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Douglas

That would delay recovery of the ozone layer hole above the Arctic and thus mark a major setback for international efforts to protect the ozone layer by banning ozone-depleting chemicals. The ozone blocks harmful ultraviolet rays from coming to Earth.

As concerns grow over climate change and global warming, large-scale efforts to alter the planet’s climate through geoengineering are being taken seriously by academics.

But a study performed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) cautioned that more research is needed before so-called geoengineering efforts are pursued.

Academics point out the obvious challenges of these geoengineering ideas, given the complexity of the climate and the prospect of managing such global ventures among different countries.

“Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects,” Simone Tilmes, the leader of the NCAR study, said in a statement. “While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions.”

Proposals to cool Earth by injecting the atmosphere with sulfate particles would deplete the ozone layer and have “perilous effects” on the planet, according to a paper to be published Friday.

The cooling effects of suflate particles has been observed from past volcanic eruptions. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, for example, had a measurable downward effect on temperatures.

A proposal to cool the climate with sulfate particles in the atmosphere would further damage the ozone layer, a study concludes.

It specifically raised the alarm over the idea of regularly sending sulfate particles into the stratosphere to reduce the Earth’s temperature. It’s one of the most discussed geoengineering proposals put forth by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and others.

The NCAR study concluded that injecting sulfates would destroy between about a fourth and three-fourths of the ozone layer above the Arctic Ocean.

Other geoengineering proposals include putting a shield above Greenland to deflect the sun’s rays and stimulating large-scale plankton blooms in the ocean to sequester underwater carbon dioxide.

(Credit:
NASA)

But it’s a bit curious on Facebook: most popular social-media sites already have applications built on Facebook’s developer platform, and those can pull updates into the Mini-Feed–so at first glance, it seems slightly redudant.

Currently, this is limited to business reviews site Yelp, bookmarking site Delicious (owned by Yahoo), and photo-sharing sites Flickr (also owned by Yahoo) and Picasa (owned by Google). More are on the way, including Digg, the post by engineer Harry Huai Wang assured members.

This post was updated at 2:54 PM PT with comment from Facebook.

With aggregation the hottest topic in social networking these days, plenty of sites from Pownce to Plaxo have opted to let members pull in feeds from external sites, and an entire genre of “lifestreaming” services like FriendFeed and SocialThing have sprung up for those social-media junkies who want to be able to track everything their friends do in one place.

(Credit:
Facebook)

Using the Mini-Feed import, however, requires no application to be installed on Facebook (read: it’s easier), and is fully opt-in, unlike Facebook’s controversial Beacon advertisements (of which Yelp is a partner). I originally speculated that perhaps Yelp, Picasa, Flickr, and Delicious were “partners” in a Mini-Feed import program, meaning that Facebook may have gotten some revenue out of the deals.

Facebook members now have the options to import their activity from a number of external social-media sites into the “Mini-Feeds” on their profiles, a post on the company blog explained on Tuesday.

But a Facebook representative confirmed to me that there were no formal partnerships in place, meaning that it was more likely just an API integration–curious.

Importing my Flickr feed into Facebook

The combination presents Google’s view of a particular property from the road and lets users virtually pivot around to see the surrounding area. It works in the 40 cities where Google has supplied imagery for its Street View service.

Trulia, a residential real estate search engine, has incorporated Google Maps Street View into its Web pages, the company said Wednesday.

Trulia builds a Google Street View into its real estate search results in areas where it's available, letting people check the neighborhood of a property for sale.

(Credit:
Trulia)

It’s nothing that couldn’t have been done manually before by typing an address into a separate window with the Google view, or likely even with an on-page mashup, but having the curbside vantage readily available is certainly handy, and Google worked with Trulia to integrate the feature, the search giant said.

A Vudu representative confirmed via e-mail that the company had reduced staffing but declined to discuss figures. Vudu “had to restructure a bit from each department” the representative wrote. “The restructuring is all part of the company reorg to focus more on sales and distribution.”

Last week, CE Pro reported that the company had reduced staff by nearly 20 percent, or about 16 to 18 employees out of 100.

Set-top maker gets a new CFO amid a reorg.

Meanwhile, the number of set-top boxes that transfer movies from the Web to consumers’ TVs has exploded. Amid all the growth, Vudu has become an also-ran.

