By Phil Berardelli
ScienceNOW Daily News
6 February 2008 It might never be able to compete with those dirt-cheap auto paint jobs, but a new laser technique could revolutionize the way metals are colored for varied applications such as jewelry, home appliances, military camouflage, and even optical filters in telescopes. It could also eliminate the need for environmentally unfriendly paints and other coatings.

Among the seemingly miraculous properties of lasers is the ability to alter the optical characteristics of materials. The intense beam of laser light can change a material's color without coating it with paint or pigment. But there's a problem: Lasers powerful enough to tint materials also tend to damage them with heat.

So researchers at the University of Rochester in New York sought to develop a laser coloring technique that could avoid the destructive heat effect. Optical physicists Chunlei Guo and A. Y. Vorobyev used laser pulses lasting only a femtosecond, or a quadrillionth (a billionth of a millionth) of a second. The technique works by melting extremely small areas of the metals, which then congeal in ways that reflect different wavelengths of light. The duo reported online 31 January in Applied Physics Letters that by fine-tuning their ultrafast laser light output and by modifying the strength of the beam, the number of treatment pulses, and the processing duration, they were able to change the hues of a number of metal samples. They could give small sheets of aluminum a gold cast, for instance, and turn gold black.

The process directly transforms the colors of metals, meaning no paints are necessary. And Guo notes that laser-treated surfaces tend to resist wear and tear, especially at high temperatures, making them more durable than painted surfaces. Because the technique is still new, relatively slow, and energy-intensive, Guo says that it's at least several years from commercial applications. Next up will be to improve its speed and efficiency. But as the technique matures, he says, "I think we should be able to apply it to things in our everyday life."

Maybe, but it will likely take a while, says physicist Joseph Shinar of the Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Iowa State University in Ames. The results are "very interesting and appealing, and the physics appear solid," he says, but there are already many ways to color metals and materials using proven coatings. The laser technique appears to affect only the topmost layers of the metal, so scratches or abrasions might change or remove the coloring--just as with coatings. Therefore, "it may be some time before we find out what sort of application needs this fulfills," Shinar says.

It may be the right move on paper, but making it work isn't going to be easy. That was the general consensus among several analysts following Friday's blockbuster announcement of Microsoft's $44.6 billion takeover bid for Yahoo. "If Microsoft and Yahoo join forces it will be the most important event in the Internet industry this year, without a doubt," said Ken Cassar, vice president for industry solutions analytics at Nielsen Online. According to Cassar, the combined entity would be visited by 86 percent of U.S. Internet users, account for 15 percent of all time spent online, and represent 59 percent of online display ad impressions sold which he said is "really the most significant revenue generator today for most online publishers." But even if Yahoo execs and its board sign off on the deal, not a given, there are still many unanswered questions %26#150; not the least of which is whether antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe will approve. A Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo has been rumored for months, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed on a conference call early Friday that talks had been going on between the two companies for 18 months. In addition, there are no guarantees that such a merger would accomplish much more than move Microsoft from a far third-place in search engine usage to a still far second-place by gobbling up its nearest competitor. Web statistics tracking firm NetApplications' search engine statistics for January 2008 show Google way out in front with 77 percent of global searches, followed by Yahoo with just over 12 percent, and Microsoft trailing way behind with a total of slightly more than 6 percent divided between MSN and Live Search. A combination of Yahoo and Microsoft would control less than 20 percent of the entire market. Of course, while not directly convertible into cash, search share is a strong indicator of how many advertising dollars those searches yield for ad purveyors. Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin is bullish on the potential of a Microsoft/Yahoo combination. He notes Yahoo is actually stronger than Google on the content side and has good partnerships with DSL providers. "When you bring both company's research groups together and you can imagine a powerful set of engineering teams working on the next generation of search," Bajarin told InternetNews.com. "There's a real need for something more precise than what we have in the market today." A Google spokesperson said it would be "premature" to comment on Microsoft's proposed purchase of Yahoo. For Microsoft, the acquisition stands to help it put its online services businesses in the black. Microsoft announced last week that in the first two quarters of fiscal 2008, its online services initiatives lost $510 million. That includes $245 million in losses for the quarter ended December 31. In contrast, Yahoo brought in income of $206 million in the final calendar quarter of 2007. Which is not to say Yahoo doesn't need help. Whereas Yahoo's revenues have been declining, Microsoft overall had another record quarter in terms of revenues and earnings. Between increasing revenues and its huge cash horde, Microsoft is well set to absorb the expenses involved in buying out Yahoo. "Yahoo was in trouble %26#91;and%26#93; they were really losing direction chasing Google %26#91;because%26#93; nobody could be a better Google than Google," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told InternetNews.com.

