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Mission possible: researchers make online text self-destruct July 21, 2009 at 11:10 pm As users flock to web-based mail and social sites, more and more of their data is stored in cloud systems. As we've seen, some of that data can persist long after a user hits the delete button on it. Now, computer scientists have come up with a way to encrypt data so that it operates like the self-destructing messages in Mission Impossible. Their scheme, called Vanish, encrypts the message, and then essentially throws away the key. The trick is that the key will take a set amount of time before disappearing from view; during that time, it's still possible to access the data. Operating Vanish It's probably easiest to describe how the system operates in practical terms before discussing the technology behind it. Thanks to a FireFox plugin, it's possible to select text on any web page—a Gmail message or Facebook posting, for example—and forward it to Vanish, which runs as a background process. Vanish will then encrypt the text, replacing it with the encrypted version if it's in an editable field, or providing the encrypted form in a popup window if not. Users can also create a drop folder for encrypting self-destructing files. UK men pirate more than women; everyone confused over rights July 21, 2009 at 9:33 pm British men are much more willing to pirate online music and video content than women, according to the results of a new survey. UK-based IT services company Telindus has released a report that examines the attitudes of adults in the UK when it comes to music and film rights online, noting that many users are confused over intellectual property rights and believe that once content is posted online, it's essentially a "free for all." According to Telindus' survey of 2,000 UK adults, a full 50 percent of men who download various media said that they never paid for content online, compared to 38 percent of women. Don't get too worked up over this battle of the sexes, though—neither number is particularly good for content owners. Three out of five (60 percent, for those keeping track) adults said they didn't believe musicians should profit from their music and videos being downloaded online, and more than two-thirds said the same of TV and filmmakers. Oink oink! Crowdsourcing government earmark requests July 21, 2009 at 8:03 pm "People are desperate for fruitcake these days," says The Cato Institute's Jim Harper when explaining why he's giving one away as a prize in his crowdsourced earmark-exposure contest. Behind the fruitcake lies a serious purpose: crowdsource the compilation of all federal legislators' "earmark" requests, those specific funding requests to dole out money directly to (hopefully) deserving entities in the legislator's home district. Click here to read the rest of this article Apollo 11's 40th anniversary goes anything but unnoticed July 21, 2009 at 7:11 pm Several websites and news sources have been revisiting the Apollo 11 launch and moon landing in order to celebrate the mission's fortieth anniversary (we're one of them). The launch originally occurred July 16, 1969 and the landing on July 20—over the last few days, a lot of commemoration has been going on. One of the more intriguing commemorations has been the release of the Command Module and Lunar Module code as open source. The two programs, named Comance054 and Luminary099 respectively, were transcribed from scanned images and are set up to run on yaAGC, an open source AGC emulator. Even if you don't want to play around with the code, the comments within are a good read. Click here to read the rest of this article Apple's Q3 fiscal call: iPhones for one and all! July 21, 2009 at 6:23 pm iPhones are up, iPods are down, and Apple has $8.34 billion in the bank. Apple has announced its third quarter 2009 fiscal results, and you can read all about the dirty details via our front page coverage. The company then held its customary conference call to discuss the results, with a team of executives prepared to answer questions from analysts. We listen in so you don't have to stab your eyes out for an hour, and here are some of the highlights: Click here to read the rest of this article Strong Mac sales, iPhone 3GS launch boost Apple 3Q earnings July 21, 2009 at 4:51 pm As expected by industry analysts, Apple posted third (fiscal) quarter earnings that breezed past the company's guidance of $0.95-1.00 per share. Buoyed by stronger-than-expected sales of its new iPhone 3GS, Apple reported profits of $1.35 per share on earnings of $8.34 billion. Both of those are up significantly from third quarter 2008 figures of $1.19 per share on revenues of $7.46 billion. Sequential growth was also solid, beating the second quarter's $8.34 billion in revenues and $1.33 earnings per share. Apple's results in the middle of a recession are encouraging, especially given the high margins it typically enjoys. In fact, margins were at 36.3 percent, a bit higher than the company's guidance of 33 percent, and higher than the third quarter of 2008's 34.8 percent.  