TECHNOLOGY

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsMarket research group In-Stat has published the results of its annual assessment of U.S. broadband speeds, which found that the nation's average downstream speed increased by 34% over the course of 2010.In-Stat says the average downlink speed for broadband subscribers is 9.54 Mbps, up from the 2009 average 7.12 Mbps, which was itself up from 2008 average of 3.8 Mbps. The price of fixed broadband, by comparison, rose by only 4% among the 518 households surveyed. This projected average speed is actually a bit slower than the average determined by Speedtest.net, which ranks the U.S. #34 in broadband speed with 10.19 Mbps. If we were to use In-Stat's figure in Speedtest's rankings, the United States would knocked down to #37, behind Canada, French island territory St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Taiwan. Naturally, the size and population density of the United States play a major factor in its place on the list. China and India, for example, are all the way down at #83 and #143 respectively.However, In-Stat asserts that the growth of mobile broadband is behaving as a driver for increasing overall speeds and bandwidth availability on fixed and residential lines. What's more, over one third (38%) of those participants in the survey had a live mobile broadband subscription in addition to their fixed one.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsWho doesn't like a cool avatar? What better for an Android user than you personalized as Google's droid mascot? Yesterday, Google released Androidify to the Android Marketplace, which I downloaded last night. The app starts with the typical green droid, which users can customize to suit their fancies. My first effort, and most certainly not my last, is above. I replaced my Facebook and Twitter avatars last night.The app is easy enough to use, and it's hugely finger friendly. Just touch and drag to resize head, torso or limbs. Google lets users choose attire, hairstyle and other attributes.

By Nick PeersHere's the rub: you can only afford one monitor, and you frequently find yourself wading through window after window trying to find the right document. Or worse still, you need to switch between two or three windows but keep selecting the wrong one because of the dozens of other open apps and windows cluttering up your desktop.You could close all these down, or you could try a virtual desktop manager. This effectively takes one desktop and multiplies it a number of times, allowing you to organize your open windows into different virtual desktops: one for your work, another for browsing the web and a third for doing your accounts, for example. And when it comes to choosing the right tool for the job, look no further than

