News : Where is Microsoft Going Today with Its Touch-Table 'Surface?'

This morning's announcement by Microsoft of a new specification for table-top touch-sensitive computers - highlighted by a demonstration package produced for NBC's "Today" program - came as no surprise to BetaNews readers who read about an early demonstration of what's now being called "Microsoft Surface" technology, at the company's WinHEC conference in Los Angeles two weeks ago. But judging by its reception, the early demo may have gone off less splendidly than the NBC package.

The concept has been in Microsoft's labs for quite some time, and it's certainly not the only company that has ever worked on this idea: multi-point touch-sensitive horizontal displays that enable information to appear on a table, and that let users "grab" it as though it were objects movable beneath a transparent surface.

But this morning's announcement adds one bit of information: The company is now working with partners to premiere working prototypes of Surface computers in retail stores, hotel lobbies, and potentially casinos - although the extent of its participation in the latter category may be subject to regulatory approval first.

A marketing document released this morning explains that a Surface device "turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, interactive surface. The product provides effortless interaction with digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. In essence, it's a surface that comes to life for exploring, learning, sharing, creating, buying and much more."

And in a prepared Q&A released this morning, the company's newly appointed chief of the Productivity and Extended Consumer Experiences Group, Tom Gibbons, borrowed a term made famous by Arlo Guthrie in explaining, in now-familiar Microsoft-ese, what "it's about."

"Surface computing is a powerful movement," Gibbons projected. "In fact, it's as significant as the move from DOS to GUI. Our research shows that many people are intimidated and isolated by today's technology. Many features available in mobile phones, PCs and other electronic devices like digital cameras aren't even used because the technology is intimidating. Surface computing breaks down those traditional barriers to technology so that people can interact with all kinds of digital content in a more intuitive, engaging, and efficient manner. It's about technology adapting to the user, rather than the user adapting to the technology. Bringing this kind of natural user interface innovation to the computing space is what Microsoft is all about."

Microsoft has often "pre-previewed" certain technologies to certain interested parties or to the press, as a way of ascertaining what public interest in a product may eventually be. Sometimes these demonstrations are helpful in unanticipated ways, perhaps to inform the company which ways not to go with a product.

During a keynote speech at WinHEC two weeks ago, the company's chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, gave the first general public demonstration of what is now considered a Microsoft Surface computer, using a form factor the hardware engineers in the crowd weren't expecting: a bookshelf table that, on the "surface," looked like it had just been purchased from Service Merchandise and assembled an hour before the show. [EP's note: This photo was slightly retouched to remove the back of someone's head from the bottom of the shot.]

"What we have here is a traditional table," Mundie's demonstration began, with the uncertain tone of an amateur magician trying out for a talent show. "Nothing magic about the table, but here we have a projection capability with cameras attached to it. This is built with the same technology today that is being made in huge volumes to do Web cameras, for example, or video cameras on the inside, and a TV display on the outside. [Rather than] putting them into a PC for processing, we're able to build an intelligent input/output system."

As his demonstration continued, some audible snickering could be heard from the crowd.

"Here, this game of checkers is one that perhaps an elderly person would play, who's confined to their homes, and she'd play checkers with a friend of hers. So here's a game in progress, and I can take the checker and move it, and I've got physical pieces. The computer is essentially reflecting the moves of the person on the other end by representing them in video."

As Mundie made the final move, however, it turned out that "Nelly's" opponent all this time was a computer-generated elderly friend. With a voice reminiscent of what one might expect from Ray Bradbury's "Usher II," the electronic "RuthAnne" murmured, "You won again! But I'll win tomorrow! Thanks for the game."

"They can talk to each other, there's essentially a video conferencing system in it, to [run the] game at the same time," Mundie continued. "But the table can be used for many purposes."

It is here that the demonstration turned from eerie to blatantly bizarre.

"So here at the end of this game, it's time for Nelly to take some of her medication," Mundie went on. "One of the big issues is getting elderly people to take them at the right time, and to take the right ones. Here, we can actually use optical recognition, and they actually put the pills down."

As he demonstrated, the table would provide a sort of template on top of which "Nelly" is expected to place her pills, before she can continue doing whatever it was she had planned to do next with the talking table. If she put the wrong pill on the surface, the table will warn her. (Behind me, someone commented that the "Aldomet" pills looked like the "OK" buttons in Mac OS X.)

If the checker-player-turned-patient feels she's having an "interaction" with her medication - which could indeed give "interaction" a whole new meaning in this context - Mundie said the table would give Nelly an opportunity to participate in a survey, probably letting her touch on-screen...or on-table buttons corresponding to where she feels her aches and pains.

"So here are two things that are natural extensions to the kind of technology we have in the personal computer environment," said Mundie, "and yet it gives us the ability to do things that would otherwise be quite challenging for people to deal with."

It had seemed that Bill Gates' CES 2007 demonstration of LCD wallpaper that could be instantly switched to suit the tastes of visiting grandmothers, would have been the single least well received demonstration in his company's history. But with all due respect to Craig Mundie - who may have felt as uneasy demonstrating this material as many of us did watching it - the checker-playing, pill-pushing stationery table is easily the least well-received demonstration ever given by Microsoft, dating back to the days when Gates' own "Microchess" challenged "Sargon" on the Apple II.

Throughout the entire show, it was the buzz outside the sessions and throughout the lunch rooms, and the part attendees called their wives and girlfriends about on their cell phones in the corners of hallways. It wasn't the touch-screen technology that people were talking about, though: it was the bewildering notion that Microsoft would want to "make our lives easier" by both entertaining and medicating our parents and grandparents.

