Google: YouTube tool won't block uploads

Digital fingerprinting technology will make it easier for copyright owners to flag and request removal of illegally copied content, says Google

Contrary to recent speculation, an antipiracy tool Google is developing for YouTube will not block uploads to the video-sharing site.

Instead, the tool will check videos after they are put on YouTube and flag those that match legitimate material submitted by copyright owners and compiled by Google into a library of restricted uploads, a Google spokesman said.
When the digital fingerprinting tool finds a match in the library, it will take predetermined actions, such as issuing an alert, removing the clip, or both, said Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes.
In this way, the digital fingerprinting tool remains consistent with descriptions of its core design made by senior Google executives in recent months.
It is also congruent with Google's position that YouTube is on the right side of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as long as it removes, upon request, illegally copied videos that owners don't want uploaded without their permission.
The tool became news on Friday, when a Google attorney briefly described it during a routine hearing in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom filed against the search-engine company.
As press accounts of the attorney's comments began circulating, a number of bloggers and industry insiders wondered if the tool's design had been altered so that it would prevent offending video clips from reaching YouTube's site.
Responding to a request for clarification from IDG News Service, Google's Reyes said that the tool has always been based on digital fingerprinting technology that will flag video clips after they have been uploaded to YouTube.
It is the same tool that Google CEO Eric Schmidt described in April during the company's first-quarter earnings call, Reyes said. At the time, Schmidt said the tool wasn't being designed to filter out and block pirated videos, but rather to help "somewhat automate" the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so that Google can remove them from the site.
"It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads," Schmidt said in April. "It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA."
The tool is still in development and testing, so some features haven't been finalized yet, Reyes said, adding that Google is now testing the tool's speed and scalability. "I don't have the answers to all the questions [about how the tool works]. We are at very early stages of testing the technology," Reyes said.
On Friday, attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton that Google would try to deliver the video recognition tool by September, according to published reports and a hearing transcript provided by Viacom, which otherwise declined comment.
"Somebody who has a copyrighted video ... would provide it to us and say, 'we don't want this up on YouTube.' We're developing a way to take basically an electronic or video or digital fingerprint of this material so that if somebody does try to upload it, within a minute or so the computers will figure out that that's one of the items that the copyright owner said they don't want up on the system, and we would be able to pull that down until any issues are resolved," Beck said, according to the Viacom transcript.
Reyes stressed that Google isn't developing this tool to comply with any law, but rather to help copyright owners flag videos they don't want up on YouTube.

Letter from CSAI to FIA

We have been informed about the outcome of the most recent meeting of the World Motor Sport Council held on July 26, 2007 in Paris. We have also exchanged views with our license holder, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro (owned by Ferrari SpA).
We must confess that we find it quite difficult to justify how a team has not been penalised while it has been found in breach of clause 151c of the International Sporting Code. Indeed, this is probably the most fundamental provision of our sport. In the present case the infringement is very serious since it has been assessed that the team Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has repeatedly breached such provision, over several months, through several top team representatives, to the detriment of its most direct competitor and therefore to its direct or indirect advantage and knowing that such infringement would still be ongoing would it had not been fortuitously discovered.
The very fact that the breach of clause 151c has been assessed by the World Motor Sport Council means that all conditions of such breach were fulfilled. We cannot see why additional conditions would have to be demonstrated in order for a penalty to be inflicted. The recent history of Formula One offers several examples of cases in which a party was inflicted a severe penalty because of a breach of clause 151c, without the subject matter of such breach having been used by a team or having had any effect on the outcome of the competition.
We fear that the decision of the World Motor Sport Council could create a precedent which, at this level of the sport and stage of the competition, would be highly inappropriate and detrimental for the sport.
In any event, in view of the aforesaid, we respectfully suggest that you, in your capacity as President of the FIA, in accordance with the powers granted to you by clause 23 paragraph 1 of the FIA Statues and article 1 of the CIA rules, submit the matter to the International Court of Appeal of the FIA.
This would also enable out license holder, Ferrari, on behalf of which we would take part to the proceedings, and perhaps other teams as well, to fully submit their position and protect their rights. In effect, Ferrari - as at least two other teams - attended the World Motor Sport Council in Paris as observers and not as a party. Accordingly, they did not have a full right of audience. As, however, Ferrari in any event had been seriously and directly affected by McLaren's behaviour, we deem it appropriate that Ferrari (directly or through ourselves) enjoys full rights of due process which would be the case in accordance with the rules applicable in front of the International Court of Appeal.
Yours respectfully,

McLaren not yet off the hook as spying scandal is sent to court of appeal

Formula one's governing body has reopened the investigation into the spying scandal by referring to a court of appeal the decision of the World Motor Sport Council not to punish McLaren. McLaren had escaped any penalty in the WMSC hearing due to "insufficient evidence'", though they were found to be guilty of possessing classified material belonging to Ferrari.
Luigi Macaluso, president of the Italian motor sport body CSAI, had written to the FIA president Max Mosley to express his surprise at the WMSC's decision. In the letter Macaluso pointed out that the sport's precedents for breaches of the relevant law - 151c of the international sporting code - suggest that a penalty would have been appropriate. He ended the corrspondence by requesting that Mosley refer the case to the FIA's international court of appeal.


Mosley responded with a fascinating letter which confirmed that depite the numerous suspicions surrounding McLaren's actions there was nothing that amounted to proof. However, he added that he was sending the matter to appeal because of "the importance of public confidence in the outcome".
It means that for McLaren there is still a very real possibility of a points deduction or even a total ban.

Putting our sport in the frame

CAERPHILLY husband-and-wife team Alun and Shirley Sedgemore, pictured right, are well known to point-to-point fans.
For the past 20 years, Alun has been taking pictures of horses and riders and Shirley has spent many happy hours sitting by their trailer showing them to the many owners and riders who have in time become their friends.
Alun said, “Taking photos at point-to-points is exciting. You never know how they are going to come out and some horses are more photogenic than others.”
He added, “There is such a friendly atmosphere at Welsh meetings.”
However, on one occasion at the Vale of Clettwr in 1999, Shirley was standing safely, or so she thought, behind the roped area at the start when a horse got loose and struck into her.
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She ended up in hospital with a broken collar bone and 10 stitches in her head. If proof was needed of the couple’s popularity the huge number of get-well messages Shirley received was evidence.
Alun has noted that when riders look at the photographs he has taken of them they are more interested in their position in the saddle rather than the quality of the picture.
He has taken thousands of photographs and is toying with the idea of producing a book. So if there are any publishers reading this article they can contact him at his address below. Alun says it was former Welsh champion rider Tim Rooney who introduced him to the sport.
Back in 1984, farrier Tim, who used to shoe their daughter’s pony, suggested that they visit the Tredegar Farmers point-to-point. They took his advice and have been hooked ever since.
Meanwhile, Stewart Peters’ latest book, The Irish Grand National – The History Of Ireland's Premier Steeplechase (Published by Tempus at £20) is to my mind his best yet.
Bentom Boy who won in 1984 was trained by Tim Rooney’s uncle Willie Rooney and ridden by Tim’s cousin Ann Ferris the late trainer’s daughter. Not many people know that Willie Rooney originally came from the Vale of Glamorgan, but perhaps more about him in a future article.
Over the years, this race, first run in 1870, has been won by some really good horses such as Prince Regent, Arkle, Flying Bolt, Brown Lad, Fortria, Tied Cottage and Devon Orchid to name just some of them.
The race soon established itself as Ireland’s most famous steeplechase and this lavishily illustrated book with photography by Pat Healey is a winner.
Welsh point-to-point champion rider Tim Vaughan is making a name for himself as a trainer and saddled his fifth winner last week when Kings Euro, owned by Rhondda retired greengrocer Norman John, ploughed through the mud to land the Empower Training Novices Hurdle under Richard Johnson at Uttoxeter. Kings Euro won three point-to-points this year with Tim in the saddle and should be one to watch when he goes novice chasing.
Later in the afternoon, Johnson was successful on Insignia for Carmarthen’s Alison Thorpe.

Peace found in sport

Take Iraq's historic football win on Sunday night.
Iraq beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 to win the Asian Cup soccer tournament, a sporting prize of global standing.
Iraq's win makes major political statements.
War between Shiites and Sunnis is not an inevitable feature of life in Iraq.
Iraq's Brazilian coach, Jorvan Vieira, forged a winning team from the Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish populations.
This mob was not fancied to even make the finals.
In the final itself, against three-time Asian Cup winner Saudi Arabia, the Iraqis were the red-hot underdog.
On Sunday, they played the Saudis off the park -- and what drove their success was the passionate spirit oozing from every Iraqi player's skin.
Their skill and earning levels were not as high as their opponents', and Iraq's many problems meant logistical nightmares for the national team.
But when these players of divided backgrounds raised their hands in one giant fist before resuming play in the second half, you could tell this team was unstoppable.
The second major political statement in Iraq's win is that it shows, once again, the immense power of the Iraqi people when they are allowed to speak.
Tragically, dozens of Iraqis were murdered by warmongers while the people were out celebrating in the streets after one of the national team's wins last week.
The Baghdad bombings that marred the street celebrations were an all-too-familiar sight.
Yet what these bombings show is the fear in the heart of the bombers when Iraqis show unity.
This is the tragedy and the hope that has been revealed in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Only on the rarest of occasions have Iraqis had the opportunity to raise their voices above the din of the country's violence.
Each time those voices have been clear. The Iraqi people believe in the reality of the Iraqi nation.
They also believe in those things that are the opposite of violence, such as expressing their opinions peacefully and sharing the pride that every nation feels in a major sporting achievement.
No, sport is not the opposite of politics.
Sometimes, in fact, it's the only way a people can express a political opinion.

