Skip the Crowds: Online Shopping Tips for Black Friday

You probably already know that many Black Friday bargains are available online too. Save the Kevlar vest for another day. Rather than brave the elements or risk being trampled at 5 a.m., it's much more pleasant to shop from the comfort of home. We asked a few expert bargain-hunters how online shoppers can score the best deals on Black Friday.

Retailers often say they won't sell doorbusters online, but that's not always true. Here's their advice: Dan de Grandpre, editor in chief of dealnews: Doorbusters, those incredibly cheap deals designed to get people in the door, may be available online too. Last year, for instance, Wal-Mart offered all of its doorbusters online-but not until later in the day on Friday. Many Black Friday deals aren't in fact great deals. Don't give up the savvy shopping techniques you'd use all year just because it's Black Friday.

You'll find better prices online. Michael Brim, president of Black Friday deal site BFAds : Some retailers jump the gun and start their online sales as early as midday Thanksgiving. Use price-comparison sites like PriceGrabber and Shopping.com to be sure you're getting the best deal. Yes, while you're eating. (You could always excuse yourself from the table to nab that $78 Blu-ray player.) Then again, many sales start between midnight and 3 a.m. (Eastern) on Friday. Be aggressive.

If you have trouble staying up, try a quick nap after dinner. You can't wake up at noon Friday and expect everything to be in stock. Well, you could reload a retailer's page for hours. How do you know when online sale goes live? Another option is to monitor Black Friday sites like BFAds. John Dunkin, founder of iBlackFriday.com: Plan ahead.

They'll let you know when sales are live. Go to a retailer's site early, pick out everything you want, and add it to your shopping cart. You can get pretty much everything you want online. Next, log into your account on Thanksgiving Day to see if your products are available at Black Friday prices. If you don't need a doorbuster item, don't bother going to the brick-and-mortar store. Contact Jeff Bertolucci via Twitter (@jbertolucci) or at jbertolucci.blogspot.com.

AMF bowls for customers with video sharing over managed IP

AMF Bowling Centers Inc. is wrapping up the roll-out of a $2 million nationwide network equipment upgrade that supports Voice over IP (VoIP) and video streaming, and includes turning over all network management to Verizon Business for three more years. As part of a contract with Verizon, the company is now relying on Verizon for an IP network that supports VoIP, point of sale devices and credit card transactions, and web hosting. AMF has 300 bowling centers in 38 states with more than 9,000 employees. The IP network also supports a centralized video surveillance system that is now being launched, as well as a centralized energy management system being tested in several bowling centers.

The contract with Verizon, signed early this year, will cost AMF about $800,000 a year, in addition to the $2 million equipment cost for Adtran routers in each center and cabling installations, he said. Additionally, because bowling has become a multimedia experience for customers, video and audio streaming of music videos is piped to most of the bowling centers using the IP network, said Harsha Bellur, vice president of IT at AMF. "We have extreme sound and light shows over projection screens in most locations with music videos that play while people are bowling," Bellur said. AMF's annual network services cost has gone up slightly with the Verizon managed service, but the number of IP applications and network reliability have far exceeded what was previously available, Bellur said. "The ROI was on the wall, but we had to do this and it made a lot of sense to invest, even with the recession," Bellur said in an interview. With cable modems and DSL there was not consistent bandwidth, while demanding applications like video were not possible. Before hiring Verizon for the managed IP service, AMF was using Verizon to provide a site-to-site VPN service, which relied on cable modems and DSL, and required AMF to work with 36 different ISPs. One of the biggest advantages of using a managed service from a nationwide provider like Verizon is having Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to guarantee service, Bellur said.

The SLAs have already come in handy, resulting in a credit from Verizon because VoIP service in Atlanta and Virginia Beach, Va., was knocked out recently more than 3.5 hours - a provision of the SLA - due to regional flooding, Bellur said. "Verizon has kept up with its SLAs and offered a financial remedy," he said. Because of the recent flood-related outages, AMF is planning to provision at least one analog phone line in each center to provide an automatic failover for voice services. "It's back to the future with the analog failover," he said, noting that AMF is now testing existing analog lines that were not being used to see which are resilient enough for failover duty. "The voice outages were a challenge and we learned the hard way with the floods," he said. "It caused some heartburn and was not something we anticipated, but we have options." The managed services contract with Verizon has not led to layoffs in the 29-person IT staff, although Verizon is managing all circuits, routers and cloud computing services. While the Verizon VoIP quality is generally good, one downside is that voice service goes down whenever there is a data network outage. The added Verizon support has meant AMF can strengthen its end-user computer support desk, which now is staffed by seven of the 29 in IT, Bellur said. AT&T Inc. and regional service provider Paetec also bid.

Bellur and others picked Verizon partly because of its nationwide network, he said. The centralized energy management system for AMF is undergoing trial runs now, to test the IP network automatically turning on and off heating and air conditioning according to hours of each bowling center. While AMF centers are actively using the network to support video and audio, Bellur said his team is contemplating using video displays as digital signs that would show pricing and examples of products on sale, including food and alcohol. The video surveillance system is designed to prevent theft and is just being installed to use the IP network, Bellur said. In addition, training videos could be piped over the IP network, Bellur said. Potentially, self-service kiosks for ordering food are possible, and online posting of scores could take place, shared over the nationwide network. "Teams between two cities could host a tournament sharing tournament brackets," he said. "We're brainstorming, but it all comes down to costs."

A longer term conceptual project has been discussed to stream videos of bowlers or birthday parties being held at bowling centers to relatives in other cities.

EU wants safe volume settings on portable music players

The European Commission has ordered all makers of portable music players to add a default volume setting of around 80 decibels (dB) and a health warning to all new devices within the next two years. The current maximum volume level permitted for portable devices of 100 dB in the European Union remains unchanged, the Commission said in a statement. It is also calling on standards bodies to change industrywide technical safety standards for mobile devices to include the 80 dB default setting. An estimated 10 percent of music player owners in Europe (up to 25 million people) risk going deaf by listening to music at volumes of up to 120 dB - - roughly the volume of a jet airliner taking off - for an hour or more each day on a regular basis, consumer rights commissioner Meglana Kuneva said in a press conference Monday.

Eighty dB is roughly the volume of road traffic."It's easy to push up the volume on your MP3 player to damagingly loud levels, especially on busy streets or public transport," Kuneva said, adding that young people especially "have no idea they can be putting their hearing at risk."The new standard default setting on devices won't prevent users from overriding the default settings and pumping up the volume, but there will be clear warnings so they know the risks they are taking, Kuneva said. You can safely listen to music at 80 dB for up to 40 hours a week without harming your ears, a study conducted for the Commission concluded. The industry said it supported the move but it warned the Commission not to try to prescribe universal volume levels for all users. Bridget Cosgrave, director general of the trade group Digital Europe, added that music players are only one part of the problem of hearing loss, but the industry would cooperate in the European initiative, "to best serve consumer interests" she said. It urged the Commission and standardization bodies to match the wishes of users with safety considerations when they set the default level.

Digital Europe called for global harmonization of the standards to be applied in Europe. "Unharmonised requirements would undermine credibility and confuse users, potentially exposing themselves to inappropriate volume of noise," the trade group said in a statement. Kuneva warned firms that she won't tolerate their failure to observe the new standards. "Regardless how big the company, no matter how reputable, I will take action," the commissioner said. And it warned the Commission against setting "overly stringent regulations", pointing out that this would drive sales of products to countries with more relaxed regulation.

H4ck3rs are people too: Film review

My friend and colleague Alan Freedman, author of the distinguished Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, defines hacker as follows in Version 22.4: "Hacker: A person who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages, such as C. The term often refers to any programmer, but its true meaning is someone with a strong technical background who is "hacking away" at the bits and bytes. The association is understandable. Hackers have a bad name During the 1990s, the term "hacker" became synonymous with "cracker," which is a person who performs some form of computer sabotage.

In order to be an effective cracker, you had to be a good hacker, thus the terms got intertwined, and hacker won out in the popular press. Today, a lot of malicious acts are performed by people with limited knowledge who gain unauthorized entrance into computers to steal data or perform mischief (see script kiddie)." "HACKERS ARE PEOPLE TOO," a 2008 documentary directed by Ashley Schwartau and produced by Winn Schwartau, is a refreshing look at intelligent, healthy, original people who are far from the twisted misfits portrayed in the notorious 1992 propaganda film "Unauthorized Access" by Annaliza Savage. Why criminal hackers must not be rewarded However, sometimes, hackers are not even worthy of the original meaning of the term. It's a counterblow against the unfortunate hijacking of the term "hacker" by an uninformed press over the last 30 years. Yes, that exists, and yes, it's out there, but people in this community who call themselves hackers are incredibly talented people who are independent thinkers, who come up with incredibly creative and innovative ways of solving problems that other people just don't think of solving in a certain way. Steven Levy tried his best to fight the misuse of the term in his entertaining and informative book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Penguin, Updated edition, Jan. 2, 2001; ISBN 978-0141000510; AMAZON). The film opens with some authentic perspectives from several simpatico non-criminal hackers on their enthusiasm for learning and tinkering: "When you think of hackers, forget the criminal aspect of it.

