The new pricing from Toshiba is well-timed, according to Paul Erickson, director of DVD and HD market research for The NPD Group. Holiday promotional pricing is essentially over for all the major manufacturers of rival disc format Blu-ray, as well as other HD DVD makers.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Barely a week after Warner Bros. announced it would no longer put out movies on the HD DVD format, of which Toshiba is a primary supporter, the company announced it is lowering the prices on all three models of next-generation DVD players.

“For them to drop MSRPs now couldn’t come at a better time,” he said. “It was a gap Blu-ray was able to close down upon during holiday sales.”

“The larger challenge for both camps is twofold: getting the hardware into people’s homes. Toshiba did very well selling $99 and $199 players (during the holidays), but that didn’t necessarily translate into a big jump in movie (sales),” said Erickson. “Unless there are serious promotions going on…people aren’t going out and buying in explosive numbers on the Blu-ray side either.”

Toshiba may have taken a huge hit recently, but the HD DVD supporter is striking back.

The entry-level model, the HD-A3, now goes for $149.99, the HD-A30 for $199.99, and the HD-A35 for $299.99. That’s about $150 to $200 worth of discounts on all models.

Toshiba will now sell its entry-level HD DVD player for $149.99.

“Even if we promote a single format…people are still not going to pay three to four times as much for a player, they’re not going to pay double the price for movies,” Erickson said, “just because they’re accustomed to much cheaper pricing on standard-def DVD.”

In our research paper, we suggested that Google and PayPal begin to offer online-campaign contribution systems. The two companies have already spent millions of dollars in establishing trusted brands–enough that millions of users entrust the firms with their credit card details and other personal information, both have Web site names that users can remember, and the two companies have well-staffed security teams that can respond in real time to phishing threats.

Third, the campaigns need to engage in user education and tell people that they should not give money through anything other than Google or PayPal.

Disclosure: I interned with Google’s security team in 2006 and have received $5,000 of fellowship money from Google and the Hispanic College Fund in both 2007 and 2008.

Second, the campaigns need to stop telling users to click on links in donation solicitation e-mails.

A couple weeks ago, PayPal launched its “PayPal Kit for Non-Profits” product. Similarly, Google recently announced a form of Google Checkout specifically designed for political campaigns.

I’m not going to claim credit for inspiring these product deployments, as I’m sure that the legal complexities in designing a campaign contribution system are significant enough that the firms were working on the products long before my colleagues and I published our paper. However, it is nice to see that we successfully predicted the future.

In a research paper released last year, Markus Jakobsson, Oliver Friedrichs, and I wrote about the looming threat of phishing Web sites posing as legitimate political-campaign sites.

The various campaigns use completely inconsistent naming schemes for their domains. Users have no way of knowing if they should go to Hillaryclinton.com or Hillary.com, Rudygiuliani.com or Joinrudy2008.com.
Politicians were nice enough to exempt themselves from antispam laws. An online store cannot send out unsolicited e-mail and ask you to buy their products, but politicians can send out hundreds of thousands of e-mails asking people to donate money.
While online banks have gone to great lengths to educate their users about the dangers of clicking on links in e-mails, the campaigns all encourage this dangerous behavior. At the end of e-mail messages describing the threat posed by the opposite party, potential donors are asked to click and donate.
Campaign contributions don’t result in the sale of a physical good. If a phisher pretends to be Amazon.com and tricks a user into entering his or her credit card number, there is a good chance that the victim will figure it out when her book never shows up. However, once a donor has given money using a legitimate campaign Web site, the only thing they will ever receive is a thank-you e-mail, which can easily be spoofed by a phisher.

The introduction of these products is a great first step. However, the millions of people who donate to campaign sites are not yet safe from phishing attacks.

The phishing problem is a particular threat to campaign sites, for a number of reasons:

(Credit:
Google)

First, the campaigns need to all ditch their own home-brew payment-processing solutions and switch to the exclusive use of either Google, PayPal, or both.

With millions of dollars per week being raised online for the presidential campaigns, this is an area that is ripe for fraud and evil activity. While the phishers have thus far not targeted campaign sites, it is surely a matter of time before they do. However, if the campaigns are smart, and start taking advantage of the tools made available to them by trusted online-payment sites, they can do much to reduce the risk that phishers pose to the online-donation process.

While the companies primarily pitch their new products as methods for “attracting more supporters” and “increasing online giving to your campaign,” the Internet titans have also laid the groundwork for phishing-resistant campaign contributions.

Both sites pitch their products as ways for campaigns to increase the amount of money that is donated and a way to increase the number of potential people who will give. The massive security benefits to donors and the campaigns (in terms of reputation damage in the event that a phishing attack occurs) is glossed over.

