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By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Sybase's new mobile sales application for iPhone, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry lets users connect to SAP CRM remotely from their phones, much as they would from a desktop or laptop PC. And a new mobile workflow app from Sybase and SAP lets users play roles in multi-part business processes from their phones, an SAP representative tells Betanews.

With new business apps for iPhone, WM6, and BlackBerry smartphones rolled out on Tuesday, Sybase and SAP have now completed the first phase of a long-term pact around mobile customer relationship management and (enterprise resource planning software. In the week ahead, iPhone and Windows Mobile client software will be available for both Sybase Mobile Sales for CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite, said Prashant Chatterjee, director of mobility and industry analytics for SAP.

Chatterjee noted that RIM released a preliminary proof-of-concept client for BlackBerry about a year ago. But, he added, the existing smartphone software for BlackBerry, currently available on the Web as freeware, will be replaced during the second half of this year with a "full-fledged client."

In an initial deal announced in March 2009, the two vendors agreed to make business processes from SAP Business Suite Mobile 7 available on Sybase's Unwired Platform to all mobile devices, including Symbian and Palm devices as well.

Chatterjee told Betanews that the two companies will soon finish up a roadmap that will outline additional phases of their pact.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Could someone please give back Steve Ballmer's brain? He really needs it. The Web is buzzing about a Microsoft executive telling APC Magazine that existing Windows Mobile handsets will not be eligible for Windows Phone 7 Series upgrades. Is Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, out of his fraking mind for letting this happen? Oh, right, someone took away his brain. Please return it.

What's all the fuss about? Firstly, the no-upgrade policy gives every possible Windows Mobile buyer every reason not to purchase. Secondly, the hottest WinMo phone, the HTC HD2, is suddenly a Windows Phone 7 Series brick. According to Natasha Kwan, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific region Mobile Communications Business GM, the HD2 "doesn't qualify because it doesn't have the three buttons." The smartphone has too much of a good thing--five buttons.

OK, sometimes Microsoft executives shoot off at the mouth, so I contacted the company's PR firm for clarification. I got one of those twisty statements that could mean one thing when it probably means another: "For Windows Phone 7 Series we are enforcing a strict set of hardware requirements to ensure a consistently great experience for end-users and developers. While we cannot confirm that WM6.X phones that satisfy those requirements will be upgradeable, every Windows Phone 7 Series device will be upgradeable with improvements and features we deliver with subsequent Windows Phone 7 Series releases."

That's doggy talk for "no Windows Mobile 6.x handset will qualify for Windows Phone 7 Series upgrades, but we don't dare say so." The unstated strict hardware requirement: That Windows Phone logo button. With the HD2, I'd wager the problem isn't so much too many buttons but not enough of the right kind. Because by all other measures -- processor, screen size and kind and graphics capability, among others -- the HTC HD2 should otherwise be able to run Windows Phone 7 Series.

For frak's sake, Microsoft, why don't you make your own phone? If the hardware requirements are going to be so strict for an operating system manufacturers must pay for -- rather than get, say, Google Android for free -- Microsoft should just make its own phone. Dissing HD2 owners is simply unthinkable. It's the hot Windows Mobile phone -- the only one really. Please, thief, return Steve Ballmer's brain because, as the Ramones sang it: "My brain is hanging upside down."

Unlucky T-Mobile USA is ready to launch the HD2. How's that for the mother of lousy timing? The company's offices are in Bellevue, Wash., or about 10 miles drive up the 405 to 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond. T-Mobile should dispatch employees to assist in the search for Steve Ballmer's brain.

Microsoft's position -- or lack of it -- about Windows Mobile handset upgrades is brain boggling times three. Nilay Patel writes at Engadget:

Making matters even less clear, we asked Microsoft's Director of Consumer Experiences Aaron Woodman about the HD2 directly on The Engadget Show, and he politely declined to tell us about the device's upgradability, and said that WP7's final required specs would be revealed at MIX '10. We'll be honest: we're taking all this confusion to mean that Microsoft hasn't quite figured out how to say the HD2 is at a dead end just before it launches on T-Mobile US.

Yeah, Microsoft sure loves its hardware partners. You can ask any of the MP3 player manufacturers that supported PlaysForSure six years ago. Microsoft was all huggy, kissy before dumping them all for Zune. Microsoft's branded music player ended any Microsoft blabber talk about device "choice." Surely, there's a Microsoft phone somewhere in the future. Why drag out hardware partners' misery?

Unless -- gasp -- they learned something from Microsoft's past behavior. Microsoft's wishy washy statements about WinMo handsets' future fate might just be enough for many partners to cool their Windows Phone 7 Series jets and look elsewhere -- like Android. That's a path still leading to a Microsoft branded phone, assuming few manufacturers really step up to license the new OS.

There really isn't any confusion here, by the way. Microsoft is keeping Windows Mobile alive for a reason. Company execs can't exactly look existing hardware partners or customers in the face and say, "There's no Windows 7 Phone Series upgrade for you," if there's no Windows Mobile alternative. By continuing the operating system as Windows Phone Classic, Microsoft has placed a back door for quick escape: Windows Phone Classic is the upgrade path for Windows Mobile.

I tease about Steve Ballmer losing his brain because I like the guy. No offense is intended. I stand by my late-January post defending Ballmer. That said, starting over with a new mobile operating system was smart. Good job, Microsoft. But potentially killing sales of existing Windows Mobile handsets is simply stupid. Potentially alienating existing hardware partners and customers is stupider still.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

At the heart of Apple's very serious charges against HTC -- among the most prominent manufacturers of Android-based phones today -- is whether the methodology Android uses to run Java programs using a specialized derivative of the Java Virtual Machine, called Dalvik, actually borrowed (or stole) ideas directly from the NeXT operating system. NeXTSTEP, you may recall, included radical innovations to the system kernel enabling inter-application communication (IAC), on a level far beyond anything Macintosh had used at the time. It was Steve Jobs' revenge against the company that had spurned him, and as history has borne out, Jobs was the victor in that little skirmish.

One of the ten patents Apple is defending in its lawsuit against HTC, drafted yesterday and filed this morning in US District Court in Delaware, deals specifically with NeXT's methodology. Apple acquired NeXT at the end of 1996, which is how Jobs re-entered the universe of Apple -- many believe, to have saved the company. Earlier that year, NeXT received a patent on a framework for IAC designed to compete with COM/DCOM and CORBA, the two other leading object methodologies of the time.

Though the complaint Apple filed with the US International Trade Commission this morning was officially under seal, it managed to get posted to Scribd this afternoon.

Apple's complaint describes the concept behind the first of its ten defended patents briefly: "As a general rule, separate processes execute independently (even when they may be executed simultaneously), and software within one process cannot directly access resources from or make calls on software within another process. Conventional methods for inter-process communication often required the software programmer to understand and utilize low-level operating system functionalities. The '721 patent describes a more efficient method for inter-process communication by way of a proxy object, which exists in a local process and acts as a local representation of objects that are located in a different process."

The typical problem with objects, or object-oriented components, in an operating system is that they don't really speak each other's language -- or more accurately, that they don't have a common language to speak. In Microsoft's COM, still at the heart of Windows, that problem is resolved through the System Registry. Windows components all share a few common functions, whose sole purpose is to enable them to discover one another. Once they've done that, they can share information from the Registry to connect them with each other's interfaces, and from there, they acquire each other's vernacular of functions they can perform. I've often said it's not so much like two foreign objects learning a common language, as much as deciding what storage room they can meet in that contains enough other objects they can point to, so they can identify what it is they want for now.

NeXT handled this problem differently, innovating new concepts that would replace COM's mutual interface exchange with what many at the time felt to be a more elegant methodology. The kernel of the NeXT operating system (and successors based on it, including the current MacOS X) is called Mach. Instead of relying upon binary interfaces, Mach let developers write IAC messages using Objective-C -- a language that for many years has been Apple's ace-in-the-hole. Mach handled all the translation, into streams of primitives that are shared with other objects using Internet-like communications protocols. Although objects still communicated with each other by way of proxy, as was the case with COM, the stream they set up with one another was a port. All the objects that have rights to communicate on that port, formed a domain.

From Apple's/NeXT's US Patent #5,481,721, which is central to the dispute: "The present invention provides a means for implementing an extensible, distributed program in which one task is responsible for creating other tasks to communicate with. This is a master/slave relationship; the master can provide the slave with send rights to the master's port as part of the creation process. When the slave starts executing, it sends a Mach message containing send rights to its port and a token for its first proxy back to the master. The master then replies with an indication of whether the connection is granted, and what token to use for the first proxy. This 'bootstrap-meta-protocol' results in both tasks knowing about each other, allowing communication to ensue."

What the objects say to one another over this shared port is almost immaterial to the patent; it's the method through which the port is negotiated and managed around which Mach's technology, and its associated patent, are based. The concepts you've just read about up to this point may become the critical points of debate over the next few years, assuming Apple's case against Android goes to trial, and also assuming (quite likely) that it will involve more competitive manufacturers than HTC. It's one thing to be open, but you can't open somebody else's ideas.

But did Android do that? Even prior to today's case, there's actually been considerable debate among developers over why Android did not appear to take the Objective-C route.

Android's runtime interpreter is a kind of Java that isn't really Java. That is to say, Android's Dalvik runs Java code, but it compiles it down to a different bytecode than a true Java virtual machine (VM). The Android Developers' forum explains that the system does this for relative efficiency: "Every Android application runs in its own process, with its own instance of the Dalvik virtual machine. Dalvik has been written so that a device can run multiple VMs efficiently. The Dalvik VM executes files in the Dalvik Executable (.dex) format which is optimized for minimal memory footprint. The VM is register-based, and runs classes compiled by a Java language compiler that have been transformed into the .dex format by the included 'dx' tool."

Certainly it may seem efficient from the point of view of a developer who simply wants to get his app built. But in terms of processing efficiency, there's considerable complaint that Dalvik is actually inefficient, evidence for which appears in Google's own benchmark results for Dalvik apps compared to Sun Java and complied C.

While NeXT's patented IAC process adopts an elegant communications scheme, Dalvik approaches the problem of sharing via a more direct, if costly, route -- efficient in the sense that it doesn't appear to require a patent to explain it. Seattle-based mobile software engineer Koushik Dutta cast a sharp spotlight on what he considered Android's inefficiencies, in a post for his personal blog in January 2009, comparing Dalvik to what he perceived as the much more efficient scheme adopted by Mono, the open source, cross-platform work-alike to Microsoft's .NET: "The two line summary is that Dalvik is designed to minimize memory usage by maximizing shared memory. The memory that Dalvik is sharing are the common framework dex files and application dex files (dex is the byte code the Dalvik interpreter runs). The first thing that bugged me about this design, is that sharing the code segments of dex files would be completely unnecessary if the applications were purely native. In Linux, the code segments of libraries are shared by all processes anyways. So, realistically, there is no benefit in doing this.

"If the battery is the primary constraint on the device, why is Dalvik so concerned with minimizing memory usage?" Dutta continued. "I am by no means a VM design guru...but I can say the following with certainty...Battery life is primarily affected by how much you tax the processor and the other hardware components of the device, especially the use of 3G/EDGE and Wi-Fi radios. Interpreting byte code will tax the processor and thus the battery much more than native/JIT [just-in-time] code...Modern (Dream/iPhone comparable) hardware running Windows Mobile is rarely memory constrained, and they don't have a fancy memory sharing runtime...If all applications can suspend and restore at the system's whim, then memory consumption is trivialized."

Dutta's explanation, in summary, appears to contrast the architecture of operating systems that adopt the principle of minimizing their memory footprints (Android) against those that take the more direct approach of suspending some apps for others to run (iPhone). Here's where it is important to note that Apple does not appear to be defending its iPhone, but rather technologies that are actually more relevant to MacOS.

Nevertheless, it may be the very inefficiencies that Dutta pointed out, that could be Android's saving grace in its upcoming battle against Apple. If Android is indeed as inefficient as some say it is, it may not be violating anyone's patent at all.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Release Version for Windows from Fileforum now.

Usually software companies have the luxury of picking their own deadlines, and typically -- especially in the case of open source or free programs -- those deadlines are allowed to slip or even lapse. But the European Commission gave Opera a solid opportunity to get back in the game, to be discussed once again in the same company as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.

Version 10.2 wasn't going to do it. We saw that back in December, with performance scores that were falling below those from the stable Opera 10.1. Among those browser users who do take advantage of their choice, speed is becoming more and more of a factor, as evidenced by Chrome's rising usage share. So last January, Opera made a strategic gamble: Dump 10.2, and throw everything behind an effort to re-create the Opera desktop browser for speed and efficiency.

The main JavaScript processor engine, dubbed Carakan, is to the interpreter in Opera 10.1 what the Macintosh II was to the Apple II. They are worlds different. There is no reason for anyone today to use Opera 10.1; not to upgrade is about as sensible as hanging onto a 1975 Toyota Celica rather than accept a free 2010 Camry.

Yet there was indisputably a rush to the finish, and even then, developers spent an extra day past the March 1 deadline when Microsoft delivered its browser choice screen to European Internet Explorer users. The big question now is, amid the rush, was Opera 10.5 rushed, or like the hero from the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream, did the company polish the front end and leave the chasses further down the line to be fixed later?

Some issues do remain. However, in our initial tests of the stable 10.5 this morning, the quirky drag-and-drop issues apparently were addressed. Selecting an item from the Bookmarks tab, then dragging it to the Personal bar, for instance, resulted in a copy (as opposed to a move) of that item -- not some other item, and not nothing at all. Selecting multiple items and moving them from folder to folder, worked. Dragging items to the Trash folder resulted in a move to the Trash (which makes more sense), followed by an opening of the Trash folder itself, enabling the user to empty the Trash in the next step. In all, drag-and-drop behaved consistently and as we expected -- the testing process worked in this instance, with the result being an improved browser.

Improved, though not yet perfected, at this point are some of the layout discrepancies with complex CSS pages. We checked back in with the Olympic Hockey results page, which was first noted by an Opera 10.5 tester in a post to the company's blog responses over the weekend. The column from Facebook is perhaps most important, because it's the style of column that gets imported on thousands more pages than just this one. The stable Opera 10.5 now formats this column cleanly, so this fixes a multitude of pages to some extent. There's still some problems with the positioning of the medal count in the block reserved for it in the upper right corner -- it starts adding medalists beneath the bottom of the block rather than at the top of the interior. This is where developers tend to get into an argument over whether pages are actually developed to the Web standard, and whether the browser or the developer got it wrong. While all that arguing is going on, Firefox, IE, Chrome, and Safari users are reading this page just fine.

One user today noted a similar layout discrepancy on Opera's own multi-language portal page, which laid out two elements in the middle of one another rather than adjacent to one another. Opera appears to have addressed this issue by completely changing the layout of that page to something simpler for now. Most of the messages to Opera's forum today consisted of congratulations, and very well augmented emoticons of support.

Our discussions with Opera Software representatives over the past few days give us the impression that there is a certain class of non-crash discrepancy that Opera's developers set aside, in an effort to focus on potential "showstoppers" that could delay the final release. By "delay," I don't mean the kind that could throw things off by a month or more (as has historically been the case with Firefox) but by an hour or two. During the Release Candidate stage (there was actually an RC5 prior to this morning's RTM), the company restricted its feedback to a narrower set of testers which, we're told, included those who responded to forums. We did get the impression, however, that commenters who complained of issues they claimed were unaddressed since version 9, were put aside along with the layout glitches, to be handled at a later time.

Problems were reported with upgrading Opera 10.1 to 10.5. Our advice is that such problems should be avoided by uninstalling Opera 10.1 first, then installing 10.5 fresh.

So what we're seeing -- if I may be allowed to continue my automotive analogy for a moment -- is a completely renewed chassis and much more horsepower in the engine, but some work remaining to be done with the upholstery. Still, Opera is back in the hunt. The final build of 10.5 did reclaim some of the performance numbers it lost during the heavily accelerated RC period, scoring a 21.66 in our Windows 7 performance index (21-and-two-thirds the relative performance of IE7 in Windows Vista SP2), which is 314% of the performance of its 10.1 predecessor. Google's fastest browser at the moment, its dev build 335.1 of Chrome 5, scores a 19.88 on the same decathlon of tests on the same machine.

In terms of computational speed, Opera is not yet the fastest, though it is disarmingly close -- as in, Julia Mancuso-to-Lindsey Vonn close. Opera 10.5 does have the fastest stable browser in the SunSpider battery, with a 68.64 relative score in Windows 7 compared to 58.55 for the latest stable Chrome 4 and 50.56 for the stable Safari 4. The Chrome 5 dev build just tops out at 69.83.

This morning, Opera 10.5 slipped past the stable Chrome 4 in the SlickSpeed CSS selectors test (even though its CSS rendering could use improvement), with an 11.64 score versus 11.54 for Chrome 4. The development builds of both Safari and Chrome, however, are faster.

Where Opera zips past the rest of the field at warp speed is in graphics performance, with a jaw-dropping 68.51 that is still better than double any other browser's score in the field, including development builds.

As of this moment, the Opera development team is sprucing up their final releases for Mac and Unix -- even with no sleep. But now, they have managed an incredible feat: They haven't just put Opera back on the map. They successfully diverted the focus of much of our attention during this critical period in history away from where it most likely would have, and perhaps rightly should have, gone -- from Firefox, the most popular alternative to IE -- to the brand that some analysts believe fell below 1% usage share. Just like Bjorn Ferry in the cross-country pursuit a few weeks ago, the Swedish team has come back to claim gold.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Apple has sued smartphone maker HTC for patent infringement, citing 20 patents related to the iPhone's user interface, architecture, and hardware, a statement from the company said this morning.

A statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs today said, "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

The lawsuit was filed both with the US International Trade Commission and in US District Court in Delaware, where Nokia has been battling Apple on similar grounds.

Apple Patents included in the suit:

• "Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States"
• "Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics"
• "Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image," (this is the newest patent involved, granted on February 2, 2010)
• "List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display"
• "System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device"
• "Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices"
• "GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality"
• "Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor"
• "Object-Oriented Graphic System"
• "Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods."

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Web-based photo editing suite Picnik announced today that it has been acquired by Google for an unspecified amount that Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato called a "very, very happy number."

The startup opened in 2005 and was chosen to be Flickr's default photo editor in 2007 when Yahoo was introducing a host of new features to the popular photo sharing site. Long before Adobe released its Web-based version of Photoshop, Picnik was already going strong.

Google will reportedly leave Picnik as its own brand for now, and allow it to be integrated into third party sites, including Flickr. Brian Axe, Product Management Director for Picasa, today said there will be no announcements about any significant changes to Picnik today, but Google will be "collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the Web."

It's the second piece of news today that has involved Google and Yahoo in a strange symbiosis.

The first bit came in a rather unlikely place: a Motorola Backflip unboxing. Adding to the Backflip's reputation as the strangest Android device to date, the default search engine is Yahoo and not Google.

Naturally, Motorola's MotoBLUR interface is built on the open source Android framework so a "Google Experience" should not necessarily be expected, but it is nonetheless interesting to see a Yahoo home screen widget on Android instead of a Google one.

For now, it appears that Google's Picasa and Yahoo's Flickr will share a photo editing suite as well.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

As IE6 and IE7 users throughout Europe turn on their Windows Vista- and XP-based computers to notice, for the first time, the opportunity to switch Web browsers from Microsoft Internet Explorer to something they may have never heard of, their manufacturers are preparing for an influx of new customers.

But they may also be preparing to lower expectations just in case the market share numbers for Firefox or Chrome or Opera or Safari fail to swing wildly positive overnight. Last week, Mozilla launched its opentochoice.org blog, ostensibly to help spread the word about the impact the choice screen may make on European computing habits. On Friday, however, the blog posted the results of a six-country, 6,000 respondent consumer poll conducted by advertising research firm Ipsos MORI.

The firm itself has yet to post detailed results, though the question it posed to consumers may as well have been an advertisement: "Were you aware that the European Commission has adopted a decision ensuring the millions of Microsoft users across the European Union who have Internet Explorer installed as their default Internet browser will now have to be offered the chance to choose the browser they want to use via a choice screen which appears on their PC/Laptop screen?"

Only 30% of respondents in Poland answered yes to the above question, with 19% of Spaniards replying in the affirmative. Results for participants in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK fell in-between.

Friday evening, a member of Mozilla's new blog with the handle Pony wrote candidly about being suspicious that the choice screen was some kind of malware: "I wasn't aware of this. The browserchoice window popped up on my laptop today and I was pretty suspicious and tried to close it down. There wasn't an explanation of why it was there, and it was so bland that I thought it was some dodgy pop-up trying to trick me into downloading something bad. I even looked up browserchoice.eu on a Whois to see who owned it, but still thought it was dodgy as I didn't see quite why Microsoft would own a domain like this rather than use their well-known "trusted" microsoft.com. Feel a bit stupid now -- I've been meaning to download Firefox for ages."

The final browser choice screen, available from browserchoice.eu.

In order to allay concerns from browser makers that Microsoft would give itself top billing on the browser screen, the company promised to the European Commission that it would randomize the order of the top five browsers in the first panel, so that IE8 would not always appear first. Right away today, there were complaints in some circles that Microsoft wasn't really randomizing the order.

Those complaints were given some credence when the Slovakian tech site DSL.sk ran tests on the underlying JavaScript code for the browserchoice.eu Web page, and determined that the distribution of browser brands among the top five slots was not even. Despite the translated page appearing to say the test was run in Internet Explorer, it's difficult to avoid seeing DSL.sk's screenshots of the test clearly depict Google Chrome as the browser.

These numbers were probably impossible to resist for IBM software architect Rob Weir. You may recall Weir from his prominent involvement in the ODF/OOXML debate three years ago. Weir was an active opponent of Microsoft's Office XML standard being approved by the ISO, though throughout that episode, he always accepted the facts in front of him. Over the weekend, Weir put his mind to the task of investigating the claims of unfair distribution. As he discovered, Microsoft's code uses the Math.random() function of the standard JavaScript library. But rather than craft a proven shuffling algorithm, architects of the browser screen apparently took the simplest option: filling the array sequentially {0,1,2,3,4}, and then randomly swapping their locations with one another left or right five times. Imagine a poorly-shuffled street corner shell game, and you get the idea.

"Microsoft...fell for the well-known trap," Weir wrote. "What they did is sort the array, but with a custom-defined comparison function. JavaScript, like many other programming languages, allows a custom comparator function to be specified... This is a very flexible approach, and allows the programmer to handle all sorts of sorting tasks, from making case-insensitive sorts to defining locale-specific collation orders, etc...Since Math.random() should return a random number chosen uniformly between 0 and 1, the RandomSort() function will return a random value between -0.5 and 0.5. If you know anything about sorting, you can see the problem here. Sorting requires a self-consistent definition of ordering...All of these statements are violated by the given Microsoft comparison function. Since the comparison function returns random results, a sort routine that depends on any of these logical implications would receive inconsistent information regarding the progress of the sort. Given that, the fact that the results were non-random is hardly surprising."

So Microsoft's solution, once again, is somewhat inelegant. But who does it benefit? Not exactly Microsoft, Weir discovered. The distribution of the random pattern should give each browser 20% distribution on every slot, if it were fair. As it turns out, IE, Firefox, and Safari all get about 25% distribution in the #1 (leftmost) slot, with Opera #1 16% of the time and Chrome #1 9% of the time. More often than any other slot, IE is positioned #2 (28%), Firefox is positioned #2 (28%), Opera is positioned #3 (26.4%), Chrome #4 (38%), and Safari #5 (53%).

Although it's tempting to blame the randomization function in IE's library, Weir blames the developers of the browserchoice.eu Web site: "So given the above, we know two things: 1) The problem is real. 2) The problem is not related to a flaw in Internet Explorer."

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

How disastrous is Microsoft's hobbled mobile strategy? Today's Pew Internet report, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," offers some glimpse and even some hope. The report reveals that more Americans than ever rely on their cell phones for news and other information. Speaking personally, I find the Google News widget on my Nexus One to be indispensable.

Fifty-three percent of US adults "access the Internet wirelessly either through a laptop or a cell phone, BlackBerry or other handheld device," according to the report. Adults? What about measuring teen Internet usage -- and not just cell phones but WiFi devices like Apple's iPod touch? (More griping about Pew overlooking teens will come later in the post.)

"Pew Internet studies have shown that wireless Internet users are different from other online adults in important ways: they are 36 percent more likely than wired Internet users to access the Internet on a given day, and they engage in virtually all online activities (including email, social networking, and blogging) at higher rates than other internet users."

According to Pew, about 80 percent of US adults have cell phones, with 37 percent connecting to the Internet or email. "Overall, 26 percent of American adults say they get some form of news via cell phone -- that amounts to 33 percent of adult cell phone owners and 88 percent of adults who have mobile internet." For the broader category of cell phone users, those seeking news varies by age: 43 percent for those under 50 and 15 percent for those over the big five-oh.

What do these mobile information hounds most care about? The weather (72 percent); news and current events (68 percent); sports scores (44 percent); traffic data (35 percent); financial data (32 percent); and news alerts sent by text or email (31 percent).

Analysts love to breakout data into demographic subgroups, and the Pew team is no exception, identifying "on-the-go-news consumers."

Not surprisingly, on-the-go news consumers maximize their cell phone use. They are 67 percent more likely than other cell phone users to text message, more than twice as likely to take pictures with their phones, and four times as likely to use their phones to instant message. They are also especially heavy Internet users -- 80 percent of this on-the-go group are online on a given day, compared with just 67 percent of other internet users -- and they engage in activities such as blogging (20 percent v. 11 percent ), using social networking sites (73 percent v. 48 percent), and using status update sites like Twitter (29 percent v. 14 percent) at significantly higher rates than other internet users.

Pew surveyed 2,259 US adults, ages 18 or older, between Dec. 28, 2009 and Jan. 19, 2010. However, the number referring to "Internet users" is 1,675. The valuable data is sadly incomplete because PEW ignored teens, which is simply inconceivable to me.

As for what this all means for Microsoft's mobile strategy:

1) More than half of US consumers already get news and other real-time information wirelessly -- laptops more than cell phones. Microsoft should seek to improve news gathering on Windows laptops and transfer the behavior to Windows Phone 7 Series. Tactically, Internet Explorer 8 features like Accelerators and Web Slices are a starting point. New Outlook social networking features are another.

Microsoft can then use established behavior on the desktop and leverage it to Windows Phone 7 Series, by offering similar capabilities. Consumers should be able to sync capabilities and their behavior from mobile Windows desktop to Windows Phone.

2) Microsoft should retool Bing for better news and information dissemination coordinated across the desktop and mobile device -- something Google already is doing with newer features like GPS location-based search and inclusion of news and weather widgets on Android 2.1 handsets. Based on other sections of the PEW report, Microsoft is right to make social networking such an important and pervasive feature in Windows Phone 7 Series.

3) "On-the-go-news consumers" are an ideal demographic for Microsoft. According to Pew Internet: "The typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, age 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full-time." Many gadget companies target younger (ages 25-34), educated males for a reason. The same demographic going after online information may also be likely to buy bleeding-edge gear -- say, a new Windows Phone.

Pew's study may also help explain some odd findings from last week's AdMob study -- that the majority of Android users are male (73 percent). By comparison, iPhone: 57 percent. Additionally, 51 percent of Android users are between 25 and 44 compared to 42 percent of iPhone users. By the way, 65 percent of iPod touch users are under 17 -- and Pew ignored that market segment in its study? Shame. Shame.

Microsoft should focus some -- perhaps much -- of its initial Windows Phone marketing on males 25-44, provided OS and applications capabilities are information and social sharing focused.

[Editor's Note: All charts are from Pew Internet report "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer."]

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Four men from a San Francisco company called Wiseguy Tickets Inc. have been indicted in a $25 million online ticket fraud scheme, the US Department of Justice announced today.

The four men -- Kenneth Lowson, 40, Kristofer Kirsch, 37, Faisal Nahdi, 36, and Joel Stevenson, 37 -- have been indicted on conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to gain unauthorized access and exceed authorized access to computer systems, and 42 additional counts of wire fraud; gaining unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access to computer systems; or causing damage to computers in interstate commerce.

Wiseguy Tickets would allegedly bypass online ticketing limitations so they could purchase huge blocks of the best seats for the most sought after concerts, live theater, and sporting events.