Google Plans YouTube Antipiracy Tool for September

Google Inc. aims to deliver in September a long-awaited and much-promised technology to combat piracy in its YouTube video sharing site.
During a hearing Friday in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom Inc. filed against Google, a Google attorney told the judge Google was working "very intensely" on a video recognition technology, the Associated Press (AP) reported.
The technology will be as sophisticated as fingerprint technology used by the FBI and Google plans to roll it out in the fall, "hopefully in September," attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton, according to the AP. Fall runs from late September to late December.
Viacom sued Google in March in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement from YouTube and seeking US$1 billion in damages.
The video recognition technology will allow copyright owners to provide a digital fingerprint that within a minute or two will trigger a block from YouTube whenever someone tries to upload a copyright video without permission, the AP reported.
However, contacted by IDG News Service, a YouTube spokesman put some caveats around the attorney's stated timeline for implementing the technology.
"We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by some time in the fall, but this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it's difficult to forecast specific launch dates," he wrote.
Google is collaborating with "some of the major media companies" in experiments with video-identification tools and is "excited" about the progress so far, the YouTube spokesman wrote.
Google officials have acknowledged that the company is working on a system to deal with copyright videos uploaded to YouTube without permission, a nagging problem that has earned Google many enemies among TV and movie companies.
In April of this year, during Google's first-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt said the system in development wasn't being designed to filter out and block pirated videos.
Instead, he said Google's upcoming "Claim your Content" tool would help to "somewhat automate" the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so Google can take them down from the site, he said.
"It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads," Schmidt said in April. "It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA."
It's not clear whether Google changed the design of the tool at some point after Schmidt made those comments, since the attorney's description on Friday seems to indicate that the system would indeed block offending videos automatically without content owners notifying Google. The YouTube spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification of this point.
Friday's hearing was a procedural one intended to set the schedule for the case, such as when the discovery period will begin and end and when the actual trial will begin, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig told IDG News Service.
The comment from Google's attorney came at the start of the hearing, when the judge gave attorneys on both sides a few minutes to present a short outline of what the case is about, to set the stage and put things in context, Zweig said.
The scheduling wasn't completed, so another conference was set for Aug. 6, although that hearing could be canceled if the companies resolve the scheduling issues and notify the judge of their agreements, he said.
Google acquired YouTube in November of last year in a $1.65 billion deal.

Wikipedia's founder builds an open-source search engine

Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, announced today that his for-profit community hosting site Wikia has deepened its investment in developing an open-source Web search engine. Wikia purchased Grub, a company that makes distributed a Web crawling program. Instead of having a single set of computers index the Web -- as Google and other search engines do -- Grub passes out the indexing work to computers across the globe.
You can download the Grub client to make your own computer pitch in on the indexing work. While you're not using it, the machine will scan the Web and send back its index to a central server; your scan, combined with input from others running the Grub client, will form the index that will power Wikia's open-source search engine.
Wales, who was speaking at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore., announced that Wikia has turned Grub into an open-source program; the company hopes for input from developers all over the world.
Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia's search engine will run as a for-profit venture. Gil Penchina, the CEO of Wikia, has said that the company hopes to one day reach 5 percent of the search market -- a number that sounds small but that could be quite lucrative. But because the project is open-source, anyone else could build a competing search engine -- whether for-profit or non- -- based on the same index, Wales pointed out to me this afternoon in the briefest of phone conversations (we had some kind of cell-phone issue).
Wikia sets out several guidelines for its open engine: It will be transparent -- the algorithms determining how results are ranked will be visible to all. Google and other engines invest huge sums to develop these algorithms, and they guard them extremely closely. But that's precisely why Wales believes we need an open search engine -- the world, he says, must have an alternative to a Web that's ranked by "invisible rules inside an algorithmic black box."
But Wales isn't looking for transparency for transparency's sake: the project rests on the idea that community involvement will actually improve upon today's search results. Whether that's possible seems a gamble; Wikia has not announced a timeline for the project's debut. A search engine is a huge undertaking, and there's something nearly crazy about the idea of doing it with volunteers. But then, so too does Wikipedia and every open-source project seem somewhat impossible; that all those people could make something together doesn't seem likely. Miraculously, though, these projects work -- and the same thing could happen for search.
Update: I just got back in touch with Wales. He clarified, first, that the open search engine will not only take contributions for its source code, but that community members will also be actively involved in the editorial process governing search engine results.
"The idea would be a wiki-like process where the community can whitelist URLS, blacklist URLs, control for spam, block users who are being bad, that kind of thing," Wales says.
Wales says that Wikia will have the front end for the search engine built by the end of this year -- a place where people can "enter a search term and get some results," very simple. "We expect that it probably won't be very good at that point, and we'll probably have to put a big disclaimer on the site, 'We know this isn't very good, please help us to make it better.'"
I asked Wales if it's possible he's too late in starting this -- is Google too entrenched to beat? "Sure," he said. "I could fail. I have no idea. But I'm going to have fun trying."

Is Google American?

Some X part of the traffic at AD comes via a Google search or Google News and we appreciate that. However, Google seems to be embracing the Progressive denial of the threat by IslamoFascists to the USA.Google may not realize it, but they are doing business in the USA. When the IslamoFascists start to exert more control in the USA. (Indirectly supported by Google censorship, Google will become a prime target of Sharia Islamic Totalitarian Law!)A variety of authors have been blacklisted by Google because they dared to question Islamic or Muslim positions.As I remember, religion is not a valid political test for members of the government and the government is prohibited from establishing a state religion.However, Google using censorship of discussions of Islamic or Muslim positions has indirectly empowered Islamic or Muslim positions.CAIR is running wild with attempts to establish Sharia Islamic Totalitarian Law in the USA, but last time I checked Google refused to index such info.

Microsoft scores a win over Google

There is no free lunch, even in cyberspace. Had the industry heeded that little piece of ubiquitous advice during the dotcom boom years, the bust might never have happened. After wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising (does "because pets can't drive!" ring any bells?), the industry learned that the best way to make money online - sans actually selling something tangible - is by selling ad space, not buying it.
Maybe it's no surprise that two of the companies that have learned this lesson best are both sitting in key positions in the industry today: Microsoft and Google. It's also no surprise that these two are each other's biggest competitors in term of managing online advertising.
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It's far too early to tell who will win the war, but Google lost one battle last week. Digg.com, which claims it receives over 17 million visitors a month, ditched Google's AdSense, instead opting for a three-year deal with Microsoft to manage its online advertising.
Google has been offering AdSence since 2003. At the time it came out, it provided small business with a way to get their products listed on Google's main search page, but not much has been done to enhance AdSense as a business option since. The price of using AdSence has skyrocketed as competition in the bid-for-prime-position scheme has increased, and click fraud - where competing advertisers can drive up the price of rival advertising by repeatedly clicking on pay-per-click ads - has frustrated many users. Google claims to be aggressively combating this type of fraud.
Advertising partner
Digg doesn't seem to care. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, said in his blog that "[t]his move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organisation and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg's growth." Maybe it's just me, but you could read that as a saying Digg is tired of dealing with old technology and wants something new. Signing Digg has to have the execs in Redmond dancing in the street. Digg will be Microsoft's second biggest advertising client behind Facebook.
While Facebook isn't the largest social networking site online, it is the fastest growing. The website hit the 30 million user mark last month, and many people are expecting the company to eclipse MySpace. Even Rupert Murdoch, who purchased MySpace for $580 million a few years ago, has been heard lamenting about how fast MySpace seems to be going from the cool space to be online to "lost in space". Last week's announcement that there are 29,000 registered sex offenders cruising around Myspace won't help boost its popularity either.
Regardless of who eventually wins, the war to control and sell ad space means only good things for the industry. As long as the ad dollars flow, there will no more dot-com busts and no more annoying socks puppets promoting websites.For those who don't understand that, look up pets.com on wikipedia.

