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According to Electronic House, the new receivers will be available in July. The suggested retail prices of the announced models is as follows: AVR-2809CI ($1,200), AVR-2309CI ($850), AVR-1909 ($650), AVR-1709 ($450), AVR-1609 ($350), AVR-989 ($1,200), AVR-889 ($750), AVR-789 ($600), AVR-689 ($400), and AVR-589 ($300).

The Denon 2809CI

All receivers will feature Audyssey Dynamic Volume, which is a sound processing mode that aims to keep volume at a stable level while you watch, so commercials don’t sound louder than shows and explosions in movies won’t startle you. We haven’t tested Audyssey Dynamic Volume ourselves, but we could see it being a popular feature as varying sound levels is a complaint we often hear. All the new receivers will also have Audyssey Dynamic EQ, which is designed to make softer passages sound richer. While it’s always nice to have these options, we’re betting audiophiles will shun both of these sound processing modes as they tend to distort audio, either stripping it of its impact or making it artificially bassy.

The six most expensive models (AVR-2809CI, AVR-2309CI, AVR-1909, AVR-989, AVR-889, and AVR-789) feature upconversion of analog signals up to 1080p, as well as onboard decoding for high-resolution audio soundtracks, such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. HDMI connectivity wasn’t released for all models, but Denon did specify how many inputs a few of the receivers will have: two for the AVR-589, three for the AVR-689 and AVR-789, and four for the AVR-889 and AVR-989. The AVR-2809CI will offer three-zone, three source capability, meaning you can listen to three separate audio sources in three different rooms. All other receivers feature two-zone, two source capability.

Denon has announced several new AV receivers for 2008, ranging from $1,200 down to $300. While last year’s line of AV receivers marked a huge break from previous generations–with a colorful graphical user interfaces and curvy exterior design–the 2008 line looks to mostly continue the innovations from last year. The initial announcement lacked most of the important specifics we’d like to know about these receivers, but we have a broad idea of what they will offer.

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(Credit:
CNET)

Electronic Arts has high expectations for its forthcoming, PC-only Spore from Sims creator Will Wright. Irritating DRM won’t help.

Word came out yesterday that Spore (from Sims-meister Will Wright) and the PC version of Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect would implement a new version of the Securom DRM middleware, which not only requires you to keep a game’s DVD in the drive to play it, but would need to perform an authenticity check every 10 days, which would have required your computer to be online during that time.

It looks like EA has made a turn-around in response to fan outrage at its plans for a complicated DRM scheme in two high-profile PC games due out later this year.

Amid much fan outrage and negative publicity, it appears EA and each game’s respective developer has relented and will instead implement a more benign DRM strategy. Gamer’s Hell reported that Mass Effect will now require a one-time online authentication, and it will reauthenticate each time you connect to the game’s download servers, but that it will no longer require constant reauthentication. Kotaku reported the same decision has been made for Spore.

On the Mass Effect user forum, the community manager from developer BioWare cited its its “many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able reauthenticate as often as required,” as one of the reasons for the change. Considering that the forum topic in which Bioware announced its original plan generated 115 pages of comments, it’s probably fair to say that fan opinion had something to do with it as well.

Copy protection remains a huge issue for PC game developers and publishers. Just a few weeks ago, Cevat Yerli, the president of Crysis developer CryTek told Hungary’s PC Play that his company was abandoning PC exclusives because of rampant piracy. We certainly understand that issue, but clunky DRM is not the answer if publishers want to encourage PC gamers to buy their products.

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What do you do when you’re trying to unseat an incumbent in your market? You could try competing with the same tools as your competitors, or you could try to disrupt them with open source.

For Siemens, the latter course makes more sense:

Siemens’ outsourcing unit is snapping up some of South Africa’s brightest open source minds as it readies to offer large-scale open source services to clients. Going, as it does, head-to-head with the likes of IBM and T-Systems, the company is hoping its open source strategy will find a new niche in an already highly-competitive market.

Here in the United States, I’ve seen rumblings of similar movements within the largest system integrators. Open source gives them a way to offer superior software and service at a lower price.

It’s just a matter of time before IBM et al. will have to respond in kind as they see software margins erode. It’s one thing to deprecate an open-source solution when it comes from mom-and-pop open-source shop X. It’s quite another when it’s being delivered by Siemens, Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture, etc.

