Legion of Angels News Archive

NEW YORK - Picture whipping out your cell phone and catching up with “Lost” or “Jeopardy,” or watching the local 11 o’clock news, all for free.

You can do this with an imported Chinese phone, but you can’t with any phone sold in the U.S. — at least not without monthly charges.

This is one of the reasons the United States is behind several other countries when it comes to making television an attractive option for cell phones. Carrier business models are partly at fault, but choices about TV technology made long ago are largely to blame.

Most phones sold in Japan can tune in to free TV broadcasts, and there are tens of millions of viewers. Cell phones that can tune in to free broadcasts are also available in South Korea, Germany and China.

But only 3 percent of Americans regularly watched video on their cell phones late last year, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That figure includes people who watched short, downloaded clips rather than broadcast TV.

For starters, you can blame the impending shutdown of all full-power analog TV broadcasts on Feb. 17, a deadline set by the government. That Chinese handset, made by ZTE Corp., can only tune in to analog transmissions. Because most of them are going away, there’s no real point in selling phones like that in the United States.

China is keeping its analog broadcasts until 2015, six years longer than the U.S., so the phones are viable there. Ironically, the TV reception chip inside comes from a U.S. company, Telegent Systems Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The analog U.S. broadcasts are being replaced by digital broadcasts, but there are no phones anywhere that can tune in to those.

When the U.S. digital TV standard was laid down in the early ’90s by the Advanced Television Systems Committee, it was optimized for high-definition signals to stationary antennas, according to Mark Richter, president of the industry group.

At the time, cell phones had screens that could display eight digits and nothing else, so little thought was given making the broadcasts work with mobile gadgets.

The Europeans created their digital television standard later and made it a bit more amenable to mobile reception, Richter said. Thus, there are now phones sold in Germany that can receive local digital broadcasts intended for stationary TVs.

Weijie Yun, Telegent’s chief executive, said it’s theoretically possible to receive U.S. digital terrestrial broadcasts on a phone, but engineers have yet to overcome key technical challenges. For now, Telegent’s chips can receive analog broadcasts in most countries of the world, and digital broadcasts in Europe and a few countries outside it.

Because U.S. phones can’t receive regular broadcast TV, carriers have had to look to other solutions. Cell-phone technology company Qualcomm Inc. has created a network that broadcasts signals designed for cell phones. AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless sell some handsets that can tune in to these broadcasts.

Sprint Nextel Corp. has contracted with another company, MobiTV Inc., which streams lo-fi streaming video over the phones’ broadband connections. The fourth national carrier, T-Mobile USA, doesn’t have a TV service.

The common denominator for the existing services is that they cost money, limiting their adoption. AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge $15 per month for 10 channels. Sprint bundles MobiTV with some high-end plans and charges $9.99 per month as standalone service.

In-Stat analyst Michelle Abraham estimates that Qualcomm’s MediaFLO has 100,000 subscribers. MobiTV has done better, with about 4 million subscribers.

Research director John Barrett at analysis firm Parks Associates points to the fees as a problem, and recommends that operators provide free content.

“A free taste would go a long way in making the consumer case for mobile TV,” he wrote in a recent report. “Mobile TV services have taken off in Japan and South Korea, where service is offered free of charge. In Italy, where additional fees have been the norm, usage has been limited.”

This month, Toshiba Corp. announced it would end a pay-TV system for handsets because of the popularity of free TV broadcasts.

“That’s one of the key barriers,” Telegent’s Yun said. “Once you start charging consumers, they start getting turned off.”

U.S. TV broadcasters are quite eager to provide free broadcasts to cell phones, just as they do to TVs with “rabbit-ear” antennas. They’ve formed the Open Mobile Video Coalition, which estimates that advertising-financed TV for cell phones could be a $2 billion market.

They want to reach cell phones through another wireless standard the ATSC is creating. It will use regular TV frequencies to reach mobile gadgets, meaning TV stations will be able to broadcast from existing towers.

The goal is to complete the new standard, called ATSC-M/H, by the first quarter of next year, Richter said. That could mean broadcasts will be operational before the end of next year.

It’s not completely clear that the technology would be used for free TV — the possibility to charge viewers monthly fees will be built in — but it would be natural for broadcasters to simulcast their regular advertising-financed programming on the mobile channel.

The big question then, Abraham said, is whether broadcasters will be able to persuade carriers to sell TV-capable phones.

AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said it was too early speculate.

“If the answer ends up being ‘yes,’” Abraham said, “then that opens up a very large market.”

Source — Yahoo!

