Oracle's Larry Ellison throws down the cloud gauntlet

Oracle CTO and executive chairman Larry Ellison, who just a few years ago famously mocked the notion of cloud computing, has positioned the company as one set up to become the industry's largest cloud player, with something to offer customers at all levels of the stack.

"We couldn't just be a specialist in [software as a service] like a Salesforce.com," Ellison said Sunday during a keynote at Oracle's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. "We couldn't be a specialist in [infrastructure as a service] like an Amazon."

While Oracle has been building out the various pieces of its cloud portfolio steadily over the past couple of years, it seemed like Ellison saw this year's conference as a chance to tell the industry that the entire meal is now fully baked.

One of the main courses is Oracle's entry into the PaaS (platform as a service) market, with which customers can move on-premises Java applications to Oracle's cloud database and WebLogic server cloud with "a push of a button," Ellison said. Non-Java applications have a home up in Oracle's skies too, as they can run on its IaaS, also with just a push of a button.

Oracle's PaaS also "endows the applications you build with modernity," according to Ellison, who cited its additional services for social, mobility, analytics and identity management.

This is the same stuff Oracle's own development teams use, which is another differentiator, he said.

"No one else offers their platform to extend their SaaS applications," Ellison claimed. "Nobody. Let me be clear. Most of our SaaS competitors don't have any platform at all. If you want to extend [their] application, you press a few buttons and a few levers, and you're done."

Ellison recently stepped down from his long-time role as Oracle CEO, with that title now shared by Mark Hurd and Safra Catz. But he didn't shy away from delivering the competitive barbs for which he's well-known.

For example, as he is prone to do, Ellison pointed out that many of today's most prominent SaaS (software as a service) vendors actually use some Oracle technology under the hood of their products.

One of these is Salesforce.com, although Ellison acknowledged the company as a formidable competitor in CRM (customer relationship management) applications.

"Salesforce is the best of the rest," he said. "At least they have a platform. The other guys, who, Workday? they don't have a platform. Missing in action."

He reserved the coldest cuts for SAP, which has created a PaaS (platform as a service) around its Hana in-memory computing platform.

"I'm going to try to be nice," Ellison said. "It's so hard. I have no idea what runs on Hana. It's rude but it's the truth. And it's kinda funny. What cloud? Let's just talk about Earth. I really like those guys."

SAP's SuccessFactors and Cloud for Sales applications are already running on Hana and work is "well underway" to move SAP's Ariba software to the platform as well, a company spokeswoman said via email after Ellison's remarks. SAP has also said more than 1,500 startups are using Hana to build products.

Ellison also updated the OpenWorld crowd on Oracle's progress in SaaS.

"We have by far the largest portfolio of cloud applications than anybody," he claimed. "We built a lot more in 2014. We bought a lot more in 2014. We definitely had a build-and-buy strategy."

Slide after slide detailing hundreds of SaaS applications flashed on the large screen behind Ellison as he ticked through a laundry list of software categories Oracle has products for in the cloud.

In the past 12 months, Oracle picked up 2,181 total new SaaS customers, according to one slide. More than 1,000 of those bought customer experience applications, while another 959 invested in HCM (human capital management) and 263 in ERP (enterprise resource planning).

Oracle also added 725 customers for Fusion Applications, the homegrown suite it developed at great time and cost. The company is keen to show growth in Fusion continues even as it acquires SaaS vendors and releases new cloud applications.

"2014 is an inflection point for us," Ellison said of Oracle's cloud software. These suites are now all available."

Meanwhile, Oracle's IaaS will have "the same pricing as Amazon or any other IaaS provider," Ellison said. Oracle may have little choice here, given the steady downward pressure on pricing seen in the IaaS market of late.

Underpinning everything is a major emphasis on security at Oracle, according to Ellison. "Security is becoming job one."

Oracle's recently announced M7 chip includes software-on-silicon features aimed not only at performance but also advanced security.

"You've got hardwired protection in the silicon itself protecting against memory violations," which can thwart a malicious program's attack, Ellison said. "It saves you a fortune in finding really difficult bugs. This is a very big deal. it's the most important piece of engineering we've done in security in a very, very long time." The M7 is set for release next year.

More than 60,000 people are attending OpenWorld in person and seven million online viewers are expected to view presentations from the show online, according to Oracle.

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With new OS, Microsoft will try to put Windows 8 era behind it

After spending the past two years in damage control mode over Windows 8, Microsoft will officially begin a new era for its OS on Tuesday, when it's expected to unveil a preview of Windows' next major version during an event focused on enterprise customers.

After the success of Windows 7, Microsoft misread the market with Windows 8 and botched the product's user interface, leaving a trail of many unhappy customers, especially in the consumer market.

Among businesses, Microsoft encountered much resistance to upgrade, as many CIOs clung to the very stable Windows 7, and took a pass on Windows 8 and its subsequent revisions, afraid that the UI, optimized for touch-screen tablets, would confuse their users, lead them to revolt and affect productivity.

So it's not a surprise that the first look of the next generation of the OS—referred to unofficially as Windows Threshold and Windows 9—will be directed specifically at businesses.

"With Windows 8, Microsoft was aiming at having a product with a good touch-first experience for consumers, and Microsoft didn't think about what would happen with enterprises," Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, said.

At the end of 2013, there were almost 715 million copies of Windows installed in businesses worldwide, and more than half—361.2 million—were Windows 7, according to IDC. About 224 million were Windows XP, and almost 40 million were Windows Vista. Little over 16 million were Windows 8.

"Windows 8 was obviously not for enterprise use. It didn't give information workers an experience that let them be efficient at work. So Microsoft has to make sure that Windows 9 is good for that very important enterprise segment," Gillen said. Windows 8 fared better in the consumer market with 117.2 million copies at the end of 2013, although there it also trailed Windows 7, which had 322 million, according to IDC.

There are a number of areas which Microsoft must get right with Windows 9 in order to attract CIOs and IT managers.

The most obvious one is the user interface. When Windows 8 first came out in October 2012, many users were shell shocked not only by the radically different touch interface, called Modern, but also by the alternate traditional desktop, which was included to run legacy Windows 7 applications but lacked key familiar features like the Start button and menu. Users also complained that the process of toggling between the Modern interface and the traditional desktop was clunky and erratic.

The issue centered on Microsoft's decision to make Windows 8 an OS that could be used with both touch screens and with mice and keyboards. Microsoft took a different route from Apple, which has iOS for iPhones and iPads, and MacOS for its laptops and desktop computers, and from Google, whose ChromeOS runs on Chromebook laptops and desktops, and whose Android is designed for tablets and smartphones.

But Microsoft couldn't get the user experience right in Windows 8, so many users felt the OS was difficult and inconvenient to use, especially for those using it with a mouse and keyboard.

Although Microsoft addressed a number of complaints in Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update, it never fully fixed all problems. Thus, Microsoft now either needs to abandon the concept of a single OS that caters to touch devices and to conventional PCs, splitting it into two separate products, or else it needs to double-down on its efforts to harmonize the two interfaces.

Considering that Microsoft officials are big backers of "hybrid" Windows devices that can double as tablets and laptops, such as the company's own Surface Pro 3 computer, chances are that with Windows 9 it will stick with the single OS strategy.

If that's the case, then Microsoft needs to make sure that the Windows 9 interface is truly "adaptive" and know automatically whether the person is using, for example, a tablet, laptop or desktop PC, or a very large wall-mounted monitor, according to Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst. "This was a mess in Windows 8," he said.

Microsoft also must make the process of moving to Windows 9 smoother than the process of migrating to a new Windows version has historically been, as evidenced by the difficulties involved most recently in upgrading from Windows XP and Windows 7 to Windows 8.

For example, depending on the case, moving to Windows 8 can involve having to manually back up and reinstall data and applications, as well as reconfigure settings, a prospect which prompts many businesses to hire consultants and migration experts often at great expense, especially if a significant number of PCs are involved.

"Upgrading or keeping Windows current should be like keeping a phone current," Silver said. "It should be smarphone simple."

A related issue that Microsoft also should address is its decision to put Windows on a faster schedule of upgrades and releases, which many enterprise IT departments dislike. At minimum, Microsoft should add the option of a standard release track for enterprises that don't want, or can't, absorb a rapid pace of OS changes, Silver said. "There are a lot of organizations that don't want to be on a fast track for Windows upgrades," he said.

There have been a number of instances where customers have cried foul over this recently. For example, when it released Windows 8.1 Update in April, Microsoft also determined that Windows 8.1 users had 30 days to make the move or else they wouldn't be able to download the next batch of enhancements, bug patches and security fixes that would be released for the OS in May.

