Ouch! Cracks in the Apple iEmpire?

Heaven forfend!

First Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, and now GE’s NBC Universal. The New York Times says NBC will not renew its contract to sell TV shows on iTunes because they can’t agree on pricing. The contract is expected to end in December.

NBC — the top supplier of digital video to Apple’s online store, accounting for about 40 percent of downloads — notified Apple of its decision late yesterday, according to the Times, which cites an unnamed source.

This is just the latest in a history of gripes media companies have with the reigning iTunes. The music industry, reeling from declining CD sales, has pushed for variable pricing. Apple, for its part, maintains that consumers want simplified pricing. iTunes Japan is one of the few markets where Apple sells tracks at different prices.

With Amazon, Wal-Mart and others on its back, will Jerkoff Jobs finally relent? Stay tuned sports fans…..

http://blogs.reuters.com/2007/08/31/keep-an-eye-on-nbc-apple/

Microsoft buying RIM? What have the pundits been smoking?

Get a grip, people. Juicy rumours about Microsoft Corp. buying Research In Motion Ltd. Have swished around the market, and while most were quick to dismiss the chatter as background noise, some observers said the idea has merit.

Even though Microsoft has its own wireless product on the market, Windows Mobile, the giant tech company may want to snap up RIM in order to ward off other competitors. Apple Inc., with its iPhone, and Google Corp., with rumours of a new device, are both threats to dominate the wireless space Microsoft covets.

While RIM is one of the largest companies in Canada, analysts think it would be a breeze for Microsoft to purchase. Microsoft has a market capitalization of $266.7 billion US and had $34 billion in cash and short-term investments on hand at the end of fiscal 2006. RIM’s market cap totaled $48.95 billion Cdn at Thursday’s close, making it the fifth most valuable company in Canada but a reasonable meal for the software goliath.

“The amount (Microsoft) would pay for RIM is a little pimple on a hippo’s ass,” one analyst said.

Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM declined to comment on the rumours, as did Microsoft.

RIM stock closed at $87.71, up 91 cents for the day, after reaching as high as $89.68. At its peak, the stock was worth more than $50 billion for the first time.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Canaccord Adams, thinks an outright sale is unlikely but argues a partnership agreement would make sense.

Such a deal would be an about-face for Microsoft, but it would put it well ahead of Apple and Google in the mobile-device race and give RIM access to content such as television shows, games and movies.

RIM’s popularity has made it the subject of takeover rumours before, with Nokia often appearing as the predator. Motorola has also surfaced as a potential buyer, but RIM’s size likely puts it out of reach.

Misek said this is the first time Microsoft has been kicked around as the rumoured suitor.

He said any potential buyer would have to pay a 50-per-cent premium and have co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis on board.

“I don’t see them as sellers,” he said. “Would you sell if you are just absolutely crushing it, and you still think you’re not even half done?”

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id
=c2c94e77-58ad-4da0-918c-f9fff563a116&k=34894

Ex-Juniper attorney faces SEC spanking

Juniper out of the bush but Berry gets a licking

Juniper Networks has settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over allegations of improper stock option backdating. But while the networking equipment maker swims out of hot water, its former legal counsel is getting a double dip in the stew pot.

The SEC filed fraud charges yesterday against Bay Area attorney Lisa Berry for her role in the backdating options while at Juniper and at KLA-Tencor Corporation.

The Commission's complaint against Berry, filed in federal district court in San Jose, accuses her serial backdating. While at KLA, she allegedly identified dates with historically low stock prices to facilitate the backdating of option grants by the companies option committee. Berry moved to Juniper shortly before its 1999 IPO. At Juniper, the SEC claims, she established a similar backdating process, creating minutes of fictitious stock option committee meetings to document false grant dates - at times using the names of other committee members with a signature stamp.

As a result of the allegedly misleading disclosures, KLA overstated its net income in fiscal years 1998 through 1999 by as much as 47 per cent. Juniper overstated its 2003 net income by nearly 22 per cent. This year, Juniper restated its financial earnings, showing nearly $900m in previously unreported compensation expenses.

"The Commission's action ... confirms that attorneys are no less bound by the securities laws than other public company executives," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, the SEC's director of enforcement. "At both KLA and Juniper, Ms. Berry was in a unique position to insure that the companies accurately disclosed their stock option expenses; instead, she facilitated their fraud on investors."

The SEC announced yesterday that — of course without admitting or denying the allegations — Juniper has consented to a permanent injunction against violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws. Juniper said it has done so without being fined, and the investigation is closed.

The charges against the company and Berry stem from an industry-wide probe of backdating investigation by the SEC. Last week, the commission fingered former Brocade CFO Michael Byrd with eight counts of fraud related to backdating stock options. Earlier this month, Gregory Reyes, Brocade's former CEO, was found guilty of backdating securities fraud. The company's former HR veep, Stephanie Jensen, also faces charges.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/former_juniper_attorney_sec_charges/

Report: Apple and Volkswagen Could be Planning "iCar" Project

A VW-made iCar could be next in line from Apple's iLife world domination plans

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Volkswagen's chief Martin Winterkorn met several days ago in California, and plan to meet for further discussions according to the Associated Press. The two companies are apparently working on “scores of ideas,” though none are set in stone.

Industry experts believe that Apple and VW may be working on the “iCar,” or some sort of vehicle concept that would incorporate a significant amount of media devices in its peripheral functionality.

Apple currently works with many automakers, including VW, to provide iPod connections as options for new vehicles. Cars with such connections can automatically interface with iPods to play the stored music through the vehicle’s interface and sound system.

Next: the iDick.

http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Apple+and+Volkswagen
+Could+be+Planning+iCar+Project/article8662.htm

Yahoo’s New Pres. Oversees a Shake-Up

Susan L. Decker, Yahoo’s new president, is putting her stamp on the company in a reorganization of its management ranks that creates a new division responsible for generating the bulk of the company’s revenue.

The latest in a string of internal shake-ups will bring together Yahoo’s sales operations with the company’s publisher network, corporate partnerships and HotJobs to form a “global partner solutions” division. It will be led by Hilary Schneider, a fast-rising protégée of Ms. Decker.

As part of the reorganization, Gregory Coleman, the company’s top sales executive, will leave, though he will remain until February to assist in the transition, Yahoo said. Mr. Coleman will be the second senior sales executive to leave since June, when Wenda Harris Millard left amid an overhaul of Yahoo’s sales force.

A steady stream of executives have left Yahoo — some voluntarily and some not — over the last year as the company has struggled with lackluster growth and its unsatisfactory showing against Google and other competitors.

As the company’s problems mounted, Yahoo shares lost nearly half their value, from a high of more than $43 in January 2006. On Wednesday, shares dipped below a 52-week low of $22.44 before recovering slightly to close at $22.55, up 3 cents.

In an interview, Ms. Schneider described the latest reorganization as the continuation of a process that began in June when Yahoo merged the sales group responsible for search ads with that responsible for graphic ads.

The new division will provide an easier way for advertisers to reach customers not only on Yahoo’s network of Web sites but also on the sites of Yahoo’s partners, which include eBay, Comcast and a consortium of newspapers, Ms. Schneider said. It will also make it easier for partners like newspapers to sell ads on Yahoo’s properties, she said.

“This integration is the logical next step,” Ms. Schneider said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/technology/30yahoo.
html?ex=1346126400&en=f50e8ce9eefb197e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Worm In The Apple?

