MICROSOFT MAKES BID FOR YAHOO
[news.com.au, February 2, 2008]
The world's largest software company, Microsoft, has launched a $US 44.6 billion ($AU 49.5 billion) bid for rival internet group Yahoo in a bid to improve its online operations as part of the battle against search and advertising giant Google. The move had long been expected as both companies have struggled to gain traction against the might of Google, which holds a market share of more than 80 per cent in most markets in the still booming global online advertising market, which is forecast to reach $US 80 billion per year by 2010. Paid search is the biggest and fastest-growing part of that market.
Microsoft revealed last night that it had been in talks with the struggling Yahoo since 2006 about an alliance, but now believed the best way forward was a takeover. "We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers, while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market," Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said.
"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers."
The bid, presented to Yahoo's board, represents a massive 62 per cent premium to Yahoo's closing price of $US 19.18 per share and a win for the target company's shareholders, who have seen the value of their investment slide in recent years. Yahoo emerged as the dominant internet company from the dotcom boom of the late 1990s, but has been overrun by Google in the past five years, thanks to the ruthless exploitation of its superiority in internet search.
There will be widespread implications in Australia if the deal goes ahead. While Microsoft has a separate successful software business in Australia, both it and Yahoo have teamed up with rival media groups for their Australian online operations. In Ninemsn, Microsoft has a 10-year-old 50/50 joint venture with the former Packer media group PBL Media, which is now 75 per cent owned by private equity group CVC Asia Pacific. Two weeks ago, Lachlan Murdoch bought a half share in James Packer's remaining stake in PBL Media.
Yahoo has a newer alliance -- the two-year-old Yahoo7 -- with Kerry Stokes' Seven Media, which recently saw private equity group Kohlberg Kravis Roberts take a 50 per cent stake. Microsoft said the deal would generate at least $1 billion in annual synergies.
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THREE DIMENSIONAL TV WITHOUT GLASSES
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[SMH, August 9, 2007]
I'm sitting in Paris and some butterflies are fluttering towards me. Loads of them, perfectly clearly. I could allow one to land on my hand or catch one of the rose petals being blown towards me -- except I can't, because they're not real. They're images on a TV in high definition- - and in perfect 3-D. They look life-sized and real, and I'm not wearing silly spectacles, other than the ones I wear all the time.
People have been working on convincing 3-D without the glasses for a long time and the demo is breathtaking. It's on a prototype Philips TV, which won't be available for a while; it would cost £10,000 (more than $A23,000) at the moment, but that's expected to be vastly lower when it reaches the mass market. And Philips isn't the only company investigating the possibilities. Luxembourg-based SeeReal has also made technological developments in the area with its Viewing Window Technology, aiming to reduce the amount of pixels you need before 3-D works.
Orange has also emerged as an unexpected early player in the market, and I'm watching the demo in its offices. It believes 3-D TV will be key to the services it will be able to deliver to people's homes once its 100 Mbps fibre-optic internet service being trialled in Paris takes off; hence its interest. The display moves to a beer advert that looks as though you could lift it off the screen, and then there's a demo of a computer game in genuine 3-D with bullets flying at you. Four cynical journalists are silenced for once. Later Orange takes a 3-D photo of us and shows it to us on a hand-held camera, with the hint that phones will do this one day.
The technology works by throwing a different image to each eye and angling them so that one eye picks up one and the other picks up the other. There are in fact eight separate images, the technologists having added more after early users reported feelings of nausea and dizziness. "All of us have heard of 3-D for games, for example, but it's not really 3-D," says Philippe Delbary, head of 3-D services for Orange. "It's just an attempt to represent depth."
The new technology shows actual 3-D and it's impressive. But it's not totally natural; if the camera has focused on the foreground, it's not possible to focus on the background as there is no clear image there for your eye to pick up. Once you're used to that it looks perfect. But how quickly will the market embrace it? One key problem Orange acknowledges is the availability of 3-D material. Just two 3-D-only films are in production -- by James Cameron and Steven Spielberg - for release in 2009.
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STATE OF THE ART EQUIPMENT FOR AUSSIE POLICE VEHICLES
[SMH, August 14, 2007]
Fighting crime could soon be as easy as tapping on a touch screen when the world's most high-tech police cars roll into Australian cop stations nationwide. The cars, thanks to front and rear video cameras and infrared technology, will be capable of automatic facial and number plate recognition. A tap on the integrated touch screen can then bring up information files on people, vehicles and crime scenes. In-car video surveillance systems will let officers communicate with support centres in real-time.
