The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry will start developing with 10 automakers an operating system for automotive electronics.

The decision will be announced this week, a ministry source said. European auto makers are in the process of developing a commmon OS for automotive electronics.

Japanese companies, which have been developing their own operating systems separately, will begin joint development of an OS, aiming to create a global standard in this field.

The ministry will commission the task of developing the OS to JasPar–Japan Automotive Software Platform Architecture–a joint venture comprising leading automakers and auto-parts makers and, electronics firms, including Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Honda R&D Co., Denso Corp. and Toshiba Corp.

The ministry plans to seek more than 1 billion yen in funding for the project in its budgetary request for fiscal 2008. The joint venture aims to have a prototype OS completed in fiscal 2009 and to market it in five to 10 years.

In an automobile, various electronics control devices are used, including those controlling fuel injection, brakes, air bags, power steering and power windows. An OS is the basic software for operating these devices.

OSEK, the operating system developed by German firm Bosch, the world’s leading auto-parts maker, is effectively the automotive version of Windows, with about 70 percent of the world market share.

Meanwhile, BMW, DaimlerChrysler and other European automakers are jointly developing a next-generation OS and are expected to complete a prototype in 2008.

While the number of electronic control devices installed in a typical automobile stood at about five in the 1980s, more than 30 such devices are installed now, with the number exceeding 100 for some luxury models.

The cost of electronic and electrical parts is said to account for about 20 percent of the overall production cost of an automobile. For a hybrid-type model, which requires a complex control system to switch the power source back and forth from the engine to a motor, electronic and electrical parts account for nearly 50 percent of the production cost.

Dave Winer writes a post on why Feedburner is in trouble after being acquired by Google. I never really looked at Google’s acquisition of Feedburner in the same light Dave does and I’m glad he wrote what he did as it is certainly a real eye opener in regards to the level of control Google is “acquiring” on the internet. By the way, Dave is the RSS God. Anyway, here’s quote from Dave that really creeps me out:

“So now someone at Google “owns” Feedburner and all their feeds. And they could, if they wanted to, change the feeds to another format, overnight, without asking anyone.”

So my question is should we begin using Feedburner here on this new site? We’re still in our infancy but if Feedburner is going to cause us problems with our readers in the future - I think its better to fight those problems now rather than when we build up readership in the future. If we choose to ditch Feedburner, all of our RSS subscribers would then have to re-subscribe to our blog’s RSS feed after ditching Feedburner. It could be a mess. So I am asking what readers we do have currently - should we ditch Feedburner now and avoid any problems that may arise in the future?

As many geeks already know, Microsoft has two fantastic sites called Channel 9 and Channel 10. Channel 9 is designed for developers and code geeks to talk about developer stuff and Channel 10 is for the tech enthusiast. The same team (led by the awesome Jeff Sandquist) is now launching Channel 8 - a new site dedicated to helping students connect with other students (and other folks) interested in writing code and excited about technology. Check out Channel 8 here.

Mary Jo Foley had broke the story shedding light on Channel 8 earlier this month.

I am unsure on whether or not Channel 8 has actually officially launched just yet. Usually Jeff posts about a new property launch from his team on his blog and I’ve not seen anything yet (he is on vacation though). The site may be up for testing and may go down. If it does go down, enjoy the above screenshot.

Thanks to Mark Johnston for the heads up.

I’m not a student so not sure how much this site will relate to me. I usually read Channel 10.

A lot of people know how much I hate Google’s Adword system, but the thing is they make money and they help business’s make money, thus it is good business. I just don’t like the whole process probably because we here at TheGeekery are poor, their are lot of rumors around the net about foul play with Adwords and how Google manipulates the system as well but that is still under investigation. But I simply don’t understand this one….

Google is in the process of acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, but for some reason the FTC is already investigating them on antitrust violations just for this attempted acquisition. I understand that Google already has the largest market share for ad based e-marketing, but when Yahoo proposed its acquisition of Rights Media was proposed not to long ago it flew through the antitrust regulators stamp of approval process. The same thing happened when Microsoft proposed the acquisition of aQuantive a DoubleClick rival, no one complained no one whined. Why is Google taking so much flack for this, this is capitalism, this is big business.

The answer is in this quote

“Google, which dominates the business of placing text ads alongside search results and on sites across the Web, is expected to capture 27.4 percent of the $21.7 billion in United States online advertising in 2007, according to eMarketer, a research firm. The acquisition of DoubleClick would turn Google into a dominant player in the business of serving banners and other graphical ads that appear on Web sites.”

Yahoo, AT&T and dare I say Microsoft are afraid, very afraid. Google is starting to scare me as well, I just don’t understand how a company can spread the spectrum so wide across so many industry sectors.

Google, even though I do not enjoy some of your business models I do salute you for the massive kahoneys you have.

-TheGeek

Well kind of lame first post but who cares, we are slowly churning out info. Graphics should be up soon. But your here for the info.

So about a week ago at work I noticed someone was running a phishy “Free public wifi” ad hoc wireless signal over my air. You see if I worked in the middle of a city or suburban area I would not think twice about it, but you see I work out in the boonies, way way out in the middle of no where. I have a pretty large network out in the country, its about a 450 node network with 7 wireless bridges granted they are all locked down very very tight. But the problem arose when I saw this SSID come across my office, you see we have outside sales reps come in with there laptops and they see a couple SSID’s and they try to connect to anything that has a signal.

So to end this long story quickly I ordered a very mild spectrum analyzer. It is the WiSPY 2.0 with external antenna from METAGEEK, it just came today so I have not even had a chance to use it at work, but I am having a ton of fun with it at home. The channalyzer software built into it is great, its a very cool little tool to have for anyone interested in the hidden world of RF frequency. On a side note this only works with the 2.4ghz range.

You can attach any SMA compatible antenna to the device making it even more versatile.

The Channalyzer software is easy to use and very effective.

Overall this is a great product, kind of on the high side for pricing coming in around $399.99 but at the same time most spectrum analyzers run about $2500-3000.

I cant wait to use it at work.

-thegeek out