Samsung's new MP3 players

Samsung has just announced that it will use its handset and chip making dominance to win market share in the MP3 music player business and has unveiled six new models aimed at helping it triple sales this year.

The New York Times/Reuters report (17 Mar.) that Samsung Electronics, Asia's most valuable technology company and the world's third-largest mobile phone maker, already has eight models in the fast growing and profitable MP3 market.

The six new players from Samsung, also the world's biggest memory chip maker, should be available in the first half of the year, says the paper and Reuters. They range from a 256 megabyte flash memory type to a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive model capable of holding about 7,500 songs.

Samsung and big Asian brands Sony and Creative Technology, as well as PC heavyweights Dell and Gateway, have their sights set on Apple's juicy market position, says the NYT.

Its popular iPod music player and iTunes music store have a 70 percent share of the global digital music player and music download markets. In the US, Apple's market share is 80 percent, reports the paper.

Samsung says it aims to sell more than 5 million MP3 players this year versus 1.7 million sold last year and will seek various strategic alliances with content providers such as Microsoft to boost sales.

Samsung's new pocket-sized models have color screens and radio tuners. Some have features allowing users to watch music videos or take digital photographs.

The NYT/Reuters report that sales of MP3 players are set to grow 57 percent this year after more than doubling in 2004, according to market research group iSuppli, which predicts sales will more than double by 2009.

Disney releasing films for Sony PSP game device

The home video arm of the Walt Disney Company has said it would release movies in the newly-developed UMD format for Sony's PlayStation Portable handheld video game and media device.

The New York Times/Reuters report (16 Mar.) that Buena Vista Home Entertainment said it would release five movies this spring: "National Treasure," "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "Reign of Fire," "Kill Bill Vol. 1" and "Hero." More titles will be announced during the year.

The paper and Reuters say that the UMD, or Universal Media Disc, holds about three times the capacity of a regular CD. It was developed specifically for Sony's PSP, to be released in North America on 24 March.

Disney is the first major Hollywood studio other than Sony's own Sony Pictures division to announce UMD support. Lions Gate Entertainment, a smaller independent film studio, is also backing UMD, report the NYT and Reuters.

Philips: new material for future memory chips

Dutch Philips Electronics has said its researchers have come up with a new material to integrate memory in very advanced semiconductors featuring very thin circuits.

The New York Times/Reuters report (16 mar.) that the new material needs only a tiny voltage to switch between on and off phases, which is used to 'remember' the data stored on a chip. This makes it useful for future chips that will have thinner and smaller circuits and which will work with lower power levels than current chips.

The paper and Reuters say that the material will remember the data after the power of the chip has been switched off, similar to today's Flash memory chips used in portable music players and digital cameras.

It will meet requirements for memory that needs to be integrated into a system on a chip by 2007 or 2008. By that time, chips will have circuits as thin 50 nanometers, compared with today's leading edge 90 nanometer chip making technology, report the NYT and Reuters.

A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. The material used is a semiconducting alloy called Antimony/Tellurium, which switches its state when an electric current flows through, and then stays in that state until another electric current flows through. Phase-changing materials are already used in rewritable CDs and DVDs, the paper and Reuters report.

The NYT and Reuters say low production costs and fast switching times of the new material may deliver a single memory chip architecture - "the holy grail of the embedded memory industry, a so-called unified memory that replaces all other types, combines the speed of SRAM with the memory density of DRAM and the non-volatility of Flash," said Karen Attenborough, project leader of the Scalable Unified Memory project at Philips Research, report the NYT and Reuters.

Big screens in small packages

The shrinking bulk of cellphones and digital organisers makes them easy to carry, but the miniaturisation comes at a cost: the screens are shrinking along with the electronics. You can read a short text message on them, for instance, but not a page of a newspaper.

In a 17 March report the New York Times says that within a year or two, however, you may be able to pull out a thin plastic screen from the side of your phone or digital organiser, read a magazine, a map, or a memo, then let the screen roll back into the device.

The paper reports that researchers at Philips Polymer Vision, a part of Philips Electronics, have produced a working prototype of such a screen, which can be pulled out like a modern papyrus to display many lines of highly legible text. The lightweight screen is so flexible that it curls around a pencil, said Karl McGoldrick, chief executive of Philips Polymer Vision. "We plan on displaying the screen in a fully functional working device in May," he said.

