Latest Technology News

Long delay expected for Intel support of USB 3.0

USB 3.0 will not see widespread adoption until at least late 2011 because of lack of direct support from Intel. As a result, the new standard may not become as prevalent this decade as USB 2.0 has been through most of the past decade.

 
USB 3.0: widespread adoption is unlikely until late 2011–or later.
The current USB standard, which is found on almost all mainstream gadgets today, has been around a long time. USB 2.0 was first available as far back as 2001 and Intel laid the groundwork for widespread use on PCs and devices in spring 2002 when it put the technology in its silicon.

Eight years later, the advantages of moving to a faster standard, USB 3.0, are clear (for devices like digital cameras, camcorders, and hard drives): transfer rates jump from 480 megabits per second to 5 gigabits per second–which is more than a 10-fold increase in speed. And as this CNET Review of a USB 3.0 Seagate external hard disk indicates, it can make a big difference: the Seagate drive was the “fastest USB external hard drive to date,” according to CNET Labs.

But without direct support in Intel’s silicon, it’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma. The result: mass adoption of USB 3.0 by PC makers is unlikely.

“The real sweet spot of a new version of USB comes when it is integrated into the chipset of the PC,” said Brian O’Rourke, an analyst at In-Stat. “That’s when USB becomes mainstream…By integrating it into its chipsets, Intel essentially allows PC OEMs to offer that new flavor of USB for free,” he said.

But Intel is not expected to put USB 3.0 in its silicon until 2011, according to O’Rourke. That means the interval between the initial introduction of USB 3.0 by NEC in May 2009 and Intel’s adoption will be much longer than the transition was in 2001-2002. “In this go-round, it’s going to be about two and a half years instead of a year,” said O’Rourke, who also writes about this in a blog entitled “Transition to SuperSpeed USB Will Be Slow.”

In an interview last month in Heise Online, an Intel representative said that USB 3.0 wouldn’t become mainstream until the next client version of Windows, which would mean Intel implementation of the standard would likely take place late in 2011.

USB devices were being hawked by companies at CES 2010 in January.

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)
Intel, when contacted this week, would neither confirm or deny a schedule for introduction. “Intel fully supports USB 3.0 and is excited to see a growing list of host controllers as well as devices. Intel is actively engaged with the ecosystem to determine the appropriate intercept for USB 3.0 integration into our chipsets,” Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer said in a statement.

Because of this lack of support in Intel chipsets, availability of the technology is limited. Almost a year after NEC released the first USB 3.0 silicon, PC makers are beginning to offer the new standard on select models only. For example, Hewlett-Packard is offering USB 3.0 on its high-end EliteBook workstation-class laptops but not on scores of other less-expensive laptops, which continue to carry the older USB 2.0 technology. Dell also offers USB 3.0 selectively on its Precision workstation laptops but not on mainstream models.

Why such a long delay?
The obvious question is, why the delay? Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64, believes it’s simply not a priority for Intel.

“USB 2.0 is doing a pretty good job for most people,” according to Brookwood. And what about HD camcorders and HD digital cameras, which can benefit from the extra transfer speed that USB 3.0 offers? “Those people are typically willing to pay a premium for high-end systems that have USB 3.0,” he said, referring to pricey mobile workstations like HP’s 8000 series EliteBook and Dell’s M6500 Precision laptop.

O’Rourke offers a similar assessment. “There will be a lot fewer applications that transition from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 just because they don’t necessarily need the bandwidth,” he said, adding that peripherals like printers, for example, don’t benefit from moving to USB 3.0.

In addition, there are other standards that may be, if not obviating, at least dulling the need for faster USB. O’Rourke points to the High-Definition Multimedia Interface, or HDMI. “This is the interface for wired CE devices, things like set-top boxes, digital TVs, Blu-ray DVDs. There’s some competition there,” he said.

And other technologies also lurk enticingly in the background. Light Peak, the highly-touted technology at last year’s Intel Developers Conference, offers even greater transfer speeds and has received support from high-profile companies like Apple and Sony. But there are few prospects for this technology appearing widely in devices until 2012, according to O’Rourke.

So consumers hungry for high-speed data transfer technology will have to opt for other technologies such as eSATA or settle for selective availability of USB 3.0 on higher-end PCs–unless Intel changes its mind, which at this time seems an unlikely scenario

What’s in store for Apple iPhone OS 4.0?

iPhone OS 4.0 is on its way. There have been hints that we’d see the next version of the software that powers the iPhone and iPod Touch soon, and on Monday Apple sent invitations to a media-only preview of the software, inviting us to “get a sneak peek” at iPhone OS 4.0. Apple isn’t going to let on what’s in the updated iPhone software until then, but there’s been some buzz recently about what Apple might have in the works.

