News written by Rich Fiscus (December, 2011)

If you are a Boxee user trying to decide what to do now that they have decided to cease development of their PC software, now might be the time to consider XBMC.

Boxee, which is a fork of XBMC, announced their decision to abandon their software platform and concentrate exclusively on their set-top box earlier this week. They will cease offering it at the end of January.

On the other hand, XBMC remains in active development. In fact a beta of the upcoming 11.0 release was announced just days before Boxee's announcement.

Two days ago XBMC developer Nathan Betzen took some time to address the issue of switching from Boxee to XBMC:

The number of domains transferred away from GoDaddy yesterday as part of Move Your Domain Day may not have a long term effect on the company's bottom line, but it raise more than $64,000 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Move Your Domain Day was a promotion by rival domain registrar NameCheap which resulted from GoDaddy's support for the dangerous anti-piracy bill SOPA. While its sponsors claim the bill is intended only to punish foreign owned or operated websites "dedicated to the theft of US property," it is actually a thinly veiled attempt to allow private companies and the US government to censor the Internet.

Not only did GoDaddy initially support SOPA, they went so far as to send a letter to the House of Representatives committee debating the bill a letter describing it as "thoughtful and comprehensive." When faced with a mass transfer of domain names to other registrars initially organized on Reddit, GoDaddy slowly backed away from that stance.

Although GoDaddy claimed to have dropped support for SOPA on December 23, it wasn't until four days later they made it official by withdrawing their letter from the House Judiciary Committee and had their name removed from its list of supporters.

DVD-Logic Software, a company which offers a variety of Blu-ray authoring products, has decided to make a selection of their tools available for free.

DVD-Logic's primary business has been selling helper applications for use with the extremely high end Rovio Scenarist or more reasonably priced NetBlender DoStudio. In fact DoStudio Authoring EX Edition includes DVD-Logic's IGEditor for creating menus.

You probably aren't planning to spend $3,0000 or more for DoStudio, and certainly not tens of thousands of dollars for Scenarist. However, you may be interested in DVD-Logic's own authoring software suites which are aimed more at the prosumer and hobbyist market.

Today their DVD Demuxer and HD DVD Demuxer tools became free. These programs do exactly what their names suggest. They extract every stream from every VOB file on a disc.

Each titleset (VTS_XX) is placed in a separate folder, and the saved streams use a naming convention which includes a lot of advanced information about how the original disc authored. Subpictures, including both regular subtitles and menu buttons, are saved in Scenarist's SST format, which can also be used with DVD-Logic's authoring software.

Now that their campaign against GoDaddy has convinced the world's largest domain registrar to back away from supporting SOPA, some Reddit members are turning their attention to unseating legislators whose support is keeping the bill alive.

To be sure, this effort is on an entirely different level than boycotting an Internet registrar, but Reddit's previous effort surely garnered them plenty of extra attention.

In part that can be attributed to their GoDaddy protest getting significant coverage outside the tech world, in mainstream publications like USA Today, Forbes, and Time. That isn't the only reason GoDaddy is in the news either.

The Hollywood Reporter has an article about a lawsuit in which GoDaddy is accused of facilitating trademark infringement by AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences) because of infringing domain names owned by customers of their domain parking service.

The Galaxy Note may be the most unusual smartphone Samsung has produced, but according to the company that hasn't stopped carriers from ordering 1 million of them already.

The Galaxy Note is hard to classify. With a 5.3 inch display, it seems almost too big to be a phone, but certainly too small to be a real tablet. It is clearly intended to be tablet-like, however, as you can tell from the inclusion of a Wacom stylus.

Although a company statement reprinted in various Korean publications claims 1 million of the Android phones have been sold, a closer reading shows that to be the count of units shipped, rather than sold.

Regardless of how many are actually in consumers' hands, the Galaxy Note has the potential to be something truly unusual - a device that defines a new category. It has a lot of power, with a 1.4GHz dual core Cortex-A9 processor and 1GB RAM. It also offers a minimum of 16GB of internal storage, plus of course up to 32GB more using the microSD slot. Even the display resolution is impressive at 1280x800.

With all the attention Apple's lawsuits against Android device makers has gotten, Oracle's patent and copyright infringement lawsuit over the OS against Google themselves has been overshadowed.

The latest development in the suit is that the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) has invalidated the majority of one Oracle patent related to the suit. Although the document says it is a "final response," that does not make it a final ruling. In fact Oracle can (and no doubt will) still appeal the decision.

Oracle's suit stems from Java patents and copyrights included in their buyout of Sun Microsystems which was finalized in 2010. The complaint revolves around Android's app framework, which is based on Java.

Although Android apps are written in Java, Android does not run them using a Java VM (Virtual Machine). Instead it uses a VM called Dalvik which is designed specifically for Android (although it has been ported elsewhere) and optimized for mobile devices with slow processors, little RAM, and relatively short battery life.

Boxee has announced that the latest upgrade to their primarily web-based media player will be the last to feature Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu Linux versions so they can concentrate their efforts on the Boxee Box and mobile clients.

They broke the news in the Boxee 1.5 announcement on their blog. Boxee 1.5, which adds a Live TV feature to the Boxee Box (with the purchase of a USB TV tuner) is currently being tested by a select group of Boxee Box owners, will be released into public beta in January.

The PC versions, albeit with fewer features, are already available from Boxee's website. They will be discontinued at the end of January, at which time they will disappear from the Boxee website.

Company spokesman Andrew Kippen wrote:

Japan's largest mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo, has announced a partnership with a group of leading Japanese and Korean electronics manufacturers to develop and manufacture LTE components.

Their partners in the joint venture will include Fujitsu Semiconductor, NEC Corporation, Panasonic Mobile Communications, and Samsung Electronics.

The details are still be working out, but NTT DoCoMo plans to invest nearly $6 million (450 million Japanese Yen) to establish the new company which will be called Communication Platform Planning Co. They will also be supplying the CEO, Mitsunobu Komori, who is currently DoCoMo's CTO (Chief Technical Officer) and an executive vice president.

The new company is expected to be formally established in January. This move appears to be a shot across the bow of Qualcomm, who currently leads the mobile chip chip industry worldwide.

DoCoMo, Fujitsu, NEC, and Panasonic had already established a partnership to develop mobile hardware. Last year they announced their first chip, developed using technology from another Japanese company called Tensilica.

The addition of Samsung to coalition would seem to complete the puzzle. Over the last few years Samsung has made great strides in mobile processor manufacturing. Among their other achievements, they build Apple processors for the iPhone and iPad.

Even after releasing a statement saying they no longer support SOPA, the US anti-piracy bill opposed by just about everyone familiar with it, GoDaddy continues to lose customers to other domain name registrars.

In part this is due to the relatively weak statement made reversing their position, while failing to mention anything about withdrawing the statements made on the record to Congress. In the letter, GoDaddy's General Counsel did not just generally support the bill. She specifically defended its worst elements.

Here are some of the highlights:

The solutions outlined in SOPA clearly present a thoughtful and comprehensive approach.

This bill cannot reasonably be equated with censorship. This bill promotes action pursuant to preexisting criminal and civil laws.

The Senate's standard for action is a site "dedicated" to infringement. SOPA's standard is similar. It is unfathomable to me how one page amidst a million could possibly qualify under any such standard.

I'm finding that most of the concerns on the substance out there are unfounded. The notion that the solutions that have been put forth will break the Internet, or that certain legal businesses will go off-line because of new mandates is utterly unconvincing to me.

Last week we told you about an anonymous source, supposedly from inside RIM, who claimed the delayed launch of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 line of devices was largely the result of unfinished software.

This source told Boy Genius Report the new OS is still a work in progress, and doesn't even have working email or BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) clients. This was in response to an earlier statement by RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis blaming the delay of primarily on a processor availability problem.

A RIM representative contacted us with a statement saying:

RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chip set architecture. As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed. As RIM has previously explained, and as Mike Lazaridis reiterated on the earnings call, we will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.

