Can Bill Gates stop hurricanes? Scientists doubt it

Hurricane experts are throwing cold water on an idea backed by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates aimed at controlling the weather.

Gates and a dozen other scientists have raised eyebrows by submitting patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures.

It's a noble idea, given the horrible memories from Hurricane Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast four years ago this week.

The storm, which rated a frightening Category 3 when it made landfall in Louisiana, was blamed for $81 billion in damaged and destroyed property and the deaths of more than 1,800 men, women and children.

Skeptics applaud the motive of the concept but question its feasibility.

"The enormity of it, in order to do something effective, we'd have to do something at a scale that humans have never really done before," said Gabriel Vecchi, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How exactly would this hurricane-zapping technology work?

Hurricanes are fueled by warm water, and cooling the waters surrounding a storm would slow a storm's momentum.

According to the patents, many tub-like barges would be placed directly in the path of an oncoming storm. Each barge would have two conduits, each 500 feet long.

One conduit would push the warm water from the ocean's surface down. The other would bring up cold water where it lies deep undersea.

World reknowned hurricane expert William Gray, who's been studying and predicting the storms for a half-century, also doubts whether the proposal would work.

"The problem is the storms come up so rapidly," said Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University. "You only get two to three days warning. It's very difficult to bring up enough cold water in two to three days to have much effect."

The idea itself isn't groundbreaking, according to Gray, who said it could only be feasible if the barges were put into place at the beginning of hurricane season with the idea that storms will come.

"But you might do all that, and perhaps no storms would come. That's an economic problem," Gray said.

Even if the technology does work, Gray said it won't completely halt a hurricane.

"There is no way to stop it. The storm might weaken in the center, but the outer areas wouldn't be affected much."

And flooding and storm surges are determined by these outer winds, Gray said.

When word of Gates' five patent applications first made headlines in July, alarmed bloggers lit up the Internet, expressing fears that playing with ocean temperatures could lead to catastrophe, possibly forcing a storm in a different direction.

That's not likely, said Kerry Emanuel, a professor in atmospheric sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"You're doing something to the ocean that the hurricane would have done anyway," Emanuel said.

Cold water that churns up during a storm slows down a hurricane naturally. But the coldest water is usually at the rear of the storm, so sometimes it's too late to weaken [the storm], Emanuel said.

"The key is doing it a little sooner than the storm itself does it and make [the hurricane] weaker than it would have been," he said. "There are enough experiments to find out whether hurricanes' natural cooling could steer the storm in a different location, and the answer is no, or it's a very small chance."

While Emanuel believes the physics are conceivable, he says the cost of implementing the system shouldn't outweigh the benefit.

"This would only be practical if the amount [of money] you spend doing this would be less than the damage caused by the hurricane," Emanuel said.

Gates and scientist Ken Caldeira, both listed as inventors on the patents, did not respond to CNN's requests to comment about their venture.

The patents, which were only made public last month by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, were filed in January by Searete LLC. The company is a subsidiary of Intellectual Ventures, an invention firm run by Microsoft's former chief technology officer Nathan Myhrvold.

A spokeswoman for Intellectual Ventures, which holds about 27,000 technology patents, didn't elaborate on the cost associated with the patent.

"At this point, there are no plans for deployment, so there is no talk of funding," she said, adding that it could take up to 18 months for the patent application to be approved.

Regardless, inventors say that this technology is not something they'll be rushing to use anytime soon.

"This type of technology is not something humankind would use as a 'Plan A' or 'Plan B,'" Paul "Pablos" Holman, an inventor in the Intellectual Ventures laboratory, wrote on the company blog.

"These inventions are a 'Plan C,' where humans decide that we've exhausted all our behavior changing and alternative energy options and need to rely on mitigation technologies. If our planet is in this severe situation, then our belief is that we should not be starting from scratch at investigating mitigation options."

Hurricane expert Gray agrees.

"I don't think this is anything that's going to be done in the next few decades in a practical sense, but maybe further down the line," Gray said. "I would love to see Bill Gates, with all his money, use some of it to experiment."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/28/hurricanes.gates.gray/index.html

Dell Beats Forecasts, Then Surges

For years, Dell feasted on a banquet of corporate technology spending, as large companies spent millions of dollars every three years or so to update their fleets of personal computers. However, ever since the recession began more than a year ago, the computer maker has had to fight for every morsel as companies hoarded their technology dollars.

Now, Dell’s involuntary diet looks as if it might be coming to an end.

On Thursday, after Dell reported unexpectedly strong second-quarter earnings, executives said that its commercial business should pick up again in 2010, starting in the United States.

The advent of new technologies from Intel and Microsoft, including October’s release of the Windows 7 operating system, and the cost of maintaining older machines will spur companies to replace their aging PC fleets, said Brian T. Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer. “We’ve seen the whole entire installed base is basically 12 to 15 months older than it usually is,” he said.

