Grab Windows Monitoring Tool WinPatrol Plus for 99 Cents

Windows: WinPatrol Plus is a powerful Windows monitoring tool which regularly retails for $40. It's available, today only, for 99 cents.

WinPatrol Plus continually monitors your system and takes system snapshots to record system changes, critical spikes in resource usage, and other events you want to be alerted of. If you want to monitor your system and keep tight control over aspects of it like what programs launch at startup or run in the background—no matter how deeply buried in the system they are—WinPatrol is a great tool for doing so. You can visit the author's site for more information or jump directly to the Yahoo! store that processes the orders—in case the offer today tanks the author's site.

WinPatrol Plus is Windows only and on sale, today only, for 99 cents. Have a favorite Windows monitoring tool? Let's hear about it in the comments.

WinPatrol Plus [via Download Squad]

Source: Lifehacker.Com

DIY: The Internet

When I used to go to NYU, I assisted in teaching a web class to graduate students. There was one woman in the class who was amazed that I was able to publish her information to the Web so quickly! She thought the Internet was a black box somewhere and that I had to ask permission to put stuff onto it.

Well now you can make your very own black box of Internet, courtesy of the IT Crowd. You can loan folks the Internet but remember to return it to a high tower where it can get the best reception.

Actually all this is is a box with an LED on it. However, do tell us if you’re able to convince anyone that you’ve given them the actual Internet. We’d love to hear about the resulting guffaws.

Source: Crunchgear.com

Tablet makers rethinking things in wake of iPad's low price

Competing tablet makers are reevaluating their pricing strategy in the wake of Apple's iPad announcement, according to a rumor in the Digitimes. The article cites the usual unnamed sources in claiming that companies like ASUS and MSI had expected Apple's iPad to debut at $1,000, and were planning to undercut that price by 20 to 30 percent with their own, presumably Android-based offerings. But with the iPad base model coming in at $499—the price of a decent netbook—the companies are now going to have to compete on something besides price.

Assuming this rumor is true, and it seems completely plausible, then it confirms what a major shift in strategy the iPad is for Apple's business. Apple jealously guards its fat margins, but those margins are almost certainly taking a major hit to get the base model iPad out the door at this price point. This sacrifice is an acknowledgment by Apple that it has to go out and create a market for a device that people don't yet know they need.

The iPad's price is also another sign of just how massive an impact that the netbook has had on the business of computing. If Apple is sacrificing profits to make the iPad an alternative to the netbook as a second or third computer for mass-market use, then Apple can join Intel, Dell, HP, and other PC vendors in the list of companies that have seen their margins suffer due to the netbook's popularity.

How did they get the price so cheap?
The inevitable teardowns haven't been done yet, but even now it's hard to see how Apple will make much, if any, money on the $499 model. This being the case, it's worth considering how the company can afford to launch at this price point.

The first trick that Apple used to keep the cost down is that, as many have pointed out, the iPad left out some key hardware features and will instead charge users a nice markup on accessories designed to give those features back. Specifically, the lack of built-in USB ports and SD card support saved a few dollars per unit, and for a unit that will eventually sell in the tens and possibly of millions, that's real money. And Apple makes even more money if it can sell tens of millions of plastic USB and SD card adapters at a hefty profit.

Apple's second technique for mitigating the impact of that low price is the classic up-sell. The company is charging considerably more for the 3G and/or more storage, with the result that buyers of the higher-end models are pitching in extra money to pay for the low-end model's discount.

Finally, it's likely that Apple sees itself taking a page from the console makers' playbook by making up lost hardware revenues with content sales. Right now, prior to the advent of the HTML5 spec, which will make it much harder for Apple to take a cut of software and content distribution on the platform, Apple can afford to give away the hardware because it's taking a cut of iTunes, App Store, and iBook sales.

As Apple's iPhone OS inevitably begins to lose control of software and content distribution on the iPad to the browser, it's hard to see how it will continue to reduce the price of the device. What seems more likely is that the company will leave its pricing structure largely intact while widening its margins as unit prices decline.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Comcast running out of IPv4 addresses, beginning IPv6 trial

Comcast is asking for volunteers to participate in its upcoming IPv6 trials. The cable ISP has been participating in IPv6 circles for a long time and with its huge subscriber base, it is experiencing the IPv4 address scarcity first-hand. So far, it has been able to get addresses for its customers—but not for those customers' cable modems and set-top-boxes. These also need addresses to function or to be managed. No problem, right? Just use private IPv4 addresses, such as the 10 network, which holds 16.8 million addresses. But with 25 million TV, 15 million ISP, and 6 million Comcast Digital Voice subscribers, 16.8 million private addresses isn't enough for a regular management system in which a management station can directly connect to each managed device. So Comcast needs IPv6 just to run its internal network effectively now.

We're also running out of IPv4 addresses, so at some point in the future, Comcast will be unable to obtain additional addresses to connect new customers. So Comcast also needs to provide IPv6 service to its customers at some point and is looking for willing subjects to give it a try.

Comcast plans four trials. The first one will use a transition technique that is still under development, called 6RD. 6RD is similar to the 6to4 automatic tunneling mechanism that is available in Windows (it's enabled automatically when the system has a public IPv4 address under Windows 7 and Vista). The difference is that 6RD only tunnels IPv6 packets across an IPv4-only part of the service provider's network, while 6to4 can tunnel across large parts of the Internet, possibly incurring slowdowns.

The second trial will be with native IPv6. Here, IPv6 packets are transmitted across the infrastructure without encapsulating them in IPv4 packets. IPv4 remains available, creating a "dual stack" deployment. "Native, dual-stack is central to our IPv6 strategy and we expect that the native dual-stack solution will be a significant part of the IPv6 transition, enabling IPv6 technology to evolve globally while still being able to provide seamless services to the traditional IPv4 Internet," says Comcast.

