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Key U.S. lawmakers urged regulators on Friday to delay action on contentious items ahead of the transition to digital television, which will likely postpone a spectrum auction opposed by cell phone companies.

The Federal Communication Commission’s December agenda includes a plan to auction a slice of the airwaves with a mandate for free Internet, and rules for handling disputes between cable companies and content providers.

Sen. John Rockefeller and Rep. Henry Waxman wrote FCC Chairman Kevin Martin on Friday, asking that he hold off any knotty FCC business and instead focus on the nationwide mandatory switch to digital television signals, due to occur February of next year.

“At a time when serious questions are being raised about transition readiness, it would be counterproductive for the FCC to consider unrelated items, especially complex and controversial items,” wrote the Democratic lawmakers, who will chair their respective oversight committees in the next Congress.

The lawmakers did not say which items should be delayed, but the spectrum and cable items are the most controversial on the FCC’s schedule.

“We believe that most of the draft items on the agenda for the FCC’s December 18 meeting, many of which were already controversial, are now in even greater jeopardy,” Stifel Nicolaus analysts said in an investor note.

Many lawmakers fear the digital switch, in which about 15 percent of U.S. households will lose their current mode of television, will be messy, as it puts a burden on consumers to take specific actions, such as buying new converter boxes, to ensure keeping television service.

Signals are being converted to digital to free up airwaves for public safety uses, especially in emergencies.

WAIT FOR NEXT ADMINISTRATION

The lawmakers said the FCC should refrain from any matters in which “the new Congress and the new administration will have an interest in reviewing.”

FCC spokesman Matt Nodine said Martin was reviewing the letter and would discuss it with the four other FCC commissioners.

Cell phone companies, in particular Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile, oppose the auction, saying rules of the auction would permit interference with adjacent spectrum, among other concerns. T-Mobile paid about $4.2 billion for an adjacent piece of spectrum.

Under the so-called Advanced Services Wireless-3, or AWS-3 plan, a bidder buying the spectrum must use a quarter of it to provide free Internet services virtually nationwide.

Cell phone companies say this business model will not work. It is similar to one proposed earlier by start-up M2Z Networks, a group backed by investors including venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Several public interest groups expressed concerns about the plan in a filing this week with the FCC, including opposition to a requirement for filtering for indecent material.

Further casting doubt on the plan, Martin is opposed by his own Bush Administration on the auction. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez officially said this week it was a bad plan.

Martin, whose support among his fellow commissioners has waned in recent months, needs backing from the two Democrats on the five-voting member FCC for the spectrum proposal to pass, analysts said.

CABLE ISSUES

Another item that could be postponed is one involving disputes between cable companies such as Time Warner Cable Inc. and Comcast, and content programmers.

“Cable companies, which have been under pressure from Chairman Martin, will probably be pleased with the letter’s direction,” Stifel analysts said.

Conflicts arise over what tier of service a content provider such as NFL Networks receives on cable and whether a cable company discriminates based on other competing programs it may own.

The FCC is scheduled to consider setting up a process for resolving such disputes and setting legal standards for when a programer can claim it is being discriminated against.

Wii Fit game and Apple’s iPhone 3G are among the top 20 products Japanese consumers confessed to buying on impulse in 2008.

In a survey conducted by Japanese search engine Goo, the Wii Fit ranked third for the year behind the year’s two sweet sensations: salted sweets and raw caramel. Wii Fit became a national phenomenon because it was seen as an easy and fun way to get fit.

Around 3 million units of the software and companion “balance board” hardware are expected to be sold by Nintendo in Japan this year, it said recently. Worldwide the company expects to sell 10 million units this year.

One other game, “Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G” for the PlayStation Portable, was among the top 20 in the ranking. The Capcom game is one of the most popular for handheld platforms in Japan and has sold more than 2.5 million copies since its launch in March. It was tied for 12th place with another local diet fad: a book that preached the values of keeping-in-shape by eating bananas for breakfast.

Following hot-on-the-heels and tied for 14th place was both a mobile PC and the iPhone 3G.

Japan was part of the simultaneous worldwide launch of the iPhone 3G on July 11 and the phone got considerable media coverage in Japan. It was the first time the iPhone was available here (the previous 2G version wasn’t compatible with Japan’s cellular networks) and some people began camping out several days before the phone went on sale to be assured of getting one. When sales began, parts of the launch were broadcast live on Japan’s morning TV shows.

The popularity of the mobile PC this year can be put down to low prices. Not only are computers like Asus’ Eee PC redefining what consumers expect to pay for a laptop but machines are being offered for as little as ¥100 (US$1) by cellular carriers in return for signing a 2-year flat-rate data contract.

