Showing posts with label Sci/Tech. Show all posts

Google’s Chief on Social, Mobile and Conflict

Lately, stories about Google often seem to be stories about conflict — Google knocking heads with China or the Justice Department or Facebook.
For Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, that is a good sign. “This is winning,” he said this week, speaking to a group of reporters at Google’s Zeitgeist conference in Arizona. “If we were losing, we would not have these problems.”
Mr. Schmidt gave a few updates on those conflicts and rivalries, as well as some others. Expect to see social tools from Google this fall, he said, but do not expect a brand new social network. Instead, Google will add social components to its core products.
He and other Google executives were not shy about needling Facebook for making it difficult for Google to import social information. Upon signing up for Facebook, people can import their Google contacts, but it does not work the other way around, Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management, noted.
“The best thing that would happen is Facebook would open up its network and we’d use that information to improve our ads and our search,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Failing that, there are other ways in which we can get that information, which is what we’re working on.”
He described another rivalry — the one between Google and Apple over mobile phones — as different than the one with Facebook. By increasing competition, that rivalry benefits both companies and both can do well, he said.
Google’s Android business is flourishing, he said, despite the fact that Google makes no money on it because it gives the mobile operating system away for free.
“I have been surprised at how important Android is for our business,” Mr. Schmidt said. “It’s fundamentally because Android is seen as representative of the new model of computing, and people are dying to put their best applications on an open platform.”
The situation in China is stable, after Google temporarily shut down its search engine in response to assaults from hackers and now redirects users to the Hong Kong site. But the Chinese government could change that arrangement at any minute, Mr. Schmidt said.
He also spoke about another government-related conflict: the Texas attorney general’s investigation into Google’s search results and whether Google unfairly favors its own services over other Web sites.
Google does not promise that it will treat all Web sites neutrally, he said. “What we promise is the best answer that we can come up with, as judged by the end user.”
Sometimes that is a Google site and sometimes it is not, he said. “There is not a deliberate favoritism from a business perspective. There is a favoritism from what end users prefer, and we have ways to measure that.”
Regarding the Department of Justice review of Google’s acquisition of ITA, the flight software company, Mr. Schmidt said he expects the deal to go through.
Google, which has been on a shopping spree lately and particularly interested in buying social networking and advertising start-ups, has picked up the pace of acquisitions and plans to keep it that way, Mr. Schmidt said.
But do not expect to see all the start-ups’ products live on, branded with Google. “Most of the acquisitions that we are doing are focused primarily on technical talent,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

Verizon leads carriers in customer satisfaction

Verizon's customers are a happy lot. AT&T's? Not so much, still.
At least those are the findings of a survey (PDF) released last week by ChangeWave Research that found Verizon tops among cell phone users for customer satisfaction and fewer dropped calls.
Of the 4,040 wireless subscribers questioned for the survey in March, 49 percent of Verizon's customers said they were very satisfied with their service. In second place was Sprint Nextel with a 35 percent satisfaction rate. T-Mobile and AT&T both tied for last with only 23 percent of their customers who said there were very satisfied.

(Credit: ChangeWave)

Verizon also came out top in the fewest number of dropped calls, with its customers reporting only 1.5 percent of their calls lost over the prior three months. The dropped call rates were 2.4 percent for Sprint and 2.8 percent for T-Mobile, while AT&T was at the bottom with customers reporting 4.5 percent of their calls being lost. The dropped call rates marked Verizon's best since September 2008 and AT&T's worst over the same time frame.

(Credit: ChangeWave)

Customer loyalty, specifically churn rate, was another factor measured in the survey. But here Verizon and AT&T both fared well, with 7 percent of Verizon customers saying they plan to switch to another carrier over the next three months, and 8 percent of AT&T customers saying the same. The churn rate was 10 percent for Sprint and 14 percent for T-Mobile at the bottom.
Though AT&T's other grades were poor, ChangeWave believes its churn rate is relatively low thanks to its deal with Apple as the only U.S. supplier of the iPhone. In total, only 8 percent of all the people surveyed said they plan to switch carriers, the lowest level ever recorded by ChangeWave.
For those customers who do plan to switch, where will they go? The popularity of the Motorola Droid led to a big jump in the number of people who said they'd switch to Verizon, according to ChangeWave's December survey results. The number has gone down 4 percentage points since, according to the most recent results, but is still the highest of the four carriers, with 27 percent of people who plan to switch reporting they'll jump to Verizon.
Among other subscribers looking for a change, 18 percent said they're switching to AT&T. That was the second-highest rank in the current survey but 3 percentage points lower for AT&T than in the December survey and 19 points lower than it was in the September 2008 survey.
Only 7 percent of those switching say they'll move to Sprint, while 5 percent indicated a leap to T-Mobile, however, those numbers do show an improvement over the last several quarters. In the case of Sprint, ChangeWave believes the boost is due to the carrier's new 4G wireless plan and its lower prices but is uncertain whether or not this trend will continue.
Finally, how might a non-AT&T iPhone shake up the cellular landscape? The news would certainly be good for Apple.
Among Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile subscribers in general, 49 percent said they'd be very or somewhat likely to buy an iPhone if their carrier offered it. But among specific carriers, 53 percent of Verizon customers said they'd be very or somewhat likely to buy the iPhone, 44 percent of Sprint customers said the same, and 39 percent of T-Mobile customers would likely jump to an iPhone.

