Wal-Mat launches digital movie downloads

Retailer kicks off its own video downloads service beginning with an exclusive 'Superman Returns' DVD bundle.

By Parija B. Kavilanz, CNNMoney.com staff writer

November 28 2006: 12:39 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wal-Mart Stores on Tuesday announced the launch its own video downloads service beginning with an exclusive "Superman Returns" DVD bundle containing a video download option with purchase of the physical DVD.

CNNMoney.com first reported in September that Wal-Mart (Charts), the world's largest retailer, had accelerated its efforts to launch a digital movie service before the end of the year.

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Wal-Mart currently accounts for about 40 percent of all DVD sales in the United States. By launching its own service, industry watchers say Wal-Mart can protect that DVD market dominance.

Attack of the Wal-Martyrs

In a press release, Wal-Mart said the service is now available to its customers in all Wal-Mart stores nationwide.

With the purchase of the "Superman Returns" physical DVD, Wal-Mart said customers can also choose from three video download format options -- $1.97 for portable devices, $2.97 for PCs/laptops, and $3.97 for both portable players and PC/laptops.

The retailer said the physical/digital DVD bundle would offer customers the flexibility to watch the Warner Bros. movie on their TV, portable devices as well as their computers.

Warner Bros. is a division of Time Warner (Charts), parent company of CNNMoney.com.

According to Wal-Mart, the Superman Returns physical DVD will come with a video download "feature sticker" on the cover. Customers will then have to log on to walmart.com/superman, enter the promotional code, and select their desired download format.

For e-tailers, it's Cyber Monday

Once users create an account and install the video download manager, the purchase completes and the movie download process begins. Wal-Mart said customers can also begin watching the movie while it downloads.

Wal-Mart said it will also test additional DVD bundles as well as offer a beta version of a video downloads service. The beta launch will feature both movie and television content from a number of studios and TV networks.

This wouldn't be the first time that Wal-Mart has attempted to make headway in the digital movie marketplace. Wal-Mart's online movie rental service failed. Walmart.com now refers customers to Netflix (Charts) for movie rentals.

Industry sources said Wal-Mart was eager to get its own download service up and running especially after both Amazon (Charts) and Apple (Charts) unveiled their own movie download services in September.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Wal-Mart will launch the service on Wednesday, according to Wal-Mart's initial press release. Wal-Mart subsequently corrected the information and said the service launches Tuesday.

GotabeMobile review of the Lenovo X60 Thinkpad Tablet PC

 

- Warner Crocker

If it feels like a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet PC week here at GottaBeMobile, well that might be accurate. To be honest, it is tough not to like this new Tablet PC, and I have to say, I’m very grateful for the opportunity I have had this last week to give it a once over and share some of my thoughts with you.

So, let’s take a look at the Thinkpad X60 Tablet PC. In this GBM Hardware InkShow I take a walk around tour of the unit I received which comes with the SXGA + (high res) screen option and is an engineering sample provided by Lenovo. I also discuss the battery options, examine the Nav Dial, take a look at the many utilities that come pre-loaded on the Thinkpad, and even show you a neat trick or two exclusive to the Thinkpad X60 Tablet PC. In my opinion, Lenovo has a winning entry in the Thinkpad X60 and it will certainly have as large an impact on the Tablet PC market as their original X41 entry, which was enormous.

A couple of notes: I was so excited putting the InkShow together that I goofed on the screen resolution options that are available when making the recording. Here they are:

XGA = 1024x768
XGA / Multitouch / Outdoor = 1024x768 (upgrade price of $200)
SXGA+ = 1400x1050 (upgrade price of $50)

On pricing, note that Lenovo will have three different options available with launch today, November 14, ranging from $1799 to $2399. On November 28 you will be able to configure your order to your liking from an array of options with a base price of $1699 (one year warranty as opposed to three.)

If you’re looking for more specs check out this GBM post that also contains the great interview that Dennis Rice conducts with Mike Hagerty, the Worldwide Segment Manager for the Thinkpad series, before you dive into this Hardware InkShow review.

