HiWEB-Interactive Show Log

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1 - Windows 7 demo: all multitouch and no meat - D6, the sixth annual All Things Digital conference, kicked off this week with a session starring Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Discussion spanned topics ranging from the failed Yahoo acquisition to the lukewarm reception Windows Vista has had to the impact that Gates' imminent departure will have on the company. It was for another reason, however, that this session was so keenly anticipated: it was to contain the first public look at Windows 7. Recent revelations from Microsoft have suggested that Windows 7 will be far more evolutionary than its radical predecessor; this was confirmed by last night's demonstration. Whereas Windows Vista had a huge amount of public build-up, Microsoft has so far kept pretty quiet about Seven. Details about Vista were talked about in public seemingly non-stop from about 2003 until its eventual release in late 2006. As is now well-known, Vista didn't deliver all of the features promised during its extended development, and the widespread negative perception of the OS has undoubtedly hurt both the Microsoft and Windows brands. The tack being taken with Seven is very different. Microsoft is deliberately keeping quiet about Windows 7 to attempt to ensure that the company can actually ship everything it promises in late 2009/early 2010. What was shown at D6 was rather less than hoped. The big feature—in fact, the sole feature—demonstrated was multitouch, the same technology as found in Microsoft's multi-thousand-dollar Surface table and Apple's iPhone. The demonstrated software was more or less the same demos we saw with Surface—photo scaling, finger painting, splashing about in water—along with a Virtual Earth/Google Earth-style mapping program. And that's the extent of it. That's all that was demonstrated. The demoed software appeared to have a new taskbar, but no details on this were forthcoming; when quizzed on it, the demonstrator replied, "It's something we're working on for Windows 7 that I'm not supposed to talk about right now." That Windows 7 would have multitouch is something that's been known since last year. Such a move is not without precedent; the current Surface platform is built on top of Windows Vista, and rolling this kind of feature into the base OS is a pattern we have seen before. XP Tablet Edition had its functionality subsumed into Vista, and amalgamating multitouch into the core Seven OS is a logical extension of that work. Seven's multitouch capabilities will simply be a more widely-available version of what Surface already has; they will free Surface from its special, expensive hardware, and offer multitouch to anyone with a suitable touch-sensitive screen; screens which, it was pointed out, are already on the market. As a demonstration of what to expect from Windows 7, this left a lot to be desired. Multitouch is fun to play with, but it doesn't appear any more useful today than it did when Surface was first demoed. In devices with limited form factors (smartphones being the canonical example) it certainly seems to have a lot to offer, but for a regular desktop or laptop PC, the benefits are far from obvious. If a technology is going to require new screens and endless supplies of screen-cleaner to remove the inevitable finger-prints, it had better offer something really killer to justify the cost, and so far, it doesn't. Microsoft has long championed touch-screen computing, but tablet PCs have consistently failed to set the market alight, and at this stage it doesn't look likely that multitouch will change that situation. Those few people using tablets will probably love it, but it won't mean anything to the vast majority of Windows 7 users. Windows 7 is shaping up to be a far-less-ambitious release than Vista. Although the Vista plans were watered down from the Longhorn ideals, it nevertheless saw significant under-the-hood development, with the most significant part of this being an all-new graphics subsystem. These changes were very disruptive as they required all-new drivers for video, sound, and other core functionality, and this has contributed significantly to Vista's reputation for poor compatibility when compared with its predecessor. This might not be such a problem were it for the fact that Vista fails to make any significant use of these new features. Plenty of pain—no real gain. To remedy this, Windows 7 is being pushed as a release that will consolidate on the ground-work laid by Vista. Windows 7 will not introduce any radical overhaul of core operating system subsystems; instead, it will leverage the new features introduced as part of the Vista release. This is in some ways surprising. By referring to the next version of Windows as "Windows 7" Microsoft is promoting Seven as a major release (Vista being version 6 of the Windows NT platform), but those few details revealed so far suggest that it is anything but. This might just be a repercussion of the new reticent Microsoft; perhaps there is far more to Windows 7 than the company is letting on. If Seven is to live up to its billing, there will have to be.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080528-windows-7-demo-all-multitouch-and-no-meat.html