Vendors such as Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, MLB.com, and MusicToday do not let ticket resellers and brokers buy bulk tickets online. Instead, access is restricted to individuals who must register their sessions through authentication software such as CAPTCHA, an method where the user must type in the letters he sees in a scrambled onscreen image to enter a site. Mechanisms like this are meant to deter automated ticket purchases.

In 2008, Ticketmaster won a suit against Pittsburgh-based RMG Technologies for selling software that let brokers bypass Ticketmaster's authentication systems and online sales limits.

According to the indictment, Wiseguys Tickets developed a network of so-called "CAPTCHA Bots" with a Bulgarian software developer which gave Wiseguys the ability to buy tons of tickets the moment they went on sale. The company amassed its own database of hundreds of thousands of potential CAPTCHA test answers which the bots could then identify and complete faster than a person could. The group disguised their activities by setting up fake companies, fake domains, and fake email addresses.

With these methods in place, Wiseguys managed to buy 1.5 million tickets, including some of the most notoriously expensive shows around. Wiseguys reportedly bought nearly half of the general admission floor seats for a Bruce Springsteen concert in 2008.

Tickets to Bruce Springsteen shows have been so scarce, and sold at such inflated prices, that the Federal Trade Commission has had to get involved.

In what the FTC called a "bait and switch" maneuver, Ticketmaster was reportedly routing customers to an affiliate site called TicketsNow where it would sell tickets to 2009 Springsteen shows at triple or even quadruple their face value. Still other customers reportedly bought tickets directly from Ticketmaster.com but never got them.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster recently settled with the FTC and agreed to provide full refunds to consumers who bought tickets to 14 Springsteen concerts at dramatically inflated prices.

The "Wiseguys," however, won't get off so easily. Each defendant faces up to five years in prison on the conspiracy charges, and up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud; plus a further $250,000 fine per count of hacking (a.k.a., "gaining unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access to computers").

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

At first blush, Apple's decision to cull a few thousand sexually suggestive titles from its iTunes App Store may seem like a puritanical attempt to cleanse its consumer-friendly image of any taint of smuttiness. But like everything related to Apple, the reality distortion field that surrounds the company makes even this assessment a questionable one.

Don't think for a second that wannabe-porn (what Apple called "overtly sexual content" in its removal notices to affected developers) won't be returning soon to any platform with an Apple logo on it. And don't think for a second that Apple will be upset about welcoming more skin to its ecosystem.

But first, let's look at last month's apparent purge of pseudo-porn. Apple's got a lot of good reasons to clean things up. Namely, as it gets ready to ship iPads later this month, it recognizes that the demographic spread of its iPhone/iPod touch universe will shift once the larger-screened devices hit the market. As iPads pop up in the home and at school, the last thing Apple wants or needs is for a less-than-optimally-supervised child to accidentally stumble into the kind of content that was once delivered surreptitiously to one's doorstep in a paper bag (no, not my own doorstep, but gee, thanks for asking).

It's all about control

Don't get me wrong, though: Apple doesn't necessarily need or want a totally skin-free App Store. It simply wants to be able to control the not-suitable-for-prime-time content that does ultimately get approved. There's money to be made from all forms of porn, and publicly traded Apple never met a profit-driving opportunity it didn't like. That it may or may not be wearing a bikini in the process is immaterial to Apple.

So while slicing 5,000 or so somewhat blue offerings from its App Store could be seen as correcting an earlier mistake to approve them in the first place, it's really little more than Apple's attempt to control how those apps appear and how they're purchased. Those 5,000 apps will be back before long, and they'll be displayed on the online equivalent of fresh new shelving.

To keep things simple, let's call anything up to and including February 2010 the "pre-porn era." While Apple happily approved titles from well-known publishers like Playboy and Sports Illustrated, as well as lesser lights like On The Go Girls and Iugo Mobile Entertainment, it didn't categorize them as uniquely as, say, the neighborhood video store would typically treat its adult material. We're all familiar with the stereotype of the cordoned off section at the back of the store, the one kids aren't supposed to enter. The App Store wasn't quite as segregated during this era, so apps with "overtly sexual content" were finding their way into other, more mainstream areas of the online resource.

It was the Web-based equivalent of putting soft-core next to Pixar's latest release. Until it had a way of keeping the iffy stuff permanently under wraps, Apple's only real solution was to remove it entirely while it programs a workable, long-term solution.

Another wall in the garden

That solution will likely take the form of an "Explicit" section in the App Store. Developers are already atwitter over reported sightings of this new category, and Apple's non-confirmation notwithstanding, it would result in a virtual kind of back-of-the-store section -- one that would keep the kids from accidentally encountering things they shouldn't...and developers from complaining that their more mainstream, seriously-themed titles were appearing cheek by jowl (I know, ew, but humor me here) with the titillating ones. Walling off the garden solves the conflict neatly just as it sets the stage for ongoing profits from this growing market space.

In Apple's post-porn era, which essentially begins now, segregation of content is crucial as the iPhone OS universe continues to expand beyond the original phone-based device. The iPod touch has become the de facto choice of today's kids and teens. For parents not ready to go the full-on cell phone route with their kids, the iPod touch is the ideal compromise as it isn't a simple game machine like the Nintendo DS/DSi and Sony PSP, and it doesn't come with the monthly hit from a wireless carrier. The iPad will extend this even further, as schools are actively exploring the tablet device's educational potential. You can't very well have questionable titles creeping into the mix when the principal is doing her research.

How do you define it?

If you're a parent, of course, this entire discussion doubtless makes you feel a little dirty. Porn, after all, is the scourge of the Internet. We can debate all day how we choose to define the various grades of porn, but ultimately there will be no agreement. Apple's "overtly sexual content" is someone else's soft-core porn. And to my prudish, spinster aunt who never smiled for as long as I knew her, the swimsuit catalog that appeared in her mailbox like clockwork every spring was the pornographer's equivalent of a ticket to a very hot, eternal place.

In any form, pornography's pervasiveness defies the imagination just as it opens up business opportunities for those with the cojones to set the morality of it all aside for a bit. As a profit-seeking, publicly traded company, Apple is simply pursuing a market opportunity that presented itself when developers first decided to push the boundaries of skin -- and taste -- and got the first of those now-disputed 5,000 apps approved.

The fact that Apple has decided it doesn't want porn ruling its platform doesn't mean it doesn't want porn at all. It simply means that Apple wants to rule everything that goes on in its software universe. That some of the titles may be considered by some pornographic, or overtly sexual, or whatever, is irrelevant to the company. In the coming months, Apple will put the proper controls and processes in place to effectively manage the content and the revenue it's expected to generate.

Anyone who thinks the same thing isn't about to happen on every other mobile platform in existence is at risk of misunderstanding just how critical this skin-flecked revenue stream is to everyone's future business. Android and BlackBerry users? You're next.

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.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Since yesterday evening, PlayStation 3 users have been reporting difficulties in connecting their consoles to the PlayStation Network for online gameplay and system updates. While it was first thought to be a network-related issue, Sony has warned that there is a much more widespread issue currently affecting older PlayStation 3's.

Sony's offical statement lists the following errors as a part of this internal clock bug:

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000. When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; "An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)."
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; "Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game."
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; "The current date and time could not be obtained (8001050F)."
• Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

"If you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data," Sony warned this afternoon.

The company hopes to have the issue resolved by tomorrow.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

All praise the great gods of the InterWeb for their divine intervention. March 1, 2010 is Internet Explorer 6's judgment day, when mighty Google and Microsoft looked down from the heavens -- or Mt. Olympus, if you prefer - and cast IE6 into the abyss. Starting today, Google is beginning to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, while Microsoft presents European Union Windows users with a ballot screen for choosing even the most obscure browser, but not IE6. Microsoft's once mighty browser has fallen -- and not a second soon enough.

IE6's heart turned evil long ago. Microsoft released the browser in 2001 only to later let development languish. Only after Mozilla released Firefox in late 2004 and, around the same time, Google showed that bundled search could make browsers profitable did Microsoft start seriously working on IE7. But by the then, IE6's cold-hearted proprietary standards had polluted the InterWeb with wicked metatags.

During IE6's reign of terror -- before there were real alternative browsers other than Opera -- Website designers paid tribute by using a DOCTYPE (or Document Type Declaration) tag to open browser-specific pages or stylesheets. DOCTYPE was created with other page-rendering purposes, but because of IE6's wicked dictatorship -- ah, proprietary standards -- it came to be mainly used for setting the browser's layout mode, mainly "quirks" or "standards."

Meanwhile, IE6 amassed a great group of worshipers -- malware writers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities for profit. In the early "noughties," IE6 brandished ActiveX as a great sword and shield, unleashing lightning that promised to spread a great horde of plug-ins across the InterWeb. IE6 blinded enterprise IT managers with great ActiveX promises. By adopting ActiveX, IT managers could automate processes, thus saving time and money. Their promised reward: Heavenly respite from their labors -- the chance to leave the office at 5 p.m. and enjoy a real life, rather than be chained to Web servers demanding manual servitude.

But IE6 betrayed enterprise ActiveX followers by allowing malware worshipers to spread malicious code across the InterWeb and Intranets. The promise of early work days became long hours of work nights trying to repair the damage done by ActiveX and other IE6 security exploits.

Like Zeus, who often couldn't keep his god children in check, Microsoft did little to reign in Internet Explorer 6 for far too long. After all, IE6 was Microsoft's child, as wicked as it had become. Parents love even the wickedest child. Now, with the birth of Internet Explorer 8 and growing InterWeb population demands to oust IE6, Microsoft has finally taken action. But only after the great god Google acted first. Google pledged to smite IE6 before Microsoft, even though their first strikes come the same day.

IE6 will be missed by malware worshipers and enterprise IT managers too dependent on ActiveX controls to easily switch browsers. ActiveX remains in IE7 and IE8, but Microsoft caged the plug-in architecture by changing the default settings. ActiveX is "Prometheus Bound," unless freed by IT managers or end users changing the default settings.

Google and Microsoft may have struck down IE6, but the browser won't easily or suddenly go into the abyss. Too many worshipers remain. According to Net Applications, 19.76 percent of Internet users used IE6 in February -- that's more than IE7 (13.57 percent) but not IE8 (22.52 percent). IE6 usage share was more than Apple Safari, Google Chrome and Opera combined (12.41 percent). Even for the great gods Google and Microsoft -- and the massive powers of monopoly -- IE6 won't easily be vanquished. But at least they're finally trying.

The IE6 death watch is finally underway. The question: How long before the browser is cast down into oblivion? I ask Betanews readers for predictions. How long do you think it will take before IE6 usage reaches zero? When will you and all the InterWeb population be free from IE6's lordship? Please answer in comments.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Release Candidate 4 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Just a handful of weeks ago, the developers of Opera 10.5 were calling their "pre-alpha" build dangerous if used to run a nuclear reactor facility. Over the weekend, in what appears to have been a round-the-clock effort to compress a few months' work into a few days' time, Opera Software ticked through four release candidates of its latest Windows-based Web browser.

The reason, of course, is Microsoft's rollout of its browser choice screen for European users of older versions of Internet Explorer. Some users reported seeing the screen for the first time over the weekend, though the full-scale rollout began in earnest today.

Judging from the fury of messages posted to Opera's developers' site over the past 72 hours, the team has been able to address some of the major bugs reported by testers in the field. Some. But others are complaining that problems continue even with the latest RC4 build posted this morning, including drag-and-drop problems discovered by Betanews last week and verified by others in the field. That somewhat "wonky" behavior persisted for us this morning -- for example, with the problematic Bookmarks tab (where bookmarks are managed in 10.5), we tried dragging a bookmark to the Trash can only to find the entire folder in which that bookmark appeared, was sent there instead.

Betanews isn't alone here; at least one other tester in the field is reporting similar problems as of just this morning. "Is it not a waste of time to post a new build for every two fixed bugs," reported one tester today. "It is getting to be ridiculous."

One tester with handle mrd disagreed: "Ideally (but in the real world almost never) you want less bug fixes per release, because then it's easier to nut out any regressions caused," he wrote.

For others, it's getting to be quite exciting. Many are expecting an RTM edition to go live sometime today. Some have suggested that it may be more important for Opera to go ahead and call it finished now, and just post hotfixes over the coming days for remaining issues.

Writes Idan Adar, "People need to understand that 10.5 is already a huge step forward from 10.10. People need to understand that at some point a software must get released, despite all issues -- new and old. If any of you guys actually follow these snapshots in this blog, then you also know that a short while after 10.5 is out there will be new snapshots of whatever comes next."

But there appear to be a truckload of those issues, and testers are providing evidence through screenshots.

In our own continued tests, with RC4, we noted a few tweaks had been made to the new translucent skin since Beta 2. We also discovered that one of the peculiarities we discovered last week in the layout of the Tab bar when wrapping (multi-row) is turned on -- the creation of an excess gap along the right side -- only occurs on accounts where Windows font magnification is set higher than 100%. At 100% magnification, the trash can icon rests nicely along the right side of the window; but with higher magnification, it gets situated more toward the middle, off by its lonesome.

Other testers are reporting the following issues: smooth scrolling that isn't smooth anymore; improper rendering of Chinese characters, with spaces between each one; some HTML5 videos not playing in the browser while others will; the drop-down list from the address bar occasionally showing up with a transparent backdrop (rendering the opaque contents illegible); and CSS objects that don't line up properly, such as in the test you're seeing here. Pictured above is how Facebook reported the results of Sunday afternoon's classic Canada vs. US men's Olympic hockey game, as rendered in Mozilla Firefox 3.6 (stable version).

And here is how Opera 10.5 RC4 renders the same page. Note the contents of the table in the middle overlap their boundaries, that the Facebook logo in the table at right is completely obscured, and also that the Medal Count box in the upper right corner appears completely empty. If you look very closely, the contents that should be in that box appear below it instead, peeking out from in-between the borders of the sporting event category buttons.

For some, sites with streaming content fail to load entirely, such as Last.fm. Early Betanews tests this morning revealed that with the recent bug fixes, Opera 10.5's performance took a hit. We also found evidence that Opera wasn't the only company with developers working overtime: Google has turned the burners on high for Chrome 5. As a result, what was a three-point gap on our Windows 7 performance index has now been cut to less than one point: a 20.70 overall score for Opera versus 19.88 for Chrome 5 dev build 335.1. Chrome leads over Opera, either slightly or substantially, in all the computational tests; it's in graphics and rendering where Opera holds a little bit of an edge. It lost its edge in table rendering to Chrome 5 this morning.

Long-time Opera users are excited to see their favorite product back in the hunt for browser supremacy, and there's no doubt that this hunt has improved the product significantly. But the rough edges will be the first edges that newcomers to Opera see this week -- folks who haven't even heard of Opera Software, will be trying it for the first time. Those hotfixes, if they're in the works, had better come quickly.

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

When you buy a PC or some other CE gadget, what kinds of substances are actually inside it...and what's being used to ship it to your house? At the Consumer Electronics Association's Greener Gadgets 2010 in New York City last week, ecologically oriented speakers touched on that question, in some cases proposing alternative materials -- such as cork or "Ecocradle" -- that they'd like to see show up in those places instead.

Yves Behar, founder of the Fuseproject product design agency, held forth on how gadgets can be "desirable" and "in demand" while at the same time friendly to the environment.

As a few examples of this combination of traits, Behar cited Herman Miller's energy-efficient LED lights, Bluetooth headphones from Jawbone, and PCs that he personally helped to design earlier in his career for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

But what's actually inside the "typical laptop" PC? Leo Bonanni, founder of Sourcemap.org, provided his answer by pointing to a slide of one of the many "sourcemaps" created by the open source group to illustrate the supply chain origins and carbon footprints of various objects.

Bonanni's sourcemap of the typical laptop includes about 50 ingredients, including steel from the Russian Federation, copper from Chile, nickel from Australia, and glass from Kentucky, along with aluminum, cadmium, and lead. The latter two ingredients often end up being often reused in children's jewelry, he noted. "We only have something for a short time in its life," according to Bonanni, who is also a PhD. candidate at MIT Media Lab. "We're just kind of shepherding it from one point to another."

Pictured left to right: Sarah Rich, senior editor, Dwell; Julian Lwin, owner, Lwindesign; and Andrew Wagner, editor-in-chief, ReadyMade, participating in the Greener Gadgets conference in New York City last February 25. [Photo credit: Jacqueline Emigh]

Through the information in the sourcemaps about carbon footprints, "You can say, 'We are exactly this green.'"

Aside from the laptop map, other popular sourcemaps on the .org site include maps for a toothbrush, a bottle of Poland Springs water, a Tesla Roadster, a Toyota Prius, and a giant TCR '04 bicycle.

Bonanni didn't precisely say whether he believes the materials in a "typical laptop" are environmentally sound. But Adele Peters, a participant in this year's Greener Gadgets design contest, clearly thinks she's come up with a better alternative to the computer mouse that ships in the same box as so many desktop PCs.

Peters' entry in the contest, Corky, is a wireless mouse designed to be powered by the motion of your hand, thereby eliminating the need for batteries. Corky's shell is made of cork recycled from bottlecaps, whereas its other components come from recycled plastic.

"Movement back and forth on the desk is captured by elements within the mouse shell. Buttons on the left and right each engage a piezoelectric element which stores the energy generated. The scroll wheel actuates another element as it turns," according to literature posted on the Green Gadgets site.

Corky made it onto a list of ten finalists culled from visitors' votes on the Web site. But in two subsequent rounds of votes held at the event -- one of them by an "American Idol"-style panel of three judges, and one by the audience itself -- the mouse got outvoted by several other green innovations.

First Place in the awards contest went to AUG Living Goods, a mobile phone app that scans bar codes to give you information about the foods you're buying. Taking Second Place was the Empower Chair, a glider-style chair which stores and reuses energy from the motion of the glider. The third slot went to Illumi-Charger, a grid-free USB wall charger.

One of the judges, ReadyMade Editor-in-Chief Andrew Wagner, voiced doubts that motion alone would be enough to power the Corky mouse.

Eben Bayer, another presenter at Greener Gadgets, showed a green alternative to the Styrofoam packing that turns up in so many shipments of consumer electronics products.

"Our vision is to rid the earth of Styrofoam," said Bayer, COO of Ecovative Design LLC. In his talk, Bayer repeatedly referred to Styrofoam as "toxic white stuff."

Beyond its role as a packing material, Styrofoam is also used inside the walls of homes. The EPA estimates that the material consumes 25% of all landfills, according to Bayer.

"It's still going to be there a year later because this stuff doesn't break down," he added.

Bayer's alternative, Ecocradle, uses husks from feedstocks such as buckwheat -- "which would otherwise get burned or dumped into the ocean" -- bound together by glue made of mycelium, the regenerative part of the "ecologically sustainable" mushroom.

Unlike the environmentally friendly corn ethanol peanuts used recently, Ecocradle is moldable to support the shapes of various electronic components, according to Bayer. He said he hopes that if someone ever tosses Ecocradle packing by the roadside, "you'll [soon] see a plant growing there."

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

Over the next three to five years, a lot more people will be giving up their collections of music CDs in favor of music subscriptions and downloads to smartphones, according to speakers at this week's Digital Music Forum in New York City.

As the major force behind the future trend, panelists cited music applications and services ranging from Spotify and Comes with Music to Shazam, Slacker, and a new offering called Thumbplay Music which just entered private beta this week.

Right now, about 5% of music consumers perform 80% of all digital music downloads from the Web, estimated Thomas Hesse, Sony Music Entertainment's President of Global Digital Business, US Sales and Corporate Strategy.

But Hesse predicted a huge switch away from purchases of music CDs in stores and online, to be driven by mass marketing through the expansion of musical download services such as Spotify and Nokia's Comes with Music from Europe to the US.

While 60% of Sony's music business is now made up of CD sales, Hesse saw CDs as accounting for only 20% of the business by 2013. The rest will be made up of musical ringtones, subscriptions, and downloads, either paid for by consumers or supported by ad sponsors.

Hesse also envisioned heavy use by Sony of both personalization and direct sales to consumers of packages that supply "all you ever wanted to know about this artist." He cited the availability of Comes with Music in Scandinavia as having helped to drastically reduce the amount of music piracy, mostly through illegal downloads, in that region.

Comes with Music, a free music service for owners of Nokia phones, was initially set to expand to the US in 2009, but the US launch was then postponed to some time later this year.

Spotify, on the other hand, is a proprietary P2P music streaming service, offered for both desktop platforms and various smartphones, designed to let people listen to music with virtually no buffering delay.

In another session at the music show this week, Aydin Caginalp, a partner in the the Entertainment and Media Group at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP, cited figures from the Gartner Group analyst firm as indicating a surge in music download revenues over the next five years.

Caginalp noted that Shazam's MusicID -- an app that identifies tunes played on a smartphone -- quickly turned into one of the most popular iPhone applications in Apple's App Store. MusicID is also available for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile phones.

Pete Watson, senior business development manager for Research In Motion, told attendees that his company has started expanding its previously enterprise-centric app development program over the past year in a more consumer-oriented direction which includes new music apps for BlackBerry phones. "We're very excited about how things are going," according to Watson.

Thumbplay Music, an Adobe AIR-based music service that went into private beta on Wednesday, will run on BlackBerrys, iPhones, Android phones, PCs, and Macs, according to Chris Phenner, the company's executive vice president for business development.

For its part, Slacker currently runs its Internet radio service on BlackBerry, Android, and Palm Pre mobile platforms, as well as desktop platforms, but more environments will be announced over the next few weeks, said Jim Rondinelli, Slacker's senior vice president for strategic development.

During the session, there were some panelists who suggested big barriers still exist to widespread replacement of CDs with downloaded music.

Several speakers cited the complex snare of intellectual property rights that makes it virtually impossible to bring together all the tunes that a user may want to download.

But Thumbplay has already managed to pull together about 8 million tunes, at planned subscription pricing of $10 per month, Phenner said. Thumbplay has licensed content from all of the "big four" recording studios -- Sony, EMI, Universal, and Warner -- along with about 20 smaller record labels.

Panelists also acknowledged that, especially in North America, the erratic quality of cellular connections can get in the way of smooth audio streaming. To get past that roadblock, Slacker provides licenses to users for caching tunes, according to Rondinelli. He added that Slacker also works with smartphone makers to optimize Internet radio on each of Slacker's supported platforms. "Each has its strengths," Rondinelli elaborated.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

There may not be a real investigation of Google's business practices from the European Commission, at least not yet. But judging from the waves of hyperbole emanating from the usual suspects, along with a few new entrants, in the wake of the EC's admission that it forwarded Google some negative mail earlier this month, there may as well have been one. It appears that if enough people on the Internet share a topic with one another, it must be true.

The complaint among three of Google's competitors is that it leverages its hugely popular, all-purpose search engine as a platform for promoting its own exclusive shopping services. In a way, there's almost no contesting the complaint -- that's exactly what Google does. The question is whether that's wrong. As Betanews noted yesterday, the answers may differ depending on the continent they apply to. Depending on the country, the legal standards (and the suppositions behind them) vary.

But late Friday, the other major company whose name was invoked in the course of the complaint -- Microsoft -- issued a response. Instantly, the hyperbolic headlines roared, the empire strikes back. Microsoft fires back a salvo, a shot across the bow, an interceptor missile.

Then it came time to actually read the response. If you think this article buried the lede way down in paragraph 3, you'll be astonished in your search for the main point of the blog post late Friday afternoon from Dave Heiner, the usually well-spoken deputy general counsel for Microsoft.

After stating that the EC has begun an investigation of Google -- a fact which the EC itself flatly contradicted on Wednesday -- Heiner appears to make the case that since so many service providers and advocacy firms have invoked the word "Google" in juxtaposition with "antitrust" in recent weeks, there must be cause for suspicion.

"In this instance, there has been no shortage of affected voices," writes Heiner. Referring first to the three subjects of the EC inquiry, he continued, "A quick Internet search will surface the growing concerns that have been raised by upstart innovators such as Ciao (owned by Microsoft), Foundem and, ejustice.fr, as well as from industry groups such as the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers and The Association of German Magazine Publishers. Publishers, advertisers, advertising agencies and others want to see real competition in search and online advertising. As Google's power has grown in recent years, we've increasingly heard complaints from a range of firms -- large and small -- about a wide variety of Google business practices. Some of the complaints just reflect aggressive business stances taken by Google. Some reflect the secrecy with which Google operates in many areas. Some appear to raise serious antitrust issues. As you might expect, many concerned companies have come to us and asked us for our reaction and even for advice. When their antitrust concerns appear to be substantial, we suggest that firms talk to the competition law agencies."

In summary, complaints...exist. And those complaints suggest, says Heiner, that "Google practices...may be harming publishers, advertisers, and competition in search and online advertising."

Unable to escape the unavoidable comparison between bundling of search and network services and the other major example of service bundling in the history of computing, Heiner acknowledged that bundling can have negative effects on competitive players. That may force competitors to partner, and here, Heiner explicitly referenced Microsoft's forthcoming search partnership with Yahoo. But finally, Heiner closed by saying, as far as the question of true harm to consumers is concerned...who knows?

"Microsoft would obviously be among the first to say that leading firms should not be punished for their success. Nor should firms be punished just because a particular business practice may harm a rival -- competition on the merits can do that, too. That is a position that Microsoft has long espoused, and we're sticking to it. Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content (like Google Books) and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly," the company's deputy general counsel wrote. "Ultimately the competition law agencies will have to decide whether or not Google's practices should be seen as illegal."

In a way, Heiner's retort is brilliant. He and Microsoft are being given credit this evening for standing up to Google, and even scoring some points in favor of fairness -- this message from Microsoft, rarely perceived by enthusiasts as the voice of fairness -- all without having really said all that much of substance.

Yesterday, in response to our story whose headline began "Define 'monopoly,'" some of our regular readers asked for more information and references for some of the main premises of our story: specifically, the thresholds for a "monopoly" in the United States and a "dominant player" in the European Union. It's a wonderful request, and I only apologize for being tied up with other matters, though here is our readers' much deserved response:

It is not really the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 that designates the threshold of dominant market share in the US, even though case law that references Sherman tends to also refer to the 75% threshold. Recent precedent was established by the 2002 ruling in one of the long-standing antitrust battles in American history, R.J. Reynolds v. Philip Morris -- the battle of the tobacco titans. US District Court in North Carolina essentially determined that previous interpretations of Sherman up to that point effectively evened out to a threshold of 75%, or thereabouts.

Specifically, Reynolds accused Morris of an unfair business practice: paying retailers for shelf space for their products. Those payments effectively came in the way of discounts on purchases, though they may be accounted for more like rebates. Morris' plan was such that it allowed competitors to set any price they wanted to for competitors' cartons, such as Reynolds' -- sell the other guy's product however you want, said Philip Morris, as long as you give us a set amount of shelf space. Part of Reynolds' complaint was that it was not in a position to offer retailers a plan that made a similar grant -- it literally could not offer a plan where retailers could sell Morris' brands for whatever prices they wanted.

The court in this case ruled in favor of defendant Morris' petition for summary judgment, on the grounds that Philip Morris may be dominant, but it's not a monopoly. As the judges found, Morris' ascertained 51% national market share was "far below the generally accepted 70 to 75 percent minimum share necessary to support a finding of monopoly power." This while citing the Sherman Antitrust Act, which doesn't actually set this threshold on its own.

The exact threshold for the European market share threshold is open to some dispute. Sometimes the nature or degree of that dispute depends on convenience. For example, in situations where the European Commission defers to member states for establishing precedent, some of those states then lean right back on EC competition law -- and cite 50% as that threshold.

In cases where the EC reviews a potential merger, under the Merger Regulation of 2004, it uses a different metric -- one which determines whether a market share number even below 50% would be considered dominant given the number of other competitors in the remaining market.

And in a very famous statement to Reuters in September 2007, then-Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes celebrated Microsoft's loss in its appeal of the EC's antitrust ruling against it, saying she hoped this would start knocking Microsoft down a few pegs. How much would that be, asked Reuters? "A market level of much less than 95% would be a way of measuring success...You can't draw a line and say exactly fifty [percent] is correct, but a significant drop in market share is what we would like to see."

