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Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer demonstrates HP’s ‘slate PC’

Microsoft and HP have teamed up to introduce a slate computer ahead of Apple’s much rumoured device launch.

The firms unveiled the Windows 7 powered touchscreen machine, also known as a tablet, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

The aim of the device is to bridge the gap between laptops and smartphones.

Apple are also reported to be gearing up to launch a slate device in late January to go on sale in March, according to the Wall Street Journal.

You can imagine how overwhelming it is for the ordinary consumer Maggie Shiels Read more and comment at the dot.Maggie blog

The HP device is also expected to go on sale later this year.

“It’s a beautiful little product,” said Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer.

During his keynote address at CES, Mr Ballmer demonstrated the machine in front of an audience of over 3,500 press, bloggers, analysts and industry peers.

He also showed off two other tablet computers – one made by Archos and the other by Pegatron Corp.

Muted reaction

Reaction to the as yet unnamed device was somewhat subdued.

“What we saw confirmed my worst suspicions that this is your standard Microsoft software in a slate form,” Paul Miller, senior associate editor of technology website Engadget, told BBC News.

“It’s an interesting product in itself but Microsoft could have gone further. It’s not anything new in terms of software and that is what you really need to make a device like this make people want to buy it.”

Analysts warn that a glut of these products will confuse consumers

However, technology blogger Devin Connors of Tom’s Hardware did not agree.

“It looked really good given the short amount of time we saw it for and it has Windows 7. Everyone loves Windows 7 and putting it in a device the size of an e-reader is probably going to be a winning combination.”

The lack of enthusiasm for the product was in part due to speculation about what – if anything – Apple may launch.

Rumours of a Apple slate – dubbed the iSlate – has dominated the blogosphere in recent weeks, although there has been no formal announcement by the Cupertino-based company.

“Apple tends to change the game and this Microsoft/HP tablet didn’t blow them out of the water,” said Dean Takahashi of tech blog VentureBeat.com.

“How successful it will be is up in the air, but HP is the biggest technology company in the world and can certainly put a lot of muscle behind the device,” he told BBC News.

Microsoft is the world’s biggest software company.

Market boost

This is not Microsoft’s first attempt to introduce a tablet or slate-like computer.

Back in 2002, the company introduced a tablet PC version of Windows XP, which failed to take off.

The form factor is around 10 years old.

Windows 7 replaced the much hated Windows Vista

Analysts however believe these new entries should give the middling $950m (£597m) US market for tablets a much needed jolt.

“Apple could do for the tablet market what it did for smartphones with the iPhone,” analyst David Daoud of IDC told USA Today.

Other industry watchers fear that consumers might be a little wary with so many companies all rushing at once to bring out new devices.

“With this market awash in products, customer confusion is what we have for certain,” said Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group.

In his address, Mr Ballmer also focused on new PCs, software and the success of Windows 7 which was released last October.

“The biggest hit of the year was Windows 7,” said Mr Ballmer.

“Windows 7 is by far the fastest selling operating system in history.”

The software boss cited figures from the market analysis firm NPD that said that since the launch of Windows 7, sales of consumer PCs in the US over the latest holiday period were up more than 50% from the year before.

Kindle 2 allows users to download from a virtual book shop

As the e-reader market heats up, Amazon is trying to stay ahead of the competition with the international launch of its bigger Kindle DX.

Amazon will release the new model, with a 9.7-in (25-cm) screen, on 19 January in more than 100 countries, following its launch in the US in May last year.

The move follows the introduction of the latest 6-in Kindle in October last year – it ships to 130 countries.

Research predicts 10m e-book readers will be sold in the US this year.

“The time for invention in the technology of reading containers has come,” said Ian Freed, vice-president of Amazon Kindle.

“There will be many winners in this market and we think it’s a really great opportunity for us to keep being at the forefront of that invention.

“We may have come up with some things no-one else has come up with, like 60-second downloads and more selections than before, including newspapers and magazines,” Mr Freed told BBC News.

Amazon said it now provides more than 400,000 books and 100 newspapers and magazines on the Kindle.

Hot product

E-book readers will be making a big splash at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

In recognition of the growing market for these devices, CES has set aside specific exhibition space for companies to demonstrate their products to thousands of journalists, bloggers and analysts.

