Because removing porn from the App Store wasn't enough, now Apple's taking aim at software that helps iPhone, iPod touch and, soon, iPad users find Wi-Fi hotspots. Forgive me for cynically choosing to disbelieve the company's excuse -- that all of these apps use undocumented or private APIs and consequently must be removed for the sake of the platform's future. If Apple actually had a workable, believable strategy for approval, it wouldn't have approved any of these apps in the first place.

The apps are -- or, rather, were distributed under the trade names Sekai Camera, Wifi-Where, and yFy, among others; and they made it easier for owners of such devices to find Wi-Fi networks and thus avoid using their more costly and often congested 3G connections. In the bad old days of wardriving, we simply walked or drove along a public thoroughfare and constantly refreshed our network lists to identify convenient and often free hotspots. The process was manual and tedious, and these packages automated the process of discovery just in time for Wi-Fi to become table stakes on handheld devices. With more end users than ever before seeking safe havens to avoid busting their carrier-imposed 3G data caps, Wi-Fi finders, scanners, and stumblers had finally hit the big time.

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Today, New York's ABC affiliate WABC-7 has pulled its programming from Cablevision, just hours in advance of the 82nd Academy Awards show.

It was no surprise, though. Earlier this month, WABC said it would be pulling its programming from Cablevision if the cable company didn't increase its payments by 20%. Cablevision did not see this as fair, as network television has always been available free over the air and nothing new had been added to warrant the increased cost.

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Two years ago, during a private premiere event entitled "Heroes Happen Here" held at the same Nokia Theater in Los Angeles where the Emmy Awards are now staged, and introduced by none other than Tom Brokaw, Microsoft rolled out a truckload of new server software product lines to help cement the company's new prominence in businesses and enterprises. One of the "heroes" that day, as Microsoft phrased it, was Essential Business Server, an effort to market a ready-from-the-get-go three- or four-server database and mail management package for businesses that have a few dozen employees, but may not yet be enterprises.

It was a solid idea. But today it was left to EBS' own product managers to announce on their team blog this morning that Microsoft has made a decision to cancel the product. The excuse they gave was especially disheartening, as it essentially caved in to the arguments naysayers used against EBS' viability from the beginning.

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In New York City last night, Samsung gave a sneak peek at three new laptops that are headed to Best Buy for later this week, and also showed a prototype of an all-in-one PC that might or might not turn into a product.

Set to be sold through Best Buy starting this weekend, Samsung's new "Red" laptops include the 14" R480, 15" R580, and 17" R780. The R480, priced at $729.99, and R580, priced at $829.99, will be sold in Best Buy stores, while the R780 will be available only through BestBuy.com.

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It's fraking Friday and to celebrate Gartner analysts are predicting Apple's iPad is going to change everything you know about the PC market. Everything. Betanews readers, will you let such prognostications go unanswered?

"Apple's iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry," Ranjit Atwal, Principal Gartner analyst, said in a statement. "This will create significantly more opportunities for PC vendors as well as significantly more threats." Threats to whom or to what? The traditional PC.

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Apple's iPad, which was unveiled at the end of January, will be available in US retail on Saturday April 3, the company announced today; and pre-orders will begin on March 12.

The first iPads available will not be equipped with 3G radios, and will be Wi-Fi only, these models go for $499 for 16 GB, $599 for 32 GB, $699 for 64 GB. The AT&T 3G-enabled models will be available in late April for $629 for 16 GB, $729 for 32 GB and $829 for 64 GB. At that time, the device will also launch internationally in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. More countries are expected to follow later this year.

An important part of this launch will be the availability of iBooks, the first app designed specifically for iPad (and a recycled Apple trademark) The free application turns the iPad into an eBook reader, and comes with the built-in Apple iBookstore, which is an obvious competitor to Amazon's Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble's eBookstore.

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Barcode and QR code reader applications are now standard fare for smartphones and can be commonly found for free in any of the major app stores. But far less common are comprehensive services that let users make their own QR codes for free.