Only 16 months ago, Vudu, the maker of a movie-playing set-top box, was generating splashy headlines in publications like The New York Times.

(Credit:
Vudu)

Now the company, which bills itself as a video store in a box, is at the center of speculation about layoffs and executive upheaval.

Chris Albrecht of NewTeeVee pointed out that some of the company’s most recent moves, which includes adding pornography and a 99-cent bargain bin “don’t exactly scream stability.”

On Monday, Vudu announced that it named Chris Watts, a former eBay executive, as the company’s new chief financial officer. What happened to the old CFO? You guessed it: “The former CFO left for personal reasons,” according to the representative. CE Pro also reported that one of the company’s founders has left the company. Vudu denied that either of it’s two founders have left.

If the problem persists, go the no-add-on route. To open IE7 with no add-ons or toolbars enabled, click Start > Run (in XP), or press the Windows key (in Vista), type iexplore.exe -extoff, and press Enter. If the problem disappears, close IE and reopen it normally. Disable all your add-ons but one to determine if that’s the source of the problem: Click Tools > Manage Add-ons > Enable or Disable Add-ons, select the add-ons one at a time, and click Disable for each, but keep one enabled. If IE works OK, enable another and test the browser again. Enable the add-ons one by one until the problem recurs. When it does, you’ve found the troublemaker.

Before you resort to option 3 or 4, try what Microsoft describes as options 5, 6, and 7: Delete your temporary Internet files, browser history, and cookies. Doing so is simple, relatively painless (sites you revisit will load more slowly), and most importantly, the likeliest source of the problem. Choose Tools > Internet Options > General, click Delete under Browsing History, and select Delete files under Temporary Internet Files, History, and Cookies. Click Yes at each warning, and then Close and OK.

Bonus tip: All the attention paid to Firefox and Internet Explorer makes it easy to forget that there are many other worthy browsers available–for free. One of my favorites is Opera, currently at version 9.26. This browser has a reputation for being lightweight but full-featured. I’ve also been spending time with Apple’s version of Safari for Windows, but I prefer browsing with Firefox on a
Mac, and I haven’t seen anything in the Windows version of Safari that would make me want to switch. If you spend a lot of time on social-network sites, you may find the Firefox-based Flock Browser to your liking.

These days it’s tough being a Web designer. Even if you create sites that comply with the latest HTML and other Web standards, you can’t be sure that the pages will open or function as intended for all of the site’s visitors. The fact is, Internet Explorer plays by its own set of rules, so in effect sites need to be designed twice.

As new Web applications debut, and older ones are enhanced, we spend more of our work time in a browser. Unfortunately, we also seem to be spending more time trying to figure out why our browsers aren’t displaying the sites we visit correctly, or at all.

Get Internet Explorer 7 back on track
Microsoft offers an IE7 troubleshooting guide, but I can save you some time by summarizing its advice: First, check for Windows updates; second, scan your computer for viruses; third, if you don’t mind losing your customizations, reset the browser to its default settings by clicking Tools > Internet Options > Advanced > Reset (a last resort); and fourth, disable your add-ons and toolbars, and enable them one at a time to find the one causing the problem.

Recently Firefox refused to load my Gmail in-box. I fixed the problem in a jiffy by clearing the browser’s cache: Click Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Clear Now > OK. MozillaZine describes other standard Firefox diagnostics, and it also provides a Firefox support forum.

(Credit:
Mozilla Foundation)

Clearing Firefox's cache can be a quick fix for many common problems.

Microsoft claims that
Internet Explorer 8–currently in beta–will support more standards, but this itself could cause problems as sites designed for IE7 don’t load correctly in the new release. Web designers will be able to add a “meta element” to pages that allows them to open in the new IE release as they would in IE7.

As with IE, start your Firefox troubleshooting by updating to the most recent version of the browser by clicking Help > Check for Updates. Next, update your add-ons by selecting Tools > Add-ons > Find Updates. MozillaZine provides a list of problematic extensions.

Disable all the add-ons in Internet Explorer except one, and then re-enable them one at a time to find the source of the problem.

