Web Development Live

Mundie, who took over as Microsofts lead visionary from co-founder Bill Gates in 2006, is preparing the company for a technology shift that he expects will be as big as the rise of the personal computer or the internet: parallel computing.
Its a lot easier for us to have a fairly accurate sense of what will happen and even make good technical progress toward achieving it, Mundie said in an interview last week. Almost everything we tried to do took longer than we expected.
The overseer of Microsofts $US7 billion ($NZ8.7 billion) research and development budget, Mundie knows firsthand how even promising technologies can take time to develop. After all, he has led Microsofts efforts in Web-based television and nontraditional forms of computing.
Parallel computing has been hyped for years as the next big thing in technology, allowing computers to run faster by dividing up tasks over multiple microprocessors instead of using a single processor to perform one task at a time.
The technologys full potential is almost unfathomable today, but it could lead to major advances in robotics or software applications that can translate documents in real time in multiple languages.
The computer industry has taken its first steps toward parallel computing in recent years by using multi-core chips, but Mundie said this is the tip of the iceberg.
To maximize computing horsepower, software makers will need to change how software programmers work. Only a handful of programmers in the world know how to write software code to divide computing tasks into chunks that can be processed at the same time instead of a traditional, linear, one-job-at-a-time approach.
A new programming language would be required, and could affect how almost every piece of software is written.
This problem will be hard, admitted Mundie, who worked on parallel computing as the head of supercomputer company Alliant Computer Systems before joining Microsoft. This challenge looms large over the next 5 to 10 years.
The shift to parallel computing was born out of necessity after processor speeds ran into heat and power limitations, forcing the semiconductor industry to assemble multiple cores, or electronic brains, on a single chip.
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have already assembled chips with as many as four processors on a single chip. Tilera Corp, a Silicon Valley chip start-up, foresees a 1,000-core chip by 2014.
KILLER APPLICATIONS
Mundie, who assumed half of Gates job almost two years ago, sets the long-term technological direction for the company as the co-founder moves to a part-time role in July to focus on philanthropy. Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, sets the shorter-term agenda.
Mundie has at his disposal Microsofts research department with over 800 PhD researchers working on the new technology.
The research focuses on everything from Web search to simultaneous translation to touch-screen technology, but parallel computing is certainly among its top priorities because it will likely affect every part of Microsoft.
Computers about 100 times more powerful than now will emerge within 20 years, Mundie estimated, packing the capabilities of a corporate data center into a single die sitting inside a mobile phone or laptop.
A killer application will bring this computing power to the forefront, he said, just like what word processing and spreadsheets did for the PC and how e-mail and the Web browser popularized the internet.
Pushing a company as big as Microsoft %26ndash; with about 80,000 employees %26ndash; to look past historical strengths and traditional ways of doing things to focus on new technology is not easy.
Bill (Gates) and I have both talked at times over the years that you cant do these jobs unless you are an optimist, almost an extreme optimist because in a way you are fighting so many forces that are resistant to change, said Mundie.

The Rocket Man and the funky monk have let Bryan Pepperell use their social networking MySpace web pages to promote his idea that the US Government apologise for the harm caused to native tribes.
One of Mr Obamas staff also took a brief break from helping him in his quest for the Democrat presidential nomination to reply to Mr Pepperells e-mail.
The reply said the most important native American issue was the development of authentic government-to-government relationships between the federal government and Indian tribes.
Mr Pepperell is still waiting for replies from President George W Bush and Mr Obamas Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, on whether they would issue an apology.
America is such an important country and if it cant get this right, how can it ever hold itself up as a leader of the world? Mr Pepperell said.
Singers Willie Nelson, the Neville Brothers and Linda Ronstadt have also opened up their MySpace pages to Mr Pepperells quest, with readers asked to leave messages of support.
It is only through reading about the history, going through the documents, and talking to some friends I have met on MySpace that I have decided to do this, Mr Pepperell said.
I also thought that since the Australian Government had the guts to front its [Aboriginal] issues recently, and start down the path of compensation and reconciliation, that I should pick up this issue, he said.

