Sony clip-on screen attachment makes Vaio laptops 3D

Sony said Tuesday it will sell a screen attachment for its Vaio laptops that allows users to view 3D movies and images without glasses.

The clear panel comes in two models for its S and C series Vaios that went on sale earlier this year, and works with Blu-ray movies as well as digital images in the MPO, or multi-picture, format.

It will go on sale in Japan and Europe in October, with no release date set for the U.S., according to Sony spokeswoman Noriko Shoji.

The screen has a suggested retail price in Japan of 13,000 yen (US$171).

It uses lenticular technology that reflects different images to each eye, providing a visual depth-of-field effect. This is common in glasses-free 3D devices, such as the top screen of Nintendo’s 3DS handheld game console and some TV sets.

As slight changes in the viewing angle can lessen or ruin the 3D effect, the Sony product uses the Vaio’s built-in camera with facial recognition software to track where the viewer is and adjust the image accordingly. Toshiba employs a similar technology in a Qosmio laptop it launched earlier this year, calling it “Face Tracking.”

Pictronics, a Japanese company, is marketing a general-use 3D film called Pic3D that can be attached to the LCD screens of TVs, iPads and iPhones. It was due to launch in August, but has yet to go on sale.

Intermec offers mobile management update

Intermec, which has made a name for itself over four decades as a provider of rugged mobile devices mainly for service delivery and warehouse use, is moving quickly into mobile management software and services.

Today, Intermec announced Skynax 8, software for integrating management of mobile data exchange, application and device management and support, and security .

The software is designed to unify various tools under one system for customers in field service, transportation and logistics, public safety and other industries, Intermec officials said in a telephone briefing.

Garrick Fiala, Intermec’s manager of software engineering, said the software is distinct among mobile management products because it provides management of network connectivity and data over wireless links.

For example, software on a client device, such as a rugged computer in a truck, will switch a connection from Wi-Fi to a 3G network to save costs and maximize throughput, he said.

The software also enables network resilience, he said. In one example, a customer running a dairy operation with 6,500 truck drivers and other users was able to restore network connections 15 minutes after the dairy’s data center went down.

The average price for Skynax 8 will range from $60 to $85 for each mobile device — a price that includes licenses for client devices and servers, Fiala said. Intermec will also host the software for customers. The software is fully open and supports Intermec and devices from other manufacturers, he added.

Skynax 8 is the first full software version sold by Intermec, after the company acquired Skynax and two other software companies in 2010 as part of an evolution of the traditional hardware maker into one that offers software and services as well, said Larry Klimczyk, vice president of Intermec Global Solutions.

Eric Klein, an analyst at VDC Research, said Skynax’s biggest advantage will be the ability to incorporate a diverse range of mobile applications, making it flexible enough to use with custom applications built by companies and developers.

Adding Skynax and other software to Intermec’s offerings “has been a good strategy,” Klein said, noting that it is the strategy used by Intermec’s biggest competitor, Motorola Solutions. Intermec and Motorola Solutions are the best known for rugged devices and software, while companies such as Good, Airwatch and MobileIron appear most focused on management of consumer-grade smartphones and tablets used in businesses.

Klein said he expects that Intermec will eventually sell Skynax software through wireless carriers.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com .

Read more about mobile and wireless in Computerworld’s Mobile and Wireless Topic Center.

CloudFlare unveils free IPv6 translation service

Startup CloudFlare is turning the economics of IPv6 transition on its head with a free cloud-based IPv6-to-IPv4 translation service that is available to website operators starting today.

Dubbed Automatic IPv6, the new service is made possible through the use of proxies at CloudFlare’s 14 data centers worldwide. The proxies translate incoming IPv6 traffic into IPv4 before being sent to a website. The service also provides IPv4-to-IPv6 translation services for new websites — particularly those in Asia — that are being built using IPv6 only.

IPv6: What you need to do now

IPv6 is the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol, which is known as IPv4. Carriers, hosting companies and enterprises are migrating to IPv6 because the Internet is running out of IPv4 addresses. IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, so website operators must deploy translation services or run both protocols if they want to be reachable by all Internet users in the future.

CloudFlare offers hosted CDN and security services, including deep packet inspection aimed at stopping malware, spam and denial of service attacks. The company supports more than 100,000 websites, including bloggers, news sites and enterprises such as the government of Turkey.