In the event that none of these steps cures what ails IE7, it’s time to break out the big guns: Boot into Safe Mode with Networking, log into a different user account, or go the clean-boot route. Microsoft offers step-by-step guides for these and other IE7 advanced-troubleshooting techniques.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Diagnose
Firefox failures
Figuring out what’s wrong with Mozilla’s open-source browser is similar to the troubleshooting steps for IE, with two big exceptions: First, you can search for solutions at the Bugzilla service; and second, if you think you’ve discovered a bug in the program, you can report it (Bugzilla account required).

Monday: better ways to search Outlook, Thunderbird, and Gmail.

That may come as no surprise, given that Yahoo over the weekend rejected a sweetened Microsoft offer to buy just its search assets and the board of directors for the Internet pioneer will be up for grabs when Yahoo and Icahn face off at the August 1 annual shareholders meeting.

Yahoo and Microsoft have both accelerated their respective deal-making talks with Time Warner’s AOL, as a proxy fight looms less than three weeks away between Yahoo and investor activist Carl Icahn, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

Updated at 1:36 p.m. PDT with a report on AOL executives meeting with Microsoft.

Specifics about the types of deals that are currently underway in these two separate discussions and the likelihood of an outcome are not clear.

“The ongoing talks between all the companies have recently picked up,” said the source.

And as noted in the Silicon Alley Insider last month, a Microsoft buyout of AOL could come sooner than later. In fact, Silicon Alley Insider posted this nugget Tuesday that a team from AOL was in Seattle to talk about a potential deal with the software giant.

And a report in Reuters Tuesday was the first to note talks had “heated up” among the three parties.

But previously, talks between Yahoo and AOL reportedly involved discussions of Yahoo acquiring AOL and, then, Time Warner taking an investment in Yahoo.

(Credit:
Dan Farber)
Finally, a technology executive willing to tell the truth about cloud computing. Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld, Larry Ellison said that the computer industry is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion and cloud computing is simply the latest fashion. The Wall Street Journal quoted the Oracle CEO’s remarks:

“We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.”

Frank Gillett of Forrester speaks about the cloud envy of various companies who jump on the cloud computing bandwagon by rebranding existing services in this interview with Beet.TV.

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

I led a panel at the MIT Emerging Technology Conference earlier this week on cloud computing with some of the leaders in the field: David P. Anderson, research scientist, University of California at Berkeley; Matthew Glotzbach, product management director, Google; Parker Harris, EVP, Technology, Salesforce.com; Mendel Rosenblum, chief scientist and co-founder, VMware; and Werner Vogels, VP and CTO, Amazon.com. The group generally agreed that cloud computing involves software running off premises, but that there are different workloads and kinds of scenarios.

The problem is that every tech company now wants to be associated with cloud computing, no matter if their products and services meet the basic criteria. At least Ellison isn’t afraid to address the hijacking of the phrase by marketers, including Oracle’s.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison

AT&T earnings dip 23.6 percent

Today’s stories:

Sources: AT&T, Comcast likely to help RIAA

Also on today’s podcast: The fourth quarter is a good news/bad news story for SAP; AT&T profits sink; Acer gets into the smartphone biz; and clickfraud skyrockets.

Listen now:

Download today’s podcast

Clickfraud closed 2008 at all-time high

When the RIAA said in December it would stop pursuing individual illegal file sharers, it wasn’t clear exactly why. Now, CNET News’ Greg Sandoval says the industry group is just switching tactics. Several sources close to Comcast and AT&T say that they, along with several other Internet service providers, will agree to monitor their networks for illegal file sharing by its customers.

Acer smartphone launching Feb. 16

How to get your Davos fix on the Web

Nvidia names Stanford scientist its research chief

SAP plans job cuts despite solid earnings

“They’ve taken an enthusiast-class quad-core part and paired it with a mainstream motherboard,” Whitman said. “And not all motherboard manufacturers have tweaked their boards to support a 125-watt TDP.” Whitman says that AMD’s 790 chipset–not the 780–should be paired with the 9750 and 9850 processors and that a number of motherboard makers are already doing this.

Whitman is referring to the fact that the high-end 9750 and 9850 Phenom processors have a Thermal Design Power (TDP or thermal envelope) of 125 watts versus the lower-end 9600 and 9550 models that have a TDP of 95 watts. The higher-watt parts will not work with motherboards that contain the 780G chipset. The lower-end models do not have these TDP issues.

This issue was reported Monday at the Web site HKEPC.

