Introducing the new Xbox Live ‘experience’

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Solid-state shift in Seagate’s future

Amid gloom, IBM sees sunny forecast

Angel investor Ron Conway is warning his start-ups to start saving up cash and reducing costs quickly. He’s not the only one who says the current economic crisis is similar and perhaps worse than the dot-com bust of 2000-2001. CNET’s Rafe Needleman, editor of Webware, stops by to talk about how or if Web 2.0 companies will be able to survive in the months ahead, and which kinds of companies are in the most danger.

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Today’s stories:

Also in Thursday’s podcast: IBM affirms a positive outlook for the year and predicts a good quarter ahead, and Digg founder Kevin Rose sits down with CNET to talk economics and what needs to change at Digg. Plus, Apple sends an invitation to a notebook event next week, and Microsoft unveils its overhaul to
Xbox Live.

It’s official: Apple to talk laptops on Oct. 14

Getting global with Digg’s Kevin Rose

Plus, a gathering of tens of thousands of people (and perhaps 70,000 for Barack Obama’s Thursday acceptance speech) generate a whopping amount of trash. Even if it’s sorted, recycling Obama-Biden signs takes energy, as does trucking in what the Journal reported to be 900 volunteers to monitor waste cans and perform the trash-separation, thereby taking them away from tasks that might be more productive.

But reality doesn’t always match expectations. Bikes aren’t permitted inside the convention’s security perimeter, so golf carts and other vehicles are used. The wooden card keys proved buggy, and some were replaced with more-reliable plastic. Fried mini-donuts were prominently on sale inside the Pepsi Center. Party VIPs and celebrities told their decidedly non-green town
cars and GMC Yukon XL mega-SUVs–rented from limo provider A Class Above Transportation–to idle, with engines and air conditioning on, in the nearby pickup area. (What self-respecting conference-goer wants to climb into a GMC Yukon when it’s a toasty 93 degrees in the shade?)

That was the claim. And it has worked to a large extent: a troika of trash containers (again, recycling, compost, and landfill) dot the convention complex, even in areas that aren’t officially part of the event. Drinking straws are made from corn and biodegradable. Room keys for hotels are made of wood. Delegates are buying carbon offsets.

(Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News) (Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News) (Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News) (Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News) (Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News) (Credit:
Declan McCullagh/CNET News)

Let us stipulate that the Democratic Party, perhaps because it was good marketing or perhaps because it was a sound principle, made an effort to promote recycling here. But whopping huge mounds of trash remain unavoidable–and the presence of idling SUVs–show that the concept remains more of a slogan than reality. (Then again, probably the only way to hold a “green” convention is to do it entirely over the Internet.)

Some of the goals include diverting 85 percent of waste that would normally go to a landfill, finding hundreds of people to sort waste into recycling-compost-landfill containers, and devising what The Wall Street Journal described as “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines that say food described thusly must not be fried and shall contain three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.

These and the other photos were taken at the Democratic convention near the Pepsi Center. When you have tens of thousands of people, huge mounds of trash are inevitable.

The labels claim that the ISP has refused to implement a filtering technology by Audible Magic that would block illegal file sharing. McIntyre argued that the content filter would erode privacy of Eircom users.

A digital rights group in Ireland condemned legal action taken by the major music labels against an Irish ISP.

“Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are intermediaries. They are not, in law, responsible for what Internet users do, any more than An Post is responsible for what individuals send in the mail,” Digital Rights Ireland chairman, TJ McIntyre, told the online publication.

Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group brought legal action against Eircom, the largest telecommmunications operator in the Republic of Ireland, according to the report by Siliconrepublic.

Lobby group Digital Rights Ireland warned that attempts by the four largest music labels to hold ISPs accountable for copyright violations committed by users threatens privacy, and Ireland’s reputation as an “Internet-friendly country,” according to a story on Siliconrepublic.com.

While Europe has taken more of a regulatory approach, in the U.S. there is a Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which proponents say relieves ISPs from responsibility for copyright violations by users.