In the last few months, both Google and eBay unit PayPal have quietly rolled out new online-payment solutions that specifically target Internet-based political-campaign contributions.

It remains to be seen if the campaigns will actually be wise enough to embrace Google, PayPal, and others–or if they will allow their reputations and the confidence of online users to be trashed due to an inability to see future threats.

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes a Trojan horse known as Mal/Hupig-D is installed. The Trojan targets Windows machines and steals passwords and bank account data, Cluley said.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama isn’t a terrorist…or a porn star.

Clicking on the link downloads an executable file that plays an amateur porn video, but Obama is not in it.

Is it the work of the Republicans? Probably not; it has the trademark bad grammar and excessive punctuation of traditional phishing attempts, many of which originate outside English-speaking countries.

Well, how old is he?

Sadly Rob can’t leave a good thing alone. Because in December of 2006 he changed his mind: Optical HD Battle May Be Over: HD DVD Wins (tip o’ the antlers to John Muir).

Rob Enderle: snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since…

Bzzzzzt.

Poor Rob. In August of 2005 he writes Blu-Ray Wins or Nothing Does.

Eh, not so much.

Rob’s reasoning? HD DVD is cheaper and Microsoft backs it.

Rumor has it Aliph will soon be releasing an updated version of its uber-popular Jawbone Bluetooth headset, but you can grab the original for just $64 (plus shipping)–a pretty solid deal considering that stores like Best Buy sell it for $129.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Renowned for its fashionable design and unparalleled noise-canceling capabilities, the Jawbone earned an 8.7 rating from CNET. Users were a bit less enthusiastic, mostly due to the awkward fit and difficulty pressing the buttons. I use a Jawbone myself and agree with the criticisms, but also think that once you’ve managed to wiggle the sucker onto your ear, there’s no better headset in terms of audio quality.

The $64 price is for a new unit in OEM packaging, and you’re limited to the black model; the silver and red versions cost $5 and $10 more, respectively.

Last week’s announcement focused on the new Satellite look (which Toshiba describes as “gray pinstripes set upon a field of black” and my colleague Dan Ackerman describes as “a distinct metallic sheen”), and the new Sleep and Charge feature, which lets you charge USB devices even if the laptop is powered off. This week’s news listed the full specs of 11 preconfigured Satellite models that are available at Toshiba’s site. We’ve listed all the details after the jump.

Someone at Toshiba has taken PR 101, where you learn that two headlines are better than one and that a trickle of information is often better than a single splash (unless you’re Apple). Thus the handful of press releases that hit the wires this morning, which provide further details of the new Satellite lineup the company announced last week.

The 13.3-inch Satellite U405-S2830 ($1,149) includes these specs:

2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100
Integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics
3GB RAM
250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi
Three USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Stereo speakers (NOT Harmon Kardon, as on other Satellites)
One-year standard limited warranty.

For $200 less you can purchase the Satellite U405-S2820, with an older 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550, just 2GB of RAM, and 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi.

Throw down another $500 and you can get the Satellite X205-SLi6, with a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, 400GB worth of storage, and a USB HDTV Tuner. The Satellite X205 series also boasts HDMI and S/PDIF connections as well as Dolby Sound Room for near-5.1 stereo surround sound.

1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550
Integrated Intel GMA X3100 graphics
3GB RAM 250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi
Three USB ports
Harman Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

And finally, Toshiba’s gaming line will get a refresh with the 17.1-inch Satellite X205-SLi5 ($1,999), which includes:

The 14.1-inch, 5-pound Satellite M305-S4822 ($949) includes:

For $100 more you can get the Satellite M305-S4826, which features a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor but otherwise identical components.

1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5550
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics
3GB RAM
320GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Harman Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

The 15.4-inch Satellite A305D-S6831 ($949) includes:

2.2GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-64
Integrated ATI Radeon X1250 graphics
3GB RAM
250GB (5,400rpm) hard drive
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Harmon Kardon stereo speakers
One-year standard limited warranty.

Opting for the Satellite P305D-S8818 will save you 100 bucks and will buy a 2.1GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 processor and just 2GB of RAM. The P300 series also incorporates Toshiba’s Regza Link technology, which is basically HDMI-based control codes designed to better integrate TV and A/V sources using a single remote control.

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8300
512MB NVIDIA SLi Dual GeForce 8600M GT graphics
3GB RAM
320GB (2 x 160GB, 7,200 RPM) hard drives
DVD burner with Labelflash
Built-in Webcam and microphone
802.11a/g/n Wi-Fi
Four USB ports
Fingerprint reader
Four Harmon Kardon stereo speakers with sub-woofer
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
One-year standard limited warranty.