The NYT says that the technology is meant for black-and-white displays of print. The small devices can have screens many times their size.

A Phillips spokesman said that in the future, the rollable screens may be used for services like wireless sports and news updates, or for customised information for professionals like accountants, doctors and lawyers, who could easily read documents like legal briefs on the larger screen.

Another application Phillips hopes to develop is related to text messaging systems on mobile phones, which typically display only a few words or phrases at a time. The company said the next generation of text messaging would evolve into systems in which people would speak into their phones and the messages would automatically be translated into text.

A product manager at Polymer Vision, said the screen could be rolled up to a radius of 7.5 millimeters, or three-tenths of an inch, and with a thickness of 100 microns, about the thickness of a sheet of paper.

The NYT says that although paper-thin, the screen is actually a sandwich of plastic film and circuitry controlling the millions of pixels in the image. The circuits that drive the display are manufactured using organic semiconductor materials.

US court revives cell phone suits

In the US., a divided federal appeals court on has reinstated five lawsuits claiming that the cell phone industry has failed to protect consumers from unsafe levels of radiation.

The New York Times/AP report (16 mar.) that the class-action lawsuits seek to force cell phone manufacturers to provide headsets, which they say could reduce risks of brain tumors. They also seek punitive damages.

The paper and AP further report that the lawsuits originally were filed in state courts in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia and Louisiana but were consolidated and transferred to federal court in Baltimore.

The report says that a judge dismissed the lawsuits last March, ruling that federal standards regulating wireless phones -- including uniform national limits on radiation emissions -- pre-empt the state law claims.

A panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the ruling in a 2-1 decision. Four of the cases were returned to state courts and one to federal district court for further proceedings, says the NYT and AP.

Several studies have found no adverse health effects from cell phones, the report says.

File sharing case nears US High Court

As the bitter debate over computer file sharing heads toward the US Supreme Court, the pro-technology camp is growing increasingly anxious, reports The New York Times (17 Mar.).

The NYT says some technologists warn that if the court decides in favor of the music and recording industries after hearing arguments in the MGM v. Grokster case on 29 March, the ruling could also stifle a proliferating set of new internet-based services that have nothing to do with the sharing of copyrighted music and movies at issue in the court case.

According to the paper, some of those innovations were on display at the Emerging Technologies Conference, attended by about 750 hardware and software designers. The demonstrations included Flickr, a Canadian service that has made it possible for web loggers and surfers to easily share and catalog millions of digital photographs.

The NYT also reports that Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief of executive of Amazon.com, demonstrated a set of new features in the company's A9 search engine designed to make it extremely simple for web users to share searches specially tailored to mine everything from newspapers to yellow pages to catalogs of electronics parts.

Software designers from iFabricate, a small company in Califoria, displayed a new web service intended to make it simple for home inventors to share instructions for complex do-it-yourself garage construction projects. Projects can be documented and shared with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, computer-animated design files and digital videos, says the NYT.

There was also a demonstration of Wikipedia, a volunteer-run online encyclopedia effort that now has generated 1.5 million entries in 200 languages, the paper reported.

The NYT says innovative online services of those types could be harder to create in the future, if the court rules that technology creators are liable for any misuse of their systems, according to technology proponents at the conference.

In briefs filed before the Supreme Court, the recording and motion picture agencies have argued that the Ninth Circuit Federal Court, in San Francisco, erred last August in finding that the operators of the Grokster and Streamcast file-sharing services were not legally responsible for copyright infringements committed by users of their services, the paper reports.

The NYT says that lawyers for the music and movie industries are attempting to persuade the Supreme Court to modify its decision in the 1984 Sony Betamax decision, which held that the video recorders should not be outlawed, because they could be used for many legitimate purposes besides illegally copying movies.

The paper says that the internet technologists worry that, if the court accepts that reasoning, Hollywood could end up dictating the technical specifications for digital technology in a way that would choke off future innovation. In fact, they point out that peer-to-peer applications are now branching out in all directions from more basic file-sharing origins.

BlackBerry maker to settle patent fight

Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry messaging device, settled a three-year-old patent dispute on Wednesday by agreeing to pay US$450 million to NTP, a company that holds a patent on a primitive form of wireless e-mail.

