Nearly ten weeks after Microsoft issued a proposal to the European Commission for a mechanism to let Windows users and installers choose the default Web browser they want to use during setup, the EC issued a statement this morning saying it likes Microsoft's basic idea, but will give the rest of the market an opportunity to weigh in with its opinions.

The EC statement admitted for the first time that Microsoft had submitted at least one "improved" version of its ballot screen concept since last July.
"The improvements that Microsoft has made to its proposal since July would ensure that consumers could make a free and fully informed choice of Web browser," reads this morning's statement. "Microsoft has in particular agreed to present users with a first screen explaining what Web browsers are. 'Tell me more' buttons for each browser would also enable users to learn more about the web browser they may wish to install. The user experience would be better and the choice screen would better represent competing browser vendors. Finally, the proposed commitment would now be subject to a clause allowing the Commission to review it in the future to ensure that consumers would continue to have a genuine choice among browsers."

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For the second time in three months, Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle 2 e-reader. The device which began shipping in February for $359.99 begins October at $259.99.

Since debuting, the Kindle has dominated e-reader mindshare in the United States, but has faced serious competition from senior e-reader maker Sony, which not only makes the lowest priced product, but also the most feature-packed product as well. Sony's Daily Edition Reader has 3G wireless from AT&T, a touchscreen interface, and the ability to borrow e-books from participating libraries.

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A massive energy bill that has already passed the House, and is currently before the Senate, would create new government programs that would not only encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by utilities and energy companies, but set limits over time as to the quantity of that reduction over the next several years. The US Chamber of Commerce (USCC), a private business federation that is not affiliated with the federal government, went on record last August as being skeptical of any legislative or regulatory effort that assumes greenhouse gasses truly endanger human health. Late last month, the Chamber voiced its opposition to that bill.

Today, Apple Inc. joined a growing list of companies including General Electric, athletic apparel maker Nike, and even energy companies such as PG&E and nuclear power plant operator Exelon, in terminating their membership in the Chamber.

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Oftentimes in the case of Google, small actions are the seeds for something much greater. In the case of a marketing video released this morning, we spotted something that looks like one of those Google seeds.

Last June, as part of a Google Creative Lab project, a Google employee named Scott Suiter produced a video with two colleagues. In that video, Suiter interviewed about 50 people one afternoon passing through Times Square in New York City, asking them the simple and nondescript question, "What is a browser?" Many of the folks who appeared in the video tended to confuse a browser with a search engine with a Web site with an operating system, making common mistakes that ordinary folks make, but giving another class of more Internet-active ordinary folks new targets for their unending streams of vitriol.

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AT&T has announced that it will now allow Voice-over-IP services to run on its wireless data networks, reversing the carrier's prior stance on the technology.

Reportedly, AT&T has been considering VoIP over 3G for weeks, but has continued to limit VoIP mobile apps to Wi-Fi networks up until even yesterday, when popular digital voice service Vonage released its own iPhone app, crippled to fit AT&T's and Apple's existing guidelines.

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In separate and very brief announcements this morning, Bell Canada and Telus -- Canada's #2 and #3 wireless service providers -- said they will be adding Apple's iPhone 3G and 3G S to their lineups this November. The move will mean the exclusivity deal between Apple and #1 provider Rogers Wireless, announced in October 2007, was probably a two-year agreement and is due to expire next month, even though Rogers only began selling the iPhone several months later.

Telus' and Bell's announcements were the talk of all Canada today, as news of the increasing availability of the world's most praised handheld gadget dominated the afternoon's headlines. At issue: Will this mean iPhone prices will come down, including for service; and will call quality go up? Neither new carrier made any promises this morning, and Apple is adding nothing to the discussion.

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Today, we finally welcome Windows Mobile 6.5 and the "Windows Phone" platform from Microsoft. As a part of today's Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store has opened for business, the new Bing for Mobile app has been unveiled, the My Phone sync and security service has been launched, the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices have been announced, and the list of Windows Mobile 6.1 devices that can be upgraded to 6.5 has been published.

Microsoft is fully in mobile mode today.

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It's the same technology that was at the heart of a news-making patent suit against Microsoft: the patent held by Eolas Technologies that defines how a Web browser plug-in can activate functionality. A trio of Eolas patents was upheld under scrutiny in 2005, resulting in a battle in the nation's higher courts over whether Microsoft owes someone else for the right to use what could essentially be described as an "on-switch." It was a battle that brought a premature, if welcome, end to the marketing push for ActiveX.

