Panasonic announced on Wednesday a DVD recorder that takes requests from the road. The machine has a 400GB hard disk drive, is capable of zapping video elsewhere in a home, and is designed to let consumers program recording remotely over the Internet–including via cell phones. The new product, dubbed the DMR-E500H, and related devices with smaller hard drives, are slated to be available in Japan beginning Sept. 21.

The DMR-E500H, billed as allowing for more than 700 hours of recorded video, demonstrates the growing capabilities of devices combining DVD recording with hard drives. A hybrid between traditional DVD recorders and so-called digital video recorders, such machines allow users to begin watching a show from an earlier moment in a live broadcast. These types of products are battling against a new generation of personal computers to be kings of the digital living room.

Bob O’Donnell, analyst at research firm IDC, said making programming choices may not be appealing on the small monochrome cell phone screens common in the United States. But things are different in Japan, he said. “It’s totally possible with the 2-inch, flip-phone cell-phone color screens,” he said. “In Japan, everybody has those.”

Panasonic said the DMR-E500H offers high-speed dubbing from its hard disk drive onto DVD-RAM and DVD-R discs. The machine can record a 1-hour program onto a DVD-R disc in just 56 seconds, according to Panasonic.

The product comes with an Ethernet port and a broadband receiver, Panasonic said. With the Ethernet connection, MPEG4 video and JPEG photos can be viewed on a PC in another room, the company said. Using two DMR-E500Hs, MPEG2 video on one can be accessed by the other on the local area network.

Broadband Internet access allows users to program recording through such mobile devices as cell phones and PCs while away from home, Panasonic said. Users also can transfer pictures between the DVD recorder and their mobile device, according to Panasonic.

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The convergence of cell phones and other portable devices shuffled another step forward on Monday when Samsung launched a handset that contained a 1.5GB hard drive with a one-inch diameter.

South Korea-based Samsung has claimed that the SPH-V5400, which was launched in Japan, is the first mobile phone to include a hard drive. Owners will be able to store a wide range of different types of media on it, including digital music files and photos.

With an estimated retail price of $800, according to the IDG News Service, the SPG-V5400 is a relatively expensive way of buying storage capacity.

But as the device will be able to store over 350 MP3s recorded at 128 bits per second, it could serve as a passable substitute to an iPod, if there was also music-playing software on the phone.

The SPG-V5400 also has two LCD (liquid-crystal display) screens–a main screen of 320 pixels by 240 pixels and a secondary screen of 128 by 128.

In recent years, the technology industry has been debating whether cell phones or PDAs (personal digital assistants) would end up dominating the handheld computer sector. The battle appeared to have swung in favor of the new range of smart phones that have been hitting the market, but manufacturers have been struggling to squeeze enough memory into the handsets.

Hard-drive manufacturers are constantly competing to squeeze more capacity into the same form factor. Last month, Toshiba announced it had created a 1.8-inch drive with a capacity of 60GB. There is also a big push to create smaller drives, below the one-inch mark, at a price that’s viable for commercial launch.

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Presidential Candidate Website Smackdown
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What if you could fit your whole life – all your music, all your photos, all your movies, all your email – in a computer as fun and useful as an iPod? Now you can. Introducing the futuristic iMac G5 in 17- and 20-inch widescreen models. The entire computer, including a G5-based logic board, slot-loading optical drive, hard disk, speakers, and even the power supply – dwells inside the enchanting display. Modern living starts at $1299.

The Display is the Computer

Apple designers removed the extraneous, miniaturized the necessary, souped up the performance and concealed the result in immaculate perfection. The iMac G5 hangs suspended from a graceful anodized aluminum stand and its widescreen display lets you chat with several friends while you retouch photos, surf the web or scan email – and see everything at the same time. In fact, the 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution 20-inch display can show more than two full pages side by side. That’s 36% more screen area than the 17-inch, at 1440 x 900 pixels.

