Live television, new 'Halo' coming to Xbox 360

Don Mattrick, president of Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft, speaks at the Microsoft Xbox global media briefing during the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, Monday, June 6, 2011. (AP / Matt Sayles)


LOS ANGELES — Live television and another chapter of the "Halo" game are landing on Xbox 360.

Microsoft Corp. announced its plan for the video game console on Monday at a news conference kicking off the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's annual convention.

The company said live TV would be offered by domestic and international broadcasters, but no other details were revealed.

Partnerships with international broadcasters currently bring live TV to Xbox 360 in the United Kingdom, Australia and France, but the service unveiled Monday would be the first such offering available on a gaming console in the United States.

Xbox 360 and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 already provide the ability to stream and download movies and shows.

Meanwhile, Microsoft hinted that "Halo 4" would be the "dawn of a new trilogy" for the blockbuster, intergalactic shoot-'em-up series. The previous game, "Halo: Reach," earned $200 million on its first day and sold 3.3 million copies in its first month on the market last year, according to Microsoft and industry tracker NPD Group.

The company also announced at the University of Southern California's Galen Center that increased functionality with its Kinect camera system was coming to Xbox 360, including the abilities to fully navigate menus with voice commands, scour for online and hard drive content with Microsoft's Bing search engine, and play games such as "Mass Effect 3" in tandem in the traditional controller.

The feature was demonstrated with the sci-fi role-playing sequel to "Mass Effect 2," as Kinect recognized vocal commands while a player used an analog controller to navigate the virtual landscape and fire a blaster.

Other gaming franchises that will add Kinect functionality include shooter "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier" and racer "Forza Motorsport 4."

"Kinect has been wildly successfully, and we want to provide experiences with it for that broad audience but also the core crowd that made Xbox what it is," said Mike Delman, marketing vice president of Microsoft's interactive entertainment division. "For example, in `Forza,' you'll be able to tilt your head to see different angles from the driver's seat."

Other games that utilize Kinect included the virtual theme park explorer "Disneyland Adventures," hands-sweeping magical adventure "Fable: The Journey," gladiatorial sparring game "Ryse," a second season follow-up to "Kinect Sports," and a "Star Wars" game that turns players' movements into the powers of The Force.

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New FT app bypasses iTunes to deal directly with readers

The FT's new iPad app is available via browsers rather than iTunes

The Financial Times has introduced a new browser-based app for tablets, claiming it as "a major first by a news publisher."

The automatically updating app will enable readers to access its editorial content across a broad range of tablet and smartphone devices.

According to an article in today's FT, the app will bypass Apple's iTunes store and Google's android market.

It will therefore overcome the problem posed by Apple's reluctance to share detailed data on the identities and behaviour of users. Publishers have railed against that barrier.

Initially optimised for the iPad and iPhone, the app will be adapted for other tablets, including android-based devices.

John Ridding, the FT's chief executive, said the company was talking to Apple about data-sharing concerns, but he added: "This is not about Apple. It's about our readers and making sure they have a consistent experience."

He went on: "This is an important step in our strategy of providing multi-channel access to our global journalism quickly and simply.

"The FT web app offers our customers flexibility and freedom of choice... with a single login or subscription. In a world of increasingly digital complexity we want to keep our service simple, easy to use and efficient."

Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com, said the FT had no plans to pull out of any apps store, but that it would encourage users to adopt the web app.

For example, as part of the launch, the new FT web app offers free access to content throughout this week.

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YouTube adds video captions

English-language video clips will be captioned automatically, in a move designed to make the site more accessible for the deaf or hearing-impaired


By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor
Published: 9:04AM GMT 05 Mar 2010

YouTube has started to add captions to all its English-language video

YouTube has announced that every English-language video uploaded to the site will be captioned automatically. The move means that Britain’s nine million deaf or hearing-impaired people will be able to access YouTube’s ever-increasing range of films and videos.

Google stressed that the roll-out of the service is only just beginning, and that the automatic software is imperfect. Video owners will be allowed to download the transcript for their content and then improve them where necessary.
Based on the technology that powers Google Voice Search, the captions will be most accurate if the video provides a clear audio track, but will, the company promises, be improved “every day”.

A button will allow users to request that existing videos be auto-captioned as soon as possible, and once they have been processed the captions will be available at the click of a button at the bottom right of the video player.

Emma Harrison, the Royal National Institute for the Deaf’s director of external affairs, welcomed the feature. “Captioning will significantly help people with a hearing loss understand video content and increase their ability to share experiences of watching those in which speech plays a prominent part,” she said.

"We believe that all on-demand content should be accessible and RNID will continue lobbying hard to ensure that people with a hearing loss have better opportunities to enjoy subtitled videos, movies and television programmes.”

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Google Enlists DocVerse in Attack on Microsoft

Google's got its head in the cloud--again. The search giant today announced that it has bought DocVerse, a software startup that makes an online collaboration plug-in for Microsoft Office. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google paid $25 million for the San Francisco-based developer, which was founded in 2007 by former Microsoft employees Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui.

The DocVerse deal wraps up an acquisitive week for Google, which announced Monday that it gobbled up online photo-editing site Picnik.

Office, Meet Apps

So what are Google's intentions for its latest conquest? "Our first step will be to combine DocVerse with Google Apps to create a bridge between Microsoft Office and Google Apps," write DeNeui and Sinha in their DocVerse blog. Their plug-in currently allows MS Office users to work collaboratively on Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents, even when they're offline.

If implemented correctly, DocVerse's Office-to-Apps bridge can help Google position its Apps communications and collaboration suite as a viable alternative to Microsoft products in the enterprise market. A collaborative tool that enables seamless (or at least pretty good) integration between the competitors' business apps could only serve to help Google and harm Microsoft, which has reigned over the enterprise market for years.

A Cloudy Outlook

The DocVerse acquisition fits nicely with Google's cloud-based view, and with the search company's not-so-subtle efforts to dethrone the desktop-centric MS Office.

