Dell Netbook Rumor Prompts Questions About Android

Reports that Dell might use Google’s Android OS in a netbook raises questions about what the device might look like and whether Android is ready for use beyond smartphones.

Software vendor Bsquare appeared to have leaked the news Wednesday that Dell is developing an Android-based netbook. In a press release, Bsquare said it was porting Adobe’s Flash Lite technology to “Dell netbooks running Google’s Android platform.” The release has since been pulled from Bsquare’s Web site and Dell has refused to comment on what it called “speculation.” But most observers think there is probably no smoke without fire.

Android is a Linux-based OS developed by Google for use in mobile devices, primarily smartphones. It includes an OS, middleware and some basic applications, and has a toolkit that developers can use to build other programs on top. Hewlett-Packard has confirmed it is testing Android as an option for netbooks, and some enthusiasts have already loaded the OS on the devices.

It’s easy to see why computer makers might be interested. Android is free to use, which means they don’t have to pay a license fee for Microsoft’s Windows OS, and it is open source, so they can customize it to build the types of products they think customers want.

Since it’s designed by Google, the OS naturally is friendly to Web-based applications. Google offers software libraries that make it easy to provide quick access to online services and data. The Google Maps library, for example, allows developers to add mapping capabilities to Android applications.

PC makers could design netbooks with distinctive user interfaces that provide one-click access to online services such as Google Docs and Google Maps. Android can also provide information about the location of a device, so netbooks could include applications that let users see the locations of their friends, for example.

Industry analyst Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, said Android’s Web-centric design could lend itself well to buying new software on the Web, in a similar model to Apple’s App Store.

But he wondered whether Android is ready for use in netbooks. Moving an OS for mobile phones to netbooks is an ambitious plan and will present some challenges, he said. Acer echoed the same sentiment when the company’s president and CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, said last week, “It’s too early to say if we’re going to see Android on a netbook in the near future.”

Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis, put it more bluntly: “If an Android netbook were launched today, it would be a nonstarter,” he said.

The idea of an Android-based notebook makes sense, but the OS has to show that it can be successful in smartphones before it moves to another device, he said.

The OS and even typical netbook hardware designs may need to be revamped for Android to work, said Ronnie Schwartz, cofounder and chief technology officer of mobile software development firm IntuApps.

Applications developed using Android are streamlined for mobile phones with smaller touch screens, and few netbooks today have touch screens, he said.

Those are the problems companies like Dell and HP may be trying to solve, Kay said. Android is still evolving for smartphones, and it will go through the same process for netbooks.

“That story is yet to be written,” Kay said.

More Palm Pre launch rumors

Ugh. Another day, another Palm Pre rumor.

The latest one comes from the Boy Genius Report and adds more fuel to the fire that the Pre will launch on or around June 7. An “anonymous tipster” sent BGR an internal Palm memo that outlines a schedule of events around the Pre for employees starting on June 3 and ending with a “LAUNCH LUNCH!” on June 5 at noon.

As Engadget Mobile points out, there could be several scenarios to come out of this: 1) It could all be prep for a June 7 release, which would keep with Sprint’s habit of launching new products on Sundays; 2) Sprint could break its own tradition and release it on Friday, June 5 (better for weekend sales, right?); or 3) It’s all a bunch of crock. As Engadget Mobile astutely points out, the “Employee Benfits” typo is a bit of a red flag.

Frankly, I don’t know what to believe anymore. There’s some sound evidence that June 7 could be the day, though I think it’s an incredibly bad idea for Sprint and Palm to launch the smartphone one day before the start of WWDC 2009. You’d think they’d want more of a head start. More than anything, I’m sick of the unknown. Trying to plan coverage for a product that might come out anytime between now and June 30 is giving me anxiety. As CNET reader Lupe Cope cleverly put it, once this is all over and done, I’m going to have to check myself into “Prehab.”

Microsoft decides it needs a BigPark

Microsoft said on Thursday it intends to acquire BigPark, a Vancouver, B.C.-based game studio.