Sprint and Google Team Up on WiMax

Google and Sprint Nextel announced Thursday that they will team up to develop a portal to let consumers search the Internet and mingle on social networks using mobile devices that work on a new, ultrafast WiMax network. The deal makes Google the exclusive provider for Web search on the portal and the preferred provider of Internet chat and e-mail. Google also will be providing mobile ads, along with its search results, and sharing the revenue with Sprint. Sprint, the third-largest wireless carrier by subscribers, said it will begin testing the new WiMax network in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., by the end of the year. Commercial service will start in April and be available to 100 million people nationwide by the end of 2008, the company said. Sprint announced plans in August to invest up to $3 billion in the new WiMax network. WiMax has a range of up to 10 miles and can transfer data at speeds similar to cable and DSL. Sprint said its new network should offer speeds of up to 4 megabytes per second -- more than twice as fast as the average broadband connection in California. "The idea here is that Sprint is the pioneer and leader to create mass-market mobile services," said Bin Shen, Sprint's vice president for mobile broadband. "This deal helps us start on the journey." For Google, the deal brings additional distribution for its mobile products, noted Craig Mathias, principal analyst of wireless research group Farpoint Group. "Google is very interested in getting greater exposure across the board," Mathias said. Carriers have blocked applications from Google and other Internet companies from running on certain phones. In the spring, T-Mobile users were upset to discover that Gmail no longer worked, for instance. Sprint already has announced partnerships with Intel, Samsung and Motorola, which are expected to develop devices that will work with the new network. Sprint also announced last week that it would team up with Clearwire, a start-up founded by communications pioneer Craig McCaw, to build the network. Sprint's goal is to blanket entire cities with WiMax coverage -- and the deal with Google could give consumers something to use on such a network, such as online productivity applications like Google Calendar. Shen said Sprint would also have a "friend finder" application and video chat, though he declined to say who the provider would be. He said it would not be Google. Despite the deal, Sprint said Microsoft would continue to be its preferred provider for local search on its regular handsets. WiMax represents a potential threat to cell phone carriers because it could enable upstarts to offer low-cost phone service via a WiMax network. But Sprint Nextel has chosen to embrace WiMax as a way to expand its ability to serve heavy volumes of data to its own consumers.

Barcelona too hot for Hearts

Is this the future of Scottish football? Playing one of the great clubs of Europe in front of a massive attendance in the late-afternoon sun, Hearts caught a glimpse of what life could be like at the top table.
Barcelona are a big draw - this game was being shown live on TV in over 100 countries - but there is obviously real appetite for football in Edinburgh. The 57,857 who made their way to Murrayfield, the home of Scottish rugby, broke the 75-year old record for a Hearts game in the capital. It only emphasised the need for Hearts to move to a ground that can accommodate this wider fan base. Tynecastle holds only 17,420, which would be embarrassing in the Championship.
Going down 3-1, they were far from embarrassed here though. This Barca team promises to be one of the great attacking line-ups in the history of the game. Ronaldinho scored twice and Hearts could not get near him. Samuel Eto'o was just too quick and, when Thierry Henry came on in the second half, he was at his disdainful best, gliding past lesser mortals. When the Frenchman hits match fitness, he will take La Liga by storm.
What will surely inspire dread in the rest of the European elite is that Lionel Messi will be added to this mix after recovering from Copa America duty with Argentina and Barca are coaxing through two exceptional talents of the future. Giovanni dos Santos, 18, scored the third and is like a mini-Ronaldinho, while Bojan Krkic, a Spanish forward of Serbian descent, is frighteningly gifted. He turns 17 next month.
The glamour of it all could not obscure Hearts' real mission though. The Scottish Premier League begins a new season next weekend and Hearts open their campaign with an Edinburgh derby against Hibernian.
Scottish football has been pinned under a Glaswegian thumb since Alex Ferguson left Aberdeen 21 years ago but there is evidently potential away from the banks of the Clyde.
Aberdeen themselves are resurgent and if Hearts can provide a serious rivalry to the Old Firm, then Scottish football can break away from the provincialism that has made them one of the minor players in the European game. It is a recurring refrain, but there has never been a more opportune moment for Scottish football to elevate its own expectations.
The national side is in rude health and the defeat of France in October demonstrated there is ample Scottish talent emerging from the academies. Celtic and Rangers have both encouraged the emergence of players from their youth system.
This is the problem with Hearts. There were just four Scots in the starting line-up yesterday and the goalkeeper, Craig Gordon, has been the subject of serious bids from English clubs, including Sunderland. The majority shareholder, Vladimir Romanov, continues to shuffle players between his three clubs, with a large number of Lithuanians imported on loan from FK Kaunas.
Three more Lithuanian trialists were doing their best to impress yesterday but, while some of the transfers have genuinely improved the Hearts squad, there is an undercurrent of instability at the club, especially after the popular Steven Pressley and Paul Hartley left in ugly circumstances last season. It is difficult to build confidence when you operate by the whims of a plutocrat, and one who has gone as far as accusing Celtic and Rangers of trying to fix matches. This is the wrong side of eccentricity.
As it stands, Hearts are managed by Anatoly Korobochka, who does not speak any English. On a day-to-day basis, they are coached by Stephen Frail, who does not know whether he will still have his job when the season begins. The players love him but Romanov remains inscrutable. Until they get their house in order there is no way they will challenge Celtic or a revived Rangers, being led once again by Walter Smith.
The problems Hearts will have were clearly demonstrated yesterday. The team made an encouraging start and, when Juho Makela equalised Ronaldinho's early penalty, there was a sustained period where Hearts held their own. But they faded badly after the break, looking disjointed and fragile as a catalogue of trialists and sub-standard reserves took to the field.

Saturday AM Practice: One for Frye

If Derek Anderson and Charlie Frye are competing for the job at starting quarterback, the former needs to look better than he did today. Today's practice belonged to Frye, who looked sharper than his challenger.
The mainstream media and the "national" NFL pundits have a lot of words they need to pour out over the coming weeks, and there's no doubt what subject will occupy the vast majority of those words: quarterbacks.
The Browns have themselves a three-headed quarterback controversy, even if one of the heads is still a limo ride and contract signing away from participating.
The problem with focusing on a quarterback compeition with the Browns at this point, and it's not something I like writing, is this: neither of the quarterbacks currently competing is very good.
While the team hoped for more from QB Charlie Frye, the off-season hopes of many Browns fans were focused on Frye's 2006 backup quarterback, Derek Anderson. Anderson has a the right size for an NFL quarterback, and he has a big arm, something lacking behind center for orange and brown since their return.
All of this, plus Anderson's solid performance in replacement of Frye for a couple of games in 2006 obviously excites both the team and fans. There has been hope expressed in the OBR forums, blogs, and among fans in general that Anderson would take his game up another notch this off-season.
Based on the morning practice on July 28, 2007, however, Anderson looks far from ready to take over as the team's start quarterback.
This morning's practice belonged to Charlie Frye, who combined with WR Tim Carter to complete a long pass on the play of the day. Frye looked far sharper than Anderson, whose first pass of the day was picked off by Brodney Pool.
While possibly a miscommunication, the pick set the tone for Anderson, who later bounced a pass off the pads of a reciever and tossed another out of bounds, unable to find an open receiver.
As Browns fans saw last year, Anderson can look very good when he's "on". When he's off, however, you get a game like the team's loss to the weak Tampa Bay squad, where four passes were intercepted.
A team needs consistency from the quarterback position, and today's practice, like the Buccaneers game, creates concern about whether Anderson can turn that element of his game around.
SHAFFER ON THE RIGHT: For the first time today, we saw Joe Thomas take some reps at left tackle while 2006 starting LT Kevin Shaffer worked on the right side of the line.
WRIGHT ON THE FIELD: Browns cornerback Eric Wright was at practice today, playing most frequently with the second unit. Kenny Wright got some time with the first team opposite Leigh Bodden.
ATTENTION!: Special Teams coach Ted Daisher was less than thrilled with the focus of his charges during kickoff return drills during the morning's practice. Several times the Browns fans present reacted with whoops and hollers when Daisher yelled at players to pay attention.
STING LIKE A BEE: Fullback Charles Ali has gotten some reaction on the sidelines from his hard hits during practice. Ali is competing with J.R. Niklos

'Where's Strahan?'

decision to skip the opening of Giants training camp while mulling retirement after 14 seasons is a personal and business decision and not a major distraction.
That what many of his teammates said Saturday.
"A couple of players have asked me, "Where's Strahan?" fellow defensive end Osi Umenyiora said less than an hour after the Giants held their first practice. "Well, he's not here, that's all I can tell you, I don't really know where he is. But, nobody is in a panic. Everybody has a lot of issues they have to deal with. People are trying to win jobs. They can't be too overly concerned about what Michael Strahan is doing."
Giants management also was left guessing about the future of the seven-time Pro Bowler.
General manager Jerry Reese was still waiting to talk to the 35-year-old star, and coach Tom Coughlin was playing telephone tag with the veteran.
Strahan called the coach around 7:40 p.m. Friday, 10 minutes after the team meeting started -- something Strahan had to know, having played for Coughlin for three years.
"I am not perturbed," Coughlin said of the failure to communicate. "I was disappointed right away that he is not here. You'd like to have him here on the field, but because I have not talked to him it's not an issue. Those things happen."
Strahan, who lost a bitter divorce case and asked earlier this year to renegotiate a contract that will pay him $4 million this season, was not immediately available for comment.
Tony Agnone, his agent, has not returned several telephone calls by The Associated Press the past two days.
The timing of Strahan's decision was bad for the Giants, coming less than 24 hours before players were to report to the University at Albany.
For the past seven months, the Giants planned on having the NFL's active leader in sacks (132½) line up at left end. They even moved second-year pro Mathias Kiwanuka from defensive end to strongside linebacker in April to get both of them on the field.
A day into training camp, they are considering other options.
For now, Kiwanuka is still a linebacker. William Joseph, the 2003 first-round draft pick who has never lived up to expectations, is starting for Strahan.
Kiwanuka believed Strahan didn't think about retiring until recently, adding that he waited a long time last year before deciding to leave Boston College to enter the NFL draft.
"If Michael comes back, it will be a tremendous help to this team," Kiwanuka said. "If he doesn't, we still have talent to go ahead and be strong."
Moving back to defensive end would not be a problem, Kiwanuka said, adding he has to know where the defensive ends are going on every play.
"My gut feeling is 'Yes,' that he'll be back to play," Pro Bowl middle linebacker Antonio Pierce said of Strahan. "But that's my opinion strictly."
Veteran receiver Amani Toomer also felt Strahan would return, but he was not certain.
"I know he has a lot of offers and opportunities to do other things in life," Toomer said. "It might just be that one day he woke up and said that was it. For me, selfishly thinking, I don't think it is it."
Center Shaun O'Hara said he considers retiring at each exit as he drives up the New York Thruway toward training camp.
Veteran offensive tackle Kareem McKenzie felt Strahan just needed some time to think things out.
"In this heat, he is lucky right now," McKenzie said. "It is miserable out there. But I mean, I'm definitely going to miss him. You definitely have to bring your 'A' game; therefore, I'm definitely going to miss a 14- or 15-year guy that's been to seven Pro Bowls. That's going to be tough."

