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Thursday, December 23, 2010

FCC chairman seeks conditions on Comcast, NBC deal (AP) : Technet

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FCC chairman seeks conditions on Comcast, NBC deal (AP) : Technet

FCC chairman seeks conditions on Comcast, NBC deal (AP)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 02:39 PM PST

By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Dec 23, 5:39 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The head of the Federal Communications Commission is proposing regulatory conditions to ensure that cable TV giant Comcast Corp. cannot stifle competition in the video market once it takes control of NBC Universal.

The conditions laid out Thursday by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski are intended to guarantee that satellite providers and other rival television services can still carry marquee NBC programming and that new Internet video distributors can get the content they need to grow and compete.

Comcast's takeover of NBC Universal could have profound consequences for the nascent market for Internet video — a market that could eat into Comcast's core cable TV business if enough consumers drop their cable subscriptions in favor of low-cost alternatives online.

Genachowski wants to ensure that Comcast won't be able to use its control over NBC's vast media empire to withhold content from emerging online competitors such as Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. — locking consumers into costly monthly cable bills to get access to a wide range of popular programming.

Genachowski now needs at least two of the other four FCC commissioners to back his proposal, and he is likely to make modifications to win the support he needs to cap off the yearlong regulatory review.

The FCC is expected to approve the deal, with conditions, early next year.

The deal also faces scrutiny at the Justice Department, which has been working closely with the FCC and is likely to impose conditions similar to whatever the FCC ultimately approves, subject to its own ability to enforce them under antitrust laws.

Comcast suggested that it could accept what it believes to be in Genachowski's proposal. In a statement, the company said the proposal would ensure that the deal delivers "real public interest benefits" and "enable us to operate the NBC Universal and legacy Comcast businesses in an appropriate way."

Comcast is seeking government approval to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. for $13.8 billion in cash and assets.

The combination would give the nation's largest cable TV company control over the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, popular cable channels including CNBC, Bravo and Oxygen and the Universal Pictures movie studio. It would also give Comcast a roughly 30 percent stake in Hulu.com, which has become a popular online platform for broadcast programming from NBC, ABC and Fox.

Although Comcast already owns a handful of cable channels, including E! Entertainment and the Golf Channel, it has built its business on distributing television programming and providing Internet connections. The company has about 23 million cable TV subscribers and nearly 17 million Internet subscribers.

Taking over NBC Universal would transform Comcast into a media powerhouse, too. Genachowski's proposed conditions are intended to prevent the company from trampling competitors once it owns content as well as distribution platforms.

FCC officials wouldn't disclose details about the conditions Thursday because commissioners were still reviewing Genachowski's proposal.

But two people outside the FCC described them to The Associated Press. They had knowledge of the details but spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

One measure aims to guarantee that satellite operators, phone companies and rival cable TV services can still get access to NBC broadcast and cable channels, Comcast's regional sports networks and other must-have programming at reasonable prices.

That condition would mandate arbitration to settle any disputes and would potentially prohibit Comcast from withholding NBC Universal content during negotiations — a practice that broadcasters have been increasingly turning to in the push for higher fees.

Another condition would require Comcast to make NBC Universal programming available to Internet video distributors under certain circumstances. Existing FCC rules require cable companies to provide channels they own to rivals such as satellite companies, but right now those rules do not apply to Internet distributors. Imposing similar obligations on Comcast in dealing with Web distributors would help prevent Comcast from stunting the growth of Internet video.

Yet another measure would bar Comcast from pressuring independent programmers into restricting online distribution of their content, too, in order to get a spot on Comcast's cable systems.

In addition, Genachowski's proposal would prohibit Comcast from requiring consumers to subscribe to cable in order to get online access to certain NBC Universal content, including NBC broadcast programming.

Genachowski's proposal would also require Comcast to continue offering an affordable, standalone broadband option for customers who want Internet access but not cable. This condition, too, could help drive the growth of online video by allowing consumers to cancel their cable subscriptions without losing their Internet connections.

The chairman's proposal would also bar Comcast from interfering with online traffic that travels over its systems, including Internet video from online services such as Apple's iTunes.

Although the FCC just this week adopted such rules for all broadband providers, they could get overturned by Congress or the courts. The condition would ensure that Comcast would still have to abide by them. The company has come under fire for discriminating against Internet traffic in the past.

One condition missing from Genachowski's proposal is a requirement that Comcast divest NBC's stake in Hulu. One influential lawmaker, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., has urged regulators to force Comcast to do that, given that the service could represent a competitive threat to Comcast's core cable business. Kohl chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that oversees antitrust policy and consumer rights.

Skype CEO: 21 million Skype users back online (AP)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:57 PM PST

By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Dec 23, 6:57 pm ET

SEATTLE – Internet calling and messaging service Skype SA mostly recovered Thursday from an outage caused by an undisclosed glitch, but problems lingered for its worldwide user base.

The service went down for almost all of its users starting at midday Eastern time on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, things had improved to the point where about 21 million users were logged in, said CEO Tony Bates. That was 10 percent less than the usual traffic for the time of day, as some people still could not log on.

Voice calling, video-chatting and text-based instant messaging are working for most users, Bates said, but other features, such as offline instant messaging and group video calls, are still down.

