The Great Geek Manual News

Google has expanded the free music downloads it offers in China to include songs by artists from each of the big four U.S. record labels, an addition that could help it win users from dominant Chinese search engine Baidu.

Google launched its free music download search last year — only in China — to compete with a similar service that analysts say rival Baidu relies on for a significant portion of its traffic.

A music search on Google’s Chinese site Monday revealed freely downloadable songs whose licensing rights are owned by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and EMI.

The expansion could boost Google’s traffic in a country where music piracy is common. Baidu has attracted more users than Google through its music search with a wider selection of songs, but it links to unlicensed downloads.

Google’s music search links users to legal downloads on the Web site of partner Top100.cn. It is supported by advertising revenue split between those two companies and the music labels.

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Source: PC World

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype’s native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application’s principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing. While most of the features aren’t too surprising–Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all–there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

In terms of navigation, Skype’s VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple’s sleek interface archetype, that’s a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype’s branding may feel disappointed.

Skype’s screens are well organized and use the iPhone’s ability to add filters, for instance, to sort your contacts alphabetically, or by who’s online. There’s chatting as well, though Skype’s flagship feature is its VoIP calling that’s free to other Skype users and an inexpensive per-minute fee to landlines. Calls on Skype for iPhone work only if you’re in range of a Wi-Fi network, so your call quality will in part be at the mercy and strength of wireless networks nearby–calls will not work over the cell phone network on the iPhone (but chatting will.) Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online.

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Source: CNet Reviews

Against the backdrop of humming computers in the underground lab in Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, a screen flickered, and the most politically explosive cyber-spy network in the world began to reveal itself.

It was March 6, 12:33 p.m., and Nart Villeneuve was getting frustrated. The 34-year-old international relations student and part-time tech geek had tried everything to track down a piece of malicious software that had infected computers around the world, including those in the offices of the Dalai Lama.

Finally, he turned to the ultimate hacker’s tool: He entered some of the code from those infected computers into Google. Just like that, he found one of the cyber-spy network’s control servers, then another, and another. From that Eureka moment came a flood of information, almost all of it suggesting the ring originated in China.

A team of Canadian researchers revealed this weekend a network, dubbed GhostNet, of more than 1,200 infected computers worldwide that includes such “high-value targets” as Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Indian Embassy in Kuwait, as well as a dozen computers in Canada.

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Source: The Globe and Mail

Not every video game creator was musing about how to sell more hardware or craft more realistic virtual weaponry at the Game Developers Conference, the annual convention of game designers, programmers and executives.

Several impresarios were more interested in pushing the limits of the interactive medium with their ideas.

The industry’s most innovative creations were showcased this week at the eighth annual experimental gameplay sessions. Developers demonstrated several prototypes, such as Ian Dallas’s The Unfinished Swan. In the black-and-white game, players track down a swan within a blank white environment by splattering black paint to reveal pathways, walls, lakes and more.

“This is, I think, the most consistent collection of designs that are doing what I describe as pushing the boundaries of game design in the most interesting and consistently thoughtful ways,” said Jonathan Blow, the panel’s organizer and the independent designer behind the time-bending puzzle platformer Braid (which is available for Xbox Live Arcade and PC).

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Source: The Globe and Mail

What’s the point of running a university computer lab when all the students bring laptops anyway? That’s a question that schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90 percent. Schools like the University of Virginia have concluded that the time has come to dismantle the community computer labs and put that money to more productive uses.

According to the school’s Information Technology & Communication department, 3,117 freshmen enrolled in 2007, and 3,113 of them owned their own computer. Nearly all of the machines were laptops, with 72 percent running Windows and 26 percent running Mac OS X (six hardy souls ran Linux).

Compared to a decade ago, the increase in student computing hardware is little short of amazing. In 1997, 74 percent of incoming freshmen owned computers, but only 16 percent of these machines were laptops. The Windows chokehold on operating systems looked complete, appearing on 93.4 percent of all machines and leaving only 6.6 percent for the Mac.

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Source: Ars Technica

Rosemary Greenway has been playing passages of opera and orchestral symphonies on the radio to the animals at her stables for more than 20 years, convinced that it helps soothe them.

While not all of her staff are quite as fond of the output of Classic FM as she is, Mrs Greenway, 62, kept the radio tuned to the station religiously while mucking out because of the apparent benefits.

But she has dropped the practice after being told that she must pay a £99 annual licence fee as it constitutes a “performance”.

Because her stables, the Malthouse Equestrian Centre in Bushton, Wilts, employs more than two people it is treated in the same way as shops, bars and cafés which have to apply for a licence to play the radio.

She received a telephone call from the Performing Right Society – now officially known as PRS for Music – which was targeting stables as part of a drive to get commercial premises to pay for licences.

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Source: The UK Telegraph

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. If you want to reduce citizens’ exposure to dangerous and illegal activities online, why not gather up all the URLs for sites that promote such acts — child pornography, extreme violence, weapon-making and so on — and have Internet Service Providers (ISPs) simply block them? Wouldn’t that make the internet safer for families and children?

Actually no, as the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is finding out the hard way. The ACMA, Canberra’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, put together such a list and sent it to more than a dozen companies. It was part of a trial program to develop software that would allow Australian ISPs to block the sites. But to ACMA’s evident surprise, at least one person who received the list handed it over to Wikileaks, an online clearinghouse for anonymous submissions of sensitive material. The ACMA “blacklist”, as it became known, was promptly posted online, becoming a handy compendium of internet depravity in one convenient package — courtesy of the Australian government. After it was posted, a surge in traffic caused Wikileaks to crash temporarily.

