---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: inttk2004 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Dec 19, 2007 9:37 AM
_______________________________________________________ INTERNET THINK TANK FLASH NEWS Decemberb 19, 2007 _______________________________________________________ About Us Internet Think Tank is an Internet technology and research firm specializing in enterprise web applications and web services. Internet Think Tank develops and promotes technology that enhances how people use the Internet in new and exciting ways. To learn more about Internet Think Tank, visit our web site at http://www.inttk.com _______________________________________________________ Business *Server Electricity Use Soars in Asia Pacific Region Server electricity use is growing faster in the Asia Pacific region (minus Japan) than anywhere on the planet, and total worldwide server electricity use doubled the first half of this decade despite growing concern about the environmental and economic impacts of the data center, according to a report issued Wednesday. Server electricity use in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan) grew 23% a year from 2000 to 2005, significantly higher than the world average of 16% annual growth, says the report written by Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and consulting professor at Stanford University. The research was sponsored by AMD. The Chinese, Indian and Indonesian economies are growing at a very fast rate, fueling growth for the overall Asia Pacific region, which also includes Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries, Koomey said in a phone interview. Worldwide electricity use doubled to 123 billion kWh by the end of the five years studied, including servers and associated cooling and equipment. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com ) *Europeans to Hold Hearings on Google-DoubleClick and Privacy European lawmakers plan to hold a hearing next month to scrutinize the privacy implications of the proposed Google acquisition of online-ad firm DoubleClick, according to the Associated Press. The proposed $3.1 billion deal has provoked complaints that it would give Google an unprecedented amount of information about consumers' online activities, with a view into not only what people search for, but exactly where on the Internet they go and what ads they click on. The hearing will be held either January 21 or January 31, according to the report. A Google spokesman had this comment on the matter: ""We agree that privacy issues are important and have taken a number of industry-leading steps to improve privacy for our users. Given the rapid pace of change in our industry, these issues are best examined in the broader context of what all companies are doing in online privacy, not by singling out any single company. As the European Commission and FTC have both made clear, though, privacy is outside the scope of their competition investigations." (Source: http://www.news.com ) *DoCoMo Rises on Report It's in Talks to Sell IPhone NTT DoCoMo Inc., Japan's slowest- growing wireless operator by subscribers, rose the most in two weeks in Tokyo trading after a report said it's in talks with Apple Inc. to sell the iPhone in the country. DoCoMo's stock climbed 1.7 percent, the biggest gain since Dec. 6, to 179,000 yen at the 11 a.m. break on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs recently met DoCoMo President Masao Nakamura to discuss selling the iPhone in Japan, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. DoCoMo, the nation's biggest wireless carrier, has lagged behind KDDI Corp. and Softbank Corp. in monthly user gains since April. A partnership with the Cupertino, California-based company may help the Japanese carrier lure customers and end two years of profit declines. (Source: http://www.bloomberg.com ) _______________________________________________________ Early Adaptor Blog The true size of the Chinese economy may be much smaller than thought, Blu-ray is killing HD-Dvd in Japan, DNA Dating and a guide to last minute geek gifts in the E.A. Blog. http://earlyadaptor.tumblr.com/ _______________________________________________________ Portals *New Tools Will Mash Up Phone, Mobile, & Net A startup called Ribbit today unveiled a tool to let developers create voice communication applications that unify Internet-based and traditional telephony services, including phones and text messaging. Developers can include voicemail and calling functions, and can embed their apps in Web pages and Web-based services, reports Reuters. The platform supports Internet calling systems such as Skype. Ribbit will allow developers to charge for their services and handle billing on their behalf. One developer already created an application that embeds calling and voicemail in Salesforce.com's web pages. In addition to making and getting calls, it lest users listen to and send voicemails, see transcripts of voice messages, and sort them. Ribbit said more than 650 developers are creating similar applications. (Source: http://www.newser.com ) Ribbit http://www.ribbit.com/ *The Federal-Contract Derby "Follow the money" has always been good advice. Now the White House budget office has made it easier for taxpayers to do just that by creating USASpending.gov, a searchable database. According to the Washington Post, the Web site resulted from an unusual collaboration between Robert Shea, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit advocacy group that ordinarily maintains a highly adversarial relationship with the budget office. I applaud this new tool, which should make federal spending more transparent. Like Justice Louis Brandeis, I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Even federal spending that doesn't cry out for disinfecting would be interesting to learn more about. (Source: http://www.slate.com ) USASpending.gov http://www.usaspending.gov/ *Health Search + Patient Social Network = iMedix When you are sick or need to research a disease for an ailing relative, the two best places to go online are health search engines like Healthline or patient support group sites like Daily Strength. Tel Aviv startup iMedix wants to combine both: a vertical health search engine with a patient-to-patient social network. Tomorrow it officially switches to beta, although the previously invite-only site has