After complaints from both consumer and enterprise users of Windows 8.1, Microsoft extended the deadline, but upset customers still felt like Microsoft twisted their arm to get them to move quickly to the 8.1 Update.

To make matters more confusing and bothersome for Windows 8.1 users, Microsoft allowed those who had stayed on Windows 8 to continue to receive all security and non-security updates through January 2016.

Microsoft also needs to do a better job of keeping enterprise customers informed about the future roadmap for Windows, according to Gillen. "They haven't been clear on that with Windows 8," he said. "Enterprises need directional information from Microsoft on how the product will look like in the future."

A promising effort that could help Microsoft with its business customers is the push to unify the Windows code base and APIs, so that it will be easier for Windows commercial and enterprise developers to create tools, applications and integrations for the OS.

In April at its Build conference, Microsoft announced the ability to create "universal" applications that can run on Windows, Windows Phone and the Xbox via the new Windows Runtime architecture using Visual Studio 2013 with Update 2 or later. Developers can modify the applications for specific devices, but they don't have to write them from scratch in each case.

However, there is more to come on this effort. In late July, during Microsoft's fourth fiscal quarter earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella said that the next major version of Windows would be a "single, converged" OS for "screens of all sizes."

"We will unify our stores, commerce and developer platforms to drive a more coherent user experience and a broader developer opportunity," he said then.

An open question is what Microsoft plans to do with Windows RT, the Windows 8 version for devices that run on ARM chips. Some industry observers have speculated that Microsoft will not maintain Windows Phone and Windows RT as separate OSes.

Windows Phone had a 2.5 percent share of the smartphone OS market in 2014's second quarter, down from 3.4 percent a year prior, according to IDC. Meanwhile, Windows had a 2.1 percent share of the tablet OS market at the end of 2013, according to Gartner.

These figures show how dramatically Microsoft has failed in the past two years in its attempts to improve its position in the smartphone and tablet OS markets, which had been the main mission of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

With Windows 9, Microsoft will try again to better compete against iOS and Android, while at the same time protecting the dominance it still holds of the PC OS market. And it can't afford another Windows 8-like blunder.

"Windows 9 has to be a watershed release for Microsoft to stay in the game," Silver said.

Adds Gillen: "Microsoft needs to get this one right."

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Lenovo set to complete acquisition of IBM x86 server business

Nine months after it was first announced, Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's x86 server business is headed towards closing.

Having received regulatory approval from the U.S., the European Commission and China, the companies will start closing the US$2.1 billion deal on Wednesday. The handover will take place in most major markets starting this week, and will be completed in the remaining countries into early next year, the companies said.

As a result of the deal, Lenovo is receiving a host of IBM products including its System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, along with its NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software.

IBM, however, will still hold on to its System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, PureApplication and PureData appliances.

Lenovo previously acquired in 2005 IBM's personal computing business.

The deal was originally expected to close in six to nine months, and will give Lenovo a major foothold in the enterprise market. On Monday, the companies said the acquisition will make the Chinese PC maker the third largest x86 server vendor in the world.

Lenovo has already been diversifying its business, at a time when demand for PCs continues to fall. On the consumer side, the company has been aggressively pushing its smartphone business in China, where it's become a top vendor.

Demand for x86 servers is growing, although competition in the market remains stiff. IBM was the world's second largest server vendor in the second quarter, according to research firm IDC, with its market share at 23.6 percent. But its lower-end server business has been losing sales to rival x86 server makers.

Despite the competition, buying IBM's x86 server business could still be a boon for Lenovo. Enterprise products are generally a higher-margin business than consumer gadgets, and Lenovo's own manufacturing capabilities and sales channels could help squeeze out more profits from the server sales, according to analysts.

On Monday, Lenovo said it had "big plans" for the enterprise market. "We will compete vigorously across every sector, using our manufacturing scale, and operational excellence to repeat the success we have had with PCs," the company added.

In the PC market, Lenovo is the world's largest vendor, with a 19.6 percent share, putting it slightly ahead of Hewlett-Packard, according to IDC.

IBM's x86 server business will be managed under Lenovo's Enterprise Business Group. Adalio Sanchez, general manager of IBM's x86 and PureSystems group, is moving over to Lenovo to lead the business.

Lenovo's acquisition of IBM's x86 server business will be priced about $200 million less in cash than when it was originally announced. This is due to a change in the value of inventories transferred, the companies said.

The Chinese company will now pay $1.8 billion in cash, and $280 million in its stock to IBM.

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Bogus bug apps offer no relief in Japan's dengue outbreak

Tokyo, futuristic metropolis of the 21st century, is grappling with a public health problem it hasn't seen since World War II—dengue fever.

Nearly 150 confirmed and suspected cases of the tropical disease have been recorded in recent weeks. The cause? Infected mosquitoes lurking in public parks, possibly introduced by travellers.

Worries about the spread of dengue fever, the painful and potentially lethal illness that dengue virus can produce, have sparked new interest in smartphone apps that purport to repel mosquitoes with sound.

Dozens of applications that claim the power to banish bugs by emitting high-frequency sound through smartphone speakers can be found on Apple's App Store and Google Play.

Anti Mosquitoes Ultra Pro Free on Google Play, for instance, says it "turns your phone into an ultrasound device, sending high-pitch 12-22 KHz waves to keep mosquitoes and other nasty insects away."

The apps are getting decidedly mixed reviews, however.

"This is useless. I've been bitten three times," one user griped earlier this month about another free bug app, called Kakihi Pro.

There are also paid versions for those even more keen to put their faith in high-frequency sounds.

"They might not be as effective as strong bug spray, but if you've got a smartphone how about giving them a try?" asked an anonymous article on AppWoman, a Japanese site with articles about smartphones.

"But don't have high expectations. Think of them as a protective talisman."

Experts say they should be thought of as garbage.

"The mosquito repulsion by sound scam has been around for decades," Jonathan Day, a professor of medical entomology at the University of Florida, wrote in an email.

"High-frequency sound waves do not repel biting flies. The best deterrent is to avoid mosquitoes, control mosquitoes in and around the home, cover skin with breathable fabrics that prevent mosquito blood feeding and, when all else fails, use a repellent that provides at least one hour of protection with each application."

In the past, radio stations tried to lure listeners with the promise of anti-bug sounds playing over music, Day added. More recently, smartphone maker LG launched an air conditioner for African markets that has an ultrasonic "mosquito away" function.

Yet a 2010 review by the Cochrane Collaboration, a nonprofit group, examined 10 scientific studies and found no evidence to support the notion that sound can repel mosquitoes.

"High-pitched sounds from smartphone apps unequivocally do not repel mosquitoes," Joseph Conlon, a technical advisor to the American Mosquito Control Organization, wrote in an email. "The only recommended personal protective measures are EPA-registered repellents such as DEET, picaridin, oil of lemon-eucalyptus and IR3535."

The plethora of mosquito apps on iTunes and Google Play would seem to violate the guidelines for the sites, which prohibit false advertising.

Apple and Google did not respond to requests for information about their policy in such cases.

Meanwhile, most Tokyoites are waiting for a surefire mosquito killer to quash the threat of dengue—the coming of winter.

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Uber defiant in face of new legal challenge

Uber is pushing back against the latest legal challenge to its business, saying accusations against it and its competitors are inaccurate and need correcting.

The district attorneys for San Francisco and Los Angeles sent letters this week to Uber, Lyft and Sidecar claiming they've engaged in unlawful business practices. The letters, based on a joint investigation by the attorneys' offices, take aim at several issues, chiefly the companies' policies around driver background checks.

The checks don't go far enough and aren't as thorough as the companies claim, the district attorneys (DAs) allege. Sidecar, for instance, has misled consumers by saying it screens out drivers who have ever committed driving violations, sexual assaults and other offenses, according to its letter from the DAs, seen by IDG News Service. Similar letters were sent to Uber and Lyft, said a source with knowledge of the matter.

Uber says the claims are false. "The district attorneys have made numerous inaccurate assertions that we will correct and discuss with them," an Uber spokeswoman said. "Ridesharing is unequivocally supported by the California legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, the governor, local jurisdictions across the state and millions of Californians," she added.

A car with Lyft's recognizable pink mustache.

Lyft and Sidecar also said they would work with the district attorneys to address the issues. "Sidecar is strongly committed to safety for both riders and drivers," the company said.

Uber's stated policies on background checks include county, federal and multi-state checks—but they only go back seven years, which is the maximum allowable under California law, the firm says on its website.

The checks apparently haven't stopped bad things from happening. In Orlando, an Uber driver was recently charged with battery after putting his hand inside a female passenger's blouse, according to a local news report. And in Washington, D.C., an Uber rider this past summer says he was kidnapped by his driver, as reported in The Washington Post.