BETACHECK

For more:

• "United States Antitrust Law Related to Bundling, Loyalty Discounts and Slotting Allowances" by Barbara T. Sicalides. From the blog of Sicalides' law firm, Pepper Hamilton LLP, October 5, 2007.
• "The Development of Antitrust Enforcement" (PDF available here). From the producers of the documentary film Fair Fight in the Marketplace, narrated by NPR legal correspondent Mara Liasson.
• Antitrust Law and Economics of Product Distribution. American Bar Association, 2006. See the Google Books citation, page 312.
• Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and Economic Foundations. American Bar Association, 2005. See the Google Books citation, "Market Share as a Predictor of Market Power," page 82.
• 2002 Annual Review of Antitrust Law Developments. Section of Antitrust Law, American Bar Association, 2002. See the Google Books citation, "Market Share as Indicator of Market Power," page 53.
• "A Simple Guide to the EC Merger Regulation of 2004" (PDF available here). Published by The Antitrust Source, January 2005.
• "DG Competition Discussion Paper on the Application of Article 82 of the Treaty to Exclusionary Abuses: Public Consultation" (PDF available here). Published by The Antitrust Alliance, an independent forum on antitrust practices.
• "EU Competition Policy and the Consumer" (PDF available here). A brochure published in 2004 by the European Commission for Competition. This brochure is not exactly the record of European law, but it's notable for the initially broad definition it set for the phrase Dominant Player: "A company is a dominant player in a market if it can change, for example, the price or quality of its product in that market independently of its competitors, customers and suppliers without significantly affecting its sales."
• "Regulatory Reform in Finland: The Role of Competition Policy in Regulatory Reform" (PDF available here). Published by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2003. Note in particular page 13, which explains the concept of "Abuse of Dominance," and clearly defines dominance as "presumed" to imply 50% market share or greater.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows from Fileforum now.

One of the more brilliant coups in the history of Web browsers, were it feasible, would be for Opera Software to seize Google's key argument -- that the best Web browser that European Windows users should switch to next month, is the fastest one -- and make it its own. Those users will get that opportunity starting March 1, when Microsoft's rollout of its browser "choice screen" through Windows Update, begins in earnest.

That's next Monday, however, and the acceleration of Opera's next-generation Web browser project from 10.2 Alpha 1 status in mid-December, to 10.5 "pre-alpha" status just 10 weeks ago to 10.5 Beta 2 status on Wednesday, is not making time go by any more slowly. As Betanews tests since December until now have revealed, test builds of Opera 10.5 provide an unbelievable 452% the performance of Opera's final 10.2 alpha daily build. With the ongoing replacement of Opera's JavaScript engine, Opera's engineers have made astonishing progress in a very short period of time.

But unless Opera truly plans to pawn off its rapidly advancing browser as a finished application in just a few days' time, like the crew of the Enterprise at the start of the first Star Trek movie, users switching from Internet Explorer 6 could find themselves in a wormhole. Betanews tests of the public build of 10.5 Beta 2 in Windows 7 show evidence of the kind of problems a tester encounters in an alpha or, at best, an early beta. Usually a build dubbed "Beta 2" looks and feels closer to a release candidate.

A heavily customized Opera 10.5 Beta 2 reveals little aesthetic 'splinters' that could be sanded down.

In fairness, I'll start by saying that Beta 2 was much more cooperative with us with regard to folding, stretching, and mutilating the browser frame, than Beta 1. I've always liked Opera's optional panels along the left side, for instance. The screenshot above shows what 10.5 looks like with the "Sand" skin applied (an attractive and unobtrusive tan shade), with "wrapping" turned on for the Tab bar (enabling multiple lines of tabs), with the left side panel selector engaged, and with the Personal bar (Opera's counterpart to Firefox's Bookmarks toolbar) moved to the bottom of the window.

One of the space-saving features in the 10.5 build is the elimination of the window's title bar. Since the title of the active window appears in the active tab anyway, there's a good argument that the title bar is redundant. However, for some peculiar reason, whenever the Personal bar is attached to the top frame of the window, the title bar returns, thereby extending the width consumed by the top of the frame. Move the Personal bar to the bottom, like in the screenshot above, and the title bar disappears again.

Though the 10.5 skin is quite innovative, there's a number of unfinished features about it that I call "splinters" -- little problematic visual elements that detract from the aesthetic flow of the program:

• When the Tab bar is set for "wrapping," thus enabling multiple rows of tabs, the width of each tab becomes fixed. As a result, you can end up with a lot of wasted space on the right side of the Tab bar.
• Also with wrapping turned on in the Tab bar, the Opera button (where the menu bar contents are absorbed) mysteriously floats to the bottom of the bar. It doesn't do this when thumbnails are turned on -- a feature that can consume as much, if not more, width.
• When the arrangement of the window is heavily customized, tabs tend to dovetail into open space. The currently active tab in a multi-line tab bar is one example, as is the floating Opera button. Also, the Panels selector on the lower status bar can dovetail to nothing if the Personal bar is scooted to the bottom.

Some users, especially longtime Opera fans, will say this is nitpicking. They're right. But that's what beta testing is. While experienced users have built up a tolerance for features that look wrong but aren't, novice users who see dovetails and unfinished borders will wonder if something's wrong -- more accurately, if they have done something wrong.

To drag or not to drag

In Betanews tests since Wednesday's release, we encountered a series of related, and perhaps obvious, functional anomalies. Opera has its own mouse movement interpreter, created so that users can make "mouse gestures" without the use of on-screen buttons or gadgets. The browser can interpret a special gesture as a command. But when trying to do ordinary things, like move imported bookmarks to a toolbar, we noticed several inconsistencies.

Historically, we've noted that applications that manage their own mouse movements may have problems with specific mouse drivers, so it may be notable here that our test system uses a standard Logitech mouse. It's important to note here: These behavioral problems persisted up until the point where Opera recognized a mouse movement we attempted with the right button held down as a gesture, and put up a dialog box asking us if we wanted to accept mouse gestures as commands. This happened a half-hour or so into our tests; we responded "Yes." At that point, the behaviors listed below vanished. When we disabled mouse gestures from the Settings > Preferences menu, the behavior returned. Thereafter, we notice the symptoms listed below from time to time when mouse gestures are turned off. However, none of these behaviors caused Opera to crash.

Opera 10.5 Beta 2 puts its bookmarks in a separate tab, like Chrome, rather than a separate window like Firefox.

In any event, we ran into several instances of awkward or unexpected behavior, including the following:

• Dragging an imported bookmark from Opera's Bookmarks tab onto the Personal bar either did not result in the bookmark ending up there, or triggered a rearrangement of the entire contents of the Personal bar, shuffling all the bookmarks that had appeared there before, and adding one other that was not the one being dragged.
• The toolbar being customized sometimes does not accept the dragged object, even though the separator that pops up during the operation clearly shows the toolbar should be receptive.
• Clicking on an item the first time in the Bookmarks tab, just after it's opened, accomplishes nothing, but clicking on it a second time selects it. Clicking on any other single item afterwards will select it.
• "Lasso" drags around a group of items doesn't work in the Bookmarks tab, and perhaps that's by design but it's a bit unexpected.
• Dragging multiple items to a folder (a bookmarks category) does not work the first time, though it will work on successive tries.
• If you click on an item in the Bookmarks tab and then click and hold on some other item, thinking you're dragging it, you might find yourself having dragged the item you clicked on first instead.
• A warning dialog will sometimes appear saying that to add an item to a toolbar, we need to hold the Shift key down. We might see that warning even if we don't have to hold down Shift to successfully alter the arrangement of a toolbar. For the panel selector, you do have to hold down Shift when adding an object to that particular device, and we noted this behavior was consistent throughout.

These are behavioral anomalies consistent with a program that tries to take care of Windows housekeeping for itself; we saw the same level of anomalies with the earlier builds of Google Chrome at the very beginning of its development cycle. But those early builds were classified as such. The problem with Opera 10.5 Beta 2 so far may not be slipshod development (in fact, judged on a timeline, it's actually coming along quite nicely). It's that its readiness for public release and consumption may be somewhat overestimated. These aren't problems that are going to fix themselves over the weekend.

Next: The potential hazards of subdividing the ecosystem...

Download Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows from Fileforum now.

The potential hazards of subdividing the ecosystem

Up until now, one of the strengths that have sustained Opera through the rough periods has been its customizability and extensibility. For the most part, Opera can be made to function the way that users want it to function, and that customizability comes as part of the package. By comparison, Firefox's strength to this point has been that a very strong community of developers, fostered and nurtured by Mozilla, have been able to craft extensions and add-ins to Firefox that enable professional users such as myself to practically reconstruct the browser into the tool they need it to be.

Opera has also nurtured a development community, but the model Opera has promoted revolves around widgets -- mini applications that are executed by Opera's JavaScript interpreter. Since Firefox is a JavaScript app in itself, extensions can run in the context of the browser and modify it. Now, Opera is becoming more strict about its development model. With version 10.5, widgets will be restricted to applets that run outside the browser context, such as weather applets, e-mail checkers, and sidebar-like games.

The new model for Opera 10.5 widgets is supposed to be based on stand-alone applets. But some of Opera's select widgets in its own gallery, are not.

Fair enough, especially since Opera doesn't need a lot of add-ons (like Firefox does) to be customizable. But when European Web browser users see the Opera brand for the first time, by virtue of its prominent placement on Microsoft's new browser "choice screen," whether 10.5 is ready for public consumption or not, Opera will likely lead new users to the place where they can download the fastest browser the company produces. After they do, users will want to experiment with how far they can stretch it...or, they may happen upon the Widgets panel while simply playing around with new and shiny buttons. Once they're taken to Opera's widgets gallery, they'll see add-ons like the homemade version of Google Toolbar (whose listing is shown in the screenshot above).

These users may not know old-style extension widgets won't work in the 10.5 context until installing them and seeing that nothing happens. Users may take that to be a bug in the program, when really it's a change in the architecture that hasn't been passed on to the proprietors of Opera's Widgets gallery. And that may become a problem.

Working with Opera in the performance department

In our report last Tuesday on Opera 10.5 Beta 1's relative performance, we noted that there appeared to be a continuing bug in the way the browser was executing one of our tests. Opera's engineers wondered whether the bug was in the test we were using -- which is actually fairly old, as benchmarks go: the Testnet.World JS JavaScript instruction test.

We've encountered situations before where Opera's and Safari's counters were synched with their respective JavaScript interpreters in such a way that they tended to report that no time was expended whatsoever ("0 ms"). Whether that's actually a defect or an architectural symptom may depend on where one stands (and who signs his paycheck while he's standing there). Nevertheless, two of Opera's architects suggested improvements to the Testnet.World battery that they said would avoid this perception problem.

Giving Opera the benefit of the doubt, we implemented their suggestions. What we discovered made us satisfied that we were given good advice. Essentially, the old benchmark tested the time expended, but when it came up 0, it assumed the test never started running, so it maintained the loop. Our new test battery no longer trusts the expended time indicator, but rather, triggers a binary "done" flag for each test. In order to better measure events that used to take tenths of seconds but now take fractions of milliseconds, we increased the workload for each test by a factor of 10, for a million iterations rather than 100,000.

It was in ten-tupling the workload that we made several interesting discoveries:

• Internet Explorer 7 wasn't such a slouch.. At 100,000 iterations, yes, IE7 on Vista SP2 (our slow index browser, for purposes of comparison) is pretty darned slow. Frankly, I was afraid that increasing the workload would make IE7 slow down exponentially. It did not; in fact, it scaled up the workload rather well, in some cases handling each iteration of the larger workload faster than for the smaller one. As a result, as the workload scales up, the comparative scores for other browsers measured against IE7 go down. That helped reset our overall scores by about 12% across the board.
• For some very repetitious workloads, Firefox is twice as fast as Chrome. No, that's not a typo. It could be argued that real-world Web pages are not going to repeat a million conditional statements. However, if we treat this test battery not in terms of how well browsers repeat statements but of how well they scale large (if artificial) workloads, Firefox is actually the champion here. The stable Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 scored a 4.45 (445% the speed of IE7 in Vista SP2) on the corrected Testnet.World battery. By comparison, the latest daily build of WebKit/Safari 4 scored a 3.91, while Google Chrome 5 Dev build 335.0 scored a 2.26. The latest stable Chrome 4 scored 2.09. What difference does that make? On our old (uncorrected) Testnet.World battery, using one-tenth the workload, Firefox 3.6 scored a 31.88, while Chrome 5 scored 43.18.
• Opera's developers are pretty decent folk. Their suggested changes eradicated the appearance of the "0 ms" anomaly, but it did not result in Opera 10.5 Beta 2 receiving favorable treatment. It only scored a 3.32 on our corrected battery.

Compensating for the anomaly did, as we predicted, improve Opera 10.5 Beta 2's scores relative to Chrome. Though the revised Testnet.World numbers scaled everyone back (IE8 and Firefox least among them), there's now a three-point performance gap between Opera's and Google's most recent development builds. Chrome 5's scores on the other batteries in our Windows 7 test suite were generally lower once again. The latest dev build, among other adjustments, changed the way that browser interprets the source of locally stored HTML files -- each one is now considered within its own individual domain, rather than in the shared domain of the computer. That's a very important safety adjustment that security-minded users should welcome.

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

After resetting our numbers, Opera 10.5 is now the only browser that scores above a 20 in our Windows 7 index, with a 21.50 versus 18.51 for Chrome 5. In the latest builds, Chrome 5 opened up a bit more of a lead against Opera 10.5 in the all-important SunSpider battery. But Opera gained back quite a bit of performance in the table element rendering category, which has historically been a strong point for Opera anyway.

Does Opera feel ready?

As Microsoft would probably tell us at this point, performance gains only matter if users can feel them. "Splinters" such as skin elements that don't line up can lend to perception problems that the browser feels unfinished, and that perception can become a lens that magnifies any other problems the browser has.

One such problem we encountered with Opera 10.5 Beta 2 concerns hesitancy. From time to time, after clicking on a bookmark or a hyperlink, or even during our performance tests, we noticed that the browser can go into a state of limbo for as long as a second, before our network meter validated that it has started loading the page. And when a page contains a long <TABLE> element -- for instance, of items pulled up from an SQL database -- reloading or refreshing the page, or loading a page with a different <TABLE> element, causes the entire plotting area of the window to go white for a noticeable period of time.

There appear to be lots of little issues like this in the latest public beta of Opera 10.5 -- enough for us to suggest there should be at least a Beta 3 cycle before a final public release. If the aim is to move users off of Internet Explorer, it should be noted that IE8 does not have lots of little issues like this. It's slow as a jar of molasses buried under a glacier, but many users don't care because, to them, it feels finished, usable, drivable, like a '76 Cadillac Eldorado.

Opera has come a very long way in a very short period of time. But as Vista proved, perception in this business is everything. If its engineers take the time they need to sand off all the splinters, this browser has all the ingredients it needs to dethrone Firefox, Chrome, and even IE in their respective categories of strength. This is the one that could actually do it. But if it's rushed, and it premieres to the general public looking unfinished and cobbled together, those ingredients may go unnoticed.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

More software developers should follow the lead of Adobe and Skype, which have abandoned Windows Mobile -- what Microsoft now calls Windows Phone Classic. The mobile operating system already was brain dead, even with, according to Gartner, 15 million unit sales in 2009. The heart pumped out licenses, but there was no brain activity to keep the platform going. Windows Mobile flatlined, and it's about time that some Microsoft developers admit it. Others should get over the denial and do the same. Microsoft doesn't have the courage to pull the plug. But smart developers can.

Skype's move was quite audacious -- pulling the Windows Mobile version of the telephony software from download. Those WinMo users with Skype can continue using it. Adobe is doing something different. It's shifting Flash 10.1 development to Windows Phone 7 Series, sidelining any Windows Phone Classic version. Both developers acted wisely. Microsoft may have kept Windows Mobile on life support by the Classic renaming, but the operating system has no real future. There's little reason for hardware manufacturers to release new Windows Phone Classic handsets or for anyone to buy them -- with Windows Phone 7 Series phones coming late in the second half of the year.

Adobe and Skype have set an example not just for other developers but for Microsoft and its customers. Microsoft has for too long made backward compatibility a top development priority, and the approach holds back platform development. Microsoft's willingness to prioritize backward compatibility makes it too easy for large enterprises to run older software versions seemingly forever.

That's why I'm proud of Google and other developers that are saying no to Internet Explorer 6. The browser is ancient by computing years. I calculate computing years as actual years divided 1.5 (Moore's Law) times 7 (dog years), which makes the browser more than 44 years old. By just dog years, IE6 would be a rickety nearly 70 years old. Antiquated software like IE6 has no place on computers anywhere, particularly considering how different the Internet is today than in 2001. Nine years ago, malware making was still more malicious than criminal. Now it's a bloodsport. IE6 isn't young enough or tough enough.

Enabling Bad Customer Behavior

Then there's Windows 2000. In this era of massive layoffs, someone's head should roll in organization running Windows 2000 anywhere. But, of course, Microsoft enabled the bad behavior by backward compatibility and nearly endless life support -- eh, lifecycle support. But Microsoft plans some massive life support plug pulling this year -- although not nearly enough of it, I assert. Windows Vista gold code support ends on April 13. Support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 end on July 13. I wish these operating systems well in the afterlife, if that were possible. They will linger still, as ghosts, and for that Microsoft bears some responsibility.

Microsoft's approach to fighting piracy includes preventing presumed pirated Windows copies from downloading important updates. Legitimate Windows XP or Vista customers can apply a service pack and let their aged operating systems live another day. But those expired, pirated versions will became the Windows undead. Malware writers can use the Windows undead to haunt the Internet with phishing email or, among other nefarious activities, to use Trojans to control living Windows. Call them the possessed.

Perhaps it's telling that the Honeynet Project uses unpatched Windows 2000 and XP systems to bait botnets: "This system is thus very vulnerable to attacks and normally it takes only a couple of minutes before it is successfully compromised." Microsoft's own data (see chart) shows that older Windows versions are more vulnerable to exploit than newer ones or those older ones with newer service packs. How strange, or perhaps revealing, that Microsoft's twice-yearly Security Intelligence Report ignoresthe topic of unpatched pirated Windows versions.

But older, unpatched operating systems are only part of the problem. There is client software, like the aforementioned IE6, or Office. Microsoft anti-piracy tactics can prevent these products from updating, too. Last year, SANS identified to two serious "cyber security risks," one related to client software. Even when updates are available to legitimate customers, they're too slow to apply them. According to SANS: "On average, major organizations take at least twice as long to patch client-side vulnerabilities as they take to patch operating system vulnerabilities. In other words the highest priority risk is getting less attention than the lower priority risk."

But all of this would matter less if more businesses or consumers used newer software -- and if Microsoft enabled good behavior by shortening lifecycle and backward compatibility support.

Developers: The Undead Slayers

Developers have the power to change Microsoft's behavior. They demonstrated this with Windows Vista, which launched without broad application or hardware driver support. By holding back on Vista, developers contributed to early customer bad experiences using the software. Developers should use this power differently -- to get businesses and consumers off older Microsoft software versions. Adobe and Skype (with Windows Phone Classic) and Google (with IE6) show the way for other developers. If Microsoft can't pull the plug. They should.

Microsoft is ready to be helped by developers. The company seems near acceptance that prolonged life support is bad business. The Windows XP-to-Windows 7 upgrade process is example. For once, Microsoft put the experience of the newer thing before compatibility with the older thing, by making XP customers do a clean install to Windows 7. Yes, the approach caused customer migration headaches, but Microsoft's priority was in the right place.

Developers also can help kill off the Windows undead, by removing applications -- particularly Web browsers -- for older operating systems. Sure, there are too many torrents to feed the Windows undead with older software, but developers can make a start by officially yanking their stuff.

Security is one consideration. Usability is another. If there's a Moore's Law for software, it's coming from the Internet. New connected Web services and applications pop up every week. Is the better (and safer) experience going to come from IE6 running on Windows 2000 or IE8 (Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari) running on Windows 7? The answer isn't rocket science. The scourge of older software creates barriers to innovation.

Look at how Apple handles iTunes or iPhone OS. The upgrades are forced during X time period. For iTunes, users are prodded to upgrade until at some future time they can no longer access the music store without a newer software version. For Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard), Apple encouraged Leopard users to upgrade by $29 pricing -- or $100 less than previous versions. Microsoft does some of this forced upgrading with connected apps like Windows Live Messenger. But, overall, the company's approach favors backward compatibility until the software atrophies on life support.

Pull the plug, developers! Because Microsoft won't do it soon enough otherwise.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

In September, Japanese joint venture Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications (CHMC) announced it would be merging with NEC's mobile division into an even bigger joint venture that will be called NEC Casio Mobile Communications Ltd.

The merger was to be completed in April 2010, but today the companies announced that getting regulatory approval is taking longer than anticipated (PDF available here). They hope the merger will only be delayed by about one month, but it remains in the hands of international antitrust regulators.

CHMC sells a number of CDMA handsets to KDDI Corporation and SoftBank Mobile in Japan which include the Exilim-branded line of 12-megapixel camera phones; LG Telecom in Korea, and Verizon Wireless in the US, which include the ruggedized G'Zone line of phones.

While the joint venture's strength comes from Casio's compact imaging and water/shockproofing technology, and Hitachi's wireless communications offerings, the partnership with NEC will extend its focus to include UMTS and LTE development and improve its efforts in Linux-based environments.

The Japanese wireless business is going through a generational shift right now and the addition of NEC to CHMC's business will prove advantageous as the country shuffles its wireless spectrum. For example, one of Casio Hitachi's major Japanese partners, Softbank Mobile, will be discontinuing its 2G service entirely at the end of March. Softbank first announced the sunset in July 2008, and now the major carrier is just weeks away from being all 3G and up.

Last week, the world's biggest 2G PHS network operator Willcom filed for bankruptcy protection in Tokyo, reporting liabilities of over $2.2 billion. This amounts to the biggest bankruptcy in Japan's telecommunications history, and the Nikkei business daily reported that Willcom will spin off its next-generation PHS data network (called XGP, similar to WiMAX) to Softbank and Advantage Partners LLP.

Hitachi and NEC Infrontia (NEC and Nitsuko Corporation's POS and digital telephone business) are supporters of the technology, and are both members of the XGP Forum.

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

That sound you heard coming from the general direction of Italy earlier this week was the sound the Internet makes when it becomes just a little bit less free.

When an Italian court convicted three senior Google executives for breach of privacy, sentencing them yesterday to a six-month suspended sentence, it set a dangerous precedent. Unless the case is turned over on appeal, such a precedent could force every Web services provider on the planet -- including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft -- to be completely accountable for every piece of text, audio, and video that any Average Joe decides to upload to his servers.

Four bullies, many victims

The case revolved around footage uploaded to Google Video in September 2006 that depicted a group of four teenagers beating up a Down Syndrome child. It was the site's most-viewed video before Google received complaints and removed it two months later. Prosecutors said the video violated the victim's privacy and that Google should have moved more quickly to remove it from its servers. They originally charged four executives with violating Italy's privacy laws and with defamation. They convicted three of them -- chief legal officer David Carl Drummond, ex-CFO George De Los Reyes, and privacy director Peter Fleischer -- on the privacy counts and acquitted them of defamation. The fourth defendant, Arvind Desikan, was cleared of all charges. (The four bullies were convicted in youth court.)

The executives are expected to appeal -- not to avoid jail, because the judge imposed suspended sentences on all of them, but to ensure the outcome doesn't force monumentally impossible data and content management rules onto every Web services operator on the planet. Such legislative-imposed oversight, unthinkable at first and every blush, would be akin to asking AT&T to vet every phone call made by every landline and mobile subscriber. "Ridiculous" only begins to describe the prospect.

It's all in the definition

In assessing the merits of the case against Google, the court chose to define Google as an Internet content provider and not an Internet service provider. We all know that the average ISP simply doesn't have the cycles to actively monitor and respond to everything its users do online. The Italian justice system gets that, too. And in defining Google as a content provider, instead, it chose to lump the company into the same boat as newspapers, magazines, television broadcasters and other conventional media outfits.

Which would be lovely and workable if, like the average newspaper, Google exclusively published its own material. But it doesn't. It facilitates the publishing of material submitted by millions of subscribers. It's one thing to be the gatekeeper of material submitted by a hundred or so reporters and editors, and quite another to run infrastructure that manages an endless torrent of material submitted by countless, usually anonymous, end users. It's massively shocking and more than a little disappointing that the judge in this case allowed such a definition to stand, and serves as yet another reminder that the court system, in Italy and elsewhere, continues to lag the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on common behaviors in society.

When a ruling can't stand

I believe this case will be turned over on appeal because the standard of care for publishers of their own content is necessarily different -- by virtue of the much lower, controllable level of content -- than the standard of care of providers who host sites that publish user-provided content.

If, however, my worst nightmare comes true and the ruling stands, then the climate within which services like Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and YouTube (which Google bought soon after the offending Italian video was posted to Google Video) will become very chilly, very quickly. Believers in the Apocalypse could easily conclude that these services would all cease to exist after being shuttered by owners freaked out by the daunting prospect of actively monitoring so much content in real-time.

The rest of us know, of course, that this won't ever happen, but that doesn't mean the Italian judiciary's message hasn't resonated deeply in communities around the world. We've gotten the message, Italy, that services like Google need to do a better job policing what goes on in their own backyard. We've also learned, again thanks to the Italian court, that it's time to get back to reality and figure out workable frameworks within which that can actually happen. Convicting their senior leaders using legislation designed for the dinosaur media age isn't the answer. Instead, nations interested in protecting their Internet-using citizens need to leverage appropriate government or quasi-government bodies to put partner with them to enhance end user privacy and balance individual protections against the risk of heavy-handed censorship.

Ask a Canuck for advice

Canada got the message and, as a result, is now seen as a global leader in the drive to balance individual and collective rights in the Internet Age. Its Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, played hardball with Facebook last year, forcing the social media darling to tighten its privacy policies and procedures. Facebook's penance in Canada has since been deployed globally. More recently, Comm. Stoddart took notice following the Google Buzz launch earlier this month, and is currently looking into the new offering in light of complaints that it plays fast and loose with users' private data.

Notice Canada didn't sue either company's senior leaders. It chose a more direct, and ultimately more successful, route to ensure the services took reasonable care on behalf of their subscribers.

Shocking as it is, the Italian ruling does serve a somewhat beneficial purpose in that it focuses attention on an issue -- online privacy and service provider and end user accountability -- that's long been shunted off to the side in the rush to release the next coolest thing. We've been so focused on the technology of social media that we've forgotten that all these great tools can significantly accelerate the rate at which innocent people can be victimized by those who choose to do harm. In the old days, transgressions like the Italian video wouldn't have gone much beyond the inner circle of victimizers and victims. Today, they can go viral in no time flat. Symbolically punishing the guys who wear suits won't fix anything.

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.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Last year, Intel agreed to share its Atom microprocessor design with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), so that third parties wishing to create their own systems-on-a-chip under TSMC's Technology Platform could integrate Intel Atom processors into the design without additional steps.

The partnership came on the same day that Intel announced the embedded edition of its Z5xx series of Atom processors for multimedia smartphones, and other such applications.

Apparently, not enough people are interested in creating Atom-based embedded devices, The New York Times recently reported, and the partnership between Intel and TSMC is now on a temporary hiatus.

Intel has been talking about bringing the Atom platform to smartphones for years, and after a few false starts, it has finally showed off the world's first Atom-based smartphone, the GW990 from South Korea's LG.

The device is another of LG's attempts at a "panoramic" profile, with a 4.8" screen in an odd 2.13:1 aspect ratio. Intel actually showed off a prototype of this design in late 2008 when unveiling the Moorestown mobile platform. The GW990 is expected to come to market in mid-2010 with a price tag over $1000.

The steep price could be an indication of why manufacturers aren't exactly flocking to the x86-based smartphone idea, when there's already a wealth of ARM-based options out there.

As Insight64 principal analyst Nathan Brookwood told me last month, "OEMs can often get chip suppliers like Samsung to roll a custom ARM design for them, with the CPU cores, DSP cores, and peripherals they want. Intel has a bunch of standard SOCs they've designed, which they hope to sell to OEMs. There's little evidence (other than LG) that this strategy is working. Intel announced a 'have it your way' strategy that involved Atom cores at TSMC about a year ago, but there's little evidence that strategy is working either."

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Apple shouldn't treat iPad like iPhone or iPod touch. The iPad App Store should be stocked full of premium content, meaning no freebees. It's the right way to help establish iPad as a premium product, as something special like the Macintosh. Unfortunately, Apple has little incentive to take this right approach benefiting its developers (because they make more money), customers (because they get better quality apps) and the iPad brand (because it comes be to viewed as a more premium product).

