Plugged In
Stay plugged in to technology news. Cox staffers across the country and around the globe bring you breaking tech news and other high-tech tidbits and explain what it all means to you and your community -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Only with "Plugged In."RSS feed
What's on this page →
All the entries posted in February.
Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F
Recent entries
Home > Plugged In > Archives > 2008 > February
February 2008
Video site Veoh.com making its mark
Veoh.com has become the top independent U.S. video site on the Internet, according to Nielsen Online.
That’s a surprise since YouTube is out there and we’re all receiving funny or oddball links to it everyday from friends.
The difference is YouTube is an amalgamation of amateur video, hence the hilarity, but Veoh offers TV shows as well. Another distinction is its download feature, USA Today says.
Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner has invested in Veoh so somebody thinks he can make money off of it.
Still, the site was poo pooed by somebody with the screen name, Kingjill, on the blog Crunchbase, for having unstable software downloads that take too long.
Besides, YouTube is still no slouch. Back in December some of us were sent links to a YouTube video called Straight No Chaser - 12 Days, where an a cappella group blends several Christmas songs together in a funny and creative way.
After the video gained so much attention virally on the Internet, an obscure e-tailing site, A-cappella.com, was deluged with requests for the group’s DVD. Normally handling about 60 orders a day, the site sold 5,300 copies of the Straight No Chaser DVD, InternetRetailer.com said. That wouldn’t have happened without YouTube.
Dell profit, revenue miss Wall Street expectations
Dell Inc. reported lower-expected revenue growth in the fourth quarter, and its profit dropped 6 percent from the same period last year as the company continued its restructuring and closed two recent acquisitions.
Dell’s revenue was $16 billion in the quarter, up 10 percent from last year. It reported net income of $679 million, or 31 cents a share, down from $726 million, or 32 cents a share last year.
Excluding several one-time charges and gains, Dell’s earnings would have been 34 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson First Call expected an average of 36 cents a share on revenue of $16.2 billion.
Dell also said it has laid off 3,200 employees worldwide over the last eight months, part of an ongoing plan to reduce its global workforce by 10 percent. The company did not say whether it planned to reach the 10-percent target, and a spokesman declined to say how many of the layoffs have occurred in Central Texas.
Dell employed 88,200 people as of Feb. 1, when its fiscal year ended. That was down about 800 jobs from the same time last year. Although Dell has cut jobs, it also has added some workers through buying other companies.
The company generated $1.2 billion in cash from operations in the fourth quarter, but its total cash and short-term investments dropped to $9.5 billion from $14.5 billion at the end of the third quarter. Dell said it used about $4 billion of its cash balance to buy back stock during the quarter.
For the full fiscal year, Dell reported revenue of $61.1 billion, up 6 percent from the year before. Profit was $2.9 billion, or $1.32 per share, up 14 percent from $2.6 billion, or $1.14, the prior year.
Google’s Going Healthy
At a medical industry conference in Orlando, Google Inc. is providing new details today about its plans to let consumers store and access their medical records online and share them with other medical providers when they move or change doctors.
Google Health is designed to let users get their X-rays or medical reports through a secure Web site. They can check what medicines they’ve taken — and how much they paid for them — easily search for information on diseases or other health problems and send their records to new health care providers with a click of the mouse.
The Internet giant plans to work with a wide variety of health industry companies, from local hospitals and research centers to retailers and pharmacies like Wal-Mart and and Long’s Drugs.
Google officials say the new Google Health site will be safe and secure and that their personal information won’t be shared. And if a user has concerns about the privacy of their records, Google points out, they can always just go online and delete them.
Try doing that with the records at your doctor’s office.
Congress looks at subsidized mobile-phone deals
Congressman Ed Markey, the Democratic chairman of the committee that deals with the Internet and telecommunications, has the right idea.
He’s floating a bill that would require wireless carriers to offer an option to customers to buy an unsubsidized handset without a service contract, CNET says.
