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Lenovo's ThinkPad T61 is one of several notebooks known to have an error-prone battery.

Some users are reporting batteries are displaying error messages that read “Irreparable damage” or “Battery cannot be charged,” and others are reporting their battery runs only for a very short time or experiences a sudden drop in its fuel gauge. It’s known to occur on these ThinkPad models: T60, T61, R60, R61, X60, and X61.

(Credit:
CNET)

Though it does not pose a safety risk, and it is not a product recall, Lenovo said, it will give those affected a replacement battery.

Lenovo on Friday said it will replace batteries on several of its ThinkPad laptops that show error messages.

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Apple lost once because of its inability to appeal to a broad developer base. If it isn’t careful, it will end up alienating its iPhone, iPod, and
Mac developer communities, pushing them back to Microsoft, over to Google’s Android platform, or elsewhere.

That’s the developer’s problem, right? Exactly, as Fraser Speiers, owner of Connected Flow (Exposure Flickr application on the iPhone), details:

I’m an Apple fan. I have been spending a lot of money on Apple products for years. But I’m also in the software business, and can’t imagine treating my own partners as poorly as Apple apparently treats its developer partners.

In other words, Apple’s lack of communication and service is hurting its developers, who already have to give up a big chunk of revenue from application sales to Apple. Apple is making them pay for poor service.

As Macworld explains, Apple requires “officially licensed” iPod and iPhone cables on new models. Apple enforces this with a:

I don’t have a problem with updates being reviewed (by Apple prior to posting), but it has to go a lot faster…Given the no-demos rule, an app lives or dies by App Store reviews. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch review after review complain about a bug that you fixed and “shipped” two weeks ago.

proprietary authentication chip in its portables that makes it impossible for third-party companies to create iPod- and iPhone-compatible accessories without signing an often costly agreement with Apple…(As just one example), most of the manufacturers interviewed (by Macworld) estimate that up to $20 of the retail cost of iPod and iPhone speakers is directly attributable to fees levied by Apple. Ouch.

Take Apple’s management of the
iPhone App Store. Apple has been delaying updates to iPhone applications by a week or more, and apparently without any communication to its developer community as to why the delays are happening, or when to expect an update to go live.

Ouch, indeed. Apple’s tight grip on its partners means higher costs and a degraded experience, at least in the case of the iPhone App Store.

Not that Apple is reserving this customer disservice solely for iPhone application developers. It also takes a pound of flesh from its
iPod and iPhone accessory developers. How?

One has to wonder if Apple must exert so much control in order to deliver a superior customer experience. Reading through the October 2008 edition of Macworld magazine, I was troubled to read about Apple’s poor treatment of its partners.

Microsoft grew to be a multibillion-dollar company by largely catering to its partner ecosystem. Apple? Fan I may be, but it’s almost sickening to see how condescendingly the company treats its partners.

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Leave it to Linus Torvalds, founder of the Linux kernel, to speak his mind. While many point to Linux as superior to Windows as offering superior security, Torvalds doesn’t want anyone to make a fetish of security, including the OpenBSD people to whom he addresses this classic missive:

…[O]ne reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifies - and thus encourages - the wrong behavior.

It makes “heroes” out of security people, as if the people who don’t just fix normal bugs aren’t as important.

In fact, all the boring normal bugs are way more important….Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can’t stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of [self-stimulating] monkeys….

I agree. Well, it’s not that I have anything against the OpenBSD developers, or against anyone that makes security their job, but rather that I personally think computing has much bigger problems than code-level security. We’ve seen that human error (like lost laptops) leads to widespread security vulnerabilities that no amount of development can fix.

If I had to choose between a better UI for Linux and better security for Linux, I’d take the former every time. Users can improve poorly secured software by improving only behavior, but not if they won’t use the software in the first place.

Google plans to launch a service called App Engine Monday evening that the company hopes will attract programmers and eventually companies needing an expandable foundation for online applications.

App Engine, free to the first 10,000 people who sign up, offers a combination of several online Google services for those who want a place to host software, said Pete Koomen, a product manager on the Google developer team. Those include the BigTable service for data storage and processing–as expected–along with authentication to let people sign on to services and e-mail to let the system handle communications, he said.

At an event called Campfire One Monday night, Google plans to show off some internally developed Web applications written with the service. One of them lets people sign up for carpools, joining the service, declaring whether and when they want to drive or be driven, and then being matched to likely partners.

The company is pitching App Engine as an easy way for programmers to build software without having to worry about rebuilding it once it gets too big for its original hardware or software britches.

