Apple Shows off New Flagship Boston Store

Apple has big plans for its latest retail store and its first in downtown Boston–literally. The new brick-and-mortar outlet, opening Thursday on Boston’s tony Boylston Street, will be the largest Apple Store in the United States with three floors of retail space.

“Apple has exploded in growth,” said Apple senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson during a Wednesday preview of the Boylston Street store. “Boston is also redeveloping…there’s so much growth in Boston, combined with growth for Apple, that it’s time to build another large store.”

While the Metro Boston area already features eight stores, the Boylston Street store is the first in the city itself. Johnson noted Wednesday that Apple has had its eye on the site for eight years–before the company even opened the first of its retail outlets. And its plans for the Boylston Street outlet have expanded over time.

“If we had opened this store in 2001, it would have been one level,” Johnson said. “If we had opened it in 2005, it would have been a two level store. But in 2008, it’s the largest store in the U.S.”

Apple’s retail efforts have grown considerably since Apple first eyed downtown Boston as a potential site for one of its stores. The company now has 210 stores around the country–183 in the U.S., with 15 in the U.K., seven in Japan, four in Canada, and one in Italy. The retail stores brought in $1.45 billion in second-quarter revenue, Apple reported last month. The Boston store is one of 45 that Apple plans to open during its 2008 fiscal year; the company also plans brick-and-mortar efforts in Australia, China, and Switzerland.

Apple’s new Boston store is the largest in the US.

Apple executives see the retail stores as a way to get more out of the company’s Mac business. According to Johnson, Apple hopes to attract five different types of customers to its stores–people who live in the area, people who go to school in the area, people who work there, people who play or shop nearby, and tourists who visit.

With a location in the heart of the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston featuring upscale shops, plenty of office buildings, one of the city’s primary convention centers, and proximity to several area universities, the Boylston Street store’s location is “perfect” for drawing all five kinds of customers, Johnson said.

“That’s why it’s so big,” he added.

In the course of planning the store, Apple worked closely with the city of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority to make the store fit into the neighborhood. “It’s a beautiful building,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said at Wednesday’s media briefing, “much better than what was here before,” referring to the building’s former occupant, a copy shop.

Menino also lauded Apple for bringing over 165 new jobs to the area–all of the store’s employees are drawn from the surrounding area, many of them from local universities.

Apple also made an effort to keep the building environmentally friendly as well. For example, the company planted natural grass on the building’s roof in an effort to provide some greenery in the urban environment. “You’d kind of want to hang out there, if you could, bring out your lawn chair,” Johnson said.

Apple senior vice president for retail, Ron Johnson, introduced the new store at a media event.

In addition, the store is set up to collect and filter rainwater in order to help rebuild the Back Bay’s water table, an issue that both Johnson and Menino said was important for the city. And while the large amounts of glass and metal in the store’s construction might present an air-conditioning challenge, Johnson also said that Apple worked hard to utilize natural light where possible to reduce heating costs in the winter. “We’re highly confident that we’ve built a store here that is going to have a great environmental impact.”

Apple Stores are designed by a team that is personally overseen by CEO Steve Jobs, so it’s little surprise that the Boston store is constructed largely from the same materials used in Apple’s other retail outlets. Like most Apple stores, the Boylston Street location features copious amounts of glass and stainless steel, though Johnson also pointed out that the stone that makes up the floor is the same used in sidewalks in Florence, Italy. “It’s a common palette of materials,” he said, “both old and new.”

While the materials might be similar, the store’s layout differs from many of Apple’s other locations. Three floors, connected by a central glass and steel spiral staircase, are each targeted at specific products and tasks. The first floor, for example, is all about the Mac, which Johnson called the foundation of the company. There are more than a hundred Macs on display, each with full Internet access and the complete suite of programs customers might want to try out. The second floor, meanwhile, features iPods, iPhones, and third-party products.

The Boylston Street’s Genius Bar can serve up to 1,000 customers per day.