Speaking through a computer running Skype, Bates declined to say what caused the software on individual users' computers to crash, which in turn caused network issues. He also would not say whether the problem originated from within Skype or was caused by external factors. On the company blog, Bates said he believes the outage was not caused by a malicious attack.

"We have a very good handle on what caused the problem," Bates said. "We are still doing an in-depth post-mortem."

On average, 124 million people use Skype each month, though the total number of registered users is more than four times that. In a video posted on the Skype blog, Bates said the problems "completely took almost every user offline."

The Luxembourg-based company said customers who pre-pay for service or are on pay-as-you-go plans will receive an e-mail with a voucher for 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world. Subscribers will be credited with a week's extra subscription service.

Skype on Wednesday said a problem affecting some versions of Skype caused many of its "supernodes" to go offline. Supernodes are computers that the company likens to phone directories, helping Skype users connect with each other.

Skype repurposed some servers to act as supernodes, which is why non-core services including group chats still aren't working, the CEO said.

Bates said Skype is trying to do everything it can to make sure the service is always available, but that he has learned a lot of lessons about disaster recovery and communication with customers during this outage. He joined Skype from Cisco Systems Inc., the maker of networking gear, two months ago.

Skype is still working out details for vouchers to compensate people who suffered from the downtime.

Skype's software offers a range of free services, including the ability to make voice or video calls and send instant messages to other Skype users. Users pay for services such as making calls from a PC to a landline or cell phone.

Skype's popularity around the globe stems in large part from the free or cheap calls it provides. Other Internet-based calling services that compete with the traditional phone system also have problems with consistent service. Earlier this year, AT&T Inc.'s Internet-based "U-verse" phone system went down for several hours, affecting 1.15 million customers.

A year ago, eBay Inc. sold its majority stake in the business for about $2 billion to an investor group that includes Skype's founders. Skype has indicated that it wants to list its shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Happy holidays from the Gadget Hound (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 01:42 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Dec 23, 4:42 pm ET

What could be more fun than blogging about the latest and greatest gadgets? Beats me, but even an avowed gadget hound like me needs a break once in a while.

Anyway, I'll be going offline during the holidays — and consequently, the Gadget Hound blog will be on hiatus until Jan. 3.

I'll be back in time for the Super Bowl of tech: the Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off Thursday, Jan. 6.

I plan on being wheels-down in Las Vegas starting Wednesday the 5th, in time for the big preshow news conferences. And once the show itself begins, I'll be going hands-on with all manner of new smartphones, tablets, TVs, computer accessories, you name it.

Once the CES dust finally settles, believe me — you'll be glad you had a little Gadget Hound break. (You and me both, come to think of it.)

So ... best wishes, Merry Christmas, and happy holidays to all of you. See you next year.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

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Skype CEO offers apology, credit for Wednesday’s outage (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 10:59 AM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Thu Dec 23, 1:59 pm ET

After a daylong outage that left untold millions of Skype users high and dry, the CEO of the peer-to-peer chat service apologized, promised that service is slowly but surely being restored, and announced that credits may be in the offing for paying users. The root cause of Wednesday's massive Skype failure is still a mystery, however.

In a blog post and in a just-posted YouTube video, Skype CEO Tony Bates said that as of Thursday morning, about 16.5 million users were back online — still only about 80 percent of the number you'd normally expect to see using Skype on a given weekday morning, but greatly improved from Wednesday, when as few as 1.6 million users were connected.

Bates said that Skype's "core services," such as audio, video and text chat, had been "stabilized" after engineers rejiggered a series of servers to act as "supernodes," or Skype clients that help one Skype user locate and connect to another.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Skype engineers ended up repurposing some servers used for other Skype features — namely group video chat and offline instant messaging — to shore up the "core" video and audio chat services. For now, that means anyone hoping to engage in group video chat or send offline IMs is out of luck.

Bates then apologized for the meltdown, the worst at Skype since 2007, when Skype users were left without Skype chat for two days. That outage was later traced to a "massive" number of Skype-connected PCs rebooting in unison after Microsoft issued an unusually large number of Windows patches at once.

"We know this has caused a major impact for many of you, and we apologize profusely for this," Bates said in the video.

OK, so what caused this latest outage? Bates told TechCrunch that "we haven't ruled anything out."

For now, all we know for sure is that a large number of these so-called supernodes — which are really just a bunch of regular Skype desktop clients that act as virtual user directories, helping a Skype client in one far-flung region of the Internet locate another — went down en masse early Wednesday. (For a better explanation of how Skype's supernodes work, click right here.)

As Bates noted in the YouTube video, Skype engineers were forced to compensate for the lost supernodes by creating their own "mega-supernodes" — cobbled together, apparently, using servers that normally handle Skype features like group video chat and offline IM.

As TechCrunch observes, that's probably just a "short-term solution" until Skype traces the root cause of Wednesday's outage and cooks up a permanent solution.

In the meantime, Skype is "investigating" the possibility of offering credits to paying Skype users (yes, many people pay to use Skype for voice calls to regular phone numbers, myself included) whose service was disrupted Wednesday, Bates said, adding that details for issuing the credits still needed to be worked out.

So, what should we do the next time Skype goes down? Resort to communicating, like, face to face or something?

Never fear; PC Magazine has drawn up a list of eight Skype alternatives, including AOL Instant Messenger, Gmail Voice and Video Chat, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo!'s own Messenger client.

Related:

[TechCrunch]

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

Follow me on Twitter!

