Panasonic ties up with 'Avatar' movie to go 3-D

Panasonic Corp. has signed on "Titanic" director James Cameron and his upcoming film in an advertising blitz for its TVs equipped with 3-D technology, both sides said Friday.

The deal between the major Japanese electronics maker and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.'s "Avatar" — the first major Hollywood 3-D release that's not animation — comes as competition heats up in flat-panel TVs that show three-dimensional images, or stereoscopic vision.




To watch 3-D TVs, viewers must wear special glasses that block vision in one eye and then the other as the TVs switch rapidly between images for each eye to create an illusion of depth.

Panasonic is planning to start selling 3-D TVs next year. Rivals, including Sony Corp., which has its own movie division, and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea have shown prototypes and may offer similar products.

The problem is the scarcity of content to view in 3-D. Skeptics say a number of Blu-ray discs of appealing 3-D movies must come out for 3-D TVs to catch on.

Several animation films are already being shown in theaters in 3-D, but "Avatar," set for release Dec. 18, will be the first major non-animation film debuting worldwide in both 2-D and 3-D.

"I believe 3-D is how we will experience movies, gaming and computing in the near future. 3-D is not something you watch. It's a reality you feel you could step into," Cameron said on video.

Panasonic is hoping its collaboration with Cameron will give it an edge in brand image as a 3-D leader as well as in obtaining suggestions for technological improvements for home TVs, said General Manager Masayuki Kozuka.




"We want to get global interest rolling," he told The Associated Press. "For people to want to watch 3-D at home, the movie has to be a blockbuster."

Panasonic plans to have several trailer-vans driving around in the U.S. and Europe next month with large-screen 3-D TVs inside showing "Avatar." In Japan, footage from "Avatar" — a science-fiction "Pocahontas"-like romance set in a futuristic jungle inhabited by creatures evocative of Cameron's "Aliens" — will appear in ads for 3-D TVs.

Details on the 3-D Blu-ray release of "Avatar" for TVs have not been set.

Prosecutors say man stole 130M credit card numbers

Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a Miami man with the largest case of credit and debit card data theft ever in the United States, accusing the one-time government informant of swiping 130 million accounts on top of 40 million he stole previously.

Albert Gonzalez, 28, broke his own record for identity theft by hacking into retail networks, according to prosecutors, though they say his illicit computer exploits ended when he went to jail on charges stemming from an earlier case.




Gonzalez is a former informant for the U.S. Secret Service who helped the agency hunt hackers, authorities say. The agency later found out that he had also been working with criminals and feeding them information on ongoing investigations, even warning off at least one individual, according to authorities.

Gonzalez, who is already in jail awaiting trial in a hacking case, was indicted Monday in New Jersey and charged with conspiring with two other unnamed suspects to steal the private information. Prosecutors say the goal was to sell the stolen data to others.

How much of the data was sold and then used to make fraudulent charges is unclear. Investigators in such cases say it is usually impossible to quantify the impact of such thefts on account holders.

Prosecutors say Gonzalez, who is known online as "soupnazi," targeted customers of convenience store giant 7-Eleven Inc. and supermarket chain Hannaford Brothers, Co. Inc. He also targeted Heartland Payment Systems, a New Jersey-based card payment processor.

According to the indictment, Gonazalez and his two Russian coconspirators would hack into corporate computer networks and secretly place "malware," or malicious software, that would allow them backdoor access to the networks later to steal data.

Gonzalez faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the new charges. His lawyer did not immediately return a call for comment.

Gonzalez is awaiting trial next month in New York for allegedly helping hack the computer network of the national restaurant chain Dave and Buster's.

The Justice Department said the new case represents the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, based on a scheme that began in October 2006.

Gonzalez allegedly devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate the computer networks, steal the card data, and send that data to computer servers in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.




