Nokia to pull out of Japanese market

The world's largest cell phone maker is pulling out of one of the world's biggest cellular markets. Nokia said on Thursday that it will stop developing handsets for NTT DoCoMo and Softbank Mobile, effectively ending a push that began five years ago when Nokia re-entered the Japanese market with the launch of 3G services here.

The current global economic conditions pushed Nokia to withdraw from the Japanese market, said Thomas Jonsson, a company spokesman. Faced with lower demand for cell phones the company is examining its operations worldwide and decided that development for the Japanese market is not a priority.

Nokia will keep a research and development center open in Japan and continue its procurement activities. The plan also won't affect its high-end Vertu brand handsets. A recent press report, which Jonsson declined to comment on, said Nokia would launch an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) next year through which it would provide service for Vertu.

Nokia's decision probably says more about the Japanese market than it does about Nokia. Handsets from NEC, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic and other domestic makers, which are typically developed in close cooperation with carriers and highly tuned to local tastes, are most popular here and no foreign phone maker enjoys the same level of popularity here that it does in other major markets.

The Blockbuster set-top box is here

Blockbuster has officially entered the "battle of the boxes" with the launch of its new set-top box today.

The box will serve movies to TVs over the Internet and is going against Netflix's set-top box solutions (Xbox, Roku, and Tivo). Blockbuster's MediaPoint box allows users to watch thousands of movies without the need of a monthly subscription.

To get the MediaPoint player, made by 2Wire, Blockbuster subscribers will have to pay a one-off $99 fee, which also includes 25 pre-paid movies. After that, users pay between $1.99 and $3.99 for each DVD rented, without a monthly subscription fee.

Netflix's box also costs $99, besides your chosen monthly subscription. But unlike Blockbuster's 2500 "of the best, biggest and most current movies available", Netflix offers its whole 10,000 DVD collection for rental through its box.

The major difference between the MediaPoint box and Netflix's is that Blockbuster does "progressive playback" in comparison to Netflix's streaming, meaning that the video quality is independent of you broadband's connection speed. By progressively downloading the movie on the box (up to five movies storage capacity), Blockbuster's solution can offer a much more consistent video quality. In comparison, Netflix's service which can reduce the movie's quality if your Internet connection slows down

Is BlackBerry Storm better for business than the iPhone?

The Storm is obviously a response by RIM and Verizon Wireless to the runaway success of Apple's iPhone, which is offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T.

Features such as a touch-screen-only interface and automatic switching between landscape and portrait modes are sure indicators of that. But the Storm also has some appealing advantages over the iPhone, such as the ability to read and edit Microsoft Office documents.

While Apple has taken steps to make its iPhone enterprise-friendly, RIM has far more experience in that regard. For example, the Storm's e-mail capabilities are basically the same as other current RIM smart phones.

Besides connecting to personal e-mail accounts, Storm works out of the box with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and, of course, BlackBerry Enterprise Server. And many IT folks are already familiar with BlackBerry's e-mail capabilities, making it easy to integrate the device into existing setups.

The Storm comes with two other significant advantages for enterprise users. The first is DataViz's Documents To Go, which enables you to view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

A longtime staple on Palm smart phones such as the Treo, this application provides seamless access not only to Office documents uploaded from your desktop computer, but also to e-mail attachments. In addition, the BlackBerry Storm has support for cutting and pasting, a significant shortcoming with the iPhone.

In-flight internet access with Virgin America

Monday, Virgin America plans to become the latest airline to offer in-flight Wi-Fi Internet, a service with a problematic past that still promises far-ranging flexibility in entertainment.

The San Francisco-based carrier has scheduled the service for one Airbus A320 aircraft, joining American Airlines as the only carriers in the world to offer full Internet access.

Dubbed Gogo, the service lets passengers browse the Web, use e-mail and instant messaging, download video and connect to secure networks through three wireless access points on the plane. Voice calls over the Internet are not allowed.

If Virgin America's test flight is deemed successful after about a week of flying, the airline will expand the service to 24 other planes in its fleet by mid-2009.

With two carriers offering the service commercially, in-flight Internet is making a serious comeback after a two-year period of dormancy.

The previous generation of in-flight Wi-Fi, operated by Connexion by Boeing, was shut off at the end of 2006. Its satellite-based system proved to be too expensive for domestic carriers, and Connexion couldn't find enough passenger demand for the $30-a-flight service.

TV ads contribute to childhood obesity

Banning fast food advertisements from children’s television programs would reduce the number of overweight children in the U.S. by 18 percent and decrease the number of overweight teens by 14 percent, economists have estimated in a new study.

