Tech News

Google’s Phone, “Nexus One”, Spotted in the Wild

Last week, Time Magazine posted its annual “Top 10” list for fifty different categories, and for gadgets, the top spot was given to Motorola’s Droid phone. This was a fairly big surprise, since Apple’s products have dominated top lists for the past few years, especially with the iPhone, but it was refreshing to see a new face for once. There’s been a lot of debate as to which is better, the Droid or the iPhone, but one thing’s for certain, Droid certainly did a lot of things right.

Unlike many other smart phones on the market, Droid doesn’t run a Palm or Windows OS, but rather “Android”, the operating system spearheaded by Google and various partners. With a company like Google behind such a robust phone OS, it almost seemed likely that it would evolve into more than just a developer, and release an actual product, and it looks as though that rumors are true, as the Google phone has been spotted in the wild.

Early leaked images of the phone looked like HTC’s Passion, and the most recent action shots show that to be the case. There’s no HTC branding on the phone, however, so whether this is just a result of an early unit, or due to a deal Google struck with the company, no one knows (except Google). According to one blogger, the phone is an “iPhone + a little extra screen and a scroll wheel“, and judging by the pictures, it does look to be a bit taller than an iPhone.

The final name for the phone, supposedly, is “Nexus One”, and the release date is of course unknown. With these recent leaks of images, though, it looks like we’ll be learning a lot more about the device in the near-future. Rumor also has it that Google will be selling these phones directly, rather than going through a partner, and if that’s the case, then things are going to be mighty interesting.

Apparently, Googlers aren’t supposed to be tweeting the details of the Google Phone, but they have no problem tweeting about how awesome it is. And they also apparently have no problem showing it off. And not surprisingly, pictures of the device are starting to hit the web. Without further ado, this is it. Cory O’Brien, a San Francisco-based blogger, got his hands on one tonight and tweeted out that picture.

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Mozilla Suggests Dropping Google for Bing

Earlier this week, I linked to one of the rare news stories that burns me up on the inside. It featured the CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, and an asinine comment, where he essentially stated that if you’re looking for privacy, you’re probably doing something wrong. Hopefully it’s not too hard to understand why this comment is a little foolish. People should be entitled to their privacy, regardless of what they’re doing.

I wasn’t the only one rubbed the wrong way with the comment, as backlash across the Internet spread fast. Even Mozilla’s Director of Community Development, Asa Dotzler, is getting in on the action, by actually suggesting that Firefox users to begin using Microsoft’s Bing search engine, rather than Google, which ironically, has been the default search engine for Firefox for as long as I can remember.

Of course, a comment like this is also going to raise a lot of comments, and even hatred, because while there are some out there who thrive on Google and can’t get enough of it, many also use the same passion to discredit Bing, and it’s uses. Personally, I’ve been using Bing since it launched, and I honestly have to say it’s been a breath of fresh air. Most of the reasons I like it are some reasons people hate it. I like the look, the design, and how it works.

A common complaint is “it won’t give me the results I’m looking for”… but that would assume that every-single time you search for something in Google, it gives you exactly what you’re looking for the first time around. That’s pretty unreasonable to believe, especially if you use a search engine a lot. I’ll admit that Google is still superb for intricate technical data, but for general searches, Bing hasn’t let me down.

If Mozilla is so gung-ho on Bing, why not drop Google as the default? That’s much easier said than done. Because of the deals Mozilla has worked out with Google, it’s just not possible to switch. Google at one point was responsible for about 97% of Mozilla’s total revenue, and if that doesn’t explain the reason, I’m not sure what will.

One of the reasons for this is that the larger majority of Mozilla’s revenue has always come from Google (about 97 percent). In November 2009, we noted that most of Mozilla’s revenue was still being generated through search deals with Google and other popular website operators (one of the reasons why Dotzler can’t simply push for Bing becoming the default search engine in Firefox). Google recently committed to extending its contract with Mozilla until 2011.

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TechCrunch vs. Fusion Garage

For many tech enthusiasts, the name “CrunchPad” isn’t an unknown. It’s the name of a product that was set to be launched by Michael Arrington, owner of TechCrunch and related network sites. The CrunchPad could be summed up as being a much larger version of the iPhone, but with a single purpose: Web browsing. Though it looks like an e-Book reader, at least to me, it’s not. The goal of the product was to deliver ultra-fast access to the thing many people care about most.

The CrunchPad was set to launch for $500 from the get go, and for most, that’s a bit steep to stomach for such a one-sided device. But, like most new products to market, prices tend to go down, and as something like this has real potential in the marketplace, I was looking forwarding to seeing its acceptance. When I’m off the PC, the last thing I want to do is connect while mobile, but I can understand the draw, and as a whole, the product was really coming along nicely.

That was until a few weeks ago, when things began falling apart for Arrington and his crew. At the end of November, Arrington made a news post that was pretty disappointing, titled, “The End of the Crunchpad“. Since skeptics for months have been poking fun at the product’s never-announced release date, it almost seemed like it was just not meant to happen. But the reasons behind “The End” aren’t because the product couldn’t be built, or any other small detail like that, but rather it was shelved due to shoddy business practices on behalf of TechCrunch’s partners.

A company by the name of Fusion Garage was the other half of this puzzle, and were responsible with pushing the product forward, and negotiating with the ODM to produce the product. After a lot of back and forth, at the end of it all, Fusion Garage, supposedly on behalf of its shareholders, decided to push TechCrunch and Arrington out of the picture entirely, despite the fact that it was them who originally came up with the design, prototypes, and marketed it (sometimes not purposefully).

It’s hard to understand all of the details of the business negotiations without being part of them, but from the outsiders look in, it looks as though Fusion Garage is fairly shady, and mere days after it broke off with TechCrunch, it re-announced the product as its own, naming it “JooJoo”. Rightfully so, TechCrunch has filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage, but where that goes is hard to predict. Again, it’s hard to understand what kind of legal agreements where in place, but for the sake of fairness, it would be great to see TechCrunch win this. Just imagine coming up with an idea, working on it for over a year, and then losing control over it completely. I couldn’t imagine how frustrating that would be!