When version 4.0 of the software will be available for download still isn’t clear. Thursday is likely just an overview of new features, though Apple might give at least a time frame for the software’s release. The best guess is that it will coincide with the release of new iPhone hardware, which has happened in late June or early July every year since 2007.

Here are some things we think Apple will introduce with iPhone OS 4.0, and some things we’re pretty sure it won’t but would make a lot of iPhone and iPod Touch owners really happy if they did.

Multitasking: Some consider it the biggest weaknesses of the iPhone in comparison with its smartphone peers: that Apple limits the ability of applications on the iPhone or iPod Touch to run simultaneously. Currently, you can do some multitasking–listening to music while reading e-mail, or browsing Safari during a voice call–but third-party applications can’t do this at all.

Apple is holding a preview event for the next version of iPhone OS on Thursday.

(Credit: Apple)

It sound like this will change soon however. Rumors began floating around last week that Apple is indeed working on multitasking in iPhone OS and could be implemented much the way Expose works on Mac OS. Expose is the feature on Macs in which clicking a certain key or swiping downward on a newer MacBook touch pad shows all the applications currently running and gives the option of toggling through each.

Integrated ads: Apple got into a tug-of-war with Google over AdMob last year–and lost. Apple settled for Quattro Wireless, another mobile advertising company, which it bought in January. Since the purchase, Apple has been mum about its plans for Quattro within Apple, but the event on Thursday could serve as a coming-out party for a new advertising platform that is integrated with the iPhone software development kit.

Borrowing from iPad: iPad runs a modified version of iPhone OS, currently version 3.2. The iPhone and iPod Touch now run version 3.1. The iPad has some features that the iPhone and iPod Touch do not, some of which the iPad we think could reasonably be added to the iPhone OS: the ability to customize the background wallpaper, using the iPhone in any orientation you want (the iPad allows you to turn it left, right, and upside down), and perhaps even Bluetooth keyboard support.

Merge iPhone OS and iPad OS: There’s also the chance that Apple could go even further in borrowing from iPad. It came up right after the iPad was introduced and hasn’t been mentioned since. But there’s a good chance the OS for the iPhone and the modified OS for the iPad will merge into one operating system. When that will be though is up for debate. John Gruber at DaringFireball thinks the introduction of OS 4.0 is the time. Jim Dalrymple, the author of The Loop blog (and a member of CNET’s blog network), says the two operating systems will merge with the release of iPhone OS 4.1 in September or October.

Folders and sorting: Apple offered a solution for organizing the overload of applications at its last iTunes and iPod event when it introduced the ability to manage apps via iTunes. But there’s still more to be done. One of the things iPhone owners could use is the ability to sort apps directly on the home page of the iPhone and/or the ability to create folders. Both of those would bring iPhone OS up to speed with what Android can do.

Tethering: Tethering is the ability to share your phone’s cellular connection with other devices, such as a computer. Though carriers in other countries allow their customers to use tethering, AT&T has yet to bring it to iPhone users in the U.S. Apple could take the opportunity to address the situation for U.S. customers on Thursday.

Better voice control: The iPhone has some voice controls, but more would be better. On the list that should be added: composing e-mails or text by voice.

Profiles: Having the ability to create different profiles for the iPhone would ensure users don’t have to constantly readjust the settings on their phone. Being able to set the iPhone depending on where you’re at or what you’re doing (“home,” “work,” and “asleep” for example) would enable users to specify when they want to get e-mail, text message notifications, ringer on/off, and more.

Some things Apple probably won’t introduce, but we can still hope for:

Mass storage capability: Apple currently doesn’t allow iPhone owners to utilize extra memory as a storage device. It’s got a USB port, why not allow people to save large files to their device and download them elsewhere?

New way to handle large files: Speaking of large files, the iPhone won’t download applications or files larger than 20MB over 3G. Apple–and likely AT&T or any service provider–prefers you wait for a Wi-Fi connection before you start downloading extra-large apps. So why not introduce a new option so that when you try to buy an app over 20MB on 3G to automatically start downloading next time you’re in range of a Wi-Fi connection?

Built-in photo editing: Right now Apple doesn’t allow iPhone users to do anything more than take a photo with the iPhone and then send it or share it via other applications. You can’t edit those photos–including basic things like cropping or rotating them–on the device itself without the assistance of a third-party app.