A new refresh cycle could prove vital for the recovery efforts at Dell, which despite its recent struggles remains a top contender in the market for commercial desktop and notebook sales. The company, based in Round Rock, Tex., generates more than 80 percent of its revenue from commercial customers, and it continues to lean heavily on sales of PCs even as it expands its higher-end products and services.

On a conference call with investors to discuss the quarterly financial results, Michael S. Dell, the chief executive, said the company already had won bids to upgrade several large computer fleets. While many deployments have been delayed because of tight budgets, he said, “we’re convinced they’ll occur.”

Dell reported net income of $472 million, or 24 cents a share, for the quarter ended July 31. That was a 23 percent decline from the $616 million in net income, or 31 cents a share, reported in the period last year. Excluding costs associated with its continuing revamping, the company reported earnings of 28 cents a share, substantially exceeding the forecast of 23 cents a share from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Dell’s revenue declined 22 percent, to $12.8 billion, from $16.4 billion a year ago. Analysts had expected revenue of $12.6 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Looking ahead, Mr. Dell said he expected revenue in the second half of the fiscal year to be stronger than in the first half.

The better-than-expected performance caused Dell’s stock price to surge nearly 7 percent, to $15.65, in the final minutes of trading Thursday. The shares had been roughly flat, but about 15 minutes before the 4 p.m. market close, they started rising sharply on heavy volume. About three minutes before the market closed, the company put out its full earnings news release, which had been scheduled to come out after the close of trading.

Jess Blackburn, a Dell spokesman, said the company accidentally posted some material from its quarterly financial presentation too early. “It was an inadvertent error on our part,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “Consistent with full disclosure, we immediately posted our news release as soon as we recognized what had happened.”

The brightest spot for the quarter came from Dell’s public group, which includes government, school and health care customers. Buoyed in part by customers’ use of federal stimulus funds and strong sales to educational institutions, revenue for that group rose to $3.8 billion, a 20 percent increase over the previous quarter.

David Bailey, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, said he was pleased to see that Dell’s gross profit margin actually rose slightly in the quarter. He said that the company appeared to be selling a more profitable mix of products. “That puts them in a better position in the near term,” he said.

Dell’s efforts to improve its cost base should also put it in a good position to defend and perhaps expand its commercial market share, he said. The company has spent the last two years revamping its operations to gain a better competitive footing.

Its ability to recapture or expand its share of large PC contracts will be a critical test of its reorganization efforts.

Meanwhile, rivals have upped the ante. In particular, Hewlett-Packard has gained significant momentum in the last two years. The company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., now ships more PCs worldwide than any other computer maker. It accounted for 19.8 percent of worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter, according to IDC, a research firm. Dell, once the market leader, was a distant second with 13.7 percent.

Throughout 2008, Dell retained its lead in market share for shipments to commercial customers, according to IDC. But during the second quarter, H.P. passed Dell in that segment, too, IDC said.

“H.P. has a much higher proportion of its business in the consumer market, so it gets a proportionally better lift when consumers are buying and corporations aren’t,” said Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. “If corporations are buying, Dell gets a bigger swing than H.P.”

A positive swing from corporate technology spending cannot come soon enough for Dell. Its commercial businesses showed some early signs of recovery in the company’s most recent quarter, but revenue and profit fell far short of last year.

H.P.’s momentum could help sway a handful of corporate technology buyers, said Matthew Eastwood, vice president of enterprise platform research at IDC, but large companies do not change PC vendors on a whim. Companies typically want to maintain some consistency with vendors and supplies, he said, and being clued in on a computer maker’s road map for future products helps technology managers plan for what’s next.

“Up until now, a lot of the end users and actual customers have been very quiet, sitting back and more or less trying to manage their infrastructure by looking in the rearview mirror,” Mr. Eastwood said. “Now they’re starting to shift and focus toward the future again: ‘What kind of investments am I going to make in I.T. to fuel my next business cycle?’ ”

Computer makers need to have an answer for that question now, or they risk the loss of new hardware sales and sales of the more profitable services and products that go along with the computer. Sales of technology-management services like online monitoring of PC fleets have become increasingly important for computer makers as profit margins on hardware narrow.

Dell has pushed hard into these services through acquisitions, partnerships and internal development work, but its list of services still lags the size and scope of H.P., especially after H.P.’s acquisition of Electronic Data Systems last year.

“If you’ve got better services than your competitor, then you can drag your hardware in on the one-stop shopping idea,” Mr. Kay said. “H.P. is better positioned with its services and software acquisitions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/technology/companies/28dell.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Old-school portraits see resurgence online

The art of portraiture, once reserved for the rich, the royal and the holy, has found a new mass appeal online.

