Ed Oswald

Verizon appears to be moving further away from Android's Google and open source core premise this week as it has begun to ask for submissions to its own app store, expected to debut as early as next week. The carrier appears to be following a similar structure to that of Apple, where apps must go through an approval process and revenues are split between Verizon and the developer.

It is not clear from reports that originally appeared on Android enthusiast site Android and Me Monday whether or not Verizon plans to replace the Android market with V CAST Apps. However it would not be the first time the company would have altered Android.

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The Federal Communications Commission is expected to approve the use of so called "white spaces" -- or unused bandwidth freed up by the transition from analog to digital television signals -- for use in wireless broadband at its September 23 meeting.

While the technology would finally gain the FCC's full blessing, it is likely years before any actual implementation is seen. Regardless, the opportunities it provides to speed up the rollout of broadband across the country excites those who have been working hard to make the technology a reality.

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HP said Monday that it had agreed to acquire ArcSight, a security software maker, for $1.5 billion. The acquisition is the company's second since former CEO Mark Hurd resigned amid controversy last month, and appears strategic as it follows a pattern of larger technology conglomerates adding security technologies to their product portfolios.

It is not known whether or not HP ran into competition with other bidders, as the company would not comment on the process in a conference call announcing the deal. HP and Dell battled over virtualized storage company 3PAR last month, pushing the final purchase price to $2.4 billion, more than two times Dell's initial bid for the company.

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While Google's Android OS has shown considerable growth this year, research firm Gartner claims its best days may be yet to come. The firm says that by 2014, as many as 259 million units could ship, coming very close to overtaking Symbian's expected shipments of 264 million that year.

In 2010 Android is expected to ship about 47.5 million devices, slightly ahead of RIM's 46.9 million: Apple is expected to ship about 41.5 million units. Nokia's Symbian will far outpace its competitors, as it is expected to ship some 107.7 million devices. If Gartner's forecast is to be believed however, this year is Nokia's last for such dominance.

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Responding to developer demands that it clarify its approval process, Apple on Thursday published, for the first time, a document that details what it is looking for in new apps. If anything could be taken away from the new public policy, it may be that the approval process could get more difficult for some.

Apple appears ready to start rejecting apps based on duplicate themes to preexisting content, and it would hold apps to a higher quality standard. Apps have become ever more inappropriate in the App Store as of late, and the Cupertino company did express concern that children may be gaining access to these inappropriate apps.

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As promised at last week's event, Apple on Wednesday released iOS 4.1, its first significant update to the iOS platform that was introduced with the iPhone 4 earlier this summer. The update includes several new features including HDR photos, HD video upload, and a working Game Center.

Several bugs were also fixed in this latest update, including the highly-publicized proximity sensor issue and security issues involving FaceTime, GIFs and TIFFs, and at least 20 bugs in the WebKit framework of the Mobile Safari browser. The fourth generation iPod touch runs iOS 4.1 natively, thus upgrading the device is unnecessary.

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Microsoft has fired the first salvo in a battle for motion-sensing superiority that is sure to last through the holiday season. The Redmond company said Wednesday that it would introduce a Xbox 360 bundle that would include Kinect for $399.99 beginning November 4.

The console is Microsoft's redesigned 250GB Xbox 360 which retails on its own for $299.99. The company had announced in July that the Kinect system would be a $149.99 add-on, so buyers would save $50 on the bundle. Like the standalone Kinect offering, the game Kinect Adventures, would be included.

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Apple may have the head start on its competitors when it comes to streaming content, but Google is not going to let it get too far ahead. CEO Eric Schmidt said in a keynote at the IFA conference in Berlin this week that it plans to offer its "Google TV" service worldwide by next year.

Sony will be the first manufacturer to incorporate Google's technologies into
television sets sold within the US this fall. From there, the service will be expanded worldwide in 2011. Samsung is also considering building televisions based on Google's Android platform, but no final decision has been made.

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Craigslist shut down its adult services section quietly late Friday, seemingly acquiescing to the demands of child welfare groups. Organizations such as The Rebecca Project had said that Craigslist's policy of allowing sex ads was assisting criminals in sex trafficking, and the site was making a hefty profit doing so.

For whatever reason, the site has decided to make it obvious that it was removing the link, placing the word "censored" in white letters with a black background in place of where the link used to be. Cragslist's decision to do so seems to suggest that it may have been pressured to make the change rather than doing it of its own volition.

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Apple's foray into social music is not going well as its Ping service is experiencing a multitude of problems, including comment spam, a lack of promised functionality, and generally inconsistent user experience.

Security researcher Chet Wisniewski at Sophos said Apple is not employing any type of spam or URL filtering, as comments such as those advertising "free iPhones" were already appearing some 24 hours after the site's launch. He also said that Apple has made it easy for those to abuse the service.

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Verizon strengthened its prepaid offerings on Thursday, introducing prepay data plans for consumers who wish to use smart phones on a no contract basis. While the acquisition costs for those phones will be significantly higher, a customer would be free to leave at any time.

Prepaid data plans would cost the user $30 per month, and include unlimited data access. The company would offer a 250MB data plan for "multimedia" phones, which would be a $10 per month add on. Both offerings would become available beginning immediately in Verizon's own stores, and online on September 28, the company said.

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In what could potentially be the first serious challenge to Apple's dominance in the tablet sector, Samsung Thursday debuted the Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch Android powered tablet device. It will initially be available in European markets later this month, with a broader worldwide launch shortly afterward.

Although the device's screen size is smaller than the iPad, much of the rest of the specifications are quite similar. The Tab includes a 1GHz processor; up to 64GB of storage space; 3G, Bluetooth, and 802.11 wireless connectivity, and high definition playback of digital content.

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In a sign that Windows 7 sales may be beginning to falter somewhat, Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it would be bringing back its Windows 7 Family Pack discount program. The offer gives multi-computer households the opportunity to upgrade three PCs to Windows 7 Home Premium.

The deal is available beginning October 3 at a price of $149.99. This is a considerable savings over individual upgrades: a single copy of Home Premium alone retails for $129.99. It is unclear when the promotion would end, although Microsoft began pulling last year's offer in December.

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Apple's hobby got a little more serious on Wednesday as the Cupertino company debuted a much smaller and cheaper version of its AppleTV set-top box. The device also heralds the introduction of rentable TV shows, a move that had been widely expected.

The new AppleTV device is less than a quarter of the size of its predecessor, and has no storage space. Instead users would stream content from Apple's servers, and content available to the box would be rent-only.

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Microsoft co-founder and former executive Paul Allen filed a suit against 11 tech companies on Friday, accusing them of infringement over patents he acquired from the now defunct Internal Research. While Allen had invested in the company, he never participated in the development of the patented technologies.

When Internal Research closed its doors in 2000, the rights to the patents were transferred to Interval Licensing, a company Allen owns. The technologies cover four patents -- the most notable being the 6,263,507 and 6,757,682 patents -- relating to various web technologies. The companies named in the lawsuit are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google's YouTube.

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