Flash compatibility: It’s pretty well known how Steve Jobs feels about Adobe Flash on the iPhone (Jobs reportedly called it a “CPU hog”). And in conjunction with the debut of the iPad, Apple has been actively promoting the new HTML5 Web standard for online videos and the Web sites that implement it. So it’s fairly unlikely he and Apple will suddenly change their minds.

Google trying anew for a 3D Web

Two related projects from Mozilla and Google, each with the similar goal of bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web, appear to be joining forces after a change in Google tactics.

The two projects emerged at nearly the same time in 2009: the O3D browser plug-in from Google and the proposed WebGL standard from Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which standardizes the OpenGL graphics interface on which WebGL is based. O3D is a higher-level technology, whereas WebGL is more concerned with the nuts and bolts of 3D graphics.

O3D lets browsers show accelerated 3D graphics such as this island scene. It’s tailored for tasks such as first-person shooters or virtual worlds.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland)

In recent months, though, O3D has become dormant. But it’s not fading away, exactly: Google is trying to breathe new life into the project by rebuilding it on a WebGL foundation.

What are the implications? For Mozilla and Google, it means more cooperation rather than competition for attention for the projects. By working together rather than in isolation, each project reinforces the other.

That, in turn, could help bring the promise of 3D graphics on the Web closer to practical reality–something browsers are more likely to support and programmers are more likely to use in situations such as games or more sophisticated applications. Don’t forget that the Google Apps suite of online services and the Chrome OS browser-based operating system give Google a powerful incentive to make the Web as powerful a foundation for applications as it can.

There are uncertainties, though. One big one is performance, a central matter for 3D gaming. Another is just how much of the original O3D feature set will carry forward to the new approach.

EvidenceGoogle wouldn’t comment specifically for this story. “We are strong supporters of 3D on the Web and are working hard to bring this functionality to browsers through technologies like O3D and WebGL. However, we have nothing new to announce at this time,” said spokesman Eitan Bencuya.

But the evidence for O3D’s rebirth is strong.

First, the issue tracker for the open-source O3D project shows signs of neglect. Of the 217 reported bugs and suggestions, few filed in the last six months show much sign of being addressed: four were fixed, one installation problem reported in November was worked on in December, and most of the remaining issues are unclaimed and still marked as “new.”

Second, the mailing list is dormant. Even when one writer ventured to ask, “Is O3D still under development?” nobody from Google offered any reassurance it was–even though two respondents said they were working on O3D-based projects.

Third, although there’s little recent activity with Google’s move to build O3D support into Chrome, there’s one very significant project: an effort to “write JavaScript classes which act like the O3D classes but call WebGL under the hood.”

Or, in other words, to reconstruct O3D out of WebGL ingredients.

Other evidence is circumstantial: Google had words of encouragement for WebGL. It’s building WebGL into Chrome, with the latest developer release of Google’s browser including support that doesn’t pose problems with Chrome’s sandbox security mechanism.

Meanwhile, Google is working on other fronts, too. One of the shortcomings of WebGL is that it uses OpenGL technology. That’s commonplace for 3D graphics on Mac OS X and Linux, but when it comes to Windows, Microsoft’s Direct3D is dominant.

Thus the existence of Google’s ANGLE project, short for Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine. ANGLE hands off WebGL graphics commands from software so they can be handled by a Direct3D a layer below.

The last data point: Google itself has called the WebGL-based O3D idea “interesting.” Matthew Papakipos, a Google engineering director, said in December, “There are potentially some performance issues, but we’re working to resolve those by making some changes to V8,” the Chrome browser’s JavaScript engine.

Bumps on the road?One question about the new approach is performance.

Gregg Tavares, a Google programmer behind O3D, raised that issue in 2009 during a mailing list discussion.

“WebGL, being 100 percent dependent on JavaScript to do an application’s scene graph [a catalog of 3D objects], is going to have serious problems drawing more than a few pieces of geometry at 60hz except in very special cases or on very fast machines,” Tavares said, listing other performance concerns as well.

O3D was written in the C++ programming language and is compiled to run fast on computers. To use it, programmers write in JavaScript, then call on the O3D interface to perform various functions.

Using WebGL means the tasks O3D handles are written in JavaScript, too. Though JavaScript is getting a lot faster, it’s generally not what many programmers would call fast compared to compiled software.

Another question is features. For those who’ve written software using O3D, it’s not clear how many of its interfaces will be available.

“Not all of the original O3D functionality is possible (practical) to implement in this way, but the goal is to implement enough of it that third-party as well as Google O3D developers have an easy migration path to WebGL,” the Chrome feature description stated.

Later, the programmer involved added, “I’ve made a lot of progress on this. Some of the old O3D demos work using the new classes with trivial modification to the demo code.”

