February 15, 2006, 11:37 PM PST
Amazon digital music store and MP3 player by summer?
Posted by: James Kim

We already know that Amazon.com has run a music store for years. Heck, along with dozens of books, toys, gizmos, and other material goods, I've purchased CDs, streamed music samples, and downloaded freebies galore. But word on the street is that the number one online retailer will follow Napster, Real Networks, Microsoft, and many others with its own music store and/or service as early as this summer; we first heard of the possibility last August. In addition to introducing a subscription service, Amazon may partner with an A-list MP3 manufacturer to deliver an Amazon-branded MP3 player that works with the service à la iTunes and the iPod. Imagine it: the aPod.

It's way early, but there are a number of reasons to think that Amazon might be able to derail the iPod train:

In general, Amazon has a gigantic user base (55 million and counting) and major brand recognition.

More specifically, the massive customer base that traditionally purchases CDs from Amazon will transition to digital downloads as MP3 players become ubiquitous; it'll be in Amazon's best interest to aid that transition.

Music-service subscriptions are growing, and many others have blazed a rough trail; Amazon's purported summer launch might be excellent timing.

Many new users may be attracted to a cell phone-like service through which an MP3 player is actually bundled free with a one- or two-year commitment. According to the Wall Street Journal article, this could happen.

Although Apple has a near monopoly in this space, it's still way early in the game. Only about 20 percent of U.S. households have an MP3 player, according to the CEA.

Again, according to the WSJ article, Amazon is responsible for selling 10 percent of all MP3 players purchased in the United States. Of course, a huge percentage of these sales are iPods.

Amazon is developing its overall digital content holdings, including video.

All right, here's why Amazon Music Store won't disrupt Apple's dynasty:

The forces at Microsoft, Creative, Samsung, SanDisk, and others have been trying to derail Apple for years. Casualties include Rio, Dell hard drive players, HP, and most recently, the Sony Walkman Bean, plus the egos of all mentioned (except maybe SanDisk's).

Say Amazon partners with Samsung to create the aPod. So far, these unions haven't worked out. Dell partnered with Creative, and what resulted was a solid but boring product that has been discontinued. Samsung launched a bunch of Napster players that didn't work out due to mediocre hardware and an even worse (at the time) Napster store. The concept of a seamless hardware/music store relationship is central to success, but Apple can control both sides of its equation. For Amazon's sake, let's hope that it can hire some innovative gadget designers.

Assuming the store will utilize Microsoft WMA, Amazon has lots of competition in its own league. Forget iTunes--it has to contend with Napster, MSN, Wal-Mart, Rhapsody, Virgin, Yahoo, Urge...the list goes on. Plus, you have some decent competitors emerging, such as the Toshiba Gigabeat S and the Creative Zen Vision:M. On the flip side, if Amazon goes AAC, ATRAC3 (uh, right), or a proprietary format, it misses out on the existing base and a still significant number of WMA players.

OK, what do you think?

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February 15, 2006, 4:16 PM PST
Sony Ericsson W810i
Posted by: Kent German

After introducing the Walkman phone at CES last month, Sony Ericsson has moved its new W810i closer to reality. We're still awaiting a carrier announcement, but the phone is now featured on the company's Web site as "coming soon." Sporting a candy bar shape similar to the Sony Ericsson W800i's, the W810i comes in black and features slightly redesigned navigation keys. And this time, the company even got the design of the dial-pad keys right.

As you might remember from CES, features on the W810i include the usual assortment of Walkman phone offerings, including an MP3 and AAC music player, as well as an FM radio. You still have to transfer music to the phone from a computer using a USB cable, but this time around, Sony Ericsson wisely included a 3.5mm headphone jack (the W800i had a proprietary connection on the phone). The W810i comes with a 512MB Memory Stick Pro Duo, which can store about 150 music tracks. If you want more tunes, you can take your W810i to a Sony retail store for an upgrade to 2GB. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera, text and multimedia messaging, a speakerphone, Bluetooth and an infrared port, 20MB of internal memory, and e-mail support. The quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone should be available to a GSM carrier in the first half of this year. Exact pricing has yet to be announced, but expect it in the $150 to $200 range with service. Of course, without service, it will be much more.

