by Stephen Shankland
August 4, 2008 12:21 PM PDT

Street View, the driver's-eye view on Google Maps, made its debut in the United States, but it's now available in Australia and Japan, too. The Street View service has raised privacy hackles in some quarters, but it's helped me navigate in areas I've never visited: What does the house I'm visiting look like?

Or the street corner where I'm supposed to get off the bus? Or where exactly is that big-box retailer? Google also is extending Street View to Europe, and in the process is gathering data that will let it create 3D models as well. To alleviate privacy concerns, Google blurs faces in Street View.

Update 3:30 p.m. PDT: The Google Lat-Long blog said the Japan imagery covers Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, and other cities in Japan, while Australia gets Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, and others.
Extra bonus: There's also a Street View Easter egg that Google apparently tucked into the service--a photo of what appears to be a gaggle of Street-View-loving Googlers.

By Joel Hruska
August 04, 2008 - 07:44PM CT

AMD's plan to integrate a CPU and GPU on a single chip, codenamed Fusion, has been a hot topic since the CPU manufacturer first announced it planned to purchase ATI. AMD hasn't had much to say about Fusion lately, beyond confirming that the project exists and is still in development, but new rumors have surfaced over what form Fusion might take when it surfaces in 2009.

Citing "industry sources," DailyTech predicts that Fusion will arrive on a 40nm CPU process, courtesy of TSMC. The odd process size of 40nm is referred to as a half-node, and it represents an intermediate point between two process generations. TSMC has used half-node production for years as a way to smooth its own production cycle, including 55nm, 80nm, and 150nm processes.

TSMC intends to begin its 32nm transition in Q4 of 2009, though the lag time between transition and production is often at least a year. AMD, for example, began 45nm wafer starts this past January, but won't launch 45nm processors in volume until Q1 2009. AMD's predicted use of TSMC as a foundry is something we've discussed before, and it might be the first concrete demonstration of the company's asset lite asset smart strategy in action.

AMD has traditionally produced the vast majority of its chips in-house, but a combination of production constraints and process technology could make TSMC an enticing partner. The first Fusion processors are expected to be a combination of dual-core Phenom and RV800 technology, and packing satisfactory performance into a single die is a challenge that has undoubtedly kept AMD's engineers hopping.

AkelPad - is an open source editor for plain text. It is designed to be a small and fast.

Features

Single window mode (SDI), multi window mode (MDI);
Editing of files, which size is more than 64K (generally speaking, size isn't theoretically limited);
Full support of Unicode strings on Unicode systems (NT/2000/XP/2003);
Support of Unicode codepages (UTF-16 little endian, UTF-16 big endian, UTF-8);
Support of any code page installed in the system;
Support of DOS/Windows and Unix newline formats;
Preview file open;
Correct pseudographics displaying;
Editing of files with "Read Only" attribute;
Notice when trying to open binary file;
Multi-level undo;
Search/replace text strings, escape-sequences and also search/replace by hexadecimal code;
Remember file codepage;
Remember file caret position;
Remember last search/replace strings;
Remember last opened files;
Printing of a document;
Support of language modules;
Plugins support (syntax highlighting, auto-completion, scripts execution, keyboard macros and much more).

Author: Shengalts A.A.
Date: 2008-08-04
Size: 201 KB
License: Freeware
Requires: Win All

By Nate Anderson
August 04, 2008 - 07:31AM CT

"Committee on Energy and Commerce" and "rampage" don't often appear in the same sentence, but the House committee is certainly on a tear when it comes to behavioral advertising.

Not content with firing off a bipartisan list of sharp questions to ISPs who installed NeduAd traffic analysis hardware, the Committee on Friday expanded its nastygram list to include "33 leading Internet and broadband companies" including Google, Microsoft, Time Warner, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. Legislation on the issue could be coming.

The new list of recipients shows that the Committee's skepticism toward NebuAd (and ISPs Charter and Embarq, who installed the gear) wasn't a one-off deal. The Committee has expanded its investigation beyond the particular questions posed by NebuAd and is now looking far more broadly at the whole field of behavioral advertising.

Companies that make use of consumer behavior (including search queries and websites visited) to serve ads are asked to describe their practices in detail, and to explain whether they take special measures to avoid use of health, financial, or other sensitive information. In addition, the Committee wants to know if behavioral targeting is "opt out" or "opt in" and how many users chose to opt out.

By Dan Goodin
4th August 2008 22:48 GMT

Plenty has been made of the biodiesel-powered, Wi-Fi-enabled buses that whisk San Francisco's Google serfs to and from their Mountain View jobs in comfort and style. According to most accounts, it's a win-win proposition that provides a highly desirable perk to employees while also reducing a significant number of cars in one of the nation's most traffic-choked locales.

