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<title>Haaze.com / James01 / Voted News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:11:38 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
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<title><![CDATA[GE refrigerators go on greenhouse gas diet]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ge-refrigerators-go-on-greenhouse-gas-diet</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ge-refrigerators-go-on-greenhouse-gas-diet</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:11:38 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>berrycrrrr</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ge-refrigerators-go-on-greenhouse-gas-diet</guid>
<description><![CDATA[GE will change the gas used when pouring in foam insulation for refrigerator products, a move which will reduce greenhouse gases from production significantly.(Credit:Screen capture by Martin LaMonica/CNET)General Electric's latest green-technology initiative will be found in unlikely place: the inside of a refrigerator. The industrial giant tomorrow will announce that it has changed its refrigerator manufacturing to use a gas that dramatically reduces the amount of greenhouse gases emitted. GE will host an event at a Decatur, Ala., plant where the atmosphere-friendly gas has first been introduced into GE's refrigerators.The gas, called cyclopentane, is used as a blowing agent for the foam insulation poured into refrigeration products during manufacture. GE said it will spend about $16 million to convert its Decatur facility, part of a larger investment in the facility, to use cyclopentane instead of HFC 134a, a refrigerant which traps heat in the atmosphere. By switching over, GE will eliminate the same amount of greenhouse gases that 78,000cars emit in a year, representing a 99 percent reduction, according to GE. The calculations were made using EPA data for the global-warming potential of different gases and were done in conjunction with consulting company GreenOrder, a GE representative said. GE Appliances is making the switch to live up to the company's Ecomagination initiative to develop green-technology products and reduce the company's environmental footprint, said Paul Surowiec, the general manager for refrigeration at GE Appliances and Lighting. The company took a &quot;clean sheet&quot; approach to making refrigeration products to consider the performance as well as the environmental attributes from production to disposal, he said.&quot;There certainly were pockets before but we've seen a significant increase in the desire of consumers to hold us accountable for environmental stewardship,&quot; Surowiec said. &quot;We were looking for optimization from an environment and energy perspective and this one hit home.&quot;During operation, the blowing agent will improve the effectiveness of the insulation slightly, he added. GE earlier this year said it will participate in an EPA program to dispose of refrigerators so that ozone-depleting and greenhouse gases are captured when they are recycled.The company plans to introduce cyclopentane to its other refrigeration products manufactured in the U.S. by 2014.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[MIT software could bring 'DNA origami' to the masses]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mit-software-could-bring-dna-origami-to-the-masses</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mit-software-could-bring-dna-origami-to-the-masses</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hundigranna</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mit-software-could-bring-dna-origami-to-the-masses</guid>
<description><![CDATA[DNA molecules are not merely carriers of information. They are also highly stable and programmable, which is why researchers have been working so feverishly on a design strategy called DNA origami.And now a team at MIT is developing a program that makes the game playable by more than just a select few.Mark Blathe of MIT(Credit:Dominick Reuter)DNA origami--constructing specific 2D and 3D shapes out of DNA strands--could prove to be a highly effective means of developing nanoscale tools, such as synthetic photocells that perform artificial photosynthesis and highly targeted drugs (think of sending a cancer drug to hunt down a specific tumor).But it's still young. Paul Rothemund of CalTech first introduced DNA origami in 2006 (thereby making the cover of Nature and delivering a TED Talk showing tiny DNA smiley faces), and William Shih's lab at Harvard Medical School was able to up the game from 2D to 3D a few years later.The result is that today a small number of brilliant and highly specialized minds are bent over a nanoscale game of origami, playing with various sequences to try to build specific shapes for specific tasks. Imagine a room of highly sophisticated gamers playing with building blocks in a world without Tetris' if they had the game, they'd be able to work faster.This is where the team at MIT, led by biological engineer Mark Bathe, comes in. They've developed software that makes it far easier, with a given DNA template, to predict the three-dimensional shape that will result.&quot;They're sort of building blocks, but it's even more crude because DNA is just a sequence,&quot; Bathe says. &quot;It's taking the places you would connect the DNA together and predicting with a computer what it would look like in the final shape. The goal is to really have this be in the inverse, so the designer wants to make a box or a basket or a gear and then the program tries different folding combinations to give you the shape you want.&quot;DNA comprises a string of four nucleotide bases called A, T, G, and C, with A binding only with T and G only with C. Rothemund found that he was able to get a long strand of DNA to fold using a viral genome that consisted of 8,000 of these nucleotides to create 2D stars, triangles, and yes, those smiley faces. That one strand served as a scaffold for the rest of the structure, with literally hundreds of shorter strands (only 20 to 40 bases in length) combining with the long strand to hold its desired shape.Bathe says his software presented a mathematical and computation challenge, but that because DNA is governed by physics in terms of how it bends and twists and folds, DNA origami is very clean and obedient. Proteins, he says, are much messier, making protein-folding far more complex, which is why the game Foldit exists. (Researchers opened the process up to the masses in the hopes that a greater volume of people working on the problem might speed up progress.)Bathe and his team, who haven't resorted to a game just yet, provide a primer of their software in the Feb. 25 issue of Nature Methods, and they're already working on making the program more automated and &quot;unsupervised,&quot; because at this point it's still largely manual.&quot;Designers still have to guess the rules and then based on the shape modify the rules to get closer to the shape,&quot; Bathe says. &quot;It's the Holy Grail to say, 'I want this,' and then it happens. We've made quite some progress already, so I think in the next half year to a year that should be coming out.&quot;Ever the optimist, Bathe was quoted in the MIT news release saying, &quot;Once nonspecialists can design arbitrary 3D nanostructures using DNA origami, their imaginations can run free.&quot; Ever the realist, I had to ask whether such an achievement might also be risky in the wrong hands. For Bathe, this is the conundrum we face in light of most advancements' the potential for progress, he hopes, far outweighs the risks.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Zapoint constructs resumes from social networks]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zapoint-constructs-resumes-from-social-networks</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zapoint-constructs-resumes-from-social-networks</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Mar 2011 07:10:03 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>maralyn45</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=zapoint-constructs-resumes-from-social-networks</guid>
<description><![CDATA[&quot;Office Depot has 40,000 employees, and they don't know who there speaks Vietnamese,&quot; Chris Twyman, the CEO of Zapoint, says in his pitch. The Cambridge, Mass., company is launching a &quot;Skills Map&quot; for 300 major companies that, he says, will tell them more about their employees than anything in their own human resources systems.Zapoint gleans this data from information that people post on personal social-network pages -- Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on. Unlike resumes, which employees may update only when they're job hunting and even then not make public, people continually self-report and publicize a lot of work-related skills data. They just don't do it with job hunting or career development in mind. And employers generally can't capture it because their data collection systems (such as they are), are inward-focused. They don't look out toward social networks. Zapoint&amp;39's Skills Mapper can compare two people at a company -- or people from different companies.(Credit:Zapoint) On the other side of the fence, the data that big employers do have about their workers is generally walled off from the public. Who you report to, what training you have, and so on -- that stuff is not made public. Twyman thinks that's an archaic way to manage information about a workforce. &quot;The social nets are marching in. You've got to embrace them,&quot; he said in an interview earlier this month.  So Zapoint, which was founded in 2006, is attacking these silos of employee information by creating a series of reports on the people at 300 major companies. It's focusing on general job descriptions and doing cross-industry comparisons. For example, marketing execs at pharmaceutical companies. The company is figuring who's who, and who has what skills. It knows how good an entire team is at a given company, too, since it knows who works with whom. It knows names. &quot;It's LinkedIn on speed,&quot; Twyman said. If you're one of the people who's been corralled in a Zapoint roundup, now your skill set can be compared to your competitors. Maybe you think that that's good, maybe not, but you can't do much about it. If you're in HR, the worry is that now your competitors can see who your best-trained people are, and poach them. But there is an upside. Individuals could also use this information to see how they stack up, and start working toward improving their skills in ways that matter' or they could use the competitive information to get promotions or raises. Likewise, employers can use the data for skills development. And at the moment, Zapoint is not actually releasing individual dossiers and names. It is telling the 300 companies that it has profiled that it has the data, and is showing them only information in the aggregate. It will sell them the names attached to the data, though, and then let them fill in the information that Zapoint can't collect: the org chart that shows how all the people and skills are arrayed in a business. I'm not sure that Zapoint's pitch to businesses -- &quot;We have data about your people' pay us and you can have it too&quot; -- will go over so well, but the company is one of several that is taking the historically private information of what we do at work and how well we do it, and making it public (See also: Honestly.com). The days of being able to hide behind a desk are coming to an end.Watch&amp;149' Reporters' Roundtable: Who owns your online identity<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Day 1 for devices at CTIA]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=day-1-for-devices-at-ctia</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=day-1-for-devices-at-ctia</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Mar 2011 07:10:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>malabugerfd</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=day-1-for-devices-at-ctia</guid>
<description><![CDATA[HTC Evo 3D(Credit:Kent German/CNET)ORLANDO, Fla.--Day one at CTIA 2011 is done and despite a certain merger hanging over everyone's head, carriers and manufacturers didn't disappoint the crowd with new devices. A few announcements trickled out yesterday, but today was the day when companies rolled out the big guns. Here's a review of what we've seen so far.For more day one coverage, check out Maggie Reardon's post on spectrum and this morning's keynote with the CEOs of AT&amp;T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless.SprintLike it has done the past few years, Sprint did its best to throw one ofCTIA's biggest bashes. It started Monday making news even as much of the wireless nation was flying to Florida. The news that it would offer the first 4G (and first CDMA) Samsung Nexus S will please Android purists while Google Voice fans should welcome Sprint's plans to integrate the service into all of its phones.Today, Sprint unveiled two additional Android devices, the Evo View and the Evo 3D. The former is a slightly revamped version of the HTC Flyertablet that debuted last month as Mobile World Congress. Sprint kept almost everything, including HTC's Scribe technology, while adding WiMax support and a black finish. The Evo 3D meanwhile is a Gingerbread-equipped smartphone with the ability to record 3D video and shoots 3D still photos. Sammy&amp;39's new Galaxy tablets are very thin.(Credit:Bonnie Cha/CNET)SamsungTablets were on Samsung's mind. The company held its own press conference this morning where it showed off the Samsung Galaxy 8.9 and 10.1 tablets. Billed as the &quot;world's thinnest tablets,&quot; both devices measure just 8.6 millimeters deep. That's thinner than the other Galaxy 10.1 and just a hair's thinner than the iPad 2 (8.8 millimeters). The major difference between the two is the size of their WXGA (1,280x800) displays (obviously, one measures 10.1 inches and the other is 8.9 inches). Features, however, are the same. Both run Honeycomb and Samsung's new TouchWiz UX for tablets. They also have dual-core processors, 1080p HD video playback, a rear-facing 3-megapixel camera and a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video calls.The LG Thrill 4G can play and record 3D video.(Credit:Nicole Lee/CNET)LGNot to be outdone, LG announced the LG G2X for T-Mobile. Like the LG Optimus 2X (this is the U.S. version), the G2X has a 1.0 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core and a load of features. It only runs Froyo, but it supports T-Mobile's HSPA+ network.Next up is the LG Thrill 4G for AT&amp;T. As the U.S. version of the LG Optimus 3D (yet another Mobile World Congress phone) the Thrill 4G is all about its 3D video recording. As we said with the Optimus handset, the 3D effect is subtle but pretty nifty. LG also announced the Optimus C for Cricket and a few accessories including Bluetooth headsets and a wireless charging pad.The restEven Nokia found time to offer up something in Orlando. It's not aWindows Phone 7 device, but runs on Symbian instead (you heard us right). The Nokia Astound will arrive at AT&amp;T on April 6. If you thought it was basically the Nokia C7, you'd be correct as the two handsets have a lot in common. It sports a 3.5-inch AMOLED touch screen, a rear-facing 8-megapixel with 720p HD video capture, and a front-facing camera for video calls. AT&amp;T also is getting the Acer Iconia Tab A501. That's an Android Honeycomb tablet with an Nvidia dual-core processor, a 10-inch WXGA multitouch screen, and 1080p HD video output via its HDMI port. So that's it from day one of CTIA. Hang tight for all the news from day two! <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Bing's search engine share continues to rise]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bings-search-engine-share-continues-to-rise</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bings-search-engine-share-continues-to-rise</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:10:07 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Kaxagomia</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=bings-search-engine-share-continues-to-rise</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In February, Microsoft's Bing continued its slow but steady rise, grabbing a slightly higher chunk of the U.S. search engine market, according to data released Friday by ComScore.Among the three top search engines, Microsoft's share of the search market rose to 13.6 percent, up half a percentage point compared with January. In comparison, Google lost two-tenths of a percentage point but still dominated the market with 65.4 percent of all searches in February, while Yahoo's share stayed flat at 16.1 percent.