Extraterrestrial Platinum Was 'Stirred' Into Earth

A research program aimed at using platinum as an exploration guide for nickel has for the first time been able to put a time scale on the planet’s large-scale convection processes.

Report author CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship researcher Dr Stephen Barnes said the study group collected a large body of data on the platinum content of lava flows called komatiites, which host some of the world’s major nickel deposits.

“We found that the oldest komatiites have the lowest platinum content,” Dr Barnes said.

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“The platinum content gradually increases from about 3.5 billion years to 2.9 billion years ago.

“This tells us that the deep source where the komatiite came from, down near the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle, was gradually gaining platinum over time”.

The paper’s authors now think they know why.

“When the Earth’s core formed, it took all the available platinum with it, leaving the mantle and crust with none,” Dr Barnes said.

“Following that, a steady rain of meteorites created the so-called Late Veneer – a thin surface layer of meteorite debris rich in platinum.”

With time through large-scale convection processes, which now cause plate tectonics, this material was stirred down into the interior of the Earth.

We are seeing the signal of that stirring, which took about 1.5 billion years to occur.

This is the first time a time scale has been put on the stirring, which has important implications for the people who study the dynamics of mantle processes and the mechanisms that cause plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes.

Combined with some other work by the researchers on sister elements to platinum, iridium and osmium, we also now have a new framework for understanding the variations in isotopic ratios of osmium with time.

Osmium isotopes are widely used as tracers of mantle processes, but there has been a mismatch between signals from osmium and from other important isotopic tracer systems which has eluded explanation until now.

Microsoft Acknowledges Mobile Mishaps

Microsoft had a tough year gaining traction in the mobile space, but the software giant is hoping that a new strategy centered on the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 will help it gain up to 60 percent market share, executives said Thursday.

"It was a tough year on succeeding in phones," Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said at the company's annual financial analyst meeting. "Mostly our own issues; and really driving our execution the right way at the right speed, [but] we've readjusted some of our plans."

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, provided some more color on what those plans entail, including: the inclusion of Windows Mobile on a broader selection of phones; a shift from a business to consumer focus; cloud services; building up the Windows Phone brand; and building better relationships with hardware manufacturers.

"I still very much believe in the opportunity to be a for-profit software-only player in the phone business," Ballmer said. "I think that's the winning approach. I think it's the right niche. I think it is the right way to get 50–60 percent kind of market share, maybe the only way."

Windows Mobile 6.5 is set to debut in October. Microsoft first unveiled the new mobile OS, which is designed to make touch-screen phones easier to use and improve Windows phones' Web-browsing skills, in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

When it does debut, Bach said, the OS will have a consumer-friendly edge.

"If I have a critique of our phones today, it's that our experiences are very good in the business case," Bach said. "But, if you're in the consumer space, and you have consumer scenarios, you want to do more browsing, you want to do more media, you want to do more video, you want to do those types of things, our experiences aren't as rich as they need to be. And starting with 6.5 and then going forward, you're going to see us expand those experiences dramatically."

Bach also pledged to work closely with handset makers like Samsung, LG, HTC, Hewlett-Packard, and Sony Ericsson to build a broad selection of phones.

"It's our view that one model, one type of phone is not going to build volume into that critical mass that we think we need to make the business successful," Bach said.

Bach also talked up MyPhone, a free service that syncs Windows Mobile 6 smartphones with a password-protected Web site that can be accessed from any PC, as a means to take advantage of the cloud. MyPhone is another product that made its debut at MWC and went into a public beta in May.

"There's a whole set of those types of services that we want to expand into, and I think those cloud-based services brought to the phone as well as to the PC and the TV are going to be quite powerful," he said.

It won't be very powerful if consumers don't know what they're buying, so Microsoft will also focus on building its brand name.

"We will invest in that with retail and we'll invest in it with our own advertising money to make sure people understand when they see those types of experiences that that's a Microsoft experience delivered on a Windows phone," Bach said.

Finally, Bach acknowledged that Microsoft has not "done as good a job as I would like in building the relationships and getting the right level of integration with our hardware OEMs." He promised a "dramatic improvement in the integration between what we do in the software and what our hardware partners do on the hardware side."

Windows 7 Beta Expires Saturday

Are you still running the original Windows 7 beta? Take note – it expires tomorrow.