Maybe. But not everyone sees the Google Bus in such a favorable light, and some of them are taking their displeasure to the city's streets. Over the past few weeks, elaborately designed stencils like the one below have appeared in San Francisco's Mission District where they can't be ignored by Google drones. The stencils depict a five-color search engine that looks a lot like the Google home page.

The search term is "mission + exploitation" and just in case there's any ambiguity, a message directly below reads: "Trendy Google professionals help raise housing costs." One of the drawings is on 24th Street, near Valencia Street, which just happens to be one of the Googlemobile's stops. On any given workday morning, literally scores of employees bound for Mountain View can be spotted waiting there.

The spectacle has a distinct flavor of deja vu. Once a bastion of hipsters and artists, the Mission barely survived the dotcom boom of the late 1990s. Under the influence of nuevo rich "entrepreneurs," rents and real estate prices mushroomed. Neighborhood hair salons and clubs that featured live punk rock were replaced by oxygen bars and high-end sushi restaurants.

by Jason Perlow
August 4th, 2008 @ 2:52 pm

The Mother-in-law versus Vista battle cold war never ends. Every week, it’s something different that goes wrong that brings us to the brink of annihilation, and I have to swoop in on the weekends to fix the inevitable new problem that comes up.

Fortunately, I have the system more or less stabilized, and I finally figured what was going wrong with her Multiple Listing System printing out all sorts of HTML garbage issue. You care about how I figured it out, right? No? Well, too bad. You see, being as protective and sensitive to virus and spyware issues that I am, I installed Mozilla Firefox on mom’s laptop, in addition to a virus scanner and spyware sweeping software and some other general crapware cleaning utilities.

This has always been my standard operating procedure on my own XP systems, which I maintain primarily now as VM’s running on my servers. Naturally, I carried forward the same methodology to mom’s Windows Vista laptop. When I installed Firefox, I answered the following question when prompted - “Use Firefox as the default system browser?” - naturally, I answered yes. Unbeknownst to me, with this single click of a mouse, I screwed up mom’s line of business application.

You see, as it pertains to Vista, when you do this, a number of default file associations get set in the registry to use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer 7. While this may not affect a lot of web sites, it did happen to affect Garden State MLS, the main web site she uses. I had to do a lot of Googling to find out just exactly why this was happening, but eventually, the solution to this problem was “Uninstall Firefox”.

by Marguerite Reardon
August 4, 2008 8:47 AM PDT

Time Warner has taken a step closer to splitting up AOL's business, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Time Warner is expected to announce Wednesday that it has completed the internal process of separating AOL's dial-up Internet access business from its advertising business, the newspaper said.

Time Warner has been talking about splitting the company into two different entities for a while now. And it's been a main focus of Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes, who took over as CEO seven months ago. AOL has long been viewed as a problem for Time Warner, as its dial-up business declines and its advertising business struggles to compete.

Time Warner has been examining several options with respect to splitting up the company, including selling off both pieces of the business or partnering with other companies. But separating the business hasn't been as easy as it sounds as the company tries to figure out how to divide revenue, staff, and liabilities. Earlier, Bewkes had said he expected to have the process completed by the end of the second quarter. Time Warner will announce second-quarter results on Wednesday.

Once the separation of AOL's advertising-content and dial-up businesses is concluded, it may aid potential suitors like Yahoo and Microsoft in sizing up an offer price. Yahoo reportedly turned to Time Warner and its AOL division as a potential white knight, after Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid for the company in February.

By Jacqui Cheng
August 04, 2008 - 12:10PM CT

A preliminary settlement has been approved in a class-action case against ad network ValueClick and its subsidiaries Commission Junction and Be Free. The case, which originated as two separate cases brought on behalf of the publishers and advertisers that worked with ValueClick, focused on the presence of adware within the Commission Junction/Be Free network and the company's inaction when it came to holding publishers to a code of conduct.

As part of the settlement, ValueClick doesn't admit to any of the allegations, but it has agreed to pay $1 million into a settlement fund that will be used to compensate class members. The two cases (which were eventually merged) began in April of 2007 and contended that ValueClick did little-to-no monitoring of its own network to ensure that advertisers adhered to the code of conduct.

This was meant to protect both the users and other advertisers so that adware producers would not use the network for nefarious purposes, piggybacking on the ads of legitimate partners to trick users into buying things from other, less-legitimate vendors. Unfortunately, adware creators essentially "hijacked" commissions from other advertisers and publishers on ValueClick's network, the lawsuit alleged. Once that happened, ValueClick and gang failed to disclose the existence of this commission theft to its legit partners, resulting in what the plaintiffs believe were relatively significant losses.

