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FCC Spectrum Auction Bids Below Expectations on First Day
One day and two rounds into the long-awaited spectrum auction by the Federal Communications Commission, the highest bids total $2.78 billion, according to news reports. The auctioned frequencies could result in a new era for broadband wireless, unlocked handsets, and nationwide emergency communications. Five blocks of frequencies in the 700-MHz band went on auction Thursday, with 214 approved bidders ranging from telecommunications companies like Verizon Wireless and AT&T to newcomers like Google and Chevron USA to small, local companies. Observers have speculated that the auction could bring in $10 billion to $30 billion, but the top bidders are not yet known because the bids are secret until the end of the auction. The C and D Blocks Two blocks in particular have attracted a lot of attention in recent months, the C and D blocks. After months of lobbying for open-access rules by an alliance led by Google, the FCC had announced that the C block winner must allow the use of any compatible device or non-malicious software, assuming the minimum price was met. Although other open-access requests were not adopted, including a requirement that the winner make the bandwidth available on a wholesale basis to third-party resellers, the initially reluctant AT&T and Verizon Wireless now have declared their support for open networks. After the first day of bidding, the C block’s high bid was $1.24 billion. The open-devices provision requires that a minimum price of $4.7 billion be met. The D block would require that the winner allow public-safety agencies to use it in case of emergencies. The leading contender for that spectrum chunk had been Frontline Wireless, a startup which included former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, but that company recently announced it was ceasing operations because it was unable to complete its financing. The D block received a high bid of $472 million…

Virus Found in Some Best Buy Digital Frames
You can add to the growing list of things you need to do to keep your computer safe — scan the digital picture frame. Best Buy has confirmed that some units of its Insignia 10.4-inch Digital Picture Frame, purchased over the holidays, had a computer virus. Last weekend, the retailer noted an advisory from its private label, Insignia, which stated that “a limited number” of the frames, model number NS-DPF-10A, were “contaminated with a computer virus during the manufacturing process.” According to news reports, Best Buy is not recalling the frames, but it has pulled the remaining units. It said this was the only Insignia frame product affected, and the product has been discontinued. Precautionary Measure The company said that once it was informed of the contamination, it “immediately” withdrew the product from stores and Web sites “as a precautionary measure to protect our customers.” Best Buy did note that “some affected units” were purchased from either its brick-and-mortar stores or from the retailer’s Web site before the virus was detected. Best Buy reportedly learned of the infection after customer complaints, but there is no indication of how the virus was acquired during manufacturing, or what the consequences may have been for customers. The company pointed out that the virus can only get to a computer if the digital frame is connected. The frames connect to PCs as well as cameras so photos can be downloaded for display. But Best Buy said cameras, USB drives and memory cards cannot be infected by the virus. Use Up-to-Date Protection Even if a consumer does attach a contaminated frame to a computer via a USB cable, Best Buy said, any up-to-date antivirus software, such as Norton, McAfee or Trend Micro, should be able to detect and remove the infection. It added that the units contained “an older virus…

MacBook Air Draws Praise, But Criticism for Performance
The MacBook Air has landed — with mixed reviews. While some call the thinnest ultra-portable laptop the market has ever seen a boon for business travelers, others are doing benchmark testing that reveal the MacBook Air is slower than its sister laptops. MacBook Air measures 0.16 inches at its thinnest point, while its maximum thickness of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. MacBook Air boasts a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, and a trackpad with multi-touch gesture support so users can pinch, rotate and swipe. “Performance is obviously important to all users; however, the emphasis or the main feature of the MacBook Air is portability,” said Richard Shim, an analyst at IDC. “As a user, you have to understand that you are going to sacrifice certain key capabilities, but you are gaining thinness.” The Most Common Criticisms MacBook Air is powered by a 1.6-GHz or a 1.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. An optional 64GB solid-state drive contains no moving parts for added durability. MacBook Air users can buy the companion MacBook Air SuperDrive, a compact external drive, for $99. The SuperDrive is powered by MacBook Air’s USB port, eliminating the need to carry a separate power adapter. MacBook Air delivers up to five hours of battery life. And Apple’s Migration Assistant software lets users transfer files, applications and preferences from an old Mac to MacBook Air over a wireless network. Two of the most common criticisms of ultra-portable notebooks are the sacrifice of performance and features. Apple’s MacBook Air wins praise for overcomes some of the obstacles of previous ultra-portable machines. “Apple set a new…

Comet Dust a Bust for NASA Program
Microscopic dust particles collected from the tail of a comet are not what scientists expected them to be. NASA’s $212 million Stardust mission was designed to gather some of the raw material that formed the sun and planets and escaped to the cold outer reaches of the solar system before the sun was formed. Instead, the mission yielded material that was altered by the early sun and later thrown to the outskirts. “The hope was that Stardust would bring back some of this primitive, unaltered, pristine material,” said physicist Hope Ishii of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, lead author of a report in the Jan. 25 issue of Science. The pristine dust may have held clues to the birth of the solar system and perhaps to the origin of life itself. The Stardust spacecraft traveled 3 billion miles in seven years to the Kuiper belt, a ring of frozen objects beyond the planets, where it snatched some dust from the tail of Comet Wild 2 and sent it back to Earth in a capsule that landed in the Utah desert two years ago. It was the first mission to successfully return a sample to earth since the Apollo missions brought back moon rocks 35 years ago. More than 200 scientists around the world have been studying the tiny comet bits which are less than 100th the width of a human hair. The team at Livermore Lab, led by Ishii and co-author John Bradley, used a high-powered electron microscope to figure out what the bits are made of. But the precious cargo has fallen short of expectations. “The Wild 2 sample is looking a lot more like meteorite material from the asteroid belt,” Ishii said. In addition to the inner solar system particles they found, the sample is missing some of the telltale ingredients of early solar system material, or stardust, which are known from comet dust collected from Earth’s stratosphere over decades by…

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