Watch Out China, 25% Of U.S. Hackers Are FBI Informer

Malaysian Post

Sony has just announced its Next Generation Portable (NGP) at E3, Los Angeles, and it’s called PlayStation Vita. One of the reasons was to divert attention from the hacking attack that left millions of PSN users’ data at risk in order to win back some trust.Obviously E3 was the platform to convince the Sony’s fans that PlayStation was still the gaming platform of preference. Sony also took the opportunity to apologise for the breach of security. Sure, blame it on the hackers.

Somehow hackers hijacked the front page news quite often recently. Google’s Security Team claimed that unidentified hacker attacks likely originated from the eastern Chinese city of Jinan, tried to collect user passwords of the Gmail accounts of hundreds of users, including senior U.S. government officials, Chinese “human rights activists” and journalists. Of course China officials denied the accusations as evil-intentioned.

Asian mums hooked on Net

SINGAPORE - THE Internet is a lifeline for Asian mothers, with a survey finding two-thirds use it to shop for themselves and their children and an even bigger number going online to research purchases and talk about them.

The study, by Microsoft Advertising and Starcom MediaVest Group, showed that mothers ultimately hold the purse-strings in the region, influencing purchasing decisions ranging from household staples to big-ticket items such as cars. And their resource of choice to make these purchases is the Internet, with 58 per cent saying they used online networks and online customer reviews before actually buying.

"Mums have become the one-stop shop for family purchases, and brands need to be aware of this influence," Kenneth Andrew, managing director of Microsoft Advertising Greater Asia Pacific, told reporters. "Mothers are becoming increasingly digitally savvy, and conversely, much more cynical of advertising."

The survey was based on interviews with about 3,000 mothers in eight markets -- China, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. The respondents ranged from pregnant women to mothers with teenage children.

On average, the survey found that Asian mothers spend 17 hours a week online, and the sites they visited ranged from those offering media, such as music and video download sites, to social networks, to sites specifically catered to children.

But largely, the online activities of mothers depended on the age of their children, with expectant women relying on sites that allow them to interact with other mothers, while those with older children rely on the web for email and searches. -- REUTERS

Earth may collide with Venus

Orbital chaos may cause our Solar System to go haywire, leading to possible collision between Earth and Venus or Mars. -- PHOTO: AP

PARIS - A FORCE known as orbital chaos may cause our Solar System to go haywire, leading to possible collision between Earth and Venus or Mars, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The good news is that the likelihood of such a smash-up is small, around one-in-2500. And even if the planets did careen into one another, it would not happen before another 3.5 billion years.

Indeed, there is a 99 per cent chance that the Sun's posse of planets will continue to circle in an orderly pattern throughout the expected life span of our life-giving star, another five billion years, the study found.

Using powerful computers, Mr Laskarand colleague Mickael Gastineau generated numerical simulations of orbital instability over the next five billion years.

Unlike previous models, they took into account Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Over a short time span, this made little difference, but over the long haul it resulted in dramatically different orbital paths.

The researchers looked at 2,501 possible scenarios, 25 of which ended with a severely disrupted Solar System. 'There is one scenario in which Mars passes very close to Earth,' 794 kilometres (493 miles) to be exact, said Laskar.

'When you come that close, it is almost the same as a collision because the planets gets torn apart.'Life on Earth, if there still were any, would almost certainly cease to exist.

The key to all the scenarios of extreme orbital chaos was the rock closest to the Sun, found the study.

'Mercury is the trigger, and would be be the first planet to be destabilised because it has the smallest mass,' explained Mr Laskar. At some point Mercury's orbit would get into resonance with that of Jupiter, throwing the smaller orb even more out of kilter, he said.

Once this happens, the so-called 'angular momentum' from the much larger Jupiter would wreak havoc on the other inner planets' orbits too. -- AFP

Microsoft to buy game maker BigPark

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will buy computer game designer BigPark Inc for an undisclosed amount, as it pushes its strategy of producing exclusive games for its Xbox entertainment system.

Microsoft has already been working with Vancouver, Canada-based BigPark over the past year on a game for the Xbox, but has so far announced no details. More information is expected at the video game industry's annual E3 Expo in June.

BigPark, founded in 2007 by former executives of Electronic Arts Inc and Distinctive Software Inc, will become part of Microsoft Game Studios.

One of BigPark's co-founders, Don Mattrick, became senior vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business in July 2007.

