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Rival Facebook already has a commerce section called Facebook Marketplace, which isn’t one of the site’s most popular or high-profile features but is nevertheless still alive and kicking. It might get a leg up when the service launches a much-anticipated payment system–currently anticipated for sometime next year.

Among the new features is a way for individual users to share listings with friends lists, which the company calls “social commerce.” Considering MySpace’s slant toward entertainment and music, this could turn into a choice spot for finding stuff like last-minute concert tickets–as well as friends to hit up that show with you.

In addition, other Oodle listings from across the Web will be listed alongside MySpace’s own, bolstering the offering and potentially providing a worthwhile alternative to the Craigslist juggernaut. According to MySpace, this will mean more than 500,000 new listings every day. This is because Oodle’s reach is big: currently, the site aggregates listings from just about everywhere but Craigslist, including eBay’s Kijiji.

While it’s no Craigslist, MySpace said its existing classifieds section pulls in a million visitors per month, and that the improved technology from Oodle–better search and filtering, more extensive ways to tweak listings–will ideally pull in more users.

News Corp.’s MySpace will relaunch its classified-listing section on Monday through a partnership with Oodle, the company is set to announce later in the day.

(Credit:
U.S. Army)

SPARK is short for “self-protective adaptive roller kit,” a mine roller system that attaches to the front or rear of a vehicle. It works by applying downward pressure in order to trigger IEDs before they’re underneath the vehicle where their explosions are most devastating.

(Credit:
Tardec/U.S. Army)

The SPARK mine roller system is meant to detonate improvised explosive devices before they can do serious damage to a vehicle and its occupants.

Both projects were led by the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, or Tardec.

For good reason, the U.S. Army has seen fit to honor some of those creations and adaptations among its annual list of top inventions. This year, the 2007 Army Greatest Invention winners include a mechanism called SPARK, designed to detonate roadside bombs–also known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs–before they can do too much damage to a vehicle, and HEAT, a training device to help soldiers learn how to escape a Humvee overturned by an explosion or other mishap.

Since very early on in the war in Iraq, U.S. troops have been finding new ways to protect themselves against explosions from roadside bombs: up-armored Humvees, heavy-duty MRAP vehicles, and a wide array of add-on gear.

For last year’s winners, including anti-IED devices and the Buckeye aerial imaging system, which produces stunningly crisp photos, see “Photos: Army touts top tech inventions.”

HEAT is the Humvee egress assistance trainer, a full-scale mockup of the vehicle interior that can be rotated through 360 degrees by an electric motor. It simulates a rollover and lets soldiers practice opening their safety harnesses and exiting through doors or hatches, even when upside-down or at an odd angle. It is now a required training stop for all soldiers and for some Defense Department civilian employees who will be serving overseas.

The HEAT mockup lets soldiers get a feel for a Humvee rollover in a safe environment.

The full top 10 Army Greatest Inventions of 2007 have yet to be made public; an awards ceremony is planned for June 12.

“Customers want the interoperability at the document level,” Craig Shank, general manager of interoperability at Microsoft. “They would like to be able to use documents in different ways.”

Microsoft on Monday announced a series of moves that it says back up its February pledge to make it easy for others’ software to interoperate with its own products.

The news is mostly incremental. Microsoft is making more documentation available on how its older binary Office formats work as well as a final version of the protocols used in Office 2007. What caught my eye, though, were two new projects.

The first involves Microsoft working with China’s Beihang University to develop translators to allow Excel and PowerPoint to open and save files in China’s UOF format. In the second, Microsoft is working to design a new translator that converts its Office 2007 documents into HTML to allow software makers to more easily create browser-based applications that can read Office 2007’s Open XML Office format.

I’ve asked Google to come on my CNET Digital Home podcast to discuss this deal and YouTube itself to give it the opportunity to tell us about its plans for the future and turning this important business segment around. I’m waiting on confirmation. If/when I get that, look for another update here.