Some avid social-network users are commissioning artists to create small digital images to represent themselves in the online world. Other Internet-savvy people use automated computer programs and Web sites to generate posterized likenesses of themselves.

Matt Held, a 38-year-old painter in Brooklyn, New York, has gained Internet celebrity for painting peoples' Facebook photos and then giving them to his subjects. And some identity researchers are trying to take the online portrait beyond images of people's faces entirely.

All of these efforts underscore the fact that tiny images, often no bigger than a postage stamp, have become stand-ins for peoples' identities online.
On the Web, people can recreate themselves in any way they choose.
Unlike in the real world, where portraits are largely reserved for museums and the mantels of self-centered celebrities, online portraits are either free or relatively inexpensive.

They're also essential for effective Internet communication, said Judith Donath, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

"In the physical world, there's a lot of effort people make in terms of how they look when they go out to walk down the street. Some people spend two hours to get ready going to the grocery store," she said. "In the physical world, there's the actual self, so you're not entirely dependent on a portrait."

On the Internet, though, people can create their appearance through images they choose to represent themselves, she said.

Donath is working with a group of students from the MIT Media Lab to take online portraiture beyond realistic-looking faces.

In the future, she says, people will create pictures of themselves with the data trails they leave online. Visit the "Personas" project and type in your name to see how this might work.

Donath said many people online are drawn to the fact that they don't have to look like the person they are in the real world.

But this is also a sticking point in the world of online portraiture, said Dan Schawbel, a personal branding expert and author of a book called "Me 2.0."
People should brand themselves online with a single professional photo that they display on all of their social networks so that strangers will be able to identify them, he said.

"Seeing the same thing again and again and again is going to make you remember it," he said, adding that photographs of human faces are more emotional and memorable than drawings or other obscured representations.
Erika Peterman would disagree.

The 39-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, paid $100 for local artist Lee Bretschneider to draw a caricature of Peterman as a comic book hero. She uses that image on her blog and on Facebook.

"I do think an illustration is a way to unleash some fantasy aspect of yourself or maybe the way you'd like other people to see you," she said.

Peterman, who blogs about comics and has read them since she was young, said her stylized comic-book image says something about her and is more compelling than a standard photo. She said she's not trying to hide anything behind the drawing.

"I look how I look and I'm not fooling anybody," she said. "If the artist had me looking like Halle Berry, that'd be ridiculous."

Joel Watson, who illustrates an online comic book series from Dallas, Texas, said he's gotten so many requests from fans asking him to draw avatars for their online social networks that he can't keep up with the demand.

He said some clients came back to him several times wanting new drawings because they had shaved off their hair or somehow changed their look. Each of these efforts cost $50 to $100, he said.

Several free Web sites offer to posterize a person's Facebook or Twitter icons, or let users assemble cartoon versions of themselves.

The latest to catch on in a big way is a spin-off of the AMC show "Mad Men." On a site called MadMenYourself.com, people create stylized images of themselves as sleek advertising executives from the 1960s, in keeping with the show's theme.

Dyna Moe, the 31-year-old New York artist who created the character components for the site, said at first she was "creeped out" to see so many computerized versions of her drawings floating around social networks. On Twitter, where tiny square icons stand in for a person's identity, it also became difficult to tell who some people were because the Mad Men icons all started to look similar, she said.

It had a "hall of mirrors feeling," she said.
The Web site had 8 million viewers the first week it launched, she said.
MG Siegler, a blogger at TechCrunch, said his fans and friends found it jarring when he took down a photo from his social networks and replaced it with a "Mad Men" avatar.

"They're like, 'Oh, what's going on here? Is there some sort of life change that you switched up your icon for?' " he said.

"It's kind of funny that people do very much pay attention to them. I think people start to associate your identity with your [Twitter] icon," he said.

Held, the painter in Brooklyn, is completing a series of 200 Facebook portraits. He chooses his subjects from a Facebook fan page called "I'll have my Facebook portrait painted by Matt Held," where more than 6,400 people have signed up.
The project struck a surprising chord with people and helped pull him out of a lull in his career, Held said.

While people in his paintings can use the images online free, he sells the canvas works in galleries for $1,800, he said.

"Portraiture in itself has always been there, but I want to bring it out to the masses," he said. "There are so many people out there with awesome photos and awesome stories who I feel need to be painted."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/27/online.portrait.avatar/index.html

Google's got a new way to surf the Internet, Hawaiian style

Many Google users probably didn't notice this month that they can now display their search tips in the Hawaiian language.

Wedged between Hausa and Hebrew, Hawaiian is one of more than 125 "interface languages" now available on Google. The list also includes some humorous twists on English, including "pirate," "Klingon" and "Elmer Fudd."
But for Hawaiian educators, the addition of Hawaiian is a small step toward legitimizing a language that is considered "critically endangered" by the United Nations.
"It's the capstone of a lot of work," said Keola Donaghy, an assistant professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.