The researchers used several statistical models to link obesity rates to the amount of time spent viewing fast food advertising, finding that viewing more fast food commercials on television raises the risk of obesity in children. The study appears in this month’s issue of The Journal of Law and Economics.

But the researchers’ estimate relies on older data gathered in the late 1990s, according to Elaine Kolish, a spokesman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Since then, two of the largest fast food chains -- Burger King and McDonald’s -- and more than a dozen other packaged food companies have signed on to the council’s Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, she said, pledging to advertise only their healthier products to children under age 12.

As a result, both Burger King and McDonald’s now air ads for children’s meals including apple sticks and low-fat milk. “I can’t help think that two huge chains advertising apples and milk to kids is going to be affecting children’s preferences,” Ms. Kolish said.

Only three countries -- Sweden, Norway and Finland -- have banned commercial sponsorship of children’s programs, and study authors acknowledged that the chances of such a ban in the U.S. are slim.

But since ads are a tax-deductible business expense, the researchers also analyzed the potential impact of eliminating federal tax deductions for fast food ads aimed at children. Such a move would curb childhood obesity by 5 to 7 percent, the analysis found.

BlackBerry Storm, the new iPhone rival

The new Blackberry Storm lets users take pictures, play movies and music and visit Facebook and MySpace pages with ease, and has the 'world's first "clickable" touch screen.' The phone and e-mail device that just a few years ago could be found mostly clipped to the belts of high-powered professionals, isn't just for workaholics anymore.

For years, the Waterloo, Canada, company has been the de facto provider of e-mail devices for corporations. But the company has its sights on the consumer market. It launched its first-ever mainstream TV ad campaign this year and is partnering with Verizon Wireless to expand a marketing blitz that has touted the Storm on TV and in print.

RIM is trying to gain market share as tech-savvy consumers embrace smartphones, which are hand-held computers that enable users to make calls, surf the Web, check e-mail and maybe even watch TV. Smartphones account for 12.6% of handsets in use in the U.S. market and for 19% of recently acquired phones, according to Nielsen Mobile.

Like other handset makers, RIM faces competition from Apple's iPhone, whose sales have surprised analysts since its June 2007 launch. According to NPD Group, the Apple gadget was the top-selling phone in the third quarter, followed by Motorola's RAZR and the Blackberry Curve.

Amazon CloudFront, the content distribution network

Amazon announced the launch of its new CloudFront content delivery network (CDN) service. CloudFront, which is built on top of the company's S3 cloud storage platform, boosts download speeds by caching content on servers nodes on the edges of the network.

Amazon first revealed plans for the service in September. It launched the beta and disclosed details of the pricing structure. CloudFront's pricing model is tied to consumption and decreases with higher volume, a factor that could make it a more competitive choice for smaller companies. The price also varies depending on the edge location because Amazon charges less for pushing bits to places where its operating costs are lower.

For edge locations in the United States, customers can expect to pay $0.170 per GB for the first 10TB per month. Customers pushing over 150TB will pay $0.090 per GB. Amazon is operating edge locations in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Because the service is built on top of S3, developers who are already leveraging Amazon's cloud storage technology will have very little trouble adopting CloudFront. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels claims that some of its S3 customers got CloudFront fully configured for their content within 10 to 15 minutes.

CloudFront's tight S3 integration and pay-for-what-you-use pricing may prove attractive, but the major incumbent players in the CDN arena aren't going to sit still and let Amazon eat their lunch. Limelight is slashing its pricing and Akamai is aggressively leveraging its patents on CDN technology to keep itself at the forefront.

Although Amazon's entry into the growing CDN market isn't likely to be a major disruptor, it will boost competition and could also make S3 look more appealing to some prospective Amazon customers.

Build robots with new Microsoft's tools

Robot fans will be happy to know that they can download the Express Edition of the developer tools for free, although they’re prohibited from redistributing the runtime code that a commercial robotic product would require.

Professional developers, educators, and students who purchase either the Standard Edition or Academic Edition ($499.95 each), on the other hand, are free to distributed unlimited copies of the runtimes (previous versions of these packages limited distribution to 200 copies).

The development kit’s Visual Programming Language is a simple drag-and-drop tool that enables you to create and debug robotics programs using blocks that represent various services. The latest version provides a simple method for defining and configuring distributed applications (i.e., programs that can run across networked devices).

Improvements to the Robotics Developer Studio 2008’s Visual Simulation Environment (VSE), meanwhile, now provide the ability to record and play back simulations before a real robot executes the program. The VSE tool also includes a new floor-plan editor that simplifies the process of creating simulation environments, including indoor, outdoor, and urban locales.