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsIn its annual public report on conditions at its overseas suppliers, Apple said it had noted an increase in child labor as well as tackling the issue of suicides at Foxconn, one of its biggest overseas partners. It also said that it had continued efforts to improve workplace safety and morale, two issues the company had taken heat for ignoring in the past.Apple said that poor checks had resulted in the increases in child labor over the past year, and it had instituted efforts to assist its suppliers in preventing it from occurring. One case was especially severe, and the company found the supplier was doing little to fix the problem, or appeared willing to.Of the 91 underage workers found to be employed, 42 came from this factory alone. Apple has since terminated its involvement with the company, which it did not identify.Such was not the same for Foxconn, which Apple identified and explained in detail in the audit. A group of Apple executives and two experts led by chief operating officer Tim Cook visited the plant in June of last year to investigate the rash of suicides that were occurring among workers.Foxconn has been a thorn in Apple's side since at least 2006, when claims of worker abuse first surfaced. At the time, the company found Foxconn violated its work code and pledged to remedy the issue. Its efforts were apparently for naught, as the supplier again made the headlines in 2009 for a rash of suicides at its Shenzhen, China plant. At least a dozen workers committed suicide while on the job, news reports indicated.1,000 workers were surveyed by Apple independently of Foxconn, and found that while the company had taken steps to provide better support for workers, it needed to do better in monitoring and providing support for those than may be ailing from psychological issues."Apple will continue to work with Foxconn through the implementation of these programs, and we plan to take key learnings from this engagement to other facilities in our supply base," it said in the report.The Cupertino company has been releasing these reports since 2007, and has ever since been auditing all its suppliers for compliance with its Supplier Code of Conduct. 288 facilities have so far been visited by Apple representatives.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsNokia is coming under increasing criticism for its partnership with Microsoft, with shareholders looking for the removal of CEO Stephen Elop, and a Finnish union looking for severance pay for workers laid off as a result of the deal. It seems to point to a coming showdown that may rear its ugly head at its annual meeting in July in Helsinki.The shareholder group calls itself Plan B, and is comprised of nine anonymous "small" shareholders of the company that were also former employees. Among their demands is the firing of Elop, restructuring of the Microsoft deal to limit it to the North American market, and adoption of MeeGo as the company's primary smartphone platform.MeeGo is an open sourced, linux-based mobile platform that Nokia developed in conjunction with Intel. When the Microsoft deal was announced, MeeGo team head Alberto Torres left Nokia, giving rise to speculation that the Finnish phone maker could be abandoning the project.Overall, Plan B's demands seem to be akin to a circling of the wagons around Nokia's own efforts in an attempt to bring the company back from the brink. Its popular Symbian mobile OS would also get a lifespan extension of five years, and even its Ovi service platform would be a focus of the group "at a later date," all but killed off by Friday's deal.In a statement to Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia said it was aware of the group's demands, but had not been contacted. It noted the proposed deal and strategy had the full support of its board of directors, and it was focusing on its execution.Shareholder troubles are the least of Nokia's worries, however. Finnish trade union Pro slammed its decision to adopt the Windows Phone platform, noting the change would result in the loss of jobs for those who worked on Symbian development. About 5,000 Nokia employees are represented by Pro.Among its own demands is a hefty 100,000 euro severance to each employee in order to defer costs associated with "reeducation."Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsAmong an announcement of half a dozen new mobile devices, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC debuted its first Android tablet, called the Flyer. HTC was the first company to release an Android smartphone of any sort and its presence in the Android tablet market could be imposing.The HTC Flyer is similar to Samsung's Galaxy Tab in a number of ways. Firstly in its size, it has a 7" screen with 1024 x 600 resolution. Secondly, in its OS. It is not running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), the tablet-optimized version of Google's mobile operating system, and will instead run on Android 2.4 (Gingerbread). However it does offer a slightly more powerful processor, running at 1.5 GHz, compared to the Galaxy Tab's 1 GHz. There is one respect where the Flyer truly shines against the Galaxy Tab, and indeed against most other mobile tablets: in its support for handwriting recognition. Instead of being a finger-only touch device, the Flyer is equipped with HTC's Scribe technology, which allows for stylus-based input. With Scribe, the "Timemark" audio and written note taking software, and built-in synchronization with Evernote, HTC has built Flyer into a compelling "connected notepad."The whole value of 7" tablets has been in dispute since Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to them as "tweeners" that compete neither with smartphones nor tablets. So naturally, the Flyer has already been the subject of criticism. Furthermore, observers have begun to criticize HTC's decision to equip Flyer with Gingerbread instead of Honeycomb, but the 7" form factor of the device makes it a logical OS choice, and its inclusion of pen support and specialty notetaking software draw a pretty clear picture of how Flyer can be exploited. "Clearly, smartphones have transformed our lives but as we observed how people use smartphones, computers and other technologies, we saw an opportunity to create a tablet experience that is different, more personal and productive," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation in a statement Tuesday. "We are progressing down a path as an industry when people will no longer be in a single device paradigm, but have multiple wireless devices for different needs; this is the direction we are moving."Another area where the Flyer could outdo the Galaxy Tab is mobile gaming. Yes, with the recent introduction of the "PlayStation Certified" label for Android devices, video gaming on the Android platform has gotten a bit more compelling, but HTC has jumped beyond the app-based downloadable gaming trend and allied with OnLive for streaming video games. Users need an OnLive controller, a subscription to the service, and a fast connection, and they can use Flyer for fully mobile gaming.As for the rest of the raw specs of the Flyer, it's got 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage plus a microSD slot for a maximum of 64 GB, a 5 megapixel camera and 1.3 megapixel forward-facing chat cam, light sensor, velocity sensor, digital compass, 802.11 b/g/n, Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and HSPA/WCDMA 3G, Bluetooth 3.0 and internal GPSHTC Flyer will be available internationally in the second quarter of 2011, and pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsSomebody call the cops -- eh, antitrust authorities. Apple's subscription plan is here, and it's as bad for many, if not most, publishers as rumored. The first of several key sentences from Apple's press announcement: "Publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a website, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app." That means you Amazon Kindle; before the announcement, all Kindle transactions took place outside the app in a web browser. This change applies to any content, but it's nestled in the subscriptions announcement.Another piece of nastiness: "Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app." That rule conceptually would prevent some publishers from extending to existing customers the benefits of a free iPad subscription."So, Apple doesn't prohibit publishers from selling subscriptions outside the app -- how could it and get anyone to offer content? But the company does fix prices. So if publisher A charges 50 bucks a year and wants to offer a holiday or school graduation promotion from its website, the deal must be offered for app subscriptions, too. Remember, Apple collects 30 percent from publishers.No one should misunderstand other terms, as stated in Apple's press release: "Publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their websites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple." Based on the wording in context, Apple isn't saying that app subscriptions can be offered free to existing customers but that publishers can offer free subscriptions on their websites (I am asking Apple for clarification)."Our philosophy is simple -- when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing," Apple CEO Steve Jobs, said in a statement. "All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app."That "philosophy" could be considered anticompetitive. I laid out why in February 3rd post: "iPad is a devil's deal for publishers." Apple is imposing restrictions on how publishers conduct their business from a monopoly position. Apple has the leading App Store, with 300,000 applications and more than 10 billion downloads.

Brightstar, a global provider of services and solutions for the wireless industry, has signed a new, three-year supply chain agreement with Telecom New Zealand Ltd, New Zealand's largest telecommunications service provider, to provide supply chain services for all mobile, broadband and fixed line products.

Ads promoting Optus' broadband plans as being "unlimited" were misleading and deceptive in contravention of the Trade Practices Act 1974, the Federal Court in Melbourne has ruled.

