Color E Ink coming at the end of the year
In an interview with Xconomy.com, the new head of E Ink talks about the company's plans to launch color displays at the end of this year. T.H. Peng, executive vice president of E Ink's parent company, Prime View International, admitted to Xconomy that in terms of quality color E Ink won't be ready to go head-to-head with LCD anytime soon.
"Our color quality will not be as good as LCD, initially," Peng told Xconomy. "But we have already received very encouraging signs from a few customers that they want to launch our color e-paper product by the end of this year or the beginning of 2011."
Peng went on to insist that E Ink's color capabilities compare favorably with that of newsprint—a bar that Peng himself admits is substantially lower than that of glossy magazines.
I actually got a glimpse of a color E Ink prototype at this past CES, and I will admit that I wasn't too impressed. Color saturation and contrast were very low, and it was fairly hard to tell the different colors apart. But the Skiff spokesperson who had the demo mentioned that it represented only one of a number of possible methods for bringing color to E Ink, and this fits with what Peng says in the interview.
Right now, E Ink is staffing up in R&D and is exploring a range of options for bringing color to E Ink screens. It's likely that the company will iterate through a number of approaches in the coming years as it pursues its goal of getting E Ink closer to full-color printing.
While E Ink explores its color options, competing approaches aren't standing still. I didn't care for the Mirasol demo that I saw at Qualcomm's CES booth, but the company claims that it has a newer, much improved version of the MEMs-based technology that looks significantly better. I was supposed to get a demo of the new Mirasol tech last week, but I wasn't able to go. We've rescheduled, though, so look for a report next month.
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XBLA Perfect Dark: a golden eye for detail
There are many video games from our youth that we as gamers may introduce to our children. Few of them will be 3D titles from the Nintendo 64 era. While games like Mario 64 still stand up, trying to suffer through Goldeneye or Perfect Dark on the original hardware these days is a painful lesson in just how much nostalgia can distort our memories. The re-release of Perfect Dark on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade wants to fix that, and by updating some aspects of the game and leaving others alone the $10 title becomes a fun, if sometimes frustrating, look back at an earlier time in console first-person shooter history.
So what's better, and why is it hard to look back? Let's dig in.
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Image hosting on the cheap: a look at three free services
Image hosting is the kind of service many people use for sharing their images. There are several great options that cost money—like SmugMug, for instance—but unless you're a major shutterbug, a free service might fit your modest needs and usage pattern better. Here we round up three of the top options for free image hosting around the Web—Flickr, Picasa, and Photobucket.
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Ubuntu prerelease testing made easy with TestDrive
I frequently download the latest Ubuntu daily build and set up a fresh install in a virtualized environment so that I can test software that I'm developing or evaluate the status of Ubuntu development.
Canonical's Jorge Castro recently introduced me to a nifty tool called TestDrive that simplifies the setup process by automatically downloading the ISO and configuring a VM. TestDrive provides a simple command-line tool that allows you to select which ISO image you want to test. It will download the image and then configure and launch a VM. The real win is that it caches the ISO images and uses rsync to update the parts that have changed so that you don't have to download the whole ISO again every time you want to test a new daily build.
It has saved me a bit of time over the past week. It's also fairly easy to use, which makes it a handy tool for casual Ubuntu users who want to see the latest updates to the new default theme or try out some of the new features that have been prominently discussed in recent reviews. It supports both KVM and VirtualBox. You can configure your preferred virtualization software, the default ISO caching path, and the default memory configuration by editing the /etc/testdriverc file.
To get TestDrive on Ubuntu 9.10, you can install it from the project's PPA. For more details, visit its project page on Launchpad.
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Using keyboard bacteria as a (not quite) unique ID
Bacteria have largely stayed out of the forensics game, but with some new research, scientists are seeking to put them into the evidence bag along with human DNA. Researchers have found that the bacteria left on keyboards and mice by users' hands are distinct to individual users, and that it is possible to identify a piece of hardware's primary user simply by swabbing the keyboard or mouse for bacteria. The technique proved effective within the constraints of the experiments, but it's a long way from being ready for forensic use.
