Technology latest news

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Microsoft said Wednesday it will reward US Live Search shoppers with cash for purchases, essentially trying to buy market share it tried to win with its failed bid to take over Yahoo.

Under the Live Search “cashback” program, shoppers using Microsoft's Internet search service will have percentages of purchases refunded.

Rebate money comes from fees merchants agree to pay Microsoft if Live Search online ads result in sales.

“We believe search can offer much more value to consumers and advertisers than it does today,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said in a release.

“Our goal is to make Live Search the most rewarding commercial search destination on the Web.”

The cash back program's more than 700 partners include online auction house eBay, bookstore chain Barnes & Noble and longtime retailer Sears, the technology colossus said.

Rebate incentives are proven ways to gain market share, according to Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle.

“Incentives, if done right, can change behavior,” Enderle told AFP.

“People will switch over, but the product has to be compelling to hold them. I don't know if Live Search good enough yet. It needs to be clearly superior to Google.”

The rebate program appears to be part of a fallback strategy by Microsoft in the wake of a failed bid to buy pioneering Internet firm Yahoo for nearly 50 billion dollars (US).

Microsoft wanted to combine online resources with Yahoo to better battle Google, which claims the lion's share of a fast-growing multi-billion-dollar online search advertising market.

Microsoft could put pressure on Google by expanding the rebate program, say by sharing ad revenues with shoppers or letting money accrue for charities or prize pots that people could win, Enderle said.

“I think it will evolve into something much more dangerous to Google over time,” Enderle told AFP. “Long term, I think this will create a price war. Up until now, Google has been taking swipes at Microsoft. Now, Microsoft can take a swipe at Google.”

US online retail sales are expected to reach 335 billion dollars annually by 2012 and currently 68 percent of Internet buys begin with search engine queries, according to statistics from eMarketer Inc.

PALO ALTO, California (AFP) - Facebook on Wednesday unveiled revamped profile pages overhauled to make the hot social-networking website faster, less cluttered and more spam-resistant.

The new design lets Facebook members use tabs to give priority to fresh pictures, messages, or “feeds” on main profile pages and compartmentalize mini-applications and “static” information such as curriculum vitae.

The changes are motivated by feedback from users as well as a trend toward people flooding the Internet with digital content such as videos, pictures, and musings they want to instantly share, according to Facebook vice president of marketing Chamath Palihapitiya.

“We want to make sure it is easy for people to push and pull information in the form of bite-size content rather quickly,” Palihapitiya said while unveiling the redesign at Facebook's office in Palo Alto, California.

“Because we want more content to be shared and created we needed to make sure the profile became simpler and cleaner. When you look at the profile today, it is actually a little cluttered.”

Outside developers that write fun, functional or hip software applications for Facebook users will get to tinker with the new format beginning this week so they can “tweak” programs to fit the new profile design.

The more than 70 million people worldwide that use Facebook will get chances to “opt-in” to redesigned profile pages during a “beta” test phase in the coming weeks.

The redesign is “in flux” and the final outcome will depend on input from members, according to Facebook director of platform product marketing Ben Ling.

“Facebook has heard from users it has become slower, more cluttered and spammier,” said iLike president Hadi Partovi, a leading music discovery service on Facebook and other social networks.

“I don't know if they will solve everything but I think that they are taking many steps in the right direction.”

Good news for those of you who have been following the XML office document standards battle. Microsoft today announced that Office 2007 will support ODF (Open Document Format), the document standard used by OpenOffice.org and other open source productivity suites, with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due sometime in early 2009.

Even more surprising, however, was the corollary to the announcement. While the Office programmer bees are busy buzzing away at ODF, OOXML (Office Open XML) is being put on the back burner. Don't expect Office to support a fully ISO-compliant version of OOXML until the next major release of the suite, currently codenamed Office 14, release date unknown.

Exactly why Microsoft is backpedaling its support for OOXML is not known. But open standards maven Andy Updegrove blogs that it may have something to do with Microsoft's current regulatory troubles in Europe and with the standards bodies that now govern OOXML. It appears likely that Microsoft actually can't implement a fully-compliant version of the standard just yet.