(Credit:ComScore)Though Microsoft may have picked up more share, the number of searches conducted at Bing fell to 2.1 billion, down 5 percent compared with the previous month. But those numbers were still better than those at the other search engines. In February, Google saw the number of searches at its site fall by 9 percent to 10.1 billion, while Yahoo also witnessed a 9 percent drop with its total number of searches declining to 2.5 billion. ComScore said the lower number of searches last month is simply because February is a shorter month than January.Overall, Internet users conducted around 15.4 billion explicit core searches last month, compared with 16.9 billion run in January.As always, the results focused on the total number of explicit core searches--search terms manually entered on a Web page. ComScore also looked at the number of &quot;powered by&quot; searches, those conducted both at a search engine's own site and at other sites.Google's &quot;powered by&quot; share of searches at its own site and those at AOL and Ask fell to 68 percent, down from 68.2 percent in January. Microsoft's &quot;powered by&quot; share of searches at Bing and at Yahoo rose to 26.2 percent, which was 25.6 percent the prior month.<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[Mozy getting a taste of Dropbox: file sync]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mozy-getting-a-taste-of-dropbox-file-sync</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mozy-getting-a-taste-of-dropbox-file-sync</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2011 08:10:03 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>shimon2011</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=mozy-getting-a-taste-of-dropbox-file-sync</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Mozy, the online backup service, is testing out a bit of technology offered by rival DropBox: file synchronization.The company started telling customers today that it's begun closed beta testing of the sync feature, which will let files stored on one machine automatically be replicated on another. It's a big advancement over Mozy's bread-and-butter of file backup, transforming the service into something people actively use rather than run passively in the background. It also dovetails with the multicomputer subscription plans Mozy introduced in January at the same time it announced it's ditching unlimited-data backup.Also taking a page from Dropbox, Mozy announced mobile apps for Android,iPhone, andiPad that let people access their archived files. Again, this makes an archive more actively useful.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[At Demo Spring, start-ups sow seeds]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=at-demo-spring-start-ups-sow-seeds</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=at-demo-spring-start-ups-sow-seeds</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:10:01 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>JEANNE100246CA</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=at-demo-spring-start-ups-sow-seeds</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The confab gives young companies six minutes to make their spiel. In a landscape brimming with such shows, is Demo still worth the admission feeFlyRuby aims to make booking a private jet easierPresenting at the Demo Spring conference, start-up says it has found a way to cut down on the inefficiencies in the jet charter business. Think an Expedia for private jets.(Posted in Geek Gestalt by Daniel Terdiman) February 28, 2011 10:53 a.m. PTRob Glaser's SocialEyes: Facebook-connected videophoneGlaser's latest venture is a videoconferencing company with an interesting, new social dynamic.(Posted in Rafe's Radar by Rafe Needleman)February 28, 2011 6:00 a.m. PTAt Demo, virtual dressing rooms promise big salesSwivel, from FaceCake Marketing Technologies, and Webcam Social Shopper, from Zugara, are latest to offer online clothing retailers ways for customers to &quot;try on&quot; clothing from their own homes.February 28, 2011 2:34 p.m. PTDemo confab holds its own against upstart rivalsAs Demo Spring 2011 kicks off today, the old stalwart of the start-up conference circuit looks as strong as ever. But with new efforts from Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis elbowing in, can Demo survive(Posted in Geek Gestalt by Daniel Terdiman)February 28, 2011 4:00 a.m. PTStream your own video content to iPads with JetStream HDWith its hardware appliance, the start-up, which is at Demo Spring this week, hopes to make it easy to stream all kinds of media content from your own home computer or media server to aniPad or other mobile device. (Posted in Geek Gestalt by Daniel Terdiman)February 27, 2011 9:01 p.m. PTPrimadesk offers personal control over your cloudThe new service, which is launching at Demo Spring this week, aims to give users the ability to control all kinds of files, documents, photos, and more from a wide variety of Web-based applications.(Posted in Geek Gestalt by Daniel Terdiman)February 27, 2011 9:01 p.m. PT.postBody h3, .postBody h4{font-size: 1.2em'margin: 10px 0 0 0 'padding: 0px'font-weight: bold'border-bottom: none'}<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Windows Phone 7's first update bricking some phones]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-phone-7s-first-update-bricking-some-phones</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-phone-7s-first-update-bricking-some-phones</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:10:29 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>kristlelev</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=windows-phone-7s-first-update-bricking-some-phones</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Oops.(Credit:Matt Hickey, Bonnie Cha/CNET)Users ofWindows Phone 7 handsets must have had high hopes when Microsoft released a patch yesterday that updated the operating system to improve the process of installing a forthcoming OS update. But some users, notably those with Samsung's Omnia 7, are reporting that the patch is bricking their phones, making them useless.It's not all Omnias, and we can't confirm if its happening on other Windows Phones, but there are reports on Web sites like WinRumors and Twitter that some users say the update is making their phones unusable. In response, Microsoft, via the Windows Phone support Twitter feed, recommends that affected users return to the store where they purchased them and exchange it for a new handset.When contacted today by CNET, Microsoft said it's reviewing the reports of bricking.&quot;We are investigating reports related to the Windows Phone update process and will provide additional information and guidance as it becomes available,&quot; a Microsoft spokesperson told CNET.The first major update for Windows Phone 7 is expected in the coming months, though Microsoft hasn't given a concrete date yet.Omnia users, have you had any luck, good or bad, with this new patch Let us know in the comments.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft announces plans for Kinect SDK]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-announces-plans-for-kinect-sdk</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-announces-plans-for-kinect-sdk</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:10:12 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>cailing</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-announces-plans-for-kinect-sdk</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft&amp;39's Kinect(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET) Microsoft announced plans today to release a software development kit for its Kinect game motion controller later this spring.In a move that was widely rumored, Microsoft said the Kinect for Windows SDK will allow third-party developers to create software titles that use a Kinect motion sensor plugged directly into a Windows PC. This noncommercial &quot;starter version&quot; SDK will give users access to deep Kinect system information such as audio, system application-programming interfaces, and direct control of the Kinect sensor, Microsoft said. The company also plans to release a commercial version at a later date.&quot;Microsoft's investments in natural user interfaces are vital to our long-term vision of creating computers that are intuitive to use and able to do far more for us,&quot; Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, said in the company's announcement. &quot;The fruits of these research investments are manifesting across many of our products, Kinect forXbox 360 among them.&quot;Since its official launch last November, hackers have found all sorts of creative ways to put the sensor bar's 3D imaging capabilities to good use. Among them: tweaks that turn the sensor bar into a 3D camera, allow for multitouch photo manipulation without the need for a touch screen, and make it possible to create midair 3D doodles.Microsoft initially reacted negatively to these &quot;hacks,&quot; but then it seemed to warm up to the idea, explaining that the Kinect was designed to be an open platform. In response to a $3,000 challenge last year by the open-source hardware outfit Adafruit Industries to come up with a hardware hack of the Kinect, Microsoft had said it did not &quot;condone&quot; such behavior. When asked at this year's Consumer Electronics Show whether Microsoft would allow the ability to plug a Kinect into a PC, CEO Steve Ballmer said the company would formally support it at the right time, although his timing was a little vague.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[NASA probe streaks past comet in picture-perfect flyby]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nasa-probe-streaks-past-comet-in-picture-perfect-flyby</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nasa-probe-streaks-past-comet-in-picture-perfect-flyby</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:11:08 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>hprjzkwti</dc:creator>
<category>Social</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nasa-probe-streaks-past-comet-in-picture-perfect-flyby</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Twelve years after launch and seven years after it collected dust from comet Wild 2, NASA's Stardust probe streaked past comet Tempel 1 late Monday, capturing 72 Valentine's Day closeups to find out how the icy body has changed since it was visited by another NASA spacecraft in 2005.The renamed Stardust-New Exploration of Tempel mission--Stardust-NExT--passed within about 110 miles of the nucleus of Tempel 1 at 11:40 p.m. EST Monday, using its navigation camera to snap a string of images and recording thousands of dust grain impacts as it raced past at a relative velocity of 24,300 mph.These three separate images (combined by author for illustration purposes) of comet Tempel 1 were captured by the Stardust-NExT spacecraft during close approach late Monday. The bottom image shows the general location of a crater that was excavated by NASA&amp;39's Deep Impact probe during a 2005 encounter.(Credit:NASA)Because of an unexplained software glitch, it took longer than expected for the close-approach pictures to reach Earth, but that was of little consequence to the engineers, flight controllers, and scientists eagerly awaiting the results.&quot;If you ask me was this mission 100 percent successful in terms of the science, I'd have to say no. It was a thousand percent successful!&quot; Joe Veverka, the Stardust-NExT principal investigator at Cornell University, said Tuesday during a post-encounter news briefing.The $300 million Stardust mission was launched in 1999. On January 2, 2004, the spacecraft flew past comet Wild 2, using an innovative collector to capture particles from the coma, the cloud of debris surrounding the nucleus. Passing back by Earth two years later, a small re-entry capsule carrying the collected material was ejected and fell to a landing in Utah where it was recovered for detailed analysis.In the meantime, NASA carried out the Deep Impact mission, sending another spacecraft to comet Tempel 1, a roughly potato-shaped body with a nucleus measuring 4.7 miles long by 3 miles wide. During a dramatic encounter in 2005, Deep Impact released an instrumented probe that crashed into the comet, throwing up a cloud of debris from the surface. The Deep Impact spacecraft monitored the crash from a safe distance and carried out remote observations with cameras and other instruments.With the Stardust probe still healthy after its successful mission to Wild 2, NASA approved a $29 million mission extension and agreed to send the spacecraft to Tempel 1 to study how the comet had changed during a full trip around the sun.Veverka said Tempel 1 turned out to be &quot;unusually interesting.&quot;&quot;In places on Tempel 1, we see layered terrains, which probably contain information about how comet nuclei are put together, and we would like to see more of these terrains,&quot; he said during a pre-encounter briefing, explaining why Tempel 1 was targeted for a second visit. &quot;Deep Impact saw only about a third of the surface. We would like to see more.&quot;Deep Impact also showed areas that appear to be smooth flow-like deposits, along with crater-like features that could be ancient vents.But Veverka said the most important reason to return to Tempel 1 was that &quot;this will be an opportunity, for the first time, to see how much a comet changes between two close passages to the sun.&quot;&quot;Deep Impact saw the comet in 2005, we're going to be seeing it one comet year later, just after its closest passage to the sun in 2011,&quot; he said. &quot;We know comets lose material, but the question is, how much does the surface change and where does the surface change So we'll be able to answer that question by comparing our images with those taken by Deep Impact in 2005.&quot;After a quick assessment of the images returned by Stardust-NExT, Veverka said numerous surface features have, in fact, changed. The large flow-like deposit, for example, appears to be receding as water ice evaporates and carries dust particles away. In one area along the deposit's boundary, structures that were visible in 2005 appear to have eroded away.The Valentine's Day flyby was set up with a major rocket firing one year ago that put the craft on a trajectory that ensured it would be able to photograph the Deep Impact crash site as well as other, unseen areas of Tempel 1.