Adobe Media Player 1.0 goes live with clear, high-def content
The Flash manufacturer's move at taking content-protected video off of the browser and moving it onto its AIR platform, no longer has the luxury of being able to excuse any remaining bugs.
It could soon become one of the most ubiquitous examples of the AIR platform in popular use: Adobe today formally published its Adobe Media Player 1.0 software, which is designed to be both a delivery system and stand-alone console for Flash video, including high-resolution media.
H-1B limits met after just one week of petitions
As the debate continues over foreign-born students educated in America taking their skills to other countries, the US continues to limit the number of non-citizen students working here to a number that can be met in under one week's time.
Last Tuesday was the first day for the US Citizenship and Immigration Service to receive employers' petitions for foreign workers to obtain H-1B visas, to perform bachelor's and master's degree-level work in the US during its fiscal year 2009, beginning this October. Yesterday morning, the first scheduled filing period ended, and USCIS reports the number of petitions already well exceeded its annual quota of 65,000 for the bachelor's category, and 20,000 for the "advanced degree" category.
EU mandates Web sites delete personal data after six months
Can a fair compromise be obtained on the matter of how long search engines should be allowed to retain personally identifiable data? Last week, a key European advisory group moved the goalposts on that issue yet again.
The European Union's key advisory panel on governing policy for Internet services issued an opinion last Friday stating that search engines and Web sites that retain personally identifiable data delete that data from their servers after six months. Member states would then be free to specify an even tighter timeframe.
Google opens its Web application engine to 10,000 developers
The engine that powers the company's online applications suite will soon be accessible by a select number of developers, for testing their own Web services at their own pace...on Google's servers.
In a highly anticipated move given the fact that it had publicized that something would emerge today for a company retreat billed as "Campfire One," Google this morning announced it is granting developmental access to its application servers, to the first 10,000 developers who apply.
AMD confirms 10% workforce cut, declining outlook
The worst is not over by a long shot for AMD. This afternoon, the company confirmed it would have to make very painful cuts, the repercussions of which are already being felt in terms of declining revenues.
Up until today, AMD had been saying it expected its revenue from the first calendar quarter of this year to decline "in line with seasonality" -- meaning, it would be lower than over the Christmas holiday because January always drops from December. And analysts had been responding to that claim, for the most part, with disbelief. As it turned out, the analysts were right.
Vista SP1 'prerequisites' to gear up systems for auto updates
In a world, to sound like Don LaFontaine for a moment, where nothing could possibly go wrong, when something small does go wrong, it's huge. Today, Microsoft is hoping a small patch will make a huge difference to Vista's image.
The problems Microsoft had in simply rolling out early versions of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to its initial testers served to vindicate its worst critics' complaints: It didn't seem the company could even correct Vista correctly. The rollout problems were even the topic of at least one of Apple's recent anti-Vista Mac ads. But many of those problems were apparently caused by a minor issue with automatic updates; and now, Microsoft says it's publishing a patch for pre-SP1 Vista that will enable customers with Automatic Updates to apply the SP1 series of patches without fear of entering an endless reboot cycle.
Adobe to correct its controversial Photoshop Express terms Thursday
"You grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue...from [Your] Content" read its original Terms of Service, which apparently didn't go over well.
Maybe the company didn't expect anyone to actually read the Terms of Service word-for-word, or maybe it didn't actually read the text itself after "boilerplating" it from some other product. But last Friday, Adobe said it has altered the Terms with regard to its online Photoshop Express product, so that it doesn't appear the company will claim the right to open a service on the side that resells users' own photos.
Felten: Some New Jersey voting machines can't add
A printed tape offered as evidence of the integrity of a Sequoia Voting Systems machine failed a very obvious test last week, as a Princeton professor noted a simple column of numbers actually added up to 105, not 106.
The Princeton University professor who has received national acclaim for his efforts to assess the true integrity of electronic voting machines, discovered one very simple error amid the evidence one manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems, had actually offered in its own defense. In recent weeks, Sequoia has found itself in hot water again for as many as sixty separate discrepancies reported in a single election in New Jersey last February 3.
Yahoo is open to some type of transaction with Microsoft
A complete withdrawal from the table at this point might spur shareholder resentment, but Yahoo's executives and board had to make some signal in light of Microsoft's claims last week of foot-dragging.
In recognizing what many independent financial analysts termed an untenable position, Yahoo's new chairman Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang responded to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "time is running out" statement on Friday by saying it would be unopposed to some kind of fair transaction with Microsoft that Yahoo's board would feel is in the best interests of its shareholders.
Voice access coming to Live Search for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry
It seemed analysts were the last to realize that Yahoo was out front and pulling away with its Go mobile service. So Google and Microsoft have been racing to catch up, and now Microsoft is preparing to leverage its investment in voice to attain an edge.
When Microsoft acquired Tellme Networks just over a year ago, it was with the intent of bringing a more intelligently behaving voice to automated answering systems, including the company's own communications servers. Now we're learning that Microsoft intends to get even more mileage out of the deal by integrating some aspects of voice recognition and response not just into services for Windows Mobile, but in a new Live Search system for BlackBerry as well.
First word from CTIA on Windows Mobile 6.1
The kernel of Microsoft's mobile operating system may not have changed much, but a great deal of rethinking has been applied to making one of the world's more prevalent smartphone systems behave more sensibly, like a phone.
At a keynote address this morning at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas, Microsoft lifted the covers off of Windows Mobile 6.1, a widely anticipated refresh -- and in some cases, perhaps a correction -- to its mobile operating environment. Touch-screen operation is being added to a significant number of features beyond its home screen, which premiered in WM6 to mixed reviews and which for WM6.1 will get a highly anticipated overhaul.
ISO certifies MS Office Open XML, just barely, with 75% approval
No, it's not an April Fool: Despite controversy over whether certain countries' voting members truly represented the wishes of their respective standards delegations, it would appear ODF now has company in the world's library of standards..
A document leaked by the OpenDoc Society to members of its internal mailing list this morning shows what purports to be the final ballot of voting members of Standards Committee 34 of the International Organization for Standardization.
IBM barred from federal contracts pending investigation on EPA bid
In an extraordinary move last Thursday, the US federal government placed IBM on an "excluded parties" list after having learned a grand jury issued a subpoena to the company, reportedly regarding a contract with the Environmental Protection Agency on which it had placed a bid.
The list effectively prohibits the company from doing business with any US government agencies for an indefinite period.
Google to phase in offline access options for Docs
One of the most innovative additions that Google may be making to its applications suite would, in a bygone era, be one of the most basic features: the ability to save locally.
One of the factors that makes Web applications convenient is the fact that you're almost always using the most currently tested version of the software. With Google Apps, the tradeoff has typically been that the user has to be online, which makes operation on a laptop while in the air somewhat inconvenient.
Competitor to Digg has journalists ranking their own, others' stories
If you care about this story and think it's important, we invite you to submit its headline to Digg or one of the other many fine aggregators on the Web. But if we care about this story, we may want to submit it to Publish2 instead.
Never one to be outdone in the naval-gazing department, the business of online journalism has been stuck in a quandary recently over who, amid the broader scheme of ebbing and flowing headlines, should get to decide what's important and what's not. News aggregation sites like Digg leave that job to the readers, though recently, the discussion has been about whether readers are rating stories or just their headlines.
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