thinkcondi.com

Stanza makes personalizing the text quick and easy.

That said, I was a little disappointed with the eReader’s dictionary integration, which is too difficult to use. And while the program allows you to change font styles and sizes, I found that the bigger the text size, the worse the experience. And due to the fact that the iPhone has such a small screen, it was somewhat difficult to see default text at times, so I found myself playing with the font size often in an attempt to cut down on scrolling left and right to read the book.

The apps

You also can’t buy any books in the app. Instead, you’ll be forced to use Safari on the iPhone to go to Amazon’s Kindle Store and buy a book there. It’s annoying and a confusing decision that makes the value of this app decline significantly. However, you can’t beat the selection of current titles that Amazon has available for download.

The App Store has a relatively limited number of books for sale as apps. Since you don’t need an additional e-book reader to read through them (the books have reader software built-in), it’s an affordable way to get into the e-book market.

If eReader was a paid app, I’d be hesitant to recommend it because of how difficult it can be (at times) to read certain books. But since it’s free and offers a slew of titles at no cost, it’s definitely worth trying out and using if you don’t want to buy a Kindle 2.

eReader

Stanza

By now, you know you don’t need a Kindle 2 to read books electronically. You can use the new Kindle for iPhone app.

But one feature is conspicuously missing: the Kindle application does not support newspapers. You’ll be forced to read only books in the application. And if you want to read articles from the newspaper, you’ll be forced to do it the old-fashioned way by using
Safari.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET)

Kindle for iPhone

The selection of books offered in eReader is outstanding. Believe it or not, there are over 60,000 titles available to purchase, which include authors ranging from Stephen King to Howard Stern. And much like Stanza, you can buy those titles from Fictionwise.com. If you don’t want to pay for the books, you can get some titles for free from Project Gutenberg. Regardless of whether you want new titles like Artie Lange’s “Too Fat to Fish” or classics like “Romeo and Juliet,” eReader has it all. And the sites are constantly updated with new titles, so you won’t be missing out.

eReader's slidebar makes flipping pages easy.

Cream of the crop

eReader is designed extremely well, and it makes flipping through pages of your free books or premium titles easy. If you want to skip to a certain page, you can use a slidebar above the text to flip through the book. It’s a simple feature, but you shouldn’t overlook it; this is an ideal way to skip pages that more eBook readers should adopt.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET Networks) eReader is one of the most popular iPhone apps in the Apple App Store and it’s the second-most downloaded program in the store’s “Books” section. It’s well liked for good reason.

Individual book pricing is all over the map. Some titles are free in the App Store and others cost more than $20. It all depends on the book. But you probably won’t be blown away by the selection. And at $20–given the price of “real” books–I’m not convinced that it’s even worth it.

Books as apps

If you don’t want to switch to the Kindle 2 and you want to use your iPhone to read eBooks, try Stanza first. It’s free, it’s full-featured, it offers the best reading experience, and it does much of what the Kindle can do in a smaller (and more affordable) package.

But Kindle’s not the only way to read books on a
iPhone or
iPod Touch. There are two other readers well worth checking out:

Reading books on the Kindle app was appealing, and I was generally impressed with the experience. Amazon did a nice job of making the iPhone feel like the Kindle. Kindle for iPhone is free, so you won’t need to worry about dishing out any more cash than what’s necessary to buy books for the device. But since it’s difficult to buy those books and you can’t read newspapers, I’m hard-pressed to recommend this program. If you really want a Kindle, don’t use this app; buy the device.

Overall, the reading experience was fine when I picked individual books and each title remembered where I left off. Swiping to the left allowed me to go to the next page and the “pinch” feature let me zoom in on different parts of the page. It made reading intuitive, but once again, trying to find the sweet spot that balances both font size and readability was difficult.

