Pc News

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The Playlist: Ring Tones Are Music Too

We had the pleasure of having a drink with the so-called Irish Britney Spears, aka Samantha Mumba.


She sings, she dances, and she acts. In fact, she played the protagonist in the hilarious zombie movie Boy Eats Girl, which played this month at San Francisco's Irish Film Festival. I met her at an informal gathering after the movie aired. Actually, Samantha Mumba is not really like Britney Spears. Her R&B pop is more interesting, and it lacks the slutty-virgin innuendo.


Right now, Mumba is working on her upcoming album. (You can get her first album, Gotta Tell You, on Apple's iTunes Music Store.) I joked around that she needed a ring tone to market herself in the U.S., where she's pretty much unknown. She said that the subject had already come up at her record label. "What's the world coming to?" she laughed on her way out of the bar.

[Rasputin]

Windows Vista Delay: Good News for Apple?

Microsoft's decision to delay the consumer versions of Windows Vista until early 2007 could encourage some holiday computer buyers to get Macs instead, industry analysts say.

"This gives Apple the biggest competitive advantage they've had in history from Microsoft," veteran technology consultant Rob Enderle, founder of the Enderle Group, said of the delay announced earlier Tuesday by Jim Allchin, co-president of Microsoft's Platform and Services Division.


Allchin told a hastily convened teleconference that Microsoft would release volume-licensed versions of Vista by year's end, as previously announced, but that consumer versions--including those preloaded on new PCs--would not be available until January 2007.


Allchin said that Microsoft was not worried about competition from Apple, but Enderle said that Microsoft may be underestimating Apple's potential, especially since the company is expected to introduce some appealing new products in time for the holiday season.

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Windows Vista Release Pushed Back to January 2007

Broad availability of the Windows Vista client operating system has been pushed back to next year, according to Jim Allchin, Microsoft's co-president of the Platform and Services Division.

Microsoft does, however, plan to release Vista to business partners through its volume licensing program in November 2006, Allchin said in a conference call today. This will enable those partners to begin deploying the OS throughout their businesses.


Microsoft also intends to release all six of Vista's core editions to manufacturing at the same time in November, Allchin said. But PCs with the consumer versions preinstalled won't go on sale until January.

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Sony to launch online service with PlayStation 3

SAN JOSE- Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news).'s top video game studio executive said on Wednesday that a new online service debuting with its PlayStation 3 console in early November will open up a world of new content for gamers as well as new revenue opportunities for the company.

The service, which lets users buy games and communicate and compete with other players via the Web, again puts the company in head-to-head competition with Microsoft Corp.

Sony, one of the world's leading technology manufacturers and entertainment companies, aims to retain dominance over the roughly $30 billion global video game market with the PS3.

Rival Microsoft introduced its next-generation Xbox 360 game console in November of last year. The company's Xbox Live subscription service, which offers game downloads and online play, has been a hit on the new machine and Sony had been widely expected to offer a similar service.

The basic level of Sony's online service, known internally as PlayStation Network Platform, will be free, Phil Harrison, president of worldwide studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, said at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose.

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Kazaa, SpyAxe Called Badware

The popular Kazaa P-to-P (peer-to-peer) file-trading software and a supposed spyware-blocking application are among the first four programs identified as "badware" by the fledgling StopBadware.org group in a report released Wednesday.

StopBadware.org, in its first report since forming in January, identified SpyAxe, a program advertised as a spyware blocker, as badware, the group's term for spyware, viruses, deceptive adware, and other nefarious software. Besides Kazaa and SpyAxe, StopBadware.org named MediaPipe, a download manager produced by U.K. company Net Publican, and Waterfalls 3, a screensaver distributed at Screensavers.com, as badware.


The four applications "clearly violated" guidelines from StopBadware.org, said John Palfrey, co-director of StopBadware.org and executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. While the group eventually hopes to identify dozens of applications, these four generated significant complaints to StopBadware.org, he said.

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"60 Minutes" in Web news tie-up with Yahoo

CBS Corp. will showcase segments of its "60 Minutes" television news magazine on the popular Internet portal Yahoo as the TV network seeks to rope in a wider audience for news programs, the companies said on Thursday.



The tie-up will begin at the start of the 2006-2007 broadcast season in the third quarter, when "60 Minutes" will launch its 39th year on the air. The two companies will split Internet advertising revenue from the venture.

Each week, following the Sunday night broadcast of "60 Minutes," viewers can turn to a dedicated Yahoo site that will expand on segments seen during the program, with unaired footage as well as archival material and blogs.

"I hope and expect we are going to reach people with our material that might not otherwise be watching and ... drive more people to the mother ship," Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes," told Reuters.

The site will feature special "60 Minutes" segments created for Yahoo and a peak at upcoming broadcasts. A preview of the service will be available on March 26, including an interview with golfer Tiger Woods.

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PayPal to offer paying by text message

Online payment company PayPal said on Wednesday it was preparing to offer a service for consumers to make purchases or money transfers using simple text messaging via mobile phones.



The move by PayPal, a unit of online auctioneer eBay Inc., marks a big step in bridging the worlds of e-commerce and the physical world of brick and mortar stores by giving consumers a pay as you go option via phones, analysts said.

The service, known as PayPal Mobile, will be launched in the next couple of weeks in the United States, Canada and Britain. Other markets worldwide will follow for the world's biggest online payments service.

"PayPal is going to be launching a mobile payments product," PayPal spokeswoman Sara Bettencourt told Reuters.

