Gregarius &#187; BetaNews.Com &#187; août 2009

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) The iPhone is a technical marvel, a full-on computer that happens to fit in your pocket. It isn't alone: The average BlackBerry is also pretty magical in its own right, as are high end phones from Nokia, HTC and a host of other vendors.

Fantastically capable as they are, don't drop yours. Don't get it wet, either. Don't stress or damage it in any way. Because if you think you can simply bring it back to the store where you got it and swap it out under warranty for a replacement unit, think again. Violate the warranty terms and you'll be buying yourself a new one.

Despite growing discontent in Apple's support forums surrounding overheating iPhone batteries --and a similarly increasing frequency of cracked screens that may very well be related to the battery issue-- the company contends there have been no confirmed iPhone 3GS overheating incidents. The company says it is investigating a mere handful of customer complaints, but isn't admitting it's got a design or production-related issue with the device. Even allowing for the usual vendor underestimation, that total number of affected units likely represents only a tiny minority of in service iPhones. Still, any blemish on a popular product can be troublesome to vendor and buyer alike.

Apple, you've got a problem

Apple's refusal to admit there may be something wrong with the iPhone's basic engineering is crucial to the future expectations of owners unfortunate enough to own a portable Apple-branded toaster oven. As long as Apple denies it's got a problem, it can easily shift the blame to the consumer. By claiming consumer behavior voided the warranty, Apple keeps a lid on its support costs.

This isn't a new strategy for Apple. Earlier this year, support forums were crackling with reports of iPhones dying after their internal moisture sensors were tripped. In those cases, Apple's response to consumers was similarly intransigent: You dropped it in water, took it to the gym for a sweaty workout, or kept it in your non-air-conditioned kitchen for an entire day while you slow-cooked Friday night supper, tough luck.

To a certain degree, I appreciate Apple's position. There are plenty of people out there who would willingly abuse a liberal product warranty and see it as a get-free-hardware card, a manufacturer-insured justification for irresponsible behavior. Why bother keeping your device protected when you can simply pick up another one, no questions asked? While there will always be customers out there who willingly abuse the system to avoid paying hundreds of dollars in repair or replacement costs, Apple's get-tough approach nevertheless puts it at risk of ticking off consumers who take a decidedly more mature approach to caring for their devices.

Our growing mobile reliance

It may seem like a trivial matter, an extension of the usual cat-and-mouse game that buyers play when they buy complex electronics only to have them fail long before their expected design life is over. But it's anything but trivial as consumers and businesses alike lean increasingly heavily on mobile devices. The industry's inability to effectively deal with durability and consumers' relative naivete in not demanding more consistent warranty terms could hinder our ability to get the most out of these otherwise game changing technologies.

Although Apple gets the headlines these days because it owns the most visible mobile technology brand, this applies to every other smartphone vendor as well. The fine print that no one reads in the excited rush to buy that shiny new wonderphone and get out of the store is coming back to bite some buyers. Left unchecked, some vendors may find themselves on the wrong side of consumer expectations.

It ain't easy being mobile

Unlike desktop PCs that just sit there for their entire lives, smartphones don't have it so easy. Even if we think we're being careful with them, they're nevertheless exposed to environments that would bring a conventional PC to its knees. We leave them in the car on a summer's day, toss them in a backpack for a mid-winter commute to work or keep them on the bathroom vanity while we shower. We don't follow the battery care instructions to the letter (or at all) and I doubt anyone anywhere can honestly claim to have never dropped the thing.

But it's hard to believe vendors couldn't foresee this kind of end-user experience. We've been carrying cell phones for a couple of decades, now, and that's given us plenty of time to get used to dealing with wireless carriers and the hardware vendors that supply them (and us) with the latest and greatest phones. Millions of us have already called our carriers with countless tales of woe, and their help desk logs are doubtless stuffed with insight into how devices fail. Hardware vendors have on occasion managed to bring toughened devices to market --Motorola stands out as a vendor that stuck with it for longer than most-- but today's buyers barely pay attention to durability.

They should.

Arm yourself

As we're peppering the in-store representative with every last question about how much memory it has, whether our neighbourhood gets decent 3G coverage and what it'll take to keep the monthly voice and data bill under three digits, we need to challenge them on durability and warranty as well. Think about how you'll be using your device, then ask what happens if it fails. Get answers in writing, if at all possible, and don't be afraid to walk if you think a given carrier and hardware vendor won't stand behind a product and a reasonably careful consumer (you, of course.)

The responsibility extends to Apple and competing smartphone vendors as well. As they decide how conciliatory or aggressive to be when responding to apparent failure patterns, they'd do well to consider how their responses might influence future buying decisions. As consumers increasingly demand fair (not overly generous, not scandalously rigid, just fair) after-sale warranty support, vendors do themselves a disservice by assuming market leadership translates into permanent customer loyalty. If anything, loyalty is the first thing that evaporates when smartphone vendors play hardball with their customers.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.

China Mobile launches 'OPhone' to counter China Unicom's iPhone

Publié: août 31, 2009, 9:11pm CEST par Tim Conneally

At an event today in Beijing, China Mobile officially launched its "OPhone" platform, the mobile carrier's answer to China Unicom's recently acquired Apple iPhone. Ophone launch in Beijing (pic: Xinhua News, Photographer: Yuan Zhou) OPhones run OMS (Open Mobile System), a China Mobile-branded fork of Google's Android, and they will be made by a number of prominent manufacturers, including Dell, HTC, Lenovo. China Mobile showed off devices by all three manufacturers today, and said it expects companies such as Samsung, ZTE, Phillips, Motorola, and LG to support the platform.

Chipmaker Marvell affirmed its support of OMS with the platform's launch today. Marvell's Vice President and General Manager of Consumer and Computing Business said, "China is not only leading the next phase of growth for the global economy, it is driving new advancements in 3G and 4G mobile technology. Working with China Mobile to deliver smartphones with advanced capabilities enables Marvell to expand its reach deeper into the world's largest phone market."

With the launch of OPhone, Android now has the single largest wireless market in the world at its disposal. At the beginning of 2009, China Mobile had 463.9 million wireless subscribers. By comparison, The United States' largest wireless carrier, AT&T, closed out 2008 with 74.9 million subscribers.

The percentage of 3G users on China Mobile, however is very small because the carrier only received its TD-SCDMA licence this year. But growth has been rapid. The company passed the 1 million 3G subscriber mark in June, roughly six months after opening the network.

Mobile gaming proves to be a huge growth market

Publié: août 31, 2009, 7:26pm CEST par Tim Conneally

French video game publisher Gameloft established an early lead in download-only gaming and is seriously reaping the rewards. Gameloft games Today, Gameloft published its results for the first half of 2009, showing sales that have reached €60.1 million so far. This constitutes a 20% year over year increase, and Gameloft says 95% of that growth is coming from the mobile gaming sector.

This means in the first half of 2009, Gameloft sold €9.69 million ($13.8 million) worth of mobile games. When considering that the price of each game is generally between $2.99 and $9.99, the possible number of downloads is quite staggering.

In addition to making games available in the DS, Wii, 360, and PSP download shops, Gameloft was one of the first prolific game makers in the mobile sector who took advantage of the app store craze. The company has released ports of its titles on Android, Symbian, J2ME, and of course, iPhone. It has released some 35 games for iPhone, and 18 of them have broken the top-ten best selling games list.

Because it is doing so well, Gameloft said today that it is revising its outlook for the rest of 2009 and will publish its forecasts on October 28.

Apple's annual iPod Refresh event confirmed

Publié: août 31, 2009, 6:37pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Apple's iPod event 2009

Reports from "music industry executives" earlier in August which predicted a September 9 iPod refresh have been confirmed today, making 2009's iPod unveiling exactly like 2008's.

Today, Apple sent out invitations for its annual iPod event, where the year's lineup of personal media players will be unveiled. The event will take place at the Yerba Buena Cetner for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

Aside from the persistent rumors of an Apple tablet/e-reader, there isn't a tremendous amount of excitement about this year's event. It is widely expected that the "Cocktail" interactive music album platform will be introduced, as well as new iPods equipped with cameras and microphones.

Samsung announces mobile app store

Publié: août 31, 2009, 6:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

It's amazing what can happen in one year. Before Apple launched the iTunes App store, there was no such thing as the "mobile app store economy." It was limited to a few vendors such as Handango, who controlled the small mobile software distribution market.

Now, most mobile operating systems have their own app store, and phone manufacturers are attempting to open stores with their own devices in mind. Today, Samsung announced it will launch an on-device smartphone app store in Europe on September 14. The company has already put up a placeholder for its app store, and downloads will be available to the Omnia and the I8910 HD. Samsung says support will be added on the Omnia II and OmniaLITE at a later date.

"With the launch of the Application Store, Samsung will increase mobile phone sales and add value for its mobile customers through the availability of carefully selected applications," said Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President of Samsung's Media Solution Center.

But it won't be limited to smartphones, Lee continued. "The Application Store will expand the service channel, not only on handheld devices but also on PCs through the launch of new PC software. The software will allow customers to download applications and manage them on a PC to maximize service usability."

'Macs don't get viruses' myth dissolves before public's eyes

Publié: août 28, 2009, 11:07pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Apple never said OS X was invulnerable to viruses. Well, not in so many words.

It's just one of those things that the media hungry --but security disinterested-- public has turned into an axiom.

But now that OS X is garnering an increased share of the operating system market, it is increasing its value as a platform for malware, and consequently increasing in value in the software security market.

The built-in security measures that have existed since Tiger (OS X 10.4) have been brought to a position of much greater prominence in Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). This week, there has been a considerable amount of discussion about two invisible anti-malware mechanisms which pop up any time certain Mac viruses are found (OSX/Puper, OSX/IWService.)

Security software company McAfee Avert Labs' Craig Schmugar pointed out that "the growth rate of malware (notably PC malware) is partly due to the success of defenses; the bad guys react and pump out more and more malware in an effort to circumvent those defenses. Apple's inclusion of malware identification into the OS could certainly be a catalyst for a more intense game of cat and mouse with virus authors, an ironic scenario should this come about."

Also, security company Trend Micro reports that the release of Snow Leopard has brought out a number of malicious Web sites where an OS X mountable Disk Image (.DMG) with malicious Install Operation scripts are being spread. Trend Micro researcher Ivan Macalintal found the most recent variant of this common malware last Sunday.

"The said downloaded script resets the DNS configuration of the affected system and adds two new IP addresses as the DNS server. As a result, users may be redirected to phishing sites or sites where other malware may be downloaded," says Trend Micro's threat definition.

DHS: Expect your computer to be seized without suspicion

Publié: août 28, 2009, 9:55pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In what was presented to the public this week as a clarification of its privacy policy, the US Dept. of Homeland Security published a paper referring to new guidelines for its immigration and customs agents regarding how they may conduct border searches of travelers' computers and electronic media. Clarifying the existing law, both sets of guidelines reiterated the department's policy created during the previous administration: Agents may seize, detain, and/or retain individuals' PCs and media without having reason to suspect that those people or those machines and devices are connected with a crime.

"ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] Special Agents acting under border search authority may search, detain, seize, retain, and share electronic devices, or information contained therein, with or without individualized suspicion, consistent with the guidelines and applicable laws set forth herein," states the new policy for immigration authorities published last August 18 (PDF available here). "Assistance to complete a border search may be sought from other Federal agencies and non-Federal entities, on a case by case basis, as appropriate."

The guidelines for Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) agents says pretty much the same thing, adding that whenever a CBP agent encounters technical trouble figuring out how a mechanism works, or what the meaning of some piece of information is, he can seek help from other US government sources. "In such situations, Officers may transmit electronic devices or copies of information contained therein to seek technical assistance from other federal agencies," reads the CBP guidelines (PDF available here).

What's been a subject of contention ever since the government tightened border inspection policies in the wake of 9/11 hasn't been so much agents' rights to act without suspicion (although for some, that already crosses the line) as the authority DHS grants them to transmit the information they find elsewhere, under the auspices of "seeking help." Both guidelines now state that agents may only seek help from other federal sources, but they are not explicit with regard to what level -- for example, whether a private consultant under retainer for the FBI would qualify.

In their assessment of the extent of the risks this clarified policy might pose to citizens' and visitors' personal privacy, published last Tuesday (PDF available here), both border agencies, acting jointly, identified six specific areas: "(1) travelers may need additional information regarding the authority [agents have] to conduct border searches; (2) the traveler may be unaware of the viewing or detention of his/her information by CBP and ICE; (3) personally identifiable information (PII) may be detained where it is not needed; (4) PII may be misused by CBP and ICE officers; (5) CBP and ICE may disclose PII to other agencies that may misuse or mishandle it; and (6) new privacy risks may arise as the technology involved in this activity is ever-changing."

In other words, individuals may not be fully informed as to the extent of agents' authority, and what safeguards there may be to protect identifying information from falling into the hands of someone who can misuse it -- the privacy threat here being that the traveler may not know what the threat really is. The solution, DHS asserts, is by making that information about the private information that could be misused, public -- specifically, by publishing it in the Federal Register.

Under the heading, "Principle of Transparency," the DHS report explains, "When ICE or CBP retain information from electronic devices, that information may be subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act requires that agencies publish a System of Records Notice (SORN) in the Federal Register describing the nature, purpose, maintenance, use, and sharing of the information. This PIA and the several SORNs published by DHS provide notice of the retention of PII at the border and the retention of some of the contents of electronic devices."

So at the very least, an explanation of the events surrounding the detention or seizure of travelers' computers may be available online to those travelers (along with everyone else) on GPOAccess.gov. However, the Department goes on to say, the extent of the information shared online this way may be limited, especially with regard to how much the detained information is being shared, as well as with whom. This is for the good of any investigation that may arise.

"Because notifying the traveler of the sharing of information could impede an investigation or other law enforcement or national security efforts, CBP and ICE do not make the information sharing process fully transparent to the public," the report states. "To ensure the protection of personal data without compromising the investigation, CBP and ICE have instituted strict oversight and review processes. Generally speaking, information, including PII, will be shared with other agencies where CBP and/or ICE require subject matter expertise, decryption, or translation."

Those oversight and review processes will make the sharing of that information with other agencies legal and permissible under the Privacy Act of 1974. Appropriate safeguards and audit trails will be kept to track when and where information is exchanged, but for the sake of privacy, that information will be kept private.

AT&T announces tentative wireline union deal

Publié: août 28, 2009, 8:39pm CEST par Tim Conneally

AT&T announced details of its tentative agreement with the Communications Workers of America who began contract re-negotiations in April.

The CWA represents 7,000 of AT&T's legacy wireline workers, whose contracts expired in the spring. Today, AT&T announced it has tentatively arrived at a three-year agreement upon wages, pension band increases, and health care. CWA workers were threatening to strike if AT&T changed their health care benefits, which included an HMO with 100% of the premiums covered by AT&T.

The health care aspect, at least, remains largely unchanged. A statement from AT&T this afternoon said, "[CWA] health care benefits remain among the best in the nation, providing for fully funded preventive care and company-funded health reimbursement accounts that can be used toward any eligible health care expense."

In the revised contract, CWA wages will increase 3% in the first and second years, and 2.75% in the third. Pension bands will increase 2% annually. In the third year, for both wage and pension band increases, there is an opportunity for a cost-of-living adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index.

Roughly half of AT&T's union contracts have been ratified, and negotiations are continuing in three major CWA districts.

Financial institutions vulnerable to phishing-by-CD, says security report

Publié: août 28, 2009, 7:53pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The National Credit Union Administration this week issued an alert warning credit unions of an innovative form of scareware that utilizes traditional postal mail and a piece of malware that the user actively installs.

Some NCUA member credit unions have reportedly received letters that claimed to be from the NCUA which contained CDs of important "training materials" that would help inform users about phishing scams. Running the discs, naturally, loaded up credit union computers with a bunch of malware.

Kaspersky Labs said the letters themselves read like phishing scam e-mails rife with grammatical and spelling errors.

For example: "The NCUA has warned numerous times about 'phishing' scams in which crooks send e-mails claiming to be from legitimate financial institutions, companies, or government agencies asking consumers to 're-submit' or 'verify' confidential information such as bank accounts, Social Security Numbers, passwords, and personal identification numbers...Please read the included document, as it contains important training and informational material regarding the risks of fraud..."

Brent Huston from security assessment company Microsolved came forward, saying this physical scareware was part of an authorized penetration test that was not intended to be made public through the NCUA.

"The person responsible for the penetration test was out the day the letter arrived," Huston said today. "The receiver of the letter followed their incident response process and reported the suspicious activity to the NCUA Fraud Hotline, just as they are supposed to do...The employee of the credit union had followed the process, just as they should, and alerted the proper authorities to the potential for fraud. We immediately contacted the NCUA Fraud hotline and explained that the process was a part of a standard penetration test. Eventually, we talked with executive management of NCUA and offered them any information they desired, including the source code to the tools on the CDs."

"However, in typical Internet fashion, the story had already taken on a life of its own. The next thing we know, the press is picking up the story, there's an article on Slashdot and people are in alert mode," Huston continued. "We then set about trying to calm folks down and such on Twitter, through e-mail and such. The bottom line here is this: This was a controlled exercise in which the process worked. The social engineering attack itself was unsuccessful and drew the attention of the proper authorities. Had we been actual criminals and attempting fraud, we would have been busted by law enforcement."

'Up-to-Date' Snow Leopard customers aren't getting what they paid for

Publié: août 28, 2009, 7:21pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date program promised users who bought a qualifying Mac or Xserve on or after June 8th of this year an automatic upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard for only $9.95.

However, it appears that Apple is only shipping out full versions of the operating system upgrade today, and not the Up-to-Date versions. As to be expected, customers who put in their orders months ago are expressing 140 characters worth of displeasure all over Twitter this afternoon.

"Like others, I'm confused why Apple didn't ship Snow Leopard to Up-To-Date customers to arrive 8/28. My delivery is expected 9/01 to 9/04," one user wrote.

"Maybe Steve Jobs is sealing every up-to-date Snow Leopard order with a kiss. Only logical explanation why my order hasn't shipped," wrote another.

Yet another said, "Whew, glad I ordered two copies of Snow Leopard. Only the retail shipped, the 'Up to Date' program copy has not..."

"Expected Product Availability" on the Up-to-Date site now simply says "September 2009."

A reluctance to Bing: UK Yahoo portal partner makes first switch to Google

Publié: août 28, 2009, 7:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

When Microsoft made its deal last month with Yahoo to provide the search infrastructure for its home page, using technology from Bing, it left open and non-exclusive the fate of several deals the one-time #2 search provider had already made, especially with carriers. Specifically, does Bing become the default search provider for services that had previously made a deal with Yahoo? The answer appeared to be no.

Today, that suspicion was roundly confirmed, as one of the world's largest cooperative portals with Yahoo -- one which still bears the Yahoo brand -- quietly but obviously switched its search box to one that was "powered by Google." In a move first discovered by the UK-based blog Connected Internet, BT's Web portal BT Yahoo became a carrier of Google search rather than Bing.

The move marks the apparent beginning of the dismantling of Yahoo-based search engine resources, as the company itself moves over to Bing technology. But that non-exclusive deal apparently does not bind its partners from making the same move. As of this morning, the US' AT&T Yahoo portal page (still known to customers by its previous name, SBC Yahoo) still bears Yahoo's search engine.

The non-exclusive nature of the Microsoft deal could mean that a multitude of lucrative deals Yahoo made last year with mobile carriers, including UK-based Virgin Mobile, may leave an opening for something other than Bing search. Yahoo had re-announced its Yahoo Mobile service last February, at the pinnacle of which was the mobile edition of its oneSearch mobile search platform, with voice search features. Google's mobile search has similar functionality, pointing to the possibility that mobile services as well as PC pages could open unforeseen doors for carriers that haven't seen any lucrative value in Microsoft's presence in mobile in recent months, to perhaps move to Google without disturbing the spirit or even the letter of their Yahoo deals. Mobile carrier deals are where the money is.

Apple: If an iPhone cracks or overheats, that's your problem

Publié: août 28, 2009, 6:00pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In the latest indication that Apple tends not to show as much love toward its customers as its customers do toward it, the company made a statement to AFP press this morning effectively saying that fewer than 10 reports from its customers of overheating iPhone batteries are to be believed. Further, it added that anyone who finds herself with a cracked iPhone needs to look into the mirror for the cause.

"To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits," an Apple spokesperson told the AFP. The report goes on to say that cracking in iPhone glass cases is due to a phenomenon it has termed "external force."

While overheating continues to be reported by many iPhone 3G and 3G S users on Apple's support forums, perhaps a more common complaint in recent days has been apparent fast drain times. Topics seeking help such as this one asking whether or not Apple has acknowledged an issue with fast drain times, are often met with a flurry of responses from non-official sources. Some refer the complainers to this Apple disclaimer on battery life, which they claim to be evidence that such drainage is impossible. Others refer complainers to official Apple statements like the one this morning to the AFP, saying such issues may not even be occurring; and some tell the complainers to take their phone to the Apple Store's "Genius Bar" and stop bothering them about it.

Some take the unusual tactic of denying the presence of other threads on the topic: "Apparently no one else has had this issue yet," said an early responder to a recently launched topic on drainage and overheating. One responder attempted to compare the ratio of people complaining about the issue, which he estimated in the hundreds, to the total size of the iPhone market to reduce the apparent severity of the problem. In one instance, the complainer was admonished for having purchased an iPhone in the first place, knowing full well that iPhone batteries have been exploding for years -- if he can't take the heat, the post essentially said, he shouldn't have invested in an iPhone.

Then many others take to the time-honored tradition of calling the complainer a moron.

In amidst all the calamity, however, there are some contributors who are offering a potential solution: Have the battery drain once completely, then recharge completely to see if that resets the battery. Some have reported success with this tactic; others who try it, but report that their batteries tend to run hot. Often bringing up the subject of heat on top of drainage collapses the entire thread into a political debate over whether naysayers are trying to slander the iPhone by saying it runs hot, when all batteries run hot. (Similar catastrophes can be found on support threads dealing with MacBook battery issues.)

The case cracking issue is particularly important for many users because Apple's warranty does not cover damage due to stress or personally-applied "external force." Nearly all support threads we've browsed on the topic this morning (there were many more than we had time to read) are from individuals seeking alternatives to completely replacing their phones, especially in situations where they actually appear to work just fine except for the crack.

Apple's stance is an indication that the company does not want to open the worm-can on possible design defects, which could lead to a nightmare scenario where it becomes responsible for replacing units that arguably were damaged due to everyday forces.

Apple's treatment of the glass cracking and overheating issues as separate may be particularly clever, though, especially since these issues could be related: stress fractures on a phone can cause the battery to ignite, as seen in this demonstration video above (which does not appear to involve an iPhone).

The Dell surprise: A turnaround suggests the warnings were unnecessary

Publié: août 28, 2009, 4:58pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Dell Just last month, Dell issued an out-of-cycle earnings warning telling investors the underpinnings of its business didn't look as solid as it thought, and gross margins could be headed for a freefall rather than the anticipated steep decline. If Dell had to make another financial reporting error, perhaps this one was the one to make: The company's $4 billion cost-cutting initiatives kicked in when it needed them most, resulting in an operating income improvement of 62% over the first quarter of the year, and a quarter-to-quarter gross margin increase by 10%.

Not that 18.7% gross margin is anywhere that Dell, or any other company, would want to be for any sustained length of time. But rather than the dire straits the company's July warnings were foretelling, Dell ended up with a better second quarter than its first in several departments -- this while its biggest competitor, HP, took a bigger hit that it expected.

A few weeks ago, HP reported shipment increases for personal systems of about 2% annually. The big question at the time was, did that 2% come at Dell's expense, or was it a result of an economic recovery in the works? Yesterday, Dell reported its shipments rose by 10% over the previous quarter. If those numbers are independently confirmed, Dell may avoid falling to the #3 spot worldwide against Acer anytime this year.

It's the bright, sweet-smelling rose on what was otherwise a pretty smelly quarter by anyone's standards. Unit shipments, while on the uptick, are 14% lower now than they were at this time last year. The company reaped just under $10 billion in revenue during the last quarter, when it was raking in $11.5 billion at the same quarter last year. But that rising operating income to $671 million was hailed by investors yesterday as an extremely positive sign for the economy -- a sign that orders are back up, and that Dell may have a plan for cashing in.

Having learned its lesson during the Windows Vista upgrade cycle, CEO Michael Dell is refraining from betting on early adopter upgrades to Windows 7 to help float those order numbers. Instead -- and very shrewdly -- he believes that the new OS will need maybe a few quarters to stabilize, to make up some ground, before consumers and businesses start treating it seriously.

But then they'll treat it seriously, Mr. Dell believes, because that huge backlog of Windows XP-based machines -- the sheer number of which Dell is intimately familiar with, from servicing them all and even downgrading Vista machines at customers' request -- will be ripe for replacement.

"When you look at the age of the install base, we know that after a certain period of time the cost just becomes pretty onerous," stated Mr. Dell yesterday (our thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript), "and the percentage of these machines out there that are based on Windows XP, which again is an eight-year-old operating system in another month or two, you know also what many of you may not have done and I would encourage you to do is go to dell.com, buy a modern PC, put Windows 7 on it, put Office 2010 on it, you will love your PC again. And as more and more people do that, I'm here to tell you there's going to be a refresh cycle next year. It's not all going to come in the first month or the second month, but over the course of the year there will be a big refresh cycle."

Flash
Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player nowif (typeof(embedWikichart) != "undefined") {embedWikichart("http://charts.wikinvest.com/WikiChartMini.swf","wikichartContainer_FF4B17E2-A7C5-D066-BB37-61C6D554C058","570","365",{"startDate":"28-02-2009","showAnnotations":"true","endDate":"28-08-2009","ticker":"DELL","liveQuote":"true"});}View the full DELL chart at Wikinvest

Maybe Mr. Dell has been reading Betanews in recent weeks, because he was certainly in tune with the Windows 7 whether-to-upgrade debate, when asked his feelings directly about customer sentiments by a Citigroup analyst: "It's always a subject of debate in terms of, you know, do you put the new OS on the old hardware? I think that the difference now is the size of the installed base of old hardware has never been greater," remarked Mr. Dell. "And you're talking about...a change from an eight-year-old operating system, so it's a significant change-over in terms of capability, and we see a lot of old machines out there that are going to be replaced. Certainly some people will put Windows 7 on the installed base. You know, generally the larger customers don't like to touch a machine once they've put it out there. It's just more expensive for them to just leave it in place and do a rolling upgrade."

Confirmed: China Unicom in three-year deal for iPhone 3G

Publié: août 28, 2009, 4:06pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In its quarterly report to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange yesterday, the Chinese telephone carrier China Unicom announced it had reached a three-year deal with Apple to sell an iPhone model in China. This in a section of the report dedicated to 3G technology progress, so although the precise iPhone model was not stated, we can assume Unicom will be getting a 3G-capable unit.

The timeframe for the launch will be calendar Q4 this year, in keeping with a new 3G marketing campaign that Unicom is simply calling "WO" (as in "whoa!"). "'WO' carries the Company's brand-new service philosophy and reflects the Company's corporate image of 'being innovative,'" reads the report, quotation marks included. "With the continued improvement of the Company's network quality, the further upgrade of the service standard and the official launch of 3G services, 'WO' will offer a brand new experience for users."

Unicom received an official license from the state to deliver WCDMA service to China last January 7. That's an accomplishment, because there actually is something of a competitive market in China for mobile services, although the state often holds the upper hand in determining the market leader for any given segment. China Mobile is actually the largest mobile carrier in China; since March of last year, China Mobile leaked news it was negotiating with Apple for the iPhone 3G. Those negotiations dragged on through September with no deal.

Although China Mobile had repeatedly denied reports that talks had broken off, even when there was no sign of Apple representatives, state-run business media last February finally squelched Mobile's hopes for good, announcing talks with #2 carrier Unicom were on.

Unicom's 3G rollout has been extremely fast, beginning only three months ago with trial service to 56 cities. Today, it's providing some service on a trial basis to 268 cities throughout the country, with its goal being to service 335 cities by the time sale of the iPhone 3G begins.

Nokia N900: The future of the 'MID' form factor?

Publié: août 28, 2009, 1:03am CEST par Tim Conneally

There have been a couple of form factors in recent years that have completely failed to capture the public's imagination, despite their promising capabilities: Tablets and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

However, with the dramatic level of rumor circulating about Steve Jobs and Apple's pet tablet project, there may be hope for that form factor after all. And with Nokia's announcement of the N900 today, the MID concept looks like it might stick around too.

But it may not gain traction, so much as evolve into a new high-powered mobile phone category, akin to a "smartbook," but minus the bookishness.

Nokia has been making MIDs for about four years, and the N900 will be the successor to the N810. However, it will be radically different from its predecessors, if only by the simple fact that it now contains quad-band GSM and HSPA cellular radios and can be used as a phone.

With the N900, Nokia has resolved some the issues which prevented MIDs from breaking through. First, MIDs were typically built to be Wi-Fi devices, anchoring them down to hotspot and home use. Not really as mobile as the name "Mobile Internet Device" would suggest. Nokia attempted to beef up the mobility of the form factor by aligning with WiMAX, but with dissolving interest in the wireless standard, the company said it was bringing 3G to its tablets in late 2008. And then reportedly sacked the WiMAX effort at the beginning of 2009. By equipping the device with cellular and mobile broadband signals in addition to Wi-Fi, it has finally become a mobile form factor. The addition of cellular connectivity also plays into the price, which I'll talk about later.

Secondly, MIDs are awkwardly fashioned in between standard form factor sizes. They're too big to fit in your pocket, and too small to view at laptop distance. You'd have to hold them as close as you would a phone, but without any of the ergonomics of a phone. Nokia solved this by keeping the resolution up (800 x 400) and shrinking the screen down to 3.5 inches, the now-standard touchphone screen size.

Nokia N900 Maemo

Thirdly, MIDs were priced out of the range of mobile phones and in the range of notebooks, despite not being as powerful. It is actually the same issue which doomed the Foleo to failure yet made the Eee a triumph. The price to power ratio was just uneven for MIDs. This has not exactly been resolved yet. The N900 is expected to sell for $711, yet it only carries a 600 MHz processor, 256 MB RAM and 32 GB of storage.

However, since it's a full-fledged cellular device, it will likely be subsidized through national wireless carriers and brought down into the smartphone price range.

Even the chipset treads the fine line between MID and Smartphone. The TI OMAP 3430 is described by Texas Instruments as supporting "all levels of handsets, from the entry-level multimedia-enabled handsets to high-end Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)."

Adding to the categorical confusion is Maemo, Nokia's Linux-based tablet OS which the N900 runs. Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Markets at Nokia said, "The Nokia N900 shows where we are going with Maemo and we'll continue to work with the community to push the software forward. What we have with Maemo is something that is fusing the power of the computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone, and it is great to see that it is evolving in exciting ways."

So it's got the chassis and connectivity of a smartphone, and the guts and operating system of a MID. It looks like Nokia has either rejuvenated the MID, or created a new mutant.