“We’ve seen cases where developers have had to rearchitect systems every six to nine months because of the load of increasing traffic,” Koomen said. Using Google’s App Engine sidesteps those issues by distributing software across Google’s own servers, automatically handling larger-scale use, he said.

It looks to me like the move could put some competitive pressure on other online services such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

But Stephen Arnold, author of “Google Version 2,” sees grander ambitions in the App Engine plan. Google’s BigTable software and accompanying Sawzall technology for analyzing huge quantities of data offers big companies a way to tackle data-mining tasks they currently can’t manage, such as American Express plumbing five years’ worth of credit-card transactions to determine the merits of Father’s Day promotions.

“This is a real zinger for the banks and credit-card agencies,” he said.

App Engine programs can be written in the Python programming language, Koomen said, though Google is seeking advice on what other languages to support. With App Engine, programmers can use a Google software development kit to write the software on their own computer, then upload it to App Engine when desired.

Google’s App Engine initially will have limits of 500MB of storage, 10GB of daily data transfer bandwidth, and 200 million daily cycles of processor use. That should be enough to power a Web site with about 5 million page views per month, Koomen said.

After the preview period ends, all comers will be able to use that amount of capacity for free, and using more will cost pay-as-you-go fees that Google isn’t yet announcing.

Google expects to generate some revenue from the service and from AdSense if developers incorporate that service into their Web applications, said Tom Stocky, another Google product manager. But the real payback from the service is indirect, Koomen said.

“The primary motivation is to enable the Web as a platform and move it forward,” Koomen said. “If it’s easier for developers to build Web applications, (that) means more applications. That attracts more users to the Web and helps Google as well.”

Future features will include mechanisms for storing files larger than 1MB, billing users for computer use, and support for offline applications, Koomen added.

Google engineers also will discuss the site at the Google I/O developer conference in May.

Update 8:15 a.m. PDT March 8: All the early spots appear to be taken, but you can sign up for the waiting list at Google’s Web site. Some more links for the project include a thorough overall App Engine description; source code for the project, under the open-source Apache 2.0 license, available for download; a gallery of applications; and Google’s App Engine blog. Also, I removed a potentially erroneous reference to a the database in Amazon’s EC2 service; Amazon hasn’t described what its SimpleDB service uses.

(Credit:
Nintendo)

Gamers and geeks, step aside. It’s Mom’s turn to jump on the gaming bandwagon. On Monday, Nintendo announced a new DS Lite bundle, clearly tailored to the interests of middle-aged women.

At the usual $149.99, the bundle includes a lime green console, a matching carrying case, and Personal Trainer: Cooking. Those who tend to buy into gender stereotypes can already preorder the bundle just in time for Mother’s Day on Amazon. Don’t forget to add on My Weight Loss Coach and Imagine: Babyz while you’re at it.

In the past couple of years we’ve seen a Nintendogs bundle for kids, a Brain Age bundle for the old timers, and other age-specific packages in between. As with all tech toys, every newly designed DS makes the last seem so passe. The lime green console itself has “geek chic” written all over it and–though I’m not a mom–I may just have to grab one for myself.

The bundle will be available at all retail locations on May 3.

Have you ever produced a video without adding captions simply because you didn’t want to bother using your video editor’s clunky, built-in captioning tools? Better yet, want to add captions to someone else’s video? Check out Overstream, a service that lets you add text captions to videos from a handful of hosting sites including the big two: YouTube and Google Video.

Diving right in to captioning a video is simple. Once you’ve given Overstream the URL, it sends you to the Flash-based editor, which at first glance may look complicated, but is about as simple as it gets. If you’re used to the timeline controls of any old video player you’ll feel right at home–just pick the spot of video where you want to add a caption and start typing away. Overstream will automatically add each caption as a 3-second chunk. If you need to make it shorter or longer, there are toggle controls you can dial up or down, and buttons to send it right next to the neighboring caption.

Additionally, you can see exactly where the caption will end in a color-coded bar that sits below the video’s timeline, and tweaking it down to the exact half second or so requires no technical knowhow whatsoever; just drag the bar to the part of the video you want. When finished with any additions you can kick the video back out to Overstream, where it’ll be hosted from its original service provider (via embed) while overlaying the captions you’ve created below.

While Miss South Carolina might not have made a whole lot of sense, Overstream's captioning tools do, and are easy enough that a total newbie can figure them out.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

To test the service, I used the infamous video of Miss South Carolina butchering the question about map proficiency in the United States, and adding captions to the 48-second clip took a matter of minutes. Larger dialogue-heavy segments will certainly take longer, but the editor supports as many captions as you’re able to fit. You can view the finished product here.