Microsoft shares were down 53 cents at $19.25 on Nasdaq.

Google CEO says he expects more government scrutiny

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said he expects more regulatory scrutiny from around the world and the company is paying more attention to the way it approaches certain business issues as a result of the attention.

But Schmidt told reporters it had not crossed his mind to recuse himself from the board of Apple Inc, even as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission looks into whether the ties between the two companies violate antitrust laws.

Schmidt, along with former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, sits on both companies' boards. Schmidt said he did not consider Google and Apple to be primary competitors, and that he recuses himself when competitive issues are discussed.

Google General Counsel Kent Walker confirmed media reports that the company is "in pending" discussions with the FTC concerning their two shared directors. But he said the law provides a safe harbor for mutual shareholders in cases where there is no overlapping revenue.

"What is changed is that we are more careful about when and how we do things which are going to raise concerns of any party," Schmidt told a room of journalists at the company's Mountain View, California headquarters ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.

"But it hasn't prevented us from doing them," Schmidt added.

Shareholders at the meeting voted to reelect Google's board of directors and to approve its external auditing firm and amendments to its stock plan.

A trio of shareholder proposals concerning the company's political contributions, Internet censorship and universal healthcare did not receive sufficient votes.

YOUTUBE TO BE PROFITABLE

Schmidt said recent cost-saving measures at Google have made the Internet search leader more efficient and have not hampered innovation.

Company executives who appeared alongside Schmidt at the media briefing said Google was looking at ways to generate money from the surge of social networking activity on the Internet, as well as at ways of integrating microblogging capabilities, such as those popularized by Twitter, into its search product.

Google has monetized "hundreds of millions" of videos on its YouTube video site, executives said, and the company has recently introduced new types of ads such as video pre-rolls that are streamed before a clip begins playing.

Schmidt would not address a recent report that YouTube, which Google acquired for $1.6 billion in 2006, could lose more than $400 million this year.

"What we said is we believe YouTube will eventually be a successful and a profitable business and it will take some time to do it," Schmidt said.

He also declined to comment on reports that Google's Android mobile operating system, currently featured in smartphones, could turn up in the new breed of miniature laptops known as netbooks.

Old maps unveil 'dirty' secrets

TOKYO - WHEN Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash.

The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another website, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused any problems.

But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan.

The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

The maps date back to the country's feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place.

At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the 'burakumin,' ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death, such as working with leather, butchering animals and digging graves.

Castes have long since been abolished, and the old buraku villages have largely faded away or been swallowed by Japan's sprawling metropolises.

Today, rights groups say the descendants of burakumin make up about 3 million of the country's 127 million people.

But they still face prejudice, based almost entirely on where they live or their ancestors lived.

Moving is little help, because employers or parents of potential spouses can hire agencies to check for buraku ancestry through Japan's elaborate family records, which can span back over a hundred years. -- AP

Vaccine earliest at fall

US authorities are pledging to eventually produce enough swine flu vaccine for everyone but say that the shots couldn't begin until fall at the earliest. -- PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO

WASHINGTON - US AUTHORITIES are pledging to eventually produce enough swine flu vaccine for everyone but say that the shots couldn't begin until fall at the earliest.

Worries about the spread of the virus mounted on Thursday as the US swine flu caseload passed 100, and nearly 300 schools closed.

Federal officials had to spend much of the day reassuring the public it's still safe to fly and ride public transportation after Vice-President Joe Biden said he wouldn't recommend it to his family.

Scientists were racing to prepare the key ingredient to make a vaccine against the never-before-seen flu strain - if it's ultimately needed. But it will take several months before the first pilot lots begin required human testing to make the vaccine is safe and effective. If all goes well, broader production could start in the fall.

'We think 600 million doses is achievable in a six-month time frame' from that fall start, Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Craig Vanderwagen told lawmakers on Thursday.

'I don't want anybody to have false expectations. The science is challenging here,' Mr Vanderwagen told reporters. 'Production can be done, robust production capacity is there. It's a question of can we get the science worked on the specifics of this vaccine.'

Until a vaccine is ready, the government has stockpiled anti-viral medications that can ease flu symptoms or help prevent infection. The medicines are proving effective. -- AP

Great Wall of China 'even longer'

The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.

A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.

Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.

Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.

The project found that there were wall sections of 6,259km, 359km of trenches, and 2,232km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.

