Pc News

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Yahoo lowers expectations for original content

SAN FRANCISCO - Web media company Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) wants to lower expectations for how much original programming it will produce as part of its online information and entertainment offerings, the company said on Thursday.

Yahoo will not do a string of one-off projects, focusing instead on combining program content with licensed, user-generated and other content, Yahoo spokeswoman Joanna Stevens said.

Speculation about the company's plans to deliver its own programming has swirled since Yahoo, which is headed by former Hollywood studio chief Terry Semel, hired Lloyd Braun in late 2004. Braun is the former chairman of the entertainment division at Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network.

Among the projects put on ice by Yahoo is "The Runner," a reality program Braun brought over from ABC, according to published reports.

Stevens declined to give specifics on the number or names of productions that were planned or are being dropped.

"We're focusing on tying all the different pieces together. We won't pursue a project unless we think there is an opportunity to make a sustainable business of it," Stevens said.

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MySpace.com to bolster security measures: CEO

BOSTON- MySpace.com, the online virtual-community run by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.., will soon add technology to screen how its 60 million members use the Web site to prevent crime, the company's chief executive said on Thursday.


He discussed the enhanced security plan in an interview, several hours after federal authorities announced the arrests of two men charged with using MySpace to arrange illegal sexual encounters with minors.

MySpace chief executive Chris DeWolfe declined to discuss the arrests or say how specifically the new security technology will work. The company will give details in an announcement in the coming weeks, he said.

DeWolfe said he's also in the midst of recruiting an executive to spearhead the company's security and safety education programs.

The new security chief is likely to have strong experience in working with the Internet as well as a background in security and perhaps law enforcement, DeWolfe said.

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Napster rues Microsoft, player glitches

NEW YORK- Technical glitches by Microsoft and the digital music device makers have hampered Napster Inc.'s ability to close the gap with Apple's iTunes, the dominant online music service, Napster's chief executive said on Tuesday.

"There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months," Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Gorog said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

"Our business does rely on Microsoft's digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft's ecosystem of device manufacturers," he added.

Microsoft Corp., he noted, had to grapple with the complexities of dealing with a number of different services and device makers.

"It's a lot more complex to get organized properly than it is to build one device and one service as Apple has done," Gorog said. "It's always been painful at the introduction of new technologies. But it always takes shape like it's done in the past."

Gorog, whose company has one of the best known names in the business but has failed to put a dent in Apple Computer Inc.'s 80 percent market share, argued that eventually the "Microsoft ecosystem" and its Windows Media format will prevail, with new devices on the way from firms like Samsung and Sony.

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AOL to add paid downloads to free service

NEW YORK - Time Warner Inc.'s AOL plans to sell programing on its Web site by the middle of this year, a top executive said, as it hastens to secure a place in the market for video-on-demand over the Internet.

The pay-per-download service will expand its existing free, advertising supported video-on-demand service, the company said.

The market for online media is booming after Apple Computer Inc. began offering shows for sale on its popular iTunes digital music and videos service last year.

The expansion of AOL's video service, which will combine free Warner Brothers-produced TV shows and pay-per-download shows from established programmers together with user-created video clips, aims to address complaints about the rigid pricing structure and the mix of available programing on iTunes.

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Feds to Probe for Digital Music Price Fixing

The U.S.Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into online music pricing by major record labels, the Reuters news agency reported Friday, citing unnamed sources.

DOJ investigators are looking at whether the labels may have colluded to set prices, the report says.

Some subpoenas may have been issued, with others to follow in the coming days, the report said. The record labels under investigation by the DOJ are EMI Group, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony, and Bertelsmann, it says.

When asked for comment regarding the potential investigation, European record labels were keeping quiet on Friday morning.

Universal Music Group International didn't have any information about possible requests from the DOJ, which would most likely have been sent to New York-headquartered Universal Music Group, a unit of the French company Vivendi Universal, said Adam White, a spokesman for Universal Music Group International.

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Google lets slip talk of online storage service

SAN DIEGO - Google Inc. is preparing to offer online storage to Web users, creating a mirror image of data stored on consumer hard drives, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web.



The existence of the previously rumored GDrive online storage service surfaced after a blogger discovered apparent notes in a slide presentation by Google executives published on Google's site after its analysts presentation day last Thursday.

