New Samsung touch-screen leaked

Details of one of Samsung’s new touch-screens, the S8000 have been leaked on the internet.

According to internet sources, the touch-screen codenamed ‘cubic’ will have the next generation in high clarity screen using what is called AMOLED technology ( Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode).

The phone is rumoured to include; Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth, a media player with the addition of a 3.5mm audio jack, five-meg camera with autofocus, and 2GB of internal memory.
According to Unwired View, the phone is the first out of three Cubic phones set to come out.

Sony Ericsson launches two new handsets

Sony Ericsson has launched two new handsets named the W205 and S312

The walkman W202 phone comes with MP3 with a playlist function, FM radio, speaker phone and 1.3 megapixel camera.
Sony Ericsson’s marketing business manager, Timo Maassmann said: ‘The W205 is perfect for those who love portable music but have never had the Walkman phone experience.’
The Sony Ericsson S312 has a two megapixel camera, a special video button enabling quick recording.
Both phones will be available in Q2.

Firefox Update May Not Support Older Windows

Mozilla Corp. is considering dropping support for Windows 2000 and the earliest versions of XP when it ships the follow-up to Firefox 3.5 in 2010, online discussions show.

In a series of messages on the forum, developers and Mozilla executives, including the company's chief engineer and its director of Firefox, hashed out which Microsoft Corp. operating systems it should support with the 2010 edition of its browser.

"Raise the minimum requirements on Gecko 1.9.2 (and any versions of Firefox built on 1.9.2) for Windows builds to require Windows XP Service Pack 3 or higher," said Michael Conner, one of the company's software engineers, to start the discussion.

Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, the still-in-development browser the company hopes to release at some point in the second quarter. Gecko 1.9.2, and the successor to Firefox 3.5 built on it -- Mozilla has dubbed the latter "Firefox.next" and code named it "Namoroka" -- are slated to wrap up in "early-to-mid 2010," according to the company's current plans.

Conner based his proposal on the fact that Microsoft Corp. will end all support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) on July 13, 2010, and has already ditched support for Windows XP and XP SP1. After that July 2010 date, Microsoft will only support Windows XP SP3, the free upgrade it shipped in May 2008 after some initial compatibility snafus.

"As we intend to ship the next version of Firefox in early 2010, Firefox 3.5 will continue to be supported under our current support policy (six months after the next version) until after those OS versions are no longer supported," reasoned Conner, "so users will continue to be supported by Mozilla as least as long as their OS is supported."

Some, however, balked at the idea.

"Right now, the majority of our Windows users are still on XP, but I'm not sure it's clear how many of those users have upgraded, or intend to upgrade, or in some cases are able to upgrade," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox. "And while I understand that the platform itself isn't supported by Microsoft, I do think that keeping those XP users from being able to use Firefox will end up doing more harm (to them) than good, no matter what the intent."

Others argued for even more drastic measures. "We can justify dropping [Windows 2000]/XP entirely better than setting the minimum to XP SP3 because there are many more new features in Vista that we could take advantage of," said developer Rob Arnold. "I think we should see how Windows 7 pans out. If the result is good and users migrate from XP, then we should consider dropping XP. Of course, there will always be people who cling to old systems like Win2k and XP and they will be vocal."

Conner rebutted Arnold's argument, noting -- as did many of the others in the discussion -- that XP is hale and hearty, and may remain so for years. " I don't think completely dropping XP is feasible for [Gecko] 1.9.2 unless it ships in 2012, given that many machines, notably netbooks, are still shipping with XP Home."

Like many of the in-the-public discussions by Mozilla -- which prides itself on the openness of its deliberations -- there was no immediate decision made by the participants, who included not only Beltzner but also Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

Currently, Firefox 3.08 supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Server 2003. Firefox 3.5, which will be updated to Beta 4 next week, supports the same list.

Users of older Microsoft operating systems -- notably Windows 98 and Windows NT -- have been unable to upgrade from Firefox 2.0 to the Version 3.x line, a point that has irked many.
source- computerworld

Latest Nokia eSeries business device, E71, hits shelves

The device is available at Nokia flagship stores in the UK or the Nokia website
www.nokia.co.uk/shop for £379 SIM free.

The E75 is the latest of Nokia’s popular eSeries business range, and offers a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The device sports a new email user interface and supports Microsoft Exchange and consumer accounts such as Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail and Hotmail.

Other features include two customisable home screens, Nokia Maps with A-GPS navigation, Wi-Fi, FM Radio and 3.2-megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom. It will also be the first E-series handset to come with Nokia's N-Gage gaming service.

Airfoil Speakers Touch Streams Audio to IPhone, IPod Touch

Thanks to the App Store, your iPhone or iPod touch can be used for everything from finding a great restaurant to straightening out your paintings to replacing that Nintendo DS that's been collecting dust. Now, thanks to Rogue Amoeba, your i-device can also double as a remote speaker for your Mac or Windows PC.