2 - Microsoft expects Windows Mobile sales to grow by 50 percent - Microsoft's managing director of OEM embedded devices Asia, told Reuters that "50 percent growth is the minimum" Microsoft expects for unit sales of Windows Mobile software in fiscal years 2008 and 2009. Worldwide, the software giant sold over 11 million units of its Windows Mobile software in the fiscal year ending in June 2007, and Wu said the company expects 20 million units to sell in the fiscal year ending in June 2008. Wu went on to say that Europe and the US are still seeing strong growth, but markets like Asia- Pacific, Middle East, Brazil, Russia, and India are topping the charts. With the February 2008 announcement of the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Microsoft can say it licenses Windows Mobile to four of the five largest mobile phone manufacturers. Nokia is the only one that doesn't have a Windows Mobile device, but then again, the company dominates 40 percent of the mobile market. This collaboration with Sony is unlikely to be limited to one device, but this is just one of the factors that Microsoft must be considering in its extrapolation. It needs to be said that the upcoming release of Windows Mobile 7.0, which is expected to hit sometime in the second half of 2009, will not be playing a part in Microsoft's predicted sales. Microsoft has been working on version 7 long before news trickled out that the iPhone was mopping the floor with Windows Mobile in smartphone sales. Last month's release of version 6.1 was meant to keep users satisfied with minor improvements as they wait for the next major overhaul. Speculation around the new version includes a revamped UI, as well as multi-touch and motion-related features, but nothing revealing (screenshots or videos) has yet hit the presses.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/05/28/microsoft-expects-windows-mobile-sales-to-grow-by-50-percent

3 - Adobe investigates Flash Player attacks - Multimedia tools developer Adobe stated on Tuesday in a brief blog post that the company is investigating reports of a previously unknown vulnerability in its Flash software, after it received evidence that attackers are using malicious Flash files to compromise computers. The exploit -- first reported by security software company Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus -- appears to be fairly widespread. The original Symantec report indicates that nearly 20,000 pages are hosting malicious Flash (SWF) files, while antivirus firm McAfee points out that Google returns nearly a quarter million search results for the attack's telltale code. Through looking for sites serving these SWF exploits we’ve found a connection with recent mass hacks," Craig Schmugar, senior antivirus researcher for McAfee, stated on the company's blog. "Hacked sites reference an external script, just as they have for quite some time. But, the external scripts now reference an SWF file."

Security researchers and malicious attackers have increasingly focused on finding flaws in the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player. Late last year, a Google researcher warned that flaws in the authoring tools that create Flash files had led to widespread cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. Adobe and other tool developers fixed the issues, but Web site owners must still rebuild all their Flash files to eliminate the vulnerabilities. Adobe also upgraded its Flash Player to add security features, warning that the changes would break some functionality. In the latest incident, the malicious Flash files attempt to install an obfuscated download program on victims' computers. The downloader will then attempt to install a known password stealer, although the detection of the components of the program are spotty among the different antivirus programs, researcher Dancho Danchev stated in a blog post. Danchev recommended that administrators block 15 different domains that appear to be hosting the malicious code.

"It could have been worse, as 'wasting a zero day exploit' affecting such ubiquitous player such as Adobe's flash player for infecting the end users with a rather average password stealer is better than having had the exploit leaked to others who would have have introduced their latest rootkits and banker malware," Danchev stated on his blog.

4 - Court finds Dell guilty of fraud - Dell was found guilty on Tuesday of fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices and abusive debt collection practices in a case brought by the New York attorney general. The Albany County Supreme Court found that Dell deprived customers of technical support that they bought or were eligible for under warranty in several ways, including by requiring people to wait for very long times on the phone, repeatedly transferring their calls and frequently disconnecting their calls. Dell also often failed to provide onsite repairs for customers who bought contracts for such support and often blamed software when hardware was actually the problem, the court found. The company also sometimes refused to offer support when a support contract ended, even though the user had first complained about a problem before the end of the contract. Subscribers to a "next-day" repair service sometimes waited as long as a year for support, the court found. Dell and affiliate Dell Financial Services also advertised special no-interest financing, but denied almost everyone those terms. It often sold customers products without informing them that they didn't qualify for the special financing terms and then charged them interest rates as high as 30%, the court said. The court will determine how much Dell will have to pay in restitution to affected customers and will also require Dell to pay the state of New York the profits it made on these deceptive practices. In addition, the ruling prohibits Dell and Dell Financial Services from continuing to engage in the fraudulent activities. The court laid out plans for investigating how many people have been affected as a way to determine restitution. Dell hopes that the court will find that only a few people had bad experiences. "We're confident that when the proceedings are completed, the court will determine that only a relatively small number of customers have been affected," Dell said in a statement. "We believe that our customer service levels are at or above industry standards."