Also last year, the Justice Department announced additional charges against Gonzalez and others for hacking retail companies' computers for the theft of approximately 40 million credit cards. At the time, that was believed to be the biggest single case of hacking private computer networks to steal credit card data, puncturing the electronic defenses of retailers including T.J. Maxx, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and OfficeMax.

Prosecutors charge Gonzalez was the ringleader of the hackers in that case.

At the time of those charges, officials said the alleged thieves weren't computer geniuses, just opportunists who used a technique called "wardriving," which involved cruising through different areas with a laptop computer and looking for accessible wireless Internet signals. Once they located a vulnerable network, they installed so-called "sniffer programs" that captured credit and debit card numbers as they moved through a retailer's processing networks.

Gonzalez faces a possible life sentence if convicted in that case.

Restaurants are among the most common targets for hackers, experts said, because they often fail to update their antivirus software and other computer security systems.

Scott Christie, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in New Jersey, said the case shows that despite the best efforts by companies to protect data privacy, there are still individuals capable of sneaking in.

"Cases like this do cause companies to sit up and take notice that this is a problem and more needs to be done," said Christie.

Phones, PCs put e-book within reach of Kindle-les

A few weeks ago, Pasquale Castaldo was waiting at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for a delayed flight, when a man sitting across from him pulled out an Amazon Kindle book-reading device.

"Gee, maybe I should think about e-books myself," Castaldo thought.




He didn't have a Kindle, but he did have a BlackBerry. He pulled it out and looked for available applications. Sure enough, Barnes & Noble Inc. had just put up an e-reading program. Castaldo, 54, downloaded it, and within a minute, began reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

As others are also discovering, the North Haven, Conn., banker found e-books quite accessible without a Kindle.

"The BlackBerry is always with me," Castaldo said. "Rather than just sitting there, if I can fill that time by reading a good book, I might do that, in addition to doing the other things I might do, like reading e-mail and Twittering."

Thanks to Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, e-book sales are finally zooming, after more than a decade in the doldrums.

But the pioneering device may not dominate the market for long. As Castaldo found, many phones are now sophisticated enough, and have good enough screens, to be used as e-book reading devices. In addition, e-book reading on computers is already surprisingly popular.

E-book sales reported to the Association of American Publishers have been rising sharply since the beginning of 2008, just after the release of the Kindle. It's the best sustained growth the industry has seen since the International Digital Publishing Forum began tracking sales in 2002 — a sign that e-books finally could be about to break into the mainstream.

U.S. trade e-book sales in the April to June period this year more than tripled from the amount a year ago, as reported by about a dozen publishers.

Total reported sales at wholesale prices were $37.6 million. That's less than 2 percent of the overall book market, but the number understates e-book sales, because not all publishers contribute to the report. The figure also excludes textbooks, an area where e-books have made substantial inroads.

While other digital media like CDs, DVDs and MP3 songs showed sharp growth rates from the get-go, e-books have puttered around as a tiny fraction of overall book sales for more than a decade. In several periods, sales actually declined from year to year as publishers wavered in their commitment and interest.

The technology has also faced unique resistance from consumers because printed books work so well.

The most well-known dedicated reading devices, the Kindle and Sony Corp.'s Reader, try to emulate the look of the printed page with a display technology known as "electronic ink."

While many find the result pleasant to read, e-ink also imposes significant limitations on the devices. They can't be backlit like other screens. They can't show color. They're also slow to update, making them difficult to use for Web browsing or other computer activities.

The Kindle has a wireless connection directly to Amazon's store, meaning users can buy and download books to the device within minutes, much like Castaldo could do on his smart phone. The Reader lacks a wireless capability and thus needs to be connected to a computer to load books.




Amazon isn't betting solely on the Kindle. It released an iPhone app for the Kindle store in March. It has snapped up some other developers of book-reading applications for smart phones, but these programs don't use the Kindle store.

Shanna Vaughn, a university worker and voracious reader in Orange County, Calif., has been reading e-books on a computer or handheld organizer for at least ten years, but it was only an occasional habit until she got an iPhone last year. It's mainly the convenience that's winning her over: Because Vaughn can buy and download books nearly instantly to the phone, she doesn't need to plan a trip to the book store.