The third trial will basically be the opposite of the first: rather than encapsulate IPv6 packets in IPv4 packets in order to traverse IPv4-only network sections, IPv4 is now encapsulated in IPv6 to get across IPv6-only parts of the service provider network. The technique for this will be "Dual Stack Lite," a protocol that is being developed in the IETF Softwires working group, which is co-chaired by Comcast's Alain Durand. In Dual Stack Lite, the IPv4 hosts use private IPv4 addresses. A home router encapsulates those in IPv6 packets, and a "carrier grade NAT" both decapsulates the packets and performs Network Address Translation so that a lot of DS-Lite clients can share a single IPv4 address.

The fourth trial will evaluate how to provide IPv6 to business class customers. The first two trials are scheduled for the second quarter of 2010, the other two for the third quarter. At this time the details on what participating in each trial will encompass are unclear, and signing up doesn't necessarily guarantee participation.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Apple lifts VoIP over cellular restrictions in new iPhone SDK

iCall VoIP services for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch are now available for use over 3G networks such as AT&T wireless.

GREENWICH, Conn., Jan. 27 /World IT News/ -- Apple Computer, Inc. has updated the iPhone developer SDK to allow VoIP over cellular networks. iCall is the first and only VoIP application that functions on the iPhone and iPod Touch over cellular 3G networks.

iCall is a market leader in desktop and mobile-based desktop calling platforms, including its highly popular version for the Apple iPhone. Until today, restrictions imposed on developers prohibited VoIP functionality on any 3G network.

VoIP on the iPhone has been the source of many debates with companies such as Google being denied access to the platform and the FCC inquiring as to the restrictions in the Apple App Store; iCall is one of the few VoIP applications that has been permitted by Apple to operate on the iPhone platform.

With the latest revisions Apple has made to the iPhone developer agreement and Software Development Kit, iCall for the iPhone and iPod Touch now enabled unrestricted free local and long distance calling over 3G data networks. iCall with support for VoIP over 3G networks is now available in the App Store for download. iCall is the first and only VoIP application available for the iPhone platform that allows use over 3G networks. iCall for the iPhone and iPod Touch may now be downloaded from the App Store at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icall-free-voip/id293837001?mt=8&uo=6

iCall CEO Arlo Gilbert is quoted as saying, "I applaud Apple's decision to allow iCall to extend its functionality beyond Wi-Fi and onto the 3G networks. This heralds a new era for VoIP applications on mobile platforms, especially for iCall and our free calling model. I hope that now more developers will begin using our VoIP as a platform to integrate VoIP into their applications."

About iCall, Inc.:
iCall is a privately held company providing a free and low-cost VoIP calling platform that is currently available for your desktop PC, iPhone and iPod Touch. iCall saves consumers money on phone calling through ad-supported calling.

iCall was founded in 2005 by Arlo Gilbert and Andy Muldowney with the goal of providing low and no-cost calling services to consumers. In January 2006, iCall first released its iCall Free Calling desktop application. iCall's free calling network now boasts over more than 4 million unique downloads.

In addition to consumer products, iCall offers wholesale VoIP solutions and a developer platform through iCall Carrier Services. iCall's private network carries over 350 million minutes of voice traffic per month to destinations around the globe.

To watch a video about iCall for the iPhone click here

Source: PRnewswire.com

Don't drink, drive, kill someone, drink, post on Facebook

As we continue our collective foray into the brave new world of social networking, we keep learning the same lesson over and over again: don't post photos of yourself doing stupid things. This is doubly true if said stupid thing is illegal, as yet another intellectually challenged Facebook user has discovered.

17-year-old Ashley Sullivan had been driving with her boyfriend in Tonawanda, a town in New York State near Niagara Falls, when she crashed into a brick pillar at 56 mph in a golf course. Her boyfriend did not survive the accident, and in November of 2009, Sullivan pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and driving while intoxicated.

That didn't stop Sullivan from posting a photo a month later to her Facebook page with the caption of "Drunk in Florida." It just so happens that she had just gone to Florida on a trip, and the judge in her case took notice. Judge Matthew J. Murphy III denied Sullivan youthful offender status, noting that she hasn't "earned it," and sentenced her to six months in jail with five years probation. "I'm troubled by your conduct since the crash, and that's the reason for the jail sentence," Judge Murphy III told her, according to the Buffalo News (via SAI).

This is just one of (what's now becoming) a pattern of stories about people making poor Facebook decisions, especially when it comes to posting pictures. Employers don't like to see you partying at the club, insurance companies don't like to see you dancing at your birthday party when you're missing work due to depression, and judges most certainly don't like to see you posting pics of you drinking after you killed someone in a drunk driving accident.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Could P2P blocking be legalized by new net neutrality rules?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation can't believe it: the FCC's network neutrality draft rules, if adopted in their current form, might give Comcast permission to flat-out block BitTorrent—precisely the scenario that led to the rules being drafted.

It's a shocking claim, if true. Could FCC Chair Julius Genachowski's big push for network neutrality actually authorize the very conduct it was (ostensibly) drafted to prevent, indiscriminate blocking of the bluntest kind?

A massive loophole?
The EFF is concerned about a particular pair of clauses in the current draft rules (PDF) for network neutrality. Those clauses impose no obligation on ISPs to permit "the transfer of unlawful content" or the "unlawful transfer of content." In other words, ISPs don't have to be "neutral" about illegal content, and those trafficking in it can't complain to the FCC is their content is slowed, blocked, throttled, folded, spindled, or mutilated.

If there was any doubt about this, another section of the draft rules make it clear: "Furthermore, we have no intention of protecting unlawful activities in these rules."

Fred von Lohmann, an EFF copyright lawyer, sees danger here. "That means that so long as your ISP claims that it's trying to prevent copyright infringement, it's exempted from the net neutrality principles and can interfere with your ability to access lawful content, use lawful devices, run lawful applications, or access lawful services," he said last week.

Today, the EFF ramped up the rhetoric, saying that the rules have "a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 — simply by claiming that it was 'reasonable network management' intended to 'prevent the unlawful transfer of content.'"