Amazon has announced deals with several US papers

“Expect to see significant offerings in the e-reader category over the next few days,” said Shawn DuBravac, director of research for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).

The CEA has forecast a doubling of sales of e-readers for the next couple of years, growing to 16m by 2014.

Ahead of the opening of the world’s biggest consumer electronics show, Hearst publishing company introduced an e-reader called Skiff with an 11.5-in flexible touch-screen that the company claimed has the highest-resolution display to date.

Also on the horizon is Plastic Logic’s Que, which has a 10-in diagonal display.

Spring Design’s Alex e-reader, with a 6-in screen, has just contracted with Google to access more than one million Google books.

There will be new COOL-ER e-books from Interead and Ray Kurzwell, an inventor and futurist, will debut a colour e-reader interface at CES called Blio.

The eDGe from enTourage Systems tries to blend the idea of a tablet computer and e-reader with a device that has two screens which can fold together like a book.

“There are too many designs sloshing around,” said Eric Savitz, of Barrons.com, a financial magazine.

“Some of these e-books are going to flame out before they get off the ground. And in any case, all of the rules in this market could be re-written when Apple unveils the tablet (computer) later this month.”

Amazon’s Mr Freed agreed.

“I think a lot of companies that are building different products are just adding features for the sake of it. We are focusing on the features, capabilities and experiences that work for the customer,” he said.

The end is nigh

Amazon seems to feel it has a product that will survive the glut of devices due to flood the market.

Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon is now the world’s biggest bookseller

The e-tailer said that throughout 2009, the Kindle was the most gifted product in Amazon’s history.

Forrester Research estimated that Amazon accounted for 60% of e-readers sold in the US last year, followed by Sony with 35%.

Amazon also revealed that it sold more e-books than physical books on Christmas day. Mr Freed told BBC News that this trend undoubtedly signals the end of physical books.

“If you were a reporter 700 years ago, you would have said the scroll will never disappear because it is a good technology.

Then someone came along with the physical book and it changed everything,” said Mr Freed.

“I think the same thing is happening here. The only question is does it take three years, five years or 20 years?”

The method spots imitations of works by Pieter Brueger the Elder

A simple method to distinguish artistic fakes and imitations has been demonstrated by researchers.

The approach, known as “sparse coding”, builds a virtual library of an artist’s works and breaks them down into the simplest possible visual elements.

Verifiable works by that artist can be rebuilt using varying proportions of those simple elements, while imitators’ works cannot.

The work is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The mathematical analysis of artworks is a relatively new discipline, which gained worldwide attention when it emerged in 1999 that Jackson Pollock’s “drip paintings” could be cast in the mathematics of fractals – patterns that repeat at ever-smaller scales.

However, the claim that a fractal analysis could be used to identify Pollock-like paintings of unknown provenance remains a subject of some controversy.

Sparse richness

Since that time, a number of approaches to identify the origins of artworks have been attempted, yielding varying degrees of certainty in the results.

Now, Daniel Rockmore of Dartmouth College in the US and his colleagues have shown a straightforward method known as sparse coding that, so far, appears to be significantly more accurate than previous attempts.

SPARSE CODING ANALYSIS Each of an artist’s works is cut into 144 pieces (12 rows and 12 columns) A set of 144 random elements the size of each piece is generated Each element is altered by a computer until some combination of them can recreate each piece from the original artwork The elements (shown above) are refined until the fewest are required to recreate each piece Those refined pieces will be unable to reproduce the work of an imitator or a fake

The method works by dividing digital versions of all of an artist’s confirmed works into 144 squares – 12 columns of 12 rows each.

Then a set of “basis functions” is constructed – initially a set of random shapes and forms in black and white.

A computer then modifies them until, for any given cut-down piece of the artist’s work, some subset of the basis functions can be combined in some proportion to recreate the piece.

The basis functions are refined further to ensure that the smallest possible number of them is required to generate any given piece – they are the “sparsest” set of functions that reproduces the artist’s work.

The team tried the approach on the works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a 16th century Flemish painter whose original works are well-known and who had a number of imitators.