Fusion Garage deleted their blog shortly after the dispute erupted. A lot of statements on that blog directly contradict statements made by Fusion Garage this week (these are included in the lawsuit). That deletion, combined with the fact that they very clearly misled us over the last month into believing everything was on track, while they simultaneously registered a new domain name and rebuilt the case of the device to include the new brand, shows a pattern of lies.

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Microsoft Releases Open-Sourced Windows 7 USB Install Tool

Want to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 on a netbook, or another PC with no optical drive? Believe it or not, it’s not that difficult to pull off manually, but to take as much hassle out of it as possible, Microsoft released a “Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool” near the OS’ launch to aide those who aren’t so technically inclined, or who simply don’t want to spend so much time on something that should be so simple.

Interestingly, Microsoft faced some flack because this seemingly proprietary tool was utilizing open-source libraries. The company then fessed up to its mistake, and said it would re-release the tool under the GPLv2 license, which it now has done. You can now grab both the executable and source code on Microsoft’s own CodePlex site, and in nine different localized versions.

Using the tool is quite simple. After installing and running, you’ll be prompted to search for the ISO you want to use. This assumes you either downloaded the ISO from the Microsoft Store, or you made one yourself from a retail DVD copy. From there, you choose whether to burn it to a DVD, or copy it to a USB device, and if USB device is selected, you should be able to see it in the drop-down menu. Because most Windows 7 DVD’s weigh in at more than 2GB, it’s recommended that you do this with a 4GB drive.

This tool like most others requires that the drive be completely erased. So it’s important to copy over any data you need to retain before using the tool. After this point, the tool will format the drive, make it bootable, and then copy all of the required files over, and hopefully, you’ll be able to boot up with the USB drive just fine (there’s no reason for it not to work, as long as your PC supports USB booting), and if not, you could just run the Setup.exe file on the drive itself, while inside your current Windows install.

The ISO file contains all the Windows 7 installation files combined into a single uncompressed file. When you download the ISO file, you need to copy it to some medium in order to install Windows 7. This tool allows you to create a copy of the ISO file to a USB flash drive or a DVD. To install Windows 7 from your USB flash drive or DVD, all you need to do is insert the USB flash drive into your USB port or insert your DVD into your DVD drive and run Setup.exe from the root folder on the drive.

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Win a Copy of Dirt 2!

Last Tuesday, I posted with confidence that Dirt 2 would be released before the weekend, and as it turns out, I was wrong. Well, kind of. It turns out that there was some miscommunication between the publisher and everyone else, because the game was never meant to be released on Dec 4 in North America. Rather, that was the European release date, and it was indeed released then. For the rest of us, the real launch was this past Tuesday, Dec 8.

I have the game installed, but due to time, I haven’t been able to load it up (and it’s killing me), so to hold me over until I can finally get some time to play, how about we do a little contest? We have three copies of the game to give out, and entering couldn’t be more simple. Simply sign up on our forums if not already and post in the comments thread for this news post. That’s it.

The copies of the game we’re giving away are Steam-based, so you must have a Steam account in order to activate and download it. This contest is open to anyone who has the game available on their Steam’s store, so before entering, please make sure that it is indeed available in your country, because the game can’t be downloaded otherwise.

Since my initial incorrect prediction was made on a Tuesday, and the game was released this past Tuesday, it makes sense to hold this contest until next Tuesday, 11:59 PM EST (8:59PM PDT). As a reminder, we also have an ongoing contest for Nero 9 Reloaded, and that one is also easy to enter, so feel free to enter both!

If you already own the game, or want to simply discuss it, you can hit up this thread, which was from from last week’s news post. Good luck to those who enter!

The game, which bears the full name of “Colin McRae: Dirt 2”, is the follow-up to the original that enjoyed great success. Though there are numerous racing titles out there, few take the racers off-road, and that’s what Dirt is all about. This title is the first since McRae’s passing in 2007, but he’s more than just a name on the box, as he’s featured in the gameplay, along with fellow off-road legends Travis Pastrana and Ken Block.

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Microsoft Begins Licensing its exFAT File System

It’s been a while since I’ve last heard much about Microsoft’s “exFAT” file system, but it looks like we may be hearing about it more in the near-future. exFAT is of course the next version of Microsoft’s ultra-popular File Allocation Table file system, which used to be commonly used as the file system of choice in our desktops, and is now the most popular one found on things like thumb drives and memory cards (and sometimes netbooks, I’ve noticed).

The biggest perk that exFAT offers has to do with its allowances, and overall density. Even FAT 32 was rather limited in how large a file could be (~4GB) and how many files could be located in a single directory (65,536), as well as an overall volume size. exFAT blows those limitations away, and it would be hard to understand that what it offers would ever become a problem (though I know better than to state that as fact). The new volume and file size can be up to 64 Zebibytes (~64,000,000,000,000 GB), while the max number of files to a directory has been boosted to 2,796,202.

According to a post a CNET’s Beyond Binary, Microsoft has begun pressing companies to license exFAT, and based on the price alone, I’m not quite sure how quickly it’s going to pick up. For companies that want to license exFAT for things like cameras, camcorders or digital photo frames, Microsoft will charge a flat fee of $300,000. For cell phones and the like, volume licensing would kick in (the result would be far more than $300,000). Whether these are on per-model or a per-lineup basis, I’m not sure.

With these prices, I can’t see exFAT kicking off too fast, because for one, most of the devices that use FAT 32 today aren’t hitting their limits, and while exFAT might be a faster file system (I have no idea, just assuming), until USB 3.0 devices catch on (that includes cameras, thumb drives, et cetera), no one is going to feel the need for the new format. The progression of technology is sometimes hard to predict though, so maybe I’m wrong. We’ll have to wait and see.

The newer format, exFAT, can work on far larger-capacity devices than its predecessor–256 terabytes, as opposed to 32GB for FAT. It also allows for faster file saves on Secure Digital Extended Capacity cards and is more extensible than its predecessor, Microsoft said. “There has been an explosion in the use of rich audio and video files,” David Kaefer, general manager of Intellectual Property Licensing at Microsoft, said in a statement. “ExFAT is an ideal file system that delivers fast and reliable use of audio and video files.”