Dell said on Wednesday it would close all of its 140 U.S. kiosks, a concept it launched in 2002 to showcase computers, as it expands sales of PCs in retail stores. Dell, the world's second-largest personal computer maker will shut the kiosks, mostly in shopping malls, today -- a decision the company said fits with its new retail strategy. Customers could test Dell PCs at the kiosks and order the products, but they could not take delivery of them there. The concept has become largely obsolete as Dell last year departed from a 23-year strategy of direct-only sales and its computers are now available in about 10,000 store outlets and online. Dell in June started selling computers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc and later announced agreements with France's Carrefour SA and China's GOME Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd, among others. Founder Michael Dell, who retook the company's helm a year ago, is changing Dell's consumer-sales strategy to better compete with rivals including Hewlett-Packard Co, which overtook Dell as the world's largest PC maker in 2006 after selling more notebook computers and printers in stores. Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman said Dell will keep about 50 kiosks outside the United States. "We recognized early on that customers really wanted to touch and see the products before they purchased them," Kaufman said. "That led us to the kiosk model. Now, customers can touch and feel our products before buying them at one of our retail partners." Shares of Dell slipped 17 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $20.39 in midday trading on Nasdaq.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it has begun shipping the first eight language editions of Dynamics CRM 4.0 on schedule. The company shipped the English edition of the product just before Christmas and said, at that time, it would begin shipping the first batch of other language versions in January. The first delivery totals eight languages %26#150; counting English %26#150; including French, Spanish, and simplified Chinese, the company said in a statement. Also included in this batch are Danish, Dutch, Finnish, and German editions. In addition, the company said it's on track to ship 17 more language versions within 90 days for a total of 25, the statement continued. Dynamics CRM 4.0 is the name of the latest version of Microsoft's customer relationship management software that it sells to partners who then provide it as a hosted-service to customers, or that customers purchase and host themselves internally. Additionally, a Microsoft-hosted version of CRM 4.0 is also currently in beta testing and will be available under the name CRM Live during the first half of the year as part of Microsoft%26#146;s "Live" branded software-plus-services strategy, the company has said. The additional 17 languages scheduled to ship in the next three months include Arabic, Brazilian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hong Kong Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, traditional Chinese and Turkish. The most notable feature in CRM 4.0 is its so-called "multitenant" architecture, which enables a hosting partner, for instance, to run only one copy of the server but support multiple customers simultaneously and securely. "Multitenancy is the big thing," Laurie McCabe, senior analyst at researcher AMI Partners told InternetNews.com. Combined with the multilingual support, that%26#146;s an indication of Microsoft%26#146;s intent. "It%26#146;s clear that they%26#146;re serious about going after the global market," she added. Not surprisingly, Microsoft agrees. "%26#91;With CRM 4.0%26#93; you have a fully multitenancy, multicurrency, and multilanguage situation," Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, told InternetNews.com. For example, a hosting partner can provide multilingual access to CRM 4.0 running on its server and still be running a single copy of the server, he added. Among other new features, the latest version adds business process automation based on Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation. It also provides new collaboration capabilities with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, such as real-time presence indicators within the CRM application. Dynamics CRM was previously last updated to version 3.0 two years ago. That release supported 22 languages but did not feature multitenancy support. Microsoft said it is also planning a 12-week, 50-city, 20 nation tour to promote Dynamics CRM 4.0.

European Union countries can refuse to disclose names of file sharers on the Internet in civil cases, the EU's top court said on Tuesday in a blow to copyright holders trying to fight digital piracy. The European Court of Justice ruled on a dispute between Spanish music rights holders association Promusicae and Spain's top telecom operator Telefonica. Telefonica argued that under a national law based on EU rules, it only had to disclose the name of an Internet subscriber for criminal actions, not civil ones. "Community law does not require the member states, in order to ensure the effective protection of copyright, to lay down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings," the court said in a statement. Promusicae wanted names of Telefonica Internet clients who shared copyright material on the Web using the Kazaa file-exchange software, so it could start civil proceedings against them. Civil proceedings are cheaper than criminal proceedings, which typically require a higher burden of proof. "There are several community directives whose purpose is that the member states should ensure, especially in the information society, effective protection of industrial property, in particular copyright," the court said. "Such protection cannot, however, affect the requirements of the protection of personal data," the court added. "The directives on the protection of personal data also allow the member states to provide for exceptions to the obligation to guarantee the confidentiality of traffic data." EU rules do not preclude the possibility for EU countries of laying down an obligation to disclose personal data in the context of civil proceedings, it said. "However, it does not compel the member states to lay down such an obligation," the court said.

By Constance Holden
ScienceNOW Daily News
30 January 2008 It's not just terrorism and earthquakes that can precipitate heart attacks among the vulnerable. Soccer games do it, too. Researchers at the University of Munich, Germany, found that heart problems more than tripled in German men while their team was playing in the World Cup in the summer of 2006.

Physician Ute Wilbert-Lampen and colleagues analyzed reports of hospitalizations for heart attacks, chest pains, and arrhythmias collected by emergency medical teams on the 7 days that the German team played during the games, which were held around Germany from 9 June to 9 July. They compared the results with reports covering weeks immediately before and after the games as well as from summer months in 2003 and 2005--for a total of 4279 patients.

On the days of matches involving the German team, men in the Munich area experienced 3.26 as many cardiac events as they did during control periods. That's not too far from the fivefold increase reported after a 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles. Women were much less affected, with a cardiac event rate 1.82 times that during control periods. The games especially affected the vulnerable: 47%26#37; of the cases involved people with preexisting heart disease, compared with 29%26#37; during the control periods.

Various other studies have tried to link soccer madness with heart attacks or mortality, sometimes with conflicting results. For example, a study published in 2003 found a decrease in fatal heart attacks among Frenchmen the day France won the 1998 World Cup.

But Wilbert-Lampen and colleagues say theirs is the first study to track a precise temporal relationship between action on the field and in the chest. They found that the incidence peaked about 2 hours into a match and remained elevated for several hours afterward--indicating that the "acute trigger mechanisms" occur 1 or 2 hours before symptoms appear. Two matches in particular led to spikes in heart hospitalizations--a hard-fought victory over Argentina and an important loss to Italy--proving it's the excitement of the game and not the outcome that causes the intense stress. The team presents its findings in the 31 January issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

Epidemiologist Diederick Grobbee of University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands says the study strengthens the case for his earlier finding that the incidence of fatal heart attacks among Dutch males jumped significantly on the day of a tense soccer match. Grobbee notes that the patterns both of mortality and of the symptoms in the latest paper indicate that "rather than inducing new events [in people with no known heart trouble], the effect could be that an event that is bound to happen anyway is triggered earlier."

