YouTube announced Monday that it has partnered with the Pulitzer Center to create a journalism contest designed to unearth the best news videographers.

The winner will receive a $10,000 grant for travel abroad and the opportunity to work with the Pulitzer Center. When the field of contestants gets down to five, they will be given Sony cameras to work with.

Contestants have until October 5 to submit news clips three-minutes long or less that must focus on stories largely overlooked or ignored by traditional media. The Pulitzer Center will judge the competition and plans to trim the contestants down to 10 finalists following the initial round.

Google is working with a titan of traditional journalism to help promote citizen journalism.

YouTube viewers will eventually choose the winner.

The company has been talking about the capability for months, and it recently demonstrated an application that will turn Verizon phones into a remote controls for the Fios TV service. The application is expected to be commercially available in the next three months.

The handset remote control application will only work with Wi-Fi enabled handsets and will use a Wi-Fi network instead of the Verizon cellular network to access the Fios service. Wi-Fi is only available on a select handsets from Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Communications is getting ready to launch a new feature that allows its Fios TV customers to interact with their sets using their Verizon Wireless cell phones, according to a story published by Dow Jones News service.

These five are only the latest to join as the emerging LTE technology gains momentum. In November at the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau, the GSM Association threw its support behind LTE. A few weeks later, Verizon Wireless, the No. 2 wireless operator in the U.S., said it would use LTE for its 4G wireless network. AT&T, the largest mobile operator in the U.S., also has indicated it will use LTE.

The largest handset maker in the world, Nokia, was joined by Sony Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, and NextWave Wireless. Part of the agreement on LTE means the companies will agree to license their patents “on fair and reasonable terms,” which means keeping royalties for handset patents below 10 percent of the handset sale price.

News.com’s Marguerite Reardon contributed to this report.

Several more companies on Monday agreed to sign their names to the Long Term Evolution (LTE) framework for the next generation of wireless technology.

“Today’s announcement is a step towards establishing more predictable and transparent licensing costs in a manner that enables faster adoption of new technologies,” Nokia’s Ilkka Rahnasto said in a statement.

People watching online video in the U.S. now watch more than three hours per month, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

In February, video usage was 169 minutes on average, but in March, it rose 13 percent to 191 minutes, Nielsen said.

Since the number of minutes per user is increasing at a faster rate than the number of videos per user, that means people are gradually moving to longer and longer videos–from 2.4 minutes in February to 2.7 minutes in March.

Also growing fast: the total video streams viewed increased 9 percent from 8.9 billion to 9.7 billion. And the number of videos per user grew 7 percent from about 70 to 74.

Google’s YouTube continues to dominate the category, with 5.5 billion videos and 89 million people using the service in the U.S., Nielsen said. Hulu is in second place with 348 million videos and 9 million users. Yahoo is in third place with 232 million videos, but it’s got more users than Hulu, about 25 million users.

It’s available as either a package with the Intel 945GC Express chipset (which includes built-in graphics) or as part of the Little Falls2 motherboard, Intel said.

Atom 330 pricing information and data sheets for customers will go live Monday, according to Intel.

Other specifications include a core clock speed of 1.6GHz, 1MB of level-2 cache, and support for DDR2 667MHz memory.

Note: the price was originally stated as $40. Intel lists the price as of September 21, 2008 at $43.

At 8 watts, the chip has a higher power envelope than single-core Atom processors. The N230 is rated at 4 watts, while Atom processors for mobile devices such as the Eee PC and Acer Aspire have a thermal envelope of 2 watts.

(Credit:
Tranquil PC)

“This is not for Netbooks,” an Intel spokesperson cautioned.

But caveats aside, computer makers will do with the chip as they please. And a few may venture to put the chip into a netbook or notebook design. One of the more compelling reasons would be the 8W thermal envelope–far below the standard 35W power envelope of mainstream Intel-based notebooks.

The single life for Atom is over–or at least one version. Intel said it has begun shipments of the first dual-core version of the Atom processor.

Tranquil PC T7-HSG Home Server uses the dual-core Atom 330

Update on September 21 at 9:10 a.m. with pricing correction.