Presently, the JavaScript-based version of O3D is slated to ship with Chrome 5, but some features recently have slipped to Chrome 6, so that schedule shouldn’t be considered carved in stone.

A more powerful WebWhat can be counted on for the foreseeable future, though, is Google’s strong desire to make the Web more powerful by enabling Web apps to tap into local processing power that PCs, Netbooks, and now even mobile phones are getting. Google’s overall argument is that people who spend more time online will use its search service more–and therefore use its search ads more.

And 3D technology built into the Web could make Google Maps more immersive–not so much a series of snapshots but instead like a flight simulator or first-person shooter–a smoothly changing perspective that lets a virtual perspective move up and down terrain contours and among 3D models of buildings wrapped with real-world imagersy. Google has said its trying to bring its Google Earth experience to Google Maps, and a plug-in such as O3D is one way to accomplish the task.

But Google also has another big business, Google Apps, the company’s next billion-dollar business, according to Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Notwithstanding Google’s protestations that it doesn’t want to re-create the full feature set of Microsoft Office, there’s no question the company would like to be able to do more with its online spreadsheet, word processor, presentation, e-mail, and calendar software than it can today. Google’s acquisition of online photo editor Picnik indicates it’s interested in broadening the scope of its applications, too.

Glitzy 3D interfaces may be a low priority for online word processing. But it’s one element of what it takes to make a polished user interface for the full range of applications on a computer today and on the cloud tomorrow.

Why games will take over our lives

If you think an electric toothbrush is high-tech, wait until you hear about the Internet-enabled version.

Jesse Schell, a game designer and Carnegie Mellon University professor, says toothbrushes will be hooked-up with Wi-Fi Internet connections within five years.

The point? If the entire Internet knows how often you brush your teeth and for how long, there’s an incentive to brush more often.

Toothbrush makers could offer rewards for frequent brushers, too. Say you brush your teeth twice each day for three months. A company like Crest or Procter & Gamble could reward you with coupons for more toothbrushes, since your well-used bristles would probably be frayed by then.

Schell says dental hygiene — and, really, just about everything else — will become a game. He thinks the “gamepocalypse,” the moment when everything in our lives becomes a game, is coming soon — if it’s not already here.

The Web-connected toothbrush is just one example Schell touched on during a recent interview. Here’s an edited transcript:

CNN: You’ve said games are showing up all over the place. What do you mean by that, exactly?

In short, we already see games creeping into our everyday lives in all kinds of funny ways. You go to Starbucks, and you get points if you have a Starbucks card. And, in fact, they have a whole leveling system. The more times you visit, the more you move from level green up to gold level, with special privileges and free soy milk.

Already, we have this whole system of economies floating around out there. And at the same time, we have all these technologies showing up that are allowing us to track new things, things that we couldn’t do before.

CNN: What are we tracking now that we couldn’t before?

A new example that’s kind of a popular one is this new game Foursquare, which is a game that works off of the GPS in your phone.

We normally think, ‘Oh, the GPS in my phone is useful in case I need to get directions to somewhere.’ But there’s no reason that your GPS can’t track your location all the time. And, in fact, why not make a game of it?

So in the world of Foursquare, you get territory points based on all the places you visit. If you are the person who visits a place more than anyone else, you can become the mayor of that place, unless someone else visits it more than you, and then they take over the mayorship of the place.

New video gaming systems are coming out that track every joint of your body. It’s basically going to become a normal thing for us to allow Microsoft to put a three-dimensional camera on top of your television set looking at you, which sounds like a Big Brother scenario if ever I heard one, but, still, it’s what we’re going to allow.

CNN: Do you think this will go so far that we’ll be living a game?

I think people will find a great deal of their lives co-opted by games, sort of like how we saw advertising co-opt huge amounts of our lives in the 20th century.

CNN: Has it already happened?

I jokingly call this convergence of games into reality the “Gamepocalypse”: the moment when every moment of life is actually a game. So many people have been interested in the topic that I made a blog called Gamepocalypse Now.

Do you know about this Green Goose product that you snap onto your bicycle and it tracks how much you ride … and it has a system of rewards based on how much gas you save?

There’s a lot of these things that are starting to happen now, and I think we’re going to see more and more of them coming together.

CNN: What’s going to happen next?

I think camera-based technology and tracking is going to be one of the things, in the next 10 years, we’re going to see a lot of evolution in.

The idea of cheap little cameras and disposable cameras are going to become fairly normal. And when you combine that with the fact that we’re getting used to touch-based interfaces and gesture-based interfaces, I think we’re going to see these cameras in a lot of places for interacting with a lot of things.

