Articles - PC Technicians Direct

Police in the 1970s urged citizens to “drop a dime” in a pay phone to report crimes anonymously. Now in an increasing number of cities, tipsters are being invited to use their thumbs — to identify criminals using text messages.

Police hope the idea helps recruit teens and 20-somethings who wouldn’t normally dial a Crime Stoppers hot line to share information with authorities.

“If somebody hears Johnny is going to bring a gun to school, hopefully they’ll text that in,” said Sgt. Brian Bernardi of the Louisville, Ky., Metro Police Department, which rolled out its text-message tip line in June.

Departments in Boston and Cincinnati started accepting anonymous text tips about a year ago. Since then, more than 100 communities have taken similar steps or plan to do so. The Internet-based systems route messages through a server that encrypts cell phone numbers before they get to police, making tips virtually impossible to track.

In Louisville earlier this week, Bernardi’s computer displayed a text message from a person identified only as “Tip563.” It read: “someone has vandalized the school van at valor school on bardstown rd in fern creek.” The note also reported illegal dumping in a trash container and in the woods.

“It’s obvious that the future of communication is texting,” said officer Michael Charbonnier, commander of the Boston Police Department’s Crime Stoppers unit. “You look at these kids today and that’s all they’re doing. You see five kids standing on the corner, and they’re texting instead of having a conversation with each other.”

When Boston adopted the system last year, the first text tip yielded an arrest in a New Hampshire slaying. In the 12 months that ended June 15, Boston police logged 678 text tips, nearly matching the 727 phone tips during the same period.

Earlier this year, a text tip led to the arrest…

In a move that could give a welcome, if short-lived, boost to consumer electronics makers and retailers, consumers up and down the West Coast are snapping up headsets that let them talk on cell phones while driving — and stay in compliance with a law that took effect in California and Washington state on July 1.

Demand for hands-free headsets has been so robust that the Verizon Wireless store in San Mateo, Calif., added a whole new section for the devices, says store manager Aari Jethmal. “The shelves have been cleared and restocked and cleared and restocked.” Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone, is the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone provider, after AT&T.

Sales Boost Expected

The law, which stipulates penalties for driving while talking on a handheld cell phone, is a boon for Plantronics and other makers of headsets that use so-called Bluetooth wireless connectivity. “Historically Bluetooth headsets have been a low-margin product, so they would need to drive significant product to move the bottom-line needle,” says Avondale Partners analyst John Bright, who has an “outperform” rating on Plantronics shares. “Luckily California is the largest state and a heavy cell-phone usage state, so it certainly bodes well for heavy volume.”

On June 26, Bright raised his estimate for Plantronics’ June quarter earnings by a penny, to 35 percent a share, in anticipation of the law taking effect. That’s a cent higher than the average of Wall Street estimates. The shares have gotten little apparent lift since the law kicked in, slipping to 21.05 on July 2, from 22.32 on June 30.

Plantronics expects a sales boost in California for the second and third quarters, says spokesman Dan Race, though he didn’t provide specifics. “We’re seeing good interest in our premium products,” Race says.

Other Bluetooth manufacturers poised to benefit include Motorola; GN Netcom, maker of…

A Manhattan district judge gave Google some partial victories this week in its copyright-infringement battle with Viacom over YouTube. Last year, Viacom sued Google and its YouTube site for $1 billion for what it called unauthorized use of video clips from Viacom properties.

In Wednesday’s decision, Judge Louis L. Stanton granted a protective order to Google so it doesn’t have to turn over its search source code as Viacom requested. Viacom argued it wanted to show that Google did not have copyright filters, but Google countered — successfully, at this round — that the code is a trade secret. The search code is used both on YouTube.com and on Google’s main search engine.

Needs ‘Plausible’ Showing

In his decision, the judge said Google and YouTube “should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation.” He added that a “plausible” showing that Google/YouTube’s denials were false and that the search function “can and has been used to discriminate infringing content” should be required before “so valuable and vulnerable an asset is compelled.”

The judge said there was no evidence that the search engine can separate clips that violate someone else’s copyright, such as Viacom’s, and those that do not. He did leave open that there may be other ways to filter infringing clips.

Stanton also turned down Viacom’s request for Google to deliver its electronic-index data for its advertising and video-content databases, or for the source code of YouTube’s video-identification tool. The video ID program enables holders of copyright material to provide YouTube with samples, so infringements can be tracked down on the site.

One aspect of Viacom’s case has been that YouTube does not merely share video content that users upload, but that the site copies the uploaded content onto its servers and makes that content available via its search…

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Department of Justice to obtain official records concerning the U.S. government’s possible use of cell-phone-tracking technology to spy on individuals without first obtaining a court order based on probable cause.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the civil-liberties groups said the DOJ failed to provide an adequate and timely response to a records request filed last year under the Freedom of Information Act.