The chipmaker indicated at the Intel Developer Forum in August that it would be shipping the dual-core chip this month.

Tranquil PC, a U.K.-based PC supplier, has already been taking pre-orders for a home server based on the Intel Atom 330.

Another reason is price. At $43 in 1,000-unit quantities, this makes it the least expensive dual-core Intel processor, along with the dual-core Celeron processor, also priced at $43.

The power-efficient processor will be targeted at Atom-based desktops called nettops. Currently, Intel offers the single-core Atom N230 processor for this category of small desktops.

eNotify will officially launch as a free
iPhone app later this year and will be followed by additional iterations that will be compatible with any Web-enabled mobile device soon thereafter.

(Credit:
OneSite)

OneSite, a company that works with businesses to help them create their own social networks for customers, on Monday announced that it’s coming to mobile devices in the form of eNotify. This product, the company’s first mobile solution, will provide enterprises already deploying OneSite’s offerings a mobile presence. Members of the communities will get a mobile place to find out when friends are online and when special promotions or events are happening.

Aside from updating users about online friends and the news, eNotify can be used by organizations to deliver targeted brand messages to the app’s users. According to the company, GPS mapping technology can be employed by retailers and brand marketers to inform users about new product launches and special promotions in their particular area and use the mapping feature to pinpoint where the promotions are taking place.

“Events will be a major part of the application,” Martin said. “Event promoters, like radio and TV stations, entertainment venues, and others, can use eNotify to send out instant updates on events happening at a certain time, in a specific location, and to only those subscribers within proximity of the venue, if desired.”

eNotify will let you check friend status and find events in your area.

“eNotify essentially extends the social network community platform beyond the computer by enabling users to follow the latest developments on their mobile device,” said Thad Martin, vice president of strategy and business development at OneSite. “It goes beyond traditional syndication tools like RSS by providing users a mechanism to interact with the content they receive by immediately posting a response or forwarding it to others, for example, just like they would from their Web browser.”

eNotify will be integrated into OneSite’s current social offerings, but some companies may need to pay an additional fee to have access to the service. That’s probably bad news for OneSite’s partners: current plans start at $49.95 per month for a bare-bones social-networking package offering features like groups and forums, but quickly skyrocket to $5,000 per month, plus a $75,000 deployment charge if they want full Web integration.

Long-term support means the company releases bug fixes, security patches, and other updates for five years on the server version and three years on the desktop version, time frames more palatable to businesses than the 18-month life spans of other Ubuntu versions.

On the desktop, Hardy Heron now can be installed directly into the Windows file system so people can try it without having to reformat their hard drives. The software also deals better with online music and photo sites such as Flickr, he added. However, because of an upgrade timing disconnect, fans of the KDE user interface software will have to make do with only 18-month support for the older KDE 3.5 or an unsupported developer version based on the new KDE 4.0.

Canonical also works on unbranded Linux for consumer-electronics companies, though Shuttleworth expects they’ll eventually opt for something like Ubuntu. “The hardware vendors are leaping at the ability to do their own operating system. I believe over time they’ll tire of the costs and risks of doing that,” he said.

On the server, the new version has support for KVM virtualization built in and comes in a stripped-down version called JEOS (Just Enough Operating System) for software “appliances” that run on KVM or VMware. The company has been working on better hardware support–though it no longer supports Sun Microsystems’ Sparc processors, Shuttleworth said. Also included are better integration with Windows’ Active Directory for corporate users and a certified, downloadable version of Java software.

“The desktop contributes more to Canonical’s bottom line than the server,” he said. The server business is still Canonical’s primary focus for support revenue. But the company has been getting paid for desktop and consumer-electronics work, he said.

“On the desktop, we see strong demand for custom engineering and assurance programs as people look to Canonical to indemnify them against potential copyright or patent issues,” Shuttleworth said.

Still not profitable
Shuttleworth, who funded Ubuntu with wealth from his sale of an earlier start-up to VeriSign, cares about business success, but he’s also willing to continue spending to help Canonical grow into new areas–such as the mobile version that’s beginning in earnest with Hardy Heron.

Regarding engineering work, he added that Canonical has a tight partnership with Intel, an “extensive on-site engineering relationship where we integrate support for latest platforms.”

