TECHNOLOGY

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsThis week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced that it will analyze the 1755-1850 MHz band for commercial broadband licensing. This would be part of the 500 MHz of additional spectrum planned to be re-claimed over the next ten years for mobile broadband, as detailed in the National Broadband Plan."NTIA is conducting this evaluation as directed by President Obama to reach his goal of nearly doubling the amount of commercial spectrum available over the next decade, an initiative that will spur investment, economic growth, and job creation while supporting the growing demand by consumers and businesses for wireless broadband services. We look forward to our continued work with the FCC and other federal agencies as we work to free up additional spectrum while protecting vital government spectrum uses," said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling on Monday.Of course, NTIA has been eyeing this band of spectrum for more than a decade. In 2000, the administration put out a report (.PDF) that examined the band's viability as a potential vehicle for 3G mobile services. Currently, that block of spectrum is used by the Department of Defense, Federal law enforcement, and other government groups for satellite, surveillance, aeronautical operations, and fixed microwave communications, among other things.The most common uses of this range of spectrum are in military environments. It has been used for a system called Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) with the US Army and Marines for tactical radio relay systems at military bases all over the country. They link the various military nodes into a single radio network, and the band experiences heavy congestion near military bases and training areas. Likewise, the Navy uses the band for DWTS, or the Digital Wideband Transmission System for point-to-point surface-based communications at Naval facilities, and the Air Force has used it for Air Combat Training Systems.NTIA says a quick turnaround is necessary, and calls for the analysis of this band to be completed by the end of this September 2011. Given the band's prior analysis more than a decade ago, and its overall readiness for use -- The Department of Commerce said it is "harmonized internationally for mobile operations, wireless equipment already exists and the band provides signal characteristics advantageous to mobile operations" -- this looks to be a transition that will be kept on schedule.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsWhen Microsoft announced its July 2009 search deal with Yahoo, and even before, Steve Ballmer said the increased scale would help improve the quality of Bing search results. Perhaps Microsoft's CEO was wrong, or Yahoo search didn't give enough scale. Bing started serving up Yahoo search results late last year. But Bing also is serving up Google results, as was widely reported yesterday. How desperate is that -- or is it, gasp, clever?To briefly, recap: Yesterday morning, at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan reported that "Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google's results, then uses that information to improve Bing's own search listings. Bing doesn't deny this." They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but c`mon, what's right about this and wrong with the math behind Microsoft's search

By Mike FeibusA few short hours after the Consumer Electronics Show finished setting the stage for the industry's year, AMD added a new wrinkle to the outlook when it revealed that CEO Dirk Meyer was leaving. Effective immediately.Meyer likely was a casualty of an increasingly fierce debate at AMD over what the tablet market means to the company and how it should respond. Meyer laid his cards on the table, both publicly and privately, asserting that tablets are companion devices that would not have a major detrimental impact on the PC market. Intel CEO Paul Otellini says much the same, by the way.Intel, though, has a well-articulated strategy for addressing the tablet market, which is dominated by ARM-based processors, with its Atom series of x86 CPUs. So too does Nvidia, executing on a years-long plan to attack the market with Tegra, an ARM-based platform.In fact, virtually every player has a strategy for the tablet market but AMD. Thus far, AMD has signaled that it would let Intel pave the way and then follow its rival into the market as an x86 player. But the sky-is-falling contingent at AMD, which advocates taking Nividia's lead rather than Intel's, reportedly has gained momentum in recent months. They would have the company develop or buy an ARM core to combine with its in-house graphics technology.Meyer deserves some of the blame for the company's waffling, and his sudden ouster suggests that AMD has decided to go down the ARM path. This much already has been speculated in the media since AMD announced Meyer's resignation on January 10.What's been glossed over in the hubbub, though, is that AMD's board designated Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert as the interim CEO. This suggests that the decision of whether to make- or-buy into an ARM platform already has been made -- and the verdict is buy.Prediction: AMD will merge with FreeScale SemiconductorI'm about to pile some speculation on top of that double dose of conjecture. So take it for what it's worth. Ready?Here it goes: AMD will be merging with FreeScale Semiconductor. The combination no doubt looks attractive to a board that wants an ARM license and design portfolio yesterday. You could also make the case that it looks good from a company culture point of view, as there is already a lot of cross-pollination between the two companies.