Technology Democratized

The iMac G5 brings the same innovative system architecture in Apple professional desktops to the home. The G5 processor makes everything zippier – connecting to email or the web, creating movies, songs and DVDs, arranging phot

The Display is the Computer

Apple designers removed the extraneous, miniaturized the necessary, souped up the performance and concealed the result in immaculate perfection. The iMac G5 hangs suspended from a graceful anodized aluminum stand and its widescreen display lets you chat with several friends while you retouch photos, surf the web or scan email – and see everything at the same time. In fact, the 1680 x 1050 pixel resolution 20-inch display can show more than two full pages side by side. That’s 36% more screen area than the 17-inch, at 1440 x 900 pixels.

Technology Democratized

The iMac G5 brings the same innovative system architecture in Apple professional desktops to the home. The G5 processor makes everything zippier – connecting to email or the web, creating movies, songs and DVDs, arranging photos or playing music. Choose a 1.6 or 1.8GHz G5 processor that’s ready to run modern 64-bit applications under the secure and stable Mac OS X operating system. What’s more, the G5 speeds up Mac OS X and all the other included software, such as iLife ‘04, Quicken 2004 and World Book.

All-in-One Ease

iMac G5 tucks away all the modern amenities in its two-inch thin(1) body, such as a slot-loading SuperDrive or Combo drive. Burn DVD slideshows of vacation photos or send friends a DVD with a special movie for the holidays. Back up your iTunes collection or make a mix CD for that special someone. Naturally, you can pop in your DVD movies and watch them in 16:10 widescreen letterbox format on the gorgeous LCD display. Your ears will hear pristine audio from built-in stereo speakers. Pointed down, the speakers bounce sound waves off your desk, counter or table into your ears.

Stay Connected

Of course the iMac G5 offers all the right ports to connect to your universe with ease. Starting with the new headphone jack that’s also a mini-optical plug. So you can watch DVDs and listen to them in 5.1 surround sound. You’ll also find a passel of USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 connectors for your camera, camcorder or gamepad. Or if you want to connect your iMac to your TV or a digital projector, the mini-VGA port gives you the option. The line in jack lets you record an electric guitar into GarageBand. iMac offers Ethernet for wired networking as well as a modem for dial-up Internet. Your modem can also double as a fax machine.

Go Wireless

Better yet, eliminate the desktop clutter of unnecessary cables with wireless connections to the Internet, your keyboard, mouse or cell phone. Pop an AirPort Extreme Card into your iMac, and you’re ready for the freedom of wireless networking from anywhere in your home or dorm – up to 150 feet from an AirPort Extreme Base Station. Or try AirPort Express with AirTunes to stream your music to your stereo and send documents to your printer. Plus, you can configure your iMac with internal Bluetooth to wirelessly access many devices that previously required cable. That means you can get an Apple Wireless Keyboard or Mouse to control your iMac from across the room, or sync your cell phone address book while your phone is in your purse, 30 feet away. Impress your friends, confound your enemies – wireless only looks like magic.

Extreme Graphics

The sizzling graphics processor and next-generation high-bandwidth architecture kicks 3D games and graphics into high gear, with three times the frame rate as the previous iMac in Unreal Tournament 2004. NVIDIA graphics provides hardware transform and lighting (T&L), per-pixel shading and drop-dead gorgeous effects at high resolutions. All models deliver over a billion textured pixels per second and an advanced Live FX engine engineered to generate the most lifelike characters. With Quartz Extreme, the graphics processors take over transform and lighting calculation functions from the CPU, freeing the G5 processor to perform essential system tasks faster than ever before.

The 17-inch model is 1.99 inches thick; the 20-inch model is 2.2 inches thick.

Apple iMac G5

Microsoft has turned to a Swiss telecommunication operator for the first commercial trial of its system that delivers television signals to consumers over a broadband telecommunications network, it announced this week.

Beginning in September, Swisscom’s Internet service provider subsidiary Bluewin will deliver 25 TV channels to set top boxes in 600 homes. During the four-month trial, testers will have access to five pay-TV channels and a video-on-demand service through the set top boxes, which also function as a digital video recorder with a live pause function, Microsoft says.

Testers will have to pay for the service: $12 per month for 12 channels, or $19 for all 25, with pay-per-view films costing from $2 to $8 each.