Following the example of successful US sites, French entrepreneurs created note2be.com in January that encouraged students to grade teachers and discuss their ability.
Unions, backed by the education ministry, immediately took the site to court, saying the personal comments represented a breach of privacy and an incitement to public disorder.
The judges backed their case and said the website could no longer identify any teachers by name and told the sites owners they faced a 1,000 euro ($NZ1888) fine for every infraction.
It also told them to pay a symbolic 1 euro fine and legal fees for some 30 teachers who had taken part in the court case.
This is an astonishing and surprising decision that has worrying implications for the development of the Web, said Stephane Cola, who co-founded the site.
The ranking and evaluation of professionals on the Web is a fundamental principle and a primary motor of the Internet around the world, he told reporters after the verdict.
However, unions hailed the outcome.
We are totally satisfied by this ruling, said Francis Berguin, the head of the SNES teachers union. It is not up to pupils to mark their own teachers and certainly not on a commercial Web site, he told LCI news channel.
Note2be.com asked pupils to rate their teachers according to six categories %26ndash; how interesting, clear, fair, available, respectful and motivated they were. It also set up a rankings system to promote Frances top 10 teachers.
Education Minister Xavier Darcos praised the court verdict, saying in a statement that he totally supported teachers whose difficult mission will not be the object of anonymous attacks on the internet.
The sometimes difficult working environment faced by teachers in France was underlined last week when a court sentenced a pupil to 13 years in jail after he stabbed and wounded a teacher who had complained about his behaviour.

Visual WebGui, developer of the AJAX enterprise application development and deployment platform, has announced the availability of their browser-based solution.Visual WebGui is an open source framework, which is available for graphical user interfaces used for web applications. Visual WebGui, which is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET framework, is expected to launch a Microsoft Silverlight compliant solution, supported by Microsoft.Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), is a combination of Javascript and XML technologies that allow the content of a web page to be updated without reloading the entire page, thereby enabling browser-based applications to behave like software applications.Visual WebGui solves the development setbacks associated with AJAX by providing developers with a Rapid Application Development solution with full Win Forms support. Visual WebGui is delivered with a designer, the application interfaces (WinForms designer), instead of Word documents (ASP.NET designer). This enables interfaces using drag-and-drop editing. Visual WebGui is available under LGPL.

Salesforce.com has extended its platform as a service offering with the addition of Force.com Development-as-a-Service - a new set of development tools and APIs that help enterprise developers harness the full potential of cloud computing. Force.com, which was first unveiled during the company’s Dreamforce conference in September, is built on the company’s proprietary Visualforce technology. It gives customers, developers and independent software vendors (ISV) the ability to create custom applications and user interfaces that can be accessed from desktop PCs, iPhones or retail kiosks using the Salesforce.com service.A new API will allow developers to access Salesforce metadata. Developers will be given full access to the platform, offering data that had previously been managed by wizards and setup tools. Salesforce also unveiled a new integrated development environment, and a service known as 慍odeshare which allows developers to collaborate remotely on a project. A new ’sandbox’ option allows developers to test applications in a protected environment. The new tools are part of a larger campaign to bring third-party developers onboard. Salesforce plans to promote Force.com with a global tour dubbed ‘Tour de Force’.Salesforce.com has also released a new pay-per-login payment option for users to access applications developed on its Force.com platform.An enterprise building a low-volume, occasional use application through Force.com, such as an online vacation scheduling app, faces a list price of USD 5 for each user login, but will only be charged 99 cents through 2008 in an effort to promote use of the new platform. More frequently used applications will carry a fee of USD 50 per user per month for an unlimited number of logins.