But Johnson described the third floor as something that really set the store apart. Not only does it boast the Genius Bar, which can serve up to 1,000 people a day, but the third floor also has what Apple has dubbed a “studio” section for hosting One to One personal training sessions, including Pro Labs–month long sessions comprised of four two-hour sessions on music, moviemaking, and more. Johnson said that Apple already has 15,000 One to One members in the greater Boston area. The store will also feature training for younger Apple users, with summer camp programs and school nights where kids can come with their classes.

The store’s layout and size aren’t the only things that distinguish the Boylston Street location from most of its counterparts. For several weeks before the store’s opening, Apple made a rare break from its uniform marketing message and tipped its baseball cap to Boston, veiling the building in a wooden facade painted to resemble the Green Monster of nearby Fenway Park. “We just thought it was fun,” Johnson said. “We thought putting something out that people really cared about was a way to put a smile on someone’s face and say ‘we’re here for you Boston.’”

Microsoft boosts XP on budget PCs

Microsoft is cutting the cost of putting Windows XP on low cost laptops.

The price cuts will only be available for ultra-portable laptops that meet a strict set of specifications.

The move is widely seen as an attempt by Microsoft to bolster its market share in one of the PC industry sectors showing growth.

Low-powered laptops, such as the Asus Eee PC, are proving hugely popular in developed nations and in projects trying to bridge the digital divide.

Life extension

News group IDG reports that Microsoft plans to charge PC makers selling to India and China $26 (£13.27) to put a copy of Windows XP Home on a low-cost laptop. For machines sold in developed markets, such as the UK or US, the price will be $32.

A retail copy of Windows XP Home sells in the UK for about £55 ($108) – though the prices PC makers pay for the software is likely to be lower.

The low prices apply only to machines that have no more than 1GB of RAM; a hard drive up to 80GB in size; a processor running no faster than 1GHz; a screen no larger than 10.2in (25cm) and no touch screen.

Market research firm IDC predicts that sales of machines with such specifications, which it dubs ultra low-cost notebooks, will grow from 500,000 units in 2007 to more than 9m in 2012.

It predicts such devices will capture a big slice of the education market as they are used in projects to improve the prospects of children in developing nations.

The devices are also catching on among those looking for a cheap computer they can use while out and about. Machines such as the Asus Eee retail for about £220.

Many of these machines use open source software such as Linux as an operating system.

Microsoft is offering XP on such devices because they are too low-powered to run Vista – the latest version of its Windows operating system.

In April Microsoft announced that it was extended the life of XP on low cost laptops until 2010. The software will stop being sold on desktops and laptops on 30 June.

Under Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential scheme the company lets governments get copies of Windows XP Starter Edition, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for only $3 (£1.50) if it provides PCs for schools.

Future directions in computing

Silicon electronics are a staple of the computing industry, but researchers are now exploring other techniques to deliver powerful computers.

A quantum computer is a theoretical device that would make use of the properties of quantum mechanics, the realm of physics that deals with energy and matter at atomic scales.

In a quantum computer data is not processed by electrons passing through transistors, as is the case in today’s computers, but by caged atoms known as quantum bits or Qubits.

“It is a new paradigm for computation,” said Professor Artur Ekert of the University of Oxford. “It’s doing computation differently.”

A bit is a simple unit of information that is represented by a “1″ or a “0″ in a conventional electronic computer.

A qubit can also represent a “1″ or a “0″ but crucially can be both at the same time – known as a superposition.

This allows a quantum computer to work through many problems and arrive at their solutions simultaneously.

“It is like massively parallel processing but in one piece of hardware,” said Professor Ekert.

‘Complex systems’

This has significant advantages, particularly for solving problems with a large amount of data or variables.

“With quantum computing you are able to attack some problems on the time scales of seconds, which might take an almost infinite amount of time with classical computers,” Professor David Awschalom of the University of California, Santa Barbara told the BBC News website recently.

In February 2007, the Canadian company D-Wave systems claimed to have demonstrated a working quantum computer.

At the time, Herb Martin, chief executive officer of the company said that the display represented a “substantial step forward in solving commercial and scientific problems which, until now, were considered intractable.”

But many in the quantum computing world have remained sceptical, primarily because the company released very little information about the machine.

The display also failed to impress.

“It was not quite what we understand as quantum computing,” said Professor Ekert. “The demonstrations they showed could have been solved by conventional computers.”