Apple Chief Steve (The Jerkster) Jobs' not-so-secret plan to take over the world is going well. On the desktop, Apple's Macs are chewing away at Dell and Gateway's market share. The iPod has squashed Microsoft's Zune beneath its tank treads. Now the iPhone threatens to roll through the wireless industry like a monster truck. Apple shares are up more than 50% so far this year.

The only problem: While Apple's shares are soaring, its customer satisfaction marks are slipping. Apple's mark on the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index slipped four points to 79 for the second quarter, down from 83 during the year-ago period. Sure, Apple's customer marks remain at the top of the industry. But it's not a trend any Mac owner would like to see continue.

The stakes are high: The slip comes as Apple is launching a complex new product, the iPhone. More ominously, customer service problems were one of the first signs that Apple rival Dell was losing its edge. While it led the industry in 2000, it now ranks behind Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway .

So, should Apple users worry? Not yet. On the desktop, part of the slip may stem from the fact that Apple is grabbing customers from other computer makers. Mac sales alone have grown at three times the rate of the overall computer industry this year, with the one-time niche computer retailer now selling one out of 20 personal computers in the U.S. "Some of those switchers are coming over, and it's like learning a new language to a certain extent," says Jim Gillespie of the Napa Macintosh Users Group.

Moreover, Apple's small size makes it easier to simply spend more on customer service as it adds customers. Unlike Dell, Apple still owns just a thin slice of the computer market. As a result, there's plenty of room for it to grow its profits by simply selling more machines, rather than selling them more cheaply. "The scale of the numbers that Dell was dealing with was, and is, very, very different," says Crawford Del Prete, senior vice president at tech market researcher IDC.

However, things get trickier in Apple's newest business. The iPhone puts Apple's reputation, in part, in the hands of AT&T . The wireless carrier's customer satisfaction scores consistently lag those of rivals Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. And AT&T has already screwed up by sending out itemized phone bills as long as 300 pages, despite an all-you-can-eat service plan. "It's a partnership," Del Prete says. "If Apple is the right hand, then AT&T is certainly the left."

Don't expect this to get too far out of hand. if Jobs is anything, Jobs is an anal-retentive control freak: Apple rolls its own operating system, it runs its own stores, it has even built its own Web browser and spreadsheet software. By contrast, Dell has to field customer queries about software that it doesn't make, such as Microsoft's operating system. "With Macs, the company is in control of everything," says Gillespie. "Whereas with those other people, there's no one in charge of the asylum."

As a result, it's too early for Apple loyalists to worry about a blip in Apple's customer-satisfaction scores. But AT&T may want to watch its step. Jobs has shown he's willing to chuck an inconvenient business partner--as he did with IBM, which once supplied Apple's processors--if they stumble. If Apple has to build its own phone network to get it right, it might. It might even make money at it.

http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/08/28/apple-jobs-
computers-tech-cx_bc_0829apple.html

Microsoft promises less-annoying Vista OS early next year

'But you should upgrade now'

This morning, with a post to the official Windows Vista blog, Microsoft said that the first Vista Service Pack will likely arrive at the beginning of the year, after the usual far-flung beta test. As SP1 betas continue to turn up on file-sharing sites across the web, the company will roll out an official beta "in the next few weeks," hoping to iron out more than few kinks in the little-used operating system.

"In addition to updates we’ve previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards," wrote Vista product manager Nick White.

White also said that the update will make "additional improvements to the IT administration experience." But he was adamant - thank goodness - that SP1 would not introduce brand new tools: "We didn't design SP1 as a vehicle for releasing new features; however, some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1."

The official SP1 ship date will depend on how well the beta test goes. "We're targeting releasing SP1 to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008," White said, "but as always, we're first and foremost focused on delivering a high-quality release, so we'll determine the exact release date of SP1 after we have reached that quality bar."

Of course, Redmond sees no reason for computer users to continue using Windows XP as the company prepares a more reliable version of Vista. "Microsoft encourages organizations not to wait for SP1 but instead [to] deploy Windows Vista today in order to benefit from improved security, management, and deployment benefits," the company told us in a canned statement, after rejecting our request for an interview.

Nonetheless, it seems well aware that most of us will continue to avoid Vista like the plague. Today, the company also announced that a third and final XP Service Pack will arrive by the middle of next year.

"Microsoft will be releasing Windows XP SP3 to customers and partners in the next few weeks and is targeting the first half of 2008 for an RTM release," a spokesman said. "It is a standard practice to release a service pack as a release nears end-of-life for the convenience to our customers and partners. Windows XP SP3 is a roll-up of previously released updates for Windows XP including security updates, out-of-band releases, and hotfixes. It will also contain a small number of new updates."

For more details on Vista Service Pack 1, check out Microsoft's beta white paper. Interestingly enough, the beta does not appear to include an update to Vista's desktop search interface, which Microsoft promised last month after a legal complaint from arch-rival Google. "The service pack improves the performance of the desktop shell, but it does not provide a new search user interface or a new version of Windows Media Center," the white paper reads. But Shanen Boettcher, a Windows general manager, told Cnet that this would come later in the beta process.

Naturally, as Vista users wait for SP1, Microsoft will continue to offer OS tweaks through Windows Update. "Service packs are part of our traditional software life-cycle; they're something we do for most major products as a commitment to continuous improvement," White wrote. "But, the servicing situation has changed with the advent of Windows Vista, as we no longer rely solely on service packs as the main vehicle used to deploy system fixes and improvements."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/microsoft_trumpets_vista_sp1/

All of world's big firms hit by typosquatting

----Squatting? Sounds kinda kinky doesn't it?

The world's 500 biggest companies have all fallen victim to typosquatting. OUT-LAW research has found that the fast-growing trend of making ad money from web domains similar to famous brands affects all the world's biggest firms.

Typosquatting is the profiting, through adverts, from websites whose addresses are very close to famous brand names. A typical site could be microsift.com. When visitors go to a typosquatter's site they see adverts which, when displayed, pay the site operator a small fee.

Though the money earned by each advert is often only a few dollar cents, the volume of traffic and the number of domains held by professional typosquatters means that some are earning millions of dollars a year.

OUT-LAW.COM analysed web sites relating to brand names held by the Fortune Global 500 biggest companies and the FTSE 100 biggest companies on the London Stock Exchange and found that every one of them had a brand which had fallen victim to typosquatting. The results are published today in the OUT-LAW Magazine and in weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio.

Many of the sites violate trade mark law because they involve the business use of a name that is very similar to a trade marked term.

"If you have a trade mark registration or common law rights and someone is trading under a name which is similar to the name you've got rights in, then providing they're trading in a similar area then yes it would be trade mark infringement," said Lee Curtis, a trade mark specialist with Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/29/biggest_companies_typosquatted/

Microsoft Developing A Double-Sided Touch Screen Device

LucidTouch includes pseudo-transparency technology that creates an on-screen silhouette of fingers wrapped around the back to ease navigation. How pseudo? Search us…..

Microsoft researchers are developing a mobile platform with a touch screen system that is double sided and appears transparent, allowing users to manipulate content with their thumbs and fingers wrapped around the device.

Microsoft isn't officially saying what the gadget -- called LucidTouch -- is for, but its form factor suggests it could be used as an ultra-mobile PC or PDA. Photos of a prototype appearing on a Microsoft researcher's Web site show the device being used as a GPS unit and a gaming platform, among other things.

