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Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Sweden appeals UK granting bail for Julian Assange (AP) : Technet

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Sweden appeals UK granting bail for Julian Assange (AP) : Technet

Sweden appeals UK granting bail for Julian Assange (AP)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 06:34 PM PST

By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press David Stringer, Associated Press – 2 hrs 39 mins ago

LONDON – A British judge ordered Julian Assange released on 200,000 pounds ($316,000) bail Tuesday, but the WikiLeaks founder will remain in custody for at least two more days after Swedish prosecutors challenged that decision.

Assange has spent a week in a U.K. jail following his surrender to British police over a Swedish sex-crimes warrant. He denies any wrongdoing but has refused to voluntarily surrender to Sweden's request to extradite him for questioning — arguing that he could be questioned from Britain.

In a day of courtroom drama, the 39-year-old Australian was first told by a judge that he would be freed, then less than two hours later was informed he had at least another 48 hours in custody.

Britain's High Court will hear the Swedish appeal, but it wasn't clear exactly when.

"They clearly will not spare any expense to keep Mr. Assange in jail," his lawyer Mark Stephens told journalists outside the entrance to the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. "This is really turning into a show trial."

Lawyer Gemma Lindfield, acting for Sweden, had asked the court to deny Assange bail, arguing Tuesday that the allegations against him were serious, that he had only weak ties to Britain and that he had "the means and ability to abscond."

Reminding the court that it had already labeled Assange a flight risk, she argued that "nothing has changed since last week to allay the court's fears in this regard."

She also rejected attempts to link Assange's case with the work of WikiLeaks — which last month deeply angered U.S. officials by beginning to publish its trove of 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

"This is not a case about WikiLeaks, rather a case about alleged serious offenses against two women," Lindfield told the court Tuesday.

Celebrity supporters in the court — including socialite Jemima Khan and actress Bianca Jagger — and hundreds of pro-WikiLeaks protesters outside the building cheered at District Judge Howard Riddle's decision to grant Assange bail.

Under the ruling, Assange must wear an electronic tag, stay at a specific address in southern England, report to police every evening and observe two four-hour curfews each day in addition to putting up the bond.

Lindfield has said Assange is accused of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion by two women for separate incidents last August in Sweden. She said one had accused him of pinning her down and refusing to use a condom. A second woman says Assange had sex with her without a condom while he was a guest at her Stockholm home and she was asleep.

In Sweden, a person who has sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can be convicted of rape and sentenced to up to six years in prison.

Assange has not been charged in Sweden. His lawyers say the allegations stem from a dispute over "consensual but unprotected sex" and argue that he has offered to make himself available for questioning via video link or in person in the U.K., where Scotland Yard has facilities for foreign prosecutors to quiz people.

Several wealthy supporters — including filmmaker Michael Moore — have put up a total of 240,000 pounds ($380,000) as a guarantee for Assange, his lawyers said.

Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club — a restaurant and forum for journalists in London — told the court Tuesday that Assange was misunderstood. Under the terms of his bail, Assange would be ordered to live at Ellingham Hall, Smith's 10-bedroom country mansion in Suffolk, southeastern England.

Riddle said he had granted Assange bail because — unlike a week ago — he now had a verified address to live at and had cleared up confusion over when he arrived in Britain.

Assange's next court appearance was set for Jan. 11, ahead of a full hearing on Feb. 7 and 8.

Outside the court, Smith said Assange feared that the Swedish extradition case was an attempt to punish him for WikiLeaks' publication of the U.S. diplomatic cables and that legal challenges from U.S. authorities were coming in the future.

Although Assange's supporters have raised fears that Washington will try to extradite him from Sweden, legal experts and Swedish officials say such a move would be impossible without British approval.

"Sweden cannot, without such consent, extradite a person, for example to the USA," a statement posted to the Swedish prosecution website said last week.

Assange's mother Christine, who was flown to Britain by Australian media outlets, watched the hearing nervously from a public gallery about six feet (two meters) from her son's seat. She gave a huge smile as Riddle granted bail.

"I just want to thank everyone who's turned up to show their support and who's taken an interest," Christine Assange told The Associated Press as she waved to her son.

She was not in court later to hear that her reunion with her son had been thrown into doubt by the Swedish appeal.

