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Posts Tagged ‘pdf’

First a Casio Exilim , now an ultra-mobile PC (or UMPC, as the Japanese say): Cult teddy bear Rilakkuma is on his way to dethrone Hello Kitty as the character of choice for Japanese electronics companies when it comes to giving gadgets that extra-cute touch. The bear is now to be seen on a special version of a Kohjinsha tablet PC [JP, PDF] that’s part of the company’s XS series. The Rilakkuma device features a 8.9-inch touchscreen with 1,280

Spring Design this morning announced that its dual screen Alex eReader will be available online today ( the rumors were true! ) for $399. Customers can thus start pre-ordering the Android-based multimedia e-reader, which supports eBooks in EPUB, PDF, HTML and TXT formats.

Original post: 
Alex eReader now on sale in the U.S. for $399 a pop, starts shipping mid-April

There’s a disturbing trend in music technology. Although home studios are rising, music is generally still recorded in specially designed environments and at high fidelity. Then for distribution, we compress the hell out of each track and do all sorts of terrible MP3-related things to them

Here is the original:
DPS plug-in from Bongiovi Acoustics

Short Version: Tax season is upon us, friends, and wouldn’t those 1099s and W2s floating hither and yon would be much more accessible if they were nestled deep inside a searchable PDF? Sure. That’s why Fujitsu invented the $295 ScanSnap S1300.

The ScanSnap S1300 is supposed to be a mobile scanner. While I’m dubious that many of us need a portable scanner, the device is small enough to fit in a briefcase and is quite light - about 3 pounds. It is USB-powered — it requires two ports (one for power and one for data) however, which is a pain - and the top is collapsible for portability.

Approximately 11 million new domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2009, an eight percent increase in new registrations from the third quarter of 2009.

The increase has brought the total of registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names to 192 million, an increase of nearly 15 million domain name registrations since the close of 2008. That means we’ll likely cross the 200 million milestone this or next quarter, provided growth continues.

The numbers come from VeriSign’s latest Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF).

In Q4 2009, the base of domain name registrations grew by two percent over the third quarter of 2009 and eight percent over the fourth quarter of 2008.

According to the Industry Brief, the base of Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) rose to 78.6 million domain names, a three percent increase quarter over quarter and a 10 percent increase year over year. In terms of total registrations, .com unsurprisingly continues to have the highest base followed by .cn (China), .de (Germany) and .net.

VeriSign’s average daily DNS query load during the fourth quarter of 2009 was 52 billion per day with peaks as high as 61 billion per day, jumping 48 percent for the daily average and 31 percent increase for peak daily queries as compared to fourth quarter 2008.

(Via press release)

Beginners Guide to Five Fingers – The good lads over at BirthdayShoes.com put together an interesting presentation on VFFs and barefoot running. It’s fairly concise and nicely designed so I’ll excuse the fact that “free ebooks” are pretty dumb generally

Go here to read the rest: 
Beginner’s guide to barefoot running

Working from home can be a good gig, but as any of us bloggers can tell you, there are real challenges. Lack of regular human contact, for instance, can make a wild animal out of anyone. My neighbors can testify, having occasionally to disengage my teeth from the calves of FedEx guys who come to my door.

Continued here: 
These “home commuting” accessories may just make a blogger out of you

Google is releasing information about a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure that occurred last month. The attack originated in China and resulted in the “theft of intellectual property from Google.” In light of the attack Google is making sweeping changes to its Chinese operations.

Google is releasing some information about these attacks to the public. The company says that a minimal amount of user information was compromised, but has come to the alarming conclusion that the attacks were targeting the information of Chinese human rights activists. Google found that these attacks were not just going after Google’s data, but were also targeting at least twenty other major companies spanning sectors including Internet, finance, chemicals, and more. Google has also discovered that phishing attacks have been used to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.

In light of the attacks, and after attempts by the Chinese government to further restrict free speech on the web, Google has decided it will deploy a fully uncensored version of its search engine in China. This is a major change: since January 2006, Google has made concessions to the Chinese government and offered a censored (and highly controversial) version of its search engine at Google.cn. Google isn’t playing that game any longer. Should the Chinese government decide that an uncensored engine is illegal, then Google may cease operations in China entirely.  We have included Google’s blog posts about the decision in their entirety below.

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People interested wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Posted by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

Here’s a second post, from the Google Enterprise Blog:

Many corporations and consumers regularly come under cyber attack, and Google is no exception. We recently detected a cyber attack targeting our infrastructure and that of at least 20 other publicly listed companies. This incident was particularly notable for its high degree of sophistication. We believe Google Apps and related customer data were not affected by this incident. Please read more about our public response on the Official Google Blog.

This attack may understandably raise some questions, so we wanted to take this opportunity to share some additional information and assure you that Google is introducing additional security measures to help ensure the safety of your data.

This was not an assault on cloud computing. It was an attack on the technology infrastructure of major corporations in sectors as diverse as finance, technology, media, and chemical. The route the attackers used was malicious software used to infect personal computers. Any computer connected to the Internet can fall victim to such attacks. While some intellectual property on our corporate network was compromised, we believe our customer cloud-based data remains secure.

While any company can be subject to such an attack, those who use our cloud services benefit from our data security capabilities. At Google, we invest massive amounts of time and money in security. Nothing is more important to us. Our response to this attack shows that we are dedicated to protecting the businesses and users who have entrusted us with their sensitive email and document information. We are telling you this because we are committed to transparency, accountability, and maintaining your trust.

Posted by Dave Girouard, President, Google Enterprise

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Sega Toys’ series of planetarium projection systems for home use, the so-called Homestars , is getting another update . The company has announced [JP, PDF] the so-called Homestar Aqua for the Japanese market (everyone living outside this country can pre-order the Aqua here )

Read the original post: 
Homestar Aqua: Sega Toys rolls out new planetarium for your bathroom (video)

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) this morning announced (PDF) the official close of its thirteenth fund, which it began investing in May 2009. At nearly $2.5 billion, it is comparable in size to NEA’s prior fund, which closed in 2006 and was just over $2.5 billion.

According to NEA, its fund XIII represents an estimated 17 percent of all U.S. venture capital funds raised in 2009 and is the largest single fund raised since 2007. The new capital commitments brings the venture capital firm’s total to more than $11 billion across all of its funds.

NEA, which has subsidiaries in both China and India, primarily invests in healthcare, energy, consumer and enterprise technology companies. The firm ranked number 4 on our list of most active VCs, which we published in October 2009 on our sister site TechCrunch Trends.

Some of its portfolio companies that will likely be most familiar to TechCrunch readers are Loopt, 23andMe, Vuze, Engine Yard and Millennial Media.

Its most recent investments were GroupOn (our coverage) and Playdom (our coverage), and it’s worth noting that NEA was the sole backer of Teracent, which was recently acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum after raising just south of $6 million.

(Press release via peHUB)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0