Normally, I hate to say "I told yo so." But Macheads whacked me so hard for last October's "iPhone can't win the smartphone wars," I simply can't resist gloating. According to NPD, during the first three months of 2010, as measured by smartphone operating system unit shipments, Android outsold iPhone -- 28 percent to 21 percent market share. BlackBerry OS had 36 percent share. The data is for the United States only.

Android has gotten a big US boost over the last seven months or so. Late 2009, Verizon launched the Droid, putting up $100 million in marketing. Apple isn't the only company that knows how to successfully sell gadgets. Some of that Verizon marketing attacked AT&T network reliability -- and quite effectively. Meanwhile, Android handset distribution increased from one to all four major carriers, while iPhone is confined to AT&T.

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A few quick articles popped up in tech blogs this afternoon which confirmed a serious flaw in the Twitter follow system. Notably, the Gizmodo article entitled "How to Force Anyone to Follow you on Twitter," showed that by simply typing
"accept [username]" into the Twitter Web interface, you could turn anyone into your Twitter follower.

Immediately, users began turning celebrity Twitter users into their followers. Former late night talk show host Conan O'Brien, who makes a point of only following one person, immediately began following hundreds of profiles.

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2:15 pm EDT May 10, 2010 · Facebook has indicated to press sources that it has not brought on former FTC chairman Timothy Muris as an employee, as has been reported elsewhere. Muris is an attorney with O'Melveny & Myers, LLP.

In a signal that Facebook is taking the messages of last week seriously -- messages that included a privacy complaint filed last week with the US Federal Trade Commission by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) (PDF available here) -- the San Jose Business Journal broke the news that it has hired Timothy Muris, the former chairman of the FTC under President Bush, presumably as its privacy point man.

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Microsoft is hawking partner wares through Windows Team Blog posts. My inclination is to praise -- and I will -- but I can't resist a little a little jab, too. A decade ago there were just a handful of Apple blogs or fan sites, like MacCentral and ThinkSecret, now there are bazillions covering every scrap of Apple news or rumor. Where are the Microsoft enthusiasts? Must they be employee bloggers selling new Windows PCs?

This morning, not one, but two, Windows Team Blog posts caught my attention -- it's more when counting duplicates, but let's not go there (both posted yesterday). The first: "From Us With Love" by Ashley Brown and "Hands on with today's offer PC -- the Sony VAIO E Series" by Ben Randolph. Brown writes about three deals and Randolph what you can do with one of them. The emphasis in both is the same: "Our offers." Randolph's post reads like the kind of first-hand, enthusiast account that might pop up on an independent blog or in a comment or forum. The posts are part of a series highlighting Microsoft partner products. None of this is super new; I finally decided to blog it today.

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Android is now the number two smartphone operating system in market share behind BlackBerry, NPD Group's Wireless Market Research report said today. This is the first time Google's open mobile platform has passed Apple's iPhone OS in market share since it debuted in October 2008.

According to NPD's data, BlackBerry still leads the smartphone market with 36% penetration, followed by Android with 28% and then iPhone with 21%.

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Exactly one year after making its public debut, the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (also known as WiGig) has published its spec for the unlicensed 60 GHz band, which it is pushing as a new, faster standard for home networking.

The 60 GHz WiGig spec is not meant to be a replacement to current 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi technologies, but instead to act as a complement that is targeted to devices requiring gigabit speeds, like HD video. While the new spec supports data transfer rates up to 7 Gbps, the high absorption of 60 GHz waves make it suitable only for short-distance communication.

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At about this time last year, Warner Brothers began an exchange program called Red2Blu that swapped HD DVDs for Blu-Ray discs, letting consumers trade their unsupported Warner Brothers HD DVDs and $4.95 for the same title on Blu-ray.

About six months later, the studio unveiled a similar project called DVD2Blu that let consumers trade in their standard DVDs (and $7.95-$9.95) for a Blu-ray upgrade. The upgrade program included 55 Warner Brothers titles.

