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The WAVE Report on Digital Media
3D --- Media Creation --- Shared Space ---Published by 4th Wave, Inc.--- Issue #0436------------------9/17/04 |
The WAVE Report is Searchable on
http://www.3dlinks.com
http://www.wave-report.com
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August is the Hottest Month for Spam as Volumes Peak at 90 Percent; Zerolin-C Virus Most Widespread
0436.2 Story of the Issue
0436.3 Advanced Processors
0436.4 Batteries and Fuel Cells
0436.5 Industry Reports
Research and Markets: 2004-2005 - USA Broadband, Internet and Broadcasting
0436.6 Standards and Specifications
New Group Formed to Continue SATA Spec Development, Promotion
0436.7 Fingertip Information
New Software Updates and Motivates Voters; Free Vote121 Toolbar Enhances Browser With News And Humor
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***August is the Hottest Month for Spam as Volumes Peak at 90 Percent; Zerolin-C Virus Most Widespread
MARINA DEL REY, Calif.
Sept. 9, 2004
FrontBridge Technologies Inc., has released its latest statistics on business email. Spam volume peaked at a record-high 90 percent in Aug. 2004, topping a previous 2004 high of 85 percent set in June. The statistic on spam volume was compiled by a specialized spam analyst team, crunching network traffic data for more than 2,200 enterprise customers representing over 15,000 email domains.
FrontBridge's spam and virus analyst team reviewed 3.1 billion messages in August. Over the course of the month, FrontBridge blocked 2.5 billion spam messages and 34 million virus-infected emails. Spam volume hit the 90 percent high on Aug. 30. This new high can in part be attributed to spam associated with back-to-school offers and a flood of politically motivated email.
Since FrontBridge first began filtering spam in 2000, the volume of spam has grown by an astounding 1600 percent. Furthermore, by some estimates, the amount of spam will triple over the next three years. This deluge of unwanted email translates into loss of employee productivity, potential legal liabilities and direct infrastructure and security costs to the corporations that are being targeted by spammers.
August was another month where viruses were running rampant. Among the 34 million viruses caught, the most widespread virus captured by FrontBridge was Zerolin-C. This virus exploits system or Windows software vulnerabilities by accessing a remote Web site by means of an HTTP IFRAME exploit. This virus also carries the aliases of TrojanDropper.VBS. Zerolin and HTML_ZEROLIN.B.
FrontBridge's anti-virus partnerships with Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro provide worldwide coverage and the ability to react much more quickly to virus outbreaks by providing rapid updates every ten minutes and making changes to the network to block malicious content within minutes of an attack being detected. FrontBridge scans emails for viruses before messages reach the corporate network, ensuring that viruses and malicious code never touch its customer's infrastructure.
***MobiQuitious 2004
By John Latta
Boston, MA
August 23 – 25, 2004
Professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Carnegie Mellon University, gave the keynote address and proposed a concept for ubiquitous computing called “internet suspend/resume.” He is also a director at the Intel Research Labs in Pittsburg. He asked the question - Will the PC whither in the era of ubiquitous computing? In response, he suggested that PC mobility has been achieved when one can move from location to location and log onto a different machine and each one preserves one’s personal state. Each computer in such a mobile environment is identical to the last computer visited and it has all the characteristics of “my” machine. One’s computer experience is thus cached over the Internet and the machine can be suspended and resumed on any connected computer.
Having attended the 13th IST Mobile & Wireless Communications Summit in June, the WAVE got a sample of the European view of mobility and a glimpse of its view of ubiquitous computing. It is different here at Mobiquitious. If there is an underlying thread here, it is the vision of Mark Weiser. Yet, going from vision which sees computing fitting this paradigm
“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”
to reality is one large leap. In fact, Professor Satyanarayanan called this a vision driven agenda. But getting from the vision to reality is the hard part. There were far fewer clouds on the horizon in Europe.
Seamless Mobility on Ubiquitous Hardware
Professor Mahadev Satyanarayanan gave his talk on the topic Seamless Mobility on Ubiquitous Hardware in both his affiliations at CMU and the Intel Research Center in Pittsburgh. There is a project on Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) on the CMU campus. The presentation touched on many issues in Ubiquitous Computing.
