$100 OLPC to Cost $176 and May Run WINDOWS!

If you weren’t sick of the OLPC, here is even more news. Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop Per Child project, has almost confirmed that the cost of the laptop would be close to $176 but also make a reference to the machines may be adopted in US schools and it may run Windows.

XO’s developers have been working with Microsoft so a version of Windows can run on the machines […] It could be the $3 software package that Microsoft announced last week for governments that subsidize student computers. It includes Windows XP Starter Edition and some of Microsoft’s “productivity” software.

That would be a direct blow to Steve Jobs who offered MacOS X for Intel to run on the upcoming laptop - for free. However, Jobs’ offer was declined in 2005 as the organization is searching for a 100% open source solution.

Posted on Uneasy Silence by Dan

Fresh News Become Standard Search Results

As promised last week, Google's web search results integrate results from Google News. The standard news OneBox that was displayed at the top of the page for queries related to recent news was replaced with a list of links to news articles, displayed anywhere in the top results.

The important news will rank higher than less important ones and they become a standard search result. This is the first step in Google's big plan of integrating every type of content in one index: an universal search engine that mixes web pages, images, videos, books, scholar papers, news articles and more.

It will still take some time until the change propagates to all Google's data centers, so you may not see results from Google News displayed as standard results (try to search for news-related queries like Bush, Iraq).

Creative Commons-licensed by rustybrick. More screenshots.

found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Homeless Internet Citizens

So you open the door, you step inside and you discover that your house is empty: no furniture, no books, no family, no pets. Your home became empty and nobody bothered to explain why.

That's what happened to Google Personalized Homepage for some users today. Says Michael M.:

Today, I logged on at college and all was fine on my homepage. When I got home, I turned on my laptop and my homepage had reverted to the default, with all of the default gadgets and the default theme. I tried to re-add my gadgets, but it keeps going back to the default style. I've tried clearing my cookies/history and signing in/out.

The personalized homepage is the page I visit most on the internet, it tracks all my news and weather and lets me keep track of my schedule and chat to my friends on Google Talk.


My homepage looks the same, but there's a big thread at Google Groups with people who lost their homepages. Google's answer is so endearing:

We're now in frantic-chase-down-this-bug mode here at the Googleplex, and I hope to have more info for you soon. For now, we're not entirely sure of this, but it's possible that changing your homepage theme might cause the problem. SO, if you still have your homepage intact, please avoid changing your theme until further notice. The big question I know you'll all want answered is whether you'll get your homepage back once we sort things out... and the really honest answer is that I hope so, but I just don't know yet.



{ Thank you, Thomas, Redmar, Yasar, Michael, Joe. }

- found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

The exact same thing happened to me btw and it REALLY SUCKS! My personalized page was down right perfect and now I have to start all over.

HP Shows Off Some Sexy Ideas for the Future

Hewlett Packard, more commonly known as HP, is going on tour. The HP Mobile Innovation Tour will show off HP's radical ideas for personal electronics in the future, the near future that is, because HP plans to make these awe-inspiring new toys available as of 2012. In the tour's latest stop in Mumbai, India, HP looks ahead to 2012, where all devices will be able to communicate with each other. Cool? Hell, I think so.

Some of the highlights of the broad range of upcoming products include a flexible display, a smart shelf, a media hub in the form of a watch, a digital wallet and an odd looking notebook. I'll provide the link at the bottom of the post, but first here are some eye catchers.

Steve's the man! Just Say NO to Rent-a-Song.

Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, on Wednesday maintained his view that customers would rather own their music than rent it, suggesting he's unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to iTunes.

"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."

Jobs' comments come at a time when Apple is believed to be preparing for iTunes licensing renegotiating with several of the music industry's largest labels. As part of those talks, several of the labels are expected to badger the Apple chief to add a subscription model to its industry-leading iTunes Store.

The labels, which are battling an ongoing decline in sales of compact discs and the simultaneous proliferation of illegal music downloads through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, are touting the potential of subscription services to boost their revenues. They believe a subscription model would increase the consumption of music and allow them to reap monthly payments in addition to small licensing fees each time songs are played.

Thus far, however, Jobs appears poised to stick with Apple's current a-la-carte and album download model, which has catapulted his firm to the forefront of the digital download business. Since its inception back in 2003, the company's iTunes music store has sold more than 2.5 billion songs worldwide.

"People want to own their music," Jobs said.

For its part in the impending negotiations, Apple is expected to press the music labels for further concessions on selling music without copy-protection software known as digital rights management (DRM). In a landmark deal announced earlier this month, EMI Group -- the third largest music label -- announced that it would begin selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes in May.