The videos themselves are YouTube videos, and they will live on a YouTube brand channel,” Daniel Rubin at Google told me. “The syndication across the Google Content Network of this content operates identically to the way in which we syndicate other YouTube videos as AdSense video units. So, just as other YT content creators generate revenue from their content by having their videos bundled with ads, so too will MacFarlane generate revenue from the branded manner in which his videos are placed on AdSense publisher sites.” “What’s interesting about this deal is that it is branded entertainment: a deal that connects Seth’s content with a specific brand advertiser. Further, this deal demonstrates how YouTube partners can generate revenue and increase distribution of their content via the Google Content Network.”

Tread lightly, Google, you never know when YouTube may come up and bite you.

For more on what Don is up to, follow him on Twitter by clicking here!

Am I missing something here?

Upon doing so, Google solves two problems: it solves the issue of controlling content, thus ensuring that more advertisers would be willing to spend cash on the show, and finally turns YouTube into a destination for high-quality content and advertising dollars, instead of a toilet for the worst videos on the Web.

Ostensibly, Google believes this idea will yield better revenue, but it still doesn’t solve the one problem it can’t figure out: YouTube is becoming the company’s albatross. And if you ask me, this “Cavalcade” would be best served on YouTube.

This deal strikes me as nothing more than a cash grab. Sure, it’s a big step for online video and it could have a major impact on the industry, but let’s not forget that it does nothing for YouTube — the one place Google needs all the help.

Regardless of the fact that Google can probably make more money on ad revenue through this distribution scheme, I don’t think it’s the best way to go about it. Instead of tying MacFarlane’s income to a portion of advertising revenue, and thus forcing itself into this distribution deal, Google should have paid MacFarlane a flat fee for his services and added this show as an exclusive on YouTube.

Then again, maybe Google doesn’t want to play the traditional advertising game with Seth MacFarlane. Instead, the company seems to be under the impression that by using it on its AdSense platform, it’ll use the video to its advantage, while helping customers add some entertainment to their sites and hopefully increase their own ad revenue.

But I’m not sold on that.

Interesting, huh? Not only has the company found a way to bring video to the Web and finally make some money on it, but it has nothing to do with YouTube.

Update1: I had the opportunity to speak with Google today to clarify a few sticking points with YouTube and this deal. According to the company, MacFarlane’s content will be featured on a dedicated YouTube channel and some revenue will be shared between him and YouTube. The New York Times has yet to update its article with this integral fact, but it should be noted that YouTube will get a cut of this deal.

From a purely financial standpoint, this deal makes sense, but finances should be the least of Google’s troubles right now if it can’t turn YouTube around. It’s already a company with solid financial health, but its looming issue with video has yet to be solved. If it can’t turn things around with YouTube soon, all the money it’s making with MacFarlane could be lost at the hands of its video albatross.

In an important announcement that could have a major impact on Google’s future in video, the New York Times is reporting that Seth MacFarlane, the creator of “Family Guy,” will start “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy”, which Google will syndicate (using AdSense) to thousands of Web sites that fit with MacFarlane’s target audience. Instead of a static ad, Google will place the video clip on the site.

Did Google just happen to forget that YouTube is still hanging around with no prospects for revenue and no advertising platform? I commend Google on forming this deal with the world’s most popular cartoonist, but why wouldn’t it try to do something on the YouTube front?

(See: “AMD reclaims the high-end 3D card belt.”)

A big chunk of the graphics chip supplier’s woes stem from a $196 million second-quarter charge taken for defective graphics processors. Though Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has said that the “failures are only seen in a small percentage of all the chips,” Hewlett-Packard and Dell have listed a number of models affected by the glitch.

And then there’s Intel’s future Larrabee graphics chip, which is targeted squarely at Nvidia’s bread and butter segment: gaming. The specter of Larrabee never fails to hit a raw nerver with Nvidia. PC Pro
posted comments from Nvidia executives and scientists pooh-poohing Intel’s attempt to enter the high-end graphics market.