The 17.1-inch Satellite P305-S8825 ($1,049) includes:

Mossberg gave Stringer a hard time about Sony PCs’ pre-loaded software, or “craplets.” Other vendors are removing the pre-loads, Mossberg said. “Are you willing to get rid of these craplets?”

In an interview with Stringer at the D6 technology and media conference, The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg started by pointing out the failures of Sony’s digital music player and interactive TV ventures. Stringer said that Sony is now running about 5 percent profit margins. Those margins need to get bigger to sustain the company, or, he says, “If we have any more success, we’ll be bankrupt.”

CARLSBAD, Calif.–Sony CEO Howard Stringer says the culture of profitability has returned to his company. But, he says, it still has work to do.

Game consoles and Blu-ray
The expense of the
PlayStation 3 at first led to a “mildly catastrophic” profitability curve, Stringer said, but the prices are coming down and the game titles are generating profits. He said the next game coming out, in June, will use the “full capacity” of the console and will be “spectacular.”

In a bit of D6 showmanship, Stringer showed a new version of the screen that’s only 0.3 millimeters thick, and that could be formed in curves “wrapped around your arm,” he said. A 27-inch version will be out soon. “It will be quite expensive. The only people who could buy them will be in this room.”

Mossberg asks: Will phones kill the dedicated portable media player? Stringer: “Steve [Jobs] keeps up, but there’s room for two devices.”

Stringer: “No, I have to examine the joy of craplets. And you’re not a typical consumer.” But, he said, “I promise you a craplets review.”

Speaking about the culture of the Japanese business he runs, he said it’s difficult to adapt quickly–there’s no laying off of white-collar workers or engineers. Hence, perhaps, his “get mad” rant last week. Stringer also delved into what’s in Sony’s future–from OLED TVs to game consoles and “craplets.”

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

Personal computers
“We had our best year ever last year. We had a 7 percent margin, our best ever.” Mossberg asked about market share, though. It’s because, “ours is the most expensive,” Stringer replied.

In standard Blu-ray players, Sony did lose money on the players as the company had to chase the HD-DVD player market and its $99 retail prices. But the studios supported the Blu-ray format, which made the bigger difference.

“Had I lost that war,” Stringer said, “the headline would have been, not that HD-DVD won, but that it was Betamax 2. That would have been on my tombstone.”

Walt Mossberg (left) interviews Sony CEO Howard Stringer (right) at the D: All Things Digital conference Wednesday.

The Sony music player, which had been overshadowed by the iPod, is “back in the game. We keep trying.”

What’s after LCD TVs?
LCD growth is beyond expectations, Stringer said, but OLED technology, while still too expensive, is the next thing. Or the current thing, if you want to spend $2,500 for an 11-inch screen. Its contrast ratio is a million to one, he said, a hundred times brighter than an LCD screen.

“Our engineers like being on the cutting edge,” he said. And “we have signs of life all over the place.”

Movies and theaters
“It’s a battle of pocketbooks and reality,” Stringer said. “4K” digital projects are a better experience and will keep the theater experience unique. It’s “transformational,” he said. However, the economics of the movie experience, from cameras to projectors, will take time to rebuild.

It appears that Sony is pushing this technology in part because it’s actually manufacturing these panels, unlike many Sony-branded LCDs, which it sources from other vendors.

Re:
iPod
“We’ve sold about 170 million music-enabled phones–about 75 million to 80 million are Walkman phones.” Which is more than iPods, he said. Stringer said that Sony’s Walkman phones revitalized the brand, and drove the success of the Sony-Ericsson phone lines.

Click here for full coverage of the D: All Things Digital conference.

Children drive the movie economy, especially in summer. “Whether the baby boomers will continue to go the theaters is a bigger issue,” Stringer said.

The console is beginning to become a platform for more than just games–a hub for the PSP, for example. The PlayStation Network was key to Sony winning the Blu-ray/HD-DVD battle, Stringer said, since the PS3 was a great movie-playing platform.

Mossberg asks how many years of value Sony will be able to eke from that victory, especially as the move is to digital distribution. “There’s a long lead time,” Stringer said, “before you get the quality, you get on Blu-ray.” He thinks the media format will last for 10 years or beyond, especially as people migrate to better and better television screens.

And, Stringer said, we’re doing more download relationships, like one we’re announcing today with Usher.

While not nearly as sexy as YouTube on the
iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile users have reason to celebrate with a new version of the YouTube’s mobile application (download and review). The company boasts that it’s 90 percent faster than the previous version in terms of how quickly it starts up, pulls up search results, and when a video begins to play. It also detects what connection you’re on and will serve up a quality that will stream in the fastest.