BigPark, which is made up of former Electronic Arts Canada and Distinctive Software executives, has been working on an Xbox-exclusive game over the past year.

“We believe BigPark has tremendous potential to create new properties and innovative gaming experiences for our platforms, one of which we’re looking forward to showcasing at the E3 Expo in June,” Microsoft game studios boss Phil Spencer said in a statement. The company did not disclose financial terms in its press release announcing the deal.

Among BigPark’s founders is Don Mattrick, who joined Microsoft in July 2007 as senior VP of its interactive entertainment business, while continuing to serve as BigPark’s chairman. Microsoft noted that Mattrick’s investment and role at BigPark was known to the company when it hired him.

However, neither Mattrick’s Microsoft biography nor the press releaseannouncing his hiring mention BigPark.

Update: I asked Microsoft for more clarification on Mattrick’s role in the deal.

“Don was not a participant in the negotiations with BigPark either in his capacity as SVP of (Microsoft’s game business) or Chairman of BigPark,” a Microsoft representative said in a statement. Microsoft added that Mattrick’s ongoing role as chairman of BigPark was approved by the company, pursuant to its code of business conduct. “As Chairman, Don was not involved in the day to day management of the BigPark business,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft maintains that it did not note Mattrick’s role at BigPark when when he was hired at Microsoft because, “BigPark had not publicly launched as an organization.” Mattrick is noted (though not his Microsoft affiliation) on BigPark’s Web site. As for why his role at BigPark is not part of his Microsoft biography, Microsoft said “As Chairman, Don was not involved in the day to day management of the BigPark business, nor was he an employee of the company; Therefore, mention of Don’s limited involvement in BigPark was not significant enough to be included in his biography.”

As for its decision not to disclose the purchase price, Microsoft said: “BigPark is a small company and the acquisition is not material from a financial reporting perspective to Microsoft.”

Microsoft said the company has 50 employees.

What was that old saying? Disclosure is the better part of valor. Something like that anyway.

Among the other topics Microsoft isn’t discussing: just what that game is that BigPark is working on for the Xbox. A representative declined to discuss the genre or nature of the Xbox game under development, saying only that it would be revealed at E3.

It’s 3.0 Or Die For New iPhone Apps

Apple has just sent out an email alert to iPhone developers that any new app submitted to the App Store will have to be ready for the iPhone 3.0 software, which is due shortly (probably around Apple’s WWDC event in June). Beginning today, any app submitted that isn’t 3.0 compatible will be rejected.

Amazon’s Kindle DX Poses Profitability Challenge To Publishers

The biggest challenge for textbook publishers joining several universities in testing the usefulness of Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN).com’s new Kindle DX will be in finding a way to make money on the large-screen electronic book reader.Introduced on Wednesday, the bigger, and more expensive, version of Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-reader has a lot of the technology publishers need. The device is thin and light, it shows crisper graphics and text without the eyestrain and glare associated with the backlight used in laptops, and it’s big enough to display electronic versions of textbooks. (On Tuesday, Amazon received its first Kindle design patent.)

No Clear Path To Profitability 
But what it doesn’t have is a clear path to profitability. And without that, textbook publishers likely will move slowly toward the digital world, delaying potential benefits for college students and school districts. Those benefits would include lower-priced electronic versions of books and the convenience of having textbooks in a single, lightweight device.

Nevertheless, the Kindle DX is forcing textbook publishers to deal head-on with the growing demand for electronic content, something they’ve been able to avoid until now. “They’re in a better position than some other publishers, but they’re not immune from the digital revolution,” Forrester Research analyst Sara Rotman Epps toldInformationWeek. “It’s only a matter of time before schools demand this type of content. Publishers hold the cards for now, but they know the game is changing.”

A sign that the change is here is in Amazon’s ability to line up five universities to test the Kindle DX on students and faculties starting in the fall semester. The cost of the pilot programs has been kept low, and participants will get a Kindle DX at no charge.

