Pc News

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Web search sites give new ways to find results

For information seekers, the days of culling Web search pages, ten machine-generated hyperlinks at a time, may be numbered.

On Monday, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) takes the next step to realize its vision of combining human advice with machine automation to offer more relevant ways of searching the Web.

It is using the millions of human suggestions from its recently introduced Yahoo Answers to complement the mathematically organized features of its core search system.

"It's the right time now to augment Web search results with some human touch," said Tim Mayer, Yahoo's product manager for Web search. "We are making search better by allowing users to tap into the collective knowledge of other people."

Meanwhile, Bill Gross, the inventor of paid Web search who sold the system to Yahoo, is set to unveil a new version of his latest project. Snap.com is aimed at broadband users and gives people visual snapshots of Web sites before they click.

These innovations in how to search for information on the Web aim to compete with the dominant search provider, Google Inc., which analysts say still has a big lead in the current generation of Web search technology.

Google's dominance is pushing rivals to seek fundamentally new approaches to searching, and Google cannot sit still either, analysts say.

For its own part, Google last week began offering Google Co-op, an early effort at human-organized search to boost its algorithmic page-ranking system.

To begin with, Co-op is working with a very fixed set of experts, such as the Harvard Medical School or the Mayo Clinic in health and Fodor's and Lonely Planet in travel guides.

"Some questions need different formats and answers," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products.

VISUALIZING THE WEB

Snap.com (http://www.snap.com) has the classic set of 10 links down the left side of its search results page, but each link a user selects is displayed in a half-size screenshot of the Web site's home page.

Thus users can scroll down a page of links using visual cues instead of reading text. It is surfing by pictures, like flipping through television channels using a remote control. The user can skip over bad pages or broken links before they load.

"Look before you leap," Snap.com Chief Executive Tom McGovern said in an interview. "People who are more visually oriented will gravitate to this."

Google runs advertisements alongside search results and only gets paid when consumers click on the ads. Snap.com argues it can take advertising a major step forward by charging only when consumers complete transactions.

But Snap.com also breaks potentially controversial ground in how the site blurs the distinction between sponsored search results and results returned by popular demand. By contrast, major search sites clearly fence-off sponsored results.

Yahoo Answers, an online site where people can ask and have other Yahoo users answer questions, has grown to store nearly 11 million answers related to technical matters or everyday life in more than 800 categories, the company said.

The service has more than 7.2 million users, Yahoo said, citing data from market research firm comScore Networks Inc.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company said it is now weaving Yahoo Answers into its core Yahoo Search system.

Yahoo Answers, which the Internet media company introduced in December in trial mode, is designed to allow users to ask questions on the Web in plain language. "A lot of people find it difficult to formulate how to come up with the right query," Mayer said. "Yahoo Answers let others answer that question."

"This is the actually taking advantage of the enormous power of the Yahoo community," Gartner analyst Alan Weiner said. Yahoo has an audience of more than 400 million users across its network of sites.

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Apple, Softbank Plan iPod Phone

Softbank, Japan's third-largest cellular carrier, and Apple Computer have reached a basic agreement to develop cell phones that can play songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes Music Store, according to local press reports.

The two companies reached the agreement after Softbank President Masayoshi Son met with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, said the Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper in its Saturday morning edition. Softbank recently entered the wireless business when it acquired Vodafone Group's Japanese unit.


The first phones to come from the partnership are expected to be 3G (third-generation) models that play downloaded songs, the newspaper said. Like current iPod music players, these handsets will play music downloaded via a personal computer. However, a second range of handsets that can directly access the iTunes Music Store and download songs is also being planned, the report said.


The first phones from the partnership will appear next year, said a Kyodo News Service report on Saturday.

No Comment

Both Apple and Vodafone declined to comment on the reports.


While Apple's iPod music players and its iTunes Music Store dominate the legal music download market in most countries, in Japan it and competing PC-based services are minor players. In 2005, about 96 percent of the 268 million tracks purchased electronically were downloaded via mobile services, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan.


