by Martin LaMonica
November 26, 2008 7:29 AM PST

IBM has won two deals to supply IT gear and services for utilities' smart-grid energy-efficiency programs. Ohio-based American Electric Power on Tuesday said that it has chosen IBM to be the systems integrator for its gridSmart initiative, which is designed to upgrade the distribution grid to better handle distributed power generation, storage, and efficiency programs.

Michigan gas and electric utility Consumers Energy on Tuesday said that it will work with IBM to test out advanced metering infrastructure in a pilot project slated to start early next year. In smart-grid projects, utilities upgrade the electricity distribution network with communications and data-gathering tools. By getting current information on electricity demand, operators should be able run the grid more efficiently and better spot problems.

In some smart-grid pilots, consumers can get an in-home display of their energy usage and participate in energy-efficiency programs. A household could agree to let utilities dial down appliances, such as clothes dryer, for a short time or take advantage of lower rates by running the dishwasher at off-peak times. Smart-grid technology has been available for many years, but smart-grid suppliers report that utilities are showing more willingness today to invest in these energy-efficiency programs.

For its part, IBM is investing heavily in smart-grid technology--the intersection of energy and IT--and is involved in several utility smart-grid upgrades around the world. Last week, IBM and France-based utility EDF announced a research program to study efficiency and "sustainable energy" technologies. This week, it published a video on YouTube explaining the basic concepts of a smart grid.

by Ryan Naraine
November 26th, 2008 @ 7:23 am

It’s true - I’m a PC. Searching through my 2006 emails recently reminded me it was two years ago this month when I loaded a beta of Windows Vista on my laptop. At the time we were primarily testing the NAP functionality in Vista while developing the Napera N24, but I was immediately smitten with the Vista interface and the overall experience.

In 2007 I switched to Vista full time on a new Sony Vaio. Reading Dan Lyon’s recent Forbes article A Gloomy Vista for Microsoft makes me wonder if I’ve led a charmed life. Apparently some folks are mired with problems that I’ve never seen. I’ll come right out and say it - I love Vista, and I’ve had none of the problems others complain about. Let me count the ways Vista has made a difference.

1. Speed. From day one, and even on my existing laptop, Vista has been lightning fast on startup and shutdown. Microsoft’s new TCP/IP stack is also supercharged, and overall the networking has been solid.
2. Security. Nobody can argue that Vista security is massively improved over XP. My favorite feature is Bitlocker, Microsoft’s integrated disk level encryption and key management, which erases the threat of losing confidential data via laptop theft. For someone who keeps a lot of confidential data on their laptop, Bitlocker is a no-brainer.
3. Network Access Protection. The NAP agent is available in XP SP3 now but for a while, Vista ruled supreme as the only operating system with a built in health agent.
4. The new Windows Explorer. The searching, exposed metadata and dedicated views for different media are way ahead of anything else I’ve seen. Every time I use my wife’s Macintosh running OS X 10.4, I’m reminded why I prefer Vista.

By Sylvie Barak
26 November 2008, 1:37 PM

INTEL HAS TEAMED UP with Taiwanese mobile service provider, Chunghwa Telecom, to launch a Giga-byte Technology, Atom-powered, M528 mobile Internet device (MID). The M528, which sports a Linux OS, a 4.8-inch touchscreen, QWERTY keypad and 4G byte solid state drive (SSD), will be shown off at a December 6th electronics show in Taipei before hitting shelves in Taiwan from December 22nd.

Weighing in at only 340 grams and measuring up at 152 millimeters by 80mm by 22.5mm, it is one of only a handful of devices launched so far to include an 800Mhz Intel Atom Z500 microprocessor. The MID, which purportedly spent 10 months in development, will go for $386 with a two year service plan or $585 without a contract. Despite the high price, Chunghwa is hoping people will find the promise of high-speed wireless Internet connectivity in their pockets irresistible, with the M528’s built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g wireless and 3.5G card for HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) wireless connections via Chunghwa's mobile phone network.