“Ubuntu will require continuing investment from me and from others. We are on a trajectory that will make the company sustainable,” Shuttleworth said. But he wouldn’t say when he envisions profitability: “I’d rather not be on the hook…I keep finding additional areas to invest in.”

“This is our most significant release ever,” he said in an interview.

Correction 8 p.m. PT: I included the wrong duration for regular Ubuntu releases. It’s 18 months.

The reason so much weight rests on the skinny legs of Hardy Heron is because it’s only the second Linux product from the company to come with long-term support. The first LTS version of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, arrived when the company was still comparatively immature and unknown.

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday, and Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth isn’t being shy and retiring about it.

Ordinarily I avoid publishing such marketing superlatives, but Shuttleworth is right. Hardy Heron, also called version 8.04 for its April 2008 launch date, is Canonical’s proof-in-the-pudding moment that will show whether the company can grow beyond its subsidized roots into a self-sustaining business. Ubuntu has a strong following among Linux enthusiasts, but it’s Red Hat and Novell that still dominate the commercial Linux market.

What’s a surprise to Shuttleworth, though, is that the desktop Linux is financially more significant than the version for servers.

One of Firefox’s competitive advantages is an active community, not just the open-source coders who help Mozilla with the core programming but also vocal fans, translators, testers, and programmers who write add-ons. That community has been helpful in places like Poland, where Firefox has nearly 50 percent market share, and Indonesia, where it has the majority, Beltzner said.

“We’ve added technology we think upgrades the Web itself,” Beltzner said.

Though 64-bit Windows is now arriving, “It’s not one of our supported-tier platforms,” Beltzner said.

Firefox also plans to improve performance in Namoroka, including start-up time and user interface responsiveness.

Most Firefox add-ons should move easily to 64-bit versions, Beltzner said, unless they include binary software compiled specifically for 32-bit operating stems.

Also in the future is a 64-bit version of Firefox for
Mac OS X. “We have people working on that now, a 64-bit version on Mac OS X. The majority of that is supposed to be done by end of quarter,” Sicore said. Again, loose deadline is for prototype work, not a production version.

Mozilla squeezed in a post-beta-4, pre-RC1 Firefox update last week, and the official release candidate 1 will get mostly a handful of changes to correctly handle some unusual JavaScript situations correctly, Beltzner said. And because of Firefox’s extensive beta-testing network–800,000 people use the beta versions–Mozilla expects that RC1 will be the sole release candidate.

The browser, code-named Shiretoko, began its life as a modest 3.1 upgrade. But as Mozilla’s ambitions expanded and other browsers such as Google Chrome exerted competitive pressure, the new Firefox was promoted to version 3.5 and its planned ship date slid back several months. You can grab the Firefox 3.5 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

What’s after Firefox 3.5?
Mozilla has a number of improvements in mind for the successor to Firefox 3.5, code-named Namoroka, and Beltzner said programmers are eager to get 3.5 out so they can get cracking.

Next up for Electrolysis will be a broader isolation technology that separates the processes of tabs, he said. “The goal for that is somewhere around the end of year in prototype form,” Sicore said.

One is a process isolation technology called Electrolysis that should help protect Firefox from crashes, said Damon Sicore, director of platform engineering. Competing browsers’ process isolation can help keep the browser running even when one page or plug-in misbehaves, but Firefox today crashes in its entirety, employing the less graceful approach of trying to reopen the pages upon restart.

Mozilla plans to issue a release candidate for
Firefox 3.5 on Friday and the final version by the end of the month, Firefox director Mike Beltzner said Tuesday.

Update 12 p.m. PDT: Other features in Firefox 3.5 include support for Web workers, which can enable browser-based applications to run in the background; personas to more easily provide themes; downloadable fonts; better built-in graphics technology through CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) standards; the ability to delete browsing traces for a recent period of time or specific Web site; and built-in support for the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) technology for better communications between a browser and server.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

The first phase of Electrolysis will be to isolate plug-ins such as Adobe Systems’ Flash so a problem won’t crash the whole browser, Sicore said. “It’s going faster than we expected. By the end of July we hope to have a prototype,” a separate development version of Firefox where the technology can be tested, he said.

