Slashdot Mirror

Chris Albrecht writes "The bippedy-bippedy-bippedy sound you hear when using 1-800-GOOG-411 is actually a senior voice designer at Google. (Here's the sound.) The technical term for that noise is the 'fetch audio,' and it's more complicated to design than you'd think. For the first time, the voice of GOOG-411 talks about how he came up with it, how important that sound is, and how people now ask him to 'perform' it."

NewsCloud writes "After tonight's Breaking Open Facebook with Free Open Source Software, TechCrunch reports Google plans to announce an open API for social networking tomorrow. "OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks: 1) Profile Information (user data) 2) Friends Information (social graph) and 3) Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)" Says Om Malik: "OpenSocial attacks Facebook where it is the weakest (and the strongest): its quintessential closed nature...Even if you take Facebook out of the equation, the task of writing and adapting widgets for the every increasing number of social platforms was going to be turn into a colossal mess.""

The site GigaOM is picking up its games coverage again, and kicks off with an article speculating on just what EA was thinking when it purchased BioWare and Pandemic. On the face of it, the move doesn't make much sense. BioWare is a great development house, but from EA's perspective their games are 'small potatoes'. "So why did they spend so much? The acquisition includes several titles for the Wii and DS already in development, and those may have breakout potential. There's tremendous gamer buzz around BioWare's upcoming RPG Mass Effect, but in all likelihood, it'll do similar numbers to the studio's million-plus-selling Knights of the Old Republic -- a hit, but not a huge one. There are rumors that BioWare is developing a 'Star Wars'-themed MMO, but if that's what inspired the purchase, the mystery only deepens: Sony Online's (SNE) MMO Star Wars Galaxies was a disappointment in relation to cost and anticipation, and that was released at the height of the buzz over a movie franchise that's since become old news."

Some nine months ago veteran MMOG designer Raph Koster announced his new game company, called Areae ... but not what they were making. To go along with the TechCrunch40 Conference, the company has finally taken the wraps off of their project: Metaplace. Essentially, Metaplace is going to be a virtual world toolkit. The whole thing is built on open standards, and attempt to 'bring virtual worlds to the web', instead of keeping them boxed away in a separate little garden. As the site puts it: "We knew it was all coming together when one of our team made a game in a day and a half. And then stuck that game on a private MySpace profile. You can inherit someone else's world (if they let you) and use it as a starting point. You can slurp whole directories of art and use them as building blocks. Cut and paste a movement system or a health bar from one world to another. Use an RSS feed for your NPCs. We made puzzle games, RPGs, action games... and set up doorways from one to the other." Virtual World News and GigaOM have writeups of the presentation at the TechCrunch Conference, while Areae's Community Manager Tami Baribeau writes in a post why gamers should care. Over at his site Areae President Raph Koster just breaths a sigh of relief.

wjamesau writes "The war between telecoms and VOIP heats up: according to Om Malik, T-Mobile UK is refusing to interconnect with mobile VoIP provider Truphone, a UK start-up with a mobile VoIP client that enables calls cheaper than mobile. 'T-Mobile told Truphone, that as a result of a policy decision, they don't connect to VoIP-based low cost calling services. T-Mobile UK's decision to block Truphone might have come as a response to the new and radically better Truphone 3.0 client that allows you to send Free SMS messages and allows VoIP calls over 3G. According to M:Metrics, nearly 86% of UK mobile users are heavy SMS users, and that means it is a cash cow that carriers like T-Mobile can't afford to be slaughtered by IP-based SMS services.' Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?"

wjamesau writes "Sun and IBM have launched intranet metaverses designed for business and built to work behind their corporate firewalls, so their worldwide employees can use them to collaborate together. Most interesting to game developers, IBM (which also runs a private, no public access Second Life island as a development lab) created their intranet world from the 3D Torque engine from Garage Games. Will the metaverse actually be thousands of gated community metaverses?"

Doc Ruby writes, "As reported at GigaOM, 'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver,' bridging 100-Gbps ethernet over 10 10-Gbps optical WAN links. Infinera's press release is here. Further from GigaOM: 'The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at [UC] Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.' We're all going to want our share of these 100Gbps networks. The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes, though they're now bringing fiber to the premises to some rich/lucky customers. Are they laying fiber that will bring them to Tbps, or will that stuff clog the way to getting these speeds ourselves?" Rumors say that what runs over Verizon's FiOS is ATM, to support their aspirations for triple-play.

breun writes to bring us up to date on the doings of Jon Lech Johansen, known as "DVD Jon" after he cracked CSS encryption at the age of 15. As reported by GigaOM's Liz Gannes, Johansen has now reverse-engineered Apple's FairPlay DRM — but not to crack it. Instead Johansen's company, DoubleTwist Ventures, wants to license the tech to media companies shut out by Apple from playing their content on the iPod. And, soon, on the iTV. Johansen could end up selling a lot of hardware for Apple.