Having lost their bid to ban sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia earlier this month, Apple is preparing to file a new lawsuit against Samsung over their tablet and smartphone case designs.

After a contentious hearing before an Australian judge during which Apple lawyers attempted to delay a hearing in Samsung's lawsuit over 3G patents, Apple's new infringement claims were revealed.

They say Samsung's smartphone and tablet cases infringe on at least 10 Apple patents and registered designs. Apple's earlier suit against Samsung, which will go to trial next year, is over touchscreen patents.

Meanwhile, a hearing on Samsung's claims of 3G patent infringement will take place in March of next year, which is sooner than Apple lawyers wanted. Apple attorney Stephen Burley said the March date would be, "unfair to Apple."

The selection of budget 7" Android tablets will be expanding again soon when the $199 Archos 70b is released.

Like Amazon with the Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble with the Nook Tablet, Archos made some compromises to keep the price down on the 70b. Most notably, it only features a single core processor, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage.

However, the processor is a 1.2GHz model, storage can be upgraded via a micro SD slot, and it runs Android 3.2 (Honeycomb). This version of Android was the first to be optimized for tablets, making it superior to Android 2.3, featured on the other two tablets.

It also has some other advantages, including built-in access to the Android Market, something Amazon and Barnes & Noble go to great lengths to avoid. It also includes Archos' own media player app - something the company is known for - and a HDMI port to connect it to a HDTV.

Unfortunately for Archos, this tablet will be released some time after the Christmas shopping season ends. Between that and Archos' relatively low name recognition in the US, it's unlikely this tablet will see the same kind of sales numbers as the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet.

In a way, with its single core processor, it probably shouldn't be compared to either of those anyway. A more fitting comparison would be to Barnes & Noble's Nook Color. If you were considering that tablet, but weren't planning to buy before Christmas, the Archos 70b might be a good alternative.

As Android and the iPhone continue to dominate the worldwide smartphone market, Windows Phone has yet to gain enough market share to be a serious competitor for either.

As more time passes with no signs that will change any time soon, Microsoft and their chief smartphone partner Nokia have appeared desperate to convince the world everything is going according to plan.

In September Nokia CEO Stephen Elop described Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility as a blow to Android. Later in the month Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talked up the importance of Nokia's dedication to Windows Phone to the exclusion of other platforms, particularly Android.

Despite all their optimistic talk, a few days layer a report from the NPD Group pointed out nearly half of all consumers didn't know enough about the Windows Phone platform to even consider buying in.

Apparently agreeing with that assessment, Microsoft anted up $44 million in October to promote their phones. Later that month he went on the offensive against Android, suggesting it is too confusing for the average person.

When Apple pushed back their annual iPhone launch from June to October, the obvious question was what effect it might have on sales.

While many people, particularly those who upgrade to the latest and greatest iPhone every year or every other year, were unlikely to even consider jumping on the Android bandwagon, the smartphone market is still growing and competition from Android vendors, particularly Samsung, was stronger than ever.

We may be getting a glimpse of the answer to that question now, and it appears to vary by country. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, iPhone sales in the US, UK, and Australia over the last 12 weeks have made up for lower than normal gains earlier in the year. This seems to follow the expected pattern of existing iPhone customers upgrading.

However, in Germany and France the iPhone isn't doing nearly as well. Not surprisingly this appears to be closely related to the success of Samsung's Galaxy S II. In fact, in Germany the Galaxy S II was the top selling smartphone during the same period.

Keep in mind, the Galaxy S II was available throughout Europe months before it arrived in the US. In fact, most US carriers didn't get it until around the time of the iPhone 4S launch.

Barnes & Noble has pushed out an update for their Nook Tablet which breaks root access to the device and disables app sideloading.

This is similar to Amazon's recent Kindle Fire update, which also disabled root access. In the case of the Nook Tablet, the changes in the update arguably make more significant changes, but at the same time they are easier to get around for the average user.

In addition to killing root access, the Nook Table update turns off sideloading support, a notable advantage it had over the Kindle Fire out of the box. However, if you have installed third party apps prior to the update, they will continue to work.

You can also reportedly downgrade to the original ROM by flashing the factory image your Nook Tablet came with. That means if you need to install or update a third party app it's possible to do by downgrading, installing all your third party apps, and then upgrading again.

When comedian Louis CK decided to finance and sell his video, Live At The Beacon, himself, he didn't have any idea how successful it would be. Now he knows the answer is more than $1 million in sales in less than two weeks.

He announced the milestone last night while being interviewed by Jimmy Fallon. "Yesterday we hit a million bucks," he said, "that was ten days on sale."

One of the hallmarks of this experience for him has been honesty about the financial side of things. Not just how much he has made, but also his expenses. He took that a step further last night by talking about what he is doing with the money he has made so far:

I felt uncomfortable about having that much money, so I kind of broke it in four pieces. Two fifty went back to pay for the special, like I replenished my company. Another two fifty went to people that work for me, that work really hard. I gave them all bonuses. And then I took another 280 thousand and donated it to a bunch of charities.

I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.

Read more...

Megaupload, the file locker service the entertainment industry has identified as one of the biggest threats to their future, has launched a new service (in beta) called Megabox.

Megabox is mostly just an extension of the Megaupload service. You can even login with your normal Megaupload username and password. At the same time, it is focused on music. And not just storing and retrieving music, but also promoting and selling it.

Megabox offers services similar to what you find in offerings from Apple, Amazon, and Google. You can look up information about artists, albums, and songs and upload your own MP3s to your locker.

You can also buy songs through Megabox. For the moment they are relying on partnerships with Amazon and 7digital to sell music. Certainly the major labels aren't about to enter into licensing agreements with them.

But of course that's nothing revolutionary. You can already get a music locker and buy songs online. The more interesting part is what's planned for the future.

In a guest post for TorrentFreak, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom explained that they will be partnering with artists to sell music directly - with 90% of the proceeds going directly to the artist. He even promises a system to pay artists for free downloads.

Just a few years ago RIM (Research In Motion) was one of two companies dominating the world smartphone market.

While Nokia's Symbian phones reigned supreme throughout most of the world, RIM's BlackBerry with it's integrated email services, was the unquestioned leader in the US.

Fast forward to the present day and you see both companies struggling. But where Nokia decided to ditch Symbian in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, RIM has continued down a very different path, which currently looks like a road to nowhere.

To say this year has been a disaster for RIM would be an understatement. BlackBerry began the year as the number one smartphone platform in the US, but was passed twice - first by Android and then by the iPhone.

Their much hyped PlayBook tablet appeared to be a minor hit with the market, but less than a month ago they were forced to write off nearly $500 million in unsold inventory.

Co-founded by Robert Noyce, one of two men credited with inventing the integrated circuit, and Gordon Moore of Moore's Law fame, Intel developed much of the technology at the heart of modern computers.

But in recent years the increasing importance of mobile devices, and the accompanying focus on low power consumption rather than raw horsepower, has put their future as an industry leader in question. While their low power Atom processors proved popular for netbooks, due primarily to compatibility with existing x86 code, the competing ARM architecture has become the unquestioned king of the smartphone and tablet market.

Recently Intel has focused significant attention on becoming relevant in the mobile world, and they hope the next generation of Atom processors, codenamed Medfield, will do just that. Set to be released next year, Medfield promises significant power efficiency improvements over previous Atom generations by eliminating the requirement for an external support chip.

MIT's Technology Review got their hands on a pair of prototype Android devices, a smartphone and a tablet, powered by the new Atom processors. In a review of the devices, which perform similarly to current generation ARM hardware, they mention that Intel has optimized them specifically for Android.

Apple has just been granted another smartphone patent which may be a new low for the iPhone maker.

Their latest US patent, 8,082,523, is for multitasking while using a handset's phone app. Technically there are some additional details, such as using a touch gesture and displaying an icon for switching to another application, but that's really just specifying that it applies to a standard mobile device touch interface.

