Google is hoping to dissuade the Department of Justice from bringing an antitrust case.

Increasing scrutiny of corporate behavior, Google is hoping to dissuade the Department of Justice from bringing an antitrust case.
For several months, Google has been explaining to regulators and journalists that, contrary to the predatory image painted by competitors, the company is fragile. It has made its case in Washington, D.C., New York, and Brussels, hoping to dissuade the U.S. Department of Justice and European regulators from bringing an antitrust case against the company.

After the lax regulatory atmosphere of the Bush administration, the Obama administration appears to be increasing its scrutiny of corporate behavior. The new head of the Justice Department's antitrust division said in a recent speech that the department would be taking a more aggressive approach with companies that use their dominant position to stifle competition. In a speech last year, before her appointment to the Justice Department, she said that Google had acquired a monopoly in online advertising.
Google also faces Justice Department scrutiny over its proposed settlement with book publishers and authors, Federal Trade Commission scrutiny over board members who also serve on Apple's board, and a Justice Department inquiry into the possibility that Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Apple colluded to avoid poaching employees from one another. Last year, Google abandoned a planned advertising deal with Yahoo to avoid an antitrust showdown with the Justice Department.

During the Google presentation, Adam Kovacevich, the company's senior manager of global communications and public affairs, acknowledged that the company's success has brought increased scrutiny. But he insisted that Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) was in a similar position a decade ago, citing a 1998 Fortune article that declared, "Yahoo has won the search engine wars."

"We also know our position is fragile," he said.
In keeping with Google's emphasis on data and metrics, Google legal counsel Dana Wagner, who coincidentally used to work in the antitrust division of the Justice Department, offered an anecdote in support of this claim.

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline contact to its Gmail Webmail application

Google announced the release of a new system which allows users to access their accounts offline.

Google Delivers Offline admittance for Gmail

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.
This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.
That's when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.
Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.
Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. "Gmail was a tough hurdle," he said.
Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people's hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.
"We had to make it such that we're managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that's seamless to the end-user," he said.
For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.
Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.
While the feature was "rigorously" tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That's why it's being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.
Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.
However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.
To activate the offline functionality, users of standalone Gmail service and the standard Apps edition should click "settings" after logging on to their Gmail account. There, they should click on the "Labs" tab, select "Enable" next to "Offline Gmail" and click "Save Changes." A new "Offline" link will then appear in the right-hand corner of the account interface. Users of the Education and Premier Apps versions will have to wait for their Apps administrators to enable Gmail Labs for everyone on the domain first.
Google is also rolling out Gears-based offline access for its Calendar application. However, it will be for now read-only and exclusively available to Google Apps account holders. Previously, Google introduced read-only offline access to the Spreadsheet and Presentation applications in Google Docs, which is also part of Google Apps.

release of offline Gmail.

The early version of the app is available now to users with the U.S./U.K. English version of Google Labs.
Pegged as an "experimental" feature, the app is aimed at maintaining Gmail's functionality even when you're not online. Built on Google's Gear's platform, once enabled the feature downloads a cache of your mail to your PC. When you're logged on the Web, it syncs the cache with the Gmail servers.
While you're offline, you can read, star, and label messages. If you send a message when you're offline, Gmail places it in your outbox and sends it as soon as you log back in. A special "flaky connection" setting splits the difference between on and offline modes ("when you're 'borrowing' your neighbor's wireless," says Google), utilizing a local cache while syncing it with the online version.

The world's best coolest ear buds

Skullcandy veered away from standard-issue black and white headphones - and struck gold.

Skullcandy is using fake alligator skin and rhinestones to shake up the headphone market, giving Philips and Sony a run for their money.