Much like eReader, I was impressed by the selection Stanza offered. If you want newer titles and you’re willing to pay for them, Stanza allows you to download books from Fictionwise.com. If you want free titles or those you simply can’t find elsewhere, you can also use Project Gutenberg. That may not help Stanza differentiate itself from eReader (the selection is practically the same), but I found that with both services at your disposal, you won’t be wishing for more titles. In fact, I found books from Stephen Ambrose, Edger Allan Poe, and a slew of other writers. Suffice it to say that, like eReader, Stanza’s title selection is outstanding.

Kindle for iPhone is good, but not great.

I downloaded a few titles on my iPhone and found that, generally, the experience was about the same as you would expect from any other reader on the device. That said, you won’t be able to customize the way the books are displayed as easily and each title is a standalone, so you can’t have multiple books housed under one icon, like you can with eReader or Stanza.

Unlike the Kindle for iPhone app, Stanza allows you to read much more than just books. In fact, the program also lets you access newspapers and online sites, and supports MS LIT, epub, Mobipocket, and PalmDoc eBook formats. You can even view Word documents and PDF files in Stanza.

The real value of Stanza goes beyond books you can buy or those you can get for free from Project Gutenberg. Because it supports periodicals and Web sites, Stanza is the closest you can get on the iPhone to using the Amazon Kindle–the real Kindle, not the iPhone app. And although it’s hobbled by the iPhone’s smaller screen, it still provides an outstanding experience (for free, no less) that you definitely should try out in place of Amazon’s device.

You don't need an Reader to read Shakespeare.

Getting going on the Kindle for iPhone application is a snap. When I loaded it for the first time, I was prompted for my Amazon username and password. Once entered, I was brought to the Amazon front page, which featured all of the books that I had purchased for the Amazon Kindle device prior to this review. Since I already purchased those titles, I was able to quickly access them and start reading. And much like the eReader app, Kindle for iPhone remembers where I left off, so I never needed to flip through pages to find my spot.

Reading eBooks in Stanza is easily the most appealing when compared with its competitors. The app provides for multi-column views or standard book layout view. And by swiping the screen, you can move up, down, left, and right. You can flip pages with just a tap on the screen. You can also change the color, size, and font of your text with a slidebar. Combine those options and you can easily create an experience that can be tailored to your liking.

eReader has great features. When you decide to stop reading for a while, it remembers the page you are on in each book you have in your account, and it allows you to wirelessly transfer eBooks to the iPhone’s local memory so you don’t need to worry about a Web connection to keep reading.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET) Just because there are eBook readers in the App Store, it doesn’t mean that you need to use those if you want to read books. Believe it or not, your iPhone is all you’ll need.

(Credit:
Don Reisinger/CNET) Stanza is the most-downloaded eBook app on the App Store and it gets that prize for good reason: it’s the best application in this roundup.

Buying books and getting them into Stanza is simple. The easiest way to access titles and start reading them is through the Fictionwise Reader Store, accessible within the app. It claims to have over 50,000 titles. In my search, it had everything I was looking for on topics ranging from history to sports to fiction. I didn’t have any trouble getting those books and reading them with the app.

I was generally impressed by the experience Kindle for iPhone created. Turning the page is achieved by swiping your finger across the screen, and as on the Kindle itself, you can bookmark pages, change font size, and sample the titles before you decide to buy.

Led by Jafco Ventures, the round was completed with contributions from the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth Fund, and previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Yodle, a New York-based company that helps small businesses generate leads and power local advertisements, on Monday announced that it has raised a $10 million Series C funding round.

“It’s been a watershed year for Yodle, and thanks to our incredible team working hard to deliver for our customers, we expect that growth to continue in 2009,” CEO Court Cunningham said in the release. “While our competitors retrench in the face of financial adversity, we are stepping up investment in our customers’ success. This new funding round will accelerate product and technology development to provide increased online exposure and even stronger results for our local business owner clients.”

The reason for raising the money? According to a release, it’s because Yodle is growing fast and plans to expand further. At the end of 2008, the company had 250 employees and 5,000 customers, and reported 700 percent revenue growth from 2007.