5 - Apple's 10.5.3 update is finally signed, sealed, delivered - After releasing numerous test builds, Apple has officially unleashed the latest update to its Leopard operating system. The hefty update—which clocks in anywhere from 198 to 420MB here at Ars Orbiting HQ—includes over 200 fixes. Some of the fixes include improvements to Active Directory binding and login, Spotlight searches on remote APF servers, 802.1X behavior and reliability, iChat screensharing, Automator, Parental Controls, and VoiceOver. Some annoyances with Spaces have been addressed, as well as several issues with Time Machine and Time Capsule reliability. iCal now allows events to be marked as private, and has improved its handling of meetings and calendar syncing. The update also includes RAW support for "several cameras," though Apple's RAW Support page hasn't been updated with the latest models at the time of this writing. There's also no specific mention of fixes for scrolling issues in Safari for Penryn-based portables or the squashed graphics bugs that are supposed to make Delicious Library 2 really cook. However, some users will no doubt be delighted that 10.5.3 addresses "stability issues with Word of the Day, iTunes Artwork, and Slideshow screen savers."

The latest update is available now via Software Update, and standalone installers are available from Apple Downloads. As usual, the update is "recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard."

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/05/28/apples-10-5-3-update-is-finally-signed-sealed-delivered

10.5.3 brings Gmail/Address Book sync... for iPhone users (Updated) - Apple snuck in a new syncing feature along with that mountain of bug fixes in 10.5.3. Unfortunately, it sounds like not everyone will be able to sync their Address Book and Gmail contacts. By now, you've probably heard that Apple's just-released 10.5.3 Leopard update fixes meeeeelions of issues. The hefty update also brings at least one significant new feature that we felt was worthy enough for a post of its own: built-in contact syncing with Google Accounts and Gmail. Announced prominently on the Official Google Mac Blog, Address Book's General preference tab contains a new "Synchronize with Google" option, which appears below the "Synchronize with Yahoo!" option initially introduced in Leopard. Checking this option presents a warning about the general nature of syncing ("You acknowledge and agree that the synchronization process may read from, change, delete or overwrite data in Google contacts. Google strongly recommends that you make a backup copy of your data before your first synchronization attempt..." etc.), then requests your Google Account/Gmail credentials to get the ball rolling.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/05/28/10-5-3-brings-gmailaddress-book-sync-for-iphone-users

6 - TJX employee fired for exposing shoddy security - TJX Companies, the mammoth U.S. retailer whose substandard security led to the world's biggest credit card heist, has fired an employee after he left posts in an online forum that made disturbing claims about security practices at the store where he worked. Security was so lax at the TJ Maxx outlet located in Lawrence, Kansas, that employees were able to log onto company servers using blank passwords, the fired employee, Nick Benson, told The Register. This policy was in effect as recently as May 8, more than 18 months after company officials learned a massive network breach had leaked the details of more than 94 million customer credit cards. Benson said he was fired on Wednesday after managers said he disclosed confidential company information online. Other security issues included a store server that was running in administrator mode, making it far more susceptible to attackers. He said he brought the security issues to the attention of a district loss prevention manager name Allen in late 2006, and repeatedly discussed them with store managers. Except for a stretch when IT managers temporarily tightened password policies, the problems went unfixed.

"I was basically hitting a glass wall," said Benson, a 23-year-old freshman at the University of Kansas who worked at TJ Maxx beginning in October 2005. "Not one single thing was done. My store manager even posted the password and username on a post-it note. I told her not to do that." So last August, Benson took to Sla.ckers.org, a website dedicated to web application security, and began anonymously reporting the shoddy practices in this user forum. Over the next nine months, he left eight posts in which he chafed at the password policy and what he should do about it. "I am not sure if this is just an isolated incident within this specific store, but it goes to show that you can't trust a company to protect your information, especially TJX," Benson wrote under the moniker CrYpTiC_MauleR. "Today was a very sad day for me =o("

A TJX spokeswoman declined to comment for this story and turned down our request to discuss the company's policies for passwords and other security matters. Benson's May 8 posting was prompted by news that managers had changed the password for employees to access the store server. Inexplicably, it was set to blank. When Benson first began working for TJX, his password was the same as his user name, he said. Then came word in January 2007 that unknown hackers had brazenly intruded on the company's network over a 17-month period. For a time following the disclosure, TJX employees were required to use relatively strong passwords. The change to a blank password clearly represented a step backward, Benson thought. The posts eventually caught up to Benson. On Wednesday, while marking down items on the TJ Maxx retail floor, he was summoned to the store office. Inside, a regional loss prevention manager told him his critiques had come to the attention of the company hired to monitor internet postings about the retailing giant. The manager told Benson he was being fired for disclosing confidential company information. No one at Sla.ckers.org was willing to defend TJX or the shoddy security practices it is accused of following, but some have questioned Benson's decision to speak so openly. "I would assume your disclosure of your company's inner server workings on the Internet means that they can't trust employees to protect their information?" one forum participant wrote in a response to Benson's posts. But he says his actions were also fueled by a healthy dose of self-interest. "My information is still on that server," he continued, referring to the machine that sits in an office at the TJ Maxx where he once worked. "So if their network is insecure, then my information is insecure. I'd prefer they get it fixed."

