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Mozilla’s new Firefox browser beta offers a glimpse of coming attractions, but is not yet suited for everyday browsing.

The first beta release of the much-anticipated Firefox 3 Web browser offers some nice enhancements over the previous version, such as additional security and new tools for storing and accessing bookmarks and browsing history, but it doesn’t differ much from Firefox 2 in looks or functionality.Most of the changes expected in version 3 (due for final release in early 2008), such as stability and performance enhancements for the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine, will be under the hood and weren’t apparent in the beta we tested. Most of the work for the new Places feature, which stores bookmarks and history in a database instead of in regular HTML files, is likewise invisible.

A few nice, though not earth-shattering, additions do reveal themselves. A new star icon next to the site URL allows for quickly adding new bookmarks; click it once to add a bookmark to the default folder or twice to choose the destination. You can also add tags to your bookmarks and then view them by those tags, or easily create bookmark backups that you can copy to other computers.

Mozilla is also working on a number of security enhancements, which again were not all available in this beta. I was able to test a revamp of the saved-password feature, which lets you postpone saving site credentials until after you’ve successfully logged in. The final release will block known malicious sites that attempt to install Trojan horses or other malware (the blacklist of such sites isn’t yet in place). Overall the extra security should help make for safer browsing, but none of the upgrades will prove a major deterrent for malware pushers.

Other updates include a new downloads manager that allows for resuming downloads after browser restarts, a full-page zoom, and security and usage improvements for handling browser add-ons. Be sure to see the full list of changes in Firefox 3.

If you’re interested in trying out version 3’s new features, keep in mind that this beta release has known bugs. You can’t log in to Yahoo Mail’s slick new interface, for instance, though you can read Yahoo Mail via the old interface. Also, many popular add-ons, including Foxmarks (for bookmark syncing) and SiteAdvisor (for Web surfing security), don’t yet work with the new Firefox. You can install and uninstall Beta 1 alongside Firefox 2, and in our tests the old version–including­ bookmarks, add-ons, and settings–was unharmed.

This beta, because of its bugs, is not well suited for everyday browsing. Using it, however, makes clear that the final Firefox 3 will include some nice extras but won’t push the boundaries for browser upgrades.

–Erik Larkin

source: PC World

Sony recently introduced a 3.5-inch multi-touch panel screen with a resolution of 640×480 and 16.7 million colors, according to the company.

The display is designed with built-in touch panel function using Sony’s low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology.

The product features a 3.5-inch screen with a resolution of 640 x 480. Based on the system on glass (SOG) technology using low-temperature poly Si, the photodetector is concurrently formed in the TFT array process.

source: DigiTimes

T-Mobile UK and 3 UK, two British mobile phone operators, recently said they would combine their 3G networks in an effort to save each of them £1 billion over the next decade. Vodafone and Orange, two other British mobile phone companies, have been talking since February about making a similar deal.Think of it as McDonald’s and Burger King getting together to share the cost of the trucks that deliver meat, potatoes and tomatoes to their outlets. While unthinkable in most industries, including fast food, this sort of collaboration is under way between mobile phone companies and is likely to accelerate.

“Everybody in Europe will be watching to see if this works,” said Steven Hartley, a senior analyst in London for Ovum, a consultancy whose clients include Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile. “If they can make this work as fast as they say they will, you’ll see a flurry of these agreements in 2008 or the year after.”

European mobile phone companies spent about £100 billion, or $198 billion, in 2000 buying 3G licenses, and then spent billions more building new networks that were supposed to revolutionize the industry by making the mobile Internet fast, appealing and - most of all - profitable. But seven years later, text messaging still dominates among non-voice services and mobile phone operators continue to struggle to convince their clients to pay for Internet surfing, video downloads and other services.

“What they are doing is trying to improve the bottom line by getting operating costs down while creating a situation where you can improve the top line by having better services,” Hartley said.

read the whole story at Herald Tribune

Internet users who download pirate films or television series could soon see their service suspended as political pressure grows on broadband service providers to stop illegal downloads.

The Government has given notice of its concern at the “huge cumulative effect” of illegal downloads and called on internet service providers (ISPs) to examine ways to reverse the trend.