The proposal also would make carriers disclose more detailed information about their coverage area and simpler explanations of their rate plans.
Good luck, Ed. I’m pulling for you.
If he’s successful, the company that stands to lose the most is AT&T. It requires a 2-year service agreement with the purchase of a new Apple iPhone. Some say the subsidy on the price of the phone is $400.
That might be worth it for some people. But I’ll bet there are others who hate signing a service agreement. I think it’s time to dump them. The consumer loses out because it delays competition until the contract runs out. These carriers are established now. They don’t need these locked-in deals anymore.
FCC chairman taking a closer look at Comcast
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is a little irritated at Comcast Cable over its manipulation of broadband downloads, he told the Boston Herald.
There was a hearing about it this week, but this all started last fall when the Associated Press tried to download a copy of the King James Bible and found that Comcast was blocking it.
The company said it found that managing file-sharing like the one the AP was trying was the most effective way to stop bottlenecks in the pipeline since it accounted for 50 to 90 percent of all bandwidth use.
But I saw an interesting take on this problem in WebProNews which argues that cable broadband is the next decade’s dial-up, because of its limited capacity.
How’s your Internet speed if you access the Web through Comcast?
Voicemail conversion to text coming to Blackberry
The Blackberry keeps evolving as competition keeps overtaking it.
There’s the iPhone, of course, and Verizon’s smartphone SMT5800 with the hidden Qwerty keyboard that slides out for messaging and the Internet.
And, there have been Centro sightings at AT&T, according to Engadget. It’s white, with the typical Treo keyboard except its number keys for dialing are in flourescent green. Very cool at $99.
Getting back to the Blackberry. SpinVox is offering a plug-in that will convert voicemails to text messages on the Blackberry. It is said to have 97 percent accuracy.
It’s just another example of life getting easier — and fuller — on your mobile phone.
Permalink | |
Dell debuts new gaming PC
Dell Inc. started taking special orders for its new XPS 630 gaming desktop today and will make the PC available to all customers tomorrow.
The XPS 630 is the latest update to Dell’s line of mid-tier gaming desktops. With the new PC, Dell hopes to reach a growing number of customers who occasionally enjoy gaming but don’t need a souped-up machine.
“Not everyone wants a $4,000 or $5,000 gaming rig,” spokeswoman Anne Camden said from London, where she was attending an event to launch the new PC.
While the XPS 630 doesn’t provide the high-end juice of the company’s more-expensive XPS 700 series, it can run some complex games and provides plenty of power to handle household computing chores.
The new model will start at $1,249. Customers who signed up for a pre-launch discount today can order a specially configured system with a second graphics card and an extra year’s warranty for $1,299, a discount of $479.
Permalink | |
Deathmatch: Hawks vs. Robot Dragonflies
We’ve all heard about Man vs. Machine, but Bird vs. Robotic Dragonfly?
In another one for the Unintended Consequences file, some hungry feathered friends have reportedly been mistaking WowWee’s remote controlled FlyTech Dragonfly for lunch.
WowWee says its customer service department has received 45 calls since Christmas of “hawks and other birds of prey swooping down and snatching consumers’ FlyTech Dragonfly out of the air.”
WowWee started investigating after seeing an article in Long Island’s Manhasset Press written by fifth-grader Danny McGorry.
Danny reports:
I was only five feet away from it when a hawk swooped down and took the Dragonfly right out of the air! This happened too quickly for me to react. My mouth dropped open; I stood there saying to myself over and over, “That did not just happen!” I could see the light in the Dragonfly’s eyes fading away. I ran inside yelling “It took it! It took it!” I calmed down and informed mom and dad … My dad spotted (the hawk) in the neighbor’s tree … I saw the hawk tear off my toy’s plastic wings and its Styrofoam body was ripped up and fell to the ground. … The next week after the “attack” I got a new Dragonfly. It’s better than ever. I saw the hawk again, watching from high in a tree, but the hawk must have disliked its Dragonfly meal.