The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. - Read More

Lightest exoplanet is discovered

Astronomers have announced the discovery of the lightest planet ever detected outside our Solar System.

Situated in the constellation Libra, it is only about twice as massive as the Earth, whereas most other exoplanets identified have been far bigger.

The scientists say the planet's orbit takes it far too close to its star Gliese 581 for life to be possible.

The detection was made by an international team of researchers using a 3.6m telescope at La Silla, Chile.

"This is by far the smallest planet that's ever been detected," said group member Michel Mayor, from the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland.

"This is just one more step in the search for the twin of the Earth.

"At the beginning, we discovered Jupiter-like planets several hundred times the mass of the Earth; and now we have the sensitivity with new instruments to detect very small planets very close to that of the Earth," he told BBC News.

Habitable zone

The planet joins three others previously detected around its star and takes the designation Gliese 581 e.

As with the previous discoveries, its presence was picked up using the so-called wobble technique. This is an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky.

Astronomy is working right at the limits of the current technology capable of detecting exoplanets and most of those found so far are Jupiter scale and bigger.

To discover one so small is a major coup. The previous record holder was about four times as massive as the Earth.

Because Gliese 581 e takes just 3.15 days to orbit its host star, it lies beyond what scientists call the habitable, or "Goldilocks", zone, where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.

But one of the other planets in this system does appear to be. Gliese 581 d was first discovered in 2007. The latest research has allowed scientists to refine details of its orbit.

The team now believes planet d (which is about seven Earth-masses in size) circles Gliese 581 in 66.8 days.

"This planet is probably not just rocky; it's very probably an icy planet - but relatively close to the star so at the surface, we should have some big ocean," said Professor Mayor.

"Maybe, it's the first candidate in a new class of planet called an 'ocean planet'."

The exoplanet discovery was announced at the JENAM conference during the European Week of Astronomy & Space Science, which is taking place at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.

A scientific paper detailing the research has been submitted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Upcoming challenge

The US space agency (Nasa) recently launched its Kepler telescope dedicated to finding Earth-size planets. It will use a different approach to the HARPS/La Silla set-up.

Kepler will look for the tiny dip in light coming from a star as a planet crosses its face as viewed from Earth.

Michel Mayor commented: "The challenge in coming years will be to find Earth-mass planets in the habitable zones of stars."

He added: "I'm absolutely confident that in one year or two years, we will arrive at [a planet with] the mass of the Earth."

In the future, some of these planets could be imaged in some detail by the next generation of ground telescopes.

One of these projects, the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) is currently coming to the end of its design process.

"One of the interesting things about today's announcement is that some of the planets in this system would actually be imageable with the next generation of telescopes," said Isobel Hook, from Oxford University and the UK project scientist on the E-ELT.

"The type of technology coming along, such as extreme adaptive optics, will allow you to produce very sharp images. The seven-Earth-mass planet we think could be imaged directly. You would be able to see it go around its star and see what it was made of," she told BBC News.

Tim de Zeeuw, director-general of the European Southern Observatory (Eso) organisation, which will operate the E-ELT, told BBC News: "The E-ELT will make it possible to take images of (Earth-mass planets) and indeed find evidence for many of them.

"This then leads to very interesting questions: do we find many Solar Systems like our own? Or is there only one like us?"

He added: "I don't follow this field daily... (but) the number of cases we have is steadily growing to a size where we can start asking this question and there are some indications that perhaps our Solar System is a little unusual."

The 42m E-ELT comprises five large mirrors. Its adaptive optics system will compensate for the distortions to images of the sky caused by turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.

Construction of the ground observatory could begin in 2011 if all goes to plan. Eso intends to select a location for the telescope by the end of this year.

Six sites have been shortlisted: three in Chile; one in the Canary Islands, Spain; one in Morocco; and one in Argentina.

Courtesy: BBC

Facebook users say yes to changes

Facebook users have voted to back changes which give them control over data and content they post on the site.

Early results suggest 75% of those who voted support the proposals.

The vote was triggered by changes Facebook made to its terms and conditions in February.

The move drew fire because it appeared to hand the social network site ownership of images, videos and data that users posted on profile pages.

Low turnout

In response to the criticism, Facebook withdrew the changed terms, wrote a new set and invited its 200 million members to make their views known.

The new terms return control of what is done with data put on the site to users and give them the right to ask for it to be deleted if they stop using Facebook.