(Credit: ChangeWave)

But with Verizon typically the most rumored carrier that would get an iPhone if and when AT&T's exclusive contract ends, ChangeWave sees a huge demand for it among Verizon customers and believes such a move could have a "profound and likely transformational impact on the industry."

YouTube extends automatic video captioning

WASHINGTON: YouTube, in a significant development for deaf Web users, extended automatic caption capability to all English-language videos on the video-sharing website on Thursday.

YouTube users have been able to manually add captions to videos since 2008 and in November of last year the site began offering machine-generated captions for about a dozen partner channels, reports AFP.
Hiroto Tokusei, a YouTube product manager, said in a blog post on Thursday that the automatic caption, or auto-caption, feature was now being expanded to all videos on the site in English.
Auto-captioning uses speech-to-text technology to generate subtitles.
“Making video easily accessible is something we're working hard to address at YouTube,” said Tokusei, citing studies that predict that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015.
While the auto-caption feature currently only works for videos where English is spoken, Tokusei said users can use Google's automatic translation service to simultaneously translate the captions into 50 other languages.
Auto-captioning in more languages will be added “in the months to come,” Tokusei said.
The YouTube project manager noted that auto-captioning is not yet perfect and a “clearly spoken audio track” without background noise is needed to create quality captions.
One of the chief advocates for captioning capability at YouTube has been Vint Cerf, the Google vice president who has been described as the “Father of the Internet.”
Cerf, who is hearing impaired and has been wearing hearing aids since the age of 13, made a personal appearance at the unveiling of the YouTube auto-caption features at Google's Washington offices in November.

Apple iPad available starting April 3 in the US

Apple announced on Friday (Saturday in the Philippines) the availability of its highly anticipated iPad in the United States beginning April 3, with pre-orders to begin on March 12.

According to PR PR Newswire, customers in the US can pre-order either the Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi+3G model from the Apple online store starting on March 12. People can also place reservations for the Wi-Fi model, which will be available at Apple retail stores beginning April 3.

Prices and availability

The iPad Wi-Fi model range will be available in the US starting April 3 with an SRP of US$499 for 16GB, US$599 for 32GB, and US$699 for 64GB. The Wi-Fi+3G model range will become available towards the end of April with an SRP of US$629 for 16GB, US$729 for 32GB and US$829 for 64GB.

Both iPad models will be available starting late April in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. The device will become available in other countries later in the year. Local pricing has yet to be announced.

'Completely new and revolutionary' -Jobs

The iPad is just 0.5in thick and weighs only 1.5lbs, with an expected battery life of up to 10 hours. Apple's Multi-Touch interface technology —first seen on the iPod Touch— provides an innovative way of enjoying the internet and various media, from music and videos to games and ebooks.

"The iPad is something completely new. We're excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Apple Sets April 3 for iPad Debut

Apple Inc. said Friday the first models of its highly anticipated iPad tablet computer will be available in U.S. stores on April 3, slightly later than originally planned.
Also, the version capable of accessing both wireless networks and AT&T Inc.'s 3G mobile-phone network will be available in late April. At that time, both models will be available in countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.
The company said U.S. customers can preorder either model starting March 12.
The iPad is a multimedia, Internet-enabled slate computer that could fuel the next leg of growth at the consumer-electronics giant. It can be used to browse the Web, read email and books and play games.
Since its debut for the media in late January, the iPad has been the subject of speculation about production delays. At that time of the unveiling, the company said the product would be available "in late March."
However, Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek said this week Apple might have to delay or limit the size of the launch because of an ``unspecified production problem.'' Mr. Misek said Apple's Taiwan-based supplier, Hon Hai Precision, could be facing a production bottleneck or a shortage of components.
Mr. Misek said he didn't expect the delay to affect sales of the iPad during Apple's fiscal third quarter, which ends in June. He estimates Apple will sell 550,000 iPads during the period and 1.2 million in fiscal 2010.
Investors shrugged off the delay, and Apple shares jumped $6.31, or 3%, to $217.02, a record high.