“Phil’s actions in the past year show that he doesn’t understand retail; he’s completely mismanaged the company, and it’s time for him to go,” said Mark Wattles, principal of the investment firm, in an interview with BusinessWeek.

But what’s more important than the financial crisis at the company is its inability to compete on too many levels with Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Most notably, Circuit City is simply unable to compete at the executive level.

Let’s be honest — any company that has lost 75 percent of its stock value, has attempted a resurgence plan that failed miserably and is being pressured by major shareholders to oust its executives is nothing more than a poorly run enterprise. And as any shareholder of the company knows, the best way to solve that problem is to get rid of the anchors and find some new management that may actually know how to run a company.

But for the preservation of the company, I agree with Wattles and the other shareholders that see Circuit City for what it really is — a barely relevant electronics retailer that has yet to understand that its time is up.

And now, in the face of shareholder resentment and at wit’s end, Schoonover and the rest of his buddies at Circuit City have found it necessary to hire Goldman Sachs to get out as soon as possible and leave the sinking ship in someone else’s hands. And while that may work for them, the real question is who wants this dog?

In case you haven’t been following the Circuit City saga, the company’s stock price has lost nearly 75 percent of its value in the past 12 months and although it was hovering at around $19 per share a year ago, it’s now languishing at about $4.50 per share.

Philip Schoonover, Circuit City’s CEO, is probably one of the worst executives in the retail industry. Presiding over corporate degradation and a financial crisis of epic proportions, Schoonover fired 3,400 of the company’s most experienced employees, has spoken about increasing customer satisfaction and relocating underperforming stores, but has yet to produce any real benefits, and managed only a meek response to shareholders in December when he was forced to tell them how poorly he has done: “Our current focus is to rebuild our selling culture.”

Nice one, Phil.

Circuit City is a sinking ship. And although some say its size alone will help it stay afloat, I think that’s wishful thinking. With a floundering stock price, losses that keep getting worse and extremely poor management, there’s not much more for this company to do other than find someone who’s willing to take it off the shareholders’ hands.

Last week I wrote that Circuit City is in deep trouble and today, BusinessWeek wrote up a news story claiming the retailer may have hired Goldman Sachs to help it find a company that’s willing to take this dog and turn it around. And while I’m not sure it will have such good luck doing it, it’s about time Circuit City executives wake up and realize that something needs to be done.

Of course, I’m not the only one who believes Schoonover can’t lead Circuit City. Wattles Capital Management, a firm that currently owns about 6.5 percent of the company said Schoonover and the rest of his cronies should be removed from office as soon as possible and replaced with people who know what they’re doing.

If I had to guess, Circuity City will probably be acquired within the next three months. During that time, the executives will be nothing more than lame ducks just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Meanwhile, Circuit City will be forced to endure even greater losses on some of its 677 stores and try to figure out a way to stay afloat in an environment that has become hostile from all sides.

With a pathetic showing each quarter and no real initiatives to turn the tide, it wouldn’t surprise me if the incoming firm guts the company entirely. In fact, those 677 stores may drop significantly and the new management will finlly do something to turn the company around. And if they were smart, they would downsize a bit, reduce expenditures as quickly and efficiently as possible and put the company back in black. From there, it can worry about its stock price and go about changing the the way it does business.

But it’s for that reason that Circuit City must be sold now. The management (for once) is making the right decision in hiring Goldman Sachs and allowing someone with some actual foresight to run the company and figure out what’s best for all parties involved. Of course, the results may hurt Schoonover’s feelings.

It’s performance art, and when Marclay performs live, he’s no DJ, it’s more about manipulating turntables to make altogether new sounds–the cut-up records are the instruments. When Marclay scratches, he really scratches. Trust me on this one, you’ve never seen or heard anything like it.

Marclay’s interested in the sounds people don’t want. Every crack in the record becomes part of the rhythm, the skips, groove roar, static, speeding up, slowing down, wow and flutter are all acceptable to Marclay. He uses his records’ fragility, purposely messes with the grooves and puts adhesive tape on them. He brings the recorded music to life, making new, unheard music out of old recordings.

I play records, Christian Marclay plays with records. They’re not the same thing.

