Microsoft demos Surface alternative dubbed TouchWall

Microsoft showed off a new product dubbed “TouchWall” at its CEO Summit today. As the name suggests, the product is another multi-touch platform that you can control with a sweep of your hand, though this time coming in a whole lot cheaper than the $10,000 Surface, costing just “a few hundred dollars worth of readily available hardware.”

The TouchWall comprises integrated hardware that includes laser and infrared lights that recognize the touch of fingertips on the screen through the embedded Plex software. A Microsoft representative declined to offer any details about whether or when TouchWall might be available commercially – though during its presentation Bill Gates said he expects the technology to someday be used on a daily basis by businesses and in the home. Until that day comes, we’ll have to settle with watching a video of the TouchWall in action.

Activision preparing Call of Duty 5

For all of you Call of Duty fans, you might be interested to know that Activision has announced the release of Call of Duty 5. The title will be available across a wide variety of platforms, including the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, DS, PlayStation 2 and the PC. Little mention is made of what dramatic differences the game will have as compared to COD4, and the official launch date has not been announced either, only that it is under production.

Likely the game will not make it out this year, though next year is possible.

Stolen MacBook camera helps catch thieves

The device integration that laptops offer us today is pretty amazing, and even more so when these can be easily configured to act as remote security systems. A woman who had her MacBook stolen was able to use the very machine itself to catch the thieves thanks to a remote control software she had installed and the laptop’s integrated webcam.

After the laptop was stolen, the thieves used it to get online – as a result, the victim was able to login to the laptop remotely and use the embedded webcam to take pictures of the thieves. After submitting the photo to the police, the two thieves were arrested and a plethora of electronics equipment was recovered from their apartment. While I am sure that no retail outlet wants to sell a laptop on the basis that it will help you catch crooks, this is a very humorous and interesting use of a simple piece of hardware found in many laptops today.

Security flaw turns Gmail into spamming machine

According to a recent report by the Information Security Research Team, a flaw in Google’s email service makes it vulnerable to becoming a massive spam machine. The team claims to have successfully created a proof of concept exploiting the “trust hierarchy” that exists between mail service providers, allowing them to send 4000+ messages in a short period of time from a single account.

The study explains that IP addresses of spam offenders are often blacklisted, while those of known good sources – such as Gmail – are immune to most spam filtering. The vulnerability enables a malicious user to bypass these blacklist / white-list based email filters and freely forge all fields in an email message by having Google’s SMTP servers tricked into functioning as open SMTP relays. There has been no official comment by Google on this matter yet, but hopefully the problem will be resolved in short order.

Nvidia denies Via acquisition rumors

It had been suspected that Nvidia could be seeking to acquire Via, which later was toned down a bit to “just cooperating” in order to beef up their market share compared to behemoth Intel. What exactly they had in plan was unknown, but now Nvidia has come out to set the record straight regarding a buyout.

According to Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, his company will not be purchasing Via, and insisted that neither company is in financial peril. The reasoning behind his outright denial was laid forth as well, with him saying that Nvidia’s focus will remain on one thing. He added they have no interest in “general-purpose” processor manufacturing. Considering that not long ago this same CEO claimed that Intel’s technology was a joke and that they had huge plans in store, the rumors were not surprising.

AMD launches new low-power quad-core Opterons

AMD today unveiled five new quad-core Opteron server processors with performance-per-watt as their key feature. The chips on average consume about 55 watts and are available in both the 2300 and 8300 series for two, four and eight-way rack-mounted servers and blades.

Compared to the “standard-wattage,” 75-watt Barcelona parts these chips are 30 percent more efficient. The model numbers are the Opteron 8347 HE, 8346 HE – for servers with four or eight processors – and the Opteron 2347 HE, 2346 HE, and 2344 HE for servers with two processors.

They run at clock speeds ranging from 1.7GHz to 1.9GHz and are priced from $209 to $873 in 1,000-unit quantities. This is AMD’s latest announcement concerning low-power chips and is seen as a good move for the struggling chip company as the issue around power efficiency and power consumption continues to gain momentum in the server and data center space.

EVGA announces USB display cards

For those that are craving for additional displays, EVGA has announced its UV Plus+ lineup of USB display adapters. These two display adapters branded as  UV12 and UV16 will use an USB to connect to PC in order to give support for additional displays.

Both UV12 and UV16 feature DVI and VGA support, and come with the so called GPU-less design. This design uses a virtual driver and high-performance DDR memory which gives it enough juice to run Windows Vista Aero and do high resolutions.

The UV12 will be able to produce up to 1440×900 resolution at 60Hz of refresh rate, while its bigger named brother UV16, will be able to give  up to 1680×1050 at the same 60Hz. The design is stackable so you are basically limited by the number of USB ports.

These new USB display adapters should be available sometimes during this week at the suggested retail/e-tail price of €79. Both devices are based on DisplayLink chips and they will be definitely good for anyone that needs more than one additional display on the notebook.

You can check out additional info here.

Samsung DVD Claims 22X Recording

Samsung India launched a DVD writer, which is claimed to be the industry’s fastest writer with 22X recording capability. The new Super-WriteMaster SH-S223 is available in the Indian market.

With over-speed recording, users can write at 22X speeds on 16X media and 12X speeds on 8X media. As lower speed media is more cost-effective, users can save money while burning discs at faster speeds.

The SH-S223 drive provides blazing recording speeds across a gamut of different data media types including: 22X DVD±R recording, 12X DVD-RAM recording, 16X DVD+R Dual Layer recording, 12X DVD-R Dual Layer recording, 8X DVD+RW recording and 6X DVD-RW recording.

