Otellini says PC industry on brink of recovery

The PC industry is set to come out of the most damaging recession in decades as computer shipments begin to pick up, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said on Tuesday. Otellini said he is "personally" betting that in the coming quarters the PC industry is likely to see flat or positive growth in shipments compared to 2008. The recovery has already started and the best is yet to come, he said. Chip shipments are stabilizing as PC shipments start to rise, Otellini said during a keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum trade show in San Francisco. "This is an environment where we have had the worst recession in 70 years," Otellini said. "The market is poised for a resurgence and we will see how 2010 plays out," he said.

The PC industry has been more resilient than expected and the trend should continue going ahead. Otellini's comments on the PC industry are stronger than conservative outlooks provided for an expected PC industry recovery from companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Dell. The recovery will help Intel, which makes the chips that power most PCs, he said. "It shows we have built something that's indispensable," Otellini said. Analyst firm IDC in July said PC shipments for the second quarter of 2009 were stronger than expectations, propped up by consumer spending and lower prices. Netbooks have helped stabilize PC shipments over the past few quarters, Otellini said. Worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter fell 3.1 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier, to 66 million units, according to IDC. IDC had originally projected a drop of 6.3 percent.

Netbooks are inexpensive laptops characterized by small screens and keyboards. Otellini said netbook shipments outpaced those of Nintendo's Wii gaming console in 2006 and Apple's iPhone in 2007; those products were wildly successful when they were launched, respectively, in those years. They are designed to run basic Internet applications and office productivity applications like word processing. Intel ships Atom processors for netbooks, which first made an appearance in 2007. Otellini also criticized the European Commission for ignoring possible evidence in its antitrust investigation. The Commission on Monday released a nonconfidential version of the ruling that detailed e-mail exchanges between Intel and computer manufacturers.

The EC found Intel guilty of anticompetitive behavior, but Intel believes the regulator was selective with evidence it looked at and, essentially, came in with a "predisposed view" to find the company guilty, Otellini said. The EC described the e-mail exchanges as "smoking gun" evidence in the probe, which resulted in the chip maker being fined €1.06 billion (US$1.45 billion) in May. The EC has consistently ignored evidence and painted a different picture around the memos, he said. Intel has never attempted to quash competitors by setting up conditional deals with PC makers, Otellini said. Intel has its side of the story to tell, but it can't offer additional information for the time being, as it was under restrictions concerning the release of documents.

Otellini also made a number of announcements at the keynote, including the introduction of a new developer program around the Atom mobile processor. But it hopes to release documents at some point to tell its side of the story. The program will help developers write and port existing programs for use on PCs, like netbooks, based on Atom processors. Otellini said applications will mostly be sold in the app stores, much like how Apple sells iPhone applications for the iPhone. It will also provide the tools and software development kits to developers and help sell applications.

The program will first apply to netbooks and then expand to other mobile devices. Intel has partnered with Asustek Computer, Acer and Dell for the program.

iStockphoto guarantees its collection

Starting today, iStockphoto, the micropayment royalty-free image, video, and audio provider, will legally guarantee its entire collection from copyright, moral right, trademark, intellectual property, and rights of privacy disputes for up to $10,000. The new iStock Legal Guarantee, delivered at no cost to customers, covers the company's entire 5 million-plus collection. Recently however, Vivozoom, another microstock company, took a similar action to guarantee its collection. Additional coverage for an Extended Legal Guarantee totaling $250,000 is available for the purchase of 100 iStock credits. "Our first line of defense has always been-and continues to be-our rigorous inspection process," said Kelly Thompson, chief operating officer of iStockphoto. "The Legal Guarantee is simply an added layer of protection for our customers, many of whom are using microstock more than ever before." Although common for traditional stock houses, such legal guarantees have not been standard in microstock because of the low prices. iStock says that files purchased and used in accordance with its license will not breach any trademark, copyright, or other intellectual property rights or rights of privacy.

And, if a customer does get a claim, iStock will cover the customer's legal costs and direct damages up to a combined total of $10,000. iStock customers can increase their coverage for legal fees and direct damages up to a combined total of $250,000 by purchasing the Extended Legal Guarantee via the iStock credits (which costs between $95 and $138). iStock expects that this program will be popular with a very small percentage of sophisticated media buyers with very specific needs, and considers it to be a value-added service to customers rather than a major source of revenue.

Scammers auto-generate Twitter accounts to spread scareware

Scammers are increasingly using machine-generated Twitter accounts to post messages about trendy topics, and tempt users into clicking on a link that leads to servers hosting fake Windows antivirus software, security researchers said Monday. The accounts, which use variable account and user names, supposedly represent U.S. Twitter users. The latest Twitter attacks originated with malicious accounts cranked out by software, said experts at both F-Secure and Sophos. In some cases, the background wallpaper is customized for each account, yet another tactic to make the unwary think that a real person is responsible for the content.

