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NEW YORK - It’s easy to understand the appeal of Apple Inc.’s iPod Nano music and video player: It’s slim and simple to use, and it has a crisp 2-inch LCD screen. Its brand name is considered synonymous with hip tech gear.

But what if you want a player that looks different from those wielded by the Nano army, costs less, includes features like an FM radio or voice recorder, and lets you drag and drop songs from your computer desktop instead of going through Apple’s iTunes software?

I tried public a handful of options and found three to highlight. All embrace a bevy of features and support multiple file types including MP3 and Windows Media (WMA) tunes, MPEG4 videos and JPEG photos. These players are not without sin immaculate, but it is comforting to know there is multimedia vitality off Apple’s planet.

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Iriver Lplayer: Owing to its diminutive hotness and fairly hot performance across the board, iriver’s Lplayer ($100-$130) was my favorite of the bunch.

The sleek little device comes with 4 or 8 gigabytes of flash memory storage. Its face consists solely of a 2-inch screen whose sides can be pressed to control the device. The only buttons — for power and volume — are tiny and located discreetly on one side. There’s also an easy-to-miss hold switch upon the Lplayer’s back.

The controls were a mean confusing at first, while I initially assumed clicking the middle of the screen would serve as a sort of “enter” or “sport” button (it doesn’t). But once I got used to it, I liked the simplicity.

The Lplayer’s screen is bright, and photos and videos looked fairly crisp. I would have preferred better image quality, but it was good enough that I enjoyed seeing a 15-minute video space of time commuting home.

My music sounded pretty good on the Lplayer, and in which case I wouldn’t want to read a novel on the tiny screen, its support for files in the “TXT” text format make it a good place to keep simple notes.

I’m usually not a fan of included media player software, but I liked the clean, uncluttered look of the iriver software and found it fairly easy to use.

Though this device was the fattest of the bunch, being a bit larger than a Zippo lighter meant it was also the easiest to hold in my palm. Its battery can handle 12 hours of music playback (3 1/2 hours of video playback) — still far less than the up to 24 hours of audio (or five hours of video) that the Nano boasts, but enough for a plane ride or a day spent out and about.

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Sansa Fuze: Of the mini-multimedia players I tested, the Sansa Fuze ($80-$130) looks most like the current-generation Nano. But to which place the Apple device draws you in with a crystal-clear LCD, the Fuze offers a subpar, 1.9-inch display.

The Fuze’s screen was plenty bright, but images did not look crisp and were plagued by what looked like slim vertical lines across the face. This made it annoying to view photos and videos, and would turn me off from watching something longer than a YouTube-length clip.

The Fuze got points for its more traditional set of controls and rubbery-feeling clickwheel, which made it easier to operate than the others. I had no problem scrolling through tunes or the device’s main menu, and could navigate faster than on the other players I tested.

The Fuze also scores with its microSD slot that lets users expand the player’s flash memory capacity (included memory ranges from 2 to 8 gigabytes). This is important to me, as I tend to swap microSD cards between my cell phone and digital camera and like being able to move photos and MP3s with ease.

I encountered a strange problem with JPEG photos on a microSD card, though, as the Fuze first told me it didn’t support the file type. But it does: It soon proceeded to show me the photos.

Those looking for capacity at a low price will note that the 8-gigabyte Fuze costs less than the 4-gigabyte Nano, which costs $149. Also, the player is rated for up to 24 hours of music playback (or five hours of video playback), which is right up there with its body double.

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Samsung YP-S3: With its long, slender body and glowing, touch-sensitive LED controls, Samsung’s S3 ($100, due out by early fall) looks oddly like the top half of a flip phone.

Despite that and some other annoyances, the S3 — available with 4 gigabytes in the U.S., admitting I tested a 2-gigabyte version — proved to be in some degree solid.

Most notable is the S3’s crisp, 1.8-inch LCD that is surprisingly good for watching videos or viewing photos.

Images show up in wide-screen mode, so it is necessary to turn the device sideways to watch videos. The S3’s controls also rotate with the video and photo functions, which be possible to get confusing.