“The mission of CloudFlare is to make the Web faster and safer,” said Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare. “We can stop [attacks] at the edge, before they get to a customer’s data center. At the same time, we can auto detect resources on a Web page that are static, and cache those at the edge. On average, we double the payload speed at a website and reduce the loan on the Web server by about half.”

Prince said CloudFlare handles more than 15 billion page views per month and supports more than 350 million unique Internet users. The company offers an advertiser-based service that is free as well as a service that is $20 per month and custom offerings for enterprise customers. Its business model is similar to OpenDNS, a free DNS service that also supports IPv6.

Now CloudFlare is bundling IPv6 translation capabilities with all of its caching and security services.

“There will be no additional cost for this feature,” Prince said. “It’s cheaper for us to run the traffic over the IPv6 network than the IPv4 network, so there isn’t any additional, incremental cost for us.”

One benefit for CloudFlare is that its network infrastructure is brand new and all of its routers and other network gear already support IPv6. So the company didn’t need to undergo the daunting upgrade that rivals such as Akamai are making to support IPv6.

“We realized six months ago, we were in a position to help organizations that wanted to be on the IPv6 network but were not ready to make a substantial investment to upgrade their infrastructure,” Prince said. “What we’ve been able to do is make deploying IPv6 for your Web presence as simple as one click. You keep your existing IPv4 infrastructure, you push one button on our site, and we will announce your IPv6 quad-A records. When a request comes from IPv6, we’ll be able to handle it by our proxies … translate it to IPv4 and hand it off to your IPv4 infrastructure.”

Prince added that he doesn’t think CloudFlare’s IPv6 translation service is a “forever solution” but that it will buy companies time to upgrade the network infrastructure and data centers to support IPv6 over time.

CloudFlare says it has around 10,000 websites that are beta testing its Automatic IPv6 service.

Prince added, “Our goal is to fix the most daunting problems the Internet faces. We have a very different business model than our competitors.”

Read more about lan and wan in Network World’s LAN & WAN section.

More ways to move data to a new Mac

When you need to get data off an old Mac onto a new one, OS X’s Migration Assistant is often all you need. But it doesn’t let you restore specific files and you can’t restore an identical backup of another Mac’s hard drive. In such cases you need some other options. Here I’ll show you how (and when) to move your data using cloning, Time Machine, and other third-party backup applications.

When to clone an old drive

If you’ve set up a Mac exactly as you like it and later want to restore it to this state, cloning your Mac’s hard drive is the way to go. It can be done with a variety of tools (some of which are free) and allows you to create a bootable copy of your Mac’s hard drive. Note that your new Mac must be compatible with the version of the Mac OS that’s on your old Mac. For instance, if you’ve purchased a new Mac that can only run under OS X 10.7 (Lion), cloning a volume that boots up under OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) isn’t an option. Similarly, your old PowerPC Mac won’t be able to boot from a clone of a volume that boots from Snow Leopard or Lion, as these versions of the Mac OS require a Mac with an Intel processor.

Disk Utility Although you can clone a drive with Apple’s Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), Disk Utility doesn’t allow you to clone the volume that you’ve booted your Mac from. If you want to use Disk Utility you must instead boot from a volume other than the one you want to clone and then use Disk Utility’s Restore feature.

To do this connect your two Macs with a FireWire cable and boot your new Mac while holding down the T key so that your computer starts up in Target Disk Mode (you’ll see a FireWire symbol on the new Mac’s display). Your new Mac’s hard drive will appear as a FireWire drive on your old Mac’s desktop.

Within Disk Utility select the startup volume on your old Mac from the list of volumes on the left side of the Disk Utility window. Click on the Restore tab and drag that volume to the Source field within the main portion of the Disk Utility window. Now locate the startup volume on the new Mac (it will bear the orange icon of a FireWire drive) and drag it to the Destination field. Click the Restore button, enter your Administrator’s password, and click OK. Disk Utility will erase your new Mac’s hard drive and copy the contents of your old Mac’s startup volume to it.

When the job is finished, shut down the new Mac by pressing on its power button, disconnect the FireWire cable, and restart your new Mac. It should now boot up and be configured exactly like your old Mac—complete with all its documents and applications.

Carbon Copy Cloner Another method is to download a copy of Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ; payment requested). This tool allows you to clone the volume you’ve booted from and, in the process, create a bootable copy on another Mac.

