Nokia axes 450 Ovi workers
Nokia is doing some sculpting. Since last year, the Finnish mobile phone leader has been pressing hard in the field of software and services, and has rolled a broad range of outside services into its Ovi portal, such as Mapping, Gaming, Music, and cloud-based file sharing.
It's got a lot to offer, but apparently not obviously enough for users and at too great a cost for Nokia.
Dear Time Magazine: Know when you're pwned
The editors of Time's current "World's Most Influential Person" poll would like you to think that their online poll wasn't owned hard by the denizens of 4chan's /b/ realm: "TIME.com's technical team did detect and extinguish several attempts to hack the vote," says the overview. Maybe, if by "extinguish" they mean "were kitten-helpless against." If you doubt the power of /b/, check out the first letters of the first 21 entries on the list.
Maybe the editors were making a meta-statement about the power of creative hacking, because the collection of exploits run against the poll are a nifty little set. Music Machinery's got a nice overview of how the multipart effort came off. So was Time asking for it by including 4chan founder moot (Christopher Poole) on their nominees list and implementing such slack security, or did they just include him for the lulz and get the excitement as a big /b/onus?
Quit swining and get the flu facts
If everyone will just calm down for a few minutes, there's plenty of good information out there on what's happening with the swine flu. (Yes, it's more fun to freak out, and your humble reporter wishes to report that children of her acquaintance are already using breathless news reports concerning the flu to beg for a day off from school. Note to children: When operating in pairs, try to get your story straight re your symptoms. I digress.)
First rule: Remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and resist the urge to gorge on me-too mainstream coverage or strained local angles on the situation. Instead, get your propagation information from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. Who's got a dedicated swine-flu page in place. So does the CDC, and they also have tips for keeping yourself and your overwrought friends and co-workers safer -- hand washing is recommendation #1. Their Travelers' Health page (on which the organization currently warns against nonessential travel to Mexico) is a good site for practical folk in any case. (WHO, by the way, advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders.)
EC's Reding: Europe needs a 'Mr. Cyber Security'
After an apparent victory in her efforts to prevent the UK from establishing a central database for private citizen communications, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding said she wants her government to create a post for a point-man for the continent's cybersecurity.
"Although the EU has created an agency for network and information security, called ENISA, this instrument remains mainly limited to being a platform to exchange information and is not, in the short term, going to become the European headquarters of defense against cyber attacks. I am not happy with that," stated Comm. Reding (PDF available here). "I believe Europe must do more for the security of its communication networks. Europe needs a 'Mister Cyber Security' as we have a 'Mister Foreign Affairs,' a security tsar with authority to act immediately if a cyber attack is underway, a Cyber Cop in charge of the coordination of our forces and of developing tactical plans to improve our level of resilience. I will keep fighting for this function to be established as soon as possible."
Rural America, your WiMAX is waiting
Soon, funds from the 7.2 billion dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be available, with $2.5 billion going to fund rural broadband projects through the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS). This funding is intended to be used in the construction, improvement, or acquisition of facilities to provide broadband to unserved and underserved locations in the US.
The 2008 Farm Bill (1.5 MB PDF available here) defines eligible rural communities as any area other than a city, town, or unincorporated area with a population greater than 20,000 inhabitants, or a city, town or unincorporated area with fewer than 50,000.
One week later, it's time for Firefox 3.0.10
It's only been six days since the emergence on the scene of Mozilla's Firefox 3.0.9 -- ostensibly a major security and bug-fix update to the world's #2 browser -- and already the organization is preparing another update. Once again, no formal announcement has been made, though version 3.0.10 has appeared on the organization's FTP site for final preparation.
The emergence of yet another update follows a week of lackluster performance from the production version of Mozilla's browser in Betanews tests. Not only did release 9 lose some speed and performance, we noticed -- as we have from time to time with Firefox 3 -- the re-emergence of a memory leak that can leave the entire browser in the online equivalent of a coma. Release 10 may not have come too soon; already, we noticed a kick in its step, gaining back what it lost performance-wise in Betanews tests, especially in the SunSpider benchmark. Release 10's performance score now stands at 5.19, which is actually higher than for Release 7 -- meaning, combining multiple tests, we find Firefox 3.0.10 to perform 519% better than Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (not IE8) in the same system.
Judgment: Apple is a patent infringer
A patent infringement suit filed against Apple by California integrated circuit company OPTi two years ago has been decided, and Apple has been declared the loser.
The suit was filed in the heartland of patent litigation, the Eastern District of Texas, where Microsoft was sued over its JPEG patent, Sony was sued for its Cell Chip technology, Google was sued for its Database technology, and countless others are sued every day.
