Belkin launches enhanced wireless router

BANGALORE, INDIA: Belkin Asia Pacific Limited, a provider of connectivity solutions, announced the launch of the new wireless router, F6D4230-4, which supports 802.11b and 802.11g and delivers 802.11n technology.
Mohit Anand, Country Head, Belkin India, said: "The N150 enhanced wireless router (F6D4230-4) is perfect for quickly and efficiently exchanging documents, surfing the net, and even for streaming digital music through your network. With the introduction of the new N150, we have extended our range of wireless routers to provide a smart solution for every kind of consumer, whatever their requirements, or budget."It features six LEDs for power, wired, wireless, modem, security, and Internet, range up to 300m and the router also supports VPN.
Other Features:Range up to 300 metresLink rate up to 150 Mbps in 40MHz channel mode4 Ethernet ports for wired connectionsSupports Wi-Fi Protected Setup - push button for simple wireless security setupEasy setup assistant and troubleshooting with Network Status Display

LG launches LG KM900 Arena having Dolby Mobile surround system in ...

South Korean tech giant LG launched its newest full function-laden high end multimedia phone, called LG KM900 Arena in India.

Known to be the world’s first mobile phone with a Dolby Mobile surround sound, the mobile phone features a large 3.0 inch WVGA display screen.

Capable of supporting WiFi and 3G HSFPA, the Arena has an internal memory of 8GB that can be expanded to 32 GB.

Other features include 5 megapixel camera and an inbuilt FM radio.

Available in two colors, black and silver titanium, the LG Arena will come with a price tag of approximately Rs 35,000.

Sony Ericsson brings the most advanced mobile java platform to the entry 3G segment

New Delhi: Sony Ericsson recently announced plans to extend its mobile Java Platform into its entry 3G mobile phone portfolio. This means that games, applications and content developed on the Sony Ericsson Java platform will provide a compelling business opportunity for developers who can now extend content creation for consumers in the entry 3G segment, widely recognised as a future growth area of the market.

“Sony Ericsson has made significant investments in the development of its mobile Java Platform, which has enabled an exceptional user-experience and consistent performance. We are confident that extending the Java Platform to a much larger global market will encourage developers to drive innovation and create richer user experiences for our customers,” said Rikko Sakaguchi, Corporate Vice President and Head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson.

Sony Ericsson’s Java Platform Strategy:

Sony Ericsson uses a platform approach to Java ME platform implementation allowing developers to focus on a platform rather than on a variety of phone product names. As a platform supports many phones, developers can deploy one build across several phones saving time and effort

Sony Ericsson has enjoyed significant success with feature-rich 3G phones due to the richness and consistent performance of Java. Transferring this fully developed platform into cost-efficient 3G devices will be an important element of Sony Ericsson’s business strategy.

"This is good news for over a million Java developers in India. Also with the 3G roll out in India expected soon, the fastest growing telecom market in the world will be a huge playground for the developer community ” said Natasha Dutta, Manager Marketing and Communications, Sony Ericsson Developer World, India

Sony Ericsson broadening the market for developers

As a leader in ‘Communication Entertainment’ and particularly Java gaming, Sony Ericsson is broadening the market for developers to build applications on one of the most robust and flexible environments in the industry. Sony Ericsson’s accumulated mobile Java knowledge and investments, which have enabled the continuous differentiation and evolution of Walkman and Cyber-shot phones, is the basis for this new strategic direction. Sony Ericsson’s aim is to grow its share of the 3G Java phone market as the Java platform JP 8.5 with its rich feature support becomes available.

Sony Ericsson consumers who experience 3G phones for the first time will enjoy a far greater and richer variety of content and applications, in the affordable entry segment than ever before.

Do the Search Engines Know Your Website?

Are you considering a search engine promotion campaign to improve your website’s search engine visibility? To aid in your decision, have you checked your website to determine its search engine awareness?

