Apple iPhone 5

Over the last year, we've heard a ton of rumors about what it might deliver with LTE, a taller display, and a redesigned connector being the most likely tidbits. Fortunately, we now can put all that speculation to rest as Apple spilled the secrets.

Taller, thinner, and a metal back
As expected, the new iPhone is 18 percent thinner (0.30 inch vs. 0.37 inch thick) than the iPhone 4S. Apple says it's the thinnest handset around, but that's a race that changes often. That means it's also 20 percent lighter for a total of 3.95 ounces. The Retina Display expands from 3.5 inches (its size since the original iPhone) to 4 inches. The total resolution remains the same, though, at 326 pixels per inch. The total pixel count is 1,136x640, and we now have a 16:9 aspect ratio.

To the user, that means a fifth row of icons on the home screen. That's pretty nice since it will let you cut down on the number of home screens. You'll also get a full five-day week view in the calendar, the calendar will show more events, and all iWork apps will take advantage of the bigger display. Third-party apps that haven't been updated will continue to work, but you'll see black borders on each side (so they won't be stretched or scaled). Apple also promises that wide-screen movies will look better, with 44 percent more color saturation than on the iPhone 4S.

Touch sensors are now built into the display itself, which makes it 30 percent thinner as a result and less prone to glare.

The iPhone 5 also fixes a design flaw that we first saw in the iPhone 4. Apple replaced the glass back with one that's mostly metal. Too many people (us included) cracked an iPhone 4 or 4S after dropping it accidentally. We don't think the change negatively affects the iPhone's aesthetics. In fact, many might see it as an improvement. A return to a metal back reminds one of the original iPhone, and the crisp, clean-cut back has a bit of the feel of other Apple devices like the iPad.

All of the design changes result in a new iPhone that's surprisingly light to hold. Think 20 percent lighter isn't a big deal? Pick one of these up and you'll feel the difference: the iPhone 4 may have been dense, but the iPhone 5 is a featherweight.

The screen is big, bright, and crisp, too, not shockingly so, but a subtly improved experience. It's akin to being the extrawide comfy chair of iPhone screens. Stay tuned for more, but this new iPhone has a good hand feel.

LTE and carriers
Not a shocker either, but the iPhone 5 will support 4G LTE networks. That's in addition to the current support for GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA data networks. LTE has a single chip for voice and data, a single radio chip, and a "dynamic antenna" that will switch connections between different networks automatically.

So which carriers will support an LTE iPhone 5? Well, in the United States that means AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless. So again, T-Mobile loses out. In Canada it's Rogers, Bell, Telus, Fido, Virgin, and Koodo. In Asia the providers will be SoftBank, SmarTone, SingTel, and SK Telecom. For Australia there's Telstra, Optus, and Virgin Mobile, and in Europe it will go to Deutsche Telekom and EE. On carriers without LTE, the iPhone 5 will run on dual-band 3.5G HDPA+.

A faster chip
The iPhone 5 will offer an A6 chip, which is two times faster than the current A5 chip. Graphics will get faster speeds, as well. Yet, despite the speedier performance, the new chip will be 22 percent smaller than the A5. According to Apple's specs, users will see Web pages load 2.1 times faster, and the Music app with songs will load 1.9 times faster.

Battery life
LTE tends to be a power hog, but the iPhone 5 is set to deliver respectable battery life even if it's not quite the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx. Of course, the real story may differ, but here's what Apple is promising for now. We're supposed to get 8 hours of 3G talk time, 8 hours of 3G browsing, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music playback, and 225 hours of standby time. You can be sure that CNET will put these promises to the test when we get a device in our hands.

Camera
The main shooter, or the "iSight" camera, stays at 8 megapixels (with the best resolution being 3,264x2,448 pixels) with a feature list that includes backside illumination, a hybrid IR filter, a five-element lens, and a f2.4 aperture. A dynamic light mode is new, and you should be able to launch photography apps up to 2.1 times faster. Another addition is an image signal processor in the A6 chip. That will bring spatial noise reduction and a "smart filter" that produces better low-light performance and captures photos faster. Finally, there's a built-in panorama mode that stitches shots together for one large 28-megapixel photo.

The secondary front camera now can shoot 720p HD video and it gets a backside illuminated sensor. And as we heard at the announcement of iOS 6 back in June, FaceTime will work over 3G cellular networks. Some carriers like AT&T have already announced restrictions for that feature, so be sure to check with your provider first.

Video resolution remains at 1080p HD, though image stabilization has been improved and face detection is now available in clips for up to 10 people. And in a nice move, you can take photos while you're shooting video.

Audio
The iPhone 5 gets an additional microphone for a total of three. You'll find one on the bottom, one on the handset's front face, and one on its rear side. What's more, the speaker now has five magnets (so up from two), which is apparently better and it's supposed to use 20 percent less space. The noise-canceling feature should be improved, as well, and there's a new wideband audio feature that promises more-natural-sounding voices. Twenty percent of carriers will support wideband audio, but so far we only know that Orange in the United Kingdom will be among them.

Smaller dock connector, smaller SIM card
On the bottom of the iPhone 5, there's that new and long-anticipated smaller dock connector. Called "Lightning," it has an all-digital, eight-signal design and an "adaptive interface" (we're not quite sure what that means yet). It's 80 percent smaller, and since it's reversible, both ends will be the same (that's kind of nice).

By all means, it's bound to annoy owners of current speaker docks, accessories, and charger/syncing cables since it will render them obsolete. Apple will offer an adapter and adapter cables (of course it will), which range from $19 to $39. We imagine, though, that the adapter may be awkward to use with some current accessories like a bedside alarm clock/music player. For new accessories, Apple says that manufacturers like Bose, JBL, and Bowers are working on new products.

Though we welcome the idea of a smaller connector, we're miffed that Apple couldn't just adopt the semi-industry standard of Micro-USB. That would make things easier for smartphone users across the globe. Yet, even so, the smaller connector may be a smart move for the future. The 30-pin connector has been around since 2003, long before the iPhone even existed: frankly, it's a dust magnet. A smaller connector helps shave extra space to achieve a smaller phone with perhaps a bigger battery. The new connector cable will mainly be used for syncing and charging by most people who own an Apple TV or Bluetooth/AirPlay accessories.

iOS 6
Inside, the iPhone 5 will debut with iOS 6 already onboard. Highlights include the new Apple Maps app, Passbook, shared photo streams, Siri updates, and the aforementioned FaceTime over 3G. For more on Apple's newest mobile OS update, check out our iOS 6 First Take. iOS 6 will be available for download next Wednesday, September 19.

Release date and pricing 
The iPhone 5 will be available in three capacity models, all of which will come in black and white versions. The 16GB is $199, the 32GB $299, and the 64GB $399. On September 21, it will go on sale in nine countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Anyone in that first batch of countries can preorder starting September 14. More countries will follow by the end of this month, and by the end of the year, the iPhone 5 will land at 240 carriers in 100 countries. As a reminder, the U.S. carriers are the Big Three: Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint.

Is this the iPhone you've been looking for? 
During very brief hands-on time with the iPhone 5, this much is clear: it's the weight you'll remember more than its thinner profile. The iPhone 4S is already a svelte device: most people probably won't spot the difference if they see the new iPhone from the side.

The screen size, also, is more of a subtle improvement. This isn't a jaw-dropping leap from the iPhone 4S: it's a gradual increase, done almost so cleverly that the front face of the iPhone 5 might, with the screen turned off, look very much like the iPhone 4S. The proof will be in the pudding for how app developers and iOS 6 take full advantage of that extra screen real estate, but the bottom line is this: more screen size and more pixels are good things.

The real killer app on this phone -- no surprise -- might be the iPhone's 4G LTE, as well as the promised battery life. If data speeds and battery life can live up to the promises, those alone will make many want to upgrade.

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Facebook tied into Apple's iOS 6, report says

The next major version of iOS will be getting a lot more social, according to a new report.

