June 5, 2008
Spear-phishing Attacks Have Hooked 15,000, Says Verisign (PC World)
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Unlike Us, CrunchGear Has Nothing Bad To Say About The Flip Mino
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Unlike my scathing review of the Flip Mino yesterday, CrunchGear’s Doug Aamoth can’t find anything bad to say about it.
In fact, he has nothing to say about it at all. That’s because Flip never delivered a promised test Mino to him, either before or after the embargo. The company flooded the blogs and news outlets with them a week ago, and we’re hearing reports that club go’ers in Los Angeles (at least the good looking ones) are being handed them for free. Almost everyone who wants one has a Flip Mino, and most of these people have written glowing reviews that completely ignore the fact that the Mino competes with digital cameras, not camcorders. Did the fact that we’ve been harsh on the Flip in the past have something to do with this?
CrunchGear did receive a delivery from Flip that included the press release, an empty box and a return address form. But no Flip. In lieu of an actual review, Doug created the video above chronicling his frustration.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Alltel customers worry about Verizon deal (AP)
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Carriers Looking to Block Free Wireless Broadband?
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Update: TR Daily reports that the vote will be delayed because of “misunderstanding” which loosely translates into lobbyists did their job and got FCC to back up. FCC has taken the vote off the website. I will report more tomorrow as I get the details. (Original story below the fold.)
Original Story: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s political ambitions might spur him into delivering “free wireless broadband,” if some Beltway insiders are to be believed. His plan, however, is not sitting well with carriers, satellite operators and even some public interest groups.
What Martin wants to do is basically have another auction of advanced wireless services (AWS-3) in the 2155-2175 MHz-band and reserve a portion of the wireless network that uses these frequencies for free wireless broadband. The plan was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The FCC is likely to vote on Martin’s idea of delivering 768 kbps wireless broadband access for free next week. I’ve been told the date is June 12th.
Ironically, Martin was not too thrilled about a similar plan proposed by M2Z Networks, a company started by former FCC official John Muleta and @Home founder Milo Medin in 2006. M2Z wanted to build a free wireless network using the same frequencies except it didn’t want to pay for the spectrum. The FCC ignored their request, so M2Z turned around and sued. They have to be feeling a tad vindicated by Martin’s latest move for free broadband.
In the meantime, I’ve managed to get my hands on a letter from T-Mobile USA bemoaning Martin’s plans and asking the FCC to hold off on making any decision until August. (Below the fold.)
Why? Because they want to “test” it for interference and other issues. “Testing,” however, is just a euphemism for “Let’s delay this sucker for as long as possible.” T-Mobile was the big bidder in the 2006 AWS auctions, and that spectrum is part of its 3G strategy. Other opponents of the idea include Qualcomm and MetroPCS, according to TR Daily.
Among the complaints parties have raised with the item, which would establish service rules for the AWS-3 band and the 10-megahertz H block, which is part of AWS-2, is the potential for interference from AWS-3 and the H block to adjacent AWS-1 and PCS (personal communications service) licensees, as well as mobile satellite service (MSS) operations…One complaint of rural and regional carriers is that the order would break up the 10-MHz AWS-2 J block by moving 5 MHz to the 2155-2175 MHz AWS-3 block, leaving an unpaired 5 MHz, and auction the new 25-MHz AWS-3 block on a nationwide basis. Some of those entities say the FCC should preserve the J block and auction it and the AWS-3 spectrum via smaller cellular market areas (CMAs) [From TR Daily, Subscription Required].
Muleta isn’t too thrilled about this, viewing it as yet another move by the carriers to keep competition at bay. Funny thing is, now he’s on the same side as Martin. M2Z filed a complaint today about this as well.
It’s ironic that Martin’s plan is running into static, for in my opinion, he and others in Washington, D.C., are the ones responsible for this lack of broadband competition that forces Americans to chose between either cable or phone companies. For the longest time abysmal technologies like broadband over power lines were touted by FCC officials as a competitive option.
Martin in particular has gone easy on the phone companies, helping along legislation that has reduced competition for the big operators. At the same time, he has been harsh on cable operators – not that there’s anything wrong with that. Overall, under his watch, the FCC has never seemed to be on the side of the folks for whom it’s responsible: U.S. citizens.
Lately, Martin has changed his tune, mostly because he’s eyeing a political career when his term with the FCC comes to an end. As a result, he has taken a more populist stance, playing nice with some of the public interest groups and overall garnering good press. But remember, he was a lobbyist for phone companies back in the day, and what is it they say about a zebra not changing its stripes? This includes getting behind the idea of free wireless broadband using advanced wireless services.