Here's the abstract from the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office):

A portable electronic device displays, on a touch screen display, a user interface for a phone application during a phone call. In response to detecting activation of a menu icon or menu button, the UI for the phone application is replaced with a menu of application icons, while maintaining the phone call. In response to detecting a finger gesture on a non-telephone service application icon, displaying a user interface for the non-telephone service application while continuing to maintain the phone call, the UI for the non-telephone service application including a switch application icon that is not displayed in the UI when there is no ongoing phone call. In response to detecting a finger gesture on the switch application icon, replacing display of the UI for the non-telephone service application with a respective UI for the phone application while continuing to maintain the phone call.

With the ink barely dry on the ITC order to ban their Android smartphones found to be infringing on an Apple patent, HTC announced a workaround.

As we pointed out yesterday, HTC can avoid the ban entirely by removing the infringing (Android) code related to the patent. That code is what allows a user to select a piece of information and use it in an app such as the dialer or Google Maps.

Speaking to the media, and joined by Google Senior Vice President Andy Rubin, HTC's Peter Chou announced that the company is already testing new phones which work around the patented technology. He also criticized Apple, saying [via Reuters]:

This industry should not allow one company use its powerful weapon to stop other innovation and take it all...this is not fair.

In September Sony made a major change to the TOS (Terms Of Service) for the PlayStation Network to prevent subscribers from participating in class action lawsuits.

It was obvious at the time that the change was a reaction to multiple data breaches experienced by the company. By preventing class action lawsuits, they clearly hoped to avoid losses from lawsuits over any future negligence on their part.

Under the terms of the new agreement, any PSN subscriber who wished to retain the right to join a class action lawsuit in the future would be required to contact Sony and opt out of this particular clause within 30 days of agreeing to it.

In the case of a data breach due to Sony negligence, that would mean each individual subscriber would have to file a separate lawsuit in order to collect any damages.

Now Gamespot is reporting a California man has responded to the change with a class action lawsuit. They say he claims the clause was hidden 21 pages into the agreement, making it unlikely those agreeing to it would ever notice.

As rumors fly that Warner is trying to delay new releases in Redbox kiosks by more than two additional weeks, one analyst is suggesting they are overestimating their leverage.

The introduction of 28 day delays between the time titles are released for sale and when they are offered for rental is a scheme the studios came up with in 2009. It is intended to be an incentive for consumers to buy discs which can't yet be rented.

Although Netflix was the first company to agree to these windows, Redbox was the studios' primary target because of their presence in major retail chains. Not surprisingly, disc sales have not made the resurgence predicted by the studios.

The deals were pushed through largely by backroom deals between the studios and companies supplying discs to rental outlets. According to Eric Wold, an analyst with B. Riley & Co, over the last several months Redbox has worked out a strategy to get around those arrangements.

Home Media Magazine recently reported about an investor note in which he wrote:

More revelations are coming to light about who is illegally downloaded pirated content via the website YouHaveDownloaded, and this time it appears to be RIAA employees.

YouHaveDownloaded.com maintains a database of downloads via BitTorrent and the IP address associated with each one. Since most Internet users have dynamic IP addresses, which may change at any time, it is likely inaccurate in most cases.

However, some IP addresses aren't dynamic. Typically corporations, governments, and other large organizations use static IP addresses which don't change. Assuming the database contains good information, it should be relatively accurate for those using such IP addresses.

Last week TorrentFreak revealed that IP addreses used by several major studios and also French President Nicholas Sarkozy were linked to illegal downloads. Now they have added the RIAA and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to that list.

This is particularly ironic considering the RIAA has sued countless people for alleged illegal downloading using nothing more than an IP address to identify them. In a statement to CNET, the organization denied TorrentFreak's claim, saying:

LightSquared, a company hoping to build a wholesale mobile network with 4G data capabilities, has apparently given up on approval from the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) and is trying to force the FCC to allow them to launch their service.

LightSquared's problems stem from a decision to use frequencies originally licensed for satellite communication for a terrestrial network. Because of the significantly higher power used for terrestrial communications, this results in interference with existing GPS signals on adjacent frequencies.

Earlier this year LightSquared's network was approved by the FCC, but that approval was conditional. Among the FCC's conditions was that LightSquared satisfy the NTIA that potential GPS problems were solved. The NTIA has conducted two rounds of testing, and so far LightSquared's network has failed both, meaning they have not met the FCC's conditions.

Apparently abandoning the hope of getting NTIA approval, LightSquared has now petitioned the FCC asking for unconditional approval on the grounds the GPS industry demands they pay for modifications to existing equipment. These modifications were designed at LightSquared's request, and are apparently the only solution they have been able to identify.

After the Antitrust Subcommittee of the US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing in September where some senators accused Google of fixing search results, it seemed inevitable something bigger was coming. Now two senators are urging the FTC to investigate the search giant for alleged antitrust violations.

In their letter, Senators Herb Kohl and Mike Lee imply it is Google's responsibility not only to generate traffic for websites which compete with their own services, but also to avoid discriminating against websites which promote rival search engines.

While the two make a point of saying they have no opinion about the legality of Google's practices, their questions for Google representatives in the Senate hearing made it clear they have problems with the company's policies. Lee went so far as to accuse Google of fixing search results.

The letter also addresses the issue of mobile search, pointing out Google's success in that area. While acknowledging a Google statement that they do not require their products to be installed on Android devices, they senators suggest the FTC should be proactive in somehow requiring that.

Along with some fixes in Apple's latest iOS update, there appears to be a new development for people who want to use the Siri Voice Assistant on older iPhones.

An iPhone hacker who goes by Musclenerd noticed that the latest update leaves system files unencrypted which were previously encrypted. An article at Cult of Mac notes this makes it possible to enable Siri on older devices without using the legally questionable app already available for jailbroken phones.

Unfortunately it's likely this is the result of an oversight, rather than an intentional decision by Apple. The company is known for locking down their phones as tightly as possible.

Prior to phone jailbreaking being granted a DMCA exemption, their encryption was even used to make the practice illegal. Don't be surprised if the files are encrypted again in the next update.

Eleven weeks after they first started taking pre-orders for it, Amazon says their Kindle Fire tablet continues to be their biggest seller.

In fact, they say the tablet has been their top selling items since it went on sale back in October. Dave Limp, Vice President of Amazon's Kindle division said of their popular tablet:

Kindle Fire is the most successful product we've ever launched -- it's the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we've already sold millions of units, and we're building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating -- Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has shot down an agreement between Eircom and the major record labels to disconnect customers from the Internet based on repeated allegations of copyright infringement.

The agreement was made to settle a lawsuit from the IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association), who attempted to force the Irish ISP to install monitoring software to detect copyrighted content being sent across its network. Eircom instead agreed to disconnect users after three allegations from the labels.

As in other parts of the world, the labels' plan involved relaying exclusively on IP addresses. Their investigators would identify an allegedly infringing file, determine the source IP address, and forward that information on to Eircom. Eircom would then send out a warning letter for the first two "offenses" and disconnect the account after the third.

Earlier this year the Data Protection Commissioner began investigating the ISP over the agreement. Yesterday he ordered a halt to it, giving Eircom 21 days to respond.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) has ruled [full text below] in favor of Apple on a single point of their case against HTC in the US. The result is a ban of HTC smartphones which violate one particular patent.

While this is a significant victory in the sense it paves the way for similar judgements against other Android handset vendors, such as Samsung, in reality it is not as big a deal as you might think.

Let's start with the patent itself:

A system and method causes a computer to detect and perform actions on structures identified in computer data. The system provides an analyzer server, an application program interface, a user interface and an action processor. The analyzer server receives from an application running concurrently data having recognizable structures, uses a pattern analysis unit, such as a parser or fast string search function, to detect structures in the data, and links relevant actions to the detected structures. The application program interface communicates with the application running concurrently, and transmits relevant information to the user interface. Thus, the user interface can present and enable selection of the detected structures, and upon selection of a detected structure, present the linked candidate actions. Upon selection of an action, the action processor performs the action on the detected structure.