MPs are also calling for the use of camcorders in cinemas to be made a criminal rather than a civil offence, as nine out of ten pirate films first appear in the market as a camcorded copy.

ISPs are to be brought to negotiations in the new year over plans by film companies to suspend the service of those who break the law.

The UK Film Council estimates that film piracy cost the industry more than £800 million in 2005. Shrek 2 and Star Wars: the Revenge of the Sithwere both available through file-sharing networks before their cinematic release. Several of this year’s Oscar contenders, including Atonement, The Kite Runner and I Am Legend, have also appeared illegally online.

The first episode of the revived Doctor Who was downloaded by tens of thousands of fans from file-sharing websites before it was shown on television, according to a report by MPs.

Until now, broadband companies have been deeply reluctant to step in, arguing that it is impractical to monitor the activities of users and would infringe privacy. “ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope,” insists ISPA, the industry association.

However, this argument has been undermined by developments in France, where an industry initiative backed by President Sarkozy could result in internet subscribers who download music, films and other content without paying for them being banned from having access to the web.

Denis Olivennes, the chairman of Fnac, the DVD retailer, who conducted a review for the French Government, called for a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” policy for individuals found guilty of internet piracy. He argued that ISPs are culpable because they encourage subscribers to take advantage of the amount of free material on the web.

In Britain, pressure is growing on ISPs from a powerful cross-party committee of MPs on the Culture Select Committee, who argue that ISPs have accepted in principle that access to unlicensed material should be restricted. In a report on the creative industries, MPs said: “It may be impractical for such businesses to be made legally liable for providing access to certain material, but we believe strongly that the industry should do more to discourage piracy.”

The Government welcomed the MPs’ report and called on ISPs and film companies to work together.

Some broadband companies have indicated that they are willing to enter negotiations. A spokesman for Virgin Media said: “As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media would always openly negotiate with any interested party or governing body such as Ofcom.” He added that a precedent for monitoring users had already been set.

A spokesman for BT said as copyright infringement is a civil, not a criminal, offenceit is “a matter for the rights holders and not for the ISPs”.

source: Times Online

The dashing start of electrons in a crystal does not remain without consequences for their further fate. Researchers examined the ultrafast movement of electrons in a gallium arsenide crystal exposed for a short time to a very high electrical field. This conceptually new experiment shows for the first time a collective, oscillatory motion of the electrons with ultrahigh frequency, which arises additionally to the well-known drift motion of these particles. This newly discovered effect could play an important role in connection with the miniaturization of electronic devices.

This is reported by the Berlin researchers Peter Gaal, Wilhelm Kuehn, Klaus Reimann, Michael Woerner, and Thomas Elsaesser of the Max-Born Institute and Rudolf Hey of the Paul Drude Institute in Nature*.

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is one of the most important materials for semiconductor optoelectronics. A GaAs crystal consists of a regular lattice of gallium and arsenic atoms, in which the gallium atoms carry a small positive and the arsenic atoms a small negative electric charge. An electron moving slowly through the crystal causes in its neighbourhood a distortion of the crystal lattice. The negative electric charge of the electron repels negatively charged atoms and attracts positively charged atoms.

This causes oscillations of the atoms around their rest position: Lattice vibrations, so called phonons, develop. “That is similar to a heavy ball rolling over a mattress”, describes Michael Wörner. “The metal springs of the mattress are squeezed together and relax again.” By the generation of lattice vibrations, the electrons lose energy and thus are slowed down. This deceleration is nothing else but the electrical resistance. The electrons drift with constant velocity through the lattice. This physical picture is the basis of the long-known law for the electrical resistance, Ohm’s law.

A completely new situation arises if the electrons experience a dashing start, i.e., if they are—by an extremely high electrical field—accelerated faster than the response time of the atoms in their neighbourhood. The Berlin researchers use for this strong acceleration an electrical field of 2 million Volts per meter, which is applied to the crystal for the extremely short duration of 0.3 picoseconds (1 picosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a second).