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February 15, 2006, 4:09 PM PST
Nokia and Sanyo partnering for CDMA phones
Posted by: Nicole Lee

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, Nokia and Sanyo have announced a partnership to create a new brand of mobile phones specifically for the CDMA2000 market, the main format used in the United States. Nokia has not had much success in the U.S. CDMA market, while Sanyo has had some financial troubles lately, so this deal is seen as an attempt by both companies at gaining market share and boosting overall sales. News.com compares the Nokia-Sanyo deal with the one Sony made with Ericsson several years ago that resulted in Sony Ericsson, which is currently the number four mobile phone seller in the world. With Nokia's focus on low- to midrange phones and Sanyo's focus on high-end phones with video capabilities, it'll be interesting to see the phones that the new company (with offices in San Diego and Osaka) will offer. The joint venture will debut in the third quarter of this year.

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February 15, 2006, 1:41 PM PST
Finally, we'll get our flying cars
Posted by: Tom Merritt

Now please, I know that Woody Norris invented the air scooter already, but students from M.I.T. are promising a full-fledged flying car that runs on premium unleaded. The bad news is that it will be an SUV and seat only two people plus luggage. Wait, how can it be an SUV and seat only two people? I guess they're not so smart at M.I.T. after all. OK, yeah, they are. They're inventing a flying car, for goodness' sake. They can call it whatever they want. The flying car will run from 100 to 500 miles on a tank of gas and hopefully will hit the air highways sometime in 2009 or 2010.

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February 15, 2006, 12:00 PM PST
PS3 info HUB-bub: rumors of release date, online service, data storage
Posted by: David Rudden

After Nintendo's DS announcements made by the company today at the DS Conference 2006 comes a slew of strong information regarding the PlayStation 3, none of which has been confirmed by Sony itself.

Next Generation, an industry-centric site that isn't one to often delve into rumor, is reporting that Sony is planning a September 2006 launch for the PS3 in Japan and the United States. A whole mess of details about Sony's online gaming service are also at the ready. Among them: the service will be called PlayStation HUB and that it will offer many features similar to those of Xbox 360's Live (voice chat as well as downloadable demos and games) while adding some pretty impressive Sony-exclusive stuff such as PSP online gaming and a media content-distribution network.

A bit lower on the truthiness scale are reports relating to the PS3's in-box data storage specs, or the lack thereof. European gaming site Total Video Games did some digging through Sony's official product page and found an interesting nugget of information. The top footnote after the spec list states, "Storage media (HDD, 'Memory Stick,' SD memory card, and CompactFlash) are sold seperately." Of course, opposite that is the grandfather of all tech disclaimers: "Design and specifications are subject to change without notice." Let's hope they add some sort of hard drive while striking the Spiderman font and tossing the boomerang controller.

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February 15, 2006, 11:07 AM PST
Don't bike and iPod
Posted by: Tom Merritt

For years we've heard about the dangers of driving while talking on a cell phone, but nobody warned us about biking and listening to an iPod. Now someone is. An Australian woman was knocked off her bike and killed in London recently. Police now warn you not to listen to an iPod unless you have a death wish. (Thanks to Jason for the tip-off.)

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February 15, 2006, 9:35 AM PST
VoIP Security at RSA
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

On Tuesday at the RSA conference in San Jose, California, David Endler of Tipping Point, a 3Com company, said that underlying operating systems pose a bigger threat to VoIP systems than script kiddies. He said the means for criminal hackers to disrupt VoIP remains out of the hands of most script kiddies--for now. He cited Cisco Cal Manager as an example of a VoIP system that relies upon Windows 2000. Vulnerabilities within Windows 2000 could affect VoIP service, such as garbling voice communications. Endler noted that because of VoIP's dependence upon the operating system platform, viruses and worms currently do affect VoIP. Worms, such as Nimda, may slow your Internet browser, but they can cripple your VoIP system. He recommends keeping your VoIP system patched with the latest updates. More-sophisticated attacks, such as registration hacking, require inside access--at which point, he says, you have other problems to worry about.