He cuts up LPs and glues together slices from different records. He’ll mix rock and big band jazz together in alternating slices. The effect can be mesmerizing.

So, will Mathias have to make good on his threat to get a VCR? Maybe. Indeed, plenty of DVD recorders now have built-in digital tuners, so they’ll work fine–but recording time will be limited to the capacity of one disc at a time (usually 6 to 8 hours maximum). Alternately, he could use his DTV tuner voucher to pick up a nearly free DTV box, and connect that to any VCR or DVD recorder. One would just need to make sure the recorder was equipped with a compatible IR blaster to change channels for timer recordings, however, that could be a tall order.

CNET reader Mathias notes:

Mathias–and plenty of others–doesn’t want to pay a monthly subscription fee, so that rules out the otherwise excellent TiVo HD. So what are the alternatives? The answer is: not much. Neither the Archos TV+ nor the forthcoming Hauppauge HD PVR even includes a tuner, relying instead on outputs from a cable or satellite box (and the Archos, at least, does charge a modest subscription fee for the programming guide after the first year, anyway).

What do you think? Are you at all interested in a subscription-free DVR? Will the EchoStar TR-50 be worth the wait? Or should folks like Mathias just bite the bullet and get a TiVo? Let us know in the comments.

To paraphrase here, it appears that Mathias gets his TV from an antenna (not cable, satellite, or fiber), and simply wants to be able to record his favorite shows with the convenience offered by a DVR with an electronic programming guide. He’s also on track by searching for one with a digital tuner, since over-the-air analog TV is scheduled to shut down in February 2009.

But there is hope on the horizon. This summer, EchoStar is scheduled to roll out the TR-50. As announced at the January Consumer Electronics Show, the EchoStar TR-50 was designed from the ground up to be a DVR for the antenna crowd, with a built-in digital tuner and the ability to record and play back full HD video. (In fact, the TR-50 looks to be a sort of antenna-only version of the Dish ViP722, which is an excellent DVR in its own right). Unfortunately, final details on the TR-50 remain vague–we still don’t know the final price or release date. In fact, there’s still no confirmation that it’ll be completely free of subscription fees. But for anyone who’s not ready to pay TiVo’s monthly fee, we think it’s at least worth waiting a few more months to see how the final details on the EchoStar TR-50 will shake out.

How about DVD recorders with hard drives? Here again, the choices are slim. We noted that this category was all but extinct in October 2007, so much so that used models were fetching huge premiums. The only current model we found at the time was the Philips DVDR3575H–but that was pretty underwhelming once we got to review it. For 2008, Philips is keeping what looks like a nearly identical model, the DVDR3576H, in its lineup. But that’s the only hard-drive enabled DVD recorder we see on the horizon for 2008. (Things are different in Japan, where Blu-ray recorders with hard drives, while expensive, at least appear to be widely available. Likewise, DVD recorders with hard drives still seem to be widely available in Canada and the U.K.)

Just a quick note/observation of mine: I can’t find any DVR out there that works without a subscription and has a tuner built in for analog and digital over-the-air television signals. This strikes me as absolutely incredible. I am actually considering buying a VCR, assuming I can find one with a digital tuner. What’s going on here?

The only thing missing from the IDF small-device love-fest? Microsoft. Oh, and Dell, whose executives said that Intel’s smoking crack if it thinks the little guys will be as popular as laptops. (Fine, what they really said was that mobile Internet devices will represent a much smaller piece of the market than Intel projects.)

For visual learners, we’ve got a photo gallery of mobile Internet devices from the show, and Intel has posted a video of one of these bad boys being cracked open. For the more technical types, we’ve also got the specifications on all five of the Atom processors that are part of the launch. For the gadget freaks, we’ve got more information on the Lenovo IdeaPad U8.

Have a great weekend!

(Credit:
Intel)

Other news from the show: an impossibly tiny motherboard, preproduction solid-state drives, wireless display connections, and a new antitheft technology for laptops.