Microsoft claims the latest version of their development package features runtime performance that is 1.5 to three times faster in message throughput between services, and that services now load twice as fast.

Is Apple building its own search engine?

There are multiple reports that Apple is working on a search engine of some sort.

At first glance, the rumors make sense. Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share, and currently uses Google as the search engine for both the standard and iPhone/iPod versions (unlike other browsers, you don’t have a choice). They also have a suite of personal productivity tools through Mobile Me that bring some hard core users to their servers daily. All of that traffic and usage equates to a lot of searches, which can be monetized heavily.

Also, Apple can’t be super pleased with Google’s competition to the iPhone with Android. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who’s also on Apple’s board of directors, sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy, and rumor is he may leave the board.

But one important fact that isn’t checking out - if Apple were building a search engine, they’d be hiring search experts and engineers. But the big companies heard the same rumors, none have lost search employees to Apple, or heard of any specific hirings.

That alone almost certainly rules out a full on search competitor. You can’t do it without people who know what they’re doing.

Apple also loves the fees they receive regularly from Google for search marketing dollars earned from Safari. They obviously aren’t in the advertising business today, so even if they did launch a search engine they’d still heavily rely on Google or its competitors for the advertising piece. So why invest all that capital into search?

The answer is they’re not. But the rumors persist, and we believe they have a nugget of truth. Here’s what we think is really going on: Apple doesn’t like the search experience on its mobile devices, and may be building a radically different user experience which is much more visual than exists today. It will likely still be powered by Google results, but Apple may present it in a very different way that suits mobile users much better.

American Airlines boarding cards go mobile

The idea is instead of the traditional paper boarding passes, passengers will use their mobile phones or PDAs to board an airplane. American Airlines tried out this new method for the first time on Thursday with passengers leaving on domestic flights from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

This is how it works: when buying the ticket online, passengers must provide an active e-mail address to which their boarding pass will be sent, in the form of a 2D bar code.

Upon arriving at the airport, the passenger can open the e-mail on their Internet-enabled mobile device to have the bar code scanned at the Transportation Security Administration's checkpoints and at the airline's gates.
Passengers can also use the same method for check-in luggage at American Airlines' self-service machines, ticket counters, or curbside check-in facilities.

During the introduction of this new feature, there are a few minor restrictions. Passengers can list only one person in their reservation and must be traveling on American or American Eagle nonstop or a trip that doesn't involve changing planes, to a domestic destination.

The destination, however, can be anywhere within the 50 United States, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
This is just the beginning, if the tryout proves successful with the TSA, American Airlines will extend this new mobile boarding method to other U.S. airports.

Big waist raises risk of early dead

The wide-scale study found that carrying excess fat around the middle increases the risk of early death, even in people not considered to be overweight.

Researchers from Imperial College London, the German Institute of Human Nutrition and other European institutions compared the waist sizes of participants with the same body mass index. They also calculated the ratio of their hip and waist measurements.

Body mass index (BMI) is a formula that expresses body weight in relation to height and is widely used to screen for weight problems. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal for an adult.

The study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that an increase in waist circumference of about two inches raised the risk of death by 17 percent in men and 13 percent in women.

Large waists may lead to higher mortality risk because fatty tissue around the middle produces hormones and other compounds that can lead to the development of cardiovascular diseases and cancers, the study said.

The authors said a key finding of the research was uncovering the extent of the connection between distribution of body fat and risk of dying early, independent of BMI.

Researchers did not focus on why some people develop bulging waistlines, but they said anyone with a large waist should increase their daily exercise, avoid drinking alcohol excessively and improve their diet.

The study tracked nearly 360,000 participants for about 10 years.

Hitachi self-encrypting hard drive

Hitachi announced on Tuesday the third generation of its 2.5-inch Travelstar hard drive with built-in encryption, the Travelstar 5K500. This is a 5400rpm, SATA II hard drive that comes in capacities ranging from 120GB to 500GB, and is designed for notebook PCs, external storage, gaming consoles, as well as other mobile and enterprise applications.

Considering the wide range of implementation, the new hard drive comes in a few versions. The one for notebooks focuses on low power consumption. The version used for enterprise has Hitachi's Enhanced Availability technology that lets the drive operate 24 hours a day at high-speed.

Nonetheless, according to Hitachi, its new drive features a halogen-free design, consumes less energy, and is more eco-friendly than other drives of the same type.