Upon using the sparse coding approach on the artist’s known works, the Dartmouth team showed that the optimised basis functions were unable to reproduce the imitations.

However, Professor Rockmore said that although authentication of works was an application that would appeal to many people, sparse coding could lend its analysis to a number of problems in the study of art.

“Our hope is that it becomes more of what people call technical art history,” he told BBC News.

“Instead of asking ‘was this painting done 40 years after these drawings?’, one might instead ask ‘how are these statistics evolving over time and what does that say about the working style?’.

“For many people those are more central questions, and probably more substantial questions.”

Some say that Mr Zapatero bears an uncanny resemblance….

Visitors to Spain’s EU presidency website have been greeted by an image of hapless fictional character Mr Bean instead of Spain’s Socialist leader.

An unidentified hacker briefly hijacked the site on Monday, replacing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero with that of a bumbling comedy buffoon.

In Spain, the similarity between Mr Zapatero and the Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson, is a long-standing joke.

The government said the site itself, www.eu2010.es, had not been attacked.

…to Mr Bean

In a statement, it said that a hacker had taken a screenshot of the homepage to make a photo montage.

“The alleged attack exploited a vulnerability called cross-site scripting,” it said.

For most visitors, this meant that a smiling Mr Bean replaced Mr Zapatero, complete with a benign smile and the words “Hi there”.

In a recent edition of El Pais, Mr Zapatero was depicted as Mr Bean in a cartoon above an article that was highly critical of his handling of the economy in Spain, where unemployment has reached almost 20%.

China arrests thousands in Web porn crackdown

Supporters of the new law say it could be a model for the rest of the world

The first effects of France’s new law against internet piracy will begin to be felt as the new year begins.

The law was passed after a long struggle in parliament, and in the teeth of bitter opposition from groups opposed to internet restrictions.

Illegal downloaders will be sent a warning e-mail, then a letter if they continue, and finally must appear before a judge if they offend again.

The judge can impose a fine, or suspend their access to the internet.

The Creation and Internet Bill set up a new state agency – the Higher Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (Hadopi).

The law was backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy and the entertainment industry.

Many opponents

Its supporters say it is a model for other countries around the world that want to protect their creative industries and make clear to ordinary web-users that not everything is for free.

What we think is after the first message… about two thirds of the people (will) stop their illegal usages of the internet Michel ThiolliereFrench senator

Michel Thiolliere, a French senator and member of the Hadopi, says that if the law is explained properly, then people understand it.

“The internet is a fabulous world, but it needs rules, if you want to get cinema, music or video games in the future.

“What we think is that after the first message… about two-thirds of the people (will) stop their illegal usages of the internet.

“After the second message more than 95% will finish with that bad usage.”

The law has many opponents, who say either that it is too draconian, or that it has already been overtaken by technology and that serious downloaders will simply sidestep it.

But for supporters, it is a long-overdue necessity.

For them, it is a way of reminding law-abiding citizens who have been tempted by an abundance of apparently free material available on the web, that it does come at a price.

Investors worry the US is not doing enough to entice founders here

A proposal that will make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs in the US to start the next Google or Yahoo will be debated in the new year.

Congressman Jared Polis has proposed a start-up visa to entice “foreigners with good ideas” to stay in the US.

The issue has been gathering steam in Silicon Valley where half of all tech company founders are immigrants, according to Duke University research.

The idea is part of a proposed overhaul of the US immigration system.

“Every day the American economy is losing ground – not to mention high-tech jobs and technologies – to India and China because foreign-born entrepreneurs cannot secure a visa to stay in the US,” he said.

Lost opportunity

Eric Diep, who has just turned 22, could be regarded as one entrepreneur who got away.

He came to Silicon Valley as a student like many immigrant founders who have helped start companies such as Google and PayPal.

Mr Diep was one of the first developers to get into social games with his application called Quizzes, initially launched on the social networking site Facebook.

Google, Pfizer, Yahoo and eBay were in-part founded by immigrants

Over a year ago he started to apply for a visa to allow him to carry on working in the Valley, but he soon encountered problems.

