Last week, Google issued a cease and desist order to Android modder Cyanogen, whose popular Android ROM modification was downloaded more than 30,000 times, but included versions of closed source Google applications instead of purely the open source components.

In a blog explanation, Google said, "Unauthorized distribution of this software harms us just like it would any other business, even if it's done with the best of intentions."

Continue reading →

In a complete reversal of roles for at least one of the principal advocates for equal access to Windows Web browsers, an attorney for the European Committee for Interoperable Systems told the European Commission in a statement published by The Wall Street Journal today that he now sees the possible inclusion by Microsoft of a Web browser selection ballot for European users of its upcoming Windows 7 operating system as a threat to those users.

Last July, Microsoft submitted a proposal to the European Commission that it hoped would comply with its demands to unbundle Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7, and give users a choice of competing browsers. "Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing Web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft Web browser or any other Web browser," the proposal reads, "or discourage the user from downloading and installing additional Web browsers via the Ballot Screen and making a Web browser competing with a Microsoft Web browser the default."

Continue reading →

Palm and Sprint today began rolling out an over-the-air update for the Palm Pre's webOS. While version 1.2 includes a number of noteworthy improvements, the iTunes sync feature broken by Apple's update to iTunes 9 was not fixed, summarily ending the cat and mouse game between Palm and Apple.

Many were anticipating iTunes syncability to return with the webOS 1.2 update, but an intervention from the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) may have ultimately caused the end of the feature in the Pre. Palm had originally contacted USB-IF to report Apple for improperly using its own Vendor ID to specifically block the Pre, but the Forum saw Palm as the guilty party.

Continue reading →

If the Federal Communications Commission is serious about wanting to be the regulator of record for net neutrality -- which the FCC defines as guaranteeing the right of equal access -- then it will have to deal with an issue that Congress once tabled in order that the country could fight World War I: In the ultimate example of turnabout-as-fair-play, four of the nation's largest private utility companies are borrowing the newly re-forged principle of net neutrality to argue that they should not be forced by law to charge cable TV broadband and VoIP service providers a lower rate for stringing their equipment on their utility poles, than they charge other utility and telephone companies.

All things being equal, in other words, if a CATV provider should not be allowed to offer content providers discounts for heavy traffic on its pipelines, then a utility provider should not be forced to offer access to its poles -- the pipelines for the pipelines -- to CATV providers for discounts. Currently, a provision in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ensures that CATV providers get about a one-third discount over market rates for other utilities and telephone companies.

Continue reading →

YouTube Insight really is an amazing free tool. For users who have uploaded content to Google's popular video sharing site, YouTube Insight provides extremely concise metrics for a video's viewership. It includes maps that show where in the world your video has the most viewers, your audience's demographic makeup, and even a second-by-second audience attention metric.

Today, Google announced that YouTube Insight has been tied into YouTube's Content ID, the management tool that lets broadcasters, studios, labels, and individual copyright holders to identify videos uploaded to YouTube containing their intellectual property.

Continue reading →

French wireless carrier Orange announced this morning that it will become the UK's second network to offer Apple's iPhone later this year, ending O2's two-year exclusivity on the line of smartphones.

O2, a subsidiary of Spanish operator Telefonica, secured a last minute deal with Apple for the iPhone in 2007, beating T-Mobile, Orange, and Vodafone for an exclusive contract.

Continue reading →

On the surface, it might seem that a company whose principal business is malware detection and eradication would eschew the thought of associating itself directly with digital rights management technology. But the job of protecting one's assets in an enterprise setting, more than ever before, directly involves being able to identify to whom an asset belongs.

For that reason -- among some others, as you'll see in a moment -- commercial anti-malware software provider McAfee this morning announced its partnership with Adobe for the distribution of data loss prevention (DLP) technology. DLP is a more politically correct, socially conscious phrase for the category of software that protects data against theft and misuse. In a way, DLP leverages much of the existing technology base that McAfee had already built up for itself for malware detection, including critical patents for data file fingerprinting including this one. Ostensibly, such a patent refers to the ability for an anti-malware program to detect infected files within encrypted and packed structures, especially when the encryption can almost completely obfuscate a Trojan file's signature.

Continue reading →

On Friday, I bought a Zune HD 32, so that you wouldn't have to.

On Monday, I may return it.

Continue reading →

In light of the coming revision to the United States' regulations on net neutrality, AT&T contacted the FCC Wireline Competition Bureau with a letter today which said that Google --"one of the most noisome trumpeters of so-called 'net neutrality' regulation"-- is violating the very net neutrality rules it claims to support.

But since Google is not a network operator, it is not subject to the same regulation that a company like AT&T is. Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president for federal regulations used today's letter to the FCC to make the case that Google Voice should be.

Continue reading →

Most businesses I know stopped calling the class of documents that Excel produces a "spreadsheet" long ago, and have deferred to the phrase "Excel sheet," rather than to Microsoft's preferred "workbook." The reason is because the types of data the application now works with have ceased to be exclusively flat and bordered. Excel data is complex, often relational, certainly networked.

So already there's going to be a big distinction that limits anything that portends to be the Excel Web App from being the complete Microsoft Excel. You don't want to bring networked, dynamic, data that's interlinked to data elsewhere in the world, onto the public platform; there are too many risks involved. If you have a complex Excel workbook on your home or business system now where the source of your data lies outside the workbook, don't expect to be able to use it on the Excel Web App.

Continue reading →

Perhaps you've read an article this week purporting to offer new details on "Windows 8," or whatever Microsoft's next client operating system will be called, only to be perturbed at discovering at the end that you were the one being asked to supply the details. The expectation among many observers is that Windows 8 will be a lot like Windows 7, maybe something less than the great leap forward that a "point-oh" release typically implies.

But that doesn't mean there aren't folks at Microsoft (or at least, folks being funded by Microsoft) who are unaware that such a significant advance may be necessary within the next few years. Granted, simply because a project is being undertaken at Microsoft Research is no guarantee that anything that culminates from it will ever be put to use (case in point: HTTP-NG). On the other hand, to paraphrase a slogan formerly used by PBS, if Microsoft doesn't do it, who will?

Continue reading →

As AT&T promised, iPhone 3G and 3G S users today gained the ability to send Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages.

To enable MMS, users must first have iPhone OS 3.1 installed, and then the AT&T carrier update v5.5 which is installed through iTunes. Once the update is in place, phones must be rebooted, and then the Messages app will feature a camera icon in the lower left corner, which triggers multimedia messages to be sent.

Continue reading →