TechCrunch says it's heard Apple's iOS 6 -- which is expected to be unveiled at Apple's annual developers conference in a little less than a week and a half -- will have built-in connections to Facebook.

According to the report, the integration will give app makers an easier way to let users log in with their Facebook account, presumably without kicking them out to Facebook's app, which is how the behavior is presently treated.

What's not mentioned is whether Facebook will get included in the sharing options alongside Twitter, which was added as part of iOS 5 last year, and set to be a built into OS X Mountain Lion when it's released this summer.

This is not the first such time Facebook has been rumored to be headed to iOS. Earlier this year, tech site iMore claimed iOS 5.1 -- a supplemental update to last October's iOS 5 -- would add connections to the social network. That evidence came from a beta version of the software delivered to developers. Pre-dating that, a report from Business Insider in early 2010 claimed Facebook contact syncing would make it into iOS 4.0.

Of note, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said to "stay tuned" on the company's relationship with Facebook. During an interview at the D10 conference on Tuesday, Cook said he has "great respect" for the social networking giant, and that "I think we can do more with them."

Apple famously yanked planned support for Facebook in Ping, the company's lackluster social music sharing network built into iTunes, at the very last minute. According to an interview with then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Facebook had demanded "onerous terms."

Facebook itself has since said one of its biggest weaknesses is mobile advertising, something it could hope to bolster by getting more users signed up, and making it easier to integrate on other platforms, including Apple's.

Apple is expected to fully detail iOS 6 at WWDC, which kicks off on June 11 at 10 a.m. Pacific. CNET will be there to bring you all the news, as it happens. Stay tuned for more details on that.

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Cool or creepy? Alohar tracks your location, always

In 2006, Sam Liang of Google started to work on the company's geolocation project. It was his team, he says, that created the back-end technology that enabled the creation of the blue dot on Google's mobile maps: the one that tells you where you are.

Now, six years later and at his own company, Alohar Mobile, he's working on a new blue dot: one that's both more precise and that uses far less battery life.

PlaceMe drops pins on a private map anytime you stop at a location for more than a few minutes.

What he's trying to do is create an "ambient" location tracking technology. (Mark that word: ambient. It's an emerging thing in tech products.)

Alohar's technology works by using not just the usual location-finding sensors (the GPS receiver and Wi-Fi hot spot triangulation) but also other sensors and algorithms, some of which Liang would not tell me about. It does use the accelerometer and compass, I learned, and also statistical modeling to tell "where you most likely are."

Car navigation apps also use a form of modeling: Since you're in a car, they assume you're on a road, and even if the GPS radios aren't placing you directly on a road, the algorithms will "snap" your location to one by default. Alohar does similar things but uses more data: If you're moving at walking speed, for example, it will place you on a sidewalk or in a building, not in the middle of the street. If the camera on your phone sees fluorescent light, it will try to geolocate you to an indoor location.

If you stop moving, Alohar will shut down the GPS until you start again; that's one way it does better geolocation while using less power.

The goal is to make accurate location data available to apps all the time, without draining batteries. This always-available location data can be used for cool new things. At the Launch conference in March, Liang showed how an always-running app could determine if a person carrying a phone was in a car accident, and send an Onstar-like emergency alert automatically. Or, a user could press a Help button if they were having a medical emergency. Liang points out that standard phone GPS isn't accurate enough to direct paramedics or police to a downed person's location; Alohar pinpoints people much better.

Alohar ties in to a rich database of locations, which the company's proof-of-concept app, PlaceMe, uses. It tracks where you are at all times, builds a list of the places you visit, and for how long you stay at each one. It's creepy, but it can also be useful. If you stop in at a store or cafe for a bite you can see, later, where it was.

By itself it's perhaps only of interest to those into the quantified self thing. But the technology could be very useful for note-taking or camera apps, many of which already geotag items you create on the run. With Alohar technology the tags could be more accurate.

If you want to experiment with it, I have to warn that PlaceMe, while cool, isn't fully cooked. It does affect battery life; on an iPhone 4 I found the impact noticeable but not bad enough to prevent me from using it. On my Android phone (a Galaxy Nexus), though, it murdered battery life enough to be unusable. Liang says updates are on the way for both platforms.

Liang says that the app respects privacy, by the way. While Alohar's servers do record the location trail of PlaceMe users, location data is tagged with a hash of the phone's hardware ID, not with personally identifiable information. Still, if you have an extralegal side business or a friend you don't want people to know about, I'd recommend against downloading this app.

Liang's goal is to get the location technology out there to developers. PlaceMe is just a demo. He says that potential uses for ambient location sensing include apps that learn where you "dwell," even if you don't check in. For example, your phone could now learn what kind of food you like based on which restaurants you stop at. It can tell how much time you spend walking vs. jogging, which could be useful for new kinds of ambient fitness apps (but see also: Jawbone Up, Fitbit, etc). Liang also said that the technology would be really useful for "double-blind dating apps," but I'll leave interpreting that to the reader.

Over 600 developers have signed up to use or try the Alohar technology, Liang says. The technology library is free, as is use of the service for experimental apps. Alohar will eventually charge a license fee for intense users, just as Google does for those who embed Maps in their online apps.

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Windows 8 Release Preview puts gadgets in the backseat

Nothing is as fascinating as the thing you can't have yet. Between Windows 8 Release Preview and a deafening cavalcade of iPhone 5 rumors, the current gadget crop didn't stand a chance this week.

This week's roundup of top-rated gear includes everything we've awarded three-and-a-half stars or above in our rating scale, and you can browse all of them in our slideshow. But first, read through our unrated Windows 8 Release Preview, written by Seth Rosenblatt. Seth has spent a lot of time with the new Windows preview, and he's played with the two-screen, app-centric experience Microsoft is so bullish on. His verdict so far: It could be great, but the operating system still needs plenty of work over the summer.

The BMW that makes me wish I wanted a BMW

The BMW X5Drive35i is here now, though, and the luxury SUV earned four stars and Wayne Cunningham's grudging respect. Despite some decidedly low-efficiency mileage, this car, as Wayne puts it, "keeps a connectedness to the road that many cars have lost" and sports at engine that's a "high-tech masterpiece with 3 liters of displacement from six inline cylinders." Plus, the iDrive system makes gadget integration easy. I'm not personally a BMW-lover, but this SUV makes me wish I were.

Yes, a four-star iPhone case
Why spend precious time reviewing an iPhone case? Because we can, but also because this case is made from a mysterious-sounding non-Newtonian fluid called D30. Imagine that stuff they teach your kids to make in science camp (some call it Oobleck) fit into the gooey center of an impact-resistant phone case.

Now you understand our fascination with the Tech21 Impact Band for iPhone 4/4S. Turns out, this case isn't just a gimmick. Though the rubbery outside makes it hard to push buttons, Kent German slipped on the case and dropped his phone on a carpet, a sidewalk, and a hardwood floor. Verdict: No cracks, no damage -- except maybe to Kent's blood pressure. Sadly, we haven't found one of these for Android phones yet.

We also spent some time this week with the latest crop of laptops with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors, including the Lenovo ThinkPad X230. Here's the thing about this laptop: It's really pretty good. But with a bulky design, it struggles to compete with a laptop peer group that's moving in toward total ultrabook domination.

Notably missing from our top-reviewed products this week is the new, semi-experimental Chromebox, a $330 Chrome OS-based Samsung computer with the latest build of Google's Web-focused OS. The idea of a computer that's inexpensive and lightweight fascinates me, since I spend almost all my time online and much of it using Google services, so I wanted us to love the Chromebox. But the little machine didn't quite make the cut, no thanks to some hardware compatibility issues.

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For Nokia, it's do or die time with the Lumia 900

There are no second chances for the Finnish handset company, a former titan in the industry now seeking a comeback.

Nokia got its wish and has its best shot to break back into the U.S. market.
So here's some friendly advice to a company that likely won't get another opportunity as good as this: don't blow it.