On Friday, Rogue Amoeba announced Airfoil Speakers Touch, an iPhone OS app that works in conjunction with the company's Eddy award-winning Airfoil, which lets you share audio over your home network (see our Airfoil 3.1 review for an overview). The companion Airfoil Speakers program allows you to turn any computer (Mac, Windows, or Linux) into a remote speaker for iTunes or virtually any other audio you can play, including Real Player, Pandora, and Last.fm. It even sends audio to Apple's AirPort Express or Apple TV and now, with Airfoil Speakers Touch, the iPhone and iPod touch can rock out to anything that Airfoil will stream.

Airfoil Speakers Touch allows you to apply a unique name to your i-device, require a password before a computer can stream audio to it, and enable an audio-level meter for some eye candy while streaming.

Airfoil Speakers Touch (iTunes link) is free and requires iPhone software 2.1 or higher, as well as the US$25 Airfoil for either Mac OS X or Windows.

Windows XP Moves Into Reduced-Support Phase

As planned, Microsoft Corp. will drop Windows XP out of what it calls "mainstream support" Tuesday, the company confirmed Monday.

"On April 14, Windows XP will transition from the mainstream support phase to the extended support phase, as planned and previously announced," a company spokeswoman said Monday in an e-mail.

Microsoft's mainstream support, which is usually offered for only five years, actually ran seven-and-a-half years because of the long lag between XP and its successor, Vista. Two years ago, Microsoft also extended mainstream support for XP Home and XP Media Center until 2009, and the deadline for the follow-up phase, dubbed "extended support," until 2014, to match the dates that had been set earlier for the business-grade XP Professional.

According to Microsoft, the transition from mainstream to extended support for Windows XP means that it will only provide paid support -- on a per-incident basis, or through its various pre-paid support programs -- and will only offer non-security hotfixes for a fee, and then only to customers who have purchased the Extended Hotfix Support plan.

Microsoft will continue to generate free security updates for Windows XP, and release them via Windows Update, until April 8, 2014.

Windows XP's shift into the first phase of support retirement comes at a time when the operating system remains extraordinarily popular, especially among business users. According to a recent survey by Dimensional Research, 97% of the more than 1,100 IT professionals surveyed said that their companies and organizations are still running XP.

The move out of mainstream and into extended support also comes just days after a leaked Microsoft memorandum spelled out a relaxation of the rules for computer makers that want to continue selling new PCs with the aged OS.

OEMs will be allowed to advertise new systems as XP PCs, something that hasn't been allowed since June 2008, and can "downgrade" a license for Windows 7 -- the operating system that hasn't yet been released -- to XP for at least six months after the former's launch.

In her e-mail Monday, the Microsoft spokeswoman noted that support for XP on a new machine is provided by the computer maker, not Microsoft. "Customers who purchased Windows XP pre-installed on their machines will receive support from their Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) per the OEM support policy at time of purchase," she said.

Nikon D5000 DSLR arrives

Nikon is at the top of its game with the latest DSLR from the company, the highly vaunted D5000 that looks set to blow the rest of the competition in its class away. Why do we say so? It comes with a robust feature set as well as simple operability that is backed by Nikon’s superlative technology, making it the perfect choice for folks who are about to enter the DSLR game for the first time as well as those who want to upgrade and purchase a digital SLR which matches their experience level in order to reach greater heights of photographic expression whenever they press the shutter button. Check out the impressive list of specifications and features right after the jump.

The D5000 first of all comes with a versatile Vari-angle LCD display which can be viewed from a standard position flush against the camera back, but depending on the situation you’re in, you can opt to have it swing out or rotated/tilted to suit you and your subject. This unequalled freedom of movement will be able to further increase the type of angles you can make in your shots. When not in use though, this monitor can be stowed away with the LCD panel facing the camera’s back to protect it from any accidental knocks. It measures 2.7″ across diagonally and comes with a 230k pixel resolution.

Other features include a 12.3 effective megapixel CMOS sensor, Nikon’s very own EXPEED image processing system, a wide range of compatibility with a comprehensive selection of NIKKOR lenses, smooth tonal gradation, outstanding color reproduction, and low noise courtesy of a wide ISO sensitivity range. In addition, the help of Scene Recognition System with Face Detection and Active D-Lighting will reproduce even more vibrant images. Would you pick this up as your next DSLR upgrade, or will you choose something else?

DivX 7 Video Software Released for Mac

DivX has announced the release of DivX 7 for Mac, the latest major version of its video encoding software. The decoder is free -- a Pro version with encoding tools is also available for US$20.
DivX is commonly used to encode video distributed over the Internet, and the Divx 7 for Mac software makes it possible for you to play .divx and .avi videos using QuickTime. DivX 7 supports High Definition (HD) H.264 .MKV (Matroska) files. Matroska is an open standard for audio and video file "containers" -- it's not an encoder -- and is often used for subtitled video content.
The free download includes a six-month trial version of the DivX Pro codec and a 15-day trial of the DivX Converter application. The codec itself, however, does not expire -- you can use it indefinitely without having to pay.
System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.4 or later, QuickTime 7 and a G4/800MHz or faster.
[Editor's note: DivX shares only a name with a now-defunct pay-per-view DVD system. Unlike that DIVX, this DivX is actually useful to end-users.]