As it kicks off its Nvision conference Monday in San Jose, Calif., chipmaker Nvidia must be hoping that the N stands for “new” and “now”–and not “no thanks.”

Nvidia is trying to shake off a tough second quarter and is staring down a slump in earnings tied to chip glitches and stiffer competition from rival Advanced Micro Devices. The home page for the Nvision 08 conference urges interested parties to “join the visual revolution” and promises attendees two days’ worth of “jaw-dropping visual wonderment” in the realms of games, movies, and science.

In laptops the gains have been smaller, however–at least up to the second quarter. “Small incremental gains by ATI, more like onesy-twosy…we’re not talking about 10-point share shifts,” McCarron said.

AMD’s recently introduced midrange and high-end graphics boards have been well-received and typically come at a discount to Nvidia boards that are roughly equal in performance. This forced Nvidia to cut prices on its performance graphics chips.

Click here for highlights of Nvidia’s Nvision 08 conference.

Ironically, one area where Nvidia did not perform well in chipsets was tied to tepid results from AMD. In the second quarter, McCarron said, “the AMD mobile processor business was not as strong as it probably could have been. If AMD mobile CPUs don’t sell, neither do the Nvidia mobile chipsets.”

(Credit:
Dell Computer)

But McCarron doesn’t see anything like a meltdown for Nvidia either. The company is still strong in high-performance graphics, and dire predictions that Nvidia must spin off its chipset operations are wrong, according to McCarron. Certain segments of its chipset business saw “a very large expansion” in the second quarter, he said.

Dell will offer a 12-month warranty for notebooks affected by Nvidia chip glitch

Analysts confirm that AMD is making inroads. “(It’s) pretty discernible. Certainly desktop standalone graphics, they’ve seen improvement there,” said Dean McCarron, the principal and founder of Mercury Research, a company that tracks chip market movements.

What does Nvidia think about AMD’s new products? “Our competition has built a nice product but…the nice things that people write about their product is that it’s well-priced,” according to Huang, speaking during the earnings call.

A possibly bigger challenge is AMD’s resurgent ATI graphics chip unit. Huang said in the second-quarter earnings conference call that his company had “underestimated” the price and performance of AMD’s latest graphics chips, leading Nvidia to “to misposition our fall lineup” of chips.

It may be nice that these sites have come available, but content is still filtered by keyword, if not encrypted during transmission, and there’s no way to know whether this increased availability of Chinese Web sites will outlast the Olympic pageantry.

ONI notes that the bulk of the opening occurred for foreign-hosted Chinese-language Web sites, while “the majority of advocacy sites and politically ’sensitive’ organizations remain blocked.”

After journalists spent a lot of energy complaining about their inability to reach many Web sites without the use of a proxy, the international and Beijing Olympic committees both seemed to respond, and many restrictions disappeared.

Tests at the main Olympic press center and on other connections around Beijing have shown that both journalists and regular Beijing Internet users are getting less restricted access than usual.

That’s according to the OpenNet Initiative’s assessment of online censorship after the first week of the Games.

The Rechtbank Arnhem court ruled that prohibiting publishing of the article would violate the researcher’s freedom of expression which is vital to a democratic society, according to a news release from the university.

The article will be published at the beginning of October during a scientific conference in Malaga in Spain. Jacobs demonstrated how one could ride the London transit system for free by making a clone of a stranger’s transit card. The card is also used for access control to buildings.

Security researchers Karsten Nohl and Rop Gonggrijp discuss the Mifare court ruling at the conference.

In a statement, NXP said publishing the means to carry out hacks on the chip “is contradictory to the scientific goal of prevention and the responsible disclosure of sensitive information.”

(Credit:
Elinor Mills)

“We have not and will not seek any kind of punitive action toward the university or researchers,” Henri Ardevol, general manager of automatic fare collection for NXP, told CNET News on Friday. “Affected parties may want to see if they themselves want to take direct action” against the university.

NEW YORK–A Dutch court ruled on Friday that a university can publish an article on security flaws in the Mifare Classic wireless smart card chip, the most popular chip used in transit systems around the world.