Perhaps you may be thinking why do I need to check my website? Do you remember going to the doctor for an illness? Hopefully, your doctor performed some tests to diagnose your illness before prescribing your medication. If not, you may have gotten some very undesirable results.

In the case of your website, you need to diagnose the patient and determine the extent of your website’s search engine visibility. Based on your findings, you can decide to focus on standard search results or paid search results.

Your checks should be done in the Google and Yahoo search engines since they are the major search engines in today’s marketplace. As an option, you should consider MSN since they have recently released their search engine. It is only a matter of time before they are considered a player, if not already.

Your first check determines if your website is indexed in Google or Yahoo. Think about the card catalog in your library. Each book has a card in the card catalog signifying the indexing of the book in the library. In this exercise you’ll check if your website has a “card” in the Google or Yahoo card catalog.

The first exercise is opening your web browser to the Google - www.google.com, Yahoo - www.yahoo.com or MSN - www.msn.com website. Enter your website’s URL, www.yourdomainname.com, in the search box and review the search results. Your website’s domain name or URL should appear in the search results if your site is indexed.

If just the domain name or URL is listed, the website has been indexed but not crawled by the search engine spider. A domain name and several lines of descriptive text indicate the website has been crawled by the search engine spider to determine the website’s content. Also, look for the link “Cached Page” or a similar phrase. This is another indication the website has been crawled for content by the search engine.

Now, you should know if your website is indexed and has a “card” in the search engine card catalog. Your second check evaluates the extent of your website’s indexing by determining which website pages are indexed by the respective search engine.

The second exercise is opening your web browser to the Google, Yahoo or MSN website. Enter the “site” command and your website’s URL in the search box in the format “site:www.yourdomainname.com” (quotation marks not required) and review the search results. All of your website’s pages indexed by the queried search engine should be listed. At the top of the search results screen look for “Results X - Y of about Z from www.yourdomainname.com” or a similar phrase. The value for Z indicates the total number of pages indexed by the queried search engine for your website.

In addition, you might see the comment “repeat the search with the omitted results included” in the results listing. Since the search engine does not always show the entire listing, you can click the link and view the complete list of your website’s indexed pages.

Your third check determines the number of inbound links from other websites to your website. The number of inbound links is very important in the ranking algorithms of many of the search engines. The commands for this exercise are slightly different between the search engines. We’ll review the commands for the three major search engines. The other search engines have similar commands.

Google & MSN

Open your web browser to the Google or MSN website. Enter the “link” command and your website’s URL in the search box in the format “link: www.yourdomainname.com” (quotation marks not required) and review the search results.

All the external website pages linked to your website and indexed by the queried search engine should be listed. At the top of the search results screen look for “Results X - Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.com” or a similar phrase. The value for Z indicates the total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Yahoo

Open your web browser and go to the Yahoo website. Enter the “linkdomain” and “-site” command and your website’s URL in the search box in the format “linkdomain:www.yourdomainname.com -site:www.yourdomainname.com” (quotation marks not required). The “-site” command is used exclude the internally linked website pages from the results.

Review the search results. All the external website pages linked to your website and indexed by Yahoo should be listed. At the top right of the search results screen look for “Results X - Y of Z linking to www.yourdomainname.com.” The value for Z indicates the total number of externally linked pages to your website.

Do not be alarmed if the displayed results from Yahoo and MSN are significantly different from Google. Recently, Google began displaying limited or no results from the “link” command. The general conclusion from the search engine optimization community was that Google felt disclosing the link information might possibly share too much information regarding their ranking algorithm and its impact on a specific website.

From these three simple checks you should have determined if the search engines know the existence of your website and be prepared to select the proper search engine promotion campaign. A pay-per-click search engine campaign would be a good choice if your website’s search engine visibility is limited and the time deadline to achieve your desired search engine rankings is short. If the time to achieve the desired search engine rankings is not critical to your website’s marketing plans, then a search engine optimization campaign to improve the standard search results could be a logical decision.