ReCoil Takes Clutter out of In-car IPod and IPhone Charging

iPod and iPhone accessory vendor Scosche has released ReCoil, a car-charging solution that connects to your vehicle's 12-Volt accessory jack ("cigarette lighter" socket) and charges an iPod or iPhone via a built-in dock-connector cable. Unlike with most car chargers, the ReCoil's cable retracts into the body of the charger when not in use; a magnet keeps the dock-connector plug in place.
The US$30 ReCoil is Made for iPod- and Made for iPhone-certified

DOJ Asks for Extension of Microsoft Antitrust Judgment

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a U.S. judge to extend her antitrust judgment against Microsoft by at least 18 months in order to give the company enough time to fix problems in technical documentation required in a communication protocols licensing program.
The DOJ on Thursday filed documents asking Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to extend her oversight of the Microsoft antitrust settlement. The antitrust order, originally scheduled to expire in November 2007, has already been extended by two years because of complaints about the state of the technical documentation.
The DOJ's request represents a reversal from the agency's earlier views on the antitrust judgment. The DOJ, in 2007, opposed an extension of the judgment, even though two groups of states that had joined the DOJ in suing Microsoft had asked for a five-year extension.Under the settlement, Microsoft is required to license the communication protocols to other IT vendors interested in developing server software that works with Microsoft's Windows operating system. As of March 31, there were 719 identified problems in the technical documentation, according to an antitrust status report filed Thursday.
source-IDG

Apple Market Share Rises Slightly as PC Shipments Fall

Shipments of desktop and notebook PCs in the United States were buoyed by the Netbook in the first quarter of 2009, but the overall shipments still fell 7.1 percent over the same period last year. Shipments of Macs remained fairly constant in both market share and shipments, according to a new report from market research firm IDC.
IDC says that Apple shipped 1,130,000 Macs in the first quarter of 2009, compared to 1,144,000 in the first quarter of 2008. Even though Apple saw a minimal decline of 14,000 computer shipments in the quarter, research shows that the company's market share actually increased over that time period.
Apple's market share rose from 7.4 percent in 2008 to 7.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the IDC report.
HP, the PC shipment leader saw its market share rise from 23.8 percent in 2008 to 27.6 percent in 2009, with shipments going from almost 3.7 million to just over 4.1 million. Rival Dell saw its shipments fall from almost 4.7 million to 3.9 million as its market share fell four points to 26.3 percent.
Apple finds itself in fourth place for both market share and shipments of computers in 2009, which didn't change from 2008. HP leads the way, with Dell following close behind. Acer is one spot ahead of Apple with 10.5 percent market share.
Even though the market declined 7.1 percent overall, it did better than researchers predicted. The projected decline for the first quarter was 8.2 percent.
IDC says that falling pricing, including the Netbook, helped to minimize the decline of overall shipments.
source- macworld

Funny Cats

Mad Apple

The Dangeorus End

Funny Cat

Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan in Japan

Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium is one of the world’s largest aquariums. Kaiyukan is a Japanese word meaning ‘Playing in the Sea Pavilion’. Visitors enjoy the living creatures as if they are playing with them in the sea. The main attractions of the Osaka Aquarium are a whale, shark, jellyfish, sea lion, turtles, spider crabs, penguins, otters etc

Jukkasjarvi Ice Hotel in Sweden

The Ice Hotel located at the seashore of Torne River, in the village of Jukkasjarvi, about 17 kms from Kiruna, Swedish Lapland, was the world’s first ice hotel. It is made of 10,000 tons of crystal clear ice and 30,000 tons of pure snow. The Ice Hotel that exists between December and April melts away and goes back to the Torne River during the spring season.

Squirrel Defence

Microsoft Brands Office 2010, Releases Exchange Beta

Microsoft released a beta of Exchange Server 2010 on Wednesday, the first product that enterprise customers will see from the next version of Office.
Microsoft also went public with the official branding of its next productivity suite -- Office 2010. Until now Microsoft had been referring to it as Office 14, but the new name had been widely expected.Exchange Server should be in full release by the end of the year, but the rest of the products in the suite won't be out until early 2010, said Julia White, director of the Exchange product management team.
Microsoft will release technical previews of other products in the suite, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010, in the third calendar quarter. A technical preview is tested by hundreds of thousands of users, while millions of people will have access to the Exchange 2010 beta, White said.Another of the Office System products, Office Communications Server (OCS), is on a different schedule. The latest version, OCS R2, was released only in February, and Microsoft has not discussed plans yet for the next big upgrade.Microsoft will begin the process of upgrading its hosted version of Exchange, Exchange Online, at the same time it ships the Exchange 2010 on-premise product. Exchange Online customers will have the ability to determine when their users are upgraded to the new Exchange 2010 capabilities in Exchange Online, starting in the first half of 2010.
Now that Microsoft offers Exchange as both a service and an on-premise product, it is beginning to align the features of the two offerings more closely, White said. When the company makes architectural decisions about the server product, it thinks about the service as well, White said. "We're thinking about them in a unified way."It made it easy in Exchange 2010 to automatically configure access for certain employee roles, such as a compliance officer or human-resources manager, White said. "You can set it up [for people] to just have access to the mail boxes they need to search, and can turn that access on and off very quickly," she said. In Exchange 2007, IT pros needed "an 80-page white paper" to do something similar, she said.
source- IDG