Christmas Eve shoppers may lead to spending record (AP)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:31 PM PST

By ELLEN GIBSON and ANNE D'INNOCENZIO Ellen Gibson And Anne D'innocenzio – 2 hrs 30 mins ago

NEW YORK – It's Black Friday, The Sequel. Stores are rolling out deals and expect to be swimming in shoppers on Christmas Eve as stragglers take advantage of a day off work. For retailers, the last-minute rush caps the best year since 2007, and possibly ever.

With Christmas falling on a Saturday this year, Friday is a holiday for most U.S. workers. That lets shoppers hit the stores first thing in the morning.

"I'm calling it Fantastic Friday, because I really do think it's going to be one of the busiest days of the year," said Marshal Cohen, chief fashion industry analyst with researcher NPD Group.

A strong Christmas Eve would round out a surprisingly successful holiday season for retailers. The National Retail Federation predicts that holiday spending will reach $451.5 billion this year, up 3.3 percent over last year. That would be the biggest year-over-year increase since 2006, and the largest total since spending hit a record $452.8 billion in 2007. A strong finish could even give 2010 the crown.

While both are heavy shopping days, Christmas Eve draws a different breed of buyer than Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season.

"Those who get up and brave the cold on Black Friday are usually looking for hot items, not only to buy gifts but to score something for themselves," said Kathy Grannis, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. "They're planners, and they map out what they want to buy."

Shoppers who come out on Christmas Eve, on the other hand, were either waiting for the biggest discounts or they didn't have the money to spend earlier, she said. Or they just tend to dilly-dally.

While many Black Friday shoppers relish the hunt, last-minute buyers are harried and focused on getting things done.

And true to stereotype, they are mostly men, said Dan Jasper, spokesman for Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

Accordingly, stores push men's and women's sweaters in their circulars, while shoes and children's apparel take a back seat. Jewelry also tends to be a top last-minute gift item, though that category has been strong throughout the season.

E-commerce has driven much of the holiday's spending growth. For the season to-date, $28.36 billion has been spent online, a 12 increase over last year, according to research firm comScore. Online shoppers spent $900 million last weekend alone.

Many people who postponed their shopping this year blame busy schedules. The number of hours U.S. workers are putting in at the office each week has been on the upswing since the official end of the recession in June 2009, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That leaves less time for shopping during the week.

Vivian Lowe, 34, works for an ad agency in Atlanta and didn't start her shopping until Wednesday. "It just caught up with me this year," she said.

She spent Thursday at the Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta and plans to hit Target on Christmas Eve because she sees it as a one-stop shop.

Procrastinators like Lowe shouldn't hit too many snags. Store inventories are not as depleted as last year, when merchants scared about having too many leftovers saw some empty shelves near the end of the season. But shoppers are not seeing the 75-percent-off-everything fire sales that characterized the 2008 holiday.

Still, many stores are offering discounts this week. Express's store at the Manhattan Mall in midtown had a huge yellow sign in its storefront window promoting an "end of the season 50 percent sale" on selected items.

Macy's is offering 30 percent off some bags and jewelry, while the Gap is applying that markdown to everything in the store. At CVS, there are buy-two-get-one free deals on bath-and-body gift sets and discounts on a 7-inch LCD TV and DVD player combo.

Ron and Lisa Johnson of Indianapolis came to Circle Center Mall Thursday morning just to buy boots for their 20-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn Shirar. Nearly four hours later, they sat on a bench with a pile of bags from Nine West, H&M and Forever 21.

"We haven't found anything that wasn't on sale," Lisa said.

Retailers say shoppers have mostly stuck to a big lesson taught by the recession: using cash, not credit. Toward the end of the season, they pulled out the plastic a little more often, but that's normal. Overall, analysts consider the increased spending a sign more consumers have paid down debt and have cash to spend.

Besides sales, retailers are finding other ways to accommodate procrastinators.

Many stores, including Best Buy Co., let shoppers order online and then pick up the merchandise at the store. Best Buy's deadline to order on its website is 3 p.m. Christmas Eve, and most stores close at 6 p.m.

Amy Adoniz, the store manager at Best Buy's store in Union Square in Manhattan, said that as of midday Thursday, 16 people were in line to pick up items ordered on its website.

7-Eleven convenience stores, always handy in a pinch, will be open all day on Christmas and are expanding their gift-worthy offerings by stocking a broader selection of wines, hand-held games and stuffed animals.

Toys R Us plans to keep its doors open until 10 p.m. Friday, but is taking a different tack from the discounters, raising prices on some popular toys to take advantage of shoppers' desperation. It bumped up the prices of the Leapster Explorer hand-held learning device by $20 and the Nerf Stampede Blaster by $5, said Gerrick Johnson, a toy analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

"Retailers are realizing that rather than give these toys away, they can actually make a profit on them," Johnson said.

If all else fails, shoppers will fall back on gift cards. Spending on the plastic vouchers is expected to reach nearly $25 billion this holiday season, 5 percent more than last year, according to the National Retail Federation. Michelle Jose, marketing manager for White Marsh Mall in White Marsh, Md., says that more than half of the mall's gift card sales for the entire year are made in the last three days before Christmas and she expects "strong sales to finish up the holiday."

Ian McCarty, 26, who lives in Atlanta and works for Emory Healthcare, was finding good deals at Lenox Square Mall on Thursday, but had trouble finding the right sizes. He picked up a gift card at Gap and was on his way to Talbot's to pick another one up for his mother.