The new Travelstar 5K500.B's features optional hard-drive-level Bulk Data Encryption. The "optional" notation means that
customers need to ask for the data encryption feature to be turned on at the manufacturer. This is because, according to Hitachi, in some markets such as China or Russia, special permits are required to buy or use hard drives with built-in encryption.

With BDE, the data is scrambled using a key as it is written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved, giving users transparent protection. It also helps simplify the drive redeployment process. By deleting the encryption key, the data is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for the time-consuming data-wiping process.

G1 costs less to make than iPhone

When it comes to the next-gen phone wars, two handsets immediately come to mind: Apple's iPhone and the G1 from HTC and T-Mobile, the first commercially available phone to run Google's Android OS.

The G1 retails to new customers for $399, while the basic-model iPhone goes for $199. Despite those numbers, DowJones, CNN, and iSuppli have discovered that the G1 is actually 10 percent cheaper per unit to manufacture than Apple's offering, something smug iPhone users are sure to love.

It costs HTC $144 to make a single G1, whereas the iPhone costs $160 each. What's not explained is why the G1 sells for twice the cost of the popular iPhone. It could be the 3-megapixel camera or hardware keypad, but the general lack of internal memory (the G1 has 1GB removable, the iPhone has 16GB internal) counters that.

While this information probably won't change anybody's buying decision, it's still interesting to see exactly how much of your purchase is subsidized by the carrier and how much is just pure profit.

YouTube links deal with MGM

Hollywood is warming up to the Internet's top video site. YouTube will announce an ad-revenue sharing deal with MGM - home of James Bond, the Pink Panther and Rocky - that will let the site show full-length movies for the first time from a major Hollywood studio.

Jordan Hoffner, YouTube's head of content partnerships, called the agreement a "watershed moment' for the company: "We are really happy about MGM. They have an incredible library."

It's easy to understand why YouTube is excited. Founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen want the site to be more than just a destination for clips of skateboarding dogs, experiments involving Mentos and Diet Coke and the occasional Simpson episode that needs to be taken down immediately because of copyright infringement.

After all, there are only so many ads YouTube can put into a short clip like "Tiger vs. Bear." A feature-length film like "Rocky IV" has room from many more marketing messages.

The site is already showing full-length independent movies like "Harold Buttelman, Daredevil Stuntman." Now YouTube can boast that it has the kind of big budget movies that people can watch on Hulu.com., News Corp partnership with NBC Universal.

Reduce the risk of prostate cancer

Although it’s one of the most common cancers suffered by men, there are ways to minimize the risk of getting it, said chief of urologic oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.

Here are five of them:

1. Get Tested. All men age 50 and older should be tested annually for prostate cancer.

There are two types of prostate cancer screening: the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test and the digital rectal exam.

The first test measures the level of PSA in the blood. PSA is a substance made mostly by the prostate. Too much PSA in the blood may indicate prostate cancer. However, high levels of PSA may also be indicative of infection, inflammation or an enlarged prostate.

The second test involves a doctor or nurse placing a lubricated, gloved finger into the rectum to check the prostate for lumps and anything else unusual.

If either test raises a red flag, doctors may follow up with a prostate biopsy. This is the most accurate way of checking for cancer. However the test is invasive and can result in a urinary tract infection, as well as urinary and incontinence problems.

2. Get Plenty of Vitamin D. Spending time in the sun and taking a daily supplement will help men increase their levels of vitamin D and possibly reduce their risks of prostate cancer.

Calcium may reduce the amounts of biologically active vitamin D in the body, so milk drinkers should also look for additional sources of vitamin D, which can be found in cod liver oil, tuna and salmon.

3. Quit Smoking. In addition to harming the lungs and the heart, smoking may also be responsible for the spread of prostate cancer.

A 2003 study from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found that men under the age of 55 who had prostate cancer and were current or former smokers were 66 percent more likely to see the cancer spread into other areas of the body.

4. Reduce body fat. Being overweight and maintaining a diet that is high in saturated fat, as well as processed and red meats, are risk factors for prostate cancer.
Fatty diets have been found to increase testosterone production, which in turn increases the risk of prostate cancer. Research has also shown that men who consume red meat at least five times a week had a 2.5 percent increase in developing prostate cancer than men who ate red meat less then once a week.

5. Eat a Variety of Healthy Foods. There has also been promising research that shows pomegranate, soy and foods high in lycopene, such as tomato sauce, reduce the risk of prostate cancer, adding that maintaining a healthy diet is one of the best ways men can reduce their risk of cancer.

