World Magazines

Google Sync

2009-02-15T09:44:00.002+07:00

Google is releasing a beta version of Google Sync for the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones, providing the ability to synchronize Gmail contact information and Google Calendar events with handheld phones. The technology is based on the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol, licensed by Google.

Sync uses push technology to send changes to the device; the connection is always on so users don't have to manually synchronize their phones after Sync is set up. Changes to phones can be made in a user's Google account.

Additionally, Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices supporting the SyncML protocol allow for two-way contacts synchronization via Google Sync. Google Calendar sync and Contacts sync already has been available for the RIM BlackBerry smartphone, Google said.

But that software for RIM does not use Exchange ActiveSync.

Microsoft previously licensed ActiveSync to Apple, Nokia, Palm, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. But the company is not seeking to make ActiveSync an industry standard, a Microsoft representative said.

Google, according to Microsoft, is taking a patent license to implement the Exchange ActiveSync protocol on Google servers that provide Google hosted services for purposes of synchronizing personal information management information with mobile handsets that implement Exchange ActiveSync protocol.

Google Sync is a good solution for small businesses relying on Gmail, said analyst Chris Hazelton, research director for mobile and wireless at The 451 Group.

Gmail Offline With Google Gears

2009-01-31T11:19:00.002+07:00

Until today, one of the biggest drawbacks of Gmail is that you could not go through your emails when you were offline. Today, that changes. Gmail is finally going offline. Google is rolling out a Google Gears version of Gmail that will be available to users starting today in Gmail Labs. (If you don’t see it, keep checking, the rollout to all users should be complete by the end of the week).

After installing the Google Gears plug-in to your browser, Gmail detects when you are offline. It caches your e-mail so that you can read it, respond to it, search it, star it, or label it. When you are connected to the Internet again, it sends all the messages. You can even open attachments. This is exactly the way Gmail already works on mobile phones such as the Android and those that support Gears. In fact, according to Gmail product manager Todd Jackson, who briefed me earlier today:

The underlying sync engine is exactly the same for Android and offline Gmail.

Some features, however, won’t work. Anything that requires an Internet connection, such as spellcheck, won’t work offline. And while you can open attachments, you won’t be able to add attachments at launch (that feature will be added soon, however).

HTC SmartPhone Include Photo Geotagging

2009-01-24T11:56:00.002+07:00

HTC on Friday unveiled the Touch Cruise, a handset featuring built-in GPS and accompanying software. The new smartphone, an update to a similarly named HTC device released in January 2008, offers consumers a more compact form factor as well as new features.

The handset is the first to include a new photograph-tagging application from HTC, called "Footprints." The program enables owners who take pictures using the device's 3.2-megapixel camera to then add notes and audio clips while automatically identifying the photo's specific geographical location. In addition to identifying each snapshot with its specific GPS coordinates, Footprint also auto-names each picture with its general location or area.

Once it's time for show-and-tell, users can relive their travels photo-by-photo with the geo-tracking program, whether the pictures were taken indoors or outside, said HTC. The Touch Cruise also doubles as an in-car navigation system when docked in the accompanying car cradle. Users will receive turn-by-turn directions displayed on the handset's 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen. With HTC's TouchFLO technology, that means users can access their phone, contacts, e-mail, messaging, calendar and GPS apps with a simple touch.

Microsoft snubs_torrents

2009-01-14T16:18:00.003+07:00

Torrentfreak has lambasted Microsoft for not using torrents for the launch of the Windows 7 Beta. Microsoft faced serious bandwidth constraints and had to delay the launch of the Beta by a day. Although the criticism is impassioned coming from a blog about torrents, it is both sensible and plausible.
An official Torrent would have not only taken a lot of burden off Microsoft’s own servers, but it would have also offered great speeds as torrents speeds improve with traffic (the ratio between seeders and leechers is equally important, though). It is the same mistake that Microsoft made during the launch of the Vista Beta. (Image Credit: Geekzilla)

YouTube Shines Spotlight

2008-12-22T12:32:00.004+07:00

YouTube continues to bring its high-definition video strategy into sharper focus with the announcement late this week of more support for HD videos. And while the new development may not make it any easier to know just where the hell Matt is -- regarding the globetrotting dancer in one of YouTube most popular videos -- his scenic backgrounds will indeed look much clearer.

The Web site has made it easier to find content uploaded in high-definition with an HD link in the Videos section. Even if you don't choose to you use that link, YouTube pops up an on-screen notice alerting you to the availability of an HD version if there's one available for whatever video you are currently watching.