FCC launches investigation of wireless industry

Publié: août 28, 2009, 1:02am CEST par Tim Conneally

This afternoon, the Federal Communications Commission gingerly passed measures that will result in the publication of three "Notices of Inquiry," seeking public input not only on the status of wireless broadband communications in this country, but what measures it should take to better judge just what "good" or "bad" means for that industry. While all those positive words were being spoken on the industry's behalf, however -- references to "the spirit of American innovation" abounded from both sides of the bench today -- from the other end of the building this afternoon, the FCC formally announced it will be launching an inquiry to "identify concrete steps the Commission can take to support and encourage further innovation and investment in the wireless marketplace."

"Wireless mobility has become central to the economic, civic, and social lives of over 270 million Americans," a statement from the FCC said this afternoon. "We are now in the midst of a transition from reliance on mobile voice services to increasing use of and reliance on mobile broadband services, which promise to connect American citizens in new and profound ways. A robustly competitive mobile wireless market will be essential to realizing the full benefits to American consumers and channeling investment into vitally important national infrastructure. The FCC is seeking to ensure that competition in the mobile wireless market continues to bring substantial benefits to American consumers."

The FCC announced its intention to vote on this inquiry last week, and now the commission will develop a framework for analyzing the wireless industry that will shape regulatory issues moving forward.

Mozilla: Privacy concerns initially prevented some upgrades to Firefox 3

Publié: août 28, 2009, 12:29am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

One of the benefits of working in an organization whose founding premise is based on openness is that mistakes can be openly admitted, and thus more quickly rectified. An example of this principle in action comes from the blog for Mozilla's own analytics team, which earlier this week presented a very telling discovery from a survey of Firefox 2 users who continually declined making the upgrade to version 3.0 (we're not even dealing with 3.5 yet).

The most oft-cited reason users declined to make the upgrade -- from one declining user in four, or about 1,250 users, according to survey results -- was the apparent fact that a user's history of previously viewed Web sites could not be deleted from the address bar. As a result, when typing in an HTTP, any user could discover the addresses of similarly-named Web sites that any other user of that same browser (under the same logon name) had previously viewed.

"The browser is not very secure if browsing history cannot be deleted from the location bar," reads the team's citation of an actual comment from a browser user.

As a reviewers' guide to Firefox 3.5 indicates, a new feature in the Privacy panel under Options lets users limit the categories of information the "Awesome Bar" may provide, making it arguably less awesome but, in some minds, more secure. More frequent use of the Private Browsing feature, which does not record the user's history when active, may also appease these users' concerns.

The problem is, many of these users may already have been turned off of Firefox, and as result, will not have read either the reviewers' guide that points these facts out, or this article that attempts to shed extra light on them. So the analytics team openly suggested a change to Firefox itself: incorporating, in a future edition, the filtering control from the Options panel directly into the address bar itself.

What were users' thoughts on that? Not a complete solution, many said, because that doesn't resolve the issue of bringing back the users that didn't upgrade. Another user was the first to invoke the dreaded "p" word: A user who may be viewing porn may not want the opportunity to accidentally leave any trail of attempting to not leave any trail, and a switch that can be left to filter out history may provoke skepticism.

Firefox security contributor Jesse Ruderman pointed out the irony of users refusing to upgrade to a demonstrably more secure browser, for security reasons. "It sounds like users declining major updates is the main way we lose users to insecure versions, but it's not the only way," Ruderman wrote. "Should we try surveying users who uncheck 'Automatically check for updates' to find out why they do that?"

But perhaps the most enlightening comment came from a contributor who pointed out that the "freedom of expression" that characterized the original Firefox 3.0 "Awesome Bar" probably did raise some concerns during Mozilla's long beta period. Had enough attention been paid to beta testers' concerns at that time, before 3.0 went RTM in June 2008, the entire survey itself might not have been necessary.

"I think the other half of the solution is to see if there are ways to help developers predict or better gauge the response during beta releases," wrote "Lucy." "Obviously not every issue brought up during beta turns out to matter, but how to do a better job of telling them apart?"

Verizon calls Comcast's bet with Web-based FiOS TV beta

Publié: août 27, 2009, 11:39pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Two months ago, Comcast announced a limited beta trial of an online TV service involving networks of Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting division, where Comcast subscribers may be treated to earliest availability of post-airdate programming from networks including TBS and TNT. This morning, Verizon announced the launch of an almost identical trial, involving exactly the same networks, in a deal that makes one wonder whether it's Turner that's in the driver's seat here.

As part of Turner's "TV Everywhere" initiative, select FiOS fiberoptic service subscribers will be offered first crack (perhaps at the same time as Comcast customers) at online availability of shows like Raising the Bar, Saving Grace, and The Closer. Rather than seeing those shows first through online portals such as TNT.tv, logged on users to Verizon Online will receive invitations to join the carrier's limited trial.

One problem which Verizon will inevitably run into during this trial is the fact that FiOS service is not available everyplace nationwide, sometimes for any number of bizarre reasons often involving small municipalities and contract negotiations. Since this FiOS TV Online initiative will theoretically be accessible by FiOS customers anywhere in the world, Betanews asked Verizon today, once the online service fills out as Verizon is planning (deals with Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate are in the works, the company says), why couldn't a non-FiOS customer pay to subscribe, at least to the online service?

A Verizon spokesperson did not rule out that possibility, responding to Betanews this afternoon. "Right now, the service is available to FiOS TV customers who are also Verizon broadband customers," the spokesperson told us. "As we progress with the trial, we'll be looking at a number of things to determine how to make this the best possible experience for our customers."

Google News caught in Italian antitrust probe

Publié: août 27, 2009, 8:50pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Following complaints from the Italian Newspaper Publisher's Federation (FIEG), Italian authorities have launched a probe to find out whether Google abuses its position of the world's most popular search engine to deprive others of advertising revenue.

At the heart of FEIG's complaint is Google News and its mystery algorithms for listing top stories. FEIG complained that since it is unknown how Google News decides which stories are listed at the top, content providers don't know how their stories should be written so as to gain top billing in Google News listings. Conversely, sites also have no say if they do not want their content listed on Google News.

Furthermore, the group alleges that content that doesn't make it into Google News listings also fails to become available through Google Search. If true, this would of course greatly reduce a site's potential traffic, with a detrimental effect on the site's value to advertisers.

The anti-trust authority was quoted by Italian news service ANSA as saying, "[We] have decided to launch an investigation against Google Italy to check whether the conduct of the company, given its undisputed dominance in the provision of Online search services, is capable of unfairly affecting competition in the market for Online advertising sales, and if it has consolidated its position in brokering advertising space."

Mac OS X Snow Leopard is coming: Yes, do upgrade!

Publié: août 27, 2009, 8:50pm CEST par Carmi Levy

If nothing else, the operating system market these days is infinitely entertaining. Consider the humble upgrade.

Some OS upgrades, like XP-to-Vista on a marginally capable machine, demand more up-front planning than the end result is often worth. You end up spending money and time on a machine that, while it may look prettier, runs slower and gives you more headaches than it solves. Other upgrade scenarios, like Vista-to-Windows 7, are a lot more straightforward and easier for most folks to justify.

There's a third class I like to call the no-brainer upgrade. And Apple fans with relatively recent Intel-based Macs find themselves blessed as the Cupertino company prepares for tomorrow's general release of Mac OS X 10.6, otherwise known as Snow Leopard.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) In the overall scheme of things, Snow Leopard isn't a huge deal over 10.5 Leopard. Now that release was a pretty major bump over 10.4, so anything short of an OS capable of making breakfast and serving it up in bed for us would likely be greeted by a yawn from the Apple faithful. But evolutionary as it is, 10.6 packs enough goodness into itself that it's difficult to see too many Macs running 10.5 by year's end. Here's why:

It's smaller. In a world where every new version of a thing is inevitably bigger, fatter and heavier than the thing it replaces, it's pleasantly shocking to see Apple swimming against the tide. Once the upgrade process is completed, the average Mac's hard drive will have available about 6 GB more space. Sure, that's barely enough to stuff a couple of movies, but merely the principle of making the OS smaller in the first place is enough for me.
It's cheaper. We've been conditioned to paying triple-digit prices for operating systems almost since the beginning of the PC era. If Apple had asked for $129 for a 10.6 upgrade (the same price it asked for 10.5) I'd probably have carefully weighed the nice-to-have-but-hardly-necessary benefits against the price approaching that of the iPod nano I need for the car. But for 29 bucks, enough to cover a few frames of bowling for me and the munchkins, it's a fast, discretionary purchase. (Amazon has marked prices down even further, to $25 for the basic upgrade package, or $43.99 for the five-user package.) I could get used to this mad money OS pricing strategy, and I'd rather spend it on this than on a game I absolutely abhor.

Snow Leopard also has enough goodies stuffed inside that it'll provide far more than $29 in entertainment value alone. Since that money will go a lot further on my wife's and son's Macs than it would watching a lousy movie next to a bunch of unruly theater-goers and munching overpriced, stale popcorn, I'm voting we cancel the family movie night on Saturday and stay in. My wife and son are already backing up their data, and have scheduled some time on the weekend to bump their machines. And I didn't even have to work on them.

Coming on the heels of my recent writings on Windows 7 upgrades, this might sound a bit odd. Am I not the same guy who railed against shrink-wrap upgrades on some older hardware? Am I also not the dad who refused to force his kid to dump XP?

Yes, and yes. And I'm sticking to my story. Because you can't compare Apples to...uh, Windows. Upgrading an OS in Apple Land is worlds apart from doing the same thing in Windows. By virtue of the fact that Apple builds and controls the hardware, upgrading a Mac is by definition a more controlled process than upgrading a Windows box, whose iterations after all possible hardware combinations are considered can easily run into the billions. The cynic in me says Macs are dumbed down enough that everyday folks can confidently update their own OS. The realist in me wonders why Microsoft, whose Windows 7 is justifiably being praised for raising the state of the OS art, is only figuring that out just now.

Snow Leopard Delivering an OS upgrade for under 30 bucks is one of those game changing moves that forever alters how consumers view a given product or service. The tech industry is full of price-driven moments like this, like when PCs finally dropped below $1,000, cell phone rate plans went from $2/minute to unlimited, and digital cameras plummeted from the $1,000 range to $100 or less. These days, sub-$300 netbooks are redefining our perceptions of price and value, and giving hardware vendors fits in the process. In all cases, drastic price reductions thanks to rapid, economies-of-scale-driven advances in technology turned former luxuries into everyday appliances that even kids could afford. It's only natural that OS pricing would follow.

Now, there's nothing that says Apple won't crank the price up again when it releases v11, which will obviously be a much more significant and fundamental change than a mere decimal point product. But its pricing strategy for the 10.6 upgrade shifts consumer pricing expectations downward, and we all know that once they descend, they don't easily rise back up again.

Cheap, however, doesn't mean free. Various flavors of Linux, including some superbly well baked distros like Ubuntu, continue to thrive as shining examples of open source goodness. I thank my lucky stars every day that they exist, as they exert a definite influence on the broader market and keep pressure on major vendors like Apple and Microsoft to keep the innovation pipeline on their own products well stocked. And as much as we'd all like to believe every OS and app we load onto our machines should be free, free doesn't pay the rent, and at some point there's got to be a business model to ensure the product survives. Since operating systems don't benefit as cleanly from the advertising baseline that supports so many Web services, the user's got to fork out something come upgrade time. (We'll leave Google Chrome OS for another day.)

But in pushing the pricing envelope for a commercial offering and challenging other expectations about what an upgrade is and should be, Apple's thrown yet another gauntlet down in a growing battle for OS supremacy. With less than two months to go before Windows 7 goes gold, this may yet be the golden era of the operating system. Where's my popcorn?

Home video game console prices reach equilibrium with Xbox 360 drop

Publié: août 27, 2009, 7:06pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Just over a week after Sony debuted its $299, 120 GB PlayStation 3 Slim, Microsoft this morning officially announced that its 120 GB Xbox 360 Elite system will drop to exactly the same price tomorrow.

With that, the seventh generation of home video game consoles looks to finally be able to settle down.

This cut brings the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 closer together in price than they have been since they began competing with each other in 2005. Both Microsoft and Sony will continue to offer their own respective outlying models, though. Microsoft offers the cheapest console (the Xbox 360 Arcade for $199 with no hard drive) and Sony offers the console with the most onboard storage (the 160 GB "fat" PlayStation 3 for $399.)

Sony Computer Entertainment of America President and CEO Jack Tretton said last week that $299 is really the "sweet spot" for home video game consoles.

The original Xbox, as well as the first and second PlayStation consoles actually launched at that price. Nintendo, however, traditionally enters the market at a lower price point than its competitors. The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube, for example, both launched at $199.

With the element of cost almost entirely removed from the consumer's end as a purchasing determinant, the consoles can now compete solely on the basis of the benefits they offer the gamer...and the games.

Court upholds pro-Verizon ruling in 'largest cybersquatting case ever'

Publié: août 27, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

A federal court in the Northern District of California has upheld the December 2008 ruling which awarded Verizon $33.15 million in a cybersquatting case against domain registry company OnlineNIC.

The 2008 ruling gave Verizon $50,000 for each of the 663 domain names OnlineNIC registered that were "confusingly similar" or in some cases identical to Verizon trademarks with the intention of attracting users who were looking to access legitimate Verizon sites.

Names such as verizononline.com, verizonphoneservices.com, verizonwirlelss.com, and verizioncareers.com were repeatedly "kited," or registered and un-registered during the ICANN five-day cancellation period where the registrar doesn't have to pay.

The court determined OnlineNIC to be a serial cybersquatter, and Verizon found 14,700 domain names that infringed on 26 Verizon trademarks.

In a statement this morning, Sarah Deutsch, Verizon vice president and associate general counsel said, "We hope the court's decision goes a long way toward protecting consumers from becoming targets of Internet abuses and frauds. Verizon is determined to protect our brand and consumers from cybersquatters whose businesses are based on misleading consumers."

TiVo brings the time-shifting fight to AT&T, Verizon

Publié: août 27, 2009, 4:46pm CEST par Tim Conneally

TiVo has been in a legal battle with Dish Network and its former parent company EchoStar for more than four years over the design of their digital video recorders (DVR), which TiVo claims are patent-infringing. Now, the company has challenged Verizon and AT&T for the designs of their FiOS and U-verse DVRs.

Yesterday, TiVo filed complaints in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas for infringement of the same three patents that Dish Network allegedly infringed upon back in 2005. The complaints seek damages for past infringement and permanent injunctions on the infringing hardware.

One of the patents in the complaint, casually referred to as the "Time Warp Patent," has been under review by the US Patent and Trademark office for the case against Dish Network and EchoStar. Yesterday, Dish said it believes this review will result in "a Final Office Action invalidating the software claims of TiVo's patent. These software claims are the very same claims that EchoStar was found to have infringed in the contempt ruling now pending on appeal."

Live coverage: FCC open hearing on national broadband plan

Publié: août 27, 2009, 3:55pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III and Tim Conneally

By Scott M. Fulton, III and Tim Conneally, Betanews

There are two major issues on the table with regard to the creation of a national broadband plan. The two sides of the debate want their respective issues to be the focus, including in voters' minds.

The new chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, and the incoming Democratic leadership would prefer that you be interested in the issue of ensuring public access to high-speed Internet service, particularly by preventing private interests from designing the system in such a way that they can charge premiums to select customers. This is at the heart of the net neutrality issue. The Republican "opposition" -- but the side which brought the whole matter to the floor in the first place -- would prefer you be interested in enabling multiple service providers to obtain national franchise licenses to set up broadband Internet service anywhere in the country at competitive rates, without having to pay municipal fees and obtain licenses for every square yard of space in America separately. That's the heart of what's now being called the open competition issue.

Depending on who has control of the floor and the microphone at this morning's open FCC hearing, you may hear both sides of this issue or you may hear just one. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:00 am this morning, though when Kevin Martin was in charge, Commission hearings often started late.

Live Commentary

9:33am PT: The commissioners are customarily glad-handing and presenting awards to each other. The "important part" of this particular meeting has drawn to a close...We at Betanews are going to return to the FCC's activities today with the Technology/Applications and Devices Workshop at 1:30 ET where Microsoft and Google are expected to make presentations.

9:19am PT: The public does not have online access to the majority of the issues facing the FCC as they're not docketed in the current online filing systems.

9:17am PT: A new internal FCC Web site called Reboot.FCC.gov has been rolled out for employees to discuss and connect on issues. It will eventually be rolled out to the public.

9:12am PT: Semi-ironically, the FCC wants to "Modernize" its own communication techniques. This involves all the updates made last week to the FCC's interaction with the public in the online space: the RSS feed on FCC.gov, the FCC's blog, Twitter, Youtube, all handled by a "small, but focused" New Media team.

9:09am PT: Over the next five years, all of the FCC's disparate licensing, comment and complaint filing systems will be streamlined and consolidated. Next month, the improved Electronic Comment Filing System will debut, which includes enhanced search and accessibility.

9:03am PT: The final report is about reform efforts in the FCC, presented by Mary Beth Richards of the Special Counsel for Reform.

8:57am PT: The FCC's request for a definition of broadband received 68 "substantive" comments to help shape the commission's picture of what broadband actually is. Not that huge of a number, really, but they are likely discounting a large number of entries.

8:52am PT: Over 4,000 people have participated with Online FCC workshops thus far.

8:51am PT: Over the next few months, the Broadband Team will be reporting on the factual state of play, where broadband is, and where it will be in the next few years. In November, they will move into the problematic areas and move immediately into their solutions.

8:48am PT: Blair Levin of the Broadband team, that will be giving the presentation on devices later this afternoon will now be taking the stand.

8:40am PT: Pardon this momentary break, we're experiencing technical difficulties. The FCC's servers have apparently "reached capacity" and we're trying to make our way back in.

8:15am PT: John Leibovitz [sp?] takes the floor. Expands the context of the report to include broader aspects of the ecosystem.

NOI asks whether the framework for analyzing competition is sufficient, up to date. Traditionally used a four-part framework, is this the best framework out there? Is this the most state-of-the-art, analytical approach? Quantitative data, how can it be more precise? Questions about wireless market segments not included in previous reports -- spectrum, backhaul, towers, edge markets, content commerce, all of which rely upon mobile services to reach market.

General outline asks about specific topics: how competitive dynamics affect consumers, relationship between competition and ongoing investment, how wireless competition varies across geographies. Invites many stakeholders, including consumers themselves and software developers, plus such groups as device manufacturers and tower and backhaul providers.

8:09am PT: Secretary announces presentation on Wireless Competition Report.

James Schlichting takes control of the presentation, announcing three deputies and staffers. Two-part presentation, first part reviews reports on the status of telecom and media sectors, how efficient are those reports?

Paul de Sa, Chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. Commission is required by Congress to report on various sectors of the industry. Five categories of reports, including the wireless sector. Opportunity to implement a consistent analysis of competition among the various sectors.

Proposed approach is data-driven, relying on facts, not assumptions. Reflecting the actual experience of consumers, customers, across appropriate customer segments.

8:05am PT: Genachowski: Innovation is core to the FCC's mission. "We're at the beginning of a wireless revolution, the first inning of a set of developments that will be so important to our country."

Transformation from mobile voice to mobile broadband, using smart, mobile computers "that can do almost anything at all." Smartphones may outsell PCs by 2011. "It is essential that the US become the leader in this wireless marketplace globally." Impossible to forecast social impact on Americans, but innovation will support the great companies and industrial segments of tomorrow. Health care, innovation, energy, public safety all depend on this development.

How spectrum is licensed, how interference is defined, how equipment is licensed, how tests are authorized -- all have an impact on how the wireless marketplace will develop. PCS auctions, creation of "unlicensed regime" for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, models of FCC successes. There are also models of FCC failures.

"It's important to note that the nature of innovation is not constant." Digital era allows for greater collaboration, rapid innovation, and shorter time-to-market. Created a new generation of innovators.

Vote on NOI: Unanimous.

7:59am PT: Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker takes the floor.

Pleased that this will be the first vote she casts as a commissioner.

Hope to acquire a comprehensive understanding of developments that promotes better and more efficient use of spectrum. Worried about hindering future business models' growth. Unparalleled innovation and growth in wireless over the past 10 years. $22.8 B per year invested by the industry on broadband services. "We stand on the verge of the next generation of wireless broadband products," and government should be careful not to regulate too much and hinder that growth.

Questions whether stakeholders will be able to yield substantive responses. Refrain from imposing burdensome regulatory obligations on industry.

7:56am PT: Commissioner Mignon Clyburn takes the floor.

"The wireless marketplace continues to evolve." Extent to which inquiry will lead to greater competition, will only benefit the consumer.

Cost factors associated with re-allocation of spectrum. NOI recognizes that re-allocation is an ongoing challenge and "a handicap on wireless innovation." Item raises appropriate question on how better to manage spectrum interference.

7:53am PT: Commissioner Robert McDowell takes the floor.

Wireless market appears to be robustly competitive, with 95% of consumers surveyed having a choice of at least four choices of carrier. Choice has been going up, so wireless penetration has been broad and quick, even in the midst of "the worst economy in decades." $80 B to be plowed into capital expenditures to make broadband services faster, more affordable. No other sector in our economy can make such a claim.

Shows the success of "how a light regulatory touch...works." "Where we go from here is not yet clear, but where we have been is clear." FCC's long-standing policy to let market forces foster their own development in services, has led to remarkable advances. So FCC should proceed with care, attracting more private investment capital rather than deterring it.

A 30-day period is too short a window for public response, possibly shortening the window for meaningful input.

7:48am PT: Seeks to identify the retail market segments that should be examined. Seeks additional data on both upstream (infrastructure) and downstream (content) markets.

Will consider a notice about consumer information and disclosure, so consumers will receive more and better information about consumers making purchasing. "We have not done much of a job" in this department, things "could have been better, sooner." Monthly bills are a regular agony for consumers, more so for what they fail to disclose and the amount of paper used to disclose it. Better wireless geographic maps would continue to be helpful.

7:45am PT: Increasing complexity, but "open access" should best promote innovation. What can we learn from the Internet model, where open platforms has spurred innovation and productivity?

"As we enable wireless technologies and services, we enable America to meet and master many challenges," said Copps.

Expanding the scope of the annual competition report to Congress. Wants to expand the depth to become more granular [both Democrats and Republicans will be pleased by this part, but I'm wondering if this is the bone the new FCC is throwing to chase the GOP off the trail of national franchising.]

Commission has the responsibility to stop playing "unhelpful games" with altering spectrum allocation screens, and to go back to ensuring competition rather than providing a free path for big service providers.

7:42am PT: Declining commitment to basic technology research and development, which Copps calls a "tsunami." Blames "speculators on the make" as triggering the fall in value of investment, then with government withdrawing its interest, that constituted a "double-whammy" which has impacted wireless industry growth. "We need to understand these things, and we need to act upon them."

Seek to understand how key innovations are occurring in the wireless chain. What has gone wrong? What are other countries doing to promote innovation? Improving the Commission's understanding and analysis of these matters will help it promote investment.

7:39am PT: Commissioner Copps takes the floor. Three NOIs under consideration go to the heart of main goal of protecting consumers. Commends Genachowski for bringing this to the forefront immediately.

"Lay the groundwork for sound public policy making."

Innovation: 21st century will be about "stunning and transformative innovations," more so than in the 20th century. Wireless industry deserves recognition and credit for what it has accomplished, "but mark me down as one who believes that we have only glimpsed the beginning."

We look to industry for guidance, but innovative public policy should be the handmaiden for guiding private enterprise.

7:36am PT: How can spectrum be used more efficiently? "Wireless networks are evolving to more IP-based and platform architectures." What role can the Commission play in encouraging further development and investment in these areas? Quick mention of the licensing program and possible reform in that area.

7:35am PT: Presenting the presentation on wireless innovation is James Schlichting, acting chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau of the FCC. He passes the floor to Deputy Chief Joel Taubenblatt.

What changes can the FCC make to its policies to encourage more outside participation in the development of wireless services? That's the subject of the proposed Notice of Inquiry (NOI) under discussion first.

The NOI wants to seek information about the state of wireless innovation, says Taubenblatt. What metrics and data sources should the FCC be treating as important, especially with regard to what the industry treats as important? [This is a particularly important issue to Republicans in Congress, who have argued in the past that the previous FCC spent too much money and resources investigating metrics that didn't really matter to real businesses.]

7:29am PT: Genachowski begins by praising the recently deceased Dr. James Marsters, co-creator of the TTY, as a model for consumer advocacy in the telecommunications industry.

Competition, he says, is essential to ensuring Americans' continued access to the information they need to better themselves, especially through education. Credits the iPhone, Pre, and BlackBerry as among the classes of mobile devices that are forcing the issue of ensured mobile broadband to the forefront.

Secretary now formally introduces the day's agenda.

7:22am PT: Today's hearing is the first full meeting to include newly appointed commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker.

7:18am PT: Introductions have begun reasonably on-time, and the formal discussion has yet to begin.

Latest SQL injection attack quickly spreads malicious JavaScript

Publié: août 27, 2009, 12:27am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

One of the more bizarre architectural elements of HTML that may still be excused with the phrase, "This behavior is by design," is the ability for a floating text frame using the <IFRAME> element to be rendered effectively invisible (or so miniature as to not be seen), and then to run JavaScript code. It's a trigger for a disaster; and pressing that trigger tens of thousands of times today is a particularly virulent SQL injection attack, the evidence of which can be detected through a simple Google search: Wednesday afternoon, Betanews discovered about 82,800 compromised pages appearing in Google's index just for one of the actual malicious triggers -- probably just a fraction of the actual number of cases. And there are multiple triggers.

The plague was first reported last Friday by security services provider ScanSafe. In an update filed today, its engineers report that as the number of infected sites grows, their geography becomes more pronounced instead of less. It's as if the source of the injection, whatever it is, is targeting Chinese sites.

A similar attack occurred in the spring of last year, once again appearing to target Chinese sites. Once infected, the sites deliver <IFRAME> code to their users that starts the download of executable binary code, and apparently even launches that code. Last May, security researchers discovered a new round of SQL injection attacks, also appearing to target China.

While some security software firms have posited the theory that malicious sources outside China are targeting that country in response to reports that it is supporting suppressions of ethnic-related uprisings, a more viable theory is that the latest wave -- like the May 2008 wave discovered by Armorize Technologies, a security firm with assets in China -- are also based in China as well.

Though the motivation behind this latest attack was not known, the most plausible theory presented for the motive in the May 2008 attack came from Trend Micro: Information that the malicious payload sent back to its host indicated that the host was hunting for data related to gaming, perhaps finding statistics about players' assets holdings in virtual worlds. Armed with that information, a malicious gamer could conceivably manipulate entire virtual economies.

BETACHECK

For more:

"SQL Injection Attacks by Example" by Steve Friedl, a brilliant but straightforward essay demonstrating exactly how a typical SQL injection attack is carried out.

"Using UrlScan" -- Documentation from Microsoft on setting up and running UrlScan 3.0 utility with IIS 7.0.

Apple 'has not rejected Google Voice application,' says it rejects 20% of submitted apps

Publié: août 21, 2009, 11:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Like clockwork, the FCC has released the statements from AT&T, Apple, and Google which respond to the Commission's inquiries into why the Google Voice app was rejected from the iTunes App store.

Since AT&T denied any involvement early on, we have been eagerly awaiting Apple's take on the situation. Cupertino replied with a six-page letter.

"Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail. Apple spent a lot of time and effort developing this distinct and innovative way to seamlessly deliver core functionality of the iPhone...In addition, the iPhone user's entire Contacts database is transferred to Google's servers, and we have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways. These factors present several new issues and questions to us that we are still pondering at this time."

Apple also confirms AT&T's statements which absolve it from blame in the rejection of the app, "Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or noncontractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple's decision-making process in this matter."

However, it does confirm that the operator does not want VoIP on the iPhone: "There is a provision in Apple's agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T's cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T's permission...Apple does not know if there is a VoIP element in the way the Google Voice application routes calls and messages, and whether VoIP technology is used over the 3G network by the application. Apple has approved numerous standard VoIP applications (such as Skype, Nimbuzz and iCall) for use over WiFi, but not over AT&T's 3G network."

After providing some examples of apps that have been rejected from the iTunes App store on the basis of bugginess, inappropriate content, and violation of AT&T customer Terms of Service, Apple said: "Apple generally spends most of the review period making sure that the applications function properly, and working with developers to fix quality issues and software bugs in applications. We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week, and roughly 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. In little more than a year, we have reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates."

AT&T further denies involvement in iPhone app rejections

Publié: août 21, 2009, 11:20pm CEST par Tim Conneally

We already knew that AT&T claimed it had no involvement in the rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone that triggered an FCC investigation. Today, AT&T released a more complete and loquacious denial.

"We appreciate the opportunity to clear up misconceptions related to an application Google submitted to Apple for inclusion in the Apple App Store. We fully support the FCC's goal of getting the facts and data necessary to inform its policymaking," said Jim Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President of external and legislative affairs for AT&T.

"To that end, let me state unequivocally, AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store. AT&T was not asked about the matter by Apple at any time, nor did we offer any view one way or the other."

"AT&T does not block consumers from accessing any lawful Web site on the Internet," Cicconi continued. "Consumers can download or launch a multitude of compatible applications directly from the Internet, including Google Voice, through any web-enabled wireless device. As a result, any AT&T customer may access and use Google Voice on any web-enabled device operating on AT&T's network, including the iPhone, by launching the application through their web browser, without the need to use the Apple App Store."

DMCA-based appeal fails, Yahoo's Launchcast prevails in royalties row

Publié: août 21, 2009, 10:45pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In a summary judgment this morning, a three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Yahoo's Launchcast music service does not have to pay performance royalties in addition to licensing fees, on account of the fact that like terrestrial radio, the service is not interactive.

Today's finding may set precedent for both online and broadcast radio, for having affirmed the legal notion that in order for a presentation of music to count as a performance, it must be directly requested by the listener. While Congress remains split over whether conventional broadcast stations should be responsible for performance royalties to the same degree as Internet providers such as Last.fm and Pandora, US law presently states that the distinction between the two classes deals specifically with interactivity -- the degree to which the listener has explicit control over what she's hearing. If no such control exists, the judges affirmed today, then there's no "performance," thus no royalties for performance apply.

In opening his panel's official ruling, Judge Richard Wesley was under no illusion that this finding was ordinary or somehow unimportant: "We are the first federal appellate court called upon to determine whether a webcasting service that provides users with individualized internet radio stations -- the content of which can be affected by users' ratings of songs, artists, and albums -- is an interactive service...If it is...[then] the webcasting service would be required to pay individual licensing fees to those copyright holders of the sound recordings of songs the webcasting service plays for its users. If it is not an interactive service, the webcasting service must only pay a statutory licensing fee set by the Copyright Royalty Board."

Judge Wesley went on to cite US Code, defining an interactive service in this context as something "that enables a member of the public to receive a transmission of a program specially created for the recipient, or on request, a transmission of a particular sound recording...which is selected by or on behalf of the recipient."