Not to pile on with more pressure, but the fate of Nokia's future, and possibly that of Windows Phone and Microsoft's ability to remain relevant in the mobile world, rests largely on how successful the Lumia 900 performs.

There are no excuses this time. Nokia has a large U.S. carrier partner in AT&T, which has promised to give the phone a major push, even more so than HTC, which is launching its 4G LTE-enabled Titan II on the same day. At $99.99 with a contract, the phone is among the best deals out there.
The phone launches on April 8, CNET reported earlier today.

If a blockbuster doesn't emerge, Nokia and Microsoft has got some serious problems. A failure could have some lasting consequences.

AT&T has been a strong supporter of Windows Phone, with more products than any other carrier. But its dedication to the platform won't last forever, and if the phone stumbles out of the gate, look for AT&T to offer discounts to dump its inventory.

Likewise, a poor-selling phone isn't going to endear Nokia or Microsoft to Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, which have only half-heartedly sold Windows Phone devices and aren't in any rush to add new products. With AT&T making such a big deal of the Lumia 900 and its 4G LTE capabilities, rival Verizon Wireless is likely reluctant to jump on to a me-too device, effectively keeping Nokia out of the largest U.S. player.

Sure, Nokia is already at T-Mobile USA, and its Lumia 710 is doing well. But the Lumia 710 is a mass-market device for the budget friendly crowd, and not something you aspire to buy. T-Mobile is no kingmaker as a distant fourth-place carrier, and offers no must-have devices.

While Nokia's brand around the world is strong, its presence here has fallen dramatically over the past few years, to the point where it's virtually meaningless to normal consumers -- at best a remnant of an older era of basic handsets. Yes, Nokia's name still adorns concerts and other buildings, but it barely registers with the consumer.

As a result, the Lumia 900 falling flat on its face would leave Nokia's brand synonymous with failure. Look at Palm. Despite enjoying a reputation for cutting edge smartphones, the last run of its aging Palm OS devices and its new WebOS saw nothing but disappointment, and its brand likewise took a major hit. Remember the Palm Pre? Few do.

Palm never recovered from its initial WebOS stumble, and didn't fare any better when scooped up by Hewlett-Packard.

Still, Lumia 900 definitely has a better chance than Palm ever did. For one, it's got the support of AT&T, one of the two biggest carriers in the U.S. Unlike previous claims that Nokia was "taking the U.S. market seriously," this time it appears to mean business.

The Lumia 900, unlike previous Nokia phones that have made their way here, is actually a good product. The trick is to get people to notice amid a sea of iPhones and Android smartphones.
Because if it doesn't, Nokia can say goodbye to its chances of being a major player in the U.S.

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Anti-SOPA Internet Society under fire for hiring MPAA executive

After warning Web blacklists would end the "viability of the Internet," the Internet Society hires the Hollywood figure who defends them and accuses critics of spreading "misinformation."

The Internet Society is hardly a fan of the Stop Online Piracy Act or the Protect IP Act. The venerable non-profit, which acts as the umbrella organization for the Internet's key standards bodies, bluntly warns that the pair of copyright laws would end the "viability of the Internet."
Which is why ISOC's decision this month to hire a senior executive from the Motion Picture Association of America -- a lawyer who has championed the wildly controversial legislation that would blacklist Web sites that supposedly violate copyright -- is raising eyebrows.

Paul Brigner defended Web blacklist legislation as an MPAA senior vice president. Why did the anti-SOPA Internet Society hire him?

ISOC announced last week that it had hired Paul Brigner, the MPAA's senior vice president and chief technology policy officer, previously of Verizon's D.C. lobby office. Brigner now heads ISOC's North America efforts, a role that includes working with the U.S. Congress and federal agencies on Internet-related laws. (See Brigner's bare-bones Web site here.)

That announcement was particularly striking because it came mere days after the ISOC Board of Trustees adopted a resolution warning of the dangers of Protect IP, SOPA, and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), all of which the MPAA and its overseas associates have lobbied for strenuously.
At a State of the Net discussion in Washington, D.C., in January at which he represented the MPAA, Brigner said that while Internet engineers have raised some valid concerns about SOPA and PIPA, the public debate has been fueled by "misinformation and exaggeration about some of the things that the MPAA and others were trying to accomplish in this legislation."

"Maybe now is the time to take a look at either DNS filtering or other mechanisms that can be a technological impediment to accessing these rogue sites," Brigner added. "There needs to be some indication that when you try to go these rogue sites, you shouldn't be there."

Brigner's blog posts at the MPAA Web site have drawn derision from the reliably anti-SOPA forces at TechDirt. After Brigner argued last year that rogue Web sites can host malware, TechDirt responded by dubbing it "stupid," an "uninformed fear that folks like the MPAA play upon," and warned that the MPAA was inventing a "new holy terror brought down upon us by the likes of zombie bin Laden."

"It seems puzzling that ISOC would make this particular selection for such an important position, given Mr. Brigner's public condemnation of Net neutrality while at Verizon, and his own postings in strong support of Protect IP while at the MPAA," says Lauren Weinstein of People For Internet Responsibility, which has opposed SOPA and favors Net neutrality regulations.

In another post on the MPAA's blog last summer, Brigner wrote that not passing the legislation would cause the Internet to "decay into a lawless Wild West." A third pointed to an paper that, Brigner wrote, "debunks claims Protect IP will break the Internet."

That's not what the public decided, of course. Protect IP and SOPA were yanked from the House and Senate calendars after January's historic online protest -- which included Wikipedia going dark for a day, alerts appearing on the home page of Google.com and Amazon.com, and so on.

For its part, ISOC chief operating officer Walda Roseman sent CNET a statement downplaying the time Brigner spent at the MPAA:

We can assure you that the Internet Society remains committed to its positions on DNS blocking and draft legislation such as SOPA and PIPA. Our position is publicly well known and remains unchanged. We would not have made this appointment if we had not been certain that Paul is ready to fully support the principles and positions of the Internet Society. Paul is onboard and already working to drive those and other Internet Society positions forward. His knowledge of technology and his insights into the issues related to Internet content will be invaluable in this area.

We are aware of some concern and even criticism around this appointment stemming from Paul's short tenure at MPAA. Paul has a full body of work and a career marked by open communication and bridge building across disparate parties. We observed these skills in Paul first-hand during his short time at the MPAA, where he opened a constructive dialogue between the content and Internet communities.

Translation: Brigner is a hired gun, but now he's our hired gun. Pay no attention to what he was saying before; he's on our side. For now.

SOPA and Protect IP would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet service providers, and other companies, forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish. A letter signed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, among others, warns that SOPA will "give the U.S. government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran."

The MPAA, which blasted the anti-SOPA blackouts as mere "stunts," and its allies haven't given up lobbying for similar legislation. "We must take action to stop" online piracy and counterfeiting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said after the protests, and MPAA chief Chris Dodd warned at the time: "As a consequence of failing to act, there will continue to be a safe haven for foreign thieves."

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LG, Samsung: We're not done with 3D yet

3D smartphones may seem like little more than a gimmick, but behind the scenes, smartphone researchers see a very real future.

3D phones may not have exactly caught on like wildfire here in the U.S., but that isn't going to stop engineers at LG and Samsung from innovating around it.

In fact, representatives for the rival Korean manufacturers both had something to say to me about 3D image technology for smartphones, and it doesn't stop at playing 3D golf games or watching "Avatar" on your phone without those dorky 3D glasses.

In fact, those use cases, which formed the cornerstone of the marketing campaigns for the LG Thrill 4G and the HTC Evo 3D, are just the beginning.

Instead, Nick DiCarlo, Samsung's vice president of product planning, sees mobile 3D technology as a gateway to more immersive entertainment in the coming years.

Just think of a smartphone that can simultaneously power 3D HD video streams on different screens, say a monitor and a TV. Sound far-fetched to you? With the ever-growing power of mobile processors, said Samsung's Nick DiCarlo, and smart developers pushing the envelope, there's room for this magnitude of evolution.