Users must find a "watch in HD" link underneath the window showing the standard-quality version of a video. Once they click on that link, the video automatically goes widescreen; no user adjustments needed, although the full-screen option is still available.

Making It Easy

Perhaps in anticipation of all those HD-enabled camcorders now gift-wrapped and sitting under Christmas trees, YouTube has also added a FAQ site for instructing users on how to properly upload their HD videos in the right resolution and frame-rate speed. The less re-encoding that takes place, the better, according to YouTube.

Making HD videos easier to find, however, doesn't necessarily mean they're easier to play. On its HD FAQ site, YouTube admits that it's still in experimentation mode with higher-quality uploading. But there's still not a lot of instruction on the HD section to help users determine if they have the right multimedia software, processor or memory in their computers for optimal viewing of high-definition content.

Gmail Gadget for Windows

2008-12-06T13:14:00.002+07:00

Google has unveiled a new gadget that allows Google Desktop for Windows users to check their Gmail accounts without having to leave leaving the vendor's desktop search application. The new gadget will allow users to read, search and send Gmail messages while in Google Desktop, Google noted. Users can also star messages and use keyboard shortcuts.

"It doesn't take up much space in your sidebar or desktop, and you can also resize it to show as few or as many messages as you'd like," noted James Yum, developer programs engineer for Google Desktop, in a blog post Monday. "When I'm at work, I keep two instances of the gadget open: one logged into my personal Gmail account and the other set to my Google Apps account for work related stuff. Instead of getting lost in a sea of tabs or browser windows, I can bring up the gadgets in an instant."

Google released Google Desktop in 2004. The application promises to make searching a PC as easy as searching the Web. It provides full-text search over email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail and Web pages viewed, according to Google. The application includes other gadgets that allows users to be shown new email, weather updates, photos and personalized news.

Yum noted that Google's gadgets team has received countless requests for a Gmail gadget for Google Desktop, and users posting comments to the page for downloading the new gadget had mostly positive comments.

Samsung drives up to 256GB

2008-11-21T18:48:00.002+07:00

The company says the new drive has been tweaked to be its fastest ever, with read times of 220 MBps and write times of 200 MBps. Erase times have also been improved, with speeds of 100GB per minute, meaning the drive can be completely wiped in under three minutes.
”While SSD’s have always been touted for their performance, Samsung is turning the storage industry upside down now with an SSD that delivers truly disruptive performance,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor.
”Getting our exceptionally high performing 256GB SSD in a notebook is analogous to having a 15,000rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power and heating drawbacks.”
Samsung says the drives are around three times faster than standard 7,200rpm platter disk drives and around ten times more efficient as a similar laptop drive.
It attributes the speed increase to a redesigned chip controller, improved NAND flash and improved firmware.
The drive also more power efficient than a platter drive, consuming 1.1 watts of power compared to two or more for a traditional drive.

Social Features in Yahoo Buzz

2008-11-08T17:27:00.003+07:00

Yahoo this week added new social elements to the beta version of its Yahoo Buzz social news site, which identifies the top news stories and blog posts based on user votes and search patterns.

On Thursday, Yahoo announced that it has added the ability to include elements from a Yahoo user's universal profile on the site by highlighting information from his friend connections. The update expands on the Yahoo Open Strategy that is aimed at opening all Yahoo platforms and data to third parties, and expanding the availability of social features. A new updates section on Buzz will allow users to more easily find content their friends have voted for on the Buzz site, Yahoo said. In addition, Yahoo added a comments area that lets users to reply to and provide a thumbs up or thumbs down to the comments of other users.

Finally, Yahoo added an expanded permissions-based activity hub that lets users access and view a profile summary and voting history, of fellow users, Yahoo added. The hub also shows the number of times a user was the first person to vote or submit a story, the most recent stories they voted on and comments they have written, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo first launched Buzz in February, prompting many industry observers to call it a "Digg opened to all publishers in August. clone." The site was first available to selected users before it was

Adam Ostrow, a blogger at Mashable, noted that the updates make Buzz look even more like Digg, but with Yahoo's more mainstream user base in mind.

"These new features are interesting for a couple reasons," he added. "First, they show the potential of the Yahoo Open Strategy -- users of Buzz essentially become users of Yahoo's new universal profile, helping create a huge social network behind the scenes. Additionally, it is starting to become increasingly obvious that Yahoo Buzz is going to keep adding the same features as Digg, as it did when it launched its 'Up & Coming' section a couple months back."

Yahoo Buzz, he added, looks to be a bright spot for the company, which has been put in a precarious position this week? after Google Inc. walked away from a proposed advertising deal between the two. After Google's announcement, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said a takeover by Microsoft might be the best thing for the company.