"The future of productivity applications is in the cloud," blogs Google Apps group product manager Jonathan Rochelle. "But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we're also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office," Rochelle writes.

Google recently added advanced data backup and recovery capabilities to all components of the Apps suite. It also introduced mobile device management tools for users of Google Apps Premier and Education Edition. Today's DocVerse announcement is yet another sign of Google's business-market play.

Microsoft, of course, is developing its own cloud-based strategy too. Its upcoming Office 2010, for instance, will feature numerous Web-based enhancements, including scaled-down online versions of core Office desktop apps.

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Apple iPad to go on sale on 3 April in US and 'late April' in UK

Apple yet to provide details on UK or international release dates, selling prices or associated mobile network companies
Apple's touchscreen iPad tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US, but no specific date – beyond "late April" – has been given for its release in the UK and other international locations.

The company declined to set either the selling price for its models abroad, or to name any of the mobile network companies that will be providing connectivity for the more expensive iPad systems, which have 3G data sims built in.

US customers will be able to pre-order the iPad, which Steve Jobs described as a "magical and revolutionary product", from Friday 12 March, either online or in Apple's retail stores.

The devices come in two basic forms – with Wi-Fi wireless connectivity, and with both Wi-Fi and 3G mobile connectivity. However, only the Wi-Fi versions will go on sale on 3 April; Apple said only that the 3G versions will be on sale in "late April".

All the versions of the iPad will go on sale in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland at the same time.

The iPad has excited huge interest because it expands the interface of the iPhone, Apple's hugely successful mobile phone, into a usable "slate" computer with a 9-inch screen. A number of content publishers have thought that it could be a completely new medium for sales of various products – including electronic versions of books, magazines, newspapers, music and films – that they will be able to charge for by selling them through Apple's iTunes store, which has been a source of revenue for music, film, TV, audiobook and notably "app" creators.

In the US, the basic iPad model with Wi-Fi and 16 gigabytes of storage will cost $499. Apple says that it "lets users browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more". The device is 0.5 inches thick and weighs 1.5 pounds – "thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook" and Apple says it can run for up to 10 hours on a single battery charge. (Tests on other products suggest the figure may typically be only half that.)

In the past few weeks there had been mounting speculation that there were production problems at Apple's factories in China. Apple had no comment on that, but the staged release to the international market compared to the US – which makes half of Apple's sales – suggests it is husbanding its resources.

The announcement notably does not offer any pricing for the UK, nor any details about which mobile carriers Apple might sign up with. O2, Orange and Vodafone already offer its iPhone, but none of them are mentioned in Apple's announcement.

Nor is pricing – which could be key to how well it sells. Since the announcement of the iPad in January, the pound has slipped against the dollar in international exchange markets, which has led to speculation that Apple is waiting until the last minute to announce the price in order to minimise any losses on exchange-rate volatility. Macworld magazine, which calculated in February that the low-end iPad selling for $499 in the US might have a starting price of £388 in the UK, recalculated on Friday that the downturn in sterling would now mean a minimum starting price of £400.

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Shuttle flights would continue under new proposal

WASHINGTON — The space shuttle era could get a new lease on life under a bill filed today by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The measure would delay the shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010 until NASA is confident that a replacement spacecraft is ready or that the shuttle and its massive payload bay is no longer needed to keep the International Space Station afloat through 2020.

The 37-page bill also authorizes an additional $1.3 billion in NASA spending next year above President Barack Obama’s request of $19 billion. The extra money would help prepare NASA for as many as two additional shuttle flights per year after 2010, as well as fund new spacecraft development.

“This must not be an ‘either or’ proposition where we are forced to choose between continuing to fly the shuttle to service the station and maintain our independence in reaching space, or investing in the next generation of space vehicle. We can and must do both,” Hutchison said in a statement.

Last month, Obama moved to cancel NASA’s Constellation moon rocket program in favor of an approach that would rely on commercial rocket companies to ferry cargo and crew to the space station after the shuttle’s final four missions.
Constellation aimed to send astronauts to the station by 2015 and return astronauts to the moon by 2020 aboard new Ares rockets and an Orion capsule, but financial and technical problems made those goals impossible.

The White House has said it hopes to have crewed, commercial launches to the station as early as 2016.

The Obama plan has gotten a chilly reception in Congress and the Hutchison measure emphasizes the need for NASA to have a government-run system that could lift astronauts into space. The new bill also calls for the “continuation or modification” of programs initiated under the Constellation program.

“While commercial transportation systems may contribute valuable services, it is in the United States’ national interest to maintain a government operated space transportation system for crew and cargo delivery to low-Earth orbit and beyond,” it notes.

The bill faces an uncertain fate in Congress.

Politically, there is talk of Hutchison leaving the Senate after losing a bid for the Texas governor’s mansion. Plus, getting more money for NASA always has been difficult — even in rosy budget years — and plans for continuing the shuttle have been criticized before because additional flights would be costly and would pose a safety risk.

Indeed, a key criticism of continued shuttle flights is that NASA would have to recertify the aging fleet to ensure that age wouldn’t cause another fatal accident. Investigators of the 2003 Columbia disaster made that specific recommendation and Hutchison appears to have listened.

The bill calls for the creation of a Flight Certification Review Committee that would assess what needs to be done in order to fly the shuttle for an additional five years. The five-member team would be appointed by the National Academies of Science.

A companion bill authored by U.S. Reps. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, and Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, is expected next week. A Kosmas aide said the delay is due to the two lawmakers seeking to get more original

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Opera says its browser is the "fastest" of them all

Opera Software has launched version 10.50 of its web browser - which it claims is the world's "fastest" for Windows-based systems.

The latest iteration of the browser also includes a redesigned GUI, along with a feature known as "private browsing" which attempts to hide all traces of visited site
"Opera 10.50 is the fastest browser in almost all speed tests. But, more important than any speed test is the real-world speed during use. We designed Opera 10.50 to be easy to use, while making our unique features stand out, so you can get more out of the Web," explained Opera CEO Lars Boilesen. 