Last week NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top cell phone carrier, said it would add playback support for songs downloaded from online music stores that use Microsoft's Windows Media Digital Rights Management 10 technology. Doing so will allow the phones to play tracks downloaded from PC-based services that compete with Apple's iTunes Music Store.


Motorola has already built several handsets that can connect with and playback music from iTunes, but none of them are available in Japan and none can directly access the iTunes Music Store.

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Nokia launches Google Talk on Web tablet

Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, unveiled a new version of its Internet tablet device running Google Talk communications software on Tuesday.

The deal between Nokia and Web search leader Google Inc. allows people to chat with other users of instant-messaging software via the Nokia Wi-Fi device, which relies on short-range wireless networks.

The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, introduced last year, offers wireless access to digital music and video, as well as access to e-mail.

But it is not a phone, and relies on unregulated local wireless connections rather than cell-phone networks.

The new version of the Internet Tablet has upgraded software and hardware, including a full-screen finger keyboard.

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Microsoft Readies Dreamweaver Rival

Developers on Monday will get their first chance to play with a Web layout and design tool Microsoft hopes will lure developers from Adobe Dreamweaver.

Microsoft plans to release an early, Community Technology Preview (CTP) version of Expression Web Designer, one of three new tools designed to compete with rival Adobe's extensive Web design portfolio.


Microsoft hopes the Expression toolset--which also includes Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer--will lure some of the creative types that build Web sites using Adobe tools such as Dreamweaver and Flash.


Interactive Designer is a 3D animation and graphics tool, and Graphic Designer is a painting and illustration tool. Microsoft expects to have the entire Expression suite available by the end of the year.

Standard Support

Wayne Smith, product manager for Expression Web Designer at Microsoft, said that the only tool comparable to Expression Web Designer for Web designers right now is Adobe Dreamweaver. But he highlighted Web Designer's support for ASP.Net 2.0, the latest version of Microsoft's technology for building Web-based applications and services, as a differentiator between the tools.


"[Dreamweaver] supports ASP.Net version 1.1, but only to a fairly superficial level," he said. "We have deep support."


Smith also stressed Microsoft's effort to support standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in Web Designer. CSS is the standard technology Web designers use to create modern Web-site layout. Microsoft enables Web designers not only to build pages using CSS but also manage the underlying code, which can be a hassle for developers, Smith said.


"If you have a complex site, you will end up with lots of CSS code, and managing it becomes an important part of the developer's job to keep the site clean and make sure the styles you've used make it work correctly," he said.

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Yahoo roving reporter thrives in "Hot Zone"

As a backpack journalist traveling solo across the world in dangerous regions, Kevin Sites' load just got a little lighter.

Not that the 60 pounds of digital equipment he totes on his back has lessened any. But Sites has made it to the halfway point of a global trek that has found him documenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Syrian government -- and in the process helped make Yahoo's news site consistently ranked No. 1 in online news coverage.

"Kevin has gotten stories that receive very little coverage by traditional news outlets but that are important and told them in a way that never has been done before or could have been done before in terms of technology," says Scott Moore, Yahoo Media Group's vp content operations. "He's made news cool and relevant to younger audiences with original content that has no spin, no filter."

From the beginning, the goal of Yahoo's "Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone" has been to put a human face on global conflict through the kind of intrepid reporting that can't be done with a conventional TV news crew.

"I saw an incredible need to cover these places in a way that wasn't just about the body count -- but what happens in terms of victimization and environmental destruction," says Sites, who has worked for the likes of CNN and NBC, gaining notoriety in 2004 when he videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a Fallujah mosque. "People won't be interested in a conflict if it seems obscure to them."

So when Sites joined Yahoo after returning from a long stint covering the war in Iraq and saw more and more online news sites cropping up, he knew Yahoo needed to carve out a niche beyond conflict reporting.

"There are many layers between us and a story, and what I wanted to do was pull back those layers by simply getting to a person," says Sites, who uses the latest in mobile and Internet technologies to report in real time. "The world is huge, but if we parachute in to enough of these tiny little slivers of countries -- even for a short time -- people should get a much more fully dimensional look."