You’ve got Google Goggles, where you take a picture of like anything, and it will tell you what it is. We haven’t really started to make games with that yet, but I think we will start to.

And if you look at the new Nintendo DSi, which is their newest handheld, it has two cameras on it, which at first seemed kind of crazy to people, but the idea is you have one camera that faces out into the world and one that faces you the user, so it can look at your face and study your face.

No one’s quite figured out exactly what that’s for yet.

CNN: What do you think it’s for?

I presume they want to go toward some facial tracking. They want to have games that involve tracking your face.

I think one of the things we’ll start to see is common is, massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft will start to have a camera on your face, and then they’ll map your facial expression to your avatar.

That’s technologically not very difficult, and I think the potential for meaningful emotional expression and communication is significant there.

CNN: Will that change our everyday lives?

Anybody who has a product that can sense that the product is being used … they’re going to want to create motivations for you to use the product.

So fundamentally, they’re going to make games out of it, because games are reward-based systems that motivate us to do things.

In fact, Oral-B is like halfway there. They already have a toothbrush that senses when you’re brushing your teeth. And every 30 seconds, it beeps, meaning it’s time now to change to a different corner of your mouth. So you do the four quadrants of your mouth, and when you’ve done all four, then it does a little special beep, and a happy face appears. And you don’t get the happy face, you get a sad face, if you don’t finishing brushing your teeth properly.

Now, that doesn’t connect to the Internet yet, but, you know, it’s about five seconds from connecting to the Internet. They already have a bathroom scale that uses Wi-Fi and connects to the Internet, so that every time you weigh yourself, it uploads it to a database so you can track your weight over time. You can configure it to automatically tweet your weight, in case you want that.

CNN: Is that supposed to be fun, or beneficial, for the consumer?

It depends on the product. If it’s a product that gets you to brush your teeth more, or what if it not only it gets you to brush your teeth, but you floss?

That sounds health-giving. But if you look at people who make soda pop, they’re going to try to incentivize you to do things that are less healthy. I hate to think about the systems the cigarette companies are going to come up with in order to incentivize people.

Whether it’s fun is going to be important, because it’s going to be competition. The 21st century is going to be this war for the attention of humanity.

CNN: Do you see a downside to people being watched and tracked all the time?

We all have choices to make about what aspects of our privacy we want to give away. We’re already making choices like that all the time.

Anybody who uses Gmail has decided, “Yeah, I think it’s OK for a major corporation to carefully sniff through every word of every e-mail I send and try to automatically come up with a profile of what sorts of things I might want to buy and then pop up distracting messages, specifically designed to distract me, based on my interests, on the side of the page.”

So you could say, “Yeah, that’s kind of creepy.” Many of us say, “That’s OK. I’m willing to give that up.”

Is it OK for Amazon to know every word of every book you’ve read? Are you comfortable with that? Maybe you are. Is it OK to let everybody know you eat Corn Flakes? OK, but then there are certain products you might not want people to know that you’re using. …

The part that I worry about the most is sort of the perverse incentives that these systems are going to try to create. Largely, the companies won’t be caring about our health and welfare. They’re going to be caring about, “Can I manipulate you into doing things that help the company?”

CNN: Should we create regulations to keep that from happening?

That’s hard for me to imagine. These things are going to creep up on us one by one, and it’s going to be up to what can people take, and what can people tolerate?

CNN: Why are we attracted to games?

One of the main things that’s appealing about games is that you know a game can be won. It’s an unusual game that’s impossible to win.

In real life, we have these problems, and the problems are hairy, and they’re messy. You look at the problems that you face in your job or in your relationship or in your family, and it’s like there’s no clear winning, and there’s no clear losing. Whereas, in a game, things are crisp and clear.

The game presents you with challenges that can be met, and then it congratulates you on your successes at those challenges. It’s a thing we don’t get everyday in life.

iPad has Wi-Fi problems, some users say

Users who rushed to snap up Apple’s iPad are complaining within days of the slate computer’s highly anticipated release that they’re having trouble connecting it to the Internet.

On Apple’s technical support Web site, there were 11 pages of comments Tuesday morning on a post saying Wi-Fi connections were weak or kept cutting out.

“Add me to the list with problems! I’m very disappointed that there’s no solution either,” one user wrote. “Does anyone think this can be fixed with an update, or should I just get a refund while there’s time?”

Versions of the iPad, a sort of hybrid between a laptop and a smartphone designed largely for reading, Web surfing and playing games, will eventually work with both Wi-Fi and 3G wireless connections.

But the versions released Saturday are Wi-Fi only.

