Gillmor Gang 4.30.11 (TCTV)

The Gillmor Gang ? Kevin Marks, Danny Sullivan, JP Rangaswami, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor ? christened the new Gang studio with a surprise welcome to Kevin Marks. It turns out he's joining salesforce.com on Monday, following JP (six months), JT (7 years), and me, who is celebrating my one year anniversary. Kevin has been a forceful champion of open standards at Apple, Technorati, Google, BT (Ribbit), the Gillmor Gang, and now salesforce.com. Before, and once the festivities were out of the way, we got back to Gang business, namely the continued aftermath of the phone location recording crisis. With free lunch debunked, we tackled the Amazon outage and its impact on the Cloud. You can decide for yourselves, but the consensus is that such challenges will be remembered fondly as a validation of the moment, as with the Gmail outage of several years ago, when the Cloud passed from inflection point to basic services. The velocity of business in the iPad age, where CEOs can see deeply into their companies in realtime, demands a level of interactive services and an iterative feedback loop not possible with the previous generation of software. And that lead to a debate about iPhone video calls and what Danny is looking for in a flying car.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/V6E1H80oj3g/

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Xcom Global's international MiFi rentals getting cheaper, Eurotrips making a comeback

No sense in beating around the proverbial bush -- we're huge fans of Xcom Global's business model, and frankly, we're saddened that every single nation in the world isn't yet included in its list of supported countries. For those hearing the name for the first time, you'll be doing yourself a solid by catching up with our review of the service, which enables jetsetters to rent MiFis or USB WWAN devices for international destinations before taking off. The end result is an always-on data connection for a reasonable fee (read: no roaming), and it looks as if those fees are about to shrink in the coming months.

The company has informed us that it'll be previewing "membership pricing" starting next month, giving consumers the ability to pick up a MiFi for $14.95 per day or a USB WWAN dongle for $12.95 per day. The real story, however, is this: second MiFis for two-country itineraries will no longer incur an additional fee, and if you're setting out on a bona fide Eurotrip, every MiFi beyond that will ring up as a flat $30 fee regardless of trip length. We're told that the pricing scheme will be fully revealed in June, and that it's a permanent endeavor as opposed to a trial run. Membership itself will also be free, and while we're still holding out hope that Xcom can nail down a global MiFi solution, these pricing tweaks will certainly make it easy to nation-hop while across the pond.

Xcom Global's international MiFi rentals getting cheaper, Eurotrips making a comeback originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/xcom-globals-international-mifi-rentals-getting-cheaper-eurotr/

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Toshiba's ET100/WT100 Honeycomb tablet clears the FCC

Toshiba's forthcoming Honeycomb tablet is already headed to Japanese stores as the Regza AT300, but it's been a bit slower in arriving stateside. Now it seems the company could be close to shipping a real, working product here in the US. The still unnamed slate -- dubbed the ET100/WT100 for now -- has won FCC approval for its 802.11n and Bluetooth radios. To recap, the slate will have a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, run on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 platform, and sport dual cameras, HDMI and USB ports, an SD card reader, and, possibly, a removable battery. We say, bring it on.

Toshiba's ET100/WT100 Honeycomb tablet clears the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/30/toshibas-et100-wt100-honeycomb-tablet-clears-the-fcc/

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Microsoft Details Windows Phone Location Info

Apple hasn't been having the greatest week so far, thanks to some negative attention over its iOS devices storing location data. The company's facing inquiries from U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who fired off letters to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking for greater clarification on news that the iPhone and 3G-enabled iPad running iOS 4 have been saving that kind of information to a hidden database file. (Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden first wrote about iOS 4's supposed location-sniffing abilities in an April 20 posting on O'Reilly Radar blog, sparking this whole thing off.)

In an FAQ posted on its corporate Website, Apple attempted to clarify its position on location-logging.

"The iPhone is not logging your location," reads one section. "Rather, it's maintaining a database of WiFi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than 100 miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested."

Apple goes on to insist that the iPhone only stores a protected subset of that total crowd-sourced database. "The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of WiFi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone's location," reads the FAQ, "which can be more than 100 miles away from the iPhone."

Perhaps anxious to avoid attracting that same sort of negative attention, Microsoft moved to place its Windows Phone location-data policies front-and-center.

"When you allow an application or game to access your device's location, the application or game will connect to Microsoft's location services and request the approximate location of the device," reads the FAQ posted on Microsoft's corporate Website. "The location service will respond by providing the application or game with the location coordinates of the user's device (when available), which the application or game can then use to enrich the user experience."