However, Professor Ekert believes that quantum computing will eventually come of age.

Then, he said, they will not be used in run-of-the-mill desktop applications but specialist uses such as searching vast databases, creating uncrackable ciphers or simulating the atomic structures of substances.

“The really killer application will probably be in designing new materials or complex systems,” he said.

Pupils reveal mobile snapshot

How big is your mobile phone bill? Have you ever felt uncomfortable about some of the text messages you receive?

And what’s the attitude of those in authority to the use of mobile phones when we should be working?

All of these questions have probably been asked in offices across the country – but they were also the issues investigated by students at Marden High School in Tynemouth as their contribution to the BBC’s School Report project.

They started by carrying out a survey of mobile phone use at their school.

Of the 920 pupils, aged between 11 and 16, responses came from 519, and only three did not have their own mobile phone.

Advanced group

This was also a very advanced group of phone users. They were asked whether they had text, photos, videos or music on their phones, and 460 said they had all four.

We then sent three teams of two students out to investigate each issue. They were helped by others who operated cameras, some of them using mobile phones to film part of the report.

The first team concentrated on cost. They found that ,while most pupils were only spending between £5 and £10 a month on their mobiles, a few spent as much as £40.

One girl, Katy, told the team that her £40 bill was not unusual.

And guess who’s paying the bill? Two thirds said it was Mum and Dad, though a few had to contribute if they went over a cost limit.

Bullying texts

The survey had shown that about a quarter of students had received bullying texts, and the team investigating that issue found that two pupils willing to talk about it.

Stephen told them: “I was getting nasty messages from a boy I gave my number to – but it stopped when I confronted him.”

Kayleigh had gone to see her head of year with her mum after getting abusive messages from an older boy – and the bullying had quickly stopped.

Our team concluded that children needed to know that they could take action against the mobile bullies.

The final issue the Marden High School news teams confronted was what teachers thought of mobile phone use.

The Head Teacher David Stainthorpe had told us that there was a school policy effectively banning mobiles from the premises but “if we had a search we’d find 1000 phones amongst the 920 pupils.”

The teachers were asked to list their concerns and they had plenty – from “happy slapping” and the sharing of explicit images to inappropriate videoing of teachers.

Firm stance

Deputy head Joan Bloomfield said, that when confronted with examples of abuse, “It’s very important that the school takes a very firm stance and steps in quickly.”

But this school is a specialist media college – as the Head puts it “our specialism is the creative use of digital media” – and teachers are beginning to think about ways of using mobile phones as an educational tool.

In one class, students filmed an animation on a mobile phone. And of course during the filming of their school report, the pupils made great use of mobile phones, filming some of the shots you will see in their report for the Six O Clock News.

So what had they learned?

Rosie told me that while teachers seemed to think there was more bad than good about mobiles, she thought they were very useful for keeping in touch with parents.

Her friend Katie agreed that she’d feel lost without her phone , and then there was a chorus from their neighbours: “I couldn’t live without my phone”.

The mobile future is calling

Developers are being asked to devise applications for mobile devices so users can “access it, mix it up, save it, and store it”.

The plea to harness the creativity of the internet and apply it on mobile phones was made by Mitchell Baker the chair of Firefox developer Mozilla.

All of this functionality “should be the same if I am on a laptop or phone, at home or on a train,” says Ms Baker.

“The breadth of the new ideas floating around and the different ways that people are thinking about information and using the web further away from browsing into more personalised information is exciting,” said Ms Baker, speaking to the BBC News website at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

She is convinced that mobile phones will be one of the forces that will help people make better use of information pertinent to them

“Information that matters to me is what the future is about,” she said.

Transforming experience

For Marc Davis, Yahoo’s social media guru, there’s no doubt that the future is about mobility – with the numbers of handsets about to hit 4 billion there’s plenty of evidence of their popularity.

“The mobile web is not just about accessing the web from your phone,” he said “Mobile phones that are location aware, temporarily situated and socially connected will transform our experience of the web, the world and ourselves.”

“The next web,” he says “will be about place and time.”

He suspects that we are near the point at which more people will be able to access the web via their phone than their desk top computer.