Reports: Yahoo Plans More Job Cuts

Yahoo may announce a new round of layoffs next week, the third one since early 2008 and the first staff-trimming under new CEO Carol Bartz, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are reporting.The round of layoffs could affect several hundred employees and could be announced on Tuesday, when Yahoo is scheduled to report its first-quarter financial results, the newspapers reported, quoting anonymous sources
Yahoo laid off about 2,600 employees in two rounds of layoffs last year, which it ended with around 13,600 staffers.If the reports of a new wave of layoffs are accurate, such a move would likely hurt the already battered morale within the company and be yet another reminder that Yahoo's long-awaited turnaround is still out of reach.The start of Yahoo's decline is open to debate, but it probably began in 2001 around the time it had the chance to buy a small startup called Google, which had impressive search engine technology. Instead, Yahoo misread the opportunity that search advertising represented and let Google get a solid, early lead in the market that has turned into absolute dominance. Along the way, Yahoo also failed to jump on hot technology trends, like video sharing, blogging and social networking that nimble Web 2.0 startups capitalized on in recent years. Things took a turn for the worse early last year, when Yahoo, in the midst of a turnaround plan drafted by co-founder and then-recently minted CEO Jerry Yang, received an unsolicited acquisition offer from Microsoft.
Yang and his executive team and the board were roundly criticized for what was perceived as an unwillingness to fairly consider the acquisition offers from Microsoft. Microsoft eventually walked away in May, but has continued trying to strike a more limited search-advertising deal with Yahoo.
Along the way, shareholders revolted and filed lawsuits, Yahoo tried unsuccessfully to partner with seemingly every major Internet player and the company's financial results continued to generally disappoint. A defeated Yang announced his intention to step down as CEO in November and Bartz was appointed in January. Bartz has so far earned praise from industry observers for her straight-talking style and for her initial reorganization steps, which are aimed at simplifying Yahoo's notoriously complex corporate structure, so that decisions can be made more quickly. In addition, like other Internet companies that depend primarily on online advertising for their revenue, Yahoo faces a weakening market. Online advertising spending in the U.S. grew considerably less in 2008 than in prior years, reaching US$23.4 billion in 2008, a 10.6 percent increase compared with 2007, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers reported recently.
That growth rate pales in comparison to the 26 percent jump in spending recorded in 2007 over 2006. In the fourth quarter of 2008, spending was US$6.1 billion, up 2.6 percent compared with the same quarter in 2007, and 4.5 percent compared with 2008's third quarter, the smallest quarterly sequential increase since 2001. Google is poised to fare better than Yahoo and others because search advertising, from which Google generates most of its revenue, broadened its lead as the preferred online ad format, accounting for 46 percent of spending in 2008's fourth quarter, up from 42 percent in the same period in 2007. For the full year, the search format had a 45 percent share, up from behind Google's stellar financial performance throughout its history. Recent media reports claim that Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer have been meeting to try to hammer out a search-advertising partnership.Yahoo declined to comment about the reports in the Times and the Journal.
source- IDG

Sony, Toshiba, Qualcomm Join the Femto Forum

Consumer electronics giants Sony and Toshiba have joined the Femto Forum, an industry organization whose role is to push femtocells. Qualcomm has also been added to the membership roster, the Femto Forum announced on Wednesday. Femtocells are small base stations that can improve indoor coverage and increase capacity. When a user is making calls and surfing the Web with a phone or laptop equipped with wireless broadband, signals are sent via the femtocell and a fixed broadband connection. They also allow carriers to offload users from the regular mobile network and save money on backhaul capacity.
Today's femtocells have the same form factor as a wireless router. But when companies like Sony and Toshiba show an interest it opens the door for TVs and set-top boxes to have built-in femtocells, according to Simon Saunders, chairman of the Femto Forum.
Sony is not ready to talk about specific product plans, but given the potential of femtocells it has joined the Femto Forum to monitor developments more closely, according to a Sony spokesman.
If femtocells are to be integrated in a wide variety of consumers electronics then chip costs will have to come down and that is where Qualcomm will play an important role. The company will help increase volumes and cut costs, as well as develop chipsets customized for femtocells, according to Saunders.
Qualcomm didn't reply to calls about the company joining the Femto Forum. But this isn't the first time it has shown an interest in femtocells. Last year, the company invested in femtocell vendor ip.access.The use of femtocells has slowly started to take off, primarily in Asia and North America. During the rest of 2009 they will be launched in Europe as well, according to Saunders. Operators will also start launching the first services beyond offering better coverage and tariffs and will take advantage of the fact that operators will know that users are at home when connecting via the femtocell, he said. Cable & Wireless, chip maker Octasic and Thai mobile operator True Move have also joined the Femto Forum, according to a statement.
source- IDG

Nokia Expands Photo Browser Availability to S60 3rd Ed.