But hey, this week wasn’t all about Intel. Toshiba unleashed a boatload of Satellites decked out in pinstripes; CTL announced the official availability of the 2go PC (based on Intel’s Classmate PC design); and rumors flew that Best Buy would soon be selling a Windows XP version of the Eee PC. We were also intrigued by both a bag that cools your laptop without a fan and a project that uses your laptop’s built-in accelerometer to gather data on seismic activity.

Finally, following in the esteemed footsteps of the MacBook Air, a Vista-based laptop fell to hackers in the PWN2OWN contest at CanSecWest. By the end of the conference, only a Sony VAIO laptop running Ubuntu remained unscathed. Which begs the question: Is open source that secure, or is it just that no one wanted the VAIO?

Mozilla Messaging also has named a three-person board of directors: Ascher; Chris Beard, general manager of Mozilla Labs; and Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, the open-source database company Sun Microsystems has just agreed to acquire for about $1 billion. More are likely to be added later as the organization grows, Ascher said.

Another fruitful avenue for experimentation is spam filtering and antiphishing security, he added. Firefox has a blacklist security feature that attempts to protect people from phishing e-mails that try to trick recipients into entering passwords or other sensitive information into bogus Web sites. “It’s possible to leverage technology in Firefox 3 to detect phishing and incorporate it into Thunderbird,” Ascher said.

Although many of those sites don’t open up their internal e-mail systems, at least at present, tightly integrating over the Web could sidestep that barrier. “Because we’re built on the same platform as Firefox, we can use Web sites quite easily,” Ascher said.

Messaging beyond e-mail
Mozilla Messaging isn’t just about e-mail. The new name reflects some of the subsidiary’s ambitions.

A new Mozilla Foundation effort to improve its Thunderbird open-source e-mail software now has an official name–and its first public goals.

“There’s a lot of engineering work that may not show its face in 3.0 but that will make it possible for other people to build extensions that plug into Thunderbird 3,” Ascher said.

Thunderbird 3.0 is due to ship by the end of the year with a more comprehensive search feature and official integration of the Lightning calendar add-on, said David Ascher, chief executive of the newly named Mozilla Messaging subsidiary. The first alpha release will come sooner, though, for those who want to test the software.

Revenue, in fact, isn’t even on the current worry list.

“What we’re trying to do with Thunderbird 3 is make a better, more integrated search experience–search that spans e-mail, calendar, address books (and) maybe someday IM conversations,” he said.

Adding a third Mozilla group can be confusing, so let me spell out the distinctions for those of you who haven’t scrutinized every development in the last 10 years since Netscape and its acquirer, AOL, spun off the Mozilla project in 1998. The Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit group, is in charge overall; for-profit subsidiaries Mozilla Corp. and Mozilla Messaging run the Web browser and e-mail projects, respectively.

Integrating search has proved lucrative: Google paid Mozilla $66.8 million in 2006 for making Google the default home page and search-box option. But adding that sort of search to e-mail isn’t on the Thunderbird to-do list.

“I’m expecting we’ll have some public releases probably within three months,” Ascher said.

For instant messaging software, Ascher is looking at XMPP, the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol used by Jabber and Google Talk. “That kind of technology might make its way into Thunderbird someday,” he said.

Although Mozilla Messaging’s priority is to produce good software, not specifically to dethrone Microsoft’s dominant Outlook software, the new calendar ability makes Thunderbird a more viable competitor, particularly in corporate environments.

Improving search–but not with ads
Nearer-term priorities, though, are improving Thunderbird 2.0’s search, adding calendar abilities, and making Thunderbird easier to use, Ascher said.

Thunderbird already can handle RSS feeds and newsgroups, but ultimately, Ascher wants Mozilla Messaging’s software to work with instant messaging, mobile phone text messaging, and Web sites such as Facebook or Flickr that have their own e-mail systems.

The organization has only five or six employees, he said, but others contribute, too, including Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox engineers, Sun’s employees working full-time on Lightning, and Qualcomm programmers moving their Eudora software to a Thunderbird base. “You quickly get to dozens of developers and hundreds of testers,” he said.