Mind-reading computers turn heads at high-tech fair Germany

DEVICES allowing people to write letters or play pinball using just the power of their brains have become a major draw at the world's biggest high-tech fair.
Huge crowds at the CeBIT fair gathered round a man sitting at a pinball table, wearing a cap covered in electrodes attached to his head, who controlled the flippers with great proficiency without using hands.
"He thinks, left hand or right hand and the electrodes monitor the brain waves associated with that thought, send the information to a computer, which then moves the flippers,'' said Michael Tangermann, from the Berlin Brain Computer Interface.

But the technology is much more than a fun gadget, it could one day save your life.
Scientists are researching ways to monitor motorists' brain waves to improve reaction times in a crash.
In an emergency stop situation, the brain activity kicks in on average around 200 milliseconds before even an alert driver can hit the brake.

There is no question of braking automatically for a driver, "we would never take away that kind of control'', said Tangermann.

"However, there are various things the car can do in that crucial time, tighten the seat belt, for example,'' he added.
Using this brain-wave monitoring technology, a car can also tell whether the driver is drowsy or not, potentially warning him or her to take a break.
At the g.tec stall, visitors watched a man with a similar "electrode cap'' sat in front of a screen with a large keyboard, with the letters flashing in an ordered sequence.
The user concentrates hard when the chosen letter flashes and the brain waves stimulated at this exact moment are registered by the computer and the letter appears on the screen.
The technology takes a long time at present - it took the man around four minutes to write a five-lettered word - but researchers hope to speed it up in the near future.
Another device allows users to control robots by brain power.
The small box has lights flashing at different frequencies at the four points of the compass.
The user concentrates on the corresponding light, depending on whether he wants the robot to move up, down, left or right and the brainwaves generated by viewing that frequency are monitored and the robot is controlled.
The technology is being perfected for physically disabled people, who can communicate and operate other devices using their brain.
"In future, people will be able to control wheelchairs, open doors and turn on their televisions with their minds,'' said Clemens Holzner from g.tec.

British consumers 'waste £52bn on gadgets they don't know how to use'

DAB radios and HD-ready televisions among the technologies that baffle consumers, says survey.

The average Briton only uses half of the functions available on their gadgets, according to research conducted on behalf of Sky HD. Almost half of the 3,000 people questioned by One Poll did not know that their HD-ready television needed to be connected to a high-definition device, such as a Blu-ray DVD player or HD service, in order to enjoy high-definition pictures.
Only a quarter of men will ask for help with their gadgets, compared to 47 per cent of women. Almost two thirds of women will read the product manual when problems occur, compared to 54 per cent of men. Ten per cent of IT experts admitted to hitting a gadget in order to try and make it work properly.
The survey found that the average British consumer owns more than £3,000 worth of electrical goods, but it calculated that the UK 'gadget gap' – the difference between the amount people spend on their gadgets compared to the value of functions they actually use – is more than £52 billion.
"It's amazing how much money people are wasting by not using things to their full potential,"said Fraser Macdonald, editor of Stuff, the gadget magazine. "A high definition television is an essential purchase, for example, but it'll be so much better if you hook it up to a decent HD PVR such as a Sky HD box, a Blu-ray player and a surround sound speaker set-up."
The 'gadget gap' was calculated by dividing the average value of a person's gadget collection by the average number of features people don't know how to use. This total was then multiplied by the number of households in the UK to arrive at a figure of £52 billion.

Google stands by Android despite HTC and Apple lawsuit

Search giant Google ‘stands behind Android and our partners who have helped us to develop it’ after Apple announces it is to sue Nexus One-maker HTC .

Google has said its Android mobile operating system is not part of the lawsuit that Apple has filed against HTC. The iPod manufacturer has claimed that HTC, maker of the flagship Android handset Nexus One, has infringed 20 patents; Google says that “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it."
The patents Apple’s suit cites range from 1995 to February this year; in a detailed breakdown on blog Engadget, writer Nilay Patel says “this litigation will take years and require many hearing [sic] to determine exactly what's covered”. Although some alleged infringements cover Windows Mobile phones and others cover Android phones, there are attacks on HTC’s software and hardware. The software HTC’s Android handsets run, however, is built with Google. HTC itself, which is the world’s largest maker of Android phones, told the Taiwanese stock exchange that it “is not only a mobile technology innovator, [we] also hold a large number of patents." The company will work with the American justice system to protect its own innovations and rights, it added, saying that it does not consider the Apple lawsuit will trouble its business

How to control emotional outbursts in front of your partner

Washington, Mar 3 ...Can't hold back your anger in front of your partner? Well, a part of your brain might be of some help to control those much-regretted emotional storms.

