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Kodak patent complaint against Apple, RIM revived (AP) : Technet |
- Kodak patent complaint against Apple, RIM revived (AP)
- Review: Solid Nintendo 3DS could use fresher games (AP)
- Girl Scout cookies go high-tech: Smartphone sales (AP)
- Sendoid Transfers Huge Files in Seconds in the Browser (Mashable)
- Appeal to keep Twitter data from WikiLeaks probe (AFP)
- In Iran, New Attack Escalates Ongoing Cyberconflict (PC World)
- Analysis: AT&T vision of wireless competition is tough sell (Reuters)
- US trade judge rules for Apple in Nokia dispute (AFP)
- More than half of US adults use Facebook: study (AFP)
- Google: Honeycomb will not be opened up to developers... yet (Digital Trends)
- Survey Shows We're Too Lazy About Mobile Phone Security (Mashable)
- Firefox leads Android Apps of the Week (Appolicious)
- Altera seen getting China boost (Investor's Business Daily)
- Sucker Punch Review (Digital Trends)
- Miniot wood iPad 2 cover mimics Smart Cover in genuine wood (Digital Trends)
- Nokia to use Symbian and Windows together for long time (Reuters)
- Parature Spring '11 Boosts Social CRM Competition (NewsFactor)
| Kodak patent complaint against Apple, RIM revived (AP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 05:10 PM PDT ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A federal agency said Friday that it will review Eastman Kodak Co.'s high-stakes patent-infringement claim against technology giants Apple Inc. and Research in Motion Ltd. The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., agreed to examine a judge's finding in January that Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry don't violate an image-preview patent the photography pioneer obtained in 2001. The decision revives Kodak's hopes of negotiating royalties worth $1 billion or more. The agency's six commissioners will decide by May 23 whether to alter the initial determination by its chief administrative judge, Paul Luckern, or let it stand. Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner said "we are pleased with the decision and we look forward to the next step in the process." The company has amassed more than 1,000 digital-imaging patents, and almost all digital cameras rely on that technology. Mining its rich array of inventions has become an indispensable tool in a long and painful turnaround. That campaign was stalled by the recession, which began just after Kodak completed a three-year, $3.4 billion digital overhaul in 2007. Its payroll has plunged to 18,800 people, from 70,000 in 2002. Kodak's shares jumped 27 cents, or 8.6 percent, to close at $3.40 Friday, then shot up 72 more cents to $4.12 in after-hours trading. They are trading in a 52-week range of $2.90 to $9.08. Messages seeking comment from RIM were not immediately returned. An Apple spokeswoman said the company had no comment. After failed negotiations, Kodak filed a complaint against Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple and Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM in January 2010 with the commission that oversees U.S. trade disputes. It also filed two lawsuits against Apple in federal court in Rochester, but it has not specified the damages it is seeking. In December 2009, the commission ruled that cell phones made by Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. infringed the same Kodak patent, and Kodak received a one-time $550 million royalty payment from Samsung and a $414 million deal was reached with LG Electronics. The 131-year-old camera maker has said it expects to continue to generate an average of between $250 million and $350 million annually through 2013 from licensing its digital technology. Over the last three years, it outpaced that figure, booking $1.9 billion in revenue. Kodak has banked on replacing hefty profits it once made on film, with promising new lines of home inkjet printers and high-speed inkjet presses. It expects to generate its first profits from consumer printers this year and its commercial line is targeted to turn profitable in 2012. Separately, ITC judge E. James Gildea issued an initial ruling in a dispute between Apple and Nokia Corp. on Friday, saying Apple did not infringe on five of Nokia's patents. Nokia, the world's largest maker of cell phones, filed a complaint with the ITC in Dec. 2009, alleging Apple's iPods, iPhone and computers violate Nokia's intellectual property rights. At issue were key features found in Apple products, including aspects of user interface, cameras, antenna and power management technologies, Nokia said at the time. The company claimed that the technologies in question help cut manufacturing costs, reduce gadget size and prolong battery life. The cell phone maker began its patent fight with Apple in October 2009, filing its first patent infringement claim against Apple in Delaware. Apple filed a countersuit, claiming Nokia was infringing on a variety of its patents. Apple countersued Nokia in the U.S., and also filed a counter-complaint with the ITC. Nokia has also filed patent lawsuits last year against Apple in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands. Apple had no comment on Gildea's ruling. A spokeswoman for Nokia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. ___ AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz in San Francisco contributed to this report. |