The Australian and New Zealand shopping site of popular cosmetics group Lush has been hacked only weeks after a similar breach occurred on the company’s UK site. Thousands of online shoppers who recently purchased items from Lush have been warned to contact their banks.

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsMobile World Congress is too great a public relations opportunity for Apple to pass up. The company is notorious for stealing thunder from events like this one. That's why something missing today is so revealing. There was no Apple press release touting Verizon iPhone weekend sales. Even if there was no industry mobile event in Barcelona, it would be typical for Apple to tout early sales, as it did with iPad (300,000 first day) and iPhone 4 (1.7 million first weekend).Apple's silence strongly suggets that those short lines on launch day were no flukes. I heard lots of excuses, in Betanews comments or Twitter, citing bad weather. For example, in response to my post "Verizon iPhone post mortem: Three lessons and some humble pie," Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg tweeted: "You're kidding right? Preorders and reservations along with frigid weather means no lines. But better prepared than not." To which I responded: "It's sunny here in San Diego and lines are short at Apple Store. 'There's not been a line at any point' said one rep."If people want something bad enough, they'll wait in the cold to buy it -- and by measure of blog and news media hype plenty of people were ready to do just that. Last week,

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsVarious executive agencies of the U.S. government have come together in an effort to speed up how the government acquires new technology and solutions, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) announced today.The GSA, in the simplest terms, is a federal body in charge of all of the material stuff the government uses. This includes everything from land, to cars, to IT technology and solutions, and it is also the government body in charge of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). Whenever a government agency wants to issue a new contract or proposal to aqcuire goods from a civilian body, it has to make sure the supplier meets the guidelines laid out by FAR."The vision for the Federal Acquisition System is to deliver on a timely basis the best value product or service to the customer, while maintaining the public's trust and fulfilling public policy objectives. Participants in the acquisition process should work together as a team and should be empowered to make decisions within their area of responsibility," says the first section of FAR.FAR was put in place in 1974 as a part of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act of 1974, but thanks to what the Government Accountability Office called "changing security threats, rapidly evolving science and technology, and budget imbalances," the process of FAR-compliant acquisition often proves to be too slow or too difficult for smaller companies."We need a tuneup on our system," U.S. General Services Administrator Martha N. Johnson said today. "Right now, we are driving our father's car. It works, but is showing its age. I want a modern, electric car version of the FAR to take us where we need to go reliably and quickly." Together with NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Management and Budget, the GSA is "tuning up" FAR beginning on March 31.The group will create action plans in three general areas: team management, case management, and training. All of them will concentrate on the ways the GSA can more quickly and accurately assess the material needs of federal agencies, and fulfill them in a quick, but fair manner.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsWith Google making efforts to improve the quality of its search results, it is now giving users the opportunity to block certain sites from search results. The extension would be available for its Chrome browser, and user's actions in blocking sites could become part of Google's fight against spam content."We've been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content," principal engineer Matt Cutts explained. "One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users."Cutts is the same person who had earlier opined for Google that spam was becoming an increasingly bigger problem for the search site. "We have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we've already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality," he said in a blog post last month.He must have been hinting at the Chrome extension released on Monday.As the user uses Google within Chrome, below each search result would be the option to block the domain from future results. This data is then sent to Google for processing. It was not immediately clear if this was done anonymously, however.Users would be able to manage the list of blocked sites, and edit and delete entries. If a result is blocked, a message would appear at the bottom of the page similar to when Google automatically removes duplicate results.The feature is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, and is available from the Chrome Web Store.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsWhen Research in Motion adds cellular data to its PlayBook tablet device in the second half of the year, it will commit to higher speed technologies according to statements at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. A WiMAX version is set to by sold by Sprint this summer, but RIM will add LTE and HSPA+ versions.HSPA+ would make the device compatible with a large majority of GSM carriers worldwide that have begun to deploy the technology as an upgrade to their data networks. LTE would make the PlayBook compatible with those further along in their deployments, as well as CDMA providers like Verizon who have chosen the platform for their own wireless data upgrade paths.The PlayBook was announced in September of last year, following months of rumors. With Apple's iPad showing that there is indeed a market for these devices, major electronics players are rushing their own tablets to the market.Betanews' Tim Conneally saw the device at CES 2011, and generally had a good impression of it. "Though the device's weight and feel in hand are still something of a mystery, the BlackBerry PlayBook is shaping up to be an impressive device, even though it is in the 7" form factor, which is sometimes considered a less-than-ideal screen size," he opined.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Larry SeltzerYou might have read about how the long-warned end of available IPv4 address space is a bit more imminent than it was, as the IANA, which governs IP address allocations on the Internet, has run out of IPv4 addresses to allocate. Simply stated: The IPocalypse is coming! It's not going to be the end of civilization, or even just the Internet, as we know it, but there will be some big problems. We're not prepared for them and we're not even working all that hard on preparing.Here's what we know will happen in the short term: There are 5 RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) for different parts of the world --