"There are a lot of people in the other music companies who are very intrigued by it," Jobs said of the move. "They're thinking very hard about it right now."

The Apple chief executive is hoping pressure from the EMI move weighs on three of the other big labels -- Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Music -- essentially forcing them to follow suit in order to remain competitive.

"We've said by the end of this year, over half of the songs we offer on iTunes we believe will be in DRM-free versions," Jobs told Reuters. "I think we're going to achieve that."

Found on Apple Insider ... where else?

The day before...

Copy: Monday 10 September 2001 - The world can change in a day. Don't miss your daily edition of in-depth news.

It's not often that a print ad literally jumps up and throttles our attention like this one - done for local newspaper brand Cape Times - did this morning.

There are four executions. This one in reference to 9/11, another (beautifully shot) for Hiroshima 1945, the JFK assassination and the '76 Soweto riots [all after the jump].

Using iconic events from history, the campaign highlights the fact that world-changing events often can¹t be predicted and that the course of history can, quite literally, change in a day.

Love the art direction and the hard-hitting message of these ads. Stunningly arresting.

Makes you think what the Virginia Tech campus looked like on Sunday morning.

found on Cherryflava.com

Earthlike Planet Found - Could Possibly Support Life and Already Contain Liquid Water

The most enticing property yet found outside our solar system is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, a team of European astronomers said Tuesday.

The astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a dim red star known as Gliese 581.

It is the smallest of the 200 or so planets that are known to exist outside of our solar system, the extrasolar or exo-planets. It orbits its home star within the so-called habitable zone where surface water, the staff of life, could exist if other conditions are right, said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

“We are at the right place for that,” said Dr. Udry, the lead author of a paper describing the discovery that has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

He and other astronomers cautioned that it was far too soon to conclude that liquid water was there without more observations. Sara Seager, a planet expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “For example, if the planet had an atmosphere more massive than Venus’, then the surface would likely be too hot for liquid water.”

Nevertheless, the discovery in the Gliese 581 system, where a Neptune-size planet was discovered two years ago and another planet of eight Earth masses is now suspected, catapults that system to the top of the list for future generations of space missions.

“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” said Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University in France, according to a news release from the European Southern Observatory, a multinational collaboration based in Garching, Germany.

Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who studies the structure and formation of planet s, said: “It’s 20 light-years. We can go there.”

The new planet was discovered by the wobble it causes in its home star’s motion as it orbits, using the method by which most of the known exo- planet s have been discovered. Dr. Udry’s team used an advanced spectrograph on a 141-inch-diameter telescope at the European observatory in La Silla, Chile.

The planet, Gliese 581c, circles the star every 13 days at a distance of about seven million miles. According to models of planet formation developed by Dr. Sasselov and his colleagues, such a planet should be about half again as large as the Earth and composed of rock and water, what the astronomers now call a “super Earth.”

The most exciting part of the find, said Dr. Sasselov, is that it “basically tells you these kinds of planets are very common.” Because they could stay geologically active for billions of years, he said he suspected that such planets could be even more congenial for life than Earth. Although the new planet is much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, the red dwarf Gliese 581 is only about a hundredth as luminous as the Sun. So seven million miles is a comfortable huddling distance.

How hot the planet gets, said Dr. Udry, depends on how much light the planet reflects, its albedo. Using the Earth and Venus as two extreme examples, he estimated that temperatures on the surface of the planet should be in the range of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade.

“It’s just right in the good range,” said Dr. Udry . “Of course, we don’t know anything about its albedo.”

One problem is that the wobble technique only gives masses of planets. To measure their actual size and thus find their densities, astronomers have to catch the planets in the act of passing in front of or behind their stars. Such transits can also reveal if the planets have atmospheres and what they are made of.

Dr. Udry said he and Dr. Sasselov would be observing the Gliese system with a Canadian space telescope named MOST to see if there are any dips in starlight caused by the new planet. Failing that, they said, the best chance for more information about the system lies with the Terrestrial planet Finder, a NASA mission, and the Darwin missions of the European Space Agency, which are designed to study Earthlike planets, but have been delayed by political, technical and financial difficulties.

“We are starting to count the first targets,” said Dr. Udry.

You can read this article by New York Times writer Dennis Overbye, reporting from New York City, N.Y., in context here: www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/science/space/25planet.html

found on http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=11485

iTunes + Yahoo = Lyrics?

By Katie Marsal

A proposed deal between Apple and digital media company Gracenote could soon see the iPod maker serve up song lyrics through its ubiquitous iTunes Store.