Bi-hourly shutdowns of the Microsoft beta already started on July 1, but it officially goes dark on Saturday. Users should consider switching to the Windows 7 release candidate or Windows Vista, Microsoft said.

Microsoft first made the beta publicly available to those attending Microsoft Developer Conferences earlier this year. The public beta was then released in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Microsoft also conducted an invite-only technical preview of the beta last year, and the company announced Thursday that participants in the test would receive a free copy of Windows 7 for their efforts.

The RC version of Windows 7, meanwhile, made its debut in May. Downloads of the RC end on August 20, but the program will still run.

"You will still be able to get a product key beyond that date but, downloads will not be available," Microsoft's Stephen Rose wrote in a blog post.

Global Mobile Market Bottoms, Grows Anew

SAN FRANCISCO - Global handset shipments grew nearly 5 percent in the second quarter, the first quarter-on-quarter growth in nine months, marking a reversal of course for the struggling market, researchers at iSuppli said on Friday.

Worldwide shipments of cellphones rose 4.7 percent to 265 million units in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, helped by strength in the Middle East and Latin America, according to preliminary data from iSuppli.

"The moderate increase indicates the worldwide mobile handset market is bottoming out and now is returning to growth," iSuppli analyst Tina Teng said in a statement.

Shipments for 2009 are still expected to shrink 9.9 percent year-on-year to 1.1 billion units—their first annual decline in eight years.

But iSuppli forecast an improving second half, with quarter-on-quarter increases in shipments of 6 percent in the third quarter and 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter

Microsoft Unveils Win7 Family Pack, Upgrade Pricing

Microsoft on Friday unveiled the pricing for its Windows 7 Family Pack offering, as well as pricing information for upgrades between different versions of the upcoming OS.

The Windows 7 Family Pack will retail for $149.99 for three Home Premium licenses. It will be available starting October 22 in the U.S. and other select markets.

Microsoft also provided details about upgrade versions of Windows 7, available via Windows Anytime Upgrade (WAU).

"A customer may purchase a netbook thinking they would use primarily it for e-mail. Over time, they find they are using that netbook as their primary every-day PC. That person decides they want their netbook to do more," Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog post. "If the netbook is running Windows 7 Starter (or Windows 7 Home Basic in select markets), WAU makes it super easy to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium."

If you have Windows 7 Starter and want to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, that will cost you $79.99 via WAU. Switching from Home Premium to Professional will cost $89.99 and moving from Home Premium to Ultimate will set you back $139.99.

When Windows 7 is officially released on October 22, users can purchase a retail package that contains an upgrade key for any WAU option. Those in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., or the U.S. will be able to purchase the upgrade online from Microsoft within Windows 7.

Installation will take about 10 minutes, LeBlanc said.

Kindle Users Sue Amazon Over Deleted Orwell Book

Two Kindle users – one of them a high school student – have filed a class-action lawsuit against Amazon after the company remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's "1984" from their e-readers.

Justin Gawronski, a teenager from Michigan, and Antoine Bruguier of California, sued the online retailer in Seattle District Court on Thursday for breach of contract, intentional interference with their belongings, as well as violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

In late July, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos apologized to Kindle users after the company deleted Orwell's books from its Web site and users' Kindles without notice. Amazon did not have the rights to distribute Orwell's books, but it did not immediately reveal this fact to Kindle users who complained about the deletions.

"Our 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles," Bezos wrote to customers. "It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission."

That apology apparently did not sit well with Gawronski and Bruguier.

Gawronski, a Kindle 2 owner, purchased "1984" in June as part of his summer reading requirements for high school English. After reading about the deletions in the news, he powered up his Kindle on July 20 and watched "1984" vanish.

His lawyers contend that in addition to losing the book itself, Gawronski also lost valuable notes. Though Amazon maintained users' notes on the book in a separate file that is still accessible, comments like "remember this paragraph for your thesis" are not helpful when you do not know what paragraph it is referencing, the suit said.

Bruguier, meanwhile, bought "1984" in April. On July 16, he received an e-mail confirming his refund for the book and, later the same day, an e-mail from Amazon that said the company had discovered a problem with the book and was issuing a refund. When Bruguier complained that he wanted to keep the book, Amazon said in a July 17 e-mail that it could not provide any insight on the deletion. Later that day, Amazon admitted in another e-mail that it pulled the book because of licensing issues.

