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The inventor of the Sugar user interface used in the One Laptop Per Child's XO says his company is developing a version for Intel's own low-cost laptop.

(Credit: Intel)

Walter Bender said in an interview Thursday with PC World that "a community volunteer is working with Intel on Sugar for the Classmate PC. Sugar Labs helped to expedite the relationship."

Bender is the inventor of the kid-friendly interface, which sits on top of a computer's operating system. His company, Sugar Labs, was spun off from OLPC in May. At the time of the announcement, Bender said Sugar Labs was already talking about sharing the UI with at least four other low-cost laptop makers, including Asus.

He described OLPC as the "primary, but not exclusive, downstream project" for Sugar Labs, and confirmed that the two companies continue to work together on further development of the UI.

That Intel will be working tangentially with OLPC again is notable. The chipmaker left its position as board member of OLPC in January, citing "fundamental differences" between the two companies' visions for low-cost computing. Previous to that, OLPC's founder Nicholas Negroponte had asked Intel to stop selling their Classmate PC platform because it was interfering with sales of the XO. Unsurprisingly, Intel declined his request.

Despite reports of setbacks, Panasonic is still aiming to have its Tru2way TVs on store shelves by the holidays.

(Credit: Panasonic)

Panasonic has confirmed to CNET that it still intends to deliver Tru2way TVs to the market before the end of 2008. A company representative e-mailed us with the following statement:

Panasonic's Tru2way-enabled VIERA HDTV is in the certification process at CableLabs. Panasonic expects to deliver Tru2way-enabled VIERA HDTVs to the market in time for the holiday season.

Of course, the company's expectation does not equal a guarantee that we'll see the product on store shelves before the end of the year. But it does represent an affirmation that Panasonic is actively working to address the alleged issues that cropped up during the CableLabs certification process. That's certainly a contrast from the "no comment" we received Thursday.

Previous Tru2way coverage:
The rocky road to Tru2way
Can Tru2way succeed where CableCard failed?
Sony commits to Tru2way

(Credit: CableLabs)

Update: Subsequent to the publication of this story, Panasonic has released a more detailed statement on the status of its Tru2way TVs.

CableLabs' Tru2way got a big boost last month when Sony signed on with a pledge to design and deliver TVs that incorporate the standard, bolstering an already impressive list of backers. The Web was flooded with optimistic reports of a post-cable box Valhalla where you could simply buy a Tru2way TV, screw in your coaxial cable, and have plug-and-play access to your 1,000-channel universe. Before those miracle TVs hit the market, however, they need to be certified by CableLabs--and there are rumors that the initial trials aren't going well. According to IP Democracy, the initial certification tests for Panasonic Tru2way TVs were unsuccessful--to say the least. The post cites "folks close to Tru2way" as calling the Panasonic tests a "'disaster of spectacular proportions'" that resulted in "'dozens and dozens' of bugs."

In an attempt to verify those dire--but anonymous--quotes, we contacted Panasonic and CableLabs for their responses. ... Read more

Corey Ondrejka

Strugging record label EMI Group continues to turn to the technology sector for leadership as it attempts to navigate the Digital Age. The music label hired Cory Ondrejka, one of the founders of Linden Lab's virtual world, Second Life.

Ondrejka was named senior vice president of digital strategy, EMI said in a statement. The hiring comes two months after EMI hired Douglas Merrill, Google's former chief information officer.

Ondrejka left Linden Labs in December. Ondrejka helped design "big parts" of Second Life.

Massively.com published an internal e-mail from Philip Rossdale, CEO of Linden Lab, saying he and Ondrejka couldn't agree on how the company should be run and that it was Rossdale's decision that Ondrejka should leave.

Ondrejka on Monday said he left when it was time to go in "a different direction." In the half year since his departure from the company, he has been teaching at the University of Southern California. In talks with Merrill about music, the possibility of joining him sounded attractive.

What Ondrejka says he can bring to the music industry is an understanding of the "problems that intersect at technology, communications, social networking, and media."

But don't look for EMI to get into the virtual-world business. Ondrejka said he joined EMI for a totally different experience.

"I spent seven years at Second Life," Ondrejka said. "I designed part of the site, hired a lot of smart people who are still there...I don't want to go do that again. A big part of what makes (the EMI position) so exciting is that it presents a completely new set of challenges."

Update 5:35 p.m. PDT: I added more details and a comment that Gmail should finally exit its beta-testing phase "soon."

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google will invite users to try new features the company is considering adding to its Gmail service, the company said Thursday.

At 6 p.m. PDT Thursday, users will be able to select from 13 new features in a "labs" tab in the Gmail settings page, said Keith Coleman, a Gmail product manager, in a meeting with reporters here.

The 'labs' tab in Gmail settings now has experimental options for users.

(Credit: Google)

"The idea is you can do whatever you want, get it out to tens of millions of people, and get feedback," Coleman said. And popular features will be incorporated into Gmail proper.

Among the new features that are possible:

• A quick-link tool that lets people bookmark specific Gmail messages.

• Superstars, which lets people select custom stars to label mail.

• The "e-mail addict" tool that lets people lock themselves out of their e-mail account for 15 minutes.

• A fixed-width font option to view a message within a font whose characters are the same width--handy for some formatting challenges.

• Mouse gestures that let users take actions based on mouse movements.

• Custom keyboard shortcuts.

• Signature tweaks that let people automatically add a signature file above quoted text in an e-mail reply.