Switzerland’s Amazee on Wednesday is launching its site for building social projects. It’s a solid effort. The collaboration tools look good, and I like how it puts the focus on the project, unlike most other social nets that focus on the person. However, in its current form, Amazee is more impressive in theory than practice. I don’t want to say the project suffers from hubris, but I do believe it will need to climb down from its ivory tower to succeed.

Within the site, you can set up a project, such as raising money for a cause, organizing a rally, or building an ark to save the planet’s animals–whatever. Amazee, unlike most social networks, is built around workflow modules, like a discussion forum, a file repository, a calendar, and other functions. The company’s team plans to layer in Basecamp-like tools for deeper task tracking.

Amazee CEO Gregory Gerhardt told me the goal for the site is to drive collective action. The tools the service offers are in support of that. But while Amazee has got the tools part of the equation well in hand, the collective part is lacking.

Part of this is due to the pure theory that Gerhardt is basing Amazee on. His was the only pitch in recent years that I’ve seen where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs played a key part. Gerhardt puts Amazee at the “Esteem” level: The service is about achievement and respect. He puts Facebook and social networks a slot down, at “Love/Belonging.”

The Amazee dashboard lets you manage your causes.

The problem is, you have to solve your Love/Belonging issues before you can address Esteem, and Amazee is so theoretically pure that it cuts itself off from the real and messy world where the mass of users congregate.

Furthermore, Amazee is being built as a destination site. People who want to launch a cause on their own site can point users to the cause’s page on Amazee, but they can’t get their own branded version, nor (yet) hook the service in to whatever network of users they already have.

The lack of a white-label version of Amazee is its greatest business fault and the service’s biggest opportunity. Facebook users already have the popular Causes app where they can talk about action and raise funds (although without Amazee’s workflow tools), but you can’t co-brand or remarket Causes for your site, and that, to me, represents an opportunity. (Amazee plans to make money by offering “private” pages, but as of yet those pages cannot be branded.)

Amazee looks like a good service with the technical framework for delivering on its promise. And while it has the social dynamic worked out within its own universe, it doesn’t have the hooks it needs into the rest of the world. As I was recently reminded when I tried Yammer here at CNET (it’s deathly silent in our little room), building a social service is only one part programming. The other 99 parts are social engineering.

See also: Ning, Karma411, FixMyStreet, Change.org.

An overhead view of U2's drummer, Larry Mullen, from ‘U2 3D.’

(Credit:
3ality Digital Productions)

Having now seen U2 3D, I can confidently say the era of three-dimensional movie-making is upon us. The movie shows what 3D can be if done right, and more important, it shows it works with real humans, not just computer-generated subjects.

I saw Beowulf in 3D three times to compare the three major 3D display technologies, Imax, Dolby 3D, and Real D. That movie was a great proof-of-concept for the projection technology, but Beowulf itself was hardly a cinema classic.

In addition, with computer graphics, a filmmaker can exert complete control over the virtual cameras. But Beowulf whetted my appetite, and I wanted to see what could be done with actual humans in a 3D movie.

U2 3D faced real-world challenges. In 3D movie-making, the two cameras must be correctly aligned, the right distance apart, and with proper convergence, in which the cameras point slightly toward each other. That’s a lot of complication, but the 3ality Digital Production guys got it right.

The result is a film that achieves a new spaciousness and depth. It offered a spectacle without many spears-jumping-down-my-eyeballs gimmicks.

When the camera is peering down at drummer Larry Mullen from above, I felt like I was really hanging above him. When there’s a sea of waving arms between the camera and Bono, you can sense each row of the crowd. Visually, my favorite moment, by far, was the seething crowd jumping in sync to “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

Editing, too, is a challenge with 3D. When cutting from one scene to another, there has to be enough time for the audience’s eyes to adjust to a new focus point–or somebody has to plan in advance to keep the focus point at the same distance.

Here, too, U2 3D fares well, though it felt a little too choppy in the opening scenes to me. Whatever the cause, though, I’m happy to bid adieu to the frenetic MTV jump-cut editing style, and U2 3D was easy on the eyes.

I found low-angle crowd shots immersive.

(Credit:
3ality Digital Productions)

There were plenty of flaws that I found distracting. The worst, ghosting, I blame on the Imax technology used during my screening. When Beowulf suffered ghosting, in which a bit of information intended for the right eye leaks over into your left eye and vice-versa, the Imax folks said it was something wrong with the theater, but it happened again in U2 3D. I also found shots directly at bright lights suffered distracting artifacts, which may or may not have been the fault of the 3D aspects of the movie.