We are an incredibly creative… intuitive bunch; we latch onto technology and find new ways of using it and have been doing this … for fifty years." – Nick Farr, Co-Founder, Hacker Foundation. "A hacker is someone who wants to know how things work, take them apart, look at the components, see if there's a way to make them better, and put it back together and share that information openly without motivation of profit or fame or anything like that." – Scott Davidson, security professional "For any individual item… [or] raw material that can be forged into a product, there is the expected uses of it and then there is other. They see a fork and they go, 'Aha! Most people look at the expected uses. This is an object that has one purpose: to eat food.' And a hacker looks at the fork and says, 'Aha! Aha! This is metal: it will conduct electricity.

This has sharp points: it can make holes in clay for … making a sculpture." – Dan Kaminsky, penetration tester. As Kaminsky says, labeling an object by its primary function should not stop us from recognizing its manifold reality. I was particularly struck by Davidson's comment, since I've been strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Korzybski on his General Semantics since I was 13 years old (believe me, it didn't get me any dates in high school). One of the most important principles of General Semantics is often summarized by the aphorism "The map is not the territory" which is taken to mean that symbols are abstractions, not reality. Good problem-solvers – hackers in the context of this discussion – are good at seeing novel uses for all manner of tools. I loved it!

Ashley Schwartau's movie really moved me. On a personal note, I started programming in assembler using an ancient teach-yourself textbook in 1965 and quickly moved on to FORTRAN IV G at McGill University (whew!). But I still used assembler coding to program HP65 programmable calculator, which had no alphabetical characters on its display. That's hacking. To create my own space-war game, complete with limited orbital and ballistic calculations, I turned the device upside down to interpret the reversed numerals as a limited set of alphanumerics for status reports. In 1980, while being trained on HP's VPLUS/3000 forms-design software, I realized that the software's parser (the "MATCH" function and its wild cards) allowed one to branch from one form to another by parsing a user's inputs.

As a result of that insight, HP sent me to its Cupertino facilities on a six-month research assignment during which I worked with HP programmer Simon Cintz to create a SYSDUMP training simulation – HP's first computer-based training. In other words, the software was not simply a "forms-design package" as it was labeled: it could justifiably be called a programming language. And that's hacking! The documentary will show youngsters that non-criminal hackers are not sociopathic law-breakers – they're often immensely likeable people with tremendously creative intelligence and originality. So as a proud hacker – but never a criminal – let me urge you to enjoy the Schwartau's charming film, which can be used in schools to fight propaganda from criminal hackers and their sympathizers. Good one, Ashley & Winn! * * * For more materials you can give to children and teachers to oppose hackers, see the Ethics section of my Web site.

For interviews with Ashley Schwartau in which she talks about her motivations for making the documentary, the process, and the response, see:

Microsoft targets Google Apps, cuts Exchange Online price

Microsoft has cut in half its per user per month list price for Exchange Online services and cut by 33 percent the price of its Business Productivity Online Services suite of online productivity applications. In addition, Microsoft said allowable mailbox sizes would go from 5GB to 25GB, a move that ups Microsoft's stake in the so-called "bottomless" inbox war with other online providers. "For many companies, GAPE vs. The drop from US$10 per user per month to $5 for Exchange Online is significant because it brings Microsoft much closer to the price Google charges for its Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) suite that is anchored by Gmail. Exchange Online is a valid comparison - and Microsoft just got a lot closer to Google's pricing," said Guy Creese, an analyst with the Burton Group.

Creese says the cost reduction in notable for corporate users who typically focus on GAPE as an email replacement. "The hidden story here is that most large GAPE installations are Gmail-focused. Microsoft's per year cost per user for Exchange Online is now $60. Google charges $50 per user per year for GAPE, which also includes other productivity applications. SMBs are using Google Apps as a replacement for Microsoft Office, but large enterprises aren't. So while enterprises buying GAPE may be paying for e-mail, a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a presentation package, what they're really using is the e-mail portion." Microsoft also cut the list price on its entire Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) suite, saying it would drop from $15 per user per month to $10. Users have to buy a minimum of 5 seats. There are also slimmed down online versions of Exchange and SharePoint for "deskless" workers, or those who use the services infrequently. "I think the price decrease is a combination of Microsoft tuning its infrastructure and continued competition in the space," said Creese. "If the competition weren't there, given Microsoft's financial fine tuning over the past year, I'm sure the company would be pocketing the increased profit." Major vendors such as IBM, Cisco, Novell, and Google are hot to build online service businesses around e-mail and other collaboration software. BPOS includes Exchange Online with Hosted Filtering, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council approved a $7.25 million five-year deal to adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. A year ago, IBM launched Lotus Notes Hosted Messaging. Last year, Cisco spent $215 million to buy PostPath, which supplies e-mail and calendaring. Microsoft's Ron Markezich, corporate vice president for Microsoft Online, said the price reduction was a reflection of the popularity and maturation of BPOS, which he says now has more than 1 million paying customers. "Since we came to market with general availability we have seen a large increase in scale of the service which allows us to drive efficiencies," he said. "And we have made a number of software investments including Exchange 2010 that allow us to drive additional efficiencies." He said Microsoft is passing on the benefits of those efficiencies and would continue to do so as a hallmark of BPOS. Exchange 2010 is expected to ship in next week and Markezich said once the server is commercially available that BPOS would offer that platform to customers. In addition, Microsoft said BPOS will be commercially available today in Singapore with commercial availability in India available later this year. He said new customers signing up after today would all be using 2010. But existing customers could cut over when they wanted.

In addition, Monday marked the launch of BPOS trials in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan. BPOS is now available or in-trial in 36 counties. Microsoft did not disclose dates for general availability of the service in those areas but said trials can run from 2-6 months.

Microsoft links malware rates to pirated Windows

Microsoft today said computers in countries with high rates of software piracy are more likely to be infected by malicious code because users are leery of applying security patches. "There is a direct correlation between piracy and the malware infection rate," said Jeff Williams, the principal group program manager for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. But the company's own data doesn't always support William's contention that piracy, and the hesitancy to use Windows Update, leads to more infected PCs. China, for example, boasted a malware infection rate - as defined by the number of computers cleaned for each 1,000 executions of the MSRT - of just 6.7, significantly lower than the global average of 8.7 or the U.S.'s rate of 8.2 per thousand. Williams was touting the newest edition of his company's biannual security intelligence report . According to Williams, the link between PC infection rates - the percentage of computers that have been cleaned by the updated monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool, or MSRT - and piracy is due to the hesitancy of users in countries where counterfeit copies abound to use Windows Update, the service that pushes patches to PCs. China's piracy rate is more than four times that of the U.S., according to Microsoft's report, published today, but the use of Windows Update in China is significantly below that in the U.S. Brazil and France also have a higher piracy rate, and lower Windows Update usage, than the U.S., Microsoft maintained. France's infection rate of 7.9 in the first half of 2009 was also under the worldwide average.

Other countries with higher-than-average infection rates, however, also have high piracy rates, according to data published last May by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an industry-backed anti-piracy organization, and research firm IDC. Microsoft is a member of the BSA. By Microsoft's tally, Serbia and Montenegro had the highest infection rate in the world, with 97.2 PCs out of every 1,000, nearly 10%, plagued by malware. Of the three countries Microsoft called out as examples of nations whose users are reluctant to run Windows Update because of high piracy rates, only Brazil fit William's argument: Brazil's infection rate was 25.4, nearly three times the global average. Turkey was No. 2, with 32.3, while Brazil, Spain and South Korea were third through fifth, with infection rates of 25.4, 21.6 and 21.3, respectively. By comparison, the U.S.'s piracy rate was pegged at 20%, and the worldwide average at 41%. Although Microsoft wants users to patch vulnerabilities with Windows Update, people running counterfeit copies of Windows have traditionally been less-than-eager to apply fixes, believing that Windows Update will recognize their software as illegal and mark it as such with nagging on-screen messages. The BSA put Serbia's piracy rate, the percentage of the in-use software that's not licensed, at 74% in 2008, while Turkey, Brazil, Spain and Korea had estimated piracy rates of 64%, 58%, 42% and 43%, respectively. Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts, particularly the technology it pushes to users that sniffs out unlicensed copies of Windows, have met with resistance.

American users have complained about the technology, too. Last year, for example, Chinese users raised a ruckus when Microsoft updated its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) anticounterfeit validation and notification technology. In June 2006, Microsoft infuriated users by pushing a version of WGA to XP users via Windows Update, tagging it as a "high-priority" update that was automatically downloaded and installed to most machines. The 2006 incident sparked a lawsuit that accused Microsoft of misleading customers when it used Windows Update to serve up WGA. Last month, Microsoft filed a motion opposing a move by the plaintiffs to turn the case into a class-action lawsuit . Microsoft's security intelligence report can be downloaded from its Web site in PDF or XPS document formats. A year later, a day-long server outage riled thousands of users who were mistakenly fingered for running counterfeit copies of Windows.