The unscientific ranking polled visitors to the Goo portal between Oct. 21 and 24.

The Microsoft Office program suite basically runs the world. If you know what you are doing with Office, then you are ready to use computers more and more in your everyday life. Office contains all of the basics for computer use. Word lets you type up just about anything. Powerpoint gives you the ability to create presentations. Excel and Access give you the ability to build databases. These are all important stepping stones. If someone doesn’t know how to do this, then they should look into MS Office training.

This isn’t actually that tough. There are a number of training centers available that will walk you through the basics of Office so that you are ready and able to start using it often. This won’t work for everyone though. It used to be that you were just out of luck if you couldn’t go to a training session. Now you have new options. These take the form of Microsoft Office training videos.

The premise is simple. Most of Microsoft Office will be taught through a do-it-yourself approach anyway. The only way to get good at it is through figuring out the processes for yourself. They’ve now made it easy to just do the work through pre-recorded lectures viewed at your own leisure.

The simple truth about technology is that you will usually understand it best if you do the instruction yourself. It is really hard to just learn how to use a program. You need to do a lot of things by yourself or alongside an instructor. This used to mean expensive training sessions at a specific center, but it is now possible to do it in the comfort of your own home with MS Office training CD plans.

These are really simple in nature. You just put the CD in the computer and then follow the instructions that it gives. The beauty of it is that it can guide you through the real ways that you’d load up the relevant programs and put them into general use. This is a great way to start off and a good way to quickly get a great understanding of the simple things everyone has to learn at some point.

The lessons take a mixture of simulations and Office 2007 training videos. You can just work through the lessons at your leisure and gain your education when it fits your schedule. What more could you want. You can learn about the latest software without a major investment.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned another iPhone ad after consumers complained it exaggerated the speed of the device.

A recent TV ad for the iPhone 3G stated: “So what’s so great about 3G? It’s what helps you get the news, really fast. Find your way, really fast. And download pretty much anything, really fast. The new iPhone 3G. The Internet, you guessed it, really fast.”

The ad showed a close-up of the phone being used to surf a news Web page, view the Google maps service, and download a file — and all the actions had waiting times of only a fraction of a second.

Seventeen people complained to the ASA that the ad was misleading because it exaggerated the speed of the iPhone — a judgment upheld by the watchdog, which said an on-screen text disclaimer stating “network performance will vary by location” was not enough to dispel the impression that the device actually operated at or near to the speeds shown in the ad.

The ASA failed to be convinced by Apple’s counterargument that the claims made in the ad were relative rather than absolute — and that it was intending to demonstrate the 3G iPhone allowed downloads and Internet access that was “really fast” by comparison to the previous Edge device.

The ASA said in its adjudication: “Although we acknowledged that the majority of viewers would be familiar with mobile telephones, we considered that many might not be fully aware of the technical differences between the different types of technology. We also noted the ad did not give an explicit indication of a comparison with the older 2G iPhone.”

The ASA has ruled the ad must not appear again in its current form.

This is not the first time Apple has been scolded over iPhone ads. In August the ASA banned another advert for the iPhone — which promised users access to “all parts of the Internet” on their Apple device, despite the phone’s inability to display Flash or Java web content.

Natasha Lomas of Silicon.com reported from London.

The world’s largest cell phone maker, Nokia, said on Tuesday its 264 million euro ($339.9 million) acquisition of British software firm Symbian was on track to be closed this year.

Nokia said in June it would buy out other shareholders of UK-based smartphone software maker Symbian and make its software royalty-free to other phone makers in response to new rivals such as Google. It has said it expects the deal to be approved by the end of this year.

“The Symbian deal is on track,” Mary McDowell, Nokia’s chief development officer, told Reuters on the sidelines to Business Week’s European Leadership Forum in London.

McDowell said Nokia hopes its push into Internet services will also boost sales of its smartphones, which lead the industry with about 40 percent market share but have lost ground to Apple and RIM in the last few quarters.

“Clearly Internet services represent a revenue growth opportunity, (but it is) also a basis of competition in high-end devices,” she told Reuters.

Handset makers had previously been relatively unscathed by the global economic crisis this year, but successive warnings from Nokia, Qualcomm and Intel signaled a rapid deterioration of consumer electronics demand.

“Even in areas where there is consumer demand, credit conditions are causing problems,” McDowell told the forum, echoing Nokia’s comments in a Nov 14 warning.

Top IT companies like Tata Consultancy Services, HCL Infosystems Ltd and some distributors of Microsoft are under the DRI scanner for alleged duty evasion to the tune of more than Rs 100 crore.Sources in the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) said that the firms are under probe for allegedly importing software from Microsoft Singapore Pte. Ltd (part of the Microsoft group) between 2005-2007 without declaring the complete value of the imports, thereby ‘evading duty’ for which notices would be issued soon.