been open about a week. iMedix is a social search engine focussed on healthcare that has raised $2 million from angel investors. When you type in a search term, an auto-completed list of health and medical terms pops down to help guide your search. Type in "toe," and it suggests "wound of toenail," "tingling toe" "broken toe," "blue toes," "absence of toe," and "hammer toe," among others. Along the side column are profiles of iMedix members who may be interested in health topics related to the search. In this case, "sport injuries." If the iMedix members are online, you can start a chat with them. If they are not online, you can send them an e-mail. So as you search, you not only find links to health articles and other information on the Web, you also find other people you can talk to about that health topic. (Source: http://www.techcrunch.com ) iMedix http://www.imedix.com/ _______________________________________________________ Internet *Economic Woes Dampen Web Holiday Sales Economic woes have dumped a lump of coal on the nation's online retailers, which, like their brick-and-mortar rivals, have struggled with an uneven holiday business following a strong official start to the season. ComScore Inc., an Internet research company, reported Sunday that online sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 14 rose 18 percent from the same period a year ago to $22.67 billion, but that's less than the 26 percent growth rate seen last year and the 20 percent projection for the season. And while online merchants are stepping up promotions even more and offering free shipping upgrades to extend the season, it's clear that e-retailers are as vulnerable to the economic challenges as their rivals with physical stores. The current economic realities are forcing customers to "pick their spots, and they are waiting for the deals," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. "I think it is possible that they are procrastinating longer than a year ago." (Source: http://finance.myway.com ) *Internet Archive to Store Researchers' Notes, "raw" Data Academic research can be a messy thing. In contrast to the carefully formatted and argued publications that result, the raw material is often a mass of annotated documents, hastily taken notes, and scattered references. The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University thinks that this raw material could be just as useful to the wider research community as the final publication. They've now secured a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a system for uploading it into a database at the Internet Archive. The catch? The academics have to be organizing that material using Zotero, a Firefox plug-in. (Source: http://arstechnica.com ) The Center for History and New Media http://chnm.gmu.edu/index.php *Narcissism Thrives on the Web More Americans are Googling themselves - and many are checking out their friends, co-workers and romantic interests, too. In a report on Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 per cent of US adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine. That is more than twice the 22 per cent of users who did in 2002, but Pew senior research specialist Mary Madden was surprised the growth wasn't higher. "Yes it's doubled, but it's still the case that there's a big chunk of Internet users who have never done this simple act of plugging their name with search engines," she said. "Certainly awareness has increased, but I don't know it's necessarily kept pace with the amount of content we post about ourselves or what others post about us." About 60 percent of internet users said they aren't worried about the extent of information about themselves online, despite increasing concern over how that data can be used. Americans under 50 and those with more education and income were more likely to self-Google - in some cases because their jobs demand a certain online persona. (Source: http://www.smh.com.au ) ________________________________________________________ Weekly Quote "Microsoft is doing the right thing in trying to develop parallel software. They could be roadkill if somebody else figures out how to do this first." --Andrew Singer, a veteran software designer who is the co-founder of Rapport Inc., a parallel computing company based in Redwood City, Calif. The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is having trouble keeping up. Newer chips with multiple processors require dauntingly complex software that breaks up computing chores into chunks that can be processed at the same time. The challenges have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips - processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 - will transform the world of personal computing. The company is mounting a major effort to improve the parallel computing capabilities in its software. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com ) ________________________________________________________ Wireless *Avaya Folds iPhone into the Corporate Network Avaya has released software which it claims will turn Apple's iPhone handset into a "fully-fledged business tool". The one-X Mobile client software, due for release in Europe in the first quarter of next year, is designed to integrate the largely consumer-centric device into "most enterprise IP telecommunications networks", Avaya claimed in a statement on Tuesday. The software will allow the use of a single number for both mobile and desk-based communications, by routing calls through the corporate network. Avaya already has software to enable the integration of a variety of popular handsets, but this is the first time it has targeted the iPhone. The company claims that the one-X Mobile interface will give users functionality such as multi-party conference calling, call transfer and call screening. Some enterprise applications have been made available for use with the iPhone, but several issues remain for those who wish to use Apple's handset in the workplace. Gartner has warned against such deployment due to security and compatibility concerns. (Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com ) *Milton Keynes gets Commercial WiMax Service A commercial WiMax service has been launched in Milton Keynes in the United Kingdom, following extensive trials of the wireless broadband technology. Run by a council-owned business called ConnectMK, the service offers local residents and businesses a wireless alternative to the relatively expensive symmetrical DSL (SDSL) connections. The connectivity is provided by Freedom4--until recently known as Pipex Wireless--which has been testing fixed WiMax in Milton Keynes since last year. ConnectMK's service is not the first commercial WiMax deployment in the U.K.