But it's important to remember that the rule isn't new. The FCC's Internet policy statement (PDF), drafted back in 2005 by a very different FCC, set out four "Internet freedoms." The first said that "consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice." The policy statement never provided protection for unlawful content.

It was this policy statement that was regularly cited in the Comcast case, when the ISP was accused of interfering with BitTorrent traffic, regardless of the content being transferred. The company received a wet-towel-snap-to-the-backside from the FCC for its actions.

The other key point is that the new draft rules do not craft an exception to net neutrality for ISPs who are "trying" to stop unlawful content transmission; the exception only applies to actual transfers of unlawful material. Under the EFF's reading of these provisions, an ISP could simply throttle all Web streaming video traffic on the grounds that some of it is unlawful. An ISP could block access to BitTorrent. Particular Web sites like The Pirate Bay could simply be blocked wholesale. Services like Rapidshare could be axed on the same ground. Access to Usenet could be curtailed. In essence, anything could be blocked so long as ISPs could show they were "trying" to stop unlawful content.

Fortunately, this isn't what the draft rules say; the exception only applies to content that is in fact unlawful. The flip side of this is a positive statement: "The nondiscrimination principle would prohibit broadband Internet access service providers from favoring or disfavoring lawful content, applications, or services accessed by their subscribers." That's pretty clear. Any ISP that attempts to do something like block BitTorrent outright would quickly block "lawful content" and would run afoul of the new nondiscrimination principle.

The "reasonable" trump card
But von Lohmann's a sharp lawyer, and he's not crazy. So what is he talking about? What appears to worry him is the fact that the exceptions both exist under the broader heading of "network management." And "network management" is defined as "reasonable practices employed by a provider of broadband Internet access service." Thus the worry—could an ISP get away with claiming that some particular block is "reasonable"? What if 70 percent of the content blocked was unlawful—would that be "reasonable"? What about 80 percent? 90? 95?

Future administrations might well agree that throttling a P2P protocol is reasonable, given that some high percentage of its content is unlawful. And you can bet that groups like RIAA and MPAA will try to make this happen.

The draft rules do address this scenario, though. The FCC says that "it appears reasonable for a broadband Internet access service provider to refuse to transmit copyrighted material if the transfer of that material would violate applicable laws." But it adds that "such a rule would be consistent with the Comcast Network Management Practices Order, in which the Commission stated that 'providers, consistent with federal policy, may block... transmissions that violate copyright law.'"

In other words, this isn't quite a free for all in which the rules on being "reasonable" could be twisted to justify any practice. The FCC provides explicit guidance on dealing with copyrighted works, and that guidance says clearly that ISPs cannot block an entire protocol like BitTorrent (this was the Comcast order being referenced) as they seek to stop the unlawful transfer of copyrighted works.

The rulemaking on net neutrality is ongoing, and the FCC wasn't willing to comment officially on interpretations of the draft rules. However, FCC sources did make clear to Ars that, in their view, the draft rules would not lead to the EFF's nightmare scenario. It is important to note that the FCC is conducting its rulemaking in order to learn about potential problems with its ideas, and the language of the rules may still be tweaked significantly.

What is crystal clear is that the draft rules do allow targeted ISP blocking of illegal content on P2P networks, assuming that the particular method of identifying such traffic passes legal muster (i.e., isn't classed as "wiretapping," which is a potential pitfall of deep packet inspection methods). As footnote 230 notes, "We also propose that broadband Internet access service providers may take action to counter unwanted or harmful traffic such as spam and malware, may decline to carry unlawful traffic, or may decline to carry traffic if the transfer of the content is prohibited by law, including copyright law."

Source: Arstechnica.com

Ubuntu's default search engine to change in deal with Yahoo

Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, revealed today that it has established a revenue sharing agreement with Yahoo. As part of the deal, the Firefox Web browser that is shipped in Ubuntu will be configured to use Yahoo as the default search engine.

Rick Spencer, the leader of Canonical's desktop team, announced the search engine change today on a public Ubuntu mailing list. The specific terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. According to Spencer, the new default will appear in the development version of the distribution "as soon as reasonably possible" and will be in place in time for Ubuntu 10.04, which is scheduled for release in April. They have not indicated whether the change will be applied retroactively to existing installations of the current stable version, but it seems unlikely.

The change will encompass both the search provider in Firefox's toolbar and the default start page. Users will still be able to quickly change the default search service by clicking the search provider icon in Firefox and selecting the search service of their choice from the dropdown menu. In order to make it easier for users to switch completely, Canonical is customizing the browser so that switching your default search provider will also change your start page if you haven't already set one.

Canonical is unusual among major commercial Linux distributors in the sense that it doesn't sell an "enterprise" or "pro" version of its software. In an effort to make this approach sustainable, Canonical is experimenting with a number of different business models, including commercial support for end users, subscription-based Web services, and integration support for hardware makers. In the announcement about the search engine change, Spencer says that Canonical's partnership with Yahoo will help to fund the ongoing development of the distribution.

"I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform," he wrote. "This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our users' default search across Firefox."

Canonical currently gains a portion of the revenue from Google searches, so the change means that Yahoo offered a better deal. Search partnerships have become increasingly common. The development of Firefox itself is largely funded by Mozilla's relationship with Google and other search providers. Hardware vendor Dell already ships Yahoo as the default search engine in its Ubuntu-based systems due to its own revenue sharing deal with the search company.

It's worth noting that Yahoo's data retention practices are more privacy-friendly than Google's. Yahoo search records are anonymized after 90 days, a practice that will continue in the future. Google, on the other hand, keeps the data for three times as long and has faced criticism for its allegedly inadequate anonymization.

