Amazon.com adds web services to its offerings

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts.

Amazon.com employees pack books for shipment in July at the company's facility in Fernley, Nevada.

In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Media sales now total in the billions each quarter, and third-party merchandise, more profitable for Amazon than its own wares, makes up nearly a third of everything sold through the site.

Now, Amazon is making an even greater stretch -- selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services.

The venture, which Amazon expects will grow into a significant business segment, could help keep the company strong if retailers get hit by an economic downturn.

More broadly, Amazon Web Services, as the business is called, could improve chances for a new generation of Web startups by slashing how much they spend up front on costly infrastructure.

MileMeter Inc., a Dallas-based startup that plans to sell auto insurance by the mile, started out running its own server in a data center. Recently, it moved most of its applications onto virtual computers in Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast.

"I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant."

Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house.

"Now, unless that is your core business ... it's a liability."

Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.

"We want to let developers innovate and make money," he said.

Amazon is certainly not the only player. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Akamai Technologies Inc., Enki and Terremark each offer at least a portion of the Web services Amazon is selling. IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer pricier versions aimed at big businesses, while Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are thought to be working on services similar to Amazon's.

Amazon comes closest to utility-style billing, Staten said. Most competitors demand a contract or minimum payments.

Amazon, which gives away the computer code to access its services, bases its fees on how much data is shifted around and stored. For example, the company charges 15 cents per month for every gigabyte of data stored in its Simple Storage Service. Developers pay another 10 cents each time they send a gigabyte into the cloud and 18 cents per terabyte when they pull data back out.

SmugMug Inc., a photo sharing startup, had considered storing its users' digital pictures and movies in the cloud with other services. But "the pricing was out of our reach, and it wasn't simple to engineer" before Amazon Web Services launched, said co-founder Chris MacAskill.

Today, the Mountain View, California-based company keeps more than 400 terabytes of data in Amazon's Simple Storage Service. It also uses up to 750 "instances," or virtual machines, in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud during peak hours to help turn its clients' high-resolution photos and video files into different sizes for display online.

In the first 12 months it used Amazon Web Services, SmugMug saved $1 million.

"It is hard to get your head around: 'Why is this retailer that ships me toys for my kids for Christmas ... also my supplier of IT services?"' MacAskill said.

Amazon executives would say that's because theirs is a technology company, not just a retailer.

In 2005, it ramped up spending on "technology and content," a catchall expense line that includes data centers and R&D to support its own global growth, Web Services, its third-party seller platform, its digital music and movie download stores and other projects.

In 2005 and 2006, the company dropped $1.11 billion on technology and content, eating into margins and souring Wall Street on its stock. With Web Services, Amazon has a chance to earn back a slice of that investment.

It's too soon to tell if Amazon will be able to turn Web Services into a business with revenue to rival its retail lines. The company declined to say what Web Services brings in, saying only that it had signed up 330,000 customers -- startups, Fortune 500 companies, students, researchers and others -- by late 2007.

"Is it any meaningful percentage of revenue? I doubt it," said Global Crown Capital analyst Martin Pyykkonen. "As far as being a technology company...Eh. It depends on how you want to get into labeling it. It's retail."

It's also not clear how many startups will want to outsource their data center functions.

At Shelfari, a social networking startup for avid readers that is partly funded by Amazon, Chief Executive Officer Josh Hug doesn't intend to use the new Web services.

Having IT staffers to keep a close eye on things is important for a consumer service, Hug said. "It's worth the extra cost."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Scan, deposit checks from home

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Online banking service provider CheckFree Corp. is rolling out technology that could mean consumers will no longer have to go to a bank branch to deposit checks.

Called Remote Deposit Capture, the technology has been around for years and lets people scan checks through their home computers and deposit them electronically. But it has been used mainly for businesses.

Customers want to be able to deposit checks without having to go to banks, said Rod Springhetti, CheckFree's vice president of global strategic marketing, and banks want to be able to offer that.

"I think the ability to remotely capture a check will become part of the standard features and functions of online banking," Springhetti said.

CheckFree said the service is available starting this week for any consumers who bank online, as long as their banks offer it.

Recently acquired by Brookfield-based Fiserv Inc. for about $4.4 billion, CheckFree has been in discussions with institutions large and small, though none have committed to using the technology, Springhetti said.

Bob Meara, a senior analyst for research firm Celent, said lots of smaller competitors may follow CheckFree's lead, but it remains unclear how many banks will adopt it and how consumers will react.

"Eventually, it will be a staple element in banks online and the mobile banking platform," he said. "That doesn't mean every consumer is going to pay attention to it."

A recent Celent survey found that about 20 percent of banks had the technology for consumers or planned to get it, and another 20 percent were considering it -- while about 90 percent either use the technology with business clients or want to.

CheckFree's technology already is in the top 150 banks. Springhetti said it is fairly simple to use, and banks can tailor it for their clients.

Customers need a scanner, which is often standard on printers now, a computer and an Internet connection. They'll go to their home banking site, enter the amount of the check, scan both sides, do a quick review and submit it to the bank.

Banks will have the option to add their own fraud protection to make sure bad checks aren't being cashed, he said. Normal processing times will apply, he said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Tax TVs, video games, outdoor group says

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- Dave Gilligan remembers being pushed outside to play baseball and other sports, but feeling it just wasn't for him.

Dave Gilligan plays a video game at the store he co-owns, Gamers Anonymous, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So the 24-year-old business owner is skeptical about a proposal to nudge kids off the couch and out the door by taxing televisions and video games sold in New Mexico. The idea could backfire, he says.

"If you take a kid that's just playing his X-Box or whatever and you take him outside and you make him play baseball, he's going to hate it," said Gilligan, co-owner of Gamers Anonymous, an Albuquerque video game store. "There's nothing wrong with sitting at home playing games. Everybody's doing it now."

But a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot.

The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state.

Supporters of the tax -- which would be the first of its kind in the nation -- say outdoor programs have been shown to improve students' abilities in the classroom, boost their self-confidence and teach them stewardship and discipline.

"We believe that an outdoor education program in New Mexico could be funded through a tax on the very activities that are divorcing kids from nature, promoting more sedentary lifestyles," said Michael Casaus, Sierra Club's New Mexico youth representative. "One of those culprits is TV and what we call screen time."

Blogs dedicated to the gaming world have been abuzz over the proposal, with critics complaining that they shouldn't have to foot the bill for parents who don't know how to raise their children. Some have seized the moment to talk about gaming's benefits.

Gilligan, for example, says he learned to read at a young age thanks to video games. He also attributes his interest in art to gaming.

"I'm not a very athletic person," he said. "I kept playing video games and eventually my parents accepted that, and now it's my career and I make good money so I'm happy."

Sean Bersell, a spokesman for the Entertainment Merchants Association, said the video game industry has fueled advances in computer technology, such as faster processors and better graphics and sound.

Supporters of the tax are wrong to suggest that such complex problems as low test scores and childhood obesity can be solved by turning off the TV, said Bersell, whose group represents about 125 retailers in New Mexico.

"Targeting a small category of entertainment as somehow a major contributor to these problem is just not justified and frankly it's not supported by a scientific consensus," he said.

The tax would put New Mexico retailers at a disadvantage as they compete with online stores and retailers that offer downloadable games, Bersell warned.

Supporters argue that just as health programs are often supported by excise taxes on cigarettes or alcohol, an excise tax on games and TVs would provide a steady source of cash for outdoor education. Legislative analysts have said the tax would generate about $4 million a year.

New Mexico State Parks already offers outdoor programs, but the funding is just a fraction of what the tax would bring in.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

How Twitter makes it real

So I wasn't in the ballroom when the keynote address by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went awry under the less-than-forensic questioning of technology journalist Sarah Lacy.

I didn't see the crowd start to get restless and heckle Zuckerberg about the deeply-unpopular Beacon advertising system, or get a chance to grab the microphone and ask questions when Lacy threw the conversation open to the floor.

And yet I was there in another way, listening to and even interacting with some of my friends in the audience, picking up on the vibe in the room and even tuning in later as Sarah Lacy loudly defended herself.

