Net’s next frontier — your mobile phone!

Search and find - on the move: Delegates at the GSM Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, check out Yahoo’s onesearch solution for handsets.
Net’s next frontier — your mobile phone!

Google launches mobile platform to extend its advertising reach

Want to get some money? Develop an application for Google's new "Android" mobile phone platform: the giant search company announced this week that it has $10m (£4.8m) to be awarded to people who develop programs for it.
Google launches mobile platform to extend its advertising reach

Paramount, DreamWorks adopts HD DVD Format

Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation on Monday said they would distribute their high-definition movies exclusively in HD DVD, giving the Toshiba-based format a big boost against Sony-backed Blu-ray.

The allegiance includes all moves distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies, MTV Films, and DreamWorks Animation, which distributes its films exclusively through Paramount Home Entertainment. Paramount Pictures is a unit of entertainment conglomerate Viacom.

Paramount plans to launch its first HD DVD under the exclusive program Aug. 28 with the release of the comedy Blades of Glory, which will be followed by Transformers and Shrek The Third. The three films represent more than $1.5 billion in box office ticket sales worldwide. The announcement did not include Steve Spielberg films, which will not be exclusive to either format. One of Hollywood's most commercially successful directors, Spielberg's films include Jaws, E.T. , Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List.

While the announcement gives a boost to HD DVD, the format still lags behind Blu-ray. According to the sources, movie discs in the latter format outsold HD DVD films 2-to-1 in the United States in the first half of the year and sales of Blu-ray discs from Jan. 1 to July 1 totaled 1.6 million units, compared with 795,000 HD DVD discs.

Toshiba Planning 320GB Notebook Drive

Toshiba Corp. will start producing a 320G-byte hard-disk drive for laptop computers before the end of this year.It is the first 2.5-inch drive to be announced at that capacity, with production to begin in the fourth quarter, according to sources. Pricing was not announced.

The drive is one of a series of five that make up Toshiba's new MKxx52SX family of hard-disk drives. The 320G-byte model will contain two platters -- the circular disks on which data is recorded. Other drives in the range will offer between 80G bytes and 250G bytes of storage space. They will connect via a 3G bps (bits per second) serial ATA (SATA) interface.

In today’s world the amount of data that can be stored on a hard-disk drive is constantly expanding as drive makers fine tune technology, and the needs of laptop users are growing in tandem with the expansion in drive space . While enterprise users might not require such a capacious drive, users of multimedia laptops will almost certainly welcome the extra space to store video.

Mobile Printing redefined; thanks to HP's CloudPrint

Hewlett-Packard Labs has come up with a solution that aims to address the problem of printing your files when you are on road and away from home--and its free, brilliantly useful CloudPrint service does so in an elegant way.

The reasons you need to print while you're traveling can seem endless: you have to update a marketing presentation; need to print an e-mail with directions to an event; or you're on vacation and want to print a brochure you stored digitally your laptop. The trouble is, when you're traveling and using a shared computer--be it at hotel, a kiosk, or an Internet café--you generally can't print your own documents due to various problems.

Enter HP's CloudPrint, named as such because you're uploading your files to live online, in the so-called "cloud," as industry jargon often refers to the Internet. The free service was quietly made public a few weeks ago; currently in beta, HP plans to continue to update and refine its service based on user feedback.

I found CloudPrint (beta version 0.71) made it easy to share, store, and print documents via the Internet. To use the service, I first downloaded and installed a new printer driver. When I wanted to print a document to the service, I selected the CloudPrint print driver, and up popped a screen to enter a document title, my telephone number (which serves as a means of ID for later retrieving documents), my name, and the telephone number(s) I want to have the DocID sent to via SMS (you can also opt not to have a text message sent).

The system then uploads the document and assigns the document a code. (Sadly, although the code does appear on screen when it's finished uploading, you can't just copy and paste from that dialog box to another document.) I used this code to retrieve and print my documents via a Web browser.

HP says that at this time, documents won't expire; they remain available on its servers for an unlimited amount of time. This means you could even upload files before you start your travels, so you can print them on demand as needed. The document title you enter as you first print a document turns out to be a handy way of tracking your documents, and finding them again should you set up a full PrintMe account (there's no charge to do so, but you do have to get a password).

The document you want to print appears as an Adobe Acrobat file within the CloudPrint page; simply press print, and the browser will generate the output. I found CloudPrint worked well, for the most; it printed the various Microsoft Word, Excel, and Acrobat documents I threw at it with ease.


The version I tested (0.71) wasn't perfect, either: The embedded Adobe Acrobat browser choked on a seven page long, graphics intensive .PDF file. I had another gripe as well--if I had last selected the CloudPrint driver to print my output, that was what the embedded Acrobat reader selected as the default print driver. While this won't be an issue in most circumstances, it can get annoying if you're trying vet that everything uploaded correctly and can print.

In addition to providing the remote printing service, the CloudPrint site also offers a Find a Printer service. Enter your address or ZIP code and get a directory of available printers (fee and free) in your vicinity. The CloudPrint service is open to users with phone numbers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Europe. Upcoming services include being able to SMS Web URLs to CloudPrint from your mobile device; and printing documents to your home or office printer, without physically being there.

Personally, I can think of several times a service like this would have come in handy. I'm looking forward to using the service more in the future, as well as seeing how the service evolves.

Sony giving clues of launch of Rolly Audio Player

Sony Corp. began a campaign in Japan on Monday for a new audio device called Rolly.As few details of the device are available but Sony is giving away a few clues. Chief among them is that Rolly is a "sound entertainment device.
Sony also opened a promotion site called Rolly World that offers even less information. The site currently consists of a mass of small videos, each an apparently random clip of people doing things. There are three people dancing, a cat walking across the street, a taxi driver speaking to a passenger and a drink being poured into a glass.
Each clip ends with a word or phrase that apparently has something to do with the Rolly. These words, which also scroll across the bottom of the screen, include: shuffle, share, music, small, motion, open and communication.
There are lot of rumors about Rolly player .According to the sources, many reported on the existence of the player and said that it would be "egg-shaped," include a speaker, and can move or dance to music. The original Web site now carries a message saying the story has been removed at the demand of Sony.
Sony was once king of the portable music industry. Its iconic Walkman players created the market and then led it for about 20 years until Apple Inc. decided to get into the game with the iPod. The iPod quickly stole the lead from Walkman thanks in part to the way it working seamlessly with the iTunes desktop application and an online music store.

Windows Patch made Skype crash

The widespread failure of Skype's Internet telephony service last week happened when millions of Windows users tried to log in to the system at the same time, after downloading a software update from Microsoft and rebooting their machines, Skype said Monday.
Users encountered problems logging on to Skype's VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) service early Thursday morning, leaving them unable to connect until Saturday. Skype said that the load placed on its system as computers rebooted after receiving a routine set of patches from Microsoft's Windows Update service revealed a previously unknown bug in the Skype software.
According to the sources, although the Skype network has a built-in self-healing function, the bug within the network resource allocation algorithm prevented the function from working as designed.
Skype has identified the bug, which was a design error and not caused by hackers. The company has already introduced "a number of improvements" to its software to help resolve the problem.