Sites already has compiled multimedia reports for Yahoo's 400 million users from 14 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

"When I first started in Somalia and the Congo and I was reporting 12 hours a day, trying to write and transmitting all night we were having equipment problems and I remember thinking, Are we really gonna do this for a whole year?" he recalls. But eventually Sites found a rhythm and credits his "mission control team" of producer Robert Padavick and researcher Lisa Liu at Yahoo's Santa Monica offices.

"I feel like an astronaut and I'm doing a space walk. They're the ones that keep me tethered in," Sites says of Padavick and Liu.

As Sites embarks on the final leg of his round-the-world journey, he says certain moments resonate more powerfully for him than others -- like witnessing a mother in Sudan singing a rebel lullaby to her child, the time he shot basketball hoops with young boys in Iran and the experience of covering a child bride tortured in Afghanistan. His coverage of the girl's plight drew 14,000 responses and became Yahoo!'s most e-mailed story that week.

Still, the journalist, who was once accustomed to the huge audience of the evening news, remains amazed by the interactive nature of the Internet platform and the Yahoo site itself with its various links, which provide a built-in account of the history behind each story.

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Microsoft unveils new search tools for businesses

Microsoft Corp. will unveil new tools on Wednesday that make it easier for office workers to share and locate information as the company seeks to fend off rivals such as Google Inc. in the enterprise software search market.

Jim Murphy, an analyst at AMR Research, said Microsoft is filling a long-time gap in its business search products while seeking to block Google -- which dominates Web search -- from gaining ground in the market for corporate information search.

"Microsoft has been remiss in not providing adequate search on the desktop and for corporations," Murphy said. "They are filling in a gap and they are defending their territory from Google and others."

While Microsoft is the biggest supplier of business software inside companies, the market for search tools has been a fragmented one, led by Autonomy Corp.. But Google has made rapid gains over the past two years to become the No. 2 supplier, according to market researcher IDC.

Windows Live Search, which will be available for free from Microsoft's Web site, allows users to search for documents stored on their computers, on departmental computer networks or out on the Internet and see the results in one place.

Last week, Google introduced version four of Google Desktop, which offers similar search powers.

Microsoft will also add new tools to its Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offering that makes it easier to collaborate with other people within a large business, using criteria such as expertise on a certain subject.

Murphy said offering search tools for businesses was a way for Microsoft to remain dominant on the desktop and could convince companies to buy future versions of new software releases such as Microsoft Office.

"To me they are trying to ensure their continued position on the desktop and make themselves irreplaceable," he said. "They want to solidify their position and remain the go-to desktop vendor."

The new search tools come as the world's biggest software maker seeks to catch rivals in both the business and lucrative Internet search markets dominated by the likes of Google.

At the same time Microsoft is also making a big push into Web services and has vowed to keep investing in a variety of technologies as it seeks to transform the way both businesses and consumers operate on the Internet.

The core of this plan is Windows Live, an advertising-funded, one-stop shop for services from e-mail, to instant messaging, to blogs that targets the fast-growing online advertising market.

But in the area of enterprise search, Microsoft said the company's current and future offerings would seek to address the difficulties users face when trying to act on information once they have found it.

The company highlighted the importance of search tools for organizations by citing an IDC estimate that workers spend up to 2.5 hours a day searching for information, or 30 percent of their work time.

Microsoft said enterprise search via Microsoft Office SharePoint would be available to most businesses later this year with the next version of Microsoft Office. It will also release a test version of Windows Live Search sometime this summer.

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Apple's New Intel-Based MacBook Now Available

Apple today announced immediate availability of its consumer Intel-based laptop, well in time for the back-to-school shopping season. Called the MacBook, this model equipped with a 13.3-inch wide screen and running on a Core Duo processor replaces the 12-inch G4 PowerBook and all iBooks.