WowWee is now looking for video of the “phenomenon,” so bird and flying toy watchers should keep those cameras handy.
Amy Weltman, WowWee’s vice president for marketing, said she doubted hawk attacks were covered under the Dragonfly’s warranty, but that anyone who catches the carnage on video will get a free replacement.
Permalink | |
Now on Xbox: Make your own game
Think you can build a better Halo?
If you’re an Xbox360 LIVE player, now you can try.
At a big game developers conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft Corp. announced it will start letting Xbox LIVE users develop and share their own games with other members over the Internet. Game developer wanna-bes can build their own games using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 2.0.
Already, Microsoft is making a few user-generated games available over Xbox LIVE. Among them: “JellyCar,” where users drive a squishy car through squishy worlds; “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai,” an action game and “RocketBall” a high-powered animated dodgeball game.
Read Microsoft’s announcement here.
Permalink | |
Buyers mad at eBay, just like sellers
Changes to eBay’s commission on sales and a feedback system that rates buyers and sellers go into effect today, and many who use the site are boycotting.
I wrote a story you can read on PalmBeachPost.com about a couple of users who complained that the changes will hurt sellers who are heavy users of eBay.
But I found a Web discussion where buyers are also mad about the changes. Here’s why: When a person gives a “feedback” rating, he accumulates points as a heavy eBay buyer. Those points, which add up over the years, telegraph to sellers that this buyer can be counted on to pay up because of his longevity on the site.
Now those points will only be counted for the current year, an unidentified buyer told ecommerce-guide.com. All buyers will look the same.
The boycott is supposed to last through Tuesday. In the meantime, there are plenty of alternatives. Here are two: cozybug.com/ and blackwellsliveauction.com/. The latter is run by a local guy in North Palm Beach, and it’s animated.
Microsoft’s Gates talks to UT students about jobs, Yahoo
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates exhorted University of Texas students to pursue technology careers today and also criticized federal policies that make it hard for top foreign students to get U.S. jobs.
“The availability of technical talent is Microsoft’s top concern,” Gates said. “We want to recruit the brightest students, but the number of people going into the field has gone down a lot.”
Hiring international students can be a problem because the special visa program for technical workers has been caught up in the political turmoil surrounding immigration reform, Gates said in his first visit to UT.
“In all the top computer science departments, the majority of the students are foreign born and these people, with the way the visa thing works, they are all told to go back and create jobs in other countries now that we have given you this great education. The irony of the situation is just unbelievable.”
Gates is making a tour of top universities as he prepares to wind down his official role at Microsoft to spend more time on philanthropy.
Only students and faculty in UT’s computer sciences and computer and electrical engineering departments were admitted to the Gates speech. And those students got an extra treat - he showed his spoof video about his last day at Microsoft, which he also famously presented at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
Toshiba the loser in HD-DVD/Blu-ray War
The war is finally over, the HD-DVD/Blu-ray War, that is.
You had to know that Toshiba was toast after Wal-mart followed Best Buy and Netflix last Friday in dumping its HD-DVD format for Sony’s Blu-ray.
Blu-ray seemed to be getting not only big-store backing but also consumers as well, as a majority of buyers had shifted away from HD-DVD in recent weeks, perhaps sensing the end of the war.
Each high-def video format had its own set of movie studios backing it. But in the end, losing Wal-mart had to be the dealth blow.
I feel sorry for the HD-DVD owners. In the 1980s, my first videocassette recorder was Betamax. I loved that thing, and to tell you the truth, I still think its smaller cassettes were better than VHS.
I had both recorders attached to my TV for a year or two. But in the end, the Betamax landed in the junk pile.
Permalink | |
Web site looks for cheapest gas
Gas prices jumped over the weekend, and my wife and I noticed too late.
By Saturday afternoon, when we started driving around to find the cheapest gas available, the price had jumped north of $3.20 a gallon, probably more in Boca.