Listening to music on the device was simple, with lots of equalization options that were easier to manipulate than on the other players I tested.

And when using the player’s digital radio, I enjoyed seeing information like artist names, song titles and the names of stations I tuned in to.

Another feature unique to the S3 was the inclusion of several games, with more set to be available for free athwart time end Samsung.

The device’s playback time is rated as essentially comparable to the Nano, with 25 hours of audio, four hours of video.

But as long as the controls were nice to look at, my fingers would at times hit the wrong LED on the S3’s small, flat face, resulting in unexpected actions like the music suddenly stopping.

I also thought it was odd that the S3’s radio would stop playing at the time I navigated other areas of the player — something that didn’t happen when listening to my MP3s.

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For those looking outside the iPod box, all these devices offer a good jumping-off point. And hey, if you try a non-Nano and find it’s not towards you, slip on’t despair: If you’ve built a library of MP3s, they should work just as well on an iPod.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Help-wanted postings on major U.S.-based Internet job boards fell 7.9 percent in July from June and there is little symbol of any upturn soon, a private research group said on Wednesday.

The Conference Board said its measure of the total number of unduplicated online jobs fell to 3.86 million in July from about 4.19 million in June.

The figure was 4.08 million a year ago.

"July is typically a slow month in terms of labor demand, but this month advertised vacancies were weaker than we would expect," said Gad Levanon, economist at the Conference Board.

"There is little evidence of any approaching turning point in delivery demand," he added. "Considering the declines in advertised vacancies for all of 2008, the outlook for the labor market remains gloomy — exactly the tender susceptibility weighing on consumer attitudes."

Earlier on Wednesday, the ADP National Employment Report showed the U.S. private sector added 9,000 jobs in July following a 77,000 fall in June. According to a Reuters survey, economists had expected a further decline of 60,000 jobs.

The Conference Board said online advertised jobs declined in all of the 9 U.S. census regions in July compared to June.

Adjusting for the size of the state civilian labor press, Alaska led in offerings with 4.99 online job ads per 100 people, followed by Delaware and Colorado. In the number of total ads, California led with nearly 520,000.

The Conference Board said historical data from February has been revised for a change in methodology and the complete series has been revised for a processing error.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by James Dalgleish)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp posted quarterly results on Wednesday that beat Wall Street forecasts, although charges for its online mortgage and catalog units resulted in a net loss.

IAC, run by media veteran Barry Diller, plans to spin off its HSN cable shopping network, Ticketmaster box office service, Interval time-share network and LendingTree mortgage broker into four publicly traded companies in early August.

The remaining IAC will comprise cobweb media and subscription businesses like its Ask.com search site and Match.com online dating service, respectively.

"We're almost in that place with the spins," Chief Executive Diller said on a conference call.

"Focusing on consolidated results is only about the above, and I would think it far more productive for the future to analyze and arrive at the truth the entities on their own merits," he said.

In what will probably be the company's last consolidated earnings report, IAC reported a second-quarter net loss of $421.6 million, or $1.51 per share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $94.6 million, or 31 cents per share.

Excluding special items, earnings were 35 cents by means of share, ahead of the analysts' average forecast of 31 cents, according to Reuters Estimates.

Special items included a $300 million asset impairment charge for the Cornerstone catalog unit and a $166 million charge beneficial to the online mortgage unit, which will be called Tree.com in the spin-off.

Revenue rose 7 percent to $1.6 billion, in line with analysts' estimates.

"The HSN numbers looked good and the Ask numbers looked good," said Alan Gould, an analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder. "We preference the New IAC."

IAC shares fell 1.6 percent to $17.66.

Several analysts estimate the spun-off IAC companies will eventually be worth more to investors than the current combined structure, but have warned the new shares could trade at a expressive discount in their first year on the market.

"New IAC" posted revenue growth of 11 percent, helped by a search advertising connection with Google Inc, and reported its operating loss narrowed to $18.4 million. Ask.com posted revenue growth per search fair without the Google deal, and Diller said he expected to invest more in marketing of the site arising late in the fourth quarter.