&quot;That impact threw up so much ejecta that Deep Impact never saw the crater,&quot; Veverka said before the Stardust-NExT encounter. &quot;So it could never complete the experiment, to see how big the crater is and what that tells us about the mechanical properties of the comet's surface. That's important if we're ever going to go back to a comet, land a spacecraft on the surface, dig up material from the surface, bring it back to Earth...So here, we have a chance to complete the deep impact experiment.&quot;As it turned out, the targeting maneuver a year ago was right on the money and the Deep Impact crash site was captured by the Stardust-NExT navigation camera, although it was difficult for the untrained eye to make it out.&quot;We saw the crater,&quot; said Pete Schultz, a Stardust-NExT co-investigator at Brown University. &quot;It's subdued, it's about 150 meters across and has a small central mound in the center. It looks as if from the impact, the stuff went up and came back down. So we did get it, there's no doubt. I think one of the bottom-line messages is that this surface of the comet where we hit is very weak. It's fragile. So the crater partly healed itself.&quot;Stardust-NExT has covered some 3.5 billion miles since launch in 1999. The spacecraft is still healthy, but it does not have enough fuel left to carry out any additional encounters.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google extends two-step log-in process to all]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-extends-two-step-log-in-process-to-all</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-extends-two-step-log-in-process-to-all</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Feb 2011 08:10:49 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Adam01</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=google-extends-two-step-log-in-process-to-all</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This screen can be found in Google under &amp;34'Account Settings,&amp;34' linked on top of a Google page, and used to set up two-step verification.(Credit:Googl)Now all Google users can take advantage of the two-step log-in procedure previously available to Google Apps customers. The company started rolling out the option to use two-step verification to Google Account holders today, according to a blog post. The idea comes from a classic security tactic, the notion that accounts are more secure when you log in using two factors: something you know, such as a password, and something that only you have, such as your phone.Google Apps users started using this feature in September. Account holders log in to Google as usual, but the first time they enable the two-step process they will receive a code via a voice call or text message, or they can generate their own code using a mobile app available foriPhone, Android, or BlackBerry. That code can be saved for 30 days. Obviously it will be much harder for anyone bent on hacking your account to steal a code sent to your phone (unless you're a valuable enough target to warrant stealing your phone and hacking your password). It's an optional feature, but one strongly recommended by security experts.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Verizon's iPhone 4 packs 'world mode' chip]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-4-packs-world-mode-chip</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-4-packs-world-mode-chip</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 08:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>bimpnorejbillty</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=verizons-iphone-4-packs-world-mode-chip</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Teardowns of Apple'sVerizoniPhone 4 reveal a Qualcomm &quot;world mode&quot; chip and redesigned antenna, among other modifications to the heretofore AT&amp;T-only phone. Both iFixit and UBM TechInsights have taken apart the phone exposing more than a few non-trivial changes. Foremost of these changes is the Qualcomm MDM6600 chip--a first for an Apple phone. That is the same chip that's being used in the Droid Pro world phone, which enables the Droid to support both CDMA and GSM. But, for now, that capability in the iPhone remains a latent, untapped potential.Other Verizon iPhone 4 iFixit teardown highlights: Battery: the battery can be removed &quot;fairly easily once you circumvent Apple's pesky Pentalobe screws,&quot; iFixit said. Antenna: an additional notch in the antenna enclosure on the right side of the phone is a result of the switch from GSM to CDMA. &quot;Only time will tell if this new antenna design helps combat the reception problems plaguing the GSM iPhone 4,&quot; iFixit said. Display: the display assembly is different from the GSM iPhone 4. The mounting tabs are in different locations for the two display assemblies. Upshot: the two assemblies are not interchangeable.Rubber pads: Apple used custom-molded rubber pads between the chips and the EMI shields. &quot;Presumably to conduct heat and quell any interference between analog and digital circuitry.&quot;Chips: Other high-profile silicon, in addition to the Qualcomm MDM6600, include Apple's A4 chip (of course) and Texas Instruments touchscreen controller (343S0499).Verizon iPhone 4: in the upper circuit board, the chip with the red outline is the Qualcomm MDM6600, the orange outlined chip is the Toshiba 16GB NAND Flash.(Credit:iFixit)The Verizon iPhone 4 earned a Repairability Score of 6 out of 10, iFixit said. Aside from the battery's annoying Pentalobe screws, &quot;other components are connected mostly with regular screws, with limited use of tabs and adhesives.&quot; iFixit also notes that the SIM card and SIM tray were the only user-serviceable parts in the AT&amp;T iPhone 4. &quot;Sadly, now the Verizon iPhone does not contain any user-serviceable parts.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Will Sandy Bridge issues delay new Apple MacBooks]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-sandy-bridge-issues-delay-new-apple-macbooks</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-sandy-bridge-issues-delay-new-apple-macbooks</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>dotali</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=will-sandy-bridge-issues-delay-new-apple-macbooks</guid>
<description><![CDATA[MacBook Pros: Sooner or later(Credit:CNET)With Intel's surprising Sandy Bridge news suggesting new computers featuring the processors might see delays, we couldn't help but ask ourselves whether the Sandy Bridge issues mean new MacBook Pros will come later rather than sooner. First of all, we have no idea when new MacBook Pros are hitting next. However, assuming they're due for a refresh within the next few months, a few things seem likely: They're going to receive new Sandy Bridge processors, including the older Core 2 Duo-toting 13-inch MacBook Pro. And, they'll likely arrive after the competition. At least, that's been the case for recent MacBook Pros, including last year's Core i-series updates.New Sandy Bridge laptops have been expected somewhere around the end of February. Even if that timeframe doesn't shift, consider that last year's Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs became available immediately afterCES. Apple's new MacBook Pros debuted in April. If that same pattern held true this year, tea leaves would point to somewhere around the end of May/early June.Now we're taking our Nostradamus hats off. Certainly, we'll be hearing news soon enough as to how OEMs will be handling the Sandy Bridge situation.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Sony announces HX100V, HX9V high-end megazooms]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-announces-hx100v-hx9v-high-end-megazooms</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-announces-hx100v-hx9v-high-end-megazooms</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>watchfamilyguyerz</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=sony-announces-hx100v-hx9v-high-end-megazooms</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sony Cyber-shot HX100V(Credit:Sony )Sony's top-of-the-line full-size megazoom was due for a refresh and here it is. The Cyber-shot HX100V updates the HX1 to something that's actually competitive with models from other manufacturers. The HX100V has a new 30x f2.8-5.6 27-810mm Carl Zeiss lens, a 16-megapixel backside-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, and an articulated 3-inch 921K-dot resolution LCD, as well as an electronic viewfinder. Many of the shooting features are carried over from the DSC-TX9, such as its high-speed burst at 10 frames per second, Superior Auto, and 3D Sweep Panorama. There are new options here, though, including 3D stills' full HD 1080/60p movie capture in AVCHD' Intelligent Sweep Panorama HR (for high resolution) that captures panoramic photos at up to 42.9 megapixels (10,480x4,096 resolution)' and a Dual Rec mode for shooting photos while recording video (they'll be at the resolution of the video, though, and it won't work if you're recording at 60p). The HX100V also has a built-in compass and GPS for geotagging your photos while you shoot. Sony includes Optical Steady Shot image stabilization as well and an Active mode to help when you're walking with the camera and shooting video. There's a new autofocus system, too, that promises digital SLR-like AF speeds, which is probably the thing I'm most interested in testing. Lastly, it has manual and semimanual shooting modes. Unfortunately, there is no raw capture option--you're stuck with JPEG.Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX9V(Credit:Sony)The HX9V replaces the HX5V. It gets the same sensor as the HX100V, but has a 16x f3.3-5.9 24-384mm Sony G lens. The shooting modes and feature sets are fairly identical, so you'll have the 3-inch high-res LCD (minus the articulated part), manual control, full HD 1080/60p movie capture, 3D photos, and built-in GPS and compass. The cameras will be available in April with preorders starting in February. The DSC-HX100V and DSC-HX9V cameras will be available in black and will cost $449.99 and $349.99, respectively.There's a new Party-shot dock, too. Basically you put your camera on it, press a button, and the thing starts automatically searching and shooting photos of people in the room. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX100V and DSC-HX9V (photos) <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google's Niels Provos battles malware on the Web]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-niels-provos-battles-malware-on-the-web</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-niels-provos-battles-malware-on-the-web</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 08:10:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>zilimbimoppy</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-niels-provos-battles-malware-on-the-web</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Niels Provos heads up Google's Safe Browsing initiative, which flags sites containing malware.(Credit:James Martin/CNET)During 2000 and 2001, Ph.D. student Niels Provos would occasionally drive from the University of Michigan across the border into Canada and spend the weekend working on an open-source cryptography project that would end up becoming one of the most widely used network security technologies ever: OpenSSH. He couldn't work on it in his Ann Arbor office, or he would have run afoul of restrictive U.S. export regulations designed to keep strong crypto out of the hands of foreigners. Several years later, Provos moved his research papers and software related to steganography, which is the science of hiding secret messages, from servers at the U.S. university to a server in the Netherlands to avoid violating Michigan law. He was concerned (and so was the Electronic Frontier Foundation) that the law--which made it illegal to develop software that conceals &quot;the existence or place of origin of any telecommunications service&quot;--was so vague as to allow it to apply to his research. After the legislation was later watered down, he moved his stuff back to the states.  &quot;One of the things I love about him is he's guileless,&quot; says Dug Song, who studied with Provos at the University of Michigan, drove him on some of his cross-border code-writing runs, and later co-founded Duo Security. &quot;He's a very honest and open person, [and] he has a lot of integrity.&quot;  Now at Google, Provos leads the Safe Browsing team, whose technology identifies sites that are dangerous and flags them in Google search results so searchers won't have their computers compromised. The Safe Browsing technology, the first search engine-based service of its kind when it launched in mid-2006, keeps hundreds of millions of Internet users safe every day from malware lurking in Web sites.  In addition to worrying about protecting Web surfers' computers, Provos also is conscientious about safeguarding consumer privacy and he pushed for Google to delete user data collected by the team after two weeks, which is a short retention period for any Internet company collecting data. &quot;We spent a lot of time figuring out what was right,&quot; he told CNET in a recent interview. &quot;Google never knows which site you go to,&quot; using obfuscation techniques when checking for malicious content, and this method also reduces the amount of data transmitted to the browser, he added.  &quot;He's always thinking about the user, especially when it comes to privacy matters,&quot; says Panayiotis Mavrommatis, a senior software engineer on the Safe Browsing team. &quot;He's not afraid to say, we cannot store this information or we should give the user the option to opt out when it comes to privacy.&quot;21st century craftsmanProvos' background explains a lot of his current interests. He grew up in the northern German town of Lubeck (founded in the 12th century) with one brother, who is an antiques dealer' his father, a judge' and his mother, who taught English at night school. The family's house was full of swords, old weapons, and armor. Both his parents practiced the Japanese martial art Aikido, which Provos took up, along with Judo. He and his brother also played soccer and spent a lot of time in the woods nearby, building caves and tree houses.  Provos also played Dungeons and Dragons role playing games in high school with friends. His father sometimes joined in and later wrote a medieval fantasy adventure book based on the stories the group came up with, titled &quot;Sargon Schatz,&quot; which means &quot;Sargon's Treasure.&quot; Provos self-published his father's book in 2008, shortly before his father died. Niels Provos spends his days working on serious security stuff, but shows a sense of fun by indulging a photographer's whimsy at Google&amp;39's headquarters. Now 38, Provos still does Aikido, as well as Japanese Kendo sword fighting, which his father did. He also took up blacksmithing a few years ago and has made kitchen knives and a Japanese Tanto Samurai sword. He is working on a replica of a Viking chest, forging a metal sliding lock, as well as metal straps and hinges as they would historically have been made.  &quot;I strongly believe you need to find a good balance between work and play,&quot; he says. With blacksmithing, Provos likes the &quot;tangible results, and (the fact that) it has nothing to do with computers.&quot; In general, though, his &quot;off&quot; hours have proved to be valuable for his work.  &quot;Most of the ideas I thought were worthwhile I had when I was not working,&quot; he says. &quot;It used to happen when I was walking the dog or taking a shower, when I was doing things not related to the actual problem. Your mind becomes free and all of a sudden this insight happens.