___

Raphael G. Satter, Cassandra Vinograd and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Taiwan flora show features high-tech displays (AP)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:41 AM PST

By ANNIE HUANG, Associated Press Annie Huang, Associated Press – Tue Dec 14, 5:41 am ET

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Paper-thin speakers blare pop music. Three-D films appear on elongated screens with no need for special viewing glasses. Viewers' pulses turn cocoons into butterflies in an interactive display.

Welcome to the Pavilion of Dreams, a high-tech enclave within the Taipei International Flora Exposition, where Taiwanese artists and engineers are using technology-generated flowers and plants to strut the island's cutting edge know-how to onlookers from around the world.

The exposition, which runs from November through April, has so far drawn more than 1.9 million visitors to an expansive site in northern Taipei.

Already recognized as a supplier of smartphone and computer components to global technology companies, Taiwan wants to use the pavilion to highlight its capacity for product innovation in the increasingly competitive high-tech world, said Hsueh Wen-chen, head of the government-funded creativity center that designed the popular pavilion.

"Taiwan is not so well-known for creating technologies because we use them mainly in making parts and components for consumer products," she said. "Here we let our imaginations run wild in a way that can give us ideas about how to meet consumer needs when we design our products."

Visitors to the pavilion are greeted by a 3.5-ton artificial flower hanging from the ceiling. It opens and folds its petals to the rhythm of pop music blared from scores of palm-sized speakers, cut into leaf shapes to merge with their surroundings. The speakers are made from a thin, flexible metal coated with a vibrating membrane with strategically placed sensors.

In an adjacent exhibition room, a row of 65-inch flat screens runs 3D animated films of flowers and plants that visitors can view without special glasses because the screens have been engineered to display something known as lenticular imaging.

Just around the corner, a wall of 10-foot- (3-meter-) tall liquid crystal glass panels — looking like a giant transparent bowl — shows a lifelike projection of flowers in the wild.

Unlike conventional flat designs, the 18 panels are curved to create a stunning visual effect. Engineers changed the properties of the membrane attached to the glass so light permeates the curved surface evenly — just like it does on the flat screen version.

Perhaps most impressive of all, a nearby amphitheater shows a film about flora and fauna in a deeply forested environment that allows viewers to transform a small plant into a large tree by breathing onto the screen, or turn a cocoon into a butterfly by placing their wrists near the screen and letting their pulses do the work.

The apparently magical effect is accomplished by using ultra-wide bands, a radio technology first developed at a Russian lab to register life signs in human beings without making physical contact.

"Taiwan is now adapting the UWB technology for medical and other uses," said Yuan Nai-chuan, chief program producer at the pavilion. "We thought it would work very nicely here, too."

B&N Nook Color e-reader to get Android 2.2 update, Android Market access (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 12:22 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Tue Dec 14, 3:22 pm ET

One of the best tablet bargains on the market is poised to get even better this January.

Announced back in October and on sale for just $249, or less than half the price of the similar-sized Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Nook Color from Barnes & Noble (not to be confused with the original, monochrome Nook) is slated to get a much-needed update to Android 2.2 "Froyo," according to SmartphoneMag.com (which got the scoop from a Barnes & Noble rep).

The Froyo update will add to the Nook Color such features as pinchable Web pages and a revamped home page. The Nook Color boasts access to thousands of books and full-color magazines for purchase courtesy of the online Barnes & Noble Nook store.

More important, it will add at least limited access to the tens of thousands of apps on the Android Market. SmartphoneMag says the market app is "still under development" and may not offer the full scope of available Android apps.

Still, that's an improvement over the current Nook Color, which shipped with a custom version of Android 2.1 that lacked market access. (Of course, there's already a hack for enabling market access on the Nook Color, but think twice before giving it a go.)

That said, the tablet — which Barnes & Noble has been careful to market as primarily an e-reader rather than an Android-powered slate device — comes with its own "NookExtras" applications, including a music player, Pandora, and games like chess and sudoku. There's also an SDK for developers who want to build their own Nook Color-friendly apps.

At $249, the 7-inch, 16-ounce Nook Color makes for one of the best tablet buys on the market, what with its 8GB of internal storage and Wi-Fi capabilities for online book shopping and Web browsing.

That's considerably cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which costs $400 with a two-year Sprint or T-Mobile contract, or $600 from Verizon on a no-contract basis. The Nook Color also costs quite a bit less than the 9.7-inch iPad, which starts at $500 for the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model.

Then again, the Tab already comes with Android 2.2 — including the full Android Market and Flash support — not to mention 3G support, 16GB of storage, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and front- and rear-facing cameras.

