Free Computer System Recovery Tools

Free Computer System Recovery Tools

Your data's trapped on a dead computer. You lost your login password. You never wrote down the product key on a non-working Windows installation. Your Mac won't start.

Don't pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now. Today we've got our top 10 system recovery picks which span operating systems but all cost the same: exactly nothing.

Which one of these tools is right for you depends on your skill level, operating system and particular problem. Do yourself a favor and burn yourself a disc with a couple of these before the terrible day when you need 'em happens.

Lifehacker's Top 10 Free System Recovery Tools

• 10. SuperDuper! (Mac boot drive maker)
• 9. Magical Jelly Bean Key Finder (Windows)
• 8. USB PC Repair Kit (Windows)
• 7. Undelete Plus (Windows file recovery)
• 6. System Information for Windows (diagnostics)
• 5. DasBoot (Mac boot CD maker)
• 4. Ophcrack Live CD (Windows password cracker)
• 3. Ultimate Boot CD (bootable diagnostic CD, x386)
• 2. Knoppix (bootable CD, x386)
• 1. GParted LiveCD (partition manager, x386)

---

Got any tales of victory or defeat with a free system recovery tool? Tell us about it in the comments. — Gina Trapani

Six Must-Know HDTV Facts

Six Must-Know HDTV Facts

Ben Patterson
The Gadget Hound

Disappointed by how fuzzy CNN looks on your new HDTV? Wondering why Jack Bauer looks so soft and plump on your new flat-screen? Maybe it's because you're not really watching HD on your high-def TV.

According to Audioholics, almost half of the 24 million homes with HDTVs lack an HD cable or satellite feed, and about a quarter of those surveyed didn't even know they were still watching non-HD signals. Why such big numbers? Actually, it's not hard to understand; I can't tell you how many times I've watched salespeople at TV stores push HDTVs on hapless shoppers, going on and on about the razor-sharp picture and surround sound, but not bothering to tell them how to get HD signals into their living rooms.

The Audioholics story ticks off six things you need to know before you buy an HDTV, and it's a must-read if you're in the market for your first high-def set. Here's a brief summary of some of the pointers, along with some thoughts of my own:

1. Your new HDTV needs an HD feed: Just plugging your regular cable or satellite box into your new HD set won't get you a high-def picture. You'll need to contact your cable or satellite provider and ask for an HD set-top box (satellite subscribers may also have to upgrade their dishes), and you may want to sign up for an HD subscription plan, as well (which typically offer channels like Discovery HD Theater and HDNet). Still watching TV using an over-the-air antenna? A good, properly aligned rooftop antenna may still do a good job of pulling down HD signals, but unless your HDTV has a built-in HD tuner (many don't), you'll have to buy a separate high-def tuner box to go with your set.
2. Your HDTV/set-top box/cables must be configured properly: First, make sure you're using the right inputs when connecting your HD set-top box to your HDTV. You must use either the component-video inputs (a trio of RCA-type plugs, marked "Y," "Pb," and "Pr") the DVI input or the HDMI input. The composite and S-Video connectors on your TV can't receive HD signals, so if the cable guy starts hooking those inputs up, time to raise the red flag. Also, your cable or satellite HD box must be set to send an HD signal to your display; go to the set-top box menu and look for the display settings, and select either 720p or 1080i (depending on the native resolution of your HDTV). Finally, once you're ready to watch HD, make sure you're watching the right channel. If you're used to watching ABC on, say, cable channel 7, that's only the standard-def version of ABC; the HD version is probably much further down the dial, usually in the 700s. Check your programming guide.
3. Most TV programming is still in standard definition: I'm still amazed by how many people think that an HDTV will display all their shows in high definition. Now, if you're only watching scripted (i.e., non-reality) prime-time shows on the major broadcast networks, then yes, there's a good chance that most of those shows are in HD (save a few holdouts, like "Scrubs" on NBC). But the vast majority of programming that's out there, ranging from "Queer Eye" and "Regis and Kelly" to "Pardon the Interruption" and "Sesame Street", is produced in standard definition, and your HDTV won't magically convert SD shows to HD. Check out TitanTV to see what's in HD in your area.
   
4. SD typically looks terrible on an HDTV: Standard-def shows can look remarkably bad on a 50-inch display. Imagine taking a grainy Polaroid picture and blowing it up to monster size. If you miss how CNN used to look on your old 27-inch direct-view set, keep in mind that you were watching it on a much smaller screen.
5. HDTV screens are wider than SD pictures: Because HDTV screens have a wide 16:9 aspect ratio, your new set will stretch the boxy 4:3 shape of a standard-definition show to fill the screen, which will make everything look short and squat. You have two choices: either live with the short-and-squat look on your SD channels, or dig into your HD set-top box settings and add sidebars to the SD channels. Yes, you'll have to deal with black bars on the left and right sides of the screen, but at least the picture won't look like a circus fun-house mirror.
6. An upconverting DVD player doesn't turn standard DVDs into HD: I'm a big fan of DVD players that upconvert standard-def DVDs to 1080i or even 1080p, but make no mistake; because the source DVD disc is standard definition, you're still watching an SD picture (albeit, one that's been extrapolated to HD proportions). If you want true HD images from your DVD player, you'll have to pony up $400 or more for a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive.
   

Still confused? Then check out the Audioholics story, which goes into much greater detail.

