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Monday, March 2, 2009

InternetNews Realtime IT News - Amazon Backtracks on Kindle Voice Feature

Amazon Backtracks on Kindle Voice Feature

But differences over copyright implications still remain unsolved.

March 2, 2009
By Judy Mottl: More stories by this author:

Amazon Kindle 2

Amazon is rethinking its stance on the text-to-speech function in its
new Kindle 2 e-book reader, saying authors and publishers critical of
the feature will soon be able to block it from their works.

Yet Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) which debuted its second-generation e-reader
early last month, still maintains that the feature, called "Read to Me,"
does not violate licensing and copyright regulations.

The move comes as a response to criticism of the feature from portions
of the publishing industry. Last month, the Authors Guild, a writer
advocacy group, claimed that "Read to Me" constitutes a new literature
format that allows Amazon to skirt rules around licensing book formats.
E-books and audiobooks, for instance, are both licensed for compensation
purposes.
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But the Guild said that the text-to-speech capability of the Kindle 2
makes for a new format that is not covered under existing agreements.

Amazon said that it aims to avoid the problem by giving copyright
holders the opportunity to specify whether their e-books would support
the feature. The company said it's now revamping its publishing system
to enable writers, authors and publishers to disable the technology on a
case-by-case basis.

Eucalyptus: the unsung hero of Open Source? - Blogs – ComputerworldUK blogs - The latest technology news & analysis on Outsourcing, HMRC data, Apple iPhone, Global warming, MySQL, Open Enterprise

Eucalyptus: the unsung hero of Open Source?

March 02, 2009

Posted by: Tom Callway ShareThis

Eucalyptus is an open-source infrastructure for the implementation of
cloud computing on computer clusters. Its name is an acronym for
"Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To
Useful Systems".

The current interface is compatible with Amazon's EC2 cloud computing
interface. Tom Callway speaks to Rich Wolski, the project's director,
about how Eucalyptus can be leveraged by enterprises and where it sits
along side proprietary alternatives like Windows Azure.

1) Can you tell us what led you and your team to develop Eucalyptus?

Gartner: PC sales to see worst fall in history | Tech News on ZDNet

Gartner: PC sales to see worst fall in history

By Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk
Posted on ZDNet News: Mar 02, 2009 10:46:07 AM

The global PC industry will suffer its 'sharpest decline in history' in 2009, as overall demand for PCs falls by 11.9 percent compared with 2008, according to analysts at Gartner.

The new low beats the previous record decline of just 3.2 percent, which took place in 2001. According to a statement from Gartner, both emerging and mature markets are forecast "to suffer unprecedented market slowdowns".

The worst previously recorded performance in emerging market PC sales was growth of 11.1 percent in 2002, but in 2009 they will see contraction of 10.4 percent. Mature market sales had a record fall of 7.9 percent in 2001, but this year they will fall by 13 percent, Gartner said.

One relatively bright spot has been the success of netbooks, which are forecast to total 21 million units in 2009 — almost double the 2008 figure of 11.7 million. Netbooks will "cushion the overall PC market slowdown, but they remain too few to prevent the market's steep decline," the Gartner report said.

Netbooks are forecast to represent eight percent of PC shipments in 2009.

Gartner senior analyst Angela McIntyre said in a statement that "mature markets continue to be the primary consumers of [netbooks] but as prices continue to fall, they are likely to attract increasing numbers of emerging market buyers".

All PC suppliers will struggle over the coming months, said Gartner senior analyst Ranjit Atwal. "It will come down to... how exposed they are and in which markets," he said.

Read More...

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-274245.html

Don