ageofempiresnews.com

Apple has switched on its Genius recommendation engine for videos, two weeks after releasing the latest version of iTunes (download for Windows and Mac) without the promised feature.

When iTunes 8.1 shipped earlier this month, the company initially said the video Genius feature would be available in the release notes for that software, but it was not active. At the time, an Apple representative promised the company would activate the feature “in the coming days.”

iLounge spotted the new Genius feature, which recommends movies or television shows you might be interested in purchasing from the iTunes Store based on your current video library. Apple unveiled a similar feature for music last year, but one notable difference with the video version is that it only seems to work with videos that have been purchased from Apple, according to iLounge’s early testing.

Another contemporary thin subnotebook is the Toshiba Portege R500, which boasts dimensions (WxDxH Front/H Rear) of 11.1″ x 8.5″ x .77″(front)/1.0″(rear) and comes with a 12.1-inch screen, an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.20GHz U7600 processor, a 64GB SSD, 2GB of memory, and a fixed DVD rewritable drive. The weight is 2.4 pounds, beating the Air (though with a smaller screen). It also trumps the Air with extra ports, including 3 USB, one 1394, and an Ethernet jack. It starts at $1,999. The CNET review (July 2007) is here.

The Lenovo X300 has received so much press already that it is almost redundant to mention it here. Suffice to say, it has a large 13.3-inch screen like the Air, is slightly thicker at 0.73 inches, packs Intel X3100 graphics, and uses a 64GB SSD. CNET review here.

Digital Equipment HiNote Ultra CS475, announced 1994

(Credit:
Hewlett-Packard)

NOTE: This is not an official CNET review. Official CNET product reviews are here.

(Credit:
ume-y)

Mitsubishi Pedion

The MacBook Air focused global attention–for the first time with prolonged intensity–on a small, thin notebook. Until now, this kind of design simply wasn’t on many users’ shopping lists. (Particularly Americans who choose performance over portability.) Here’s a brief look at this notebook category, both past and present.

At the top of the blast-from-the-past utrathin notebook list is the Sharp Actius MM20P. This model is listed with a height of 0.62-inch. That’s thin–though it doesn’t taper to 0.16-inch like the Air. It comes with the Transmeta Efficeon TM8600 (Intel-compatible) 1GHz processor, a 10.4-inch screen, a 20GB hard disk drive (no solid state drive option), and 512MB of memory.

Sharp Actius MM20P in dock

Next up: the HP 2510p. Unbeknownst to many, Compaq (which HP purchased in 2001) has a long history of delivering excellent ultraportables. These designs emerged after Compaq bought Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) in 1998. At that time, DEC was shipping the HiNote Ultra line, which was a sensation when hit the market in 1994. The HiNote didn’t hit with the impact of the MacBook Air, but it was close. Only one-inch thick (again, this is 1994) and weighing four pounds, it seemed absolutely razor thin at that time. The CS475 model also came with a cutting-edge floppy-drive slice–that snapped on the bottom–and a multimedia docking station. Back in my early days at CNET, I wrote about the HiNote.

The problem–as the specifications indicate–is that it’s dated (and discontinued). Sharp did show, however, that thin notebook designs were viable long before the Air. A progenitor of the Actius is the Sharp Muramasa. This measured 0.54 inches thick. Here’s the CNET review of the Actius MM20P.

The Mitsubishi Pedion, announced in 1997 (reincarnated as the Hewlett-Packard OmniBook Sojourn), is even more dated–and a milestone design too. It was 0.7 inches thick, 3.1 pounds (about the same as the Air) had a 12.1-inch screen, and came with a 233-MHz Pentium MMX processor. It retailed for a whopping $6,000. But the notebook never seemed to be a finished product and was plagued by user complaints. One of the biggest problems–with the initial version–was the Chiclet keyboard.