The ride-sharing companies have faced legal challenges, caps on the number of cars they can operate and outright bans in many areas they operate. Uber's legality in Germany has gone back and forth over unresolved questions of safety and insurance.

In California, "We value innovation and new modes of providing service to the public; however, we need to make sure that the safety and well-being of consumers are adequately protected in the process," said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon on Friday.

The district attorneys also say new services from all three firms that allow customers to car pool to split costs are illegal under California law, which forbids transportation companies from charging multiple people for the same ride. The California Public Utilities Commission has also challenged the services.

San Francisco's Gascon and LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in the letter they'd like to meet with the firms by Oct. 8. Barring that, their offices are prepared to take legal action including injunctive relief and civil penalties.

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Report: Softbank in talks to buy Dreamworks Animation

Japan's Softbank is in talks to acquire Dreamworks Animation, The Hollywood Reporter said late Saturday citing a source. The Wall Street Journal later reported the same news citing "people familiar with the matter."

Softbank is best known as operator of Japan's scrappy, third-ranked cellular carrier. In 2013, it bought the number three U.S. wireless carrier, Sprint, and earlier this year made a play for fourth-ranked T-Mobile USA, but has given up on that acquisition.

Following a $32 per share offer from Softbank, the Dreamworks Animation board held an emergency meeting on Thursday, said The Hollywood Reporter. It said Nikesh Arora [cq], a former Google executive and now head of the recently formed Softbank Internet and Media, liased with Dreamworks on the offer.

Dreamworks Animation is well known for its often humorous computer animated feature films. Some of the company's biggest hits have included "Shrek," "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Kung Fu Panda."

The company's business relies on most of its movies attaining a hit status, putting great stress on the studio to keep performing.

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Uber defiant in face of new legal challenge

Uber is pushing back against the latest legal challenge to its business, saying accusations against it and its competitors are inaccurate and need correcting.

The district attorneys for San Francisco and Los Angeles sent letters this week to Uber, Lyft and Sidecar claiming they've engaged in unlawful business practices. The letters, based on a joint investigation by the attorneys' offices, take aim at several issues, chiefly the companies' policies around driver background checks.

The checks don't go far enough and aren't as thorough as the companies claim, the district attorneys (DAs) allege. Sidecar, for instance, has misled consumers by saying it screens out drivers who have ever committed driving violations, sexual assaults and other offenses, according to its letter from the DAs, seen by IDG News Service. Similar letters were sent to Uber and Lyft, said a source with knowledge of the matter.

Uber says the claims are false. "The district attorneys have made numerous inaccurate assertions that we will correct and discuss with them," an Uber spokeswoman said. "Ridesharing is unequivocally supported by the California legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, the governor, local jurisdictions across the state and millions of Californians," she added.

Lyft and Sidecar also said they would work with the district attorneys to address the issues. "Sidecar is strongly committed to safety for both riders and drivers," the company said.

Uber's stated policies on background checks include county, federal and multi-state checks—but they only go back seven years, which is the maximum allowable under California law, the firm says on its website.

The checks apparently haven't stopped bad things from happening. In Orlando, an Uber driver was recently charged with battery after putting his hand inside a female passenger's blouse, according to a local news report. And in Washington, D.C., an Uber rider this past summer says he was kidnapped by his driver, as reported in The Washington Post.

The ride-sharing companies have faced legal challenges, caps on the number of cars they can operate and outright bans in many areas they operate. Uber's legality in Germany has gone back and forth over unresolved questions of safety and insurance.

In California, "We value innovation and new modes of providing service to the public; however, we need to make sure that the safety and well-being of consumers are adequately protected in the process," said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon on Friday.

The district attorneys also say new services from all three firms that allow customers to car pool to split costs are illegal under California law, which forbids transportation companies from charging multiple people for the same ride. The California Public Utilities Commission has also challenged the services.

San Francisco's Gascon and LA District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in the letter they'd like to meet with the firms by Oct. 8. Barring that, their offices are prepared to take legal action including injunctive relief and civil penalties.

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Here's a to-do list for Comcast's first 'customer experience' exec

In a move that can be viewed both as extremely cynical as well as long overdue, Comcast named its first senior executive in charge of "customer experience" on Friday.

Charlie Herrin, the man that led the overhaul of Comcast's cable box UI as part of its X1 platform, will be tasked with redoing the company's relationship with its customers. In 2014, Consumerist named Comcast "the worst company in America," a crown that it had also earned in 2010. 

"Transformation isn't going to happen overnight," Neil Smit, Comcast's chief executive, wrote in a blog post. "In fact, it may take a few years before we can honestly say that a great customer experience is something we're known for.  But that is our goal and our number one priority … and that's what we are going to do. "

Comcast, of course, hopes to nail down a proposed $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable, consolidating the cable oligarchy down to one less player. And it's unclear whether or not Herrin will continue to allow Comcast support employees who were apparently trained to harangue customers to work at the company. In other words, is Herrin simply the sweeter, gentler face of the cable giant, or one who can effect some real change? That shouldn't be too hard to discover. Here's a brief to-do list for Herrin in his new job:

Comcast

Comcast's Charlie Herrin

1.) Retention bonuses. No, not for his call-center employees. For customers. If we've had to put up with Kabletown and its crap for the last few years, give customers promotional rates for six months. Comcast's service is way overpriced, and customers need to be cut a break.

2.) New set-top boxes. You have the new X1 interface out? That's terrific. So where is it? In fact, there should be a policy about how quickly users can upgrade their boxes, so they can record and store more than a dozen HD shows.

3.) Give customer-support representatives some power. Sure, many of you are going to pound furiously on the computer screen on this one. What about that jerk who wouldn't get off the phone? Why can't Comcast hire someone nice? Of course they can, and they're out there. But without the power to actually do something, and not try to upsell customers at every opportunity, quality support representatives leave. And you're left with the jerks.

4.) Use your own hotspots, not ours. Irrational as it sounds, I really don't care for someone being able to tap into my cable modem. I doubt anyone does; I live in suburbia, surrounded by mildly affluent neighbors who subscribe to what I presume is their own cable service. But instead of trying to use my router to extend a free wireless network, wire up schools, coffee shops, and libraries. Right now, America believes that Starbucks cares more about the connectivity needs of Americans than anyone else.

5.) A la carte pricing. Yes, yes, YES. Comcast gives me 500 channels, give or take. I watch...maybe eight? But they happen to be PBS, the networks, ESPN, the local A's channel, HBO, and an occasional foray to SyFy and parts unknown. That's it. That's the true test. I know, ESPN charges cable companies on the order of $7 or so per household. But here, customer service meets capitalism: keep prices high, and ESPN subscribers will drop. And that, in turn will force ESPN to lower prices to satisfy their advertisers. Lean on HBO to provide a la carte pricing as well.

6.) Unblock the apps. Personally, I'd like the FCC to step in and prevent the Time-Warner Cable merger simply because Comcast blocks the HBO Go app from running on my PlayStation, and forces me to use their lousy cable box UI instead. The polite way to describe this is "petty", and I'm sure you can think of some other adjectives here.

The ball's in your court, Comcast. If you want to improve your customer experience, you better get busy.

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MIT is developing underwater robots that hunt for drugs

They may not be as quick or efficient as airport sniffer dogs, but robots are getting ready to take the fight against drug smuggling underwater.

Researchers at MIT are working on submersible machines that could use ultrasound to find drugs hidden on ships.

Their prototype, which looks like a bowling ball, is designed to move along the hulls of ships. It could use ultrasound scanning to detect hollow spaces in false hulls and propeller shafts where drugs might be stashed.

Developed by grad student Sampriti Bhattacharyya and Harry Asada, a professor of engineering at MIT, the robot is divided into two halves, one waterproof and the other water-permeable.

The former houses a rechargeable lithium battery and electronics, while the latter contains six pumps that force water out through tubes, driving the bot forward.

The robot can move between 0.5 and 1 meter per second while pressed against the hull of a ship, and its battery charge lasts about 40 minutes.

The submersible was made using 3D-printed structural elements, meaning it could be manufactured for as little as US$600. That's cheap enough to allow a swarm robot approach, with dozens of machines working in unison to ferret out contraband.

"It's very expensive for port security to use traditional robots for every small boat coming into the port," Bhattacharyya was quoted as saying in an MIT News article.

The prototype was recently presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Chicago, but tests so far have focused on whether it can travel in a straight line and stay in contact with an underwater surface. It still has to be equipped with an ultrasound sensor.

The researchers hope to add improvements such as batteries that can recharge wirelessly and changes to the propulsion system that would extend operating time to 100 minutes per charge. Performing ultrasound scans without being in contact with a hull is another possible enhancement, since ships can be fouled with barnacles that would hamper the bots.