Apple's business is about selling hardware, using software and services as differentiators. Sure, Apple sold its 10 billionth song at iTunes yesterday, but the company's business isn't about selling content. The content is a means to selling more high-margin hardware. From that perspective, paid apps only marginally benefit Apple. Free is better, because there can be more applications, which is good for building out the App Store/iPhone OS device platform.

The question: Is the platform already big enough? I say, "Yes!" -- for a few reasons:

1) At the end of first fiscal quarter 2010, Apple had shipped 75 million iPhone OS-capable devices. The iPod touch may already be outselling iPhone, something often not factored into industry smartphone sales data. Apple's mobile platform is much bigger than iPhone.

2) Apple boasts more than 140,000 applications at its App Store, or about 7 times more than the Android Marketplace.

3) The majority of App Store applications -- 75 percent -- already are paid ones, according to analytics firm Distimo. By comparison, 57 percent of apps at Android Marketplace are free. Nokia's Ovi Store has highest percentage of paid apps -- 85 percent.

If three-quarters of the apps are paid ones already, why not 100 percent on iPad? Sure some people will balk, but, hell, they're the early adopters paying somewhere between $499 and $829 for iPad. What should they expect? It's a new product category for Apple and one where competitors have repeatedly failed. If Apple is going to try and breakthrough with tablets, why not freshen the approach: Make the product even more chic by making it more exclusive -- even at $499. Paid apps, and only paid apps, is one way to do it.

The approach also would better differentiate iPad from iPhone and iPod touch. The differences would then become something more than the applications, gaming and Web experience benefits coming from the larger screen size and processing power. Apple could pitch the iPad as the better App Store platform because the applications are better. They're not just better because of the hardware but investment developers make for something they get paid for.

Free isn't just about monetary value. It's about perceived value. People inherently value something more they paid for than what they get for free. That difference can be huge for developers and content providers trying to build brand loyalty. Free apps are throwaways. People are more likely to keep stuff they pay for. Brand loyalty is important for generating future applications sales, too.

The iPad is a unique opportunity for Apple to change the rules and take a paid-app only approach. Publishers will love it, especially content providers seeking to build audience as well as make money. If I were a news content provider, my iPad app wouldn't be free. There would be some fee attached to it. Better still: Apple should work with publishers on a news aggregation application. The iPad user spends, say, $120 a year and gets access to content from Economist, Financial Times, New York Times and Wall Street Journal -- or any other combination of five to 10 news sources.

Apple's risk is low, from my perspective, although company execs might balk at any strategy that could hurt early iPad sales. The people who are going to buy have already decided to do so. According to a report released today by AdMob, 16 percent of iPhone users and 24 percent of iPod touch users plan to buy an iPad within six months.

But there is concern, for and against paid-only apps, revealed by the AdMob report. The good: 50 percent of iPhone users and 35 percent of iPod touch users buy at least one app a month, compared to 21 percent for Android. However, while the majority App Store applications are paid and Android Marketplace apps free, the monthly averages are similar: iPhone users download an average 8.8 apps a month compared to 8.7 for Android users. Among these apps, on iPhone 7 are free and 1.8 paid. For Android: 7.6 free and 1.1 paid. Considering the huge differences in number of paid-versus-free apps between the two stores, the similarities in customer download habits are surprising.

For Apple, this data cuts two ways, therefore. Firstly, there is risk of alienating customers used to free apps for iPhone and iPod touch. Secondly, if Apple does nothing, iPad will be yet another hardware device for distributing free applications.

Developers need to make money; the value of free apps is often something else: brand exposure, upsell to paid apps, upsell to paid extras or advertising revenue, among other things. But I contend those same benefits could be available by charging at least 99 cents for applications. Apple should make 99 cents the new free on iPad.

Would you pay a buck for better mobile apps -- or is free the right price for you? Please respond in comments.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Last month, Baidu, the leading search engine in China, filed suit against US-based Internet registrar Register.com, in a legal event that took place at the height of the debate over Google's continued business dealings with China. Baidu accused the registrar of changing its DNS records, so that customers were redirected to a completely different site purporting to represent the "Iranian Cyber Army." But that original suit was heavily redacted, so we didn't know the specifics of the alleged defacement. This week, US District Court in New York released the unredacted version of Baidu's complaint, and now, as the man once said, we know the rest of the story.

The basis for Baidu's allegation that Register.com knowingly and willfully damaged Baidu's property, and thereby its reputation, is that one of its customer support agents changed Baidu's DNS records literally on the request of a guy who showed up in Register.com's support chat room. Supposedly, he pretended to be Baidu ("Mr. Baidu," perhaps?). And although records show the support personnel asked him to verify his identity by sending back the security code that was just sent to the e-mail address on record as Baidu's authoritative address, the fellow instead responded with a made-up bunch of numbers...which the agent then accepted as valid.

What happened next, by Baidu's account, could be the subject of a reality show about the world's most flagrant acts of fraud...assuming, of course, the registrar's support agent wasn't in on the deal from the beginning.

"Incredibly, Defendant [Register.com] thus changed the e-mail address on file from one that was clearly a business address and contained the name of the account owner, to an e-mail address that conveyed a highly politically charged message ("antiwahabi"), with the domain name ("gmail.com") of a competitor of Baidu, at the request of an individual who not only could not produce the correct security verification, but actually produced false information twice during the verification process."

The search engine's lawyers then go on to say that Register.com's personnel (perhaps the same person) actually refused to speak with representatives from the real Baidu (whose e-mail address probably includes "baidu.com" or "baidu.cn"), either via online chat or telephone, throughout the two-day period that service was redirected to the "Iranian" site.

No reason has been publicly given for the release of the unredacted complaint, or why it was redacted to begin with. However, one possible reason could concern national and international security. If government agencies were investigating the ties of the "Cyber Army" to the real government of Iran, then perhaps the release of the unredacted version indicates that no such ties were discovered.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Yesterday, after the European Commission announced it had sent Google earlier in the month copies of complaints it had received from three search providers that Google refused to rank their search results highly in its index, the company Google had the least to say about was Foundem. That's a British shopping site that aggregates the results from UK online retailers' catalogs. As the EC said yesterday, the inquiry has not yet triggered an investigation.

Although the EC keeps private the contents of complaints it forwards on to the subjects of inquiries, there's a very good chance that Foundem's complaint may echo the public comment it filed with the US Federal Communications Commission, ostensibly with respect to its request for ideas for "Preserving the Open Internet." In that document (PDF available here), Foundem alleges that Google threatens the desired state of the Internet -- something commissioners have referred to as "search neutrality" -- by giving prominent placement to Google services in search results, under the label, "Universal Search."

Borrowing a very key term from the Microsoft antitrust proceedings, Foundem explains the situation thus: "Crucially, Google determines the exact placement of its own services independently of the ranking algorithms it uses to determine the relative placement of all other results. The degree of favoritism -- whether they appear first or third, for example -- is therefore entirely at Google's discretion. Google calls this process of merging its own services with actual search results 'blending' (others have justifiably called it 'bundling')."

The bundling system, as Foundem describes it, converts a generic search platform that's the overwhelming choice of a majority of Web users, from which Google does not derive income, into a huge promotional platform for Google services from which it does derive income. That has the effect of reducing the incentive for Web users to locate specialized sites, not only such as Foundem, but also mapping services such as Streetmap.co.uk and MultiMap.

As is commonly known, Google's formula for page rank uses a formula that combines the relevance of indexed content with popularity. As data throughout the last decade has made clear, popular services are made even more popular though better placement in Google search results.

A chart from Foundem's complaint to the FCC depicting the prominence that Google gives itself in product search results.

So Google's automatic placement of its own services on its search results pages, Foundem illustrates, seeds that formula with enhanced popularity. Sidestepping the fact that Google's services were not relatively popular in previous years -- Google Product Search, formerly Froogle, being the most prominent example -- Foundem alleges Google was able to give itself the benefit that would normally be afforded independent services that achieved high page rank through popularity.

Foundem demonstrates how much more popular Google Product Search became after it gave itself prominence.

"Through Universal Search, Google can divert traffic from its competitors to its own services largely at will," writes Foundem to the FCC. "The rollout of Universal Search has been gradual, and, to a large extent, unnoticed by users. Google already gives preferential placement to its own Map, News, YouTube, Book, and Product Search services, and it has made it clear that it plans to continue expanding this practice into new services."

While Foundem's document clearly presents facts, it refrains from offering suggestions to the FCC as to how government should respond...or whether government can, or even should, respond. The question faced by regulators on both continents now is, is the fairness of the content of a publication (which is what, at one level, Google is) favored by a majority of its readers, worthy of government regulation? In this instance, Foundem's arguments more closely resemble those of publishers of competing telephone directories in the 1970s and '80s, that argued against the telephone company's monopoly over phone books -- even though, when the playing field was leveled, customers chose the phone company's books.

According to comScore's assessment of US-based general searches from home, workplace, and university locations last month, Google was responsible for processing 65.4% of Americans' searches. US #2 Yahoo handled 17% of searches, and #3 Microsoft (Bing) 11.3% (a 0.6% gain month-to-month, biting off some search share from the other two).

In general legal studies over the centuries, the term "monopoly" is used to define a market in which there is only one available producer of goods or services. Under US law -- particularly the Sherman Antitrust Act -- the term has been adapted to pertain to the degree of dominance a company has in a market where there are other players -- for example, Microsoft's dominance in office applications versus Corel, or Intel's dominance in processors versus AMD. The current borderline under US law is 75% market share. Even so, there remains a major question as to whether "market share" applies with respect to Google Search. If we assume that companies doing business on the Web are online publishers, then Google Search becomes a publication; and there may be no precedent in US law for mandating the content of a publication once it becomes very popular.

The same questions, however, may not be applicable to European law. There, Google is more clearly interpreted as a service, and the nature of such services that take place on European territory are considered business transactions. Also, EU antitrust law makes reference to a concept of the dominant player, mandating that it is the responsibility of any player deemed to be dominant, to play more fairly. Recently, the EC declared Intel a dominant player in its market, for having 70% or better market share -- below the US standard for a monopoly. So the possibility exists that, while the US may determine that Foundem's allegations may not necessarily trigger a more pro-active regulatory approach toward Web publication, the EU may come to a more final conclusion.

But how would that conclusion work? Specifically, should Google be obligated to provide other search engines' specialized results, among its own? And in the interest of fairness, should Foundem, Ciao, and their brethren also include search results from Google, Yahoo, and the other major players? Or should they be excluded from such obligations because they are specialist sites, while Google and Yahoo are not? If we expect government, of any country, anywhere, to take action in consumers' interests -- if we invite the proverbial elephant into the room -- then we must fully discuss, debate, and respond to all of these questions.

Yesterday, in response to our story whose headline began "Define 'monopoly,'" some of our regular readers asked for more information and references for some of the main premises of our story: specifically, the thresholds for a "monopoly" in the United States and a "dominant player" in the European Union. It's a wonderful request, and I only apologize for being tied up with other matters, though here is our readers' much deserved response:

It is not really the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 that designates the threshold of dominant market share in the US, even though case law that references Sherman tends to also refer to the 75% threshold. Recent precedent was established by the 2002 ruling in one of the long-standing antitrust battles in American history, R.J. Reynolds v. Philip Morris -- the battle of the tobacco titans. US District Court in North Carolina essentially determined that previous interpretations of Sherman up to that point effectively evened out to a threshold of 75%, or thereabouts.

Specifically, Reynolds accused Morris of an unfair business practice: paying retailers for shelf space for their products. Those payments effectively came in the way of discounts on purchases, though they may be accounted for more like rebates. Morris' plan was such that it allowed competitors to set any price they wanted to for competitors' cartons, such as Reynolds' -- sell the other guy's product however you want, said Philip Morris, as long as you give us a set amount of shelf space. Part of Reynolds' complaint was that it was not in a position to offer retailers a plan that made a similar grant -- it literally could not offer a plan where retailers could sell Morris' brands for whatever prices they wanted.

The court in this case ruled in favor of defendant Morris' petition for summary judgment, on the grounds that Philip Morris may be dominant, but it's not a monopoly. As the judges found, Morris' ascertained 51% national market share was "far below the generally accepted 70 to 75 percent minimum share necessary to support a finding of monopoly power." This while citing the Sherman Antitrust Act, which doesn't actually set this threshold on its own. The exact threshold for the European market share threshold is open to some dispute. Sometimes the nature or degree of that dispute depends on convenience. For example, in situations where the European Commission defers to member states for establishing precedent, some of those states then lean right back on EC competition law -- and cite 50% as that threshold.

In cases where the EC reviews a potential merger, under the Merger Regulation of 2004, it uses a different metric -- one which determines whether a market share number even below 50% would be considered dominant given the number of other competitors in the remaining market.

And in a very famous statement to Reuters in September 2007, then-Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes celebrated Microsoft's loss in its appeal of the EC's antitrust ruling against it, saying she hoped this would start knocking Microsoft down a few pegs. How much would that be, asked Reuters? "A market level of much less than 95% would be a way of measuring success...You can't draw a line and say exactly fifty [percent] is correct, but a significant drop in market share is what we would like to see."

BETACHECK

For more:

• "United States Antitrust Law Related to Bundling, Loyalty Discounts and Slotting Allowances" by Barbara T. Sicalides. From the blog of Sicalides' law firm, Pepper Hamilton LLP, October 5, 2007.
• "The Development of Antitrust Enforcement" (PDF available here). From the producers of the documentary film Fair Fight in the Marketplace, narrated by NPR legal correspondent Mara Liasson.
• Antitrust Law and Economics of Product Distribution. American Bar Association, 2006. See the Google Books citation, page 312.
• Market Power Handbook: Competition Law and Economic Foundations. American Bar Association, 2005. See the Google Books citation, "Market Share as a Predictor of Market Power," page 82.
• 2002 Annual Review of Antitrust Law Developments. Section of Antitrust Law, American Bar Association, 2002. See the Google Books citation, "Market Share as Indicator of Market Power," page 53.
• "A Simple Guide to the EC Merger Regulation of 2004" (PDF available here). Published by The Antitrust Source, January 2005.
• "DG Competition Discussion Paper on the Application of Article 82 of the Treaty to Exclusionary Abuses: Public Consultation" (PDF available here). Published by The Antitrust Alliance, an independent forum on antitrust practices.
• "EU Competition Policy and the Consumer" (PDF available here). A brochure published in 2004 by the European Commission for Competition. This brochure is not exactly the record of European law, but it's notable for the initially broad definition it set for the phrase Dominant Player: "A company is a dominant player in a market if it can change, for example, the price or quality of its product in that market independently of its competitors, customers and suppliers without significantly affecting its sales."
• "Regulatory Reform in Finland: The Role of Competition Policy in Regulatory Reform" (PDF available here). Published by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2003. Note in particular page 13, which explains the concept of "Abuse of Dominance," and clearly defines dominance as "presumed" to imply 50% market share or greater.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Popular instant messaging, voice chat, and video conferencing client Skype and Skype Lite are no longer available on Windows Mobile devices.

The company says, "We've chosen to withdraw Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile because we want to offer our new customers an improved mobile experience -- much like the version that has proved so popular on the iPhone, and which is now available on Symbian phones. Our focus is on providing a rich user experience that allows you to enjoy free Skype-to-Skype and low cost calls as easily on the move as you do at your desktop. We felt that Skype Lite and Skype for Windows Mobile were not offering the best possible Skype experience."

Replying to a commenter on WMPoweruser who said Skype was canceled because hardware manufacturers all have different methods of utilizing the earphones and speakers, Skype's Peter Parkes said, "[The] comment above pretty much nails it. It's been very difficult for us to make the experience consistent across a wide range of Windows devices. However, we have a partnership in place with China Unicom to deliver a new beta version to their WM handsets -- where we can work with mobile operators, we'll be able to deliver a Skype experience on the current WM platform which lives up to expectations."

This news comes just over a week after Skype and Verizon Wireless jointly announced that unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G will be allowed on certain BlackBerry and Android devices.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Despite the critical acclaim Palm has won for its webOS devices (Pre, Pixi, Pre Plus and Pixi Plus), the public hasn't been snatching them up by the armload like Palm was expecting. In a financial guidance announcement this morning, the company said its revenues for the full year are going to be "well below its previously forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion," because of slower-than-expected consumer adoption.

That isn't to say Palm's devices haven't been selling, it's just that the company was expecting a quicker turnaround.

"Driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated," said Palm Chairman and CEO Jon Rubinstein in a statement this morning.

This disappointing demand has resulted in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods. The precise impact this has had on Palm's revenue was not specified, but the company will go into greater detail at the third quarter earnings call on March 18.

Today, soon to be Google-owned mobile advertising company AdMob released its January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, which attempts to profile webOS users based on a six-month survey. 58% of webOS users are male (73% for Android, 57% for iPhone) 24% are under the age of 25, and 69% would recommend their device to another user.

Specifically, AdMob says that webOS users are 3.4 times more likely to not recommend their device when compared to iPhone OS users.

Looks like Palm's problem is that there is just not enough fanatical evangelism going on.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

There's precedent throughout the European Union protecting the rights of ISPs when Web sites they host end up streaming defamatory, libelous, or injurious content. Despite that, a Milan judge today sentenced three of four Google executives convicted last November of violating the privacy of a boy victimized in a briefly-posted YouTube video, to six months' suspension.

The sentencing came even though the original plaintiff in the lawsuit -- representatives of a boy with Down's Syndrome, who unwillingly appeared in a YouTube video showing classmates tormenting him -- reportedly withdrew from the case last week, as first reported by IDG's Philip Willan last Sunday. In an American court, this would normally lead to a dismissal; but Judge Oscar Magi took the not-unprecedented step of assuming the role of the plaintiff, effectively trying the case on behalf of state prosecutors.

In the absence of legislative action, Italian courts have worked to establish precedent that Internet service providers are responsible for the data that moves through their pipelines. Earlier this month, the country's Supreme Court reinstated an overturned block on the IP address of file trafficking site The Pirate Bay. This despite a ruling the same week from a court in Norway, near the site's native Sweden, that one of that country's largest ISPs, Telenor, would not have to block access to TPB for its customers.

Up to now, Italian lawmakers and judges have perceived it difficult to hold uploaders of content to Internet video services like YouTube, and the hosts of that content such as YouTube itself, to the same level of civic responsibility as the country's broadcasters. But a fix may be in the works. Last month, IDG's Willan also reported on the issuance of a decree from Italy's communications ministry, that effectively declares the posting of video to the Internet the same as broadcasting over the public airwaves. Thus, anyone posting a video would require a license from the Ministry.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi continues to own some of that country's largest publishing and broadcasting institutions, including Mediaset. That corporation filed a half-billion euro lawsuit against YouTube in July 2008, ordering it to remove all instances of copyrighted content that allegedly infringe upon Mediaset's portfolio -- including clips from soccer games and the reality show "Big Brother." Each hour someone watches Il Grande Fratello on YouTube is one less hour of watching it on Canale 5. Last December, a Rome court ruled in Mediaset's favor.

The Communications Ministry is answerable to the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Mediaset has taken an investment interest in Endemol, the Holland-based creator of the "Big Brother" franchise...which, ironically, is all about the lack of privacy.

Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter noted, reports in the Italian press stated Mediaset was preparing to settle with YouTube. The deal, reports said, would involve the publisher dropping the €500 million claim against YouTube, in exchange for dropping its own parent company, Google, as its advertising supplier in Italy in exchange for Publitalia, the television advertising agency at the center of Berlusconi's holdings since the 1970s.

Google's Deputy General Counsel for Europe, Matt Sucherman, responded to the news of the sentencing of his company's executives this morning: "We are deeply troubled by this conviction...[because] it attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence. The belief, rightly in our opinion, was that a notice and take down regime of this kind would help creativity flourish and support free speech while protecting personal privacy. If that principle is swept aside and sites like Blogger, YouTube, and indeed every social network and any community bulletin board, are held responsible for vetting every single piece of content that is uploaded to them -- every piece of text, every photo, every file, every video -- then the Web as we know it will cease to exist, and many of the economic, social, political and technological benefits it brings could disappear."

From the perspective of those in power in Italy, that might not be such a bad thing.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

In late 2008, AMD spun off a major portion of its chip fabrication business into a new company called GlobalFoundries, a joint venture with Abu Dhabi investment firm ATIC. At the time, AMD said the new venture would "join the IBM joint development alliance for both silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and bulk silicon through the 22 nanometer generation. The alliance consists of a group of leading semiconductor companies collaborating on next generation silicon technologies."

So as the chips have worked their way from 45 nm in size down to 28, Global Foundries has teamed up with ARM Holdings and is working on a new System-on-a-Chip based on the ARM Cortex A9 processor and GlobalFoundries' High-K Metal Gate 28 nm fabrication process.

ARM says the new platform is expected to enable a 40% increase in computing performance, a 30% decrease in power consumption, and a 100% increase in standby battery life over 40/45 nm.

There will be two variants of the new 28 nm process: one for mobile and consumer applications (SLP), and one for higher performance applications (HP).

ARM expects production of these SoCs to begin in the second half of 2010 in the Dresden, Germany facility -- at one time, the crown jewel of AMD's system of foundries.

This is the second major partnership GlobalFoundries has announced this year that will result in new products coming out of Dresden. In January, Qualcomm announced it intended to collaborate with GlobalFoundries on wireless technology CDMA2000, WCDMA and 4G/LTE cellular standards, and the smartbook device segment.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

For any other company besides Google, a week like this would be interpreted by some in the press as the beginning of the end, and it's only Wednesday. However, an individual breakdown of every bad story, element by element, reveals the company may not be deluged so much by a hailstorm of controversy as a cavalcade of unfortunately simultaneous snowballs, none of which may end up leaving any lasting damage.

Last Friday, Xerox filed suit in US District Court in Delaware, claiming two counts of patent infringement against Google and Yahoo, and one count against Google's YouTube division. A scan of the complaint reveals an almost "boilerplate" document, making no arguments other than that its two patents cover types of functionality that the three named defendants willfully employed without negotiating with Xerox first.

The patents themselves are very explicit, and appear to deal with the very specific application of methods and even software, some of it bearing Xerox trademarks. Theoretically, such methods could be used in the dissemination of live repositories of information -- meta-documents comprised of information gleaned from multiple sources, as those sources are being published and indexed. Certainly, generating live pages of meta-documents are among the features that Google's AdSense platform and YouTube video platform, and Yahoo's contextual search and advertising platforms, perform. So in a very general sense, one could conclude there was a connection, and maybe someone should have looked up Xerox in Google's patent search.

But had that someone done so, she may also have discovered that the apparatus Xerox researchers described bears close resemblance to the type of document management system the patent was designed to protect, and the methods Xerox did not want to see other competitors lay claims on first.

"One aspect of the invention is based on the discovery that data on the use of documents stored in an enterprise document management system (EDMS) provides insight into the flow of knowledge within the enterprise," reads US Patent #6,236,994, which all three parties are accused of infringing upon. "This discovery avoids problems that arise in conventional document or knowledge management systems, where the flow of information must be rigorously characterized before or at the time the document is stored into the EDMS."

For decades, Xerox has been heavily involved in developing an exclusive method for quantifying aggregate data about how the information included in documents is used, and how that use evolves over time. That research is what has made Xerox' document management software so valuable over the years, and is one of the under-appreciated qualities of that company's hard work.

But it may be harder work for Xerox' attorneys to prove that YouTube, for example, produces aggregate data on how its videos are used, compiles workflow analyses, and generates new aggregate documents based on the results of those analyses. The precise pseudocode for that methodology comprises about four pages of the '994 patent; Xerox may need to demonstrate that YouTube, among others, followed essentially that same flowchart to do...whatever it is YouTube is supposed to have done with it.

The way Xerox' attorneys described YouTube's infringement upon the '994 patent sounds a lot more generalized: "YouTube makes and uses YouTube.com, a Web site for video hosting and sharing that integrates information related to videos with data from user reviews and ratings. YouTube performs all elements of the infringed claims of the '994 Patent by making and using YouTube.com."

The other patent under contention, #6,778,979, issued in 2004, covers a method for the automatic generation of queries -- essentially, ways in which information gleaned from a database can be compiled into a query that is then run to obtain more information. This patent is extraordinarily well illustrated, with 69 diagrams, most of which illustrate specific use-cases of Xerox' automatic query generation system put to use.

"Google AdSense and AdWords software automatically generate queries based on the content of Web pages to retrieve related advertisements," reads Xerox' complaint. Assuming that's correct, it may be difficult to prove that AdWords was specifically altered to utilize Xerox' 2004 methodology, especially since AdWords was launched in 2000.

Google has responded to various press sources today with a single sentence, saying Xerox' claims are without merit and the company will vigorously defend itself against them.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Download Concerity Analytics Free 1.0 Beta from Fileforum now.

Web developers have access to all sorts of information about the visitors to their sites: IP address, operating system, browser type, and so forth. With solutions like Omniture's SiteCatalyst, for example, developers have access to an even greater depth of information about visitor behavior that they can use to improve their product.

For desktop software developers, however, these kind of analytics are not as readily available, and are frequently limited to crash reports for the purpose of fixing bugs.

Last month, Utah-based software company Concerity launched its own Analytics Platform, directed toward software developers. The toolkit provides software vendors with a more granular look at how their software is being used by embedding an analytics runtime into it. The end user can opt in to anonymously share his information with the developer, and then the developer can see how the software is being used, what type of machines it's being used on, see which features are the highest priority, and so forth.

Today Betanews proudly announces that our Fileforum is the exclusive host of Concerity Analytics Free, the freeware version targeted at independent software vendors. The beta of version 1.0 is available now.

Implementing the tracker in your software only takes a couple of lines of code, and then information coming from users is sent to the cloud-based Concerity Analytics Results Dashboard, where the data are available as graphs, charts, and tag clouds.

What can users of the free version expect to track in their software? Concerity Analytics Free grabs a profile of the user which includes his CPU, graphics processor, RAM, storage, operating system, and screen resolution, where he is geographically located, when the application is used, and whether it was closed nicely by the user or it crashed.

Matt Cupal, CEO of Concerity shared some of the inspiration behind the product: "One year ago, I ran a company called Sorenson Media, which makes desktop video compression apps. When we'd try to come up with new feature sets, we'd get pretty frustrated. We'd do surveys of customers and sales guys, then we'd do a traditional beta model where 300 people would test the new version. But we weren't getting tons of useful feedback, we needed more analytic information to base feature sets upon."

"Beta testing is certainly different today than it was in the past," Cupal continued. "There's better recognition, and users are more open to supplying their information. Ten years ago, it would be a hard issue to fly because of privacy concerns. People would be more likely to say 'Of course you can't see what I'm doing!' But now, we do it a lot more because the products improve more when you share more data."

We spoke yesterday with one of Concerity Analytics' beta testers, 3D machining software company FeatureCAM. Vice President of Engineering, Tom McCollough.

"Like a lot of other software companies, we release an annual version of our product and support it with monthly updates. Since the annual versions have the most changes, they also invariably have the most crashes," McCollough told us. "We're using Concerity as a way to measure the reliability of each version, and we're shooting to have crashes go down with each service pack release."

Pricing for the final release of Concerity Analytics will be made available when the product is generally released next month. A beta of the commercial edition, released last month, is available from Concerity's Web site.

[FULL SEC DISCLOSURE: Betanews operates Fileforum, which is the exclusive host of Concerity Analytics Free software.]

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

This morning, despite clearly and pointedly phrased headlines such as this one proclaiming that the European Commission had opened an antitrust investigation into Google, the Commission released a statement this morning saying no such investigation was launched.

"The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being," reads this morning's EC statement. "As is usual when the Commission receives complaints, it informed Google earlier this month and asked the company to comment on the allegations." No further information is being provided to the press on this matter -- again, as per protocol, because no investigation has begun.

Instead, according to the EC, the Commission received three formal complaints about the company's conduct, and as per protocol, forwarded the complaints to Google. The difference between an investigation and an inquiry, in this context, is that an investigation seeks information to build a specific case against its subject. No such case exists against Google, although it is possible that Google's response to the EU could trigger the launch of a formal investigation. That has not happened yet.