--that accolade goes to Urban Wimax's Westminster-based business network--but it does appear to be the first deployment in conjunction with a city council. According to Steven Jewell, the chief executive of ConnectMK and also the head of IT and e-government for Milton Keynes Council, the commercial side of the deployment was designed in part to sustain community improvement. (Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com ) ________________________________________________________ Technology *Windows XP Outshines Vista in Benchmarking Test New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1. Vista's first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor. Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds. Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials. (Source: http://www.news.com ) *Amazon Launching Database-as-a-Service Having made book-buying easier, Amazon.com is now seeking to do the same thing for databases. Developers can sign up now for Amazon SimpleDB, a Web service for running queries on structured data, that will be available as a beta within several weeks. The database Relevant Products/Services access, in conjunction with Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) application hosting, provides services that the company said will make Web-scale computing "easier and more cost-effective for developers." Users only pay for what they use, at the rate of 14 cents per machine hour used. The machine hours are determined by measuring the use required for every request, on the basis of the capacity of a current-generation 1.7-GHz Xeon processor. In addition, there are charges for data in and out, starting at 10 cents per GB in and 18 cents per GB out, although data transferred to other Amazon Web Services is free. (Source: http://www.sci-tech-today.com ) Amazon SimpleDB http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342335011 *Goldman Sachs: New iPhones, Apple TV for 2008 We had a pretty good idea that a new iPhone would be coming in 2008, but what will it look like? A report from Goldman Sachs Wednesday spotted by AppleInsider doesn't exactly shed much more light on that subject, but says that Apple is gearing up to deliver two new iPhones next year. The first one sounds like it will be just a storage upgrade with more flash memory in the first half of the year, while the second half of the year should bring the long-awaited 3G iPhone, according to the report. Not one, but two iPhones could be released next year, according to Goldman Sachs. Both Apple CEO Steve Jobs and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson have indicated that 2008 is the year for the 3G iPhone, so that's not much of a surprise. An iPhone that could connect to 3G (third-generation) data networks would allow for faster download speeds, but Apple has held off on introducing such a model to this point because of concerns over battery life, according to Jobs. Goldman also thinks that Apple is getting ready to introduce a newer version of Apple TV, which had a disappointing first year. (Source: http://asia.cnet.com ) ________________________________________________________ Security *Report: One In Six Computers Has Spyware Infection The threat of rootkits seems to have faded from public consciousness in recent months, with key loggers and Trojans getting most of the attention. However, a survey by Internet security vendor Prevx finds that quite a few PCs are infected with rootkits. Prevx has a free scanner called Prevx CSI that looks for rootkit infections and, after just a few weeks of testing, the results were not pretty. Prevx first started giving out CSI to perform scans for malware and adware in October. Of the 291,000 users who downloaded Prevx CSI, one in six found some kind of infection. Then, beginning on December 1, Prevx added rootkit detection. Since then, 114,000 computers were scanned and 1,678 had a rootkit, or 1 out of every 70 PCs. On top of that, 93 companies used the business scan feature in Prevx CSI and 13 of those companies, or 14 percent, had at least one or more PC infected by a rootkit. (Source: http://www.internetnews.com ) *Report: Cybercrime Stormed the Net in 2007 Security researchers say 2007 was the year online criminals showed off how smart and dangerous they can be. Anti-virus vendor F-Secure added 250,000 new signatures to its malware database this year -- as many as the company added in its first 20 years combined. "The driving force is that the malware is being done at a professional level," according to Patrik Runald, security response manager for F-Secure, speaking about the company's end-of-the-year report, released this week. That explosion didn't come from hordes of hackers feverishly writing new programs to steal password and credit card numbers, though. Instead, hackers perfected automated tools that wrapped old exploits in new gift boxes -- sometimes changing the appearances of files offered as downloads as quickly as every five minutes. That mighty morphing malware menace is one of many signs that individual fraud artists, organized crime and Eastern European hackers are transforming the face of online crime. Black-hat hackers increasingly infect legitimate sites with drive-by downloads and find clever ways to reap financial gain from malware. (Source: http://www.wired.com ) ________________________________________________________ Legal *MPAA Wins Copyright Suit Against TorrentSpy.com A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled in favor of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) member studios in their copyright infringement suits against BitTorrent index TorrentSpy.com, taking the extraordinary step of terminating the case after finding that TorrentSpy had intentionally destroyed evidence. The case will now proceed directly to the phase where damages are considered, although CNET News.com reports that TorrentSpy will appeal the decision. U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said in her ruling that, "although termination of a case