More to the point, mobile phones and tablets will quickly become people's primary vehicle for video consumption. You may not watch full movies on the cell phone screen all the time, but more and more features are bound to arise that will have you relying on your device more often.
"There's nothing to keep your phone or tablet from taking over your set-top box," DiCarlo emphasized.
An engineer, Henry Nho, Mobile Platform Architect at LG, also sees the 3D potential that's tied to juiced-up processing power. When you record video and pictures, Nho says, the smartphone camera will have the power to take 2D and 3D images and movies simultaneously, so you can later choose which version you want to view.

Sharing 3D images will also become more important. Many high-end LG TVs already have 3D feature more or less built-in, Nho said. An HDMI cable connection is an extra expense and an unsightly one since it literally tethers your phone with a cord. One day you'll be able to share 3D content with your TV over Wi-Fi, using just a fingers swipe to start playing content.

3D now

Although research and development engineers like Nho's colleagues at LG experiment with 3D new products and use cases, it's up to marketers and managers to work the technology into future products.
With the Optimus 3D Max announced last month at Mobile World Congress, LG is putting some of its 3D R&D to the test. Designed to make lighter, thinner, and faster than last year's Thrill 4G, the Optimus 3D Max is pre-loaded with goodies like a games converter that can render a number of games into 3D -- so long as they're written with OpenGL standards and can play in landscape mode.

 The Optimus 3D Max will also receive a smart focus app, which uses both cameras and some rendering tricks to blurs the photo's background so that the image resembles a DSLR photo. In addition, a later release will include software that promises to smooth out blurred image edges when you connect the phone to a large screen display with a higher resolution. LG demoed the feature at MWC.

Unfortunately, 3D fans in the U.S. won't get a chance to try out the Optimus 3D Max anytime soon, unless they snag it from Europe, where it's headed in April. The handset won't have LTE support.

While LG is actively marketing 3D smartphones, the advances his team will be able to accomplish in the next two or three years is what really excites Nho. It's then that a new type of 3D display technology will enter the smartphone market. "Lenticular lens," are known for adding depth. These lenses steer the light, Nho explained, to brighten the image without consuming more battery power.

"I think that 3D has a very interesting future," Nho told me -- one that promises to be far less one-dimensional than it seems.

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Australian agency taking Apple to court over iPad '4G' label

High-speed wireless networking in Australia uses different 4G frequencies than those the new iPad supports, and a consumer commission will seek fines and injunctions barring sales.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said today Apple is violating the Australian Consumer Law by misleadingly labeling its new iPad as 4G-capable, and it will try to get a court to impose fines and an injunction against sales.

The commission will apply to the Federal Court in Melbourne for orders tomorrow morning against Apple, it said in a statement:

The ACCC alleges that Apple's recent promotion of the new "iPad with WiFi + 4G" is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product "iPad with WiFi + 4G" can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case...
The ACCC is seeking urgent interlocutory relief to ensure consumers are made aware of the correct technical capabilities of this device.

Additionally, the ACCC is seeking final orders including injunctions, pecuniary penalties, corrective advertising, and refunds to consumers affected.

Apple offers two varieties of the third-generation iPad, one with only Wi-Fi networking and one with wireless network service provided through mobile phone networks. In the United States and some other areas, the wireless network can work with the higher speeds of the LTE standard for 4G networking.
In some parts of the world, though, 4G hasn't arrived, so the new iPad works just at slower 3G speeds. In Australia, though, there is 4G service from Telstra--but it uses an 1800MHz frequency band, ZDNet Australia reports. The new iPad's 4G requires 700MHz or 2100MHz for 4G.

"Consumers who have purchased or are considering purchasing an 'iPad with WiFi + 4G' should ensure that they have a proper understanding of the mobile data networks which this iPad can directly access by a SIM card," the ACCC said.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Apple store in Australia uses the standard product naming for the 4G-capable model, but the fine print makes mention of using 4G networks only overseas.

"The iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G model can roam worldwide on fast GSM/UMTS networks, including HSPA, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA. When you travel internationally, you can use a micro-SIM card from a local carrier. You can also connect to the 4G LTE networks of AT&T in the U.S. and Bell, Rogers, and Telus in Canada," the Apple store iPad product page said today.

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FTC seeks Apple testimony in Google antitrust probe

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reportedly taken an interest in the mobile side of a business relationship between Apple and Google, and wants it on the record.

Citing two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that the U.S. regulatory group has subpoenaed Apple in hopes of getting details about its mobile-search deal with Google. That includes information on the agreement that has made Google the default search engine on Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPhone since 2007, the report said.

The subpoena, which Apple did not confirm or comment on to Bloomberg, is part of a larger investigation by the FTC to figure out whether Google has used unfair or deceptive business practices. The FTC and the U.S. Senate already have investigations under way focused on concerns that Google unfairly promotes its own services in its search results.

A Google spokesman declined comment on the report.

While Google has long been the default search engine on Apple's iOS, there are other options. In the United States, that includes Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, the latter of which became an option in mid-2010. Just ahead of that addition, there was a rumor that Microsoft had won a deal with Apple to become the iPhone's default search provider, although it was quickly squashed.

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Apple tightens its tablet grip on enterprises ahead of Windows 8

A new survey finds tablet adoption increasing among corporate tech buyers, with Apple extending its lead over rivals as Microsoft readies its tablet-friendly operating system.

Apple's iPad is strengthening its grip on corporate buyers as Microsoft continues to put the finishing touches on Windows 8, its first operating system to enthusiastically embrace tablet computing,

A new survey conducted by ChangeWave Research shows that companies are stepping up their tablet purchases, and that a growing number intend to buy iPads. ChangeWave said its survey of 1,604 corporate tech buyers shows the highest level of corporate iPad demand it's ever found in a survey.

Apple's iPad

The results can't bode well for Windows 8. PC growth, and by extension Windows growth, has slowed over the years, while the market for tablets, primarily the iPad, has soared. Windows 8 is a touch-friendly operating system designed to help Microsoft tap that market.

While the consumer market will be tough to crack, given the lead that Apple has there, the corporate business has been seen as one where Windows 8 tablets could make inroads. That's largely because of Microsoft's long history of selling to enterprises and the manageability that corporate buyers expect in devices that run Windows.

The new survey, though, suggests that the iPad is increasingly meeting the needs of those potential customers. ChangeWave found that 22 percent of the respondents plan to purchase tablets for employees during the second quarter, and that 84 percent of those companies are planning to buy iPads. That's a seven-point gain from a survey the firm did in November. Some of that interest is no doubt fueled by anticipation of the new iPad's debut this Friday.

What's more, those buyers are increasingly shying away from tablets made by companies other than Apple. The interest in buying devices from every other tablet manufacturer, from Amazon to Samsung, declined from the November survey. So while buyers are increasingly looking to buy tablets, more often than not, they're only looking at picking up iPads.

The second most popular tablet-maker among corporate buyers is Samsung. ChangeWave found that 8 percent of respondents that are planning to buy tablets for employees intend to pick up a Samsung device, down from 10 percent in November.

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Goodbye cruel Google Ex-employee's Lament

It's not quite a Google version of the now famous peanut butter manifesto, but it's still worth reading this angry tirade from a Googler leaving the Googleplex because he feels the corporate culture has changed for the worse. In his very public adios, engineering director for Google+ APIs James Whittaker explains why he's moving on after three years after leaving Microsoft to join Google. He has since rejoined Microsoft.

    The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Yeah, big duh. In case you missed it during orientation, I'm sure that someone, somewhere along the line explained the business mission. If not, I doubt very much that Google would have achieved what it's achieved.

    Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn't feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.

Technically, you're right. Pardon the sarcasm, but where was this guy buried? The other stuff, like cars which drive themselves, is good for kicks but there's just one business at the Big G that pays for all the free lunches that you ate. Hint: the word starts with an "A."

    Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder's awards, peer bonuses and 20% time. Our advertising revenue gave us the headroom to think, innovate and create. Forums like App Engine, Google Labs and open source served as staging grounds for our inventions. The fact that all this was paid for by a cash machine stuffed full of advertising loot was lost on most of us. Maybe the engineers who actually worked on ads felt it, but the rest of us were convinced that Google was a technology company first and foremost; a company that hired smart people and placed a big bet on their ability to innovate.

Welcome to the real world and now face facts: After 10 years, companies will change, though I doubt that Larry Page is any less of a technologist than Eric Schmidt.

    But that was then, as the saying goes, and this is now. It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook. Informal efforts produced a couple of antisocial dogs in Wave and Buzz. Orkut never caught on outside Brazil. Like the proverbial hare confident enough in its lead to risk a brief nap, Google awoke from its social dreaming to find its front runner status in ads threatened.

    Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information, so much so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own. Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike, a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook's? No company has ever done that for Google and Google took it personally.

    Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn't enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be & well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction.

Larry Page as the second coming of Vladamir Lenin? Say it ain't so, comrade. Seriously, if this guy was running the show, is he saying that Google would not do anything and everything short of breaking the law to leverage its existing strengths to battle Facebook? Google was late to the game and still has an uphill battle wiping the smirk off Zuckerberg's face. Only a village idiot would take a pass at making those ancillary parts of the company, once so "joyous in their independence," work more closely together in support of the bigger objective.

    Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the old Google and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a new Google that promised more wood behind fewer arrows. The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.

Oh, cry me a river. To be fair, nostalgia for the good old days is a very human trait. Folks since Aristotle have bemoaned the shortcomings of the new generation. Not that it makes for accuracy but it's good fodder for a bar conversation.

    Google+ and me, we were simply never meant to be. Truth is I've never been much on advertising. I don't click on ads. When Gmail displays ads based on things I type into my email message it creeps me out. I don't want my search results to contain the rants of Google+ posters (or Facebook's or Twitter's for that matter). When I search for London pub walks I want better than the sponsored suggestion to Buy a London pub walk at Wal-Mart.

Now he gets to the crux of the matter. Hey, advertising bores me silly, too. I'd much rather write about new technology but you knew what you were getting into when you signed on the dotted line. Sorta late in the day to claim innocence.

    The old Google made a fortune on ads because they had good content. It was like TV used to be: make the best show and you get the most ad revenue from commercials. The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves.

Don't kid yourself. TV's "golden age" was a Fig Newton of our collective imagination. Ditto for this lachrymose line about the "good content" that once predominated.

    Perhaps Google is right. Perhaps the future lies in learning as much about people's personal lives as possible. Perhaps Google is a better judge of when I should call my mom and that my life would be better if I shopped that Nordstrom sale. Perhaps if they nag me enough about all that open time on my calendar I'll work out more often. Perhaps if they offer an ad for a divorce lawyer because I am writing an email about my 14 year old son breaking up with his girlfriend I'll appreciate that ad enough to end my own marriage. Or perhaps I'll figure all this stuff out on my own.

Welcome to 1984. But didn't we arrive there years ago?

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Does it still make sense to buy DVDs?

With services like Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon offering a wealth of on-demand viewing options, do DVDs still have a place in the world?

I'm on vacation for the next couple days, so I'll see you back here on Thursday. In the meantime, I have a nice, meaty topic to tide you over.

A few weeks ago I asked if it still made sense to buy CDs, what with so many download and streaming options.

Today, let's turn our attention to those other silvery platters of goodness: DVDs (and, by proxy, Blu-rays). Do they still have a place in the world?

Despite the physical similarities of the media, music and movies aren't quite the same thing. I think people tend to buy a lot more of the former, or at least they did when CDs ruled the music-distribution roost. Personally, I probably own 10 times as many audio CDs as I do DVDs.

On the other hand, I know folks who have massive movie libraries, who don't think twice about plunking down $20 for their own copy of "Napoleon Dynamite." And don't forget parents, who are very likely to spring for movies that the younger kids will watch repeatedly (which explains why many of the movies I do own have Pixar on the label).

But that was then. Today we live in a world where iTunes slings movies to our iPhones and iPads, Amazon Instant Video provides on-demand rentals for those outside the Apple ecosystem, and Netflix streams to nearly every device known to man. How can the DVD compete?

With simplicity, for starters. It doesn't get much easier than dropping a disc into a tray and pressing Play. Granted, Netflix isn't exactly complicated, but it does require a certain level of tech competency--along with a fast, reliable Internet connection. Many of us take the latter for granted, but plenty of people in this country (and others) barely have Internet at all. DVDs require no connectivity, and their image quality isn't dependent on bandwidth.

(Ironically, Blu-rays do require Internet access, at least if you want certain online extras. And don't forget the seemingly endless player firmware updates required to accommodate the latest DRM protections. Did I just say discs were simple?)

Of course, as with CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays offer advantages their digitally delivered counterparts can't match (not yet, anyway). The most obvious: outtakes, deleted scenes, director commentary, and other extras.

Even more important for some viewers: image and audio quality. No video stream or download comes close to the razor-sharp picture and 5.1-channel sound afforded by Blu-ray. Even upscaled DVDs look better than a lot of what you can stream.

Still, just as a 256Kbps MP3 is "good enough" for many listeners (myself included), I find myself satisfied with what I'm getting from the likes of Amazon Instant Video and Netflix. Recently I've been rewatching "Battlestar Galactica" via the latter, and to my eyes it looks terrific--especially considering that I watched much of the series in standard definition when it was first broadcast.

And in my house, we rarely fire up the Blu-ray player anymore. Occasionally we'll rent something from Redbox, which makes up for its two-trip hassle with change-under-the-sofa-cushions prices, but mostly we're done with discs. Even the minivan's DVD system has largely gone dark in favor of iPods and iPads.
So that's the trend in this cheapskate's world--and, I suspect, the world at large. What do you think? Are DVDs soon to join laser discs and VHS tapes in three-for-$5 garage-sale obscurity, or will they survive in the way print books will--marginalized by electronic alternatives, but still treasured and coveted by the faithful?

While you're prepping your comment on that, answer me this: What's your all-time favorite DVD that you own? My pick: "Firefly: The Complete Series."

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Zuckerberg turns up at home of Linsanity

It's a holiday weekend in America and, this week, the most important issue hasn't been the national debt or the dearth of novel political thought.

It's the entry of Jeremy Lin of the New York Knicks into the national consciousness.
Just this morning, ESPN announced that it had fired an online headline writer for offering this on Lin's first defeat as a starter: "Chink in the Armor."

And now, as I am torn between my affection for a former Golden State Warrior (most do better when they leave) and my fondness for the Cubans that own the Dallas Mavericks, I am suddenly assaulted by a very odd sight: Mark Zuckerberg.

Yes, behind the Knicks bench at Madison Square Garden, there sits the Facebook CEO who, thus far, has been to ball sports what Genghis Khan was to peace talks.

Indeed, Zuckerberg's only fondness for sports seems to have been of the bloody variety. After his declaration that he would only eat meat that he had personally killed, one wondered whether any animals would be safe from his sights.

So why the sudden interest in the NBA and, presumably, Lin?

Yes, they both went to Harvard. But Lin was there long after Zuckerberg was off to be Silicon Valley's new point guard. And the Knick, well, graduated.

So some might assume this is beautiful marketing from Facebook. As mortal enemy Google is mired in ever more suggestions that its iniquity knows no bounds, someone must have whispered to Zuckerberg: "Get next to the saint."

And there he is in the second row on the Knicks side, bathing in secondary beatification.

I am excluding the slight possibility that he is there to witness the arrival of J.R. Smith, one of the less charming players in the NBA. So I have contacted Facebook to see whether its CEO got his tickets from Lin or merely bought them on StubHub.

In the meantime, Twitter has begun to shudder with this extraordinary sighting--both through the misspelled "Zuckerburg" hashtag and the more accurate "Zuckerberg."

I wonder if Zuckerberg and Lin will pop out for a cup of tea--and, perhaps, some freshly killed bison--after the game.

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Facebook not a virtual shopping mall after all?

