Apple has sued smartphone maker HTC for patent infringement, citing 20 patents related to the iPhone's user interface, architecture, and hardware, a statement from the company said this morning.

A statement from Apple CEO Steve Jobs today said, "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

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Web-based photo editing suite Picnik announced today that it has been acquired by Google for an unspecified amount that Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato called a "very, very happy number."

The startup opened in 2005 and was chosen to be Flickr's default photo editor in 2007 when Yahoo was introducing a host of new features to the popular photo sharing site. Long before Adobe released its Web-based version of Photoshop, Picnik was already going strong.

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As IE6 and IE7 users throughout Europe turn on their Windows Vista- and XP-based computers to notice, for the first time, the opportunity to switch Web browsers from Microsoft Internet Explorer to something they may have never heard of, their manufacturers are preparing for an influx of new customers.

But they may also be preparing to lower expectations just in case the market share numbers for Firefox or Chrome or Opera or Safari fail to swing wildly positive overnight. Last week, Mozilla launched its opentochoice.org blog, ostensibly to help spread the word about the impact the choice screen may make on European computing habits. On Friday, however, the blog posted the results of a six-country, 6,000 respondent consumer poll conducted by advertising research firm Ipsos MORI.

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How disastrous is Microsoft's hobbled mobile strategy? Today's Pew Internet report, "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," offers some glimpse and even some hope. The report reveals that more Americans than ever rely on their cell phones for news and other information. Speaking personally, I find the Google News widget on my Nexus One to be indispensable.

Fifty-three percent of US adults "access the Internet wirelessly either through a laptop or a cell phone, BlackBerry or other handheld device," according to the report. Adults? What about measuring teen Internet usage -- and not just cell phones but WiFi devices like Apple's iPod touch? (More griping about Pew overlooking teens will come later in the post.)

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Four men from a San Francisco company called Wiseguy Tickets Inc. have been indicted in a $25 million online ticket fraud scheme, the US Department of Justice announced today.

The four men -- Kenneth Lowson, 40, Kristofer Kirsch, 37, Faisal Nahdi, 36, and Joel Stevenson, 37 -- have been indicted on conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to gain unauthorized access and exceed authorized access to computer systems, and 42 additional counts of wire fraud; gaining unauthorized access and exceeding authorized access to computer systems; or causing damage to computers in interstate commerce.

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At first blush, Apple's decision to cull a few thousand sexually suggestive titles from its iTunes App Store may seem like a puritanical attempt to cleanse its consumer-friendly image of any taint of smuttiness. But like everything related to Apple, the reality distortion field that surrounds the company makes even this assessment a questionable one.

Don't think for a second that wannabe-porn (what Apple called "overtly sexual content" in its removal notices to affected developers) won't be returning soon to any platform with an Apple logo on it. And don't think for a second that Apple will be upset about welcoming more skin to its ecosystem.

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Since yesterday evening, PlayStation 3 users have been reporting difficulties in connecting their consoles to the PlayStation Network for online gameplay and system updates. While it was first thought to be a network-related issue, Sony has warned that there is a much more widespread issue currently affecting older PlayStation 3's.

Sony's offical statement lists the following errors as a part of this internal clock bug:

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All praise the great gods of the InterWeb for their divine intervention. March 1, 2010 is Internet Explorer 6's judgment day, when mighty Google and Microsoft looked down from the heavens -- or Mt. Olympus, if you prefer - and cast IE6 into the abyss. Starting today, Google is beginning to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, while Microsoft presents European Union Windows users with a ballot screen for choosing even the most obscure browser, but not IE6. Microsoft's once mighty browser has fallen -- and not a second soon enough.

IE6's heart turned evil long ago. Microsoft released the browser in 2001 only to later let development languish. Only after Mozilla released Firefox in late 2004 and, around the same time, Google showed that bundled search could make browsers profitable did Microsoft start seriously working on IE7. But by the then, IE6's cold-hearted proprietary standards had polluted the InterWeb with wicked metatags.

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Download Opera 10.5 Release Candidate 4 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Just a handful of weeks ago, the developers of Opera 10.5 were calling their "pre-alpha" build dangerous if used to run a nuclear reactor facility. Over the weekend, in what appears to have been a round-the-clock effort to compress a few months' work into a few days' time, Opera Software ticked through four release candidates of its latest Windows-based Web browser.

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When you buy a PC or some other CE gadget, what kinds of substances are actually inside it...and what's being used to ship it to your house? At the Consumer Electronics Association's Greener Gadgets 2010 in New York City last week, ecologically oriented speakers touched on that question, in some cases proposing alternative materials -- such as cork or "Ecocradle" -- that they'd like to see show up in those places instead.

Yves Behar, founder of the Fuseproject product design agency, held forth on how gadgets can be "desirable" and "in demand" while at the same time friendly to the environment.

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Over the next three to five years, a lot more people will be giving up their collections of music CDs in favor of music subscriptions and downloads to smartphones, according to speakers at this week's Digital Music Forum in New York City.

As the major force behind the future trend, panelists cited music applications and services ranging from Spotify and Comes with Music to Shazam, Slacker, and a new offering called Thumbplay Music which just entered private beta this week.

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There may not be a real investigation of Google's business practices from the European Commission, at least not yet. But judging from the waves of hyperbole emanating from the usual suspects, along with a few new entrants, in the wake of the EC's admission that it forwarded Google some negative mail earlier this month, there may as well have been one. It appears that if enough people on the Internet share a topic with one another, it must be true.

The complaint among three of Google's competitors is that it leverages its hugely popular, all-purpose search engine as a platform for promoting its own exclusive shopping services. In a way, there's almost no contesting the complaint -- that's exactly what Google does. The question is whether that's wrong. As Betanews noted yesterday, the answers may differ depending on the continent they apply to. Depending on the country, the legal standards (and the suppositions behind them) vary.

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Download Opera 10.5 Beta 2 for Windows from Fileforum now.

The potential hazards of subdividing the ecosystem

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More software developers should follow the lead of Adobe and Skype, which have abandoned Windows Mobile -- what Microsoft now calls Windows Phone Classic. The mobile operating system already was brain dead, even with, according to Gartner, 15 million unit sales in 2009. The heart pumped out licenses, but there was no brain activity to keep the platform going. Windows Mobile flatlined, and it's about time that some Microsoft developers admit it. Others should get over the denial and do the same. Microsoft doesn't have the courage to pull the plug. But smart developers can.

Skype's move was quite audacious -- pulling the Windows Mobile version of the telephony software from download. Those WinMo users with Skype can continue using it. Adobe is doing something different. It's shifting Flash 10.1 development to Windows Phone 7 Series, sidelining any Windows Phone Classic version. Both developers acted wisely. Microsoft may have kept Windows Mobile on life support by the Classic renaming, but the operating system has no real future. There's little reason for hardware manufacturers to release new Windows Phone Classic handsets or for anyone to buy them -- with Windows Phone 7 Series phones coming late in the second half of the year.

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In September, Japanese joint venture Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications (CHMC) announced it would be merging with NEC's mobile division into an even bigger joint venture that will be called NEC Casio Mobile Communications Ltd.

The merger was to be completed in April 2010, but today the companies announced that getting regulatory approval is taking longer than anticipated (PDF available here). They hope the merger will only be delayed by about one month, but it remains in the hands of international antitrust regulators.

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