For that reason, it is extremely noteworthy that the list of Microsoft's announced partners for its Surface technology includes Harrah's, Starwood Hotels (the parent company of Sheraton), and T-Mobile...and does not include the manufacturers of Toprol, Aldomet, or any other anti-depressant.

News : Live blog with Gates and Jobs at D5

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs have taken the stage in this much-anticipated event at the D5 conference here.

Earlier in the day, both companies tried to lay their claim to hipness, Microsoft by showing off a multitouch table computer, and Apple by announcing that its Apple TV will begin playing YouTube videos.

I'm in an overflow room a half-dozen other reporters, many of whom flew to San Diego to watch the main event on TV from an overflow room several hundred yards from the ballroom.

The keynote kicked off with a 1983 video of a young Jobs hosting the "Macintosh software dating game" with three software CEOs--Gates, Mitch Kapor of Lotus and Fred Gibbons.

In the video, a young Gates in a blue polo shirt tells Jobs how important the Mac is to Microsoft. "During 1984 Microsoft expects to get half of its revenue from Macintosh software," Gates says.

It moves on to a video of the famous 1997 Macworld in Boston where Apple announced its deal with Microsoft. In the video, Gates appears via satellite to a chorus of boos from the Macworld crowd.

The four walk out on stage--Gates, Jobs and Swisher and Mossberg--with Jobs wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck, jeans and tennis shoes. Gates is wearing a button down shirt, dark pants and shoes.

The discussion began with Swisher asking each what the other's biggest contribution was.

"Bill built the first software company in the industry," Jobs said. "The business model turned out to be one that worked very well for the industry. Bill was really focused on software before anyone else had a clue."

Gates responded by first noting that he is not the author of a popular Steve Jobs satire site.

"I want to clarify I'm not Fake Steve Jobs," he quipped.

Gates praised Jobs for pursuing the idea that the computer could really be a mass market idea and then for betting heavy again on the Mac, despite the Lisa's lack of popularity.

They then delved back into the early days of the Mac when Microsoft and Apple worked closely together.

"When Steve first came up, it was going to be a lot cheaper computer than it ended up being," Gates said. "That was fine." Stay tuned. Updating frequently.

News : T-Mobile Ships First Windows Mobile 6 Phone

T-Mobile said Tuesday it had launched the Wing, the successor to its MDA smartphone and the first handset in the United States to ship with Windows Mobile 6 installed.

The carrier was also the first to offer an upgrade for Windows Mobile 5 users with a T-Mobile Dash, and it said phones with the new OS installed would appear next month.

The Wing offers many improvements over the MDA, most noticeably a slimmer form factor. In additional, the phone also includes a new keyboard design and longer battery life, along with a 2.0-megapixel camera.

Like its predecessor, the Wing features Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, with the option to use the device at any of T-Mobile's 8,000 HotSpot locations. It also includes support for all four major instant messaging services, including AOL, Windows Live, ICQ, and Yahoo.

Both Microsoft and T-Mobile hope the release of the device, which costs $299 USD with a two-year contract -- some $200 cheaper than the initial price of the MDA when it was first launched -- will help smartphones catch on with a broader market segment.

"The HTC-designed T-Mobile Wing is a versatile, user-friendly smartphone that will appeal to a wide range of consumers," HTC America vice president Todd Achilles said in a statement.

Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6 in February, but devices have been slow to make it to the States. This is likely due to the fact that smartphones have generally seen higher sales in markets in Europe and Asia than in North America.

Other enhancements provided by Windows Mobile 6 include improved security and easier syncing procedures. T-Mobile has also added support for its myFaves service.

The phone is available immediately from the company's Web site and retail stores, T-Mobile said.

News : Microsoft Steps Up Open-Source Battle

Microsoft continued its battle against open-source on Tuesday with the release of yet another company-funded study showing that developers believe the next version of GPL shouldn't cover patent deals.

This latest study was performed by the Harvard Business School, and found that developers would rather have GPLv3 stay out of the deal regulation business. Perhaps not coincidentally, the study comes a week after Microsoft claimed that open-source violates 235 patents.

The study is based on a very small sample of only 34 respondents. Researchers sent out some 332 questionnaires, but a scant 11 percent responded according to eWEEK. Some Microsoft watchers are puzzled by Redmond's latest moves.

"I'm stunned that after taking a number of seemingly positive steps vis-a-vis its thinking and strategy around open source, Microsoft has decided to blow away any bridges it built in a matter of weeks," long time Microsoft pundit Mary Jo Foley opined.

She noted that Microsoft's threat to sue had backfired, and pointed to a website that lists over 300 open-source supporters that are openly asking Microsoft to sue them over alleged patent infringement.

Microsoft is now in a tough predicament. Either it must stick to its guns, or attempt to back off and sweep what could become a public relations disaster under the rug.

Others are echoing Foley's concerns. "Microsoft perceives risks with how GPLv3 treats intellectual property. The playing field isn't level, though. There is no similiar mechanism for Microsoft licensing," Joe Wilcox, writer for Microsoft Watch, told BetaNews.

"Microsoft gets the say, with modest input from its largest customers."

News : Google Continues to Dominate Search

Microsoft's search share lost ground once again as competitors Google and Yahoo gained, statistics from research firm Nielsen/NetRatings indicate. Released Monday, the study showed that once again Microsoft was having trouble holding on to any gains it had made previously. In April, the company's share of the market stood at 9 percent, down 1.1 percent from the month previous.

