Digital Media

Could Intel's new Moblin 2.1 OS make a dent against Windows in the mobile and desktop markets?

At this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chipmaker debuted a beta version of its Moblin 2.1 open-source operating system targeted to run on a variety of devices, including smartphones, Netbooks, nettops, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and in-car systems.

Moblin 2.1 will compete with other open-source operating systems like Google's Android and bump up against Microsoft in the burgeoning nettop arena.

Originally developed for Netbooks, Moblin 2.1 (short for mobile Linux) will come in three flavors--one for handhelds, another for Netbooks, and a third for nettops.

In the market for handheld gadgets such as smartphones and MIDs, Moblin 2.1 will run on Atom chip-based devices. The beta demoed by Intel at IDF showed off capabilities for touch-screen and gesture input. The new interface will also let users switch among different open applications and will provide shortcuts to social-networking apps.

The Moblin 2.1 Web browser will also support Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology to run interactive Web-based apps.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

It's probably time you said goodbye to your PowerPC-based Mac.

Adobe confirmed Tuesday that future versions of its Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Mac computers. There will be no support offered for PowerPC-based systems.

The company's decision follows Apple's announcement in June that it was discontinuing support for the PowerPC in its new operating systems, starting beginning with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). With Apple's future development focused on Intel Macs, Adobe is aligning its resources accordingly.

According to Adobe, existing customers who own Creative Suite 3 and Creative Suite 4 will still be able to use the software on either a PowerPC-based Mac or an Intel-based Mac without having to make any changes. However, Adobe will provide support for these two suites only to address critical issues that may arise.

Creative Suite is Adobe System's collection of well-known industry-standard graphic design, video editing, and Web development applications. These applications include Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, Flash, and many others.

While Snow Leopard has not been released yet, and the new version of the Creative Suite hasn't been announced, either, Adobe decided to announce these changes now so its customers will have time to plan their migration strategy accordingly. This means you should go get yourself an Intel-based Mac if you haven't done so already.

For more information on the discontinuation of support, check out Adobe's FAQ.

Can't donate your personal time to a good cause? Intel is providing what may be the next best option.

Intel teamed up with GridRepublic on Monday to launch a Facebook application that allows the spare processing power in a PC to be used to fight diseases and study climate change.

The massive amount of data crunching necessary for high level research is often extremely expensive or not readily available--or both. Intel's solution is Progress Thru Processors, a computing application built on the Facebook platform that allows people to donate their PC's available data processing capacity to research projects such as Rosetta@home, which uses computers to determine the 3-dimensional shapes of proteins that may ultimately lead to finding cures for some major human diseases.

GridRepublic application allows computers to work on public-interest research projects when the machines are not otherwise in use.

(Credit: Intel)

In addition to Rosetta@home, Progress Thru Processors participants can choose to contribute processor power to the research efforts of Climateprediction.net and Africa@home. Climateprediction.net is dedicated to increased understanding of global climate change by predicting the Earth's climate and testing the accuracy of climate models. Africa@home is currently focused on finding optimal strategies to combat malaria by studying simulation models of disease transmission and the potential impact of new anti-malarial drugs and vaccines.

"By simply running an application on your computer, which uses very little incremental resources, you can expand computing resources to researchers," Deborah Conrad, Intel vice president and general manager of corporate marketing, said in a statement.

The application was launched Monday as a public beta and available to all Facebook users and is available for download here.

The application will activate only when a PC's performance is not being fully utilized. When the participant's computer usage demands more processor performance, the application defers and sits idle until spare processing capabilities become available again, Intel said. The application runs automatically as a background process on a PC and will not affect performance or any other tasks, according to Intel.

Progress Thru Processors does not require participants to leave their computers powered up unnecessarily. By keeping their PCs on only as they normally would, participants will still be contributing, Intel said.

How do I calculate the size of meatballs?--O'Brien asks.

(Credit: 'The Tonight Show' with Conan O'Brien)

"How do I calculate the size of meatballs?" That was the title of one of the seminal Intel science projects that late-night comedian Conan O'Brien covered in a segment last night on NBC's "The Tonight Show."