Some users were saying their Wi-Fi connections were weak, while others were saying they weren’t able to connect with Wi-Fi at all. Some users say laying the iPad on a flat surface exacerbates the problem.

Apple did not respond Tuesday morning to a request from CNN.com for a response to the complaints.

On Saturday, when the company reported selling 300,000 of the devices, Apple posted a Web page outlining troubleshooting tips for “occasional problems” that included weak Wi-Fi connections or not being able to find a signal.

The tips include moving closer to a Wi-Fi router or hot spot and making sure the Wi-Fi router is plugged in and the power is turned on.

The Web page also suggests checking for sources of possible interference, like a microwave oven, and making sure you’re connected to the correct Wi-Fi connection if multiple ones are available.

It’s not unusual for users to have trouble navigating a new electronic device in its early days. But reports from tech-savvy members of the online community suggest the problem isn’t just operator error.

“Count me in as someone who’s having iPad Wifi issues as well,”wrote Michael Arrington, founder and editor of technology blog TechCrunch. “The device works fine near the router, but on the other side of the house, nada. But my Macbook pro and my Nexus One and other various devices I’ve brought into the house pick up wifi just fine in that area.”

The iPad is a lightweight, portable computer with a glass multitouch screen that wirelessly surfs the Web, displays photos and videos, runs apps and plays games and movies, among other potential uses.

Reviews in the tech community have ranged from “sensual” to “disappointment” in the hours since its release. Some have raved that it’s close to being a “laptop killer,” meaning it can perform almost all the functions of the bigger portable computers.

There have been raves about its 1.5 pound weigh-in, making it easy to carry, and its ability to render reading material in color — a potential boon for comics, newspapers and magazines.

Complaints, which predated widespread notice of the Wi-Fi issues, have centered around its lack of a camera, difficulty using its onscreen keyboard and the fact that users can’t run more than one program at a time.

Like other Apple products, iPad does not run Flash, making some games and videos unusable.

Court: FCC has no power to regulate Net neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission does not have the legal authority to slap Net neutrality regulations on Internet providers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A three-judge panel in Washington, D.C. unanimously tossed out the FCC’s August 2008 cease and desist order against Comcast, which had taken measures to slow BitTorrent transfers before voluntarily ending them earlier that year.

Because the FCC “has failed to tie its assertion” of regulatory authority to an actual law enacted by Congress, the agency does not have the power to regulate an Internet provider’s network management practices, wrote Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Tuesday’s decision could doom one of the signature initiatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat. Last October, Genachowski announced plans to begin drafting a formal set of Net neutrality rules–even though Congress has not given the agency permission to do so. That push is opposed by Verizon and other broadband providers.

Comcast welcomed the ruling in a statement that said: “Our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation.” The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s lobby group, elaborated by saying that Comcast and its other members will “continue to embrace a free and open Internet as the right policy.”

Supporters of Net neutrality claim that new Internet regulations or laws are necessary to prevent broadband providers from restricting content or prioritizing one type of traffic over another. Broadband providers and many conservative and free-market groups, on the other hand, say that some of the proposed regulations would choke off new innovations and could even require awarding e-mail spam and telemedicine the identical priorities.

Net neutrality proponents responded to Tuesday’s ruling by saying the FCC should slap landline-style regulations on Internet providers, which could involve price regulation, service quality controls, and technological mandates. The agency “should immediately start a proceeding bringing Internet access service back under some common carrier regulation,” Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn said. The Media Access Project said, without mentioning common carrier regulations directly, that the FCC must have the “ability to protect the rights of Internet users to access lawful content and services of their choice.”

In a statement on Tuesday, the FCC indicated that it was thinking along the same lines. The DC Circuit did not “close the door to other methods for achieving this important end,” the agency said. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate.

Early reaction on Capitol Hill cleaved along party lines. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas senator and senior Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, said: “It would be wrong to double down on excessive and burdensome regulations, and I hope the FCC chairman will now reconsider his decision to pursue expanded commission authority over broadband services.” Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican, warned that “the FCC should not reclassify” broadband providers as common carriers; Rep. Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican, added that such an action by the FCC “would be illegal”; Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, called the decision “good news for the future prosperity of the Internet.”

 But Rep. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who had drafted one of the unsuccessful Net neutrality bills, said: “I encourage the (FCC) to take any actions necessary to ensure that consumers and competition are protected on the Internet.” Markey noted that he reintroduced similar legislation last summer–it’s been stuck in a House subcommittee even though House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once said there was an urgent need to enact it.

Microsoft’s big gamble with free Office

SAN FRANCISCO–Microsoft has a new plan to make more money from Office: give it away.