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsFollowing its Nokia partnership announcement at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft on Monday made half a dozen significant announcements about new features and capabilities that will be coming to the Windows Phone platform this year.Ballmer announced that the first major update to Windows Phone 7 will be rolled out to consumers in March, and it will add copy and paste functionality. However, little else was said about the update, and we've asked Microsoft today for a bit more information about it. In all likelihood, it will pale in comparison to the updates Ballmer announced will be coming later this year.At different points throughout 2011, CDMA network operators will begin carrying Windows Phones, Twitter will be integrated into the People Hub, Cloud-based Office document sharing and storage with Windows Live Skydrive will be added, multitasking and background application functionality will be covered at MIX in April and launched in the second half of 2011, and Internet Explorer 9 will be brought to Windows Phone 7 with support for all the HTML5 technologies the desktop version supports. Microsoft even ventured further into the future and showed off Windows Phone 7 integration with Xbox Kinect, and talked a little bit about its targets for 2012 with Nokia Windows Phones."We're in the race ??" it's not a sprint but we are certainly gaining momentum and we're in it for the long run," said Achim Berg, corporate vice president in Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business and Marketing Group. "We know we have tough competition, and this is a completely new product. Our design is different, our platform is different, our customer experience is different, and our long-term strategy for earning widespread adoption is different."Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsThat's today's question for mobile developers, particularly those with experience creating applications or services for Android, iOS or Windows Phone in addition to Symbian or even Meego. Nokia will be swapping out Symbian as its primary mobile platform for Windows Phone. Details are scant now on how soon other than general references to 2012.You can respond in comments or by e-mailing joewilcox at gmail dot com. I will take your responses and put some of them together as another post. Please be specific why the Nokia-Microsoft would be or would not be good for you, particularly if you see mixed benefits and shortcomings.My top-line analysis is simple, as previously stated here and here.

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsAt the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Sony Ericsson officially unveiled Xperia PLAY, the first "PlayStation Phone."Xperia PLAY is a 4" touchscreen slider, but instead of sliding to reveal a keyboard like most slider phones, it reveals PlayStation-style controls and buttons like Sony Computer Entertainment's PSP Go. It's powered by Qualcomm's 1 GHz Snapdragon processor with the embedded Adreno GPU capable of 60fps playback 3D gaming. It also features 400MB RAM, support for up to 32GB MicroSD storage, a 5.1 megapixel flash camera, aGPS, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11 Wi-Fi with hotspot functionality. Thanks to a patent application Sony Ericsson filed back in 2006 for a video game phone, rumors of a PlayStation phone have been persistent and long-running. But Sony Ericsson in January revealed that it wouldn't just be releasing a single phone, but a whole gaming platform that lets other Android smartphones become "PlayStation Certified."This certification creates a new branch in Android applications which will include games optimized for PlayStation Certified devices and PlayStation One titles emulated to run on them. These will be accessible through the PlayStation Suite application which the PLAY will have built in.In Sony Ericsson's product announcement today, it said titles such as EA's Need For Speed, Sims 3 and a multiplayer version of FIFA '10 will launch on the platform, as well as GLU Mobile/Activision's Guitar Hero, and Gameloft's versions of Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell. Of course, nearly all of these are already available on Android (Guitar Hero 6, Assassin's Creed, Need for Speed, Sims 3,) in fact, Sony Ericsson only showed off three exclusive titles at MWC today: Star Battalion, FIFA 2010, and Need For Speed Asphalt.The Xperia PLAY will be available globally in selected markets beginning in March, and is expected on Verizon Wireless in the Spring. No pricing has been announced yet.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsToday at Mobile World Congress, Samsung confirmed the rumors, announcing the Galaxy S II smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Both mobile devices have dual-core processors, and, yes, Samsung-manufactured, Google-branded Nexus S owners like me have reason to gripe about the new smartphone series. So much for Google's reference-design model that suddenly feels oh-so dated.The new smartphone features a 4.27-inch Super AMOLED display with 800 x 480 resolution; dual-core Samsung processor; 8-megapixel front-facing and 2-megapixel rear-facing cameras; Android 2.3 (Gingerbread); 1080p video recording; Bluetooth 3.0+HS; and HSPA+ network support, among others."With the GALAXY S II, Samsung wants to set the new standard of quality viewing on mobile, powerful performance, and slim and modern design," JK Shin, president of Samsung's Mobile Communications Business, said in a statement.Last month I asked: "Is 7-inches the better size for a media tablet?" Apparently it's not. The original Tab's successor is getting a screen-size boost -- to 10.1 inches. So Samsung says it: Bigger is better. The new tablet will run Android 3.0 (aka Honeycomb). Among other features: 1GHZ dual-core processor; 10.1-inch TFT (right, not AMOLED) display with 1280 by 800 resolution; two cameras -- rear-facing 8-megapixels with LED flash; front-facing 2MP; 16GB or 32GB internal memory; Flash 10.1; 1080p video recording; and support for HSPA+ 21Mbps networks. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 measures 246.2 mm by 170.4 mm by 10.9 mm and weighs 599 grams. At least in the initial press release, Samsung did not announce US availability. The device will come to Vodafone in Europe next month."Vodafone customers in over 20 markets around the world will be the first to get the GALAXY Tab 10.1 when it goes on sale this spring," Patrick Chomet, a Vodafone group director, said in a statement. Yeah, bud, how about the United States?Manufacturers have announced more than 85 tablets this year, and that's not counting Apple. Most of these devices will fail. I've spoken to several component supply-chain suppliers, Samsung among them, and they all warn of shortages that will affect screens, storage and other parts used to build tablets. Then there is the Apple factor. The company has locked in deals that give it component-availability preference and better pricing. It's one reason why Motorola's hot XOOM tablet is