Data Robotics ships Drobo iSCSI SAN

Data Robotics today released its first iSCSI SAN storage array that, like its other low-end arrays, manages itself and allows any capacity or brand of disk drive to be mixed, matched and exchanged without any downtime. The new system extends the number of Smart Volumes - Data Robotics' thin provisioning that pools capacity from all eight drives - so users can now create as many as 255 virtual storage volumes, up from 16 volumes in the current Drobo model. Data Robotics' DroboElite offers automated capacity expansion and one-click single- or dual-drive (RAID 5 or 6) redundancy for Windows, Mac and Linux machines.

The latest addition to the Drobo family of arrays is aimed at the small to mid-size business market and resellers selling into the virtual server space, according to Jim Sherhart, senior director of marketing for Data Robotics. "Virtual servers tend to use a lot of small LUNs (logical unit numbers)," said Jim Sherhart, senior director of marketing for Data Robotics. For example, if a user were to initially set up DroboElite for dual drive failure, he could switch to single-drive failure with one mouse click. The DroboElite is also able to drop from higher to lower levels of RAID with no manual intervention. Users can also change out drives, adding higher-capacity models, in 10 seconds - with no formatting required, according to Sherhart. Tarun Chachra, chief technology officer at marketing company KSL Media , has owned two Drobo USB arrays for about a year and a half.

DroboElite can support VMware environments and advanced functionality including VMotion, Storage VMotion, snapshots, and high availability. He purchased four DroboPro arrays in June for use in two offices for Microsoft Exchange replication and backups for about 16 servers. Chachra said he was impressed that he could simply go out and buy a 1TB, 7,200 RPM SATA drive for $69 and stick it in the DroboElite, saving him money on total cost of ownership on pricier SAS drives. He's also beta testing the DroboElite, which he plans to purchase for backing up his VMware servers because of its higher throughput with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and greater number of creatable volumes. Chachra has been comparing his existing DroboPros, which can be configured with up to eight 2TB drives, to what he'd previously been using for backups: a Hewlett-Packard AiO400R array with four 500GB drives. The HP array runs the same iSCSI stack as the DroboPro, but it uses Windows 2003 Storage Server as a backup and replication application.

Chachra said the DroboPro cost about $3,500 compared with the AiO400, which cost $5,219. The HP array was set up for RAID 5 right out of the box and couldn't be changed; the DroboPro offers both RAID 5 and 6 interchangeably. The HP has forced Chachra to reboot his backup server every three days or so because it would hang up and couldn't handle bandwidth, he said. "We don't have huge IT teams looking at servers, so it's better for us to have something that can tolerate a higher driver failure rates," he said. "We also don't stock a lot of hard drives. The DroboElite also offers a non-automated thin provisioning feature called Smart Volumes that allows users to create new volumes in seconds and manage them over time by pulling storage from a common pool rather than a specific physical drive allocation. The main thing, though, is redundancy and having Exchange available all the time." "I don't know that an enterprise is going to run out and deploy this for 2,000 or 3,000 [users], but for small or mid-size shops, this is cost effective and it works as well as it should," Chachra added. Smart Volumes are also file system aware, which allows deleted data blocks to be immediately returned to the pool for future use.

Geoff Barrall, CEO and founder of Data Robotics, said the DroboElite can deliver cost savings of up to 90% compared to other iSCSI SANs "by combining cost-effective hardware with robust iSCSI features." The DroboElite is currently available starting at a price of $3,499, with multiple configurations selling for up to $5,899 for a 16TB configuration (using eight 2TB drives).

California Bans Power-Hungry TVs: Critics Blast Regulation

California TV shoppers are going green - whether they like it or not. However, not everyone is excited about the regulation's possible impact. On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission voted unanimously to apply a new standard requiring TVs up to 58-inches in screen size sold in the state to eat up 33 percent less electricity than they do currently by 2011 and 49 percent less by 2013. The move is a first-ever clamp down on TV set sales in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Representatives for the consumer electronics industry have blasted the measure saying that the new rules will drive up the cost of HDTVs for state residents, result in the loss of California-based jobs, and limit the number of innovative HDTV features available to California TV owners. The California regulation takes effect Jan. 1, 2011. Despite the lingering energy crisis, California is the first state to take action of this kind. The new regulation does not impact TVs currently on retail shelves. Although the U.S. government has guidelines such as Energy Star in place for PCs and other computers, there is no federal energy efficiency standard for TVs. Impact on Sales and Price Unclear Since the new energy rules have just been passed, many of its future implications remain unknown. What loopholes might exist?

How will flat panel TV makers such as Sony, Samsung, and Panasonic handle compliance with the California law? Can California residence buy a power hungry TV over the Internet that doesn't meet California's standards and get away with it? TVs with screen sizes larger than 58 inches now account for no more than 3 percent of all TVs sold, according industry statistics. Will manufacturers try to elude the law by focusing sales and promotions on larger TVs with screen sizes greater than 58 inches. Most significantly, how much will it cost TV makers to obey the energy efficiency regulations, and how much of those costs will be passed along to consumers? Instead of allowing customers to choose the products they want, the Commission has decided to impose arbitrary standards that will hamper innovation and limit consumer choice.

Not Everyone Excited The Consumer Electronics Association, which member include some of the biggest TV makers, says this new regulation is "unprecedented and unnecessary." Jason Oxman, CEA's senior vice president of industry affairs blasted CEC in a statement released to its Web site Wednesday: "Simply put, this is bad policy-dangerous for the California economy, dangerous for technology innovation and dangerous for consumer freedom. It will result in higher prices for consumers, job losses for Californians, and lost tax revenue for the state." You can read CEA's entire statement here. According to California's energy commission, state residents are expected to save $8.1 billion in energy costs over a 10-year period as a result of the regulation. What the CEA fails to do in its attack against the California Energy Commission is explain how jobs will be lost, why consumers will pay more for HDTVs, and what innovative features will be missing from HDTVs sold in California. Additionally, California commission says the new restrictions will be like taking 500,000 cars off its roads by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million metric tons a year. (PC World's Tom Spring contributed to this report)

Blogging. Lifestreaming. What's next: Lifelogging!

Smile when you talk to research legend Gordon Bell. Bell wears two cameras around his neck all his waking hours. You're on candid camera. One of them he calls a SenseCam.

It's all part of a project Bell calls MyLifeBits. It takes a digital photograph every 20 seconds or so - all day, every day, year after year. (I'll tell you below how to buy your own SenseCam.) The other camera takes pictures and video only when Bell presses the right buttons. He's documented the project, and made a case for why we'll all have MyLifeBits projects of our own, in a new book called Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. Gordon's archive includes phone calls, IM scripts, years of email, web pages visited, and daily activities captured by the SenseCam. The book's official Web site explains the MyLifeBits project: "MyLifeBits captures and holds a lifetime's worth of articles, books, letters, memos, photos, presentations, music, home movies, and videotaped lectures. One of the challenges of MyLifeBits has been to build applications, e.g. timelines and viewers for people to take their personal memorabilia out of the shoebox and store them digitally for all kinds of future usage from a daily aid to memory through record keeping to immortality." This automated capture of everything is called Lifelogging.

But we're all definitely headed in his direction. Bell, who works as a principal researcher for Microsoft, is way ahead of everyone. Soon enough, lifelogging will go mainstream. The digital technology trends are plain to see. Why you'll lifelog Many big cultural transformations occur when technology unleashes human nature.

Storage and digital cameras are getting cheaper and smaller. More interestingly, however, cultural trends are all pointing toward an acceptance of lifelogging. Wireless connectivity is becoming more ubiquitous. People feel compelled to record their lives, and have for millennia. Blogs. As technology progresses, it gets easier and therefore more popular.

Twitter. Evernote. Facebook. Self-photos with camera phones. In fact, the hardest part is coping with the huge variety of ways we can share thoughts and experiences.

The use of these sites and of media prove that people instinctively capture more whenever capturing becomes easier. The state of the art in sharing right now brings all those ways together into a phenomenon called lifestreaming. But like blogs, lifestreaming has been co-opted into the social networking impulse. Lifestreaming was originally conceptualized as the capturing of all digital "stuff" you create or interact with for your own purposes - kind of like a very detailed diary. Now, the idea of lifestreaming is to capture your blog and Twitter posts, YouTube uploads, records of what music you listen to, videos you watch, blogs you read and so on.

The purpose is identical to the purpose of Twitter and Facebook - human connection and personal memory. The audience is now both you and your social group. A friend of mine named Steve Rubel is at the forefront of a widespread public exploration of the possibilities of lifestreaming. I have a Posterous account myself, but use it only for posting iPhone pictures to Twitter. He and others prefer Posterous.

All I have to do is take a picture, then e-mail it to the address assigned to my account by Posterous. You can post a wide range of media on Posterous, but so far I use it mainly for pictures. The service then posts a link to the picture on Twitter. I've been thinking about posting a lot more on Posterous. Lifestreaming only happens when you work at it.

But I tend to forget. And that's where Lifelogging comes in. It started out as a science fiction-like lifestyle experiment to transmit live, first-person vantage point video all day, every day. The definition of lifelogging has evolved over the years. Think The Truman Show, the story of a man who discovered his life was being broadcast around the world at every moment.

I'd like to propose a simplified definition: Lifelogging is automated lifestreaming. But now it means all kind of things. That means whatever experiences you'd like to share or record, you simply turn it on and the sharing or recording happens by itself. The article was accompanied by a video that included footage from Bell's own SenseCam. Buy your own 'SenseCam' BusinessWeek published a nice article on Bell and his MyLifeBits project and new book last month.

