Man 'finds US troop data' on MP3

Chris Ogle says he found the files when he went to download music

A New Zealand man says he found confidential data about US military personnel on an MP3 player he bought from a thrift shop in Oklahoma.

Chris Ogle, 29, said: "The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be looking."

The files included names and telephone numbers of American soldiers, according to reports by TV New Zealand.

One expert says the files are unlikely to compromise security, as most of them are from 2005.

Some included a warning that the release of its contents is "prohibited by federal law".

Embarrassment

As well as personal details of US soldiers, such as social security numbers, the files also listed pregnant female troops and apparent mission briefings in Afghanistan.

Peter Cozens, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies, New Zealand, said the information should not be in the public domain but it did not appear likely to affect US national security, according to the Associated Press news agency.

"This is just slack administrative procedures which are indeed a cause of embarrassment," he said.

Mr Ogle, from Whangarei, said he would hand the files to US officials if asked.

There was no comment from the US Embassy in New Zealand.

Similar breaches occurred in Afghanistan in 2006, when US investigators reportedly bought back stolen flash drives that contained sensitive military data from shops outside a main US base in Bagram, according to AP.

Digital TV switch could be delayed by vote

The end of analog television could be delayed by a vote Wednesday.

Senators, worried about the static they'll see when the plug is pulled on analog television broadcasts in the United States, approved the emergency measure by unanimous consent Monday and rushed it to the House floor for a vote Tuesday afternoon. But representatives put off the vote until Wednesday.

The transition to digital-only broadcasts had been set for nearly a decade for February 17, 2009, but 6.5 million households, mostly lower-income, have not bought the newer digital TVs or converters for their old sets, according to a study by the Nielsen Co.

The Senate's bill, sponsored by Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, would allow stations to keep their old transmitters turned on until June 12.

"I am pleased that the Senate has acted to delay the deadline, which is our only hope of mitigating the negative impact on millions of consumers," said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

"In light of the Senate action, I will work with the House Democratic leadership to bring up the Senate bill for consideration Tuesday," Waxman, a California Democrat, said.

Two members of the Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to Rockefeller and Waxman this month "to express our deep concern" that the country is "nowhere near" ready for the signal switch.

Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein called for a delay to give the government more time to get "boots on the ground" to help with the transition.

At least $200 million has been spent in recent years to explain to TV viewers how they need to prepare, but one key element of the federal government's transition plans hit a bottleneck in recent months.

The FCC ran out of money in recent weeks for the $40 coupons to help people buy converters for their analog TVs.

QuickTime Broadcaster Update Improves Synchronization

Apple on Tuesday released an update for QuickTime Broadcaster, the company's live encoding software.

According to notes provided with the update, QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5.3 improves audio and video synchronization when recording broadcasts to disk. Supported video sources for QuickTime Broadcaster include Digital Video cameras with FireWire output for DV audio and video, an iSight Camera, and FireWire-based analog to DV converters.

The 1.0.3MB update is available for download from Apple's Web site.

Google Delivers Offline Access for Gmail

Google will begin to offer browser-based offline access to its Gmail Webmail application, a much-awaited feature.

This functionality, which will allow people to use the Gmail interface when disconnected from the Internet, has been expected since mid-2007.

That's when Google introduced Gears, a browser plug-in designed to provide offline access to Web-hosted applications like Gmail.

Gears is currently used for offline access to several Web applications from Google, like the Reader RSS manager and the Docs word processor, and from other providers like Zoho, which uses it for offline access to its e-mail and word processing browser-based applications.

Rajen Sheth, senior product manager for Google Apps, said that applying Gears to Gmail has been a very complex task, primarily because of the high volume of messages accounts can store. "Gmail was a tough hurdle," he said.

Google ruled out the option of letting users replicate their entire Gmail inboxes to their PCs, which in many cases would translate into gigabytes of data flowing to people's hard drives. It instead developed algorithms that will automatically determine which messages should be downloaded to PCs, taking into consideration a variety of factors that reflect their level of importance to the user, he said. At this point, end-users will not be able to tweak these settings manually.

"We had to make it such that we're managing a sizable amount of information offline and doing it well in a way that's seamless to the end-user," he said.

For example, in Gmail, users can put labels on messages, as well as tag them with stars to indicate their importance, and Google can use that information to determine which messages to download. Sheth estimates that in most cases Gmail will download several thousand messages, preferring those that are more recent as well. Depending on the amount of messages users have on their accounts, they may get downloads going back two months or two years, he said.

Google will begin to roll out the Gmail offline functionality Tuesday evening and expects to make it available to everybody in a few days, whether they use Gmail in its standalone version or as part of the Apps collaboration and communication suite for organizations.

While the feature was "rigorously" tested internally at Google, it is a first, early release upon which Google expects to iterate and improve on. That's why it's being released under the Google Labs label. Users are encouraged to offer Google feedback.

Users have been able to manage their Gmail accounts offline via other methods for years, since Gmail supports the POP and IMAP protocols that let people download and send out messages using desktop e-mail software like Microsoft Outlook and others.

However, the Gears implementation will let people work within the Gmail interface without the need for a separate PC application. When offline, messages will be put in a Gears browser queue, and the desktop and online versions of the accounts will be synchronized automatically when users connect to the Internet again. This will come in handy for people who travel a lot and often find themselves without Internet access, Sheth said.