The anti-smuggling robot follows an effort by consulting company Boston Engineering and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to develop a tuna-shaped underwater vehicle called BIOSwimmer. That vehicle is designed to inspect flooded bilges and tanks of ships and to use a camera and sonar to detect hull anomalies that might signal the presence of drugs.

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Intel investing $1.5 billion in two Chinese chip firms

Intel is investing 9 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in two Chinese chip companies with an eye to boosting its presence in the country's booming mobile phone market.

The two fabless semiconductor companies develop mobile chipset platforms for smartphones, feature phones and other consumer electronics products, which support 2G, 3G and 4G wireless communications standards, Intel said Friday.

The U.S. chipmaker will acquire a minority stake of about 20 percent in a holding company which will own the chip firms - Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics.

The two chip companies have links to the state. The holding company, in which Intel is investing, is being set up under Tsinghua Unigroup, an operating subsidiary of Tsinghua Holdings, which is a solely state-owned company funded by Tsinghua University in China. Tsinghua Unigroup said in July it had acquired RDA for $907 million.

The agreement with Tsinghua Unigroup involves the design and selling of Intel architecture-based system-on-chips (SoCs). The initial products will be available in the second half of next year.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement that China is now the largest consumption market for smartphones and has the largest number of Internet users in the world. "This partnership will also enhance our ability to support a wider range of mobile customers in China and the rest of the world by more quickly delivering a broader portfolio of Intel architecture and communications technology solutions."

Intel's rival Qualcomm is being investigated in the country. The country's National Reform and Development Commission started investigating the company in November following industry complaints that the company has been overcharging its clients to use its patents.

The investment by Intel is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions and is expected to close by early next year, Intel said.

Intel has been making strategic moves to expand its presence in China. In May it tied with Rockchip in Fuzhou to develop an Intel-branded mobile SoC platform. The quad-core platform is being built around an Intel Atom processor core integrated with Intel's 3G modem technology. In February, its venture capital arm, Intel Capital, invested in three Chinese cloud providers and has shown interest in local companies that make components for wearables.

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New ad-free social network Ello is pro-privacy, but with caveats

A new social network is generating buzz for its hard stance against paid advertising and data collection. But how the site really works, when it comes to privacy, is a little more nuanced.

Ello is open on an invite-only basis, so you'll need to know someone who's already in the club to get in straight away. Tens of thousands of people are on the waiting list, according to the site, and only small batches of people are being let in at a time.

The site, which is still in beta, works similarly to Twitter. Users' posts are public, and may include links to outside sites like YouTube or Soundcloud. There are two feeds: "Friends" for your besties; and a curated "Noise" stream for everything else. You can mention other users by adding the "@" symbol in front of their names, comment on their posts and repost them.

Those features are not remarkable. But Ello's been generating chatter partly due to its lack of ads and privacy ideals. Unlike Facebook or Google, the site says it will not sell any of its users' data to third parties. The site hopes to make money by letting users pay for premium features.

"We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity," Ello says in its manifesto. "You are not a product," the company claims.

As many tech firms' businesses revolve around gathering personal data, Ello's claims are being viewed skeptically by some.

However, Ello itself does gather quite a bit of data. And while it may not "sell" it to third parties, there are still circumstances under which it will share it.

For starters, Ello also uses cookies to let its servers recognize your Web browser and provide information to Ello about how and when you use the site. That's standard fare these days, but Ello's privacy policy reveals it may also embed cookies in email to track whether the messages are being read.

If you delete your account on Ello, the site says it may still store backups of your data on its servers.

The site also uses an anonymized version of Google Analytics to gather and aggregate general information about user behavior and IP addresses.

"To the best of our knowledge, the information gathered by Google on Ello's behalf is collected in such a way that neither Ello, nor Google, can easily trace saved information back to any individual user," Ello says.

"To the best of our knowledge, this also makes what you do on Ello useless to Google for advertising purposes," Ello says.

And, Ello says it may share personal information with third parties if it's required to do so by law, or if one day it contracts with a third-party service to offer a new service like payments.

If you're an Ello user and all this makes you uneasy, you can opt out of Google Analytics through your settings page. Ello also respects the "Do Not Track" setting in most browsers, which is designed to send a signal to Web companies' servers to restrict the data they collect.

The fact that Ello honors DNT is commendable; many companies don't.

But Ello is not alone in the pursuit of privacy. Established ad-supported sites like Facebook and Google are now trying to bake in more privacy-oriented features. Facebook is working on anonymous log-ins for third-party apps, and Google recently abandoned its real-names policy for Google+.

And as for whether it will be able to survive financially without ads, "We're not interested in ruling the world," the company says on its website, in a jab at Facebook.

"We think people that are motivated to do things like that have unresolved psychological problems," Ello says.

Ouch. Ello certainly got the "audacity" thing right.

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Facebook appeal allowed in New York privacy dispute

Facebook's appeal against the collection by law enforcement in New York of bulk user data under a gag order has been accepted.

The appellate division, first department of the New York State Supreme Court ruled Thursday against a government move to dismiss the appeal as well as accepted briefs in support of Facebook filed by some civil rights organizations and tech companies, including Google and Microsoft.

The case has attracted attention as it raises many questions, including about the standing of a service provider to raise the constitutional rights of its subscribers, particularly when the provider is subject to a gag order and cannot inform its subscribers.

Facebook said in June that a New York court directed it to turn over data, including photos, private messages and other information of 381 accounts, as part of an investigation by the New York County District Attorney's office into a disability fraud case.

Of the 381 people whose accounts were covered under the warrants, 62 were later charged in the fraud case, Facebook said.

In its appeal, Facebook is asking for the return or destruction of the data and also wants a ruling on whether the warrants are in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of property. Referring to the case, the New York Civil Liberties Union has objected to "broad fishing expeditions" by government into personal and social conversations with family and friends with no regard to user privacy.

Facebook also wants the appeals court to rule on whether the gag provisions of the warrants violated the Stored Communications Act and the First Amendment, and whether it has standing to challenge the warrants on behalf of its users. A trial court had ruled in the negative on these issues.

Besides briefs from the NYCLU and the American Civil Liberties Union, the appeals court also granted a motion from Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yelp.

A separate motion filed by Foursquare Labs, Kickstarter, Meetup and Tumblr was also accepted. Describing themselves as the "New York Amici," these companies have argued that users should in this type of cases be provided with notice and an independent opportunity to object, as smaller companies may not always be able to afford to litigate each search warrant or court order.

The District Attorney's office and Facebook could not be immediately reached for comment on the court's decision.

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Hands-on with Pebble Firmware 2.5; iOS 8 users get better notifications

Pebble users are getting a few new goodies in Firmware 2.5, including a much better way to handle notifications on their smartwatches.

Dealing with notifications on Pebble used to a hassle. If you had multiple notifications stacked up, you could only wade through them by repeatedly tapping the down button. This often required multiple taps to get through a single message, and if you dismissed a notification on the watch, it would still show up in the notification bar when you took out your phone.

The latest firmware update eliminates these nuisances, at least for iOS 8 users. Now, each notification has a little "X" next to it, lined up with the middle button on the right side of the watch. Tapping the "X" dismisses the entire notification, and also removes it from Notification Center in iOS 8. Pebble then shuffles you on to the next notification, or returns you to the clock.

This may not seem like a big change, but it's especially useful when you have some unimportant messages in your stack of notifications. Instead of having to scroll through them, you can dismiss them immediately with one tap and move onto the next message.

Unfortunately, Pebble doesn't offer quite enough granularity with this new feature. Tapping the watch's left button will dismiss notifications without clearing them from your phone, but this removes all your pending notifications from the watch. It would be nice if you could somehow preserve and dismiss notifications on an individual basis, so only the important ones would be waiting for you when you took out your iPhone.

Of course, Pebble still doesn't let you take any meaningful action on the notification itself, such as deleting an e-mail or replying with a canned response. For that level of interactivity, you'll need to buy an Android Wear watch, or hold out for the Apple Watch next year.

The other key improvement in Pebble Firmware 2.5 is the arrival of compass support in Pebble apps. Pebble now offers a basic Compass app for free, and some third-party apps are already taking advantage of the new functionality. For instance, a $3 iPhone app called Where To? lets you search for nearby businesses from your phone, while the watch shows a little arrow to point you in the right direction.

Pebble

Pebble apps can point users in the right direction with compass support.

Both apps seemed accurate enough in my tests, and are a nice taste of what's to come. A quick look through the Pebble App Store showed geocaching and full-blown mapping apps on the way.