As well as being able to transfer files wirelessly via Bluetooth 2.0, the M528 also boasts an onboard 3MP auto-focus camera, a 300k Web cam for video chat and slots for data cards, an earphone and USB. But the M528 will not be the only fish in the Taiwanese pond, with BenQ also announcing an 800MHz Atom based MID coming soon and with Chunghwa also launching the Iphone next month.

By Kelly Fiveash
26th November 2008 16:11 GMT

Dell is offering its US corporate customers zero per cent financing to encourage them to buy more products in what has been a tumultuous year for the computer giant. The company is blaming the recessive economy for the decision, but it told The Register that – for now at least – there’s no plan to extend the financing deal to Europe.

Dell said yesterday that most large businesses and institutional customers in the US would be eligible for zero per cent financing. It’s also cherry-picked some small biz firms too. "It's really a bit more than just saving dollars on the monthly budget. It's enabling them to procure the equipment," said Dell Financial Services general manager Larry Graves, according to Reuters. "We think it just gives them more options and flexibility."

Dell said it will lower prices on some models from its product line of Latitude E-series laptops, as well as on its PowerEdge servers. The computer vendor, which in the past year or so has been realigning its business strategy by climbing into bed with the channel, said it would also offer deferred payment plans to some companies. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell saw a three per cent sales drop in its third quarter results last week, as demand from nervous biz customers has fallen in the face of a weakened economy that’s gearing up for a tough, recession-biting 2009.

It’s also been attempting to cut costs by liberally swinging the axe at its workforce, amidst the firm’s painful restructuring process at CEO Michael Dell’s helm. The company has already shed at least 8,800 jobs since 2007. Dell shares, which have lost nearly 50 per cent of their value in the past year, are currently trading at $10.8, up 3.55 per cent on Nasdaq.

By John Oates
26th November 2008 12:47 GMT

Intel says it is unable to respond to the European Commission investigation into its business practices unless the regulator gives it access to certain documents from AMD. Intel is seeking to extend the deadline it has to respond to a month after it gets its hands on documents from AMD - the complainant in the case.

Back in July Intel was handed a Statement of Objections by the Commission accusing it off giving rebates to retailers who promised not to stock computers from rival chip supplier AMD, and offering money to an Original Equipment Manufacturer to delay launching an AMD-based laptop and rebates if it switched to become an Intel-only shop. Last month Intel went to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg to accuse the Competition Commission of breaching proper procedure - which means the deadline is suspended.

According to the Official Journal of the European Union, Intel is claiming that the Commission decision contains errors of law and that the time limit for it to respond should only start once it has been given documents from AMD. Intel said the Commission investigation is "the contested decisions are manifestly illegal because they permit the Commission to continue with an investigation which is discriminatory and partial".

By Nick Farrell
26 November 2008, 10:40 AM

APPLE MESSIAH Steve Jobs does not like people breaking Apple's rules and right now he is mightily miffed at the search engine Google which seem to have broken one of his commandments which he set in stone. When Steve approved the rules of Apple's Iphone Software Development Kit he demanded developers use APIs that come from his elite team of Mac developers.

Innovation is not allowed other than from the font of all innovation, the amazing shrinking Messiah himself. However Google Mobile uses undocumented APIs in order to use the Iphone's proximity sensor to prompt a verbal search. Such software cleverness is deemed naughty in Steve's sight and the Apple press claims that it could break in the future as Apple updates its software. So far St Steve has taken no action to cast Google into outer darkness, there to gnash its teeth for standing against the mighty Steve.

But many believe it is coming. One of the problems for Steve is that too many people are writing cool code for his Iphone toy and Apple just can't keep up with them all. If it were not for the fact that it is an item of faith that Steve Jobs is omnipotent, many would think that he just missed the Google code. But that would make him fallible.

by Jason D. O'Grady
November 25th, 2008 @ 4:53 pm

In a surprising move for the consumer electronics turned retail heavyweight, Apple has internally announced that retail store employees can match prices of other authorized retailers. The key phrase here is “authorized retailers” which means that Apple isn’t going to price match some gray marketer selling Macs online or pretty much anyone that doesn’t adhere to Apple’s strict Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy, which states:

…Minimum Advertised Price (M.A.P.) Guidelines apply to reseller’s advertisement of products acquired through the Reseller BTO Apple Store. The M.A.P. price for all BTO product acquired through the Reseller BTO Apple Store is the reseller acquisition cost divided by .92. Any deviations from the Guidelines may result in a reduction in AppleFund and/or Apple Specialist Resource Fund payments.

