Italian verdict on Google privacy sets dangerous precedent
An Italian court has convicted three former Google executives of violations to Italy's privacy code early Wednesday morning. The decision comes after months of back and forth on the case, all of which began with a video uploaded by some delinquent teenagers of themselves beating on a classmate with Down Syndrome. Though the judge in the case absolved the executives of defamation charges (and a fourth was found not guilty of all charges), the verdict is shocking and is likely to have serious repercussions for sites that host user-generated content in Italy.
The three-minute video was uploaded in 2006 and had a short lifespan on Google Video Italia, as complaints were quickly lodged and it was pulled within hours. That didn't stop an Italian Down Syndrome support group called Vivi Down from arguing that it should never have appeared in the first place. The group filed a complaint that resulted in a two-year investigation, and eventually, Milan public prosecutor Francesco Cajani agreed that the Google execs had violated Italian law by allowing the video to be uploaded.
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VeriSign to offer "Trust Seal" certification for websites
VeriSign, a prominent vendor of SSL certificates, has announced a new validation service for websites. Companies that sign up for the service will undergo a corporate background check and have their websites scrutinized by VeriSign. Websites that meet with VeriSign's standards will be entitled to post the company's Trust Seal insignia.
VeriSign already offers a similar service to some of its SSL customers. The new service is intended for website operators that offer commercial products and services, but don't need an SSL certificate because they rely on third-parties for processing transactions and performing other activities that require encryption.
The company says that it will conduct daily malware scans of the websites that bear the Trust Seal in order to ensure that they remain trustworthy after the initial examination. According to VeriSign, the $299 per year Trust Seal service will help websites boost traffic and increase customer loyalty. The company claims that the existing SSL variant of its Trust Seal service has generated an average traffic increase of 24 percent for its customers.
Although trust seals might give a warm fuzzy feeling to regular end users, there is little evidence that such validation programs actually guarantee security or trustworthiness. A researcher published a study in 2006 revealing that websites validated by TRUSTe were actually "more than twice as likely to be untrustworthy" compared to unvalidated sites.
The researcher speculated that private validation organizations were reluctant to sacrifice revenue by revoking validations, even in the most egregious cases of abuse. There is also the risk that untrustworthy sites will convey a false sense of legitimacy by displaying a forged seal.
The automated daily scanning that is included in VeriSign's service could give it a leg up in security over some of the alternatives.
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Amazon gives EC2 a boost and broadens Windows support
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) platform, which offers on-demand scalable access to Linux, Solaris, and Windows-powered computing facilities, has launched a couple of new options for customers. First, the company offered a new, even larger, more capable kind of compute node, the "High Memory Extra Large." This offers access to substantial amounts of memory (17.1GB) and storage (420GB), along with processing power approximately equivalent to two Opteron or Xeon (Pentium 4-era) cores at about 3.5GHz each.
Access to larger amounts of memory and storage will make EC2 easier to use for number crunching and data analysis tasks. While the typical Web serving stack (database, middleware, Web server) is designed to be reasonably memory-efficient, brute force data processing tasks often see substantial gains from large amounts of memory.
Second, Amazon now offers its cheaper Reserved Instance pricing to Windows nodes. Reserved Instances reduce the per-hour pricing in return for a commitment to pay for a reserved instance for one or three years.
Amazon says that the Reserved Instances have been offered as a result of customer demands. A willingness to pay for one or three years up front shows that customers clearly want to commit to EC2, at least for the medium term. With Microsoft's competing Azure service recently coming online for paying customers (Azure payments started at the beginning of the month), this commitment is sure to be welcomed by Amazon.
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Google, T-Mobile sort of explain Nexus One ETFs to Uncle Sam
All responses are in to the Federal Communications Commission's probe of the big wireless companies' controversial early termination fees—the penalty you pay if you drop a wireless service before your contract expires. These include replies from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. The Verizon headline is that the company has shaved down the size of some of its $350 ETFs. But since the most interesting questions were directed at Google and T-Mobile's $550 double-whammy ETF system for the Android based Nexus One, we'll start there first.