Pebble Firmware 2.5 also adds emoji support in notifications. This worked well for basic faces, though it still showed a blank square for more exotic emoji (such as a frog and a trophy).

For now, these improvements are only available to iOS users, but Pebble says "similar enhancements are in the pipeline" for Android.

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ARM's new processor could usher in feature-rich robots, appliances, wearables

ARM hopes its latest Cortex M7 processor design will lead to more responsive robots, smart appliances and wearables.

The Cortex M7 CPU design, which will be licensed to chip makers, could also go into cars, medical devices and networking and storage devices. The faster and power-efficient M7 will allow device makers to pack more functionality and features into products, said Nandan Nayampally, vice president of marketing for the CPU group at ARM.

For example, the Cortex M7, which operates at a clock speed of 400MHz, can bring finer control and accuracy in location and speed measurement to drones and robots, Nayampally said.

"The response time and management of motor control needs a certain speed," especially for moving devices and targets, Nayampally said.

The M7 can also be used in wearables like smartglasses as co-processors to collect sensor information. Faster processors like the Cortex-A, which is used in mobile devices, are still needed for highly visual or graphical functionality, Nayampally said.

ARM already dominates the smartphone and tablet market via Cortex-A chips, which are also due to appear in servers early next year. ARM wants its CPUs to go into more devices, and the Internet of Things market represents a big opportunity. The number of Internet-connected devices is expected to reach anywhere from 30 billion to 50 billion by 2020.

Key to IoT devices is support for wireless technologies and sensors, which can be packaged with M7 in hubs, industrial control systems and office and data center equipment, Nayampally said.

The M7, which also has digital signal processors and floating point functionality, is fast enough to provide "embedded intelligence" so only relevant information is dispatched to repositories, Nayampally said.

The new CPU sits at the top of the line of products that includes the Cortex M3, which is used in Qualcomm's Toq smartwatch, and Cortex M0, a microcontroller used in many low-cost development boards.

About 8 billion processors based on Cortex M designs have shipped to date, with 4.6 billion of those shipping in the last year and a half, Nayampally said.

One M7 CPU can perform the functionality of multiple M0 or M3 chips, which can help save space in devices, Nayampally said.

Chip makers Freescale, Atmel and STMicroelectronics are supporting the new processor design.

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BMC Software files patent infringement lawsuit against ServiceNow

BMC Software has filed a patent infringement suit against ServiceNow, claiming its patents are violated by the rival's IT management technologies.

The company in Houston, Texas, has accused ServiceNow of allegedly violating seven patents in products in its offerings, which include incident and problem management, performance analytics, configuration management, including ServiceNow's Configuration Management Database, discovery, orchestration, and change and release management.

"BMC's ability to earn sufficient profits from demand for its innovations is harmed when others freely use these patented technologies and offer them at below market prices because such infringers do not need to recoup BMC's enormous R&D investments," the company said in its complaint Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall division.

Among the allegations against ServiceNow is that it hired key former BMC employees, including engineers and sales staff, who were used to develop "key aspects of the ServiceNow Service Automation Platform and related products, including at least some of the features that infringe the patents-in-suit."

ServiceNow in Santa Clara, California, could not be immediately reached for comment.

BMC's complaint refers to an interview in May 2013 by ServiceNow's founder and Chief Product Officer, Fred Luddy, as evidence of his attitude towards the intellectual property rights of others. Luddy said in the video cited that "good artists copy and great artists steal, and I've been a thief all my life. I'm going to admit it right here, right on camera, live." Luddy was discussing in the interview the process how artists reformulate and repurpose ideas to solve new problems.

BMC has asked the court, among other things, for damages and a permanent injunction against ServiceNow and its executives from engaging in the alleged infringements.

The IT management patents in the suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 5,978,594, 6,816,898, 6,895,586, 7,062,683, 7,617,073, 8,646,093 and 8,674,992. They include patents for a method and system for configuration management database software license compliance, system and method for assessing and indicating the health of components, and interfacing external metrics into a performance management system.

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iPhone 6 Plus Display is the best there is (well, almost)

Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 4 apparently edged out the recent Apple iPhone 6 Plus in terms of display quality, even though the analyst reviewing it basically called Apple's displays the best he's seen to date.

In a report released Monday, DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira—who does nothing more than test smartphone displays, by the way—called the iPhone 6 Plus display the "best performing smartphone LCD display that we have ever tested," Soneira wrote. "The iPhone 6 Plus has raised the bar for top LCD display performance up by a notch," he added.

High praise indeed for the iPhone 6 Plus. But that doesn't make the iPhone 6's display the best, period—an odd little caveat that may inspire a new round of back-and-forth between Samsung and Apple fanboys. "We recently gave the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 our overall Best Smartphone Display award, and for the time being that continues for all of the reasons originally mentioned there," Soneira wrote in his report.

Apple

Apple's iPhone 6 uses a 1334x750, 326-ppi pixel display, while the iPhone 6 Plus has a 1920x1080 pixel display with 401 ppi. Apple calls both displays 'Retina HD," and executives made a big deal at the iPhone 6 launch describing how good they look.

Still, Soneira wasn't nearly as effusive about the display quality of the smaller iPhone 6. "The display on the iPhone 6 is none-the-less still a Very Good display, and most buyers will be happy with its performance, but it's somewhat disappointing that Apple went for satisfactory as opposed to the best," Soneira wrote. "Maybe that was done for intentional product differentiation with the iPhone 6 Plus, or perhaps to improve their margins… With a 1920x1080 display the iPhone 6 would have taken the crown."

According to DisplayMate's tests, the iPhone 6 Plus breaks all sorts of records, including the highest peak brightness, lowest screen reflectance, highest (true) contrast ratio, highest contrast in ambient light, and more. But it doesn't exceed competitors in terms of resolution, pixels per inch, and absolute color accuracy.

Still, both displays should satisfy casual users and creative types alike. With a nearly perfect 99-percent sRGB color gamut for the iPhone 6 and 101-percent for the iPhone 6 Plus, the displays will be almost be perfectly color-accurate. And in a nod to anyone who uses their phone outside in the bright summer sun (which is, naturally, everyone), both phones combine high screen brightness and low screen reflectance, critical to outdoor performance. Specifically, they both provide 550 cd/m² luminance, DisplayMate found. 

In general, the two iPhone 6 displays are also both more power-efficient than other full-HD LCD smartphones. But the Note 4 outclassed the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus when used to view a mixture of different images, consuming 21 percent less power. If the display were simply powered on to a white screen, however (such with a flash light app), the two iPhone displays would consume 45 percent less power than the Note 4.

"The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the current Best Mobile LCD Displays and the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 are the current Best Mobile OLED Displays," DisplayMate concluded.  So as we concluded in our review of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: Yes, bigger is indeed better.

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AT&T shanghais cord-cutters with $40 deal that has plenty of strings attached

As more so-called cord-cutters turn their backs on TV services, providers like AT&T U-verse are doing everything in their power to lure them back, even bundling services like HBO Go and Amazon Prime.

Yes, for $40 per month, AT&T will give you U-verse broadband, basic cable, a year's worth of HBO Go on-demand movies, and even a year's worth of Amazon Prime—with all the Amazon on-demand movies, Kindle lending, and free two-day shipping that entails.

All AT&T is asking from you is to please, please, PLEASE be a customer—and to pay a little more when a year's out. And to be locked into a year's contract with an early termination fee of up to $180. And bunches of other little charges that AT&T hopes you won't think about until you're on the phone with a helpful salesperson.

Like what, you ask? For one thing, the offer isn't available in all areas. When I checked the bundle options for my home in the San Francisco North Bay, the Amazon Prime offer never appeared, although the promotional page mentions it prominently.

As for the possible additional fees, let's extract them from AT&T's fine print. They are, in no particular order:

• $49 service activation fee
• Up to $99 in equipment installation fees
• Broadcast surcharge of $2.99 per month
• $15 more per month for a whole-home DVR
• $10 more per month for high-definition service
• Assorted taxes and other regulatory fees

And remember, when the year is up, AT&T can go back to charging you $26 per month for HBO service and $19 per month for basic cable, plus an additional $22 per month for broadband Internet service (18 Mbits/s downstream in my area). In other words, $67 per month plus the original $40 per month fee equals $107 per month—not bad, but not the cord-cutting nirvana that you might have thought. Of course, at that point there's nothing preventing you from walking away to another provider, signing up for some other, similar deal, or simply trying to negotiate with Comcast or with AT&T itself.

What the deal does seem to imply (as Re/Code suggests) is that AT&T hopes you'll sign up, autopay your bill, and then gently slip into a movie- and pizza-fueled coma where you won't notice more money being siphoned from your digital wallet in a year's time. Because by then, True Detective season 2 will be out, and seriously, why would you ever want to let that go?