I was there because I was plugged into Twitter, the instant messaging service that lets users send short text messages to anyone who cares to tune in, online or on their mobile phone.

As I sat at my desk a constant stream of 'tweets', as they are called, was being supplied by many of the people in the room and I was able to reply directly and feel that I too was participating.

One of the reasons for its success is that it is very open, with a clean and well-defined way for programmers to use the service through an application program interface

Of course following short messages on a screen is not the same as being physically there, just as watching a nature show on TV doesn't mean you can claim to have visited the Serengeti.

But the sense of presence that can be achieved is remarkable, especially when you're sitting at your computer working, connected to the internet and with a Twitter client running on your computer so that tweets appear as they are posted. It's rather like reading a novel, where you stop seeing the words on paper and find yourself immersed in a world created for you by the author.

After a certain point Twitter becomes part of the background to life.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the caf of my favourite bookshop with my partner. She was reading about the Habsburgs, Hitler and Weimar while I was writing a talk about the future of publishing.

But I was also engaged in a distributed dialogue with a bunch of friends around the world,

BrightMeadow was cold and complaining, so I sympathised. Luke invited me to look at the first release of his new site, while sambrook was happy to discuss media futures and help me with my talk.

I was there in the cafe but also in this liminal space with everyone else, reading lovemaus's comments on Casablanca, sympathising with technokitten stuck at Madrid airport and wondering whether Jeff went for his run on a chilly New York morning.

Thanks to Twitter I carry my online networks with me as I wander through town, and more and more I see the world through the lens of our shared experience.

Sanjukta is in a cafe in Delhi and here with me; I am wondering what Documentally is filming in Rugby; I know that Yuko42 is lying in bed listening to the Tokyo rain.

Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey while working for San Francisco based podcast company Odeo, and it launched in August 2006, growing by word of mouth until last year's SXSW conference when it emerged from nowhere as the way for attendees to keep track of what was going on and share their thoughts with friends.

One of the reasons for its success is that it is very open, with a clean and well-defined way for programmers to use the service through an application program interface (API).

The developers have gone out of their way to encourage people to write clients for Twitter users, and seem to be both flexible and understanding.

For example clients are limited to 70 requests for data per hour, in order to keep the load on the system manageable and deter spamming.

But they also say 'If you are developing an application that requires more frequent requests please contact us and we'll see what we can do'.

Most of my friends seem to twitter from the web or a client called Twitterific. I prefer Twhirl, which works nicely on my Mac, but thanks to the open API there's a lot of choice.

When I'm out I can even get Twitter on my iPod Touch thanks to Hahlo, which offers a particularly clean and usable interface.

And when I want to follow a particular topic, like SXSW, I use the Tweet Scan website, which searches public updates.

You can choose to keep your tweets private, of course, though there is something about telling the world just what you're up to in 140 characters or less that becomes strangely compelling after a while.

Like many fast-growing services Twitter is far from perfect. The site sometimes creaks and falls over under the load, the interface can be confusing and sometime tweets don't get through.

It is also a dangerous distraction from work, encouraging micro-conversations and followups and witty rejoinders when articles have to be edited, code checked and projects planned.

But as I sit here writing this I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online.

And I feel that I have a foretaste of what tomorrow's network world will bring, when the boundaries have dissolved completely and we can experience the network directly through augmented reality contact lenses or direct neural connections or whatever other technologies make it out of the lab and into the streets in the next decade.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Mardell's Europe Day in pictures Moon marvel

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Phorm: Your questions answered

The controversial online advertising company Phorm has come under fierce criticism for its tool that tracks users' online surfing habits.

Q: What transparency is there? How can I check that Phorm is doing exactly what it claims it is doing? If I opt out, how can I assure myself that the opt out means just that - my data is not being harvested at all?

A: The claims we make as regards our systems, policies and procedures are regularly audited by the privacy audit department of Ernst & Young. But perhaps more importantly, our ISP partners take their customers' privacy very seriously and they have conducted immense due diligence on our technology and internal controls.

Q: Given Phorm's history (as 121media) in the murky world of adware and spyware, how can we trust it today? Why should we trust it?

A: It's true that we have a background in adware, not spyware. Part of the reason we decided to get out out the adware business was because we realised it was very difficult for people to distinguish between the two. We also think that we should be judged on our transparency and our actions. Firstly, when we realised the desktop model was taking us away from our core vision for the business of personalising the internet, we took the unprecedented step of shutting the desktop business down: voluntarily, transparently and under no pressure from anyone else. It was our choice and one that meant we cut ourselves off from revenues of $5-6 million a year in order to concentrate on developing a network based solution, where we find ourselves today.

Q: What fees (or other gifts/gratuities) were paid to Simon Davies and Gus Hosein when they were "invited" to assess Phorm's privacy protection measures? Does Phorm, or any of its directors, agents or employees have any interests in 80/20 Thinking

A: Phorm, its directors, agents or employees have no interests whatsoever in 80/20 Thinking. 80/20 Thinking is a consulting business founded and run by Managing Director Simon Davies, who is also a director of Privacy International, one of the leading privacy advocacy bodies. Phorm has retained 80/20 Thinking to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment on its technologies, systems and policies and we will work with them on an ongoing basis throughout the year. We chose 80/20 Thinking because Simon Davies has spent the best part of thirty years championing consumer privacy and railing against infringements. We wanted our systems and policies to be open to the kind of unforgiving scrutiny Simon brings.

And yes, 80/20 Thinking does charge for its services, as conducting audits takes time and resources.

A: No, we do not modify web pages or inject ads. We only serve ads to the websites we partner with. In order to participate, websites have to insert a tag into their own page. If you have opted out, will still see ads as you browse - just as you do today - but they won't be from the OIX and they won't be relevant to your browsing.

Q:Would they consider hiring an external agency to audit the provisions for opt-out?

A: Yes. We already have an external auditor -- Ernst & Young, and 80/20 Thinking is conducting a Privacy Impact Assessment, but we would welcome suggestions for additional auditing.

A: Most people have a separate login if they are sharing a computer and they will therefore have a separate random number. But also, advertisers using our system can choose to show ads based on the page they are visiting, recently visited, or a longer term basis. Only the last of these would be affected if the computer and the login were share, so this scenario if possible but not that likely. If the person really wants to hide a surprise, they can switch webwise off!

Q: I would like to better understand the strict demarcation of ownership of equipment to be installed in the ISP to really understand the full content of the stream received at the point of entry to equipment under the control of Phorm. Bloggers purporting to be from BT claim that this is the FULL browsing (http - port 80) stream with IP addresses obfuscated in some way. Is this true? And if so, what safeguards over employee recruitment do Phorm have since they will be in an extremely powerful and trusted position, being able to read 10m peoples' web traffic.

A: No, this is not true. IP addresses are not passed in any form, even obfuscated, to Phorm. All that is passed is a limited digest of page data from each navigation. This data is never stored on disk and is immediately deleted from memory as soon as a product category match has been made.

Q: The same report also mentions detailed (but anonymous) logs that will be removed from the closed loop onto Phorm servers and kept for up-to 14 days. Why do they need these logs since the very thing that impressed 80/20 was the lack of need to store detailed personal information nor remove it from the closed loop

A: The logs mentioned in the E&Y audit report concern system health and error logs, not anything to do with users.

Q: Do phorm intend to resell any data, such as "clickstream" trends, perhaps even split by demographic, and if so, are they aware of the possibility that this data would be "de-anonymized" as reported on techcrunch and numerous sites with the AOL and Netflix "anonymous" releases.

A: Clickstream data is never stored. Therefore is cannot be sold on or 'deanonymised'. The AOL / Netflix situation cannot occur because the clickstream data has been deleted in real time as the page loads.

Q: Even if you do opt out your web traffic will still be intercepted and analysed, you just wont see the ads. Is this true?Q: Plus how will Phorm serve you the "correct" ads unless the traffic they have analysed can be traced back to your computer / IP address. Either Phorm are connected or they aren't, in which case the system can't work. Just replacing the IP with a "unique ID" doesn't make Phorm unconnected if there is a direct relationship between the two.Q: You maybe able to select to opt out of the adverts however BT will still be passing your personal and private information to Phorm, this will include the content of all emails you view online that are not covered by a secure connection (SSL).