At Princeton University, the High Meadows Foundation, which supports projects that could lead to more environmentally friendly practices, is paying the $30,000 for the Kindle DX test. Amazon, meanwhile, is expected to contribute some of the funding for pilot programs at Arizona State University and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

For the schools, the attraction is the potential benefit to the students, the reduction of manufacturing and transport costs, and a softer environmental impact.

“Our interest in the pilot is to provide Amazon and other vendors with information on what our students and faculty need in such devices to make them successful,” said Serge Goldstein, associate CIO and director of academic services at Princeton. “The ability to deliver textbooks in a format that doesn’t require paper is probably inevitable.”

With schools onboard, publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, which represent about 60% of the U.S. higher-education textbook market, have agreed to offer some of their products for the tests. However, it’s not clear how far the publishers would be willing to go in offering electronic versions of textbooks, if the test proved successful. 

It’s also not clear how far schools would be willing to push publishers toward offering e-books as an alternative to traditional books. Princeton believes the market will force any needed changes. “If the tests work, you’ll see a lot of students buying Kindle-like devices,” Goldstein said. “This market will stand on its own. It won’t need Princeton arm-twisting.”Rik Kranenburg, president of McGraw-Hill’s Higher Education group, acknowledged that e-book readers could prove disruptive for the industry, which is still trying to understand how to use the technology and make money. “We’re trying to figure out what works,” Kranenburg toldUSA Today.

Impact On Publishers Will Be Serious 
One fact that’s sure to keep shareholders up at night is the drop in the value of content once it becomes digital, sometimes as much as 50%, analysts have said. Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), for example, sells electronic versions of books for about $10, considerably less than hardcover books or paperbacks.

Once the trend toward e-textbooks begins, the impact on publishers will be serious. “Their businesses are going to get smaller,” Epps said. “They will see a decrease in revenue in their core products, and that’s going to be painful.”

Whether it’s as painful as the free fall in CD sales experienced by the music industry remains to be seen. Record companies have been hit hard by an increasing number of people buying their tunes over the Web in digital format.

Textbook publishers are likely to have more time to adjust. “It’s still a relatively slow-moving train,” Andrew Frank, analyst for Gartner, said of the shift to e-books. “The Kindle DX has a ways to go before it’s a ubiquitous replacement for printed books. It’s not an imminent threat.”

Meanwhile, newspapers face a different challenge. A major concern they have with the Kindle DX is that if it becomes too popular, then Amazon would gain too much control over the distribution of the electronic versions of newspapers. Such a scenario would be similar to Apple’s rise as the largest music seller in the United States with the popularity of the iPod and its iTunes music store. Apple’s success has caused considerable tension between the company and record companies over pricing of music.

“They don’t want to hand over too much revenue to Amazon or any other e-book reader maker,” Frank said of newspapers.

As a result, newspapers are taking a cautious approach to the Kindle DX. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post will offer the $489 Kindle DX at a reduced price to subscribers, but only to those in areas where home delivery isn’t available. The amount of the subsidy hasn’t been disclosed, but customers will have to agree to a long-term subscription to get the device.

Counting Down to the Hubble Rescue

Hubble lovers around the world have pinned their hopes on the shuttle mission launching Monday from the Kennedy Space Center – making its fifth and final visit to the space telescope.

Hubble is the one telescope everyone knows, and its spectacular images are downloaded daily. Hubble is the comeback kid of telescopes. Launched in 1990 — over budget and behind schedule — to great fanfare, it immediately became a late night joke when it turned out the telescope’s mirror had problems which caused blurred images.

Hubble, 19 years old now, overcame its early problems, and the rest is history - history that has changed what we know about the universe, and history that won’t end soon, thanks to a long-overdue house call to repair and upgrade the venerable orbiting observatory.

Preston Burch, Hubble’s project manager, says his team has been working around the clock to get ready for this. “This is the last chance to make Hubble the best it can be, we will almost have completely rebuilt Hubble since it was launched. We will also install a soft capture mechanism to deorbit Hubble in the future.”