The inability to use high-end quad-core AMD processors on some motherboards may be symptomatic of a larger challenge. AMD is finding it difficult to compete head-on with Intel quad-core offerings in the consumer segment. Hewlett-Packard and Gateway, for instance, offer desktops with only the lower-performance Phenom chips, such as the 9100e (1.8GHz) and 9600 (2.3GHz). Neither HP nor Gateway offer desktops with higher-performance 9750 (2.4GHz) or 9850 (2.5GHz) Phenoms.

“We’ve never made claims that 780G motherboards are enthusiast-class motherboards,” Whitman said.

AMD quad-core Phenom X4

Whitman says there’s a reason for this. First-tier PC makers “are not necessarily interested in building the fastest AMD-based quad-core systems, but are more interested in price.” He expects wider adoption of the high-end Phenom chips with system builders and game-enthusiast PC makers.

In related news reported by CNET News.com on Monday, supercomputer maker Cray said it would adopt Intel quad-core processor designs for its supercomputers. Though Cray says it will continue to offer configurations with AMD chips too, the move by Cray is seen as an endorsement of Intel multicore designs. Before this announcement, Cray had been using AMD processors only.

“What people have done, mistakenly, is paired a 780G (chipset-based) motherboard with the higher frequency Phenom–the 125-watt Phenom,” said Jake Whitman, an AMD spokesperson.

(Credit:
AMD)

Meanwhile, Intel-based systems from these companies–though usually more expensive–come with quad-core chips ranging up to a 2.83GHz Q9550.

AMD confirmed Monday that some motherboard suppliers are mismatching high-end quad-core Phenom processors with a lower-end chipset. (The motherboard is the main circuit board in a PC. The chipset allows the processor to interact with other components, among other functions.)

Update: Circuit board makers using Advanced Micro Devices’ high-end quad-core Phenom chips claim that there are compatibility issues with select boards. This comes as the chipmaker struggles to churn out processors that are competitive with Intel’s offerings.

Silicon Valley marches to a different beat. You’ll find the occasional carpetbaggers–during the dot-com bubble, they were all over the place–but most hung out a shingle in order to create something new and exciting.

Reed Hastings, chief executive of video rental site Netflix, floated a ballsy proposal in Friday’s New York Times, volunteering the idea that he and other highly paid wage earners ought to pay more in taxes.

All this takes place against the backdrop of the president’s proposal this week to put a $500,000 compensation limit on executives of companies seeking a bailout.

I’m the chief executive of a publicly traded company and, like my peers, I’m very highly paid. The difference between salaries like mine and those of average Americans creates a lot of tension, and I’d like to offer a suggestion:

It’s a terrible idea. We all want the taxpayers’ money returned, and capping compensation (for) bailout recipients will just make it that much harder for those boards to hire and hold on to the executives who can lead their companies to compete and thrive.

President Obama should celebrate our success, rather than trying to shame us or cap our pay. But he should also take half of our huge earnings in taxes, instead of the current one-third.

Perhaps a starting place for “tax, not shame” would be creating a top federal marginal tax rate of 50 percent on all income above $1 million per year. Some will tell you that would reduce the incentive to earn, but I don’t see that as likely. Besides, half of a giant compensation package is still pretty huge, and most of our motivation is the sheer challenge of the job, anyway.

Then, the next time a chief executive earns an eye-popping amount of money, we can cheer that half of it is going to pay for our soldiers, schools, and security. Higher taxes on huge pay days can finance opportunity for the next generation of Americans.

I give Netflix’s boss credit for trying to refocus the debate. Of course, no technology firms have lined up at the trough to receive public funds. So at this stage, at least, the idea remains theoretical–that is, barring the (unlikely) economic collapse of the tech industry as well.

Even if it’s got a snowball’s chance of going anywhere for now, the idea still merits consideration.

Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO

Hastings’ proposal seeks to satisfy both sides of the debate over pay scales for executives overseeing companies that are bailout recipients. Writing about the compensation cap proposed by Obama, he had this to say:

That last clause is beyond contestation. The thrill of being the boss is a huge motivation. The gluttons being outed on Wall Street are a class unto themselves.

(Credit:
Netflix)

Don’t get me wrong. Many of these folks take home enormous compensation packages. But we’re talking about real bonuses in return for real performance. I think that Obama’s jumping mad because the financial fat cats were taking home real bonuses for fictional profits. There’s a big difference.