(Credit:
AT&T)

A new BlackBerry Pearl has found its way to AT&T’s doorstep this morning. Available starting today, the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110 has integrated GPS and support for the carrier’s AT&T Navigator service, which provides voice-guided turn-by-turn directions, 3D colors maps, traffic alerts, and more. Of course, if you want this luxury, you’ll have to pay an additional $9.99 per month. While the GPS is great, you lose the Wi-Fi found on the recently released RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120. (Is it asking too much to have both?)

RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8110

AMD’s Web site also says the new technology comes with energy-efficient features for reduced power consumption. (The site links to a Business Class section in several places, but that page itself is not yet live.)

AMD is touting the longevity of the new line. PC manufacturers will maintain AMD’s Business Class systems for two years to ensure that systems aren’t phased out before they are deployed, and warranties will be for three years instead of one, according to Larry Dignan over at ZDNet.

The initiative is built around AMD’s multicore Athlon and Phenom processors and ATI graphics technology.

The chipmaker is set to announce on Monday an initiative called AMD Business Class, formerly code-named Hardcastle, that is geared toward making it easier for PC makers to build computers that better suit the needs of small businesses, according to the reports.

AMD is planning to make a big push into the small business sector, according to ZDNet and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Updated at 10:10 p.m. PDT

(Credit:
Pentax)

Much love,
The Macalope

But obviously bandwidth isn’t free. Comcast’s network wasn’t a gift from God. Comcast spent a certain amount of money building it, and it continues spending money to maintain it. Nor does Comcast’s network have infinite capacity. Like any other digital-cable network, Comcast’s system has intrinsic capacity limits on multiple levels from neighborhoods up to cities.

So the sky is safe after all, at least for now. And Chicken Little is still blogging, so I’m sure if he perceives another threat, we’ll hear about it.

(Though Malik went on to use a disgusting excretory analogy to criticize Comcast’s announcement–which was, honestly, a very clear, specific, and forthright statement of the company’s intentions. What was that about?)

But over the weekend I read some of the news coverage and blogger opinions of the cap, and I have to say that some of it is just astonishing. People are making claims and demands that violate the basic rules of mathematics and the laws of physics. It looked like a digital form of mass panic, like the sky was falling.

Full standard-definition (SD) video uses a lot more data–usually more than ten times as much as audio. I checked the SD movies at the iTunes Store, for example. The iTunes download of one of my favorite movies, “Blade Runner: The Final Cut,” in standard definition is 1:57:28 long and 1.21 GB in size, or 618 MB per hour. At that rate, you could download more than 400 hours of standard-definition TV or movie content in a month without exceeding Comcast’s usage cap, even if you do a normal amount of other activity. (Comcast says its median usage for residential customers is less than 3 GB/month.)

If some other company institutes a service that relies on dramatically increasing Comcast’s network traffic–and therefore the costs of constructing and maintaining its network–why should Comcast have to swallow those costs?

In this story, the falling acorn was represented by Karl Bode at Dslreports.com, whose article announcing the cap (here) was highly speculative but still reasonable.

Of course, the data rate for HD movies will usually be several times higher than that for SD content. You might only be able to download 100 hours of HD movies per month without raising Comcast’s ire.

(In the same blog post, however, Lowensohn also made the ridiculous claim that Comcast customers can reach that median monthly usage of 3 gigabytes in “minutes.” Although Comcast’s best residential service has a peak throughput of 16 megabits per second- giving 3 GB in 25 minutes–there isn’t a server in the world that will provide that kind of download speed. So even the fairly sensible people still suffer from a certain level of innumeracy here.)

But Malik’s analysis is preposterous. The video-on-demand services Malik claims Comcast is trying to block barely exist yet, so most of us have no experience with them. This isn’t the Internet “as we know it,” it’s the Internet as it might develop if bandwidth were free.

Blogger Om Malik volunteered for the role of Chicken Little in calling the cap “the end of the Internet as we know it,” assuming other carriers follow Comcast’s lead.

Running the numbers
But seriously, is there anything to worry about? Let’s look at the math. The cap of 250 gigabytes per month works out to a continuous stream of data at over 96 kilobytes per second. Medium-quality digital music works out to 16 kbytes/s, so the cap can’t possibly interfere with any amount of music streaming or downloading for personal consumption. Do you listen to Internet radio? That usually operates at even lower data rates, so you’re safe. Leave it on 24 hours a day if you like.