NFL Player Roy Williams Scores Big By Opting To Shed Pounds With Alternative Weight Loss Program

Amidst all the commotion over recent disproportional statistics of obesity in the African American community and worldwide, we should all take the time to recognize and celebrate developing progress that any one of us can achieve. Obesity can take even the best of players out in this game of life that we only get one shot to score in.
Not so for one NFL player, Roy Williams of the Dallas Cowboys. Williams decided that he was going to score a major touchdown off the field by shedding unwanted pounds from his body.
Is this not the goal for a lot of us? We don’t have to be NFL players to make a concerted effort to slim down, but we do have to take the game very seriously and be ready to do what it takes to score big and win the victory.
We have to be team players and have open minds to trying other methods that are safer, more natural and ultimately more effective than fad diets. That is what Roy Williams was savvy and witty enough to do for himself.
How did Roy obtain his weight loss victory? While vacationing and relaxing, Roy’s weight got up to 246 pounds and his coach asked him to get down to 225 pounds. Roy acknowledged the fact of his weight gain by saying, “I really did get heavy, but I did a program called Isagenix. It’s a weight program and it got me down."
By doing this, Roy was able to release 26 pounds from his body bringing his weight down to 221 pounds.
Isagenix is the world’s leader in nutritional cleansing, which helps cleanse your body of impurities, release stubborn fat and build lean muscle. It helps you to lose weight and become healthier through the use of meal replacement shakes, high grade nutrients and regular exercise.
What did Roy have to say about his results from utilizing this nutritional program? "It’s a huge difference for me," he said. "I’m flying around, I'm full of joy and energy."
Now that is truly winning! Anyone of us can jump on a fad diet and drop a few pounds. Take your pick, as there are hundreds to choose from. However, when you can get yourself on a system that can give you what most of us are really searching for - this is quite phenomenal.
That same feeling of joy and, energy at the same time is what we all can have. While playing in the game of life, we should all be “in it” to “win it. So why cheat yourself when you can have more than just temporary weight loss?
If weight has been a challenge for you, you have tried all kinds of diets, maybe its time to do something different. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all times stated, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Unfortunately dieting has been the common approach for solving weight loss issues, but we are now in the 21st century and can begin to move forward with our advancements. Roy Williams' coach only asked him to lose 22 pounds for the start of training camp, he decided to go the extra mile and lose four more.
“But I challenged myself to go lower than that," Williams said. ”This is for me."
As you can see not only do average Joe’s and Jane's struggle with their weight, but so do athletes even if they are not considered to be obese. They just want to do something for themselves to make them feel and look better. Whatever your goal weight is, it is what you want for yourself.
We can all take a lesson from the athlete and go a step further, go for the gold, the big play and stop making small plays that don’t even get us onto the field. We want it all joy, energy, clarity, stamina, as well as quick, safe and permanent weight loss.
Through technological advances made in the last five years you have the opportunity to have a level playing field in which to get one up on obesity and become more clean and lean than ever before. The time is now to release the weight and let the true champion in you - shine through.
This is the line of scrimmage and you are in the perfect passing situation, just don’t hesitate, and whatever you do, don’t drop the ball! We're all rooting for you, victory, victory, victory!

N.F.L. Looks to Bolster Pipeline Beyond Border

“How can a Mexican have the last name Wong?” he said Friday after his first training camp practice.
Wong, whose father’s grandfather was Chinese, joined the Jets this season after one season in the Arena Football League and two in the now-defunct N.F.L. Europa. Born and raised in Mexico, he has pursued football from age 6, spurning soccer for a sport that he said was now probably more popular in his homeland than baseball.
Wong was among 99 foreign-born players on N.F.L. rosters as training camps opened across the country last week. That number has nearly doubled since the beginning of the preseason 10 years ago, when there were 52 foreign-born players on rosters.
Making sure international players are able to find their way onto N.F.L. rosters is a part of the league’s strategy in trying to spread its popularity throughout the world, said Mark Waller, the senior vice president of N.F.L. International.
Since N.F.L. Europa folded in June after 16 years, Waller said in a telephone interview Thursday, the goal of the league has been to show the world “the best product we have to offer.” That includes playing regular-season games overseas.
“Once we build the popularity of the sport, the players will follow,” said Waller, who added that the N.F.L. was focusing on Mexico, Canada, Britain, Germany, Japan and China.
In its fourth year, the N.F.L. International Development Practice Squad Program is giving 11 international players positions on team practice squads. Each N.F.L. team is also eligible for an international player exemption, a spot on the roster for a foreign-born player who does not count toward the 80-man limit.
One of those exemptions is Noriaki Kinoshita, a wide receiver from Japan who signed with the Atlanta Falcons after three years with the Amsterdam Admirals of N.F.L. Europa.
Kinoshita is trying to become the first regular-season N.F.L. player from Japan, a country that loves its baseball and soccer but also has football teams at the collegiate and professional levels. He drew Japanese news media to Flowery Branch, Ga., for the first day of training camp, on Thursday.
“Hopefully, this way, future players will not be so scared and will come over and play in the N.F.L.,” Kinoshita said Thursday in a telephone interview, with the help of an interpreter.
“I’ll probably be the first Japanese player to play. I can show them how it’s done.”
Even with the recent increase in international players, less than 4 percent of all potential N.F.L. roster spots were occupied by foreign-born players when camps opened. International players made up 20 percent of N.B.A. rosters last season, and 29 percent of Major League Baseball roster spots at the beginning of this season.
Kim Bohuny, the N.B.A.’s vice president for basketball operations-international, said that international sports clubs with basketball teams helped the influx of foreign-born N.B.A. players by complementing several other important events: the beginning of N.B.A. telecasts throughout the world, the fall of the Eastern bloc and the 1992 Dream Team’s dominating performances.
Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball’s president and chief operating officer, said that baseball had benefited from having more than one method of obtaining players, including a protocol agreement with Japan that brings premade stars to the United States.
But international sports clubs do not have football teams, and football does not have the same global history as baseball. The N.F.L. also lost a major international feeder system in N.F.L. Europa. That “puts a lot more pressure on us as a league to continue to do a great job” of making sure foreign-born players get into the N.F.L., Waller said.
They would provide exposure for the N.F.L. in their native countries and the world’s best athletes should get an opportunity to play in the league, he added.
Even when foreign-born players make their way onto preseason rosters, most are a long way from the success that some international stars in other American sports leagues have seen. In the N.B.A., the last three Most Valuable Player awards have been won by players who were not born in the United States.
Nick Polk, the director of football operations for the Falcons, said that Kinoshita was “a long shot” to make the team.
And Wong had only four catches in two N.F.L. Europa regular seasons, and he is undersized at 5 feet 11 inches and 179 pounds.
One day, if the N.F.L.’s strategy succeeds, a name like Juan Wong might not be the topic of conversation for the opening day of training camp.
“I think it would help a lot,” Wong said about the impact he would have in Mexico if he played for the Jets. “It would help the young kids, to be some kind of inspiration to see that a Mexican, who was born and raised in Mexico, can make it on an N.F.L. roster.”

U.S. Forces Europe Track and Field Championships

Jamie Eckford of Bamberg wins the men’s 200-meter dash with a time of 22.10 seconds, more than 5 seconds faster than the runner-up, Gregory Marshall of Giessen. Eckford also won the men’s 100-meter dash and the long jump, but Giessen took the team title in the U.S. Forces Track and Field Championships on Saturday at the Sport Anlage West in Regensburg, Germany.

