Canon develops largest CMOS sensor

Canon has announced that it has developed the world's largest CMOS sensor, 40 times the size of the largest CMOS sensor that appears in its full-frame cameras.

The new CMOS sensor (left), which is 40 times larger than a full-frame, 35mm sensor (right). (Credit: Canon)

The sensor measures 202x205mm and Canon claims that it will be adept at shooting video and in low-light situations. The announcement follows just days after the Japanese imaging firm announced it had developed a 120-megapixel APS-H size image sensor.

While not intended for consumer cameras, Canon states that it may be used for recording video of stars, as it's capable of shooting 60fps video with 0.3 lux, or half the brightness of ambient moonlight.

Microsoft adds Hotmail ActiveSync support for iPad, iPhone but not yet Android

Microsoft, as promised, began rolling out ActiveSync support for Hotmail on August 30.

Hotmail’s support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) is available to all existing Hotmail users worldwide today, a spokesperson said. (In other words, this isn’t a gradual rollout, like the delivery of the new Wave 4 Hotmail has been.)

The new push synchronization support is supported on Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Nokia E_Series, S-Series and N-Series phones. But it will not work right off the bat with Android devices.

According to Microsoft, the “Hotmail team will add Android to list of supported devices in the coming months after testing is completed.” Access from Android 2.1 is not currently supported due to known client issues on Android 2.1, Microsoft officials said. However, “(t)here are users successfully syncing from Hotmail via the default application or the Touchdown application on Android 2.2,” the Sofites added.

(Update: Microsoft may be saying it is not yet “officially” supporting Android with Hotmail ActiveSync, but my ZDNet UK colleague Mary Branscombe and others say they’ve gotten EAS to work to varying degrees on various Android phones.)

Microsoft has provided steps for enabling Hotmail ActiveSync on these various devices.

Hotmail ActiveSync enables users to get their mail, calendar and contacts pushed automatically to their phones using the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Changes made on phones will be reflected on the Web and vice-versa. For users already using e-mail clients on their PCs that currently sync with Hotmail — like Outlook with the Outlook Connector or Windows Live Mail — Hotmail sync also will be supported.

LiveSide.net noted back in June 2010 that Microsoft was testing ActiveSync for Hotmail, and that a number of users had it working. In mid-August — shortly after Microsoft announced it had completed rolling out the new Hotmail Wave 4 release to all of its Hotmail users — LiveSide reported that some users were able to access ActiveSync for Hotmail, but some were not

Microsoft Raises Price of Online Gaming on Xbox Live

Microsoft will increase the price of a subscription to its Xbox Live online gaming service later this year, it said Monday.

Via the Major Nelson blog, the Xbox 360 maker announced that a one-year Xbox Live account will now cost $60 instead of $50 effective November 1.

The prices of one- and six-month subscriptions will also increase, as will certain subscription plans in Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

The fee increase comes as “no surprise” to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research analyst Jesse Divnich.

“When originally launched in 2002, a Gold subscription cost the same as an AAA video game, ($50)” he said in an email. “When taking into account for inflation… and the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect, a $10 price increase still represents an incredible value to consumers.”

Google, AP reach new deal on licensing rights

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc. will be able to continue posting content from The Associated Press under a new licensing deal the two companies announced Monday after months of sometimes thorny negotiations.

The AP said in a statement that the two companies also will work together in ways to improve discovery and distribution of news.

Financial terms and the duration of the contract were not disclosed.

"We think this is a good deal for both sides," said Jane Seagrave, AP's chief revenue officer. "We have had a long relationship with Google and are pleased we were able to work out our differences."

Google, the Internet's most profitable company, began to pay for AP's content in 2006 after the not-for-profit news agency threatened to sue. That contract expired in January but was extended while the negotiations on a new deal progressed. The talks got so thorny that at one point, Google stopped hosting AP content.

Even after the 2006 agreement, Google and AP still had an uneasy relationship.

AP executives have said they still believed that the news cooperative wasn't being adequately compensated for its material, partly because Google's search engine pointed to websites that the AP said had pirated its content.

Google, in turn, insisted that it was simply fulfilling its mission to help its users find pertinent information.

In a possibly conciliatory sign, Google said it intended to help the AP find more ways to make money online while striving to create a better experience for its own users. Neither company provided further details on their plans for cooperation.

Google also has signed contracts with Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association, Canadian Press and other outlets.

Under these licensing agreements, Google publishes entire stories from the AP and other outlets in the news section of its website.

That's a departure from Google's usual practice of just showing snippets from stories posted on thousands of other websites. Google maintains those excerpts qualify as "fair use" under U.S. copyright law, exempting the company from having to pay any licensing fees to most Web publishers. Some media executives, such as News Corp. Rupert Murdoch, have blasted Google for the practice, arguing that Google is profiting from the work of others. Google argues it is helping newspapers by driving more traffic to its website.

Unlike newspapers and broadcasters, the AP doesn't try to draw traffic to stories on its own website. Rather, the AP licenses its content to other media, which sell their own advertising in print, on the airwaves and on the Internet.

The Google deal is part of AP's effort to bring in more revenue from the Web to help offset a drop in revenue from newspapers and broadcasters that have been hard hit by an advertising slump. As part of that process, AP renewed its licensing agreement with Yahoo Inc. earlier this year and is trying to strike a new deal with Microsoft Corp.

The 164-year-old AP gets about 40 percent of its revenue from U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. The AP is preparing for that ratio to fall as more readership and advertising migrate to the Internet.