 

NASA Mission Risky, Once Controversial

A space shuttle mission to Hubble is considered risky because there is no safe haven - if something goes wrong on a mission to the international space station, the crew can hang out at the space station until a rescue vehicle comes to get them.

A shuttle at the Hubble has no place to find refuge - so NASA came up with a plan to have a second shuttle standing by ready to go if something breaks on Atlantis that can’t be repaired in orbit.

The fifth mission to service the Hubble was scrapped after the 2003 accident that doomed the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. Then NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said it was much too dangerous.

“Could we do this and take the risk? Sure, but somebody else would have to make that decision not me, because I’m not doing it,” O’Keefe said.

That someone was the next NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin.

“We studied it for 18 months and decided we could do this with no more risk than we ask of our astronauts on a space station flight – it was not a trivial undertaking. It wasn’t that I snapped my fingers and reversed my predecessors’ decision; we studied it for 18 months. But we did find a way. That at the end of the day - that’s what is key; we found a way to do it safely.”

NASA Mission Will Extend Hubble’s Lifetime by 5 or 6 Years

It’s been seven years since Hubble has been serviced, and it is in sad shape. It needs new batteries, its gyroscopes are failing, its main camera isn’t working at full capacity, and several other instruments are broken.

Astronauts, on five grueling back-to-back spacewalks, will perform very delicate repairs on electronics, some that were never meant to be replaced on orbit.

Three months after the mission ends the astronauts will know if their work paid off when the first pictures will be seen from the newly refurbished telescope.

Prospecting for Uranium–In the Grand Canyon

The Bureau of Land Management has authorized several new uranium exploration permits near the Grand Canyon despite a congressional resolution last year barring new claims near the national park.

According to documents released yesterday [pdf] by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Grand Canyon Trust, BLM on April 27 authorized Quaterra Alaska Inc. to conduct eight uranium mine exploration operations at five separate projects north of Grand Canyon National Park and west of the Kaibab Plateau.

“Our understanding is that exploration can begin immediately,” said Taylor McKinnon, director of CBD’s public lands program.

Quaterra Alaska is a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Quaterra Resources Inc.

All of the projects are within the 1 million acres of BLM and Forest Service land that the House Natural Resources Committee ordered to be withdrawn from new uranium mining claims in June 2008, according to the groups.

The committee employed its rarely used emergency declaration authority to withdraw the lands, but then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne rejected the panel’s request, saying the committee did not have a quorum on the vote, which was taken after Republicans walked out in protest, arguing that there was no emergency to prompt the move.

The department also disputed the committee’s authority under the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act to issue emergency withdrawals and later issued a new rule that limited its ability to carry out such orders.

Michael Taylor, deputy director of resources at BLM’s Arizona state office, disputed the groups’ claims that this action authorized new drilling operations.

He explained that the documents reflect the company’s shift in reclamation bond funds from one set of exploration sites that the company was no longer interested in exploring to the new set of sites that were not previously bonded. “It was a transfer of bonding money between the notices,” Taylor said. “There is no on-the-ground exploration authorized.”

Describing the action as a “paper shuffle,” Taylor said the company has not given any indication that it plans to explore the newly bonded sites and that the agency has not authorized any new exploration permits. “We haven’t done anything out there, anything that would be contrary to what the committee had requested,” he said.

But Richard Mayol, director of communications and government affairs for the Grand Canyon Trust, said the transfer still constitutes a new authorization. “The fact they shifted the bonding to these sites means they can begin this exploration drilling,” he said.

The trust and CBD, along with the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit against Interior last fall to force it to comply with the committee’s order. 

While the case has yet to go to court, McKinnon said the groups were not informed of BLM’s authorizations, and that he was unsure how they would affect the lawsuit.

Earlier this year, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) reintroduced legislation to bar uranium development near the Grand Canyon, noting that new mining near the park could contaminate regional water systems. 

