Anybody have any solutions? Or good stories about people watching sketchy material on a plane you were on? Let us know in the Talkback section.

No mile-high Web porn fix for me.

Now, Bloomberg is reporting that American’s flight attendants are concerned about just that–that too many passengers will try to get their mile-high Web porn fixes.

It’s unclear whether those worries stem from a specific incident or incidents, but it appears both passengers and flight attendants raised some red flags and the leaders of the American Association of Flight Attendants brought it up with American Airlines’ management. They urged the company “to filter its in-flight Internet service to block access to pornography and other Web sites the workers said were inappropriate.”

(Credit:
John Falcone/CNET Networks)

Personally, I get a little embarrassed when even a semi-nude scene flashes on the screen of my
iPod or portable DVD player while I’m watching a movie on a plane (we’re talking R-rated here). If there are any younger fliers around I’ll do my best to shield the screen or jump ahead a chapter. But people do some crazy stuff on planes, so it wouldn’t totally surprise me to hear about a passenger casually perusing some porn sites and thinking nothing of it. There are people out there who think, “I bought this seat, I can act or smell as badly as I want in it.”

Moral majority aside, I can see where the flight attendants are coming from. They’re the ones who have to deal with passengers’ complaints and will be forced to regulate what people are looking at. Better to nip it in the bud and block sites like they do at a lot of workplaces. But the problem is there’s some subjectivity when it comes to what’s offensive or not. Just ask Janet Jackson.

Maybe instead of Johnny Knoxville, what Microsoft really needs is a little more Ralph Macchio.

Its U.S. marketing, by contrast, just didn’t seem to do the trick when it comes to really making a compelling case for an upgrade.

A Windows prize fight, starring Ralph Macchio as Windows Vista.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has talked about the company’s need to do better when it comes to Vista marketing, and I think the U.S. folks might want to take a page from their Japanese counterparts. In case there was ambiguity here, that page is the prizefight one. I’m not that into pink.

Every now and then, though, one of Microsoft’s subsidiaries goes out on a limb. Such is the case with a new bundle Microsoft has in Japan that combines
Windows Vista Home Premium with Windows Live OneCare in one eye-popping hot pink box. (Kudos to Long Zheng for spotting this one.)

I did some more poking around on the Microsoft Japan Web site and found another marketing approach that might have more global appeal than pink packaging. On its site there, Microsoft has a cool Japanese cartoon prize fight between Windows XP and Windows Vista, really illustrating how the new OS is different than its predecessor in areas like desktop search, security, and performance.

Sorry Hello Kitty fans, you have to be in Japan to get this version of Vista.

Sometimes, internationalizing Microsoft’s products just means translating the same, boring packaging into another language.

I’m not sure how much adding hot pink will add to the software’s appeal (though it has made Hello Kitty’s career), but it is interesting to see Microsoft thinking of new ways to sell its gear.

(Credit:
Amazon.com)

Nintendo DS: 633,500
Wii: 289,500
Xbox 360: 175,000
PlayStation 3: 131,000
PlayStation 2: 117,000
PSP: 100,400

New games, including a few blockbusters, would certainly alter the scenery a bit.

Follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom

While there are a wealth of new games coming in 2009, including what appear to be some winners for
PS3 and
Xbox, Nintendo platform games made up just shy of 50 percent of the top 10 sales in May:

UFC 2009 Undisputed(THQ) Xbox 360 - 679,600
Wii Fit(Nintendo) Wii - 352,800
EA Sports Active(EA) Wii - 345,800
UFC 2009 Undisputed(THQ) PS3 - 334,400
Infamous(Sony) PS3 - 175,900
Pokemon Platinum(Nintendo) DS - 168,900
Mario Kart(Nintendo) Wii - 158,300 Punch Out!!(Nintendo) Wii - 156,900 X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged(Activision) Xbox 360 - 120,700 Wii Play(Nintendo) Wii - 109,800 Total Nintendo software: 1,292,500
Total other vendor software: 1,310,600

Nintendo also remains strong in the console business, with sales of the Nintendo DS and Wii nearly doubling the competition.

As CNET’s Lance Whitney reported, “NPD blamed most of the decline on the lack of blockbuster games rather than the weak economy. The report noted that last year’s sales were boosted by the launch of popular software titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV. Nintendo’s
Wii Fit also was a hot commodity in 2008.”

Brad’s a good dude, but that line came straight out of the pot-calling-the-kettle-black folder. By now, we’re all acutely familiar with Microsoft’s devotion to maintaining open and competitive markets.

All I can say is that Jerry Yang must really pack a pair.