To activate the offline functionality, users of standalone Gmail service and the standard Apps edition should click "settings" after logging on to their Gmail account. There, they should click on the "Labs" tab, select "Enable" next to "Offline Gmail" and click "Save Changes." A new "Offline" link will then appear in the right-hand corner of the account interface. Users of the Education and Premier Apps versions will have to wait for their Apps administrators to enable Gmail Labs for everyone on the domain first.

Google is also rolling out Gears-based offline access for its Calendar application. However, it will be for now read-only and exclusively available to Google Apps account holders. Previously, Google introduced read-only offline access to the Spreadsheet and Presentation applications in Google Docs, which is also part of Google Apps.

EC Panel Considers Hearing Loss From Music Players

The European Commission convened a panel of experts in Brussels on Tuesday to consider the risks to hearing caused by listening to music players at a high volume.

The one-day meeting was in response to a study issued in October that found between 5 percent to 10 percent of people who listen to music through personal music players are risking permanent hearing loss because of the amount of time they spend listening at a high volume.

"This risk is real if they listen to music for more than one hour a day, each week, at high volumes settings for a period of five years or more," said Meglena Kuneva, European Commissioner in charge of consumer protection, in televised opening remarks.

"The scientific committee opinion highlights that if consumers use their personal music players for only one hour per day each week, at more than 89 decibels, they would exceed the current limits in place of noise allowed in the work place," she said.

Scheduled to attend the meeting were representatives from Nokia, Apple, the French Ministry of Health, the U.K. Royal National Institute for Deaf People and the Spanish Confederation of Consumers and Users.

Apple has already set a volume limiter on models of its iPod sold in Europe due to French law, and Kuneva hinted that Europe-wide regulations were a possibility.

"Warnings and information campaigns have a crucial role to play, but they should not be used as an alternative to putting only safe music players in the hands of consumers," said Kuneva.

Gmail Goes Offline

If you live in Gmail, but don’t always have a broadband connection available, today should be a happy day for you. Google is rolling out a new system for letting Gmail users access their accounts offline. Google will cache your messages on your system using Google Gears. You’ll be able to open your browser to Gmail.com, see your inbox, read and label messages and even write replies without a Net connection. Your messages will send once your system reconnects to the Web.

The system is beta (of course) and accessible through Gmail Labs. But it won’t be immediately available to everyone – Google is parsing out access as it experiments with the new feature. I don’t have access to the new feature yet, so I’ve still got lots of questions. But Google’s post makes it sound like the experience will be almost indistinguishable from using Gmail normally.

“Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection,” Gmail Engineer Andy Palay wrote.

There will also be a “flaky connection mode” that’s supposed to give you the best of both worlds. It’ll assume that you’re disconnected and use the local cache to store your data, but whenever your connection is working, it’ll sync with Google’s servers in the background.

This all sounds pretty good, but here are my questions:

How much will Gmail cache? Just my inbox, my entire 6.2GB mail file or something in between? I work pretty hard to keep my inbox clear, so I hope that it’ll cache more than just my inbox.

How extensively can you search? The biggest reason I use Gmail is that I can find a message I got two years ago in just a few seconds with the right search terms. But depending on just how much gets cached, your search capability could be severely limited.

Will you work the same way in Gmail whether you’re offline or online? That’s certainly the way Google makes it sound. If so, that’ll be a big step forward from other attempts to bring webmail offline. You’ve long been able to access your Gmail account through a client like Mozilla Thunderbird. But that doesn’t give you all the Gmail functionality like labels. Yahoo Mail has offered offline access since last summer using Zimbra Desktop. But that also involves using a client on your desktop. For offline access to Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft suggests using their Mail client software.

Is Gears up to the challenge? Google launched this system for creating offline access to Web apps nearly two years ago. For a long time, the only apps that used it were Google Reader and to do list Remember the Milk -- an indication that developing for and implementing Gears wasn’t quite as simple as Google would have you believe. In fact, bringing Gmail offline was an obvious use of Gears that has taken 21 months to come to fruition.

(Google also says it's readying an offline version of Google Calendar, also presumably using Gears, though the company didn't specifically say that. Offline Calendar will initially be available only for users of Google Apps Standard Edition and there's no firm release date.)

Is Gears ready now? We’ll see soon. I’ll check back in once I get a chance to play with Gmail offline. And let me know what questions you have. I’ll do my best to answer them. In the meantime, you can watch this relatively lame video from your friends at Google.

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Apple Yanks IMovie 6 Download

Back in 2007, Apple announced iMovie '08 would be totally new from the ground up, due to the amazing work of one of the company's engineers (who we now know was Apple's Chief Architect of Video Applications, Randy Ubillos). Not everybody was thrilled, though: many users found themselves annoyed at all the features iMovie '08 lacked compared to its predecessor, iMovie HD 6 (there's a naming scheme I'm glad Apple deep sixed).

So, in a Chamberlainian move of appeasement, Apple graciously provided a free download of iMovie HD 6 to all registered users of iLife '08. Problem solved, right? Well, Tuesday that era of appeasement came to an end, as MacRumors points out that Apple has removed the download page for iMovie HD 6.

It's easy to see why: iMovie '09 supposedly brings the re-engineered iMovie up to par with the old one in terms of features. You don't need iMovie HD 6 anymore, right? In fact, you've never needed iMovie HD 6, and we've always been at war with Oceania.

If you're itching to hold onto a little piece of the past, you can still download the iMovie HD 6 disk image directly (that's a download link there, folks) and hold onto it until Steve Jobs pries it from your cold, dead hands.