The move has generated a bit of controversy among some Ubuntu enthusiasts who are concerned by the adoption of a default that doesn't represent the general preference of a majority of the users. In practice, the ease with which the default can be changed largely mitigates any potentially detrimental implications. As long as Canonical's efforts to monetize the desktop doesn't escalate into the kind of crapware epidemic that has infected the major PC makers, it's not going to be a problem. Selling the default search seems like a fairly uninvasive and practical way for Canonical to boost its revenue, thus helping to ensure that the company can continue to provide its software to users at no cost.

Source: Arstechnica.com

HP gives a few new details on Slate via video

HP last night posted a (rather boring) five-minute video (even the interviewer seems to forget where she is at some points) giving further details about the HP Slate that Steve Ballmer showed off during his keynote at CES 2010. It was first posted on the hpcomputers YouTube channel with the heading "SPECIAL REPORT! The HP Slate." The interviewee is CTO Phil McKinney, who we've seen showing prototypes of HP touch devices before. We've watched the video so that you don't have to (despite its lacking presentation, the details are interesting), but in case you're interested, we've also embedded it below:

The project started five years ago at HP Labs in the UK, germinated by the concept of an e-reader device. HP took its prototypes and put it in the hands of users to get feedback from them. The biggest feedback users gave was that reading was great but they wanted it to do media as well, according to McKinney. As such, HP now believes that consumers are looking for a device that can be used as their "ultimate content consumption experience," McKinney says. It has to be thin and light, somewhere between 4 to 10 inches, and essentially invade the market that is currently dominated by e-readers from Sony and Amazon. Those devices don't have color though, nor can you play back videos, or browse the Internet on them, but McKinney says users want all that in addition to being able to read magazines and books, and that's the problem the slate platform will solve.

When asked, "why now?," McKinney answers that 2010 is "the optimal year for the slate platforms" because now there's "the perfect storm of innovation." There's a convergence of low-cost and low-power processors as well as the touch-aware Windows 7, and that's what will let HP push the slate platform.

"In reality we could have built this device two years ago. We had it ready; we put it on the shelf," McKinney boasts. "[At] that time for us to deliver the device it would have been $1,500, and [it] would have been outrageously expensive. Our target was to get it down to be a mainstream price point, mainstream product, not a niche offering."

So to sum up: you'll be able to get it some time in 2010, it will cost you less than $1,500, and it will run Windows 7.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Nokia Brings Location-Sharing to Facebook

As predicted, 2010 is shaping up to be the year of location. An unlikely entrant has just thrown its hat into the location-based social networking ring. Nokia, by way of Ovi Maps, has just introduced location-sharing to their smartphone users.

The new Ovi Maps, which you may recall just gifted users with free turn-by-turn directions, also supports a “share location” feature that equips people with the ability to select where they are on the map and share their locations — street addresses, nearby points of interest or favorite places (as saved to their Maps) — and to post a status update and photo on Facebook.

Nokia’s approach to location-sharing is incredibly simple and practical, which means unlike Google and its Latitude product, users can share their locations on Facebook directly from the Maps application. No additional applications required. Essentially, location-sharing is now built into Nokia’s default mapping application, which exposes the relatively niche activity to a more mainstream audience instantly.

That fact alone makes this maneuver especially interesting. Although lacking the social gaming features of Foursquare, or a check-in model like Loopt and Yelp, Nokia has given its users the ability to share their locations with their friends on the world’s most popular social network without any additional legwork.

HP deal strengthens Omnifone's position in digital music battle

Omnifone's MusicStation is fighting it out with rivals such as Spotify, Sky's Sky Songs and other services being developed by Apple and Virgin Media. Photograph: Asger Carlsen/Getty Images

The latest salvo in the digital music war will be fired today when British group Omnifone announces it has clinched a crucial deal with Hewlett-Packard, the largest PC manufacturer in the world, to have its MusicStation unlimited track download service pre-loaded onto computers and laptops.

The deal, which covers 10 European countries including the UK, comes as online music service Spotify continues to gain ground in Europe, and Apple is understood to be planning to announce its own streaming music service for iTunes on Wednesday. Late last year, the Californian technology company snapped up small music start-up Lala. It has expertise in online storage and streaming and that deal was widely seen as preceding a move by Apple into the streaming music market.

Many current online music services only allow people to listen to tracks when connected to the internet. MusicStation, which is already available as a mobile phone service from operators including Vodafone in the UK, allows users to download an unlimited number of tracks – from a library of 6.5m - and play them offline. For £8.99 a month (€9.99 outside the UK), subscribers to MusicStation for the PC also get their 10 favourite tracks each month without any copyright protection, meaning they can load them onto any digital music device.

The digital music market has become a battleground not just for the music companies and retailers, but also for hardware manufacturers and even internet service providers. HP is just the latest in a long line of brands to jump on the bandwagon.

While iTunes and the iPod gave Apple a significant head start, its grip is being loosened by a plethora of new services. Satellite broadcaster Sky recently launched its Sky Songs streaming and download service and Virgin Media is trying to get a similar service up and running, reportedly under the title MusicFish.

Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia launched its Comes With Music service more than a year ago, bundling unlimited track downloads in with some of its smartphones. The service, however, has failed to attract significant takeup, not least because its advertising left many people baffled. Omnifone, meanwhile, powers rival mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson's own music service PlayNow.

Omnifone launched MusicStation in 2007 and teaming up with HP, which globally ships almost 50m computers a year, will give it access to a huge potential market. Anyone buying one of 16 HP computers and laptops across Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK will get MusicStation bundled with their new hardware and will be offered a free trial and the chance to subscribe to the full service.

For HP, the deal gives the company the chance to boast to consumers about the media credentials of its hardware, at a time when bitter rival Dell has poured millions into advertising its own consumer-friendly range of brightly coloured multimedia laptops.

"Omnifone is proud to partner with HP, the world's largest PC manufacturer, to deliver MusicStation to consumers on millions of PCs in 10 countries across Europe," said Rob Lewis, Omnifone chief executive. "The HP rollout sees MusicStation Desktop preinstalled on multiple HP PCs, available in seven languages with each territory featuring an individually tailored music catalogue."