Yahoo gained a statistically insignificant .1 percent to grow to 21.9 percent, but Google showed the most gains, with its share up 1.5 percent to 55.2 percent of all Web searches. The results are sure to cause consternation in Redmond; Microsoft has expressed disappointment with its search performance. Rounding out the top five search engines were AOL with 5.4 percent and Ask.com with 1.8 percent of the market.

News : Google Launches 'Hot Trends' Service

Google on Tuesday rolled out a new service designed to provide instant insight into what people are searching for in different areas of the world. "Hot Trends," currently in testing on Google Labs, combines the company's Zeitgeist and Google Trends features.

The Hot Trends list is updated throughout the day and links to Google News, blog and Web searches so users can see why the search term made the list. Google is not simply listing the most popular search queries, but rather those that deviate from their typical frequency. As a result, seemingly odd searches make the list, such as "legless chihuahua." Currently, many of the Hot Trends relate to XM Satellite Radio's outage.

News : Apple: Fake Memo Didn't Come from Internal Server

Apple attempted to squash the confusion surrounding a fake memo published on AOL blog Engadget Wednesday, which claimed both the iPhone and Leopard were being delayed and temporarily led to a major drop in Apple stock. The company says the memo was not sent from its servers.

Instead, the fake memo was simply crafted to look like it came from Apple and contained the same wording that typically accompanies legitimate internal communication from the company's Bullet News system. The e-mail was then sent to a handful of employees, one of whom passed it to Engadget.

Within minutes, Apple's stock tumbled two percent, falling to an Intraday low of $103.42. This was after the stock opened the day up over $1.30 from its previous close. As it closed in on the end of the day's trading, the stock had still not managed to recoup all of its losses.

Apple lost four billion dollars in market capitalization in just six minutes.

Engadget claimed in an update to its original post that the e-mail "was an ACTUAL email distributed within Apple's internal email system to Apple employees." This statement led many to defend the blog's actions.

"I have to say that I, too, would have posted this news based on the source. The email was in fact sent from Apple’s email server to Apple employees and was then forwarded to Engadget from a trusted source," commented high-profile blogger Michael Arrington.

Even Jupiter Research vice president Michael Gartenberg -- a long proponent of getting the story right rather than first -- supported the site, stating that, "I don't if I would have acted differently than Ryan did. Engadget had a legitimate Apple email, coming from a source at Apple."

But Apple now says that the e-mail did not come from its internal email system, which indicates that a check of the message's headers could have revealed the hoax. The company did not say whether it would try to find the individual responsible for the fake memo.

AOL's Ryan Block, who manages Engadget and posted the original memo, apologized on the site late Thursday. In the posting, Block explained that the memo "by all appearances was a legitimate email from Apple corporate."

He also responded to the questionable point in the memo that said a press release had been issued to announce the delay of the iPhone and Leopard. Block believed a press release would come later, and the site would have been doing a "disservice to our readers" had it sat on the story until confirmation.

Due to the seeming manipulation in Apple's stock price, the SEC could take action, but would not confirm whether or not it was investigating the matter.

"The fact is that big blogs now have an incredible amount of power to move information quickly, and influence people more broadly than ever before. I’m not sure we (bloggers) understood quite how much influence we really had until yesterday," added Arrington.

News : Microsoft Makes Largest Buy in History

Furthering the pace of consolidation in the Internet advertising industry, Microsoft on Friday announced it will acquire aQuantive for around $6 billion - its largest acquisition in history. Microsoft is paying nearly an 85 percent premium for the company.

Microsoft was rumored to be bidding for 24/7 Real Media, one of the smaller advertising firms up for sale, however WPP Group announced it won the deal Thursday for a price of approximately $649 million. Last month, market leader DoubleClick was acquired by Google, and Yahoo purchased ad firm Right Media.

aQuantive is perhaps best known in the industry for its ad agency Avenue A | Razorfish, one of the largest in the world. It offers marketing consultation, media planning and buying, and creative services to advertisers.

The company additionally offers DRIVEpm, a tool that matches advertiser campaigns with available publisher inventory and maximizes the return. aQuantive's Atlas platform also helps optimize marketing campaigns and improve publisher revenue.

"Today's announcement represents the next step in the evolution of our ad network from our initial investment in MSN, to the broader Microsoft network including Xbox Live, Windows Live and Office Live, and now to the full capacity of the Internet," remarked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Microsoft is intensely committed to creating a thriving advertising business and to partnering closely with all key constituencies in this industry to help maximize the digital advertising opportunity for all."

aQuantive's 2,600 employees will continue to operate as part of Microsoft's Online Services Business. Unlike the Google-DoubleClick deal that Microsoft claims reduces competition by combining companies offering the same services, Microsoft says aQuantive is complementary to currently available MSN adCenter solutions.

News : Wii Continues to Shine as PS3 Sales Slide Further

For the fourth month in a row, the Nintendo Wii outsold its competitors, even showing impressive strength at a time that is traditionally one of the slower periods for video game sales.

Nintendo sold some 360,000 units of the $249 USD next-generation console in April, up 39 percent from the previous month and its highest monthly sales total since January, retail data from research firm NPD Group shows.

Nintendo said that it is doing all it can to keep up with demand, and continues to manufacture consoles at a rapid clip. Some of the monthly increase could be due to better supplies at retail, although no reasoning was given.