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsNo matter what sales numbers Apple or Verizon eventually boasts about, iPhone 4's launch on the carrier cannot be called a resounding success -- at least compared to others. Launch day got off with short customer lines, something Apple simply isn't accustomed to or was prepared for. The Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists fed the frenzy, raising expectations about Day 1 on Verizon. There was fizzle instead of pop yesterday.In doing a post mortem, I see three things the Verizon iPhone launch reveals about Apple.1. Apple botched launch preparations. Apple stores opened early, with loads of staff inside and lots of food and drinks ready for customers waiting in line. Except there were no big crowds. The company clearly overestimated in-store demand for the Verizon phone, something also indicated by customers receiving preorders early and actual orders starting a day earlier than planned.

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThe mobile world's biggest hardware maker will be pairing with the computer world's bigest software maker to start making Nokia Windows Phones. Here are ten things about the pairing that you need to know before the partnership begins releasing any products.1. It will take two years before Windows Phone even makes up half of Nokia's product mixNokia plans to gradually introduce Windows Phone into its product lineup while phasing out Symbian and slightly decreasing the amount of feature phones it produces. Eventually, Nokia expects to make Windows Phone-powered devices its largest product segment, but the company has said that will take two years or more, and its "Smart Devices" will make up a different business unit from its "Mobile Phones." 2. Nokia Maps is becoming part of BingAmerican consumers are largely unaware of the Nokia Maps experience, which is somewhat interesting, since it has always been powered by Chicago-based company Navteq, which Nokia acquired in 2007 for $8.1 billion.With the inclusion of Navteq's map data, Bing Maps will have access to high quality traffic information, mapping data, and 3D geospatial imagery.3. Windows Marketplace and the Ovi Store will combineIn the joint announcement from Microsoft and Nokia today, the companies said Nokia's content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace. Naturally, this doesn't mean much at first since the two stores offer content on two different platforms, however Matt Bencke wrote in the Windows team blog today that there will be "more details to share about the marketplace strategy in the future, but our intent is to build upon the best of what both companies offer today." 4. App Developers: Carrier billing for Windows Phone apps will expand by magnitudesNokia's 6-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today highlighted an important part about this deal; that Nokia's operator billing agreements in more than 190 markets will make it easier for customers to purchase Windows Phone apps in countries with low credit card use. So not only will windows phones become more widely available globally, but they'll also be more accommodating to regional buying habits.5. Nokia gets a strong U.S. marketing forceMicrosoft spends a lot of money on U.S. advertising, and frequently manages to approve some very memorable campaigns. But Nokia has not, and the company is fully aware of the repercussions of this. Indeed, in Nokia's 2010 20F SEC filing, the company said, "Insufficient investments in marketing and brand building could also erode the value of the Nokia brand. Any...failure to optimize the Nokia brand in the marketing of our mobile devices could have a material adverse effect on our capacity to retain our current customers and consumers and attract new customers and consumers and on our business, sales and results of operations."With Microsoft's help, there will be a big increase in Nokia's U.S. presence.6. Windows Phones will begin to vary in specs, especially in the camera departmentMicrosoft's strategy with the first generation of Windows Phones was to have very strict guidelines for hardware manufacturers. Indeed, every one of the first 10 WP7 devices had nearly identical specs, with a 1GHz processor and 5 megapixel image sensor.But Nokia has one of the highest resolution image sensors on the market, and is eager to utilize it with Windows Phone.7. Microsoft's adCenter audience will explodeAccording to comScore data from November 2010, Microsoft's adCenter reaches 23% of the U.S. online market, and in 2009 adCenter scored a deal to provide Bing and mobile advertisements to Verizon Wireless customers. But these are both tiny in comparison to today's deal with Nokia. adCenter will provide search ads for the totality of Nokia's devices and services, giving it an estimated 38% of the world's mobile audience.8. Nokia's Research and Development arm could shrink significantlyNokia has scaled back its domestic workforce several times in the last three years, and Finnish Minister for Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen expects this shift in software development to be "far and away the biggest structural change that Finland has ever seen in the new technology sector," that could result in thousands being laid off. While this would be a bad thing for the Finnish economy in the near term, it would greatly reduce Nokia's operating expenses and ultimately cause a reorganization in the company's employment opportunities. 