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It’s a shame the entry $1,099 price is gone (replaced by a $999 version of the previous plastic MacBook model), and that the FireWire port went out to get some milk and never came home. Otherwise, we’re calling this one an overall winner.

The new MacBook's bigger touchpad.

The redesigned MacBook is a solid improvement on an already well-loved system. The new aluminum frame essentially makes it a smaller version of the MacBook Pro, and even the new Nvidia chipset and integrated graphics are impressive, offering playable frame rates in games such as Quake IV and Call of Duty 4 (as long as you keep your expectations modest).

Read the full review of the new Apple MacBook.

In case you missed it after checking out our rumor mill posts, live coverage of the Apple press conference, and even our collection of “unboxing” pictures of the actual hardware, you can now read CNET’s full review of Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook.

Any Drobo users out there? If so, are you also using DroboShare? Can you help me find a justification for dropping $700 on the pair? Any other would-be Drobo users sitting on the fence? Are you waiting for a price drop or features to get added before taking the plunge, or did you go with another NAS product? I welcome you to comment below.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

My current backup situation is not what you would call elegant. I have a pile of external hard drives that I occasionally dig out of a desk drawer and connect to my PC or laptop. I use one drive to back up my iTunes library, another to back up my digital photos, and another where I keep backups of home videos. I then have a larger Western Digital drive where I keep backup copies up everything. It may take a while to get there, but it does qualify as redundant storage.

I’m hooked on network attached storage and need a fix. You see, I’ve been testing out DroboShare this week, and I quickly grew accustomed to having a simple, always connected backup device and a stash of mixed media freely available on my home network. As I boxed up my Drobo and DroboShare loaners this morning to send back to Data Robotics, I began debating whether I could justify dropping $700 for a networked storage device, which would also involve me purchasing at least two high-capacity hard drives.

My current backup system isn't pretty but it works.

The Drobo and DroboShare duo is certainly superior in every way to my current system, but do its benefits add up to $700? I’m not so sure. Drobo’s automated and flexible RAID-like technology is tempting, and its storage expansion is as simple as popping in a new hard drive. DroboShare’s ridiculously simple setup and maintenance puts other NAS products to shame. And the product design is excellent, even down to the packaging. No other NAS product comes close to matching Drobo’s offerings, which is why Data Robotics can set the price where it sees fit. If Drobo itself included an Ethernet jack and, perhaps, threw in a 500GB hard drive to get me started, I could probably come up with around $400 and feel good about purchasing it.

(Credit:
Matt Elliott/CNET Networks)

For $500 (plus the cost of two, three, or four hard drives), Drobo gives me redundant storage without having to think about it. For another $200, the DroboShare companion piece lets me put my Drobo volume on my network. And I really like being able to access my entire music library and digital photos from any PC in the house.

I’m giving up Drobo and DroboShare–cold turkey.

Get all your news from feeds and more on one page with Feedly.

I’m a little wary of the fact that Feedly requires you to install a browser plug-in, but for now it makes sense: once installed you get special contextual menus for content you’re viewing in Feedly. This includes a highlighter that lets you make small annotations and special options to tweak or share that feed with others. It even taps into other sites like Twitter in case you want to share what you’re reading there.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

feedly guided tour from Edwin Khodabakchian on Vimeo.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

You can read entire articles and feeds without having to visit the source site. For the purists, there’s also a simple button you can click to bring up each article in a light boxed window on top of the feed. In fact, there are several ways to view content, either with large thumbnails and abstracts, or just headlines. My personal favorite is the thumbnail view, which doesn’t even tell you what the article is until you mouse over it, but which will grab graphics from the post and present it on a large grid. Users with big screens will love this.

Love RSS feeds but are generally unhappy about the structured systems that let you browse them? You might like Feedly, a very nontraditional approach to viewing your favorite feeds that ends up feeling a lot like portal news sites of yore, but with a tight-knit social network built in to help you discover and share new content with friends.

Below is a screenshot of what the service looks like once you’ve pumped it full of feeds. There’s also the three-minute demo provided by creator Edwin Khodabakchian.

To me it feels like a very early attempt at helping people categorize the mess that can become a list of bookmarks and feeds in excess of 200 sites–something most are unlikely to have. To that end, Feedly’s organization is one of its strong suits. You can go in and tweak your feeds or services at any time.

It’ll also help you out with a feature called “spring cleaning,” which will highlight feeds that haven’t been updated in a while–something Google Reader does, but with less visual flair. You can then nix these feeds or simply turn them off with a simple switch. They’re even color coded with yellow, orange, and red to mark the severity of the deadness. Nice.

The service, which is currently
Firefox-only (how convenient) and requires you to install a small browser plug-in, will slurp up your bookmarks, social networking log-ins, news preferences, and an entire OPML file and will organize it on to various news pages.

My hope is that they find a workaround so that you’ll be able to access all of this from any browser, anywhere without problems.