&quot;  The discipline for mastering a skill and the appreciation of creating things that are functional and beautifully architected are also reflected in Provos' work in security as a hacker and defender of people's computers and digital secrets. He hammers metal into weapons and turns bits and bytes into digital locks and keys. &quot;Niels is a craftsman,&quot; Song says of his former collaborator and the man who was best man at his wedding. &quot;He brings an academic discipline to engineering--and rigor, but also a craftsman's approach, to software design and implementation.&quot; In addition to working on OpenSSH, free open-source software used to encrypt Internet communications, Provos wrote libevent, a software library released in 2000 that allows programmers to write scalable network programs.  &quot;He has written some of the most widely used and important system software in the world...which forms the core of many of the most important modern network daemons and programs,&quot; Song says. &quot;Libevent was revolutionary at the time in promoting event driven programming.&quot;  Provos also volunteers time serving on the board of directors for USENIX, or the Advanced Computing Technical Association, and working on the Honeynet Project, an international nonprofit security research organization. Going to GoogleProvos' path to security and Google wasn't the most obvious one, given that he started out studying physics at the University of Hamburg. &quot;I really enjoyed physics at first, but at some point you reach these questions about the universe that you can't answer anymore. And all the measurements you do only result in models you can't truly explain,&quot; he says. &quot;Then I went to mathematics and everything could be explained and my world view was good again. But mathematics was kind of dry. Then I started working on cryptography and realized I liked doing computer science.&quot;  He decided to get a PhD in the United States, and the proximity to Canada where he could work on cryptography away from U.S. government scrutiny made the University of Michigan an ideal choice. When he was finishing his degree, Provos assumed he would get a job in a research lab or as a professor at a university. But then he saw a little advertisement in an Association for Computing Machinery publication seeking smart people to work at Google.  &quot;I hadn't really thought of Google at all, but I thought, 'why not'&quot; he says. &quot;I went to the interview and everyone was really smart and enthusiastic about what they worked on...They have fantastic infrastructure and there is so much opportunity to work on interesting projects.&quot; He joined the Mountain View, Calif.-based company in 2003. &quot;...Then I started working on cryptography and realized I liked doing computer science.&quot; --Niels Provos In the early days, he was working on protecting sites against denial-of-service attacks. But then &quot;I realized that malware and compromised Web sites was becoming more of a problem,&quot; he says. &quot;The danger was that this could erode confidence in the Web and at the end of the day hurt Google too.&quot;  So he proposed that engineers leverage the information Google gleans about all the sites its system crawls, figure out which contain malware, and display warning signs before people click on those results. The system was designed so it could be automated on a large scale. Google also tells Webmasters of sites that are flagged what the problem is and offers suggestions for how to fix it.  Safe Browsing protects every Google Web search and warns users of Chrome,Firefox, andSafari when they are about to visit a site that has malware. Webmasters can use the Safe Browsing Application Programming Interface to warn site visitors away from links on their site that lead to malware-infested pages and to prevent users from posting phishing links on the site.  &quot;What I enjoy about Google is that it's possible to do these things. When I started the project, nobody was working on this,&quot; Provos says. &quot;There is a strong team of great engineers. The work is challenging and interesting. I'm very happy.&quot;  Provos has shown his ability to handle pressure gracefully when there is a bump in the road, even a big bump. On Saturday, January 31, 2009, for about 45 minutes, Google mistakenly flagged every Web site in its search results as having malware on it. The problem was quickly fixed, but fearing that his colleagues would be demoralized, Provos called everyone on his team to give them a pep talk.  &quot;He was basically trying to make sure everyone was OK in terms of stress level,&quot; says team member Mavrommatis. &quot;Google is known for not going down ever, and this was one of the major outages in the history of the company. That sort of highlights his personal relations with the team...He is very good with people and a great manager because he cares about the people.&quot; <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[War in the Pacific: A coffee-table book for your iPad]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=war-in-the-pacific-a-coffee-table-book-for-your-ipad</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=war-in-the-pacific-a-coffee-table-book-for-your-ipad</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:10:39 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>haywoodros</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=war-in-the-pacific-a-coffee-table-book-for-your-ipad</guid>
<description><![CDATA[                                A must-have for anyone interested in World War II, War in the Pacific turns a print book into an interactive dazzler.(Credit:Screenshot by Rick Broida)I'm a closet World War II junkie. I sat rapt through Ken Burns' &quot;The War&quot; and HBO's &quot;Band of Brothers.&quot; And I just finished &quot;Unbroken,&quot; the mesmerizing, jaw-dropping tale of WWII POW Louis Zamperini. (Seriously, if you read no other book this year...)So I was very keen to thumb through War in the Pacific, an iPad application based on an eponymous coffee-table book published early last year. And that's the best way I can describe it: a coffee-table book for your iPad.But you've never seen a print edition like this. The e-book's 20 chapters fill five main sections spanning the years between 1941 and 1945. Each gorgeously illustrated page includes supplemental materials such as photos, secret documents, archival videos, and profiles of historical figures.In other words, imagine a typical historical tome, but with photos you can zoom in on, a timeline you can view and hide at will, the occasional video corresponding to a passage in the text, a search function, and so on. It reminds me of the multimedia-enhanced &quot;interactive&quot; CD-ROMs of the '80s, but formatted to take advantage of the iPad.War in the Pacific ($9.99) has two other noteworthy features: animated, narrated maps of each of the five sections, and a three-dimensional scrolling wall of all the photos contained in the book. The latter is pretty cool, though the photos themselves don't zoom to fill the screen--perhaps because many of them are a bit soft to begin with.My key gripe about the app is that whenever you return to the main menu or open a new chapter, its dramatic musical score kicks in. Much as I like the music, I'd like the option to turn it off--but there isn't one.Thankfully, the iPad's own volume controls can remedy that. If you have even a passing interest in World War II, I highly recommend this beautifully designed, richly detailed app. It's so good, you might decide to leave your iPad on your coffee table.                 <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Giant batteries steady grid in New York]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=giant-batteries-steady-grid-in-new-york</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=giant-batteries-steady-grid-in-new-york</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:10:45 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jamememaem</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=giant-batteries-steady-grid-in-new-york</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Lithium ion batteries aren't just for your laptop anymore. A group of truck-size battery banks are delivering quick bursts of power to the electricity grid in upstate New York.AES Energy Storage, a subsidiary of power generation company AES, today said that the first 8 megawatts of a planned 20-megawatt battery grid storage system are now online in Johnson City, N.Y. The full project is expected to be completed later this year.The network of batteries is designed to keep an even balance between energy supply and demand in that portion of the New York grid. The batteries will store energy and, based on a signal from grid operators, supply power for a few seconds as needed.This battery system supplies eight megawatts of power to the grid in upstate New York to maintain a steady frequency. It will be expanded to 20 megawatts later this year.(Credit:AES Energy Storage)The electric grid requires a steady frequency--the rate with which current changes direction in the U.S. grid. Frequency regulation, as it's called in the utilty industry, is traditionally done by turning up natural gas turbines to increase power into the grid.The advantage of a battery-based system is that it can respond quickly--in as little as one second, according to AES--and is less polluting than turning up fossil fuel plant generation.There are already battery storage systems connected to the grid, but AES said this is the largest in the U.S. Battery maker A123 Systems, which also makes batteries and cells forcars and power tools, supplied the hardware for the storage system. The Johnson City project received a $17.1 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, which has funded a number of energy storage-related projects. Another technology being tested for frequency regulation is flywheels supplied by Beacon Power, which is developing a frequency regulation service in Stephentown, N.Y.AES Energy Storage is making revenue on the project already since it gets paid for regulating the frequency, one of a few ancillary services provided to grid operators to maintain reliability. It says it has other frequency regulation projects in its pipeline, including one for 100 megawatts of power in advanced development. Grid energy storage for different applications has risen in importance the last few years. Using storage can make the grid more reliable and make it easier to integrate intermittent wind and solar energy sources, say experts. Energy storage on grid heats up (photos) <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[FCC outs CDMA iPhone 4]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-outs-cdma-iphone-4</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-outs-cdma-iphone-4</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:10:28 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>jamesws2010</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=fcc-outs-cdma-iphone-4</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As you might expect, the Verizon iPhone 4 made its debut on the FCC listings today. It looks very much like the AT&amp;TiPhone 4, of course, except it has the CDMA/EV-DO Rev. A specifications instead of GSM.  The FCC report also says that it has a 1.18 W/kg SAR, which is just a smidge higher than the 1.17 W/kg on the AT&amp;T iPhone--the difference is so small that it's pretty insignificant. Aside from those few differences, the Verizon iPhone 4 is just like the AT&amp;T one.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Prius gets a minivan, a hot hatchback, and a plug-in]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=prius-gets-a-minivan-a-hot-hatchback-and-a-plug-in</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=prius-gets-a-minivan-a-hot-hatchback-and-a-plug-in</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:10:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>erdikcopd</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=prius-gets-a-minivan-a-hot-hatchback-and-a-plug-in</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Toyota Prius V has a higher roofline than the current Prius, meaning more cargo space.(Credit:Josh Miller/CNET)Toyota Prius family (photos) DETROIT--Toyota fulfilled its promise to expand the Prius lineup at the 2011 Detroit auto show, turning the once single model name into a whole set of hybridcars. Joining the Prius lineup is the mini-minivan-sized Prius V, a plug-in version running a lithium ion battery pack, and a new compact concept.Prius C conceptWe saw a version of this concept previously at the 2010 Detroit auto show, dubbed the FT-CH. This sporty-looking little hybrid hatchback is Toyota's effort to design a Prius for young, urban buyers. Its size should make parking easy in cities and its looks will appeal to image-conscious buyers.Prius VWithout increasing length much, Toyota raised the roof with the Prius V to create a larger cargo area. The result is a Prius hybrid that offers more flexibility for families. This car uses the same power train as the current Prius, but loses some fuel economy due to its larger size. Toyota plans to release the Prius V late this summer.Prius Plug-inEgged on by an enthusiastic user base and even a modification community, Toyota has finally announced firm details on a plug-in Prius. This car swaps out the standard nickel metal hydride battery pack for a lithium ion version, which can handle plug-in charging better. The Prius Plug-in can drive 13 miles under electric power alone, and charges to full in 1.7 hours from a 220-volt outlet. The 13-mile electric range is not much compared with the Chevy Volt's 40 miles. Toyota plans to release the Prius Plug-in in mid-2012.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[North Korean Twitter, YouTube accounts hijacked]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=north-korean-twitter-youtube-accounts-hijacked</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=north-korean-twitter-youtube-accounts-hijacked</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Emma01</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=north-korean-twitter-youtube-accounts-hijacked</guid>
