Skyfire, the third party mobile browser famous for its ability to handle nearly every major browser plug-in and web technology has finally arrived in the Android Market today.

At the beginning of April, the browser was released in a very limited alpha program which received overwhelming interest from users. The Skyfire team said it had to stop taking email requests for the software almost immediately because of the sheer volume of messages. Well, those masses now have something they can sink their teeth into.

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There are a handful of issues of contention that broadcasters (who transmit content over the public airwaves) have with the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Plan. One such outstanding dispute concerns the FCC's proposed reallocation of unused digital spectrum from broadcast to broadband purposes -- a way to get at least some of the estimated 180 MHz of spectrum wireless operators say they need, without another complete re-auction.

On Tuesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the formation of a so-called Spectrum Task Force, which many see as his way of connecting the necessary dots between the public airwaves (the FCC's natural purview), wireless, and the Internet (the FCC's disputed territory). In his announcement yesterday, the Chairman said, "To lead the world in mobile, the FCC must ensure that our nation's spectrum is being put to its highest and best use."

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The potential of HP + Palm + Microsoft

Anyone who thinks HP hasn't managed, or cannot manage, a software platform on its own has forgotten -- or is wholly ignorant of -- HP's success as the master of HP-UX, which makes it the "Face of UNIX" for a big chunk of enterprise customers. When HP uses the single word "Scale" to describe the benefits it can offer Palm, that's the scale it's talking about.
Not a lot of consumers know (or care) about HP-UX. "However, we have seen HP move to try to differentiate its products from other PCs running Windows by doing things such as developing the TouchSmart layer for its all-in-ones, and some of its touchscreen notebooks," noted Rubin, in his talk yesterday with Betanews. "Perhaps, particularly faced with the prospect of having limited control over the user interface in Windows Phone 7, having access to webOS allows [HP] to define the customer experience a lot better than licensing another operating system might."

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Today, just as Adobe released a preview of Flash Player for Mac OS X that features H.264 video decoding, Apple CEO Steve Jobs released a letter called "Thoughts on Flash," which explains the many reasons why there's no Flash support on any of Apple's mobile devices, and why H.264 is a better format.

The letter is emblematic of Apple's increasingly verbal approach to the frantically interested but highly misunderstanding public: "Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven -- they say we want to protect our App Store -- but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain."

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Android apps crash. There's no other way to say it. If you spend a lot of time installing and testing new apps on Android devices, you know it.

So when Mozilla officially rolled out its first public version of the Fennec mobile browser for Android with various warnings that it is a very early "pre-alpha," with experimental features that could require hard resets, I thought I knew what I was in for.

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Microsoft sure is gaining search share fast. Too bad it's cannibalizing Yahoo rather than gaining on Google.

Today, Nielsen released March 2010 US search share numbers, and, whoa, are they good news-bad news for Microsoft. The good news: Microsoft search share is 12.2 percent. The bad news: Microsoft closed the gap on Yahoo to within 1.2 percent. Yahoo's search share is 13.4 percent.

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HP's just-announced $1.2 billion offer to buy Palm is as close as this industry gets to a lifejacket. Despite the fact that the deal won't suddenly vault Palm back to the top of the mobile market it practically created, HP's ultimate goals for its latest acquisition extend well beyond the near-term.

It's been clear for years that Palm simply couldn't make a go of it on its own -- that if the company hoped to remain relevant in today's fast-evolving mobile marketplace, it needed to be acquired. The announcement earlier this spring that Palm was seeking a buyer and speaking with interested parties confirmed that it was only a matter of time before a deal was struck.

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If financial analysts had concerns about Hewlett-Packard's ability to resurrect Palm's flailing fortunes, those concerns may have actually deepened following HP's announcement call with analysts Wednesday afternoon.

During the call, which lasted under 20 minutes, Executive Vice President Todd Bradley told analysts that he expects HP's track record for building out communications infrastructure with eight of the world's ten largest telecom carriers will earn HP points when making its case for carrying Palm products.