Users can interact with LucidTouch by touching the front or the back of the device. A feature called pseudo-transparency creates an on-screen silhouette of fingers wrapped around the back to ease navigation. The feature "allows users to accurately acquire targets while not occluding the screen with their fingers and hand," says Microsoft researcher Patrick Baudisch, in an undated blog entry describing the device.

Baudisch says early tests on the prototype revealed that "many users found touching on the back to be preferable to touching on the front, due to reduced occlusion, higher precision, and the ability to make multi-finger input."

Microsoft has not provided a release date for the device. The photos suggest that some prototypes are being co-developed by Hewlett-Packard's Compaq division, which has worked with Microsoft in the past on Tablet PCs.

Microsoft in the past has struggled to introduce computers with unconventional form factors. Its operating system and software support of Tablet PC, which allows users to input commands using a stylus, has developed only a niche following. Early versions of Tablet PC suffered from hand writing recognition glitches.

Later this year, Microsoft is expected to introduce a system, known as Milan, which features a touch screen about the size of a small coffee table.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201802969

City cancels Wi-Fi vision

Chicago is curtailing its digital dreams, deciding to back away from municipal Wi-Fi service after failing to reach agreement with either of two companies that sought to build a wireless Internet network in the city.

The move comes as municipal broadband wireless projects around the country face difficulties, and EarthLink Inc., a major player in the field, is re-evaluating its future in municipal Wi-Fi.

As envisioned in early 2006, Chicago was expected to become one of the first big cities in the country to blanket its streets and neighborhoods with a wireless Internet signal that would allow residents access to the Web in their homes and wherever they traveled in the city.

But technology is advancing and the cost of online access for consumers is declining so dramatically that Chicago has other avenues to promote more use of the Internet. As a result, the Wi-Fi deal lost luster when negotiations bogged down, according to sources close to the matter.

Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined.

Taking its proposal request off the table for re-evaluation "is entirely appropriate for the city," said Tom Hulsebosch, vice president of municipal sales for EarthLink. "We're seeing this evolve as we learn more about these networks, and the city needs to think about this again from its own business perspective."

It might be possible for the city to spend money on Wi-Fi services that it now spends on other communications, he said, but that would require rethinking the budget.

A few years ago when San Francisco, Philadelphia, Houston and other cities jumped into Wi-Fi, officials thought paying less than $20 a month to get a high-speed Internet connection anywhere in the city would find a lot of takers. They also thought advertising could support citywide free connections.

Results on both scores have been generally disappointing. In Lompoc, Calif., which activated its $2 million Wi-Fi network almost a year ago, the city signed up fewer than 500 users out of a population of more than 40,000.

"There's a serious dose of reality, much needed, that has come into play after all the hype last year about free, ad-driven Wi-Fi," said Craig Settles, a wireless business strategist and consultant based in Oakland.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tue_nowifi0828aug28,1,5523756.story

iPhone hacker's skill wins him sports car

A teenage hacker who managed to unlock his iPhone so that it can be used with cellular networks other than AT&T will be trading his reworked gadget for a new sports car. George Hotz said he had reached the deal with CertiCell, a Kentucky-based mobile-phone repair company.

The procedure, which the 17-year-old laid out on his blog last week, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who do not want an AT&T service or cannot get it.

The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the US.

Hotz posted on his blog that he traded his modified iPhone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z and three 8GB iPhones.

"This has been a great end to a great summer," Hotz added.

The hacker said he would be sending the three iPhones to the three online collaborators who helped him divorce Apple Inc's product from AT&T's network. It took 500 hours, or about eight hours a day, since the iPhone's 29 June launch. The youth made the deal with Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, who also promised him a paid consulting job.

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1369442007

AT&T turns screws on iPhone unlocker

Scary late night caller

UniquePhones has pulled its iPhone unlocking service after receiving calls from lawyers claiming to represent AT&T and threatening to sure the Belfast-based firm for copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination.

The call apparently came in the middle of the night, UK time, within hours of the intended launch of the unlocking service. The company says it's trying to discover how serious the threat is.

Given the plethora of methods for iPhone unlocking, including soldering solutions, software solutions and even cork-and-pin solutions, it seems perverse for AT&T to go after one company in Belfast. Then again UniquePhones is planning to sell the unlocking service, rather than giving away instructions as most people are.

This could make such unlocking considerably more common, as anyone will be able to get an iPhone just by paying money to UniquePhones rather than following arcane instructions from hackers web sites.

Unlocking the phone makes the handset usable on other GSM networks, though some of the most desirable functionality, such as Visual Voicemail won't work without network support. It's also not clear if Apple will be able, or willing, to reverse the unlocking next time you sync to iTunes or download a security fix.

iPhone users are required to use at least 60 per cent of their bundled minutes on the AT&T network. Some people in Vermont have, apparently, been cut off as AT&T have no coverage there and therefore all the calls are handled on a roamed-to network, costing AT&T money.

But anyone unlocking their handset would appear to be making no calls at all, and as AT&T isn't subsidising the handset it's hard to understand why they care so much. Apple, on the other hand, is demanding 10 per cent of revenue from European operators in exchange an exclusive deal on the handset, something they must be very interested in protecting.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/iphone_unlocking/

Seagate nixes Chinese buy interest talk

Seagate Technology, the world's largest disk drives maker, dashed speculation that a Chinese firm has expressed interest in buying the firm, saying it had received no such offer and there was no intention to sell.

The New York Times reported this month that a Chinese technology firm had made overtures to Seagate, citing an interview with Chief Executive William Watkins.

But the U.S. disk drives giant said in a statement on Tuesday that Watkins had actually referred to growing interest in disk drives technology from companies in China, Japan and Korea, which he said had made disk drive storage "a national agenda".

"Just to be clear, Seagate has not recived such an offer and we are not trying to sell the company," Seagate said in a corporate statement provided to Reuters on Tuesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/mergersNews/idUSHKG28206320070828

Just what you always wanted: Young Wozniak and Jobs play set

Some of you may remember that, last summer, we chronicled for you the different levels of Apple zealotry. There is the OS-defending zealot, the Apple hardware collecting zealot (I'm looking at you Erik!), the zealot who shaves or tattoos various incarnations of the Apple logo on his or her body, and then the most severe form of Apple zealot, the one that collects lego-esque action figures of his or her favorite Apple personalities.

It was at that time that we pointed out a set of Lego-themed bricks, based on Apple's award-winning 1984 commercial. It was then when our fears were realized. The set sold out alarmingly fast, like Kansas City out of the pennant race fast. There were many more of these individuals afflicted by this severe form of zealotry then we had ever realized—hordes of you were willing to pay $200 for the limited edition (not) Lego set.

The events of last summer about to happen again. This time, PodBrix is releasing a limited-edition run of 300 "Young Woz and Jobs Playset." The set, which will go for $39.99, depicts Steve Jobs and a frighteningly wookie-like Steve Wozniak with a screwdriver in hand way back in the year 1972. Steve Jobs sports a sort of maniacal smirk while Wozniak a big grin, and beside both of them sits a computer that looks an awful lot like an Apple II. That is, if it wasn't seven years before that machine was produced.

Of course, there are varying degrees of each level of zealotry—a tattoo obviously makes for more of a zealot than a hair cut. Since this is the case, this set will definitely make you less of a zealot at $39.99 than those who paid the $198.99 price tag for the last limited edition. Please do consider that—after buying the add-on Steve, Steve dream house, and Steve dream Corvette—your level will rise significantly.