U.S. sales of video-game consoles and software jumped 28 percent last month compared to last year, according to market researcher NPD Group. Nintendo’s DS portable and Wii remained the most popular systems.

For hardware, that means nearly $450 million in July purchases, a 17 percent increase compared to the same time last year. The top-selling DS moved about 608,000 units, with the Wii second at about 555,000.

PS 2 Still Popular

The next four places showed small differences, with third-place Sony’s PlayStation 3 at 225,000, its PlayStation Portable in fourth with 222,000, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 fifth with 205,000. The PlayStation 2, now entering late middle age eight years after its release, still sold about 155,000 for sixth place.

In total sales, the Wii is in first place, with about 13.5 million sold in North America and about 31 million worldwide. The Xbox 360 is in second place, with 12 million U.S. sales and 20 million worldwide, and the PS3 takes third with 5.5 million U.S. and 15 million worldwide.

Game software sales in the U.S. totaled $591 million, an increase of 41 percent over last year. The top two games were Electronic Arts’ NCAA Football 09 for the Xbox, with 397,000 sold, and Nintendo’s Wii Fit, with about 370,000. Guitar Hero: On Tour for the DS sold 309,000 for third place, and Wii Play was fourth with 284,000.

The remaining games in the top 10 were, in order, NCAA Football for the PS3, Soulcalibur IV for the Xbox 360, Mario Kart for the Wii, Rock Band Special Edition Bundle for the Wii, Soulcalibur IV for the PS3, and Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution for the Xbox 360.

‘Years’ for Sony to Catch Microsoft

Mike Goodman, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said it is “pretty safe to assume that Nintendo will continue to lead the way for the foreseeable future.” The more interesting development, he added, is the continuing monthly battle between the PS3 and the Xbox 360, which in the U.S. is “still very close.”

In the latest U.S. figures, he noted, “Sony has managed to inch ahead of Microsoft,” but the Xbox 360 still leads in total sales since launch. “At this pace,” Goodman said, “it will take Sony years to catch up with Microsoft.”

Goodman said the PS3’s built-in Blu-ray high-definition DVD player is “nice to have,” but probably “not a must-have” that would sway buyers. The inclusion of Blu-ray in the PS3 delayed the release of the console, but became a possible asset after the recent Blu-ray triumph in the high-definition format war with HD DVD.

Goodman noted the monthly competition might be in for a shake-up if a rumored big price-cut for the Xbox 360 takes place this fall. If, he said, Microsoft were to drop $100 from the console price, the dynamic of the monthly sales race could dramatically shift once again.

Source — Yahoo!

SAN FRANCISCO – “Weapons of mass destruction multi-agency exercise.”

If I’ve ever covered an event with a more stark title, I can’t think of it.

But there I was Saturday morning, along with several hundred firefighters, police officers, Army National Guard personnel, and members of other local, state, and federal agencies for a large-scale exercise designed to help train all these emergency responders how to deal with a major terrorist attack involving suspected chemical weapons or other bio-hazards.

As a bulletin announcing the exercise put it, the goal was for the agencies’ personnel to “identify the emergency and work as one large team to protect and save lives and mitigate the hazards.”

Practically speaking, this was quite the undertaking. Upon arriving in the middle of San Francisco’s usually crowded financial district, I encountered no traffic, but a wide variety of emergency vehicles and dozens upon dozens of people in almost every official uniform you can imagine.

This is not the first time San Francisco has run an exercise like this. Last year, the city ran another such scenario at the famous pyramid-shaped Transamerica building. This time, the owners of 555 California St., one of the city’s largest office buildings, had asked the city to prepare an exercise in their building. And so for the last year, the city and the owner of that building and another nearby had been planning this day.

The scenario was this: a terrorist with a backpack full of sodium cyanide–a chemical used in gold mines that quickly attacks and shuts down the human respiratory system–unleashed it inside 555 California.

The attack instantly kills a number of people and injures others.

Because of the victims, the fire department is the first to arrive on the scene, and when the firefighters discover what’s happened, they isolate the building’s lobby and deny entry into the building by anyone else, and then quickly set up a mass decontamination system nearby. And then they call in the specialists.

This is, of course, the whole point: to bring in the many different types of specialists to deal with the variety of complexities a situation like this creates.

But to make it even more complicated, the scenario had more to it: emergency personnel also discover an improvised explosive device inside 555 California, and just when they’re dealing with everything going on there, there’s also a shooting in another office building nearby.

By the time the press was allowed into the scene, all this was under way. We got a quick briefing from SFFD public information officer Mindy Talmadge, who explained that the exercise, which cost about a quarter million dollars, was paid for with federal grant money.