Previously store managers had a little room to make deals on larger purchases but there has never been a formal policy on price matching. The people this will probably cheese off the most is Apple’s remaining network of independent retail Apple stores (we have a great one in Philly called Springboard Media). ifoAppleStore notes that Apple doesn’t traditionally discount its products except on Black Friday and that Last Sunday Best Buy announced US$50-$150 discounts on various Macs, while Amazon.com typically offers year-round discounts on Macintosh models.

by Stephen Shankland
November 26, 2008 4:00 AM PST

Is Google's Chrome browser mainstream? Certainly not. But I've been curious how widespread its use is, in particular because I'm curious if I have any company in my choice to set Chrome as my default browser. So I persuaded CNET's tech guys to give a window on what's going on here at CNET News.

The result surprised me: 3.6 percent of those visiting the site in October used Chrome, up from 1 percent in September, when Google launched Chrome. That's higher than I expected. It lagged Microsoft Internet Explorer, with 40.7 percent, Firefox with 37.4 percent, and Safari with 18.2 percent, but beat out Opera, with 1.2 percent in October. (Other browsers bring the total to 100 percent.) Of course, CNET News has a more adventurous and techno-savvy audience than the average Web site.

For comparison, I looked at data from Net Applications, which releases browser statistics based on the 160 million different people who visit a network of 40,000 sites using its Web analytics service. The company's data skews somewhat toward usage in North America and Europe, but it's still a more mainstream view of browser use than our site's. Net Applications gives Chrome's share at 0.74 percent, essentially tied with Opera at 0.75 percent for October.

Leading the pack is IE with 71.3 percent, followed by Firefox at 20 percent, and Safari at 6.6 percent. So it doesn't look like Chrome is crushing either of the major powers. But second-tier browser companies should certainly be paying attention, given how rapidly Chrome ascended to striking distance. Google has a strong brand and a lot of programmers, though even most folks still aren't convinced they need to switch.

By Ryan Paul
November 26, 2008 - 07:34AM CT

The IPv6 Workgroup of the Linux Foundation has announced that all major Linux distributions are now in compliance with Department of Defense certification policies, several months after the DoD began enforcing the requirements in its procurement practices.

The compliance effort was driven by a collaboration involving IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Nokia, and several other major Linux stakeholders. IPv6, which stands for Internet Protocol Version 6, boosts the size of IP addresses to 128 bits. This simplifies routing by dramatically expanding the number of available addresses. IPv6 adoption will be necessitated by the eventual exhaustion of available IPv4 addresses, but the transition has been slow and challenging.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) accelerated its own move to IPv6-enabled technology and set 2008 as the target year for completion of the process. Major software vendors have had to fulfill specific requirements and validate their products against the Defense Information System Agency's IPv6 Special Interoperability Certification in order to avoid being excluded from DoD procurements. The DoD made certification mandatory in June.

According to the Linux Foundation, the most popular enterprise Linux distributions now meet the DoD's standards. The foundation's IPv6 workgroup was led by Venkata Jagana, IBM's chief architect of linux networking. IBM was an early participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force's efforts to devise IPv6 and implemented the protocol in its own AIX UNIX operating system in 1997. They began contributing to Linux's IPv6 development efforts a few years later.

Wiseval Photophant is a free software for batch resizing, converting and renaming images or your digital photos from and to jpg, bmp, png and gif formats.

Main Features:
- 100% Free. No spyware, adware, banners etc.
- Resize, rename and convert images in batch mode
- Supports jpeg, png, gif, and bmp formats
- Variable options and settings for advanced users
- Built-in templates: iPod, iPhone, Facebook, DVD etc.
- Configurable compression / resolution ratio
- Load / save settings and image lists
- Very fast preview and image processing
- Clean, easy to use interface
- Small installation file ~ 2MB
- Supports Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista (32 and 64 bit)

Portable version also available.

