Internet service provider Charter Communications announced Tuesday that it was indefinitely suspending the use of a controversial tool to track its customers' movement on the Web.
Charter, the fourth-largest cable operator in the U.S., announced in May that it would use technology from a company called NebuAd to monitor some of its broadband customers' Internet habits to provide advertisers with information to target online ads to individual customers. Privacy advocates had likened the service to Internet wiretapping.
"Our customers are always our first priority," Charter said a statement. "As such, we are not moving forward with the pilots at this time. We will continue to take a thoughtful, deliberate approach with the goal to ultimately structure an advertising service that enhances the Internet experience for our customers and addresses questions and concerns they've raised."
Charter's plans had also raised the attention of prominent members of Congress, including Massachusetts Democrat Edward J. Markey, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Shortly after Charter's announcement, Markey released a statement praising the decision to suspend the program but questioning whether it violated the law:
Given the serious privacy concerns raised by the sophisticated ad-serving technology Charter Communications planned to test market, I am pleased to hear that the company has decided to delay implementation of this program, which electronically profiled individual consumer Web usage. I urge other broadband companies considering similar user profiling programs to similarly hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.
The move comes as targeted Web advertising efforts ramp up. Earlier Tuesday, Google announced a tool called Ad Planner that lets advertisers find Web sites whose visitors match various demographic attributes. The tool, which competes with market leaders ComScore and Nielsen Online, also can show in detail how many people visit a particular Web site.
Pictures of the Eee Monitor, the upcoming all-in-one desktop PC from Asus, have surfaced.
A PC World reporter at the Computex trade show in Taipei snapped a few photos of a company slide showing the Eee Monitor. Head here for the images.
It appears quite iMac-esque--shiny and white with a minimalist design. And although Asus isn't confirming a price just yet, it's a fair assumption that the Monitor, part of Asus' low-cost Eee line, won't have an iMac-esque price tag.
Details surfaced in January suggesting a $499 price point. The Eee Monitor is supposed to use Intel's Shelton platform and include a TV tuner, and a display between 19 inches and 21 inches.
It should be available in September, which is almost a year after new all-in-one PCs from Dell and Gateway began to hit the market.
Sony's teased us for a bit with its impossibly thin, 11-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV, and finally brought it to the U.S. this year. Now it looks like there will be more to choose from in OLED TVs next year. Samsung SDI says that by 2009, not only will it have OLED panels for larger TVs, but also for monitors and notebook displays, according to a report in Digitimes.
OLED TVs on display at CES
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)The report quotes Samsung SDI's VP of mobile display marketing, Woo-Jong Lee, who says that Samsung SDI will be able to produce 3 million panels in 2009, which is double what they can crank out now. Lee said the company anticipates doubling its capacity again by the close of 2010.
The liquid crystal display (LCD) industry probably doesn't have much to worry about yet. OLED panels are incredibly expensive to produce right now, and, yes, they're awfully pretty. (Sony's 11-inch display achieves a 1 million-to-1 contrast ratio, which is by far the best available for a TV.) But even as production increases from one manufacturer, it doesn't necessarily mean the prices will drop down to where flat panels have sunk. The 11-inch OLED TV from Sony costs $2,500. For that price you could also get a 50-inch Pioneer Kuro, generally regarded as the best plasma TV on the market.
Though Samsung has previously discussed making OLED TVs, the company still has yet to release one. A year ago Toshiba also said it's planning on investing in OLED panels. Sony is betting on OLED's eventual domination of the display market, but it's also heavily invested in LCD.
However, Panasonic, which owns the plasma TV market, doesn't anticipate LCD or plasma TVs fading out anytime soon.
The Asus Eee PC will soon welcome new family members.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Looking to capitalize on the popularity of its $400 Linux laptop, the Eee PC, Asus announced it will release three products under the Eee banner later this year: a desktop, an all-in-one PC, and an LCD TV. I can't see any of these forthcoming Eee products matching the Eee PC's early success--a compelling form factor and significant cost savings over similarly sized laptops helped it out of the gate--although the all-in-one PC may have a shot. Let us run through the newly announced products.
Confirming earlier rumors, Asus said it will release a desktop version of the Eee PC, which it will call the E-DT. The E-DT will cost between $200 and $300 and it will use an Intel Celeron processors. It is scheduled for an April or a May release. Later versions of the product will be based on Intel's Shelton platform with single-core Diamondville CPUs on the 945GC chipset.
Despite its dull name, the E-Monitor looks like it has the best chance to succeed among the announced products. At $499, this all-in-one PC will be priced much lower than Apple's iMac, Dell's XPS One, or Gateway's One. It's scheduled for a September release, and will use Intel's Shelton platform and include a TV tuner. It'll feature a smallish display in the 19- to 21-inch range. Design plays a huge role in an all-in-one's appeal--much more than a tower you tuck under your desk--so hopefully Asus is given its product designers the resources they need for the E-Monitor.
The E-TV will also be released in September and is somewhat of a departure from the Eee strategy of undercutting competing (Windows-based) products on price. This 42-inch LCD TV will cost $200 more than similarly sized units, but it will include Linux, lending it PC functionality should you want that. I would say let me keep my $200, just give me an LCD TV and I'll put that chunk of change toward an Eee PC. So that I can watch TV on my TV and browse the Internet on my lap. At the same time. I'm a bit of a multitasker that way.
While announcing the new products, Asus did mention one Eee PC-related tidbit: plans are on hold for bringing a touch screen to the laptop.
(Credit:
TigerDirect)
It's rare to see a 22-inch LCD for less than $200, so I'm quite excited to find the Acer AL2216WBD on sale for just $179.99 (after a $50 mail-in rebate). This is a new unit, not a refurb, and it has a stellar pedigree.