O'Brien was at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, billed as the world's largest pre-college science fair. Intel is one of the sponsors of the "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," which launched recently with the retirement (from that show) of Jay Leno.

"Even though Intel is one of the world's largest corporations and they could crush me like a fly, they were nice enough to let me go visit their science fair in Reno, Nev.," O'Brien said.

"1,500 dweebs, nerds, and Poindexters," O'Brien said, describing the high school kids attending the event.

Conan O'Brien interviews science fair participants

(Credit: The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien)

A project of note was a "See Through Camera Jammer." "So if someone has a see-through camera, your device stops them from seeing through people's clothing?" O'Brien asked. "Why would you make this?" The response from the high school kid who did the project: "Because it's illegal." And Conan responded: "But I paid a lot of money for that thing."

He ended the segment with a visit to the meatball size-measuring project. "Of course, not everyone here is a genius. 'How do I calculate the size of meatballs?' This was a $13 million study commissioned by Chef Boyardee," he joked.

The link to "The Tonight Show" replay is here. Note that the Intel segment begins at about the 6:30 marker into the show.

Shares of Amazon.com sold off sharply Tuesday, and Apple failed to swim against the tide despite rolling out a revamped MacBook line, as the broader markets gave up gains from its stellar performance a day earlier.

Amazon trading performance

(Credit: Yahoo Finance)

Amazon fell 9.93 percent to end the day at $55.86 a share, with little news out on the company. Amazon, however, is set report its third-quarter results on October 22.

Apple, meanwhile, received little love from investors, after rolling out its new MacBook lineup. The computer maker's stock fell 5.6 percent to end the day at $104.08 a share. Investors, who in general were selling off stocks across the board, may have also been less than happy that the computer maker was rolling out an under-$1,000 notebook.

Apple and Intel stock performance

(Credit: Yahoo Finance)

Intel, meanwhile, jumped as much as 6 percent in after-hours trading, after reporting a 12 percent increase in third-quarter profit. Intel, which reported its quarterly results after the markets closed, ended the day down 6.24 percent to $15.93 a share, during the regular trading hours.

Tech stocks, overall, were down, with the CNET Tech Index giving up 39.15 points to end the day at 1,228.68.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, closed down 65.24 points, or 3.5 percent, to close at 1,779.01. The S&P 500 fell 5.34 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 998.01. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 76.72 points, or less than 1 percent, to end the day at 9,310.99. On Monday, the Dow was up a record 936 points.

Click here for ongoing coverage from CNET News, "Tough times for tech."

Yahoo's Widget Channel software lets TVs run network-enabled applications such as this one for Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing service.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo on Wednesday announced an effort to provide the software underpinnings of network-enabled TV, a move that could transform not only what it means to watch TV but also what it means to advertise on it.

Though the TV experience has been spiced up by voting for American Idol contestants, it generally has retained its famously passive character. Yahoo wants to change this by bringing a version of its Yahoo Widget Engine, a software foundation that can run small applications called widgets, to network-enabled TVs.

This new version, called the Widget Channel, will resemble the version that's available for PCs, but will come with a different user interface to let programmers build widgets that can be controlled from a distance with a remote control, said Patrick Barry, Yahoo's vice president of connected TV at Yahoo.

Yahoo's hope is the move will bring its clout on the Internet to a new domain.

"Our goal is to aggregate a very large, multimillion-person audience across a number of devices with our standard platforms so we can start to address the audience in a unified consistent way, and ultimately create a liquid advertising market," Barry said.

Yahoo is working on partnerships with TV makers to have the software built in and integrated with TV functions. "I'm quite sure there are going to be products on this," Barry said. "I expect to see some things next year."

A first example of the technology emerged at the Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday during a speech by Eric Kim, general manager of Intel's Digital Home Group. A demonstration of the technology showed widgets for monitoring eBay auctions, using the Twitter microblogging service, and viewing Flickr photographs.