U.S. Forces Track and Field Championships
Scores and top finishers in the U.S. Forces Europe Track and Field Championships in the Regensburg, Germany, Sport Anlage West on Saturday. Meet hosted by U.S. Army Garrison Hohenfels:
Team scoring
Giessen 36; Aviano and Bamberg 30; Ansbach 28; Heidelberg 26; Vilseck 20.
Men
100 meters—1, Jamie Eckford (Bamberg) 10.92 seconds; 2, Romaine Johnson (Giessen) 12.98200—1, Eckford, 22.10; 2, Gregory Marshall (Giessen) 27.27400—Marshall 53.54; 2, Francisco Gonzalez (Heidelberg) 54.55800—1, Marshall, 2 minutes, 1.18; 2, Gonzalez, 2:03.29High jump—1, Gonzalez, 4 feet 7 inchesLong jump—1, Eckford, 19-4.Shot put—Edward Cook (Ansbach) 36 feet, ½ inch; 2, Alfred Boone (Vilseck) 35-5.Discus—1, Edward Cook, 104-10¾; 2, Boone, 96-09¾Javelin—1, Boone, 114-2½; 2, Cook, 77-4¾
Women
200—1, Danielle Todman (Aviano) 29.31 seconds800—1, Todman 2 minutes, 48.76 seconds5,000—1, Jennifer May (Baumholder) 20:28.87.Long jump—1, Todman, 14 feet, 9 inches

Report Warns Against Too Many 'Net Rules

Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
'Governing the Internet,' issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.'
'Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,' the report said.
Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office, said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy.
Among those are Malaysia, where a government official said this week that laws would be drafted for bloggers and authorities would not hesitate to prosecute those deemed to have insulted Islam.
Haraszti cited separate research by the OpenNet Initiative, a trans-Atlantic group that tracks Internet filtering and surveillance, which pointed to questionable online restrictions in Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere.
The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era 'spy mania,' and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online.
Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of 'dirt' and 'lies.'
'Those who think it is impossible to control the Internet can continue living in a world of illusions,' Yertysbayev told the Vremya newspaper in a recent interview.
On Thursday, in a speech at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Yertysbayev insisted his country was committed to democracy and the creation of what he called an 'e-government' that would expand Internet access and make 'our information sphere more open and our media more free.'
In the most publicized instance of a government crackdown, Kazakh authorities took control of .kz Internet domains in 2005. It then revoked a domain operated by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'
Baron Cohen since has relocated his satirical Web site, which Kazakhstan considered offensive.
The OSCE report warns that Kazakhstan's approach to the Internet has produced a hostile atmosphere where 'any dissident individual, organization or an entire country could be named an 'enemy of the nation.''
Georgia, the report says, has laws that contain 'contradictory and ill-defined' provisions 'which on certain occasions might give leverage for illegitimate limitation of freedom of expression on the Internet.'
'It is important to support the view of the World Press Freedom Committee that 'governance' must not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content,' the report says.
___

Northrop Grumman's Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft Completes 1,000th Flight

SAN DIEGO, July 27, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The high-flying RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial systems (UAS) built by Northrop Grumman Corporation recently completed their 1,000th flight. The fourth production Global Hawk, designated AF-4, flew the milestone mission June 14-15 in support of the global war on terrorism (GWOT).
"AF-4 cruised at extremely high altitudes for more than 18 hours without refueling -- a feat that very few aircraft, manned or unmanned, have matched thus far," said Gary Ervin, vice president for Northrop Grumman's Integrated Systems sector.
This was the 517th combat mission flight for the Global Hawks, which have logged more than 10,700 combat hours, accounting for 71 percent of the program's total flight time of 15,135 hours.
"Global Hawk's GWOT support has been outstanding, with two Block 10 variants currently deployed and surging with 20-hour missions, with only four hours between recovery and the subsequent launch," said Randy Brown, Global Hawk program director with the U.S. Air Force's 303rd Aeronautical Systems Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. "This achievement and the system's excellent track record reaffirm what we already know -- the Global Hawk is a highly reliable, flexible and cost-effective intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) weapons system that meets the needs of our troops on the battlefield."
Since its initial deployment immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, the Global Hawk program has maintained a 95 percent or better mission effectiveness. Out of the 277 combat missions flown since January 2006 until its 1,000th flight, only 11 have been canceled due to maintenance, weather, or mission reasons.
Another significant accomplishment this year occurred when three Global Hawks were airborne simultaneously on Feb. 21 and April 24. In both instances, Global Hawk AF-5 flew a GWOT mission in the Middle East while AF-7 flew a series of flight tests from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. At the same time, another Global Hawk, N-1, flew from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. N-1 is one of two U.S. Navy aircraft designated for the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration (GHMD) program.
"From these three sites, the aircraft could have reached any point on the planet and provided persistent ISR and returned to their respective home base," said Jerry Madigan, Northrop Grumman vice president of high-altitude long-endurance systems. "The Feb. 21 flight marked the first time the GHMD program exercised Global Hawk's certificate of authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate outside of the restricted area into national airspace."
Another important milestone for the GHMD program took place April 11 when Global Hawk N-1 provided surveillance support for the Navy's Commander Carrier Strike Group One Ship Sinking Exercise (CCSG-1 SINKEX) at NAS Patuxent River, taking 114 near-real-time images in approximately eight hours.
The CCSG-1 SINKEX sortie featured several firsts for GHMD, including the first night launch, first maximum-weight launch from NAS Patuxent River, and the first GHMD operations in the Atlantic Ocean. It was also the longest-ranging GHMD flight flown from NAS Patuxent River to date.
Global Hawk is the only UAS to meet the military and the FAA's airworthiness standards. It is the first UAS certified by the FAA to have its own flight plans filed and use civilian air corridors to fly regular flights in the United States. The Block 20 variant is the only UAS tested to manned aircraft standards.
In addition, the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center determined in March 2007 that the Global Hawk is fully qualified for the intelligence collection needs of battlefield commanders after conducting an operational assessment of the Block 10 variant. The operational assessment included testing during actual GWOT sorties as well as two domestic flights. The first domestic flight was over Florida to evaluate electro-optical, infrared and synthetic aperture radar sensor performance in dense foliage. During the second 27-hour sortie, the Global Hawk system collected images over Alaska to test its performance in the upper latitudes and to collect intelligence information in a snowy environment.
"Without a doubt, Global Hawk has proven its capabilities and value to the warfighter as it continues to be on cost and on schedule for the past 19 months," said Madigan. "Most recently, the Block 20 configuration equipped with an enhanced integrated sensor suite was delivered to the Air Force on May 17. The Block 20 aircraft provides 50 percent more payload capacity, further enhancing Global Hawk's ability to identify and track insurgents."
Global Hawks are operated overseas by Air Force pilots from a mission control element stationed at its main operating base at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif. A launch and recovery element and a combined Air Force and Northrop Grumman team are forward deployed with the air systems. The air vehicle can fly at altitudes up to 65,000 feet and can survey vast geographic regions with pinpoint accuracy. A third Block 10 Global Hawk will be deployed to support GWOT later this year.
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a $30 billion global defense and technology company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in information and services, electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide. CONTACT: Gemma Loochkartt
Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems
(858) 618-4245
gemma.loochkartt@ngc.com

Report Warns Against Many Internet Rules

Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
'Governing the Internet,' issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.'
'Speaking out has never been easier than on the Web. Yet at the same time we are witnessing the spread of Internet censorship,' the report said.
Miklos Haraszti, who heads the OSCE's media freedom office, said about two dozen countries practice censorship, and others have adopted needlessly restrictive legislation and government policy.
Among those are Malaysia, where a government official said this week that laws would be drafted for bloggers and authorities would not hesitate to prosecute those deemed to have insulted Islam.
Haraszti cited separate research by the OpenNet Initiative, a trans-Atlantic group that tracks Internet filtering and surveillance, which pointed to questionable online restrictions in Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Sudan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and elsewhere.
The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era 'spy mania,' and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online.
Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of 'dirt' and 'lies.'
'Those who think it is impossible to control the Internet can continue living in a world of illusions,' Yertysbayev told the Vremya newspaper in a recent interview.
On Thursday, in a speech at OSCE headquarters in Vienna, Yertysbayev insisted his country was committed to democracy and the creation of what he called an 'e-government' that would expand Internet access and make 'our information sphere more open and our media more free.'
In the most publicized instance of a government crackdown, Kazakh authorities took control of .kz Internet domains in 2005. It then revoked a domain operated by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the movie 'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'
Baron Cohen since has relocated his satirical Web site, which Kazakhstan considered offensive.
The OSCE report warns that Kazakhstan's approach to the Internet has produced a hostile atmosphere where 'any dissident individual, organization or an entire country could be named an 'enemy of the nation.''
Georgia, the report says, has laws that contain 'contradictory and ill-defined' provisions 'which on certain occasions might give leverage for illegitimate limitation of freedom of expression on the Internet.'
'It is important to support the view of the World Press Freedom Committee that 'governance' must not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content,' the report says.