There are techniques and countermeasures to detect cards and data which have been tampered with, although there remains a residual risk, Ardevol said. (More information on the risks is on Mifare’s Web site.)

Security researcher Karsten Nohl discusses how he cracked the cryptography in the Mifare Classic Chip at the Last HOPE conference.

Karsten Nohl, a University of Virginia graduate student who worked with others to break the crypto algorithm last year, was giving a talk about his research into security problems with Mifare chips at the Last HOPE hacker conference here on Friday morning.

Ardevol said it was too early to say whether NXP would appeal the ruling.

“Migration to a different format is one option,” he said. “We introduced Mifare Plus earlier this year, and it is designed to help migrate from Mifare Classic to a higher level of security…We will be developing plans for how to guide these migrations.”

NXP has sold more than 1 billion of the cards, although it does not know how many are still active, according to Ardevol.

Updated 8:30 a.m. PDT with researcher comment and photos. Updated 11:17 a.m. with NXP comment.

“I don’t think anyone truly believes you can prevent reverse engineering techniques from being published,” Nohl said during his talk. Although the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act would apply in the U.S., universities are exempt, he said.

“I’m very happy that the court upheld the right to open research and freedom of publication,” Nohl told CNET News after his talk. “I’m also happy that the court understood that publishing vulnerabilities is a crucial part of the evolution of security and a different court outcome would have slowed down that evolution of smart card security and left too many systems vulnerable.”

(Credit:
Elinor Mills) NXP Semiconductors, formerly Philips Semiconductors, sued to prevent computer science professor Dr. B. Jacobs Radboud at University Nijmegen from publishing a scientific paper on the technology, arguing that it would be irresponsible to make the information public.

Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch security researcher attending the conference, said publishing information on vulnerabilities is often the only way to get the vendor to fix the problem. “Any other outcome would have changed the way science discloses security vulnerabilities,” he said.

We have a relentless focus on reducing our operational costs for hardware, storage, and other aspects of operating the Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure. In addition, with greater scale (S3 now houses >29 billion objects) have come further efficiencies. As we continue to reduce these costs, we’re able to pass the savings on to our customers.

Amazon.com has announced that it is dropping prices for heavy users of its hosted storage service, S3. The baseline monthly fee of 15 cents per gigabyte of storage remains, but high-volume users will be able to take advantage of a tiered pricing model.

Any small amount of additional flotation will no doubt be welcomed by tech companies today, though entrepreneurs may also want to heed Richard Stallman’s warning: cloud computing is “stupidity.”

After 50 terabytes, the cost goes down to 14 cents a gigabyte; for more than 500TB, it’s at 12 cents. See the new pricing chart.

Through increased scale and operational innovations, we’ve been able to lower the cost of running Amazon S3. We’ve always said we would pass on savings to our customers when we could, and we’re doing so again now.

I asked an Amazon representative if the company is reducing prices just because it could, or if it was the company’s way of helping to bail out tech companies that are going to be finding it harder to fund ongoing operations. The answer is the former:

“Finally, consider that many of today’s applications and operating systems are not optimized for SSDs, but for rotating media.”

Micron will launch its next-generation RealSSD products later this year. Intel and Micron are co-partners in the joint venture IM Flash Technologies. Both companies are expected to bring out similar SSDs though they will be marketed and branded separately by the two companies.

Intel claims its upcoming SSDs will be power efficient

“The controllers analyzed in the Tom’s Hardware review are early-generation, multi-chip and in some cases even use FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which can be quite power hungry. As with many other first and second generation drives, these drives are not delivering on the full potential of the NAND and are not delivering properly on the performance promise.

Has the image of solid state drives as power misers been shattered? A recent review would seem to dispel the notion that these devices are more power efficient than the hard disk drives used in laptops.

The Tom’s Hardware review, however, says: “While conventional hard drives may operate at relatively low power when little movement is required…flash based drives do not. They will draw their maximum power level constantly when in use, and as a consequence, simply spend more total time drawing maximum power than conventional drives.”

