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<title>Haaze.com / Fernada / Voted News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:10:28 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[Nook Color now lets authors sign e-books]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-now-lets-authors-sign-e-books</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-now-lets-authors-sign-e-books</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:10:28 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>peter</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-now-lets-authors-sign-e-books</guid>
<description><![CDATA[You&amp;39'll still to visit the bookstore to get your book signed. (Credit:Barnes &amp; Noble)Lovers of literature know that having a book signed by a favorite author is something truly special. How do you sign an e-book though Hopefully not with ballpoint. Barnes &amp; Noble is set to debut a new feature for the Android-equipped Nook Color e-reader that lets authors digitally sign their e-books using a stylus.  Writer and illustrator Sandra Boynton will be one of the first authors to host an e-book signing, and it's scheduled for Barnes &amp; Noble's Upper East Side store in New York City (7 p.m. on Monday, May 2). The event will promote the digital version of her classic children's book &quot;The Going to Bed Book.&quot; (In keeping with the book's theme, Boynton suggests both adults and children arrive in their pajamas' I'll be the one in the &quot;Brilliant!&quot; Guinness flannels.)Other e-readers, such as the Sony Reader, already make it possible to write on pages. There is also a company named Autography that carries a patent for &quot;inserting an autograph or other salutation into an e-book.&quot;  Despite the existing technology, though, the phrase &quot;e-book signing&quot; hasn't hit the mainstream. It's an interesting play from Barnes &amp; Noble, a company that's redefining itself as paperback sales continue to dwindle due to increased competition from Amazon's Kindle.A representative for Boynton also confirmed that B&amp;N is looking to expand the option to other e-books in the future. Hopefully marathon book-signing sessions with a stylus will be less carpal-tunnel inducing than those conducted with a pen.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Amazon restoring AWS, but slowly for some]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=amazon-restoring-aws-but-slowly-for-some</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=amazon-restoring-aws-but-slowly-for-some</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>winmintern3u</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=amazon-restoring-aws-but-slowly-for-some</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Amazon Web Services&amp;39' status dashboard showed troubles with the Elastic Compute Cloud service.(Credit:screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)A serious Amazon Web Services outage has extended well into its second day, but Amazon said Friday the end is in sight for most affected customers of the cloud-computing infrastructure.&quot;We continue to see progress in recovering volumes, and have heard many additional customers confirm that they're recovering. Our current estimate is that the majority of volumes will be recovered over the next 5 to 6 hours,&quot; Amazon said on its AWS status dashboard at 8:49 a.m. today. Volumes are areas of Amazon's Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service that store data. But for some customers, the news isn't so good. In some cases, Amazon has to restore data from backups made yesterday, a time-consuming process. &quot;We anticipate that those will take longer to recover,&quot; Amazon said, without making any predictions about just how long.AWS is a flagship example of one facet of cloud computing, a flexible collection of online computing services that can ramp up and down according to varying needs, with customers getting a flexible infrastructure and paying only for what they consume. At the same time, though, when a widely used service goes down, many suffer. In AWS' case, the problems with some services in the East Coast region laid low many Internet operations, including the Web sites of Quora, Sencha, Reddit, and FourSquare, and services that relied on Heroku.Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, Relational Database Service, and Elastic Beanstalk service have been affected by the outage. The problem was first logged at 1:41 a.m. PT yesterday, the result of a &quot;networking event&quot; that triggered a cascade of other problems.Struggling to restore the service has clearly been a taxing effort for Amazon. &quot;The team continues to be all-hands on deck trying to add capacity to the affected Availability Zone to re-mirror stuck volumes. It's taking us longer than we anticipated to add capacity to this fleet,&quot; Amazon said late last night.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[What Japan's nuclear crisis means for public health (Q&A)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-japans-nuclear-crisis-means-for-public-health-qa</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-japans-nuclear-crisis-means-for-public-health-qa</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:11:33 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>IzzyStarr</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=what-japans-nuclear-crisis-means-for-public-health-qa</guid>
<description><![CDATA[By far, the biggest danger from the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant is to the workers who are trying to control a still-volatile situation. But with the crisis likely to play out for months, people are beginning to wonder what the release of radioactive material actually means. Very low levels of radioactive material have been found in the water supply in Tokyo, for example, and those same particles are being carried by the wind elsewhere in the world. Workers at the plant are being exposed to radiation coming directly from the core and spent-fuel cooling pools. For people living far from the source of the radiation, exposure can come from the radioactive material that entered the air or water during efforts to stabilize the cooling systems. Radioactive versions of elements such as cesium, iodine, and strontium can enter the body either through the lungs or by eating and drinking affected food. A standard precaution is to prevent people, particularly growing children, from drinking milk in the area of a nuclear accident, since cows can eat grass with radioactive iodine and pass it on to people.(Credit:Tokyo Electric Power via Martyn Williams)The Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring and publishing data on the radioactivity in water and milk from Japan in the U.S. and the levels are &quot;far below levels of public-health concern.&quot; But some argue that being exposed to even a small dose of the radioactive materials already released--iodine-131 and cesium-137 are the most prevalent--can be significant. If ingested, radioactive iodine can be absorbed by the thyroid gland, with children at the most risk. Cesium-137, which can also lead to cancer by affecting many types of cells, is more worrisome because it has a half-life of 30 years, versus 8 days for iodine-131. Radioactive strontium, which also has a long half-life, is linked to bone cancer and leukemia.If there is a large-scale release of radioactive isotopes from the Fukushima Daiichi reactor or spent-fuel pools, then the risks will rise substantially. But in the current situation, how should people evaluate the health risk How do academics and scientists view this problem Are sufficient safeguards being put in place To get a better understanding of these questions, CNET spoke to two experts in the field to get their views the same week that the Fukushima Daiichi was raised to the highest level possible for a nuclear power accident.Below is an edited transcript of a discussion with David Brenner from Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research. My CNET colleague Elinor Mills conducted an interview with Ira Helfand, the former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, a group firmly opposed to nuclear power, which it says poses unacceptable risks. That Q&amp;A can be found here.In a nutshell, the view of Brenner, who recently testified to Congress on radiation from backscatter X-rays at airports, is that the individual risks are extremely low for people outside the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. At the same time, a large number of people will be exposed, which means that over the long term, that minute risk becomes more significant. Q: What is the difference between what workers are exposed to and the rest of the populationBrenner: It's simply a matter of the radiation dose. It's relatively low for people away from the plant. While we don't know what the doses are, the workers are clearly getting relatively high doses.There have been traces of radioactive material detected in food and milk here in the U.S. Should people be concerned Brenner: In the U.S., the levels of radioactivity in the water and milk both on the West Coast and the East Coast have been exceedingly low. I don't think there are any significant health issues with the level of radioactivity in this country. It was inevitable that once radioactivity was released in Japan, that some of it would be blown here. What was fortunate is that most of the radioactivity released into the air was blown into the sea but it was inevitable that it would end up in this country...Very little indeed has gotten here because it got heavily distributed. The fact that you can measure it here doesn't mean that it's a high health risk, at least in the short term. That's the situation in the U.S.In Japan, the doses are still pretty low outside the exclusion zone. Again, the further away people are from reactors, the lower the dose, such as the folks in, say, Tokyo. In Kyoto, it's even lower.What about the longer-term effectsBrenner: The health consequences are actually very small for any individual. That being said, there are longer-term issues. The two main isotopes that were released are iodine-131 and cesium-137. The half-life for half the radioactive material in iodine to decay is eight days, so by a month or two later, it's essentially all gone. There's no long-term effect. Whatever cesium was released will get into the food chain, into the ecosystem, and it will gradually get dispersed. So there will be some in the food and water for generations to come. It will be at some level but it will be at a very low level. What we really have will be a prolonged exposure to very low levels of radioactive from the Fukushima event. That's really what we're stuck with. But the risk for any individual will be tiny. Although individual risk is low, an awful lot of people exposed to it. Think of the lottery. An awful lot of people will [be involved] because somebody's going to win...[In this case] one would expect some extra cancers in the long run but everybody's individual risk is low.Some people say that even a tiny bit of exposure should be avoided because it could cause a specific type of cancer, such as thyroid cancer in children. Brenner: You can think about risk in two different ways. There's the risk of an individual and certainly the risk is very small. You can also think about the lottery analogy. How many tiny individual risks affect a population It's two complementary ways of looking at it.From an individual's point of view, one doesn't have to worry. When you're starting to think about what is significant from the point of view of the population and how do we proceed with nuclear power, we need to think about the population.Should we be restricting food importsBrenner: Most of radioactivity being seen in food, water, and fish is almost certainly from iodine. I would expect in a month or two months, those restrictions will probably go away. But what will be left will be much lower levels of cesium in food [in part because less cesium than iodine was released]. It's more than appropriate that Japan and the U.S. and any other country should be monitoring the food. It's not hard to do. I don't expect this will be long-term except in a broader sense.How do people in your profession decide what's an acceptable risk Brenner: We try to think about risk and benefits. Having a CT scan, there's a small radiation risk, but there's a benefit to hopefully getting an accurate diagnosis. It's another story whether we get that balance right since there are alternatives to CT scanners.You could argue, one should be doing the same estimations for nuclear power. The risk, unfortunately, is the scenario like what we have in Fukushima. What are the benefits of power without oil or use of fossil fuels It's up to society to make the risk-benefit analysis as best they can. You need to understand risks as well as you can and different folks will come up with different conclusions. One thing that's pretty clear is that we have in this country and Japan a pretty aging fleet of nuclear reactors. The Fukushima plant was built in the 1970s and there are plenty of similar reactors also built at the same time in the U.S.It seems to me we're at that point where we have to make decisions about replacing older reactors with more modern reactors that have more defense mechanisms built into them. We can never say anything is 100 percent safe, but they can be a lot more safe. Are you pro nuclear powerBrenner: My job is to try to understand the risks. It's for society in general to determine how to balance risks. I'm all in favor of safe nuclear if it can be achieved. Some risks do always exist. The question is do they counter-balance the benefits. The two extremes around nuclear power are either that it's extremely unsafe and it should be abolished, but that is not true. The other extreme is that it's entirely safe. That's not true either. The reality is in the middle. It seems that there isn't agreement on the ultimate health impact from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Does that disaster provide much guidanceBrenner: Most of the epidemiological studies that should have been done haven't been done for political and economic reasons. The Soviet Union broke up shortly after so was difficult to have Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia work together on it.The studies that have been done are the low-hanging fruit--studies about thyroid cancer and leukemia which you would expect to see first. There's no question there was a tremendous increase in thyroid cancers and it's pretty clear for [an increase in] leukemia too. Studies on the more common cancers like lung cancer and breast cancer have not been done. And that's a shame, to put it mildly. Lacking those, people are having to estimate what consequences were because we don't know enough about the effects of very low levels or radiation.It's still not appropriate to compare Fukushima to Chernobyl, where the containment blew up entirely and large amounts of the core were emitted high into the atmosphere. There was no ocean. I heard a statement that Fukushima was one tenth as hazardous as Chernobyl but I think it is far less.You testified in Congress about backscatter X-rays at airports. For most people, this is the day-to-day question: how much low-level radiation is OK. Do we knowBrenner: The argument's a little bit the same [as Fukushima]. The individual risk is miniscule. I didn't hesitate to go through [security] on my flight home. The concern is the population risk because an awful lot of people fly, about 700 million a year in the U.S. If the TSA wants to scan every passenger, you got a scenario where you have a tiny risk and you take that tiny risk [and multiply it], you do get significant population risk. You could argue that there's risk but it's OK as there is a benefit. But there are alternative technologies, such as millimeter scanners that don't have this X-ray risk.An individual who lives in Tokyo doesn't have that choice and there are no individual benefits. Fortunately, for an individual the risks are extremely low.You readers may or may not know this but 40 percent of them are going to get cancer, so the sorts of increases we're talking about are miniscule. It's a tiny addition to a very large problem. You've been working on a system where people can do individual testing with a blood test (called the RABIT, for rapid automated biodosimetry tool for radiological triage). Is the goal to get away from statistical estimates for whole populationsBrenner: Yes. The motivation is [a response to] a large-scale radiological terrorist event [from a dirty bomb]. In many senses, that scenario is quite like the scenario in Japan with a very small number of people exposed to high doses. And a very large number of people exposed to very small doses and not believing what they are being told. There is a great deal of skepticism in Japan and I'm sure that would be true in this country too. The goal is to have some very high-throughput way of estimating one's dose. So you can try to find the folks who did get high doses who need to be treated. The other part is to reassure people. We're developing a finger stick approach where you take a drop of blood, something that can be done by nonexperts. You'd have many centers, such as hospitals and railway stations, where you can go have your finger sticked, give a drop of blood, and it would get transported to more centralized machines. An individual estimate will mean that you won't clog up the emergency services. What sorts of precautions should someone in the U.S. and Japan take right now Brenner: You don't need to be doing anything. The EPA is testing the water and milk and the levels are all pretty low and will get a lot lower as iodine decays. There's no reason to avoid any food or drink. The same goes for Japan. Yes, there will be some contaminated food [and they are being monitored with spot checks] for the moment. That's what the government is and should be doing [to watch that] it is going to be at reasonable levels.