Nokia's Beta Labs has made a new version of the recently announced Photo Browser available to S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 and Feature Pack 2 handsets. Previously, it was only available for S60 5th Edition. The Photo Browser gives S60 users another way to interact with images on their handsets, and has a feature called Face Tracking that lets users browse the faces of people captured in photos. Noka Beta Labs has also updated its Share Online application for S60 3rd Ed FP1 and FP2, making it easier to share photos with contacts. Both are free downloads available from the Beta Labs site.

Apple Drops Beta 3 of iPhone 3.0

Apple has made a third beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 available to registered iPhone developers. Changes include performance improvements, user interface updates and alterations to Spotlight search.

Vista needed for next Windows 7 upgrade

Microsoft Corp. last week urged Windows 7 beta testers to return their machines to the Windows Vista operating system before upgrading to the impending release-candidate version of the new software.
Windows 7 Release Candidate, the next milestone for the operating system, is expected to be available sometime next month.
In a post on its Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft asked users to revert to Vista to ensure that their upgrade process is "something real-world customers will experience."
Microsoft said that bugs or other problems reported while upgrading from one prerelease build to another aren't worth fixing. "We don't always track them down and fix them because they take time away from bugs that would only manifest themselves during this one-time prerelease operation," it said.
Microsoft acknowledged the difficulty that its request poses to users. "We know that means reinstalling, recustomizing, reconfiguring and so on. That is a real pain," it said in the blog.
For Windows 7 beta testers who decline to revert to Vista before upgrading, Microsoft provided instructions for circumventing a built-in check that bumps users out of the release candidate installation if the beta is still present. The process involves booting from an external drive or another partition, and then modifying an installation file with a text editor. Meanwhile, a survey by ChangeWave Research found that the number of Windows 7 beta testers who were satisfied with the operating system was four times higher than that of early users of Vista.
In a poll of IT professionals, the market research firm found that 44% of 68 users testing Windows 7 were "very satisfied" with the beta. In a February 2007 ChangeWave survey conducted just weeks after Vista's launch, only 10% of the respondents expressed the same level of satisfaction with that operating system.
This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition. An expanded version was posted on our Web site last week.

source- computerworld

Report: ITunes Price Hike Hurts Sales

Billboard reports that there's already evidence that the recent change to song pricing in iTunes may have hurt sales of individual songs.
On Tuesday, April 7th, Apple announced that all digital rights management (DRM) had been removed from music sold on the iTunes Store. The company also unveiled tiered pricing for individual songs and albums.
The new tiered pricing prices some songs at 69 cents, others at 99 cents, and others at $1.29.
Writing for Billboard.biz, Glenn Peoples reports that the changes in chart position between Tuesday and Thursday indicate that higher prices had forced many songs to drop in chart position to lower-priced songs.
"By Thursday, there were a total of 15 songs that had risen to $1.29 from a $0.99 price on Tuesday. Over the two-day period, those 15 songs had lost an average of 1.5 chart positions," Peoples wrote.
He cautions that his analysis does not take into account sales trends that would have existed with the absence of price changes, however. External factors including radio play, media attention, time since release date and other issues could have also affected the rise and fall of certain songs.
"What is left is an incomplete but valuable look at the impact of price increases on relative sales performance," Peoples concluded.
source-macworld

Analyst: Dell in Smartphone Talks With China Mobile

Dell is in talks with China Mobile to offer a smartphone based on the carrier's mobile operating system, a move that would take Dell into a huge but competitive market in China, an analyst said Monday.
The world's number two PC vendor has strongly hinted it plans to offer a smartphone or mobile Internet device, but it has not given any details or said if it will offer such a product in China.
Dell is waiting for China Mobile to pick one or two models from smartphones it has offered and the two firms could reach a deal around August, Zhang Jun, an analyst at research firm Wedge MKI, said in a phone interview.
A Dell smartphone could then hit the Chinese market by the end of the year, Zhang said.
No one from China Mobile was immediately available for comment.
A Dell representative in Beijing declined to comment.
The China Mobile OS, known as Open Mobile System (OMS), is based on Google's Android but will include China Mobile applications like the firm's instant messaging client.
OMS will support China Mobile's next-generation mobile network that is expanding coverage beyond major cities this year. The network's standard was developed in China and is called TD-SCDMA (Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access).
China Mobile, the world's biggest mobile carrier, hopes for a flashy Dell addition to currently drab handset offerings that have hurt the take-up of TD-SCDMA so far, Zhang said.
Dell will also offer a TD-SCDMA netbook with the launch of its Inspiron Mini 10 in China this Thursday.
Other firms designing OMS phones include High Tech Computer (HTC), the manufacturer of the G1 smartphone, and Chinese telecommunication equipment providers Huawei and ZTE, Zhang said.
Lenovo Mobile is set this spring to launch the first OMS smartphone, a touchscreen handset called the OPhone, according to research firm BDA.
Lenovo Mobile was sold to a group of investors in January, 2008 by Chinese PC giant Lenovo.
Source- IDG News