The review goes on to test four solid state drives (SSDs) from Crucial (Micron Technology), Memoright, Sandisk, and Mtron. For example, in evaluating the Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB drive, the review states, “Users who purchase this drive because of Crucial’s statements such as ‘low power consumption’ and the product being ideal for ‘users who want longer battery life’ will most likely be disappointed.”

(Note:
Tom’s Hardware has posted a correction to its original report here.)

(Credit:
Intel)

STEC offers drives already with MLC technology.

One of the key selling points of solid state drives has been that they use less power than hard disk drives. The claim has seemed plausible because solid state drives have no moving parts, while hard disk drives have a number of moving components.

In an article at Tom’s Hardware titled “The SSD Power Consumption Hoax”,
the authors state: “We have discovered that the power savings aren’t there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash (solid state drive).”

Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT July 3, with additional comments from Micron Technology (at bottom).

Intel Fellow and Director of Storage Architecture Knut Grimsrud earlier this year presented a paper titled “Not all SSDs are Created Equal” (PDF) that stated “power efficiency must account for the amount of work being performed during the power measurement.”

Dean Klein, vice president of memory system development for Micron, echoed Wilkison’s comments about using legacy drives in the review. He made the following statement:

Micron Technology, which is a manufacturer of one of the drives used by Tom’s Hardware in its review, made a statement on Thursday.

Wilkison pointed out that the most competitive drives adopted by computer makers will have better power management. “Over time, these drives will need to have very intelligent power management systems. Some of these SSDs will have them, and those (that) do not have such power intelligence will not be used (by PC makers).”

And the next crop of SSDs based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology will need to aggressively manage power. “In order to make MLC viable, the drive needs a much more powerful processor/controller, which implies more power draw because frequencies will be higher, number of channels will be higher, ECC (error correcting code) engine will be working harder,” he said.

“There is another factor to be aware of. If the CPU spends 25 million clock cycles waiting for random HDD data, but only part of that waiting for SSD data, the actual increase in notebook power consumption may be in the CPU. A useful metric is how much processing gets done per watt. If you are willing to scale back performance to that of an HDD-based system, an SSD-based system should deliver significantly longer battery life.

Though Intel’s drives were not tested in the review, the chipmaker stated Wednesday that SSDs “can be architected to improve battery life.” Intel is expected to bring out drives ranging in capacity from 80GB to 160GB later this year.

Update: Micron Technology chimes in:

However, high-performance solid state drive maker STEC provided some insight into what to expect. Data used in the Tom’s Hardware piece applies to the current first-generation mass-market SSDs but not necessarily to upcoming drives, said Patrick Wilkison, vice president of marketing and business development at STEC. “They are using legacy drives, none of which will be used by any major PC OEM,” Wilkison said in an e-mail.

Whether this will actually translate into improved power efficiency when Intel brings out its drives remains to be seen.

Normally I steer clear of writing about Facebook apps that have been created for promotional purposes, but this one is too good to pass up. It comes from FX UK, which has put together a very strange experience that tells you how “perfect” your face is in order to promote the plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck.

Related:
FaceStat: What happens when Hot or Not hooks up with Google Analytics

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Users can pick any photos they’ve uploaded to Facebook and simply map out points on their face for the app to run its algorithm. The end result is a 1 percent to 100 percent scoring scale, with 100 being absolute perfection. The entire process takes about a minute from start to finish, and when you’re done, you can see how you stack up with your friends who have used the app, or the general public.

One major flaw with this app from the get-go is that it doesn’t access your profile picture album, which is probably going to be where people have the most recent shots of their face. I also found the zoom to be not quite up to snuff when it comes to letting you line up your face on any picture that hasn’t been taken for a school yearbook. Otherwise, it’s a very enjoyable exercise to claim bragging rights of having the most mathematically perfect face.

How perfect is your face? Nip/Tuck's Facebook app will let you know.