Google was under no obligation to come forward with details of the allegations against it, but it did so anyway: Two of the complaints come from firms with either direct Microsoft backing or ties to organizations funded by Microsoft, and both operate shopping sites. Ciao, a German-based (not Italian) shopping service recently purchased by Microsoft and integrated into its British and German Bing services; and Foundem, the proprietor of a British-based shopping site and the member of an organization called Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace that claims funding by Microsoft, have both issued formal complaints that Google downplays search results that lead to their sites, in Google results. This according to Google's assessment of the complaints in its blog post this morning; no other statements on the matter have been released by the parties involved.

Foundem's situation first came to light last August, when an article in the UK publication The Guardian profiled its founder, Richard Wray. In that article, Wray claimed that its service was being virtually ignored by Google. Foundem is essentially an aggregator of price comparisons for computers, appliances, other consumer market items, and real estate; as is Ciao, whose British service now bears some resemblance to Bing Shopping in the US.

Typically, search engines that have their own shopping services do not feature the aggregate pricing assessments of other search engines with their own shopping services; for example, Bing Shopping does not feature results from Google Product Search. For competitors to Google Product Search, this may be a problem.

Google did not say much about the complaint from French-based legal research firm eJustice.fr, other than to say its complaint paralleled that of Foundem. That site describes itself as a professionally researched search engine that performs its own assessment of the relevance of legal material it has indexed based not on popularity, like other (unnamed) search engines, but upon direct relevance to the case or subject of law being studied. The site prides itself on providing fewer, better, search results, indexed over 100 sites, in an effort led by Dominique Barella, former president of France's union of magistrates, and a deciding judge in many technology-related cases there over the years. For example, in 2005, Judge Barella was under the opinion that unauthorized sharing of MP3 files may not be a criminal offense on the same order as theft.

In an interview published today by the French news site Eco89, Barella stated he provided the European Commission with a 40-page complaint, complete with technical documentation and evidence, which he says proves that Google blatantly and willfully delisted eJustice from its search results, not in terms of searching for "eJustice" but specifically with respect to results that point to eJustice's index. As an example for Eco89, he stated that Google doesn't point to eJustice in searches for rental contract cases. He complained that Google told him, not in writing but verbally, that Google would index eJustice's search results if eJustice could provide them in a manner accessible via Google's algorithms.

Making eJustice comply with Google's pattern, Barella argued, is unfair because the two sites are search engines, and are therefore competitors.

It is not impossible for Google to index search results of other Web sites' search results. But typically, Google is only able to find the queries themselves through links to those sites on the pages it indexes. Those links tend not to reside on the most popular pages, and Google ranks pages -- as eJustice's own "About Us" page notes -- by popularity as well as relevance. If, by eJustice's own account, it indexes less popular, more relevant, sources, then by Google's publicly known formula for assessing page rank, it may not score enough points by its own design.

The mistaken assessment of this morning's inquiry as an investigation may have been exacerbated by Google's own account of the affair this morning. First, senior competition counsel Julia Holtz referred to the matter as "scrutiny" -- a term often applied to investigations. Later, she mentioned that Ciao's complaints were originally handled by the German competition authority, referring to the matter as a "case" that was now "transferred to Brussels," the seat of the EC. The EC is denying that this is a case in the formal sense. Since there is no investigation taking place after all by the EC, there's no timetable for the next step in this inquiry.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

We have a problem understanding devices that live outside of the commonly accepted "three screens" model. It's the model that has been pushed by big companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Nielsen, and Microsoft which says that our main windows into content consumption are the TV, PC, and mobile device.

If a device's functionality falls somewhere between one of these three screens, it gets marginalized and written off as something that doesn't address a specific need.

That's actually one of the first criticisms from US consumers reacting to the Apple iPad.

It is a device that we "don't need," and is simply another way to sell iTunes content, some said. People could not look at the iPad and instantly state its principal, core functionality like they could for the rest of Apple's product line. They could say, for example, that the iPod is a music player, the iPhone is a mobile phone, and AppleTV is a connected set-top box.

And while all of those devices offer a lot more than those basic descriptions tell you, at their heart, they have a single purpose, an identity. The iPad didn't immediately click with that identity.

Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs marginalized the iPad as "something between a laptop and a smartphone," which focuses on functionality already delivered by the other devices like browsing the Web and consuming streaming media. "It's going to have to be better at these kind of tasks than a laptop or a smartphone, otherwise, it has no reason for being," Jobs said in January.

That's a pretty damning set of guidelines. But it may be better to wedge a new device in between two of our three screens than to give it a vague, almost purposeless description like Intel has done with the Mobile Internet Device profile and Microsoft has done with the Origami/Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) profile.

When these device classes premiered in 2006, Microsoft didn't even tell us what made something an Origami device, much less how they were supposed to fit into our lives. The Origami campaign slogan was literally "What is Origami?" and it actually tried to make its case on the premise that there was no case to make -- you fill in the blank.

An early prototype Origami UMPC device running Windows XP, believed to have been manufactured by Samsung. [Photo credit: Wolfgang Gruener for TG Daily, 2006]

But Microsoft's description of Origami PCs is familiar: a device with "a powerful processor, a big, bright display, easy-to-use input options, and support for the latest connectivity standards...The UMPC offers a display of 4-7 inches and touch capabilities, all in a package that weighs less than 2 pounds." All this was expected in a package that cost between $599-$799.

Why, that sounds just like the iPad, doesn't it?

So what, exactly, made Origami the crashing failure that it was, dubbed by one publication, "The biggest flop since Windows ME?"

The problem was not simply that Origami, or UMPC, or whatever you want to call it, didn't have a clear purpose (or even a clear name). It was too heavy, too resource-constrained to run a desktop OS, its battery life was too short, and its input method was weak.

Things haven't fared any better for the device category dubbed MID by Intel. Instead of being declared a total flop, manufacturers have gradually converged that platform with mobile phones, while Intel -- which at one time actively avoided the term 'netbook' -- has now actively abandoned it altogether. Intel is now not only free, but content, to embrace MID's successor, complete with its own device architecture (Atom) and operating system (MeeGo, formerly Moblin).

Back in 2008, comScore said that smartphones were actually cutting into the low-cost computing segment populated by netbooks and MIDs.

"Smartphones, and the iPhone in particular, are appealing to a new demographic and satisfying demand for a single device for communication and entertainment, even as consumers weather the economy by cutting back on gadgets," comScore said.

The very things that were supposed to make MIDs stand out -- their lower cost and easy Web browsing experience -- were being squeezed out by smartphones that were cheaper, more versatile, and just as enjoyable to browse with. Why would a consumer pay the the same price for a MID with only Wi-Fi that they would for an unlocked top-of-the-line smartphone?

Major mobile phone maker Nokia, which has been dabbling in MIDs for more than five years, has nearly drawn its efforts in MIDs to a close. In 2005, the company launched the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, with a 4.1" touchscreen and and the Linux-based maemo MID platform (which was merged into Moblin earlier this month). Looking at it now, the 770 (pictured right) isn't really not that far off from a smartphone, except that it's a bit chunky around the middle.

Four years later, Nokia slimmed down its MID profile, shrunk the touchscreen to just under 4 inches, and equipped it with cellular radios. The N900, which will be the last device to run on the maemo MID platform, is for all intents and purposes a smartphone.

When maemo is finally merged with (read: "consumed by") Moblin (pictured above) in the new MeeGo platform, the result will be an open, Linux-based operating system designed for a number of device classes, like smartphones, netbooks, notebooks, and embedded environments. Nokia's MID-centric operating system is marked for death.

And yet, just when it looks like the MID is dying, there are some who argue that it's only just now reaching the point where it could break through in the Americas.

Inbrics has made $170 million selling mobile devices in its home country of South Korea, and it has made impressive appearances both at CES and GSMA Mobile World Congress this year, showing off a device that looks exactly like an Android superphone, but without a cellular voice module. Just like Nokia's N900, the Inbrics M1 Identity is a MID in function but a smartphone in form.

"We expect the demand for MIDs in North America to rise at the end of 2010 and into 2011," Inbrics' chief marketing officer Bobby Cha told Betanews. "All of the major wireless carriers have a plan that includes a MID separate from their phones."

The M1 Identity is an iPod-thin device that looks pretty much like a high-end mobile phone, with a 3.7" capacitive AMOLED touchscreen, a full QWERTY keyboard, 800MHz applications processor, 16GB of memory, running Android 1.5 with its own custom UI that includes an in-depth home media controller poetically called the "3 Screens Manager."

Cha says the key to MID adoption will come as Americans change the way they interact with their phones. "In Asia, the typical user doesn't hold their phone up to their ear. They hold it in front of their face...We have the innate ability to change the way the consumer interacts with their content."

Laptop Magazine ran an article last week called "Do Americans Really Care About MIDs?" which examined a crop of Mobile Internet Devices that are expected this year.

I was honestly taken aback. I thought the answer was pretty clear by now. The only MIDs Americans care about are smartphones.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The European Union's preliminary antitrust investigation of Google isn't the least surprising. But the timing is shockingly foreshadowing.

In December 2007, when Google announced the DoubleClick acquisition, I blogged: "The Google Monopoly Begins." I asserted that the acquisition would change everything about Google's search and advertising dominance and perceptions about the company's growing status as gatekeeper to all online information. The preliminary antitrust investigation comes as Google makes major changes to DoubleClick with hopes of boosting its display advertising business. The changes mark the final Googlefication of DoubleClick -- or the realistic, final integration of the acquisition into Google.

I don't believe in coincidence. More than two years ago, I asserted that DoubleClick marked the real beginning of the Google monopoly. The same week Google begins to flex that monopoly, the European Union starts informally investigating the information company. The European Competition Commission is taking seriously three competitor complaints, made by, according to a Google blog post: "UK price comparison site, Foundem, a French legal search engine called ejustice.fr and Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing."

For clarification, after I posted, the European Commission released statement: "The Commission has not opened a formal investigation for the time being." Right. It's preliminary, subject first to Google's response about the three complaints. In the Google blog post, Julia Holtz, senior competition counsel, asserted: "We will be providing feedback and additional information on these complaints," presumably to the European Commission. Microsoft's antitrust problems in Europe started in the late 1990s from a single complaint made by Sun Microsystems (now absorbed into Oracle).

Coincidence or not, the European Union is starting too late. Too much has changed in Google's favor since December 2007. The acquisition should never have been approved by European regulators. The mess they'll be cleaning up is one they helped create. I blogged 26 months ago:

The Google monopoly could be prevented, just as the Microsoft monopoly could have been. To be fair, monopolies aren't necessarily bad, and they certainly aren't illegal in the United States. But Google is positioned to fulfill the decade-old predictions made about Microsoft but as a more dangerous and consumer harming monopoly. Google's monopoly would be over information, and there is just too much opportunity for abuse. DoubleClick significantly cranks up the potential volume of abuse.

Much has changed; since the DoubleClick acquisition was announced, Google:

• Released the Chrome Web browser, which in less than 18 months reached version 5 beta.
• Launched the Android mobile operating system, which sales rose 961 percent year over year in 2009.
• Announced development of a new operating system -- Chrome OS -- for mobile devices, including netbooks.
• Negotiated a deal (now being scrutinized) for making millions of books freely available online via Google search.
• Increased search share on mobile devices, bolstered by new location-based search, local search, mapping and other services.
• Erected a mobile applications stack, by leveraging together Android, Chrome, disparate Google Web applications and search services.

That's a short, condensed list. But their meaning simply stated:

1) Google is expanding a monopoly over Web search and arguably trying to extend it into several adjacent markets, including display advertising, desktop operating systems, mobile operating systems, mobile Web applications and Web browsers. Microsoft's antitrust problems started with leveraging its Intel-based desktop operating system monopoly into the market for Web browsers.

2) Google's free business model is disrupting many, major established informational industries by reducing their contents' value to zero -- subsidized by search and adjacent services from which Google profits. While analyst estimates vary, the most reliable put Google's online advertising share at about 90 percent in the European Union.

3) Recent Google activities raise serious questions about trust, such as Buzz privacy settings. Can Google be trusted with all this information? Buzz demonstrates Google's increased willingness to put its interests ahead of customers. Likewise, ongoing tweaks to the search and keyword business model, technology or terms of agreement put Google's interests before partners.

A Monopoly Matures

In my December 2007 post declaring the Google monopoly, I gave five reasons it matters. I'll reiterate four of them here:

Google is the information gatekeeper. The US Justice Department went after Microsoft in May 1998 partly out of fear the company would become the Internet's gatekeeper. That never happened with Microsoft, but it most certainly is occurring with Google. Its business is all about profiting from information. For years, I've argued that Google is not a search company. Google is an information company, with search being a means to an end -- the end being information around which the company sells keywords and advertising. Google's search share reaches 70-80 percent or more in some geographies, according to combined analyst reports.

Google's business is rife with conflict-of-interest. Google provides through search the road leading to a destination, then profits from many of the businesses established around it. Additionally, as I explained 26 months ago:

Google doesn't just offer search, but advertising, keyword search and demographic services around information and businesses pay for this stuff. DoubleClick will greatly enhance the latter activity. Marketers are hungry for demographic information, and they're willing to pay for it. Google provides the door, checks who's coming inside and can pass that information onto marketing paparazzi. The temptation to mine the information will be huge, and that temptation will increase as Google matures, its growth slows and its stock falls to earth.

Google leaches off the good work of others -- for free. As I explained 26 months ago:

Google produces nothing. Shall I repeat that statement? The company's core business is about search and advertising, which relies on the content of other people and businesses. Google doesn't own the information from which it makes nearly all its revenue. Google is the middleman of the information, which it takes for free. At least Microsoft produces software and makes money off the licensing. Microsoft owns what it sells, but not Google.

Google abuses the intellectual property rights of others. "Google's information grubbing ways come without any asking permission," I wrote in December 2007. "In one sense, people want their Web sites to be found, for information to be mined. But they're not compensated for something for which Google makes oodles."

Much has changed -- for the worse -- since Google announced the DoubleClick acquisition. A late-2009 Fair Syndication Consortium study found that over one 30-day period 75,195 Websites published unlicensed content lifted from newspapers. Additionally, 112,000 unlicensed "full copies of U.S. newspaper articles were found on sites across the Internet." The profit motive: Search-driven revenue, with Google accounting for "53 percent of the total monetization." Interestingly, "38 percent of the sites were ranked in the top 100,000 most trafficked sites." Google's business model essentially allows -- and even encourages -- further intellectual property abuse.Better stated: Stealing.

Wrapping up, Google is a dangerous monopoly. Being a monopoly isn't illegal in the United States, although in Europe it seemingly is so (because of weight given to competitor complaints). Being dangerous doesn't necessarily mean acting dangerously. But the potential is there. How dangerous a company do you see Google -- or not? Please answer in comments.

Some related posts putting the Google monopoly in context:

• "Google lacks humanity"
• "Why is Google suddenly so evil?"
• "How would you rewrite Google's '10 Things?'"
• "Can there be a free Web if no one makes money?"
• "Advertising is the wrong model for the open Web"
• "Google's 'Open' definition: Simply brilliant business, but is it evil?"
• "If mobile-to-cloud sync is big in 2010, it's game over for Microsoft"
• "If the Obama Justice Department guns for Google, is Microsoft safe?"

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Opera 10.5 Beta 1 Build 3271 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Two weeks ago, we warned the new leader in the Windows Web browser, Opera 10.5 Beta 1, that it would have to paddle fast to stay ahead of the ever-improving Google Chrome 5. Apparently only one side of that battle was listening: Opera did paddle fast, pulling nicely above 26 in our latest Windows 7 relative performance index tests. The newest Chrome 5, meanwhile, took a performance hit that sent it back the other direction.

As a result, Opera's lead over Chrome is no longer a narrow gap. The latest build 3271, released just today, scored a 26.17 on Betanews' Windows 7 RPI, representing over 26 times the performance posted by Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista, on 70 different data points in 10 independently-developed test categories, using the same hardware. The previously tested build on February 11 scored a 25.83. Developers' build 5.0.322.2 of Chrome, released late last week, posted a Win7 RPI score 23.90, way down from 24.60 the week before for build 5.0.317.2.

What does this mean? As developers at Google scramble to make version 5 of its Web browser -- whose development track began just weeks ago -- more stable, that usually takes points away from performance. We usually see this happen at the very beginning of a development cycle, after the first obvious bugs are pointed out and eradicated, and toward the very end just prior to a product's release. But Opera hasn't had this kind of performance lead in years, literally coming out of the blue with performance better than triple its current stable release. Opera's developers may be riding the waves while they can.

So here's a message for anyone working on the Opera beta: A continuing bug in the beta's nested conditional statement handling remains responsible for as much as half a point of performance loss on our tests.

When you break down the test results by category, the news looks somewhat better for Chrome. The latest developer build actually regained the performance lead in the SunSpider computational test battery, with a 68.39 score versus Opera's 67.75. Mysteriously, the latest WebKit development build of Apple Safari 4 suffered terribly on this test. If you want proof that WebKit's own SunSpider battery is honest with its results, look at the result build 55138 of WebKit/Safari 4 posted today: a 38.92. Betanews retested and verified this result. The latest stable Chrome 4 posted the third best SunSpider score today with 58.55.

Click here for a comprehensive explanation of the Betanews CRPI index version 2.2.

The Opera beta took a performance hit in CSS rendering as well, which is usually Opera's strength, with a 6.73 score on the Nontroppo CSS rendering battery versus 15.09 for the latest stable Safari 4, and 14.18 for the WebKit/Safari 4 daily build. Chrome 5 crawls toward the podium here with 12.38. Opera 10.5 hangs on to third place in the SlickSpeed CSS selector test, which compares the browsers' performance in handling 10 different development libraries for referencing complex page elements using CSS. Chrome 5 has the best score here with a 13.29, compared to 12.43 for WebKit/Safari 4 and 11.68 for Opera 10.5. In the Testnet.world JavaScript math operators' test, Opera continues hanging on to second place (it might be first were it not for the bug), with an 18.31 score versus 19.19 for Chrome 5.

So wait a minute...I thought Opera was in the lead here. What's going on?

In two of the three categories where Opera 10.5 does lead, it's by a breathtaking margin -- so much that, in the average, Opera ends up winning out overall, despite having second- or third-place performance elsewhere. In the old-style Web page loading test (which judges the handling of pages that would probably be considered tailor-made for IE6), Opera 10.5 scores a phenomenal 9.86. The next highest score in that category is posted by the stable Opera 10.1 with 8.57 (the stable build doesn't score very well elsewhere), followed by the stable Chrome 4 at 7.05.

And in the Canvas element test, which judges graphics performance in a Web app environment, Opera 10.5's lead here has only increased: to 69.00, more than double WebKit/Safari 4's next highest score of 31.81. Sadly, Chrome 5 posts a 22.76 in the Canvas battery.

For the Chrome dev track to retake the lead from the Opera beta, conceivably, it only requires radical improvement in just two departments. One is page loading, something Google thought it had the lead in at one time. On the standard page load test, Chrome processes bits at about 3200 KB/sec, while Opera 10.5's speed is just over 5000 KB/sec (that's processing speed excluding the speed of the network). And during the load process for the same test page, Opera 10.5 fires its DOM loaded event (signaling scripts that they can start referencing the Document Object Model) in 24 ms, while Safari 4 fires it in 34 ms, and both Chrome 4 and 5 in 39 ms. That's not an indicator of how fast the page has loaded (as some have mistaken it to mean in the past), but rather how soon certain elements of the script can start executing.

The other department is graphics performance, another former Chrome stronghold. Our Testcube 3D battery examines not only how fast the browser rotates two sizes of cubes in memory and re-plots them, but how consistent each iteration is compared to the next. If it costs cycles in the middle to get fast in the beginning, that's not good performance. For the large cube half of the test, Chrome 5 lost consistency points, with iterations as fast as 12 ms but as slow as 24 ms. That led to a 2.55 score for Chrome 5 here. Meanwhile, the Opera beta rotated the large cube as fast as 9 ms per iteration and as slow as 14 ms -- more consistency, better control, better performance. Opera has the overall lead here at 3.30.

With the browser choice screen being rolled out to Europe March 1, look for Google to make up some ground, particularly so it can roll out its campaign that the fastest browser is the best browser, without Betanews blaring a big neon pointer in the direction of Opera.

Download Google Chrome for Windows Dev build 5.0.322.2 from Fileforum now.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Arizona company Objecs announced today that it has developed "enhanced memorial products" that add Near Field Communications tags to cemetery markers, which allow text and photos to be "embedded" in a headstone and retrieved whenever a cell phone is touched against its surface.

It's the same inductive coupling technology used in wallet phones that allows complex information sharing at the expense of practically no electrical energy.

Objecs, which specializes in "object hyperlinking," or assigning a Web-based presence to real world objects, sells two products. One is called RosettaStone, which is a palm-sized stone tablet; the other is Data Tag, which adheres directly to headstones. In good outdoor conditions, the company says the Personal RosettaStone should be readable for as much as 300 years.

While it does conjure up fantastical images of Jor-el's parting messages to Superman, this sort of tagging can actually be incorporated into the extremely popular (and lucrative) genealogy business.

"Each tag has a unique ID number that serves the same purpose as a database primary key," John Bottorff, Objecs Founder said in a statement today. "This unique ID number creates a common reference between the physical world and the digital world in ways that first and last name by itself can not."

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

With its latest announced systems on Monday, Lenovo is following up on a series of PCs unveiled just over a month ago that included AMD-powered Edge notebooks for SMBs. The global #3 PC maker's new entries include two ultraportable notebooks, a tablet PC, and two mobile workstations -- one of them outfitted with Lenovo's trademark secondary display -- and a low-cost server aimed at the smallest of businesses.

With these new products, Lenovo is adhering to a "protect and attack" strategy versus rivals such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, said Mika Majapuro, a Lenovo product marketing manager, in a meeting with Betanews during a New York City press tour.

Lenovo, he elaborated, wants to safeguard its core business of enterprise PCs for the North American, European, and Japanese markets while at the same time branching more into the SMB and consumer spaces as well as emerging markets such as Latin America.

The five Lenovo notebooks launched this week are geared mostly to enterprises, according to Majapuro. Lenovo is officially addressing consumers through its IdeaPad line-up. But on the other hand, ThinkPads are also popular with some consumers, particularly students, because ThinkPads are designed to provide "best value," he said.

"With a ThinkPad, you know it will last at least three years," Betanews was told. Majaupuro contended that Lenovo's PCs are so durable that he can stand on a ThinkPad notebook without breaking it.

Lenovo's new X201 and X201s ultramobile notebooks come with 12.1-inch, WVGA + LED backlit displays; multiple choices for HDD or SDD storage; Intel HD GPUs; built-in Bluetooth; and a 4- to 9-volt battery. WiMax and external optical drives are optionally available. Pricing starts at $1,199 for the X201 and $1,599 for the slightly lighter X201s (pictured right).

Lenovo also unveiled a convertible tablet edition of the X201 (above). Features include a 12-inch capacitive multitouch screen; a wide angle screen for views of up to 185 degrees; a 2 megapixel camera; a fingerprint reader; dual microphones for canceling out background noise; and WiMAX, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The X201 Tablet is also expandable through up to 8 GB of memory, multiple USB ports; and a 54mm Express Card Slot for smart card readers, TV tuners, Firewire and other devices. Options for the convertible tablet include a super-bright outdoor screen and a DVD drive connection through Ultrabase or USB port.

Majapuro said that Lenovo's new W701 (above) and W701ds (left) 17-inch mobile workstations are tailored to engineers and other users of graphics-intensive application looking for desktop replacement machines that are portable between rooms in an office, or between the office and home. Both machines sport X-rite color calibration for color accuracy and Intel Core i7 processors with NVidia Quadro FX 2800 and 3800 Series GPUs.

Pointing to the W701ds, Majapuro showed a secondary, slideout 10.6-inch WXGA resolution screen for supplementary viewing.

Options available for both machines include X-rite color calibration for color accuracy and a built-in Wacom digitizer and pen, he said. Pricing begins at $2,199 for the W701 and $3,799 for the W701ds.

Although also very suitable for home networking, Lenovo's new T3200v ThinkServer is really aimed at small business, a target the PC maker expects to pursue some more with additional products over the next couple of years. The company's new TS200v server -- meant mainly for SMBs -- offers a choice of four 32 nm Intel Core CPUs including the new 2.13 GHz Core i3-350 with integrated graphics.

Small enough to fit under a desktop, the new server comes with a DVD drive; a single Gigabit Ethernet port; x16 and x1 PCI slots; ten USB ports; dual PCI slots; and VGA out. Equipped with space for two HDDs supporting RAID 0/1, the server supports unregistered DDR3 RAM through four expansion slots. The TS200v also comes with Intel Active Management Technology, for remote management whether the server is situated in a home office or a medical building, for instance. Pricing starts at under $400.

In the future, Lenovo plans to announce additional servers for SMBs, along with an all-in-one PC geared to enterprises, Majapuro told Betanews.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Worldwide, Windows Mobile smartphone operating system market share declined in 2009 to 8.7 percent from 11.8 percent a year later. Windows Phone 7 Series couldn't come soon enough -- if holiday 2009 could even be enough to hold back Apple's iPhone OS and Google Android.

The smartphone data comes from Gartner, which measures actual sales to customers rather than to carriers or dealers. By that reckoning, Windows Mobile sales only declined by 1.47 million units to around 15 million units year over year. By comparison, iPhone OS sales more than doubled -- to nearly 25 million units -- with share rise to 14.4 percent from 8.2 percent year over year. Android made significant gains -- and at the expense of other Linux-based smartphone operating systems, too -- with share rising from 0.5 percent in 2008 to 3.9 percent in 2009 on 6.8 million units shipped. Android made its biggest gains of the year during fourth quarter.

"Android's success experienced in the fourth quarter of 2009 should continue into 2010 as more manufacturers launch Android products," Roberta Cozza, Gartner principal research analyst, said in a statement.

Between 2008 and 2009, Android's smartphone market share increased by 680 percent, while unit sales rose by 961.4 percent. By comparison, Windows Mobile market share decreased by 26.27 percent and units sales fell by 8.9 percent. iPhone OS: 75.6 percent increase for share and 118 percent increase for unit sales. BlackBerry OS: 19.9 increase in market share and 48.4 percent for unit sales. Symbian: Market share declined by 10.5 percent, while unit sales rose by 10.9 percent.

Mobile phone sales reached 1.21 billion last year, 380 million during fourth quarter. Device sales were strongest at at the fringes -- smartphones and lower-cost handsets. Apple, Google and Research in Motion benefited from smartphone sales, while Nokia gained from cheaper and mid-tier handsets, particularly those selling into emerging markets.

"Smartphone sales to end users continued their strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009, totaling 53.8 million units, up 41.1 per cent from the same period in 2008," Carolina Milanesi, Gartner research director, said in a statment. "In 2009, smartphone sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8 per cent increase from 2008." Milanesi noted that "smartphone-focused vendors" captured "market share from other larger device producers."

The only really good news for Microsoft is that Windows Mobile share stank but sales didn't reek. As aforementioned, Windows Mobile dramatically lost more market share than number of units shipped. Windows Mobile fell to No. 4 position from No. 3, replaced by iPhone, for smartphone OS share. Microsoft still has some footing for recovery, particularly as it up to Windows Phone 7 Series device releases. That said, Android and iPhone OS are rapidly rise stars, even as Windows Mobile's shine dims.

Nokia remains the market share force for all other handset competitors to reckon with. While Nokia lost market share in 2009, prospects are much better for 2010. Symbian OS smartphone share dropped from 52.4 percent to 46.9 percent on an increase of about 8 million more handsets sold than 2008.

"Symbian had become uncompetitive in recent years, but its market share, particularly on Nokia devices, is still strong," Cozza said in a statement. "If Symbian can use this momentum, it could return to positive growth." Much depends on the operating system's first, truly open-source version, Symbian^3, which the Symbian Foundation announced during Mobile World Congress.

"Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010," Milanesi warned. "Its very strong mid-tier portfolio will help it hold market share, but its ongoing weakness at the high end of the portfolio will hurt its share of market value."

Nokia stood out from nearly all other handset manufacturers during Mobile World Congress by not announcing a slew of new handsets. Still, Symbian^4 is expected to release by end of year. Both new Symbian versions will add functionality as much to mid-tier handsets as smartphones. Nokia sales may be weak in the United States, but they're strong in nearly every other region and across nearly every handset category.