But c’mon, I know you don’t want to watch that many hours of other people’s home movies. If you’re going to spend that much time watching HD video, you’re going to do it with commercial content instead, most likely movies downloaded through Apple TV,
Xbox Live, or some similar service. And that means you’re going to be spending quite a bit of money, because this content is generally going to cost you $2 to $3 per hour.

The facts show that Comcast’s usage cap is necessary, reasonable, and high enough that it will never be encountered by most users. Anyone who might be flirting with 250GB/month of usage in the next few years probably ought to be thinking in terms of a commercial account anyway. And after that, as bandwidth gets cheaper and new high-bandwidth services come on line, Comcast (and other ISPs) will inevitably increase the residential usage cap accordingly.

There are about 720 hours in a month, so if you spend your whole life watching one new movie after another, you will exceed the cap. Well, at least this is a good reason to spend the usual amount of time eating and sleeping.

If you’re doing that, you can afford to spring for Comcast’s commercial Internet service, which has no usage caps. It’s only around twice the price of residential service–under $100/month. That’s a fairly good deal for a service that gives you way more bits per buck than your neighbors are getting.

Still, some people have raised serious objections. CNET’s Josh Lowensohn pointed out (here) that online backup services work by transferring large amounts of user data to and from central servers.

Do you watch a lot of videos on YouTube? That’s safe too. Even high-quality YouTube videos come in under 90 KB/s, and most of the content there isn’t high quality in this sense. If you’re on YouTube 24-7, you won’t hit the usage cap.

In practice, this won’t be a problem for all Comcast customers, since these services usually involve much more uploading than downloading and the upload speed for most Comcast customers is just 384 kilobits per second, or less than 125 gigabytes per month, even with uploads running continuously at this speed.

Would Malik let me upload videos to Gigaom.com and charge customers for downloads, all without giving him a share of the revenue? Of course not, because he isn’t an idiot. He’s just not thinking clearly.

But yes, if you have a service of this type, you’d better keep an eye on it. If you’re seeing a daily transfer rate over 6 or 7 gigabytes per second, you’ll have to find a way to throttle your bandwidth (often a feature of these services) or upgrade to one of Comcast’s commercial Internet packages.

Many other bloggers fell in behind Malik, rushing out to tell the world about the impending disaster.

When Comcast announced last week that it was instituting a formal usage cap for residential customers–a total of 250 gigabytes of data transfer (uploading plus downloading), as described here–I didn’t think much of it, except to be happy they finally defined a critical element of their service guarantee. The previous level of ambiguity was annoying and arguably unlawful, as I described here last October.

Few Comcast customers will ever consume that much bandwidth, and in fact it’s probably several times what Comcast’s network can provide to all users anyway. If a large fraction of Comcast’s customer base is now encouraged to start sharing its own high-definition home movies on peer-to-peer file-sharing services, network congestion will impose a much lower limit.

Social media Web sites also featured much more prominently in the 2008 election, which is not surprising–most were in their infancy, if even in existence, during the 2004 campaign. Nearly half of all 18 to 29-year-olds–Internet users and nonusers alike–watched online political videos during the campaign. Among Internet users with a social networking profile, 52 percent used social networking sites for political purposes.

Some voters went online to find voting information. Nearly one in five voters used the Internet to find out where to vote, 16 percent of voters went online for information about absentee or early voting, and 9 percent went online to find out where they were registered to vote.

The 2008 election was truly the most Internet-based presidential race ever, but the more voters went online, the more they sought out partisan content, a new report shows.

Official campaign Web sites were also more popular in the 2008 election. While 18 percent of all Internet users visited the John Kerry Web site in 2004 and 14 percent visited George Bush’s 2004 site, 30 percent went to Barack Obama’s site last year and 21 percent went to John McCain’s.

With greater online political engagement, the report shows, came greater partisanship. One-third of online news consumers said they usually seek out online political information from Web sites that share their political point of view, and the more online news sources a person regularly visited, the more likely he would be to seek out specific view points. Nearly half of online news consumers visited at least five different online types of news content in 2008.

(Credit: Pew Research Center)

While more voters turned to the Internet for political information, fewer relied on traditional news sources like radio or newspapers. Television remained the most common source of election news, with 77 percent of Americans watching election-related coverage. Twenty-eight percent of voters cited newspapers as a major source of election news, down from 39 percent in 2000.