Still, if you don't mind skimping on bells and whistles like video chat or 3G access, the $250 Nook Color could be an affordable way to dip into tablet devices, particularly with word that the Android 2.2 update is on the way.

Related: Nook Color Getting Android 2.2 Treatment in January [SmartphoneMag]

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

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Comcast’s ‘Xcalibur’ service embraces the Web, tentatively (Ben Patterson)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 12:13 PM PST

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – Tue Dec 14, 3:13 pm ET

The big U.S. cable carriers had been reluctant to let subscribers watch Web-based videos and other content over their set-top boxes. But now Comcast is reportedly taking a few baby steps with a new prototype device.

Code-named "Parker" — as in Peter Parker from "Spider-Man" — Comcast's "experimental" set-top boxes are part of a limited test of a new service that would combine a traditional (if spruced-up) cable TV interface with "a smattering" of Web videos, according to the Wall Street Journal.

If that sounds like Google TV — or Apple TV, or Roku, or TiVo — well, that's surely the idea. Comcast's "Xcalibur" project is viewed as a "partly defensive" move by the carrier to fend off challenges by the latest wave of upstart streaming set-top boxes.

Make no mistake, though: Comcast's Parker box can't sling its way around the Web like a Google TV device can.

While the test device lets you search for and stream Web videos (perhaps clips on YouTube, but probably not full shows on Hulu or Netflix) and boasts some "basic connections" to social-networking services for commenting or "liking" TV shows, there's no full-on Web browser, a la the Logitech Revue or Sony's new Google TV-enabled HDTVs and Blu-ray players, the Journal says. And NewTeeVee says YouTube might not even be an option.

Still, Comcast's new Parker interface is said to be more "fluid and graphical," with a revamped programming grid and a strip of icons along the top of the screen representing shows you've recently watched.

Central to the experience, though, are Parker's search capabilities, which reportedly include results from traditional broadcast and cable TV networks as well as matches from the Web.

How is any of that new? you ask. Well, it isn't. TiVo has long offered Web results in its program searches, and a key selling point for the new Google TV devices is the ability to pinpoint both Web and network TV programming using Google-powered search.

Meanwhile, you've got Apple TV and Roku, both of which offer tens of thousands of streaming videos via Netflix, with Roku, TiVo and the new Sony Netbox all slated to deliver Hulu's massive catalog of streaming TV episodes.

What is new is the mere fact that Comcast is poking around with Net-friendly set-top boxes -- a tactic that the big U.S. cable carriers have been slow to embrace.

Even as the biggest pay-TV operators insist that cord-cutting is just a myth, they're testing and rolling out services — like Comcast's year-old Xfinity initiative, or Time Warner's set-top controlling iPad app — that seem geared toward stemming the recent tide of fleeing cable subscribers.

So, would Xcalibur and the new Parker set-top boxes help Comcast keep would-be cord-cutters aboard?

I can only speak for myself here, but having recently tried Google TV, I can tell you that being able to search for shows and Web videos using Google was nice — right up to the point where I realized that in the end, I was still dealing with the same pool of network TV offerings, which are increasingly available online.

And yes, I like YouTube as much as the next guy (assuming YouTube videos are accessible at all), but being able to watch rollerskating dogs over my cable box isn't a convincing argument for keeping my scissors stowed.

I suppose we should give Comcast the benefit of the doubt, given that Xcalibur sounds like it's in the early beta stages. But a better interface and a "smattering" of Web videos doesn't sound nearly as enticing as a streaming set-top box that does Hulu and Netflix.

That's just my opinion, though. What about you? Does Comcast's Web-searching Xcalibur service sound appealing?

Related: Comcast Tests Combo Internet-Cable Device [Wall Street Journal]

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

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Acer sees big growth in China, tablet market (Reuters)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 08:50 PM PST

By Baker Li and Argin Chang Baker Li And Argin Chang – 23 mins ago

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Acer, the world's No.2 PC vendor, expects its China operations to make up more than 20 percent of its total sales in five years, helped by new tablet PCs and an alliance with China's Founder Technology.

As one of Taiwan's few internationally recognizable computer brands, Acer is betting heavily on its growth in the tablet computer market where it joined other rivals to compete with Apple's widely successful iPad.

"Tablet is a huge market and it shows a new path for new growth," Acer Chairman J.T. Wang said during the Reuters China Investment Summit.