According to the latest figures from AppData, users of the Android Facebook app now use it more often than those using the iPhone app.

Comparing AppData's figures for the two platforms, the number of monthly users on both are steadly going up, but Android users are increasing more quickly than on the iPhone.

However, the number of Android users for any given day is already slightly higher than the number of iPhone users. This trend, and the ratio of daily to monthly users, are generally considered important indicators of whether an app is gaining in popularity.

An explosion Saturdy at a Shanghai factory preparing to begin supplying components for Apple left 61 injured, 23 of whom had to be hospitalized.

The factory, which had not yet begun operating, is believed to be slated to produce back panels for the iPad 2. This has raised speculation of shortages of the world's most popular tablet in the first quarter of next year.

According to Reuters, Apple is investigating the incident.

In recent years Apple has gotten a lot of bad publicity over stories of poor working conditions in the factories of their suppliers. In reality these issues aren't unique to their suppliers, but Apple's high profile and profit margins have made them an easy target for critics.

In 2010 Foxconn, who assembles components from around the world into iPhones, was in the news frequently because of a series of suicides.

A new Foxconn plant in Brazil has reportedly already begun producing the iPhone 4 at a rate of 1600 units a day and may be adding iPhone 4S production by the end of the year.

An initiative to standardize the way touch enabled devices interact with web content has had a wrench thrown into the works, at least temporarily, by Apple.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Events Working Group was created last year and tasked with standardizing the way touch devices, from smartphones and tablets to drawing pads and spatial sensors, interact with web applications. One of the specifications they have been working on is called 'Touch Events.'

As part of the standard development process, the working group sent out multiple requests for patent exclusions. In layman's terms, these are requests for disclosure of any existing or pending patents which might be required to implement a standard.

Responding to the third of three calls for exclusions this year, Apple provided the group with a list of four patents, one of which has already been approved, two which are pending approval, and a fourth which is in the early stage of application, which they say are related to the Touch Events specification.

A developer for the Opera browser who blogs under the name Haavard is crying foul on Apple's move, and says they are simply trying to impede the creation of the Touch Events spec. He points to similar occurences in 2009 and 2010, when Apple made exclusion claims with respect to the W3C Widgets specification.

Shortly after the furor over Carrier IQ began, Senator Al Franken sent letters to several national mobile carriers and handset manufacturers asking for details of the program's operation.

Carrier IQ is a rootkit which comes preinstalled on various smartphones sold in the US. A rootkit is a program which runs secretly with privileged access. Carrier IQ sends diagnostic information, at the carrier's request, to servers operated by the software's developers, who then forward that information to the carrier.

Since the software was discovered in November, there has been a great deal of debate over what information it is capable of collecting, what information is actually being collected, and the legality of it.

The researcher who first announced its existence, Trevor Eckhart, claimed it could record and report every keystroke made on a smartphone. Later, another researcher reported that was not true.

Senator Franken has received and published responses to his letter from Sprint, AT&T, Samsung, and HTC. He is still waiting for responses from T-Mobile and Motorola, which he has requested no later than December 20.

Just over a week ago a video created by file locker provider Megaupload was taken down from YouTube at the request of Universal Music (UMG). In the aftermath of that incident, YouTube finds itself answering questions about how that happened thanks to UMG's refusal to provide details.

Based on UMG's filings in response to the resulting lawsuit in which Megaupload sought to have them punished for improper use of the DMCA's takedown provision, one thing we know for sure is that no actual DMCA takedown request was issued.

Instead, UMG used YouTube's content management (ie digitial fingerprinting) system to have the content removed. That means Megaupload's primary claim is pretty much dead in the water.

We also know UMG says they never made a copyright claim on the video because of a letter they submitted to the court in which a company representative explained to YouTube that was not the only grounds under which their contract allows a takedown.

Beyond that, they have avoided addressing the issue of what happened, providing just enough information to show any DMCA related penalties (and really that's not much anyway) don't apply.

As supporters of SOPA and PIPA, the anti-piracy bills working their way through Congress, continue to insist they won't be used to censor the Internet, the entertainment industry seems determined to prove they intend to do just that.

The latest big target for censorship is the file locker service Megaupload. Besides being one of the most successful cloud storage services, Megaupload is also one of the sites at the top of the entertainment industry's "rogue sites" list, making them one of the first services you can expect to be targeted if SOPA or PIPA becomes law.

But even without either measure, Megaupload finds itself fighting for the right to publish completely legal content to defend themselves in a PR war started by the major record labels and movie studios. As part of that effort, Megaupload commissioned a music video featuring a number of music industry heavyweights.

After it was uploaded to YouTube and started getting a lot of attention on Twitter, Universal Music Group had the video removed taken down. When Megaupload protested the removal of the video, it was reinstated and then almost immediately taken down again.

According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gus Richard, Intel is falling behind in the processor market thanks to their failure to compete in the lucrative mobile device segment.

While Intel has continued to concentrate primarily on performance, says Richard, consumer interest has largely shifted to convenience and mobility. As a result, the SoC (System on a Chip) processor has become increasingly important.

In a research note this week he wrote (via CNET):

As an example, there is nothing leading edge about Apple's A5 processor. However, the performance of an iPad is perceived by users as better than a PC. This is because the product has a longer battery life, instant on, and a fast internet connection. The A5 processor is not faster than an Intel processor but instead has a large number of IP blocks that execute different functions with lower power and typically more quickly than a general purpose CPU (Intel).

New legislation being proposed in California could substantially change the cost of providing textbooks to college students.

The bill would mandate the creation of new textbooks to be offered for 50 different undergraduate courses. Electronic versions of the textbooks readable on computers and mobile devices would be available for no charge, with print versions costing around $20.

The textbooks would all be published under a Creative Commons license.

"There's a clarion call from students and middle class families to make higher education more accessible and affordable," said California Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg. "Open source digital textbooks can bring real relief of nearly $1,000 a year to each college student."

Dr. Larry Green, Lake Tahoe Community College professor already uses a free textbook in some of his classes. He said of his experiences with it:

Choosing to adopt the open digital textbook for my students spares them thousands of dollars in textbook expenses, and the book's academic quality is comparable, if not better, than the pricey versions offered by publishers.

While much of the focus on smartphones revolves around their use for gaming and media consumption, according to a report from Verve Wireless, the majority of smartphone owners also use them for shopping at least once per month.

According to Verve, 81% of smartphone users have purchased at least one product after researching it on their phone and 75% use their phones to find out more about products while they are in a store.

Price comparisons, they say, are the most popular category of shopping related activity, followed by looking up product information and reviews.

Greg Hallinan, Chief Marketing Officer of Verve Wireless said:

The results substantiate what our advertising partners have known for a while, that mobile is an essential part of any retailer's advertising plan. There is a growing demographic of consumers who rely on their mobile device to help them make decisions in the aisles of brick-and-mortar stores as well as while shopping online. The advertiser who meets them there will win the sale.

Apple TV may be the most unusual product Apple has produced since Steve Jobs returned to the company in the 1990s. Not unusual as a product, but more in the company's approach to it.

To put it simply, Apple can't seem to figure out how to boost sales to the level of their other products, but they apparently don't want to get rid of it either.

It's not that Apple TV doesn't do well in the market. Market researchers at Strategy Analytics predict Apple's set-top box will be the top selling Internet set-top box this year according to CNET. They say it will account for nearly a third of the market.

That's impressive considering the lead other companies, most notably Roku, had in the market. What's not so impressive is the number of units in question - around 4 million. Many companies would be happy with those numbers. Those companies are not Apple.

Presumably what keeps the Apple TV box around is the assumption many people have that video will ultimately be just another data service. If you buy into that, it's only logical that Apple needs to have a way to leverage that market.