Open strategy

Echoing Mozilla’s call to developers, Mr Davis is urging them to get involved in being part of Yahoo’s mobile future. As a way to convince his audience he highlighted the company’s earlier announcement at the Expo called Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS).

“Openness is deeply in our DNA and we are coming out as an ‘open company’ now in a big way. So we are making it possible for developers to write an application, to write a widget and open this up.”

Yahoo is no the only one championing widgets. Mobile giant Nokia has announced the next stage of its Widget platform for Symbian Series 60 smartphones .

The new stage will give developers access to GPS, contacts book, communications stacks, e-mail and SMS functions on the phone.

“These are the kinds of things that really make a phone unique,” says David Rivas, vice president for Nokia’s Series 60 technology management devices group.

“We are at a real crossroads in terms of mobile phone technology and it is this availability of web technology on the mobile device that signals that crossroads.”

But when can consumers expect results? Not for a while said Mike Butcher from technology blog TechCrunch.

“We are not there yet,” he said. “We are about 18 months from an incredible boom in mobile applications and mobile adoption.”

“I think there are two things that are going to happen,” he said. “Firstly the mobile platform is being opened up for other people to create interesting applications. And the second is the handsets are constantly improving which means the overall experience promises to be good.”

Windows Mobile to get pumped up on Nvidia

Watch out, Nvidia is stalking the iPhone. The maker of fast graphics processors will apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface.

Nvidia APX 2500-based Windows Mobile device has flick-and-roll interface

As reported back in February, after a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile internet devices (MIDs).

CNET Video of APX 2500 prototype here.

iPhone-style devices with Nvdia’s APX 2500 system-on-a-chip–due late this year and next year–incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. (See block diagram.) And it is important to note that Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile internet device, not just the graphics component.

The APX 2500 is different from Intel’s Atom processor platform–which is offered as a processor and a separate chipset–because the 2500 integrates everything onto one piece of silicon. This makes it more akin to Intel’s upcoming Moorestown processor that’s due next year or early 2010.

Nvidia’s goal is to pack as much processing punch as possible into a few-hundred-milliwatt power envelope, said Michael Rayfield, general manager of the Mobile Business Unit. “I said start from zero. And then made my team beg and plead for every milliwatt,” he said. Notebook PC processors typically operate in power envelopes between 10 and 35 watts.

But to the user, the biggest difference will be Microsoft’s Mobile Windows interface and what can happen when there is Nvidia GeForce graphics silicon pushing everything around.

The platform that Nvidia is demonstrating goes far beyond the staid, pin-striped Windows Mobile that is used today. Nvidia is showing finger-flick-and-roll screens and accelerometer-based reorienting 720p video.

These tiny devices are designed to run 720p HDTV video for 10 hours–one of the marquee features that Nvidia will be emphasizing, Rayfield said. He plugged a prototype APX 2500-based device into a large screen TV via a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector and played high-definition movies with the same fluidity and resolution as you get from a big HDTV box or bigger computer.

Nvidia APX 2500 block diagram

All on, believe it or not, Windows Mobile. The operating system has struggled since its inception back in 2000. Initially, it had promise on Compaq (and later Hewlett-Packard) iPaq handhelds, but these devices never appealed to a large base, even in corporate America which eventually went en masse for the Blackberry. There is more acceptance now as Windows Mobile 6.1 is adopted by companies like HTC, Samsung, and Acer (which announced its intention to bring out a Windows smartphone)–but it is still Windows. In a post-iPhone world, Nvidia says this is not adequate.

The prototype mobile internet device that Nvidia is currently working on is not the product that will appear from phone companies or navigation device vendors. Rayfield said it is necessarily a thick device and contains extra circuit boards because it is a development platform. The final product made by device manufacturers will be thin, he said.

Nvidia APX 2500-based Windows Mobile device interface
(Credit: Nvidia)

EIC Squared: SAP, Sun, AMD and Microhoo

In this week’s EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet’s Larry Dignan and I discuss the latest news from SAP, Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices, and Microhoo. At SAP’s Sapphire conference this week, company executives explained the delayed rollout of the new on-demand enterprise suite, Business ByDesign. SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said that the total cost of ownership (TCO) equation on Business ByDesign and the upgrade procedures weren’t good enough:
“We know we can have TCO, but need NetWeaver enhancements. There’s a very close link between the TCO of Business ByDesign and NetWeaver. The TCO is not so much hardware; There are too many processing steps in our hosting. We can continue to do manual steps when first upgrade Business ByDesign from 1.0 to 1.1, but it’s not predictable in way where every client got it at once and in the same way.”