I take a moment to focus on Nokia because of American blogger and journalist obsession with smartphones, particularly iPhone. In many regions of the wolrd, the cell phone is the first connected device that people own -- not a PC. In emerging markets, services like mobile money (and mobile banking) are transforming peoples' lives in meaningful ways. Application stores and touch-feely touchscreen features American bloggers and journalists coo so much about matter much less to people in emerging markets with more basic needs that a Symbian -- or even Android or Windows Mobile -- handset might better serve.

[Editor's Note: Paragraph inserted with percent change in smartphone OS market share and unit sales.]

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

One of President Obama's first priorities upon taking office was a comprehensive review, then considered urgent, of federal policies for maintaining Internet security. The report on that review, released last May, recommended further empowering the role of what was then being called the "cybersecurity czar," including the delegation of authority to lead emergency responses in case of an attack on Internet resources that threatened the national security.

Inactivity in enacting those recommendations was blamed for the resignation of Mr. Obama's first czar, Melissa Hathaway, last August. In December, a former security advisor to Pres. George W. Bush, Howard Schmidt, was confirmed to fill Hathaway's post.

That's assuming the post actually means anything or has any authority whatsoever. Last February 4, the House voted overwhelmingly 422 - 5 to pass its version of the cybersecurity act that would give Schmidt the authority recommended in the review that Hathaway led.

But this morning, the Congressional news service The Hill reports, the Senate's version of the same bill -- despite bipartisan sponsorship from Sen. John Rockefeller (D - W.V.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R - Maine) -- now appears on a list of 290 House-originated bills stalled in the Senate.

The reason: An ongoing showdown over health care legislation has apparently created a situation not only where Senate Republicans are unwilling to publicly show support for any administration-backed proposal, or even judicial nomination, but also where Senate Democrats are unwilling to show signs of compromise for fear of empowering the opposition.

Now, The Hill cites House Democratic leaders as blaming Senate Democratic leaders for the logjam. For instance, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D - S.C.) likened Senate leadership (indirectly including Harry Reid (D - Nevada), the Senate Majority Leader), fairly or unfairly, to the British House of Lords -- a legislative body that is perennially seen as out of touch with the common person.

Signs of a possible thaw came yesterday as the Senate voted 62-30 in favor of legislation for creating and protecting jobs, believed to have been the President's #2 legislative priority this year. Voting in favor, ironically, was newly minted Sen. Scott Brown (R - Mass.), the man who campaigned for Ted Kennedy's old seat by declaring himself "#41" -- the one Republican vote necessary to stop cloture votes and maintain debate indefinitely.

Still, whether an authoritative federal agency in charge of cybersecurity -- a concept not only currently supported by House Republicans, but even created by some of them during their leadership of that body years ago -- can be established this year may depend on how the Senate handles the proceedings in the publicly televised health care reform debate, currently slated to begin Thursday.

In the meantime, it has been left to the Federal Trade Commission to send letters to several dozen organizations this month, the FTC announced yesterday, that their private documents were discovered in an investigation of files publicly shared through P2P file trading networks. The names of organizations contacted have not been released, however, the FTC says that private entities, including local governments, were among those notified. Normally, the FTC -- the "T" in whose name stands for "Trade" -- would not be notifying a school or municipal authority about its public conduct; and in fact, the FTC may have no authority in enforcing any of the recommendations it gave to non-private entities.

A sample of the version of the letter the Commission sent to schools and public agencies (PDF available here) reads in part, "The FTC recommends that you identify the students, employees, and others whose information has been exposed by taking appropriate steps to determine which of your files have been shared to P2P networks. You should also consider whether to notify them -- and any law enforcement agencies and credit bureaus -- about the exposure."

By Jacqueline Emigh, Betanews

After rolling out the first Linux edition of its desktop encryption security software last month -- together with new support for the latest versions of Windows and Mac -- PGP Corp. on Monday announced major server updates that will let PGP be managed alongside myriad other approaches to encryption.

Released on January 19, the new PGP Desktop 10.0 product brings new support for Windows 7, MacOS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and two flavors of Linux: Ubuntu and Red Hat. The software also works on Windows Vista, XP, and 2000, earlier editions of Mac OS, and Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones, said Karthik Krishnan, senior director of product management, in a briefing for Betanews.

Version 10 also adds greater ease of use and new capabilities not provided by the Bitlocker feature in Windows 7 and Vista, for instance, according to Krishnan. For example, if you lose your encryption password, you can now retrieve it by successfully answering Q&A challenges incorporated into the desktop software.

PGP 10 can be used either with or without two new server products -- PGP Universal Server 3 and PGP Key Management Server 3 -- slated for availability from PGP Corp. on March 3.

PGP Corp. bought the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) code base and name from Network Associates back in 2002. Initially written in 1991, PGP was available as freeware, and widely used on bulletin boards, prior to its productization.

Beyond adding support for PGP 10's new platforms and feature, the new Universal Server 3 adds the ability to manage encryption policies while users are offline.

In addition, for purposes of regulatory compliance, administrators can now give Encrypt and Sign buttons to business users who need to prove that they've digitally signed documents.

New in the Key Management Server is centralized support for PGP, along with other encryption technologies such as KMIP, OPAL, IEEE 1619.3, and PKCS 11 -- and security certificates for SSL, VPNs, and wireless networks, according to Brian Tokuyoshi, product marketing management.

The development of Key Management Server 3 comes hot on the heels of PGP Corp.'s acquisition of TC Trust Center -- a specialist in PKI (Public Key Infrastructure encryption -- and its parent company Chosen Security on February 2.

Krishnan acknowledged that PGP and PKI were once seen by many as competing encryption technologies. But, he added, PGP Corp. views the two as complementary, with PGP working under a peer-to-peer trust model and PKI supporting a "hierarchical, infrastructure-based model."

By and large, PGP's server software is geared to large enterprises rather than small to medium businesses, according to Krishnan. But smaller businesses can purchase full-scale cloud-based encryption services either through PGP Corp.'s partners or through TC Trust Center directly.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

At the end of business last Friday, Google announced it had completed the transaction to acquire On2 Technologies, the maker of Web video encoding software and codecs, for a deal that was finally valued at $124.6 million. On2 was a small company that was, in recent quarters, losing small amounts of money. It was attempting to become lucrative at some point through the licensing of a new generation of its VPx codec platform, called VP8 announced way back in the fall of 2008. Customers were supposed to have included Move Networks and Skype.

It's the type of business model that only a small startup company could profit from to any significant degree; and it's the type of model that normally a huge company the size of Google would only purchase in order to shut down, perhaps to disable a competitor. But none of the usually suspected motives for a major player acquiring a minor provider make immediate sense when applied to Google and On2.

Perhaps that's why when the Free Software Foundation on Friday posted an open letter to Google urging the company to completely give away the crown jewel of On2's portfolio, VP8, to the free and open source community, that solution seemed about as plausible as anything else on the table. Why would Google make such a move? As the FSF describes it, to promote a single, ubiquitous standard that could end the Web's reliance upon Flash, Adobe's proprietary streaming platform that powers Google's YouTube.

"Because patent-encumbered formats were costly to incorporate into browsers, a bloated, ill-suited piece of proprietary software (Flash) became the de facto standard for online video. Until we move to free formats, the threat of patent lawsuits and licensing fees hangs over every software developer, video creator, hardware maker, web site and corporation -- including you," writes the FSF. "You can use your purchase of On2 merely as a bargaining chip to achieve your own private solution to the problem, but that's both a cop-out and a strategic mistake. Without making VP8 a free format, it's just another video codec. And what use is another video format with patent-limited browser support?"

On2 Technologies created this comparison between its own VP8 codec and H.264.

The problem is, it's of some use. Although Flash is a technology that does belong to Adobe, Google is actually in a good position to continue using it for some time to come, with all the benefits coming to it directly. Reportedly Google has already paid Adobe a one-time license fee for perpetual rights to the encoding; and since YouTube uses HTTP progressive streaming rather than the RTMP streaming protocol maintained by the Open Screen Project, it doesn't owe a license fee for using a Web standard. Meanwhile, one of the leading manufacturers of Flix encoding software for VP6 -- one of the codecs Flash has supported since version 8 -- is On2, so conceivably there's a little revenue to be made from perpetuating the VPx platform just as it is.

Back in August 2008, just as On2 was announcing VP8 for the first time, its executives convened a conference call with analysts (transcribed by Seeking Alpha). It was there that the company offered the first clues as to what it was really trying to build, going beyond the relatively low-profit licensing model of its chief competitor, the MPEG Licensing Authority, which manages H.264.

As acting CEO Matt Frost told analysts at the time, "We have licensing flexibility that the MPEG LA doesn't. If you want to license H.264, there's one licensing model and if you try to negotiate for a different licensing model, you're not going to get it. With On2, we are partnered with many different people using video applications and we're very open to different licensing structures with them, and it's something that many of our biggest customers have found particularly attractive about us."

On2 expected VP8 to compete against H.264 for the rest of its existence, Frost went on, but the company would not limit itself to licensing on a typical, annual basis as does MPEG LA. Frost wasn't looking to advance Web standards here: He was making a play for video systems manufacturers, companies like Vizio and Panasonic that are integrating Internet video into HDTVs. It doesn't make sense to apply an annual royalty model to a more wholesale business.

So when Broadcasting & Cable found On2 the very next month demonstrating at a major video manufacturers' conference, it wasn't with the idea of competing with Flash on YouTube. On2, remember, had an interest in Flash on YouTube. Instead, it was demonstrating a service, along with Move Networks, for potential customers such as Disney and NBC Universal to stream not-so-high-definition content onto set-top boxes and built-in program guides -- a way for content studios to advertise their content directly in TV sets.

Maybe On2 as a company wasn't going anywhere in the past few years, but that doesn't necessarily mean On2's technology was a bad idea. Anyone who's noticed Vizio's Forge product line commercial during NBC's Olympics coverage in recent days (you know, the one your wife or girlfriend warns you about because it starts with Beyoncé in a short, red dress) knows that the selling point for high-end HDTVs these days is functionality. Internet apps are delivering a new class of functionality to HDTVs, and there's a lucrative new market in the platforms for that functionality.

So maybe giving away VP8 would help Google score some points with Web browser fans; but we may be looking in the wrong category for clues as to Google's reasoning here. It may not care about VP8 as a PC/netbook/smartphone Web codec at all, and could conceivably continue to promote H.264 as the HTML5 codec of choice as long as it wishes. Google's chance at a platform play could have nothing to do with the Web at all. Problem is, giving away VP8 to the Web would mean giving it away everywhere, and that's something that looks less and less likely, the more you consider the viability of VP8 outside the Web.

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

It's one of the most predictable responses in all of tech: Every time there's a blowup over some online service's privacy or data security lapses, if you stick your head out the window and focus yourself just so, you can hear the rumble in the distance as naysayers happily share their told-you-so stories of woe.

Without your even asking, they'll go into excruciating detail over how cloud-based services aren't ready for prime time and probably never will be. They'll tell you how distrustful Web services vendors are, how they view our confidential data as means to a profitable end, and how only an idiot would move off of conventional network-controlled infrastructure and throw every shred of personally identifiable data into the nebulous clutches of an unseen service provider.

By the time they get to the part where they swear they'll never run anything that isn't installed on a server that they physically control, I'm just about ready to run for the exits.

There's no going back

I've been hearing a lot of this over the last few months. First when Facebook's latest privacy faux-pas earned it the undying attention of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, and last week following the firestorm of disapproval that followed the Google Buzz launch. And as much as I believe companies like Facebook and Google need to be held accountable for their too-loose interpretations of confidentiality and privacy, I'm similarly adamant that the cloud don't-wanna-bes are howling senselessly at the moon.

A little history might help make this a little easier to take. A cloud-free existence is as impossible to imagine today as a phone-free one was in the '70s, a PC or fax-free one in the '90s, or an Internet-free life for much of the past 15 years. Like it or not, the cloud -- or Web-based services, or software-as-a-service, or whatever else you want to call it -- is here to stay, and anyone who sanctimoniously opts out amid claims of never, ever moving over is in for a rude awakening.

That's because, despite the still-significant issues surrounding the transition of applications from locally installed, owned, and administered infrastructure to a decentralized model that's controlled by a provider other than you or your company, the cat is already out of the bag and it won't be getting back in anytime soon. Make that at all. When we go online in any capacity -- even reading a site like Betanews and leaving a comment -- we're buying into the cloud-based paradigm where we leave footprints far outside our firewall and far beyond our own ability to control them.

If only it were so simple that anyone who wanted to opt out of a cloudy existence could flip a switch and make it happen. Sadly for these Luddites of the Web Age, it isn't. If they were to successfully take their opposition to all things cloud-based to its ultimate conclusion, they'd miss out on pretty much every form of online interaction that increasingly drives our personal and professional lives.

With that in mind, if you find yourself among the cloud-hating minority, here's what you'd miss out if you decide to fully cut the Web services chord and revert to a locally-hosted and controlled way of life:

• E-mail. That message you just sent your mom? As soon as it leaves your cozy network, it's in the cloud, touching servers near and far, going places you couldn't even begin to imagine. E-mail was the first and still is arguably most widely used cloud-based app. I'd like to suggest dusting off that old fax machine and calling a paper supplier.
• Web browsing. When we go online, we leave traces of ourselves virtually everywhere we go. We don't even have to deliberately leave a comment, either. That pesky little IP address of yours gets logged into every Web site you visit. With it, the server owner can find out a whole lot about you. The cloud strikes again, apparently. I hear broadcast television (which you're going to be watching extensively after you remove all traces of Web activity from your day-to-day existence) is still somewhat interesting once the infomercials are over.
• Text messaging. That cell phone in your pocket isn't immune to the influence of the cloud, either. Few online services are as easy for carriers to track as SMS-based messages. So when you fling your girlfriend a text that you're picking milk up on the way home, you're buying into the cloud. Now that I think of it, even a voice call kind of qualifies, so you may as well pitch your cell phone or smartphone entirely. To ensure you're not out of touch, stock up on quarters and hope Ma Bell doesn't yank every last pay phone from your favorite haunts.

Insert tongue firmly in cheek

I realize I'm being more than a little ridiculous. But sometimes it takes one form of silliness to expose another. Our interconnected online economy practically compels us all to give up some personal information to a third party at some point in time. No, we don't all have to join Facebook, and we can buy and install Outlook and Exchange on our own machines instead of farming our messaging service out to Google. But at some point, the strategy of limiting exposure to online services and holding on to as much physical ownership of applications and data as possible simply runs out of steam. Eventually, your data's going to have to leave the nest, venture outside the firewall, and land on a server that you do not own.

Taking the high (and mighty) road of cloud-refusal ignores the growing reality that standalone solutions relegate those who use them to a standalone existence. While it's entirely possible that someone could unplug and live an idyllic life off the grid, it's infinitely more likely that this is little more than a pipe dream for most of us. The Internet as a whole is one giant cloud-based service. We can no more easily turn it off than we can learn to live without telephones. The world relies too heavily on this interconnected technology, and our ability to build careers and connect with the people who matter most increasingly relies on it, too.

Photo credit: Carmi Levy

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.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

The flu pretty much wiped out most of last week, which is just a blur to me. This morning, I started catching up on email and found a real frakker in my Windows Live Hotmail inbox. Someone wants to steal my Windows Live ID and password -- and probably yours, too. The message is dated Feb. 22, 2010.

The email caught my attention for several reasons: 1) Windows Live Hotmail didn't flag the message as junk or suspicious; 2) The apparent originating address -- "communications@microsoft.windowslive.com" -- seems legit enough; 3) Sender is "Windows Live Team"; 4) The email effectively uses threats and cajoling.

I know that phishing emails are common enough for me not to single this one out. But, hey, I'm catch-up blogging and concerned someone else will get suckered to cough up their credentials. The email might have slipped through Windows Live Hotmail security checks because there cleverly are no links. It's an old school phishing attack. Instead of sending the user to a Website to enter in credentials -- surely something Microsoft would catch -- the information is given via reply email.

By the way, you don't want to lose your Windows Live ID. Have you ever tried to cancel one? It's not desperately difficult for one simply attached to Hotmail. But once Microsoft has your credit card on file and attached to several paid services, the process gets tough. Last time I tried to cancel a Windows Live ID, three different Microsoft reps insisted I independently cancel Xbox Live and Zune subscription services first because a credit card number was attached to them. Imagine criminals controlling your ID and perhaps purchasing "points" at your expense -- among other nefarious activities -- all while you struggle to cancel or suspend the account. If faced with that situation, I would report a terms of service violation, which might get faster response.

Having been sick with the flu, I laughed at the phishing email's "We are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail/Live accounts" as justification for demanding ID and password. Full text of the email:

Are you protected?

Dear Account User,

This Email is from Hotmail/Live Customer Care and we are sending it to every Email User Accounts Owner for safety. We are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail/Live accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail/Live accounts and your account was among those to be deleted.

We also noticed a violation use of your account and if you think you have not violated the Terms and Condition of Hotmail/Live, please verify below with information requested

You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 48 hours for security reasons.

• Username: ...............................
• Password: ................................
• Date of Birth: ............................
• Country Or Territory: .................

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Warning: Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Sincerely,

The Windows Live Hotmail/Live Team.

Just a reminder: Microsoft will never ask for your password in an email, nor would just about any other responsible service. Passwords should never be sent by email. I would have to check with Microsoft about whether information sent via Windows Live Hotmail is in the clear -- another reason not to send any confidential information via email. Windows Live log-in is [https] but my Hotmail page link is [http,] suggesting no encrypted connection. By comparison, Gmail is now [https,] a change Google made after the recent Chinese hacks.

I have to ask: Anyone else out there get this e-mail or something like it?

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Normally, Betanews doesn't like to do "inside baseball" stories, that deal with the individuals in the technology journalism business and all the insights as to "how the sausage is made." I'll try to make this one as painless as possible, but it needs to be done, because the individual involved had been cited by me in Betanews stories in the past.

Yesterday morning, ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Larry Dignan revealed the results of research showing that a blogger for IDG publications, and the CTO of a testing and research firm cited by that blogger, were actually the same person. Blogger Randall C. Kennedy, a trusted InfoWorld contributor up until yesterday, was Devil Mountain Software Chief Technology Officer "Craig Barth," the author of reports over the years claiming that Windows Vista performance was slower than Windows XP, and recently that Windows 7 performance was slower than Windows Vista.

The admission was admirably acknowledged on InfoWorld yesterday by its editor-in-chief, Eric Knorr: "Integrity and honesty are core to InfoWorld's mission of service to IT professionals, and we view Kennedy's actions as a serious breach of trust." Though Knorr states Kennedy's blog was removed from the site, past posts including a handful to which Dignan linked were left visible for public scrutiny. They show Kennedy referring to Barth, Devil Mountain, or Devil Mountain's "laboratory" exo.performance.network as though it were an outside source.

In his blog post, Dignan states that his research was only able to turn up a quote from Barth in one other publication besides IDG's. That publication was probably us, and the guy citing him was probably me.

You should know that the Betanews article in question, published November 27, 2007, was a critical examination of "Barth's" research methodology. His report purportedly showed that Microsoft Office performance was much slower under Windows Vista than Windows XP. In examining the research, I discovered that "Barth" was using Office 2007 on Vista, versus Office 2003 on XP. Amid an outpouring of complaints (which actually began prior to Betanews' report), "Barth" re-tested Office performance using Office 2003 on both operating systems, and admitted the performance gap was not as wide as originally claimed.

That was the subject of that November 2007 story; and as long-time Betanews readers should recall, I've often disassembled research reports that draw an extremely favorable or extremely unfavorable conclusion about a product or service.

Betanews' second run-in with Kennedy (which we only realized was the second incident just this morning) came just last August. In our story about a CHKDSK- triggered memory leak in Windows 7 discovered by an independent researcher (not Kennedy, not "Barth"), it was Kennedy who grabbed attention by characterizing the bug as a "showstopper," and saying it threatened to postpone the then-pending launch of Windows 7.

"Oh boy!" Kennedy's post began, as though he were licking his lips. "It appears that Microsoft's glowing track record with Windows 7 is about to come to an abrupt and unceremonious end."

As I and many of my colleagues know from experience, even late-discovered bugs in Windows and other major software can be addressed by way of hot-fixes downloaded during the setup process. Microsoft confirmed my prediction that this is how it would handle the problem, and then pointed me to a blog post by company president Steven Sinofsky, who sufficiently diffused the issue. As it turned out, no show was stopped whatsoever, the CHKDSK bug was addressed in time, and few other people were ever bothered by it.

Among the first to spot deficiencies in Devil Mountain Software's research were Betanews readers. As reader HBX, a beta tester of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, wrote in December 2007, "I'm running SP1, and I agree it's a substantial improvement across the board. Everything seems much quicker, and transitions are faster within vista. I've also tested SP3 for XP and I can tell you this: I don't know where Devil Mountain got [its] numbers, but I've test both SP1 and SP3 against each other on the same hardware, and sorry to say it, but Devil Mountain is spreading FUD."

Unfortunately, over the past three years, Kennedy used both of his identities simultaneously, apparently leveraging his Kennedy identity to substantiate his "Barth" identity. In so doing, he successfully duped a handful of reputable and honorable journalists and editors. Only a few hours after Dignan's expose did Kennedy change his story in an e-mail to a frequent contact of his, ComputerWorld reporter Gregg Keizer.

As Keizer cited from Kennedy's e-mail: "The individual Craig Barth doesn't exist. It's a pseudonym I created a decade ago while writing news copy for Windows NT Magazine. I resurrected it a few years back in an effort to separate my sometimes controversial editorial contributions to InfoWorld from the hard research content I was developing as part of Devil Mountain Software."

In the latest and perhaps saddest turn in this story, Kennedy appears to be capitalizing on his newfound infamy, perhaps as publicity for his research firm, whose list of contributors now bears Kennedy's name rather than "Barth's." In a response to Dignan yesterday, Kennedy not only accused his editors at IDG of complicity, but of actually creating a kind of false Randall Kennedy identity, in an effort, he claimed, to build a kind of "shock jock persona" capable of garnering millions of page views without being answerable to the publisher.

However, while he admitted to leading Keizer on, at the same time, he blamed Keizer for his ability to be misled: "Poor Gregg Keizer -- hey, the man was looking for an anti-Microsoft angle at every turn, and he let his zeal get the best of him. I honestly never meant any harm, especially to Gregg." Then finally, perhaps caught up in a climax of excitement, a few hours ago, Kennedy posted an "Editorial" on the blog that used to host "Barth," claiming that the entire revelation of his false identity was orchestrated by Microsoft, perhaps in an effort to divert public attention away from some hidden, dark truth.

"It was our research into Windows 7 performance that prompted Microsoft to call in its chips," either Kennedy or "Barth" wrote, speaking apparently on behalf of both. "And call them in it did, instructing its media cronies to silence me by dragging my name through the mud and casting doubt about what is by any measure a very successful professional history."

Larry Dignan has done the world a good service by exposing this individual's duplicity, and Gregg Keizer -- another honorable journalist -- has done well by coming clean and apologizing for an oversight that was made by many other reputable reporters as well.

Kennedy's defense is that, while he himself may have been untrue to the world, his data was not. That defense would never hold up in court. But it's also not even correct: As I discovered -- as it turns out, on two occasions -- his observations and his conclusions were flawed as well. I'm a little embarrassed to discover that two of the examples I often used to demonstrate Betanews' propensity for debunking mythical claims, even in the same sentence, were actually very directly related. That's one connection I missed.

The man's personal problems are perhaps more appropriate for discussion in a psychology publication. If we as journalists and professionals can learn anything applicable to our business from this latest flameout, it's this: At this level, we're expected by our readers to be more than just conveyors of data that somebody else assembled, produced, and pre-digested for our convenience. It's sometimes way too tempting to take somebody else's pre-packaged, extreme conclusions and analyses, complete with suggested headlines for Google News consumption, and run them as-is -- proof positive that the world will end next week, that Obama was born in Uzbekistan, or that Windows 7 is a conspiracy to make the world run slower. More so now than ever, everything we're handed on a silver plate -- everything -- needs to be inspected with a microscope before being passed onto the public as the truth. We need to be the security screeners for the world's facts.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Wal-Mart is in the process of acquiring streaming video service Vudu, The New York Times reports today. An unnamed source said the two companies have begun telling Hollywood studios about the deal. No details have yet been disclosed to the public.

Vudu has had its own streaming HD video products available for a little more than two and a half years, and has gradually moved away from a hardware-centric service to something more akin to Netflix, where its platform is the core of the business.

This year, Vudu's HD on-demand movie service has been embedded in TVs and connected media players from major consumer electronics makers such as Mitsubishi, LG, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba, and Vizio.

Among its competitors Netflix, Blockbuster, and Amazon, Vudu has the dubious distinction of being the only major digital streaming service to offer adult entertainment through its partnership with the AVN network.

This may cause issues since Wal-Mart is well-known for carrying "clean" versions of much of its disc-based music and movies, and this has extended to the download market.

The store's policy says: "Occasionally, Wal-Mart may refuse to stock music merchandise that may not seem appropriate. However, Wal-Mart may carry some recordings that some customers might find offensive, indecent, or objectionable. Parents are always encouraged to review the merchandise their children purchase from Wal-Mart to ensure it meets their own standards."

We've sent inquiries to both companies and will hopefully learn a little bit more today.

UPDATE- Wal-Mart has officially announced the acquisition, saying it expects it to be completed in the next few weeks. The financial terms, however, were not released.

Edward Lichty, VUDU's executive vice president said, "We are excited about the opportunity to take our company's vision to the next level. VUDU's services and Apps platform will give Wal-mart a powerful new vehicle to offer customers the content they want in a way that expands the frontier of quality, value and convenience."

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

One of the more obvious, but little mentioned, facts about the upcoming Windows Web browser "choice screen," to be rolled out to European users via Windows Update March 1, is the absence of one very important choice: sticking with the old version of Microsoft Internet Explorer they may currently be using.

The "choice screen," as the European Commission now refers to it, will only be displayed for users who have IE7 or IE6 as their default Web browser. While they may choose Internet Explorer from this ballot, it explicitly offers version the latest version 8. The only upgrade procrastination option the ballot gives, based on snapshots of the first public beta, is a button in the lower left corner marked, "Select Later." The next time the user boots her computer, the choice screen reappears.

Over the past few years, one of Web developers' chief complaints is that IE6 was simultaneously one of the most successfully deployed, and least standards compliant, browsers ever made. Efforts at convincing users to willingly upgrade to a version that Web servers no longer have to "talk down to," have only seen success in recent months. The latest live running tally from NetApplications shows usage share for IE6 finally having dropped below that of IE8, though with as many as one fifth of the world's browsers that interact with servers NetApplications tracks, announcing themselves as IE6.

If fewer of the world's browsers were IE6, the argument goes, developers would have fewer excuses to delay adoption of methods created long ago to render pages, such as CSS and AJAX.

But legitimate -- or at least, legitimate sounding -- reasons may exist why businesses have chosen not to upgrade beyond IE6. Prior to last year's Windows Update-based IE8 push, which was classified by Microsoft as "Important," one of the most urgently asked questions among IT department workers was, "How can we block it?" That prompted Microsoft to release an IE8 blocker toolkit in December 2008, to help administrators prevent users on their networks from installing IE8 without their guidance -- or simply to keep users from changing their systems.

FOR MORE:

• Why You Can't Pry IE6 Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands by Esther Schindler, IT Expert Voice, February 20, 2010
• Internet Explorer 8 Blocker Toollkit: Frequently Asked Questions. Published December 2008 on Microsoft TechNet.
• Google: Phase-out of IE6 support will remain limited to Google Apps by Scott Fulton

The fascinating reasons why some of the world's businesses have been unable -- not even unwilling, just unable -- to upgrade even to IE7, was the subject of an IT Expert Voice investigation published Saturday by my friend and colleague, Esther Schindler.

While simple procrastination was the reason many small businesses avoid upgrading, according to independent consultants Esther spoke with, many larger enterprises have been stuck not only with IE6 but with Windows XP and/or Windows 2000, mainly because the Web applications upon which their businesses depend, have not been upgraded and perhaps may never be upgraded. In some cases, Web apps such as Siebel CRM (distributed by Oracle) began supporting IE7 in early 2008. That may very well have been when Siebel's clients began the migration process, but the actual software-changing element of that process for one client Esther spoke with, is only beginning now.