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsA design flaw within the chipset supporting its new line of Sandy Bridge processors may delay the launch of next-generation computers, and Apple could find itself affected the most. Intel's latest chip is the first from the company to include integrated graphics silicon on the chip, while also using the company's advanced 32-nanometer manufacturing. This is said to allow PC manufacturers to offer systems that have much better graphics capabilities and much greater power efficiency than its predecessors.It is expected that the problem will cost Intel at least $300 million, although another $700 million has been set aside for any necessary repairs and replacement costs. One positive is that the issue was caught early in Sandy Bridge's release, meaning that only a fraction of the estimated eight million "Cougar Point" (the code name) chipsets in manufacturers hands have actually made it to consumers.Sandy Bridge will officially launch on February 20. Intel could not say as of Tuesday whether the flaw would delay this launch, although corrected chips that have only just started to be produced would not be ready before the end of the month. It would likely not be until April before the chipmaker ramps up to the volume demands of its customers.Cougar Point chipsets allow for the connection of up to six Serial ATA devices, such as DVD drives, HDDs, and the like. Under extreme conditions, Intel found that devices on ports 0 and 1 would degrade in performance. No degradation was experienced on ports 2 through 5.A possible workaround would be to ship devices based on the faulty chipset using only the unaffected ports, however that would obviously defeat the purpose of the new chipsets.Based on the history of Intel and Apple's partnership, it's likely that Sandy Bridge would make it into the next-generation iMac and MacBook Pro computers. With the delays due to the issue likely in the range of up to three months, the new time frame for shipment would fall near to the time where Apple is expected to update its notebook line.If there are no plans to update the line before April or so, the delay may not be noticeable to the consumer. However no manufacturer would be able to ship computers based on the Sandy Bridge architecture before the end of this month, and likely in limited quantities if so.Intel would not comment on Apple's plans, and as with most issues the Cupertino company was not responding to requests for comment as it deals with speculation on future products.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsFor United States citizens interested in getting continuous news coverage of the Egyptian revolution, the options are limited to one: the live Al Jazeera feed on its website. Even though United States cable companies don't carry the station, it is easy to pipe that streaming news feed to your HDTV with a variety of Web-connected devices.Set-top box maker Roku today announced that users of its popular set-top streamer can now push Al Jazeera's live and on-demand streams to their HDTVs with just a few steps. 1.) Sign up for a free account with Podcast/Vodcast manager CDNTwo, and stay logged on to the site.2.) On your Roku Streamer, go to Channel Store > News and Podcasts and add the CDNTwo Channel. In the channel's "configuration" menu on the far right, you will get an activation code to link your Roku box to your account.3.) In the CDNTwo Website's Member Area, under "My Profile," enter the activation number in the field labeled "My Set top Box," and click Activate.4.) Then, click on the "Add Category" tab, and enter whatever text you want in the name and description fields, then hit the "Add Category" button.5.) Click on the "Add Content" tab, and click the very first item listed "Livestation.com (Beta) - Live Video." Then name the feed, assign it to the category you made in step 4, and click "Add Feed."5.) Back on the Roku box, the "My Categories" menu will now have the channel you just created, with access to all of LiveStation's Al Jazeera content."We're working on a number of ways to bring Roku customers both live and on-demand feeds from Al-Jazeera," Roku's announcement on Tuesday said. "As we speak we are working to add the live feed to our Roku Newscaster Channel, making it even easier to watch."This Livestation feed is a critical element in accessing Al Jazeera's English language feed, and it can be hooked up to any number of set top boxes and portable devices. The D-Link Boxee Box, for example, has a Livestation channel that can be found by searching for "live news," and the Android Market has two apps that connect to the feed. Livestation even has an HTML5-optimized site which can be pulled up on GoogleTV, the iPad, or really anything with a browser. Even though some have weighed criticism against U.S. pay television providers for not carrying Al Jazeera, the Livestation feed makes it relatively easy to reach "over the top."Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsWith its combined efforts in PC, console, and mobile gaming, as well as video and television, Microsoft has a serious presence in the entertainment business. And as Peter Parker's Uncle Ben said, with great power also comes great responsibility. So, Monday evening, Microsoft released a document called PACT that seeks to help parents and kids work out guidelines for entertainment consumption.PACT is an acronym that stands for Parental Involvement, Access, Content, and Time, and parents and kids are supposed to go through the PACT document and sign off the family guidelines for conduct online and on gaming consoles. The document is meant to be a companion to Microsoft's Get Game Smart initiative for 2011, which encourages parents and kids to work together and have an open dialogue about the family's media choices."As leaders in the video game industry, it's Microsoft's goal to provide parents with tools and resources to manage their children's gaming and entertainment experiences so that they can play in safer, healthy and more balanced ways," Microsoft's Get Game Smart program says.Anyone who plays action games on Xbox Live is sure to tell you, the language gets pretty salty in there. In 2006, blogger Josh Smith did a personal study of the use of profanity in Halo 2, and over the course of 33 hours, he heard 641 profane utterances by random people he was playing games with, or just under 20 curses an hour.So a part of Microsoft's PACT involves parents finding out whom their kids are playing games with online, and setting general limitations upon who they can receive voice and text messages from. While that may not be effective for quelling the explosion of curses associated with someone getting fragged, it's a nice try.Microsoft's PACT is available for download here.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