The notebook also complements Apple's recently released MacBook Pro laptops, which reportedly have experienced overheating and other technical problems. (Some Mac enthusiast sites are posting links to software that monitors the temperature of MacBook Pros.)


The MacBook is slimmer and slightly heavier than the old 12-inch Apple laptops. It comes in black or white and with either a 1.83-GHz or a 2.0-GHz Core Duo processor. Like the MacBook Pro, the MacBook comes with a built-in Webcam, Front Row media software, and an infrared remote control. It also has DVI-out support, gigabit ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11g Wi-Fi, and optical digital audio-in and-out.


Apple priced its standard configurations of the MacBook at between $1099 and $1499. However, PC World's preferred configuration--with a 2.0-GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 100GB hard drive--would cost $1699. Apple isn't offering a sub-$1000 configuration with an Intel Core Solo processor as it is with the $599 Mac Mini desktop PC.


IDC analyst Richard Shim says that the MacBook pricing makes sense given the more expensive, less common 13.3-inch wide-screen panel, whose resolution is 1280 by 800 pixels. "We're obviously not looking at a mass-market price point, and that's obviously by choice," says Shim. "But their challenge, of course, if you talk to Wall Street, is to increase their market share. This won't get them there."

What's Missing?

Like the feature set on the current MacBook Pro, this one doesn't include a modem (a $49 accessory) or an optical drive that writes to double-layer DVD media. When we reviewed the MacBook Pro, Apple said that its current optical drive supplier doesn't offer double-layer write support for drives that fit into the thinner laptop. Apple wasn't available for comment for this story.


The MacBook, which comes with an integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics processor, does not include an option for discreet graphics. This a sticking point for users such as "Mashugly," the founder of The OSx86 Project, a site focused on Mac OSX and Intel-based hardware. "The only thing that would keep me from [the MacBook] is the integrated graphics," asserts Mashugly, who says that otherwise the MacBook is "probably the best entry-level notebook that I've seen."

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Microsoft Fires Back in Xbox Patent Dispute

Microsoft has filed a countersuit against Lucent Technologies in a dispute over Microsoft's alleged misuse of patented technology in its Xbox 360 games console.

In court papers filed earlier this week, Microsoft denied infringing Lucent's patent and argued that it is invalid anyway, in part because Lucent failed to disclose "prior art" when it made its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Prior art refers to existing inventions in the field where a patent is being sought. Microsoft also accused Lucent of infringing several Microsoft patents.


Lucent filed its suit against Microsoft at the end of March, arguing that technology used in the Xbox 360 for decoding MPEG-2 video files infringes on one of its patents. It requested a trial and monetary damages but stopped short of seeking an injunction to prevent Microsoft from selling the console.


The patent in question is Number 5,227,878, "Adaptive Coding and Decoding of Frames and Fields of Video," and can be viewed by searching at the USPTO Web site. The suits were filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of California.

Ongoing Battle

The dispute dates back to 2003, when Lucent filed other lawsuits against Dell and Gateway over the same patent. Microsoft stepped in because of an indemnity agreement it had with the computer makers, suing Lucent in an effort to gain a judgment of noninfringement of the patent.


Microsoft was successful--a judge granted it summary judgment in the case last year on the grounds that Lucent's patent contained a typographical error. Lucent had the patent corrected by the USPTO, however, and filed its new lawsuit against Microsoft this year.


In a statement this week, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Tom Burt said the company stands by its intellectual property and its partners. He accused Lucent of choosing to litigate rather than engaging in "meaningful license negotiations."


Lucent representatives couldn't immediately be reached for comment.


If the case comes to trial, some legal experts see Lucent seeking an injunction to block Microsoft's sale of the Xbox 360. Others say that because the case has a complicated history, such a measure would probably be years away.

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AOL buys online ad company Lightningcast

Time Warner Inc.'s AOL Internet unit on Thursday said it had purchased privately-held online advertising company Lightningcast in a bid to expand its Web ad network.

Lightningcast specializes in inserting video and audio advertising into video segments that air over high-speed Internet connections, including live programming, downloaded clips or on-demand viewing.