The set will go on sale August 29 at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. Good luck.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/08/27/
just-what-you-always-wanted-young-wozniak-and-jobs-play-set

Why is Apple’s customer satisfaction slipping?

The University of Michigan has announced its annual ranking of customer service by PC manufacturers. Apple is still tops in the industry, as it has been forever. But it tied Dell for the biggest drop since last year, with a five percent decline. Here's what survey author Claes Fornell had to say:

With more than $21 billion in revenue, Apple has grown by nearly 400% in sales during the past 5 years. Recent demand for Mac computers is up by about 25%, which is more than twice the rate of growth for the overall PC market. Many analysts seem to believe that Apple is gaining market share in part because of iPod users switching to Mac computers. It is very difficult to ensure that both customer service and satisfaction stay high when a company suddenly needs to service many more customers. This is probably what is behind the decline in customer satisfaction for Apple. According to the Economist (6/9/07), there are also “grumblings about manufacturing defects and customer service.”

And he didn't even mention the iPhone, which will present a slew of unfamiliar new kinds of customer complaints for Apple to learn to deal with. So what do you think? Are you as satisfied with Apple as you were a year ago? Is its customer service and product quality holding up?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2007/08/is_apples_custo.html

iPhone Unlocked; Legal Battle Looming?

Our day is not complete without an attempt to bust what's left of Job's cojones. Ed Felten writes: In the past few days several groups declared victory in the battle to unlock the iPhone — to make the iPhone work on cellular networks other than AT&T’s. New Jersey teenager George Hotz published instructions (starting here) for a geeks-only unlock procedure involving hardware and software tweaks. An anonymous group called iPhoneSimFree reportedly has an easy all-software unlock procedure which they plan to sell. And a company called UniquePhones was set to sell a remote unlocking service.

(Technical background: The iPhone as initially sold worked only on the AT&T cell network — the device was pretty much useless until you activated AT&T wireless service on it. People figured out quickly that you could immediately cancel the wireless service to get an iPhone that worked only via WiFi; but you couldn’t use it on any other mobile phone/data network. This was not a fundamental technical limitation of the device, but was instead a technological tie designed by Apple to drive business to AT&T.)

Unlocking the iPhone helps everybody, except AT&T, which would prefer not to face competition in selling wireless services to iPhone users. So AT&T, predictably, seem to be sending its lawyers after the unlockers. UniquePhone, via their iphoneunlocking.com site, reports incoming lawyergrams from AT&T regarding “issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination”; UniquePhones has delayed its product release to consider its options. The iPhoneSimFree members are reportedly keeping anonymous because of legal concerns.

Can AT&T cook up a legal theory justifying a ban on iPhone unlocking? I’ll leave that question to the lawyers. It seems to me, though, that regardless of what the law does say, it ought to say that iPhone unlocking is fine. For starters, the law should hesitate to micromanage what people do with the devices they own. If you want to run different software on your phone, or if you want to use one cell provider rather than another, why should the government interfere?

Regardless of what AT&T does, its effort to stop iPhone unlocking is likely doomed. Unlocking software is small and easily transmitted. AT&T’s lawyers can stick a few fingers in the dike, but they won’t be able to stop the unlocking software from getting to people who want it. This is yet another illustration that you can’t lock people out of their own digital devices.

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1191

Acer's Snaps Up Gateway: Vaults It Ahead of Lenovo

According to our good and great friends at the Wall Street Journal, Acer Inc.'s acquisition of Gateway Inc. for $710 million highlights the intensifying consolidation in the personal-computer business and strengthens an already fast-growing competitor against industry leaders Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. in their home market.

The deal, announced Monday, will put Taiwan-based Acer firmly in the No. 3 spot in global PC market share by unit shipments, supplanting Lenovo Group Ltd., which itself vaulted into the global top tier two years ago by purchasing the PC operations of International Business Machines Corp. The Gateway acquisition marks a major though potentially risky step for Acer, a company that once manufactured PCs for big-name Western brands and is now buying one.

Under terms of the agreement, Acer will launch a cash tender offer for all outstanding shares of Gateway, Irvine, California, for $1.90 a share, a 57% premium to the closing price of Gateway's shares on the New York Stock Exchange Friday. The companies said the deal has been approved unanimously by the boards of both companies and is expected to close by December.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118820817365109596.html

Crisis? What crisis?

Unless you live in a bunker, you will have noticed the sub-prime credit crisis that has sucker-punched the US, pushing interest rates down, weakening the dollar and battering stocks and shares worldwide.

The impact is yet to hit home in the UK but many are predicting doom and gloom for businesses as bank managers roll up their sleeves, pull back credit and clampdown on private equity funding.

But what does all this financial uncertainty mean for the tech channel and can distributors expect to feel the pinch long-term if the market upheaval persists? Surprisingly the answer seems to be that, in the short term at least, the channel reckons it can and will tough it out.

In June this year, equity analysts Standard and Poor's (S&P) said in its "LBO Activity Accelerating In The Global High-Tech Sector" report that credit trends in the IT sector had shifted to "fairly balanced but positive" in 2007 from a "negative" position in 2006. It said it expects to see that trend continue for the remainder of this year, but added that the debt burden for tech firms also looked set to grow.

However, more recently S&P has highlighted the growing uncertainty around the impact of the credit crunch on the financial market, as S&P analyst Bruce Hyman puts it: "The backlash to sub-prime is working its way upstream and no one is quite sure when it's going to hit."

He adds that the "doldrums of summer" may be contributing to a "short-term cusp" in the financial markets with the last two weeks of August being a typically slow time for businesses. But, Hyman explains, "it's a little hard to tell how much tighter the market can expect to be squeezed."

What's that coming over the hill?

Distributors and vendors are feeling some pressure from current market conditions, according to Ed Bateman, hard disk drive and components business unit manager at Bell Micro. Despite this, he reckons the exchange rate impact on the channel of a strong pound up against a painfully weak US dollar is "absolutely negligible and fairly limited."

He accepts that if the situation continues "there could be a huge reset in the market for both distributors and resellers trying to break even". But he argues that "these things tend to even out. It's not as if we haven't seen these fluctuations regularly."

Bateman says he is confident that the dip is only short-term, and that for Bell Micro, the return on components is reasonable. "Of course no one wants to see reduced margins and we're all about adding value to the business. We're in the value space."

Does Bateman think there could be long-term implications for US and UK distributors if market volatility continues?

"It could all be a different story if the dollar does fall through the floor. But it's all a big if at the moment."

Ovum IT services practice leader Angel Dobarbziev agrees that "at this stage the impact is negligible." He believes that what we are seeing is the market returning to normal conditions following an upturn in activity. The credit crunch derives from a huge injection of cash into mergers and acquisitions propped up by a flurry of private equity deals at the tail end of last year, he says.

Dobarbziev is convinced the financial risk has been sparse and he thinks resellers and disties will only see a brief low. But he warns that losses could be greater than financial results already publised would suggest, as pressure on profits grows and IT spending tightens. He says there will be a broader impact on the US economy which can expect a minor hit in terms of spending. But he points out that all this is off the back of "some pretty positive times and maybe this is simply the beginning of that slowdown".

Credit will become more expensive, suggests Dobarbziev, leading to a drop in consolidation within IT. As for the big players in the technology sector, enterprise-sized organizations have made considerable repairs since the 2001/02 dotcom crash and that this could save them if a recession does hit the UK, he says, adding "it is simply too early to tell".