Halfhill says it’s not an outright Intel competitor. “I don’t think they’re doing this to compete with (Intel) x86 per se (but) If somebody has to run some software that’s only available to x86 you can do it,” Halfhill said.

The silicon is no slouch. The Godson-3, due in 2009, will have four cores, and an eight-core version is also planned. “The four-core chip is the most sophisticated chip we’ve seen come out of China,” according to Halfhill.

The original Godson-1 was launched in 2002. In 2005, the Godson-2 debuted, with new versions appearing successively with increased performance.

The upshot is that it will compete on some level. “Every processor that China sells is one less processor that somebody else sells,” he said.

At its core, it is a MIPS RISC processor–but one that proposes to run Intel-compatible software efficiently enough that most Chinese may not notice the difference. “It won’t be an x86 processor. But the 200 instructions will optimize the (Intel) performance,” Halfhill said.

Oh, and that sticky licensing question. “They don’t have an Intel license. It remains to be seen if these 200 instructions they’re adding violates any Intel patents or not. They have not disclosed those new instructions,” according to Halfhill. (Intel would not comment on the processor.)

But the support from the Chinese government may help it avoid the fate of other x86-compatible processors that had similar aspirations, such as the Cyrix and Transmeta Crusoe processors. To be sure, most Intel-compatible processors have died a slow, painful death.

Developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it also has a larger goal: microprocessor independence for China. “Their motivation is pretty clear. They don’t want to be totally dependent on the outside world for something as important as microprocessors,” said Tom Halfhill, an analyst at In-Stat.

China’s Godson-3 chip is ambitious if anything. It proposes to be everything a world-class processor should be–and then some.

(Credit:
The Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences )

Godson processors, also known as Loongson, are manufactured by STMicroelectronics.

And Godson may go far beyond desktops. By 2010, China plans to build a petaflop high-performance computer based on the Godson-3. (A petaflop translates to a quadrillion floating-point operations per second.) IBM currently offers one of the fastest supercomputers in the world that achieved 1 petaflop in June.

This would put the eight-core version in the same elite camp as IBM’s cell processor or Intel’s future Havendale and Auburndale processors. Those Intel chips due next year put a graphics core and a Nehalem processor on the same piece of silicon–a first for Intel.

If the processor succeeds, it will be compelling because of the overall low cost of the platform. The Chinese government can put together a hardware-software package “that’s a lot less expensive than if they went with buying chips from Intel and licensing from Microsoft,” Halfhill said.

The later eight-core version is a “heterogeneous” processor, he said. That is, different types of processors will be put on one piece of silicon. Typically, in a quad-core Intel processor, for example, all four cores are identical.

But its singular head-turning feature is the proposed Intel “x86″ compatibility mode.

The current Godson chip: the Loongson-2E High-Performance General-Purpose CPU

“The most interesting part of the chip is that they’re adding about 200 new instructions to assist with x86 compatibility,” Halfhill said.

“They want to get a lot of computers out into their schools and companies and they want to make them in China,” he said. “With a MIPS-compatible processor, they can stick Linux on it, they can stick Open Office on it, and adapt open-source Web browsers.”

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

Get 22 inches of LCD goodness for just $142 out the door.

And check out the specs: 1,680 x 1,050 native resolution, 5ms response time, 2500:1 contrast ratio, and VGA/DVI inputs. It’s even HDCP-compatible, meaning you can watch Blu-ray and other protected content if your PC is pulling media-center duty.

I think we’re at the point where it’s no longer sensible to pay more than $150 for a 22-inch LCD. I’ve posted numerous monitors at that price, and here’s one that’s even less: TigerDirect has a refurbished Acer X223Wbd 22-inch widescreen LCD for $139.97.

Thus, if you’re on the prowl for a bigger or secondary monitor, here’s your chance to score a big ‘un on the cheap. Really, really cheap.

Of course, because it’s a refurb, your warranty expires after just 90 days. I don’t consider that a showstopper, as the problem with most LCDs is a dead pixel or two–and that’s something you usually see immediately.