The New York Times reports (17 Mar.) that in exchange for the one-time payment, NTP will give Research In Motion "an unfettered right to continue its BlackBerry-related wireless business without further interference from NTP or its patents," R.I.M. said in a statement. The case was being appealed in Virginia.

The NYT reports that news of the settlement sent Research In Motion's stock soaring 17.3 percent Wednesday in Toronto, to 95 Canadian dollars.

Several court decisions had indeed gone against Research In Motion, says the paper. In August 2003, a federal court ordered the company to make royalty payments that, according to Michael Urlocker, an analyst at UBS Securities, could have totaled more than US$1 billion. That court also banned the sale of BlackBerry handsets and Research In Motion's e-mail services in the United States, but held off on that order pending an appeal.

During the initial trial, R.I.M. said that it did not copy NTP's patents, arguing that they were too general and broad to be valid. It also said that because the software in dispute existed only on servers at its headquarters in Canada, the American courts exceeded their jurisdiction. "

Uncertainty over the legal action had been a concern for many investors and customers of Research In Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, says the paper.

In the months leading up to the settlement with Research In Motion, NTP, struck patent licensing arrangements with Nokia and Good Technology, another wireless e-mail software company. The terms of those deals were not disclosed, but analysts said the agreements involved relatively little money and were mostly a means to increase pressure on Research In Motion to settle.

Research In Motion has set aside US$137 million for the settlement. It said that it would take a charge for the remaining US$313 million against its fourth-quarter results.

The NYT says that despite the settlement's size, it is unlikely to hurt Research In Motion seriously. Kona Shio, an analyst with Conscius Capital Partners in Montreal, forecast that the company would have $600 million in cash at the end of this year, even after the settlement.

Higher offer expected from Qwest to buy MCI

Qwest Communications is expected to raise its bid for MCI to US$8.45 billion, its latest attempt to wrest control of the company from Verizon, according to people close to the situation.

The New York Times reports (17 Mar.) that MCI's board signed a deal last month to sell the company to Verizon for US$6.75 billion. Under pressure from angry shareholders, the board agreed to consider an offer of US$8 billion from Qwest, which was originally made at the beginning of February.

The paper says the new offer from Qwest amounts to US$26 for each share of MCI, with US$11 of that in cash and the rest in stock. The cash portion is higher than the US$9.10 in cash that Qwest included in its previous offer, which was valued at US$24.60 a share.

The new offer is part of an increasingly contentious tug of war between Verizon and Qwest, two of the four remaining regional Bell telephone companies., says the NYT.

In the wake of SBC's purchase of AT&T, both companies are trying to take over MCI, the last big independent provider of telecommunications services to corporations and the government, the paper adds.

The NYT says Qwest has been trying for weeks to convince MCI and its shareholders that it would be a better partner than Verizon. But MCI's board chose Verizon's offer, contending it was worth more in the long term because Verizon is a bigger and healthier company.

That decision frustrated some MCI shareholders, who filed lawsuits in Delaware to force the board to reconsider Qwest's offer. To avoid future legal challenges, Verizon granted MCI two weeks to reassess Qwest's offer.

The paper says that two-week period has just ended, and MCI's board must now weigh Qwest's newest proposal. If they decide that the bid is superior to the US$20.50-a-share offer from Verizon, then MCI will give Verizon time to respond.

Many industry analysts say that Verizon will ultimately prevail in the bidding war over MCI because of its bigger financial resources. While it is loath to raise its bid, Verizon has the money to do so. Qwest's eagerness to sign a deal with MCI may also signal its concern about a future without a sizable partner, says the NYT.

IT manager jailed for five months in US

In the US, an IT manager was sentenced this week to five months imprisonment over a January 2003 hacking attack against his former employer, California-based Manufacturing Electronic Sales Corporation (MESC).

The Register reports (17 Mar.) that Mark Erfurt, 39, from Orange County, southern California, was also ordered to pay US$45,000 in compensation to MESC by US District Court judge at a hearing in a San Jose federal court. Upon his release in prison, Erfurt will have to spend five months under house arrest and three years on probation.