Also, the privacy and user transparency needs some work, because from the very onset you’re sharing what you’re annotating, along with feeds that you subscribe to, with everyone else. It also automatically subscribes you to a grouping of feeds in Google Reader, something which is now being turned off after user complaints.

The result is something some have coined as Yahoo 2.0, with each area of interest set up as its own news section–complete with top stories that change throughout the day.

Personally I find more value in Google Reader’s tightly organized system of viewing feeds, which resembled something a little closer to an e-mail in box, but I can see how people who like to view hot news on a single page would flock to this product.

You can do a host of things from any story or feed you're on, including opening it up in a little light box above the page.

It’s hard to say whether this is innovative or just another company jumping on the touch-based gesture bandwagon, but Pandigital’s announced a new line of digital photo frames with “intuitive” touch controls. Not surprisingly, the line’s called PanTouch, but what’s weird about it is that the whole touch part doesn’t apply to the screen itself but the frame around the display.

OK, this isn’t exactly the way Apple would do a photo frame, but Pandigital appears to be doing its best to inject a little flare into the digital photo frame game. We’ll let you know if it’s a stupid idea–or not–when we get our hands on one, which should be soon.

Let your fingers do the swiping.

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Pandigital)

What’s this mean exactly? Well, check out the image and you’ll notice that good looking index finger is touching the edge of the frame, not the screen itself. The press release says, “Customers can use touch and swipe motions on the surrounding matte to access to digital images, MP3 music and video clips.” On a more mundane level, PanTouch frames will come in three models and sport 512MB of internal memory.

But recently since Raul Castro has taken power from his brother Fidel Castro, the government has loosened many restrictions on average citizens. In March, a ban prohibiting ordinary citizens from owning cell phones was lifted. And in May, the Associated Press reported that Cubans are now allowed to buy desktop PCs.

According to the Wikileaks article, the new undersea cable is being built as a strategic partnership between Cuba and Venezuela to encourage an interchange between the two governments; foster science, cultural and social development; and increase economic relationships among Cuba, its South American neighbors, and the rest of the world.

The United States economic embargo against the island nation has forced the communist country to rely on slow and expensive satellite links for Internet connectivity, according to the Wikileaks article. Even though it would cost less and be more efficient to lay a new cable between Cuba and the U.S., which are only 120 kilometers apart, Cuba is working with Venezuela to lay a 1,500-kilometer cable to get high-speed Internet connectivity.

Cuba has traditionally kept a tight lid on Internet access in the country. In 2003, the government cracked down on ordinary Cuban citizens, who were accessing the Internet over the government’s painfully slow phone network.

A new undersea fiber-optic cable being laid between Cuba and Venezuela will help provide high-speed Internet access to Cuban citizens by 2010.

Earlier this week, Wikileaks published documents that were signed in 2006 by officials in Cuba and Venezuela describing plans for the new undersea cable that will connect the two countries.

The proposed cable, which is being deployed by CVG Telecom (Corporacion Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba), will also provide high-speed Internet access to Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad.

(Credit:
Symantec)

Compromised PCs sending spam had been part of the background noise until recently, when their usage surged in September.

In looking for a reason behind the one-month increase, Symantec speculated it had something to do with the increase in e-mail with sensationalistic news headlines that included links to downloadable malware. These include malicious spam campaigns emulating e-mail from CNN and MSNBC.

Compromised computers that send spam as part of their regular botnet activity increased dramatically in September, according to a Symantec study (PDF) released Monday.

Turkey topped the list of countries hosting spam-sending compromised PCs, responsible for 12 percent of such traffic, according to Symantec. It was followed by Brazil (9 percent), Russia (8 percent), the U.S. (6 percent), India (6 percent), China (6 percent), Germany (5 percent), Argentina (4 percent), Poland (4 percent), and Thailand (3 percent).

After seeing a 37 percent drop in botnet-related spam for August, Symantec reported a 101 percent increase in September. The growth appears to be focused in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with South Korea experiencing the largest increase at 4,236 percent. It was followed by Kazakhstan (761 percent), Romania (607 percent), Saudi Arabia (555 percent), and Vietnam (540 percent).

The Symantec report follows a study from MessageLabs also illustrating the increased use of automated spam relays.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany has gone to court to force the video-sharing site to permanently purge the files, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. The paper quotes Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council, saying he believes Google was culpable for “aiding and abetting racial hatred and discrimination.”

Should there be limits to what can be found on YouTube?

But in Germany, incitement to racial hatred crosses the legal red line. And that’s why YouTube finds itself in the cross hairs. German television last year carried a report in which it was stated that, among other racist works, Internet viewers could watch a Nazi propaganda film called Jud Suess on YouTube. I watched Jud Suess years ago in college. The Nazis intended the movie to reveal the depravity of Jews. Instead, the paradox is that Jud Suess is a powerful weapon against racism. It offers compelling video testimony about that particularly insane mix of evil and absurdity that characterized the narrative of the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945.

If other, more current and more graphically horrifying videos have begun circulating on YouTube, would that really surprise you? Not me. When racists get their hands on high technology, you wind up with a high-tech-savvy racist.