In the 80’s and 90’ the concept of mobile computing was the ability to connect up virtually anywhere with a light weight portable computer. In practical terms with WiFi and lightweight notebooks this has happened. We have arrived at the Eden of Mobile Computing.
From the computing hardware perspective, this has been a technology driven agenda. The computer has gone from the luggable Compaq of 1997 to an IBM Linux Wristwatch in 2000. Communications has gone from a NCR WaveLan card in 1990 to Centrino chips in 2003. The progress in hardware has been excellent.
Yet, many challenges remain. This has been the focus of much research. These core challenges include:
Resource Poverty
The notebook will never be able to match the resource capabilities of what is present on the desktop computer and with its power sources and connectivity.
The capabilities in mobile are wimpy compared to the desktop.
Communications Uncertainty
There is a huge dynamic range of connectivity. The issues center on bandwidth, latency variation and intermittent connectivity. A significant barrier is that connectivity may cost real money.
Finite Energy Source
The limitations on battery power mean that actions may be slowed or deferred. The practical matter is that communications are one of the major consumers of energy.
Multi-Modal Interaction
Mobility also means that one’s eyes and hands are frequently occupied with other tasks. As a result, other means of interaction can be useful. This includes speech and gesture recognition. I expect that augmented reality may have a major impact.
Scarce User Attention
Because one’s focus is frequently elsewhere, there is lower human performance and higher human error rates. Limited attention span is like a dumb user.
Less Security and Robustness
There is a conflict between portability and size. Thus, as with the cell phone smaller is better. As a result, these are frequently lost and broken. At the same time the likelihood of subversion increases.
As we look to Ubiquitous Computing, a.k.a. as Pervasive Computing, there is one person responsible for this vision – Mark Weiser. His seminal 1991 paper in Scientific American defines his views and the vision of computing into the 21st century.
Compared to the hardware which enables mobile computing, Ubiquitous Computing is driven by the vision that Mark articulated. As a result the issues include:
If hardware is almost free, what is expensive?
How does one further reduce the cost and how is this new world created?
This has led to new areas of research in context-aware computing and smart spaces.
At the same time this has become a major area of investigation in HCI (see the report on CHI 2004).
In assessing the trades between being portable vs. Ubiquitous, we must examine if a resource is carried or found. Simple examples were used to illustrate the role of portable vs. ubiquitous. Air is ubiquitous and we seldom need to carry it with us. Water is almost of the same situation but we do carry more water with us, especially as a function of the geography such as foreign travel and hiking. When it comes to personal computing, portable using notebooks has become the mainstream computing platform compared to desktop only systems. There are no ubiquitous personal computers in this context – such as the thin clients. The question then is – what will the future computer look like when there is a trade between carry and find, i.e., portable vs. ubiquitous?
The bottom line is that ubiquity can be seen as a substitute for portability.
As we look to the future of personal computing in this mobile world, the role of applications and the level of personalization of our computer plays a very important role. The computer we use is “our” computer defined by how we have customized it.
To realize the importance of this, we must look back to the future to the era of time sharing in the mid-60’s to the early 80’s. This was a period of time sharing – what we would call today thin clients. These thin clients, were on dumb terminals and our state was held at a central mainframe. But it had perfect user mobility access across points of use. Our personalized computing followed us.
Enter the era of personal computing. Initially we won big on performance and usability (windowing interface) but we gave up on mobility (as in the context of the time sharing user). What has happened is that one’s PC has become a personal fortress. We live in our own computing world as defined on the PC we use. Moving to another computer, when we sell an old one, is an arduous task. This clearly discourages the use of pervasive hardware.
The questions then are:
How can we enjoy seamless mobility across pervasive hardware?
Avoid painful re-customization and the resultant loss of productivity?
Enter Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR). The inspiration is to make access to one’s personal computing state perfectly seamless. Thus, any computer becomes “your computer.” Your entire personal state is centrally managed.