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Lyft acquires ride-sharing startup Hitch

Car-sharing service Lyft has acquired Hitch, a startup in the mobile app-enabled car-pooling business, to integrate the service with its own shared rides business that it set up last month.

"Similar to Lyft, Hitch has always believed the shared rides experience is inherently social, and we're excited that they're joining the team to accelerate this movement together," Lyft wrote in a blog post Monday.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hitch co-founders Snir Kodesh and Noam Szpiro will join the Lyft team as the company expands personal transit to more cities across the U.S. Hitch offers its service in San Francisco.

"We observed too many empty cab seats and noticed that public transit could be improved with the addition of dynamic routing," the Hitch co-founders wrote in a blog post. "We built an app, a sophisticated engine optimized for pairings, and started to grow our platform—with new users and drivers alike."

The Hitch platform will close for drivers and passengers starting Tuesday. Current Hitch drivers will move to the Lyft community, to which many are already signed on as ride-sharing drivers, Lyft said.

The company said it had seen "incredible" growth and demand for its shared rides business Lyft Line in San Francisco, which launched in August. Lyft Line held out the promise that it would connect people with a ride already going the same way for up to 60 percent less than an original Lyft ride. Lyft Line would roll out first in San Francisco on iOS, with support on Android and services in other cities to follow, the company said at launch.

Rivals Uber and Sidecar have also begun similar car-pooling services.

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New Oculus Rift 'Crescent Bay' prototype packs integrated audio and 360-degree tracking

Kicking off day two of the Oculus Connect virtual reality conference in Los Angeles, CA, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe took to the stage to announce a new Crescent Bay prototype—not the consumer release nor another developer kit, but a new internal stepping stone similar to the old Crystal Cove model.

"Today it is happening. Virtual reality is here," said Iribe. "We thought about flying cars, maybe hoverboards. And virtual reality. It's finally here."

First, Iribe laid out what was necessary for the consumer version of the Rift, as far as Oculus is concerned: Six degrees of freedom, 360 degree tracking, sub-millimeter accuracy, sub-20 milliseconds of latency from you moving your head to the last photon hitting your eye, persistence of less than three milliseconds, 90 hertz refresh rate, at least 1k x 1k resolution per eye, no visible pixels, a comfortable eyebox, and a field of view greater than 90 degrees.

"When you put these together, and you get it right, and you get the content right, suddenly you're there," said Iribe.

Enter Crescent Bay. Crescent Bay is the latest Rift prototype, which Iribe says is "as big of a leap from DK1 to DK2 as we've made from DK2 to Crescent Bay." 

"It's awesome," he continued.

More from Oculus Connect: Oculus open-sources original Rift developer kit's firmware, schematics, and mechanics

The core features: 360-degree tracking (there are LEDs on the back of the headset now), a quicker refresh rate, and optional integrated audio (you can move the small attached earbuds out of the way to use your own headphones) along with 360 VR audio software powered by RealSpace 3D's audio system.

The Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype includes LEDs on the rear of the headstrap to offer full 360-degree head tracking.

Iribe also talked about how Oculus's plans encompass both mobile and PC going forward. "Today on PC you get high fidelity and a sense of presence, which is the magic of VR," said Iribe. "With mobile the magic is accessibility, affordability, and portability." He claims that embracing both platforms is the way to "connect a billion people in VR"—a long-standing goal for the company.

They're well on the way, considering Oculus still hasn't shipped a real consumer-facing product. "There's over 100,000 Rift developer kits shipped to over 130 countries around the world. We launched two years ago," said Iribe. "That's incredible." He later said he thinks the actual number is near 130,000 development kits at this point.

Still no mention of a consumer release date, though. All we got was "We're really sprinting towards the consumer version." One of these days...

Stay tuned to PCWorld for more news from Oculus Connect—both Michael Abrash and John Carmack have keynotes later today. Or, for up to the minute news, feel free to follow my Twitter feed, where I'll be posting highlights and photos all day. We'll also have a hands-on with the Crescent Bay model soon.

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Oculus Rift 'Crescent Bay' prototype hands-on: A VR alien waved at me and I waved back

We don't really like to swear on this site. By and large PCWorld is a family-friendly affair. Which is a shame, because at Oculus Connect on Saturday I got hands-on time with Crescent Bay, the latest internal Oculus Rift prototype and most likely the last stepping stone before the consumer Rift.

And all I can say is [redacted], it's amazing. [Redacted].

"Presence"

In case you missed the announcement Saturday morning, here's a quick rundown of what Crescent Bay entails. It's not a new development kit. You'll never be able to buy it. Instead, like the Crystal Cove model demoed by Oculus at CES earlier this year it's an internal prototype—a benchmark of what the company is aiming for.

According to Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe's keynote, the step from the newly-released DK2 to Crescent Bay is as big as the step between the first-gen (DK1) and second-gen (DK2) developer's kit models. If you've used the DK1 and DK2 you know what an incredible difference that is. If you haven't, imagine the only television set you've used your entire life is a grainy old 70s CRT and then somebody played you a movie in full HD for the first time.

Crescent Bay increases the resolution yet again (rumors say it's probably the 1440p screen used in the Note 4, though Oculus was for some reason hesitant to let me crack open one of their few Crescent Bay models just to look at the screen). Along with the higher resolution you get a higher refresh rate, which should again decrease the amount of judder (and thus your likelihood to get motion-sick).

The Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype.

You'll also notice some cosmetic differences—namely, that there are now white dots all over the outside again including the back of the headband and that two tiny headphones hang down from the sides. Crescent Bay features full positional tracking, even from behind, and integrated 3D audio.

The key word for Crescent Bay is "presence." Iribe said it about a dozen times during his keynote and then another dozen times during a behind-closed-doors speech to press. By that, he means forgetting that you're staring at a virtual world. Iribe claims this is the point—this is where VR becomes a real thing.

Reflexes

But that's all marketing speak. What's it actually like?

Like every iteration thus far, Crescent Bay comes with a brand new demo to show off its capabilities. A set of demos, really. In the ten or so minutes that I wore Crescent Bay, I think I saw eight or nine distinct demos, each designed to show off a certain aspect of the unit.

Oh, and big news: You stand. Oculus has been notoriously reticent about standing while using the Rift. John Carmack's keynote during Connect even featured him speaking at length about "Swivel Chair VR" because the company views standing use as a liability. Except, apparently, when it comes to the Crescent Bay demo.

Author Hayden Dingman settling into the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay demo at Oculus Connect.

I was brought into a small cubicle with a grey mat on the ground and told I could walk, crawl, whatever on the gray mat, but would be stopped from leaving the mat with the headset on. The Rift was placed over my head, the hanging headphones adjusted onto my ears, and we were off.

The first demo was fairly rote. The Rift turned on and I found myself standing in a beautifully rendered but empty corridor, all industrial steel and green lighting. It was clear that the resolution has gone up since the DK2, though you can still see individual pixels if you try. And I tried, especially because I was just standing in this boring green room.

Still, I walked around a bit, looked at some gauges. The position tracking worked, even when I turned fully around.

Let me say that again: I reflexively waved at a virtual alien.

I then loaded (to the best of my memory) into a dark room with a raptor, which roared at me, and then into a cartoonish, flat-shaded scene on a beach. There was a small campfire, a moose, and a fox. Again, I kind of just looked around, walked a bit. Walking is harder with the Rift than you might expect—even when you know there are no obstacles to trip over, it's still hard to convince your brain to just walk like a normal human.

"Okay, so this is Crescent Bay," I thought. And then the scene shifted...

...And I was standing on the edge of a skyscraper, traffic passing miles below. A zeppelin floated above, next to an Oculus-branded skyscraper. There was a bridge off to the side.

It took me a bit to realize all of this, because I was too busy looking down. Had somebody turned on a fan at that moment I might have yelled—for a brief moment Iribe's "presence" marketing crap was a real thing. I honestly believed I was on a ledge.

Not consciously, of course. Your brain's not dumb. It knows you're standing in a room in a hotel in Los Angeles, wearing a goofy-looking headset. Hell, you're all-too-aware of the iconic "I'm wearing a Rift and my forehead is slightly sweaty" feeling.

But on a different level it didn't matter. I was on that ledge.

The rear of the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay headstrap is adorned with LEDs to enable full 360-degree positional head tracking.

Two other demos sparked this feeling in me:

In one, you're standing on a barren, rocky planet as an expertly-rendered alien talks to you in an unfamiliar language, occasionally yelling at you or smiling. And then the alien raised up a hand and waved. Before I really understood what I was doing, I'd already raised my own hand reflexively.

Let me say that again: I waved at a virtual alien.

