Archive for March, 2010

By Asavin Wattanajantra

We’re not like Apple

AS A SOFTWARE HOUSE, Google is going to support Adobe with better support for Flash in its Chrome browser.

This is encouraging news for Adobe, as it means that it is far too early to declare the death of Flash in favour of the native video rendering alternative available in HTML5.

HTML5 is a revision of HTML which doesn’t require a special player for video. It has been gaining ground thanks to its use on Apple devices like the IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad instead of Flash, which Apple has not disregarded but rather publicly deprecated.

Google’s support also means that Adobe can focus on improving Flash rather than worrying too much about Apple’s complete refusal to have anything to do with Flash on its IPhone and upcoming IPad.

For Google, it says its reason for doing this is that it needs to work with companies like Adobe and Moziila to develop a next-generation browser plug-in API to address the problems of the current browser plug-in model.

As Adobe Flash is the most widely used web browser plug-in, it makes sense. With the support of Google and Chrome pledged, along with support in most other web browsers, it remains to be seen what sort of impact Apple’s stance will have.

Flash is still the dominant form of media for online video, but if Google had taken the same attitude as Apple then the long term viability of Flash might have begun to fall under a cloud.

As it is, Chrome and other browsers’ support for Flash means that its future on websites is reasonably secure – that is if the Iphone and IPad don’t become the dominant devices for viewing video on the Internet.

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Brennon Slattery

Private e-mail addresses that many Facebook users wanted to keep hidden were revealed publicly last night on a multitude of Facebook profiles, Gawker reports. The glitch lasted about 30 minutes before Facebook sealed the gap.

An anonymous tipster altered Gawker of the breach in an expletive-riddled message: “6:46PM: I cannot [bleeping] believe it. Everybody’s email has been turned on to the public for at least the past 30 min. I tried going into my account to remove my email b/c I have an issue with a crazed stalker. But I wasn’t able to. God I [bleeping] hate FB!! When will they ever learn?!”

It might be that Facebook’s recently proposed changes to its privacy settings could be to blame for the hiccup. PC World writer Paul Suarez reported that “One of those changes [to Facebook's Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities] would make it possible for Facebook to send your name, photo, friend list, and any public information about you and your friends to preapproved third-party Web sites.” A slight tweak to broadcasting profile information could have resulted in this embarrassing flub.

Facebook desperately wants to be known as a site where users can expect a reasonable amount of privacy, but sometimes this isn’t the case. Briefings of previous mistakes make it clear that Facebook has a lot of work to do, possibly at the risk of tarnishing its original smiles and hugs philosophy. Thankfully this most recent trip-up only lasted approximately 30 minutes; any longer would have spelled disaster.

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Iain Thomson

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By PETER SVENSSON

Cisco Systems Inc. is trying to remove the techspeak from home Wi-Fi routers and make the equipment easier to install and set up.

On Wednesday, it’s introducing a new brand in consumer routers: “Cisco Valet.” It will be the first time it sells consumer routers without the Linksys brand, which it acquired in 2003. However, it’s keeping the Linksys brand for more techie-oriented routers.

“This is very much a reflection of Cisco’s goal of becoming a household brand,” said Scott Kabat, director of marketing at Cisco Consumer Products.

The focus on ease of setup is intended to address common frustrations about Wi-Fi routers. Some retailers report that one in four routers are returned because buyers can’t set them up, Kabat said.

“It’s not a good consumer experience today,” he said.

Cisco decided to tap the know-how of engineers from PureDigital, the maker of the Flip camcorders, which Cisco acquired last year. PureDigital came from nowhere to sell millions of camcorders because made it easy to shoot and share the footage online.

“Valet is to wireless what Flip is to home video,” said Kabat, who led brand marketing at PureDigital.

Valet will come in two versions, one for $100 and another, with longer wireless range, for $150. That’s more than the equivalent new Linksys routers, which start at $79. But rather than having standard setup CDs, each Valet will come with a USB flash drive that buyers insert into their computers. The drive configures each computer to use the Wi-Fi hot spot, cutting the steps required to set up Wi-Fi.

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by Aayush Arya

If you like the App Store, you’ll be no doubt thrilled to know that you can now Like it. Similar to its previous Facebook page for iTunes, Apple has now launched an official App Store page where the company plans to dish out “free exclusive offers, hot tips, tutorials, and more.”