Q: What safeguards are there to ensure that in the future Phorm doesn't alter or add to the amount and types of information/data is passed to and

The keynote is transparency: we will communicate any changes and our claims will continue to be subject to external scrutiny by formal audit, partner due diligence, customer vigilance and media interest.

Q: Does the opt out from Phorm satisfy the Data Protection act's provision that individuals can write to the Data Controller of the ISP in writing

The ISP will not be passing any personal information to Phorm. We do not tie into their authentication systems or use any subscriber information.

Q: And does the service ever modify information you receive via http that might not be a web-page, i.e. is it possible for it to accidentally break

We operate a whitelist of user-agents corresponding to major browsers (e.g. Firefox, IE, Opera). Other user-agents are ignored.

A: This isn't inconsistent. The Profiler is owned by the ISP. If someone opts out no data is passed from the ISP to Phorm.

Q: However, I would like to know who provides the software for the "Profiler" and if it's not written by the ISP, how does the ISP check that it does what it's meant to?

A: Phorm provides the software for the profiles, just like Cisco, for example, provides software for an ISP router. The ISP can see exactly what data is being passed in and out of its systems and has complete control over it.

Q: I still want answers to my cookie question. Part II Section 11 "Right to prevent processing for purposes of direct marketing". Is this direct marketing - well as is clear to all concerned there HAS to be some link between the profile and the target computer else the ads would not get served. Opt out by cookie is insufficient in my mind.

A: It's important to understand there are two distinctly separate processes in the Phorm system: data capture and ad serving. The data capture system only stores one item of information on your computer -- a random number. The random number is the only thing that distinguishes your browser from the millions of others on the internet. It does not contain any information about you or your computer. The only person able to make that connection is you, as you have that cookie in your browser.

As you browse your browsing behaviour is matched against pre-defined advertiser categories for everyday products eg travel or sport.

No urls, browsing histories or IP addresses are retained and the raw data used to make the match is deleted in real time - by the time the page loads. There is, in essence, no data other than the categories and the random number stored in the system and so it's impossible to know (or indeed reverse engineer from that) who you are or where you've been.

In the ad serving phase, when your computer requests an advert from the OIX (because a website has included our tag in their page), the browser sends the random number and the categories are used to deliver the targeted ad, not the details of your browsing, or anything about you or your computer.

If you clear your cookies regularly or if you'd like to ensure that Webwise is permanently switched off, simply add "www.webwise.net" to the Blocked Cookies settings in your browser.

Mardell's Europe Day in pictures Moon marvel

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Web desktop targets 'cybernomads'

Many in developing world rely on computer centres

A virtual desktop aimed at users who access the web via cybercafes is attracting interest from organisations set up to bridge the digital divide

Offered by Luxembourg-based start-up Jooce, it is being billed as a way of personalising any computer.

Jooce is targeting the estimated 500 million people who log on to the internet from a cybercafe every day.

Its free web-based desktop could prove valuable for those who can't afford their own PC, said experts.

Jooce offers users the functionality they would get from their personal computer on any machine, allowing them access to files, e-mail, instant messaging, storage and other applications.

"It's a platform that will make it much easier for the world's cybernomads to manage their digital lives," said Jooce founder Stefan Surzyck.

"The one thing that has been missing is a place on the internet where these people can properly manage their online lives - their very own private space online," he said.

A public desktop - known as a Joocetop - is also available to allow friends to access and share files. A dedicated e-mail client is also in development.

Bandwidth issues

Jooce offers a personal desktop on any computer

Eloisa San Mateo is a regional IT coordinator for the Philippines National Computer Centres - government-sponsored cybercafes set up to provide net access for those in remote areas.

She sees potential for Jooce as a storage device for those who use the centres but has some concerns.

"It seems to require a lot of memory and while the performance of Jooce on high-end computers is very good, when it is run on lower spec machines with poor bandwidth it takes too long," she said.

She is currently running workshops to give locals a feel for the system and is looking to install it on machines over the next six months.

Meddia Mayanja is a senior program officer of Telecentre.org, an organisation that offers advice to telecentres in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

He sees new technologies such as Jooce as crucial if publicly-funded net access centres are going to remain relevant and useful to the audience they intend to serve.

"It is one of many applications that add value to users," he said.

Jooce is also working with the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) to bolster its telecentre programme - a network of cyber kiosks across the developing world.

In India, it is partnering with charity Mission 2007 and ISP Tatatel to support their digital divide activities.

It is also seeing big interest from China.

Heavy-weight backer

Jooce is one of many companies which offer so-called web-based operating systems.

Companies such as Global Hosted Operating System (g.ho.st), desktoptwo and startforce also offer net-based desktops allowing users to access files and applications from any browser.

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with JupiterResearch, believes the concept of a web OS is a misleading one.

"WebOS is a buzzword but it has little that technically represents an operating system and is more about aggregating functionality," he said.

"It is a crowded market but it is interesting that people are more and more looking to have their digital personas linked into online universes," he said.

Jooce has been in public beta testing for one month and in its first week of operation had 60,000 sign up for a free account.

It has a heavy-weight backer in the form of Mangrove - the venture capital firm that provided the initial funding for voice-over-IP platform Skype.

Online technology news site CNET.com has nominated Jooce as a finalist in its 2008 Webware 100 awards.Texan tango 'Troops chased me' Bound for Baghdad

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Quick guide: Cracked DRM systems

Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are a technology used by many of the world's leading content providers to prevent piracy.

Critics argue that many of the leading DRM systems are easily broken. Here is a look at four of the main DRM systems and how effective they are.

Windows Media DRM is used in the BBC's iPlayer

Windows Media DRM is a Microsoft-produced copyright protection system intended to "securely deliver content for playback on computers, portable devices and network devices".

The system has been updated several times since it was first released in 1999. The most up-to-date release is version 11.

Various tools have been created to strip files of the DRM, such as FairUse4WM, a program released in August 2006 by a hacker named Viodentia.

Nine days after the crack first appeared, Microsoft released a new version to prevent FairUse4WM from working. Within three days hackers released a new version of the tool.

The tool can be used to strip DRM from programmes with the BBC iPlayer.

On 13 July, a new version of the tool called 1.3fix-2 was released. It can be used with Windows Vista and can also strip DRM from songs downloaded from Microsoft's online music store, Zune Marketplace.

Return to menu

Several tools have been released to circumvent FairPlay

FairPlay is the DRM of choice for Apple products.

It is built into the Quick Time media player and is used by the iPhone and iPod. Protected music from the iTunes store also uses the system.

Users can copy downloaded songs to a CD and then copy the disc back on to the computer to remove the DRM - but the quality of the music is affected.

The first tool to circumvent FairPlay was a program called QTFairUse, released by infamous hacker Jon Lech Johansen, in November 2003.

Since then several versions of the program have been distributed to keep up to date with new versions of iTunes and FairPlay.

Other programs such as Playfair, Hymn and JHymn have also been developed to get around FairPlay. Following updates to the DRM and legal action by Apple, these systems no longer work.

Return to menu

AACS is used by both next generation DVD formats

The Advanced Access Content System (AACS) is the DRM of choice for next generation HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

It was first introduced on high definition discs in June 2006 and uses a system of keys to decrypt content in a player.

These keys can be revoked by the AACS licensing authority if compromised.

Six months after the first discs hit shelves, a hacker known as muslix64 released a tool called BackupHDDVD which circumvented AACS on a Windows PC. Several other similar tools followed.

Many keys were made available on the internet.

In April this year, hackers discovered a method to retrieve the crucial keys using a tweaked HD DVD drive for an Xbox 360. The hack still works even when keys are revoked.

Return to menu

Many of the tools allow DVDs to run on open source software

Content Scramble System (CSS) is used on almost all commercially produced DVD-Video discs.

It was first introduced in 1996 by the DVD consortium.