India's Tech Mahindra Wins Majority Stake in Satyam

Tech Mahindra, an Indian outsourcer which has British Telecommunications as a key client and investor, has won the bid for a majority stake in troubled outsourcer Satyam Computer Services.
Venturbay Consultants, a subsidiary controlled by Tech Mahindra, has emerged as the highest bidder to acquire a controlling stake in Satyam, the company's government-nominated board said on Monday. The selection is subject to Indian government approval.
Tech Mahindra, with revenue of US$934.7 million in the Indian fiscal year to March 31, 2008, currently focuses on the telecom sector but the investment in Satyam will help it move into other industry segments.
Tech Mahindra may, however, find it difficult to win the confidence of Satyam's clients from other industries, said Sudin Apte, senior analyst at Forrester Research, said on Monday.
As a result, Tech Mahindra will gain between $900 million to $1 billion in revenue from the takeover, as some customers may drop Satyam as a supplier, Apte said.
Satyam's customers polled by Forrester said that they would prefer a large IT services provider with business in a number of industries, Apte said last week.
Tech Mahindra will pay 17.6 billion Indian Rupees (US$354 million) for a 31 percent stake in Satyam. It will be subscribing to a preferential allotment of new equity rather than existing equity, which will ensure the infusion of additional funds into the cash-strapped company.
Tech Mahindra will also have to make a public offer to other Satyam shareholders to buy another 20 percent of the equity of the company at the price it will pay for the first round of equity. The combined total will give it a 51 percent share of the company.
Satyam was plunged into crisis in January when the company's founder B. Ramalinga Raju, said it had inflated profits for several years. The company's accounts are being re-stated.
The Indian government appointed soon after a board with its own representatives, to supersede Satyam's board.
The new board selected Tech Mahindra through a global competitive bidding process launched by Satyam on March 9. Three bidders from the short-list submitted both technical and financial bids on Monday.
Some prospective bidders backed out earlier, citing inadequate information on the finances of Satyam. The outsourcer is also facing class-action suits in the US from investors.
In the technical evaluation, bidders were evaluated for their organizational ability and experience in owning, operating and managing global information technology companies, their track record in managing distressed companies, revenues and profitability from Indian and overseas operations, and their strategic plan for Satyam, the Satyam board said.
Source- pcworld

Microsoft Set Records for Bug Fixes in 2008

Microsoft Corp. was forced to pick up the patching pace in the second half of 2008, the company admitted last week, as it fixed 67 percent more flaws and released 17% more security updates in the period than it had in the first six months of the year.
Included in the bugs patched during the latter months of the year was the vulnerability exploited by Conficker, a worm that led to the biggest infection outbreak in years and a minor media frenzy last week.
Microsoft patched 97 different vulnerabilities in 42 separate security update in the second half of 2008, compared to 58 vulnerabilities in 36 updates in the first half.
Vinnie Gullotto, the general manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, acknowledged the increase. "The number [of patched vulnerabilities] did go up, but a lot has to do with our methodology."
Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report explained it differently. "Although the total number of security bulletins in [the second half of 2008] was on par with the last several periods, there was a significant increase in the number of CVE identifiers addressed per security bulletin in [the second half of 2008]," the report stated. The average number of Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) identifiers rose from an average of 1.6 per security bulletin in the first half of 2008 to 2.3 in the final six months.
In plain English, that means Microsoft packed more individual patches into the average security update.
During the second half of 2008, Microsoft issued several multi-patch updates, including MS08-052, a five-patch update for the GDI+ component of Windows; MS08-058, a six-patch update for Internet Explorer (IE); MS08-072, an eight-patch fix for Microsoft Word; and MS08-073, a four-patch update for IE.
Gullotto also argued that the number of bugs Microsoft quashed was less important than the number of exploits actually crafted for, and released into the wild against, those vulnerabilities.
"The number of exploits against those [bugs] stayed about the same as in the first half of the year," he said. The report did not include a complete tally of all exploits aimed at Microsoft software during the last six months of the year, though it included some data related to browser and document file format bugs.
Conficker, the most prolific worm in several years got its start last year when it began to exploit unpatched Windows machines just weeks after Microsoft issued one of its two emergency updates for the period. "Fortunately, Conficker was a rarity," said Gullotto, referring to the scarcity of worms that attack the operating system and self-propagate quickly through networks.
The other "out-of-band" update was released in mid-December to plug a critical hole in IE which had already been exploited by criminals.
Even as Gullotto admitted that Microsoft had to patch more bugs as 2008 proceeded, he defended the company's track record. "We're clearly seeing the results of the progress we've made in software development," he said, pointing out that the company's newer software is more secure than older code. According to data gathered from the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), the anti-malware utility Microsoft updates and redistributes each month to Windows machines, the real-world infection rate of PCs running Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is 61% less than that of systems powered by Windows XP SP3.
"Older versions typically do have more vulnerabilities, that's true," he said, "but one of the good things is that we're being transparent about it, we're telling people about the vulnerabilities."
Micrsosoft's new security report, labeled as "Volume 6," is available for download as a PDF file from the company's Web site.
source- Computerworld