Vaughn, 35, is not interested in a Kindle or a Reader.

"I never really wanted something that was a single-function device. I just couldn't see spending ... $300 for a device where I'm sort of locked in to one retailer. Whereas my phone, that does everything."

Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said that while the Kindle has sparked interest in e-books, downloads of e-reading applications for smart phones have far outnumbered the Kindles sold.

The Stanza app for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, for instance, has been downloaded more than 2 million times since last summer, compared with Rotman Epps' estimate of more than 900,000 Kindles sold through the first quarter of this year. (Lexcycle Inc., the maker of Stanza, was acquired in April by Amazon, which does not disclose Kindle sales.)

"There will be a market for dedicated reading devices, but there's potentially an even bigger market for reading on devices that people already own, like smart phones," she said.

According to a survey of 2,600 adults by research firm Simba Information this spring, the most common way to read e-books is on another general-purpose device: the personal computer. It found that 8 percent of adults had bought an e-book last year, a high figure considering that Kindle sales were less than half a percent of the adult population.

Bob LiVolsi, the founder and CEO of independent e-book retailer BooksOnBoard, said two-thirds of his customers read their books on their PCs. Romance, thriller and mystery titles costing $5 to $7 are the big draw for his customers, who aren't high earners and have trouble justifying the cost of a dedicated device.

Though adoption has been slow, PCs have had a big head start in e-books, said Michael Norris, senior publishing analyst at Simba. Their ubiquity also means they provide some camouflage to avid readers who want to "read a romance novel at work while pretending to work," he said.

Robert Lisi, a construction estimator in Charleston, S.C., reads on his BlackBerry when he doesn't have his Sony Reader handy.

He's even signed up for The Daily Lit, a service that sends out books in e-mail every day, broken up into chunks that take about five minutes to read on a BlackBerry or computer screen.

"I have books on tape, and then I have books on paper and as e-books," Lisi said. "I want to get to where I'm reading a book a week, but I work, so I can't do that."

Microsoft, Nokia form alliance to rival RIM

Microsoft Corp and Nokia announced an alliance on Wednesday to bring business software to smartphones and counter the dominance of Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The alliance between the world's largest software company and cell phone maker means the latest versions of Microsoft's Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and messaging, will be available on a range of Nokia cell phones, which make up 45 percent of the global smartphone market.




The two companies, at one time fierce rivals in the mobile telecommunications business, expect to offer Nokia phones running Office sometime next year.

"This is giving some of our competitors -- let's spell it out, RIM -- a run for their money," said Nokia Executive Vice President Robert Andersson, in a telephone interview. "I don't think BlackBerry has seen the kind of competition we can provide them now."

Research in Motion's BlackBerry created the market for mobile e-mail, and its dominant position in the corporate sector, especially in North America, has protected it from Nokia's attempts to crack the market in recent years.

"RIM should be reasonably safe in the near-term because Nokia's presence in the U.S. is relatively small," said Neil Mawston from research firm Strategy Analytics. "Partnering more closely with Microsoft will help to raise Nokia's profile in the U.S."

The alliance also aims to counter Google Inc's recent move into free online software, targeted at Microsoft's business customers, and the growing popularity of Apple Inc's iPhone device.

"It's clear that Nokia and Microsoft are both facing competitive challenges, most notably from Google," said John Jackson, an analyst at wireless research firm CCS Insight. "It makes sense for these two companies to work together to see if they can pool their competitive strengths to try and counter some of this pressure."




The alliance means Microsoft's new Office suite of applications could be available to a much wider audience than the users of Windows Mobile phones, which make up 9 percent of the smartphone market.

"We see this as a great opportunity to deliver Office Mobile to 200 million Nokia smartphone customers," said Takeshi Numoto, an executive at Microsoft's Office business.

