Saturday Snippets

Playing catchup with the tech news since 2003...

1. The FCC has approved BPL: broadband over power lines, and utilities in Washington State and Ohio are moving to implement it. The technology could bring high-speed Internet to areas unserved by DSL and cable modems. The ARRL, which has been virulently opposed to BPL, said they were cautiously optimistic that the new rules would protect hams.
2. Project Fluffy Bunny has seen the light of day. Google is extending its search business to your desktop. The new Google desktop search indexes Outlook and Outlook Express email, Microsoft Office files, filenames, web history, chat logs, and text files. It integrates into Internet Explorer, and future Google searches will include results from your own hard drive as well as the web in general. It's a great product considering the price, but I still prefer X1 for its speed and the wider variety of files it searches.
3. It has been rumored that Google is also considering distributing its own Instant Messaging client. Experts who examined the code in the desktop tool says it supports its own IM protocol. Google's acquisition of Picasa some months ago gave it access to the IM code in Picasa's Hello program.
4. Intel has announced it won't produce a 4GHz Pentium 4 after all. Overheating problems with higher clock speeds are forcing the company to focus its efforts on multi-core chips - single chips with two processors - and improving efficiency in the Pentium 4 line with larger caches.
5. Meanwhile AMD continues its march to eclipse Intel. Tuesday the company will unveil the Athlon 64 FX-55 and the Athlon 64 4000+. The FX is currently the best performing desktop CPU on the market.
6. Netflix is announcing that it's cutting its monthly fee from $22 to $17 because it expects Amazon to enter the business soon. Earlier this year Netflix raised its fee from $20 to $22 - but I guess that didn't work. The DVD by mail company's stock tumbled 41% in after hours trading on the news. Blockbuster responded by dropping its monthly fee to $17.49. Analysts say neither company can expect to make money at that price.
7. More troubles for Bungie. Just days after announcing that Halo 2 for the Xbox is ready to ship, a pirated copy has leaked onto the Internet. The French language version is for PAL television sets and won't play without a mod chip.
8. Apple's iTunes Music Store sold its 150 millionth song on Thursday. The store is averaging four million tracks a week. Beth Santisteven of Ignacio, Colorado bought the 150 millionth song: Lauryn Hill's "Ex-Factor." Apple sold two million iPods in Q4.
9. Of course, Apple is not without competition. Starbucks is rolling out music burning stations in its coffee shops. Fifteen new Hear Music stations will open Monday in Seattle. Thirty later this month in Austin. A trial store has been open in Santa Monica since March.
10. According to Dell's Consumer Spyware Initiative, 90% of PC users have been infected by spyware, and the majority have no idea what to do about it. The Internet Education Initiative has set up a spyware education page. Unfortunately it seems to focus on commercial tools from its partners, rather than the free and effective tools most experts recommend.

Monday's Mini News

A couple of quick stories that caught my eye, today. I'm going out of town tomorrow but will update the news on Thursday.

• Rock band U2 has made a deal with Apple to sell custom iPods promoting the band's next album. Steve Jobs and Bono will announce the special black iPod at a press conference on Tuesday, October 26. The MP3 player will be loaded with the band's new CD plus songs from older albums. The iPod should ship November 23 - just in time for my Regis appearance. How thoughtful of them.
• The real question, though, is will Apple announce the rumored PhotoPod with a color screen that stores both music and images at the same event?
• Dell is once again the number one PC maker, gaining ground on second place HP. Gartner and IDC both reported that the PC maker had increased shipments by more than 20 percent over last year to give it an 18.2% market share. IBM, Fujitsu, and Toshiba round out the top five.
• According to USA Today, Googles new desktop search tool can index Hotmail and other webmail caches, so if you're on a shared computer with the desktop tool installed, someone could theoretically read your email.

Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Tuesday's Threat Assessment

I'm in Canada to get my flu shot, but the news must go on. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas hits stores today. Expect a drop in real life carjacking as thugs try out the virtual stuff. Rockstar expects to sell 4.5 million units this week alone. Apple's big press conference is today. Presumably they'll announce the new U2 iPod. The shootout at the OK Corral occurred on this day in 1881. Pan Am made the first commercial transatlantic jet crossing, New York to Paris, in 1958. Doonesbury debuted in 1970.

1. Three anti-spyware bills are working their way through Congress, and the FTC has achieved its first victory in its lawsuit against Spamford Wallace. On Thursday the US District Court granted a temporary restraining order against Wallace prohibiting him from exploiting Internet vulnerabilities to place spyware on computers. Wallace was given 24 hours to pull his software from the web.
2. PalmOne has officially announced the release of the Treo 650. Sprint has cornered the market on the hot phone through sometime next year. Sprint says the phone will be available by mid-November and cost around $500. Wi-Fi support will not be available at first, but PalmOne does expect to make a Wi-Fi card for the phone eventually.
3. Microsoft says it will compete with Google in the desktop search arena, as well. The company plans to release its own desktop search program before the end of the year.
4. Meanwhile Google shares were up another 15% on Friday, topping $180/share at one point. Thanks to a strong earnings report on Thursday, two analysts are saying it's worth over $200.
5. Maybe there's good reason. According to a new survey by MSN Search, when men want advice they turn to search engines first. 50% of the men surveyed say they Google first, one-third say they ask family members, only one in four say they ask their wives first. One man in three has searched for his name online; only one in five women has done so.
6. An AOL survey shows that 20% of home computers are infected with viruses. 80% are infected with spyware. Infected machines had an average of 93 different spyware programs on them. Technical experts from AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance examined 329 computers in the survey. More than 70% of owners falsely thought they were protected from online threats.
7. AOL is giving its seal of approval to a reworked Microsoft anti-spam proposal. The technology, known as Sender ID, was rejected by the IETF last month because it was encumbered by Microsoft patents. The patent has been restated but it's not clear whether open source advocates will accept the new proposal.
8. The DOJ has given its go ahead for Cingular's acquisition of AT&T Wireless. The merger awaits FCC approval now. The merger will give Cingular 47.6 million subscribers, making it the number one wireless carrier.
9. A fake Red Hat security alert is making the rounds. The alert, targeting users of Fedora, encourages users to download a "patch" which is actually a Trojan horse. Red Hat says don't install updates unless they're digitally signed by the company.
10. The tech industry received a big tax break on Friday. President Bush signed a bill offering $136 billion in corporate tax relief, including a reduction from 35% to %5.25 in the tax rate on foreign profits for US multinationals. The breaks have been criticized for encouraging offshoring of jobs, but the US tech industry lobbied heavily for them saying they needed the money for additional R&D and investment. Senator Feinstein's amendment requiring companies to spend their tax windfall in the US was rejected.

Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.

Thursday's Sore Loser

Forget it, I'm not leaving. But I will do the news. Audio to follow as soon as I stop sobbing. Happy Birthday Walter Cronkite, he's 88. King Tut's tomb was discovered on this day in 1922. The Iranian Hostage Crisis began in 1979.

1. It's the day after tomorrow. The eight-nation Arctic Council is reporting that the icecaps are melting at twice the normal rate, due to global warming. The four year study will be officially released next week. Global warming isn't all bad. 25% of the Earths remaining oil and gas reserves are hidden under Arctic ice. That amphibious Hummer is looking better than ever.
2. E-voting went mostly without a hitch on Tuesday. It was the first extensive use of electronic voting machines and only about 600 glitches were reported, mostly minor according to the Verified Voting Foundation. On the other hand, the Election Protection Coalition reports over 1,000 problems, including touch screens that switched votes away from Kerry.
3. CNET reviews the electronic gadgetry used by the television networks on election night. Tim Russert replaced his whiteboard with a Fujitsu tablet PC. CBS used a 50-inch touch screen plasma monitor to swoop and zoom over electoral maps. I followed the results on the radio but I don't think NPR was using any of that stuff.
4. A brother and sister spamming team have been convicted of a felony in a Virginia court. It's the first felony conviction of spammers ever. The two sent junk email to millions of AOL customers. The jury recommended nine years in jail for the brother and fined the sister $7500.
5. The Motion Picture Association of America is preparing to follow in the RIAA's footsteps by suing movie pirates. The MPAA says it will make "a major announcement regarding illegal file sharing of motion pictures on peer-to-peer networks" this morning.
6. Microsoft and Intel are joining forces this holiday season with an advertising campaign touting "Digital Joy." The multi-million dollar campaign marks the first time the two companies have advertised together.
7. Another reason to eschew HTML email. The latest phishing scams overwrites your banking bookmark with bogus sites where they'll collect your login and password, and the email does this without any action on your part.