About Nero 9

2008-10-29T16:02:00.002+07:00

Nero 9 is the next generation of the world’s most trusted integrated digital media and home entertainment software suite. It features new cutting-edge functionality that makes enjoying digital media content simple.

This easy-to-use yet powerful multimedia suite, gives you the freedom to create, rip, copy, burn, edit, share, and upload online. Whatever you want – music, video, photo, and data – enjoy and share with family and friends anytime, anywhere.

With easy-to-use Nero StartSmart command center, your digital life has never been more flexible, feasible, and fun.

Nero 9 Highlights:

Fast and easy rip, burn, Autobackup, and copy functions
Backup files to CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs*
Create professional-looking DVD movies with integrated 3D menus
Copy, burn, share, upload, and create music mixes like a DJ
Convert music, photos, and DVDs to play on your iPod® and other mobile devices
Quick photo and video upload to My Nero, YouTube™, and MySpace
Watch, record, pause, and customize your live TV experience
Play AVCHD and other HD formats

What is Windows 7?

2008-10-16T15:45:00.001+07:00

While the company provided few details, Windows 7, the next client version of the operating system, will be among the steps taken by Microsoft to establish a more predictable release schedule, according to sources. The company plans a more "iterative" process of information disclosure to business customers and partners, sources said.

Windows Vista, the oft-delayed most recent release of Windows, shipped to businesses in November and to consumers in January after more than five years of development. Vista's gestation period was marked by shifting product details as internal priorities changed and problems arose with development.

Like Vista, Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. The company also confirmed that it is considering a subscription model to complement Windows, but did not provide specifics or a time frame.

Next up on Microsoft's agenda is Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista, which is expected before year's end.

The discussion of Windows' future isn't surprising, given that Microsoft has been criticized by business customers for delays related to Vista. Many business customers pay for Microsoft's software under a license agreement called Software Assurance.

Windows 7 was previously known by the code name Vienna. A Microsoft representative confirmed that Windows 7 is the internal code name for the next client release of Windows. The details were released "as part of our ongoing outreach to enterprise customers and partners, Microsoft has begun sharing plans for how they will continue to deliver value to businesses in the future?Software Assurance customers in particular," a representative said in a statement via e-mail.

"Microsoft is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year time frame, and then the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar," according to the representative.

A Game Designer's Life: Paid to Watch Football

2008-10-06T18:41:00.002+07:00

There are dream jobs, and then there are Dream Jobs. Anthony White has the latter.

Every week during football season, this EA assistant designer receives a little black box at his desk at EA's Tiburon Studios. Inside the box is a portable hard drive with videos of that week's NFL games.

White then fires up that little black box and proceeds to get paid for watching every single one so he can ensure EA's Madden NFL Football titles are as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

"Sometimes I have to pinch myself," White said, to which we say, "no kidding!"

But, lest we all incorrectly assume this kind of job just fell into White's lap, think again. Since 1991, White has basically lived and breathed the Madden franchise. Back then, the series was only two years old, and White was fresh out of high school awaiting deployment in the United States Air Force.

"I would sit there and play continuously, all through the night," said White, 35. "Mom and Dad thought I was nuts. . . . While most other guys my age were into hanging out, going to the mall, girlfriends and things like that, I'm at home drawing up plays on notepads and different things I want to try out in the game."

The insanity eventually paid off. After starting a Madden strategy site in 1999, White got noticed by EA. He was offered a job as an assistant producer at Tiburon in 2005.

Today, he's basically in charge of making sure the plays you run against friends in Madden are as accurate and fresh as possible. For Madden 09, that meant watching and adding 32 new formations, and about 1,200 new plays.

Just last week the NFL saw a number of new, unorthodox plays unveiled by teams like the Miami Dolphins. You can bet White saw every minute of Miami's quaterback-less offensive packages, and that they'll be in Madden 2010. It's what he does, after all.

Motorola Rokr E8 Music Phone

2008-09-24T13:23:00.002+07:00

The Rokr E8 excels at music playback, but usability issues plague it in other areas.

The Motorola Rokr E8 looks vaguely like an iPod: glassy, slim, and dark, except for a thin circular metal strip in its middle. The resemblance is probably not coincidental, given that the device is a cell phone intended for music lovers. The 0.4-inch-thick candy bar phone boasts good looks--and isn't half-bad as an MP3 player--but its usability shortcomings in other areas disappoint.

The E8's sexiest attribute is its touch-sensitive surface's ability to change interfaces depending on what you use it for. When you power it on by sliding a silvery hardware button on its right edge, a virtual phone keypad lights up below the metal circle; when you switch to music player mode (by pressing the musical notes above the green dial control), a few simple MP3 controls replace the virtual keypad.

