John’s Tech News

On Wednesday, researchers announced a flaw in how the Google Chrome browser behaves with undefined handlers. An exploit provided as a demonstration crashes the new browser.

In an article on the Securiteam site, Rishi Narang from Evilfingers says a crash can occur without user interaction. If a user is provided a malicious link with an undefined handler followed by a special character, Chrome crashes.

In Google-speak, the browser displays a message “Whoa, Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?”

Narang found the fault in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27. More details can be found on this Evilfingers page.

And on Tuesday, mere hours after Chrome was released, researcher Aviv Raff concocted a proof-of-concept demo to show how the Google browser could be made vulnerable to a carpet-bombing flaw and thus open a window for ill-intentioned hackers.

Chrome suffers first security flaw

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Verizon Communications and AT&T have thrown the first blows in an impending broadband pricing war.

Last week, Verizon Communications said it will offer six months of free DSL service to new customers who sign up for a one-year contract and also use the company’s traditional landline voice service. The promotion is available until the end of October.

Verizon’s DSL service typically costs between $19.99 per month for 768Kbps downloads and $42.99 a month for 7.1Mbps downloads. Add traditional telephone service, and subscribers can get high-speed DSL and phone service for as little as $45 a month versus $65 a month.

AT&T has also upped the ante with a new promotion that guarantees customers its current pricing, which ranges from $20 to $55, for two years, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The promotions come as broadband operators saw a sharp decline in new subscriber growth in the second quarter of 2008. Twenty of the largest cable operators and phone companies in the U.S. only signed up about 887,000 new subscribers during the quarter, the lowest level of growth seen in the past seven years, according to Leichtman Research Group.

Phone companies appeared to be the hardest hit by the slowdown, only adding about 23 percent of the customers they added during the same quarter a year ago. Specifically, Verizon lost 133,000 DSL subscriptions in the second quarter as its existing customers upgraded to its Fios network and new broadband users went to cable competitors.

Meanwhile, cable companies, such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable, have fared much better. In total, cable companies added about 75 percent of all new customers in the second quarter.

Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., added 278,000 high-speed Internet subscribers during the second quarter. Comcast executives have said that about two-thirds of its new broadband customers had switched from DSL. And about one-fifth of these customers are signing up for the triple play bundle.

As a result, cable operators haven’t felt compelled to lower prices or offer more for less. But as the broadband market gets tighter, a cable response is likely.

Today about 60 percent of U.S. households already have high-speed Internet connections. And of all people who regularly use the Internet, about 90 percent of them already subscribe to broadband service as opposed to dial-up. This means that there is a smaller pool of people using dial-up who may switch to broadband services, a fact that is also likely impacting growth in the broadband market.

Comcast is already starting to see its edge weakening. During the second quarter, the cable operator added about 18 percent fewer customers during the quarter than it did a year ago.

It will be interesting to see what kind of affect the phone companies’ new pricing terms will have on the market in the third quarter. Stay tuned.

This broadband war could lead to some good deals for consumers. But bargain shopping consumers will have to read the fine print on these deals. Pesky service contracts with early termination fees that are common in the wireless industry could show up more regularly in the broadband market. Verizon’s six-month free DSL promotion requires a one-year commitment. And the company is charging a $79 fee for people who cancel the service early

Broadband price war brews

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Google wants to help you put a name to that face.

With a face recognition feature set to launch at noon PDT Tuesday, Google’s Picasa Web Albums will help users label their photos with the names of subjects. That and other changes to the photo-sharing site are joined by a new beta version of the accompanying Picasa 3.0 photo-editing software.

The “name tag” feature presents users with collections of photos with what it judges to be the same person, then lets them click a button to affix a name. Once photographic subjects are named, users can browse an album of that individual on the fly.

The name tag feature groups like faces together to let users tag them with names a batch at a time.

The Picasa Web Albums name tag feature groups like faces together to let users tag them with names a batch at a time (click to enlarge).
(Credit: Google)

“Once you’ve started naming people, we’ll start suggesting names for you based on similarity,” said Mike Horowitz, Google’s Picasa product manager. “The process of naming people is really addictive and tremendously fun.”

Having tried the new service on dozens of photos, I wouldn’t go that far. But it is a major advance in what I believe is a very important area, photo metadata.

Tagging is a powerful way to sort digital photographs. Photo albums are useful, but with rich tagging, people also can slice and dice their photo collection to show particular people, activities, or locations. Even with face recognition technology or other computer processing, the textual tags in photos are a far more reliable way for computers to understand image content.

