Pakistan: Send an 'indecent' text, go to jail
Pakistan's new Cyber Crime Act has come into force and includes provisions that make "indecent, provocative and ill-motivated and concocted stories through e-mails and text messages against the civilian leadership and security forces" a criminal offense.
The Act is very similar to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance (PDF available here) introduced by the Musharraf regime in 2007, which put the country's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in charge of investigation and enforcement of electronic fraud, forgery, data theft, cyberstalking, and cyber-terrorism.
Ten-finger multitouch headed to mobile gadgets this year
Synaptics, the creator of touchscreens already embellishing the iPhone and G1 Android phone, today rolled out new multitouch technology for mobile gizmos which rivals that of Microsoft-'s table-sized Surface.
The "Three-Finger Crumple" and "Two-Player Tennis Lite" are just two of the new offerings likely to show up on new mobile devices at year's end through Synaptics' introduction of the ClearPad 3000 Series touchscreen solution.
Seven years later, 802.11n approaches finalization
Wireless-N draft users, get ready for a router firmware update because rumor has it that the IEEE has sent its latest 802.11n draft standard off to the Standards Board Review Committee (RevCom), which reviews draft proposals for their final vote on standardization. If this were a roller coaster, this would be the slow hill climb before the final drop. RevCom's quarterly meeting will be from September 9 - 11, and if approved, the final vote could take place in November.
The first draft of the multi-antenna wireless standard took nearly two years to complete, and it was promptly shot down in the first vote. While it is typical for the earliest versions of a standard to not make it far in the standardization process, IEEE hadn't anticipated the flood of almost 12,000 comments on the first ballot, meaning the process of revision had the potential to be long and arduous.
Stalemate for Web standards continues with no open video for HTML 5
The dream of a completely free platform for online video has run up against a significant roadblock, and it's another drama that Microsoft appears happy to watch play out from the sidelines. That dream is that Web developers can embed video into their sites using the <VIDEO> element of HTML 5, without being encumbered by anyone's proprietary technology. If it works, those sites can be assured of being able to stream to browsers' native codecs, rather than requiring users to install usually proprietary plug-ins like Adobe Flash or Apple QuickTime.
The problem with online video is that the technology behind it -- encoding, decoding, streaming and distribution -- is typically owned by somebody. That means it can't freely be distributed in an open source package. The exception here is Ogg Theora, the leading open source codec, and the hope of the community for a royalty- and penalty-free Web video platform. Yet its underlying technology may not only be outmoded, some are arguing, but may also actually still be owned by someone who has yet to assert patent rights.
What's Now: Microsoft confirms Windows 7 three-license discount 'family pack'
Your reporter has a theory about suicide, which goes: No one knows why the hell anyone does anything. That said, if your employer searches your home, puts you in solitary confinement, and uses "inappropriate interrogation techniques" on you, maybe 25-year-old Sun Danyong's decision to jump off a 12-story building makes sense to you. And if you're the company (Foxconn) and the alleged infraction involves a missing top-secret iPhone prototype, well... A little Foxconn history in a moment, but first, gather the family 'round the PC.
Windows 7 to be offered in "family pack"
Apple Q3 2009 by the numbers
Apple has once again defied the economic gravity pulling some tech companies' earnings into a black hole. For fiscal 2009 third quarter, the company posted, again -- isn't this getting tiresome -- strong year-over-year revenue and earnings growth.
Strong Mac and iPhone shipments contributed to a quarter that surged past Apple's guidance and Wall Street analysts' inflated estimates. Apple described the results as being its best for a non-holiday quarter. That's a remarkable claim given that second calendar quarter typically is the slowest for PC shipments and economic recession afflicts all Apple's major sales market.
Yahoo puts forth better-than-expected earnings, but no 'economic predictions'
In her company's earnings report on Tuesday, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared herself not to be in the economic-indicator business: "Overall we are seeing less fear in the market, but it's too early to call... We'll leave the economic predictions to others." The company is busy, they explained, being "Internet kingmakers and the center of the online ecosystem."
Big talk? It got bigger. Bartz said on the call that Yahoo is the largest online media company in the world, with one out of two Internet users using one Yahoo property or another. When news breaks, "our home page continues to be the big dog. And in that kingmaker role, Bartz (relating a recent event in which a link on the Yahoo front page drove nearly 9 million viewers to a story on the New York Times in under three hours) "in the end we work with [news] publishers, not against them" -- a not-so veiled reference to Google News' ongoing conflicts with news outlets that feel that that service's aggregation goes too far.
iPhone sales skyrocket in Q3
In Apple's earnings call today, it became a little more obvious why iPhone user disgust over AT&T's network has become so much more prevalent: because there are 700% more iPhones out there to complain about.
In addition to Apple's near record-breaking Mac sales last quarter, iPhone sales jumped an astronomical 736% over last year. In the third quarter in 2008, Apple sold 717,000 iPhones for a total of $419 million; this year it sold 5.2 million and pulled down $1.6 billion in total iPhone revenue.