In total about 600,000 people took part in the week-long vote. Initially, Facebook said it would only adopt those new terms if 30% of its members voted in support of them.

However, writing in a blog posting on Facebook announcing the early results, Ted Ullyot, Facebook's legal chief, said it would adopt them anyway.

"You can expect to see the new documents on the site in the coming weeks," wrote Mr Ullyot.

He said a preliminary count suggested 74.4% backed the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

The results are now being assessed by an external auditor to produce a final count.

Mr Ullyot expressed disappointment that there was not a bigger turnout but acknowledged that the exercise was a first for both Facebook and its members.

Future votes on changes to how the site operates, which are enshrined in the new terms, will have a threshold of less than 30% for any alterations to be made binding.

"We are hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes," he wrote.
-- Courtesy: BBC

Your name, your Google search

SAN FRANCISCO - GOOGLE is giving people influence over what information turns up during online searches on their names.

The California Internet search king began on Tuesday featuring voluntarily created Google profiles at the bottoms of US 'name-query' pages.

'It's no secret that from time to time many of us have searched on Google for our name or someone else's,' Google software engineer Brian Stoler wrote in a posting at the Internet firm's website.

'When searching for yourself to see what others would find, results can be varied and aren't always what you want people to see. We want to make that better and give you more of a voice.'

Google profiles contain basic information and pictures that people don't mind sharing. Concise profiles are displayed along with results of searches on people's names to allow a little control of one's online image.

Information about setting up profiles is available at google.com/profiles. -- AFP

Earth-sized planet found

HATFIELD (England) - IN A discovery that one expert called 'extraordinary', European astronomers reported finding one planet close to Earth's size in a different solar system and realizing that another planet could possibly sustain a large ocean.

European researchers said on Tuesday that not only had they found the smallest exoplanet ever, called Gliese 581 e, but they realized that a neighbouring planet discovered earlier, Gliese 581 d, was in the prime habitable zone for potential life.

'The Holy Grail of current exoplanet research is the detection of a rocky, Earth-like planet in the 'habitable zone,'' said Michel Mayor, an astrophysicist at Geneva University in Switzerland.

Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system. Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of Earth - while previous planets found outside our solar system are closer to the size of massive Jupiter, which NASA says could swallow more than 1,000 Earths.

Gliese 581 e sits close to the nearest star, making it too hot to support life. Still, Mr Mayor said its discovery in a solar system 20 light years away from Earth is a 'good example that we are progressing in the detection of Earth-like planets.'

Scientists also discovered that the orbit of planet Gliese 581 d, which was found in 2007, was located within the 'habitable zone' - a region around a sun-like star that would allow water to be liquid on the planet's surface, Mr Mayor said.

He spoke at a news conference on Tuesday at the University of Hertfordshire during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.

Fellow astronomer and team member Stephane Udry said Gliese 581 d is probably too large to be made only of rocky material, adding it was possible the planet had a 'large and deep' ocean.

'It is the first serious 'water-world' candidate,' Mr Udry said. Mr Mayor's main planet-hunting competitor, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, praised the find of Gliese 581 e as 'the most exciting discovery' so far of exoplanets.

'This discovery is absolutely extraordinary,' Mr Marcy told The Associated Press by e-mail, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets. -- AP.

Google rolls out search changes

Google has launched two experimental products it hopes will change the way users search for pictures and news.

A feature known as Similar Images uses a picture rather than text to find other matching images.

Timeline presents information already available in Google News but organised and displayed chronologically.

Alongside these features is a new version of Google Labs, in which users can take a peek at what its thousands of engineers are working on.

Amid past criticism that Google has wasted too much time and effort on projects that have little impact, the aim of the Labs upgrade is to make prototypes available earlier.

"The idea we are trying to build here with Labs and the culture of innovation is to close the gap at the point of which a new idea is hatched and the time it takes to get into the hands of users for feedback," said Google director of product management R J Pittman.

This means engineers can find out at a much earlier stage what does and does not work in a new feature or product allowing them to either reshape it or scrap it altogether.

Google said that in the present economic climate this approach made complete sense.

"We are not especially sure where the industry is headed or the economy is headed but we do know that innovation is alive and well at Google," said Mr Pittman.

"This is a time when innovation is at its most critical in any company."

"Hard problem"

Google is the leader in search with nearly 64% of the American market compared with Yahoo, which has just over 20% and Microsoft with 8.3%

By adding new features to enrich the experience, it is undoubtedly hoping to increase its grip on the world of search.