Say what?

“This is only a limited test, and does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense program,” the company said.

Full disclosure: I never believed Yang was the right replacement for Terry Semel. Woody Allen famously quipped that 90 percent of success in life can be accomplished by just showing up. Not in this case. To be fair, Yang inherited a company listing at 30 degrees. But months passed without strong action. If not Microsoft, it was only a matter of time before some other bidder would have come knocking.

Just to keep the yucks flowing, Microsoft issued a terse response under Brad Smith’s byline:

Maybe Yang’s being crazy as a fox here, though investors might wonder whether a collection of village idiots is now running the show. After two months of trying to elude Microsoft’s bear hug buyout offer, is this the right time to tacitly acknowledge that Yahoo’s most ambitious IT project is a bust? I’m sure that’s going to thrill the company’s investors.

So if Yahoo thinks so much of Google’s search technology, why did it waste all those millions on its ‘Panama’ ad system?

(Credit:
Anne Broache/CNET News.com)

“Panama might be perfect on the technology side and might ‘know’ exactly which ads it should serve onto each page, but if there aren’t any active advertisers for it to serve then the end result will still be a low yield. The ad coverage will reflect negatively on the quality of the platform. Google has much better ad coverage than Yahoo does for historical reasons, and that’s not something that can be solved quickly.”

Yahoo can spin this as a experiment on 3 percent of its traffic and thus stand on terra firma when it rejects this as an admission that Panama is broken. After all, this is only a “test.” Word games notwithstanding, Panama remains behind Google’s AdSense in terms of RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) or revenue per search query, in this case. One advertising exec I spoke with put it this way:

Jerry Yang: He's not ready to go down without a fight.

Let’s assume for the moment that Yahoo ultimately does agree to a Microsoft buyout. How long do you think it will take for Steve Ballmer to pull the plug on the Google test? This is only an extra obstacle Yahoo’s putting in Microsoft’s way. So far, Microsoft says it’s still interested in doing a deal (though for the life of me I still can’t understand why.)

Yang’s problem is that he wound up with a suitor he can’t stand.

Then again, neither side in this monotonous novella has a monopoly on hypocrisy.

After spending millions to build a Google-like algorithm, the company plans to test Google’s AdSense for Search service.

Ultimately, he added, this boils down to a question of how many clicks get fed into the algorithm to make it intelligent about targeting. Due to its bigger market share, Google’s got insight into far more clicks than anyone else. That means it will continue to get more intelligent about the ads that work well.

Sure.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

It’s not likely Microsoft opened up its specifications and made its pledges Thursday out of the goodness of its heart. As the open-source movement and its free-software predecessor have matured over more than two decades, Microsoft has found it necessary to make accommodations.

Take OOXML, the office document format Microsoft is trying to standardize as an alternative to the ODF that was spawned from the OpenOffice.org software, an open-source rival to
Microsoft Office. “The approval of OOXML, for instance, is seen as crucial by Microsoft as a means of maintaining its Office market share,” The 451 Group, an analyst firm, said in a statement Thursday.

Microsoft announced a number of moves that could significantly improve its relationship with the open-source world. Among other things, the company said it will share communication protocols that govern how Microsoft software products communicate; pledged not to sue open-source programmers for developing software that uses those interfaces; and launched an Open Source Interoperability Initiative to improve how well open-source software works with its own.

In other words, Microsoft hasn’t backed down from its insistence that its intellectual property isn’t free for the taking, an assertion made most clearly in 2007 when Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Linux and other open-source projects violate 235 Microsoft patents.

The Thursday move suggests two forms of patent agreements. First is one in the mold of the controversial Microsoft partnership with Novell from 2006 and various other smaller Linux companies afterward. The second is an agreement directly with customers that use open-source software such as Red Hat’s Linux, as Ballmer suggested last October when he said, “People (who) use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to eventually to compensate us.”

And as ZDnet blogger Mary Jo Foley noted, the ISO standards group is meeting in Geneva next week to vote on whether OOXML should be awarded official standard status.

Microsoft made major concessions Thursday that should make it easier for open-source software to dovetail with or even replace Microsoft products, but a major caveat means the company’s legal threats remain alive and well.

“The promise not to sue is only for ‘noncommercial’ open source, which is a bit meaningless,” said Jeremy Allison, a founder of the open-source Samba project that lets Linux servers substitute for Windows file and print servers by emulating the required Microsoft communication protocols.

The Samba case illustrates the pressures on Microsoft. In December, Samba announced a complicated third-party arrangement that in effect gives it access to Microsoft’s communication protocols, a move that came shortly after the European Union required Microsoft to share interoperability information with open-source projects.