| Review: Solid Nintendo 3DS could use fresher games (AP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 12:09 PM PDT Whether you're watching a Hollywood action movie in an IMAX theater or college hoops on a 3-D TV, there's no denying the wow factor of current 3-D technology. And the trend isn't lost on video-game companies — particularly Sony, which has been trumpeting the 3-D environments of recent PlayStation 3 games like "Killzone 3." Still, big-screen 3-D isn't for everybody: Those of us with poor vision will probably never adjust to wearing 3-D glasses on top of our prescription specs. That's why Nintendo's announcement last year that it had created eyeglasses-free 3-D was greeted with such enthusiasm. And its 3DS portable game machine ($250) lives up to the hype, creating a convincing illusion of a third dimension beyond its 3.5-inch screen. The most dazzling demonstration, which comes installed on the device, is "AR Games." ("AR" stands for "augmented reality.") Place a card on a table, point the 3DS cameras at it — and a dragon bursts out of the flat surface. To shoot targets on the dragon, you have to move yourself around the card to find different angles. You can also take 3-D photos and add a variety of effects. Or you can incorporate your friends' images into "Face Raiders," which morphs them onto a fleet of floating, whirling attack helicopters. Like "AR Games," it's simple, but offers a promising glimpse of what we might expect from future 3DS software. Nintendo has assembled a solid but derivative lineup of 18 games ($40 each) to accompany the launch of the hardware. Almost all of them are based on familiar franchises, including Nintendo's own "Pilotwings Resort," a lighthearted flying game, and "Nintendogs + Cats," a lovable pet simulator. The 3-D effect does enhance sports games like EA Sports' "Madden NFL Football" and Namco Bandai's "Ridge Racer 3D." But it feels superfluous in Capcom's "Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition" because its 3-D angles tend to block your view; it's a good game, but "SF" fans will probably stick to the 2-D perspective. LucasArts' "Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars" delivers flashier 3-D effects: In combat, enemies burst into Lego bricks that look like they're going to burst through the screen. For the most part, though, the game plays just as well in two dimensions. It's easy enough to switch that extra dimension on and off, and I suspect many players will make frequent use of the device's 2-D/3-D slider. If you look away from the 3-D screen, it takes a few seconds to readjust your eyes back to it. More significantly, my eyes got tired after about 10 minutes of 3-D action, so I spent more time with it turned off. So, if the games are just as playable in two dimensions, what's the point? The 3DS launch lineup doesn't answer that question, but surely some developers are plotting software that makes 3-D more integral to gameplay. Beyond 3-D, the 3DS does sport several new features that will delight longtime players of Nintendo handhelds. The most welcome change is a circular thumb pad — at last! — that complements the traditional plus-sign-shaped directional pad. The 3DS adds a motion sensor so you can tilt the device to control the action in games like "Super Monkey Ball 3D." And a retractable stylus can be adjusted to your comfort level. The whole package is only slightly thicker and heavier than 2008's DSi. The biggest drawback is battery life: If you have the screen set at maximum brightness, a charge lasts just three hours. Before release, I was unable to try out the 3DS' wireless features, which encourage you to leave the device turned on — in sleep mode — while you carry it around. SpotPass will detect wireless hotspots and automatically download information and free software, Nintendo says. StreetPass will detect other 3DS players and automatically transfer data such as Mii avatars between devices. And the Nintendo eShop, like the earlier model's DSi Shop, will let you buy and download new games, starting in May. Nintendo's longtime dominance of handheld gaming has been threatened by the expanding presence of smartphones, especially Apple's iPhone. It will probably take more than 3-D technology to slow down the competition, so the eShop and the 3DS' other wireless goodies will be key. What the 3DS demonstrates is that Nintendo isn't going to give up the portable market without a fight. ___ Online: |
| Girl Scout cookies go high-tech: Smartphone sales (AP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 12:08 PM PDT PARMA, Ohio – The Girl Scouts were selling their cookies the old-fashioned way, pulling a creaky-wheeled red wagon laden with Thin Mints and Samoas down a suburban street. But the affair took a decidedly 21st-century twist when, with a polite smile, one of the girls pulled out a smartphone and inquired: "Would you like to pay with a credit card?" The girls are among about 200 troops in northeast Ohio who are changing the way Girl Scouts do business. For the first time, the girls are accepting credit cards using a device called GoPayment, a free credit card reader that clips onto smart phones. Girl Scout leaders hope that allowing customers to pay with plastic will drive up cookie sales in a world where carrying cash is rapidly going the way of dial-up Internet. Keeping pace with changing technology is a priority lately for the historic Girl Scouts, an organization that's preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. "Normally I think a lot of customers would love to buy cookies, but they have to walk by the booth because they're not carrying cash," said Marianne Love, director of business services for the Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio. "I know I never carry cash when I'm out shopping." If all goes well, Love plans to roll out the device to all 2,700 troops in northeast Ohio. Ten troops in San Diego, Calif., are also testing out the device this month. "I know there's a lot of interest across the country with other Girl Scout councils," Love said. "So I wouldn't be surprised if you see it everywhere this time next year." GoPayment is just one of several popular mobile payment devices that took off in 2010, with hundreds of thousands of people signing up to use them, said Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group of Centennial, Colo., a consulting company focused on the mobile payment industry. "Everyone from delivery drivers to Girl Scouts to baby sitters are swiping cards on their phones to take a payment," Ablowitz said. "I mean, this barely existed before 2010. The numbers are staggering." The technology has actually existed for years, but it wasn't until San Francisco-based Square, Inc., began offering its card readers for free that the industry really gained momentum, Ablowitz said. Intuit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company that manufactures GoPayment, charges a small fee per transaction and offers