The original plaintiff in this case was Bertelsmann Music Group, later known as Sony BMG, and now Sony Music. The appeal on BMG's behalf argued that since Launchcast presented music that was tailored to its listeners' desires, that degree of communication constituted interactivity.

But then BMG went one very big step further, arguing that Launchcast's failure to abide by its performance royalties responsibility constituted a circumvention of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA asserts that copyright is infringed whenever an unauthorized party produces a program made up of non-licensed material. But the judge thought big too, invoking the memory of no less than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, from a classic decision dated 1918: "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."

When copyright law was amended in the 1970s, Judge Wesley recalled, it continued to protect radio stations, explicitly referring to the symbiotic relationship between them and record producers. Radio gives the producers the advertising and promotion needed to incite people to go buy music. He admitted the Internet has muddied that relationship somewhat, and that by making it feasible for an individual to reproduce a digital recording with as good a quality as the original (or good enough), the notion that you can't really make a record off of the radio anyway, no longer applied.

But that change of affairs is precisely the reason why the law chose to distinguish between an interactive service and a non-interactive one -- an individual may only willfully infringe copyright if he requests an illegitimate, non-licensed transmission of a performance, gets it, and records it in pristine quality. Whether the party transmitting the recording is violating copyright depends on whether it's sending out recordings for the purpose of being copied (e.g., The Pirate Bay). Wesley cited a House of Representatives report stating how Congress arrived at its language for what constituted a "request" on the part of the listener, making certain, for instance, that the law still enabled one party to make a request on behalf of a big group of listeners. (Thus the "KOMA Café" request show on my favorite oldies station doesn't make KOMA interactive.)

In recalling how Launchcast works -- or, rather, once worked -- Judge Wesley explicitly noted that the service took information from its users, but then built its own program of songs: "Whenever the user logs into Launchcast and selects a station, Launchcast generates a playlist of fifty songs based on several variables. Launchcast does not provide a list of the pool of songs or of the songs in the generated playlist, and therefore, the user does not know what songs might be played." Other users' ratings for songs -- users the listener doesn't even know -- played a factor in the service's program determination.

There's a lot of strange variables involved in the automatic selection of programs for listeners, the judge conceded. He even spent several pages in the decision listing all of them individually. But that didn't mean he bought the argument that Launchcast was interactive: "It is hard to think of a more complicated way to 'select songs,'" he wrote, "but this is the nature of webcast music broadcasting in the digital age."

And in a closing explicitly designed not only to survive appeal to the Supreme Court, but to serve as a signal to the recording industry, Wesley closed with this: "When Congress created the sound recording copyright, it explicitly characterized it as 'narrow.' There is no general right of performance in the sound recording copyright. There is only a limited right to performance of digital audio transmission with several exceptions to the copyright, including the one at issue in this case."

In other words, just because a song is played, in all the clarity that digital performance can give it, doesn't mean the song is performed. There are exceptions to that rule, but this isn't one of them.

It wasn't a complete win today for Launchcast; the three-judge panel later issued a summary judgment denying Launchcast's motion to recover court costs, claiming BMG's suit was frivolous and malicious. But besides that, it is a huge victory for online music providers. Although Launchcast today is merely another Yahoo-based portal for CBS Radio (as is AOL Radio), and no longer operates in the manner Judge Wesley described, services like Last.fm (also owned by CBS) and Pandora now have reason to celebrate and hope.

Pirate Bay acquisition looks rockier than ever

Publié: août 21, 2009, 9:10pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Swedish stock market regulators have suspended the trading of Global Gaming Factory X's stock in the Aktietorget marketplace today on the suspicion that the company's reported assets and actual assets may differ.

In June, Global Gaming Factory X made a $7.7 million bid for The Pirate Bay, but authorities today would like assurance that GGF has enough money to complete the transaction.

Peter Gönczi, Vice President and head of market surveillance for Aktietorget issued a statement today which says: "As part of its normal monitoring of listed company information, Aktiestorget requested a full disclosure from Global Gaming Factory to show that funds are in line with its reports...Aktietorget found a lack of conditions for an efficient trade of its shares and decided to suspend trading until the requested information is provided. The halt of daily trading has nothing to do with suspicions of insider trading."

Global Gaming is reported to have numerous outstanding debts, including to former CTO Johann Sellstrom, former ally and ex-Grokster founder Wayne Rosso, and P2P technology company Peerialism.

Google's Rubin: Android isn't blocking VoIP, despite claims

Publié: août 21, 2009, 8:02pm CEST par Tim Conneally

This morning a USA Today article discussed the FCC's investigation into why the Google Voice App was banned from the iPhone. The article goes on to say that Google could "soon find itself in the hot seat" because Android cannot use Skype, proposing that Google itself blocks VoIP to force users into traditional voice calls.

Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Mobile Platforms, had to step forward and call USA Today out.

Rubin said, "Here are the facts, clear and simple: While the first generation of our Android software did not support full-featured VoIP applications due to technology limitations, we have worked through those limitations in subsequent versions of Android, and developers are now able to build and upload VoIP services."

Rubin says it's up to the operators to decide if certain applications violate their terms of service.

"As we told USA Today earlier in the week, Google did not reject an application from Skype or from any other company that provides VoIP services," Rubin continued. "To suggest otherwise is false. At this point no software developer -- including Skype -- has implemented a complete VoIP application for Android. But we're excited to see -- and use -- these applications when they're submitted, because they often provide more choice and options for users. We also look forward to the day when consumers can access any application, including VoIP apps, from any device, on any network."

In short, Android app availability is up to the carrier, but on iPhone, nobody has stood up to take responsibility yet. In the investigation into the rejection of the Google Voice App on the iPhone, an application which lets users manage all of their phones (home, office, mobile, etc) from a single number, AT&T denied having a role in the decision.

Yahoo, Microsoft team with rival trustbuster against Google Books settlement

Publié: août 21, 2009, 7:34pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

An attorney who was at the heart of the US Dept. of Justice's original 1994 antitrust case against Microsoft, arising from its proposed takeover of Quicken manufacturer Intuit, will find himself spearheading a coalition against Google's book scanning policies that includes both Microsoft and Yahoo, spokespersons from both companies confirmed to Betanews this morning.

It was attorney Gary Reback who first called Microsoft to task for using its "embrace and extend" policy in an abusive fashion against competitors, often representing those competitors in legal action, as was the case with Borland International and Sybase in the mid '90s. Currently, he is the author of a book called Free the Market! Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive. His latest confrontation is against Google, whose proposed settlement with book authors and publishers would give Google "non-exclusive" rights to scan their books contents and reproduce them online in the Google Books service. Already, Google has been scanning books that are available in public libraries, and making excerpts of those books available to users -- excerpts, as opposed to the books in their entirety.

The settlement would be signed by authors consenting to Google's wishes, although it would have to be ratified by a judge. Google's defensive arguments have included the notion that, if a book is freely accessible through a library, it should be freely accessible online. But publishers have countered that it should be up to them to determine whether a book is freely accessible online, adding that they have services which sell directly to libraries, and in so doing are in full control of their books' distribution. Libraries, they say, do not have to reproduce books, whereas Google's service constitutes unauthorized reproduction, and is thus in violation of copyright.

Reback's partner in this coalition is Peter Brantley, a founding director of the Internet Archive. While his service also makes available copies of published work, though in a different sense, that work -- Web pages -- were intended for free distribution to begin with. North American and European library associations have been expected to be among their initial membership roster, to be revealed next week.

The surprise is the membership of Microsoft and Yahoo. Both companies are declining further comment to Betanews about the extent of their membership or their goals in joining up, until Brantley and/or Reback make further public comments on the matter. Their opposition to Google in the marketplace, of course, is a matter of record; though a thorough read of the proposed settlement agreement would not put Google in an exclusive position legally; conceivably, Microsoft and Yahoo would be free to deploy similar services, assuming of course they would accept Google as having the authority to grant them that freedom.

European library groups have already raised opposition to, and taken action against, Google's unilateral efforts to catalog the world's printed information. Recently, some there have formed their own competitive services, under the notion that they're not against the idea of online access -- they're against anyone else thinking they have the authority to grant that access on their behalf.

In a recent Betanews review, we scored Google higher than Microsoft's Bing service in one market area, among other reasons, for Google's ability to lead the reader directly to desired excerpts in Google Books -- a feat Bing cannot yet match. Ironically, the story of Gary Reback's antitrust efforts against Microsoft is recounted in The Microsoft Way, one of the many books excerpted by Google Books, probably without the publisher's permission.

Revamped FCC to initiate investigation of wireless competition, exclusivity

Publié: août 21, 2009, 6:58pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Similar to the inquiry it launched into the iPhone Google Voice rejection, the Federal Communications Commission today announced its intention to scrutinize the wireless telecommunications industry as a whole, to see if it encourages competition, innovation and investment, and if it is fair and open to consumers.

The Commission will take a vote on August 27 to decide whether it will proceed with the investigation, which seeks to "understand better the factors that encourage innovation and investment in wireless;" to determine "the status of competition in the mobile wireless market, including commercial mobile services;" and to "comment on whether there are opportunities to protect and empower American consumers by ensuring sufficient access to relevant information about communications services."

This will continue the Government's investigation into wireless exclusivity which both Congress and the Department of Justice have debated with industry leaders. In response to the congressional hearings, Verizon Wireless revised its exclusivity terms in July.

Facebook phishing app plague may be getting out of control

Publié: août 21, 2009, 6:47pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again.

The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password.

Ferguson first noticed the problem on Monday, with two innocuous seeming apps simply called "Posts" and "Streaming," installed by means of a notification labeled, "sex sex sex and more sex." The trick, he believes, is accomplished by redirecting users to a page hosted by the domain "fucabook.com," which his research has uncovered is being hosted within Amazon's EC2 cloud. That URL might appear in the user's browser window while it's running the built-in JavaScript, but the slight differences in spelling might not stay in the address bar long enough to be noticed. That's because the refresh attribute in the malicious page's <META> element is having the browser refresh itself almost immediately, pulling up the real Facebook login page.

By that time, however, the JavaScript is already running in the background, effectively collecting the password information from the real login page, rather than having to produce a look-alike page.

Yesterday, Ferguson reported that Facebook removed the first five rogue applications he had discovered, only to have six more turn up in their stead. While all this is going on, over the last month, Facebook has been incrementally adding new accessibility features to its Open Stream API, with the purpose of making it easier for developers to publish information into users' streams, and gain direct access to discussion threads and Facebook e-mails.

Irish ISP to block Pirate Bay even as it goes 'legit'

Publié: août 21, 2009, 5:10pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Pirate Bay logo It's not a nationwide ban like the one now in place in the Netherlands, but it may be a step in that direction. Starting September 1, Irish ISP Eircom will block its customers from accessing torrent indexing site The Pirate Bay.

Eircom started working with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) last February to crack down on P2P music sharing, the result of an out-of-court agreement between the ISP and the "big four" major labels, in order to avoid litigation.

"The settlement reached between the parties provides that the record companies will supply Eircom with the IP addresses of all persons who they detect illegally uploading or downloading copyright works on a peer to peer (P2P) basis," IRMA's site announced earlier this year.

So far, it is the only ISP in Ireland to have responded to the music industry's threats. The Irish Times reports that cable operator UPC and telco BT Ireland have both denied IRMA's request to block The Pirate Bay.

Will two Windows Mobiles get consumers interested?

Publié: août 21, 2009, 12:57am CEST par Tim Conneally

A recent Digitimes report told us what we already sort of knew, but phrased it in such a way that the tech media did a huge double take.

It said that Microsoft will launch Windows Mobile 6.5 in October, and then Windows Mobile 7 in the fourth quarter of next year...pretty much a verbatim repeat of what Steve Ballmer said about the platform last March. However, the report goes on to say that Microsoft will be running what it calls "a dual-platform strategy to allow Microsoft to compete with the Android-based platform using Windows Mobile 6.5 and also compete with iPhones leveraging Windows Mobile 7."

Microsoft didn't really confirm or deny that it will be selling multiple mobile operating systems at the same time. "We have said we will deliver new Windows phones this fall and we remain on track to do that. We have nothing new to say about future versions," a representative said.

But it really doesn't need to explain, this would rather nicely clarify why Microsoft will be making a push with "Windows Phone", a brand that will come to represent all Windows Mobile devices simultaneously.

But this is Microsoft, not exactly the masters of memorable branding.

"I think it would be a major mistake for Microsoft to run with two parallel mobile operating systems," Jack Gold, President of analysis and consulting firm J. Gold Associates told Betanews this afternoon. "They have done this in the past and it only confused the market and made it harder for them to sell their vision."

Indeed, if this is Microsoft's strategy, it will not only need to have a decent OS to counter each of the dominant brands, but also some way to differentiate one "Windows Phone" from another. Furthermore, the strategy speaks only to the consumer segment, and not the enterprise segment where Windows Mobile has its strongest following.

But then, that could be the idea.

"If Microsoft does not do something to generate consumer interest and move beyond their primarily enterprise constituency, they can not hope to achieve the market share they want," Gold continued. "Consumer-chosen devices are becoming prevalent in enterprises of all sizes, and end users are much more often getting to pick their own devices (within certain constraints.)"

"This bodes well for 'sexy' devices like iPhone, Pre and Android, and badly for Windows Mobile, at least until Windows Mobile 7 features catch up. But that is a year away, and Microsoft could lose a lot of market share in the next year."

Mozilla chief: Microsoft ballot screen leaves IE 'uniquely privileged'

Publié: août 20, 2009, 11:37pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In the first comprehensive statement representing Mozilla's viewpoint on the issue of Microsoft's compliance with the European Commission's recent Statement of Objections, Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker wrote earlier this week that a "ballot screen" giving Windows 7 installers the option of setting up Firefox or another browser instead, is not enough to level the playing field. Internet Explorer, Baker fears, will continue to received favored placement elsewhere in the system, including on the desktop and the taskbar.

"Choosing another browser as a 'default' does not mean that the other browser takes the place of IE," Baker writes. "For example, the IE logo ('shortcut') still remains unchanged on the desktop. The shortcut / logo of the browser the user has selected does not replace this, it is added elsewhere. As a result, the familiar location remains IE, not the user's choice."

Baker's comments come in response to Microsoft's suggestions to the European Commission about how it can best comply with the lawmaking body's demands -- suggestions which await the EC's formal response upon return from summer vacation. Those suggestions, as far as we know, have not included actual software demonstrations, but rather screenshots of mockups of how such a ballot screen may be presented.

Microsoft's proposed 'Web Browser Ballot' as presented to the European Commission July 24, 2009.

Indeed, one of those screenshots as presented publicly by Microsoft itself does show an Internet Explorer logo adorning the title bar of the window where the browser screen appears. Although this screenshot does not necessarily depict how the end result of Microsoft's work might appear, if the company left a few too many of these little logos in its other screenshots presented to the EC -- for instance, in the taskbar or on the desktop -- it might have left holes for its own arguments, holes that Mitchell Baker and others are already discovering.

"Even if everything in the currently proposed settlement is implemented in the most positive way," she writes, "IE will still have a unique and uniquely privileged position on Windows installations."

FCC still needs a good definition for 'broadband'

Publié: août 20, 2009, 9:56pm CEST par Tim Conneally

In order to move ahead with the National Broadband Plan, the FCC has to first say exactly what qualifies as "broadband." Today, the Commission has issued a public notice seeking a tailored public comment on exactly what the definition of broadband should be.

Already, the FCC has what it believes to be a definition for the term, presented on its Broadband.gov site inaugurated earlier this week: "The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access." But here's the thing: What, exactly, is "high?"

On the FCC's blog today, Senior Advisor Carlos Kirjner wrote, "Much of the recent debate tends to center on throughput speeds. Engineers know that these numbers by themselves are most often misleading. For example, in most cases the 'advertised' throughput speed has a tenuous relation with the actually delivered speed, which will actually vary over time, depending on the application, the server, and many other factors.

"But why do we care?" Kirjner continues. "Several reasons: (1.) If we want to decide who has and who does not have broadband, we actually need to agree on what we mean by broadband. (2.) If we want to decide who can take advantage of one type of application or another, we need to know what they are actually getting today, and what is the gap between that and what they actually need to get. (3.) If we need to know how much it would cost the country to enable all or a subset of its households and businesses to take advantage of one application or another, we need to know what the gap is between where we are and where we want to be. (4.) If we want to ensure that consumers have a clear and accurate view of what they are getting for their money, we need to decide what are the important metrics, and how to measure them."

If you'd like to submit a brief comment on your definition of "broadband," you can do so in the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System under the heading "National Broadband Plan Notice of Inquiry - Docket 09-51." The comment period closes on September 8, so look for broadband's official definition shortly thereafter.

Windows 7 is coming: You should upgrade

Publié: août 20, 2009, 9:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

I'll begin by saying that Carmi Levy is my very good friend, and I do admit that most of the time, he and I think along the very same wavelength. I met him through our mutual friend Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily, and we've carried on a very fruitful dialogue about the IT industry ever since. That, and he has this way of making Winnie-the-Pooh berets look really cool.

Scott Fulton On Point badge (200 px) We do disagree on one point today, and I think the nature of that disagreement would be beneficial to folks who are wrestling with the question Carmi brought up this morning: "To upgrade or not to upgrade." His article is worth reading, so rather than summarize it here, I'll let Carmi speak for himself.

As for me, here is my heartfelt belief after seriously using -- not just testing, but installing real apps on -- the real Windows 7 release-to-manufacturing version since its release last week: Windows 7 is "Vista service pack 3."

If you own a machine running Windows Vista right now, I cannot conjure any technical reason whatsoever why you should avoid upgrading to Windows 7. Not one. If you hated User Account Control, Windows 7 gives you an easier way to turn it off than hacking the Registry. If you'd rather that misbehaving programs don't slow down your ability to activate other running programs, you will prefer Win7. You will be surprised at the devices whose drivers were non-functional or even non-existent in Vista, that actually do exist and that do work in Windows 7. And programs that expect the 32-bit envelope of XP, where inter-application communication could take place without any regulation, and where a program could get away with anything just by elevating its own privilege level to "Administrator," can run within a protected XP virtualization envelope.

The one serious issue in customers' minds is money. Should you spend $150 for three licenses for a product whose principal value proposition boils down to, "It's not Vista?"

I've said this many times before: Vista is not the worst operating system ever made. But in just the time I've spent wrestling with Vista's "Black Screen of Death," I could have earned way more than a hundred fifty bucks. And if you consider the amount of time you've wasted languishing in Vista, waiting for things to get done, lumbering from app to app, and give that time a dollar value, and then consider that you might be able to get two thirds of that time back under Windows 7, you'll realize it's a sound investment.

The real issue that Carmi raises, though, is not about Vista at all. His comparison is between Windows 7 and Windows XP, a system which still appears to be the fastest of the three most recent versions. Should an existing system that was designed to run XP be upgraded to Windows 7, a process which requires either a clean install and reinstalling the applications or a risky double-upgrade procedure that still involves Vista?

I know who Carmi's talking about when he refers to these shadetree guys who build their own systems and know what to fix and where, when it breaks down. He's talking about me. And back when the whether-to-upgrade debate involved XP and Vista, I said no. My reasoning was that, although Vista is more secure by orders of magnitude, it introduces speed bumps and roadblocks, the net effect of which is sometimes worse than anything adware or malware may contrive. The tradeoff was not worth it. I typically run XP on systems which ran XP in the past; I've only installed Vista on some new machines that I build, and I've acquired Vista on notebooks that I've purchased.

Windows XP is a very capable operating system. But it has occurred to me that one of the reasons I've become comfortable with it is that I'm familiar with its foibles. For all of Vista's problems, I still cannot get any XP-based system I've built in the last three years to retain their knowledge of what "sleep mode" means. When I or my cat accidentally kicks the back of an XP-based machine where I've got two monitors plugged in, XP often disconnects the monitor, uninstalls the monitor driver, and on more than one occasion, has switched the resolution on the other monitor to 640x480 and uninstalled my Nvidia driver. And I run so much "custom junk," as my wife puts it, on an XP-based system that it's a fair question whether my OS was made by Microsoft or Stardock.

I also run a lot of operating systems side-by-side. And despite all the Vista headaches, I can safely say that it is not only possible but often unnoticeable for me to be able to run a single Vista session, complete with the correct sleep modes, for longer than one month. I cannot, to this day, run an XP-based session on any machine for longer than a day without some process, at some time, springing a memory leak that slows it down to such a crawl that Vista looks like a championship sprinter.

The typical customer to whom Carmi refers is a fellow with a five-year-old computer, for whom the Vista footprint was simply too big. Personally, I believe that a five-year-old computer is an old computer, and one does not become a "sucker" when considering total replacement as an option. Storage and memory are both at near-historic low prices (memory a little higher in recent days, but the trend remains down). Because of this fact, I would ask folks with "old computers" using XP to consider the benefits of purchasing a second hard drive of at least a half-terabyte (or clear all those movies off the big one they already have), and install Windows 7 as a dual-boot option on that second drive. It is a phenomenally simple process (certainly simpler than the XP-to-Vista-to-Win7 upgrade hassle), it does not require a technician, and it lets you run your XP environment unchanged. You can migrate your apps and your docs to Win7 at your own pace. And whenever you run into a situation where XP simply was better, maybe for some game, then XP is still there.

Carmi points to the impending doom of the current sales model for the operating system, where you purchase a monolithic package with promises of patches and fixes and service packs down the road. He and I have always agreed on that point. The thing is, it takes an innovative and competitive operating system concept that folks will not only want to use, but will prefer over Windows, to bring such a sales model to fruition. Since I don't see that coming anytime soon from Linux or Google or the North Pole, the only thing compelling Microsoft to make such a change may be continued poor financial performance -- something this company is not accustomed to. Nonetheless, we're talking years down the road, when your current five-year-old computer may as well be an Atari 800. The need to evolve the sales model further is not reason enough for you to postpone your upgrade.

Does Windows 7 offer the prospect of enough of an improvement over XP to justify the cost? Vista did not. But I measure the value of my time very carefully, and in my professional estimate, I believe the answer with respect to Win7 is yes. If I end up being wrong, then I expect Carmi to send me a note with the heading, "Suck-a-a!" along with a Winnie-the-Pooh beret that I'll have to wear on the masthead of my column at least once.

Now, if you'll please permit me to digress in closing: Twenty-two years ago, I ran one of the first and only computing publications with a discussion panel, ever to have a worldwide presence on the Internet. This was at the peak of the Mac vs. Intel, 68000-vs.-80386, Atari-vs.-Commodore debate period, and I signed up many contributors from varying walks of life who disagreed on everything...and that's one reason I signed them up. We fostered a community of people who appreciated each other's company with love and affection, and who couldn't agree less with what the other was saying.

Since that long-ago time, I fear we are losing our ability to disagree with one another with civility. It seems that any more, folks can't find someone they disagree with without accusing him or her, or the publication she works for, of a conspiracy to infiltrate our minds with some false doctrine. If there is any clearer signal that Betanews is truly balanced, it is in our continually being accused of bias toward every perceivable side and every conceivable angle of an issue, equally and evenly. On one recent day, within two hours of one another, I received hate mail I will not repeat here accusing us of being anti-Microsoft zealots and of being paid Microsoft mouth-organs.

Reasonable people know better. They know that we have opinions and we're vocal about them, but having heartfelt opinions as individuals does not make us biased collectively. We can be certain of what we believe because we're assured of the foundations upon which we stand. And as far as I'm concerned, the dartboard that represents my personal perspective on the IT industry is riddled with holes. You can't poke a new hole that hasn't been poked already, and it's still standing. Same goes for Carmi. We can debate and we can rebut, and maybe one of us can be wrong, and we can be friends. I would advise my readers, if they've never done so before, to try it sometime. It's amazing what making a friend will do for your life and your lifestyle.

COUNTERPOINT:

Windows 7 is coming: Don't upgrade by Carmi Levy

Report: AT&T's first Android device could be scrapped

Publié: août 20, 2009, 8:27pm CEST par Tim Conneally

HTC Lancaster AT&T's first Android handset, a touchscreen slider from HTC code-named "Lancaster" could face an indefinite delay, according to a DigiTimes report today.

Lancaster was originally slated for a third quarter release, but now could be either delayed or cancelled entirely, according to Digitimes' reliable sources in its native Taiwan, because the phone "has not yet passed AT&T validation."

The Lancaster is a 2.8-inch QVGA touchphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and 3 megapixel camera. Reportedly, it's not a show-stopper. It is possible that this is another case of Android developing faster than HTC's phones can handle, or possibly of AT&T holding back on a potentially problematic device. Either way, T-Mobile remains the only United States carrier to offer any Android phones.

Samsung InstinctQ via Phandroid

Sprint's first Android device is now expected to be the Samsung InstinctQ, a phone similar in design to the HTC Lancaster which recently leaked to an Android fan site. InstinctQ is expected to arrive somewhere between mid-October and early November.

Motorola Sholes via GSMArena

Verizon's first Android phone is currently expected to come from Motorola in the form of the Sholes, yet another QWERTY slider with a 3.7-inch touchscreen and a 5-megapixel flash camera.

With the future of AT&T's first Android device uncertain, it's a race to see which carrier will step up and be the next to vend Google's mobile operating system.

Google Apps grows more commercial, adding scripting to 'Premier'

Publié: août 20, 2009, 6:29pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By far the strongest feature of any operating system or applications suite -- when its architects bother to include it -- is the ability for its own users to program new and unique features into it. It's also the least appreciated feature on the marketing list; but businesses that have invested heavily in Microsoft Office over the years typically have an extensive library of Excel macros, a war chest of VBA functions built into their Word templates, and a spaghetti tangle of Outlook rules.

Today, Google premiered its approach to user-designed extensibility for its online Apps suite, and so far it's exactly what you might expect from Google: Its Apps Script language doesn't reinvent the wheel, leveraging its grammar completely from JavaScript, which many developers already know. It uses a basic set of terms for representing the graphical objects in the system, and a simple array of methods for making things happen and applying functions to menus. And as for how it can actually improve your work, Google pretty much leaves that up to you.

But folks curious enough to peruse the company's tutorials, which ask users to test their skills on prepared document templates, very quickly find themselves in either of two situations: directed toward a sign-up sheet for "Premier Edition" where they prepare to subscribe for $50 per user per year, or with an open template whose Tools menu -- the place from which the script editor is launched -- is completely disabled.

Although there's no up-front notice of this fact whatsoever, our tests reveal that the new scripting feature is clearly limited to Premier Edition subscribers, whose licenses cost $50 per user per year, and whose DNS registries often include MX records that point to Google's Gmail servers.

Slowly but most certainly, Google is shifting the bar between free and commercial functionality, certainly with good reason -- its intent is to build the market in software, and there is no market in "free." But the company hasn't been straightforward in how it goes about introducing commercial services, specifically toward customers who have had the "free" aspect of Google software drummed into their heads for so long.

This morning's blog post from the company does mention that scripting is available for Premier and Education class customers, although folks are only now learning what the distinctions there are. For awhile, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington couldn't find the free Google Apps and thus proclaimed it "history;" it does still exist, but is harder to find without a link like this one to take you there. Prospective Google Apps users are now directed to the Premier sign-up sheet, and away from Standard.

Premier users who make it through to the scripting examples will find that Google has created something similar to what Microsoft would call a type library, representing the features of each application with a little vernacular. The model here is surprisingly similar to what you'd see in Office. For the Google Docs spreadsheet, for example, the application is represented by the centralized object SpreadsheetApp (the counterpart to Excel.Application). The active workbook, or collection of spreadsheets, is a property of this object that you collect using a method .getActiveSpreadsheet(), and assign to a variable as you instantiate it using var; for individual sheets, you collect each one using the .getSheets() method, referring to its place in the workbook using the subscript. (VBA here would use member objects instead of methods, but assigning the properties of member objects to a variable would work pretty much the same way.)

A custom message box appears in a scripted Google Apps spreadsheet.

Google makes the point that Apps scripts are run on Google's servers, not on your client system -- and that's important because it seriously affects the offline functionality of your applications. Certainly it helps that all of the security functions are managed at the server level, so the possibility of accidentally accessing a malicious script that gains access to your local computer or file system, is reduced to near-zero if not zero. But it also limits the interoperability of your applications to Google's walled garden, so you can only play with the toys that Google gives you without accessing, say, the system clipboard or the contents of an open calculator app.

And from what we've seen, a "custom function" in Google's spreadsheet is limited by the same problem that afflicts VBA scripts in Excel: The formula language is, in many respects, more powerful than the scripting language. The one nugget of functionality that a scripting language could really add to an app is the procedural ability to perform a series of functions on set conditions, maybe even at discrete times; but by separating spreadsheet functions from procedural functions, you can't use the procedure to influence the calculation to any appreciable degree, at least not without hacking the contents of the sheet itself and recalculating -- which is painful in practice, and sends you right back to 1986 with regard to the programming model.

So Google's typical pitch to consumers, which boils down to, "Here it is, now do whatever you want with it," may be incompatible to some degree with the simultaneous pitch which says, "Please pay for it." It's fine for a free product to be unbounded and indeterminate in its use, that's what experimentation is all about. But if Microsoft has had a hard time pitching VBA to customers who have already purchased Office, imagine how difficult it will be for Google to sell Apps Scripting to folks who haven't yet shelled out their fifty bucks.

Windows 7 is coming: Don't upgrade

Publié: août 20, 2009, 5:12pm CEST par Carmi Levy

To upgrade or not to upgrade: It's the issue of the moment for Windows users everywhere as the hype machine for the October 22 Windows 7 release gathers steam. And as we gaze at our existing machines, either running a snappy but outdated XP or a pokey but still slick looking Vista, and wonder whether we should be planning a late night trip to the big box store for our very own copy, I've got one word for you: Stop.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) There are plenty of reasons why you'd want to refresh your existing machine with a cool new operating system. Pre-release versions of Windows 7 have displayed impressive performance, stability, and usability. Device compatibility -- a major bugaboo early on for the ill-starred Vista -- is much improved. It's smaller and lighter than the OS it ostensibly replaces, a nice reversal from the years-long tidal wave of ever-more-bloated products from the world's largest software vendor. Win7 scales better and can take advantage of more memory and multicore processors. That the new OS looks cool enough to not embarrass Windows fans when they run into Mac zealots at parties is an added bonus.

I don't doubt that Windows 7 seems to be Microsoft's strongest OS in years. I also don't doubt that most of us will eventually use some form of it. I just don't think we should be running it on any machines we're using now. Unless you're a weekend tinkerer with extra PCs hanging around the house and a lot of extra time on your hands, upgrading an existing machine is for suckers.

Married to the hardware

Just because you can slap in some DVDs and upgrade your current machine doesn't mean you should. Call me old fashioned, but I'm a big believer in upgrading your OS when you upgrade your hardware. Windows isn't like a Linux distro you install yourself. Hardware vendors devote significant resources tuning it to support their PCs. Tweaking the Windows image to work cleanly with a given hardware build is a critical value add that explains why more of us don't build our own systems from scratch. Installing a retail-purchased box of Windows 7 on a machine whose vendor never certified the specific build is a veritable invitation to a litany of niggling little problems -- issues arising from the fact that the hardware was never intended to work with anything but the OS that was originally installed.