The company also helps advertisers develop Web video ads with interactive components, connecting viewers with more information on an advertiser should they select it.

"(Ad) agencies know that's where the market is going," said Tom MacIsaac, chief executive of Lightningcast. "Most video advertising (online) ... is repurposed TV commercials, but it's also a temporary state of affairs."

Internet video ads represent a new growth area in the rapidly expanding $13 billion online ad industry, as a growing number of viewers tune in to television programs and other entertainment delivered on the Web.

Lightningcast will operate as a subsidiary of AOL's Advertising.com unit. The company also sells and manages video advertising space on behalf of Web sites and combined with Advertising.com will work with a network that spans 300 Web sites, AOL said.

Financial terms were not disclosed. AOL has purchased 7 companies to bolster its online entertainment and advertising business since August 2005.

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Skype Seeks Bulk to Avoid Being Blocked

The larger Skype's user base grows, the less likely it is that telecommunications operators or regulators will successfully block the voice over IP service, said the head of Skype's European operations, during an interview at the VON Europe conference here.

An experience in Brazil makes a good example, said James Bilefield, general manager of Skype in Europe. About a year ago, one of the largest telecom operators in Brazil blocked Skype. The reaction from Skype users was so strong that after a week, the operator relented. "The community has the power to change things," he said.


Some operators, particularly the incumbents, may seek to block Skype because Skype's low-cost voice service can steal market share from them and thus eat into their most significant source of revenue.


Incumbent operators speaking at VON Europe didn't hide the fact that the VoIP players are a threat.


"Our existing cash flow is being challenged," said Joacim Damgard, vice president for broadband and fixed services at TeliaSonera.

Harder to Block

With the introduction of the most recent version of Skype came news that the application does a better job of hiding its traffic on networks, making it harder for service providers or third party applications to block it. While Bilefield couldn't explain how the application does that, he did say that Skype has a mission to make sure that customers can use the software.


"Our goal is that consumers who want to use it should be able to," Bilefield said. "They shouldn't have anything in their way."


If the issue of blocking Skype gets heated, Skype thinks that regulators will be on its side. "Overall, regulators want to provide choice. Skype does that," he said.


Mobile operators have most recently begun to ban VoIP services. Last week, T-Mobile in the U.K. said that subscribers to a new data card service are forbidden to use VoIP services. Bilefield said that some operators have chosen to work with Skype because their customers want the service.


In the near future, some mobile operators may find it harder to challenge Skype. Skype has been working on creating a client that is compatible with Symbian, the operating system from Symbian used in smart phones manufactured by Nokia and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications. A Skype client is already available to users of phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS.

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Activists challenge AOL's bulk e-mail fees

Four years ago, a small e-mail campaign saved a struggling coffee shop in Portland, Oregon.

Today proprietor Becky Bilyeu is among the thousands of people fighting to preserve the free flow of electronic mail.

Bilyeu contacted the MoveOn.org political advocacy group earlier this spring when she heard that Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, the largest U.S. Internet service provider, planned to start charging for guaranteed delivery of certain types of bulk e-mail.

The fee -- a small fraction of a cent per e-mail -- took effect two weeks ago. AOL says it will help stop spam, or junk messages, from clogging their customers' inboxes.

But many say e-mail should move freely so that people can build and maintain large communities over the Web. Nearly 500 organizations, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Gun Owners of America, have joined together to create a coalition called DearAOL.com (http://www.dearaol.com).

The coalition predicts Internet service providers could effectively end up taxing nonprofit organizations and charities for e-mail in the same way that businesses now are by AOL.

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Google Wants Your Trust

Google's head of mobile services is looking for your trust.

Sharing your current location with a data-hoarder like Google might seem unattractive to some people, but greater trust could open the way to a whole range of location-based services, said Deep Nishar, Google's mobile product management director.


"Technology is available to tie location with what kind of searches you provide and what kind of results you provide," Nishar said in an interview this week. "However, that depends on what the mobile operator is willing to provide to a service provider like Google and also the privacy laws of the country."


