We don’t often give away software here on Crave, but this week we’re offering up Roxio’s latest 3D-enhanced version of its digital media suite, Roxio Creator 2011, to one lucky winner.

As CNET’s Jasmine France writes in a recent blog post, “The new version of Creator includes the ability to import video from popular 3D video cameras, and it lets users edit said videos and even select from a variety of integrated 3D transitions. You can also save 3D videos to various formats and burn discs on 3D-capable media. As an added bonus, the suite is also capable of converting 2D photos and videos to 3D (as shown in the screen grab above). Of course, none of this would be possible without the requisite 3D glasses, and Roxio includes a pair in the package with the software.”

Normally, Roxio Creator 2011 would cost about $100, but you have the chance to get it gratis.

So, how do you try to win this software package? Let me enumerate the basic rules. Please read them carefully; there will be a test.

Shortly after the market close, Hewlett-Packard raised its bid to $27 per share, up from $24. That move comes just hours after Dell juiced its own bid to $24.30, which was a counterpunch to HP’s counteroffer from earlier in the week.

HP’s new offer, if it’s accepted, would put the total value of a 3Par acquisition at about $1.8 billion. It marks an 11 percent premium over Dell’s offer Thursday morning.

“Our revised proposal offers superior value to 3Par’s shareholders, while maintaining our disciplined approach to only pursuing acquisitions that we believe will strengthen our portfolio and create long-term value for our shareholders,” said Dave Donatelli, general manager of HP’s Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking unit. “Not only is our offer superior to Dell’s proposal, HP remains uniquely positioned to execute on this combination given the number of synergies between the two companies.”

Under deadline pressure, Dell had boosted its offer to acquire 3Par–and said that 3Par had accepted the higher bid.

Dell announced Thursday morning that 3Par has acceded to the new cash offer of $24.30 per share, which raises the total value of the bid to about $1.6 billion. Last week, Dell’s initial offer stood at $18 per share, or about $1.15 billion–a bid that 3Par’s board had approved.

The increased offer came in reaction to HP stepping in Monday with a bid of $24 per share. At that juncture, 3Par said that HP’s unsolicited offer was likely to result in a “superior proposal” and gave Dell an ultimatum: three days to produce a better offer.

The initial agreement between Dell and 3Par included a provision to allow Dell to match competing bids, and the two companies have now signed an amendment reflecting the new offer price, according to Dell.

The Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker wants 3Par at least in part for its expertise in data management for multitenant cloud-computing environments. Virtualized storage arrays from Fremont, Calif.-based 3Par let companies buy storage capacity as needed.

Under the terms of the deal, 3Par would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Dell.

Dell said the amendment to the offer won’t change the timing of the proposed acquisition, which it expects to close before year’s end. HP similarly said that if it is successful in with its bid, the deal would close by the end of the year.

Also on Thursday, HP made a separate cloud-related acquisition, picking up privately held Stratavia, which focuses on database and application automation, for an undisclosed sum.

The Kepler-9 system includes two Saturn-class worlds orbiting in gravitational lockstep close to their star and a possible third planet just a bit larger than Earth that whirls through a hellish “year” in just 1.8 days.

The announcement came just a few days after a European team, using a different technique with a ground-based telescope, revealed the discovery of a solar system with up to seven planets, including another candidate planet slightly larger than Earth.

An artist’s impression of a solar system discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft showing two Saturn-class worlds. A possible third planet, slightly larger than Earth, also may be present.

(Credit: NASA)

The combined results demonstrate a steadily improving ability to detect Earth-size worlds across vast gulfs of space, raising hopes than within a few years, scientists will know whether Earth-like planets are common or rare.

“The Kepler mission has discovered two new planets orbiting the same star and actually there’s a third possible, or candidate, planet that may be transiting that star as well,” said William Borucki, the Kepler principal investigator. “It is the first discovery of (multiple) planets transiting the same star.

“The observation will give us new information about a system of orbiting planets that’s quite different from our own solar system. It gives us clues about the composition of these planets and actually helps us to search for other planets in the planetary system even though the planets don’t transit.”

Trailing the Earth in its orbit around the sun, Kepler’s 95-megapixel camera is aimed at a patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus that’s the size of an out-stretched hand, a target zone that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars.

Of that total, the science team has selected some 300,000 stars that are the right age, have the right composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Over the life of the mission, more than 156,000 of those will be actively monitored by Kepler.

The spacecraft’s camera works like a photometer, continually monitoring the brightness of target stars in a wide field of view. If a planet passes in front of a target star, the light observed by Kepler will dim ever so slightly.

By studying those subtle changes in brightness–comparable to watching a flea creep across a car’s headlight at night–and by timing repeated cycles, computers can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits even though the planets themselves cannot be seen.

The probability of finding sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in orbits similar to ours–and aligned so that Kepler can “see” them–is about one-half of 1 percent. Given the sample size, however, that still leaves room for hundreds of potential discoveries.

But it will take three-and-a-half years of around-the-clock observations to capture the repeated cycles needed to confirm detection of an Earth-like world in Earth-like orbits.

Based on the first 43 days of data, scientists said in June they had identified more than 700 candidate planets and five possible multiplanet solar system.

The two Saturn-class planets announced Thursday, designated Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c, are part of a sixth system. Both planets orbit their parent star, 2,300 light-years from Earth, in gravitational resonance, with the former completing one “year” in about 19 days and the latter in about 38 days.