This is why Microsoft's TagReader, which was released in the Android Market today, is worth checking out. It's similar to any number of barcode scanners available on the Android platform, except that it is designed to read Microsoft's unique "Tags."

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After reading through the avalanche of reactions to Apple's wide-ranging lawsuit filed Monday against handheld vendor HTC, I'm beginning to think that Apple may very well fear the rise of Google. And an indirect legal assault on the eminent provider of Android-powered devices is easier, cheaper, and less risky than a direct attack on Google itself.

What has Apple to lose?

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In a keynote speech to the RSA security convention in San Francisco on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney, spoke to the issue of whether a global organization on the order of the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control -- a public/private cooperative -- should be established to help secure the Internet and its billions of users worldwide. During that speech, Charney tossed out a number of ideas as to how such an organization could conceivably be funded.

A transcript of Charney's comments verified by Microsoft for Betanews this afternoon indicates that he suggested such an organization could conceivably be charged with the task of empowering government regulators in member countries to impose restrictions on the behaviors of enterprises and Internet users whose policies endanger global Internet users at large.

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The road from here to there

To help Firefox make the quantum leap from its current state to a level competitive with the others, version 3.7 will serve as a kind of waypoint. Already, we're seeing some other performance features being tried in the new Alpha 2 and the latest daily development builds of Alpha 3.

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Opera Software today has released the first native version of Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Since this version does not require Java support, like the beta released a little over six months ago, nearly any Windows Mobile device can install this one.

It is identical in most respects to the Java-based version released in beta late last year, with the Speed Dial homescreen, tabbed browsing, password management, and support for Opera Link, which unifies users' mobile bookmarks and features with those from their desktop Opera browsers.

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In a precedent-setting win for the company perceived as the originator of "time-shift" video recording, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has fully affirmed a lower court's judgment that satellite service provider EchoStar's software continued to infringe upon TiVo's patents even after making significant changes to address its complaints. This despite what EchoStar (whose DVR boxes are also used by former sister company Dish Network) had called "Herculean" efforts to steer clear of TiVo's intellectual property, and a preliminary US Patent Office rejection last August casting doubt on the validity of TiVo's patents.

At issue was whether EchoStar modified the software for two of its recorders, called the 50X and Broadcom series (the latter named after the supplier of its key hardware), in such a way that it didn't store video in a stream similar to TiVo's patented methodology. Last June, after a jury found in favor of TiVo on the infringement charge, a US district court slapped an injunction on EchoStar and Dish Network boxes. EchoStar did not appeal that injunction, and it may have thought it wasn't really enforced while courts jostled back and forth over possible penalties. That prompted TiVo to move the district court to find EchoStar in contempt. It did, and today the Appeals Court upheld that finding.

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Devices running Android 2.0 and later can now download from the Android Market the Google Gesture Search lab, an application which recognizes letters drawn on the touchscreen and uses them as live in-phone search terms.

The standalone application can search your contacts, browser bookmarks, installed applications by name, or music by artist name, album name or track name, all queries are limited to within your device, and do not yet reach deeper into applications for Web or content searching.

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It's the question to ask after the bold statement made yesterday by Google's John Herlihy. According to Silicon Republic, Herlihy told Digital Landscapes conference attendees that: "In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smartphones, not PCs."

My answer is an easy "Yes" for desktops, assuming Herlihy meant desktop PCs. Mobile PCs will take longer -- not much, unless 3G radios come to be standard equipment on most laptops; that's for displacement, not irrelevance. Yesterday I asked Betanews readers: "Has your smartphone changed your life?" The smartphone most certainly will change your life if it displaces the PC. How much more dramatic will be the change whenever PCs should become irrelevant?

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The battle over RealNetworks' DVD copying software, called RealDVD, has finally come to a close, and Real has lost.

Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the United States District Court, Northern District of California ruled today in favor of the DVD Copy Control Association, who argued that RealDVD actually made illegal copies that violated the Content Scramble System (CSS) license agreement.

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