Our skin houses large bacterial ecosystems and, even after washing your hands, the bacterial community is restored within a matter of hours. Scientists have suspected for some time that we might leave "trails" of this skin bacteria on things we touch during the course of a day, and more importantly, that the bacteria might be traceable to individuals. It's not that each person has a unique bacterial species, but that their ecosystems contain different mixes of species, each present at different frequencies.
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Wikileaks leaks classified intelligence report about itself
Wikileaks, a website that aims to boost government transparency and accountability by publishing sensitive documents, has released a classified military counterintelligence analysis report that discusses the "threat posed to the US Army" by Wikileaks itself.
The report outlines this perceived threat and contends that military security could be put at risk if classified information is made available through Wikileaks, where it can be accessed by foreign intelligence agents and terrorists. The report also points out that foreign governments could leak falsified information to the Wikileaks site in an attempt to undermine the credibility of the United States.
One of the primary topics addressed in the report is potential strategies for deterring moles within the US government from disclosing information to Wikileaks. The author of the report suggests that identifying leakers and terminating their employment or pursuing legal action against them could undermine the relationship of trust between Wikileaks and its informants, thus diminishing the risk of future leaks.
"Recent unauthorized release of DoD sensitive and classified documents provide FISS, foreign terrorist groups, insurgents, and other foreign adversaries with potentially actionable information for targeting US forces," the report says. "The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out."
The report concludes that the disclosure of classified information by Wikileaks reflects the need for stronger counterintelligence programs and better information security training for military personnel.
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Canada's $75 iPod levy returns (and might legalize P2P)
Canadian MP Charlie Angus, a former rocker, has formally introduced a bill meant to ease the legal uncertainty around format shifting. He proposes a trade: Canada's levy on items like blank CDs gets expanded to devices like iPods, and in return people can legally transfer their own music to devices like iPods.
Such a plan might sound bizarre to US ears, where format- and time-shifting are assumed to be legal so long as no DRM circumvention is involved, but it remains legally dubious in countries like Canada and the UK. Shifting a song from a CD to a computer to an iPod does, after all, create new copies of the work—and copyright holders have long claimed compensation for such uses.
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feature: PlayStation Move: what we hate, what we love
During a press event at the Game Developers Conference, Sony finally showed its motion controller to the gaming press. Welcome to the world of the PlayStation Move.
We were shown a number of videos and demos, and they all looked uncomfortably similar to what we've already played on the Nintendo Wii. Even the models, with a focus on females and families, made it look like we were in the realm of Nintendo. The reveal of the secondary controller with an analog stick—a product that again looked like a direct rip-off of a Nintendo product—drew either ambivalence or titters from the crowd. At a cocktail mixer directly after, we were able to get our hands on the Move directly, and play through the offerings.
How did people react? There is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the product, and people were talking about similarities to Nintendo titles and about the price of the product in hushed tones. There were jokes made about the look of the Move; many people compared it to a certain sexual toy. Others placed the glowing orbs on their crotch, to mimic testicles. In short, there wasn't a lot of love for the Move at the launch.
But we've played the games, handled the hardware, and given the whole thing a long think, and we believe that the Move may not flop, although it could have had a stronger first showing. Here are the things we like about the hardware, and where Sony may have gone wrong.
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NBP: inside the FCC's spectrum revolution (and its problems)
In the months preceding the release of the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, the agency made clear that it wants to broker a huge transfer of licensed spectrum away from the television broadcasting sector and toward the wireless phone/broadband industry. FCC Chair Julius Genachowski has long called for 500MHz of bandwidth to be found in the TV bands and elsewhere, then moved to the wireless sector over the next decade.
In fact, the NBP calls for freeing up 300MHz starting just below the UHF zone (300MHz to 3GHz) to be made "newly available for mobile use within five years." On top of that, the Plan wants to open up 20MHz of licensed space in the little-known 2.3GHz Wireless Communications Service (WCS) band for mobile broadband use.
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Big cable pushes 7 "consumer principles" for cable, IP video
As the Federal Communications Commission hands its National Broadband Plan over to Congress, the cable industry's top trade association has issued a manifesto that looks pretty good, at least on paper. It boils down to seven "consumer principles," says the National Telecommunications and Cable Association, to which cable operators will adhere, "and which we believe could serve as the foundation for Commission and inter-industry efforts."