EU Charges Intel With Monopoly Abuse

EU regulators said Friday they have charged Intel with monopoly abuse for blocking rival chipmaker AMD's access to customers.
It said Intel gave 'substantial rebates' to computer makers for buying most of their computer processing units, or CPIs, from Intel; that it made payments to manufacturers to get them to delay or cancel product lines using AMD CPUs; and that it sold CPUs below cost to certain server customers to try to muscle into that business.
'These three types of conduct are aimed at excluding AMD, Intel's main rival, from the market,' the European Commission said. 'The three types of conduct reinforce each other and are part of a single overall anticompetitive strategy.'
Intel has 10 weeks to reply to the preliminary charges and can seek an oral hearing to defend itself, after which regulators may make a decision that would force the company to change its behavior under threat of fines.

Toshiba Quarterly Profit Jumps Fivefold

Profit at Toshiba Corp. jumped fivefold in the April-June quarter on brisk sales of personal computers and semiconductors, the company said Friday.
Net income rose to 20.63 billion yen ($173.8 million) in the electronics company's fiscal first quarter from 4.04 billion yen a year ago, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement.
Sales climbed 14.6 percent to 1.66 trillion yen ($13.9 billion) from 1.45 trillion yen.
The company said its semiconductor business saw higher sales in NAND flash memory chips and large-scale integrated, or LSI, chips for use in flat-panel televisions and other digital electronic appliances.
Its personal computer business grew especially in the U.S. market, Toshiba said.
Special profits from the sale of real estate and its stake in a music-content venture to Britain's EMI Group PLC also helped its profit soar, it said.
Toshiba also said it has revised its forecast of profit for the first-half of fiscal year to March 2008 to 40 billion yen ($336.9 million), up from the 10 billion estimate announced April 26. The company's profit during the same period last year was 38.8 billion yen.
Toshiba had project that its profit will fall about 13 percent in the current fiscal year ending March 2008, on a 5 percent gain in sales. The company said Friday it was currently reviewing its forecast for the full year.
Toshiba reports its earnings based on U.S. accounting standards.

Robots Clear Waterways of Deadly Mines

As it slowly moves in the shallow water along a beach, the robot splashes its fins like a small child playing in the surf.
But the prototype device has a serious mission: destroying mines that could kill Marines and Navy SEALs as they come on shore. Such technology is considered the future of underwater bomb detection.
'It's a kamikaze vehicle, a suicidal robot,' said Mathieu Kemp, a scientist with Durham, N.C.-based Nekton Research, LCC, which created the Transphibian.
The 3-foot-long device, which will some day carry 14 pounds of plastic explosives and attach itself to an underwater bomb before igniting, can be maneuvered by a joystick, which Kemp demonstrated last month at the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Fest, an annual two-week gathering of researchers who design robots for military use.
Experts with the Panama City Beach-based Naval Surface Warfare Center say such robots eventually will replace minesweeping ships and perform dangerous jobs now done by specialized divers.
A 2003 mine-clearing operation in the port of Um Quasar, Iraq, was a major test for autonomous underwater vehicles. The technology helped the U.S. Navy clear a path for a British ship carrying 200 tons of food and emergency supplies. It took the AUVs about 16 hours to search nearly a square mile and help divers locate an undisclosed number of mines - a task the Navy says would have taken 21 days for divers working without the technology.
In the future, scientists plan to put explosives on the AUVs to destroy the mines. Meanwhile, they are using them to quickly and accurately differentiate ocean clutter from mines.
'The closer in you get to any port or harbor, the greater amount of clutter you will encounter - tires, rocks, coral reefs - there can be so much clutter you would not believe it,' said Daniel Broadstreet, a spokesman for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which specializes in neutralizing underwater mines.
'To screen out all that clutter is a huge job and it takes some very, very technologically advanced sensors,' Broadstreet said.
The Um Quasar operation was a milestone for AUVs because it marked the first wartime use of the technology, said Tom Swean, team leader of the Office of Naval Research's Mine Warfare Science and Technology Program.
Swean joined the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va., in 1981, but his work took off in 1997 when the Navy SEALs got involved. They tailored the systems for missions including surveying the seabed, finding channels near the shore and locating mines.
'It was important that they have underwater vehicles that could not be seen very easily,' Swean said. 'Their missions are near shore and are very dangerous.'
A decade later, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pushed advances in unmanned and robotic technology, especially on land and in the air where robots routinely inspect improvised explosive devices and drones conduct air reconnaissance.
'It's gone from zero to 60 pretty fast,' said Jeffery Bradshaw, a scientist at the Pensacola-based Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, which is working with the warfare center on a project to use robots for port security.
The military is expected to spend more than $50 million on the acquisition of AUV technology in the next five years, Swean said. At the same time, more than $12 billion is expected to be spent on unmanned aircraft programs.
The next steps for the researchers include creating robots that function alongside troops as members of an operational team and ones that work with other robots.
'If one robot breaks or if one of the human team members is in trouble, they would know how to coordinate interactions - sort of like buddies,' Bradshaw said.
Despite the interest in robotic technology, changes won't be immediate, Swean said. The Navy likely will phase out large mine sweepers, but it will need ships to deploy the robotic systems, he said.
Among the robots with the most promise is the Transphibian, which is still being developed.
'It's a good example of a hybrid concept, it can swim in the water and it can crawl on the sea floor,' Swean said as he watched a prototype splash along the waters near Panama City Beach. 'The last piece is to efficiently and cheaply go out to a real mine and place a charge on it.'
___

Navteq Charts Digital Map Expansion

Getting lost is getting rarer nowadays, and any yahoo with a keyboard or a GPS device can find precise directions or pinpoint the location of an out-of-town landmark.
Now drivers hooked on digital maps are looking for more than just streets and turns. They want ever more accurate and up-to-date points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels and theme parks.
For digital mapmakers like Navteq Corp., it's up to road teams like Ann McNeil and Rich Joyce to deliver.
Like luxury-class explorers, the geographic analysts cruise streets and roads in a tech-laden SUV outfitted with a satellite tracking computer, electronic clipboard and rooftop cameras.
'Our customers are wanting more and more information,' said McNeil, who has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in a decade at Navteq. 'We're expanding all the time.'
It's all part of a race with Dutch rival Tele Atlas NV to not only chart the world more accurately but combine the maps with other relevant data.
A pioneer of the digital map business, Navteq produces the maps and software found in automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices made by Garmin Ltd. and other companies, and Internet map sites like AOL's Mapquest, Google Inc.'s Google Maps and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Maps.
Navteq is the Rand McNally of the 21st century, according to Colorado-based map industry consultant Henry Poirot. And the rapid growth may be just beginning.
Thanks to global positioning systems and recent technology advancements, Navteq is fine-tuning ways to let consumers use a phone or other handheld device to track their dogs, find where to jog in another city, learn how many calories they will burn doing it, learn where the nearest 24-hour gas stations are and see current traffic and weather conditions. Tele Atlas has its own projects under way.
'There's a lot of competition going on,' said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst for Gartner Inc. 'Both companies are trying to show that their data is better, by being innovative in gathering more detailed information.'
The mapping duel heated up this week with the announcement that Tele Atlas agreed to a $2.6 billion acquisition by TomTom NV, the world's largest maker of personal navigation devices.
While that should make the combined European company a more formidable foe, Navteq's stock also soared. Analysts said TomTom's competitors such as Garmin may now go to the Chicago-based company for their maps rather than buy from a rival.
Navteq would like to improve its current share, which already includes most of the Internet mapping market and a split of the handheld device market with Tele Atlas. Its European rival drives the roads, too - the two companies' teams even sometimes spotting one another covering the same turf.
The biggest threat facing the two competitors in the future may be user-generated map content - a mapping equivalent of YouTube, as it were.
Google also could be a rival. The Internet search leader is deep into research, development and even acquisitions related to its mapping services, which include Google Earth as well as Google Maps.
Navteq has shown a knack for adapting to changing technology.
The company was born in 1985 as Navigation Technologies, focusing on kiosks at car rental agencies and hotels where patrons could print out directions and maps for chosen addresses. Dutch conglomerate Philips Electronics became its primary investor starting in 1989, a role it held until recently.
Navteq finally became profitable in 2002 thanks to global positioning systems, a boom in car-based navigation guides and its increasing grip on the exploding Internet mapping market. An initial public offering in 2004 helped ignite fast growth, and today it has more than 3,000 employees in 30 countries and a new headquarters in Chicago.
The company made $110 million on $582 million in sales last year and posted big gains in both categories in the first quarter. It reports second-quarter results Tuesday.
A heavy reliance on the slowing auto market, which accounted for nearly all its sales in 2000 and still brings in about 60 percent, has sent its stock price on a bumpy ride. Hoping to smooth things out, CEO Judson Green, who headed Disney's theme parks division until coming to Navteq in 2000, has steered the company into more diversification.
A pair of acquisitions for a combined $216 million in the past nine months underscore that effort: Traffic.com, which produces live traffic reports for cities around the country, and Map Network, producer of special maps for travel destinations, major hotels and big events like the Super Bowl.
In a swiftly moving business, it's not clear if that will be enough to stave off Tele Atlas and any nascent competitors.
'They're not moving fast enough,' said Koslowski. 'It's not just a question of acquiring companies like Traffic.com. ... The company needs to focus more on emerging markets.'
To map 12 million miles and 69 countries, Navteq has used an estimated 100,000 different sources, from satellite images and aerial photography to maps issued by local governments and commercial companies.
But to Green, the 'secret sauce' keeping the company on top of the mapping world is the 700 employees who spend half their work time behind the wheel or in the passenger seat.
'I would say that 80 to 85 percent of the effort that we put into making a digital map is from that very labor-intensive driving that we do,' he said. 'We cannot find the quality, accuracy or richness of the information from all these other sources unless we go do it our way.'
The road teams capture 225 different attributes for every link or block of road - one-way signs, turn restrictions, lane information, obstacles in the road and points of interest that may include a hardware store, park or hotel. Every year, the list grows based on customer demands.
Teams ride in the specially outfitted SUVs and rely on sophisticated monitors displaying moving maps and icons while live video from the multi-camera system is shown on separate screens. Among the recent additions: six tiny high-resolution cameras concealed under a glass dome on the roof.
On one recent mapping run, Joyce made sketch pen notations on the electronic clipboard while he and McNeil watched both sides of the street for discrepancies or updates from the existing data.
They quickly spotted a cafe in Chicago's West Loop that had changed its name. This is familiar territory; based on customer requests, they may drive the same streets as often as every three months to check for errors or gather new categories of information, such as bookstores and coffee shops.
'The real world is constantly changing and our challenge is to keep up with that change,' said Navteq spokeswoman Kelly Smith.
Tele Atlas has fewer drivers and road testers than Navteq but claims a bigger database covering over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its business is more balanced between devices and maps.
For its part, Navteq has a new product in use in Europe called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that Green says effectively puts the map in the engine to help drive the car. For example, it turns headlights to match the road's curves, changes the transmission as the car approaches a large hill and warns the driver when a lane line is crossed without a turn signal.
The company also is pushing aggressively into information for pedestrians and is eyeing mobile phones as a huge developing market.
'The next wave of location-enabled devices will be cell phones, and there we're penetrating less than 1 percent,' he said. 'That opens up all kinds of opportunities if you know where you are.'
It's clear, in other words, that the digital map world now is about much more than getting from Point A to Point B.
'The whole array of location-based services - we're just at the beginning of what's going to be possible,' said Green. 'It'll be pervasive in your life.'