It's finally settled: Broadcom and Qualcomm lay down their swords
The mobile communications industry can now pursue 3G technologies without fear of being caught in a whirlwind patent dispute. That's the outcome reached last weekend when Qualcomm agreed to settle its remaining disputes with Broadcom, in a deal which (at least at first glance) will net Broadcom $891 million over four years.
Qualcomm's incentive to settle was becoming obvious. In the current economy, a business plan built on the hopes of revenue from a big settlement from Broadcom or an unprecedented judgment in its favor, were becoming untenable. That point was driven home this morning when the company released its quarterly revenue numbers: Though revenue only declined by a mere 5.8% annually -- actually a noteworthy achievement -- net income could have ended up as high as $702 million, a decline of 22%. But the cost of putting this case behind it -- which only includes its initial payment to Qualcomm -- cost Qualcomm $748 million in this quarter alone, forcing it to post a net loss of $46 million.
Finally, a non-HTC Android phone
Samsung today announced its first Android mobile handset, becoming the first company since HTC to come forth with a completed piece of mobile hardware supporting the open source operating system.
The I7500 is a GSM and HSDPA touchscreen phone that includes most of the same accouterments as HTC's G1, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, and the full host of Google tools. However, it ups the ante on HTC's products considerably by supplying a 5-megapixel camera, 8 GB of onboard memory expandable to 32 GB via microSD, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a microUSB port.
The Broadcom/Qualcomm war is over
The Hatfields and McCoys of the wireless chipmaking industry, Qualcomm and Broadcom, today announced that they had laid down their long legal feud and entered into a multi-year patent agreement.
Since 2006, the two companies have been bouncing in and out of U.S. Courts and U.S. International Trade Commission hearings over patent infringement and licensing of WCDMA technology.
Confirmed: Windows 7 RC to the public on May 5
Leaving not much time for folks to stew in the rumors over the latest "leaked" builds (plural) numbered 7100 of the Windows 7 release candidate -- one of which may have been legitimate -- Microsoft decided late Friday night to officially confirm that May 5 is the official public release date for the Win7 RC.
"I'm pleased to share that the RC is on track for April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers. Broader, public availability will begin on May 5th," wrote Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc in a corporate blog post late yesterday.
Windows 7 to include 'XP mode' virtualization
The news that Windows 7 -- release candidate on track for April 30, thank you very much -- will have available a virtualized version of XP that will run right right alongside 7 apps is exciting stuff for those of us who have shaken our heads at Microsoft's backward-compatibility problems over the years. It means very nearly 100% compatibility with current Windows apps; it means side-by-side XP and 7 apps (dogs and cats living together!); it means that Vista was all just a bad dream. (Okay, maybe not.)
News of "Windows XP Mode" hit on Friday afternoon more or less simultaneously with Microsoft's post on The Windows Blog announcing that the RC is looking good for next Thursday. Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, who are hard at work on Wiley's Windows 7 Secrets book and were briefed on the tech back in March, describe XPM as host-based virtualization, and suggest that this might mean that going forward, client versions of Windows may include a Hyper-V-based hypervisor.
'Deep packet inspection' could become the target of legislation
The two biggest threats to Internet users' privacy, from the point of view of Rep. Rick Boucher (D - Va.), come from behavioral advertising technology and from deep packet inspection (DPI) -- the ability for an ISP to scan the contents of IP packets, and make determinations as to their handling based on those contents. But the specter of another company using both of these technologies together, like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, spelled out a more explosive danger. Chairing hearings of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet yesterday, Rep. Boucher made that clear:
"What services that consumers consider essential to the safe and efficient functioning of the Internet are advanced by DPI?" asked Boucher during his opening remarks yesterday. "Since the death of NebuAd's DPI-based behavioral advertising service last year, are other companies using DPI to deliver behavioral advertising? What, if any, safeguards are in place to ensure that consumers are giving meaningful consent to the tracking of their activities on the Internet?"
Apple lays off 1,600 workers but keeps stores afloat
Ten percent of the full-timers in Apple's newly mushroomed total of 250 stores got handed pink slips between January and April, according to Apple's latest 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Apple dubbed the laid off salespeople "full-time equivalents," reporting a headcount of 14,000 Apple store employees. That's slashed from the 15,600 number listed in its 10-K filing just last January.
Twitter more of a siren in March, says comScore
It has been experiencing double-digit growth for months now, but in March Twitter Web traffic went boom in a big way, jumping 131% to 9.3 million unique visitors. It was the fastest growing Web property last month according to comScore, which released its March numbers this week.
(Remember this as we wait for next month's comScore numbers. Those will reflect April's strange celebrity infatuation with the service -- Ashton Kutcher's competition with CNN to garner a million followers, not to mention Oprah's imprimatur -- yes, other people care about Oprah even if you don't.)
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