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Time’s Top 10 Everything of 2009

Like in previous years, Time has released a “Top 10 Everything of 2009”, and it isn’t kidding. It has top lists for the obvious, like medical breakthroughs, TV series, movies, video games, gadgets, but even categories for things like top crime stories, new species, oddball news stories, apologies and so forth – 50 different categories in all. Of course, there’s a few categories I couldn’t help but look at, such as gadgets.

I admit that I expected something from Apple to be in the #1 spot, since it seems to be a given lately, but that wasn’t the case here. Rather, Motorola’s Droid phone is, for the reasons that it has a sharp and vivid touchscreen along with a real keyboard, and also that it’s 3G capable. Despite the fact that it just came out, Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader took the second spot thanks to improvements it has made over the Kindle, like the mini-color screen at the bottom, along with SD, Wi-FI and PDF support.

In number three is Dyson’s “Air Multiplier”, essentially a fan without blades. The iPhone 3GS finds itself in fourth, and in fifth, is the uber-pricey Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. Seeing as this camera is capable of shooting at 102,400 ISO and deliver pictures that might actually be work looking at, I’d have to say that it deserves its spot. Dell’s super-stylish and ultra-thin Adamo XPS came in sixth.

Of course, there’s a lot more than gadgets on Time’s list. The top crime story? The resurfacing of Jaycee Dugard, who was held captive for 18 years by Phillip Garrido. Best viral video? How about the one that showcases one man growing a beard, taking a picture every single day? The best video game might be no surprise, Modern Warfare 2 (which we reviewed). Brad Paisley’s “American Saturday Night” took the top spot for best album, Mad Man for best TV series, The Princess and the Frog for best movie, and Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” for best song.

Everybody likes Android, Google’s open-source smartphone operating system. But a smartphone operating system isn’t all that satisfying without an actual kick-ass smartphone wrapped around it. Now Android has one: The Droid is a hefty beast, a metal behemoth without the gloss and finish of the iPhone, but you don’t miss it. The Droid’s touchscreen is phenomenally sharp and vivid, it has an actual physical (not great, but good enough) keyboard, and best of all, the Droid is on Verizon’s best-of-breed 3G network. It’s Android’s first credible challenge to the iPhone. Price: $300.

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Apple Releases iTunes Top Lists for 2009

Are you curious to know what albums, songs, movies and apps topped Apple’s iTunes’ store during 2009? Well, wonder no more, because Apple takes out all of the guesswork and reveals all (except actual numbers) in a feature on the iTunes store called “Rewind 2009”. Split into categories, you can see what media topped the charts in an overall look at things, and also split between genres.

For music, the number one artist of 2009 is, no surprise, Michael Jackson. Interestingly enough, Jackson doesn’t own any of the “Top Sellers” for individual tracks, nor a top album, but he still became the number one artist due to the aggregated numbers of various albums that were sold. The best new artist was Lady GaGa, and the album of the year was Kings of Leon – Only By the Night.

Black Eyed Peas topped the individual tracks list with “Boom Boom Pow”, but that was hardly the only track of theirs to be listed in the top 10 throughout the year. Flo Rida’s “Right Round” hit the second spot, with Lada GaGa’s “Poker Face” in third. Out of the top 25 or so, the genres hovered around hip-hop, pop and dance more often than not.

For television, the best seasons for respective genres include Glee, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror Collection, Brick City, Top Chef, Gossip Girl and Top Gear. Top movies included Up, The Hangover, Tyson, (500) Days of Summer, Drag Me to Hell, Anvil!, Star Trek, Adventureland, Inglorious Basterds, Sunshine Cleaning, Coraline and Sin Nombre.

Of course, we can’t forget the top apps list. No surprise, it’s “Games” that are featured first, with Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Real Racing, Zenonia and Ravensword: The Fallen King taking the top spots for 2009, with The Sims 3, The Oregon Trail, Need for Speed: Undercover and Madden NFL 10 taking the top spot for overall sales. For “app” apps, ReelDirector, Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America, Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals, I Am T-Pain top the list.

For all of 2009’s lightning-quick flashes of brilliance, underground success stories, and every trend and head-nodding beat – one story casts a pall over them all. The death of Michael Jackson was a left field blow that stupefied music lovers worldwide. The King of Pop bowed out in 2009 and left us with his classic jams blaring from every iPod, car stereo, and club system. Artist of the year? Yes, and then some.

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Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux Released

When Google released its Chrome Web browser last fall, it came with almost no warning. There were leaks, sure, but even those didn’t surface until mere days before the launch of the first “beta”. Google’s known for a lot of things, and browsers wasn’t one of them, but surprisingly enough, Chrome was good, as I found out, and it was clear that there was a new competitor in the ring. The downside, of course, was that there was no Linux or Mac OS X support.

That changed this week, though, with the first beta releases for both platforms. Chrome on Linux or Mac isn’t that new, per se, as those who’ve dared test the waters have been able to use Chromium nightly builds for a while, but as these are the first official beta releases, it seems like Google’s pleased enough with the stability and feature set. Different teams work on each respective version, but the overall feature set and goals don’t change much.

I admit that I haven’t used Chrome much since its initial beta, but from what I can tell, neither version here is much different than the Windows version. The browser as a whole looks the same, and at least where the Linux version is concerned, there doesn’t look to be any important features lacking. In my quick tests of browsing around the Web, I can honestly say that like the Windows version, Chrome is much snappier than Firefox. Every-single page I went to loaded faster, in some cases, up to 1 – 1.5s faster.

Also new here are “Extensions”, also in beta. These are available for the Windows and Linux versions, but not yet for Mac OS X, due to the fact that it’s not quite “beta-quality” yet. Like extensions for Firefox and other browsers, the extensions for Chrome allow added functionality to a browser that’s for the most part, lacking in it. Let’s just hope that the browser will be able to retain its great page rendering speeds even with various extensions in use.

You can download the betas simply by heading over to the Google Chrome homepage.

We’ve been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we’ve focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we’re very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there’s hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!