And what about those Linux boxes? There's a world of difference between a tech enthusiast's latest challenge and the laptops your company just deployed to your sales force. When you're the one doing the building and the configuring (and you presumably know what you're doing) there's an expectation that things will go wrong and you'll be able to figure out how to fix them. Tweaking is part of the fun when you build it yourself. I doubt that salesperson in the field would be too pleased after a driver compatibility issue at a client site turned the laptop into a doorstopper.

People buy mainstream hardware pre-loaded with mainstream operating systems because they just want it to work, and they don't have the cycles to figure it out for themselves. Drop an upgrade on top of all that integrated goodness and you're back in the world of white boxes and intermittent glitchiness.

Of course, even that risk may not be enough to deter some users from dumping their old OS, anyway. I admit some folks may not be happy with Vista's performance on their current machine and may be, to put it charitably, highly motivated to be the first to upgrade. Microsoft's design philosophy for Windows 7 -- namely make it smaller and lighter without compromising the omnibus, full-featured architecture that has always allowed Windows to seemingly be all things to all people -- holds promise for some that they'll finally be able to put Vista-induced pokiness behind them.

Time ticks down for XP

XP users may also want to jump, though for different reasons. While the older OS doesn't bog hardware down to the same degree that Vista often does, it suffers from an aged interface only its mother could love, lagging security capabilities and rapidly diminishing vendor support. Microsoft doesn't make as much money selling it, either. And while we really shouldn't play the little violin for a multibillion dollar global corporation, profit-seeking organizations can't sustain less than optimally profitable products forever. As much as some loyalists would like to keep XP alive forever, its time is clearly running out.

But the realities of tightly coupled OS/hardware packages signal the death knell for the shrink-wrapped boxes that used to signal a new OS release. We don't buy software off a shelf anymore. The OS comes pre-loaded when we buy our hardware, and as a result most of us have gotten used to upgrading to a new version of Windows whenever we get a new machine. Businesses, too, wary of the enormous costs of certifying a new OS build in complex network and application environments, are also beginning to see the merits of streamlining their OS roadmap and tying it to hardware refreshes.

Unlike applications, new operating systems rarely deliver the kind of functionality or productivity improvements that would justify the project cost. As organizations look for ways to shave unnecessary expenses, the standalone OS upgrade project has emerged as low hanging fruit. They're justifiably content to live with an older, not-quite-leading-edge OS as long as it works and doesn't fail in some way every other day. For the most part, XP and Vista continue to deliver on that front, so it makes eminent sense to keep them chugging until IT can deploy some shiny new Windows 7-equipped machines.

Sure, those poor users won't have as much to chat about at parties, and the Mac folks will be all over them for a little while longer. But as the OS increasingly becomes a commodity product, anyway, the prospect of investing time and money on something you'll get essentially for free the next time you visit Best Buy will increasingly be seen as laughable. For now, keep your wallet in your pocket and start researching your next PC instead.

COUNTERPOINT:

Windows 7 is coming: You should upgrade by Scott Fulton

RealPlayer launches SP, letting users copy YouTube vids

Publié: août 20, 2009, 4:33pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Let's face it: RealPlayer hasn't been a viable media player for almost ten years. As Technologizer's David Worthington wrote for Betanews in 2000, "A once useful media player's standard installation was transformed into a bloated menagerie of components and add-ons with the release of RealPlayer 7. These needlessly suck away system resources and add useless functionality..."

Today, RealNetworks finds itself competing not so much against Windows Media Player as with the likes of DownloadHelper. Real is now working to generate interest among free media consuming types with the launch of RealPlayer SP, which lets users download unprotected Flash videos to keep.

The latest version of Real's software allows videos to be captured and converted to formats such as MPEG4, Windows Media, QuickTime, and of course RealVideo. When converting files, the software presents a number of preset device profiles (iPod, BlackBerry, Nokia S60, etc.) so it can automatically format the video for its destination. Furthermore, audio can be ripped from online videos in the event that the user just wants the song playing in the background.

The freeware supports the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome and can be downloaded at Realplayer.com today. By shelling out €29.99 for the full version of RealPlayer SP, users can add H.264 conversion as well as DVD playback and burning.

Glass: Android for office phones

Publié: août 20, 2009, 3:12am CEST par Tim Conneally

Earlier this year, we took a look at a desktop phone running Android built by California startup Touch Revolution. While that device provided a look into the potential application of the OS in fixed telephony, the devices we saw were running a version of Android almost indistinguishable from the publicly available build.

Today, Cloud Telecomputers has debuted a completely unique build of Android as a part of its Glass "telecomputer" platform. The company's reference design has the Android environment running on a TI OMAP processor, and all telephony (VoIP and DSP, SIP Stack and Voice Codecs) being handled by a separate Audiocodes processor.

"Our approach allows us to focus on innovation, continually increasing the functionality of the Glass platform, while our partners concentrate their resources on branding, selling and tailoring applications for vertical markets." said Ravin Suri, Cloud Telecomputers CTO.

With Android running the front end, Cloud Telecomputers is leaving the door open for third-party or in-house application development. Naturally, the platform comes with its own unique suite of apps (screen sharing, visual voicemail, voice to text and salesforce.com integration), but the value is in Android's extensibility.

Cloud Telecomputers' Glass Android SIP/PBX phone

"By basing Glass on Google's Android, we have provided users with access to the entire world of Android apps. Instead of asking users to conform to proprietary standards, we feel that the value of Glass is maximized by working with applications that are already available. New Android applications are being created every day, and Android's user-supported development community is constantly growing," the company said.

Furthermore, because the Glass platform offers an open API, licensees can actually develop and build their own apps and sell them to other Glass users, or go a step further and create their own desktop app store specifically for Glass.

New Windows Live Movie Maker debuts, says good-bye to XP for good

Publié: août 19, 2009, 11:11pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The Windows Live team announced this afternoon that Windows Live Movie Maker, the free video editing software component of Windows Live Essentials has come out of beta and is available for download.

Windows Live Movie Maker opened in beta last year, and has been designed to provide a quick and easy method of cutting video clips rather than a full editing suite.

"I recently used Windows Live Movie Maker to create a movie out of 50 photos, three video clips, and a music soundtrack in 30 seconds using the AutoMovie feature in Windows Live Movie Maker. I couldn't have done that in iMovie -- it doesn't have a feature for combining photos, videos and music in one automatic step," said Brian Hall of the Windows Live Team.

The latest version of the software includes support for high definition up to 1080p, more than 60 transitions, 18 pan and zoom options, and 20 visual effects to apply to photos as videos, far more than were included in the early beta builds. Files can be saved, burned to DVD or directly uploaded to YouTube.

In a blog post today, Brian Hall announced that the software will not support Windows XP: "Change isn't always easy, and I know there have been some growing pains as we've moved from Windows Movie Maker to Windows Live Movie Maker. I want to address one thing we think you might be concerned about -- OS support...In order to take advantage of the latest and greatest technologies available on the Windows platform, we optimized the new Windows Live Movie Maker for Windows Vista and Windows 7. As a result you get support for newer file formats like HD, a new graphics driver model which brings more reliable and stable support for high-end graphics, and a new engine on top of DirectX, which improves speed and enables even more advanced capabilities over time. If you're still using Windows XP, Windows Movie Maker 2.1 for Windows XP is still a great option."

What is the Microsoft Lifestyle?

Publié: août 19, 2009, 10:40pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Since January, when I switched to Windows 7 (Beta and later Release Candidate), I have sought an answer to that question. To my surprise, I have yet to find a Microsoft lifestyle -- not one that fits me. So I ask Betanews readers: What is the Microsoft lifestyle? What is your Microsoft lifestyle? Please answer in comments.

Perhaps Microsoft's lifestyle is enterprise computing, something I don't participate in. I've never worked for a company that required SharePoint and often, because of older deployed software, neither has there been mandate to use Exchange Server. When I was an analyst, writing in Word was a must, but not before or since.

There's a gaming lifestyle around Xbox and Xbox Live, but it doesn't really touch enough other Microsoft products for there to be extensive lifestyle. There's a value lifestyle, for businesses and consumers, looking to save money. But who really wants to participate in that? "Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers." The value of value is saving money on one thing to spend it elsewhere on luxuries -- another lifestyle.

All successful companies sell lifestyles. For decades, PepsiCo used motto "Pepsi Generation" for a reason. There is a Pepsi lifestyle. Harley Davidson sells a motorcycle lifestyle that some people stereotype as Hell's Angels' types but is really something else: Graying (or balding) middle-aged men riding their hogs, usually on weekends; they feel virile, and who wouldn't riding a Harley. That's the lifestyle.

Many technology companies excel at lifestyle marketing, too. Research in Motion sells a connected business-personal lifestyle around BlackBerry and email. BlackBerry lifestyle marketing also benefits from America's hipster president being an admitted Crackberry addict.

There is increasingly a Facebook lifestyle, and it's successful without any real marketing. It's a water cooler or dress party lifestyle, where people gossip and share what's important to them with friends and even strangers.

Among technology companies, Apple is the 21st Century's lifestyle marketing leader. There's nothing new about Apple selling a Mac lifestyle, but the approach got a major makeover in the new century. I contend that next to 1984, when Apple launched Macintosh, 2001 was the most important year in the company's history. In January 2001, Apple unveiled iTunes music software. In March, Apple launched troubled Mac OS X 10.0 and essentially relaunched as 10.1 in September. In May, the company opened Apple Store, in two locations -- California and Virginia. In October, the first iPod debuted. Apple Store, iPod, iTunes and Mac OS X seemed innocuous launches at the time, but they would later be the four pillars raising the Apple brand from obscurity to mass popularity.

All four products -- later supported by marketing, starting in June 2002 with the "Switch" campaign -- laid the foundation for the Apple lifestyle of the new century. There had been a Mac lifestyle, but Apple Store, iPod, iTunes and Mac OS X extended it to the larger company brand. All the other successful Apple products that followed came from these four 2001 launches:

If not iTunes and Mac OS X, no iLife
If not iTunes and iPod, no iTunes Music Store
If not iPod, iTunes and Mac OS X, no iPhone
If not Apple Store, none of the above

Apple Store provides a focal point for the Apple lifestyle, around digital activities like listening to music and watching, making or sharing videos. The iPhone adds a mobile lifestyle component, extending from the others but more connected through the applications and the Web. Apple's lifestyle is dimensional, with different facets.

In the 1990s, there was a clearly identifiable Windows lifestyle, but it lost definition coming into the new century. Today, Windows is more a utility, like the kitchen stove or refrigerator. There are no defining applications, outside businesses. What? Is there a SharePoint or Windows Server lifestyle that people aspire to? Or Outlook?

As I look back to Apple and 2001, I wonder about Microsoft and 2007. Can Azure, advertising campaigns like "Laptop Hunters," Bing, Microsoft retail stores, Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows 7 and Zune HD be the foundational launches for a new Microsoft lifestyle? Microsoft has lifestyle vision, even without great execution, around three screens -- PC, TV and mobile device. But can all that lead to a tangible Microsoft lifestyle? You tell me.

My questions for readers to answer and debate in comments: Is there a Microsoft lifestyle? Do you live a Microsoft lifestyle, and, if so, what is it? What do you want Microsoft's future lifestyle to be?

Former Secret Service informant named in 'largest credit card data breach ever'

Publié: août 17, 2009, 10:22pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, the US Department of Justice announced that a 28-year-old hacker and former Secret Service informant named Albert Gonzales is being indicted for the third and, by far, the largest crime of his short career: participation in the theft of more than 130 million credit and debit card mag-strip data dumps, in attacks between 2006 and 2008.

Gonzales was already in federal custody for several major data breaches. He faces trial in New York next month for the first, which involved hacking restaurant Dave and Busters' payment system. Then the second case will be heard in Boston in 2010 for Gonzales' involvement in the theft of data off of more than 40 million credit card mag-strips from OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, BJ's Wholesale Club, and many more.

Just after his arrest, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey said, "So far as we know, this is the single largest and most complex identity theft case ever charged in this country."

But a statement from the Department of Justice today one-ups that notorious achievement: "The indictment, which details the largest alleged credit and debit card data breach ever charged in the United States, alleges that beginning in October 2006, Gonzales and his co-conspirators researched the credit and debit card systems used by their victims; devised a sophisticated attack to penetrate their networks and steal credit and debit card data; and then sent that data to computer servers they operated in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. The indictment also alleges Gonzales and his co-conspirators also used sophisticated hacker techniques to cover their tracks and to avoid detection by anti-virus software used by their victims."

Among the victims listed by the DOJ are Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth largest credit card processor in the United States; national convenience store chain 7-Eleven; and Hannaford Bros. Supermarkets.

Earlier this year, Heartland Payment Systems announced that it was the victim of a massive compromise, but President and CFO Robert Baldwin said, "Our discussions with the Secret Service and Department of Justice give us a pretty good indication that this is part of a group that appears to have done security breaches at other financial institutions."

The case is being overseen by the US Secret Service, and will be heard in US District Court in New Jersey. There, Gonzales will be indicted on charges of conspiracy and conspiracy to engage in wire fraud.

Gonzales allegedly used SQL injections to put "sniffers" on in-store computers which would then capture credit card numbers and account information. This information could then be put on blank cards to drain user accounts of all their cash, or sold on the black market. He already faces life in prison in the Boston case.

Dell denies Chinese smartphone makes its official debut

Publié: août 17, 2009, 7:52pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

For some time now, Chinese engineers have been working on an offshoot of the Android smartphone OS that uses a proprietary front-end, with the intention of creating a network for functions and applications that will rival that of Apple's iPhone. It's being called the Open Mobile System (OMS), and the app platform is now being referred to as Ophone.

This morning overseas, China Mobile showed off its newly completed Mobile Market applications store, the country's first competitive online market for Ophone apps. Since there is no single Ophone unit for China, multiple manufacturers may be involved in producing the phones themselves; and as attendees of this morning's event learned to their surprise, Dell -- the company that has long been hesitant to enter this market -- was one of them.

Attendees saw a no-frills phone that the Chinese Web site tech.163.com journalists immediately concluded was the Mini 3i, a GSM phone that a leaked document from China Mobile made direct reference to. And indeed, the phone does fit what minimal description there has been of the device.

The smartphone that Dell is saying is not really its Mini 3i, at least not yet.

But a Dell spokesperson told Betanews today that the device shown with Dell's trademark at the China Mobile press event was merely a prototype, produced in very limited numbers, and designed specifically to demonstrate Ophone apps at this show using the Ophone Mobile Market. Individuals should not, we were told, jump to conclusions about whether the phone seen at the show will or will not represent anything Dell may sell in the future.

In other words, the spokesperson affirmed to us, this is not necessarily the Dell Mini 3i. That's important, because while on the one hand, it doesn't appear as though this could be anything else, Dell cannot help but be mindful of the fact that the early take on the device was not very positive, or at least underwhelming.

Dell will be cooperating and participating with China Mobile, though the company is making no official announcement about whether that cooperation involves the marketing and promotion of the Ophone Mobile Market -- which, for now, is the only thing it could be cooperating about.

The spokesperson went on to affirm statements the company has made for several years, as a reminder that devices the company produces and ships in Asian markets may not reflect what the company produces for North America and Europe, and vice versa.

HTC confirms 'Sense' Android UI upgrade for China

Publié: août 17, 2009, 6:45pm CEST par Tim Conneally

HTC's 'Sense' UI is a large part of what makes the HTC Hero such a desirable handset for Android fans. The interface, centered mostly around home screen widgets, was debuted earlier in the summer and was expected to arrive on other "non-Google" HTC Android handsets.

Since there are only three HTC Android handsets, and all of them are Google-branded in the US so far, this meant at the time that the UI was not coming to the States.

HTC Hero

As expected, HTC announced this morning that users of the HTC Magic on Taiwan's Chunghwa network will be able to upgrade to the Sense UI for free in the month of October.

Despite the fact that the MyTouch 3G (T-Mobile and Google's version of the Magic) is outwardly indistinguishable from the Magic, it is still unlikely that it will officially be upgradeable.

Sense has actually proven to be quite a resource-hungry UI, what with all of the widgets simultaneously running in the background and MyTouch 3G actually has less memory to work with. Some have speculated that this is the real reason Sense will not be making it to Google phones and not for licensing issues. A side by side comparison of the two devices shows that the Magic has 288 MB of RAM and the MyTouch3G has only 192 MB.

A browser war veteran turns wannabe

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:53pm CEST par Carmi Levy

Marc Andreessen is a brilliant guy. His Mosaic browser, which eventually morphed into Netscape, introduced us all to the concept of surfing and ushered in the Internet as we know it. His new way of looking at online services -- which seems ho-hum today but was radically transformational 15 years ago -- freed us forever from the tyranny of arcane, unfortunately named services like Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Gopher. In taking Netscape public, he set the stage for dot.com-era IPOs that created countless tech billionaires-as-rock-stars and defined an era when technology's potential was seemingly limitless. Let's call him brilliant and visionary, then.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) However, even geniuses have their bad days...sometimes, they have many. Netscape was eventually wiped off the relevance map when Microsoft finally woke up to the Internet reality and paved over the landscape with Internet Explorer. The Internet bubble burst as the perverse logic that drove much of it -- eyeballs, "stickiness," and the ridiculous notion that bricks-and-mortar were headed for permanent and complete obsolescence -- was finally and thankfully replaced by the old rules of business that dictated you needed to generate revenue, and that revenue needed to exceed your costs.

Succeeding despite adversity

Still, Mr. Andreessen has always managed to come out on top. At the height of the industry's headiness, he sold Netscape to AOL for $4.2 billion and hung around for a bit as AOL's CTO. Later, he went on to establish Loudcloud and eventually sold it, as Opsware, to HP for $1.6 billion. Last month, he and Ben Horowitz founded a new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and targeted its first $300 million fund at tech entrepreneurs. Let there be no doubt that Andreessen is Silicon Valley royalty.

One of the fund's first beneficiaries is RockMelt, a startup that plans to release a new browser. The company isn't saying much (yet) but it promises the new browser won't be derived from any existing technology. Instead, it'll be built entirely from scratch. In the era of Web 2.0 and increasingly dynamic and interactive online services, a browser based on modern principles and optimized for this environment is definitely a good thing. The real question is whether the world needs a new social media-aware browser. Or even cares. After all, it's not like Flock has set the world on fire.

As I stare at my machine (a typical laptop running a typical OS and a typical array of productivity and connectivity applications), I realize I've got more ways to surf the net than any one person really needs. My list of installed browsers includes Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. I certainly don't need them all, but since they're free and since some sites tend to work better in some than in others -- Chrome, for instance, does funny things to some of my blog posts, while Firefox plays nice -- I feel better keeping them all around, just in case.

Clinging to yesterday's thinking

And when RockMelt goes live, I'll probably download and install it, too, because it'll also be free, and my hard drive's big enough to handle as many browsers and plug-ins as I could ever hope to have. But just because I can and will doesn't mean it'll ever make money. And there's the rub: I fear Mr. Andreessen is chasing yesterday's dream -- namely recapturing the browser-based glory he knew when Netscape was the Internet for most of us -- while the rest of the online world long ago moved on.

Oh sure, alternative browsers are alive and well. Mozilla's Firefox has hacked out an incredibly respectable 20% global usage share, and challenged the old assumption that no one could beat Internet Explorer because it came installed on every Windows PC. Firefox proved that if you built it, and built it well, savvy users would take the time to make the switch. Google's Chrome proved the need to return to our Internet roots with a small, light, blazingly fast browser that dispensed with the bloat that had gradually converted the average browser from a climbing-the-stairs-victoriously Rocky into the equivalent of a long-retired, unshaven, pot-bellied, dog-slow, has-been "Rocky VI."

Netscape founder and venture capitalist Mark Andreessen

So, yes, the world needs better browsers today. And will continue to need them tomorrow. But, sadly for Mr. Andreessen, we no longer need to add another name to the list of browser vendors fighting for our desktop loyalty. The big boys already have it covered, and with each successive update, are finding ways to deliver greater Web 2.0-era functionality with less bloat and less instability.

I'm not certain I understand how RockMelt plans to carve out a business model by slicing the browser market even more thinly and hoping advertisers come along for the ride. Notably, Mr. Andreessen sits on both Facebook's and eBay's boards of directors. No doubt he's imagining some kind of connection that would allow RockMelt to improve the user experience for social media and other interactive services. But until we all decide our current browsers are patently unable to get the job done -- something I'm just not seeing -- it's difficult to imagine IE and Firefox users running for the exits.

We need more than browsers

We no longer lack the tools to explore the Internet at a basic level. I'm sure I'm not the only one who questions how a me-too product is going to improve our collective online capability. Geeks may appreciate the fresh technology under the hood, but attributes like that hardly matter to the vast majority of consumer and business users who wouldn't even know or care what browser they're using. For them, good enough has always been good enough, and only a new category of software, beyond the browser will justify any differential mindshare. And revenue.

RockMelt answers a question no one's been asking for much of the last decade, and would have been much better off looking beyond the browser to an entirely new way of experiencing online services. Mr. Andreessen's always done extraordinarily well with the new, the different and the radical. As he looks for other places to invest his $300 million, I humbly suggest he keep that in mind.

Sony takes more control of Sony Ericsson, appoints Stringer to chair

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:18pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

It's difficult to say which company has suffered most from the bad global economic climate -- Nokia, Motorola, or Sony Ericsson -- but if you ask any of their executives candidly, they'll probably point to their own firms. Last quarter, Sony Ericsson reported shipping 43% fewer phones than in the same quarter of 2008; and in terms of income, the company is bleeding at the rate of a third of a billion euro per quarter.

At the time, company president Dick Komiyama promised he would continue focusing on a return to profitability. This morning, it was learned that Sony has told the division president he can start thinking about focusing someplace else -- preferably, retirement. Effective immediately, Ericsson Executive Vice President Bert Norberg will scoot Komiyama to just a part of the president's chair, until the last quarter of the year when Komiyama will be out altogether. Though Komiyama will officially be sharing the presidency with Norberg until then, no one's under any illusion that this sharing will be anything more than official.

Meanwhile, Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg will step aside from his chairmanship of the jointly-owned phone producer, to make way for Sony President and CEO Sir Howard Stringer. That means Sir Howard now plays four roles in the global conglomerate, up from the three roles that already seemed daunting enough for the former executive producer of the "CBS Evening News." Already Chairman and CEO of Sony Corp., Sir Howard moved into that president's seat just last February, in a move that the wide-ranging executive tried desperately to characterize as temporary.

Norberg's ascent into the Sony Ericsson presidency may carry with it his software division's plans for high-end handsets, which involve Google's Android. Last month, the firm produced a video showing its own innovative UI, code-named "Rachael," built on an Android platform.

But while Rachael may solidify Sony Ericsson's standings in the smartphone field, it's in everyday cell phones where the biggest challenges lay. Concentrating on the higher end these past few quarters did manage to double its gross margin, from "ridiculous" to at least "tolerable," but with sales volume slipping to tragic levels, that hasn't meant much.

Back up the Pirate Bay!

Publié: août 17, 2009, 5:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

With the future of the Pirate Bay still up in the air, an anonymous user has created an archive of the torrent indexing site just in case things don't go well with its acquisition and transition into a "legitimate" service.

The user has made a mostly complete archive of The Pirate bay and all of its 873,671 hosted torrents available as a 21.3 GB download. The Pirate Bay's tracker claims to track over 2 million torrents, but most of these were not hosted by the Pirate Bay.

The description of the archive says, "I crawled their index and since I don't have the hardware necessary to deploy it to the public, I have decided to release the database. Remember that all torrents from TPB now have the new tracker openbittorrent.com included, so they will continue to track even after the TPB tracker shuts down. I have included the program I made to crawl the index, and a mockup Web site that can read the...sqlite3 database."

TorrentFreak spoke to the creator of the archive, who said, "I suppose I want us to have assurances. If the TPB deal disappoints us, we can just put it up again."

Psystar wants to get your Apple questions answered

Publié: août 14, 2009, 11:13pm CEST par Tim Conneally

You know why there are so many Apple rumors? Because they don't talk to the media. So when someone is guaranteed to have an audience with Apple where the company is legally bound to answer the questions, it's a golden opportunity to learn about the tight-lipped company's strange and wondrous ways.

Stouthearted Mac clone maker Psystar announced that it will have its turn to depose Apple in its litigation over the company's unauthorized use of OS X on its PCs.

The company wrote on its blog yesterday, "After numerous depositions of Psystar employees and associates the shoe is finally on the other foot, oh the joy!

"...Given that there is a significant interest in this litigation aside from the business interest of Psystar, in particularly those of the OSX86 community and others; we want all your input," the blog continued. "On that note, we're taking the top ten most highly moderated questions for each person to be asked at their depositions. Please bear in mind that these must relate to the litigation at hand and if you feel this correlation is unclear, please elaborate to help us better understand your perspective and/or argument."

Psystar says it will be questioning executives Bob Mansfield, Phil Schiller, and Mark Donnelly; as well as OS X project leaders John Wright, Simon Patience, and Kevin Van Vechten; and other Apple leaders such as Mac Hardware director Mike Culbert, and engineers Gary Thomas and Greg Christie.

"Feel free to post your questions as comments or e-mail them directly to press@psystar.com if you feel that the question would be better unleashed via surprise attack," the company continues. "Bear in mind that we might not be able to release the answers to said questions until the conclusion of this litigation (re: Apple's Super Secret Protective Order)."

Bing vs. Google rematch: Who's getting better, quicker?

Publié: août 14, 2009, 10:40pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Two months ago, Microsoft unveiled its revamped Bing search service, touting it as a "decision engine." There were some genuine new advantages which we did discover, but not everything appeared ready for Bing's first outing, and we were told to expect improvements to some features "in the coming weeks." Not months, weeks.

So this is August, and (do forgive me) what hath Bing brung? In our June series of Face-offs, the final score was Google (4), Bing (3) -- not necessarily a runaway, but good enough for the champion to not feel immediately threatened. With Google testing improvements to its search engine, we wondered if we'd find any evidence of tweaking on Bing's side as well. We've decided to put both services through the same paces a second time to see which service is the one that's really gunning for a rematch.

Obscure literary quotes. In our very first heat last June, Bing did a good job of identifying a passage from psychologist Carl Jung, but Google took us straight to the book. This time, we wondered whether Bing or Google could pull up the identity of a translated poem that is itself excerpted, perhaps only once in modern literary history, in a semi-obscure work of fiction. The original source of the poem is an English-language translation of the Diamond Sutra, a statement of the Buddhist faith believed to be the oldest printed book in existence. It could be translated many ways, so the specific English translation we used might give away its translator.

Thus-Gone to Thus-Gone, I with a Buddha's hand
Offer the unplucked flower, the frog's soliloquy
Among the lotus leaves, the milk-smeared mouth
At my full breast and love, like the cloudless
Sky that makes possible mountains and setting moon,
This emptiness that is the womb of love,
This poetry of silence.

The translator in this case is Aldous Huxley, who cited it in one of his last works of fiction, Island. To begin, we tried the first line of the excerpt, which is so unique that it could only apply to either Island or to some discussion of the Diamond Sutra. Item #1 from Google was a page of Huxley's various poems from the same book, while #2 led to a Google Books excerpt from Island itself. No mention of the Diamond Sutra, but still a correct identification.

Bing returned six results for the query as opposed to Google's two, and the #1 result was the same page of Huxley's poem excerpts from a site devoted specifically to the book, Island.org. But #5 on Bing's list was a surprise: a link not to Google Books, but to an independent researcher's page devoted to Aldous Huxley where the entire text of the book could also be found. Granted, the excerpt in question wasn't automatically highlighted like in Google Books, but it wouldn't take but a moment for the browser user to hit Ctrl+F and do an in-page search.

Here's something else we discovered, curiously enough: When we tried for a unique phrase from later in the poem, frog's soliloquy, Google no longer retrieved results from its own Google Books, even though that phrase definitely appears in its version of the excerpt. Bing, meanwhile, continued to point to Huxley.net.

So essentially, it really is possible for Bing to pull up results that are as useful as Google's, in situations where someone else besides Google compiles the database. It's curious that Google's search results omit the reference to Huxley.net, especially since that site has some other Huxley-related resources that might be of interest to a researcher. It's that curious omission which prompts me to give Bing the nod in this particular heat.

Best price on a 1 TB hard drive. One of the features Microsoft touted right away as a proof-of-concept of its "decision engine" motif is its shopping service. We really liked what we found back in June.

So what happened to the big "Shopping" button on the left side? When we tried our 1 TB hard drive entry in Bing a second time (obviously, without enough information in the query to infer that we're shopping for prices), we had to click on the little-bitty "Shopping" button on Bing's menu bar, which today is buried beneath a picture of a ram's horn.

Evidence of Google's slight tweaks to its shopping section, including narrowing down options to just the best prices.

In fairness, Google makes you click on the same button, but I can't exactly say that Bing is improving for working more like Google. While Bing's Shopping page results remain fairly functional, Google has made some subtle improvements over the past few months. Most notably, the range of prices from various retailers (some of which were a bit dubious, and some which were clearly misinterpreted) has been replaced with a single price and a single vendor listing.

On the one hand, that seems logical -- folks who are shopping for hard drives are usually looking for the best price. Usually. But the second criterion is often quality of vendor; and at the moment, you actually cannot go "shopping," as it were, between vendors -- Google does the shopping for you. I don't want anyone else's "decision engine" doing the deciding for me, thank you very much (which is bad news for Amazon, which gets some serious star treatment in Google's rankings). When I click on Google's listing, it takes me to the vendor it selected; when I click on Bing's listing, it takes me to a list of other vendors offering the same item, which is something I actually want to see.

So I'm actually increasing the size of this particular win for Bing, even though Bing's demotion of the "Shopping" button isn't really an improvement.

Next: Finding that girl from that show with the other girl, you know the one...

That girl from that show. Any good search engine should respond to an explicit and well-phrased query, but we all know that not every user will be able to craft a query that will enable a search engine that catalogs images to associate an image with the phrase. Last June, we had our search engines try to pull up a picture of actor Rod Taylor, using only scant information about him. And it was funny perusing through catalogs containing Johnny Depp and Zachary Quinto and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a lost gosling on a rainy highway, all of which reside on pages whose terms had to do vaguely with the things in our query that had to do vaguely with Rod Taylor.

For our rematch, we portrayed a user looking for the picture and identity of an actress who portrayed author Jane Austen in a movie about Jane Austen, not by Jane Austen. I know, you're thinking Anne Hathaway; no, this one was from British TV, and for the sake of the challenge, we'll pretend we don't remember the name of the show. We'll know her when we see her.

Google's image search found actress Olivia Williams, even though the search terms were a little obscure.

With Google, as a lot of folks know, you can have it exclude results from a search query by preceding it with a little minus. That doesn't necessarily mean it won't pull up a picture of Anne, but it shouldn't pull up one inside a page where her name is listed. When we tried the query actress played "Jane Austen" British TV in Google images, we did indeed see several actresses in productions of Jane Austen novels, though we were surprised to see Gillian Anderson show up as entry #1, completely out of character. The caption for her name in the source page shows her as hosting the PBS Masterpiece series that features Jane Austen dramas, so that's how she got there. The lovely Indian actress in the #3 entry is named Aishwarya Rai, and she stars in an Austen knock-off called Bride and Prejudice.