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[ComScore: Microsoft, Google hold their own in search]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=comscore-microsoft-google-hold-their-own-in-search</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=comscore-microsoft-google-hold-their-own-in-search</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>paultupppu</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=comscore-microsoft-google-hold-their-own-in-search</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft and Google each grabbed a tiny sliver more of the U.S. search market last month, according to ComScore.Both companies gained three-tenths of a point of market share in March, compared with February.Overall, Google sites accounted for 65.7 percent of the 16.9 billion searches in the U.S. last month, ComScore said yesterday. Microsoft sites snagged 13.9 percent, while Yahoo sites held 15.7 percent. As always, ComScore's figures specifically track &quot;explicit core&quot; searches, which are search terms that people manually enter on a Web page.Beyond the core search numbers, Google's and Microsoft's &quot;powered-by&quot; figures show a bigger piece of the puzzle.Combining the searches done on Google sites with the Google-powered searches on AOL and the Ask Network, Google held 68.2 percent of the market in March, compared with 68 percent in February. For Microsoft, combining Bing searches on its own sites with its Bing-powered searches on Yahoo, Microsoft accounted for 26.4 percent of market share last month, versus 26.2 percent in February. (According to ComScore, Google doesn't account for all searches on AOL or Ask, and Microsoft doesn't run every search on Yahoo. Some searches are internal, such as those within e-mail.)Using that calculation, Google and Microsoft together accounted for 94.6 percent of all searches done in the U.S. last month.ComScore's powered-by numbers are slightly off from those released by Experian Hitwise this week, which pegged Microsoft's share at 30 percent and Google's at 64.4 percent.(Credit:ComScore)<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Gaze at the stars and play the arcade classics: iPhone apps of the week]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=gaze-at-the-stars-and-play-the-arcade-classics-iphone-apps-of-the-week</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=gaze-at-the-stars-and-play-the-arcade-classics-iphone-apps-of-the-week</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:10:25 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>mariedelexz</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=gaze-at-the-stars-and-play-the-arcade-classics-iphone-apps-of-the-week</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:CNET)In a CNET News story yesterday, our very own Josh Lowensohn explored Apple's recent patent application for an interesting touch-screen concept. The patent details separate smaller displays outside of the regulariPhone touch screen. According to the patent filing, these separate displays could be used in tandem with the main iPhone touch screen or used by developers to show added information in apps and games. Josh is careful to point out that patent applications don't necessarily mean a company will use an idea in a future product, but they are nonetheless interesting to consider.Obviously, adding separate screens would open up all kinds of options for apps, but I wonder if these areas would be used by Apple for showing things like battery life, current time, camera information, or other more generic smartphone-related uses. But if these added touch-screen areas could be used by app developers, it would open up a huge number of possibilities for more interesting on-screen controls and other information widgets related to what's happening on-screen.Even without knowing whether this will come to light, what sort of uses can you envision for extra displays around the main iPhone screen Let me know your ideas in the comments.This week's apps include an app for star gazing that uses augmented-reality technology and an app that lets you play classic arcade and console games from the golden age of gaming.Simply point your iPhone at the sky and you&amp;39'll quickly find planets and stars you recognize.(Credit:Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)SkyView (99 cents) lets you use your iPhone camera view to create an augmented-reality view of the sky complete with constellations, planets, and satellites. Simply launch the app and point your iPhone camera skyward to see constellations and other celestial bodies where they are in real time. You also can touch planets, stars, and constellations to get more info and history at the bottom of the screen.While you can spend plenty of time simply pointing in different directions and viewing celestial bodies, SkyView offers a few more handy features for finding what you want. You can use the search tool to quickly bring up an alphabetized list of celestial bodies, with buttons across the bottom of the interface to narrow your search to planets in our solar system--stars, constellations, or satellites. The search results let you know which celestial bodies are above or below the horizon in your location, making it easy to find things you can actually see.Another extra lets you enter the date and time to see what's in the night sky. This acts as a sort of time machine, letting you view the position of stars and planets on a specific day and determine whether you'll be able to see a planet as it passes closer to Earth, for example. But even just using the current date and time, SkyView lets you &quot;scrub&quot; forward on the moon's path, for instance, to see where it will be positioned later that day.Overall, by using augmented reality, the iPhone accelerometer, and gyroscope technology, SkyView is an excellent way to identify celestial bodies, satellites, and constellations right from your iPhone. If you've ever wanted to know what you're looking at in the night sky, this app is the perfect stargazer's companion.It&amp;39's great to see the sights and hear the sounds of Tempest, but the controls are not perfect.(Credit:Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)Atari's Greatest Hits (free with in-app purchases) lets you relive the early history of video gaming, giving you tons of old-school arcade and Atari 2600 hits on your iPhone. But it's not without flaws. Games like the original Asteroids, Tempest, Gravitar, Crystal Castle, and many more are available via in-app purchases packaged with their associated Atari 2600 games and some extras. In other words, the Atari Greatest Hits app itself is free, but if you want to play Tempest, for example, you'll need to buy the Tempest pack (99 cents), which comes with Tempest, Tempest for Atari 2600, Outlaw (2600), and Video Cube (2600). You also have the option to buy all the packs in one shot for $14.99 giving you more than 100 old-school games.Upon first launch of an old favorite, you're bound to be excited to see the same graphics and hear the same sounds you may remember from the classic days of gaming, but once you start playing, that initial excitement will probably wear off quickly.The problem with playing these old games on the iPhone is the small screen size and limited control schemes for each game. As an example, Tempest, which was originally played with a spinnable knob and a fire button in the stand-up version, is controlled using a vertical slider on the left side of the screen and a fire button on the right. Even after a few plays, I was never able to get the slider to move the way I wanted it to, forcing me to try over and over to move around the board on levels I used to be able to beat easily in the original. Unfortunately, most of these classic games share similar issues.Overall, Atari's Greatest Hits offers somewhat stunted iPhone versions of the old classics, along with several Atari 2600 titles. Sadly, after playing these old greats the new way, you might find your rose-colored nostalgia tainted. Certainly, some of the more popular titles like Adventure, Combat, and other Atari 2600 hits will be fun to play a couple times, but for the most part, the control schemes and dated games seem to be more for nostalgia than for actual lasting entertainment.Around the Web, I've noticed that Atari's Greatest Hits is being reviewed fairly favorably, but for me--a gamer who used to load my quarters and tokens up at the arcade machines of old--this collection is ultimately a disappointment to play, if a cool novelty. I should point out that my CNET colleague, Christopher MacManus agrees in his first take, but suggests that theiPad versions are much more palatable.What's your favorite iPhone app How do you like using augmented reality to see the night sky Am I being too hard on Atari's Greatest Hits Let me know in the comments!<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Windows 8 screenshots reveal ribbon interface]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-8-screenshots-reveal-ribbon-interface</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-8-screenshots-reveal-ribbon-interface</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:10:36 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wanbimsiryy85</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-8-screenshots-reveal-ribbon-interface</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Images from a pre-beta version of Windows 8 reveal that Microsoft is apparently expanding its use of the ribbon interface to replace traditional pull-down menus and toolbars.Following Microsoft's release of the latest pre-beta build of Windows 8 to select partners recently, screenshots of certain features in the upcoming OS were allegedly posted online. In particular, images displayed on enthusiast site Within Windows by &quot;Windows 8 Secrets&quot; co-authors Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott show the ribbon interface reaching Windows Explorer.Introduced with Office 2007, the ribbon interface has been loved by some and reviled by others. But Microsoft has expanded its use of the ribbon, adding it to such programs as Paint and WordPad inWindows 7. Noting that the ribbon interface in the pre-beta Windows 8 is only half-finished and rather &quot;unattractive,&quot; Rivera and Thurrott suggest that its potential appearance in Explorer may be controversial within Microsoft itself.Beyond showing off the ribbon, the two authors also revealed a new welcome screen in Windows 8, which they say is based on the lock screen inWindows Phone 7. Displaying the date and time and offering a changeable background image, the new screen reportedly will also feature audio controls so people can play and adjust their music even when the screen is locked.Microsoft has supposedly been looking to splash a bit of the Windows Phone 7 Metro UI look and feel onto the next generation of Windows. Beyond just the welcome screen, other alleged images of a recent Windows 8 build show a set-up routine and overall interface that takes a page from the design of the Metro UI, according to enthusiast site WinRumors.Windows 8 could also offer built-in integration with some of Microsoft's Windows Live features. Looking at the screenshots of the new Windows Explorer, enthusiast site Liveside.net spotted one option for Sync, which it believes could refer to Microsoft's cloud-based Windows Live Mesh. Another option called &quot;Web sharing&quot; could point to online storage service Windows Live SkyDrive.Of course, Windows 8 is still at a very early stage in development, so its look, feel, and features are likely to be debated and tweaked within Microsoft before the new OS finally reaches consumers. Microsoft has been generally mum about Windows 8 and hasn't give any clues as to a launch date. However, a blog post on the company's Dutch Web site may have spilled a few beans last October when it stated that Windows 8 was about two years away, putting its release toward the end of 2012.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Report: Amazon exploring mobile payments via NFC]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-amazon-exploring-mobile-payments-via-nfc</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-amazon-exploring-mobile-payments-via-nfc</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>frank10sm</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-amazon-exploring-mobile-payments-via-nfc</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Yet another company looks to be testing the waters of near-field communication for mobile payments. This time it's Amazon.com, who in a report by Bloomberg today, is said to be exploring the possibility of enabling such a service for smartphones. The report cites sources who asked not to be named. The report goes on to say that Amazon will decide whether or not to pursue the project in the next three to five months.Amazon already has a business division that enables mobile payments. But incorporating near-field communications, or NFC, chips would allow users to wave their phone over a terminal or price tag to either pay for an item or find a different size or color of the item on Amazon's own store.If the online retailer does opt to go that route, they'll likely be joining some of the biggest names in tech. Google has already been selling a phone, the Nexus S, with NFC chips installed, and is reportedly testing a service in New York and San Francisco. Microsoft is also said to be planning to include NFC technology in a future phone withWindows Phone 7, and Apple has been rumored for almost a year to have something similar in the works.Samsung and Visa have also said they'll be facilitating mobile payments via NFC on smartphones during the summer Olympics in London next year.Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Another Google service facing uncertainty in China]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=another-google-service-facing-uncertainty-in-china</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=another-google-service-facing-uncertainty-in-china</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:10:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>leonflllel</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=another-google-service-facing-uncertainty-in-china</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google is facing potential trouble with the Chinese government over yet another one of its services.The future of Google Maps, the company's online mapping service, may be in jeopardy as the company reportedly has yet to file the required application with the Chinese government to keep the service running, and the deadline is tomorrow.China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping confirmed that it has not received an application from Google for a license for Google Maps, according to Bloomberg and other sources. If tomorrow's deadline passes, and a license application still has not been received, the bureau said that the service would face &quot;administrative actions&quot; by July 1.Google has not responded to a request for comment. Bloomberg, however, had the following statement from the company: &quot;We are examining the regulations to understand their impact on our maps products in China.&quot;China's potential actions against Google Maps are part of the country's overall effort to crack down on &quot;illegal&quot; online mapping services in light of their ability to reveal &quot;sensitive and confidential&quot; information, according to China's state-run news agency Xinhua. Such a crackdown would extend to unapproved online mapping sites, potentially leading to their shutdown.China announced last spring that it would start requiring licenses for online mapping services, already putting the future of Google Maps in question. As of the middle of February, China has given licenses to 105 Web sites that provide online mapping in the country, including Baidu, Sina, Nokia, and China Mobile, Xinhua said.Always tenuous, Google's relationship with China took another bad turn last week when the search giant accused Beijing of interfering with the operations of Gmail. The company also just suffered a blow to its overall market in China as Sina, the country's biggest Internet portal, said yesterday that it has replaced Google's search engine on its various Web sites with its own, according to AFP.