John Lister

As we reported yesterday , Microsoft has lost a federal appeal over a copyright case involving the MS Office program, MS Word. In short, Microsoft breached a patent on a technique for opening XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents in MS Word. ... What is XML? XML is something of a sequel to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which is the language used for creating the layout of a webpage. Whereas HTML "tags" decide how text appears on screen, XML tells a computer what the text is about. This effectively turns web content into a type of database and makes it easier to organize and manipulate ... (view more)

Hewlett Packard has acknowledged a complaint that its webcam technology discriminates against darker-skinned users. But it doesn't address the racism issue directly -- instead, HP points to a technical limitation. Technology Locks onto Faces The ... allegations involve a feature in the webcam which recognizes faces and then "locks on" to them, automatically moving to keep the picture in the shot as a head moves around. The assertion comes shortly after a YouTube user uploaded a clip which appears to show that the feature fails to lock-on his face. (Source: youtube.com ) In a company blog post on ... (view more)

Microsoft has apologized after a contractor appeared to copy code from a rival company to use in a microblogging service. But Plurk, the company claiming its material was stolen, says it is considering taking the matter to court. Juku, a ... Twitter-style blogging feature on Microsoft's MSN site in China, was taken down this week after the complaints. Plurk's staff had written that Juku's design had involved "blatant theft of code, design, and user interface elements." As Much as 80% of Code Stolen Not only did Plurk staff believe Juku's look and feel was remarkably similar to its own site, but ... (view more)

3D movies could be a feature in home theatres as early as next year, thanks to a new agreement. It comes as one movie studio gets set to simplify the options available to movie-goers. The Blu-ray Disc Association, the main industry body behind the ... format, has agreed to a specification for incorporating three-dimensional video into discs. The group is keeping its options open; the system only deals with the creation of the 3D image, not the way it is viewed. 3D Discs Store Two Versions of Movie The technical details of the system will be sent out to disc producers shortly. It effectively ... (view more)

Reports suggest Google will soon unveil its own smartphone running Google's own Android operating system. However, analysts are split on how significant the move is and whether it will have a major impact on the market. Rumors of a "Google-phone" ... have been rampant ever since the company launched its open-source operating system Android, which now appears on a growing number of handsets, most prominently Motorola's Droid phone. Blog Posting Drops Strong Hints Officially, the firm has only said "We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative ... (view more)

Microsoft will ask all European users of Internet Explorer whether they want to try out a rival browser. It's an unexpected result in a long-running dispute with European Union officials. It came as no surprise when the firm announced today that it ... will include a "browser ballot" screen on all Windows PCs sold in Europe from January 2010, and on. The scheme, which Microsoft had proposed some months ago, will mean that during set-up users will see a list of leading browsers and have the option to install some or all of them, rather than simply getting Internet Explorer by default. Ball Screen ... (view more)

A range of security experts say the crusade by search engines to include "real-time" results from social networking sites will undoubtedly make life easier for hackers. Such word comes hot on the heels of a report suggesting sites like Facebook and ... Twitter now pose a risk to businesses. As we reported last week, Google is trying out a new feature which lists results for a search term in real time . That means that for popular topics there's no longer a lengthy waiting period while web pages are scanned and indexed: instead they are constantly monitored and appear in a special results section ... (view more)

Google will soon offer a range of new search options. The improvements include a constantly updated "real-time" search and some creative ways for using camera phones. One of the main drawbacks to any search engine has been that it takes time for ... pages to be scanned, analyzed and then added to the site's index so that they appear in searches. Today, that time has been greatly reduced, and it's common for news stories to appear on the first page of Google search results on the same day they are published. However, that's not enough for some users who want to search for the latest details on a ... (view more)

A government contest whereby participants were requested to spot ten weather balloons at once has been won by the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But MIT took the prize thanks to the help of a network of ordinary Internet users ... recruited under an intricate cash reward system. The content was launched by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same group which developed a network commonly acknowledged as the forerunner of the Internet. The idea of the contest was to see how people would use online networking to solve a problem too big for any one individual. ... (view more)

A Windows blogger has discovered that a feature supposedly removed from the starter edition of Windows 7 is in fact simply hidden. Thus, users of the new operating system (OS) can easily access the ability to run so-called ad-hoc networks. An ad-hoc ... network, also sometimes known as a computer-to-computer network, is a way of wirelessly connecting two computers directly rather than through a router. For example, you might use this when the main computer in a home is connected to the Internet through a cable modem rather than a router, with the ad-hoc network then allowing laptops to share data ... (view more)