With Office 2010, one of the biggest changes is how many ways there are to get Microsoft’s most profitable software program for free.

In addition to the free, browser-based Office Web Apps, Microsoft is also offering PC makers the ability to install a basic version of Office on new computers. The new program, Office Starter, includes a stripped-down version of Word and Excel. PC makers, retailers and Microsoft can all make money if the PC buyer later upgrades to a paid version of Office.

New buying options for Office 2010 include a “product key card” that can be used to upgrade the basic version of Word and Excel on new PCs.

(Credit: Microsoft)

“People will be exposed to the Office 2010 experience from the minute they turn on that PC,” Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop said Wednesday in an interview here. Microsoft is estimating that 80 percent of new PCs sold at retail after the launch of Office 2010 will have the starter edition of Office pre-installed, he said.

It’s obviously a huge gamble for Microsoft, which still makes the bulk of its profits from Windows and Office. That said, most of the Office money comes from businesses and, on the consumer side, Microsoft is also trying to contend with free rivals like Google Apps.

Plus, while Starter is new, Microsoft has always had a lower-end productivity suite. Office Starter replaces Microsoft Works, a product that was both sold at retail and heavily pre-installed on new PCs. While Office Starter only shows the user the slimmed-down versions of Word and Excel, PC makers are actually loading the full version of Office, ready to be unlocked as soon as the buyer pays for an upgrade.

To make buying that full copy of Office easier, Microsoft plans to flood stores with options to buy the product. In addition to the traditional boxed copies of the suite, Microsoft is also planning to sell “product key cards” that can be used to upgrade a single copy of Office (boxed copies can be used for two or three computers, depending on the edition).

The product key cards have a number of other subtle differences as compared with traditional boxed products. One is that the cards, like gift cards at a supermarket, are just pieces of plastic or cardboard until they are activated. That means stores don’t have to pay for lots of copies of the software upfront.

“We’re migrating to an inventory-less model,” Elop said.

But saving retailers the cost of stocking inventory is just one aspect.

The move to product cards also allows Office to be carried in more places within the store.

“If it is an inventory product, if it is a real boxed product with real value, there are always concerns about the security of that product,” he said.

By contrast, the product key cards can be placed at all the positions where someone might think of buying Office (or be convinced by a salesperson)–in the software section, near the PCs, and, most importantly, right by the cash register.

Microsoft also plans to use the Web apps as a way to sell the full Office. Elop said there will be a prominent button within the browser-based programs to open a document in the desktop versions of Office. Those that have the latest Office will see the document immediately, while Microsoft will have an opportunity to sell those with an older version or no version of Office on the benefits of buying Office 2010.

The challenge, Elop said, is making sure that Microsoft doesn’t mess up the user experience in its efforts to sell users on paid products.

“You have to balance the absolute importance of the quality of the user experience against the desire to also have an upsell opportunity,” Elop said. “We will bias toward making sure the user experience really hangs together…We’ve seen situations in other companies, on other days where people have become too aggressive on that.”

Digg’s app comes to Android, minus some features

Digg users with Android devices, who might have been jealous of Digg’s recently launched iPhone/iPod app, now have one of their very own.

The good news is that it’s free, and has the same, simple interface as its iPhone cousin. The bad news is that it’s not packing nearly as many features.

Just like the iPhone app, Digg’s Android app, which went live on the Android Marketplace on Friday, offers a quick way to view and sort through stories on Digg.com. Included are tabs for top, recent, and upcoming stories on Digg, as well as a way to eyeball how many comments each story has acquired. The commenting interface itself is identical in both versions, with tabs to sort between all the comments or just the best.

When it comes time to read the stories linked on Digg pages, the Android version makes use of the same built-in browser as the iPhone version, albeit with fewer buttons and knobs. There is, for instance: no way to save articles for reading later, share to Facebook or Twitter, or have a Digg link set to open in your Android browser of choice. Another big change is that users have to verify their log-in credentials through a Web browser, instead of directly inside of the app. This may be just be some launch jitters, but I was unable to log-in to the site from here, despite being able to in another browser. These are the kind of problems you just don’t have if the log-in system is built into the app.

There is one nice thing Android users get over iPhone users though–at least for now, and that’s landscape mode. This comes in handy, as even on an Android device with a wide horizontal resolution in portrait mode, titles and other text is frequently cut off. Flipping your phone sideways solves most of these problems. It also makes it more enjoyable to read stories from within the integrated browser. Still, this is something Android users are only getting an edge on for a little while, at least until the iPhone app is updated to include it too.