A California man has sued AT&T for over billing him on data charges for his iPhone, a move that could raise new questions on the carrier's billing practices. Patrick Hendricks claims that the carrier was charging him for usage even when he wasn't using any.Hendricks uses the $15 monthly 200MB plan, and apparently became suspicious after he was charged overage fees for using 223MB worth of data across 259 data connections. His lawyers say that their research showed that AT&T was regularly o...

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsWhich smartphone operating system truly leads the US market. According to Nielsen, none of them. Says Don Kellogg, Nielsen's Telecom Practice Research and Insights senior manager, it's a "three-way tie" between Apple's iOS, Google Android and Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS. Oh, man, it is going to be a bad day for fanboy jockeying for position.Nielsen strips back any potential contention about unit shipments and focuses on install base. By that measure, among US smartphone owners, 28 percent have devices with iOS and 27 percent each for Android and BlackBerry OS (data is from December 2010). But as the chart above shows, the long-term trend is revealing. Since February 2010, iOS has steadily declined, despite the June launch of iPhone 4 -- from 39 percent share measured by install base. During the same time period, Android's install base steadily rose from 8 percent share. Despite musings from the Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists calling RIM a lost cause, BlackBerry OS has remained largely flat, with sine-wave like fluctuations between 26 percent and 29 percent install base share.The longer-term trend syncs with another Nielsen observed last month -- in December, 43 percent of recent smartphone purchasers bought an Android phone compared to 26 percent for iPhone. For some perspective on why Android is gaining now, please refer to my October 2009 post: "Apple cannot win the smartphone wars." However, BlackBerry nosed down after iPhone 4 launched, with percentage among new purchases dropping from 35 percent in June 2010 to 20 percent in December -- so perhaps the Apple fan club has a point after all.Nielen also did some, ah, ethnic profiling of smartphone buyers. Thirty-one percent of all Americans owned a smartphone in December 2010. Asian Pacific/Islanders and Hispanics were most likely to own smartphones (45 percent for each). African-Americans: 33 percent. Whites were least likely to own smartphones: 27 percent. Among new purchasers, Asian Pacific/Islanders were the most likely to buy a smartphone (60 percent), followed by Hispanics (56 percent), African Americans (44 percent) and Whites (42 percent).By measure of install base, iPhone leads among Asian Pacific/Islanders (36 percent). Hispanics: iPhone (29 percent) African Americans: BlackBerry (31 percent). Whites: iPhone (29 percent). But among Hispanics and Whites, BlackBerry closely follows (27 percent).The demographic data is by far the most interesting and useful, particularly for cellular carriers planning their marketing programs. But Nielsen doesn't provide other demographic measures. Which ethnic group is more likely to have data or choose 4G over 3G?But news of the day will be the three-way tie. Android is sure to nudge ahead of iPhone when Nielsen updates the data, thanks to the surge among new smartphone purchasers. But iPhone is coming to Verizon on February 10. This horse race isn't over yet.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsSmartphone operating systems and their related app stores effectively cut the mobile network operator out of the value chain, but mobile browsers are giving carriers a foot in the door.Mobile carriers continue to attempt their own branded app stores to break into the app store goldrush. Just today, Japanese network operator NEC Biglobe launched Andronavi in the United States, saying that it's a better app store than Google's Android Market because it provides reviews and detailed information specifically from the Japanese audience.The ability to provide app developers with very specific user data is extremely important, but because carriers generally offer smartphones on numerous platforms, opening an app store for each one would be a costly and unwieldy endeavor.However, mobile browsers and the growth of mobile web apps are giving carriers the option to create cross-platform stores that also let them harness all of their anonymized data like device type, location, and behavioral data. It opens new doors for content targeting and monetization.One needs only to look at T-Mobile USA's Android phones to see this in action. When you launch the browser for the first time in a carrier-branded Android device, the default homepage is T-Mobile's web2go.com. If you are connected to a wi-fi hotspot, T-Mobile does not have access to your location or behavioral data, and the site is intercepted, telling you that you do not have access to Web2Go or Downloads and that "you must temporarily disable your Wi-Fi connection." . Tuesday, California-based software vendor Openwave announced Aplicity, an HTML5 development solution targeted at network operators who want to create browser-based app stores that are compatible with all of the latest smartphones.While cross-platform compatibility is certainly an important issue for carriers, the biggest benefit of this solution is all the harvestable user data it offers."Operators have always been an essential part of the internet ecosystem, and the data they possess is the key to beating over-the-top players in the battle for consumer mindshare," said Dan Nguyen, Openwave's vice president of product management, Ecosystem. "Openwave Amplicity allows operators to open up their networks to developers and third-party content providers to ultimately create smarter applications that rely on contextual information."Openwave is responsible for Sprint's attempt at "browser-based value-added services" which it launched last October and called the "Sprint Services Framework." The company says it's giving mobile operators a chance to "eliminate the friction of the app business" by giving developers more granular user data and therefore better monetization options.Openwave Amplicity will be available to carriers some time within the first quarter of calendar 2011.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Nick PeersSystem Restore is good when you're in a tight spot, allowing you to roll back your computer's key programs and system files to earlier versions in an attempt to fix a problem. But it's not foolproof, and because it doesn't roll