Another problem she encountered among enterprise-level IT is the lack of backward compatibility in Web apps that have been upgraded for IE7 and IE8 -- an absolute necessity for organizations whose business, ironically, is to help other clients manage their systems. As one IT chief named John told Esther, "For example, SAP's own portal site doesn't work right in IE8. So if we roll out Windows 7, our developers won't be able to request developer keys etc. and so won't be able to work...I'm sure time will resolve these issues but in the meantime we are stuck on XP and IE6/7."

For European enterprises, that logjam will not be broken by the rollout of the choice screen, which will not break Siebel's or Lotus' or SAP's dependence on older browsers. So admins may end up deploying the methodologies offered by that IE8 Blocker Toolkit, to postpone inopportune progress once again.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants publishers to support iPad, but not with Adobe Flash. Jobs' anti-Flash campaign has grown bolder since the company announced iPad last month and during this week's Mobile World Congress, where Flash 10.1 inched a little close to widespread mobile device availability. What's Apple's problem with Flash? Simply put: Competition.

Apple wants to control the entire mobile applications stack. The App Store/iPhone/iPod touch platform, which will soon include iPad, is a closed stack that Apple tightly controls. For developers, it's Apple's way or no way. But Apple could conceivably lose control of the stack -- most importantly the applications and their user experience -- should Flash run free and unfettered on iPhone OS devices.

Why Apple Disses Flash

As Adobe readies Flash for most every mobile platform -- other than Apple's, of course -- and publishers ask what about Flash on iPad, Jobs and Co. have responded by slandering Flash's reputation: Flash is too buggy, or iPad battery life would be 1.5 hours instead of 10 if running Flash. Flash slandering shifts the debate away from why Apple won't allow Flash on iPhone OS devices to why Apple supposedly protects customers by holding back the Adobe technology. It's the clever kind of counter marketing Apple excels at (Just watch most any "Get a Mac" commercial).

Apple's Flash slandering obscures the real reason for resisting the technology. Because of Flash's huge video success, too many people look at the technology in that context for iPhone OS devices. Long before Flash became the most common way of delivering video over the Web, developers used it to create applications -- and they still do today. Flash is a rival development platform, and one Apple doesn't control. If Apple lets Flash roam iPhone OS devices, uncaged and free, developers can create applications that bypass the App Store. By keeping out Flash, Apple:

• Maintains tight control over the user experience
• Avoids competition with a major third-party application platform
• Keeps user interface fairly consistent across different iPhone OS applications
• Ensures App Store remains iPhone's primary application development and delivery platform

Apple's problem with Flash is competition. The company doesn't want any. Hence the anti-Flash campaign now under way. The Flash slandering will only increase as Jobs courts more content publishers for iPad and Flash becomes widely available on every other mobile device.

There are Other Reasons

Of course, there is a secondary reason for all this campaigning to, ah, dim the Flash: Apple-Adobe rivalry. With the notable exception of PDF, Apple competes with Adobe in most of the same content-creation categories. That was by choice. Apple chose to compete with this major, long-time Mac supporting developer.

Something else: Contrary to commonly held convention, Apple's iPhone OS device strategy is not about the mobile Web. Apple seeks to establish iPhone OS devices as alternatives to the mobile Web. The mobile Web is all about the browser. The first iPhone was about the browser, but all that changed with App Store, which channels content consumption (or creation) away from the browser into application containers of disparate and discreet functions. "There's an app for that" -- Apple's well-known marketing slogan -- means that people work within separate applications; separately from one another since background operations are restricted or prohibited.

Apple wants any video capabilities to occur within these applications, using its technologies and the H.264 codec. Apple has worked around Flash, rather than support it, by iPhone's YouTube implementation. Jobs wants iPad publishers to work around Flash, too, by supporting H.264 streaming instead of Flash. The publisher controls the user experience (on Apple's terms, of course) with the application either way. The bigger benefit goes to Apple, which keeps out a rival development platform.

HTML5: Backdoor Lover

What I find fascinating is the backdoor Apple opened to yet another rival development platform: HTML5. Apple offers partial HTML5 support in its desktop and mobile Safari browsers, and the company has touted the advantages for video streaming without Flash. Apple is trying to have its cake and eat it, too, as the saying goes: Video streaming without the platform development competition.

But HTML5 support is hugely risky. Last year, at GigaOM, Alistair Croll asked the same question I did: "Will HTML5 break Apple's stronghold on apps?" Google has answered with a resounding "Yes." In 2009, Apple (or was it AT&T -- or both) refused to accept Google Voice in the App Store. In January, Google responded by releasing Google Voice for iPhone as an HTML5 app running in Safari. Last week, when launching Buzz, Google released an HTML5 mobile version for Android 2.x and iPhone 3.x devices. No Apple App Store approval process required.

Apple should be more concerned about Google. As I will explain in a subsequent blog post, the mobile Internet is diverging along two paths: Discreet applications and the mobile Web browser. Apple strongly advocates applications, which benefit its closed App Store/iPhone OS device platform. Google is pushing the browser for consuming services or running HTML5-based apps (even while supporting mobile apps in the Android Marketplace). Microsoft also is taking a hybrid mobile Web browser/applications approach with Windows Phone 7 Series. Nokia favors browser and widgets more than discreet applications, which are more open on Symbian^3, Maemo or MeeGo, like Google's Android.

Competition is in inevitable. It's the nature of things. Life on earth is about living things competing for survival -- something that transfers to the things humans create. Apple may try to shut out Flash as a rival development platform to App Store/iPhone OS devices, only to see HTML5 take its place. Google is a much bigger problem for Apple than Adobe ever could be.

Steve Jobs responded to Flash competition with words -- anti-Flash marketing that came out of his mouth and which blogs and news sites candidly reported, all without him providing substantive evidence to back up the claims. How will Apple handle Google or try to close that HTML5 backdoor? The answer may be soon coming.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

This week, Dutch group Forthehack launched PleaseRobMe, a site meant to expose the danger of location-based social networks such as Foursquare, BrightKite, Gowalla, and Google Buzz. Basically, PleaseRobMe says that every time someone posts his location in a location-based social network, that person is publicly announcing that he is not home, which could be taken to mean, no one is home.

To illustrate the point, PleaseRobMe rephrases public Foursquare posts to say, "@Username left home and checked in X minutes ago..." and then presents that person's current map location in a Twitter alert.

"Don't get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome," the site's description says. "The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you're definitely not...home. So here we are; on one end we're leaving lights on when we're going on a holiday, and on the other we're telling everybody on the Internet we're not home. It gets even worse if you have 'friends' who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address...on the Internet..."

Naturally, the site gathered instant attention for its approach. Some called it totally irresponsible, while others agreed that it does show how careless some users can be with oversharing information.

Foursquare responded to the commotion caused by PleaseRobMe by saying, "The truth is, you could make something like this without using foursquare at all. Just try searching Twitter for the words 'headed to'...and you'll start to scratch the surface on all the location data a lot of us push into the internets, perhaps even without thinking about it.

"Anyway, we definitely 'get' the larger issue here -- location is sensitive data and people should be careful about with whom and when they share it," the company's blog said. "And at foursquare, we do everything we can to make sure that our users know with what people and social sites they are sharing their location with."

So little has changed for Foursquare, but PleaseRobMe is trying to turn its sarcastic jab at location-aware social networks into an actual security operation.

The site now leads with a blurb that reads: "We want to offer this Web site to a professional foundation, agency, or company that focuses on raising awareness, helping people understand and provide answers to online privacy related issues. If you're such a foundation, agency, or company, contact us."

You could call it fearmongering, but such a service may be necessary as more so-called "n00bs" adopt location-revealing technology.

Now that everybody and her grandmother is on Facebook, we can see just how clueless and vulnerable many tech-disinclined people are.

Last week, hundreds of Facebook users who type "Facebook" into their Google search bar rather than use the URL in the address bar were routed to a ReadWriteWeb article instead of Facebook when Google temporarily shuffled the search rankings. What followed is one of the most tragically hilarious comment threads of all time.

After reading it, you start to wonder if Foursquare couldn't eventually have posts from helpless users saying things like: "I'm walking unaccompanied down a dark alley with a pocket full of cash."

The problem with status updates and social location sharing is that privacy is incumbent upon the user, and many aren't capable of handling that responsibility. Foursquare's comments yesterday said "Foursquare only knows where you are when you decide to tell us (by checking-in)."

In this way, each post a user makes is a waiver of his privacy, fully left up to his discretion. This means that everything a user does not post is meant to be private. But the problem occurs when users post very frequently. When a user waives his privacy by default, he can become a target not for what he says, but for what he leaves out and deems "private."

Through simple deduction, an observer can watch for gaps in the user's content stream and learn when he's doing something he doesn't want to share with the public.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

There will be no further legal action in a case whose outcome was already upheld in August 2008 by a US appeals court. As a result, legal precedent has now been made permanent for the right of open source software developers to seek monetary damages for infringement of their copyrights, even if their products were being distributed freely.

Settlement documents in the case of Jacobsen v. Katzer were filed early this morning in US District Court in Northern California, as Linux Foundation attorney Andrew Updegrove informed Betanews just hours later. A pending appeal of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling last August is now terminated. In the judgment that was being appealed, the Circuit panel ruled that the right to declare software free, could be given monetary value: "There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties," that court ruled. "For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects. Improvement to a product can come rapidly and free of charge from an expert not even known to the copyright holder."

The case itself was somewhat simple: Model railroad software developer Robert Jacobsen discovered that a commercial railroad parts maker was using his software without his permission, his license, or his original copyright attached. The point of contention had been whether the copyright that protects open source software is entitled to the same monetary evaluation as the copyright for commercial software. It was a fair question, since judgments in commercial software copyright violation cases are typically evaluated based on how much revenue the software would have earned in a normal market, had copyright not been violated.

Knowing that the Appeals Court had decided open source software was entitled to something, the remaining question was, how much? Rather than leave that for a judge or panel of judges to determine -- especially since luck appeared to be on the plaintiff's side up to now -- parties agreed to set the precedent themselves.

The terms of the settlement award the plaintiff $100,000 plus costs, payable in installments over an 18-month period. Though arbitration is still binding with regard to ensuring payments are made, both sides have agreed to dismiss any pending and future action on this matter.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In an early morning blog post Friday, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner announced that final field testing of the company's Web browser ballot screen for European Windows customers (XP, Vista, and Windows 7) is under way now. The goal is to have a fully operational ballot screen by March 1 -- a week from Monday.

"External testing of the choice screen will begin next week in three countries: the United Kingdom, Belgium and France," Heiner reported. "Anyone in those countries who wishes to test it can download the browser choice screen software update from Windows Update. We plan to begin a phased roll-out of the update across Europe the week of March 1."

Heiner's post offered two very small renditions of what the browser ballot should look like. A careful study of these photos by Betanews indicates that these screenshots might not have been taken consecutively, assuming Heiner's description is accurate.

As the rollout is currently being planned, Windows-based PC whose update features are set to automatic, will download the program that gives users the browser choice. At next bootup, if any version of Internet Explorer is pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, it will be automatically unpinned. The screenshots show Windows 7. We do not know whether Vista-based systems with IE attached to their Quick Launch bars (a feature replaced in Win7 by the new taskbar) will unattach these icons as well, although since the process by which a program pins and unpins icons to these two devices is similar, it's safe to forecast that Vista users will notice IE icons missing as well.

This will not mean IE is uninstalled. After the user reads the introductory screen (which explains why IE was unpinned, and gives the user an option to pin it back), the ballot screen appears. Here, just as Microsoft's previous public rendition of the browser ballot indicated, the world's top five Windows Web browser titles will appear in equally-sized vertical slots along the top row, with a second group of randomly organized titles made visible by scrolling to the right. What's different about this latest rendition (we apologize for the screenshot not being any larger or clearer) is that the obvious Internet Explorer controls, including the menu bar and search bar, are removed from this ballot.

However, at least in this rendition, the IE icon reappears in both the title bar and the address bar, which does remain. Microsoft's picture of the introductory panel shows the address bar missing, and the icon for the ballot being not the IE icon but a generic ballot icon Microsoft has used before -- for instance, with generic Control Panel components. In its browser ballot screenshot, not only does the icon reappear but IE is re-pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.

The reason this actually matters (whether there's a blue IE icon in the corner or not) is because it was believed to have been a topic of complaint by opponents to Microsoft's original proposition for a browser ballot, which was later revised to look more like this one. If the second rendition is accurate, such a complaint could arise again, hopefully not pushing Microsoft past its current March 1 deadline for full deployment.

Heiner does not mention in his blog post whether this process would enable IE to be uninstalled. Based on our understanding of how Windows works, this will probably not be possible from the browser ballot, specifically if the user currently has IE7 or earlier versions. Although IE8 now can be uninstalled, no such procedure exists for IE7 and older versions. However, IE6 and IE7 can be upgraded to IE8 which, when uninstalled, should not leave too many traces of older browser parts strewn about the system directories. Still, that's a process that everyday users should perhaps avoid.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

One of the "national priorities" in the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan is to use high-speed connectivity to "provide more educational opportunities and improve outcomes" for those in rural areas and inner cities.

The FCC said today that 97% percent of public elementary and secondary schools do have Internet access, but speeds are insufficient, and services are being wasted.

The Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program already offers eligible public schools and libraries a special "E-rate" discount for telecommunications services and Internet access. But Commission rules currently require schools to certify that they will use "E-rate" funded services only for educational purposes, or activities that are "integral, immediate, and proximate to the education of students."

Therefore, these subsidized services go completely unused on evenings, weekends, school holidays, and summer breaks, when people in surrounding communities may have no access to Internet services at all.

Today, the Commission said schools receiving the subsidized "E-rate" will have the option to open their facilities the public during non-operating hours.

"These connections will be available to adults taking evening digital literacy courses, to unemployed workers looking for jobs posted online, to citizens using e-government services, and for other uses that local schools believe will help their communities," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said today. "By making broadband available to more members of the public, this waiver furthers the goals of universal service and the Congressional directive to encourage access to advanced telecommunications and information services. And it does so in a way that doesn't increase the size of the Universal Service Fund -- indeed, that encourages more efficient use of USF funds."

Schools that allow community members to use their E-rate services after hours, however, may not request service enhancements above and beyond those needed by students.

By Charles King, E-Commerce Times

Recent IT industry events have created a field day for those who think the news tend to come in "threes":

During a five-hour-plus long event highlighting the conclusion of its Sun Microsystems deal, Oracle discussed plans for the company's hardware division, and said it would continue investing in Sun's Sparc- and X64-based systems and storage hardware. The company provided a Sparc road map and said it was planning upgrades for systems based on both the Sparc T series (now made by Oracle) and the Sparc64 chips made by Sun partner Fujitsu. However, there was no discussion of the status of UltraSparc-RK "Rock" processors and related "Supernova" systems, which are rumored to have been discontinued.

Oracle Co-President Charles Phillips commented extensively on the company's plans to build integrated systems/appliances for online transaction processing (OLTP) and other Oracle database-intensive business applications. Only general guidance was offered regarding the availability of these new solutions.

Intel introduced the Itanium processor 9300 series (codenamed "Tukwila"), which the company said delivers more than double the performance of its predecessor, boosts scalability, and adds reliability features to the platform. The new chip boasts twice as many cores (four versus two) as its predecessor and eight threads per processor, plus significantly improved cache, interconnect bandwidth, memory bandwidth and memory capacity.

Intel discussed plans for "at least" two more generations of Itanium: "Poulson," (scheduled for delivery in two years) will add an advanced multicore architecture, instruction-level and hyperthreading enhancements, and new reliability features. Future Intel Itanium processors in development will support socket and binary compatibility with 9300-based systems and software. The company expects OEM systems based on the new processors to ship within 90 days.

IBM's Power Systems group launched its next-generation Power7 microprocessor, along with a quartet of business class, enterprise class, high-end and high-performance servers featuring the new chips. According to IBM, Power7 systems can deliver four times the performance, four times the virtualization capabilities, and three to four times the energy efficiency of previous generation POWER6+ systems, but will sell for the same price as those solutions.

Power7 processors can now run up to 32 simultaneous tasks -- with eight cores and four threads per core. The chips also support more memory and throughput and offer new features, including TurboCore, Intelligent Threads and Active Memory Expansion. These features will make Power7 particularly valuable for demanding enterprise applications, as well as for the basis of workload-optimized IBM solutions like last year's Smart Analytics Systems. In addition, Power7 systems' robust performance and flexibility make them appropriate for increasingly complex Smarter Planet workloads and processes. IBM's new Power7 systems will begin shipping between February 19 and March 16.

While these announcements all focused on their respective vendors' latest/greatest microprocessor architectures (RISC for IBM Power and Sun Sparc, EPIC for Intel's Itanium) for supporting enterprise-class Unix and Linux workloads, what was really going on beneath the surface? In short, the trio offers excellent examples of vendors engaged in customer preservation (Oracle), partner management (Intel) and forward thinking (IBM).

It's important to consider the general state of the Unix market before slicing and dicing the announcements themselves. Once considered a nearly unassailable bastion of enterprise-class business and high-performance computing (only mainframe systems have a higher status), Unix solutions have been under continual pressure from below for the past half decade, due to the expanding capabilities and popularity of servers leveraging x86/64 Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. In fact, x86/64-based systems have essentially eclipsed RISC and EPIC in high-performance computing and supercomputing environments.

The battle is likely to become increasingly fraught with next-gen x86/64 processors, including Intel's Nehalem EX, waiting in the wings. How are Unix vendors responding? Not surprisingly, by emphasizing their platform's already robust RAS (reliability / availability / security) features, as well as expanding virtualization and other capabilities that even the best x86 solutions have trouble meeting, let alone surpassing. Such strategies have tended to force Unix solutions into higher and higher market niches, but upwardly ratcheting performance has also allowed vendors to explore, develop and inhabit entirely new commercial opportunities, including workload-optimized systems.

So, what did the announcements say about the status of these vendors? Perhaps more importantly, did any of the three reveal anything appreciably new or unexpected?

Oracle Sparc

In the case of Oracle/Sun, not much. The marathon webcast was hours longer than other vendors' comparable acquisition events, but painted Oracle's plans for the Sparc server business with a broad brush.

Yes, Oracle will continue selling and developing existing Sparc processors and systems (an issue about which CEO Larry Ellison seemed notably unenthusiastic when the company first announced its plans to buy Sun). Yes, Oracle will develop new Sparc-based solutions, setting its sights on workload-optimized servers/appliances. However, that doesn't show much in the way of imagination or innovation -- Oracle has been shipping similar systems based on HP hardware for months, and IBM's workload-optimized systems are arguably more sophisticated in terms of targeting specific industries and markets.

Oracle also said that it plans to increase its overall research and development budget some 55% from USD$2.8 billion in the past fiscal year to $4.3 billion in the year ahead. But how much of that budget, plus time and effort, will be spent to resurrect a Sparc platform that has fallen on hard times? That remains unclear.

Though no company wants to give its competitors a clear view of its strategic plans, the lack of transparency also doesn't really matter if the essential purpose of Oracle's discussion was, as I expect, to reassure current Sun customers and constrain them from jumping ship to IBM and HP, where many have already found comfortable homes.

Without clients' good will, Sparc's marketplace position will continue its slow decline, and could sap enthusiasm for continuing platform development. What should Sun customers do? Carefully watch how Oracle pursues to its Sparc/system plans, and keep an eye on what's happening in Power and Itanium systems.

Intel Itanium

The timing of Intel's announcement says almost as much about the state of Itanium as did Tukwila's technical details. Coming on the same day and nearly at the same time as the Power7 launch, Intel appeared to be looking to overshadow IBM as much as trying to establish thought or market leadership. Some may see this as reading too much into press release minutiae, but there were also some curious issues around the launch, including the low-key responses of Itanium OEMs.

Also significant: The considerable three-month lag time between Intel's announcement and the likely appearance of 9300 systems suggests the event may have been a bit premature. So, what was the point? First and foremost, to keep partners -- especially HP -- happy. Since HP and other Itanium OEMs have handed off microprocessor development to Intel, it behooves the company to be aggressive in offering those partners good news to take to market.

Overall, Intel deserves credit for delivering a 2X bump in performance, especially since less than a year ago, the company decided to incorporate DDR3 memory into Tukwila rather than the buffered DIMM memory of previous-generation Itanium chips. Despite that, it seems worth considering Itanium's long-term prospects. At this point, HP represents some 85% of the Itanium market -- a massive position, especially for a microprocessor once intended to become the Industry Standard platform for 64-bit enterprise computing.

That isn't likely to change appreciably over time, but I'm not as pessimistic as some other analysts about the outlook for Itanium. Though Itanium is feeling the same upward pressure from x86/64-based servers as other Unix platforms, development will likely continue as long as vendors' solutions, particularly HP's Integrity systems, remain profitable. However, if HP ever begins porting HP-UX or its other legacy platforms to x86/64, it will likely mark the official beginning of Itanium's end.

IBM Power7

In comparison to Oracle and Intel, IBM's Power7 announcement had all the confidence of a vendor in firm control of its circumstances and thinking far ahead of its peers, and with good reason. Less than a decade ago, IBM trailed both Sun and HP in Unix sales. Today, it leads both those rivals, owning some 40% of the $16 billion Unix market.

In part, that success came as disaffected Sun and HP customers jumped ship to Power. Why? Because as Itanium and Sparc development hit potholes, snapped axles, and headed into the ditch, IBM Power stayed remarkably on track and true to the company's long-term road map.

Power7's significant performance improvements mean that any competing vendors' platforms or systems are unlikely to pressure, let alone alter, IBM's current Unix performance leadership position; Power6/6+-based systems own over a hundred #1 industry benchmarks.

The Power7 announcement also demonstrated an interesting development in IBM's marketing strategy: Rather than specifically highlighting next-generation microprocessor improvements, which were considerable, the company instead focused on how Power7 is helping drive end-to-end system innovation. The result? IBM made strong cases both for Power7 delivering significant benefits to traditional business applications and for providing the engine in next-generation Smarter Planet workloads and processes.

How this will play in the market is an unknown. But as systems become ever more complex, it seems possible, if not likely, that microprocessors will increasingly take a back seat to overall systems evolution. If that is the case, it will require Oracle to further ramp up its Sparc efforts, and Intel to tighten development and messaging efforts with its OEM partners.

Overall, the events of the past weeks portend an increasingly interesting future for RISC- and EPIC-based systems. Far from the inevitable death spiral some have prognosticated for this sector, both IBM and Intel's efforts suggest that innovation and competition remain alive and well in the Unix market.

Even the uncertainty around Oracle/Sparc is better than Sun's previous wallowing in the Slough of Despond. That said, I also believe that IBM's Power7 represents the current bar by which upcoming Itanium 9300 and Sparc systems will be judged. If Oracle, HP and other system vendors cannot or will not step up their games, the market for Unix servers will likely be a very different place in three to five years than it is today.

Charles King is principal analyst for Pund-IT, an IT industry consultancy that emphasizes understanding technology and product evolution, and interpreting the effects these changes will have on business customers and the greater IT marketplace.

This story was originally published on E-Commerce Times.

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

By Carmi Levy, Betanews

I read "Windows Phone 7 Series is a lost cause" with great interest. In it, my Betanews colleague Joe Wilcox lays out the reasoning behind his apocalyptic conclusion that Microsoft has used up its ninth life in trying to extend its desktop OS dominance into the mobile OS space.

He makes a number of rational, indeed valid, points about why Microsoft won't be a top-tier mobile OS vendor now, anytime soon, or ever. Microsoft's Windows Mobile franchise has been in freefall for years, thanks largely to a legacy OS that was completely out of tune with today's market, and a product development roadmap marked by countless delays and occasional lipstick-on-a-pig refreshes of the increasingly creaky product. So since it's hard to argue with the facts, with the numbers, and with history, it's also hard to take exception to his thesis.

But I'll disagree with him anyway. Because for all the headlines that Apple and Google have generated with their respective iPhone and Android universes, Microsoft remains the company whose software we touch when we get off the road, get into our homes and offices, and get down to work. And as much as some of us like to malign Microsoft for clinging to yesterday's business model long after the rest of the world has moved on, Apple and Google have hardly been poster children in playing nice with our data or playing nice with developers. Microsoft may be down, but it's more than a little unfair to say that it's completely out.

Mobile: The platform Microsoft can't refuse

First, the why: Microsoft cannot afford to abandon the mobile market any more than General Motors can afford to walk away from next-generation propulsion technologies. Like GM, Microsoft is faced with making huge investments to catch up in areas where others have leapfrogged it. When GM finally does bring such products to market, starting with the Volt next year, it'll lose money on every one sold. The cars themselves will likely underwhelm, as they'll be first-generation examples of radically new technology selling for significantly more than existing offerings from competitors. Toyota's recent troubles notwithstanding, the strength of its Prius branding should hold.

But here's the kicker: If GM continues on its same old path, it'll be dead in five years. Not bankrupt-and-bailed-out-by-the-taxpayer dead. Dead-dead, because the world will have long since moved on from the traditional solutions on which its original business was based.

On reflection, this looks a lot like the Microsoft of today. Its legacy revenue streams -- namely Windows and Office -- won't exist in any recognizable form in five years. Windows, in particular, will decline largely due to the shift from desktop to mobile. Despite the fact that big operating systems just don't fit into our world view anymore (does anyone even care about what OS the iPhone runs?) Microsoft needs to find a new revenue source to replace it.

So Microsoft abandoning its mobile efforts would be akin to GM deciding it doesn't want to be in the transportation business anymore. It's unheard of, and it won't happen for either company anytime soon.

Who needs hardware?

What will have to change, however, is Microsoft's view that it has to own the OS in order to own the revenues that ultimately stream through it. I don't buy that for a second. Google's done just fine making money off of services that run on countless hardware and software platforms, all of which are owned and controlled by companies other than Google. While Google's Android, Chrome, and Chrome OS initiatives are all designed to return some gatekeeper-like powers to Google by giving it greater control over the mobile OS, browser and desktop browser experience, the company will survive quite nicely in the unlikely event that all three initiatives simultaneously implode and fail to gain further market traction.

(That said, I've got issues with the decision to pursue both Android and Chrome OS, but we'll discuss that another time.)

Apple's model, of course, has always been hardware-based. And a good-enough OS with a good-enough developer community that allows it to sell zillions of high-margin devices is good enough for the company and its shareholders. In this respect, it's somewhat unfair to compare it directly to Microsoft, which never bundled desktop or mobile versions of Windows into self-branded hardware.

However similar or dissimilar they may be, they still compete against each other when we head down to the wireless store and ogle the shiny new devices. And for all their success to-date, Apple and Google have both made critical errors along the way that leave room for others to carve out enough market share to, if not dominate, at least survive. Apple continues to tick off developers with an opaque app approval process that discourages long-term partnership and threatens to sink lesser-capitalized small developers. Google's push to become a player in social media -- latest salvo, Buzz -- has opened it up to the kind of privacy firestorm that threatens to derail Facebook's quest for global social media domination.

Is the OS the only avenue?

Into this breach steps Microsoft, which wisely -- and finally -- dumped its old Windows Mobile architecture in favor of a clean-sheet design...or at the very least, dumped it off the roof onto the top-floor balcony, where it may be called "Windows Mobile Classic" (a new euphemism for "dumped").

As sweet as Windows Phone 7 Series seems to look and work, it won't threaten the iPhone or Android. Not soon and not ever. But Microsoft's mobile end game isn't limited to the mobile OS itself. Its upcoming Office 2010 suite will be more Web- and mobile-friendly than any previous version of its venerable productivity offering. Its search partnership with Yahoo positions its Bing search engine favourably as a distant #2 to Google. Its Xbox Live and also-ran Zune marketplaces are finally being pulled in a consistent direction.

Even if Microsoft's new mobile OS dies on the operating table, that won't stop the company from throwing everything it has into ensuring it remains more than relevant as consumer attention shifts away from its traditional desktop strengths and toward the mobile Web. It's almost too easy to write the company's efforts off solely based on its well-regarded but late-to-the-party new mobile OS. There's so much more to this story.

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.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Today, Google Gmail customers are seeing a promised round of software changes whose purpose is to make Google Buzz users more aware of their privacy options, and to give them a more obvious way to back out of Buzz. These changes come a mere nine days after the social networking product's rollout as an element of Gmail, although some have already claimed personal damage, and have already begun legal action.