Semiconductor Sales Slip Worldwide

According to a final marketshare analysis by Gartner, worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled US$255 billion in 2008, down 5.4 percent, or a decrease of $14.5 billion from 2007 revenue. The steep decline in the market in the final quarter of 2008, combined with the ongoing economic weakness, signals far worse declines in 2009.

"While sales held up fairly well in the first half of 2008, in the third quarter the industry started to soften as the economy slowed, and by the fourth quarter sales were deteriorating quickly, causing revenue growth to go into negative territory," said Peter Middleton, principal research analyst at Gartner. "With the market heavily impacted by the recession, we can expect considerable market consolidation going forward."
Gartner's annual semiconductor market share analysis examines and ranks the worldwide and regional revenue for more than 275 semiconductor suppliers, in 65 separate product categories, and eight major market categories. It serves as a benchmark for both semiconductor industry performance, as well as a means for individual companies to assess their revenue performance against their competitors.
Intel held the No. 1 position for the 17th consecutive year, in this analysis, increasing its market share to 13.3 percent in 2008, although it saw its revenue decline by 0.5 percent ― a consequence of spinning off its NOR flash memory business (see Table 1). The company outperformed the industry average due to the strong performance of its notebook business in which the company gained share throughout the year.
The best performer among the 2008 top 10 in Gartner's market share analysis was Qualcomm, with growth of 15.3 percent. This growth was driven by a strong first three quarters of the year, but Qualcomm felt the impact of the economic downturn in the fourth quarter of 2008 as carriers and OEMs reduced their inventory of code division multiple access (CDMA)-based devices and chipsets.
Samsung, the No. 2 vendor, saw its revenue decline 15 percent in 2008 with the company's main product lines, DRAM and NAND flash experiencing sharp price declines caused by excess supply in the market during 2008. Toshiba, in the No. 3 position, saw its revenue decrease 10.3 percent, largely because its application-specific integrated circuit (ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs) for consumer, wireless and automotive electronics showed mild growth in early 2008, but the market went into free-fall in the second-half due to the global economic downturn.

Vendor Relative Industry Performance

Market share tables by themselves give a good indication of which vendors did well or badly during a year, but they do not tell the whole story. More often than not, a strong or weak performance by a vendor is a result of the overall market growth of the device areas that the vendor participates in. Gartner's relative industry performance (RIP) index measures the difference between industry-specific growth for a company and actual growth, showing which are transforming their businesses by growing share or moving into new markets and choosing their customers wisely.
Broadcom led the RIP ranking in 2008. In the consumer ASSP business, it benefited from solid performance in the core set-top box business, augmented by Blu-ray and digital TV products and the sale of digital converter boxes for the DTV conversion in the United States. In wired communications ASSPs, Broadcom padded its considerable lead over No. 2 Infineon Technologies. Ethernet switches and broadband modem chip sales sparked this performance. In wireless ASSPs, the company grew strongly in a declining market, mainly due to sales of connectivity products, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.
Elpida Memory was the No. 2 vendor in Gartner's RIP ranking. Its strong performance in the ranking was because of its ability to add capacity in the DRAM market faster than the market declined, thus showing only a slight revenue decline in a market that saw strong double-digit declines.
source- Channelworld