• "Muzzle," which conserves buddy-list screen real estate by hiding status messages.

For now at least, only Google engineers can add features. "Any engineer can code a labs feature," Coleman said. "Once the code is written and mostly working, it'll get into the next product build that goes to users" through the labs feature.

Eventually, though, the company is interested in opening the system up to outsiders if it can find a way to integrate outside code.

"We'd like to get to a point where more people can build on this. That would require something with a different level of interface," Coleman said. "We're interested in making it possible of users and us to iterate on the product faster, so it's something we're interested in."

The openness of Gmail contrasts with the arguably greater openness of Yahoo's Zimbra, which is an open-source project. However, just because a project can be modified doesn't mean those modifications will appear in the version of Zimbra that Yahoo or another company offers as a service.

Google is trying to be open-minded with the feature additions for now.

"There are some things in here we think are probably bad ideas," Coleman said, pointing specifically to a snake game that's one of the 13 features that's amusing but probably not a great idea for mainstream deployment. "It's something we would never do."

The code behind the new features has been vetted at a basic level, but not otherwise heavily tested or screened.

If Gmail is so great, how come it's been in beta testing for four years now?

"We have really high standards," Coleman said. "There are a few things we want to do before we take it out of beta, but we expect to do it soon."

It's one thing to bang out a quick third-party program for a single phone model, and quite another to develop a mobile application that works as predicted on a battalion of cell phone models, each with their own set of finely cultured specs.

For numerous reasons, developers may not have all those phones at the ready, and when it comes time for final testing, emulators that live on the screen and mimic device behavior just aren't good enough.

(Credit: Palm Software)

If you're Palm, a mobile platform and device manufacturer that's fighting for its slimmed-down market share, you'd want to encourage developers to get their applications out there. That could be one reason why, with the help of DeviceAnywhere, Palm is launching its Virtual Developer Lab. Simply put, developers will rent hourly remote access to Palm phones in the physical world to complete their tests and make tweaks. Software makers throughout the community will be able to collaborate on projects in real time or fly solo to finish their products and bring them to market.

It's Palm's undertaking, but DeviceAnywhere is running the show. Previously known as MobileComplete, the company, headed by CEO Faraz Syed, has established management systems for helping developers on all platforms port and monitor applications to shared hardware pools for over 1,000 cell phone models. The remote access software includes a built-in advanced reservation system for booking time on a device, and a first-come, first-served queue that alerts the next developer in line when it's his or her turn to test a program's mettle. When they're done, a clean-up script plucks out leftover artifacts.

For the Palm Virtual Developer Lab, data centers sprinkled across the globe will house the 13 Palm handsets, for which developers will pay $100 per month and $13 to $16 per hour to access. This system replaces Palm's previous invite-only lab for premium developing partners, said Syed, which shut out the majority of developers.

No doubt the initiative will spark discussion about Palm's attempts to steady its declining presence in the mobile industry even after some lift brought by the Centro device in late 2007. Interested developers can register for the Palm Virtual Developer Lab here.

Related articles:
For the Palm faithful: Treo 800w rumors abound
Palm closing retail stores, paying out Treo owners

Former One Laptop Per Child President Walter Bender has formed a nonprofit called Sugar Labs, which will advance the Sugar graphical interface he originally created for the low-cost computing project.

Sugar Labs will partner with developers of Sugar-compatible applications and other hardware makers that want to use the user interface on their devices.

"By being independent of any specific hardware platform and by remaining dedicated to the principles of free and open-source software, Sugar Labs ensures that others can develop diverse interfaces and applications from which governments and schools can choose," Bender wrote on the Sugar Labs Web site.

One of the first of the "others" on the list is Asus' popular Eee PC.

Bender moved on from OLPC last month after it was revealed the project's founder was leaning toward abandoning the use of Sugar and Linux in favor of putting Windows XP on his $188 XO laptops.

Microsoft and OLPC made it official yesterday, though there will still be OLPCs offered with Linux. In an interview with CNET News.com, OLPC founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the company is aiming to port the XO's Sugar interface over to Windows and has been "in discussions" with third parties, which would appear to refer at least in part to Sugar Labs.

Following its massive overhaul earlier this year, HP Labs will begin a more formal and focused program doing collaborative research with universities.

Beginning Wednesday, the research and development arm of Hewlett-Packard will begin accepting proposals from university researchers anywhere in the world.

Proposals will be accepted until mid-June, then judged and awarded in the fall. The winners will receive a grant ranging from $50,000 to $75,000, which is enough for each professor who wins to hire at least one graduate student, according to HP's Office of Open Innovation.

"In the past, we did a lot of collaboration with universities, but it didn't have the same kind of sharp focus," said Rich Friedrich, director of HP's Open Innovation Office.

The new focus at HP Labs, announced in March, is aligned around a smaller number of subset "labs" and five main areas of research, including information management, cloud computing, transforming analog content to digital, intelligent infrastructures, and sustainability.

Google's AppEngine looks great. It's a way to build web applications and run them on Google's "cloud" infrastructure.

The downside? Your applications effectively become Google's applications because there's no easy way to move them elsewhere. You have to run them using Google's authentication engine, framework, file system, APIs, etc. Free as in Google's.

Enter Morph Labs.

[Morph] claims to have done all the back-end cutwork to make it easy for developers to get their software up and running as a service on Amazon's Web Services (AWS), freeing them from Google's Microsoft-like vendor lock-in....

... Read more