"We look forward to extending our partnership onto even more PCs and territories, to ensure consumers have the ability to gain legitimate access to the world's music on every HP PC they purchase."

Source: Guardian.co.uk

How To: Get Multitouch On Your Droid or Nexus One

This generation of Android phones is faster, more powerful and generally awesome-er than anything before. But for whatever reason, they don't have one thing other smartphones take for granted: multitouch. Here's how to fix that, and so much more.

Google's Nexus one and Verizon's Motorola Droid are, in a sense, miles ahead their competitors in terms of hardware specs, but moreso because they've got much newer versions of Android's software, with 2.1 and 2.0, respectively. In the midst of a slew of new software features and despite base-level hardware and software support, Google, who has always been cagey about the multitouch issue, continues to leave it out of their core apps.

This is especially weird in the cases of the Droid and Nexus One, which don't just support multitouch on a hardware level, but fully support it on an OS level, too. It's really just the apps, like the browser, the photo gallery and the maps app, which exclude support for multitouch gestures such as pinch-zooming. Why can't all Android users have use the same gestures that iPhone, Pre and HTC Hero owners can, if their phones can already accept multi-finger input? Only Google knows. But there's something you can do about it. Actually, there are two things:

Rooting

Rooting is most intensive method, and can actually do a lot more than add multitouch to your phone. What this does, basically, is give you deep, system-level access to all your phone's software and parameters, which lets you run unsanctioned tethering apps to writing apps to your SD card (by default, Android phones restrict you to the device's limited, onboard memory), modify the device's stock apps, and most importantly, swap your phone's software out completely, with what's called a new ROM. To get native multitouch apps on your phone, you can opt for an entire flash ROM, or just a more narrow set of hacks. But you will need to root your device.

Downloadable Apps

As I mentioned before, the Droid and Nexus One's shared dirty secret is that they support multitouch out of the box, but don't support include the gestures necessary to get any use out of it. This means that unless you're willing to hack your phones, as seen above, you're not going to be able to get multitouch in your native browser, or for that matter any of your native apps. The easy solution? Download Dolphin, a browser that include multitouch gestures (and a lot more cool stuff, like swipe gestures, RSS feed subscriptions and a built-in Twitter client.

For photos, try Multi-Touch for Gallery, which is a full photo gallery replacement, or PicSay, which is a combination gallery/photo editor. All you've got to do is search for these apps in the Android Market, install them, and designate them as your default web and photo browsers.

There are other mulitouch apps in the App Market, from games to utilities to simple tech demos. Drop your favorites in the comments, and I'll add them to the post.

Source: Gizmodo.com

World's First 3D Photocopier Goes On Sale For $17,000

Ortery's Photosimile 5000 3D photocopier has taken two years to go on sale since it first surfaced in 2008, providing digital 3D replicas of whatever object you place inside it. Think of the possibilities!

Once the object is placed on the Ortery turntable inside the box, a Canon DSLR takes 360 degree photos, with the four daylight bulbs giving 6500K of illumination—the perfect lighting conditions for the 72 photos taken.

Connected to a PC by USB, the images are saved as GIF or Flash files, and then transferred to the Photosimile software. If all of this is getting you hot under the collar at the thought of such a machine, better schedule a meeting in with your bank manager—it's $17,000 and has just started shipping.

[Ortery via Gizmag via TechRadar]

Source: Gizmodo.com

OpenShot 1.0 Is an Actually Usable Linux Video Editor

Linux/Live CD/DVD: It's one of the five features we desperately want in Ubuntu: a video editor that the average user can stitch together simple movies with. OpenShot 1.0 is mostly there.

That's not to say the interface has much polish, or that you don't have to install non-free multimedia codecs in your Linux system beforehand. Then again, unless you're a FLAC/OGG music purist, you probably already installed your MP3 and other file supports.

I had a video project to assemble over the weekend—combining a recorded audio file and still pictures into a video file that could be imported into iMovie, or watched on a standard PC laptop. I dropped an audio file into the left-hand sidebar, and it automatically dropped into one of the two default tracks. I dragged in a batch of pictures, and I could then drop them onto the timeline. From there, you can use the really simple tools—resize, razor, marker, and moving tool—to adjust and arrange the clips. For my purposes, that was perfect. It was a return to earlier versions of iMovie, a basic non-linear video editor for the rest of us.

If you're looking to make very complex transitions or pull precise transformations on your video, you're still better off with a more advanced suite on another platform—one of our six best video editing applications, perhaps. If you're a Linux user and looking to stitch together a small-scale video project, OpenShot is definitely worth a look.

OpenShot is a free download, available as a live CD or DVD, as an Ubuntu/Debian repository, and pre-compiled for Ubuntu and Fedora systems. If you've given OpenShot a try and like it, or find it lacking a certain something, tell us about it in the comments.

OpenShot 1.0 Has Arrived! [OpenShot Video Editor]

Source: Lifehacker.Com

OS Software Revenue Up 35%

U.S. retail operating systems boxed software revenue increased 35 percent in 2009, but it was not enough to lift non-games software into positive territory, according to new research from The NPD Group.

Total retail non-games software revenue fell 7 percent in 2009 to $2.4 billion. That is an improvement over the 10 percent decrease in 2008. Unit volume for 2009 dropped 6 percent and average selling price dipped 2 percent.

Operating systems was the only category to post both a revenue and unit increase over 2008. With new operating system releases from both Microsoft and Apple in the back half of the year sales traffic, volume, and interest in boxed software were at very high levels. Both OS releases posted record sales and growth figures for their initial launch periods and continued to perform strongly even after their initial entry into the market.

"2009 was a mixed bag for the packaged consumer software market," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "There is always a burst of interest when new versions of operating system are released.

"But weak results in the more stable sales categories, like tax and system utilities, drove overall revenue down. Shifting channel activities and a move to more online purchasing took a bite out of both of those segments in 2009. The outlook for 2010 is for similar sales results as the lack of any OS launches will likely be offset by the release of Office 2010."