The reporter in the video said: "Maybe you'd like to wear one of those SenseCams around your neck. Those are custom-made." That was true when he said it, but soon it won't be. But you can't have one. A U.K.-based company called ViconRevue is transforming Bell's Microsoft-developed SenseCam into a consumer product. It also will use an accelerometer (the kind used in cell phones like the iPhone) and light sensors to figure out when you're in a new environment - say, you walk into a restaurant - and snap a picture at that moment. The public version will have an adjustable frequency of automated photos, with a minimum of once every 30 seconds.

It will even have a heat sensor to detect when someone is standing in front of you, to make sure they get their picture taken. An $820 version of the camera for researchers will go on sale this year. The device has 1 GB of storage, which reportedly holds 30,000 pictures. The company plans a consumer version for release some time next year at a yet-unspecified price. They'll tell you when and where you can buy the camera when that information becomes available. I recommend that you visit the company's Web site and add your e-mail address to their update list.

The ViconRevue SenseCam is just the beginning. For example, imagine a SenseCam that does face recognition, and captures every face in a "log" that includes the subject's Facebook profile information. I imagine a universe of software tools and hardware products that automatically post to your "automated lifestream," or lifelog, whatever you choose to post. Some ambitious startup should create software that uses image recognition, GPS data, computer-activity monitoring and so on to summarize your activities intelligently, and post that information to your lifelog automatically. "Mike is writing his column." "Mike is begging his editor for more time to write his column." "Mike is eating lunch (again)." "Mike is walking with his wife." "Mike and his wife are watching a movie." All this could be posted on a timeline with SenseCam photos and other media. I'm sure there's a universe of lifelogging products we can't yet imagine.

These are some lifelogging approaches I can easily imagine. Like all culture-shifting technologies, lifelogging comes with upsides and downsides. Lifelogging feels like science fiction. The upsides are: * Better memory about our lives; literally photographic memory. * Evidence when we're falsely accused * Capturing of amazing events * Evidence against criminals and sociopaths when we witness crimes * Ability to share our memories, strengthen personal bonds * Leaving our lives for posterity * Self examination (Wow, I'm spending all my time working!) But the downsides are: * Potential privacy abuse * Potential accidental abuse of other people's privacy * Self incrimination * Behavior change (will people act differently when everything is recorded and shared?) History shows, however, that most people will gladly give up their privacy and take on a few other risks in order to enhance social sharing. But it's real.

And it's coming soon. It's culture-changing. Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Lotus simplifies client licensing; makes Designer free

IBM/Lotus Tuesday whittled its client licensing options from 11 to two and said its Domino Designer development tool would now be offered free of charge in hopes of increasing application development on the platform. The Messaging license, which allows access to Domino e-mail from any client, is $99 per user. The news came as Lotus unveiled Notes/Domino 8.5.1, a point release that includes support for real-time synchronization with Apple's iPhone (see related story here). As part of the 8.5.1 unveiling, IBM revealed two client options that will replace the laundry list of previous options. The Enterprise license is $159 per user and adds Mobile Connect VPN software and Domino Designer tools that give users access to any existing Notes applications and any homegrown programs.

The tool was originally built into the Notes client in its very earliest releases. IBM officials say giving away Designer was a major step toward expanding development on the Domino platform. The tool eventually became a separate offering that carried a price tag of $864. "When we started to sell to IT more, when Lotus was bought by IBM, we put the Designer into a separate product and it took it out of the hands of the power users, the people who are in the line-of-business and really sort of isolated Notes application development to this specialized universe," says Ed Brill, director of product management for Lotus Software. "What we are really trying to do by giving it away free is democratizing it again and getting it out into the hands of everybody." Users can download Domino Designer, which is based on the Eclipse platform, free at IBM deverloperWorks. Other features of the 8.5.1 release include updates to Domino Designer, which adds support for Lotus XPages application model running on a Notes or mobile client. Users who want to link the software with a Domino server will have to buy a $150 license.

Web browser support was added in 8.5. XPages lets users develop Web applications with little or no coding. Follow John Fontana on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana XPages also can be used to convert existing Notes applications to Web applications.

Windows 7 drives RAM capacity explosion; Vista SP2 usage rising

Windows 7 will drive the average PC RAM capacity to 4GB in the next 18 months. There you'll find a collection of dynamic chart objects that provide a real-time view into data gathered from xpnet.com's nearly 20,000 contributing members. That's the conclusion of researchers at the exo.performance.network who are monitoring the ramp-up to Windows 7's launch on October 22. After evaluating data collected from early adopters of the Windows 7 RTM code spread across several hundred IT sites, the xpnet.com team observed that nearly 50 percent sported memory capacities of 4GB or higher, with some reaching as high as 12GB. The average of all Windows 7 PCs was 3.7GB, which is in stark contrast to Windows XP PCs, where the average RAM capacity (for all versions) hovers at just under 1.7GB. Windows 7 RAM installations also best Vista's average of 2.7GB. In fact, the move from a Vista-centric world to one defined by Windows 7 will likely drive a jump in RAM capacity (by 33 percent) comparable to the one experienced during the transition from Windows XP to Vista (a jump of 37 percent in installed RAM). [ Is your PC ready to run Windows 7? Find out by using InfoWorld's Windows Sentinel tool, which also lets you track performance and other aspects of your Windows PCs and servers. ] Note: You can check out the latest data from the exo.repository by visiting InfoWorld's Windows Pulse page.

The bottom line: While much has been made about Windows 7's supposedly reduced memory footprint, the reality is that a combination of Moore's Law (as it applies to RAM density) and the harsh lessons of the Vista debacle are prompting customers to err on the side of caution and equip Windows 7 PCs with ample RAM out of the gate. [ If the charts in this story are not visible, you can see them in the original story at InfoWorld.com. ] Vista SP2 adoption risingThe adoption rate for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 ticked up a bit over the past few weeks. Meanwhile, the number of systems reporting SP1 installed dropped 2 percentage points (now 72 percent), as did the few laggards still running the Vista RTM release (now at just under 8 percent). Given the breadth of bug fixes and performance enhancements provide by Vista SP2, including improvements to Bluetooth support and an improved wireless networking stack, xpnet.com researchers expect the adoption rate to climb steadily as IT shops finish internal testing and deploy it more widely. After lagging behind Service Pack 1 by a wide margin, SP2 is now gaining momentum, with nearly 20 percent of PCs reporting the newer service pack level. However, they also note that this trend may be tempered somewhat by the conversion of many long-term Vista deployment projects to Windows 7 when it becomes available. This should signal the tipping point for application developers who have been waiting for the technology to reach critical mass before investing in additional multithreading development/multicore tuning for the core product lines. Multicore pushes single-core into the minorityOne development the xpnet.com team has been watching closely is the transition from single- to multicore CPUs. Data from the exo.respository indicates that multicore is now the dominant CPU architecture, with fully 57 percent of the installed base sporting CPUs with two or more cores.

As InfoWorld's tests show, Windows 7 is strongly poised to take advantage of multicore PCs, more so than XP and Vista.

The Net's Most Heinous Hoaxes

Most online hoaxes are mildly annoying, and a few are hilarious. Plastering an epilepsy forum with flashing images? But propagating a false AMBER Alert over Twitter? Not cool.

Twitter/Facebook Amber Alert The AMBER Alert system-a child abduction alert system broadcast over radio, TV, satellite radio, and other media whenever a child is abducted-was created after nine-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996. Recently, some users have also broadcast alerts over text messages and Twitter. We'll take a look at some of the Web's most heinous hoaxes over the years, and sprinkle in a handful of amusing ones. Last July, someone tweeted an AMBER Alert for a three-year-old girl. It turned out to be a false alarm. People responded by spreading the alert as fast and as far as they could.

A similar sequence of panicked, rapid-fire tweeting followed another false AMBER Alert occurred in September. Though we're glad that no abduction occurred in either case, there's a disturbing "cry wolf" aspect to the story-what happens the next time a real AMBER Alert goes out? How heinous is this? For eroding the value of a potentially vital line of defense against child abduction, this hoax sets the platinum standard for repugnance. The site included tips on how to insert a feeding tube and a waste removal tube, and where to drill air-holes "prior to kitten insertion." It also included a gallery of pictures of "Bonsai Kittens" and a guestbook filled with love (and hate) mail. Bonsai Kitten Paging PETA: In 2001, a group of enterprising MIT grad students put together a little Web site called Bonsai Kitten, which detailed how to grow a kitten in a jar for aesthetic purposes.

The site was so realistic that it caused uproar among kitty enthusiasts and animal rights activists (including the Humane Society), and it eventually gained enough notoriety that the FBI investigated the site's authenticity (or lack thereof). But since no kittens were actually harmed in the perpetration of this hoax, we think it tends more toward the hilarious than the heinous. Some of the pranks they allegedly pulled are a bit more serious, however, such as the Epilepsy Forum Raid. Epilepsy Forum Raid Anonymous, a group of online pranksters, has been blamed for an array of notorious acts of Internet grief-from uploading porn on YouTube to launching denial-of-service attacks on Scientology sites. In March of 2008, an epilepsy support forum run by the Epilepsy Foundation of America was attacked with uploads of flashing animations. The animations-which were clearly intended to induce seizures and/or migraines in epileptics-can be very dangerous for epilepsy sufferers. The National Society for Epilepsy, based in the UK, fell prey to a similar attack.