Related:
Are You Sure You're Watching HDTV? [Audioholics]
Deciphering the Basic Roadmap for HDTV Connections

MPAA: We are committed to fair use, interoperability, and DRM

MPAA: We are committed to fair use, interoperability, and DRM

By Nate Anderson | Published: April 26, 2007 - 12:15AM CT

At a LexisNexis conference on DRM this week, MPAA boss Dan Glickman said the movie studios were now fully committed to interoperable DRM, and they recognize that consumers should be able to use legitimate video material on any item in the house, including home networks. In a major shift for the industry, Glickman also announced a plan to let consumers rip DVDs for use on home media servers and iPods.

Unfortunately, this plan is not yet well developed. In his speech to industry insiders at the posh Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel, Glickman repeatedly stressed that DRM must be made to work without constricting consumers. The goal, he said, was "to make things simpler for the consumer," and he added that the movie studios were open to "a technology summit" featuring academics, IT companies, and content producers to work on the issues involved. He also pointed to the $30 million MovieLabs project that the studios are currently funding as proof of their commitment to interoperability.

Speaking to Ars after the speech, Glickman acknowledged that the plan was still in the early stages. I asked him specifically about DVDs, which are currently illegal to rip under the DMCA, and how the law would square with his vision of allowing consumers to use such content on iPods and other devices. "You notice that I said 'legally' and in a protected way," Glickman responded, suggesting that some form of DRM would still be required before the studios would sign off on such a plan. He noted, however, that no specific plans have been made.

The MPAA does recognize that progress on DRM needs to be made soon, or impatient consumers will increasingly turn to unauthorized sources for content. "We're working on this right now, trying to find ways to make it interoperable," he said, but added that pricing and business models for such a system are "way beyond my pay grade."

Dean Garfield, VP of Legal Affairs for the MPAA, told me that he has confidence in the market to sort all of these issues out. "You have to give some thought to how young the digital distribution market is," he said. "I suspect that the issues confounding people today won't be the issues challenging the industry six months from now."

But will consumers sit idly by, twiddling their thumbs while content owners and consumer electronics manufacturers get their act together? Garfield recognizes that consumers are impatient, which means that "we also have to be impatient."

In his speech, Glickman said that the industry needs "a collective philosophical commitment" to move forward on issues of interoperability and authorized use, and said that the MPAA has now made that commitment. He called on other companies in the industry to sit down and work out a solution. Though he never mentioned Apple by name, it's clear that the Cupertino-based company was number one on the list of companies that need to get involved; whether interoperable DRM and legitimate DVD ripping actually mesh with Apple's own business priorities is another question, though.

Despite the lack of specificity, Glickman's speech marks a step forward for the MPAA, which says it is now committed to allowing content to play on any device, from any manufacturer. As other presenters at the conference made clear, this is largely a result of self-interest: consumers are frustrated with current limitations, and movie studios aren't thrilled about having to sign off on Apple's terms in order to get content onto iPods. Still, hearing Glickman speak with conviction about consumer rights to use material in "fair ways" and to wax eloquent about interoperability was an encouraging sign—even if he views DRM as a necessary "enabling tool" that's not going away anytime soon.

Display and solar cell device

Display and solar cell device - Patent 7206044

Cell phone battery life has been one of the top problems since its inception. Motorola was there at the beginning, and is at least exploring smart solutions.

Motorola recently received a patent for combining an LCD screen and a solar cell on a wireless device. While the cost of such a concept makes the iPhone seem like a bargain, the concept of having a display that also can have a dual purpose of receiving light for recharging the battery makes a lot of sense.

Moto’s patent notes that this technology is better with black-only LCDs achieving up to a 75% light let-through rate. In the market, thin film solar cell development has come a ways since this technology was filed. In thin-film processing of solar cells, Wikipedia notes:

Many new solar cells use transparent thin films that are also conductors of electrical charge. The dominant conductive thin films used in research now are transparent conductive oxides (abbreviated “TCO”), and include fluorine-doped tin oxide (SnO2:F, or “FTO”), doped zinc oxide (e.g.: ZnO:Al), and indium tin oxide (abbreviated “ITO”). These conductive films are also used in the LCD industry for flat panel displays. The dual function of a TCO allows light to pass through a substrate window to the active light absorbing material beneath, and also serves as an ohmic contact to transport photogenerated charge carriers away from that light absorbing material. The present TCO materials are effective for research, but perhaps are not yet optimized for large-scale photovoltaic production. They require very special deposition conditions at high vacuum, they can sometimes suffer from poor mechanical strength, and most have poor transmittance in the infrared portion of the spectrum (e.g.: ITO thin films can also be used as infrared filters in airplane windows). These factors make large-scale manufacturing more costly.

The concept has been of interest for a number of years by a few different players including Seiko, Minolta and Sharp. Motorola’s experience in solar leading to this patent has been a bit scattered over the past thirty years.

Convenient and eco-friendly, now we just need to see more of it in the market.

Clarifying What Windows XP Going Off Market Means

Clarifying What Windows XP Going Off Market Means

Christopher Null
The Working Guy

I originally wrote this post about Windows XP going off the market in January 2008 in order to clear up confusion about its availability. Based on comments and emails, people out there are more confused than ever. So let's take a stab at clarifying, again, what's going to happen by answering some frequently asked questions about it.

Will Windows XP really no longer be on sale after the end of the year? Sorry for the double negative, but no. You'll still be able to find copies online for the foreseeable future, and likely the unforeseeable one, too. But hang on to your copy of Windows XP. You may need it down the road.