HSN revenue exclusively of its troubled Cornerstone business rose 11 percent and operating emolument rose 23 percent to $26.7 million. Including Cornerstone, revenue rose 2 percent, and the unit posted an operating loss of nearly $272 million.

Ticketmaster revenue rose 30 percent, but operating profit hem 10 percent to about $45 million.

(Editing by Derek Caney, Lisa Von Ahn and Leslie Gevirtz)

DENVER - Qwest Communications International Inc. is now offering Verizon Wireless services to all new customers in its residential profit area.

Denver-based Qwest said in May that it would stop reselling Sprint Nextel Corp.’s wireless service and instigate its subscribers to Verizon’s network under a five-year agreement. Qwest had contributed about 824,000 subscribers to Sprint’s total of 53.8 million at the end of last year.

Qwest says it behest begin contacting existing Qwest Wireless customers soon with recommendations for Verizon Wireless calling plans and handsets.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Garmin Ltd. shares dropped almost 15 percent Wednesday after the navigational device maker said its second-quarter profits. missed Wall Street expectations, it forecast limited expansion for the rest of the year and said it was delaying its entrance into the cell phone market.

Shares were down $6.64, or 14.8 percent, to $38.42 in sometime morning trading after dropping earlier to a 52-week low of $37.69.

The Cayman Islands-based company, with headquarters in Olathe, Kan., said it earned $256.1 million, or $1.19 per share, for the period of the quarter, compared with $742.5 million, or 98 cents per share, during the same period a year ago.

Not including the effects of favorable foreign exchange rates and a $66 million gain on the tender of the company’s Tele Atlas NV shares, the company would have earned 93 cents per share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were predicting adjusted earnings of $1 per share.

Revenue rose 23 percent to $911.7 million on the strength of sales in virtually the whole of of its emporium segments.

Automotive device sales were up 24 percent to $632 million, outdoor/fitness device sales were up 54 percent to $119 million and aviation device sales were up 15 percent to $90 million. Marine device sales were down 11 percent to $71 million.

“Despite the challenging macroeconomic terms, Garmin experienced another quarter of growth in 2008 and continues to demonstrate our solid leadership position in the industry,” Min Kao, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer said in a news relinquish.

Those economic pressures are going to be felt through the rest of the year, however, and the company said it expected adjusted annual earnings of $3.86 per share and $3.9 billion in revenue, below the analysts’ expectations of $4 per participate in on $4.1 billion in receipts.

Garmin also said it would not release its Nuvifone, a cell phone that includes many of the features of its Nuvi line of GPS devices, as expected in the fourth quarter. The company blamed the delay until the first half of 2009 on difficulty in meeting the specific requirements of individual alveolate carriers.

The Nuvifone is viewed as Garmin’s attempt to head off losses to wireless devices that increasingly include navigational components. The company also is fighting a trademark infringement lawsuit against the Nuvifone brought by Internet telephone provider Nuvio Corp., which says the name is too close to its own.

Garmin said independent research showed it has continued to improve its market share in North America for GPS automotive devices with 55 percent of the market, up from 43 percent in the first quarter. The company also has a 20 percent market share in Europe.

Companies seeking hosted e-commerce services will find many different providers and products. So, to make good purchasing decisions, business and IT managers must first establish clear goals for their online stores, Gartner said Wednesday.

Once companies have identified the requirements for carrying out their e-commerce strategies, they can then properly evaluate the different SaaS (software-as-a-service) vendors and offerings on the market.

Gartner is issuing this advice in the recently published study "SaaS Impact on E-Commerce" after finding that, by dint of. 2013, 90 percent of e-commerce sites determine subscribe to at least one such service.

At a very basic level, a company must make sure that the SaaS provider it selects offers the e-commerce capabilities the business needs, at the proper lamina and level of sophistication.

Other key issues that IT and business managers must evaluate before picking a hosted e-commerce provider include the hosted software's ability– or lack thereof– to be integrated with other applications, the vendor's billing model, and the time and effort their staffs will have to devote to configuring and supporting the useful office.