The strategy is based on having a layered virtual machine on a distributed file system. This has the following features:
The virtual machine encapsulates the state cleanly;
The distributed file system transports state via caching;
State is considered precious and safe on central servers and
Local caching is permitted.
The ISR architecture has the user environment, such as MS Office and the guest OS, such as Windows XP, at the top of the environment. This is, what the user sees. On the client is a virtual machine which creates the virtualized hardware to support the guest environment. There is then a glue layer which runs on a bare OS using Linux. The file system is Coda.
This implementation is an excellent example where the usage complexity is low and there is a high level of internal complexity. By low usage complexity, it means that the user sees the same environment they are accustomed to. The difficult part is getting this to work across many target computers.
Caching plays a very important role. Examples were given of early tests on Resume Latency using both multiple means of caching and with various bandwidths. Some of the simulations showed resume times of only 12 seconds across bandwidths from .1Mb/s to 100Mb/s.
ISR is an experimental prototype. It is running on the CMU campus. The system is characterized as reasonably robust but not of production quality. It will become a small scale pilot deployment on the CMU campus.
This paper extends the concept of virtualization to mobility. Very interesting.
Is Ubiquitous Computing Here Today?
Here at MobiQuitious we are surrounded by presentations on these technologies:
Ontologies
Semantic Tuple Spaces
Ad Hoc Networks
Service Discovery
Service Networks
Semantic Networks
and more. Yet, everyone admits that the foundation for this activity is the original work of Mark Weiser. He wrote in 1988 from his position in the Computer Science Lab at Xerox PARC:
“We call our work "ubiquitous computing". This is different from PDA's, dynabooks, or information at your fingertips. It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.”
Yet, it seems that the elegant concepts of Mark Weiser have been turned into a research agenda which misses the point. Are we not seeing ubiquitous computing today and fail to recognize it?
What is Ubiquitous Computing?
Tim Finin, (UMBC) also gave the only perspective of what makes ubiquitous computing. His points included:
(1) It exists in an open, heterogeneous and dynamic environment;
(2) There is a high degree of cooperation
(3) Context sensitive functionality
(4) Personalization is driven by user models and data and
(5) It has AI like capabilities.
He then drew the conclusion that a service view of ubiquitous computing is very appropriate. It is not possible to do this on a cell phone or a wearable computer. From this he drew the conclusion that heavy use will be made of software agents and semantic web languages.
The WAVE asked the question:
Do we not already have a ubiquitous environment in today’s automobile, especially the high end models which have 100 + processors?
The environment here performs many services such as:
Dashboard control;
ABS;
Engine Control;
Lighting;
Ride and
Telematics.The driver is not even aware of all that is going on. The processors are networked and getting more so.
Increasingly the automobile network is being tapped externally, at a minimum, to do support repair operations.
Thus, are we not imprinting our own technologies and research agenda onto ubiquitous computing and as a result missing where it is happening today?
Response: Essentially no answer.
Optimal Bluetooth Scatternet Formation
Leigh Hodge of the Center for Mobile Communications, Cardiff University, Wales, UK presented an approach to optimize the performance of Bluetooth Scatternets. A scatternet is made up of one or more piconets. Each piconet can have up to 8 devices and occupies a star configuration. Bridge devices, i.e., nodes, are in multiple piconets. There are two types of bridges: SS – slave in all piconets and MS – master in one piconet.
The Bluetooth spec permits scatternet operation but the protocol remains open. There have been many protocols proposed and an extensive survey will be published shortly in Ad-hoc Networks Journal. One of the shortfalls is that the techniques for measuring and comparing protocols are not clear.
This paper gave a preliminary view on how it will use a global awareness of the device location and to provide an absolute benchmark. A genetic algorithm is used to address this as a multiple objective problem. The algorithm selected is NSGA-II. One of the challenges is to represent the scatternet so that it can be optimized and not violate the rules of the scatternet.
The research plan is on going. Due to the high levels of computation for the optimization, and the intent to analyze 1,000 networks, the simulation time is expected to take 2 months. The results will be made available over the next 12 months.