First, the open-source programming philosophy outdid Microsoft in an area where it previously had been a leader, fostering communities of developers. Second, there have been years of antitrust litigation, first by the United States and more recently from the European Union, that called on Microsoft to share. The third, and perhaps strongest reason, is that open-source software has become a powerful force in the software industry and customer sites–and even at Yahoo, the Internet company Microsoft is trying to acquire for $44.6 billion in part because of its engineering expertise.

“Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open-source developers for development or noncommercial distribution of implementations of these protocols,” the company said. “Companies that engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license.”

Sharing protocols, while it makes it easier for others to interoperate or clone Microsoft products, also could serve to entrench Microsoft’s products by making its in-house protocols into de facto industry standards.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (left) and CEO Steve Ballmer.

In principle, carbon credits are part of a market for reducing greenhouse emissions. The company reducing its emissions gets credits to sell to those who emit more. Bundling the Kyoto Box with a solar-charged flashlight, a solar water bag, and an efficient turbo cooker to burn residues (in a package the company calls “Kyoto Family”) can help each family save two tons of greenhouse gases per year could make it a freebie for the users.

A prototype of the award-winning Kyoto Box solar cooker.

They named the company Kyoto Energy because of the key role the Kyoto Protocol will play in lowering the cost.

The company explains its calculations: each ton of carbon credits is worth about 10 euros ($13). Two tons means 20 euros ($26) worth of credits per year per family. The cost of the Kyoto Family kit is 40 euros ($52), which means that if the family uses the kit for two years, it should be free, the company hopes.

Norwegian inventor and Kyoto Energy CEO Jan Bohmer is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

While the design of the stove and manufacturing is simple, the business model is advanced. The box costs just $5 to make, but the goal is that it will be given away for free. How? The cooker could be eligible for carbon credits, which could finance the production of the boxes.

Kyoto Energy’s goal is to reach 500 million households with its products. Bohmer wants his company to stay in the family, since kin have helped develop the products. He has a
car and a house and says he doesn’t need big profits. “I have used everything I have to do R&D,” he said. “If I get more, I’ll probably do more R&D. I am obsessed with finding solutions for problems.”

The invention was inspired by the 240-year-old “hot box,” a heat catcher by Swiss inventor Horace de Sausseur, and it could solve problems plaguing rural areas of developing countries.

(Credit:
Kyoto Energy)

“It feels good. It was the only finalist that was a solution for developing countries,” Kyoto Energy CEO Jan Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya, told CNET News during a call on a crackling phone line from Nairobi.

It looks so simple, and that’s the key innovation.

For Bohmer, receiving the Climate Change Challenge award is an acknowledgement after years of trying to get support for his ideas. “I’ve had 200 application from governments and organizations rejected or ignored before this,” he said.

(Credit:
Kyoto Energy)

Since receiving the prize, Kyoto Energy has received requests from 20 countries, from Guatemala to Cambodia, for trials. A plastic version of The Kyoto Box will go into production soon in a Malaysian factory. “The cardboard version was more of a test,” Bohmer said. “It is the same thing made of recycled plastic bottles, but this one is more durable.”

But for the business model to work, the relatively new carbon trading system must continue to improve. Bohmer hopes the U.S. finally will join this carbon trading system, and recent signs suggest it might. The White House needs to offset its emissions from all their flying, Bohmer joked, adding that the president has a great opportunity to show the way: “President Obama can buy these carbon credits from his own grandmother here in Kenya.”

Click on the video below to see the see the problems the Kyoto Box wants to solve.

The invention received the $75,000 FT Climate Change Challenge award last week. The competition, run by Forum for the Future with The Financial Times and Hewlett-Packard, had nearly 300 entries, which were judged on their contribution to tackling climate change.

The Kyoto Box consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other. The inner box is painted black to absorb sunlight, and the heat is trapped with a transparent acrylic lid. Captured solar energy heats up the air in the box enough to boil food and water and bake, but the stove is not powerful enough to fry food.

WebGL can be used in the latest Chrome developer preview version–but only if “–enable-webgl” and “–no-sandbox” command-line switches are added when Chrome launches. The latest versions are Chrome 4.0.221.6 for Windows and 4.0.221.8 for Mac OS X and Linux.

WebGL began at Mozilla and Khronos Group, the organization that oversees the OpenGL 3D graphics interface. WebGL lets programmers creating Web sites issue commands for drawing 3D graphics, but the standard is still under development. The general idea is important for advanced Web sites and for Web-based applications, which although steadily getting more sophisticated don’t yet match their analogs that run natively on computers.