The Kepler observations are so precise, scientists were able to measure subtle timing variations that were the result of gravitational interactions between the orbiting planets.

“The discovery of the Kepler-9 system is important because it demonstrates an additional technique, this transit timing variations technique, that can be used for confirming planets and estimating their masses,” said Matthew Holman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “This technique is something we will apply to future Kepler data where it’ll be particularly valuable for estimating the masses of small planets.”

For context, he said, “it’s important to point out that if we were to observe the (Earth’s) solar system from a distant star viewed edge on…we would see sizable transit timing variation. It gives you a sense of what Kepler’s looking for. However, we can also use this technique to search for additional planets that may not transit the star. We can see their influence on the transit times of the planets that do transit the star.”

Both of the Saturn-class Kepler-9 worlds are believed to have formed much farther from their parent star, “migrating” inward due to interactions with gas and dust in the original disk of material that gave birth to the worlds.

“Such a location so close to the star would not have been an easy place to form,” said Alycia Weinberger, an astronomer with the Carnegie Institution. “So these planets probably had to form farther from the star and migrate inward and the fact that they wound up in this special relationship, this resonance, has something to say about the history of that migration. The whole history of that planetary system’s formation may be included just in the present day configuration of these planets.

“It will take continued precise measurements by Kepler of their orbits and theoretical work to understand what the initial conditions were that lead to the final configuration that we observe today,” she said. “But we could hope to understand how far these planets formed originally from their star and…how long it took them to form and how long their migrations lasted. And that really teaches us about the general mechanisms (of) the formation and migration of planets.”

The smaller candidate planet, Kepler-9c, is believed to have a radius just 1.5 times greater than Earth’s, completing an orbit every 1.6 days.

Earlier this week, a team of European astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system with up to seven planets, including five Neptune-class worlds, one possible Saturn-class planet and one possible low-mass world similar in size to Kepler-9c.

The European team used a ground-based telescope and a sensitive spectrograph to measure the slight movement of the parent star caused by the gravitational tugs of the orbiting planets over the past six years.

According to the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia maintained by the Paris Observatory, 488 planets have been discovered to date beyond Earth’s solar system, not counting the latest from Kepler. The radial velocity technique is responsible for the lion’s share of the discoveries, but the transit technique will continue to gain ground as the Kepler data are analyzed.

“The Kepler data is like a treasure chest packed with all sorts of scientific riches,” said Jon Morse, director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters. “Researchers across the country and around the world are just now beginning to dig through this treasure trove.”

I’ve been pretty jazzed about the idea behind OnLive ever since the service was first announced more than a year ago. The concept is ambitious. Using a backbone of server farms spread across the country, all armed with banks of ultra high-end gaming PCs, OnLive aims to stream the hottest PC games straight to your desktop or laptop, even on systems without souped-up graphics cards or bleeding-edge processors.

All you need on your system, in fact, is a client smaller than 10MB that streams video and audio to your desktop — think of it as playing high-end PC games remotely over YouTube — as well as a decent broadband connection (at least 5Mbps or so). A “micro-console” about the size of a paperback book will let you play OnLive over your HDTV; it’s due later this year.

Of course, the question hard-core gamers have been asking is: How in the world will OnLive be able to pull all that off? What about latency — won’t precise running-and-gunning be impossible if there’s, say, a one-second lag between the time you click your mouse and your game character pulls the trigger? And how could the sterling graphics on a top-of-the-line gaming PC possibly survive the compression involved in streaming video over the Internet?

I’ve been testing out OnLive on a 2007-era, Intel Core Duo 2-packing MacBook Pro with a midrange graphics card for a little over a week now. And no, the experience is not like what you’d get from a hot-rod gaming system sitting on your desk. But to my eyes and ears — not to mention my itchy trigger finger — it comes surprisingly close.

For now, access to OnLive is by invite only. But you can sign up as a “founding member,” and if you do so before July 15, you won’t have to pay the usual $15-a-month access fee for your first full year of membership. You’ll also get the option of a second year for just $5 a month.

Installing the small OnLive client — just 8.5MB for my Mac — took seconds, with the service firing up almost immediately after a quick check of my MacBook’s specs. (A dual-core CPU and screen resolution of at least 1280 by 720 is recommended.) There is one annoying catch to using OnLive: You must use a wired broadband connection — although OnLive says the no-Wi-Fi restriction may be lifted once the service is “better established.”

Once you’ve fired up the desktop client, a window pops open and the OnLive logo appears, accompanied by an unworldly hum and some cool-sounding swooshes and techno beats. Next, a globe twirls into view, eventually zooming into a grid of nine main menu options, surrounded by a frame of windows showing live “look-ins” to games in progress. Cool.

After you’ve created a profile, you can jump right into the Marketplace of available games, which unfortunately is somewhat limited for now. Among the 20-odd titles are the ones I mentioned above, plus Assassin’s Creed II, Borderlands, Dirt 2, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Just Cause 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction. Some casual games are also available, such as Brain Challenge, Lego Harry Potter and World of Goo. Titles on tap include Darksiders, F.E.A.R. 3, Warhammer 30000: Dawn of War, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Red Faction: Armageddon.

Prices range anywhere from zilch for a 30-minute demo to $59 for a full “Play Pass,” which entitles you to play a given game for as long as it remains available through OnLive. (The full Play Pass for some older titles is often cheaper; last year’s Red Faction, for example, is just $19 for the full pass.)