A new study has suggested that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is a brain region that may help people to control their emotional reactions to negative facial expressions from their romantic partners.

For the study, Christine Hooker and her colleagues recruited healthy, adult participants in committed relationships.

The research subjects viewed positive, negative, and neutral facial expressions of their partners during a brain scan.

In an online daily diary, participants reported conflict occurrence, level of negative mood, rumination, and substance use.

It was found that LPFC activity in response to the laboratory-based affective challenge predicted self-regulation after an interpersonal conflict in daily life.

When there was no interpersonal conflict, LPFC activity was not related to mood or behaviour the next day.

However, when an interpersonal conflict did occur, LPFC activity predicted mood and behaviour the next day, such that lower activity was related to higher levels of negative mood, rumination, and substance use.

The study findings suggest that low LPFC function may be a risk factor for mood and behavioural problems after a stressful interpersonal event.

The constructive management of negative emotional states that emerge inevitably within romantic relationships can be a critical facet of coping with the world.

The relationships frequently serve as emotional havens from the stresses of the working world.

Yet these relationships also may augment rather than reduce life stress. When that happens, problematic behaviours such as over-eating and substance abuse may increase.

"When activated in the context of intense emotion, it appears that the LPFC helps us to manage the intensity of negative emotions that emerge in social relationships. When this brain region does not efficiently activate or when the intensity of the conflict is very high, people need to learn behavioral strategies to cope with the emotional response. For some people this strategy can be as simple as counting to 10 before doing something that they might regret later," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Hooker explained that their findings "suggest that imaging can provide potentially useful information about who may be vulnerable to mood and behavioral problems after a stressful event. We hope that future research will build on this idea and explore ways that imaging can be used to inform people about their emotional vulnerabilities."
The new study has been published in Biological Psychiatry....

Female beetles lock horns in fierce battle for dung London, March 3 .... In a new research, scientists found out that female beetles resort to horned aggression against each other in the battle for securing dung.

According to a report in New Scientist, the research was carried out by Nicola Watson and Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia, Perth.

They pitted female dung beetles against each other in a race for dung - a valuable resource that provides nutrients for their eggs.

Matched for body size, females with bigger horns managed to collect more dung and so provide better for their offspring.

To give their young a start in life, female dung beetles - which have much larger horns than males - make balls of dung, called brood balls, from cowpats and bury them underground.

They then lay an egg into each ball; each ball provides nutrition for the developing larva, and the more dung there is in the ball, the larger and more fertile the offspring will grow to become.

"Larger-horned females managed to get greater access to the dung and reproduce more brood balls and in turn more offspring," said Watson.

The life of a female dung beetle is highly competitive.

"Dung loses its usability quickly, so they have to seize it fast," said Watson.

Female beetles have been found to steal dung, raid other brood balls, and replace existing eggs with their own.

"It is against this backdrop of intense female-female rivalry that the horns have evolved," said Watson.

According to Patricia Backwell of the Australian National University in Canberra, although there are many cases of female weaponry - in lizards, crabs and some dinosaurs, for instance - in most cases it is used in defence against predators.

"In the beetles, however, weaponry has evolved under female competition, which is rare," she said.

Google staunchly defends pact to digitize books

WASHINGTON – Google Inc argued in a staunch and sometimes eloquent brief that an agreement reached with the Authors Guild to digitize millions of books was legal and a contribution to human knowledge.
Google's ambitious plan has been praised for expanding access to books but the Justice Department criticized it on February 4 on a variety of grounds, saying it potentially violated antitrust and copyright laws.
Google disagreed, saying on Thursday that the amended settlement agreement complies with the law. "With only one significant exception, the parties sought to implement every suggestion the United States (Justice Department) made in its September submission," Web search leader said.
That exception was a decision to keep books in the project unless authors decided to opt out. Finding all the authors in question and requiring them to sign up for the program "would eviscerate the purposes of the ASA (amended settlement agreement)," it said.
Google also argued that the deal did not harm libraries and did nothing to stop other groups seeking to digitize books.
"The ASA will enable the parties to make available to people throughout the country millions of out-of-print books," Google said in its brief. "This is precisely the kind of beneficial innovation that the antitrust laws are intended to encourage, not to frustrate."
Google also took a swing at corporate rivals, noting that Microsoft Corp had abandoned its own book project.
"Competitors such as Amazon raise anxieties about Google's potential market position, but ignore their own entrenched market dominance," Google said in its brief.
Another objection has been that it is inappropriate to use the class action mechanism "to implement forward-looking business arrangements." But, Google said, the Justice Department did not point to any cases disapproving a settlement on those grounds.
Google further sought to downplay the economic significance of the books in the project, saying that most were either out of copyright or no longer in print. The authors of most of the books in neighborhood bookstores would withhold their books from the project.
The Open Book Alliance, made up of Google's corporate rivals, some library and writers groups and other groups digitizing books, rejected Google's arguments.
"Despite the spin from Google's attorneys, the amended settlement will still offer the search and online advertising giant exclusive access to books it has illegally scanned to the detriment of consumers, authors and competition," the group said in an email statement.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who must approve the class action suit for it to go into effect, has scheduled a hearing on the settlement for February 18.
The agreement is designed to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit filed against Google by authors and publishers who had accused the search engine giant of copyright infringement for scanning collections of books from four universities and the New York Public Library.
The Justice Department recommended in September that the agreement be rejected.
Faced with this and other opposition, Google and a group of authors and publishers made a series of changes to the deal in November that has failed to stem criticism of it.
The case is The Authors Guild et al v. Google, Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 05-08136.