Then there's the Showdown demo, which closed out our time with Crescent Bay. Showdown was designed by Epic, and features a battle between a group of soldiers and a massive robot. The camera moves inexorably down the street towards the robot while the action progresses around you in slow motion—bullets ripple towards the robot in trademark Matrix fashion, a car explodes and flips over your head, and rubble flies through the air. It was the last category that got me: As rubble flew towards my face, I jerked backwards expecting to feel concrete hit me in the face.

While "Presence" and this sense of realism is incredible, some of the other demos were just as impressive for entirely different reasons. One brief section had me standing over a neon orange map, beacons shining into the sky from the heart of each city. I could easily see playing a real-time or turn-based strategy game from this viewpoint—the art style made me think of DEFCON, but any God-view game would work.

And finally, one demo I was merely floating in space next to a small model town, as if someone had built a model railroad and left it there for me. This scene was the best demonstration of Oculus's new audio focus, with sound fading in and out seamlessly as I leaned around the town. Positional audio isn't exactly a new idea, but it's amazing how much it can help improve the "reality" part of VR.

The Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype ads integrated headphones, which you can see in this picture.

The catch—literally

The biggest downside with Crescent Bay, and presumably the final consumer Rift model? That damn cord. Moving around the room with a cable attached to your head is an enormous distraction, and multiple times I got really into the scene only to be jarred out of it by a tugging feeling on the side of my head. Obviously it also makes spinning around in a circle a disaster.

There's also the question of setting everything up. In the demo room, the positional camera was mounted on the wall. That's even less portable than the DK2's "mount this on top of your monitor" camera, and I'm curious whether standing is a use case Oculus is actually fully promoting or whether it was simply for demo purposes.

As for the headphones, I'm currently ambivalent. I didn't get a great look at the headphones and the Oculus staffer in my room refused to answer any questions or let me see the unit closer, but they appear to swivel out of the way when you want to wear real headphones. In other words, I don't think they detach completely. The audio quality was fine for demo purposes, but that's about the most I can say—a crowded convention isn't the best place to test audio fidelity.

Bottom line

It's impressive, though. To think that we've gone from DK1 to Crescent Bay in approximately two years...well, it's mind-blowing. Still, the main problem for Oculus at this point is to release a product. Hopefully our current indications are correct and this is at long last the final step before a consumer rift release.

Because they've already made me a believer. Hell, I was a believer after I used a DK1 for the first time. Now the only challenge is to get you to believe too.

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Microsoft, Getty copyright dispute heads for mediation

A judge in New York has postponed for mediation proceedings a decision on an injunction motion by Getty Images against a Bing widget, which allowed publishers to embed image collages and slideshows from search results on their websites.

Getty had earlier this month filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Microsoft, in which it alleged that the image galleries and slideshows typically consist of copyrighted images, including those owned or controlled by Getty.

Microsoft said it had temporarily removed the Bing Image Widget, which was in its beta, so it could talk with Getty and better understand its concerns.

In a court filing, the software company said a preliminary injunction wasn't required as it had voluntarily disabled the widget a day after learning of Getty's claims and subsequently agreed to change it to use only licensed images until a decision in the case. The company plans to relaunch the widget only in the modified form. Getty could hence not claim any irreparable harm without an injunction, Microsoft argued.

Getty has countered in a filing last week that the widget remains operational across websites worldwide, to which Microsoft continues to supply images, including Getty's copyrighted images, without a license to do so.

Microsoft has also held it cannot be liable because its widget never actually copies or displays any copyrighted works, but supplies to the third-party user's website an "HTML address pointing to where the images are located, not the images themselves." The image host site to which Microsoft's code points in the collage view is its own server containing images that it copied from the Internet at large, Getty countered.

In an order made public Friday, District Judge Denise Cote ordered that the motion for preliminary injunction "is stayed until October 3, 2014 while the parties engage in mediation." Getty has to file any amended complaint by Friday.

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IEEE standards group wants to bring order to IoT

The IEEE is embarking on an ambitious effort to build a overarching architecture for the Internet of Things, spanning a multitude of industries and technologies.

IEEE P2413, which the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers officially started work on in July, would form a framework for interoperability among connected devices and related applications in home automation, industrial systems, telematics and all other sectors that are expected to use IoT in the coming years. While leaving room for differences across those industries, the standard would allow for sharing of data across IoT systems, according to Oleg Logvinov, chair of the IEEE P2413 Working Group.

"The activities in the Internet of Things today are disjointed," Logvinov said Thursday at the IEEE Standards Association IoT Workshop in Mountain View, California.

IDC analyst Michael Palma, who also spoke at the workshop, counted seven industry groups plus the IEEE that are working in this area. They include enterprise-level bodies such as the Industrial Internet Consortium and more consumer-focused efforts such as AllJoyn.

"What they need is the Rosetta Stone to make everything talk and work together," Palma said.

A unifying force

IEEE is a powerful international body that's set the standards for, among other things, ethernet and wireless LANs. But the P2413 Working Group, which first met in July, doesn't want to replace existing IoT groups. Rather it aims to create a standard architecture so IoT systems for all industries can work together.

"They need a place where they can come together and move forward as a scalable, unified platform," Logvinov said. "That type of unification can be enabled only by a global, international standard."

Logvinov and others at the event compared today's IoT to a group of islands. To form the greater whole that IoT can be, there's a need for bridges between those islands and eventually a merging into one land mass that can house the equivalent of a big city, they said. The benefits of bringing different areas of IoT together could include economies of scale, lower hardware prices and future applications as yet unimagined.

That problem exists in a nutshell in the medical equipment industry, according to Dr. Julian Goldman, director of medical device interoperability at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The makers of various types of devices for monitoring patients' health don't design their products to share data or even acknowledge one another, so doctors can't get as good information as they might, he said. For example, measurements taken by a blood oxygen sensor on a patient's finger can be affected by the actions of a blood-pressure monitor that squeezes the patient's arm, but the systems don't automatically account for that effect, Goldman said.

"If we don't look at the lessons today in health care, the Internet of Things is not going to be an Internet of Things, it's going to be a pile of things," Goldman said.

A standard by 2016?

The P2413 group hopes to define the basic building blocks of IoT systems that are common across industries, Logvinov said. Among other things, it hopes to turn the information coming from different platforms into commonly understood data objects, he said. It hopes to finish the standard by 2016, a goal that Logvinov acknowledged is ambitious.

A standard that spans IoT will be hard to build, but so will IoT itself, which may represent the next phase of the industrial revolution, he said.

"It's worth the effort," Logvinov said. "It's worth trying to build."

There are too many vendors and groups pushing overlapping specifications for IoT, said Michael Holdmann, executive vice president of sales, marketing and strategy at Coversant, in an interview at the forum. Coversant sells communications software that's used in some IoT systems today.

"People are just trying to do things that are already out there," Holdmann said.

He welcomes the P2413 effort but said it will be important for the group to coordinate with other organizations. In time, people trying to use IoT will demand some kind of order, he said. "The market is going to drive the standards bodies to cooperate."

Coordination with other organizations, including ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the machine-to-machine group oneM2M, is part of the P2413 game plan, Logvinov said. There are currently 23 vendors and organizations represented in the P2413 group, including Cisco Systems, Huawei Technologies, General Electric, Oracle, Qualcomm and the ZigBee Alliance.

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Oculus open-sources original Rift developer kit's firmware, schematics, and mechanics

Kicking off the Oculus Connect conference in Los Angeles this weekend, Oculus's Nirav Patel announced that the original Oculus Rift developer kit (DK1) is now fully open-source, with the exception of the pieces that aren't actually in production anymore—for instance, the display, which is no longer manufactured.

"We don't want everyone to have to take the same risks we took. We just want to share the things we learned so you don't have to do that. We're all in this to build virtual reality together," said Patel.

Those risks were the focus of Patel's talk, which discussed the manufacturing of the DK1. "We found just about the roughest and quickest contract manufacturer we could find in China," said Patel. "We were a ragtag group of ten people nobody had ever heard of trying to create a product nobody thought was possible."

He discussed the different challenges the team encountered trying to get the original Oculus out the door, such as the trip where they spent hours rubbing different foam materials on their face to find one that was comfortable enough for prolonged use.

Or the last-minute panel change that almost screwed the project—"We initially started with this 5.6 inch panel in the Rift," said Patel, "But ultimately that thing ended up being end-of-lifed before we could get our hands on them, so we had this mad rush to switch to this 7" panel which resulted in this big lunchbox thing."

As a result, the DK1 had all sorts of underutilized screen real estate hidden behind the lenses, but it was a compromise the Oculus team had to make to get the product out the door. Other things Patel acknowledged were ill-planned: The removable eye lenses that let dust in, the weird adjustment slots on the side that needed a coin or screwdriver to turn, et cetera.