The attack was investigated by the FBI, which found no connections to the group Anonymous. Bigfoot's Body Bigfoot is alive-okay, actually he's dead, and he's in a freezer in Georgia. Internet speculation has attributed the attack variously to The Internet Hate Machine, to 7chan.org, or to eBaum's World. At least, that's what The New York Times and other major news outlets reported on August 14, 2008. In the finest "made you look" tradition, two men from Georgia announced that they had found the body of Bigfoot and would present definitive proof (in the form of photographs and DNA) that Bigfoot existed. Quasi-expert Tom Biscardi, an inveterate promoter of all things Bigfoot (and perpetrator of his own Bigfoot hoax just three years prior), vouched for the men. In fact, they revealed, they saw three other Bigfoots in the woods as they were dragging the dead beast's body back to their car-possible evidence that these creatures had mastered the intricacies of contract bridge but had not yet learned to control their tempers over botched bidding.

How bad is this? But an Indiana man fronted $50,000 on behalf of Biscardi for the "body," and is now suing the pair of hoaxers to get his money back. Not surprisingly, the body turned out to be a costume stuffed in a freezer. The most heinous part of this hoax is the fact that someone actually fell for it. Alabama legislators began receiving letters from outraged scientists and civilians, but that's about as dangerous as the situation got. Changing the Value of Pi On April Fool's Day 1998, Mark Boslough wrote a fictional piece about Alabama legislators calling on the state government to pass a law that would change the value of pi from 3.14159... to the "Biblical value" of 3. Boslough's titled his article "Alabama Legislature Lays Siege to Pi." Though the piece was originally posted to a newsgroup, it ended up being forwarded...and forwarded...and forwarded...

The funniest part of the hoax? Save Toby Taking a cue from Bonsai Kitten, a site called Save Toby used a creepy premise to throw animal rights activists into a tizzy. It echoes an actual event: In 1897, the Indiana House of Representatives passed a resolution to change the value of pi to 3-luckily, irrationality prevailed and the bill died in the State Senate. The Save Toby saga began in the early days of 2005, when the site announced that its owners had found a wounded rabbit (which they named Toby) and nursed it back to health-but then declared that if they did not receive $50,000 in donations for the care of Toby by July 30, 2005, they would be forced to cook and eat the rabbit. Animal rights activists cried "animal cruelty," to which the owners responded that they were doing nothing cruel to Toby-in fact, they were trying to save him.

The owners asserted that the site was not a hoax: They would, indeed, cook and eat Toby if they did not receive the money. Supposedly, the site collected more than $24,000 before Bored.com bought it, and Toby was saved. (By the way, possible inspirations from pre-Internet days for the Save Toby hoaxers aren't hard to find.) But holding a bunny hostage for ransom? MySpace Suicide This hoax may have been the most senselessly cruel of any listed here. Real classy, fellas. In 2007, a 13-year-old girl committed suicide after being dumped by her MySpace "boyfriend." The girl's family later learned that the MySpace "boyfriend"-a cute boy named Josh-never existed.

The Josh character had gained the girl's confidence before sending her a message that told her he didn't want to be friend anymore because he'd heard she was a mean person. He was a fictional character made up by the mother of another girl. The girl, who was on medication for depression and attention deficit disorder, took her own life the next day. Then again, the scammers send out thousands of e-mail appeals every day in the hope of getting just one gullible person to reply. Our take: Unforgivable. 419 Nigerian Money Scams Nigerian money scams are so overexposed in the media these days that it's hard to believe people still fall for them.

The scam itself is pretty simple: The grifter promises the randomly chosen e-mail recipient an absurd amount of money to help the crook "transfer funds" from one bank to another (or some variation thereof). To help the con artist, all the victim has to do is provide his/her personal information, bank information, and, oh yeah, a small fee (around $200-a small price to pay, considering the impending payoff) to help transfer the money. The scammer obtains all of the scammee's personal info, and a tidy little sum besides. If the scammee goes along, bam! Not bad for one e-mail. In some cases, the scammers invite the victims to travel to Nigeria or a bordering country to complete the transaction. These scams can be life-threatening as well as costly.

In 1995, an American was killed in Lagos, Nigeria, while pursuing such a scam. Work-At-Home Scams Like the Nigerian money scams, work-at-home come-ons are heavily reported in the media. Truly horrific. Yet people still fall for them. But desperation or greed makes some people forget. Most people know that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Work-at-home scams promise you the opportunity to make quick, easy money from the comfort of your house; all you need is a computer-which, of course, you have. Except, of course, that materials will never come, and you'll have lost your money, and you still won't have a job. Any number of activities may be your ticket to riches-stuffing envelopes, transcribing, medical billing-but first you need to do send the scammer some money for preliminary materials. Heinous? And the fact that they prey primarily on unemployed or underemployed people who aren't exactly swimming in discretionary income (it's hard to imagine Warren Buffett jumping at the chance to make money by stuffing envelopes) increases their vileness quotient at least a little.

Such scams aren't life threatening, but they can certainly put a dent in your savings-especially if you fall for them more than once. Remember, if prospective employers ask you to send money before you start working for them...it's probably a scam. In September 2009, Facebook's PR went rogue and punk'd TechCrunch with a "Fax This Photo" option. Facebook Hoax on TechCrunch Guess you should stay on the good side of people who run your primary social networking site. TechCrunch reporter Jason Kincaid opened his Facebook on September 10, 2009, and discovered that under every photo there was a new option: "Fax This Photo." It seemed ridiculous-but everyone in the TechCrunch network saw it, so he sent an e-mail to Facebook. He then called Facebook PR...and discovered that it was all a big prank, and that Facebook staffers were placing bets on how long it would be before TechCrunch posted it.

They didn't respond, so he posted a skeptical note. Heinous? TechCrunch got PWN'd. Of Related Interest For two discussions-one old and one fairly new-of online scams, check out these stories: • "Top Five Online Scams" (2005) • "5 Facebook Schemes That Threaten Your Privacy" (2009) For a look at some relatively benign online hoaxes (mixed in with some evil ones), read this: • "The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks" (2007) And from deep in the vaults of PCWorld.com come these chestnuts: • "Devious Internet Hoaxes" (2002) • "The Worst Internet Hoaxes" (2001) Not at all.

Apple tablet won't be just an e-reader, argues analyst

Analysts split today in their take on recent reports that Apple's long-rumored tablet will stress the device's e-book capabilities, saying that the company's plan for the "iPod Touch on steroids" would depend on the price tag. It certainly will be an e-reader, that will be part of its ecosystem, but that won't be all it is." Gottheil, who six months ago touted the idea that Apple would deliver a tablet best described as an "iPod Touch on steroids," stuck to that reasoning today. "It will use the iPhone OS, or a modified version of it," Gottheil said, echoing something iLounge.com said it heard from a reliable source this week. Earlier this week, the popular gadget blog Gizmodo cited unnamed sources who claimed that Apple was in talks with several media companies, including the New York Times , to negotiate content deals for its unannounced-but-expected tablet. "[Apple isn't] just going for e-books and mags," Gizmodo's Brian Lam wrote Wednesday. "They're aiming to redefine print." Not so fast, said one analyst. "It's more than just an e-reader," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research who follows Apple's moves. "It's an application platform, it's a game and social gaming platform.

The App Store, which Apple said this week had delivered its two billionth application, is crucial to the tablet's success, said Gottheil, which means that the device will be more than a one-trick pony. "Apple will market it as 'one more thing' nested inside 'one more thing'," Gottheil said, a move possible because of the App Store's broad library. "They'll [cast] it as able to do several increasing cool things." Gottheil's reasoning relies on the $800 price he expects Apple to slap on the tablet, a price tag much too high for a media reader-only device. "I don't think Apple has any particular interest in just creating another Kindle," he said, referring to Amazon's $489 Kindle DX . "Apple enjoys skimming the top of the market by making something hot and getting a nice margin out of it." Brian Marshall, a Wall Street analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, had a much different take, largely because of his price expectations. "I think $500 is the price," said Marshall today, adding that he agreed with Gizmodo that the tablet will focus on its e-reader capabilities. "I actually think that's how they'll promote it," he added. "They'll pitch [e-books] as a big segment, but they'll also say, 'We're gonna do this in color and much better than the Kindle'." Amazon's Kindle DX features a 9.7-inch grayscale display; according to reports out of Taiwan, component suppliers building parts for the expected Apple tablet are assembling 9.6-inch color, touch-enabled screens. Most analysts have pegged the first half of 2010 for a tablet rollout, although some have proposed that Apple will craft a two-stage introduction, as it did with the iPhone in 2007, by announcing the hardware several months in advance of availability to give developers time to create applications or tweak existing iPhone programs for the larger device.