It enables consumers to burn 4.7GB on a DVD±R disc in approximately 4 minutes and 26 seconds, a 6 percent increase in speed compared to a 20X DVD writer. It also takes less than 12 minutes to burn 4.7GB in DVD-RAM format, which is a 30 percent increase in speed over a 20X DVD drive. The SH-S223 drive supports SATA interface, the dominant interface for PCs.

It includes free software, enabling users to easily create music, video, photo and data discs. The drive also includes Samsung’s live firmware update program that enables users to download new firmware upgrades for free and keep their drives updated.

It features technologies including SAT (Speed Adjustment Technology), TAC (Tilt Actuator Compensation) and Double OPC (Optimum Power Control). Buffer Under Run Free Technology supports stable writing under high speed, and Magic Speed and ABS (Automatic Ball Balancing System) technologies reduce vibration and noise.

The SH-S223 is designed to be eco-friendly and is RoHS compliant. It is available at the price of Rs. 1700 (US$41).

Social Networks Go Corporate

The market for social networking software nearly tripled last year, and an IDC analyst says when implemented properly, these tools can improve internal communication.

Framingham, Mass.-based IDC released a study this week, which found it underestimated the popularity of social networking. Last year, the firm predicted the market in the U.S. would increase by 120 percent in 2007, but the actual revenue growth was 191 percent, said Rachel Happe, IDC’s research manager for digital business economy.

The study, dubbed U.S. social networking applications 2008-2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking takes Hold, used revenue figures from American vendors. No figures were released for Canada. The study, which predicts the market could reach $2 billion by 2012, includes any software often deployed as a service paid for by enterprises to enable communities, either internal or external, such as KickApps, Passenger and hi5.

The technology is popular because companies are discovering the use of applications spawned by the popularity of Facebook and Myspace have business benefits, Happe said.

More in CIO Canada Concerns over social networks

“These communities are extremely good at prioritizing information,” Happe said. “It’s like flash mob. If a community sees an idea and thinks it’s really exciting and everybody starts participating in it, the company can recognize that this is something that maybe they should spend a few resources investigating.”

A case in point, she said, is Dell Inc.’s Idea Storm site. Last year, customers surveyed by Dell said they wanted Linux as an option for their PCs, so the PC manufacturer decided to offer hardware with the open source operating system.

Happe said social networking lets workers exchange information without bombarding each other with e-mail.

“As a participant who may see an interesting conversation, I don’t necessarily have to get that flowing in e-mail and constantly get pinged,” she said. “I can kind of drop into the social network when I have time, see what conversations are happening and engage when I have the time to, rather than having things directed at me.”

Human resource departments in particular are taking advantage of social networking, especially in companies that have gone through several mergers and have different employees who are accustomed to different processes. “I’m seeing it all over the place,” she said. “Engineering teams are a good example. With so much outsourcing and distributed teams where you have 24 by 7 development going on around the globe, it’s really good to keep track of conversations and updates that are happening.”

Businesses planning to implement social networking need to bear in mind the major implementation issues are not technical issues, Happe warned.

“It’s community development effort, making sure people know about it, bringing them in and getting them used to the social construct of this,” she said, adding: “you can’t force people to communicate so if you don’t have an impassioned group of people it’s going to fall flat.”

Facebook to let users carry profiles with them

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook Inc. is loosening its grip on millions of personal profiles to allow inhabitants of its popular Internet hangout to transplant the information and applications to other Web sites.

With the changes announced Friday, Facebook joins a growing movement to make it easier for people to share their favorite pictures, information and applications with family and friends anywhere on the Internet.

Facebook, which has about 70 million users worldwide, unveiled its plans the day after its bigger rival, News Corp.’s MySpace, made a similar commitment.

Unlike MySpace, which has about 200 million users worldwide, Palo Alto-based Facebook plans to allow users to take their personal profiles to any Web site that wants to host them. For starters, MySpace is opening user profiles only to a select group of sites, including leading destinations owned by Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc.

Both Facebook and MySpace say several weeks remain before their users’ data becomes portable.

The transition poses a risk for Facebook and MySpace because they are effectively tearing down the barriers that sequestered the personal profiles on their sites. This so-called “walled-garden” approach kept people coming back to the sites and sticking around, creating a magnetism that appeals to advertisers.

But pressure to offer portable profiles has been building as people have embraced the Internet as a convenient way to swap personal information and interests.

Internet search leader Google Inc. waded into the fray last year by creating a network that’s supposed to make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on a range of online hangouts.

MySpace joined the Google system, known as OpenSocial, but Facebook hasn’t.

If freeing up the personal profiles on its site turns Facebook into the command center for shaping and steering social interactions across the Web, that could make Facebook even more powerful than it already was becoming.

Facebook’s Web site could also become an even more attractive platform for hosting a wide range of mini-applications, known as “widgets,” now that its users will be able to take the same bundle of programs to other Web sites. Drawn by a potentially larger audience, developers may see greater reason to create applications for Facebook.

The portability of personal profiles also may help other top Web sites, like Yahoo, that have struggled to create their own social networks. Yahoo is hoping to drum up more advertising by featuring more social applications from outside sources. Yahoo is under intense pressure to boost its profits after its board refused last weekend to sell to Microsoft Corp. for $47.5 billion.

Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook in October, valuing the 4-year-old startup at $15 billion. That deal came a little more than a year after Facebook rejected a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo.

Facebook’s recent efforts to interact with other sites haven’t gone smoothly. Last year, users rebelled when Facebook introduced a marketing tool that tracked and broadcast information about their activities on dozens of other Web sites. The backlash prompted Facebook to empower users to turn off the feature permanently.