And tags become even more powerful as photos are assembled into publicly accessible collections such as those at Yahoo’s Flickr, Picasa, or Fox Interactive’s Photobucket.

Eat your vegetables, exercise regularly, tag your photos
The problem with tagging is that it’s a chore, so most people don’t bother. But Picasa’s name tag feature automates the process enough–and provides enough reason to use it–that I believe many users will take the tagging plunge.

It took me less than 15 minutes to tag close to 200 faces in a set of more than 100 photos, and that included some start-up time such as figuring out how the system worked, establishing names for various common subjects, and correcting a few errors. The most impressive moments are when Picasa presents a large array of photos with the same face, and you can label them all with a single click.

Picasa editing software now lets users export movies with musical soundtrack to a file or YouTube.

Picasa editing software now lets users export movies with musical soundtrack to a file or YouTube (click to enlarge).
(Credit: Google)

I speak here from experience. I do tag my own photos–for example the 700 I took on a weeklong backpacking trip earlier this month–and something like Google’s facial recognition assisting would have dramatically sped the process. It wouldn’t help with other tags such as “swimming,” “waterfall,” or “Sierra tiger lily,” but let’s face it–people are the central feature in most people’s photos.

Overall, Google’s Picasa moves show that despite a long period of near-dormancy, Google still evidently is committed to the photography site and software.

However, Picasa overall still feels like a staid place to store photos, share them with friends, and maybe order prints. It doesn’t match the vibrant community of Yahoo’s Flickr. And though Flickr also has been slow to change, Yahoo has at least been nudging it in the right direction with additions such as online editing.
Picasa Web Albums' most conspicuously erroneous identification of a face, actually the spokes on my bicycle's front wheel.

Picasa Web Albums’ most conspicuously erroneous identification of a face, actually the spokes on my bicycle’s front wheel.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Face recognition blemishes
Picasa’s name tags are helpful but imperfect. The feature failed to find faces in several photos where I thought the faces were reasonably obvious. It also thought my bicycle wheel’s spokes and wife’s ear were faces. One excusable error: it thought a mask in a mural was a face, though for some reason it didn’t bother with a couple of real humans in the same mural.

“Our face-matching technology works best when a person is looking at the camera,” Horowitz said. “There are a variety of factors that may limit our success in matching faces, including profile views and challenging lighting conditions like shadows.”

The most annoying error was that during the initial period when I was adding names to the system, it somehow came up with three separate versions of me and two versions of my son, despite the fact that I entered the same name and e-mail address. I fixed it by telling Picasa my alter egos were erroneously labeled, at which point they re-entered the labeling pool and I assigned them to the remaining identity. Too bad I didn’t notice the “merge” option until later.

Picasa Web Albums asked me to identify this face it found–actually a mask in a mural.

Picasa Web Albums asked me to identify this face it found–actually a mask in a mural (click to enlarge).
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Knowing the privacy implications of face recognition, Google is proceeding somewhat cautiously. Picasa users must specifically enable the name tag feature, and default name tags aren’t shared publicly. Picasa users may only tag photos in their own account.

With the “name tag” feature, which users must specifically enable, Picasa presents groups of images sharing the same face. Users can label them with a person’s name. Eventually users can click a tag to find shots of a particular subject in their photo collections,

The face recognition technology came to Google via its 2006 acquisition of Neven Vision, Horowitz said.

There are other changes coming to Picasa Web Albums (though a change to Google Photos isn’t one of them, at least right now). One is an “explore” view that lets people browse the total collection of public Picasa photos. It lets people browse by popular tags, location, and peer at recent uploads. Another is the ability to e-mail photos to the service.

Picasa 3 beta
Google also plans to release a beta version of the Picasa 3 image-editing. It works on Windows, though a Google Labs version has been transmogrified to work on Linux via the Wine software layer. Horowitz wouldn’t confirm whether a Mac OS X version is anything more than an idea: “Macs are important to us,” he said. “We’re always looking for new ways making sure our users are happy, so it’s something we’re looking at.”

The new Picasa software brings several changes:

• A movie maker mode lets people combine photos with music to export movie versions of galleries to watch on a PC or upload to YouTube.

• A new retouch brush lets people edit out skin blemishes and other trouble spots. And the tool can automatically fix red-eye problems caused by flash photography.

A collage mode in Picasa lets users create poster-size collections, sizing and placing each snapshot.

A collage mode in Picasa lets users create poster-size collections, sizing and placing each snapshot. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: Google)

• A new collage mode lets users compile many photos into one composite image. This time, users get precise control over image placement for example by moving, rotating, and resizing photos, and the software can produce a high-resolution composite for poster-size prints.

