Maybe T-Mobile doesn't have its own Steve Jobs, and maybe it's difficult to get worked up over something as nebulous as "Android." But some analysts do expect it to pick up considerable steam over the coming months and years.

At the most optimistic end of the scale, Strategy Analytics has predicted that the Android platform will grab a four percent share of the US smartphone market in the fourth quarter of this year. Yet the success of Android will hinge in large part on the impact of carrier subsidies on pricing, analysts at the firm acknowledged.

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A PlayStation 3 owner has brought to attention Sony's policies regarding movies purchased from the PlayStation Network: if one is deleted, it is rather difficult to obtain again.

According to Sony's licensing agreement: "Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a PLAYSTATION 3 or PSP system. Content cannot be redownloaded once it has been downloaded to either a PLAYSTATION 3 or PSP system."

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In response to an order from the US Federal Communications Commission in August, Comcast Corp. released on Friday a "protocol agnostic" network management plan that could result in poorer performance for the heaviest users.

On August 1, the FCC found the cable operator in violation of net neutrality rules, meaning that despite Comcast denials the agency believed the company was restricting point-to-point traffic such as BitTorrent. Among other things, the report that Comcast released on Friday conceded that the company had indeed done that, though by way of protocols and not content.

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In a further gamble that its quality of service is enough to sustain its customer base, VZW this morning announced it will let customers pay for service month-to-month if they're also willing to pay full price for their phones.

Pre-paid contracts typically let customers acquire the phones they want for little or no up-front payment, and usually the best phones are paired with the longest contracts. Now, Verizon Wireless will let customers of its Nationwide Voice and Data plans either bring their own CDMA equipment -- which was an option expected since its historic announcement last November -- or purchase phones from VZW at full price.

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SanDisk's potential acquisition, either by hostile Samsung, white knight Toshiba, or some other vendor, is likely to have little effect on its slotMusic product, said an analyst who has been watching the potential acquisition.

"Given that the acquisition, if and when it happens, is several months out, nobody can say," said Jim Handy, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based director of Objective Analysis, a semiconductor market research firm. "If Samsung is true to their word and allows SanDisk to continue to operate as a separate entity, then the service could continue."

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At some point after the publication of still images from the second phase of Microsoft's ad campaign on its Web site -- as first reported in Computerworld -- observers noted they'd been prepared on a Mac.

The still images -- frames from a TV ad which then aired Thursday night -- were posted to Microsoft's PressPass site last week.

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AT&T has announced its HomeManager, a 7" touchscreen device by Samsung that looks to revitalize landline communication by bundling it with other services.

The HomeManager device offers converged content through its simultaneous connection to a broadband router and to a landline. Voice calls can take place both over VoIP or landline, and address book syncing from AT&T Mobile Backup allows customers to port their mobile device's contacts over to the HomeManager base station. The touchscreen device acts as a portable speakerphone, but also comes with a Dect 6.0 cordless handset for regular conversations.

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A spokesperson for Nokia flatly denied a report from Reuters which claimed to have cited UK retailer Carphone Warehouse as having announced the first Nokia 5310 "Comes With Music" phone would premiere in about three weeks.

"The sales start for Nokia Comes With Music has not yet been finalized, and the date that was posted on the Carphone Warehouse Web site was in error," Nokia spokesperson Victoria Dickson told BetaNews early this afternoon. "We're delighted with the level of interest in the launch of Comes With Music, and will confirm further details in due course."

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In Budapest, Hungary on Friday, the Acer group unveiled its strategy for marketing and identity-branding for all of its consumer computer labels.

TBR analyst John Spooner remarked to us earlier this year that Acer looked to be arranging itself at the top of its brand pyramid, ahead of Gateway and Packard Bell, and eMachines. In the new conglomerate, it looked like all the brands would retain their identities. On Friday, Acer announced the relative markets where these products would be aimed, and there doesn't appear to be a change in course.

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Pre-loaded with MP3 tunes from the "big four" labels, SanDisk's DRM-free, microSD-based, USB-enabled slotMusic cards will be sold during the upcoming holiday season in Best Buys and Wal-Marts.

SanDisk today anounced "slotMusic" -- a new service to sell memory cards pre-loaded with DRM-free music from major record labels -- just three years after trying to launch a similar service dubbed "gruvi." Revolving around microSD, a flash memory format created by SanDisk, slotMusic will be supported by "big four" record labels EMI, Sony BMG (soon to become SMEI), Warner, and Universal.

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"Cloud computing" is so attractive: it enables enterprises to outsource their IT by offloading their logic onto third parties' bigger hosts and save costs. But if businesses could own their logic and still cut costs, would they do it instead?

There's already a cottage industry whose foundation is the presumption that corporate data centers will be so inclined to outsource their data processing to so-called "cloud computing" services, such as the one developed by Amazon, that expenditures for high performance servers could go down in coming years. CIOs are already estimating they can save their enterprises as much as $300,000 per year annually, on average, in hiring expenses for IT personnel, if they're able to shift their resources to low-cost hosting services who'll maintain their infrastructure and their applications for them.

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In taking its first step into the global server market, Lenovo's strategy is to focus exclusively on "relieving the pain points" of SMBs with hardware for Windows, Linux, and VMware's new Virtual Data Center OS (VDC-OS).

NEW YORK, NY (BetaNews) - In contrast to Lenovo's ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkVision monitors, the new ThinkServers rolled out at Interop this week are geared totally to SMBs. "They're SMB all the way," noted Tom Tobul, executive director of Lenovo's Enteprise Business Unit.

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At this week's Interop show in New York, speakers argued that Microsoft's recent moves could give cloud computing a substantial lift. But they also cited needs for Microsoft to streamline its virtualization products and pricing.

NEW YORK, NY (BetaNews) - Microsoft's recent entrance into data center virtualization could bring big benefits to the cloud computing industry as a whole, especially if Microsoft starts to offer a simple enough product line-up and pricing model, said observers at this week's Interop show.

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There's been no dispute that the National Security Agency cooperated with AT&T in a surveillance operation from its West Coast office. But its legal basis has been a Presidential order, and a new lawsuit questions whether that is enough.

In a lawsuit that would most likely convene after President Bush has left office next year, a number of AT&T phone and Internet customers have sued the President personally, along with the National Security Agency and members of the President's intelligence community since 2001. Citing evidence brought to light last year by former AT&T network technician Mark Klein, the suit alleges that AT&T was ordered by the President to cooperate with the NSA in illegal warrantless surveillance operations, in what has often been described as "the secret room on Folsom Street" in San Francisco.

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After a premature rollout by Asus earlier this week, Skype gave the first glimpses of Asus' first phone -- a videophone with a built-in webcam -- at events yesterday on both sides of the Atlantic.

NEW YORK, NY (BetaNews) -- Skype celebrated its fifth birthday yesterday by announcing in both New York and London that Asus, maker of the pioneering Eee ultramobile (PC), will produce the first Skype-certified videophone.

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