Former Microsoft open-source chief joins cloud startup

Former Microsoft open-source chief Sam Ramji has joined cloud-computing startup Sonoa Systems, taking over product strategy and business development at the Santa Clara, California-based company. Last month he also took a position as interim president of the CodePlex Foundation, an open-source group formed out of his work at Microsoft. In his last job at Microsoft, Ramji was responsible for fostering more interoperability and collaboration with the open-source community as head of its Platform Strategy Group. However, when the foundation and Ramji's role in it were unveiled, he said he was leaving Microsoft Sept. 25 to join a cloud-computing startup, though he did not specify which one.

It also provides visibility, management and governance to make cloud services and the APIs (application programming interfaces) that connect to them as robust, policy-compliant and scalable as on-premise applications, according to the company's Web site. Sonoa offers technology called ServiceNet that helps companies manage their cloud-based services by setting policies for them, acting as a proxy server between service providers and the consumers of those services. In addition to ServiceNet, Sonoa also has released an analytics tool for API developers called Apigee as a free way to monitor and manage how their services are being accessed in the cloud. Sonoa's customers include MTV and Guardian Insurance. In an e-mail, a company spokesman compared the tool to Google Analytics.

Sonoa's CEO is a former BEA Systems executive, Chet Kapoor. The foundation also was formed by Microsoft to inspire other proprietary software companies to participate more in the open-source community, though eventually it is meant to be run as an independent group. Microsoft has not named anyone to take Ramji's role but said when the CodePlex Foundation was unveiled that the Platform Strategy Group will remain intact and will continue to promote collaboration with and participation in open-source projects.

Scammers auto-generate Twitter accounts to spread scareware

Scammers are increasingly using machine-generated Twitter accounts to post messages about trendy topics, and tempt users into clicking on a link that leads to servers hosting fake Windows antivirus software, security researchers said Monday. The accounts, which use variable account and user names, supposedly represent U.S. Twitter users. The latest Twitter attacks originated with malicious accounts cranked out by software, said experts at both F-Secure and Sophos. In some cases, the background wallpaper is customized for each account, yet another tactic to make the unwary think that a real person is responsible for the content.

Some of the tweets exploit Twitter's current "Trending Topics," the constantly-changing top 10 list of popular tweet keywords that the micro-blogging service posts on its home page. Tweets from those accounts are also automatically generated, said Sean Sullivan, a security advisor with the North American labs of Helsinki-based F-Secure. Others are repeats of real tweets. The defense, however, has regularly been subverted by hacker-built software, or by humans who contract to decipher the characters manually. "There's nothing cookie-cutter about these accounts," noted Sullivan, who added that scareware scammers aren't afraid to spend money to make money. All the tweets include links to sites that try to dupe users into downloading and installing bogus security software, often called "scareware" because they fool users with sham infection warnings, then provide endless pop-ups until people pay $40 to $50 to buy the useless program. "As fast as Twitter can shut down the accounts, [the scammers] create new accounts," said Sullivan. "Somehow they're getting around the CAPTCHA, but how they're doing it, whether with a bot or by CAPTCHA farms, we don't know." CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is the technology that uses distorted, scrambled characters to block automated registration of accounts. There's a lot of the latter to be had.

Because the scareware tweets use a URL shortening service - as do most tweets to crowd as much as possible into Twitter's 140-character limit - it's impossible for users to tell exactly where the link will take them. Last year, botnet researcher Joe Stewart of SecureWorks said there was evidence some hackers were making as much as $5 million a year shilling scareware. "A lot of these scareware campaigns don't last 24 hours," said Beth Jones, a threat researcher at U.K.-based Sophos. "By the time a [distribution] site is blocked, they've already moved on to something else." The servers hosting the phony security software behind the Twitter attacks are located in Toronto, said Jones, who said Sophos had been monitoring those systems since June. Jones suggested that users access Twitter with a third-party application, such as TweetDeck, which offers a URL previewer to show the actual destination. Unfortunately, the scammers are using the Metamark shortening service ; TweetDeck doesn't support previews for Metamark. "Scammers are using Twitter because it's a new conduit for spreading their scareware," said Jones. "They go where the money is, which means where people are, and people are on Twitter." By late Monday, Twitter had deleted the machine-generated accounts spreading scareware that Sophos and F-Secure had revealed, but some tweets with the same malicious URL were still available on the service.

Moore's Law has decades left, Intel CTO predicts

Moore's Law will keep going strong for decades, Intel CTO Justin Rattner predicts. Predictions of the demise of Moore's Law are routinely heard in the IT world, and some organizations are trying to find a replacement for silicon chip technology. Why we're hard-wired to ignore Moore's LawRead the Intel CTO's take on why machines could ultimately match human intelligence Moore's Law, in force for more than 40 years, says that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit will double every 18 to 24 months.

But Rattner says that silicon has plenty of life left and said there is no end in sight for Moore's Law. "If Moore's Law is simply a measure of the increase in the number of electronic devices per chip, then Moore's Law has much more time to go, probably decades," Rattner said in an interview with Network World. Separately, IBM scientists are building computer chips out of DNA.  Rattner, who is CTO of the world's biggest chipmaker and the head of Intel Labs, the company's primary research arm, predicted that chip architecture will "undergo dramatic changes" in the coming decades but that silicon itself will remain the core element for the foreseeable future. The National Science Foundation is already preparing for a post-silicon world, having requested $20 million in federal funding for research that could improve or replace current transistor technology. Intel is now moving to a 32-nanometer process for chip production, an upgrade over the existing 45-nanometer process. "There's plenty of life left in silicon," Rattner says. "We're well along in our 32-nanometer development and I think we'll show some significant product-level results at 32. Right now, in terms of silicon technology we don't feel like we're at some point of demise in any sense. Beyond the search for ever-greater performance and efficiency, Intel's researchers today are striving to make chips more compatible with server virtualization technologies, such as the VMware and Xen hypervisors.

And there are still new approaches to the way we build transistors and devices that will involve silicon and newer materials, like our high-k metal gate silicon technology." The high-k metal gate technology uses hafnium-based circuitry, which Intel adopted to create smaller processors that are faster and more energy-efficient. Just a decade ago, Intel had a hard time convincing its own chip designers that virtualization was an important feature, but times have changed quickly. "Virtualization has become mandatory," Rattner says. "We had a lot of work to do to convince the chip designers that this was a really important feature. What we think of today as supercomputer applications will ultimately move down to desktops, laptops and even mobile phones, Rattner says. At first they looked at it, kind of squinted and said 'really'? Now it's just about the most important thing in the product." Rattner, who will deliver the opening address at the SC supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore., in November, also discussed how supercomputing power is being packed into smaller and smaller form factors. Intel is building many new "system on chip" designs that will add new capabilities to a variety of Internet-connected devices, such as robotics, set-top boxes and various mobile Internet devices. Rattner says "mobile augmented reality" will become a part of everyday life, with cameras that you can point at an object – such as a famous ruin – and instantly receive detailed information about what it is. "That's augmented reality, where you take real world information, and you overlay the virtual information that informs you about the scene," Rattner says. "Beyond that, what we see happening is an increasing amount of what we call perceptual computing tasks, as small form factor machines have richer sensor capabilities."

FCC pledges public safety spectrum plan by February

Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski told Congress today that the FCC would have a new plan for auctioning off a key piece of public safety spectrum by February 2010. Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee today, Genachowski said that plans for the spectrum, commonly referred to as the "D block" on the 700MHz band, are part of the FCC's emerging national broadband plan due to be delivered to Congress next year. But while the total spectrum bids for the 700MHz band nearly doubled congressional estimates of $10.2 billion, no bidder met the reserve price for the D block, which was originally reserved for the construction of a high-speed public safety network that would bring America's emergency response system up to date with next-generation technology. Genachowski would not provide any further details on what form a new auction for the D block would take and only said that the commission was working diligently to get the block on the market. "The challenge is in getting this right and we don't want to rush into failed auction," he said. "The D block comes up often in connection with our broadband plan but don't have anything concrete right now." The FCC had originally tried to auction off the D block as part of its auction of spectrum on the 700MHz band last year.

When the auction ended, the top bid for the D block was less than half its $1.3 billion reserve price. Frontline Wireless, a start-up carrier that had planned to bid aggressively for the public safety block, announced that it was shutting down its business just weeks before the 700-MHz auction began. In the weeks leading up to the auction, analysts at the Yankee Group predicted that the "horrendous" ownership costs of the block, whereby prospective licensees would be responsible for building out a national public safety network with 75% population coverage within four years of getting the license, would deter companies from making significant bids on the spectrum. With Frontline out of the picture, the D Block received only one significant license bid, and the fate of the spectrum has been in limbo ever since.

Pantone releases iPhone App

If you're a designer whose inspiration strikes while you're on the go, Pantone has a new iPhone app for you: myPantone. The app provides the sRGB, HTML, and LAB values on each color swatch, and its cross referencing system lets users identify colors across color libraries. The app gives graphic, multimedia, fashion, interior, and industrial designers the tools to capture, create, and share Pantone color palettes while they're riding the bus to work, waiting on line at the supermarket checkout, or anywhere they happen to be. "MyPantone gives designers the freedom to access Pantone colors anywhere, without the need to be in their office or carry around cumbersome guides," said Andy Hatkoff, vice president of technology licensing for Pantone. "Now with myPantone's Portable Color Memory in their pocket, designers no longer need to agonize trying to recall an exact color." MyPantone gives designers access to all the Pantone color libraries, including the Pantone Matching System for coated, uncoated, and matte stock; the Pantone Goe System for coated and uncoated stock; Pantone Pastels for coated and uncoated stock; and the Pantone Fashion + Home Smart Color system. In addition, myPantone facilitates creation of harmonious color palettes by finding complementary, analogous, and triadic combinations for selected colors.