Google has been caught up in a controversy over anti-Semitic videos that have been circulating on YouTube.

But Google shouldn’t get hung out to dry. Instead of being on the receiving end of a lawsuit, aren’t there more sensible, if not more calibrated ways to figure out the next step? I don’t have any quick answer to the question. Let’s get a conversation going and let me know how you think the sides should proceed.

In the U.S., hate groups figured among the earliest of the early adopters. They quickly figured out how to exploit the Internet to spread their message and use the medium to raise money. More than half a century after the Holocaust, one might have hoped for better. Then again, people don’t really change that much from one generation to the next. The only difference is the quality of the technology at their disposal.

This question is especially freighted with extra historical baggage in Germany, where the Holocaust occupies a front row in the nation’s historical consciousness. And as much as it breaks my heart to say, I think the Central Council is making a mistake.

People who used a video-game training program saw improvements in their contrast sensitivity, or the ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, according to a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The training could be beneficial to people who have amblyopia–commonly known as lazy eye–and those who have trouble seeing while driving at night, the study said.

“Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery–somehow changing the optics of the eye,” Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, said in a statement. “But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”

Researchers studied two groups that played video games for 50 hours during a nine-week course. One group played action games such as “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament 2004.” Another group played non-action games such as “Sims 2,” which doesn’t require precise, visually guided aiming actions. People who played the action games showed enhanced contrast sensitivity compared with those in the non-action game group, with improvements ranging from 43 percent to 58 percent, according to the study.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that contrast sensitivity can be improved by simple training,” Bavelier said. “When people play action games, they’re changing the brain’s pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it, and we’ve seen the positive effect remains even two years after the training was over.”

Researchers suggested that the video game training’s effect could last for years and could be a useful complement to other eye-correction techniques such as eyeglasses, contact lenses, or surgery. The study, which was funded by the National Eye Institute and the Office of Naval Research, noted that not all action games have such a benefit to the visually impaired.

Playing action video games may help adults improve their eyesight, according to a study released Sunday.

(Credit:
Activision)

A new study finds that playing action video games such as "Call of Duty 2" can help improve eyesight.

The results appear to mirror those in a 2007 study that found people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their spatial resolution by about 20 percent.

The Genius MousePen 8×6 is a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet that lets you draw freehand in programs like Corel Painter. Usually such tablets start at around $80, and large ones like this run even higher, but Amazon has it for just $39.99 with free shipping.

I’m no tablet expert, but the reviews on Amazon and this one on About.com peg this as a pretty solid model (the ratings average 4 out of 5 stars). It features 1,024 pressure-sensitivity levels, a wireless pen, a wireless mouse, and a copy of the aforementioned Corel Painter. Although the specs indicate Windows compatibility only, the Genius site has Mac OS X drivers available for download. If you’re in the market for a tablet, this is the deal to beat.

(Credit:
Amazon)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

Microsoft is free to use the open source business model, or any model derived from it, like SaaS. Open source companies, in turn, are perfectly free to deliver proprietary extensions to open source products, as they regularly do under many licenses.

Open source and Microsoft were never really enemies in the first place. Open source is a business model. Microsoft is a company. It’s like pitting a noun against a verb.

Dana wrote an excellent piece over the weekend challenging Microsoft to compete with open-source products, and not with open source itself. This has what Microsoft has claimed to be doing for years, but the reality is that Steve Ballmer can’t seem to wrap his brain around open source, even when he tries to appear open or dismissive to or of it.

But that same industry points to an end to the proprietary license model as we’ve known it. Mini-Microsofts aren’t getting funded anymore; at least, not at the same rate. SaaS is in. Open source is in. Advertising-based models are in. Build a proprietary application and sell it through an expensive field sales force? That’s out.

As Dana suggests, it’s not the end of proprietary software. But it may well be the end of a particular era of proprietary software. Microsoft is free to join this new era, but it’s really going to have to alter the way it delivers value to the market, starting with figuring out the web…which will require that it figure out open standards, open source, and the other components of the modern Internet.

Microsoft should be looking to open source as an exceptional opportunity to extend the dominance of its Windows platform. Instead, it gets so mixed up as to whether it’s a platform or application or proprietary company that it fails to simply add open source to its arsenal. Dana writes:

Yes, Microsoft’s proprietary model continues to deliver outsized returns, even as the market cools to Vista and other Microsoft products. This is a testament to the power of lock-in. It’s not hard to look around the industry to spot other examples of companies that continue to take in hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance fees on products that long ago ceased being competitive in the market.

The conflict between Microsoft and open source involved the monopoly rents Microsoft was gaining due to what is now becoming an obsolete business model. That era is now over and Microsoft knows it.

In short, we already have the giants: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM. These companies have runway to keep doing what they’ve always done, but on a bigger scale (i.e., consolidation). Newcomers need to disrupt, and SaaS and open source appear to be two of the most useful ways to disrupt established industries and deliver value to customers…and not merely shareholders.

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