"The car is designed to automatically check vehicles that it drives passed whether it is a shopping centre car park or the highway," said Des Bahr, director of operations at the non-profit National Safety Agency (NSA), the Australian research and development group that designed the new cars. Police could also identify people through their fingerprints using technology built into the car, while a GPS navigation system will help them map out the best routes and allow police headquarters to track a car's location at any given time.
The NSA claims a single police car equipped with the number plate recognition system could check up to 9,000 vehicle registrations in a shift. A Holden Commodore VE incorporating the new technology is on display in Melbourne at the SmartDemo 2007 conference, which is taking place at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds. Bahr said the NSA, Motorola, General Motors and Monash University, in developing the "police car of the future", maintained close consultation with NSW Police and emergency services nationally. The project was funded by a grant from the Federal Government. He said while much of the technology would be ready for roll-out in Spring next year, police agencies had already started incorporating elements into their existing cars.
"Various agencies around Australia are already starting to adopt the in-car video [and] some are starting to trial number plate recognition as a result of this," Mr Bahr said.
"NSW are very keen to look at this sooner and we're working very closely with NSW Police to look at integration of such technology very near in the future."
NSW Police Minister David Campbell said the Government was always looking at ways to improve the equipment it provides to NSW Police and had already fitted some cars with "in-car video and mobile data terminals." "NSW Police are having ongoing discussions with the National Safety Agency in relation to the concept vehicle," Mr Campbell said.
Bahr just returned from the US where he shared information with the Los Angeles Police Department, which Bahr said was working on a similar project. He said the NSA over the next 12 months would take the concept vehicle to police agencies around the country "so they can touch and feel a practical example and determine for themselves how it enhances the operation of the vehicle." The goal of the project was originally to improve heat and power management in emergency vehicles, but it had now been extended to explore the potential of new and emerging technologies, Bahr said.
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MORE THAN ONE BILLION DOLLARS TO REPAIR FAULTY X-BOXES
[Associated Press, July 6, 2007]
Microsoft said on Thursday it expects to spend more than $US 1 billion to repair widespread hardware problems in its Xbox 360 video game console after a large number of them broke down. The software giant said it would extend the warranty on the Xbox 360 to three years after too many of the consoles succumbed to "general hardware failure," but the company provided few other details about the extent of the problems. "We don't think we've been getting the job done," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player. "In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking."
Bach said the company made some manufacturing and production changes that he expects will reduce Xbox 360 hardware lockups, but he declined to identify the problems or say which others might remain. Microsoft said it will record a charge of up to $US 1.15 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, to cover the additional costs associated with the warranty extension. The software maker also said sales of the console fell short of expectations for the fiscal year that just ended.
Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, estimates that Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $US 6 billion since 2002. Microsoft has written down larger amounts in the past -- more than $US 10 billion in the late 1990s related to investments in telecommunications companies, and more than $5 billion related to antitrust issues -- but a $US 1 billion write-down for one division in one quarter is significant. "It suggests the problem is pretty widespread," Rosoff said.
Microsoft will pay for shipping and repairs for three years, worldwide, for consoles that experience hardware failure, which is usually indicated by three flashing red lights on the front of the console, something gamers sometimes refer to as "the red ring of death." Previously, the warranty expired after 1 year for U.S. customers and 2 years for Europeans. Microsoft also will reimburse the "small number" of Xbox 360 owners who have paid for shipping and repairs on out-of-warranty consoles, Bach said.
In June, bloggers speculated that the Xbox 360 return problem was getting so severe that the company was running out of "coffins," or special return-shipping boxes Microsoft provides to gamers with dead consoles. "We'll make sure we have plenty of boxes to go back and forth," Bach said in an interview. Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in a conference call that the company sold 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles since the product's November 2005 launch, missing a target for 12 million units by the end of the fiscal year.
Microsoft's entertainment and devices division reported an operating loss of $US 315 million on $US 929 million in sales for the three-month period that ended in March.
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Helio Ocean (Pantech PN-810)
APPLE'S iPHONE FACES STRONG COMPETITION
[PC Magazine, June 22, 2007]
Excuse me while I stick my head out the window to breathe, because the iPhone has sucked all of the air out of the room. Some smartphone makers, however, have treated the iPhone not as a smotherer, but as an inspiration. They are piggybacking on the Apple's relentless PR attack and showing off some of their similar (and in their minds, superior) models. You may not believe me, but there are reasons to buy these devices over the iPhone. Here are just a few of them.