When Apple introduced iAd with the iPhone 4 it was hailed as their answer to Google's AdMob. Both services provide in-app advertising for mobile devices.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's pricing and strict control over ad content have relegated iAd to third place in the mobile ad space, behind both Google and Millenial Media.

However, The Journal reports, they are trying to change that with new pricing options and free mobile marketing training. The biggest change is reportedly in the cost per tap and minimum spending level.

Advertisers will continue to pay $2 per tap, but the cost will be capped now. Just as importantly, rather than requiring a minimum commitment of $500,000, advertisers will be able to spend just $400,000. This amount had already been reduced from the initial requirement of $1 million when the platform first launched.

Apple is also offering marketers training sessions in their Cupertino, California headquarters. Advertisers meet with designers and product teams to learn more about creating ads suitable for Apple devices.

The European Commission has temporarily suspended their review of Google's plan to buy Motorola Mobility.

The deal to purchase Motorola's mobile devices and set-top box division for $12.5 billion was announced in August. Before it can be finalized regulators from both the US and EU will have to sign off on it.

According to Bloomberg, a spokeswoman for the commission told them the delay is to allow more time to get more documents related to the deal. Their review was originally expected to be completed early next January.

Google's Al Verney wrote in an email (via Bloomberg):

We're confident the commission will conclude that this acquisition is good for competition and we'll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

Wikipedia co-founder Jim Wales has posted a straw poll asking whether there is support for a "community strike" to get the word out about SOPA.

The idea was prompted by a similar action taken previously on the Italian Wikipedia homepage to protest a law which could potentially have forced that page to shut down permanently or risk massive fines any time someone felt their image was harmed by the site.

Last Friday Wales wrote:

A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to blank all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law which would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse law going under the misleading title of "Stop Online Piracy Act' is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be attending a meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a couple of fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms, and I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on this issue. My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case. There are obviously many questions about whether the strike should be geotargetted (US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because the law would seriously impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a global strike of at least the English Wikipedia would put the maximum pressure on the US government.) At the same time, it's of course a very very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia.

Despite committing a huge amount of money and lining up big name partners to produce high profile handsets, Microsoft has been unable to turn Windows Phone into a serious competitor.

CEO Steve Ballmer has largely downplayed the platforms poor sales as normal growing pains, but it appears he's not as confident as his public demeanor would suggest.

Yesterday The Seattle Times reported a shakeup within the company as Terry Myerson was promoted to head the Windows Phone division, replacing Andy Lees.

It's not clear if Lees is getting a demotion since Ballmer sent out a somewhat cryptic internal memo stating he would be in "a new role working for me on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8."

The US Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile has been put on hold as the two companies regroup to decide whether to give up on the deal.

The deal, which would make AT&T the largest US mobile carrier. Over the last few months, many different parties, including competing national and regional wireless companies, public interest groups, the FCC, and the DOJ have come out in opposition to the deal.

AT&T hasn't helped their case with numerous statements which appear to be directly contradicted by their own government filings and statements to shareholders.

Howard University School Of Law Professor Andrew Gavil characterized the deal as finished, although not necessarily the end of the road for the buyout. He said (via Bloomberg):

Two US legislators, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Darrell Issa, have fashioned an alternative to SOPA and PIPA, the draconian anti-piracy bills being pushed through the two houses. Their proposal is called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN for short.

Rather than taking the draft of their bill straight to Congress, the two men have decided to offer it up for online discussion first. You can find the full text of the first draft below or on a new website dedicated to the discussion.

While their proposal does address most of the worst aspects of SOPA and PIPA, that mostly serves to highlight how bad the least troubling parts of those bills are. Here are some of the highlights.

The Good

• The straight censorship requirements of SOPA and PIPA are gone. There's nothing about DNS blocking or purging a website from search engine results.

• There is no right of private action. Under SOPA, a private company would be able to force advertisers to stop paying an accused website operator without ever going to court. Under OPEN, only the International Trade Commission (ITC) would be empowered to order that.

• The term 'dedicated to infringement' is narrowly defined as having "only limited purpose or use other than engaging in infringing activity and whose owner or operator primarily uses the site to willfully engage in infringing activity." Likewise, infringing activity is specifically defined as violations of the existing copyright and trademark provisions of federal law.

• US based companies may not be targeted.

From the time Amazon started taking orders for their Kindle Fire tablet earlier this year, it has looked like a runaway hit with consumers. Before the first customer got a single tablet in his hands, sales were estimated at over a million units.

While Amazon may not have the brand name appeal of Apple or the screen size of the iPad, the $199 pricetag and generally impressive technical specs have proven to be major motivators for consumers.

As people have started using the new device, some of the luster seems to be wearing off a little. While it has received a lot of four and five star reviews on the Amazon website (more than 3,000 in all), the number of one and two star reviews (more than 1,000) is also notable.

An Amazon spokesman recently told the New York Times the company has an update in the works which should address many of the problems, including performance, multitouch functionality, and an inability to lock the screen.

Despite assurances to the contrary from LightSquared, it looks like the latest government testing of their proposed LTE data network aren't convincing government regulators to let them start operating any time soon.

LightSquared's plan to offer wholesale mobile data service has been in limbo ever since receiving conditional approval from the FCC. Their problems stem from the use of frequencies in a range normally limited to satellite communication.

Until the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) is satisfied their signal won't interfere with the operation of high precision GPS equipment, which use an adjacent frequency band, they won't be allowed to turn on their service.

A previous round of testing performed by the NTIA and Department Of Defense, who uses some of the problematic GPS equipment, was an overwhelming failure. The resulting hearings led to charges of political cronyism as it appeared President Obama tried to push through FCC approval without the necessary testing.

According to a new report from Businessweek, who claims to have a leaked copy of the results from the latest round of testing, LightSquared hasn't managed to fix their problems yet. They say a report on the tests, set to be presented to various government officials this week, says the service will still interfere with the vast majority of GPS systems.

Spotify has introduced their take on Internet radio for users of their new app enabled client.

To use the new feature you will need to be running the preview version of their software which adds support for Spotify Apps. When you look at an artist page in Spotify, you will be presented with an option to 'Start Artist Radio.'

At least two US legislators are taking the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to task for the events surrounding the seizure and eventual return of a hip hop blog as part of Operation In Our Sites.

While US Attorney General Eric Holder was testifying before the House Of Representatives' Judiciary Committee regarding a sting operation to catch gun smugglers, Representative Zoe Lofgren took the opportunity to ask for details about the seizure of the Dajaz1.com domain name by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The domain name was seized a year ago by ICE (read the order below), who claimed operators of the popular blog were guilty of criminal copyright infringement. Despite the fact federal seizure laws require the government to either return property after 90 days or take forfeiture action, the domain name was returned a full year later with the agency admitting there was no justification for a criminal complaint.

According to a report from Techdirt, during that time the government repeatedly told lawyers representing the blog's administrator they had filed for extensions to the initial 90 day seizure period, but at no time was the accused given notice of the hearings, and in fact his lawyers weren't even allowed to see the extension orders the government claimed were issued.

In the span of less than a week Samsung managed to win two major victories in their international patent war with Apple.

Last week a US judge rejected Apple's request for a preliminary injunction banning sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Meanwhile the injunction Apple was granted in Australia was being reviewed to determine whether it should be reversed.

Today that review was completed, resulting in another temporary victory for Samsung. They ban was overturned and Samsung will be allowed to sell their tablets in Australia immediately.

A Samsung spokesman told The Sydney Morning Herald it would not be until some time next week that consumers could get their hands on the tablets, but "certain channels" will be accepting pre-sales immediately.

This is not the end of either case. Both will be going to trial at some point, and while the tablets in question will likely be replaced by newer models before final judgements are rendered, that still leaves the possibility of monetary damages.

Troubled smartphone maker RIM has decided to rename the next version of their mobile OS BlackBerry 10.

The company had previously announced the OS, which merges features from their smartphone and tablet platforms, would be called BBX. Unfortunately for RIM, that name had been in use for many years by a company called BASIS International.