Besides those tantalizing tidbits, Apple will also be featuring apps from the store on members’ Walls and there’s a Search & Share feature for you to recommend specific apps to your Facebook friends. The Featured and Games sections have widgets that show you the top free and paid applications across all App Store categories and the Discussions tab allows you to chat about all things App Store with the Facebook community.

No word on whether Apple will now help you with your farm

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By ALEXA OLESEN

Disruptions suffered by Google Inc.’s Chinese search service show how vulnerable it remains to the country’s Internet police — a threat industry executives said is likely to drive users and advertisers in the mainland away.

Though service resumed Wednesday, many users inside China were unable to search anything for the latter part of Tuesday. Google initially said it was an in-house technical problem but later shifted its explanation, blaming the “Great Firewall” — the nickname for the network of filters that keep mainland Web surfers from accessing material the government deems sensitive.

Whatever the reason, the outage reaffirmed suspicions that China’s government would settle scores after a public dispute over censorship prompted Google to shut its mainland-based search engine and move the service to the freer Chinese territory of Hong Kong last week.

“People are going ‘Uh-oh, it’s begun,’” said T.R. Harrington, chief executive of Shanghai-based Darwin Marketing, which specializes in advertising for China’s search engine market. “People just have an expectation that there’s going to be some problems based on how Google decided to make its exit and how the government reacted to that.”

Chinese departments that monitor the Internet and maintain the network of filters rarely explain disruptions to individual sites and services. The press office at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology declined immediate comment Wednesday on the outage and the possible reasons for it.

Google said it made no fixes or changes on its end to restore service, raising the likelihood that Chinese blocking — not technical glitches within the company — caused the trouble. “We will continue to monitor what is going on, but for the time being this issue seems to be resolved,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement.

The sudden disruption and lack of explanation fit with how the government has brought companies to heel previously in the heavily monitored Chinese Internet industry, analysts said.

“I don’t think anyone should be surprised,” said Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur and author of the technology blog Digicha. Tuesday’s problems were payback by the government, he said, because “Google humiliated China.”

“Is it really realistic to expect that the Chinese government is just going to say ‘OK, we’re all friends now and go ahead about your business’ after what just happened?” he said. “I think most people who’ve spent time in China and spent time in this industry dealing with the government would probably tell you that’s a low-probability outcome.”

Google’s other China ventures began unraveling almost immediately after it announced its partial retreat, switching google.cn queries to google.com.hk in Hong Kong. Partners in mobile phone and other ventures said they were reviewing or scrapping service agreements with Google. Among them was China’s second-largest mobile phone operator, China Unicom, which shelved plans to use Google search on two new cell phones running Google’s Android software.

Industry analysts have said that in the past the government used its control of telecommunications companies to slow the speed of queries and responses to some sites, driving customers away. Those slow speeds are thought to have played a part in undoing eBay Inc.’s business in China.

Service disruptions — or fears of them — drive users and advertisers away, and Google has already begun to be affected by those fears, said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

Yu said his firm’s research shows that Chinese advertisers are shifting their spending to homegrown companies like China’s search leader Baidu, the auction site Alibaba and other kinds of market services “because they are afraid of the instability of Google services.”

“The peak of the panic started from the moment Google said it was considering pulling out of China, but later events confirmed the worry,” said Yu.

Google, meanwhile, warned of a separate threat to Internet freedom in neighboring Vietnam, saying cyberattacks were attempting to silence opponents of a government-led mining project involving a Chinese company.

The attacks did not involve Google, but it said it was drawing attention to them because they underscored the need for the international community “to take cybersecurity seriously to help keep free opinion flowing.”

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By: Emma Woollacott

Companies including Google, Microsoft and AT&T have launched a campaign group calling for restrictions on the government’s access to private data.

The Digital Due Process coalition says the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was fine at the time, but that technical developments have left it “a patchwork of confusing standards that have been interpreted inconsistently by the courts”.

“1986 was a good year, but it’s time our laws catch up with how we live our lives today,” says Richard Salgado, Google’s senior counsel for law enforcement and information security.