Hand as HID (Human Interface Device)
Tobias Hollerer, UCSB, examined how hand gestures can be used to control devices and computers. He began with the premise that a mobile computer can do many things and, to illustrate, showed many devices including a cell phone, a digital camera and computer game. One of the problems is that wearable devices, a mouse included, has a small interaction footprint. However, the hand has a much larger range of movement. He called this vision-based interfaces for mobility. Required to observe the hand is a camera near the head and eyes. The advantages cited include:
Hands are free with no need for gloves or tracking devices;
Lightweight, mobile and potentially wireless;
Works well in adverse environments;
Camera use for hand detection can be used for other purposes
andAffordable.
Three types of interaction were described:
Registered – pointing to a displayed object or space.
Pointer Based manipulation – interaction with a displayed object. (Similar to direct manipulation)
Location-independent interaction – hand gestures to determine actions (6 hand gestures are recognized)
The detection of these hand gestures is accomplished with the API called HandVu. It typically takes 5 – 150ms to interpret the hand on a 3GHz processor with a 640 X 480 sensed area. The current performance is felt to be acceptable but it does require considerable computation. The process steps go from hand detection to hand tracking to posture recognition. The detection rate is 92% and with a false positive rate of only 10**-8. One aspect responsible for the low false position rate is the use of color for hand detection.
Do We Need ContentCascade?
A product of Georgia Tech in Atlanta and the HP Labs in Palo Alto, ContentCascade is a means to use public displays, such as store signs, assumed to be digital displays, and interactive ones at that, to push content to passerby’s. If the passerby shows interest by some interaction, a dialog would ensue with the individual. As the paper said, the problem statement includes the following relative to public displays, i.e., signs:
The amount of interactive content exchange is limited due to short attention span, privacy issues and resource constrains due to what the individual is carrying. This is compounded by limited human memory and the fact that much of the viewed content will be forgotten.
Examples of what can be downloaded to the user included:
URL of a web site Thumbnail of a poser cover or page of a book or Small movie trailer.
What was missing from this presentation was:
Does the consumer care?
If such content can be pushed to a cell phone or ubicomp device then the burden lies with the consumer to set up rules on what will be permitted or not. The scenario then has the consumer “programming” the device before coming to the mall to look of offers of shirts, for example, when walking the mall. Who needs such a burden?
Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing – Another Non-Starter
Eiji Tokunaga of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan presented concepts for how augmented reality, a.k.a. mixed reality, could be made useful to individuals and consumers. Basically, this is a means to combine virtual objects on a real world visual space. The tool kits suggested for use include ARToolkit from the HIT Lab at University of Washington and Trip from the Sentient Computing Lab at the University of Cambridge.
Examples were shown of:
Using a PDA in a mobile reality set up to determine the location of a refrigerator.
Configuring a control device, such as a PDA used for remote control of a television set, based on having the device recognize the television; and
Performing gesture recognition as HID.
When asked will this work in ad hoc environments, the response was no.
Take away - high levels of complexity with little in the way of output.
Rule Processing Applied to Wearable Computing – The Computer Has
NOT Disappeared
Masakazu Miyamae of Osaka University described a number of examples of wearable computing using ubiquitous computing technologies. Using a services-based approach, when a user approaches a facility, navigation is provided – using an HMD as the interface. The rule engine is based on Events, Conditions and Action. In the prior example, the user moves near a building and the display shows the name of the building.
To show how this system works, examples were shown of a video navigation system, a tour of a park, a farm work system and a motorbike race support system. In the case of the farm work system, the workers would wear gloves and on one finger was a temperature probe.
Yes, this is all research. But here is technology that is both obtrusive and of marginal value beyond what can be accomplished by other means.
Migrating Applications based on Location
Anand Raganathan of the University of Illinois, Urbana, described a simple problem:
How to migrate an application, in this case Powerpoint, for a presentation, into multiple rooms which have various degrees of support for the application?
For example, if one enters a room which has only Linux computers the application would create a pdf form to show. The concept is interesting and a variation on the theme expressed by Professor Satyanarayanan earlier. That is, does one carry or find in ubiquitous environments? In this case, the burden on adaptation lies with the user to make the task work in what has been found in the new environment.