BEIJING China has branded the Dalai Lama a “wolf in monk’s robes” and his followers the “scum of Buddhism.” It stepped up the rhetoric Tuesday, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate and his supporters of planning suicide attacks.The Tibetan government-in-exile swiftly denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s defense, calling him “a man of peace.”"There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.Wu Heping, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Public Security, claimed searches of monasteries in the Tibetan capital had turned up a large cache of weapons. They included 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 7,725 pounds of explosives, 19,000 sticks of dynamite and 350 knives, he said.”To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibetan independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks,” Wu told a news conference. “They claimed that they fear neither bloodshed nor sacrifice.”Wu provided no details or evidence. He used the term “gan si dui,” a rarely used phrase directly translated as “dare-to-die corps.” The official English version of his remarks translated the term as “suicide squads.”Wu said police had arrested an individual who he claimed was an operative of the “Dalai Lama clique,” responsible for gathering intelligence and distributing pamphlets calling for an uprising.The suspect admitted to using code words to communicate with his contacts, including “uncle” for the Dalai Lama and “skirts” for the banned Tibetan snow lion flag, Wu said.Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of orchestrating violence in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Protests which began peacefully there on the March 10 anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule spiraled out of control four days later.Chinese officials have put the death toll at 22, most of them Han Chinese; the government-in-exile says 140 Tibetans were killed.China also says sympathy protests that spread to surrounding provinces are part of a campaign by the Dalai Lama to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and promote Tibetan independence.The 72-year-old Dalai Lama has condemned the violence and denied any links to it, urging an independent international inquiry into the unrest.”Tibetan exiles are 100 percent committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks,” Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, said Tuesday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”Experts on terrorism and security risks facing Beijing and the Olympics have not cited any Tibet group as a threat.Scholars said the claim of suicide squads was a calculated move by China allowing it to step up its crackdown in Tibetan areas.”There is no evidence of support for any kind of violence against China or Chinese,” said Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at Westminster University in London.Instead, Beijing is “portraying to the rest of China and the rest of the world: these people are basically irrational” and that there was no room for compromise, he said.Tuesday’s accusations could also further divide the Tibetan government-in-exile and other groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress, which has challenged the Dalai Lama’s policy of nonviolence, Anand said.”This is a way of pressuring the Dalai Lama to renounce Tibetans who have created violence,” he said.Andrew Fischer, a fellow at the London School of Economics who researches Chinese development policies in Tibetan areas of China, dismissed Wu’s warnings as “completely ridiculous.”What China is trying to do “is justify this massive troop deployment, a massive crackdown on Tibetan areas and they’re trying to justify intensification of hard-line policies,” Fischer said.Drawing from a deep historical reserve of angry rhetoric, Tibet’s tough-talking Chinese Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, recently called the Dalai Lama a “wolf in monk’s robes, a devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast” and deemed the current conflict a “life-and-death battle.” State media has denounced protesting monks as the “scum of Buddhism.”The campaign against the Dalai Lama has been underscored in recent days with showings of decades-old propaganda films on state television portraying Tibetan society as cruel and primitive before the 1950 invasion by communist troops.The escalation of the rhetoric to include claims of possible suicide attacks may also touch upon another sensitive issue for China’s communist leadership - unrest in Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim region to Tibet’s north, and Beijing’s tight security measures in the area.On Tuesday, a local government Web site in Xinjiang reported that a protest has broken out in a market in the region on March 23. One official linked the incident to the unrest in Tibet.But U.S.-government funded Radio Free Asia, which first reported the demonstration, said the protesters were demanding authorities not ban headscarves, and that they stop torturing Uighurs and release all political prisoners. It said several hundred Uighurs staged the protests in Hotan and a nearby county and were taken into custody.Fu Chao, an official with the Hotan Regional Administrative Office, disputed that characterization. “The riot was nothing to do with the ban on headscarves, but about responding to the riots in Tibet,” Fu said.Last month, Chinese state media reported that a woman had confessed to attempting to hijack and crash a Chinese passenger plane from Xinjiang in what officials say was part of a terror campaign by a radical Islamic independence group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. The reports said the woman was from China’s Turkic Muslim Uighur minority.While the United States has labeled the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terrorist organization, the State Department alleges widespread abuses of the legal and educational systems by the communist authorities to suppress Uighur culture and religion.Fischer said China has tried to change the “nonviolent, compassionate” image of Tibetans into one of violence and brutality to draw parallels to the pro-independence stance in Xinjiang.”If they succeed in portraying them that way, then they can treat them the same way they treat Muslims in Xinjiang,” he said.