In 1999, hacker Jon Lech Johnasen, along with two anonymous hackers, cracked the system and distributed the DeCSS tool on the internet.

Following its release, the system was also found to be susceptible to a so-called brute force attack, where thousands of different codes are tried in order to break the encryption.

On average, the DRM could be stripped off a movie in 24 hours using this method.

Since 1999, hundreds of different variants have appeared on the net, many developed to add DVD support to open source movie players.

Return to menu

Survival questions Key question Blu-ray victory

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

'Hacker' launches iTunes copying

The software will allow the sharing of music bought on iTunes

The release of software from a firm run by a notorious Norwegian hacker is likely to cause waves in the music and film download world.

Jon Lech Johansen became the "enfant terrible" of the DRM industry when he released software which cracked the encryption codes on DVDs, aged just 15.

His firm, DoubleTwist, has now released software allowing users to share digital media files across devices.

It would allow songs bought on Apple's iTunes to be shared on other devices.

At the moment, the only portable music player which can store content downloaded from the iTunes store is Apple's iPod.

In 2003 Mr Johansen distributed a program which bypassed Apple's Fairplay system, the software that enforces this relationship. Since then he has had several other well-publicised run-ins with the firm.

The software from San Francisco-based company DoubleTwist will allow users to share both user-generated and professionally created music, photos and video clips between computers, mobiles and game consoles.

Media which lives on a computer can be moved to a variety of mobile devices by dragging and dropping the files to a desktop folder which then drops copies on the external device over the web.

Initially the system will allow file-sharing with Sony's PSP games console, Nokia's N-series mobile, Sony Ericsson's Walkman and Cybershot handsets and Microsoft's Windows Mobile smartphones.

Tower of Babel

The software converts media stored in one file format to those used by the other devices in a system that mimics the process of ripping a CD onto a computer.

One hundred songs can be converted in about half and hour, with a slight degradation in sound quality, according to the firm.

With digital media such as video from a friend's cell phone or your own iTunes playlists, it's a jungle out there," said Monique Farantzos, co-founder of DoubleTwist.

"The digital media landscape has become a tower of Babel, alienating and frustrating consumers. Our goal is to provide a simple and well integrated solution that the average consumer can use to eliminate the headaches associated with their expanding digital universe," she said.

The company is confident there will not be any legal challenges from Apple.

"All we are facilitating are friends sending things to one another," Ms Farantzos told the Reuters news agency.

The software is available as a free download from the company's website.Survival questions Key question Blu-ray victory

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Why the future is in your hands

GPS is starting to appear on more handsets

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.

Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.

"Converged devices are always with you and always connected," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Last year Nokia sold almost 200m camera phones and about 146m music phones, making it the world's biggest seller of digital cameras and MP3 players.

In the coming year the firm predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone. Form and function

Nigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, said: "All of those single use devices - MP3 players, digital camera, GPS - are collapsing onto the phone."

"We are going past the point where this was a phone with a few other things," he said.

Symbian's operating system shipped on 188 million phones last year and a third of those came with GPS.

"We see mobile phones evolving into multi-functional devices that now support consumer electronics, multimedia entertainment and mobile professional enterprise applications; all converging," said Luis Pineda, from mobile phone chip firm Qualcomm.

More and more people are snapping shots with a handset

The first phones powered by a chip running at 1Ghz will hit the market later this year, seven years after the first desktop chip broke the gigahertz barrier.

Qualcomm's 1Ghz Snapdragon chipset will debut inside a number of handsets, including some from Samsung and HTC

"It's a first in the industry for a wireless chipset," said Mr Pineda.

As well as raw horsepower Snapdragon also features a dedicated application processor, as well as the ability to handle 12 megapixel digital photos and up to 720p high definition video imaging.

Mr Clifford from Symbian said the mobile industry had to deliver multi-function devices which did not compromise.

He said: "When we look at what is collapsing on to these devices and people's expectations with their experiences on single-use specialized devices there is going to be rising expectations."

Chip shop

More than 90% of the world's mobile phones are powered by technology created by British firm Arm. It designs chip architectures that it licenses to semiconductors makers such as Qualcomm and Broadcom.

Ian Drew from Arm said future mobile phones demanded ever more processing power.

But building chips with greater processing was not a straightforward, he said.

The future of the internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or at the office; it's going to be mobile

"It needs to get into your pocket. And there's no fan. It needs to work for days rather than hours."

He added: "When you start adding multi media experiences - such as 3D graphics, video, and games - there are two ways to do that: you can get bigger and bigger processors or you have multi core where you can switch off a processor when you don't need it."

Arm is demonstrating a chip architecture, called Coretex A9, that will offer four cores, or processors, on a single chip.

Symbian has been working with Arm on future uses for multi-core mobile phones.

"You can use massive amounts of processing if you need it. But if you don't you can power down the cores that aren't required," said Mr Clifford.

Symmetrical Multi Processing will drive the next generation of applications on a phone, he added.

"Silicon vendors are looking very seriously at how they integrate SMP."

Mr Clifford added: "The future of the internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or at the office; it's going to be mobile."

The gaming abilities of handsets are rapidly improving

"That is one of the next single usage devices that will start feeling the pressure from the mobile device," he said.

3D graphics acceleration is becoming standard on many of today's mobile phones and specialists like Nvidia have joined the market.

Mr Clifford said today's most powerful mobile phones, such as Nokia's N96 and NTTDoCoMo's 905 series have the same power as a laptop from 2000.

Nvidia's APX 2500 chip has enough 3D graphics acceleration to handle Quake 3, a PC game from 1999, on a mobile phone.

Handset owners were also beginning to expect the same online experience they have on their desktop PCs on their mobile phones.

"Web 2.0, social networking and video sharing; that's a real driver of horsepower," said Mr Drew from Arm.

He added: "But you need to be able to get data in. The next generation of mobile phones need high performance radios - they will have high data rates that will enable this content to be streamed to you."

Symbian is working on technology called Freeway to give phones the ability to move seamlessly between wireless networks, like wi-fi and cell networks like 3G and 4G.

"We don't want people to feel the mobile web is a second class experience."Opposition joy In pictures Battling on

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Game creators look to the future

Games aimed at casual players have been big in 2007

The developers of some of the world's most popular video games are in San Francisco this week to discuss the future of the industry.

They will look back on one of their most successful years and discuss tackling the challenges ahead.

Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers' Conference said: "We had an incredible banner year in 2007 with games like Bioshock, Halo 3 and Uncharted.

In the US the industry's revenues grew 43%, with software sales up a third on the previous year.

Speaking to BBC News, Mr Moledina said: "It's often dangerous to make predictions about the future but the industry has taken on a sense of casualisation."

In this sense casual games are those that people can play and complete in minutes rather than hours and are aimed at children, women and older people. Many of the titles prepared for Nintendo's Wii are casual games.

He added: "There's definitely an increasing interest in approaching that larger audience of media consumers."

New markets

Traditionally the games industry has concentrated on its core audience. Titles like Halo 3, which pulled in the biggest ever earnings for an entertainment release in a single day, showed that the hard core gamer remained a potent market.

How on earth will the games industry surpass last year's commercial and critical high?

For instance, he said, Guitar Hero games made more than $820m at retail, a record for any single franchise in any one year.

Mr Moledina added: "The Wii has re-proven the point that five to 95 year olds like playing games."

Veteran game designer Sid Meier will speak at the conference to shed light on "the key things you need to capture the interest of the public at large".

"We have Facebook here talking about how they have managed to get so many eyeballs playing games in such a short space of time," he said.

Developers and publishers were looking at this area very closely, he added.

But, he said, these new developments would not change everything. "Not all games are going to be casual. There's still going to be a huge market for the core base which drives everything."

One of the games aimed squarely at the core audience in 2008 is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which will be demoed at the week-long conference.

Gaining control

The event will also feature talk about the future of the human computer interface.

"Game worlds are a fairly complex universe, however the controllers we have are often a bit intimidating," said Mr Moledina.

Emotiv systems will be showing off its latest headset that uses sensors to detect brain waves to allow gamers to control characters and objects in a game world.

