The long-running $1,000,000 competition to improve on the Netflix Cinematch recommendation system by 10% (in terms of the RMSE) may have finally been won. Recent results show a 10.05% improvement from the team called BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos, a merger between some of the teams who were getting close to the contest’s goal.

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you’re a gamer or heavy graphics user of virtual machines, VirtualBox 3.0 has an early beta out that introduces OpenGL 2.0 and Direct3D support. If you have no clue what that means, the release has other goodies, too.

The graphics support for Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest machines are the marquee features in the upcoming 3.0 release, but a lot of other fixes and tweaks are looking to make the cut, too, including a streamlined settings window, better synchronization of shared folders between Linux and Windows host/guest setups, and continued optimizing of virtual processors. The OpenGL and Direct3D additions will, of course, depend heavily on your hardware, and how much video memory you allot to your virtual machines, but it should clear up quite a few compatibility problems.

Salesforce.com announced on June 15 the release of the Force.com Free Edition, a stripped-down version of its cloud computing platform for the enterprise. By relying on cloud-based resources, Force.com clients can run Websites and build Web applications without an on-premises infrastructure.

Each client utilizing the free version of Force.com can deploy their newly built Web applications to up to 100 users. In addition, the free edition gives clients access to one Website with up to 250,000 page views per month, 10 custom objects/custom database tables per user, a sandbox development environment, free online training, and a library of sample applications.

The Free Edition, which will be initially available only in the United States, also includes one custom app; it can be found at this site. Regular Force.com pricing begins at $25 per user per month.

Microsoft Corp is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for personal computers that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc.

A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would “soon” make a trial version, or product beta, available via its website, he added, but declined to provide a specific date.

Microsoft has said it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

China is requiring personal computers sold in the country to carry software that blocks online pornography and other Web sites, potentially giving one of the world’s most sophisticated censorship regimes even more control over the Internet.

The software’s developer said Monday the tool would give parents more oversight by preventing computers from accessing sites with pornographic pictures or language. Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., which won a government contract to develop the “Green Dam-Youth Escort” filtering software, was compiling a database of sites to block.

Although porn sites are initially targeted, the software could be used to block other Web sites, too, including those based on keywords rather than specific Web addresses.

On the heels of Symantec’s OnlineFamily.Norton released earlier this year, security stalwart McAfee jumps into the family protection game with a new home-oriented protection program. Called McAfee Family Protection, the program offers many familiar tools to parents in the hopes of fostering conversation while protecting children from harm.

McAfee Family Protection offers blocking, monitoring, and parental notifications for most computer-based activities. The program allows for up to 10 users on three different machines, utilizing several layers of algorithms to monitor behavior. Parents can outright block or merely monitor Web sites, social-networking behavior, and instant messaging including Facebook IM and multi-protocol chat clients, according to Javed Hasan, vice president of McAfee Product Management.

In addition to blanket blocks for subject matter and specific Web site blocks, parents can customize rules so that they can block all of YouTube, or just YouTube videos that have specific tags. Web sites protected by secure protocol, https, can also be blocked. They can also set up roadblocks that prevent specific applications from opening, such as peer-to-peer clients or media players, and parents can receive brief SMS notifications alongside more detailed e-mail reports.

A Secret computer program created by Google is helping to track down paedophiles on the internet.

The amazing new technology lets investigators speedily trawl through a suspect’s computer and FIND horrific images - even when hidden in a seemingly innocent video.

They can also match a child’s face shown in a video to similar images discovered around the world.

This often enables cops to rescue the tragic kids and break up secretive paedo networks.

Clues

The system can even recognize background scenes in an abuse clip - such as posters, views from windows, furniture or carpets - to provide clues or evidence against suspects.

OffiSync, founded by former Microsoft Office marketing manager Oudi Antebi, now VP of marketing and strategy at business intelligence company Panorama Software, combines Office and Google Docs with a new toolbar in Office that lets customers OPEN and save Google Apps documents and collaborate on them or define collaborators from within Microsoft Word.

