AOL plans Web coupons tied to loyalty cards

AOL plans Web coupons tied to loyalty cards

NEW YORK — AOL wants you to stop clipping coupons or even printing them out.

The company is launching a new service, Shortcuts, for manufacturers to distribute coupons on the Internet.

Instead of clipping them out of your newspaper insert, you can simply choose the ones you want online and add them to an account tied to a grocery store’s loyalty program. To redeem those coupons, you simply present your loyalty card at the register.

The program is free for consumers and retail chains, while manufacturers pay to have their coupons listed. Charges will be based on how many get selected and redeemed.

Manufacturers can also buy banner ads to accompany the coupon listings at Shortcuts.com.

The new service, the latest aimed at distributing paperless coupons online or by cell phones, comes as Time Warner Inc.’s AOL continues trying to boost advertising revenue to offset steep declines in subscriptions for dial-up Internet access.

Although AOL expects manufacturers to continue distributing coupons in print publications, Shortcuts director Sharon Baker said companies could eventually offer exclusive deals online.

Shortcuts was scheduled to launch Thursday with the Kroger Co. grocery store chain and one food manufacturer, General Mills Inc.

Coupons from Kimberly-Clark Corp. and Kraft Foods Inc. are to come later this month.

Dutch interior minister says widely used security pass can be hacked

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Dutch interior affairs minister says a technology being used in up to a billion security cards around the world can easily be hacked.

The “Mifare” chip technology owned and licensed by NXP Semiconductors is frequently used in public transport systems such as London’s “Oyster” card. It is also used by corporations and governments in “swipe” access cards.

Guusje ter Horst said Wednesday that researchers at the Radboud University in Nijmegen have “developed a method by which a large number of [Mifare] chip-cards is relatively easy to crack and duplicate.”

Ter Horst wrote in a letter to Par-liament that she was preparing supplemental security measures for some government buildings as a result.

She said the chip is used in an estimated 2 million cards in the Netherlands and a billion globally — though Mifare’s Web site gives a total of 500 million, and it was not clear whether the vulnerability to hackers would apply to all versions of the chip.

NXP spokeswoman Lieke de Jong could not confirm the total.

The company said in a statement that it was “taking these claims very seriously,” was investigating and would inform its customers.

“NXP believes that additional measures [can] ... drastically reduce the possibility of successful attacks,” according to the statement.

A spokeswoman for Radboud University said researchers would make findings public Wednesday.

Acer to launch movie laptop with full high-def screen, 6 speakers

NEW YORK — Acer Inc., the Taiwanese computer maker that bought Gateway last year, said on Tuesday that it now aims to take laptop users as close as they can get to the high-definition home theater experience.

The top model of the new “Gemstone blue” line of laptops has a screen with the same resolution as an a top-of-the-line HDTV, at 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels, and will have six speakers, including a subwoofer, for so-called “5.1” surround sound.

The computer will go sale next month in the U.S. for $1,999. A model with three speakers and a smaller screen (but still HD resolution) will cost $1,699. Both will have built-in Blu-ray disc drives.

The computer industry has long had its set of standard screen resolutions, while the consumer electronics industry has standardized on different ones. Acer’s Blue line effectively adopts the consumer-electronics standard, which means that many movies and all HD TV shows will fill the screen, without black bars.

Acer said the laptops would be the first with 1,920-by-1,080 screens, and the top model is the first laptop with six speakers.

The $1,999 model has an 18.4-inch screen, placing it in the “desktop replacement” category of heavy laptops that aren’t meant for more than occasional travel.

Even with six speakers, the laptop isn’t capable of true surround sound, since that requires speakers on either side of the listener at ear level. Some current laptops use two speakers to simulate the enveloping experience of surround sound. Acer’s laptop will do the same, but the simulation is better with six speakers than with two, said Acer senior vice president Jim Wong.

At the presentation in New York, Acer president Gianfranco Lanci said the company plans to keep the Gateway and eMachines brands it acquired last year and use them to meet its goal of selling 300 million units worldwide this year. It was the third largest PC maker in the world in 2007.

TiVo, YouTube will deliver videos to DVR users’ TVs

SAN FRANCISCO — TiVo users will be able to watch YouTube clips on their televisions by year’s end, TiVo Inc. said Wednesday.

That’s the latest move by YouTube to reach beyond the Web’s regular boundaries. Fans of the popular online video provider can view its videos on their cell phones and Apple TV, a box that streams movies from people’s computers to their TV.

Now TiVo users with a broadband Internet connection and a TiVo Series3 box, which includes the high-definition model, will be able to search, browse and watch YouTube videos directly on their TVs.

Each month, 66 million viewers watch about 2.6 billion videos on YouTube, according to the latest data by Nielsen Online. That’s 57 percent the 116.7 million monthly online video viewers.

YouTube is owned by Google Inc., which paid $1.76 billion for the company in November 2006. The site has not yet produced significant profits.

EU aims to change image of ‘geeky’ IT jobs to attract more women

BRUSSELS, Belgium — The information technology industry needs to show that it isn’t just for “geeky, unsociable” people if it is to attract more women to fill a skills shortage, according to the EU’s top technology official.

EU Commissioner Viviane Reding said stereotypes that IT careers are “boring and too technical” for women need to be overcome because few young women are taking engineering and technology degrees despite huge demand. The field will need 300,000 qualified workers by 2010 in Europe alone, according to EU estimates.

But that will mean a radical change of image.

Reding said the EU could help by having girls shadow older female technology professionals who work for companies such as Finnish cell phone maker Nokia and French satellite maker Thales Alenia Space to learn what the industry is all about.

Associated Press