Technology latest news

San Francisco - Looking to boost the Web, Sun is working on a royalty-free and open video codec and media system, company officials said Thursday afternoon.

“The main benefit is that you don't have that now and there are markets, key markets like the Web, that are in need for the Web 2.0 experience a foundation of royalty-free for the media element,” for audio and video, said Rob Glidden, global alliance manager for TV & Media at Sun.

Detailed at the Sun Labs Open House event in Menlo Park, Calif., the project is called Open Media Stack or the Open Media System. It was derived out of Sun's Open Media Commons initiative for development of royalty-free and open solutions for digital content.

Currently, proprietary solutions are relied on, such as Adobe's Flash or royalty-bearing specifications like H.264, Glidden said.

OMS is a recent project. Asked about the availability of OMS technologies, Glidden said, “Stay tuned. I have no announcements on any commercial implementations or time frame.”

OMS video is to be based on H.26x technology.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A federal appeals court said Friday it won’t reconsider a ruling favoring TiVo Inc. in its patent dispute with Dish Network Corp.

The decision puts TiVo closer to receiving the $94 million a lower court awarded the Alviso, Calif.-based digital video recorder maker for Dish Network’s patent infringement. It also sets an important legal precedent that gives TiVo leverage as it negotiates partnerships with other satellite and cable TV providers who want to use DVR technology.

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with a lower court that DVRs distributed by Dish, formerly known as EchoStar Communications Corp., violated the software elements of TiVo’s patent. The ruling overturned the lower court’s finding that Dish also infringed on the patent’s hardware elements.

Dish last month asked the Washington-based appeals court to rehear the case, saying the court’s ruling relied on inaccurate testimony from a TiVo witness. But the court Friday declined to reconsider its decision.

Dish Network said it would file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

TiVo issued a statement Friday saying it was “extremely pleased” with the court’s action.

“Today’s ruling brings us closer to resolution of EchoStar’s infringement and reconfirms the strength of TiVo’s Time Warp patent,” the statement said.

Dish Network issued a statement saying the ruling was disappointing, but would not affect its customers because the company had developed and distributed new DVR software that “does not infringe the Tivo patent at issue in the Federal Circuit’s ruling.”

Dish’s shares dropped $1.02, or 3 percent, to $30.61 in late trading Friday. Tivo rose 7 cents to $8.85.

San Francisco - Microsoft has proposed a tiered approach to protecting the privacy of people targeted by online advertising, saying advertisers should get permission before using sensitive, personally identifiable information to deliver ads.

Microsoft filed comments on Friday in response to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) request for comments on its proposed privacy principles that would be self-administered by the online advertising industry. Microsoft's proposal operates under the idea that the greater the risk to privacy, the greater the protection data should receive, Microsoft officials said.

Microsoft agrees with the FTC's decision to focus on an industry self-regulatory approach, but the company has also called for Congress to pass comprehensive consumer privacy legislation, noted Frank Torres, Microsoft's director of consumer affairs.

“We're supporting what the FTC is proposing, but we also believe that privacy is important for consumers,” Torres said. “We're not opposed to going even further” than the FTC self-regulatory proposal.

Microsoft's proposals would give consumers control over how their personal data is used, Torres said. “When it comes to online advertising, consumers should be in the driver's seat,” he said.

Among the Microsoft proposals:

*

Microsoft is in trouble and its flagship Windows operating system is broken, Gartner analysts said at the Emerging Trends conference this week. Analysts Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver offered many reasons why Microsoft may see rougher days ahead.

The analysts said Microsoft's operating-system development times are too long, especially for the level of innovation the company delivers. They also said Windows releases fail to offer a consistent experience between platforms and create compatibility issues. Other vendors, they said, are innovating circles around Microsoft.

These problems translate to the enterprise in unpredictable releases, high management costs, Windows systems that break other applications and prolong testing and adoption time, and overall limited value. That has to be music to the Linux camp's ears.

Stats to Prove the Point

Gartner offered some statistics to back up this gloomy view. Growth in PC hardware is limited, with Gartner expecting two to eight percent between 2005 and 2011. Emerging markets are a better story with expected growth of 16 to 24 percent for PC hardware, but price sensitivity dampens the optimism. Linux tends to win in developing nations.

“All these things are in opposition to what we've seen with people expanding PC use year after year,” MacDonald said.

A transition toward server-agnostic applications could have a major impact on enterprise computing and on Microsoft's pain. Gartner said 70 to 80 percent of corporate applications require Windows today. But the firm expects a dramatic shift by 2011, when a new wave of OS-agnostic applications will hit the market — specifically, Internet-based apps.