Similar Images allows users to sort through the results of an image search more easily by clicking on a link. In a presentation to journalists, Google's director of engineering Radhika Malpani used the example of Paris to illustrate the benefits of the new feature.

While the initial search came up with the celebrity Paris Hilton, the Eiffel Tower and a photograph of an old church, clicking on any one of these images would restrict the search to one of the three. In other words the query is expressed visually as an image and not text.

"Image search is an inherently hard problem to solve because it is a visual problem and explains why people say an image is worth a thousand words because it is so difficult to describe," said Ms Malpani.

She said Google's goal was to "cover all the public images of the world and make all the images accessible to all our users".

"Work of art"

Google said another tool to help users find more relevant results was through the Google News Timeline.

It is the brainchild of Andy Hertzfeld, a key member of the original Apple Macintosh development team.

Using Timeline, users searching for baseball scores or the Iraq War will be shown a history of articles, photographs and videos arranged by date, week, month or year. Users can also refine the search to specific magazines, newspapers or blogs. Other search possibilities include Wikipedia, movies, music or even video games.

"I am like a kid in a candy store with all this information and it's great to make it accessible to our users," Mr Hertzfeld told BBC News.

"I think being able to see the culture of the human race laid out on the computer screen like this is fantastic. It's its own work of art seeing the sum of what humanity cared about through time."

"Newer approaches"

Out of all the work being done at Google, the company decided to unveil two projects that are closely aligned to a growing shift in the world of search.

"They are reflective of what Google started doing with universal search," explained internet analyst Greg Sterling.

"This shows they are pushing beyond text into other areas and other ways to present content. The approach is much more about multi-media, different views and different ways to navigate through data," said Mr Sterling.

Google's Mr Pittman agreed but also said that the traditional method remained the bedrock of search.

"Keyword search is still critical and mainstream. It is also pivotal because it is a very efficient mechanism where someone asks a question and they get an answer that is relevant and useful. I don't see that going away.

"These newer approaches are starting to tap into the appetite of the real-time web. These audiences are discovering new ways to search the web and get information and sound bites. These are early days for us and that's why we launched these new products.

"We make no claims about how they are going to change the face or shape of search but we think they have very compelling potential to do so. But we will let our users give us some feedback first and help us steer these in the right direction," stated Mr Pittman.

World Digital Library to go live

WASHINGTON - WHEN the World Digital Library goes live on Tuesday a former US professor's vision of fostering global understanding by making cultural treasures accessible to a huge audience takes a leap forward.

'This is a way of stimulating people to think about the interaction of cultures,' James Billington, who has headed the US Library of Congress since 1987, told AFP days before the launch of the ambitious online library.

'We hope it will increase international understanding and also increase the curiosity of the world we live in about cultural achievements of humanity.

'And the beauty of this whole system is that it doesn't prejudge who it's for. It's for everyone,' said Mr Billington.

He pitched the project to global partners when the United States rejoined the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 2003 after a nearly 20-year absence.

'I suggested that we set up a world digital library, and that we do it in all languages of the United Nations - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish,' Mr Billington said.

He drew on the positive experiences of the 209-year-old US Library of Congress in digitising the tens of millions of items it holds.

'Putting together our national digital library taught us that new technology is a wonderful way to get together old cultural and historical primary documents, of which there is very often only one copy, and make them accessible to everyone,' Mr Billington said.

The site that will go live on Tuesday at www.wdl.org is based on a prototype presented to Unesco officials at the organisation's Paris headquarters in late 2007.

'If you click on one geographic cluster, such as Europe, you get all the content about Europe,' Michelle Rago, technical director for the global online reference tool, told AFP. 'If you're interested in learning more, you go to an item and get a detailed page,' she said.

Tens of thousands of images and pages of information have been digitised and translated for the site's debut. Twenty-six partners in 19 countries, including the national libraries of Egypt, France, Iraq and Mexico, have contributed to the library. -- AFP

Cheap vaccine developed

SEOUL - AN INTERNATIONAL health organisation said on Monday it has developed the world's first cheap cholera vaccine which has been licensed in India, paving the way for its global use.

The Seoul-based International Vaccine Institute (IVI) said the new product costs about US$1 (S$1.51) per dose compared to the existing internationally licensed oral vaccine which was too expensive for developing countries - costing US$18 a dose in Bangladesh.