Shipping isn’t free, but it’s a very reasonable $1.99. That brings your out-the-door total to $141.96 — a really amazing price for a monitor of this size.

(Credit:
Buy.com)

The commission was expected to vote Tuesday on a proposal spearheaded by Chairman Kevin Martin that would have drastically changed intercarrier compensation, the complex system established between phone companies for paying each other for connecting long-distance calls. It would have also changed how fees are assessed and collected for the Universal Service Fund, which helps phone companies provide service in rural areas.

But on Monday, the FCC pulled the item from its agenda, which means a vote on these highly controversial issues will be delayed. The four commissioners are asking to reopen public discussion on several proposals with the hope that the item can be brought up again at the FCC’s December 18 meeting.

Martin also wanted to revise the Universal Service Fund. Currently, carriers receiving USF funds are given subsidies based on fees collected from incumbent phone companies. Right now, carriers are required to pay a percentage into the fund based on the volume of long-distance calls their customers make. The actual cost is paid by customers, who are assessed a fee on their monthly bills whether they make long-distance calls or not.

Martin’s proposals were largely seen as beneficial to large phone companies such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, and Qwest Communications International. But consumer advocates, small and midsize phone companies, and state regulators have been opposed to the proposal, arguing that it would ultimately jack up prices for phone service.

Martin’s proposal called for establishing a more uniform pricing model that would have ultimately lowered rates. This would have meant some phone companies would lose money under the new rate plan. To make up for that, Martin proposed allowing these carriers to make up the difference by charging customers as much as $1.50 more a month for residential service and $2.50 a month more for business customers.

Martin’s proposal would have altered this formula, and also required USF recipients to promise to offer high-speed Internet service to all customers within five years.

In a statement Martin expressed his frustration and disappointment with the commission’s inaction.

Opposition has also been growing among politicians. And on Monday six more senators–Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Robert Casey (D-Pa.)–sent letters to the FCC asking the commissioners to postpone the vote.

It’s no secret that Martin, who will be leaving his post in January when a new administration takes office, wanted to tackle these issues before the end of his term as chairman. But the FCC also faces a November 5 court-mandated deadline to come up with a solution that addresses a sliver of this problem. A federal court this summer told the FCC to come up with an equitable way to charge local phone companies terminating calls to an Internet service provider.

The commissioners went on to say that they were united in the common goal of “modernizing our universal service and intercarrier compensation policies.” But they also said it “is equally important to ensure that any reform proposal receive the full benefit of public notice and comment–especially in light of the difficult economic circumstances currently facing our nation.”

For their part, commissioners Michael Copps, Jonathon Adelstein, Deborah Taylor, and Robert McDowell said in a joint statement that they were “disappointed that the chairman has withdrawn the fundamental reform item from tomorrow’s agenda.”

“I am disappointed that we will miss the opportunity for comprehensive reform,” he said. “I would like to be encouraged by my colleagues’ commitment that they will truly be ready to complete this much needed reform on December 18. The nature of the questions they would like to include makes me doubt they will have found their answers with an additional seven weeks. I believe the far more likely outcome is that, in December, the other commissioners will merely want another Further Notice and another round of comment on the most difficult questions. I do not believe they will be prepared to address the most challenging issues and that the commission will be negotiating over what further questions to ask in December.”

“I remain skeptical that such an order, which retains artificial and unsupported distinctions between types of Internet traffic, will be seen any more favorably by the court than the commission’s two previous attempts,” he said. “I recognize that few other issues before the commission are as technically complex and involved, with many competing interests, as are reforming the Intercarrier Compensation and Universal Service programs. But neither of those two realities are excuse for inaction.”

The issue of intercarrier compensation has been talked about and debated in the FCC since 2001. And the FCC has been looking at reforming USF since 2005.

Martin said Monday in his statement that he plans to construct a narrow order to deal with the court-mandated issue, but he was skeptical that it would satisfy the court given the fact that the commission has put off resolving the bigger issue of intercarrier compensation.