Will I be forced to upgrade to Vista in 2008? No. It will get harder and harder not to, though.

Will my XP machine stop working in January? No, but Microsoft will stop releasing non-security software updates to the masses on April 14, 2009. But XP will continue to "work" even after this point.

Will Microsoft shut off product activation for XP after the end of the year? No, that would be crazy. While no one has said if this will happen, it's conceivable that Windows could shut down product activation for XP but that would only happen after it reaches its end-of-support term. The good news for you: That happens in 2015, plenty of time to get the kinks worked out of Vista... or switch to a Mac. Bottom line: Your copy of XP will work, totally legally, at least for eight-plus more years.

What about after 2015? Well, that's unclear, but I think it's likely XP will stop being installable at that point. However, two things come to mind: 1) Even the most die-hard XP enthusiast will probably be ready to upgrade at that point (as XP will be nearly 15 years old; your PC will be dead by then, I'm sure), and 2) even if Microsoft shuts off product activation, dozens of tools will certainly be made available by the hacker community to disable product activation, letting you continue to use it with abandon. Fret not.

Can I install XP on a PC that has Vista already on it? Yes, you can delete any partition with any OS on it (and reformat it) during the installation of XP. You can even run both OSes at the same time by setting up a dual-boot machine if you're feeling brave.

Whew! Does that clear everything up? Feel free to continue sending your queries and comments, if not... and remember, 264 days to go until XP is "gone!"

First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin died suddenly in Moscow yesterday

First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin died suddenly in Moscow yesterday

It's not about the theme of my blog but I can not pass it over. Really great man has died and the whole political era has died with him. Rest In Peace, Boris!

Boris Yeltsin, the first president of an independent Russia, has died at the age of 76, reportedly of heart failure. Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, son of Siberian peasants, began his career building machines and ended up reshaping a nation. Yeltsin was not born to money or influence. He was born to hunger, on February 1, 1931, in the village of Butka, in Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast.

But Boris Yeltsin's ambition helped him survive that harsh decade as well as World War II. His charisma and working-class background won him a place at the Urals Polytechnic Institute's engineering faculty. After graduation, Yeltsin quickly rose from construction foreman at a local machine-building plant to chief engineer of the Yuzhgorstroi.

Early Riser

He joined the Communist Party in 1961, at the age of 30. Yeltsin spent the next two decades rising through the ranks of Sverdlovsk's Communist Party organization, becoming first secretary of the Sverdlovsk Region's Communist Party Committee in 1976.

In 1985, the same year Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Yeltsin was brought to Moscow and made a member of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee. He soon joined the Kremlin's inner sanctum, becoming first secretary of Moscow's Communist Party Committee and a member of the Politburo. But Yeltsin retained a populist touch, which presaged Gorbachev's own democratization campaign.

He rode the subways from time to time, and was fond of turning up at Moscow markets to sample farmers' produce. Just as the first winds of perestroika began to blow, however, Yeltsin broke with his Kremlin mentors.

In October 1987, Yeltsin delivered a scathing criticism of top party leaders before a plenary meeting of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee. He was immediately removed from his post as Moscow party boss and kicked out of the Politburo. Gorbachev shunned him. But Yeltsin got his revenge two years later with his election to the Soviet Union's first democratically elected parliament, the Congress of People's Deputies. In May of 1990, Yeltsin was elected chairman of the Russian Republic's Supreme Soviet. A month later, the Russian republic declared its sovereignty within the Soviet Union. The following month Yeltsin terminated his Communist Party membership. A year later, he was elected president of the Russian republic by popular vote.

Moscow was now the capital of two states: Russia and the Soviet Union. But the rivalry would not last long. Yeltsin's defining moment came in August of 1991, when Gorbachev's closest advisers tried to depose the Soviet leader in a ineptly-staged coup. Yeltsin summoned the resistance from atop a tank in Moscow, in the name of the Russian people.

"On the night of August 18 to August 19, 1991, the legally elected president of the country was deposed from power," Yeltsin told the crowd. "Regardless of the reasons used to justify this act, what we are dealing with is a genuine, reactionary, unconstitutional coup. Despite all the difficulties and hardships that our people have known, the democratic process in our country has become broad-based and is irreversible. The people of Russia are becoming masters of their own fate."

The coup was put down, and a humiliated Gorbachev brought back to the Kremlin to preside over the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Hero Of The Nation

Yeltsin, flush with victory, addressed supporters: "Most of the leaders of the world's countries yesterday, overnight, and this morning, telephoned and said: 'An enormous thank-you to all the people of Russia, to Russia, to Russians, for saving democracy, for saving the union, for saving the peace."

But Yeltsin, who used the power of democracy to propel himself to power, soon began to rule Russia like a benevolent autocrat. He unveiled a series of presidential decrees that launched Russia into a program of crash economic liberalization. Led by a team of young economists, the "top-down "economic reform freed prices, lifted restrictions on foreign investment, and introduced piecemeal privatization in a matter of months.

Wrenching economic adjustment followed, as real wages and domestic production plummeted, and inflation skyrocketed. Shops filled with goods, but mostly for the new rich, who often turned out to be old party bosses, cashing in on their connections. Russia's borders were opened and a free press flourished, but social tensions increased.

The Russian parliament, still dominated by former Communists, increasingly began to oppose the president. In a bid to eliminate this rival center of power, Yeltsin dissolved the parliament by decree in September 1993. But legislators barricaded themselves inside the parliament building, known as the Russian White House, eventually calling for the government's overthrow. Yeltsin sent in tanks to crush the rebellion. The White House was shelled into submission and rebellious legislators arrested.