“Our growth has been steady and strong throughout the past year,” Beltzner said.

But Mozilla has a big leg up on other IE rivals. Based on the number of machines that ping Mozilla’s servers, the organization estimates there are 300 million Firefox users worldwide–a major increase from the 175 million a year ago when Firefox 3.0 was released amid “Download Day” promotional fanfare. According to NetApplications, Firefox has 22.5 percent share, a number that Beltzner said corresponds reasonably well with Firefox’s own measurements.

Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system is fully 64-bit, including
Safari, and Apple boasts that JavaScript runs much faster in the 64-bit version

Firefox trails only Internet Explorer in market share, and Mozilla says its use is growing fast.

“We’re aiming the final release around the end of the month,” Beltzner said.

Firefox 3.5 comes with a spate of new features–5,000 total, according to Mozilla. Among the major ones: built-in video; local storage to enable richer Web applications that can work even with no network connection; a private browsing mode; geolocation to aid Web pages that can benefit from knowing a user’s location; and faster performance loading pages and executing Web-based JavaScript programs.

Firefox in second place
Firefox broke the lock Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had on the browser market, and now there’s abundant competition. Apple’s new Safari 4 works both on Mac OS X and Windows, Google’s Chrome is advancing the performance agenda, and Opera is trying to advance the state of Web computing.

This list is neither chronological nor exhaustive. It leaves out recent departures such as dealmaker Bruce Jaffe and strategy executive Charles Fitzgerald.

Jeff Raikes

Who’s in:

Ray Ozzie

Kevin Turner
Turner has also been around for a while now, having been hired as chief operating officer since August 2005, when he was hired away from Wal-Mart Stores.

He now heads up Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher efforts, within Kevin Johnson’s Platform and Services unit. His domain includes the former Aquantive ad engines, Microsoft’s homegrown AdCenter, as well as mobile acquisition ScreenTonic and in-game ad engine Massive.

Critics note that, under his watch, Windows projects were often late and had to have planned features taken out to meet already delayed deadlines. Steven Sinofsky, now in charge of Windows engineering, was known at the Office unit for getting releases out on time and staying “on message” in public.

Stephen Elop

Bill Gates

Steve Berkowitz
The former Ask CEO, who joined Microsoft in April 2006, has been pushing the software giant to think less geeky with its Windows Live services.

Ozzie’s hiring has been heralded by Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer, but we’ve heard precious little from him in recent months. He spoke at just two major public events last year–the company’s Mix trade show as well as Microsoft’s financial analysts’ meeting.

Ray Ozzie
Ozzie’s been there since 2005, but his influence has continued to grow. He’s now chief software architect, Gates’ old role, and in charge of the company’s Live services push.

Jeff Raikes
Definitely a key part of Microsoft’s old guard, Raikes is a onetime Microsoft sales chief, who, in recent years, has been responsible for building the Office franchise and expanding into other areas, such as business intelligence and unified communications.

His is the impact most likely to be felt across the company. Even as the company has grown, there was still the notion of a “Bill review” where a project’s technical merits were discussed, as well as his twice-yearly “Think Week” where employees submitted papers on new ideas for the company.

However, one financial analyst characterized him as a “job-hopper.” In his most recent job, Elop was at Juniper for just one year.

Who’s out:

Stephen Elop
Elop, who was hired on Thursday to replace Raikes, will bring a number of relevant experiences when he joins Microsoft later this month. His telecommunications experience at Juniper Networks could help on the unified communications side, while his experience at Adobe Systems could help Microsoft with its Silverlight push.

Steve Berkowitz

Brian McAndrews

Bill Gates
OK. Well, the Microsoft founder isn’t leaving the software maker completely. But he did cede his chief software architect title and plans to shift to part-time work in July.

Kevin Turner

There have been a fair number of changes at Microsoft HQ of late, so we wanted to provide a program for those keeping score at home. Here are some of the top executives who have joined the company or are leaving the executive ranks.

However, the company’s search share has continued to fall, and Berkowitz saw his fiefdom scaled back as part of a March 2007 reorganization. An insider said he may not be the right fit even for his present role.