I also thought subjects in fast motion were marred by flickering. The digital projection systems, which can take advantage of the higher frame rates possible with Texas Instruments’ DLP chips, are better in this department, too.

The Imax show did have terrific sound and, of course, an all-encompassing screen that’s effective in grabbing your attention all the way to its peripheral vision. And Imax will be going digital this year, so these issues should be only temporary.

U2 3D sticks fairly close to reality, but it’s artfully laced with extra elements. I enjoyed the superimposition of images tremendously, with different views shown at different depths. For example, more than once a view of the band members on stage would be visible within the dark silhouette of Bono in the foreground. It was a new twist to multiple exposures.

Also well done were computer effects that usually complemented the giant display wall actually at the concert. Some purists might want a less adulterated representation of the band’s “Vertigo” tour, but I for one wasn’t fooled into thinking I had front-row seats, so the extras were fine by me.

Overall, the movie was immersive and entertaining. No doubt the novelty of 3D will wear off over the years, just as it did with color and sound in earlier years of cinema, but for now, my advice is to relish it.

SnapVillage, owned by Corbis, is one of a host of 'microstock' sites for inexpensive downloads of stock photos.

(Credit:
SnapVillage)

SnapVillage, a microstock site founded in June by stock-art sales company Corbis to compete with rivals such as Fotolia and Getty Images’ iStockphoto, has expanded to include international sales.

Although the site now works beyond the United States, the Web site is English-only for now. The company plans to localize with more languages later, a representative said. The site is still officially in beta testing.

The site receives about 10,000 new image uploads a week, SnapVillage said in a statement Wednesday. Although there are several rivals already better established, Corbis believed it would be better off starting its own site from scratch.

The company wouldn’t release specific download statistics, but said sales are growing. In the last three months, the number of image downloads per week has increased by a factor of 8 and the number of new accounts created per week has increased 60 percent.

Throwing a Saturday night dance party for young voters as a political fundraiser, especially in a city where there are gossip-hungry bloggers on every corner (ahem), always runs the risk of turning into bad press. But there was only one moment when the event nearly erupted into scandal–when somebody decided to take Obama’s “fired up and ready to go” slogan a little too literally and, well, fired up a joint. Regardless of what you think about marijuana legalization, it’s still illegal in the state of New York and caused some concern among For Your Imagination representatives, whose landlords are undoubtedly being very generous by permitting them to hold open-bar parties. The offending joint was extinguished, but the dance floor energy wasn’t.

Yes, that’s right: people actually danced. Whether they’ll actually vote–we’ll see on Tuesday.

The crowd wasn’t quite as “dotcommy” as an event for, say, geek candidate-of-choice Ron Paul might be. It was, however, a clearly creative and tech-savvy set. There were more than a few bloggers in the house, including at least one from TechCrunch’s payroll. Others were into the more experimental, Improv Everywhere-esque side of culture: one young choreographer told me that he was working on a “Boogie for Obama” in which dancers in Obama T-shirts would get their freak on in the New York subways on the day before Super Tuesday.

NEW YORK–When it comes to a strategy for galvanizing young voters in the hours before the “Super Tuesday” primaries, a coalition of big-media outlets chose to throw an online and offline dialogue with candidates. A group of tech-friendly 20-somethings in New York decided the best way to organize young supporters of Democratic candidate Barack Obama would be to invite them to a massive dance party.

But the event wasn’t just a bunch of kids; the “Big Obama Party” had close ties to the local technology and digital-media communities. The organizers had no formal affiliation, but several count progressive Web policy initiatives like Free Culture and Creative Commons, as well as New York University’s art-meets-tech Interactive Telecommunications Program among the points on their resumes.

Over the past week, invitations created through Facebook and Evite flew around the inboxes of many plugged-in young New Yorkers: an appropriate donation to Obama for America would give them access to an open bar, dance-worthy DJ music, and plenty of other young Obama fans who were willing to spend Saturday night at a fundraiser rather than a Lower East Side hotspot. The informal Web invites appear to have been a success, as several hundred people showed up–and most of the attendees, who were overwhelmingly under the age of 30 (and almost exclusively under 35) were indeed dressed up for a Saturday night out. Campaign T-shirts were almost nowhere to be found, except on one young woman sporting a shirt that said “I’ve Got A Crush On Obama” with plenty of pink hearts.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

And the venue was Web video studio For Your Imagination, which has become a local favorite among the dotcom set due to the company’s courageous willingness to host late-night parties in its office space.