Source: Marrecca Fiore - Fox News

Salesforce moves into cloud computing

Given the resources required to provide software-as-a-service, it seems practical that companies should offer available resources to paying customers. Chicago company Salesforce.com, the worlds biggest online Customer Relationship Management solutions provider, is the latest to enter the ‘Cloud computing’ arena, sharing its resources with developers and allowing third party applications on its infrastructure.

The company’s new platform, Force.com, utilizes Visualforce, the company’s existing framework for building and deploying user interfaces. This means developers can create their applications on Force.com and utilize Salesforce.com features such as payment and billing systems and subscriber relationship solutions. They will also be able to “publish data to any Web site”, or “build public applications that run entirely on Force.com”. In future the platform will also integrate with Facebook and Google application environments, allowing developers to utilize features from both.

Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff announced the company’s move into the Cloud during the recent Dreamforce event: "cloud computing, or platform-as-a-service, has enormous potential for the enterprise. Cloud computing offers almost unlimited computing power and collaboration at a massive scale. With Force.com Platform-as-Service, we are providing the necessary building blocks to make cloud computing real for the enterprise."

Microsoft offers free software to web startups

Microsoft is giving away free software to early-stage Web start-up companies as part of a worldwide program called BizSpark.

BizSpark aims to help startups get off the ground by providing production licenses and technical support for several Microsoft products. The licenses are free for the first three years, after which the startups must start to pay.

As well as helping startups, the program gives Microsoft a way to promote the use of its software at a time when open-source alternatives have matured, and as rivals such as Google and Salesforce.com are promoting their cloud platforms for building Web applications.

Other products covered by the program include Office SharePoint Portal Server, BizTalk Server and Systems Center, with Dynamics CRM to be added soon. Startups also get a subscription to the Microsoft Developer Network and a Community Technology Preview of Microsoft's Azure cloud software announced last week.

To qualify for BizSpark, companies have to be privately held, less than three years old, have annual revenue of less than $1 million, and be developing an online service or hosted application.

They also have to be nominated by one of the partners Microsoft is signing up for the program, which include investment companies, university incubators and economic development agencies, said Dan'l Lewin, Microsoft's vice president for Strategic and Emerging Business Development.

CNN and hologram technology

Today CNN beamed a hologram of correspondent Jessica Yellin from Grant Park in Chicago to its election headquarters in New York, and it was stunning.Bathed in a pool of light and glimmering around the edges, Yellin suddenly appeared in the center of the CNN newsroom to chat with anchor Wolf Blitzer about the huge crowd massing in and around Grant Park in Chicago in hopes of a victory by Barack Obama.

After detailing events in Chicago, Yellin explained the technology that made her hologram possible.

She was standing, she said, in a tent in Chicago surrounded by a ring of 35 high-definition cameras that were in sync via computer with cameras in New York. The 35 Chicago cameras created her image and then sent it to the cameras in New York, so that she appeared in real time as a hologram.

"It's like I follow in the tradition of Princess Leia," Yellin said jokingly.

Blitzer ended the interview, saying, "You were a terrific hologram, Jessica. Thank you very much."

Talk about Tuesday night being historic: It's a safe bet no anchorman ever ended a conversation with a correspondent thanking her for being a good hologram.

Blood test predicts obesity

According to new research by scientists, the degree of change in blood triglyceride levels following a fatty meal may indicate susceptibility to diet-induced obesity.

Triglycerides are a form of fat that is transported in the blood and stored in the body's fat tissues. They are found in foods and also are manufactured by the body.

These findings suggest we may someday be able to use a simple blood test to identify those at risk for obesity. The ability to identify more susceptible individuals would make it possible to target obesity-prevention resources on those who need them most.

The global obesity epidemic is thought to be caused in part by consumption of a diet high in fat and carbohydrates, which promotes weight gain. This propensity to gain weight and become obese when consuming a high-fat diet is at least partially controlled by genes, with some individuals gaining more than others while eating the same diet.

The researchers screened rats for vulnerability to diet-induced obesity by measuring the increase in blood triglyceride levels following a single high-fat meal. They then fed the rats a diet high in fat over the next four weeks.

They were able to predict which animals would become obese over the four-week period by examining the earlier metabolic response to the high-fat meal: the smaller the triglyceride change, the greater the weight gain.

There currently are no simple biomarkers for predicting susceptibility to diet-induced obesity, and thus no clinical tests that assist physicians in identifying those at risk for becoming obese. The current findings suggest that a change in blood triglyceride levels may someday be used as such a tool.

Future studies will entail a thorough investigation of the mechanism behind differences in the change in blood triglycerides.