Top sources in the agency said that the ‘evasion’ amounted to import of CDs and DVDs during the period for which they had allegedly not declared the licence fee as stipulated by the country’s laws.

“As per our law, the license fees are also liable for duty which has to be added to the import cost but during our checks we found that certain companies had not done so,” a senior DRI official, who didn’t wish to be identified said. Sources said that the agency had started its investigations in middle of June and had even arrested Sunil Dalal, Managing Director of Softcell Technologies, a Mumbai-based software company and also a distributor of Microsoft in India as part of its investigations.A few officials of Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd among others were reportedly questioned by the agency, sources said.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Microsoft said that the company does no have “any comments to give” about the ongoing investigations.

A new study has found that just one response for every 12.5 million spam mails sent can turn spammers into millionaires.

Researchers from University of California, San Diego and Berkeley hijacked a working spam network and uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The scientists broke into the Storm network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for junk mail.

The research team led by Assistant Professor Stefan Savage from UCSD, created several so-called “proxy bots” that acted as conduits of information between the command and control system for Storm and the hijacked home PCs that actually send out junk mail.

They used these machines to control a total of 75,869 hijacked machines and routed their own fake spam campaigns through them.

For the study, the researchers created a pharmacy site and ran two types of fake spam campaign through these machines

One mimicked the way Storm spreads using viruses and the other tried to tempt people to visit a fake pharmacy site and buy a herbal remedy to boost their libido.

The fake pharmacy site was made to resemble those run by Storm’’s real owners but always returned an error message when potential buyers clicked a button to submit their credit card details.

While running their spam campaigns the researchers sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages. The vast majority of these were for the fake pharmacy campaign.

“After 26 days, and almost 350 million e-mail messages, only 28 sales resulted,” BBC quoted the researchers, as writing.

The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001percent. This is far below the average of 2.15 pct reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

“Taken together, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of 2,731.88 dollars—a bit over 100 dollars a day for the measurement period,” they added.

The researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about 7,000 dollars a day or more than 2m dollars per year.

When Les Paul’s grandchildren are jamming on the video game “Guitar Hero,” it’s not lost on him that he made it all possible.

Paul, known as the “Father of the Electric Guitar,” will be honored at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s annual American Music Masters series, a weeklong event that starts Monday.

Paul is a rock ‘n’ roll da Vinci, part artist, part inventor, and at age 93 still performs weekly at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.

“It’s therapy,” Paul said Thursday.

Paul recalled that the first time he heard a guitar on his mother’s radio he knew he had to have one. By age 13, he was performing semiprofessionally as a country-music guitarist.

He built a solid-body electric guitar in 1941 — an invention born from his frustration that audiences were unable to hear him play.

Paul remembers the moment when inspiration hit. He was playing at a barbecue stand somewhere between his hometown of Waukesha, Wis., and Milwaukee when a man told him his guitar wasn’t loud enough.

It took Paul 10 years to sell the Gibson guitar company on the concept.

“They thought it was a crazy idea to make a guitar come through an amplifier,” he said.

In 1952, Gibson introduced the Les Paul model, which became the instrument of choice for musicians such as Duane Allman and Jimmy Page.

“We now could be king because you could turn the level up and you could be heard and you could play things that you could never have played acoustically,” Paul said.

Paul’s other innovations include recording techniques like close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking. He also made his mark as a jazz-pop musician, recording hits like “How High the Moon” with his second wife, singer Mary Ford.

Paul was inducted into the early influence category of the Rock Hall in 1988.

He said he still tinkers with new ideas and is busy designing four new amplifiers and two new guitars for Gibson, including a model that beginners can afford but still fall in love with.

“Most of the people that I know that have a guitar love that guitar like they do their wife,” he said.

Paul will perform at a tribute concert Nov. 15 that caps the American Music Masters series. He will be joined by a legion of guitar virtuosos, including Slash, Duane Eddy, Billy Gibbons and the Ventures.

“I’m very grateful to the generation that came after me and picked up the instrument and carried on with it,” Paul said. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am.”

Ergonis Software on Wednesday released an for PopChar X, its utility allowing users to insert special characters into documents.

Among the changes in the new version is improved compatibility with OpenOffice and NeoOffice. PopChar can now also detect the current font in MultiAd Creator Pro.

The company said other improvements and fixes have been made to the application in this update including a problem that caused the memory allocation to grow over time.

PopChar X 4.1 is free for anyone who purchased the application in the last two years. For new users the app costs $37.