Microsoft's location services apparently rely on a database of local cell towers and known WiFi access points to "provide an approximate location of the user's device." In addition to WiFi access points, those services can also leverage a device's GPS (when available) to provide observed longitude, latitude, direction and speed.

The FAQ also insists the location services "will only collect information when you allow a particular application to request location information and that particular application requests location information." While Windows Phone apparently doesn't save any location data to a smartphone's memory, Microsoft also doesn't mention whether any information transmitted back to the company is encrypted in transit.

In addition, Microsoft also insisted that any location information "is not shared with mobile operators," and that users can deny applications access to their location information.

Windows Phone users, does that explanation make you feel more secure? Or are you already reaching for the tinfoil hats?

Source: http://feeds.ziffdavisenterprise.com/~r/RSS/MicrosoftWatch/~3/Ot9tyPhn2wU/microsoft_details_windows_phone_location_info.html

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Desk Phone Dock review

With every passing day, more people are ditching their landlines in favor of using their cellular phones as a combination device. Smartphones are no doubt excellent means of contacting other humans and managing our lives, but some of us miss the simpler days -- when a phone was just a phone. If you're a proud owner of an iPhone but looking to head down the retro road, Kee Utility would like to point you in the right direction. When we first saw the Desk Phone Dock, we were pretty intrigued by its looks but had questions about its practicality. What you see here is the $150 answer. Keep reading to see how well we got on with it.

Gallery: Kee Desk Phone Dock Review

Continue reading Desk Phone Dock review

Desk Phone Dock review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/desk-phone-dock-review/

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When Will Microsoft?s Internet Bloodbath End?

"Online Services Division revenue grew 14% year-over-year primarily driven by increases in search revenue." That was Microsoft's statement about the Online Services Division in their earnings release yesterday. Growth! Yippee! The strategy is working! Right? Wrong. What they don't bother to mention in the release, but they can't hide in the actual numbers, is just how bad the quarter actually was for the division. While revenue may have grown a bit year over year, income ? as in the money you actually get to keep ? was an entirely different story. It was a bloodbath, really. Yes, again.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/7jNLcl9AI7Q/

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Onavo?s Guy Rosen Plans To Disrupt Data Roaming (TCTV)

Onavo, as we just reported, is a magical iPhone app which literally shrinks the data your phone uses and thus your roaming data bill when you are travelling. It launches today and I caught up with CEO and co-founder Guy Rosen at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/99Zwolbla-4/

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Marissa Mayer, David Karp, Kevin Systrom, And Tony Conrad Will Rock At Disrupt NYC

The speakers for Disrupt just keep on getting better and better. Today, we are extremely excited to announce four more guests who will join us at this year's Disrupt in New York City: Marissa Mayer, David Karp, Kevin Systrom, and Tony Conrad. Marissa Mayer joined Google in 1999 as Google's first female engineer. She ran the search product for years and is now the VP of Local & Maps at Google. Mayer will be one of the finalist judges at the Startup Battlefield. She's tough, she's done it before, and we are grateful to have her back. David Karp is the CEO and founder of Tumblr, one of the hottest startups in New York and also one of fastest-growing websites, period. Tumblr is built on the principle that self-expression should be easy. Karp recently raised $30 million to keep up with all the growth.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XVleoYcXqFc/

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Intel touts 50Gbps interconnect by 2015, will make it work with tablets and smartphones too

Woah there, Mr. Speedy. We've barely caught up with the 10Gbps Thunderbolt interconnect, debuted in the new Macbook Pro, and now Intel's hyperactive researchers are already chattering away about something five times faster. They're promising a new interconnect, ready in four years, that will combine silicon and optical components (a technology called silicon photonics) to pump 50Gbps over distances of up to 100m. That's the sort of speed Intel predicts will be necessary to handle, say, ultra-HD 4k video being streamed between smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes and TVs. Intel insists that poor old Mr. Thunderbolt won't be forced into early retirement, but if we were him we'd be speaking to an employment lawyer right about now.

Intel touts 50Gbps interconnect by 2015, will make it work with tablets and smartphones too originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/intel-touts-50gbps-interconnect-by-2015-will-make-it-work-with/

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The Creepiest Royal Wedding Photo Ever, Courtesy Of Color

Well, the Royal Wedding is over. Wasn't that wonderful? If you weren't watching on TV, there were about a million ways to participate online. Millions watched on YouTube, Livestream and elsewhere. And even those who were there uploaded their own photos and videos, including this guy. �I'll call him the masked Union Jack freak. Is that some sort of S&M suit he's wearing? It doesn't seem proper juxtaposed with the royal newlyweds. You can find pictures of him on a special Color Royal Wedding Album created by people using the iPhone social camera app and sponsored by the British paper, The Telegraph. You remember Color, the $41 million photo app that created a huge backlash in the press and some confusion among consumers about exactly how to use the app.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/b6l1k6KDADo/

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Microsoft Versus Google: European Edition

It's getting vicious between Google and Microsoft.