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Exactly, what do they have in common? HP-Palm is a merger of necessity. HP needs to jumpstart (for the umpteenth time) its mobile strategy and Palm needs to be bought by anybody or perhaps die. Hey, there is anybody and then there's anybody else would be better. In a parallel universe the situation is different. HP is doing what I said Microsoft should: Buy Palm, and what a steal HP is getting for $1.2 billion.

Perhaps I'm missing something about things in common. While I was writing this post, Walter Lounsbery tweeted to me: "HP and Palm both share that has-been entrepreneurial spirit." Ouch! Get the Neosporin! And a Band-Aid! Alex Scoble poured salt on the wound. In a response to me at FriendFeed: "They both sell mobile devices...just no one knows that HP sells mobile devices." Whoa, put away that baseball bat, Alex!

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Perhaps the headline here should be, "HTC doesn't acquire Palm." In any event, our question from last week, "What if nobody wants Palm?" has just been rendered moot: Hewlett-Packard has just announced it has agreed to acquire the assets of Palm Inc. for $5.70 per share, or approximately $1.2 billion.

HP's announcement cites webOS in the first paragraph, indicating that the operating system was key to the company's offer.

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In an astonishing statistic released this morning, Web analytics service Experian Hitwise reported that of all the Web searches performed in the United States on the top three search engines Google, Yahoo, and Bing during the first four weeks of March, about two percent on average are for the word facebook. For Yahoo and Bing, Another one percent is for facebook.com, and just less than one percent is for facebook login.

Coupled with statistics for the same month from analytics service comScore, Experian's findings suggest that, from March 1 through March 27, searches for a way to get to Facebook other than through typing the address or clicking on a bookmark, accounted for as many as 175.84 million Google searches in the US, over 78.9 million Yahoo searches, and over 80 million Bing searches.

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A spokesperson for Microsoft's legal department confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that a precise legal interpretation of the company's patent agreement announced late yesterday with phone maker HTC is accurate, but interpretations of that announcement that imply Microsoft will charge royalties to HTC for its use of the Android operating system, are inaccurate.

"This agreement covers HTC's use of Microsoft technology that may appear in Android," the spokesperson told Betanews, affirming a specific interpretation of the language that we sought clarification on. As the announcement reads, "Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for HTC's mobile phones running the Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC." (emphasis ours)

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Move over Apple, Nokia isn't ready to give up its market share leading position just yet. After two failed flagship smartphone attempts -- the N97 and N900 -- Nokia has cued up the drool-worthy N8 for third quarter release. I'm suddenly excited about a Nokia handset again, and you should be, too. The N8 might also be the Nokia handset to crack the US market.

Nokia is leaning on its strengths in hardware innovation, while improving software and services. The handset manufacturer has long excelled at hardware, whereas Apple does much better with software. For example, Nokia shipped cell phones with great cameras years before Apple sold one iPhone. But Nokia has struggled to extend steller photo and video capabilities into the capacitive touchscreen era.

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Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies will be acquiring ICQ from AOL Inc. for $187.5 million, the companies announced today.

Former Internet service provider AOL purchased ICQ creators Mirabilis Ltd. for $407 million in 1998. At the time, the free ICQ chat client was one of the most popular pieces of free software available.

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The problem for independent video producers and enthusiasts has been the inability to encode videos that can be burned to Blu-ray Discs, and then actually played on BD consoles. That changed yesterday as Jason Garrett-Glaser, the leader of the open source x264 project that has seen success with DVDs, announced his team was able to encode a playable Blu-ray video using entirely free software.

That disc is being released as a kind of "Hello, World" effort for the high-definition format. It contains free videos folks have probably seen before, such as the Creative Commons licensed cartoon "Big Buck Bunny." But the image was designed to be small enough (2 GB) to be burned to either a DVD or a BD, to further prove the software's versatility.

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