<description><![CDATA[An animation that mocks North Korea&amp;39's heir apparent shows him driving a sports car and mowing down impoverished women and children.(Credit:Screenshot by Elinor Mills/CNET)The Twitter and YouTube accounts held by the North Korean government were hijacked over the weekend and used to post messages critical of the regime and mocking North Korea leader Kim Jong-Il's heir apparent, Kim Jong-Un. The official Twitter account for North Korea posted messages on Saturday, the day of Jong-Un's birthday, calling for an uprising and criticizing him for reportedly hosting lavish parties while North Koreans starve, Reuters reported.  Meanwhile, an animation appeared on the regime's YouTube channel the same day showing Jong-Un mowing down impoverished women and children in a sportscar, the report said. The posts and video were removed but another copy of the video was still accessible.  Members of a North Korean Internet forum, DC inside, have claimed responsibility for the prank, according to reports. The hijackings come as North and South Korea prepare to begin talks at the end of the month. Last year in November a group of South Koreans were killed on Yeonpyeong island during an exchange of artillery fire and in March a South Korean military ship was torpeadoed. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[CES: Kodak EasyShare Sport waterproof camera announced]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-kodak-easyshare-sport-waterproof-camera-announced</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-kodak-easyshare-sport-waterproof-camera-announced</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:10:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gravyextmez</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ces-kodak-easyshare-sport-waterproof-camera-announced</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:Kodak)Rugged and waterproof cameras are growing segments of the point-and-shoot market, but most of them will cost you more than $200. The 12-megapixel Kodak EasyShare Sport, however, is less than $100 and is waterproof down to 10 feet. Unfortunately, the camera is otherwise unremarkable.Despite the appearance of a zoom rocker on back, there is no optical zoom on this camera' it's digital zoom only. The LCD on back is small at 2.4 inches, too, and the Sport seems to have a bare minimum of shooting options.Look for the EasyShare Sport in spring 2011 for $79.95 in white, gray, red, yellow, and blue.Editors' take:The Sport is a pretty limited-use camera. It isn't rugged, just waterproof and in turn dustproof, so it won't stand up to the abuse that more-expensive shockproof, crushproof, and freezeproof models can handle. But if all you want is a camera to keep poolside, survive a trip to the beach, or keep working in rain, it's an option that hasn't really existed at this price. Plus, since it's powered by AA-size batteries, you can easily keep this handy as a secondary camera for when things might get a little wet. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Missing e-mail, folder bug in Hotmail fixed]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=missing-e-mail-folder-bug-in-hotmail-fixed</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=missing-e-mail-folder-bug-in-hotmail-fixed</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:10:01 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Manisha</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=missing-e-mail-folder-bug-in-hotmail-fixed</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A bug that made e-mails and folders go missing for some Windows Live Hotmail users has been fixed according to Microsoft. &quot;We have identified the source of the issue (and) have restored e=mail access to those who were affected,&quot; the company said on the Windows Live Solution Center help site yesterday afternoon. &quot;We recognize that even though we restored e-mail access, some of the affected users did not receive mail sent to them during the last 24 to 72 hours.&quot; Microsoft says the issue was fixed early this morning, although if users are still having issues, they should send in a help request using a specialized form.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[California says yes to molten solar]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=california-says-yes-to-molten-solar</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=california-says-yes-to-molten-solar</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:11:05 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>awtayk</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=california-says-yes-to-molten-solar</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The California Energy Commission has approved a permit for SolarReserve to build a 150-megawatt solar plant that uses molten salt to store energy, the company announced Wednesday.The Santa Monica, Calif.-based start-up says its Rice Solar Energy Project will be located 30 miles from Blythe, Calif., and when running at full capacity will supply enough energy to power the equivalent of 68,000 homes annually. The project also has a 25-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas &amp; Electric (PG&amp;E). The molten salt system will enable the solar farm to store and release solar energy so that it can continue to generate electricity for up to eight hours after sunset, according to SolarReserve.Molten salt solar plants, which have been built in Spain by SolarReserve with additional molten solar projects underway in Nevada and Sicily, work by using molten salt to retain and release heat energy.In the case of a molten salt solar plant, heliostats--giant rotating mirrors controlled by computers to best track and reflect sun onto a specific point--reflect sun rays onto a central tower, or a series of pipes, containing a molten salt mixture. The molten salt generally consists of sodium nitrates and potassium. The solar rays heat the liquefied salt to a temperature of up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steam from the molten salt is then harnessed to power a generator that makes electricity. Afterward, the cooled molten salt is then piped back to the tower to be heated once again.In the case of the proposed Rice Solar Energy Project, the heliostats will be directed to a large central tower using a molten salt system developed by Pratt &amp; Whitney Rocketdyne. The company received more than $10 million to develop more efficient molten-salt systems, as part of a Department of Energy (DOE) project sponsoring 13 companies with funds.However, this latest California board approval does not mean this project is full steam ahead. The Rice Solar Energy Project still needs to receive approvals from both the Bureau of Land Management and the Western Area Power Administration, according to SolarReserve.(Credit:SolarReserve)<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[eBay buys mobile-app developer Critical Path]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ebay-buys-mobile-app-developer-critical-path</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ebay-buys-mobile-app-developer-critical-path</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>rewinbugtalk</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=ebay-buys-mobile-app-developer-critical-path</guid>
<description><![CDATA[eBay said yesterday that it has bought Critical Path Software, a mobile-app developer that had already been working with the auction site for the past couple of years.Helping to design several eBay mobile apps, Portland, Ore.-based Critical Path has partnered with eBay's mobile group to create eBay for the iPhone and eBay Classifieds. Critical Path and eBay also teamed up to develop StubHub, a ticket-buying app, and Shopping.com, a shopping comparison app.The acquisition is part of eBay's move to focus even further on the growing mobile market. The auction site has also been busy scooping up other businesses this year. In June, eBay bought RedLaser, developer of aniPhone app that scans bar codes to compare products and prices. And earlier this month, it picked up Milo, a shopping service that tries to tie in online and offline shopping.&quot;We're very serious about innovating in mobile commerce, and this acquisition underscores our commitment to bringing the very best and brightest in the field to eBay,&quot; Mark Carges, chief technology officer and senior vice president of global products for eBay Marketplaces, said in a statement. &quot;Integrating the Critical Path Software team into eBay will be a big win for mobile shoppers around the world.&quot;The purchase price and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Congress moves to outlaw 'mystery charges' for Web shoppers]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=congress-moves-to-outlaw-mystery-charges-for-web-shoppers</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=congress-moves-to-outlaw-mystery-charges-for-web-shoppers</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:10:40 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>huntrore</dc:creator>
<category>Business &amp; Finance</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=congress-moves-to-outlaw-mystery-charges-for-web-shoppers</guid>
<description><![CDATA[(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Legislation that makes it illegal for Web merchants and so-called post-transaction marketers to charge credit cards without the card owners' say-so came closer to becoming law this week. A bill known as the &quot;Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act&quot; passed on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate. The law will make it illegal to use &quot;misleading post-transaction advertisements&quot; and require marketers to clearly disclose the terms of their offers. Merchants and marketers must now &quot;obtain billing information, including full credit or debit card numbers,&quot; directly from card holders. The legislation was the government's answer to one of the blackest episodes in e-commerce's brief history. A Senate investigation last year found that marketing companies Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue paid dozens of some of the Web's best-known retailers to help dupe shoppers into signing up for loyalty programs that enabled the marketers to walk away with over a $1 billion. Shoppers at Buy.com, or the Web sites of Avon, Spirit Airlines, Live Nation, Shutterfly, Hotwire and MovieTickets.com, would be presented with an ad as they neared the end of a transaction. At a point when they just want to pay and complete their purchases, the shoppers would be offered a free service or product. At a glance, it appears that all they had to do to receive the free offer was provide their e-mail address. The full terms, notifying them that by supplying their e-mail address they were agreeing to pay a monthly fee to join a loyalty program, was buried in the fine print. Few if anyone ever collected the discounts. Senate investigators unearthed documents that showed the strategies employed by these post-transaction marketers were set up to bamboozle the consumer from start to finish. For example, the people who discovered the mystery charges on their statements had nowhere to go to find out why their cards were being charged other than the marketers. This meant that the misled were seeking help from the people who misled them. The Web is filled with complaints and horror stories from people who went through this process. Typically, the unhappy shopper would phone the marketer to find out what they were being charged for and would get the runaround. What they most often wouldn't get from the marketers was all their money refunded or answers about which retailer had hung them out to dry. The marketers banked on three factors: the trust that people had in the retailers, the mistaken belief of many consumers that their credit cards couldn't be charged if they didn't key in the numbers themselves, and the fact that many people don't check their credit card statements. The scheme snagged a wide range of people, including doctors, soldiers, lawyers, electricians, and plenty of tech savvy shoppers. It also roped in the elderly, the sick, and inexperienced Web shoppers. CNET reporter Josh Lowensohn, a long-time Web shopper, got hit last year. During a Senate hearing on this issue, lawmakers heard from an Army veteran, who was severely wounded in Iraq and had lost money as a result of these programs. Anyone who ran across these ads was up against a legion of mathematicians, and quantitative analysts. These &quot;quants&quot; as they are called, were hired by the marketers to use shopping data against consumers, according to a source who once worked for two of the marketers. The former employee said that the companies could predict with a high-degree of accuracy how many people were likely to get pulled into their system over a given time. The marketers were sophisticated enough to know how many people would provide their e-mail addresses depending on how the word &quot;free&quot; was presented in ads. They knew the ranges for how many people would complain, or how many people would just cancel their credit cards once they discovered the charges and wouldn't try obtaining a refund. The man said there was always an embarrassment factor that the companies tried to play on. Customer service personnel employed by the marketers were instructed to strictly follow a script when dealing with angry customers. The scripted responses were designed to try and turn the responsibility of the unwanted charges back on the consumer, the source said. One of the other data that the marketers tracked very closely, according to the former employee, was how many people requested a refund from their credit-card company. Merchants who generate too many of these refunds will get booted from Visa and MasterCard's systems. But these security measures are easily overcome, as we've seen recently. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Analyst: Kinect sales already higher than Move]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=analyst-kinect-sales-already-higher-than-move</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=analyst-kinect-sales-already-higher-than-move</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:10:20 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Sarah02</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=analyst-kinect-sales-already-higher-than-move</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Kinect is now outselling the PlayStation Move, analyst Michael Pachter says.(Credit:Microsoft)So much for thePlayStation Move's sales lead over the Kinect.Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter released a note yesterday saying Microsoft has sold more units of its motion-control device, Kinect, than Sony has sold PlayStation Move units, even though the Move launched weeks earlier.&quot;The higher-priced Kinect controller appears to have overtaken the Move controller in the sales races, with sales about even notwithstanding Move's six-week head start in the marketplace,&quot; Pachter wrote in a research note to clients.Pachter came to that conclusion by analyzing information offered up recently by both Sony and Microsoft. Earlier this week, Sony said that it sold 4.1 million Move units through November since its motion controller's launch back in September. The company later clarified that its sales were those made to retailers and not to consumers. It wouldn't divulge how many units were actually sold to consumers so far.However, using that figure, Pachter estimates that Sony has sold approximately 2.5 million Move units to consumers since the device's launch. That figure matches Microsoft's own announcement this week, claiming it sold 2.5 million Kinect units to consumers in the device's first 25 days of availability. The motion-gaming peripheral launched on November 4 in North America.Based on his contention that sales were even at the end of November, and considering Microsoft's sales pace is far more rapid that Sony's, Pachter believes Kinect is now outselling the Move. And through the rest of the year, that trend will likely continue. In fact, Pachter believes Microsoft will hit its Kinect sales target of 5 million units sold. He believes Sony will sell a total of 3 million Move units by the end of the year.The latest data Pachter presents follows what analysts, including Pachter, have been saying for quite some time.In an interview with CNET last month, Pachter said that he fully believed that Kinect would hit the 5 million sales mark by the end of the year. He said that he thought Sony would sell 3 million PlayStation Move units by the end of 2010, but it was &quot;possible&quot; for the company to sell 3.5 million Move units with &quot;a pickup in advertising.&quot;Neither Sony nor Microsoft immediately responded to a request for comment.