Regardless of which way you use the phone, a two-inch LCD occupies the upper half of the unit. Tiny raised glass dots and haptics feedback (vibrations) help confirm your fingertip touches, and the silvery metal strip acts as a touch-sensitive navigation wheel for scrolling and clicking through menu options using your thumb.

Unfortunately, I found the wheel difficult to control. All too often I overshot or undershot my target as I scrolled through the rather long main menu, or even through a short list of contacts. And the menu structure itself, especially for adjusting settings, wasn't intuitive: I waded through several levels of options before giving up on finding the evaluation unit's phone number. In addition, the glass-covered touch controls required fairly firm touching-with no way to adjust touch sensitivity.

Voice quality on my T-Mobile test unit was fine. We haven't lab-tested the phone's talk-time battery life yet. Check back for test results--and the PCW Rating--for the Rokr E8 once we do.

The phone defeated all my efforts to use the carrier's Web-based contact manager to import my Outlook contacts in order to sync them onto the E8. (The alternative is to spend $35 on Motorola's Phone Tools 5.0, a desktop app that includes contact syncing.)

Though the Rokr E8 provides predictive text entry support, using its touch keypad would be even more annoying than using a mechanical phone keypad to compose a lot of text. And the small screen is not optimal for Web browsing, which in my shipping unit proceeded rather slowly on T-Mobile's EDGE network.

T-Mobile sells the Rokr E8 for $150 (with a two-year contract). The phone makes most sense for customers seeking a stylish handset that excels at music, and not much interested messaging or Web applications.

Six-Core Chip Is Set for Release

2008-09-18T13:25:00.006+07:00

Intel Corp. is expected to release its six-core Xeon 7400 chip Monday, just as VMware Inc.'s big annual show begins in Las Vegas. And the timing is no coincidence.

Intel's chip is aimed at users seeking a consolidation and virtualization server platform, analysts said. Moving multiple virtual machines (VMs) to a six-core chip will improve management of virtual as well as physical systems. Consolidating physical servers to a single, presumably energy efficient system, may help users tight on data center space.

Intel isn't alone in picking VMware's conference to release its chip. Over the next week, vendors will be making numerous hardware announcements all designed with virtualization in mind. As virtualization use expands in data centers, so does the need for server hardware with added processing capability, memory and networking connections.

Vendors will announce over the next week products tuned for virtualization, integration with virtualization platforms and new services to support deployment.

Dell Inc., for instance, announced new PowerEdge blade servers today, including the M905 four-socket, dual- or quad-core chips from Advance Micro Devices Inc. it says can support 66 virtual machines. The system can support Citrix XenServer, VMware and Microsoft's Hyper-V. The company announced new storage and services as well.

In describing Intel's six-core chip, code-named Dunnington, at the Intel Developers Forum last month, Pat Gelsinger, Intel executive vice president, cited a number of workloads for it, including database, ERP, Java-based and virtualization.

AMD is also working on a six-core chip, code-named Istanbul, which is due out in the second half of next year.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif., said the six-core system is a niche product intended for large applications such as transaction-oriented workloads and databases that already use multithreaded environments and virtualization.

The six-core Xeon was built on a single piece of silicon, unlike Intel's quad-core chips that are built from two dual-core chips. As a result of the improvements in Dunnington, Brookwood said it handles caching much better, improving performance. He called it "the best multiple core chip that Intel has introduced to date."

With six cores, Brookwood said users can consolidate more VMs in one physical server, and being able to do so improves the management of the VMs. The risk is that if that physical server should fail for any reason, it can affect lots of people, Brookwood said.

The increased number of cores not only lend themselves to managing more workloads, but six-core systems will also take up less space in a data center and use less power, said Rich Partridge, an analyst at Ideas International Ltd. in Rye Brook, N.Y. For some users, "having a consolidated server that is more efficiently managed is very attractive," he said.

Partridge also said Intel is seeking to appeal to users who have typically turned to Unix and RISC-based systems to operate large workloads. But he also said the target audience for this server isn't users who want to run one workload across six cores, but those who want to manage multiple apps across a hypervisor.

iTunes 8 Media Player

2008-09-18T13:25:00.002+07:00

Apple earlier today unleashed iTunes 8, the newest version of its media player application. iTunes 8 gives you a fresh way to browse your music, improved accessibility for the vision-impaired, and a new automatic playlist-generation feature dubbed Genius. Judging from my test-drive of iTunes 8, the new features are useful, but none are particularly groundbreaking, must-have additions.