Larry remarks on AMD’s lack of transparency about its chip fabrication plans and product roadmap, and I recap my visit to JavaOne, where I met rocker Neil Young and interviewed Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz about his plans for JavaFX and cloud computing. Schwartz has a good plan, but getting developers on board will take some heavy lifting.

Top How-to Tech Videos That Won’t Cost You a Dime

These days, most companies refer you to a Web site or include online help. Still, you may need a little extra help with complex subjects.

That’s where these instructional videos come in. They can guide you visually — sometimes with a little comic flair thrown in. Here are some of the best how-to videos on the Web and tips on how to find more.

Enable Wireless Security

The typical Belkin or D-Link router does provide good documentation on enabling security. Still, most people are thoroughly confused about the subject, which explains why companies such as Network Magic make software to guide you through the steps.

Another option is just watching a video from the “Lab Rats” (Sean and Andy) who do a pretty good job of explaining the basics of WEP and WPA. Another one, from the Get Connected TV Show, is also helpful — but not nearly as nerdy.

Record Video Game Footage

Sites such as G4’s The Feed show you game-play footage for Xbox and other consoles, but did you know you can record your own? A YouTube video from a person called “ramsy66″ shows you the hardware you need and how to get it all connected and working. (This particular video is from the U.K., but the same principles and hardware apply to the U.S. audience.) Of course, you won’t find how-to videos like this at Xbox.com because Microsoft doesn’t encourage customers to make these homespun videos.

Use a Phone as a Modem

Popular Mechanics has some of the best how-to videos on the Web, and this video guide by Glenn Derene — the technology editor at the magazine — is quick and useful. He explains the fundamental concept: Your smart phone can act as a modem for your PC, which means you can connect to the Internet from anywhere. The phone and PC have to support Bluetooth, and the settings in Windows can be a chore to configure, but once it is all working, you don’t have to rely soley on Wi-Fi hot spots.

Ultraportable Laptops That Perform

Ultraportable laptops are the latest trend, but buying decisions could be a struggle when choosing between low-cost and better-performing models. Low-cost ultraportables under 3 pounds, like Everex’s CloudBook and Asus’ Eee PC, have limited processing power and storage, but they’re good enough to surf the Internet and edit Word documents. The expensive ultraportables, like Lenovo’s IdeaPad U110 and Fujitsu’s P8010, pack processing power, storage and memory, making them good primary PCs.

The question is — where do you settle? The low-cost laptops are good for short-term use and as backup PCs, but if you have more cash on hand, the more powerful laptops are hard to ignore and better for the long run.

Fujitsu’s LifeBook P8010

It’s not quite as light or thin as Apple’s MacBook Air, but I could lift the Fujitsu’s LifeBook P8010 ultraportable notebook with two fingers. The 2.9-pound (1.3-kilogram) laptop felt like a godsend compared to my earlier desktop replacement laptop, which weighed in excess of 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms).

This laptop is one of the first to adapt Intel’s low-power Core 2 Duo SL7100 LV chip running at 1.2GHz, which was shrunk 60 percent from Intel’s original Core 2 Duo design. The chip consumes less power compared to its larger counterpart, giving laptops longer battery life.

The laptop comes with an OS choice of Windows XP Professional or Windows Vista Business. A test unit sent by Fujitsu came with Vista Business, with an included DVD allowing me to downgrade to Windows XP Professional. I downgraded to Windows XP immediately.

The laptop’s keyboard format was different from my earlier laptop and took a little while to get used to. More keyboard functions are bundled into other keys. For example, the page up and page down keys — which I use often — are combined with the up and down arrow keys, and work only after pressing down a special FN key. The performance was impressive — the laptop booted in less than a minute, and programs loaded quickly.

