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Submission + - Ad favorites through the years (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "Computerworld has compiled a set of very amusing ads from the pages of its past for the 40th Anniversary issue. In what year would the question, "What is E-mail?" be answered with: "One of the most advanced methods is terminals talking to one another."

They're "versatile, dependable, compatible and maybe even sexy." What are they? These modems that are "all performers," according to a not-so-subtle ad.

"with WordStar, you have a true screen image of what your printout will look like before you print it! With WordStar, you'll erase, insert, delete and move entire blocks of copy."

Remember when "mobile" meant "luggable"? An NEC ad boasts of a laptop that only weighed 11.2 lb. despite its 640K of memory, dual 720K drives and five built-in programs. Woohoo!

A personal favorite: the Personal Mainframe."
Upgrades

Submission + - Next Generation Bulb: Aluminum Foil? (discovery.com)

Submitted by Gandul
Gandul writes: Flexible and flat new lamps can hang on a wall like picture frames, be mounted onto curved surfaces, glow like Times Square in a wide range of colors, or even be used for biomedical purposes.
Television

Submission + - 10 MORE Reasons Why HD-DVD Formats Have Failed (audioholics.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Almost exactly a year ago Audioholics wrote an eye-opening piece on the demise of both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc high definition DVD formats. On the anniversary of that article Clint DeBoer has penned a follow-up article called "10 MORE Reasons Why HD-DVD Formats Have Already Failed" that discusses each point in light of a year's worth of released hardware and software and whether his predictions were on the mark or just a bunch of hot air. The bottom lines are interesting and it does seem to indicate that his initial assumptions are still on track.
Communications

Submission + - LA wants 911 callers to be able to send pics (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by
mikesd81
mikesd81 writes: "San Jose Mercury News reports the Police Commission on Tuesday approved a proposal to buy a software program that would allow witnesses with cell phone cameras to take pictures of accident and crime scenes and transmit the images to 911 call centers.

When a witness dials 911 to report an incident and has taken cell phone pictures of the scene, a dispatcher can send a text message to the caller requesting the image. The caller replies to the message with the images attached, according to software maker PowerPhone Inc. of Madison, Conn. "It seems like a good way to make our city safer and help law enforcement officials know about the crime scene," said City Council President Eric Garcetti, who introduced a motion in April asking the city to implement the program. The cost of the program hasn't been determined, but Garcetti estimated it will be "in the hundreds of thousands range." "If it saves a life, if it helps prevent a crime from occurring, then it's a price well worth it," Garcetti said."
Quickies

Submission + - Weapon found in Whale blubber from the 1800's (cnn.com)

Submitted by LABarr
LABarr writes: AP and CNN are carrying this story. "A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt — more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3½-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old. The bomb lance fragment, lodged in a bone between the whale's neck and shoulder blade, was likely manufactured in New Bedford, on the southeast coast of Massachusetts, a major whaling center at that time. It was probably shot at the whale from a heavy shoulder gun around 1890." One tough whale...
Censorship

Submission + - Law students sue anonymous message board posters (wsj.com)

Submitted by
The Xoxo Reader
The Xoxo Reader writes: "The Wall Street Journal reports that two female students at Yale Law School have filed suit for defamation and infliction of emotional distress against an administrator and several anonymous posters (identified only by their pseudoynms) at the popular law student discussion board AutoAdmit (a.k.a. Xoxohth). One of the claims is that the posters have violated copyright laws by reposting pictures of the women without their permission. Since AutoAdmit's administrators have previously said that they do not retain IP logs of posters, it is unclear how the plaintiffs will ultimately be able to identify the actual people behind the pseudonyms named in the complaint. Apparently, one method was to post the summons on the message board itself and ask the posters to step forward. The controversy leading to this lawsuit was previously discussed on Slashdot here."
Microsoft

Submission + - MS attempts to challenge Adobe's Web design suite (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "Computerworld has published an analysis of Microsoft's challenge to Adobe's suite of Web-design and development software. The MS products are part of the $600 Expression Studio, which includes a bunch of different tools such as the successor to FrontPage (Expression Web) and a competitor to Adobe Illustrator (Expression Design). The reviewer found the functionality of the individual tools to be "not bad", and the price is great, but pointed to two major shortcomings: A lack of an image editing program and the failure of the Expression Studio products to really work together:

