NEW YORK (AP) – Most consumers probably associate eBay Inc. more with vintage lunch boxes and low-priced electronics than with laptop bags made from recycled plastic by women in New Delhi.

The online auction operator is trying to change that perception with WorldofGood.com, a Web that launched Wednesday to sell goods produced with social and environmental goals in mind.

EBay developed the site with World of Good Inc., a startup focused on “ethical supply chains” behind consumer products, and licensed the group’s name for the marketplace. World of Good will get a share of the revenue from the site, which had been operating for the past six months as an online community focused on the social impact of business.

The site sells fixed-price goods that purportedly have some positive effect on people and the planet. The goal is to help consumers align their social values with their shopping decisions, WorldofGood.com general manager Robert Chatwani said.

Shoppers can search for products by certain social or environmental categories, revealing, for example, a photo of the man who produced the fair-trade coffee you’re interested in buying, details of its origins and whether some of the proceeds support a charitable cause.

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written by Andrew

Cablevision Systems Corp. said Thursday it has finished the first phase of its wireless network buildout in New York and remains on track to complete the project in two years.

The diversified cable operator is offering the WiFi service at no charge to its 2.4 million Internet customers at speeds of up to 1.5 Megabits per second, similar to DSL at home.

The company currently doesn’t have plans to offer the service to non-subscribers.

The WiFi network, which is expected to cost about $310 million overall, is Cablevision’s answer to a wireless option being pursued by other cable operators.

Bethpage, N.Y.-based Cablevision announced the WiFi project in May, soon after cable operators Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks joined chipmaker Intel Corp., Google Inc., Clearwire Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp. in a joint venture to offer a wireless Internet service.

Cablevision’s first phase of WiFi deployment comprised parts of Nassau and Suffolk counties and commuter rail platforms and station parking lots in Long Island.

The cable operator already has WiFi pockets in other parts of New York, as well as in New Jersey and Connecticut. These will be folded into the WiFi buildout announced in May.

Consumers seeking more information should log onto http://www.optimumwifi.com.

Source: yahoo.com

written by Andrew

NEW YORK - Google Inc.’s new Web browser, called Chrome, does much of what a browser needs to do these days: It presents a sleek appearance, groups pages into easy-to-manage “tabs” and offers several ways for people to control their Internet privacy settings.

Yet my initial tests reveal that this “beta,” or preliminary release, falls short of Google’s goals, and is outdone in an important measure by the latest version of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.

Chrome is a challenge to Microsoft’s browser, used by about three-quarters of Web surfers. But it could equally be called a challenge to Microsoft’s Office software suite, because what Google really wants to do is to make the browser a stable and flexible platform that can do practically everything we want to do with a computer, from word processing and e-mail to photo editing.

To strengthen that effort, Chrome was designed to improve on the way other browsers handle JavaScript, one of the technologies used to make Web pages more interactive and more like desktop software applications. Google’s online word processing and spreadsheet programs use this technology, but it’s also very widely deployed on Web pages to do less sophisticated things, like drop-down menus.

At first blush, Google’s focus on JavaScript makes sense. JavaScript can eat up computer processor power, and if poorly used by a Web site, can bring down the browser. One of the things Chrome promises is that if one browser tab crashes, it won’t take down the whole program.

Chrome also has some cosmetic differences from Internet Explorer and Firefox, like putting the tabs at the very top of the window. That’s a nice move, but it’s the browser’s performance that really matters to me. And this is where Chrome’s attention to JavaScript might miss the point.

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written by Andrew

The Mountain View-based company took the unusual step of announcing its latest product on the Labor Day holiday after it prematurely sent out a comic book drawn up to herald the new browser’s arrival.

The free browser, called “Chrome,” is supposed to be available for downloading Tuesday in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Google said it’s still working on versions compatible with Apple Inc.’s Mac computer and the Linux operating system.

Google’s browser is expected to hit the market a week after Microsoft’s unveiling of a test version of its latest browser update, Internet Explorer 8. The tweaks include more tools for Web surfers to cloak their online preferences, creating a shield that could make it more difficult for Google and other marketing networks to figure out which ads are most likely to appeal to which individuals.

Although Google is using a cartoonish approach to promote Chrome, the new browser underscores the gravity of Google’s rivalry with Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer is used by about 75 percent of Web surfers.

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written by Andrew

(AP) — First, an iPhone price cut left early buyers feeling foolish, and then came reports that some iPods were spitting sparks.

Now, the new iPhone 3G has been marred by bugs, spotty service, disappearing programs for the device and a veil of secrecy over software developers trying to broaden its appeal.

Such a string of mishaps and missteps might throw another electronics company into crisis. But of course, Apple Inc. isn’t just another electronics company. Even as iPhone griping rages online, it looks like Apple’s sterling reputation will emerge untarnished.

“The objective reality is that Apple does plenty of wrong,” said Peter Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

However, Fader said, the company’s loyal fans and even casual users have come to identify so strongly with Apple’s high-end, individualistic vibe that they’re willing to look the other way.

“Very few companies have this kind of iconic status where anything they do, even if it is mediocre, will automatically have a halo around it,” he said.

Kern Bruce, a 25-year-old Web designer in Boston, Massachusetts, waited in line for 13 hours to buy an original iPhone. He sold it to upgrade to a 3G.

“There was no going back at that point, but after I sold it, I quickly started to regret it,” he said. Bruce’s complaints echo countless Web forum posts: The device gets uncomfortably warm. Programs crash. And it so seldom connects to AT&T’s speedier third-generation, or 3G, data network that Bruce carries the iPhone around with 3G turned off.