(Credit:
Sharp)

Asus U1E

HP 2510p

A few prefatory notes: Because I use a MacBook Air, the topic of ultraportables has taken on more importance for me. But the impact of this category of notebooks goes much further than personal interest. Ultraportables now contain fast Core 2 Duo processors, snappy solid state drives (SSDs), and better screens, which makes them more usable and mainstream than ever before. Price is still the limiting factor. This will change, however, as SSD prices fall and more ultraportable competition creeps in at the low end from the likes of Asus and Everex.

The current HP 2510p comes from this bloodline. It’s slightly thicker (at 0.97 inches) than some of the others but there’s a reason for the extra plastic: an integrated optical drive. It also packs an Intel “Santa Rosa” GM965 chipset with X3100 graphics. (The Toshiba R500–see below–uses an older 945GMS chipset and 950 graphics.) The 2510p weighs 2.8 pounds, more than the R500 but less than the Air. Otherwise, it outclasses the Air in almost exactly the same areas as the R500. More ports, an integrated 10/100/1000 gigabit network adapter, and built-in DVD rewritable drive. The 2510p starts at $1,499. CNET review here.

(Credit:
Mitsubishi)

Toshiba R500

Other notable entries in this category include the Asus (maker of the Eee PC) U1E which has an 11-inch screen and gets as slim as 0.7 inches and the LG X series with a 10.6-inch display.

(Credit:
Toshiba)

(Credit:
Asus)

(Credit: The Digital Bits)

When Warner Bros. announced it was becoming a Blu-ray exclusive studio, most observers of the format war agreed that it was a mortal wound for HD DVD. The only remaining question was, how long is HD DVD going to last? Well, according to the latest NPD data (as compiled by Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits), not very long. During the week of January 5 to 12–the first week the market had to respond to the Warner announcement–Blu-ray absolutely trounced HD DVD in hardware sales, grabbing 92.53 percent of the high-def disc-player market. That’s pretty ugly for the HD DVD camp, but it only gets worse. The most damning aspect of these numbers is that they do not include the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive–only standalone players. We previously thought HD DVD’s only road to victory was by selling tons of cheap standalone HD DVD players, so the fact that relatively expensive Blu-ray players are starting to sell makes it seem like this format war has been officially declared over–by the consumers.

Of course, Toshiba slashed prices on its HD DVD players just a few days after this data ends–and we’re very interested to see what kind of impact that has on hardware sales–but it’s going to be hard (if not impossible) to overcome Blu-ray’s momentum. Blu-ray also continues to outsell HD DVD in software sales, largely because of the
PS3 user base. We’ll be weighing all these new developments in our next update to our Quick Guide to HD DVD vs. Blu-ray, which will go up early next week.

commentary

I cover many of Red Hat’s customer wins and case studies because Red Hat PR is good about sending these along, and even better about having an RSS feed to which I subscribe that covers these. Please do the same. I’d love to hear about how companies are adopting open source.

There are many things that don’t interest me at all as a blogger. I couldn’t care less about the newest version of your product. I just don’t. Unless you’re Apple, in which case I care because I worship you.

But for the PR people who want to find space on this blog, please send me case studies. I love hearing how customers are using software. The customer is always right, so even if I don’t personally dream about your company/client every night, if a customer does, I want to know, and I’d like to cover it.

Then it was Mount Vesuvius in the flesh with Nutsy Fagin shouting from his seat about a tangled conspiracy involving Gary Webb and the CIA and journalistic cover-ups. If you don’t recall, Webb was an investigative reporter who authored a series of 1996 pieces for the San Jose Mercury News, reporting on a CIA link to Nicaraguan drug dealers in Los Angeles. The paper later distanced itself from the articles, and Webb wound up dead from what the police said was a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

So it was that Stanford gathered Keen alongside Larry Lessig; Hal Varian, a professor-turned-chief economist at Google; Tom Rubin, who is in charge of copyright legal policy at Intel; and Paul Cappuccio, the chief legal officer at Tim Warner, to consider the question.

As if they would shed new light.