The half pipe tucked in a corner of the office is the first clue that Skullcandy is not your average company.
Other clues: In the teeth of the worst recession in generations, the five-year-old private company is growing like a weed. And it just scored a round of funding, from private-equity shop Goode Partners, at a time when investment dollars are scarce.
If the name Skullcandy doesn't register, it will with your kids (so will the term half pipe, which is a ramp, in this case for skateboarding, shaped like a pipe cut in half lengthwise).
Skullcandy's business is headphones, and they dominate the 12- to 25-year-old demographic with a line-up of gear covered in faux gator skin, gold foil, rhinestones and hip hop-inspired graphics. Pull back the hoody on any kid riding a snowboard in Park City, Utah and chances are pretty good, a pair of Skullcandy headphones, probably the top-selling "Smokin' Buds," will be pumping music into their ears.
Making electronics cool
From a distant No. 10 three years ago, Skullcandy is now North America's third-largest manufacturer of headphones by unit sales, behind consumer electronics giants Philips Electronics (PHG) and Sony (SNE), according to NPD Group. "We'll be No. 2 soon," predicted Skullcandy president Jeremy Andrus, legs dangling from the office half pipe. "My guess is some time next year."
After that, Skullcandy and the band of snowboarders, skaters, surfers and DJs that founder Rick Alden has assembled in Park City, will be gunning for No. 1. That is, if Alden, the CEO and creative madman to Andrus' operations guru, can figure out a way to do it without diluting the company's cool factor.
Skullcandy didn't invent headphones; what the company has done is make them into a fashion item. Kids don't want one pair, they want five. "We're like sunglasses," Alden said. "Except we sit on top of your head, and you wear them a lot more."
Skullcandy headphones are not the type you will hear audiophiles gushing about. They are mostly solid-sounding pieces of affordable gear that, unlike Sony's grey and black headphones, or Apple's white, don't disappear into the background. On the contrary, they make a statement. The snowboard, surf and skate inspired graphics and colors ask for attention, and speak to a lifestyle, or in most cases, a wannabe lifestyle.
Successful clothing brands are able to evoke that lifestyle magic, but it is the rare consumer electronics company that does it. Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) with its iPod is the obvious and most successful current example. Skullcandy has pulled it off so far, and in doing so sent revenue from essentially zero to approaching $100 million in just a few years. Sales more than doubled in 2008.
To put in perspective Skullcandy's momentum, when many consumer electronics companies saw sales fall off a cliff in November, Skullcandy's quadrupled year over year, according to Andrus.
That success is obviously gratifying to Alden, but it also has him worried about overexposure. "I was at the mountain riding with my son the other day, and everyone I saw was wearing Skullcandy headphone, I mean they were everywhere," Alden said. "I may go back to wearing black Sony's just to be different."
He's kidding, but his concern is real. Alden and his design team need to keep Skullcandy fresh, so it doesn't fall out of fashion and black becomes the new black. Fortunately the Skullcandy team has a secret weapon when they seek inspiration, design-wise and business-wise.
"We head to the mountain," Alden said, checking for the latest snowfall report on his laptop. "No good ideas ever come from sitting in an office, not around here at least."

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The Potential of Earbuds
There is great disagreement about:
Whether earbuds could potentially sound good, given their small size.
Whether any actual earbuds sound good, or whether the whole idea needs further development.
Which earbuds sound good and which sound bad.
Which of the expensive ($40-$80) earbuds sound so good that the extra cost is justified.
After testing many headphones and earbuds and applying my extensive experience tweaking equalizers, I think that earbuds actually have the potential to sound even *better* than standard headphones. In any case, all headphones and earbuds need a new approach: a calibrated equalization curve built into the player, to yield flat response. Megabass is a step toward such a compensation curve.
Like the Etymotics, earbuds have the potential to have smoother response than even the best popular standard headphones, such as the Sennheiser 580's. I've dialed in some truly vibrant, open sound using equalization together with $10 earbuds. It is easy and straightforward to equalize earbuds; just do anti-rolloff to a greater or lesser degree, and leave the rest flat; there aren't mysterious jags hidden along the entire spectrum that need unique shapes of compensation. I'd rather trust my ears than the common assumption that earbuds are inferior. If the conditions are right and the appropriate, ordinary EQ compensations are made, earbuds can be superior, rather than inferior, to good standard headphones. It's simply a matter of starting with a decent earbud driver, and providing the inverse of the earbud driver's frequency response.
If someone shows me a measured response curve of an earbud and it's rough and jagged, I will change my view somewhat, but in any case, I think that eq-compensated earbuds at least *can sound* unusually smooth and natural. Players need more fancy curves to compensate for specific earbud models.
"Though I like the R3 stock earbuds even better than the 888's, I can't stop seeking for even better sound, as I believe it can be a lot better. If I press against an earbud I get very powerful bass, so it is possible. I will keep on looking, and if I find something interesting I will let you know. Please let me know your findings on this matter." (from a private email to me)
Some people haven't been lucky and haven't heard the one or two models that are really good. No wonder they think earbuds are a poor packaging and sound poor. I was starting to suspect that *some* Sony stock earbuds (included with the player) sound great, and some sound lousy.

Wireless power technologies are moving closer to becoming feasible options.