The approximate location of a cell phone user can be determined using the cell phone towers to which the phone connects, and some advanced handsets include GPS (global positioning system) receivers capable of accuracy down to a few meters.


Armed with this information, results from searches on mobile phones could be tailored to the location of the user at that time. For example, a search for a bookstore or restaurant would count the closest shops as the most relevant, while a search for a movie would provide a list of starting times at local cinemas. However, in many countries local laws or privacy concerns stop carriers from sharing location data with companies like Google.


For that to change, companies like Google and cell phone carriers will have to gain the acceptance of users, said Nishar.


"It's more a matter of trust and really understanding," he said. "People don't think twice about giving their credit information online but they might think twice about saying 'Oh, I'm driving here and I don't want that to be known.'"


A possible solution would be to offer users a choice over when such information is shared.


"If users could say 'OK, right now I am willing to let people know where I am but another time I want to turn that ability off' then that might also provide a better opportunity for widespread use of that service," said Nishar.

Going Mobile

Google has been aggressively expanding its mobile footprint in the last few months.


Its most recent deal was signed Thursday with Japanese carrier KDDI and will see the Google search box appear on about 20 million cell phone screens in the country.


Since the beginning of this year similar deals have been struck with other carriers including the world's largest mobile operator, Vodafone Group, and device makers including Motorola, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, and BenQ Mobile.


There's a good reason for this expansion: there are about twice as many cell phones in the world as computers, and the cell phone market is growing faster, said Nishar. But for Google, a more relevant number is people using wireless Internet services.


That may still be small in many countries, but Nishar believes that as better technology, such as 3G, spreads, more people will search from phones while in transit.


"It's not a cultural barrier," he said. "Information is pervasive and the thirst for knowledge is common around the world."

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Microsoft Details Vista Hardware Requirements

Microsoft has launched a Web site outlining the minimum hardware requirements for the next version of the Windows OS, Windows Vista.

The move comes less than a week before the company will host its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle. At the show, which kicks off Tuesday, Microsoft and hardware manufacturers are expected to show how Vista will run on a variety of machines, as well as showcase add-on technology built to enhance the OS.


On the Microsoft "Get Ready" Web site, the company has outlined the requirements for running both low-end versions of Vista or higher-end versions that take advantage of the OS's new Aero graphical user interface capabilities.


The company differentiates between the two by calling the former a "Windows Vista Capable PC" and the latter a "Windows Vista Premium Ready PC."

System Specs

Hardware requirements for a Vista Capable PC are a modern processor with a speed of at least 800 MHz, 512MB of system memory, and a graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.


A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC has a good deal more requirements. It must have at least a 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, 1GB of system memory, 128MB of graphics memory, 40GB of hard drive capacity with 15GB free space, a DVD-ROM drive, audio output capabilities, and Internet access capability.


It also needs a graphics processor that runs Windows Aero, which Microsoft defines as a DirectX 9 class graphics processor that supports a Windows Display Driver Model Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, and 32 bits per pixel.


The graphics processor for Aero also must meet the following requirements for graphics memory: 64MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor less than 1,310,720 pixels; 128MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions from 1,310,720 to 2,304,000 pixels; or 256MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor at resolutions higher than 2,304,000 pixels.

Getting Ready

Microsoft began working with hardware partners several months ago to prepare customers for Vista's release. In April, PCs with stickers saying "Windows Vista Capable" became available in stores, letting customers know what hardware can be upgraded to Vista once it is available. Microsoft does not plan to do the same with the Windows Vista Premium Ready designation, recommending customers ask a retailer or manufacturer about PCs that meet those requirements.


On the Get Ready Web site, Microsoft stressed that purchasing a Windows Vista Capable PC does not mean customers will get discount vouchers for Windows Vista. They still must purchase an edition of the OS for full price when Vista is available.