T-Mobile, FCC, AWS-3 - Get more Information Technology
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Wearfone watch phone looks to style up Finns
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Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables
[Thanks, Petteri] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Wearfone watch phone looks to style up Finns
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Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables
[Thanks, Petteri] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
BPI and Virgin Media Agree to Start Warning Uploaders
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In 2008, the ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ concept has been gathering pace around the globe. Get caught uploading three times, and the anti-piracy groups would like your internet connection, disconnected. Unsurprisingly, most people aren’t that keen on this plan and ISPs who have been revealed to be considering such systems have received lots of bad press.
In the UK and at the forefront of this controversy has been Virgin Media. Various reports suggested that Virgin would implement the 3-strikes policy with the BPI but this proved very unpopular and it took just a few days for Virgin to deny any such deal had been struck.
Undeterred, the BPI has carried on working with Virgin who, according to a Music Week report, have now agreed to some sort of halfway-house. Virgin will not (yet) disconnect persistent uploaders but after receiving information from the BPI about users making unauthorized uploads, Virgin Media will start sending out warning letters along with ‘educational’ advice about how to ensure that the customer’s account isn’t ‘misused’. Included in the advice will be links to authorized music sources, along with the usual fear mongering about viruses and spyware.
In this 10-week trial, along with the letter from Virgin the subscriber will also receive a warning letter from the BPI. It will state that persistent offenders will be disconnected and/or taken to court, despite the fact that Virgin appears to be refusing to disconnect users so far.
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “Virgin Media is the first ISP to publicly address the problem. It is a socially responsible ISP and I think other ISPs will look at this and see progress. I am very encouraged they have engaged with us. They understand the rights of musicians.”
A Virgin Media spokesman added: “We want people to enjoy music online without infringing the rights of musicians and music companies. This campaign is about helping our customers understand how they can do this.”
So here lies a very large inconsistency. If a casual uploader simply gets a warning from the BPI/Virgin and only persistent, regularly caught users only MIGHT be disconnected or MIGHT get taken to court (in a civil action, of course), why has the BPI ignored all of these things while effectively directing the police that the recently arrested uploaders from OiNK should be treated as serious criminals? TorrentFreak knows that at least two of those accused uploaded just a single album. Persistent? Hardly. Conspiring to Defraud? Give us a break.
Where was their friendly, education-based warning?
This is an article from: TorrentFreak
BPI and Virgin Media Agree to Start Warning Uploaders
Intel hit with $25.4 million antitrust fine (AP)
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AP - South Korea's antitrust regulator said Thursday it will order Intel Corp. to pay $25.4 million for violating fair trade rules.
How Google Plans to Win the Wild West of the Mobile Web
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It’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While last100's Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface. Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. But Google is banking on one app that carriers and handset makers won't want to touch - the browser.
Syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog
Android's UI looks to have borrowed just enough from Apple’s iPhone, as well as some of the design Zen of the original Palm OS, to more than satisfy my needs. However, on the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.
What Google is less keen to highlight, however, is how Android’s openness could potentially lead to the platform becoming fragmented, resulting in a mishmash of incompatible flavors or implementations. That’s because, notes The Register, Google plans on open sourcing Android “under a freewheelin’ Apache license” in which carriers and handset makers will be able to make any modifications they like. These could be as innocuous as cosmetic changes to the UI, such as replacing icons with the networks’ own branding, to something more significant like swapping which default applications and services are installed, including the option to remove Google’s own wares and, say, replace them with Yahoo’s or a carrier’s own.
“They can add to it. They can remove from it. They make it their own”, Android project leader Andy Rubin told attendees of last week’s Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
However, even if this means that handset makers and carriers can customize and control the ‘out of the box’ configuration of Android-based phones — since the platform is open, users should also have the same freedom to add to it, remove from it, and make it their own, right?
Not necessarily.
In theory there is nothing stopping any Android vendor, regardless of if they are a member of the so-called Open Handset Alliance or not, from locking down portions of the OS, even going as far as removing access to certain APIs. Rubin confirmed as much at the I/O conference, but attempted to reassure developers who are worried that their applications may face compatibility problems, by revealing that Google will provide tools to easily verify the make-up of each Android handset.
“We’re providing a piece of technology - I can’t go into a great amount of detail - that tests the APIs,” quotes The Register. “This will be a script that you’ll be able to run… and determine whether all the APIs are there.”
In other words, users may be faced with the situation of downloading and attempting to install applications on their ‘open handset’ only to be greeted with a message saying that their particular Android phone isn’t compatible.
Also see: Worries over Google phones: What if they're just ordinary?