One of the elements of the scenario was that no one actually knows at first what the terrorist has attacked with. It seems obvious it is some form of chemical weapon, but the specifics are still a mystery. Finding out and then disseminating that information is one of the goals of the exercise.

“They knew it was a CBRN (chemical, biological, radioactive or nuclear) event,” said Talmadge, “and that it was a terrorist event. They don’t know what the chemical is. They have to decide based on what they find and what they heard.”

In the scenario, the attack has happened on a busy weekday, but of course, it’s actually a quiet Saturday and downtown is rather empty. There are some random pedestrians walking through the scene–which is closed to automobiles, but not foot traffic, since many local businesses were open–and it is sort of odd to see them passing through what is otherwise an extremely unusual and macabre scene.

“I doubt people would be walking calmly around” during a real emergency, Talmadge admits.

But of course, shutting down several blocks of the city’s financial district on a weekday would be a pretty significant thing.

At a press briefing later involving the chiefs of both the fire and police department, I asked if there was any possibility of ever running this kind of exercise during a workday, since it would seem that it would be helpful for these emergency personnel to learn how to handle such a situation with countless people and vehicles around.

“It would be a challenge, but if the community wanted it, we would plan and find the resources to do it” and deal with the inconveniences, said SFPD Chief Heather Fong.

Another interesting part of all this is just how slow everything and everyone seems to be moving.

Even as the exercise was in full swing, everywhere you looked, emergency personnel were standing around in groups, talking, sitting on overturned newspaper boxes, and otherwise waiting for something to do.

One man from the 95th Civil Support Team–a federal agency that specializes in WMD situations–in a blue hazmat suit that was pulled about halfway up his body, was intently looking at a device in his hands that had an orange antenna and looked a little bit like a Wi-Fi router. He said it was an air monitor and was used to measure what was in the air nearby.

At the same time, a fireman in a bright yellow hazmat suit was brandishing another device, this one looking like a circa 1984 cell phone. He said it was a gas detector used to determine what gases might be in the area.

All in all though, most of the people milling around, many in hazmat suits, others in a variety of official uniforms, were looking bored and like they wanted something to do.

But this is according to plan. That’s because one thing that seems very important to everyone in charge here is that in the course of trying to help out the victims of the attack, the emergency responders don’t themselves become victims.

And that means moving slowly and methodically.

According to SFFD Chief Joanne Hayes-White, one of the main goals of this scenario is to the members of all the various agencies that would be involved in the response to a real attack together so that they begin to know each other.

“It’s difficult to have the level of seriousness (you would have) in a real situation” in an exercise, Hayes-White acknowledged, “but it’s a good lesson for us.”

She said that prior to September 11, emergency personnel were trained to charge right into buildings where something had gone seriously wrong. But the lessons of the post-September 11 world is that it is important to know exactly what the situation is before sending vital personnel in unprepared.

Still, Hayes-White admitted that it is hard for highly trained responders to just stand around and wait for as much as two hours–which is what was happening Saturday.

“They might be feeling a little frustrated and a little awkward about standing around,” she told me. “But we want to keep everybody safe. And it’s sometimes difficult to simulate that.”

After awhile, we went back inside the lobby of 555 California where the man from the 95th CST and another from the police department, both in serious hazmat suits, were investigating what was clearly supposed to be the chemical agent causing all the ruckus.

With the “victims” still lying prone on the floor nearby, the two methodically worked on the chemical in an attempt to identify it.

The idea here is that until now, no one knew what the chemical was, and therefore how to respond to it. Soon enough, however, word came that they had identified it as sodium cyanide, and quickly the word went out over the radios.

The men take three samples of the chemical, one that is put away, never to be opened, one to be tested and a third for a re-test, if that’s necessary.

And it’s tricky work, largely because the men are trying to work with cotton swabs and other small items while wearing thick gloves. Indeed, as they work, they drop their swabs on the floor at least once.

They are also working with a small computer that a member of the 95th CST tells me is called an Ouera, and is used to analyze the chemicals found at the scene.

“It tests whatever the substance is,” said Sgt. Maj. Daniel Morales of the 95th CST. “We take the sample over to our mobile laboratory. And if they’re not able to determine what it is, they’ll take it over to Lawrence Livermore” National Lab.

Eventually, the two men in hazmat suits are done, and they leave. They walk across the street where they are put through what is called technical decontamination. This is a process involving a careful and thorough scrubbing down of their suits, and then each part of the multiple layers they are wearing. The idea is to ensure that nothing touches their skin until they are completely clean.

