June 1, 2005
PC World: Toshiba, Canon Bet on New Flat-Panel TV Technology. The factory is the second major investment Toshiba and Canon have made in the new TV technology. Last September, they said they would spend $1.8 billion to form a joint venture called SED to mass-produce the TVs.

June 2, 2005
NY Times: TV's Future Is Here, but It Needs Work. Unfortunately, Akimbo can offer only what the networks and cable channels are willing to contribute. And these days, just hearing the phrase "Internet downloads" generally sends television executives into paranoid fits. As a result, the Akimbo library is so puny and overpriced that the enterprise is interesting only as a "what not to do" case study.

June 3, 2005
IBM developerWorks: Tools to keep the user from being hurt. The world is full of devices associated with the word ergonomic. A scholar trying to learn the word by studying the way it's used in today's culture is likely conclude that it means "curvy" or possibly "funny-looking." Nearly all mice, trackballs, and other devices are now described as ergonomic; this doesn't mean they're all good for you to use.

June 6, 2005
News.Com: Longhorn photo support comes into focus. The company on Wednesday announced deals with camera companies Nikon and Canon, as well as Fuji Photo Film and Adobe Systems, to let Windows users view, print and eventually edit uncompressed digital camera images--which are stored in what's commonly known as a "raw" format.

June 7, 2005
News.Com: Microsoft 'hypervisor' plan takes shape. Bob Muglia, senior vice president in the Windows Server Division, said at Microsoft's Tech Ed conference here that the software will be "built directly in Windows and will allow companies to virtualize multiple operating systems.

June 8, 2005
eWEEK: Microsoft's Security Response Center: How Little Patches Are Made. Anxious to shed the company's image as having a lax attitude about software security, officials at the Microsoft Security Response Center are using the Tech Ed conference here to provide a rare glimpse at the step-by-step process used to create, test and roll out security patches.

Schneier on Security: Public Disclosure of Personal Data Loss. It might seem that there has been an epidemic of personal-data losses recently, but that's an illusion. What we're seeing are the effects of a California law that requires companies to disclose losses of thefts of personal data. It's always been happening, only now companies have to go public with it.

June 9, 2005
Technology Review: Intel's Breakthrough. It's still early days for silicon photonics. But the Intel result, which built on findings reported over the past year in a flurry of papers describing advances in silicon-based optical components, is convincing many experts that it could become practical to closely link optical and electronic technology at the computer level.

June 10, 2005
Wired News: Keeping Up With Uncle Sam. Currently in the EU, there are separate copyright terms for composers and performers. Composers are awarded copyright for the life of the author plus 70 years. Performers hold a copyright for 50 years from the first recording. It's the 50-year term the IFPI wants to extend.

June 13, 2005
Useit.Com: Archiving Usability Reports. Whenever you go to the trouble of creating an in-depth formal report with detailed analysis, you need to maximize your return on investment by encouraging future use of the insights. You should also archive informal usability reports.

Wired News: Microsoft Censors Chinese Blogs. The policy affects blogs created through the MSN Spaces service, said Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director at MSN. Microsoft and its government-funded Chinese business partner work with authorities to omit certain forbidden language, Sohn said, declining to provide specific examples.

PC World: Intel's New Pentium D Equipped with DRM Capability. Microsoft and the entertainment industry's holy grail of controlling copyright through the motherboard now comes closer as Intel said it is embedding digital rights management within in its latest dual-core processor Pentium D and accompanying 945 chip set.

June 14, 2005
NY Times: Sony BMG Tries to Limit Copying of Latest CD's. The world's second-biggest music corporation is rolling out its latest answer to digital piracy. The company, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, which is owned by Sony and Bertelsmann, is outfitting a broad selection of its latest CD's with software that restricts copying.

June 15, 2005
Technology Review: The Fading Memory of the State. Unfortunately, NARA doesn't have decades to come up with ways to preserve this data. Electronic records rot much faster than paper ones, and NARA must either figure out how to save them permanently, or allow the nation to lose its grip on history.

News.Com: Yahoo to buy Net phone services company. Internet giant Yahoo has agreed to purchase Dialpad, a company that offers Internet telephony services, and expects to offer new voice services within the next few months, Yahoo said Tuesday.