These “full” passes have, naturally enough, sparked an uproar among gamers, who wonder why in the world you’d pay full price for a title that might disappear from the OnLive servers — and indeed, if and when you drop your OnLive subscription, you’ll lose access to your full Play Pass games as well. It’s a fair question, and anyone who signs up with OnLive should consider those restrictions carefully before coughing up $60 for Prince of Persia.

Luckily, between the free demos and pricey “full” options lie some cheaper alternatives. For games such as Batman: Arkham Asylum and Unreal Tournament III, you can opt for a three-day pass ($4.99) or a five-day pass ($6.99), a handy option for those who aren’t necessarily interested in owning a game once they’ve beaten it. (Personally, I loved the Xbox 360 version of Arkham Asylum for the week it took me to finish it, but once I’d beaten the game, I sent it back to my Gamefly rental service without regret.) You can always extend a Play Pass if you want to keep fragging — and yes, your game saves will be preserved even after you let your Play Pass expire.

Besides the marketplace, OnLive also offers something called the Arena: a virtual peanut gallery that lets you watch in-progress games of other OnLive players, and you can even “jeer” or “cheer” their performance. You can also add and message with your OnLive “friends,” or shoot and upload “Brag Clips” of your greatest kills.

As far as how these games look and play, streamed over the Internet: That depends on your expectations and needs.

If you have a high-end gaming PC at home, you’re going to be disappointed by OnLive’s graphics performance, no question. Overall, OnLive’s visuals look a bit soft, and blocky, murky compression artifacts are clearly visible during moments of intense action like a huge explosion or bad guys swarming on-screen.

Looked at from the perspective of a mid- to low-end system, though, OnLive’s visual performance is a revelation. I’ve tried installing cutting-edge games on my 3-year-old MacBook Pro before, and I’ve consistently had to dial down the graphics to get anything approaching decent gaming performance. But with OnLive on my MacBook, I managed to get some pretty stellar-looking graphics with speedy, jitter-free frame rates. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Red Faction: Guerrilla, F.E.A.R. 2 and Dirt 2 looked far better on my aging MacBook than I ever would have imagined, making the occasional compression artifacts more than acceptable to my eyes. I even tried Red Faction on my super-light but graphically wimpy MacBook Air, which is most definitely not a gaming machine. Again, the graphics looked far better than I would ever have expected.

All right, so what about latency?

I tried OnLive using a wired Road Runner broadband connection, and even with my speedy throughput, I did notice a tiny bit of lag — maybe a fraction of a second or so, which was most noticeable as a slight “waggle” when I was navigating a game menu with a cursor.

Surprisingly, though, the ever-so-slight latency didn’t really bother me during gameplay. Punching villains in the face with the back of my Bat glove wasn’t a problem, nor was destroying buildings with my sledge in Red Faction. Yes, I crashed and burned quite a bit in Dirt 2, but I’d blame my performance more on my poor mastery of keyboard steering than on any lag.

The one time I did have a clear problem with latency was while sniping enemies in Unreal Tournament III. The slight waggle I mentioned made it tough to get a bead on baddies in my viewfinder, particularly when they were in motion.

Is OnLive a substitute for a high-end PC or a gaming console?

At this point, definitely not. If you’re a hard-core gamer and you expect the ultimate in graphics, plus pinpoint precision, you should stick with your souped-up $4,000 machine. And if you’ve got an Xbox 360 or a PS3 at home, you’ll probably want to double down on them rather than sink money in an online gaming service.

Other factors to consider include the sparse selection of titles available on OnLive (although the service plans to expand its roster rapidly in the coming months), as well as the fact that paying full price for an OnLive games doesn’t mean you “own” the title. You’re merely buying the right to play the game as long as OnLive supports it, and only so long as you keep paying your membership dues. If that limitation bothers or offends you, then by all means, stay far away form OnLive.

But if you don’t have a game console and you’re stuck with a somewhat middling PC or Mac at home, yet you still have a hunger to play the latest cutting-edge games, OnLive might be just the ticket. You’ll get graphics and performance that aren’t possible on entry- or mid-level systems, plus you don’t have to deal with the hassle of installing a game on your PC or blowing several gigs of storage on your hard drive (which you’ll have to do even with online game distribution services like Steam). Instead, games fire up almost instantly, and any updates and/or hardware upgrades are handled on OnLive’s end.

I’m curious to see how OnLive (as well as Gaikai, its yet-to-be-launched cloud-based competitor) evolves. From what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of potential here.

I hope the company will continue to improve its streaming and latency performance, especially as it gradually adds more players to the mix. I also hope OnLive considers lowering its $15-a-month membership fee to, say, $5 a month, or simply eliminate it altogether.

If access to OnLive were free for all (as opposed to just its “founding members”), it would be hard to see the downside of at least giving this “in the cloud” gaming upstart a try.

— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.

July 6 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc., with a storehouse of billions of music, movie and software downloads, is studying the buying habits of many of its 150 million iTunes users to show more appealing mobile ads and fuel competition with Google Inc.

Through the iAd program that began last week, Apple started placing ads in iPhone applications for the first time. Early iAd clients include Nissan Motor Co., Unilever NV, JC Penney Co., Best Buy Co. and AT&T Inc.

At stake is leadership in mobile ads, forecast by EMarketer Inc. to almost triple to $1.56 billion in 2013. Google, which gained the biggest share of online advertising by placing ads based on PC-Web surfing habits, may use that tack to widen a lead on handheld devices. Examining consumers’ entertainment and software purchases may give Apple an advantage, says Rachel Pasqua, director of mobile at marketing firm ICrossing.