Business software was the only other category, besides operating systems, to post a unit gain. The category grew 6 percent, due in part to ASPs dropping 15 percent. MS Office Home and Student delivered strong sales volumes during both the back-to-school and holiday periods as a result of aggressive price promotion.

The average selling price fell from $118 in the prior year to $106 in 2009. Apple's iWork 2009 also saw strong unit volume growth as average prices declined more than 15 percent on the single-user version. With these falling prices, however, category revenue took a hit posting a 10 percent decline.

Source: Webpronews.com

Why Amazon won't launch its own tablet, but will use Apple's

The Kindle game is up, and Amazon knows it. In 2010, the world plus dog will be hawking an E-Ink-based e-reader, and major distribution and publishing houses like Barnes & Noble, Google, and Hearst will be offering their digital content on everything with a screen. That's why Amazon gave up some royalty money to e-book publishers on Wednesday, and announced a SDK and app store for the Kindle on Thursday.

The former move makes the Kindle Store more attractive to publishers, who will soon have plenty of options for putting their content on e-readers, E-Ink or otherwise. And the latter move will keep the Kindle e-reader fresh and attractive long after Amazon joins Apple at Wednesday's iSlate launch to announce that the Kindle Store is coming to Apple's new tablet, and to every other smartphone and tablet on the market. Forget about Amazon launching its own tablet—this year, the Kindle Store will be everywhere.

The Kindle hardware gets an SDK and a fighting chance

"Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year," the company said in a press release on Thursday. "The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle."

As examples of "active content," Amazon mentions word games, restaurant guides, and puzzles. EA Mobile, the division of Electronic Arts that does games for smartphones, is jumping on-board, but it's not clear what they have in mind for the platform. ("You're in a maze of twisty passages, all alike"?)

The fact that EA Mobile is involved has led some to speculate that Amazon will announce a non-E-Ink-based, tablet-style device that can accomodate video and will compete with Apple's upcoming iSlate. Specifically, the WSJ report on the announcement includes speculation from a Forrester analyst that Amazon is readying an iSlate competitor.

This is extremely unlikely for two reasons: 1) an Amazon-branded media tablet would be just one of a number of Wi-Fi-only tablets that are launching this year, and 2) Barnes & Noble's e-book store will be on everything with a screen by the end of the year, so Amazon will end up following suit by rolling out the Kindle store to all of the aforementioned tablets, including Apple's iSlate.

But before I elaborate, let's be clear on one thing: the Kindle Developer Kit announcement is quite explicit that Amazon is planning app store for the existing Kindle:

The Kindle Development Kit enables developers to build active content that leverages Kindle's unique combination of seamless and invisible 3G wireless delivery over Amazon Whispernet, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, and long battery life of seven days with wireless activated.

So at some point soon, the Kindle will get apps that are designed specifically for the existing, E-Ink-based hardware.

And the Kindle is just the first such E-Ink device to get an app store. There will be others, because the hardware race that's going on in e-reader application processors will ensure that there's plenty of computing horsepower to push the software on these devices quite a bit further.

An Amazon tablet would be a me-too, Wi-Fi-only device

Before talking about why Amazon will launch and iSlate Kindle Store, let's talk about why they won't put out a competing tablet of their own.

When the Kindle launched, a huge part of its success was that you don't have to sign a wireless service contract with it. Whispernet's bandwidth is pre-paid and all-you-can-eat.

This pricing model will continue to work on the current Kindle even after it gets an app store, because the E-Ink display's combination of low resolution and glacial refresh rate ensures that the bandwidth load that any app can put on Whispernet will remain very low. Sprint and Amazon have no worries that Kindle games will suck up Whispernet bandwidth, because the display essentially acts as a giant bandwidth bottleneck. So Whispernet's all-you-can-eat model is safe.

This would not be true of an Amazon-branded tablet. An Amazon media tablet would have to either rely on Wi-Fi, or come with a more traditional 3G service bundle that would severely limit its appeal. And given that it would be a media device, the price of 3G bandwidth for it would be high.

So, an Amazon tablet would be yet another large-screen, Wi-Fi-based, portable media player, of the type that everyone and their uncle is bringing to market this year. And unless Amazon has a skunkworks tablet OS project that can compete with whatever Apple will put on the iSlate, the company will be stuck using a Linux or Windows flavor, just like all of the other tablet vendors (e.g., HP, Dell, and Lenovo on Windows 7, or any number of Chinese OEMs on Android) who have established hardware brands and way more experience in tweaking existing software to make an integrated device.

The only way to differentiate such an otherwise generic tablet would be for Amazon to make it the exclusive platform for the Kindle Store. The reason that such a thing won't happen brings me to my next point.

B&N and Google Books are on everything, so Amazon will follow

At CES, every random E-Ink reader company had a big sign up advertising that Barnes & Noble and Google Books are available on their platform. Hearst is doing a similar thing with its Skiff project, where the Skiff-branded reader will be but one way to access Skiff content. These media powerhouses will be joined by an army of small, "social publishing" startups like Scribd, FastPencil, Copia, etc., all of whom want their content store to be on as many platforms as possible.

As the company's somewhat rudimentary iPhone Kindle app shows, Amazon will eventually put its Kindle store on everything with a screen. Either that, or Amazon will be left hawking a me-too tablet to a customer base that is migrating to Barnes & Noble and other distributors and publishers. Given that Amazon just bought e-book reader software maker Lexcycle, it's much more likely that the company plans to put the coders to work on bringing the Kindle Store to many different smartphones and tablets that it is that they'll launch their own tablet.

The end result is that this Kindle Developer Kit announcement is way to keep the Kindle hardware fresh and relevant while Amazon pursues opportunities in the media tablet market that will take off this year.

The only way that Amazon doesn't end up on iSlate is if Apple locks them out so that it can have the content market on the device all to itself. That's within the realm of possibility, but Amazon will still put the Kindle Store on competing Windows 7 and Linux tablets, better enabling the latter to compete against Apple.