For starters, check out some of the specs: a 700:1 contrast ratio, 5 milliseconds refresh time (ideal for games and movies), and DVI and VGA inputs. Better still, the AL2216WBD earned a five-star rating from more than 200 TigerDirect customers and a 7.1/10 from CNET. (Readers gave it an even better score: 8/10.)
In short, this is one sweet monitor, and if you don't mind waiting on a rebate, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better deal. I've got a similar model, the AL2223W, staring me in the face at this very moment, and I absolutely love it. The rebate deal ends January 31, but I'm pretty sure this baby will sell out before then. Don't wait.
Another tool has emerged for Baby Boomers and Gen Xers faced with caring for an aging parent or grandparent.
Caring.com, which debuted Monday, offers how-to information on caring for elderly family members, whether they live in their own home, with a family member, or in a facility. The topics include providing in-person and long-distance support, financial and legal advice, and end-of-life issues.
Caring.com features a community area for people to share care-giving tips, as well as a section where questions can be posed to various experts, such as a communication supervisor with the American Medical Response ambulance company.
Tools on the site include a risk calculator to determine the chances an elderly family member will fall and tips on how to prevent falls, said Andy Cohen, co-founder and chief executive, who started the company in January.
"There are a lot of sites that address specific diseases, but no other site is as comprehensive," said Cohen, whose mother died of lung cancer last fall.
Cohen is a former Intuit executive who launched Caring.com with Steve Fram, a former BabyCenter vice president of engineering, and Jim Scott, BabyCenter's former global editor-in-chief. Both Fram, Caring.com's chief information officer, and Scott, the site's editor-in-chief, are dealing with elderly parents who are suffering from health issues.
An estimated 34 million Americans are caring for elderly parents. The National Alliance for Caregiving and the MetLife Mature Market Institute found that 15 percent of caregivers live an hour or more away from the elderly family members, making it harder to track whether they are taking their medication or to keep a watchful eye on them.
Although a number of groups and companies are betting on the future of eldercare technology, the interest of caregivers in receiving information and tips is not lost on venture capitalists.
Caring.com has raised a total of $7 million in funding from Doll Capital Management and Split Rock Partners. A large portion of the funding is earmarked for providing unique content, which is designed to serve as a barrier to entry for competitors, Cohen said.
My wife, Amy, has done a fairly good job of convincing our daughter to wear sunscreen, at least when the sun is shining and the temperatures are soaring.
Amy also does a fairly good job of convincing her to wear sunscreen on cloudy summer days, arguing that just because you can't see the sun directly doesn't mean the rays cannot reach you.
... Read the full post at CNET's CES 2010 blogThe price of LCD panels for notebooks and desktop monitors has been on the rise since April, though the increase has not yet been passed on to consumers. But that could change very soon, according to a new report from iSuppli.
Though LCD television prices have stabilized, monitor prices are far more volatile right now. As an example, the average price for a 15-inch notebook display has inched up from $90 to $108 between April and September, according to iSuppli. But during that time, monitor prices did not go up even as panels did, severely eating into the margins of monitor manufacturers.
"We're now reaching a point where profit margin for the monitor supply is really being impacted," said Sweta Dash, director of LCD and projection research at iSuppli. "So already some monitor suppliers are starting to increase their prices $10 to $20." Considering the already tight supply (from a backlog of product in the spring), prices have almost nowhere to go but up.
"Considering all these facts, we don't think monitor prices can continue to go down," said Dash.
But, never fear: the biggest shopping day of the year should still be chock-full of aggressive pricing.
"Black Friday prices may still be aggressive and exciting," said Dash. "Because they make those decisions way earlier, in (the beginning of) Q2 when many system suppliers set panel prices. Since those are contracts, they can't be changed."
CHIBA, Japan--NTT, Japan's telecommunications giant, with help from Hitachi Displays has come out with a 3D LCD screen that doesn't require eyeglasses and doesn't cause eye strain.
3D for thee
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)Called SpaceIllusion, the LCD screen basically consists of two LCDs sandwiched 10 millimeters apart. The two screens carry slightly different images but the overall effect to the viewer is that 2D images go 3D. Study the accompanying picture and you can see how the two images differ.
"This 3D TFT LCD displays images without physiological unnaturalness in comparison with conventional 3D glasses type of screens," the company said in its accompanying literature.
The 3D effect is optimized when you sit about a meter away. You can also flip off the 3D effect to make the screen show 2D images. The company showed it off at Ceatec, the large Japanese trade show here.
I watched it for a while and the effect was somewhat convincing. And it did feel more natural than in some other no-glasses 3D systems. In those--from Philips, Sanyo and Sharp--the pixels in a single screen are divided up. Some send images to one eye and the rest send images to the second eye. The images are slightly different and create a 3D image. You sometimes get jagged contours with those screens.
Those one-screen systems, however, are far more advanced in development. Philips has 42-inch screens and is talking to hotels and casinos about installing the screens. NTT's is a prototype and smaller.
(Credit:
Dell Inc.)
Dell released its first LCD monitor with an integrated Webcam today with the 20-inch Dell SP2008WFP. The 2.0-megapixel Webcam sits next to a microphone above the wide-screen display and can do video and photos and--with the included software--lets you engage in such activities as remote monitoring, motion detection, and time-lapse video capturing. The specs: 1,680x1,050 native resolution, HDCP support, a fast 2ms response time (gray-to-gray), and a high contrast ratio of 2000:1. The display features Dell's new silver color scheme and serves up four USB 2.0 ports in addition to DVI and VGA video ports. Dell lists a price of $289, or $20 more than its current, non-Webcam equipped, 20-inch 207WFP.