The problem that Martin was trying to address in his proposal with respect to intercarrier compensation was that right now carriers charge each other different rates for connecting long-distance calls. Some operators charge less than a penny per call while others charge much more than that.

The Federal Communications Commission is postponing a controversial vote on how phone companies pay each other for long-distance calls that traverse their networks.

I’ve been trying out the Iris Browser nonetheless–it’s got a full enough feature set to stand up to many of the third-party mobile browsers out there. Built on the open-source WebKit code, it’s got a lot of what we already see in Opera Mobile, Skyfire, and Mozilla’s mobile Firefox alpha, Fennec: search, various rendering views, zoom, bookmarking, a mouse, find in page, image capture, and tabs.

Here’s a fairly new, fairly stealth specimen for all you
mobile browser buffs. The Iris Browser is a beta-only offering produced by Torch Mobile, a start-up that presented at last week’s Under the Radar conference.

(Credit:
Torch Mobile)

Iris Browser’s resolution is good, but page loading was on the slow side. Because its mostly void of branding, it looks a little plain, but beta testers may appreciate the singular way it bounces when you switch tabs and the way links bubbles like boiled water when you click. For those of you Windows Mobile owners intent on browser comparison, Iris Browser beta is worth an informational look.

While the beta for Windows Mobile phones 5+ is publicly available, consumers won’t likely be able to download it themselves in its full incarnation. The company will convert beta testers’ feedback into a more robust product to sell to manufacturers, who will brand the browser as their own.

You are prompted to enter your login and password the first time you use the device, but from then on you’ll always be connected. We asked the INQ rep about security concerns, and he said that the phone does prompt you to enter the password every once in awhile. That said, the surest way to prevent a security breach in case your phone is stolen is to just change the password on the Web site.

(Credit:
Nicole Lee/CNET)

The INQ1 slides open.

Indeed, as we played around with a sample model at a CES press event yesterday, we could go directly to Facebook with a single push of a button from the device’s home screen. Facebook and other similar applications are laid out along the bottom row of the home screen, allowing for simple and direct access. The INQ1 comes with Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, Google, eBay, and Windows Messenger built-in, but since it also supports Java and BREW, you’re able to add other applications like MySpace. The phone’s contacts list is closely integrated with these applications, allowing you to see the online presence of all your contacts directly from the address book. For example, as you scroll down your contacts list, you can see the person’s Facebook online status, Skype availability, and IM status. And then you can just choose whichever way you wish to contact him or her.

INQ Mobile boasts a handset made for social networks (Credit:
INQ Mobile)

The idea of a “social networking phone” seems redundant at first–don’t all phones have an ability to connect to a social network of some kind? But INQ Mobile, a company based in the U.K., claims that it is the first to really bring social networks in the form of Facebook, MySpace, et al. to those of us who prefer to have regular, affordable phones. INQ’s argument is that most handsets with dedicated Facebook and Skype applications have so far been of the smartphone variety, and thus out of touch with the mainstream. But with the INQ1, as it’s called, these social networking applications are now available in a simple and affordable phone.

The hardware itself is decent, but nothing out of the ordinary. It has a nice display and a slider form factor. It also has a 3.2-megapixel camera, and once you take a picture, you can immediately upload it to Facebook, MySpace, or any site you want. The INQ1 also has a music player, which you can then connect to last.fm right out of the box, allowing you listen to your favorite streaming music. Of course it also has stereo Bluetooth, text messaging, and a speakerphone.

So the big question is: is it affordable? INQ said that for now, the handset will go for 79 pounds, and right now the handset is only available in the U.K. and Australia. The company is shopping around for U.S. providers at the moment, and hopes to expand its partnership to other European carriers this year as well. We’re not too sure how this will sell in the U.S., but perhaps its simplicity and ease of use will appeal to some.

