US STOCKS-RIM's outlook, bank plan dismay weigh on futures

* RIM outlook weighs on techs;stock off before market open

* Dismay over U.S. financial rescue plan persists

* For up-to-the-minute market news, click [STXNEWS/US]

By Ellis Mnyandu

NEW YORK, Feb 11 (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures dropped on Wednesday as a disappointing financial outlook from Research In Motion (RIM.TO)(RIMM.O) added to concerns about the impact of the recession on consumer and business spending.

But aside from the tech sector unease, worries persisted about the failure of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday to instill confidence about a reworked plan to shore up the beleaguered financial sector.

Shares of RIM, the BlackBerry devices maker, dropped 6 percent to $53.58 before the bell, a slide that also weighed on other tech bellwethers, including Apple Inc (AAPL.O) , down 2 percent.

Investors were dismayed by the lack of detail on how the government will cleanse toxic assets burdening the banking system, triggering a sharp Wall Street sell-off and a nearly 14 percent slide in the KBW Bank Index .BKX on Tuesday.

"The market is headed lower because there's just no confidence," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Avalon Partners in New York.

"After the Geithner massacre, the likelihood of the market turning around in the short term is unlikely. The financial stability plan was nothing new. It still leaves the question of toxic assets, how you cleanse them, unanswered."

S&P 500 futures SPc1 fell 0.90 points and were about even with fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures DJc1 were unchanged, and Nasdaq 100 NDc1 futures declined 2.50 points.

Research In Motion said its fourth-quarter earnings and gross margin would be at the low end of its previous forecast range, even as subscriber additions topped expectations. For details, see [ID:nN11352604] (Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source : http://www.reuters.com/

Microsoft kills off public availability of Windows 7 beta

Microsoft has slammed the door shut on its Windows 7 beta download program, though anyone still keen to get their mitts on it can simply trundle along to Pirate Bay or similar for a copy.

The software giant put out a reminder late on Monday that those who wanted to play around with the beta, AKA build 7000, of its upcoming operating system had nearly run out of time to, at least officially, grab the download via Microsoft’s website.

However, those who began downloading the beta but haven’t yet completed the process were granted a little extension – they have until 9am PST on 12 February to finish the download.

Microsoft’s MSDN and TechNet developers will continue to have access to the code, but the public beta is no longer available, noted Redmond yesterday.

“If your download was interrupted, you can still finish it. And, you can still register for a product key or look up the key you've already gotten,” said MS on its Windows 7 download page.

The firm had originally put a limit of 2.5 million users for the public beta, but later offered unlimited downloads due to popular demand, only to then see its servers wilt under the pressure.

Meanwhile, alleged screenshots of what appears to be the latest build of Windows 7 have rocked up on the interwebs.

WinFuture.de is carrying screenshots that appear to show a 64-bit Enterprise edition of build 7032, which comes just days after build 7022 was leaked to torrent sites.

The Register asked Microsoft if, given the sudden abundance of new builds tipping up on torrent sites, customers can expect to see the release candidate of Windows 7 land as soon as April.

Unfortunately, at time of writing the company hadn’t responded to our request for comment. We’ll update you when it does.

Microsoft recently reiterated it would not bring out a second beta for Windows 7 but instead would move straight to the release candidate stage. A decision that once again fuelled speculation that Redmond was in a hurry to get the OS out to manufacturers and customers. ®

Source : http://www.theregister.co.uk/

Kindle's New Challenger Brings E-Books to iPhones

Amazon's new E Ink-powered Kindle 2 is all the rage right now, but a Canadian bookseller is confident it can give you the same experience on your smartphone, and without the hefty pricetag.

Shortcovers -- occasionally touted by its makers as "the Kindle Killer" -- is set to launch in the coming days as an app for the iPhone, the BlackBerry, and the Android operating system. So can it really live up to its king-sized claims? Read on and decide for yourself.

An Expanded E-Book Reader

Shortcovers is owned and operated by Indigo Books & Music, the largest book retailer in Canada. While smartphone-based e-book readers have been available in places like Apple's App Store for a while, it's Shortcovers' close ties to the publishing industry that set it apart from the pack. Because of the company's connections with major publishers, it's been able to secure the rights to brand new books that are often tough (if not impossible) to find on other services.