But with the DK2 out, Oculus decided it was time to put out the DK1 to the community. And they really mean the community. Many of the files would require high-end equipment that most people won't have access to, so Oculus is hoping the community will come together to make some easy 3D printable files and the like.

The files are out there, though, if you want them. "Really we're more interested in seeing what people do with the individual components," said Patel. He said an enterprising person could even make low-latency trackers based off Oculus's design and sell them to interested people—the licenses are that open.

And, of course, "There's also the CAD for the carrying case if you want a cool fashion accessory."

As for when the DK2 will go open source? Patel's keeping quiet for now. "Even opening the DK1 was a debate we had internally for the last year or so," he said. Fingers crossed, DIY community.

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New Oculus Rift 'Crescent Bay' prototype packs integrated audio and 360-degree tracking

Kicking off day two of the Oculus Connect virtual reality conference in Los Angeles, CA, Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe took to the stage to announce a new Crescent Bay prototype—not the consumer release nor another developer kit, but a new internal stepping stone similar to the old Crystal Cove model.

"Today it is happening. Virtual reality is here," said Iribe. "We thought about flying cars, maybe hoverboards. And virtual reality. It's finally here."

First, Iribe laid out what was necessary for the consumer version of the Rift, as far as Oculus is concerned: Six degrees of freedom, 360 degree tracking, sub-millimeter accuracy, sub-20 milliseconds of latency from you moving your head to the last photon hitting your eye, persistence of less than three milliseconds, 90 hertz refresh rate, at least 1k x 1k resolution per eye, no visible pixels, a comfortable eyebox, and a field of view greater than 90 degrees.

"When you put these together, and you get it right, and you get the content right, suddenly you're there," said Iribe.

Enter Crescent Bay. Crescent Bay is the latest Rift prototype, which Iribe says is "as big of a leap from DK1 to DK2 as we've made from DK2 to Crescent Bay." 

"It's awesome," he continued.

More from Oculus Connect: Oculus open-sources original Rift developer kit's firmware, schematics, and mechanics

The core features: 360-degree tracking (there are LEDs on the back of the headset now), a quicker refresh rate, and optional integrated audio (you can move the small attached earbuds out of the way to use your own headphones) along with 360 VR audio software powered by RealSpace 3D's audio system.

The Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype includes LEDs on the rear of the headstrap to offer full 360-degree head tracking.

Iribe also talked about how Oculus's plans encompass both mobile and PC going forward. "Today on PC you get high fidelity and a sense of presence, which is the magic of VR," said Iribe. "With mobile the magic is accessibility, affordability, and portability." He claims that embracing both platforms is the way to "connect a billion people in VR"—a long-standing goal for the company.

They're well on the way, considering Oculus still hasn't shipped a real consumer-facing product. "There's over 100,000 Rift developer kits shipped to over 130 countries around the world. We launched two years ago," said Iribe. "That's incredible." He later said he thinks the actual number is near 130,000 development kits at this point.

Still no mention of a consumer release date, though. All we got was "We're really sprinting towards the consumer version." One of these days...

Stay tuned to PCWorld for more news from Oculus Connect—both Michael Abrash and John Carmack have keynotes later today. Or, for up to the minute news, feel free to follow my Twitter feed, where I'll be posting highlights and photos all day. We'll also have a hands-on with the Crescent Bay model soon.

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Samsung launches free'My Knox' app for securing its latest smartphones

Samsung on Thursday announced price reductions and updates for its Knox security and management software for IT shops and a free My Knox service that is directly available to professionals using ActiveSync.

My Knox can be installed on a user's Galaxy S5 or Galaxy Note 4 smartphone without an IT administrator's involvement to set up a My Knox User Portal to remotely find, wipe and lock a device, according to a Samsung blog.

With My Knox, professionals can synchronize emails, calendar events and contacts between desktop computers and mobile devices, Samsung said. It creates a virtual Android partition within the mobile device that has its own home screen, launcher, apps and widget.

"If you are looking for a free security solution that ensures your privacy while providing the simplicity of having a secure workspace for email and apps that is managed by you, look no further than My Knox," Samsung's blog says.

Samsung also posted a separate blog that details its new Knox Premium and Knox Express services for IT admins to deploy cross-platform mobile security companywide.

Knox Premium for large enterprises will cost $1 per user, while Knox Express for small and medium businesses will be free. Cloud support for Knox tools had been priced as high as $3.60 per user, but Jae Shin, vice president of the Knox Business Group, recently said the price would soon go down.

"Knox Premium will be attractive to businesses because of its low cost and it will address concerns that Knox is expensive and not affordable," said Shreyas Sadalgi, senior vice president of business development at Samsung Knox partner Centrify. He spoke in a recent interview.

Samsung described Knox Premium as a "complete mobility management solution" that includes Knox Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), which is cloud based for easy deployment. It works across other device platforms besides Android, but Samsung didn't say which ones. It also comes with online technical and phone ticket support.

Knox Express will also have Knox EMM, and will have an online portal for IT admins with support for Samsung and other Android and iOS devices, Samsung said.

Centrify provides the cloud-based identity and access management features of Knox EMM.

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IEEE standards group wants to bring order to IoT

The IEEE is embarking on an ambitious effort to build a overarching architecture for the Internet of Things, spanning a multitude of industries and technologies.

IEEE P2413, which the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers officially started work on in July, would form a framework for interoperability among connected devices and related applications in home automation, industrial systems, telematics and all other sectors that are expected to use IoT in the coming years. While leaving room for differences across those industries, the standard would allow for sharing of data across IoT systems, according to Oleg Logvinov, chair of the IEEE P2413 Working Group.

"The activities in the Internet of Things today are disjointed," Logvinov said Thursday at the IEEE Standards Association IoT Workshop in Mountain View, California.

IDC analyst Michael Palma, who also spoke at the workshop, counted seven industry groups plus the IEEE that are working in this area. They include enterprise-level bodies such as the Industrial Internet Consortium and more consumer-focused efforts such as AllJoyn.

"What they need is the Rosetta Stone to make everything talk and work together," Palma said.

A unifying force

IEEE is a powerful international body that's set the standards for, among other things, ethernet and wireless LANs. But the P2413 Working Group, which first met in July, doesn't want to replace existing IoT groups. Rather it aims to create a standard architecture so IoT systems for all industries can work together.

"They need a place where they can come together and move forward as a scalable, unified platform," Logvinov said. "That type of unification can be enabled only by a global, international standard."

Logvinov and others at the event compared today's IoT to a group of islands. To form the greater whole that IoT can be, there's a need for bridges between those islands and eventually a merging into one land mass that can house the equivalent of a big city, they said. The benefits of bringing different areas of IoT together could include economies of scale, lower hardware prices and future applications as yet unimagined.

That problem exists in a nutshell in the medical equipment industry, according to Dr. Julian Goldman, director of medical device interoperability at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The makers of various types of devices for monitoring patients' health don't design their products to share data or even acknowledge one another, so doctors can't get as good information as they might, he said. For example, measurements taken by a blood oxygen sensor on a patient's finger can be affected by the actions of a blood-pressure monitor that squeezes the patient's arm, but the systems don't automatically account for that effect, Goldman said.

"If we don't look at the lessons today in health care, the Internet of Things is not going to be an Internet of Things, it's going to be a pile of things," Goldman said.

A standard by 2016?

The P2413 group hopes to define the basic building blocks of IoT systems that are common across industries, Logvinov said. Among other things, it hopes to turn the information coming from different platforms into commonly understood data objects, he said. It hopes to finish the standard by 2016, a goal that Logvinov acknowledged is ambitious.

A standard that spans IoT will be hard to build, but so will IoT itself, which may represent the next phase of the industrial revolution, he said.

"It's worth the effort," Logvinov said. "It's worth trying to build."

There are too many vendors and groups pushing overlapping specifications for IoT, said Michael Holdmann, executive vice president of sales, marketing and strategy at Coversant, in an interview at the forum. Coversant sells communications software that's used in some IoT systems today.

"People are just trying to do things that are already out there," Holdmann said.

He welcomes the P2413 effort but said it will be important for the group to coordinate with other organizations. In time, people trying to use IoT will demand some kind of order, he said. "The market is going to drive the standards bodies to cooperate."

Coordination with other organizations, including ETSI (the European Telecommunications Standards Institute), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the machine-to-machine group oneM2M, is part of the P2413 game plan, Logvinov said. There are currently 23 vendors and organizations represented in the P2413 group, including Cisco Systems, Huawei Technologies, General Electric, Oracle, Qualcomm and the ZigBee Alliance.

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