Microsoft expects the trial to result in the launch of a Bluewin TV service over ADSL in 2005, it says.

Potential Customers:

At the end of June, Bluewin had 390,000 ADSL customers, while parent Swisscom had a further 269,000 ADSL in operation used by customers of other ISPs, according to Swisscom figures. Swisscom, the former state monopoly operator, has 3.1 million telephone lines in operation, according to company figures, for a population of around 7.3 million, according to the 2000 government census.

Microsoft and Swisscom are trailing the pack in the race to sign up customers to digital TV over ADSL. In France, several of the major ISPs already offer television programming over ADSL, notably Free SAS, a subsidiary of Iliad SA, which offers ADSL service at up to 6 megabits per second with free telephone calls and 100 TV channels for $36 per month to 355,000 of its 768,000 ADSL customers.

Some 4.5 million of France’s 11 million Internet connections are via ADSL, according to ART, the French telecommunications regulatory authority. The country has a population of 60 million.

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Priceline.com and Ramada.com have agreed to changes that will allow users with “screen reader software” and other technology to navigate and listen to the text throughout their Web sites, according to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.Although the software and other devices, including a vibrating mouse that lets the blind “feel” boxes and images on the computer screen, have been available for years, Web sites must have specific coding that allows the equipment to operate, Spitzer said.”This is a precedent-setting decision,” said Carl Augusto, president and CEO of the American Foundation for the Blind. “We hope it’s going to be influencing other companies throughout the United States so that the 10 million blind and visually impaired people can fully participate in our society at all levels.”"It’s the right thing to do, and it’s good business,” said Augusto, who is visually impaired.

Spitzer’s settlement follows investigations over the last two years to determine if Web sites conform to the federal act and state law that require all “places of public accommodation” and all “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations” be accessible to the disabled.

Priceline.com has already made the Web site accessible for the visually disabled to get airline tickets, said the firm’s spokesman, Brian Ek. By the end of the year, the entire travel site will be accessible, he said.

Ek said the firm encourages other firms to do the same. He said the firm isn’t releasing the cost of making the entire site accessible for the visually disabled, but said it won’t be enough to reduce earnings.

A spokesman for Ramada.com didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Accessible Web sites are the wave of the future and the right thing to do.” Spitzer said. “We applaud these companies for taking responsible and proper steps to make their Web sites accessible to the blind and visually impaired. We urge all companies who have not done so to follow their lead.”

Ramada.com and Priceline.com, which face no charges and make no admissions of guilt, will pay the state $40,000 and $37,500 to cover the investigation’s cost. Spitzer said both firms were cooperative.

The Norwegian hacker who broke the DeCSS DVD encryption has now cracked Apple’s AirPort technology, which encrypts music sent between iTunes and wireless base stations Jon Lech Johansen, the Norwegian hacker famous for cracking DVD encryption, has cracked Apple AirPort Express.Johansen has revealed the public key that Apple AirPort Express, a wireless networking protocol, uses to encrypt music sent between iTunes and a wireless base station.

AirPort Express was released in June 2004 as a small wireless bridge from a personal computer to a hi-fi. Details of the AirPort Express codes were also published on Johansen’s weblog, which is called So Sue Me.

In a double whammy for Apple, Johansen also wrote a program called JustePort – allowing software other than Apple iTunes to stream music to AirPort Express.

Thanks to Johansen’s work, it’s now only a matter of time before other popular software is capable of streaming music to the Airport Express. Until now, a copy of iTunes 4.6 was required.

Johansen shot to fame over his controversial program that bypassed DeCSS encryption schemes on DVDs.

In 2003, he narrowly escaped criminal charges, brought by Hollywood, after a Norwegian court found him justified in developing the program to view legally bought DVDs on his Linux machine.

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Sonic Solutions said Monday that it signed an agreement to buy the consumer software division of Roxio Inc. for a combination of cash and stock totaling $80 million.Sonic, which primarily makes DVD-creation software, said the acquisition will give it a well-recognized set of consumer software brands, access to long-standing distribution channels and strong marketing expertise.