"Under the hood, we introduced a new JavaScript engine, Carakan and a new graphics library, Vega. What that means to you: no more waiting around for a site to load. [And] on Windows 7/Vista, we let Opera enjoy Aero Glass, as well as supporting Aero Peek and Jump Lists."

Other features include:

* Opera Turbo - Compresses Web pages on Opera's servers and facilitates the faster transfer of data.
* 
Unite - Allows users to share content immediately without uploading files or posting to a social network.
* 
Link - Synchronizes speed dial, notes, search-engine preferences and more. Can be used across multiple Opera browsers.

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Chile quake may have shortened day

This composite image of the Earth is based on data from the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite. It represents the most detailed image of the Earth from space ever taken. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

The 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake released so much energy that it may have slightly shortened the length of the Earth's day, a NASA scientist says.

Richard Gross, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory computed how the Earth's rotation may have been affected by the Feb. 27 quake, which has killed at least 723 people.

The JPL computer model suggests that the length of the Earth day may have been shortened by 1.26 millionths of a second.
YOUR NEWS:

If you were in the quake zone — or have relatives who were — tell us about your experience.

The change in the length of the day came as a result of the shift in the Earth's axis that occurred because of the quake. The Earth's figure axis, the imaginary line about which its mass is balanced, shifted by 2.7 milliseconds of arc, or about eight centimetres.

Gross said the same model estimated that the 2007 Sumatran earthquake, with a magnitude of 9.1, should have shortened the length of day by 6.8 millionths of a second, although its shift in the Earth's axis was only about seven centimetres.

Gross said the smaller Chilean earthquake had a greater effect on the Earth's rotation because it occurred farther away from the equator. As well, the fault responsible for the Chile quake dips into the Earth at a steeper angle, making it more effective at shifting the axis.

Gross said more data from the Chilean earthquake will provide a clearer picture of how it affected the planet.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/02/tech-nasa-earth-chile-quake.html#ixzz0hD44TGQk

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Google 'considering China options'

Google has said it is continuing to review the future of its China operations, almost two months after the firm said it would stop complying with Chinese government regulations requiring it to censor search results.

On Tuesday a senior executive from the internet search giant told a US senate committee that the company's investigation into alleged hacking attacks on its email service was still in process.

Google warned in January that it was considering pulling out of China altogether after discovering that Chinese dissidents using Google's Gmail service were being spied on.

Speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Human Rights, Nicole Wong, a Google vice-president, said the firm had not set a specific deadline for ending censorship of its Chinese search results, although she said Google was "reviewing our options".

"The attack on our corporate infrastructure and the surveillance it uncovered - as well as attempts over the past year to limit free speech on the web even further - led us to conclude that we are no longer willing to censor our search results," she said.

Commenting on the future of Google's operations in China, Wong said the company was "firm in our decision that we will not censor our search results in China and we are working towards that end"
She added that Google has "many employees on the ground" in China, "so we recognise both the seriousness and the sensitivity of the decision we are making".

Wong gave few new details on the mid-December cyber attack thought to have originated from China that was partly responsible for Google's threat to pull out of the country.

However, she said the company was in discussion with the Chinese government as to how it can continue to do business in the country.

China has so far insisted that all companies offering internet services in China must comply with regulations requiring them to block access to sites deemed undesirable by Chinese censors.

"We want to get to that end - of stopping censoring our search results - in a way that is appropriate and responsible," Wong told the hearing.

"We are working on that as hard as we can but it's a very human issue for us."

Tuesday's senate subcommittee hearing was chaired by Dick Durbin.

The Illinois Democratic senator has said he intends to introduce a bill that would require internet companies to follow a code of conduct for doing business in countries that restrict free speech and human rights.

Durbin's proposed bill would subject companies that do not take "reasonable steps to protect human rights" to civil or criminal penalties.

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Apple suit likely a shock to Google phone maker Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/02/apple-htc-patent-lawsuit.html#ixzz0hD35DDrS

Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC is likely coming as a shock to the Taiwanese phone maker, which holds the American company in high regard.

"I have always been an Apple fan, all of my life," said John Wang, HTC's chief marketing and innovation officer, in a recent interview. "I stay up till 1 a.m. to see [Apple CEO] Steve [Jobs'] speeches, every time he speaks. Apple is such a respectable company in this world."

On Tuesday, the Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC that claims the company has violated 20 of its patents related to graphical interface, underlying architecture and hardware in several of its handset models. Apple has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. District Court in Delaware to block the import and sale of infringing phones in the United States, as well as triple damages and interest.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Jobs said in a press release. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

HTC on Tuesday said it had not yet been served with the lawsuit and could not comment.

In an interview with CBC News in late January, Wang spoke of his admiration for Apple, but also of HTC's own innovation efforts. The company set up its first dedicated innovation centre, dubbed "Magic Labs," in Taiwan in 2004 and 2005. The lab's focus was to concentrate on inventing new technologies away from the pressures of quarterly business targets, with an eye to developing products that would hit the market two or three years into the future.

Wang said he was surprised when he watched Jobs' speech in January 2007, where he unveiled the iPhone. Touting a sleek, graphical touch-screen interface, the iPhone nearly swept the carpet out from under HTC, which had been working on similar features since 2005.

"My jaw dropped. I was thinking that half of my projects at Magic Labs were in this phone," Wang said. "I wasn't feeling too well after that announcement."

The shock was short-lived, though, as Apple's announcement edified HTC's approach, he added. HTC released its Touch smartphone in June, 2007, a month before Apple released the iPhone.

"The introduction of the iPhone showed that HTC's direction was correct. It turned out to be good for HTC as well," he said. "I'm sure Apple was equally surprised that HTC introduced Touch around the same time."

HTC and Google, with its Android operating system, have been quickly expanding their shares of the exploding market for smartphones since the two joined forces in late 2007 with the Open Handset Alliance. Phones running Android capture about five per cent of the market in 2009, according to research firm Gartner, up from only 0.5 per cent a year earlier.