Analysts said Microsoft is clearly looking at the largest possible audience with the Nokia deal.

"The deal is a good win for Microsoft and it will surely now be hoping to upsell the Microsoft suite of operating systems into Nokia's possible portfolios of smartphones, mobile Internet devices and netbooks over the next couple of years," said Strategy Analytics' Mawston.

The two companies stressed that the new venture will not affect the future of Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian operating systems for smartphones. Executives said Nokia has no plans to make a Windows Mobile device.

"We are extremely committed to Symbian," said Andersson. "This is very clear. This is a multi-year collaboration building on Symbian. We are as committed as before, if not more," he said.

Microsoft shares rose 2.1 percent to $23.62 on Nasdaq while Nokia rose less than 1 percent to 9.30 euros in Helsinki. Shares in RIM were 0.5 percent lower in Toronto. (Reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle and Tarmo Virki in Helsinki, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Robert MacMillan) Keywords: MICROSOFT/NOKIA

Judge rules against RealNetworks DVD copy software

A federal judge has barred RealNetworks Inc. from selling a device that allows consumers to copy DVDs to their computer hard drives, pending a full trial.

Walt Disney Co., Sony Corp. and Universal Studios, among others, filed suit against Seattle-based RealNetworks in 2008, saying its RealDVD device is an illegal pirating tool. The Hollywood studios contend that RealDVD would keep consumers from paying retail for movies on DVD that could be rented cheaply, copied and returned.




RealNetworks has said its product legally meets growing consumer demand to convert their DVDs to digital form for convenient storage and viewing. RealNetworks lawyers have argued that RealDVD is equipped with piracy protections that limit a DVD owner to making a single copy. They also said the device provides consumers with a legitimate way to back up copies of movies legally purchased.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled in favor of the movie studios in granting a preliminary injunction against RealDVD, declaring that the technology would allow consumers renting and buying DVDs to violate copyright laws.

In a 58-page document, Patel said RealNetworks failed to show that the RealDVD products are to be used by consumers primarily for legitimate purposes.

"The court appreciates Real's argument that a consumer has a right to make a backup copy of a DVD for their own personal use," Patel wrote, but noted that "a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."

Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of Motion Picture Association of America Inc., said in a written statement Tuesday that the ruling "affirms what we have known all along: RealNetworks took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier."

"This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy," he said.




RealNetworks said it is "disappointed" in the decision.

"We have just received the Judge's detailed ruling and are reviewing it," the company said in a statement. "After we have done so fully, we'll determine our course of action and will have more to say at that time."

In October 2008, Patel temporarily barred sales of RealDVD after the $29.99 product was on the market for a few days. At the time, the judge said it appeared the software violated federal law against digital piracy, and she ordered detailed court filings and the trial to better understand how RealDVD works.

The judge's ruling Tuesday did not set a date for a trial in the case.

EBay, GM set to start car-selling trial Tuesday

General Motors and eBay Inc. are expected to announce Monday that hundreds of the auto maker's California dealers will let consumers haggle over the prices of new cars and trucks through the online marketplace, as part of a previously disclosed trial.

About 225 of California's 250 GM dealers are set to take part in the program, which will begin on Tuesday. They will be selling Buick, Chevrolet, GMC and Pontiac vehicles on cobranded Web sites through eBay's online auto marketplace, eBay Motors, until Sept. 8. The cars will also be searchable through eBay Motors and eBay's main site.




The trial is part of Detroit-based GM's turnaround plan, making more official a practice some of its dealers had already participated in on their own. It expands an existing partnership covering GM certified used vehicles sold through eBay.

It also marks a shift for San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, since most of the vehicles sold on eBay Motors — a site that sells various types of vehicles and auto parts — have traditionally been used.

Starting Tuesday, eBay visitors will be able to visit Web pages like gm.ebay.com and chevy.ebay.com, where they can browse new 2008 and 2009 vehicles, ask dealers questions and figure out financing.