Jim Allchin
Allchin, who headed the Windows unit, left Microsoft in January 2007, the day after Vista shipped. Allchin had a well-earned reputation as a perfectionist and tireless champion for quality and user experience.

Jim Allchin

Raikes, who joined Microsoft from Apple in 1981, is giving up the reins of the business software division at the end of the month, but will remain at the company until September.

Instead, I’ve focused on a few key folks who have left or are leaving shortly who have the biggest impact in Redmond, as well as some key outsiders Microsoft has recruited in recent years.

Brian McAndrews
Seen as a rising star within Microsoft, McAndrews was CEO of Aquantive, which Microsoft snapped up last year for $6 billion.

Titled “XBM image uninitialized memory reading”–Mozilla says a bug in the XBM decoder allowed random small chunks of uninitialized memory to be read. The company credits Billy Hoffman with reporting this vulnerability. Firefox 3 is not affected by this issue.

MFSA 2008-44: Moderate

Titled “UTF-8 URL stack buffer overflow”–Mozilla says “a specially crafted UTF-8 URL in a hyperlink…could overflow a stack buffer and allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code.” The company credits Mozilla security researcher Justin Schuh and Tom Cross of the IBM X-Force and Peter Williams of IBM Watson Labs for reporting this vulnerability. Firefox 3 is not affected by this issue.

MFSA 2008-45: Low

The updates are pushed automatically to current users and will take effect the next time the browser is restarted. Current users of Firefox 2 are encouraged to upgrade by manually downloading Firefox 3 as soon as possible.

MFSA 2008-42: Critical

Titled “Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.2/1.8.1.17)”–Mozilla says under certain circumstances memory corruption could be exploited to run arbitrary code. The company credits Drew Yao of Apple Product Security and David Maciejak for reporting the vulnerability.

Titled “BOM characters stripped from JavaScript before execution”–Mozilla says certain BOM characters are stripped from JavaScript code before it is executed and could lead to code being executed. The company credits Microsoft developer Dave Reed and security researcher Gareth Heyes for reporting the vulnerability.

MFSA 2008-40: Low

Titled “resource: traversal vulnerabilities”–Mozilla says the restrictions imposed on local HTML files could be bypassed using the resource: protocol, allowing an attacker to read information about the system and prompt the victim to save the information in a file. The company credits Mozilla developer Boris Zbarsky and Georgi Guninski for reporting this vulnerability.

Titled “Privilege escalation using feed preview page and XSS flaw”–Mozilla says this fixes “a series of vulnerabilities in feedWriter which allow scripts from page content to run with chrome privileges.” The company credits Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 for reporting this vulnerability. Firefox 3 is not affected by this issue.

MFSA 2008-43: Moderate

MFSA 2008-38: High

Titled “Forced mouse drag”–Mozilla says the vulnerability allows an attacker to move the content window while the mouse is being clicked, causing an item to be dragged rather than clicked-on possibly forcing a user to download a file or perform other drag-and-drop actions. The company credits Mozilla developer Paul Nickerson for reporting this variant of a click-hijacking vulnerability discovered in Internet Explorer by Liu Die Yu.

MFSA 2008-41: Critical

MFSA 2008-39: Critical

Mozilla released
Firefox 2.0.017 and Firefox 3.0.2, updated versions of its browser, on Wednesday to address a dozen security vulnerabilities. Four are ranked by Mozilla as critical, one high, two moderate, and the rest of the patches are considered low priority. About half do not apply to Firefox 3.

Titled “nsXMLDocument::OnChannelRedirect() same-origin violation”–Mozilla says the same-origin check in nsXMLDocument::OnChannelRedirect() could be bypassed and could be used to execute JavaScript in the context of a different Web site. The company credits Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 for reporting this vulnerability. Firefox 3 is not affected by this issue.

Titled “Privilege escalation via XPCnativeWrapper pollution”–Mozilla says this fix includes “a series of vulnerabilities which can pollute XPCNativeWrappers and allow arbitrary code run with chrome privileges.” The company credits Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 for reporting the vulnerability.

MFSA 2008-37: Critical