Ed Oswald

AT&T's deal to purchase T-Mobile appears all but dead. The carrier joined with the Justice Department to ask for a stay of a planned trial until mid January, which US District Judge Ellen Huvelle granted on Monday. The extra time allows for a "Plan B" to be considered, and for AT&T to "evaluate its options".

"AT&T is committed to working with Deutsche Telekom to find a solution that is in the best interests of our respective customers, shareholders and employees", the company says in a statement. "We are actively considering whether and how to revise our current transaction to achieve the necessary regulatory approvals so that we can deliver the capacity enhancements and improved customer service that can only be derived from combining our two companies' wireless assets".

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The European Union has stopped its review of the planned merger between Motorola Mobility and Google, a filing posted to the European Commission's website on Monday says. The EU is asking for more information, and will continue its review once it is received.

EU officials halted the merger review on December 6, according to the website. Both companies said they expect the merger to be completed in 2012, and even with this delay there should be no trouble in meeting that deadline. Google describes the request as "routine", so it seems likely that the merger will still go through without any issues.

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Apple's impressive streak of courtroom victories is over as the company was dealt a serious blow in its patent fight with Motorola. A German court on Friday sided with Motorola, saying Apple's cellular-enabled devices -- the iPhone and iPad -- infringe on GPRS patents held by the company. The ruling may result in an injunction that would prohibit sales of Apple's products within the country.

Since it involves GPRS -- a 2.5G technology -- this means every iPhone produced is impacted by the preliminary injunction, as are both iPad 3G models. It also may give Motoorola leverage elsewhere in the European Union to seek a broader injunction against Apple products. While the ruling is against Apple's European arm, it initially only impacts Apple products within Germany.

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Amazon wants you to shop on its website this Saturday. How much so? It is enticing users of Amazon Price Check with up to $15 savings on items they scan in stores and end up buying through the retailer. Users can earn up to a $5 discount per purchase (five percent) on electronics, toys, sports, music and DVDs.

The company is using those scanning to effectively spy on brick-and-mortar retailers for them by enabling a share price function in the app. Amazon says it will use this data to keep its prices competitive. To earn the discount, customers would need to use the checkout function within Price Check.

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T-Mobile is the first stop in the United States for Nokia's Windows Phone line, as a Federal Communications Commission filing and an invite sent to the media confirm the nation's fourth largest carrier plans to bring the Lumia 710 to its network. The FCC filing can be seen here.

The 710 sports a 3.7-inch screen and 1.4 GHz Qualcomm processor with 512MB of RAM. It has 8GB of on-board storage and integrated 5-megapixel digital camera. Nokia produces GSM and WCDMA models, running Windows Phone 7.5.

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Do you like the sophisticated design of Microsoft's mobile UI, but can't part with your iPhone? Microsoft gives iOS users a taste of mobile life Redmond style, by releasing an Xbox Live app for iPhone and iPad. While basic, the app gives Xbox Live subscribers control of their accounts.

The app sports much of the transitions and user interface considerations that earned Windows Phone accolades from even the most vocal critics of Microsoft's mobile efforts.

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Android users have a multitude of options in order to detect whether Carrier IQ exists on their smartphones, with at least a dozen applications available through the Android Market. While most of the apps will not stop Carrier IQ from running, they will at least give those concerned with the company's actions some solace in knowing for sure whether they're being tracked or not.

Carrier IQ's discovery -- that stealthily monitors cellular users' smartphone activity -- set off a firestorm of controversy over the past several weeks. Some see it as a serious threat to users' security and privacy, while others have likened the reaction to mass hysteria generated by the media.

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The prospect of cost savings is touted as a significant benefit of cloud computing, but a new study disputes that argument. More than one-third of US businesses employing the cloud save less than $20,000, according to the study commissioned by IT consultation firm CSC. Nearly one-quarter saved nothing. Going to the cloud does not reduce the size of IT departments generally: only 14 percent report a reduction in tech workforce, while one-fifth actually expand the number of employees in IT through the hiring of consultants.