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Sony: PS3 hacker GeoHot fled to South America]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-ps3-hacker-geohot-fled-to-south-america</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-ps3-hacker-geohot-fled-to-south-america</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Poereelsoprip</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-ps3-hacker-geohot-fled-to-south-america</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Update, 7:01 p.m. PT:with Hotz saying he is on a long-planned vacation.If you've been following the drama between Sony and hacker GeoHot (aka George Hotz) then you're in for a fun twist today: Sony is accusing Hotz of fleeing the country, but Hotz says he's just enjoying spring break.Sony makes the allegation in a court filing (PDF, see page 2, line 24) dated Friday.After news stories began appearing today, Hotz wrote a blog post to set the record straight.&quot;Actually, it's true I'm in South America, on a vacation I've had planned and paid for since November. I mean, it is spring break' hacking isn't my life,&quot; he writes. &quot;Rest assured that not a dime of legal defense money would ever go toward something like this. And of course [Sony-employed law firm Kilpatrick Townsend &amp; Stockton] loves the idea of painting me as an international fugitive. I have been in contact with my lawyers almost every day' I would not let the case suffer.&quot;George Hotz telling Sony how he feels.(Credit:YouTube)Hotz is well known for reverse-engineering the multi-digit code that allows the installation and execution of non-Sony-recognized code onPlayStation 3s, essentially allowing anyone with a PS3 to run homebrew software, or even pirated games.A federal magistrate a couple weeks ago OK'd Sony's request for Hotz to hand over his hacking gear--his PS3 consoles, computers, and other equipment--untouched. It seems that before turning the stuff in, he allegedly made edits, deleting key evidence that Sony likely planned to use against him.What's more, Hotz was allegedly caught lying about having a PlayStation Network (PSN) account. But Sony says it was able to prove that in February of last year, Hotz allegedly purchased a new PS3 and, tracing the serial number, Sony says it concluded that he had set up a PSN account under the screen name &quot;blickmanic,&quot; which is also a name Hotz used on previous Web forums oniPhone jailbreaking.Besides jailbreaking PS3s for non-sanctioned use on PSN, Hotz was a very vocal and active member of the iPhone/iOS jailbreaking community, bringing several key userland jailbreaks to the devices, including blackra1n and limera1n. While Apple consistently moved to patch the exploits Hotz used in its software, it never went overtly litigious as Sony has.It's unclear what will happen in this case next. It's not publicly known where in South America Hotz is staying, what gear he has with him, and what assets he has access to. Recently, a court granted Sony access to Hotz's donation-based PayPal account, so that cash source may well be totally unavailable.Whatever the case, we expect this to be far from over. There are egos, weird and obscure copyright laws, and potentially millions of dollars still at stake. If you're like me, you might want to make some metaphorical popcorn as well.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Intel executive quits as smartphone biz falters]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=intel-executive-quits-as-smartphone-biz-falters</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=intel-executive-quits-as-smartphone-biz-falters</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>arliqoixgas</dc:creator>
<category>Business &amp; Finance</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=intel-executive-quits-as-smartphone-biz-falters</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Intel executive who led Intel's so-far-unsuccessful push into smartphones andtablets quit as that business comes under unrelenting competitive pressure from companies like Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. Anand Chandrasekher, who had headed up Intel&amp;39's push into smartphones and tablets.(Credit:Intel)Anand Chandrasekher, who had been senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, announced today that he will be leaving Intel to &quot;pursue other interests.&quot; Effective immediately, Mike Bell and Dave Whalen, both vice presidents of Intel Architecture Group (IAG), will co-manage the group, which is responsible for building Atom chips that go into smartphones and tablets. This follows the departure last year of Eric Kim, who headed another team--Intel's Digital Home Group--that targeted the Atom processor for consumer products such as TVs. &quot;Intel remains committed to this business,&quot; said David Perlmutter, executive vice president and IAG general manager, in a statement, referring to smartphones. &quot;We continue to make the investments needed to ensure that the best user experience on smartphones and handhelds runs on Intel architecture, and to ship a phone this year,&quot; he said. Chandrasekher had become somewhat infamous for making regular appearances at Intel conferences over the last few years and invariably waving a prototype smartphone or handheld device for the cameras, then promising that an Intel-based smartphone was on the way. But none ever materialized. &quot;The industry has gone right past them,&quot; said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman &amp; Renshaw. &quot;They're just another player [in the smartphone and tablet markets]. There's no first among equals,&quot; Kumar said, referring to the ARM processor business, which is dominated by an oligarchy of other big chip companies, including Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Apple, Marvell, and Nvidia. Another analyst says that Intel's first chip designed specifically for tablets and smartphones, &quot;Moorestown,&quot; was a failure. &quot;Moorestown was a complete flop,&quot; said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group, a chip consulting firm. &quot;Intel is still struggling to get traction in tablets and particularly smartphones. Atom is in a few tablets that run Windows, but Windows tablets are not very popular, except in a few vertical applications,&quot; he said. And what about Intel's next-generation Atom for smartphones &quot;It remains to be seen whether Medfield (the next Atom for smartphones) will do any better, since Intel has not disclosed any details on that product yet. In addition to finding customers, the new [Ultra Mobility Group] management has a big task in figuring out how to integrate Atom with the ex-Infineon baseband products,&quot; Gwennap said, referring to Infineon's wireless business, which Intel purchased this year. &quot;Legacy (Windows) compatibility doesn't matter in the post-PC era. All the blockbuster products that Apple has had are post-PC. Therein lies the conundrum for Microsoft and Intel,&quot; added Kumar. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Criminal probe into iPhone prototype nears end]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=criminal-probe-into-iphone-prototype-nears-end</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=criminal-probe-into-iphone-prototype-nears-end</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Mar 2011 07:10:16 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sevenForuxxtyvi</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=criminal-probe-into-iphone-prototype-nears-end</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A probe into a prototypeiPhone 4 purchased by a gadget blog is nearing its end, with investigators expected to report their findings soon.Stephen Wagstaffe, district attorney for the county of San Mateo, Calif., told CNET today that &quot;the investigation is ongoing&quot; and he expects it could conclude as early as next month. Investigators are close to finishing their interviews and will present him with their findings, he said.The investigation began early last year when Robert Gray Powell, a 28-year-old Apple computer engineer, left an unmarked prototype iPhone in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif. Brian Hogan, a 22-year-old student, found the prototype and sold it to Gawker Media's Gizmodo for $5,000. Gawker editors and Hogan could be charged with crimes.Wagstaffe, who was elected district attorney last June, said the investigation has taken this long because his colleagues have been busy on other cases. San Mateo County encompasses part of what's known as Silicon Valley, with San Francisco to the north and Apple's headquarters of Cupertino to the south in Santa Clara County.District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe, shown in his office in Redwood City, Calif., last year(Credit:Declan McCullagh/CNET)Court documents unsealed last May at the request of CNET and other media organizations show that Apple pressed local police to investigate the loss of a next-generation iPhone a day after Gizmodo published photographs, telling investigators that the prototype was so valuable, a price could not be placed on it. Apple CEO Steve Jobs formally introduced what became known as the iPhone 4 last June, and it appeared in stores later that month.Prosecutors have confirmed that they are conducting a felony theft investigation, but no charges have been filed. They previously have said that media organizations that commit crimes should not expect to be immune from criminal laws. A possible target of the investigation is Hogan, who could be accused of violating a state law dealing with misappropriating lost property. Another, which law enforcement officials have indicated is an option, is Gizmodo and its parent company Gawker Media. Police obtained a warrant to search the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen last spring.Neither Gawker Media founder Nick Denton nor an attorney for Hogan immediately responded to a request for comment today.Gizmodo editor Jason Chen in an April 2010 post titled &amp;34'This is Apple&amp;39's next iPhone.&amp;34'(Credit:Gizmodo/Screenshot by CNET)Complicating the situation are allegations raised by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other advocacy groups that police violated the federal Privacy Protection Act, which broadly immunizes news organizations from searches--unless the journalists themselves committed the crime. In addition, California law may provide protections to writers for newspapers, magazines, and &quot;other periodical publications,&quot; a term that a state court has applied to an Apple blog before.But courts also have ruled that journalists suspected of criminal behavior do not benefit from the legal shields that newspapers and broadcast media have painstakingly erected over the last half-century. &quot;It would be frivolous to assert--and no one does in these cases--that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his news sources to violate valid criminal laws,&quot; the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be--but &quot;appropriates such property to his own use&quot;--is guilty of theft. There are no exceptions for journalists. In addition, a second state law says any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year. Knowing that an item probably belonged to someone else has previously led to convictions. &quot;It is not necessary that the defendant be told directly that the property was stolen. Knowledge may be circumstantial and deductive,&quot; a California appeals court has previously ruled. &quot;Possession of stolen property, accompanied by an unsatisfactory explanation of the possession or by suspicious circumstances, will justify an inference that the property was received with knowledge it had been stolen.&quot; State law says that lost property valued at $100 or more must be turned over to police. Powell's LinkedIn profile says that he's still employed at Apple. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak publicly came to Powell's defense last year, saying &quot;it's a bad accident that could happen to any of us.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Android and the future of feature phones]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-and-the-future-of-feature-phones</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-and-the-future-of-feature-phones</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:11:39 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>sirrasmanpotz</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=android-and-the-future-of-feature-phones</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The LG Optimus T was one of the first entry-level Android smartphones to have us thinking feature phones might be dead.(Credit:Josh P. Miller/CNET)When the LG Optimus T and Optimus S phones were announced last year, I genuinely felt for the first time that feature phones were a dying breed. Both of these Optimus handsets were branded as entry-level smartphones, but had very impressive features--they shipped with Android 2.2 Froyo (the latest OS update at the time), had portable Wi-Fi hot spots, and of course the usual Android features like robust e-mail and Google app support.  Sure they weren't as advanced as their higher-end cousins--no Flash support, no HD video, and so on--but for $30 or less, these phones were an absolute steal. Considering that some feature phones are selling for more than twice that price for far fewer features, it seemed that smartphones were finally affordable enough that everyone could get one. Furthermore, the Android interface is not that difficult to navigate, making the usability factor almost a non-issue.But there are two important barriers to entry when it comes to smartphone adoption: data plans and contracts. Almost every carrier requires some kind of data plan to go along with its smartphones, while feature phones tend to escape such confines. Also, smartphone contracts tend to be more expensive to get out of, with early termination fees in the $200-$300 range depending on how early on you want to exit the contract. Because of these restrictions, feature phones still continue to be popular with the mainstream despite the smartphone craze that tends to dominate the tech news circuit. Which is why the Motorola i886 is such an interesting handset. The i886 is billed as a feature phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but when we first took a look at the i886's interface, we were amazed at how Android-like it was. Everything from the customizable home screens to the main menu has the typical Android interface. The Motorola i886 has home screens and menus with a definite Android look and feel. (Credit:Josh P. Miller/CNET) However, Motorola was firm in saying it wasn't Android, and that it was a proprietary Linux-based OS. More importantly, the i886 doesn't meet basic Android standards: it doesn't have a touch-screen, and it doesn't have access to the Android Market, so it can't technically be called an Android phone.And yet, it IS an Android phone. We dug around in the phone's settings and discovered that according to the phone's open-source licenses, it runs using Android code.  Yes, it has been modified to fit within the i886's hardware restrictions, but it's certainly Android at the heart of it. When you think about it, this is a very smart move by Motorola. Android is open source, after all, and manufacturers don't have to spend a lot of resources coming up with their own code.  Additionally, using Android allows the i886 to have excellent e-mail and Exchange features that other feature phones lack. Plus, we much prefer the sleeker Android interface over the usually clunky Motorola/Nextel menus.A screenshot of the Motorola i886&amp;39's open-source licenses that shows it uses Android code. (Credit:Josh P. Miller/CNET)There's been talk of Android trickling down to feature phones before. We heard late last year that LG would be switching its LG enV series of feature phones over to Android with the rumored LG enV Touch 2, for example. But the supposed enV Touch 2 seems to be more of an entry-level smartphone than a true feature phone. The Motorola i886, with its lack of an app store, touch screen, robust Web browser, and required data plan puts it squarely in feature phone territory.The question is, why would you get it if it lacks so many features The answer depends on what you want from a phone. If all you want is the ability to make calls, send and receive occasional texts and e-mails, and enjoy modest multimedia support, feature phones are usually enough. And like we said above, feature phones don't require expensive data plans like most smartphones.  With the Motorola i886, you get the benefits of a feature phone while getting a taste of Android. We won't be surprised if more and more feature phones adopt Android or some version of it in the future. Indeed, this is perhaps what all future feature phones will look and feel like. And who knows, if you like the interface enough, you might be willing to upgrade to an actual Android smartphone one day. That is perhaps what Motorola, and Google, is counting on.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Japan quake death toll expected to top 10,000]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=japan-quake-death-toll-expected-to-top-10000</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=japan-quake-death-toll-expected-to-top-10000</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 13 Mar 2011 08:10:19 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jolalaaoaa</dc:creator>