"For Acer, we want to become a significant player as soon as possible," Wang said in an interview at the company's headquarters.

Acer aims to capture a 15-20 percent share of the global tablet PC market next year, said Wang, whose company unveiled a range of its own tablet computers last month.

Analysts expect worldwide tablet PC sales to reach 40-50 million units in 2011, with the iPad dominating the market. Research firm IDC has said tablet shipments could grow by an average 57.4 percent per year in 2010-2014, reflecting the sector's huge growth potential.

That would also help boost Acer's China revenue to $2.5 billion in 2011 from $1 billion this year, he said. China operations account for 7 percent of Acer's total sales now.

When asked about the impact from an appreciating yuan currency, Wang said: "In China, purchasing power will increase significantly in the next few years and PCs will become cheaper."

In late October, Acer, which also sells smartphones, forecast its fourth quarter sales would grow 5-10 percent and its branded PC revenue would grow 10-15 percent next year, driven by growing demand from China and emerging markets.

Acer, whose operating profit margin stood at 3.2 percent in the July-September quarter, will see the margin stable at about 3 percent next year, Wang said.

Investors have bought into Acer's solid fundamentals, pushing the stock to a more than eight-month high last week.

Analysts expected Acer to book revenue of T$758 billion ($25 billion) in 2011, up 14 percent from this year, and will grow another 13 percent into 2012, according to forecasts from Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

For Wang, getting bigger is a survival issue.

Earlier this year, Acer announced a strategic alliance with Founder Technology to beef up its presence on the mainland, including paying $67.5 million for use of Founder's PC-related trademarks for seven years.

After a restructuring plan to drop out of contract manufacturing to further develop its own brand in late 2000, Acer also acquired PC rivals Gateway and Packard-Bell, dramatically expanding its footprint in the United States.

By unit shipments, Acer had a 13 percent share of the global PC market in the third quarter of 2010, trailing only Hewlett-Packard's 17.6 percent, according to research firm IDC.

(Editing by Ken Wills)

Remains of the Day: Justice will be served promptly at 7 (Macworld)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 04:30 PM PST

Dan Moren Dan Moren – Tue Dec 14, 7:30 pm ET

Japanese publishers are demanding justice for copyright infringment in the App Store, Supreme Court Justices are talking Kindles and iPads, and there's no justice in being the designated family tech support guy—until now. But, like justice, the remainders for Tuesday, December 14, 2010 are blind.

Japanese publishers threaten to bite Apple (Wall Street Journal)

A group of Japanese publishers has banded together to knock Apple for its failure to catch copyright infringement. Apparently books by well-known authors like Haruki Murakami have been scanned and then embedded in apps sold on the App Store. In Apple's defense, it keeps meaning to download that Japanese phrasebook app, but hasn't quite gotten around to it yet.

Justice Kagan on using a Kindle to read briefs (YouTube)

iPad versus Kindles—a battle no less pitched than the Mac and PC wars of yesteryear. So what better body to deliberate on their relative merits than Supreme Court Justices. It seems Elena Kagan is all about her Kindle, but Antonin Scalia is an iPad man, through and through. Not sure about the rest of the court, but I hear Clarence Thomas mainly just reads over Scalia's shoulder.

Send your parents a tech support care package (Teach Parents Tech)

Remember when your parents sent you those care packages in college? Time to return the favor. Some folks at Google have assembled a tech support care package to send to mom and dad. Just check off the tasks they've been having a hard time for (making text smaller or bigger, upgrading their browser, sharing photos, etc.) and they'll get videos walking them through the processes. My only worry is that I might be obsoleting myself as a son.

Mobile Data Plan Limits: How Much Can I Download? (PC World)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 06:00 PM PST

Mark Sullivan Mark Sullivan – Tue Dec 14, 9:00 pm ET

With the advent of tiered pricing for wireless broadband service--and the eventual disappearance of unlimited data plans--it's more important than ever to understand how much data you can pull down from the Web before reaching your plan limit and being liable for overage charges.

Earlier this year, AT&T and Verizon adopted tiered data pricing systems--AT&T in June and Verizon in October--and the rest of the industry is expected to follow. Lower tiers for smartphone data can have limits as low as 200 megabytes (MB) per month ($15/month, AT&T), while the upper tiers for tablets and mobile hotspots can offer as much as 10 gigabytes (GB) of data per month ($80/month, Verizon). When you take a close look at the data usage you've become accustomed to during the month, you might find that those caps--especially in the lower tiers--are easier to reach than you might think.