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[U.S. seizes sites linked to copyright infringement]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=u-s--seizes-sites-linked-to-copyright-infringement</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=u-s--seizes-sites-linked-to-copyright-infringement</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 26 Nov 2010 08:10:13 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>domingalom</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=u-s--seizes-sites-linked-to-copyright-infringement</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Visitors to dozens of Web sites purportedly linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods were greeted by this message.The U.S. government has launched a major crackdown on online copyright infringement, seizing dozens of sites linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods.Torrent sites that link to illegal copies of music and movie files and sites that sell counterfeit goods were seized this week by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. Visitors to such sites as Torrent-finder.com, 2009jerseys.com, and Dvdcollects.com found that their usual sites had been replaced by a message that said, &quot;This domain name has been seized by ICE--Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court.&quot;&quot;My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!&quot; the owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak, which listed more than 70 domains that were apparently part of the massive seizure.DHS representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The seizures came after a Senate committee unanimously approved a controversial proposal earlier this month that would allow the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) allows a Web site's domain to be seized if it &quot;has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than&quot; offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.The proposal has garnered support from dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America lobbying groups. However, critics such as engineers and civil liberties groups say the COICA could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger legitimate Web sites.The battle against online file sharing has ramped up. Earlier today, a Swedish court upheld the copyright conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing site. In October, a U.S. district judge issued an injunction against Lime Wire, the company that operated the popular file-sharing software LimeWire. In May, a judge granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry's claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Scannable PetHub ID tags give Rover a URL]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=scannable-pethub-id-tags-give-rover-a-url</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=scannable-pethub-id-tags-give-rover-a-url</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:10:34 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>bxikamilia</dc:creator>
<category>Social</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=scannable-pethub-id-tags-give-rover-a-url</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In case a name and phone number on Fido's dog tag aren't enough to bring him home from his wanderings, a new tag from online pet community PetHub includes a Fido-centric URL that is scannable by smartphone.(Credit:PetHub) One side of the laser-etched tag displays a human-readable Web link to information on your pet. The other shows a two-dimensional QR bar code that can be scanned by anyiPhone or Android phone with the free code-scanning software NeoReader installed.  When scanned, the code automatically navigates a browser to PetHub to display an animal's information.  By default, PetHub shows only the name and photo of a pet, but you can add any information you want (the name of your pet's doggie day care, vet, necessary medications, or details on his love for expensive leather shoes).  Other digital dog tags also lean on technology to get pets home, of course. The dime-size KoogaPet can store information transferred from the computer through its USB connection. The Pet Tag Flasher flashes four red LEDs to help identify a pet's whereabouts in a crowd.  One cool feature of the PetHub Link ID tags is that if your furry friend gets lost, you can immediately log in to your PetHub account to modify the information displayed when the link on the tag comes up. This could come in handy, for example, if you're out of town and entrusting your animal to a pet sitter.  To be sure, it would be easy enough to create a Web site for Sparkles and have the URL printed on a tag, but it's nice that PetHub makes the whole process easier. The company is careful to emphasize that its ID tags aren't meant to replace microchips safely implanted under a pet's skin. But there are advantages here.  During the company's beta test, it's giving away 1,000 PetHub Link ID tags for free, along with free data storage. Once the beta ends in February, PetHub plans to charge a nominal fee for any new tags ordered, while data storage will remain gratis. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Expert: Next Congress may slow green job growth]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=expert-next-congress-may-slow-green-job-growth</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=expert-next-congress-may-slow-green-job-growth</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:10:25 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>footballtshirts1</dc:creator>
<category>Eco</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=expert-next-congress-may-slow-green-job-growth</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Republican gains in the next Congress will likely curtail spending on green construction projects, but the sector promises to be a source of job growth for an economy that sorely needs it, advocates said on Tuesday.&quot;America needs 30 million jobs. Our mission ought to be to make those green jobs,&quot; David Foster, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of nine labor unions and four environmental groups, told the Greenbuild Expo in Chicago.Foster predicted that Republican gains in the November 2 election mean there will be little government investment in green projects next year. But the year after that, Americans will still be clamoring for jobs, and government will have to act, he said.A study done for the U.S. Green Building Council, organizer of the trade show, estimated that green construction projects had created 2.4 million American jobs between 2000 and 2008.The Booz Allen Hamilton study projected green building projects will support or create 7.9 million jobs between 2009 and 2013 and will contribute $554 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product.Weatherization of existing buildings, rehabilitation of older buildings to save energy, renewable energy projects, and a host of other green construction efforts would all be a source of jobs, Foster and other advocates said.The nearly exhausted federal stimulus program included $80 billion in funding to promote a &quot;green energy economy&quot; and had been effective, Foster said.&quot;There's a great record of job creation (with green projects). The problem is you can't do it just once in a little package. These are big, long-term investments,&quot; Foster said.China has generated a million green jobs in the past five years, and Foster said it had overtaken the United States in solar and wind energy.&quot;China's going to steamroll us if we don't get into the game,&quot; he said.Foster expressed regret that the newly elected Republican governor of Wisconsin had promised to halt funding for a high-speed rail project. And New Jersey's governor halted a project to build another train tunnel between his state and New York City.Locating the trade show in Chicago seemed appropriate. Chicago has more building projects--40--certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and more space devoted to green roofs than any other U.S. city, a spokesman said.Story Copyright (c) 2010 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Google's Schmidt teases new Android phone]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-schmidt-teases-new-android-phone</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-schmidt-teases-new-android-phone</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:10:04 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>wanminlim1y</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=googles-schmidt-teases-new-android-phone</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google CEO Eric Schmidt holds up an unannounced Android phone that is probably the rumored Nexus S.(Credit:Tom Krazit/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Google plans to support Android phones with near-field communications chips in the next version of Android, which CEO Eric Schmidt said today would arrive in the next few weeks. Schmidt, kicking off the Web 2.0 Summit at the Palace Hotel here in downtown San Francisco, held up an &quot;unannounced product&quot; that appeared to be the Nexus S, which leaked out on Best Buy's Web site last week. The phone--Google unhelpfully covered over the brand label--was running Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread and used a near-field communications chip that Schmidt thinks could eventually replace credit cards.Near-field communications chips allow for fast short-range wireless transmissions, and credit card companies believe that those transmissions are actually more secure than the mag-stripe technology on your current credit cards, Schmidt said in a discussion with reporters following his discussion with Web 2.0 Summit hosts Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle. Credit cards aren't going away for quite some time, but Google is interested in getting the technology out in front of developers in order to see what happens, he said. Schmidt touched on several topics during his talk and in the briefing afterward. &amp;149' Android: Google is pretty satisfied with how Android has worked out, but Schmidt said if he had to nitpick one thing it would be how Google chose to focus on developing Android itself over emphasizing third-party application development. He bemoaned how people focus on the competitive battle between Google and Apple in smartphones while missing the point that the entire market is growing like crazy. &amp;149' Raises: Schmidt confirmed that Google gave employees the option of taking home last week's bonuses in actual cash, but declined to say how much money the company had sitting around last Tuesday night. A Google engineer stepped forward over the weekend to claim that the person who was fired for leaking the memo about the $1,000 bonuses put employees in danger. &amp;149' Privacy: Google is under a ton of scrutiny from privacy advocates this year following its embarrassing Street View Wi-Fi scandal, and Schmidt reiterated that Google takes its responsibilities seriously, noting that even though the technology is available to permit real-time face-recognition in products like Google Goggles, the company has made a conscious decision to hold back. What &quot;we learned with all of these things is you just can't rush a product out any more. An engineer's political views is not (necessarily) what governments would accept,&quot; Schmidt said. &quot;What we have learned is that people disagree on where that line is, and it is not up to Google to make that decision.&quot; &amp;149' Social: Schmidt didn't have much to say about social technologies, which has long been a weak spot for Google. He expressed the potential for social cues to continue to enhance search results. &quot;We agree that social information's very important, in particular the name value graphs that they generate,&quot; he said. &quot;We can produce a better search result with your permission. Information that is anonymous about what your friends are doing is made available as one of the many signals we provide.&quot; &amp;149' Facebook: Likewise, he also declined to say anything about the fact that Facebook's revamped messaging system, while not an e-mail client, may be intended to sway consumers away from more traditional e-mail like Gmail (but which, on the flip side, exhibits many of the real-time messaging vibes of the failed Google Wave). &quot;It would not be appropriate for me to comment on their product. I am the CEO of Google, not Facebook,&quot; he said.Though he had insisted it was not in specific reference to an incident last week in which Google stopped permitting Facebook users from importing Gmail contacts--a sign that some saw as an early shot fired in the two companies' supposed forthcoming showdown over e-mail and other messaging--he said, &quot;In general, we've taken the position that user data is the user's, and that it should be possible for them to move it back and forth.&quot; &amp;149' Chrome OS: Netbooks running the Chrome OS operating system are expected to arrive any week. Schmidt painted the difference between Google's two mobile operating systems in terms of the input methods used with those devices. &quot;Android is optimized for things that involve touch, (while) Chrome OS is focused on keyboard-based solutions. That's how the market is evolving.&quot;CNET's Caroline McCarthy contributed to this report.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Microsoft to drop 3D, plug-in need in Bing Maps]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 02 Nov 2010 07:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>ecosavvy</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-to-drop-3d-plug-in-need-in-bing-maps</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This story was updated at 4:50 p.m. PDT with a new headline, and additional comment from Microsoft.Microsoft has taken the covers off a future update to its Bing Maps service that removes the need for its Silverlight browser plug-in to view an alternate mapping layer, and has also announced that it plans to remove its 3D map viewer. The changes will arguably make the service more approachable to the masses, but indicate that the company is going in a different direction with its online tools and technology platforms.In a post on the Bing community blog, Bing Maps Product Manager Brian Hendricks detailed two big changes to the company's online mapping service.The first of those is the removal of the 3D maps layer, which lets users see 3D renderings of some buildings, as well as landscape topography. Microsoft first introduced the 3D feature in early 2007, and it's since come to include nearly 70 cities around the world. To make sure the removal of 3D doesn't litter the Web with a bunch of non-working URLs, the company is changing every map link, map tour, and desktop shortcut to simply direct users to whatever part of the map the 3D version had been pointing to. Buildings that had been 3D models before will also become pushpin locations.The other change coming to Bing Maps is more subtle and may even go unnoticed by many. Users no longer need to have Silverlight installed to use Bing Maps' bird's-eye view. This is the isometric view that the company has used in addition to top-down photography to give users a better sense of two-dimensional scale. Here's the difference compared to your standard aerial view:According to Hendricks, this change was due to the company's efforts with Ajax, which, as Hendricks notes, allows people to use the feature &quot;without custom plug-ins for individual features.&quot; That also means bird's-eye view will work on mobile devices that may not have been able to run the Silverlight runtime.(left) Bing&amp;39's aerial view provides a top-down view, while (right) bird&amp;39's-eye is taken at a 45-degree angle.