“There are methods to configure the software to only share from a particular directory,” said Loveless. “But you’re talking about someone who has problems, in many cases, using Microsoft Word or corporate e-mail, apps they’ve had training on. So I would not expect them to necessarily know how to go about that and correct it.”

Tiversa probes the networks, searching for specific terms and lets customers know when it finds any data out there specific to that firm and helps pinpoint the source of the leak and stop it.

The latest version of popular file sharing software, released earlier this year, LimeWire 5, includes a number of the suggested changes and served as a “poster child for compliance,” said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the DCIA.

Security experts have long cautioned about the risk posed by the use of peer-to-peer file sharing by individuals working in corporations, warning that the practice creates holes that let malware in and sensitive data out.

Peer-to-peer use at ABN Amro and Pfizer led to the exposure of personally identifiable information of more than 20,000 consumers in 2007. And then there was the symbolic slap in the face when politicians called P2P networks a potential “national security threat” at a congressional hearing that summer.

This isn’t the first time sensitive data has trickled out via popular file sharing networks. Last summer, personal information of some 1,000 former patients of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was believed to have been leaked via a peer-to-peer network. Sensitive health care and financial data has also been found on file sharing networks, according to studies from Dartmouth College and P2P network monitoring service provider Tiversa, which also uncovered the leaked presidential helicopter data.

This screenshot illustrates how a peer-to-peer file sharing network works.

“We were concerned about user error in earlier versions of file sharing software where it was easier for users to make those mistakes,” Hopkins said. “But a lot has been done to close those loopholes for the new versions.”

Corporations also might consider encrypting sensitive information and using data loss prevention tools to block data leakage, experts said. And if they want to see if any of their data has found its way onto a P2P network, they can hire Tiversa to probe Gnutella, eDonkey and FastTrack file-sharing networks.

“The default settings tend to err on the side of being more open than more closed,” Mark Loveless, a research scientist at technology non-profit Mitre, said on Thursday. This mirrors the security-versus-usability trade-off that software and Web services providers, like Microsoft and Google, often find themselves making.

“The default settings (in P2P software) tend to err on the side of being more open than more closed.” –Mark Loveless, research scientist, Mitre

Minimizing the risk
IT administrators need to have a written policy that specifies whether or not employees are allowed to use file sharing. And they need to use perimeter security software, including firewall and intrusion detection, “to lock down the ports used by P2P or to look for specific P2P network traffic,” said Tony Bradley, director of security at Evangelyze Communications, a unified communications software and service provider.

For corporate IT administrators, that shift can’t come soon enough. The problem was highlighted by the recent news that avionics blueprints of President Obama’s helicopter had leaked through a peer-to-peer network used by a defense contractor to an IP (Internet Protocol) address in Iran.

Employees: The weak link

The problem, experts say, is that employees are violating corporate policy by using P2P at work or on work laptops to download MP3 files, or they take the work laptop home and their children install file-sharing software on it.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the employees also tend not to be savvy enough to configure the settings so as to protect files they don’t want to share from being distributed.

And some of the P2P programs can be buggy, particularly software written by young enthusiasts as opposed to paid professionals. Meanwhile, P2P files are being used to spread viruses and other malware to unsuspecting downloaders. For instance, a Trojan circulated on BitTorrent in January in pirated copies of iWorks 09.

The report shows 100 percent compliance with the guideline that recommends that default settings prohibit the sharing of user-originated files, while 57 percent of the respondents said they were complying with the guideline to offer a simple way for the user to disable the file-sharing functionality.

There is also malware that can automatically scan a computer and when it finds a media file anywhere on the system it changes the P2P software configuration to share the entire drive the media file is in, Hopkins said.

Historically, P2P programs used one specific TCP/IP port for the traffic, but now they can pick a random port to use or they use Port 80, which is used for all kinds of Web traffic, thus thwarting administrator attempts to block P2P traffic by plugging the port, said Sam Hopkins, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Tiversa.

Their message may be having an impact in the P2P development community.