Word of the service had leaked out earlier on Wednesday when bloggers found links to test pages on PayPal's Web site describing it. Details can be found at: (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...ile/MobileSend

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Yahoo to Discontinue Yahoo Plus Premium Bundle

Yahoo has notified subscribers to its Yahoo Plus service that the bundle of fee-based premium content and services will be discontinued in April. The move is another indication that such bring-your-own-broadband-access packages, while popular a few years ago, are losing their appeal.



Yahoo Plus includes a variety of premium security, e-mail, entertainment, and storage software and services. Launched in December 2003, it doesn't include Internet access, as it is aimed at users who already have a broadband connection.


A big reason such services are losing popularity is that broadband subscriptions have fallen in price while also gaining many complementary software and services that have been the staple of bring-your-own-access packages.

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Microsoft Reshuffles Responsibilities

As expected, Microsoft reshuffled its Platforms & Services Division, appointing Steve Sinofsky to lead a new group overseeing Windows OS and Windows Live services development, the company said today.



The restructuring--part of a plan by the vendor to repair what it sees as lack of agility and growth in the division that oversees its largest property, Windows--also breaks up and renames groups that were formerly part of the MSN division.


Kevin Johnson, copresident of the Platforms & Services Division, announced the changes in an e-mail to his division. The group overseen by former Office group leader Sinofsky--the Windows and Windows Live Group--is one of eight groups that now comprise the division, according to Microsoft.

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PCs Will Be Ready for Vista, Despite Display

A delay in the latest upgrade to Microsoft's Windows OS, Vista, won't impact PC hardware makers very much in terms of technology because no matter when the software comes out, hardware components will already be in place, a DRAM (dynamic-RAM) executive said Thursday.



"We're already selling lots of 1GB [DRAM] modules for notebooks that are compatible with Vista," said Pai Pei-lin, vice president of global marketing and sales at Nanya Technology, in an interview.


Computer hardware in general will be ready for Vista on time despite the delay, he said, so any further change in the schedule--such as an early release--would be possible.

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Apple packages videos for next iPod push

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Apple Computer is exploring new ways to market and sell music videos in bulk as interest in downloadable video grows.


In a first, iTunes is selling all the clips from Tori Amos' "Fade to Red" -- a 21-song music video collection released on DVD via Rhino Entertainment -- as individual downloads for $1.99 each or as a complete package for $24.99.

The iTunes Music Store has been steadily selling one-off music videos of current and catalog hits for $1.99 apiece since late last year. But the company is just now moving into higher-margin packages.

The Tori Amos offer is part of Apple's larger video bundling push that includes iTunes-only "video albums" (offers of six to seven videos from an artist that have not been released as physical collections) and "vingles" (a bundled offer of a video and its corresponding single).

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Vista Problems Might be Larger Than Microsoft Admits

More delays revealed today in the release schedule for Windows Vista hint that problems with getting the new operating system out the door may be broader than Microsoft has so far allowed.

Beta testers familiar with Microsoft's plans to release test versions of the OS say that although Microsoft has said Vista has been delayed a few weeks, the date the OS will be released to manufacturers has been pushed back two months.


Instead of reaching manufacturers on August 25, as originally scheduled, Vista will now be released to them on October 25, sources say. The next Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of Vista, which is the completion of the Beta 2 cycle, also has been moved to May 24 from its original release date of April 12. Similarly, the first release candidate of Vista, originally set for mid-July, is now slated for August 25.


Microsoft says it is on track to release the next CTP of Vista in the second quarter, but has not given a more specific date than that.

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Should the Internet Play Favorites?

Your favorite Web sites may be relegated to the Internet's slow lane if the companies that run its backbone network have their way. Proposed services from telecommunications and cable companies would let ISPs and other Web businesses pay extra to receive preferential treatment for their data packets carrying everything from video to music to text over the Internet. Such packet prioritization would deliver a more responsive Web to those sites' visitors--a valuable perk for high-bandwidth services like streaming video.

Prioritizing content based on type--meaning giving first crack at available bandwidth to services that need a quick, uninterrupted data flow, such as streaming media--is supported by both consumers and content providers. But charging the providers extra for special delivery of these packets is opposed by some Internet firms and consumer groups.

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Mobile-phone cheating in exams on the rise

LONDON - The number of students penalized for cheating in school exams and coursework in England rose by over a quarter last summer, the country's exam watchdog said on Monday.

Candidates caught with mobile phones in exam halls accounted for around 25 percent of the offences, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) said.

"Over recent years we have seen a noticeable rise in the number of mobile-phone related incidents in examination halls across the country," said QCA Chief Executive Ken Boston.

Students can be marked down or even failed for just having a mobile phone with them during exams, whether they use them to cheat or not.

Boston said he would be writing to all schools about the importance of students leaving their phones outside exam halls.

Just over 4,500 students were penalized during last summer's round of A-level and GCSE exams, a rise of 27 percent over the previous year.

However, the overall number of candidates penalized remains low, with less than one incident for every 1,500 exams taken.

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Online music makes up for CD sales losses: survey

AMSTERDAM - Online music sales will grow rapidly over the next five years, although traditional music sales will still make up almost two thirds of revenues in 2011, a survey by market researcher Forrester said on Monday.

The study forecast a 30 percent decline in European sales of traditional music formats like CDs and DVDs, but music downloads on the web from shops like iTunes Music Store from Apple will fill the gap.

Online sales are seen growing more than tenfold to 3.9 billion euros ($4.70 billion) in 2011 from 279 million euros in 2006.

The total music sales market will grow to nearly 11 billion euros by 2011, up from less than 9.5 billion euros now, as the new sales channels will boost demand.

The survey coincides with the launch of new services aimed at boosting the take-up of online music sales. Mobile technology and services companies mBlox and NewVisions on Monday introduced a mobile phone delivery system which includes the network charges for mobile phone download of music.