"We've been doing this work for 18 years, simply trying to make it easier for people who speak Hawaiian to use these kinds of technologies."
It marks the first native American language available through the "Google in Your Language" program.

Getting started
It took Donaghy several years to get the project off the ground through the "Google in Your Language" program, which was launched by the California-based company not long after it was founded in 1998.

"The idea was to enable users worldwide to be able to access Google in the language of their choice, and if it wasn't available, to enable users to help make it so," Google spokesman Nate Tyler said. "Why limit users to a set of dominant languages if they were willing to help make Google their own?"
The results of the search are still in English, although the user can select a preference for Web pages written in more than 40 other main languages.
Google works with linguists like Donaghy who are interested in translating search instructions into their language.

"Volunteers sign up on their own to provide translation," Tyler explained. "They simply sign themselves up, declare a language proficiency, and then start translating or reviewing the products that are available for volunteer translation.

"When the translations are completed, we make the product(s) available in that language. Recent other languages like this include Maori language."

It was the Maori project, launched last year, that actually helped get Donaghy's initiative off the ground.

Three years ago, Donaghy started e-mailing and calling Google about a Hawaiian language project, but he got no response. He put the project on hold until last year.

"When I heard the Maori version came out, I asked Google about it," Donaghy said. "Apparently the original (language) coordinator had gone and as soon as a new coordinator was brought online, they set up the system."

Donaghy began working on the massive translation project sometime late last year.
"It was whenever I could find an hour or two in between teaching or other duties," he said. "It was a combination of personal and work time."

He spent more than 100 hours translating the search terms that appear on the Google page into Hawaiian through the program.

"I did the actual translation from beginning to end, and then I consulted with my colleagues at the university who have worked on these projects in the past," Donaghy said.
"I wanted to be very consistent -- such as how you say 'Go to this menu and select this' -- or people may become confused."

What's Hawaiian for 'browsing' the Web'?
Some of the Hawaiian words for terms such as "links" or "Web browser" had already been established when Donaghy and others worked on translating the Netscape Navigator search engine in 1997.

"Over the years, we usually face the debate of do we want to 'Hawaiianize' an English word, or take an old Hawaiian word and give it a new meaning," he said.

He explained some of the challenges in translating terms, such as "browsing" or "surfing," into Hawaiian.

"People use the term 'surf the Internet' and they'll say 'he'e nalu' which is literally surfing the ocean out on a board," he explained. "But we use 'kele,' which is what you do when you're steering a canoe. So we chose that as you're navigating the net."

Donaghy finished the translation project in April, but there were issues with the code for the search engine that would not activate the Hawaiian language interface.
The Hawaiian language interface actually launched on Apple's Safari browser first because Donaghy had worked with Apple to ensure that the language's diacritical marks and characters were available on the company's computers.

"Now, it comes with every computer that they ship," he said.
Some Apple computer users who had selected Hawaiian as their primary language for other programs noticed a couple of weeks ago that Google's search terms started appearing in Hawaiian, too.

"People started calling me and asking, 'Did you hack into my computer? My Google is in Hawaiian,'" Donaghy said. "And that was the point I said, 'OK, word is getting out about this' and I put out a news release. I was afraid someone was going to start freaking out, 'Why is my computer in Hawaiian?'"
Important milestone for Hawaii's culture
The initiative is an important milestone for Hawaiian linguists and cultural educators who have pushed to have their native language taught in schools alongside English.

It wasn't until the 1980s that the law banning the Hawaiian language from being taught in schools was overturned. The law was established in the late 19th century as a prerequisite to Hawaii becoming a U.S. territory.

Today, more and more Hawaiians are studying and majoring in Hawaiian language programs. There are Hawaiian language immersion programs in which English is taught as a second language.

Mona Wood, a Hawaiian speaker and owner of a public relations firm in Honolulu, said there has been a kind of Hawaiian language "renaissance" in the state since the late 1970s.

"Even tourism has been learning and growing and realizing that our 'host culture' must be added to the visitor experience," Wood said. "There are many more programs available at hotels and shopping malls that weren't there 20 years ago."

Wood said that when she studied Hawaiian in college, it was under the foreign languages department.

"It has been so wonderful to see so many of our youth embrace the native culture and see the programs expand to the point where there is an entire Hawaiian Studies Department," she said. "One can now get a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) and M.A. (Master of Arts) in Hawaiian language."

Wood -- who owns Ikaika Communications, which represents local officials, local and national companies and celebrities including Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman -- said that when she was growing up, "Our culture was dying in every way."