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Seagate Introduces Pulsar SLC Solid-State Disks

Like most other mechanical hard drive vendors, Seagate has long remained adamant that from a consumer standpoint, solid-state disks (SSDs) are just not that important. Western Digital said the same thing even at the beginning of this year, and then look what happened. Like Seagate, Western Digital’s stance on who SSDs are good for isn’t much different. But unlike Western Digital, Seagate planned to stick to its guns by marketing its new Pulsar drives as “enterprise” offerings.

Seagate proves it with the fact that the Pulsar is an SLC-only offering. For those unaware, or who forget, SLC is the highest-end version of NAND found in SSDs, and as it’s 1-bit-per-cell, it not only has a longer lifespan, it can deliver far faster speeds. The downside, is that because it’s 1 bpc, you also have to pay more for less, in terms of overall density. Of the launch drives, Seagate is offering the Pulsar in 50GB, 100GB and 200GB sizes.

Compared to consumer SSDs currently on the market, the Pulsar drives boast some sweet specs, including a 240MB/s sequential read speed, and 200MB/s sequential write. While this is faster than most other SSDs on the market ,it’s not that much faster, but perhaps there’s some hidden goodness in here that we’re not quite aware of. If the random speed proved better than most other drives on the market, that’s one thing that would set it apart.

So… the downside. It doesn’t look like the Pulsar is going to become available to the regular consumer soon, and for that reason, pricing isn’t mentioned in the press release. Rather, Seagate is going to offer the drives exclusively to OEMs, meaning that most likely, the only way to get one would be to include it in a configured PC from a company like Dell. To be fair though, Western Digital has had its SiliconDrive SSDs available for months, and I haven’t been able to find those on sale anywhere. It really seems like both companies are trying to wait as long as possible before releasing consumer drives, so they can say, “Ok, now SSDs make sense for the regular consumer”.

The Pulsar SSD delivers the necessary performance, reliability, and endurance to match the application environments of enterprise blade and general servers. It achieves a peak performance of up to 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS, 240MB/s sequential read and 200 MB/s sequential write. Its SLC-based design optimizes reliability and endurance and helps provide a .44% AFR rating with a 5-year limited warranty. As an additional safeguard, the Pulsar drive leverages Seagate’s enterprise storage expertise to protect against data loss in the event of power failure.

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If You Want Privacy, You’re Obviously Hiding Something

Those who know me well know that I try to stay away from Google products as much as possible. This includes its search engine, Web apps and so forth. The reason boils down to privacy, and the absolute lack of. If you use a Google service, including its search engine, the amount of data that it has on you is enormous. I have no doubt that Google has more bits of information on almost everyone than your respective government does. Isn’t that a little weird?

“Don’t be so paranoid” is a counter-argument I hear a lot when I explain my reasons for avoiding Google, and personally, I find that mentality alone to be a little depressing. It seems to me today that most people just don’t care about their own privacy, or realize the real dangers of being so open online. It’s one thing to allow everyone to have your data, but it’s another to not care about it at all.

I don’t target just Google, but given that I consider them to be the worst where data mining is concerned, that’s where I focus most of my attention (I was once quoted around this subject in a USA Today column, and asked to appear on Fox’s news show Fox & Friends, so you can say I haven’t been too quiet about it in the past, either). Given that data mining is a huge part of its business, Google of course wants you to not give a care about your privacy, and recently, its CEO, Eric Schmidt, couldn’t have been more clear on his thoughts:

“If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.“

I can’t argue with that too much, as though I hate the loss of privacy, I hate even more to see people not get caught for some of the most disgusting crimes out there. Another comment of Schmidt’s sums it up for me, though: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” That’s right… if you want privacy, it’s probably because you’re doing something you’re not supposed to be doing.

How could it be summed up better than that? And what’s ironic about all this? Read the quote below.

The more troublesome comment is Mr. Schmidt’s indictment of those who wish privacy. One must also consider Mr. Schmidt’s own demands for personal privacy. Mr. Schmidt banned CNET, one of the top tech news sites on the web, from Google for an entire year for publishing information about the CEO, including his salary; his neighborhood, some of his hobbies and political donations. Where did CNET find this info? From none other than Google itself.

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Mozilla’s Thunderbird 3 E-mail Client Released

The latest major version of Mozilla’s popular e-mail client, Thunderbird, was expected late last month, but that time came and went, and no cigar. Whether or not the rumors were wrong, or various reasons held it back, I’m not sure, but it’s here now, and just went live about an hour before this post. It’s available for the three major operating systems as you’d expect, and in many, many different languages.

I admit that I’ve been excited for this new release, because Thunderbird has been my preferred e-mail client for quite a while, and unlike 1.x > 2.0, which didn’t seem to be a true major upgrade, 3.0 brings a lot of new and improved features to the table. One of the more focused features is tabbed e-mails (this is certainly becoming a theme, huh?), which is just as it sounds. Rather than open up an e-mail in a separate window, you can instead open it in a new tab, and easily switch between open e-mails. This is one feature I particularly appreciate, because it always bugged me that I couldn’t open (as in, in a pop-up window) more than one e-mail at a time.

Like Firefox, Thunderbird offers a rich extensions database, and the internal tool to add them has been improved. Rather than go to a website in order to search for new extensions, you can do it all through the “Add-ons” section, which again, is another great feature. The same add-ons section is where you control plugins and themes as well, but that’s no different than before.

As I mentioned in a quick look at the beta 4 release last month, one of the best new features is the improved setup. If you’re using a service that has rather simple configuration (no exotic port numbers, or differing servers), you should be able to access your e-mail without issue. In the best case, you put in your name, e-mail address and then the password, and Thunderbird will work hard to take care of the rest.

There’s a lot more than just these three features added to the latest version, and to check them out, I recommend heading to the URL below. If you’re ready to take the latest version for a spin, you can go straight to the official homepage.

If you like Firefox’s tabbed browsing, you’re going to love tabbed email. Tabbed email lets you load emails in separate tabs so you can quickly jump between them. Perhaps you’re responding to an email and need to refer back to an earlier email. Tabbed email lets you keep multiple emails open for easy reference. Double-clicking or hitting enter on a mail message will now open that message in a new tab window. Right-clicking on messages or folders will open them in a tab in the background.