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Microsoft Asia prototypes fancy new inductive charging pad
Microsoft has applied for a neat patent for a smart inductive charger (via Being Manan). Inductive charging, used, for example, in the Palm Pre's Touchstone, allows for contactless charging of devices in close proximity.
The charger couples inductive charging with an LCD screen that can be used to show off "weather conditions, sports scores, news headlines, and/or other selected items" through a wireless connection to a PC. More useful, I would think, would be some indication of the charging status of the device.
Apparent pictures of a prototype of the device have emerged. Though we can't be certain that it uses the patented technology, the prototype is all but identical to the design shown in the patent, suggesting that development is quite far advanced. The prototype is shown charging a wireless mouse. This seems a rather mundane use for such a fancy charger, and the thing is rather smaller than might be expected—the mouse covers the LCD screen when it's on the charger, which renders it all a bit useless.
A larger device that could be used to charge a range of devices (mouse, Windows Phone, some future Zune) would seem a lot more compelling—a one-stop charging shop for all your wireless Microsoft gadgets.
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"Spying" school agrees to preserve evidence in Laptopgate
The school district responsible for allegedly "spying" on a high school student in his own home has agreed not to remove webcam images from any of the 2,300 student-issued MacBooks. In the meantime, both the ACLU and EFF have spoken out about the incident that has gotten privacy advocates up in arms, and a number of parents have begun weighing in on the controversy that may, in the end, be all thanks to a bunch of mistaken candies.
The Lower Merion School District (LMSD) was issued an order by the Philadelphia Federal court on Monday barring the district from removing any possible evidence from laptops issued to students. Additionally, the court ordered LMSD to stop using the webcams to spy on students—something the district independently decided to do last Friday. The school agreed to both terms without an injunction, which the attorney representing high school student Blake Robbins applauded.
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feature: Cloud storage in a post-SQL world
Since the rise of the Web, SQL-based relational databases have been the dominant structured storage technology behind online applications. The past few years have seen the emergence of the cloud as a compelling environment for online application development, bringing true utility computing into the infrastructure pantheon. But the cloud and SQL do not mix well, and multiple efforts are now underway to offer viable alternatives to the venerable database. In this article, I'll review the forces that have led to this shift, and I'll argue that while relational databases are by no means doomed, they will soon be joined in the cloud, and possibly out-shined by, new non-relational database technologies.
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The victims of PC gaming DRM: one soldier's story
With companies like Ubisoft leading the way to a future where all PC games need to be in contact with their home servers all the time, one group is being particularly harmed by this movement: soldiers stationed in remote locations. Life on deployment is hard, psychologically demanding, and often lonely for soldiers missing their loved ones and families. Gaming is a popular pastime in American bases, but DRM can take that away.
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Microsoft patents automatic device pairing system
A recent patent application (via WMPowerUser.com) describes a system devised by Microsoft to enable automatic pairing of devices over short-range wireless connections such as Bluetooth and Wireless USB. After an initial manual pairing, say between a phone and a PC, the system would allow those devices to automatically pair with other related devices, such as a second PC.
The pairing mechanism would act as an alternative to the preexisting pairing mechanisms already built in to these protocols, and would require device support for both sides of the operation. Public key cryptography is used to securely share pairing information among different devices; that information might be transmitted via USB key, network connection or any other convenient method. The described system respects user identities, so merely pairing with a computer would not mean that anyone logged into the machine would be able to use an automatically paired device.
Scenarios in which suitably enabled devices would be useful are not too hard to envision. Having phones automatically paired to all the PCs you own is perhaps the most obvious example of when this would be useful, but more broadly, any peripheral could be used: headsets that you pair with your PC but also work automatically with your phone, mice that work with every PC you own, and so on.
Of course, filing a patent does not mean that this will ever materialize in any shipping product, and there's no indication thus far that this will form a part of Windows Phone 7 Series. That said, phones and PCs are probably the best-suited devices to this kind of technology as, being software-driven, they're the easiest to update to include this kind of extension. Seamless wireless syncing (Zune already performs syncing over WiFi, unlike the iPhone), including seamless wireless pairing, would certainly be another way in which Microsoft could distinguish its phone platform from the iPhone, and would enable the company to promote the more connected, less wired merits of Windows Phone.