ChipGuy writes "Despite the growing popularity of p2p networks,Usenet is the real treasure trove of multimedia content including vintage cartoons, westerns and popular television shows. Nearly two terabytes of data is added everyday to Usenet. GUBA, a seven year old San Francisco company is making it easier to find the information on Usenet through the browser. Its like " Google for Usenet," says this report."

prostoalex writes "Nokia delayed its Linux-based tablet product, the first one to use open-source Maemo tablet. The official site still optimistically promises delivery by Q3 2005, but the word is that Nokia is trying to improve the quality of the product and push the product before Christmas."

jacksonwest writes "What's been rumored for some time has now been confirmed -- Google has made a bid in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom's request for information. The details of the bid include citywide access, for free, at 300kbps. The plans dovetail into their location-based advertising and services strategy, and come on the heels of their recent VPN service rollout."

theodp writes "CNET reports on this weekend's Bar Camp, an open-source alternative to O'Reilly Media's A-List Foo Camp, which CEO Tim O'Reilly explains employs a "Bozo filter" to exclude undesirable attendees.

Chris Holland writes "Beyond the WSJ Story, Om Malik gives us inside information obtained by Business 2.0 Magazine about the Apple Video iPod. 'Steve Jobs has spoken with Disney President and soon-to-be CEO Bob Iger about ways to license various Disney content for a video iPod, according to an internal Disney email I have obtained. That could include anything from clips from ESPN and ABC News to short cartoons.' "

VoIPluvr writes "Microsoft, is quietly turning into a voice-over-IP powerhouse. It all started with the launch of its Microsoft Live Communication Server. Bill Gates says, 'Communicating in a better way has a huge impact for business,' and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone. Recently, Microsoft teamed up with VoIP companies like Sylantro to offer hosted IP-PBX services, and now is rumored to have bought Teleo, a small VoIP company based in San Francisco. Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is helping the company extend its reach into the fast growing VoIP business, thus putting it in direct competition with the likes of Cisco. Teleo, for instance could help the company compete more effectively with the likes of Yahoo and Skype."

VoIPluvr writes "Microsoft, is quietly turning into a voice-over-IP powerhouse. It all started with the launch of its Microsoft Live Communication Server. Bill Gates says, 'Communicating in a better way has a huge impact for business,' and he states that he wants Microsoft to marry the PC, the cell phone and the desk phone. Recently, Microsoft teamed up with VoIP companies like Sylantro to offer hosted IP-PBX services, and now is rumored to have bought Teleo, a small VoIP company based in San Francisco. Microsoft's dominance on the desktop is helping the company extend its reach into the fast growing VoIP business, thus putting it in direct competition with the likes of Cisco. Teleo, for instance could help the company compete more effectively with the likes of Yahoo and Skype."

An anonymous reader writes "Google suffered a pretty long outage saturday evening, due to some DNS glitches, according to company spokesperson. All Google services were down for a while, including Gmail and Google AdSense. There seems to be a DNS hijack, as some screen grabs show that Google.com was redirecting to another site, SoGoSearch.com. "

An anonymous reader writes "Google suffered a pretty long outage saturday evening, due to some DNS glitches, according to company spokesperson. All Google services were down for a while, including Gmail and Google AdSense. There seems to be a DNS hijack, as some screen grabs show that Google.com was redirecting to another site, SoGoSearch.com. "

ChipGuy writes "Broadband brings the world right to your laptop or your handheld. With it comes information, and along with it comes desire to stay connected, and on top of everything. Om Malik calls it Internet Anxiety Disorder. 'The rush to catch-up and living a six megabits per second lifestyle, is what I think is going to be first major malaise of the 21st century - Internet anxiety disorder,' he says. Firefox developer, Blake Ross thinks that 'Internet hardwires developing brains with a click-happy sense of urgency that will not defer to reality. We are addicted to information and seek it even when we know it's not available.' Others have described this info-addiction as Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder."

ChipGuy writes "With funds on loan from the Chinese government, Chinese equipment giant, Huawei is undercutting big rivals like Cisco and Nortel, and is using money to buy its way into the U.S. market. Overseas in Europe and Asia it already has become a major force. There are parallels with auto industry and home appliances. It took a little while before prices became a determining factor and shifted growth away from North American vendors. Telecom will go through the same curve. Huawei is curently selling EVDO phones for about $130 and WCDMA phones about $250 which is about 30% than everyone else on the market. Huawei's agenda is pretty clear - get business and sales at any cost. And that means bad news for already struggling telecom industry."

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has a great analysis of how Yahoo is fighting back the Google assault. 'A handful of blog-evangelists, a couple of key buys - (Odd Post and Flickr) have turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes.' Yahoo's new initiatives like Yahoo 360 are even apprently making Yahoo Web 2.0 compliant."