Click here to read the rest of this article Intel's new 34nm SSDs cut prices by 60 percent, boost speed July 21, 2009 at 4:04 pm Intel has announced two new solid state disk drives made on its leading-edge 34nm process. The two new SSDs are X25M SATA parts weighing in at 80GB and 160GB, and they're meant to replace Intel's existing X25M drives in those capacities, but at 60 percent less cost and with better performance. The 80GB X25-M is $225 in lots of 1,000 (down from $595), and the 160GB is $440 (from $945). That's some serious discounting, and it may well drive even more SSD uptake in the coming quarters despite the ongoing IT spending crunch. So what do you get for 60 percent less? In a word, speed. The new drives boast a 25 percent reduction in read latency, which was already about 60x the speed of an average hard disk; write performance has also doubled with this new generation. Click here to read the rest of this article Soapbox, Microsoft's YouTube, dies on August 31, 2009 July 21, 2009 at 3:55 pm Microsoft has finally decided to kill off Soapbox, its relatively unknown YouTube competitor that never made it out of beta. Just last month, Microsoft said it would put the MSN user-generated video portal on the backburner. The software giant was looking for a way to find focus for the product: a way to sell content for ads as strategically as possible. The company has changed its mind, however, deciding instead to let the service burn away completely into obscurity. Click here to read the rest of this article Jupiter gets another cosmic punch, shows new bruise July 21, 2009 at 3:45 pm Over the weekend, Jupiter was apparently struck by an unknown object, probably a comet or an asteroid. The discovery was made by Anthony Wesley in Australia, an amateur astronomer well-known in both the amateur and professional astronomy communities. The news quickly spread around the world and, for the past 72 hours, the planetary astronomy community has been filled with excitement—emails are flying, with people exchanging information about the new discovery and its development. Major observatories are canceling their scheduled observations so that they can point their telescopes at Jupiter. Click here to read the rest of this article Microsoft taps former Apple exec to find prime locations July 21, 2009 at 3:37 pm Microsoft has hired George Blankenship, a retail veteran with history at Gap and Apple, to help it identify the best spots for its upcoming retail stores. Blakenship most recently served as vice president of real estate at Apple, charged with identifying locations for its highly visible—and successful—Apple Stores. Microsoft has confirmed that it has hired Blankenship as an independent consultant, perhaps in an effort to avoid any non-compete agreement he may have with Apple. Though the company has insisted that it isn't trying to copy Apple's successful strategy, hiring a former Apple exec to find suitable locations—some right next to Apple Stores, according to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner—suggests otherwise. Click here to read the rest of this article Upcoming product adds 3D capability to PSP July 21, 2009 at 3:25 pm You may like your PSP, but wouldn't you love it more... with another dimension? RealView Innovations Ltd. is launching something called the V-Screen in the fourth quarter of this year, and the peripheral promises to turn your system into something of a 3D experience. "The innovation uses special optical components in unconventional ways," states Eamonn Ansbro, an Optical Engineer who is co-Executive Director of RVI. "No software, electronics or headgear is required. Nonetheless, the optical results are astonishing." Continued Ansbro: "The video game industry is a perfect fit for our technology. The V-Screen offers consumers a tremendous leap forward in optical enhancement." OK, that's from the press release, but when I contacted the company hoping for more details about how the thing works, I was told they're holding back information about the technology until September. They did send an image though, and I am sharing that with you right now. Not sure how it works, not sure how well it works, not sure about anything, but it's an interesting idea. We'll be keeping our eyes on this one until we have more information to share. Streaming, not P2P, behind mobile broadband data usage surge July 21, 2009 at 2:57 pm Tremendous sales of both smartphones and laptop data cards mean tremendous data surging through cell networks, and a new report says that mobile data growth grew 30 percent over the course of the second quarter 2009. But (for once) don't blame P2P. Allot, a vendor deep packet inspection (DPI) and other network monitoring gear, has just released its Global Mobile Broadband Traffic Report for Q2 2009, using data gathered from wireless network operators. It found that the most popular use for mobile data is HTTP browsing, though HTTP streaming is by far the fastest-growing (58 percent over the quarter). Click here to read the rest of this article Hands on: Barnes & Noble playing catchup with new e-books July 21, 2009 at 1:44 pm A year ago, it wasn't even clear that traditional book retailer Barnes & Noble had an e-book plan. But, over the past few months, the company has picked up several small e-book companies, and on Monday it announced the end results of its efforts: dedicated readers for phone and desktop platforms, an exclusive deal with an upcoming portable reader, and a massive library of over 700,000 books, most of them free. Despite the impressive numbers, B&N is still playing catch up with Amazon in a number of areas. In the library department, B&N's 700,000 books dwarfs Amazon's capacity, which the company claims includes over 300,000 works (minus two from George Orwell). But all of Amazon's offerings