On the flip side, Sony's PlayStation 3 again showed slowing sales, falling 37 percent to only 82,000 consoles sold during the month. A lack of first-party titles and compelling new games are being blamed for the console's weakness.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 was also off 13 percent for the month, selling 174,000 units, however the company said it saw evidence that the release of the HDMI-equipped Xbox 360 Elite helped to soften the typical seasonal decline.

Since January, sales have fallen only 17 percent for the Wii, while the Xbox 360 has fallen some 41 percent and the PS3 67 percent. The Wii's sales stability has allowed Nintendo to gain quickly on market leading Microsoft and pull further ahead of Sony.

Xbox 360 accounts for about 59 percent of the installed next-generation console user base, followed by 27 percent for Nintendo and 14 percent for Sony.

The best-selling games were all from Nintendo: DS titles "Pokemon Diamond" and "Pokemon Pearl" took the top spots, followed by "Super Paper Mario" and "Wii Play" for the Wii console.

News : Modded 360s Banned from Xbox Live

Gamers with modified Xbox 360 consoles are getting a nasty surprise: their consoles are being blocked from accessing Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

Until last week, modifications to the console were undetectable by Microsoft, allowing enterprising gamers to open up the next-generation console and tinker with its settings. However, a software update has seemed to change all that.

Microsoft can now test for the existence of a hack that allows the console to played burned versions of games, as well as if the game in the drive itself is a legitimate copy. If these items are found, the user is then banned from Xbox Live.

Some are saying the rise in copying has much to do with the highly anticipated Halo 3 beta -- many may be copying the game Crackdown for the sole purpose of gaining access to the beta, which is also included on the disc.

It is a violation of the Terms of Service to use a modified console with Xbox Live. A message will appear on the screen, and the console, but not the user's account itself, will be banned.

"We have stated in the past that customers can only enjoy access to the Xbox Live community through the use of a genuine, unmodified, Xbox console and we will continue to enforce this rule to ensure the integrity of our service, the protection of our partners and the benefits of our users," Microsoft said.

News : Google Offers Co-Branded Apps

Google on Friday released a new Partner Edition of its online applications, which enables ISPs, portals and other service providers to offer specially branded versions to their customers. For example, an ISP could utilize Gmail instead of building and supporting their own webmail platform.

Aside from Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets will be available with the service. "All you have to do is point and click in the easy admin control panel and figure out what branding you'd like to layer on top of the products in order to create a customized look and feel," says Google Apps product manager Hunter Middleton.

News : RealNetworks Inks Deal with Vodafone

A day after Napster secured a deal to power the music services on Motorola's new ROKR handsets, RealNetworks has inked a similar agreement with European wireless carrier Vodafone. But Real had to buy into the partnership.

Music offerings on Vodafone are currently powered by Sony NetServices, a joint venture of Sony DADC and Sony Europe, which was acquired Wednesday by Real. Both streaming Internet radio to mobile phones and music downloads are available through the solution.

Downloads and streaming music are available now from Vodafone in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Romania and the UK, while the streaming music service is available in France.

Real says it will further expand the offering with technology it acquired from WiderThan, which provides music services on mobile phones and handles syncing between wireless devices and PCs. The Vodafone agreement is a multiyear deal, but terms were not disclosed.

"We are uniquely suited to offer Vodafone customers a compelling and easy-to-use personalized music experience that takes full advantage of the reach and speed of Vodafone's superior 3G networks across Europe," commented said John Giamatteo, Real's President of Technology Products.

Counting the addition of Vodafone, Real says it now has 12 music on demand customers with more than 196 million mobile subscribers in 11 countries. With the company's Rhapsody music service still struggling against giant iTunes, Real has increasingly focused on the growing mobile market for music and games.

News : Amazon to Open Music Download Store

Online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday confirmed rumors that it plans to open a music download store to compete with Apple's iTunes. Unlike competitors, however, Amazon will only sell songs in the unprotected MP3 format.

Amazon says it will offer millions of songs on the as-yet unnamed service, which come from 12,000 record labels. Most of these will be smaller, independent labels, as EMI is the only major to have agreed to license its tracks without digital rights management.

"Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. "We're excited to have EMI joining us in this effort and look forward to offering our customers MP3s from amazing artists like Coldplay, Norah Jones and Joss Stone."

With Amazon on-board the DRM-free movement, it could persuade other major labels to follow EMI. Both Universal and Warner have said they are testing unprotected songs, but are wary of piracy that could come about from users openly sharing the digital tracks they purchase.

Because it has chosen MP3 as the format, songs from Amazon will be compatible with almost every digital music player - from iPods to Zunes to Zens. Although Apple plans to offer DRM-free songs from EMI at a slight premium -- $1.29 compared to $0.99 -- the files will be in Apple's AAC format, which is not supported by many players.

Still, that may not be enough to pose a serious challenge to iTunes, say analysts.

"If Amazon can offer a greater catalog than Apple at a lower price point or higher quality bit rates, we might begin to see iPod users begin to use the Amazon offering over iTunes but unless there's a marked differentiation, it's not likely that iPod users would go to Amazon over iTunes, especially given the iTunes eco system of music, TV shows, movies and games," remarked Jupiter Research vice president Michael Gartenberg.

Amazon expects to launch its music download store later this year, but did not provide a specific date.

News : Yahoo Overhauls Mapping Service

Faced with increasing competition from Google Maps and AOL's MapQuest, Yahoo is beefing up the driving directions offered on its Maps product, for the first time including directions in 34 European countries.

In addition, Yahoo has upgraded its Maps engine to provide more landmarks and visual cues to help with navigation. The new engine -- developed in house -- should help make the product more responsive as well. Yahoo has made sure the platform upgrade will not affect third parties using its APIs. Printing of maps has also received improvements.