One of the big enhancements is the Grid view, which displays your collection's album covers visually in a grid. Within Grid view, you can sort your music by album, artist, genre, or composer. As you mouse over an album's cover-art tile, a Play button appears. Skim your mouse over tiles when sorting by Artist, Genre, or Composer, and the tile will quickly flash the album art for items sorted under each category. Click on the tile to play all songs or videos in the tile. Double-click the tile to view everything categorized under that tile.

In my experience, this arrangement made locating music quickly somewhat easier--if you want to listen to a certain album, you can use the tile-based view to find it visually, instead of doing a search for it. But this feature won't drastically change the way you organize and find your music.

In addition to the new Grid view, iTunes continues to let you browse your music by List view, in which you can see details about your music and videos, and by Cover Flow view, in which you can flip through album covers as if you were using a jukebox.

ITunes 8's marquee new feature is Genius, which automatically suggests songs based on your selection of a baseline. Genius has two parts: the Genius sidebar and the Genius Playlist tool. If you're familiar with iTunes, you may notice some similarities between Genius and both the iTunes Mini Store and Just For You features from iTunes 7 and earlier. You will need to turn on Genius before using it; iTunes will collect information on your iTunes library, submit it to Apple, and then start feeding you Genius sidebar results. When you activate Genius, iTunes compares your songs, playlists, and iTunes purchase history against what Apple offers on iTunes and library information from other users to give you the most relevant recommendations.

Some users may be a little concerned about the fact that you are sending information about your library to Apple--and for good reason. For its part, Apple says that it collects information "such as track names, play counts, and ratings," but notes that your iTunes library data "will be stored with an anonymous Genius ID and not linked to your iTunes account."

To use the Genius sidebar, select a song. iTunes will give you Genius sidebar results tailored to your selection. The Genius sidebar consists of four parts: the top albums from the selected song's artist, the top songs you don't yet have in your library from that artist, relevant iTunes Essentials collections, and other recommendations based on your selection. This is a welcome feature to me, since I already enjoy using iTunes to find music from artists I'm not familiar with; the Genius sidebar will make that even easier for me to do.

The other half of Genius is the Genius playlists function. To create one, select a song and click the Genius button in the lower-right corner of the iTunes window (indicated by an atom icon). iTunes will then generate a playlist containing songs in your library similar to the song you selected. By default iTunes limits these playlists to 25 songs, though you can create Genius playlists up to 100 songs. I found that Genius generates some pretty accurate playlists. And as Apple notes, Genius should become more accurate as additional playlist information becomes available, though as my colleague Tim Moynihan discovered, it is possible to confuse the iTunes Genius.

Incidentally, Microsoft announced a similar feature today for its Zune line, known as Mixview. The two companies seem to be thinking along the same lines. Perhaps both used Pandora as inspiration?

In its eighth iteration, ITunes remains solid, although it still has both its benefits and its quirks as a media organizer, player, and jukebox. None of the new features are what I would characterize as a must-have update, however. Genius is a useful--and generally well-done--addition, and Grid view may make finding music easier. Aside from that, though, nothing about iTunes 8 is, as noted, really groundbreaking.

Free Browser "Google Chrome"

2008-09-11T17:33:00.000+07:00

The new Web browser that Google released Tuesday is designed to expand its huge lead in the Internet search market and reduce Microsoft's imprint on personal computers.

The free browser, called "Chrome," is being promoted as a sleeker, faster and more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has been the leading vehicle for surfing the Web for the past decade. Despite recent inroads by Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, Internet Explorer is still used by roughly three-fourths of the world's Web surfers.

Google have announced plans to take on Microsoft and Firefox with their own open-source browser, codenamed Chrome, by releasing a specially drawn comic by Scott McCloud explaining the app. Based on the existing Webkit rendering engine, Chrome will integrate not only tab-based browsing but Google Gears and a newly integrated search and address system called Omnibox.

Omnibox will replace the individual address and search boxes and offer search suggestions, popular pages and history pages. It will also automatically replicate a webpage’s own search box, allowing site and query strings to be entered simultaneously. An Amazon search, for instance, could be triggered by entering “amazon”, pressing tab and then the search term.

Chrome will also include some of the more popular features from existing rivals. It will have a homepage of nine instant-access shortcut thumbnails, as found in Opera 9, with a sidebar of recent searches and tabs. The tabs themselves will be switched to above the window, not below it as on Firefox, and there’ll be a privacy option similar to Internet Explorer’s recently announced InPrivate mode, in which no record of sites or searches will be stored. A malware and phishing protection system will be integrated and constantly updated, with Chrome automatically downloading a list of dangerous sites in the background.