Pc News

[Rasputin]

Google CEO, co-founders stick to $1 salary in 2006

Google Inc. co-founders and its chief executive will continue to receive $1 each in annual salary and forego bonuses in 2006, while holding shares potentially worth billions of dollars in the Web search leader, according to regulatory filings on Friday.

CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page set the $1 annual salary for 2005 and decided to continue the policy in 2006, Google said in its shareholder proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Schmidt and Page earned bonuses of $1,630 in 2005, while Brin earned $1,723.

"Their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google," the statement said. "As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests."

The three also exert voting control over Google through their holdings of class B shares in the company.

[Rasputin]

No Vista, but 'Vista Capable' Stickers Instead

Even though Windows Vista won't be available until next year, Microsoft will work with hardware partners to prepare customers for its release. Starting next month, PCs with stickers saying "Windows Vista Capable" will be in stores, letting customers know what hardware can be upgraded to that operating system once it is available, the company said today.

Microsoft and industry partners co-developed what the company calls the Windows Vista Capable PC program to identify machines that currently run Windows XP but have the requirements to upgrade to Vista. Microsoft announced earlier this month that consumer versions of Vista wouldn't be ready until January.


To receive a sticker, the PCs must pass certification requirements for the Designed for Windows XP logo. They also must meet hardware criteria that make them capable of performing well if running Windows Vista, Microsoft said. Those requirements are a modern CPU, at least 512MB of memory, and a DirectX 9-class graphics processor.

[Rasputin]

News Corp. has grand plans for MySpace

While News Corp.'s recently acquired online community destination MySpace.com is thriving in its current form, the media giant already is devising plans to make the site even stickier and more profitable, possibly by acquiring so-called "Web 2.0" properties, enabling transactions between members and adding subscription offers.

"We're looking for technologies or feature sets that give users tools to participate in the media rather than just sit back," Ross Levinsohn, president of News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit, told the annual Bank of America Media, Telecommunications and Entertainment Conference here Thursday.

He said News Corp. could find a middle ground between traditional push media and user-generated content by providing the seed of an idea or a topic that online users react to.

"I'm really intrigued by some upstarts," Levinsohn said. "They don't cost an arm and a leg, and they have feature sets that could get us places faster."

[Rasputin]

Hollywood studios to offer digital movies for sale

Two online movie services, Movielink and CinemaNow, on Monday said they will begin selling major films such as "Memoirs of a Geisha" on the same day DVDs are sold at stores in a watershed event for Hollywood in the digital age.

Movielink said it signed download-to-own deals with six major studios, and CinemaNow unveiled similar pacts with two big players as well as independent LionsGate Entertainment Corp., the studio behind this year's Oscar winner "Crash."

"This is an endorsement that digital delivery of high value content has finally arrived," Movielink Chief Executive Officer Jim Ramo told Reuters.

CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis called it "one giant step for digital distribution."

Until now, both services offered digital movie downloads for a rental period only. Some films have been available to buy, but mainly those movies have been B grade flicks.

[Rasputin]

Download This: Demystify Your Life, Indoors and Out

You like to know what's going on, don't you? Then you'll want to check out this month's freebies, which keep you on top of things. We look at a tool for analyzing software license agreements, an add-on that improves the usefulness of Windows Task Manager, and a traffic monitor to help you get where you need to go. And did I mention that they're all free?

Get Help With Your Required Reading


No one enjoys reading software end user license agreements. It's as if the vendors count on boring you senseless before you get to the parts about allowing installation of third-party software and sacrificing your firstborn. A freebie called EULAlyzer can help by scanning EULAs and giving you a heads-up when it encounters suspicious phrases.


EULAlyzer's one-window interface includes a plus-sign icon. To scan a EULA text document, you open it in Microsoft's Notepad, then click and drag the plus sign over the text. If you can't open the EULA in Notepad--for instance, if it's on a Web page--you can copy it and paste it into EULAlyzer. Hit the Analyze button, and EULAlyzer quickly tells you what it thinks of the EULA. It assigns the agreement a risk rating and calls out "words of interest" (apparently it's not nice to call them "suspects") such as "third party" or "without notice." If you see creepy-looking phrases called out, you might want to rethink your decision to install the software.


Helpful as EULAlyzer is, you shouldn't rely on it to find every potential problem. (For instance, I'm pretty sure EULAlyzer isn't programmed to check for "firstborn.") You really do need to read EULAs all the way through before installing software. But EULAlyzer can save you time and trouble by flagging the most egregious problems for you.

[Rasputin]

Music industry unleashes more lawsuits in Europe

The music industry launched a new wave of lawsuits and criminal proceedings against file-sharers across Europe on Tuesday, part of its drive to curb online piracy and encourage the use of legal music services.

About 2,000 cases were launched in 10 countries, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said, bringing the total to 5,500 people in 18 countries.