“Apple knows what you’ve downloaded, how much time you spend interacting with applications and knows even what you’ve downloaded, don’t like and deleted,” said Pasqua, whose clients include Toyota Motor Corp. and Mazda Motor Corp. She isn’t currently working with Apple on iAd campaigns.

Relying on the music, videos and apps that customers are downloading from its iTunes, App Store and iBooks helps Apple sketch a behavioral profile that can be paired with appropriate promotional messages. On its website, Apple says its “standard targeting options” include demographics, application preferences, music passions, movie genre interests, television genre interests and location.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, slipped $1.54 to $246.94 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading on July 2. It has gained 17 percent this year.

‘Surgical’ Targeting

Unilever, which began working with Apple in May on a campaign for its Dove Men+Care soap, is using iAd to zero in on married men who are in their late 30s and have children.

“Apple then overlays that with the iTunes information and targets quite well and quite surgically,” said Rob Candelino, marketing director at Unilever, based in London and Rotterdam.

Apple doesn’t share information on individuals, Candelino said. Instead, Unilever can choose to advertise in certain “buckets” of applications, such as those on news or entertainment, based on characteristics of its users.

“The leading global brands we’re working with are developing iAds timed with their seasonal marketing campaigns, such as back to school and the holiday shopping season,” said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Miller. “We’re just taking our first few steps. We’ll work our way up to walking and running as this year progresses.” IAd was announced in April.

5 Billion Downloads

U.S. mobile advertising spending will grow 43 percent this year to $593 million, according to EMarketer. The business will grow almost threefold more by 2013, reaching $1.56 billion, the New York-based research firm said.

The ads are being integrated into some of the 225,000 applications created for Apple’s online App Store. Users have downloaded more than 5 billion of them, according to Apple. The iAd system will be rolled out later this year to the iPad, which sold more than 3 million units in its first 80 days.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said at a conference last month that the company had sold more than $60 million in advertising since the iAd platform was introduced in April. That’s about half the mobile display-ad market, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Google, which this year bought mobile-ad network AdMob, doesn’t report what portion of sales comes from mobile. Google and AdMob may generate more than $100 million in U.S. mobile-ad sales in 2010, says IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Google’s Strengths

From early on, Google has honed an ability to make ads relevant to users. As it rolls out mobile-ad strategies, the company could tap a wealth of information on how people use Web search, e-mail and software available via the Android mobile operating system, said Michael Collins, chief executive officer of mobile-ad agency Joule Inc.

“The question that many of us in the industry are very curious about is how much of that data will Google be making available to target,” said Collins, whose agency is a part of WPP Plc. “The more available data, the better the targeting.”

Apple appeals to a “premium” audience because of the cost of its products, while Google can reach a broader market because its Android operating system is on more devices, said Noah Elkin, an analyst at EMarketer.

“It boils down to the exclusivity of Apple and the customer you can target that way, versus the breadth that you have with Google,” he said.

‘Hype and Buzz’

Some marketers are skeptical that Apple’s success in selling gadgets will translate to advertising. Apple hasn’t proven that its platform will result in more effective ads that are worth the investment, said Thom Kennon, vice president of strategy at Wunderman, whose clients include Campbell Soup Co.

“Right now it’s hype and buzz more than reality,” he said. “There are just not that many people with iPhones in their pockets or iPads in their hands to consume this advertising.”

Companies that opt for iAd, though, say they’re drawn to the marketing prowess that has helped Apple sell about 100 million iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads in three years. Working with Apple was “unequivocally” a reason for choosing iAd, said Chad Jacoby, senior manager of Nissan’s marketing team.

To keep companies paying, Apple will need people to click on the ads and respond with their wallets, said ICrossing’s Pasqua. The better Apple can target ads, the more effective iAd will be, she said.

Privacy, Antitrust

Apple will also need to keep from running afoul of government officials concerned about anticompetitive practices and the way tech companies handle information gathered on users.

Federal Trade Commission officials are preparing to review allegations that Apple is trying to trammel rivalry in mobile advertising, people familiar with the matter said in June. They’re examining app-developer instructions, issued in June, that AdMob says might bar programmers from using Google and AdMob advertising software on the iPhone.

Regulators in the U.S. and Europe are also paying heed to privacy practices. The German Justice Minister last month raised questions about Apple’s practice of compiling data on users of its iPhone. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation also began an inquiry into a security breach that exposed the e-mail addresses of as many as 114,000 users of the iPad.

Apple lets customers opt out of receiving ads based on iTunes download history or location. “With iOS 4, Apple has gone further to protect users’ privacy, particularly with respect to location, than anyone else has to date,” Apple said in a statement, referring to its mobile operating system.

–With assistance from Peter Burrows in San Francisco. Editors: Nick Turner, Lisa Wolfson.

To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

“We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China,” Liu Chuanzhi told the Financial Times. “If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble.”

iPhone sales in China have been restrained since the phone debuted there last October. China Unicom announced in December that it had sold 100,000 iPhones, a modest figure considering China Unicom’s 144 million total subscribers.

Sales are limited because China Unicom is currently the only carrier authorized to offer the iPhone for sale, although Apple has conducted on-again, off-again talks with China Mobile. The phone sells for $730 to $1,020, according to published reports, much higher than gray market smartphones and iPhone knockoffs.