Other guidelines, with compliance percentages ranging from 29 percent to 71 percent, included requiring users to select individual files within a folder to share rather than sharing the entire folder, requiring the user to take affirmative steps to share sensitive folders and preventing the sharing of a complete network or external drive or user-specific system folder, such as “Documents and Settings.” Among the guidelines are requirements for warnings to the user when particular settings might jeopardize security.

A trade group representing peer-to-peer file sharing providers next week will publish a report that finds P2P software companies are modifying their programs in an effort to make it harder for users to inadvertently share sensitive information.

If the P2P user isn’t careful in establishing a shared folder for other users of the file sharing network to access, sensitive files anywhere on the computer can be exposed. For instance, a user can inadvertently open up files in the “My Documents” folder or anywhere in the entire C: drive.

Ninety-three percent of P2P disclosures in the enterprise are inadvertent, said Tiversa Brand Director Scott Harrer. “You can’t really guard against human error,” he said.

Beyond having default settings that err on the side of openness and not security, the software is also designed to circumvent firewalls and other attempts to block it, Loveless said.

The software also has tricks to get access to files behind firewalls. If a user wants something that is on a computer that is located behind a firewall, the system can communicate behind the scenes to get a third computer to ask the firewall protected computer to send the file out to the seeking user, he said.

(Credit:
Tiversa)

After lawmakers accused them of being part of the problem nearly two years ago, P2P providers and their trade group–the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA)–formed a working group to figure out ways to minimize the risk for P2P users and their networks. The DCIA prepared a report dated Thursday on the Inadvertent Sharing Protection Compliance that lists guidelines for better protecting P2P users and percentages of its members who are following them.

“P2P programs will use encrypted and sophisticated protocols to be able to talk to the Internet and evade (network monitoring) tools,” he said. “They’ll use multiple ways to try to get out on the Internet, undetected.”

CNET’s Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.

The restraining orders against Google and Yahoo mean the search companies must censor search results from their Argentine sites for information about the plaintiffs, such as their names. The court orders do not apply to the U.S. sites Google.com and Yahoo.com.

While laws in the U.S. and E.U. make it clear that whoever posts content to the Internet is responsible for it, Arebalos said, no such laws exist in Argentina.

Peña probably “thought we’d make a deal out of court, but we don’t want to do that because it’s not a good deal,” Arebalos said. “We will fight because we think this is a good fight.”

The notice was implemented early this week, according to Yahoo representative Tracy Schmaler, after it was engineered into the search results.

Both Google and Yahoo have unsuccessfully appealed the restraining orders and are now complying with them while the underlying lawsuits filed by Peña’s clients are pending.

Arebalos said he did not know of any other cases in which a search engine had been asked by an individual to censor search results with his or her name. Searches have been limited in some other countries, however. German law, for instance, has forbidden searches for neo-Nazi material, and in France, auction sites have been barred from allowing the sale of Nazi memorabilia. In the U.S., copyright holders have forced Google to remove search results.

“Our position always has been we are not going to be the censor of the Internet,” Arebalos said. “If you go to a newsstand and tell the owner he’s responsible for reading every paper and finding the articles that could impact somebody, that doesn’t make any sense. We are the newsstand.”

The result so far: since last year, Internet users have been left with abbreviated search results from Yahoo Argentina and Google Argentina, as a result of temporary restraining orders handed down by Argentine judges.

Such broad restraining orders compelled Yahoo to remove all search results for certain plaintiffs such as Maradona, the soccer star. A search for “Diego Maradona” on Yahoo Argentina brings up only news results and a notification that–translated from the Spanish–reads, “On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it.”

Caption: Results for a search of soccer star Diego Maradona on Yahoo Argentina only bring up news results and a notification that the search has been filtered.

Google is working with Argentine government officials and the congress, Arebalos said, to fill the “legal vacuum” that allows for Internet companies to be held responsible for content. Other Latin American countries, such as Chile and Colombia, have made progress on that front, he said.

