ï»¿Thanks for joining us here on World Tech Update. Iâ€™m Nick Barber.
Coming up on this weekâ€™s showâ€¦North Korea develops its own Linux OS, Intel introduces
a new Classmate PC at Germanyâ€™s Cebit and Google tries to explain that street view
is nothing to fear. Weâ€™ll get to the Cebit news in just a bit, but first Apple
filed a patent infringement lawsuit this Tuesday against HTC, claiming that the Taiwanese company
is infringing on 20 Apple patents. The patents are related to the iPhone UI and the smartphoneâ€™s
underlying architecture and hardware. In a statement Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that quote
we can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions or we can do something
about it end quote. HTC has not commented on the filing yet.
Sonyâ€™s PlayStation Network was hit by a glitch this week that left users on all
continents unable to connect to the online service. With 38 million users worldwide,
the Playstation Network is an Internet based service that connects PS3 consoles to online
stores, software downloads and is used as a platform for some multiplayer online games.
Sony restored service to the PlayStation Network by resolving a glitch in the internal clock
of some PlayStation 3 consoles that recognized 2010 as a leap year and wrongly added a Feb.
29 to the clock.
Environmental group Greenpeace is criticizing Samsung for reneging on a promise to remove
harmful substances from its products. Here Greenpeace activists can be seen installing
signs on the Samsung building in Brussels. In 2006 the company promised it would end
the use of brominated flame retardants or BFRs in its products by January 1, 2010, but
that never happened. In November 2009, less than two months before the deadline, Samsung
emailed Greenpeace to say it wouldnâ€™t be able to keep its promise. BFRs have the
potential to damage the environment and harm human health and their elimination has been
a major goal of Greenpeace in the electronics sector. Other companies like Dell, Lenovo
and LG Electronics delayed changes as well but they confessed at least one year before
their deadlines. Samsung says it will now remove BFRs from MP3 players and digital cameras
by June 1st of this year and from laptop computers by January 1, 2011.
North Korea has reportedly developed its own version of the Linux operating system with
a graphical user interface that closely resembles Microsoft Windows. A copy of the North Korean
Linux distribution called Red Star was purchased for 5 US dollars by a Russian student named
Mikhail who then posted a brief review on his blog. One of two Russian students at North
Koreaâ€™s Kim Il-Sung University, Mikhail said it took about 15 minutes to install and
said it came with a single language option, Korean.
Now itâ€™s over to Martyn Williams whoâ€™s covering the Cebit trade show in Germany,
Martyn?
Thanks Nick and welcome to Hanover. We're gonna kick off with news of some new products
and this week Intel announced the latest version of its Classmate PC.
The student-targeted Classmates runs on a new Atom processor, the N450, which uses 20
percent less power than previous models so prolongs the battery life. Intel has also
added new connectivity options including 3G wireless and WiMax.
"A lot of improvement has actually been done since the first version. It has a rubberized
surface so this rubberized surface gives you more of a feeling of ruggedness. This one
drops better, so it can withstand a drop from the desk height of the kids. You know, it
now has a bigger screen, a 10.1 inch screen, a bigger keyboard, it's almost a full size
keyboard now."
Intel won't make the machine - it's a reference design offered to PC makers. The first models
should be out in April.
Taiwan's Asus, the company that created the netbook, is now trying its hand at e-book
readers. The DR900 is due out in the second half and has a 9-inch touch-sensitive display.
The battery should last about 10,000 page turns before it needs to be recharged and
the 4 gigabytes of internal memory is enough for hundreds of electronic books. Asus hasn't
announced a price.
And Mio's latest navigation device, the Moov V780, comes with a 7-inch touchscreen. Video
is a main feature and it can playback files and tune in to digital TV. It can also be
hooked-up to a TV and playback high-def video. There's a Web browser and music player alongside
the core navigation function. It will be available in the second half for around 499 euros, that's
about 680 US dollars.
Cebit is all about selling products but Google is here for the first time trying to sell
an idea to a skeptical German public: that their Street View service isn't evil.
Street view has launched in several European countries despite protests despite privacy
advocates. But in Germany the situation is different. Here the company is building an
opt-out system to appease the privacy authority.
"Right now we are working on an opt-out tool. So for German users we give them the opportunity
that they can tell us now that they don't want to have the house included in Street
View."
As part of its push Google's Chief Technology Advocate spoke to local media and tried to
sell them on some of the benefits of Street View and allay some fears.
"
The pictures are still kinda blurry. It's not some super spy-camera. It's a little camera
on top of a car and the car is shaking. It's not super high-quality photography but it's
enough to say 'Oh, it's that building, it's not the other building.
At Cebit, attendees can get an up-close look at three Street View cars, and the company
has let artists loose on them -- something that ironically has visitors snapping pictures.
How many will take Google up on its exclusion program remains to be seen but company officials
say they expect it to be a small number.
Sticking with the web, the German Research Center for Artifical Intelligence and Saarland
University have developed an extension for HTML that allows for 3D models to be included
on websites. This is the kind of thing they can do with XML 3D.
This is a 3D model of a Venetian Palace embedded into a Wikipedia page. It can be navigated
and controlled with the mouse. It's this integration with HTML and Web browsers that the developers
believe makes it a better alternative to competing technologies that require developers to learn
a new programming language.
The next-step will be the release of a modified version of Firefox with support for XML3D
so that Web developers can try the technology out for themselves. That should appear in
the next couple of weeks at XML3D.org.
As the snow begins falling that's it from Cebit for now. We've still got a couple more
days of reporting to go, so come back to next week's World Tech Update and we'll wrap up
Cebit, but for now it's back to Nick in hopefully a warmer Boston. Nick?
Thanks Martyn, we have some snow here too so it's no warmer in Boston than Hanover.
Well thatâ€™s our show for this week. Coming up on next week's show weâ€™ll
take a look at body scanners being installed right here at Boston Logan Airport and of
course all the latest tech news. Find out whatâ€™s coming up on every weekâ€™s
show by following us on Facebook and Twitter. As we head out this week weâ€™ll leave
you with some more shots of Cebit. Iâ€™m Nick Barber and for all of us here at IDG
thanks for watching and we hope to see you next week.