Articles by Sharon Fisher

Virtual subdomain patent struck down

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 6:21 PM

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One of the more obvious, though still practical, permutations of domain name usage is now no one's intellectual property in particular.

Ever use an Internet site that automatically gave you your own subdomain...like Google's blogspot, which automatically gives you "your blog title" @blogspot.com "http://blogspot.com" or LiveJournal, which gives you "your journal title" @livejournal.com?

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Supreme Court lets online porn filtration law expire

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 5:50 PM

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There's a saying that goes, I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for the right to keep folks from hearing it. Or something like that. No, the Supreme Court said today, that's not how it goes.

Unconvinced by the argument that begins, "The children, the children!..." the US Supreme Court this morning refused to hear an appeal brought forth by the Bush Justice Dept., of a decision that effectively bars the government from punishing individuals for failing to protect minors from Internet-based pornography.

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What lessons can we learn from the Heartland credit card breach?

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 5:03 PM

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The company's response is raising troubling questions about the security of such processing centers and laws ostensibly intended to protect consumers in general.

Millions of credit cards per month, primarily used in restaurants, could have been exposed to hackers who broke into the Heartland Payment Systems processing center network, in an incident the company said Tuesday took place the previous week.

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They talked over Obama's speech in China, too

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 2:26 PM

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Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions...To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

If you live in China and read only Chinese, you didn't see those lines from President Barack Obama's inauguration speech yesterday, and if you were watching the inauguration live on television, you didn't hear them, either. According to The New York Times, the live broadcast of the inaugural address on China Central Television, the country's main state-run network, was interrupted after the "communism" line, and went instead to an analyst. In addition, Chinese translations of the speech published on official channels left out the two lines, though English printings included them. Following the credo of Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," Chinese Internet users reportedly spotted the deletion quickly and publicized the correct text of the speech. US news sources began reporting it as early as 8:30 pm EST on Tuesday.

Seagate confronts an overflow of bricked hard drives

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 2:09 PM

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Faced with a firmware bug fix that is making many of its hard disk drives even harder -- to read, that is -- Seagate is offering a firmware upgrade and free data recovery services if users still cannot read their data.

The scope of the problem is so massive, with so many users complaining in so many places online and attributing any drive failure to this problem, that it's difficult to determine what exactly happened. But it appears that the majority of those posting originally had a 1 TB drive using SD15, which with no warning became not detectable by BIOS after about three months of use. Some users felt that the problem was more likely to occur with drives made from Thailand.

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Please leave the DTV deadline at February 17, begs Qualcomm

By Sharon Fisher on January 21, 2009, 11:17 AM

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Qualcomm may now be a key industry holdout against a proposal to extend the digital television switchover deadline from February 17, potentially to June 12.

While Verizon and AT&T have each indicated that they would not object to a proposed extension to June 12, Qualcomm reportedly wrote a letter to Congressional representatives asking them not to delay the switchover because of how it would affect the company's rollout plans.

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Behind the first live 3D bowl game at CES

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 7:13 PM

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Some CES attendees who had the opportunity to watch the Oklahoma Sooners get creamed during a BCS game Thursday -- always a glorious experience (though not for Scott) -- were also the first to watch a live 3D college football game.

But live 3D sports has been promised since 2004, and has been trickling in since then.

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Analyst: Consumers don't want widgets on their TVs

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 5:48 PM

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Amidst all the announcements about widgets this week was one ominous note: a survey from Strategy Analytics saying that consumers it surveyed weren't all that hot on widgets.

Well, they're right -- and wrong. As Disraeli (or Mark Twain, depending on your preference) used to say, there's three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. And the way you design a survey can make a big difference in the sorts of answers you get.

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'Intel Inside' moves outside the PC, and fast

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 4:12 PM

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When Intel sold off its networking processor group to Marvell three years ago, some said Intel was letting go of its dream of connecting the planet's media devices. Wrong.

While Intel has been in the process of achieving Master of the Universe status over AMD for PC chips since last summer, it has also been taking steps to conquer the more mundane -- but potentially overwhelmingly profitable -- areas of industrial computing and consumer electronics devices.

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The case for VESA DisplayPort: Both open and shut

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 2:34 PM

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The Video Electronics Standards Association announced the next steps in its DisplayPort specification, but copy-protection features that can make it difficult for users to play back legitimately acquired content are still there.