Government calls for action on mobile phone crime

The government has called on the mobile phone industry to do more to protect handset owners against theft.

Alan Campbell, Minister for Crime Prevention, said firms "have a social and a corporate responsibility to tackle crime".
Around 2% of British mobile phone users report they have suffered a theft in the last year, although for teenagers the figure is three times higher.
Mr Campbell said it was also an opportunity for innovation.
"First this is a great opportunity - this is new technology which can be promoted around the world," said Mr Campbell.
"But also mobile phone companies have a responsibility which goes beyond the profits they can make from phones; they have a social and a corporate responsibility to tackle crime."
'Amazing opportunity'
Mr Campbell likened the problem to that of car theft. He said that following government intervention, innovations in the car industry - such as immobilisers - had helped cut theft by 60% in 10 years.
Figures suggest that 228 mobile phones are reported stolen in the UK every hour.
Michael O'Hara from the industry body GSMA said the mobile industry "supports and welcomes innovations that help to safeguard against mobile phone crime in any guise".
He said the GSMA "leads a growing number of initiatives" aimed at tackling mobile crime including "a database of handset serial numbers" that allow a phone to be blocked when they are reported as lost or stolen.
The government's call comes as the Home Office unveiled the winning designs in a crime prevention contest, aimed at making mobile phones less attractive to thieves.
Designs included an alarm that sounds when a phone is too far from its owner and locks the handset.
Others included a system to encrypt users data on the phone.
David Kester, chief executive of the Design Council said that mobile phone firms had an "amazing opportunity".
"Mobile phone companies want to sell phones - we want to feel safe, to protect our money.
"Just a little bit of a nudge from the government and you see innovation - there are real ideas that can make money for British industry.
"Suddenly a problem that we the public all care about becomes a big opportunity."
The winning designs will be shown off at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from the 15-18 February.

Hello Twitterverse: First Tweet From Space

Twitter has rocketed into outer space, thanks to a Nasa software upgrade on the international space station that allows astronauts to update their feeds themselves.

A new, high-powered wireless connection has been established between orbiters and groundlings, allowing crews to post tweets directly from their spacecraft.
Flight Engineer TJ Creamer posted the first tweet on January 22 from aboard Nasa Expedition 22.
He said: "Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station -- the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s"
Previous tweets from astronauts have had to be emailed to ground control and then posted to astronauts' accounts by Nasa's administrative team.
Creamer, along with ISS Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi, had been attempting to post directly to the social networking site since January 4, but had been stymied due to technical issues.
Commander Williams expressed his pride in Nasa's achievement, with his own first space tweet which read: "It's good to be on line! Appreciate the great job of the team who made it work!"
The new powerful web connection, called the Crew Support LAN, takes advantage of existing communication links to and from the station, allowing astronauts to browse and use the web.t is expected that this development will enhance the crew's personal lives during long missions, easing the isolation associated with life in a closed environment.
In addition to this new capability, the crew will continue to have official e-mail, a web-based telephone and some videoconferencing capabilities.
According to Nasa, astronauts will be subject to the same computer use guidelines as government employees on Earth.

Birds 'read numbers from left to right'

It is not just many humans who read numbers from left to right, a new study shows, birds do too.