Yeltsin rewrote the constitution to give him broad powers, ensuring that the next parliament could not oppose him. He also cut deals with several regional governors, granting them special exemptions from federal taxes and controls to retain their favor.

The end of Yeltsin's first term was marked by greater economic stability but also a disastrous decision to send troops to the secessionist Caucasian Republic of Chechnya. As the bodies of dead Russian soldiers continued to pile up, the Kremlin sank deeper and deeper into a guerilla war that was sapping its international prestige and draining financial resources.

The war took a personal toll on Yeltsin, who became increasingly remote and began to spend more and more time in hospitals or at sanatoria. Rumors of Yeltsin's drinking and heart problems dominated international headlines. The Kremlin once again became of place of intrigue and power struggles.

Yeltsin appeared to make a miraculous recovery as he campaigned for a second term as president against Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Yeltsin crisscrossed the country and used all available resources to marshal Russia's fractured society to his side. He was reelected in July of 1996 and immediately disappeared from public view, his aides speaking of his "postelectoral exhaustion." The resolution of the war in Chechnya and the running of the country's economy were left to his entourage.

Health Problems Surface

As Yeltsin's absence lengthened, his advisers confirmed the rumors of heart trouble. Yeltsin underwent quintuple bypass surgery in November of 1996, under the supervision of leading U.S. heart surgeon Michael DeBakey. The operation breathed new life into the Russian leader and once again, a long period of withdrawal from the public eye alternated with a brief period of frenetic activity. But it did not last long. Yeltsin ended 1997 much as he had 1996 -- in a sanatorium, recovering from a series of what aides described as "bad colds."

Meanwhile, the country lurched from crisis to crisis, with unpaid workers regularly striking and key reform promises remaining unfulfilled. Yeltsin made one final attempt to forge ahead with reforms in the spring of 1998, by removing long-time Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin from power. He replaced him with the young and ambitious Sergei Kiriyenko, who promised rigid belt-tightening measures and crafted plans to collect taxes from Russia's most powerful companies. But the "oligarchs" -- whose economic and political influence had grown much as Yeltsin's powers had ebbed, revolted.

As the summer of 1998 came to a close, Russia plunged into its most serious economic crisis since emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991. And as panicked Russians rushed out to convert their rapidly devaluating rubles into any solid commodity and the communists and nationalists openly called for the president's resignation, Yeltsin remained holed up in his dacha, a shadow of his former self.

Yeltsin left Russia with a very mixed legacy. The larger than life leader brought Russia independence. He offered bravery and presence of mind, inspiring the nation at defining moments. He unleashed economic reforms.

But Yeltsin, like Gorbachev before him, succumbed with old age to the habits of a party apparatchik, insulating himself from the outside world with a coterie of advisers while his associates grabbed chunks of Russia for their own personal profit, leading the country to the edge of bankruptcy.

Surprise Resignation

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin stunned the nation by announcing his immediate resignation during a televised New Year's address.

"Today, I am addressing you for the last time as Russian president," Yeltsin announced. "I have made a decision. I have contemplated this long and hard. Today, on the last day of the outgoing century, I am retiring."

The mantle of leadership was passed on to Yeltsin's hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin used his farewell address to apologize to the tens of millions of Russians for whom prosperity remained as distant and unrealized a promise as it had under the previous decades of communism.

"I want to ask you for forgiveness, because many of our hopes have not come true, because what we thought would be easy turned out to be painfully difficult," Yeltsin said. "I ask to forgive me for not fulfilling some hopes of those people who believed that we would be able to jump from the gray, stagnating, totalitarian past into a bright, rich, and civilized future in one go."

In the end, whether the new Russian society Yeltsin helped to create will evolve into an economically stable democracy is still up to history's judgment.

Copyright (c) 2007. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

Suit Against Google Stands

SAN FRANCISCO, April 18 (Reuters) — A federal judge refused on Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit contending that Google’s AdWords program abuses trademarks.

Judge Jeremy D. Fogel ruled that the public had an interest in whether AdWords, the company’s popular pay-per-click advertising system, violated trademark law.

American Blind and Wallpaper Factory, the top American retailer of window blinds, charged that Google had abused trademarks by allowing rivals of a company to buy ads that appear when users search the Web for information on its business.

Chinese Political Prisoner Sues in U.S. Court, Saying Yahoo Helped Identify Dissidents

Chinese Political Prisoner Sues in U.S. Court, Saying Yahoo Helped Identify Dissidents

By MIGUEL HELFT

Published: April 19, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, April 18 — A Chinese political prisoner and his wife sued Yahoo in federal court Wednesday, accusing the company of abetting the commission of torture by helping Chinese authorities identify political dissidents who were later beaten and imprisoned.

The suit, filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act, is believed to be the first of its kind against an Internet company for its activities in China.

Wang Xiaoning, who according to the suit is serving a 10-year prison sentence in China; his wife, Yu Ling; and other unnamed defendants seek damages and an injunction barring Yahoo from identifying dissidents to Chinese authorities.

“I hope to be able to have Yahoo promise that in the future they will stop this kind of wrongdoing,” said Ms. Yu, speaking through an interpreter in a telephone interview from San Francisco.

Yahoo said it had not yet seen the suit, filed in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, and could not comment on the allegations.