The motion of the electrons caused by this high electric field is observed with ultrashort light pulses in the infrared spectral region. In contrast to the drift motion with constant velocity observed for small electrical fields, for high fields the velocity of the accelerated electrons changes periodically between high and low values. The frequency of these velocity oscillations corresponds exactly to the highest frequency with which the atoms can vibrate, the frequency of so-called longitudinal optical phonons.

Theoretical computations confirmed quantitatively this experimentally found behaviour. MBI director Professor Thomas Elsaesser says, “the fact that strongly accelerated electrons can excite vibrations of the atoms and that in turn they are decelerated and accelerated by the vibrating atoms is of great importance for the charge transfer in nanostructures.” In such nanostructures, electrical fields of similar size can arise due to the small dimensions. Elsaesser adds: “Therefore our results are important for the optimization of transportation characteristics of semiconductor nanostructures.”

*Nature. Vol. 450, Page 1210.

Adapted from materials provided by Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V..

source: ScienceDaily 

BenQ has announced the launch of a new notebook series - the Joybook Q41, featuring dual screens.

The Joybook Q41 features an auxiliary display which allows consumers to have immediate access to Windows Media Player at the touch of a button, to SlideShow Player to view all their photos and to access games, according to the company.

The Joybook Q41 also allows access to calendar appointments, latest emails, entire contact lists and PowerPoint presentations on the auxiliary display, noted the company.

source: DigiTimes 

Apple’s sputtering efforts to be a major purveyor of video downloads may get a lift in 2008 from an agreement with 20th Century Fox for digital movie rentals.Apple has been trying to interest a number of Hollywood studios in an iTunes rental service, and several people familiar with the negotiations said that more than one studio would appear onstage at the company’s MacWorld exhibition in San Francisco beginning Jan. 14 to endorse a new Apple movie rental service.

These people, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations, confirmed the Apple-Fox relationship. Apple now trails several companies offering digital movie rental services, including Amazon and Movielink.

The Financial Times first reported the movie rental agreement on Thursday.

Apple and Fox executives declined to comment. The Fox studio is a unit of News Corp.

Steven Jobs, the co-founder and chief executive of Apple, has been publicly skeptical about movie rentals in the past. Hints that Apple would reverse itself and pursue a digital rental strategy emerged last month when a Carnegie Mellon undergraduate found a series of text phrases in the company’s iTunes software suggesting that components of a video-on-demand rental service were already embedded.

Apple, which is based in Cupertino, California, now sells movie downloads from several studios through its iTunes service, including Walt Disney, where Jobs is a board member and its largest individual shareholder.

With more than 30 million iPods sold, many of which can display videos, Apple has in its customers an attractive audience for the Hollywood studios.

read the whole story at Herald Tribune

Chris Sacca had a plum job as the Wi-Fi guru at Google. But with his stock options fully vested, he left the Internet search company this month for a new career as a venture capitalist.Sacca, 32, joins a growing number of Google millionaires hoping to parlay their newfound wealth into even greater riches by bankrolling technology start-ups.Three years after Google went public, a fast-growing network of company veterans is fanning out across Silicon Valley. Some are joining the venture capital firms that financed the technology boom of the 1990s. Others are raising investment funds or backing embryonic companies with their own money as so-called angel investors.

“I had one of the best jobs in the world,” said Sacca, who as head of special initiatives at Google led a number of high-profile projects, including the creation of a free Wi-Fi network in Mountain View, California, the company’s hometown. “But there is a world of opportunity.”

So after four years at Google, he struck out on his own to raise a venture fund. Like many Silicon Valley hands, Sacca enjoys working at small companies. And Google, which has more than 16,000 employees, is hardly the start-up it once was.

In their new careers, Google alumni like Sacca are increasingly turning to former colleagues for money and ideas. They help each other line up investors, identify entrepreneurs and hire talented engineers and managers.

Some Google veterans hope to turn their loose affiliation into the next powerful network in Silicon Valley, where webs of money and connections have helped build many companies.

read the whole story at Herald Tribune

Many industrial processes involve reactions in places that are difficult to see directly. A novel tabletop touch screen allows hidden sequences of events to be observed in progress. It can be operated intuitively using a combination of fingers and recognizes swiping movements.