9. Windows Phone 7 development will accelerateWith the addition of the world's leading handset manufacturer as an exclusive hardware partner, Windows Phone 7 will be given greater exposure in markets where it has not yet taken root. Furthermore, the companies haven't yet established what sort of devices Nokia will be making, and there could be significant opportunities in language expansion and localization for WP7 developers using Visual Studio 2010, Expression 4, Silverlight and the XNA framework.10. This is mutually beneficial for Nokia and MicrosoftMy colleague Joe Wilcox believes that Microsoft was the main beneficiary of this deal, and that Nokia could be signing its own death warrant by signing up to license Windows, but both companies have tremendous resources behind them that are actually quite complementary. The main challenge for both will be in bringing a product to market with the necessary expedience.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsIn what can be viewed as a acknowledgment of its weakening position in the smartphone market, Apple is working on lower cost and smaller versions of its iPhone. Sources told Bloomberg that the company is also working on technology that would allow the device to work across multiple networks.One device would apparently be a smaller version of the current iPhone from those that have seen it, at about two-thirds the size of the iPhone 4, and without a home button. The device would be sold for about $200 without the need for a contract. It is not clear however whether the device would come unlocked making it capable to be used across any network.Another version would be dual mode, meaning it would work on both GSM and CDMA networks. Such a device would especially be beneficial to those on the Verizon network: the carrier's use of CDMA limits the device's use outside of the US, where by and large the standard is GSM.Also in the works is universal SIM technology, where the iPhone user would not need to change the SIM itself in order to switch from one GSM network to another. If true, that development may be an indication that Apple may be willing to loosen its tight controls on what networks its phones appear on.Evidence on such an effort may be found in a patent application first publicized by Apple enthusiast site AppleInsider on Wednesday. The patent calls for a system within iTunes where carriers would essentially bid through iTunes to provide cellular service to iPhone users.CEO Steve Jobs appears to be fully involved in the project, even though he has been on medical leave since last month. Original plans apparently had the device releasing mid-year -- likely around the time Apple has historically updated the iPhone -- but Bloomberg seemed to indicate that those plans had either been delayed or scrapped.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsFirst Tunisia. Then Egypt. Now Nokia. The twittersphere is again afire with buzz about massive protests. They're not political this time, but the outcome could be just the same. Can Nokia CEO Stephen Elop survive the revolution?Nokia employees aren't responding well to today's sweeping deal with Microsoft. They're mad, as they should be. A few hours ago I called the agreement, which swaps Symbian for Windows Phone as Nokia's primary mobile platform, a "silent takeover...If I were a Nokia employee or investor, I'd stage a revolt." Apparently employees and shareholders are doing just that. Investors punished Nokia shares with a 14-percent decline. Meanwhile, about 1,000 employees walked off the job, using flexible work-hour plans to do so, apparently protesting Nokia's deal with Microsoft. There is plenty of Twitter buzz, unfortunately too much of it in Finnish (Hey, my second language was Latin, and I'm rusty at that). But the reaction I can read is absolutely chilling.Nebil: "#Nokia RIP. #Microsoft will leach you out of your existence. Nokia bends to pick up the soap."Turcu Ciprian: "I think #nokia did a big mistake. No offense #microsoft but Android would of been a better way to go if they wanted a slice of the cheese."Rajinder Yadav: "#Nokia just added fuel to their man on a burning raft. They just killed the QT developer ecosystem today for MS and .NET"Justine Devine: "I should start writing a case study now about how #Nokia put themselves out of business."Tom Reestman: "I wonder if Elop thinks his 'relationship' w/ #Microsoft will keep him from getting screwed by them down the road?"Dale Wilson: "Did #Microsoft send #Elop to #Nokia to stage a coup? Hmmm ... What do you think?"Nick Robinson: "Has any other company ever scrapped the OS with the largest market share in favour of one with the smallest?"Steven Frank: "A 20 year regime comes to an end after populist revolt."Helge Reikeras: "#Nokia you are officially dead to me now."Purnateja: "Why Did Stephen Elop decide to Elope with Microsoft?"The questions now to ask:Has Elop gone too far to survive the wrath of Nokia employees, investors, customers, developers and partners?Does he still own Microsoft stock (I haven't had time to yet check), which could raise reasonable questions about conflict of interest?Was this all along a plan between Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to gut Nokia's platform in exchange for Windows Phone?Remember, Elop only went to Nokia in September, surprisingly giving up his cozy position as president of Microsoft's Business division. He's not only new chief executive but a foreigner -- a Canadian, giving an American company huge influence of one of Europe's oldest

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, love is in the air – but criminals are in the ether too. Cyber-criminals love a good scam, and they especially love events like Valentine’s Day when people let them in by opening their hearts – and their computer systems.