What's new in v1.0.7:
Fixed the bug with renaming images.

Author: Wiseval
Date: 2008-11-26
Size: 1.48 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win9x/NT/200x/XP/Vista

Reanimator is a free of charge software for removing Trojans/Adware/Spyware and some of the rootkits.
Reanimator does not contains any adware/spyware modules.
Supported Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP/2003/VISTA.
Compatible with all known antiviral software.

Author: Greatis Software
Date: 2008-11-25
Size: 4.53 MB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

Publisher's Description:

Microsoft Web Platform Installer provides a single, free package for installing and configuring Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installerâ??s simple user interface, you can select specific components or install the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. To help you stay up-to-date with product releases, the Web Platform Installer always contains the most current versions and new additions to the Microsoft Web Platform.

Latest Changes:

* Now supporting Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
* Lets you install ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio Tools for Silverlight, and much more

Released: November 21, 2008
Publisher: Microsoft Corp.
License: Freeware
OS Support: Windows 2003/2008/Vista/XP

Publisher's Description:

cFosSpeed is a high-performance network driver for DSL modems and routers. Highlights of this program include Traffic Shaping, For DSL modems and routers, Fully compatible with conventional PPPoE drivers, Automatic router detection, Self-calibrating, Highly responsive when used with online games and Peer-to-Peer networks like eMule or Kazaa, and Freely configurable priority classes.

Released: November 25, 2008
Publisher: cFos
License: Shareware; $11.00 to buy
OS Support: Windows 2000/2003/2008/Vista/XP

by Matthew Miller
November 25th, 2008 @ 11:49 am

There has been a few rants posted over the last week or so about the statement that was made on a Microsoft Windows Mobile blog pertaining to the apparent lack of support for existing devices to support the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6 web browser. James is one person not happy about it and echoes many of the comments made on the MSDN blog post.

Brett is not happy either and made it a point to show how there are third party browsers that exceed anything Microsoft currently has with Internet Explorer Mobile and what it looks like Internet Explorer Mobile 6 may also support. Microsoft revealed Windows Mobile 6.1 and Internet Explorer Mobile 6 at CTIA in April and most of us thought we would see this latest version of the browser in WM 6.1 devices. That hasn’t happened and now it appears it will be in the recently revealed WM 6.5 update or available as a stand-alone download (highly doubtful IMHO).

I had no doubt that IE Mobile 6 would run on these latest WM 6.1 devices and frankly I am quite surprised by the statement in the MSDN blog that existing hardware will not run the browser and people will have to buy new devices to use the browser. For people that pay US$200 to US$800 for their latest and greatest Windows Mobile devices and sign long term wireless carrier contracts that is just unacceptable to me and many others. I imagine if it is possible then the good folks over at XDA Developers will get it running on existing hardware.

Then again, maybe it really isn’t possible, which is hard to believe with devices running 500 to 600 MHz processors and 250+MB of RAM and 500+MB of ROM. Now let’s take a look from Microsoft’s side in regards to providing updates on Windows Mobile devices. It is fairly easy for Apple, Nokia, RIM, and Google to provide updates to customers across the board because all of these companies have their own devices.

by Brooke Crothers
November 24, 2008 8:20 PM PST

Rumors of an iPhone-style Microsoft phone running on Nvidia silicon add heft, in part, to what Nvidia has been talking about since early this year. In the spring, Nvidia demonstrated its Tegra chip-based mobile phone prototype to me and pretty much anyone in the media who made a visit to its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.

Nvidia has made it clear that the chip platform was targeted at Windows Mobile--a point that an Nvidia representative reiterated Monday. Though the prototype phone (actually a development platform) is quite a bit thicker than a real "thin" phone that a handset provider would bring out at some point, the prototype runs on top of Windows Mobile, as it would presumably in a commercial device.

And what does Nvidia bring to the table? The master of faster graphics processors wants to apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile Internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface. After a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile Internet devices, or MIDs.

iPhone-style devices with Nvdia's Tegra APX (or Tegra 600) incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. And Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile Internet device, not just the graphics component. (This Nvidia Mobile Device page shows the Tegra 600 series and Tegra APX.)