Obama supporters typically were more engaged online than John McCain supporters–26 percent of Obama supporters online created their own original political content online, compared with 15 percent of McCain supporters.

Twenty-six percent of Americans said they relied on the Internet as a major source of campaign news in 2008, compared with 11 percent in 2000.

For the first time ever, more than half of the voting age population–55 percent of adults–went online for news and information about a presidential election or to communicate with others about the race, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

When I was a kid, my mother would complain that I’d tune her out whenever it came to taking out the garbage or mowing the lawn. In other words, when it came to all the stuff I didn’t want to do.

(Credit:
Albert S. Feng, University of Illinois.)

Odorrana tormota lives in a noisy environment on the brushy edge of streams in the Huangshan Hot Springs, in central China, where waterfalls and rushing water create a steady din.

There’s a reason why people outside of frog enthusiasts and people with very weird hobbies should care. Earlier research into the mechanics of frog hearing helped Feng and his colleagues design an “intelligent hearing aid” that boosts sound signals. You can click below to listen to excerpts from the audio interview.

I spoke with Albert Feng, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at University of Illinois, who noted that this particular frog, known as “Odorrana tormota,” is the only known animal that actively selects what frequencies it hears. He pointed out that the frogs seem to possess an ability to tune in to specific sound frequencies as circumstances change. For instance, when the low frequency background noise makes it too difficult for them to discern the calls of potential mates or rivals, the frogs’ hearing can switch to high frequency and ultrasonic hearing levels.

What is the frequency, Kenneth?

What is the frequency, Kermit?
University of Illinois professor Albert Feng says the frog known as “Odorrana tormota” is the only known animal that actively selects what frequencies it hears.

Download mp3 (3.78 MB)

Turns out I wasn’t so special after all. Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles have turned up a frog in central China whose ears can shift to different sound frequencies. The analogy offered by the researchers, who also included scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (at Harvard Medical School), is that of a radio tuner.

The findings appear this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles spearheaded the research team, which also included scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (at Harvard Medical School).

Their work appears this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(Credit:
Albert S. Feng, University of Illinois)

“You have your own radio frequency in your head,” she would say in mock–and sometimes, real annoyance.

Microsoft filed five new lawsuits and amended two previous complaints against SMP Soft and Registry Update, all relating to programs that allegedly falsely alert consumers to problems on their computers and offer to sell software fixes. The programs listed include Scan & Repair, Antivirus 2009, MalwareCore, WinDefenderXPDefender.com and WinSpywareProtect. Most of the defendants are listed as “John Doe” because investigators do not yet know the identities of the people behind the programs.

The software then reports 43 critical problems and offers to sell a fix for $39.95. However, the software, dubbed “Registry Cleaner XP,” does nothing but lull the consumer into a false sense of security, officials said.

Consumers can file complaints on their own, officials said. Meanwhile, the defendants face penalties of up to $2,000 per violation plus restitution and attorney fees.

Updated 1:15 p.m. PT with more details on Microsoft lawsuits.

(Credit:
Washington Attorney General's office)

To protect themselves against these and other threats, computer users should keep their operating system, antivirus, firewall and antispyware software updated, Microsoft said.

Microsoft and the Attorney General’s office in Washington state said on Monday they have filed a handful of lawsuits over pop-up ads that scare consumers into paying for software that supposedly fixes critical errors on a PC.

This is an example of the pop-up that consumers received from a Texas firm sued for allegedly spreading "scareware."

The lawsuits were enabled by a broadening of Washington’s Computer Spyware Act, which was amended earlier this year to outlaw misrepresentation of the source of a message to a computer user in order to scare the person into installing software.

That lawsuit, which includes claims of misrepresentation, harassment, and high pressure sales, names as defendants Texas companies Alpha Red and Branch Software, and their owner James Reed McCreary. McCreary did not return a call seeking comment.

It’s a “blatant rip off of consumers,” Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna said in a news conference. Consumers were “duped into downloading a fake scan (of the computer) and then duped into paying for software they don’t need.”

Microsoft has brought 17 spyware-related legal actions since the Computer Spyware Act was enacted in 2005.

The messages often would be displayed repeatedly, with one IP address receiving more than 200 in one day, the complaint alleges.

(Credit:
Washington Attorney General's office)

More information and a link to the complaint against McCreary is on the Washington Attorney General’s Web site.