Some of the tweets exploit Twitter's current "Trending Topics," the constantly-changing top 10 list of popular tweet keywords that the micro-blogging service posts on its home page. Tweets from those accounts are also automatically generated, said Sean Sullivan, a security advisor with the North American labs of Helsinki-based F-Secure. Others are repeats of real tweets. The defense, however, has regularly been subverted by hacker-built software, or by humans who contract to decipher the characters manually. "There's nothing cookie-cutter about these accounts," noted Sullivan, who added that scareware scammers aren't afraid to spend money to make money. All the tweets include links to sites that try to dupe users into downloading and installing bogus security software, often called "scareware" because they fool users with sham infection warnings, then provide endless pop-ups until people pay $40 to $50 to buy the useless program. "As fast as Twitter can shut down the accounts, [the scammers] create new accounts," said Sullivan. "Somehow they're getting around the CAPTCHA, but how they're doing it, whether with a bot or by CAPTCHA farms, we don't know." CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is the technology that uses distorted, scrambled characters to block automated registration of accounts.

There's a lot of the latter to be had. Because the scareware tweets use a URL shortening service - as do most tweets to crowd as much as possible into Twitter's 140-character limit - it's impossible for users to tell exactly where the link will take them. Last year, botnet researcher Joe Stewart of SecureWorks said there was evidence some hackers were making as much as $5 million a year shilling scareware. "A lot of these scareware campaigns don't last 24 hours," said Beth Jones, a threat researcher at U.K.-based Sophos. "By the time a [distribution] site is blocked, they've already moved on to something else." The servers hosting the phony security software behind the Twitter attacks are located in Toronto, said Jones, who said Sophos had been monitoring those systems since June. Jones suggested that users access Twitter with a third-party application, such as TweetDeck, which offers a URL previewer to show the actual destination. Unfortunately, the scammers are using the Metamark shortening service ; TweetDeck doesn't support previews for Metamark. "Scammers are using Twitter because it's a new conduit for spreading their scareware," said Jones. "They go where the money is, which means where people are, and people are on Twitter." By late Monday, Twitter had deleted the machine-generated accounts spreading scareware that Sophos and F-Secure had revealed, but some tweets with the same malicious URL were still available on the service.

Computer programmers set for smash-mouth brain battle

A smart people smack-down is set to start next week where thousands of university computer researchers will pit their brains and machines in a grueling battle of logic, strategy, and mental endurance. Layer 8 Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring During the competition, ten to twelve problems are attempted in a five hour period. The 34th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Contest (ICPC) pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a nerve-wracking five-hour deadline. The problems are of varying difficulty and flavor.

The goal is that every team solve two problems, that every problem is solved, and that no team solve them all, according to ACM. Contests in the past have included problems that searched for a missing boat at sea, triangulated the location of a faulty transmitter, computed golf handicaps, stacked pipe of varying diameters in a fixed width bin, coded or decoded messages, printed braille, sought an exit to a maze, processed satellite images and solved a math problem. ACM says it wants two problems that could be solved in an hour by a first or second year student, two that could be solved in an hour by a third year student, and two that will likely determine the winners. Problems are presented with no more than a page of text, a helpful illustration, a sample input set with and accepted output set, ACM states. And judging is relentlessly strict, IBM says. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build smart software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. The students are given a problem statement, not a requirements document.

Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner. Some problems require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only.

Still others are simply too hard to solve - except for the world's brightest problem-solvers, according to IBM. The Battle of the Brains is the largest and most prestigious computing competition in the world, with more than tens of thousands of students from universities in approximately 90 countries on six continents participating. Previously, the 2009 ACM-ICPC World Finals took place in Stockholm, Sweden, where a team from St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics in Russia emerged as the world champion for the second year in a row. Since IBM began sponsoring the contest in 1997, participation has grown from 1,100 to more than 7,100 teams. Regional bouts will begin in the United States on October 18 and continue through December, sweeping from continent to continent. Only 100 three-person teams will advance to the World Finals on February 5, 2010 hosted by Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China. "The ACM-ICPC affords students the opportunity to showcase their talents and gain exposure among top recruiters," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "The contest is also a forum for advancing technology in an effort to better accommodate the growing needs of the future."