Remember also, that GottaBeMobile.com will be publishing another exclusive Hardware InkShow very soon in which Dennis Rice will be reviewing the Multi-Touch/Indoor/Outdoor screen, the Ultra-Bay Media Slice, and much more. You don’t want to miss that one. 

• Watch the video ( 40 minutes, 280mb, Windows Media streaming or direct download).

• Visit the Thinkpad X60 Product page

• Check out the GBM Interview with Lenovo’s Mike Hagerty.

Latest Treo a big hit for Palm

By Mark Kellner
November 28, 2006

When Palm Inc. takes a big swing, it usually connects. I can't remember the last time the company whiffed.
    Their latest out-of-the-park achievement, available now, is the Treo 680, a mobile phone that seems to defy gravity, if not expectations. Gone is the nubby antenna; instead, there's a smooth shape and no "handle," as some users call it.
    Memory available to users is double: 64 megabytes versus 32 MB for the Treo 650. Battery life seems longer, and you can, with the appropriate data plan from your carrier, use this as a wireless Bluetooth modem for your computer.
    This is a GSM/GPRS phone, which means it can be used overseas, subject to your carrier's plans or the purchase of an appropriate "SIM" card for your phone from another carrier.
    The Treo 680's system for mounting and using SIM cards, by the way, shows a fair amount of promise: the holder is secure and unlikely to see the kind of card displacement I've observed in other phones.
    Palm has also updated the placement of a SecureDigital or SD card for added memory. It's now behind a tiny door on the side of the phone, making it far less likely to fall out or become lost. This one change helps elevate the new phone to a higher plane; keeping such cards in place can be very important.
    The Treo 680 also comes in four colors, probably for the fashion conscious, according to the www.palm.com/us Web site, where data about the phone can be obtained.
    Right now, Cingular Wireless is offering the device for $199, depending on service plan selected. An "unlocked" version of the phone -- meaning you don't have to sign up for a new service deal, is $399.
    What else is there to like about the phone? In my book, a lot: It retains the ease of use and more-than-decent keypad of the earlier Treo phones.
    Palm's operating software is, in my view, a superior mobile phone platform to Windows Mobile, and the Treo 680's use of the Palm OS offers users a phone that's easy to learn, and easy to keep using. There have been a few tweaks to the interface, all of which make using the phone less taxing.
    A voice-dialing option remains available, and the Bluetooth connection can work with a hands-free device to make calling while driving a bit easier and safer.
    The 320- by 320-pixel TFT display screen is bright and easy to read, even outdoors. Sound quality is impressive, and if you plug in the right headphones, your multimedia will come out in stereo, as will happen when you dock the Treo 680 with the Altec Lansing InMotion mobile speaker system, sold separately.

 The camera is described as being "VGA" in quality, but the images I took were in resolutions of 72 dots-per-inch and thus suitable for a Web page more than a magazine page.
    However, if I had to document a car accident, or show someone a ceiling fan at Home Depot, I suppose it would be more than adequate.
    In short, there's very little not to like with the Treo 680, especially because it costs $100 less than the 650 with more memory, a better (if not perfect) camera, and no "stub." Would I want one as a holiday gift?
    You bet!
    Read Mark Kellner's Technology blog at www.washingtontimes.com/blogs.

Iambic working on Agendus for Windows Mobile

I found this over at Palm Addicts.

They did a good job with the Palm versions lets see what they do with Windows Mobile.

I'm pleased to announce that Agendus will soon be available for the Windows Mobile platform, which is why you now see a brand new forums section, with a couple of subforums, this "beta program" being one of them.

Given the increasing popularity of Windows Mobile powered devices, given the requests from users we have been receiving in the past few months, we just couldn't resist to the temptation of having some fun (well -- for the most part at least ) with the latest development toys from Microsoft and put together a brand new version of Agendus.

http://support.iambic.com/forum/showthread.php?p=94474#post94474

NYT Markoff: Web 3.0 = AI + Web 2.0

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NYT Markoff: Web 3.0 = AI + Web 2.0

By Tim Finin on Saturday, November 11th, 2006 at 9:31 pm.