Mr John Clemens, the institute director-general, said in a statement the licensing of the new product in India 'paves the way for a wider use of the vaccine in cholera-endemic populations in Asia and elsewhere.'

This was because the World Health Organisation (WHO) has approved the national regulatory authority there.

The IVI said it modified a Vietnamese-made product to create the new vaccine, with help from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the governments of South Korea and Sweden.

It said the vaccine has been tested in the slums of the Indian city of Kolkota and initial results showed it confers significant protection.

The IVI, citing a WHO report, said cholera claimed 4,031 lives in 177,963 outbreaks in 53 countries - mostly in Africa - in 2007.

It said the actual number of deaths from cholera, given widespread under-reporting, is estimated at up to 120,000 a year.

'The use of safe and effective cholera vaccines in cholera-endemic areas could lead to a significant and rapid decline in cholera incidence and, ultimately, to its control worldwide,' said Mr Clemens.

The United Nations Development Program launched the IVI in South Korea in 1997. It is the world's only international body working exclusively on developing vaccines for the world's poorest people. -- AFP

MySpace hopes to turn free songs into needed cash

LOS ANGELES —In 2004, when MySpace was still getting going, recording label executive Courtney Holt noticed that musicians were using the website to connect more intimately with their fans, through detailed blogs and behind-the-scenes photos. So Holt arranged to meet MySpace’s founders.

“I remember going into his office when we were very small,” said MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe, “when most other companies wouldn’t pay attention to us.”

Holt, then a marketing vice president with Interscope Geffen A&M, urged bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Weezer and The Black Eyed Peas to nurture MySpace profile pages too. The bands streamed new songs for free on their MySpace profiles, and some had the best album launches of their careers.

“The artists loved it and it created a Pied Piper effect for the fans,” Holt said. When it came to music promotion, Holt realized, MySpace was like a “fire hose.”

Now, Holt is being asked to turn MySpace’s attention to a music industry in flames — and in the process, to improve the mediocre finances of MySpace as it tries to fend off rival Facebook.

Three months ago, Holt, 40, took charge of the recently revamped MySpace Music, a joint venture with the major recording labels. The service now lets MySpace users queue up multiple songs to play for free on their profile pages, rather than one song as in the past. Users also can create playlists that let them swap songs with their friends.

MySpace Music overhauled its dedicated home page, which promotes album releases and tours and corrals 5 million blinking artist profiles into genres. And the songs now carry links that let people buy downloads of the tracks from Amazon.com Inc.

The setup gives MySpace and the music industry a share of song-download sales from Amazon, and it could bring new revenue from ads. Next, Holt plans to make MySpace into a seller of concert tickets and band merchandise, while better targeting songs, ring tones, artists and ads at the people who will probably be interested in them.

Through these efforts, MySpace’s vaunted music-promoting power could help patch the leaks that have sprung up in the recording business. Even with sales of song downloads on the rise, the music industry is not recouping the revenue lost from falling sales of compact discs.

MySpace’s objective will be to find “half a dozen new revenue streams” that will help recording labels move away from just selling song downloads and CDs, said Rio Caraeff, executive vice president of Universal Music Group’s digital strategy unit. “We’d rather have 10 healthy revenue streams than one big revenue stream prone to disruption.”

First, though, Holt has had to do damage control.

The new music player was clunky and slow when it launched. Fans complained that too few songs were available and that playlists they created couldn’t handle enough songs.

Holt directed the creation of a sleeker, faster-to-load version that debuted last month, and he removed the cap on the number of playlists that could be created.

Eventually, Holt wants to build up discussions of artists’ discographies on MySpace and foster “social DJs” — playlist creators who are as influential as radio disc jockeys once were.

Black Eyed Peas rapper will.i.am credits Holt with being “one of the few guys that knows the way through the jungle” of digital music.

But Holt has the weight of multiple masters on his back. Aside from the music industry, Holt has to satisfy billionaire Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005 but has yet to eke out more than a meager profit from it.

MySpace also has to intrigue its users enough to hold off social networking rival Facebook, which lapped MySpace a year ago in overall users worldwide, and now has 200 million to MySpace’s 130 million.

MySpace is still the largest social network in the United States, with 70 million users a month, but Facebook is catching up quickly with 61 million, according to tracking firm comScore Inc. MySpace Music could be the differentiator it needs: Facebook lacks a music player and relies on third parties to create them for members to download.