We drove for 30 minutes and my gas gauge kept edging toward the empty side.
Since then, my wife found a web page on Microsoft Network that shows you the cheapest gas in the area, and I’m passing it on so you won’t make the same mistake I did.
You plug your zip code into a window, click on search, and it brings up a list of stations with the price at those stations and a map of how to get there.
Just a way to save on gas while you’re looking for cheap gas.
Valence delivers an extra jolt for a converted Prius
Valence Technology Inc. said Tuesday it is providing the batteries for an add-on pack that’s used to convert a Toyota Prius into a more fuel-efficient, plug-in hybrid vehicle.
The Austin rechargeable battery company said it already has supplied OEMtek with 300 of its battery modules, which are installed over the tire in a Prius’ trunk. Valence said it plans to ship an additional 600 modules by the end of the month.
OEMtek’s BREEZ system can boost the Prius performance to as much as 90 miles per gallon in highway use and 150 mpg in city use, the companies said in a release. OEMtek, a Silicon Valley firm, will install about 40 BREEZ systems in March and ramp up to 100 a month by the end of the year.
For now, the systems will be available only in California.
Earlier this month, Valence announced a deal to supply battery systems for Smith Electric Vehicles, one of the largest manufacturers of electric vehicles. The Smith and OEMtek deals are the first significant production agreements the company has announced in at least two years, during which it fixed some problems in its manufacturing process.
With some long-term testing programs wrapping up, these new production deals could boost revenue for Valence, which has streamlined itself but still hasn’t reported a profit since it was founded in 1989.
Permalink | |
Digital TV is coming whether you’re ready or not
You still have a year to apply for a $40 coupon from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration for a discount on a digital TV converter box.
The deadline is Feb. 17, 2009, the day that broadcast stations pull the plug on analog signals and switch to digital.
If you have satellite- or cable-TV, the transition to digital won’t affect you because those services already convert a digital signal back to analog for older sets.
My “how to” story on The Post’s web site will tell you just about everything you’ll need to know.
But one reader who goes by the handle “Tmaners” asked what residents should do if they have cable and satellite TV and a hurricane like Wilma plows through the area and knocks out service.
My advice: Go ahead a get a $40 discount coupon from the NTIA as well as rabbit ears. Store them with hurricane supplies for that terribly windy and rainy day when the next storm hits.
Yahoo! and News Corp. start to dance
Looks like Yahoo! has found another suitor. Maybe. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corps. is said to be in talks with the second-place search engine, several news sites, including Siliconvalley.com, said.
The deal would give News Corp. a 20-percent-or-so stake in Yahoo, and Yahoo would get Murdoch’s MySpace social-networking site and other Internet properties.
This is interesting since Google, Yahoo’s nemesis, has a $900 million deal to provide advertising to MySpace until mid-2010.
One blog at Wired.com called the whole idea of Yahoo and News Corp. joining forces “lame.” It won’t help Yahoo battle Google over Web search. Partnering with Microsoft would. But Murdoch’s proposal would keep Yahoo independent, sort of, and that’s what Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang wants.
There may still be other offers out there — possibly from buyout funds. Stay tuned.
Permalink | |
Dell adds data-storage services
Dell Inc. today announced a new set of services designed to help commercial customers evaluate and select the right storage systems for their growing troves of data.
The three new services are aimed at helping businesses and other organizations assess their current systems, map out how much and what kind of storage they’ll need going forward, then suggest the best designs to accomplish that. Dell said the services can be delivered in a matter of days, rather than weeks with competing approaches.
The services will be available through Dell or its authorized partners.
Dell has expanded its services portfolio in recent years, adding more consulting types of services to the break/fix and other options it had kept tied closely to the PC itself. However, the company’s services have remained focused the types of hardware it sells and how it can simplify those increasingly complex technology systems.
Permalink | |
Crackberry Nation goes on the blink
There’s outrage in the blogosphere today after the collective CrackBerry Nation of 12 million users freaked out when their devices went on the fritz Monday afternoon.