“The reason it was so difficult for me was because I dropped out of university and the stipulation for a lot of visas is undergraduate experience. My age also seemed to be an issue for the attorneys

“At the beginning it wasn’t the expense in terms of legal fees but the big problem soon became one of distraction. I was trying to spend as much time working on perfecting my product but then I would have to go away and figure out the legalities of applying for the visa,” Mr Diep told BBC News.

In the end, Mr Diep decided to base himself in his native Canada and travel back and forth to Silicon Valley.

“The flying is so tiring between the two places and it’s expensive. At one point, I had no money left in my bank account but at the last minute money came in and now I feel pretty fortunate that I can still do this.

“It was a pretty close call,” he added.

He backs a start-up visa because, for him, being in Silicon Valley is where he needs to be.

“Being there at the time really launched me. I would never have spotted the social gaming opportunity had I not been there.”

Visa details

The start-up visa is aimed at streamlining the country’s EB-5 visa system which was initially introduced in 1990 to attract foreign capital to the US.

Each year 10,000 EB-5 visas are available but to get one, applicants need to invest $1m and create 10 full-time jobs.

Mr Polis said he wants “a new class of eligibility” with the start-up visa.

The new visa would require $100k-$250k in venture capital funding

It would be granted to foreign entrepreneurs if their business plan attracts either $250,000 from a venture capital operating company that is primarily US based or $100,000 from an angel investor.

They must also show that the business will create five to ten jobs or generate a profit and at least $1m in revenue.

Some of these requirements may well be changed when the bill goes to committee in the new year.

“Immigration reform is a big discussion in Washington,” said supporter Brad Feld, who is also a managing director with venture company the Foundry Group.

“We think the start-up visa is an easy thing to talk about and get consensus around in terms of having a positive spin on entrepreneurship and creating jobs.”

Job creation

Some critics fear that making it easier for entrepreneurs to set up shop will hurt Americans by taking jobs away from them.

“I feel incredibly strongly that that is a misinterpretation of the proposal,” said Eric Ries a venture advisor and author.

Start-up companies are needed to boost the economy say backer of the visa

“Some people have called those opposed to new immigration reform xenophobes and that is why I think it is important we craft this proposal so it addresses those concerns. This is not a new visa category but reform of an existing but flawed category,” he told BBC News.

The proposal’s backers say that far from taking away jobs, new jobs will emerge that were never there in the first place.

“If the capital is available for the market, we should jump to bring those people here. Those jobs only get created once the founders get funded. This is a market driven decision,” said Dave McClure, an internet entrepreneur, investor and start-up advisor.

YouNoodle is a start-up company founded by two British entrepreneurs. It tracks the start-up sector and said the figures speak for themselves.

“If just ten thousand start-up visas were made available this would mean over 3000 additional new innovative and funded companies would be based in the US every year,” said Kirill Makharinsky, YouNoodle co-founder.

“They would generate more than 10,000 jobs on average every year. In the first 10 years that would add up to over 500,000 highly-skilled new jobs

“So the upside is huge and the downside is negligible because no jobs are being taken away from US citizens,” Mr Makharinsky told BBC News.

And for Mr McClure, the consequences of not establishing a start-up visa class are obvious.

“We will lose out because we are not being competitive with the rest of the world,” he said.

“There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and Australia. They are all vying for the top entrepreneurs and if we only look at our own citizens, we are only taking 10-20% of the world’s talent into consideration here. That would be short-sighted in the extreme.”

As Google continues to build out its search technology, the company has gradually expanded beyond browser-based text search to include voice and image searches.

The experimental Google Goggles is one such project: an image-based search service that allows people to submit an image and get Web-based search results pulled from Google’s massive archive of indexed photos and images. It’s currently available only on Android-powered smartphones, but a Google developer is working on a side project to incorporate the same functionality into future versions of the company’s Chrome Web browser.

The concept is simple enough: snap an image with your phone, and let Google Goggles search the Web for results based on the image you’ve submitted. But it’s not always easy to execute.

I put Google Goggles to the test on my Motorola Droid running Android 2.0.1. Logos and text seem to be the simplest tasks for Goggles to handle. It had no problem identifying an older version of the CNET logo, returning results with an image of the logo as well as our Web site, cnet.com. Other tests didn’t go quite as well.