News : Apple likely to show off new iPods Sept 1

A customer enters the new Apple store, which is the world's largest, on its opening day at Covent Garden in London August 7, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett

SEATTLE/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Apple Inc is expected to show off a snazzier line of iPods on September 1, as speculation mounts the consumer electronics giant may also unveil plans to reinvigorate its long-neglected TV project.
Analysts expect the makers of the iPhone and the iPad, which has always labeled Apple TV a hobby, to showcase a new iPod Touch with dual cameras in time for the holidays.
Its shares climbed 1.2 percent. The company has in recent years used splashy September events to showcase new iPod models for the year-end spending spree. It typically also describes tweaks and new features for its iTunes online media store.
Last year's event marked the return of Steve Jobs to the public eye after a long hiatus, during which he underwent a liver transplant. This year, blogs are afire with talk about a souped-up Apple TV, though analysts deem unlikely a major announcement on that front next week.
Sources have told Reuters Apple is in the throes of negotiations with the major U.S. TV networks from Walt Disney Co's ABC to General Electric Co's NBC, hoping to offer TV shows for rent via iTunes for 99 cents per episode.
But those sources also said it was not a done deal. Apple and the media companies have declined to comment.
"From our checks with supply chain and industry sources, we believe potential changes could turn Apple TV into a bigger hobby and a multimillion unit seller," Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros wrote.
Apple will hold the event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where it introduced the iPad in April. This year's invitation carried a prominent picture of a guitar's front, with an Apple logo standing in for the sound hole.
The company's iPods dominate the music- and media-player market, but growth there has moderated in past years and it has turned its attention toward the iPhone and iPad. In the June quarter, Apple said it sold 9.41 million iPods in the June quarter, down from 10.2 million a year earlier.
In contrast, analysts estimate the company sells about 1 million Apple TV units annually.
Still, some analysts expect Apple to eventually revamp -- and enhance -- its long-neglected TV device as the electronics maker continues to merge content with gadgets and ensconce itself in the home.
Wu expects to revamped Apple TVs in stores as early as this holiday, or the first half of 2011.
"In the grander scheme of things, it takes them a step closer" in that effort," Wu said. The device is "perhaps a precursor into a bigger effort to address the home entertainment space down the road."

(Reporting by Bill Rigby and Edwin Chan; Editing by Richard Chang)

News : Netflix makes available free iPhone, iPod app

(Reuters) - Web video subscription service Netflix Inc launched on Thursday a free iPhone and iPod application that allows subscribers to watch TV shows and movies on Apple Inc's handheld devices.
Netflix said the app is available on iTunes for subscribers to plans starting at $8.99.
Earlier this month, Netflix struck a $1 billion deal with pay TV channel Epix to become the exclusive web-only distributor of films from Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Lions Gate Entertainment.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

News : Spies behind 2008 cyber attack, U.S. official says

U.S Army soldiers from Task Force Yukon use computers to surf the internet, at FOB Clark in Khowst province, December 5, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A foreign spy agency led a 2008 cyber attack on U.S. military computer systems, a top Pentagon official said, shedding light on what he called the most significant breach of American military cyber security.
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said the attack took place after an infected flash-drive was inserted into a U.S. military laptop at a base in the Middle East, uploading malicious computer code onto the Central Command network.
"That code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control," Lynn wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine published on Wednesday.
"This previously classified incident was the most significant breach of U.S. military computers ever."
Lynn did not say which country's spy agency was behind the attack. But he said that more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations were trying to break into U.S. networks.
"Some governments already have the capacity to disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure," he wrote.
Every year, he said, hackers steal enough data from U.S. government agencies, businesses and universities to fill the U.S. Library of Congress many times over.
When it comes to attacks on the military, the difficulty identifying culprits behind attacks make them very hard to respond to and alluring for hostile governments, he said.
"Cyber attacks offer a means for potential adversaries to overcome overwhelming U.S. advantages in conventional military power and to do so in ways that are instantaneous and exceedingly hard to trace," he wrote.
KILL SWITCHES
Counterfeit hardware had already been detected in systems that had been procured by the Defense Department, Lynn said -- a danger since computer chips can be written with remotely operated "kill switches" and hidden backdoors.
"The risk of compromise in the manufacturing process if very real and is perhaps the least understood cyber threat," Lynn wrote.
Rogue code, including so-called "logic bombs" that cause malfunctions, can also be inserted into software as its being developed, he said.
Lynn said the attack was a wake-up call for the Pentagon, which has since launched a Cyber Command and taken measures to bolster defenses.
Policymakers now need to consider whether Pentagon capabilities should be extended to shield civilian infrastructure from attack, Lynn said. He noted that U.S. defense contractors have already been targeted "and sensitive weapons systems have been compromised."
"The U.S. government has only just begun to broach the larger question of whether it is necessary and appropriate to use national resources, such as defenses that now guard military networks, to protect civilian infrastructure," he said.
(Editing Xavier Briand)

News : Mozilla launches Firefox 4 beta 4, rolls in Sync, Panorama tab manager

Firefox Panorama: How To from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Mozilla Tuesday updated Firefox 4 to its fourth beta release, adding two major new features: Firefox Sync and Panorama.
Firefox Sync lets users access browser history, password keychain, bookmarks, and open tabs across their different desktop computers, iOS, or Maemo-based mobile devices. Sync is available as an add-in for Firefox 3.5 and 3.6, but in Firefox 4, it is a built-in feature.