Roger Boyce, CEO of Evident Software, discusses application virtualization. As companies take many servers and make them look like one, Evident provides unique insights into the operation of those new app fabrics. InformationWeek s John Foley speaks with David Selinger, the CEO and Co-Founder of Richrelevance. Richrelevance is a SF based startup that makes a next generation recommendation engine. SocialCast takes many of the social network tools from the consumer world and makes them available in an on-demand service for the enterprise.
SocialCast takes many of the social network tools from the consumer world and makes them available in an on-demand service for the enterprise.
There are any number of reasons people might be slow to jump on the Google Apps bandwagon, including one big one in particular: It s just not Microsoft Office.

Most consumers and companies already have Office installed, and many companies have enterprise licenses that entitle them to free upgrades and additional perks. But Google Apps has fewer features than Office, and it could take a bit of training to turn newbie employees into power users.

Of course, the fact that it isn t Microsoft Office is also a reason Google Apps has gotten traction. Google Apps brings a few important features that Microsoft Office doesn t yet offer, including free Web-based editing and file storage, real-time and asynchronous collaboration, and more granular file search than is available in Windows.

Antebi says he now hears a familiar refrain when he talks to people about OffiSync: I have never used Google Docs because I didn t want it to replace Office, but now I might use it because it just makes Office better.

The 8-MB download plug-in also allows users to manage their Google Docs file libraries as if they were local file stores. Users can search from within the OPEN and save document dialogues built into OffiSync and send e-mail notifications to collaborators. Antebi plans to offer two versions, one for individuals and a paid version for enterprises that includes management and deployment features.

The initial release of Microsoft media player for the browser lacked many of the features Flash had offered for years. Version 1.0 was really little more than a dressed up beta and, while the current release is an improvement, it still lacks many advanced capabilities that have seen Flash set the standard.

Silverlight 3.0, released as a beta recently, promises to put Microsoft’s player on a nearly level playing field with Adobe’s Flash framework. Silverlight 3.0 brings a staggering amount of improvements to the table with new APIs, audio codecs and features for video such as Smooth Streaming, H264 and AAC, and hardware-based graphics acceleration.

But how easy is it to develop in Silverlight? And how much has Microsoft closed the feature gap with Adobe’s Flash platform? The Register took the Silverlight 3.0 beta for a spin.

Twitter has confirmed that someone broke into its network and gained access to 10 accounts, which appear to include Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher, according to screenshots posted on a French blog site.

“Our initial security reviews and investigations indicate that no account information was altered or removed in any way,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a blog post Thursday afternoon.

“Personal information that may have been viewed on these 10 individual accounts includes email address, mobile phone number (if one was associated with the account), and the list of accounts blocked by that user,” the posting said. “Password information was not revealed or altered, nor were personal messages (direct messages) viewed.”

Stone did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Watch what you say. Scientists in England have developed a computer that can not only read lips, but can tell the difference between languages.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia’s School of Computing Sciences developed the technology by statistically modeling the lip motions of 23 bilingual and trilingual speakers. The resulting system is able to identify the language spoken by an individual with “very high accuracy,” according to the university. Identifiable languages included English, French, German, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Italian, Polish, and Russian.

What gives you away? The movement of your articulators–when you wag your tongue, jaw, and lips, you are generating the measurable characteristics of visual speech, the recognition of which is known as lip reading. Computer vision has already been used in lip reading, or “feature extraction,” but this is the first time computers have been “taught” to recognize different languages, according to UEA

Google has released research results about a new test to foil computers pretending to be humans by requiring them to orient an image so it’s upright.

A persistent problem on the Internet is screening out automated computer systems that can be used, for example, to sign up for spam-sending e-mail accounts or post comments designed to improve a site’s search results. Google, which already devotes a lot of resources to block e-mail and Web spam, has tried a new test to keep the bots at bay.

The test is the latest variation on a screening technique called a Captcha (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart). The idea is that people can often tell which way is up in a photo, but computers have a harder time.