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsIt's a reasonable question to ask, now that, after today,

A new study by Testra has shown that Australian parents have failed to teach their children with cyber skills despite spending a lot of money buying their kids with the latest gadgets.

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsToday is the last day for Xserve, Apple's nine-year old line of rackmount servers designed for enterprise use. As the company announced last November, no orders for the server hardware will be accepted beyond January 31.While there is a community of server admins who use Mac server hardware, the discontinuation of Xserve has not been met with any wails of anguish from the IT community. After Xserve is completely liquidated, Apple will only sell specially configured versions of its Mac Mini and Mac Pro as servers. This means the sole remaining part of Apple's server business is OS X Snow Leopard Server, which is itself, not that different from client versions of Snow Leopard. What's left of the Mac server business is almost a "prosumer" category, that is, where consumer hardware can be tinkered with to create something that could work in professional settings, as long as they're not too demanding. Naturally, companies dealing with alternative Mac server products are popping up today to remind the world that there are options for the Mac Minis that Apple called it's "most popular line of servers" back in November.H-Squared recently debuted its Mini-rack for mounting up to 18 Mac minis in a standard rack enclosure. The Washington-based company has not yet announced a price for the rack, but will provide further details in February when it opens up for pre-orders.For virtualization in a setup like the one shown above, there's really only one choice: Parallels Server for Mac 4.0 the only hypervisor-based virtualization software compatible with Snow Leopard Server. Parallels, one of Apple's consistently strong software partners, also offers a "bare metal" edition of Parallels Server for Mac for installation directly on bare Apple hardware. The requirements for the virtualization platform aren't steep, either; it can be installed on any Intel-based Mac with VT-x support and a 1.5 GHz processor or higher. 4GB of RAM is recommended, but only 2GB is required, and 30 GB of disk space for each virtual machine is needed. Apple's default Mac Mini with Snow Leopard Server configuration is more than adequate to run a couple of 64-bit virtual machines. It has a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM with support for up to 8GB, and two 500GB 7200RPM HDDs are built in.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsMust everything be partisan? In the US Congress, Democrats and Republicans spilt over nearly every issue. Today's strangest debate isn't political, but analytical -- sides supporting or opposing Apple and bloggers and journalists parlaying games of oneupmanship. It's all about how much tablet market share Samsung snatched from Apple during calendar fourth quarter, if any. The debate is simply pointless.Earlier today, Bloomberg reported on data from Strategy Analytics stating that Android tablets captured 22 percent market share in Q4, based on 2.1 million shipments, essentially punching market leader iPad smack in the touchscreen. By Strategy Analytics' reckoning, iPad's market share dropped from 95 percent to 75 percent in a single quarter.About three-and-a-half hours later, Bloomberg competitor Wall Street Journal struck back with seemingly damning information from Samsung's January 28th earnings call. Samsung shipped 2 million Android-based Galaxy Tabs during fourth quarter. In response to an analyst question regarding "sell-in" versus "sell-through," Samsung's Lee Young-hee described sales as being "quite small." But there was no qualification on what "quite small" really means. Did Samsung only sell a few thousand units or were sales simply below expectations and the answer one of