In this chart (click thumbnail image at right for full-size view), we show, using concrete examples, how much content you can download before reaching various plan limits.

Setting aside the issue of overage limits for a moment, understanding your monthly data usage can help you pick a data plan that gives you just enough data per month, while relieving you of paying for data allowances you'll never use. This summer, a study from Nielsen found that average smartphone data consumption was just shy of 300MB. So for many users, buying a 5GB plan, for example, would be overkill.

On the other hand, the Nielson study also found that average data usage is growing quickly. Mobile data users pulled down 230 percent more data in this study than when Nielson did the same study a year earlier.

You can also try AT&T's and Verizon's data usage calculators to help you estimate how much data you use each month.

MTV launches Music Meter, a music discovery tool (Digital Trends)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 05:58 PM PST

Laura Khalil Laura Khalil – Tue Dec 14, 8:58 pm ET

mtv music meterInstead of relying solely on conventional metrics such as CD sales or radio play, Music Meter ranks the top 100 artists based on their social media buzz.

Each listed artist is featured in a widget-like box with a drop-down menu that offers links to preview and purchase songs, as well as tabs with videos, photos, tweets, news stories and a bio. There’s also a “similar” button that will help users find other artists they might like based on those that have ranked on the chart.

Music Meter aims to help visitors discover new music, not just listening to the artists getting heavy radio play.

“We have a long history at MTV of locking arms with artists in the beginning of their careers and providing them with an opportunity to grow their audience base,” says MTV spokesperson Kurt Patat. “And you have lots of chances to discover music by Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, so when we were thinking about what we wanted the Music Meter to be, we thought of it as a discovery tool people can come to and find new music.”

So, despite the viral strength of the Lady Gaga’s and Justin Bieber’s of the world, you won’t find many of those chart kings and queens at the top of the Music Meter (though you can search for them if you want and get all the same details). Instead, it’s an eclectic mix of artists known and lesser known whose sounds people are digging at this moment.

“MTV has played the role of curator for a long time and with so much music out there and everyone having access to thousands of songs, sometimes it’s hard to know what to listen to,” he explains. “So we’re giving you what the world is saying is cool and allowing you to discover much more from there.”

Comcast Xcalibur Takes on Google TV (ContributorNetwork)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 03:50 PM PST

JC Torpey Jc Torpey – Tue Dec 14, 6:50 pm ET
Contribute content like this. Start here.

Internet television is making the rounds again and, this time, Comcast is releasing a beta version of their new Xcalibur Internet ready television, according to The Wall Street journal. Apparently, the Internet television will have limited Web access and will only allow users access to only a handful of social networks and online video streaming sources; it's hardly a rival to the Google TV released earlier this year.

Comcast's Xcalibur

Other features of the new Comcast set top Internet TV box include viewing television content that Spectrum subscribers can record onto the built-in DVR, live search functions for television shows and on-demand video recording and playback. Even the small amount of Internet surfing allowed is much more than Comcast has offered in recent years, since none of their previous devices allowed such integration.

The Xcalibur is being made available only in small testing areas, which is also cited as one of the reasons that the Internet content availability is so restricted. Either way, the release of any Internet integrated set-top TV box is seen as direct competition with Google and other companies such as Apple and Microsoft that have done and are about to do the same. The announcement also comes not too long after Comcast's previous announcement that the company's on-demand television and movies is now available for viewing on the Comcast website.

My personal use of the Comcast on-demand website brought disappointment, as much of the advertised content was labeled either "This content is no longer available" or "Internal error prevents video from viewing, please try again later." I have yet to come cross a video that works online.

Google TV

Google TV, on the other hand, offers many more features than Comcast's Xcalibur does. It allows users to access the entire Internet unrestricted. Google TV also offers numerous web applications that users can access right form their television equipped with Google TV. These include apps such as Netflix, Pandora Radio, Twitter, Napster, and even CNBC, among other popular websites.

Google also offers Android smartphone users the option of using their smartphones as the television's remote control. While this is a free application users can download from the Android market and use for other televisions, it was created especially for the Google TV experience. Google was even nice enough to include an iPhone app allowing Apple fans to use their devices to control the television as well.