various pricing plans to customers based on sale volume. GoPayment has been on the market for about two years. Intuit charges the Girl Scouts its lowest rate, at 1.7 percent plus 15 cents per transaction. Most customers pay 2.7 percent per transaction. "We saw people that wanted to take electronic payments and just didn't have a way to do it," said Chris Hylen, vice-president of Intuit's payments business. "It's been the fastest-growing part of our business." Sales are already picking up in Ohio, with one troop reporting selling 20 percent more than they did in the same location the previous year, Love said. "And we also had a customer earlier today say he was taking out cash to buy two boxes, and he ended up buying seven because he was able to use his credit card," she said. Selling cookies is a massive and lucrative operation for the Girl Scouts, hauling in about $714 million every year. It started out in 1917 in Muskogee, Okla., when Girl Scouts began baking cookies at home with their mothers, said Michelle Tompkins, spokeswoman for Girl Scouts of the USA. The sale went commercial in 1935. Nowadays, the actual baking of the cookies is done by commercial bakers, who receive a small portion of the profit. But the rest goes to local troops, who use the money for whatever they like. Some girls decide to pool their funds to travel abroad, while others donate money to charity. Transitioning to mobile payments was natural for most of the girls, said Gwen Kolenich, a troop leader in Parma, a Cleveland suburb. "This is something that makes it easy because we're now in a touch generation," she said. "So being about to offer this kind of payment method and technology to girls is right up their alley." Cassie Walko, 10, was stationed at an outdoor shopping mall in Oakwood Village on one cold Saturday morning, where most shoppers who stopped by the booth still insisted upon using cash, despite the girls' best efforts to wield their cell phones. Cassie said it was confusing the first time she tried to ring up a customer. "At first the machine wouldn't work because it was so cold," she said. "But then we figured it out." Linda Bellomy, who bought 10 boxes and donated them to the troops, said she used her credit card because she never carries cash anymore. "I gave her my card, they zipped it through, and they actually were able to key in an email address that my receipt goes to," she said. About 30 miles away in Parma, the Girl Scouts pulling their wagon from door to door encountered a problem that can't be fixed by technology. Most people weren't home to answer the door. For the geographically challenged, Girl Scouts of the USA is introducing yet another digital innovation: an app for the iPhone called the "USA Cookie Finder," which uses GPS technology to pinpoint the user's location and map out the nearest cookie sales. Users can even post cookie sale locations on Twitter and Facebook. "When it comes to technology, I think the best way to sum up Girl Scouts is: We are where the girls are," Tompkins said. "We listen to what they say. And when they tell us that they are on Facebook, then we go on Facebook." |
| Sendoid Transfers Huge Files in Seconds in the Browser (Mashable) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:40 PM PDT The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Sendoid Quick Pitch: Sendoid allows for instant and private large file transfer in the browser. Genius Idea: Peer-to-peer file transfer.
With the sudden rise of Chatroulette, the world was exposed, for better or for worse, to the peer-to-peer possibilities of real time media flow protocol (RTMFP) technology -- the technology that establishes a direct connection between two individuals. Sendoid, a Y Combinator startup, is applying the same peer-to-peer technology to a far less visually arresting purpose: file transfer. The peer-to-peer system, which forgoes cloud or server storage entirely, lets users transfer gigantic files in the browser in seconds and at no cost. Veteran file-transfer service YouSendIt charges the user $14 to move a 100 MB file, with the transfer taking about 24 minutes, as Sendoid co-founder John Egan said during the startup's Demo Days presentation. The same file is transferred in 35 seconds free of charge via Sendoid. With this in-browser transfer experience, the user selects a file and gets a link to share with the recipient. Upon receipt of the peer link, the recipient is securely connected to the sender's machine, and the file is transferred directly from the sender to the receiver without passing through Sendoid's servers. It's this peer-to-peer exchange that makes Sendoid so fast. Sendoid's browser-based file transfer service maxes out for files around 1 GB, but the startup also offers a desktop application for transferring files of unlimited size. There's no cost for either option, and Sendoid has no plans to introduce fees based on file size or transfer frequency. "It shouldn't cost money to send a 1 GB file," says Egan. "It just doesn't make sense anymore. The technology has caught up." The file transfer experience heretofore has been clunky, client-based, slow and expensive for end users. Plus, Sendoid believes the demand for sending larger files, especially in the form of high resolution digital photographs, is growing. For these reasons, Egan and fellow co-founder Zac Morris believe the startup is launching at just the right time. "The technology is here now to move large amounts of data inexpensively," says Egan. "And this is about the moment in time when file sizes for consumers are crossing the threshold [in size] and are no longer able to be transferred through traditional means." Sendoid has moved roughly 250,000 files -- an early sign that Egan's predictions about changing consumer behaviors are fairly accurate. The just-launched startup is currently operating on seed funding from the accelerator program, but it's currently in talks with several interested investors and will likely raise a substantial round in the weeks ahead. Eventually, Sendoid will introduce for-charge premium features that provide additional security or support file grouping. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Fred-D