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EU antitrust enforcers turn their eyes upon Google
The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into Google's business activities after complaints from three European companies. The companies, which offer services similar to Google's, believe that Google actively demotes their rankings in its search results because they are competitors. Google insists that it's just offering what users want: useful search results.
The companies in question are price-comparison site Foundem, a legal search engine called ejustice, and the now-Microsoft-owned Ciao! from Bing. According to a post on Google's own European Public Policy Blog, both Foundem and ejustice argue that Google tries to limit the success of the competition by keeping their search rankings low, and that Google does this on an algorithmic level.
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Windows Phone 7 Series to have three chassis
Remember that rumor from over a year ago that said there wouldn't be a Microsoft phone and instead claimed the software giant would push forward a chassis specification? Well, apparently there won't just be one chassis spec that phone makers have to match (or surpass) to be able to put Windows Mobile 7 on their device and get christened under Windows Phone 7 Series; there will be three. The chassis details come to us from the 40-minute Saturday's Frankly Speaking podcast (spotted by ZDNet). Here is the crux of the discussion by Microsoft Australia Developer Evangelist hosts Michael Kordahi and Andrew Coates:
We're talking about three form factors at this stage. There's going to be one available at launch, which is big touch screen, gigahertz processor, dedicated graphics chip. And only touch, no keyboard entry. Chassis two is going to be slide with a keyboard, so looking more like the Palm Treo, touch screen plus a Qwerty keyboard. Chassis three, I don't think we've released any data as about yet but they're the three in total we're going to have. Candybar? I'd say so.
Microsoft has been saying for ages that the company will be more stringent when it comes to the specs that its mobile partners need to adhere to once Windows Mobile 7 arrives. We know the upcoming Windows Mobile platform will have much tighter hardware requirements (a physical keyboard will be optional): at least four-point multitouch, GPS, FM radio, a high-resolution screen, accelerometer, and a 5MP camera. Microsoft will even be making sure the processor and GPU achieve certain performance standards.
Despite these Windows Phone 7 Series details, the company is still staying tight-lipped about specific requirements, so we'll have to sit tight to find out the exact specs for all three chassis (not the mention when exactly later this year Windows Phone 7 Series devices will start shipping to consumers). Three might seem like a lot compared to devices like the iPhone, but when you look at older Windows Mobile versions, or even Android, Microsoft is actually making a huge cutback.
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iPhone and Android biggest winners in mobile market in 2009
Though the overall mobile market is slowing—sales are down about one percent for 2009 year-over-year—a slight fourth quarter sales jump balanced the dips during the rest of the year. The good news is all in smartphones, as sales were up a whopping 41.1 percent for the fourth quarter and 23.8 percent overall, according to the latest data from market research firm Gartner. Nokia still commands large but declining chunks of smartphone and overall mobile phone sales, while iPhone and Android devices saw big leaps last year.
Overall mobile phone sales were down about 11 million units for 2009—perhaps good news for the growing concern about the contribution mobile phones make to the growing e-waste problem. Three of the top five vendors saw sales decline over the year, with Nokia down a couple points, and Motorola and Sony Ericsson seeing their shares cut almost in half. Samsung's share of the mobile phone market is up to almost 20 percent, and LG bumped up a couple points to 10 percent. Gartner told Ars that Apple doubled its share of the overall market from 1.2 percent in 2008 to 2.1 percent for 2009, though it wasn't enough to put it in the top five.
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Apple releases, pulls iPad SDK beta, camera hints inside
Apple released a third beta of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK on Tuesday afternoon, the version of the iPhone OS that is exclusively for the upcoming iPad. Apple later pulled beta 3, but not before several developers had downloaded it. Now, a couple details have surfaced, including more references to camera compatibility.
The latest version of the beta includes resources to help developers build applications that will run on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Developers can include code specific to each device as a "universal" app, enabling them to release one app for all platforms if an app is destined for all three devices.