In March, Microsoft said the consumer release of Vista would be delayed until January 2007, though business customers will have access through Microsoft volume licensing to the OS before the end of the year. Since Microsoft is missing the busy Christmas holiday shopping season with Vista's general release--which had been an important target for selling the new OS--analysts are predicting that the company may release Vista even later than January.

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WinHEC: Microsoft to Offer Pay-as-You-Go PCs

Microsoft is starting up trials of pay-as-you-go PCs in underdeveloped nations as a way to give residents of those countries more access to low-cost computers.

Microsoft will provide the prepaid PCs in retail outlets in Brazil, Mexico, Russia, India, and China beginning this week, said Mike Wickstrand, director of product management for Microsoft's market expansion group.


These PCs will be built using a technology called FlexGo, developed by Microsoft and its partners. FlexGo is a combination of hardware and software that enables PCs to be sold and used on a pay-as-you-go basis, much like wireless phones, Wickstrand said.


A user will buy a PC for about half the normal retail price and, in exchange, will be given a certain amount of time on the system. The computers have metering technology built in that tracks a user's time and alerts them when they are running low on time.


As time begins to run out, the PC will shut down certain functionality, going into "reserve mode" so a user knows to buy more usage time. Users can buy this time over the Internet or through prepaid cards. If usage time runs out completely on a FlexGo PC, the technology locks the machine until a user buys a new card.


The FlexGo PCs were inspired by the success of prepaid cellular phones in countries where people may not have credit cards or predictable income streams, Wickstrand said. In India alone, there were 5 million prepaid cell phones five years ago; today there are more than 90 million, and that number is growing every month, he said.

Windows Around the World

Microsoft has been looking for new ways to sell Windows in emerging markets for some time now. Many see the company's push in these markets as a way to stave off competition from inexpensive open-source technologies that threaten Windows revenue growth.


Brazil will be the first country to sell the PCs. Microsoft had quietly tested FlexGo pay-as-you-go PCs in Brazil last year, selling them in a national retailer Magazine Luiza. The other countries will follow Brazil with rollouts in the next two months, Wickstrand said.


The PCs, which will cost about the equivalent of $300, will be available at various local retail outlets in each country. However, the PCs are technologically equivalent to a machine that would cost about $600 in the U.S., Wickstrand said.


"Customers pay a lower amount for the PC up front because they have to keep purchasing [usage time]," he said.


Partners that have worked with Microsoft to design the FlexGo PCs in the current round of trials include Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Infineon Technologies, Lenovo Group, Phoenix Technologies, and Transmeta, Wickstrand said.


Manufacturers building the FlexGo PCs are Lenovo in China and India; First International Computer in Brazil; Excimir D.M. in Russia; and Avatar in Mexico.

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Casinos bewail missed opportunity of Web betting

U.S. casinos wish they had access to the growing universe of gamblers that seem intent on placing bets online, but companies claim they are not losing customers to the foreign operators that offer Web wagering.

ADVERTISEMENT

"It represents an enormous opportunity," said Alan Feldman, spokesman for U.S.-based MGM Mirage, the world's second-largest gaming operator. "And it is an opportunity that is being completely handed to foreign companies right now."

Standing in the way of this potential windfall is a 1961 federal law that forbids interstate telephone betting that the U.S. Justice Department has said also applies to the Internet, making it illegal for U.S. companies to offer online gambling.

But the law is difficult to enforce on operators based abroad, who are luring a growing number of American gamblers to their Web sites, even as some U.S. lawmakers renew attempts to snuff out the business.

Worldwide revenue from online gambling increased to about $12 billion last year from $3.1 billion in 2001 and is expected to hit $24.5 billion by 2010, according to estimates from Christiansen Capital Advisors, an industry consulting group. U.S. residents now make up about half of that market.

The number of Americans who placed bets on the Web doubled in 2005 to about 4 percent of the adult population, or about 8 million people, according to a survey by the American Gaming Association, an industry group that represents U.S. casinos and related companies.

"It is a new place for people to gamble," said Eugene Christiansen, a consultant with Christiansen Capital. "These are big businesses."