Instead, according to reports, users of Office 2007 Service Pack 2 will have the option to make ODF the default file format for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents, the same way they can choose Office 2003 or several other formats. Office users can already import and export ODF files using third-party filters, but it doesn't make sense when only a small number of users have installed the filters or even know that they exist. Having support for ODF “baked in” to the Office suite will mean that everyone will be able to save and access these files with no extra effort.

Any way you slice it, this is a big step toward shaking off Microsoft's dominance of the office software market and ensuring that we can all preserve our files for years to come.

Rural households are now more likely to have a broadband connection than residents of towns, says Ofcom.

The regulator’s regional communications market report shows that 59% of rural households have broadband compared to 57% of urban homes.

It is the first time that the country has overtaken the town, according to the report.

Four years ago urban dwellers were twice as likely to have broadband as those living in the country.

Ed Richards, Ofcom’s Chief Executive, said “Our report highlights a closing of the geographical digital divide in the UK. Rural households are today as well connected to broadband as their urban neighbours”.

The report also reveals big differences in take-up of modern communications across the UK.

Sunderland appears to be the UK’s most connected city, with 66 % of households having broadband and 96% using digital television. Glasgow has the lowest take-up of broadband in the UK at 32 %.

Ofcom could not explain why Sunderland was at the top of the broadband league but said Glasgow’s position probably reflected low levels of household income and computer ownership .

By contrast, in the Highlands and Islands, 62% of homes have broadband, and Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee are all well ahead of the UK average.

There has been a major drive to bring broadband to every corner of Scotland, partly to sustain the economies of isolated communities where many residents can now work from home.

Ofcom’s report also shows just how rapidly new mobile technology is changing Britain. 20% of UK households now rely solely on a mobile phone, and in Greater Manchester 28% of homes use a mobile but have no fixed line telephone.

3g phones are also taking off rapidly. Dundee is the city with the highest levels of 3g phone use, with nearly 3 in 10 people using one. And Ofcom provides evidence that the mobile internet is now beginning to take off.

One in five UK adults have surfed the web on the move, but use is highest in London and Birmingham. In Devon and Cornwall, where 3g phone coverage is pretty sparse, just 7% of people have used the mobile internet.

Large numbers are also watching TV or video online, with a national rate of 30%, but again there are big regional variations. In London, 40% have tried services like the BBC iPlayer, while the figure in Greater Manchester is just 16%.

One more fact from the thousands sprinkled across this comprehensive survey of media habits across the UK - there are now 14,000 Wikipedia articles in Welsh, more than twice as many as the number in Gaelic. Which is not a bad effort, considering that Wales has a lower rate of broadband take-up than the rest of the UK.

DIGITAL BRITAIN Most connected parts of UK

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Having nearly tripled its audience and added about 20,000 new applications over the past year, Facebook Inc.’s popular online hangout is about to undergo a housecleaning.

Visitors who can’t stand the clutter that’s been piling up will be glad to see that the site’s new look sweeps disparate bits of information into categories marked by tabs at the top of each user’s customized home page.

Basic personal background and interests will be filed under an “info” tab, for instance, while news about users’ buddies’ latest activities will land under a “feed” tab, pictures will be corralled in a “photo” section and applications will be easily located under a “programs” tab. That content is now scattered, creating a confusing mishmash that has frustrated some Facebook users.

The facelift, in the works since January, is to debut in June.

Besides tidying the site, the overhaul should give users more control over their profiles, Facebook managers said Wednesday as they previewed the redesign at the startup’s Palo Alto headquarters. Users will be able to magnify information they want to emphasize and downplay other features, for example.

Even so, many users are likely to protest, said Mark Slee, the Facebook product manager overseeing the facelift.

“Change is difficult for our users, even positive changes,” Slee said. “But we are pretty confident that we can walk everyone through this so they will be engaged with the changes and enjoy them.”