Last week, I wrote a few articles for eWEEK discussing the antitrust complaint Microsoft filed with the European Commission, pillorying Google as an 800-pound gorilla in the world of search.

"We're concerned by a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping anyone else from creating a competitive alternative," Brad Smith, Microsoft's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in a March 30 statement posted on the Microsoft on the Issues blog. "We've therefore decided to join a large and growing number of companies registering their concerns about the European search market."

His posting argued that Google restricts other search engines from property cataloging YouTube videos in search results, that it prevents those YouTube videos from running well on Windows Phones, that it blocks access to book publishers' content and that it restricts advertisers' access to their own data.

In addition, Smith accused Google of contractually blocking "leading Websites in Europe from distributing competing search boxes" and discriminating against competitors by raising the price for prominent placement in Google advertisements.

The European Commission, of course, spent years chasing Microsoft around the block over supposed anti-competitive practices related to Internet Explorer. Eventually, Redmond executives relented to releasing a "Web browser choice screen" that gave Windows users in the European Union a selection of browsers other than IE.

Google didn't take Microsoft's EC filing very well.

"We're not surprised that Microsoft has done this, since one of their subsidiaries was one of the original complainants," a Google spokesperson wrote in a March 31 e-mail to eWEEK. "For our part, we continue to discuss the case with the European Commission, and we're happy to explain to anyone how our business works."

By "one of their subsidiaries," the spokesperson is referring to Ciao! from Bing, an online-community portal aimed at a handful of Western European markets. Back in February 2010, the European Commission notified Google that Ciao, along with U.K. price-comparison Website Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr, had filed complaints about Google's effect on European search-engine competition. Foundem is a member of ICOMP, a lobbying group sponsored by Microsoft.

Is Microsoft's move surprising? Not really.

Redmond is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting its Bing search engine, in exchange for incremental market-share gains (which add up, to be fair; if you add Bing.com's share with what the search engine earns from powering Yahoo's back-end search, Microsoft can claim close to 30 percent of the market, according to research firm comScore).

At the same time, Microsoft is also attempting to carve out a presence in the smartphone market with Windows Phone 7. Several rivals occupy that territory: Research In Motion, Apple, Google and (soon) Hewlett-Packard's re-launched Palm franchise. But it's Google's burgeoning market share that seems to have everyone else concerned.

Lastly, there's also the business cloud side of the equation. Google and Microsoft have been battling for several quarters over government and corporate contracts for their respective cloud IT services. In November 2010, Google filed a lawsuit against the federal government, alleging that the Department of the Interior unfairly restricted its bid to update its email and messaging system in favor of Microsoft's BPOS-Federal suite. That action alone hints at the animosity level between the two companies.

So a lawsuit with the European Commission is just another twist in what promises to be a long battle, one in which both sides seem willing to do anything to gain even a small advantage over the other.

Source: http://feeds.ziffdavisenterprise.com/~r/RSS/MicrosoftWatch/~3/qYZnsxnHUqs/microsoft_versus_google_european_edition.html

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Alpha Bike concept: free-wheeling fixie for flip-floppers

So Philliebot was a fail, but this chainless bicycle serves as proof that UPenn doesn't always come up short. The Alpha Bike, designed by a group of engineering students, contains an entirely internal drivetrain that allows riders to switch between fixed-gear and multi-gear setups. The simple switch is enabled by an electronically controlled clutch, part of the Switchable Integrated Free-Fixed Transmission (SWIFT), discreetly hidden in the bike's frame. Populating the front hub are a drum brake and a dynamo, which juices the bike's electronics -- the back hub contains a three-speed gear set, put in motion by a simple push-pull cable. When the front wheel starts rolling, an LED screen mounted in the carbon fiber handlebars is illuminated, displaying time, cadence, and speed, among other things -- this data and more is stored on an accessible SD card. As of now, the bike is still a prototype, but if you start saving now, you might actually have enough scratch to buy one when it comes to fruition.

