Initial development is nearly complete on an entirely new kind of Web browser code execution policy management system, which may yet become part of Firefox 3.7 (the point release following the next one in line), a Mozilla spokesperson informed Betanews. When implemented, browsers such as Firefox will be capable of restricting certain classes of embedded code from execution, and Web sites can advertise to browsers in advance which classes of code its pages contain.

The end result, the developers of Mozilla's Content Security Policy (CSP) hope, is that policy-enhanced browsers will be completely immune from cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks from malicious sources, by virtue of restricting themselves to either only executing inline code from trusted, certified sites, or not executing any such code at all.

Continue reading →

Well over seven years since work began on the standard, and four years since the first draft of the proposed standard was published to vendors -- and subsequently rejected by them -- there is at last a process in place for wireless networking equipment vendors to get their products formally certified using a certification that means the product is certified. If that last sentence sounded redundant, believe it or not, it wasn't: Since 2007, some Wi-Fi products have been certified using a certification that did not mean the product was certified.

Huh? Some products that adhered to so-called "draft-11n" standards (in this case, "Draft 2.0") were allowed to carry a logo that said "Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n Draft 2.0," with the latter two terms in smaller print. At the time, the Wi-Fi Alliance described this certification as "the consumer's indication that a product has passed rigorous testing and can deliver the very best user experience." More than 700 Wi-Fi products received the right to bear this logo. But among professional network engineers, there was no doubt that this "mark of excellence" was perhaps the world's most definitive maybe.

Continue reading →

If the last two months should be interpreted as Microsoft suggests, with Bing's gradual ascent in usage share against Google as a sign of Bing's inevitably catching up, then a similar interpretation of September's numbers from live analytics firm StatCounter should be taken as a sign of Bing's ultimate demise. A sampling of five billion or more US page views from Web sites accessed by StatCounter in September reveals that, of the world's top three search services, Google's usage share has climbed back just above 80%, and is flirting with last November's peak of 81.14% -- meaning Google is back to serving four out of five US-based general queries.

Bing's usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo's dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google's share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search.

Continue reading →

Sony's latest handheld game console, the $250 PSP Go hit retail today -- the first major video game system that does not support physical media, with games offered only via download.

To kick start the device's life today, Sony has beefed up the catalog of downloadable games in the PlayStation Store with more than 100 titles ranging from $5 all the way up to $39.99, including the highly hyped Gran Turismo PSP. Sony will be giving away one copy with every PSP Go for the first ten days of its availability.

Continue reading →

Even though collective analysis shows that the iPhone hasn't done as well as peer marketers would have us believe, the iTunes App Store undoubtedly has. In the first nine months the App Store existed, more than a billion apps were downloaded. Five months later, another billion were downloaded. Naturally, less than half of this vast quantity is thanks to the iPhone, as Apple combines the tens of millions of iPod Touch users downloading apps with iPhone downloaders.

But regardless of the device doing the downloading, the app store model has proven sound and has created a multi-million dollar business. This "app gold rush" has compelled thousands of developers to try their hands at creating software for the iPhone and iPod Touch in hopes of making a fortune.

Continue reading →

Attorneys for Uniloc, the independent developer whose patent for software activation was the subject of an infringement case against Microsoft, told Betanews Thursday morning they will appeal a Rhode Island district court judge's decision Monday vacating the jury's award of $388 million to Uniloc.

In a statement to Betanews, Uniloc's attorneys said the following: "We are disappointed by the decision the trial judge has made to overturn the jury's unanimous verdict in Uniloc's patent infringement case against Microsoft. We believe that the jury's verdict in April was thoughtful, well reasoned and supported by the evidence presented. Since the patent status remains unchanged, Uniloc will continue to protect its intellectual property and appeal the Judge's decision to override the jury's verdict to the US Court of Appeals. We are confident that Uniloc will ultimately prevail."

Continue reading →

As first reported by TechFlash's Eric Engleman, Amazon has elected to settle out of court with a Michigan high school student, who sued the Kindle maker last July after having remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from his and about 2,000 other users' Kindles. The electronic publisher in that instance did not actually have the rights to those works from Orwell's estate; but as Amazon acknowledged in its published settlement order (PDF available here, courtesy Puget Sound Business Journal), deleting those works from their systems was a violation of Amazon's own Terms of Service.

The settlement is unique in that Amazon was willing to let its terms be known. Student Justin Gawronski's attorneys will receive $150,000, on the stipulation that the attorneys' portion will be donated to a charity that promotes literacy, educational, or children's causes. Amazon will continue to honor its plan to give purchasers a $30 gift card.

Continue reading →

By all definitions, Apple's iTunes App Store is a massive success, with sales numbers that would make McDonald's franchisees green with envy. Two billion applications -- half a billion in the last quarter alone -- have been downloaded since the store went live just over 14 months ago. With over 85,000 apps, it puts every mobile platform competitor to shame. The 125,000-strong iPhone Developer Program and successive evolutions of iPhone and iPod touch devices should keep driving growth for a while.