YouTube 2.2 plays videos in landscape and portrait modes on the Samsung Omnia.

]]> http://www.paladinrecords.com/index.php/2010/08/23/youtube-revamps-mobile-offering-for-symbian-and-wi/feed/ http://www.paladinrecords.com/index.php/2010/08/23/this-week-in-laptops/ http://www.paladinrecords.com/index.php/2010/08/23/this-week-in-laptops/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:21:45 +0000 admin http://www.paladinrecords.com/?p=189 Imagine us saying (in our best Jan Brady voice): “Intel, Intel, Intel!” The chipmaker managed to dominate laptop news this week thanks to the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, where the company heavily hyped all things small, especially its next-generation Classmate PC (see our exclusive full review) and mobile Internet devices running on the new Atom chip.

But hey, this week wasn’t all about Intel. Toshiba unleashed a boatload of Satellites decked out in pinstripes; CTL announced the official availability of the 2go PC (based on Intel’s Classmate PC design); and rumors flew that Best Buy would soon be selling a Windows XP version of the Eee PC. We were also intrigued by both a bag that cools your laptop without a fan and a project that uses your laptop’s built-in accelerometer to gather data on seismic activity.

Finally, following in the esteemed footsteps of the MacBook Air, a Vista-based laptop fell to hackers in the PWN2OWN contest at CanSecWest. By the end of the conference, only a Sony VAIO laptop running Ubuntu remained unscathed. Which begs the question: Is open source that secure, or is it just that no one wanted the VAIO?

Other news from the show: an impossibly tiny motherboard, preproduction solid-state drives, wireless display connections, and a new antitheft technology for laptops.

(Credit:
Intel)

The only thing missing from the IDF small-device love-fest? Microsoft. Oh, and Dell, whose executives said that Intel’s smoking crack if it thinks the little guys will be as popular as laptops. (Fine, what they really said was that mobile Internet devices will represent a much smaller piece of the market than Intel projects.)

For visual learners, we’ve got a photo gallery of mobile Internet devices from the show, and Intel has posted a video of one of these bad boys being cracked open. For the more technical types, we’ve also got the specifications on all five of the Atom processors that are part of the launch. For the gadget freaks, we’ve got more information on the Lenovo IdeaPad U8.

Have a great weekend!

Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL [For some reason in Orlando, Florida - was he swimming with dolphins?]:

1. Linux (by far the most popular platform among MySQL customers). 2. Windows (High number of Windows downloads but most deployments are on Linux). 3. Solaris.

[Rich] We will continue to invest and drive opportunities for other databases like PostgreSQL…. We have hundreds of developers who work on interoperability with Oracle, too, and will keep doing that. But we will also use that expertise to make MySQL run well on Sun’s platforms to drive excellence. [Paraphrasing on that one.]

How do you deal with this? If your deployments are on Linux, how does this help Solaris?

“We have overlap in our technologies and underlap in our customers….All of [Sun's] customers are deploying MySQL. [But then stressed that Sun's scale could bring comfort to enterprise customers not yet ready to put MySQL into mission-critical deployments."

From the Q&A:

[Jonathan] We have been one of the earliest backers of PostgreSQL and today we reaffirm that commitment.

Around 20% of MySQL’s deployments are on Solaris. About 75% of the Solaris deployments aren’t on Sun’s hardware. Not only can we bring a breadth of service to MySQL, but we can also help take MySQL into mission-critical environments. We can help move MySQL onto new platforms.

“Wonderful industry logic underlying this transaction.”

Will this be a standalone software business?

“We are perfectly aligned in our business models and cultures. We each have a business model that revolves around free and open access to all of our technology.”

Our software business is really untethered and decoupled from our systems business….As with Java, Glassfish, etc. we’re building a business as broadly as the Internet reaches….If we can sell to new customers…we’ll be thrilled to do so. This is good for our margins [as MySQL will help push storage, identity management, and other solutions from Sun]….This is really all about reaffirming Sun’s position at the center of the web.

What does this mean for Sun’s support for PosgreSQL?

Tony of Sanford Bernstein: Can you comment on the current financials of MySQL? (Estimates of $60-80 million in 12 months trailing revenues.)

“This strengthens our ability to serve our existing customers and to serve our new customers as enterprises migrate over to open-source databases.”

Jonathan asked him to wait until the financial analyst call later today.

Rich Green, EVP, Software, Sun:

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, talked up MySQL’s customer list: Facebook, Google, Digg, etc., but also Toyota, IKEA, Southwest Airlines, Nokia.

commentary

What percentage of implementations are on Linux?