PowerMat Wireless Charging Plate

A vision of our wireless future, courtesy of PowerMat. The company teamed up with Michigan-based HoMedics to introduce more than a dozen products at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

This year probably won't be the tipping point for wireless electricity. But judging from all the new techniques and applications of this awe-inspiring technology, getting power through the airwaves could soon be viable.
Fulton Innovations showcased blenders that whir wirelessly and laptops that power up without a battery at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this month. The devices are all powered by electromagnetic coils built into the charging surface, and there's not a plug in sight.

Fulton's wireless electricity technology is called eCoupled, and the company hopes it can be used across a wide rage of consumer devices. Fulton was one of half a dozen companies that wowed consumers at CES.
10 Wireless Electricity Technologies
ECoupled uses a wireless powering technique called "close proximity coupling," which uses circuit boards and coils to communicate and transmit energy using magnetic fields. The technology is efficient but only works at close ranges. Typically, the coils must be bigger than the distance the energy needs to travel. What it lacks in distance, it makes up in intelligence.
In conjunction with the Wireless Power Consortium, Fulton, a subsidiary of Amway, has developed a standard that can send digital messages back and forth using the same magnetic field used to power devices. These messages are used to distinguish devices that can and can't be charged wirelessly, and to relay informtion like power requirements or how much battery is left in a device.
Using this technique, an industrial van parked outside the Fulton booth at CES charged a set of power tools from within its carrying case. The van was tricked out by Leggett & Platt people )--a diversified manufacturing company based in Carthage, Mo., and an eCoupled licensee--and is designed to solve its customers' biggest headache: arriving at the job site with a dead set of tools. Fulton, which teamed up with Bosch to design the setup, already has test vehicles rolling around in the field and plans to sell them to utility and other industrial companies by the end of the year.

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Bosch Wireless Powertool Set The eCoupled setup uses a technique called close proximity coupling, so the devices can remain in their case while charging. Generally, the efficiency of the wireless-electricity transfer decreases with distance.

In another area of the vast CES show, cellphones, videogame controllers and a laptop charged wirelessly on a silver and black mat created by Boulder, Colo.-based WildCharge.
The mat uses a conductive powering technique, which is more efficient than inductive powering but requires direct contact between the devices and the charging pad. Though most of the mats or pads on display are intended to power only a handful of devices at a time, WildCharge says the product design is certified for up to 150 watts--enough to power 30 laptops.
Across the room from WildCharge, PowerCast displayed Christmas ornaments and floor tiles glowing with LEDs powered by ambient radio waves. The devices harvest electromagnetic energy in ambient radio waves from a nearby low-power antenna. Because of the dangerous nature of electromagnetic waves in high doses, Pittsburgh-based PowerCast is targeting its application for mall devices like ZigBee wireless chips, which require little power.
Perhaps the most promising wireless power technology was the latest iteration of WiTricity, the Watertown, Mass.-based brainchild of MIT physicist Marin Soljacic, on display in a private suite high in the Venetian hotel tower.
The technology uses a technique developed by Soljacic called "highly coupled magnetic resonance." As proof that it works, an LCD TV is powered by a coil hidden behind an oil painting located a few feet away. Across the hotel room, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler walks in the direction of another coil holding an iPod Touch in the palm of his hand. Power hungry, it starts to charge when it gets within two meters.
Soljacic has already earned a $500,000 genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for his work, but Giler said the technology is at least a year away. In the meantime, WiTricity has obtained an exclusive license from MIT to bring Soljacic's idea to market and hopes to have an estimated 200 patents.
But because Soljacic published his academic paper in Nature magazine, companies like Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) have been able to replicate the effect in their labs based on his principles.
Elsewhere at CES, PowerBeam showcased wireless lamps and picture frames. Located in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company uses yet another wireless-powering approach. Its technology beams optical energy into photovoltaic cells using laser diodes. Although the company says it can maintain a constant energy flow across long distances, the difficultly of targeting a laser means that it's not ideal for charging moving devices.
So, while 2009 may not be the year wireless electricity takes off, the nascent sector is certainly on its way.

Smartphone performance : Monzilla

Iphone is turning to the mobile computer, to provide the customer satisfaction
The iPhone isn't a true mobile computer yet, but it's on the right track, according to a Mozilla executive.

"Getting a no-compromise web experience on devices requires significant memory (>=64MB) as well as significant CPU horsepower. High end devices today are just approaching these requirements and will be commonplace soon," wrote Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, in a blog post Tuesday, implying that while the iPhone and its current competitors don't quite have what it takes under the hood to be full-fledged mobile computers, we're not all that far away.
It seems to me like there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on here. Are smartphones slower than people would like because the hardware is too rudimentary, or because truly useful software is too bloated for the limited memory and power requirements of smartphones? I don't think too many people bought an iPhone expecting it would be just as zippy as their PC, but just how much slower is it than a PC?