Roxio, the owner of the Napster music Web site, will receive $70 million in cash and Sonic shares valued at $10 million. The sale is part of Roxio’s plan to focus on the digital music market. The company said it is changing its corporate name to Napster and will trade under the ticker “NAPS” on the Nasdaq after the completion of the deal.

“Napster will emerge as a well-positioned pure-play in the fast-growing digital music sector with a substantially enhanced balance sheet that will support our growth plans,” Roxio chairman and chief executive Chris Gorog said in a press release.

The companies said they expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter.

Nasdaq – listed shares of Sonic closed earlier up 32 cents, or 2.6 percent at $12.63. Roxio stock, which also trades on the Nasdaq, closed up 16 cents, or 4 percent, at $4.14. In the extended session, Sonic was up nearly 7 percent and Roxio was up nearly 8 percent recently.

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Tech firms might be rebounding from the dot-com bust, but enrollment in college computer programs keeps falling.San Jose State University in Silicon Valley enrolled 417 full-time computer science undergraduates for the fall semester, down from 525 last year. The University of Texas at Austin expects about 1,275, down from 1,465 a year ago. The University of Notre Dame should have 50  better than last year, but down from 60 at the peak. Ohio State University is down 30%.

Nationwide data aren’t available. However, last year, the number of newly declared computer science and computer engineering majors in the USA and Canada fell 23% vs. the year before, says the Computing Research Association, a college trade group. The figures aren’t expected to improve this year.

Blame the bleak tech job market. In the past, a computer degree meant “instant riches, or at least a well-paying, secure job,” says San Jose computer science chair David Hayes. “Now, the perception is jobs are going overseas, and people are being laid off.”

Students are now trying biology, nursing or other majors.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Peter Lee, an associate dean at Carnegie Mellon. His elite undergraduate program received 2,000 applicants this year, compared with 3,200 at the height of the boom. But the students are often of higher quality, motivated more by love of technology than dreams of stock options, he says.

Still, many educators worry there won’t be enough workers when the industry rebounds, crimping growth. Matthew Szulik, CEO of software firm Red Hat, says he’s having trouble finding some highly skilled programmers. The USA grants only about 6% of the world’s engineering degrees, behind China, the European Union, Japan, Russia and India, says the National Science Foundation and tech trade group AEA.

Graduate programs haven’t seen the same decline yet. “One place you go when you can’t get a job is back to school,” says computer science professor Warren Hunt at the University of Texas.

But that might change. Many U.S. graduate programs rely on foreign students who come here to study. In the USA and Canada, 43% of computer science and engineering recipients are non-resident aliens, the CRA says.

New security regulations might be keeping these students from applying. In India, the number of students taking the Graduate Record Exam, the test required for most applicants to U.S. graduate schools, fell 56% this school year, vs. last, test administrators say. In China, test-taking fell 52%.

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Satellite radio provider XM Satellite Radio on Tuesday said it will provide Starbucks Coffee Co.’s “Starbucks Hear Music” channel to its more than 2 million subscribers beginning this fall. XM said the move is part of a multi-year, exclusive marketing pact between the two companies. Currently, Starbucks sells about 100 CD compilations, spanning various genres, that it has created at its coffee shops. As part of the XM deal, the “Starbucks Hear Music” channel will feature music from these compilations as well as other sources.Also under the deal, the companies said Starbucks will play XM’s “Starbucks Hear Music” programing at 4,000 of its stores beginning in 2005.

It was not immediately clear if the programing would be transmitted by XM or distributed through other means, according to a Starbucks spokeswoman.

In March, Starbucks unveiled a music initiative to open Starbucks music cafes, using Hewlett-Packard Co. technology to enable customers to make their own custom CDs as they sip coffee.

Starbucks launched the first music cafe at a former Hear Music store in Santa Monica, California, and announced plans to expand the service to 2,500 stores in two years.

Founded in 1990, Hear Music, which operates four music stores in Santa Monica, Palo Alto, Berkeley and Seattle, was acquired by Starbucks in 1999.

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