News : DoD Blocks Access to 13 Web Sites

A new policy being implemented by the Department of Defense means that soldiers will lose access to 13 sites including MySpace and YouTube beginning Monday in an effort to conserve bandwidth.

The agency claims the "recreational" use of its network slows down official government work, as well as posing a security risk for ongoing operations. The new policy would supplement a preexisting policy that forbids the sharing of information that may jeopardize the missions of the military.

"It is a proactive measure: we do not want a problem with demand for these sites clogging the networks," a U.S. Strategic Command official said. Although some may think it is also a move to control the flow of information out of the war area, the DoD denied it, saying it was "solely a bandwidth/network management issue."

While members of the military could still visit these sites from their own machines and networks, those computers connected to the DoD would have the sites blocked. For many in the war now, the Defense Department network is the only means of Internet communication.

Covered in the ban are the following sites: video sites YouTube, Metacafe, iFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, social networks MySpace, BlackPlanet, and Hi5, music sites MTV and online radio sites Pandora, 1.fm, and live365, and photo sharing site Photobucket.

Such bans are not specific to the military; several public companies also forid access to similar sites for much of the same reasons.

News : US DOJ Gets 50th Warez Conviction

The United States Department of Justice has announced the 50th felony conviction as part of its Operation FastLink crackdown on warez groups operating on the Internet to illegally share music, movies, games and software. Christopher Eaves, 31, of Iowa Park, Texas, faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.

Eaves was part of a group known as "Apocalypse Crew," and was responsible for providing copyrighted music online before its official release. “Digital piracy is a serious and growing global problem, and this 50th conviction represents a milestone never before achieved in any online piracy prosecution,” commented Assistant Attorney General Fisher. The DOJ's Operation FastLink has thus far resulted in more than 120 search warrants executed in 12 countries.

News : Google Shareholders Reject Anti-censorship Resolution

A Google shareholders' resolution put forth by representatives of New York City pension funds, which would have mandated the company would not store personal data on servers housed in countries where Internet management may be monitored by the state, was apparently rejected yesterday during the company's annual stockholder's meeting, after the company's board of directors voiced their disapproval last month.

The petition specifically listed Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam as countries that "block, restrict, and monitor the information their citizens attempt to obtain." On that basis, the resolution implied, those countries should not be trusted not to interfere with private data on US citizens.

The pension funds, which are managed by the New York City Comptroller's Office, represent a surprising number of shares of the company - at last count, the Office told BetaNews today, 700,719 shares valued at over $338 million. But that's still about two tenths of one percent of the company's outstanding shares, and not enough to sway the board's consensus.

Google declined comment on the issue to BetaNews this afternoon beyond the company's unofficial statements made during the meeting itself. A spokesperson did say the precise breakdown of the shareholder vote would be revealed during the company's next quarterly analysts' call, which will likely be held in July.

But a comment on the general issue of doing business with countries whose Internet policies may be questionable, was released today on Google's corporate blog by its global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer.

"Companies like Google are trying to be responsible corporate citizens," Fleischer wrote, "and sometimes we are told to do different things by different government entities, or to follow conflicting legal obligations. It's hard enough to get different government entities to talk to each other inside one country. When you multiply this by all the countries where Google must comply with the laws, the potential conflicts are enormous. Nonetheless, Google is committed to providing its users around the world with one consistent high level of data protection."

Fleischer's comments were in the context of a statement explaining the company's recently altered personal data retention policy. Last March, Google announced it would anonymize its server logs 18 to 24 months after data has been collected. As Fleischer explained, a recently passed EU directive requires Google to retain data, and member states have been urged to pass laws setting that retention period at 24 months.

It isn't that Google retains data which bothers New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., but where it takes place. Last Tuesday, the pension funds his office manages filed a shareholder resolution calling on Microsoft to adopt the same anti-censorship stand from foreign governments as for Google and Yahoo, where a vote on a similar shareholders' resolution is forthcoming.

In a statement to BetaNews today, Thompson's office said, "The Comptroller and the New York City Pension Funds believe that Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft need to take steps to combat censorship across the globe. The measures we have filed help to protect freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Management at these companies needs to institute policies to protect freedom of access to the internet to send a message to authoritarian governments that they should not block, restrict and monitor information."

The NYC pension funds hold about 28.1 million shares of Microsoft valued at $870.4 million, or just less than three tenths of one percent of shares outstanding.

News : Google Adds Print Option to AdSense

Advertisers using Google AdSense are seeing a new option for reaching customers: print newspapers. The search company has been testing the print waters since late last year, and said in December it would enable online advertisers to purchase surplus inventory in hundreds of newspapers.

AdSense advertisers can choose a weekly amount they'd like to spend on the campaign, as well as the newspapers to target, which Google lists with circulation numbers. The concept of ad brokerage is nothing new to the industry. What is new is Google's spin on it, which is essentially pure automation and acceleration of the process, not unlike what eBay has done for barter. Marketing Pilgrim has screenshots of AdSense for Print.

News : Comcast Talks Up 150 Megabit Cable

With growing pressure from lower-cost DSL and Verizon's faster FiOS, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts used The Cable Show conference in Las Vegas to show off a new cable modem technology that could bring speeds of 150 megabits per second. FiOS is currently offered up to 50 megabits, but is capable of much more.