Grijalva had introduced the legislation last year but faced serious opposition from Bush administration officials and Republicans, who said the bill would hurt local economies, prompting the Arizona Democrat to push for the committee’s emergency withdrawal.

He said in January that he would work to convince Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to reconsider the temporary withdrawal while he pushes his legislation. Salazar has not spoken publicly about the issue since taking office.

“This is an indication that the BLM needs leadership from the new administration,” said CBD’s McKinnon. “The Grand Canyon example highlights the need for change.”

Department of Energy Favors Renewables, Cuts Yucca Mountain

The Obama administration solidified its plans today to kill the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository while seeking new increases for science and renewable-energy programs in a proposed $26.4 billion Energy Department budget for fiscal 2010.

The total proposal is essentially flat compared to current DoE funding. But that does not include nearly $40 billion showered on the department from the stimulus law for alternative-energy and efficiency initiatives.

The White House’s budget summaries cite $38.7 billion in stimulus cash steered to and through DoE in 2009-2010. DoE has already made several funding announcements and solicitations in areas such as science and biofuels.

Instead of funding Yucca Mountain, the proposed budget would provide almost $197 million for exploring alternatives to the proposed Nevada waste site. All funding for Yucca development would end, the White House says, because President Obama has “made clear that the nation needs a better solution” for disposing high-level nuclear waste.

“Such a solution must be based on sound science and capable of securing broad support, including support from those who live in areas that might be affected by the solution,” the White House said in a document outlining proposed cuts. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is forming a “blue ribbon” commission to weigh nuclear-waste solutions.

The budget proposal does help continue the Yucca licensing proceeding before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But DoE has called this a way to help understand NRC’s views on radiation standards and other issues, not an effort to proceed with Yucca.

Overall, the budget would increase funding for a many renewable-energy and efficiency programs. The budget requests $2.32 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Solar energy programs in that office would see a major boost, receiving $320 million, while programs including wind, building and industrial efficiency, advanced vehicle technologies and others would also receive boosts.

Specific proposed funding levels include $75 million for wind energy; $235 million for bio-energy; and $334 million for vehicle technologies.

Science, nuclear

The proposal also increases funding for the Office of Science, which Chu has said will be a top priority.

The plan would provide $4.94 billion for the office, boosting programs in basic energy sciences and other areas. The current-year funding is $4.77 billion, although the stimulus also provided $1.6 billion for this year.

Elsewhere, the plan would trim spending on nuclear energy research programs somewhat, proposing $762 million, compared with $792 million in current year spending.

The plan seeks to phase out the Nuclear Power 2010 program, a cost-share partnership with industry to help navigate the nuclear power plant licensing process as the sector seeks to build the first new reactors in decades. The budget would provide $20 million and notes there is evidence that the program has helped promote interest in new reactors, citing 17 applications NRC has received to build 26 new reactors.

The proposal also would end funding for the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative.

The plan boosts funding, however, for the Generation IV program that supports multinational research and development for next-generation reactors and also would increase funding for fuel-cycle research and development within DoE’s nuclear energy office.

In another area, the proposed budget would provide almost $5.5 billion in new appropriations for DoE’s environmental cleanup programs to address contamination from Cold War nuclear weapons production. Those programs also received more than $5 billion in the stimulus law.

Reduced spending for ‘clean coal’ research

The White House spending plan cuts funding for DoE’s fossil-energy program, directing funds toward “clean coal” projects and eliminating spending for oil technology research.

The 2010 proposal of $618 million is significantly less than 2009 spending. But the program received an additional $3.4 billion in stimulus funds earlier this year.

The spending plan completely cuts funding for the oil research and development program on grounds that the private-sector oil industry should pay for the technology developments that provide little public benefit. The Obama administration also proposes to end funding to the mandatory oil and gas R&D program authorized by the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

This year’s spending plan is focused on carbon capture and storage technologies and gas hydrate research.