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Virgin Galactic Unveils First Commercial Space Plane

Have you ever dreamt of soaring around the edge of our earth, with nothing but our entire galaxy in front of you? Well, believe it or not, that’s becoming a reality, and far sooner than you’d likely imagine. Virgin, a company that partakes in pretty much every industry there is, is launching “Virgin Galactic”, a service that will make Virgin Atlantic look boring when it finally launches.

For the past couple of years, legendary aircraft designer, Burt Rutan, has been working at Virgin to build the world’s first “commercial rocket plane”. Burt earned the $10 million Ansari X prize back in 2004, so the potential for the plane to become a reality was good from the get go. Though there have been varying models of the planes throughout the years, the one to haul people into space is called SpaceShipTwo, and carries two pilots and six passengers.

The cost, at least at first, is a little overwhelming… $200,000 per passenger. So far, at least 300 people have either paid that up-front, or have paid a down-payment, showing that there is extreme interest in galactic flight. What’s holding the trip back at this point is a combination of current construction of the spaceport, and also government regulations that must be first passed.

Test flights are set to launch next year, and if all goes well, the first flights to bring customers into space will take place in 2011. Think the asking price is a little expensive? It almost seems justified when you realize that each plane will cost upwards of $80 million, and looking at things from that perspective, you almost have to wonder if Virgin ever expects to see a return. I can’t see that many people willing to part with $200,000, but I could be wrong. Who knows, in ten years from now, this kind of travel might seem completely normal!

“There is definitely a business model,” he said in an interview. “We’ve got more billionaires on the planet and millionaires than ever before in the history of humanity. It’s the same thing with every new technology, whether it’s cell phones or airplanes, the wealthy step up first, they pay the higher ticket price and eventually it becomes available to everybody. We need to demonstrate the market and the technology will follow.”

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Enter to Win in our Nero 9 Reloaded Contest!

We’ve been promising to post a contest for a while, and I admit, it took us much longer than originally planned. But one’s here, and it’s a goodie. Nero has supplied us with five copies of its popular burning suite, Nero 9 Reloaded, and pretty-well the entire world is able to enter and have a chance at a copy. Do note that there are some caveats, so I urge you to read through our rules and regulations.

For those somehow unaware, Nero is one of the most popular burning suites for the PC platform, and it’s been that way for just over ten years. One of the first burning applications I ever used was Nero Burning ROM 4, and since then, I never looked back. I’ve used other such tools over the years, but I always seem to go back to Nero, even when it comes to what I use under Linux.

A couple of months ago, Nero updated its 9 suite to become “9 Reloaded”, updating its slew of included tools, along with adding verification that it was also fully compatible with Windows 7. Nero offers a lot more than just burning capabilities, of course, and to summerize what I said on the contest page, “Some of the other functionality includes the ability to create CD covers, recover data from scratched discs, test your drive’s performance, recode and watch video, create your own movies, edit your music files and a whole lot more.“

Entering the contest couldn’t be much easier, trust me on that. You need to sign up for our forums, answer three quick questions that Nero could put to good use in making future versions of the suite even… suiter (heh!), and that’s it. Winners will be able to choose between either the boxed or downloadable copy, depending on the preference, and as mentioned, the contest is pretty well open to everyone. So if you want a robust and reliable burning suite, check it out, and good luck!

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Apple Doesn’t Tolerate App Store Cheaters (Here’s Proof)

If there’s one company that knows how to sell a product, it’s Apple. Even if you aren’t a fan of the brand, or its products, that simple fact cannot be denied. Take for example, its “App Store”. Apple launched this mobile apps service last summer, and in just over a year, it hit a staggering 2 billion total downloads, and not too long after, it reached the milestone of having 100,000 apps listed. I’m not entirely sure of what kind of revenue resulted from these high numbers, but you can be sure they aren’t low.

Despite the store’s intense success, though, there have been many developers, and fans, who have been left upset by Apple’s harsh approval process and deceptive excuses for denying certain apps (even if the proof of the real reason seems to be right there). But while there’s problems, there’s also a lot of good to come out of Apple’s HQ for enforcing of the better rules, like developers cheating to sell more copies of their software.

An iPhone photography blog called iPhoneography suspected that app developer “Molinker” was cheating to improve both its ratings and reviews for most of its apps. In one example, an application of theirs had 44 5-star ratings, and it’s being suggested that 42 of those were faked. The theme runs through many other of the company’s apps as well, which is why the issue stood out.

After the blog submitted its five-page report on its findings, the authors were surprised to see all of Molinker’s apps gone from the App Store days later. Before you think this is a minor win… Molinker had a total of 1,011 different apps available, and in a flash, all are unavailable. What good is an iPhone/iPod touch app that can’t be acquired by the consumer? No good at all, and I’m sure Molinker is beginning to regret its decision to cheat quite heavily. That’s a lot of code going to waste, and it’s almost sad to think about.

On Saturday, a friend of the iPhone photography blog Iphoneography reached out to the blog for a bit of help pooling details on what he believed was a review scam. While looking through the applications offered by Molinker, he noticed that as many as 90% of the reviews on some of their applications appeared to be written by a group of people who only reviewed Molinker applications. On Molinker’s “NightCam Pro”, for example, 42 of the 44 5-star reviews appeared to be fake.

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Apologies for Site Downtime

“Sounds like you’ve got a case of the Monday’s!“

Yes, it’s true. Monday can be one of the roughest days of the week to work through, because the weekend is over, and so is the relaxing. Plus, with everything ramping back up to start the new week off, sometimes things go wrong, and people get frustrated, hence why the above quote rings so true today. I normally like to begin my Monday’s off with a look at tech news around the Web, and enjoy some fresh coffee, but today, I had some site downtime to “enjoy”.

I’m not sure when the site first went down, but it was at some point during the morning, and well into the afternoon, EST time. The downtime began as a planned event, as our data center had to lay down some fiber lines, but when things looked to be wrapping up, an important switch ended up dying. I’m not sure if these two events are related, but the latter was certainly not appreciated.