By Mark WilsonLast week, we looked at

By Mike WilliamsAn application's move to a whole new version number is normally accompanied by much publicity, as the

By Nick PeersHere's the rub: you want to upgrade your hard drive to a bigger model, but you don't want to go through the rigmarole of setting everything up from scratch on your new drive. Or maybe you've suddenly found that Windows has badly corrupted and will no longer load -- your data is safe on the drive, but inaccessible. What you need to do is back up the drive somewhere safe, then restore Windows before recovering your precious data.In both scenarios, there are plenty of tools, many of them free like

By Mike WilliamsFree antivirus tools can occasionally be short on features, a little lacking in comparison to their commercial brothers.

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsSwedish telecommunications hardware maker Ericsson on Monday announced it had set the world record for multi-carrier HSPA downlink speeds using a prototype consumer device and standard commercial network equipment. The record-setting rig achieved 168 Mbps on the downlink and 24 Mbps on the uplink.Multi-Carrier HSPA is a technology still quite a long way from being available to consumers. It is not yet included in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specification for High Speed Packet Access, and only a select few carriers worldwide even offer support for its precursor, dual-carrier HSPA, the evolution of the wireless technology included in 3GPP release 8 (standardized in 2008.)The basic selling point for MC-HSPA is that a wireless network can improve its spectrum efficiency through joint resource allocation and load balancing across multiple Cell_DCH carrier frequencies. Cell_DCH is a Radio Resource Control state in UMTS which routes signals between the user's equipment and the Radio Access Network. In short, each user, instead of being locked to a single carrier channel, is carried across several sub-carriers that are phase shifted. "For many years we have focused on the evolution of HSPA and it is rewarding to see that the industry-wide support for HSPA Evolution is now stronger than ever, said Ulf Ewaldsson, Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson. "Ericsson's Evo RAN brings EDGE, HSPA and LTE together into one strong, industry-leading offering. The potential for HSPA is even larger and 3GPP is already looking at even higher HSPA speeds."Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsAndroid's ascendency to smartphone supremacy hit a new high in fourth quarter 2010, according to research firm Canalys. Global Android smartphone shipments topped Nokia Symbian-based handsets -- 32.9 million to 31 million, respectively -- or twice iPhone (16.2 million). By another accounting, including OMS and Tapas platforms, Google ranked higher still: 33.3 million units.Canalys' shipment data means Google is activating more than the previously disclosed 300,000 Android handsets per day. The number exceeds 350,000. During Q4, just two manufacturers, HTC and Samsung, accounted for 45 percent of "Google OS-based handset shipments," which includes OMS and Tapas.Manufacturers shipped 101.2 million smartphones in Q4, up 89 percent year over year. Apple shipments grew slightly faster than the overall market, 89.5 percent. By comparison, Android shipments grew by more than 600 percent. For all 2010, manufacturers shipped about 300 million smartphones, up 80 percent year over year.The year "2010 has been a fantastic year for the smartphone market," Chris Jones, Canalys principal analyst, said in a statement. "But vendors cannot afford to be complacent; 2011 is set to be a highly competitive year with vendors looking to use new technology, such as dual-core processors, NFC and 3D displays, to differentiate their products and maintain value."Regionally, Europe, Middle East and Asia were the strongest markets for smartphones -- 38.8 million units, for a growth rate of 90 percent. While Nokia led EMEA, it ceded market leadership in Latin America to Research in Motion, which shipped about 1 million more units partly based on the popularity of BlackBerry Curve and other mid-range smartphones. Among Asian countries, South Korea smartphone shipments soared to 3.4 million units, up from 700,000 a year earlier. Smartphone shipments to China grew 134 percent year over year. Nokia's market share in the country plummeted -- to 56 percent from 76 percent a year earlier, despite 70 percent growth in unit shipments.In the United States, smartphone shipments rose 64 percent year over year. It is the largest single country market, with unit shipments more than twice China. During fourth quarter, RIM retook first place from Apple. HTC ranked third, a position held now for three consecutive quarters. Canalys credited HTC's continued growth to Android and Windows Phone 7 handsets. By the way, fifth-ranked Microsoft bled market share in Q4, with growth falling by 20 percent, globally. Microsoft's US share fell from 7 percent to 5 percent year over year."Android was by far the largest smartphone platform in the US market in Q4 2010, with shipments of 12.1 million units -- nearly three times those of RIM's BlackBerry devices,"