Unsurprisingly, ValueClick denied the allegations and argued that it had no legal duty to the plaintiffs to monitor for noncompliant software or to restore any lost commissions due to adware. The company also said that its monitoring systems already satisfied its legal obligations to advertising and publishing partners, and that no further action was necessary.

By Don Reisinger
August 03, 2008 - 09:01PM CT

Google may be the de facto leader in search today, but will its lead last forever? With services like Mahalo and Cuil gaining attention and Microsoft willing to pour continued billions into its quest for online dominance, Google's rivals are legion, and they're hungry, but that doesn't mean the Big G needs to elevate its corporate blood pressure; Google's dominance is assured far into the future.

According to comScore's latest figures, Google commanded 61.5 percent of the US search market, while Yahoo owned 20.9 percent and Microsoft trailed with 9.2 percent. Both Ask.com and AOL follow far behind the big three. And where are the hot startups? Smaller search engines like Mahalo, Powerset, and Quintura didn't even make the list.

Making room - A search engine can be an extremely lucrative endeavor when it's popular. But with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft commanding more than 90 percent of the market, is it even possible anymore for a small company to be anything more than the nichest of niche players? The answer is "no" and the reason is simple: if a search service is good enough to make significant headway, deep-pocketed Google or Microsoft will acquire it before it even has a chance to hit the mainstream.

Case in point: Microsoft acquired Powerset just a few months ago to bolster its search business as it tries to live up to Ballmer's lofty goals for the future of Live Search. "I would say 'Hey, you know, you're just three years old,'" Ballmer said in response to a question asking him if Live Search needs to get its act together quickly. "And we've got you in there playing basketball with the 12-year-olds, and you know what?

By Charlie Demerjian
03 August 2008, 9:30 PM

THERE ARE A ton of 'rumors' floating around about Nvidia giving up the ghost on it's ailing chipset division. Nvidia is desperately trying to deny it, but don't believe the spin, the division is deader than an Nvidia mobile GPU.

Just over a week ago, Nvidia's maximum leader, Jen-Hsun Huang, held a meeting with Taiwanese mobo partners. He directly asked them if there was a reason why Nvidia should stay in the chipset business. You could hear the crickets chirp. In mainland China. No one came up with a reason, so the division was officially killed, and the teams will be rolled into GPU projects.

Nvidia PR is having the proverbial hissy-fit, but ignore it, they do that a lot. The INQUIRER has talked to people who were at the meeting, and they confirmed the reports, and are dead convnced that Nvidia chipsets are a thing of the past. This is not to say that there will be no new chipsets from today. Things currently done or almost done will be out, but new designs won't be started, and early-stage projects are not likely to continue.

Deep breaths people, projects on the near term horizon are safe, or at least safe from that paticular axe. This mercy killing was strongly hinted at during Cebit in March, and was likely a done deal back then. If you look at the abysmal performance of the group, from the laughable 780i and the highly dropped 790i to being six months late to PCIe2, you understand why things are going away.

by Richard Koman
Aug 04, 2008 12:16 AM PDT

Even as China is being roundly criticized for restricting Internet access even for Western journalists during the Olympics, another Asian country is moving to restrict the net. Reuters reports that South Korea is starting to make moves to restrain the Net, as well.

The mass access to the Internet, which helped ex-CEO Lee Myung-bak to his resounding presidential election victory, went on to become the instrument helping shatter that popularity in just five months in office. Now the government is working on new rules to rein in the excesses of its netizens and bring some control to the information — and disinformation — that bombards the nation’s computer screens.

What’s the problem? First it was mad cow disease. Koreans took to the Net in hysterics that new premier Lee Myung-bak was allowing US imports of beef. Among the net rumors: that Koreans have a genetic predisposition to catching mad cow disease and that a beef by-product used in diapers endangers Korean babies.

The government also says the Net need to be reined in because of rude behavior and cyberstalking. So the Justice Ministry is working on what it calls a Cyber Defamation Law. “The reality is that we lack the means to effectively deal with harmful Internet messages,” a ministry official said.

by Brooke Crothers
August 3, 2008 9:00 PM PDT

Intel has disclosed details on a chip that will compete directly with Nvidia and ATI and may take it into unchartered technological and market-segment waters. Larrabee will be a stand-alone chip, meaning it will be very different than the low-end--but widely used--integrated graphics that Intel now offers as part of the silicon that accompanies its processors.