Newspapers Feel Real Estate Woes

It's bad enough that a cratering housing market is leading to a slump in real estate advertising at newspapers, as a dreary series of earnings reports showed this week.
What's worse is that a lot of that advertising may never come back to newspapers even if the real estate sector recovers. That's because a significant chunk of those advertising dollars are moving - you guessed, online.
Exactly how much of a shift is occurring is difficult to measure in terms of dollars or market share, but several real estate executives say they are making a conscious decision to move money out of newspapers and onto the Internet as that medium grows in importance as a tool for researching home-buying decisions.
Granted, a significant amount of the declines in real estate advertising in newspapers can be attributed to the general weakness in real estate markets, particularly in hard-hit markets such as California and Florida, which were booming a year ago - leading to big gains in advertising back then.
This week Tribune Co., the No. 2 publisher by circulation, posted a 24 percent drop in the second quarter, while industry leader Gannett Co. has reported a 9.9 percent decline and McClatchy Co. reported a 19 percent decline, citing big losses in California and Florida.
Like the housing market itself, much of the up-and-down movement in newspaper real estate advertising can be viewed as cyclical, meaning it will be weak in down markets and bounce back in the upward part of the cycle, whenever that comes up.
But what's worrying analysts this time around is that real estate could become the next category of classified advertising - after help-wanted ads - to mark a significant and permanent shift away onto the Internet. The stakes are big for newspapers since classifieds are highly lucrative and make up more than 35 percent of their revenues.
Mike Simonton, the top media industry analyst at the Fitch Ratings credit analysis service, says that currently a good 30 percent of help-wanted classified advertising is now online, while the Internet's share of real estate and auto classified advertising is lower, at about 15 to 20 percent, but poised to move higher.
'The threats from the Internet are real,' Simonton said. 'Newspaper advertising should remain under pressure until newspapers are better able to address the threat of online advertising.'
Representatives of several major real estate franchisors said in interviews that many home sellers still see newspaper advertising as an essential component of selling a home, but that younger brokers, home sellers and buyers are clearly more focused on using the Internet.
'For our agents, newspapers are an old standby,' said Abby Lee, director of regional advertising in Denver for RE/MAX, a major real estate franchisor. 'With younger agents, there's a trend of going online. There's a realization that's where they need to be.'
Suzy Antal, director of marketing, communications and public relations for Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., said many Prudential agents have been pulling back on advertising during the current downturn, but as they return, they're shifting ad budgets to their own Web sites, creating blogs, and taking different approaches beyond newspapers.
'Is newspaper a high priority? No,' Antal said. 'I don't believe my buyers and sellers are going to be in that market.'
Newspaper publishers understand they need to move more aggressively to hold on to real estate advertising. 'We can't sit on our hands,' says Charlie Diederich, the director of marketing and advertising at the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group.
Diederich said newspapers are still a key part of most people's real estate searches and an important tool for realtors to make people aware of their brands. But he also acknowledged that newspapers need to do more to make their own Web sites essential to home buying decisions.
'We've got to improve both our print but especially our online products ... so consumers will continue to come to us first so we can deliver that audience to the professional realtor,' Diederich said.
A group of five major newspaper publishers also owns Classified Ventures, a Chicago-based business that powers the real estate sections of the Web sites of its 125 member newspapers.
Tim Fagan, president of that group's real estate division, said Classified Ventures would 'significantly increase' its investment in Homescape, a real estate-related Web site that provides home listings, but he declined to provide specific numbers.
Whether those efforts will be enough to stanch the flow of real estate ad dollars to online alternatives remains to be seen.
Blanche Evans, the editor of Realty Times, an online real estate news service, says that realtors now have a number of alternatives besides newspapers for listing homes for sale, such as Realtor.org, a site run by the National Association of Realtors, in addition to major online destinations such as Yahoo Inc.
As home-buyers flock online, it's also tough on realtors, Evans said, since home-buyers are becoming accustomed to seeing extensive color photos, descriptions of the neighborhood as well as video tours of the property - all of which costs money to produce.
With all the online tools available today, realtors 'have the ability now to really expose the property in a significant way,' Evans said. 'People have the ability to tour the house. That has changed everything.'

Papers Losing Real Estate Ads to Online

It's bad enough that a cratering housing market is leading to a slump in real estate advertising at newspapers, as a dreary series of earnings reports showed this week.
What's worse is that a lot of that advertising may never come back to newspapers even if the real estate sector recovers. That's because a significant chunk of those advertising dollars are moving - you guessed, online.
Exactly how much of a shift is occurring is difficult to measure in terms of dollars or market share, but several real estate executives say they are making a conscious decision to move money out of newspapers and onto the Internet as that medium grows in importance as a tool for researching home-buying decisions.
Granted, a significant amount of the declines in real estate advertising in newspapers can be attributed to the general weakness in real estate markets, particularly in hard-hit markets such as California and Florida, which were booming a year ago - leading to big gains in advertising back then.
This week Tribune Co., the No. 2 publisher by circulation, posted a 24 percent drop in the second quarter, while industry leader Gannett Co. has reported a 9.9 percent decline and McClatchy Co. reported a 19 percent decline, citing big losses in California and Florida.
Like the housing market itself, much of the up-and-down movement in newspaper real estate advertising can be viewed as cyclical, meaning it will be weak in down markets and bounce back in the upward part of the cycle, whenever that comes up.
But what's worrying analysts this time around is that real estate could become the next category of classified advertising - after help-wanted ads - to mark a significant and permanent shift away onto the Internet. The stakes are big for newspapers since classifieds are highly lucrative and make up more than 35 percent of their revenues.
Mike Simonton, the top media industry analyst at the Fitch Ratings credit analysis service, says that currently a good 30 percent of help-wanted classified advertising is now online, while the Internet's share of real estate and auto classified advertising is lower, at about 15 to 20 percent, but poised to move higher.
'The threats from the Internet are real,' Simonton said. 'Newspaper advertising should remain under pressure until newspapers are better able to address the threat of online advertising.'
Representatives of several major real estate franchisors said in interviews that many home sellers still see newspaper advertising as an essential component of selling a home, but that younger brokers, home sellers and buyers are clearly more focused on using the Internet.
'For our agents, newspapers are an old standby,' said Abby Lee, director of regional advertising in Denver for RE/MAX, a major real estate franchisor. 'With younger agents, there's a trend of going online. There's a realization that's where they need to be.'
Suzy Antal, director of marketing, communications and public relations for Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc., said many Prudential agents have been pulling back on advertising during the current downturn, but as they return, they're shifting ad budgets to their own Web sites, creating blogs, and taking different approaches beyond newspapers.
'Is newspaper a high priority? No,' Antal said. 'I don't believe my buyers and sellers are going to be in that market.'
Newspaper publishers understand they need to move more aggressively to hold on to real estate advertising. 'We can't sit on our hands,' says Charlie Diederich, the director of marketing and advertising at the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group.
Diederich said newspapers are still a key part of most people's real estate searches and an important tool for realtors to make people aware of their brands. But he also acknowledged that newspapers need to do more to make their own Web sites essential to home buying decisions.
'We've got to improve both our print but especially our online products ... so consumers will continue to come to us first so we can deliver that audience to the professional realtor,' Diederich said.
A group of five major newspaper publishers also owns Classified Ventures, a Chicago-based business that powers the real estate sections of the Web sites of its 125 member newspapers.
Tim Fagan, president of that group's real estate division, said Classified Ventures would 'significantly increase' its investment in Homescape, a real estate-related Web site that provides home listings, but he declined to provide specific numbers.
Whether those efforts will be enough to stanch the flow of real estate ad dollars to online alternatives remains to be seen.
Blanche Evans, the editor of Realty Times, an online real estate news service, says that realtors now have a number of alternatives besides newspapers for listing homes for sale, such as Realtor.org, a site run by the National Association of Realtors, in addition to major online destinations such as Yahoo Inc.
As home-buyers flock online, it's also tough on realtors, Evans said, since home-buyers are becoming accustomed to seeing extensive color photos, descriptions of the neighborhood as well as video tours of the property - all of which costs money to produce.
With all the online tools available today, realtors 'have the ability now to really expose the property in a significant way,' Evans said. 'People have the ability to tour the house. That has changed everything.'