PALM DESERT, CALIF. -- Whether it's managing your voicemail from your computer desktop or accessing updating your blog through your phone, communications advancements marked the first day of DEMO, the bi-annual conference of new products and services. Among the most ambitious here at DEMO is Silicon Valley startup Ribbit, which connects mobile phone users with the Web. Once you've registered your mobile phone at the company's Web site, you can manage all your communications from the desktop. Ribbit's service also provides users with a range of added features. For example, you can view brief, transcribed previews of phone messages and search through them using keywords. For an additional fee, the offering converts phone messages entirely into text. Ribbit is currently in private beta and expects to be available to the public this Spring. The company's Amphibian developer platform has already attracted 3,000 enterprise and consumer-focused developers, who can create new features they can sell through the Ribbit store. One third-party Amphibian product offers the look and some of the features of Apple's iPhone on the PC. Another is tailored to appeal to Salesforce.com users. The company said it also supports Google's Open Social initiative for social networks. When receiving a call, for example, Ribbit can quickly pull in feeds from various social networks. letting you view publicly available profiles and other information. "It's Caller ID 2.0," Ribbit co-founder Crick Waters said. The Ribbit platform was developed using Adobe's AIR platform for rich Internet applications. Another phone-meets-Internet service at the show comes from Toktumi, which offers features of more expensive high-end office phone systems to smaller offices and home-based businesses. The company said it's defined a new product category it calls "P2PPBX" (a term merging both P2P, or peer-to-peer technology, with the venerable PBX.) The hosted solution taps the processing power of a company's existing PCs to do its call routing. Following an initial installation on a user's PC, Toktumi's product offers features like dialing by name, enabling users to place calls by typing in their contact's name. It also provides Caller ID that appears on the PC screen, allowing users to decide whether to answer, send it to voicemail or transfer the call. Toktumi's offering also supports conferences of up to 20 other people. The service doesn't require special phones -- it works with mic-equipped PC headsets, but users can connect an external phone using an adapter. The package also provides a range of management capabilities -- automatic call-forwarding or accepting incoming calls with a pre-recorded greeting. If your PC or Internet connection is down, calls are automatically stored on to Toktumi's servers as voicemail or forwarded to your cell phone. Another new service at DEMO called 800PBX brings Web and e-mail access to mobile phone users. The company's 800 Genie, now in beta, reads e-mail aloud over the phone -- allowing you to call in to receive and reply to messages from services like Gmail. You can also access other applications from your phone, and even update your blog via voice.

Better than expected results from a number of top technology names boosted stocks in the early going Friday, but sellers soon took over to send the market sharply lower. Despite extreme volatility, Wall Street managed to finish the week with small gains in the Dow and S%26amp;P and just a 0.6% loss in the Nasdaq, as the Federal Reserve's biggest emergency rate cut since 1982 saved stocks from much steeper losses. Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Juniper Networks and Broadcom were among the names posting better than expected results late Thursday. All opened sharply higher Friday morning but ended the day mixed, with Microsoft and Juniper lower and Sun and Broadcom posting small gains. The selling started as the S%26amp;P 500 neared the 1370 level, the bottom of a 15-month trading range the index broke down out of last week, as traders began lowering their expectations for more rate cuts when the Federal Reserve meets next week. Expectations are for a one-quarter to one-half point rate cut, less than this week's three-quarter point emergency rate cut. E*Trade was a big gainer, up 8% on a restructuring plan, and Microchip Technology and Compuware were higher on their results. InsWeb jumped 29% after finishing its first year of profitability. Motorola rallied 6% despite an S%26amp;P credit rating cut, as the company rebounded from an 18% drubbing earlier this week. Synaptics, PMC-Sierra and Integrated Devices fell on their results. The Nasdaq lost 34 to 2336, the S%26amp;P fell 21 to 1330, and the Dow tumbled 171 to 12,207. Volume declined to 4.92 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.65 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 19-14 margin on the NYSE, and 16-14 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 73% on the NYSE, and 72% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 21-84 on the NYSE, and 42-114 on the Nasdaq.