HTC has been the most aggressive developer and marketer of Android phones in that time, fielding a number of handsets including the very first — the G1 — and Google's showcase product, the Nexus One. Other companies, including Motorola and LG, recently released Android phones as well.

Apple's accusation that HTC stole its innovations is also likely to anger the Taiwanese company. In its early days, HTC invented and designed products for other technology companies, such as the iPaq personal digital assistant for Hewlett-Packard. The company then moved on to designing phones for carriers in Europe and Japan, which are the most "advanced and cut-throat" markets in the world, Wang said.

"That's how you build a strong company because if you can work with the most advanced partners in the most competitive market in the world … then you can do anything. You can truly become an industry leader," he said. "HTC's DNA has always been innovation. It's not just one person, one group or one department, it's always been everywhere. That's the way HTC culture has always been."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/02/apple-htc-patent-lawsuit.html#ixzz0hD3D2KC8

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In-App Sales and iTablet: The Killer Combo to Save Publishing?

Apple on Thursday made a subtle-yet-major revision to its App Store policy, enabling extra content to be sold through free iPhone apps. It’s a move that immediately impacts the publishing industry, and it could pay even bigger dividends if the Cupertino, California, company indeed delivers its highly anticipated touchscreen tablet.

While the most obvious beneficiaries would be app developers, a market segment that can also benefit from the new in-app commerce model are people and companies that create content and need to set up shop in a way that doesn’t, in effect, charge someone for just walking in — like media publishers.
Newspapers and magazines are reportedly in talks with Apple about repurposing their content onto a “new device,” presumably the rumored touchscreen tablet Apple will deliver in early 2010. Numerous reports suggest an Apple tablet would have a strong focus on redefining print media. Enabling in-app commerce through free apps was a crucial move to help make this goal a reality.

Apple’s earlier in-app sales model wasn’t ideal for publishers. Previously, in-app commerce was a feature exclusive to paid apps; free apps were not permitted to sell content. Newspapers and magazines already struggle to sway readers to pay for content to begin with, and charging for apps cuts off potential customers. By allowing commerce within free apps, Apple creates the opportunity for a free media app to serve as a gateway for readers to get hooked on a newspaper’s or magazine’s content, which could help lure them into paying for exclusive premium content.
CNN is an exception: Its recently-released iPhone app costs $2. The Wall Street Journal will later this month begin charging for most of the content it delivers through its free app, and the Financial Times has an app that only offers up to 10 free stories a month without a subscription to the newspaper. But for the most part, publishers have loathed charging for an app, even if it then enabled them to try to charge for content within that point of sale. Reducing the cost barrier of that business model to zero changes things considerably. At least one small publisher, Scarab Magazine, has already taken advantage of the change.
Picture a free magazine app that offers one sample issue and the ability to purchase future issues afterward. Or a newspaper app that only displays text articles with pictures, but paying a fee within the app unlocks an entire new digital experience packed with music and video. This is an example of the “freemium” model that Wired magazine’s Chris Anderson explains in his book Free. It’s a model that some publishers, including Wired’s parent company Condé Nast, are already experimenting with on their websites. (Our sister publication Ars Technica, for example, offers its general content for free, as well as a “Premier” subscription option for readers to access exclusive content.)
If Apple does indeed deliver a tablet, the key for publishers is to create a convenient experience that readers will pay for, as opposed to the content itself. A free app would be the first step toward offering that experience. (And then the publisher will have to figure out what to do about ads, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.)
It’s plausible to imagine that a freemium strategy would be much more effective through a tablet app than a website. If the tablet is indeed designed like a 10-inch iPod Touch or iPhone, as insiders have described it, then publishers developing apps will be able to take advantage of features such as the accelerometer, GPS, live video streaming and multitouch to innovate the way they engage with their audience — and, ultimately, persuade them to pay.
Only now is the relevance of a touchscreen tablet becoming more clear. Scores of tablet devices have come and gone in years past, and many analysts and tech enthusiasts wondered why Apple would enter what is considered a failed product category. Clearly, Apple sees a gaping hole — the publishing industry’s lack of vision for a working digital model — and a touchscreen tablet, combined with the App Store and this new in-app sales model, would seek to fill it.
What’s in it for Apple? Primarily, squashing Amazon’s Kindle. Who would wish to read a digital newspaper or magazine on the Kindle’s drab e-ink screen if Apple delivers a multimedia-centric tablet? Wired’s Steven Levy shares my view in his assessment of the Kindle’s newspaper experience: “[The Kindle DX's] plodding menu-based interface still made navigating newspapers difficult, and the rich graphic quality that makes magazines such an indulgence is totally missing. Even the flashiest print publication looks like The New England Journal of Medicine.”
Can Apple redefine print media to save the publishing industry? It probably has a higher chance than any other tech company out there. Apple is a market-shaper, and that’s the kind of a company the publishing industry needs to resuscitate it as the traditional advertising model continues to collapse. Daily Beast editor Tina Brown believes that, thanks to the powers of the internet and technology, we’re entering the “golden age” of journalism in the next three years. Perhaps Apple’s tablet will be a crucial part of it.

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DTV Coming to Your Mobile Device

• By MYFOXDC STAFF/myfoxdc

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new mobile digital television signal means you can take your favorite shows with you on the go-- live.
On Friday, FOX 5 got a demonstration of digital TV in action. With this new signal, you can receive broadcasts on a laptop, cell phone or mobile device.
How much will that convenience cost? Prices haven't been announced yet, but one company plans to offer a connection for laptops for $99. Handsets could cost between $300 and $400.
An association of 800 TV stations agreed Thursday on a broadcast standard for the digital signals. Eventually, you could also be able to get emergency alerts customized by location, live audio feeds, and traffic information all on your mobile device.

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California cuts bond sales to $4.14bn to draw buyers

California hacked the total size of the deal by 8 per cent to $4.14 billion bonds could not allure enough demand to achieve the desired goal.

Apart from $2.82 billion in taxable bonds, the state's deal included $1.75 billion in Build America Bonds, while $1.31 billion in tax-exempt bonds.