The exercise will continue for several hours, but the major activity is over now.

Since this wasn’t the first time San Francisco has had an exercise like this, it’s natural to wonder what the city learned from doing it again.

Hayes-White said that, among other things, she felt that the various agencies had found some improvements in the way they were communicating with each other during the exercise. And of course, such communications are vital since with several hundred emergency personnel on the scene, it’s crucial that everyone know what is going on and what they should be doing.

But Hayes-White also stressed that much about the day would only be known afterwards at a series of reviews of the exercise

For me, it was very interesting to watch this evolve.

Given that such an attack would almost certainly happen during a busy weekday, it’s hard to feel like this exercise, held on a quiet weekday is anything like what the real thing would be like.

I think, ultimately, the real point of this is what Hayes-White alluded to: the need for the various agencies to learn how to work together and to build a collective command structure in the event something horrible like a WMD attack actually happened.

And to be honest, anything that these agencies can learn about how to proceed during what Fong called an “inevitable” attack is worthwhile. Let’s just hope these agencies have the time to carry out a few more of these scenarios and learn a few more lessons before that happens.

Source — Yahoo!

NEW YORK - The magazine industry, already facing a decline in newsstand sales and falling ad revenue, is being besieged by a new foe: digital piracy.

A fledgling Web site called Mygazines.com encourages people to copy and upload popular magazines that are currently on newsstands. Visitors can read high-quality digital copies of dozens of current titles, including People, Men’s Health and The Economist, in their entirety.

The site, with some 16,000 registered users as of Friday, is a “flagrant” violation of copyright laws, according to legal experts — but it is run by an offshore company of specious origin, making it difficult to shut down.

“It’s pretty hard to see how it’s anything other than a straightforward set of copyright violations,” said Jeffrey Cunard, an intellectual property lawyer with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in Washington. “There are entire magazines with no commentary, no criticism — clearly not a case of classic fair use.”

Magazines routinely make some or all of their articles available online for free, but they are in control of how much they release, as well as any advertising they sell. Although visitors to the Mygazines site would presumably see ads run in a magazine’s print edition, the publisher is compensated only for authorized, audited circulation.

The Mygazines site said in a July 29 press release announcing its launch that its copies are no different from magazines shared in a doctor’s office or salon.

Cunard rejected that argument because the site makes available copies of paid-for content — not the actual product.

“The first-sale doctrine says that once I buy a physical copy of something, I can do whatever I want with it — except copy it,” he said.

Several magazine publishers said they are aware of the site and are considering legal action.

“We take our intellectual property seriously and are considering appropriate action on this matter,” The Economist said in an e-mail statement.

Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Inc.’s Time division, said the publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and other titles is investigating its options, including ways to have the site shut down.

The industry trade group Magazine Publishers of America — which has no legal recourse because it doesn’t own the copyrights — said it will support its members’ efforts.

The challenge for the magazine publishers is that Mygazines’s domain name is registered in the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla, which is a British overseas territory, and thus outside of the jurisdiction of U.S. copyright law.

Publishers could have recourse if the company uses servers physically in the United States. They also could sue the company in U.S. courts because content is available to Americans, but they would not be able to force Mygazines representatives to show up — nor collect any damages for any ruling made in absentia.

Repeated attempts to contact representatives of Mygazines.com went unanswered. Registration records show the domain name is owned by “John Smith” of Salveo Ltd., based in The Valley, Anguilla. The address listed is a post office box, and the phone number rang unanswered. Registration companies require that domain buyers use their actual names and contact information, but the submitted information is rarely checked.

A representative at a London-based company called Salveo Ltd., which sells fitness and beauty products online, said the company did not own or operate the site.

It’s not clear how Mygazines would make money. There are no advertisements, and users can register for free.

Nonetheless, that’s irrelevant to whether the site would be liable for copyright infringement, Cunard said. Publishers can claim damage because at least a few people will read the content on Mygazines.com instead of going out to buy a copy.

Under federal copyright law, sites like Google Inc.’s YouTube do have some protections from the actions of their users, as long as they take steps to remove content once they become aware of copyright infringement.

But that protection might not cover Mygazines, Cunard said, because the site’s operators “are encouraging people to upload copyrighted material.”

The U.S. Supreme Court already found Grokster, a file-sharing site, liable for intentionally inducing infringement. Mygazines’s home page Friday featured plenty of copyright-protected works, and the company’s tag line — “upload. share. archive.” — encourages their digital reproduction.

Source — Yahoo!

PHOENIX - With the price of oil still above $100 a barrel, everything from wood chips to chicken fat is being scrutinized as an alternative to traditional fuel. But when it comes to airplanes, finding the right mix poses a special challenge.