The group is calling for revisions to the Act covering what they see as the most important issues – access to email and other private communications stored in the cloud, access to location information, and the use of subpoenas to obtain transactional data.

It wants warrants to be issued before internet providers and mobile carriers hand over such information to law enforcement agencies.

They say they want to “protect innocent Americans against government fishing expeditions through masses of communications data unrelated to a criminal suspect”.

“Technology has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, but the law has not,” said Jim Dempsey, Vice President for Public Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, who has led the coalition effort.

“The traditional standard for the government to search your home or office and read your mail or seize your personal papers is a judicial warrant. The law needs to be clear that the same standard applies to email and documents stored with a service provider, while at the same time be flexible enough to meet law enforcement needs.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has also joined the coalition – despite having had its own run-ins with Google and AT&T in the past.

“But this diverse coalition of privacy advocates and Internet companies agree on at least one thing,” says EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston.

“The current electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated and must be updated to provide clear privacy protections that reflect the always-on, location-enabled, Web 2.0 world of the 21st century.”

Other members of the coalition include Intel, AOL, eBay and human rights groups.

The group is in discussion with the White House, FBI and the Justice and Commerce Departments about amendments to ther Act. Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he looks forward to reviewing its ideas.

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By BETTINA WASSENER

Google, fresh off a dispute with China over censorship and intrusion from hackers, says it has identified cyber-attacks aimed at silencing critics of a controversial, Chinese-backed bauxite mining project in Vietnam.

In attacks it described as similar to but less sophisticated than those at the core of its spat with China, Google said malicious software was used to infect “potentially tens of thousands of computers,” broadly targeting Vietnamese speaking computer users around the world.

Infected machines had been used to spy on their owners and to attack blogs containing messages of political dissent, wrote Neel Mehta of the company’s security team in a post late Tuesday on Google’s online security blog.

McAfee, the computer security firm, said in a separate blog posting that it believed “the perpetrators may have political motivations and may have some allegiance to the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

It added: “This incident underscores that not every attack is motivated by data theft or money. This is likely the latest example of hacktivism and politically motivated cyberattacks, which are on the rise.”

Google said that while the malware itself was not especially sophisticated, “it has nonetheless been used for damaging purposes.”

“Specifically, these attacks have tried to squelch opposition to bauxite mining efforts in Vietnam, an important and emotionally charged issue in the country.”

Bauxite is a key mineral in making aluminum and one of Vietnam’s most valuable natural resources. Plans by the Vietnamese government to exploit bauxite in the Central Highlands region, in partnership with a Chinese state-run company, have generated much local criticism, including from a well-known war hero, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap.

General Giap and other opponents say the project will be ruinous to the environment, displace ethnic minority populations and threaten the south-east Asian country’s national security with an influx of Chinese workers and economic leverage.

The role of China in the bauxite project also has stirred up anger in a nation that still fears its bigger neighbor: Vietnam was a tributary state of China for 1,000 years and was invaded by China in 1979, and the two countries continue to joust for sovereignty in the South China Sea.

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By NIRAJ SHETH

With a new version of the iPhone in the works, the clock is ticking for AT&T Inc. to get its much-criticized network ready for the looming battle.

The carrier has taken a beating from consumers who have complained about poor coverage in major cities including New York and San Francisco. Now, AT&T is racing to reduce its dropped calls and speed up Web-surfing before Apple Inc. releases a new version of the iPhone that could run on Verizon Wireless’s network.

In mid-December, AT&T executives set up a 100-day plan to dramatically improve the company’s network in densely-populated cities, according to people familiar with the plan. Since then, AT&T has added new network spectrum to better handle traffic, repositioned antennas to improve reception in office towers and wired more neighborhood cell towers with faster connections.

But even with its recent efforts, the network still has not met customers’ quality standards everywhere. While some third-party tests have given AT&T nods for having a faster network, a poll last month by J.D. Power & Associates found AT&T still ranks poorly against Verizon Wireless in call quality.

Some analysts say the scramble to add more capacity might still fall short. “They haven’t fixed the network and they’re going to see a huge exodus to Verizon” when it gets the iPhone, said Edward Snyder, managing director of Charter Equity Research, a financial research firm that studies the cellular phone industry.

AT&T defended its wireless efforts, and said this year it expects to spend $2 billion more on build-outs for its wireless network and add twice as much capacity as it did in 2009. A spokesman declined to provide details on its spending last year.