Running for about six hours while using a wireless 802.11n network connection, the battery life was close to what Fujitsu recommended. When operating on a battery, the screen automatically dims down to an extent where eyes could strain. The screen brightness can be adjusted manually.

The performance of built-in Intel graphics was adequate — not overwhelming — and it provided decent graphics performance for applications like Lord Of the Rings Online and Second Life, but I’m not much of a gamer.

The laptop’s biggest asset is its ultraportability. It’s light and easy to carry, and delivers battery life and performance that can keep it working for hours on the road. At US$1,699, the P8010 is one of the more inexpensive ultraportable laptops available that could be a primary machine.

The laptop comes with a 12.1-inch screen and supports up to 2G bytes of RAM and up to 200G bytes of hard drive storage. Solid-state drive storage will be available in the future, a Fujitsu spokeswoman said.

It also has a DVD-RW drive and a built-in 1.3-megapixel Webcam. It supports TPM (Trusted Platform Module), a hardware-based authentication technology for system security.

It is available worldwide through retailers and Fujitsu’s Web site.

Lenovo’s ultraportable IdeaPad

Lenovo added an ultraportable laptop, the IdeaPad U110, to its consumer laptop line last month. At $1,899, this laptop’s starting price is higher than Fujitsu’s LifeBook P8010, but it packs a faster Intel processor and has multimedia features that contribute to its appealing glossy design.

The laptop comes with a dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 1.6GHz and includes the Vista Home Premium OS. It weighs 2.4 pounds (1.08 kilograms) and comes with an 11.1-inch screen. It comes with multiple batteries that give the laptop an impressive eight-hour run time. Inside, the computer integrates Intel graphics, a 120G-byte hard drive and 2G bytes of memory, which is upgradeable to 3G bytes.

The laptop also comes with VeriFace face recognition technology, where a built-in camera recognizes a face to log a person into the computer. The feature absolves users from remembering lengthy and complex passwords, Lenovo said. Button controls on top of the keyboard help control multimedia tasks like adjusting sound and viewing movies.

It is already available in red and black online and will start shipping through retail stores later this month. When customizing the laptop online, users can buy a $30 recycling service from Lenovo for laptop disposal. In return, users get a $50 rebate to apply for future purchase on a Lenovo product.

Military Computer Contractor Convicted on ID Theft Charges

A former U.S. military contractor has pleaded guilty to exceeding authorized access to a computer and aggravated identity theft after he was accused of selling names and Social Security numbers of 17,000 military employees, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Randall Craig, 41, of Houston, pleaded guilty Friday to both counts of an indictment returned in April by a grand jury in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Craig acknowledged selling information contained in a military database to a person he believed to represent a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The person who purchased the names and Social Security numbers from Craig was an undercover FBI agent, they said.

Craig worked as a private computer contractor at the Marine Corps Reserve Center in San Antonio, Texas, in September 2007, and he had access to personal information of U.S. Marines in the center’s database, the DOJ said.

On Feb. 6, Craig met with someone he believed to be a representative of a foreign government at the Houston airport to discuss the sale of a thumb drive containing the information Craig had obtained from the military database, the DOJ said. Craig sold the thumb drive for US$500, the agency said.

“Our personal identification information is readily available to those who have a legitimate use for it as well as those who do not, such as Mr. Craig,” U.S. Attorney Don DeGabrielle said in a statement. “Because he sought to profit from this identity theft, we moved swiftly and justly — as we will in all such cases — to protect our military heroes and to protect everyone in the conduct of their personal affairs.”

A forensic examination conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service determined the data was from the Marine Corps Reserve Center where Craig worked, the DOJ said. The thumb drive contained personal information of 17,000 people assigned to the Battalion of the U.S. Marine Corps in San Antonio, the DOJ said. The investigation found that none of the information obtained by Craig was sold to others or otherwise compromised.

At a Feb. 22 meeting with the FBI undercover agent, Craig said he had made efforts to contact other foreign countries in an attempt to offer his services, the DOJ said. The undercover agent and Craig discussed future contact, using cell phones and e-mail.

The conviction for exceeding authorized access to a computer for financial gain carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory two year-sentence that must be served consecutive to any sentence imposed for the charge of exceeding authorized access. Both counts also include maximum fines of $250,000.