Schroepfer thinks, based on third-party tests, that the iPhone is about 10 to 100 times slower than a MacBook Pro on scripting benchmarks and about 3 to 5 times slower than a ThinkPad T40 laptop when operating on the same Wi-Fi network. "But rapid improvements in mobile processors will close this gap within a few years," he wrote.


He estimates that the iPhone is using about 128MB of system RAM, and a processor (known to be an ARM-based chip from Samsung) running at between 400MHz and 600MHz. Apple's iPhone application development policy means we're not going to see Firefox on the iPhone anytime soon, but that's information that Mozilla is using to work on future mobile browsers for devices like the iPhone that won't be able to run unmodified PC software for several years.

As Schroepfer notes, the nice thing about the chip industry is that we can be reasonably sure that there will be more performance to work with every couple of years. Both ARM and Intel have set aggressive performance and power consumption goals for chips due out over the next several years.

But Schoepfer seems to be operating under the assumption that it's the hardware that is holding back a true Internet experience on a smartphone. "Up until very recently, device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up," he wrote. I wonder if that was such a bad thing; I'm sure to save time and effort developers would rather port as much of their PC code as is feasible over to smartphones, but is it better to develop mobile software that's designed specifically for mobile devices or to investigate ways to move the multitude of software that's already out there for PCs to a new category of mobile devices?

Mozilla wants to work both sides of the fence, not wanting to throw away all the work they've done on PC development when mobile processors are bound to get more capable, but recognizing that mobile-computing requirements are different. "There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation," Schroepfer wrote.

I'm no software developer, and I'd welcome feedback about this from those who are examining this problem. It seems pretty clear to me that true mobile computing is going to require new thinking about software development in addition to faster hardware, the same way multicore processors have shaken up the PC software development industry. And those concepts are even going to merge at some point: by 2010 ARM's partners will have multicore mobile processors on the market.

Does that mean personal-computing software development is headed down two different development paths or that smartphone developers and PC developers are converging at some point down the road? Let me know what you think.

MX Air , actually half mouse and half remote control.

Logitech has created a computer mouse called the MX Air that’s actually half mouse and half remote control.

The MX Air is made to be used “on the desk” or “in the air.” It works like a regular, wireless mouse when you push it on a flat surface.

But, it also works like a combination laser pointer and video remote controller when you wave it in the air and point it towards your TV.

It is made to let you control – from near or far - the latest breed of multimedia Windows PCs. Especially new media computer units which require placement close to those shiny, flat-screens, high-definition televisions.

The MX Air looks like many other modern wireless laser mice. It’s black and steel colored with stealth backlighting that quietly appears when you move the mouse. There are also a lot of extra control buttons that you normally don’t find on a mouse.

On top is a very large, touch-sensitive scrolling bar that runs down the middle. On either side are the left and right “click” buttons. And below the scroll there are buttons for ‘Back’. ‘Select’, ‘Play/Pause’ and ‘Volume so you can take charge of your computer’s digital audio and video media.

The secret weapon inside is called Freespace Motion Control technology. It translates raw sensor data into precise on-screen interactions by using a combination of micro-electromechanical sensors (tiny motors), digital signal processing and radio-frequency technologies. That means it can accurately interpret the mouse’s movements regardless of its orientation.

The MX Air wirelessly connects to your computer via a USB dongle, which looks like a very small memory stick. The wireless radio controller has a range of 30 feet. It’s powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery which should be good for up to five days use per charge.

Of course, good looks and promises don’t always translate into a better user experience. In this instance I’ve had mixed results.

When used as a wireless mouse on a flat surface, the MX Air is a great performer – once you adjust it properly. Right out of the box I found the controls to be very twitchy until all the motions were slowed down almost to their minimum settings. The scroll bar seems to move way too quickly whatever settings I choose. It took a few tries to get most everything set to my liking.

Logitech’s MX Air has a suggested retail price of $149.99.

I found the mouse to be somewhat less endearing when used “in the air”. The cursor is larger and easier to see in this mode, but its motions are somewhat more difficult to control. I found that it takes a little time to get used to using the MX Air across the room – but really like the idea of having only one device control everything that a Windows Media Center mouse and remote control needs to do.