“This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques,” said Catherine Crump, the ACLU lead attorney. “Signing up for cell-phone services should not be synonymous with signing up to be spied on and tracked by the government.”

Complying With Current Law

At least some U.S. attorneys may have violated a DOJ “internal recommendation” that “federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas,” according to a Washington Post article published last November. Moreover, the ACLU said other media reports have raised the possibility that law-enforcement officers may have obtained tracking data directly from the nation’s mobile carriers without any court involvement.

Due to the limited amount of information currently available about the government’s tracking practices, the ACLU said it believes the lack of information on the issue raises serious questions about whether the government is complying with current law and the U.S. Constitution.

“The government’s policies and practices for monitoring the locations of mobile phones are unclear,” the ACLU noted in its original records request. “It is not even apparent whether the government routinely obtains mobile-phone location information without any court supervision whatsoever.”

Information pertaining to the DOJ’s procedures for obtaining real-time tracking information is vital to the public’s understanding of the privacy risks of carrying a mobile…

Openmoko has taken the wraps off its Neo FreeRunner, a Linux-based smartphone based on the company’s open mobile-computing platform. Before you yawn about reading yet another product-introduction story — especially about a handset that lacks 3G capability — what sets the Neo FreeRunner apart is that it really is open, literally and figuratively.

The company’s black, oval-shaped smartphones are built for users to actually open. For example, buyers will be able to take the unit’s casing apart to get at the electronic circuitry. Openmoko says it will even supply the tools to make opening the device a snap.

And the handset’s flexible development platform will allow designers to create Linux-based mobile applications for specialized markets, Taiwan-based Openmoko said. The goal is to empower developers and consumers alike to personalize their devices, much like a PC.

Under the Hood

Measuring 4.75 x 2.44 x 0.73 inches and tipping the scales at 6.5 oz, the Neo Freerunner sports a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a display resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Underneath the hood, the handset integrates chips for connecting tirelessly with functions and services compatible with the Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) standards.

The handset uses a 400-MHz ARM9 processor, 128MB of WSDRAM and 256MB of NAND Flash memory. Though there is no camera, the smartphone has two three-axis motion sensors and a microSD expansion-card slot.

The Neo FreeRunner is a tri-band GSM device that comes in 850/1800/1900-MHz and 900/1800/1900-MHz forms. To find out which Neo to buy, Openmoko suggests that prospective buyers first determine the GSM bands supported in their home markets.

Customization Options

On the software side, the new handset can dial numbers, send and receive SMS text, and record personalized contact information. Openmoko expects to supplement these with downloads, beginning with the release next month of a software suite that will include…

The Mozilla Foundation has set a world record and achieved new heights in its battle for browser market share. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 Web browser set a record for the most downloads in a day. It was the first time a browser-maker attempted to set a record.

Mozilla set the record with 8,002,530 downloads in June. The Mozilla Foundation will receive the official certificate in London next week.

“Setting a world record really doesn’t matter. It’s a marketing stunt,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. “At the end of the day you still have to look at who has the overwhelming browser market share. It still belongs to Microsoft.”

Breaking Down Browser Shares

Indeed, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser. But Firefox is gaining ground, according to a new report from Net Applications. The release of Firefox 3.0 on June 17 spurred rapid usage gains, topping four percent worldwide. In the first hour after the product was released, Firefox 3.0 gained one percent of worldwide market share.

Firefox 3 gains came mostly from users upgrading from Firefox 2, while its overall usage share grew about .4 percent, primarily at the expense of Internet Explorer, according to Net Applications.

IE’s market share dipped from 73.75 percent in May to 73.01 percent at the end of June, Net Applications’ latest data shows. Firefox increased its overall share during the same period from 18.41 percent to 19.03 percent.

Is Firefox Really the Safest Browser?

In a flurry of good news reports for Firefox, Mozilla users are most likely to be using the latest versions of their browsers, with 83 percent of Firefox users patched, according to joint research from Google, IBM and Communications Systems Group in Switzerland.

By contrast, only 63.3 percent of Safari users and 56.1 percent of Opera…

Sony is feeling some gaming-division woes this week with a double PlayStation 3 whammy. First, Sony’s PlayStation Web site fell victim to SQL-injection attacks. Now Sony’s PS3 firmware update is turning some consoles into bricks.

Sony released Version 2.40 of its firmware on Wednesday with the promise of a more collaborative experience to compete with Microsoft’s Xbox 360. But following customer reports of problems with the patch, the company temporarily suspended the download. Sony says only a few consumers have had problems with the new firmware.

“In order to further assess the issue, we have temporarily taken the firmware offline for further testing,” Sony said. “We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.”

Sony’s Black Eyes

Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch, called the firmware incident a black eye for Sony that will continue to raise quality-control questions until the company can come up with some answers about what and why it happened.

“No one wants to have their PS3 turned into a PS paperweight, which is apparently what happened to some users,” Gartenberg said. “Sony was wise to immediately pull the update for general availability so no one else is affected by it. An official firmware upgrade put out by the company should never, ever damage the user’s hardware.”