The Register says that Erfurt pleaded guilty to gaining "unauthorised access and recklessly damaging" the computer system of MESC as part of an August 2004 plea bargaining agreement He also confessed to obstructing justice over his attempts to destroy evidence of his cyber crimes, which included downloading a proprietary database, reading the email account of MESC's president and deleting data from its servers.

Erfurt admitted he hacked into MESC's systems using the systems of a competitor, Centaur, who were employing him at the time and where he continues to work, reported The Register.

MESC, a hi-tech manufacturer's representative, went out of business in June 2004, employed Erfurt as a contractor, managing its network remotely part-time whilst he retained his main job with its Irvine-based rivals Centaur, The Register adds.

Germans form spam-busting alliance

An impressive cross-section of German trade organisations, including The Association of Consumer Protection Agencies (VZBZ), The Agency for the Prevention of Unfair Competition (WBZ) and The Association of the German Internet Sector (Eco), has announced a new alliance to fight spam in Germany.

The Register reports (17 mar.) that the Association of the German Internet Sector, which represents approximately 300 members, including 180 ISPs, will provide technical expertise in order to track spam back to the sender. Based on that evidence, the consumer protection agency and the competition agency can press charges against senders of spam as well as their clients. Companies that offer products using spammers can expect fines too. Spammers may even receive restraining orders, the alliance warned yesterday.

The Register says that under the present Act Against Unfair Competition (AAUC) it is already illegal to send spam, but that hasn't stopped spammers.
Warning: Power plants need anti-virus

UK warning: utilities cyber security risks

Analysis Utility companies are been urged to review cyber security risks as the industry moves over from proprietary technologies to cheaper Windows-based systems, The Register in the UK reports (17 Mar.).

The Register reports that attendees at an Industrial Cyber Security Conference in London this week were told that the control systems of utilities are becoming open to the kinds of attacks that bedevil corporate systems, such as computer worms and DDoS attacks, as power and water companies embrace the net.

According to The Register, PA Consulting and Symantec, the joint organisers of the event, cited an Australian case where a disgruntled ex-employee, Vitek Boden, hacked into a water control system and flooded the grounds of a hotel with million of gallons of sewage in March and April 2000.

In Russia, malicious crackers managed to take control of a gas pipeline run by Gazprom for around 24 hours in 1999, says The Register, adding that there's another case where the Slammer worm affected the operation of the corporate network at Ohio's inactive Davis-Besse nuclear plant and disabled a safety monitoring system for nearly five hours in January 2003.

The Register says that using this, and other largely anecdotal evidence, PA and Symantec paints a picture of critical systems rife for attack.

The Register says it's standard marketing tactics for security firms, particularly at the point where they are trying to break into new markets, to talk up the level of threat. Put crudely: fear sells. But perhaps, in the case of utility control systems, there's reason for concern, the publication adds.

Justin Lowe, PA Consultant, and Symantec representatives both stressed the point that applying firewall defences alone, whilst a good first step, is not enough to protect process control systems. "Patching is a nightmare in process control. Standard policies are guaranteed not to work," he said, reports The Register.

The Register reports that the two firms say that sticking with old systems is not an option for most utilities but sometimes they advised clients to run the latest, greatest Bluetooth-enabled devices and venerable old control systems in parallel.

BT automates talking book production

Blind and partially sighted people in the UK could soon have better access to a wider variety of books and publications thanks to a prototype voice synthesiser developed by BT.

The Register report (17 Mar.) that the software, dubbed Laureate, will work in conjunction with EasePublisher, an application that converts plain text to electronically navigable books, to create talking books and magazines.

Traditionally this process is very time and cost intensive, calling on the services of professional actors to record the text. While this is reasonable for blockbuster novels like Bridget Jones or Harry Potter, it is less practical for magazines or periodicals, BT points out, reports The Register.
The company says Laureate's synthetic male and female voices can add enough intonation automatically for the production of audio versions of this more "work-a-day reading matter".

The Register says the technology is based on an industry standard audio mark-up language called DAISY that can combine text, audio and image files into a digital talking book. Text is highlighted in real time as the audio file is played back.

The online publication says the project was run in conjunction with Dolphin Computer Access, the National Library for the Blind (NLB) and with the backing of the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). The technology is currently being trialled by 400 people, and BT says the early results are "very encouraging", reports The Register.