The move would be part of a larger industry-backed push to stifle proliferation of unauthorized websites that currently dominate the market, often offering inaccurate lyrics and never compensating artists for their work.

Gracenote and Yahoo! kicked-off the effort earlier this week in announcing a licensing deal allowing Yahoo! Music to offer legal, licensed song lyrics from hundreds of thousands of songs to its customers. Some feature artists include U2, Elvis and The Beatles.

In a deal with music publishers last summer, Gracenote gain the rights to distribute lyrics from nearly 100 music publishers, including the top five: BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, and dozens of prominent independent publishers.

“Song lyrics are continually among the top 10 searches performed on major search engines, though the results often provide consumers a frustrating experience filled with inconsistent and incomplete lyrics, and annoying pop-ups,” said Craig Palmer, president and chief executive officer of Gracenote.

In speaking to Reuters, Palmer revealed his firm is in discussions with various other music partners, such as Apple's iTunes. "We wouldn't be in the business to launch just one service, so stay tuned," he said.

The arrival of lyrics on iTunes could present exciting opportunities for Apple, which already offers high-quality album artwork downloads to its customers. A deal between Gracenote and Apple would almost certainly pave the way for lyric downloads to digital music players, allowing iPod users to sing along to their favorite tunes. Karaoke products and possibilities also exist.

In speaking to Reuters, Palmer said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually, by as much as $100 million annually within the next 10 years.

found on Apple Insider

Intel CPU Prices Drop, Drop, Drop!

According to Akihabaranews, Intel has been cutting the price of its CPU (whole range) up to 40% ! The following chart was found on Akihabara and as you can see it demonstrates the drop in price of each intel CPU. Anyone out there with plans to refurbish your old desktop or maybe wanting to make it able to run Vista .... or OS X, but have incompatible CPU's (shucks, my problem); your prayers have been answered. (Tip: Click the picture and it will get bigger!)

Try Google's Next Design Before It Goes Live

Google's latest design test for the search results pages and homepage is clever and has big chances of replacing the current one. The big change is that Google adds a navigation menu for its services placed at the top of the page. The list of services includes Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs (the last two are hidden under "more"). If you click on one of the navigation link, you'll go to the homepage of that service, strange as that may seem for search-related services. Under the search box, you'll see links to other specialized search engines that provide useful results for that search. For "Bush", there are many services listed, including news, news archives and blog search, but for most queries you'll see few services listed (for "Google", you'll see only news search; for "flowers", image search; for "c++", code search, blog search and groups).


Courtesy of Webbsnack, here's how you can test this new design.

Copy this code:

javascript:document.cookie= "PREF=ID=fddb01133a87d314:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1177334998:LM=1177334998:GM=1:S=OOg0FEVzpPplxe9J; path=/; domain=.google.com";void(0);

go to google.com/ncr, paste it in the address bar, press enter, then search for something clever. I absolutely love the new design, but if you don't like it, clear your Google cookie and it'll go away.


Small observation: the number of results should be at the top of the page. I sometimes search for things on Google just to see the number of results (this is my primitive grammar checker).

found on http://googlesystem.blogspot.com

Microsoft admits Vista failure

Actions speak louder than PR

By Charlie Demerjian in Beijing: found on the inquirer

WITH TWO OVERLAPPING events, Microsoft admitted what we have been saying all along, Vista, aka Windows Me Two (Me II), is a joke that no one wants.

Microsoft did two unprecedented things this week that frankly stunned us.

Dell announced that it would be offering XP again on home PCs. The second that Vista came out, Microsoft makes it very hard for you to sell anything other than Me II. It can't do this on the business side because it would be laughed out the door, but for the walking sheep class, well, you take what you are shovelled.

This is classic abusive monopoly behavior, Microsoft wrote the modern book on it. It pulled all the major OEMs in by twisting their arms with the usual methods, and they again all fell into line. Never before has anyone backpedalled on this, to do so would earn you the wrath of Microsoft.

But Dell just did. This means that Me II sales are at least as bad as we think, the software and driver situation is just as miserable, and Dell had no choice but to buck the trend. If anyone thinks this is an act of atonement for foisting such a steaming pile on us, think again, it doesn't care about the consumer.

What happened is the OEMs revolted in the background and forced Microsoft's hand. This is a big neon sign above Me II saying 'FAILURE'. Blink blink blink. OK, Me II won't fail, Microsoft has OEMs whipped and threatened into a corner, it will sell, but you can almost hear the defectors marching toward Linux. This is a watershed.