Version 3.0 of the DOCSIS standard, developed by Cable Television Laboratories which represents all of the cable providers, utilizes four channels to send data instead of just one. This "channel bonding" would enable speeds 25 times higher than current cable modems. Roberts says manufacturers are planning to submit DOCSIS 3.0 modems for certification later this year, and customers could see the technology in their homes within a couple years

News : Gates Calls AJAX 'Very Complex,' Touts Silverlight as an Alternative

During a Strategic Account Summit meeting in Seattle for investors and analysts yesterday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates downplayed the role of Asynchronous JavaScript (AJAX) technologies in future Web development. Gates said this immediately following a demonstration of Silverlight created for Major League Baseball, one of whose principal virtues is that its back end is written entirely in C#, to run within the .NET Compact Framework.

"Over the last three or four years, people have been really finding the limitations of HTML to be very problematic," Gates told the audience, according to Microsoft's official transcript, "and they've been trying some browser capabilities that we had really going back over five years with Internet Explorer 4.0. But even though so-called AJAX-type technologies have forced very complex development, and they don't integrate into the traditional HTML very well. They've been experimenting with things that you download that let you do more interactivity and media."

Gates' statement coincides with last week's comments from his chief architect, Ray Ozzie, which also detach Silverlight from its technological bindings with AJAX. Together, they make absolutely clear their company's marketing strategy: to entice Web developers to adopt two classes of technologies with which they may not yet be familiar. Specifically, they are Windows Communication Foundation, which supports the OASIS WS-* Web services model upon which non-browser-dependant applications will depend; and applications development languages like C#, with their static typing and rigid, object-oriented rules.

For Microsoft's marketing plan to work, Web developers will have to buy into the message that they can accomplish more in the interactivity department using C# as an application platform, then using Microsoft's own ASP.NET AJAX and HTML.

But since Silverlight is based on the company's former WPF/E technology, which exposes services to AJAX as a .NET language just as easily as it does to C# as a .NET language, it may take more than a flashy, interactive baseball diamond for Microsoft to make a successful pitch.

As BetaNews has noted previously, all eight public demos of Silverlight applications on Microsoft's Web site are built on ASP.NET AJAX. Of course, some might argue that since those demos were designed to be accessible to visitors to Microsoft's Web site via a browser, AJAX was the better choice...maybe.

On the other hand, some developers might argue that since users will be connecting to Web sites first, and Web applications second, a more browser-oriented language like AJAX may be preferable to a rigidly-typed language like C#, designed for stand-alone applications.

As Microsoft's own developers are demonstrating, Silverlight applications using AJAX may be just as functional and "immersive" from the user's perspective as those written in stand-alone languages.

But Microsoft's incentives behind the "good/better/best" approach to Silverlight marketing may include a need to attract partners whose interests are to develop services that appear to stand alone from typical browser-based Web apps.

During a demonstration yesterday of the MLB application, Microsoft's technical product manager Brian Goldfarb described his company's new partner like this: "Major League Baseball has made a huge business of online access to content and games. Their player is an extension of their league, of their brand, and of their experience. And it has evolved dramatically over time. They're particularly interested in Silverlight because it can create an incredibly immersive experience that will capture their users' eyeballs for longer."

This won't be the first case of Microsoft struggling with locating the best point at which to split hairs, especially when making simultaneous appeals to "developers, developers, developers" and marketing partners. It's a legitimate market battle this time around, with Microsoft contending against Adobe and Sun in a field where it may not even be the #2 player, and where it's working to obtain something it hasn't had to wrest for itself in several years: a toehold.

News : A fresh, faster Hotmail

Some 280 million Hotmail users are getting a brand-new in-box today. If you're already using Hotmail, when you log in a green button will invite you to try the new service, while the beta tag disappears for testers
Voila, the new Windows Live Hotmail.

In addition, Microsoft is building bridges between its desktop and browser-based e-mail services. The Windows Live Mail beta download should become available later this month, succeeding Outlook Express and Windows Mail. Also later in May, expect to see the free Microsoft Office Outlook Connector beta, which will synchronize contacts, e-mails, and folders with the new Hotmail. The current Outlook Web Access will remain for enterprise users only.

Microsoft dug up the foundation of MSN Hotmail and has spent more than two years reconstructing it, brick by AJAX brick. So in addition to a new face, expect more speed; messages will load without requiring the entire page to refresh.

Down to the Today tab of news that loads when you sign in, the multipane interface looks just like that of Yahoo Mail beta, which apes Microsoft Outlook--letting you drag and drop messages into folders, or right-click messages for a menu of options. Windows Live Hotmail, however, lets you choose a color theme.

Similar to the Hotmail of the past as well as Mozilla Thunderbird, checkboxes appear next to each message--but only when you hover over or select an e-mail. This is built to help old-school users get used to the new layout, although you can select multiple messages without zeroing in on the tiny boxes.
Windows Live Hotmail has customizable color themes

Windows Live Hotmail has customizable color themes
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CNET)

New goodies include:

* Storage starts at 2GB and expands to 4GB for $19.99 per year.Yahoo, by contrast, offers unlimited storage.
* Say R.I.P. to the old Hotmail, although you can switch to Classic view, which closely resembles it.
* A built-in audio player lets you listen to MP3 and WAV files--including songs and voicemail messages.
* You can make minor changes to pictures when attaching them to an e-mail message. Unfortunately, this feature and the inline audio player won't work in Firefox.
* Although there's no integrated chatting as Gmail and Yahoo Mail beta allow, Hotmail can detect when a contact is online and will pop up a Windows Live Messenger window when you choose to chat.
* Microsoft may be working with an unnamed partner to embed video features. If so, the ability to play movies within your inbox could really set this email service apart from Yahoo's and Google's.
* An inline spelling checker underlines misspelled words with squiggly lines and ties to a dictionary and thesaurus, just like in Word. Gmail and Yahoo Mail lack this.
* The security bar atop incoming messages turns yellow or red according to the potential danger. Although Hotmail won't block senders from your contact list, most messages won't show pictures or links until you allow them. Although some users may find this too cautious, I've found it to be a pretty straightforward buffer zone against phishing and other scams.
* A banner atop the screen may target ads according to your location. Unlike Gmail, however, Hotmail will not serve advertisements based on the text content of your e-mails.
* You can choose to send messages that appear to be from your Gmail or Yahoo address.