<category>Business &amp; Finance</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=japan-quake-death-toll-expected-to-top-10000</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Smoke rises from a stricken reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan.(Credit:Associated Press video, screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)The estimated death toll from Japan's crippling earthquake and tsunami was revised to more than 10,000 today as officials worked to prevent a nuclear disaster.&quot;The earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear incident have been the biggest crisis Japan has encountered in the 65 years since the end of World War II,&quot; Prime Minister Naoto Kan told a news conference today. &quot;We're under scrutiny on whether we, the Japanese people, can overcome this crisis.&quot;Some 200 bodies were recovered today, and the official death toll from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami stood at 1,217 as of Sunday evening, Japanese police told The Chosunilbo, but that number is expected to climb to between 20,000 and 30,000. In one town alone, only 15,000 out of 75,000 were able to evacuate' the rest remain missing.Hoping to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, officials began venting the containment of reactor unit 3 through a controlled release of vapor intended to lower pressure inside the reactor structure, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported. Residents near the plant some 170 miles northeast of Tokyo evacuated the area after a quake-triggered power outage left a cooling system unable to supply water to cool the reactor. The original 2-mile evacuation radius has expanded to 12.5 miles and involves some 210,000 residents.The earthquake, which today was upgraded to a 9.0 magnitude from 8.9, left almost 2 million households without power in the freezing north and about 1.4 million without running water, the government said. Meanwhile, the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average dropped 494 points, or 4.8 percent, to 9,760.45 as the market opened Monday--the first business day after the twin disasters. The Bank of Japan said Monday it would inject 7 trillion yen ($86 billion) into the financial system to help stabilize the market.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[New sports channels signal shift in Apple TV]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-sports-channels-signal-shift-in-apple-tv</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-sports-channels-signal-shift-in-apple-tv</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:10:27 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>marabmin7y87</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=new-sports-channels-signal-shift-in-apple-tv</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Apple is beefing up its Apple TV offering with live streaming sports.(Credit:Donald Bell/CNET)It's becoming obvious that Apple TV is not a hobby anymore.The company had famously referred to its set-top device that way when it premiered four years ago as a way of keeping expectations low. But with today's software update, Apple is being more aggressive about making Apple TV competitive with its set-top rivals. As part of the iOS 4.3 update released today, Apple TV owners will now have access to MLB.TV and NBA League Pass. Both are subscription services for streaming live games over the Web, and like Netflix, which is already on Apple TV, customers have to enter their existing account to gain access via Apple TV. It's the first time Apple has featured live sports on Apple TV, and with the addition of these channels, Apple is also signaling that something else may be in the works: a more app-like approach to the device.Until now, Apple's set-top basically did three things: allow you to rent or buy iTunes content (that stayed on Apple TV only), stream Netflix (if you're a subscriber), and stream iTunes content from other devices. Those are great, but it still placed Apple TV behind the offerings of set-top devices like Roku,Xbox, andPlayStation 3. Besides Netflix, Roku, PS3, and Xbox have integrated Amazon Video on Demand, Hulu Plus, and scores of other sources of Hollywood content. Apple wants customers to buy iTunes content, so it's not likely we'll see it add many more ways to watch non-iTunes content beyond big name players like Netflix. But the sports angle is a big deal for cord-cutters--those of us who are trying to consume all of our entertainment content on TV without a cable TV subscription. Up until today Apple TV had no sports offering. In terms of major sports, Roku has long had MLB.TV and NHL GameCenter Live, Xbox 360 has ESPN live streaming and MLB, and the PlayStation 3 has MLB.TV and NHL.Today's update makes Apple TV a lot more competitive in comparison to what those other set-top devices offer. So while Apple TV might be late getting into the sports streaming game, this is a solid start, and probably (hopefully) means we'll see more.App-le TVIt's something we've wondered about since the new-and-improved $99 device arrived last fall: would Apple TV eventually be able to run iOS apps, thus expanding the platform's reach and giving new opportunities to game developers and app makers Games on Apple TV would make a lot of sense, as would many other apps.But when Steve Jobs introduced the reimagined Apple TV last fall--a smaller, sleeker device with a lower price tag and Netflix access--he specifically noted that it was running a version of iOS, but not the full-fledged system that appears on iPhones, iPads, and theiPod Touch. While Netflix, MLB.TV, and NBA League Pass are being positioned as channels on Apple TV--you can't download them from any sort of app store, they're only available via this software update--they're really not any different in how they work than the Netflix app on the iPhone or iPad, or the MLB Game Day app on the same devices. MLB's Game Day app has always been very popular in the App Store, so if these sports channels do well on Apple TV, it's hard to see why Apple wouldn't someday want to give customers more variety of channels or apps to choose to add to their Apple TV. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[To cut LED lighting costs, Bridgelux rides silicon]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-cut-led-lighting-costs-bridgelux-rides-silicon</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-cut-led-lighting-costs-bridgelux-rides-silicon</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:11:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>manziter4</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-cut-led-lighting-costs-bridgelux-rides-silicon</guid>
<description><![CDATA[To get the same economics of the computer semiconductor industry, the LED lighting world needs to start manufacturing on the same equipment, says Bridgelux CEO Bill Watkins.The LED light source maker said today that it demonstrated the production of LED light chips on silicon, a transition that will cut production costs by 75 percent and ultimately result in cheaper, energy-efficient light fixtures. Bridgelux intends to start making LEDs, which will be fitted into bulbs made by other companies, with the process in two or three years.An 8-inch gallium nitride on silicon wafer.(Credit:Bridgelux)Light fixtures with LEDs use semiconductors made by growing Gallium nitride (GaN) on a substrate of sapphire or silicon carbide. Using GaN on silicon, Bridgelux engineers have been able to get the same light quality and comparable efficiency to today's commercial products, the company said. Silicon Valley-based Bridgelux is now making its LEDs on 2-inch and 4-inch wafers. But the silicon process technology will allow it to get higher yields by contracting with silicon chip makers, which will lower production costs. &quot;We can partner with a semiconductor company to take advantage of their fully depreciated fab and manufacture at 8-inch scale, which you probably can't do on sapphire, with very minor tweaking to existing machines,&quot; Watkins said. &quot;That's why the semi companies are all over this space--they want to put this on silicon.&quot;Bridgelux has been able to get about 135 lumens per watt, which is about what the efficiency of GaN was on sapphire two to three years ago. For a light bulb with the color temperature of a typical halogen, that translates to about 85 lumens per watt, said Jason Posselt, the vice president of marketing.General lighting playResearchers for years have tried to put GaN on silicon, but there are challenges in making the two materials work together, notably the differences in thermal expansion. One of the common problems is defects or cracks that occur on the chip. Rather than a single breakthrough, Bridgelux engineers have made a few changes to the manufacturing process, Posselt said. There still are engineering challenges, but the company is confident it can make the transition to GaN on silicon. The move to silicon, which other companies are pursuing, could significantly knock down the price of LEDs for general lighting, since the LED light sources are about half the cost of a consumer bulb, said Posselt.Because they are efficient and controllable, LEDs are already being adopted by retail outlets and other commercial customers. In the past year, LED bulbs designed for home use have come out as well, but at significantly higher prices than traditional bulbs.There are 40-watt and 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs sold at large retail outlets, such as Home Depot and Lowes, with prices in the range of $18 to about $40. Lighting manufacturers expect prices to go down steadily for the LED bulbs, some of which are rated to last 25 years and are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs. But in the near term, the purchase price will still be higher than existing technologies.Moving to a cheaper manufacturing process, coupled with ongoing efficiency improvements of GaN, will help push LED lighting into general lighting based on purchase cost, Posselt said. Watkins, the former CEO of disk driver maker Seagate, said the manufacturing technology means LED companies can lower prices faster. &quot;The quantity and quality of light you can now get out of an LED source has really dramatically improved,&quot; Watkins said. &quot;Now the issue is cost and how to get the cost lower.&quot;<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft to fix four holes in Windows, Office]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-fix-four-holes-in-windows-office</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-fix-four-holes-in-windows-office</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:11:10 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>winlimlim4</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-fix-four-holes-in-windows-office</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:Microsoft)Contrary to last month when Microsoft plugged 22 holes on Patch Tuesday, only four holes will be fixed in the company's monthly security update roundup next week. There will be three bulletins, one of them rated &quot;critical&quot; for Microsoft Windows and the other two rated &quot;important&quot; and affecting Windows and Office, according to the preview advisory released today.  While they are few in number, they are not to be ignored. They all involve remote code execution, which means an attacker could force code to run on a target's machine and could lead to a complete takeover of the computer.  &quot;The upcoming Patch Tuesday includes a fix for a DLL (dynamic-link library) hijacking vulnerability in the Microsoft Groove application,&quot; said HD Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7 and chief architect at Metasploit. &quot;This was one of the hundreds of flaws discovered last year by both Rapid7 and another security firm. I am glad to see that Microsoft is making progress on these vulnerabilities and continuing to fix affected applications.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Design a battle robot for Demiurge's new game]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=design-a-battle-robot-for-demiurges-new-game</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=design-a-battle-robot-for-demiurges-new-game</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:10:44 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>StephTanner</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=design-a-battle-robot-for-demiurges-new-game</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A screenshot from the upcoming downloadable game Shoot Many Robots, which, as the title implies, involves shooting robots, and as many as possible.(Credit:Demiurge Studios)Aspiring game designers and robot aficionados unite!  One of the most prominent independent game developers in the Boston area, Demiurge Studios, is getting ready to launch its newest downloadable game, Shoot Many Robots, but not without seeing a few of your ideas first. (Credit:Demiurge Studios) Announced to implore budding concept artists to show off their skills, the contest &quot;Design Many Robots&quot; asks creative minds to sketch their own vision of the ultimate battle robot by April 4.  The most creative and all-around awesome entries will earn a free trip to Demiurge Studios to see their creations come to life--not literally, of course.  But the victorious robots do get to appear in an expansion pack of the game, which is set to launch later this year. Assemble the full details and rules at ShootManyRobots.com. Planned as a digital download for theXbox 360 andPlayStation 3, the title of the game sums up what it will essentially revolve around: shooting robots, and as many as possible. Details beyond the &quot;run and gun&quot; nature of the game, however, are hidden in Demiurge's holsters for now.  Apart from breaking and entering, this robot design contest has to be one of the easiest and most fun ways to get your foot in the door of a major game studio. I can only begin to imagine how many illustrations of Skynet minions are going to flood Demiurge's inbox for this contest. I'm going to guess many.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Bing deepens 'liked results' Facebook integration]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bing-deepens-liked-results-facebook-integration</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bing-deepens-liked-results-facebook-integration</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:10:03 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>joesmithie2</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bing-deepens-liked-results-facebook-integration</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft says the feature that highlights Facebook activity around some of Bing's search results has been &quot;extended&quot; to include any and all URLs.The company announced the expansion in a blog post earlier today, saying that this integration was just &quot;part of a longer journey,&quot; and that it played a complimentary role to the company's efforts in adding a social layer to is results, as it did with Twitter.&quot;This is the first time in human history that people are leaving social traces that machines can read and learn from, and present enhanced online experiences based on those traces,&quot; Lawrence Kim, the principal program manager for social search, said in a post on the Bing Team blog. &quot;As people spend more time online and integrate their offline and online worlds, they will want their friends' social activity and their social data to help them in making better decisions.&quot;The Bing feature analyzes links that show up in its search results to see if Facebook friends have &amp;34'liked&amp;34' that particular URL.(Credit:Microsoft)Microsoft had originally unveiled the social features back in October of last year at a press conference with Bing execs and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company rolled them out to U.S. users three weeks later. Last week, Google unveiled a similarly social feature it's applying to search results which takes advantage of data from Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to display links that have been shared by other users. The feature remains exclusive to U.S. users of Bing, the company said.