That figure does not include the United States, covered by its sister group the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed about 18,000 lawsuits.

Among the countries targeted was Portugal, where sales of physical formats like CDs have slumped by 40 percent in the past four years amid heavy file-sharing usage, especially by college students.

Other users targeted for legal action included a Finnish carpenter, a British postman, a Czech IT manager and a German judge, the IFPI said.

[Rasputin]

Yahoo brings user ratings to Finance postings

Internet media company Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) on Monday introduced a ranking system on its popular Yahoo Finance site, allowing users to select the most useful tidbits of information from its message boards.

The ranking system appeared to be a new salvo by Yahoo against main rival Google Inc., which launched a financial news, stock quote and chat service last month.

Taking its cue from social networking sites where user voting identifies the most popular postings, Yahoo Finance will let its investment community rate user messages on a scale of 1 to 5.

A user can filter the way those messages appear on their Internet browser to list the most highly rated selections, whether for tips on stocks or the best weekend getaway.

Message boards on Yahoo and elsewhere on the Internet now list postings chronologically.

[Rasputin]

AOL Introduces New Mobile Services

America Online today introduced new and enhanced mobile services--including new mobile browsing that adapts regular Web pages to mobile screens--as the provider of online services and content competes for wireless Internet users.

AOL, which built its business by providing dial-up Internet access, has been trying in recent years to expand beyond this mature market in various ways, including by boosting its mobile offerings.

Demand and Competitors

As online services and content for mobile devices increase, the popularity of cell phones for accessing the Internet rises. In a study it cosponsored (the results of which were made public Monday), AOL found that among adult U.S. cell phone users, 52 percent keep their phones turned on all the time. The study also found significant U.S. demand today for mobile versions of online services like mapping, text messaging, photography, games, e-mail, Web search, and Web browsing.


It's no surprise then that all major providers of portal and search services are jockeying for position in the mobile market, including Google, Microsoft's MSN, and Yahoo, as well as AOL, which announced at the CTIA Wireless 2006 conference this week in Las Vegas that it is adding the mobile browsing service to its AOL.com mobile portal.

[Rasputin]

Internet Bars Give Tongfang A Bid Leg up

Internet Bars Give Tongfang A Bid Leg up

Apr 05, 2006 --Tsinghua Tongfang, the third largest PC maker in China, kicked off lately a nation-wide campaign to sell its budget, customized computers to Internet bars with the helps from the Chinese government.


For 2006 alone, Tongfang will launch a series of Internet bar-oriented computers, which will be priced at CNY 3,000 to CNY 20,000 to meet the various demands for different bars.

Numbers given by Tong indicate that branded PCs account for 20 percent of the Internet bar PC market, or 400,000 sets last year. Backed by the Ministry of Culture, Tsinghua Tongfang this week got its first big order on Internet bar PCs from China Netcom's branch in Jiangxi province.

Tsinghua Tongfang has reached partnership with microprocessor giant AMD to ship PCs to Internet bars in China. There are about 113,800 such hotspots around the country.

"The Internet bar strategy can greatly push up our sales in 2006," said Li Jianhang, vice-president and general manager of the computer department of Tongfang.

[Rasputin]

Qualcomm plans chips for high-speed world phone

Qualcomm Inc. expects to introduce chips by year-end for high-speed data phones that could work virtually anywhere in the world, making it easier for traveling executives to communicate overseas, its chief executive, Paul Jacobs, said on Wednesday.

Because the two main mobile network technologies currently used by network operators around the globe are incompatible, overseas travelers often have to rent a phone for mobile Web surfing or e-mail or just to make calls as their own phones will often not work in other countries.

Jacobs said Qualcomm is building phone chips that work on both EV-DO, a high-speed data technology used by U.S. operators Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp., and another technology known as W- CDMA, which is dominant in Europe.

"We'll do sampling by the end of the year," said Jacobs at a press conference at the CTIA wireless conference. Chip makers send sample products to phone makers in advance of new phones so they have time to include the chip into the phone design.

[Rasputin]

First Look: PC World Installs Windows XP on a 20-Inch iMac With Boot Camp

First Look: PC World Installs Windows XP on a 20-Inch iMac With Boot Camp

It works. Impressively well. With games, even. That's our first impression of Windows XP running under Apple's Boot Camp on our 20-inch iMac. And that's more than you could say a couple of days ago about the promising-but-hacked-together WinXPonMac effort. (You can download Boot Camp here.)

XP on a Mac is refreshing, but Microsoft's idea of an "exciting new look" feels a little last century.Eager to get our hands on a real, dual-booting Apple/Windows hybrid, we ran the Boot Camp installer on a 20-inch iMac and found the process amazingly smooth. It took about an hour. Graphics drivers--the major remaining performance hurdle under WinXPonMac--were solid and responsive under limited testing on our iMac.