But the final round of that fight never played out, as Eolas and Microsoft settled for an undisclosed sum, just as Microsoft won the right to argue the invalidity of Eolas' patents anyway. Since those arguments were never made, the 2005 decision upholding their validity stood.

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Today, Verizon and Google announced their partnership on the Android mobile platform, a collaboration that has long been expected, but has recently been bereft of new developments. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam today said that the discussions between Google and Verizon began some 18 months ago but the timing of this announcement is in no way a reflection of "whatever's currently being discussed on the Hill." (i.e. The FCC's investigation of Apple's Google Voice rejection.)

Through this new partnership, Verizon Wireless will debut its first Android devices in the next couple of weeks. The carrier promised today they will provide "the best possible form factors from [Verizon's] partners in the hardware space, to bring those apps and services to market...there will be different form factors appealing to different audiences."

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Yesterday, Neowin's Tom Warren discovered a list of what appeared to be Windows Live Hotmail account credentials, posted last weekend to a location where you wouldn't expect such a list to appear: a collaborative debugging code sharing site for low-level software developers called pastebin.com. Warren reported the news to the world at the same time he reported it to Microsoft.

Still, Microsoft acknowledged the problem late yesterday, but attributed the source of the problem to "a likely phishing scheme." If such a scheme does exist, then its first victim today was poor pastebin.com, whose proprietor Paul Dixon (LordElph) was forced to take the site offline due to the sudden surge of activity.

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Nagging Capital One credit card commercials ask, "What's in your wallet?" Perhaps for the connected age, the question should be "What's in your digital wallet?" If the answer is a password used at Windows Live Hotmail and pretty much everywhere else online, your wallet may have been stolen.

As reported earlier today by Neowin, on October 1st someone briefly posted online thousands of Hotmail (e.g., Windows Live) account passwords. The number of pilfered accounts could be much higher. The source of the accounts information remains uncertain, although Microsoft claims they were gathered through phishing expeditions. I decided not to wait to find out.

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As Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, they enacted a strategy of shifting the authority for implementing and regulating so-called net neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission, where Republican opposition was less likely to forestall it. Now that the FCC itself is under Democratic control, and its new chairman Julius Genachowski comes into the job already having been recognized as the nation's leading net neutrality advocate, Republicans in Congress have little else to do but voice their opposition from the sidelines.

That's exactly what they're doing today, in a concerted effort whose timing is curiously in sync with the publication of a position paper on net neutrality from leading service provider Verizon.

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After enduring patent infringement lawsuits from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in 2006-2007, Vonage lost its commanding position in Voice over IP telephony (also known as digital voice) to cable companies such as Comcast and Qwest. Today, the company looks poised to make a comeback with its new Vonage Mobile app for iPhone and BlackBerry.

The free application lets subscribers place packet-based calls over Wi-Fi or circuit-based calls over cellular networks. It ends up being similar to the Skype iPhone application in that it will only use VoIP if the mobile device is within range of a Wi-Fi signal. Otherwise, it will make traditional wireless calls over AT&T's GSM network. Furthermore, when connected to a Wi-Fi signal for a VoIP call, and a call comes in through the cellular band, Vonage Mobile reportedly drops the VoIP call.

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Two months ago, Google announced its intention to purchase On2 Technologies, the producer of the technology behind the Ogg Theora codec that was the prime candidate earlier this year to become the open video solution for HTML 5. Google's engineers had come out in opposition to Ogg Theora, and that fact was cited by the HTML 5 working group as reason for its suspending efforts to incorporate open video for this version.

Whatever Google's reasons may have been for purchasing On2, not everyone in the company appeared to be interested in advancing the format. Today, that sentiment appears to have been made official, with the announcement during Adobe's MAX conference in Los Angeles that Google is joining Adobe's Open Screen Project, established last year.

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With a network that is already overloaded with data traffic, AT&T has enlisted the help of Opera Software's server-side compression technology to help bring mobile Web access to even more subscribers.

Today, AT&T debuted four new feature phones, two from Pantech (Reveal and Impact) and two from Samsung (Mythic and Flight) which the company touts as "Full Web Browsing Phones," equipped with a new att.net branded HTML browser that "utilizes advanced data compression from Opera Software, allowing for much faster delivery of HTML Web pages."

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