The other equally monumental Me II failure? Gates in China launching a $3 version of bundled Me II. Why is this not altruism? Well, it goes back to piracy and how it helped enforce the MS monopoly. If you can easily pirate Windows, Linux has no price advantage, they both cost zero.

With Me II, Microsoft made it very hard to pirate. It is do-able, you can use the BIOS hack and probably a host of others, but the point is, it raised the bar enough so lots of people have to buy it. Want to bet that in a country with $100 average monthly salary, people aren't going to shell out $299 for Me II Broken Edition?

What did MS do? It dropped the price about 100x or so. I can't say this is unprecedented, when it made Office 2003 hard to pirate it had to backpedal with the student edition for about $150. This time though, things are much more desperate.

If you fit Microsoft's somewhat convoluted definition of poor, it still wants to lock you in, you might get rich enough to afford the full-priced stuff someday. It is at a dangerous crossroads, if its software bumps up the price of a computer by 100 per cent, people might look to alternatives.

That means no Me II DRM infection lock in, no mass migration to the newer Office obfuscated and patented file formats, and worse yet, people might utter the W word. Yes, you guessed it, 'why'. People might ask why it is sticking with the MS lock in, and at that point, it is in deep trouble.

So, it did the unthinkable, and dropped the price. I won't bother to hunt down all the exec quotes saying how people can't afford clean water would be overjoyed to sell kidneys to upgrade to the new version of Office, but they are out there. This was a sacred cow, and it is now hamburger backed up against the wall.

These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested three years ago. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can't compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times.

What we are seeing is an unprecedented shift of power. It is also an unprecedented admission of failure. And the funniest part about the moves made? They are the wrong things to do. Microsoft is in deep trouble.

iPhone's Technical Difficulties

Whispers on the street have it that Apple has run into some issues with the iPhone's OS, preventing a solid supply of the much-ballyhooed phone to hit stores in time for the launch. A source from the manufacturer has this to say on the situation: "It does not look feasible that Apple will be able to ship units out in May to make the shipping date in the US (June), so expect units to trickle by end of June or early July."

Apparently, Apple has sent 50 engineers to Taipei to work around the clock to get the bugs worked out so the iPhone can ship on time. That's a lot of engineers. The source claims that such a shift in manpower is part of the reason Leopard was delayed. We're not sure how likely it is that Apple would send that many people halfway around the world, but anything is possible. Take it with a grain of salt.

Is it just me, or is the iPhone sharing more traits with the much-maligned Playstation 3 than anyone cares to admit? Let's see: The pricing is exactly the same ($500 and $600 models), there are manufacturing delays that are going to make for a very unpleasant launch, and both products are banking on the popularity of their predecessors to become huge sellers. Add to that a touchscreen without tactile feedback that might not be what people are expecting and this might not be the home run that Apple (and everyone else) is anticipating.

These are, of course, just rumors, and it's entirely possible that the iPhone will roll out as smooth as honey in mid-June, with thousands upon thousands of people lining up to toss more money at Apple. In any case, it should be interesting. –Adam Frucci

The above article was found on Gizmodo.

Google Spreadsheets Adds Charts

Google Spreadsheets finally added charts. This feature has been developed for many months and was one of the biggest lacks from Google's spreadsheet application.

You can create more types of charts: columns, bars, lines, pie, scatter, add labels and a legend. Just select the columns you want to plot and click on the new chart icon. After inserting the chart in the spreadsheet, you can save it as a PNG image or edit it.

The charts are rendered as SVG in Firefox/Opera and VML in Internet Explorer, so they don't require plug-ins. As usually, Opera is not officially supported, so you'll find things that don't work as expected.



You can annotate cells and Google search the content of a cell.


The above was all found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Hotdoll: The Sex Doll for Dogs

Is your dog in heat and humping anything it can wrap its horny little legs around? Are you constantly having to pry your promiscuous pooch off the legs of guests, parents and members of your church? Protect your leg from a hump attack by getting Scruffy a Hotdoll. Yes, it's a sex doll for dogs. It's shaped like a dog and it'll allow your tension-filled pet to go to town as much as his little heart desires, humping away until he passes out in exhaustion, leaving a wispy coil of friction-singed dog-fur smoke wafting into the air.

The above was all found on Gizmodo, check out the original article on Giz by clicking here.

More Girls Than Guys Online

Women outnumber men online, and it's likely to stay that way. *Pause for applause and cheering* WHOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes folks, it's true! Girls now outnumber guys on the internet by about 6 MILLION users! The table's are turning and I like it! Anyone who knows me knows I'm so not a feminist and I get really annoyed at the hairy, masculine girls who get all hard up about this kind of stuff, but this is the one time I'll be stepping out of character to scream WHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO GIRLS!