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsOn Monday, Intel Corp announced it had completed the $1.4 Billion acquisition of Infineon AG's Wireless Solution business (WLS), to finally tie in baseband processors into the company's CPU solutions. The WLS unit will be part of the new Intel Mobile Communications group, a standalone business unit within Intel's Architecture Group.With the new portfolio of 2G, 3G and LTE baseband products acquired from WLS, Intel is going to move forward with a business to "serve a broader array of customers and market segments." Intel has thus far remained outside of the radpidly growing mobile- and smartphone business, and continued to concentrate on improvements within the realm of personal computers. As it has done this, mobile applications processors based on the 32-bit ARM architecture have grown dramatically, and chipmakers such as Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm have become strong competitors. At CES 2011, the momentum behind ARM chips was solidified when Microsoft announced the next version of Windows will support ARM, and when graphics company Nvidia announced it is making its first GPU/CPU hybrid chip based on ARM Cortex A15 processors. For Intel to grow in the mobile sector, it must broaden its purview. "As we enter an era of multi-communication solutions, IMC's products and technologies will be integral to connecting a breadth of Intel and ARM-based mobile devices. We are truly excited to be a part of this growth," said Dr. Hermann Eul, President of Intel Mobile Communications in a statement Monday.IMC will continue WLS' business of wireless and cellular platforms, and also add support for Intel Core and Atom-based application processor platforms, as well as ARM-based products.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsSadly, I must reaffirm my position stated during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' last medical leave, in January 2009: His health situation isn't a private matter, and, frankly, it's even less so now. The seeming suddenness of Jobs' more recent medical leave, which this time is open-ended, raises reasonably disconcerting questions about how long he can continue as chief executive and whether Apple has in place an appropriate succession plan. I didn't expect to return to this topic again, and surely Macheads will beat me aside the head with snide and accusing comments or rebuttal blog posts. So be it.As leader of a public company, Jobs has no inherent right to privacy where his ability to act as CEO is concerned. Jobs' share in Apple was, last time I checked, well below 5 percent. He isn't principal owner of Apple, tens of thousands of shareholders are. If not Jobs, then at least Apple's board of directors has a responsibility to appraise shareholders about such an iconic CEO's realistic ability to continue in the role. Right now, Jobs has essentially abdicated the responsibility for undetermined amount of time. In a January 17 letter, Jobs explained that he had "asked [COO] Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple's day to day operations." Not some responsibility but all.The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn't explicitly require disclosure of executives' health-related issues, but it does encourage companies to disclose succession plans. From Stanford School of Business paper "CEO Health Disclosure at Apple: A Public or Private Matter?" published last week: "The SEC has encouraged companies to disclose information on their succession plans so that shareholders can assess whether the company might be 'adversely affected due to vacancy in leadership.'"From that perspective, Jobs' health is not a private matter but one of public company responsibility. On January 17, Jobs didn't give a time period for the medical leave or even assert that he would return to his responsibilities. "I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can," he wrote. Hope expresses desire to resume duties, not expression of confidence that will be the outcome. By comparison, in Jobs' letter for the last medical leave, he gave a finite period (six months) and referred to Cook taking responsibility "for Apple's day to day operations" without using "all." As later was revealed, Jobs was quite ill during the last medical leave, when he received a liver transplant. Could he be sicker this time -- something that could be insinuated by the seemingly sudden and open-ended medical leave?Rules of SuccessionIn a January 18 interview with Bloomberg, Charles Elson, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Corporate Governance, said that Apple hasn't met its responsibility to shareholders: "Much more disclosure is in order. I think the board really should come forward and let--give--investors know more of what they know. Transparency in this situation is really valuable." He added: "The problem is that in this company, investors place a lot of stock in Jobs' presence, and in the past his presence or absence has caused some real gyrations in the stock price." Elson emphasized that when investors bought Apple shares they "expected full and fair disclosure of the company's fortunes. I think this would include something like this" -- the "this" referring to Job's medical leave.In a January 18