The phone also lacks Wi-Fi. Chinese regulations had prohibited the sale of any Wi-Fi device that does not use the country’s own wireless standard known as WAPI (Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure). As a result, Apple introduced the iPhone with Wi-Fi disabled in order to enter the Chinese market without delays. However, due to a relaxation of rules, devices sold in China can offer Wi-Fi as long as they also include WAPI.

Lenovo recently began shipping its new LePhone smartphone in China, its first venture into the smartphone arena. Liu said the phone was well-positioned to compete with the iPhone because it was customized for users in China.

“This is a very practical thing,” Liu said. “The iPhone has more than 100,000 content providers, and we have no more than 1,000 But our Chinese customers feel our applications are very convenient to use.”

Apple representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Hong Kong-based company recently returned to profitability, recording a fourth-quarter net profit of $13 million versus last year’s fourth-quarter loss of $264 million.

“We are looking to augment human capability,” said Norman Winarsky, vice president for licensing and strategic programs at SRI. “But with artificial intelligence.”

Established in 1946 by Stanford University, SRI created early prototypes of the computer mouse and the technologies involved in ultrasound and HDTV.

Although SRI does roughly 80 percent of its work for the federal government, many of its technologies have been adapted for commercial purposes. Recently, the institute has set its sights on the mobile phone and Web market, especially on creating applications that perform personal functions.

“We have companies in every space: drug discovery, flexible circuits, new medical devices, solar, clean tech,” said Mr. Winarsky, who oversees the establishment of new companies that are spun off from SRI. “But right now, half of the companies we’re thinking of creating are strongly related to virtual personal assistants.”

SRI’s newest venture is a Web-based personalized news feed, Chattertrap, that monitors what people are reading to learn what they like, and then serves up articles and links that suit their interests.

Another recent project is a mobile application, Siri, that allows people to perform Web searches by voice on a cellphone. Siri users can speak commands like “find a table at an Italian restaurant for six at 8 tonight,” and the application can translate the request and use GPS functions and search algorithms to find an answer.

Siri’s software is sophisticated enough that over time, it can even remember if someone prefers places that serve Northern Italian cuisine, rather than Sicilian, and make recommendations around that preference.

The application has already been a big hit; in April, Apple acquired Siri for a price said to be as high as $200 million. But some analysts wonder whether SRI will be able to duplicate this kind of success. Variations on the virtual personal assistant concept have been around for a while. Two services, for example — Remember the Milk and Jott — are types of electronic crutches intended to help users be more efficient at ticking off items in their daily to-do lists.

But SRI is betting that its expertise in artificial intelligence will help make software that can break away from the pack. And it has high hopes that Chattertrap will be as successful as Siri.

“The popular news sites aren’t always the most interesting,” said Gary Griffiths, one of the two entrepreneurs SRI recruited to guide Chattertrap. “But by using technology to evolve with you as you use it, watching what you’re doing and giving more of what you like and less of what you’re ignoring, we can create a very personal information service.”

Although Chattertrap is in a limited test period right now, the company hopes to allow more users later this summer and release the product in its entirety by the end of the year.

Chattertrap has already caught the eye of Li Ka-shing, a Chinese billionaire who has invested in Facebook and the music-streaming service Spotify. Mr. Li recently led a $1.5 million round of venture financing in the Chattertrap project.

SRI’s newfound interest in mobile and Web applications was born, in part, from a research project commissioned by the Defense Department to develop software that can learn, in an effort to create a more efficient way for the military to communicate and stay organized in the field. The project’s underlying technology, a combination of adaptive machine learning and natural-language processing, has spawned several offshoots.

Each year, SRI tests the marketability of roughly 2,000 technology ventures, but typically only three or four are ever established as independent businesses.

Charles S. Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research who follows the mobile industry, said SRI was tapping into the mobile market at a time when the need to simplify searching is greater than ever.

“The old paradigm of having a desktop computer in front of you with a large screen to search around for what you want is going away,” Mr. Golvin said. “More and more, the information you want online is coming from the palm of your hand.”

Since most mobile phones have small, cramped screens and tiny keyboards, voice-activated search and speech recognition become much more powerful, Mr. Golvin said.

“It’s a very compelling offer for a mobile company,” he said.

In addition, companies like Apple and Google are sizing up the market opportunity for location-based search and the potential advertising opportunities that come with it, said Brent Iadarola, director of mobile research at Frost & Sullivan.

“The acquisition that Apple has made provides powerful clues as to what the mobile landscape will look like in the future,” Mr. Iadarola said.

“When you’re in a mobile environment there’s a higher propensity to spend, and tying that into mobile advertising could be lucrative.”

Still, he said, it’s not clear yet whether SRI can recreate the same type of successes it had with Siri with its future virtual personal assistants. “That was hitting it out of the ballpark, in my opinion,” he said. “I don’t know if they can replicate that.”

Mr. Winarsky said the intellectual property licensed to Apple as part of the acquisition of Siri is a fraction of what has been generated by the institute.

“Siri is the first and in some cases, the simplest, of what we’ll do,” he said.

Mr. Winarsky said SRI was in the early stages of determining what will be the next start-up to become an independent company.

One area he is particularly excited about is translation, he said.

“Virtually every industry and platform has a need for translation services,” he said.

In addition, he said, a virtual personal assistant could be of great use to the health industry and patients, by helping figure out which procedures are covered by insurance or quickly finding and booking a doctor’s appointment.