The animals also appear to learn better after a good night’s sleep, scientists have found.
Researchers tested the reactions of a group of adult Clark’s Nutcrackers and newborn chicks.
Shown a set of objects, the birds were all trained to pick out the fourth one in a line, in return for food.
Initially the objects were placed in a vertical line in front of birds but when they had successfully learned which to pick, the researchers changed the test to lay the objects out in a horizontal line.
The birds continued to correctly count to four, reading from left to right, the findings, published in the journal Biology Letters show.
The team behind the research, from Padua University in Italy, said that the results “indicate for the first time a disposition to map a number line from left to right exists in non-human … species.”
Sleep also helps birds to consolidate information they have learned during the day, in the same ways as it does with humans, a separate study shows.
Tests on starlings showed that they performed better in memory tests after a good night’s sleep.
Researchers trained the birds to respond to certain calls, one of which signified that they would receive a treat and the another which heralded a punishment, in which the lights in their cages were briefly switched off.
The findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, suggest an extremely similar patter to what happens in humans, said the researchers, from the University of Chicago.

Google Earth focuses on Haiti devastation

Google has updated its Google Earth application to provide crisis responders with up-to-date images of the devastation in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, the web search giant said on Thursday.

The new images were taken on Wednesday, Google said in a blog posting and could be helpful to aid organisations trying to assess the damage to the region.

Available as a new downloadable layer on Google Earth, the new images give a bird's eye view of the destruction, showing sites like the National Palace and the Sylvia Cator Stadium strewn with debris.

Google said that it was working with its satellite partners to continually update the images of Haiti.

Watching TV shortens life span, study finds

Australian researchers find that each hour a day spent in front of television is linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease and an 11% greater risk of all causes of death.

Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn't the best way to spend leisure time -- inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing's effect on risk of death.

Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.

The study, released Monday in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Assn., looked at health data among 8,800 men and women older than 25 who were part of the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study. Participants recorded their television viewing hours for a week, and researchers separated the results by amount of viewing: those who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched two to four hours a day, and those who watched more than four hours a day.

The subjects also had oral glucose tolerance tests to determine blood sugar and gave blood samples to establish cholesterol levels at the beginning of the study. People with a history of cardiovascular disease were not included. In a follow up about six years later, 87 people had died due to cardiovascular disease and 125 of cancer.

Researchers found a strong connection between TV hours and death from cardiovascular disease, not just among the overweight and obese, but among people who had a healthy weight and exercised.

People who watched more than four hours a day showed an 80% greater risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 46% higher risk of all causes of death compared with those who watched fewer than two hours a day, suggesting that being sedentary could have general deleterious effects. The numbers were the same after the researchers controlled for smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, an unhealthy diet and leisure-time exercise.

"What we showed was that irrespective of a person's exercise level, sitting for four or more hours watching television was linked to a significant increase in risk of death compared to watching lower amounts of TV," said Dr. David Dunstan, lead author of the study and professor and head of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia. "The message here is that in addition to promoting regular exercise, we also need to promote avoiding long periods of sitting, such as spending long hours in front of the computer screen."

To him, the results weren't unexpected. "When we're in that sitting posture, we're not using our muscles, and we know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are important for the body's regulatory processes, such as the ability to break down glucose and use it as energy." That can cause insulin resistance, which can trigger a spike in blood sugar levels, possibly leading to type 2 diabetes.

Dr. Prediman K. Shah, director of the cardiology division of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, agreed. He pointed out that muscles become deconditioned when not used, triggering harmful physiological changes. "If your activity is slowing down, you metabolize cholesterol less and synthesize it more," he said.

Even sporadic exercisers who sit for long periods need to increase their daily activity.

"The physical activity we do over a 24-hour period is important," says Dr. Gerald F. Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and a spokesman for the American Heart Assn.

That means taking the stairs instead of the elevator, gardening, walking the dog . . .

"For couch potatoes, sitting on your duff is hazardous to your health," Shah said. "The bottom line is keep moving."

German boffin wants to make dumb gadgets smart

A GERMAN BOFFIN is not happy with just making electronic gadgets very precise, he also wants to harness the power of the cloud to make them a bit smarter.
Karlheinz Brandenburg, who gave the world the MP3 player [he can have it back any time he wants it. Ed] is backing Perfect Stream technology that lets computing power in the Internet "cloud" do the thinking for simple gadgets.
Brandenburg told AFP he thought those Perfect Stream guys were "just crazy" and having a laugh, but he likes "crazy" because people said the MP3 was "crazy" too.
Perfect Stream's idea is to have digital video and audio tailored to individual tastes and delivered as a service to essentially any gizmo that can talk to the Internet. It has been trialed successfully in Germany and the company was at CES to license the technology to Internet service providers in the United States.
A gadget can be programmed with a person's preferred shows, news sources, music, Twitter feeds, or other Internet content, and the data can be routed to digital picture frames, in-car navigation systems, feature phones, game consoles and more.
Apparently personalised Internet streams can be directed to everything from clever online electronics to the daftest $50 phone with prepaid plans.
At the heart of the technology is processing digital content on servers "in the cloud" and then feeding it to gadgets that need only receive and decode the data.