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has a great analysis of how Yahoo is fighting back the Google assault. 'A handful of blog-evangelists, a couple of key buys - (Odd Post and Flickr) have turned Yahoo from a dot.has.been to the new darling of the chattering classes.' Yahoo's new initiatives like Yahoo 360 are even apprently making Yahoo Web 2.0 compliant."

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik points out the launch of Sony PSP in US could actually turn Sony's fortunes around and thinks that new unqiue applications like Sajeeth Cherian's latest software, PSP Video 9, might be the real reason. Cherian created Videora bit torrent client's new hack, PSP Video 9. It takes any video and turns it into a format that PSP can read. So now you can download videos using Videora, and then convert them to PSP friendly format within a few seconds.He calls this PSP casting."

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik points out the launch of Sony PSP in US could actually turn Sony's fortunes around and thinks that new unqiue applications like Sajeeth Cherian's latest software, PSP Video 9, might be the real reason. Cherian created Videora bit torrent client's new hack, PSP Video 9. It takes any video and turns it into a format that PSP can read. So now you can download videos using Videora, and then convert them to PSP friendly format within a few seconds.He calls this PSP casting."

ChipGuy writes "TiVo's death watch has begun. The company is having a tough time finding traction in the marketplace, as more and more competitors rush into the market, most of them deep pocketed satellite and cable companies. But is all lost? What if the company went private and became the anti-cable, letting us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet. Others believe that TiVo should get into the content aggregation business."

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has an opinion piece stating his opinion that Cisco Systems is slowly becoming a security company, a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec. Cisco has bought its way into the market, worried about the security moves of its main rival, Juniper Networks. The company expects to make major announcements at the RSA Conference later this week. "

ChipGuy writes "Om Malik has an opinion piece stating his opinion that Cisco Systems is slowly becoming a security company, a move which may prove problematic for traditional security vendors like Symantec. Cisco has bought its way into the market, worried about the security moves of its main rival, Juniper Networks. The company expects to make major announcements at the RSA Conference later this week. "

Eric writes "In the face of increasing pressure from the likes of Google and MSN, America Online has opened beta testing for its standalone AOL Browser and Desktop Search to anyone with an AOL or AIM screen name. The AOL Browser beta utilizes Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine (not Firefox's, like Netscape) and integrates the company's Desktop Search client. Unlike Netscape it looks decent from the screenshots and also includes some nifty features like tear-off tabs and zooming." And prostoalex writes "In what could be the biggest VOIP push into US households, AOL will start offering VOIP services, as reported by Light Reading. 28% of online Americans subscribe to dial-up or broadband version of AOL, AOL has 4 million broadband users, and beta testers in the Light Reading article seemed to be pretty happy with the service."

Pablo Martinez-Almeida writes "Skype has just announced full versions of its software for Mac OS X and for Linux. Now I'm only waiting for some conversations recording feature. (via Om Malik on broadband)"

ChipGuy writes "The New York Times looks at MythTV (an open source PVR technology), Bit Torrent and Videora and how they are disrupting the television business, especially the lucrative business of selling TV DVDs. Unlike the music industry, television folks are trying to get ahead of the curve and offer TV downloads in a legal and easy to use manner."

ChipGuy writes "SBC is in talks to buy AT&T according to Wall Street Journal and New York Times, both reporting price tag to be between $15-and-$16 billion. The news comes close on heels of SBC reported weaker earnings and 7000 job cuts. The New York Times says talks are fluid and sensitive. Wall Street Journal says, "a major acquisition would speak to SBC Chief Executive Edward Whitacre Jr.'s aim of turning the company into a national brand and his desire to do at least one final deal before he retires." Om Malik writes that "buying AT&T will make sense for anyone, and not just SBC. Why? Because AT&T still is the only game in the enterprise markets. MCI is hurting and Sprint clearly wants to focus on wireless. That leaves AT&T in a pretty good shape.""

ChipGuy writes "Newsweek is reporting on a new elitist club called the Silicon Valley 100, an exclusive group of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs like Marc Andressen, Esther Dyson, Chris Shipley, and Ross Mayfield. The Schwag Set will get a lot of free stuff which they will either recommend or not, to unsuspecting masses. Dan Gillmor thinks 'it is oddly creepy', and urges people on this list to 'bow out of this exercise entirely.' Om Malik says it ironic that 'the first product being offered is a shitter! What Crap!'"

ChipGuy writes "Newsweek is reporting on a new elitist club called the Silicon Valley 100, an exclusive group of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs like Marc Andressen, Esther Dyson, Chris Shipley, and Ross Mayfield. The Schwag Set will get a lot of free stuff which they will either recommend or not, to unsuspecting masses. Dan Gillmor thinks 'it is oddly creepy', and urges people on this list to 'bow out of this exercise entirely.' Om Malik says it ironic that 'the first product being offered is a shitter! What Crap!'"

ChipGuy writes "Things are getting bleak for TiVo, reports the New York Times, and adds that TiVo blew a major opportunity to team up with Comcast. And that might have cost CEO Michael Ramsey the job. Om Malik writes that 'The fate of TiVo also highlights the dilemma facing a lot of "exploding TV" start-ups. The technology does not necessarily translate into profits and a business,' and breaks down the financials -- over half a billion dollars in losses so far. PVRBlog adds that 'When the story of TiVo is written, this Comcast negotiation could be the point when the company's outcome was decided.' More reactions here."

ChipGuy writes "Things are getting bleak for TiVo, reports the New York Times, and adds that TiVo blew a major opportunity to team up with Comcast. And that might have cost CEO Michael Ramsey the job. Om Malik writes that 'The fate of TiVo also highlights the dilemma facing a lot of "exploding TV" start-ups. The technology does not necessarily translate into profits and a business,' and breaks down the financials -- over half a billion dollars in losses so far. PVRBlog adds that 'When the story of TiVo is written, this Comcast negotiation could be the point when the company's outcome was decided.' More reactions here."

ChipGuy writes "Things are getting bleak for TiVo, reports the New York Times, and adds that TiVo blew a major opportunity to team up with Comcast. And that might have cost CEO Michael Ramsey the job. Om Malik writes that 'The fate of TiVo also highlights the dilemma facing a lot of "exploding TV" start-ups. The technology does not necessarily translate into profits and a business,' and breaks down the financials -- over half a billion dollars in losses so far. PVRBlog adds that 'When the story of TiVo is written, this Comcast negotiation could be the point when the company's outcome was decided.' More reactions here."

Aaron B. Russell writes "Om Malik reports that Six Apart are looking to buy blogging community LiveJournal.com. Rumour? I hope so. I seriously hope so. Neither Six Apart nor Danga Interactive (the company behind LiveJournal) have commented on the situation yet. What impact will this have for the users and volunteers over at LiveJournal? Chris Schmidt, a volunteer at LiveJournal, hypothesizes here(1) and here(2) ." Sources close to LiveJournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick say this is just a rumor, and that LJ is not being sold. Update: 01/06 by J : Our sources were way wrong.

ChipGuy writes "With all the hoopla around Tivo To Go, SBC Communications has launched its own PVR-plus-set-top box which integrates SBC DSL with its satellite service. From the looks of it, this could be the trend where phone operators offer their one set-top box/ home media servers. This is not good news for TiVo or Microsoft which harbors living room ambitions. 2Wire might be the dark horse in set-top box sweepstakes."

Chris Holland writes "On the heels of Juniper Networks' recent release of its TX Matrix Platform, Om Malik is giving an interesting overview of current and upcoming battles between protagonists of the Router Game, armed with their Terabit toys."

Chris Holland writes "On the heels of the recent launch of the preview release of Downhill Battle's Blog Torrent, Nicholas Reville further articulates his vision of a "TiVo for the Internet" in an interview by James Enck for The Broadband Daily. Nicholas touches on the P2P promise, various players, revenue models, and the healthy challenges coming Big Media's way."

Chris Holland writes "Right on the heels of a positive FCC regulation preventing individual U.S. States from levying taxes on VoIP communications, SBC, according to Om Malik, appears to have brought to a quick end the 'lets not pay any termination fees' party that had VoIP upstarts drunk. Jeff Pulver is also sharing his take."

Chris Holland writes "Right on the heels of a positive FCC regulation preventing individual U.S. States from levying taxes on VoIP communications, SBC, according to Om Malik, appears to have brought to a quick end the 'lets not pay any termination fees' party that had VoIP upstarts drunk. Jeff Pulver is also sharing his take."

Chris Holland writes "Daniel Berninger wrote the most informative article about Voice over IP I've ever read, over at Om Malik's blog. It outlines in great details the history behind the evolution of traditional communication technologies framed within the convergence of various Internet-related technological advances, and the challenges PSTN telcos are facing to hold-on to their shares of this lucrative pie. Beyond mere technological issues, Berninger offers great parallels and insights on past, current, and future governmental regulatory policies. A must read for anyone who's ever talked on the phone."

Kaa writes "Short version: Comcast's cable modem/802.11g base station that is made by Linksys has capabilities to 'phone home' to Comcast and tell them how many devices are connected to your WiFi base station, how much bandwidth they are using, etc. It also has the capability to 'disable LAN segments' which, I assume, means they can kick your devices off your home network if they choose to do so. Something tells me this particular device won't make it into my house..."