He predicts that enterprise spending on IT services could drop as the cash cow dries up but reckons vendors have healthy balance sheets and need not be overly concerned, in turn minimizing any impact on disties.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/08/27/credit_crunch_exchange_rates_channel/

iPhone unlocked: AT&T loses iPhone exclusivity

Jerkoff Jobs, eat your heart out!

It's high noon, Apple and AT&T -- we really hate to break it to you, but the jig is up. Last night the impossible was made possible: right in front of our very eyes we witnessed a full SIM unlock of our iPhone with a small piece of software. It's all over, guys.

The iPhoneSIMfree.com team called us up to prove their claim that they cracked Apple's iPhone SIM lock system, and prove it they did. (No, we don't have a copy of the unlock software, so don't even ask us, ok?) The six-man team has been working non-stop since launch day, and they're officially the first to break Apple's SIM locks on the iPhone. It's done. Seriously. They wouldn't tell us when and how they would release it to the public, but you can certainly bet that they'll try to make a buck on their solution (and rightly so). We can hardly believe the iPhone's finally been cracked. No, scratch that -- we just can't believe it took this long.

Again: we can confirm with 99.99% certainty that iPhoneSIMfree.com's software solution completely SIM unlocks the iPhone, is restore-resistant, and should make the iPhone fully functional for users outside of the US. Read on for details.

Notes on the install

* The unlock process took only a couple of minutes. From our end it was totally painless.

* Once you put your new, non AT&T SIM in the device, you have to go through the usual activation process. This can, of course, be done by anyone anywhere with the right tools (like iASign or iActivator)

* We tested with an active T-Mobile SIM -- after the hack was finished and we reactivated we immediately got full bars and the T-Mobile carrier info popped up in the top bar.

* Everything is otherwise the same, except the menu system now has a couple more options. The root menu has Carrier settings where you can select your preferred network if you don't want to roam.

* The General -> Network menu now has an EDGE network settings area where you can input your carrier's APN and username / password. We put in our T-Mobile info, and were immediately online. (Apparently these hidden menus were added in the 1.0.1 update, they tell us. How convenient!)

* Visual voicemail isn't in the cards -- sorry. That was, of course, to be expected because it's a special AT&T network-specific feature right now. When you hit the voicemail button you are taken immediately to your carrier's default voicemail line though, and that works just like it would on any other phone.

* Everything is confirmed as working on a non-AT&T network: SMS send / receive, internet (including Safari, Mail, Google maps, etc.). YouTube doesn't work out of the box, but that's to be expected. If you're not on AT&T you have to manually activate YouTube -- here's the guide on how to do that. (YouTube is the only app you have to activate like this.)

* We know, it's kind of crazy, but this doesn't look like it's a hoax.

* No, sorry, you can't have our unlocked iPhone.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/iphone-
unlocked-atandt-loses-iphone-exclusivity-august-24-2007/

Subprime Fallout Could Help Venture Capitalists

The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The ground is rising.

Could the subprime problems that have screwed up the market be a mixed blessing for Silicon Valley’s high-technology investors?

Highly out of favor in recent years, public offerings of technology start-ups are enjoying a mild resurgence. And some venture capitalists are arguing that the fragile momentum could be bolstered by the problems that mortgage-related securities have caused in the stock and credit markets. The rationale is that technology investments, because they are far removed from credit-centric securities, could look relatively enticing.

“One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.”said Keith Benjamin, a partner at Levensohn Venture Partners, a San Francisco firm that focuses on technology investments.

The logic is being echoed in Silicon Valley, albeit somewhat sheepishly given the self-interest involved and the fact that there is but one major data point. That point is the initial offering of VMware, a company that makes software for servers. It went public on Aug. 14 at $29, and its shares surged 76 percent. VMware shares closed yesterday at $70.20, up $3.35.

The sharp rise of VMware, while the markets have been so volatile, punctuates what appears to be the end of the technology drought for initial public offerings. In the second quarter, 26 venture-backed offerings raised $4.3 billion, compared with 19 such companies raising $2 billion in the period last year.

Venture capitalists now hope that the disfavor technology companies engendered during the dot-com collapse is being more quickly erased — or put into perspective — by the risks evident in the struggling hedge-fund investment strategy.

But, that said, venture capitalists said the subprime-spawned troubles could be a mixed blessing — given that those troubles could take a negative toll, though an indirect one, on the seeding and growing of high-tech companies.

On the downside, venture investors said, they could have a tougher time raising investment funds from big financial institutions and other limited partners. The concern among some venture investors is that those institutions have less money because of recent declines in the market and also that they are distracted by all the fallout.

In addition, limited partners tend to some extent to lump together venture firms and hedge funds as alternative investment options. That means that as hedge funds come under scrutiny, some venture firms may get less money, said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist in San Diego and author of the blog Infectious Greed.

Another concern is that tighter credit, by making it harder to borrow debt, could sap the ability of some larger companies to pay for and acquire start-ups. While technology investors would rather take their investments public than have them acquired, a potential dip in the mergers sector could hurt one of venture capital’s primary strategies for selling investments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/business/24venture.html?
_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

And Now for Something Completely Different…..

Nicole Richie does 82 minutes hard time

'Treated like any other inmate' during prison hell ordeal

US reality TV "star" Nicole Richie is apparently none the worse for the wear after serving a hellish 82 minutes of a four-day drink-drive sentence, the BBC reports.

Richie, 25, was hauled off to the Lynwood celebrity hang-out jail - recently favoured with a quick visit from Paris Hilton - and duly fingerprinted. She didn't, however, get as far as the cells, since she was then released "based on her sentence and federal guidelines".

In an apparent attempt to prevent the US's prisons bursting at the seams with ne'er-do-well celebutards and Blackberry-chucking rapstresses, "inmates sentenced to less that 30 days for non-violent crimes are usually released within 12 hours", the Beeb explains.

Richie was nabbed last December driving the wrong way down a motorway. She subsequently coughed to a "driving under the influence of drink and drugs" rap, and was sentenced to four days' jail. The judge also handed down three years' probation and ordered her to attend a drug treatment program.

Having escorted his client from chokey, Richie's lawyer Chapman Holley assured the awaiting press: "She was really treated like any other inmate." Reports that a weeping Richie added that her slammer ordeal "felt like a 100 minutes" are unconfirmed

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/richie_ordeal/

Microsoft and Nokia hook up for Windows Live

It’s about bloody time!

Nokia, in conjunction with Microsoft, has released a version of Windows Live for its Series 60 handsets, with Series 40 to follow next year.

The deal gives punters easy access to Windows Messenger, Hotmail, Contacts and Spaces, without so much as a nod to the network operators.

The application may already be installed using the "Download" application on the N73, N76, N80, N93i and N95, where a new icon - WinLive - offers "Mail and IM" and "WL Spaces" for installation. The installing process takes a while, and consists of several components, but once installed offers well-integrated access to Windows Messenger.

Only IM is available - no video, VoIP, or such. File transfer appears to work, but we weren't able to find any of the received files when we tried it.

WL Spaces adds Windows Live Spaces to the available media-upload sites, along with Flickr and Vox which come pre-installed.

Much of this functionality was already available for Series 60 handsets, though not for free and not endorsed by Microsoft, but pre-installing the applications onto Series 40 phones (the platform used by mid-range phones such as the Nokia 6230) increases the potential user-base enormously.

The launch is a clear snub to network operators who have made several half-hearted attempts to launch their own email and even photo-sharing applications. By doing a deal directly with Microsoft, the network operator is reduced to trying to collect on the data traffic generated.