First proposed in 2005, DisplayPort's advantage is that a single digital interface connects both internal and external displays. This means that DisplayPort can carry pixels directly from any display source to any LCD panel. Other advantages of DisplayPort over Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and VGA include a small USB-sized connector with available latching, two-way display connectivity, optional audio support, higher performance than dual link DVI at 10.8 Gbps, and a unique micro-packet architecture that enables new display features.

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Reading Palm's fortune: Does its life line now lead to glory?

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 1:51 PM

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It's a question worth asking: With the Pre looming upon the horizon, is this the same Palm we were talking about only 48 hours ago -- the Palm that was very near to being buried in the desert and fed upon by vultures?

The Pre is a tremendous device, but let's not forget that it has to get here. Sprint and Dan Hesse need to deliver on their promises of delivering a network for this device, and consumers might not have an easy time picturing those 10,000 guys in red and grey coats with service trucks and helicopters, standing behind them wherever they go, when they think of "Sprint." And Palm as a company is in very bad shape. Yes, it may have designed the product of the year, and it could very well have one-upped the iPhone -- we'll see. But Apple had a healthy business infrastructure going for it two years ago at this time, and it's even much healthier now, stock price notwithstanding. Palm is another affair.

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Verbatim's new keyboards add not only sound, but light

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 1:17 PM

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Having trouble finding space for speakers amidst the clutter on your desk? How about building them into the keyboard? That's the theory behind TuneBoard, Verbatim's new product. The keyboard, which works with either Macs or PCs, features integrated dual stereo speakers that are angled towards the listener In addition, it includes a media console with seven multimedia keys for controlling iTunes or a Windows default music player.

The multimedia keys also provide muting, volume adjustment, play, pause, stop, previous track and next track control. Two additional hot keys are included for switching the enhanced bass on and off and to switch the keycap luminescent background lighting on and off. The keyboard also includes a built-in microphone so it can be used with applications such as Skype and other VOIP software. A built-in microphone jack and earphone jack are also included on the back of the keyboard. Suggested retail will be $69.99 for both Mac and PC editions.

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How many titles, again, are available in BD-Live?

By Sharon Fisher on January 10, 2009, 12:36 AM

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Andy Parsons, who chairs promotions for the Blu-ray Disc Association, said during the Blu-ray press conference Thursday that only 21 Blu-ray titles included bonus features using BD-Live technology.

[ME's note: Correction made above to Mr. Parson's title.]

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Seagate evolves external storage into a media console

By Sharon Fisher on January 9, 2009, 4:53 PM

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If you're the sort of person who likes to save lots of digital photos, video, and similar content to a hard disk drive, and would like to show it on a television rather than a computer monitor, here's the product for you. The Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD media player, which works with a remote, is intended to work with the Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive. The media player gets plugged into the TV once, and thereafter users can plug their FreeAgent Go drives into the media player without having to fumble with cables each time. It also includes a USB port for linking other non-Seagate FreeAgent Go devices. Seagate quoted a 2007 survey by Parks Associates as saying that more than a quarter of consumers are interested in accessing personal content -- such as photos and music -- directly on the TV, while nearly a third of respondents expressed interest in being able to view movies and other PC-hosted video through the TV. In addition to watching movies and slideshows, Seagate suggested consumers could also use the device to pair slideshows of high-resolution photo libraries with music collections and customize them with specialized transition effects, or to synchronize and organize digital media from multiple computers.

Just think -- whenever you're trying to get rid of company, you can offer to show them 250 GB of slides and video from your summer vacation. The Seagate FreeAgent Theater media player will be available in March either standalone for $129.99, with a 250 GB FreeAgent Go drive for $229.99, or with a 500 GB FreeAgent Go drive for $299.99.

A once-unthinkable combo: a picture frame that hides a router

By Sharon Fisher on January 9, 2009, 3:56 PM

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You know those dolls with the crocheted skirt your grandmother had on the back of the toilet, combining home decor with hiding the spare roll? Now D-Link hides a network router inside a digital picture frame.

The D-Link Xtreme N DIR-685 includes an 802.11n Wi-Fi router, an FTP server, network attached storage (how much, D-Link doesn't say), SharePort technology for sharing USB printers and scanners -- and a 3.2-inch LCD monitor that displays pictures, live streaming video and other Internet content, the weather, and network performance statistics and gauges. And hey, like so many other products we've seen this week, it's even good for the environment. It recognizes port activity and cable length and adjusts power usage accordingly, consolidates functions to a single device, and uses the idle mode to turn off power to the LCD screen. A wide local area network (WLAN) scheduler can turn off the router's Wi-Fi module at a preset time, and the power adapter complies with Energy Star 3.0 specifications. The company doesn't say how much it will cost or when it will be available.