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. |
| Appeal to keep Twitter data from WikiLeaks probe (AFP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 08:03 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Internet rights attorneys appealed a US judge's order that Twitter must hand over data of three users in contact with the controversial website WikiLeaks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the March 3 ruling on behalf of Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, one of the Twitter users targeted by the decision. The EFF and ACLU want Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan's decision overturned and WikiLeaks investigators to reveal any similar requests for information from other Internet firms. "Except in very rare circumstances, the government should not be permitted to obtain information about individuals' private Internet communications in secret," said ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine. "If the ruling is allowed to stand, our client might never know how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her, and she may never be able to challenge the invasive requests." Besides Jonsdottir, the Twitter accounts belong to US computer researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch volunteer for WikiLeaks. The government request for information from Twitter became public because the California-based microblogging service notified them, according to the EFF. In her decision, Buchanan rejected arguments that the grab for Twitter information violated freedom of speech and privacy. She said the three "already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available" and voluntarily provided information to Twitter pursuant to the website's privacy policy. Buchanan also dismissed the argument that the order violated the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects people against "unreasonable" searches. When the trio relayed information to Twitter, they gave up "any reasonable expectation of privacy," she said. "Services like Twitter have information that can be used to track us and link our communications across multiple services including Facebook and Gmail," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "The Magistrate's ruling that users have no ability to protect that information from the US government is especially troubling." President Barack Obama's administration obtained a court order last year seeking information from the Twitter accounts as it considers action against WikiLeaks, which has released a flood of secret diplomatic documents. WikiLeaks, which has strongly criticized the order, said that three Twitter users never worked for the site but that two helped make public a video that showed a 2007 US helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed several people. The footage appeared to show the Apache pilots mistaking a camera carried by an employee of the Reuters news agency as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. WikiLeaks has since angered US authorities by posting secret documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and releasing a slew of internal correspondence among US diplomats around the world. |
| In Iran, New Attack Escalates Ongoing Cyberconflict (PC World) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 06:10 PM PDT A cyber-attack linked to Iran this week is the latest in a string of cyber-events that some say represents a new step in a shadowy and long-running war between the Iranian government and those who criticize it on the Internet. Comodo Group, a seller of digital certificates, said that an unnamed partner was compromised on the evening of March 15. The attack was worrying because the kind of digital Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates that Comodo sells are an important part of the infrastructure used to secure the Internet. These certificates are encrypted files that tell the browser it's securely connecting with the real Gmail.com, for example, and not an imposter site. They help prevent phishing attacks, but in a country like Iran, they can be critical to dissidents, helping to keep private communications safe from prying eyes. The attack was well-planned and carefully executed, but according to Comodo, it was quickly detected. Massimo Penco, a vice president of Comodo based in Italy, said he received an alert around 7 p.m. on March 15 that something unusual was going on. "Someone issued a certificate for Google, but we didn't have a request from Google," he said. Within 15 minutes of this happening, he was on the phone asking colleagues in New Jersey to lock the system down, he said. The certificate for Google was revoked within an hour or so, along with eight others that had been issued in the meantime. Comodo doesn't know who was behind the attack. In the hacking world, it's standard practice to hop from computer to computer as a way of hiding one's tracks. And a secretive country such as Iran is unlikely to share information with Western investigators. Still, Iran has the means, motive and opportunity to pull off an attack like this in order to spy on supposedly secured communications between Iranians and the servers used by companies such as Google, Skype and Microsoft, all of whose certificates were spoofed in the attack, said Melih Abdulhayoglu, Comodo's founder and CEO. "All things point to the Iranian government and their newly founded cyberwarfare department," he said. Representatives with Iran's Permanent Mission to the United Nations were unable to comment Friday. The Iranian government has been interested in monitoring and controlling its citizens' Internet use for close to a decade now, said Mehdi Yahyanejad, founder of the popular Iranian discussion site Balatarin. But after the founding of the country's cyberpolice unit in late 2008, Iran began to flex some muscle. Yahyanejad believes that Iran was behind a complicated February 2009 attack that wiped out his website and kept it offline for three weeks. He suspects state involvement, because news of the attack was published on the state-sponsored Fars News Agency website within hours of the attack -- before even