Cloud computing was recently touted by former US chief information officer Vivek Kundra as a method to save the federal government some $5 billion annually. If CSC is right, Kundra's claims are way off, and actually may cost taxpayers far more.

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If you have any private photos on Facebook that you really don't want out there, consider this story your fair warning to delete them. A flaw in the social networking site's reporting mechanism allows users to peer into content that is otherwise marked "private". Now would be a good time to remove that pic of drunken you mooning the boss.

The flaw was first widely reported on the forums of bodybuilding.com, a popular fitness site. The post -- since removed -- details the exploit. Proceed through the menus after reporting an image as inappropriate. When the dialog asks if you want to report any other images in the album, click "yes". All images, whether public or private, will be displayed.

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A number of Kindle Fire users are reporting Internet connectivity issues that are preventing them from browsing the web, according to posts to Amazon's community forums. Devices connect to WiFi but not to the Internet, or speed drops dramatically.

The trouble was widely reported today and attributed to WiFi. However, based on a cursory technical review and thorough exploration of forum posts, BetaNews sees a likely different cause: Some kind of breakdown between Amazon's Silk browser, Amazon's supporting web services and local ISP connection -- relating to server caching, we suspect.

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So says IHS iSuppli, which released projections for fourth-quarter tablet shipments on Friday. The firm predicts Kindle Fire will take about 13.8 percent of the market after having no share in the previous quarter. Kindle Fire went on sale at the end of September, with Amazon taking preorders right away but shipping November 14.

iSuppli expects Amazon to ship about 3.9 million units during the quarter, taking second place and all but tripling Samsung tablet market share. Kindle Fire's success comes at the expense of Apple as well as Samsung, however.

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The United Nations finds itself resecuring its network Wednesday following a hack that resulted in the login details of the employees of several divisions being posted to the Internet. Calling itself TeaMp0isoN, the group calls the UN "a Senate for global corruption" and "sits to facilitate the introduction of a New World Order and a One World Government".

TeaMp0isoN hacked accounts belonging to employees of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UNICEF, World Health Organization (WHO) among others. Some of the fault for the hack may lie in the users themselves: TeaMp0isoN notes that several of the user IDs contained no password at all.

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Microsoft's window of opportunity when it comes to tablets is closing. Release of Windows 8 is expected well into 2012, and businesses and consumers pine for tablets running the next-generation software - or they did. That is longer the case, Forrester analysts JP Gownder and Sarah Rotman Epps claim: Microsoft is too late to the party.

Windows 8 tablets will come in fifth after a host of other platforms, including the iPad and Android tablets, the struggling RIM PlayBook, and now defunct WebOS. Gownder and Epps say the tablet market is not forgiving to latecomers, which equals bad news for Microsoft.

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Research in Motion is accepting to the realities of the smartphone industry, saying Tuesday its new Mobile Fusion device management software will work with iOS and Android devices in addition to BlackBerry smartphones. The announcement suggests RIM might be ready to concede the market to its bigger rivals.

The Canadian phone manufacturer has watched its share of smartphones plummet from a third of the market this time last year to 18 percent in the most recent quarter, due to the lack of any blockbuster device release. Most of these users shifted to Android, which has more than doubled its market share over the same period.

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It's a working holiday for many involved with the proposed $39 billion merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. Representatives for AT&T informed the Federal Communications Commission through its online filing system late Wednesday that it had pulled its application for merger approval. The move signals an apparent surrender at the nation's second biggest carrier, and throws the entire merger into serious doubt.

It also suggests that AT&T feels the oncoming battle with the FCC is one that it cannot win. Chairman Julius Genachowski has put forth an order for its own hearings on the deal, but it was a statement from an anonymous FCC official that struck many: "The record clearly shows that -- in no uncertain terms -- this merger would result in a massive loss of US jobs and investment".

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