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Kindle to deliver your daily news, sports, money, and life

By Sharon Fisher on January 9, 2009, 3:40 PM

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USA Today -- which veteran journalist Linda Ellerbee once described as the newspaper for people who find the evening news too complex -- is now available on Amazon's Kindle electronic reading device. The paper is said to be the top-selling newspaper in the U.S., with a total average daily circulation of 2.3 million and a daily readership of 5.4 million. A monthly subscription to USA Today costs $11.99. Kindle now offers subscriptions to a total of 29 papers. Most daily city papers cost less than USA Today; the New York Times and several European dailies are more expensive.

Toshiba SSD creeps into an SAS

By Sharon Fisher on January 9, 2009, 1:47 PM

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Showing the expansion of the use of flash memory into enterprise hardware, Toshiba said it was developing a solid-state drive using a SCSI (SAS) interface, making it suitable for high-performance enterprise storage. Flash memory is solid state, is faster than traditional memory, uses less power, and produces less heat. But although it's earned a bad reputation lately among foundries for being cheap, compared to DRAM, it typically has been more expensive -- at least by the gigabyte -- and thus far it's been used primarily in laptops. On the other hand, servers that take less power and produce less heat could save data centers a lot of money. The 2.5-inch form factor drives, which will store up to 100 GB, will for reliability include dual-ported SAS redundancy (i.e., if one link fails there'll still be another one) and non-volatile cache (i.e., if the power goes out, your data won't go with it). The company said that samples of the drives would be available late in the first quarter, with mass production in the second quarter, but did not reveal a price.

Making gestures at Hitachi's latest displays

By Sharon Fisher on January 9, 2009, 12:58 PM

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Those of us who like to gesture at the television while watching news and sporting events are going to have to watch it, thanks to Hitachi.

This week at CES 2009, Hitachi is demonstrating a prototype television that is controlled by hand gestures instead of a remote. Using a 3D sensor from Canesta, people within about 10 feet can perform functions such as turning the set on (with a rapid wave), changing the video source, or changing the channel. The technology -- which works the same regardless of the ambient level of room light -- also can differentiate between single- and double-hand gestures, offering more command options. (What I need to know is, how well can it differentiate between my hand and the cat's tail? Or a roomful of people 'talking with their hands'? Can I set it to ignore my daughter's hand?) Ironically, Hitachi said, the use of such gestural interfaces is so common in television programming that consumers believe it's a lot more prevalent than it really is. The company did not say when it expected to release products with the technology nor how much they would cost.

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CES Countdown #1: How are manufacturers' perceptions changing about the consumer?

By Sharon Fisher on January 8, 2009, 9:36 PM

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Up until now, the ultimate CE consumer has been the young 20-something male with money to burn and something to prove. With the credit market drying up, that fellow has to prove something else now.

Now that the carnage of the Christmas shopping season is over -- whether you're thinking of the pile of non-recyclable wrapping paper and bows under the tree or the success (or failure) of retail sites -- Consumer Electronics Show manufacturer attendees are bracing themselves and figuring out how to restructure themselves to make it through the rest of the recession.

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Sony expands the IPTV connection for its latest Bravias

By Sharon Fisher on January 8, 2009, 7:27 PM

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Like Vizio, Sony announced at CES 2009 that its Bravia line of LCD HDTVs would include built-in streaming Internet capability without a set-top box.

The capability will be present in the XBR9 and Z-series models, which will include an Ethernet connection. The two companies also announced a similar line of content partners, with Sony mentioning Amazon Video On Demand, YouTube, and Yahoo Widgets. In addition, they will have access to digital photos, music, and video stores through support of the Digital Living Network Alliance specification. Unlike Vizio, which did not let consumers know how fat a pipe they'd need to support Internet television, Sony warns potential users that a broadband Internet connection of at least 2.5 Mbps is recommended, and that a full-screen display may not be available for all Internet video. Models of the XBR TVs, which will be available in the spring, measure 32 inches, 40 inches, 46 inches, and 52 inches. Models of the higher-end Z-series measure 40 inches, 46 inches, and 52 inches, plus offer 240Hz Motionflow technology for displaying fast-moving images more smoothly. The XBR TVs support 120Hz Motionflow technology. All of them are compliant with the Energy Star 3.0 specification.

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