Facebook has had to quell two user rebellions since Mark Zuckerberg started the site a little over four years ago while he was still an undergraduate at Harvard University.

In 2006, users railed against a feature called “news feed” as too intrusive because it shared too much information about their activities. The backlash caused Zuckerberg to apologize and tweak the application to give users more control over how the information was shared. The news feed is now a Facebook staple.

Zuckerberg, 24, apologized again late last year after a tracking tool called “Beacon” caught users off guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and personal preferences expressed by their activity at other Web sites. Facebook decided to allow users to turn off Beacon, diminishing its reach and possible value to advertisers.

Despite those hiccups, Facebook has emerged as Silicon Valley’s hottest startup since Internet search leader Google Inc., which recently has been losing some of its prized employees to Facebook. Ben Ling, a former top engineer at Google, is part of the team working on Facebook’s overhaul.

Microsoft Corp. put its stamp of approval on Facebook late last year by paying $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the startup — a deal that implied a $15 billion value for Facebook.

Since dropping a $47.5 billion offer to buy Yahoo Inc., Microsoft reportedly has been mulling a bid for Facebook, although Zuckerberg has repeatedly indicated he wants to preserve the privately held company’s independence.

Facebook turned into a potential gold mine as it extended beyond its initial goal of allowing college students swap information about each other. The site now has 70 million users worldwide, up from about 24 million a year ago.

Zuckerberg’s decision to open Facebook to outside applications last year has played a key role in Facebook’s rapid growth. Since then, developers have contributed 20,000 applications that make it easier to distribute photos, share music and play games.

But all those programs were starting to make Facebook look jumbled — a problem that also has plagued the Internet’s largest social network, News Corp.’s Myspace.com.

Facebook is trying to address the situation without alienating the outside developers who helped fuel the site’s success. That’s taken on added importance since Google launched a network last year to help developers create applications to run on multiple Web sites.

After spending months addressing their concerns, Facebook plans to open a “sandbox” where programmers can experiment with how things will work at the redesigned Facebook.

“There may be some short-term pain, but I think there will be more long-term gains,” predicted Ling, who is Facebook’s director of platform product marketing.

Though the calendar still says spring, the summer tour season has begun. Tracking your favorite acts, though, can be almost as interesting online as at your local amphitheater.

Here are a handful of curious Web stopovers bands are making while on the road:

Tom Waits: The generally press-shy Waits announced his upcoming “Glitter and Doom Tour” in a video recently posted on his Web site: http://www.TomWaits.com. In a press conference, Waits quiets a clamoring press corps while speaking into numerous microphones (including, humorously, a boom mic). I won’t spoil the reveal, but the punchline is classic Waits.

Death Cab for Cutie: The Seattle-based rock band is currently touring their chart-topping new album “Narrow Stairs,” a dark and big sounding record that is playing well on large stages (as it did at Coachella). The band has long been very fan-friendly, happy to pull back the curtain to their inner-workings. On Tuesday, they took over the music blog Stereogum (http://stereogum.com), with all band members writing posts. Among the most interesting: Chris Walla explaining why he’s tired of being asked about “the Radiohead model.”

Coldplay: The British band, which is releasing the album “Viva la Vida” on June 17, made news recently by announcing plans for free concerts in London, New York and Barcelona. After releasing a traditional video for their single “Violet Hill,” they last week put out a version featuring footage of dancing politicians. President Bush and former Prime Minister Tony Blair are the video’s biggest stars. Chris Martin sings, “When the future’s architectured by a carnival of idiots on show/ You’d better lie low.”

Kanye West: The always interesting Chicago rapper is currently on tour and will be playing big venues all summer, including a performance at Bonnaroo. At http://www.KanyeUniversity.com/blog/, West posts numerous times a day in his own brand of blogging that aptly reflects his, well, let’s say uniqueness. He mostly posts links to music, design, furniture, movie trailers and even saunas that interest him.

Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor really, really likes the Internet. Earlier this month, Reznor’s band released its new album “The Slip” for free at http://www.nin.com. Beyond that, though, the band has made all songs available to fans for remixing and they regularly post photos and video of backstage life. One video is a 31-second first-person perspective of Reznor autographing a book. It’s titled: “Spend the day with us: Watch this 2500 times.”

The Raconteurs: Since forming three years ago, Jack White’s rock outfit has made nostalgia a part of its identity. The Raconteurs play old-fashioned bluesy guitar rock ‘n’ roll and they like to appear in black-and-white photos that resemble old pictures of the Band. Their Web site, http://www.theraconteurs.com is also old-school. It has the bare-bones, bright green type of early computers. The site calls itself “The Raconteurs: Version 1.0″ and bears a copyright of 1981 and 1982.

DeVotchKa: Though less known than the above acts, DeVotchKa is a band worthy of a larger audience. With Eastern European, gypsy and mariachi influences, the Denver-based band (which supplied much of the score to “Little Miss Sunshine”) play one of the most theatrical shows around. They are also the band to most recently participate in NPR’s “All Songs Considered” concert series. The series is the best way to hear concerts in full either live (on http://www.npr.org) or via podcast (downloadable for free on iTunes). Other recently recorded concerts include the Black Keys and Lou Reed.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — What’s your favorite Web site for summer tours? E-mail AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle at jcoyle(at)ap.org

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush announced an easing of restrictions on Wednesday to allow Americans to send cell phones to their families in Cuba, in what he portrayed as a test of the Communist country's economic reforms.

Since Cuban President Raul Castro took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in February, he has undertaken several economic changes, such as allowing Cubans to buy computers, DVD players and mobile phones. But few people can afford them.

It was unclear how Bush's plan might work. Potential obstacles include whether Cuba will allow the phones in, if they will work there, and how the expensive bills will be paid.

“If Raul is serious about his so-called reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people,” Bush said at a White House ceremony on Cuba in which he scathingly described the Cuban reforms as a 'cruel joke' on the country's people.

“Through these measures the United States is reaching out to the Cuban people, yet we know that life will not fundamentally change for Cubans until their form of government changes,” Bush said.

At odds with Havana since soon after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, Washington has maintained a decades-long economic embargo against Cuba and the Bush administration has firmly upheld it, despite calls both in the United States and abroad to loosen it. Bush has been dismissive of prospects for political change under Raul Castro.

White House officials stressed that the change on mobile telephones was merely an extension to the U.S. existing policy that permits gift parcels to be sent to families in Cuba rather than a crack in the embargo.

Dan Fisk, National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs, said phones sold in Cuba can cost $120 plus another $120 to activate them, though he did not say how much the service cost. The average monthly wage in Cuba is less than $20.

Fisk said that he believed the phones would work on the island, which lies 90 miles south of the Florida coast.

While U.S. wireless service is not available in Cuba, Americans could buy phones from companies like AT&T Inc. (T.N) or T-Mobile (DTEGn.DE) because they use the same network technology available in Cuba, known as GSM, but they would have to be activated by the Cuban state-run telephone company.

Currently, U.S. regulations allow U.S. families to send $100 a month to relatives in Cuba so that money could pay for service, according to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. The changes in U.S. regulations will likely take effect in the next couple of weeks.

The Cuban government had not yet commented on Bush's announcement.

'LONG SUFFERING PEOPLE'

Bush also made it clear that there would be little change in policy toward Havana under Castro unless the Cuban people were given more freedom to speak, political prisoners were released and economic reforms were implemented.

“But experience tells us this regime has no intention of taking these steps,” Bush said. “Instead, its recent gestures appear to be nothing more than a cruel joke perpetrated on a long-suffering people.”

Opponents of Bush's policy on Cuba were critical of Wednesday's move.

“It seems to me at a time when we're seeing real reforms in Cuba all the way from decentralization in agriculture to allowing Cubans new personal liberties, President Bush is wrong to dismiss these changes as a cruel joke, and he's wrong to position the United States against the process of change in Cuba,” said Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in America.

Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who supports lifting the embargo, said, “If we're expressing solidarity with the dissidents, it seems to me we ought to maybe listen to what they're asking for, and overwhelmingly over the years the dissidents have said this isolation is not helping.”

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, and Jeff Franks in Havana; Editing by Frances Kerry and Anthony Boadle)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kenny Chesney, who touched off a furor at the Academy of Country Music Awards by telling reporters that his entertainer of the year award had been “diminished” by Internet fan voting, says his remarks have been misconstrued.

Chesney, writing about the controversy in a blog entry on his official MySpace page, told his fans his much-discussed comments were not aimed at them and were shared by others in the country music industry.

“Sure, to make me sound ungrateful is a sexy way to spin this and drive viewers. It's a controversy and that sells,” Chesney wrote on Tuesday.

“But realistically — and based on the response in our fan forum — you know how important you are to me, how much I believe in the way we've all built this together,” he wrote. “You, the fans, are the reason I keep pushing, keep striving, keep wanting to be more and better.”

Chesney was named entertainer of the year a fourth time on Sunday night, during the 43rd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, in the first year that fans were allowed to choose the winner by voting on the Internet.

The top-selling country singer told reporters backstage in response to a question that Web voting had cheapened the show's top prize.

“I don't think it's right that they picked the one award that means the most, that all the artists sacrificed the most for, and turned it into … a sweepstakes, to seeing who can push people's buttons the hardest on the Internet,” he said.

“It's a complete disrespect of the artists. I think because of that it really diminishes the integrity of the work.”

Chesney's remarks made worldwide headlines and a Los Angeles Times blogger even asked readers to vote on whether the 40-year-old singer, best known for such hits as “There Goes My Life” and “You Had Me From Hello,” should return his award.

On his blog, Chesney said that in speaking to reporters backstage he was trying to say that he wanted fans to enjoy the music and let the music industry handle awards judging.

“And that's what I was being asked about … what a lot of people in the business were talking about and frankly something an awful lot of artists and business people have told me they not only agree with but something the entire media room applauded pretty resoundingly after I addressed it Sunday night.”

Reuters/Nielsen

NEW YORK - Is the Internet boom back? No, but information technology companies have again overtaken the financial industry as the largest sector in the S&P 500 index, Standard & Poor’s said Wednesday.

IT was last the top dog of the index in early 2002 as tech bubble was deflating, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

At Tuesday’s close, IT represented 16.26 percent of the S&P 500, compared with 16.19 percent for financials, Silverblatt wrote in a report. It expanded its lead on Wednesday.

At the peak of the boom in March 2000, the IT sector made up 34.51 percent of the index, Silverblatt said.

This time, the IT sector is not the biggest because of giddy growth, but because it’s been hit less hard than the financial sector by the credit crunch and economic weakness.

Financial stocks have retreated 29.11 percent since their peak on Oct. 9 last year, according to Silverblatt’s calculation, while IT companies have lost 8.74 percent.

“Information Technology stocks didn’t go up, the leaders went down,” Silverblatt wrote.

The trend continued Wednesday with the financial sector losing 2.6 percent and IT retreating 1.9 percent.

NEW YORK - It’s the big horse race in the gadget market this year: Who’s going to win consumers’ hearts with a box that brings Internet movie downloads to the TV set? Now, we have a tiny box that deserves to be a winner.

Roku Inc., a small maker of Internet-connected media devices, this week introduced a black box that grabs movies and TV shows from Netflix, the DVD rental-by-mail pioneer.

You attach the Netflix Player to your TV, and connect it to your home broadband connection over Wi-Fi or a cable. Pick a movie using the included remote, wait a minute for the download to start, and then watch on your TV.

There are couple of other boxes on the market that do the same thing, including the Apple TV. The Roku Netflix Player, which is half the size of a Nintendo Wii, isn’t really better than any of them, but it has one tremendously attractive feature: its price. In a shaky economy, that’s the kind of feature that seals the deal.