It argues that its growing pains with the iPhone position it to provide better service than any rivals picking up the smart phone for the first time.

AT&T “is managing volumes that no one else has experienced,” said John Donovan, the company’s chief technology officer. It has improved service in big-city markets and expects “continued improvement in those markets in the coming months,” he said.

For example, AT&T said when iPhone customers started checking their email and surfing the Web from their high-rise offices, AT&T repositioned its cellular antennas to point up, instead of down. Rivals will start the process of making the same changes only after the phones hit their networks, it said.

The iPhone taught AT&T other lessons its rivals will discover through customer trial-and-error. Before the iPhone, it used to be able to accurately forecast to the minute the type of phone usage each new customer would add to its network based on basic demographics such as age and income levels. The forecast always held true across cities and towns.

But with the iPhone, such bets are off, AT&T executives painfully learned. It now looks at a broader set of customer profiles to forecast behaviors. For example, in a metro area with a large proportion of students, the phone operator schedules network upgrades to occur outside of colleges’ nine-month academic terms.

“I’m as interested now in what you’re doing when you’re not on the network,” said John Stankey, head of AT&T’s operations arm.

A Verizon-compatible iPhone is slated for mass production as early as September, according to people briefed on the matter. On Tuesday, several analysts said they expect that AT&T’s exclusivity will last only until the end of this year.

“It probably won’t ship in 2010 because of the extension on exclusivity that AT&T got but they’ll be sitting on trucks ready to roll,” said Charter Equity’s Mr. Snyder.

A Verizon Wireless spokesman declined to comment. Verizon Wireless is jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC.

Of course, there are some network roadblocks even AT&T can’t steam roll. Getting permission from municipal councils to tear up streets or convincing landlords to provide access to buildings to add more radio boxes takes time, executives said.

Laying down higher-bandwidth cables to cell towers is labor intensive. And installing special radio-routing equipment can only be done in the middle of the night to prevent network outages.

At times, the carrier has gotten help from Apple. Last year, as its network came under heavy strain, AT&T flew Mr. Stankey and Mr. Donovan to California. Their job: assure Steve Jobs they were working on the problems and to provide Apple designers with a crash course in wireless networking.

They ended up returning regularly, and Apple even helped with new technologies to limit the load that iPhones put on the network.

Apple rejiggered how its phones communicate with AT&T’s towers. As a result, the phones now put less of a load on the network for such simple tasks as finding the closest tower or checking for available text messages.

“They’re well past networking 101, 201 or 301,” said Mr. Donovan. Apple, he said, is now “in a Master’s class.”

Of course, that’s just the sort of know-how that help AT&T rivals chart their own network roll outs. The need for AT&T to dramatically improve its performance isn’t lost on the company or Mr. Donovan.

A health fan who uses his iPhone to track an exercise and diet routine, he checks an iPhone app from the Weather Channel for ideal biking conditions before heading out. A pedometer he keeps at his hip counts how many steps he takes a day, and another iPhone app keeps track of how many calories he eats.

But since late last year, Mr. Donovan has felt the heat. The challenge of quickly addressing network shortcomings has his blood pressure up 20 points.

“We’re in a new era,” he said. “The stress is on everyone.”

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By Harry McCracken

When Microsoft released Windows XP in October of 2001, the software got upbeat reviews and sold briskly. But I doubt if even XP’s biggest boosters would have predicted just how long-running a hit it would be. Nine years later, it’s still the the world’s favorite operating system.

Two words explain XP’s uncommonly long reign: Windows Vista. The much-hyped 2007 Windows upgrade turned out to be notoriously glitchy (especially at first) and short on substance. Some PC users tried Vista and loathed it; others simply chose to avoid it. Either way, XP got a new lease on life.

And then Windows 7 arrived last October. For the millions of PC users who chose to skip Vista, 7 is the upgrade to XP. And it’s a nifty one, retaining what was good about Vista — such as the ability to instantly search your entire hard drive — while fixing every major problem. Features for juggling multiple applications are greatly improved, and annoyances such as pop-up messages are much reduced. Overall, Windows 7 is just plain pleasant in a way that even XP isn’t.