BASIS makes development tools for creating code to run on a variety of platforms, including several mobile operating systems. They said this had already caused confusion for their customers, several of which had asked them if there was an affiliation with the new BlackBerry OS.

The suit went further, alleging (via CRN):

In addition to the inevitable confusion created by RIM's use of the mark BBX for related goods, customers and prospective customers are also likely to wrongly believe that software applications created using Basis' development tools are only compatible with RIM's BBX operating system, thus impairing and destroying Basis' reputation for providing software development tools for cross-platform development

It's no surprise Warner Music Group was up for sale recently. They have just released their first annual financial statement since being sold back in May.

The recording industry has fading quickly in recent years and WMG's fiscal 2011 report doesn't show any signs that's changing. They reported a loss of $205 million.

To put the scale of this loss into perspective, in the fourth quarter alone WMG lost $103 million. This is 124% of their loss in the same quarter last year.

This may also explain why CEO Edgar Bronfman stepped down from that position earlier this year. Of course, in a move you would expect in an industry this clueless, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors, putting him in charge of developing a strategy for the future.

After the wonderful job he did as CEO, what could possibly go wrong?

If one good thing has come out of the introduction of the SOPA and PIPA legislation in the US, it's the way opposition to both has led those in the tech industry to organize and take action on an unprecedented scale.

Some established companies, including Google and Facebook, have made decisive public statements. At the same time, law professors and entrepeneurs have sent messages directly to Washington.

Now a coalition of entrepeneurs, venture capitalists, and people who advise startups has emerged. Calling themselves EngineAdvocacy, they are dedicated to getting the public involved in efforts to promote an environment where technology, both on the web and in other places, can be used to drive economic growth.

A blog entry announcing the launch of their new website reads:

We?re very excited to see our plans for Engine come to fruition - creating a platform for communication between one of the fastest growing and valuable industries and the decision makers in government is something we are very passionate about. We?re launching our full website today and we want the site to be a collaborative space to engage on issues of importance to the tech industry - like our opposition to the controversial anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA, which you can read more about on our site.

Read more...

PersonalWeb, a company based in Tyler, Texas, has filed patent infringement suits against a number of large tech companies, including Google, Amazon, VMWare, and NEC.

The company's location is notable only because Tyler, Texas has a reputation as the most friendly court in the US for patent lawsuits.

PersonalWeb is notably different from the typical company setting up an office in the East Texas town. In most cases those companies are non-practicing entities, more commonly referred to as patent trolls, who exist only to sue and produce no products of any kind.

While PersonalWeb has followed a path familiar to patent trolls in buying up patent portfolios from other companies, those patents are used in actual products, including StudyPods, an educational social networking platform currently deployed in Tyler, and an anti-piracy product called Global File System.

In fact, in their statement announcing the lawsuits PersonalWeb makes a point of mentioning both those products, begging the question of whether their sole purpose is to create a facade of legitimacy as a real tech company instead of a patent troll.

ISPs have been arguing for years that the heaviest data users should pay more for their service because they put a bigger strain on the network. This is the primary rationale for tiered data plans which cap downloads at varioius sizes and charge overage fees for additional data.

A new report from Benoît Felten challenges that assumption based on analysis of traffic data from an unnamed North American ISP. His conclusion based on that analysis is that heavy data users do not, in fact, put a disproportionately large strain on ISP networks.

While the study itself must be purchased if you want to read the details, he has posted a free summary of his key findings.

• The top 1% of data consumers (hereafter Very Heavy consumers) account for 20% of the overall consumption.

• Average data consumption over the period is 290 MB, while consumption for Very Heavy consumers is 9.6 GB. Thisroughly equates to data consumption of 8.7 GB and 288 GB per month, respectively.

• However, only half of these Very Heavy consumers are customers of the highest service tier (6 Mbps), which implies that half of them have bandwidth usage restricted to 3Mbps (the next service tier) or lower.

• 61% of Very Heavy data consumers download 95% of the time or more, but only 5% of those who download at least 95% of the time are Very Heavy data consumers.

• While 83% of Very Heavy data consumers are amongst the top 1% of bandwidth users during at least one five minute time window at peak hours, they only represent 14.3% of said Top 1% of users at those times.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam expects the company to begin offering shared data plans for smartphones, combining the plans for different devices on the same account into a single plan.

McAdam's comments came during an interview during the UBU Global Media Conference. He indicated the company expects smartphone penetration, currently at around 40%, to eventually reach around 70% of Verizon Wireless customers.

In addition, with the introduction of more services, including video, for mobile devices, he believes tablet use will also grow significantly. As those things happen, he sees shared data plans as both a convenience for the customer and a cost saving measure for the company.

In the interview he said:

I think in 2012 we'll see it. We've been working on this for a couple of years frankly... because we see four screens or even five screens. If you look at all the machine to machine capabilities that are out there, customers don't want - and neither do we by the way - want an individual account for each one of those devices. It drives them crazy and would raise our costs a lot so getting to one bill and having account level pricing is the way to go.

HP is getting ready to make their final push to rid of the last remaining stock of their discontinued TouchPad stock.

After dismal sales of the WebOS based tablet led to HP discontinuing it earlier this year, they went on sale for below cost and quickly sold out. Later, contractual obligations with suppliers led to an additional batch of TouchPads being produced which were offered in bundles with their computers.

This last bunch of TouchPads consists of refurbished units, which TechCrunch reports will be offered at the same $99 and $149 pricepoints via the company's eBay store. They quote an internal HP email which reads:

In an effort to give HP employees first chance at a very limited supply of refurbished TouchPads, there will be a short delay between when the product is posted live for sale on eBay and when the general public is notified of the sale.

Read more...

Lately it seems like Netflix can't take a step without tripping over its own feet. The company's latest debacle is the launch of a new Xbox 360 client which has customers complaining about bugs and missing features.

The new client was rolled out yesterday, following Microsoft's update to the console. It takes advanage of new voice and gesture control capabilities, as well as adding access to audio and subtitle settings.

All of this sounds great in theory. In practice it is apparently quite buggy. Here are some excerpts from customer responses to the new client:

This new app is neither easy to use nor attractive. This should not have made it to release at this stage --- not even past the beta stage. What the heck were you thinking? Subtitles, Kinect, Dolby 5.1? Who cares when the software is AWFUL.

Drives me crazy that I can't view a static screen when selecting what episode to watch. Why do I have to be watching an episode to get to a list of other episodes? Not being able to skip forward/back is a pain, and not being able to restart a feature from the beginning is maddening! Please correct these issues!

Some days you have to wonder if anyone at the RIAA actually reads their official statements before unleashing them on the public. At the very least maybe they should check to see if they pass the giggle test.

The latest bit of nonsense is a submission to the Opinion section of a Nashville, Tennessee newspaper claiming the reason they stopped suing P2P users was because the campaign was successful, and the job completed.

The original article in The Tenneseean, which was primarily about how much the recording industry spends on lobbying, said:

The focus on lobbying and campaign contributions comes after the music industry?s use of a tactic, now almost universally acknowledged as a failure, in which it filed lawsuits against individuals accused of illegally downloading songs to stop piracy.

The record industry filed nearly 30,000 suits, which proved to be a poor public relations strategy as stories of teens, college students and families taken to court emerged. The suits ultimately proved ineffective in ending systematic online piracy.

Read more...

The CEO of LightSquared will be meeting today with representatives of local governments in rural areas of the US to sell them on the benefits of their proposed wholesale 4G mobile network.

LightSquared's plan to offer 4G service using a frequency range originally allocated for satellite communications has been plagued by problems stemming from interference with high precision GPS systems which use nearby frequencies.

Their meeting with people like Charles Simmons, County Commissioner and Chairman of the Southern Lower Chattahoochee Council of Governments, Michael Evans of the Ohio Hotel and Lodging Association, Shaun Golden, Sherriff of Monmouth County, NJ, Beatrice Snowden from The University of Kentucky Agricultural Cooperative Extension Services, and Maine State Representative Diane Russell appears to be an attempt to put pressure on federal regulators to approve the delayed launch of their mobile network.