“We’ll only be able to tell in 20 years,” he said. “But I truly believe this is the dawn of a new era of artificial intelligence. It is on the vanguard of a great revolution in computer science.”

This game from Wastelands Interactive is a great example, that classic strategies are still an attractive position for gamers of all ages, both for beginners and experienced veterans that expect a highly realistic gameplay. Storm over the Pacific is a perfect game for anyone looking for absorbing entertainment and a challenge for the mind. It’s worth mentioning, that this title puts together classical game principles with an excellent audio-visual experience.

MAKING HISTORY II: The War of the World marks a dramatic step forward in the MAKING HISTORY series. From the factories and shipyards on the homefront, to epic battles across the globe, MHII gives WWII grand strategy gamers the opportunity to lead a nation and remake history. MHII reflects the reality that economics win wars as much as combat, so players can customize the development of specific cities, regions and units to support their objectives. Along the way they will face rival political factions both domestic and international, diplomatic choices that affect their nation’s status and reputation, and a reactive artificial intelligence that alters its strategy based on player actions. The detailed 3-D map creates an immersive environment that lets players spend more time on the map building their cities and planning battles.

Winchester Systems Inc.,

SAS disks now offer the same 2 TB capacity as SATA (Serial-ATA) disks and provide extra reliability features such as dual ports for redundancy and error detection and correction algorithms. This creates a new intermediate tier of storage between high speed SAS and Fibre Channel disks with 15,000 RPM (revolutions-per-minute) for primary, high performance applications and SATA bulk storage for backups and archiving.

Many applications such as radiology images, security and surveillance videos, data acquisition, data mining and other applications where the data is voluminous and historical yet is still primary storage and not just a copy of the real data. These applications are good candidates for high capacity and high reliability of the 2 TB SAS drives at relatively low cost.

As tiered storage systems, these FlashDisk RAID disk arrays support three tiers of storage in a single solution. These tiers include primary storage using 15,000 RPM SAS disks, secondary storage using SATA 7.2k rpm disks and a new intermediate tier for high volume reference materials using the new SAS 7.2K rpm disks that need the reliability of SAS without the cost of high performance.

The FlashDisk SX-2300 disk array models support up to 84 disks including the base unit and six expansion shelves, with 12 disks each, now offers 168 TB of SAS and SATA storage. Likewise, FlashDisk SX-3400 disk array models support 112 disks, with 16 disks per shelf, and offers 224 TB of SAS and SATA storage.

According to the company’s chief executive officer, Joel Leider, “Many of our customers love the idea of using FlashDisk disk arrays with the capacity and reliability of 2 TB SAS disks — at low cost.”

For added protection of large RAID disk arrays, the company includes high-speed, ASIC-driven RAID 6 dual-parity that protects data in the event of two drive failures as well as rebuild failures. According to the company’s white paper, “High Speed RAID 6,” RAID 6 dual parity offers 500 to 30,000 times longer MTDL (Mean Time To Data Loss) than RAID 5. An informative 6-minute presentation “RAID 6 Essentials” is also available.

FlashDisk SX-2300 disk array models using 2 TB disks are available, and the pricing start from under $12,000. Delivery is 2-3 weeks ARO.

Targeted primarily at commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and document imaging enterprises with significant archiving needs, BDXL provides customers with triple layer 100GB RE (rewritable) and R (write-once) discs and quadruple layer 128GB R discs.

Possible consumer applications include capture and playback of HD broadcast and satellite programming in markets where set-top recorders are prevalent.

“The BDA worked diligently to create an extension of the Blu-ray Disc format that leverages the physical structure of the design of the disc to create even more storage capacity,” said Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. “By using the existing Blu-ray technologies, we have created a long-term and stable solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images. We expect further growth of the Blu-ray Disc market as the introduction of 100GB/128GB discs will expand the application of Blu-ray Disc technologies.”

The BDXL specification was developed with specific market segments in mind, and newly-designed hardware addressing such markets will play back or record BDXL media. However, because the new media specifications are extensions of current Blu-ray Disc technologies, future BDXL capable recorders can easily be designed to play back existing 25GB and 50GB Blu-ray Disc formats.

Samsung

The standout machine of the Samsung trio is the new Q430 laptop. On paper, this notebook isn’t all that different from the R580 (pictured above), as both have Windows 7 Home Premium OS, a 500GB hard drive, 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz memory, a very basic 0.3-megapixel webcam, HDMI support and a 3W stereo speaker. The R580 even has a few things better than the Q430, like the slightly larger display and the Blu-ray optical drive.

But with a marginally lower weight count, the Q430 packs more power into within that brushed aluminum casing, including a Core i5 CPU and advanced NVIDIA 3D graphics processing.

Given that there are many more specs to go over, here’s a breakdown of each one starting with the netbook and going up from there:

N150-11

• 10.1-inch LED-backlit, WSVGA non-glare display (1,024 x 600 resolution)
• Intel Atom N450 Processor
• Windows 7 Starter OS
• Intel GMA 3150 graphics
• 1GB of DDR2 667MHz memory
• 250GB hard drive
• 3W stereo speaker
• 0.3-megapixel webcam
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Connectivity: Three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet
• Island keyboard
• 9-hour battery life
• Dimensions: 10.5- x 7.4- x 0.97-inches
• Weight: 2.73 lbs.