A crowd of people is gathered around a large table with an illuminated surface, on which images of a journey through pipes and machines in a factory are being displayed. Users can select individual components by touching the corresponding image with a finger. The objects can be rotated and observed by swiping a finger over them – and the same method can be used to watch a process in slow motion. By drawing apart their two index fingers on the table surface, users can enlarge the image and zoom in on a detail, such as a bay wheel scooping up hundreds of thousands of plastic granules.

The Multi-Touch Table provides a tangible virtual replication of processes that normally take place hidden inside networks of pipes: How does the process work? What are its advantages?

The large, industrial-scale display table was developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt. “The table is already being used by the Coperion Group of companies,” relates IGD project manager Michael Zöllner. “It allows customers to observe the entire process chain of plastics manufacturing and processing. They can watch in real time as the granulate flows through the pipes and regulate the speed by swiping a finger over the image.” The researchers worked with colleagues at the Steinbeis Institute Design and Systems on the development of this application.

So how does the touch screen work? Infrared LEDs emit light into the Plexiglas® surface of the display at a horizontal angle. This light is internally totally reflected within the acrylic sheet, which allows none of the light to escape. A finger placed on the surface changes its reflective properties, enabling light to emerge. This light is captured by an infrared camera installed beneath the table. Although the system is based on well-known principles, various challenges still had to be overcome.

“The surface of acrylic sheets is too smooth to resolve finger movements. Our solution was to apply a special coating,” says Zöllner. Another problematic aspect was how to project the images. “To obtain a large, bright, undistorted image, the optical path has to be relatively long – something that is difficult to achieve within the confines of the table below the display. We had to affect the optical path itself, by using mirrors to keep it short,” the research scientist explains. As for the user interface, the researchers made sure that it could be used easily and intuitively. After all, nobody wants to have to follow complicated technical instructions when meeting with customers or visiting a museum.

Adapted from materials provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

source: ScienceDaily

Home theater surround-sound setups use five speakers to emulate the movie-hall experience — a pair front and back, and one speaker in the center. But if you can’t wire and hang such a system, there is a workaround: Single-enclosure sound bars for mounting under flat-panel TV screens.

At next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Definitive Technology will be showing off its $1,099 Mythos SSA50 array, which will go on sale in February. Inside its 46-inch-wide aluminum enclosure, the SSA50 employs psychoacoustic tricks, like filtering the sounds meant for the rear speakers to mimic the way the mind expects to hear sounds from behind. The phase of the sound waves from the left and right drivers is shifted to reduce perceived crosstalk, for better separation of the channels.

The effect is to fool listeners into thinking the sound is coming from all around. Some single-enclosure models rely on bouncing sound off of walls, but if the arrangement of your entertainment center makes this difficult, the SSA50 could do the trick.

source: Herald Tribune

AMD has recently adjusted its triple-core CPU model numbers and launch dates, according to sources at motherboard makers.

AMD will launch two B2 stepping triple-core CPUs, Phenom 8600 and 8400 in March of next year, while in the second quarter, the company will launch three more models, Phenom 8700, 8650 and 8450.

The Phenom 8400 and 8600 will feature core frequencies of 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz, respectively, while the Phenom 8700 will clock at 2.4GHz. Phenom 8650 and 8450 will be based on B3 stepping cores, and will have frequencies of 2.3GHz and 2.1GHz, respectively. All five CPUs will have a 95W TDP.

The high price/performance ratio of the triple-core CPUs could force Intel to cut prices of its quad-core products which could cause higher-end models to cut into sales of lower-end CPUs, noted the sources. However, AMD could also face the same problem, they added.

AMD declined to comment on unannounced products, but noted that the triple-core CPUs provide consumers with more choices and will extend the market’s acceptance of multi-core technology.

source: DigiTimes 

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has teamed up with a number of Taiwan-based makers in a bid to strengthen it market position in the dedicated PDA and PDA phone segments, according to sources at Taiwan handset makers.

The company released its new PDA device, the iPAQ 112, in South Korea last week and unveiled the product in Taiwan on December 25.