Navteq Charts Growth of Digital Maps

Getting lost is getting rarer nowadays, and any yahoo with a keyboard or a GPS device can find precise directions or pinpoint the location of an out-of-town landmark. Now drivers hooked on digital maps are looking for more than just streets and turns. They want ever more accurate and up-to-date points of interest such as restaurants, gas stations, hotels, theme parks and more. For digital mapmakers like Navteq Corp., it's up to road teams like Ann McNeil and Rich Joyce to deliver.
Like luxury-class explorers, the geographic analysts cruise streets and roads in a tech-laden SUV outfitted with a satellite tracking computer, electronic clipboard and rooftop cameras.
'Our customers are wanting more and more information,' said McNeil, who has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in a decade at Navteq. 'We're expanding all the time.'
It's all part of a race with Dutch rival Tele Atlas NV to not only chart the world more accurately but combine the maps with other relevant data.
A pioneer of the digital map business, Navteq produces the maps and software found in automobile navigation systems, portable navigation devices made by Garmin Ltd. and other companies, and Internet map sites like AOL's Mapquest, Google Inc.'s Google Maps and Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Maps.
Navteq is the Rand McNally of the 21st century, according to Colorado-based map industry consultant Henry Poirot. And the rapid growth may be just beginning.
Thanks to global positioning systems and recent technology advancements, Navteq is fine-tuning ways to let consumers use a phone or other handheld device to track their dogs, find where to jog in another city, learn how many calories they will burn doing it, learn where the nearest 24-hour gas stations are and see current traffic and weather conditions. Tele Atlas has its own projects under way.
'There's a lot of competition going on,' said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst for Gartner Inc. 'Both companies are trying to show that their data is better, by being innovative in gathering more detailed information.'
The mapping duel heated up this week with the announcement that Tele Atlas agreed to a $2.6 billion acquisition by TomTom NV, the world's largest maker of personal navigation devices.
While that should make the combined European company a more formidable foe, Navteq's stock also soared. Analysts said TomTom's competitors such as Garmin may now go to the Chicago-based company for their maps rather than buy from a rival.
Navteq would like to improve its current share, which already includes most of the Internet mapping market and a split of the handheld device market with Tele Atlas. Its European rival drives the roads, too - the two companies' teams even sometimes spotting one another covering the same turf.
The biggest threat facing the two competitors in the future may be user-generated map content - a mapping equivalent of YouTube, as it were.
Google also could be a rival. The Internet search leader is deep into research, development and even acquisitions related to its mapping services, which include Google Earth as well as Google Maps.
Navteq has shown a knack for adapting to changing technology.
The company was born in 1985 as Navigation Technologies, focusing on kiosks at car rental agencies and hotels where patrons could print out directions and maps for chosen addresses. Dutch conglomerate Philips Electronics became its primary investor starting in 1989, a role it held until recently.
Navteq finally became profitable in 2002 thanks to global positioning systems, a boom in car-based navigation guides and its increasing grip on the exploding Internet mapping market. An initial public offering in 2004 helped ignite fast growth, and today it has more than 3,000 employees in 30 countries and a new headquarters in Chicago.
The company made $110 million on $582 million in sales last year and posted big gains in both categories in the first quarter. It reports second-quarter results Tuesday.
A heavy reliance on the slowing auto market, which accounted for nearly all its sales in 2000 and still brings in about 60 percent, has sent its stock price on a bumpy ride. Hoping to smooth things out, CEO Judson Green, who headed Disney's theme parks division until coming to Navteq in 2000, has steered the company into more diversification.
A pair of acquisitions for a combined $216 million in the past nine months underscore that effort: Traffic.com, which produces live traffic reports for cities around the country, and Map Network, producer of special maps for travel destinations, major hotels and big events like the Super Bowl.
In a swiftly moving business, it's not clear if that will be enough to stave off Tele Atlas and any nascent competitors.
'They're not moving fast enough,' said Koslowski. 'It's not just a question of acquiring companies like Traffic.com. ... The company needs to focus more on emerging markets.'
To map 12 million miles and 69 countries, Navteq has used an estimated 100,000 different sources, from satellite images and aerial photography to maps issued by local governments and commercial companies.
But to Green, the 'secret sauce' keeping the company on top of the mapping world is the 700 employees who spend half their work time behind the wheel or in the passenger seat.
'I would say that 80 to 85 percent of the effort that we put into making a digital map is from that very labor-intensive driving that we do,' he said. 'We cannot find the quality, accuracy or richness of the information from all these other sources unless we go do it our way.'
The road teams capture 225 different attributes for every link or block of road - one-way signs, turn restrictions, lane information, obstacles in the road and points of interest that may include a hardware store, park or hotel. Every year, the list grows based on customer demands.
Teams ride in the specially outfitted SUVs and rely on sophisticated monitors displaying moving maps and icons while live video from the multi-camera system is shown on separate screens. Among the recent additions: six tiny high-resolution cameras concealed under a glass dome on the roof.
On one recent mapping run, Joyce made sketch pen notations on the electronic clipboard while he and McNeil watched both sides of the street for discrepancies or updates from the existing data.
They quickly spotted a cafe in Chicago's West Loop that had changed its name. This is familiar territory; based on customer requests, they may drive the same streets as often as every three months to check for errors or gather new categories of information, such as bookstores and coffee shops.
'The real world is constantly changing and our challenge is to keep up with that change,' said Navteq spokeswoman Kelly Smith.
Tele Atlas has fewer drivers and road testers than Navteq but claims a bigger database covering over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Its business is more balanced between devices and maps.
For its part, Navteq has a new product in use in Europe called Advanced Driver Assistance Systems that Green says effectively puts the map in the engine to help drive the car. For example, it turns headlights to match the road's curves, changes the transmission as the car approaches a large hill and warns the driver when a lane line is crossed without a turn signal.
The company also is pushing aggressively into information for pedestrians and is eyeing mobile phones as a huge developing market.
'The next wave of location-enabled devices will be cell phones, and there we're penetrating less than 1 percent,' he said. 'That opens up all kinds of opportunities if you know where you are.'
It's clear, in other words, that the digital map world now is about much more than getting from Point A to Point B.
'The whole array of location-based services - we're just at the beginning of what's going to be possible,' said Green. 'It'll be pervasive in your life.'
___
On the Net:
http://www.navteq.com

EBay Can Continue Using 'Buy It Now'

A federal judge Friday denied a request from a small Virginia company to stop the online auction powerhouse eBay Inc. from using a feature that allows shoppers to purchase items at a fixed price.
U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Friedman denied a motion by MercExchange LLC for a permanent injunction against San Jose, Calif.-based eBay over the 'Buy It Now' feature.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that although eBay infringed upon MercExchange's patent for the service, it was up to the lower court to decide whether eBay had to stop using it.
In his ruling, Friedman said the company was not irreparably harmed because it continued to make money from its patents, either by licensing them outright or by threatening litigation against those it believed infringed upon them.
A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed on Great Falls-based MercExchange's patent and awarded the company $35 million. The amount later was reduced to $25 million.
MercExchange attorney Greg Stillman called the opinion a 'double-edged sword.'
'It was sort of good news, bad news for both sides,' Stillman said. 'I'm sure eBay is relieved that they're not going to be enjoined, but on the other hand (Friedman) made it quite clear that they're going to have to pay for that right.'
Catherine England, a spokeswoman for eBay, said the company is 'extremely pleased' with the decision.
Friedman denied eBay's request to stay proceedings on the 'Buy It Now' patent because the infringement suit already has been tried by a jury and a final verdict and damage award was affirmed by the federal circuit.
The judge did stay proceedings on a second patent held by MercExchange until the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has time to reexamine it.
In the closely watched case, the high court ruled that judges have flexibility in deciding whether to issue court orders barring continued use of a technology after juries find a patent violation. The decision threw out a ruling by a federal appeals court that said injunctions should be automatic unless exceptional circumstances apply.
The case became a rallying point for critics who argue the U.S. patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products.
___
On the Net:
http://www.ebay.com
http://www.mercexchange.com