So, allow me to apologize for any inconvenience that our downtime may have caused. I’m hoping that things are free and clear now, and nothing else will break throughout the day. I’m off to get some work done… right after I toss this event on my list of “reasons why I hate networks”.

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Traffic Plummets After Mininova Goes Legit

One of the more common arguments against torrenting from the media industry is of course piracy. But those groups who attempt to prove these companies wrong exhaust all possible angles in order to prove that torrents don’t entirely amount to “illegal”, and in many cases, there are completely common legal uses for the technology. Personally, whenever I download the latest version of a Linux distribution, I usually take advantage of torrenting so that I can help make up for what I download by helping to upload.

It can’t be argued that torrenting has no legal purpose, because it does, but it’s become unbelievably clear that torrenting used for piracy completely dwarfs its legal use. Most often, though, when a big-time torrent tracking site goes down, it’s hard to see what the shutdown caused, because we’re rarely given statistics of any sort. But Mininova has been a lot more open about things, and the findings are incredible.

Due to a court ruling, Mininova was forced to remove all of the torrents listed on the site that breached any sort of copyright. Because the site tracked well over a million individual torrents, sorting through them all would have been impossible, so instead, the site decided to delete torrents en masse by targeting those uploaded by regular users. Torrents that were uploaded through its content distribution platform remained, as it has an approved members list and wouldn’t see copywritten material uploaded.

Prior to Minonova’s closing, it wasn’t uncommon for the site to receive upwards of 5 million visits per day, but just one week later, that number has dwindled to 1.8 million. If the trend continues, the site will see less than 1 million visitors per day by next week, and ultimately, things could get much worse. Likewise, while before, the site handled over 10 million downloads a day, it now sits at 371,424, and searches also went from 10 to 3 million.

Not so surprisingly, despite the massive decline of Mininova, it doesn’t look as though the site’s dropping of illegal material has had much effect on bandwidth usage. A worker at an Australian ISP noted that when the Pirate Bay shut down, there was no noticeable effect on bandwidth usage. As they say, as soon as a torrent site goes down, a dozen more pop up. The courts may have won against Mininova, but the problem certainly isn’t going away anytime soon.

Mininova was forced to take such a drastic measure following a negative verdict in their court battle with the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN this summer. The torrent indexer was told by the court to remove all infringing torrent files from its index. This was technically unfeasible according to the Mininova team, who were left with no other choice than to remove all torrent files uploaded by regular users.

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KDE 4.4 to Introduce “Tabbed Applications”

As I’m sure many of our readers are aware of by now, my preferred OS happens to be Linux, not Windows, despite using the latter for almost all of our performance-related testing. My preferred desktop choice is KDE, for various reasons I won’t tackle here. As you may recall, I posted an editorial a couple of months ago that took a look at KDE 4.3, and in the end, I was impressed. I literally hated KDE 4.x up to that point, so the changes were stark.

With KDE 4.4’s release set for this coming February, there are many reports around the Web of what the latest version is going to include. The version number change is minor, but the changes are usually major, with some new features, revamped applications, refreshed back-end libraries, and so forth. I’ve been following 4.4 reports for the past week, and I have to say, I’m really, really looking forward to its release. There’s some good stuff there, to say the least.

One feature in particular that stands out are tabbed applications. Yes, that sounds boring, because tabbed anything isn’t too new, and anyone using a recent Web browser (hopefully, all of you) know just how useful tabbed browsing can be. But what about tabbed applications? We’re talking beyond a single application here. What if you could essentially tab different applications together, for ultra-quick access to each one?

I’ll attempt at better explaining this with an example. Imagine you’re doing some design work for your website. You could take the photo manipulator, let’s say Photoshop, your HTML editor, Dreamweaver, your Web browser, Firefox, and perhaps some other tool, and combine them all into a single tabbed window, so switching between them could be made much easier, and rather than have a bunch of applications open in your task bar, you’d clear up some room by keeping them in tabs.

Apparently, this idea isn’t new, and some lesser-known Linux window managers have included this feature for a while, but this is the first I’ve heard of such a feature in one of the biggest environments out there. The feature is still rather unique, and with tabbed browsing being as popular as it is, I have to wonder if this is the next step for tabbed computing. What do you guys think? Would you ever take advantage of tabbed applications, given the choice?

However, one big obstacle in front of the widespread aceptance of tabbed windows is virtual desktops. Most of the Linux DEs supports virtual desktops and people usually use it to organise their open windows based of their purpose. Virtual Desktops are very unlikely to go out of favour. So, if tabbed windows is to be accepted widely, it has to exit side by side with virtual desktop. In the absence of virtual desktops (like in Windows), however, tabbed windows will certainly a killer functionality.

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First Commercial Tool to Bypass BitLocker Released

Back with the Windows Vista launch, Microsoft delivered a new tool that aimed to protect its customer’s data with sophisticated encryption and a hardware-based switch that would either allow or deny access to said data. The hardware side of things requires a TPM chip on the motherboard, and with the help of BitLocker, an encryption key is stored, and required for future access to the data on the drive.

For the most part, this is a very, very secure solution. Microsoft uses a 128-bit AES algorithm to protect the data, and if someone takes the drive out of the machine and runs off with it, they’re not going to be able to touch the data, as they wouldn’t have access to the TPM encryption key, which absolutely has to exist. If not, the drive is essentially useless (although I believe it can be formatted and re-used).

So if BitLocker isn’t entirely new, why am I bringing it up? Because it’s finally been “cracked”, and it’s something to be aware of. There are some caveats, though, so I wouldn’t write the technology off, because BitLocker is far from being the only HDD encryption scheme that suffers a major flaw, one that software firm Passware takes full advantage of.

In a scenario where an encryption key is used to authorize access, it’s normally stored in the system memory. If you can tap into the memory, and grab the keys, then you could later use software to work on them to end up bypassing the protection scheme. That’s what Passware does. With an image of the system RAM (it might also work with the machine booted on, I’m unsure), it will find and match the appropriate keys in order to allow you access to the drive, and according to the company, this takes mere minutes.