Right now the service is free, though the terms and conditions make it clear that a monthly subscription may be imposed later (with a 30-day warning). Such a subscription will be paid to Microsoft or Nokia, not the network operator. Why settle for 10 per cent of revenues when you can deal direct?

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/08/23/windows_live_nokia/

Google Sky launches

Google has already conquered Earth. Now, the world's most popular search engine is turning its attentions to the heavens. The media giant yesterday launched a service called Google Sky that aims to bring the mysteries of distant galaxies to a computer near you.

The add-on to the successful Google Earth whose bird'seye view of the planet is beloved of TV news graphic departments as well as hundreds of millions of internet users, offers a "virtual telescope" into the further reaches of the cosmos.

Using thousands of high-resolution images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope it promises to allow users to float and zoom in on more than 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

"Never before has a road map of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team. "Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer."

Dr Francisco Diego, from the department of physics and astronomy at University College London, described the program as an "imaginative, powerful and unique tool". He said: "Just as we are about to celebrate the 400th anniversary of telescope astronomy, this initiative will open a new window for anyone to be able to appreciate, explore and discover our fragile position in this vast and amazing universe."

To begin searching the universe online, users can scroll dizzyingly around a 3D map of the constellations from Andromeda to Vulpecula before clicking for a close-up and explanation of what they are seeing.

The images were compiled with the help of NASA from research by scientists around the world. Among them were the Digital Sky Survey Consortium, the Palomar Observation in California and the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre which provided 20 years worth of images from the skies above Britain. And users can enter their postcode and get a pollution and cloud-free image of what the sky should look like above their home.

http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2886382.ece

California Museum sets up mini-shrine to Steve Jobs

Okay, so maybe it's not quite a mini-shrine, it's going to be more like a full-size shrine. The California Museum announced today its list of inductees to its Hall of Fame for 2007, which include the likes of Ansel Adams, John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, and the CEO everybody loves to hate, Steve Jobs.

The Sacramento-based museum was established in 2006 as a way to honor "California's innovative spirit and have made their mark on history." And no museum about California's innovators would be complete without Steve. But what about the other Steve—Woz certainly played a hand in Apple's foundation—and what about Jonathan Ive? Perhaps they're on the short list of inductees upcoming years.

The induction event will be held in December of this year and medals will be handed out by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the First Lady. Who wants to see Steve jello wrestle Arnold before being allowed to take home the medal? Anyone?

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/08/21/california-museum
-sets-up-mini-shrine-to-steve-jobs

Apple Signs iPhone Deals for Europe

Apple Inc. has signed its first deals with mobile phone operators to offer its iPhone in three of Europe's largest markets, ending a period of intense negotiations, according to a report in the Financial Times newspaper.

Germany's T-Mobile Deutschland GmbH, France's Orange SA and Britain's O2 (UK) Ltd. are reported to have signed exclusive deals to sell the iPhone in their respective markets. The operators have agreed to give Apple 10 percent of the revenue they generate from the sale of voice and data services for the device, according to the report, which cited unnamed sources. The operators hope to introduce the phone in time for the important Christmas shopping season.

Apple plans to announce the deal officially at the IFA international consumer electronics exhibition in Berlin next week, the Financial Times reported.

The iPhone first launched in June in the U.S. through an exclusive partnership with AT&T Corp.. Since then, speculation had been rife about who Apple would partner with in Europe. Most initial reports agreed that T-Mobile and O2 would be among the partners. Some reports, citing unnamed sources, said that Vodafone Group PLC, Europe's biggest mobile operator, had been outbid by rivals in eleventh-hour talks.

Europe's splintered telecommunications market makes it harder for Apple to launch the iPhone here than in the U.S. None of the big carriers cover all of Europe's most populated markets, forcing Apple to strike deals with several operators.

The iPhone could provide a boost for operators in Europe, where customers tend to choose service based on coverage and where brand loyalty is not very strong, Niek van Veen, an associate analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said in a recent interview.

It may also help them to secure longer term contracts with customers, who tend to favor prepaid calling plans in Europe over long-term subscriptions. That same factor could also work against the iPhone in Europe, however. Apple and AT&T require customers to sign up for a two-year contract for the device, an unusually long period.

Apple's steep demands may have made it harder for the company to reach agreements, van Veen said.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136263-c,techindustrytrends/article.html

Joint venture to battle iTunes

Rots of ruck, dudes!

Viacom's MTV Networks said on Tuesday it struck a digital music partnership with online music service RealNetworks Inc and Verizon to compete against Apple's iTunes.

MTV Networks will contribute cash, a five-year note for $230 million (116 million pounds) and other assets to the joint venture, according to a RealNetworks filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

MTV will merge its digital music store Urge with RealNetworks' Rhapsody music subscription service in a joint venture called Rhapsody America. Executives declined to say when products associated with the partnership would be launched.

But Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, will become the exclusive wireless distributor for the joint venture's digital content once it is up and running.

"The pieces are such that we think one plus one, plus one equals big -- certainly more than three," RealNetworks Chief Executive Rob Glaser said on a conference call.

The partnership represents another attempt by tech and media companies to snatch market share from Apple, whose combination of iTunes service and iPod digital entertainment devices has been hard to beat.

"It will be highly visible and it has a chance of eking out some market share," Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff said. "But it will be awfully hard to push out iTunes."

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-08-22T044926Z
_01_MOL168260_RTRUKOC_0_UK-VIACOM-MTV-REALNETWORKS.xml&src=nl_uktopnewsearly

Google will carpet YouTube with 'overlay' ads

Not for user generated content....yet

Google will introduce a new advertising model for YouTube today which it reckons will be five to 10 times more effective than existing ad formats used on the video sharing website. From today, semi-transparent animated "overlay" ads will show up at the bottom fifth of the video window for a few seconds when a user views a YouTube clip.

By clicking on the ad, users can see it in full with the original video being paused while an "in-video" ad launches. It can also be closed manually by the user or will simply expire automatically. The new model is part of Google's attempt to ease investors' worries following the search engine giant's $1.65bn buyout of the video sharing biz last October.

Much of YouTube's success was built on a model that shunned commercialisation in favour of users sharing personal, and often copyrighted content, so finding a way to monetise the service without alienating the site's users has proved a big headache.

The concern for Google has been that encumbering the video site with ads could see its 100 million users log off in droves as they go in search of an ad-free alternative.

But it claims overlays will keep the "user community" happy while allaying investors' fears.

Google has been testing a number of formats with advertisers and big name content partners including Warner Music and BMW over the past few months. It said the research showed that users were five or ten times more likely to click on and view overlay rather than banner ads.

For the time being it said the ads will only be placed on video clips of its content partners, which include more than 1,000 small and large media firms that have videos licenced to YouTube.

Profit will be split between the media partner and YouTube and Google will charge advertisers $20 for every 1,000 times ads were shown.

Naughton said the restricted roll out will allow marketers to "acclimatise" to the new format before a decision is made on whether or not to the use the ads on user-generated video clips. But, if it does get the full go ahead, one potential drawback of the new model could see big name firms having ads run alongside content they do not approve of

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/22/google_youtube_overlay_ads/

Gartner Sees $19.3 Billion SaaS Market by 2011

That's in just a few years. SaaS has clearly come a long way. baby.

"The worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) market reached $6.3 billion in 2006 and is forecast to grow to $19.3 billion by year-end 2011, according to Gartner. SaaS is hosted software based on a single set of common code and data definitions that are consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers, at any time, on a pay-for-use basis, or as a subscription based on usage metrics."