• A photo viewer for quick slideshows, an option that during installation politely asks to own the file associations for JPEG, TIFF, raw images from higher-end cameras, and some other formats. The slideshow software can view PNG files, which is handy, but the editing software still can’t, which is a significant limitation for me.

• Online synchronization. If photos have been uploaded from Picasa to the Web site, they can be edited later and the changes, including tags, are synchronized to the Web site. This is very handy since you might want to get images up quickly to share with friends then edit them later. Unfortunately, changes on the Web site aren’t mirrored back to the PC, so all those name tags will stay put in the cloud for now.

Revamped Google Picasa site identifies photo faces

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Starting October 1, Comcast will cap its customers’ monthly use of the Internet to 250 gigabytes per account.

That’s the equivalent of 50 million e-mails or 124 standard-definition movies for all residential high-speed Internet customers, Reuters reported.

Comcast said customers who exceed the limit may be called by Comcast’s Customer Security Assurance group, and those who go over the cap twice in a six-month period may have Internet service cut off for one year. However, 99 percent of customers won’t be affected, said Comcast, which is one of the country’s largest Internet providers. Spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury told The New York Times that the average customer uses two to three gigabytes a month.

Limiting heavy usage to ensure fair access for all is being considered by cable and phone companies as customers are increasingly watching online video, sharing photos online, and downloading music services.

Popularity of those services is rising. A report by Cisco last winter stated that, “Today’s ‘bandwidth hog’ is tomorrow’s average user.”

S. Derek Turner of Free Press, a media policy group, told Reuters: “If Comcast has oversold their network to the point of creating congestion problems, then well-disclosed caps for Internet use are a better short-term solution than Comcast’s current practice of illegally blocking Internet traffic.”

Victor Godinez, technology blogger for the Dallas Morning News, writes that Comcast is, “going about this all wrong.” He says, “Comcast needs to institute some kind of ‘bandwidth credit’ marketplace. Since Comcast says the majority of its customers only use two to three gigabytes per month, let those users sell their excess capacity to the heavy users who do go over the 250 gig limit. Win-win, yes?”

Time Warner Cable and AT&T are considering other ways to limit use, by “metering,” or charging different prices for different broadband speeds or usage.

Comcast to place limits on Internet use

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The Federal Communications Commission is taking on telecom companies and trying to bring down the costs when you cancel your cell phone plan.

Early cancellation fees can cost as much as a car payment.

“You cancel, they charge you. You wanna change providers they charge you. It’s terrible,” said Shane Coakley, who had to pay $275 to get out of his contract.

On Thursday, the FCC called on cell phone companies to justify the charges. One Verizon executive says the cancellation fees allow companies to actually keep overall phone prices down for everyone and offer some phones for free and others at low prices.

“They give consumers the ability to get service without an up front cost. They don’t have to spend a lot of money buying a phone. They get cheaper per-minute rates on an ongoing basis,” said Thomas Tauke of Verizon.

But some commissioners don’t buy it. They want cancellation charges to be relative to the cost of each phone – the more expensive the phone, the higher the fee.

Also, they say the costs should go down over time and a renewed contract should not mean a renewed fee.

“Consumers are not being told the whole truth. Contracts are simply to hold customers hostage so the companies continue to have a steady stream of income,” said Anne Boyle, Nebraska Public Service Commission.

That plan could actually gain some traction because it’s similar to a proposal put out by the cell phone industry last month. If those changes are approved, there is no timetable yet for when they would take effect.

Feds want to cut off cell phone cancellation fees

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SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The maker of a hot-selling revolutionary phone cuts its price to spur more mass-market demand.

Sound familiar? That happened to the Razr, and while the move spurred sales for a while, Motorola (MOT) couldn’t duplicate the success because it failed to innovate. Motorola’s stock is trading now near multiyear lows as the company searches for a new growth driver.

While no one is predicting such a dramatic reversal for Apple Inc. (AAPL) and its iPhone, many are noting that the most revolutionary change to the latest iPhone is its reduced pricing - and even that doesn’t represent a big shift in an industry long dependent on carrier subsidies.

The iPhone is, by all accounts, a truly innovative piece of technology. Yet the most innovative parts - its user interface, its touchscreen capabilities and its appearance - remain what Apple brought out with the original device. The iPhone’s latest additions, such as the ability to tap faster wireless networks and its location services, have been available in smartphones for years.

“Where’s the innovation?” Global Equities Securities analyst Trip Chowdhry said in describing his initial impression of the new iPhone.