But right there in row #3, success: The lady we're looking for actually appears twice, once from the show in question, once from her role in a Fox TV series called Dollhouse. The show that was actually on my mind is called Miss Austen Regrets, and the actress' name is Olivia Williams. (Hopefully my wife won't mind too much if you'll permit me to say that I adore this actress.)

Bing not only couldn't find Olivia Williams, it kept pulling up actors when the query clearly called for 'actress.'

When we try the exact same query in Bing, the first surprise is that a great many of the entries that are shown up top are not of women. That's when it hits you that Google's entries truly did center on women; it pulled up actresses and in many cases appeared to exclude actors. With Bing, we got two pictures of David Tennant ("Doctor Who"), Colin Firth (yes on the Jane Austen, no on the gender), novelist Gregory David Roberts (whose book was reviewed on a page containing another book review from an author who idolized Jane Austen -- not a joke), Nicholas Cage, Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, Bruce Greenwood (twice) as Capt. Pike from Star Trek XI (what is Bing's deal with Star Trek XI?), and Australian Idol contestant Carl Risely.

One of Bing's filtering tools enables you to exclude everything but head shots, or head-and-shoulders shots. The Just faces tool limited our first 100 or so results to a dozen head shots, and for reasons we can't fathom yet, several head shots of actresses were excluded when actors were not. Case in point, Lindsay Wagner was excluded. Now, I can't think of a Jane Austen movie she's been in, but at least she's an actress, and I believe she still has a face.

How much tuning would we have to do for the Bing query to reveal one measly photo of Olivia Williams, without asking for her explicitly. If we add Masterpiece (the PBS series where her movie aired), for some reason Bing adds movie posters from Harry Potter and Pan's Labyrinth. When we replace Masterpiece with Dollhouse (the Fox show she's in), we get four items which don't include head shots at all -- one is a Grammy award, and the other is a news photograph of a car being tugged out of an icy retention pond.

So far in our rematch, it's Bing over Google winning two out of three. But that last run given up in the previous inning was a costly one for Bing.

Last June, it was obvious to us that Microsoft needed to make serious adjustments to its capability to discern contexts from information, if it was to ever have serious reason to claim usage share from Google. Two months later, however, the search engine that's making changes in the interest of becoming more competitive -- for better or worse -- appears to be Google. People use search engines to find stuff, not go browsing through stuff. It was Microsoft that brought the issue to the forefront, when its Bing ad campaign made the point that if we all spoke to each other the way Google finds search results -- with rambling, often random associations thrown out willy-nilly -- we'd never make sense to anyone. It's a brilliant campaign, but so far, the search engine needs to live up to its billing. After two months, we find Bing is still lagging behind. After purchasing a space for Bing on #2 Yahoo, Microsoft continues to run the risk of being perceived as #3.

SEE THE ORIGINAL FACE-OFF FROM THE BEGINNING:

Bing vs. Google face-off, round 1: Bing (2), Google (1)

Bing vs. Google face-off, round 2: Bing (2), Google (2)

Bing vs. Google face-off, round 3: Bing (2), Google (3)

Bing vs. Google face-off, round 4: Bing (3), Google (3)

Bing vs. Google face-off, round 5: Bing (3), Google (4)

Verizon completes 4G LTE trials in Boston, Seattle

Publié: août 14, 2009, 9:40pm CEST par Tim Conneally

LTE logo Just as Verizon has predicted since late 2007, the company has completed its first trials of LTE (Third Generation Partnership Project's Long Term Evolution), the as-of-yet non-standardized 4G wireless technology.

Verizon was able to make calls in the 700 MHz spectrum based on the 3GPP's Release 8 LTE standard in trial deployments in Seattle and Boston. The company was able to stream video, upload and download files and browse the Web, but most importantly, it was able to complete voice calls.

Voice has been one of the biggest obstacles thus far for LTE, because the 4G standard is 100% packet based. Traditionally, voice calls are completed on circuit-switched networks, and Verizon utilized VoIP in its trials. This is the main area of contention with Voice over LTE. Verizon utilized the 3GPP-supported system called IMS (IP Media Subsystem) which is an offshoot of the Release 8 draft, while the hardware manufacturers support a system called VoLGA (Voice over LTE via Generic Access).

Verizon now has 10 LTE cell sites in the 700 MHz block in Boston and Seattle, and says it expects to be ready for a commercial launch in 30 markets by 2010 which will cover approximately 100 million people.

Surplus of applicants for federal broadband stimulus money triggers a delay

Publié: août 14, 2009, 8:29pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Everybody is scrambling for his or her broadband stimulus money.

5:00 p.m. EDT today was scheduled to be the deadline for funding applications under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but because of overwhelming traffic on the government's servers, the deadline has been extended to next Thursday, August 20.

"Over the last several days, the online application system (Easygrants System) has experienced service delays due to the volume of activity from potential applicants," a joint statement from the Department of Agriculture and Department of Commerce today said. "The agencies have added additional servers to address these capacity issues. Nevertheless, in an effort to give applicants that have already started the electronic application submission process prior to the application closing deadline an opportunity to complete the submission of those applications, RUS and NTIA announce that an applicant with an application pending in the Easygrants System as of 5 p.m. ET on August 14, 2009, will be given until 5 p.m. ET on August 20, 2009, to complete the electronic submission of its application."

Of the $7.2 billion in Recovery Act funding, approximately $2.5 billion will go to the Rural Utilities Service Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), to improve broadband infrastructure in rural areas of the US. The remaining $4.7 billion will go to the National Telecommunications Information Administration's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) which will fund broadband improvement in "underserved" areas -- that is, areas that aren't necessarily rural but are definitely underconnected, such as lower income urban areas.

Companies, organizations, and local governments with all sorts of proposed solutions are applying for funding.

The Recovery Act also directed the FCC to submit a National Broadband Plan to Congress by February 17, 2010. The plan will outline the benefits of improved broadband infrastructure for such things as education, employment, and heath care, as well as the issues related to deployment, adoption and affordability.

Last week, the Commission began its series of workshops to discuss and debate ideas in the drafting of the National Broadband Plan. Today, the FCC named the seven senior technologists who will lead in the creation of the Plan.

Stagg Newman, Chief Technologist

Byron J. Neal, Chief Engineer

Julius Knapp, Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology, FCC

Ronald T. Repasi, Deputy Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, FCC

Rashmi Doshi, Chief, Laboratory Division, Office of Engineering and Technology, FCC

Walter Johnston, Chief, Electromagnetic Compatibility Division, Office of Engineering and Technology, FCC

Jeff Goldthorp, Chief, Communications Systems Analysis Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, FCC

The Commission has also named Dr. Carlos Kirjner as Senior Advisor on Broadband to Chairman Genachowski. Kirjner was Vice President of Business Development for Telegent Systems, Inc., a fabless semiconductor manufacturer, and Director for New Business Development at Vodafone.

Office vs. Web apps: Breaking the 0-0 tie

Publié: août 14, 2009, 6:12pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The story so far: We're in the initial phase of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview, a period of private and public testing that could last for the better part of a year. So far, the biggest complaint we're seeing emerge is that so little is changing, that it's becoming more difficult for Microsoft to make the value proposition for why businesses and individuals should upgrade from Office 2007 or even 2003. In the absence of viable, existing reasons why the new Office will be better than the old one, a couple of Microsoft employees launched a Web site this week, asking people to come up with their own reasons and vote up each other's best responses.

Scott Fulton On Point badge (200 px) Right now, the number one suggestion users have for "making Office better" is the restoration of an old feature that existed in Office XP. The #3 suggestion for Word: Give users the option to bring back the Office 2003 menu bar. (You can just hear Carmi Levy cheering that suggestion.) So to recap, from both Microsoft and its users, nothing new yet, but plenty of pleas to bring back old stuff that was just fine.

From the other side of the fence, we're hearing some vocal complaints. The monolithic nature of PC applications such as Office, the argument goes, runs counter to the modern and evolved state of app development. Office is expensive, it's cumbersome, and it's not all that mobile. And it tends to force data to be formatted and archived using protocols that are either owned by someone or subject to unanticipated change, or both. The Web apps model would appear to solve these problems. Web apps are nimbler, you can run them anywhere there's a (modern) browser, and all the changes are managed on the back end without involving you, the user.

The Web app is the future, the other camp chants; the Web is the platform. And in the future, your data will move, your applications will evolve, and your work will progress at the speed of the Web.

Oh, really? Let's hoist our old windsocks for a moment and see just how fast that is.

The principal channel that a Web application platform needs to maintain communications between server and client is under suspicion from interest groups for what they claim could be its potential use by governments in surveillance activities. The most oft-heard excuse from Web developers regarding why they don't adopt new standards is because users won't dump the old browser. And the most oft-heard excuse from users as to why they don't dump the old browser is because their businesses have yet to hear a compelling case for why they should adopt new standards. Microsoft won't terminate IE6 support until 2014; and it may take another three years for the government study of the effects of that termination to be completed.

Meanwhile, the reason why Web standards bodies can't adopt new standards is because their members can't reach an agreement over whether a "standard" is the technology most openly shared or the one most overtly used. And in the wake of the latest disagreement over Web video standards, Google -- the owner of YouTube, the Web's largest proprietor of Flash video -- purchased On2, the company behind the standard that Google's own engineer slapped down in the W3C.

Google's incentive to make an On2-based codec the standard upon which all Web video is based, and in so doing upend YouTube's central platform, appears to be on a level with Microsoft's incentive to make HTTP-NG the next secure transport layer for the Web, right after it hired away its principal creator in 1999. If you check the guy's Web page, you'll see that as of 2006, he's still hard at work on it.

The reasons why there cannot be a "revolution" in Web applications, at least not yet, are clear and threefold: One, there is a measurable drought of new ideas and innovation as to what a Web application should be. When one is perceived to improve, it's usually because it looks and works more like Office 2003. At the period in Web apps' history when we should be inventing the rocket that takes them to the moon, their principal designers are stuck reinventing the wheel.

Two, no one has created the business model for a sustainable Web apps market. Let's face it: Today's Internet is besieged by the failure of any kind of business model to sustain an industry, beyond simply sustaining Google. Now, certainly Google has reason to feel it can produce a workable platform and profit from it. But to date, Google's success has been attained from the sweat and toil of online publishers who blithely feed it the content it needs to hang its shingle and sell advertising. So all the evidence we have at our disposal points to Google, this single competitive entity upon which more and more of the non-Microsoft development world is pinning its hopes, building a Web applications industry around the ideal that we're all standing ready to take a break, and we'll be right back after this important message.

The problem with all commercial publishing on the Web today is that it does not know how to generate an audience. So it produces features and headlines and functions that cater to the least common denominator, that shout as loud as they can but say little of substance. Once in a great while, they can reel in a big fish and turn a profit for the day, but not every day. Is this really the business model you want extended to the realm of Web applications?

Or perhaps you prefer the alternative, the walled-garden model of utopia, where There's An App For That* (*void where prohibited). To borrow a phrase from Dr. Phil, "How's that workin' for ya?"

Three -- and I mean this in all sincerity -- what platform? In recent years, the development of an infrastructure for Web-based functionality and communication has been the one element of the IT industry where there's been any healthy progress, where there's still activity, where ideas are truly flourishing. There's RESTful architecture, persistent objects for AJAX, dynamic languages -- there's real and good work going on here, from both the open source and commercial camps.

But just like Lotus Symphony nearly sunk the Macintosh in its initial months, the platform needs a killer app, not a killing app. And so far, the need to tie everything back to the browser, to the big window with the close box and the menu bar, to 1984...is holding everybody back.

If Microsoft Office appears to be sinking under the weight of old ideas, its would-be successor doesn't exactly appear to be treading water. We lack a viable business model, we lack cohesion in our standards efforts, and we lack a sense of direction, mainly due to the stark absence of new ideas, and one inspiring vision to make those ideas flourish. Maybe one will turn up on MakeOfficeBetter.com, though I'm not betting money on it. However, I will say this for certain: The one company that has always consistently flourished and prospered in the absence of new ideas, is Microsoft.

So unless you've got some brilliant plan, 2014 will be a lot like 1984.

Qik: Yet another brilliant service crippled on iPhone

Publié: août 14, 2009, 4:48pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Qik on the iPhone 3GS Mobile video streaming site Qik, which was introduced last year is leading the charge into the next generation of the Web. Think of it as a real-time YouTube where a user's mobile phone is paired with an online channel that broadcasts live video streamed from his handset camera over 3G. The service's value for citizen journalism is undeniable.

Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android all have the ability to stream live video to Qik, and the iPhone 3G S just got an app for the service for the first time yesterday.

Unfortunately, as we've seen with many of the most groundbreaking new apps, the iPhone's version provides none of the groundbreaking features.

Qik's Director of Marketing, Jackie Danicki said last night, "For now, this is a capture and upload app -- not the low latency live video you've become used to with Qik. And for today, this app only works over Wi-Fi. But we've submitted an update to the App Store which will have it working over 3G networks, too."

So the service which is noteworthy for streaming live video over 3G networks has come to the iPhone with no live streaming and no 3G connectivity. This places Qik in the ranks of most of Google's services which have to be tailored to fit the iPhone, or which have been rejected entirely.

EU study: Web users think they're being charged enough for online content

Publié: août 13, 2009, 11:42pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

One of the stated goals of the European Commission over the past few years has been the fostering of a healthy and vital creative community, a kind of second or third Renaissance brought about by the rapid growth of digital media. But the key fuel for growing the content community as rapidly as the technology community will be the same fuel that tech requires: money. And online content creators aren't getting much of it, a continent-wide EU survey concludes this week, because a sizable plurality, if not a majority, of consumers there believe they're already paying for "free" content -- some too much so.

According to data compiled from member nations by the European Union's statistics and record-keeping agency Eurostat, which sampled survey responses from 211,651 individuals in 148,604 households, only 5% of Europeans reported having paid above and beyond their Internet service charges, for any kind of online content within the last three months of having received the survey. (For individuals 16-24 years of age, the number was closer to 10%.) Among the remainder who had not paid extra, about 49% said they would be unwilling to pay any extra for Internet content, regardless of whatever incentives they may be offered or whatever laws may be passed or enforced.

The main reason, the European Commission working group concluded, was that a large number of individuals surveyed believed they already were paying for content, as customers of what they compared to an all-you-can-eat, all-day diner.

"The limited willingness to pay in return for service improvements suggests that the take up of advanced content services is linked to the perception that many of these services are free or are provided in exchange for a flat rate Internet connection," reads the working group's report (PDF available here). "For many users, and especially the younger cohorts, adoption of advanced services seems to be driven by the principle of 'eat as much as you can' in exchange of a fixed fee. Once the connection to the Internet is established, it is just a matter of streaming or downloading and copying the content of choice."

Just over one-fifth of those polled said they might consider paying for online content if, for some reason, less of the available content on the Web were free. The EC group used that figure to advance a curious argument: a sort of rebuttal to the idea that the elimination of opportunities for piracy is the answer to the problem of content profitability. The content industry, the group said, contends that as long as piracy continues to flourish, less commercial high-quality content will be purchased. The polling data, the group says, suggests that even if piracy were curbed, folks wouldn't start popping off to the record store in droves, implying that the health of commercial content isn't plagued merely by piracy.

As far as who is to blame for the notion that content "wants to be free," the study points to sites that distribute user-created content. You may have seen one or two of these yourself, perhaps in passing; there's one called YouTube. You'd think the lack of remuneration for the creators of this category of content would set a low market value for it. However, the problem -- as the report clearly implies, using diplomatic language -- is that the costs of establishing and maintaining a user-created content service on the order of YouTube are so high that only big companies in big and/or bold countries are willing to withstand the losses necessary to fund the effort.

Where are those countries and companies? America, of course, which serves as the fortress for YouTube, MySpace, and their ilk. But another is within the EU boundaries: Estonia, a member state only since 2004. Estonia was credited by the US-based NGO Freedom House has having the least restrictive Internet service in the world...but also the country that ranks highly with Russia and South Korea as a worldwide haven for spam and malware. An October 2008 study conducted by a Danish research firm (PDF available here) concluded that as much as 54% of the content emerging from Estonian online news services (including the user-created variety) may be objectionable to parents for viewing by their kids.

While fewer than 3% of Czech Republic citizens reported having uploaded any of their own content to the Web in the past three months, some 21% of Estonian citizens reported having done so. In a way, that's good because Estonia fosters a creative community; in another way, it's not because there's no market emerging from within that community. And because it sets a low standard for the perceived value of European content, the report implies, the US can corner the market for other commercial content, even within US boundaries. Or put another way, Estonia is greasing the wheels for iTunes.

"While Europe is one of the most creative regions of the world in terms of production of quality content and features high rates of broadband take-up, it is not yet taking full advantage of digital content markets," the report concludes. "American content and online shops have to a large extent cornered the market, raising revenues through online advertising, and experiencing success stories such as [iTunes] App Store. For Europe to successfully compete in the market for content, solutions to these problems need to be found; through finding innovative and sustainable business models as well as a favorable regulatory environment."

Looking forward to September with Apple

Publié: août 13, 2009, 11:06pm CEST par Tim Conneally

For the last four years, Apple has reserved the September back-to-school season for upgrading its line of iPod media players. Rumors attributed to "music industry executives" this week indicate that this September will be no different.

A keynote in September gives the company the opportunity to hype up the latest generation of iPods while reminding parents that college kids can get one free if they buy a Mac.

While there could be a dozen or more Apple rumors flying around at any time, a couple of the most solid (and plausible) ones suggest minor upgrades to the iPod platform: equipping the iPod Touch and Nano with a camera and microphone, while also adopting a new interactive digital album format codenamed "Cocktail".

This afternoon, long-time Apple correspondent Jim Dalrymple reported that his sources were saying the long-rumored Apple tablet, sometimes referred to as a Mac or iPhone netbook, will not be unveiled during the event.

If prior iPod refreshes are any indication, the event will take place in San Francisco, and will be between September 7 and 12. The burning question now is: will Steve Jobs return to give his trademark "one more thing," or is the infirm CEO giving up the spotlight again to Tim Cook and Phil Schiller?

ICANN: 'Domain tasting' practice declined to near-zero in April

Publié: août 13, 2009, 9:30pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Perhaps you've noticed this yourself: Whenever you mis-type a URL with a name that's maybe one letter off from the proper one, you no longer get directed to a site with a zillion ads that masquerades as the real one that you've never seen before, and that you may never see again. While the practice of cybersquatting hasn't necessarily subsided, the Web had been suffering from a plague of domain tasters -- sites that set up shop on sound-alike URLs for five days at a time, or even less, knowing they could revoke their URL registrations within that "add grace period" (AGP) without paying a fee.

In the meantime, these domain testers could reap the rewards of serving up dozens of cheap pop-under ads, and maybe even planting a few bots in the process. It was getting so bad that the number of misappropriated URLs cancelled within ICANN's five-day AGP, for one month in early 2007, approached 50 million. And as few as ten registrants were responsible for the lion's share of those one-off names.

The solution reached in June 2008 by ICANN, the non-profit agency responsible for the world's top-level domains, was very simple and very social: Charge registrants for "excessive AGP deletes" -- generally, for more than 70 deletions for every 1,000 registered names. As a result, according to an ICANN report released yesterday (PDF available here, the number of AGP deletes fell by as much as 84% in just the first month after the new policy took effect.

An ICANN chart depicts the plummeting abuse of the domain name registration system, since charging for near-term registry deletions from June 2008.

[Chart credit: ICANN, August 12, 2009.]

About 17.67 million AGP deletes were reported in June 2008. That number declined to 2.79 million in July, and then all the way to a paltry 58,218 in April 2009.

In a statement yesterday, ICANN CEO Rob Beckstrom used the good news as an illustration for how his institution could succeed in working with the greater Internet community to solve critical problems, as opposed to working under government oversight: "This shows the power of the Internet community working together," Beckstrom said. "The problem was identified and then a solution produced that has effectively seen the death of domain tasting in less than a year. In this case the study into tasting was prompted by representatives of the user community in ICANN, known as the At-Large community...It is enormously gratifying to see how collective responsibility, coordination and problem-solving can remove a potential for profit-making abuse of the domain name system so quickly. It is yet another piece of proof that ICANN's multi-stakeholder model of decision-making works and works well."

AT&T and Apple hit with class action over iPhone MMS promises

Publié: août 13, 2009, 9:21pm CEST par Tim Conneally

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple and AT&T in the Eastern District of Louisiana on the grounds that Apple's "print and video advertisements [for the iPhone 3G S] in and on television, the Internet, the radio, newspapers, and direct mailers all touted the availability of MMS," but the functionality remains unavailable.

The complaint, filed one week ago, says "Millions of customers, including Louisiana residents, purchased the 3G and 3G S waiting for the day in June 2009 when the new application would be available which would allow MMS. Unfortunately, after downloading the new 3.0 software update application, MMS still did not work on both the 3G and 3G S...The only excuse offered by AT&T and Apple is a mouse-print disclaimer on the Web site, in barely readable font, which reads 'MMS Support from AT&T coming in late summer.'

The complaint estimates that at least 10,000 individuals could eventually comprise the class.

Apple fans who have heard the story are already jumping on the issue. Seth Weintraub of 9 to 5 Mac said "Frankly, MMS is a dinosaur of a technology and won't be around in 5 years. It also enables telcos to charge you for something that should be free. You can accomplish everything MMS does on mobile e-mail so long as your recipient has e-mail on their phone."

However, MMS is still a common method of sharing media between phones, and the issue at hand is AT&T and Apple's alleged customer deception. The suit cites an Apple troubleshooting article under the heading, "To send and receive MMS messages on your iPhone 3G, do the following..." which links to a page showing carriers that support MMS.

"Clicking on that hyperlink leads to a page showing several countries," the suit says. "Clicking on North America and Viewing the graph for USA under the headline 'AT&T,' it shows that AT&T is not a carrier which offers MMS! Of course, AT&T is the only carrier in the United States used by the iPhone. In other words, AT&T's towers do not support MMS."

"When and if AT&T finally upgrades its towers, the millions of iPhone purchasers will get what they bargained for in terms of MMS," the complaint continues. "But in the meantime, all the millions of purchasers of the 3G and 3G S iPhone have been deceived and cheated out of what they thought they were purchasing -- a phone with MMS functionality."

How to turn off Palm Pre's 'Big Brother' data collection

Publié: août 13, 2009, 7:09pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Debian developer Joey Hess this week pulled the covers off of Palm's WebOS, and showed some interesting things going on in the background. Apparently, Palm Inc. collects daily samples of the user's location, which apps he has installed and his usage of them, and app crash logs.

As expected, many have panicked at the thought of both Sprint and Palm harvesting their usage data. But Palm appears to be working within the realm of its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, and the company's data-sharing policy has actually been a known issue since the Pre's release.

Palm and its subsidiaries, affiliates, partners, suppliers, and agents (collectively, Affiliates) may collect, store, access, disclose, transmit, process, and otherwise use your Registration Data, account or Device information, content, and technical data for Palm and its Affiliates to provide you with the Services, address your requests, provide technical support, process any transactions for your account, and otherwise in accordance with Palm's privacy policy. Palm may also provide or enable certain Services through your Device that rely upon location information. In order to provide such Services, Palm and its Affiliates may collect, store, access, disclose, transmit, process, and otherwise use your location data (including real time geographic information) in accordance with Palm's privacy policy. You also agree that Palm has the right, without liability to you, to disclose any information, including but not limited to your Registration Data and other information, to law enforcement authorities or government officials, to the extent Palm believes is reasonably necessary or appropriate.

To appease those quick to invoke big brother, Palm issued a statement which said, "Palm takes privacy very seriously, and offers users ways to turn data collecting services on and off. Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer's information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust."

Turning off Background Data Collection on the Palm Pre The main complaint for users now is that turning the data collection off is not simple or obvious enough. Hess said, "My approach to disable this, which may not stick across WebOS upgrades, was to comment out the 'exec' line in /etc/event.d/uploadd and reboot. However, then I noticed a contextupload process running. This is started by dbus, so the best way to disable it seems to be: rm /usr/bin/contextupload."

According to Palm, however, it's much easier than all that. Under Location Services, a user needs only to switch Background Data Collection to the "off" position and all this controversial location and app data will kept private.

Lower profile XP Mode (N) for Windows 7 omits Media Player 9

Publié: août 13, 2009, 7:03pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Windows XP Mode (N) Release Candidate for Windows 7 from Fileforum now.

In a move which could very rapidly multiply the number of total users of Windows XP N way beyond the paltry number of users, mostly in Europe, who invested in the product in 2005, Microsoft this morning quietly released a separate version of the release candidate for its XP Mode virtualization system for Windows 7. This version creates a virtual envelope for Windows XP N, the version Microsoft created without Media Player 9 pre-installed, to appease the European Commission.

But there's a very good reason Windows 7 users may want the (N) version instead: There's no really good reason for most users to be virtualizing Media Player 9 anyway, since XP Mode's real purpose in Windows 7 is for running older Windows apps whose developers didn't make the transition to Vista. If you want to watch a movie, you've got Media Player 11 in Win7.

The download profile for XP Mode (N) is therefore about 22 megabytes slimmer than for the non-N version. What's more, without the media drivers on board, the XP N platform may conceivably be a tad faster, though Betanews has yet to confirm this.

Proof that Windows XP Mode (N) virtualizes the XP N version from 2005. Microsoft released its initial release candidate for XP Mode last week, one day before the commencement of availability of the RTM code for Windows 7 on MSDN and TechNet. In Betanews initial tests that day, we discovered the XP Mode RC had significant trouble with installation and with establishing a working VM on the Windows 7 Release Candidate -- trouble that completely disappeared with the Windows 7 RTM code. Therefore, we recommend that you wait until receiving or purchasing the final Win7 before trying XP Mode RC or XP Mode (N) RC.

Because XP Mode (N) truly is the 2002 edition of Windows XP Professional recompiled without Media Player, it begins life in dire need of years and years worth of security fixes. The installation routine in Windows 7 enables the Automatic Updates feature in XP Mode to collect and install those updates automatically, though we've noticed that those updates actually came in waves -- once you install the first wave, you find yourself requiring successive ones. So you may be better off simply using Windows Update manually to download and install each wave of updates in succession, to ensure the stability of your virtual platform.

Keep in mind that the Updates program is geared to automatically omit Internet Explorer 8 from the list of updates, favoring IE6 instead. You have IE8 in Windows 7, so you may actually find IE6 not only useful for development purposes (downward compatibility being as important as it is), but also required for those older Web apps that remain on corporate intranets, and that were written to the older Microsoft standard. Also, Media Player is not among the updates offered.

An independent estimate of the total number of sales of Windows XP N in Europe, after the first year of availability, totaled under 1,800.

Download Windows XP Mode Release Candidate for Windows 7 from Fileforum now.

[ME's CORRECTION: I did it again and I didn't catch myself: I mistakenly referred to Media Player 9 as "Media Center 9." The error was completely mine, and I apologize.]

Three cheers for Goliath: Microsoft Word and the battle for ideas

Publié: août 13, 2009, 5:47pm CEST par Carmi Levy

It's always a kick to watch little David saunter onto the battlefield, load his slingshot and knock off the dominant, arrogant Goliath. We all enjoy rooting for the little guy, and whenever he prevails over the odds-on favorite, we can't help but feel that all is right with the world.

Sometimes, though, Goliath needs to pound his tiny adversary into the ground.

Microsoft found itself on the wrong end of a patent infringement judgment in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas earlier this week. Judge Leonard Davis upheld an earlier jury verdict against Microsoft in a long-running patent dispute launched by Toronto-based i4I Inc. Davis ruled that Microsoft wilfully violated i4i's parent that covers specific methods used to read custom XML files.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) That's not the scary part for the hundreds of millions of people who spend the bulk of the workday in Word. Beyond increasing the original $200 million in damages to $290 million, Davis also imposed a permanent injunction against sales of Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007. Assuming nothing changes from this point onward, Microsoft will no longer be able to sell Word in the US in 60 days. And if you want technical support when opening custom XML-based documents, you'll be out of luck, too, as Microsoft's help desks will be banned from answering any related questions.

Look at me, says the judge

Don't buy the hype for a second. Although headlines screaming about the impending death of Word make for memorable moments around the water cooler, it's difficult to believe that a hyperbolic injunction governing one of the key instruments of modern business would ever actually be implemented. This is little more than a blatant grab for attention by an otherwise anonymous judge, and another example of how small companies that feel they've been wronged try to level the playing field by going directly for Goliath's jugular.

I'm inclined to believe we'll all still be able to buy Word in 60 days for a number of key reasons:

The fight isn't over. Microsoft has already announced it will launch an appeal. Given the glacial pace of justice, the injunction will be covered with a thick layer of dust by the time every last motion is launched, debated and settled.
East Texas is a patent troll's dream. The numbers don't lie. If you're a plaintiff in a patent case and you want a court that's friendly to your plight, you seek out East Texas. According to the Patent Prospector, file your case in East Virginia or Western Wisconsin courts and you've got an even chance of winning. Go to Mid-Florida and your success rate bumps to 55%. The highest patent holder success rate, 67%, belongs to East Texas. If it goes to trial, you're in even better shape: Plaintiffs win fully 71.9% of their cases here, with median damages topping out close to $20 million per case. Can we say "cha-ching?"
Replacement is always an option. Microsoft is certainly capable of developing alternative technology and releasing it as a patch or an update. It isn't inexpensive, easy or without risk -- which largely explains why the company has been duking the issue out in court for the better part of five years and still hasn't gone down the tech-replacement route. But it's not unheard of, and Microsoft can work around the issue more easily than its David-like, less resource-rich opponent.
Brinkmanship is the name of the game. The most eye-catching headlines get everyone's attention, and it doesn't get more eye-catching than "Word is dead." But i4i's goal isn't to put Microsoft out of business. It's to push the software giant as close to the edge as it can to squeeze the largest possible settlement out of the deal. It's a great negotiation strategy, and it's working.
Microsoft and i4i were once friends. Way back in the days of Office 97 and 2000, Word had no way of natively supporting custom XML documents or templates. Microsoft looked to i4i to develop a plug-in that added this functionality. When Microsoft natively included this type of XML capability in Word 2003 -- and subsequently 2007, as well -- the situation soured between the two, and i4i launched the legal proceedings that culminated in this week's ruling.
The plaintiff is out of business if Word dies. Even as the case has ground through the courts, i4i has built a consistent business creating tools that allow companies (mostly pharmaceutical firms) to create forms and other front ends that allow for rich data entry and collaboration. The tools are built both on and in Microsoft Word, so if the parent application disappears, so, too, does i4i's business model.

Beyond the legal machinations and inflated damage claims that are par for the course in cases like this lies the stark reality that Word is not just a piece of software. It's an institution that for many of us governs how we spend our day, create our work, and share it with our colleagues, clients, friends and family. We can argue, correctly, that the days of shrink-wrapped software are drawing to a close as Web services become ever more sophisticated. We can also argue that Microsoft has a limited window of time to carve out a post-Office business strategy. But we're still nowhere near the tipping point, and for now at least, the thought of a Word-less world is laughable.