Apple, which declined to comment for this story, said little as complaints rolled in but then released a software fix it said would improve the device’s ability to connect to 3G networks. Users on various sites have reported no improvement.

Bruce, an Apple aficionado since the very first iPod, also recently returned a MacBook Air because it got too hot and said his Apple cinema-display monitor sports burned-in images.

“They’re skimping on materials, on testing things to gain market share, but they’re kind of pushing away people who have been with the brand even when [it was] struggling,” he said.

Yet when asked whether he’d abandon Apple, the answer was no.

Macs are “a lot better than the alternative in terms of stability, viruses, being able to do high-end graphics work,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell people to stop getting Apple products. They make very good products.”

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written by Andrew

NEW YORK - The nation’s largest Internet service providers all say they haven’t partnered with Silicon Valley startup NebuAd Inc. to monitor Web surfing and deliver targeted advertising to their subscribers.

Here is a look at six smaller service providers, however, that have conducted trials. The companies say all the tests have ended, often to review privacy and related issues. No provider is known to be currently using NebuAd.

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written by Andrew

SILVER CITY, Idaho - The craggy gullies where Idaho cowboy Paul Nettleton runs 1,200 head of cattle are often precious minutes from reliable cell phone coverage.

That could spell disaster in this region where sudden summertime storms howl in from eastern Oregon, bringing dry lightning that can ignite fast-moving wildfires on sage- and juniper-covered hillsides. Unchecked, the flames could quickly turn this old mining town’s historic wooden buildings to ashes.

This spring, Nettleton and six other Owyhee County ranchers who make their livelihoods in some of America’s most remote backcountry began carrying satellite telephones provided by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the Idaho Bureau of Homeland Security.

It’s an effort to turn men whose ranching families have been wedded to this land for more than a century into a high-tech advance guard against devastating wildfires.

“Minutes count in that country,” Nettleton told The Associated Press one morning last week after parking his four-wheeler outside the town’s 145-year-old Idaho Hotel. “Right now, it’s pretty quiet. But it’ll come.”

The BLM says Owyhee County — the name comes from South Pacific explorer Captain Cook’s spelling of Hawaii and honors Hawaiian trappers who disappeared in the uncharted region in 1818 — is the first place the agency has armed cowboys with satellite phones.

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written by Andrew

WASHINGTON - When a computer glitch at a Federal Aviation Administration center caused widespread airline delays this week, it served as a reminder that the U.S. flight system is waiting for a modernizing overhaul. But it also appears the FAA’s management of its existing technologies falls short of standards in other vital sectors.

By using computing practices that would be considered poor in credit card networks or power plant operators, for example, the FAA was vulnerable to a problem caused when new software was loaded at the Atlanta center that distributes flight plans.

Because the FAA relies on just two computing systems, one in Atlanta and one in Salt Lake City, to handle that chore for the entire nation, the software glitch all but sank the system Tuesday. The Salt Lake center remained up and served as a backup, but it became overloaded by information coming from airlines. More than 600 flights were delayed from Atlanta all the way to Boston and Chicago.

A failure at the same Atlanta center caused major delays across the East Coast in June 2007.

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written by Andrew

JERUSALEM (CNN) — More than 2,000 years after they were written, the Dead Sea Scrolls are going digital as part of an effort to better preserve the ancient texts and let more people see them than ever before.

The high-tech initiative, announced Wednesday, will also reveal text that was previously not visible to the naked eye.

Over the next two years, the Israel Antiquities Authority will digitally photograph and scan every bit of crumbling parchment and papyrus that makes up the scrolls, which include the oldest written record of the Bible’s Old Testament.

The images eventually will be posted on the Internet for anyone to see.

“These are the earliest copies of the Bible ever found,” said Pnina Shor, head of treatment and conservation at the Antiquities Authority.

“The Bible is sacred to us and to you and to all the monotheistic religions, and therefore [the scrolls] are national treasures and world treasures, and therefore it is our duty to preserve them at least for 2,000 years more.”

It is widely believed that the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who ventured into a cave in the Judean Desert in search of a lost sheep or goat. The texts were found wrapped in linen inside earthenware jars.

Eventually, 11 caves were found to contain scrolls — some dating back more than 2,000 years.

The texts shed light on life in the Holy Land around the time of Jesus, in the early days of Christianity and at a time of great upheaval for the Jewish people.

“They show the connection between Christianity, Judaism and how everything evolved from the God — the God is one God,” Shor said. “The scrolls are meant to bring us all together.”

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written by Andrew

PHILADELPHIA - The road to advanced video, Internet and phone services is bumpy — and the bumps can be almost as big as refrigerators.

As cable and phone companies race to upgrade services or offer video for the first time, they’re doing it by installing equipment in boxes on lawns, easements and curbs all over American neighborhoods. Telecommunications rollouts have always been messy, but several towns and residents are fighting back with cries of "Not in my front yard!"

AT&T Inc.’s nearly fridge-sized units, which route its new U-verse video product to customers, are drawing particular ire. A few caught fire or even exploded. AT&T said it has fixed that by replacing the units’ backup batteries.

That’s not much comfort to David Crommie, who thinks the boxes are an eyesore. Crommie, who is president of a San Francisco neighborhood group called the Cole Valley Improvement Association, complained after seeing some boxes sprout in town and managed to delay AT&T’s plans to install up to 850. AT&T now is expected to reapply for an exemption to the city’s environmental-review procedures.

"We have nothing against the technology. We just don’t want that delivery system," Crommie said. "It’s 19th century packaging for 21st century technology."

AT&T’s rival Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, apparently thought so too. It ran ads in Illinois calling the cabinets "giant utility boxes." In most locations, U-verse cabinets are 4 feet tall, 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep.

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written by Andrew