The principles have a sort of FCC Internet Policy Statement or even FDR Four Freedoms speech feeling to them, but focus on mobility of content, portability of devices, and ease of Internet access. They include the Holy Grail: "1. Consumers should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can access their multichannel provider's video services without a set-top box supplied by that provider." A right-to-broadband clause: "3. Consumers should have the option to access video content from the Internet through their multichannel provider’s video devices and retail video devices." And a freedom-of-platform commitment: "5. Consumers should have the option to easily and securely move video content between and among devices in their homes."
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Day one content: Bioware explains why it's sometimes legit
Games are now supported long after they're released in retail stores, but some consumers cry foul when they buy a game, go online, and see there is already downloadable content to add to the experience. Why force gamers to go online to get the content? Why not just include the content on the disc?
We spoke with Casey Hudson, the project director for Mass Effect 2, at GDC. He's a man who knows a little bit about post-release content, and he explained it in a way that makes sense. The simple answer? It takes time to get discs into the hands of gamers.
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Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs
Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.
The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which seeks to make it easier to integrate Macs in Windows-centric IT deployments, surveyed IT admins from companies that made large deployments, including universities and government agencies. Responses included in EDA's analysis include those from environments with a mix of Macs and PCs that had a total of 50 servers or over 100 Macs.
A majority of respondents said that Macs cost less in terms of time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, and system configuration. Admins generally agreed that costs related to software licensing and supporting infrastructure were the same between the two platforms.
Two-thirds of those managing mixed environments plan to increase the number of Macs deployed in 2010. Twenty-nine percent cited lower TCO as a "key reason" for deploying Macs. Almost half cited lower TCO, ease of support, or a combination of the two as leading factors in Mac adoption. User preference and increased productivity were considered important factors as well.
"As a greater percentage of enterprise applications become OS-neutral, the cost to support a more diverse hardware and OS mix will decrease, making Macs a more viable choice for a greater number of users who continue to demand them," noted Michael Silver, vice president and research director at Gartner, in a recent report on PC trends. Macs tend to be popular among C-level execs, as well as with those in creative departments and developers (especially cross-platform developers).
Apple has historically done little to actively develop a traditional strategy to target enterprise deployment. Instead, the company tends to focus on consumers first, and lets individuals drive enterprise demand for its computers and mobile devices. It does, though, make continual small improvements that make it easier to integrate Macs, iPhones, and soon iPads into many corporate environments.
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General relativity passes a large scale test
General relativity, our current best understanding of gravity, has passed yet another test—this time on a much larger length scale. Ever since relativity's first confirmation in 1919, when Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington observed that the light from distant stars was shifted by the mass of the sun, direct tests have been confined to length scales smaller than our solar system. No test to date has stringently probed general relativity's applicability to the length scales of the universe itself.
A paper that is published in the current edition of Nature reports on research that incorporates gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering measurements, and growth rates of large scale structures to measure a single parameter that can be compared to the predictions of general relativity. To probe the effect of gravity at large length scales—on the order of two to 50 megaparsecs (MPc) at a redshift of 0.32—the authors describe a variable EG that incorporates three physical parameters and can be used to differentiate between competing theories of gravity.
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Unsurprisingly, IE9 won't be supported on an obsolete OS
Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch all but confirmed today that the next version of Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer 9, will not be supported on Windows XP.
Hachamovitch stopped short of explicitly saying that XP would not be supported, but said that building a "modern browser" required a "modern operating system." IE9 will be heavily dependent on hardware acceleration, courtesy of its use of Direct2D and DirectWrite; neither API is available on Windows XP.
That IE9 would use these features has been known since last year's PDC, and so the lack of XP support should come as a surprise to few. Nonetheless, there are sure to be some who will gripe that the newest browser (not likely to hit until next year at the earliest) won't be available for a decade-old operating system.