(Credit:Josh Lowensohn/CNET)The changes go along well with Microsoft's push to implement Web standards in the browser, as was presented at the company's Professional Developers Conference, which took place last week. But at the same time, it also muddles the message the company has been pushing since yesterday, that it still believes Silverlight to be an important technology, and one that can differentiate itself from existing Web services. Saying the same thing can now be done with Ajax, the technology Silverlight was utilized to replace just less than a year ago, does not say much for its future as part of the company's online services strategy.Update: A Microsoft spokesperson has released a statement clarifying some of the changes mentioned in the company's post:Today's announcement on the Bing Maps blog was around the end of life of the Active X-based 3D Map control and it has nothing to do with our commitment to Silverlight. We continue to invest in Silverlight functionality, which delivers the richest possible experience for our users' specifically through our map apps that run in the browser on the PC and the Silverlight map control forWindows Phone 7 applications.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Goodbye Walkman, thanks for the iPod]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=goodbye-walkman-thanks-for-the-ipod</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=goodbye-walkman-thanks-for-the-ipod</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:22:09 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Marry</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=goodbye-walkman-thanks-for-the-ipod</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sony has announced it has finally retired the Walkman cassette tape player, marking the end of one of the most successful consumer gadgets of all time. Over three decades, Sony sold more than 200 million Walkman tape players. (Credit:Sony Corp.) At least it outlived disco. By today's standards, the Walkman was clunky. The plastic tape player required frequent replacing of two AA batteries. There was no shuffle. There was no storage to speak of. It could play only the number of songs on the tape. Jumping to a new song tasked an owner with fast-forwarding, an inexact process that meant repeated stops to find the start of the desired tune. But until July 1, 1979, the day the Walkman went on sale in Japan, people had no concept of portable music--not the kind that Sony offered. Until that day, portable music mostly meant holding a transistor radio up to your ear. The Walkman dazzled.Count Steve Jobs among the most impressed, according to John Sculley, Apple's former CEO. &quot;We used to go visit [Sony founder] Akio Morita and he had really the same kind of high-end standards that Steve did and respect for beautiful products,&quot; Sculley said in an excellent interview with Leander Kahney of the Cult of Mac blog.&quot;I remember Akio Morita gave Steve and me each one of the first Sony Walkmans. None of us had ever seen anything like that before because there had never been a product like that...Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did with his was take it apart and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.&quot; So, the Walkman's designers likely influenced the eventual concept for theiPod. And what about the Walkman's branding After the music player became a hit, Sony tried to capitalize by releasing such products as Pressman, Watchman, Scoopman, Discman, and the Walkman MP3 player--which will soldier on. Now, think iPod,iPhone, andiPad.  iPod Nano(Credit:Donald Bell/CNET)Of course, Jobs took portable music to a new level, one where even Morita's company couldn't compete. Jobs wrapped his offering around a cohesive and as yet unbeatable combination of hardware, software, and digital retail. Sony knew hardware but was at best so-so in retail and a total disaster at developing software (see Sony Connect). Some have speculated that Sony's failure to keep up in a segment that the company created was one of the reasons it has given the Walkman such a quiet send off. Still, the company should be proud. It's unlikely we would have had the iPod without the Walkman and Morita, who helped set music free. For that, we owe the device and the man a deep and respectful bow.  <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Are hybrid clouds the path to cloud-computing nirvana]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-hybrid-clouds-the-path-to-cloud-computing-nirvana</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-hybrid-clouds-the-path-to-cloud-computing-nirvana</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>vacationspot1</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=are-hybrid-clouds-the-path-to-cloud-computing-nirvana</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This post is sponsored by Dell. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity. Dell had no involvement in the content of this or other posts.If you&amp;'re tackling your company&amp;'s computing needs, you&amp;'re going to have to look to the clouds. But which onesYou&amp;'ve likely heard of cloud computing &amp;8211'shared computing resources available over the &amp;''cloud,&amp;'' or the Internet. But it turns out there&amp;'s more than one way to cloud.When most people talk about the cloud, they mean a public cloud &amp;8212' big server farms maintained by companies like Rackspace and Amazon.com available to and shared by a wide range of customers. They typically sell storage, bandwidth, and computing power at rates cheaper than most businesses could obtain on their own by maintaining their own computing infrastructure.There are also cloud applications, like Salesforce.com&amp;'s customer-relationship management service, which provide both the software and the computing power needed to run it as a package deal. These, too, are a specialized form of public cloud.The cost savings are compelling: Why own when you can rent But cloud computing requires a shift in how programmers design and develop applications, however. That&amp;'s a burden for businesses both large and small. Add to that lingering concerns over security and availability, and it&amp;'s easy to understand why not everyone&amp;'s rushing to the public cloud.Security concerns with the public cloud are mostly a myth, said Jason Hoffman, founder and chief technology officer of cloud-computing provider Joyent. But most major companies will probably still always have security standards that will prevent them from moving their business into the public cloud.Many businesses don&amp;'t want to ship sensitive information off to public cloud servers, especially if they&amp;'re in regulated industries. And for time-sensitive tasks like, say, computerized trading, firms may not want to give up the edge they get from running their own servers.That doesn&amp;'t mean companies can&amp;'t embrace cloud computing. The notion that the cloud is &amp;''all or nothing&amp;'' is a myth, Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels, a big public-cloud proponent, said earlier this year.Some businesses are beginning to set up their own cloud-like pools of computing resources, called private clouds. They use the same kind of over-the-Internet architectures as public clouds, but they&amp;'re reserved for the use of the organization and can be firewalled off from the public Internet for a higher level of security and performance.The best-of-both-worlds mix, where businesses use private clouds for their most important computing tasks and public clouds for occasional peaks of demand or less-sensitive tasks, like serving up images on a website, is the hybrid cloud. And it could be the way forward for businesses that aren&amp;'t ready to sail all the way to the cloud.Startups and big software companies are gearing up for the hybrid-cloud opportunity. Eucalyptus Systems, a startup which recently raised $20 million, is making tools that help businesses adapt their applications to run on hybrid clouds. Microsoft and SAP are increasingly talking about hybrid clouds, where their software is available for installation on customer-owned servers and also provided as a service over the Internet.Odds are that the public cloud will be the infrastructure that inevitably wins out, especially as the strength of their security gets tested and proven to the satisfaction of customers and regulators. But hybrid clouds could win in the short-term, as a way to get businesses started on cloud architectures. And in some ways they live up to the ultimate promise of cloud computing &amp;8212' that it doesn&amp;'t matter where our servers are physically located. Public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud &amp;8212' as long as it&amp;'s in the cloud, and we&amp;'re getting more efficient, we&amp;'re headed in the right direction.Next Story: AdMob investor backs mobile ad startup MoPub Previous Story: Online game distributor OnLive plans to stream movies next yearPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: cloud computing, cloud infrastructure, hybrid cloud, private cloud, public cloud, software as a serviceCompanies: Amazon.com, Dell, Eucalyptus Systems, Joyent, RackspacePeople: Jason Hoffman, Werner Vogels          Tags: cloud computing, cloud infrastructure, hybrid cloud, private cloud, public cloud, software as a serviceCompanies: Amazon.com, Dell, Eucalyptus Systems, Joyent, RackspacePeople: Jason Hoffman, Werner VogelsMatthew Lynley is VentureBeat's enterprise writer. He graduated from University of North Carolina, where he studied math and physics, in May 2010. He has reported for Reuters. He currently lives in San Francsico, Calif. You can reach him at mattl@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @logicalmoron.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Why China could rule the new age of games]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=why-china-could-rule-the-new-age-of-games</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=why-china-could-rule-the-new-age-of-games</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>newsJur4ik</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=why-china-could-rule-the-new-age-of-games</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As the games business transitions from console and PC titles to social and mobile games, China is set to take away the United States&amp;' leadership in the business.That&amp;'s the bold prediction from Tim Merel, who has made a splash analyzing the video game market in the past couple of years as the managing director at investment bank Digi-Capital. Merel believes that in 2010, video game investment and acquisition activity changed fundamentally and accelerated in a way that it never had in the industry&amp;'s decades-long history.In a 68-page report released this week, Merel (pictured) predicts that revenue from online and mobile games will grow from one-third of industry revenues now to half of industry revenue, or $44 billion, by 2014. China will make up nearly half of sales, increasing its share from 12 percent of the worldwide market today to 25 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. share of the game market is expected to fall from 26 percent to 22 percent.As the video game industry gathers for the Game Developers Conference next week in San Francisco, it&amp;'s a sobering thought. What if the U.S. video game companies aren&amp;'t moving fast enough into the new social and mobile markets and will lose their grip on financing and innovationRight now, it&amp;'s easy to disagree with Merel. Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts are giants in the traditional game business. But that business is expected to be flat or down. Zynga is leading in social games, with a commanding leadership on Facebook with 266 million monthly active users. The company reportedly had revenue of $850 million in 2010 and a profit of $400 million and it is reportedly raising a round of funding at a $10 billion valuation. DeNA, the Japanese firm that acquired iPhone game maker Ngmoco for $403 million last year, is also a force to be reckoned with in mobile. That seems to suggest that, for 2011, the game industry is still pretty strong in the West and in Japan. What&amp;'s more, video games are just about at their finest hour, with total hardware and software revenue of $77 billion coming near global film revenue at $85 billion. And the games that are delivering the best cinematic experience are console titles such as Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Call of Duty Black Ops.Still, Merel says that Tencent&amp;'s $315 million acquisition of Riot Games a couple of weeks ago is a portent of more to come. Tencent&amp;'s valuation is more than $49 billion, and that gives it the market power to acquire just about every major video game company in the U.S. The company gets 20 million simultaneous players for its online games and it enjoys 50 percent gross profit margins on its games. By comparison, U.S. game publishers have to dish out $20 million to invest in a top game and sell a million units to break even.Venture capital investment has moved to the online and mobile markets. Fundings for game companies were up 52 percent in 2010 from the year before, with funding amounts returning to the peak level in 2007. Mergers and acquisitions were up 60 percent in value in 2010. The Chinese stock market &amp;8212' inflated as it might be &amp;8212' has given billion-dollar valuations to Shanda, ChangYou.com, Giant and NetEase. By 2014, Merel estimates that Asia and Europe will account for 90 percent of the revenues in online and mobile games.&amp;''The time to act is now, whether raising funds to accelerate growth prior to consolidation, create joint ventures and strategic partnerships to enter major foreign markets,&amp;'' Merel said, or just exit and take the money and run. &amp;''Major console publishers must evolve to survive.&amp;''Merel believes that major conglomerates in the media and entertainment space have the best chance to adapt. They can assemble all of the assets across the different sectors, while pure play console publishers have less money available to invest in the new markets. In other words, Disney is better off than Ubisoft.Just as Tencent moved beyond the Chinese market with the Riot Games deal, Merel predicts the Asian companies will lead the wave of consolidation as they push into the U.S. and European markets. That will lead to Chinese domination of the video game market. Perhaps that shouldn&amp;'t be surprising, as China could very well dominate every technology market. But the path for the Chinese game companies is pretty clear and it&amp;'s not such a stretch to predict this outcome anymore.The good news is that video games should grow to $87 billion in 2014, with mobile and online games growing at an 18 percent compound annual growth rate from 2009 to 2014. The major market sectors include console games, social online, casual online, smartphones and tablets, browser-based massively multiplayer online games, retail MMO games, online skill-based gaming, and online gambling. (The latter is usually considered outside of gaming). Each one of these sectors has successful game companies that are substantially growing the market and making lots of profits. Each sector also has clear investment, acquisition and joint venture opportunities, Merel said.In 2009, Merel said the $19 billion in revenue related to online games and mobile was about 32 percent of total video game revenue worldwide. By 2014, that should grow to $44 billion, or 50 percent of video game global revenue.What do you think Please take our poll below. Merel&amp;'s report is at the bottom.Online Surveys &amp;8211' Zoomerang.comNext Story: iPad 2 rumors settle on thinner body and cameras, no high-res display Previous Story: Making Fun debuts as the video-game arm of Rupert Murdoch&amp;'s empirePrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          People: Tim Merel          People: Tim MerelDean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[FindTheBest hints at social plans with Kleiner Perkins funding]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=findthebest-hints-at-social-plans-with-kleiner-perkins-funding</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=findthebest-hints-at-social-plans-with-kleiner-perkins-funding</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>DefevantHat</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=findthebest-hints-at-social-plans-with-kleiner-perkins-funding</guid>