AT%26T on Thursday posted stronger-than-expected wireless growth for the fourth quarter and reiterated its 2008 outlook, easing investor concerns that U.S. economic weakness would hurt its subscriber growth. The largest U.S. phone company had warned earlier this month that it saw some softness in its consumer business, but it said on Thursday that it added 2.7 million net new wireless subscribers in the quarter, showing resilient growth. Five analysts contacted by Reuters had on average estimated AT%26T's new subscribers at 1.92 million for the fourth quarter. AT%26T also said its fourth-quarter profit was $3.1 billion, or 51 cents per share, compared with $1.9 billion, or 50 cents a share, a year earlier. Most of the year-ago quarter excludes earnings from BellSouth, which AT%26T bought at the end of 2006. Before merger-related costs and other special items, AT%26T's profit rose to 71 cents a share from 61 cents a year ago, matching Wall Street expectations. AT%26T said quarterly revenue grew 2.9 percent to $30.3 billion assuming it owned BellSouth for both full quarters. "It was a solid quarter certainly," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King. "It's certainly a positive, and they reiterated guidance for 2008," he added. "In this type of market, any reiteration of guidance has to be viewed positively." The exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple's iPhone, AT%26T results came after third-largest U.S. wireless service Sprint Nextel warned last week it had incurred steep losses of high-value customers last quarter. Verizon Communications is scheduled to report results on Jan 28. "We had an excellent fourth quarter, which affirms our outlook for 2008," AT%26T CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement. He had reported earlier in January that AT%26T was seeing some softness in its consumer business, which represents about 20 percent of revenue. The CEO said at the time that this had less of an impact in wireless than on wired services. AT%26T last month forecast 2008 consolidated revenue growth in the mid-single-digit percentage range and adjusted earnings-per-share growth in the double-digit range. It also forecast wireless service revenue growth in the mid teens. The company also said on Thursday it had approved a buyback of 400 million shares, or 6.6 percent of its shares outstanding, and expects to complete the transactions by the end of 2009. AT%26T said it maintained double-digit growth in revenue and subscribers for its broadband Internet service and saw subscribers to its U-verse video service rise to 231,000 by the end of the quarter from 126,000 the previous quarter. Stephenson said AT%26T was on track to reach more than 1 million U-verse subscribers by the end of 2008. U-verse is a video and broadband service AT%26T is building to compete with cable rivals such as Comcast. King said AT%26T's addition of 12,000 U-verse customers a week in December was better than its goal of 10,000. AT%26T shares were up 12 cents at $36.65 in early trading.

Let the bidding begin! The long-awaited wireless spectrum auction began today, with the Federal Communications Commission accepting bids for slices of airspace in the coveted 700 MHz band. Verizon Wireless, Google, AT%26T, Cablevision and other heavy hitters representing a cross section of the communications industry will vie for the airwaves that the government is freeing up in advance of next year's conversion to digital television broadcasting. The auction is expected to generate as much as $15 billion in government revenue, according to Gartner analyst Tole Hart. "It's the last major spectrum auction for the foreseeable future, so there's some scarcity there," Hart told InternetNews.com. The FCC is selling the spectrum in five blocks: A and B, both 12 MHz, the 22 MHz C block, D block, linked with public safety networks, and the unpaired 6 MHz E block. The C block is the most sought after spectrum at the auction, and that is where Google is likely to come up against the major telcos Verizon and AT%26T, Hart said. Hart predicted that Verizon would likely outbid Google for the bulk of the C block spectrum, with AT%26T also making a strong push. Quite simply, Hart said, the C block spectrum plays into the telcos' "core competency" of improving the data transfer speeds of their networks, and they will likely be more willing to drop a greater share of their budgets on the auction. Hart said he expects that Verizon to be the top bidder for the C block because that spectrum would be pivotal in executing the company's Long-Term Evolution (LTE) plans for upgrading its network. The analyst firm Stifel, Nicolaus %26 Co. concurs, pegging Verizon as the likely high bidder for C block. After the first round of bidding today, the FCC saw one bid for the C block as a package; the other bids for regional licenses. Under the auction rules, the identities of the bidders are kept anonymous, so the public can only see the dollar amounts of each bid. The C block package drew a bid of slightly more than $1 billion. Small and midsized companies engaged in the most vigorous bidding, grappling mainly for licenses in the A and B blocks. The B block licenses in Los Angeles, New York/Newark and Phoenix each drew seven bids. One group put in a bid for the national D block public-safety/commercial license, though Stifel noted that it is too early to determine whether that is a serious bid or if the group made the move simply to retain eligibility for other parts of the auction. Analysts have been speculating on which groups would bid on the D block since Frontline dropped out of the auction earlier this month. With Verizon likely winning the C block, Stifel suggests that AT%26T might make a run at the D block, which could trigger Verizon to enter a bid just to drive up the price. There are 214 qualified bidders in the spectrum auction. After months of speculation, Google officially announced that it would participate in November. The FCC finalized the auction rules in July, pledging that it would devote nearly one-third of the spectrum to open-access networks, meaning that consumers could use any type of device or software. The FCC has said that it sees the spectrum auction as a healthy means of promoting competition in the wireless market. The FCC's nod to open access drew sharp protests from Verizon Wireless and other telcos, which have unsuccessfully challenged the legality of the rules. Though it remains unlikely that Google will win the C block, if it bids heavily enough, the auction could cross the threshold so the spectrum becomes open access. The auction is expected to last for several weeks.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called on Thursday for a new "creative capitalism" to help the world's 1 billion poorest who live on less than $1 a day. Gates, one of the world's richest men, said he was not dumping the basic tenets of capitalism but argued market forces must be better used to address the needs of those left behind by advances in technology and health care. "We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well," he told the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "I like to call this idea creative capitalism." The speech to top business leaders and politicians in Davos, Switzerland, reflects Gates' growing focus on philanthropy. Gates built Microsoft into a formidable and sometimes controversial money machine, which has been accused in the past of abusing its market position. But he will retire from full-time employment at Seattle-based Microsoft at the end of June to concentrate on his charitable organization, the Bill %26 Melinda Gates Foundation. The organization, founded in 2000, supports projects to improve health, reduce poverty and increase access to technology. Gates said the self-interest behind capitalism had driven multiple innovations but to harness it to the benefit of all required the system be refined. Greater focus on recognition for improving the lives of others could provide a spur for companies to focus more on making money out of providing valuable products at affordable prices to the world's poor. He urged multinationals to pledge the services of their top people to the work. "This kind of contribution is even more powerful than giving cash or offering employees time off to volunteer," Gates said. "It is a focused use of what your company does best," he said.

