Vista sales failing to sparkle
Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report. Standalone unit sales of Vista at US retail stores were down 59.7% compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5%. As of this summer, more than 60 million licences have been sold. According to research company Gartner, roughly 239 million PCs were sold worldwide last year, compared with 128 million in 2001. In many ways, sales of Vista are tied closely to the rate of PC sales. One of the big variables is how quickly businesses move to adopt Vista. Most businesses are not moving to the operating system in significant numbers yet, though Microsoft has begun to tout a few large deployments from corporations including Charter Communications, Citigroup, Continental Airlines and Infosys. Ahead of Vista's release, the software maker said it expected businesses to adopt the new operating system at twice the rate of XP during its first year on the market. However, many businesses have said they are waiting until Microsoft releases the first update to Vista before considering deployments of the operating system. Microsoft is starting beta testing of its first service pack for Windows Vista, though that update won't be released in final form until next year. News on the retail front is brighter for Office, which was released to stores the same day as Vista.

NTP sues several US wireless firms
Patent holding company NTP is suing several major US wireless companies for infringing patents which it holds on email services. The company claims that AT&T, Verizon Communications and Sprint Nextel are in breach of eight patents. NTP is seeking royalty payments based on sales of phones, PDAs and other mobile devices. NTP won a $612.5m out-of-court settlement in March 2006 from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) following a four-year legal battle. The judge in that case had been expected to rule in NTP's favour and order RIM to shut down its wireless email service in North America. NTP's latest legal challenge was filed on 7 September in the same federal court in Richmond, Virginia where the RIM case was held. NTP also filed a lawsuit against Palm in November 2006, alleging that the Treo Smartphone infringed on its patents.

Patent law passed in US, but Presidential veto could follow
A new US law which would reduce the damages to be paid out for patent infringement has been passed by one half of the US legislature. The proposed law was backed by large technology firms and banks but opposed by smaller tech companies and drug companies. The Patent Reform Act was passed by the House of Representatives on Friday. It must be passed by a vote of the Senate and signed by the President before becoming law. The bill's supporters said that it was aimed at improving the quality of patents awarded and cutting down on the amount of expensive litigation over patents that takes place. The law proposes a cut in the damages that can be awarded for patent infringement. It also changes the basis on which patents are awarded. The US is unusual in awarding patents to the first person to invent a technology. The bill proposes that a patent be awarded to the first person to file a patent application. This is easier to determine and, proponents hope, will result in less litigation. Software publishers' lobby group the Business Software Alliance, which represents companies such as Microsoft and Apple, had backed the new law, which it says goes some way towards fixing a 'broken' patent system. The large hi-tech companies lobby says that the current system plays into the hands of abusive patent litigation and opportunism. The bill was passed by just 220 votes to 175 with Democrats largely backing it. The 60 Republicans who voted for the bill were almost cancelled out by the 58 Democrats who crossed the floor and voted against it. Innovation Alliance is a lobby group which represents smaller technology companies such as InterDigital and Qualcomm. It says that the new law could end up costing small businesses and universities money.

Free your iPhone
Open Source developers have released free software that enables owners to unlock Apple's Iphone themselves, freeing them from AT&T. There are apparently two versions, one that uses the terminal window to enter commands, and a second, more user friendly version that has a GUI front-end. Apple could release a software update tomorrow that breaks this unlocking application, but it reportedly doesn't intend to do that deliberately. The GUI version of this free as in freedom and free as in beer Ip`hone unlocking software is here.

News Corp. Won’t Yank iTunes
News Corp. has no plans to pull its television shows from iTunes like NBC Universal, but echoed the media industry's calls for Apple to offer more flexible pricing. Many sector watchers expected News Corp. and other media groups to follow NBC Universal, which said last month it would not renew a deal to sell shows on iTunes because it wanted more flexibility in offering different packages and pricing. But Peter Chernin, News Corp.'s president and chief operating officer, said Rupert Murdoch's media group was not in a dispute with Apple, though it would like a bigger voice in pricing its shows. "Right now we have a perfectly good relationship with Apple," Chernin said. "But let me say this, we're the ones who should determine what the fair price for our product is, not Apple." Chernin's decision to keep popular Fox shows such as 24 and Prison Break on iTunes should be welcomed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is facing a growing revolt by some media companies over the pricing policies for audio and video downloads. Earlier this summer, Vivendi's Universal Music Group declined to sign a long-term deal, leaving open the possibility of exclusive deals with another services. An NBC Universal spokesman said it agreed with Mr. Chernin.

Citizens offer new take on news
A news agenda formulated by citizens would be radically different from that put together by journalists. That is the conclusion of a US study which compared what made the headlines in the mainstream media with that of three diverse user-driven news sources. The study - conducted by a wing of the US Pew Research center - compared stories over seven days. Its results will make interesting reading for news editors as well as the new breed of citizen journalists. The report - released by the Project for Excellence in Journalism - took a snapshot of news stories from the last week in June 2007. It compared the stories making the headline in 48 mainstream news sources, including TV, radio and online, to that of three user-driven news sites - Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us. It found that the interests of users was markedly different to that of traditional editors. Seven out of ten of the stories selected by the user-driven sites came from blogs or non-news websites with only 5% of stories overlapping with the ten most widely-covered stories in the mainstream media. This technology bias was partly down to the fact that it was early adopters of technology that lead the way when it came to "playing with the potential of the internet to empower users", said Mr Rosenstiel. In all, 40% of the most popular stories on Digg and Del.icio.us, were devoted to technology with the second most popular category being lifestyle stories. One of the biggest differences noted by the researchers was the emphasis put on a single story.