One thing I hope gets added in a future version of the app is a way to submit content from your phone, to Digg. This is something many Android apps do using the “share” option in the default Android browser, and in the media gallery. I’d also like to see a home screen widget with some of the top stories. Both of these things would give it a nice edge, and a few tricks that the iPhone app is not currently capable of.

Digg’s new Android app can do most of the things the company’s iPhone app can, but is missing a few things.
(Credit: Digg / CNET)

India to witness ‘exponential’ computer growth: official

India is about to witness an explosion in the spread of personal computers and Internet connectivity, visiting Minister of State for IT and Communications Sachin Pilot said.

“An exponential growth will happen in PC penetration and Internet penetration” in the Asian giant, which is already a major player in global information technology and outsourcing, the Indian official told the Indian-American Chamber of Commerce.

The service sector currently accounts for 57 percent of India’s gross domestic product, most of it involving information technology (IT), which over the past few years has been growing at an annual pace of nine percent, said Pilot, 34.

In 2010, India’s IT sector is expected to hit double-digit growth, said India’s ambassador to Washington, Meera Shankar.

Between now and 2014, Pilot said, the IT sector in India will be needing hardware equipment worth an estimated 400 billion dollars.

“We need semi-conductors, simple factories to feed the domestic market,” he added.

At present only eight percent of Indian households have access to a PC, he said, while mobile telephones have experienced enormous growth, going from 1.4 units per 100 people in 1995 to 51 per 100 in 2010, including 140 percent in big cities.

India is also working to extend broadband to 250,000 villages — out of more than 600,000 — and to provide widespread banking services via mobile telephones, Pilot said.

Asked about US computer giant Dell’s reported intention to move its manufacturing facilities from China to India, Pilot only could confirm that he met with Dell officials last week, without providing further details.

Internet connects deepest Nepal to ‘telemedics

Patients in rural Nepal will soon be able to consult specialist doctors over the Internet as part of an innovative scheme to improve health care in remote areas of the Himalayan country.

Over the next few weeks, the government will begin connecting 25 district hospitals, most of them located in the rugged and inaccessible Himalayas, to specialist consultants in the capital Kathmandu using satellite technology.

The 30-million-rupee (400,000-dollar) project is the first of its kind in Nepal, where millions of people live in small communities with no road connections and several days’ walk from the nearest hospital.

The scheme is the brainchild of doctor Mingmar Sherpa, who for 24 years ran the main hospital in the Everest region in eastern Nepal, where he experienced at first hand the difficulties faced by health practitioners in rural areas.

“Most people in Nepal live in remote villages where harsh weather conditions and geography make access to healthcare difficult,” said Sherpa, 56, now director of logistics at the health ministry in Kathmandu.

“It’s very hard to get specialists into those districts — mostly they want to remain in the city, or even go abroad to work. Even getting skilled birthing attendants to work in such places has proved a challenge,” he told AFP.

“So the health ministry decided it was worth trying telemedecine, which is already quite advanced in other South Asian countries such as India.”

Impoverished Nepal has made significant progress in health care in recent years, reducing maternal and child mortality rates and increasing life expectancy.

In 2007 the government endorsed health care as a basic human right in the constitution, introducing a policy of free treatment for the poorest and most vulnerable.

But development agencies say nearly one in four people in Nepal still has no access to even basic health care.

Sherpa came up with the idea of introducing telemedecine five years ago, but at that time, Internet connectivity in Nepal was still too weak for the scheme to work.

Now, under his supervision, the health ministry has set up high-speed Internet connections in 25 hospitals, using satellite technology to provide sufficient bandwidth for videoconferencing.

Local doctors will log their patients’ notes online along with any x-ray or ultrasound images and lab tests, ready to be examined by specialists in Kathmandu — a system known as “store and forward”.

Doctors at the Patan Hospital on the outskirts of the capital will devote two hours a day to patients in outlying areas under the plan, which will also allow rural health workers to receive training using videoconferencing.

Sherpa says the system will allow common diseases to be diagnosed much more quickly than at present, and enable post-operative patients to receive follow-up treatment without having to travel to the capital.

Under the scheme, doctors in Kathmandu will in turn be linked up with consultants know as “super-specialists” working in 12 hospitals across India to give them access to further medical expertise when needed.

The government is also setting up a toll-free telephone line offering health advice to people living long distances from the nearest doctor.

It is a major leap forward in a country where as little as 20 years ago, most people still relied on local shamans or witch doctors if they fell ill.

“Telemedecine sounds very technical, but it is really just using technology to treat patients, whether it be mobile phones or the Internet,” said Sherpa, who hopes the scheme will eventually extend nationwide.

“Once we are on the right track, we will start adding more districts and expanding into rural health posts. This is just the beginning.”