Even so, when I reviewed Windows 7 back in October, I told would-be upgraders that there was no shame in waiting a bit just to make sure that the early adopters who installed it on day one didn’t discover any nasty surprises. For the most part, they didn’t — and the vast majority of those who participated in a survey I conducted raved about the software.

So today my advice is simple: If you’re buying a new PC, get Windows 7. And my recommendation to XP users who aren’t ready to get a new machine is only a little more complicated: Unless you’re really resistant to change or have a really old PC, spending $120 on Windows 7 Home Premium edition is a great way to get more out of your computer.

But before you take the Win 7 plunge, do this:

Make sure your PC is up to the task. Most computers sold in the past few years should do a decent job of running Windows 7. But it’s still wise to run Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, which will do a quick system check and provide customized upgrade advice. (One tip: If your PC doesn’t already have 2GB of RAM, get it.)

Back up. I’ve heard very few horror stories of Windows 7 upgrades gone awry, but you don’t want to be the exception that proves the rule. Before you begin the process, make sure that you’ve backed up your data to an external hard drive or an online service such as Mozy – especially irreplaceable items such as family photos and videos.

Take your time. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t give you any way to install Windows 7 over XP, retaining existing programs and settings. You need to install a fresh copy of the operating system, reinstall your favorite software, set up peripherals such as your printer, and generally recreate your environment the way you like it. Consequently, it’s best to do the job when you’re not in a huge hurry. (I’ve been known to upgrade Windows on otherwise lazy weekends.)

What if you’re still not convinced that it’s time to give up XP? Fret not — I’m done trying to convince you otherwise. In fact, I’ll provide some tips for you, too:

Stay up to date. Let’s face it, XP is inherently antiquated. But it’s an antiquated operating system that’s still evolving, especially when security vulnerabilities are discovered. Use Microsoft’s Windows Update service to verify that you’re running Windows XP Service Pack 3, the most recent major update — and that you’re getting new security patches as they come out.

Get a modern browser. Don’t use Internet Explorer 6, XP’s default browser — it has too many security holes and is too lacking in essential conveniences, such as tabbed browsing. At the very least, upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the current version. Better yet, try one of the two Windows browsers I recommend most often these days: Firefox and Google Chrome.

Prepare for the inevitable. Unless you have no interest whatsoever in new software, hardware or services, you will say goodbye to Windows XP at some point. Microsoft has repeatedly bowed to reality, allowing manufacturers to put XP inside the boxes of even Windows 7 PCs as a “downgrade” option. But XP’s time is almost over, and there’s going to be more and more interesting stuff that won’t work with it, such as Microsoft’s own upcoming Internet Explorer 9, which will support Vista and 7 only.

So feel free to hold onto XP if you choose. Just know when to say when — and understand that the day is coming soon.

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By Andrew R Hickey

When it comes to smartphones, Apple (NSDQ:AAPL)’s iPhone may be top of mind, but mobile devices with Google Android guts pose the biggest threat to Jobs and Co.

According to a new market research study from Google (NSDQ:GOOG)-owned AdMob, the iPhone held about a 50 percent share of the global operating system (OS) market for smartphone devices browsing the internet in February 2010. While that statistic may not be surprising, AdMob found that Google Android is creeping up from behind, capturing about 24 percent of the market share. Nokia-owned Symbian placed third with 18 percent of the market. Meanwhile, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) and Microsoft Windows Mobile are left in the dust with a paltry 4 percent and 2 percent of market share, respectively, despite its solid smartphone sales.

In the U.S., AdMob found that in February 2010 the Apple iPhone operating system held a 44 percent market share, down from 55 percent in November 2009; while Android’s share rose in the U.S. from 27 percent in November to 42 percent in the most recent AdMob report.

While Apple maintained a 50 percent market share globally, Google Android devices like the Motorola Droid, the Motorola CLIQ, and a slew of HTC handhelds like the Dream, the Hero and the Magic helped push Google Android to No. 2, according to the study results.

“Android was the fastest growing operating system in the AdMob network year-over-year,” the study explained. “Android’s share of smartphone requests increased from 2 percent in February 2009 to 24 percent in February 2010.”

The study, according to AdMob, illustrates that Apple iPhone and Google Android users take advantage of the mobile Internet more than users of competing devices.