“Companies doing business in China are forced to comply with Chinese law,” said Jim Cullinan, a Yahoo spokesman. When government officials present the company with a lawful request for information about a Yahoo user, he said, “Yahoo China will not know whether the demand for information is for a legitimate criminal investigation or is going to be used to prosecute political dissidents.”

Several American Internet companies, including Cisco Systems, Google and Microsoft, have come under fire, with some politicians and human rights groups accusing them of helping the government monitor and censor the Internet in China.

But Yahoo has come under particularly sharp criticism. Human rights groups say that Yahoo has helped identify at least four people, including the journalist Shi Tao in 2004, who have since been imprisoned for voicing dissent in cyberspace.

“Our concern is that Yahoo, as far as we know, is continuing this practice,” said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA and a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

According to the suit, Mr. Wang distributed online several journal articles calling for democratic reform and a multiparty system in China. He did so anonymously by posting the articles in a Yahoo Group in 2000 and 2001. The suit contends that Yahoo HK, a wholly owned Yahoo subsidiary based in Hong Kong, provided police with information linking Mr. Wang to the postings.

Mr. Cullinan of Yahoo disputed those claims. “Yahoo HK does not exchange info with Yahoo China or give information to mainland Chinese security forces,” he said. Yahoo transferred its mainland China operations to Alibaba.com in 2005, and owns a minority stake in that company, which is based in China.

On Sept. 1, 2002, Mr. Wang was arrested by Chinese authorities, according to the suit, which says he was later kicked and beaten and was detained until September 2003, when he was sentenced to 10 years.

The suit says that the Chinese court’s judgment noted that Yahoo HK told investigators that the e-mail account used to disseminate the postings belonged to Mr. Wang.

The Alien Tort Claims Act, enacted in 1789, lets foreigners sue in American courts for fundamental violations of international law, like torture and genocide. It has been used in recent years to sue people who have violated basic human rights.

But legal specialists say that Mr. Wang and Ms. Yu face significant hurdles.

Allen S. Weiner, a professor of international law at Stanford, said it was unclear whether the law would apply to a company like Yahoo, which is only accused of having contributed indirectly to Mr. Wang’s predicament. Further, Professor Weiner said that Yahoo might be excused by courts by virtue of its obligation to comply with Chinese law.

The Torture Victims Protection Act, which was enacted in 1991, allows plaintiffs, including foreign citizens, to file civil suits in the United States. Under either law, the plaintiffs would have to prove that Mr. Wang was subject to torture, Professor Weiner said.

“The plaintiffs in this case have a lot of barriers to overcome,” he said.

Vista, IE7 help Microsoft boost search market share

Vista, IE7 help Microsoft boost search market share

By Eric Bangeman | Published: April 18, 2007 - 11:46PM CT

In a rare bit of good news for Microsoft on the search front, web metrics firm comScore reported that for the month of March, Microsoft's search engines saw their first market share increase in nearly a year. Microsoft's search market share jumped 0.4 percentage points from February to March, giving it 10.9 percent of the total market.

One month does not a trend make, but the increase is good news for the software giant. More importantly, it may show that increasing adoption of Vista and Internet Explorer 7 are helping Microsoft's search efforts. comScore senior vice president James Lamberti told Ars that his company is seeing increased traffic to Live.com.

"Growth from Live.com is outpacing Microsoft's overall search traffic growth," Lamberti told us. "Live is the integration point for Vista, and it looks like Live.com is beginning to have an impact."

Whether Microsoft's March increase is a blip or the start of a trend is something we won't know for a few more months. However, Lamberti does believe Microsoft's bleakest days in the search market may be a thing of the past. "I think we're comfortable with the notion that Microsoft has bottomed out," he said. If traffic to Live.com continues to grow, it will mean that Microsoft's strategy of making Live.com the default search engine in IE7 and a focal point for Vista will be paying off, and we should see continued growth as Vista adoption grows.

The last year has been challenging for Microsoft's search efforts. When we looked at search engine trends a few weeks ago, we noted that the company had been seeing its market share slip away, while Google's steadily increased and Yahoo's remained more or less stagnant.

Speaking of Microsoft's competition, comScore reported yet another month of gains for Google. Its market share saw a modest, 0.2 percentage point increase during March, bringing it to 48.3 percent. comScore's news for Yahoo was not as good, as it was the only one of the top five search engines to see a decrease in market share last month. Yahoo's share of search traffic dropped to 27.5 percent from 28.1 percent, its lowest level in over a year.

Cellcom offers ad-funded games

Cellcom offers ad-funded games

10:15, Apr 18th 2007 by Tim Green

Cellcom has launched an ad-funded mobile games service offering free downloads supported by McDonalds, Adidas, Walt Disney and others.

Israel's largest mobile operator hired innerActive to power the service, which offers users free games in exchange for exposure to ads embedded in them. The ads are injected into the games as product placement.

Adi Cohen, VP of marketing at Cellcom, said: "The trial confirms our view...that when you offer the consumer very targeted and relevant campaigns, you get a high ROI for the advertisers."

The campaigns were built by major agencies such as McCann Digital, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBDO and others using innerActive's web campaign management tool, InFlare. The dynamically inserted ads are targeted in real time according to user profiles and generated according to user behaviour.

Big Brother and 1984 meet at Mount Holly

Big Brother and 1984 meet at Mount Holly

John Naughton
Sunday April 15, 2007
The Observer

The future, as the novelist William Gibson observed, 'is already here - it's just not evenly distributed'. One place where it might be found is Mount Holly, Berkeley County, South Carolina. I've just flown over it (courtesy of Google Earth), and you'd never think it was a place where our destiny lies. The terrain is flat and wooded and includes some magnolia plantations. There's a highway and what looks like a railway line (the image resolution isn't great). The nearest town is Goose Creek, a settlement of 30,000 souls.