(Credit:
Charles Cooper)

Then again, this is old hat for Keen, the author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. The book’s marketing director purposely chose a title designed to antagonize the maximum number of people in Silicon Valley–and boy, did that wish come true. For a while, I was sure some locals would invite the media to witness Andrew Keen pinata parties where the assembled could take a whack just for the hell of it.

The outburst was the highlight of the day during an otherwise predictable panel discussion on the “future of professionally created content” down here at Stanford. Actually, a better promotional tagline would have been “Beat up on Andrew Keen Saturday. Come and get some.”

When the focus of the debate shifted, Lessig brought up a more provocative point: Is the golden age of newspapers, when journalists “could write the truth and not fear retaliation,” over? I’m not convinced that’s entirely the case, but the signposts point to trouble ahead. In the last several years, we’ve watched the increasingly flimsy line between church and state at many newspapers come under more pressure. Recall the Los Angeles Times’ horrid profit-sharing arrangement with the Staples Center a few years back and the editorial rebellion it triggered. Since then, a succession of LA Times edit chiefs have struggled to contain the publishing moguls’ cupidity and stupidity. I’m afraid they’ll lose that fight.

Jeff Jarvis, who was not here, has written eloquently about how mainstream newspapers can redefine themselves in the Internet era. But is there enough urgency at old institutions like the LA Times or The New York Times to order a remake as digital companies where they become more of a platform for local news? Per Jarvis: “This means that the staff must change radically as roles evolve from producing content to organizing, enabling, and educating collaborative and distributed networks.” That sounds like a sensible way to reverse a trend that very few people believe will be in the public interest. Not even the crazy guy in the front row.

Saturday’s face-off was little different. Lessig, who is fiercely smart and a professor of law at Stanford Law School, got skewered in The Cult of the Amateur, and this was payback time. He had fun pointing out mistakes in the book, which Lessig reminded the audience was “professionally produced content.” And if it was so riddled with mistakes, what does that suggest about how the traditional system works? Yes, he allowed, many blogs are “crappy” but the professional world can be just as bad as that of the amateur. It’s hard to dispute the good professor.

Keen’s book offers an acerbic take on the Internet’s impact on the larger culture–especially as it touches the wider world of media. Critics, who seized on the holes in his narrative, have dismissed the book as a transparent polemic. Well, Keen on Saturday was back in the belly of the beast. The guy’s been doing the book circuit for the last year and has learned how to give as good as he gets.
But halfway into this, I started mumbling the Rodney King line about getting along already. Why can’t so many smart people move past this stale debate already? I was sure the controversy had exhausted itself. Apparently not.

Left to right: Larry Lessig, Andrew Keen, Hal Varian, Tom Rubin, and Paul Cappuccio

PALO ALTO, Calif.–It was only a matter of time before the crazy guy in the front row blew up. He had been fidgeting in his seat all morning. All it took was for author Andrew Keen to bemoan the public’s loss if more struggling newspapers bite the dust.

Truth be told, this remains a debate primarily between the elites and for the elites. These folks are ready to talk this topic to death, though the forums often degrade into personal slugfests.

(Credit: Minnesota Independent)

Sheehan e-mailed supporters on Wednesday urging them to cancel their credit cards and hinted at political espionage. Coleman has asked federal authorities to investigate, according to the Star Tribune.

The campaign of Republican Norm Coleman, who is engaged in a fierce legal battle to keep his Senate seat from Democrat Al Franken, has warned supporters that their credit card numbers may have been exposed on the Internet.

Richards began her investigative computer work after Coleman’s campaign was accused of falsely claiming that its Web site crashed after being overwhelmed by traffic from people who were allegedly disenfranchised voters.

Supporters received an e-mail from the nonprofit Wikileaks site on Tuesday night saying the Coleman campaign had leaked donor information and that it was on the Wikileaks Web site, as well as another e-mail providing some of the data in a spreadsheet as evidence, the report says. The spreadsheet contained information for more than 4,700 donors. But Wikileaks said it has data on more than 51,600 Coleman contacts.

His campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, said the office became aware of a possible security breach of the donor database in January, however an investigation found the data had not been accessed by an unauthorized party, according to a report on Wednesday in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.

IT consultant Adria Richards said she got the site’s IP address by entering “colemanforsenate.com” into an OpenDNS cache-check tool, and then copied the IP address into a
Firefox browser to reveal the Web site directories for colemanforsenate.com, the report says. She then posted a screen capture of what she found online and wrote about the security problems on her blog.

A report in The Minnesota Independent quotes an IT professional who says she was testing the security of the campaign’s Web site in January and was easily able to access data without hacking.

This is a screenshot of the e-mail Coleman's campaign sent to supporters warning them about the data leak.

Coleman is challenging Franken’s lead of 225 votes, following a recount. The case is being heard by a special three-judge panel. Closing arguments are expected to begin Friday in the trial, which has gone on for seven weeks.

Aperture exit strategies - Apple discussion forum - A post just days before Aperture 2.0 was released. "As there seem to be some issues concerning the long-term viability of Aperture, I am looking at how to salvage my work and move to a supported professional-level application."
Some Apple commentary on raw support with Aperture 2.0 - Not a huge advance in the discussion here, but some scraps of detail from Apple execs.
Tech Tips from Chuck Westfall - No, shooting a Canon PowerShot G9 set to 6 megapixels doesn’t produce better image quality than set for 12 megapixels. Shoot raw if you want quality, he advises. Also some notes on using older lenses.
Dilbert discovers virtualization - I’m clearly not making much headway in my attempt to get "v12n" to catch on as a more convenient term.
Bruce Perens - State of Open Source Message: A New Decade For Open Source - A look back after 10 years after the drafting of the Open Source Definition by Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond: "Our first mistake: for a time, there was a conflict between Open Source and Free Software evangelism.
Canon patent for iris registration mode - Biological Copyright Metadata : Photography Bay - Copyright meets biometrics. Intriguing.
D200 “Black Frame Syndrome” Solved - Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog - "It turns out that the D200’s white balance setting can be set to a white-balance preset that has not yet been defined, and when this happens, you get the Black Frame Syndrome."
The Auction of Getty Images Appears to Be Stalled - New York Times - No bidders going above the company’s market cap. "The auction’s collapse may also reflect waning interest in established photo and video providers like Getty when many competitors offer similar material at much lower cost."
Canon EOS 40D review Cameralabs resolution results - Even 2+ years after release, the Canon 5D resolution looks better than the new 40D. Qualifier: this is just one test. Things look better in raw, so some of this is probably just sharpening.
Interesting advice on de-crufting Windows - Shipping Seven - "Re-create your profile instead of reinstalling Windows." I think I’ll try this…
Ah, memories…Dvorak’s 2003 prediction Apple would switch to Itanium - A classic Dvorak prognostication from 2003: "Prediction: Apple Computer Corp. will switch to Intel processors within the next 12 to 18 months…What will be radical is the company’s choice of processor. Apple will announce its use of the Itanium chip."
Why Marten Mickos sold MySQL to Sun - Mickos shares his thoughts about the Sun acquisition.
Mike Olson, co-founder of Sleepycat, leaves Oracle - Matt Asay - I guess he didn’t want to stick around at Oracle.

YouSendIt is a Webware 100 finalist. See all the products in its category.

I’ve found that I frequently use the large file transfer service YouSendIt to send big files, videos, scans, and pictures. And I’ve taken to recommending the service to others when I hear about a problem getting a file from one place to another. That’s rare–usually the Web services I like the most are a bit too rickety to recommend to people with real lives and jobs.

But one thing about YouSendIt has always bugged me: the need to go to the browser to upload a file for transfer. I hate browser uploaders. Fortunately, the company just released a desktop app, YouSendIt Express, that lets you drag files from your system into it, from which it will then upload the file to the transfer service. And if your connection drops, it will resume the upload when it can. It’s available for PC and
Mac.

But it’s still a great app.