Ultimately, the Kindle has done its job for Amazon, so it's time to move on. E-Ink is no longer the novelty it once was, and publishers are looking to reach as many devices with their content as possible. Amazon's recent decision to give up more Kindle revenue to publishers is a recognition of the fact that its vise grip on them is now broken. In 2010, publishers have alternatives, and Amazon's Kindle platform, as huge and important as it was, is no longer calling the shots.

Source: Arstechnica.com

Week in tech: Chrome OS, HTML5, China, Ubuntu 10.04a, and Firefox 3.6

It was a busy week as controversy continued to rage over the Google-China dust-up and Mozilla released a solid new version of Firefox. But first, Google.

Ars sat down with the engineering director of Google's Chrome OS project to talk about the past, present, and future of the project. There's a lot of good detail about the relationship between Chrome and Android, the genesis of Chrome OS, and much more.
The Google/China story has enough legs to qualify as a "centipede" at this point. After saying that it would no longer censor Chinese search results and that it was ready to pull out of China, Google also admitted to being the victim of a sophisticated cyberattack that went after more than 30 companies. The Chinese government responded harshly.

The Ubuntu development community pushed out the second alpha version of Ubuntu 10.04. It offers a few new apps and drops HAL in favor of DeviceKit. Check out our hands-on for the scoop on 10.04.

Firefox 3.6 was released this past week. We tested it extensively and found that its incremental improvements combined with a lot of developer-friendly features to make for an extremely solid release.

Ever wanted to know more about quantum computing but were afraid to ask? Check out our definitive guide to quantum computing. It covers the basics of qubits, two-qubit systems, and a primer on quantum physics 101 so you can wrap your brain around the topic.

As the e-book reader wars heat up and we await the unveiling of the Apple tablet, Amazon tried grabbing a bit of the spotlight by announcing a new royalty program for the Kindle. Authors can now earn up to 70 percent from each e-book sold, with a couple of catches.

Looking to make a love connection online? Data from popular dating site OKCupid reveals what kind of photos draw the most attention, and the results may surprise you.

The FTC recently filed a complaint against Intel over its business practices in the CPU market. Intel finally got around to posting its response this past week, and it's a doozy. Highlights include some damning comments from AMD execs made during the middle of the past decade.

Carbon sequestration has been touted as a way to deal with the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Researchers have developed a copper complex that is capable of reacting with carbon dioxide at a slightly elevated electric potential. The process turns the carbon dioxide into a usable byproduct which can be recycled and reused for this purpose multiple times.

Akamai's State of the Internet report reinforces the United States' reputation as a broadband sluggard. The average broadband speed in the US is 3.9Mbps, placing the country in 18th place. Topping the list? South Korea, with an average speed of 14.6Mbps.

Source: Arstechnica.com

YouTube offers HTML5 video player as Flash alternative

YouTube on Wednesday announced that the popular video-sharing Website will now support HTML5 for video playback. HTML5, for the uninitiated, is an in-development Web standard that aims to add various niceties and enhancements to the modern Web-browsing experience.

In YouTube's case, that means that browsers that support the HTML5 tag and can play H.264-encoded video can now watch videos on the site without needing to use Flash at all. Since Flash is enough of a resource-hog on OS X that entire software utilities to avoid it exist, this is a pretty compelling move for Mac users. On the Mac, only Safari and Chrome support the technologies needed for YouTube's implementation--that means every (up-to-date) Mac user on the planet can start surfing YouTube Flash-free.

You can join the HTML5 beta with a single click, but YouTube notes that you'll miss out on a few things if you do: for one thing, there are no ads (I know, terribly disappointing), but the beta also lacks fullscreen video, closed captioning, or annotations.

YouTube is calling the HTML5 beta an "experiment," but in my testing it works flawlessly.

Source: Macworld.com

Five Best Email Clients

Email as a technology has been around for decades, and thanks to wide spread adoption and popularity, it isn't in danger of disappearing. Check out the five most popular email clients to help you wrangle your email.

Earlier this week we asked your to share your favorite email client. We didn't restrict the voting to only stand-alone email applications or web-based email clients, but we did specify that if you voted for a web-based tool it had to have distinctly client-like features—such as Gmail's ability to fetch and sort email from other sources. The email Call for Contenders was one of the most popular we've ever had, with over 1,000 votes logged. Here are the five most popular clients used by Lifehacker readers:

Outlook (Windows, $399 for Office Standard Suite)

Outlook has been around since the 1990s, and by virtue of being part of the Microsoft Office suite and having been entrenched in the business environment, it enjoys an enormous popularity. Even if many people use Outlook because it's the email client provided—and often required!—by their place of employment, that doesn't mean it can't stand on its own merits. Integration with Windows Desktop Search gives you the ability to quickly search through your entire Outlook workflow, and Outlook can handle everything from your email to your calendar and easily transfer tasks, contacts, and more between the two.

Apple Mail (Mac, Free)

Apple's Mail application, also known as Mail.app or simpy Mail, unsurprisingly continues the tradition of Apple applications following the "it just works" method of design. Mail allows you to collect all your email from across the web and various email servers in one place, and it actively engages your email as you read it. For example, if you get an email with an invitation to a meeting next Thursday, Mail will detect it and make it simple to kick that appointment right over to iCal. Like the integration between Windows Desktop Search and Outlook, Mail is integrated with Spotlight to make deep massaging your messages easy.

Thunderbird (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Thunderbird is an open-source offering from Mozilla—the company behind the beloved open-source browser Firefox. Thunderbird is a solid email application that sports the same extensibility of its code-sibling Firefox. Many readers voted for not just Thunderbird but Thunderbird with the addition of Lightning, a Thunderbird extension that adds scheduling and task management functionality to Thunderbird. If you're interested in using Thunderbird you'll definitely want to check out our guide to making Thunderbird your ultimate online/offline messaging hub, and you may also want to consider packing Thunderbird Portable away on your thumb drive for anywhere-access to your email.