The new SDK also includes a Photos application for testing via the iPad Simulator. That app can automatically access camera hardware if it is present, and offers an interface like that previously uncovered inside the Contacts app. Though Apple didn't show off an integrated camera when the iPad was introduced, the system-wide capabilities to use a camera suggest Apple either is keeping the feature to reveal when the iPad ships or plans to build one into a future version.
Furthermore, numerous references to video chat capabilities have been discovered in the SDK's telephony frameworks, including requisite functions to enable the capability as well as icons for buttons to begin and end a video call. These inclusions hint at a possible front-facing camera for future iPhone or iPad models.
Documentation for the third beta also confirms that Apple's A4 processor includes a GPU core based on Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX technology, the same used in the latest iPhone 3GS and third-gen iPod touch models. An earlier rumor claimed that it used an ARM-based Mali GPU core.
Apple hasn't explained why the beta release was pulled from distribution shortly after it became available via the Apple Developer Connection, though some who downloaded it said that it contained a "major bug."
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iPhone developer consolidation stirs fears among fans
iPhone publisher and developer ngmoco has acquired long-time Mac software developer Freeverse, according to Freeverse's website and Twitter feed. While terms of the deal are unknown, it appears that Freeverse will continue doing business as an independent entity with its current management.
Freeverse has been a mainstay in the Mac software world since before the days of Mac OS X and has published numerous games, utilities, and productivity software for the platform ever since. The company has also published for Windows, as well as XBox 360 Live Arcade. In recent years Freeverse has also published for the iPhone OS where it has seen moderate success with its 25+ applications, the most popular of which are the Flick series of games and Skee-Ball.
While ngmoco has been around for considerably less time, the company has approximately 15 titles for the iPhone OS, including popular games like Rolando and Topple, and has most recently created a "premium social play network" called plus+. ngmoco was formed by former Electronic Arts executives in 2008 and offers both free and paid applications that almost universally make use of in-app purchases, a feature Apple made available to developers when it introduced version 3.0 of the iPhone OS SDK.
While claims have been made that the deal won't effect Freeverse, it seems likely that there will be at least some changes. The company will no doubt be hard at work incorporating plus+ into its existing catalog of iPhone games and also including more in-app transactions in its offerings. Fans of the longtime Mac company might end up disappointed if more of ngmoco's focus shifts to the iPhone and the company's Mac, Windows, and console software is left for dead.
Regardless, the acquisition means that two medium-sized developers for the iPhone are now one larger fish in the App Store sea that is becoming more inundated each day by 40-foot sharks. We can only hope that a group of investors doesn't turn Freeverse into just another iPhone company.
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Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time
We'd like to think of ourselves as dynamic, unpredictable individuals, but according to new research, that's not the case at all. In a study published in last week's Science, researchers looked at customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time. These findings may be useful in multiple fields, including city planning, mobile communication resource management, and anticipating the spread of viruses.
It's not currently possible to know exactly where everyone is all the time, but cell phones can provide a pretty good approximation. Cell phone companies store records of customers' locations based on when the customers' phones connect to towers during calls. Researchers realized that taking this data and paring it down to users who place calls more frequently might allow them to see if they could develop any measure of how predictable human movements and locations are. The users they worked with placed calls an average of once every two hours, connecting to towers that cover an area of about two square miles.
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Intel victim of cyberattacks at the same time as Google
Intel was also a victim of a cyberattack at the same time as the high-profile attack on Google, adding it to the list of companies allegedly targeted by Chinese hackers. The company revealed the information Tuesday in its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, noting that the attack could harm Intel's business operations if any intellectual property was stolen.
Intel didn't reveal much more in its filing except to say that a "sophisticated incident" occurred in January, "around the same time as the recently publicized security incident reported by Google." The company said it's investigating the incident, but warned investors that it may not be fully aware yet of the magnitude of what happened. If valuable data was stolen—the company won't say flat out that it has or hasn't been—then it could affect Intel's ability to compete in the market.
What Intel did not say in its filing was whether the attacks came out of China, but it stands to reason that Intel was likely one of the 30+ other companies affected by the China/Google attacks. Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy was very careful, in fact, not to imply much of anything about the situation. "The only connection between what we saw in January and the attacks on Google is timing," Mulloy the New York Times, adding that the attacks weren't as broad as the ones described by Google. Because the company is subject to these kinds of attacks fairly often, it may well be coincidence, but we suspected it isn't.