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Source: Times

Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast electronic spying operation that infiltrated computers and stole documents from government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

In a report provided to the newspaper, a team from the Munk Center for International Studies in Toronto said at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries had been breached in less than two years by the spy system, which it dubbed GhostNet.

Embassies, foreign ministries, government offices and the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York were among those infiltrated, said the researchers, who have detected computer espionage in the past.

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Source: Reuters

You’re unbelievably good at using Facebook (Facebook reviews) and Twitter (Twitter reviews), but no one is taking you seriously because you don’t have papers to prove it? Birmingham City University can solve your problems; as of next year, it’ll offer a course in social networking sites as communications and marketing tools.

The one year course will earn you a master’s degree at the cost of 4,400 pounds (6 239 dollars). “During the course we will consider what people can do on Facebook and Twitter, and how they can be used for communication and marketing purposes,” says the course convener Jon Hickman, adding that “There has been significant interest in the course already, and it will definitely appeal to students looking to go into professions including journalism and PR.”

Of course, there’s the question of how deep such a course should go; some students have already described the course as too basic. Finding expert teachers on the subject might be a problem, since many students are already very good at using social networking and social media sites. However, there’s nothing wrong with the idea; there are courses in TV and media, and social media and social networking are definitely worthy subjects, especially if you’re studying communications, journalism, PR or marketing.

Source: Mashable

Adults who play a lot of action video games may be improving their eyesight, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

They said people who used a video-game training program saw significant improvements in their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, a finding that may help people who have trouble with night driving.

“Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery — somehow changing the optics of the eye,” said Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York, whose study appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

“But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”

For the study, the team divided 22 students into two groups. One group played the action games “Call of Duty 2″ by Activision Blizzard Inc and Epic Games’ “Unreal Tournament 2004.” A second played Electronic Arts Inc’s “The Sims 2,” a game they said does not require as much hand-eye coordination.

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Source: Reuters

With the Jerry Seinfeld era behind it, Microsoft Relevant Products/Services is moving ahead with a new Windows advertising strategy that aims at Apple’s Achilles’ heel: Higher prices. The commercial appears to be the first in a series called Laptop Hunters, and it puts Microsoft on the offense instead of the defense.

Microsoft’s just-released Windows commercial taps into the price-conscious, recession-driven consumer mind-set by following a woman on a mission to find a laptop that’s fast and has a comfortable keyboard and a 17-inch screen — for $1,000 or less.

In the ad, the voice-over says Microsoft told Lauren, a redhead with glasses, that if she could find a computer that met her demands, she could keep it. In other words, Microsoft would buy it for her. With that, she becomes a laptop hunter

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Source: News Factor

PirateBay’s IPREDator is a new P2P anonymizer designed to cloak the actions of downloaders and keep file logs and IP addresses hidden from the authorities.

The IPredator, which sounds more like a ballistic missile or an alien trophy hunter - has been unleashed just in time to coincide with new Swedish anti-piracy laws, due to launch next week.

According to Torrent Freak, the IPREDator launch has been designed to coinicide with the introduction of Swedish laws that could make it much easier for copyright enforcement organisations to force sites to cough up the personal details of alleged file downloaders.

The service is currently only available in beta mode to a small group of 500 subscribers, but PirateBay are expecting to expand the service.

The anonymity service, designed to work like existing VPN services, will charge international subscribers the small fee of $6 euros a month, for the knowlegde that their downloading actions will be extremely difficult to trace.

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Source: iT News

The most energetic laser system in the world, designed to produce nuclear fusion–the same reaction that powers the sun–is up and running. Within two to three years, scientists expect to be creating fusion reactions that release more energy than it takes to produce them. If they’re successful, it will be the first time this has been done in a controlled way–in a lab rather than a nuclear bomb, that is–and could eventually lead to fusion power plants.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), comprises 192 lasers that fire simultaneously at precisely the same point in space: a sphere of fuel two millimeters in diameter. They are designed to deliver 1.8 megajoules of energy in a few billionths of a second. That’s enough to compress the fuel to a speck 50 micrometers across and heat it up to three million degrees Celsius. The lasers, which were fired together for the first time last month, have so far produced pulses of 1.1 megajoules.

“Depending on how you count it, it’s between 60 and 100 times more energetic than any laser system that’s ever been built,” says Edward Moses, the principle associate director for NIF and Photon Science at LLNL. Eventually, the fusion reactions produced by each pulse are expected to generate at least 10 times the energy delivered by the lasers, a significant net gain that could be useful for generating power.

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Source: Technology Review

The Federal Trade Commission kicked off its big DRM conference in Seattle Wednesday morning by saying that the goal was not to “take sides” over the question of whether DRM is good or bad—but the conference nevertheless opened with a warning.

Mary Engle, an FTC Acting Deputy Director, began her remarks by warning that those who use DRM had better get serious about disclosing it and the limits that it places on products. She referenced the Sony BMG rootkit debacle, saying that “sellers who use DRM technology to enforce the terms of bargains with consumers need to be particularly careful to disclose in advance” what those bargains are.

And just stuffing the disclosure into the fine print of an End User License Agreement (EULA) isn’t good enough. “If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away,” she said, “don’t be surprised if the FTC comes calling.”

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Source: Ars Technica