Yahyanejad himself had had time to figure out what had happened. With that attack, the hackers used social engineering techniques to trick Yahyanejad's Internet service provider into giving them unauthorized access to his hosting account. And like the Comodo incident, it was meticulously planned and well-executed. Since 2009, Balatarin has been hit with numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The most recent, in January of this year, was unprecedented in power. Iranian dissidents have a lot to worry about on the Internet these days. E-mail and Web-based malware, along with distributed denial-of-service attacks, are regularly used parts of Iran's toolkit, Yahyanejad said. The DDoS attacks flood websites with useless requests, knocking them offline. They appear during protests or times of unrest, often as a way of muffling protest on the Internet. "They want to make sure that during those days the videos don't get out quickly enough, [in order] to reduce the media impact of those demonstrations," he said. In the past few years, a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army has surfaced and defaced websites belonging to Twitter, Chinese search engine Baidu, and just last month, the Voice of America. Nobody knows who the Iranian Cyber Army really is, but Yahyanejad believes that they could be state-sponsored too. With Iran's Green Revolution protests now just a memory, government opposition now lives on the Internet, not on the streets of Tehran. These latest attacks on Comodo's digital certificates are a next step, made necessary as companies such as Google have pushed more and more users to secure, HTTPS websites, which are much harder for the government to monitor. "It's an indication that they're taking cybersecurity seriously as a theater of conflict," said Cameran Ashraf, an Iranian-American digital activist. Alex Stamos, a U.S. computer security consultant who is a founding partner at ISec Partners, agrees that the stakes are rising, in Iran and elsewhere. "The major American cloud computing providers and Web service providers -- the Googles and the Facebooks and the Microsofts -- are in a very quiet war with totalitarian governments to keep access to their services available and to keep those people safe," Stamos said. The lines in this battle are not clear. Are the hackers completely independent, or state employees? Do they operate with the tacit approval of the Iranian government? These questions are hard to answer. But both Comodo CEO Abdulhayoglu and Balatarin's Yahyanejad believe that the attacks that hit them were methodical and well-planned enough that it was likely they were the work of the Iranian government. "They've started going after the Internet," Ashraf said. "It's the last bastion." Peter Sayer, in Paris, contributed to this story. Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com |
| Analysis: AT&T vision of wireless competition is tough sell (Reuters) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:36 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) – AT&T (T.N) faces a tough pitch convincing regulators that its $39 billion deal to buy Deutsche Telekom AG's (DTEGn.DE) T-Mobile will not create a duopoly in the cell phone market. The massive telecom company was clearly honing its pitch even as it came out of the gate. When announcing the deal on Sunday, it said that in 18 of the 20 top U.S. local markets there are five or more local carriers, not so subtly telling regulators they should take a market-by-market look when assessing competitiveness. AT&T chose not to focus on the fact that the deal would concentrate 80 percent of U.S. wireless contract customers in just two companies -- itself and Verizon Wireless. Susan Crawford, who teaches at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, waved away the AT&T argument. "It's a red herring to say there are five in major cities," she said. "People buy mobile service for nationwide coverage. ... It's already a duopoly." AT&T also stressed that it was making the deal to acquire spectrum, which is in high demand as technology becomes more mobile. Unlike most companies announcing mergers that regulators question, AT&T did not argue that the deal would mean lower prices but said that the cell phone market was competitive, and would remain rough and tumble despite the proposed deal. This is the argument that AT&T's legal team is expected to take to the Justice Department for its antitrust review. The Federal Communications Commission also must sign off on the transaction for it to go forward. One person who agrees with AT&T is Jeff Eisenach, who teaches at George Mason University School of Law. "The wireless market is extremely competitive," he said, arguing that the cell phone industry lent itself to monopoly to take advantage of economies of scale. "You see prices are declining really rapidly. I have not noticed Verizon and AT&T acting like cozy monopolists lately," he said, pointing in particular at the companies' vigorous advertising campaigns. But most antitrust experts interviewed said it will be tough to convince regulators that the deal will allow a competitive wireless marketplace to thrive, without significant asset sales by AT&T. This is especially true since the government itself recently raised doubts about competition in the wireless industry, before the deal was announced. The FCC in May 2010 issued an annual report that for the first time since 2002 did not describe the wireless industry as having "effective competition." The industry leader is Verizon Wireless with about 31.5 of the market and AT&T with 28.5, trailed by T-Mobile (12.1 percent) and struggling Sprint Nextel (S.N) (17.9 percent), according to an FCC report issued last May. Verizon Wireless is owned by Verizon Communications (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L). While the four big companies have national reach, the smaller do not. These include MetroPCs (2 percent), US Cellular (2.3 percent) and Leap (1.4 percent), which owns Cricket, and some antitrust experts dismiss them as not truly competitive with the big companies. "It's hobbled competition," said one veteran of the Justice Department's antitrust department. Traditionally DOJ analyzes deals like this one by looking at local markets, said Bob Doyle, an antitrust expert with the law firm Doyle, Barlow and Mazard PLLC. "However this deal, given the size and significance of both players, the government might be inclined to take a bigger picture and examine this deal on a national basis in which case you have a problematic four-to-three merger," he said. "There could be several hundred localized markets where there could be divestitures in this case," he said. (Additional reporting by Jasmin Melvin; Editing by Bernard Orr) |