"It's the easiest thing to do," he said.

____

AP Retail Write Mae Anderson in Atlanta and AP Business Writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this story.

QuickOffice Connect for iPad gets PowerPoint editing ability (Macworld)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 04:50 PM PST

David Dahlquist David Dahlquist – Thu Dec 23, 7:50 pm ET

The iPad has taken yet another step toward becoming a full-fledged laptop replacement for business users with Quickoffice's release of a free update for its Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPad. The 2.0.0 version of the suite adds extensive text formatting and graphical editing abilities for PowerPoint 2003 files as well as viewing and presenting capabilities for PowerPoint 2007 files.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite lets you create, open, and edit Microsoft Office files on your iPad. It features dedicated tools for working with Microsoft Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations; it also includes built-in support for multiple online storage services including Dropbox, MobileMe, Google Docs, and Box.net.

With this update, Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite users can now manipulate font type, color, size and style; add, delete and reorder slides; insert and rotate common shapes; change object layering; insert and edit text boxes; insert images saved within Quickoffice or from the iPad's built-in Photos app; and view presentations in slideshow mode on the device and on an external monitor.

Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite costs $15 and runs on iOS 3.2 or later.

IBM's Racetrack Memory Moves Closer to the Checkered Flag (PC World)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 04:00 PM PST

Robert McMillan Robert Mcmillan – Thu Dec 23, 7:00 pm ET

IBM researchers are now a step closer to commercializing an experimental technology that could be used load up a mobile phone with so much storage that it could keep copies of every movie made this year.

Called "racetrack memory," it's a technology that IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin has been tinkering with since 2004. Unlike a hard drive, which spins magnetically charged atoms around using a motor, racetrack memory uses electric currents to move collections of electrons, called magnetic domain walls, up and down a very tiny wire. "It's like a kind of magnetic wave that we're moving along without having to move the atoms," Parkin said.

By moving these domain walls to a reader, racetrack should be able to read and write data much more quickly, and using far less power than today's storage devices. "It would be a million times faster to access the first bit, and use much less energy, and there would be no problem with crashes," Parkin said.

Parkin thinks he can have a big effect on the storage capacity of common electronic devices such as phones. With the right funding, he thinks he's two to five years away from building chips filled with minuscule wires were he could push magnetic domains around, storing up to one hundred times as much data as today's flash memory chips. Using wires a few microns long and about 30 nanometers wide -- one thousandth the thickness of human hair -- the first racetrack chips could store hundreds of gigabytes or even a few terabytes of data, Parkin said.

Parkin's team has already developed some early racetrack prototypes -- chips that can read and write simple data sets -- but until now there was a key unanswered question: How exactly do these magnetic domain walls move? "If we wanted to manipulate and place these domain walls precisely, that was something we needed to know," Parkin said.

Before now, there had been two schools of thought on this question. One held that the magnetic waves that Parkin talked about had no mass and would move instantly at their set speed as soon as the current was applied; and they'd stop instantly too. The other view was that maybe they actually had mass and were subject to the laws of inertia -- taking a bit of time to speed up to speeds of hundreds of miles per hour, and essentially coasting to a stop when the current was turned off.

In a paper published in the Dec. 24 issue of Science Magazine, the IBM researchers report that domain walls have mass and do indeed take a bit of time to speed up to peak velocity, and to slow down. Knowing this, they'll be able to move and retrieve data on a racetrack trip accurately.

There's still a lot of work to be done before racetrack becomes a reality, but according to Parkin, the biggest questions -- whether an electric charge would move these domain walls, and whether or not they have mass -- have now been answered.

Now the problems are more practical and less theoretical: how do you build a racetrack chip that works reliably with millions or even billions of these racetracks, for example. "Those are the questions that we can only address by building prototypes and testing them for a period of time," Parkin said.

Now Facebook Admins Can Unmerge Their Pages from Places (Mashable)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 01:43 PM PST

Ben Parr Ben Parr – Thu Dec 23, 4:43 pm ET

Responding to the requests of page admins, Facebook has finally given Facebook Page admins the ability to unmerge their business' Facebook Page with their Facebook Place Page.

The option was first noticed by several unhappy Facebook Page admins and reported by Inside Facebook. The "Unmerge all merged Places" option now appears at the bottom of the left-hand Page admin menu. It hasn't fully rolled out yet, but soon any admin who regrets merging his Pages can reverse the process.

Facebook first offered the merge feature in August, allowing a business to have a single Page represent their brand instead of having both a Facebook Page and a Places Page. Some businesses were unhappy when they enacted the merger because merged Pages don't allow for default landing tabs, an important feature to many Page admins.

Giving Page admins the ability to reverse the merging process was a no-brainer. It's a bit surprising it took this long for the social network to roll out the unmerging option, but we're just happy that thousands of businesses can finally fix their Pages.

Image courtesy of Inside Facebook.