According to eMarketer, female usage of the internet in the U.S. has risen 12.4 per cent since 2000, compared with 3.2 per cent for males.eMarketer estimates that there will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million US females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population.

Schools need to do everything in their power to push this further. THE INTERNET IS NOT JUST FOR GEEKY GUYS, THERE ARE GEEKY GIRLS TOO AND IT'S TIME TO LEARN! Schools need to teach girls about code, designing websites, graphic design, blogging, rss feeds, torrents, and all major sites like youtube, wikipedia, filehippo, and all those damn social network sites. Only 66 per cent of the estimated 97.2 million females online watch videos, compared with 78 per cent of the 90.9 million men.

The author of the eMarketer report said the change in demographics could affect trends in content and usage of the web.

"For girls who have grown up with technology, there is no significant gender gap in internet usage," said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "The rise of activities that are particularly appealing to young females, such as social networking, will result in even greater usage."

More Women Online [eMarketer via Slashdot] - [Gizmodo]

New Mac v.s PC Ad

This one actually RIGHT ON THE MONEY! I hate stupid trial programs, they suck and I don't ever want to buy them. I don't want to have Norton or Mcafee virus protection for a year and then be forced to pay for it afterwards. If you try to delete the damn you get ALL SORTS of problems, especially with Mcafee. And for god's sake, I don't want real player or quicktime to be bundled with anything. I know where to get it, and I'll get it if I want it. I hate realplayer! Say NO to bundled trial versions and other bundled software!

Leopard Screenshot?

It isn't much really, but I found the above screenshot (no confirmation on it's legitimacy) on Gizmodo with the following article...

"The fanboys are sad that OS X Leopard is going to be late, so in the meantime, here are some fresh screenshots to keep em held over. There, there, it'll be ok.

These are shots from the latest build seeded to developers, 9A410. Charming name aside, this evolution of the beta unifies the UI elements, ditching the now aging brushed aluminum window borders, along with the interesting Finder sidebar icons. Check em out.

BTW, these won't be around very long, so look at em, love em, and kiss em goodbye.

UPDATE: I also like Leander's take on the low probability of these being real, and the logic behind that reasoning.–Brian Lam"

More Shots: (hint - click on the pics and they'll get bigger!)

Apple's iPod may gain Wi-Fi by holidays

Apple plans to launch new iPods featuring Wi-Fi during the second half of 2007, according to a report at DigiTimes, the same publication which first reported that Apple would be forced to push out Leopard's release until October.

In a brief posting, the Taiwanese rumor publicized cited "portable music player component makers" who say that Universal Scientific Industrial (USI) has been contracted by the Cupertino-based iPod maker to produce the Wi-Fi modules and that Foxconn will act as the OEM system assembler.

USI will reportedly begin the first shipments of its Wi-Fi modules to Apple later this month, while Foxconn isn't expected to deliver the completed players until the third quarter, which runs July - September.

DigiTimes's report is somewhat in line with expectations published by AppleInsider over the course of the past few months. Sources initially reported that three distinct iPod models lie on Apple's roadmap for 2007, later adding that one of those players --- a next-gen video iPod -- was tracking for a third quarter release.

Thus far, Microsoft's Zune has led the way to increasing development of Wi-Fi portable music players, with Creative and SanDisk most recently showcasing such players at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. According to DigiTimes, Samsung and Sony are also planning to offer similar products in the near future.

found on AppleInsider

If It’s XP You Want, It’s Vista You’ll Get

Microsoft is adamant that they will no longer allow Windows XP to be installed on new PC’s after January 2008, DESPITE only 10% of Windows users actually wanting Vista.

Also, hardware will be manufactured to ONLY support Vista, so you would not be able to install XP on your new hardware. Do you think anyone should care about XP anymore? Are people really overreacting to Vista? Is Vista the next Windows ME?

found on Uneasysilence

Apple delays Leopard until October because of iPhone

By Peter Cohen on Macworld

Apple on Thursday released a statement noting that Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” won’t be released until October. The cause of the delay? The iPhone.

“iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is,” reads a statement published by the company.

Getting the iPhone ready for its June launch has had an unintended consequence, however: QA and “some key software engineering” resources allocated to Mac OS X needed to be diverted from their work to finish the iPhone. As a result, Apple won’t release Leopard at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, as it had first planned.

“While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones,” reads the statement.