Multiple restraining orders have been filed for some individuals. In some cases, the restraining orders require the search engines to censor results for certain keywords or URLs. In other instances, however, they call for broad restrictions such as censorship of “scandalous material.”

Both Yahoo and Google are locked in a legal battle with dozens of fashion models and other public figures like Maradona over whether the Internet companies should have to censor search results relating to those persons’ names.

If an Argentine sports fan tried searching Yahoo Argentina for one of his country’s most beloved athletes–soccer star Diego Maradona–these days, he’d be out of luck.

Google and Yahoo recently joined forces with other companies and human rights groups to create the Global Network Initiative, a framework for communications technology companies to follow in response to laws in various countries that may interfere with an Internet user’s privacy or freedom of expression. The guidelines are intended for these types of situations, Schmaler said, and encourage principles such as transparency when complying with local law.

Arebalos said Google is appealing the court orders because it amounts to “censorship if we block all references to a person, because a lot of those can be lawful.”

The matter was taken to court, and judges in Argentina have so far sided with the models. Other public figures–including Maradona and Judge María Servini de Cubría–have in recent months sought out the same lawyer to successfully block search results about them on Google and Yahoo as well.

The move amounts to a class action suit against the Internet companies, although there’s technically no such thing as a class action suit in Argentina. The lawyer representing all the plaintiffs, Martin Leguizamon Peña, has sought damages between 100,000 and 400,000 pesos for his clients (about $30,000 to more than $121,000).

The move effectively holds the search companies responsible for content on other Web sites, a legal maneuver that would not be possible in the United States or the European Union, according to a Google representative. In the United States, federal law generally says that search engines are not responsible for the content of pages they index.

Google first received an injunction to block references to the individuals on its Argentina search engine in mid-2007, after refusing to do so voluntarily, said Alberto Arebalos, Google’s director of Latin America global communications and public affairs. A group of about 70 fashion models, represented by the same lawyer, initially asked the Internet company to block all search results with their names with the intent of blocking pornographic sites that used the models’ pictures. Google responded that it would only block specific problematic links, provided it could notify users, Arebalos said.

Qualcomm has picked up handheld assets from Advanced Micro Devices, including graphics chip technology.

The acquisition includes “graphics cores that we have been licensing for several years,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, in a statement.

“AMD will retain rights to the AMD Imageon products,” the spokesperson said. “We intend to honor existing customer commitments for the currently available AMD Imageon products, including the A250 application processor and the M180 media processor, for the remaining lifecycle of these products.”

The agreement provides Qualcomm with “vector graphics and 3D graphics technologies and IP,” AMD said in response to an e-mail query.

San Diego, Calif.-based Qualcomm and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD announced on Tuesday that Qualcomm has acquired graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were “formerly the basis of AMD’s handheld business.”

AMD added that it will not update the Imageon road map. “We will not add any new AMD Imageon products to the road map,” according to the representative.

AMD will get $65 million in cash. Qualcomm expects the acquisition to be approximately 2 cents dilutive to pro forma earnings per share in fiscal 2009 and accretive to earnings by the second half of calendar year 2010.

AMD would not provide further details on what Qualcomm got but said that AMD’s handheld graphics is centered on “unified shader architecture” technololgy that has been used in Microsoft’s
Xbox, for example. “We have not disclosed the specific assets and technologies that Qualcomm has acquired. Our Handheld 3D graphics technology is based on unified shader architecture,” the AMD spokesperson said.

Under the terms of the agreement announced Tuesday, Qualcomm said it has extended job offers to various design and development teams from AMD’s handheld business. “The teams are developing technologies to enhance mobile devices in areas including 2D and 3D graphics, audio/video, display, and architecture,” Qualcomm said.

AMD, however, did make it clear that the agreement does not include its Imageon processors. “The agreement does not include the AMD Imageon processor products, the Imageon brand, or any existing Imageon customer commitments,” an AMD representative said.

With the acquisition in 2006 of ATI Technologies, AMD became a leading supplier of media processors to the handheld and handset device market through ATI’s Imageon line.