"Learning my roots came through my own curiosity -- choosing to take hula lessons when my mom wanted me to take piano," she said. "Then I went to the Hawaiian High School, Kamehameha, and continued with some Hawaiian classes and joined a club at UH (University of Hawaii).

"Seeing Hawaiian knowledge becoming an asset over the years has been truly satisfying," she said.

Donaghy hopes the Google initiative is another step toward giving Hawaiian "the same status as English and other major European and Asian languages" -- particularly in the fast-moving sector of technology.

"To me personally it's very important that we are giving the opportunity to have as many things in Hawaiian as in English," he said. "So if we had not begun to address technology in the early 1990s, we would be telling people that this is a place where Hawaiian doesn't belong. You have to revert to English.

"We didn't want to send that kind of message so we've worked to make the language more accessible."

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/hawaiian.google/index.html

Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West?

Today's Internet is governed by the idea that crowds of people can create the news, share information and collaborate on online projects. So when Wikipedia, the user-written encyclopedia that's built an empire on this ideal, decided this week to add a layer of oversight to its system, the Web erupted in debate. The popular encyclopedia, which has drawn criticism for inaccuracies, says it will try assigning editors to some of its entries. These trusted volunteers likely would have to approve public edits before they're published to English-language stories about living people. Some see the move as a shift away from Wikipedia's core values and a sign that crowds of people aren't able to produce a usable and accurate body of information. Others see the change as a sign that these communities of online volunteers are getting more complex and they may need more rules. Since Wikipedia was founded in 2001, a number of sites have popped up employing its basic philosophy that users can control the content of the Web. Some, like YouTube and Digg, leave control almost totally in the hands of their online communities. On the other end of the spectrum are sites like Flickr, the photo-sharing site, or CNN's iReport.com, which have structured community guidelines and are maintained by community managers to promote a respectful and productive experience for users. The idea that a user-submitted content site like Wikipedia can be a free-for-all has passed, said Caterina Fake, the founder of Flickr. She cheered Wikipedia's decision, because without rules like those the site is testing, the encyclopedia would devolve "into chaos," she said. "It would basically be like a wall of graffiti in a bathroom," said Fake, who runs a site called Hunch. "It's not going to be a very high level of discourse." She also believes the changes will help Wikipedia address its problems with inaccuracies. In January, for example, Wikipedia entries about Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd falsely stated both U.S. senators had died. Wikipedia in the past has frozen some of its pages about people or events that have become sensitive. That leads Fake to argue that the changes to the Wikipedia editing process actually make the site more democratic. "If you really want to participate in Wikipedia, it is open to you so long as your contributions are benefiting the community and everybody kind of collectively decides that your contributions are good," she said. But others see the changes as a move away from Wikipedia's idealistic roots. Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead writer at the blog ReadWriteWeb and author of a guide to online community management, said Wikipedia's shift is a sign that user-generated content sites are outgrowing their limits. "As things get more and more popular online, some of these [Wikipedia-style] experiments realize they need to temper some of their experimental nature and learn from more traditional forms because they're just not sustainable," he said. "It makes me shed a little tear, too, because presumably it will lead to a slowdown of new content creation, and it does seem like a departure from the essential nature of Wikipedia." Mia Quagliarello, a community manager at YouTube, declined to comment on Wikipedia, but said that YouTube relies on its community to make decisions about what's important and useful. Like on Digg, a site where people share and discuss news stories, YouTube gives its users mechanisms to vote videos up and down based on whether the content is worthwhile or offensive. "We give them the tools to hopefully let the best comments bubble up to the top," Quagliarello said. "You can 'thumbs down' anything you don't think is productive." John Abell, New York bureau chief for Wired.com, a technology site, said the change at Wikipedia is a cultural "tipping point" for online communities. But it doesn't mean Wikipedia is failing at its mission, he said. "They've made a leap here," he said. "I think it's a good leap, a necessary leap, a righteous leap. In the history of Wikipedia, this will probably be seen as a pivotal adjustment." A spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the site, did not respond to CNN's requests for comment for this story. Online communities -- particularly those like Wikipedia, which are run by volunteers -- evolve just like real-world societies, said Amanda Michel, an expert on citizen journalism and editor of distributed reporting at ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization. "As these sites evolve, we should expect them to develop more sophisticated methods, whether they're social methods or technical methods, of quality control and of production," she said. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/wikipedia.editors/index.html

Would you pay to Twitter?

One question has been nagging at Twitter for years: How to make money?

A piece of the answer to that question was revealed this week as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told VentureBeat that Twitter plans to start charging for a premium service.

“Twitter will still be free for everybody and we’ll still tell them to go crazy with it,” Stone told the blog. “But we’ve identified a selection of things that businesses say are helping to make them more profit.”

As of now, the popular micro-blogging site doesn’t charge for its service. It also doesn’t run ads.