Once again, connect the two Macs with a FireWire cable and boot the new Mac into Target Disk Mode by holding down the T key at startup. Launch Disk Utility, select your new Mac’s hard drive, click the Erase tab, make sure Mac OS Extended (Journaled) is selected in the Format pop-up menu, and click the Erase button. In the sheet that appears, click Erase again to confirm your decision. In short order, your new Mac’s hard drive will be erased.

Launch Carbon Copy Cloner. In the window that appears choose the old Mac’s startup volume (Macintosh HD, for example) from the Source pop-up menu. From the Destination pop-up menu choose the new Mac’s hard drive. The I Want To area below should read Maintain a Backup (Archive Modified & Deleted Files). Click the Clone button and an exact copy of your old Mac’s startup drive will be copied to your new Mac. This copy will be bootable. Shut down the new Mac by pressing its power button, disconnect the FireWire cable, and restart the new Mac. It will boot with all the contents of the old Mac.

When to restore data from a backup

Assuming you’ve been backing up your Mac regularly, you have another way to move your data over to a new Mac. You can restore a portion of your data from a backup, even if that data was backed up from a different Mac (say, the old one you’re retiring). This is handy when you want just specific files rather than a copy of the entire drive.

Time Machine To do this with a Time Machine backup, connect the disk that contains the backed up data, click and hold on the Time Machine icon in the Dock, and choose Browse Other Time Machine Disks. (Alternatively you can Option-click on the Time Machine menu in the Finder’s menu bar and choose this same command.) In the window that appears, select the volume or drive that contains your backup archive and click Use Selected Disk. The Time Machine interface will appear. Use it to locate the data you’d like top restore to your current Mac.

Third-party backup programs Other backup programs offer similar capabilities—without the Time Machine interface, naturally. Install a copy of your backup program on your new Mac and use it to browse and restore your data from the backup archive you created with this tool on your old Mac. Note that in the case of both Time Machine and third-party backup applications, you may run into permission issues when restoring data from a user account other than your own—your Mac may tell you that you don’t have the proper privileges to open some files. You can get around some of these problems using Lagente Software’s free BatChmod, which allows you to easily change file permissions.

With these techniques as well as a hand from Apple’s Migration Assistant, you should be able to move just about any data you’d like from an old Mac or backup archive to your new Mac.

Three tips for using iTunes on a small display

As Apple continues to sell more laptops than desktops, the number of people working with iTunes on small displays increases. While I have a 27-inch iMac on my desktop, which allows me to use iTunes efficiently and see plenty of information about my library, working on my 13-inch MacBook Air is a bit more difficult. If you only have a laptop, there are ways you can optimize the way iTunes displays its content to make it easier to manage on a smaller display.

1. Choose the right view

iTunes offers four different views, or ways the program displays your content in windows or playlists. (See “Pick the perfect view options in iTunes” for more on the different views. Note that the article was written before Album List view, the second choice on the view button, was added to iTunes.) While you may want to use List view or Album List view on a large display, you might find that Grid view or Cover Flow view works better on a small display. If your laptop is your only Mac, you may want to switch back and forth between one of these views and List or Album List view when you need to see information about your content or make changes to tags.

If you do use List view or Album List view, you can adjust the number of columns displayed in your windows and playlists to save space. To do so, press Command-J to bring up the View Options window, and check the columns you want to see (and uncheck those you don’t want to see). After you click OK to dismiss the window, you can click and drag the column headers in the main iTunes interface to change their position, which can help makes sure the info you really need to see if always in front of you without having to scroll sideways. You can put the columns you only consult occasionally all the way to the right, so they’re there when you need them.

2. Adjust the column browser

If you use iTunes’ column browser (see “Making the most of the iTunes Column Browser” for more on how it works), you might want to change your habits. Not that you shouldn’t use it—I find it a great way to speedily drill down into my library—but the way you set it up has a big impact on its usefulness on a smaller screen. If you have the column browser on the left, it eats away at your horizontal space, which is more limited on a small display. Putting it on top shows less content below it, but gives you the full width of the screen. (You can change its position by selecting On Top or On Left from View -> Column Browser.) If you really want to keep it on the left, think about displaying fewer columns, and changing their widths. To do the latter, hover your cursor over the line separating two columns, then drag that line. Another option is to make the sidebar as narrow as possible; to do so, drag the line separating it from the rest of the window.