EE Times: BT soft-launches 'world's first' fixed-mobile service. BT has finally taken the wraps off its groundbreaking Bluephone fixed-mobile convergence project, renamed the service it plans to introduce in September BT Fusion and launched a limited service available on a Motorola V560 Bluetooth enabled handset.

June 16, 2005
Computerworld: Video and management for mobile seen as next big things. Improved wireless device management tools and IP-based video-over-wireless applications were among the future technologies that attendees at this week's Mobile & Wireless World 2005 conference said they hope to see within the next few years.

June 17, 2005
eWEEK: Encrypted Lockbox Aims to Clean Up Password Clutter. The celebrated cryptographer, who is credited with designing or co-designing several widely used encryption algorithms, announced the release of Version 2.1 of the database utility as a full-fledged open-source project at SourceForge.

PC World: Microsoft Builds Its Own Peer-to-Peer App. Researchers at Microsoft's labs in Cambridge, England, are developing a file-sharing technology that they say could make it easier to distribute big files such as films, television programs, and software applications to end users over the Internet.

June 20, 2005
Fast Company: Strategy by Design. Logistics systems, the Internet, organizations, and yes, even strategy -- all of these are tangible outcomes of design thinking. In fact, many people in many organizations are engaged in design thinking without being aware of it. The result is that we don't focus very much on making it better.

June 21, 2005
PC World: Seagate Preps Hard-disk Encryption Technology. Seagate Technology said today it has developed a security technology for some of its hard-disk drives that will make life more difficult for notebook PC thieves to read stolen data, it said Tuesday. The technology, called Hardware-Based Full Disc Encryption, will start shipping next year and automatically encrypts all the data written to the drive...

June 22, 2005
Adaptive Path: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control. Peter Merholz. The Web’s lesson is that we have to let go, to exert as little control as necessary. What are the fewest necessary rules that we can provide to shape the experience? Where do people, tools, and content come together?

PC World: User Interface the New Focus in Digital Music Player Design. Joon Yang, CEO of South Korea's Reigncom, which produces players under the IRiver brand name, said that the exterior design of his company's devices used to make them stand out from the competition. But competitors have caught up on exterior design, pushing IRiver to focus on something else.

June 23, 2005
PC World: AT&T Plans Internet Security News Network. The service, which currently goes by the code name Internet Security News Network, (ISN) is under development at AT&T Labs, but it will be offered as an additional service to the company's customers within the next nine to 12 months...

June 24, 2005
Fast Company: Apple in Their Eyes. Digital-audio players weren't exactly virgin territory when Apple entered the fray in 2001. But the iPod -- with its sublime design, intuitive usability, and unparalleled cool quotient -- set a new standard by which all other MP3 players would be judged. Four rivals talk about designing their answer to an icon.

PC World: Hotmail Takes a Tougher Stance on Spam. The software maker has begun warning Hotmail users with an on-screen alert when the sender of an incoming e-mail cannot be verified using its Sender ID Framework. Mail that fails to pass the test will be placed in a junk mail folder or could even be deleted...

June 27, 2005
Technology Review: A Quantum Leap in Cryptography. In recent months, the two major vendors of quantum encryption products, id Quantique and MagiQ Technologies, have introduced second-generation products that they say are more straightforward to operate -- that is, geared toward network administrators rather than scientists.

NY Times: Court Rules File-Sharing Networks Can Be Held Liable for Illegal Use. The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that Internet file-sharing services like Grokster and StreamCast Networks could be held responsible if they encouraged users to trade songs, movies and television shows online without paying for them.

June 28, 2005
Useit.Com: Usability: Empiricism or Ideology? Usability's job is to research user behavior and find out what works. Usability should also defend users' rights and fight for simplicity. Both aspects have their place, and it's important to recognize the difference.

June 29, 2005
Nature: Bioterror paper gets online. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences originally said it would publish the paper on 25 May, but it delayed publication to address concerns from the US health department. After consideration, the journal has decided to publish the paper without any substantive changes.

BusinessWeek: "Ten Years of Chilled Innovation". Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. By making it a process that goes through the courts, you've just increased the legal uncertainty around innovation substantially and created great opportunities to defeat legitimate competition. You've shifted an enormous amount of power to those who oppose new types of competitive technologies.