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Warning: Coupons make you spend more]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=warning-coupons-make-you-spend-more</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=warning-coupons-make-you-spend-more</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>garretkrgr</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=warning-coupons-make-you-spend-more</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ I've said before, and not too long ago, that only people with poor impulse control buy things at retail prices. But I've recently come to understand that deal-seekers, people who habitually try to save money by using social-shopping sites like Groupon or coupon directories like RetailMeNot, may actually be even more valuable to the retail industry than people who buy stuff at list price. Because they spend more. Cotter Cunningham, CEO of WhaleShark Media, which runs RetailMeNot, explained to me recently why his straightforward coupon site is working well, and how the Internet is changing how pricing and consumer marketing is done.Cotter Cunningham says coupons make for bigger online orders.(Credit:Rafe Needleman/CNET) Affiliate marketing--paid links to commercial destinations--is the third-most efficient way for consumer goods and services companies to get online business, after e-mailing existing customers and doing good SEO. Coupons make for very effective and trackable affiliate links, because users have to click on them to get the deal, not just visit the site selling the product they want. And coupon sites succeed because the business of aggregating coupons is very strong: each link is a CPA, or cost-per-action link, which pays out at a much higher rate than CPC, or cost-per-click advertising links.  The goal is to become the big site with the most coupons, as getting into that position makes for a virtuous SEO cycle: the more coupons you have, the more people link to and visit the site, and the higher you rise in the search engines. RetailMeNot pursues this strategy by including even nonaffiliate coupon deals in its listings. Unlike some of the original coupon sites, where each coupon has an affiliate or CPA link attached to it, RetailMeNot encourages its users to submit coupon codes they find around the Internet. These coupons don't generate direct revenue for the site (although pages they're on do serve ads), but they do serve the incredibly important function of improving RetailMeNot's depth and thus its SEO juice and its traffic, making its paid links bigger revenue drivers.  According to Cunningham, retailers don't mind the couponification of their customers. While it's certainly true that the profit margin a coupon-using consumer generates is less than somebody paying full retail price, advertisers effectively use coupons to &quot;march you up the AOV (average order volume) food chain,&quot; he says. You know those offers to get a discount or free shipping only on orders over a certain amount They work. People spend up, and spend more, to get to the coupon threshold. RetailMeNot has both paid coupons and those discovered by its users.(Credit:Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET) The current challenge for the standard coupon site business is the competitive threat posted by the social coupon sites like Groupon and LivingSocial. RetailMeNot has some of its own social initiatives on Facebook and Twitter, and the company is working on ways to add more compelling game mechanics to the site to get people to use it more. Also, Cunningham says, RetailMeNot will soon launch a partnership with a social deals site as a test project.  Cunningham sees the effect of the group deals sites already. He says consumers are getting more disciplined, and this is good for his business. Consumers are learning the value of waiting for a coupon or group deal to appear' this realization will lead to enhancements in the alerting system in RetailMeNot.  The other coming improvement on RetailMeNot is a mobile app to help users find deals on items they're right in front of at physical retail stores (see also: eBay building mobile apps to grow user base). The site has focused on electronic commerce to date, so this is a bit of a branching out.  I still maintain that retail prices are for suckers' with the growth of social deal sites, now more than ever. However, it appears that thanks to retailers' smart use of coupons and deals, it's still just as easy to get suckered into paying more than you need to.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Nvidia CEO: Future laptops will mirror MacBook Air]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nvidia-ceo-future-laptops-will-mirror-macbook-air</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nvidia-ceo-future-laptops-will-mirror-macbook-air</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>CocoChanel</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nvidia-ceo-future-laptops-will-mirror-macbook-air</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Nvidia's CEO added his two cents to an increasingly popular theory on laptop design: that is, the MacBook Air as a template for all future designs. The Toshiba AC110, based on an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, hints at what&amp;39's to come.(Credit:Toshiba)In case you're wondering where the laptop is headed--circa 2014--Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang offered what could be considered a highly educated guess in response to a question I posed to him in a phone interview today. &quot;You'll have trouble finding one that doesn't look like the MacBook Air,&quot; he said. &quot;I think the Macbook Air is a good mental image of what a clamshell laptop will look like.&quot; &quot;They'll be thin because you won't need any heat pipes, the fan, and extra batteries to lug around,&quot; according to Huang. Nvidia chips have played an important role in the MacBook Air. Apple chose Nvidia graphics silicon beginning with the second-generation Air. And its role eclipsed that of Intel in the 2010 MBA (third generation): Nvidia's GeForce 320M graphics processor is the only major logic chip to see a significant upgrade in the Air (Intel's silicon changed very little from second- to third-generation). But Huang's vision for the future laptop goes beyond today's Air. It is rooted in devices running on power-sipping ARM chips, of which Nvidia is now a major supplier totablet makers like Motorola, Samsung, and LG. And by 2014, ARM laptops will likely be running a full-blown version of Windows--if that's even necessary in light of the burgeoning popularity Google's Android, which runs almost predominantly on ARM. Speaking of Android, if the present is prelude to what's to come, the Toshiba AC110 represents the future of extremely thin and light laptops thanks to its use of an ARM-based Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. And don't think will they will be slow. Nvidia is already hawking a third-generation quad-core Tegra processor that should make it into tablets this year. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Best Buy to launch gadget buy-back at Super Bowl]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=best-buy-to-launch-gadget-buy-back-at-super-bowl</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=best-buy-to-launch-gadget-buy-back-at-super-bowl</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:11:06 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>AfishaOnlink</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=best-buy-to-launch-gadget-buy-back-at-super-bowl</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Best Buy is trying a novel approach to tempt Super Bowl watchers to buy more electronics. The retailer will officially launch a buy-back service designed to lessen consumers' concerns about tech obsolescence, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said in an e-mail to customers. The program could also help increase electronics recycling rates.The Buy Back program is sort of an insurance policy, letting consumers get some money back for their gadgets while the goods still have some value--at least to somebody else. After purchasing a TV, mobile phone, laptop, Netbook, ortablet with the Buy Back program, a buyer has two years to bring it back and get a percentage of the purchase price as long as it's in good condition. Rates range from 50 percent within 6 months to 20 percent for between 18 months and 2 years. Between 2 years and 4 years, TV buyers can get 10 percent of the purchase price.If goods don't have any resale value, the electronics will be stripped down for parts or recycled in the U.S. as part of Best Buy's existing in-store recycling program, a company representative said last month.A growing number of buy-back services are aimed at tech consumers looking to get some money for older electronics. Secure TradeIn, a division of ReCellular, said it intends to spend $10 million in preparation of consumers trading in older smartphones for a newVerizoniPhone. Another buy-back provider is Gazelle, which shows consumers a gadget's residual value online and sends a shipping label. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Monty Python's Cow Tossing: Fetchez la vache!]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=monty-pythons-cow-tossing-fetchez-la-vache</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=monty-pythons-cow-tossing-fetchez-la-vache</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:10:42 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>bintterazmwes</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=monty-pythons-cow-tossing-fetchez-la-vache</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Monty Python Cow Tossing offers some unique twists on Angry Birds, but comes up short in the graphics, sound, and humor departments.(Credit:Zed Worldwide)Talk about a can't-miss idea: an Angry Birds-style game based on the cult classic &quot;Monty Python and the Holy Grail.&quot; Instead of flinging birds at pigs, you fling French cows (and other presumably French barnyard animals) at King Arthur and his knights. Sprinkle in clips from the movie and some unique gameplay twists, and you've got pure gaming gold.In theory. In reality, Monty Python's Cow Tossing (also available for iPad) is missing that certain...special...something [cue music].The game works on the same basic principle as Angry Birds: fling stuff at your enemies until you've destroyed them. In place of a slingshot and a limited supply of birds, you've got a catapult and unlimited animals.So where's the challenge if you have unlimited &quot;ammo&quot; It took me a while to figure this out, but the knights (i.e. your targets) are piled atop a battering ram that slooowly creeps toward your stronghold. If it gets there, you lose the level.You can adjust the height and placement of your catapult, though I rarely found this to be necessary. What's more, various power-ups (and occasional power-downs) drop from the sky at regular intervals' if you time your shot so that your &quot;weapon&quot; hits one midflight, it immediately gains (or loses) an advantage.What do the various power-ups/downs do You'll have to squint at the game's tiny help pages to figure it out. One example: fling a turkey at a falling axe and it turns into two projectiles (body and, um, severed head) instead of just one.All this should add up to great fun, especially for a die-hard Python fan like myself, but Cow Tossing comes up short in the most important area: gameplay. Maybe it's because everything onscreen is so tiny, or because the herky-jerky framerate makes the action awkward, but the game just doesn't &quot;feel&quot; right.I will say that after I got through the first 10 or so levels, which are extremely easy, things started to get more interesting, and I started to enjoy it more. But I still couldn't escape that feeling of something being missing. I guess I expected more humor, or at least some Python-ish sound effects (mostly you just hear explosions). Monty Python's Cow Tossing needs less tossing and more Python.At 99 cents ($1.99 foriPad), the game won't break anybody's bank. It did, however, turn me into a newt. (I got better.)<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[HP Palm posts teaser video for Feb. 9 event]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=hp-palm-posts-teaser-video-for-feb--9-event</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=hp-palm-posts-teaser-video-for-feb--9-event</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Sonia01</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=hp-palm-posts-teaser-video-for-feb--9-event</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I've got to give HP Palm credit. Even after Engadget seemingly spoiled the surprise of February 9 event with a story and photos of two WebOS-based tablets, the company shot back with a message saying, &quot;Think you saw the latest on Engadget Think again.&quot; It certainly piqued our interest and now, we're even more enthralled thanks to a new teaser video.The clip is brief and shows close-ups of a device from several different angles, but aside from a couple of buttons and switches, it's hard to determine what exactly you're looking at. Beneath the video on Palm's YouTube page, the description simply reads, &quot;Think big. Think small. Think ahead. Think beyond.&quot;Just last week, HP CEO Leo Apotheker dropped hints that we'd see WebOS smartphones andtablets at the event and said the products would ship just a few weeks after the announcement. Fortunately, we also don't have to wait too much longer, as the February 9 is just a few days away.The press conference kicks off at 10 a.m. PT, and of course, CNET will be there to bring you all the latest news live, so be sure to tune in then.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Report: Verizon asks employees to delay iPhone purchases]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-verizon-asks-employees-to-delay-iphone-purchases</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-verizon-asks-employees-to-delay-iphone-purchases</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:10:30 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>resbimmarlk</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-verizon-asks-employees-to-delay-iphone-purchases</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Verizon Wireless doesn't want to see the iPhone in its employees&amp;39' hands any times soon.(Credit:Bonnie Cha/CNET)Citing expected &quot;unprecedented&quot; demand for Verizon Wireless' forthcomingiPhone 4, the carrier is asking its employees to delay iPhone 4 purchases, according to a memo obtained by AppleInsider.&quot;Customers and non-customers alike have waited for years to see this product on America's most reliable wireless network. Demand will be unprecedented,&quot; Verizon Wireless Chief Operating Officer John Stratton wrote in an e-mail addressed to &quot;U.S.-Based Management Employees.&quot; &quot;To help ensure we meet customer demand for iPhones, Verizon is urging employees and their families to postpone purchases of the popular smartphone, whether online or in retail stores, for the time being.&quot;&quot;I know customers aren't the only ones who are excited--employees are, too. While I share your excitement, over the coming weeks we all need to do our part to meet our customers' needs--this means putting our customers first,&quot; Stratton wrote.Verizon Wireless representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The newVerizon iPhone is expected to be a hot seller when it goes on sale February 10. Verizon executives have not provided exact projections for iPhone sales, but they say that analyst estimates of 11 million new subscribers for the iPhone are likely accurate.The company announced last month that it added more than 800,000 new subscribers during the fourth quarter as it prepares for the launch of the Verizon iPhone. When Verizon announced the impending availability of the iPhone on its network, the company said current customers would be allowed to preregister for the device beginning tomorrow, giving them first crack at the CDMA iPhone.Related:  CNET's full Verizon iPhone reviews<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[RIM says it can't give India keys to secure e-mails]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=rim-says-it-cant-give-india-keys-to-secure-e-mails</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=rim-says-it-cant-give-india-keys-to-secure-e-mails</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jonathanmo</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=rim-says-it-cant-give-india-keys-to-secure-e-mails</guid>