is a harsh sanction appropriate only in extraordinary circumstance, the circumstances of this case are sufficiently extraordinary to merit such a sanction." The court found that TorrentSpy members destroyed evidence including forum postings with references to copyright infringement, site directories referencing copyrighted works, and user IP addresses. (Source: http://www.dmwmedia.com ) *A New Front Is Opened in the Browser Wars Opera Software, the Oslo-based producer of the Opera browser, has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft Relevant Products/Services, alleging that the software giant is unfairly abusing its dominant market position by tying Windows to Internet Explorer. The complaint also alleges that Microsoft is hindering Web interoperability by failing to adhere to widely accepted Web standards. In a press statement released earlier Thursday, Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said that the company was acting on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them. "In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers," Tetzchner added, "we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we've brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide." The company is asking the European Commission to order Microsoft either to unbundle Internet Explorer or to require it to bundle additional competing browsers, such as Firefox or Opera. (Source: http://www.newsfactor.com ) *Facebook Sues Porn Company Over Hacking Facebook is suing seventeen people and a Canadian Internet porn company for allegedly trying to mine the popular social networking site for its users' personal details. Facebook alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook's site. The allegations are contained in an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The company first filed suit back in June, but amended the complaint this month after obtaining court orders to identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site. Experts have warned people against publishing too much personal information on social networking sites for fear it could be collected and then abused by fraudsters. (Source: http://www.pcworld.com ) *Amazon Ordered to End Free Delivery on Books in France Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled. The action, brought in January 2004 by the French Booksellers' Union (Syndicat de la librairie française), accused Amazon of offering illegal discounts on books -- and even of selling some books below cost. The court gave Amazon 10 days to start charging for the delivery of books, which should at least allow the company to maintain the offer through the end-of-year gift-giving season. After that, it must pay a fine of €1,000 ($1,470) per day that it continues to offer free delivery. It must also pay €100,000 in compensation to the booksellers' union. Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France. The union said it was pleased with the court's ruling, which would help protect vulnerable small bookshops from predatory pricing practices. (Source: http://www.infoworld.com ) ________________________________________________________ Gadget of the Week *AT&T Announces Napster Phone AT&T will soon begin offering Samsung's SLM phone, a new device that is sure to raise some eyebrows with Apple and iPhone buyers. The new cellphone, scheduled to be available on November 23 for $150 (after a $50 mail-in-rebate), will be selling side-by-side to the iPhone and offer similar functionality as well as features Apple customers are still waiting for. The phone is a fully decked-out clamshell phone covered in a brushed-metal finish and will be AT&Ts first phone to support music downloads from Napster. Other than the iPhone, which is operating under AT&T's moody EDGE network, the SLM supports 3G HSDPA to provide download speeds of more than 600 Kb/s, according to the carrier. AT&T says that the connection is high enough to enable the download of a music track in less than a minute. iPhone users will have to connect their iPhone to a Wi-Fi network to achieve broadband speeds and download songs from iTunes. While the iPhone is locked down to iTunes, the SLM also supports AT&T Video Share, AT&T Mobile Music, eMusic and mobile banking at Wachovia and SunTrust banks. (Source: http://www.tgdaily.com ) Review: Samsung SLM SGH-A747 http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/samsung-slm-sgh-a747/4505-6454_7-32751900.html _______________________________________________________ Tech Terms Circular Entertainment Up to a quarter of the entertainment consumed by people in five years time will have been created, edited and shared within their peer circle rather than coming out of traditional media groups. This phenomenon, dubbed 'Circular Entertainment', has been identified by Nokia as a result of a global study into the future of entertainment. _________________________________________________________ On the Web CNET looks back on the year of consumer tech. "Best & Worst tech of 2007" http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-13753_7-6809816-1.html Nicholas Christakis, a researcher at Harvard University in Cambridge, is using the popular Web site to study the influence of social networks. "On Facebook, scholars link up with data" http://iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/style/17facebook.php The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies. "Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html?ex=1355461200&en=e8b94d40d6584db4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss _________________________________________________________ Wired Index December 18, 2007 $21.22 Last Week -0.62 Year to Date +18.02% Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators Fund (IWIRX) tracks the share prices of 40 public companies, selected by the editors of Wired magazine to represent the forces driving the new economy. For more information about the fund including past performance, see the link below: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=iwirx ___________________________________________________________ ***Apeluri umanitare George Cuzuc: website http://www.cuzuc.netfirms.com/index.htm Emilia Baba-Paun: website http://www.help-ema.puls-il.ro ------------------------------------------------------------- **[RomaniaUSA] "Romani. 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