By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

As we reported earlier, rumors about Dell and AMD have been running rampant lately. Forbes is reporting today that Doug Freedman with American Technology Research has stated that AMD is within weeks of getting CPUs into Dell PCs.

The analyst says Dell will first use AMD chips in its notebook PCs, and later add them to its servers and desktop PCs. Source: Forbes

We Say: They keep teasing us! If you remember, a Dell UK executive said not to read too much into certain comments that had been made earlier by Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins. I have been saying all along that I think this time it will really happen, but I won’t really believe it until it does.

By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

I just found this very interesting extension for Firefox (there’s an IE version too though) called SiteAdvisor.  SiteAdvisor is designed to help keep you informed about the websites that you are visiting (or may visit).  It works similarly to Google’s search engine, utilizing bots to scour the web and report back on the sites that they come across.  The sites get added to a master list which your local copy of SiteAdvisor can then access when you visit a site or perform a search to tell you if there’s anything you need to be concerned about from a particular website.

Another nice feature of the software is that it doesn’t just give you a vague impression of a site’s trustworthiness.  It gives you the down-and-dirty details including whether they will try to bombard you with popups, install shady software on your computer, or spam your email address (should you give it out).  If you’ve just performed a search, you can see a summary of the findings by moving your mouse over the icons next to the search results.  Also, if you’ve already visited the site, you can click on the small SiteAdvisor button on the bottom-right corner of your screen and go to a page with an even more in-depth report of the website.  It even makes a chart of all the sites that the website in question links to and rates them (the quality of sites linked to also effects a page’s rating).

There were two things that did make me a little uneasy about the SiteAdvisor plugin at first.  The first was that I was worried about what information it may collect about my browsing habits and the second was performance.  Since the extension needs to contact its servers for every website you visit, this could conceivably slow down your browsing experience.  Luckily, I noticed no slow-down on a high-speed internet connection.  I also closely read the short EULA (short is good) and tried to find out what they did with my data, if anything at all.  As it turns out, they do collect which websites you visit but they do not attach any personally identifiable information to the data.  They claim that the only reason they keep track of which websites are popular is to be able to make sure that popular websites get examined.  This seems reasonable enough to me, and since they aren’t even attaching my IP address to this data, it seems fairly innocuous.  It’s no more intrusive than the “PageRank” feature found in the Google Toolbar. In fact, SiteAdvisor seems to have beaten Microsoft to the punch in providing feedback on the quality of webpages (a feature planned for IE7). Good job!

We Say:  I hope that the only reason you haven’t already downloaded SiteAdvisor is that I haven’t given you a link to it yet.  Well here it is. Now what’s your excuse?

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

First off, I want to thank Microsoft for giving us early information on this. I spoke with Gary Schare, Director of IE Product Management at Microsoft. As of right now, you can download the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Public Preview HERE. I installed the software, and although I will say it’s still buggy (more on that later), it’s definitely a step in the right direction for Microsoft. You can expect a full review later in the week, as I play with this release more. Note: it requires Windows XP SP2 … and 32-bit. There will be a later beta release for 2003 Server as well as a 64-bit version released later.

What to Expect:
As opposed to the refresh of Internet Explorer which occurred with SP2, which was security-centric, IE7 has three areas of focus: security, user interface, and an improved platform. We’ll take a quick look at each of these; details can be found on Microsoft’s website.
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By Chief Gadgeteer, Gizmos for Geeks
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Being a (recreational) soccer player, this news item naturally caught my eye: adidas recently announced a new concept in soccer boots, a modular boot. The new +F50 TUNIT, as the model is called, consists of 3 interchangeable components: the upper, the chassis and the studs. Of course, each part comes in different styles and functions to suit different weather and pitch conditions. Now you can decide how your boot will look and work. Already, adidas has lined up quite a number of star players to wear the new shoes at the 2006 World Cup in Germany this summer. I’d love to get my feet into a pair of these, but I can already imagine the price tag attached to these puppies.

Source: Gizmos for Geeks.

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

You may recall the $100 Laptop project, hand-cranked laptops that Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has called a “gadget“. The project was founded by Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT’s Media Laboratory.

Negroponte failed to reach agreement with Microsoft on the usage of Windows CE in the laptop, and has since decided on Linux. Since then Microsoft has started to talk up its own concept: a specially configured cellular phone turned into a computer by connecting it to a TV and a keyboard.

Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder and chairman, demonstrated a mockup of his proposed cellular PC at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and he mentioned it as a cheaper alternative to traditional PC’s and laptops during a public discussion here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Craig J. Mundie, Microsoft’s vice president and chief technology officer, said in an interview here that the company was still developing the idea, but that both he and Mr. Gates believed that cellphones were a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations. “Everyone is going to have a cellphone,” Mr. Mundie said, noting that in places where TV’s are already common, turning a phone into a computer could simply require adding a cheap adaptor and keyboard. Source: New York Times

We Say: I’m not sure how accurate “Everyone is going to have a cellphone” is, and I’m also not sure how much, if any, the decision against Windows CE had to do with Microsoft’s stance. Apparently Microsoft offered an open-source version of Windows CE, and Apple also offered free versions of OS X, but both were turned down in favor of Linux. However, the Times said Gates has been privately bitter about the rejection.

Of course, most phones today run Symbian. Any Windows Mobile based phone would seem to be out of reach price-wise for this project. Negroponte said he was not opposed to the idea of building a low-cost computer using a cellphone, but that a laptop was shown to be a better solution. At any rate, I hope the project continues to get attention and funding, no matter what the final design. That’s the most important thing.

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Zone Labs announced that 180Solutions has dropped it’s lawsuit that sought to get them to change how they labeled their Zango and Search Assistant programs. No reason was released by 180, nor was this a settlement.

“From the inception of the suit, we believed it had no merit,” said John Slavitt, general counsel for Check Point Software Technologies, parent company of Zone Labs. “ZoneAlarm alerts are triggered by the behavior of a program, not its name. If the180Solutions software exhibits suspicious behavior, we alert our customers accordingly. We did not make any concessions or reach a settlement after the suit was filed.”

For example, if a customer downloads the 180Solutions’ Zango program today, the following ZoneAlarm alert is shown to the user: “Zango is attempting to monitor user activities on your computer. If allowed it may try to track or log keystrokes (user input), mouse movements/clicks, Web sites visited, and other user behaviors.” Source: Finanzen.net

We Say: Could 180Solutions be giving up? Nah, too much money would be left on the table, so they must have talked to a sensible attorney finally who told them to give it up. Probably not, but whatever reason, it makes it seem like some common sense has slid in behind the scenes amid all the deceptive practices, maybe they had to lay off some lawyers….

By Jimmy Daniels
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Microsoft has been forced to issue new versions of it Office suites, Office 2003 and Office XP, as a result of the patent dispute it was involved in with Carlos Armando Amado, because of the way their Access database product interacts with Excel. They have begun issuing emails to corporate customers who purchased Office from March 1997 until July 2003, and have been ordered to pay 8.9 million because of the patent infringement.

“It was recently decided in a court of law that certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office XP Professional and Microsoft Access 2002 infringe a third-party patent,” Microsoft said in an e-mail to customers. “As a result, Microsoft must make available a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing code replaced.”

Although existing customers can keep using older versions on current machines, any new installations of Office 2003 will require Service Pack 2, released by Microsoft in September. Office XP will need to be put into use with a special patch applied.

Microsoft is also recommending that customers update their existing software with the new code.

“We understand that this will create an inconvenience for a small percentage of our customers…. Source: News.com

We Say: Notice how everything seems to be an in inconvenience unless it involves some corporation losing money? So, most organizations will have to check to make sure their macros and databases all still work and then start using the new patch, I wonder how “immediate” that will be. And update their existing software, good luck. As good of a time as any for them to start pushing Office 12…

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

Let’s say you have a state with low population density, but you still want complete coverage for the whole state. That can be an expensive proposition, and not all that cost-effective, to build up cell towers across the state. Extend America Inc., a wireless telecommunications company is looking to solve that problem by using weather balloons instead. According to CEO Ed Schafer (former governor of North Dakota, where a test is to take place), “To cover every square mile of North Dakota, it would take 1,100 cell towers. We can do the whole state with three balloons.”

The balloons themselves would drift across the state, eventually dropping the repeater when they drift outside North Dakota. The balloons only cost $55 apiece whereas a tower would cost $250,000 … and the repeater should be recoverable and reusable.

Up to 20 miles above the earth, well above commercial airliner pathways, steady stratospheric winds would push the latex balloons across the state at about 30 mph. Each balloon would deliver voice and data service to an area hundreds of miles in diameter.

“Nine balloons would always be in the air, with some going up, some going down, and some in the middle,” Schafer said. Source: AP via ABC News

We Say: Cost-wise, this makes a lot of sense. There simply isn’t enough population density to make towers viable. Will it work? The test will be run in the next few weeks, so we’ll be watching.