BEIJING China is reaching out for a greater role in global affairs and opening up at home, too - at least a little - as the once-reclusive Communist giant gets ready for this summer’s Olympic Games.That’s good news, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.Whatever the motivation for the change, the Bush administration sees China adopting what it thinks are more responsible positions, from North Korea to Sudan and elsewhere, moving from isolation to engagement. China is going to great lengths to burnish its image as the Olympics bring worldwide scrutiny to the country, though Rice didn’t draw a direct connection in remarks here Tuesday.”I can’t get into their motivations, but … China is opening up to the world in a lot of ways,” Rice said after talks with President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders.”I do believe that there is more of an effort to reconcile China’s size and influence in international politics, which is a relatively new thing, with China’s foreign policy behavior,” she told reporters.While still averse to the kind of high-profile interventions that Western countries and human rights groups are known for, China has recently begun to weigh in on issues it has long avoided for fear of opening itself up to criticism for its own well-documented lapses.”There is a broadening, I think, in general of China’s view of itself in international politics and I think we’re benefiting from it,” Rice said.U.S.-China ties have been strained on numerous occasions since the countries established diplomatic relations in 1979.The two nuclear powers have massive militaries and often spar over Taiwan. Perhaps their biggest fallout came after China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, which led to years of recriminations.The Olympics are widely seen as China’s biggest opportunity yet to rub away more of the stain of Tiananmen.Rice praised China for its recent willingness to press North Korea on its nuclear program, to broach the subject of repression with Myanmar’s military rulers and to support a hybrid United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region.”China is making an impact,” she said, recalling that only a few years ago many in Washington doubted Beijing would use its political and economic clout as a “responsible stakeholder” in international affairs.”I see them grappling with the ‘responsible stakeholder idea,’ which everybody said they couldn’t translate,” Rice observed. “It turns out that they can translate it and they talk about it actually.”Although she did not link the evolution to the Olympics, China is thought susceptible to outside influence now, and some advocacy groups want to use the games to push for Chinese action, notably in Darfur because of the country’s significant investments in Sudan.The United States has been cool to the idea of using the Olympics as leverage, and Rice reiterated that “we’ve been very clear, the president has been very clear, that this is a sporting event.” President Bush plans to attend the opening ceremony.Chinese officials have rejected attempts at pressure but still agreed this week to send a battalion of engineers to Darfur, a step Rice lauded.And despite Beijing’s insistence that its foreign policy remains rooted in opposition to meddling in other nations’ internal affairs, it appears ready to open itself up for human rights scrutiny, albeit within limits.Rice raised three human rights cases with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.Those were the arrest of Hu Jia, one of China’s most prominent political dissidents; the jailing of Jude Shao, a China-born U.S. businessman who is serving a 15-year sentence on tax evasion, and the case of Shi Tao, who is serving a 10-year sentence for sending information about a government crackdown to an overseas Web site.Even as China has sought to improve its image in the run-up to the games, human rights groups have accused Beijing of failing to improve freedoms for its citizens and media in line with its Olympic promises in 2001.Just Tuesday, a Chinese activist in Shanghai said an activist lawyer who was beaten and harassed several times in recent days had been taken away by police again. Human Rights in China said the man apparently was detained because of recent advice he gave to Shanghai downtown residents who have been evicted to make room for large development projects, and for an interview he gave the Epoch Times, a U.S.-based newspaper linked to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.Hollywood director Steven Spielberg recently quit as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of the August games, accusing China of still not doing enough to press for peace in Darfur.Even as Yang repeated the non-interference stance on Tuesday, he announced that Beijing is ready to resume a human rights dialogue with the United States that China broke off in 2004.Rice said she was pleased and a date would be set soon.”That’s something that we have been trying to do for some time,” she said.