Outsourcing Not the Big Savings Firms Expect, Study Says

The recession is pushing businesses to cut the cost of their software portfolios, but most companies overestimate the savings that offshoring can deliver, according to Compass Management Consulting.
Companies rushing to outsource their software development for quick savings actually risk significant losses in productivity because developers do not fully understand business requirements, according to the consultants.
While staff costs may be 40 percent lower in offshore locations, Compass research found these savings were undermined by a 60 percent drop in productivity in operations where the full lifecycle of application development has been outsourced.
"This means that the decision to migrate development, when you include additional management control, increased infrastructure spend, employee attrition, language, and cultural issues, can end up costing up to 20 percent more than current in-house operations," said the consultant group.
Compass analysed over 200 outsourcing contracts, accounting for a total value of more than £3bn over the past two years.
Many organisations are already replacing legacy systems and updating applications to reduce costs, said Nigel Hughes, a consultant at Compass. "Complexity of the application environment is a major driver of overall cost escalation in IT, and 2009 is the best chance since the year 2000 issue to make radical change."
Staff attrition related to moving application development to offshore locations, particularly the loss of functional expertise, will have having a "negative effect" on productivity.
"With lower productivity in many offshore locations and currency movements that are working against UK buyers, it is important to outsource the right type of development project and ensure that business analysis skills are kept in-house in order to make any savings," said Hughes.
"More than 70 percent of a typical software budget is spent on maintaining legacy systems. Top performers are clear that they cannot run a 21st century operation supported by 20th century technology," said Hughes.
But Compass said that rationalising software estates by consolidating applications could reduce spend by 20 to 40 percent within less than a year.
Compass advised companies to keep strategic applications in-house, and look at outsourcing "non-strategic, non-critical and low complexity applications".
"For the strategic, complex and business critical applications, it makes more sense to retain the analysis skills that will drive the innovation and value in-house," said Hughes.
source- computerworld

Conficker-Infected Systems Spew Spam

Windows PCs infected with the Conficker worm have turned into junk mail-spewing robots capable of sending billions of spam messages a day, a security company warned.
According to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail.
"In just 12 hours, one bot alone sent out 42,298 spam messages," said Kaspersky researcher Alex Gostev in a message Friday. "A simple calculation shows that one bot sends out around 80,000 emails in 24 hours. Assuming that there are 5 million infected machines out there, the [Conficker] botnet could send out about 400 billion spam messages over a 24-hour period!"
The spam is pitching pharmaceuticals exclusively at the moment, said Gostev, primarily erectile dysfunction medications such as Viagra and Cialis, with message subject headings including "She will dream of you days and nights!" and "Hot life -- our help here. Ensure your potence [sic] today!"
Gostev also noted that almost every message contained a unique domain in the embedded link, a tactic spammers sometimes use to side-step anti-spam filters, which analyze the frequency which any one domain is used. "We detected the use of 40,542 third-level domains and 33 second-level domains," said Gostev. "They all belonged to spammers and the companies that ordered these mailings."

Most of the domains are hosted in China, he added.

Conficker, the worm that first appeared in November 2008, exploded in early 2009 to infect several million machines and set off a near-panic as an April 1 trigger date approached, was fed a new version early Thursday that restored its ability to spread and beefed up its defenses against security tools. If it successfully updated an already-infected PC, Conficker.e -- as the new variant has been labeled -- also downloaded and installed a noted spam bot, Waledac.
Waledac has its own checkered history, in that it's assumed to have been created by some of the same hackers who operated the notorious Storm botnet during 2007 and 2008.
The spam coming from Conficker.e-infected systems is actually generated and sent by the Waledac bot Trojan.
Some Conficker bots have also downloaded and installed Spyware Protect 2009, one of the many "scareware" programs in circulation. Scareware is the term given to fake anti-malware software that generates bogus infection warnings and then nags users with endless alerts until they pay to $50 to buy the useless program. According to Microsoft, the scam -- also called "rogue software" -- is one of the biggest threats to Internet users. In the second half of 2008 alone, Microsoft's antimalware tools cleaned nearly 6 million PCs of scareware-related infections.
Yesterday, another researcher raised the alarm about the new Conficker and the software it drops, saying that the spam and scareware angles were clearly the first solid evidence of how the worm's makers planned to profit from their crime. "I don't want to be a scaremonger," said Kevin Hogan, director of security response operations at Symantec Corp. "But the situation now, as Conficker does go back to propagating, is actually more serious than a couple of weeks ago.
Source -pcworld

Office 14 Web Apps: Microsoft Takes on Google Docs and Netbooks

CIO — The next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office 14, will include lightweight but fully-functional versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that can run in a browser.
Called Office Web Applications, the service will be in beta later this year, according to Microsoft, but the final versions of the Office Web apps won't come until the desktop version of Office 14 is also done. Steve Ballmer announced in February that this won't happen until 2010.
Office Web Applications follow through on Microsoft's promise to deliver "software plus services" and are a belated move to get productivity tools online to curb the threat of free, Web-based apps from Google, Zoho and OpenOffice.org. Microsoft currently has a free service called Office Live Workspace that lets users view and share — but not edit — Office documents. Office Live Workspace never took off in a meaningful way with most enterprise users.
To keep more users from moving to Office alternatives, Microsoft is not tying the forthcoming Office Web Applications to Internet Explorer. The company has confirmed that Office Web Applications will work on the Firefox browser and Apple's Safari browser. It has also insinuated, though not fully confirmed, that Office Web Apps will work on the iPhone.

So via the Firefox browser, Microsoft Office will run on Linux machines, giving Office a route onto Linux-based netbooks and smartphones that it didn't have before. If Linux-based netbooks begin to increase market share, Microsoft will be losing OS dollars, but would at least be able to offer Office apps on Linux machines.
Source-cio