They are being assisted in these efforts by two former US Senators and a former governor of Pennsylvania. According to a company press release, topics of discussion will include, "preliminary testing results from an independent laboratory that shows LightSquared's network is compatible with high precision GPS devices."

While most of the hype in the video world continues to revolve around the ever expanding world of streaming, Blu-ray continues to gain in popularity.

Despite a poor start to the year, it looks like Blu-ray sales in the US, Europe, and worldwide are poised to grow significantly for the year as a whole.

A report from Home Media Magazine, citing industry analyst Jim Bottoms of Futuresource, says 2011 sales of Blu-ray discs will outperform last year by 35%, while European sales will be up more than 40%. Worldwide he is predicting sales of 234 million units, a 45% increase over 2010.

Bottoms lists a number of factors in Blu-ray's recent success. In Europe, he says, German Blu-ray adoption is probably the biggest factor. But worldwide he says it is more about the gradual phasing out of DVD players in favor of Blu-ray by consumer electronics manufacturers.

"We?re getting to the price point now where CE manufacturers won?t make a DVD player and a Blu-ray player," Bottoms said. "There?s no point in having double inventory."

Motorola Mobility and Verizon have announced two new Android tablets, the DROID XYBOARD 10.1 and DROID XYBOARD 8.2, featuring a 10.1 inch and 8.2 inch display respectively.

The tablets will ship with Android 3.2 (Honeycomb), but upgrades to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) are planned for some point in the future.

Both tablets feature dual core 1.2GHz processors and 1GB RAM. They also have 5 megapixel rear-facing cameras with digital zoom, autofocus and LED flash and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing cameras for video chat.

There will also be accessories available, including a HD dock for connecting to an external display via HDMI.

Software included with the DROID XYBOARD tablets will include the Dijit app enabling their use as universal remote controls with an electronic programming guide for TVs, Blu-ray players, DVRs, and other consumer electronics.

Additionally, the 10.1 inch model has stylus support and comes with a precision tip stylus.

The DROID XYBOARD 10.1 will be available with 16GB of storage for $529.99, 32GB for $629.99 and 64GB for $729.99 with a new two-year customer agreement.

The 8.2 inch XYBOARD will be released in just two versions, a 16GB model for $429.99 or 32GB for $529.99, once again a new two-year customer agreement.

Every three years, when the US Copyright Office considers potential exemptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision, the issue of DVD ripping is raised.

DVD ripping, or more accurately bypassing the CSS encryption used for DRM on most DVDs, is illegal under the DMCA. Not surprisingly, the MPAA has fought the effort to exempt bypassing CSS for fair use purposes on the grounds it would lead to more piracy.

So far the Librarian Of Congress, at the request of the Register of Copyrights, has generally rejected these requests, although limited exemptions for educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students, documentary filmmaking, and noncommercial videos were added last time around.

With another triennial rulemaking process underway, another request for such an exemption has been proposed. There's no particular reason to believe the result will be any different, but there are some important differences in the approach taken this time around by Public Knowledge.

In their filing to the Librarian Of Congress, Public Knowledge has framed the argument for the CSS exemption in terms of format shifting. Rather than arguing in favor of re-using content for purposes not intended by the copyright holder, they are concentrating on the simple act of watching the content, albeit on a device without a DVD drive or decryption capabilities.

A new prepaid wireless service has just debuted in the US, offering smartphone plans with unlimited 3G data for $45 per month.

PrepaYd Wireless is a subsidiary of PrepaYd Inc, who offers prepaid debit cards under the Bank Freedom brand. Their wireless offering uses Sprint's network.

In addition to unlimited data, PrepaYd's plan offers unlimited calling within the US in addition to unlimited SMS and MMS messaging.

PrepaYd Wireless also sells a small selection of smartphones for use with their service. Being a prepaid plan, phone prices are higher than US consumers are generally accustomed to since they lack the significant subsidies offered by postpaid providers.

Initial offerings include two Android phones, the LG Optimus S for $75 and the Samsung Replenish for $150. Additionally there is the Windows Phone powered HTC Arrive for $400.

You can find more information on the PrepaYd Wireless website.

Despite the obvious implications for SOPA to cause problems for tech companies, the Business Software Alliance's criticism of the bill has been muted at best. BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman initially called the introduction of SOPA, "a good step."

After it became clear his view wasn't representative of many BSA members, he revised his position, saying:

The idea behind SOPA, as Chairman Smith explained at last week's hearing, is to remove pirates' ability to profit from their theft. We think that is the right approach as long as it is done with a fine touch.

An Apple filing in their US lawsuit against Samsung for allegedly copying protected design elements of the iPhone and iPad has been released.

As with their other design claims around the world, it basically comes down to the argument that generic and functional are actually unique and purely aesthetic. The document is a redacted version of a declaration from industrial designer Cooper C Woodring in which he makes a number of astonishing claims about what Samsung should do to avoid infringing on Apple's intellectual property.

Even as he argues that the design elements of both iDevices are purely aesthetic, he suggests changes for Samsung which would make their phones and tablets decidedly less functional.

Let's look at a few of them. First, he argues, Samsung could make the area around the display raised, rather than flush with the display. Of course that ignores the fact that it would make it nearly impossible to swipe all the way to the edge of the display.

He also says they could make the devices less rectangular. In fact it's arguable the shape of the iPhone, which is significantly wider than the display, is purely functional because the extra length is needed to make it usable as a phone.

Always on the lookout for ways to push back against the recognition that any unauthorized copying is legal, the RIAA has filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in a copyright infringement case brought by a Las Vegas firm.

Righthaven LLC is a company formed by lawyer Steve Gibson and the publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Its sole purpose was to purchase the right to bring copyright infringement lawsuits over online copying of newspaper articles.

When the terms of Righthaven's agreements with LVRJ and other newspapers was detailed in court filings several months ago, judges began dismissing their suits for a lack of standing. That's because the right to sue is an extension of the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders, and not a separate right which can be transferred separately.

That's not what the RIAA is arguing against. Instead their filing is in opposition to a ruling in one of Righthaven's failed lawsuits in which the judge stated it was possible for the republication of a copyrighted article, in its entirety, by a non-profit organization could be fair use.

In fact this is not a new concept at all. It was a key point raised by the Supreme Court in the most famous copyright case ever - the Betamax Case. In that case, the majority opinion read:

A new bill making its way through the US House Of Representatives would reallocate a significant amount of spectrum both to build a nationwide public safety network and provide additional wireless Internet service.

The proposal, called Jumpstarting Opportunity with Broadband Spectrum (JOBS) Act of 2011, was passed on from the Communications and Technology Subcommittee to the full House Energy & Commerce Committee.

In order to free up valuable spectrum currently used for digital TV, the bill would authorize the FCC to offer broadcasters payment in exchange for moving down from their current UHF assignments to VHF frequencies. While this sounds like a simple proposition, that's not necessarily the case.

When DTV broadcasts first began in the US, most broadcasters were using various UHF frequencies due to the limited bandwidth available on the VHF portion of the spectrum where most of their analog signals resided. When permanent digital frequencies were assigned by the FCC, the lower two portions of the VHF spectrum were avoided due to transmission problems.

The JOBS Act seems to make the assumption these same low VHF frequencies (formerly used for analog channels 2-5 would be viable for DTV broadcasts. However, it is ultimately broadcasters who will have to make this decision since the move would be strictly voluntary.

In addition to the potential issues for broadcasters, such a move could case problems for consumers. Some antennas commonly used for DTV reception aren't well suited for the lower range of the VHF spectrum.

But those are short term considerations. In the long term it seems inevitable TV will ultimately be just another data service absorbed into a common universal connection.