In this example, why not carry the notebook?
Migrating User Interfaces
Donatien Grolaux of Catholic University of Louvain presented the notion of migrating portions, that is, screen portions, of a user interface from one device to another. For example, a control panel can be moved to a PDA and seen as one walks a factory floor. Another illustration, where there is a multi screen display of sensor output and one sensor to be monitored, can have its display migrated, also to a smaller screen device.
Interesting variation on the theme of mobile applications but applied to the context of the display real estate. The only problem is that the software used Mozart-Oz and this requires that all applications be rewritten using it.
WAVE Comments
Will Ubiquitous Computing Degenerate to Personal Spam on Legs?
Listening to multiple presentations, we struggled with “where is this going?” One of the presentations on ContentCascade, above, described how individuals can be informed on public displays and then interact with them. It then sank in that many of the services are about pushing information, in part context sensitive, to individuals as they passed by a source. The rules are the means to determine what content and to assess the interest level of the individual. One motivation for these complex environments is to set up rules based on individual preferences, geography, the access device and at the same time gauge potential level of interest. We were left cold. The ContentCascade paper would have us walking in a mall with a PDA or cell phone. If one showed the slightest interest, or possibly not, the consumer could be bombarded with “deals” or enticements to come to one store or many stores. It looks like spam on legs. The problem is that the burden shifts to the user to construct rules on what is acceptable and not. If ubiquitous computing reduces to this, it is not clear who would want it.
More
This conference is at the convergence of mobile computing and ubiquitous computing. There were 130 papers submitted from 26 countries. For the first conference of this type the response was quite surprising. The audience is heavily attended by individuals from Asia.
There is a mix of academia and business. In both the keynote and panel discussions, the presenters confronted the issues of “economic reality.” Yet, when a technology is vision driven, few agree on how to make a business case. It appeared that many saw Bluetooth as the enabling wireless technology. Yet, one speaker from Europe stated that Ambient Intelligence does not imply that it must all be wireless. The presenter, Stefano Salsano, U. of Roma Tor Vergata, spoke of the IST – SIMPLICITY project (see the WAVE report on 13th IST Mobile & Wireless Communications Summit) and to him this project was not abstract but of how to make devices easy to use. Stefano addressed some of the practical issues of how to get service providers to let users own and carry ones personal state. This is getting close to some of the caching issues discussed by Professor Satyanarayanan. Bottom line, Mark Weiser stated in his classic paper "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991 that it would take 20 years for this to be realized. 8 years remain to address many complex issues.
***Transmeta Announces Availability of Its Efficeon TM8800 Processor Based on 90 Nanometer Process Technology
SANTA CLARA, Calif.
Sept. 10, 2004
Transmeta Corporation has announced that earlier this month it began limited production shipments of its second generation Efficeon family of processors, the TM8800 series. The Efficeon TM8800 processor is manufactured with state-of-the-art 90-nanometer (90nm) CMOS semiconductor technology. By using 90nm process technology, the Efficeon TM8800 achieves both higher performance and improved performance per watt. In addition, the Efficeon TM8800 features AntiVirusNX technology, being the first low power x86-microprocessor to provide hardware support for the anti-virus protection enabled by Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). The Efficeon TM8800 processor family will be formally introduced on October 5th at the Fall Processor Forum, in San Jose, California, and Processor Forum Asia on October 19th in Hsin Chu, Taiwan.
The Efficeon TM8800 is manufactured using the state-of-the-art 90nm CMOS process technology at Fujitsu Electronics Devices Group Akiruno Advanced Technology Center near Tokyo. The initial 90nm TM8800 chips feature a maximum clock speed of up to 1.6GHz. Transmeta has already sampled Efficeon processors with even greater clock speeds, and expects to sample 2GHz products by the end of 2004. Chip power consumption for a given clock frequency is greatly reduced on the Efficeon TM8800 processor as compared to the prior generation 130nm Efficeon TM8600 processor. In addition, 90nm technology reduces die size and ultimately reduces manufacturing costs.