Once you create a color palette, you can view or share it with others. And, the app can extract colors from any image stored in your iPhone's camera roll or let you choose individual colors from an iPhone photo and match them to specific Pantone colors. For viewing color chips, you can use Pantone's slate of built-in backgrounds or you can use one of your own photos as a background. You can attach text notes or voice annotations, as well. Sharing options include sending color palettes via e-mail, sending palettes to other iPhone users, and sharing via Facebook or Twitter. You can e-mail palettes as color patches, or as application swatch files for use in Adobe Creative Suite, CorelDraw, and QuarkXPress.

MyPantone is available for $10 at the iPhone App Store. Designers can also share their color palettes with other designers by sending them to Pantone's hosted Web site. It is compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 or higher and can also be used with the iPod Touch.

Group seeks answers from DHS on delay of privacy report

A privacy rights group is pressing the U.S Department of Homeland Security to disclose when it plans to release its annual privacy report to Congress. The letter also noted that Callahan is obligated by law to prepare an annual report to Congress detailing activities at the agency that have an impact on privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on Tuesday sent a certified letter to Mary Ellen Callahan, DHS's chief privacy officer, noting that the department's last privacy report was released more than a year ago, in July 2008. "As it has been over a year since the publication of the last report, we would like to know when the current report, concerning the activities of your office, will be made available to the public," the letter states.

The report also needs to detail complaints of privacy violations, implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and internal privacy controls within the DHS, the letter states. Lillie Coney, EPIC's associate director, said the privacy report was "significantly tardy enough" to merit sending the letter to DHS. "We'd like to know what the agency has been doing regarding privacy," Coney said. A copy of the DHS letter was sent to the chairman and the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. EPIC needs to be sure that the DHS' privacy officer is sufficiently focused on her obligation to release the report in a timely fashion, Coney said. The DHS could not be immediately reached for comment. The annual report, which has been issued since 2003 chronicles the privacy issues that the DHS is focused on and shows whether it is fulfilling its constitutional obligations for privacy and civil liberties, Coney said. "It gives us an idea of the way the DHS has been prioritizing privacy issues and what resources it has made available" to address the issues, she said.

This is not the first time EPIC has pressed DHS to release its reports in a timely fashion. As one of the largest federal agencies, the DHS is involved in several projects that privacy groups such as EPIC keep a close eye on. The group sent a similar letter to the DHS last year after the report's release was delayed. Examples include Einstein 2.0, a network monitoring technology that improves the ability of federal agencies to detect and respond to threats, and the Real ID identity credentialing initiative . The DHS's terror watch list program, its numerous data mining projects , the secure flight initiative, the proposed use of body imaging technologies and its searches of electronic devices at U.S. borders are also all being closely followed by privacy groups.

Analyst: AT&T likely to keep iPhone exclusive deal

Despite widespread speculation that Apple Inc. will open the iPhone exclusive arrangement with AT&T Inc. to include Verizon Wireless after 2010, one analyst firm is predicting AT&T's exclusive deal as the wireless carrier will be extended beyond then. The main reason Apple is likely to stick with AT&T beyond 2010 is the relatively wide usage and growth expected for the HSPA air standard used by the carrier for 3G data." It appears iSuppli reached it conclusions without any direct knowledge of what Apple will do regarding the exclusive deal. In a report, iSuppli Corp. said that its main reason for expecting an exclusive extension is based on its analysis of a growth in usage of a faster wireless standard at AT&T known as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA). The global growth in HSPA usage will far outstrip growth in usage of EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized), a different standard used by Verizon, iSuppli said. "Speculation is rife that Apple will end its exclusive U.S. iPhone service deal with AT&T when the current contract expires in June 2010, and begin to offer phones that work with the Verizon network," said Francis Dieco, an iSupply analyst, in a statement. "However, iSuppli doesn't believe this will be the case. AT&T and Apple have been mum on the issue for months, and were again today.

Many analysts have speculated that Apple would want to work with more than a single carrier in the U.S. just to expand the opportunities to sell the iPhone. Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney agreed that AT&T will "definitely extend their deal" for exclusive sales of the iPhone. "AT&T would be crazy not to sell iPhone," he said in an e-mail, but added that Apple will also support Verizon, possibly with a different type of unit. "If you are beholden to stockholders to make money, there is no easier money than in your home turf through a carrier desperate for this type of device," Dulaney added. Today, Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates, said that Apple would more likely want to open the exclusive deal for both AT&T and Verizon, the two largest carriers in the U.S. Gold said he didn't agree with iSuppli's conclusions, primarily because there isn't that much incentive for Apple to stay with AT&T "unless AT&T throws a lot of money at Apple." Gold rejected the analysis of growth in HSPA as a sufficient rationale to stay with AT&T, partly because adherence to a wireless standard doesn't fully determine how data throughput occurs. Many AT&T customers using the iPhone have been outraged about service interruptions and slow downloads, which may occur because a tower might not be nearby due to buildings or terrain, Gold and others have noted. "Raw speed with a wireless standard doesn't mean anything." Gold added. "It's important to realize, when three people are on a tower, that's no big deal, but when you have 300 people on a tower in downtown Boston or downtown L.A., that's huge." The analysis from iSuppli predicts that Verizon might get Apple products to sell other than the iPhone. A major factor in what a user experiences is determined by the number of users on a single cell tower, and how many towers are located in dense areas, he noted.

Dieco based that prediction on his finding that there's no information indicating that Apple is prohibited from pursuing a relationship with Verizon for non-iPhone products, such as another phone model, tablet computer, netbook or an enhanced iTouch. In 2009, there were 269 million HSPA subscribers globally, a number expected to soar to 1.4 billion in 2012. For EVDO, there were 145 million subscribers globally in 2009, a number expected to reach 304 million in 2013. Verizon has undertaken a program to move to faster LTE wireless in the 2011 to 2013 timeframe, and some analysts have assumed future iPhones could work over LTE, assuming Apple strikes an agreement with Verizon. Part of the reason iSuppli relied on the growth projections for HSPA versus EVDO to make its predicion is that HSPA growth globally will be so much bigger.

Start-up releases uber-fast, efficient enterprise-class SSDs

Pliant Technology Inc. today released its first series of enterprise-class solid state disk (SSD) drives based on a proprietary ASIC design that the company claims can handle - without using any cache - more than twice the input/output operations per second (IOPS) as the top competitive drives. The 3.5-in. drive can produce up to to 500MB/sec sustained read or 320MB/sec write rates and the 2.5-in. up to 420MB/sec read and 220MB/sec write rates, Pliant said. "Put it on a log application and write to it as hard as you want for five years - it will run 24/7 for at least that long," said Greg Goelz, vice president of marketing at the three-year-old startup. The first two two enterprise flash drive (EFDs), the EFD LS and EFD LB models, are 3.5-in. and 2.5-in. drives that can produce up to 180,000 IOPS and 140,000 IOPS respectively.

Pliant also claims there is no limit to the number of writes that can be performed to the drive and that it will work without slowdown for at least five years. In an enterprise environment, that's one of the major concerns: The wear out of the SSD." Most enterprise-class SSD companies today use Fibre Channel connectivity. The drives are aimed at equipment manufacturers such as EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Hitachi Data Systems and Sun Microsystems Inc., the company said. "They're able to claim some pretty solid performance numbers on read and writes and they're also able to claim unlimited program and erase [write/erase] cycles," said Joseph Unsworth, research director for NAND flash semi-conductors at Gartner Inc. "That's big. Pliant's first products use serial-attached SCSI (SAS), which most industry observers believe is the interconnect of the future for servers and storage arrays. "You don't want to saturate your [server] CPU cores and then find out we have this great SSD but the bottleneck is now the interface," Unsworth said. "It's all about speed." SAS currently supports 6Gbit/sec data transfer speeds and its roadmap indicates 12Gbit/sec rate by by 2012. Fibre Channel drives are currently capable of 4Gbit/sec data transfer speeds, and while Fibre Channel switches and interface cards are now emerging with 8Gbit/sec speeds. STEC Inc., the top provider today of enterprise-class SSDs, recently announced its own SAS model. SAS is eclipsing those speeds at the device level. "Six gigabit SAS in terms of data throughput is going to be the performance leader," said Jeff Janukowicz, a flash memory analyst with IDC in Framingham, Mass.