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsResponding to widespread civil unrest, the government of Egypt on Thursday evening ordered all private network operators to shut down their services, both wired and wireless.At around 12:30am local time, Egypt's outbound connections to the Internet hit a brick wall, and fell approximately 80%. Both BGP Mon and Renesys observed similar withdrawals of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routes in Egypt.A statement from Vodafone, the British telecommunications company responsible for one of Egypt's three major cellular networks, said all mobile operators, likewise, were instructed to suspend service in areas where anti-government protests were taking place."Under Egyptian legislation, the authorities have the right to issue such an order and we are obliged to comply with it. The Egyptian authorities will be clarifying the situation in due course," Vodafone's statement said on Friday.Nearly 24 hours later, the communications blackout is still in effect."I have been able to connect with my family through landlines only, as the cell phones and internet were turned off," Dr. Ibrahim Karim, Montreal-based Author and alternative medicine researcher told us today. "[It] is really frustrating everybody."There is only one landline telephone company in Egypt, Telecom Egypt, which is controlled by the government.The blockage was done to thwart seditionaries and protestors who had been using social media outlets to organize activities and share information about the uprising with the outside world. White House Press Seceretary Robert Gibbs said the Egyptian government "must respect the rights of the Egyptian people, and turn on social networking and Internet." This sentiment was later echoed at a press briefing by Seceretary of State Hillary Clinton.According to 2010 estimates from Internet World Statistics, Egypt is the second most-connected African country with 17,060,000 internet users and an estimated 4,077,520 Facebook users.Though it's the sixteenth most populous nation in the world (80.47 million population) this level of connectivity is disproportionately low. Germany, which is Egypt's nearest neighbor in terms of population with 82.2 million residents, has 65 million connected citizens or a staggering 80 percent. Vietnam, a country with 89.5 million residents, had 24.26 million Internet-connected citizens, or 27 percent. So even though only a small proportion of the Egyptian population uses the Internet in any fashion, and an even smaller fragment used it to share information about anti-government protests, the effect it has had on the news flow has been staggering.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Ed Oswald, BetanewsThe FBI said Thursday that it had executed more than 40 search warrants across the US, part of an expanding global probe into the attacks by hacktivist group Anonymous on several companies. The move followed another by British authorities also on Thursday that resulted in the arrests of five suspected participants.Law enforcement agencies in at least five countries are now conducting their own investigations. The arrests in the UK are the only ones to occur as part of the i...

By Joe Wilcox, BetanewsSamsung and ZTE were big winners selling mobile phones in 2010, based on new data released by IDC. Apple fell from fourth to fifth place. Smartphone shipments drove year-over-year growth to a new quarterly high -- 17.9 percent -- in fourth quarter. Unit shipments rose from 340.5 million units to 401.4 million. IDC measures shipments into the channel, which means unsold handsets are counted. Gartner should soon release actual sales data, for which the numbers will be lower.For the year, manufacturers shipped 1.39 billion cell phones, up 18.5 percent from 1.17 billion units a year earlier. The United Nations estimates there are 5 billion cellular subscribers worldwide. IDC predicts that smartphones will be the major sales growth driver through 2014. This year, smartphone shipments are projected to rise by nearly 44 percent year over year."The mobile phone market has the wind behind its sails," Kevin Restivo, IDC senior research analyst, said in a statement. "Mobile phone users are eager to swap out older devices for ones that handle data as well as voice, which is driving growth and replacement cycles."IDC spotlighted an ongoing trend that American bloggers and journalists obsessed with iPhone have ignored: Handsets coming out of China. ZTE moved up into fourth place in market share, largely from shipping lower-cost handsets into emerging markets. Meanwhile, grey market smartphones -- many of them running Android -- are gaining sales momentum in Asia. These grey market devices often imitate better-selling handsets like iPhone while offering new features or capabilities, such as dual-SIM slots. By the way, ZTE pushed Apple into fifth place, and the maker of iPhone risks dropping out of the Top 5 altogether. "Change-up among the number four and five vendors could be a regular occurrence this year," added Ramon Llamas, IDC senior research analyst, said in a statement. "Motorola, Research In Motion, and Sony Ericsson, all vendors with a tight focus on the fast-growing smartphone market who had ranked among the top five worldwide vendors during 2010 are well within striking distance to move back into the top five list."The data also reveals that contrary to a string of Nokia