The Efficeon TM8800 processor is optimized for a wide range of computing applications and new types of devices such as notebooks, ultra-personal computers (UPCs), tablets, BladePCs, cluster workstations and fanless media centers. The Efficeon TM8800 processor continues Transmeta's commitment to set the standard for efficient computing, enabling new classes of computing and consumer electronic devices which can benefit from high performance, excellent energy efficiency, low heat and fanless design. Systems based on the 90nm Efficeon TM8800 processor will begin shipping this month, starting with a new notebook computer from Sharp Corporation that was introduced on September 9th in Japan. The recently announced Orion Multisystems Cluster Workstation will also use the new 90nm Efficeon TM8800 when the system begins shipping later this year.
The Efficeon TM8800 features the new AntiVirusNX technology that works in conjunction with the Data Execution Protection feature shipping from Microsoft in the Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). The Efficeon TM8800 processor and all future versions of the Efficeon processor will provide this capability to protect against the execution of code from memory regions intended for data.
0436.4 Batteries and Fuel Cells
***New Power Sources Needed for Soldier of the Future
WASHINGTON, DC
Sept. 10, 2004
The U.S. Army should investigate alternative power sources, such as fuel cells and small engines, to create longer-lasting, lighter, cheaper, and more reliable sources of energy for the equipment soldiers will use in the future, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. In addition, the Army should step up its efforts to develop and acquire technologies that are more energy-efficient, said the committee that wrote the report.
"The Army should immediately conduct a comprehensive analysis of power sources for future dismounted soldiers, looking beyond today's standard military batteries," said Patrick Flynn, committee chair and retired vice president for research, Cummins Engine Company Inc., Columbus, Ind. "Many commercial energy sources exist, but they are developed for a consumer market, not the military. The Army must determine and select the energy sources that are most relevant to its needs."
The Army will equip its future warriors through a program called "Land Warrior," which, in addition to weaponry, includes high-tech electronics that significantly increase soldiers' awareness of the combat environment, such as helmets with visual displays, chemical and biological sensors, radios, and portable computers. But these devices are not energy-efficient and will need new power sources to operate efficiently. The development, testing, and evaluation of these new energy sources will be carried out under a program known as Future Force Warrior.
The committee evaluated and prioritized options for supplying energy to various low- and high-power applications on the battlefield. In addition to disposable and rechargeable batteries, the committee considered fuel cells, small engines, and hybrid energy systems such as those combining a battery with a fuel cell, or a small engine with a battery.
Existing military batteries can provide enough power for computer displays, radios, sensors, and electronics for a 12-hour mission, but longer missions will require other technologies to efficiently power operations lasting up to 72 hours. These include improved low-power electronics, sophisticated power-management software, and "smart" hybrid energy systems that automatically adjust to the soldier's operating environment on the battlefield.
Some of the applications requiring a higher level of power -- an average of 100 watts -- include portable battery rechargers; laser target designator devices used to guide a rocket, missile, or bomb to its target; and individual cooling systems for protective garments. For these applications, the committee concluded that hybrid systems operating on common military fuels would be needed.
Other devices designed to enhance soldiers' performance on the battlefield use even more power, requiring between 1 and 5 kilowatts. For example, the "exoskeleton," which consists of a pair of mechanical metal leg braces and a backpack-like frame, literally takes the load off a soldier's back, allowing him or her to carry large or heavy packs without losing agility. To power such energy-intensive equipment, the Army should consider use of lightweight engine generators, the report says.
Among all possible energy sources, hybrid systems provide the most versatile solutions for meeting the diverse needs of the Future Force Warrior, the committee said. The key advantage of hybrid systems is their ability to provide power over varying levels of energy use, by combining two power sources.
The study was sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Army. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provide science and technology advice under a congressional charter.
***Research and Markets: 2004-2005 - USA Broadband, Internet and Broadcasting
DUBLIN, Ireland
Sept. 10, 2004
The Internet User Population Passed the 207 Million Mark at the End of May 2004 and Now Mirrors the General Population in Terms of User Demographics
Research and Markets has announced the addition of 2004-2005 -- USA Broadband, Internet and Broadcasting to their offering.