Overall Thoughts

While Xcalibur is a small step by the cable TV giant Comcast geared to take Google TV and other Internet television competitors off the market, when it comes to television viewing and web surfing freedom, it is largely limited because users cannot freely surf the Internet as they can while use Google TV. Even though some networks have banned access to Google TV users, such as ABC and CBS, Google still offers its user much more in the way of features and access without needing to change anything. With the integrated web and television or movie access of Google TV has many more viable options available to their users than Comcast does. If the company's beta Internet television is to be a success in major viewing markets, Comcast needs to step up their game a bit, especially if the company thinks it will win over Google users anytime soon.

Jessica (JC) Torpey is a self-taught computer technician with more than 10 years experience in the field. JC's passion is studying the various political and business aspects of the technology industry. Combining that knowledge with her love of computers, JC uses it to influence her writing.

Mozilla's Creative Genius Seeks to Transform Health Care with New Startup (Mashable)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 02:04 PM PST

Ben Parr Ben Parr – Tue Dec 14, 5:04 pm ET

Aza Raskin, Mozilla's renowned creative director, is leaving the non-profit foundation behind Firefox to revolutionize a different industry: health care.

Raskin joined Mozilla in 2008 when he was hired away from Humanized, a design startup he co-founded. He has since become the driving force behind many of Mozilla's most prominent projects, including Ubiquity, Firefox for Mobile and Tab Candy/Panorama. He is one of the most respected experts in his field.

Starting January 1, 2011 though, he is taking that expertise to Massive Health, a new startup he is co-founding to bring a "design Renaissance" to the health care industry.

From his blog post announcing his departure:

"Each of us has a unique ability. I want to use mine—the knowledge to make products which are disruptively easier and more enjoyable to use—to change people's lives. Life-changing not in the sense of a new social website or better email, but in making people's lives materially better by helping them get and stay healthy. Anyone that's been sick, overweight, or had to deal with a doctor knows that health is a field in dire need of humane design."

The startup boasts A-list investors (yet to be revealed) and two co-founders, Sutha Kamal and an unnamed co-founder we are told is Atul Varma, whom we worked with at Humanized and Mozilla.

We'll be watching this startup very closely.

eBay mobile sales jump shows upward trend in buying goods using smartphones (Appolicious)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:04 AM PST

Apple updates drivers for Canon, FujiXerox, Lexmark printers (Macworld)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 03:50 PM PST

Serenity Caldwell Serenity Caldwell – Tue Dec 14, 6:50 pm ET

Having trouble printing from your Canon, FujiXerox, or Lexmark printer lately? Perhaps you'll find it easier after installing Apple's latest slew of printer driver updates to OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), posted Tuesday afternoon on the company's Support Website and available via Software Update.

Three separate driver downloads are available, each targeting a specific manufacturer: Canon, FujiXerox, and Lexmark. The Canon update, version 2.4.1, is 300.83MB in size and installs and updates drivers for various models. The 2.1 update for FujiXerox printers and scanners is only 45.43MB, and the 2.3.1 update for Lexmark printers is 121MB in size.

As always, you can double-check what printer and scanner models are officially supported by Snow Leopard by scanning through Apple's Knowledge Base article on the subject. Printers are sorted by model.

IBM supercomputer will compete on Jeopardy next year (Digital Trends)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:15 AM PST

Molly McHugh Molly Mchugh – Tue Dec 14, 2:15 pm ET

We see all types of people on Jeopardy!, and this February that will extend from "people" to "computers." IBM is working on a device that it claims will be able to rival the two most successful champions of the game show, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

As you may remember, Jennings won the most consecutive games ever during the 2004 to 2005 season, and Rutler holds the title of most money taken home by a Jeopardy! contestant.  But February 14 through 16, the two decorated winners will face a new type of challenge, one built specifically with them in mind.

Scientists at IBM have been developing a machine for two years that "can understand and answer complex questions with enough precision and speed to compete against some of the best Jeopardy! contestants out there." The supercomputer has been codenamed Watson and has been programmed to not only recognize human language, but comprehend its meaning. It's technically referred to as a "Question Answering" or QA system, and IBM assures us that Watson will have no outside help via Internet connection.

Jeopardy! questions often involve more than just a straightforward question. There are riddles and word play, things difficult for your ordinary computer to decipher. But Watson will be able to "distinguish between relevant and irrelevant content, and ultimately, demonstrate confidence to deliver precise final answers." And it will also answer with the speed necessary to win the game. The machine has been training for the big day. Over the fall, Watson took on over 50 former Jeopardy! winners as practice, and passed the same exam all participants of the game show are required to take.