Listen in tomorrow at 8:35a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles.

Tuesday's TO Twingle

It's snowing in Toronto, so I'm staying indoors and doing the news. Today is a day that will live in infamy. Pearl Harbor was bombed on this day in 1941. The Model A was discontinued in 1931. Happy birthday Noam Chomsky, Tom Waits, and Larry Bird.

1. A study released Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that musicians do not see online file sharing as a threat to their livelihood. According to the study, "artists and musicians are more likely to say that the Internet has made it possible for them to make more money from their art than they are to say it has made it harder to protect their work from piracy or unlawful use." Nor do most musicians agree with the RIAA's tactics. Around half still think it should be illegal, however.
2. Lycos Europe has dropped its plans to use an anti-spam screen saver to launch denial of service attacks against accused spammers. Lycos's Make Love Not Spam screen saver was taken offline on Friday. There's apparently no law against launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the UK.
3. The Pennsylvania Attorney General has sued two men for advertising an online diploma mill. The two allegedly sent out spam offering graduate degrees in less than 72 hours. Among the recipients, a cat who got an MBA. The men face only civil penalties, not jail time.
4. MessageLabs says online phishing scams have increased tenfold this year. The company has intercepted 20 million phony emails so far this year.
5. A German online ad firm, Adtech, says Internet Explorer users are four times more likely to click on banner ads than Firefox users. This is based on actual clickthrough on the 1,000 European sites that use Adtech. I hear Firefox users are better looking too.
6. Another German study says computers hinder learning. Researchers at the University of Munich studied 175,000 15-year-old students and found that performance in math and reading had suffered significantly among those who had more than one computer at home.
7. Former President Bill Clinton is helping to boost a Chinese-owned web search engine, saying "I hope you all make lots of money." The service, Accoona (from the Swahili phrase "accoona matata" meaning "no worries") claims to use artificial intelligence to improve search results. When I did a search for "Bill Clinton" on the site it came up with a page of paid placements (after a long minute) including an anti-Clinton site. Worse than that, the second unpaid result was for a site selling Saint Clinton memorabilia. Hey Google, no worries!
8. According to insiders, IBM is close to inking the deal to sell its PC business to the Chinese owned Lenovo Group, formerly known as Legend Computers. The $1-2 billion deal is expected to be announced tomorrow morning. The IBM brand would be retained for at least a few years. IBM would continue to sell its corporate servers. The PC business pulls in $10 billion in revenue but only breaks even.
9. Apple shared jumped yesterday on rumors the company will announce an inexpensive flash-based iPod at MacWorld in January.
10. Phew. Ken Jennings has found a job. The Jeopardy champion who lasted a record 75 games will become a spokesmodel for Microsoft's Encarta encylopedia. Jennings (whom a Microsoft spokesman called "Jenkins" in a press interview) will embark on a "Quiz The Whiz" tour where reporters will be asked to challenge him with questions culled from Encarta. Here's a piece of trivia: Jennings answered 2,700 questions on his way to winning $2.5 million dollars.

Listen in Tuesday at 6:45a Pacific for my weekly news commentary on KGO 810 AM in San Francisco.