million units, growing 32 percent, with a 14 percent market share. In the fourth spot was Toshiba, followed by Lenovo, Fujitsu-Siemens, Sony and Asus. Apple was ninth, shipping 1.34 million units, growing 38 percent over the previous year.

Overall, notebook shipments totaled 33 million in the fourth quarter of 2007, growing 41 percent.

Acer used a strong retail and channel presence in Europe and Asia to increase its notebook shipments and overtake Dell, Jacobs said. Acer recently acquired Packard Bell and Gateway to expand its presence in Europe and North America. Dell has, to a degree, neglected its retail strategy by placing far more focus on enterprises, Jacobs said. However, Dell is signing more retailers and placing products on more shelves, which could boost the company's notebook shipments.

During a recent conference call, Dell CEO Michael Dell said that notebooks are outselling desktops six to one, and that the company's PC sales are getting a boost from the retail strategy it introduced last year. Dell is now selling PCs in about 10,000 retail stores worldwide. Most of Dell's retail sales have been in the U.S., though the company's agreements with European retailers are starting to take effect, Dell said. The company signed up European retailers including Carrefour and Tesco to sell PCs.

Dell's retail strategy took off in the fourth quarter of 2007 and will expand this year, said David Daoud, research manager at IDC. HP sold 2.67 million PC units in the U.S. through retail in the fourth quarter of 2007, much larger compared to Dell, which sold 225,000 PCs. Dell is witnessing an uptick with every quarter, and its growing retail presence could bite into HP's numbers this year, Daoud said.

Dell rules online notebook sales, but the strength of HP and Acer in stores pushed them ahead of Dell in market share, Daoud said. Consumers tend to research online but are increasingly going to retail outlets to buy notebooks.

Retailers prefer notebook PCs because of better margins, DisplaySearch's Jacobs said. Retailers are also finding better margins in selling notebook accessories, such as backpacks, and components, such as extra memory, Jacobs said.

Moreover, the days of users blindly buying notebooks online have slowed– buyers need to touch, feel and customize a notebook to their liking before buying it. “It's critical to have that look-and-feel, that touch presence. At the end of the day, the physical experience is very important,” Jacobs said.

Desktops are more about configuration– the processor, memory and graphics card– than notebooks, which have more style, IDC's Daoud said. People want mobile products that represent them, and notebooks fit that profile, Daoud said. PC makers have been slow at paying attention to style and customization of laptops, which could be a potential growth area, he said.

Offering notebooks also brings more customers into retail outlets such as Best Buy and Staples, which have better exposure by offering more brands, Daoud said.

It's a good thing Yahoo Taiwan bought Wretch.cc last year: the Web site, which offers free blogs, picture and video posting and other applications to users, just swiped the top Internet ranking on the island away from its owner's portal.

Wretch.cc was ranked the top Web site in Taiwan in a top-100 list tabulated by Business Next, a local magazine, and Taiwan's Access Rating Online (ARO).

Talk about a big victory.

Yahoo Taiwan's portal has been the top site by hits and unique visitors in Taiwan since its US$146 million all-stock purchase of Kimo.com in December of 2000, the most popular portal on the island at the time.

Yahoo added a number of features to draw new users, including an English-Chinese dictionary, stock listings and other features. It's also been ranked as the top local destination for online auctions.

But despite Yahoo's best attempts to keep up with new features such as blogs, Wretch.cc continued to grow and gain popularity. It proved such a difficult battle that Yahoo Taiwan finally used cash to end the battle, buying Wretch.cc for an undisclosed sum. Local newspaper reports valued the deal at NT$700 million (US$22.7 million).

Yahoo Taiwan came in second in the ranking overall, but it remained number one against other Internet portals.

Rounding out the top five overall Web sites in Taiwan, PChome Online came in third, Yam.com ranked fourth, and Gamer.com took fifth place in the Business Next/ARO list.

The U.S. version of Google ranked first among search engines, and 14th overall, while Google Taiwan came in second, China's Baidu ranked third and video search engine Flurl came in fourth.

In video posting sites, Taiwan's I'm TV beat out YouTube for the top spot in Taiwan.

Online travel company Expedia has started operations in India with the launch of a local site where Indians can pay using Indian rupees.

India's economic boom, reflected in over 8 percent annual gross domestic product growth, has created a large interest in both business and leisure travel.

India had 32 million active Internet users as of September 2007, from a total population of 1.1 billion, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Expedia.co.in will offer its services directly to travelers in India via the Web site or by phone, for travelers who prefer to speak with an representative, a company spokeswoman said Thursday. Along with pricing in Indian rupees, Expedia provides localized service and a customer care center within the country, that is staffed with agents who speak both Hindi and English, it added.