This report provides an extensive range of market and industry information, regulatory environment and statistical data. An in depth review of the following sectors -
-- Fixed and Wireless Broadband;
-- Internet & e-commerce;
-- iTV, PayTV and Digital TV;
-- New Media.
The US telecommunications market has finally emerging from its slump - although at this stage, it is believed it will not be until 2005/6 before the market returns to usual levels - and when it does, it will be valued in a similar manner to any other mature national market - not at the ridiculous levels witnessed in the telecommunications and dot.com boom. 2004 was a year where many operators "turned the corner" and started to focus on increasing their customer base, while keeping one eye firmly on their profitability. The previous few years has seen most operators consolidate their position in the market and focus on steadying their profit and loss statements -- but now more operators are looking to more actively poach customers and grow their own customer base - either through competition or acquisition.
In 2004 some of the predicted market consolidation in the wireless communications market finally occurred. This consolidation will continue as long as a number of strong operators remain in the market - however, the presence of congested networks and radio spectrum, particularly in the larger cities, is helping provide enough customers to support the current number of operators. Without the need to build out expensive new networks that the European operators are facing, the US operators can spend their money more sensibly on acquiring customers and attempting to increase Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) using the existing network and services. At this stage the operators have upgraded their networks to General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) or CDMA2000 1xRTT, and are now rolling out EV-DO and EDGE or WCDMA services across the country.
Competition is heating up in the local voice market as a number of cable companies and other CLECs are beginning to emerge as major competitors to the big telecom operators - although Comcast Corporation's focus on profitable voice services has seen it slow down the rollout of its cable telephony services. VoIP services are driving demand for data services in corporate America as these services finally become accepted by businesses. IP telephony services in the USA are increasingly becoming more common and now have the support of a number of major mainstream US operators including AT&T.
Internet and online markets are still witnessing strong growth as demand for services continues. The Internet user population passed the 207 million mark at the end of May 2004 and now mirrors the general population in terms of user demographics.
The promised fast and furious growth or broadband services never materialised -- what is being witnessed instead is the organic growth of a market -- but it is now beginning to reach the penetration rates that were initially forecast. DSL and cable modem Internet services continue to dominate the broadband access market, as fixed wireless and satellite services are relegated to niche markets where fixed-line solutions are not available. The much hyped and long awaited debut of Internet over powerlines is yet to materialise.
Key highlights of this report:
-- The Predicted Consolidation Of The Wireless Market Began As AT&T Wireless Was Acquired By Cingular After A Brief Bidding War With Europe's Vodafone. The Consolidation Is Likely To Continue;
-- SMS And Other Mobile Messaging Services Began To Make An Impact On Mobile Operators Bottom Lines, With Usage Of These Services Amongst The Youth Segment Beginning To Mirror Usage Levels Seen In Europe;
-- IP Telephony Services Received A Vital Regulatory Boost Along With The Thumbs Up From The Major Operators As A Number Of Incumbents Launched Mainstream IP Telephony Services. By 2006 IP Telephony Will Be One Of The Major Factors Driving The Growth In Broadband Services;
-- Infrastructure Spend Finally Seemed To Pick Up Again As The Financial Markets Began To Look More Fondly On Telecoms Players;
-- Competition Remained Fierce In The Long Distance And International Calling Markets;
-- Broadband Services Continue To Make Inroads In The Internet Access Market -- And Competition Continues To Drive Down Prices - Although More Slowly Than In Previous Years;
-- Cable Telephony Adoption Rates Slowed As Comcast In Particular Focussed On Profitability As Opposed To Customer Acquisition;
-- Many Of The Cable Operators Saw Their Subscriber Numbers Stagnate As The Satellite Providers Witnessed Much Of The Growth In Subscriber Numbers In 2004;
-- Wi-Fi Services Continued To Disappoint Despite The Roll-Out Of A Number Of New Networks And The Increasing Penetration Of Wi-Fi Enabled Devices - Prices Dropped And Business Plans Failed As The Elusive "Road Warrior" Continued To Prefer Coffee To E-Mail While At Starbucks Et Al;
-- The Number Of Fixed Lines In Service Continued To Decline As Wireless Services And Broadband On Existing Cable And Copper Decreased The Need For Second And Sometimes First Lines;
-- The Triennial Review Of 2003 Was Overturned In The Supreme Court, Sending The FCC Into A Tailspin;
-- The Effects Of The Acquisition Of DirecTV By News Corporation Began To Impact The Market -- Although At This Stage Little Has Changed.