But even that next-generation product produces a maximum of 80,000 IOPS compared with Pliant's 180,000 IOPS. Pliant's SSD controller architecture is not vastly different from those of other high-end SSD manufacturers. The drives are configured as RAID 0 for increased performance and the controller. It has twelve independent I/O channels to interleaved single level cell (SLC) NAND flash chips from Samsung Corp. Most enterprise-class SSDs today also use a general purpose field programmable gate array (FPGA) controllers as opposed to Pliant's custom controller, which is programmed specifically to address SSD issues, such as wear leveling (spreading writes more evenly throughout the memory) and write amplification (reducing the number of operations required for a write), according to analysts. Also, the lack of any DRAM cache, which can store data writes more quickly, laying them down on the NAND flash chips during non-peak performance periods, is also unique to Pliant's enterprise-class product. Also unique to Pliant's controller is the use of a triple redundancy error correction code algorithm to ensure that meta data - which is used to locate data on the drive - is saved even if two copies of it become corrupted.

Some of today's more popular server-class SSDs, like those from Intel, use serial ATA interfaces, which has a half-duplex interface as opposed to SAS, which like Fibre Channel, is full duplex. Single-port half-duplex allows for one or the other. The difference between the two is that full duplex is dual ported, allowing for reads and writes at the same time. Pliant, based in Milpitas, Calif., released its new SSDs for beta testing last year and plans to make them generally available later this month. And, based on Pliant's claims, they see to have addressed many of those important issues." The company refused to release a suggested retail price for the drives. The company raised $15 million in Series C funding in March, which was used to ramp up production of the SSDs, the company said. "I think with Pliant's announcement we're starting to see some of the true promises of SSD coming to market," Janukowicz said. "A lot of these applications are demanding, mission critical, 24/7 applications and they require high reliability, efficiency and predictable performance.

However, it did note that the drives will be more expensive than Intel's X25-E SSD , which sells for $780 for a 64GB SATA model, and less expensive than STECs Zeus SSD , which sells for about $6,000 for a 73GB Fibre Channel model.

Time ripe for $700 MacBook, says analyst

Amid talk that Apple will kill the iPod Classic and add a camera to other models of its music player tomorrow, one analyst has a different prediction: Apple will roll out a retooled MacBook for $700.

"The rumors of a less expensive MacBook have real potential," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "It could drive up Apple's share further and quite possibly increase the margins on Macs, even at the very attractive price of $700."

Gottheil's rumor reference was to stories two weeks ago, particularly by AppleInsider , that said sources had reported Apple would soon revamp the design of its 13-in. white, plastic-enclosed MacBook.

The white MacBook, which currently sells for $999, is the only model remaining in the line. In early June, Apple shifted its two "unibody" MacBook configurations into the MacBook Pro lineup, swapping out the user-replaceable battery for an integrated battery and adding a backlit keyboard to both models. The 13-in. MacBook Pro starts at $1,199.

Gottheil has pushed the idea of a less-expensive MacBook before as an easy way for Apple to dip a toe in the netbook waters.

"This would close the gap between the entry-level prices of PCs and Macs," he said today, speaking of the current difference between Windows-based netbooks, some of which sell for under $300, and the $1,000 price point of today's MacBook.

From his spot in the peanut gallery, Gottheil thinks that Apple could lower the price of the MacBook and retain its traditional high profit margin, by backpedaling the laptop's technology to circa-2006 components, which are considerably cheaper than when the notebook debuted that year.

"Apple could position the MacBook as just as good [in performance] as two years ago, or even better, since it would drop in Snow Leopard ," Gottheil said.

The original MacBook - the first of that line to sport an Intel processor - debuted at $1,049, and included a 1.83GHz Core Duo CPU, 512GB of RAM and a 60GB drive.

Unlike AppleInsider, however, Gottheil said it made more sense to stick with the existing enclosure mold, another way Apple could cut costs to drop the price by $300. He also said he would expect Apple to offer the cheaper MacBook in several configurations, probably three - the company's sweat spot, it seems.

"It's the right time to do this, assuming, of course, that a tablet won't be released this year," Gottheil said. "The lack of a netbook entry can't go on forever. And earlier, when sales were soft, Apple wouldn't have wanted to appear weak," he added, talking about the first calendar quarter of this year, when Apple said Mac sales had fallen 3%, year-to-year , the first such decline since 2003.

"Now they can do [a reduced-price MacBook] from a position of strength," said Gottheil. "And it would give them some additional [sales] volume."

In the quarter that ended June 30, Apple sold 4% more Macs than in the same period the year before, reversing its one-quarter sales downturn.

Apple's San Francisco event, which will kick off at 1 p.m. ET tomorrow, is expected to focus on its iPod business , but the company has a history of tossing in unexpected announcements at virtually any opportunity. For example, Apple revised the MacBook Pro line, adding the 13-in, aluminum-cased notebooks formerly part of the MacBook family, during its annual developers conference in early June.

Dictionary app endures approval nightmare over dirty words

Thirty-seven years ago, the late comedian George Carlin listed the seven words you can't say on television. Times haven't changed: today, they're words you apparently can't say on the iPhone, either. The latest bizarre decision to come down the App Store pike is the strange case of Ninjawords Dictionary, which has had its vulgar content exorcised.

Matchstick Software's $2 Ninjawords is a simple, lightweight, well-designed dictionary application. It also, upon first submission to the App Store, contained a repertoire of dirty, dirty words. You know, the kind of words that you could only hear on the playground, on television, or while your dad watched the baseball game.

According to Daring Fireball's John Gruber, Apple provided Matchstick with screenshots of said vulgar words along with a rejection notice, saying that it violated the App Store's obscenity restrictions. The approval process as a whole ended up taking two months before Ninjawords finally made it to the store, along with a 17+ rating-because it contains words.

Yes, words. At one point, as kids, we all took a little bit of glee looking up dirty words in the dictionary, right? After all, they were just words. The only real danger was that you might get your mouth washed out with soap if you were careless enough to use them around adults-who, of course, are perfectly familiar with them, no matter what they might claim. A few of the words removed from Ninjawords application even have completely innocuous meanings in addition to their slangier uses.

What's more, there are plenty of dictionary applications on the App Store that don't suffer from this overzealous scrutiny: Hampton Catlin's Dictionary!, Dictionary.com's client, and several pricier "name-brand" dictionaries such as the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Webster's Third International Unabridged Dictionary, and the American Heritage Dictionary. The free WordWeb English dictionary app implements a vulgarity filter that you can switch on and off (albeit, along with a rather perplexing error message).

Matchstick developer Phil Crosby told Macworld in an e-mail that the company is considering implementing a similar filter in a future version, but didn't have the resources to do so the first time around. "We never suspected that a simple English dictionary would be met with such rigorous rejection," Crosby wrote.

On the Mac side, OS X's included Dictionary application-which uses the New Oxford American Dictionary-includes all the objectionable words Apple's reviewer complained about as well as many more colorful variations. Not to mention the myriad Web-based dictionaries you can access from the iPhone's Safari Web browser.

So what's the problem here? Red Sweater Software developer (and former Apple employee) Daniel Jalkut weighed in on his blog that the real culprit may be the way that Apple employs its reviewers, by encouraging a system whereby reviewers are rewarded for finding violations. Another Apple engineer-turned-indie developer, Sci-Fi Hi-Fi's Buzz Andersen, concurred on his own blog, speculating that Apple staffed its review teams with "a bunch of people who can quickly go down a very literal laundry list of things to check, but don't have the time or expertise to make nuanced judgments about an app's suitability."

This isn't the first time Apple's had problems with an app over obscene words: the company once rejected an update to popular Twitter application Tweetie because an expletive was present on Twitter's site at the time, an issue that was later ironed out. While Apple is understandably concerned about its image as a family-friendly company, there is such a thing as taking that too far.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment about the situation.

It's another example in the rapidly accruing list of troubling App Store approval incidents, and it highlights the problems caused by the lack of clear, consistent rules for developers. Of course, as long as the company continues racking up thousands of apps and millions of downloads, Apple may merely consider problems like these irritating gnats buzzing around its head.

Canada: Facebook Must Bolster Privacy Practices

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has determined that Facebook does not meet Canada's privacy legislation requirements. The ruling was issued following an investigation into the social network's privacy practices by the Canadian government, which recommends that Facebook bolster its settings and simplify controls so users can make informed decisions about how much information they wish to share and know what happens to their information once it's posted.

Facebook already determined on its own that its privacy settings were too complex and needed simplification. But it appears its efforts to quell concern haven't been adequate for high-level Canadian government.

The investigation, prompted by a complaint from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, determined that Facebook should become more transparent.

Also criticized were Facebook's relationships with third-party developers of games, quizzes, and other entertainments. According to the report, Facebook lacks safeguards preventing third-parties from parsing profile information. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart noted concern because Facebook doesn't know exactly what information these developers can access, and that information may be used for intrusive purposes. The investigation resulted in a recommendation that apps use only what's necessary to run the program.

The biggest problem noted was with deleting Facebook accounts. The "account settings" page details how to deactivate an account, but not how to delete it. This is a major concern after it was discovered that Facebook - and a variety of other social networking sites - keep data such as photographs on its servers long after an account is supposedly closed.

Facebook agreed to implement most recommendations. On some of them, it has proposed "reasonable alternatives." Still, there are some recommendations Facebook has not agreed to implement. It is unclear as of now which ones these are.

"We urge Facebook to implement all of our recommendations to further enhance their site, ensure they are in compliance with privacy law, and ultimately show themselves as models of privacy," Canada's Assistant Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said.