Sprint Nextel said on Thursday that Chief Financial Officer Paul Saleh and two other top executives would leave the company in a new management shake-up as the No. 3 U.S. mobile service grapples with subscriber declines. The announcement is the second major move in less than a week by Sprint's new Chief Executive Dan Hesse, who was appointed in December to stem the company's market share losses to bigger rivals AT%26T and Verizon Wireless. Sprint shares rose 1.7 percent in pre-market trading from its New York Stock Exchange close of $8.71. Saleh will leave the company on Friday, along with Chief Marketing Officer Tim Kelly and president of sales and distribution, Mark Angelino. Saleh had served as Sprint's acting CEO while it conducted a search for a permanent leader. Last week, the company reported deeper than expected subscriber losses and said it would cut about 4,000 jobs as it lost ground to bigger rivals. The news sent Sprint shares down nearly 25 percent and raised fears of a wider slowdown in the U.S. wireless industry. But AT%26T reported on Thursday better-than-expected wireless subscriber results for the fourth quarter, adding 2.7 million net wireless customers compared with an average forecast of 1.9 million, based on four analysts contacted by Reuters. Hesse said the company has no set time frame to fill the roles, but would name permanent replacements after a review of its overall strategy. Sprint controller William Arendt will serve as acting CFO in the interim. John Garcia, senior vice president of product development, will be acting chief marketing officer and Paget Alves, regional president for sales and distribution, will be acting president of the sales and distribution division.

In the film "Arlington Road," a college professor in a quiet Virginia town is disturbed to learn his neighbors may be terrorists. That film was released in 1999. In 2008, something similar happened, in a manner more fitting to the 21st century. A few days ago, Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing began tracking a software package called Mujahideen Secrets 2, an update to an encryption tool used by al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to communicate on the Internet. Henry tracked it down to a password-protected Web site that belongs to an Islamic forum known as al-Ekhlaas. al-Ekhlaas's domain, Ek-ls.org, traces back to a hosting company, Noc4Hosts, which in turn is run by Hi Velocity, a hosting provider based in Tampa, Florida. Henry, who lives in Tampa, was upset when he found out. "I'm appalled that someone is willing to risk these types of actions just to make a few dollars," he told InternetNews.com. Hi Velocity did not answer a query as of press time, and calls to the phone number listed in its WHOIS registration entry did not go through, meaning the lines are disconnected or out of service. Its 800# customer service line has an option to report abuse, but on selecting that you are told all abuse must be reported via a feedback form on the company Website. Henry said that he contacted the FBI about the site and its contents last weekend, but as of Wednesday evening it's still up and running, as is Henry's blog posting on the subject. Because the site is password protected, Henry hasn't been able to download the new version of Mujahideen Secrets. Ironically, under U.S. law, he can't try to brute force his way in either. He's concerned because it looks like the bad guys are getting better at covering their tracks. "What concerns me personally is we've relied on their use of archaic technology to block them in the past and it looks like this might be the start of a tech refresh for the bad guys," he said. Last November, there was supposed to be a mass cyber assault called e-Jihad, but it never went down. Henry said the IP addresses with the command and control servers with the target lists were hard coded into the client applications. Law enforcement apparently got the information before the attack and were able to take down the servers before the attack could be launched. Now, Henry says terrorists have adopted the same methodology as the Storm worm, using something called a fast flux DNS, where the IP addresses of control servers change every 300 seconds, making it impossible to use IP address blocking. Unlike "Arlington Road," this incident isn't a movie, but a potential threat. And we don't know, yet, how it ends.

Dell is making up for lost time with its late entry into the blades market with an ambitious new design, both in the chassis and blades themselves. The first point Dell wants to make about the PowerEdge M1000e series, unveiled Monday, is that it comes ready to run out of the box. Rather than being shipped in pieces, it was designed for shipment with all blades installed. You can have it unboxed, plugged in and running in 15 minutes, said Rick Becker, vice president of solutions for Dell. "When we talk about making IT faster, we mean it by shipping the system preconfigured and ready to go out of the box," he said. Dell is claiming considerable power savings over similar blade solutions from HP's BladeSystem c-Class and IBM's BladeCenter. Dell plans to phase out its existing blade server line, the M1955, but the same OpenManage administrative tools to run the 1955 will also support the 1000e. The PowerEdge M1000e is a 10U-sized enclosure, supports 16 half height blade servers or a mix of full height blades, which Dell plans to ship some time in the near future. The chassis supports both the PowerEdge M600 and M605 blade servers, which contain two quad-core Xeon or two quad-core AMD Opteron processors, respectively. The back plane of the M1000e is also a mix and match of fans, power supplies that Dell claims are 91 percent efficient and various network ports, all of which are hot swappable. The various back plane blades include an upgradeable Ethernet blade switch with four 1Gb ports and optional, three Cisco Ethernet switch options, two Brocade 4Gb Fibre Channel options, and FC4 Host Bus Adaptors from QLogic and Emulex. The M1000e will not have backup blades, something found in competitive products from HP and IBM. "We think the chassis is best for deploying dense computing solutions," said Becker. "We have better solutions coming with dense storage and we think that that's a better solution than trying to do a half-job in the chassis." James Staten, analyst with Forrester Research, had nothing but praise for the new blade system. "Dell's made a lot of interesting moves with these products in terms of setup, management, remote administration. They are a definite step up from the last round of blades," he said. Staten said most customers who tend buy blades do so from their preferred server vendor. So if you are in HP's camp, you will buy from HP. Dell had no response, which sent its customers elsewhere. Despite coming late to the blades game, Staten said Dell closed the gap quickly with HP and IBM. The new M1000e blade enclosure will be available from Dell on Wednesday with a starting price of $5,999 for the chassis and blades starting at $1,849.

