uk-shec.org

Each kiosk holds about 100 new-release titles. You don’t have to sign up for anything or use a special DVDPlay card: just choose a movie, swipe your credit card, and presto, the movie pops out like magic. When you’re done, bring it back to the kiosk and slip it into the return slot.

(Credit:
DVDPlay)

DVDPlay kiosks, which can be found in grocery stores and other locations around the U.S., just permanently lowered rental prices to $1 per day. The move, which brings the company’s prices in line with its competitors, also applies temporarily to Blu-ray discs as well.

Thanks to reader Shankar for mentioning this deal.

Blockbuster charges something like $4 for an in-store DVD rental. Let me tell you something: Iron Man was good, but it wasn’t that good.

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Yes, the selection is quite limited compared with Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and other movie stores. And your dollar gives you only 24 hours to watch the movie. (You get charged another buck for each additional day.) So you have to be diligent about returning it. But, hey, if you rent just one movie per week, you’ll save about $150 over the course of a year. That’s a lot of microwave popcorn.

The National Association of Broadcasters has filed an emergency petition with the Federal Communications Commission in an effort to change the agency’s mind about supporting the use of “white space” spectrum.

The NAB filed its request in conjunction with the Disney’s ABC, CBS, General Electric’s NBC, News Corp.’s Fox and other broadcasters.

The NAB said that the FCC’s own report contradicts claims that devices using white space spectrum do not interfere with services using adjacent spectrum channels.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said this week that he will submit a proposal for the rest of the commissioners to vote on that would open up white spaces for unlicensed use. Several technology companies, including Motorola, Microsoft, and Google have been lobbying the FCC for more than a year to open up these channels, which would provide between 300MHz and 400MHz of unlicensed spectral capacity throughout the country that could be used by anyone.

“White spaces” are slivers of unused spectrum that sit between licensed broadcast channels in the 150MHz to 700MHz spectrum bands. The FCC tested several proof-of-concept devices this summer to see if companies can develop products that could use this spectrum without interfering with licensed spectrum services in these bands.

The NAB, which has opposed the use of “white space” spectrum, said in a statement that it has filed a request for the commission to take public comments on a report that the FCC issued earlier this week stating that this spectrum could be opened up for unlicensed use without interfering with licensed spectrum holders. The report said that geolocation and sensing technologies were adequate in preventing interference. The FCC is set to vote on a proposal to open up this spectrum during its November 4 open meeting.

But incumbent spectrum license holders, such as TV broadcasters and cell phone operators, say wireless devices that access this unlicensed spectrum will cause interference in the neighboring spectrum bands.

These technology companies believe this spectrum, which is ideal for sending data wirelessly over long distances and penetrating through walls, can be used to enhance or create new wireless broadband services. And they say they can develop products and services that use this spectrum without interfering with services running on licensed spectrum in adjacent bands.

In a report released earlier this week, the commission’s Office of Engineering Technology said that devices with geolocation and sensing technologies could be used without interference.

Dubbed Office Communications Server 2007 R2, the release is currently in private testing and is slated to be released in February. The product, which will add group chat and screen-sharing technologies, comes roughly a year after Microsoft introduced the first version of its business telephony product.

Microsoft said that about half of Fortune 500 companies have at least one instance of Office Communications Server installed, but the company wouldn’t give any sales estimates or say how many people are using the software to handle telephony as opposed to simply for corporate instant messaging.

Aiming to make further inroads into business telephony, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is working on an update to its unified communications software.

Elop declined to offer publicly any sales or unit targets for the new release, but said the software has exceeded internal forecasts so far.

While some products are tougher to launch during tough economic times, Elop said OCS is the kind of product that can sell well into a slower market. In an interview on Friday, Elop said that such tough times play to Microsoft’s strengths.

“We still have steps ahead, (but) we’re well on that journey,” Elop said.

“It’s at times like this that some of the most difficult technology decisions can be made,” Elop said. “This is a disruptive technology that has value (and) lowers cost.”

“Where we are at with Office Communications Server, we have incredible acceptance and penetration from an instant messaging standpoint,” Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop said in an interview. As for telephony, though he said Microsoft is still in the “early adoption” phase.

Last year, it seemed that Microsoft was making great gains on the Apache Web server, with Apache dropping from its high of 70 percent of the Web server market to 50 percent.