So why is this obscure spot a pivot of the universe? Because Google is to locate one of its server farms there. The decision was announced at a pork barbecue held on 6 April for 300 dignitaries. Google executives gave a short presentation, announced a $407,000 donation to the community and invited questions. The idea that these might require answers did not occur to the Googlers, but that is the Company Way.

For example, one question concerned the plant's consumption of electricity and water. (Server farms require massive quantities of the former, and a good deal of the latter for cooling purposes.) 'No comment,' was the response, later expanded by Rhett Weiss, Google's head of strategic development to: 'We're in a highly competitive industry and, frankly, one or two little pieces of information like that in the hands of our competitors can do us considerable damage.'

South Carolina politicians and officials bent over backwards to persuade Google to build at Mount Holly. 'The governor, department of commerce, and Berkeley county officials have been wonderfully helpful during our evaluation,' said Lloyd Taylor, Google's director of global operations. State governor Mark Sanford responded: 'Given the stature of this company and the magnitude of this investment, this is a real win for South Carolina that will have a tremendous impact on the local and state economy'.

As a token of its appreciation, 'the state legislature updated the state tax code to exempt the electricity and the capital investment in equipment necessary for this kind of facility used in the web search portal and internet service provider industries from sales tax, just like what is done for the manufacturing sector'. Except that Google doesn't make anything - except money.

The scenes at Mount Holly are being replicated across the US and other parts of the world. Along with Yahoo and Microsoft, Google is breeding gigantic server farms wherever there is reliable electricity, cheap water and appreciative politicians. On 27 March, Microsoft opened a 470,000 sq ft one in Quincy, Washington State, not far from one Google has already built in Oregon.

The Microsoft site has nuclear-style security, but an enterprising journalist was allowed a brief visit. 'It's easy to get lost inside Microsoft's main building,' he reported, 'which contains long halls with a tile floor and a maze of rooms centring around five 12,000 sq ft brain centres that contain tens of thousands of computer servers. Each server room has two adjoining rooms lined with refrigerator-sized air-conditioning units to keep the temperature between 60 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Another room contains row after row of batteries to kick in for 18 seconds if a power failure should occur before the trucksized back-up generators fire up.'

Already there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of such centres around the world. This is the bricks-and-mortar reality of Web 2.0. 'The network is the computer' is the mantra underpinning this brave new world. The problem is that the network can only be the computer if it has thousands of server farms. Behind the airy dreams of Web 2.0, in other words, is a grisly reality of colossal computing installations consuming vast quantities of electricity and water, simply to prevent them melting.

And behind that nightmare lies another. If the rush to web services continues, in 10 years all our personal data - emails, documents, photographs, music, movies - will reside in these server farms. Of course, the companies will swear blind they will defend our privacy to the last. Until, of course, the government arrives with an injunction, a revised Patriot Act, or our own dear Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Welcome to 1984, folks. It's been a bit delayed, but we're getting there.

The scoop on The Coop: an early review of Mozilla's social networking tool

The scoop on The Coop: an early review of Mozilla's social networking tool

By Ryan Paul | Published: April 10, 2007 - 11:55PM CT

An early prototype of The Coop, Mozilla's new social networking component for Firefox, is now available for user testing. Announced earlier this week, The Coop is designed to integrate support for social networking features directly into the Firefox browser interface. At the present time, the available prototype is extremely limited and simplistic, but it provides insight into the potential of The Coop.

Although The Coop will eventually communicate with a multitude of social networking services, the current prototype only works with Facebook. Deployed as a Firefox plug-in, The Coop provides a new right-hand sidebar interface that will display a list of your Facebook friends after login. The Coop specification says that Facebook status information will eventually appear in the friend display, but right now it only shows the names of your friends. When you click on any of the people in the friend list, the interface changes to show only that friend, but no additional information appears. Next to each user in the friend list, three icons are displayed: a web page, a camera, and a film reel. In the current prototype, those icons appear to have no function or significance.

To send content to a friend, you can drag links, tabs, and images and drop them onto the image of the recipient in your friend list. This will open a new window with the Facebook sharing page, which will allow you to add additional recipients as well as a comment. In all of our tests, the sharing feature worked correctly.

Obviously, The Coop is still little more than a technical experiment right now. Since there are already existing Firefox extensions that provide roughly comparable functionality, The Coop isn't really useful for regular end users yet. Open source software developers generally believe in releasing early and often, so it's important to keep in mind that the current prototype's weaknesses are indicative of its nascent status rather than poor programming. The current interface clearly has some holes that need to be filled, but it seems relatively straightforward and intuitive.

I often find myself saving links to share with friends, and The Coop's simple drag-and-drop interface makes that easy. With sufficient support for additional social networking services and a more complete interface, The Coop could be come very useful. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are amongst some of the most heavily trafficked web sites on the Internet. For many of the youngest technology enthusiasts, social networking sites provide a nexus for communication and social interaction. As these services continue to increase in relevance, integrated browser support will become a compelling and desirable feature.

