It was a wide-ranging assessment by Clinton, whose administration (1993-2001) played a largely hands-off role when it came to e-commerce. The forum was organized by VeriSign Inc. to mark the anniversary of the March 15, 1985 registration of Symbolics.com, a computer company. The anniversary event ranged from sweeping to whimsical, all of which characterized Clinton’s talk.

Clinton offered a grim take on mainstream media when asked by VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin about his favorite Web sites. In response, he ticked off several political sites, including Politico , The Daily Beast and Huffington Post , as well as a few “right wing ones” to get both sides of the political debate. . But Clinton said that many of the political sites “don’t have to do what a newspaper does every day,” which is why he is “really worried about our ability to maintain any newspapers” or anything that “serves as a standard of objectivity.”

“It’s almost impossible given the economics of the modern world for newspapers to continue…,” said Clinton.

Asked by VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin what his favorite device is, Clinton named the iPhone, “because I can get so much stuff on it.” The former president also has a Blackberry, but no e-reader .

“I don’t even own a Kindle, yet,” said Clinton, who still prefers physical books.

As for his administration’s role in shaping Internet policy, Clinton said that its most important discovery was the realization “that this was going to be the dominant mode of the communication in the 21st Century,” he said. “Realizing (the Internet’s) importance led to everything else,” he said.

The Clinton administration set out a federal role for the Net in a 1997 report, “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce.” Its overarching conclusion: that “for electronic commerce to flourish, the private sector must continue to lead.”

Even so, he said that the broadband access framework proposed by the Federal Communications Commission may be needed. The deregulation approach helped the U.S. move ahead quicker than some other nations, “but a lot of our competitors now have better cell phone coverage than we do because they had some regulation to guarantee a framework of universal access.

“In general, our entrepreneurial approach is the best one,” said Clinton, but “there are limits to it and sometimes we need a framework to make sure the markets can continue to grow by having more universal access. So I’m hoping the FCC proposals will do that.”

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld . Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com .

Source:itnews.com

China’s pricing of these metals is so low that it has become unprofitable for mining companies in U.S. and other Western countries to mine and process them.

The U.S. is almost completely dependent on China for these metals. One metal, neodymium, is used in hard-disk drive magnets, and nearly 100% of its production today is in China.

“China appears to view rare earths as one of the incentives they can offer a technology firm scouting for a new plant location,” said U.S. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in a statement on Tuesday.

“How do we compete in attracting and retaining manufacturing firms that need access to rare earth elements in light of China’s current near monopoly, and their willingness to use their monopoly power to our disadvantage?”

Jack Lifton, a Detroit-based independent consultant on rare earth metals, said that the Chinese have managed to keep the price of neodymium very low. “It’s not about making a profit,” he said, in an interview.

The U.S. has sufficient natural supply of rear earth elements but the cost of mining them is too great because of the price set by China have given it, in effect, a monopoly. “They have priced the stuff so low that they have made it impossible to mine it here,” Lifton said.

If the price of rare earth metals was competitive, Lifton said he believes the U.S. could revive some manufacturing industries.

The major source of rare earth deposits in the U.S. was at Mountain Pass, Calif., but mining operations ceased 2002. The new mine owner, Molycorp Minerals LLC, sells existing deposits, but it is working on a plan to resume mining.

But mining is only part of the process. The U.S. has lost its capacity to manufacture rare earth metals, and those capabilities will have to be reintroduced into the U.S.

One of the last U.S. companies manufacturing rare earth magnets was Valparaiso Ind.-based Magnequench Inc., which was acquired by a Chinese company and eventually moved to China about five years ago.

“This deal and subsequent deals around the globe have allowed China to come closer to cornering the market in rare earth minerals,” wrote the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission in a 2005 report.

“Of equal concern is the transfer of technology, including patents, allowing China to control development of next-generation products using rare earth minerals,” the report said.

Mark Smith, CEO of Molycorp Minerals, told the congressional committee this week that “while the U.S. still possesses the technical expertise, we have lost the necessary infrastructure to manufacture the rare earth metals and magnets that fuel next generation technologies.”