An Apple spokesman defended the innovative nature of the new iPhone. As the company pointed out Monday, among other things, the new iPhone can download Web pages 36% faster than two competing phones from Nokia Corp. (NOK), can receive email notifications of software updates, and has a battery life that is about 90 minutes longer in some cases than rival devices.

However, those developments pale in comparison to the shock factor from the original iPhone. The lack of a signature technical improvement in the second- generation iPhone has raised some concerns about whether the company can keep innovating fast enough to keep the iPhone fresh in an extremely competitive smartphone market.

Apple hasn’t faced this type of competition with its music player, as the iPod blew away the competition with a unique form factor and ran away from the field. With smartphones, Apple is trying to distinguish itself in an industry already crowded with well-established, well-heeled heavyweights.

For example, by the fourth quarter this year, the iPhone is expected to face increased competition from new smartphones from Nokia and Research In Motion Ltd.’s (RIMM) Blackberry. While details of those phones remain under wraps, they are expected to offer similar features as the iPhone.

Another challenge is from Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) ever-improving Windows Mobile operating system, which powers many smartphones and has experience dealing with corporate information technology systems.

Presently, RIM has a significant lock in the U.S., while Nokia will remain the world leader in the smartphone market. Nokia held 45.2% of the global market for smartphones, while RIM followed with 13.4%, according to Gartner Inc. Apple holds 5.3% of the market.

Few Tech Highlights

“The big news here is the price cut,” was an oft-repeated sentiment of analysts commenting on Apple’s latest moves.

The most noteworthy new feature on the new iPhone is how it can tap cellular networks that download Web pages at near broadband speeds. But top handset makers have been selling so-called third-generation, or 3G, phones for years.

The company also unveiled a number of enterprise security features such as a remote wipe option that lets users erase valuable data if the phone is stolen. Yet the new features are already found on phones from the likes of Palm Inc. ( PALM) or RIM.

The device also will come packed with navigation capabilities, which even basic handsets already boast.

“Putting something like global positioning systems into inside the iPhone is no big deal,” Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said. “The difference is going to be what Apple does with it. Think of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, they pretty much are putting in lots of features just to increase the features list.”

Even on the iPhone, the global positioning services featured aren’t seen overcoming major challenges, like GPS’ low-degree of accuracy in urban areas.

Razr Trap

While the iPhone’s lower price is expected to increase sales, that is the trap Motorola fell into with the Razr. Motorola kept pushing at lower and lower prices with only superficial changes and upgrades, destroying its image as a high-end device.

Razr’s initial success forced the likes of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. ( 005930.SE) and Nokia to counter with similar thin phones - much like Apple’s success with the touchscreen has every device maker, and every carrier, selling one or more touchscreen handsets.

Finally, Razr became the standard device given away in exchange for service contracts.

To be sure, Apple has a solid and well-earned reputation as a technology innovator, and analysts note the iPhone has such a headstart in multiple areas that significant jumps in innovation aren’t necessary.

“They don’t need to take a dramatic step forward because their form factor, software and ecosystem are so far ahead of everything else,” said Rory Altman, a partner at telecom consultancy Altman Vilandrie & Co.

Nonetheless, Motorola’s stumble with the Razr should serve as a cautionary tale for Apple and for future iPhone development.

Apple’s IPhone Must Avoid The Razr Trap

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To be sure, the 3G iPhone announced during yesterday’s WWDC keynote is a big improvement over the original. But there are still a few detractors to keep certain people away. Here are five reasons explaining why you may want to avoid the 3G iPhone.

5. The Camera. Apple made no improvements to the camera at all, and not even to the camera’s software. Many of the world’s top converged devices have cameras that range between 3 and 5 megapixels. The iPhone’s 2-megapixel shooter is really a bare bones camera for such an advanced device. There’s also no flash and no vanity mirror. On top of that, the software controlling the iPhone’s camera includes no ability to make any adjustments to the shooting process or the camera’s settings. You can’t dial down the resolution, the quality, adjust white balance, or perform any other changes that even “free” phones can make. That’s just poor. Perhaps Apple is relying on third-party app developers to create better camera software. Personally, I’d rather have Apple-developed camera software, and Apple didn’t deliver.

4. The Price. Yes, the price. I know the device costs $200 less than it did yesterday morning, but that’s not taking into consideration the additional $240 you’ll be paying for that data contract over two years. The total cost to own the device for two years just went up by $40. If price was the only thing keeping you away from the original iPhone, just know that it ain’t cheaper at all. Of course, you can’t forget the new rules. 3G iPhones need to be purchased and activated in AT&T (NYSE: T) or Apple stores. No unlocking, two year-contracts mandatory.