Mobile gaming is starting to be taken seriously

Gamers can swing an imaginary golf club or interact with a 3D world just by using their hands and arms and without the need for a controller.

"A lot of people experiment with different ways to get into the game; to convert a fairly complex way that humans think and behave and have that map in a natural way to a complex game world," explained Mr Moledina.

The conference also features a strong mobile gaming element.

"We are seeing more and more big game companies take the space seriously. The sea change is that traditional game developers are less snarky about mobile and casual than they were because of the power of phones today."

Microsoft's head of Live services, John Schappert, will give one of the conference's keynotes, where he is expected to unveil new features for the Xbox Live service.

"Microsoft hasn't delivered a keynote for two years so it will be interesting to see what they have for us," said Mr Moledina.Opposition joy In pictures Battling on

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Meeting the man behind Moore's Law

Dr Moore has now helped found several companies

In April 1965 a 36-year old electronics buff jotted down his thoughts on the future of the juvenile silicon chip industry.

Writing in a "throw-away" journal, Gordon Moore accurately imagined a future filled with mobile phones, home computers, and even intelligent cars.

But it was a much more prosaic prediction that has come to dominate his life and the industry that he helped found.

"I could see a change coming that the electronics were going to get significantly cheaper," says the co-founder of Intel, the largest maker of computer chips.

In the article in Electronics Magazine, he predicted that the number of transistors on a silicon chip would double every year for ten years.

He later revised the forecast to doubling every two years or so, as the initial breakneck speed of development and shrinkage waned. It was a prediction that became known as Moore's Law and it has helped drive the computer revolution over the last four decades.

Modest growth

At first glance it is not the kind of observation that would catapult a person to fame.

But the day I meet him, a now silver haired Dr Moore has just given a talk to a packed auditorium of people and he is surrounded by crowds of autograph hunters who were not even born when he made his off the cuff observations.

Moore's Law has become shorthand for the pace of technological change. It set a standard for the chip industry's phenomenal growth and has in turn underpinned the world's digital awakening.

"It was an exciting technology in the beginning. It had so much potential, we just had no idea how much potential," he says.

"When Intel was formed [in 1968] the total semiconductor industry was only a couple of billion dollars worldwide - today it is 300 billion."

And as the industry has delivered each successive generation of faster, smaller, cheaper chips, it has opened up rafts of new possibilities for silicon that have ultimately delivered the technologies he predicted more than 40 years ago.

Reflecting on his prophesies today, a retired and quietly-spoken Dr Moore is characteristically modest.

"When I went back and read that I was amazed that I predicted all of those things," he says.

But, as a young engineer, he was at least uniquely placed to make his key observation, having co-founded Fairchild Semiconductors, maker of the first commercial integrated circuit, or chip.

"I was directing a lab where we were trying to advance the technology and from my perspective I could see some of these things coming that weren't generally visible to the rest of the population," he says.

Force for change

At the time, computers were mainly used by the military and PCs were unheard of, he says.

"Computers were in glass rooms tended to by a core of monks that knew how to do the proper incantations."

But as the silicon chip industry took hold and computer makers learnt how to exploit the technology everything changed.

"Shortly after that the commercial market just completely dwarfed anything in the military," he says.

And what had originally been just a prediction by Dr Moore became a self-fulfilling prophesy.

"It has become a driving force for the industry," he says. "Competitors have realised that if they don't move at least that rate they are going to fall behind."

So far silicon producers have managed to keep on or ahead of the curve for more than four decades by continually shrinking the technology and packing more and more components inside a chip.

"It's a peculiar feature of this technology that by making things smaller everything gets better," says Dr Moore. "The transistors get faster, you can put more of a system on a chip."

But more importantly, and perhaps more curiously, the chips also become cheaper.

And this is the key point of his 1965 paper, he says. Moore's Law is an economic law and would probably have driven the industry regardless of whether or not he had made his prediction.

"I am not sure that having Moore's Law held up there as a yardstick increases the pressure [on chip manufacturers] because the need to remain competitive is so strong."

Chip future

As a result, the industry has grown "far beyond" what he could have imagined in 1965, he says.

Moore interview

"It is surprising that any of the things we predicted are still valid."

He is most impressed with the industry's inventiveness, he says, allowing it to overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable technical hurdles as it grew.

"The industry has succeeded in getting around all of the ones that have been thrown in front of it," he says. "It has been much more successful than I probably would have predicted."

But, Dr Moore says, the industry can only go on shrinking transistors for so long.

Eventually, the features will become so small that the atomic structure of the materials will be a limitation, possibly spelling the end of Moore's Law

So what does he think will happen in the next 40 years?

"I'm through with making predictions," he chuckles. "Get it right once and quit."

Return to text

In pictures Balance of forces In pictures

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Getting more from Moore's Law

For more than 40 years the silicon industry has delivered ever faster, cheaper chips.

The advances have underpinned everything from the rise of mobile phones to digital photography and portable music players.

Chip-makers have been able to deliver many of these advances by shrinking the components on a chip.

By making these building blocks, such as transistors, smaller they have become faster and firms have been able to pack more of them into the same area.

But according to many industry insiders this miniaturisation cannot continue forever.

"The consensus in the industry is that we can do that shrink for about another ten years and then after that we have to figure out new ways to bring higher capability to our chips," said Professor Stanley Williams of Hewlett Packard.

Even Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel and the man that gave his name to the law that dictates the industry's progression, admits that it can only go on for a few more years.

"Moore's Law should continue for at least another decade," he recently told the BBC News website. "That's about as far as I can see."

Tiny tubes

As a result, researchers around the world are engaged in efforts to allow the industry to continue delivering the advances that computer users have come to expect.

Key areas include advanced fabrication techniques, building new components and finding new materials to augment silicon.

Already new materials are creeping into modern chips.

To overcome this, companies have replaced the gate dielectrics, previously made from silicon dioxide, with an oxide based on the metal hafnium.

The material's development and integration into working components has been described by Dr Moore as "the biggest change in transistor technology" since the late 1960s.

But IBM researchers are working on materials that they believe offer even bigger advances.

"Carbon nanotubes are a step beyond [hafnium]," explained Dr Phaedon Avouris of the company.

'Superior' design

"They are a more drastic change but still preserve the basic architecture of field effect transistors."

Dr Avouris believes they can be used to replace a critical element of the chip, known as the channel.

Today this is commonly made of silicon and is the area of the transistor through which electrons flow.

Chip makers are constantly battling to make the channel length in transistors smaller and smaller, to increase the performance of the devices.

Carbon nanotube's small size and "superior" electrical properties should be able to deliver this, said Dr Avouris.

Crucially, he also believes the molecules can be integrated with traditional silicon manufacturing processes, meaning the technology would more likely be accepted by an industry that has spent billions perfecting manufacturing techniques.

The team have already shown off working transistors and are currently working on optimising their production and integration into working devices.

Tiny improvement

Professor Williams, at Hewlett Packard is also working on technology that could be incorporated into the future generations of chips.

Nano chip developer Multi-core chips Multi-core 'myth'

"Now we have this type of device we have a broader palette with which to paint our circuits," said Professor Williams.

Professor Williams and his team have shown that by putting two of these devices together - a configuration called a crossbar latch - it could do the job of a transistor.

"A cross bar latch has the type of functionality you want from a transistor but it's working with very different physics," he explained.

Crucially, these devices can also be made much smaller than a transistor.

"And as they get smaller they get better," he said.

Professor Williams and his team are currently making prototype hybrid circuits - built of memristors and transistors - in a fabrication plant in North America.

"We want to keep the functional equivalent of Moore's Law going for many decades into the future," said Professor Williams.In pictures Balance of forces In pictures

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Facing the future Facebook style

Facebook has become so influential it is bound to create headlines

Regular commentator Bill Thompson ruminates on the inevitability of Facebook being in the news in 2008

It might just manage to avoid upsetting its users with new services such as Beacon, the misjudged advertising feature that told your friends about your purchases.

It might spot fake profiles of famous people, like the two Bilawal Bhutto entries that fooled both Facebook and some newspapers, and remove them before they get noticed.