And Larrabee will be based on the universal Intel x86 architecture. The first Larrabee product will be "targeted at the personal computer market," according to Intel. This means the PC gaming market--putting Nvidia and AMD-ATI directly into Intel's sights. Nvidia and AMD-ATI currently dominate the market for "discrete" or stand-alone graphics processing units.

As Intel sees it, Larrabee combines the best attributes of a central processing unit (CPU) with a graphics processor. "The thing we need is an architecture that combines the full programmability of the CPU with the kinds of parallelism and other special capabilities of graphics processors. And that architecture is Larrabee," Larry Seiler, a senior principal engineer in Intel's Visual Computing Group, said at a briefing on Larrabee in San Francisco last week.

"It is not a GPU as many have mistakenly described it, but it can do most graphics functions," Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research, said in an article he posted Friday about Larrabee. "It looks like a GPU and acts like a GPU but actually what it's doing is introducing a large number of x86 cores into your PC," said Intel spokesperson Nick Knupffer, alluding to the myriad ways Larrabee could be used beyond just graphics processing.

By Joel Hruska
August 04, 2008 - 12:05AM CT

Amazon's Kindle has enjoyed apparently robust popularity since it debuted last fall; the first run of the eBook reader sold out, even at the initial $399 price point, and Amazon had only limited inventory for some time. The company later cut the unit's price to a marginally more acceptable $359, a move that must have spurred some additional sales.

But how many units was Amazon actually moving? Newly-reported data suggests that Kindle sales over the past nine months may have exceeded Amazon's expectations, and made the company a killing in the process. Exact data on Kindle sales figures has been hard to come by. Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped on such topics, and although CEO Jeff Bezos did give some Kindle-related information back in July, the company has yet to break out how many readers it has sold to date.

Sitting on that information may not be an option any longer; TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon, with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures. According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold some 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated revenue between $86 million and $96 million dollars.

Kindle's strong sales have galvanized the eBook market, and Amazon itself is developing a new series of Kindle products. The details of the update, however, have yet to be announced, which means we don't know yet if we'll see a hardware/software refresh of the existing Kindle, a new "Kindle 2.0" hardware design, or a new, student-oriented Kindle aimed directly at the textbook market.

by Marguerite Reardon
July 31, 2008 3:14 PM PDT

A judge in California has ruled that Sprint Nextel's early termination fees are illegal and said the wireless operator should pay back $18.2 million in collected fees to consumers, a decision that could help sway decisions on similar cases throughout the country.

The preliminary decision released earlier this week is a major blow to Sprint and to other phone companies in their battle to defend themselves against angry consumers who say the fees imposed on them when they leave the companies' services are unlawful. Verizon Wireless, which was also being sued in California, has already settled its case, agreeing to pay $21 million to settle all claims against the company.

And after the decision against Sprint, there's a chance that cases against T-Mobile and AT&T could also be settled. Early termination fees have been around almost as long as cell phone service. Wireless operators impose the fees, which can be as high as $200 per line, on customers who cancel service before their contracts have expired. Phone companies say they must impose these fees to recover the cost of subsidizing handsets and for guaranteeing low monthly service charges.

But consumer advocates don't buy that argument, and they say the fees are excessive and restrict customers' ability to switch services. Cell phone users fed up with these fees took their complaints to a California court and formed a class in a lawsuit against the four major carriers in 2006. The court separated the cases and has been dealing with them individually.

By Joel Hruska
July 31, 2008 - 06:25PM CT

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 working group behind the development of FireWire in both its 400Mbps and 800Mbps configurations has formally approved the next-generation S1600 and S3200 standards. These two standards build on the already established FireWire ecosystem, and will offer speeds of 1.6Gbps and 3.2GBps, respectively.

The final specification itself should be published in October, but there's no word on when we'll see shipping product, or what the adoption ratio between S1600 and S3200 will be. Backwards compatibility concerns, thankfully, should be kept to a minimum. The new S1600/S3200 cables will be fully compatible with both older FireWire 800 cables and FireWire 400/800 devices.

S3200, meanwhile, isn't the end of the line for FireWire technology, as current plans call for the interface to scale up to at least 6.4Gb/s over time. That's not going to happen any time soon, but there's obviously still plenty of headroom in the interface itself. The IEEE 1394 standard will face a new competitor in the form of USB 3.0. USB 3.0's specification is expected to be published by the end of the year, which may give S3200 a few months' head start.

FireWire, however, has never enjoyed the widespread success of USB 3.0, and as a result, could find itself the first standard out the door, but the last standard on the shelf. Motherboard manufacturers will drop USB 3.0 on high-end boards as soon as chipsets are available (even if devices aren't), but FireWire ports are considerably harder to come by.