Rovi buying Sonic for $720 mil (Investor's Business Daily)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:26 PM PST

– Thu Dec 23, 6:26 pm ET

Digital entertainment software maker Rovi (NMS:ROVI) will pay $14 or 0.2468 shares of Rovi stock for each share of Sonic Solutions (NMS:SNIC). With Rovi down 1.9% to 57.26, the stock offer is worth $14.13 as of Thu. But Sonic shot up 28.7% to 14.42. Rovi program guides find content from all over. Sonic has a platform for delivering TV shows and movies by Internet. Rovi also lifted its 2010 EPS guidance from a range of $2-$2.10 to $2.08-$2.12. Analysts saw $2.08. Rovi expects the deal to close in Q1 and to add 5-10 cents to 2011 profit.

HOW TO: Make the Most of TextMate (Mashable)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 11:38 AM PST

Christina Warren Christina Warren – Thu Dec 23, 2:38 pm ET

The Web Development Series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace's hosting solutions here.

For web developers, a key part of the toolkit is a solid text editor. Vi and Emacs wars aside, there are lots of good choices for web developers, ranging from the ultra-sparse to the full-on IDE.

One of the most popular text editors for Mac OS X among coders is TextMate. Despite not receiving many major updates since 2007, TextMate is still a favorite amongst developers, front-end coders and even writers (a few of Mashable's bloggers use TextMate to compose first drafts of blog posts).

On its own, TextMate is a good program. With the right add-ons and modifications, however, TextMate it can be a dream come true. Even if we never see a TextMate 2, here are some tips to making the most out of your TextMate installation.

Install Some Themes

Out of the box, TextMate comes with a handful of themes, but there are many more options for your text editing enjoyment.

In a previous post, I compiled some of my favorite TextMate themes from over the years and put them together in a handy package on GitHub.

To install a theme, just double click it. TextMate, like other text editors, is designed for monospaced fonts. Mac OS X comes with several choices, including Menlo, which made its appearance in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

If you want to further explore your programming font choices, check out this article, written by my friend Dan Benjamin, which provides a great overview of some of the most popular choices.

Add Some Plugins

Despite not receiving any major updates for well, years, TextMate remains a favorite amongst old and new developers. If I had to pick a single reason, it would be the extensible nature of the program.

Simply put, TextMate can be extended and improved via the use of plugins and bundles. Plugins can impact the program as a whole, whereas bundles are specific collections of commands, snippets and shortcuts.

Some of my favorite TextMate plugins include:

  • WebMate -- This lets you preview and edit HTML content in TextMate.
  • SVNMate -- A nice SVN integration for TextMate.
What's even better than just downloading the plugins is downloading the plugins and a set of UI modifications. One of my favorite TextMate "packages" is Green Moleskine, which has recently been updated to version 1.2. The new version includes Snow Leopard support for some of the UI modifications.

Green Moleskine also includes SVNMate, WebMate and MissingDrawer, but the link to MissingDrawer on GitHub has an updated version of that plugin.

For new TextMate installations, I usually just start with Green Moleskine and then build out.

Get GetBundles

Without a doubt, bundles are my favorite part of TextMate. I never thought I would be the type of person who got religious about my text editor, but the bundles feature in TextMate has made me a disciple.

Over the years, TextMate bundles have been created for practically every web framework and task you can imagine. You can find these bundles online and double click the *.tmbundle file to install.

But what if there was a better way to discover and install bundles, within TextMate itself? There is, and it is called GetBundles. GetBundles has a graphical interface that allows you to search the official TextMate bundle repository, the review queue and GitHub. The GitHub support is really slick, because these days, that's where most of the updates and new code ends up being released.

The easiest way to install GetBundles is to pop open Terminal in Mac OS X and paste in the lines that Trey Piepmier thoughtfully setup on his blog.

Once GetBundles is installed, you can search the various repositories and click on a bundle to install it -- and also check for updates to the bundles you already use.

Bundle Bonanza

Once GetBundles is installed, the final step to an awesome TextMate experience is track down some bundles.

These are a few of my favorites:

  • Blogsmith Bundle -- Back when I wrote for TUAW and DownloadSquad, my colleague Brett Terpstra created a bundle to help us with our blogging. He did this because the backend of the publishing tool we used was unable to connect to XML-RPC clients like MarsEdit. This bundle, which included things like the ability to select a group of words and quickly insert a link, search archives or add tags and other information to a post, became something that I was so reliant on, I commissioned Brett to write me a Mashable-specific add-on bundle when I started working here. If you do any type of web writing, this Bundle, which works with MultiMarkdown, is an absolute gem.
  • MultiMarkdown Bundle for TextMate -- John Gruber's Markdown syntax is a format for writers who want markup that is readable and fast. MultiMarkdown adds even more features in the form of a TextMate bundle.
  • HTML5 Boilerplate Bundle -- Darren Wood made this bundle, which puts all the HTML5 Boilerplate goodies at your fingertips.
How have you tricked out your TextMate install? Let us know in the comments.

More Dev & Design Resources from Mashable:

- Hacker Web Design: Words of Wisdom for Building Great Apps
- 5 Better Ways to Read "Hacker News"
- A Beginner's Guide to Integrated Development Environments
- 10 Chrome Web Apps to Check Out
- HOW TO: Make Your WordPress Blog More Like Tumblr

New iPad 2 rumors focus on smaller size and louder speakers (Appolicious)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 12:22 PM PST

Software Said to Match Quantum Computing Speed (PC World)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:30 PM PST

Joab Jackson Joab Jackson – Thu Dec 23, 6:30 pm ET

While work continues on developing the fundamentals for super-fast quantum computers, a group of researchers has shown that, at least for some sorts of problems, classical computing could match the eventual speed of a working quantum computer -- with the correct software algorithms in place.