For some people, particularly in rural areas, there is every reason to believe that connection will be wireless due to the cost of running and maintaining wired connections in sparsely populated areas. At some point that will have to mean reallocating frequencies to increase data service options.

While this bill, at least as currently written, may not be the best way to accomplish that, it's something we need to be considering sooner rather than later.

In reality this bill has some major hurdles to overcome before it can be passed. A second provision would free up more spectrum currently used for public safety networks used primarily by state and local governments into a single national frequency range.

Like the DTV move, consolidation of the various public safety networks into a single nationally available range is probably inevitable, but there is significant resistance to it right now.

Another dealbreaker could be a provision forbidding the FCC from putting net neutrality requirements on sales of the newly freed spectrum.

At this point it may be purely hypothetical, but these challenges are realities which will have to be addressed eventually.

While supporters of SOPA, the US Internet censorship bill claiming to be aimed at combating online piracy, the reality is it would cast a wide net and make it significantly more difficult and expensive for many legitimate online services to operate.

One such service is Bookshare, an online library for people with various visual and reading disabilities, ranging from blindness to dyslexia. Bookshare provides unlimited access to specialized ebooks which can be translated into spoken words, Braille, or large print using various software and hardware.

The service is intended to fill a gap in many commercial products, which are designed specifically to disallow such conversions as a result of demands from publishers and authors preoccupied with piracy and performance royalties.

Bookshare is a completely legal service thanks to a specific provision in US Copyright law, found in Section 121, also known as the Chafee Amendment:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.

When Google+ was announced earlier this year, it was hailed as a possible Facebook killer. Despite their previous failure with Buzz, Google was looked at as the one company who might have the resources and know how to truly compete with the social networking giant.

But the reality hasn't lived up to the hype so far. In fact, all the signs have pointed toward Google+ actually being something of a disappointment.

When the invitation-only beta was announced, people seemed to be lining up to get in. It took less than a month to reach 20 million users.

But it didn't take long for the initial excitement to subside. Data from Experian Hitwise seems to indicate their decision to open Google+ to the public occured immediately after traffic started dying down.

There was an initial spike after that, but once again the public seemed to cool on the service. Analysts at Chitika pointed out that Google+ traffic returned to more or less the same level as during the closed beta just a couple weeks later.

It's certainly not news that the anti-piracy bills making their way through Congress, PIPA (aka Protect IP) and SOPA (aka E-PARASITE) are essentially just wish lists written by the entertainment industry.

While sponsors of both bills claim they are tightly focused on taking action against websites operated outside the US which are "dedicated to infringement," the reality is there are a number of troubling implications for innovation and even security.

The Sunlight Foundation, an organization dedicated to transparency in government, has published lists detailing the amount of money contributed by the TV, movie, and music industries to the campaigns of SOPA and PIPA sponsors.

The list for SOPA includes 18 of 25 sponsors:

• Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., $1,727,156. His southern district border is Hollywood Blvd. and he was the beneficiary at a fundraiser earlier this month hosted by two lobbyists at a firm that represents the National Broadcasting Association.
• Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., $516,400
• Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., $488,731
• Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., $488,636
• Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., $392,995 (sponsor)
• Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-VA, $316,686
• Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., $261,700
• Rep. Lee Terry, R-Nev., $248,168
• Rep. John Barrow, D-GA, $210,900
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., $204,199
• Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., $133,023
• Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., $130,100
• Rep. John Carter, R-Tex., $75,850
• Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., $64,648
• Rep. Steve Scalise, R-LA, $54,000
• Rep. William Owens, D-N.Y., $42,850
• Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., $30,000
• Rep. Thomas Marino, R-Penn., $21,300

It appears the most serious allegations about Carrier IQ, the diagnostics software secretly installed and run with root access on a variety of smartphones, may be unfounded.

Carrier IQ comes pre-installed on a number of smartphones, most notably Sprint and AT&T branded Android smartphones, and is sold as a diagnostic tool to help carriers monitor problems with their mobile networks.

The software's existence was discovered last month by a security researcher named Trevor Eckhart, who calls it a rootkit.

While Carrier IQ disagrees with that description, there appears to be no question it is installed without the user's knowledge or permission and runs secretly (hidden from user view) with privileged access. That's the basic definition of a rootkit.

Further revelations by Eckhart include Carrier IQ having the capability of logging every keystroke the user makes and secretly reporting the contents of SMS messages and encrypted communications to the carrier.

Another security researcher, Dan Rosenberg has performed his own analysis of the Carrier IQ implementation on a Samsung Epic 4G Touch and concluded Eckhart's conclusions were in error. According to Rosenberg, claims that Carrier IQ has a keylogger or is capable of sending carriers the contents of SMS messages or webpages are completely false, at least for the Samsung phone he looked at.

According to the latest numbers from comScore, the iPhone accounted for more than 10% of US mobile subscribers in October. Their 10.8% subscriber share was up from 9.5% a month earlier.

Keep in mind, this is an accounting of phones in use, rather than sales.

By comparison, Samsung phones were used by 25.5% of US subscribers, but that includes both smartphones and feature phones. Despite the sales gains in smartphones they have made in recent months, their usage share was unchanged from September.

Other companies whose phones were used by more Americans in October were LG and Motorola, but the trend for both companies was a slight downturn of 0.3% and 0.5% respectively.

At the same time, overall Android usage was up from a month earlier, accounting for 46.3% of smartphones compared to 41.9% in September. However, that gain didn't come at the expense of Apple, whose phones accounted for 28.1% of usage, compared to 27.1% in September.

Not surprisingly, the biggest loser was RIM. They dropped from a share of 21.7% in September to 17.2% in October.

The Washington DC Public Library is getting some publicity for their new offering of the Freegal MP3 service to give card holders free music, but on close inspection it may not be such a good deal for anyone but the service provider.

Library Ideas offers the Freegal service to a number of libraries throughout the US. The selection of songs is exclusively from Sony Music, and each person is limited to just three downloads per week, and two downloads for each individual song.

The downloads are DRM-free MP3 files, and once you download a song you own it. While that may not be a bad deal for free, if you look at the terms Library Ideas is apparently giving libraries, it's far from free.

Last year a librarian from San Rafael, California blogged about her dealings with the company providing the service, and she wasn't at all impressed.

According to Sarah Houghton, downloads from Freegal actually cost libraries an average of $1 or more per song. On the other side of the equation, she says the reaction from users to getting a mere three songs per week, and only from a single label, hasn't been positive.

A member of the board of Dutch music collection agency Buma/Stemra has resigned in the midst of a scandal around accusations he tried to shake down a composer who was merely asking him to do his job.

Jochem Gerrits is accused of demanding Melchior Rietveldt turn over a third of his royalties in exchange for bringing the matter before the agency's board. Rietveldt's claim revolves around a piece of music he wrote for Dutch anti-piracy firm BREIN to use in a video.

Rietveldt says the music has been distributed on tens of millions of Dutch DVDs, which isn't covered in the contract he signed for the piece. He is looking for more than 1 million eurosin royalties.

It's unclear what part BREIN may have played in the music being used without authorization, but it doesn't appear they have any connection with Gerrits' actions.

Gerrits made the demand in a phone call with Rietveldt's lawyer, not realizing the call was being recorded. Although he claims his statements are being taken out of context, they seem to stand on their own.

According to TorrentFreak, when asked why the composer should share the money with him, he said, "It could be because a lot of people in the industry know that they are in trouble when I get involved."

With sales of their PlayBook tablet remaining low, even with significant discounts, Research In Motion seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

They have just announced a negative adjustment of $485 million to their Q3 financials to account for unsold tablet inventory. At the same time, the company remains commited to the tablet market and believes sales will improve with aggresive promotions.

A company statement says:

As previously disclosed, RIM has a high level of BlackBerry PlayBook inventory. The Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers. This is due to several factors, including recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market and a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software. As a result, RIM will record a provision that reflects the current market environment and allows it to expand upon the aggressive level of promotional activity recently employed by the Company in order to drive PlayBook adoption around the world.