Will you buy Microsoft KIN? That's my question for Betanews readers on this fine hump day of the week. Will you or perhaps someone in your family purchase KIN? The Microsoft smartphone -- in KIN ONE and KIN TWO versions -- goes on sale tomorrow through Verizon Wireless. I took the "KIN is good for teenagers" stance last month. Today, here at Betanews, Tim Conneally asserts "KIN is not just for teenagers." So there's another question for you: Who is KIN for?

Pricing isn't exactly tween budget friendly, since the lowest pricing -- $49.99 for KIN ONE, $99.99 for KIN TWO -- is only obtainable by $100 mail-in rebate, which comes as a debit card. That means the kiddies will pay 150 or 200 bucks out of pocket. Then there are the data fees -- $29.95 a month, which doesn't include texting (that costs 20 bucks more). Verizon's pricing is more like AT&T's for iPhone -- separate data and text -- but without the benefits.

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The United States does not officially have an office, bureau, or commission for the oversight of online privacy policies and the enforcement of privacy laws. However, the Federal Trade Commission has acted in that stead, although with limited tools. Yesterday, one of Congress' leading advocates for Internet users' rights published an early draft of legislation he intends to offer on the floor of the House of Representatives, presumably this term, that would not only give the FTC enforcement authority, but also fine-tune the terms the law uses with respect to how a service provider may infringe upon users' privacy rights.

Now, some of the same rights advocates who had earlier pleaded for action against questionable policy changes, especially recently at Facebook, are expressing outrage that such action is apparently coming from the government.

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Owners of the Roku Netflix set-top box have had an MLB.tv icon on their home screen since August 2009. The logo on the screen originally included a message saying the service would launch with the beginning of baseball's spring training season. MLB.tv subscribers would pay either $99.95 or $119.95 per year to have access to full streaming versions of available pre-season, and then every in-season Major League Baseball game as they happened, with local blackout exceptions. For big baseball fans, it is an excellent package.

But when spring training started, the service was still being beta tested and non-testers couldn't access it. Then the service's opening message changed to say it would be ready to launch on opening day. But when opening day rolled around, the MLB.tv message on the Roku home screen changed again to "Tune in in Mid-April."

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Apple's reported problems with the Feds -- possible investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, US Justice Department, or both -- needs a primer. So I've prepared a list of 10 Things you should know about Apple and also US antitrust law. Should the FTC launch the investigation, as explained in #7, Apple's short-term risk would be greater but some kind of amicably resolution more likely. I would do another list then.

Then there is #9, where I for the first time express my feelings about the US government's antitrust case against Microsoft and what that should realistically mean for Apple. With that introduction, here are the 10 things, presented in order of informational value rather than importance:

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Starting tomorrow (May 6th,) Microsoft's new KIN phones will be available through Verizon Wireless' website, and in stores on May 13th. The first two devices, logically named KIN one and KIN two, are geared toward the always-connected individual interested in social networking and sharing. Their feature sets fall somewhere between feature phone and smartphone, but the user experience is completely new.

That experience could actually be described as a combination of Windows Live and Zune. Users sync all of their social network and exchange data with their Windows Live account and with their cloud-based KIN Studio, which keeps an archive of all the pictures and videos they share.

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Technically, comedians and comedy writers cannot be held liable for certain copyright violations, especially if their parodies are presented in the context of a comedy show. But that doesn't mean major sponsors can't pull strings other than legal ones; and Tuesday morning, comedienne Ellen DeGeneres found herself apologizing -- in her own self-deprecating way, of course -- for a parody of an iPhone commercial that appeared on Monday's show.

As the show's own Web site admitted, "Apple wasn't thrilled with it, and now Ellen's in hot water!"

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Are you paying Rupert Murdoch 18 bucks a month for a Wall Street Journal iPad subscription? I dare you to confess. Today, during News Corporation's earnings call, CEO Murdoch claimed that the Journal has 64,000 active users on iPad. Presumably one of them is you. Confess -- comments are open -- and tell us all what is your reason.