However, all of the news is not good. As I've discussed many times here, the movement toward SaaS is problematic for many conventional enterprise software vendors. They are having trouble with both the technology and the price point.

"The scale of change involved in moving to a SaaS approach is proving hard for many vendors to manage. 'Due to the law of large numbers, traditional IT product models are becoming victims of their own success, while the relative smallness of new approaches facilitates growth much more easily,' said Ben Pring, research vice president for Gartner."

The end result of SaaS? A replacement of more conventional means of software delivery and the use of license and maintenance fees that have been driving enterprise application vendors for the last 15 years. There needs to be a huge shift in culture and sales approaches in order to make SaaS effective. Then too, there are no more lucrative, long-term service engagements to get an ERP or a CRM system up and running. The try-to-buy model of SaaS, and the simplicity of delivery, means there little lag between wanting a SaaS-delivered product and getting it.

I see a huge shake-out in the next few years as some traditional enterprise application vendors move to SaaS and fail. Thus, the existing pure-play SaaS players become stronger, and perhaps even purchase existing enterprise application players for their customer base, moving them over to SaaS.

However, don't think software-delivered applications will go away. Sure, that model will always have some followers, and there are many companies that still won't allow SaaS for security and cultural reasons, and, in many cases, their enterprise applications are running just fine and don't need to be replaced.

The growth of SaaS will drive a movement, a shift in the way we develop, deploy, and deliver software. And according to Gartner, the growth is going to happen rapidly

http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2007/08/gartner_sees_19.html

Quick Bits: Hasta La Vista, Vista?

A New York Times blog pposes the question, is Microsoft’s Vista having problems gaining acceptance? The booming sales of PCs this year says it is certainly not dissuading anyone from buying, but a few prominent defectors are getting attention. James Fallows of the the Atlantic monthly, and Jim Louderback, a former PC Magazine editor, have just said they are going back to Windows XP.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/quick-bits-hasta-la-vista-vista/

Tech giants Cisco, Microsoft team up

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made assurances that there would be no corporate "jujitsu." Cisco Systems' CEO John Chambers said he trusted Microsoft.

In an unusual press dog-and-pony-show to showcase their evolving business alliance, the leaders of the two tech giants Monday described how an increasing level of collaboration, as well as "respectful" competition, will drive the next wave of innovation and business success.

The alliance between Cisco and Microsoft, Chambers said, "could be a role model for our industry."

Seven initiatives, ranging from security to entertainment, were announced in a New York press conference. Questioned first by television interviewer Charlie Rose and later by business reporters, Ballmer and Chambers explained how a partnership that began 10 years ago had deepened in the past three years.

Ballmer, known for his intense manner, and Chambers, more diplomatic with a soft West Virginia drawl, offered a vision that sharply contrasted with the historic and fierce rivalry between Microsoft and some other Silicon Valley companies, such as Apple, Netscape and Sun Microsystems. Allegations of anti-competitive practices have dogged Microsoft since at least 1991, ultimately leading to a federal antitrust lawsuit and settlements that required the Redmond, Wash., company to change some of its practices.

Cisco's relationship with Microsoft has never been that adversarial. On Monday, the executives said collaboration would occur whether they participate or not because the so-called Web 2.0 era makes it easier for users to share information and work together.

Moreover, customers are demanding such cooperation because they expect technology to become more user-friendly, Ballmer and Chambers said. Rather than choosing one company's line of products, they explained, business customers are asking for "interoperability" on a range of products from the companies. Business clients, Ballmer said, are still "glad for the competition," but also saying, "tell me how you are going to work with Cisco."

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_6677102?source=most_emailed

Google Video Store gets stay of execution, full refunds coming

According to Ken Fisher, Google Video is closing its commercial video sales wing, the Google Video Store. The controversial decision will see Google eventually shuttering its video Digital Rights Management service, which will render video bought from the store useless.

Fortunately, Google has seen the error of its ways and says it will now work with customers to give them full refunds in addition to keeping its DRM service alive for another six months. The upshot: customers can obtain full refunds, keep past credit, and still play their movies (until early next year).

Google's original deal was to offer past customers credit in the form of a Google Checkout bonus that could be applied to purchases made with Google partners (namely, companies that are using Google Checkout). That solution didn't sit too well with customers, and it's not hard to see why: you had to spend more money to get your "credit." The company also gave users less than two weeks before killing the videos they had purchased.

Bindu Reddy, Google Video product manager, has now said that Google is working with customers to provide them full refunds since the company realizes it had made a "mistake" in rushing to close the store. Reddy admitted on the Google blog that the company should have anticipated that its previous refund policy would appear "self-serving."

Because of the "goof," Google is not only going to refund the purchase price, but they will still extend the original Google Checkout credit to users as a "we're sorry we goofed" credit. If you spent $10 at Google Video, you now have a $10 refund due and a $10 credit. Let no one say that Google can't apologize sincerely.

Of course, the most significant issue in all of this is still not addressed: namely, the weak business model that sits at the core of this DRM-controlled experience. It remains ridiculous that the DMCA props up such a flawed business model, one in which the "purchases" you have made are constantly held hostage to the threat of a DRM clearing house going offline somewhere. I discussed all of this in my previous write-up on the matter and won't rehearse it all again here. Suffice it to say that Google is exiting the business in a respectable way now, but the business (of tying content to DRM that can't be legally circumvented) itself is still not entirely respectable in my opinion.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070821
-google-video-store-gets-stay-of-execution-full-refunds-coming.html

Customers can sue AT&T, after all

Wireless contract 'unconscionable'

A federal court in San Francisco has decided that AT&T's wireless contract is "unconscionable".

On Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit came out against AT&T's "arbitration clause," which forbids wireless customers from bringing class-action suits against the company.

Arbitration clauses are quite common in the US, as companies do their darndest to bury expensive consumer suits before they even get started, and the new ruling could go a long way towards curbing the practice.

"The Ninth Circuit is saying that AT&T - or companies like AT&T - are not allowed to force consumers to waive what it regards as a fundamental constitutional right," Jeffery Glassman, a lawyer with the California firm Moldo, Davidson, Fraioli, Seror & Sestanovich, told The Reg.

In February of last year, AT&T customer Kenneth Shroyer brought a class-action suit against the company on behalf of AT&T customers everywhere, claiming he had "suffered injuries" thanks to the company's behavior in the wake of its merger with wireless provider Cingular. His claims include breach of contract and untrue advertising, among others.

According to Shroyer, his wireless service significantly deteriorated after the merger. When he complained, the company told him he needed a new chip for his phone. But it wouldn't let him install the chip without signing a new agreement with the company, and in doing so, he unknowingly agreed to the arbitration clause.

Such a clause prevents consumers from exercising various legal rights, including class actions, forcing them to enter arbitration with companies outside the courts.

"This is a standard clause that a lot of companies put in their agreements because they don't want to deal with the hassles and the expense and the risk of getting sued by their employees and their customers and their vendors," Glassman said. "In signing it, you waive your right as a consumer to have a trial by jury or have judge hear your arguments."

So, when Shroyer's suit landed in federal court, it was dismissed. But, on appeal, the Ninth Circuit has now ruled that AT&T's arbitration clause is invalid under California law.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/20/court_slames_att_wireless_contract_clause/

Apple slapped with another class-action suit

Apple is being slapped with another class-action lawsuit over the battery in its iPhone, this time by a Northern California resident who is echoing claims of a similar suit filed in the state of Illinois. Sydney Leung is accusing both Apple and AT&T of fraud because the companies neglected to inform potential iPhone buyers of the costs related to maintaining a working battery for the device over the course of the iPhone's lifespan, according to AppleInsider.