What Does Your Phone Say About You? : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech

What Does Your Phone Say About You? : Gina Hughes : Yahoo! Tech

I've featured many phones here on Yahoo! Tech, most of them created to appeal to a younger, style-conscious generation that wants both form and function packaged in a good looking phone. After all, phones are an extension of our personality and the reason we pay a lot of moolah to have them covered in Swarovski crystals. That's not to say we solely judge a phone by its cover. This generation of tech-savvy consumers has all the shopping comparison tools they need to make an informed decision. Add tech blogs, forums, and techie friends to the mix, and young consumers will have enough reasons to think twice before plunking down $300 on a phone, just because it's cute.

A recent survey conducted by Nielsen Media Research confirms what we long suspected: cell phones do say a lot about our personality. According to Nielsen Media Research associate director Mr. Jody Loughlin, "The type of mobile you're seen with could even be more important than whether you're with...one of the other major carriers." Most of us know that mobile phone companies will do anything to get their phones into celebrity hands as a tactic to make them more desirable. Forbes recently shed some light on a practice called "celebrity seeding" where companies gift actors with their products hoping to garner media attention in return. Nothing new here, but lately I've seen celebs pictured with more than two gadgets in their hands, sometimes even three. Blogs like Geeksugar never fail at keeping us guessing what phones celebs are sporting on their regular column called "Match The Celeb with the Cell Phone."

So I've combined what Nielsen Media Research and Dawn Bratton say about phone stereotypes, and added a little celebrity phone sightings to find out if what they say is true. What do you think?

Do you fall into any of these categories:

Motorola Magenta RAZR: Fashion conscious, under 24, fun seekers, individualistic.The "It" girls must have phone.
Celebrities who have one: Maria Sharapova, Paris Hilton, Denise Richards, Nicole Richie, Rachael Bilson, and Mischa Barton.

Dolce & Gabbana V3i RAZR: Only 1,000 of these were made so this phone screams "I'm One of a Kind."
Celebrities who have one: Sharon Stone, Hillary Duff, Reese Witherspoon

Chocolate LG Pink: Favorite with moms/stay-at-home parents, success driven, harmony seekers.
Celebrities who have one: Rihanna, Mariah Carey, Jessica Alba, Snoop Dog, Hugh Hefner, Girls Next Door.

Sidekick 3: You can be exclusive and you like to have people wonder what you are doing at all times.
Celebrities who have one: Hillary Duff, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan

Nokia: Family-minded, middle aged managers, balance seekers, health conscious.
Celebrities who have one: Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige

Sony Ericsson: Ambitious young men, professionals, success driven, individualistic
Celebrities who have one: Robbie Williams, Helena Christensen

Samsung: Young women, career focused, success driven, fun seekers
Celebrities who have one: Leonardo DiCaprio, Allison Janney

Blackberry: You are into all of the tech things and like new things. Carrying a PDA also means you may be demanding but only because you are a multi-tasker. You are extremely organized.
Celebrities who have one: Jaime Fox, Britney Spears, Lauren Conrad, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, Adrian Grenier, and Tina Fey.

Treo: You are into all of the tech things and like new things. Carrying a PDA also means you may be demanding but only because you are a multi-tasker. You are extremely organized.
Celebrities who have one: Mathew Broderick, Peter Gabriel

Could the stereotypes be true? What phone do you have?

The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded: Crisp and Crunchy

The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded: Crisp and Crunchy

By ALAN COWELL

Published: April 11, 2007

LONDON, April 10 — Should it be slithery or scrunchy, glutinous or grilled? The answer, British scientists say, may be divined by a formula: N = C + {f_b(c_m) · f_b(t_c)} + f_b(T_s) + f_c · t_a.

Researchers at Leeds University found that crisp bacon on white bread makes the perfect bacon sandwich.

That is the scientific answer to the question: what makes the perfect bacon sandwich?

And, no, it is not April 1.

Researchers at Leeds University spent more than 1,000 hours testing 700 variants on the traditional bacon sandwich, which many Britons refer to as a bacon butty (eschewing the term sandwich, said to have been coined to honor the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s habit of eating meat between slices of bread around 1762).

For Britons, butties come in a variety of guises — chip butties (French fries between slices of bread), crisp butties (ditto with potato chips) or even sugar butties, which are self-explanatory. None are viewed as especially healthful.

There are some finer points in the language, if not the cuisine. A sandwich containing sausages, for instance, is likely to be referred as a sausage sarnie, while sausages served with mashed potatoes are called bangers and mash.

There is no easy explanation for this.

Even the bacon butty, though alliterative, is sometimes etymologically challenged, as in a recent posting on the Web site of The Yorkshire Post relating to the study at Leeds University.

“Perhaps another few minutes on research would have told them that a butty is a slice of buttered bread with a topping; a bacon sarnie is what they are describing,” said a contributor who signed himself Joey Pica.

But Graham Clayton, who led the research, said the endeavor had been an earnest attempt, commissioned by the Danish Bacon and Food Council, the British subsidiary of a Danish pig producers’ organization, to determine what degree of crispiness and crunchiness made the perfect sandwich.

The company’s announcement of the research last Sunday made no reference to other criteria like cholesterol, carbohydrates or other dietary attributes of the perfect butty. Chloe Joint, a spokeswoman for Danish Bacon’s public relations company, Porter Novelli, declined to say how much the study cost.

The research combined four types of cooking, using grills, pans and ovens, three kinds of oil and four types of bacon — smoked, unsmoked, streaky and thick cut — to establish the preferences of 50 tasters in such matters as the butty’s tactile and aural crunchiness. The study also considered a broad range of condiments (like ketchup and brown sauce) and spreads.