NYT reporter John Markoff has a story in tomorrow’s Times on Web 3.0, envisioned as the infusion of AI techniques and capabilities into the current Web. In Entrepreneurs See a Web Guided by Common Sense, he discusses attempts to make Web applications and services smarter:

From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence. Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century.

The Blue Pill

Would Blue Pill create a matrix for PCs?

By Bill Brenner 30 Jun 2006 | SearchSecurity.com

Those who've seen "The Matrix" know the scene where Laurence Fishburne's character Morpheus offers Keanu Reeves' Neo a choice between two pills, one red and the other blue. Morpheus explains the blue pill will allow Neo to wake up in his bed and believe whatever he wants, while the red one will let him "stay in Wonderland and see how deep the rabbit-hole goes" -- in other words, to learn the truth about the Matrix.

In the real world, Joanna Rutkowska, a security researcher for Singapore-based IT security firm COSEINC, claims to have developed a blue pill of sorts that will create an equally fake reality for anti-malware sensors, including those baked into Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

She describes it in detail in her Invisible Things blog, and plans to show how it works at a couple upcoming security conferences, including the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas Aug. 3.

In the blog she writes: "Imagine a malware whose capabilities to remain undetectable do not rely on obscurity of the concept, malware which could not be detected even though its algorithm (concept) is publicly known. Let's go further and imagine that even its code could be made public, but still there would be no way for detecting that this creature is running on our machines..."

Rutkowska said she's been working on just such a creature over the past few months, and has code-named it Blue Pill. She claims it to be 100% undetectable malware that's not based on an obscure concept.

The idea behind Blue Pill is simple, she said. The operating system "swallows" the Blue Pill and it awakes inside a Matrix controlled by the "ultra thin Blue Pill hypervisor." This all happens without restarting the system.

"There is no performance penalty and all the devices, like graphics card, are fully accessible to the operating system, which is now executing inside [the] virtual machine," she said. "This is all possible thanks to the latest virtualization technology from AMD called SVM/Pacifica."

To some observers, this may sound a lot like the SubVirt rootkit researchers from Microsoft and the University of Michigan outlined in a recent (.pdf) paper. But Rutkowska says there are some key differences:

SubVirt is a permanent (restart surviving) rootkit, but unlike Blue Pill, it can't be installed without a reboot. SubVirt must also introduce some modifications to the hard disk, which allows for off-line detection, she said. SubVirt was implemented on x86 hardware, which doesn't allow it to achieve 100% virtualization. Blue Pill can go fully virtual because the AMD SVM technology it's based on allows for it. SubVirt is based on the Virtual PC and/or VMWare applications. Both of these applications create virtual devices to be used by the operating system, which are different from the real underlying hardware. This allows for easy detection. Rutkowska says she's cooked up a working prototype for Vista x64, but she sees no reason why it shouldn't be possible to port it to other operating systems like Linux or BSD, which can be run on a x64 platform. Her first demonstration will be at the July Symposium on Security for Asia Networks (SyScan) in Singapore, followed by Black Hat in August. Her Black Hat presentation is cheerfully called "Subverting Vista Kernel for Fun and Profit," according to the Black Hat Web site. Not everyone in the blogosphere is interested in taking this trip down the rabbit hole. Some dismiss the notion that this Matrix can even be constructed. As Kurt Wismer puts it in his Anti-Virus Rants blog, "The Blue Pill is hard to swallow." He offers some technical scenarios to explain how Blue Pill probably won't dissolve into the machine as fully as Rutkowska claims, then concludes, "If undetectable virtualization technology can be used to hide the presence of malware, then equally undetectable virtualization technology preemptively deployed on the system should be able to detect the undetectable VM-based stealth malware if [and] when it is encountered."