Research in Motion, the company that makes BlackBerries, said the outage lasted only three hours from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time. But people addicted to the BlackBerry’s connectivity are ready to blow a gasket when their service is zapped.
The last time a large-scale network failure happened was last April. Each time, people threaten to dump their handhelds. But more many it would be like giving up cigarettes. Here’s David Spade in total denial about his BlackBerry habit:
I liked the reaction on Redeyechicago.com which said: Hey my iPhone on the Edge Network was running just fine, a nice dig at the BlackBerry and a boost for the iPhone’s often disparaged data network.
There’s another answer out there. Can you say Treo?
Permalink | |
Starbucks switches to AT&T for wireless service at stores
Starbucks Inc., which has sold wireless Internet access at its coffee shops for years, is shifting to AT&T Inc. as its broadband network provider, the companies announced today.
The move is a significant win for AT&T, which will replace T-Mobile at more than 7,000 company-owned coffee shops in the U.S.
It’s also a win for Wayport Inc., which manages AT&T’s WiFi network traffic from its operations center in Southeast Austin.
Starbucks will offer two hours of free Internet access every day to customers, who can pay $3.99 for additional two-hour segments or pay a monthly fee of about $19.99. AT&T’s existing broadband customers can get unlimited free Internet access time at Starbucks under the new deal.
Permalink | |
Yahoo! board nixes Microsoft offer
Yahoo! gave Microsoft the old cold shoulder today.
In rejecting an offer that was 62 percent higher than Yahoo’s stock price before the bid, Yahoo head and cofounder Jerry Yang is saying he can do better.
Can he? Or is Yang just having separation anxiety?
Other reports have Yahoo looking at Time-Warner’s AOL unit or Google as possible partners. But wouldn’t those pose problems of their own? AOL has faltered for several years, trying to find a niche, and Google would most certainly face regulatory hurdles.
The fact is none of these are perfect, and Microsoft’s share price has suffered since making the bid more than a week ago.
A New York Times commentary criticized the strategy as targeting what was the last big thing, Internet search, rather than going after the next big thing, whatever that is. It’s a sad way to grow a company and doesn’t really take a Silicon-Valley chance on innovation.
Permalink | |
Forgot your sign-on name? No problem (someday)
It’s a bane of anyone who uses the Internet: Remembering different sign-on, passwords and registration information for Web sites you use regularly.
Soon, you may not have to.
Some of the Internet’s biggest players - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM and VeriSign - are working on a new “single sign-on” system that would take some of the hassle out of surfing the Web.
The five companies on Thursday became the first corporate board members of the OpenID Foundation, which is behind an industry-wide initiative aimed letting Web surfers use a single sign-on across the entire Internet.
OpenID has been around for a while, but the addition of the Internet heavyweights is huge boost to the efforts. See the OpenID site here.
Don’t expect to be able to use a single sign-on at the big sites anytime soon. OpenID Foundation Chairman Scott Kveton acknowledges it may take months - or longer -before the system has widespread deployment.
But a good idea, no?
Permalink | |
Order pizza online and name it yourself
The big three pizza places — Dominos, Pizza Hut and Papa John’s — have moved into web- and mobile-web ordering.
But Domino’s is doing something new on its Web site. Under a promotion called the BFD Builder, a customer can order a pie using a list of ingredients on the left-hand side of the page.
Simple enough for a $10.99 flat rate.
Then you can name the pizza. The site will then archive it and put a photo of it next to its freshly-baked moniker and the ingredients you chose.
So far, the most popular is the Ciao Bella, with hand-tossed crust, black olives, cheese, green peppers, ham, Italian sausage and provolone. It has 83,684 orders posted.
There’s something like 12,000 pizzas listed. The names can get pretty creative (does that mean that pizza makes you smart?) There’s the Time for Lent Pizza, with no meat of course, and the Simply Piggy with Cheese, with bacon AND ham.
