MTS courses for your strong career‏

LIMITED SEATS, DISCOUNT AVAILABLE FOR GROUPS

Google Reader widget brings RSS to the desktop

Users of Google's Desktop software have a new first party widget to play with. This one lets you use most of Google Reader's features without having to fire up your browser. It puts Google Reader's source list in your sidebar where you can peruse feeds you're subscribed to and read individual stories in a small pop-up window that slides out across your screen.

The widget works both in Google Desktop's dock and "popped out" on its own. Between the two, I prefer it off the dock since you can see more of the feeds and stories at once without having to change the height and width of your sidebar; something that can affect the look and feel of other widgets.

One major drawback is that it can't yet properly display HTML-formatted feeds, meaning some of your feeds will be left unreadable with images and page formatting stripped out. However, just like in Google Reader proper, you can simply click on the headline to hop to it on its original site.

I also found performance on this widget to be a tad sluggish. It doesn't provide the instant feedback you get in the browser. For instance, clicking on my source list of feeds and seeing them appear took about two or three seconds. The same goes for any time you drill down to see any feed's list of stories.

Early flaws aside, there is a serious convenience factor here. You can keep an eye on your feeds no matter what you're doing, and read entire articles without the need to launch another app or be signed in with a specific Google account back in the browser.

What Apple could learn from Nokia and Google

Apple is well known for its simplicity, but the upcoming version of the iPhone's system software is exhibiting usability weaknesses that companies like Nokia solved years ago.

Earlier this week, as part of the ramp-up towards releasing this software to the public, Apple began running a stress test of push notifications--the hallmark feature of the new operating system. This system sends notifications to your phone whenever there's an update from an application, even when it's not running.

To manage the onslaught of notifications from each application, Apple added a new menu that lets users manage push notification settings for each application, as well as providing a quick switch to turn them all on or off. While handy, this introduces an annoying problem for business users that Nokia solved a decade ago by providing a quick way to toggle multiple settings without the hassle of menu hopping.

User sound profiles, something that Nokia has had in its phones for over a decade, do just that. These let you change multiple settings on the device with just two button presses, and include things like ringer volume, vibration, keyboard tones, and control over how much attention each type of alert can get.

The best part is, you can switch between these profiles by quickly tapping the power button and choosing from a pop-up menu. You're also able to make your own custom profiles with settings you choose. There's even the option to have them automatically turn on and off during certain times of day, so you can have it switch to silent after 10 p.m. so it won't wake you or your significant other up when you're trying to go to sleep.

On the iPhone, you have one profile, and one profile only. Even if you turn the ringer sound off by flipping the volume silencer switch, you will still receive alerts and vibrations for incoming calls, e-mails, text messages, etc. Worse, with iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has embedded some of the options to turn these things on and off a little deeper than they were in version 2.0.

The new notification settings now live where the e-mail push notification used to reside. That menu has been pushed ever deeper into the mail settings, which means that to tweak things like how often it fetches e-mail and pops up with calendar items and invitations, you have to dive three settings menus deep (not including the two or more actions required to wake and unlock the phone and get to the settings menu).

A small tweak to Apple's handling of e-mail fetching has a big effect on usability for business users.

(Credit: CNET)

So here's my problem with all this: when I start my work day I want to turn all this stuff back on after having to have turned it off so I wouldn't hear a buzz or have the screen light up every few minutes while I was asleep. I want it to get my work and Yahoo e-mail via push, and fetch all other mail every 15 minutes. I want to flip the push notifications back on, too. Now I have to go through two different settings menus, flipping each one of those things on, when there really should be one where I can manage both.

Even better would be a system similar to Nokia's where I can set up the phone to do these activities at certain times of the day, just like I'm able to set up with timed alarms. Or how about making use of these $30 and $50 plastic charging docks by having the phone automatically switch to certain settings when it's in a particular dock. Heck, that would make me want to buy one for work and home.

What really surprises me about this is that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has been a notorious stickler about the details in the software and hardware found inside the company's products. An anecdote about Jobs in Steven Levy's Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, mentions that he badgered the engineering team of the original iPod repeatedly when he couldn't get to the song he wanted in a certain number of clicks, something which led to the original iPod's simplistic text menu structure.

Jobs wanted to get to a song in just three clicks. I just want to turn my e-mail and notifications on and off in less than nine.

Third party innovation

The SBsettings menu for jailbroken iPhones lets users quickly change settings for multiple apps and services.

(Credit: BigBoss.org)

Just because Apple has not addressed this issue with its own software releases doesn't mean it hasn't been worked on by others.

A third party iPhone developer known as BigBoss solved half these problems eight months ago with an app for jailbroken iPhones called SBsettings. This is a menu that drops down when you slide your finger across the top of the iPhone, and provides quick on/off access to various features like 3G, Bluetooth, and the phone signal. The closest Apple's iPhone software gets to that is with the airplane mode, however that's an all or nothing solution, and still requires exiting whatever application you're in.

What's nice about SBsettings is that it follows you no matter what app you're using, which is exactly the kind of system-level control Apple needs to bake into a future firmware revision.

The company has already done this with some of the hardware buttons, and special software-controlled combinations like clicking on the home button twice to call up things like iPod controls, phone favorites, and soon the phone-wide search. But where it's really lacking is when you need to make a quick change in an app, and don't want to exit it to do it. This happens to me all the time when I need to hop over to a different Wi-Fi network, or am reading something in bed and want to turn the brightness down. It's just a pain to exit whatever I'm doing and dig through Apple's ever-growing settings menu.

In comparison, Google's more open approach on its Android mobile platform has led to a handful of genuinely useful apps that let you accomplish exactly the type of functionality I pined for earlier. One called Toggle is very similar to SBsettings, and puts most of your phone's antenna controls right in the status bar, so you can very quickly swipe your finger down and adjust Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, screen brightness, volume levels, and airplane mode. Like SBsettings it can be set up to be systemwide, which means its available whenever you need it, from any app you're using.

Another, called Locale can change a number of settings when you get within a certain geographical radius. I used this app to very quickly set up a radius for my work here at CNET in San Francisco and at my house over in the Oakland. When I get into either one of these two zones it can change things like screen brightness, ringtone, the wallpaper, and which phone antennas are turned on and off.