And it could even avoid falling victim to one of the frauds that are likely to be perpetrated against users of all social network sites.

But even if Facebook is lucky it will still get a lot of coverage.

Because during 2007 it became the social site of choice for journalists, politicians, bloggers and others who see MySpace as for the kids and LinkedIn as too business-oriented for friends.

Face off with blogger

The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.

It also means that when Facebook is directly involved in a story then it will be bigger than it may otherwise have been.

We saw this recently in the fuss over the site's treatment of Robert Scoble, one of the more significant technology bloggers and a former Microsoft employee and evangelist.

Scoble, who has complained that Facebook limits him to 'only' 5,000 online friends, used a program to read each name, e-mail address and date of birth and import them into another social service, Plaxo Pulse.

When you sign up for Facebook "you agree not to use the Service or the Site to harvest or collect e-mail addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications".

Since Scoble was using an automated script to harvest addresses he was clearly breaking this condition, so Facebook suspended his account just as it would for any other user.

Data issues

However Scoble is an A-list blogger so when he wrote about his suspension it generated a storm of comment.

At first people were broadly on his side, criticising Facebook for acting as if it owned his network of contacts.

Others then weighed in, pointing out that the birth dates and e-mail addresses Scoble had taken didn't belong to him but to his Facebook friends, many of whom might not want to be imported into Plaxo without their consent.

Company and blogger have now made up, with Scoble having achieved his goal of enhancing his notoriety and outsider status by standing up for users right to have access to 'their' data - even when that data is personal information about other people.

And Facebook has backed away from another PR embarrassment, although not without some loss of face since it is unlikely that an unknown accountant from Basingstoke would have been allowed to return after such an egregious breach of the site's rules.

Blurring boundaries

The spat has helped highlight the issue of data ownership and data portability, and may even lead to more careful consideration of who can do what with the information found around the internet.

But it also shows how important Facebook has become as the focal point for any discussion of this type. It is our lightning conductor for many of the issues which are emerging as important in the new, online world, and that will ensure that it will be dragged into stories to make a point, even when it is not directly involved.

Of course the chances are that the site will also merit some coverage because of the way it grows.

In his list of technology predictions for 2008 noted computer scientist Ed Felten includes 'a Facebook application will cause a big privacy to-do', and he's not alone in this belief.

One reason for this is that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg comes from the generation that grew up with the network in their lives, for whom the boundaries between offline and online relationships have always been indeterminate and to some extent irrelevant.

Mark Zuckerberg, part of a new generation of networkers

Zuckerberg's instincts are those of the children who flock to MySpace, Bebo and YouTube, not those of the older users who are now using the tools his company has developed.

This culture clash is an interesting reversal of the old order, in which teenagers would grow into a world defined by their parents and have to learn how to assert their own desires and demands.

Adults going online for the first time are entering a world that has been shaped by the interests, desires and concerns of the younger generation, a world that does not operate according to the rules they have followed in real life.

It is hardly surprising that there are differences of opinion, or that the practices of the various social sites sometimes cause concern for parents, politicians or teachers.

It will be interesting to see whether some compromise can be achieved in the coming months and years, or whether the rapid rate of network development means that even Mark Zuckerberg will end the year complaining that the youngsters are just not behaving responsibly online.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Smart tags hail the web of things

Tags are helping monitor health and safety on building sites

The humble radio tag is growing up.

So say researchers and developers who are finding ways to make the tiny devices much more than just a hi-tech price tag that can help shops and supermarkets track cans of beans from warehouse to store shelf.

"It all started with simple radio tags and asset tracking," said Gerd Kortuem, "but that really only gives you an identifier for an object."

Now, said Dr Kortuem, tiny Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are getting smarter and more communicative as bigger memory, basic processing power and wireless technologies are added to them.

"We are trying to embed a little more intelligence beyond location by adding sensors and by networking these objects together," he said.Safe and sound

Dr Kortuem and colleagues at the University of Lancaster are working on a project that combines smart tags and personal identifiers to keep an eye on people working on construction sites using heavy machine tools.

"It's to keep track of how long they are used, to figure out vibrations generated by these tools," he said. "It's for health and safety. We create personalised health and safety records for every worker."

The future of the internet is an internet of connected objects

Workers will also be able to look at their own health records to get a sense of their exposure to potentially harmful working environments and raise awareness of the dangers.

For instance, prolonged exposure to vibrations from drills and other tools can lead to a condition called "vibration white finger" that can leave extremities numb and painful.

Many hardware makers, such as router maker Cisco, are also starting to put smarter tags on devices so they can keep a record of their working life and can call for help if they are about to fail or are in need of servicing.Smarter homes

In the home too some gadgets are starting to use RFID tags to become smarter and help their owners cope with the pace of modern life.

The latest version of the Nabaztag wi-fi rabbit gadget has been fitted with a sensor that can interrogate the radio tags.

The rabbit can also read out e-mails, monitor RSS feeds and the weather for its owners. Rival devices such as the Chumby and Tux droid perform similar functions.

The rabbit can recognise lots of different objects

Jean-Francois Kitten, a spokesman for Violet, said at first only five titles, some stories and some educational, would have tags but more were expected soon.

When a tagged book is waved under the Nabaztag's nose it pulls a recording of a story being read from the net and begins to play it. Moving the rabbit's ears lets listeners skip forward or back in the text.

The rabbit also remembers where it reached in the book so, in the case of a story, it can pick up at the right place in the action when listeners want to continue.

"In the average house you have about 10,000 different objects and right now you have maybe three objects connected to the net - phone, computer and perhaps a rabbit," he said.

"But we think that more and more objects are going to be connected," said Mr Kitten.

Mr Kitten said putting tags on books had huge potential. For instance, he said, a tagged book could become a key to future content if a novel was made in to a film or game. When the rabbit read the tag its owner would get the chance to watch the movie online or download a game.

"It's a pedagogical way to explain what you can do with RFID and interactive objects," he said.

Violet also had plans to sell RFID stamps, or ztamps, that can be stuck on any object which can then be associated with almost any net content. When they go on sale three ztamps will cost 1 (1.34 euros).

Nabaztag owners will be able to customise what happens when a tagged object is waved under the nose of their wi-fi rabbit.

"The future of the internet is an internet of connected objects," he said.In pictures Benazir's ghost In pictures

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Amazon.com adds web services to its offerings

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Critics thought it was over the top when Amazon.com Inc. expanded from books into music in 1998. When the Web retailer let competitors start selling things alongside its own inventory in 2000, they said Amazon had gone nuts.

Amazon.com employees pack books for shipment in July at the company's facility in Fernley, Nevada.

In both cases, Amazon proved them wrong. Media sales now total in the billions each quarter, and third-party merchandise, more profitable for Amazon than its own wares, makes up nearly a third of everything sold through the site.

Now, Amazon is making an even greater stretch -- selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services.

The venture, which Amazon expects will grow into a significant business segment, could help keep the company strong if retailers get hit by an economic downturn.

More broadly, Amazon Web Services, as the business is called, could improve chances for a new generation of Web startups by slashing how much they spend up front on costly infrastructure.

MileMeter Inc., a Dallas-based startup that plans to sell auto insurance by the mile, started out running its own server in a data center. Recently, it moved most of its applications onto virtual computers in Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud.

EC2 lets its customers quickly start up a virtual computer in the "cloud" -- industry slang for data centers around the world -- then use it as a Web server or for crunching data and shut it down just as fast.

"I don't need to have a systems administrator or a network administrator," said Chief Executive Chris Gay. "I don't have to worry about hardware becoming irrelevant."

Gay said he also uses Amazon's online payments service and is evaluating its data storage and simple database services. During the first dot-com boom, he said, "It was a badge of strength to have as much as possible in house.

"Now, unless that is your core business ... it's a liability."

Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services, said Amazon wants entrepreneurs to focus on their ideas, not on hardware leases and crashing servers.

"We want to let developers innovate and make money," he said.

Amazon is certainly not the only player. James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research, said Akamai Technologies Inc., Enki and Terremark each offer at least a portion of the Web services Amazon is selling. IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. offer pricier versions aimed at big businesses, while Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are thought to be working on services similar to Amazon's.