There are a lot of companies with point products for specific WAN optimization and application acceleration needs. Certainly Cisco is among those that play in the WAN optimization and application acceleration space though for Cisco it's about a lot more than just point products. With Cisco it's about building what it refer to as an Application Delivery Network. As part of its application delivery strategy, Cisco is now rolling out a series of products that tie together to handle application and WAN acceleration for both office and remote users. Among the offerings is the new entry level Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) 4710 Appliance; the Cisco ACE XML Gateway Release 5.2 and the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Mobile. Cisco is also rolling out a Data Center Assurance Program for Applications (DCAP for Applications) that ensures that applications from leading vendors Microsoft, Oracle and SAP will benefit fully from Cisco's application delivery portfolio. "Our approach to building application delivery technology is network wide and tightly integrated with all components of the network," Mark Weiner, Director, Data Center Solutions, Cisco told InternetNews.com. "It's about application delivery networks and not about delivering point products." Weiner sees the current data optimization market as being at an inflexion point where it is moving away from its original basis in point solutions that stand on their own. He explained that the broader Cisco strategy is to put smarts into the foundation and tie it into purpose built application delivery products so you end up with an application delivery network. The various components are all tied together with common mechanisms that provide end to end visibility and reporting. A key part of Cisco's application delivery is found in its ACE (Application Control Engine)product line which was first released back in April of 2006. Originally ACE was just available as a module that fit into Cisco's Catalyst switching lineup. Now it's also available in a standalone appliance form factor. The new ACE 4710 is considered to be an entry level ACE appliance with support for up to 2Gbps of application traffic. Web applications in particular can benefit from the ACE 4710 with Cisco's FlashForward acceleration technology that aims to reduce network delays with Web technologies like JavaScript files. Indrajit Roy Sr. Manager, Product Management Application Delivery Products for Data Centers, at Cisco explained that the ACE 4710 uses asymmetric acceleration techniques. "The asymmetric acceleration means the ACE 4710 sits in front of application servers in a data center," Roy said. "This allows for optimization that makes the transactions up to 90 shorter in terms of latency. The impact is very tangible." The ACE 4710 also makes use of virtualization techniques to virtualize the application delivery pipeline as well, with the end result being better utilization and optimization overall. For those enterprises that are deploying SOA and XML types of applications, Cisco is releasing the new ACE XML Gateway (AXG) Release 5.2. Roy noted that the new AXG is capable of handling 30,000 transactions per seconds which he argued is superior to other XML acceleration solutions in the market today. XML acceleration appliance are now becoming increasingly popular. Among the many vendors now entering the space is Alcatel-Lucent with its OmniAccess 8550 WSG (Web Services Gateway). Remote acceleration for mobile Cisco is also rolling out a new Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Mobile release to extent the benefits of acceleration to remote users. "The WAAS mobile client has automatic agility," Roy explained. "So as it's running on a laptop when you walk into your branch it will automatically sense the local branch and put you through the local box giving you even better performance." Roy noted that Cisco has been using the new WAAS release internally itself for months with great success. While the new ACE, AXG and WAAS products are each unique offerings, Roy commented that the products are not isolated for one another. All the products can interoperate with each other and there is common management as part of Cisco's overall application delivery platform. With its broad offering affecting some very different aspects of the IT infrastructure, a key challenge for Cisco with its application delivery network strategy isn't so much about the technology it's about people. "The challenge is expanding inside the base of customers that we speak too," Weiner said. "The solutions are spread across a range of departments in IT, application owners, infrastructure people storage and servers and then the traditional network teams we've sold to for so many years. It's just sharing benefits and getting alignment across these teams and getting approval cycles done."

A surprise interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve may have rescued the stock market from a steep decline on Tuesday, but it was no help for Apple shareholders. Apple shares plunged in late trading Tuesday after the company issued a much weaker than expected outlook for the current quarter. Apple posted 35% December quarter sales growth to $9.6 billion, along with earnings of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 a share. Both numbers were much better than expected, and Mac and iPhone shipments were solid. But iPod sales of 22 million were below forecasts, and the company's current quarter outlook %26#151; $6.8 billion sales and 94-cent earnings %26#151; was well below estimates, sending shares skidding. For the rest of the market, the day turned out much better than it could have. Following a global sell-off on Monday, U.S. stock futures were headed sharply lower Tuesday morning when the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a point. It was the first emergency Fed funds cut since September 17, 2001, and the Fed's largest rate cut since October 1984. The news did much to ease fears that the Fed was unresponsive to a market and economic freefall, but stocks still ended the day down more than 1%, adding to the market's worst-ever start to a year. Yahoo lost 4% on reports that it is considering cutting hundreds of jobs, while eBay fell 4% on reports that CEO Meg Whitman could retire. Motorola shed 7% ahead of its quarterly results, and Alcatel Lucent lost 12% on a Goldman Sachs downgrade. Oracle was another big decliner, down 6%, and Microsoft, Cisco, Dell and Sun were off more than 3% each. The Nasdaq lost 47 to 2292, the S%26amp;P fell 14 to 1310, and the Dow lost 128 to 11,971. Volume rose to 6.51 billion shares on the NYSE, and 3.16 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led by a 19-13 margin on the NYSE, and 20-10 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 55% on the NYSE, and 79% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 32-1,098 on the NYSE, and 36-982 on the Nasdaq.