Proposed repeal of oil-industry tax breaks

White House budget documents re-emphasize Obama’s proposals to end billions of dollars in oil industry tax breaks – plans that face stiff resistance on Capitol Hill from oil-state Democrats and most Republicans.

The biggest proposal would end the oil and gas industry’s ability to claim the Section 199 domestic-manufacturing deduction, worth an estimated $13.3 billion over a decade. Overall, the plan would end more than $26 billion in industry incentives over a decade.

“The oil and gas subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices,” the White House says in a document listing programs the administration wants to end.

NASA may not get astronauts back to the moon by 2020 after all

NASA’s stated goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020, which received a tentative boost in February with an affirmation in President Barack Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2010, is reportedly now in danger.

According to a report in the Orlando Sentinelquoting unnamed NASA engineers and contractors, the space agency’s timelines “are quietly being revised” in light of ongoing technical and budgetary problems. That revision, engineers told the newspaper, means the “2020 date to send humans back to the moon is in deepening trouble.”

The agency has pushed back by two years its internal timeline for the scheduled moon launch of Ares V, a planned heavy-cargo carrier rocket, according to theSentinel report. NASA had reportedly tagged the Ares V with a 2018 internal target—which builds in leeway for unforeseen problems—for a lunar launch, while announcing a 2020 date to the public. Grey Hautaluoma, a spokesperson for NASA, declined to comment on the Sentinel story. “We won’t have any comment about our budgets and schedules until the 2010 budget is released next month,” Hautaluoma said.

The Ares V rocket is designed to be unmanned but will play a role in planned astronaut missions to the moon by delivering the Earth departure stage and lunar lander to Earth orbit for rendezvous with a separately launched crewed spacecraft. With the internal timeline for its moon shot now reportedly set to 2020, there is little room for error if NASA is to meet its stated target. 

One contractor told the Sentinel that an announcement of the delay by Kennedy Space Center officials “was not received with enthusiasm” by his group. Any delays will likely exacerbate job losses at Kennedy and elsewhere along Florida’s “Space Coast,” where the shuttle program has fueled the space industry for three decades. Without intervention from Washington, the space shuttle program will be shut for good down next year, and its replacement, the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule, will not be ready before 2015.

Mystery Object Spotted in the Early Universe

Looking deep into the sky—and, by extension, far back in time—astronomers have spotted a curious space blob that existed when the universe was only 800 million years old, about 6 percent of its present age.

Masami Ouchi, a fellow at The Observatories of the Carnegie Institutionin Pasadena, Calif., who led the researchreported in the May 10 issue of theAstrophysical Journal, says that the luminous gas cloud, which spans some 55,000 light-years (about half the diameter of the Milky Way), is unique for its time. “There are no extended objects found at such an early epoch,” he says. Other known objects in its class, called Lyman-alpha blobs, are from somewhat more recent history, Ouchi says—at least two billion to three billion years after the big bang.

Lyman-alpha blobs are an astronomical mystery that may be primordial galaxies. “The consensus is that these are enormous protogalaxies, which over the course of time will yield very massive old galaxies such as we see in the local universe,” says Dan Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in England. Smith, who was not involved in the study, calls the detection of such an early Lyman-alpha blob “a very exciting result.”

But as of now, it is not known what Lyman-alpha blobs are or what causes them to glow. Resolving the proposed explanations for these early objects could shed light on how galaxies such as the Milky Way take shape. Some theories hold that Lyman-alpha blobs are formed byinflows of cold streams of gas, a mechanism that Smith points out has recently been suggested by some researchers as the dominant mode of galaxy growth. Other explanations posit that the blobs’ gas emits radiation due to heating by an active galactic nucleus harboring a churning object such as a supermassive black hole or by an accelerated phase of star formation known as a starburst.

The Lyman-alpha blob has been dubbed Himiko, after a queen in ancient Japan. “I found the name of Himiko is very suitable,” Ouchi says, “given the fact that this object was discovered in an ancient universe [by] the Subaru Telescope,” which is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

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