“Sometime in the middle of the next decade, Windows will be playing a much less important role on the desktop,” MacDonald said.

To Everything There is a Season

Everything is dying. It's not a matter of if, but when — and Windows is no exception, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. Microsoft's situation reminds him of the lyrics in Bob Dylan's It's Alright Ma, “he not busy being born is busy dying.”

“I don't expect to write the epitaph for Windows any time soon, maybe not even in my lifetime,” King said. “But Gartner does bring up some interesting issues. The industry, and perhaps more importantly technology consumers, appear to be rapidly embracing new lower-functionality computing devices, everything from texting on standard cell phones to smartphones and media-enabled phones like Apple's iPhone to this new class of ultra-mobile computing devices.”

King's point is that those devices don't need Windows Vista functionality. In fact, he said, Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP for use on mobile devices is an interesting indication that parts of the IT industry may be fracturing. The old model of more and more powerful desktops or laptops seems to be moving in a significantly different direction.

“In order to take advantage of the opportunities that are ahead of us, Microsoft is going to have to learn to dance to a different tune and do so as quickly as possible,” King said. “The XP decision suggests that the company is willing to take some risks and to act in a way that might be surprising to people. I don't think that's the last such interesting move we'll see from Microsoft.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - TiVo Inc on Friday said a federal appeals court has denied EchoStar's request to have a panel of judges rehear arguments related to their long standing patent dispute.

TiVo, the maker of television recording technology, said the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington to deny EchoStar's request for a “rehearing en banc” brings their patent fight closer to a resolution.

In January, the court upheld a lower court's damage award of $74 million plus interest, saying that EchoStar infringed a TiVo patent in building digital video recorders. With interest, the damages would be $94 million.

An EchoStar spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment.

That lower court had ruled that EchoStar's digital video recorders infringed what it called the “software” claims of a TiVo patent. But the appeals court reversed a portion of the lower court's decision that said the EchoStar devices also infringed on what it called “hardware” claims.

EchoStar has said it has developed and deployed 'next-generation' DVR software that does not infringe the TiVo patent at issue.

Shares of TiVo rose 8 cents, or about 1 percent, to $8.86 in afternoon trade on Friday. EchoStar shares fell 3.5 percent to $30.53 on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Franklin Paul)

WASHINGTON - TracFone Wireless Inc. can provide discounts on wireless service to low-income consumers — and be reimbursed by the government — in 10 states and the nation’s capital, regulators said Friday.

The Federal Communications Commission said TracFone, the U.S. subsidiary of Mexico City-based telecom carrier America Movil SA, met certain eligibility requirements needed to participate in the federal program for low-income consumers. Commissioners approved the action on Wednesday.

In exchange for providing the discounts, the carrier can be reimbursed for the revenue it loses through the federal Universal Service Fund, which helps subsidize telephone service in high-cost areas, such as rural and low-income urban communities.

TracFone is eligible to participate only in “Lifeline,” one of the program’s three services. Another service offers a discounted telephone installation, while a toll-limitation service helps consumers keep costs low by limiting the number of long-distance calls a phone can place or blocking the calls entirely.

Under the FCC order, TracFone will provide discounts to customers in New York, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee, Delaware, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.

However, the company did not get the designation it sought in Florida. The FCC said the company will have to file a petition with the state public service commission there.

Commissioner Michael J. Copps said in statement the designation will make it easier for low-income consumers to get wireless phone service.

“To some who own multiple phones of every size and shape, such a decision may seem inconsequential; but to the many working poor in this country phone service remains essential to staying connected with family, employers, and the communities in which they live,” he said.

More than 1,500 telephone companies participate in the federal low-income program.

Miami-based TracFone has about 9.5 million customers across the country.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Many people are uncomfortable with Web sites customizing content to people's personal profiles, according to a new survey.

“There's a creepy factor and a fear of the unknown that people don't want to deal with,” said Michelle Warren, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ontario.

“The notion that there's a privacy issue in someone's email account hits a little too close to home for some,” she added.

Nearly 60 percent of 2,513 people in the United States questioned in a Harris Interactive poll said they were uneasy when Web sites use information about personal online activity to tailor advertisements or content.

The findings may pave the way for web giants to offer users more tangible benefits in exchange for lost privacy, such as discounts on movies, music and electronics, said Dr. Alan Westin, of Columbia University in New York, who helped to design the poll.

“Free search engines or social networking sites are encoded on web user's DNA, and one way to defend behavioral marketing is to sweeten its benefits to users,” Westin said in an interview.

While privacy boundaries aren't forcing web users to boycott popular Web applications just yet, that may change as users begin to understand the extent to which their personal details are being used.