Despite retailer GameStop's initial enthusiasm about opening a storefront in Facebook, it looks like it's Game Over for the effort--and perhaps for such Facebook stores in general.

Bloomberg published a story this week that chronicles the closings, during the past year, of Facebook stores opened by GameStop, the Gap, Nordstrom, and others.

When GameStop cut the virtual ribbon on its Facebook storefront last April, the company's vice president of e-commerce seemed to think the move was a no-brainer.

"Social commerce on Facebook is a natural complement to our trusted store and online networks," Kelly Mulroney said in a statement at the time. "We have millions of customers already engaging with us on Facebook, and [the technology behind the Facebook store] gives those loyal fans more reasons than ever to shop GameStop across multiple channels."

Others agreed, says Bloomberg, with some investors guessing that Facebook--thanks to its hordes of users--had the mojo to strike fear into the heart of Amazon and PayPal, and one business consultancy predicting, in January 2011, that sales of physical goods through Facebook and other social networks would jump from $5 billion to $30 billion by 2015.

Facebook, of course, did its best to contribute to the buzz. According to Bloomberg, the company's director of business development, David Fisch, said that since Facebook is such a social experience, it would be a natural shopping mall. "This is where people are hanging out," Bloomberg quotes Fisch as having said at a retailer's conference in June.

But the Bloomberg piece suggests there are different kinds of hanging out, and that not all of them may be conducive to shopping:

"There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop," Bloomberg quotes Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru as saying. "But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they're hanging out with their friends at the bar."

Another factor may have been that despite GameStop's philosophy of providing shoppers with "multiple channels" for acquiring goods, a Facebook storefront may have been a channel that was simply unnecessary.
Bloomberg offers up GameStop Vice President of Marketing and Strategy Ashley Sheetz' comment that shopping on the GameStop site itself was already easy enough--customers had no real reason to shop via Facebook. The Gap, too, told Bloomberg that its customers preferred shopping at the company's own sites.
Bloomberg says retailers continue to send ad dollars Facebook's way, that they continue to maintain Facebook pages ("For us, it's been a way we communicate with customers on deals, not a place to sell," GameStop's Sheetz said), and that the Gap, at least, is keeping its options open as far as trying Facebook storefronts again somewhere down the line.

And one of the sources quoted in the Bloomberg piece, Wade Gerten, whose company has developed commerce strategies for Delta Airlines, Ticketmaster, and others, published a piece in Forbes that says that though the Facebook storefronts might have been misguided, creatively leveraging social networks to reach customers isn't.

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Two Android tablets take on Apple: One is up to the task

Comparing Apple's iPad 2 with Motorola's XyBoard and Amazon's Kindle Fire is fraught with peril. But here goes anyway.

Let me preface my review by saying that a few overzealous readers (I'm being charitable with that description) almost invariably call the writer (me) an idiot for not being as savvy and/or perceptive as they claim to be. That's par for the course. But let's get a few things straight here.

First, this isn't an official review. Like the kind you would find at CNET Reviews. Second, I don't favor one manufacturer over the other. So, let me state the obvious (though, I realize, this will never satisfy conspiracy theorists). If Product X makes what I need to do easier, then I will favor it over Product Y.

And, third, as a corollary to the above, I have personalized needs, like anyone. A graphic designer will place a very different set of demands on a tablet than I would. So, my use case doesn't necessarily apply to everyone.

That said, I have used the iPad 2, the Motorola XyBoard (aka Xoom 2), and the Amazon Kindle Fire long enough to understand their strengths and weaknesses for my particular needs.

I've had the iPad 2 for 10 months (and if you count the original iPad, that's about 22 months of iPad use). The XyBoard for about 2 months. The Amazon Kindle Fire for a little more than 2 months.
And availability addresses an important point. Apple has been making 10-inch-class consumer tablets longer than anyone. That gives Apple an advantage. Based on my own personal preference, I had to wait until Motorola came out with the second-generation Xoom to justify the purchase of a 10-inch-class Android tablet. (Motorola didn't ship its original Xoom until about a year after Apple announced the original iPad.)
So, here's my (admittedly somewhat cursory) evaluation.

Xyboard with Android 3.2 is in dire need of performance tweaking: Web browsing is probably the most basic task that anyone can ask a tablet to do. Unfortunately, the Xyboard doesn't do that basic thing well.
The stock Android browser on the Xyboard can be deceiving. In the first few weeks I used the Xyboard, Web browsing seemed fast. That's because, as it turns out, I wasn't using it for extended periods of time. In other words, when I picked up the Xyboard and played with it for 15 minutes or so--which I tended to do in the first few weeks because I couldn't immediately wean myself off the iPad that I had customized over the previous ten months--it seemed fast.

But once I started customizing the Xyboard and used it for long stretches (as I'd been doing with the iPad), it broke down.

News Web sites, which tend to have a lot of graphics, began to refresh too slowly. YouTube became very erratic: sometimes working OK (i.e., refreshing pages at acceptable speeds), sometimes not--tempting me to drop-kick the tablet across the room. Keep in mind that this is predicated on all things being equal with the iPad and Kindle Fire, i.e., not related to connectivity.

And, bizarrely, the Xyboard can't access the mobile versions of some Web sites, despite relying on a mobile browser. (Browsers like Skyfire solve this particular problem but introduce others. And Opera Mobile can be faster, but it too has its own problems.)

Even a simple thing like typing in a Web address in the stock browser can become so slow (molasses comes to mind) that you have to wonder what Motorola and/or Google were thinking. (Google, after all, is slated to become Motorola's parent company).

And it gets worse. My Xyboard, despite being announced just as Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) was being released, came with Android 3.2. And it won't get Ice Cream Sandwich until "Q3" (third quarter) of this year. If, in fact, Motorola doesn't delay the update (not unheard of in the annals of promised updates).
I don't know if ICS would solve the performance problems, but it might at least be a start.
I could go on, citing other negatives (text input), but I won't because I've covered the most serious shortcoming for me: browsing.

I want to like the Xyboard: Not only because I spent my own money but because I like the design--more than the iPad's. That was probably the single biggest reason I walked into my local Verizon store and grabbed the Xyboard.

I like the wide 10.1-inch screen and I like the way it sits in my palm (again, more than the iPad on both counts). And I like the LTE "4G" (though it doesn't work in 4G areas as consistently as I had hoped).
I also know that the Xyboard's dual-core Texas Instruments' OMAP 4430 chip with an Imagination SGX540 graphics chip has a lot more potential than Motorola and/or Google have been able to wring out of it. I know there's potential for some very snappy sustained performance, but Motorola and/or Google haven't optimized the software to enable that.

Amazon got it right with the Kindle Fire: The Kindle Fire (Android 2.3) is a much better experience. Browsing with the built-in Android browser is reliable and consistently faster than browsing on the Xyboard. E-mail works as advertised, text input is snappy, and the apps that I need work well. (And note that the Kindle Fire uses the same TI chip as the Xyboard does.)

So, how did a Web retailer create a tablet for $199 (about $500 less than what I paid for the Xyboard) that works surprisingly well for a Gen 1 product? And do a better job than a device heavyweight like Motorola? I would submit that Amazon is much more focused on fusing the software with the underlying hardware. Sound familiar? Yeah, just like Apple.

Of course, in some respects the Fire is very different from the iPad. It's smaller (7-inch screen), runs Android, and is not billed as being as versatile as the iPad. That said, as a limited-function tablet, it works surprisingly well.

And if Amazon comes out with a larger tablet as rumored, I would seriously consider it based on my experience with the current Fire.

The iPad 2 just works: Which brings us to the iPad 2. I don't have much to say because the iPad just works. On pretty much everything (browsing, e-mail, light productivity) I need it to do, the iPad delivers. In fact, it comes about as close to a productivity device as a tablet can get.

While there are some obvious limitations to extended data input, formatting, and precise image editing (among other tasks), that could change in a heartbeat.