Amazon comes closest to utility-style billing, Staten said. Most competitors demand a contract or minimum payments.

Amazon, which gives away the computer code to access its services, bases its fees on how much data is shifted around and stored. For example, the company charges 15 cents per month for every gigabyte of data stored in its Simple Storage Service. Developers pay another 10 cents each time they send a gigabyte into the cloud and 18 cents per terabyte when they pull data back out.

SmugMug Inc., a photo sharing startup, had considered storing its users' digital pictures and movies in the cloud with other services. But "the pricing was out of our reach, and it wasn't simple to engineer" before Amazon Web Services launched, said co-founder Chris MacAskill.

Today, the Mountain View, California-based company keeps more than 400 terabytes of data in Amazon's Simple Storage Service. It also uses up to 750 "instances," or virtual machines, in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud during peak hours to help turn its clients' high-resolution photos and video files into different sizes for display online.

In the first 12 months it used Amazon Web Services, SmugMug saved $1 million.

"It is hard to get your head around: 'Why is this retailer that ships me toys for my kids for Christmas ... also my supplier of IT services?"' MacAskill said.

Amazon executives would say that's because theirs is a technology company, not just a retailer.

In 2005, it ramped up spending on "technology and content," a catchall expense line that includes data centers and R&D to support its own global growth, Web Services, its third-party seller platform, its digital music and movie download stores and other projects.

In 2005 and 2006, the company dropped $1.11 billion on technology and content, eating into margins and souring Wall Street on its stock. With Web Services, Amazon has a chance to earn back a slice of that investment.

It's too soon to tell if Amazon will be able to turn Web Services into a business with revenue to rival its retail lines. The company declined to say what Web Services brings in, saying only that it had signed up 330,000 customers -- startups, Fortune 500 companies, students, researchers and others -- by late 2007.

"Is it any meaningful percentage of revenue? I doubt it," said Global Crown Capital analyst Martin Pyykkonen. "As far as being a technology company...Eh. It depends on how you want to get into labeling it. It's retail."

It's also not clear how many startups will want to outsource their data center functions.

At Shelfari, a social networking startup for avid readers that is partly funded by Amazon, Chief Executive Officer Josh Hug doesn't intend to use the new Web services.

Having IT staffers to keep a close eye on things is important for a consumer service, Hug said. "It's worth the extra cost."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Scan, deposit checks from home

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Online banking service provider CheckFree Corp. is rolling out technology that could mean consumers will no longer have to go to a bank branch to deposit checks.

Called Remote Deposit Capture, the technology has been around for years and lets people scan checks through their home computers and deposit them electronically. But it has been used mainly for businesses.

Customers want to be able to deposit checks without having to go to banks, said Rod Springhetti, CheckFree's vice president of global strategic marketing, and banks want to be able to offer that.

"I think the ability to remotely capture a check will become part of the standard features and functions of online banking," Springhetti said.

CheckFree said the service is available starting this week for any consumers who bank online, as long as their banks offer it.

Recently acquired by Brookfield-based Fiserv Inc. for about $4.4 billion, CheckFree has been in discussions with institutions large and small, though none have committed to using the technology, Springhetti said.

Bob Meara, a senior analyst for research firm Celent, said lots of smaller competitors may follow CheckFree's lead, but it remains unclear how many banks will adopt it and how consumers will react.

"Eventually, it will be a staple element in banks online and the mobile banking platform," he said. "That doesn't mean every consumer is going to pay attention to it."

A recent Celent survey found that about 20 percent of banks had the technology for consumers or planned to get it, and another 20 percent were considering it -- while about 90 percent either use the technology with business clients or want to.

CheckFree's technology already is in the top 150 banks. Springhetti said it is fairly simple to use, and banks can tailor it for their clients.

Customers need a scanner, which is often standard on printers now, a computer and an Internet connection. They'll go to their home banking site, enter the amount of the check, scan both sides, do a quick review and submit it to the bank.

Banks will have the option to add their own fraud protection to make sure bad checks aren't being cashed, he said. Normal processing times will apply, he said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Tax TVs, video games, outdoor group says

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- Dave Gilligan remembers being pushed outside to play baseball and other sports, but feeling it just wasn't for him.

Dave Gilligan plays a video game at the store he co-owns, Gamers Anonymous, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So the 24-year-old business owner is skeptical about a proposal to nudge kids off the couch and out the door by taxing televisions and video games sold in New Mexico. The idea could backfire, he says.

"If you take a kid that's just playing his X-Box or whatever and you take him outside and you make him play baseball, he's going to hate it," said Gilligan, co-owner of Gamers Anonymous, an Albuquerque video game store. "There's nothing wrong with sitting at home playing games. Everybody's doing it now."

But a coalition of groups, led by the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, is sold on the idea that outdoor education programs can inspire children in a way that video games and television cannot.

The coalition wants state lawmakers to create a No Child Left Inside Fund with a 1 percent tax on TVs, video games and video game equipment. The fund would help pay for outdoor education throughout the state.

Supporters of the tax -- which would be the first of its kind in the nation -- say outdoor programs have been shown to improve students' abilities in the classroom, boost their self-confidence and teach them stewardship and discipline.

"We believe that an outdoor education program in New Mexico could be funded through a tax on the very activities that are divorcing kids from nature, promoting more sedentary lifestyles," said Michael Casaus, Sierra Club's New Mexico youth representative. "One of those culprits is TV and what we call screen time."

Blogs dedicated to the gaming world have been abuzz over the proposal, with critics complaining that they shouldn't have to foot the bill for parents who don't know how to raise their children. Some have seized the moment to talk about gaming's benefits.

Gilligan, for example, says he learned to read at a young age thanks to video games. He also attributes his interest in art to gaming.

"I'm not a very athletic person," he said. "I kept playing video games and eventually my parents accepted that, and now it's my career and I make good money so I'm happy."

Sean Bersell, a spokesman for the Entertainment Merchants Association, said the video game industry has fueled advances in computer technology, such as faster processors and better graphics and sound.

Supporters of the tax are wrong to suggest that such complex problems as low test scores and childhood obesity can be solved by turning off the TV, said Bersell, whose group represents about 125 retailers in New Mexico.

"Targeting a small category of entertainment as somehow a major contributor to these problem is just not justified and frankly it's not supported by a scientific consensus," he said.

The tax would put New Mexico retailers at a disadvantage as they compete with online stores and retailers that offer downloadable games, Bersell warned.

Supporters argue that just as health programs are often supported by excise taxes on cigarettes or alcohol, an excise tax on games and TVs would provide a steady source of cash for outdoor education. Legislative analysts have said the tax would generate about $4 million a year.

New Mexico State Parks already offers outdoor programs, but the funding is just a fraction of what the tax would bring in.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Shooting down of satellite doesn't worry space station crew

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- Military plans to shoot down a damaged U.S. spy satellite carrying toxic fuel will not concern the crew aboard the international space station, commander Peggy Whitson said Saturday.

Astronaut Stanley Love, upside down at left, installs a solar experiment package Friday.

The military hopes to smash the satellite as soon as next week -- just before it enters Earth's atmosphere -- with a missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the northern Pacific Ocean.

It was unclear how close the satellite will be to the space station when it is shot down. NASA referred questions to the Defense Department, which did not immediately return a message seeking clarification.

Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and French astronaut Leopold Eyharts will still be in orbit 215 miles above Earth when the satellite is targeted. The satellite will be about 150 miles up when the shot is fired.

Whitson said NASA and the Department of Defense "love the station crew" and would not put them in harm's way.

"So, no, we're not worried about it," she said in a news conference with the 10-person shuttle-station crew.

Atlantis and its seven astronauts will be safely back on Earth before the Pentagon takes aim. NASA plans to open up the backup landing site in California to increase chances of an on-time landing next Wednesday even if weather is a problem in Florida.

Left alone, the satellite would be expected to hit Earth during the first week of March. About half of the 5,000-pound spacecraft would be expected to survive its blazing descent through the atmosphere and would scatter debris over several hundred miles.