US probes hiring behaviour at Google, Yahoo: Report

LONDON/NEW YORK: The US Justice Department has initiated a probe into the hiring behaviour of some of the largest American technology companies,

Top Indian outsourcing cos Nine trends for IT in 2009 Cities that are IT hubs

including Google, Apple and Yahoo, says a media report.

The UK-daily The Financial Times has reported that the US Justice Department has begun a civil antitrust inquiry into hiring behaviour at some of the largest technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Apple and Genentech in Silicon Valley.

"Officials have sent as many as a dozen companies civil investigative demands seeking documents

that would shed light on whether they have an agreement not to poach talent from one another," the report said quoting people familiar with the probe.

Attributing to Genentech, the publication said, "Our understanding is that a number of companies received this request for information... Genentech is co-operating and will respond to the request in due course".

Apple might give glimpse at Jobs and new iPhone

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) — Apple on Monday is expected to unveil a next-generation iPhone and possibly provide a glimpse at long-absent chief executive Steve Jobs as it kicks off a software developers conference here.

The northern California maker of iPods, iPhones, and Macintosh computers has remained tight-lipped as usual about what announcements it has in store, but speculation and rumor are rampant.

"My gut tells me we are going to see a next-generation iPhone and Snow Leopard be the two stars of the announcements," Gartner analyst Van Baker said, referring to Apple's smartphone and a new Mac operating system.

"Steve may do a cameo, maybe, because there is strong evidence from multiple sources he is getting back to good health," he said.

However, "it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't show up; he doesn't want to upstage Phil (Schiller)," Baker added.

Schiller is a senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple and is filling in for Jobs at the keynote presentation opening the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Schiller went on stage in place of Jobs at a Macworld conference in San Francisco in January after Apple's renowned 54-year-old chief went on a leave of absence for health reasons.

Apple has been notoriously secretive about Jobs's health since he underwent an operation in 2004 for pancreatic cancer but has been adamant that he is returning to the company's helm this month.

"Steve Jobs is coming back, but he is not coming back for long," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.

While claiming no inside information, Enderle said he believed Jobs would soon step aside and turn the reins over to executives who have shown they can capably run the company in his absence.

Apple's keynote on Monday is to be tailored to an audience of software developers interested in crafting programs to work with the iPhone or Macintosh operating systems.

Talk that Apple might delay the release of Snow Leopard has heightened speculation that Jobs might make a keynote appearance to divert attention from the setback.

"Rather than have the news of the day be that Snow Leopard is slipping, bring out Steve Jobs and get people focused on the iPhone," Enderle said, theorizing about a potential Apple tactic.

Even if Snow Leopard's release is delayed, its features will be outlined because it is, after all, a software developers conference, according to Baker.

"Whether Apple ships it that day or a few months later is immaterial as long as they stand up and show what it can do," Baker said of Snow Leopard.

The annual conference provides software developers with technical information about Apple operating systems and opportunities to get hands-on lessons from the company's engineers.

The third-generation iPhone is expected to have improved processor, camera and video capabilities and to allow users to run multiple applications simultaneously.

The ability to run multiple programs at once is the much-touted feature of the Palm Pre smartphone which went on sale in the United States on Saturday and has been praised by reviewers as a worthy competitor to the iPhone.

There has also been unconfirmed speculation that Apple is working on a low-price iPhone.

"I would be pleasantly surprised if I actually saw a line of iPhones," Baker said. "They need a span of low to high-end models."

Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in drowning accident

WASHINGTON: A much-loved Stanford University professor from India who mentored and backed such sparkling and now storied Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Paypal died in a freak drowning accident at his Bay area home on Friday, sending the tech community into gloom. Rajeev Motwani, who was born in Jammu, grew up in Delhi, and graduated from IIT Kanpur, was found in the backyard swimming pool of his Palo Alto home he purchased three years ago. There was no official word about the cause of death, but friends and local reports said he did not know how to swim and may have drowned accidentally. Paramedics were called when his body was found, and he was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:28 pm, according to the San Mateo County coroner’s office. Motwani, who was only 47 and in the prime of his academic and professional life, leaves behind his wife, Asha Jadeja, and daughters Naitri and Anya. News of Motwani’s death stunned the close-knit and well-networked Silicon Valley tech community. Messages sped through emails, blogs, Facebook entries, and Twitter feeds, as scores of techies and gearheads who had thrived under his tutelage, mentorship, and affection, opened their hearts. Among the first to record a tribute was Sergei Brin of Google, who along with his co-founder Larry Page, were Motwani’s students in grad school at Stanford and worked closely with him as they founded Google. In his first blog entry in nine months, Brin recalled Motwani’s ''big role in my research, education, and professional development.'' "In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile,'' Brin wrote, in a condolence that ended with a stirring epitaph: ''Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.'' Brin recalled that when his interest turned to data mining, Rajeev, who had specialized in the field, helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. ''Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational. Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since." he wrote. Motwani moved to the US in the mid-1980s, taking the familiar route from IIT (Kanpur) to University of California (Berkeley), where he earned his doctorate, before moving to Stanford University. As a Stanford professor, he also served as the director of graduate studies for the computer science department and founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), positions from which he mentored many start-ups and was a major catalysts in the Silicon Valley eco-system. Although he was primarily a theoretician, Silicon Valley gurus credit Motwani with having a profound impact on products and companies. Michael Arrington, a serial entrepreneur and founder of the blog TechCrunch said Brin and Page always gave Motwani significant credit for helping them create what would eventually become Google. In fact, Arrington recalled, it was a 1998 paper called ''What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket'' by Brin, Motwani, Page and Terry Winograd that became the basis for Google. In the paper, the quartet said they intended to ''take advantage of the link structure of the Web to produce a global 'importance' ranking of every web page.'' They said this ranking, called PageRank, helps search engines and users quickly make sense of the vast heterogeneity of the World Wide Web. But early search engines that were off the blocks before Google scoffed at the idea. AltaVista, the leading search engine at the time, turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million, saying spam would make PageRank useless. Yahoo also declined to purchase Google, supposedly because they didn’t want to focus on search, which only sent users away from Yahoo.com. In the end, Google ate them for lunch.

'Now Is Time to Brace for Inflation Scare'

A few months ago, the buzzword used by pessimistic observers to describe the worst-case scenario on the economic outlook was deflation, or declining price levels.

But scary deflation is turning into its mirror image, and now scary inflation ― rocketing price levels in a short period of time ― is on the lips of an increasing number of doomsayers.

Marc Faber, dubbed Dr. Doom for his negative views on the global economy, said he is 100 percent sure that the United States will go into hyperinflation like that of Zimbabwe.

``The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time comes and the Federal Reserve should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate,'' Faber said in a recent interview.

Prof. Nouriel Roubini at New York University, one of the few who predicted the ongoing economic turmoil, is talking about a milder but still severe inflation.

During a press conference last week on the sidelines of the Seoul Digital Forum, Roubini said double-digit inflation would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.

``The U.S. inflation rate is at a very low level now. But even 10-percent inflation would highly damage the U.S. and may cause a decade of very mediocre economic growth,'' he said.

Korean experts are more cautious in predicting inflation, but most agree that rising prices would generate a big headache in the long run.

``Commodity prices have shown a turnaround recently and this makes some talk about deflation,'' said Na Jung-oh, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities

``To be more precise, however, commodity prices hit the bottom to make a slight upturn. Inflationary pressures would weigh on the economy in the long run. But for the time being, you should worry more about deflation,'' he said.

LG Economic Research Institute came up with a similar report last month that inflation would engulf Korea Inc. in several years but not in the near future.