R580-11

• 15.6-inch LED-backlit glossy HD display (1,366 x 768 resolution; 16:9 aspect ratio)
• Intel Core i3-350M Processor
• Windows 7 Home Premium OS
• Intel HD Graphics
• 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz memory
• 500GB hard drive
• Blu-ray optical drive
• 3W Stereo Speaker
• 0.3-megapixel webcam
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Connectivity: Three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI
• Island keyboard
• Dimensions: 13.5- x 9.4- x 1.20-inches
• Weight: 5.45 lbs.

Q430-11

• 14.0-inch glossy LED-backlit glass HD display (1,366 x 768 resolution; 16:9 aspect ratio)
• Intel Core i5-450M processor
• Windows 7 Home Premium OS
• 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz memory
• 500GB hard drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 310M graphics with 512MB of DDR3 memory
• DVD dual-layer optical drive
• 3W Stereo Speaker
• 0.3-megapixel webcam
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Connectivity: Three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI
• Dimensions: 13.5- x 9.37- x 1.04-inches
• Weight: 5.25 lbs.

Pricing starts at $349 for the N150 netbook, then bumps up to $849 and $899 for the R580 and Q430 laptops, respectively. All three of the Samsung computers mentioned here will be available tomorrow at Best Buy. So if you’re looking for a very last-minute gift for dad, there’s a few more options now.

I have now come to another decision time after purchasing my own Sprint HTC EVO 4G and considering the Pre Plus, EVO 4G, or new Apple iPhone 4. I was able to knock out the Palm Pre Plus this weekend and just paid the extremely high Verizon ETF to end that contract. I also just read an excellent article on Android Central that compares the Sprint EVO 4G and Palm Pre from a couple of long time Palm users, Craig Froehle and Don Ferguson.

They go into quite a few details about the various aspects of the devices from a users point of view and the comparison just confirmed that my decision to cancel my Palm Pre Plus contract was the right choice. I do think that Palm’s webOS is very intuitive and user friendly, but going head-to-head with Android showed me that I prefer a more customizable and feature packed operating system.

I still have a few more days before the iPhone 4 is available and I do have a reservation at my local Apple store. At this time I am leaning heavily towards sticking with Sprint and the HTC EVO 4G. I already have an iPhone 3GS and can eventually load it up with iOS 4 so the need for the iPhone 4 is not as great. I know the hardware of the new iPhone will be excellent and pretty compelling, but I think I will miss the customizable home screens with glanceable information, easy WiFi tethering, superb Gmail support, included Sprint services, outstanding free GPS navigation solutions, and more found in Android.

I will continue to consider the EVO 4G and iPhone 4 this week and we will see what happens on Thursday.

Nintendo may be the reigning video game hardware sales champ, but you may be surprised to learn it’s also the record-holder for longest rock steady pricing.

That’s about to change, at least in Japan. Nintendo says it plans to slash the price of the DSi by one fifth on June 19, according to Bloomberg, to revive sagging domestic sales.

Expect a DSi price drop from 18,900 yen ($205) to 15,000 yen ($163), or 21 percent, reports Bloomberg, adding that the Japanese DSi LL–equivalent to the U.S. extra-large DSi XL (PCW Rating: 3 out of 5)–should see a price cut of 10 percent, landing at 18,000 yen ($196). Sales of the DS have fallen in Japan since last year, down 1.5 percent to 4 million for the 12 month period ending March 31.

The original Nintendo DS launched in the U.S. back in November 2004 for $150, then dropped to $130 in August 2005. It’s held there since, even after the slimmed down, camera-clad DSi launched at $170 in April 2009.

Analysts expect Nintendo to follow suit in overseas markets, e.g. the U.S., in anticipation of Nintendo’s next generation 3D model, expected in Japan by early next year and elsewhere shortly thereafter. Nintendo’s declining comment on followup international price relief, but DS sales are down in all markets, so the writing’s more or less on the wall. In fact with E3 around the corner, I’m betting Nintendo drops the bomb at its June 18th press show.

The company says it wants to put “a DS in every home.” It’s certainly nearing its goal, with roughly 130 million DS handhelds sold worldwide and 30 million of those in Japan alone. According to a 2003 Japanese Statistics Bureau estimate, the number of households in Japan is around 47 million.

17 million to go? Should be a snap, once the Nintendo 3DS arrives.

Follow me on Twitter (@game_on)

Share

Video-gamers know about heartbreak.

You finally get your hands on that game you’ve been hearing about for years. You dive in and … well, sure, the beginning’s a little slow, but it’ll heat up. But as you dig further in, it slowly dawns on you that the more you play, the worse it gets. And in just a few hours, excitement turns to despair — not just over the $60 you wasted, but also the idea that something so promising could turn out to be so worthless.

Last year, “Brutal Legend” nearly destroyed my faith in everything I thought I liked about games. Earlier this year, my Twitter feed exploded with the howls of angry “Final Fantasy” fans who felt betrayed by the radical changes in that series’ latest installment.

The failure of “Alpha Protocol” (Sega, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99) is nearly as crushing. It combines two of my favorite genres — role-playing game and spy thriller — and the developers at Obsidian Entertainment have contributed to some of the best-loved RPGs of the last 20 years.

What could go wrong? Nearly everything.

The titular Alpha Protocol is one of those top-secret government agencies that takes on the jobs that are too hot for anyone else to handle. Its current goal is the assassination of a Middle Eastern terrorist, and the agent on the case is a cocky recruit named Michael Thorton. You can adjust some of Thorton’s traits at the start — you can make him a gunslinger or a tech expert, or give him a beard and glasses — but he’s essentially a charmless creep.