AdMob services mobile ads for more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications globally and stores and analyzes the data from every ad request, impression and click within its network and issues monthly reports based on that data to evaluate the mobile device and mobile Internet ecosystem.

Other findings in AdMob’s most recent study show that smartphones accounted for about 48 percent of AdMob’s worldwide traffic in February 2010, which was up from 35 percent in February 2009. The increase in smartphone traffic pushed traffic from feature phones down. Feature phone use declined from 58 percent a year ago to 35 percent in February 2010.

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By Katie Marsal

Adding to an earlier report of Apple’s forthcoming next-generation iPhone, Daring Fireball on Monday claimed Apple’s new handset will feature a custom A4 processor, 960×640 double-resolution display, and a second front-facing camera.

Author John Gruber sarcastically mentioned an earlier report from The Wall Street Journal, calling it the paper’s “lame entry in the iPhone rumors game.”

In addition to details on the processor, display and camera, Gruber also reiterated what AppleInsider reported earlier this month: Apple’s iPhone 4.0 software will add multitasking support for third-party applications.

Separately, Engadget also reported an anonymous tip that the device would be dubbed the iPhone HD, and will be announced on Tuesday, June 22. If true, that would be a week before the rumored schedule of June 28 through July 2 for WWDC 2010.

When Apple introduced its forthcoming iPad in January, the Cupertino, Calif., company revealed that the device is powered by a custom-built system-on-a-chip dubbed the Apple A4. The speedy 1GHz processor is based on the ARM architecture and includes an integrated CPU and graphics processing.

That Apple’s custom silicon would find its way into the next-generation iPhone should come as no surprise, as the company has been a licensee of ARM for years and has been long rumored to leverage its $278 million acquisition of fabless chip designer P.A. Semi for its mobile devices.

A forward-facing camera for videoconferencing is a feature that some users have desired in the iPhone for years. In the months of build-up to the iPad’s unveiling, many reports alleged that the device would include a forward-facing camera, and forward-facing camera on an iPhone-like device. The application described technology for superior picture and video recording performance on mobile devices.

Gruber’s posting was prompted by a report from the Journal that alleged Apple is working on two new iPhone models, including a CDMA-capable model for release on the Verizon network in the U.S.

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by Brian Heater

Tony Fadell is finally leaving Apple for good. The engineer joined the company nine years ago and played a key role in the development of two industry-shaping products, the iPod and iPhone. Fadell rose to the position of senior vice president, but stepped down from that job in 2008. He remained with the company in the role of special adviser to Steve Jobs.

Before joining Apple, Fadell briefly worked with RealNetworks, pitching the company on the idea of a hard drive-based music player. The company didn’t take to the idea, so Fadell took the idea to Apple, after only six weeks with Real.

As to his future plans: “My primary focus will be helping the environment by working with consumer green-tech companies,” Fadell told The New York Times in an interview. “I’m determined to tell my kids and grandkids amazing stories beyond my iPod and iPhone ones.”

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By Damon Poeter

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) has what it thinks will be a game-changing new x86 server platform and judging from the list of computer makers preparing to ship systems based around AMD’s new Opteron 6100 series microprocessors, the chip maker could be onto something.

“There are too many silos in IT environments and too much complexity,” said David Peterson, group marketing manager for Industry Standard Servers at Palo Alto, Calif.-basedHewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), one of several computer makers basing refreshed server product lines around AMD’s new eight-core and 12-core Opteron processors.

“What we hear in the industry is that it costs too much to power these servers. That they use too much energy,” said Peterson. HP is launching its new ProLiant G7 family of rack-mount servers in conjunction with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD’s release of the first Opteron 6000 series platform, formerly code named Magny-Cours.

Some computer makers on board with the Magny-Cours launch, such as Fremont, Calif.-based AMAX Information Technologies, will also have products ready forIntel (NSDQ: INTC)’s Tuesday release of its eight-core Xeon 7500 series processors for multi-socket servers, also known as Nehalem EX.

HP will have four-socket and above servers to showcase at Intel’s Nehalem EX launch event in San Francisco Tuesday, an HP spokesperson told Channelweb.com late last week.

But HP has built its next-generation ProLiant G7 server line soley around Magny-Cours. The computing giant said the new Intel chips would eventually find their way into the G7 product family, but for now, the three initial servers in the G7 lineup sport AMD parts.