The company also has a plug-in for Outlook, which makes perfect sense. Except I have yet to meet an Outlook plug-in that doesn’t somehow degrade the mail application itself. So, I haven’t tried it and I have no intention to.

I do wish YouSendIt’s pricing structure for occasional users was more reasonable. The free service is very limited, but what do you want for nothing? The problem is that the lowest-cost paid account is $9.99 a month. I’d like to see a per-use fee or a much cheaper monthly fee. For occasional use, $120 a year is just too steep.

Yeah, that’s a pretty hefty rebate to wait on, though I think Staples has a pretty good reputation in that department (you can submit the form online, and you don’t need to hassle with UPC stickers or anything like that). The bigger caveat is that the printer itself is just mediocre, according to CNET’s review and the reviews of other Staples customers. Apparently it prints slowly and jams easily. That said, a new color laser printer for under $100 is rarer than a controversy-free presidential election, so this could be a good choice if you have modest printing needs. Plus, it’s compatible with Windows,
Mac, and Linux systems.

(Credit:
Samsung)

One last note: As with most color lasers, consumables for this printer will cost you more than the printer itself. A black toner cartridge runs about $60, while the three color cartridges sell for around $45 apiece (when purchased together). That’s a toner bill of about $200–ouch!

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Remember the Samsung CLP-300 compact color laser printer from a couple months back? It was a refurbished unit for around $125. Now, Staples has the Samsung CLP-300 new for $99.98 shipped (after a $150 mail-in rebate).

The first phones to use Android are expected to arrive this summer or fall, just a few months after the first Release Candidate 1 phones arrive. Shikiar said LiMo doesn’t see itself as a competitor to Android per se, but it’s hard to see how the two organizations aren’t jockeying for space inside the same phones.

Google’s Android may get all the attention, but there’s more than one industry consortium working to unify Linux development for mobile phones.

Broader application portability will be accomplished with Release 2, expected out in early 2009, Shikiar said. The second release will also improve the multimedia capabilities of the operating system. By then, however, the Google Effect will have made its first impact on the mobile phone market.

However, that’s also part of the problem with mobile Linux. All those different implementations of Linux force application developers to tweak their programs for each different implementation; that’s a ton of work. The resulting fragmentation has limited Linux to lower-end mobile phones, with the higher-end smartphone development community largely organized around Symbian, Windows Mobile, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, and Apple’s growing
iPhone business.

Hence the LiMo foundation’s goal, which is to produce a common platform that various members can use to run mobile phones, and ensure application compatibility across different devices. Unfortunately, Release 1 falls short of that goal.

There’s no shortage of interest among the mobile-phone industry elite in using Linux on their phones. Linux provides a compelling alternative for the mobile world to commercial operating systems like Symbian or Windows Mobile since it’s cheaper and not controlled by a huge company (Nokia and Microsoft, respectively). Also, its modular nature allows handset makers and carriers to put together an implementation that makes the most sense for their customers or geography.

Android, and the Open Handset Alliance created by Google last year, have very much the same goal as LiMo: to unify Linux development for mobile phones. Google boasts a roster of many of the same companies that founded the LiMo foundation just months before Android made its debut, perhaps a hint those companies have now set their sights elsewhere for Linux mobile-phone software.

“This is a significant achievement for LiMo in that we now have a complete fully released version of the platform that our members are free to distribute,” said Andrew Shikiar, director of global marketing for the LiMo Foundation. More than 30 mobile-phone companies are members of LiMo, including heavyweights Samsung, Motorola, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, and newest member Texas Instruments.

The nonprofit LiMo Foundation plans to announce the launch of LiMo Platform Release 1 at the
CTIA show in Las Vegas Monday. Release 1 gives handset makers and carriers the basic operating system software needed to run a phone, leaving it up to them to put a crowd-pleasing user inferface and applications on top of that phone software.

Phones with Release 1, however, are already in the market, such as Motorola’s Razr 2 and Rokr E8. Others are expected to be released later this year, Shikiar said.