By Tim Conneally, BetanewsIn the company blog Thursday, Netflix Director of Content Delivery Ken Florence presented a ranking of the best and worst network operators for Netflix streaming, a ranking that the company plans to maintain and publish as a monthly report.Florence says the top HD streams from Netflix are about 4,800 Kbps, and because the service adapts to the available bandwidth a provider may have, no one carrier would hit that maximum and maintain it. However, it serves as a good reference point for the average overall throughput a network can provide. Charter, the leading US network in overall throughput, averaged 2,667 Kbps between October 1, 2010 and January 15, 2011. Beneath Charter are three relatively distinct performance tiers. Following not too far behind Charter was a cluster of six carriers: Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, Cablevision, Suddenlink, and Cable One.Then, there is a rather large drop in performance into a middle tier where Verizon, AT&T, Bellsouth, Windstream, Embarq, and Qwest are rather evenly spaced in descending order. These range between approximately 2,300 Kbps and 1,700 Kbps.Finally, there is the bottom tier with the slowest performers, which includes CenturyTel, Frontier, and Clearwire. These carriers performed in the range of 1,650 Kbps to about 1,400 Kbps.Naturally, network technology, content delivery partners, and geographic region all have a lot to do with an operator's overall performance in these rankings, but as Florence says, "it's a great high-level view of Netflix performance across a large number of streaming sessions."Still, Clearwire representatives reached out to us today, looking to defend their mobile broadband network against Netflix's castigation."It doesn't come as a surprise to anyone in tech that a wireless network ranks behind wired DSL, cable and fiber optic networks in terms of speed," a Clearwire representative said. "Wired networks are capable of achieving faster speeds than wireless networks. That's the nature of the technologies. But speed isn't the whole story."Indeed, Clearwire does have its own benefits that can balance out the lower average speed; principal among them is the fact that when a user is connected to a Clearwire WiMAX signal, he can take his Netflix stream along with him, instead of having to leave it at home. "As mobile video consumption increases, this key advantage will only become more of a differentiator for services like ours," Clearwire told us.Most interestingly, though, was the fact that Canada had an average much closer to the maximum than the U.S. Rogers, Canada's largest ISP, trumps all of the United States' carriers with a 3,020 Kbps average throughput. When Netflix launched its streaming service in Canada just over six months ago, Rogers shrunk the download cap for its Lite pricing tier from 25GB per month to 15. Users began complaining that these data limits could be met and exceeded in under a week of use. Maybe the heightened stream speed and quality have something to do with it.Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Leading Japanese and Chinese electronics firms NEC Corporation and Lenovo on Thursday announced a strategic partnership to create the largest PC group in Japan. The agreement aligns NEC, Japan's number one PC company, with Lenovo, the fastest growing top-five PC maker in the world. The new joint venture gives both Lenovo and NEC a unique opportunity to grow their commercial and consumer PC businesses in Japan, the third largest PC market in the world, through a stronger market position, enhan...

Australia's telecoms giant Optus on Friday reported that it has completed repair works in fixed residential network. However, the company said they are still repairing phone lines of customers that sustained water damage.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews[Editor's Note: This was a live document from 4:20 p.m. EDT until 5:40 p.m.]Microsoft weathered the brunt of slower-than-forecast PC sales to beat Wall Street consensus for fiscal 2011 second quarter. The software giant announced earnings after the bell, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31, 2010.Microsoft revenue rose 5 percent to $19.95 billion, year over year. Operating income: $8.17 billion, down 4 percent. Net income: $6.64 billion, or 77 cents a share. Earnings per share rose by 4 percent year over year. However, Microsoft stated growth rates when counting a $1.7 billion deferral related to Windows 7's launch in the year-ago quarter. Without the deferral, revenue grew by 15 percent, operating income by 20 percent and earnings per share by 28 percent.Two years ago this month, Microsoft stopped providing Wall Street analysts with quarterly and yearly guidance, in a move that is highly unusual for so large and so successful a public company. I've long argued that Microsoft's refusal to give guidance creates unnecessary negative perceptions about its performance. As such, Wall Street analysts had to rely solely on their wits to call the quarter.