"With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)," the notes in the original Google presentation state.

Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in his presentation made a cryptic comment that one goal of Google was to "store 100 percent" of consumer information.

Copies of the notes were captured by a handful of bloggers and shared around the Web. The company subsequently took down its original PowerPoint slide presentation and replaced it with a 94-page Adobe Acrobat file, devoid of the speaker notes.

When asked to confirm plans for a GDrive, a Google spokeswoman declined to comment on any specific service but confirmed that presentation containing the notes had been mistakenly released on the Web.

"We deleted the slide notes because they were not intended for publication," Google spokeswoman Lynn Fox said. The deleted presentation had appeared on Google's investor relations site at http://investor.google.com/ppt/20060302_analyst_day.ppt

"We are constantly working on new ways to enhance our products and services for users, but have nothing to announce at this time," she said.

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Online music service to let users swap CDs

LOS ANGELES - A new online music service called La la Media Inc, aims to offer full-length CDs for $1, by letting users trade discs, in a bid to avoid legal pitfalls that face online song trading.



Backed with $9 million in funding by Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, La la works like an online music co-op by enabling members to trade physical CDs they own for physical CDs they want, Bill Nguyen, co-founder of La la, said ahead of the Tuesday announcement.

With 1.8 million album titles available, members trade the CDs in prepaid envelopes, much like the way popular mail-order DVD service Netflix Inc. operates.

La la founders argue that, unlike underground online file-sharing services, which have been sued for copyright infringement, La la is protected under an exception to the U.S. Copyright Act. They argue that the owner of a CD can transfer a legally-acquired copy without permission or payment of additional royalties.

Members will pay $1 to La la for facilitating the trade once they receive the disc from other members, plus a 49 cent shipping charge.

La la said it will set aside 20 percent of its trading revenue to recording artists.

La la said it is currently talking with the world's major music labels to obtain licenses for the sale of digital music.

La la founders said the record industry will benefit from the music's increased exposure and sales through the site, which enables members to buy albums they can not get for trade from other members.

La la enables members to buy a physical CD new and hopes to eventually offer digital album downloads at retail prices, but does not plan to offer digital downloads of singles.

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AMD Boosts Opteron Speed

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced three additions to its family of dual-core Opteron processors for servers and workstations, boosting the speed of the chips to 2.6 GHz.




The processors come in three models: the 885 for systems with up to eight processors, the 285 for systems with one or two processors, and the 185 for systems with one processor. The 885 and 285 are available now, while the 185 will be released in about a month, the company says.


The processors are priced at $2149 for the 885 and $1051 for the 285, both for 1000-unit quantities. Pricing for the 185 was not released.

Performance Without Power

The dual-core chips give extra performance without greatly increasing power consumption or cooling requirements compared to AMD's single-core processors, according to the company.


They use AMD's PowerNow and Optimized Power Management technologies, which allow servers and workstations to regulate the amount of power used by the processors based on usage. The technologies can reduce power consumption by up to 75 percent during idle time, according to AMD.


IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard plan to offer the processors in their servers and workstations, AMD says.

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Microsoft tests revamped Windows Live search engine

SEATTLE- Microsoft Corp. plans to start testing a revamped Web search engine on Tuesday that includes new features aimed at closing gaps with Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.

Windows Live Search is one of the central applications for Microsoft's strategic shift to unify the company's Web-based software and services, such as e-mail, instant messaging and computer virus detection, at its Windows Live site.

The new features highlighted in Windows Live Search allow users to display all query results on one page without moving from page to page or to adjust the amount of information displayed from each search result with a slider bar.

"It isn't always about hunt and fetch," said Yusuf Medhi, senior vice president in charge of strategy, marketing and search development at MSN, Microsoft's Internet arm. "People are getting less and less satisfied with search."

Microsoft trails Web search leader Google and number-two Yahoo in the U.S. search market with an 11 percent share. Together, Google and Yahoo processed 70 percent of all queries in January, according to Neilsen//NetRatings.

Under Microsoft's "beta" or general test preview, Windows Live Search will run queries on live.com, the company's site for Windows Live that allows user to customize news, weather and other content.