The actual threat lies elsewhere

It's easy for a district court judge to make what seems to be an historic ruling when he knows full well it'll be turned over on appeal. I suspect an appellate judge for a higher court would spend more time weighing the market-impacting implications of such a ruling and less time managing the ensuing PR and media storm.

For all of those who use Microsoft Word, it'll be business as usual for as long as they want it to be. The real threat is longer-term, and comes from the Web. If anyone's going to kill the Goliath word processor -- and its sibling Office products as well -- it won't be a small developer of collaborative applications from north of the border. David won't win so easily this time, and Goliath will live on to fight a much more evenly matched opponent before long.

Sony to dump proprietary DRM in eBooks

Publié: août 13, 2009, 5:44pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Sony Reader with Touch capacity This morning, Sony announced that it intends to "take the confusion out of digital book formats" and put all its weight behind the EPUB format. By the end of 2009, Sony will only sell EPUB books in its store, and will have dropped its proprietary DRM entirely in favor of Adobe's CS4 server side copy protection.

"A world of proprietary formats and DRMs creates silos and limits overall market growth," Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division said. "Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store. With a common format and common content protection solution (DRM), they will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use."

Just over a year ago, Sony began its support for EPUB, the XML-based eBook standard used by the International Digital Publishing Forum, a group which includes major publishers such as Random House and HarperCollins.

EPUB is one of the most widely supported formats in eBook readers, yet is noticeably absent from the current market leading Amazon Kindle. Similar to the way Apple's iPod is paired with iTunes, the Kindle is very closely paired with Amazon, and consumers who want to load their Kindles with content from different stores have to go through extra steps to convert their documents to Kindle-friendly formats.

Sony appears to be addressing this issue directly as the Kindle's chief competitors all support the EPUB format, such as Barnes & Noble, Borders UK, and Penguin Books, to name only a few.

While Sony's readers still lack the simplicity of wireless shopping, the company is making affordability and openness its primary selling points. Convenience may be a bit further down the list, but not too far, according to The New York Times, which says Sony will be releasing a wireless Reader "later in the year."

Maybe frequency is important: AMD raises Phenom II ceiling to 3.4 GHz

Publié: août 13, 2009, 5:19pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Starting today, AMD is marketing a stepped-up version of its Dragon platform's top-of-the-line processor, the Phenom II X4 model 965, for a price of $245 in 1,000-unit quantities (the "tray" price, street prices may be a little higher). The "stepped-up" part of the bargain involves a feature that just two years ago, AMD's marketing team was saying didn't really matter anymore: frequency.

It's a clear sign of AMD's renewed confidence in its own architecture that it now offers a consumer-grade desktop CPU clocked at 3.4 GHz. During those bleak days of the company's under-performing Barcelona architecture, it tried hard to play down its unwillingness to break the 3.0 GHz barrier. For a company that's famous for being very straight with its customers, these explanations of why higher performance isn't the number one item on their wants list sounded like raising the white flag, in the midst of stiff competition from Intel's Core 2.

Today, that flag isn't white. It's green.

"We hope people realize that things are a lot different this time around for us," said Adam Kozak, AMD's desktop platform marketing manager, in an interview with Betanews. "And we're not playing in the $1,000 CPU space [with Intel]...We know where we stand, and for that price/performance, you're going to be hard pressed to find a better value than us right now."

This morning, Tom's Hardware released initial benchmark results for comparison tests pitting new and previous Phenom II Black Edition processors against a selection of similarly priced CPUs from Intel, including the Core 2 Quad Q9550S and that company's forthcoming Core i7 models. The results were a mixed bag, with the 965 at factory speed outperforming the Q9550S in the synthetic PCMark Vantage trial, but with Q9550S and Core i7 920 performing better elsewhere. The street price for the Q9550S is about $350, so 965 street prices will probably come in lower, giving AMD a slight victory margin in some categories. However, that Q9550S was clocked at only 2.83 GHz.

What AMD is hoping will sway enthusiasts' opinions is a feature whose relative performance merits won't show up on Tom's benchmarks: smart profiles -- specifically, software policies capable of stepping up or down the power allotted to certain cores, based on the measured requirements of the application (or game). AMD is arguing that the perceived performance of some games may actually benefit from power being stepped down or regulated in some instances.

"What it's doing is playing to the affinities of that specific application," said Kozak. "For example, a game like Quake Wars, that game is...not going to use all four cores. It's going to use two at the most. So what [smart profiles] does is take your two fastest cores and bumps them up to give you even more performance, while the other two cores will throttle down. It's the affinity set for that specific application that'll give you the best experience possible."

Benchmarks tend not to "throttle down," or to have affinities associated with them that enable them to do so; and since Intel doesn't offer a competitive feature, that fact will likely stay the same. So AMD will still have a bit of a "Yes, but..." factor in its favor when comparisons tend not to point in their direction. What's more, AMD can claim the ability to perform better with older or more conventional single-threaded apps and games, squeezing perhaps 5% better performance by turning down the volume for cores that would generally go unutilized anyway.

A comparison of performance-per-watt, using AMD's own processors as an example, demonstrates the company's renewed confidence in its latest architecture.

The company is also showing renewed confidence with marketing that says better performance-per-watt matters even to the enthusiast, contrasting against 2007 when the message was that power consumption only matters to Opteron buyers. AMD is now claiming that the model 965 has 11% better power efficiency than the previous 955, and an impressive 61% better efficiency than its own Phenom 9950 -- built during the short period when the company said enthusiasts don't care about power consumption.

Today, AMD also announced an interesting development in the software field: the development of a CPU/GPU performance driver specifically for Adobe Premiere Pro. Using the driver on systems with AMD CPUs and ATI GPUs, AMD claims that its capability to co-opt the GPU improves the program's video encoding and rendering time by a factor of seven.

Zune HD: Finally, it's official

Publié: août 13, 2009, 9:50am CEST par Tim Conneally

Zune HD is Official Though the device has been leakier than a rowboat made of Swiss cheese, Microsoft has at last given the final word on the Zune HD's availability, and It's up for pre-order today.

Microsoft's multi-touch, HD radio packing MP3 player can be pre-ordered today on Amazon.com, Best Buy.com, Walmart.com, and the Microsoft store, (though as of 3:30am EST, only Best Buy had an active page.)

It will come to retail stores on September 15 --not the eighth, as we had previously stated-- in 16 GB ($219.99) and 32 GB ($289.99) capacities and five color variations. ZuneOriginals.net will also offer 10 custom engravings by guest artists on the Zune HD's launch date.

If the numerous recent hands-on videos of the Zune HD in action haven't been enough to sell you on the device, select stores in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC will have demonstrations on August 22 and 23.

Is Microsoft violator or victim in i4i patent dispute?

Publié: août 13, 2009, 1:26am CEST par Joe Wilcox

Perhaps they don't use Microsoft Office at the courthouse in Tyler, Texas? Could there be no computers at all and just Selectric typewriters? I have to wonder following yesterday's injunction barring Microsoft from shipping Word.

I'm being snide because Tyler is the reputed "patent troll" capital of North America. Plaintiffs tend to win big judgments there, and surrounding vicinity, against companies like Microsoft. As such, it's easy to dismiss yesterday's court judgment as meritless. But is it?

Toronto-based i4i claims that Microsoft infringed on US patent 5,787,449, which was issued in July 1998. In March 2007, the company filed the case in Tyler, where a jury later found for i4i.

Come One, Come All Patent Trolls

Tyler is located 62 miles west of Marshall, another popular jurisdiction for filing patent lawsuits. Eighty-one miles to the south is Beaumont, where a lawsuit against Toshiba led to a $2.1 billion settlement in 1999. Southeast Texas is a popular venue for patent trolling. Patent defendants include Apple, Autodesk, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, Nintendo, Samsung, SanDisk and Sony. Some cases of interest:

In November 2008, EMG Technology filed an infringement claim against Apple, less than a month after the patent was issued.
The same month, a jury found that Sony violated an Agere patent and ordered payment of $18.8 million.
In May 2009, a jury found that Microsoft violated the aforementioned i4i patent.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts tracks the number and kind of cases filed each year. During 2008, in the Eastern Texas U.S. District Court, 358 of the 2,866 civil cases related to copyrights, patents and trademarks. There were even more contract disputes, 390, and 185 personal injury/liability cases. If that doesn't seem excessive, here's some perspective. The were 5,459 civil cases filed in Eastern New York District Court last year, only 170 of which were for copyrights, patents and trademarks. About twice as many civil cases, but only around half as many copyright, patent or trademark filings.

By venue, i4i's patent victory is easily dismissed. But the company nor the case are atypical for Tyler. Most patent-troll cases share fairly common characteristics:

Most plaintiffs are companies or individuals, rather than, say, Apple, IBM or Microsoft.
Patents tend to have been recently issued, typically not long before an infringement claim is filed.
Plaintiffs typically don't produce actual products or offer services, which in many other court jurisdictions would raise questions about the patent's legitimacy.
Plaintiffs demand a jury trial, and the case either goes to jury or to settlement.
Area of filing is well known for either judges or juries favoring patent holders over defendants.

But i4i is for real, selling XML-based collaborative solutions, mostly to pharmaceutical companies. The patent's age and existence of a real company producing real products makes this case look quite different from the typical patent troll case filed in Tyler or the surrounding area.

Here's where I qualify that I am not a patent attorney. That said, I've covered enough Microsoft legal cases to know how to read and interpret legal findings. On this rarest of occasions in Southeast Texas, perhaps Microsoft has a problem.

Office Not so Open

For years I have bitched about Microsoft and XML. So-called "modern" Office file formats aren't XML, as Microsoft has claimed. They're XML-based. I was an early and fierce critic of Microsoft calling the formats Office Open XML, or OOXML. They're not "open" nor are they XML.

Microsoft file formats use proprietary schemas and allow Office customers to generate their own custom schemas. These custom schemas are akin to proprietary dialects. That's where "open" leaves OOXML. Two people can agree to talk the same language, but communication breaks down if one person uses a dialect or jargon the other doesn't understand. Office openness breaks down with Microsoft schemas. That said, there are places where that jargon, the custom schemas, make sense for how business manipulate data.

Starting with Office 2003, Microsoft heavily touted custom schemas' value to businesses needing to better define their data. Some of that definition is regulated, such as XML content submitted to the US Federal Department of Agriculture. Could it be coincidence that pharmaceuticals, where is i4i's main customer base, one of the markets Microsoft repeatedly touted as benefitting from custom schemas? Some examples from Microsoft's Website:

While Microsoft touted the value of custom XML schemas around Office System for several industries, pharmaceuticals stand out -- and it's i4i's principal market. Then, in the midst of this counter marketing, Microsoft did something i4i decided had violated its patent, which abstract states:

A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture and content of a document, particularly for data representation and transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers, removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of operation.

Does Custom XML Violate i4i's Patent?

Based on my reading of i4i's March 2007 legal complaint, and other documents associated with the case, changes Microsoft made to better support customer needs for custom schemas and other data led to the core infringement. In Office, Microsoft provides proprietary schemas, such as WordprocessingXML to define data. But custom schemas, as I explained paragraphs ago, let businesses use definitions specific to their data needs.

Before the release of Office 2007, Microsoft starting referring to custom schemas in context of "custom XML." Microsoft's Brian Jones explained the change and reason for it a November 2005 blog post:

In Office 2003, Word and Excel both introduced support for marking up content in the files with custom defined schema, but one of the big things we saw from folks building solutions on top of our XML support in Office 2003 was the need to store your own XML data in the document. We had support for marking up a document with your own schema, but if you had data you didn't want to show to the user, there weren't a lot of options...In Office 12, we've introduced a new feature to the formats that we're currently calling the XML data store, and the way it works is really simple. As you should all know by now, the new format consists of a ZIP file with a bunch of XML parts (files) inside. Up until now we've talked about all the parts that we in Office have defined to create our documents...You can take any XML file and put it inside the ZIP package. Then all you need to do is create a relationship from the main document part to your XML part.

Microsoft used the ZIP file as a way of breaking up the format, allowing businesses to extract just the raw XML. But they can also add to it. Jones explains in the blog post: "The ability to put your XML in the ZIP package means that you now have a place to store any data your solution may need."

The i4i patent is called "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other." It's more practical application is some of the XML-based solutions, i4i offers today for pharmaceutical companies. A jury decided that the patent also applies to "custom XML" in Microsoft Word. Consider Microsoft custom XML support around the ZIP storage container, how customers can manipulate content and extract from or add to the container architecture.

Again, qualifying that I am not a patent attorney, to my eyes, the case has merit. Perhaps i4i carefully chose the venue of Tyler, Texas, but this doesn't look to me to be a patent troll case.

Even for Tyler, it's unusual for a judge to issue an injunction prohibiting sale of a major product, particularly something as widely used as Microsoft Word. The injunction says something about the seriousness of the violation.

How serious? The judge applied the "permanent" injunction not just to Word 2007, but the 2003 version and and "Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007...Future Word Products." He specifically notates "custom XML."

Dell and Nickelodeon launch 'slime' netbooks for kids

Publié: août 12, 2009, 11:22pm CEST par Jacqueline Emigh

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Reps demonstrate Dell's Nickelodeon 'slime' netbook At a press event in New York City this week, Dell and two partners rolled out a new product that will compete in the home market versus kids' netbooks slated for release this fall by Eee maker Asus and Disney.

The upcoming Dell Inspiron Mini Nickelodeon Edition is based on a low-end, slimmed down version of Dell's current Mini 10 netbook, known internally as a "bear" edition, noted Bill Holden, a Dell product management executive, speaking with Betanews at the event.

But the new netbook will be more than a "toy," said Leigh Ann Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products. Targeted at home use as a "secondary PC," the product will feature parental controls devised by Dell, along with Nickelodeon-branded wallpaper, icons, and Web portals; bundled security software from McAfee; and an icon linking to Whyville.net, an educationally oriented virtual world created by Numedeon mainly for eight-to-15-year-olds.

Although the first release of the new netbook will run Windows XP, Dell and its partners Nickelodeon and Numedeon, Inc. expect to add Linux as an alternative in the next iteration, according to Holden.

Dell is using Nickelodeon's "slime" as one product design theme, but other designs will include Nickelodeon properties iCarly and SpongeBob SquarePants. The three companies are also looking at collaborating on netbooks for the school market, Holden told Betanews.

The Dell / Nickelodeon 'slime machine' netbook

Also this week, wire reports surfaced that the city of Portland, Maine, is weighing the purchase of 2,200 Dell netbooks for high-school students, at a total cost of $1.1 million, in place of the originally planned but more costly Apple iBooks. If the Dell deal is approved by the local school board, students will get the netbooks in October.

At the event in Manhattan on Tuesday night, James B. Bower, chairman and "chief visionary officer" of Numedeon, confirmed to Betanews that his company has been talking with Dell about the prospect of working together in the education market.

Other organizations already active in the school netbook space include Intel, with its Classmate; and One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).

Dell plans to start selling the new netbooks for home use in October, at Wal-Mart stores and on Walmart.com. Pricing hasn't yet been announced.

Also at the New York City press event, Dell previewed Microsoft's Windows 7 running on one of its Adamo PC notebooks.

Safari 4.0.3 speed gains hobbled by unexplained poor AJAX performance

Publié: août 12, 2009, 10:29pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Apple Safari for Windows 4.0.3 from Fileforum now.

Test Results

The latest security update to Apple's Safari 4 browser for Windows includes impressive speed gains in many departments, including page rendering -- gains the one-time speed champion desperately needs to remain competitive against Google Chrome 3. But a surprisingly poor performance score in one department -- declarations of AJAX objects on one of the tests in Betanews' benchmark suite -- is preventing the latest production version of Apple's browser from decidedly overpowering the latest production edition of Google's.

The third round of bug and security fixes and performance enhancements to the Mac work-alike browser slowed its performance index score on Windows XP Service Pack 3 to 16.01 from 16.16. But on Windows 7 RTM, Safari posted solid gains from 12.58 for build 530.19 to 13.09 for build 531.9.1, reflecting a nearly 5% gain on speed alone.

But the new Safari posted a particularly poor score -- much slower even than our index browser, Internet Explorer 7 on Vista SP2 -- in the AJAX declarations heat. That's a test from the Celtic Kane battery that does nothing more than time how long it takes the browser to create an XMLHttpRequest object in JavaScript, the principal object used in establishing a virtual communications link between server and client. (Since the benchmark test does literally nothing else with the object, its validity as a test in itself has been called into question in the past.)

Specifically, a heat where Safari 4 build 530.19 was timed at 23 ms, for a score of 8.96 (almost nine times faster than IE7 on Vista), yielded a time of 371 ms (0.56) for build 531.9.1.

An updated word about our Windows Web browser test suite

Relative performance of Windows-based Web browsers, August 12, 2009.

Though yesterday's security advisory from Apple does not list XMLHttpRequest as one of the topics of its security fixes for this round, a known issue regarding malicious crafting of the object's header was reported by Apple two months ago. The exploit involved injecting a carriage return/line feed sequence into the header in such a way that WebKit, the rendering engine for Safari, could pass a request object as valid without a proper header to authenticate it. The header should affiliate the request with the Web site from which the script originated; WebKit normally runs with a same-origin policy.

The very sudden slowdown of this one feature in Safari suggests that Apple may have employed a stopgap measure to prevent new culminations of the same exploit. Since we've seen Apple release two different versions of the same "build" in succession before, it's possible that a follow-up release within the next few days could resolve the issue.

Apple's release yesterday was followed up by the beginning of the Beta 3 cycle for the Opera 10 browser for Windows. Once again, performance results for Opera have been a mixed bag, with a lower score on the Windows 7 RTM platform for build 1699 (5.07) than for build 1691 (5.31). On Windows XP SP3, the index score remained flat at 5.28. Opera now has the dubious distinction of having the only browser whose stable and beta versions register lower performance on Windows 7 RTM (4.40 and 5.07, respectively) than for Vista SP1 (4.43 and 5.27).

This while the latest daily build of the private Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 preview, code-named "Minefield" ("Namoroka" is the public preview), posted an XP score solidly above the 10 mark for the first time, at 10.41. Mozilla can now say its latest development build is twice as fast as that of Opera, which at one time not long ago boasted the fastest browser in the field.

Download Opera for Windows 10 Beta 3 Build 1699 from Fileforum now.

$1 rentals are not too cheap: Redbox sues 20th Century Fox

Publié: août 12, 2009, 9:54pm CEST par Tim Conneally

In the second suit of its kind, DVD rental kiosk maker Redbox is suing 20th Century Fox in US District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, for allegedly intentionally delaying shipments of its DVD releases to Redbox.

In the first such suit at the end of 2008, Universal Studios Home Entertainment allegedly attempted to limit the availability of its titles in Coinstar-owned Redbox movie rental kiosks. The studio wanted its DVD releases to be off limits to Redbox for the first 45 days after release. The studio believed Redbox's $1 rentals have a devaluating effect on DVDs.

When Redbox sued Universal, its CEO Gregg Kaplan said, "Redbox is committed to providing our customers with the highest level of service and value, and we will continue to acquire DVD titles despite attempts to limit consumer access to titles at our kiosks."

Universal Studios Home Entertainment President Craig Kornblau told reporters at the time that he believed Redbox had only filed the action to scare other studios out of instituting similar delays.

Recently, other studios including Sony and Lions Gate have struck distribution deals with Redbox, though Sony stipulated that Redbox must destroy rental copies after their rental cycle ends instead of selling them for $7 as for other studios' releases.

The problem, according to analysts such as Pali Capital's Richard Greenfield, is that pay-per-view is vastly overpriced, and DVD rentals are equally underpriced. "Movie studios rely on the sale of DVDs, yet it would appear increasingly difficult to sell DVDs at $15-$20 a piece, if consumers believe movies are only worth $1 a day," Greenfield said earlier this month.

Android app updates support for Office documents

Publié: août 12, 2009, 8:32pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Just as Microsoft and Nokia announced Office will be coming to Symbian S60, the mobile software company that makes Office-compatible readers for Symbian UIQ and S80 released a new productivity app for Android.

DocumentsToGo 2.0 for Android

DataViz DocumentsToGo 2.0, released yesterday in the Android Market, is a portable productivity suite that lets users view, edit, and create new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and supports a number of formats including the latest Adobe .PDF files.

The app supports files from: Word 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 for Windows; Word 98, 2001, 2004, 2008 for Mac; Excel 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 for Windows; Excel 98, 2001, 2004, 2008 for Mac; PowerPoint 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 for Windows; PowerPoint 98, 2001, 2004, 2008 for Mac; and Adobe PDF.

DocumentsToGo 2.0 for Android A free version of DocumentsToGo 2.0 is available in the Android Market as well, but it only gives users the ability to view Word and Excel documents in "Word to Go" and "Sheet To Go." For the ability to edit and create new documents in the app, users must spend $29.99 for the full version.

The previous version of DocumentsToGo was considerably cheaper, at only $19.99 for the full install, but users who purchased the earlier version can upgrade for free, and utilize the Cupcake-enabled functions such as soft keyboard text entry, and live folders.

DocumentsToGo 2.0 for Android Unfortunately, there is still no way to open e-mail attachments in Android's native POP/IMAP Mail client. DataViz says, "The 'Email' application does not currently let you download attachments other than pictures, which is completely out of our hands. We would expect that a future update will address this issue. In the meanwhile, you may want to forward your messages containing attachments to your Gmail account and download them from there. You can then view and edit them in DocumentsToGo."

Likewise, the app does not yet support printing, but there are a couple of printing solutions (PrinterShare, Send 2 Printer) for Android that add that functionality.

Microsoft and Nokia do the right thing for the wrong reasons

Publié: août 12, 2009, 7:56pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Today's Microsoft and Nokia strategic alliance is important for both companies, but probably not for the reasons many people will write about. Mobile Office is no big deal. Most people don't need it. Nokia already supports Exchange Sync, which matters more. For Microsoft, the deal's big bang is Office Communications and SharePoint servers support on Nokia handsets.

Microsoft casts the deal as being for enterprises, which is shortsighted. Based on the announcement, axiom "doing the right thing for the wrong reasons" applies here. The Nokia deal is potentially quite good for Microsoft, but for other reasons than Mobile Office. But, for Microsoft, Mobile Office must be the strategic priority, because the company needs to extend Office desktop software's relevance to the handset and the cloud. As I've written many times before, a new applications stack -- mobile device to the cloud -- challenges Microsoft's dominant Office-Windows-Windows Server applications stack.

Microsoft hopes to leverage the strength of its applications stack to the new applications stack, through enterprises, which is where the customer strength lies. Windows Mobile simply doesn't ship on enough devices. In one quarter, Nokia ships about five times as many handsets as Microsoft sold Windows Mobile licenses for all 2008, according to Gartner stats.

Microsoft has got the productivity products and Nokia has the largest mobile install base and market share based on device sales. Gartner released second-quarter mobile numbers today. Worldwide, Nokia sold 105.4 million mobile phones, for 36.8 percent market share, down from 120.4 million and 39.5 percent market share a year earlier. For comparison, second-ranked Samsung shipped 55.4 million handsets, for 19.3 percent market share. Gartner tracks sales to end users rather than shipments to dealers or carriers; so these numbers are actual sales.

The Microsoft-Nokia deal will matter more for smartphones, if for no other reason than the productivity software will be available on E-Series handsets first. Worldwide, in the second quarter, Nokia sold 18.4 million smartphones, or more than all the other top-five manufacturers combined. While Nokia's market share declined from 47.4 percent year over year, device sales rose by 3.1 million units. For comparison, second-ranked Research in Motion sold 7.7 million smartphones, for 18.7 percent market share.

Nokia is more than the volume leader. It has huge international reach, which will be even more important to Microsoft. The international markets are what make me say that Office Communicator Mobile and SharePoint support matter more than Mobile Office.

Emerging markets are notorious for what some people call technology skip. They jump over an older technology for a newer one. In many emerging markets, mobile phones and not PCs are the first connected computing devices used by consumers and small businesses. Many of these same users will never use PCs. That's another incentive for Microsoft bringing Mobile Office to more users there. Of course, the mobile version isn't meant to replace Office. Still, this is a big step for Microsoft.

"It is the first time Microsoft will develop Office Mobile for another smartphone platform," Microsoft Business division president Stephen Elop said in a canned video announcement released today. Elop is right about that big first, with emphasis on big and first. What he didn't say: Windows Mobile isn't doing well enough, so the Business division must look to a rival platform.

To restate the problem I see: Most people, even enterprise business users, don't need Mobile Office; even less for all those new users in emerging markets. The mobile Office applications are rather confining, particularly their requiring files and specific file formats. If you disagree, fire up your comment and tell us all why Mobile Office is or would be important to you.

Collaboration and communications make sense around real-time information. That's where Office Communicator Mobile and SharePoint support matter more, assuming Microsoft doesn't get too hung up on centering most or all collaboration around Office documents. For emerging markets, Microsoft needs to offer hosted Exchange, Office Communications and SharePoint servers to support the handsets.

This morning, Nate Mook and I IMed about the Microsoft-Nokia announcement. He wondered about competition with BlackBerry Messenger, which I've never used. But I understand that the software offers real-time communications and presence, which is important to many enterprise users and certainly would matter to many small businesses providing services here and abroad. Office Communicator Mobile and SharePoint support could offer something similar as BlackBerry only better, because of real-time collaboration.

How does Nokia benefit? For starters, Nokia could increase its US presence. No major US carriers offer Nokia's flagship smartphone, the N97, or high-end, multimedia handsets like the N85, N86 or N96. AT&T recently started carrying the Nokia E71x, a US locked version of the E71 smartphone. The Microsoft deal should give Nokia more leverage increasing distribution for its high-end handsets.

Smartphones are the big mobile growth market, the devices most likely to replace or supplant PCs and best suited to Microsoft productivity software or services. Manufacturers shipped 40.9 million smartphones in second quarter. Nokia is the leader in smartphone operating systems, too. According to Gartner, worldwide in second quarter, Nokia's Symbian OS had 51 percent smartphone market share. Windows Mobile: 9 percent.

But Symbian's share is declining, too, down from 57 percent in second quarter 2008. Meanwhile, BlackBerry and iPhone OS share rises and Google's Android approaches 2 percent share. Gartner expects that Android will take share away from Symbian and Windows Mobile as more Google partners release devices.

From that perspective, one could view today's deal, which won't bring products or services to market until 2010, as declining giants working together. They will rise or fall together.

By the way, I have to ask who is really running this deal. Microsoft preannounced yesterday, and the official announcement came early day on the US West Coast rather than in Finland. Nokia World commences in late September, when the deal could have, and probably should have, been the crowning announcement. Nokia shouldn't chase Microsoft's wagging tail. Microsoft needs Nokia more than Nokia needs Microsoft.

Microsoft and Nokia join forces to take on BlackBerry

Publié: août 12, 2009, 5:53pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Nokia's Symbian S60 today became the first non-Windows Mobile platform to receive support for the Microsoft Office Mobile suite of applications and services. Microsoft and Nokia today announced their long-term partnership to collaborate on the design, development, and marketing of mobile productivity solutions.

Nokia Symbian Office Microsoft

Beginning next year, Nokia's E-series handsets will ship with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile built in, and later, other Office applications and software will be added to the Symbian platform, such as mobile versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, as well as SharePoint Server and Microsoft System Center.

Bloggers and journalists speculated that today's conference was going to announce Windows Mobile coming to Nokia devices, which fell in sync with a simultaneous rumor of Nokia abandoning Symbian for its open source tablet OS Maemo. The latter of these rumors was quickly squashed by Nokia spokespeople responding to several bloggers, and Nokia's Executive Vice President for Devices, Kai Oistamo, addressed the former rumor by saying "there are no such plans" to make a Windows Mobile Nokia device.

In today's announcement, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop said, "We remain deeply committed to Windows Mobile...and Nokia is absolutely committed to Symbian. We both believe strongly in our respective strategies...but we both believe in choice."

The alliance is not aimed at the consumer segment, but rather at combining Microsoft's strength in enterprise mobility with Nokia's industry-leading device penetration. Stephen Drake, Vice President of Mobility & Telecom at IDC said, "By bringing Microsoft's productivity solutions to Nokia's large customer base, the two companies should be better able to serve the needs of the growing mobile worker population, which IDC estimates to reach 1 billion worldwide in 2011."

Oistamo said, "This is a formidable challenge for RIM, if for no one else."

Judge invokes DMCA in upholding ban on RealDVD

Publié: août 12, 2009, 5:24pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The technology used to thwart DVD ripping software such as Slysoft's AnyDVD includes mechanisms that place intentional errors and even false logic, such as navigation menus that lead nowhere, on studios' DVDs. Ordinary DVD players would ignore this false information, but rippers may copy it and, in producing better images of it in the copy, produce DVDs with errors that ordinary players would not ignore. It's this technology which RealNetworks engineers actively worked to overcome, in their creation of a system enabling owners of DVD movies to create archival backups of their collections onto hard disk drives.

Yesterday, US District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled that this act -- the creation of error-correcting code that does not discriminate between accidental errors such as scratches, and intentional errors used for copy protection -- is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This in her decision yesterday which upholds a lower court ban on the sale of RealDVD, and future Real products based on that product, imposed last October.

"The intentional, calculated sector and file-structure errors that are created by ARccOS and RipGuard as part of their copy protection systems [used by major studios' DVDs] present different characteristics from physical scratches. A typical scratch or smudge would not have the numbers of bad read errors in a row, i.e., sequentially from when reading a disk, that an ARccOS or RipGuard error does, because scratches are typically perpendicular to the path of data that spirals radially around the DVD (much like the grooves on a vinyl record)," reads Judge Patel's decision yesterday. "These differences would be distinguishable by a software program that copies DVD content."

By Real's own testimony in the case, its engineers sought legal and defensible means to thwart these two brand-name intentional error-generating mechanisms, ARccOS and RipGuard, in order to build a DVD archiving system. The initial project for Windows-based software for home media computers was code-named "Vegas" (named for the phrase, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas"); while a future edition using a branded hardware component containing a hard drive, was called "Facet." "The Real software engineering team... spent over a year creating software that would ensure that Facet never encountered ARccOS or RipGuard errors as it made a copy," according to the decision.

But Facet used a unique error-correcting method that went over and above Vegas, and could be construed as a next-generation copy-protection defeat system. It went so far as to create a virtual machine in the computer's memory, that would pretend to play a DVD just like an ordinary DVD player, but whose internal clock was intentionally accelerated. To the VM, it would be "playing" the DVD at normal speed; in the real world, it was copying the DVD at an accelerated rate. The process was called "DVD Walk."

Because DVD Walk could copy anything it played at the speed it created for itself, it had no reason to try to detect whether any errors it encountered were accidental or intentional...because it wouldn't encounter them. "Facet switches to DVD Walk regardless of the cause of the errors it encounters. There is no explicit mechanism or code in Facet to identify ARccOS or RipGuard errors with certainty; Facet only recognizes sector errors, whether intentional or inadvertent, such as from a scratch."