The first servers in the G7 series are the HP ProLiant DL165 G7 and HP ProLiant DL385 G7 rack-optimized servers, and the HP ProLiant SL165z G7 scale-out “skinless” server, the company said in a statement.

In rolling out the ProLiant G7 series, HP has stepped up an aggressive return-on-investment story it first made in March 2009 with the introduction of its ProLiant G6 lineup of servers equipped with Intel’s Nehalem-class Xeon 5500 series chips. Back then, Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP promised a three-month ROI for customers replacing older servers with single-core processors with G6 units featuring Intel’s re-architected quad-core Xeons.

On Monday, HP cut that promise by a third, asserting that its new G7 servers would deliver ROI in just two months. On the consolidation front, the computer maker also claimed that just one of its new G7 servers could replace 23 older systems and deliver equivalent performance.

The computing giant can make that claim due in part to the increased efficiencies in AMD’s Magny-Cours chips, Peterson said, but also thanks to HP’s development of its own proprietary Integrated Thermal Logic technologies, such as the system-level thermal detection array HP calls its “Sea of Sensors” and Dynamic Power Trapping, a method for reclaiming extra power in a data center.

For a database-dependent real estate listing company like MLS Property Information Network (MLS PIN), the HP value proposition is enticing, said Matt Lavallee, director of technology at the Shrewsbury, Mass.-based firm.

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People’s moral judgment can be altered by disrupting part of the brain according to a U.S. study, AFP reported Tuesday.

People’s moral judgment can be altered by disrupting part of the brain according to a U.S. study, AFP reported Tuesday.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) disrupted activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), located above and behind the right ear, an area usually highly active when we think about what we believe the outcome of a particular act will be.

The researchers disrupted the TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp and asked study participants to read a series of scenarios posing moral conundrums.

In one scenario, a person called Grace and her friend took a tour of a chemical plant when Grace stops at the coffee machine. Her friend asks her to get her a coffee with sugar. A container by the coffee machine is marked ‘toxic’ but contains sugar — Grace does not know that. She puts it in her friend’s coffee anyway and her friend is unharmed.

Participants in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were asked to judge on a scale of one to seven if they thought what Grace did was morally acceptable. One ranks as “absolutely forbidden” and seven as “absolutely permissible.”

Two experiments were conducted: during one, participants were asked to judge the scenarios’ characters after magnetic pulses were sent to their TPJs for 25 minutes, and in the other they passed judgment while undergoing very short bursts of magnetic interference.

In both experiments, disrupting normal neural activity in the right TPJ switched off the part of people’s “moral compass.”

When it was disrupted, participants were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm another person as morally permissible than those participants whose right TPJs were not altered.

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By Connie Guglielmo

March 30 (Bloomberg) — When it comes to predicting how many iPads Apple Inc. will sell this weekend, Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster has little company among Wall Street analysts in making a guess.

In the weeks before Apple began selling the iPhone in 2007, analysts and technology pundits prognosticated about how many would be snapped up in the first few days. With the iPad, Munster is estimating first weekend sales of 200,000 — a figure his rivals say is too difficult to predict.

The sticking point: It’s unclear how consumers will respond to the iPad, an untested category of computer that’s bigger than a smartphone and less powerful than a laptop. Apple is also offering multiple versions of the device, though only three are available on day one.

“This is a big revolutionary device, but it’s a new market,” said Katy Huberty at Morgan Stanley in New York. “A lot of potential consumers are still questioning what it may be used for.”

Investors look to new products from Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs to spur sales and profit, which reached a record last quarter on demand for the iPhone and Macintosh computer. Anticipation for the iPad, which goes on sale April 3, helped drive Apple stock to an all-time high of $237.19 today.

Stake Out

Munster, who has recommended buying Apple shares since June 2004, expects iPad sales of 2.8 million in 2010. He’s sending analysts to stake out stores in six cities — New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Wisconsin — to gauge early demand.

“We’ll measure lines and get a pulse of the excitement,” Munster said. “If we go to the New York store and there are four people, that’s not a good sign.”

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, started taking early orders for the iPad on March 12, offering consumers the choice of home delivery or collecting them in stores. That will help the company assess demand and figure out where it needs the most inventory, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros. in San Francisco.