Booting With Boot Camp

Boot Camp Assistant helps you resize partitions to make room for Windows.Boot Camp requires the latest version of Mac OS X (version 10.4.6) and a firmware update (a very loud, un-Mac-like system beep is normal at the start of this process). Once you've properly updated your system, you can download, install, and run Boot Camp Assistant, which burns a CD of Windows drivers for you and walks you through the process of repartitioning your Mac and installing Windows XP.


"This ugly, blue installation routine feels oddly familiar..."I chose to give XP a 100GB partition and inserted my XP Service Pack 2 CD to begin the installation process. XP's familiar, pixelated installation process went normally, and the Boot Camp manual provided intelligent directions about how to tell XP which partition to use and how to format that partition. (If you choose FAT instead of NTFS, you'll be able to write files to the XP volume while you're running Mac OS.)


The Windows XP install process proceeds as expected.On our iMac test machine, Boot Camp was endearingly smart about automating the series of required reboots to get you set up in XP. Once XP was set up to my satisfaction, I held down the Option key while rebooting and used the bootloader to hop back into OS X.


The Startup Disk preferences page lets you choose which OS to start by default.Once there, I used the Startup Disk preferences page that Boot Camp installs to ensure that XP was set as the default OS. Boot Camp installs a corresponding Control Panel app in Windows so you can change this setting in either OS.

[Rasputin]

April Microsoft Patch Preview Includes IE Fix

Microsoft is set to release five security patches for its products next Tuesday, including a highly anticipated Internet Explorer (IE) fix that will address a bug that hackers have been exploiting over the past two weeks. Along with the critical IE patch, Microsoft will repair three other issues in its Windows operating system, as well as an unspecified problem in Office that is rated moderate.

Although some had called for Microsoft to release an early version of the IE patch, ahead of its previously scheduled April 11 security updates, that possibility now seems unlikely. "Our test and engineering plan for that update that we began two weeks ago is on track to have that update ready for Tuesday," wrote Stephen Toulouse, security program manager with Microsoft's security response center.

Part of the Plan

Microsoft releases its security patches on the second Tuesday of every month, a predictable process that makes corporate system administrators happy. But the schedule also has led some users to download unsupported third-party security updates in between official patch releases from Microsoft.


Prompted by the severity of the IE bug, known as the "create TextRange ()" vulnerability, security vendors eEye Digital Security and Determina have already offered free downloads that fix the IE bug. To date, eEye reports more than 100,000 downloads of its software, which is not recommended by Microsoft.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Ramps Up DRM Work

With ever more songs, pictures, and video clips being sent over the airwaves to mobile phones, Microsoft plans to beef up its investment in digital rights management (DRM) technologies to help protect copyrighted material, the company said Wednesday on the opening day of CTIA Wireless 2006 in Las Vegas.

Microsoft provided no financial details, saying only that the investments will be "significant." It plans to extend its Windows Media Digital Rights Management software to support new types of wireless services, it said.


The company said it was responding to demands from its wireless partners who want new ways to deliver content protected by copyright. The more than 800 million mobile handsets sold worldwide each year represent a largely untapped market for digital entertainment, representatives said.

The DRM Debate

DRM is a catch-all term for a variety of methods used to limit content-sharing and protect copyright of the content. Techniques include digital encryption of songs and encoded limits on the number of times content can be accessed.

[Rasputin]

EarthLink, Google tapped for San Francisco Wi-FI

A San Francisco city commission has selected a joint bid by Web search leader Google Inc. and Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. to provide free wireless access throughout the city.

The Department of Telecommunications and Information Services said late on Wednesday that the city will begin contract negotiations with EarthLink and Google to create a widely available wireless broadband network across San Francisco.

The EarthLink proposal edged out runner-up MetroFi and four other bidders, the city government said in a statement.

EarthLink and Google are working with wireless equipment suppliers Motorola Inc. and Tropos Networks to construct a mobile network for residents, businesses, municipal government and visitors.

Google has said it plans to offer free wireless access supported by advertising. EarthLink will offer services aimed at business users and to support local government activities.

EarthLink also has been selected to build a municipal Wi-Fi network for the city of Philadelphia, and more recently, for Milpitas, California, in Silicon Valley.

Donald Berryman, president of EarthLink's municipal networks unit said in a statement: "We look forward to taking the next step to negotiate a contract to build a municipal wireless broadband network."

[Rasputin]

Mobile Phones Grow Even More Popular

The U.S. added 25.7 million new mobile phone users to its ranks last year, a record number for a single year, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association said this week.

The total number of cell phone users in the U.S. grew 14 percent year-on-year to 207.9 million at the end of 2005, a figure representing 69 percent of the U.S. population, the group said in a survey.


Six percent of U.S. households use wireless handsets only, CTIA said. Details of the survey results can be found online.