The lawsuit contends that deleting content remotely from Kindles is a breach of contract and violation of Amazon's terms of service, which says that Kindle users have a right to keep a permanent copy of the digital content they purchase, and view it as many times as they want.

The suit contends that the Kindle is protected as a computer because it is used for interstate commerce and communication. When they remotely deleted content, Amazon accessed customers' Kindles without permission, a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and a violation of privacy.

"Unless restrained and enjoined, Amazon will continue to commit such acts," the suit said.

The practice violates Washington state's consumer protection statute, which bans unfair and deceptive acts and practices, the suit said.

Meanwhile, Amazon caused intentional interference – or trespass to chattels – to private property. "Amazon has no more right to delete e-books from consumers Kindles and iPhones than it does to retrieve from its customers' homes paper books it sells and ships to consumers," the suit said.

Gawronski and Bruguier have suffered harm because they are now forced to find another copy of the book, which will likely cost more than the $0.99 and $3.20 they paid for "1984," respectively, according to their lawyers.

Apple, Labels Stir Up Deluxe, Digital Cocktail

DENVER - Downloadable music didn't kill the album cover. The CD did.

By shrinking the size and visual impact of the recording industry's mainstay product—and then encasing it in plastic security packaging—the shiny aluminum disc marginalized the LP to a nostalgic memory. By the time the MP3 format came along, consumers shrugged off the absence of album art and liner notes.

"We were living for so long with the CD cover art space after vinyl went away that we lost that feel of a great tactile, creative experience," says Livia Tortella, Atlantic Records general manager/executive VP of marketing and creative media. "Something got lost when you had to crack open the plastic CD with all the marketing stickers on it."

Enter Cocktail: a new digital music format that Apple is developing with record labels. The format will go beyond a simple PDF file of liner notes, and instead bundle photos, videos, lyrics and other assets with an album's music. Details remain slim, but label sources confirming the effort's existence point to it as the digital version of the record sleeves of yore.

The Cocktail format would enable fans to play an album without having to open their iTunes music management software. Supported devices haven't yet been confirmed, but industry sources expect them to be limited to the more advanced iPods, such as the iPhone and the iPod Touch. There have also been rumors of a yet-to-be-announced multimedia tablet computer from Apple that would fall somewhere between an iPhone and a laptop in terms of size and functionality.

MORE REVENUE, NOT MORE SALES

Will the Cocktail format drive greater digital album sales? Probably not, but that's not what the music industry is expecting from it. Instead, label sources position it as a way to further monetize existing digital album purchases. While pricing information isn't available, Cocktail-formatted albums will almost certainly cost more than the standard album available on iTunes.

One major-label source notes that when a digital album is released as both a standard music-only download and a deluxe download with extra content, the deluxe version typically outsells the standard one by 85 percent to 90 percent in the first few weeks after its release, even though it usually costs $2 to $5 more.

"It's not about selling more albums," a label source says about Cocktail. "It's about selling more unique kinds of content. We as an industry have found that when you offer more content, there's an appetite for it. So why not continue to offer more?"

Cocktail wouldn't be the first effort by the majors to push more interactive versions of digital albums. For instance, Atlantic's Fanbase application, which it has bundled with the CDs of such artists as Rob Thomas and T.I., aggregates photos, videos and news specific to an individual artist from various online sources. Tortella says Fanbase has been downloaded more than 200,000 times and is viewed up to 4 million times per month.

Cocktail-formatted albums would include only content selected and bundled by the label, but the broader goal would be the same—to offer fans a more immersive digital music experience than they have had with MP3s and CDs.

Apple has already offered a variety of incentives at iTunes to enhance the appeal of digital album purchases. Its "Complete My Album" option allows fans who have purchased one or two songs from a record to buy the remaining tracks at a discount. Through a partnership with Ticketmaster, iTunes has bundled digital albums with the purchase of a concert ticket. And earlier this year, its new iTunes Pass format provided artists and labels with a way to sell a "subscription" that allows fans to purchase an album along with other exclusive content that is released in stages.

"Kids will either choose to buy something or not," Tortella says. "It's up to us to make it as exciting as possible to get people to want to buy. When you're dealing with different product configurations, it makes it more exciting."