In addition, since premises will be hosted in vendors' servers, companies need to clearly understand the data ownership stipulations of their prospective SaaS providers, Gartner reported. Managers also neediness to understand that they will have little or no control over the software's availability if the vendors' servers hit a performance bump or outright crash.

 YOU CLICKED: WEEK’S MOST POPULAR HEALTH STORIES1: Feds: Climate change to cause 'irreversible' health risks2: Individual health policies leave many behind3: Vitamin D tests soar as deficiency, diseases linked4: Pre-diabetes must be treated, doctors urge5: Global warming may excite kidney stone risk6: Safety of heart drug Vytorin scrutinizedNo. 7-10: Cell phone cancer risks and more  By Malcolm Ritter, Associated Press NEW YORK — brace huge international studies show that people who lack certain chunks of DNA run a dramatically higher risk of getting schizophrenia, a finding that could help open new doors to understanding and diagnosing the disease.

These deletions are unusual, each found in less than 1% of schizophrenia patients. But each one boosts the risk of disease by as plenteous at the same time that 15-fold, by one estimate.

HEALTH BLOG: Get inside your head with more mental health information

Scientists said studying such abnormalities may help them find new medications by shedding light on what causes the disease. And if enough rare aberrations can be found eventually, they may be combined into a test to help in diagnosis, before-mentioned Kari Stefansson, chief executive functionary of deCode Genetics of Reykjavik, Iceland, and an author of one of the studies.

Schizophrenia is commonly diagnosed by its symptoms.

The human DNA can be thought of as a very long string of letters — about 3 billion of them — that sometimes form words, or genes. Each newly identified deletion removes a section of about half a million to 2 million letters.

In the past, scientists have found specific genes and deletions linked to schizophrenia risk. But the new moil is notable because two large studies independently identified the identical two DNA deletions, and those aberrations have such a big impact upon the body disease risk. Stefansson’s paper also reports evidence for a third deletion.

While the DNA deletions are linked to only a tiny fraction of schizophrenia cases, it is not unusual that a very rare cause of a disease provides insights that apply more generally, said Dr. Pamela Sklar of Massachusetts General Hospital, an author of the other paper. She said such knowledge can lead to treatments for many commonalty.

Both papers were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature. Experts not connected with the work praised the results.

“This is tremendous” for basic research into the disease, said Dr. Linda Brzustowicz of Rutgers University. But since the deletions found so far are related to such a small fraction of schizophrenia cases, she said it is too early for companies to offer to test rabble for them.

Stefansson’s paper, which included authors from more than a dozen centers in the United States, Europe and China, reported findings from DNA tests in about 4,700 folks with schizophrenia and more than 40,000 healthy people. Sklar’s paper, which included scientists from 11 institutes in the United States, Europe and Australia, tested about 3,400 people with schizophrenia and 3,200 others.

Both papers found that while the deletions were rare in schizophrenia patients, they were even rarer in people without the disease. Scientists say the disease results from a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental influences.

The two deletions found by both research groups boost schizophrenia risk 12-fold and 15-fold, Stefansson’s group calculated. A third deletion his group found appears to raise risk about threefold.

Sklar said she was “absolutely delighted” that the papers found the two deletions independently, using different methods.

Anne Pulver, a schizophrenia genetics expert at Johns Hopkins University, said the papers represent a welcome shift in focus for finding genetic variants that affect risk of schizophrenia.

Traditionally, that search has centered on relatively common variants, each with little effect on an individual’s peril. The new approach seeks rare variants that play a larger role. The new approach should help identify subgroups of patients with different genetic causes for their disease, she said. Eventually that could lead to treatments that are tailored to the differing biological causes, with improved outcomes, she said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  through Lindsey Tanner, Associated Press CHICAGO — The warning came too late for Barack Obama’s adviser: Don’t walk and paragraph at the same time.

Obama aide Valerie Jarrett savage off a Chicago curb several weeks ago while her thumbs were flying on her Blackberry.