This is all obviously good for Apple, because a vibrant online App Store naturally drives demand for its high-margin hardware. And in the case of the iPhone, AT&T and other partner-carriers benefit from carrying a device whose sales are driven not only by desirable hardware, but by the ability to easily turn the device into pretty much anything the end user wants. The paltry few-thousand choices on Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World, or Palm App Catalog's even paltrier few dozen apps, end up serving as inadvertent advertisements for the iPhone.

Continue reading →

American business history almost certainly will recall Apple as one of the most successful marketers ever. With iPhone, the company has performed a remarkable magic trick: Making the late-starting mobile seem ready to take over the world. But the hard reality of facts -- not the torrent of glowing emotions coming from American and European financial analysts, journalists or Mac loyalists -- show something else. Apple's smartphone is by no means the roaring success everyone here claims it to be.

Let me preface by reminding that I'm on record as calling Microsoft's mobile strategy a train wreck and asserting that the cell phone is poised to replace the PC. I've also called Apple's mobile platform -- iPhone, iPod touch and App Store -- as leading contender to become the next-generation computing platform.

Continue reading →

The US Dept. of Commerce will no longer have a direct oversight role over the independent corporation responsible for maintaining the Internet's domain name system (DNS) and top-level domain (TLD) registry. This announcement came from ICANN on the very day -- essentially, the last minute -- of the Commerce Dept.'s official oversight of the group.

Under the terms of an Affirmation of Commitments document released by ICANN today, the United States will maintain a seat on ICANN's Government Advisory Committee, an 109-member league of nations, not all of which actively participate. But that's it. The periodic review process for accountability that ICANN underwent since its establishment by the DOC in 1998, will now shift to what new ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom describes as "an international committee of parties chosen by the chairman of our Governmental Advisory Committee."

Continue reading →

As smartphones gained popularity outside of the business world, a division formed between devices made for consumers (lifestyle smartphones) and those made for enterprise deployments (professional smartphones). Professional devices tend to be more integrable into bigger systems and offer more in the productivity department while lifestyle devices cater more to the individual's tastes and offer more in terms of entertainment.

Though Microsoft has plenty of consumer smartphones running Windows Mobile, the operating system has found itself on the far end of "Professional," struggling to appeal to consumers enamored with touch-based operating systems. So Microsoft has worked to make Windows Mobile 6.5 and future versions much more "finger friendly," without sacrificing their professional capabilities.

Continue reading →

Verizon has reportedly discontinued the Verizon Hub VoIP phone/widget tablet a little more than six months after it debuted.

The short-lived Hub was intended for households with multiple Verizon Wireless phones, where it could act as a calendar, home messaging and management platform and VoIP base station. And though fixed-line telephony continues to dwindle as technologies such as Femtocell gain cachet among wireless carriers, both The Hub and Verizon's femtocell Wireless Network Extender suffered from the same problem: they weren't tied into FiOS.

Continue reading →

Today, Google is expected to invite as many as 100,000 more participants into the private beta of its concurrent communications system, called Wave. As that happens, many more participants will be able to not only communicate with one another in a more granular form of real-time, but potentially collaborate on work and projects.

It's that latter part of the program that's supposed to congeal at some point into a collective sense of purpose. But this time, unlike Microsoft's first experiments with Dynamic Data Exchange between applications on the same computer three decades ago, there isn't yet a clear, single purpose for the system. No question it could bring individuals as close together as people separated by indefinite distance could become; but as to the question of what they do with one another once they do get together, Google is hoping this question -- like so many others it puts out there in the open -- resolves itself.

Continue reading →

Just about one year after announcing their partnership, TiVo and Research in Motion today have announced that the "TiVo for BlackBerry smartphones" application is downloadable today in BlackBerry App World or as a direct download.

The free app lets users schedule recordings on their Series2 or Series3 TiVo DVR from their BlackBerry (software v.4.2.0 and up), browse most popular shows or daily picks and view programming details such as title, description, runtime original air date and time and thumbnail. It also includes an advanced search function which lets users filter results by title, keyword, or by actor.

Continue reading →

It's beginning to be a habit: In the short history of Microsoft's surprisingly popular Windows Home Server product, its first two major upgrades (each with truckloads of bug fixes), called Power Packs, suffered from delays -- especially after Microsoft heavily promoted their upcoming release. Monday evening, it happened again: After what appeared to be a successful launch event at the CEDIA 2009 expo in Atlanta last week, Microsoft announced that Power Pack 3's release is now slated for toward the end of this year.

That's bad news for many customers who had been planning to upgrade their home systems to Windows 7. There are a number of features in the current Windows Home Server Power Pack 2, designed for Vista, that do not work properly in Windows 7, especially with respect to backup -- one of the main reasons to use Home Server in the first place. PP3 was supposed to include the fixes that make it compatible with Win7's completely revised backup, and last week, at least, they looked pretty good.

Continue reading →