Apple: 'We can't build a great $399 computer'
Apple has posted its earnings for the third quarter of the 2009 fiscal year, which amounted (once again) to the best non-holiday quarter in Apple's history. The company's revenue grew 12% over last year to a total of $8.34 billion, with a net profit of $1.23 billion.
During the quarter, Apple saw record-setting adoption of Macs and iPhones by consumers, thanks in large part to the price cuts on the lower end of both lines. Wall Street anticipated a 3% contraction in Mac sales, but the company actually grew by 4% over last year, with a surge in sales taking place after the WWDC price cut announcements. During the quarter, 2.6 million Macs were sold, nearly meeting the company's all-time quarterly sales record.
First Windows 7 RTM code available August 6
In an announcement late Tuesday afternoon, Microsoft product evangelist Brandon LeBlanc did not reveal the precise date in which Windows 7 would release to manufacturing. He did state, however, that the first availability of the final code will come Thursday, August 6, for independent software and hardware vendors, and also for MSDN and TechNet subscribers (English language version only).
Volume license customers will be next to see availability the following day, if they subscribe to Software Assurance (SA), said LeBlanc. Those without an SA license must wait until September 1 to download their copies.
'Legit' Pirate Bay's future in doubt
The Pirate Bay's $7.8 million acquisition by Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory could fall through after all, reports are now saying.
When the acquisition was announced in late May, Global Gaming Factory said it intended to re-launch the Pirate Bay under new business models "that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." Last week, a little more depth was given to the Pirate Bay's potential revenue model by former Grokster CEO Wayne Rosso, who called it the "Resource Supported Model."
Report: Microsoft to drop out of the race against YouTube
Microsoft's scaling back of its social media initiatives continues, with the news today first reported by paidContent.org, learned during an interview with Corporate Vice President Erik Jorgensen, that MSN Video's Soapbox service will be shutting down completely. Soapbox has been its portal for user-submitted videos, but Jorgensen indicated to Fried that sponsorship for those videos -- which constituted about 5% of MSN Video's content portfolio -- was too low for the service to be sustained in the present economy.
In an interview with CNET's Ina Fried last month, Jorgensen stated then his team's intentions to scale back Soapbox, though he was careful at that time not to reveal the extent. The paidContent.org interview indicates that user-generated content may still be feasible on a revised MSN Video service, or whatever it should be called, although Microsoft is unlikely to give that content its own portal.
The tipping point: iPhone users turn against AT&T
The iPhone crowd has turned into an anti-AT&T mob. Spend 30 seconds on Twitter or perform even the most basic search for iPhone and AT&T information and you're sure to run into some serious rancor from disgusted iPhone users across the country. While the exclusive partnership between Cupertino and the Dallas teleco has never been perfect, user hostility has lately been at a fevered pitch.
In February of this year, prominent blogger Om Malik announced he was "breaking up" with his iPhone. "I love my iPhone -- but AT&T's network has failed me. Apparently I'm not alone. If you follow me on Twitter, then you know how often I complain about it; my complaints always result in me receiving similar messages of frustration from other iPhone users. A status update on my Facebook page on the topic unleashed a flood of messages from people expressing abhorrence of AT&T's service."
Firefox 3.5 vs. Chrome 3 Showdown, Round 4: Running Web apps
While some are still sounding the trumpets over Google's proclamation that its Chrome Web browser technology will be elevated to the role of operating system sometime next year, there are some Web applications engineers who wonder why it isn't one already. Once Chrome 3 is proclaimed fully functional on Linux, it will essentially make the same Web applications accessible from the desktop that Chrome OS plans to do. And if you don't mind the fact that the Chrome 3 Web browser is in the development stage, whether you're running Linux or Windows XP on your netbook, it does that right now.
Though I've made the point before that most businesses and a majority of consumers today still prefer Microsoft Office, there will be a small, though potentially beneficial, market of consumers who appreciate the flexibility and versatility that a Web application may offer. If they can suffer through the bugs, users will have the opportunity to produce some respectable, if not altogether spectacular, documents. But what is there for users to gain by installing these Web apps on their desktops, and use them like software installed on their computers, as opposed to simply running them in their browsers?
Fourth major US WiMAX deployment launches today
Right on schedule, the latest Clear WiMAX network has launched, bringing 4G wireless coverage to 638 square miles of Sin City. Clearwire detailed its plans for Summer launches in Atlanta and Las Vegas in early May. Today, Clearwire recapitulated its goal to have more than 80 markets covered by the end of 2010, which will include Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, Honolulu, Philadelphia, and Seattle before 2009 is out. Networks planned in 2010 include New York, Boston, Washington DC, Houston, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Coverage in Las Vegas is provided from more than 300 Motorola access points throughout the city and blankets an area with about 1.7 million residents, which balloons by more than 100,000 every January when CES rolls around.
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