Some of the services the company reportedly will charge for:

Site analytics, which tell businesses about how people are using their Twitter feeds
A “commercial layer” for the social network to be rolled out this year, VB says
Certified accounts, so you can know for sure a person or company is who they say they are
There aren’t many details about the services available. The interview comes on the heels of the release of a Twitter 101 business guide. And it’s another indication Twitter is catering to the business crowd (read: people with money).

But what do you all think? Would you pay for extra Twitter services? Do you use Twitter for business? Feel free to discuss in the comments below.

Posted by: John D. Sutter -- CNN.com writer/producer
Filed under: Twitter

Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo fight Google Books

Three Google rivals join in opposition to the search giant's settlement with authors and publishers that let it sell books online.

Three of Google's biggest online rivals have joined the fight against a court settlement that would give Google the rights to sell millions of books on the Internet.

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) confirmed Friday that it has agreed to join a coalition opposing the Google deal. Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) and Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) have also joined, according to published reports.

The coalition, called the Open Book Alliance, opposes a settlement reached last October between Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild. The settlement would allow Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) to display portions of books online and sell digital copies of them.

A court will review the agreement for approval on Oct. 7. The coalition said it is considering whether it will file a challenge to the settlement with the court.

"We've been having a range of conversations with rather diverse organizations that have interest in speaking together to articulate concerns about the settlement," said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive and spokesman for the Open Book Alliance. "We'll raise the possibility of ways that the settlement may be changed or altered to create a more open market for books."

Google's online book initiative, called Google Books, has cataloged 1 million public domain books with expired copyrights. The tech giant's settlement was reached after the publishers and authors associations sued Google for copyright infringement in late 2005 over the company's plans to scan and copy millions of books from library collections -- many of which are still under copyright.

The settlement would give authors and publishers $45 million whose copyrighted books are scanned without permission.

The Justice Department's antitrust unit announced in April that it is looking into the settlement.

In addition to the three big companies that plan to join the coalition, the opposition group is made up of the nonprofit group Internet Archive and various library associations from across the country.

Requests for comment from Yahoo and a coalition representative were not immediately returned. Amazon, which makes the popular Kindle e-reader, and sells digital books on its online store, declined to comment.

A formal announcement from the group is expected next week.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/21/technology/google_books/index.htm

Report criticizes Yahoo over prescription-drug ads

NEW YORK (CNN) -- One of the largest Internet search engines is being accused of violating both federal and state laws by accepting advertising from online pharmacies it should have known were selling drugs without valid prescriptions.

Two small research firms, Legitscript.com and KnujOn.com, say that during a three-month period in the spring and early summer of 2009, Yahoo routinely accepted ads from dozens of online pharmacies that dispensed drugs without a valid prescription.

The allegation is included in a new report by the two firms, which said their researchers used "blind" buys -- purchases made without disclosing their identities -- to obtain a wide range of prescription drugs from nearly a dozen online pharmacy sites that advertised on Yahoo. The researchers, the companies said, often had real-time interaction with online pharmacy employees.

"If search engines continue to knowingly facilitate illegal prescription drug sales, then we will continue to issue these reports," said Garth Bruen, president of KnujOn.com.

The two companies earlier accused the new Microsoft search engine Bing of similar practices. Bing said it had followed all "acceptable" practices and would increase security on its search engine.

Researchers from the two companies say they were able to buy drugs such as Ambien, Tramadol and Soma -- along with a range of others -- merely by filling out an online form. They received the drugs within a day or two, the companies reported.

Both Yahoo and the other major Internet search engine, Google, use a firm called PharmacyChecker.com to verify that drugs are dispensed legally. But this week's report said even with that protection, drugs were purchased with ease.

Google has not been mentioned by the two firms as a search engine that accepts ads from rogue pharmacies.

But John Horton, president of Legitscript.com, said more than 80 percent of Yahoo's Internet pharmacy ads "were operating contrary to federal and state laws."

In one instance, a researcher from the firm asked a representative from "Pharmacybuycheap.com" whether he needed a doctor's prescription for Tramadol, a powerful muscle relaxant which has been known to be addictive.

"No, you do not need a prescription from a doctor," came the reply, according to the report.

CNN attempted to reach a representative of "Pharmacybuycheap.com," but the company did not return requests for comment by phone or e-mail.

In an e-mail to CNN, a spokesperson for Yahoo said the company has "strict guidelines and policies in place" for all search advertising and, "All known violators are removed from the Yahoo network."

"In addition, we have implemented a number of protective measures to protect the marketplace, including a more robust manual review process," the statement said. Online pharmacies wishing to advertise on Yahoo must undergo a "rigorous" review by PharmacyChecker, and companies that do not pass that review "may not participate in Yahoo's search marketing program."