Yields on bonds ranged from 3.75 per cent to 7.23 per cent for the taxable debt.

Yields on the tax-exempt bonds ranged from 2.95 per cent to 5.0 per cent.

Speaking on the issue, Janney Montgomery Scott's chief strategist, Guy LeBas, said, "Unfortunately, California seems to have come to market right when buyers are starting to balk at the absolute low level of yields."

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer's office stated that retail investors purchased $505.2 million in bonds, around one-third of the $1.55 billion offered to them.

It should be noted here that California has the lowest credit ratings in the US on

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Fed chief sees no rush to boost rates

Key lending rate will probably stay near zero for an ‘extended period,' Bernanke says
The Fed's key bank lending rate is now at a record low near zero and will probably stay there for an “extended period,” Mr. Bernanke said in prepared remarks to a Fed conference here.

That echoed the pledge he and his colleagues made at their meeting in late September. The goal: super-low rates will entice people and businesses to spend more, nurturing the budding recovery.

In a surprise move earlier this week, Australia's central bank raised rates, the first nation in the Group of 20 countries to do so. The move raised questions about which country would be next.

Although Mr. Bernanke has previously said the United States is likely out of recession, he has warned that the recovery won't be robust enough to prevent the unemployment rate — now at a 26-year high of 9.8 per cent — from rising. It is expected to top 10 per cent this year, and rise as high as around 10.5 per cent in the middle of next year before slowly drifting downward.

Still, Mr. Bernanke made clear on Thursday that when the time is right the Fed will have the tools and the political will to reel in the unprecedented amount of money it has pumped into the economy to avoid unleashing inflation.

“At some point, however, as economic recovery takes hold, we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem down the road,” Mr. Bernanke said.

The Fed chief laid out some more details about how the central bank would sop up the money.

Besides boosting its key bank lending rate, the Fed can raise the rate it pays banks on reserve balances held at the central bank, Mr. Bernanke said. That would give banks an incentive to keep their money parked there, rather than having it flow back into the economy, where it can stoke inflationary pressures. The Fed also can set up the equivalent of certificates of deposit for banks at the central bank, another incentive for banks to keep their money at the Fed.


The Fed also can drain money from the financial system by selling securities from its portfolio with an agreement to buy them back at a later date, Mr. Bernanke said. Such large-scale “reverse repurchase agreements” can be done with banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other institutions, he said. Some analysts have said that might involve transactions with money market mutual funds. Or the Fed can sell a portion of its securities outright.

“Overall the Federal Reserve has a wide range of tools for tightening monetary policy when the economic outlook requires us to do so,” Mr. Bernanke said. “We will calibrate the timing and pace of any future tightening, together with the mix of tools to best foster our dual objectives of maximum employment and price stability,” he added.

It's sure to be a high-wire act for the Fed. Tightening too soon could short-circuit the recovery. Waiting too long could ignite inflation.

The Fed's balance sheet has ballooned to $2.1-trillion (U.S.), reflecting the creation of a spate of lending programs intended to ease the financial crisis. That's more than double before the crisis struck.

As the crisis has eased, so has demand for some of the Fed's lending programs.

Short-term lending, which hit $1.1-trillion at the end of last year, when the crisis was still mounting, has fallen to about $264-billion, a drop of more than 75 per cent since the turn of the year, Mr. Bernanke said.

“We expect this trend to continue as markets improve,” he said.

Demand for another “commercial paper” program that provides companies with short-term financing needed to pay for salaries and supplies also has declined sharply, from $334-billion at the turn of the year to less than $50-billion currently, Mr. Bernanke said.

Meanwhile, the Fed is on track to wrap up this month a $300-billion program to buy government debt. That program aims to lower rates for mortgages and other consumer debt, the Fed chief said.

The Fed also is buying $1.25-trillion worth of mortgage-backed securities, in another move to force down mortgage rates. Bernanke said both programs appear to be having their “intended effect.”

The Fed chief once again expressed his displeasure at last year's rescue of insurance giant American International Group and the Fed's financial backing of JPMorgan's takeover of Bear Stearns. Those operations were taken “with great discomfort,” Mr. Bernanke said.

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Mobile web polarizes as duellists pick their seconds Verizon/Google vs AppleT&T

The two largest US cellcos went on the warpath this week with contrasting statements about their web strategies.

Verizon Wireless formed a far reaching partnership with Google, echoing the search giant's existing alliance with Sprint and pointing to Android dominance of the CDMA carriers' own-branded web services platforms, which will be vital to differentiation in the open access world, and will take shape from 2010AT&T is exploring its own options to create an AT&T mobile web experience that will compensate for falling data rates and the loss of the usual carrier lock-in weapons – exclusives, subsidies and closed network/software platforms. It increasingly seems to be distancing itself from Google and turning to a range of partners usually more associated with European operators, from Opera to Nokia.
The three mobile web models

The mobile web world is likely to break into three distinct battlefields from next year, and major carriers will have to take account of all three. First, the conventional smartphone approach, where the phonemaker and carrier engage in a tug-of-war over brand visibility and commercial relationship, but the handset itself is the key to customer choice.

This choice increasingly rests on the availability of downloadable apps and the overall software environment of the phone, not just hardware features. Of course, the premier example of this in the US has been the AT&T-iPhone relationship, which Verizon Wireless has failed to match for impact with a branded smartphone range that relies heavily on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

It is likely to ally with Android manufacturers such as Motorola and HTC to redress this balance, but its initial Android announcements, made with Google this week ahead of the CTIA Wireless and Entertainment show in San Diego, fall into the second mobile internet category. This is the creation of an operator branded platform, with a distinctive set of user interfaces, applications (with the mandatory store) and mass market webphones.

In this model, the carrier tries to keep customers loyal by offering a cost effective, usable and attractive web experience from which users, especially those below the smartphone uplands, will feel comfortable, even when not tied in by a long contract or closed network. To make this model work at all, operators need to move well beyond their conventional and limited portals and attract large bases of developers and device partners - as Vodafone has epitomized with its transition from old-style Live! to its new Vodafone 360 (see separate item on Telco 2.0).