"We're putting lots of money into building quantum computers, but we shouldn't underestimate the power of algorithms," said John Watrous, who works at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo at Ontario, Canada.

As a by-product of studying the predicted performance of quantum computing, Watrous and other researchers have shown how an algorithm little used in today's software could provide a new level of problem-solving performance in traditional computers, one that could match, in theory anyway, speeds obtained by quantum computers.

Their work was published in the latest edition of the Communications of the ACM, the flagship publication of the Association for Computing Machinery.

"One striking implication of this characterization is that it implies quantum computing provides no increase in computational power whatsoever over classical computing in the context of interactive proof systems," the paper notes.

In June, an earlier version of this paper won the Best Paper Award at the esteemed Symposium on Theory of Computing for 2010. The award shows that the work has major implications for the field of computer science, especially given that STOC judges rarely award quantum computing work, noted Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the work.

Quantum computing is often touted as the next stage of computer technology, one that could offer large-scale performance improvements after Moore's Law has been exhausted.

Taking advantage of the properties of quantum mechanics, a quantum computer could conceivably offer "exponential parallelism" in the aid of solving problems, Aaronson points out in a commentary accompanying Watrous' paper.

No quantum computers have been built yet, though companies such as IBM are beginning to develop the basic building blocks that could one day make such a computer.

The work of Aaronson and his colleagues seemingly settles a debate over whether or not one group of mathematical problems, called quantum interactive proof systems, are more or less difficult to solve than another set of problems, called classical interactive proof systems.

They are not, the paper asserts. But, due to the fact that these sets of problems are theoretical, the finding itself says little about quantum computing, beyond its ability to solve such abstract problems, Watrous admitted.

In order to set up the study, however, the researchers used an algorithm to evaluate potential speed in classical computation. Called the matrix multiplicative weights update method, it was developed from research in two mathematical fields of study, combinatorial optimization and learning theory.

The algorithm provided a way to solve a problem using parallel processes, the kind easily executable with today's multi-core processors and computer clusters. It provided a way to match the efficiency of quantum computing, for this set of problems.

Surprisingly, this matrix-based method hasn't been applied to parallel computing before, Watrous said.

"It has never been considered to my knowledge in a parallel setting," he said of the method. "We had to show that this method could be parallelized, and we couldn't find any reference to anyone doing that."

Watrous, while stating that he does not work in the commercial field of computer science, speculates that more work could be done in finding and adopting other mathematical algorithms that could speed the computational performance of hardware available today.

"We could try to build quantum computers to solve problems but we could also just design new algorithms to solve problems," he said.

Aaronson said that the algorithm could be used in commercial fields of computing, particularly in the field of semi-definite programming, which looks at ways of solving optimization problems. "These are very common in industrial optimization," he said.

The researchers showed that "for a certain class of semi-definite programs you can get not the exact answer but a very good approximate answer, using a very small amount of memory," he said.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

IBM offers glimpse into the future (AFP)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 01:20 PM PST

– Thu Dec 23, 4:20 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Air-powered batteries, 3-D cellphones that project holographs and personalized commutes are among the predictions of IBM scientists gazing into their crystal balls.

The US computer giant this week released its annual "Next Five in Five" list of five innovations expected over the next five years.

Among the predictions are advances in transistors and battery technology that "will allow your devices to last about 10 times longer than they do today," IBM said.

Today's lithium-ion batteries could be replaced by batteries "that use the air we breathe to react with energy-dense metal, eliminating a key inhibitor to longer lasting batteries," IBM said.

"If successful, the result will be a lightweight, powerful and rechargeable battery capable of powering everything from electric cars to consumer devices.

"Better yet, in some cases, batteries may disappear altogether in smaller devices," IBM said, by reducing the amount of energy per transistor to less than 0.5 volts and relying on a technique known as "energy scavenging."

"Some wrist watches use this today -- they require no winding and charge based on the movement of your arm," IBM said. "The same concept could be used to charge mobile phones for example -- just shake and dial."

Also on the cards: 3-D and holographic cameras that fit into cellphones allowing video chat with "3-D holograms of your friends in real time."

Personalized commutes are another development seen by IBM scientists, who are already at work on using new mathematical models and predictive analytics technologies to deliver the best routes for daily travel.

"Adaptive traffic systems will intuitively learn traveler patterns and behavior to provide more dynamic travel safety and route information to travelers than is available today," IBM said.

Human beings will also increasingly become "walking sensors," IBM said, providing valuable data to "fight global warming, save endangered species or track invasive plants or animals that threaten ecosystems around the world."

"In five years, sensors in your phone, your car, your wallet and even your tweets will collect data that will give scientists a real-time picture of your environment," IBM said.

"A whole class of 'citizen scientists' will emerge, using simple sensors that already exist to create massive data sets for research," it said.

Finally, IBM said, scientists will find ways to better recycle heat and energy from data centers to "do things like heat buildings in the winter and power air conditioning in the summer."

"Up to 50 percent of the energy consumed by a modern data center goes toward air cooling," IBM said. "Most of the heat is then wasted because it is just dumped into the atmosphere.

"New technologies, such as novel on-chip water-cooling systems developed by IBM, the thermal energy from a cluster of computer processors can be efficiently recycled to provide hot water for an office or houses," it said.