Mine would have to be the Keeping the Peace pizza — cheese, onions, Italian sausage and provolone across a thin-crust pie. But then I’d add mushrooms on one half for me and ham on the other half for my wife, Gretchen, who hates the sight of the squishy fungal topping.
Even that might backfire. It might turn out to be the Eat Your Half Someplace Else pizza!
National Instruments buys Danish company
National Instruments Corp. said today it has acquired a small Danish firm that develops systems used to test products ranging from microchips to hearing aids.
National Instruments said it purchased all the outstanding shares of microLEX Systems A/S to help bolster its lineup of audio and video test products.
The companies did not release terms of the transaction. Because microLEX is a small operation with 19 employees, the acquisition will have little impact on National Instruments’ earnings this year, CFO Alex Davern said in a press release.
Last week on a conference call with analysts, Davern said Austin-based National Instruments would consider more acquisitions because the valuations on companies “might be more realistic in 2008.” In a press release Thursday, he said the company would continue to look for acquisition opportunities.
Permalink | |
Hanna Montana, the Movie a big seller online
Bless the Hanna Montana money machine.
The teenage starlet who has every middle-schooler ga-ga over her show and her concerts is raking in a fortune for Disney. But she’s also doing her part for a small Boca Raton company, Hollywood Media Corp.
Hollywood Media is part owner of the Movietickets.com web site, and last weekend when the 3D blockbuster, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, the ticket site sold $8 million in advance sales.
The online sales represent about 28 percent of the concert movie’s opening-weekend box office total.
The movie ranks 17th on movietickets.com’s best-selling list. With this kid’s popularity (link), she might unseat Star Wars, Episode 3, the Revenge of Sith, for number 1 all time?
Here’s a concert video of Hannah/Miley from YouTube:
Microsoft: Google’s too big. Google: Microsoft’s too big
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Speaking to Wall Street analysts on Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his surprise $45 billion bid to buy Yahoo would only be good for competition, given Google’s dominance of the search engine business.
“We think this enhances competition,” Ballmer said in New York, according to the Associated Press.”Anything else would be less good from that perspective.”
Wait a minute. Microsoft. Isn’t that the tech industry’s 8-million pound gorilla that has become a poster company for anti-trust problems in recent years?
Exactly, says Google in its only public response so far to Microsoft’s proposed takeover. In Google’s official company blog, chief legal officer David Drummond went so far as to suggest that Microsoft could wreck the whole premise of the Internet if the deal goes through. Google, Drummond goes on to say, is willing to help Yahoo fight off Microsoft any way it can.
“Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?” Drummond wrote over the weekend “While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.”
At Yahoo, meanwhile, CEO Jerry Yang says he’s not turning anybody away just yet. In a note to employees, published by the San Jose Mercury News, Yang said merging with Microsoft is only “one of many options that we’re evaluating” to make things better at the pioneering but struggling Internet company.
Stay tuned on this one.
Permalink | |
Dell and EqualLogic get down to business
Dell Inc. launched its first EqualLogic product family today, less than a week after it closed its acquisition of the small New Hampshire company.
The Round Rock, Texas, computer maker announced the Dell EqualLogic PS 5000 series, data-storage systems designed to be easy to install, to manage and to expand as needed. The products are designed to fit between Dell’s entry-level storage products and the high-end storage systems it sells in a partnership with EMC Corp.
Dell recently bought EqualLogic for $1.4 billion, its biggest acquisition and one that landed the computer maker a technology that fits several growing trends in business computing.
While companies’ data-storage needs are soaring, technology managers are seeing their budgets shrink or remain flat in a tightening economy. The budget constraints have driven companies to get more out of their existing systems, using technologies such as virtualization, which essentially lets them make several virtual machines out of one server or storage device.
EqualLogic’s data-storage systems employ virtualization, as well as iSCSI connection technology that’s one of the fastest-growing segments of the data-storage market.