“What happens is people suddenly realize they've put out enough personal information to get served with a targeted advertisement, and the Web makes the transition from convenience to creepiness,” said Colin McKay, of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in Ottawa.

The survey showed that younger users are more comfortable with the customized web content, with people aged 18-43 leading the pack.

As a whole, web users' comfort was increased only slightly when asked to consider potential safeguards that would improve web privacy policies and procedures.

San Francisco - Microsoft will work with Indian IT company HCL Infosystems to develop system integration frameworks for the deployment of Microsoft's products for vertical industries in India.

HCL will set up a dedicated team of 500 staff to target industry verticals such as telecommunications, banking, financial services and insurance, power, defense, retail, e-Governance, media, and entertainment, the companies said Friday.

The announcement was made during a visit to India by Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

The two companies also announced a three-year agreement to train and certify 50,000 students on Microsoft technologies across 100 training centers set up by HCL. The curriculum used by the new HCL Career Development Centers will be the Microsoft Official Curriculum, a structured learning methodology designed and developed by Microsoft. The goal of the training initiative between Microsoft and HCL is to enhance the employability of students and help the Indian IT industry retain its competitive edge, the companies said.

Microsoft has been training Indians on its technologies for some time now, including a program for training teachers in government schools in India. The new program with HCL will ensure that a large number of IT staff, trained on Microsoft's technologies, will be available to the private sector and government for its computerization programs.

HCL has also teamed up with Microsoft to offer its MiLeap brand of laptops with Windows XP Home edition at a low price of about $400.

San Francisco - IBM is developing a type of memory that it says could one day be faster and more reliable than today's hard drives and flash memory.

Called “racetrack,” it is a solid-state memory that aims to combine the best attributes of flash, like having no moving parts, and the low cost of hard drives for an inexpensive form of nonvolatile memory that will be stable and durable, said Stuart Parkin, an IBM Fellow.

Racetrack memory stores information in thousands of atoms in magnetic nanowires. Without the atoms moving, an electrical charge causes data to move swiftly along a U-shaped pipe that allows data to be read and written in less than a nanosecond, Parkin said. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second and commonly used to measure access time to RAM.

The memory reads 16 bits of data through one transistor, so it reads and writes information 100,000 times faster than flash memory, Parkin said.

“In flash memory and hard drives, one transistor can access 1 bit, or with flash, maybe 2 or possibly even 4 bits, that's it. We are going to use … a transistor to access many bits of information.”

Racetrack is still in its early days. The concept was proposed four or five years ago, Parkin said, and IBM hopes to be able to provide terabytes worth of storage from such devices in a few years.

“It will take two to four years to build a prototype in which we build these reading-and-writing elements on a nanoscopic scale. In four years we can perhaps demonstrate it works and then manufacture it,” Parkin said.

Racetrack memory has no moving parts, it is “virtually unbreakable” and will never wear out, unlike flash drives, which could wear out after 10,000 read-and-write cycles, Parkin said. He likened the U-shaped design of horizontal pipes to a racetrack.

The memory keeps atoms constant, making it more durable than hard drives or flash. “Whenever you start to move atoms you have problems and devices wear out from fatigue after a time,” Parkin said.

Racetrack memory's storage capacity is similar to flash's and may soon exceed hard-drive capacities, Parkin said.

Hard disks rotate to access information, while racetrack memory uses an electrical charge to read and write data, so it also uses less electricity, he said.

It will be inexpensive to manufacture because fewer transistors will be required and each memory chip will hold thousands of nanowires in a small footprint, Parkin said.

The premise behind racetrack memory is

Microsoft will work with Indian IT company HCL Infosystems to develop system integration frameworks for the deployment of Microsoft's products for vertical industries in India.

HCL will set up a dedicated team of 500 staff to target industry verticals such as telecommunications, banking, financial services and insurance, power, defense, retail, e-Governance, media and entertainment, the companies said Friday.

The announcement was made during a visit to India by Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

The two companies also announced a three-year agreement to train and certify 50,000 students on Microsoft technologies across 100 training centers set up by HCL. The curriculum used by the new HCL Career Development Centers will be the Microsoft Official Curriculum, a structured learning methodology designed and developed by Microsoft. The goal of the training initiative between Microsoft and HCL is to enhance the employability of students and help the Indian IT industry retain its competitive edge, the companies said.

Microsoft has been training Indians on its technologies for some time now, including a program for training teachers in government schools in India. The new program with HCL will ensure that a large number of IT staff, trained on Microsoft's technologies, will be available to the private sector and government for its computerization programs.

HCL has also teamed up with Microsoft to offer its MiLeap brand of laptops with Windows XP Home edition at a low price of about US$400.