Yet when Facet did encounter those sector errors, it managed those errors differently than a normal DVD player would, since its intention was, after all, to make a copy. Effectively, it did a better job of error-correction than the error-correcting code that all DVD players have, and it did all this while still avoiding the low-level error detection that would have red-flagged an error as an intentional one. In other words, there are ways to spot an ARccOS or RipGuard error; by not doing so, Real was in violation.

What's more, the judge ruled, since the copy created by Facet or Vegas did not include all of the CSS copy protection mechanisms that the original DVD contained -- by virtue of the fact that 1) Real wasn't licensed to reproduce those mechanisms anyway; and 2) the copy itself was not on a DVD but a hard drive -- RealDVD constituted a circumvention of those mechanisms. Changing the form factor of the copy, thus, can be construed as circumvention.

"Real has violated section 1201(a) of the DMCA by trafficking in RealDVD products for the purpose of circumventing CSS technology. Specifically, RealDVD's 'play and save' feature, which allows the user to view the DVD content while RealDVD makes a copy of the content on the device's hard drive, or its 'save' feature, which commands RealDVD to simply copy the content from the DVD onto the device's hard drive so that it can be played later, both circumvent CSS technology by permitting RealDVD to access DVD content from the hard drive without going through most of the CSS protection steps, such as DVD drive-locking, CSS authentication and CSS bus encryption. Once RealDVD has copied a DVD, it does not authenticate the DVD drive or receive encrypted keys at that time. The record shows that CSS technology requires that a DVD drive 'lock' upon insertion of a CSS-protected DVD and prevent access to its contents until an CSS authorized player engages in an authentication procedure, none of which RealDVD does when it reads back DVD content from its hard drive. The process of authentication with the DVD drive, and subsequent content decryption, is thereby circumvented by the RealDVD products."

One final strike against Real in Judge Patel's decision concerns the fact that Real was not licensed to reproduce CSS technology. The fact that it did not reproduce certain key elements of that technology anyway (see above paragraph) did not serve in Real's defense. Real's argument was that a licensed owner of a DVD was already authenticated to use that DVD by the copy protection mechanisms that were on the DVD, so "once is enough" -- once copying the authentic DVD to a source owned by the authentic user, the same authentication was not required again. Patel saw that as a technical argument that was not borne out by the technology itself -- effectively, CSS was designed to keep authenticating licensed users, and thus that's how it should work.

So Real should have obtained a license, the logic goes on, to have effectively authenticated the user for the purposes which the original DVD's technology authenticated the user for, even though the complete authentication suite was missing from the copy (thus, the act of circumvention). But as the decision itself continues, the DVD CCA licensing authority probably would not have licensed Real to use CSS for the purposes of making a copy anyway. So while DVD CCA and Real did make a good faith agreement, as the judge found, "That the Agreement [between Real and DVD CCA] does not explicitly ban the order in which Real copies DVD content onto a hard drive has no force from a legal standpoint, given that the step of playing back DVD content from a RealDVD hard drive itself violates the Agreement, both expressly and impliedly."

The precedent set by Judge Patel's order may be profound: If a company that makes a good-faith agreement with the DVD CCA licensing authority uses the technology it's authorized to use, for purposes which probably would not have been sanctioned, it may be in violation of the DMCA.

US sale of Microsoft Word threatened by court injunction

Publié: août 12, 2009, 3:46pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The US District Court in Eastern Texas, the hotbed of patent litigation where everyone from Apple to Nintendo has been found guilty, has granted an injunction on Microsoft Word on account of willful infringement upon patents held by Canadian software company i4i.

That's right. Judge Leonard Davis yesterday said that Microsoft can no longer sell Word 2003, Word 2007, or "Microsoft Word products not more than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007," and must pay $200 million in damages to i4i.

In May, a jury found Microsoft guilty of infringing upon i4i's 1998 patent for "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other," and Judge Davis upheld the ruling.

The principal area of infringement is Word's support for XML files (.XML, .DOCX, and .DOCM), so this is not the end of this case by a long shot.

Microsoft has 60 days to appeal the ruling and stay the injunction, where it will have a chance to flex its new XML patent, which was awarded just over one week ago. Microsoft applied for the patent ("Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML,") nearly three years before i4i even issued a complaint about XML.

On second thought, Tr.im stays open

Publié: août 12, 2009, 12:06am CEST par Tim Conneally

Just shy of two days after announcing it couldn't afford to keep URL shortening site Tr.im open, The Nambu Network says public demand for the site is far too great to simply shut down.

Tr.im will stay alive instead.

But there's a catch: Twitter (the main reason URL shortening sites took off in the first place) has aligned itself with competing service bit.ly, and Tr.im URLs are still getting replaced. In the Tr.im team's blog this afternoon, it says:

"Twitter has stacked the URL shortening business opportunity overwhelmingly in bit.ly's favour, as twitter.com currently operates. This is not whining, as some have suggested, but a simple reality. If we post a link to this blog article by its title Twitter switches our tr.im URL to a bit.ly URL. bit.ly has a monopoly position that cannot be challenged with reasonable investment or innovation unless Twitter offers choice. This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies. bit.ly has deep personal connections and agreements with Twitter that we simply cannot compete with. And it is our humble opinion that this type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers."

Nambu is reportedly still looking to sell Tr.im, so much of today's announcement delineates what the team is really looking for: a known investor who will not frame the tr.immed URLs or add interstitial advertising.

Even though it may seem like this was done to keep interest in the service high, the team says, "This was not a public relations stunt. At all."

Web cookies elevated to a US government privacy firestorm

Publié: août 11, 2009, 10:42pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

The principal architecture of HTTP, the transfer protocol for the Web, is by definition sessionless. That means that once a browser has completed loading a page from a server, the communication between the server and the browser is broken. So any illusion of a connection between the browser's user and the server is produced by the server creating a record of the session that inevitably terminates, and referring to that record later. The only decision a Web publisher has to make is where to store those records -- on a local database, or using remote cookies stored on the client.

For most publishers, that decision takes less than two seconds to make -- cookies are practically ubiquitous among Web sites. But for the United States Government, storing any record about a person using a government service is a privacy concern; and the decision of storing and retrieving government-generated data on a citizen's private computer raises the irresistible specter of conspiracy.

Since June 2000, US government policy has been not to store cookies on private citizens' computers, for reasons which at the time were explained as obvious. "Because of the unique laws and traditions about government access to citizens' personal information, the presumption should be that 'cookies' will not be used at Federal Web sites," wrote then-director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Lew, in a policy memo. "Under this new Federal policy, 'cookies' should not be used at Federal Web sites, or by contractors when operating Web sites on behalf of agencies," unless clear and compelling reasons for doing so are presented in writing, Lew continued.

The problem with that policy is that it has a dramatic effect on the Web architecture choices that the government can make. Persistent variables used by JavaScript are often stored as cookies; when asked if there's any other way to do it, professional developers tend to say no. While there are other ways to store session state, any of the problems the government might encounter in attempting to enable one of them, tend to be enormous:

They're limited to newer browsers, which is the case with an API called XMLHttpRequest. This sets up an interface that can be addressed using JavaScript, and which can store data in memory in such a way that cookies are not required. Though recent versions of Internet Explorer implement the version of XMLHttpRequest currently specified in the W3C's working draft, IE6 is limited to an implementation that uses Microsoft's ActiveX -- a technology whose security implications are far more grave than any cookie. And as Betanews has been reporting today, the government may not be able to abandon IE6 until Microsoft does so, which won't happen for at least another five years. Besides, the W3C has yet to formally sign off on this API as an official standard, for reasons some blame on the public sector's reticence towards upgrading.
They have prominent brand names, as is the case with Microsoft's ASP.NET. It maintains a sophisticated HTTPContext object where variables representing the session state are maintained within member objects. Unfortunately, Microsoft's initial attempts at cookie-less session state resulted in a severe security hole. Another alternative is implemented in Java (which is part of Sun, which is now part of Oracle), which in the past utilized an IIOP protocol whose roots lie all the way back to CORBA. But that protocol utilized a port that firewalls today tend to block, since that channel is also used by Java to implement remote procedure calls, and for that reason was heavily exploited.
They're protected by private patents. Enough said there.
They remain experimental in nature, even years after the discovery of the methodology. What's more, they obviously require throwing away the old rulebook on Web development and starting from scratch.

As daunting as any one of these prospects may appear from the perspective of an OMB manager writing suggestions and mandates for government Web architects, the option of simply going forward with traditional cookies while promising not to misuse or abuse them, is now meeting with opposition that could look as scary, if not more so: The American Civil Liberties Union is now formally objecting to any move that the Obama administration's Web architects may take to allow the use of cookies, calling it a "sea change in government privacy policy."

ACLU Washington-based attorney Michael Macleod-Ball stated yesterday, "Without explaining this reversal of policy, the OMB is seeking to allow the mass collection of personal information of every user of a federal government Web site. Until the OMB answers the multitude of questions surrounding this policy shift, we will continue to raise our strenuous objections." And later in the same statement, ACLU counsel Christopher Calabrese uttered the "S" word in his objection: "No American should have to sacrifice privacy or risk surveillance in order to access free government information. No policy change should be adopted without wide ranging debate including information on the restrictions and uses of cookies as well as impact on privacy."

By design, cookies are extremely small units of data, and browsers may only use a few of them. While conceivably some agency may store information about how a user browsed through that agency's Web site, the use of cookies as surveillance tools is about as rare as the use of databases as clairvoyance tools.

The other alternative the government has open to it is to stay right where it is with regard to Web development policy. But that will mean maintaining an older and less adaptable methodology that's taught by fewer instructors, therefore making it more costly. The administration did seek the public's assistance in making a final decision; it'll be interesting to see if the public came up with a viable solution to this one.

Firmware upgrade may be required for Seagate half-terabyte drives

Publié: août 11, 2009, 10:04pm CEST par Tim Conneally

At the beginning of 2009, Seagate had to deal with a firmware bug affecting 21 different hard drive models which caused widespread failure. For the second time this year, a Seagate internal HDD is causing problems that may necessitate a firmware upgrade.

The model in question is the 500 GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drive (model# ST9500420ASG), which causes the system to pause for as much as 10 seconds as the drive audibly hiccups.

While the main body of users complaining of the problem are Macbook Pro owners, the drive was also made available as an upgrade to certain Dell notebooks.

Apple yesterday said it is working on a software update to address the problem, but has not said when it will be ready.

We're waiting to hear back from Seagate about whether it plans to issue a firmware upgrade for users on non-Mac platforms who experience the same issue.

Google's next search engine: What's the difference?

Publié: août 11, 2009, 7:47pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Yesterday, without much explanation or instructions, Google opened the floodgates on what it's describing as the next generation of its search engine, most likely to test its efficiency and performance using real-world traffic. Testers are being invited to sample the new engine that Google is calling "Caffeine," although perhaps intentionally, it isn't yet explaining just what the differences are.

In Betanews' initial tests Tuesday morning comparing Caffeine to Google's current stable release, we noticed that for nearly every simple and complex search query we tried, the top three non-paid search results were always the same. But the order of results starting as high as #4, sometimes #6, changed. Usually Caffeine retrieved the same pages as the stable version, but shuffled them in a different order.

For instance, with a query that used to stump search engines that couldn't make sense of special punctuation, "virtual function" C++ C#, we would expect to find entries that compared the use of virtual functions in two classes of programming: traditional C++ and Microsoft's C#. For this query, the first four results retrieved were the same for Caffeine as for the stable version (which I'll call "Stable" for short). But Caffeine swapped the order of entries #5 and #6: an independent article by Jordan Leverington from devarticles.com, and an MSDN article by Microsoft support engineer Rakki Muthukumar, respectively. Caffeine placed the independent article higher.

Caffeine also included a separate grouping of entries taken from Google Groups (posts on Usenet forums), which Stable omitted. Caffeine then rated the text of a discussion forum on the subject much higher -- #7 rather than #10.

Unless you believe in conspiracy theories (and I tend not to), the logic of this organizational shuffling isn't yet self-evident. So for our next trial, we tried an intentionally vague query related to something that's been in the news lately: folks who show up at political town hall meetings and try to out-shout the speaker. Without any punctuation and without much specificity, our test query is shouting town hall.

For both engines, the retrieved Google News entries at the top were identical -- evidently Caffeine's new algorithms do not extend to Google News (or to any other Google department). And again, the top three entries retrieved by Caffeine and Stable were identical, with a Fox News story showing up as #1, and a CBS News story as #3.

The #4 items were different, although they came from the same source: the political blog TalkingPointsMemo.com. Both were about the strange trend of congressmen being shouted down by onlookers at public events. But surprisingly, of the two stories the engines pulled up, it was Caffeine that pulled up the older story (August 3 versus August 5 from Stable); and it was the Stable version that included an expansion box enabling more results from the same blog.

While the remainder of Caffeine's Page 1 entries included a YouTube video that didn't appear on Stable's Page 1, Stable pulled up this story from a St. Louis Fox affiliate of a shouted-down town hall meeting from last week, conducted by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D - Mo.) headlined "Carnahan Town Hall Turns Into Political Shouting Match" -- certainly fitting the criteria -- rating it #8; while Caffeine rated the same story #32.

This one is something of a puzzle, because all three of our search query words appear squarely in the story's headline (although "shouting" was not in the URL). And since it fit the subject matter, Caffeine should have had good reason to rate it high. In an effort to discover why, we mixed the order of the terms to town hall shouting, so that Google's interpreter would pair the first two terms rather than the second and third. As expected, we received different results. The second time around, with Caffeine, a different TalkingPointsMemo.com story (but still August 3) appeared as #4, and the one that had been #4 just a few minutes ago had been bumped down to #7. The order of stories appearing from #5 on had changed. Meanwhile, the same reorganized query in the Stable version bumped the Carnahan story down one spot to #9, whereas Caffeine bumped it down to #39.

In other words, our promoting the pairing of "town hall" in the query demoted a story that should ring alarm bells for that very context, more so for the test version of the search engine than for the stable version.

Next, the tie-breaker: How both engines handle a misspelled query…

After our initial tests of Google's experimental Caffeine search engine versus its existing stable one, we're still in something of a fog as to what the differences mean. So for our third heat, we decided to implement a purposefully botched query:

Joshua Schachter, the founder of social bookmarking site Delicious who sold that site to Yahoo a few years ago, is in the news today for a remark he made on a public forum about regretting that move. His name is a difficult one for some Americans to remember, let alone spell, so we're going to implement a query that confuses the poor fellow with IndyCar driver Tomas Scheckter. And just to show how stupid we can act when we're getting paid to, we'll misspell poor Scheckter's name while we're at it.

So our botched query is Thomas Schacter Delicious Yahoo, as might be written by someone wanting some information on whatever it was the guy who founded Delicious said about Yahoo. We expect a lot of misses with this one, but how soon will either engine pull up an entry that corrects our spelling? Both Caffeine and the current Stable version of the Google engine offered to correct the spelling of the correct Mr. Schachter's last name, judging from its position next to Delicious. And both engines pulled up as their #1 entry a blog post by Thomas Hawk from a 2006 meeting of social network leaders that Schachter attended.

But the citation that Caffeine pulled up from that same #1 entry contained the full and correct spelling of "Joshua Schachter," which anyone botching his name should have right away. That's a plus for Caffeine. But the Stable release included as its #4 entry a directory listing for a psychologist whose name very nearly matched our botched spelling -- more so than for Mr. Schachter or Mr. Scheckter. In Caffeine, that entry was completely missing from its first 100 search results.

So from what we can surmise thus far, we believe Google is experimenting with improving search relevancy by demoting or throwing out entries that maybe don't apply to the context of the query. In the good Dr. Schachter's case, yes, his entry should perhaps be thrown out because it really had no bearing to Delicious or Yahoo, even though his name was close to our misspelling. But Caffeine's terrific demotion of Rep. Carnahan's town hall meeting when it clearly did fit the context of our query, seems unreasonable by comparison.

As Google software engineer Sitaram Iyer blogged yesterday, "Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google's current search results and our new system." That feedback, Iyer said, may be delivered by clicking on the Dissatisfied? Help us improve link on the bottom of the company's sandbox page, although in some circumstances, arguably, testers may not be dissatisfied...though perhaps Dr. Schachter has cause for complaint.

Delicious founder: 'Since when is Yahoo cool?'

Publié: août 11, 2009, 6:53pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Joshua Schachter, founder of social bookmarking site Delicious, said in a forum posting yesterday that he regrets selling Delicious to Yahoo.

The discussion centered around Apache Hadoop creator Doug Cutting, who announced this week that he's leaving Yahoo to join Cloudera, an enterprise support service for Hadoop users.

One user said, "Its pretty clear to many people that Cloudera is a rocket ship heading skyward, both in terms of innovation and valuation...As cool as Yahoo is, its not hard to see why Cloudera could lure Cutting away."

This was where Schachter joined the conversation, saying "Since when is Yahoo cool? [They] killed a lot of good startups, wasted a lot of engineers' time...Perhaps I spent too much time inside that particular sausage factory."

Later, he says, "The problem is that the number of cool projects is pretty minimal. They're in duck and cover mode. They'll get pushed to trim employees further and further to stretch the revenues out. I wish I had not sold it to them. The cash and freedom do not even come close; I would rather work on a big, popular product."

Schachter created del.icio.us in 2003 as a platform for users to save and share Web sites they visited. In 2005, he sold Delicious to Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. He retained his position at Delicious until late 2008, when he resigned just weeks before a major redesign went live.

Schechter was part of a massive Yahoo "brain drain" that took place between 2007-2008, when more than 130 executives resigned.

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone vies for streaming over 3G

Publié: août 11, 2009, 5:33pm CEST par Tim Conneally

SlingPlayer Mobile is an application for mobile devices that lets Slingbox users stream content from their television to their phone regardless of their location. Sling Media created apps for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Symbian, PalmOS, and most recently, iPhone OS. The app for iPhone and iPod Touch was released in May, costs $30, and works with Slingbox Solo, Pro, and Pro-HD set-top boxes.

Slingplayer mobile iPhone

Unfortunately, there have been a couple of major complaints about the app by users. Firstly, it doesn't work with older Slingboxes and secondly, it can only stream content to the iPhone or iPod over Wi-Fi.

But that will eventually change. This week, anupdate to the app was reportedly submitted to Apple for approval which will let users stream content over a 3G connection. The catch, of course, is that the app is designed only for non-US users, providing yet another barb in the ongoing series of noteworthy App Store rejections from Apple.

Microsoft may not kill IE6 until at least 2014

Publié: août 11, 2009, 5:08pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Of the three most recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the one used by more individuals and businesses worldwide, according to recent analytics, is the oldest: IE6, which is notorious for interpreting Web pages in the manner that seemed most convenient to Microsoft at the time. Many Web sites anxious to support newer and more efficient rendering standards remain reluctant to drop support for IE6 rendering entirely, simply because it may still be in use by as much as one-third of the Web-browsing public.

Now that the movement by Web architects to engineer a collective dumping of IE6 has generated its own Web site, the move is on to spur Microsoft itself to join in. After all, the success of IE8 could depend on businesses' willingness to dump IE6. But in a plea to Web architects to understand the difficulties those businesses face in dumping any old software and adopting any new ones (and avoiding Firefox in the process), Microsoft IE8 product manager Dean Hachamovitch wrote for his team's blog that Microsoft simply cannot drop support for IE6 while support for the operating system that delivered it -- Windows XP -- continues.

"The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product," Hachamovitch wrote. "We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have. As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC."

Hachamovitch linked to a page that showed Microsoft's typical "Mainstream" product support lifecycle extending five years beyond that product's original introduction, with "Extended" (paid) support extending an additional five years beyond that. However, last April, Microsoft specifically extended the "Extended" support program for XP until 2014, after finally terminating its Mainstream support cycle long after it had originally intended.

The very sudden rise in popularity of the netbook form factor, coupled with the fact that XP is the latest shipping version of Windows that many netbooks can even run, has triggered a situation where Microsoft simply can't kill XP. As a result, it appears, with IE6 irrevocably tied to XP, the company's hands may be tied with regards to the old Web browser. If Microsoft can't kill IE6, some businesses in the private and public sectors are asking, why should they be tasked with the job?

In his blog post, Hachamovitch linked to a fascinating transcript of a quadrennial policy review meeting of the US State Dept. last July 10, led by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy. In that transcript, an unidentified State Dept. employee steps up to the microphone and asks the secretaries why the Dept. can't use Firefox. Perhaps not the expert on Web browsers, Sec. Clinton deferred the question to USM Kennedy, who responded that the problem has to do with costs. But Firefox is free, said the employee. "Nothing is free," Kennedy responded.

After the laughter in the room (according to the transcript) subsided, Kennedy continued, "Yes, you're correct; it's free, but it has to be administered, the patches have to be loaded. It may seem small, but when you're running a worldwide operation and trying to push, as the Secretary rightly said, out FOBs and other devices, you're caught in the terrible bind of triage of trying to get the most out that you can, but knowing you can't do everything at once."

Sec. Clinton herself then weighed in on the subject, borrowing an image -- though not the entire metaphor -- from Yahoo: "When you go to the store and you buy, let's say, peanut butter and you don't realize you've got two jars already at the back of the shelf…I mean, that sounds simplistic, but help us save money on stuff that we shouldn't be wasting money on, and give us the chance to manage our resources to do more things like Firefox, okay?"

Betanews has asked Microsoft for further clarification on the company's intentions for Web browser support, which may be forthcoming.

Update ribbon (small) 2:00 pm EDT August 11, 2009 · A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that Dean Hachamovitch's comment was interpreted correctly: "Microsoft will support IE6 until 2014 because Windows XP support was extended," we were told.

Real-time Web search could be Facebook's future

Publié: août 11, 2009, 4:55pm CEST par Tim Conneally

After Facebook announced that it would be acquiring social sharing service Friendfeed, Facebook engineering manager Akhil Wable announced that Facebook was in the midst of improving its in-site Search features as well.

Users can enter the term they want to find in the search field, then results can be filtered to include posts by friends, fan groups, or pages viewable to all users, as well as events, applications, and the Web as a whole.

"I used Facebook Search to get the latest about our recent acquisition of FriendFeed, an innovative service for sharing online," Wable wrote. "When I enter 'FriendFeed' in the 'Search' field in the upper-right hand corner of any page on Facebook, I get the most recent status updates, reactions and news from my friends who work in technology and people who have chosen to make their content available to everyone. I also can find the official FriendFeed Page on Facebook and user groups related to FriendFeed."

Because Friendfeed's executive staff is comprised of former Google employees, and it concentrates on keeping track of real-time Web updates, some take yesterday's announcements as a clear sign that Facebook is moving toward becoming a search site.

Blogger Robert Scoble said, "This is Facebook firing a shot at Google...Facebook knows the real money in real time is in search. FriendFeed has real time search. Google does not (although it's bootstrapping there very fast, some of my FriendFeed items are showing up in Google within seconds now)...Google has Wave coming, along with some other things this fall and that forced a shotgun marriage between FriendFeed and Facebook."

Best Buy leaks the final missing info about Zune HD

Publié: août 11, 2009, 1:08am CEST par Tim Conneally

Zune HD is Official Until today, there were only a couple of important bits of information about Microsoft's new multi-touch Zune that were left unknown: the price and the date of availability. Now, thanks to a Best Buy Leak, even those mysteries have been exposed.

On September 8th, the 16GB Zune HD will be available at $220, while the 32GB model will cost $290 (versus $299 and $399 for the 16GB and 32GB iPod Touch.)

The Zune HD will be Microsoft's answer to the iPod Touch, offering a 3.3" (420 x 272) capacitive touchscreen, full-screen Web browser, a built-in HD radio, the ability to put out 720p video with the HDMI-equipped Zune Dock, and integration with Xbox Live.

Twittered off: Time to grow up

Publié: août 11, 2009, 12:27am CEST par Carmi Levy

Last week's monumentally scaled denial-of-service attacks -- more recently attributed to a massive attack on a Georgian professor and part of the ongoing dispute between Russia and Georgia -- once again showed just how soft Twitter's soft underbelly is. And for a service used by 44 million people last month, getting hauled to its knees by a bunch of political/cultural enemies intent on opening up a new front in a simmering regional conflict isn't exactly a sign that all's well on the security front.

Wide Angle Zoom (200 px) If Twitter were a bank, the angry mobs would have already descended on Capitol Hill, pitchforks in hand, calling for someone's head. But since Twitter's just an itty-bitty message service, and since it's free, it gets a pass. It shouldn't.

Pass or not, Twitter finds itself in good company. Recent history proves just how tough it is to go viral. Susan Boyle, this year's Britain's Got Talent contestant who went from nobody to global video star after her frumpy-homebody-sings-like-an-angel audition turned non-believers into believers, could write a book about it. She hit it big, melted down under the pressure, and is now challenged to figure out where she goes from here.

Of course, few people will rise -- or fall -- as quickly as the now-forgotten Ms. Boyle. Twitter may yet join her. It may be the belle of the social networking ball after a meteoric rise in popularity, fuelled by the breathless approval of Hollywood's power elite (thank you, Ashton Kutcher) and mainstream media trying to look hip (CNN's Don Lemon, where are you?). But its inability and/or unwillingness to outgrow its gawky adolescent stage and grow some serious architecture could consign it to the social media scrap heap that's already in the process of claiming Friendster and Orkut.

Growing pains

Like the average teen, Twitter's problems stem from the fact that despite its achievements to-date and its incredible potential as the defining messaging platform of tomorrow, it is as immature as the guy running the french fry machine at the local fast food joint. Its problems stem from the following three issues:

It's small. The company has approximately 29 employees. The bank might like leanness, but when global growth requires robust, scalable infrastructure, it won't happen when the average elementary school classroom is larger than your head count.
It has no business plan. I know founder Biz Stone has repeated ad nauseum that his company doesn't need to generate cash for the foreseeable future. I know better than to question the motives of someone with a pretty solid track record in building social media networks that stick. But if Twitter ever hopes to address the size issue outlined above, it needs to generate pipelines of cash to fund its growth and maturity.
Its architecture is famously weak. The company's service is supported by one ISP...which reduces redundancy in the face of large-scale attacks like the one it experienced last week. Google, which is rewriting the book on Web service redundancy with distributed data centers, also came under attack. But it managed to limit the damage thanks to its sophisticated failover capability. Facebook weebled and wobbled, too, but didn't fall down, also because its basic infrastructure is stronger. If Twitter wants to continue playing in the big leagues, it needs big league infrastructure.

A checkered history

This was all true before last week's attacks, of course. For much of its history, Twitter has wrestled with spotty and inconsistent service. The Fail Whale that appears when things don't work as they should has become a defining icon of social media-era outages. When the whale became a regular thing during a period of particularly steep growth last year, alternative microblogging services like Identi.ca and Jaiku and even FriendFeed, gained traction among users frustrated with Twitter's flightiness.

But once Twitter seemingly stabilized, speculation about its future once again ceased and the alternative services slipped back into the shadows. Last week's attacks prove Twitter's problems continue, and we do ourselves a disservice by assuming it's the only viable microblogging service worth considering. While switching away from Twitter for good would be a serious hassle for users who have spent months building follower lists and gaining eminence in this virtual space, it's not unheard of for leading platforms to become ghost towns. AOL, for one, assumed its then-loyal fan base would always be loyal. History bears out how wrong this assumption can be...and in this case, was. Loyalty, especially when there's no real price tag attached, is never forever.

And if Twitter hopes to convert its present-day darling status into a sustainable business that reinforces twittering as basic a function as picking up the phone or sending an e-mail, it needs to invest big in technologies that make it as dead-reliable as the phone company has always been. There's something to be said for picking up a phone, even in the middle of a major power outage, and hearing that comforting dial tone. Modes of communication don't become ingrained in our culture until they're just as reachable -- and trusted.

It's a matter of trust

Right now, I don't trust Twitter to always get my message across. And as I consider which channels of communication I use to connect with the people who matter most, I often stop myself when I get to Twitter. I've been let down too many times to entrust my next meeting, family get together or chat with my wife to a service that doesn't seem to learn from its past mistakes.

Like the teenager with all that potential but a questionable track record, I'm holding my breath that one of these days Twitter figures out what it needs to do and sheds the gawkiness of adolescence. We all want it to grow into a finely turned out, impressive adult, but I doubt we're willing to hang around forever waiting for it to get its act together.

Firefox 3.6 needs more, better features to compete against Chrome 3

Publié: août 10, 2009, 11:34pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 code-name "Namoroka" for Windows from Fileforum now.

Test Results

Last April, Mozilla gave the first public indication of the feature set it was planning for the version of Firefox that could be released in the fall of this year. Among them were the following: a thumbnail preview mode for tab switching using Ctrl+Tab; an integrated, if limited, version of the Ubiquity command line tool; live theme changes without reboots; a new and more fully loaded "New Tab" feature; a complete status window that answers to the URL about:me; and integration of the desktop Web application platform Prism.

But in releasing the first public edition of the Firefox 3.6 alpha, code-named "Namoroka," general testers will find none of these features -- at least, not yet. Only in the private nightly builds may some testers begin to see features including Ctrl+Tab preview, but now it's believed that integrated Prism and other features will not make it into the final release.

According to Mozilla's official schedule, whatever front end enhancements the organization will end up making to this particular release, will have to be ready for Beta 1 sometime next month. Meanwhile, testers will have to deal with a 3.6 platform that's slightly faster than Firefox 3.5.2 in some respects, but noticeably slower in others, most likely due to developers' error control code as indicated by Betanews performance tests.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1, code-name 'Namoroka,' as of August 10, 2009.

What Firefox aficionados say they love most about the browser compared to Google Chrome -- currently its biggest competition as an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 -- is its rich feature set and customizability. Chrome, by contrast, is fairly bare-bones, although its bare chassis can now claim to be nearly twice as fast as Firefox 3.5.2 on Windows XP SP3, the fastest (though arguably the least secure) of Microsoft's three modern operating systems. Although Chrome has demonstrated some fancy windowing functionality, probably as a show of Google's prowess in producing something more resembling an operating system; and last week it adopted something that could be laughably described as "themes", Google's developers are finding buckets full of performance for Dev channel editions on an almost daily basis.

Relative performance of Windows-based Web browsers, August 10, 2009.

Since Betanews' tests just last Friday, Chrome 3 has clinched nearly one point of performance, and on our Windows XP SP3 physical test platform is now flirting with 20 times the performance of IE7 on Vista, now at a record 19.90 on our XP index. This while Mozilla's public release of Namoroka Alpha 1, on our Windows 7 RTM index slips almost one full point over Mozilla's final Namoroka release candidate, due mainly to visibly slower scores in the general math departments. The latest private daily build of Firefox 3.5.3 "Shiretoko," however, gained back some ground to pull just ahead of the stable 3.5.2.

An updated word about our Windows Web browser test suite

If a full feature set is the factor that distinguishes Firefox over Chrome, then Mozilla will need to pack as many features from that April wish list as it can cram into Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 and Beta 2 next month.