| US trade judge rules for Apple in Nokia dispute (AFP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:06 PM PDT WASHINGTON (AFP) – A judge with the US International Trade Commission ruled in Apple's favor on Friday in a patent dispute with Finland's Nokia over mobile phones, portable music players and computers. Judge James Gildea denied Nokia's claim that Apple had violated five patents held by the Finnish company. The judge did not provide an explanation for his ruling and the full six-member commission now has 60 days to review his determination. The ITC has the authority to bar imports into the United States of products found to be infringing on patents and Nokia was seeking to have Apple products barred. The two mobile phone titans have been embroiled in a fierce legal battle over patents with Nokia lodging at least two other lawsuits against Apple and the California gadget-maker filing countersuits against the Finnish company. |
| More than half of US adults use Facebook: study (AFP) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 01:55 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – More than half of US adults use online social networking service Facebook, according to an upcoming study. A report by Edison Research and Arbitron Inc. to be released on April 5 includes the finding that 51 percent of US residents age 12 or older have profiles set up at Facebook. Facebook terms of service require people to be at least 13 years old to be members of the online community, which boasts more than a half-billion users. "We have been tracking the growth of Facebook since 2008, and have watched it go from eight percent usage just three years ago, to 51 percent today," New Jersey-based Edison said in a release. The market tracking firms based the findings on a January survey of 2,020 people. Study findings presented in a webcast will include the popularity of accessing social networks using mobile phones, according to Edison. |
| Google: Honeycomb will not be opened up to developers... yet (Digital Trends) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 03:50 PM PDT
In an e-mail statement, Google claims that "while we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will public the source as soon as it's ready." Fortunately, the decision to keep the code to itself a little while longer won't affect the production and release of current manufacturing partners' products. App builders as well can rest easy, as they don't require Honeycomb's code for their purposes. There was some concern that this moved implied Google was attempting to keep a uniform Honeycomb branding throughout, and maybe head off some of that fragmentation name-calling. This would mean that Google would prevent tablet manufacturers from laying their own customs UIs on top of Honeycomb, which plenty currently do. Androinica got in touch with a Google rep who completely dismissed the idea, saying, "That rumor is inaccurate, there are no restrictions on custom UIs for Honeycomb whatsoever." So at least for the moment, tablet-makers are free to layer away. But UI aside, Google isn't giving any indication of when it plans to offer up Honeycomb's code. |
| Survey Shows We're Too Lazy About Mobile Phone Security (Mashable) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 02:34 PM PDT A new survey shows U.S. consumers are shockingly lax about basic security on their mobile phones. Most of us have no qualms about making purchases via mobile, and the vast majority of us use the same phone for business and personal use -- two common vulnerabilities in web security. Yet in spite of these yellow flags, few of us use phone-locking passwords and duplicate the same passwords for mobile apps that we use on our desktops. The survey [PDF] in question comes from security firm AVG and research and consulting firm The Ponemon Institute. One key finding we mentioned was the crossover between business and personal use of the same device. Around 84% of consumers use the same smartphone for both professional and personal tasks. In those cases, if the user's phone ever becomes lost or compromised, the amount of risk is automatically doubled, since both kinds of private and confidential data could be accessed.
When it comes to the kind of data that puts consumers at further risk, 66% of respondents said they kept personal and personally identifiable data (such as an email address, name, contact lists, photos, videos, anniversary and personal dates, etc.) on their phones. And 23% of respondents also said they stored passwords on their phones.
And we're not as wary as we should be about mobile viruses, either. In fact, more consumers are bothered by mobile ads than by malware. Roughly 67% of consumers surveyed said they were concerned about receiving marketing ads and promotions, but just 44% said they were worried about the possibility of a mobile virus attack. According to the survey, 66% of respondents have made at least one purchase on their phone, 38% make payments on their phones and 14% do mobile banking. A full 12% have been the target of attempted mobile payment fraud. Yet a mere 6% do a monthly check of their cell phone bill, and only 8% check their phone statement when it's unusually high.
And in spite of all these security risks, less than half of consumers in this survey used keypad locks or passwords to secure their mobile devices, and only 29% said they have thought about using a mobile anti-virus application. Take a look at the man-or-woman-on-the-street clips below, and in the comments, let us know what you're doing about your own mobile security.