"As this report illustrates, the online pharmacy marketplace is challenging to police," Yahoo said. "However, we take swift action when we become aware of violators and we have a number of safeguards in place to protect our advertisers and users."

In 2008, CNN aired several stories documenting rogue online pharmacies that dispensed prescription drugs without a valid doctor's authorization. CNN was able to order the powerful anti-depressant Prozac by simply filing in a form and pressing a button, and the drugs arrived via express mail the next day.

Kansas authorities are prosecuting a rural pharmacy that sent the muscle relaxant Soma to a Wichita man who eventually committed suicide by ingesting dozens of Soma pills. The drugs came from the pharmacy via an online site.

Mark and JoLane Poindexter face felony counts of computer crime, conspiracy to commit computer crime and commercial bribery, along with misdemeanor violations of Kansas pharmacy laws. The state closed their drugstore in Lyons, northwest of Wichita, in March 2008.

Rick Cloxin, their former chief pharmacist, has pleaded no contest to 14 misdemeanor counts and is awaiting sentencing.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/20/internet.drugs/index.html

Time to drop the Netbook label

(CNET) -- Can we all agree on something? There's no longer a difference between a Netbook and a notebook.

Thanks to Netbooks' move to more features and larger-size screens, the distinction between the two can now be considered little more than marketing speak.

We recently wrote about the fall's coming battle between Netbooks -- a category now 2 years old -- and thin and light notebooks with consumer ultra-low voltage (CULV) processors.

In theory, the value of a Netbook -- with its small keyboard, small screen, and lack of an optical drive -- vs. an ultralight laptop with a long battery life and a full-size keyboard for roughly the same price was very low.

But now that we're actually seeing how PC makers are packaging and selling CULV notebooks (take Dell's recent introduction of its Inspiron 11z notebook) it's obvious: Netbooks are nothing more than smaller, cheaper notebooks.

The distinction made some sense early on. The first Netbooks were very small, around 7 or 8 inches, and were used for little more than getting online.

They were marketed by smaller brands such as Asus and MSI as super portable, inexpensive notebooks that ran Linux, cutting out much of the cost tacked on with a Windows license. But they didn't really take off until Microsoft began offering Windows XP specifically for Netbooks, long after it was no longer available on new laptops and desktops.

The big PC makers, understandably, wanted a piece of the action too, but not at the expense of cannibalizing their budget-conscious traditional notebook lines.

So Netbooks were sold as a "companion device." As in, if you keep some of your data "in the cloud" as with e-mail on Yahoo or Gmail or pictures on Facebook or Picasa, and you stream music on a service like Pandora or Last.fm, you can use your regular notebook at home and use something smaller on the road that still affords access to a lot of your stuff.

But then people outside the tech-savvy early-adopter crowd started buying Netbooks in droves -- 16 million of them were sold in North America in 2008 -- because they were so much cheaper than most traditional laptops, and with XP, had a familiar operating system.

Their popularity, probably not coincidentally, began to grow right around the time the economy crumbled.

Then, earlier this year, Intel started pushing the idea of ultra-low voltage processors that are inexpensive and offer better battery life. PC makers, of course, like this idea because they can package them in yet more new hardware and can charge a bit more than they would for a Netbook.

Which brings us to Dell announcing its $399 Inspiron 11z. It certainly looks like a Netbook and has a Netbook-like price, yet to Dell, it's not a Netbook. Instead, the company describes it as a notebook with a slightly faster processor, and 1GB of more memory.

Acer says Netbooks "typically" have Atom processors, weigh less than 3 pounds, have screens between 10 and 11.6 inches, and are in the $299 range.

HP says Netbooks are smaller than 12 inches and intended as companion devices designed for "content consumption, while the traditional notebook PC is also designed for content creation as well as consumption."

It's clear this is mostly arbitrary. If there were a technical definition it wouldn't be constantly in a state of flux: two years ago, Netbooks would have been defined as something with a much smaller screen, at least as small as 7 inches, and a more expensive starting price.

But it's most helpful to look at one from each category side by side.

Let's compare the $399 Inspiron 11z (whose price might go up slightly when the promotion is over) and the Dell Mini 10 Netbook, which I configured with roughly the same specs, but that comes out to a slightly pricier $424.

Color, screen resolution, battery, Wi-Fi, Webcam? The same. And they both lack an internal optical drive. The differences, though relatively small, can be summed up in the 11z notebook's 1.5 inches of extra screen real estate, a more powerful Celeron processor, 1GB of extra memory, and a larger hard drive.

Plus, by getting the notebook with Vista, you have an automatic free upgrade to Windows 7. With any computer with XP, it costs around $100 to get Windows 7 Home Premium Edition.