are commercially-produced works that are still in print. B&N has gotten to its figure by partnering with Google, gaining access to out-of-copyright works that have been scanned as part of the Google Book Search service. On the plus side, these are available for free; readers who have been itching to catch up on the classics will love this service. On the downside, B&N may end up paying for a lot of bandwidth to satisfy a user base that won't be paying them anything. Click here to read the rest of this article Sony's ban hammer challenged in court July 21, 2009 at 1:25 pm When you get banned from an online service like the Playstation Network or Xbox Live, odds are that your behavior warranted your booting. Well, that, or you could've just mentioned your sexuality in your profile. In the case of the former, though, a San Jose man has filed a lawsuit against Sony Computer Entertainment America because his banning from the Playstation Network has apparently caused him a significant amount of pain and suffering. Click here to read the rest of this article Mac/iPhone Developers: help raise money for cancer research July 21, 2009 at 12:59 pm For the fourth consecutive year, Seth Dillingham is teaming up with the Macintosh software development community to raise donations for his ride in the Pan Mass Challenge. The Pan Mass Challenge is a long bicycle ride across Massachusetts that raises money for the Jimmy Fund, an organization that helps fund cancer research and treatment of patients at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Last year, Dillingham set a goal of $10,000 and ended up raising $14,000. This year, he has set the same $10,000 goal, but we would like to see him top last year's total. The beautiful thing about the charity is that it is highly efficient, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to charity. The problem is that he can't do it without the generous donations from Macintosh and iPhone developers. Click here to read the rest of this article Competition concerns lead to EU's Google Book Search hearing July 21, 2009 at 12:36 pm The European Union is adding to the Google Books settlement scrutiny by reviewing the deal to ensure it won't stifle competition. A hearing is scheduled for September 7, at which time the EU plans to let US regulators know what it thinks of the settlement terms. Google apparently doesn't feel threatened by this latest development and seems to believe that everything will continue to move ahead. Google Books has been dealing with legal issues since its inception, first due to a legal battle with the publishing industry and later in a battle with regulators due to its settlement with the publishing industry. The Authors Guild had originally accused Google of "massive copyright infringement" because the company digitized numerous copyrighted books and offered the text online for free. However, in October of 2008, Google agreed to allow libraries free and unfettered access to the entire contents of the books, while universities and other large organizations could get access by paying a subscription fee. Click here to read the rest of this article Skype 2.8 brings screen sharing, WiFi access to Mac users July 21, 2009 at 11:05 am Skype is the sort of software that is very cool, but I don't seem to get that much use out of it. And, though I don't know many people who use it regularly, the Skype team continues to pile on useful communication technologies for those who do use it all the time. The latest version for Mac—2.8—is out now, and adds screen sharing and Skype Access among other improvements. The first major new addition, screen sharing, lets users share all or part of their screen to any other Skype user that's running a video-capable version. If the other user is running version 2.8 for Mac or version 4.1 for Windows, though, both users can even collaborate across platforms. This feature works a lot like iChat's screen sharing features, and like iChat, you can continue to chat while the feature is active. Click here to read the rest of this article Too much, magic BusRadio? Battle fought over school bus ads July 21, 2009 at 11:03 am The Federal Communications Commission's investigation of BusRadio is in its second month. A commercial WiFi music stream for school buses, over a million kids listen to BusRadio en route to or from classes. The company says that its service offers a "superior, age-appropriate alternative to AM/FM radio programming," in which the students "are engaged and entertained in the safest way possible." BusRadio haters see the matter differently. "It is a disgrace that our children are subjected to such manipulative marketing tactics such as bus radio," declares one comment to the FCC. "Keep commercial radio OFF SCHOOL BUSES!" says another. "Our kids lives are being hijacked by the media and its onslaught of advertising." Click here to read the rest of this article Backwards, rhythm-based shooter Retro/Grade coming to PSN July 21, 2009 at 11:00 am With all of the shoot-'em-ups out there, it can be tough to find one that does something new and interesting. After a few decades of existence, the genre has pretty much seen it all. But 24 Caret Games is trying to bring something unique to shmup fans out there, with an upcoming PlayStation Network game called Retro/Grade that is played entirely in reverse. Click here to read the rest of this article Be an ambassador: tell people you play games July 21, 2009 at 10:40 am I read