The software itself costs $795, so it’s somewhat exclusive, but if someone malicious wants your data, then chances are the same user would simply go and pirate it, meaning it’s going to be a tool that’s available to anyone who takes that route. In the end, BitLocker is still very secure, and even if someone takes the drive out of your machine and runs off with it, they’ll have no access to the data. So, very specific conditions must first be met, but it’s still a flaw to keep in mind if you need BitLocker to protect extremely important data.

Passware claims that full disk encryption was a major problem for investigators and that its tool helps police, law enforcement, and private investigators bypass BitLocker encryption for seized computers. That may be, but since this is a commercially available product, anyone with $795 can now circumvent the encryption. Add to that the fact that previous versions of this software have been pirated (version 9.0 was released earlier this year), and it’s only a matter of time before even the price point doesn’t matter.

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Intel’s Initial Larrabee Discrete Graphics Card Canceled

Well, I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting this… at least not so soon. Just earlier this week, I linked to a story which showed off Larrabee’s impressive computational performance – it beat NVIDIA’s highest-end GeForce GTX 285 by at least a factor of 2. Of course, such metrics don’t easily equate with what we could expect from the gaming performance of the card, and as it appears now, it seems like there was a reason that Intel was giving off GPGPU numbers and not graphics performance numbers.

According to Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer, who spoke with CNET, the company has decided to pull back its projected launch of the discrete graphics card, and has instead decided to turn what it has now into a software development platform, for both internal and external use. There’s been no new projected date for what we had all hoped to see, a discrete card, and as a result, many are considering the project to be dead.

That might be the case, and at this point, I’m really uncertain what use a Larrabee software platform would have. It could be that Intel wanted to have something to show for all of its efforts, rather than delivering nothing at all. Either way, the company’s failure to deliver a discrete graphics chip is disappointing, as even though we all expected a slow start to things, having more competition in the graphics card market would have been nice to see.

It’s especially disappointing since Intel has been talking a fair bit about Larrabee over the past few months. At its Developer Forum this past September, it had showed off the chip’s real-time ray tracing capabilities, which as a whole was a rather lackluster showing, but it was something. Then just last month at the Super Computer 09 conference, it boasted about Larrabee’s computational performance. With these recent Larrabee showings, it seems that this decision to cancel the discrete card (for now) was made rather quickly.

When the software development kit is set to be released is unknown, but I’m not going to be too surprised if it never shows up at all. If Larrabee is indeed dead, then Intel is going to try to just let it die from people’s minds. ATI and NVIDIA have nothing to worry about for quite a while, it seems.

“Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project,” Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer said Friday. “As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product,” he said. “Rather, it will be used as a software development platform for internal and external use,” he added. Intel is not discussing what other versions may appear after the initial software development platform product, or “kit,” is launched next year.

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Can Gaming Lead You to a Career?

Have you ever played a video game and thought, “I could SO do that in real-life.”, but never actually attempt it? It could be something that requires real skill, like scaling a building, jumping from one roof top to the next, or something little more realistic, like racing. Of course, even if you master something inside of a video game, it means absolutely nothing in the real world. Even as far as racing goes, a steering wheel is not the same as a gamepad.

In the opposite instance, if you happen to be involved in something like racing, or have fought in a war, then playing a game based around that same premise probably isn’t going to be too enticing. But what about the vice versa? It’s not too often, if ever, that someone gets so good at a video game that it leads them to a career, but for Lucas Ordoñez, a Spanish student, his passion for racing and racing video games worked out to his favor.

Lucas is a hardcore Gran Turismo fan. That stems from the fact that racing is in his blood, and when the opportunity came to enter an official competition that pitted 25,000 gamers against each other, he knew he had to give it a go. The grand prize? A chance to race real GTA car on an official circuit. The amazing thing? Lucas ended up winning one of the first races he partook in, which is incredible, because racing is not something you learn that quickly. It takes a lot of skill, and time to learn all of the tricks.

Simply playing Gran Turismo doesn’t make you an all-star racer, but it’s clear that the realism that the gameplay offers does pay off in the end, if your goal is to go out racing yourself. The game’s are tuned for realism, and even each individual car is looked at from all angles to make sure it matches the handling of the real-life version. So who knows? If you keep playing Gran Turismo, you might just get into a real race car some day. And if not, the game is still a blast anyway!

During the later months of 2008, Ordoñez continued to work on his MBA during the week, while in the times he wasn’t studying, he was getting fit in Madrid with a personal trainer, undergoing the gruelling physical training necessary to be a professional driver (and tolerate the large G-forces). On weekends, Ordoñez participated in a number of smaller European races to gain his international race drivers ‘C’ licence, which stipulates a mandatory amount of track time at national certified tracks.

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Have Techgage Readers Adopted Windows 7?

A couple of weeks after Windows 7’s launch, reports came out that usage was rather good considering the short amount of time it was available. In just under 10 days, Microsoft’s latest OS hit a 3% market share of Internet-connected PCs, and anyway you look at it, that’s impressive. I’m not sure how thing’s have improved since then, but as far as Techgage readers seem to be concerned, the OS is quite alright.

In the above-linked news post, I was unable to give information about the percentage of people using Windows 7 to view our site, but as of December 1, our analytics software finally updated itself to support detection of the OS, so we can begin to see its usage on our site. Bear in mind that as our site gets nowhere near the traffic as ultra-large sites which are normally used as a baseline to understand OS usage growth or decline, since our site does cater to a tech audience, it’s informative enough to see just how well-received the OS is.

Of all our visitors, 88.08% were using a Windows OS between December 1 – 3, and of this, 23.80% were running Windows 7. Surprising, no? Of course, XP is still the dominant OS with a 51.96% share, and Vista is in a close third to 7 with 19.45%. I find these results interesting, because even though 7 has been out just a little over a month, it’s already eclipsed Vista and is half-way to catching up to XP (that won’t happen for a while).

It’s hard to consider this information definitive based off of three days of data, but I found it interesting enough to post about. I’m going to let this go for another two weeks or so and then post a follow-up to this to see if the numbers of changed. I honestly don’t expect them to change much, as the numbers hovered between 17% – 26% between these days (the 17% is likely due to the fact that the software didn’t start picking up on Windows 7 until later in the day), so if anything, the number might very-well rise.