WASHINGTON It’s a Herculean task: revamping a financial regulatory system dating back to the Civil War to deal with 21st century crises imperiling the country.Under an ambitious Bush administration plan, the Federal Reserve would take on the unwieldy role of uber cop in charge of financial market stability. Other regulatory agencies could see their influence diminished.The proposal won’t fix the host of economic and financial problems that threatens to plunge the United States into a deep recession, but it might help guard against future troubles. It would take years and a lot of political wrangling - in Congress, on Wall Street, in statehouses and elsewhere - to implement all the changes envisioned.Yet, the initiative, formally announced Monday, casts a fresh spotlight on the best way to protect the country from financial catastrophes in an intricate web of complex, often-changing financial products and the wide array of financial players using them in the United States and beyond. That debate probably will take center stage in the next president’s administration.—Stocks gain on last day of quarterNEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street managed a moderate gain in the final session of a dismal first quarter Monday, but stock prices and the major indexes still ended the first three months of 2007 with massive losses, the casualties of the still continuing credit crisis. The Standard %26 Poor’s 500 index, the benchmark for many widely held investments such as mutual funds, suffered a loss for the quarter of nearly 10 percent.The blip upward came from a better than expected reading in the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index, which is considered a precursor to the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing survey on Tuesday. The index rose to 48.2 in March from 44.5 a month earlier; economists had been expecting a reading of 47.3, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Though the number topped forecasts, a figure below 50 nonetheless indicates a contraction in manufacturing activity.The market’s reaction, however, was likely not as enthusiastic as it might seem from Monday’s gains by the major indexes. Price movements tend to be skewed when volume is as light as it was Monday.It was a difficult quarter on Wall Street, with financial companies’ ongoing credit market losses and the flagging economy wiping out many investors’ appetite for stocks. While the market saw a number of up days during the quarter, the overall trend was sharply lower, with reports of asset write-downs and shaky financial companies pummeling the market - in particular, the near-collapse of Bear Stearns %26 Cos. in mid-March.—Pernod Ricard buys maker of AbsolutSTOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Spirits group Pernod Ricard SA is adding Swedish flavor to a liquor cabinet stacked with Scotch whisky, French champagne and Cuban rum with its $8.34 billion purchase of the state-owned maker of Absolut vodka.The company said Monday it was delighted to add the premium vodka brand to its assortment of drinks, after the Swedish government accepted its bid for Absolut’s parent company, Vin %26 Sprit.The Swedish government celebrated the higher-than-expected price tag for Vin %26 Sprit, but investors were less exuberant, sending shares in France-based Pernod Ricard down 4.3 percent to $103.03 in Paris.Sweden said it selected the Pernod Ricard bid on Sunday over three other offers, by U.S.-based Fortune Brands Inc., Bermuda-based Bacardi Ltd. and an investment group controlled by Sweden’s Wallenberg family.—Less corn could mean higher food pricesWASHINGTON (AP) - From chicken nuggets to corn flakes, food prices at grocery stores and dinner tables could be headed even higher as farmers cut back on the land they’re planting in corn this spring.Corn prices already are high, and a drop in supply should keep them rising. Combine that with the huge demand for corn-based ethanol fuel - and higher energy costs for transporting food - and consumers are likely to see their food bills going up and up.Farmers are now expected to plant 86 million acres of corn this year, the Department of Agriculture predicted Monday, down 8 percent from last year, which was the highest since World War II.Corn is almost everywhere you look in the U.S. food supply. Poultry, beef and pork companies use it to feed their animals. High fructose corn syrup is used in soft drinks and many other foods, including lunch meats and salad dressings. Corn is often an ingredient in breads, peanut butter, oatmeal and potato chips.—Merck, Schering-Plough sink on VytorinNEW YORK (AP) - Shares of Merck %26 Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. fell to record lows Monday, as analysts warned new clinical data would cause sales of their blockbuster cholesterol drug Vytorin to fall further.The companies market Vytorin through a joint venture, but earlier this year, partial results from a clinical study showed that it was no more effective at limiting plaque buildup than Merck’s Zocor, a drug that is already available in generic form. Full results of that study were released Sunday.Vytorin is a combination of Zocor and Schering-Plough’s drug Zetia.Schering-Plough shares plunged as low as $14, touching their lowest levels since August 1996. Merck shares fell as low as $36.82, their lowest since June 2006.Leading physicians are now recommending the use of older drugs called statins before putting patients on Vytorin. Many physicians had prescribed Vytorin in lieu of higher doses of statins because of what some said was an undue fear of side effects.