Libraries Pinched to Add Computers
Despite increased demand for Internet access at the nation's public libraries, a new survey finds the majority have no immediate plans to add computers. For many library systems, the buildings simply don't have enough room, and their electrical wiring can't deliver the required power. Others are already struggling to stay open, buy books and encourage youths to read. A new study from the American Library Association finds the average number of public Internet terminals largely unchanged since 2002, yet only one in five libraries says it has enough computers to meet demand. Costs, limitations in space, electrical outlets and cabling are cited as the chief factors preventing libraries from buying more computers. The survey of 4,027 public libraries, conducted from September 2006 to January 2007, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. The American Library Association conducted it with Florida State University and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which distributes grants to libraries for new computers and high-speed connections.

Amazon to Promote Web Services With Contest for Startups
Amazon.com Inc. is hoping to gain attention among entrepreneurs for its Web services by offering a contest that includes an investment offer as part of the prize. The "Amazon Web Services Start-up Challenge," introduced Wednesday, is targeted at start-ups and software developers who might need the Seattle retailer's Web services -- online-software services such as storage or access to computing power -- to get their fledgling companies off the ground. Entrepreneurs can rent these services instead of spending money on the computer infrastructure, such as data centers and servers, that start-ups normally usually purchase. Since 2002, Amazon has been making some of the technology and engineering that it uses to power its top-rated Web store available for rent to other software developers. It has added more services over the years as a way of earning money for its behind-the-scenes technology. The contest will award the entrepreneur with the best original and most promising business venture with a first prize of $50,000 cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Services credits, mentoring sessions with a Web services technical expert and a financing offer from Amazon. It will award Web services credits as other prizes.

Hong Kong newspaper takes gamble on free distribution
In an age of proliferating free news on the Internet, The Standard, a 58-year-old English-language daily newspaper, took a gamble Monday that underscores the challenges facing print publications everywhere. It joined the growing ranks of the free newspaper. On ferry piers, subway stations and street corners of this bustling financial center, distributors gave away an initial print run of 120,000 copies of The Standard, almost tripling its last paid-circulation run and outperforming a major rival. By around 8:30, almost all the copies were snapped up by the public. But the decision to eliminate the cover price of 6 Hong Kong dollars, or 77 U.S. cents, says more about the relentless impact of the Internet on traditional media than it does about turning adversity into opportunity. The growth of the Internet has been one of the drivers of a trend to start free papers, particularly in Europe. While the Internet has eroded readership and advertising revenue for newspapers in markets worldwide, few publications have as badly or suddenly fallen victim to the Web than The Standard. I

Chinese web filtering 'erratic'
China's firewall that tries to sanitise web browsing is much more porous than previously thought, says a study. Carried out by US researchers outside China, it found that the firewall often failed to block what the Chinese government finds objectionable. The firewall was least effective when lots of Chinese web users were online. The idea of the firewall was more effective than the technology at discouraging talk about banned subjects. The study, exploited the workings of the Chinese firewall to investigate its effectiveness. Unlike many other nations Chinese authorities do not simply block webpages that discuss banned subjects such as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Instead the technology deployed by the Chinese government scans data flowing across its section of the net for banned words or web addresses. When the filtering system spots a banned term it sends instructions to the source server and destination PC to stop the flow of data. The team used words taken from the Chinese version of Wikipedia to load the data streams then despatched into China's network. If a data stream was stopped a technique known as "latent semantic analysis" was used to find related words to see if they too were blocked. The researchers found that the blocking did not happen at the edge of China's network but often was done when the packets of loaded data had penetrated deep inside. Blocked were terms related to the Falun Gong movement, Tiananmen Square protest groups, Nazi Germany and democracy. On about 28% of the paths into China's net tested by the researchers, blocking failed altogether suggesting that web users would browse unencumbered at least some of the time. Filtering and blocking was "particularly erratic" when lots of China's web users were online, said the researchers. Despite the failures of the blocking system, the researchers said the idea that web browsing was being overseen often acted as a spur to self-censorship.

Top Ten Luxury Cars Gearing to Burn the Road
Driving and riding in a classy and expensive vehicle is usually taken as a status symbol. Super luxury cars have been here after Karl Benz got that first patent for a motorwagen in Germany in January 1886. Bugatti Veyron 16.4 is the car that currently holds the title of being the fastest, most powerful and most expensive production car in the world with a price tag of $1,700,000. But, the scenario is going to change (in terms of pricing, not speed) as DiMora Motors have announced the production of a US $2 million luxury car. Here, I have compiled a list of top 10 luxury cars coming your way. Check them out.

Average user rating

   (0 vote)