Apple to launch handheld computer and media player

APPLE, seeking to win a larger share of the market for handheld computers, plans to unveil a tablet PC this month.
Expected to go on sale in March, the tablet will help Apple capitalise on demand for devices that offer internet access and play movies and music. The product may also bring fresh competition for Amazon.com, maker of the Kindle book reader, as well as netbook makers such as Acer, ASUSTek Computer and Hewlett-Packard.
Analysts expect the tablet could be an oversized version of Apple's 9 centimetre iPod Touch media player or a scaled-down notebook computer. Apple expects to ship 10 million tablets in the first year at less than $US1000 each, former Google executive Lee Kai-fu wrote on his blog last week, citing a friend familiar with the project. Apple refused to comment.

Google poised to take wraps off new mobile phone Google Inc. is again trying to shake up the mobile market.

In holding an event Tuesday in which it was expected to outline its vision for how a mobile phone should be made and sold, the Internet search leader will likely raise the stakes in its bid to gain more control over how people surf the Web while they're on the go.
The catalyst in Google's latest attempt to redefine the mobile market apparently will be the Nexus One, the first smart phone designed by the company's own engineers.
Google has said little about the phone except to confirm that its workers received the handsets three weeks ago for a final round of internal testing. Google is expected to provide the first concrete details about the phone, along with the company's vision for how such devices should be made and sold, during a news conference Tuesday at Google's headquarters in Mountain View.
In its invitation to the event, Google said the wireless market has only seen "the beginning of what's possible" with the free Android operating system that it introduced for mobile phones in late 2007.
Android was designed to make it easier to interact on a mobile phone with Web sites and services, including Google's, while providing an egalitarian platform to run applications developed by outside programmers.
The applications don't have to go through an extensive review before they can be distributed to Android-powered devices, a contrast from the control that Apple Inc. holds on its hot-selling iPhone.
Until now, Google has been content to let other companies design the devices relying on Android. And those devices thus far have largely been distributed like most other mobile phones, tethered to major wireless carriers that typically require buyers to lock into two-year contracts in return for discounts on the handsets.
But Google now appears to be ready to push its operating system in a new direction while trying to give consumers more flexibility to connect a mobile phone with the wireless carrier of their choice.
Google intends to stamp its own brand on the Nexus One and sell it directly to consumers over the Web, leaving it up to the buyers to pick their own carriers, according to reports published in technology blogs and major newspapers. That could open new possibilities while igniting new tensions in the mobile phone market.
Just how much Nexus One shakes things up will likely hinge on the phone's price.
Most smart phones designed for Web access sell for $50 to $200, thanks to subsidies provided by wireless carriers in return for commitments to service plans that cost $800 to $1,000 a year. Without the financial aid, the phones would sell for $400 to $600 - a range that most consumers have been unwilling to pay, especially in a shaky economy.
T-Mobile has agreed to provide a subsidy for a Nexus One that works on its wireless network, according to published reports. Such an agreement wouldn't represent a substantial change from the status quo.
Yet Google appears to be betting that the Nexus One will make a big enough splash to persuade other major U.S. wireless carriers - AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. - to subsidize the device, too, said technology analyst Rob Enderle.
"If enough customers want this phone, the carriers will have no choice but to follow," he predicted.
That would also break the traditional practice of giving carriers the right to sell specific models exclusively for a certain period.
Google conceivably could offer a sharp discount on the Nexus One without carriers' help, hoping to recoup some of the costs by selling more ads on the devices. But the mobile advertising market is unlikely to grow quickly enough to offset the costs of the discounts for several years, so pursuing that strategy would likely crimp Google's profits - something that could drive down the company's stock price.
Another option is for Google to simply sell the phone at the full price, banking that it'll be attractive enough for buyers looking for the freedom to choose their own carrier.
A smart phone that empowers consumers to choose from a variety of carriers could post a threat to the iPhone, which is tied exclusively to AT&T in the United States. That tie-in has spurred complaints from some iPhone users who say AT&T's network bogs down amid heavy Web traffic, particularly in big cities such as New York and San Francisco.
With the competition between the two companies heating up, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board five months ago.
Selling its own phone also could foster more resentment toward Google among the business partners that have been backing Android as a viable alternative to the mobile operating systems made by Apple, BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion Ltd. and Microsoft Corp.
Verizon, for instance, has raised consumer awareness about Android during the past two months by bankrolling a marketing blitz for the Droid phone made by Motorola Inc.
In an effort to keep the peace, Google probably will try to position the Nexus One as a way to encourage even more innovation with its Android system, said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin.
"They might tell everyone in the Android ecosystem, 'We applaud you for what you have done so far, we just want to take things even further and think we can help light the way,'" Golvin said.