— HUD chief resigns amid criminal probeWASHINGTON (AP) - HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, his tenure tarnished by allegations of political favoritism and a criminal investigation, announced his resignation Monday amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.He leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions about whether he tilted the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward Republican contractors and cronies.The move comes at a shaky time for the economy when soaring mortgage foreclosures imperil the nation’s credit markets.Some Congressional Democrats had pushed for Jackson to leave.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said HUD will be called on to work with Congress on assisting refinancing for borrowers faced with imminent foreclosure.—Oil prices slide, retail gas hits recordNEW YORK (AP) - Prices surged at the gas pump, hitting a new record Monday even as crude oil accelerated its slide amid a broad-based commodities sell-off.The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded rose to $3.287, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices were highest in Hawaii and California, where the average price topped $3.60 a gallon.Gasoline prices are expected to keep rising as the summer driving season brings with it greater demand for the fuel. Last year, prices peaked in May before backtracking; with gasoline already at a record it will like only continue its advance.If crude oil prices, which set records of their own during March continue their advance, that will also add to the cost of gasoline at the pump.On Monday, however, light, sweet crude for May delivery dropped $4.04 to settle at $101.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, adding to a decline of nearly $2 a barrel on Friday. Even so, prices finished the first three months of the year 5.8 percent higher than where they started; crude set a record of $111.80 in March before giving up ground.—Citi splits consumer banking, card unitsNEW YORK (AP) - Citigroup named a veteran retail banker Monday to head its North American consumer banking unit, splitting it off from its credit-card business as Citi struggles to become profitable again after suffering its biggest quarterly loss in its 196-year history.The latest move is the biggest sign yet that CEO Vikram Pandit, appointed in December, wants to fix Citi’s major parts rather than sell them off to raise cash - at least for now.It also shows what steps Pandit would take to attract more consumers to Citi’s retail banking unit.Citi’s worst problems are in its investment banking segment, which made huge losing bets on the mortgage industry. But its bread-and-butter business of lending to and collecting deposits from average people has also been underwhelming shareholders.Citi is ubiquitous throughout the United States, but in recent years has lost customers to rival banks such as JPMorgan Chase %26 Co. and Wachovia Corp.—Major indexes rise, commodities slip as quarter endsOn the last day of the quarter, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 46.49, or 0.38 percent, to 12,262.89.Broader stock indicators also rose. The S%26P 500 index advanced 7.48, or 0.57 percent, to 1,322.70, and the Nasdaq composite index rose 17.92, or 0.79 percent, to 2,279.10.Light, sweet crude for May delivery dropped $4.04 to settle at $101.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, adding to a decline of nearly $2 a barrel on Friday. Even so, prices finished the first three months of the year 5.8 percent higher than where they started; crude set a record of $111.80 in March before giving up ground.In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 5.58 cents to settle at $3.0492 a gallon, while gasoline futures sank 10.07 cents to settle at $2.6163 a gallon. Brent crude futures fell $3.47 to settle at $100.30 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

LAS VEGAS Sprint Nextel Corp. on Tuesday said it is betting heavily on a touch-screen phone that appears to be the closest thing the U.S. market has seen to Apple Inc.’s vaunted iPhone.The Samsung Instinct will be available in June for a yet undetermined price, Sprint announced at CTIA Wireless, a cell-phone industry trade show in Las Vegas. Executives hinted that the price would be substantially lower than the $399 for the cheapest iPhone.Sprint, which has been losing subscribers, will spend $150 million to advertise the Instinct when it launches, compared with $30 million for a typical product introduction, according to David Owens, the company’s director of devices.Like the iPhone, the Instinct lacks a keypad and has just a few buttons. Most of the functions are accessed by touching the screen.A few touch-screen phones appeared