Nokia is poised to unveil a brand-new strategy at a February 11 briefing to investors in London. Rumour has it the Finnish mobile giant is set to announce some dramatic changes tomorrow morning.

By Robert JohnsonI gave up on Internet Explorer way back at IE7. As a user interface developer, the CSS and JavaScript workarounds created way too much unnecessary work. So I turned my attention to the next best thing at that time, which was FireFox. It was the most standards-compliant browser on the market at that time. Its plugins (e.g., FireBug) made my work easier and much more enjoyable. So as I spent more time with it as a developer guess what happened? I also became a regular user.The IE9 Release Candidate , which Microsoft posted today, may change all that again. IE9 is the first Microsoft browser in years that has me excited about UI development. Finally, I can see a future void of the many CSS hacks necessary to get a page to play nice with IE. There are five features in this release candidate I am excited about as a UI developer.Five Things1. CSS 3. CSS 3 comes with loads of new features that will help make web-based apps feel and function more like desktop based apps. From a pure visual perspective, rounded corners comes to IE for the first time. At this time Safari 5 and IE9 are the only ones to implement it without special browser markup.2. HTML5. With IE9 more developers can jump on the HTML5 bandwagon. Including myself. Support for canvas and video will go a long way towards making online video a ton easier to develop.3. Hardware Acceleration. This one is huge. Not only does it bring with it significant speed increased, but it also results in fantastic looking graphics and text. No UI designer wants to design a great-looking site only to have it look terrible to most of the people who will see it. I'm a huge fan of TypeKit, and IE9 does an awesome job of displaying type from this service. In my opinion type looks better on the Mac, but most people don't view the web on Macs. Most are on Windows PCs. And when it comes to IE9 vs. Chrome or Firefox, my sites (and hopefully yours too) look way better in IE9. Not only that, they load faster.4. Jump Lists. I am particularly excited about this one. With IE9 sites can be saved onto the toolbar and launched just like any other application. With Windows 7 any icon on the toolbar has a jump list. IE9 allows developers to customize the jump list. For instance, if you run a sports site, you can store different sports categories in the list so that when a user clicks the NCAA Football link it will take them to that page. This feature is definitely blurring the line between desktop and web-based applications.5. Developer! Developer! Developer Tools! I never really cared much for the developer tools in IE. In IE9 improvements were made and I think these tools are a lot easier to use now than before. While they won't convert me from FireBug, I have to give Microsoft some credit here: the new Networking and CSS tab enhancements are welcome. The CSS tab organizes CSS files a lot easier and will make debugging CSS issues a lot easier.The new network profiler is another welcomed addition to the developer tools. The summary view will tell you the original URL requested, all resources requested by HTML and CSS, and all requests made through JavaScript. I no longer have to download add-ons when I need to quickly find out what's slowing my UI down. Final ThoughtsI love the new IE9 and it will become one of the browsers I use on a regular basis. I definitely will start taking Internet Explorer more seriously from a developer perspective. The tools are nice. The hardware acceleration and CSS 3/HTML 5 compliancy were a long time coming.But there is one thing that really concerns me as a developer: updates. Microsoft usually has taken a long time to develop new versions of Internet Explorer, while Chrome is updated on a more frequent cadence sometimes adding new support for CSS 3or HTML 5. I hope that Microsoft does not intend to wait another 2 years to update IE. If it does, we will probably find ourselves back where we started: where every browser supports modern standards, except for IE.Robert Johnson is a user interface developer specializing in the user experience (UX) of .NET-based web applications. He has been working in some form of web development and graphic design for 14 years. He loves technology in general, particularly that of Apple, Google and Microsoft. He is a Betanews reader.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Nick PeersSparrow, the minimalist mail application for Mac, has left beta and been officially released through the Mac App Store for an introductory price of $9.99. It offers a streamlined user interface through a window that pops up from the program's Dock icon, cutting out the clutter and delivering an unfussed experience to collecting, reading and sending mail.Version 1.0 currently only supports Gmail accounts -- support for other mobile providers, including Mobile Me, AOL and Yahoo!, along with general IMAP accounts is promised for version 1.1, which is about to undergo private beta testing.Sparrow boasts several features: support for multiple accounts, labels, threads and inline attachments, plus features a quick reply box that appears in the same window as the original message, a good example of Sparrow's intentions to keep things as simple as possible.A free version of the main app, Sparrow Lite, is currently awaiting approval from the Mac App Store. Sparrow Lite will be ad-supported, and work with only one account.Sparrow 1.0 requires Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) or later, and the beta will need to be manually uninstalled before downloading and installing version 1.0 from the Mac AppStore ??" full details are on the program'sFAQ.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Larry SeltzerEspecially in retrospect, Internet Explorer really did used to suck. Even though browsers were all about standards from the beginning, Microsoft used to think of it purely as a vehicle for pushing proprietary features. Not anymore. IE9 Release Candidate is available, today, and things really are different.Microsoft's public relations and technical docs for IE9 are all about high performance, security and safety and a high level of standards compliance. It's too early to tell if it really is as good at these characteristics as they say it is, but they are at the very least saying the right things.Too little, too late? Report after report shows that usage share of Internet Explorer has declined from nearly 100 percent (think about that!) to a slim majority. The 56 percent usage share reported by Net Applications would be considered dominant in almost any other context, but it makes IE look like the Roman Empire, circa 400 A.D. The decline has been proceeding for years and IE9 is not enough to make it rebound.The new browser could stop the bleeding though. It's not logical to think that IE share will go all the way to nothing, especially since it really is a good browser. There will likely come a point where all the people who really care about their browser have at least tried alternatives. At that point, things will get interesting.Internet Explorer began to stop sucking in earnest with IE7 on Vista -- nothing on Windows XP is a good browser. IE8, for my money, was a fine-tuning of v7. You could reasonably call it 7.5. Both, when run on Vista or Windows 7, are significantly more secure browsers than earlier versions and probably a lot more secure than Firefox.There are security enhancements in IE9 and they're meaningful (I'll get to them in a bit). But the big security improvements happened with Windows Vista and IE7. Vulnerability exploits both became much more difficult at that point. In fact, browser vulnerabilities are not a big piece of the threat landscape these days if -- you ask me. All the action is in malware that is based on social engineering, and in this sense, browser security is largely irrelevant. It's the user who gets hacked.ActiveX Filtering and Tracking ProtectionThere are two big security enhancements in IE9: ActiveX Filtering and Tracking Protection. ActiveX Filtering allows the user to make Internet Explorer opt out of ActiveX controls by default. If you visit a site that has controls on it, you will get a notice to that effect and you can choose to view them for that site. This is a good approach. Similarly, IE9 gives you the option to disable all add-ons to make it run faster (as well as safer).Tracking Protection is a tricky business at this point, however. You might have read that the Federal Trade Commission and some other parties, including Mozilla, agreed on a "do not track" HTTP header standard to allow users to request, automatically, that a site not track them with cookies or anything else. Whether the site really tracks them or not is another matter.Microsoft has taken another approach with IE9: Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs). Users can create their own list of what to block, use and edit a provided default list, or download a list from a third-party service. In this way, the browser blocks the tracking and doesn't rely on the site to comply.Both approaches are problematic, but for sure the Microsoft approach will work better at first. Will people notice? Will they care? Personally, I think the whole tracking thing is overblown. Users may like the idea of just being able to check a single "Do Not Track" box and that's that, and they probably won't know or care which approach works better.Microsoft Really CaresStill, Tracking Protection is a good example of how Microsoft really does care about the quality of Internet Explorer. Not too long ago Microsoft was happy to let it stagnate, but now the company's

