As NPD recently showed, more than 72% of all phones being sold are feature phones, and though there are a few examples of app stores for these phones, the mobile app trend has largely missed the majority of phone owners. Today Microsoft announced its move to change that with OneApp, a mobile app environment which gives feature phones access to smartphone-style applications.

With applications for Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, news, weather, sports, stocks, games, and RSS feeds, OneApp is available on several dozen feature phones: Nokia (3555, 5320, 6300, 6500, 6600, E50, E51, E63, E65, E66, E71, N70, N72, N73, N78, N80, N81, N82, N85, N95, N96) Samsung (U900, Soul) and Sony Ericsson (C510, C902, C905, G705,K610i, K800i, K805i, T650i, W200i, W580i, W595, W660i, W980.)

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Now that it's a known fact that Apple rejects something in the neighborhood of 88,000 iPhone apps a year, companies are getting wise and publicizing their applications before Apple has a chance to finish reviewing them.

RealNetworks has submitted an app for its subscription music service Rhapsody to Apple for approval. The application will let subscribers access Rhapsody's 8 million song database for streaming over EDGE/3G/Wi-Fi. Though it hasn't passed Apple's review yet, Real is already publicizing the app.

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On September 1, Microsoft announced this morning, it will be making upgrade editions of Windows 7 available to European customers, as originally planned, apparently with Internet Explorer 8 included. These editions will be publicly available on the originally planned global availability date of October 22, although pre-orders will begin September 1.

This leaves a one-week window in which European customers may continue to pre-order full versions of Windows 7 Home Premium at the upgrade price, which is currently €119.99 for most European customers, £79.99 in the UK.
While we do know that €119.99 will be the upgrade price for Home Premium from September 1, and that the full version price will be somewhat higher, we do not know as of yet the specific breakdown for the upgrade prices for the Professional and Ultimate SKUs. These prices did not yet appear on Microsoft's online retail sites in foreign countries, as of 12:15 pm EDT Monday afternoon.

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It was last February when Terry Childs, a former employee of the City of San Francisco's IT department, sat down with InfoWorld's Paul Venezia in a jailhouse interview about his bizarre case. He was a high-level administrator of his division's computers, but after learning in July 2008 he would be reassigned to a different department, he sent those systems into a state of lockdown that only he could undo.

There's no doubt it was Childs who held city services in a virtual cryogenic state. Upon his surrender to authorities, he gave the Mayor the keys needed to unlock city systems. Childs faced four counts of tampering with city property and shutting down access. But last Friday, a judge tossed out the three tampering charges, reported the San Francisco Chronicle, leaving only the single count pertaining to the lockdown.

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Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the incremental update to which has been a topic of discussion for more than a year will finally be available on August 28, The Apple Store now says.

As an incremental upgrade for Leopard users, Snow Leopard will only cost $29.99 for a single user license and $49.99 for the family pack (five licenses.) Also, any Mac purchased after June 8th is eligible for a $9.95 upgrade. Pre-ordering is open today for delivery on Friday.

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Today, Finnish mobile phone leader Nokia introduced its first notebook PC, the Nokia Booklet 3G.

Mobility is still the name of the game for the 25-year cellular phone pioneer, as the 10" Booklet 3G is designed for portability, with an aluminum chassis only .79" (2 cm) thick that weighs only 2.75 lbs (1.25kg). Naturally, it will also feature built-in 3G, HSPA, A-GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

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Like clockwork, the FCC has released the statements from AT&T, Apple, and Google which respond to the Commission's inquiries into why the Google Voice app was rejected from the iTunes App store.

Since AT&T denied any involvement early on, we have been eagerly awaiting Apple's take on the situation. Cupertino replied with a six-page letter.

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We already knew that AT&T claimed it had no involvement in the rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone that triggered an FCC investigation. Today, AT&T released a more complete and loquacious denial.

"We appreciate the opportunity to clear up misconceptions related to an application Google submitted to Apple for inclusion in the Apple App Store. We fully support the FCC's goal of getting the facts and data necessary to inform its policymaking," said Jim Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President of external and legislative affairs for AT&T.

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In a summary judgment this morning, a three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Yahoo's Launchcast music service does not have to pay performance royalties in addition to licensing fees, on account of the fact that like terrestrial radio, the service is not interactive.

Today's finding may set precedent for both online and broadcast radio, for having affirmed the legal notion that in order for a presentation of music to count as a performance, it must be directly requested by the listener. While Congress remains split over whether conventional broadcast stations should be responsible for performance royalties to the same degree as Internet providers such as Last.fm and Pandora, US law presently states that the distinction between the two classes deals specifically with interactivity -- the degree to which the listener has explicit control over what she's hearing. If no such control exists, the judges affirmed today, then there's no "performance," thus no royalties for performance apply.

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Swedish stock market regulators have suspended the trading of Global Gaming Factory X's stock in the Aktietorget marketplace today on the suspicion that the company's reported assets and actual assets may differ.

In June, Global Gaming Factory X made a $7.7 million bid for The Pirate Bay, but authorities today would like assurance that GGF has enough money to complete the transaction.

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This morning a USA Today article discussed the FCC's investigation into why the Google Voice App was banned from the iPhone. The article goes on to say that Google could "soon find itself in the hot seat" because Android cannot use Skype, proposing that Google itself blocks VoIP to force users into traditional voice calls.

Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Mobile Platforms, had to step forward and call USA Today out.

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An attorney who was at the heart of the US Dept. of Justice's original 1994 antitrust case against Microsoft, arising from its proposed takeover of Quicken manufacturer Intuit, will find himself spearheading a coalition against Google's book scanning policies that includes both Microsoft and Yahoo, spokespersons from both companies confirmed to Betanews this morning.

It was attorney Gary Reback who first called Microsoft to task for using its "embrace and extend" policy in an abusive fashion against competitors, often representing those competitors in legal action, as was the case with Borland International and Sybase in the mid '90s. Currently, he is the author of a book called Free the Market! Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive. His latest confrontation is against Google, whose proposed settlement with book authors and publishers would give Google "non-exclusive" rights to scan their books contents and reproduce them online in the Google Books service. Already, Google has been scanning books that are available in public libraries, and making excerpts of those books available to users -- excerpts, as opposed to the books in their entirety.

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Similar to the inquiry it launched into the iPhone Google Voice rejection, the Federal Communications Commission today announced its intention to scrutinize the wireless telecommunications industry as a whole, to see if it encourages competition, innovation and investment, and if it is fair and open to consumers.

The Commission will take a vote on August 27 to decide whether it will proceed with the investigation, which seeks to "understand better the factors that encourage innovation and investment in wireless;" to determine "the status of competition in the mobile wireless market, including commercial mobile services;" and to "comment on whether there are opportunities to protect and empower American consumers by ensuring sufficient access to relevant information about communications services."

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In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again.

The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password.

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It's not a nationwide ban like the one now in place in the Netherlands, but it may be a step in that direction. Starting September 1, Irish ISP Eircom will block its customers from accessing torrent indexing site The Pirate Bay.

Eircom started working with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) last February to crack down on P2P music sharing, the result of an out-of-court agreement between the ISP and the "big four" major labels, in order to avoid litigation.

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