In comparison, Prof. Lee Joon-koo of Seoul National University has a different view.

``With such rich liquidity available here, you should worry about the inflationary threat. I am afraid it will end up causing an asset price bubble in the not-so-distant future,'' he said.

Prof. Kim Sang-jo at Hansung University even urge the Bank of Korea to increase the benchmark interest rate, currently at 2 percent, by 25 basis points by July.

His rationale: The central bank is required to give a signal to the market that it will not sit idly by if the market shows any sign of overheating due to too much money.

Microsoft Bing "Decision Engine"

IN seeking to make the new search engine Bing as much a part of the popular culture as “bada bing,” Bing Crosby or Stanley Bing, Microsoft is buying prominent placement for bing.com inside television shows and the online video hub Hulu.

To promote Bing, a new search engine from Microsoft, Hulu.com will have an hourlong “Bing-a-thon” on Monday.

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The effort to weave advertising for Bing into content, known as branded entertainment, is intended to complement an elaborate traditional campaign, which began on Wednesday with commercials created by the JWT unit of WPP.

The Microsoft Corporation is estimated to be spending $80 million to $100 million on ads to help establish Bing as a viable alternative to the 800-pound gorilla of search, Google. It is the most recent of several attempts by Microsoft — all flops — to become a significant factor in search, where ad spending has held up better than in most other media.

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“It’s a very tall marketing challenge and a very tall product challenge,” acknowledged Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for the online services division of Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

“It’s going to take multiple steps to get where we want to go,” he added, “and this is the first step.”

Bing has two goals, Mr. Mehdi said: “Win a fan base and start to grow share.” The latter refers to the fact that “every other provider” of search-engine services “has lost market share in the last five years,” he added, “except for the leader” — that being, of course, google.com from Google.

“The key will be whether we deliver a product and connect with people emotionally in the advertising,” Mr. Mehdi said. To achieve the second point, “you have to do something a little bit more surprising,” he added.

First up is a program-style commercial on Hulu, scheduled for 8 p.m. (Eastern time) on Monday. The hourlong spiel, a first for Hulu, is being styled like a telethon and carries the title “Bing-a-thon.” It was developed for Microsoft by the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles.

The cast of the faux show on Hulu — a joint venture of the NBC Universal division of General Electric and the News Corporation — will include Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live,” Olivia Munn of the G4 cable channel and the comedian Fred Willard.

Those Hulu users who watch the “Bing-a-thon” will receive a reward: the ability to watch TV shows or movies on hulu.com without commercial interruptions. (Yes, you have to watch a commercial to avoid watching other commercials.)

After that will come integrations of Bing into shows on networks that are part of NBC Universal as well as on cable channels that are units of the MTV Networks division of Viacom.

The NBC Universal networks include NBC, with segments on “Late Show With Jimmy Fallon,” beginning next Friday, and integrations of Bing into episodes of a summer series, “The Philanthropist,” which starts on June 24.

As a seller of technology products and services, Microsoft “is in a highly competitive space,” said Ben Silverman, co-chairman at the NBC Entertainment unit of NBC Universal in Los Angeles, so it needs “innovation marketing” to break through the clutter.

For instance, the segments on “Late Show” will present Mr. Fallon as a quiz master, asking contestants to use bing.com to search for answers to questions in categories like travel, health and shopping.

“ ‘Bing’ sounds like a Jimmy Fallon word,” Mr. Silverman said, laughing. “The alignment is great.”

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On “The Philanthropist,” in which James Purefoy portrays a globetrotting do-gooder, the Bing Maps feature will establish where in the world the character is; other characters will use bing.com to seek information.

And viewers will be prompted as commercial breaks begin to visit bing.com to learn more about subjects discussed during “The Philanthropist,” scheduled to run for eight episodes (which makes it, in the vocabulary of the drum-beating Mr. Silverman, “a summer maxi-series”).