They also need to harness the differentiation they can derive from their networks, opening proprietary features such as address books and location to third party programmers. The operator branded 'smart pipe' approach is much discussed, but actual offerings are only just emerging – Orange Partner, China Mobile oFone, Vodafone 360, and now Verizon and AT&T are trying to create their own offerings.

The third mobile web model could disrupt the other two in time, but only when wireless networks have the capacity and robustness to support vast amounts of data traffic and still generate profit for their operators. This means WiMAX and LTE, probably both in their next iterations, plus plentiful spectrum and advanced new networks and devices geared to maximum efficiency.

This is the 'Google vision', where the browser replaces the functions of the full-blown operating system and all applications are created and run in the browser, using standard techniques like HTML 5 and JavaScript, with data and back end processes located in the 'cloud'. Downloads, apps optimized for specific devices or networks, and semi-closed portals all disappear in favour of a fully open web akin to that on the PC – where, of course, the carrier becomes a bit pipe rather than a smart pipe.

Current networks do not support this however, as highlighted by Google itself in its eagerness to work closely with the carriers it eventually seeks to sideline, pushing Android even as it develops Chrome as the browser/OS of the future. This raises the ironic prospect of Palm webOS being closer to the open web dream than Google itself (see inset).

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iPhone tops J.D. Power list for consumer and business users

Apple's iPhone is still king of the smartphone hill.
(Credit: Apple

J.D. Power and Associates on Thursday released the results of its 2009 Wireless Consumer Smartphone Customer Satisfaction Study and the 2009 Wireless Business Smartphone Satisfaction Study. It may not surprise you to learn that Apple topped the list for satisfaction among consumers, but the iPhone is also the No. 1 pick among business users, too.

The factors determining satisfaction for business users (in order of importance) are ease of operation (29 percent); operating system (23 percent); physical design (21 percent); features (16 percent); and battery function (11 percent).

Apple scored 803 out of a possible 1,000 points among business users in the survey. Research in Motion's BlackBerry finished in second place in the business category, with a score of 724.

The factors and how they were weighted differed for the consumer and business surveys. Factors used to determine satisfaction for consumers were ease of operation (which accounted for 30 percent of the score), operating system (22 percent), features (21 percent), physical design (18 percent), and battery function (9 percent).

J.D. Power said Apple came in first with consumers, scoring 811 out of a possible 1,000. LG came in second with 776, and the BlackBerry took the third spot with 724.

While the company didn't give specific numbers, J.D. Power said the iPhone performed "particularly well in ease of operation, operating system, features, and physical design."

Overall, consumer satisfaction with smartphones has gone up 23 points out of 1,000 from a year ago, while business users report an increase of 43 points during the same time.

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Cambridge scientist scoops Nobel Prize for Chemistry

A scientist at Cambridge University has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work that has led to the development of new antibiotics.
(L-R) Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz of the US and Israel's Ada Yonath win the Nobel Chemistry Prize 2009 Photo: AFP

Dr Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, a senior research fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, has scooped the prize for his work at the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

The physicist was awarded for his contribution in developing an atom-by-atom map of the mysterious, life-giving section of a cell, known as a ribosome. The breakthrough has been essential for progress in the field of antibiotics.

While DNA molecules contain the blueprint for life inside each cell of every organism, it is the ribosome that translates that information into life.

They showed how the ribosome, which produces protein, functions at the atomic level.

"As ribosomes are crucial to life, they are also a major target for new antibiotics," the Nobel Committee for Chemistry at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said in a statement.

His success follows hard on the heels of Chinese-born Briton Charles Kao being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics yesterday.

Dr Ramakrishnan, 57, is one of three winners of the chemistry prize for using x-ray crystallography, a technique which uses x-rays to determine atomic arrangements, to create a model of the DNA ribosome structure.

He won a third of the prize along with Thomas Steitz from Yale University and Ada Yonath from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

He said: "I have to say that I am deeply indebted to all of the brilliant associates, students and post docs who worked in my lab as science is a highly collaborative enterprise.

"The MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and the University of Utah supported this work and the collegiate atmosphere there made it all possible.

"The idea of supporting long term basic research like that at LMB does lead to breakthroughs, the ribosome is already starting to show its medical importance."

Dr Ramakrishnan is a US citizen and was born in Tamil Nadu, India in 1952.

He currently works as a senior scientist and is a group leader at the structural studies division of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

A statement on the Nobel Prize website reads said the research had led to antibiotics and the "saving of lives and decreasing humanity's suffering".

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Microsoft unveils new mobile operating system

Microsoft wheeled out its answer to the iPhone today with the launch of a new version of its mobile operating system and an iTunes-style marketplace for smartphone applications.

Windows Mobile 6.5 attempts to address some of the shortcomings of previous versions that have caused Microsoft to lose substantial momentum in the highly competitive smartphone market.

The first phone in Australia to carry the new operating system is HTC's Touch Diamond 2.However, some critics had their claws out today, criticising the new OS for being too little too late from the software giant.

"Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't just a letdown - it barely seems done ... It's an interim product and a vain attempt to hold onto the thinning ranks of people who still choose Windows Mobile despite not being somehow tethered to it until the tardy Windows Mobile 7 comes out, whenever that may be. And it won't work," said a review on the Gizmodo blog.

Key features of the new OS are a re-organised user interface, larger touch-friendly icons and a more advanced web browsing application. The company has also packaged in a free back-up service for photos and data called My Phone to protect users whose smartphones have been lost or stolen.

Microsoft said that My Phone synchronised the content from contacts, appointments, texts and photos to a password-protected website, and also let users publish photos from My Phone or their handset to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

The Windows Marketplace is a crucial addition to its mobile offering as the company rapidly loses ground to other popular smartphone platforms used in the BlackBerry (Research In Motion), and the iPhone, which are firmly established in Australian business and consumer markets respectively.