“When you’re in an airplane, you don’t want your fuel to start solidifying,” said Robert Dunn, a Department of Agriculture chemical engineer who is studying biodiesel jet fuel.

The airline industry is aggressively pushing for homegrown alternatives to petroleum-based jet fuel, while leaning on customers with a variety of new travel charges to help control a projected $61 billion industrywide fuel expense this year. A number of alternatives to standard jet fuel have been studied for years, though aircraft manufacturers say the challenge is to find ideas that will work now.

Jet engines can be retrofitted to run on hydrogen, for example. But hydrogen does not pack the same punch as traditional jet fuel — kerosene — and would require airlines to buy planes designed with massive tanks. That is a tough choice for cash-strapped carriers, said Billy Glover, managing director of environmental strategy at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

The best bet right now for non-conventional fuel comes from South Africa, experts said. The country has powered its airline industry for a decade using a coal-based jet fuel blend developed by petrochemicals group Sasol. It’s technically a “synthetic” fuel, which means it can be used without altering engines or other aircraft equipment.

A number of U.S. companies are developing a variety of similar synthetics. Airline experts say three companies in particular could provide as much as three million gallons a day of synthetic fuel by 2012: American Clean Coal Fuels of Portland, Ore., Baard Energy in Vancouver, Wash., and Rentech Inc. of Los Angeles.

Though significant supplies will not be ready for several years, the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) — a coalition that includes the Federal Aviation Administration, airline, manufacturing and airport associations — wants to set standards by the end of the year for a 50-percent synthetic jet fuel. CAAFI wants standards for a totally synthetic fuel ready in two years.

Executive Director Richard L. Altman said the push for new fuel standards is meant to show investors that airlines will buy synthetic fuel. Doing so will send needed dollars to energy startups that may one day replace foreign oil, Altman said.

“Nobody will invest unless the fuel is certified,” he said. “So we have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.”

With more companies investing in alternative energy, the thinking goes, the more synthetic jet fuel eventually becomes available. The more fuel available, the easier it will be for airlines to unshackle themselves from volatile petroleum markets.

Meanwhile, Boeing and Air New Zealand later this year will test a biofuel made from the oil-rich seeds of the jatropha tree, a Mexican plant that grows in warm climates. Other synthetic fuel tests will follow on Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines flights. In February, Boeing partnered with Virgin Atlantic to test a flight that included a biofuel mixture of babassu oil, which comes from a palm tree in northern Brazil, and coconut oil.

“We’re looking for something that is so correct in its performance that it can be interchanged with petroleum-based kerosene,” Glover said. “From a distribution standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it needs to fit without modifications or special handling.”

Many biofuels may create more problems than they solve, however. Using edible feedstocks such as corn and sugar could raise the price of food. And palm trees for babassu and coconut oil could lead to clearing large chunks of rain forest.

These are some of the reasons why algae-based synthetic fuel is getting a lot of attention.

Algae is inedible, and it has a relatively high yield compared with other crops, using less land to produce the same amount of oil.

“It can be grown anywhere you can have a pool of water and expose it to sunlight,” said Stanford Seto, an expert in aviation fuels who works with ASTM International, a Pennsyvania-based organization that develops standards for jet fuel.

Investors have pumped almost $84 million into companies developing algae-based fuel so far this year, up from $29 million in all of 2007, according to the Cleantech Group, an industry research firm.

Despite its promise, it will be years before algae biofuel could be sold at a price that would make sense to an airline, said Dave Jones, co-founder of LiveFuels, an algae fuel startup in San Carlos, Calif.

“If anyone is below $50 a gallon, I’d be stunned,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea on how to grow algae. The biggest challenge is in the harvesting and how to extract it from the water.”

Even if prices come down, most airlines see synthetic fuel as a chance to run a greener airline, not necessarily a cheaper one, said Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs for the Air Transport Association.

More fuel sources could temper the effect oil speculation has on gas prices, and they could give carriers fuel at a cost they can count on, she said. But “you aren’t going to find a fuel that’s pennies on the dollar than what we find today,” she said.

For travelers, that means that fewer flight options and charges for checked bags, drinks and other items are here to stay.

“Even if we were to double the volume we were to make in biofuels every year for the next 10 years, we’re still looking at maybe this will impact 15 percent of the overall fuel supply,” said Brian Fan, Cleantech’s senior director of research.

“Realistically, for anything to be happening at scale, enough to actually impact an airline’s bottom line, we’re years away,” Fan said.

Source — Yahoo!