The iPAQ 112 features a 3.5-inch touch screen and runs on Windows Mobile 6 OS and is powered by a Marvell PXA310 processor. The handheld device, which also supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, carries a suggested retail price of NT$9,900 (US$305).

While outsourcing the production of the iPAQ 112 to the Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) Group, HP is contracting the production of two PDA phones, the iPAQ 610 and iPAQ 910, to Inventec Appliances, according to sources at the makers.

The launch of the iPAQ 610 and iPAQ 910, both supporting the 3.5G standard, was originally set for the fourth quarter of this year but has been postponed to the first half of 2008 due to certification problems, the sources indicated.

HP has also teamed up with Compal Communications for the development of three smartphone phones with specifications yet to be decided, said the sources, noting that the iPAQs manufactured by Compal may come out in the second half of 2008 at the earliest.

source: DigiTimes 

Asustek Computer has announced the DSEB-D16 series server board, a 45nm Intel Xeon 5400/5200 processor ready platform, which the company claims is capable of 90%+ power efficiency.

The DSEB-D16/SAS optimizes power efficiency by up to 90%, enabling power savings of around 1.68KWh per day and 613.2KWh per year. This would provide a significant reduction of the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), especially for enterprises deploying numerous server systems to provide non-stop services, said the company.

The 16 FB-DIMM slots in the DSEB-D16/SAS provide up to 64GB memory capacity and are divided into two zones (8-DIMM per zone) to enable better airflow.

The optional Asustek patented MemCool Kit maximizes FB-DIMM performance by eliminating the potential risk of system memory throttling from over-temperature, and minimizes system integration effort of thermal and acoustic solutions, said Asustek.

The DSEB-D16/SAS also provides two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, one PCI Express x8 slot, and one PCI-X interface for advanced hardware RAID upgrades, the company highlighted.

source: DigiTimes

The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it had cleared Google’s proposed takeover of DoubleClick, the digital marketing company, saying that the deal was “unlikely to substantially lessen competition” in the Internet advertising realm.In tandem with the announcement, the agency released voluntary privacy guidelines for companies like DoubleClick that are in the business of targeting ads to people based on their Web-surfing habits. The gist of the guidelines was that the entire advertising industry should work together to give consumers more choice about whether or not they want to be tracked.

Although Google, the leading Internet search portal, and DoubleClick, which connects advertisers to advertising venues on the Web, have been waiting for the better part of the year for an antitrust decision from the agency, their uncertainty is not over yet. The acquisition could still be held up in Europe, where personal privacy enjoys more legal protections than in the United States and which does not always follow the agency’s lead on antitrust cases.

The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, said it would decide by April 2 whether the deal should go through. Last month, the commission extended its scrutiny after an initial review raised competition concerns.

In Europe, the market share of the two companies combined is higher than in the United States - close to 90 percent in parts of the Internet advertising business, according to some estimates. And while the European regulators said they were evaluating the merger solely for its effects on pricing and market share, consumer groups are urging them to factor in privacy considerations, too.

Google’s $3.1 billion deal to buy DoubleClick has been controversial since it was announced in April, both for competitive reasons - each company is a guiding force in its business - and because of the sheer volume of personal information it would concentrate in the hands of one company. Consumer watchdogs say the ability of the merged company to track people on the Web and build profiles of them would be not just formidable but potentially dangerous.

“In the 21st century, concerns about privacy and competition are inextricably linked because information is the digital gold of the Internet,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Information is the equivalent of what oil and steel and railroads were in the previous century. Today the FTC sanctioned Google to become an even more powerful company in collection and usage of consumers’ data.”

read the whole story at Herald Tribune

The good: Upgraded CPU for the same price; same great design; built-in Webcam and remote control; adds 802.11n support.

The bad: Cutting-edge features are absent, including Intel’s new Santa Rosa platform and LED-backlit displays.

The bottom line: Apple’s rightfully popular 13-inch MacBook gets a decent incremental upgrade, but we’re still looking forward to the next version.

Specs: Processor: Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, SuperDrive, black, Weight: 5.1 lbs

source: CNet