* New apps marketplace launched
* Free back-up tool to protect data
* Re-organised user interface
* Larger touch-friendly icons
* More advanced web browsing

Microsoft said its competitive advantage lay in the ability to duplicate work and productivity applications from the computer screen to the mobile phone.

"Customers are telling us they want a seamless, integrated experience over the three screens in their life; the computer, notebook and mobile phone. Our next step is in breaking down those walls," said Alex Stewart, Microsoft's local consumer and online manager.

But the company has some ground to make up according to Australian telecommunications research firm Telsyte. In a recent survey conducted by the researcher, the BlackBerry emerged as the operating system of choice among Australian businesses for 22 per cent of firms, while Microsoft slipped to No.2 with 16 per cent, down from 21 per cent last year.

“That Windows Mobile is no longer the top-of-mind OS platform hardly came as a surprise, given that the vendor has been quiet with no major announcements in the past 18 months in a market where new competitors have risen to the forefront,” said Warren Chaisatien, research director at Telsyte.

The sentiment was no warmer in the consumer segment where Telsyte conducted a similar survey on 900 smartphone users, which revealed the iPhone had been adopted by one-quarter of Australian consumer smartphone users in the short time it has been on the market.

“The rapid rise of the Apple iPhone and the strengthening of the BlackBerry in the consumer space have come primarily at the expense of Symbian-based and Windows-based smartphones,” the researcher said.

Aside from having no apps marketplace, Windows Mobile OS has been widely criticised for its non-friendly user interface and a lack of streamlined functionality with many applications and settings inaccessible from the home screen.

To get around this, Microsoft licensees HTC and Samsung have been overlaying their own interfaces onto Windows Mobile “to create more competitive products and make up for the usability constraints of Microsoft's platform”, Gartner said.

Figures from Gartner reveal that Microsoft's global market share of mobile phone operating system fell in the second quarter of this year to 9 per cent of the market, while Research in Motion and Apple both increased their shares.

Adding to the intense market pressure is Google's relatively new Android platform, which will be the driver of numerous new smartphones due for release over the coming year.

HTC's Touch Diamond 2 is already being sold in Australia on the previous version of the OS, and users will be able to upgrade their handsets once their carriers support version 6.5.

Telstra is the first to support the upgraded HTC Touch Diamond 2 with others expected to come on board in coming weeks.

Other HTC smartphones due to carry Windows Mobile 6.5 at a future date will be the Snap and the Touch Pro 2 and Telstra said the LG GM730 would also be upgraded.

Although HTC has overlayed its own user-friendly interface onto the Touch Diamond 2, users will now be able to choose between the HTC interface and Microsoft's new interface.

While changes to the actual function of the Touch Diamond 2 will be subtle, the new Marketplace and Myphone back-up will help to boost the popularity of the product, said Anthony Petts, sales and marketing director of HTC Australia.

“It allows end users to customise their devices and make it more of what they want it to be. With the back-up service as well, these are certainly good enhancements.”

Microsoft's new Marketplace, launched today for version 6.5, has about 250 applications available including popular games and Facebook and Myspace apps priced from $3.99 to $20 (and above) for productivity applications. These will also be made available to all phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 by the end of the year.

But whether these developments can carry enough momentum to bring Microsoft's operating system back into the game is by no means assured said Chaisatien.

He believes "complacency" has prevented Microsoft from dominating the mobile market and that its greatest challenge now is to create a visible product roadmap to get more application developers interested in the platform.

“Market presence, mindshare and roadmap are what matters to developers and we still don't really know what Microsoft plans to come up with in 12-18 months."

He added that the company should look at carving a new market niche in the smartphone sector.

“When it comes to entry-level pre-pay smartphone market, it has not yet been serviced. I think if Microsoft can move very quickly to service that market [it will be] an opportunity for them.”

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Windows Mobile 6.5 Review

Windows Mobile has always been at its best when used with an Exchange server, and 6.5 looks set to show its true colors when Exchange 2010 debuts. That will bring with it Conversation View, which groups sent and received emails into a themed conversation, the ability to check whether a contact is free or busy from their global address list card, and a “nickname cache” which auto-suggests contacts for the To: field in an email based on previous correspondents, even if they’re not a saved contact. It’ll also debut speech-to-text transcription of voicemails, which will slot neatly into unified messaging, and preserve reply/forward flags not only on the smartphone but over to Outlook on the desktop.

Even before Exchange 2010 arrives, however, there have been some much-welcome usability tweaks to contacts and calendar management. It’s now possible to select more than one contact entry and beam them wirelessly, copy them to the SIM/Outlook, or delete them, something we can’t quite believe has taken this long to arrive. Push-To-Talk has also been integrated with contacts, SmartDial and call history, and since conference calls are now more common your Windows Phone can now not only keep one caller on hold while on a second call, but alert you to an incoming third call too. You can also bypass the contacts app altogether, and save new numbers directly to your SIM. Similarly, emails embedded in SMS or email messages can be pulled out and saved to a new or existing contact, and Windows Mobile 6.5 now supports the Bluetooth Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) for remote administration.

Little changes make pleasant differences when trying to navigate within and between apps, such as the ability to call a phone number in the body of a meeting invitation (complete with passcode sequences) and new typing shortcuts; tapping “T”, for instant, shoots you to the top of the page, while “B” moves you to the bottom. A double-space tap automatically enters a period and a space, while holding letters capitalizes them. There’s also a new Gesture Physics Engine which introduces common “rubber band”, “bounce” and “scroll” animations to gestures, which means that kinetic scrolling is possible and lists bounce when you flick down to the end of them. Third-party developers will be able to access these touch and gesture APIs for their own software.


The biggest graphical work comes in the new home, Start and lock screens, however, which see Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional learn – and advance – from the non-touchscreen 6.1 Standard. The new Windows Phone homescreen has been well previewed in various pre-production leaks, but basically lists key apps as touch-friendly plug-ins that serve both as shortcuts and as notifiers. As standard, Home/Clock, Calendar, Music, Photos, Phone, E-Mail and Text are included, and as you scroll or tap through them they each show their status: how many new SMS messages are present, for instance, or how many missed calls there have been. A second tap takes you directly to that app.