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We've always known that the Internet has evolved since 1996 (whose laws were based to some degree on the world circa 1978) to something that current US telecommunications law doesn't adequately describe. The whole court debate over whether the Federal Communications Commission could legally address how Comcast manages its network traffic wasn't really about whether it should, but rather whether current law designates that it can.

Up until yesterday, the two choices before the FCC were whether the broadband system it wants to regulate is more like a telephone (Title II) or a teletype (Title I). For years, its leaders argued that Title I of the Telecommunications Act, amended in 1996, was more fitting, making the case that since broadband services were usually piggy-backed over communications services anyway, its ancillary authority to protect information services could be attributed to its primary authority to protect communications services. In a decision very, very likely to survive judicial review, the DC Circuit said that's wrong.

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Borders, the United States' second largest bookstore chain behind Barnes and Noble, announced it is now taking pre-orders on its Kobo e-reader, which will arrive on June 17.

At $149.99, the Kobo is considerably cheaper than Barnes & Noble's nook and Amazon's Kindle, both of which retail for $259.00, and it comes pre-loaded with 100 classic books. Borders has not yet launched its cross-platform eBook store, but says it will be open in June when Kobo ships.

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Late in 2009, leading telecommunications company Nokia sued Apple, alleging that the iPhone infringed upon ten of Nokia's patents, most of which revolved around the fundamental wireless technologies used in the device.

Now, the Finnish company has filed another suit against Apple, this time in the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin. There, Nokia is accusing Apple of five additional counts of patent infringement in both the iPhone and the iPad 3G.

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ComScore's most recent MobiLens market data ranks Samsung as the top mobile original equipment manufacturer in the United States with 21.9% of the mobile market, a tie with Motorola.

Samsung is attempting to use its lead to advance its own open mobile operating system, called Bada, which the company launched back in November. In February, Samsung started showing off its first device running Bada, the 3.3-inch super AMOLED-eqipped Wave, but the device has not been released yet.

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Worldwide in first quarter, smartphone manufacturers shipped 54.7 million units, growing 56.7 percent year over year, according to IDC. Apple surged strongest -- 131.6 percent. While seemingly good, Apple needs to look back at approaching HTC and Motorola. Motorola is making a big comeback, and by way of smartphones; shipments grew 91.7 percent year over year. Motorola is betting big on iPhone OS rival Android. IDC noted that Motorola is expected to launch 20 new handset models during 2010, shipping an estimated 12-14 million Android smartphones.

About 27 percent of Motorola's total handset shipments were smartphones, which was higher than the market average of 18.8 percent, up from 14.4 percent a year earlier. Apple ships 100 percent smartphones.

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Download Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2 (v. 1.9.7.7.66.6600) from Fileforum now.

This week, Microsoft continued its public demonstration that it's working hard to improve the underlying Internet Explorer platform, with a release on Wednesday of the second preview of just the platform of the next IE9 -- not a fully functional Web browser, but a demonstration of where the rendering engine is going. Again, it's just a minimal front end on top of a rendering engine, and its main purpose is to show off the HTML 5, SVG, and JavaScript functionality pointed to on Microsoft's IE9 test site.

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The sound you heard after HP's purchase of Palm last week was that of Windows reaching the top of the roller coaster and beginning its inevitable trip back down. Microsoft had absolutely nothing to do with the transaction, of course, but the ripple effects of the buyout foreshadow a significant shift of one of Microsoft's most stalwart partners away from its core products.

Worse for Microsoft, the HP/Palm deal shines a bright light on the software giant's seeming inability to set a course for a post-Windows world. Giants can and do get left behind if they fail to move quickly enough.

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Google Goggles, the optical search tool released for Android last December received a significant update today which improves the app in a number of ways; including giving it the ability to recognize and translate languages.

Currently, the optical character recognition of Goggles is limited to five languages with Latin-based alphabets: English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. When you snap a picture of text, the app scans the content and offers a translation window where you can choose what language you want the text to be translated into. In Google's mobile blog today, Software Engineers Alessandro Bissacco and Avi Flamholz said the goal is to eventually be able to read non-Latin languages like Chinese, Arabic and Hindi.

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