3. Use multiple windows

You may not know it, but you can make iTunes use more than one window. To do so for a playlist, for example, just double-click on the playlist’s icon in the iTunes sidebar, or right-click and choose Open In New Window. The new window opens with the same content, and in the same view, as the playlist, but without the sidebar. You can resize or otherwise alter that window, then switch back to the main window, and choose any other window from the Windows menu.

Using multiple windows is practical if you have a playlist in which you want to see more information temporarily, say. You can create separate windows for anything but the Music library at the top of the sidebar. So you can have a separate window for the iTunes Store if you visit it a lot; for the Downloads list if you download a lot of content with iTunes; for iTunes DJ if you use that to play music during the day; or for your favorite playlists. If you watch a lot of TV shows, put that library in a separate window as well. While it may be confusing at first, it can be much easier to work with multiple windows because you don’t your their place in the main window, and don’t have to make several clicks to get back to where you were.

The main advantages to multiple windows are that the new windows you open won’t have a sidebar, they will have more horizontal space, and they can stay open all the time.

[Senior contributor Kirk McElhearn writes about more than just Macs on his blog Kirkville. Twitter: @mcelhearn Kirk is the author of Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ.]

Report: Japan KDDI to sell iPhone 5 from next year

KDDI, which runs Japan’s second-largest mobile carrier, will offer the iPhone 5 from early 2012, ending Softbank’s monopoly of the device in Japan, the country’s largest business newspaper reported Thursday.

The iPhone 5 is to go on sale globally in October, but more time is required to prepare the phone for KDDI’s network, the Nikkei newspaper said. KDDI had been in negotiations with Apple and reached an agreement by this summer.

A KDDI spokeswoman said the company had not made any official announcement regarding sales of the iPhone, declining to comment further.

Softbank, operator of Japan’s third-largest carrier, has combined its exclusive offering of Apple’s iPhone and iPad with aggressive pricing plans and a quirky but popular advertising campaign. The company bought Vodafone’s struggling Japanese business in 2006 for around US$15 billion and transformed it into a strong competitor that is steadily gaining market share.

KDDI, through its “au” brand, currently offers smartphones that run Android, including one with a user interface developed in house, and Windows mobile operating system. The company is also a major shareholder in Japan’s main provider of WiMax, a high-speed, long-range wireless Internet technology, and is increasingly offering phones and devices that tether into the network for data services.

Oracle, Google fail to reach settlement in Android case

Two days of face-to-face mediation talks between Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Google CEO Larry Page over the companies’ Android mobile OS lawsuit have yet to result in a settlement, but the door is open for negotiations to continue, according to a document filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

“Lead counsel shall contact the courtroom deputy to the undersigned to schedule a call tomorrow regarding when further discussions will take place and whether the further attendance of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Page will be required,” the brief filing states.

Oracle sued Google last year, claiming that Android violated a number of patents and copyrights it holds on the Java programming language, which it gained through the purchase of Sun Microsystems. Google has denied wrongdoing.

The often rancorous tone of pretrial dealings between the companies suggests that it could be difficult for them to reach a settlement agreement.

Software patent expert Florian Mueller, who has been following the case closely, speculated in a blog post Thursday whether Page and Ellison would make another appearance at the mediation table.

“Theoretically, the reference to the further participation of the two Larrys could mean two things,” he wrote. “It could indicate that a philosophical agreement has been reached and the parties only need to hammer out some more detail, in which case the two Larrys might not be needed anymore. But more likely, the court has realized that there isn’t much hope for an agreement and recognizes that it wouldn’t be reasonable to ask for too much time on the two CEOs’ part.”

Other top Oracle executives at Wednesday’s mediation session included co-president Safra Catz and Thomas Kurian, executive vice president of product development, according to the court filing. Representing Google along with Page was Android head Andy Rubin, among others.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris’s e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Nokia’s interim CTO gets permanent status

Nokia’s acting Chief Technology Officer Henry Tirri is to stay on in the role, after his predecessor Rich Green left the company on Thursday following three months leave to deal with a “personal matter.”

Tirri was named acting CTO on June 9, and confirmed in the role Thursday. He will be responsible for setting Nokia’s technology agenda and will be based in Sunnyvale, California, the company said.

Before becoming CTO, Tirri was head of Nokia Research Center, which works on technologies that can be turned into products within three to 10 years.