Web Server Market Share

(Credit:
Netcraft)

There are a number of factors for Microsoft’s losses, including “more than 2 million blogging sites running on Microsoft-IIS Web sites expir(ing) from the (Netcraft) survey,” but the basic trend is that Apache is holding firm while Microsoft is dropping to represent less than a third of the Web server market.

commentary

Since then, however, Apache’s market share seems to have stabilized while Microsoft’s IIS has been losing share at a steady clip, according to Netcraft market share data and OStatic’s analysis thereof.

So your friend could be using the $8 for that pina colada and spending it on cheese fries instead. But as they say around the holidays, it’s the thought that counts.

The concept is, in theory, very similar to start-ups like buyyourfriendadrink.com. But services like that are only compatible with participating bars, and Give Real has found a workaround that will make its gifting service compatible with any bar that accepts credit cards. You opt to send a drink to a friend, your credit card gets charged, your friend chooses to accept the payment, and his or her credit card will be credited for that amount of cash when a purchase at an establishment considered a bar, restaurant, or cafe is made.

Announcing a new way to get your friends drunk: GiveReal.com, a Facebook application (and standalone Web site) that just emerged out of private beta. It’s hoping to pioneer what the founders call “social e-commerce” by letting people send virtual drinks to each other that can be translated to a real-life libation.

The company aims to make a profit by charging a small transaction fee to each buyer and by doing branded campaigns whereby you can “buy” your friends a sponsored variety of drink (say, Corona or Jim Beam). The first of these partnerships should be announced within the month.

A source with knowledge of the situation said that the funding was in the low seven figures. In these economic conditions, I’ll drink to that.

Give Real has been funded by Battery Ventures and Hillcrest Management, as well as angel investors Brian O’Kelley (co-founder of Right Media) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. Facebook junkies may know that he’s the co-founder who hasn’t exactly been on stellar legal terms with CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But he still has a big stake in the company, and undoubtedly wants to see the platform keep up its momentum.

If the Facebook app is used, activity shows up in members’ news feeds.

Drinks run the gamut from “Draft Beer” to “Pinot Noir” to “Purple Hooter Shooter” (what’s that?) and there’s no fixed price. So, depending on your generosity and wallet size, you can offer up anywhere from $1 to $99. If your recipient doesn’t accept the purchase, you’ll get your money back 12 months later.

Payments via Facebook
What’s more interesting is that Give Real created its own payment platform to handle the transactions. Facebook has famously had a transaction system in development, something that may or may not have been delayed with the departure of product manager Ben Ling. I spoke to one of Give Real’s founders, and he said that the introduction of a Facebook payment system would make it a lot easier for Give Real. But, at this point, they seem to have figured it out on their own, and say they’ve figured out the tough parts–fraud prevention and security.

On one hand, it is a very cute spin on the virtual-gifting trend that can be used to settle bets from afar (”I’ll owe you a beer if…”) or embarrass your friends by having an apple martini show up in a box on their Facebook profile. On the other hand, you’re really just transferring a dollar amount to your friends’ credit cards that’s eligible for any purchase at an establishment classified by the four major credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover) as a “bar, restaurant, or cafe.”

QuickTime 3
This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.9 - v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the heap buffer overflow vulnerability detailed within CVE-2008-3624. Apple says that viewing a maliciously crafted QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) movie file may lead to an “unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” Apple credits Roee Hay of IBM Rational Application Security Research Group for reporting the vulnerability.

QuickTime 7.5.5 may be obtained from the Apple Software Update application or you can download the latest version of free Quicktime player here.

QuickTime 2
This patch affects users of Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses CVE-2008-3635, stack buffer overflow vulnerability within in a third-party (Indeo
v3.2) codec for QuickTime. Apple explains that viewing a maliciously crafted movie file “may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” This issue does not affect systems running Mac OS X.

Apple on Tuesday released QuickTime 7.5.5, a version that includes nine security patches, some of which could lead to denial of service or allow an attacker to run code on a compromised machine. The patches cover both Windows and
Mac OS X versions of QuickTime. Earlier Tuesday, Microsoft released two bulletins addressing serious vulnerabilities in its Windows Media Player.