If you have a job, the Blackberry Curve (pictured) may be more to your taste. The Curve is super easy to use, plus fast and stable and the iPhone will probably be all of those things, too. But keep in mind that the iPhone doesn't connect to most corporate email systems. The Curve, on the other hand, gets the famous Blackberry push e-mail, whether it is from a Blackberry Server, a POP3, Web mail, or Microsoft Outlook Web Access account. It also has a two-megapixel camera, just like the iPhone, and software that automatically reformats videos and music to play on the Curve. Of course the software isn't as smooth as iTunes, but it's still usable.
If you live in a Windows Media or Exchange Server world, the HTC Touch could be the closest you'll get to an iPhone. The Touch is a flawed experiment, but it looks a bit like an iPhone and has a fun, if superficial, touch interface that makes it easy to get to some popular applications. Unlike the iPhone though, it syncs up with Windows Media music and Exchange corporate servers – a big plus.
For those on T-Mobile, the LG Prada makes a credible alternative. One big drawback with the iPhone is that it's available for AT&T customers only. The Prada, which looks and acts a lot like the iPhone in many ways, is unlocked, so it'll work with AT&T or T-Mobile. It's also a usable, stylish phone that's all the rage in Europe right now. You'll need a geek to help you load on your music and video, though.
If you're a geek, a world traveler or a shutterbug, you'll appreciate a Nokia N95 much more. The N95 is close to the ultimate handheld device: unlocked globe-trotting world phone, 5-megapixel camera, and a smartphone with a huge developer community and a wealth of cool software (mostly coming out of Europe.) Its Web browser is just as good as the iPhone's too. Still, the N95's interface isn't anywhere near as easy as the iPhone's and operates much more like a traditional smartphone.
Instant messaging addicts listen up, the Helio Ocean is what you really want. I've been boggled by reports that the iPhone won't support IM. If that's actually true, take a look at the Ocean instead. The iPhone has no keypad, but the Ocean has two: a regular phone keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard for texting, IMing and e-mailing. In addition, the Ocean also supports all the popular IM services, along with a whole bunch of e-mail options.
It must be said that none of these phones, naturally, will offer the iPhone's ability to play iTunes purchased, protected content, the iPhone's multi-touch interface, the iPhone's wide screen or the iPhone's, well, iPhoniness. So don't worry, Apple fans, you still have something special.
I've got just "one more thing" -- Sprint, Verizon, and Alltel users, there's no love for you here. And there's no excuse for that lack of love, either, except that the nation's CDMA carriers seem to be slow to the game. Sure, Sprint may plug their Samsung Upstage as an iPod-like music phone, but its difficult interface pretty much counts it out of the running. LG has a CDMA version of their Prada phone out in Korea while HTC makes CDMA devices, and RIM has always had a strong relationship with Verizon, yet the latest models for those carriers may be months away. Time to step up, guys.
Read full article with links to other products HERE
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HARDCORE PORN FOUND ON NEW CELL PHONE
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[Herald-Sun, June 27, 2007]
A Victorian woman says she is disgusted and humiliated after finding 135 files of hardcore pornography on her new mobile phone. Debbie Tozer bought a new Sony Ericsson W880i -- worth almost $1000 -- on a plan, from Crazy John's at Watergardens Shopping Centre in Taylors Lakes, Victoria, Australia. She was looking through the menus on the phone on Sunday night when she found made the sickening discovery.
"It was full of hardcore porn. I was in absolute shock and disbelief," Ms Tozer said. She said the material -- video files, the vast majority of which appeared to have been downloaded -- was extremely disturbing. "It's absolutely disgusting," Ms Tozer said. "It's hardcore porn, some of it with animals. I felt insulted and humiliated. We all know sex is a part of life, but this is sick." A spokesman for Crazy John's yesterday said the matter would be fully investigated.
Last year, a Herald Sun investigation found used mobile phones were being "rebirthed" and sold as new, with some customers finding photos, messages and videos left on phones by previous owners. But the spokesman for Crazy John's said this had not occurred with Ms Tozer's phone. "We do not sell second-hand phones. They come from the manufacturer as a sealed product and they are sold as a sealed product," he said.
However, the spokesman said this was not the first time a mobile phone had been found to contain unauthorised content. "This is an industry issue. This is not the first time we have seen this," he said.
He said the phone would need to be examined to find where the videos had come from.
Ms Tozer said the pornography was saved to the phone, and not its memory card. A spokesperson for Sony Ericsson could not be contacted yesterday. Ms Tozer said the phone style would appeal to teenagers, and that the pornography could easily have ended up in the hands of children. "What if I had bought this for my daughter?"
Ms Tozer said she was also angry that her new phone -- worth around $1000 -- appeared to have been used. Two of the files on the phone were not pornographic and appeared to be private videos shot by a previous phone user. The spokesman for Crazy John's said she would be offered a replacement phone.