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1 - EcoGeeks Get All the Girls - Just in case you needed another reason to care about the environment...turns out girls dig guys who dig environmental technology. According to a study done by GM (of all people) as part of this year's Challenge X competition:

Little did we know...we've been fashionable all along! OK, maybe not me...I'm still tooling around in my old Sentra. No one seems to have told 80% of America that it's greener to keep driving your current car than to invest in a new one.

Nonetheless, it's good news. And when I buy my first new car (never) I'll be sure to let everyone know how green it is.

GM's Challenge X is a yearly competition between college students to make GM vehicles more efficient. Students from 17 universities are "re-engineering" Chevy Equinox's to make them more efficient and reduce their greenhouse impact while retaining consumer appeal. Solutions the students are putting together include alternative propulsion systems like fuel cells and hybrids, and alternative fuels like biodiesel and ethanol. This year's winners, from Mississippi State, increased the fuel economy of the Equinox by almost 40% with a hybrid-electric bio-diesel engine.

2 - Solar iPods in the Future - Apple has just filed a patent for an in-screen / device-covering solar film for it's gadgets. We've seen similar in-screen technology patented by Motorola already (not clear if this is an infringement) but Apple wants to cover the entire device, not jut the screen, with the solar cells. You can already get a solar powered iPod...it just requires a larger-than-an-iPod charger that you have to lay out in the sun all the time. Not perfectly convenient, for sure, but I suppose it's better than the regular coal-powered way of charging up. But if the solar cells were built into the device, that would certainly make things simpler. Unfortunately, with current efficiencies for thin-film solar (the only kind that could be semi-transparent) it's unclear that there would be much benefit. Unless you were planning on leaving your iPod in the sun all day long, you'd still need to charge the old fashioned way. Unless Apple starts making flat gadgets with a large surface area....and that doesn't seem to be the direction they're going.

In a patent application dated April 24, 2008 and titled "Solar cells on portable devices" attributed to a number of Apple employees, Apple reveals possible plans to integrate solar cells into devices such as iPods and MacBooks.

3 - Avcen Jetpod T-100 City Flying Taxi says "naught" to highways - No, that's not a scene from The Fifth Element II. What you see here is the Avcen Limited Jetpod T-100 City Flying Taxi, a VQSTOL (Very Quiet Short Take-off and Landing) vehicle that the company says could be in the air by 2010. The idea is that these flying cars would volley people between city centers and outlying areas (like airports) in order to reduce highway traffic. Avcen says that 75 of these in London could relieve road traffic of 37,000 return car trips per day all the while keeping things quiet and requiring only short landing strips made of pavement or grass. For air geeks, specs include dual jet engines with a thrust of 2 x 13.3 kN, a cruising speed of 350 mph, a range of 920 miles, an operating payload of 1,543 lbs, and seating for 7 pax. Bruce Willis pilot not included.

4 - Earth Trek touts "world's smallest" projector - While it likely won't hold onto the (slightly dubious) title for long at the rate mini-projectors are cropping up these days, Hong Kong-based Earth Trek has nonetheless gone out and proclaimed its new 90-805R projector to be the "world's smallest" and, indeed, it is small. Measuring about 4 by 2 inches, the projector can apparently pump out a 22-inch diagonal image (no word from what distance), with an SD card slot and an A/V input provided via a 3.5 mm jack, not to mention a built-in speaker. No word on a price or release date just yet, but we'd assume they'd want to get it out relatively soon in order to beat the inevitable cellphone projector rush.

Same topic, 3M mini-projectors set to land in / with Samsung phones later this year - 3M has been touting its mini-projectors for some time now (along with many others), but it looks like they're now finally a bit closer to landing in an actual product, with Samsung reportedly set to begin offering them later this year. What's not clear, unfortunately, is whether the projectors will actually be built into the cellphones (and if so, which ones), or simply offered as an attachment of some sort, but either way you can apparently expect to pay between $200 and $400 for the chance to spread a bit of visual pollution.

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1-Viewers see giveaway link on HiWEB.NET for more details. Next Giveaway June 5th – Remember the eligibility requirements. Subscribe to Youtube, Register and Comment on Blog –*Andthen stay Tuned for Hot Giveaways

2- Future segments will include music production segments, hardware reviews and product demos…

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5- HiWEB-Interactive Past Shows on http://www.hiweb.net/pastshows.html (past shows)

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“Thank You for participating in HiWEB-Interactive, we look forward to bringing you more information from the edge of technology” Until next time have Fun with your technology – GottaJiboo!

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