Many other features are still under wraps and will roll out gradually. Among the Outlook-like features that are absent for now:

o No RSS reader
o No message color-coding
o No built-in preview of documents from Office and elsewhere.
o Calendar integration is still in progress.
o Despite the rich text editing for e-mail composition, there's no sign that Hotmail will incorporate an online word processor, a la Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
o I'm crossing fingers that built-in mapping, chatting and voice-calling might also happen at some point.
o No word yet on whether Hotmail will render HTML as Outlook 2007 does. If so, it would also lack CSS support, giving migraines to many newsletter designers.

If you're confused by all the changing names of Hotmail, you're not alone. The first code name for the redesigned Hotmail was Tsunami, replaced by Kahuna later in 2005, then otherwise known as Windows Live Mail beta. Now Microsoft is keeping the Hotmail brand after all and preceding it with the newer Windows Live moniker that also describes a host of Web 2.0 tools (The team behind the rebuild reportedly cheered at the decision).

Just don't mix up Windows Live Hotmail with Windows Live Mail, the new, free desktop client--or with Office Live Mail, which integrates with other Office Live services. For the sake of my sore fingers, I'm referring to Windows Live Hotmail as Hotmail from here on.

News : Windows Live Hotmail Desktop Client Due Shortly

Amid the announcement that Windows Live Hotmail is launching globally on Monday, Microsoft said that it plans to release a beta of its desktop client called Windows Live Mail "within weeks." The application replaces both Outlook Express and Windows Mail as the company's signature e-mail client. Sources indicate that Windows Live Mail would be similar to the Windows Live Desktop Mail client currently being tested.

That application provides desktop access to POP and IMAP e-mail accounts, as well as the Hotmail service. It also integrates with other Live services, including Contacts, Messenger, Spaces. Users of the free client are shown advertising, while subscribers to Hotmail premium services did not. It was not immediately clear whether or not ads will be displayed in the updated version.

News : Yahoo Launches Web Based Messenger

Following in the footsteps of IM rivals AOL and Microsoft, Yahoo on Thursday launched a Web-based version of its instant messaging client, which runs across platforms in IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Users can message their Yahoo and Windows Live contacts from a Web browser, as well as access chat history.

Yahoo Messenger for the Web includes a feature the downloadable versions does not yet have: a tabbed message window. Currently in beta, the service is available in English, Portuguese, Vietnamese and traditional Chinese. AOL has offered its own AIM Express on the Web since 2000, while both Microsoft and Google also offer browser-based versions of their IM clients.

News : Google to Unveil 'iGoogle' Branding

Seemingly taking a page from Apple's naming playbook, Google on Tuesday will unwrap "iGoogle," a new brand for the search company's Personalized Homepage service. News features will arrive alongside the iGoogle site, including a "Gadget Maker" and location based search results.

Google's Personalized Homepage lets users create exactly that: a customized start page for their Web browsing. On the page, users can place "gadgets" containing information they are interested in, be it weather, stock feeds, news feeds from Web sites, and even the current date and time.

The iGoogle name isn't exactly new, as developers of the feature originally planned to name the service as such before the idea was shot down by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Instead, the service was relegated to more generic branding, but remained at the URL: google.com/ig.

Apparently, the surprise popularity of the feature and growth of competing personalized start pages such as NetVibes prompted Page and Brin to reconsider their decision. The company says tens of millions of users have created a personalized homepage, and the feature is growing faster than Google Maps and even Gmail.

In turn, iGoogle will be offered in 18 more countries, making for a total of 40 countries supported with 26 languages.

25,000 gadgets are currently available for the site, says Google, but the company on Tuesday will also release a Gadget Maker feature that will enable users to create their own gadgets without knowing HTML or JavaScript. Seven templates of gadgets will be provided, and users will be able to share their creations with others using the new "My Community" feature.

Moreover, Google is planning to offer users search results through iGoogle that are custom tailored to their physical location. The company is putting huge resources into collecting massive amounts of data on users in order to deliver results that are more likely to interest them. Google recently launched its Web History service that tracks and stores every Web page a user visits for future reference.

News : Napster Loses Penn State to Ruckus

Penn State will end its partnership with the Napster music service on May 31 in favor of Ruckus, the university said on Wednesday.

The announcement ends a nearly four-year deal between the institution and music service, and sends mixed signals on the future of the offering itself. Penn State was one of Napster's largest educational customers.

Starting in the fall, all students at the university's 24 campuses across the state of Pennsylvania will be eligible to sign up for an account with Ruckus. The service offers about 3 million tracks.

In somewhat of an ironic twist, Ruckus is headed by Mike Bebel, who was president of Napster when the original deal was signed with Penn State in November 2003. Napster was staying silent on what the announcement meant for the future of the service.