This innovation already exists, and it could make the iPhone OS that much easier to use. While Apple has often remained steadfast on keeping things overly simplistic to appeal to the masses (see the Mighty Mouse, buttonless Shuffle, one-input cinema LCD displays, et al) it's making the business of getting business done on the iPhone a more complicated affair.

Any business users who intend to use the iPhone for work and play have many things to look forward to with the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 update, but juggling notifications, e-mail fetching, and other settings could add up to quite a headache.

Apple did not respond to calls or e-mails for comment on changes to these menus.

Update: Developer Mario Intelliborn pinged me to let me know about his MyProfiles app for jailbroken iPhones. It lets you do most of the things I'm talking about and more, including a way to make calls and notifications from certain parties get through. To use it you need to have a phone that's been jailbroken to allow for unsigned, third-party applications.

Microsoft to unveil Kumo search engine next week

Microsoft will demonstrate its long-awaited next-generation search technology, code-named Kumo, next week at the D: All Things Digital technology conference, according to reports.

Both The Wall Street Journal and the All Things Digital blog (both owned by News Corp.) are citing unnamed sources saying Kumo will make its official public debut at the conference.

In response to an e-mail seeking confirmation of the reports, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company has nothing new to announce at this time.

For the past two months, Microsoft has been running an internal test of the search technology. However, some of the design changes that are part of that update are now in limited public testing, as one user seemed to discover last week (see screenshot below).

Kumo, a name sources say is not final, is expected to include more than just changes to the look of Microsoft's search engine. Among the expected enhancements is the inclusion of semantic search technology Microsoft got as part of last year's purchase of Powerset.

The software giant has a considerable game of catch-up to play as it has continued to trail Yahoo and Google despite years of investment. According to March numbers from Nielsen Online, Microsoft had 10.3 percent of the U.S. search market, as compared to 15.8 percent for Yahoo and 64.2 percent for Google. (Coincidentally, numbers for April were the same.)

Staff writer Ina Fried contributed to this report.

This search result for Zune, seen on Live Search by enthusiast Ryan Rea, bears a significant resemblance to the Kumo prototype that Microsoft has been testing internally. (Click for larger version)

AT&T Netbook data plans go coast-to-coast

If you've been waiting for AT&T's Netbook data plans to come to your area, the wait is almost over.

The company first offered these plans exclusively in Philadelphia earlier this year. Saying that trial was a success, AT&T announced Tuesday its intent to expand these data plans to the rest of U.S. this summer.

This means you'll soon be able to buy mini ultraportable laptops made by Dell, Lenovo, and Acer at a discounted price when you get a 3G data plan at one of AT&T's retails store or on its Web site.

According to an IDC report published in April, by the end of 2009, worldwide shipments of mini laptops could reach 22 million. Obviously, AT&T wants its share of the growing Netbook pie.

Currently, details on pricing and availability of the new devices and the data plans are not finalized and AT&T said it would announce that at a later time. However, the company has made it clear that Netbooks embedded with AT&T 3G services will also be available through other national retailers.

OpenID comes to Facebook, at last

For the past few years, Facebook has been flirting with the possibility of supporting the OpenID log-in standard, which calls itself "an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity" without actually building support for it.

Now, the massive social network--once famous for its ultra-walled-garden approach to data and user experience--announced Monday that it has become an OpenID "relying party," which basically means that it's started, at last, to deploy support for the standard. Facebook joined the OpenID Foundation in February, even though many considered its Facebook Connect log-in standard to be a proprietary competitor.

But, Monday's announcement indicated, Facebook believes the two can work in tandem.

"We've always let our users express their real world connections," a post on the Facebook blog read. "From the beginning, Facebook users could use their college and workplace identities to establish real world networks. Now, they can use open standards to establish their identities on Facebook."

Most notably, you can now register for a Facebook account with your Gmail account, or can link an existing Facebook account with Gmail or other OpenID-participating services if they support automatic log-in.

"We've always believed that making the user experience as secure, lightweight, and intuitive as possible, which 200 million people can comfortably enjoy and understand, is one of our top priorities," the blog post read. That could be a subtle nod to the fact that OpenID, founded in 2005, has historically been a bit difficult for the non-tech-savvy to comprehend.

Facebook's blog post also said that security concerns have been an issue. In working with the OpenID community, "we shared our experience developing Facebook Connect, where we eventually came up with a design that ensures that users would know that they were providing their login credentials to Facebook, and not some unscrupulous site."

The plus side? Facebook's tests have indicated that if new users can register with an existing Web service account, like Gmail, that they are more likely to stick around.

Apple and AT&T playing favorites with the App Store?

Just under a year since first announced, the SlingPlayer Mobile application is finally available for the iPhone . But compared with the capabilities of the same application available on other smartphone platforms, the iPhone version of SlingPlayer is curiously handicapped.

The version set to arrive Wednesday costs $30, and can stream a TV signal from a set connected to a Slingbox to the iPhone. But this version is available using Wi-Fi only. It's notable because the beta version of the application was demonstrated at CES using the iPhone's 3G connection. So why is it turned off in the official release? Recent changes in the terms of service that comes with AT&T's iPhone wireless service may offer some clues.

Apple rejected the original version of the application Sling submitted to the App Store that required use of the phone's 3G service, according to Sling. It was subsequently approved when it was modified so that it will just use local Wi-Fi hotspots. Apple's exact reason for rejecting it isn't clear. There are plenty of video- and audio-streaming applications available today in Apple's App Store, from smaller streaming services like Orb and Last.fm (owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive), and heavyweights like MLB.com's At Bat, CBS' TV.com, and YouTube.

While Apple has certainly not been shy about exercising its veto power over App Store applications-- just ask Trent Reznor , for example--it's unclear why Sling's streaming video service is being treated differently from, say, the YouTube app (owned by Apple-friendly Google), which has been available on the iPhone since the device's launch.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment about why only the Wi-Fi version of SlingPlayer was approved. But it appears the rejection also could have been at AT&T's behest. Early in April, AT&T changed its terms of service for wireless customers , saying that redirecting TV video or audio signals--as the SlingPlayer does--was no longer allowed on its network. After a public outcry, AT&T quickly reversed its decision, citing "a mistake." But then last week the company reinstated the ban in its TOS .