Gmail (Web-based, Free)

Google has had quite a hit on their hands with Gmail, their extremely popular web-based email client. Not only do you get a feature-packed email account when you sign up for Gmail—you also get an email client that's is very adept at pulling in email from other services and organizing it with a robust system of filters and tags. You can check out how to manage multiple inboxes here if you'd like to use Gmail as a central hub for managing all your email. Many of the features in Gmail aren't necessarily revolutionary—like the ability to filter messages, flag, or label them—but the featurs are implemented in such a way that makes them effortless to use. And, surprising as it may seem, its much-loved threaded conversations are still relatively unique to Gmail.

Postbox (Windows/Mac, $39.95)

Postbox is stand-alone email client for Windows and Mac operating systems. Postbox is based on Mozilla-code, so the Postbox team has been able to tweak quite a few Thunderbird extensions, including Lightning, to work with Postbox. In addition to its extensibility, Postbox's default interface is powerful. The app includes features like the ability to search and compose simultaneously. You can look up an email address, search for a previous attachment, and check an old email for information all in the sidebar while working on your current email. Postbox also provides email summaries as you read through and search your email, showing you not just the sender and subject line but the attachments and any important information inside the email like addresses, appointments, and URLs.

Source: Lifehacker.Com

New service hamstrings Google data hoarding

Alarmed by the vast amount of personal information Google collects from its users, a hacker has unveiled an anonymization service that prevents the internet giant from tracking searches and websites visited by a specific individual.

Dubbed GoogleSharing, the anonymizing proxy service is designed exclusively for communications with Google. It mixes together requests from many different users so the search engine's data collectors are unable to tell where they originate.

"Google thrives where privacy does not," GoogleSharing creator Moxie Marlinspike wrote in announcing the service. "If you're like most internet users, Google knows more about you than you might be comfortable with."

This is often the case even when users aren't logged in to a given Google account. In addition to every search query an individual has ever made, other personal details open to snooping include what search results and news articles are clicked on, every destination ever looked up on Google Maps and thanks to Google Analytics, many website visits that didn't involve a Google search. Those using Gmail also divulge the content of every email ever sent and received.


GoogleSharing is designed to hamstring Google's data hoarding ways for all its services that don't require a login. Using it is as simple as installing this Firefox plugin, which redirects Google-bound traffic to a proxy. There, requests are stripped of all identifying information and replaced with the details of a different GoogleSharing user. The Google response is then proxied back to the user. By sharing the identities of many different people, the requests become much harder for Google to correlate and analyze.

"The result is that you can transparently use Google search, images, maps, products, news, etc... without Google being able to track you by IP address, cookie, or any other identifying HTTP headers," Marlinspike explained. And only your Google traffic is redirected. Everything else from your browser goes directly to its destination."

The service was unveiled on Tuesday, a day after Microsoft said its competing Bing search engine would cut the amount of time it tracks user searches to just six months. Google, by contrast, holds on to searches for nine months, and even then changes only parts of the data collected while leaving the all-important cookie data alone. Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said if you'd prefer your most intimate or work sensitive net activity not be tracked and retained, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Marlinspike, a hacker who has identified weaknesses in the widely used SSL protocol, readily concedes that anonymizers such as Tor are more appropriate for people who want to conceal their online activities from a wide variety of actors. But those services can often be extremely slow. For those concerned only about Google, GoogleSharing makes more sense.

Marlinspike has also released the source code used by the proxy so it can be examined or used to create alternative services by others.

Of course, it's impossible for people to connect to Gmail, Google Calendar, and other services that require a login without identifying themselves, so GoogleSharing doesn't work in those situations. In such cases, the Firefox plugin simply forwards request directly to Google. Other Google services that can't be anonymized include Chat, Checkout, Sites, Docs, Photos, Reader, or Health.

Marlinspike has pledged that GoogleSharing will log absolutely nothing. All requests sent to the proxy - and all responses returned - are automatically encrypted using HTTPS, although traffic passing between the proxy and Google is often sent in the clear because Google, like most other websites, still doesn't provide universal SSL support. ®

Source: Theregister.co.uk

Skype 2.1 Beta 2 Puts Screen Sharing in Linux

Skype 2.1 beta 1 for Linux finally gets an upgrade, version 2.1 beta 2 comes with a bunch of new features to boost the stagnant growth rate in which Skype for Linux finds its self.
The major feature here is certainly the addition of Screen Sharing, a feature long present in the Windows and Mac versions of Skype. Screen sharing means – you can show your desktop to a Skype contact by simply calling that contact and sharing all or part of your desktop.

Other features in Skype 2.1 beta 2 include; Instant Message Quoting and support for User Interface Styling.
Skype for Linux now supports abuse reporting and has implemented support for localized time formats.

What else!!!
Many know issues are still present in this release though several bugs fixes have been added and minor improvements made.
- The ugly PulseAudio bug is still there; “When PulseAudio is enabled in the audio settings, only that specific entry will be available; to change the settings, use the PulseAudio manager tool that is bundled with your distribution.”
- Sometimes Instant Messages are not ordered correctly.

For more on the known issues move to the Release Notes.

Download Skype 2.1 Beta 2 for Linux

Source: Kabatology.com

Firefox 3.6 Portable Available for Your Thumb Drive Needs

Windows: It's always exciting when a new release of your favorite browser comes out, but if you're a Firefox Portable user, you've always got to twiddle your thumbs a touch longer. Well twiddle no longer; Firefox 3.6 Portable is available for download.

The quick-on-their-toes team at PortableApps.com put together their release less than a day after Mozilla's official release, and—like yesterday's Firefox 3.6 release—it's packed full of speed increases, one-click themes, and plenty more.

Firefox 3.6 Portable is a free download, Windows only.

Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition [PortableApps.com]

Source: Lifehacker.Com