IBM posted a YouTube video of the five predictions at www.youtube.com/watch?v=anKiEoxkpxM

IE9 Blocks Malware, But Older Versions Are Vulnerable (NewsFactor)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 10:26 AM PST

Barry Levine, newsfactor.com Barry Levine, newsfactor.com – Thu Dec 23, 1:26 pm ET

It's one step forward and one back for security on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. A new report from a security firm found that IE9 beta offers "vastly" more protection from malware than other browsers, while Microsoft on Wednesday issued a warning that there is a vulnerability in IE 6, 7 and 8 that could allow someone to take remote control of the computer.

The software giant said there is no evidence this vulnerability has actually been used. Dave Forstrom, director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, said Microsoft was "currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the claimed vulnerability or of customer impact."

Cascading Style Sheets

The attack could be hidden as malicious code in a web page, and involves the way computer memory is managed when the browser processes Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is widely utilized to control how a page is presented.

Microsoft has issued updates to fix the memory management problem, but now it appears the updates aren't completely effective. While it works on a more permanent fix, the company has recommended the use of a free Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit that it offers. But, the company said, "the issue does not currently meet the criteria" for an out-of-cycle fix.

The company said IE Protected Mode on Windows Vista and Windows 7 "helps to limit the impact" of this vulnerability. But according to some security researchers, the vulnerability can be still exploited in up-to-date Windows 7 and Vista computers.

'Exceptional' IE9 Beta

Meanwhile, NSS Labs has tested live malware threats of various browsers and found that IE9 beta caught what it called an "exceptional" 99 percent of live threats.

IE9 has both SmartScreen URL filtering and the new SmartScreen Application Regulation service, the combination of which NSS Labs credited for the good performance. The report also found that the presence of SmartScreen URL filtering in IE8 increased that browser's protection, but not as much as IE9.

The report said IE 9 was "by far the best at protecting against socially engineered malware," in that it had "a far superior malware identification, collection and classification method."

The next best browser for this protection was Mozilla Firefox 3.6, which captured 19 percent of live threats.

Other browsers tested included Apple's Safari 5, which found 11 percent of threats, Google's Chrome 6 with only three percent, and Opera 10 in last place with no capturing at all. The testing involved NSS Labs' assessing if a browser would block potentially malicious URLs in at least one run, with new URLs added each day.

Michael Gartenberg, research director with the Gartner Group, said IE9's security, as assessed by NSS Labs, "shows how vendors are going to great lengths to differentiate themselves."

However, he said there is "a certain amount of inertia in browser usage" for consumer and business users, and they are "unlikely to make browser choices based on security."

Firefox 4 Beta Provides Support for 3-D Graphics (NewsFactor)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 02:09 PM PST

Mark Long, newsfactor.com Mark Long, newsfactor.com – Thu Dec 23, 5:09 pm ET

Mozilla launched a new Firefox 4 beta release for PCs and laptops Wednesday featuring expanded support for 3-D graphics, together with a revamped Firefox add-on manager. And on the mobile side, Mozilla introduced several enhancements to the mobile version of Firefox 4 beta for smartphones based on Google's Android and Nokia's Maemo platforms.

The popular browser's new 3-D enhancements are based on WebGL -- an open standard for accelerated 3-D graphics rendering on the web that eliminates the need for users to install special plug-ins. As a result, developers will be able to render amazing visual experiences directly within the browser window, noted Firefox Product Manager Mike Beltzner.

"Firefox 4 beta now supports WebGL for most modern built-in graphics cards, making it easier for developers to create interactive 3-D games, vivid graphics, and new visual experiences for the web without the use of third-party plug-ins," Beltzner wrote in a blog.

Browser-based 3-D

Applications that formerly would have been possible only on the desktop or with plug-ins become possible in any modern browser that supports WebGL, noted Principal Firefox Engineer Vlad Vukicevic. "3-D games, interactive product displays, scientific and medical visualization, shared virtual environments, and 3-D content creation all become possible on the web," he wrote in a blog.

WebGL is based on OpenGL ES 2.0 -- the same 3D API used for Android and iOS development, Vukicevic observed. By including WebGL -- together with Mozilla's work on HTML5 video and audio support -- Firefox 4 beta now supports "a full set of web technologies" for building rich and compelling applications on the web, he wrote.

"WebGL focuses on OpenGL ES 2.0 feature compatibility to ensure content compatibility with mobile devices," Vukicevic explained. "However, ES 2.0 is behind the latest advances on the desktop today, [and] in the future various desktop features may become available in WebGL in the form of extensions."

What's more, Firefox 4 beta updates add-ons automatically to ensure that the user's browser is always up to date. "This should happen without you even noticing, keeping add-ons safe and fast while eliminating the hassle of [manually] updating," wrote Firefox team member Jennifer Boriss in a blog.

Syncing Devices

Firefox 4 beta now includes a streamlined Firefox Sync setup for acquiring the same address-bar history, bookmarks, open tabs, and passwords across PCs and laptops as well as smartphones running Android or Maemo. For example, developers have made some significant UI improvements to make setting up new accounts or devices for Firefox Sync easier and faster, noted Ragavan Srinivasan, project manager for Firefox Sync.

"You are no longer required to come up with a secret phrase or a sync key," Srinivasan wrote in a blog. "It is automatically generated for you."