"Napster helped Penn State greatly in taking a bold and ultimately successful step, but we believe the new Ruckus service will provide greater flexibility for the university marketplace going forward," university president Graham Spanier said.

Penn State stands to save a lot of money by switching to Ruckus. The music service does not require any payment for offering Ruckus to students, whereas Napster charged the university for the base service. Only downloaded tracks require students to pay a 99-cent fee.

It is unknown how much Penn State paid for Napster, because the company required that information to be kept secret as part of its agreement.

Additionally, students complained that the Napster service did not offer enough in the way of video and movie downloads, and that played a large part in the school's decision to switch.

News : AACS LA Versus Digg, Google in DMCA Showdown Over Leaked Key

Beginning two weeks ago, attorneys for the licensing authority for the Advanced Access Copy System used in both Blu-ray and HD DVD issued letters to multiple Web sites and services, including search engines, demanding they remove direct references to a 32-hexadecimal digit code they claim is a processing key that could be used to circumvent DRM protection in HD DVD discs.

"It is our understanding that you are providing to the public the above-identified tools and services at the above referenced URL," reads one letter sent by AACS LA's attorneys to a representative of Google, "and are thereby providing and offering to the public a technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof that is primarily designed, produced, or marketed for the purpose of circumventing the technological protection measures afforded by AACS (hereafter, the "circumvention offering"). Doing so constitutes a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

The letter goes on to demand the removal of references to four Web sites whose articles include the code, as well as to any other material where the code may appear, otherwise "failure to do so will subject you to legal liability." In an extra bit of irony, the document filename in one of the four URLs the attorneys cite is actually the 32-bit code itself.

The key in question appears to be the same one discovered by the Doom9 Forum user whose screen handle is arnezami, back in February as reported then by BetaNews. What this user discovered, other forum members verified, was a media key that software could use to identify itself as a validly licensed media player of HD DVD discs. While Linux media players could theoretically read the code from HD DVDs, they cannot decrypt that code since AACS LA has thus far declined to issue licenses - and thus, licensed media keys as well - to creators of open-source software, who could theoretically share that code in the act of source code distribution.

Word does not travel as fast as those who repeat online what they read elsewhere online believe it to; and thus, the existence of the discovered media key was only widely reported after a Digg user posted a link to an article where that key happened to appear. That article, appearing Monday on the blog Rudd-O.com - almost two and a half months after the key's discovery - begins with the key itself, explains its discovery on the Doom9 Forum, and links to a 17-page autobiographical feature of the fellows who found it on Doom9 (through Digg) and repeated it on Rudd-O.com, entitled, "Stickin' It to the Man: The Illustrated Report of an Epic Event."

That article which links to "Stickin' It to the Man" was itself Dugg, by way of another blog post - this time entitled, "Spread This Number. Now." - which the author then self-Dugg, and in so doing, generated by his count 15,492 Diggs (votes of approval from Digg.com users).

It is that article with the high Digg count which caught the attention of AACS LA's attorneys, who immediately issued a takedown notice. At first, Digg complied, removing references to "Spread This Number" and other material. In an explanation on Digg's corporate blog, CEO Jay Adelson wrote, "We've been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.

"Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information," Adelson continued, "and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down."

Digg also apparently suspended the accounts of individuals who provided the original Digg links, including the one to "Spread This Number," as its author posted on his own blog last night. However, multiple Diggs to the original Digg, including comments generated there, apparently remained.

There was an immediate public outcry from Digg users - which, for a story that took two and a half months to germinate, is perhaps noteworthy. However, many of the thousands of comments posted to already long threads appear to consist of meaningless data, side discussions irrelevant to the topic, spam, and even cute little pictures drawn with ANSI characters.

Regardless of the substance of the protest, it was enough to provoke Digg's executives to reverse their course. In a blog post late last night whose title actually includes the media key code, Digg founder Kevin Rose wrote, "Today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company.

"If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying," Rose concluded. Exactly what action Digg takes from this point on was not stated.

The entire uproar over whether the posting of a 32-hex digit code should be censored as copyright infringement or upheld like a banner of liberty, overlooks a fairly significant technical issue: specifically, whether the media key, discovered last February after all, still works. Last month, AACS LA began its first wave of distribution of so-called revocation keys. Through Internet connections and through the distribution of new HD DVD discs, these keys are matches to media keys considered to have been compromised, and this list is believed to contain the now-celebrated 32-hex digit code.

Whether a site posting a software patch that contains revocation keys may, in so doing, be distributing the media keys that were compromised - and thus violating the terms of the DMCA, as maintained by AACS LA's lawyers - remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, members of the Doom9 Forum, including arnezami, have been working since last month to apply a homebrew patch to Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD DVD attachment drive, after having reverse-engineered the firmware from two drives to compare the differences in their code and determine the locations of secret keys. Their stated objective is to make it possible for software to decrypt the contents of a disc using its volume key only - which is more easily located.

If they are successful, then theoretically software could be permitted which enables Linux users to play HD DVD movies without a processing key at all...which would have made this whole two-and-a-half month discovery process another chronicle of wasted time.

In his Freedom to Tinker blog yesterday, engineer Ed Felten - who last year demonstrated the ease in which an unauthorized party could break into a Diebold voting machine - made a poignant comment about this whole affair. "It's hard to see the logic in AACS LA's strategy here," Felten wrote. "The key will inevitably remain available, and AACS LA are just making themselves look silly by trying to suppress it. We've seen this script before. The key will show up on T-shirts and in song lyrics. It will be chalked on the sidewalk outside the AACS LA office. And so on."