Facebook buys FriendFeed

Publié: août 10, 2009, 10:07pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Popular social networking site Facebook has bought FriendFeed.com, and will be taking its entire staff aboard, the companies announced this afternoon.

"Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.

While the small 12-person team will become Facebook employees and the four founders (all ex-Google employees) will assume executive positions at the social network, where FriendFeed users will go is not as clear cut."

"FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being," The FriendFeed blog today says. "We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team."

Facebook already uses a number of FriendFeed's popular features, but one of the main advantages of FriendFeed is that its feeds show up in real time, where Facebook's status updates must be refreshed.

GM's big eBay yard sale starts Tuesday

Publié: août 10, 2009, 9:47pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Today, bankrupt-but-bailed-out automobile company General Motors announced it will be attempting to sell cars on eBay in a move to reach out to new customers and possibly reclaim some market share.

Beginning tomorrow, approximately 225 California Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, and GMC dealerships will put some 20,000 cars up on a new dedicated portal (gm.ebay.com) with "buy it now" prices which are negotiable.

The slogan: "Our Best Cars, Your Best Offer."

GM's choice to use eBay to help re-vitalize the American car business is just too perfect. The former mother of all online auction sites has turned into e-commerce's equivalent of the dirt mall after a slow decline that has spanned more than five years.

No longer the premier site for trading rare and treasured goods, eBay is now a place where you can buy on the cheap. CEO John Donahoe said earlier this year that the site was beginning to concentrate more on "secondary market" goods, (i.e., liquidation and overstock merchandise) as PayPal becomes the main revenue driver for the company and Skype gets spun off.

Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of US sales, said today, "Together with eBay Motors, GM and our dealers are reinventing the car-buying experience for our California customers...As the dealer showroom expands from the parking lot to the laptop, this makes it easier for a customer to browse available new-car inventory, make an offer, buy it now, or send a message asking for more information from a dealer -- all at the customer's convenience."

Nortel CEO steps down in massive restructuring

Publié: août 10, 2009, 7:07pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski is stepping down from his position today as the nearly bankrupt Canadian telecommunications company continues its liquidation and reconstruction.

After losing almost $7 billion in two years, Nortel filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of this year.

"Mike came to Nortel to transform this company," said Chairman of Nortel's Board of Directors, Harry Pearce. "He made great progress on many fronts including addressing significant accounting and related legal issues; improving the quality of Nortel products and the company's cost structure. His ambitious vision helped shift the economic center of the company from legacy to growth investments. It was unfortunate the transformation was derailed by a deteriorating economic climate and the company's legacy cost structure. The operating improvements and strategic investments made during his tenure significantly contributed to the fact that Nortel's businesses are so attractive to potential buyers today."

At the end of July, New Jersey-based Avaya Inc. agreed to purchase Nortel's Enterprise Soultions unit for around $475 million, and Swedish wireless communications company Ericsson entered into an agreement to acquire parts of Nortel's Carrier Networks division related to CDMA and LTE technology in North America.

At an emergency House of Commons Industry meeting on Friday, Research in Motion's co-CEO Mike Lazardis said Nortel's LTE assets should not be turned over to a foreign company.

"Nortel's intellectual property and workforce devoted to next-generation wireless research, known as LTE, is nothing short of a national treasure that Canada must not lose," Lazardis said to the committee.

Lazardis argued that the deal should be subject to government review even though it was below the limit that would require a government oversight. Transactions worth more than $312 million require a review, but Ericsson is buying Nortel's properties for only $149 million. It is unlikely that a review of the transaction will take place.

Breakthrough in Intel/Nvidia licensing standoff for i7, i5 CPUs

Publié: août 10, 2009, 5:50pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

In a statement this morning that included a blessing from an Intel vice president, GPU maker Nvidia announced it has been licensed by Intel, along with other leading motherboard manufacturers, to produce its GPU-stacking SLI technology for motherboards that include Intel's Lynnfield generation Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs using Nehalem microarchitecture, with Intel's P55 Express chipset.

It's great news for system builders who had been concerned about whether a recent legal standoff between Nvidia and Intel would render it impossible (or at least, unsanctioned) for them to build performance gaming systems with the latest Intel 45 nm CPUs, plus multiple Nvidia GPUs. Simply being blockaded from doing so at the legal level would be perceived as a watershed moment for rival ATI, which wouldn't be good news for Intel either since ATI is now wholly owned by arch-rival AMD.

The Lynnfield platform is important because it integrates quad-core with Intel's hyperthreading technology. Introduced years ago as a stopgap while it developed an inexpensive true-dual-core to compete with AMD, hyperthreading is now perceived as a powerful weapon in Intel's arsenal, giving a four-core processor the threading capacity (if not yet the horsepower) of an eight-core system. But Intel also threw power-saving technology into the mix, in a move that combats AMD's Phenom II strategy, which some say sacrifices power conservation for higher performance.

Not that all high-performance system builders really place power conservation high on their features list. But they can get it along with high performance, and now without sacrificing the capabilities of SLI, Intel can stay competitive on the high end even when it doesn't have the cheapest up-front prices. Getting Intel's blessing to include its SLI technology on Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI motherboards is a big step towards full redemption for Nvidia.

Last February, in a licensing skirmish that nearly all parties involved say was overblown by the enthusiast media (though which enthusiasts themselves have said is quite important), Nvidia intimated that it was already licensed to include SLI technology with motherboards using Intel chipsets including P55 Express. Intel went so far as to request a court injunction to preclude Nvidia from making such statements until an actual licensing agreement was worked out.

What today's statement from Nvidia does not yet say is whether Nvidia is now licensed to produce its own chipsets to compete with P55 Express, that would also enable GPUs using SLI to be used on different motherboards with Lynnfield processors. The absence of such information implies that such a license has yet to be obtained, though Betanews has sought clarification from Intel on that subject.

Update ribbon (small) 1:36 pm EDT August 10, 2009 &middot As Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy confirmed to Betanews this afternoon, this morning's Nvidia license does not extend to the right to produce competitive chipsets for Intel CPUs. "Two unrelated issues," said Mulloy.

Tr.im: You can't make money shortening URLs

Publié: août 10, 2009, 5:23pm CEST par Tim Conneally

There's an old business saying: If you want to make money in a gold rush, don't prospect, sell shovels. This is the same sort of idea that happened with Twitter and URL shorteners.

URL shortening services are the shovels of the Twitter gold rush, except nobody's making any money selling them.

Because Twitter limits its posts to 140 characters, URL shorteners such as bit.ly and TinyURL are a necessary tool for link sharing and re-tweeting, activities which are now major methods of news circulation. Tr.im was another link shortening service, maintained by The Nambu Network, which received nearly one million unique visits a month.

Unfortunately, though their "shovels" were being used, there was no way for Nambu to make any money, and the site has begun its shutdown process.

On its home page, a message reads:

"Statistics can no longer be considered reliable, or reliably available going forward. However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009. Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected. We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount."

Since Bit.ly has become the default URL shortener on Twitter, Tr.im simply cannot afford to hang around.

"There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening -- users won't pay for it -- and we just can't justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner," the site's farewell message says. "There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep."

Bit.ly has reportedly offered to host the millions of Tr.im URLs so they do not disappear on January first when the service officially closes down, but there is no word on whether this will take place yet.

Microsoft exits the ad agency business with Razorfish sale

Publié: août 10, 2009, 4:43pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

Microsoft's sale of Razorfish, which for only two years served as its creative advertising division, to French ad giant Publicis Groupe is not so much the indication of a new trend, but of an old trend that is being suspended for now, perhaps for some very old-fashioned reasons.

In the present-day Internet business model, the principal generator of revenue is advertising. Unless a Web site or publisher is in the music delivery business, or happens to be one of the world's few paid search providers, there's few other alternatives for a steady source of income. But as with nearly all media these days, publishers are contending with whether they actually need to invest in the creative side of the process -- why not let someone else create the content, or better yet, let's see if someone will volunteer to do it for free.

When Microsoft purchased advertising resources firm aQuantive three years ago for a tremendous $6 billion, it was working to put itself on a par with Google, which was just acquiring DoubleClick and looking to make itself an online advertising behemoth in all respects, including creatively. The arrival of the software king in the advertising realm was heralded as a signal of the arrival of logic into the advertising process, and a reversal of the dynamics of all of online advertising.

Specifically, creative talent such as Brian Fling of Seattle's creative ad design firm Blue, proclaimed the traditional advertising agency "dead." His reasoning seemed sound (and may yet be sound at some future date): Since the Web compels users to "pull" information based on the criteria they're interested in, ad firms whose business models are built around "push" -- inserting unrequested content in the middle of streams -- are becoming less relevant, he said.

"Take news for example, a few years ago we got our news pushed to us through the method of a morning newspaper at our front door, or the local news broadcast at 11 pm," Fling wrote just after the aQuantive buy. "The time and medium of delivery was defined, we needed to adjust our lives in order to receive it. Today how we gather information is far different. We pull it from various sources when we need it or when it is convenient to our schedules, our expectation is information will always be available on-demand. The pull model is becoming an increasing pervasive method of gathering information, only to store and retrieve it later using the method or medium of our choice."

The modern ad firm would be one, Fling reasoned, that best applies itself to a more segmented model of information delivery, from sources that fit smaller niches and deliver precise information to more precise targets. But history might have informed him that Microsoft has rarely been the first to ride the crest of a major trend.

As the recession hit, creative resources were the first to be devalued; and as a result, Razorfish -- at one time the creative heart of aQuantive -- was considered less and less crucial to Microsoft's plans in online services, especially in the midst of the Yahoo takeover attempt. With Microsoft trimming down its resources, it made the decision to keep the analytics and technical side of its ad operation, while selling Razorfish (one of whose principal clients is, not surprisingly, Microsoft) for about $530 million -- about one-ninth of what Microsoft originally paid.

Razorfish joins an international network that is nothing short of a colossus, and one of what the advertising world calls the "Big Four." Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett Worldwide are also part of that school of fish in which Razorfish now swims. The ad agency as we have known it for some time remains alive and well.

Armistice Day for the format war: Toshiba signs on with Blu-ray

Publié: août 10, 2009, 2:46pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Toshiba this morning announced that it has applied for membership in the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), the body in charge of standardizing and evangelizing the high definition disc format, and that it intends to launch Blu-ray notebooks and standalone players this year.

"In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA," read the company's statement this morning.

Today's announcement confirms last month's report in Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun in which an anonymous insider said that the former champion of HD DVD had plans to release its own Blu-ray players by the end of 2009.

Like a shy schoolboy, Toshiba is acting as though it's just now considering its Blu-ray product plans for 2009; but of course, there's not much of 2009 left. "Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year," reads this morning's statement. "Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration."

Windows XP SP3 runs browsers 13% faster than Windows 7 RTM

Publié: août 8, 2009, 1:17am CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

An updated word about our Windows Web browser test suite

Test Results

In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 -- our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday -- the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.

Our latest complete round of tests shows Google Chrome 3 continuing to make phenomenal gains with each iteration, with developer channel build 196.2 posting another record Betanews index score of 18.96 in XP, and 16.09 in Win7. In other words, on the XP platform, Chrome 3 performs with the relative horsepower of about 19 Internet Explorer 7 browsers running on Vista SP2. There's good reason to believe Google wants Chrome 3 to run particularly well on the older XP platform, which has enjoyed a huge resurgence as a result of installations on netbooks where Vista would either under-perform or not even fit. Apple's Safari 4 build 530.19 is the next best performer on XP with a 16.16 score.

Relative performance of Windows-based Web browsers, August 7, 2009.

There are a handful of trends worth pointing out in this latest round:

Apple Safari is also concentrating on XP, with a big performance gap between its XP score (16.16) and its Windows 7 score (12.58). On Vista, Safari 4 scores a 11.77.

Opera 10 Beta 2 build 1691 is a speed leader in one and only one heat: page load times. For some reason, with Windows 7, Opera 10 blazes past the others, scoring 4.29 relative to IE7 on Vista on the rendering portion of our test suite, which counts toward 25% of the overall score. Safari 4 is second fastest on Win7 with 4.09, followed by Chrome 3 at 3.86. On Vista, the gap is closer with Opera 10 scoring 3.66 on the rendering test, versus 3.29 on Safari 4 and 3.23 on Chrome 3. But in the same test, Opera 10 crashes and burns on XP, scoring only 2.60 versus 4.33 and 4.46, respectively.

Firefox may yet rival Chrome and Opera in the page rendering department, as speed gains that at one time were planned for version 3.5.1 now appear to be slated for version 3.6, whose development track has now been code-named "Namoroka." Were the latest preview build of the 3.6 alpha not loaded with error correction code -- if it performed as well in error tracking as does the current "Shiretoko" beta of 3.5.3 -- the 3.6 alpha would post Firefox's first solid index score over 10.0 on the Windows XP platform; as it stands, the 3.6 score is now 9.55 on XP versus 9.94 for the stable 3.5.2, and 9.96 for the beta of 3.5.2.

The speed gap between Windows 7 and Vista is 17.1%, with Internet Explorer 8 scoring a 2.23 in Win7, reflecting a speed jump that's right in line with our geometrical mean. If you're running IE7 on Vista now, you should see 223% better performance from your browser when you upgrade to IE8 on Win7.

Office Home and Student accounts for 85% of US Office retail share

Publié: août 7, 2009, 10:54pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

Which Microsoft Office version is most popular at US retail stores -- brick and mortar or online? Office Home and Student 2007, which inherited the position from XP and 2003 versions of Office Student and Teacher. Home and Student accounts for "85 percent of Office sales, either Mac or PC," said Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis.

I asked Baker for the percentage because it's that time of year when students are preparing to go back to school and Microsoft and retailers practically give away Office Home and Student. Last week, I spotted the software, which normally sells for $149.95, at Microsoft Store for $99.99. That's a good deal, right? Wrong. This week, I saw the software at my local Costco selling for $81.99, after mail-in rebate. That's an even better deal, right? Wrong. Amazon sells the software for $79.99, no rebate.

That 80 bucks doesn't buy one but three Office Home and Student licenses. Three installations for $80. By comparison, Amazon sells Office Standard 2007 full version for $299.95, and that's for a single license; one activation. Microsoft Store sells the same software for $399.95.

So, I wonder: Who buys Office Home and Student? It's not like Microsoft or retailers check student IDs. That "Home" could apply to pretty much anyone. If someone runs a business out of the home, doesn't he or she technically qualify for a cheap copy of Office?

Microsoft doesn't talk about Office Home and Student or Student and Teacher editions piracy rates, but they have to be fairly high at retail if either version accounts for the bulk of sales. The company considers the purchase of software meant for one channel bought from another as piracy. Example: OEM Windows versions sold separately from new PCs.

According to current US Census Bureau statistics, there are about 25.4 million business firms in the United States -- 26.9 million when adding operations with single locations. Among both categories, there are 19.5 million non-employer businesses, with the majority being sole-proprietorships. Out of the 5.9 million employer firms, 3.8 million have 1-9 employees. So, in the United States, out of 25.4 million firms, 23.3 million have fewer than 10 employees. Where do these smaller businesses buy software? For the majority, it's brick-and-mortar or online retail stores.

Office versions for sale at Mission Valley Costco, San Diego

How many of these small or home-based businesses buy Office Standard 2007 or another version, when only 15 percent of US retail sales go to any edition other than Home and Student? Surprisingly few, if I rightly interpret NPD's US retail sales data.

While Microsoft doesn't talk about cross-channel piracy, the company doesn't ignore it, either. With Office 2007, Microsoft swapped out Outlook for OneNote in the consumer version. Before that, XP and 2003 Student and Teacher editions were feature identical to Office Standard, but with three licensees/activations for $250 less (even bigger difference during back-to-school buying season).

But is Outlook really that necessary for home-based or small businesses, when there are alternatives like Gmail or Windows Live Hotmail? It has been sometime since I checked in with the Hotmail team; but the last time, globally, small businesses accounted for more than 50 percent of users. Most people I know who aren't Windows geeks or use Outlook at work don't use Outlook. How about the people you know?

I first wrote about Student and Teacher edition in 2002, about 10 months after Microsoft started offering the version. At the time, analysts speculated Microsoft introduced the SKU to cut Office's price for consumers without jeopardizing business pricing. I have to ask: Is Microsoft victim of its own success, because of cross-channel piracy? The version 2007 SKU change strongly suggests so. Three licenses are tempting for the price.

What about future pricing and also retail market share? The heavy discounts won't last. "They always get aggressive on price in August, because that's when people are buying for back to school," Baker said. "This is time of year that you go nuts. That's when the volume's there; you don't want to let that stuff slip through your fingers."

What about that low pricing? "You saw $99 last year," Baker said. But 80 bucks? He said that Amazon typically is lower than other retailers, but the $79.99 price is about $5 less than what he remembers from last year.

Back-to-school pricing for Office 2007 Home and Student

About retail share, Baker said: "I don't think it's anything dramatically different form last year." He's right. Share was 80 percent in January 2007 and about the same three years earlier, according to older NPD data I looked up. I suspect 85 percent is about as high as the share will go.

But could the market share go down? That's the $64,000 question of the day. Microsoft has acquired domain Office.com, presumably for the forthcoming Office Web Apps. I've read lots of punditry about Microsoft trying to fend off perceived Google Apps competition. But what about Office Web Apps competing with Office Home and Student among consumers and small businesses?

I contend that Microsoft already has lost Office revenue because of home-based and small businesses buying Office Home and Student. That $80 is a great deal -- about $26.60 per license or $50 at full price -- but how much more attractive is free?

Last week, Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business division, explained the Office Web Apps strategy during the company's annual Financial Analysts Meeting:

Office Web applications will be available in three ways. First, through Windows Live, where more than 400 million uses will have access to Office Web applications at no cost. Second, we will provide business customers with the opportunity to subscribe to Web applications as a service hosted by Microsoft similar to other offerings in Microsoft online services. And, third, all 90 million existing business customers with annuity agreements, plus all of the new Office 2010 volume license customers, will have rights to run Web applications on premises enabling them to deploy and manage these applications like they would any other service.

The software will be free for consumers, and the consumer Office version accounts for 85 percent of sales in the United States. That's not complex math to figure out. There has to be some cannibalization, unless Microsoft requires Office on the desktop as adjunct to Web Apps.

Something else: How exactly will Microsoft separate consumers from home-based or small business customers for Office Web Apps, when it can't for Office Home and Student? Perhaps there will be answers when or soon after Office Web Apps begins its Technical Preview later this month.

Amazon may have gained Zappos, but it's losing Target

Publié: août 7, 2009, 10:39pm CEST par Tim Conneally

The U.S.' second most popular retailer, Target announced that it will be ending its 8-year relationship with Amazon.com and launching its own new platform for Target.com, which does not rely on Amazon's services.

Steve Eastman, president of Target.com said, "The strength of Amazon's technology and fulfillment services has been a contributing factor in Target.com's success. However, to deliver a customized multi-channel experience for Target's guests, we believe it is in Target's best interest going forward to assume full control over the design and management of Target's e-commerce technology platform, fulfillment and guest services operations."

By the holiday season of 2011, Target.com will be a fully independent platform. Until that time, Amazon and Target will continue to work together to improve upon its current state.

Amazon is America's highest grossing Internet retailer, with $19.2 Billion in sales a year. Target, meanwhile, remains in close competition with its chief rival Wal-Mart in both the physical retail space and online. In May of this year, for example, Wal-Mart attracted more visitors to its site, but Target led in purchase rate.

First betas of Digg-able advertising

Publié: août 7, 2009, 9:44pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Actual Beta News feature banner Earlier this summer, Digg's Chief Revenue and Strategy officer Mike Maser announced the beta of Digg Ads, a novel advertising platform where readers rate ads and determine how much the advertisers has to pay. For example, an ad which has lots of Diggs will cost an advertiser much less than if an add is buried. Ads can be buried so much that they are priced out of the system.

This week, the site has begun the rollout of an early beta version of Digg Ads. For a select group of users, paid entries will begin to appear on the site. The only difference between these advertisements and traditional Digg entries is that the advertisements are marked as "sponsored", similar to sponsored results on search sites.

Maser said in the company's blog yesterday, "We're rolling Digg Ads out initially to small sets of users to help us test the product, so in the early stages many of you will not see them. We will continually iterate the product based on input from the community and our advertising partners. These changes will be rolled out over the course of the next several months, so expect to hear from us frequently on this topic as we work to create more compelling and innovative ads."

Digg Ads

Report: DirecTV to partner with Comcast, Time Warner in 'TV Everywhere'

Publié: août 7, 2009, 8:16pm CEST par Tim Conneally

In June, cable operator Comcast and media company Time Warner announced that they would begin working on the new distribution model known as "TV Everywhere," a Web-based streaming service akin to Hulu that would give Comcast subscribers on-demand access to cable content at a premium. Ideally, the service will help cable companies make more money off of streaming content than syndication sites currently do.

Now, satellite television network DirecTV has reportedly entered into discussions with Comcast and Time Warner about joining TV Everywhere.

The current trial of TV Anywhere involves 5,000 Comcast subscribers who are authenticated online and given access to content from 23 networks like HBO, Cinemax, TNT, TBS, CBS, AMC, A&E, and Starz. The test attempts to prove that there is a method where the content can be securely accessed only by authorized parties.

"[We] will be prepared to launch a similar product around the same time, if not before, others in the industry." DirecTV spokesman Robert Mercer told Advertising Age. Unfortunately, Mercer did not specify whether a deal has actually been made with content providers or what DirecTV's On Demand online program will be called.

Facebook and Nintendo DSi linkup launches today

Publié: août 3, 2009, 4:29pm CEST par Tim Conneally

Nintendo DSi features Beating Microsoft to the punch, a system update at 5:00 pm EDT this afternoon will turn the Nintendo DSi into the first Facebook-integrated video game system.

At E3 2009 in June, Facebook announced that it would be making its way onto video game consoles through Facebook Connect, the social network's open identification platform. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts all announced that they would be integrating with Facebook.

With today's update, the Nintendo DSi camera application will be able to upload photos directly to a user's Facebook profile. Previously, the only way to move photos from the DSi to another platform was by copying them to an SD card, this application capitalizes on the handheld's Wi-Fi connectivity.

Microsoft's Xbox Live integration with Facebook and Twitter is not expected to go live until the fall.

Eric Schmidt leaves Apple's board amid Google Voice, Chrome OS conflicts

Publié: août 3, 2009, 3:26pm CEST par Tim Conneally and Scott M. Fulton, III

By Tim Conneally and Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A mere three days after the San Jose Mercury News published an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which he stated conflicts of interest regarding his membership on Apple's board of directors could be resolved by recusing himself from matters regarding the iPhone, Apple has officially recognized Schmidt's resignation from that board.

Apple's CEO Steve Jobs issued a statement this morning which said, "as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest." Schmidt was elected to Apple's board in 2006.

In the Mercury News interview, Schmidt told reporter Elise Ackerman, "The board question can be solved by recusing yourself, which I do with the iPhone. It is also important to remember that unlike Microsoft and Google, Apple and Google have a lot of technical partnerships. The underpinnings of Chrome are the same as that of Apple's Safari browser. There is a lot of collaboration around Web standards. We collaborate on the maps area. We have a large number of iPhone apps. There are significant benefits to Apple and to Google for me to be on both boards with the caveat that you mentioned that you have to be very careful."

The Google CEO's move comes a week after Apple made the decision to officially disallow the distribution of Google Voice, an application that centralizes the distribution of voice mail but which also requires the creation of a separate phone number. The company is working on a way to transport your existing mobile number; but in any event, Google's functionality would effectively trample upon AT&T and other carriers' services which, though non-centralized like Google Voice, are still bundled with the iPhone. Users began noticing Apple's reluctance to enable Google Voice last November.

Jury arrives at $675K fine for student's music downloading, $22,500 per track

Publié: août 1, 2009, 3:46am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

The jury in the Joel Tenenbaum case has fined the Boston College student $675,000 for copyright infringement of 30 songs, or $22,500 per track. The award is radically smaller than the $80,000 per track levied against Jammie Thomas-Rasset in a similar infringement trial earlier this year.

The jury was out, according to Copyright & Campaigns' Ben Sheffner, between two and three hours. Judge Nancy Gertner has already announced that she'll review the award to ensure that it does not violate the Constitution's due-process clauses. As for Mr. Tenenbaum, he told Mr. Sheffner that he plans to file for bankruptcy if the award amount stands, as the doctoral candidate (in physics) has no way of paying the fine.

After Tenenbaum, who will take back the music industry from the RIAA?

Publié: août 1, 2009, 3:00am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Recovery badge (style 2) Because the Joel Tenenbaum trial hasn't been maddening enough, Engadget yesterday had a little item on how the RIAA is claiming that customers ought to just suck it up and accept that DRMed tracks will go poof even if they've been paid for, since no other products or service providers are expected to "provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works." That's interesting coming from a group that claims that alone of all industries, copyright holders somehow deserve to get paid in perpetuity for their output. I guess forever looks a lot longer when it includes server-maintenance duties.

If anyone's got a more enlightened response than "oy" to the Tenenbaum trial's result, I'm all ears. I respect Professor Nesson's legal acumen, and having fair use taken off the table just hours before the trial was probably not a setback from which any legal team could have recovered, but looking over the past year's proceedings -- the defense's push to make its processes open and transparent, the sustained effort to get the trial shown live on the Web, all that -- I wonder if we'd all have have been better off if both Tenenbaum, and Jammie Thomas before him, had simply rolled over.

No, I do not support the RIAA's extortion racket.

I think the recording industry is a culture-gutting abomination, and that the entire outfit ought to be torched like Rome during a Nero violin recital. Whatever figure the jury arrives at, the artists Mr. Tenenbaum loves will never see a cent of it; after over a century of treating most artists like sharecroppers, "the industry" takes the droit de seigneur approach to windfall profit.

Music is so much more than the music industry, and for the sake of music -- the transmission of it, the longevity of the worthwhile stuff -- I hope the industry which treats one of humankind's most powerful communication devices and repositories of memory like so much chattel withers and dies.

Now that distribution is a non-issue, A&R guys, vice-presidents of promotion, global distribution managers -- to all of the ranks that stand between us and the artists...

Buh-bye, hope an honest day's work happens to you someday.

The courtroom, however, is not a venue for accomplishing that goal, and I've come to the conclusion that Joel Tenenbaum was ill-served by the attempt to make it otherwise. It's simply not built to do that.

The record-industry representatives insinuated during testimony that any desirable track was easily available online. That's a pantload, but unless Neeson's team was prepared to prove it untrue, it's testimony they couldn't challenge. (Had anyone asked, I'd suggest trying to find the complete catalog of The Connells online as an exercise in how "easily available" stuff is, but hey.)

The courts aren't the place to conduct our battle against the music industry; they've got good lawyers while all we consumers have are good ears and good sense. The legislative branch is perhaps our only remaining hope to fix the legal nightmare that copyright has become. And yes, I am painfully aware that the US Congress is a clown college when it comes to parsing this stuff. But we've written ourselves, legally speaking, into a corner. Even the most activist of judges isn't going to get us out, no matter how strong the moral appeal.

I am also painfully aware that file sharing is having a cultural effect not unlike Prohibition did back in the day. Circumvention efforts lead to security holes; disdain for one set of laws opens up disdain for others, and the public is forced to choose between seeming unethical (for file-sharing) and seeming stupid (for believing what they're told about file-sharing and handing over its cash). Protip: No one chooses to look stupid. Result: Sharing will continue, and thrive, hamstringing potentially better delivery mechanisms (in the way that bad money invariably drives out good) and ensuring that journalists will always have stories to write about litigation that ruins some random music fan's life.

The real leaders in this, ironically, are the world's unacknowledged legislators -- that is, the poets, or in this cases the lyricists and musicians. The musicians who choose to avoid the industry and sell directly to fans; the artists who post tracks for download and set up fair means of (again) purchasing directly; the radio stations that eschew RIAA-beholden music in favor of independent fare; and most importantly every one of us who decides that there's better stuff to listen to than whatever's being shoved down the foie-gras-feeding-tube of Clear Channel / RIAA / music television / People magazine -- these are the forces of nature now.

Years ago I sat in on a panel of teenagers being queried about their downloading habits, and one of the boys said that he used to download but didn't much anymore, because he had everything he wanted and didn't think he'd need anything else. I smiled, because even the most backward adult usually finds at least an artist or two to like after 17. But I wonder sometimes how that worked out for him -- if he's still downloading and exploring, or if he let his obvious fear of the power of the music industry undercut what should be a lifelong source of joy.

I hope he's out there taking advantage of good DRM-free services such as Lala, checking out tracks on the music blogs, and maybe directly sponsoring the next recording due out from a favorite artist or two.

Most of all I hope he's not letting a group of vampires calling itself the music industry take away from him enjoyment of music. That's what Professor Nesson was trying to explain to that Boston jury -- that the enjoyment of music is, or should be, bigger than this passing "industry" situation. He didn't succeed. That doesn't mean he was wrong -- just that he was in the wrong place.

Let your geek flag fly.

FCC investigating Apple's App Store policy after it rejected Google Voice

Publié: août 1, 2009, 2:32am CEST par Tim Conneally

Read the FCC's letter to Apple

FCC Logo Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app proved to be the last straw, and now the Federal Communications Commission is involved. The FCC has begun an investigation into the matter.

"The Federal Communications Commission has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said this evening. "Recent news reports raise questions about practices in the mobile marketplace. The Wireless Bureau's inquiry letters to these companies about their practices reflect the Commission's proactive approach to getting the facts and data necessary to make the best policy decisions on behalf of the American people."

In its letters to AT&T, Apple, and Google, the Commission asked each party to clarify exactly what happened and why the application was blocked from the iTunes App Store.

To Apple, the commission posed questions redolent of a criminal investigation: "Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice..."

Among its half-dozen questions, the FCC bluntly asked Apple why the app was rejected, and whether there is a list of prohibited apps that is provided to potential vendors, developers and iTunes customers.

To AT&T, the commission asked a number of similar questions, and asked to "Explain AT&T's understanding of any differences between the Google Voice iPhone application and any Voice over Internet Protocol applications that are currently used on the AT&T network, either via the iPhone or via handsets other than the iPhone."

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out this evening, this inquiry is significant because the FCC received no complaints about the rejection, and it was spurred purely by "Recent press reports [which] indicate that Apple has declined to approve the Google Voice application for the iPhone and has removed related (and previously approved) third-party applications from the iPhone App Store."

Read the FCC's letter to AT&T

Read the FCC's letter to Google

FCC investigates Apple's App Store policy after Google Voice rejection

Publié: août 1, 2009, 2:32am CEST par Tim Conneally

Read the FCC's letter to Apple

FCC Logo Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app proved to be the last straw, and now the Federal Communications Commission is involved. The FCC has begun an investigation into the matter.

In its letters to AT&T, Apple, and Google, the Commission asked each party to clarify exactly what happened and why the application was blocked from the iTunes App Store.

Read the FCC's letter to AT&T

Read the FCC's letter to Google

The Value Question: Is the Apple or Microsoft Family Pack the better deal?

Publié: août 1, 2009, 1:43am CEST par Joe Wilcox