<description><![CDATA[RIM yesterday reiterated that it's unable to provide the Indian government with the means to access secure e-mails on its enterprise network, despite a looming deadline.Robert Crow, Research In Motion's vice president for Industry, Government and University, repeated the company's familiar position. Speaking to reporters yesterday in New Delhi, Crow said that RIM does not have the ability to turn over the keys to the encrypted data flowing over its BlackBerry Enterprise Server because those keys are held by its corporate customers.Despite promises to India that it would offer a permanent solution by January 31, Crow said that &quot;there is no possibility of us providing any kind of a solution. There is no solution, there are no keys to be handed,&quot; according to Reuters.Earlier this month, RIM had given Indian officials the ability to monitor its consumer messaging services, which include BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and BlackBerry Internet Services (BIS) e-mail. But that access does not extend to the company's Enterprise Server, which it sees as a type of secure virtual private network (VPN) for its business customers.RIM has been facing challenges by India as well as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, all of whom have been demanding access to its secure customer data for national security reasons. The nations see such access as a necessary tool in their fight against terrorists and have all at one time threatened bans against the BlackBerry service unless RIM complies.The company narrowly averted a ban on BlackBerry services in India in October by offering an interim solution and promising a permanent one by January 31. Last year, RIM faced potential bans from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but it was able to work out agreements with those two nations that allowed its services to continue. Though RIM hasn't revealed how it averted those bans, some reports say the company was able to work around the issue by setting up local BlackBerry servers.Crow said that the overall problem extends beyond just the BlackBerry network.This is not an issue unique to BlackBerry. BlackBerry represents a very small fraction of the total population of VPN in India,&quot; he said, according to the AFP news service.India has also been after Google and Skype to allow access to their services as well, asking them to install local servers for the purpose of monitoring e-mail and messaging.Crow has been meeting with Indian officials from security agencies and the country's ministry to discuss the issue and said that further meetings are planned during his current visit, Reuters reported.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[W3C tackles touch-screen Web apps]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3c-tackles-touch-screen-web-apps</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3c-tackles-touch-screen-web-apps</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 28 Jan 2011 08:10:13 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Samya01</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3c-tackles-touch-screen-web-apps</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In the competition between native applications for mobile phones vs. Web applications, hardware support often makes native apps an obvious choice for programmers. But the World Wide Web Consortium is tackling one area, touch-screen support, in an effort that could help Web apps catch up.The W3C published an editor's draft of a new touch-screen standard for Web apps today. The draft specification is designed also for devices such as drawingtablets that don't have a screen, but today's hot market for smartphones makes touch screens the more important focus.A standard--if designed well and adopted--would make programmers' lives easier by making it possible to write Web application software that would work on multiple browsers. And with touch screens expanding from the high-end smartphone market to lower-end models and to tablets, touch screens are becoming a dominant technology for user interfaces.Of course, touch screens work to an extent withmobile browsers today. But they chiefly just reproduce the mouse era, and touch screens can be different. Multitouch is one obvious difference, but the draft specification also accommodates subtleties such as the pressure of a touch event and the radius of the spot being touched.The specification defines how a browser would report information in a standard way to a Web application, letting programmers write software that responds to the events. And as with many Web specifications, it uses a real-world browser as a starting point. In this case, Apple'sSafari.&quot;Editor Doug Schepers did the sensible thing and started with Apple's specification,&quot; said Peter-Paul Koch, a consultant who closely monitors browser issues and in particular mobile browsers, in a blog post. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[To avert Internet crisis, the IPv6 scramble begins]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-avert-internet-crisis-the-ipv6-scramble-begins</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-avert-internet-crisis-the-ipv6-scramble-begins</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:11:22 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>belimsirkak</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=to-avert-internet-crisis-the-ipv6-scramble-begins</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Remember Y2K The Internet today is facing a similarly big problem all over again, but nobody knew exactly when it would hit--until now.The problem is the day the conventional Internet runs out of room for new computers because the world has used up the supply of Internet addresses that computers need to communicate over the Net.It's likely that this week or next, the central supplier of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses will dole out the last ones at the wholesale level. That will set the clock ticking for the moment in coming months when those addresses will all be snapped by corporate Web sites, Internet service providers, or other eventual owners.And that means it's now a necessity, not a luxury, to rebuild the Net on a more modern foundation called IPv6.It's taken a long time because there was little immediate payback for companies spending money and time to build IPv6 support. But even though the carrot to motivate people has been pretty small, the stick now is getting bigger with each passing week.&quot;Many are waiting for a 'killer application' for IPv6. This is a misconception,&quot; said Lorenzo Colitti, the Google engineer overseeing the search giant's years-long transition to IPv6, in a 2010 talk. &quot;The killer application of IPv6 is the survival of the open Internet as we know it.&quot;Only a tiny fraction of Google users--about 0.2 percent--are equipped to use the next-generation IPv6 technology that will relieve growth pressures on the Internet.(Credit:Google)Minimizing disruptionsMany expect some disruptions as the IPv6 shift takes place. Web sites could be slow or inaccessible, companies could have a harder time setting up new services, Internet service providers could have a hard time keeping up with subscriber growth, and security will have to adapt to the new technology.The Net won't collapse, though.Leslie Daigle, chief technology officer of the Internet Society, a standards and advocacy group, likens the situation to a changing separation of railroad tracks. Trains for one can't travel on tracks for the other, and moving data between the networks is, in effect, as onerous as unloading and reloading traincars' cargo.&quot;If you have a Web site, you are basically going to have some customers coming on wide gauge and on narrow gauge,&quot; Daigle said. &quot;Narrow gauge is going away.&quot;To give the world a chance to wrestle the IPv6 bull directly by the horns, the Internet Society is helping to organize the World IPv6 Day. On June 8, content providers such as Google and Yahoo and content distributors such as Akamai and Limelight Networks will offer their services over IPv6 for 24 hours for a collective evaluation and troubleshooting session.That means, for example, that Google will enable IPv6 service on its primary domains, not just in a dedicated corner such as today's ipv6.google.com (that link won't work for most folks today). Those with IPv6 connectivity will help to stress test a tender new Internet.People who want to get an earlier start can point their browser to an IPv6 readiness test page to see how far along they are. All modern personal computer operating systems can handle IPv6 with no trouble, but the connection to the Internet is another question entirely.The end in sight--for yearsExperts have known for ages that the limit of 4.3 billion IP addresses would be a problem with the prevailing Internet Protocol version 4. The problem stemmed from a 1977 decision by Vint Cerf, who now is an Internet evangelist at Google.At the time, just a few years into the Internet's history, he decided to use 32-bit Internet addresses. But 2 to the 32nd power, about 4.3 billion, looks a lot smaller in 2011 than in 1977.&quot;Who the hell knew how much address space we needed&quot; Cerf told journalists in Sydney, Australia, recently.It didn't take until today to figure out an answer to that question, though. That's why in the 1990s, Internet engineers developed IPv6, which has a practically inexhaustible supply. To be precise, 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.The big problem, though: IPv6 isn't compatible with IPv4, so making the transition is painful for a wide spectrum of the computing industry.The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which doles out IPv4 addresses in blocks of 16.8 million called slash-eights or /8s to five organizations called regional Internet registries (RIRs), only has seven of the 256 &quot;slash-8&quot; blocksoriginal 256 /8s left. And after the next two are handed out, the remaining five will automatically be distributed to each of the RIRs, which in turn will offer them to Internet service providers, hosting companies, and others with an appetite.Yahoo Japan&amp;39's broadband service has been evaluating the best ways to offer IPv6 connections. It&amp;39's not simple.(Credit:Yahoo Japan/Softbank)The imminent exhaustion of IANA's IPv4 addresses helps put a timetable on the IPv6 transition. That's a big change from the last decade, when IPv4 exhaustion was clearly going to happen but not on some specific schedule.Setting a deadlineThe timing is helpful for getting planning in gear. In fact, it makes makes the IPv6 transition look more like Y2K, the expensive problem that peaked on January 1, 2000, when computers storing dates with only two digits could confuse 2000 with 1900. Like Y2K, the IPv6 transition requires companies to spend money on mundane infrastructure upgrades rather than exciting new revenue-generating services.But there's a big difference between the Y2K and IPv6 challenges. Y2K was mostly limited to isolated computing systems. With the exhaustion of IPv4 Internet addresses, the entire Internet needs to be upgraded to IPv6--everything from Web sites to smartphones, from networked gaming consoles to routers that pass information across the Internet.That means regular folks are going to be dragged into the IPv6 transition, said Martin Levy, director of IPv6 strategy at Hurricane Electric, a back-end Internet service provider that has had a concentrated IPv6 program for years.&quot;When you walk into [electronics stores such as] Fry's, Dickson's, or Comet, you look at the shelves and pick the wireless gateway you want for your home. You may want 802.11n or a printer port or storage,&quot; Levy said. &quot;But at what point do you say, 'I want v6 enabled' You don't have a realization as a consumer that this is important.&quot;And as with Y2K, when companies bought a glut of new servers to replace aging systems, there's money to be made from the IPv6 transition. Hurricane Electric isn't the only one with a sales pitch.NTT America has had a specialized service for helping companies through the change. And AT&amp;T, which &quot;has invested millions of dollars to ensure that its own network and services are ready to make the transition to the new Internet Protocol,&quot; yesterday announced a consulting service for businesses facing the change.Early adoptersNot everyone is scrambling, though. Google is perhaps the best example of a company that's been working to adjust to IPv6 before crunch time. It's used IPv6 both for internal operations and, increasingly, external sites.In 2008 came Google search over IPv6, with a public launch in January 2009. In March 2009 came Google Maps, then in August the first IPv6-enabled Android phones. In Feburary 2010, YouTube showed up, leading to an overnight surge in Google's outgoing IPv6 traffic.&quot;The key lesson that we learned was starting early and taking the transition slowly. It was cheap and relatively easy,&quot; Colitti told CNET. &quot;We also found that an incremental approach was key: by bringing IPv6 to one service at a time and using shim layers when communicating with back-ends, it's possible to achieve slow but steady progress rather than have to tackle the whole code base at once. Unfortunately, it's getting late for that approach now.&quot;Facebook, too, has been working on the problem, and like Google, has been avoiding the idea of separate internal infrastructure for IPv4 and IPv6. &quot;Since last summer, we've offered Facebook over IPv6 at www.v6.facebook.com,&quot; said Donn Lee, a Facebook network engineer. We leverage as much of the existing systems in our data centers to minimize separate paths and functions for v6. We are not unique in this practice. Others are following similar strategies. Having a parallel Facebook for v6 won't scale.&quot;Where's the appetite for IPv6 data A huge amount, at least for Google in 2010, was France. That's because, Free.fr, a French Internet service provider that offers phone and TV service as well, made the jump to IPv6 in 2008.They're still a rarity. Google statistics show that a little over 0.2 percent of Google visitors today would get Google services over IPv6 if they were offered on the company's primary domains rather than IPv6-specific addresses.Unfortunately for early adopters, there can be an IPv6 penalty. IPv6 routes across the Internet can meander through distant, sometimes overloaded gateways rather than connect computers more directly, Yahoo IPv6 expert Jason Fesler said in a presentation last year. &quot;A small percentage of the users will, when given the chance to connect to an IPv6 address, time out instead of quickly and transparently failing over to IPv4,&quot; he said.In other words, at times, IPv6 servers will appear to be offline--something that makes Yahoo &quot;a bit timid&quot; about serving content over IPv6. It lags Google and Facebook, in part because of higher priority engineering projects, and plans to begin offering its services over IPv6 in late 2011, Fesler said.That's changing, though. Gradually, nodes on the Internet will start getting wired into the IPv6 Internet, relieving congestion. Right now, by Hurricane Electric's measurements, 8 percent of those nodes are on IPv6.&quot;More and more networks are going v6' but that's a measurement in the core of the networks, not the end user connections,&quot; Levy said. &quot;We see that improving day over day.&quot;Worth it in the endPerhaps the best news about the IPv6 transition is that, once it's mostly over, the Internet will be a qualitatively different place. With vast tracts of IP addresses available, individual ones can be assigned to phones, computers, cars, stereo components, living-room thermostats, heads-up display glasses, wristwatches, home solar panels--you name it. Where a case can be made for networking, these devices will be able to communicate directly without the network topology shenanigans such as network address translation necessary today.One consequence of that more direct connection is the elevation of peer-to-peer communications in the network. Central servers will remain important, but no longer necessarily a gateway.Less revolutionary but probably more persuasive for those in the computing trenches, IPv6 makes the more mundane business of networking easier, too. There, perhaps, people can relish a little taste of the carrot even as they smart from the stick .&quot;Direct connections between users and sites...allows for faster, more reliable, more secure, and less costly Internet service,&quot; Facebook's Lee said. &quot;Almost everyone in the Internet ecosystem is motivated along these lines.&quot;<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Capacitive and resistive touch to go head-to-head in next portable gaming showdown]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=capacitive-and-resistive-touch-to-go-head-to-head-in-next-portable-gaming-showdown</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=capacitive-and-resistive-touch-to-go-head-to-head-in-next-portable-gaming-showdown</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:10:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>paultupppu</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=capacitive-and-resistive-touch-to-go-head-to-head-in-next-portable-gaming-showdown</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Will the NGP's rear touch panel make for a more seamless experienceA major difference between the NGP and 3DS lies in the two devices' touch-sensitive technologies. The 3DS will reuse the original DS' resistive touch screen, whereas the NGP will have two capacitive touch areas (front and rear), of the type mosttablets and smartphones use today (including theiPhone andiPad). The 3DS' resistive touch screen requires some depression (hence the stylus), but can also respond to a finger press. The technology offers a nice level of precision (like when handwriting or pecking at small virtual keys), but certainly requires a bit of a learning curve when being used in tandem with a stylus. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Study finds Apple tops in call center tech support]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-finds-apple-tops-in-call-center-tech-support</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-finds-apple-tops-in-call-center-tech-support</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:10:14 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>octavio4ga</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=study-finds-apple-tops-in-call-center-tech-support</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Apple outscored both Dell and Hewlett-Packard in overall satisfaction with tech support by phone, though its problem-resolution rates took a bit of a hit in a study released today by consumer feedback firm Vocal Laboratories.Based on interviews with customers from July 2009 to December 2010, Apple's lead in phone support over Dell and HP dipped a bit in the second half of last year compared with the first half, according to the study from Vocal Laboratories (Vocalabs).But Apple customers seeking tech support still proved the happiest, with 66 percent saying they were &quot;very satisfied&quot; with the call itself, compared to 51 percent for HP's customers and 49 percent for Dell's. Further, 76 percent of Apple users said they were very satisfied with the representative who helped them on the call, though that too was down a bit from 82 percent in the first half of the year.(Credit:Vocal Laboratories)Satisfaction over actually fixing the problem also dipped slightly for Apple, with 60 percent of those polled saying the problem was resolved during the call, compared with 67 percent in the first half of the year. Looking at satisfaction with the company overall, Apple fell in the second half to 59 percent from 66 percent in the first half, though that was still higher than the rates for Dell and HP.Satisfaction with the automated part of the call, which Vocalabs dubbed the &quot;nuisance factor,&quot; also saw a drop among Apple's customers from 2009 to 2010, at the same time that it improved for Dell users.Thirty-five percent of Apple users questioned during the second half of 2010 ran into difficulty reaching a live person, irrelevant or repetitive steps, and trouble with the IVR (interactive voice response) system, which tries to route calls based on the responses of the caller. That proved to be an increase from the 21 percent who reported similar problems in the second half of 2009.In comparison, Dell's nuisance factor over the same period dropped to 46 percent in 2010's second half from 55 percent in 2009, though even with the drop, Dell's rate was still higher than Apple's.(Credit:Vocal Laboratories)Despite the declines for Apple in certain areas of customer satisfaction, the company continued to outpace Dell and HP overall and still commands the most loyal customers.Asked whether they'd buy the same brand again, 84 percent of Apple users said yes, compared with 60 percent for Dell and 66 percent for HP. And asked if they'd recommend the brand to others, the results were similar--85 percent of Apple customers said they would, compared with 61 percent for Dell and 66 percent for HP.The study was based on 2,166 telephone interviews conducted between July 2009 and December 2010. Customers were interviewed immediately after tech support calls to Apple, Dell, and HP, allowing Vocalabs to directly compare the quality of phone support among the three.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[India to plug in solar-powered telecom towers]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=india-to-plug-in-solar-powered-telecom-towers</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=india-to-plug-in-solar-powered-telecom-towers</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:10:51 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>BestyMerryBMW</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=india-to-plug-in-solar-powered-telecom-towers</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A solar-powered mobile phone base station in Rajasthan, India.(Credit:Shashwat Nagpal/VNL)The high-powered schmoozing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has yielded a project to install solar-powered cell phone towers in India.Vihaan Networks Limited (VNL) and lithium ion battery maker Boston Power today announced that the two companies have successfully developed the small-scale telecom stations which VNL plans to roll out this year.The communications-based stations, called WorldGSM, are designed to operate entirely from a few solar panels and are not connected to the grid. The Boston Power batteries can power the tower, which can be set up in half a day, for up to three days without sunlight. The idea for the product came about at last year's World Economic Forum where the CEOs of both companies met after winning &quot;Technology Pioneer&quot; awards.VNL calls the WorldGSM towers a &quot;microtelecom&quot; product because they are designed for the billions of people who live in rural areas outside the mobile phone network's reach. VNL says these customers typically spend less than two dollars a month on mobile phone service.Coupling storage with cell phone base stations makes sense in many places where connecting to the grid is a challenge or adds significantly to the cost. The WorldGSM base stations are being tested now and are set for deployment in different areas this year. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Verizon's iPhone hot spot to cost $20 a month]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-hot-spot-to-cost-20-a-month</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-hot-spot-to-cost-20-a-month</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:10:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>rosszooozo</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-hot-spot-to-cost-20-a-month</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Verizon Wireless&amp;39' new iPhone will have a hot spot feature that allows up to five devices to connect to the Internet via the iPhone&amp;39's 3G data connection. (Credit:Bonnie Cha/CNET)Using Verizon's forthcomingiPhone as a mobile hot spot is going to cost subscribers $20 a month--that's on top of the required data and voice plans subscribers will already be paying for.The fee, which is in line with what Verizon charges for mobile hot spot service on other smartphones, was confirmed today to Macworld by Brenda Raney, Verizon Wireless' executive director of corporate communications. The hot spot feature comes with a 2GB data allowance, but if users go over that limit, they will be charged $20 per gigabyte.The personal hot spot allows up to five Wi-Fi devices at a time to connect to the Internet using theVerizon iPhone's 3G data connection as a wireless router. The feature was highlighted during Verizon's January 11 event announcing iPhone's imminent availability on its network, but pricing for the service was not revealed at the time.Earlier today, Verizon announced it would keep its $30 unlimited data plan for the iPhone, but the plan will only be offered for a limited time before the company moves to a usage-based billing model.The new Verizon iPhone is expected to be a hot seller when it goes on sale February 10. Verizon executives have not provided exact projections for iPhone sales, but they say that analyst estimates of 11 million new subscribers for the iPhone are likely accurate.AT&amp;T, the only other carrier offering the iPhone, currently allows only a single device to be tethered to the device via USB or Bluetooth. However, the hot spot feature will reportedly be available to all iPhones capable of running iOS 4.3, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system, a beta of which was recently released to developers. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[FCC approves Motorola Atrix 4G, Samsung Vibrant 4G, more]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-approves-motorola-atrix-4g-samsung-vibrant-4g-more</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-approves-motorola-atrix-4g-samsung-vibrant-4g-more</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>restaurantlancpa</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-approves-motorola-atrix-4g-samsung-vibrant-4g-more</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The label ID of the Samsung SGH-T959V on the FCC&amp;39's website. This could be the Samsung Vibrant 4G.Mere weeks after the Consumer Electronics Show, it appears that the Motorola Atrix 4G has finally earned its seal of approval from the FCC. The model number is MB860 and yes, it does support UMTS 1900Mhz, which AT&amp;T is calling &quot;4G.&quot; Another 4G phone to get stamped by the FCC could be the Samsung Vibrant 4G. The Vibrant's model number is the SGH-T959, while the phone seen here has a very similar model number of SGH-T959V. On a non-4G note, it appears Huawei has also let slip its Ideos X6 on the FCC recently. Looks like there's definitely no shortage of smartphones soon, and we're looking forward to getting our hands on them once they're released.Because the FCC has to certify every phone sold in the United States, not to mention test its SAR rating, the agency's online database offers a lot of sneak peeks to those who dig. And to save you the trouble, Crave has combed through the database for you. Here are a selection of filings from the past week on new and upcoming cell phones. Click through to read the full report.Huawei Ideos X6LG A180aLG P970LG VP200Motorola Atrix 4GSamsung GT-C3300iSamsung GT-E2330BSamsung GT-S4570BSamsung GT-S5670LSamsung SGH-T330GSamsung SGH-T959VSamsung SPH-M260<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[W3C's new logo promotes HTML5--and more]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3cs-new-logo-promotes-html5-and-more</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3cs-new-logo-promotes-html5-and-more</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:10:10 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>byimvaid</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=w3cs-new-logo-promotes-html5-and-more</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The W3C&amp;39's new HTML5 logo stands for more than just the HTML5 standard.(Credit:W3C)Underscoring the confluence of technology, politics, and marketing, the World Wide Web Consortium today unveiled a new logo for HTML5.With the logo, the W3C wants to promote the new Web technology--and itself. The Web is growing far beyond its roots of housing static Web sites and is transforming into a vehicle for entertainment and a foundation for online applications.The W3C hopes the logo--T-shirts and stickers with it already are on sale--will fuel excitement and interest in the refurbished Web. &quot;In addition to work on the specification, test suites, and useful materials for developers, we seek to raise awareness about W3C technology and to promote adoption of W3C standards,&quot; spokesman Ian Jacobs said.Curiously, though, the standards group--the very people one might expect to have the narrowest interpretation of what exactly HTML5 means--instead say it stands for a swath of new Web technologies extending well beyond the next version of Hypertext Markup Language.And some Web developers aren't happy about that. Web developer Jeremy Keith wrote today that the W3C just helped push HTML5 &quot;into the linguistic sewer of buzzwordland.&quot;Here's how the W3C put it: &quot;The logo is a general-purpose visual identity for a broad set of open Web technologies, including HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and others,&quot; the W3C said in the FAQ about the HTML5 logo, referring to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting and graphical effects, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for advanced 2D graphics, and the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) for elaborate typography. &quot;In addition to the HTML5 logo there are icons for eight high-level technology classes enabled by the HTML5 family of technologies. The icons can be used to highlight more specific abilities, such as offline, graphics, or connectivity.&quot;Using &quot;HTML5&quot; to represent technologies well beyond the standard itself doesn't sit well with some developers who see a useful role in more precise terms. Bruce Lawson, an employee of browser maker Opera and co-author of a book on HTML5, has proposed the acronym NEWT--new exciting Web technologies&quot;Basically: HTML5 logo = good thing. But disappointed to see CSS 3 conflated into it,&quot; Lawson tweeted today, pointing to his rather amusingly theatrical YouTube video about it.His case was likely something of a lost cause, though, even before the W3C itself offered a logo naming a specific standard to stand instead for a range of technologies. Apple, a company with vastly more marketing skill than most, launched an HTML5 showcase last year that extended well beyond HTML5--indeed it was probably better classified as a demonstration of new CSS than new HTML. There's a reason that marketing types preferred the broad definition of HTML5: it's hard to get people to understand a long series of acronyms from standards groups. And it seems unlikely Apple's promotional experts would get excited about an amphibian.To be fair to marketing department oversimplifiers, it's hard to keep track just of what the W3C is up to. Web Workers, Geolocation, IndexedDB, Web Sockets--all these are standards that are useful for the next-generation Web but that venture beyond HTML5, strictly defined.https://spinner.cnet.com/post.htmlid=20028718&amp;versionId=413456But Web-development insiders reacted to the logo's broad definition with scorn, or at least raised eyebrows. Keith's blog post is titled &quot;Badge of Shame&quot;:What. A. Crock. What we have here is a deliberate attempt to further blur the lines between separate technologies that have already become intertwingled in media reports...So now what do I do when I want to give a description of a workshop, or a talk, or a book that's actually about HTML5 If I just say &quot;It's about HTML5,&quot; that will soon be as meaningful as saying &quot;It's about Web 2.0,&quot; or &quot;It's about leveraging the synergies of disruptive transmedia paradigms.&quot; The term HTML5 has, with the support of the W3C, been pushed into the linguistic sewer of buzzwordland.And there was more carping:&amp;149' &quot;Hmm, wow. I'm thinking a new logo representing 'the Web platform in a very general sense' is maybe not really what HTML5 needed the most,&quot; tweeted John Lilly, Greylock venture partner and former Mozilla chief executive.&amp;149' &quot;CSS3 is now 'officially' part of HTML5,&quot; said a sarcastic tweet from Anne van Kesteren, who works on standards at Opera.&amp;149' Longtime Web developer Jeffery Zeldman called the logo's broad definition &quot;misguided.&quot;&amp;149' &quot;Nothing wrong with the HTML5Logo itself, use it if you want, but including CSS3 and other bits is just wrong and confusing,&quot; tweeted Web developer and HTML5 fan Ian Devlin.&amp;149' And HTML5 book co-author Remy Sharp asked, &quot;Let's clear this up, once and for all: does the @w3c intend for 'CSS3' to be included as 'HTML5'&quot;Don't expect standardization work at the W3C will lose its ultra-precise wording in favor of loosey-goosey marketing terminology. But do expect W3C to promote its broader agenda in more general terms.Jacobs said in a blog post that the W3C had begun an internal project in 2010 to create a logo for the &quot;open Web platform&quot;--another more general term for today's constellation of new Web technologies--but put it on hold. Today's HTML5 logo came instead from design firm Ocupop, which according to creative director Michael Nieling was developed with all the Web technologies in mind:The term HTML5 has taken on a life of its own' there has been significant confusion and debate both within the developer community and in the public at large as to what exactly HTML5 is when the term is used outside of simply referring to the spec itself. This variability in perception is what inspired the project--a group of developers and HTML5 evangelists came to us and posed the question, &quot;How can we better communicate all of the technologies and potential that HTML5 represents&quot; ...and the resounding answer was, the standard needs a standard. That is, HTML5 needs a consistent, standardized visual vocabulary to serve as a framework for conversations, presentations, and explanations moving forward...Nieling himself said, though, that the designers don't get the last word about what exactly the logo means&quot;I am confident that we've provided a very clear and effective baseline of vocabulary for HTML5,&quot; he said. &quot;The syntax and ultimate meaning is up to the community.