In a press release, IBM revealed that there is more to Watson than winning a game show. The purpose of the supercomputer is to take human-computer communication to the next level by imitating the human mind as closely and accurately as possible.

The winner of the upcoming tournament will receive $1 million; second place $300,000 and third $200,000. The human contestants will donate half of their earnings if they win, and Watson will donate all of it. May the best man or machine win.

Microsoft fixes bugs in Windows, Internet Explorer (Reuters)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 12:46 PM PST

– Tue Dec 14, 3:46 pm ET

BOSTON (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp issued one of its biggest-ever security fixes on Tuesday, including repairs to its ubiquitous Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser for flaws that could let hackers take control of a PC.

Microsoft said on Tuesday that two of the new patches -- software updates that write over glitches -- were of the highest priority and should be deployed immediately to protect users from potential criminal attacks on Windows and Internet Explorer.

The world's largest software maker said it also repaired other less serious security weaknesses in Windows, along with security problems in its widely used Office software for PCs and Microsoft Exchange email software.

Altogether, Microsoft released 17 security patches to address 40 problems in its products.

The constant patching of PCs is time consuming for corporate users, who need to test the fixes before they deploy them to make sure they do not cause machines to crash because of compatibility problems with existing software.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; editing by Andre Grenon)

Top 10 Ubuntu Ideas Offer Hint at What's to Come (PC World)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 11:29 AM PST

Katherine Noyes Katherine Noyes – Tue Dec 14, 2:29 pm ET

As part of its effort to involve the Ubuntu community in making its Linux distribution better, the Ubuntu Technical Board last week published a list of some of the most popular recent suggestions for inclusion in a future version of the open source operating system.

Nearly 20,000 ideas for Ubuntu have been collected on the wiki-like Ubuntu Brainstorm site so far, and they're viewable in categories corresponding to popularity, whether they're already in development, and whether they've been implemented already.

The Ubuntu Technical Board has been reviewing the most popular ideas so far, and last Friday Ubuntu CTO Matt Zimmerman published on his blog the first of what will be quarterly batches of 10 to come under scrutiny. Along with each idea evaluated, he presents an official response on behalf of the project.

"This means that the most popular topics on Ubuntu Brainstorm receive expert answers from the people working in these areas," Zimmerman explains.

Here are the top 10 suggestions currently being evaluated for possible inclusion in Ubuntu:

1. Power Management

Battery life is a key focus for Linux users on laptops, so it's no real surprise that this has been among the most popular suggestions on the Ubuntu Brainstorm site.

Amit Kucheria, Ubuntu kernel developer and leader of the Linaro working group on power management, addressed the issue in a separate blog post last week with technical analysis, tips and recommendations, and a look at what's coming next.

"Power management, when done right, should not require the user to make several (difficult) choices," Kucheria wrote. "It should just work - providing a good balance of performance and battery life."

2. IP Address Conflicts

"IP addressing is a subject that most people should never have to think about," Zimmerman wrote. "When something isn't working, and two computers end up with the same IP address, it can be hard to tell what's wrong.

"I was personally surprised to find this one near the top of the list on Ubuntu Brainstorm," Zimmerman added. "Nonetheless, it was voted up, and we're listening."

A tool called "ipwatchd" is now available in the package repository and can address this problem, he wrote; if feedback is strong enough, the project could consider adding the tool for inclusion in the default installation.

3. Selecting the Only Available Username to Log In

Given that most Ubuntu systems are used by just one person, "it seems a bit redundant to ask the user to identify themselves every time they login, by clicking on their username," Zimmerman noted. "Why not just preselect it?"

Martin Pitt of the Ubuntu Desktop Team asks for further feedback on the Brainstorm site with user preferences.

4. Icon For .deb Packages

For users who go outside the Ubuntu respositories to work with .deb files directly, "the icon used to represent .deb packages in the file manager is not ideal, and can be confusing," Zimmerman notes.

Deb-thumbnailer is tool that makes the icon both more distinctive and more informative, so it's being considered for packaging into the main repository.

5. Keeping Time Accurate Over the Internet by Default

Ubuntu has actually included automatic Internet time synchronization with Network Time Protocol since the very first release, "so some of us were a little surprised to see this as one of the most popular ideas on Ubuntu Brainstorm," Zimmerman noted.