Once the new search engine is officially launched sometime around the summer, Windows Live Search will replace MSN Search on Microsoft's main content Web site, MSN.com, the company said. Windows Live is also still in test form.

Windows Live Search will also allow users to save specific parameters to limit queries to certain Web sites and then share those "macros" with other people with similar interests.

"We're going to make search more of a platform," said Medhi, who plans to recruit third-party bloggers and Web sites to write their own parameters to provide more relevant query results.

Medhi said the company's research consistently shows that one out of every two Web queries still fail to produce the answer sought by the user, fueling dissatisfaction.

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The Print Shop: The Latest in Professional Printers

The big annual Photo Marketing Association (PMA) convention just wrapped up, and my colleague Eric Butterfield reported on new consumer digital cameras and photo printing accessories for our Today @ PC World blog. However, PMA also saw the introduction of some interesting photo printing solutions that cater to business markets. These include new high-end photo printers targeting professional photographers, graphics artists, and advanced amateurs.



I'll discuss those after I tell you about a new commercial product from HP.

HP's New Photo Kiosk

The touchscreen of HP's new Photosmart Express Station.If HP has its way, you won't be able to go into a supermarket or drugstore without bumping into its new Photosmart Express Station. This kiosk can deliver 4-by-6-inch photo prints from your own memory cards or from a Snapfish online photo-sharing account.


In these kiosks, HP will use its new six-ink inkjet technology, which is based on the company's scalable printing technology. Competing kiosks use either dye-sublimation or silver halide processes.


HP claims that this technology should help the Photosmart Express Station be up to 40 percent more profitable per square foot through greater efficiency, lower maintenance requirements, detailed remote monitoring tools, and up to 10 times the supply capacity of current competing kiosks. Consumers can expect an easy-to-use interface that will deliver waterfast 4-by-6-inch prints that, according to HP, should last for "long over 50 years"--and will produce each one in about 5 seconds.


HP's new Photosmart Express Station printer kiosk.HP has looked to the retail market before: You might remember its Phogenix Imaging partnership with Kodak, which dissolved back in May 2003. It will be interesting to see how the new kiosk venture competes with existing competitors, including its old ally.


See this post at PC World's staff blog for further information on the Photosmart Express Station and HP's new Photosmart Studio, which will allow retail stores to create albums, calendars, posters, and greeting cards with customer's photos.

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Toshiba Readies First HD-DVD Notebook

HANOVER, GERMANY-- Toshiba is planning to launch its first laptop computer with an HD-DVD drive in Europe in April, the company said Tuesday.


The Qosmio G30 laptop will also be available in Japan and North America at about the same time, said Oscar Koenders, general manager of marketing at Toshiba Europe's PC division.


It will cost around the same as Toshiba's current Qosmio G20 notebook, prices of which depend on configuration and begin at about $2410, he said.

High Definition DVDs

HD-DVD is one of two formats vying to replace current DVDs for high-definition content such as movies. Its main backers are Toshiba and NEC and it is competing with Blu-ray Disc, which is backed by a group including Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung Electronics.


Users will be able to watch HD-DVD content on the laptop's screen or on a compatible high-definition monitor or television. The computer has HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) for hooking up to a TV and a DVI interface with copy-protection support for connection to a monitor, said Koenders.


Qosmio is Toshiba's multimedia PC line and the computer also features a TV tuner and Dolby Home Theater support.


Initially HD-DVD will be available only in the Qosmio machines, Koenders said. He estimated it will be available in some models of Toshiba's Satellite-range of machines later this year.


The Qosmio G30 will be shown this week starting Thursday at the CeBIT exhibition in Hanover, Germany.

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Apple iTunes in monthly deal with Comedy Central

NEW YORK - Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes online music and video store on Wednesday launched a new service called Multi-Pass that lets users buy downloads of television shows on a monthly basis.


The venture is being launched by iTunes in partnership with Viacom Inc.'s Comedy Central Network, which is rolling out "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" on the new service. Fans will be able to buy the next month's series of 16 new episodes via Multi-Pass for $9.99, or to pay $1.99 per episode.

Apple's vice-president of iTunes, Eddy Cue, said MultiPass is not a subscription service, even though customers would pay for it on a monthly basis.

"This is something that you can always own as a download," he said. That makes it different from other online music subscription services like Napster or Real Networks' Rhapsody, where consumers lose their music if they unsubscribe.