Like Kindle, Shortcovers will let you read the first chapter of any book free of charge. From there, the app offers you two options: You can either buy a chapter at a time, or opt to purchase the whole book. Single chapters are expected to cost around 99 cents a pop, while full books will range between $10 and $20, on average. If you decide you want to get a book physically shipped, you can do that, too.

Shortcovers says it'll have about 50,000 full books available upon launch, with another 200,000 individual chapters and excerpts in its library. Only a third of the titles will be public domain or copyright-expired works. The rest will be current commercial offerings.

Shortcovers plans to offer news and magazine articles, short stories, and blog posts in addition to the book content.

Kindle Comparisons

Compared to the Kindle, Shortcovers comes up a little short with the bells and whistles. You won't find a built-in dictionary, for example, nor will you be able to highlight text. There's no high-tech E Ink to make the pages look like real paper. The program's advantage, though, is its convenience: It's already right there in your pocket, so there's no need to tote around a second device. Fittingly, then, much of Shortcovers' publicity thus far has focused on the application's ability to let you read on-the-go -- a chapter here, a chapter there, wherever you happen to be.

As far as navigation, Shortcovers uses your phone's standard interface. With the iPhone, for example, you click onto your chapter of choice in a contents list, then scroll down the screen just like you do in other apps. Shortcovers allows you to adjust font size and choose from either standard or landscape mode on the phone. And, like the Kindle, it'll remember where you leave off in a book when you shut down, then bring you back to the same page when you return. You can go back and forth between reading on your phone and reading on the Shortcovers Web site with automatic synchronization as well.

The program offers some interesting social features, too, including a rating and sharing system, a tagging function, and a set of mashup tools in which you can build your own literary mixes. You'll even be able to upload your own writing and add it in.

The Long and Short of It

Shortcovers is scheduled to launch in the U.S. in late February, then in Canada shortly thereafter. Company exec Mike Serbinis talks more about the app and how it's come into existence in the following video interview with USA Today, conducted on the floor of last month's Consumer Electronics Show.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com/

Google's Grid Meter Looks to Save Homeowners Some Green

DailyTech previously covered IBM's efforts to release a "green meter" which monitored the amount of electricity that small businesses use and equating it to green house gas emissions.  Now Google has joined IBM and others by releasing its own entry into the burgeoning grid meter market.

The new service from Google is called PowerMeter and it's free to both home and commercial users.  While this sounds great, there's one significant catch -- PowerMeter relies on others to provide the information it needs.  Google is hoping that makers of home electronics and appliances will add hardware which will feed the service information wirelessly.  It also needs utilities to provide it with grid metrics.

Kirsten Olsen Cahill, a program manager at Google.org, the company’s corporate philanthropy arm which developed the service, states, "We can’t build this product all by ourselves.  We depend on a whole ecosystem of utilities, device makers and policies that would allow consumers to have detailed access to their home energy use and make smarter energy decisions."

The new service, if it gains a hardware foothold, will offer homeowners their first chance to participate in a smarter grid.  Google is among the firms leading such efforts which seek to use existing resources more efficiently.

The service and others in the future may interface with the chips inside devices such as washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers to give users an ever-changing visual display of how much money it will cost to use the device at that particular time of the day.  Electricity charges are tied to demand, something most consumers never pay much attention to when it comes to power usage.  By using devices at times when demand is lower, users could potentially save a great deal of money, depending on their utility's policies.

Describes Rick Sergel, chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group that sets operating standards for the grid in an interview with the New York Times, "They’ve been putting a chip in your dishwasher for a long time that would allow you to run it any time you want.  (These services) provide an opportunity to create dancing partners that will help the system balance itself."

The new meter could also be very useful for plug-in electric vehicles.  With GM and others preparing to unleash a fleet of electric plug-ins on the streets, advanced grid meters could allow for billing, at local recharging stations and could also help users and utilities work together to figure out the optimal time for daily recharges.  If the user leaves the car plugged in, the smart meter would help the power companies figure out the lowest demand time of the day and recharge the car then.  This would save the user money, while helping the utility by reducing the stress on its networks.

The new stimulus package which has almost passed through Congress should help further finance efforts such as Google's.  It includes $4.4B USD for "smart" power technologies, with money earmarked specifically for 4 million meters.  James Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has some jurisdiction over transmission lines says the efforts will not only improve the grid, but will also create jobs.  He states, "You can hire a lot of people to install smart meters."

Source : http://www.dailytech.com