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CHINA LAUNCHES NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITE
[BBC, May 15, 2007]
China has successfully launched a communications satellite for Nigeria. The official Xinhua news agency says it is the first time that a foreign buyer has purchased both a Chinese satellite and its launching service. The Nigerian Communication Satellite NIGCOMSAT-1 is expected to offer broadcasting, phone and broadband internet services for Africa. China beat 21 other bidders in 2004 for the $311m contract to launch the satellite, Xinhua says.
The satellite, lofted by a Long March 3-B rocket, is expected to reach its final position later this year and to remain in operation for 15 years. The launch is being portrayed as part of a drive to enhance rural access to technology and the internet and boost Nigeria's and Africa's knowledge economy.
"It gives you bandwidth to enable you to communicate from point A to point B, from rural Africa to urban cities," Dr Bashir Gwandu, a member of the Satellite Launch Committee and a director at the Nigeria Communications Commission told the BBC's Focus on Africa. Nigeria has been experiencing a communications revolution in recent years, says the BBC's Alex Last, and is one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in Africa and the world.
Having a space program is also symbolic of how Nigeria wants to be seen as a growing player on the world stage. Critics say the majority of the population live in poverty and the internet can be made redundant by the simple fact that electricity is sporadic at best. The government should rather spend all this money on power, job creation and basic public services, they say.
COOPERATION
This is the latest example of growing economic co-operation between China and Africa. China is buying African raw materials, and building infrastructure such as roads. The launch represented "China's wish to cooperate with developing countries in the peaceful use of outer space and to promote a closer relationship between China and African countries," Xinhua says.
China is expanding its space program, and in 2003 became only the third country to launch a man into space. This is one of 30 foreign satellites China has been commissioned to launch, Xinhua reports. Nigeria already has a weather satellite launched in 2003 with Russian assistance.
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IT TECHNOLOGY IN THE COMING DECADE
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[PC Magazine, June 26, 2007]
Want a list of all the groundbreaking technologies due over the next decade? Tough luck. We've got neither the time nor the space. But we can give you the milestones—the 13 technologies guaranteed to change the world between now and 2020.
Summer 2007, The Real Quad-Core: AMD releases the first single-chip quad-core CPU. Code-named Barcelona, it promises 20 to 50 percent better performance than the competing multichip design from you-know-who.
Late 2007, Hello, OLED: Sony introduces the first OLED (organic light-emitting diode) television. It's too small and too expensive for mass consumption, but early adopters love its 3mm profile and 1,000,000-to-1 contrast ratio.
2008, Like Wi-Fi—but Everywhere: Carriers launch the first WiMAX services in the U.S., giving major metro areas wireless access that rivals the speeds of Wi-Fi. The difference? No more hot spots. It's everywhere you go.
2008, Eight-Core and More: Intel unveils an eight-core processor and completely revamps its Core architecture, moving the memory controller and graphics circuitry from distinct chipsets onto the CPU itself.
2010, So Long, Laser Printer: The first Memjet ink-based printers hit the market, delivering 60 pages per minute at a reasonable cost per page. The trick: multiple print heads that span the entire width of the paper you're printing on.
2010, The High-Def DVR: Seagate releases a 3.5-inch hard drive that stores 3 terabytes of data. That's 3,000 gigabytes. We're talking about a digital video recorder that records nothing but high-def video.
2011, Can You Say 4G?: Fourth-generation cellular networks debut in the United States. The LTE (Long Term Evolution) standard doubles the throughput of 3G networks, offering 3 to 4 Mbps to real-world users.
2011, Chips Go Optical: IBM perfects a chip for mainframes and other high-end machines that uses optical connections instead of copper. Moving photons instead of electrons improves data transfer speeds eightfold.
2015, A Cure for Jersey Drivers: The first cars equipped with Motorola's MotoDrive technology roll off the assembly line. Able to calculate their speed and position relative to other vehicles, these cars can automatically avoid accidents.
2016, HDTV Is Obsolete: Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) debuts with a resolution of 7,680-by-4,320 and 22 speakers of surround sound, dwarfing today's HDTVs, which top out at 1,920-by-1,080.
2016, Power Off, Memory On: Manufacturers use carbon nanotubes to offer NRAM (nonvolatile random-access memory). Unlike today's SDRAM and flash memory technologies, it can hold information even when you lose power.
2019, Wash 'N' Wear iPods: Flexible, washable OLED screens hit the market. That means laptops that roll up like place mats—not to mention smartphone and music-player displays built right into your clothing.
2020, Offices Everywhere: Wall-sized displays made of low-power polymers and improved video-conferencing technologies let groups of home-based workers interact as if they were sitting face to face.
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