Nevertheless, since then it was discovered that there was at least one case where time wasn't working. So, it's now fixed for Ubuntu 11.04, and patches have been sent upstream to Debian and GNOME.

6. More Detail in GNOME System Monitor

Ubuntu's System Monitor lets users follow their system's inner workings, but some have asked for more detail. Robert Ancell of the Ubuntu Desktop Team has offered to mentor a volunteer to develop a patch, and someone has already stepped up with a first draft, Zimmerman says.

7. Help the User Understand When Closing a Window Doesn't Close the App

This one is pretty self-explanatory, and work is already in progress to resolve it, according to Canonical creative strategy lead Ivanka Majic.

8. Ubuntu Software Center Removal of Configuration Files

Rather than removing packages by default when the user requests it--an option that can leave some files behind--this idea suggests defaulting to purging them instead, which wipes the slate clean.

9. Ubuntu One file Sync Progress

Ubuntu One file synchronization "works behind the scenes, uploading and downloading as needed to replicate your data to multiple computers," Zimmerman notes. "It does most of its work silently, and it can be hard to tell what it is doing or when it will be finished."

Plans are in the works to address the issue comprehensively, he adds, but there are also tips that work today, as engineering manager John Lenton notes on the AskUbuntu Q&A site.

10. Multimedia Performance

Given all the multimedia content available today, it's important that Ubuntu be able to keep up with it all. Allison Randal, Ubuntu Technical Architect, addresses the topic in a separate post.

Do you have an opinion on one of these topics, or another one to suggest? Then head over to Ubuntu Brainstorm and make your voice count. In the world of open source, we can all have a hand in making the software better.

Follow Katherine Noyes on Twitter: @Noyesk.

France warns Google not to abuse dominance (Reuters)

Posted: 14 Dec 2010 07:14 PM PST

By Leila Abboud and Cyril Altmeyer Leila Abboud And Cyril Altmeyer – 1 hr 59 mins ago

PARIS (Reuters) – France's antitrust watchdog put Google on notice not to abuse what it said was its dominant position in online search advertising, adding to European regulatory pressure on the U.S. Web search giant.

The French regulator said on Tuesday Google's market power was not necessarily bad or illegal but its practices needed to be carefully monitored to avoid anti-competitive impact.

The European Commission has recently launched its own formal investigation of Google, while the French parliament is weighing a 1 percent tax on all on-line advertising which has been dubbed the "Google tax."

Google, which has argued that it is not a dominant company, said the regulator's market analysis was too narrow.

"Search ads are one of many options for advertisers. If the price of search ads rises, advertisers can and do switch to other formats, both online and offline. That is the sign of a competitive and dynamic industry," the company said.

Guy Lougher, a partner on the EU competition team of law firm Pinsent Masons, said the French finding could lead rivals to charge Google with abusing its dominant position or encourage further investigation from the regulator.

"It's a shot across the bow, Google is now formally on notice that they might be vulnerable depending on what they do," he said. "It's starting to look horribly like a rerun of the Microsoft cases."

The U.S. software giant pledged last year to allow easier access to rival browsers in Windows, ending a 10-year antitrust dispute with the European Union.

"It's part of a gathering storm," said Thomas Vinje, a partner at law firm Clifford Chance. "It will make it easier for the EU to come to the same conclusion on market dominance."

INVESTIGATION

The Google ruling by the Authorite de la Concurrence followed a 10-month investigation requested by the French economy ministry.

The probe examined Google's services that allow companies to buy targeted advertising, which places ads when a user searches for keywords or looks at a web page with related content. Such ads generate the majority of Google's revenues and are a cornerstone of its business model.

Google will now have to consider whether to modify its operations to avoid accusations of abusing its position or to fight the regulators' conclusions, said Lougher.

France's competition regulator wrote of Google: "This dominant position is not reprehensible: it results from a great deal of innovation, supported by significant and continuous investments. Only the abusive exercise of such market power could be sanctioned."

But it found that Google's search ads "represents a specific market that cannot be replaced by other forms of communication, notably because it allows for very fine-tuned targeting, and because no other equivalent alternative offer exists in the eyes of advertisers."

Google's share of the global online advertising market rose to 43 percent in the third quarter from 42 percent in the previous three months, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. The market was worth $16.4 billion overall.

Yahoo was a distant second, with 8.7 percent of the market, while Microsoft came third with 3.2 percent.
at 9:36 PM

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