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| Firefox leads Android Apps of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:00 PM PDT |
| Altera seen getting China boost (Investor's Business Daily) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 03:13 PM PDT The maker of programmable logic devices will likely get a spark from China Mobile's (NYSE:CHL - News) increased infrastructure spending, said Citigroup, which upgraded Altera (NASDAQ:ALTR - News) . China's top mobile carrier plans $20.2 bil in capital spending this year and $39 bil from 2012-13. Citi sees Altera's volumes increasing up to 10% in Q2. Altera climbed 2.3%. |
| Sucker Punch Review (Digital Trends) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 04:06 PM PDT
Sucker Punch is actually a fairly hard film to review, mainly because it isn't really a film. If you took all the actual plot elements and cut them together, the entire movie would be about 15 minutes long. The visual scenes are fairly impressive to watch, but there is nothing holding them together, and there is never any real sense of danger or accomplishment in their completion. But more on the plot later—don't worry, that section will be brief. But still, Snyder has to be applauded on taking the chance and trying something new–even though he fails on most levels. Snyder's films are just somewhat soulless. There is such an emphasis on the visuals that everything else suffers. There is not a single shot in all of Sucker Punch where multiple things are not going on. Even in the most innocuous of scenes where someone is just talking—not even saying anything important, just talking — the camera will zoom in. It may even then cut to an overhead view looking down, before cutting back to the speaker and panning over them. Just leave the damn camera alone for one single second, Snyder! It is not just distracting, it could almost be described as "twitchy." You can't care about any of the characters because there simply isn't anything to care about. They are slaves to the action, and most are little more than sexy set pieces. God help me for saying this, and believe me, it hurts to type this, but even Michael Bay does character development better. And it is a problem with all of Snyder's movies, but none more so than in Sucker Punch. In fact, after watching this movie, it makes all of Snyder's films look like less of the work of a visionary, and more of the work of a guy that seriously needs to lay off the caffeine.
The plot within the plot within the stupid plotThe idea of Sucker Punch is that it is a world within a world within a world. In that sense, and only that sense, it is similar to Matrix. Baby Doll ( Emily Browning) is the daughter of a wealthy woman who dies, leaving her estate to her two daughters. The stereotypical evil stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) isn't too keen on this, and while about to rape the younger daughter, Baby Doll tries to shoot him but accidentally kills her sister.The film is set in the 1950s, and so her stepfather has little trouble in having Baby Doll institutionalized and scheduled for a lobotomy because things like that apparently happened a bunch, even though when the police come there is more than enough evidence to acquit her and send the stepfather to jail, but that is beside the point. It does, however, set a precedence for the entire plot though and you get the idea that the plot is an inconvenience. Once in the institution, the corrupt orderly Blue (Oscar Isaac) forges the signature of Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino who is bewilderingly trying to pull off a Russian accent for no real reason), and Baby Doll has five days before the Doctor (John Hamm) arrives to lobotomize her. Baby Doll meets a handful of other women in the institute, beginning with attractive and friendly Rocket (Jena Malone), who she saves from an attack. Once she has been accepted, the attractive and innocent Baby Doll joins the clique that includes such notable stereotypes as the attractive but stern Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), the attractive and ironically named brunette Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and the attractive but timid Amber (Jamie Chung). A pattern should be obvious by now. Rather than accept that she is falsely imprisoned in an institutional hospital, Baby Doll creates a world where she is part of a brothel run by Blue, who takes the role of a pimp, with the partially unwilling help of the now "Madam" Gorski. Baby Doll has a talent for dancing, and she has an appointment with the High Roller (Doctor) in five days. So she hatches a plan to escape, and creates another fantasy world where she and the other girls are basically a group of superheroes tasked with completing four quests given to her by the Wiseman (Scott Glenn), with each quest yielding an item to help with their escape. This fantasy within a fantasy world contains dragons, steampunk German soldiers, robots and demonic samurai, all attempting to stop the girls from completing their goal. The plot is just something that is there to explain the visuals in the same way that a video game would send you on a quest to achieve the "plans" from the insanely well guarded enemy stronghold, but the film is so busy trying to be "cool", that it forgets to actually do anything in terms of attaching you to the characters. One minute they are victims, then they are prisoners, then they are superheroes. The opening scene–which should be a heart wrenching scene of loss–is entirely filmed with music blaring and hardly a word of dialog, and from there the tone is set. Again, the plot is barely worth mentioning, but honestly, that is fine. You are watching a movie about giant samurai with Gatling guns, so the story is not why you are there. The problem though is that without any emotional attachment, you won't — no, you can't — form any feelings for the girls, any more than you would become attached to a dancer in a music video. It also is never really clear why Baby Doll just doesn't explain what is going on to Doctor Gorski, who is supposed to be sympathetic, nor does it explain why Baby Doll would imagine a brothel instead of a hospital, but those are minor quibbles.