“We’ve seen focus groups and market studies trying to predict demand, but the reality is you don’t really know until you know,” said Wu, who recommends buying Apple shares. “I’m not taking any guesses.”

Apple isn’t disclosing early order numbers and won’t say whether it will disclose opening weekend sales, as it’s done in the past for the iPhone, said spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.

Weekend Sales

Last weekend, Apple moved back the shipping date for new iPad orders to April 12. Customers who previously placed orders will still get the device on April 3. The move fueled speculation that demand for the iPad is higher than Apple expected, Huberty said.

Apple rose $4.01, or 1.7 percent, to $236.40 at 9:40 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares had gained 10 percent this year before today.

Jobs unveiled the iPad in January, showing off a tablet computer with a 9.7-inch (25-centimeter) touch screen that can serve up Web pages, e-mail, music, videos, games, electronic books and iPhone applications.

While analysts are shying away from predicting initial iPad demand, they are taking a stab at sales for the full year. Even those vary widely. Huberty and David Bailey of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. both estimate sales of as many as 6 million in 2010. Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital in New York puts the number at 5 million. Wu of Kaufman Bros. estimates 2 million to 2.5 million.

Huberty said yesterday that she expects Apple will sell 750,000 iPads in the quarter ending in June.

Wi-Fi Models

The first three iPad models to go on sale in the U.S. work with Wi-Fi networks, and they start at $499. Three more versions will follow at the end of April. Those work with third- generation wireless phone networks and cost from $629.

Most buyers will likely opt for the Wi-Fi versions because they are cheaper and don’t require wireless fees, Wu said. Munster estimates that 80 percent of all iPads sold will be the Wi-Fi models. Still, it’s often difficult to predict what consumers will go for, Wu said.

“There’s always the customer who wants it all and who can afford it all, so they may have no problem buying the 3G model,” he said.

Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, also said he won’t predict iPad demand for the first weekend. Early sales aren’t meaningful because it will take some time for consumers to understand the differences between Apple’s tablet and cheap notebook computers, he said.

“The potential audience is anyone who sits on the couch and wants to surf the Internet or anyone who sits on the couch and wants to read a book,” said Hargreaves, who estimates Apple will sell 5.3 million iPads this year. “While the value proposition isn’t immediately clear, the thing is so flexible.”

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By Brian X. Chen

With the iPad launch still days away, a developer appears to have leaked a video showing the iPad App Store.

Multiple independent reports over the weekend included purported screenshots of the iPad App Store. Those screenshots match the images in the screencast above, lending credence to the video’s authenticity. Posted by MacStories, the video appears to have been made by a developer with special privileges to access the App Store through the iPad’s software development kit and emulator.

As expected, the iPad App Store closely resembles the UI of the iPhone’s App Store. From the video, we can extract a few key tidbits:

Cover Flow

A brand new “In the Spotlight” section utilizes Apple’s Cover Flow interface to showcase highlights in the store. We’re guessing those are Apple staff’s picks for what they feel is interesting — and if that’s the case, expect developers to be more sycophantic than ever in their effort to win Apple’s affection.

Pricing

Developers are pricing iPad games a bit higher than iPhone titles. The iPad game Flight Control HD, for example, is listed for $4.99; the iPhone version costs $0.99. And the iPad game Flick Fishing HD costs $2.99 — $2 more than Flick Fishing for iPhone.

This is just an early sample, and prices are subject to change based on market reactions, but it’s interesting to note that some game developers appear to be experimenting with the price bubble. $0.99 was an extremely popular (and successful) price point for many iPhone apps and games. Perhaps the standard price point for paid iPad apps will be around $2.99? We’ll see soon enough.

Titles

Many developers appear to be titling their apps and games to tout their iPad compatibility. Some app titles are tagged with “for the iPad,” and some games are tagged “HD” or “XL” to denote their iPad-ness.

That raises the question of whether iPad apps will be difficult to discern from the 150,000 iPhone apps in the store. A screenshot published by App Advice suggests that iPad apps will have their own separate section. But in most of the screens shown here, iPad apps seem to be sprinkled among iPhone apps, which may exacerbate the issue of overcrowding in the App Store.

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