The cobranded sites will also include a Web tool currently on eBay Motors that helps shoppers determine if they're qualified to trade in their old car for money toward a new one under the government's just-refilled "cash-for-clunkers" stimulus program.

Car buyers will be able to choose between the two standard options currently offered on eBay Motors: Negotiating a price with a dealer through the site or purchasing right then at a fixed price. Cars will be picked up at the dealerships.

EBay Motors Vice President Rob Chesney said the companies decided to run the trial in California because there are many tech-savvy consumers there. EBay users who live outside California can contact dealers to see if they're willing to sell and ship vehicles to them, he said.

The test comes a month after GM made an unusually quick exit from bankruptcy protection with ambitions of becoming profitable and building cars people are eager to buy. Once the world's largest and most powerful automaker, new GM is now leaner, cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it without additional federal loans.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson said in July that the company was working on an experiment that would let eBay users in California bid on vehicles or buy them at a fixed price. Dealers were to distribute the cars. At the time, no deal had been completed, though.




Mark LaNeve, GM's vice president of U.S. sales, believes that getting the auto maker directly involved in new online sales will give customers a larger sense of security about buying a car on the Web. Currently, many consumers research new cars online, but most still go down to a dealer to make the actual purchase.

He's hoping it generates more interest in GM vehicles in California — a market he said the company needs to improve in.

For eBay, the program fits in with its strategy of growing its market for goods that are still new but not necessarily the latest models. It's also a chance to get more people interested in making new, large purchases on a site whose past is steeped in the sale of hard-to-find collectibles. The sale of used cars on eBay is already proof that consumers are getting more and more comfortable buying higher-priced items online, Chesney said.

"New cars are like the next frontier of that," he said.

The companies would not give financial details of the deal, but GM spokesman John McDonald said it is an arrangement that they think will be profitable for both firms.

If the companies feel the trial is successful, they want to expand it across the country. Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay marketplaces, said eBay may eventually try doing the same thing with other auto makers, too.

Inder Dosanjh, a Dublin, Calif.-based dealer who owns four GM dealerships and currently sells used cars on eBay, said the program shows GM is trying to step outside the box and find new ways to sell cars. He plans to list all his new inventory on eBay this week.

"I think they should have done this a long time ago," he said.

InfoWorld releases new Windows 7, iPhone 'deep dive' reports

Infoworld today released two special PDF reports in its "Deep Dive" series: one on Windows 7 and one one enterprise iPhone. InfoWorld, a Web-based publication devoted to emerging technology and hands-on business tech expertise, had previously released a "Deep Dive" report on next-gen mobile devices and a quick-start guide to Windows 7.

The new reports feature the results of hands-on testing from InfoWorld's independent Test Center. They also contain deployment advice for the new Microsoft Windows, due to be released on Oct. 22, and the new iPhone 3.0 OS, released in late June, from the site's cadre of editors and working-professional contributors.




The "Windows 7 Deep Dive" explores the performance of the forthcoming Windows 7, with special attention to Windows 7's ability to perform on the new generation of multicore chips compared to Windows Vista and XP. It also examines the changes to the Windows operating system's interface and explores the changes under the hood, such as to its security capabilities. The "Deep Dive" report also explores ways to make Windows 7 more secure, integrate with Microsoft's Windows Server 2008, and migrate from Windows XP in a business environment. (InfoWorld also offers a tool to check PCs' compatibility with Windows 7, as well as a quick-start guide to Windows 7 for busy execs.)

The "Enterprise iPhone Deep Dive" explores the use of Apple's popular mobile device in a business context, examining how well Apple's iPhone Configuration Utility and the newfound support in the recent iPhone 3.0 OS for Microsoft's ActiveSync management tool actually work. The report also examines the business fit of the new iPhone 3.0 OS and compares the iPhone to its primary business-class competitors: the RIM BlackBerry and the Palm Pre. For professional developers, the report shows the results of InfoWorld's hands-on testing of third-party iPhone application development tools.