&quot;Updated 7:41 a.m. PTwith more reaction against the broad definition of the new logo.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Solar tactically used on the Afghan front]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=solar-tactically-used-on-the-afghan-front</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=solar-tactically-used-on-the-afghan-front</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:10:21 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>amytalbot</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=solar-tactically-used-on-the-afghan-front</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Marines and their Afghan national army counterparts in front of a ZeroBased Regenerator, a solar/energy storage unit consisting of six solar panels. It can power 17 computers and 15 lighting units simultaneously. Marines added four more panels (two on each side) of this particular unit for even more power.(Credit:U.S. Marine Corps/Gunnery Sgt. William Price)A Marine experiment aimed at determining whether it's beneficial, or even feasible, to use solar energy in the theater of war has landed on the side of solar.That's according to an article filed Wednesday by Gunnery Sgt. William Price, 1st Marine Division, about Marines located in the Sangin District of Helmand Province, Afghanistan at what's known as an &quot;experimental forward operating base.&quot;The Marine 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment at Forward Operating Base Jackson, and its Afghan national army counterparts, have been using portable solar blankets to continuously charge radio batteries while on long patrols, solar tarps to power lighting for tents at night, and solar panels to power command centers and computers.To be clear, this Marine regiment was not simply thrown into using the new gear while in Afghanistan. They do have the claim to fame of being the &quot;first military unit to use nothing but renewable energy to power their systems&quot; when they participated in Enhanced Mojave Viper in July 2010, a month-long pre-deployment training exercise at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, in Twentynine Palms, Calif.Among that equipment, the PowerShade solar tarp made to fit a standard issue Marine Corps tent that can power a tent's lighting system. The ZeroBas Regenerator consists of six solar panels attached to a storage battery capable of providing enough electricity to run 20 lighting systems and 15 computers simultaneously. The Ground Renewable Expeditionary Energy System is a slightly smaller solar/battery system that can generate enough power for four computers or one Combat Operations Center.But the regiment told Price that they have been discovering some new benefits of using solar while at war.Using portable solar blankets to charge radios has enabled them to carry fewer extra batteries, leaving room for more ammunition.When operating at Patrol Base Sparks, an outpost of Forward Operating Base Jackson, regiment members have managed to get their fuel use down from 20 gallons per day per generator to just 2.5 gallons per generator.And that change has enabled those Marines to generate and store enough electricity during sunlit hours, that generators are only minimally run at night, reducing noise and allowing the base to be less conspicuous to insurgent attackers, Staff Sgt. Greg Wenzel, 1st Platoon told Price.Most importantly, it's cut down on the amount of convoy trips U.S. military have had to make for fuel replenishments. That change has cut down their exposure to attacks and roadside bombs, according to Staff Sgt. David Doty, 1st Platoon.(via Wired Danger Room ) <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Report: First Windows 7 service pack sent to OEMs]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-first-windows-7-service-pack-sent-to-oems</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-first-windows-7-service-pack-sent-to-oems</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:10:12 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>winmansufes</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-first-windows-7-service-pack-sent-to-oems</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The first service pack forWindows 7 has been sent to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), according to a post on TechNet by Microsoft's Russian Windows Visualization team.Microsoft launched the first release candidate for Windows 7 SP1, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 in late October of last year, saying that it would be the only RC prior to the software being finalized and made available to manufacturers. The company also promised that SP1 would arrive in the hands of users in the &quot;first half&quot; of 2011.Blog Winrumors, which reported the news earlier today, weighs in, saying that while SP1 is indeed going out to OEMs, it may be a while longer before consumers get their hands on it.A Microsoft spokesperson told CNET, &quot;we have nothing to share at this time but will keep you posted.&quot;SP1 packs together a round of hotfixes, as well as an updated remote desktop client that makes use of RemoteFX. Besides bringing a boost to 3D applications, RemoteFX helps IT admins deploy Windows 7 through virtual machines using the technology, which it picked up with its acquisition of Calista Technologies back in 2008. Other SP1 adds include dynamic memory support for Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, and all previous Windows security fixes.Earlier this week, Microsoft released KB 976902 through its Windows Update software before having the knowledge base article to explain what the update was for. Security expert Brian Krebs dug a little deeper and found out it was an update to the Windows stack to get the OS ready for future updates, something the company did ahead of the SP1 beta back in July. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Firefox beta getting new database standard]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=firefox-beta-getting-new-database-standard</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=firefox-beta-getting-new-database-standard</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:10:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kyblackr</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=firefox-beta-getting-new-database-standard</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The ninth beta version ofFirefox, due imminently, is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser's computer.&quot;IndexedDB allows Web apps to store large amounts of data on your local system (with your explicit permission, of course) for fast offline retrieval at a later time. We're hoping that Web mail, TV listings, and online purchase history will one day be as convenient to access offline as they are online,&quot; Ben Turner, who develops IndexedDB for Mozilla's browser, said yesterday in a blog post.Firefox 4 beta 9 has been built, is being tested, and should become available soon. After that Mozilla presently plans to ship a 10th beta, release candidates, and a final Firefox 4 version in February.One of the primary uses of IndexedDB is offline access to data used by Web applications. Google has offered such access to Gmail and Google Docs, for example, using a now-discontinued technology called Gears' it's likely the promised re-emergence of that technology in early 2011 will use IndexedDB.Mozilla and Microsoft backed IndexedDB, which originated with an Oracle engineer, after raising concerns about a rival technology called Web SQL. Although Web SQL is built into Apple'sSafari, Google's Chrome, and Opera (and Gears used the same approach), theWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C) dropped Web SQL standardization work. Even though the SQL technology for database interaction is well known among many programmers, Web SQL standardization was hampered by the fact that its implementation was tied to a specific program, SQLite, not to a standard interface.Google is building IndexedDB support into Chrome, and Microsoft looks likely to follow suit once the standard settles down. Currently Microsoft offers an experimental IE extension for developers.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Iomega SuperHero might save your iPhone]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=iomega-superhero-might-save-your-iphone</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=iomega-superhero-might-save-your-iphone</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>icolorcy</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=iomega-superhero-might-save-your-iphone</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Iomega SuperHero is a charger and backup station for the iPhone and iPod Touch.(Credit:Nicole Lee/CNET)One of the unsung accessories at this year'sCES might be the Iomega SuperHero, a device that lets you charge and back up youriPhone with an SD card. It looks like a simple docking station, but on the back is an SD card slot that you can use to back up your contacts and photos.As the capacity is limited to 4GB, it's obviously not meant for your music or video collection, and it's not meant as a replacement for iTunes. The idea behind it is that some people don't hook up their phones to the computer that often, and the Iomega SuperHero is an easy way for them to still back up those all-important contacts and photos.  Simply dock the device, and the backup will be done automatically. It will work with the latest-generationiPod Touch, and it might also be useful if you're switching to another iPhone.   You do need to download the free SuperHero iPhone Backup App from the App Store to back up and restore the phone. The charger itself is $70, and is available now. The Iomega SuperHero has an SD card slot on the back. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Four things still in AT&T's iPhone pocket]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=four-things-still-in-atts-iphone-pocket</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=four-things-still-in-atts-iphone-pocket</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:10:21 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Sophia002</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=four-things-still-in-atts-iphone-pocket</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:AP/CBS)Ever since AT&amp;T and Apple introduced the first iPhone four years ago, the carrier has racked in the cash and customers while selling iPhones by the millions. But along with all that success, AT&amp;T also has received heaps of criticism for a creaking network that has saddled users with dropped calls and slow data speeds.Though AT&amp;T doesn't deserve all of the blame, it shouldn't escape it completely. Indeed, when I was at CES last week, I couldn't get aniPhone signal anywhere near the Las Vegas Convention Center. It can be pretty miserable, frankly, which is why Phone users and fence-sitters alike have been clamoring for Apple's device to land at Verizon Wireless for years. And now that a Verizon iPhone looks like a sure thing, AT&amp;T will a few defections. But as even as some consumers switch to Verizon in search of a perceived better network--which is hardly a sure thing, mind you--AT&amp;T still has a few advantages that Verizon can't touch. And these points are nothing to take lately.A global technologyAT&amp;T uses GSM, which is the dominant global cellular technology. Whether you're in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or the Americas, you can find a GSM network for using your iPhone. Verizon, however, uses CDMA, which is present in only a handful of countries outside North America. That list includes Brazil, China, India, and Israel, but you won't find a drop of CDMA across the whole of Europe. Of course, Verizon could close this gap with a dualmode CDMA/GSM device.Voice and dataCurrently, CDMA phones can't transmit voice and data at the same time. To you, that means that you won't be able to be on a call and browse the Web or access your e-mail simultaneously. It's a big change for how many people use the iPhone now, especially when you consider that Apple has made such functionality--you can talk on the phone and get directions to Starbucks!--a centerpiece of some of its ad campaigns. The good news is that the CDMA Development Group will fix this limitation sometime during the first half of next year, but AT&amp;T will have a big ball in its court until then.A faster 3GDespite its troubles, AT&amp;T's HSPA 3G network is theoretically faster than Verizon's EV-DO network. For most people, that has been just a theory, but other users may notice a difference if they live in an area with better AT&amp;T reception. Of course, 3G speed will be irrelevant if Verizon has an LTE handset, but that's an unlikely prospect at this point.PriceIf you're an AT&amp;T user still on contract, switching to Verizon could cost you $624. You'll have to pay the carrier's early termination fee (ETF)--as high as $325--and you'll have to buy a completely new iPhone that supports Verizon's network. Though we don't know Verizon's pricing strategy just yet, I imagine Apple will insist on matching AT&amp;T ($199 for the 16GB model and 32GB for the $299 version). Granted, AT&amp;T does prorate the ETF as you serve out your contract, and Verizon could offer an incentive program for AT&amp;T customers, but it's still going to be an expensive proposition.CNET will bring you live coverage of Verizon's event tomorrow, January 11, at 11 a.m. ET, so be sure to check back for the full story. In the meantime, tell us what you're expecting from the Verizon iPhone.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[CES: AOC shows 0.3-inch thick monitor]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-aoc-shows-0-3-inch-thick-monitor</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-aoc-shows-0-3-inch-thick-monitor</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 09 Jan 2011 08:10:07 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>parwinrestalk</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-aoc-shows-0-3-inch-thick-monitor</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Thin.(Credit:AOC)LAS VEGAS--It appears the ultrathin monitor wars have begun. AtCES this week, LG showed off its 0.28-inch thick E2290V monitor. And not to be outdone, or at least in an attempt to not be outdone, AOC revealed its i2352Fh monitor with a 0.37 profile length. Not quite as thin as LG's offering, but still thinner than anything else we've yet seen in monitors.The 23.6-inch AOC monitor is, however, wall-mountable--unlike, as far as we could tell, the E2290V. Also, the AOC comes with two HDMI ports.No pricing or release date info has been confirmed yet by AOC.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Facebook dominates Hitwise list of top searches]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-dominates-hitwise-list-of-top-searches</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-dominates-hitwise-list-of-top-searches</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 29 Dec 2010 08:10:23 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Imminkamumb</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-dominates-hitwise-list-of-top-searches</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:Experian Hitwise)Just in case you haven't had your fill yet of top-10 lists and countdowns for 2010, today, courtesy of traffic company Experian Hitwise, we give you two more lists related to the Web: most-searched terms and top-visited sites in the U.S. for 2010.For the second year in a row, Facebook was the Internet's most-searched term in the U.S. between January and November, followed by a range of mostly navigational search terms: facebook login, youtube, craigslist, myspace, facebook.com, ebay, yahoo, www.facebook.com, and mapquest. In other words, iterations of Facebook grabbed four of the top 10 spots, according to the traffic company's annual survey of search queries. Overall, Hitwise found that social network-related terms dominated the results for most-searched terms in the U.S., accounting for 4.18 percent of the top 50 searches.New search terms in the top 50, according to Hitwise, included: netflix, verizon wireless, espn, chase, pogo, tagged, wells fargo, yellow pages, poptropica, games, and hulu.But lest you think Web users have gotten less tabloid-y, here's the juicy stuff: the top five people searches this year, in order, are: Kim Kardashian, Oprah, Rush Limbaugh, Miley Cyrus, and Glenn Beck.Moving on to top-visited sites, Facebook this year beat out Google for the most-visited Web site. Google was No. 2 on the list, followed by Yahoo Mail, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN, MySpace, Hotmail, Yahoo Search, and Bing.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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