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying fuel called hydrazine that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it hits the ground.

The satellite, known by its military designation US 193, was launched in December 2006. It lost power and its central computer failed almost immediately afterward, leaving it uncontrollable. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor.

The astronauts aboard the orbiting shuttle-station complex focused their attention Saturday on the inside of the new Columbus lab.

They have all day Saturday and just half a day Sunday before the hatches between shuttle Atlantis and the international space station are sealed.

On Friday, a pair of spacewalking astronauts wrapped up work on the exterior of Columbus, installing a package of sun-gazing instruments as well as a huge box of experiments on radiation, orbital debris and other subjects.

During their 7-hour spacewalk, Rex Walheim and Stanley Love also installed handrails on Columbus, and removed a broken gyroscope from the space station and loaded it into the shuttle for the ride home.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source from: edition.cnn.com

Read More..

Can the tech community go green?

Following a trip to Geneva, Bill Thompson began wondering about how much electricity he uses.

Laptops could benefit from more energy efficiency

LIFT is one of the highlights of the technophile calendar, an opportunity to meet up with some of the most interesting people around and engage in debate about the future with those who are actually building it instead of waiting for it happen.

The nice people at the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) sent me there to talk about an online community they run called wattwatt (where I am a paid adviser), and a competition for schoolchildren around the world to come up with ideas for cutting electrical consumption called care4It (of which I'm an unpaid judge).

As I was doing my pitch for the technology community to take more of an interest in energy use - lauding the efforts to date of IBM, Google and Intel - I looked out from the stage to see hundreds of laptops ranged in front of me.

About half of the audience had their computers open, casting cold light onto their faces as they turned to listen or looked down to type some notes, answer e-mails or chat to their friends.

But just before my session I'd seen a couple of people trying to get their XO-1 laptops to talk to each other.

Uncomfortable reality

Many of my geeky friends seem either unaware of or unconcerned with the energy use of the myriad of devices they acquire and use, and it is about time we woke up

The XO-1 is the small green computing machine developed by the One Laptop Per Child project, and it has been built to be energy-efficient not because the designers wanted to save the planet but because electricity will be scarce and expensive in the countries it will end up in.

And it occurred to me that if the laptops in front of me had all been XO-1s, designed to use as little power as possible and even to shut down the central processor when nothing was happening, then the conference as a whole could have saved significant energy.

Of course we were in Switzerland so, as someone pointed out to me later, the power probably came from hydroelectricity with zero carbon load.

But that wasn't the point. The point is that many of my geeky friends seem either unaware of or unconcerned with the energy use of the myriad of devices they acquire and use, and it is about time we woke up, because we face an uncomfortable reality.

Human impact on the planet has been more significant than any other species since the first bacteria started photosynthesising and generated enough atmospheric oxygen to enable animal life to thrive.

Geologists have recently started saying that we need a new name for our geological era, that we have moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, a geological era that will be noted by future geologists - human or otherwise - for the preponderance of soot, cement and plastic in the sedimentary rocks laid down in our time.

Global warming

The XO is efficient because energy is scarce in the developing world

Our reliance on carbon-based fuels to supply most of our energy needs has added enough carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to affect the mechanisms that have given us a temperate and relatively stable climate system for the last 10,000 years, and we can anticipate significant changes as a result.

The distribution of human habitation will be directly affected; species diversity on the planet may diminish, at least temporarily; and the relatively temperate weather patterns we have been accustomed to for the 10,000 years or so it has taken our species to emerge from the plains and conquer the world may be replaced by far more severe patterns of meteorological activity.

Even if this is unlikely to be species-threatening it would be far better to reduce the impact of the coming changes by cutting the release of carbon into the atmosphere. Energy efficiency, especially when it comes to electricity, is a vital part of that process.

Being more efficient might buy us more time to reach a proper solution to the problem of global warming, but we have to be careful that we don't just end up giving politicians an excuse to do nothing because the science is as clear as it can be and significant action is vital.

It isn't certain but then nothing in science is certain, not even the existence of the very electrons that are driving your computer as you read this.

We have a well-grounded theory that incorporates the electron as a particle, but it could be wrong. So it is with climate change.

The evidence is compelling but no scientist would say that it is certain, because no good scientist can be certain about anything in the way that newspaper editors and politicians so often claim to be.

One way to encourage careful use is to provide more information about energy consumption.

Sitting here with my 17-inch flat screen monitor's screen saver going and my low-energy bulb in my desk lamp I wondered which was the best way to illuminate the desk.

A quick search indicates that my monitor is using 35W, a bulb around 15W, so I should turn off the monitor if I'm not actually typing. But what about my laptop screen? Should I use that instead?

Competitive about energy

In this case smart meter which monitors electricity consumption and displays it would be invaluable. If I want to know how much power my laptop is using then I can plug it in and watch the readout go up.

But we can do more.

One of the more interesting toys mentioned at LIFT was the "Wattson" meter.

It is a smart meter with a difference, because it stores data for the past four weeks and has a USB socket so you can download it to your computer and plot graphs, look at trends and even upload the information to their community site.

Getting people to be competitive about their low energy use is an excellent idea, and I can't wait to see Facebook apps and MySpace widgets that show energy use and your ranking against your friends and colleagues.

It might even persuade the geeks to think more seriously about leaving their chargers plugged in and computers turned on all the time.

Epilogue: I know that flying to Geneva isn't exactly a great way to show my commitment to the environment, even if I did offset the carbon load of my flight. But I don't believe that we need to stop flying, or give up our advanced industrial economies in order to limit climate change, and often being in the same room as a group of people is the only way to make a connection to them.

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..

Internet Day highlights web risks

Schools are being encouraged to discuss net dangers

Safer Internet Day is being marked around Europe with events to educate children and parents about net dangers.

Themed events will reveal the risks of sharing too much personal data and warn children that their virtual friends may not be who they say they are.

Public events will encourage parents to oversee their children's online life so they know who they are talking to.

In the UK schools were encouraged to run assemblies that discuss how children should behave online.

Data dangers

This is the fifth Safer Internet Day and this year more than 50 countries are expected to take part.

Prior to the day schools, youth groups and clubs were encouraged to undertake projects that get children thinking about what they do online and how to stay safe while they do.

Those taking part were asked to produce publicity materials, such as leaflets, posters and videos, which warn children about the dangers or emphasise safe net use. Cash prizes are on offer for those judged to have produced the best materials.

Local authorities have also been running events to help educate parents.

A spokeswoman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection, which is co-ordinating the UK's involvement, said its efforts were being focused on getting schools to run assemblies that discuss the issue.

Buttons to help children report problems are being used online

"It's about getting them talking about the issue, the personal information they put online and their social networking profiles," she said.

A short film has been produced for older children that spells out the potential dangers for teenagers of meeting the people they get talking to online.

One of the most important points for children to realise, said the spokeswoman, was that the people they talk to might not be other youngsters.

"If they are going to meet someone in the real world they should make sure to take a trusted older person or an adult," she said.

"The message is getting through," she said, "and now it's about refining that message."

In a global survey conducted by securtiy firm Symantec, it was found that 75% of parents did not know what their children are doing online.

In the UK, adults believed that 4% of children had been approached by a stranger. The actual percentage was 20.

UK organisations are banding together to create the Information Security Awareness Forum (ISAF) that will co-ordinate the broad array of work being done to educate consumers and companies about online security.

"There are a lot of messages coming out from lots of different places but the question is who do you listen to?" said Dr David King, chair of the ISAF.

The organisation is planning to produce best practice guides for businesses and to run events that raise awareness about computer security.

"It's about our work overlapping rather than duplicating," said Tony Neate, head of Get Safe Online which has signed up to ISAF.

He said although more people were starting to use anti-virus, firewalls and anti-spyware programs, protection meant more than just installing software.

People also needed to be aware of the "social engineering" threats in which con artists use technology to make their scams more plausible.

"This is everyone's responsibility," he said.Time to choose Frostbite agony Stolen Generations

Source from: news.bbc.co.uk

Read More..