3. Still no keyboard. The iPhone’s software keyboard has documented issues. It’s simply harder to use than Apple says it is. I’ve owned an iPhone for a year and still have trouble with it. So do many others.

2. Lack of other upgrades. Still no stereo Bluetooth, still no MMS, still no video recording, still no character counter in the SMS app, still no IM capability, still no cut-and-paste, etc. Many of these features may be offered via third-party apps in the future, but that is not known for certain.

1. The 3G radio. Yes, I am going to complain about the 3G radio. Apple stuck a UMTS/HSDPA 3G radio in the iPhone. Kudos to Apple for at least making it a tri-band radio, meaning you’ll be able to roam between North America, South America, Australia, Europe and many other regions of the world and still have access to 3G. But Apple could have done better. How? What about including a radio that can handle AT&T’s HSPA network, meaning faster uploads for all those pictures and emails? What about supporting faster versions of HSDPA. Right now, the iPhone’s 3G radio supports the middle HSDPA speed, which is about 3.6Mbps for downloads in optimal conditions. Other 3G phones available on the market support 7.2Mbps downloads. The 3G iPhone may in fact have a 3G radio in it, but it is not quite as zippy as others. Apple could have put the best chip in there. And it should go without saying, but I am going to say it anyway: If you don’t live in an area blanketed by AT&T’s 3G network, upgrading to 3G won’t do you any good.

Update: Some of the source information I had for the original article was incorrect. It turns out, the iPhone’s 3G radio supports up to 3.6Mbps downloads, which is better than the 1.8Mbps I originally reported. The text above has been changed to reflect that correction. It still, however, does not support HSPA upload speeds.

Five Reasons NOT To Buy The 3G iPhone

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Apple has released the latest version of Mac OS X Leopard, just weeks before its annual developers’ conference.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 is now available for downloading from Apple’s site or through the Software Update process. Dozens of bugs are fixed with the new release for products like iCal, Mail, Time Machine, and others.

Apple is getting set to host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco the week of June 9, where we might learn more about the yet-unnamed Mac OS X 10.6, assuming they aren’t skipping ahead to Mac OS XI, or Mac OS 11, or whatever naming convention gets chosen.

Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5.3

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During the joint Gates/Ballmer opening interview at the D6 conference on Tuesday (all stories), the audience was treated to an early look at Windows 7, which, according to Ballmer, will ship to customers in late 2009. The demo showed a full-screen multitouch interface embedded in the operating system. We saw a demo of a Surface-like app for organizing photos, and what appeared to be the Windows 1.0 Paint app, except that you can now draw with all your fingers at once. Also, a digital globe app, where the two-handed interface makes good sense. And a piano app, on which, thanks to multitouch, you can now play chords.

Aside from a glimpse at a touch-enabled Windows task bar, that was it. The interface. The coat of paint on top of the multitasking engine, the file system, the security, the device drivers…the foundation that the UI is built on top of.

After the demo, I ran in to Bill Gates and asked him why he showed just the UI and didn’t discuss the underpinnings. His explanation: “It’s hard to show more in only five minutes…the security, the speed…” Then he took his plate of shrimp and left. And Ballmer had said, earlier in the evening, that the biggest pushback Microsoft got on Vista from customers was not around its security systems or its drivers, but rather on its interface.

But I really want to believe that customers–or failing that, at least the techie D6 audience–is able to see beyond the surface. There are so many more important things to worry about, both for users and for Microsoft. Cloud computing is obviating the need for much of what the OS does, yet users want to maintain control and ownership of their personal data. Network-delivered user interfaces can do a lot of what the desktop UI has traditionally done, but only when the user is online. I was really hoping for Ballmer and Gates to address the changing nature of computing, and not fight Apple for the design award; I really don’t think the Microsoft UI juggernaut committee is going to be able to outflank the Apple design team’s Zodiac runabout.

Make no mistake, multitouch is cool. And it may, eventually, be important. Apply the technology at a personal level, to the manipulation and visualization of complex data structures like a Facebook social network, and it could be a game changer. Furthermore, support for this interface method does belong in the operating system, because you need device driver support for it. But even if you buy that logic, I believe the multitouch project is inconsequential when compared with the bigger things we need from an OS. And I think the audience, both here at D6 and elsewhere, deserves to know what’s really changing in Windows at a deep level. We can wait a bit before we worry about the surface.

Windows 7 demo at D6: Really? Thats it?

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Samsung Shows 256GB SSD, Plans Launch This Year

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