MySpace’s revenue is estimated to be nearly three times Facebook’s, or about $585 million in 2008, according to research firm eMarketer. But MySpace has yet to lift News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media unit past the $1 billion in annual revenue that Murdoch predicted it would reach by last summer.

In this recession, Holt is in for an uphill slog.

U.S. advertisers have cut back overall, and aren’t convinced that social networking sites are good places for ads, given the highly personal or frivolous content that users post. “Click-through” rates on ads are poor on social media sites.

“Either you can see a message from a friend who’s just broken up with you, or you can see a random ad. Which would you choose?” said Shiv Singh, a vice president at digital advertising firm Razorfish.

Because of this dynamic, growth is slowing for social network ad spending, which is expected to rise 10 percent this year to $1.3 billion, eMarketer estimates. Social media sites are expected to have 3.9% of the overall online ad market in 2013, down from 5% today.

Another challenge for MySpace is that several other sites offer similar free music streaming online, including AOL, Yahoo, MTV, Pandora, last.fm and imeem.

Add to that, Google Inc’s YouTube and Universal Music Group recently announced a venture that will show music videos supported by ads on a tailor-made player called “Vevo.”

That could play to one of MySpace’s strengths. After all, MySpace users helped popularize online music videos by embedding them in their profile pages. And MySpace Music has the right to stream music videos from all the major recording labels, not just Universal’s. But that function isn’t developed yet.

Holt is the first to acknowledge that MySpace Music is a work in progress, and he promises four or five “cool and evolutionary” improvements each quarter.

There are indications that the service is gaining traction.

According to comScore, MySpace Music had 20 million U.S. users in March, up 30% from a year earlier, when MySpace was running the previous incarnation of the service — although MySpace questions comScore’s methodology and argues the number should be higher.

That vaulted MySpace from fifth to second place among the music entertainment sites, behind only AOL with 21 million.

Partly in reaction, third-ranked Yahoo, with 18 million users, revamped its music pages this month. However, Yahoo doesn’t have a direct deal with the record labels, limiting the number of free songs that people can stream on the site.

MySpace Music has managed to gain an edge in some important ways. The site secured exclusive early free streaming rights for high-profile new album releases, from U2’s “No Line on the Horizon” to Lily Allen’s “It’s Not Me It’s You.”

Allen, a longtime MySpace blogger, premiered a music video on the site and performed a “Secret Show” in New York in February as part of a series of promotional concerts that are free to MySpace users.

Buzz about the show was “all over the blogosphere,” said Bob Heinemann, head of interactive marketing at EMI Group PLC, which owns Allen’s Capitol Records label. He said the MySpace promotion gave the album a big push.

Even so, analyst Debra Aho Williamson of eMarketer questioned whether MySpace Music will truly be able to set itself apart from other Web music sites.

“Have they reinvented the wheel or just made the wheel a little bigger?” she asked. “Because it’s now just one more place to get music.”

Hitachi launches Gazopa for iPhone application

TOKYO —Hitachi Ltd on Friday announced the release of GazoPa for iPhone application. Available free at Apple’s iPhone App Store, GazoPa for iPhone app allows users to search for similar images on the web by uploading any photo captured with camera on iPhone. This makes it possible for users to search for images similar to the items in front of them. Since GazoPa use image features such as color and/or shape, users can look for images without typing any words. This gives users easy and unique way of searching images on the web.

In addition, searching by user’s drawing is also available on GazoPa for iPhone app, that is very popular feature at GazoPa.com. This search by drawing enables users to search for items that users have in their mind. Users only need to draw what they want to search when they feel difficulty in expressing them in words or have no photo related to those items. Hitachi’s advanced similar image search technology allows users to find images similar to their drawing.

GazoPa for iPhone app also has a search option such as search by color, layout, shape and the ability to filter by size, video thumbnail. This gives users more chances to find their desired images. And GazoPa for iPhone app takes advantage of the advanced capabilities of the iPhone user interface and is a great way to search images on iPhone.

The GazoPa for iPhone app can be found by searching for GazoPa in the iPhone App Store.

GazoPa is a Hitachi web image search engine in private beta release, that uses features from an image to search for and identify similar images. In addition to images found using keyword searches, GazoPa enables the use of users’ own photos and drawings, and images found on the Web, as search keys to locate similar images. GazoPa can support not only photos but also the search of video thumbnails.