on the U.S. market last holiday season, after the iPhone’s debut in June.Verizon Wireless launched the LG Voyager, which has an exterior touch screen and folds out to reveal a non-touch screen paired with a keyboard. Sprint introduced the Touch by HTC, a slim pad with only a touch screen.Both phones were hampered by the lack of software designed specifically for a touch screen. The Voyager dealt with that by adding a keyboard. The Touch grafted some touch-friendly features on to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system, which is designed for smart phones that either lack a touch screen or are intended for use with a stylus. Some functions on the Touch are hard or impossible to use by tapping with the fingers alone.The Instinct is based on a Samsung phone that’s already available under different names, and with different software, in South Korea and Europe. Sprint commissioned its own software from European design house Icon Mobile.”We took a more active part than we ever have” in a phone’s development, Owens said. “This was designed from the ground up to be a touch-screen phone.”The software is based on Java, a commonly used programming language that should make it easy to develop applications for the phone.The Instinct will have a few features the iPhone lacks. For one, it will be the first consumer phone in the U.S. to use EV-DO Rev. A, the fastest cellular broadband technology available on the Sprint and Verizon Wireless networks.AT%26T Inc. has phones that use a competing technology with equivalent speeds, but the iPhone is not one of them: It runs on a comparatively slow network, supplemented by Wi-Fi access.The Instinct also contains a Global Positioning System chip, for location applications. The iPhone lacks one, but it can use cellular and Wi-Fi signals to determine an approximate position.The Instinct’s screen measures 3.1 inches diagonally, compared with the iPhone’s 3.5 inches.The Instinct won’t be able to take input from more than one finger at a time: The iPhone’s characteristic “pinch to zoom out, spread to zoom in” feature won’t work. Sprint compensates for this by using the phone’s motion sensor. In a demonstration of a prototype, tilting the phone while holding a button made a Web page scroll.

Look closely. Just above the signature on your Idaho driver’s license, you’ll see a faint image of an old-style barn surrounded by rolling hills. That barn, a real place and part of a working farm on Blacks Creek Road west of Boise, is also in the running to become one of Ada County’s six “County Treasures” for 2008.If you have favorite historic sites in Ada County, particularly in unincorporated areas of the county, there’s still time to submit your nominations to the county’s Historic Preservation Council. Nominations are due by Monday. The council, made up of volunteers appointed by the county commissioners, includes experts in archaeology and preservation. Each year since 2003, the group has named six “treasures” - sites significant to Ada County’s rural past, or to the history of county government or even to the county’s physical infrastructure. The list in the past has included structures like the New York Canal’s Callopy Gates near Kuna. Council member and history fan Al Bolin said the gates, named after a worker on the Oregon Shortline Railroad that used to run nearby, haven’t been used in decades. Once, they protected the area from floods by diverting water into Indian Creek for natural drainage. Leslie Toombs, a planner in the county’s development services department, said that so far this year, submissions are sparse. Sometimes, to compile its list of six sites, council members refer to a county survey taken in the late 1990s, when architectural historians traveled through the entire county, street-by-street, acre-by-acre, to identify important structures. “The idea was to document what is there because the county is changing so quickly,” Toombs said. “Sometimes we go out now to see the structures listed on the survey but find they’ve been torn down, or altered, and have lost their historic features.” Being designated a “county treasure” carries no legal weight when it comes to protecting historic buildings. “The county has no means of objecting to changes, or destruction,” Bolin said. “But the program recognizes surviving structures’ historic significance and the people who have been responsible for preserving them.” The winning properties share a special metal sign during the year and get immortalized on the county’s Web site. Bolin’s own favorite “treasures” were among last year’s winners - four structures that make up the once thriving village of Ustick around Ustick Road and Mumbarto Avenue: The former mercantile, bank, car repair/sugar beet processing plant and school building. The old Ustick School on Mumbarto Avenue, now apartments, still has its original coal furnace in the basement. “With Ustick, we were able to do kind of a theme,” Bolin said. “And given that Ustick Road is being widened to four lanes (between Cole and Five Mile roads, just west of the old Ustick townsite), this seemed like a good time to bring attention to the historic parts of the area.” Anna Webb: 377-6431