It costs just $99.99. Even more importantly, it’s cheap to use. If you already subscribe to Netflix’s DVD rentals, you pay nothing extra to watch as much Internet video as you want, as long as your monthly plan is $8.99 or more.

This makes the Roku-Netflix combination a far better deal than its competitors. Apple Inc.’s device costs $229 and lets you rent movies from iTunes for $2.99 to $4.99 each. Vudu Inc. sells an eponymous box for $295, with similar rental prices. Various TiVo Inc. digital video recorders will let you download movies from Amazon.com. The catch with all of these is that you have just 24 hours to watch a rented movie; if you need more time, you have to pay the rental fee again.

If you’re the kind of person who sits down once a week to a watch a movie straight through, that will cost you about $15 a month for four movies with either box. But if you watch those movies in half-hour segments four days a week, you’re paying more like $60 a month.

Apple, Vudu and Amazon.com aren’t directly to blame for their rental terms, which are set by movie studios. Vudu has managed to double the rental period on independent movies.

Netflix, on the other hand, manages to skirt these onerous rental terms entirely by licensing the movies from the studios not for downloading, but for streaming.

The downside to this model is that Netflix has fewer “big” movies available, and they take longer to show up after they leave theaters. Some of its 10,000 instant-view movies are exercises in obscurity, like the Italian horror movie “Planet of the Vampires.” But there are enough good flicks to give you your money’s worth and more, like “Letters from Iwo Jima,” “La Vie en Rose” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.” TV shows include “Dexter” and “Heroes.”

You pick the movies on the Web site, using your computer, and place them in a “queue.” Back at the TV, you pick among the movies in the queue with the remote. You can’t access the entire instant-view catalog through your remote — you have to preselect on the computer. I didn’t find this to be a problem.

So how do the movies look? Good enough, in most cases. Everything is in standard definition, but the quality varies considerably from movie to movie, and with the speed of your Internet connection. At a download speed of 2.2 megabits per second, the maximum quality delivered by Netflix, “Heroes” looks as good as or better than a DVD. “Blade Runner” looks terrible at any speed, apparently because of low-quality source material.

Most of the content is watchable, but if your broadband line is medium-range DSL at 1.5 mpbs, the quality will be substantially less than if you have 3 mbps or more.

I also found that if I connected the player to the Internet using Wi-Fi, the speed of the download varied between 1 mbps and 2.2 mbps, with an attendant change in picture quality. When I connected the box to my Internet router with a cable, everything came down at 2.2 mbps.

There’s no surround sound, but if Netflix were to add that to its movies, the box would play it, according to Anthony Wood, chief executive of Roku. Wood also said the player is capable of high-definition video, if Netflix would provide it. HD would probably require a download speed of at least 6 mbps, and it might be tough to get it to work over Wi-Fi.

The Apple TV and Vudu are less dependent on the speed of your Internet connection, because they contain hard drives that can store a movie for later viewing if the connection is slow. Each also has about 100 HD movies available.

The lack of a hard drive in the Netflix Player is part of the reason it’s so cheap, but it’s also behind its one really annoying feature: reversing and fast-forwarding takes much too long. Since it takes up to a minute for the box to “find its place” in a movie by downloading the content from Netflix, skipping back 10 seconds to listen again to a missed line can take much longer.

For me, the low price was an effective dose of Gold Bond powder on this irritation. Starting a movie takes up to a minute? Yes, but hey, it’s cheap! The picture quality varies a great deal, and there’s no HD? Yes, but you can’t expect the world for $8.99 a month.

Roku’s box is just the first of what Netflix hopes is a whole family of products that get movies from its Web site. LG Electronics is planning to include the streaming capability in a Blu-ray DVD player later this year, and two other unnamed manufacturers are bringing out set-top boxes.

But I don’t see a big reason to wait for them. Even if the Roku player sacrifices a few things to limbo under the $100 price level, it’s a no-brainer for the 8 million-plus Netflix customers out there. If you’re not one, this is an added reason to become one.

___

On the Net:

http://www.netflix.com

http://www.roku.com/netflixplayer