Green joined Nokia as CTO in May 2010, having previously worked at Sun Microsystems and other companies. Green initially reported to Anssi Vanjoki, then Nokia’s number two, but Vanjoki left following the appointment of former Microsoft business division president Stephen Elop as CEO of Nokia last September.

Within months, Elop turned the company’s smartphone strategy on its head. On Feb. 11 he announced Nokia’s adoption of Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system as a replacement for its own Symbian OS and for Meego, the Linux-based OS jointly developed with Intel.

Green had been a supporter of Meego, and in the days following the OS strategy change he continued to describe it as a potential Plan B should Nokia’s adoption of Windows Phone not work out.

Tirri will now replace Green on the Nokia Leadership Team, formerly known as the executive board. Green had remained on the team during his leave of absence, having only joined it on Feb. 11, the day Elop announced the switch to Windows Phone. Elop thanked Green on Thursday for “the key role he played in assisting Nokia through a major transition.”

Nokia has released a number of new Symbian phones since February, but so far none running Windows Phone. The company is widely expected to launch its first devices running the Microsoft OS next month at its Nokia World event in London.

Teradata’s Aster analytic database gets appliance treatment

Teradata is adding an appliance option for its Aster analytic database, giving it another potential weapon against rivals such as Oracle’s Exadata, EMC’s Greenplum and SAP’s HANA.

The product, announced Thursday at the Strata conference in New York, will be built with the same infrastructure that underpins Teradata’s range of data warehousing appliances. It joins the existing software-only and cloud deployment options for Aster’s database, which was acquired through the purchase of startup Aster Data Systems in March.

The appliance is expected to be released in the first quarter of next year, with pricing yet to be determined, said Randy Lea, vice president for the Aster Data Center of Innovation at Teradata.

Aster has made much of its support for the MapReduce programming framework for large-scale processing of data, particularly “big data” types such as that generated by Web logs and sensors. Its SQL-MapReduce toolset allows users to invoke MapReduce functions from within business intelligence tools or with standard SQL.

Aster Database 5.0, which was also announced Thursday, adds a number of improvements to that framework, including “pre-built MapReduce modules for behavioral clickstream interpretation, marketing attribution, decision tree analysis and other analysis,” the company said in a statement.

Other new features focus on workload management and SQL performance.

The 5.0 release is scheduled to arrive early next year along with the appliance, Teradata said.

While both Aster and Teradata’s own database are aimed at analytic workloads, they have differing and complementary strengths, according to analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research.

“Aster is best used for two things,” he said. “First, you can do complex analytics on a research basis. Second, after your research succeeds, you can massage data and derive conclusions that are fed into a more operational, even if analytic, database.”

In turn, “Teradata is a great system for running operational analytic databases. In many cases, it’s the single best choice.”

“Teradata is good for a broad variety of analytic tasks, and most especially for use cases that combine several of them,” Monash added.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris’s e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

YouTube Adds 2D-to-3D Conversion Tool

YouTube wants to improve on the lack of 3D content, which is one of the main barriers stopping mass adoption of the technology. The video streaming site is now making it easier for anyone to create 3D video content, without the need for special cameras, with a beta 2D to 3D conversion tool.

Three-dimensional videos on YouTube are not new. The site allowed filmmakers to upload video in 3D, but they had to set up two cameras and combine the footage using special software — a tricky and time-consuming task. The new 2D to 3D conversion tool is a much handier alternative for the average user.

YouTube’s 2D to 3D conversion tool turns any 2D video into a 3D film with the click of a button after upload. The feature can be found by selecting “Edit Info,” then “3D Video” on a video you’ve uploaded. YouTube product manager Shenaz Zack Mistry said in a blog post that users will “still get best results with a 3D camera, but it’s a great new way to let people enjoy your finest moments.” You’ll also still need 3D glasses to enjoy the converted clips.

YouTube also introduced two new software tools for amateur moviemakers to spice up their home movie productions. The first tool is called Magisto, which is an automated video editor (found in the video toolbox) that claims to find the best scenes in your video and assembles them with music and effects (fades, transitions) for short clips. The second tool is called Vlix, which lets you add various effects and text at the beginning and end of a video.

To top it all off, YouTube announced that users who go through a complete account verification (includes giving the site your phone number) and haven’t breached any copyright rules (such as using popular songs as music backgrounds in their videos) will be allowed to exceed the 15-minute upload limit.

Follow Daniel Ionescu and Today @ PCWorld on Twitter