The Microsoft representative mentioned the company’s online security and safety best practices for customers, including specific guidance on how to help protect your Windows Live ID account security. But when it comes to protecting your free Hotmail e-mail account, users appear to be without much recourse.

That’s exactly what a second locked-out Hotmail user did in early May. Microsoft support staff responded with the following message: “Thank you for your message to MSN and Windows Live Privacy. I understand you are having difficulties accessing your MSN Hotmail account because you believe someone has gained unauthorized access to your account. For assistance with this issue, please contact the MSN Support staff using the (following) form.” The message is signed by Raktim from MSN and Windows Live Privacy.

After filling out the form, several weeks passed, and the Hotmail account holder said he has still received no further response from Microsoft.

“Microsoft is committed to helping consumers have a safe, secure, and positive online experience,” a company representative said Thursday. In the case of the first e-mail, Microsoft worked with the owner to restore her access. In the case of the second, it’s still pending. “As always, we reiterate our general guidance to customers to help protect themselves and their accounts by exercising extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments and links from both known and unknown sources, and that they install and regularly update antivirus software,” the representative said.

CNET is aware of a couple of Hotmail users who have recently gotten locked out of their accounts. In one case, someone who had hacked into an account sent a desperate-sounding e-mail asking for money under the account holder’s name.

The body of one of the e-mails, sent to a CNET reporter, reads:

“I am in a hurry writing this mail. I had a trip to oxfordshire, United Kingdom for an urgent event . Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen at the hotel where i lodged from the attack of some armed robbers and since then i have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here,So i have only access to emails,my mobile phone can’t work here so i did not bring it along. Please can you lend me $1500 so i can return back and settle the hotel bills i would return it back to you as soon as i get home, I am so confused right now. You can have it sent through western union.”

Imagine getting an e-mail from a friend or family member with the following subject line: “ITS IMPORTANT YOU GET BACK ME TODAY.”

Microsoft had no direct comment.

Without addressing what might have occurred regarding the second person’s account, Microsoft appears to be blaming the user: if you had used more caution, you probably wouldn’t be in this situation.

“If a customer at any time suspects their account has been accessed by an unauthorized party, they should contact our customer support team, a Microsoft representative said.

The owner of the Hotmail account was confirmed to be at home, safe.

“That is ultimately my goal–to get people to actively question and dig into why the results turn out the way they do,” Jones wrote in his report.

For me, the highest testament to Vista’s security comes not from a comparison of patches or vulnerabilities, but from the grumbling praise given to the operating system by the hacker crowd at last year’s Blue Hat.

The report’s author, Microsoft’s Jeffrey Jones, says those numbers compare with more than 100 vulnerabilities fixed in
Mac OS X Tiger’s first year, more than 220 flaws in Ubuntu version 6.06 in its first year, and 360 flaws fixed for Red Hat enterprise Linux 4 in its first year.

Jones does acknowledge that some might consider his research suspect, given his employer, but said he welcomes other researchers to look at his methods.

“Vista is the most difficult mainstream OS to break into that I’ve ever seen,” security researcher Halvar Flake told me at the time.

Microsoft took
Windows Vista in for a one-year security checkup and came back with, if not a completely clean bill of health, at least signs that the infant is healthier than most babies.

Note: This is one in a series of blogs looking at Windows Vista on the first anniversary of its consumer launch.

According to the report, Microsoft issued 17 security updates fixing 36 vulnerabilities in Vista in the 12 months following its commercial launch in November 2006. By comparison, the company issued 30 security updates encompassing 65 vulnerabilities in XP’s first year.

Jones is quick to say that his study is not a complete analysis of the operating system’s “security,” but rather a quantitative look at the number and severity of the vulnerabilities found thus far.

The pic briefly showed up on a French Web site, and just as quickly vanished, but not before several sites (from Valleywag to Wired) were able to grab copies of the photo. (The original post is now up again.)

Let the Internet comment trolling commence!

(Credit:
nowhereelse.fr)

Some Apple faithfuls are crying “fake!” while others think it’s the real deal–we should all know for sure at Apple’s next big press event in mid-October.

We present the original photo here for your examination and interpretation.

The Interwebs are atwitter with a single blurry cell phone shot of what may or may not be one of the newly redesigned MacBook laptops we’ve been reading about.