The specs are so similar that the average shopper would likely be confused as to why one is better than the other. And the way Dell introduced the 11z doesn't clear matters up. Dell's official blog notes that "the Inspiron 11z blends Netbook-like portability with laptop-like capability."

If the specs and capabilities are essentially the same, and the size (both 1-inch thin) and weight (the 11z is 3 pounds, the Mini 10 2.6 pounds) are essentially the same, one of these is not more "portable" than the other. The only conclusion is that there really is no distinction between the devices besides names.

Now, it's true not every manufacturer will sell a notebook so similar to what it calls a Netbook. HP sells Netbooks and ultrathin CULV laptops, as do Lenovo, Acer, and many others.

But Dell's blurring of the line between the two appears to reflect the lack of clarity of the whole industry when it comes to how to balance selling more laptops, pricing them attractively when many buyers are pinching pennies, and still finding a way to make some sort of profit.

Because the definition of Netbook is so arbitrary, and because you get so much more for your money with thin and light CULV-based Netbooks, it's really not hard to imagine the former flood of Netbooks to the market slowing down to a trickle.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/ptech/08/20/cnet.drop.netbook.label/index.html

Teaser sites promote the story, not the video game

In today’s video game universe, it isn’t enough to get publicity at conventions and gaming sites. More publishers are seeking extra online buzz by creating special teaser Web sites that sell the backstory of the game instead of the game itself.

The “Bioshock 2″ site, www.somethinginthesea.com, offers cryptic details about strange sightings in the ocean and children who’ve mysteriously gone missing. The home page depicts a 1960s-era office with metal filing cabinets, bulletin boards, radios and more; when the user clicks on certain objects, clues are revealed that offer glimpses into the game and explain how some of its characters were created.

By contrast, “Batman: Arkham Asylum” offers what looks like a stodgy Gotham City municipal Web site with links to city services, the mayor’s office and paying utility bills. But when users click on the “Breaking News” headline about a fire at Blackgate prison that required its inmates to be transferred to Arkham Asylum, they discover such other tongue-in-cheek links as one for Arkham Care, which promises “even the most diseased mind can be cured.” Eventually, users discover parts of the Joker’s scheme to lure Batman to Arkham Asylum and trap him inside.

These sites don’t give away anything important about the plots of the games and don’t even mention the main characters. Instead, they offer pieces of a puzzle — pieces that on the surface don’t seem to make sense but that create a sense of mystery and intrigue.

“Batman: Arkham Asylum” is due Aug. 25, while the release “Bioshock 2″ has been delayed til the first half of next year.

A last-minute note on “Batman: Arkham Asylum”: The developers say the PC version of the game will be delayed for three weeks, but don’t despair. The game is being tweaked with NVIDIA® PhysX® technology, which will create more realistic objects and environments within the gameplay.

According to the NVIDIA website, your computer will need GeForce 8-series GPUs and later, with a minimum of 32 cores and a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory, to play “Arkham Asylum.” So check your specs before you invest in the game.

http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/19/teaser-sites-promote-the-story-not-the-video-game/

MySpace to buy social music site iLike

News Corp.-owned MySpace buys music Web site and network application, which gained popularity on Facebook and other social networks.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Social networking site MySpace said Wednesday that it agreed to buy popular music application iLike for an undisclosed amount.

The deal marks MySpace's first purchase under Chief Executive Owen Van Natta, who took the helm in April.

Once the largest social network, the company has struggled to grow its user base since it was purchased by NewsCorp (NWS, Fortune 500) in 2005.

With 55 million total users, iLike is the most popular music application across social networks, including Facebook, which eclipsed MySpace as the world's biggest social networking Web site in 2008.

ILike allows users to share music playlists and concert alerts, as well as connecting them to concert ticket buying Web sites. Van Natta said users will not notice any immediate changes and will still be able to access the application on rival networks.

First of many deals. The MySpace CEO said on a conference call that the deal will compliment the MySpace Music unit, a joint venture with major record labels. Van Natta hopes to expand iLike into gaming and video.

"ILike provides a great experience," said Van Natta. "We want to continue to extend that to new users into other categories -- it has a broad range across other entertainment categories."

Van Natta said the iLike acquisition is just the first of many soon-to-come announcements of bringing "world-class" talent to the company.

The MySpace chief executive said he doesn't want to disrupt what iLike is doing, and will keep the company's founders, Ali and Hadi Partovi, in their current roles. However, he also said he plans on utilizing the Partovi brothers' skills in other areas of the company as well.

"MySpace's strengths have been a long-time source of inspiration for iLike," said Partovi, in a statement. "Combining MySpace's existing platform, reach and resources with iLike's syndication network and social discovery tools creates the potential for truly exciting innovation and commerce across any vertical entertainment category."

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/19/technology/myspace_ilike/index.htm?postversion=2009081916