In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google

IN a manifestolike e-mail message sent last month to all Google employees, Jonathan Rosenberg, a senior vice president for product management, told them to commit to greater transparency and open industry standards. Rather than hoard knowledge to exploit it, he wrote in “The Meaning of Open,” share it and watch Google and the entire Internet prosper.

With the Chrome browser, however, Google’s inclusive principles are being put to the test: a new version of the browser allows, one might even say encourages, users to stop Google ads from appearing.
How Google got to such a position speaks to the inherent dynamism (or is that chaos?) of business on the Internet.
Google announced on Dec. 8 that the test, or beta, version of Chrome would accept extensions — little programs that improve or customize the browser’s performance — as a way of harnessing the creativity of an outside community of programmers who would work free and agree to share what they make with others. The standard version should do likewise in a matter of months, Google said.
Google’s extensions mimic the “add-on” system that has flourished on the open-source Firefox browser.
As it happens, two 28-year-olds, Michael Gundlach, an independent programmer from outside Athens, Ga., and Tom Joseph, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at Mount Sinai Medical School, separately went through the exact same experience. In telephone interviews, each told of excitedly looking to see if he could install a Chrome extension of his favorite Firefox add-on, Adblock Plus, which prevents ads from appearing on Web sites, whether bright flashing animation or the text ads that Google serves up after a search.
They did not find one. So, naturally, each spent a day or so creating a rough version of such an extension, with much more work to come. AdThwart from Mr. Joseph is now No. 2 in popularity among the more than 1,200 Chrome extensions; AdBlock from Mr. Gundlach is No. 8. Together, they already have more than 120,000 users.
“When I saw they made extensions on Dec. 8,” Mr. Gundlach said, “I said I bet they have an ad blocker. When I saw they didn’t, I said I need to make this thing, and I need to make it awesome.”
Despite his enthusiasm, Mr. Gundlach, like Mr. Joseph, told of wondering if Google would even allow such potentially self-harming extensions.
Each read the rules, and when convinced that an ad-blocking extension wouldn’t be kicked off, began programming in earnest.
Mr. Joseph said he was “honestly a little surprised that they kept true to their word and allowed ad-blockers,” but then explained that in many ways, Google’s hands were tied. Programmers who make iPhone applications, whose work exists at the sufferance of Apple, he said, at least share in the profit. Google needs to give great latitude to programmers as a way of “keeping credibility with the people who make extensions.”
Both programmers said their tasks were much easier because they had borrowed from the Firefox add-on — whether its code or its carefully compiled affiliated list of Internet addresses where ads come from. The Chrome extensions work differently, though: ad blockers on Chrome cannot prevent the ads from arriving on a Web page, as is done on Firefox; instead they mask the ads after they arrive.
For now, Google is playing only on the fringes by tolerating ad-blocking programs on Chrome, despite the implied threat to its livelihood. Chrome is still a fringe browser — in the vastness of the Internet, 40 million users is still fringe — and ad-blocking browser additions are still a relatively fringe experience.
“Ad blockers are still used by a tiny proportion of the Internet population, and these aren’t the kind of people susceptible to ads anyway,” Wladimir Palant, who runs Adblock Plus on Firefox, wrote in an e-mail message. Adblock is the most downloaded add-on for Firefox and has more than seven million users.
Still, Google seems confident that Internet users will be able to distinguish between their ads and more aggressive display advertising.
Speaking at a conference on Dec. 11 in Mountain View, Calif., Linus Upson, engineering director at Google, said there were many discussions before allowing ad-blocking programs “because Google makes all of its money from advertising.”
But he explained that the prevailing thinking was that “it’s unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying.”
“So I think the market will sort this out,” he said. “At least that is the bet we made when we opened the extension gallery and didn’t have any policy against ad-blockers.”
Mr. Gundlach, who once worked for Google in Ireland helping to ensure that ads kept appearing on Web sites, says he does not fear for media companies that increasingly rely on online ad revenue. Sounding like a firm believer of Mr. Rosenberg’s embrace-the-chaos manifesto, Mr. Gundlach said a brighter day would emerge from the challenge of ad blockers.
Extensions like his, he said, will make “every one else change their ways, to make ads more useful. Everyone wins, that’s competition. The ideal result would be to retire this extension because the entire Web was covered with ads that people loved and no one wanted to block them.”

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