Any time companies update the core part of a technology, whether it’s a phone, an operating system, or a video-game console, there is the potential for things to run afoul. Seemingly minor issues can cause entire systems to stop working, Gartenberg said. Sony’s disadvantage is the Internet age. Even if the foul firmware only disrupted the gaming systems of a few consumers, the masses know about it.

“The fact that people are communicating on the Internet about technologies makes it all…

Transferring information between computers is easier now than it ever has been.

I remember back in the days of my Commodore 64 when it was near impossible to exchange information between different machines unless they were of exactly the same manufacturer and model and had compatible peripherals.

Modems were primitive devices that few had access to and as such you ended up saving the information on to an audio cassette, then either posting or exchanging it in person.

Today things are much different; irrespective of your computer configuration you can easily transfer information via a number of removable media types or alternatively instantly to any location in the world over the Internet.

There is no doubting that the Internet has revolutionized how we move data and one resultant technology currently experiencing rapid growth is online personal storage.

Physical media such as a flash pen drive is fantastic but is not without its drawbacks. For example, it is so easy to leave at home when it will be needed or even worse if lost then you not only have to worry about the information being lost but also potentially falling in to the wrong hands.

[With online storage, your data] is secure. All the information stored is encrypted and can only be accessed using a designated password. It’s portable — you can gain access to your files from any machine with an Internet connection.

Most [online storage] services are either completely free or include a free “lite” version. While capacities vary, several gigabytes of free space is the norm.

A good starting point for most would be the Microsoft SkyDrive service.

Direct your browser to http://skydrive.live.com and you should be able to get going immediately if you already have a Windows Live ID.

This would have been set up in the past if you use another Microsoft online service such…

Tech junkies looking to pinch pennies in today’s economy can scour the Web for a bounty of free software — for word-processing and photo-editing, online storage and more.

Dozens of downloadable or online-only applications are available at no charge. While many are scaled-down versions of paid programs, you’d be surprised at how feature-rich these freebies can be.

The catch? Some of these applications may be ad-supported and won’t offer extensive tech support, if any.

Companies that offer free software are motivated by a range of factors — from building brand recognition to up-selling users to a paid version, says Michael Gartenberg, research director at JupiterResearch. Some tech companies use free products to experiment with different revenue models, Gartenberg says. Google, for instance, embeds advertising in its Gmail e-mail offering.

“Google, in fact, is a good example of a company that can afford to develop a product today and figure out how to monetize it tomorrow,” he says.

Here are a few of our favorite free apps.

Photo-Editing Software

Chances are you already know about Google’s Picasa (picasa.google.com), a free downloadable program ideal for novice users that lets you manage, edit and share your digital photo collection, but there are other free photo programs worth noting.

Adobe has launched Photoshop Express (photoshop.com/express), an intuitive online application allowing you to upload up to 2 gigabytes of photos, make edits and share them via e-mail or social-networking sites, such as Facebook. The Web is a great opportunity for Adobe to bring its digital imaging expertise “to very large, new audiences,” says Geoff Baum, director of Photoshop Express at Adobe. The free tool is not intended to replace Adobe’s beefier photo-editing packages sold at retail, such as Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS3, Baum says.

Advanced users seeking free software might consider GIMP (gimp.org), available for Windows, Mac, Linux and other systems. With its…

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN] has voted to allow–in addition to more traditional top-level domains [TLDs], such as .com and .org–theoretically any TLD at all, as long as it is no longer than 64 characters long. The application process for such custom TLDs looks set to be arduous and the criteria reasonably rigorous, but observers say the new system will create confusion.

“This has the potential for utter chaos,” said John Mackenzie, of the law firm Pinsent Masons, on Friday. “The attraction for cybersquatters is not going to be setting up a registry that matches someone else’s brand; it will be in the generic TLDs. All of a sudden, every brand will be forced to register their name at .shop, .buy and .london to stop anyone else getting it.”

Mackenzie added that a similar effect was seen when the .eu TLD was introduced. “Our clients didn’t want the .eu domain name but they felt they had no choice,” he told ZDNet Asia’s sister site ZDNet UK on Friday. “They had to register their brands as .eu names. Before that, it was .info and .biz and all the others. Each time a new TLD is introduced, large brands spend a fortune on defensive registrations to avoid the greater expense of recovering the names from cybersquatters further down the line. ICANN has just multiplied those costs. It’s a brand owner’s nightmare.”

Roy Illsley, a senior research analyst at the Butler Group, echoed Mackenzie’s sentiments. “It’s going to give brand managers a massive headache,” he said. “There will be a huge number of potential extensions. If [the brand owners] don’t use them, then, if someone else gets them, it does potential brand damage.”

“If you go beyond the brand, it’s [slogans like] ‘Every little helps’ from Tesco,” Illsley continued. “Can anyone use that?…