Along with high-tech uses, rare metals are heavily used by defense and, increasingly, for clean energy.

China has acquired 100% of the associated rare earth metal production. This is causing much concern because, Smith said, “China’s national consumption of rare earth resources is growing at an intense pace, consistent with their meteoric GDP growth, and it is leaving the rest of the world with less of these critical materials just as the clean energy economy is beginning to gain momentum.”

Source:itnews.com

Providing full 1080p30 resolution on a 24-inch HD desktop screen will allow executives to interact with customers, employees and others “as if they were sitting across the desk,” Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen said in a statement.

The EX90 monitor can double as a PC monitor or it can be coupled with a second monitor in a package where one shows all videoconference communications and the other provides for joint viewing of documents and other materials.

The EX90 system also comes with a camera that can tilt at a 90 degree angle to capture and transmit images of sketches, product samples and other documents.

It also includes a separate eight-inch touchscreen that can be used to set up video calls and share content. The touchscreen eliminates the need for the remote device commonly used in larger videoconferencing systems.

A videoconference session can be extended to three other users at once.

Tandberg said that Varian Medical Systems, a manufacturer of medical devices, uses the system.

In a statement, Steve Henderson, program manager at Varian, called the EX90 a “natural extension” of Tandberg’s room-sized telepresence suites. He added that the touchscreen module makes video navigation “easy and intuitive.”

Cisco and Tandberg, like some of their competitors, have mostly focused on high definition videoconferencing as a way to improve the video quality of live sessions, especially those viewed in large specially-equipped rooms, usually referred to as “telepresence.”

In a joint statement on Feb. 9, both companies said they will remain competitors until the close of Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg . Regulatory approvals are expected before June. Cisco at the time also elaborated on plans to integrate the technologies of the two firms — noting that it will continue to sell both Tandberg’s personal videoconferencing systems and Cisco’s smaller TelePresence Systems.

For the larger “immersive” room-based telepresence systems, Cisco’s product line will remain while Tandberg’s Total Telepresence Solution, including the T3 and T1 product lines, will be adapted custom deployments and a range of other systems, Cisco said.

Cisco agreed late last year to pay $3.4 billion to acquire Tandberg as part of its plan to become an uber video company. The final price was $400 million above Cisco’s original offer .

Cisco also has acquired Pure Digital Technology, maker of the Flip video handheld device, and in October agreed to pay $2.9 billion to buy Starent Networks , a maker of products designed to help wireless carriers pump data to smartphones and other devices.

Tandberg expects to show off the EX90 at the VoiceCon conference next week in Orlando. Pricing for the system has not been announced.

Videoconferencing products are also offered by Hewlett-Packard, Polycom and Logitech, among others.

Source:itnews.com

The Commodore 64 was a home computer running on an 8-bit processor released by Commodore International in 1982. The computer was one of the most popular models of all time, selling close to 17 million units between 1982 and 1994, according to the Computer History Museum.

The revamped computer will be available through the Commodore USA online store, which is set to open June 1, according to the company’s Web site. The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities, according to the site.

To conform with the times, the PC also offers up to 500GB of hard drive storage and 4GB of RAM. Also included are a DVD-RW drive, a touchpad, four USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port to connect monitors. No price information was given on the Web site.

Commodore USA is a new company that has licensed the Commodore name from Commodore Gaming, which makes games for PCs and consoles. The PC company is trying to invoke the glory of the Commodore 64′s past to promote the new PC. On its Web site, the company shows an image of the old Commodore 64 with the caption “you loved us then,” and then an image of the new PC, with the caption “you’ll love us again.”

The device is small, measuring 17.5 inches (0.44 meters) wide and 2 inches (0.05 meters) tall, Commodore said. “It’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer,” Commodore USA said. The PC will run the Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

But will it find buyers? The glorious past of Commodore PCs might not be repeated for its successor, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

“It’s a weird legacy thing with modern inerts,” Kay said. Commodore PCs had a heavy following in the 1980s among hobbyists, but the glory days may not translate to better sales with price-conscious customers today, Kay said.