The PC chip industry continued seeing strong sales and held prices relatively flat over 2007, according to a new report from market researcher IDC. For the full year, total worldwide PC processor shipments grew 12.6 percent over 2006 while revenues were nearly flat, up only 1.7 to $30.55 billion. This reflects the price erosion that occurred for most of the year, where vendors were lucky to keep average selling prices (ASPs) flat instead of declining as they did in other sectors, like memory. During fourth quarter alone, microprocessor shipments grew 8.5 percent sequentially from third quarter. Revenue grew 9.6 percent sequentially to $8.7 billion, according to IDC. By and large, the two major competitors in the field -- Intel and AMD -- held their respective market shares. For the entire year, Intel held 77.4 percent of the market to AMD's 22.2 percent, with the rest going to VIA Technology, IBM, Freescale and Transmeta. This represents virtually no change from the 3Q07, but a slight decrease for AMD from the fourth quarter of 2006 -- before the company began suffering from a number of problems. In that quarter, AMD held 25.3 percent of the market to Intel's 74.5 percent. What a difference a quarter can make. Barcelona delays and other production problems hurt AMD terribly, and its market share plummeted to 18.6 percent in the first quarter of 2007, just one quarter later. Since then, AMD has clawed back to 23.1 percent market share in Q407. Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC, told InternetNews.com that despite the woes surrounding AMD, it wasn't a yearlong bloodbath. "There's some common wisdom to dispel that every quarter Intel is cleaning AMD's clock," he said. "It was the first quarter where AMD had its problem with supply chain and pricing. Since then it's been going toe to toe with Intel." What AMD needs now is to get high end products out the door because that's where the profits lie. "Until they get Barcelona and Phenom quad%26#91;-core%26#93; out in volume, that means they are not playing at the top of the stack where the best ASPs are," he said. "If you don't have products there, the rest of your products are still moving downward in price. If you don't have anything to replace them at the top end, your ASPs are sinking." Compared to other markets, PC server chips had the best quarter, growing 17.0 percent sequentially while laptop chips grew 10.3 percent and desktop processors were up 6.5 percent. In all three categories, IDC reported that sales in the middle and high end outpaced the low end. Rau attributed this primarily to Intel's Caneland platform, and a little to AMD's success in finally shipping Barcelona. For the year, desktop processors grew by 2 percent, servers were up 5.6 percent, and mobile processors grew a whopping 34.3 percent. IDC's PC researchers estimate that in 2010, laptop system sales will finally surpass desktop sales -- one year earlier than it had previously projected. Rau said he expects an even earlier transition for CPUs, with laptop chip sales surpassing desktop models in late 2009. IDC expects mobile sales to remain strong in 2008, but a weakening of the U.S. economy may impact the rest of the market. Both Intel and AMD noted in their recent quarterly announcements that they do about three-quarters of their business outside of the country, so impact of a U.S. slowdown might be mitigated. Rau agrees, to a point. "For an American-based company, having a lot of worldwide business does help them hedge their bets, especially as it goes along with a weak American dollar," he said. "That's an effective price cut for emerging markets that are very price-conscious. The danger is when the U.S. economy spills over into the worldwide economy."

For Zend Technologies, PHP is a lot more than just an open source programming language. Zend, the lead commercial backer behind PHP, is pushing its vision of PHP as a prominent platform for development and deployment of mission-critical applications with a pair of new products. Zend Studio for Eclipse is Zend's new PHP IDE(define), and Zend Platform 3.6 is the latest release of the company's enterprise-deployment platform for PHP. The new releases are part of the PHP vendor's strategy to move from point products to a complete suite for the application life cycle, as PHP continues to makes inroads against both Java and .NET. "When our customers build mission applications they take the whole Zend solution, since we deal with the whole life cycle from development to staging to production," Andi Gutmans, Zend's CTO, told InternetNews.com. "So they use Zend Core for their certified PHP, they use Zend Platform for getting performance, scalability and reliability for their production servers and then they use Zend Framework across the board to get the right methodology and best practices," Gutmans added. The Zend Platform got under way in 2005 with the last major release version 3.0 in February 2007. In the new version, 3.6, Zend has focused on further improving the performance of PHP deployments. "Performance management starts when a user clicks on a URL and until they get what they're looking for," Gutmans noted. "So we mapped that whole process and looked at where we could improve." One of the key improvements in Platform 3.6 is the ability to cache model view controller%26#150;based applications, which are increasingly popular in framework deployments. Gutmans explained that with the new MVC caching capabilities, instead of caching on a file basis Zend Platform can now cache on a URL basis. Additionally, Zend Platform allowed for high-performance sites to cache in shared memory, which further improves PHP delivery performance. While Zend Platform is available for both Linux and Windows Servers, Gutmans commented that the 3.6 release is geared toward Linux. "We're now working with Microsoft toward Windows Server 2008 and working on a road map for how to work with it," Gutmans said. Zend and Microsoft have a working partnership to make PHP run well on Windows platforms. On the development side, Zend's IDE version of Zend Studio has long been primarily used on Windows, and that's not expected to change with the new release of Zend Studio for Eclipse. The new Zend Studio for Eclipse is the first official release from Zend of its IDE based on the Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PHT) project. Gutmans noted that Zend had more than 15,000 beta testers for Zend Studio for Eclipse, and the feedback received helped to make the final release a more stable product. Because the new Zend Studio is based on Eclipse, developers can now leverage the full Eclipse ecosystem of plug-ins to further expand the capabilities of the IDE. While Zend is pushing its new Eclipse-based IDE, it's not abandoning its non-Eclipse Zend Studio 5.5 customers. Zend has not officially set an end-of-life date yet for the non-Eclipse Zend Studio and has pledged to keep it current for minor fixes in a maintenance mode. "I think right now we have a very solid story for business-critical applications," Gutmans said. "What we're seeing today at Zend is that it's changing the way we work with customers," he added. According to Gutmans, the company set out on this path two years when it began working with Eclipse and Framework. "It's a strategy we've been seeing the benefit of," Gutmans noted. That's not to say there still isn't work for Zend to do to further improve PHP development and deployment. "I'm the CTO, so I always think there should be more that we should be doing," Gutmans said. "I want to do more around RIA (Rich internet applications), methodologies and more around business critical deployments. There is always a lot of work for Zend."