Gartner: Turn server heat up to 75

Data center managers should turn server temperatures up to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and adopt more aggressive policies for IT energy measurement, Gartner says in a new report.  Five tools to prevent energy waste in the data center After conducting a Web-based survey of 130 infrastructure and operations managers, Gartner concluded that measurement and monitoring of data center energy use will remain immature through 2011. Only 7% of respondents said their top priorities include procurement of green products and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient technology. In a troubling sign, 48% of respondents have not yet considered metrics for energy management. In general, data center managers are not paying enough attention to measuring, monitoring and modeling of energy use. "Although the green IT and data center energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers' products," Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner, said in a news release. "In other words, even if more energy efficient servers or energy management tools were available, data center and IT managers are far more interested in internal projects like consolidation, rationalization and virtualization." About 63% of survey respondents expect to face data center capacity constraints in the next 18 months, and 15% said they are already using all available capacity and will have to build new data centers or refurbish existing ones within the next year.

Gartner issued four recommendations for improving energy management: • Raise the temperature at the server inlet point up to 71 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius), but use sensors to monitor potential hotspots. • Develop a dashboard of data center energy-efficient metrics that provides appropriate data to different levels of IT and financial management. • Use the SPECpower benchmark to evaluate the relative energy efficiency of servers. • Improve the use of the existing infrastructure through consolidation and virtualization before building out or buying new/additional data center floor space. CDW surveyed 752 IT pros in U.S. organizations for its 2009 Energy Efficient IT Report, finding that 59% are training employees to shut down equipment when they leave the office, and 46% have implemented or are implementing server virtualization. In addition to Gartner's report, a recent survey by CDW illustrates trends related to data center efficiency. The recession has helped convince IT organizations of the financial value of power-saving measures, with greater numbers implementing storage virtualization, and managing cable placement to keep under-floor cooling chambers open and thus reduce demand on cooling systems. Data center managers are finding it easier to identify energy efficient equipment because of the Environmental Protection Agency's new Energy Star program for servers.

CDW found that 43% of IT shops have implemented remote monitoring and management of their data centers, up from 29% the year before. But data centers are still missing many opportunities to save money on energy costs. "Energy reduction efforts are yielding significant results … Still, most are spending millions more on energy than necessary," CDW writes. "If the average organization surveyed were to take full advantage of energy-savings measures, IT professionals estimate they could save $1.5M annually." Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter 

HP's DreamScreen aims to cut ties to the PC

HP is trying to revive the idea of placing smart screens around the home to display content from the Web and PCs, though the number of Web sites available at first will be very limited. It can also be hooked up to a PC to play music or video stored on the computer in a different room, or to display photos like a digital picture frame. "What we're really trying to do is bring a simple, user-intuitive device that's always on, always connected to the Internet, to bring Web applications that don't require PCs," said Ameer Karim, director of worldwide marketing with HP's futures and innovations group. The HP DreamScreen, announced Thursday, can display content from the Web without needing to be hooked up to a PC, using its built-in wireless connection.

The screens use a remote control and a touch panel for input, and can also be used as an alarm clock, to check the weather or to play any of about 15,000 global radio stations, HP said. Instead, HP worked with Internet companies and content providers to develop interfaces to display their content. The DreamScreens don't come with a Web browser, however, which limits the Web content that can be viewed. The initial partners are Facebook, the music site Pandora and the photo site Snapfish. The company stressed that the devices are supposed to complement PCs, not be a substitute for them. More applications may be added in the future, Karim said.

Starting a PC just to check something on the Web is time-consuming, Karim noted. The products come in 10.2- and 13.3-inch sizes, priced at US$249 and $299, respectively. The DreamScreens can be hung on a wall or put on a table in living rooms or kitchens, and look more elegant than most PCs, according to Karim. "Internally, we've been calling it 'bite-sized computing.' It's snippets of the stuff you'd normally get on a computer, but we don't really want to bring productivity here," he said. They will be available starting October in the U.S. through Best Buy, Amazon.com and other retailers. The device may support TV viewing in the future, Karim said. "It is very likely you will see these devices do all sorts of things like access content on a DVR or a set-top box." It may also pull video content from TV stations in the future.

HP didn't provide plans to sell the product worldwide. Other companies have tried to market smart screens for the home but without success. The products failed to gain traction and were eventually cancelled. A few years ago Microsoft was promoting its Windows Powered Smart Displays, which had to be connected to a PC to display Web content but were otherwise similar. HP's smart screen uses the Linux OS and comes with 2GB of internal storage so that photos, music and movies can be stored locally. It supports multiple MPEG video formats; the JPEG, PNG and bitmap (BMP) photo file formats; and MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV audio formats.

It will have a USB port and a memory card reader, from which digital content can be played. HP didn't comment about the processor inside the product. Intel has shown off TV sets and set-top boxes that run small Web applications that it says can complement TV viewing. Other companies are also experimenting with new ways to access the Internet in the home. For example, a group of friends on MySpace could chat with each other about a program they are watching.