Leung's suit claims that Apple's iPhone battery only lasts 300 complete charges before becoming completely depleted, and says that the battery will need replacing every year which can only be accomplished by Apple technicians without voiding the warranty.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of users who purchased iPhones during the initial launch, before Apple and AT&T announced their battery replacement details. The suit claims that Leung and others who bought iPhones during the product's introductory weekend were uninformed of the time as well as money needed to maintain the phone's battery until after they had signed a two-year contract with AT&T. Leung is seeking the cost of replacing batteries and punitive damages for misleading initial iPhone customers.

Apple has yet to respond publicly to the suit but contradicts claims about the iPhone's battery life, maintaining that the battery offers full charging potential for between 300-400 cycles and will likely hold most of its charge for an extended period afterward.

http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/07/08/17/apple.faces.another.suit/

Sorry! Skype issues apology for 'outage'

Net phone firm Skype says its service is up and running again after three days of "unprecedented" disruption.

The problems with the service began on 16 August and stopped millions of people logging in and making calls. Skype said the ongoing disruption was caused by an unexpected interaction between its servers and users' PCs.

Despite Skype's claim to have fixed the problems some subscribers reported that they had trouble making calls throughout the weekend.

In a statement posted on its website, Skype said the widespread outage began after subscribers' computers around the world re-started following a security software upgrade issued by Microsoft.

The knock-on effect was that an unusually high number of people tried to log on to the system at once and the Skype network could not cope. To make matters worse, the scale of the failure exposed a previously unknown bug in the algorithm that should have helped the Skype network recover quickly.

The statement said: "as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days."

It added: "...we'd like to apologise and thank you. Precisely in that order."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6954675.stm

Google Adwords dive-bombed by American Airlines

'We do not bring this suit lightly' Yeah sure....

Yet another trademark owner has gone to war over Google's keyword advertising. But this time it's a name everyone knows: American Airlines.

Yesterday, the world's largest airline slapped a federal suit on the world's largest search engine, claiming that Google's cash-cow of an ad system infringes on American's rather extensive trademark portfolio.

"Some individuals and entities attempt to take advantage of consumers by marketing their products or services using the brands of others," reads a filing with the US District for the Northern District of Texas. "This lawsuit involves exactly such a situation - efforts by certain companies to free ride on American Airlines' brands through use of Google technology."

Google is to blame, the suit argues, because it allows third-party businesses to piggy-back their ads on search engine keywords that violate American Airlines trademarks - like "American Airlines," "AA," and "A A."

Close to a dozen companies have filled similar suits against Google, including Geico and American Blinds, but none can match the profile of an American Airlines. "Geico is a pretty well known brand," Santa Clara University law professor and tech law blogger Eric Goldman told The Reg, "but American Airlines is one of those highest-echelon brands, one of the brands that almost everyone is familiar with." And American Airlines has lots of money to pay its lawyers.

American's argument is, shall we say, multi-faceted. On one level, the airline claims that Google is "directly" infringing its trademarks, that the search engine is using intellectual property owned by American Airlines to rake in cold, hard cash.

"The law doesn't really distinguish between me slapping a competitor's brand on my knock-off good and Google offering the ability to make a keyword match on its database," Goldman told us. "The fact that Google is taking money for having made an association on someone's trademark could, in theory, meet the trademark statute standards" - i.e. break the law.

What's more, the suit argues, Google is actually suggesting that advertisers purchase keywords that violate American Airlines trademarks. "Google has a sandbox where it suggests what keywords [advertisers] should buy and it will routinely suggests third-party trademarks," Goldman explained. "If you go onto the site and say 'Hey, I'm thinking about advertising in the travel business,' it will say 'Have you considered the following keywords' - and American Airlines trademarks may be on that list."

The airline makes a boatload of additional claims - with some holding more water than others. At one point, it gets huffy because Google doesn't allow keyword matches on its own trademark, and it complains that when you click on links related to American Airlines trademarks, you're taken to sites that sell both American Airlines tickets and tickets from competitors. You might as well complain that your local grocery store is selling both Coke and Pepsi even though it ran a Pepsi ad in the local paper.

So far, no such suit has actually gone to jury trial, but the American Blinds case is headed that way..

http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/17/american_airlines_sues_google/

IBM and PwC cough up $5.3m to settle kickback charges

Pay $5.3m to keep government happy. Wait a minute, isn't that...?

IBM and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers have agreed to pay a total of about $5.3m to settle allegations that they gave illegal kickbacks to reel in contracts with US government agencies.

IBM has agreed to fork over $2,972,038.50 to make amends, and PwC will pay $2,315,662.

The US Department of Justice said both IBM and PwC separately cooperated in the investigation and won't face further litigation on the matter. The department alleges that IBM and PwC knowingly solicited and made payments to a number of companies with whom they have global alliances.

Both companies have denied the kickback allegations, and said the settlement is not an admission of guilt.

"IBM did not engage in kickbacks, false claims, or any other illegal conduct alleged in the various complaints that have been filed in this matter," said IBM in a statement. "IBM's business practices and policies comply with all applicable statutes and regulations, including requirements related to government contracts."

The DoJ announced the settlement today as a part of its ongoing investigation of government technology vendors and consulting firms that has already fingered Accenture, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.

"The payment of kickbacks or illegal inducements undermines the government procurement process," Peter Keisler, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, said in a statement. "The Justice Department is acting in these cases and in the overall investigation to protect the integrity of the procurement process for technology products and services."

The charges stem from a complaint filed by Norman Rille and Neal Roberts in 2004 under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act. The statute allows people who file successful actions alleging fraud in the government to receive a share of the money. That could mean some extra spending money for Rille and Roberts. The DoJ said both will receive an amount to be determined in the near future.

The government will give them a fair share, we're sure. Remember, dudes, that five bucks will last longer if you buy from the dollar menu.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/16/ibm_pwc_settle_kickback_charges/

Skype users hit with outage

Software blamed; don’t those guys know software inside and out?

Inexpensive Internet telephone provider Skype hoped to have service restored sometime today to millions of customers who were shut out Thursday by a software problem that prevented them from logging into their accounts.

It was unclear how many of the company's 220 million worldwide users - who rely on the service to make free or cheap calls and send instant messages - were affected.

Skype officials said Thursday that the blackout was caused by a software problem and apologized on the company Web site for the inconvenience.

The disruption apparently began Wednesday night and continued through much of the day Thursday. According to the Skype site, at any given time there usually are 5 million to 6 million customers using the service.

Skype has been one of the most public faces of Internet telephone service. The company, based in Luxembourg but acquired by eBay in 2005, has attracted a huge worldwide base of users who can make free, mostly PC-based telephone and video calls between members. The company, which eBay bought for $2.1 billion, also offers cheap calls to non-Skype customers.

Analyst Will Stofega of IDC said the service interruption appears to be the longest Skype has suffered. It underscores, he said, some of the uncertainty behind Internet telephone companies, which are still not as reliable as traditional providers.

"This shows that nothing is invulnerable and free of defects," Stofega said. "This may be a sign that they need to make additional investments to make sure their infrastructure keeps up with their growth."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/17/BUUNRJVSU.DTL