The lock screen, meanwhile, becomes far more usable, with notifiers brought down from the status bar across the top of the display and into the main body of the page. That gives Windows Mobile 6.5 room to list missed calls, voicemails, e-mail, text and calendar items separately; not only that, you can unlock the smartphone and go straight to the item of interest, rather than having to navigate there from the homescreen, or even listen to voicemails or return calls without unlocking the handset at all. This is actually one of the most successful changes Microsoft have implemented, and makes far more sense – using the main body of the display rather than merely the uppermost quarter-inch – than in previous versions.


Finally, the Start menu gives up on attempting to recreate a Windows desktop feel on a mobile device, and instead kicks you into a distinctive honeycomb launcher. Bigger icons (together with kinetic scrolling) make finger-navigation more straightforward, and it’s easy to reorganize the default list to suit your commonly-accessed apps. Rather than picking 8-10 top applications and then having to kick through various panes of the Programs menu for titles beyond that, all of the programs – plus folders, such as for Games shortcuts – are presented on the one screen. It’s quicker, certainly, than navigating the Windows Mobile 6.1 Start menu, and there are some neat touches like the honeycomb scrolling in screen-sized chunks each time you flick.

Altogether it’s a significant change to the native UI, though it’s hard to tell exactly how many new Windows Phone users will ever see it. Part of the problem lies, ironically, with Microsoft’s own hardware partners, who over the past few years have been forced to become software developers in order to keep their products competitive. Given the comparatively dreary UI of Windows Mobile 6.1, companies like HTC and Samsung have developed their own interface shells that sit on top of the core OS and generally aim to make it more finger-friendly. HTC TouchFLO 3D and other shells have helped keep Windows Phones afloat, but they also mean that some of the more obvious changes – to 6.5’s UI – can be lost by to the end-user.

Still, it’s possible to turn off TouchFLO 3D, TouchWiz and the others, should the mood take you, though we found it wasn’t as straightforward as it could be on the Windows Mobile 6.5 review devices we had in. Happily there are other places where the new Windows Phone OS makes its mark, one being the browser. In previous iterations, Internet Explorer Mobile fell far short of the usability experience of rival third-party browsers, prompting manufacturers to put alternatives such as Opera Mobile in place instead. With 6.5, Microsoft debut Internet Explorer Mobile 6, and it certainly offers more flexibility than its predecessor. In addition to supporting Flash Lite, for online video, there’s also better touch-zoom control and a cleverer rendering engine. Even so, however, we found it struggled with some CSS formatting, while the success of streaming video proved very dependent on the smartphone’s processor and available memory.

Also new to the platform is Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft’s own take on the on-device application download store. Like Palm and Android’s stores, Windows Marketplace lacks the breadth you’ll find in Apple’s App Store for the iPod touch and iPhone; however, unlike those two, Windows Mobile already has a vast back catalog of software that’s already been written for the platform. The Windows Marketplace only went live this past week, but the limiting factor for what’s on offer is likely to be how fast developers can submit their wares (tweaked to satisfy the policy guidelines Microsoft demand for inclusion) and how fast Microsoft themselves can check and approve each submission.


The download store itself is split into categories (and sub-categories), including most popular apps and most recent additions, with filters for paid or freeware titles. There’s a full search function, and each app has a description, reviews and screenshots; to download, you’ll need a Windows Live ID, and paid apps are either charged to a credit card associated with that ID, or directly to your phone bill if your carrier supports it. Downloads take place in the background and are queued up for installation, and a similar system flags up available updates; from that same menu you can rate, review or remove an app.

It’s all straightforward, and should make finding new software for your Windows Phone a much easier endeavor than it has been in the past. Interestingly, Microsoft is looking to play ball with carriers and develop individual Marketplace sections for them, but in return the network has to offer mobile billing. Since that’s arguably easier for the end-user than associating and maintaining a working credit card with a Live ID, it’s a neat way to make the consumer experience slicker. As before, you’re free to sideload applications from outside of the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, or use a third-party software browser if you choose, which does at least make Windows Mobile 6.5 more open than, say, Apple’s iPhone.

Another addition to 6.5 is Microsoft My Phone, the company’s wireless smartphone backup service. As we’ve seen in beta for some months now, My Phone keeps an online store of contacts, photos, videos, text messages and other information which is not only there in case your Windows Phone is accidentally wiped, but can be accessed via the web-interface. Should you lose your smartphone you can ring it, lock it or even remotely wipe it via that same website, similar to how Enterprise users or Apple MobileMe subscribers are able to. However, it’s worth noting that Microsoft offer MyPhone free (though the remote-wipe demands a fee) whereas both of those other systems are not.

Microsoft have obviously put a lot of work into streamlining the smartphone ownership experience, and given how far ahead in the consumer space rival platforms are, that’s a good thing. Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates are now supported – network and handset manufacturer depending – and there are many behind the scenes bugfixes and tweaks intended to make the OS less clunky. In its native form, it’s a more attractive, cleaner and more usable platform than Windows Mobile 6.1 could manage.

However, it’s not the all-out OS relaunch that many are, not only hoping for, but relying on to pull them back to Microsoft’s platform. The menus may have been reskinned, the settings pages streamlined, but Windows Mobile 6.5 still feels a lot like its predecessor; those coming from devices with manufacturer-led UIs, such as HTC’s handsets, will be even harder pressed to identify the changes. It’s saying something when an OS refresh many months in the making feels, to some extent, like another UI shell.

Faster, more stable and more capable it may be, but Windows Mobile 6.5 still leaves us hungry for Windows Mobile 7 simply because that OS promises the revolution Microsoft’s platform so badly requires. Windows Phones do some things very well – their Exchange integration is superb, and that functionality will only get better once Exchange 2010 launches – but Microsoft face a tough struggle promoting them as consumer devices. Enterprise users will likely find this latest version a decent mixture of the familiar and the new, but Windows Mobile 6.5 still falls short of a knock-out blow against webOS, Android and the iPhone.

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