There are several other captioning services that have done this including BubblePLY, Viddler, and several that have closed up shop including Click.TV and Mojiti. More tech-savvy folks should also give JumpCut a spin, which can do captions on top of its basic video-editing tools.

[via gHacks via DownloadSquad]

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Microsoft, making the same mistake that Oracle made a few years ago with its low-end Oracle 10g Express Edition database, has decided that the best way to hold off open source nipping at its heels is to create a portfolio of low-end, cheap products.

It won’t work. Microsoft provides compelling value, but this is not it. “Crappy but cheap” is not a compelling value proposition against open source, which already has an array of software that fits that model (just as there’s lots of cheap but crappy proprietary software out there already).

Microsoft gets it right in its annual report: The way forward for Microsoft is to continue to provide a broad portfolio with (more-or-less) tight integration between the products. That’s what will continue to position Microsoft well against open source, which tends to be a disparate array of non-integrated point solutions. It won’t always work, but it will work for the near term.

Crappy but cheap? It isn’t going to stop open source. Open source wins, in part, because it’s cheap, but anyone that has run Linux, Apache, Zimbra, etc. knows that there is plenty of open source that wins because it is awesome…and just happens to be cheap as an added benefit.

(Credit:
CompUSA)

It’s pretty rare to find a 22-inch LCD selling for below $200 with no rebate required, but that’s exactly what CompUSA has this morning: the Soyo DYLM2284 for $199.99. It’s a new unit, not a refurb, and did I mention there’s no rebate?

The monitor features VGA and DVI inputs (alas, no HDMI), built-in speakers, a 5ms response time (great for games and movies), and a native resolution of 1680×1050. Ground shipping will run you about $15.

So, how’s the picture? Alas, reviews are as rare as a 22-inch LCD for under $200, though it did receive five stars from one user on CompUSA’s site. Plus, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, so the risk is fairly minimal. If you’re still suffering through your workday with a 19- or (horrors) 17-inch display, here’s your chance to upgrade on the cheap.

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

This blog has been updated with the correct default kilowatt-per-hour rate.

Sometimes it’s the little things that count, especially when it comes to your carbon footprint.

When it comes to PC usage, those little things include turning off your computer when you’re not using it. Enter Verdiem, with its free download called Edison, which it is offering to consumers to help with their PC power management at home.

(Credit:
Verdiem)

Verdiem has a similar product for large enterprise customers–and they of course charge for it. But Edison is free, and available at the company Web site, or from Microsoft.com/environment. Microsoft and The Climate Savers Initiative are both supporting the launch of Edison.

There are more than 1 billion PCs in the world, and each is responsible for an average of 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year, says Allison Cornia, Verdiem’s vice president of marketing, adding, “Most people are really unaware how much energy PCs are wasting, and we want to draw a lot of attention to that.”

I tried it out, and it seems easy enough. Download and register the program, and a window pops up. A series of tabs helps you customize your settings. Choose your peak work and non-work hours, and when you want Edison to save more or less power.

Using the “save more” setting while you’re working will power down your display and hard drive after 5 minutes, and suspend your PC after 10. “Save less” means your display will be powered down after 30, your hard drive after 45, and never suspends your computer. There are several settings between those extremes as well.

But the part where you actually feel like you’re making a difference is under the “Estimated Annual Savings” section. Once you plug in what your local power company charges for kilowatts per hour, Edison calculates money and energy saved per year, as well as how much carbon dioxide is not being emitted. After having Edison installed for roughly 4 hours, at the default $0.089 kW/hr, I’d be on track to save $30.85 this year in energy costs, 346.68 kW/hr, and 472.52 pounds of CO2.

It’s Windows-only for now, but Verdiem says it will add an OS X-compatible version depending on whether
Mac users show interest.

A happy Opal owner.

(Credit:
Lenard Audio)

Americans love big
cars, mammoth trucks, huge houses, but for some reason they go ga ga over tiny speakers. Sure, the little guys are good enough for computers, but real music lovers should consider investing in something that can move some air, something along the lines of Klipsch’s RB-81 ($698/pair) hefty bookshelf speakers. They’ll blow away any lifestyle poser speakers with 3 -inch woofers. Don’t kid yourself into believing that any of those puny speakers can be any better than good enough.

But true connoisseurs of big sound who need something bigger should take a peek at Lenard Audio’s Opal speakers. I’m sure they’ll do the job! How big are they? Big enough to house four 27-inch woofers (!!!) in its pair of eight foot high cabinets. Each system is individually commissioned and built. Most Opals are assembled with modern high quality speaker components, but some use original 1970s classic JBL drivers, “…made when engineering craftsmanship was at its height.”

Lenard Audio is based in Australia, where they offer a wide range of very large speakers.