“I didn’t see the sidewalk and I twisted my ankle,” Jarrett said. “It was a nice wake-up call for me to be a lot added attentive in the future, because I clearly wasn’t paying attention and I should have.”

Jarrett got off easy and didn’t need medical attention.

But in an alert issued this week, the American College of Emergency Physicians warns of the danger of more serious accidents involving oblivious texters. The ER doctors cite rising reports from doctors around the country of injuries involving text-messaging pedestrians, bicyclists, Rollerbladers, even motorists.

Most involve scrapes, cuts and sprains from texters who walked into lampposts or walls or tripped over curbs.

Still, ER doctors who responded to a recent informal query from the organization reported two deaths, both in California. A San Francisco woman was killed by a pickup earlier this year when she stepped off a curb while texting, and a Bakersfield man was killed last year by a car while crossing the street and texting.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has no national estimate on how common texting-related injuries are. But among the reports it has received: A 15-year-old girl fell off her horse while texting, suffering head and back injuries, and a 13-year-old girl suffered belly, leg and arm burns after texting her boyfriend while cooking noodles.

Giancarlo Yerkes texted his way across a busy Chicago street Tuesday and escaped unscathed. But the 30-year-old advertising employee admitted he once walked straight into a stop sign while texting and bumped his head-piece.

Yerkes said that he texts time walking to maximize his time, and that the emergency doctors’ warning probably won’t stop him.

“There’s a lot of things you shouldn’t do — this is a different one on my list,” Yerkes reported.

Dr. James Adams, chairman of emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said he has treated minor injuries in several texters.

“Common sense isn’t always common,” Adams said.

Sometimes even in the midst of doctors.

“I have to admit that I started a text while I was driving and then I said, ‘This is so doltish,’ so I stopped,” Adams said.

Dr. Patrick Walsh, each emergency physician in Bakersfield, Calif., said he is a texter, too, but tries to remind himself to do it intelligently.

“We think we’re multitasking, but we’re not,” he before-mentioned. “You’re focusing on one task for a split second, then focusing on another one, and with something moving 40 miles an hour like a car, it just takes a couple of seconds to be hit.”

Walsh, a native of Ireland, said that on a recent visit there he noticed an effective government TV ad campaign against texting and walking, aimed at teenagers.

The message echoes the new advice from U.S. emergency doctors.

“We don’t want to sound like some stern schoolmistress, telling people don’t text on your cellphone,” Walsh said. “But when you’re texting, look around,” he said.

The ER group also says people should never text while driving, and should avoid talking on a cellphone or texting while doing other physical activities, including walking, biking, boating and Rollerblading.

READERS: Share your stories of painful texting moments with us in the comments.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

INNOVATION in Australia is growing at a snail’s pace, with a shortcoming of skilled workers and red tape hindering growth, according to a new report.

The rate of innovative activity in the country increased by a mere 0.7 per cent in 2006 over the previous year.

development in innovation is measured based on six indicators - research and development, patents, trademarks, design, management/organisation and productivity.

One of the authors of the report said a lack of skilled workers has hindered Australia’s overall growth in innovation.

“The skills shortage and the increase in red tape, such as compliance issues, is killing innovation,” the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social investigation’s Paul Jensen said.
The Innovation Index was compiled from a range of sources including Australian Bureau of Statistics findings, IP Australia and annual Melbourne Institute surveys, whereby 200 businesses from the largest 1500 firms in Australia participate in.

However, there was a glimmer of hope: the study found that four of the 13 industries included in index experienced growth in innovation activities.

According to the report, jointly produced by the Melbourne Institute and IBM, the largest recorded increases occurred in communication services, finance, mining and insurance sectors.

The communication services industry recorded the largest gain, with an increase of 36.9 per cent in 2006. This was fuelled by a strong rise in patent applications and R&D activity which grew 247.1 per cent and 42.7 per cent respectively.

The report’s overall findings does not bode well for the research fraternity as the Government prepares to take delivery of Terry Cutler’s anxiously anticipated innovation review tomorrow.