Natural allies
Intel and Yahoo are natural allies in the technology effort. Both companies are powerful in their current markets, but as much in the giant consumer electronics market. Intel wants to sell processors--in this case the newly named Media Processor CE 3100 that had been code-named Canmore, and Yahoo wants to expand the reach of its content and ads.

But history shows the effort won't be easy; the consumer electronics industry has withstood years of attempted incursions by computing companies employing various "convergence" strategies.

One of Intel's chief advantages is that so much existing software and programming tools already are compatible with the widely available x86 processor family used in all of today's PCs. "We see the PC architecture coming to consumer electronics over the next few years and that driving a ton of value," Barry said.

Though the Intel-Yahoo demonstration used a system based on Intel's processors, the Yahoo technology will run on other hardware, Barry said. And because it uses platform-independent standards such as HTML and Flash, programmers won't have to worry about having to adapt their widgets for the underlying hardware, he added.

The software can work in different modes, including a sidebar that overlays part of the TV image and a full-screen mode that takes over completely.

A new ad market
Naturally, Yahoo is eyeing the ad business that it expects will come with the Widget Channel, though it won't be the sole conduit for advertisers. Yahoo believes the Widget Channel will come with the best features of both TV and Web advertising, Barry said.

"We're not getting into this game for our health," he said, pointing out that television ad spending is still five times that of online spending. "Yahoo will provide advertising services to this platform, but we're not going to be the only ones. And we're not going to be a gatekeeper or tollkeeper," Barry said.

Users will be able to select TV widgets from a gallery, but the Widget Channel software will be built into the TV, Barry said.

Among those developing TV widgets are Blockbuster, CBS Interactive, CinemaNow, Cinequest, Disney-ABC Television Group, eBay, GE, Group M, Joost, MTV, Samsung Electronics, Schematic, Showtime, Toshiba, and Twitter, Yahoo said. (CNET is a division of CBS Interactive.)

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

Intel's remote wake-up chip could finally turn PCs into phones.

One of the biggest drawbacks of current PC-based Internet phone services like Skype, which allow people to make phone calls from their computers over the Internet for free or for reduced fees, is that you can't receive calls when the computer is turned off. But that is changing with a new chipset introduced by Intel Thursday that allows computers to wake from "sleep" to accept calls and do other tasks like accept downloaded content.

Intel has teamed up with JaJah, a California-based voice over IP start-up, to allow JaJah users to receive calls on their PCs when their computers are in "sleep mode."

"The Intel technology turns the PC into a PBX for the home," said Trevor Healy, CEO of JaJah. "With the JaJah soft client you can plug in any USB-enabled phone and start receiving inbound calls anytime."

The deal with Intel also means that JaJah technology will come already configured into certain PCs so that users don't have to download any software to make Web calls. This makes it different from other PC-based IP telephony services, like Skype, which require users to download a software client. Jajah provides users with local phone numbers and routes calls over the Internet to allow users to call any fixed or mobile phone anywhere in the world for a fraction of what they would normally pay.

JaJah was the first telecommunications partner that Intel selected to be used with its new Remote Wake technology. JaJah with more than 10 million subscribers is small potatoes compared with the biggest name in PC-based VoIP, Skype, which boasts over 300 million subscribers. But Intel's venture arm is an investor in JaJah, pouring $20 million into the company in May 2007.

That said, Intel said that the Remote Wake technology could work with any VoIP service.

"Intel Capital invested in JaJah, so this extends that relationship," said Joe Van De Water, Intel's director of consumer product marketing. "But the Remote Wake technology is open. There is a software development kit. So there's no reason that other VoIP providers like Skype couldn't use this."

Skype didn't respond to requests for comment.

While Remote Wake could make it easier to use a PC as a phone, it could also help make online video services work more efficiently. Orb Networks and CyberLink, two online content services, are also working with Intel to use the technology to work with their services so that songs, photos, videos, or other content can be downloaded onto PCs during off-peak hours. Intel is also hoping to work with PC services that do remote back-up or security updates so they can use the technology to offer their services during off-hours when there is less congestion on the network.