When it comes to built-in support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, WebGL is being built into Firefox and the browser project behind Safari, and now Chrome is following suit.

Google supports WebGL but also is working on a separate, higher-level 3D interface for browsers called O3D.

Fighting this killer feature is Microsoft Word’s own killer feature, which is: Everyone in business has Word, and most people know how to use it effectively. There are plenty of people who would use a simultaneous editing feature in Word if it had one, and who aren’t going to switch to Google just because it does.

The service works as a plug-in to Word, adding a collection of buttons in the “Review” tab. These new functions let you invite users into a document, push your changes to the Web, and read in new changes.

Plutext will be available as server-based software for companies that want their documents stored inside their own firewalls; a cloud-based Plutext service may also be forthcoming.

While Plutext does not support strictly simultaneous editing (you have to intentionally publish your changes and get new updates), neither does it let two users get out of sync by letting them work on different versions of the same file. You really can have a dozen people in the same document at the same time. Plutext uses Word’s existing Accept and Reject Revisions function to review changes other people have made on your open document.

The demo I saw was early and a bit rough; taking a file from standard single-user mode to collaborative looked complicated; Harrop says the system will be cleaner when it ships in October.

(Credit:
Plutext)

(Credit:
Plutext)

A new service, Plutext, currently being developed, will bring nearly live editing to Word documents. I saw a demo at the Office 2.0 conference.

Plutext is also going to release a free Java-based editor, Docx4all, that natively supports Word .DOCX files as well as the Plutext system. It’s not a pure Web-based editor, but it will allow document authors to send links to active versions of their files to users who don’t have Word.

To my mind, the killer feature of Google Docs is not that it is Web-based, per se. It’s that it makes real-time collaboration easy. You can invite a user into a document you currently have open, and you both can edit the file at the same time. It’s not a feature you’re going to need all the time, but when you’re on a deadline and need to get sign-off from one or more other person on a document right away, it’s a life-saver (see also: Zooos).

See also: Expresso, EditGrid, Sharepoint. And keep an eye on Docverse.

Plutext Managing Director Jason Harrop told me that real-time co-editing is technically possible with his platform, but that his research says users want the level of control that the intentional publishing gives them.

There’s also a wiki-like revision history that acts as an audit trail of all the work done on a document. Revisions in this report are flagged either by paragraph or section heading (user’s choice); the latter could make reading updates on technical and legal documents much easier than it would be otherwise.

Plutext adds new collaboration functions to Word.

With Plutext, you won’t have the problem of multiple versions of the file floating around with different revisions in them, nor will you run into the issue of trying to open a document to edit it only to find that some other user has it opened and locked for changes, and is out to lunch.

The NAB and others, such as Verizon Wireless, which also opposes the use of white spaces, certainly have their own business motivations for opposing the use of white spaces.

On the other side, Google and the technology community say that these are simply proof of concept devices and not even prototypes that could be used in commercial products. In fact, Google’s Whitt said he is certain his company and others would pour millions of dollars into development if the FCC approved the use of white spaces and gave specific guidelines and rules for products.

So far it looks like FCC Chairman Kevin Martin agrees. He was quoted Monday in The Wall Street Journal in favor of opening up white space spectrum to encourage more broadband deployments.

“Microsoft’s applications fail all the time. “But for us our signals need to get to our audience, so it’s a different world. And it’s not acceptable for there to be any interference.” –Dennis Wharton, National Association of Broadcasters

Technology companies have also proven that they can mitigate interference issues through proper engineering. Just look at the use of Wi-Fi. The technology uses unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4GHz band, and there are specifications to ensure that Wi-Fi devices don’t interfere with microwave ovens and garage door openers that operate at the same frequency.

The FCC is expected to release a report of the test results next month. And it will likely vote on whether to open the spectrum in the next few months.

But even if the FCC is to allow the use of white spaces, Google and others are concerned that the FCC might succumb to pressure from the broadcasting industry to put onerous rules on the spectrum that will make it virtually useless. Some critics say that the FCC’s rules on low-power FM devices and ultra wide band devices have restricted them so much they can barely be used.

The debate is coming to head as the FCC finishes field tests of proof-of-concept devices used to detect and avoid spectrum already in use. The results of the tests have been mixed. Some companies claim that geolocation-based technology has proven that it can interference with existing spectrum holders. Meanwhile, a field test of spectrum sensing technology at a major sporting venue proved that technology still has some problems.