Before we went to that extreme, Betanews tested the Buzz changes on accounts where Buzz was already set up. There we noticed the promised Buzz tab has been added to Gmail settings, where as we expected, the user is given the option to withdraw the lists of other Buzz users she's following from her public Google profile. This is effectively a copy of the option from Buzz setup that Google only made prominent after its first round of changes at this time last week.

Though the initial problem with new users inadvertently sharing the identities of frequent Gmail contacts with others appears to have been addressed, it was in testing the efficacy of the new option for turning Buzz off that we discovered another potentially serious problem, which can begin with social spoofing, and can lead to the ability to follow other users with complete stealth.

First, we noticed one little quirk: Beside Show the list of people I'm following and the list of people following me on my public Google profile, there's a link labeled Learn more. It takes the user to a page we've seen before on Google's help system. But if you click this hyperlink, you also select the Show the list... option, even if it had been previously set to Do not show these lists on my public Google profile. This is something that users will have to remain cautious of before clicking on Save Changes.

Clicking on the clearly labeled Disable Google Buzz link brings up the Delete your profile dialog box (shown below), which explains the ramifications of exiting the social network. We noted that when the user clicks on this link, even though she has an opportunity to back out at this point, the Buzz link and its associated window are removed at that moment from the Gmail sidebar (but not from the Settings tab). Clicking on No, I changed my mind takes the user to the familiar Edit your profile dialog; but even then, Buzz is disabled.

But disabling Buzz does not mean deleting one's Google profile. From here, the user is given the option to wipe her profile clean. As the explanation reads, "Your personal profile information will be permanently removed from our system." Based on that explanation, it seems curious that Google would add another option, Also unfollow me from anyone I am following in Buzz, Google Reader, and other Google products. You would think that not having a Google profile means you're not following anyone in Buzz. As we would discover, that's wrong.

As a test, we first clicked on No, I changed my mind. But Gmail did not respond as we expected; it did not re-enable Buzz in Gmail. As it turns out, the disablement part already happened; the "change my mind" part refers to the deletion of one's Google profile. This may lead to some confusion among users of Google Reader and Picasa, where profiles are also prominent; they may never have had an interest in deleting their profiles on those services anyway, just in Buzz.

Next, we noted that once the user has disabled Buzz and signed out of Gmail, she will not be given the traditional invitation to join Buzz. So Google will not continue to advertise a service the user has apparently rejected. However, even if the user visits http://buzz.google.com to restart the service, she'll find she's taken to Gmail where Buzz remains disabled.

But the Buzz tab still appears in Gmail settings, where she has the option of clicking on Show Google Buzz in Gmail and restoring it to the Gmail sidebar. If the user has not deleted her profile (if she "changed her mind" earlier), then Buzz will re-appear as though nothing had changed at all. Followers remain followers, and members who were followed before, are followed again.

Next, we tried the more destructive option: disabling Buzz and deleting the public profile, with the Also unfollow me... option checked. Google responded by taking us to the Accounts page, where we were told we didn't have a public profile yet and were given the option to create one. That makes sense, because one reason a person might want to delete his profile is to start over with a new one.

What's interesting here, though, is that the information in the Google Account we used for this test continues to include my picture, which one might think was a profile element. If the user goes to the page for the profile she thought was deleted, she'll find a page with her picture on it...which might have her thinking she still does have a Google profile. Is it true that Google really deleted the profile information as it said it would? To figure this out, we tried re-entering Buzz.

Even when a user who's discontinued Buzz once before enters Buzz through its own dedicated URL, she's taken to Gmail where Buzz remains disabled. Though there are no explicit instructions here, we discovered the user can re-enable the service using the Buzz tab. However, she won't be led by the hand in the creation of a new profile -- there's no auto-suggesting, no auto-following, no auto-anything. Buzz starts out with a blank slate. Arguably, that's the most secure state it can start out in, blank -- and perhaps Google wouldn't have been the subject of such criticism if it had started out presenting a blank slate to begin with.

But what we were surprised to discover was this: When using a Gmail account to re-enroll in Buzz after having exited the service once already, Buzz does not automatically set up any Google profile at all. This despite the fact that our new Buzz service picks up the list of followers we generated the first time -- not the list of people being followed, that's gone. The list of people following a once-deleted Buzz user does remain and is restored once the user re-enters Buzz. This is probably because that list is compiled "live" from the active profiles of non-deleted Buzz users, so it can be reconstructed.

A person without a public profile shows up in Buzz as a person without a public profile, at least at first.

This made us wonder: If a user follows someone else using her old Buzz account, then disabled Buzz, and re-enabled it later, is the user still following that other person? No. Does the other person get notified? No, not directly. Can the followed person go into his Buzz list and discover that person is no longer following? Yes, just as though the following person were still inactive in Buzz. If the following user re-enrolls the followed user, is the followed user told? No, but the followed user can see the picture and ID of the following user in his list, assuming he's looking for it.

Next: Following somebody who thinks she's blocked you...

As we discovered in our tests, when a user deletes her Google profile, certain information about her remains -- for instance, the photo from her Google account, and her screen name. For someone who legitimately wants to discontinue using Buzz and all other Google services, erasing the Google profile may be pointless. Even though Google appears to promise that a deleted profile is a destroyed one, traces of a user's activity could enable elements of that profile to be reconstructed. Apparently one key element survives the profile deletion: the list of people that a Buzz member is following.

But that points to a second problem, which may even be dangerous: Theoretically, a malicious user could leverage this situation to create a false Buzz identification that is not tied to any publicly searchable profile. That malicious user could then masquerade as someone whom the followed person knows, using only a name and perhaps a photo (that's optional anyway), both of which could be false. If the malicious user created a false Google profile with Buzz, and then de-activated Buzz, the false photo and name would remain associated with the Gmail account.

The fact that this element survives even before the public Google profile is reconstructed reveals certain characteristics of Buzz that we did not previously know:

• A Buzz user may follow others without a Google public profile. Even though Google states the creation of a public profile is necessary in order for a new user to enroll into Buzz, one certainly was not necessary for us to re-enroll an account into Buzz after de-activating it and deleting our test profile. As a result, if you find yourself using Buzz, you may discover that other individuals are following you whom you did not invite, and whose identities you cannot determine. In order to keep things simpler and more brief, let's call the malicious user trying to follow someone X, and the person being followed Y. At first, X's ID and photo (if he has one) is listed in Y's Gmail under Y's list of followers, even if X does not have a "public profile," and even if X elects not to share his list of followed contacts on his (non-existent) profile. Y can unfollow that person (assuming he's a person at all). However, if X does not have a public profile, all Y can see is the name and perhaps the photo. Therefore, it's possible that a "non-profiled" person can follow any Buzz user, not with complete stealth, but at least without being able to present his credentials first. And if he has set up his Gmail account under a false name and photo, then conceivably anyone may easily become followed without permission by someone else passing himself off as a friend. This, in our opinion, is dangerous -- perhaps even more so, theoretically, than the possibility of accidentally revealing one's contacts list during sign-up.



• Evidence exists that a user's Buzz activities in Google's database survive the deletion of her Google profile. Even without re-creating the Google profile, in our test, when we re-activated a once deactivated Buzz, it suggested (but did not automatically select) other Buzz members to follow. That list of suggestions (shown above) contained individuals to whom our test account had never sent a Gmail message, and from whom it had never received one, but who were previously followed under our Buzz account before we disabled it and deleted our test profile. That fact suggests that each user's Buzz activity is being stored at Google independently of that person's profile, so deactivating Buzz does not wipe one's slate clean.
• "Blocking" a follower can lead to a situation where the blocked follower can end up following that person anyway without being detected. Assume that X has no public profile, and is following Y. Y discovers X in her list of followers, so she blocks X. X is not notified -- in fact, X still thinks he's following Y. But he doesn't receive Y's updates, so he gets curious. X unfollows Y. Then X follows Y again. X is no longer blocked. What's more, not only is Y not notified that X is no longer blocked, she cannot see that X is following Y. Y appears in X's list of followed people, and X does not appear in Y's list of followers. What's more, X is not counted as one of the followers in Y's Buzz count; so if Y has three other followers besides X, Y's Gmail will read, "3 followers."



Two simultaneous dialog boxes from different Gmail accounts: X is informed he's following two people, one of whom is Y. Y believes she has blocked X, and Y is told that X is not following her. X does not have a public Google profile.

• An unprofiled Buzz user may be followed by anyone else without being notified. This is where you could say Y turns the tables on X: Assume once again that X has no public profile, and is following Y. Y discovers X and blocks X. Immediately afterward, Y follows X. X can continue to follow Y, and Y will not appear in X's list of followers. If X has not discovered yet that Y has blocked X, and X has not yet unfollowed and re-followed Y, then for the time being, X appears in Y's list of followed people, and Y does not appear in X's list of followers. However, X does have this one strange clue: Y is counted as one of the followers in X's Buzz count. So if X has no other followers besides Y, X's Gmail will read, "1 follower." However, when X clicks on that link, the dialog box that appears will read, "X has 0 followers."

In our initial tests last week, Betanews determined that it was indeed possible for a Buzz user to not have a public profile, and we explained why in one sense, this was a good thing. It made it possible for there to be a safeguard for new Buzz users to avoid inadvertently sharing her list of frequent Gmail contacts with other Buzz users.

But the addition of a system that enables a Buzz user to exit the service and come back with no profile at all, creates a new problem: It makes it easier for someone you don't want following you to falsify his identity. Betanews notified Google of our test results prior to the publication of this story.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

An Australian federal court has ordered game hardware distributor RSJ IT Solutions, parent company of GadgetGear, to immediately stop selling the R4 DS modification chip that allows pirated games to be played on the popular handheld console.

The R4 chip is a microSD reader that fits into the Nintendo DS' Slot-1 port and bypasses all security functions, so the user can play music and movies, read text files, create homebrew software, and, of course, play copied games. It usually retails for around $45.

Nintendo has been trying for several years to control the distribution of the R4 cart, and in 2007 the company famously said, "We are keeping a close eye on the products and studying them. But we cannot smash all of them."

But that has not stopped the game company from trying, and the R4's availability may weaken as a result of this suit. Australian publication IT News said today that RSJ IT Solutions must file an affidavit by the end of the week which identifies all of the suppliers of the R4 chips, and pay Nintendo $520,000 in damages for selling a device that facilitates piracy.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

It has been just about one year since Amazon launched its Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch; and today, thanks to popular demand, it has come to BlackBerry.

Like the iPhone app, Kindle for BlackBerry is free, and doesn't require a dedicated Kindle e-reader to use. Within the app, users can browse the Kindle Store and download e-books directly, and if you have already purchased Kindle e-books, you have access to your entire library, synced to the last place you left off in each book.

Unlike the iPhone app, Kindle for BlackBerry users cannot yet create annotations or highlights. Amazon said this feature will be added in future versions of the software, along with the ability to scroll text line-by-line, and search for text within books. Furthermore, the app does not have access to Kindle newspapers, magazines, or blogs, and service is limited to US customers.

BlackBerry users can download the Kindle app within their mobile browser at amazon.com/kindlebb.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

AT&T announced today that it will start selling Android devices, and the first one will be the unique Motorola Backflip, beginning on March 7.

While T-Mobile began selling Android devices as soon as the first became available in late 2008, the other major carriers have been slower to catch on. Sprint announced its first, the HTC Hero, in September 2009; and Verizon's first, the Motorola Droid, came just one month later.

According to a number of unsourced reports, AT&T could have actually had an HTC-made Android device in Q3 2009, but it had difficulty "passing AT&T validation."

The Motorola Backflip will be available for $99 after mail-in rebate and two-year service contract which requires both a voice plan and a $30 per month data plan.

Additionally, a new page on AT&T's Web site dedicated to Android says the first smartphone from Dell will be coming to the network soon. This confirms reports from last October, which said the carrier would have a Dell smartphone "as early as 2010."

The PC maker launched its first device in China earlier this year, and told us that it didn't have plans to launch that particular model in the United States. However, the company has recently been showing off a 1 GHz Snapdragon-powered Android tablet called the Mini 5 which it says will definitely be coming to the US this year.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Outlook Social Connector 32-bit Beta for Outlook 2007 for Windows from Fileforum now.

It's no surprise that Microsoft has begun distribution of the first beta of Outlook Social Connector, the Office plug-in that adds a list of each contact's social network activity to Outlook. It's also no surprise that business contacts network LinkedIn is Microsoft's first partner -- that fact has been known for some time. What is interesting is that today's beta release also contains a version that supports Outlook 2007, adding to it one key feature that could very well have been a reason to upgrade to Outlook 2010: the People Pane.

Only the 32-bit beta is available at present, so users of 64-bit Office 2007 will have to wait, although the beta will work in 64-bit Windows. Once installed, the new People Pane appears in both the Mail and Contacts panels, and in e-mail messages. Surprisingly, it also new Outlook functionality that doesn't even require social network connections. The People Pane is built into the latest Outlook 2010 Release Candidate, so you don't need to download the separate beta package; if you have the RC, you already have Social Connector. You don't actually need any social network connections at all to make the People Pane work. However, to expand its functionality to see social activity, you need a "connector" package; and the first such package available comes from LinkedIn, and is available for download here.

In our tests today, we noted that the Social Connector beta (which should, by all rights, be called the People Pane) collected its photos of contacts not from LinkedIn (which does use photos) but from Outlook's existing database. So even though you may make contact with several people in LinkedIn who are not necessarily enrolled in your list of Outlook contacts, at least for now, there's no automatic device in Outlook for importing a LinkedIn contact as an Outlook contact. This was the case for us, even though the Profile Pane clearly reads, "Connect to social networks to show profile photos and activity updates of your colleagues in Outlook." Of course, you could have your LinkedIn friend send you a vCard.

On the other hand, this critical separation between the social network and the e-mail client does cast light on a fundamental, and in many regards, beneficial difference between this system and Google Buzz in Gmail. When you select an e-mail from a known contact or the entry for that contact in Outlook's database, the People Pane recalls that person's LinkedIn activity (as well as from other connected networks), and Outlook merely reports it -- the connection is one-way only. Your LinkedIn contacts do not see your e-mail contacts in Outlook, and you don't use LinkedIn any differently than you did before.

More social connectors are expected to be made available soon, but not from Microsoft directly. A company spokesperson tells Betanews that, although LinkedIn did develop its connector in partnership with Microsoft, in typical situations, it will be up to outside developers to create new connectors that merge social networks' APIs with that of Outlook. So while Twitter and Facebook connectors are quite likely, perhaps even before Outlook 2010's general release this June, the theoretical ability for Outlook to connect with Google Buzz will have to be tested either by Google itself (the company acts as though this is a possibility) or by independent developers.

Social Connector will be a standard feature of Outlook 2010 when it's released as part of Office 2010 by Microsoft in June.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

To spur development on the OMAP 4 family of ARM Cortex A9-based systems on a chip, Texas Instruments this week unveiled its Blaze development platform which incorporates nearly everything an OMAP developer/tester could possibly need to into a single tablet-sized device.

Blaze is equipped with two 3.7" capacitive WVGA touchscreens, three multi-megapixel cameras, a pico projector, HDMI out, accelerometer, compass, sensors for light, temperature, barometric pressure, and proximity, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, FM transciever, and broad support for digital microphones and stereo speakers.

As far as cellular modem support, the Blaze MDP can be connected via an expansion bus breakout connection, and any PCIe-supported modem can be used to provide 3G connectivity.

The Blaze development platform will reach general availability in mid-2010, and widespread production of the OMAP 4 platform will come in the second half of 2010.

Unfortunately, TI won't be releasing a full sheet of specs until the device comes out later this year.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Could Windows Phone 7 Series save Microsoft's mobile platform? Yes. In 2007. In 2010, it's a non-starter. That's not easy for me to write, because with Windows Phone 7 Series Microsoft is following much of the advice I offered via blog posts over the last few years.

That advice would have meant something when given, not months and years later when the competitive landscape has radically changed. Then there is the crucial analysis given last week -- that Microsoft failed to deliver on: Immediate release of new phone software and/or Microsoft phone. Holiday delivery on new Windows Phone 7 Series handsets is simply too late.

The geeks may be gaga this week about Windows Phone 7 Series, but that won't much last beyond next month's MIX10 conference. Apple's shipment of iPad and presumably March iPhone 4.0 OS announcement will change geek chatter away from Microsoft mobile. (For the last two years, Apple announced new iPhone OS versions in early spring.)

Microsoft's problem is more about timing than strategy -- or technology (Hey, I like the user interface and presumed user experience, too). If Microsoft were running a marathon, its new runner would be entering the race to replace the one falling behind the leading group. But the new runner would be starting when the others already were well ahead to their 26-mile goal. No matter how good the runner, the leaders would be too far ahead to easily catch.

Sure, the market for converged handsets (e.g., smartphones) is seemingly small-- about 15.4 percent of 2009 global handset shipments, according to IDC -- but it grew 39 percent last year. Microsoft is reviving its mobile strategy just as competition increases among established players like Nokia and Research in Motion and newcomers Apple and Google -- all while losing market share and mindshare.

Because I'm still struggling with the flu, I'm going to blast from the past, using my previous predictions for context about now and the 12 months or so ahead (I purposely have chosen posts before 2009, for predictive emphasis). In short, Windows Phone 7 Series is a lost cause because:

• There is no Windows monopoly leverage to jumpstart the platform
• Windows Mobile has lost too much sales and developer momentum
• Android adoption -- by manufacturers and mobile users -- is too great
• Microsoft doesn't have an end-to-end software plus hardware plus services platform

Now for some long-form explanation:

Windows Phone has no Windows Leverage

Just the opposite, mobile devices leverage against Windows. I've been predicting -- for years -- that during this decade the connected mobile device would replace the PC as primary computing platform. I wrote in February 2008 post, "Microsoft's Mobile Madness":

The future of mobiles is PC replacement. It's an inevitable outcome and one Microsoft simply isn't accepting. Microsoft's denial is madness, too.

The cellular phone market is:

• Enormously bigger than that for PCs. For every PC in use there are three cell phones, based on analyst estimates of 3 million mobiles in 2007.
• Captive, as most people carry mobiles most of the time; but not PCs.
• Personal, because people care more about their cell phones than PCs. Who asks to be buried with their computers, but it's a common request for mobiles.
• More global, as more people are likely to have cell phones than PCs, particularly in emerging markets.
• More connected than PCs, as cellular services reach many places than does the wired or WiFi Internet.

To update the first bullet point, combined analyst estimates put the total number of cell phone subscribers at 4.6 billion worldwide. PC install base: About 1 billion. IDC predicts the number of cellular subscribers will increase by 1.3 billion by 2013.

In July 2008 post, "iPhone 3G: Windows 95, Only Better," I wrote: "The mobile remains the future of computing and connectivity. How long before dictation replaces typing? If you don't need a keyboard, why would you need a PC when the cell phone offers anywhere computing, any time?" Dictation already replaces the keyboard on Google's Nexus One.

Matters are worse, Apple and imitator Google have better platforms already because of mobile application stores. In 2005, I warned Microsoft executives they should use product activation to build a third-party application store into Windows. Developers could sell and distribute applications from within Windows, ensuring a revenue stream for them, while better protecting their software from piracy. A Windows app store would have been great leverage to mobile devices.

About three years later, Apple did with App Store on mobile devices what Microsoft failed to on the desktop. As I explained in October 2008 post, "Windows Mobile Is an Also-ran," in Apple's application store, developers have:

• a software distribution mechanism built into every device and means for getting paid for the applications
• access to millions of captive devices because people carry cell phones everywhere
• digital rights management protection that hugely diminishes piracy of distributed applications

Apple claims about 135,000 mobile applications in the iTunes App Store and more than 3 billion downloads. By the time the first Windows Phone 7 Series handsets ship, Apple will offer apps for three mobile devices -- iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Meanwhile OEMs are pushing Google's Android on ebook readers, netbooks and smartphones. The two rising stars already have leverage, with developers and mobile users, because of applications stores. Sure, Microsoft has an app store, as some Betanews commenters will surely observe. I say them: Have you looked at it lately and seriously compared what Microsoft offers compared to the Android Marketplace or App Store? Yes, games will come for the holidays, but Apple will only have widened its portable gaming lead to three devices.

Windows Mobile has Fallen Too Far Behind

The chart below, which Silicon Alley Insider put together from ComScore data, is nearly all that's needed to demonstrate Microsoft's mobile fall from reign. The data is for US subscriber share (from a poll of 30,000 consumers). Some other perspective: Based on global smartphone sales to end users, Microsoft's mobile market share declined to 7.9 percent during third quarter from 11.1 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner (Q4 data isn't yet available).

Smartphone is the category where Windows Phone 7 Series will compete with upstarts Apple and Google and leaders Nokia and RIM. IDC has released full-year smartphone shipments, but not for operating systems. For Apple, they're synonymous -- 21.5 million. Based on the first three quarters of data, it's likely that more iPhone OS handsets shipped than Windows Mobile devices in 2009 -- and that's without accounting for iPhone touch.

Android Adoption is Simply Too Great

In June 2007 post, "Why Google Succeeds, Part 2," I warned: "If Google and its partners can bring to mobile devices what they have to the desktop, I predict it will be game over for Microsoft. Windows' relevance will diminish before the Web platform." Google delivered with the G1, as I explained in September 2008 post, "How Android hurts Microsoft." I referred to the G1 as Google's "alternative platform to the Windows PC."

A month later, in the Windows also-ran post, I wrote:

Once Android reaches the world markets, it will be too late. Microsoft has no Windows desktop leverage to drive mobile development or sales. The question now: When will HTC make Android a priority over Windows Mobile? That will be the day when all doors close Microsoft's mobile operating system into a tomb.

Android has global reach (and competes with Windows Mobile/Phone for same licensees), nearly all of the coolest HTC handsets run Android and Google claims surprisingly brisk sales. Yesterday, at Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that 60,000 Android phones ship every day. That works out to nearly 22 millions for the year, but the figure could be hugely conservative. According to IDC, 1.35 million Android phones shipped in third quarter (Q4 data isn't available), or 14,674 a day. That puts daily shipments up nearly 4 times in less than two quarters. If the growth curve continues, and Schmidt's figure is accurate, Android shipments would easily exceed iPhone as early as this year (but not when combined with iPad and iPod touch).

"Android is reaching the mainstream," IDC analyst Kevin Restivo expressed during our Skype chat earlier today. "Awareness efforts are paying off in the form of increased distribution, which is widening quarterly. More importantly, additional models are being offered by Android manufacturer partners -- hence increased sell-in."

The day of Android as "alternative platform to the Windows PC" has come. Yesterday, Schmidt said that Google's priority would now be mobile applications "first" before desktop apps: "Our programmers are working on things mobile first." While Microsoft has little Windows monopoly leverage for Windows Phone 7 Series, Google has huge leverage from search and supporting Web services.

There's No Microsoft Phone

For years, Microsoft has rallied behind the banner of software plus services. But in January 2008, I boohooed Microsoft for failing to add hardware to the equation. In post, "The Minus in Software Plus Services," I explained that Microsoft needed to add hardware to the software-plus-services equation. At the time, there was no Google phone. I wrote:

Microsoft enters 2008 in position to leapfrog Google by early 2009 or 2010, depending on how both companies execute. The company that best delivers software plus hardware plus services will best the other. Yes, that's a prediction.

Google has done much better than Microsoft delivering software plus hardware plus services -- to the point of having a phone (the aforementioned Nexus One). But Apple has done even better, as I acknowledged in post "iPhone 3G: Software + Hardware + Services." Apple's approach is one stack it controls. Google has it both ways -- three, really, considering open source -- by making Android available to hardware manufacturers and shipping its own handset. Microsoft is a licensor only. There is no Microsoft phone.

Apple is making huge margins from selling iPhone as a single software-plus-hardware-plus-services device. The iPhone accounted for about 36 percent of Apple's fourth calendar quarter $15.6 billion revenue. Microsoft will compete against Apple, which makes mountains of money off iPhone, and Android, which is free. Microsoft will charge for licenses (of course) and make little for its efforts. According to Silicon Alley Insider estimates on Windows Phone 7 Series OS revenue during Microsoft fiscal 2011: "A reasonable average is somewhere in the $300 million range, which is less than 0.5 percent of the $66 billion in revenue that Wall Street expects Microsoft to generate in fiscal 2011."

My November 2008 post, "I Believe in a Microsoft Phone," expressed hope Microsoft would do a handset -- keeping with a software-plus-hardware-plus-services approach. "The time has come," I wrote. "It's inevitable: Either Microsoft has a secret phone project or its mobile strategy is collapsed." I warned that even for 2009 "Microsoft's biggest problem is time to market," because of Apple's App Store/iPhone/iPod touch platform.

Time-to-market situation is way worse looking at holiday 2010. Microsoft needed to announce a phone this week, shipping within a few months. Perhaps Microsoft executives think they can show off a reasonable software-plus-hardware-plus-services strategy next month at MIX. Maybe they can without Microsoft doing its own phone. But time to market is too long -- and Microsoft competes with Apple big money making software plus hardware and services (Nokia and RIM, too) and Google free. Microsoft has started the marathon late. Apple, Google, Nokia and perhaps even RIM will set the agenda for your mobile future. Microsoft's mobile platform is a lost cause.

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Well, it's final: New releases from Warner Home Video will not be cheaply rentable until four weeks after the DVD is released in stores.

In January, Netflix acquiesced to the studio's demands and imposed a 28-day rental blackout for new release Warner films; and yesterday, the results of the Warner/Redbox lawsuit were released, showing that Redbox will be doing the same.

Hollywood studios are of the opinion that low-cost rentals such as those from Netflix and Redbox actually devalue new releases, and that a four-week window will encourage full-price sales of the films. Redbox disagreed with the notion that its service undercuts full-price DVD releases, and sued Universal, 20th Century Fox, and Warner for the right to get DVD new releases at the same time as traditional rental outlets like Blockbuster.

The suit with Warner in Delaware District Court has ended with Warner's 28-day blackout still in place, where Redbox does not get new DVD or Blu-ray titles immediately, but is guaranteed wholesale prices on the discs it buys when they become available.

Though the outcome of the suit is effectively a draw, the result was actually a pretty sound defeat of Redbox's accusations in court.

"Redbox never addresses the critical fact that it has signed a number of direct deals with studios that effectively lock up over 50% of the supply of 'new release' DVD titles it seeks to carry; it never addresses the statements sprinkled throughout its own public filings and pleadings attesting to the explosive growth its DVD kiosk business has experienced throughout the same period of time that Warner, Fox, and Universal kiosk distribution policies have been in effect; it never asserts that a single one of its kiosk customers has actually been unable to obtain a Warner title or had to pay more for a Warner title since the implementation of Warner's policy; and finally, it ignores the numerous inconvenient public admissions made by its parent company that its DVD kiosk business competes with a wide variety of distribution channels, technology, and content in the 'highly competitive' home video industry," according to testimony from Warner Home Video officials last week.

In the end, Redbox has come out with a single benefit in that it can once again stock its kiosks with Warner titles at cheaper wholesale purchase rates and not bulk retail rates.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed for the consumer. Titles still cost $1 at the kiosk, and their availability is still delayed.

Mitch Lowe, President of Redbox said, "By agreeing to a delayed release date, Redbox can now acquire Warner Home Video titles at a reduced product cost, preserving value for our consumers and increasing customer access to Warner titles at Redbox locations nationwide."

So who really benefits? Redbox and its investors.

"The agreement is accretive to EBITDA, and removes the risk of buying and selling DVDs on the open market," Ari Black of Thomas Weisel Partners today wrote today. "We believe there is now a lot more certainty that Redbox will be able to maintain margins going forward."

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The office of Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that she has contacted Google officials by telephone, in an informal inquiry regarding its Google Buzz social networking service. Although Comm. Stoddart's office acknowledges the changes the company has already made, and is continuing to make, since Buzz's rollout last February 9, she says she asked a conference of Google officials why they released Buzz service to Canada without any advance notification to government regulators there.

Stoddart's office has not reported the nature of Google officials' response, or whether they responded at all. The phone call does not appear to be, at least at this point, the full-scale investigation implied by a CBC News report yesterday. But a statement issued by Stoddart's office in response to Betanews' inquiry this morning indicates that she may have told Google that, had they consulted with her first, she might have noticed the potential for privacy issues, enabli