TV shows and other video have been available for sale on iTunes since late last year. Comedy Central announced a relationship with iTunes six weeks ago with shows including "South Park," "Drawn Together" and "Comedy Central Stand-Up."

Michele Ganeless, executive vice president at Comedy Central, said there would be no advertising on the service for the time being, similar to the network's DVD business.

Apple has so far resisted calls from media companies and competitors to adopt a monthly subscription fee favored by the likes of Napster and Real Networks Inc.'s Rhapsody, preferring an a la carte download model where music tracks cost 99 cents and videos $1.99.

Videos downloaded from the iTunes Music Store can be played back on a personal computer or an Apple iPod portable media player, among other devices. More than 8 million videos have been sold since it launched at the end of last year.

Shows including Walt Disney Co.'s "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" were among the first to be made available on the service.

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Tech.gov: Your Phone Records in Peril

By now you've heard the stories. Countless phone records have been stolen using a practice known as pretexting: Someone pretending to be you calls up your telephone or cellular carrier and asks for a copy of your latest bill, or worse, multiple copies of past bills with call details. In some cases thieves simply activate online access to your phone records--a service your carrier intended as a courtesy to you--and get your info that way.


Once they have your records, thieves turn around and sell them online. No one is safe: The folks at AmericaBlog demonstrated that when they bought General Wesley Clark's phone records earlier this year.


Some online information sellers, such as All Star Investigations and First Source Information Specialists, have come under scrutiny and are facing lawsuits from carriers such as Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. The lawsuits typically allege that the companies in question fraudulently obtained phone records and then sold them without authorization. These companies run Web sites that sell the information; for example, Locatecell.com displays a notice saying the site is managed by First Source Information Specialists and Sprint Nextel says the same company also operates Datafind.org.


Regardless of whether these particular firms are found to be at fault, others are certainly blithely stealing and selling your information.


Yes, there are laws against this sort of thing, and phone companies are supposed to at least attempt to confirm your identity before they release your records. However, the system clearly has broken down.


Congress, outraged by a problem everyone can agree on, has acted swiftly (for Congress). Two related bills, one in the House of Representative, the other in the Senate, spell out the criminal behavior in these cases and propose tough penalties for violations. Both have recently passed out of committee with relatively little debate and are headed for a vote. Given the general agreement on the problem in committee, and the desire to protect voters (it's an election year, have you heard?), I'd bet these or similar bills will be passed.


But none of the proposed bills addresses the need for stronger privacy protections at the phone company level, or broader privacy standards for any company that gathers and stores information about us. (For a few tips on what to do to help protect your phone records, read the Privacy Rights Clearing House recommendations.)

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Amazon in talks for movie, TV downloads: NYT

NEW YORK - Online retailer Amazon.com Inc is holding talks with three Hollywood studios on creating a service to allow consumers to download movies and television programs and copy them onto DVDs, the New York Times reported on Friday.


Citing three people briefed on the discussions, the Times said Amazon is in advanced negotiations with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers. The report did not give a timetable or estimate cost of such a service.

Such a fee-based service could compete with new video download options available at Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes digital download store.

In February, sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Amazon is in talks with four major music labels on starting a digital music service.

Warner Brothers is part of Time Warner Inc., Universal Studios is owned by General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Paramount is part of Viacom Inc..

Amazon officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report.

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Cheaper 'Daily' dose on iTunes

LOS ANGELES- Viacom's Comedy Central is breaking the mold of iTunes television pricing.

Full episodes of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" will be available either singly or at a significantly lower cost when purchased using a new option called Multi-Pass.

The two shows also are the first daily programs to be offered on Apple's iTunes Music Store.

Individual episodes are priced at the standard $1.99. The Multi-Pass alternative costs $9.99 for the next 16 first-run episodes, each automatically delivered to the consumer's computer the day after it airs. Repeats are not included.

Apple vp iTunes Eddy Cue said Multi-Pass should not be considered as Apple moving toward offering subscriptions.

"We've sold 1.5 million shows so far, and we're trying to deliver what consumers want in a simple way," he said. "You're not going to get every customer every day coming in and hitting the buy button. Now they can click one button, get last night's show and get the next month's shows automatically."