The pop-ups take advantage of a function called Windows Messenger (not to be confused with Microsoft’s instant-messaging program Windows Live messenger) that was designed to allow network administrators to send alerts to Windows PCs on a network. The functionality was turned off in Windows XP Service Pack 2, said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Team.

The lawsuit filed by the Attorney General’s office alleges a Texas firm sent incessant pop-up ads that falsely claimed the computer had critical errors in its registry and directed people to a Web site where they could download free scanning software to find the problems.

This isn’t the first time that Gore has insisted on a $100,000-or-so speaking contract that prohibited press from attending. He did it at a speech at Augustana College (billed as “free and open to the public”). He did it at a speech last year to the American Institute of Architects convention, which the San Antonio Express-News
crashed and wrote up anyway.

Gore might have gotten away with it a decade ago. And, to be sure, he has the right to negotiate that requirement with RSA. But nowadays, when tech-savvy audience members, who each coughed up some $3,670 for registration, are outfitted with digital cameras and recording devices (including on mobile phones), any speaker who insists on this requirement is foolish or naive.

Gore is scheduled to give a keynote speech on April 11 at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. RSA says as many as 17,000 people showed up at last year’s conference, and it’s reasonable to assume a large chunk of this year’s crowd will try to squeeze into Gore’s keynote speech. These are security types, engineers, marketers, PR flacks, and so on–many of whom have their own blogs, Flickr accounts, and Twitter feeds where they’ll share details about Gore’s speech (assuming he says anything interesting).

This cozy, stylish and handsome CNET fleece could be yours: be the first to send along a link to a video of Gore's you-may-not-record-this speech at RSA next month.

Which makes it bizarre that Gore has demanded–as a condition of giving the keynote speech–that press be barred from the room. As Kim Zetter wrote for Wired.com: “Video recordings, broadcasts and photography are also prohibited.”

His standard speaking contract says “closed press” and “Vice President Gore will accept no interview requests” and “Vice President Gore does not permit taping of his speeches.” It’s especially ironic given Gore’s joint ownership of Current TV, which relies on user-submitted content.

Does anyone really think Gore’s Don’t-Record-Me Ban will work at a conference of 17,000+ gadget-outfitted security geeks? Thought so. So here’s my offer: A free News.com (or CNET, depending on what we have in stock) baseball cap or fleece–your choice–to the first person who e-mails me a link to the video of the astonishingly publicity-shy ex-veep at RSA next month.

P.S.: The Gore-Internet quote from nearly a decade ago, according to CNN’s official transcript: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” (And no, for you conspiracy buffs, mentioning that doesn’t make me a Bush
administration acolyte.)

Remember, folks, it’s Al Gore’s Internet. We’re just using it.

QDP apps will be presented in Flex, which has the big advantage of running everywhere (and making it easy to create very pretty applications). However, since QDP apps are targeted primarily at QuickBooks users, and nearly all of them are on Windows, the cross-platform angle isn’t that important. The fact that there are a lot of Flex developers is, though.

Intuit claims an addressable market of 3.6 million companies that use QuickBooks.

The program goes into limited beta on Thursday. Version 1 should open up to all developers this summer.

The QuickBase Developer Program has important elements. First, it gives the Intuit Web database access to data from customers’ QuickBooks installations. Most of Intuit’s business customers use the QuickBooks installed software, not the online version. The QDP is for Web apps, though: It links apps to data resident on customers’ PCs.

One of the QDP’s slickest pieces is financial. Intuit will handle the billing for QDP apps on the part of developers. That saves them from having to hassle with collecting from their customers. Also, resources for QDP apps, all of which will be hosted by Intuit, will be charged for in a pay-as-you-go system, like Amazon Web Services. That makes QDP apps economically scalable.

A Flash app accessing QuickBooks data, thanks to QDP

Intuit is announcing today its entry into the growing app platform market. Like Salesforce has done, Intuit’s new QuickBase Developer Program will let developers create and sell add-on Web apps that tap into the company’s core product: QuickBooks. And like Salesforce, Intuit will market these third-party apps directly to its customers via a promotional channel in the core app. Intuit will go after the small-business market with the program, leaving the enterprise space for Salesforce–even though both companies have customers in the other’s main market.

Other players in this space include Google and Amazon. However, their platforms don’t come with large audiences of customers already familiar with their back-office business apps.