The sponsorship deal with MTV Networks is to start on Thursday on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” on Comedy Central, and continue through June 17 on “Top 20 Countdown” on CMT, “The George Lopez Show” on Nick at Nite, “Charm School” on VH1 and “Real World — Road Rules Challenge Duel II Reunion Special” on MTV.

The Bing sponsorship will be centered on offering viewers about two minutes of additional content for each show by reducing the number of commercials. (Advertisers like Philips have done that before, enabling programs like “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” to report more news.)

The MTV Networks shows will carry a Bing spot, created by JWT, called “Fast Forward,” which looks like viewers are using the fast-forward feature on a DVR or VCR to zip through 2 1/2 minutes of commercials in 30 seconds. The intended message is that bing.com is about “getting what you want,” the spot declares.

“What’s great about ‘Fast Forward’ is that it flips traditional TV advertising on its head,” Judy McGrath, chairwoman and chief executive at MTV Networks in New York, wrote in an e-mail message, “to the benefit of the marketer and the consumer.”

“We’re delivering stronger exposure for the brand,” she added, “and more show for the fan.”

The risk with all branded entertainment is that it comes across to consumers as too much brand and not enough entertainment.

In searching for ways to be “baked into the shows,” said Eric Hadley, general manager of worldwide marketing for search and MSN at Microsoft, the goal must be to get consumers to “say ‘Oh, wow’ ” and not “ ‘That’s it?’ ”

Windows 7 RC Available, Includes “XP Mode”

The really good news is that Windows 7 will include “XP Mode”: a fully licensed, virtualized copy of Windows XP. XP Mode will be available as a download for users with Windows 7 Professional and up. As Jeff Atwood notes:

The attraction of virtualizing older operating systems is that it throws off the eternal yoke of backwards compatibility. Instead of bending over backwards to make sure you never break any old APIs, you can build new systems free of the contortions and compromises inherent in guaranteeing that new versions of the operating system never break old applications.

XP Mode should mean that Windows 7 is completely backwards-compatible with XP, and should also mean that Microsoft can start removing the older cruft from the OS that is currently only there to ensure backward-compatibility.

Cloud Computing: The Next Big Thing?

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which data and software is housed in remote data centers rather than on-site server, which are typically accessed through the Internet. It implies that instead of running software applications on your computer, you run the apps in the "clouds" in cyberspace, in other words through the Internet. All your programs and files are stored on an outsourced computer network.Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.

The concept incorporates infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0 and other recent technology trends that have the common theme of reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. Examples of SaaS vendors include SAP Business ByDesign, Salesforce.com and Google Apps which provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

Cloud computing should not be confused with grid computing ("a form of distributed computing whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely-coupled computers, acting in concert to perform very large tasks"), utility computing (the "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility such as electricity") and autonomic computing ("computer systems capable of self-management").

Advantages of Cloud Computing:

1.Cost is greatly reduced and capital expenditure is converted to operationalexpenditure. Server equipment cost is reduced due to elimination of the necessity of on site servers. Staffing cost also comes down, since there is little or no need for on-site network administration.

2. This lowers barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing.

3.Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browserregardless of their location or what device they are using, e.g., PC, mobile. As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet the users can connect from anywhere.

4.Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs among a large pool of users who can acces it through PC, netbooks, mobile phones and other handheld devices.

5.Clouds provide scalability; can easily grow as the organizaton grows.

6. Security typically improves due to centralization of data, though concerns are raised about privacy issues.

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) include bigger names like Amazon, Microsoft , Google , Sun and Yahoo.

Worldwide cloud computing services revenue is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, and is expected to top $56.3 billion (US) in 2009, according to a report from technology research firm Gartner. Market revenue grew by 21.3 per cent from 2008's $46.4 billion, and it will continue to increase to $150.1 billion in 2013.

Nonetheless, there are still concerns about security and privacy from individual through governmental level, e.g., the USA PATRIOT Act and use of national security letters and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act's Stored Communications Act.