I ask because I see the Journal as having gone too far with its paywall approach. I'm testing iPhone 3GS again, and I downloaded the WSJ app last week. I logged in with my Web subscription account, and the Journal let me read for a couple days. Then came the demand for more cash. Not much, just a buck a week. But I'm already paying for the Web subscription, for which the Journal charges about $150 a year. So Murdoch wants another 52 bucks a year for iPhone and about another $215 for iPad, which I also am testing? OK, it's only $207 a year for iPad if taking advantage of the $3.99-a-week promotion.

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Steering around Apple

A survey conducted for Forrester Research and Dr. Dobb's Journal cited by Jeffrey Hammond in his report, shows 39% of responding companies as using AJAX as their primary RIA development platform (with Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX being the principal provider). Other platforms, including Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, the Google Web Toolkit, and the Dojo Toolkit rounded out the list. The word "Apple" is nowhere to be found.

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The last two major WiMAX expansions for Sprint and Clearwire were somewhat understated events. At the end of March, Houston became the seventh Texas city to have its 4G network switched on; and last weekend, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Reading and York launched their networks to cover southeastern Pennsylvania.

Clearwire expects more than 80 markets to be completed this year, but has not officially announced which markets these will be in a comprehensive list. Last year, the company said the rollout would include Boston, Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC; and at CTIA this year, it added Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis to the list.

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The growing trend of Windows users at home trying alternative Web browsers continues, with data from the world's two leading browser analytics services suggesting that Google's front-page advertising for its Chrome browser is working as intended.

This morning, analytics service NetApplications trumpeted that, for the first time, it projects worldwide usage share for all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer combined (IE6 through IE8 being the most active) at just below 60% in its estimates for the first time, at 59.95%. That represents a decline averaging at about 0.8% per month since last June. The service projects Google Chrome as having picked up the lion's share of converts, with usage share having risen worldwide to 6.73%, climbing over half a point per month since December.

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It's the question I'm asking after the New York Post reported that the "Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple's new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple's programming tools."

Yeah, yeah, some people can scoff and, say, "It's just the Post!" But the New York Post was packaging gossip and jamming scoops long before Gawker publisher Nick Denton was in diapers. The Post claims that regulators "are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry." At issue is Section 3.3.1 of Apple's developer agreement, which prohibits cross-platform technologies like Flash and Java. (See Scott Fulton's excellent analysis about the antitrust issues.)

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The Android Team today published a snapshot of the platform which shows the versions of Android most commonly in use. Though the platform is frequently criticized for being highly fragmented, there are three versions used far more than the rest.

Out of the six supported versions of Android, it is a close three-way split between 1.5 (37.2%), 1.6 (29.4%), and 2.1 (32.4%). Version 1.1, 2.0, and 2.0.1 combined only make up 1% of Android users.

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Two weeks ago, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) held its Music Creator Conference at Los Angeles' Renaissance Hollywood Hotel. Highlights of the conference included sessions with music celebrities John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Quincy Jones, and Rupert Hine (who produced albums for Rush, Tina Turner, Howard Jones, Suzanne Vega, and dozens more).

The messages from all of these professionals, as summed up by
Paul Zollo in American Songwriter this week, were all variations of the same theme...

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Last month, I asked Betanews readers to answer question: "Has Apple gone too far?" For the majority, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" I didn't expect the vehement Apple whacking reaction. Did you?

Today is appropriate day for readers' answers. Apple announced sales (more likely shipments) of 1 million iPads and that App Store had reached 200,000 applications. Apple restrictions around iPad and the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK led to my asking the question.  Additionally, today, unconfirmed reports have the US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission jockeying over which agency could start an Apple antitrust investigation. The investigation would look at Section 3.3.1 of Apple's developer agreement, which restricts cross-platform technologies like Flash or Java.

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At a conference 18 years ago, a company called Shapeware -- formed by some former Aldus folks I knew from my days as a Macintosh contributor for Computer Shopper a few years earlier -- displayed an add-on product for Microsoft Office that some Microsoft folks told me was the best example of a COM add-in they had ever seen. And since I was known for a particular Corel Draw review where I said the Corel folks figured out something about functionality that the Macintosh folks had missed, they made sure I had a first look and a review copy.

It was called Visio, and it was strong, lightweight (a couple of diskettes rather than a dozen), intuitive, and fast. My comment then -- to the Visio guys, to Microsoft, in print, and online -- was, and has been for two successive decades, this: Why can't PowerPoint be more like Visio?

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