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House of Lords gives thumbs up to 3 strikes, site takedown
The UK's House of Lords has passed a version of the Digital Economy Bill that eliminated one controversial anti-piracy measure but added a new one in its place. The bill, which includes a three-strikes provision that will suspend the service of repeat copyright infringers, will now be considered by the Commons. There are promises that a provision that would require ISPs to block access to sites used for infringement will be revised during the process, but the rush to complete work on the law ahead of the UK's coming elections has left a number of advocacy groups feeling that major changes to copyright enforcement are being rushed through Parliament without proper consideration.
The Digital Economy Bill was first introduced last November, at which point attention focused on a provision that some claimed would turn the UK's Secretary of state into a "Pirate Finder General." Although the government wouldn't specify anti-piracy measures in the bill proper, it reserved the power for the Secretary of State to take unnamed actions in the future, if those actions were likely to reduce infringement.
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Online presence of hate, terrorist groups up 20%
Hate groups have always been a presence on the Internet, but their presence is growing quicker lately thanks to social networking sites. According to a report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), groups that promote violence, terrorism, homophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of intolerance grew by 20 percent in the last year alone.
The report is part of the Center's annual look at the spread of hate groups online, which noted that there are now more than 11,500 social networks, websites, forums, and blogs that focus on spreading intolerance, recruiting new members, and instructing people on how to hurt others. "The numbers are probably, at the end of the day, multiples of that," the SWC's associate dean Abraham Cooper said in a news conference Monday. "That should be taken as a low ball figure."
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National Broadband Plan arrives, quoting Shakespeare
When the federal government spends more than a year developing a 300+ page report on national broadband policy, perhaps the last thing one expects to find in it is a quote from Shakespeare's Henry IV.
As two rebels plot their assault on the English king, the Welsh leader Owen Glendower brags that he can "call spirits from the vasty deep." The English Hotspur retorts, "Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?"
Anyone can talk a good game about conjuring broadband policy from the vasty deep of the FCC—but can those people actually implement their visions? The National Broadband Plan, released today, drops this bit of Shakespeare on readers at the bottom of page 11 to make a simple point: this Plan is about the art of the possible.
Perhaps a better quote from Henry IV might be from the lips of the famous comic figure Falstaff: "The better part of valor is discretion."
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Keyboard dock, other iPad accessories will be MIA on April 3
National iPad Day is just over two weeks away, but when April 3 rolls around, iPad owners won't be able to get most of the accessories that were touted to go along with the device. As noted by Electronista, the iPad keyboard dock and USB power adapter have both been pushed back until May, after even the 3G model of the iPad is set to be released.
During the introduction of the iPad on January 27, the keyboard dock was the accessory that got some major attention from Apple-watchers. After all, it's the "cheapest" and simplest way to do text entry on the iPad without typing on the touchscreen itself. However, the delay doesn't mean WiFi iPad owners will be prevented from entering mass amounts of text until May—the regular (non-keyboard) dock is still set to ship on April 3, and iPad users can pair their devices with a bluetooth keyboard for text input if they so desire. (The dock connector to VGA adapter is also still on schedule for early April.)
The only other accessory that is currently MIA is the Camera Connection Kit. Announced at the iPad event, the kit is meant to allow users to read SD cards or connect to their cameras via USB through the 30-pin connector. The kit remains on Apple's spec page for the iPad but is nowhere to be found in the online store.
The inability to buy certain accessories to go along with their shiny new toy will undoubtedly disappoint some iPad buyers. Some have tried to analyze what these accessory delays could mean, but we're going to chalk it up to poor coordination among manufacturers.
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feature: Platform Preview gives Web developers first taste of IE9
Microsoft today released the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview to the public. The release is meant to demonstrate the capabilities of Internet Explorer 9 to Web developers while at the same time providing feedback to the IE9 team. Microsoft says it is committed to updating the Platform Preview to keep a more effective rhythm for discussion, and it will be updated every eight weeks or so. Microsoft will share feedback with standards-setting bodies in addition to using it for internal development.
The Platform Preview is a minimal wrapper: it's not a full-fledged browser. It has no tabs. It has no address bar. It has no back button. So what is included? Everything that Web developers need to see: the rendering engine, of course, as well as the new JavaScript engine, hardware acceleration features, and the developer tools. The IE9 team told Ars that each update will use one of the latest internal engineering builds, at which point the feedback loop will start again.
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