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| Miniot wood iPad 2 cover mimics Smart Cover in genuine wood (Digital Trends) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 07:00 PM PDT
The magnetic design of Apple's Smart Cover, which was released in conjunction with the iPad 2, has been almost as buzzed-about as the device itself. The design features an attached front cover to the iPad which uses magnets to put the device to sleep when it's in use and awaken it when removed. This new case from Miniot mimics that clever design, but stands out against the sea of Apple's typical and unadventurous color options. If you like the Apple Smart Cover, but find its design a little too blasé for your tastes, the Wood iPad 2 Cover ($70) from Miniot takes your iPad's style cred up a few notches. The cover is carved from a single piece of wood and has notches that allow for it to bend into a sturdy cylinder that will hold your iPad up in either portrait or landscape viewing mode. It won't do much in terms of protecting your iPad all around, but if you're going to carry your toy around unsleeved, this wood design will keep it functional and looking good. Personalized engraving is offered free, and the cover is now available for pre-order. |
| Nokia to use Symbian and Windows together for long time (Reuters) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 03:45 PM PDT HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia (NOK1V.HE) said it will continue to sell smartphones using its legacy Symbian software for a long time after its first phones using Microsoft's (MSFT.O) Windows go on sale. Symbian is due to be replaced by Microsoft's Windows Phone over the coming two years under a plan announced in February, raising concerns Nokia could drop Symbian phones -- which have lost market share, but generate strong profits -- too early. "We will be selling (Symbian) devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear," Purnima Kochikar, head of developer relations at Nokia, said in an open letter developers, published late on Friday. Nokia has promised to introduce its first models using Windows Phone platform at the latest in 2012. Nokia didn't specify how long it would continue to offer Symbian. Earlier this week research firm Ovum forecast that Symbian phones will continue on some markets into 2016. Kochikar said coming Symbian models would focus on strong integration of services, as well as have faster processors than so far in the Symbian product line. "Over the past weeks we have been evaluating our Symbian roadmap and now feel confident we will have a strong portfolio of new products during our transition period -- i.e. 2011 and 2012," Kochikar said. "They will also include improvements in hardware performance such as GHz+ processing capabilities and faster graphics speeds," she said. Nokia's current top models, the N8 and the E7, use 680 MHz (megahertz) processors, while rivals top models already use 1 GHz (gigahertz) and faster processors. (Reporting by Tarmo Virki; editing by Carol Bishopric) |
| Parature Spring '11 Boosts Social CRM Competition (NewsFactor) Posted: 25 Mar 2011 01:56 PM PDT Cloud-based customer engagement just got more competitive. That's because Parature has unveiled its latest social CRM software. Parature Spring '11 is designed to help customer support teams leave a better impression on customers and engage with the company's target audiences through vehicles like Twitter, Lithium communities, Facebook, chat, phone, e-mail and, of course, the web. The new version lets companies monitor, manage and resolve service issues across those channels. Even as Duke Chung, chief strategy officer for Parature, launches Spring '11 and prepares to roll out Parature for Facebook as a stand-alone product, he sees plenty of competition on the horizon. The Wild West of Social Software "The social-software marketplace is still undefined to a large part -- it's like the Wild West out there," Chung said. "There are hundreds of companies that position themselves as social-software providers. Companies looking to make a purchase have to educate themselves so thoroughly and then make the decision that best fits their strategies and organization." As Chung sees it, this process can be exhausting, confusing and lead to folks wanting to wait and see how the game pans out and who emerges as the leader. He is betting that by integrating social channels into the experience, Parature will stand out from the social-applications crowd. With Spring '11, Parature expands its direct social-engagement model to Twitter and Lithium. The new version also offers auto-suggest and improved search features. Customers can automatically receive auto-suggested answers while submitting tickets. Parature also beefed up the analytics; developed the ability to view, report and automatically remove profane content from a Facebook page for brand security; and added rich media support and unified management of multiple Facebook pages. "Since last year, Parature has been focused on integrating social networks and channels into its overarching cloud-based support solutions," Chung said. "The reason being that as the web evolves to be more social and collaborative, consumers and customers are looking to their preferred channel to find the answers they need. Facebook has over 500 million members, and members spend hours at a time on the network. Customers don't want to leave their preferred channel to head elsewhere to get the answers they are looking for." Resolving Issues More Quickly Vovici, a survey-software and enterprise-feedback-solutions company, is tapping into Parature to meet the increasing demand it sees for direct communication with its clients through social channels. "Vovici is all about customers; it's not only our business but our internal philosophy as well," said Nancy Porte, Vovici's vice president of customer experience. "Delivering service with Parature's customer-support software enables our customers to quickly and independently resolve issues or directly engage with our support team via chat or a social network, which helps us differentiate ourselves, retain existing customers, and attract new ones." |
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