QuickTime 6
This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.9 - v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the memory corruption issue vulnerability details within CVE-2008-3626. Apple says because of the way QuickTime handles STSZ atoms in movie files, viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple credits an anonymous researcher working with TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative for reporting the vulnerability.

QuickTime 8
This patch affects users of Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the invalid pointer issue detailed within CVE-2008-3628. Apple says opening a maliciously crafted PICT image may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple credits David Wharton for reporting the vulnerability. This issue does not affect systems running Mac OS X.

QuickTime 1
This patch affects users of
Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses CVE-2008-3615, a memory access vulnerability in the third-party (Indeo v5) codec for QuickTime. Apple says “viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” This issue does not affect systems running Mac OS X.

QuickTime 9
This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.9 - v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the out-of-bounds read issue detailed within CVE-2008-3629. Apple says opening a maliciously crafted PICT image may lead to an unexpected application termination. Apple credits Sergio “shadown” Alvarez of n.runs AG for reporting the vulnerability.

QuickTime 7
This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.9 - v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the memory corruption in QuickTime’s handling of H.264 encoded movie files detailed within CVE-2008-3627. Apple says that viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple credits an anonymous researcher and Subreption working with TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative for reporting the vulnerability.

QuickTime 5
This patch affects users of Windows Vista, XP SP2 and SP3. The update addresses the integer overflow vulnerability within CVE-2008-3614. Apple explains that users opening a maliciously crafted PICT image may suffer an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. Apple credits an anonymous researcher working with the iDefense VCP for reporting the vulnerability. This issue does not affect systems running Mac OS X.

QuickTime 4
This patch affects users of Mac OS X v10.4.9 - v10.4.11, Mac OS X v10.5 or later, Windows Vista, XP SP2, and SP3. The update addresses the stack buffer overflow vulnerability within CVE-2008-3625. Apple says viewing a maliciously crafted QTVR file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution because of how QuickTime’s handles panorama atoms in QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality) movie files.

PALM DESERT, Calif.–The Demo conference was small this year. Only 39 companies presented, down from the usual 60+ at this show. The audience was smaller, too. But there were some good companies here, and some solid business models. Senior writer Daniel Terdiman and I came up with our seven picks from this conference.

Daniel really liked eFormic’s CO2Code (story) initiative to create a database of carbon emissions for consumer products, all indexed off the products’ UPC codes. Once you know how much carbon your purchases are spewing into the atmosphere, you can buy the appropriate offsets on the site. We’d like to see this service tied into a home-based UPC scanner, or perhaps into grocery stores’ loyalty programs.

Asurion (story) showed a contact manager for Android mobile phones. Not just a phonebook, it’s an app that pulls together all your contact information from all your social networks. The
Palm Pre is supposed to have a very similar feature. We liked it there, and we like it here.

Unfortunately, we have to give the Demo booby prize to BluBuzz (story). It’s location-based marketing using Bluetooth, which is, I believe, a non-starter (how many mobile users leave their Bluetooth radios on and open to incoming file transfers?). It also requires users install an app. And, sadly, the demo didn’t work and it appears one of the presenters forgot his lines. Kind of a double-whammy there, but I will try to learn more about this one to see if there’s value hidden under the demo.

Demo will announce its own Demo God and People’s Choice awards this afternoon.

Although I have reservations about the current state of the product, Avaak’s Vue (story) camera system is clever, reasonably-priced, potentially very useful, and based on genuine technology (a low-power radio mesh network). And the demo did its job. A number of people here told me they were looking forward to buying the system as soon as they could.

I really like the article discovery service Ensembli (story). As I wrote, it does not appear to be a comprehensive or reliable enough for professional use, but it’s the simplest way I’ve seen to expose users to custom content.

Always Innovating’s Touch Book (story): Yes, it’s just another Netbook. But the removable keyboard and touch-screen interface make it an attractive product, and its ARM CPU and custom Linux build earn it geek points. Might be a little too expensive to be an impulse purchase for home users, but it does improve the breed.

Although I was initially skeptical of it, I also really liked Silverstone Solutions (story; podcast), a new kidney transplant matching service that tracks more than just one-to-one matches. It could save lives. What’s not to like?

Skout (story; podcast) makes a clever location-aware dating service. But there’s a twist: The company is also creating software for kiosks in bars (in the real world, these are called “jukeboxes”) that are aware of the Skout users nearby. This expands the local dating pools. But if you’re using one of the kiosks and want to chat up a mobile user, you have to pay for the privilege–a flat rate at the moment, but we don’t see why connections shouldn’t be market priced. Given what this service is about, why mess around?