<description><![CDATA[FindTheBest, the website filled with hundreds of charts comparing things like private schools and smartphones, has just raised funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' Byersa4a4 new sFund.I wasna4a4t surprised that founder and chief executive Kevin Oa4a4Connor found a big-name backer for his Santa Barbara, Calif.-based startup &amp;8212' after all, he sold his online ad company DoubleClick to Google for $3.1 billion. But the fact that the money came from Kleinera4a4s fund for social networking startups was a bit surprising. So when I got on the phone with Connor this morning, I asked: What makes FindTheBest sociala4AIta4a4s an amorphous term,a4 Oa4a4Connor acknowledged. But he said user involvement was always a key part of his plans. FindTheBest employs researchers to build the charts (which it calls a4Acomparison appsa4), but Oa4a4Connor said those researchers cana4a4t be 100 percent comprehensive on their own: a4AIta4a4s absolutely essential that businesses and consumers come and add things.a4FindTheBest has already added editing features, and people are using them, but the company hasna4a4t really promoted that part of the site yet. Encouraging that involvement will be a4Athe next big push,a4 Oa4a4Connor said.He added that FindTheBest might also incorporate data from social networks like Facebook. For example, when youa4a4re looking at the private school comparison chart, besides seeing school size, location, and student-teacher ratio, it would also be helpful to see if there are schools that your friends like or dislike.a4AWe don&amp;'t have it all figured out yet, but we&amp;'re definitely excited about the possibilities,a4 Oa4a4Connor said.When I explored FindTheBest a couple of months ago, I was impressed by the quality of information, especially compared to Googlea4a4s efforts to build similar charts with its Google Squared product. There are now 440 comparison apps on the site, and Oa4a4Connor said his goal is to reach 700 or 800 in the next year.The size of the funding was not disclosed. Kleiner partner Randy Komisar will join FindTheBesta4a4s board of directors.Next Story: By suing popular chat app Kik, is RIM poisoning its own ecosystem Previous Story: IBM makes breakthrough in super-fast laser chipsPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: sFundCompanies: FindTheBest, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' ByersPeople: Kevin O&amp;'Connor, Randy Komisar          Tags: sFundCompanies: FindTheBest, Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp' ByersPeople: Kevin O&amp;'Connor, Randy KomisarAnthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Self-serve machine mixes custom milkshakes to order - Springwise]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=self-serve-machine-mixes-custom-milkshakes-to-order---springwise</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=self-serve-machine-mixes-custom-milkshakes-to-order---springwise</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>gloriacooperth</dc:creator>
<category>Food</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=self-serve-machine-mixes-custom-milkshakes-to-order---springwise</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It''s been more than four years since we covered MooBella''s made-to-order ice cream vending machines, but it seems safe to say that consumers'' love for custom frozen confections hasn''t diminished in the meantime. Enter F''real, a California-based innovator of self-serve blending machines that make custom milkshakes, smoothies and frozen cappuccinos to order on the spot.Targeting food and convenience retailers throughout North America, the F''real Blender machine features a full-size LCD touch screen that lets consumers tailor their frozen drink to suit their tastes exactly. They begin by selecting a cup that''s prepackaged and frozen with most of the ingredients their drink will need. Ingredients are assembled and frozen at the dairy, with no syrups or canisters needed' cups are then labeled by flavour and stored in an accompanying freezer nearby. After peeling off the cup''s lid, consumers then place the cup in the machine''s holder and select whether they''d like their drink extra thick, regular or less thick. From there, the blender mixes and shakes up a drink to the consumer''s exact specifications. Perhaps best of all from the retailer''s perspective is that the F''real Blender power-cleans itself after each use.Frozen confections are appealing enough in their own right, but the addition of a self-serve, interactive element and a splash of customization make F''real''s concept a very appealing one. Retailers around the globe: better get in line now! '-) (Related: Unilever launches world''s first smile-activated ice cream vending machine a4&quot; Butcher shop installs vending machine for service 24/7 a4&quot; Samsung and Coke launch touch-screen machine for interactive vending.)Website: www.freal.comContact: realpeople@freal.comSpotted by: Sandy Avvari <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[LinkedIn: We&'re powered by obsessives]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=linkedin-wersquore-powered-by-obsessives</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=linkedin-wersquore-powered-by-obsessives</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>reggieyggg</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=linkedin-wersquore-powered-by-obsessives</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Professional networking site LinkedIn just filed for its initial public offering, and that filing includes an interesting overview of the company&amp;'s &amp;''risk factors&amp;'', i.e., &amp;''What might go wrong.&amp;''The company is obligated to emphasize the negative here, so it covers some obvious stuff like, &amp;''We have a short operating history in a new and unproven market,&amp;'' and, &amp;''We process, store and use personal information and other data, which subjects us to governmental regulation and other legal obligations related to privacy, and our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.&amp;''But what really struck me was this statement: &amp;''The number of our registered members is higher than the number of actual members, and a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members.&amp;'' Now, LinkedIn isn&amp;'t admitting anything particularly damning here, since almost any site will have more registered users than actual members (due to users having multiple accounts,dying, or other causes), but the statement echoes a common criticism of LinkedIn, that you basically create an account and then forget about it unless you&amp;'re looking for a job.LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner has admitted that this was the perception of LinkedIn in the past, but he argued that the company is trying to become more of a professional dashboard that you visit every day. Hence the addition of features like an article-sharing button and the acquisition of business-card reading startup CardMunch (which could bring more contact data into the site).But LinkedIn is dominated by a small subset of devoted users, why is that a bad thing Well, let&amp;'s go back to the filing: &amp;''If our membersa4a4 profiles are out-of-date, inaccurate or lack the information that users and customers want to see, we may not be able to realize the full potential of our network, which could adversely impact the growth of our business.&amp;''Another challenge that LinkedIn acknowledges is attracting and retaining employees. The company says that as of December 31, 57 percent of its 990-person workforce had been with the company for less than one year and 74 percent had been with the company for less than two years. Again, that&amp;'s not hugely damning since LinkedIn is a fast-growing company, but it does suggest that it&amp;'s fighting in the same war for talent as Google and Facebook.None of that should take away from the growth that the site has seen, going from net revenue of $32.5 million in 2007 to $120.1 million in 2009 (and then $161.4 million in the first nine months of 2010 alone), or the basic excitement of &amp;''Wow, LinkedIn is having an IPO!&amp;''Next Story: With LinkedIn, outsiders can get in on the PayPal mafia&amp;'s racket Previous Story: Investors thrash Amazon.com after sales miss the markPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Companies: linkedin          Companies: linkedinAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Andreessen-Horowitz brings enterprise pro Peter Levine on board]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=andreessen-horowitz-brings-enterprise-pro-peter-levine-on-board</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=andreessen-horowitz-brings-enterprise-pro-peter-levine-on-board</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Thadaartida</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=andreessen-horowitz-brings-enterprise-pro-peter-levine-on-board</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Enterprise pro Peter Levine, a former manager at Mayfield Fund that was a part of Citrixa4a4s $500 million acquisition of XenSource, is joining the storied venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz to man its coverage of the enterprise sector.Andreessen-Horowitz is well-established in the enterprise space a4&quot;it has invested in cloud storage provider Box.net and Asana, a collaboration company started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Mokovitz and Justin Rosenstein. But managing a super-fund thata4a4s worth nearly $1 billion can take a lot of work. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz might both be enterprise pros themselves after orchestrating Opswarea4a4s $1.6 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard, but they were short-handed enough to bring Levine on board.Levine will focus on early-stage and mid-stage companies that are looking for investors in their first and second rounds of funding, he said. To kick that off, hea4a4s invested in Bromium as his debut investment at Andreessen-Horowitz a4&quot;a company that focuses on virtualization and security. Ita4a4s part of Levinea4a4s investing ethos that he brings to the firm: the intersection of enterprise and mobile technology.a4AI think the big trend this year is the enablement of mobile consumer devices into an enterprise environment,a4 Levine said. a4AHow, when somebody has an iPhone or an android device, how do they securely incorporate that into an enterprise environment.a4Ita4a4s a complicated enough trend, too a4&quot; most large companies fret about bringing in external devices that might not be secure and are easy to hijack for information. But ita4a4s a trend that is on its way regardless of what larger companies want, he said. Therea4a4s a huge opportunity for companies working on securing that data on Android devices and other mobile devices, which is what he said he wants to focus on specifically.Levine will operate as a a4Aventure partner,a4 a role the firm crafted just for him. It amounts to being a part-time general partner, he said. That means that he will be coordinating investments and also serve on the boards of companies he invests in. But he will also split his time with his current company Citrix, he said.Previous Story: Firefox 4 available now, a day before official releasePrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: a16z, Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Peter LevineCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, citrix, Opsware, xensource          Tags: a16z, Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Peter LevineCompanies: Andreessen Horowitz, citrix, Opsware, xensourceMatthew Lynley is VentureBeat's enterprise writer. He graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he studied math and physics, in May 2010. He has reported for Reuters. He currently lives in San Francisco, California. You can reach him at mattl@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @logicalmoron. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Nook Color to become a real Android tablet with January update (Updated)]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-to-become-a-real-android-tablet-with-january-update-updated</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-to-become-a-real-android-tablet-with-january-update-updated</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Fely</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=nook-color-to-become-a-real-android-tablet-with-january-update-updated</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Update: Barnes and Noble reps are now saying that it has no plans to offer full access to the Android Market on the Nook color. That doesn&amp;'t mean the device won&amp;'t be getting a major Android update, but its future as a full-fledged Android tablet is likely farther off. Original post below.&amp;8212'Barnes and Noble&amp;'s Nook Color, the $250 update to the original Nook, appeared from the start to be an Android tablet in e-reader clothing. Now it looks like it will finally be able to live up to its tablet potential.The Nook Color will receive an update to Android 2.2 in January, and with it, the device will get access to the Android home screen and apps through the Android Market, a Barnes and Noble representative told SmartphoneMag.It sounds like the device won&amp;'t have full access to the Android Market &amp;8212' but still, even a few apps are better than none. The Nook Color currently runs Android 2.1 with no support for apps. The coming Market may feature apps from Barnes and Noble&amp;'s developer program, which it announced when it first unveiled the device in October. Alternatively, those Nook-specific apps may be offered in a separate store to avoid confusion.The Android update will also bring the usual performance and battery life improvements, as well as pinch and zoom support to the device&amp;'s browser.With the 2.2 update, the Nook Color will become an even better value than it already is. At $250, it&amp;'s more than half the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab (which is available for $400 with a two-year contract, or $599 without contract on Verizon). It&amp;'s also just about half the price of Apple&amp;'s iPad. The Nook Color certainly isn&amp;'t as fast as more expensive tablets, but for the price it&amp;'s the best introduction into tablets on the market right now.Next Story: Justin Bieber, World Cup, Haiti, iPad top 2010 trends on Facebook and Twitter Previous Story: MicroVentures opens up new opportunities for investorsPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Android, Galaxy Tab, iPad, Nook Color, tabletsCompanies: Apple, Barnes And Noble, Google          Tags: Android, Galaxy Tab, iPad, Nook Color, tabletsCompanies: Apple, Barnes And Noble, GoogleDevindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's lead mobile writer and East Coast correspondent. He studied philosophy at Amherst College, worked in IT support for several years, and has been writing about technology since 2004. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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