That said, Google and the rest of the technology companies lobbying for the freeing of white spaces have their own motivations and interests to consider. The more wireless spectrum and broadband services available, the more Google can make from advertising. The company hasn’t denied this. Intel, Microsoft, and Motorola also benefit as they can each sell more products and services to consumers who use this unlicensed spectrum.

“Microsoft’s applications fail all the time,” said Dennis Wharton, a spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters. “But for us our signals need to get to our audience, so it’s a different world. And it’s not acceptable for there to be any interference.”

Google and other technology companies such as Intel, Microsoft and Motorola have been lobbying the FCC for months to open up what’s known as “white space” spectrum for unlicensed use after the digital TV transition early next year. These slivers of spectrum that sit between TV channels as buffers to ensure that TV channels don’t interfere with each could be used to provide broadband wireless services.

The NAB may claim it is afraid of interference, but the reality it members don’t want to give up control of airwaves they believes are theirs. Verizon Wireless and other wireless operators don’t want competitors to get their hands on free spectrum that they could use to build competing services.

The NAB says it only trying to protect the TV viewing public.

“Spectrum is very valuable and we want to make sure it’s being used as efficiently as possible,” he is quoted as saying in the Journal. “The idea of trying to utilize the ‘white spaces’ from a consumer perspective would be a good win for everyone.”

The debate over new unlicensed spectrum the Federal Communications Commission is considering opening up is heating up as Google ups the ante with a new lobbying Web site.

“When you look at low power FM or ultrawide band rules, the technology has great promise but the Commission adopted rules that constrained it to the detriment of consumers,” Whitt said. “So of course there are concerns that that the rules could be too limiting.”

It’s clear that this has become as much of a political debate as it has a technical one. On the one hand, the National Association of Broadcasters is pointing to the tests as evidence that interference can’t be avoided.

That said, much of the white space spectrum that will be available will be in sparsely populated rural areas where there are fewer TV broadcasters and little access to broadband. And because the spectrum is ideally suited for rural areas with good propagation characteristics, it could be used by rural communities to blanket their regions with broadband access.

But broadcasters say using these channels will cause interference with their broadcast signals and cause major issues for people watching TV.

Google on Monday launched the new site called FreetheAirWaves.com to provide consumers with a voice, the company’s policy guru said during a press conference call.

“NAB supports new technology and ending the digital divide,” Wharton said. “What we can’t support is a multibillion-dollar spectrum giveaway to Google and Microsoft that threatens interference-free television.”

This is exactly what Wally Bowen, from the Mountain Area Information Network in Asheville, N.C., and Matthew Rantanen, who works with the Tribal Digital Village in San Diego, Calif.–which represents Native American tribes–say they hope will happen if the white spaces are offered to the public without licenses. They say that broadband operators are currently underserving their constituents and that access to free spectrum would help get broadband to more people in the country.

Better coverage
But my gut feeling is that this new spectrum won’t likely become a major threat to wireless operators, such as Verizon, nor will it cause any disruption in TV service. But it could drastically improve the coverage of broadband particularly in rural areas.

I’ve been looking for a replacement for playable search engine Songerize, and this morning, I stumbled across Just Hear It, which offers a much better experience than Songerize ever did.

In other words, enjoy Just Hear It while it lasts.

The fact that the entire site is a Flash application makes navigation difficult–the “back” button doesn’t work, and if you click on “About,” you’re stuck there with no way to the home page except reloading. The light-gray text on black background isn’t the best design choice. Still, this is the best service I’ve seen so far for hearing that song you need to hear right now.

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Often, the engine turned me on to alternate versions–live tracks, cover versions–that I didn’t know existed. You can play results immediately or compile them into a playlist, but you can’t save playlists between searches, unless you’re a member, which makes this feature kind of worthless. (Membership is currently available by invitation only.)

The site needs a few tweaks–the “search” button at the top of the page seems to return random results (maybe it’s a list of what other searchers are looking for?), so you have to click the logo and return to the home page to conduct additional searches.

There’s been an ongoing debate over the last two years regarding a proposed rate increase for performance royalties–CNET’s Greg Sandoval wrote a detailed account of the latest developments in February–but suffice it to say, claiming that you’re legal doesn’t necessarily make it so.

In my tests so far, Just Hear It has always delivered the song I was looking for somewhere in the first-page results, though sometimes, I’ve had to enter both artist and title–for example, searching “Thrasher” didn’t return the Neil Young song of that name until I entered Young’s name.

Enter a song title or artist’s name, and Just Hear It returns a list of possible matches–including not only audio tracks, but also YouTube videos. (Songerize didn’t offer choices, but started playing what it thought was the best match, and it didn’t have any video content.)