It's hard not to see Expression Studio as less a true 'suite' than a collection of products that have been co-branded after the fact — partly because Microsoft's other suite, Office, is so tightly knit in comparison. It's tough to see how the products in Expression Studio fit into a single integrated workflow or how they can all be used together, aside from creating XAML applications for Web sites.
The review also notes that these programs support Silverlight, the partially open-source technology that is meant to go up against Flash."
Google

Submission + - EBay pulls from Google AdWords (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
InfoWorldMike
InfoWorldMike writes: "EBay has pulled all of its paid search ads from Google AdWords network in the U.S in an eyebrow-raising move likely to be interpreted in the industry as a sign of deteriorating relations between the two Internet giants. An eBay spokesman characterized the decision to pull the U.S. Google ads as an instance in a continued experiment eBay does to determine the best allocation of its advertising and marketing budget. But a source familiar with the situation said the move is an angry reaction by eBay's management to Google's decision to hold a protest party concurrent with the start of eBay Live, the company's annual conference for merchants."
Censorship

Submission + - Yahoo censors Flickr images in Germany (flickr.com)

Submitted by janoc
janoc writes: Apparently not only China is censoring Flickr. Flickr has recently introduced filters to filter out images deemed inappropriate. Unfortunately, the filters are now forced also on the German users (together with Singaporeans and Korean users). Photos marked "moderate" or "restricted" are invisible even to their own authors if they happen to be in one of the restricted countries. However, users from elsewhere can still see them just fine if they disable the "Safe search" feature in preferences — this option is not available to Germans anymore. There is a large discussion about this issue going on here: link.
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Is SDK-less iPhone out of business? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
InfoWorldMike
InfoWorldMike writes: "InfoWorld's Tom Yager hits a new low in his love affair with Apple, writing "Steve Jobs told the crowd in January that Apple's upcoming mobile device, iPhone, runs OS X. A Unix phone with Apple's UI panache? Touch, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile phone in one device? I was ready to take a three month sabbatical from InfoWorld just to spelunk around inside iPhone's APIs and its OS X core. Looks like I'll have to continue to hone my mobile app development chops in the familiar domains of BlackBerry, Symbian/Nokia, and Windows Mobile. At the Worldwide Developer Conference this week, Jobs paved the way for the June 29 delivery of iPhone by telling a crowd of some 4,000 that where developers are concerned, iPhone is a handheld Safari browser. "You don't even need an SDK,' Steve said before he invoked the magic phrase 'AJAX and Web 2.0,' to let the press know that iPhone is open to all applications that take advantage of these state of the art paradigms. Steve cited Salesforce.com as the exemplar of the type of Web-based application one would run on an iPhone. That sounds pretty until you realize that of all the ways to write and package software, none is less suited to mobile use than a Web application. Salesforce makes this plain with Salesforce To Go, custom native software targeted to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Symbian devices. I can handle having my expectations go unmet. But to trumpet AJAX and Web 2.0 as iPhone's development platform is worse than spin. It strains my faith in Apple." I did not help, either, that Yager's MacBook Pro's battery died during this deadening keynote, I'll add to this."
Privacy

Submission + - Google adjusts user privacy policy -- slightly (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Google's global privacy counsel posted a blog yesterday stating that the company would make data that it stores about users anonymous after 18 months. The blog came in response to a letter the company received last month from a European Union data protection working group regarding Google's privacy policies. 'In its letter, the Article 29 Working Party ... asked Google to explain why it needed to keep user data for 18 to 24 months.' A report released last week by Privacy International ranked Google worse than any other Internet company in protecting the privacy of its users."
Software

Submission + - Tools that manage both Macs and PCs (computerworld.com)

Submitted by johannacw
johannacw writes: Ryan Faas takes a look at nine tools that handle systems management tasks clients and servers in both Mac and Windows environments. He gives his take on each tool's strengths and weaknesses, and explains why security concerns caused him to leave Apple Remote Desktop off his list.
Security

Submission + - Slim is in for Windows desktop firewalls (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
jcatcw
jcatcw writes: "Scot Finnie has concluded, after years of hands-on testing and with the benefit of thousands of messages from advanced computer users, that Windows-based multifunction desktop security products have a low degree of customer satisfaction. Most properly configured, low-cost firewalls get the job done of protecting against casual inbound incursions. The problem comes with outbound traffic — some of the most commonly used firewalls offer inferior protection. After setting strict criteria for product selection, he reviews Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4, Jetico Personal Firewall 2.0 beta, Sunbelt Personal Firewall 4.5, Look 'n' Stop Firewall 2.06, and Eset Smart Security beta 1a."

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