While this is probably painting a worse-case-scenario, the whole point of Android is that it is supposed to help address the current status quo in which “the mobile platform is unbelievably fragmented”, according to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering. So it’s somewhat surprising that the company would allow such a possibility in the first place.
Or is it?
How else could Google persuade carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint and Telfornica, along with a host of incumbent handset makers to come on board in the form of the Open Handset Alliance?
Besides, Google is really banking on there being at least one application that the carriers and handset makers leave well alone, regardless of how else they tinker with the OS. And for Google’s purposes that application far exceeds the importance of any other, and offers the best hope of giving developers, including Google themselves, the unified mobile platform they crave.
That application is of course Android’s mobile Web browser, built on the same WebKit source code as Apple’s version of Safari for the iPhone. Nokia also utilizes WebKit in its own browser, albeit one built on older code.
Gundotra has already gone on record saying that the iPhone features “a better mobile browser than anyone had ever delivered before”, and that he expects others to follow Apple’s lead and adopt WebKit-based browsers of their own, helping to eliminate the need for developers to create separate versions of their web applications for each device — or at least if those apps stay in the browser.
All of which makes perfect business sense for the world’s largest Internet ad company.
“Google does reasonably well on the open Internet. We’d like that model to come to mobile phones,” says Gundotra.
Image credit: Android UI AndroidCommunity.com
This post is syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.
How Google Plans to Win the Wild West of the Mobile Web
add to del.icio.us
It’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While last100's Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface. Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. But Google is banking on one app that carriers and handset makers won't want to touch - the browser.
Syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog
Android's UI looks to have borrowed just enough from Apple’s iPhone, as well as some of the design Zen of the original Palm OS, to more than satisfy my needs. However, on the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.
What Google is less keen to highlight, however, is how Android’s openness could potentially lead to the platform becoming fragmented, resulting in a mishmash of incompatible flavors or implementations. That’s because, notes The Register, Google plans on open sourcing Android “under a freewheelin’ Apache license” in which carriers and handset makers will be able to make any modifications they like. These could be as innocuous as cosmetic changes to the UI, such as replacing icons with the networks’ own branding, to something more significant like swapping which default applications and services are installed, including the option to remove Google’s own wares and, say, replace them with Yahoo’s or a carrier’s own.
“They can add to it. They can remove from it. They make it their own”, Android project leader Andy Rubin told attendees of last week’s Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
However, even if this means that handset makers and carriers can customize and control the ‘out of the box’ configuration of Android-based phones — since the platform is open, users should also have the same freedom to add to it, remove from it, and make it their own, right?
Not necessarily.
In theory there is nothing stopping any Android vendor, regardless of if they are a member of the so-called Open Handset Alliance or not, from locking down portions of the OS, even going as far as removing access to certain APIs. Rubin confirmed as much at the I/O conference, but attempted to reassure developers who are worried that their applications may face compatibility problems, by revealing that Google will provide tools to easily verify the make-up of each Android handset.
“We’re providing a piece of technology - I can’t go into a great amount of detail - that tests the APIs,” quotes The Register. “This will be a script that you’ll be able to run… and determine whether all the APIs are there.”
In other words, users may be faced with the situation of downloading and attempting to install applications on their ‘open handset’ only to be greeted with a message saying that their particular Android phone isn’t compatible.
Also see: Worries over Google phones: What if they're just ordinary?
While this is probably painting a worse-case-scenario, the whole point of Android is that it is supposed to help address the current status quo in which “the mobile platform is unbelievably fragmented”, according to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering. So it’s somewhat surprising that the company would allow such a possibility in the first place.
Or is it?
How else could Google persuade carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint and Telfornica, along with a host of incumbent handset makers to come on board in the form of the Open Handset Alliance?
Besides, Google is really banking on there being at least one application that the carriers and handset makers leave well alone, regardless of how else they tinker with the OS. And for Google’s purposes that application far exceeds the importance of any other, and offers the best hope of giving developers, including Google themselves, the unified mobile platform they crave.
That application is of course Android’s mobile Web browser, built on the same WebKit source code as Apple’s version of Safari for the iPhone. Nokia also utilizes WebKit in its own browser, albeit one built on older code.
Gundotra has already gone on record saying that the iPhone features “a better mobile browser than anyone had ever delivered before”, and that he expects others to follow Apple’s lead and adopt WebKit-based browsers of their own, helping to eliminate the need for developers to create separate versions of their web applications for each device — or at least if those apps stay in the browser.
All of which makes perfect business sense for the world’s largest Internet ad company.
“Google does reasonably well on the open Internet. We’d like that model to come to mobile phones,” says Gundotra.
Image credit: Android UI AndroidCommunity.com
This post is syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.