Then on Friday the head of PR for AT&T, Mark Siegel went on the Clark Howard radio show and very clearly said that "Slinging"--the process of accessing a TV signal from a Slingbox from a remote computer--was banned on the company's network.

Siegel compared using Sling's service over a wireless connection to sending bulk e-mail and spam, activities, which he said eat up too much of the network's bandwidth. "You can't use a service called 'Slinging,' where you redirect a wireless TV signal to your phone. We do not allow that type of application on our phones," he said. "It's absolutely cool (technology), but if we allowed these kinds of services, the highway would quickly become clogged."

He confirmed again to CNET News on Tuesday that AT&T believes the SlingPlayer app would take up more bandwidth than it should. To be fair AT&T does have a valid point. Streaming video eats up a lot of bandwidth . Because cellular networks are divided into cells, users in a particular cell share the available bandwidth in that cell or region. So users streaming a lot of high-quality video over the network, could potentially eat up all the available bandwidth and degrade service for other subscribers in that cell.

But there's a slight disconnect in what AT&T is saying and what it is doing: Other 3G smartphones that operate on AT&T's network can use the SlingPlayer . For example, the SlingPlayer works on several BlackBerry devices, the BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Pearl 8120, BlackBerry Curve 8320 and the BlackBerry 8820. Users are able to download the mobile SlingPlayer application directly from the Sling Media website onto their phones.

Siegel says that AT&T's terms of use are clear when it comes to the SlingPlayer and he suggests that anyone downloading these applications onto a smartphone for use over its 3G network is in violation of the company's terms of use.

Bandwidth usage is a legitimate concern when it comes to SlingPlayer. The software is designed to provide the best quality video experience based on how much bandwidth is available. But Dave Eyler, product manager for mobile at Sling Media, said that the latest version of the SlingPlayer submitted to Apple for the App Store capped the bit rate to ensure it was below Apple's and AT&T's threshold. He said that the application actually uses a little less bandwidth than TV.com's application.

"Our latest application, which was submitted for App Store, is under the bit rate that Apple has set for these kinds of applications," he said. "And we are below some of the apps that have already been approved for the App Store."

So why won't Apple allow the SlingPlayer for the iPhone to be used over AT&T's network if it doesn't eat up any more bandwidth than other video applications that have already been approved by Apple?

That's a good question. Eyler said the explanation given to his team was that AT&T doesn't allow video services that redirect TV signals onto their network. But interestingly, OrbLive, which is offered on the App Store, also redirects TV signals onto the iPhone. The application is designed to allow people to stream media from a PC to the iPhone wirelessly. And the company's website explicitly states that live TV can be streamed over 3G, Wi-Fi, or the slower 2.5G EDGE network, if someone is using a TV tuner card in their PC. This essentially "turns your iPhone or iPod touch into an on-demand media center," the site says.

OrbLive's application sounds very similar to what the SlingPlayer does. Eyler admits the situation is confusing and a bit frustrating. But he says the company isn't getting too bent out of shape about things.

"We think our app is awesome," he said. "There is a lot of Wi-Fi out there. Of course, we'd like it to be available on a 3G network, and that's ultimately our goal. But we don't have any more details about the decision making process."

Apple releases OS X 10.5.7

Apple on Tuesday released OS X 10.5.7 , an update to its Leopard operating system that is intended to fix a variety of bugs and security issues, as well as provide expanded hardware support.

Several security issues are addressed in the update, including issues related to Apache Web server, PHP, CoreGraphics, and Safari . The update patches three separate vulnerabilities in Apple Type Services, QuickDraw Manager, and WebKit, all of which could allow for arbitrary code execution.

Among the hardware support enhancements is additional RAW image support for third-party digital cameras--a format that allows for retention of more image information than JPEGs. The update also improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with Nvidia graphics components and resolves an issue with Dvorak keyboard layout in Mac OS X 10.5.6.

OS X 10.5.7 includes patches for issues related to network stability and performance, as well as issues related to logging in to Gmail and synching contacts on Yahoo. The update also includes a patch to improve the accuracy of several Dashboard widgets, including Unit Converter, Stocks, Weather, and Movies.

Improvements to iCal include improved reliability with CalDav as well as automatic syncing with MobileMe. Apple has also improved its Parental Controls and applications restrictions.

The update, which is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard, is available through a standalone installer or Software Update.

Some users have complained about installation issues related to the update. For troubleshooting tips, see MacFixIt .

AT&T to cut iPhone service plan by $10

AT&T may slash the price of its iPhone service plan by $10 when a new version of the touchscreen smartphone is launched this summer, according to a story on TheStreet.com.

The article cited analyst Michael Cote of Cote Collaborative saying that there is a "strong possibility" that AT&T will drop the entry-level price of its service plan to $59 from $69. Apple is expected to unveil the latest iPhone on June 8 during the company's World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

(Credit: Apple)

AT&T declined to comment for this story, and Michael Cote did not respond to an e-mail request for an interview.

The price cut would likely help make the iPhone, which now retails for $200 with a two-year service plan with AT&T, more appealing to more mainstream customers. I've been saying for quite some time that the biggest hurdle to widescale adoption of the iPhone or any other smartphone in the mainstream market is the high price tag of the service contracts.

Consumers have shown that they are willing to pay anywhere between $100 and $200 for a sophisticated smartphone device. But the monthly service charge, which starts at $69 for the iPhone, is much harder to swallow.

It puts the real cost of the iPhone 3G over the life of the two-year contract at a whopping $1,856, which includes the price of the 8GB phone and 24 months of the most basic iPhone voice and data plan. It doesn't include the activation fee or taxes and other fees associated with the account. For subscribers who need more voice minutes or unlimited texting, the price tag is even higher.

Still, a $240 reduction in the overall cost of the phone over the life of the contract could entice some cost-conscious consumers.

AT&T and Apple have slashed the price of the iPhone twice already. The first version of the device introduced nearly two years ago was originally priced at $599 for the 8GB version. A couple months after the release, Apple reduced it to $399. When the new iPhone 3G was introduced, AT&T subsidized the cost of the phone and offered it for $199 with a two-year contract. The price cut likely helped the companies sell about 17 million iPhones last year, compared to about 4 million devices in 2007.

For the most part, Apple and AT&T have managed to keep the subsidy and sale price of the iPhone constant over the past year, while other carriers and smartphone makers have been forced to slash prices to attract customers.

Only a month after it hit the market, T-Mobile's G1 started selling for $148 from Wal-Mart. And three months after it launched the Storm, Verizon Wireless started offering a special buy-one-get-one free promotion that allowed customers who bought any BlackBerry device, including the Storm, to get another one free.

But as competition heats up in the smartphone market, AT&T and Apple could be forced to address the affordability issue to gain new customers. This is especially true as Research In Motion's consumer-focused BlackBerry Curve surpasses the iPhone in sales. And with the Palm Pre also set to launch in early June on Sprint Nextel's network, Apple and AT&T will face even more competition.

Screenshots point to digital compass in new iPhone

(Credit: Boy Genius Report)

Rumors first floated a month ago that there would be a magnetometer built in to the next version of the iPhone. Now there appear to be corroborating screenshots, which Boy Genius Report has obtained.

The images show a debugging menu with the option to "show in compass," that is purportedly going to show up when the upgraded iPhone debuts.

One of the interesting things you can do with a digital compass is introduce augmented reality-type applications, as MacRumors suggests. Mobile augmented reality can use a phone's camera and compass to let a device capture an image of a location, like San Francisco's Union Square, for example. Information from the compass would allow names of locations to pop up on top of the image.

While this would be new for the iPhone and for Apple, others (like Nokia) have been working on this exact type of mobile application for several years. HP Labs has also looked at the usefulness of mobile augmented reality.

A digital compass also allows for the iPhone to catch up to the G1's capability of doing Google Maps in "compass mode." In the Street View mode, as you move the phone around, so does the view of the map.

We won't find out for sure until Apple does release the next iPhone, which is expected to happen sometime this summer.

English is Fun

Spotted in a toilet of a London office:
TOILET OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW.

In a London Laundromat:
AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT

Outside a London second-hand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING - BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

Spotted in a safari park:
ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR

Seen during a London conference:
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN'T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAY CARE ON THE 1ST FLOOR

Notice in a field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES

On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR, THE BELL DOESN'T WORK)


People in other countries sometimes go out of their way to communicate with their English-speaking tourists. Here is a list of signs seen around the world :

At a Budapest zoo:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Doctors office, Rome :
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Hotel, Acapulco :
THE MANAGER HAS PERSONALLY PASSED ALL THE WATER SERVED HERE.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE SHOULD WAIT AND SEE THE MANAGER.

In a City restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

In a Calcutta Coffee House:
PEOPLE DISCARDING CIGARETTE STUBS IN CUPS WILL BE SERVED COFFEE IN ASH TRAYS

The iPhone's secret silicon: A need to know?

The precise specifications for many iPhone chips are murky. Should Apple be more open about its secret ingredients?

We know the precise dimensions of the outside of the iPhone--but what's inside?

(Credit: Apple)

Granted, many people don't care about the silicon inside their iPhone. They just want it to work. That said, I think more than a few people would like to see the specifications for the iPhone's core silicon posted on Apple's Web site.

By comparison, take your typical laptop. Prospective buyers are able to see the exact specifications and make an informed buying decision. Though the iPhone isn't offered in different processor SKUs (models) like a laptop, the iPhone comes close to a PC in its capabilities and demands more disclosure.

Nikkei's TechOn Web site takes a stab at what the iPhone's main chip might be--generically referred to as an application(s) processor: "An LSI (large-scale integrated circuit) printed with Apple Inc.'s logo ("339S0036 ARM K4X1G163PC-DGC3") was embedded on the center right of the board. It was assumed to be an application processor with an ARM core. Because it included a letter string beginning with 'K,' it seemed to be manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. of Korea."

Semiconductor Insights is a little more specific, saying it's a "Samsung ARM11-based design."

Here's my point: Am I getting a smartphone with a Samsung, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Freescale, Nvidia or Intel processor? As high-end smartphones proliferate (such as those based on Intel's upcoming "Moorestown" processor), it would be useful to know up front who makes the applications processor and other core silicon and what the rated performance-per-watt of that chip is. And right now, the iPhone is the most prominent high-end smartphone.

Don't think smartphone makers should go down the same path as laptops, which are plastered with Intel, AMD, ATI, Nvidia, and Microsoft stickers? Maybe not. But more about what makes the device tick could only be helpful.

Would anybody else like to know?

Transparent plastic solar cells fitted into windows

Solar company Konarka has developed a transparent solar cell that it hopes will be built onto electricity-generating windows.

The Lowell, Mass.-based company on Tuesday said it has reached an agreement with Arch Aluminum & Glass to use Konarka's plastic solar cells in building materials, including windows.

A transparent solar cell Konarka hopes will be fitted into power-generating windows.

(Credit: Konarka)

Under its Arch Active Solar Glass development, the company has built prototypes of windows with the solar cells between two panes of glass. The photovoltaic cells can be tinted different colors.

"It is energy-efficient and transparent with superior vertical performance and a subtle red, blue or green aesthetic. With these features, BIPV (building-integrated photovoltaics) will no longer need to be confined to spandrel or overhead applications," Arch CEO Leon Silverstein said in a statement.

Konarka makes organic solar cells made from flexible plastic. Last fall, it opened a factory in Massachusetts to manufacture the cells which come off assembly lines as spools fitted with wires to carry electricity.

The advantage of these flexible cells is that they can be used for a wide range of applications, such as power-generating military tents, portable chargers for electronics, and sensors.

Photos: Building on flexible solar cells

But these organic photovoltaics aren't very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity and won't last as long as a rooftop solar panel, which is typically under warranty for 25 years. Konarka said late last year that it achieved 6 percent efficiency in its labs but that's not yet available in its products. A high-efficiency silicon solar cell, the most common cell material, can be over 20 percent.

Konarka's factory is turning out red solar cells but has started making the transparent cells in limited runs for prototypes and development, according to a representative.

Although Konarka has raised over $100 million and has signed a number of partnerships, there are many people who are skeptical that the company can be profitable.

"The real key will be to see if they can make building-integrated products that can stand the weather for 20-plus years," clean-tech venture capitalist Rob Day from @Ventures told Greentech Media in December last year.

Konarka also faces growing competition in the building-integrated photovoltaics field. Thin-film solar manufacturers, including Heliovot, also make flexible cells that can be fitted onto glass or building structures such as awnings but are more efficient. Nanosolar's cells made from CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide), for example, are in the 9 percent to 10 percent range.

Intel and Novell take aim at Android with Moblin

Google's still-nascent efforts to dominate the mobile market, already reeling from Apple's surging iPhone platform, were dealt another blow on Thursday when Intel and Novell announced that they will collaborate to promote Intel's Moblin operating system, a rival Linux distribution for mobile devices.

Whereas Google is initially targeting smartphones with Android (though an Android-based Netbook has apparently been released), Intel is targeting Moblin at Netbooks.

Additionally, Android and Moblin aren't simply two different Linux distributions, in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are. Android and Moblin use Linux in different ways, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, suggested to me:

Moblin is Linux for mobile devices, (and its) first focus is on Netbooks. Android is an (operating system) for phones that uses a Linux kernel...very different.

Novell's Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing, said in a follow-up conversation:

Moblin 2.0 is the first open-source Linux software stack and technology framework designed from the ground up for the Netbook device type. Essentially, Moblin plans to start at the Netbook layer of the stack, and then work its way down to the smaller mobile devices. Given Novell's strength in delivering desktops based on Linux, it made sense for us to collaborate closely with Intel to deliver the optimal user experience on Netbooks.

Given Apple's rising dominance in smartphones and Symbian's lingering power in other mobile devices, this seems like a smart, strategic move. The Netbook market is still wide open, with Apple currently disdaining to enter it and Microsoft bleeding cash to hold its ground against Linux.

Though Ubuntu made the first forays for Linux in the Netbook market, could it be Novell and Intel that end up dominating it?

Maybe. Maybe not. The one sure thing, at least for now, is that Microsoft may win the short-term Netbook war, but it still needs a long-term, winning game plan for mobile.

The mobile market is fascinating because it is uprooting long-held beliefs about how and where to compete in software. Intel, Google, and Apple, each fiercely contending for dominance, share a common strategy: they're investing in the operating system but planning to make their money elsewhere (Atom chips, in Intel's case; advertising and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Google's; hardware and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Apple's).

Such strategies stand in stark contrast to Microsoft, which persists in trying to monetize its mobile Windows platform.

Small wonder, then, that Microsoft is losing the mobile battle. It's fighting with the wrong ammunition.

Back to Google. While it seems clear that Intel's Moblin initiative is an attempt to fend off Google's looming Android threat, there's probably enough time for Intel and Novell to stake out a strong position in Netbooks that Google will struggle to overcome.

Regardless, the one player left out in the cold in all this activity is Microsoft. Google, Novell, Intel, and Apple are each putting hefty resources into winning the mobile market, but doing so in a way that undermines Microsoft's traditional approach of licensing only the software. Microsoft's Xbox experience suggests that it can do hardware right, but will it be able to catch up if it starts chasing its competition?

Nvidia looks to Windows 7, 'Tegra' for growth

Nvidia is looking to its Tegra chip for growth and Windows 7 for new opportunities.

Speaking during the company's earnings conference call Thursday, Nvidia Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang said one the company's biggest opportunities is graphics-specific applications on Windows 7. (Nvidia earnings summary here.)

Huang waxed enthusiastic about a technology he called "DirectX Compute"--which taps into the hundreds of processors inside many of today's graphics processors. "Finally it's possible to do video editing...that's not excruciating," he said. "This is going to be one of the major usage models for Windows 7," he said.

Nvidia also released a statement Thursday about DirectX Compute, saying it will boost the "speed and responsiveness" of Windows 7. This is analogous to what Apple and Nvidia have been saying about graphics on Apple's upcoming Snow Leopard operating system.

Huang also made it very clear that Tegra is a big part of Nvidia's future. Tegra is a system-on-a-chip that integrates an ARM applications processor and Nvidia's GeForce graphics silicon, among other functions. The goal is to bring robust PC-like graphics to small devices.

"Of all the products in our company, Tegra long term has the largest TAM (Total Available Market)," Huang said. "We've been investing in Tegra for about four years...There's 500 people working on Tegra."

Huang said--referring to Tegra--that Nvidia has built a "computer completely from scratch that's the size of a penny" that delivers a full high-definition experience and "consumes less than one watt." He added that this is the second computing revolution and "we want to be all over it."

Huang also talked about Nvidia's Ion platform. When Ion was launched in December of last year, the emphasis was initially on boosting graphics performance on Intel Atom-based Netbooks. But Huang said Thursday that Ion applies broadly to any products that use its 9400M GeForce chipset, such as Apple's MacBooks. The bulk of Nvidia Ion chipset revenue is coming from Apple, he said.

In related news, Nvidia released Windows 7 graphics drivers on Thursday, in conjunction with the release candidate of Windows 7. The Nvidia Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL)-certified graphics driver for PC desktops and notebooks is available for its Ion, GeForce, and Quadro products. (Like a number of hardware makers, Nvidia had issues with it Vista drivers.)

Nvidia cited performance testing on Windows 7 at technology Web site Anandtech, which said that "performance was rock solid and the compatibility/stability aspects of the driver far exceeded our expectations."

Oracle's Ellison wants to be in hardware

There's been a lot of speculation that Oracle purchased Sun for its software assets like Java, Solaris, and--although this point has seen more debate--MySQL. Even those of us who viewed the acquisition as a serious play by Oracle to become a full-fledged system vendor figured those systems would be mostly x86. That's not to say Oracle would kill SPARC processor development and servers outright--the installed base is too large and profitable--but it would be a business to milk, not to invest in.

However, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, writing in an e-mail interview with Reuters, claims to have big plans for Sun's server business--including its in-house processor design capabilities.

Ellison begins by stating that "we are definitely not going to exit the hardware business." It doesn't get much more definitive than that as to Oracle's overall strategy of being a systems company.

What Ellison has in mind here is integration. He goes on to write that:

While most hardware businesses are low-margin, companies like Apple and Cisco enjoy very high-margins because they do a good job of designing their hardware and software to work together. If a company designs both hardware and software, it can build much better systems than if they only design the software. That's why Apple's iPhone is so much better than Microsoft phones.

Those are fair points. And Oracle has itself experimented with hardware/software integration such as the Exadata Storage Server that uses HP hardware.

At the same time, the idea that you can be in the server business and only sell into the profitable niches strikes me as a notion that Oracle may not want to depend upon too much. (Cisco has made similar statements with respect to its Unified Computing System.) The history of the system vendor business going back at least a decade suggests that the most successful companies have supply chains and partner networks that allow them to sell pallets of small servers in addition to a smaller number of highly profitable large ones.

Ellison then goes on to make it equally clear that he's not interested in just bundling software and hardware but deeply optimizing the hardware when he writes: "Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important... Right now, SPARC chips do some things better than Intel chips and vice-versa."

By way of background, Sun's CMT SPARC chips are designed around a philosophy of handling many tasks in parallel even if it means that individual tasks may run somewhat slower than on a chip with fewer but more powerful cores. This approach lends itself well to workloads that involve a lot of relatively independent activities--such as Web and application servers. It also lends itself to very power-efficient designs.

But Ellison isn't just arguing that SPARC is good for some things and x86 is good for others. He's arguing for hardware that is truly optimized for Oracle software.

Some system features work much better if they are implemented in silicon rather than software. Once we own Sun, we'll be able to plan and synchronize new features from silicon to software, just like IBM and the other big system suppliers. We want to work with Fujitsu to design advanced features into the SPARC microprocessor aimed at improving Oracle database performance.

There remain plenty of questions about how large Oracle's investments will be and how much it will tilt toward its own processor-server-operating system-middleware-applications stack. It will, of course, continue to sell software to run on HP, IBM, Dell, or wherever else it can garner license revenue from.

However, on the face of it Oracle has grand visions for its Sun acquisition that go well beyond selectively mining some key software assets and milking the rest. Oracle's purchase of Sun was the latest example of the general shift back to a more vertically-integrated computer industry going on. This latest interview with Ellison makes that point again--with exclamation points.

Facebook's official Windows Mobile debut (at last!)

A decently good reading experience on Windows Mobile.

(Credit: CNET)

Back in March, Microsoft promised the world, and especially Windows Mobile 6 owners, a native Facebook application for Windows Mobile phones. On Thursday, Redmond delivered. OK, so Facebook for Windows Mobile 6 was forecast for April instead of May, but we're willing to overlook its tardiness because the app not only works quite well, but it also adds some unique and useful functionality tailored to this platform.

It's striking that Facebook on Windows Mobile is recognizable, but doesn't look like the spitting image of the site, unlike Facebook on BlackBerry, Palm, and iPhone, which retain the site's very strong look and feel. That said, it matters little. The core features are there--the news feed, status, and photo updates, notifications, and friend requests. Also your personal wall, info, and photos, your friends list, and so on.

It's noteworthy that the phone's form factor may affect how you navigate. On the tall, thin Samsung Omnia, flipping the screen horizontally showed the full width of the app, but not the depth. The vertical view condenses the navigation icons up top, but truncates the secondary navigation bar just below, so you'll need to scroll to the right to see the photo tab, for instance.

Here's one example that it's not Facebook as usual on these phones. Instead of following a link to update your status within the app window, you either press a soft key (from your profile page) or a menu item (from the Status Updates screen) to tell your circle what you're up to.

Facebook for Windows Mobile also includes a few mobile-only features that make use of the operating system's characteristics. As with Facebook on other mobile platforms, you're able to upload a photo from your album, or take a new one. You'll be able to do the same for video, assuming your phone has that capability. In addition, the app uses the Windows Mobile menu metaphor that pops up activities when you tap your finger or stylus to the touch screen. For instance, tapping a friend's status message produces a list of three options: view their profile, write on the wall, or leave a comment.

Upload photos and videos from your phone.

(Credit: CNET)

The best and most original new feature is the phone book, which neatly gathers the names and numbers of buddies who have populated their profiles with their digits. With this list, you can call, text, or send a message to their Facebook in-box. (Note: Texting didn't work with my Omnia during testing, but did work with a Windows Mobile 6 Palm Treo Pro.)

Somewhat similar address book tie-ins have been very recently implemented on Facebook for BlackBerry, but the goal was more to port Facebook photos to the address book and give users a quick way to start writing to a Facebook contact, rather than to give social networkers quick access to a secondary address book. I, for one, hadn't realized I had so many of my contacts' phone numbers at my fingertips. Now if only Microsoft or RIM could mash up their ideas to create a new record in the native address book for these Facebook contacts, and pull in their photos in the process.

A secret address book awaits. Call, text, or send a Facebook message.

(Credit: CNET)

Once again, it's interesting to note Facebook's strategy of collaborating with developers from Microsoft, as they have done with those at RIM, Palm, and others, to let the platform-providers roll out these apps themselves on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Palm. It makes sense--Facebook's team is relatively small, but demand for Facebook is globally high. Rather than wrestle with programming for separate platforms, Facebook can get Palm's engineering corps to work with Facebook, using APIs or other tools in the development arsenal.

As a result, these multiple versions of Facebook vary in their ancillary feature sets, but keep the marrow of the app the same--feeds, photos, and so on. The design of Microsoft's Facebook app isn't nearly as crisp or beguiling as is the iPhone's, for example, and it could use some work making tasks like searching for names from within the phone book much smoother. However, Microsoft rose to the occasion with the substance of this app, and the effort shows

Do Google's carbon offsets add up to much?

Google, a company that runs power-hungry data centers, employs thousands of people, and operates a corporate jet, said on Wednesday that it was carbon neutral for the past two years. How so? Offsets.

The idea of a carbon offset is to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions of a company or person by investing in a project that reduces emissions from the atmosphere.

Google sees offsets as an imperfect method for lowering their total carbon footprint, among other efforts. To detractors, offsets are essentially greenwashing when companies do little more than buy offsets to meet their environmental sustainability goals.

There are many routes an offset purchase can go: wind energy farms, siphoning off methane from landfills, or making buildings more energy efficient. There's an entire industry around offsets, which can be voluntary--as Google has purchased--or regulated in countries that have climate change regulations.

Without offsets, a company--no matter green--would have a hard time claiming to be carbon neutral simply because energy consumption means pollution. Achieving carbon neutrality is complicated by the fact that there isn't universal agreement on how to account for a company's carbon emissions: should it include just a company's operations or also its supply chain and end use of its products?

Even hard-core climate activists see offsets as problematic. Climate advocate Joseph Romm, who writes for the Climate Progress blog, calls them "rip-offsets."

The problem ultimately comes down to how effective offsets are in actually reducing emissions, he says. Offset claims are very difficult to verify, and doing a lifeycle analysis of an offset project--what is the exact net reduction of a landfill methane project?--are very easy to fudge, according to Romm.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office last August published a report saying it's particularly difficult to ensure "additionality." In other words: does a purchased offset truly represent an greenhouse gas reduction above and beyond business as usual. For example, some offsets were tied to a company that was already forced to capture methane to meet existing environmental rules.

Where's the beef?
So is Google being cavalier (or worse, disingenuous) by purchasing carbon offsets? It's impossible to say exactly what its motives are, but it's clear people there have thought this question through.

In a post on Wednesday, Google Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl said that the search giant's efforts to reduce data center energy consumption and to advocate for renewable energy were the meat of its climate mitigation activities. Offsets were done to reach neutrality, "not as a substitute for real action."

In addition, the company took the step to verify through a third party that the offsets were "additional," or projects that were done above business as usual.

Judged by non-governmental organizations such as ClimateCounts, Google is a leader in climate change in the Internet industry. It was outscored by companies in other industries, but Google gets points for actually measuring its carbon footprint and taking steps to reduce it.

Google.org has invested in a number of renewable energy companies in solar, wind, and enhanced geothermal. It has a plug-in electric initiative fueled by one of the largest corporate solar arrays at its headquarters. And it's nudging into home energy monitoring software while it lobbies for energy policies to support renewable energy and smart-grid technology.

In his post, Weihl summed up Google's view on offsets:

"The best way to reduce our corporate footprint is to not use electricity in the first place. Google will continue to reduce our emissions directly by building and designing some of the world's most efficient data centers as well as using on-site renewable energy to power our facilities. Over the last five years, we have eliminated over half the emissions we would have produced in the absence of these critical measures. Offsets serve to neutralize the rest. In the future, we will continue to drive for improvements in energy efficiency and to find affordable sources of renewable energy," he said.

Obviously, a large technology-intensive enterprise like Google will have a far heavier footprint than many other businesses. Even though it's not giving out a specific number on total emissions, Google appears to be doing a rigorous accounting, including everything from electricity to employee travel and server manufacturing in its total footprint.

And unlike most companies, it's done the math on offsets as well. Offsets will likely continue to be controversial, but at least Google isn't shying away from the debate and is confessing to the flaws of carbon offsets.

An expert's guide to YouTube

In the past, we've done Newbie's Guides for certain services, but we wanted to switch things up and really dig into a product's advanced features.

Video-sharing site YouTube is the perfect service to start with because it's massively popular and incredibly simple to use, but also has a few powerful features that are tucked away. This guide is to help you learn how to use some of these advanced features and to serve as a simple reference page.

For the sake of simplicity, we're only covering searching, viewing, and sharing. We've skipped uploading since it's pretty straightforward and made simple with the service's recently launched multifile uploader. We're also not including any third-party downloading tools because that is against YouTube's terms of use and is already an official first-party feature on some content.

Searching

Using YouTube's search tool:
YouTube's search engine works a lot like Google's. In fact, it uses the same search operators to let you tweak your results. Here are some worth remembering the next time you're looking for a video:

• Limit to words in the title. Putting "allintitle:" in front of your search keeps YouTube's results limited to those videos with the matching words in the title. This is great if you want to keep it from searching through descriptions or tags. Not so useful if the video you're looking for has a misspelled or misleading title.

• Exclude a term. Add a "-" then the word you want to exclude will keep it out of the results. So if you're searching for explosions but don't want to see videos with diet Coke or Mentos, you'd type in "Explosion -diet -coke -mentos." Be sure to add the "-" in front of every word you don't want.

• Play the wildcard. If you're too lazy to type a word, or think that YouTube will figure out the words you're leaving out, you can just put in an asterisk in place of that word. In practice, this means that searching for something like "Fallout: Broken Steel" you could just type "Fallout * Steel" and have it guess the word in the middle.

If you can't remember these off the top of your head you can find them in YouTube's advanced search box, which shows up as an option in the results of any completed search. It's also worth going there if you want to filter how long the videos in the results should be. This is a great way to find long-form content that's 20 minutes or more.

Search and browse with your eyes.
If titles and thumbnails are not enough, you can explore additional, related video clusters by using YouTube's warp feature. This is a feature that can still be found on some videos, but YouTube has since relegated it to its TestTube section. That doesn't mean you can't use it on any old video though. Simply inserting "warp.swf" in the URL instead of the word "watch" will send you into full-screen "warp speed" mode. To read more about how to use this feature check out our coverage of it.

To warpify any video just change the watch in the URL to warp.swf, and you get a special treat.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Third-party search tools
There are a handful of third-party YouTube search engines and tools that add a little bit of utility on top of YouTube's search. Here are some of our favorites:

• YouTube Fast Search lets you play the video right next to the results, as well as create a playlist by dragging and dropping videos from the results page. It's also got a cool feature called VideoWall that creates a giant canvas of thumbnails, which you can play just by clicking on them.

• CoolIris, which works on iPhones and computers alike, also presents videos in a giant wall that can be browsed or searched. You simply click on the thumbnails you want to play.

• The YouTube search Firefox add-on. Puts YouTube's search engine in your browser, and uses Google's Suggest API to give you suggestions as you type.

• VideoSurf gives you visual summaries of YouTube videos (and other video services). If it's a movie or TV show you can search by actor, and all videos get a visual time line so you don't waste any time waiting to see what's on that 10-minute clip.

• Search The Tube is a search engine that only shows videos that can be embedded off YouTube. Keeps you from finding that perfect video that can't be stuck on a blog post.

Viewing

Watching videos on YouTube seems pretty straightforward, but if you want to enhance the viewing experience there are some official, and unofficial, tools that can tweak the presentation.

Setting YouTube to automatically play the high-quality version
You've got to be logged in to make this work. Simply go to YouTube's playback settings (when logged in) and pick the "I have a fast connection" option. The next time you play a video it will automatically switch over to the higher quality stream. Worth noting is that this doesn't yet work for HD videos; you still need to click on the HD button to make it switch over to that stream.

Choosing this option makes YouTube always play the high-quality stream.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Make HD videos fit the screen better
Viewing a video in HD resizes from the standard 710-pixel player into one that's 950 pixels wide. It still doesn't go to the edges of the page though. To get that extra 100 pixels or so you can install this small Firefox add-on that resizes them to fix the rest of the YouTube UI. Of course you could always just hit the full screen button, but this lets you access all the other page elements while it's playing.

Turn down the lights on any YouTube video
A select few YouTube videos have the option to "turn down the lights," which darkens the rest of YouTube's UI and shows you just the video. If you want to make this option available on all videos you can download YouTube Cinema for Firefox, which can do this for you automatically. It also lets you change the background color.

See also Quietube (story) and Theeter (story), which do the same thing using a special bookmarklet you can add to your browser. However, unlike the Firefox extension, both of these services require using the bookmarklet to turn it on when you're browsing videos on YouTube proper.

Sharing

Watching videos on YouTube is a no-brainer, but if you want to control the way viewers see your videos or videos you're sharing, there are some handy tweaks.

YouTube recently introduced a relatively simple way to do this using tags. During or after an upload you have the option to add tags, and this is where the magic happens. Adding one of the below tags has different effects on your video, which gives you complete control over how it looks:

Controlling the size of the video by cropping or scaling:
• Add "yt:crop=16:9" This zooms in on the 16:9 section of the video, and gets rid of any black bars on the side or on the top of your video.
• Add "yt:stretch=16:9" takes any content that's been shot in anamorphic (with the black bars on the top and bottom) and scales it to fit the wide-screen player.
• Add "yt:stretch=4:3" scales widescreen videos to fit a 4:3 player.

Changing the default quality of the stream:
• Add "yt:quality=high" makes it so that the default quality level is the highest, whether that's HQ or HD. It depends on what type of content you've uploaded.

How to control the start time on a shared link or embed
With some small URL tweaks you can control the start time of a video when shared as a basic link, or when embedded. YouTube is likely to add this as part of the embedding options at a later date. In the meantime, the below methods are helpful if you want to share a specific part of a long video.

For basic links:
The time you want the video to start must be appended by hand with #t=_m_s at the end of the video's URL. You have control over the minutes and seconds, which are what go where the underscores are. So, for this URL www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfkxBVIJ0vc#t=0m21s, the video would start 21 seconds in.

Deep linking in YouTube from Josh Lowensohn on Vimeo.

For embedded videos:
Skipping ahead in embeds is a little harder than with basic URLs, but still manageable. Copy and paste the embed code wherever you intend to put it. Then find the two places where the source URL is. These two links come after "value" and "src" and simply contain the link to the video. Now, paste " &start=__" onto the end of that URL, placing the number of seconds you want it to start at where the underscore is. Since there's no minutes section like you get with the link trick above, you have to do the math and add an additional 60 seconds for each minute you want to go in.

Creating and embedding a self-playing playlist
Say you've got two or more videos you want to share--or just group together. Skip the link dump and make a playlist. Go into your uploaded videos and create a new one. Then simply check off the videos you want to add. Pick the "add to playlist" option, then click on the playlist you just created.

For one reason or another, YouTube isn't very up front about giving you an embed code to stick the playlist elsewhere. Don't worry though--it's still there. To find it, go to the playlist you just made from here: www.youtube.com/my_playlists. Then click on the "play all" link on a playlist to start playing it. Under the playlist option on the right, click on the link with the name of the playlist you're watching. This will take you to a page that gives you a rundown of the entire playlist, along with the option to send that self-playing list as a permalink, and the embed code to put it elsewhere.

You're looking for these three things (the highlighted link will have the name of your playlist, not mine):

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Third-party sharing tools:
Worth a mention here is Splicd, which lets you pick specific beginning and end points of a video. It plays these videos off YouTube's site, but gives you simple sharing links and a slightly higher degree of control than YouTube does.

See also the aforementioned Quietube and Theeter which both provide links that can be shared with others that format the video without the rest of YouTube's UI.

These are just a few tips to become an expert in all things YouTube. If you have any of your own, add them in the comments or shoot me an e-mail.

AMD cites chips that don't do Windows 7 'XP mode'

Select processors from Advanced Micro Devices do not support Windows 7 "XP mode" though, like Intel, the vast majority of shipping processors do support XP mode.

Microsoft describes XP mode on its Web site as follows: "As part of the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate milestone, Microsoft will release a beta version of Windows XP Mode, which allows users of Windows 7 Professional and above to launch many older Windows XP productivity applications directly from their Windows 7 desktop. The Windows XP Mode stand-alone feature is specifically designed to help small businesses that are using Windows XP applications move to Windows 7. For larger businesses, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) MED-V 2.0 builds on top of Windows Virtual PC and provides centralized management of Windows XP Mode. MED-V 2.0 will be available in beta within 90 days of general availability of Windows 7."

"All CPUs AMD is currently shipping, except Sempron, include AMD-V and therefore support XP mode," an AMD spokeswoman said Wednesday.

AMD also cited processors that are not necessarily shipping currently. "With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and Turion K8 Rev E processors, all notebook processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 XP mode," AMD said. "With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and pre-Rev F Athlon branded processors, all of the desktop processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 in XP mode."

And Opteron processors: "Also, all AMD Opteron processors shipped by AMD from Rev F forward include AMD-V," according to AMD.

A quick search on Best Buy's Web site turned up very-low-end systems that use the Sempron processor. For example, a $329.99 Acer desktop is currently being sold with a Sempron processor. And on Hewlett-Packard's Web site, an HP Compaq dx2450 Microtower (starting at $329), for example, can be configured with a number of different Sempron processors.

Dell has sold laptops, such as the Latitude D531, with AMD Mobile Sempron processors.

An earlier Nanotech: The Circuits Blog post cited Intel processors that do not support XP mode. Intel spokesman Nick Knupffer asserts this won't be a big issue. "Having VT on these consumer laptops is not going to be an issue--because the consumer versions of Windows 7 (Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium) do not include Windows XP Mode," he writes.