Firefox Panorama was formerly known as Tab Candy, and it debuted in alpha several months ago to critical acclaim. To solve the problem of too many browser tabs being open at once, and turning into a cluttered mess; the feature lets the user arrange their tabs into groups. The result is similar to HTC and Samsung's Android UI layers that let the user zoom out and see all the homescreens at once.

Mozilla's Aza Raskin Tuesday said, "While there are many directions still left to explore...there is a strong set of design principles that have and will continue to guide development. We've already seen activity from extension authors to extend the capabilities of Panorama, which makes now a perfect time to discuss Panorama's design principles."

News : Halo Reach hacked, leaked weeks before anticipated release date

Halo: Reach, a prequel to Microsoft's billion-dollar Halo first person shooter series was scheduled to launch on September 14 worldwide, but a pre-release version of the game leaked early and has found its way across the Web.
Microsoft put the full version of Halo: Reach on Xbox Live Marketplace for media and reviewers to download with a pricetag of 99,999 Microsoft points to prevent the public from accessing it. A group of users on a game modding site called Game-Tuts.com took credit last week for cracking Halo: Reach.
A user going by the name Joakim posted: "So after alot of .xex cracking etc. Me and my team finally did it, we got Halo: Reach! This is not released for public, and we are not really planning on releasing either."
The file, however, found its way out within 24 hours of that post. The precise source of the leak has not yet been determined.
To play the game, an Xbox 360 hardware modification called JTAG is required. With this, users can install any size hard drive or launch unsigned games through a parallel PC connection.

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News : China's Tencent buys Google-backed social-networking co

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's largest Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd has bought a Google-backed Chinese social networking company for more than $60 million, the China Business News reported on Tuesday.

Tencent, China's No.1 online game operator and its largest instant messaging provider, had bought Comsenz, a Beijing-based social-networking provider, Comsenz said in a statement on its website. Comsenz is backed by Google Inc, Sequoia Capital and Morningside Ventures.
The deal was reportedly worth more than $60 million, the newspaper said, quoting a source familiar with the situation.
Tencent could not be reached for comment.
Tencent, which bought a 10 percent stake in Russian Facebook investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST) for $300 million earlier this year, could be on the look out for more acquisitions as it seeks to expand its dominance beyond China.
China's Internet space is becoming more cut-throat as users become more sophisticated and selective over which products and services they use and companies jostle for attention in an increasingly crowded arena. China is the world's largest Internet market by users with 420 million online.
(Reporting by Melanie Lee; Editing by Chris Lewis)

News: Taiwanese LCD maker files second suit against Sony

Sony Computer Entertainment's new Play Station 3 (PS3) game console is displayed during a news conference in Tokyo August 19, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Yuriko Nakao

By Liana B. Baker

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Taiwan's Chimei Innolux Corp sued Japan's Sony Corp for infringing on patents used in PlayStation 3 video game consoles, televisions, computer notebooks and cameras.
Sony engaged in "widespread infringement" of three patents dating back to 1998 Chimei said in its lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware on Monday.
Chimei said the infringement came after it had invested tens of millions of dollars in developing liquid crystal display (LCD) panels and related products.
The complaint was filed a month after Chimei filed a similar lawsuit against Sony in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas.
Chimei is seeking unspecified compensatory damages, which it wants tripled because of what it considers Sony's "willful" misconduct, and other remedies.
Neither company returned calls seeking comment.
Sony, the world's second-largest camera maker and the third-largest flat screen TV maker, posted an operating profit of 67 billion yen ($785 million) in its fiscal quarter ended in June.
Chimei Innolux was formed in a three-way merger in March and overtook AU Optronics as Taiwan's No. 1 LCD maker. It reported a second-quarter net profit of T$9.54 billion (US$298 million) on August 9
The case is: Chimei Innolux Corp v. Sony Corp et al, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware, No. 10-00706.
The case in the Western District of Arkansas is Chimei Innolux Corp v Sony Corp, et al, No. 5:10-cv-05122.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker; editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

News : Video Intel powers Creators Project

News : Facebook "Places" lets users track friends and services

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg applauds while unveiling the company's new location services feature called ''Places'' during a news conference at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, August 18, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith

By Alexei Oreskovic

PALO ALTO Calif (Reuters) - Facebook's 500 million-plus users will soon be able to track friends' whereabouts across the United States, as the world's largest Internet social network adds technology to increasingly tie its virtual world to everyday life.
The new "Places" feature -- which begins rolling out on Wednesday to some users and goes nationwide within weeks -- is touted as a tool to help users share where they are, figure out who is in the vicinity, and check out happenings and services within the same locale.
The addition of so-called location services to Facebook -- a move that industry observers have speculated about for months -- opens new revenue opportunities for the company, but also presents it with delicate privacy challenges.
"Places" will be accessible via an Apple iPhone app that Facebook designed from Thursday, or from the social network's own mobile version on touchscreen smartphones.
"This is not about broadcasting your location to the world, it's about sharing where you are with your friends," said Michael Sharon, product manager for "Places."
Users will be able to declare their whereabouts whenever they want, thereby opening themselves up potentially to offers, suggestions or advertisements about nearby businesses. Facebook on Wednesday said it had no immediate plans however to pursue such money-making opportunities.
Users can "check in" from their smartphones, broadcasting their location -- anywhere from a restaurant to a park -- to their own Facebook friends. Their whereabouts are then flashed through the network's popular status updates.
Users can look up the locations of friends who are similarly "checked in" -- either via updates or on a separate Web page -- or tag friends who happen to physically be with them, thus declaring where they are.
But with privacy in mind, Facebook will allow users to block "Places" functions as part of a comprehensive set of privacy controls and other safeguards.
The new services could help Facebook grab a bigger piece of a local advertising market driven by small businesses like restaurants and stores. The vast size of that market -- estimated in the tens of billions of dollars a year in the United States alone -- has attracted online companies like Google and Yelp.
The feature could let Facebook eventually target users with ads based on their location, or offer special coupons when a user nears a certain business, supplementing the $700 million to $800 million that Facebook generated in revenue last year, according to people familiar with the matter.
LOCATION, LOCATION
Location services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, which allow consumers to use their cell phones to keep track of their friends whereabouts and earn rewards for frequenting brick-and-mortar businesses, have caught on among technology aficionados.
Foursquare and Gowalla executives popped up onstage alongside Facebook on Wednesday, saying they will team up with the social network and tailor their own services to work alongside its "Places" feature.
Foursquare, one of the fastest-growing location services, has amassed 2.7 million users since its March 2009 launch and raised $20 million in venture capital funding in June. Facebook and Yahoo both unsuccessfully sought to acquire Foursquare earlier this year, according to media reports.
Whether location services appeal to the mainstream audience on Facebook however remains to be seen, particularly given the concerns many people may have about a service that reveals their physical location.
Privacy has been a persistently thorny issue for social networking companies, which must balance users' concerns about how much of their personal information is made public with the need to generate revenue by sharing information about users with advertisers.
In May, Facebook introduced tools to give users more control over what personal information is shared on its service, following criticism from many privacy advocates.
Google Buzz, a microblogging service for broadcasting short messages to friends and contacts, was faulted for lax privacy settings as soon as it launched in January, a stumble from which the service never recovered, say analysts.
"They want to make sure they've done their homework, because privacy does become a concern right out of the gate," said Michael Gartenberg, a partner at consulting and analyst firm Altimeter Group. "They don't' want to introduce this and then have to come back and fix it."

(Editing by Edwin Chan and Valerie Lee)

News : Yahoo begins transition to Bing search, kills SearchMonkey

Yahoo said Tuesday that it would begin to switch over its search backend to the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada, the cornerstone of an agreement reached between the two companies last July. A "Powered by Bing" graphic would appear at the bottom of its search pages after the transition, the company said.
It would still be some time yet before other markets worldwide transition to Bing, for which Yahoo gave no timeline, although it's expected the full transition wouldn't be complete until 2012. Of course, one notable example would be Japan: that division is switching to a Google backend pending regulatory approval and any legal challenges.
While the innards of Yahoo would change, the search company stressed that most of the functionality around the search would stay the same. Web services product SearchMonkey is a notable exception: that service shutters effective October 1.
"As a result, third party custom result apps, infobar apps, and data services will no longer appear on Yahoo!'s search results," product manager Natasha Fattedad wrote in a blog post announcing the move.
Yahoo would continue to offer its Search BOSS, YQL, and Site Explorer tools, although the company said it was still evaluating others, and would charge for access to some of them.
The fact that Yahoo's development tools will remain should not be too surprising: in essence, the Microsoft deal only really covered the search results portion of Yahoo. Most of Yahoo's other services were unaffected.
Paid search accounts would also begin the transition to Microsoft's adCenter platform this week as well. Current Yahoo Search Marketing customers would be prompted to create adCenter accounts through a transition portal, and Yahoo and Microsoft hope to have this portion of the transition completed by the end of the year.