Expedia said its international revenue accounted for 32 percent of worldwide revenue in 2007, up from 28 percent in 2006. Expedia.co.in is the company's 17th branded site, it said.

Microsoft last week introduced the next generation of its Web technologies, including beta versions of Internet Explorer 8 and its Silverlight 2 browser plug-in, as well as a hosted Exchange e-mail service and a SQL Server-powered data storage and query-processing service.

In doing so, the company's top software engineer admitted that Microsoft hasn't been crystal clear about its Web technology road map. “It's occurred to me that without being able to see the big picture as each one of these products is introduced, it might seem to you to be just a little bit random,” chief software architect Ray Ozzie said during a keynote address at Microsoft's MIX conference for Web developers in Las Vegas.

Microsoft's Web strategy is framed by three principles. First, the Web can serve as a hub for managing “personal experiences” across devices and services. Second, the Web should be an option for business computing. And third, the Web can be used by developers to create new applications. The key ingredients, Ozzie said, are “connected” devices, entertainment, productivity, software development, and business services.

Microsoft plans to begin broad beta testing of services it will host based on the company's Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications servers. The online services will come with Online Administration Center, a Web console that lets companies manage and configure them. System administrators can download a tool to run on a local directory server that's configured with both online and server credentials and synchronizes accounts every 24 hours.

That means, for example, that employees in remote offices or temporary workers with Microsoft-hosted e-mail wouldn't notice anything different than employees whose e-mail runs on a business's own servers. Microsoft already is doing this sort of integration with instant messaging.

The push into online services is important for Microsoft as it tries to stave off Google and other competitors offering online alternatives to its e-mail and productivity applications. And at the same time, Microsoft must compete with Salesforce.com and other software-as-a-service vendors that are thriving at its expense in the business applications market.

STILL WAITING

The new data storage and query processing service, SQL Server Data Services, aims to help businesses avoid some of the costs and complexities of developing and provisioning data-intensive applications and mashups on their own.

Microsoft is pitching SQL Server Data Services to small and midsize businesses as a way to off-load costs, to developers looking to avoid infrastructure investments for data-intensive applications, and to enterprises that might want archival and collaborative access to data sets.

Amazon.com broke new ground with its S3 online data services. SQL Server Data Services is Microsoft's response and lays the groundwork for more SQL Server capabilities to be offered by Microsoft over the Web. It's an early example of Microsoft's broader utility computing effort, Ozzie hinted.

Many of the deliverables of Microsoft's Web technology road map aren't quite here yet, but Ozzie promised that's about to change. “Over the course of the next nine months, and progressively into the future, many of the software and services products that we've been developing for quite some time now will finally come to life,” he said. For now, customers are still waiting.

See original article on InformationWeek.com

Europe’s ATV has lifted off from French Guiana on a mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).

The Automated Transfer Vehicle is the biggest and most complex spacecraft Europe has ever tried to put in orbit.

The 20-tonne unmanned cargo ship left the Kourou spaceport at 0403 GMT, riding atop an Ariane 5 rocket.

Mission controllers will confirm a successful launch only after the ATV has been ejected from the Ariane’s upper-stage 66 minutes after lift-off.

The ATV is carrying just under five tonnes of food, water, air, fuel and equipment to be passed over to the ISS during the course of a six-month attachment at the orbiting platform.

During that stay, the vehicle will also use its thrusters to push the station higher into the sky to keep it from falling back to Earth.

The ATV has been dubbed “Jules Verne” for its maiden flight and is carrying a first-edition hardback of the 19th-Century French author’s book From the Earth to the Moon.

The mission also marks an important milestone for the Ariane 5 rocket - that of the heaviest single payload it has ever lifted off the ground.

The rocket is more used to lofting telecommunications satellites into equatorial orbits that go out to 35,000km above the Earth. For this flight, it is having to take a highly inclined trajectory out over the Atlantic to put the ATV on the correct low-altitude path to the ISS.

Ariane’s upper stage has also been programmed to reignite twice - once to circularise the orbit at a 260-km altitude before ejecting the ship; and a further burn to take itself safely out of the sky and into the Pacific Ocean.

The ATV will essentially then be parked in space. It must wait until Space Shuttle Endeavour has completed its forthcoming mission to the ISS before moving in to make a docking, probably on 3 April.

The ship’s own computers will be in charge as an advanced form of GPS and, in the latter stages, optical sensors guide it into position on the end of the Russian Zvezda module.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk