Seinfeld-Windows TV Commercial Premieres to Criticism

Microsoft  $300 million advertising campaign for Windows starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld launched Thursday night with an extra-long television commercial almost entirely devoid of any talk of Windows, Microsoft, or anything, really.

That was oddly appropriate, considering Seinfeld's eponymous hit 90s comedy was described by both admirers and detractors as a "show about nothing."

The minute and half commercial (available on YouTube here and here and elsewhere) is the first of many.

It co-starred Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and was set in a shopping mall. Seinfeld, who did most of the talking, helps Gates buy a pair of shoes called the Conquistador while asking if Gates ever wears his clothes in the shower. The commercial ends with Seinfeld asking Gates if Microsoft will "come out with something that makes our computers moist and chewy like cake so we can just eat them while we're working." Gates wiggles his rear to answer in the affirmative.

The commercial ends with the Windows logo and the phrase "Delicious."

LG Introduces New Dynamite Phone in India

The LG Dynamite KP199 will be the newest phone in the Korean manufacturer's 'Dynamite' series of phones for India. The phone has a 1.77 inch screen and weighs in at 84.5 grams and also offers 60 MB of internal memory and supports external memory.

The new Dynamite phone also has Bluetooth capabilites, an FM radio and an MP3 player. Users can gain access to the VGA camera with a help of a dedicated hotkey. The manufacturer claims that the phone battery offers talktime upto 11 hours and a standby time of 30 days. The phone also has a built-in security feature which sends out messages to pre-decided numbers whenever the SIM card is changed.

The phone will retail for Rs. 4,390. 

Sony Recalls 73,000 Vaio laptops Over Burn Hazard

Sony is recalling about 73,000 Vaio laptops because faulty wiring near a hinge can pose a burn hazard.

The recall was jointly announced Thursday by Sony and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The commission recommended that consumers immediately stop using VAIO TZ-series notebook computers.

According to the commission, Sony has received 15 reports of overheating, one of which burned a consumer. Either the wiring problem, which is near computer's hinge, or a loose screw in the hinge can cause a short circuit that then causes the overheating.

The recalled laptop models are the Vaio VGN-TZ100 series, the VGN-TZ200 series, the VGN-TZ300 series and the VGN-TZ2000 series. The computers' screen size measured diagonally is about 11.1 inches. The machines in question were sold between July 2007 and August 2008, according to the commission.

Not all units are problematic. Sony recommends that users call a customer hotline at 888-526-6219 to find out whether their laptop is affected.

Users can also go to the Sony support site and input their product code and serial number, which can be found on the bottom of the computer. If users find that their laptops have the problem, they can make arrangements online for an inspection.

Mike Abary, a senior vice president at Sony, said in an online notice that the company will offer a free inspection and possibly on-site repair at the user's home or office. Users also can ship their laptops in to a service center for repair.

ZoooS Takes OpenOffice.Org, Other Desktop Apps To Web

When asked if and how they plan to match Microsoft Office's unparalleled feature set, most online office suite vendors simply switch the subject, touting the superiority of their Web-based collaboration, and low or free price. ZoooS LLC is one of the few vendors that won&apost dodge the question.

At the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week, the California-European startup will preview a Web office suite that is based on the free, open-source OpenOffice.org , Microsoft Office's main desktop competitor. ZoooS offers Google Docs-like collaboration, such as letting users simultaneously edit the same document. And despite OpenOffice's size -- version 2 for Windows requires 440 MB of disk space when installed -- ZoooS offers speedy access to 95% of the features and look-and-feel of OpenOffice.org, said ZoooS' CEO and co-founder, Hisham El-Emam."It's almost all Javascript, so it runs really fast, you don't even need Google Chrome ," El-Emam said.

ZoooS already has a "few thousand" paying users at several medium-sized companies and its major client, the German Ministry of Education, making the 20-employee startup already profitable, El-Emam said. The basic cost is $999 for a perpetual server license for 10 users, which includes installation support and a few basic support incidents after that. The price per user decreases as the number of users increases, he said.

This isn't El-Eman's first attempt at a Web office suite. The German-trained lawyer co-founded Ajax13 Inc., an early online office vendor.Trying to match Microsoft Office breadth-wise, however, hurt Ajax13's depth , said a Computerworld review last year. El-Eman split with Ajax13's co-founder, MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, last year, though Robertson retains a small stake in ZoooS.

El-Eman's new approach delivers OpenOffice.org's deep feature set, multi-lingual capabilities (36 languages), and user interface, which is close but not identical to Microsoft Office.

ZoooS's framework translates the OpenOffice.org code, making it browser-friendly. By the end of this year, the company hopes to have plug-ins and widgets for Firefox , Opera and several other browsers for both on- and offline access. An Internet Explorer version is targeted for the first half of 2009. El-Eman said a main goal with ZoooS was to target existing users of Microsoft Office. ZoooS can be more attractive on price against Microsoft, he said, and, at the same time, will be appealing to users who are resistant to switch to something free (such as Google Docs) or very low-cost (such as Zoho) because they may be lacking in features.

ZoooS is also developing 'skins' for Office 2003 and Office 2007. Thus, users would get the Office user interface of their choice, even though the functional backend remains OpenOffice.org, he said. The only catch: files are natively saved in OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument Format (ODF), rather than native Office or Office Open XML. ZoooS is working on making opening and converting of Office files as fast and true as possible, said El-Eman.

IFAL: LG Unveils Netbook PC with Embedded 3G

LG Electronics will launch in October a netbook-class laptop PC based on Intel's Atom processor that also includes 3G wireless, it said at the IFA show in Berlin.

The X110 will include an HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) cellular data modem that should be compatible with the newer 3G (third-generation) networks now being rolled out by most major carriers around the world. HSPA is typically capable of download speeds of several megabits per second and the latest versions of the evolving technology also offer megabit per second uploads.

In addition to 3G, the machine also supports 802.11b/g wireless LAN and has a wired Ethernet connector.

The X110 is based around the same 1.6GHz Atom processor that many of its competing devices also use and has a 10-inch WSVGA resolution (1,024 pixels by 600 pixels) screen that, if it wasn't for the 3G, would place it very close to competing netbook PCs.

LG has decided to go for a conventional hard-disk drive in the X110 and will offer models with either 80G bytes or 120G bytes of capacity. Some netbooks use faster solid-state disks based on flash memory chips but they typically offer much lower capacity.

It runs the Windows XP Home operating system.

The machine will be available in several colors including white, pink or silver. LG didn't announce the price.

Security the New Keyword for IE 8 in Beta Version 2

Microsoft's updated browser, Internet Explorer 8, promises an assortment of new features, with the goals of making Web browsing with IE safer, easier, and more compatible with Net standards. We looked at Beta 2. On the surface, IE 8 seems to be a lot like IE 7, but Microsoft has made a good number of changes. However, you may have seen some of the new features in its no-longer-upstart competitor, Mozilla Firefox 3.

If you accidentally close a browser window in IE 8, you can opt to restore it when you reopen the program (just as you can in Firefox). But IE 8 will group related tabs together using color coding. If you open a link from pcworld.com in a new tab, for example, it will open adjacent to the original tab, and the tabs themselves will have a matching color. You can move tabs from one group to another, but if you have three unrelated pages open, you cannot create a group out of them.

Perhaps the most novel addition in IE 8 is what Microsoft refers to as tab isolation. The feature is designed to prevent a buggy Web site from causing the entire program to crash. Instead, only the tab displaying the problematic page will close, allowing you to continue browsing.

Of course, IE 8 Beta 2 retains some of the features introduced in the first beta, including WebSlices and accelerators.

If you enable IE 8's InPrivate feature, the browser will not save any sensitive data--passwords, log-in info, history, and so forth. It would be as if your browsing session had never happened. This feature is very similar to Private Browsing in Apple's Safari browser, except that an icon in IE's address bar makes InPrivate's active status more obvious.

The browser's phishing filter—called SmartScreen— improves upon its predecessor's filter with such features as more thorough scrutiny of a Web page's address (to protect you from sites named something like paypal.iamascammer.com and a full-window warning when you stumble upon a suspected phishing site. SmartScreen relies largely on a database of known phishing sites, so a new, unknown phishing site may be able to slip through the cracks.

IE 8 displays sites' domains in a darker text color, so you can more easily see whether you're actually visiting an ebay.com page, say, or in reality a page on some site you've never heard of. Microsoft could still put a little more emphasis on the domain name (using a different color background, for example), but the highlighting is a welcome addition.

Creating a site that looks identical in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari can be a challenge. IE 8 Beta 2 offers better support for W3 Web standards —a set of guidelines developed to ensure that a Web page appears the same in all browsers. The downside is that IE 8 will break some pages designed for earlier Internet Explorer versions.

To counteract this, Microsoft has added a compatibility mode: Click a button in the toolbar, and IE 8 will display a page the same way that IE 7 does. In my testing, I found that most pages worked fine with the standard (new) mode, and that most errors were minor cosmetic ones. Unfortunately, the Compatibility Mode toggle button may not be obvious to most users, because it's pretty small; a text label would have helped.

While it likely won't convince many Firefox users to jump ship, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 may be worth considering for people who have not yet solidified their browser loyalties.

Intel Shows Atom-based Computer

Intel has demonstrated prototypes of a range of low-cost 'nettops' in India that could be available in the country for as little as $114 (approx RS. 5000).

The devices, which run on Intel's new Atom processor, will be priced low, but they will not have a display, a spokeswoman for the company said today. The plan is that users will be able to use their television sets or other displays in the home with the device, she added.

The demonstration of the new devices in Delhi was part of the launch of a joint industry and government initiative, called 'Connected Indians"', which aims to increase Internet connectivity in India, so that it reaches a billion Indians.

Intel gave the initiative a "kickstart" by bringing industry, government, and other organizations together on this, but Intel does not run the programme, the spokeswoman said.

The Indian government aims to have 500 million Indians connected to the internet, with more than 100 million broadband connections, and 100 million broadband enabled devices in the field by 2012. The country has a population of over 1.13 billion people.

Internet penetration in India is currently very low. India had 4.6 million broadband subscribers at the end of July, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.