Commodore started selling Commodore 64 in 1982 for US$599 and managed to reduce the price to $199 over time, a revolutionary price then, said Jack Tramiel, former chairman of Commodore International, during a panel discussion in late 2007.

During the same panel, Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs approached Commodore with an Apple II prototype, which was much more advanced in color, graphics, sound and games. Apple at the time didn’t have the money to make and sell the Apple II, and was hoping Commodore would push the design to market. Commodore, however, preferred to develop the Commodore 64 as a simpler, lower-cost, black-and-white-only machine.

Commodore wanted to serve the “masses,” not the “classes,” Tramiel said during the discussion. Commodore kept updating the original Commodore 64 design and became the first to sell more than a million PCs, but the company filed for bankruptcy in 1994 and liquidated its assets. In the meanwhile, Apple managed to survive, and the Apple II became one of the most recognized computers in the 1980s.

Commodore computers were made for enthusiasts and came with fairly arcane software and hardware elements, Kay said. Kay bypassed a Commodore and bought an Apple II in the early 1980s, as it had software that made the computer easier to use.

“It wasn’t so easy [to use a Commodore], the way Apple always understood the experience should be,” Kay said. That made the Apple II computer better for new users entering the computer market.

Source:itnews.com

The new microSDHC card targets the smartphone market and uses third-generation 32nm lithography techniques with 3-bit-per-cell NAND flash technology.

Most manufactures of NAND flash products use 2-bit-per-cell multi-level cell (MLC) memory.

“With the large volume of photos, videos and music that consumers create and carry around, a high-capacity memory card is a must-have component of today’s smartphone,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk’s president, in a statement. “This is the highest-capacity card of its type, and SanDisk is pleased to be the first to ship such an advanced product. This marks yet another important first in our innovative history in the flash memory industry.”

SanDisk said 32GB cards are already needed by many users as smartphones increasingly serve as mobile offices, and incorporate music players, cameras, video recorders, GPS devices and gateways to the mobile Internet. The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card, SanDisk noted, can store enough music to play music on more than 35 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York before repeating a single song.

SanDisk microSDHC cards are also available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card is available now on SanDisk.com as well as on U.S. and European e-commerce. Worldwide retail availability is expected to follow next month.

The new card comes with a 5 year limited warranty and has a retail price of $199.99.

Source:itnews.com

The HP Pavilion dv4i can have up to 8GB of DDR3 memory RAM, as well as a hard-drive with 500GB of storage capacity, and an optional ATI Radeon 4550 with 512MB. The display screen of the latest HP Pavilion has a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, and you can opt for a DVD burner or a Blu-ray drive.

Other goodies of the dv4i include an optional HDTV tuner, webcam + mic, stereo speakers, WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, 3 USB ports, a 5-in-1 media card reader, and another optional deatil which is the fingerprint reader.

This laptop runs Windows 7 Home Premium and is already available at the online store of HP for $800.

Source:mobilewhack.com

It also supports the multitouch capability of Windows 7 operating devices. It is available for a price at $749.99.

Source:mobilewhack.com

One of these is the X420, a notebook with a 14-inch screen. It has a distinctive keyboard with raised keys, as well as MSI’s color film print technology that provides unique design. The X420 supports both 3.5G and WiMAX, and is available in Cappaccuino Brown.

Source:mobilewhack.com

This guy is a hard metal rod that uses Bluetooth 2.0 to sync with most Bluetooth phones. It is powered by a Li-ion rechargeable battery for a talk time of up to 15 hours, and a music playing time of up to 8 hours. It has a range of up to 10 meters.

Unfortunately, I have no idea of when this product will be out, nor any word of the price.

Source:mobilewhack.com

For the people who want to get a hold of a beta copy of this program, you can get a SGS 9.4 with Scrybe beta copy from any sales representative or go directly to their website and sign up for participation in their beta program.

Source:mobilewhack.com