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsYahoo on Thursday announced that it will soon debut a new magazine-style method of digital content delivery especially aimed at touchscreen mobile devices like tablets and smartphones called Livestand."Publishers and advertisers must expand their content to [phones and tablets] to stay in front of consumers," said Blake Irving, Executive Vice President and Chief Product officer at Yahoo. "We see an opportunity to provide publishers and advertisers with a pipeline for fresh and active content and to help them reach and engage their most valuable audiences."Irving says Livestand will debut in the first half of 2011, and it will make Yahoo's sports, news, and finanical content available, as well as Flickr, omg!, and the Yahoo! Contributor Network as iPad and Android tablet apps.While service and software providers are opting for HTML5 and rich web applications instead of releasing standalone mobile apps, it appears that media companies are sticking with apps. Yahoo is following companies such as Flipboard, Catalogs.com, and News Corp, who have released "magazines" for tablets."With Livestand, we're using ad formats that evoke the emotion of TV advertising with a highly-visual magazine-like experience. And they're combined with the effectiveness of an Internet ad that's data-rich, actionable, even location aware," Irving said on Thursday.For the last six years, Yahoo has unveiled dozens of different ways for users to access Yahoo content on mobile devices. In 2006, it launched Yahoo Go which eventually evolved into Yahoo Mobile in 2009. In 2008, it launched onePlace, a mobile app for organizing and sharing web content, and oneConnect for managing contacts and social network content. At the same time, it's released apps for iOS, BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Phones covering the gamut of its services. More recently, it's unveiled Yahoo Entertainment, Sketch-a-Search, and Sportacular specifically for iPad.There's no doubt Yahoo's got a strong grasp of the importance of a mobile presence, but creating a magazine for tablets has not proven to be a panacea for all content providers. News Corp. recently took the "tablet magazine" approach with its iPad app called The Daily, and while it received passing marks from some reviewers, others completely trashed it. The Telegraph went so far as to call it "a complete failure of imagination."Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010