Like its PC counterpart, the new mobile version of Firefox 4 beta makes the discovery of add-ons easier and simplifies Firefox Sync setup. The latter is important for mobile users because it reduces the amount of typing needed to securely access browsing history, bookmarks, tabs and passwords, noted Firefox team member Stuart Parmenter.

Users of compatible smartphones also are now able to save web sites as PDFs for later reading, Parmenter wrote in a blog. Additionally, the new mobile version of Firefox 4 beta offers "support for 'copy and paste' in the URL bar," he added.

Google Tools for Better Searches (PC World)

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 06:00 PM PST

Ian Harac Ian Harac – Thu Dec 23, 9:00 pm ET

does not limit itself to that one role. From robust and well-established applications such as Picasa to cutting-edge "Google Labs" products that may become next year's game changers (or next year's punchline), Google offers far more than just a search engine.

Some of the many tools and services that Google provides include different ways to search the Web, graphics tools (such as SketchUp), and experimental concepts (such as Image Swirl). All of these products draw on Google's extensive experience in sorting, searching, and cataloging information.

Search a Different Way

Google Directory. Like many such directories, it suffers from being slow to update and woefully incomplete, but I've found it useful for discovering things I might not have thought to search for directly.

Follow the Trends

Speaking of discovery, Google Trends not only shows you the top current searches but also allows you to see how popular a search term is over time, and where search requests are coming from. You can type in multiple search terms and compare them, too, so you can see when searches for "Lady Gaga" surged ahead of searches for "Madonna," for instance.

In the category of "great idea, not there yet," there's the still-in-beta Google News Timeline. The idea is to show news and blog articles related to a search in chronological order, so you can follow a news story or topic as it appeared and developed. Although it's a great concept, at the moment it includes only a small number of sources, and it treats dates mentioned in articles as the date of publication (so many articles written about the 9/11 attacks, for example, appear as if they were published on September 11, 2001). Those problems greatly undermine the idea of being able to see the development of a news story in context. But, hey, that's why News Timeline is in the lab, not in the wild.

Processing in the Cloud

Google Docs, a direct stab at the heart of Microsoft. Google Docs includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a form builder, and a presentation creator. Features-wise, all are very "lite" compared with Microsoft Office (or its open-source clones), and they have limited font choices and formatting options. However, you can access the documents anywhere you have Net access, and the apps offer an easy way to share data with friends, coworkers, or the world. You can also open documents to mass editing, and you'll find some interesting leveraging of Google's data--for example, the spreadsheet application allows you to enter formulas that will pull financial data for a given company directly into the sheet.

See It on a Map

Google Fusion Tables. This application "fuses" databases with Google Earth, and provides powerful tools for displaying and understanding data--turning data into information, as folks used to say. For example, visualizing a database of the travel arrangements of Texas gubernatorial candidates lets you easily see which parts of the state were solidly "red," which were "blue," and which were in contention. This is another not-quite-ready product; the map rendering has many glitches, and it often loses navigational control. The potential is obvious, though, especially when you begin working with filtering and aggregation on a well-designed table.

Fun With Pictures

Another very early tool is Image Swirl, which attempts to group images by visual and categorical similarity, relying on a mix of textual metadata and image recognition. Beginning with a broad concept such as "apple," you can focus on fruits or computers, with each step bringing you images of greater similarity to one another. At the moment, the searchable database is (by Google standards) fairly small, and the algorithms that classify images sometimes give odd results. Then again, serendipitous discoveries are part of what makes the Web so much fun.

Like Photoshop but Less Confusing

Picnik online photo editing tool hooks into many major sources of photos, such as Facebook and Flickr. It won't replace Photoshop anytime soon, but it isn't intended to--it's aimed at people who want to turn their family pictures into holiday cards by adding a snowflake border, for instance. Perhaps learning from the good folks at Zynga, Picnik reserves the most interesting or useful features for "Premium" account holders. Picnik also ties in to Picasa...and that brings us from the cloud to the desktop.

Who Needs Facebook Albums?

Picasa is Google's well-known photo and image management application. It scours your hard drive for pictures, including some you may have forgotten--or those you should have deleted--and helps you organize them, view them, and group them. It also tries to identify faces in the images and allows you to tag them, grouping together images it determines are of the same person. That feature can help you put together family albums, or find and delete every picture of a regrettable romantic entanglement. And Picasa can create Web albums that you can easily connect to Piknik.

Personal Google

Google Desktop does for everything. It's like having your own private Google. It integrates with Google proper when you search (though it claims Google won't see results from your local database), and you have the option to exclude certain folders or drives from indexing. Plug-ins are available to increase the types of files it can index and search.

The Future of Architecture?

Google SketchUp, an application for creating precise models of buildings, structures, and objects of all sorts. It's basically a CAD program, and what makes it "Googly" is that it allows you to share your preconstructed objects with the world, download other people's objects, and even include sections of Google Maps directly in your drawing. It's a useful way to show how a new office building will look in the city, for instance.

Go to the Labs

If you want more, Google Labs is constantly adding new apps and tools. Many of these projects will never make it out of the lab, but some will, and if you venture there you might get a chance to see what may be the killer app of tomorrow. It's a lot like a digital Willy Wonka factory, but with less of a chance that you'll be turned into a giant blueberry. If that happens, though, rest assured that you will most likely be able to google "cure for being a giant blueberry" and find a solution.
at 9:21 PM

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