Have YOU adopted Windows 7? Let us know in the thread!

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Need to Warm Up? How About a USB Hand-Warmer?

Whether you like it or not, the winter season is right around the corner. Depending on where you live, it may have very-well already begun for you, and if that’s the case, then I’m glad I don’t live anywhere near you. I’m not afraid of the cold, but like how I feel about onions, I’d rather not have to deal with it. I’m the kind of person who’d rather be too hot than too cold, and I’m sure many are with me.

Even if you love the cold, though, there must be times when you can’t help but say, “Geez, it’s cold.” In those situations, it may feel like you’d do anything to warm up, whether it be running around in circles, closing your eyes and pretending your in a sauna, or turning on your old Intel Netburst computer… but what about a hand-warmer? Clever idea, but just how convenient could one be?

Well, according to ezGear, one could be very convenient. Earlier this week, I received a press release touting a USB-based hand-warmer, and while I tend to ignore most USB gadgets, this one was just too humorous to pass up. Sure enough, the company offers a USB hand-warmer that can reach temperatures of 40°C (104°F), also known as “twice as hot as the summers where I live”.

The interesting thing about this hand-warmer, though, is that it looks to be the size of a regular 2.5″ external enclosure, which is rather small, and thin. It’s meant to be turned on, and held onto while you warm up. Or if you are so inclined, you could slide a glove over top of it and heat that up, then put it on. The company also includes a colored glove for protection, so you don’t have to hold a scratched device each time you need to warm up. The best part? It’s rechargeable, so you don’t need to actually be plugged into a computer in order to use it (that’d be embarrassing during a snowstorm, huh?). This is a weird product, but it somehow intrigues me. It’s unique, I’ll give it that.

The ezGear Rechargeable Hand Warmer is the perfect way to keep your hands warm. The ezGear Rechargeable Hand Warmer houses a rechargeable Lithium battery which provides up to 3 hours of warming for your hands. The warmer is housed in a high quality aluminum shell to provide the optimal thermal conductivity. The included storage sock keeps the hand warmer cosy in your hand.

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Micron Announces S-ATA 6Gbit/s RealSSD C300

S-ATA 3.0 (6Gbit/s) has been available to consumers for the past month or two, but the drives themselves have been scarce. On the mechanical hard drive side, Seagate is the lone contender right now with its Barracuda XT, but we can expect to see products trickle out from the others over the course of the next few months. But, the truth is, S-ATA 3.0 does little for mechanical hard drives, due to technical limitations.

But with SSDs, the sky’s the limit. On S-ATA 3Gbit/s, the theoretical limit was 300MB/s, and many SSDs have shown themselves to be capable of delivering close to that same figure, but nothing higher. So with S-ATA 3.0’s doubled limits, SSDs have a lot of room to grow, and the proof of this is beginning to be seen now. Yesterday, Micron announced its RealSSD C300, which is as far as I’m aware, the first consumer SSD to become available for S-ATA 3.0.

Of course, S-ATA 6 will mean little if the speeds are the same as what we’ve seen for a while, but that’s not the case. While the drive writes at 215MB/s (this was possible with S-ATA 3Gbit/s, but it’s still extremely impressive), the read speed is 355MB/s, a figure that extends just beyond the previous limit of 300MB/s. For those familiar with Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage suite, the C300 scores 45,000 in its HDD test.

The fact that the drive uses the S-ATA 3.0 bus is interesting enough, but it also uses Micron’s latest 34nm MLC flash memory, which the company touts as being the first to adhere to the ONFi 2.1 standard. Unfortunately, the press release doesn’t give us the details we really want, such as pricing and availability, but I suspect we’ll learn more soon, or at the latest, during CES in early January.

Native support of SATA 6Gb/s means that the data path between the host computer and the SSD is twice as fast as the previous SATA 3Gb/s interface. While some drive architectures require a trade-off between throughput-sensitive and IOPS (Input/Output Per Second)-sensitive data streams, Micron’s core design and higher speed interface provides advantages for both. The C300 SSD leverages the SATA 6Gb/s interface to achieve a read throughput speed of up to 355MB/s and a write throughput speed of up to 215MB/s. Using the common PC Mark Vantage scoring system, the C300 SSD turns in a score of 45,000 from the HDD Suite.

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McAfee Reveals Riskiest Web Domains

McAfee, the creators of some of the most popular security software available for the PC, has released its updated “Mapping the Mal Web” report that shows which Web TLDs (top-level domains) are the most dangerous in the world, in terms of the likelihood that malware is going to be acquired by visiting a site with said domain. One of the worst is .com, but that’s not much of a surprise.

But the absolute worst wasn’t one of the generic TLD’s, but rather .cm, for Cameroon, with 36.7% of Websites being potentially hazardous to your computer’s health. Ouch… 1/3rd is not a small deal. Unfortunately, .com isn’t much better, with 32.2% of sites having the chance of including malware. Believe it or not, no other domains really come close to this, with the third place going to China’s TLD, .cn, which has a risk factor of 23.4%.

Other TLD’s in the top ten include Samoa’s .ws, the generic .info, Philippines’ .ph, the generic .net, Former Soviet Union’s .su, Russia’s .ru and also Singapore’s .sg. How can you protect yourself from these domains? Well, one way is to make sure you don’t accidentally visit them, because chances are you’ll not have to go to a legit site with most of these domains if you don’t speak the language. But, the domains like .info and .net are of a far greater risk.

For country TLD’s, you could use security software or your router’s admin to block any TLD’s you want. Either or would get the same job done, and make life a little easier on you if you know others in the house have no problem with visiting every random site they see a URL to. Interestingly, McAfee also shows the least-risky domains, and it’s probably no surprise that .gov ranks first there (there -have- been scams performed with .gov addresses in the past, however). The safest Country TLD? Japan’s .jp.

“This report underscores how quickly cybercriminals change tactics to lure in the most victims and avoid being caught. Last year, Hong Kong was the riskiest domain and this year it is dramatically safer,” said Mike Gallagher, chief technology officer for McAfee Labs. “Cybercriminals target regions where registering sites is cheap and convenient, and pose the least risk of being caught.”

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