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February 15, 2006, 9:33 AM PST
Dumpster-diving with Google at RSA
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

On Tuesday at the RSA 2006 conference, George Kurtz, of McAfee/Foundstone, spoke about the need for companies to check their public data that's available on the Internet. While companies may not have their payroll.xls files visible, they may be broadcasting their robot.txt files, files that tell Web crawlers what not to include in their search engine indexes. How is that a problem? If you type inurl:robot.txt in Google, you might be able to see the contents of that file and subdirectories that weren't meant to be public. As an example, Kurtz showed a robot.txt from whitehouse.gov, listing all the subdirectories on Iraq and 9/11 that the Bush administration didn't want to surface on Google and other search engines. Kurt recommends that companies use No Archive metatags and even then password-protect all sensitive documents within restricted subdirectories. He also recommended Google-hacking your own system.

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February 15, 2006, 7:30 AM PST
Nintendo of Japan announces DS Web browser, TV antenna
Posted by: David Rudden

At today's DS Conference 2006, Nintendo of Japan took its biggest strides yet toward unseating the Sony PSP as the handheld choice for multimedia with the revelation of two major new additions to the DS's repertoire: touch-screen-based Web surfing and a TV tuner. Even though the text is completely Kanji-fied, the images released by Nintendo still provide plenty of information. On the second-to-last page of the conference summary, the Web service is revealed (Opera) as well as a mock design of how it will work, with the touch screen displaying the page in full and the top screen serving as a magnification device.

Moving along to the last page shows the potential design for the TV tuner--can you say obstructive?--as well as some images in action. As you'd probably expect, the top screen displays the program while the bottom one acts as a rudimentary remote. Dang--I thought it'd let me draw myself into an episode of 24.

There's no information right now regarding implementation of either service outside of Japan, but we will be sure to update you with new info as we attain it.

Source: Nintendo of Japan via Kotaku.

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February 15, 2006, 6:21 AM PST
Microsoft issues two critical patches
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

Microsoft released its February 2006 security bulletins, which includes two critical updates and five important updates. The bulletin covers not only Windows updates but updates to Microsoft Office as well.

MS06-004: Critical

Entitled "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer," this update affects Windows 2000 SP4 and does not affect Windows 98, 98 SE, Me, or Windows XP.

MS06-005: Critical

Entitled "Vulnerability in Windows Media Player Could Allow Remote Code Execution," this update affects Windows Media Player 10 for XP, Windows Media Player 9 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and Windows Media Player 7.1 on Windows 2000. Not affected are all versions of Windows Media Player 6.4.

MS06-006: Important

Entitled "Vulnerability in Windows Media Player Plug-in with Non-Microsoft Internet Browsers Could Allow Remote Code Execution," this update affects Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. It does not affect Windows 98, 98 SE, or Me.

MS06-007: Important

Entitled "Vulnerability in TCP/IP Could Allow Denial of Service," this update affects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. It does not affect Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows 98, 98 SE, or Me.

MS06-008: Important

Entitled "Vulnerability in Web Client Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution," this update affects Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. It does not affect Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows 98, 98 SE, or Me.

MS06-009: Important

Entitled "Vulnerability in the Korean Input Method Editor Could Allow Elevation of Privilege," this update affects Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and some specific apps within Microsoft Office 2003. It does not affect Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows 98, 98 SE, or Me.

MS06-010: Important

Entitled "Vulnerability in PowerPoint 2000 Could Allow Information Disclosure," this update affects Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 3, specifically, PowerPoint 2000.

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