It concluded that the best bacon butties were made with crisply grilled, not-too-fat bacon between thick slices of white bread.

Eureka!

“We often think that it’s the taste and smell of bacon that consumers find most attractive,” Dr. Clayton said in a news release. “But our research proves that texture and sound is just, if not more, important.”

In a telephone interview, he also acknowledged that tasters made comments about fat. “If there was too much fat from the cooking process, that was a turnoff for people,” he said. Leathery bacon was a no-no, too, he added.

“We are programmed to avoid leathery food as old and not very good,” he said. That wisdom does not seem to prevail, however, among some of the more basic vendors of bacon butties at roadside halts or cafes known generically as greasy spoons to denote their customary modes of cooking and hygiene.

In the experiment, some of the tasters sampled between four and six bacon sandwiches a day for three or four days.

And so the formula evolved to establish the amount of force in the bite, expressed in newtons, and the level of noise, expressed in decibels, to make the perfect crunch.

Ideally, Danish Bacon said, 0.4 newtons should be applied to crunch the sandwich, creating 0.5 decibels of noise. The formula uses these values: N = force in newtons; f_b is the function of the bacon type; f_c is the function of the condiment or filling effect; T_s is the serving temperature; t_c is cooking time; t_a is the time taken to insert the condiment or filling; c_m is the cooking method and C represents the breaking strain in newtons of uncooked bacon.

“It’s not a hoax,” Dr. Clayton said, acknowledging that, a few days ago — on April 1, to be precise — it might have been taken as one.

A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs

A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs

By BRAD STONE

Published: April 9, 2007

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

“If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

The code of conduct already has some early supporters, including David Weinberger, a well-known blogger (hyperorg.com/blogger) and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway,” he said.

But as with every other electrically charged topic on the Web, finding common ground will be a serious challenge. Some online writers wonder how anyone could persuade even a fraction of the millions of bloggers to embrace one set of standards. Others say that the code smacks of restrictions on free speech.

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

Distraught over the threats and manipulated photos of her that were posted on other critical sites — including one that depicted her head next to a noose — Ms. Sierra canceled a speaking appearance at a trade show and asked the local police for help in finding the source of the threats. She also said that she was considering giving up blogging altogether.

In an interview, she dismissed the argument that cyberbullying is so common that she should overlook it. “I can’t believe how many people are saying to me, ‘Get a life, this is the Internet,’ ” she said. “If that’s the case, how will we ever recognize a real threat?”

Ms. Sierra said she supported the new efforts to improve civility on the Web. The police investigation into her case is pending.

Menacing behavior is certainly not unique to the Internet. But since the Web offers the option of anonymity with no accountability, online conversations are often more prone to decay into ugliness than those in other media.

Nowadays, those conversations often take place on blogs. At last count, there were 70 million of them, with more than 1.4 million entries being added daily, according to Technorati, a blog-indexing company. For the last decade, these Web journals have offered writers a way to amplify their voices and engage with friends and readers.

But the same factors that make those unfiltered conversations so compelling, and impossible to replicate in the offline world, also allow them to spin out of control.

As many female bloggers can attest, women are often targets. Heather Armstrong, a blogger in Salt Lake City who writes publicly about her family (dooce.com), stopped accepting unmoderated comments on her blog two years ago after she found that conversations among visitors consistently devolved into vitriol.

Since last October, she has also had to deal with an anonymous blogger who maintains a separate site that parodies her writing and has included photos of Ms. Armstrong’s daughter, copied from her site.

Ms. Armstrong tries not to give the site public attention, but concedes that, “At first, it was really difficult to deal with.”

Women are not the only targets of nastiness. For the last four years, Richard Silverstein has advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace on a blog (richardsilverstein.com) that he maintains from Seattle.

People who disagree with his politics frequently leave harassing comments on his site. But the situation reached a new low last month, when an anonymous opponent started a blog in Mr. Silverstein’s name that included photos of Mr. Silverstein in a pornographic context.

“I’ve been assaulted and harassed online for four years,” he said. “Most of it I can take in stride. But you just never get used to that level of hatred.”

One public bid to improve the quality of dialogue on the Web came more than a year ago when Mena Trott, a co-founder of the blogging software company Six Apart, proposed elevating civility on the Internet in a speech she gave at a French blog conference. At the event, organizers had placed a large screen on the stage showing instant electronic responses to the speeches from audience members and those who were listening in online.

As Ms. Trott spoke about improving online conduct, a heckler filled the screen with personal insults. Ms Trott recalled “losing it” during the speech.

Ms. Trott has scaled back her public writing and now writes a blog for a limited audience of friends and family. “You can’t force people to be civil, but you can force yourself into a situation where anonymous trolls are not in your life as much,” she said.

The preliminary recommendations posted by Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly are based in part on a code developed by BlogHer, a network for women designed to give them blogging tools and to guide readers to their pages.

“Any community that does not make it clear what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is welcome to join the conversation is at risk of finding it difficult to help guide the conversation later,” said Lisa Stone, who created the guidelines and the BlogHer network in 2006 with Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins.

A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors. They say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.

That may sound obvious, but many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech. It is too early to gauge support for the proposal, but some online commentators are resisting.

Robert Scoble, a popular technology blogger who stopped blogging for a week in solidarity with Kathy Sierra after her ordeal became public, says the proposed rules “make me feel uncomfortable.” He adds, “As a writer, it makes me feel like I live in Iran.”

Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”