The transition has been bumpy so far. The AP's revenue declined nearly 10 percent last year to $676 million, and management anticipated another drop this year as it cuts fees for newspapers and broadcasters. The financial slump prompted the AP to lay off about 90 employees from its news staff late last year, the biggest cutback at the cooperatives in decades.

Google, meanwhile, has been thriving, even during the worst U.S. recession since World War II. The company earned $6.5 billion on revenue of nearly $24 billion last year. Its net income is up by more than 30 percent so far this year, compared with last year.

Google Planning YouTube On-Demand Video

Google is working on a deal with major Hollywood studios that will allow it to distribute pay-per-view video through YouTube.

If negotiations succeed, YouTube could begin showing top-tier streaming content on demand before the end of the year, according to a report in The Financial Times.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The consumation of such a deal would add significant value to Google TV, the company's effort to integrate the Web and television on the Android-based Google TV platform. The first Google TV device, a Sony TV, is scheduled to ship this fall.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the CEOs of six other major media and technology companies appeared on stage together at the Google IO developer conference in May to introduce Google TV and to signal the seriousness with which these companies are pushing the convergence of TV and the Internet.

Google began offering full-length MGM movies and TV shows on YouTube in 2008 and launched a paid video download service in 2009.

While YouTube continues to be dominated by user-generated content, the site has been steadily moving to support major studio content and a traditional TV viewing paradigm. Last June, for example, YouTube introduced YouTube XL, a revised interface designed to make it more enjoyable to view Web video on the large screen TVs typically found in the living rooms of the affluent.

Other companies are pursuing a similar strategy. Apple is reportedly planning to revise its Apple TV device by moving it to the iOS platform. In addition to allowing users to download iOS apps in a living room setting, the company is expected make $0.99 rentals of TV shows available.

Both Google and Apple are moving to compete more directly with other streaming content services, such as Amazon Video On Demand, Hulu, and Netflix.

Google acquires social networking startup Angstro

Google China headquarters in Beijing on March 21, 2010 in a file photo. The Angstro deal underscores the importance to Google of social networks in an increasingly competitive Internet search arena which it dominates.

Photograph by: Liu Jin, AFP/Getty Images

SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc has acquired Angstro, a startup that sorts news and information across social networks like Facebook, a spokesman for the leading Web search provider said on Sunday.

Palo Alto-based Angstro has developed applications to find photos on Facebook, combine Caller ID with LinkedIn profiles and other tools for Twitter, according to the company's website.

"The struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning," Angstro co-founder Rohit Khare said in a blog post last week.

Google, which runs the top search engine in the United States with more than two-thirds of the market, did not disclose the terms of the agreement.

The Angstro deal underscores the importance to Google of social networks in an increasingly competitive Internet search arena which it dominates.

Last week, Google launched a website for users who want to sift through news, comments and other information on the Internet in real time, letting them follow conversations on social network hubs like Facebook and Twitter in one place.

Microsoft has also announced partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to provide real-time search results.

The buying of Angstro follows acquisitions by Google earlier this year of small startups like Plink, which makes visual search engines, and video broadcaster Episodic.

Indian eCommerce Leader Adopts Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

RALEIGH, N.C., Aug 30, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Red Hat, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!rht/quotes/nls/rht (RHT 34.82, -0.34, -0.97%) , the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Euronet Service India Pvt. Limited (Euronet) is powering its IT infrastructure, including its business-critical Card Management System application, on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. After migrating from Microsoft Windows to the combined Red Hat solution, Euronet has achieved increased flexibility, decreased hardware and power costs, reduced system maintenance needs and increased scalability and performance with its virtualized infrastructure.

Euronet is a global provider of electronic payment and transaction processing solutions for financial institutions, retailers, service providers and individual consumers. It facilitates the movement of payments around the world and serves as a critical link between its partners, including financial institutions, retailers and service providers, and their end customers, both locally and globally. Founded in 1994, Euronet has established itself as one of the leading electronic payment providers. Serving customers across 46 countries, Euronet handles critical ATM networks across the globe.

With a growing business and increased demands on its IT infrastructure, Euronet was experiencing uncontrolled growth of the physical servers that handle its mission-critical systems. This was in turn leading to increased costs for physical space, energy and other utilities. Having faced issues with its Microsoft Windows-based systems, the company decided to consolidate its datacenter using virtualization technology and planned to migrate to an open source platform to address the licensing issues it had faced with proprietary alternatives.

After a successful pilot, with the help of Red Hat partner Taashee, Euronet deployed the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating platform. "Implementation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux was one of the key milestones in our IT infrastructure and it was the first time that Euronet was implementing an open source solution," said Ashish Mehta, director, IT and Infrastructure for Asia Pacific and Middle East at Euronet. "After we established Red Hat Enterprise Linux as our operating system of choice, we began investigating virtualization solutions to help us consolidate our datacenter."

After evaluating a variety of industry virtualization solutions for flexibility, scalability, cost, security and performance benefits, Euronet selected Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization as its platform of choice.

"It was a natural evolution for our technology partnership with Red Hat to expand on our use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has all of the benefits that we desired in a virtualization solution," said Mehta. "After deploying the Red Hat virtualization solution for our Card Management System, we benefited from faster performance. We also experienced simpler management of our systems with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization's live migration and system scheduler features. On top of that, the wide ecosystem shared between Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offered us more choice and flexibility for our systems."

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has also helped Euronet's business become more agile with improved server utilization that has translated into reduced hardware and power costs.

"We encourage other businesses to take a look at Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization," said Mehta. "We expect Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to be evaluated as we build our plans to deploy a private cloud as our IT infrastructure evolves."

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