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c4790
0436.6 Standards and Specifications
***New Group Formed to Continue SATA Spec Development, Promotion
Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Systems Conference
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Sept. 9, 2004
Dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, 40 leading computer component and peripheral companies announced the formation of the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO).
The new organization builds on a long heritage of effective SATA organizations starting with SATA 1.0 in early 2000, to SATA II in 2002 and now SATA-IO. The working group's transition to SATA-IO, a formal industry association, indicates the member companies' long-term commitment to continue delivering technology and high-quality specifications that meet the needs of a rapidly changing market.
The current SATA-IO technology roadmap includes enabling the 3Gb/s technology defined in the newest SATA spec, which was released in July. The group also plans to expand membership to include additional optical storage vendors, storage controller and hard drive vendors, system builders, storage semiconductor designers and computer technology designers.
Companies that have a strong vested interest in the SATA technology are encouraged to join the organization. Benefits of membership include early access to draft specifications via members-only access to the specification development Web site, free copies of final published SATA-IO documents, licenses to new technology developed under the SATA-IO organization, opportunity to participate in SATA-IO interoperability labs, and licenses to use the SATA logo. To ensure continuity and momentum, SATA-IO is led by a new board of directors from the former Serial ATA II Working Group promoter companies: Dell, Intel, Maxtor, Seagate Technology and Vitesse.
At Intel Developer Forum
SATA-IO is showcased its newest technology features and specifications at the Intel Developer Forum. Highlights included the first demonstration of the 3Gb/s spec -- running from the host to the disc drive -- presented by AMCC and Seagate. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Silicon Image are demonstrated the new 3Gb/s spec using a native host and connecting 2 TB of storage through an external port multiplier.
About the Serial ATA International Organization
The SATA-IO, created by the members of the SATA II Working Group, is the international organization that owns and manages SATA specifications as open-industry standards. The non-profit organization defines and implements SATA storage specifications as the industry's storage needs evolve. Formed this month, the SATA-IO currently has 40 member companies worldwide.
***New Software Updates and Motivates Voters; Free Vote121 Toolbar Enhances Browser With News And Humor
NEW YORK
Sept. 9, 2004
Vote121 is a free, innovative new browser toolbar that brings all the latest news and commentary about the Bush and Kerry campaigns straight into the user's browser. Without interrupting their normal browsing routine, users learn more about the presidential candidates with the Vote121 toolbar than from standard web searches or TV sound-bites, plus they get an active countdown to the election and an up-to-the-minute display of the projected election results.
The Lighter Side Of Politics: The Vote121 toolbar doesn't just link to the latest serious commentary and news -- it also includes humorists and three syndicated political cartoonists. The cartoons are highlighted on Vote121 everyday, and appear without users having to visit a particular website or drill down through lots of pages to get to them.
Integrated RSS Reader: In addition to the election tools, users are given a robust RSS reader in the toolbar, eliminating the need for a standalone reader. In addition to pre-populated links, users can add any website to get news from their favorite source.
Search The Issues -- Or The Web: Vote121 includes a search feature that can search the candidates' websites on various issues, or it can search the web for more information on any topic. The search is powered by the Vivisimo search engine, which was chosen for its unique ability to cluster contextual results on-the fly from a wide variety of sources.
121 Communications, Inc. created the Vote 121 toolbar both as a way to get out the vote and as a showcase of new technology. 121 is also offering the toolbar for sponsorship, and custom versions of the toolbar can be created for any company or organization to promote their issues.
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