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- HP and Intel are promoting energy efficiency programs and new products that reflect those initiatives. At an event here Wednesday, HP announced new versions of two low-power desktops, one with a 16GB solid state drive (SSD), ie. flash memory drive. The new systems are the HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC with SSD and the HP Compaq dc5800 Business PC will meet Energy Star efficiency and use all the latest techniques for power efficiency, such as a low wattage CPU and the power management from Intel vPro. The dc7800 can actually attach to the back of an LCD monitor for a small, albeit less than elegant footprint. Its SSD drive will consume just two watts of power instead of 10 to 12, according to Kirk Godkin, senior product manager for business PCs. Between the SSD drive, Intel's Core 2 processor and vPro management, HP claimed it can cost as little as $10 per year to operate, at least in terms of raw power. However, the SSD drive comes with just 16GB of capacity, making the dc7800 the computing equivalent of an iPod Touch. Godkin acknowledged that this system is not for everyone, or even many businesses, due to its low capacity. It's aimed at customers where the PC would be used in a single-use environment, like a kiosk. The 16GB drive runs around $300, vs. $120 for a 80GB standard hard disk. Godkin said in the future, as prices come down, there could be 32GB and 64GB versions as well. The HP Compaq dc7800 is available today in North America at a starting list price of $1,258, while the HP Compaq dc5800 is expected to be available on February 11, starting as low as $579. The PCs reflect the latest efforts of both companies to reduce harmful materials in computers and recycle as much as possible from old systems. Until recently, old PCs usually ended up in a landfill. Not any more. HP recycled 185 million pounds of PCs in 2006, according to Carl Eckersley, manager in the personal systems group supply chain operations at HP. That includes old servers, even from a competitor. "If you're buying HP stuff, we'll take %26#91;the old equipment%26#93;," he said. "We grind up the metal and plastics, recover the precious metals and reuse as much as we can." HP recently passed the one billion pounds recycled mark and hopes to recycle another billion pounds by 2010, he added. In addition to its low power push, Intel's contribution to the environment has been to make cleaner chips. The newly-launched Penryn line is free of lead and halogens, which will make them less polluting and easier to recycle. Intel is also working on recycling efforts, although it generally leaves system recycling to the OEMs, according to Todd Brady, corporate environmental manager for Intel. But Intel does have its own project to recycle its own waste in the works. "It's been a multi-year effort, both in the U.S. and overseas," he said. Intel manufactures chips in places like Costa Rica, Malaysia, Israel and Ireland. If the local pollution control standards aren't particularly strong, Intel still brings back the waste to properly dispose of it. This includes chemicals like acids and salts used to etch the silicon wafers and the metals in the wafers. "We recycle about 80 percent of the chemical waste and minimize the amount that ends up in a landfill. Last year, about six percent of our total waste ended up in a landfill. Our ultimate goal is to get that to zero."

The drive toward openness and interoperability in Web services is gathering steam. Yahoo today announced that it is supporting the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, giving a ringing endorsement to the effort to build a universal login standard -- which has been dismissed by some skeptics as a dreamer's fantasy. The addition of Yahoo, which counts 248 million registered users globally, will triple the number of OpenID accounts on the Web to 368 million, the company reported. "Yahoo's commitment to an open Web is a significant validation of the OpenID movement," said Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation, in a statement. The OpenID Foundation formed in June 2007 to promote the standard. The brainchild of LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick, who is now with Google, OpenID is designed to provide Web users with a universal identifier so they can sign into social networks, blogs and other Web sites with a single login. When Yahoo launches its OpenID service in public beta form on Jan. 30, anyone with an OpenID identifier will be able to log into Yahoo's Web sites. On non-Yahoo sites, Yahoo users will be able to type "www.yahoo.com" into the login prompt of a site that uses OpenID. The company Yahoo said that it is also working with several OpenID partners to include a "Sign in with Your Yahoo ID" button on their sites to further streamline the process. Prior to Yahoo's announcement, AOL had been the biggest name behind OpenID. Other backers include Plaxo, the online address service, and blogging sites Technorati and WordPress.com. Still, OpenID has remained at the fringes of the Web, hindered by security concerns and a tepid embrace beyond its early adopters. It is also part of the larger push toward cross-platform interoperability that some Web properties have resisted. OpenID is one of the initiatives supported by the DataPortability Workgroup, a broad-based coalition devoted to creating open standards and protocols to level the barriers between Web sites. Last week, the group announced that representatives from Google and Facebook had joined the effort. Both companies, which each offer a third-party developer platform for applications to run across various social networks, were two of the last major holdouts to the coalition. In addition to OpenID, the DataPortability Workgroup supports data-integration standards such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) and others.