the e-mail you guys send me, and I always get a kick out of the footers. We have aerospace engineers. People with PHD at the end of their names. We have kids, we have adults, we have teachers, and we have one guy who really wants the world to know he plays drums. I love hearing from readers, just because I suck out all the information I can from your e-mails to try to figure out who the hell is reading these ramblings. The good news is that the people who are passionate about games are my neighbors, my friends, and people with way more eduction than me. Many of you out there wear ties. You guys are important people with important jobs. Except for the students, and they should of course say no to drugs and stay in school. Why do I bring this up? Click here to read the rest of this article New Beatles trailer shows gameplay, confirms included tracks July 21, 2009 at 10:20 am It's hard to get exciting about new rhythm games; if both Guitar Hero and Rock Band did nothing but release new songs every week it would probably keep most of the fans happy. The endless sequels and updates and iterations that are coming this year are enough to make you tired in advance. The one bright spot on the horizon is The Beatles: Rock Band. Harmonies, downloadable albums from the band's catalog, and of course the biggest draw is simply the music of the Beatles. Last night a new trailer was released, along with a new batch of songs that will be included in the game. Let's take a look. Click here to read the rest of this article Industry study claims strong copyrights fuel economic engine July 21, 2009 at 9:55 am Copyright-focused industries have been booming in recent years, seeing growth rates that are more than double that of the US GDP. That's the conclusion of a report prepared on behalf of the International Intellectual Property Alliance. The study relies on data from the US Department of Commerce and methods adopted by the World intellectual Property Organization, so nobody is questioning the numbers, but a number of groups are questioning the author's conclusion: that the numbers highlight the necessity of combating piracy. The report (PDF) was prepared by an intellectual property consulting firm at the behest of the IIPA; its author helped develop the methods of analysis, which have since been adopted by WIPO. It covers the years 2003 to 2007 (the most recent year that data is available for) and breaks things down into two categories: core copyright industries and related industries. The core includes things like movies, music, publishing and software. Related industries include things like design (furniture, toys, etc.), distributors, and the production and performance industries, like electronics makers. Click here to read the rest of this article iPhone app has us wondering if radio's future is on demand July 21, 2009 at 7:03 am Public radio's existing iPhone app was already cool—it allowed listeners to hear public radio stations from across the country on their phones, live. But the new version of the Public Radio Player, released this weekend, adds an incredible new set of features that provide a glimpse at the future of "radio." Welcome to the on-demand, in-your-pocket future, today. The upgraded app adds the two most-requested user features: station schedules and on-demand access to past shows. Dialing in my local station (WBEZ in Chicago) starts the stream and displays the currently playing show, along with the schedule of the next show. Users can also tap to see the station's complete lineup for the day; because the app allows access to streams from across the country, it's possible to hear just about any show at any time. Click here to read the rest of this article The Wii is born again: Ars reviews Wii Sports Resort July 21, 2009 at 12:30 am It's worth going back and playing the original Wii Sports before you play Wii Sports Resort, in order to give the new game some context. Wii Sports came packed with the hardware in the United States, and did more to sell the system than any commercial ever could. It felt like Nintendo was bringing in a new era of gaming, complete with a brand-new way to interact with our games; the possibilities seemed nearly limitless, and we waited for the flood of games that would take advantage of the Wiimote technology. The competition-crushing sales numbers sure came, but the games didn't. I can name a dozen great Wii games with no effort, but if you asked me to name six games that showed off what the system could do as well as Wii Sports, I would have to stop and think. I'm not sure if there are six. Nintendo sits on a hollow throne: the company may have won this generation, but the revolution never came. Not in the way we had hoped. DSL has some life left in it as Qwest rolls out 40Mbps tier July 20, 2009 at 11:10 pm DSL—it ain't dead yet. While cable companies and even telcos like Verizon argue that fiber is the future, Qwest believes that a combination of fiber to the node plus DSL to the home is a winner, especially with new electronics that can boost speeds as high as 40Mbps. Qwest today announced its plan to offer higher DSL speeds in 23 markets over the next few months, including Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Salt Lake City, Tucson, Omaha, Phoenix, and Des Moines, Iowa. It has spent the last few years running fiber from its central offices out to remote terminals closer to customer homes, then upgrading the remote terminals with VDSL2 electronics.