“The only right really that might be implicated is the so-called public performance,” Zittrain said. “But what I want the thing to do is to read to me in the
car. I don’t see a copy being made so I don’t see how this can be Amazon’s problem.”

Amazon’s technology enables a computer voice to read text aloud to owners of the Kindle 2, the next-gen version of reader.

Wow. If a computer can’t lawfully read a book out loud, do human beings have the right? Amazon and Aitken could not be reached for comment.

That’s the question raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group’s executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon’s Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

The debate could be academic. If the book publishers don’t like the feature, they can refuse to renew their licenses with Amazon in the future. And my colleague Ina Fried raised another point. Why would Kindle owners choose a computer voice when they can hear a recording of the author or a professional actor reading the book?

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, said he doesn’t see how the speech feature violates copyright law if no recorded copy of the book is created. Book publishers often license audio books separately than the text versions.

Sheffner said it’s unclear whether the text-to-speech feature could be considered a public performance. Under copyright law, if someone profits from, say, a public reading of a copyright work without authorization, they are breaking the law. Someone could argue, said Sheffner, that the Kindle’s speech feature is a public performance because it enables scores of people to receive audio of a book. Sheffner added that the counter argument would be that the feature is only enabling lots of different private–and therefore legal–performances.

Was your mother a lawbreaker when she read you The Little Prince or Green Eggs and Ham?

Well, mothers of America, never fear. You most certainly do have the right to privately perform copyright work, says Ben Sheffner, a copyright attorney. Sheffner, a well-known copyright advocate, says the issue of whether Amazon’s Kindle infringes on intellectual property is not as cut and dry.

Update at 5:30 p.m. PST: Quotes added from copyright advocate Ben Sheffner.

Lucene has a lot going for it…(It’s) one of the safest (open-source projects) around, in terms of governance and oversight (through the Apache Foundation), the maturity of the code, the amount of active development going on, the size and vitality of the user ecosystem, and the number of high-traffic Web sites that have validated the technology in real-world applications (some better-known examples being Monster.com, Netflix, and Wikipedia).

In fact, in talking with Gries several times over the past few months as a member of Lucid’s advisory board, it became apparent to me that the Levanta experience may well prove to be one of the best reasons to be optimistic about Lucid, in addition to its stellar roster of engineers and Doug Cutting, the founder of Lucene, as an adviser.

If you were looking to create a start-up, and particularly an open-source start-up, you could hardly do better than to stumble upon a pre-existing open-source project with millions of downloads, widespread adoption by some of the biggest names in the industry, and a fast-growing enterprise need.

Started by Eric Gries in 2007, the company already has a full roster of customers that includes Netflix, Hewlett-Packard, FedEx, Orbitz, AOL, Apple, Comcast, and Zappos, which sets it apart from Gries’ former venture, Levanta (formerly Linuxcare), where he was CEO.

commentary

Enter Lucid Imagination, a commercial Lucene company that on Monday announced a $6 million Series A round of venture financing from Granite Ventures and Walden International, which also invested in SugarCRM.

Enterprise search is a growing market, and Lucene (and its more commercially friendly Solr brother) is keeping the pace. The question then becomes whether Lucid and Gries can provide enough value around Lucene to warrant companies such as Netflix spending big with Lucid rather than rolling their own Lucene-based search solution.

Take Lucene, for example, as CMS Watch’s Kas Thomas noted on Monday. It is a hugely popular project with one big failing: no enterprise support. Writes Thomas:

Perhaps reflective of all this, Lucene has become a top-five Apache project, with 7,000 downloads a day.

I think it can, because it’s being run by people that have learned the hard way how to ensure open-source success. As an adviser to Lucid, I’m somewhat biased, and doubly so because my own company uses Lucene as part of our content management solution, so I’ve felt the power and pain of Lucene firsthand. But I believe that this is a space to watch and a company worth watching.

But one thing Lucene is not is an out-of-the-box solution…To go from Lucene to a ready-to-deploy solution requires programming (and lots of it). And when you have a problem, there’s no phone number to dial in the middle of the night. It’s just you, the source code, and the community.