You’d think contemporary spy craft would put a premium on stealth, but most of the missions in “Alpha Protocol” devolve into mindless shooting. That might be tolerable if the shootouts were well-executed; instead, they’re bogged down by glitches, from sloppily programmed opponents to an inconsistent cover system that leaves you all too open to enemy fire.

Early in the game, Michael isn’t supposed to be that sharp a marksman, which leads to one weird effect: Even if you shoot a villain in the head at close range, it takes four or five bullets to bring him down. It’s easier to kill an enemy by running straight at him — even if he’s armed — and punching him.

That doesn’t mean the hand-to-hand combat is satisfying, since it consists of simply pounding one button as quickly as possible. And “Alpha Protocol” is further bogged down by hacking and lock-picking minigames that seem designed for maximum tedium.

“Alpha Protocol” does live up to its promise of giving you choices that have substantial impact on the rest of the game. For example, early on you have the choice of killing an arms dealer or letting him escape, in the hope that he’ll lead you to bigger fish, and either option leads to surprising consequences.

But that’s about all “Alpha Protocol” gets right. From its dated graphics to its confused story to its two-dimensional characters, it bears all the signs of a project that never had a strong guiding hand. The designers at Obsidian should know better, and publisher Sega should be ashamed to charge $60 for such a half-baked release. One star out of four.

___

Online:

http://www.sega.com/alphaprotocol/

WASHINGTON – The Entertainment Software Association, a trade group for video game companies, spent $1.2 million during the first quarter to lobby on the regulation of video game content, First Amendment protection, copyright enforcement and other issues, according to a recent disclosure report.

This is up 23 percent from $980,000 spent in the same quarter a year earlier and even with the amount it spent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The group, whose members include Microsoft Corp., Disney Interactive Studios Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., Sony Computer Entertainment America, and Nintendo of America, among others, also lobbied on piracy, industry ratings and immigration.

The ESA opposes efforts to regulate the content of entertainment media, including the creation of government-sanctioned ratings systems. The video game industry has its own ratings system run by the nonprofit Entertainment Software Rating Board, which was established in 1994 by the ESA.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a California case that pits free speech rights against a state law, which never took effect, banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.

In the January-March period, the ESA also lobbied on broadband deployment, green cards for skilled foreign workers and the H1-B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized and advanced-degree positions.

The ESA lobbied Congress, the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, the Justice Department, the FBI and other agencies, according to the report filed April 20 with the House clerk’s office.

The result was a very rough, but functioning prototype of an Xbox 360 controller that had buttons and joysticks that could be moved around and assigned functions.

To see a video report, click here.

“I think the controller itself is important because when you’re disabled, sometimes you’re bed-bound … and really, video games are your escape and controllers allow you to get to them,” said Spohn.

The prototype, built from Xbox 360 controller parts, duct tape, Velcro and a bag of rice, was designed with Spohn’s limited range of motion in mind.

“The real benefit is that all these buttons are actually considered blank, so you can assign any function you want to them,” said Adam Coe, president of Evil Controllers, an Arizona-based company that modifies existing controllers to bring more functionally and flexibility to gaming. “You can make them all the ‘A’ button, you can make them all the ‘B’ button, you can do whatever you want.”

Coe helped build the controller along with Ben Heckendorn and Suzanne Papajohn.

The controller also included a T-shirt that had buttons in the shoulders so that when a user shrugs, buttons are activated.

Mark Barlet, CEO of AbleGamers, a public charity that advocates for disabled people to take advantage of digital entertainment, said that the shoulder-activated buttons weren’t very reliable, but that it was “a step in the right direction.”

The homemade controller is far from commercialization, but Spohn hopes it one day could come to market. “I hope it’s the beginning of a well-polished product,” he said.

“It’s important for people like me to have access to the outside world,” Spohn said. “And for some of us, that’s through games.”

Spohn can move his fingers, shrug his shoulders, speak and flex his calf. Barlet said Spohn is resistant to using sip-puff controllers, or mice you can control with your mouth, because “he feels like that’s giving up.”

(Justin Meisinger in Boston contributed to this report.)

Nick Barber can be contacted by e-mail at nick_barber@idg.com and on Twitter at @nickjb.

By Barry Collins

Posted on 27 Apr 2010 at 10:49

The UK security industry is launching a series of online games in a bid to identify the next generation of security experts.

The scheme is being run by Cyber Security Challenge UK, a consortium of security organisations that include the Metropolitan Police and the Institute of Information Security Professionals. The scheme is supported by the Cabinet Office.

The challenge hopes to identify young people who have the necessary skills to forge a career in IT security.

Judy Baker, the director of the Cyber Security Challenge, told PC Pro that there’s a desperate shortage of IT security experts in the UK. “Companies can’t get the people they need, they’re just not good enough,” she said. “Raising awareness [of IT security] is part of our aspiration to draw in talented people.”

The Challenge will consist of two stages. The first round involves a series of online games designed to identify candidates with specific security skills. The games will concentrate on topics such as network defence, forensics and identifying website vulnerabilities.

The winners of the first round will progress to face-to-face challenges at a yet unnamed venue. Prizes for the eventual winners will include scholarships with security companies or IT training courses. “It has been suggested that we’re blind dating here!” said Baker, noting how the scheme matches up future security professionals with companies.

“We’re targeting people from age 16 upwards. Younger people often do better than experienced professionals [at solving security problems],” she added.

The challenge is expected to start in the autumn.