In other words, imagine an Apple-designed hybrid tablet-laptop (think: Asus Transformer Prime as a template) running iOS. Would that render the MacBook obsolete? An interesting point to ponder as we wait for Apple's imminent iPad 3.

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E-mail viruses most likely to appear in the morning

Eight in the morning is a good time to grab some coffee, but not to check your e-mail.

The number of viruses sent out each day peaks between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. EST, according to the Global Security Report released by security research firm Trustwave this week.

"The number of executables and viruses sent in the early morning hours increased," reads the report. "The spike is likely an attempt to catch people as they check e-mails at the beginning of the day."

Using real-world data collected in 2011 from more than 300 incident response and forensic investigations in 18 countries, along with analyzing 16 billion e-mails from 2008 to 2011, Trustwave compiled this in-depth report that looks at security trends, vulnerabilities, and more.

Trustwave also looked into which month of the year more viruses were sent and concluded that viruses shot up in August and reached a peak in September. Overall, 3 percent of viruses sent through e-mail came in August and September.

"The time from compromise to detection in most environments is about six months," reads the report. "Therefore, if these methods were successful, March 2012 should be a busy month for incident responders and breach disclosures."

Other interesting findings in Trustwave's Global Security Report:

What cybercriminals are looking for: Customer records are the No. 1 thing attackers look for, which make up 89 percent of the breached data investigated. Trade secrets and intellectual property are a distant second with 6 percent.

Franchises and chain stores are major targets: Industries with franchise and chain stores are top targets because they often use the same IT systems across stores. If an attacker can break into one store's system, most likely they can get into several locations. More than one-third of 2011 investigations happened in franchise businesses.

Global businesses have weak passwords: After analyzing more than 2 million business passwords, Trustwave found that the most common password used by global businesses is "Password1."

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How the two flavors of Windows 8 will be different

One thing was made crystal clear today by Microsoft. Windows 8 on ARM will not be the same experience as Windows 8 on Intel-AMD.

Windows 8 ARM devices will run on processors from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, and Nvidia--marking the first time that a mainstream Windows operating system will run on processors from ARM chip suppliers in addition to those of Intel-AMD.

Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky said today that Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) will launch at the same time as Windows on Intel-AMD (X86)--though he didn't say when--and that ARM-based devices (such as tablets) will run the desktop version of Office 15. But there are some key differences.

Here are the major ways that Windows 8 on ARM and Window 8 on Intel-AMD are different:

•ARM will not run Windows 7 stuff: While Windows 8 will run on older Windows 7 PCs because everything is more or less standardized on the X86 platform, this is not the case for ARM. "The approach taken by ARM Holdings, the licensor of ARM products is, by design, not standardized in this manner," wrote Sinofsky. If you need to run a lot of existing X86 software, then you will need to have an X86 device. Period.

•No virtualization or emulation: And along these lines, WOA will not support any type of virtualization or emulation and "will not enable existing x86/64 applications to be ported or run." Why? "Supporting various forms of emulation runs counter to the goal of delivering a product that takes a modern approach to system reliability and predictability...Virtualized or emulated software will consume system resources, including battery life and CPU, at unacceptable levels."

•ARM uniqueness: Device makers work with ARM partners to create a device that is "strictly paired with a specific set of software (and sometimes vice versa), and consumers purchase this complete package, which is then serviced and updated through a single pipeline." Again, this is different from standardized X86-based devices. "In these ways, this is all quite different than the Windows on x86/64 world," Sinofsky said.

•Labeling to "avoid confusion": When a consumer buys a Windows on ARM PC, it will be "clearly labeled and branded" so as to avoid potential confusion with Windows 8 on x86/64. The PC will come with the OS preinstalled, and all drivers and supporting software. WOA will not be available as a software-only distribution, "so you never have to worry about which DVD to install and if it will work on a particular PC."

•Windows on ARM devices don't turn off: You don't turn off a WOA PC, according to Sinofsky. WOA PCs will not have the traditional hibernate and sleep options. Instead, WOA PCs always operate in the Connected Standby power mode, similar to the way you use a mobile phone today.

•Office 15: While WOA includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, these are "Office 15" apps that "have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption" while also being fully-featured and providing "complete document compatibility." WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop "which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption."

•And WOA and X86/64 are the same in important ways, too: Out of the box Windows on ARM will feel like Windows 8 on x86/64. Sign in, app launching, Windows Store access are the same. And, like X86/64, there is access to Internet Explorer 10, peripherals, and the Windows desktop with tools like Windows File Explorer and desktop Internet Explorer.

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Apple in 'crunch mode' preparing apps to demo iPad 3

In the wake of iPad 3 launch rumors, Apple is reportedly scrambling to prepare for the tablet's expected debut event next month.

The company is in "crunch mode" to drum up apps to demonstrate the tablet both onstage and in TV advertising, according to The Next Web tech site, which cited unidentified sources with knowledge of the matter.

The report notes that Apple usually spends weeks handpicking apps to showcase the tablet's capabilities during its introduction. Apple's selection process, which is moving along at an "increased rate," is placing special emphasis on graphics-oriented apps to show off the new iPad's rumored Retina display, The Next Web reported tonight.

Apple is said to be sending the apps it is most impressed with to its longtime advertising agency, TWBA/Chiat/Day, for possible inclusion in TV ads.

Apple is expected to unveil its next-generation iPad at a event in San Francisco scheduled for the first week of March, according to an AllThingsD report.

The design of the new iPad is expected to resemble the iPad 2 but run with a faster chip, an improved graphics processor, and better resolution. The new tablet is expected to feature a 2048x1536 Retina Display that would bring its pixel density in line with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

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Three years on, Chrome at last arrives on Android

Google today released a beta version of its Chrome browser for Android, a momentous step that marries two of Google's most important programming projects.

The new browser, unlike the stock Android browser, is available in the Android Market so that people don't have to wait for handset makers to offer it through an operating system upgrade. But its reliance on newer hardware acceleration interfaces means it only works on Ice Cream Sandwich, which despite emerging last year on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone remains a rarity in the real world.
Chrome comes to Android, but only ICS

Chrome for Android (review) includes the desktop version's V8 JavaScript engine, has gesture-based controls for moving among multiple tabs, synchronizes with the desktop version of Chrome, and shuts out plug-ins including Adobe Systems' Flash Player and Google's own Native Client. With its performance and features, Google expects Android users to increase their browser activity.
"In general, we have seen usage go up," said Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of Chrome and Apps. "I expect to see more people use the mobile Web."

It's unfortunate that it's limited to Ice Cream Sandwich, but Chrome doubtless will take off widely among those with Android 4.0. Even in beta, it's a compelling browser at least on the Galaxy Nexus I tried it on, and it's and a much better match for Apple's Safari on iOS. And eventually, its success is all but assured when it simply becomes what ships with Android.
Google tried to examine every aspect of browsing and if necessary adapt it for the mobile world. "The intent was to reinvent mobile browsers," said Arnaud Weber, engineering manager for Chrome. "We went through every feature of Chrome and brainstormed every feature."

Peas in a pod
Android and Chrome are made for each other. Each arrived for the public to use in the closing months of 2008. Each started as small, rough projects that exploded in usage and became top priorities for the company.

Each project isn't actually an end in itself, but rather a means to an end: get more people to use the Internet and Google's services on it. Android and Chrome are vehicles to carry people to Google search, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google+, and doubtless many future online services. Not coincidentally, Chrome and Android are set up to work better if you're signed into a Google account.

With so much to gain from each other, it's somewhat surprising that it took more than three years for the Chrome chocolate to get stuck in the Android peanut butter. But Google wanted to make sure Chrome for Android would be good enough, Pichai said.

"We really wanted to get the full capabilities of a desktop browser--stuff like V8--in a highly capable browser that's optimized for the mobile experience," Pichai said. "It was a challenge."
And Google didn't want to brand the stock Android browser with the Chrome name. It wasn't based on Chromium, the open-source foundation of Chrome, and Google wanted to ensure the "underlying mobile platform could run things you're used to in desktops," Pichai said.