Alpha Bike concept: free-wheeling fixie for flip-floppers originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/29/alpha-bike-concept-free-wheeling-fixie-for-flip-floppers/

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It?s Face Time: Google Talk For Android Phones Gets Video Chat Support

If you're on an Android device, you may know that there are already plenty of ways to conduct video and voice calls using various third party applications (Qik, Fring, etc.). But that functionality has never been included with stock builds of Android (at least, not for phones), the way Apple's FaceTime has been integrated into iOS for the last year. Today, that's starting to change. Google is currently rolling out an update to Nexus S devices that adds voice and video chat to Google Talk, which is included as part of the core set of Google applications that come pre-installed on many Android devices. The feature will work on both Wi-Fi and 3G/4G wireless networks, and allows calls between phones, tablets, and any computer with Gmail and Google Talk enabled. The update is gradually rolling out over the air (a process that usually takes a couple weeks), and it also includes numerous bug fixes. The Nexus One will be getting an update as well, but it won't include the video chat support (it doesn't have a front-facing camera, though it would have been nice to have a voice-only feature for VoIP calls).

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Z5iJpX_wehc/

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Motorola Xoom software update brings SSL and Widevine DRM, no LTE quite yet (update: pulled)

Seems like Verizon, Motorola and Google are on a bit of a security bent -- the latest update for the Motorola Xoom lets you take a far more leisurely tour of the internet's walled gardens. There's a WPA-PSK security fix to allow choice users into your mobile hotspot, SSL for secure web browsing, Google's Widevine DRM for viewing locked online video content and HDCP for piping it to your TV. Of course, there's no mention of the Xoom feature we're truly waiting for, but we'll happily take our Bluetooth mouse support and POP3 email in the meanwhile. Droid-Life reports that this HMJ07B update will start hitting Xooms later today, but Verizon's still got a month to make good on those LTE promises.

Update: We're not quite sure what happened, but Droid-Life discovered that Verizon's update-detailing PDF has been pulled, so it's probably better to not expect an OTA upgrade later this afternoon.

[Thanks, K]

Motorola Xoom software update brings SSL and Widevine DRM, no LTE quite yet (update: pulled) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/28/motorola-xoom-software-update-brings-ssl-and-widevine-drm-no-lt/

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Microsoft vs. i4i: Yes, This Is Important

Microsoft is currently locked in legal battle with i4i, a small Canadian company that has argued for years that Word 2003 and 2007 violated its patents related to custom XML. The two sides argued their case before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week, officially making it a Very Big Deal. More to the point, depending on who wins, it could radically affect patent law in this country.

During the April 18 arguments, Microsoft's legal counsel insisted that the current standard of proof for invalidating patents is too high, making it difficult for companies to repulse frivolous patent-infringement suits. "When the Patent Office didn't even consider the evidence, it makes absolutely no sense," Microsoft attorney Thomas Hungar told the court, according to an April 18 Bloomberg report.

If Microsoft triumphs, it could establish a precedent that makes it easier for big companies to knock down weak intellectual-property lawsuits. That would help slam the brakes on "patent trolling," an annoyance for many large tech companies. Those companies filing briefs in support of Microsoft range from Google to Cisco Systems.

But i4i is arguing that existing patent law is necessary for innovation.

"It is abundantly clear that the fundamental change in the law, which Microsoft seeks, would result in an enormous decrease in innovation," i4i Chairman Loudon Owen wrote in an April 18 statement. "Microsoft did not present either policy or legal reasons that would justify any changes to the law, particularly the sweeping change they now apparently seek."

So if i4i wins, it could potentially help smaller companies fight larger aggressors in open court. Those filing briefs in support of i4i include 3M, General Electric and Genentech.

"The bottom line: Tech vendors attacked by patent trolls are only asking for payback by reducing the standards in patent law," Ray Wang, principal analyst of Constellation Research, wrote to me in an April 19 email. "If Microsoft wins, it's a check and balance against patent trolls. If i4i wins, innovators who feel their rights have been trampled by large evil tech vendors will have protected their rights."

Microsoft's battle with i4i goes back to August 2009, when the federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas ordered that all copies of Word 2003 and 2007 be removed from retail channels within 90 days, after i4i argued that the word-processing software violated its key patents for custom XML. Microsoft's attorneys managed to impose a delay, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals uphold the verdict four months later.

Microsoft also found itself hit with a nearly $300 million judgment, which if upheld could sting the company's bottom line a wee bit.

That upheld verdict came with the court order that all offending copies of Word be yanked from store shelves by early January 2010. Microsoft refused to give in, issuing a patch for Word it claimed would sidestep the alleged infringement, and asking for a review by all 11 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

That effort failed, and Microsoft appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. A decision should come by late June.

Source: http://feeds.ziffdavisenterprise.com/~r/RSS/MicrosoftWatch/~3/eoxmDKqZW0g/microsoft_vs_i4i_yes_this_is_important.html

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