Mozilla is best known for its success with the
Firefox browser, which has dented Microsoft Internet Explorer’s dominance and sparked programmers to build a rich selection of extensions. Now the group is trying to apply the formula to e-mail software. Even though many rely on Web-based services for the chore, e-mail software is still widely used, and Thunderbird could open another major beachhead for open-source software in mainstream computing.

“I’m deferring the revenue model issues for a while,” Ascher said. The first priority will be to produce good software. “The model used for Firefox was not to generate something that would generate revenue, it was to create the best browser possible. I’m following that recipe again.”

Ascher hopes the new Thunderbird will begin paving the way for such possibilities, in part by enabling a wide range of experimentation.

When a researcher wants to place a substance inside a cell, molecular cargo is then attached to the gold surface with the help of “linker” molecules. When placed in a cell’s cytoplasm or nucleus, the bonds with the linker molecules break, freeing the cargo.

This is truly amazing. What is more amazing, however, is the fact that Apple is able to convince people that its iPod Nano is so “tiny.”

(Credit:
mtandao-afrika.net)

Other than delivery, according to Yu, the nanoneedles can also be used as electrochemical probes and as optical biosensors to study cellular environments, stimulate certain types of biological sequences, and examine the effect of nanoparticles on cellular physiology.

The nanoneedle is designed to penetrate the membrane of a living cell for the targeted delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or the nucleus. In addition, it can be used as an electrochemical probe and as an optical biosensor.

According to Min-Feng Yu, a professor of mechanical science and engineering and a researcher at the Center for Nanoscale Chemical-Electrical-Mechanical Manufacturing Systems, nanoneedle-based delivery is a powerful new tool for studying biological processes and biophysical properties at the molecular level inside living cells.

Structure of a cell.

I just can’t wrap my head around this development–not because it’s so big, but because it’s so tiny.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a “nanoneedle” with a diameter of approximately 50 nanometers–about half the size of previously reported nanoneedles.

The nanoneedle was created with a rigid, but resilient, boron-nitride nanotube. The nanotube is then attached to one end of a glass pipette for easy handling. It is coated with a thin layer of gold.

This is because it helps deliver, detect, and track individual fluorescent quantum dots in a cell’s cytoplasm and nucleus. The quantum dots can then be used to study the molecular mechanics and physical properties of cells.

The DVD player
Napster
TiVo
iPod
YouTube
Realistic CG characters
Digital video cameras for consumers
Flat panel TVs
Satellite radio stations
Stadium multiplex seating

(Credit:
Kent German/CNET Networks)

Though it started out as a good read the last article forced me to put down the magazine in disgust–I even made it past Die Hard earning ninth place in the top 100 best films from 1983 to 2008. In the list of “The 25 gadgets and innovations with the biggest effect on pop culture since 1983″ I was aghast to find the cell phone nowhere on the list. How could a gadget that revolutionized Hollywood business deals, spawned a celebrity accessory culture and served as the main plot device in such cinematic achievements as Cellular get beaten out by the likes of the Amazon Kindle and stadium multiplex seating? To me, it’s completely unfathomable. Of course, the iPod and TiVo landed in the top five (how could TiVo not make it?) but satellite radio hardly deserves its ninth-place ranking. Here’s the tech that made the top ten.

The
iPod’s 2001 introduction also earned top honors in a readers’ poll on the top pop culture moment of the last 25 years. It managed to knock out Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, Kurt Cobain’s suicide and Ellen DeGeneres’ “Coming Out” episode. Both Cobain and Jackson made it to the semifinals before a “late surge by Apple fans edged them out.” Never underestimate the power of fanboys.

It’s always a good day at our house when the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly arrives in the mailbox. And when last week’s summer double issue arrived, an already good day was made even better. I love top 10 lists, but Entertainment Weekly managed to maximize my pleasure with an entire issue dedicated to “Celebrating the new classics: The 1,000 best movies, TV shows, albums, books, and more of the past 25 years.”

So what do you think? Do you agree that the cell phone was robbed of its deserved place on the list? And tell me about any other tech that you think Entertainment Weekly overlooked.