Feature frenzy
Among the features in the browser:

• The browser shows multiple tabs like overlapping pages when you tap the tabs button. Swiping one of the pages to one side or the other close it in much the same way that you can sweep away notifications on Ice Cream Sandwich. Once you click a page, it expands to fill the whole screen, at which point you can switch to new pages by sliding your finger from one edge or the other.

• The browser can preload pages in advance when Google has high confidence that you'll likely tap its link. That means pages don't have to wait so much for the network.

• Chrome for Android has hardware acceleration for tasks such as scrolling. It also uses it for slick visual feedback effects like browser tabs.

• It supports a wide range of Web standards, including Web Workers for multiple computing processes, Web Sockets for fast server-browser communciations, HTML5 video and audio, and IndexedDB for offline storage.

• The browser is rejiggered for tablets. "On tablets, we realize consumers expect a similar experience to what they get on a laptop," Pichai said, so for example the tab strip looks like what you'd see on a personal computer.

• You can synchronize data such as bookmarks and Web address autocomplete suggestions with your desktop browser, with passwords arriving in a later upgrade. As with Firefox for Android, tabs you had open on your laptop or desktop can be opened from a list in Chrome for Android. To use sync, you must be signed into your Google account.

• The browser has incognito mode that doesn't leave traces such as cached images, cookies, and browsing history on the phone. It's walled off into a separate stack of tabs; if any incognito tabs are open, you can move between them and the ordinary stack of tabs by tapping the tab button and then tapping the appropriate stack.

• Programmers can use their PCs to remotely debug Web pages that don't work properly on Chrome for Android. A command on the PC will open the mobile browser's Web pages for scrutiny.

Web apps or native apps?
Chrome for Android increases a certain tension within Google: should software run natively on a particular computing device or as a Web app within a browser?
For Android, the answer clearly has been largely the former as Google has pushed the Android Market and worked to improve programming tools and interfaces. But part of Chrome's raison d'etre has been to spur Web-app innovation, a subject near and dear to Google's heart. Because browsers run on so many devices, Web apps span them and at least theoretically offer programmers the promise of cross-platform development.

Naturally, with Chrome on board, Android becomes a much more powerful foundation for Web applications. That's especially true since Chrome will be on the Android Market and therefore Android users will be able to upgrade it even when their handset manufacturers can't be bothered to keep up with newer Android releases.

Path shares photos--oh, and uploads your contacts, too
But Chrome's arrival doesn't herald a new age when Web apps rule on Android.
"The mobile ecosystem is evolving at such a rapid pace that native apps will always be there, while the Web works its way there," Pichai said.

Chrome for Android doesn't yet overwrite the stock Android browser. The latter is still used, for example, by other Android apps that need a browser engine.

Android 4.0 only
Google stuck required Ice Cream Sandwich because it has necessary interfaces such as those for hardware acceleration. It sure is convenient, though, that it means Google doesn't have to worry about a lot of problems with compatibility and performance of a lot of older phones.
In fact, Google passing over earlier Android versions is almost exactly what Microsoft chose to do with Internet Explorer 9 when it dropped Windows XP support, in part because it lacks newer graphics interfaces. That cuts off a lot of people but simplifies engineering and support.
"ICS represesnts a big leap forward," Pichai said of Google's choice. "It made sense to aim there, to build for the future."

Likewise, don't expect Chrome on other mobile operating systems, most notably iOS. Apple permits other browsers on iOS only if they use its WebKit engine to render Web pages; although Chrome stems from the same WebKit lineage, it's a different bundle of bits with, for example, a different JavaScript engine.
"On iOS, we can't run V8 or our multiprocess architecture," Pichai said. "There are a lot of limitations."
Chrome for Android is based on Chrome 16, the current stable release of the browser for computers. Google plans to update Chrome for Android every six weeks, just like the desktop version, and eventually the browser version numbers will sync up, Pichai said.

"Our intent is to have the smallest possible gap" between the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome, Weber said.

Chrome for Android won't support Flash, Pichai said. Google has been a tight Flash ally with its creator, Adobe Systems, but Google was spared a tough choice when Adobe scuppered its attempt to extend Flash from desktop to mobile last year.

Google's own Native Client, for running Web apps compiled to run at native speeds, also isn't an option, said Dave Burke, the Android engineering director. For that sort of software, programmers will simply write native Android apps, he said.

But Google loves the mobile Web--and it's a big deal financially.
"We believe one in every seven searches on Google comes from a mobile device," said JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth in a research report yesterday.

Advertisers pay only a half to a quarter the amount for each ad when people click on them compared to what they pay on personal computers right now, but more mobile usage likely will mean more advertisers bidding and therefore higher cost-per-click payment rates for Google, he said.
But overall, a lot of Google's excitement seems to be just about finally giving a top company brand a prominent place in a fast-moving, important market.

"I think mobile browsing is in its infancy. As phones are getting more powerful, as screen sizes are getting larger and higher-resolution, and as connectivity is getting better going from 3G to 4G, I think mobile browsing can be huge," Pichai said. Now using Chrome on Android, "my browser usage has sky rocketed."

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Startup Soraa lights up with 'LED 2.0'

To build a better light fixture, startup Soraa started right at the foundation with a different kind of LED chip inside.

The Fremont, Calif.-based company tomorrow will come out of stealth mode and launch its first product, a spotlight which uses efficient LEDs (light emitting diodes). The MR 16 bulb replaces a 50-watt halogen and uses 12.5 watts and it offers a better beam and light quality, said Soraa CEO Eric Kim.

The bulb from Soraa, which has raised more than $100 million in venture capital, is the first in a planned line of LEDs for general lighting and lasers for projector displays.

The company was founded by a team of scientists renowned for their contributions to LEDs and lasers, notably Shuji Nakamura from University of California at Santa Barbara. In 2008, investor Vinod Khosla approached Nakamura and his colleagues Steven DenBaars and James Speck to commercialize research they had done on new materials for LEDs.

White LEDs use gallium nitride (GaN) as the active semiconductor material that gives off light when current is passed through it. Most companies make LED chips where a gallium nitride crystal is grown over a substrate of sapphire or, in the case of Cree, silicon carbide.

Soraa's LEDs are made with an active material layer of gallium nitride and a gallium nitride substrate. Having a single material leads to LEDs that can take more current and thus produce more light on a package of a given size. It also means that there's less wasted heat, which can degrade the life of LED lighting.

For the most part, the LED industry has tried to bring down the cost of LED lighting by scaling up manufacturing, Kim said. Competitor Bridgelux intends to make crystals on a silicon wafers to take advantage of existing silicon manufacturing equipment.

Kim said that the performance improvement that comes from the new material will help bring costs down quicker than ramping up volume production with existing materials. That will make LEDs more compelling for general-purpose lighting.

"When you have a very tight lattice match, light generation happens far more efficiently," said Kim who joined the company in 2010 after working at Intel and Samsung. "It really leads to LED 2.0 and a whole new disruptive technology curve."

Rather than supply LED lights sources to light fixture makers as is common in the lighting industry, Soraa is making its own LED fixtures as well. Being vertically integrated allows it to come to market faster with a light bulb and ensure supply of needed components for its LED chip platform.

Soraa's initial focus is commercial customers who use MR16 bulbs, which are typically used in restaurants, retail outlets, and museums. But it intends to make a set of products designed as replacements for existing bulbs, including those for consumers.

An executive from Soraa competitor Cree agreed that having the same active material as the substrate in an LED does lead to good efficiency, but the main limitation in this case is cost.

"A GaN (gallium nitride) wafer would be on the order of 50-100 times more expensive than an equivalent sapphire wafer. So while the wafer cost doesn't matter too much in the world of GaN-on-sapphire LEDs, it definitely would be a major expense for GaN-on-GaN," said Cree product marketing manager Paul Scheidt

Kim declined to say how much its new bulb cost, but said that the MR16, which will be available this quarter, will offer a payback in under a year, a benchmark it intends to target for future lighting products.

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