Intel's filing comes just days after US researchers revealed that they discovered the programmer responsible for the code used in the Google attack. Without releasing his name (or their own, for that matter), the researchers said that the programmer in question was not responsible for carrying out the attacks, and that he was just a freelancer who happened to be working with the Chinese government. But, as various security experts have pointed out, further research into the origins of the attack won't be possible without the cooperation of the Chinese government, which has been difficult—to say the least—to obtain thus far.
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Intel, VCs to replenish innovation pipeline with wad of cash
Intel has announced a $3.5 billion plan to boost US job growth and innovation by investing alongside 24 of the country's top venture capital firms in industries like bioinformatics, clean technology, and IT. The program also includes a commitment by Intel and 17 other tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Cisco, CDW, Dell, and others, to increase their hiring of US college graduates.
The overall plan has been dubbed the "Invest in America Alliance," and Intel itself is putting up $200 million of the total, with the other VC firms pitching in the rest.
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Apple VP attempts to explain double standard for risqué apps
Apple recently began purging over 5,000 "overtly sexual" apps from the App Store after customer complaints caused Apple to reverse a policy that had allowed such apps to be approved. The New York Times recently asked Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, to explain the reasoning behind the decision, and he says that it's all about the children. However, there might be a double standard if you are an "established brand" such as Playboy or Sports Illustrated. The uneven application of constantly changing standards is a problem for developers and users alike, and continues to be a thorn in Apple's side.
Originally, Apple tended to fall on the side of banning anything from the App Store that had sexual overtones, including e-book reading apps that could potentially access a text-only version of the Kama Sutra. Apple extended Parental Controls to the App Store with iPhone OS 3.0, and the policy became more lenient on apps that were rated 17+. However, it was later discovered that children could access apps that sometimes had salacious descriptions and screenshots, even if they couldn't actually buy them.
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Add billions of mobile phones to the world's e-waste problem
With the great global surge of mobile gadget use has come a tsunami of cell phone garbage, the United Nations warned on Monday—especially in India and China. And that's on top of tidal waves of computer, video receiver, and kitchen electronics junk skewing about the planet in all the wrong places. All in all, global e-waste is growing by 40 million tons a year, a study by the UN's Environmental Programme concludes.
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Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero patent claims tested
Activision Blizzard has made, by most accounts, a boatload of money on the Guitar Hero franchise. Now a group is claiming that Activision falsely advertised the games, including DJ Hero, claiming that it had patents pending notation when there weren't patents being applied for, and for listing patents not connected with the products. With a possible fine of up to $500 per product sold, a finding of wrongdoing could be very expensive.
"Essentially, PCG [the group filing the action] is claiming that the scopes of the patents with which Activision's video game products are marked do not cover the methods or systems of the actual products," PatentArcade wrote in its coverage. "In addition, where Activision has marked products with 'patent pending' or 'patent applied for,' PCG's position is that none of Activision's patent application has a potential scope of protection which would cover any aspect of the specified video game products."
With a few billion dollars in the bank and no debt, it's a safe bet that Kotick and Co. have the ability to fight off claims this nebulous. "Activision may avoid liability if it is able to sufficiently prove that it had a reasonable belief that the articles were within the scope of the patents with which the product were marked," Patent Arcade explained. Looking over the patents listed, which include "Turn-table adapter capable of being attached to a game device and portable game device using the same" and "Method and apparatus for simulating a jam session and instructing a user in how to play the drums," that reasonable belief should be easy to show.
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Heavy Rain is out today: some tips on playing
Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3 is out today, and if you're on the fence about buying it, you can read our spoiler-free review of the game. We gave it a rent, but if you love story-based games and have some patience for the first few hours... we think you're going to enjoy what the game has to offer.
Heavy Rain is very different than most games, however, which is why it may be worthwhile to share some tips on how to play the game to get the maximum enjoyment out of the experience.
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YouTube to kill IE6 support on March 13
Over six months ago, Google announced it would start phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 on Orkut and YouTube, and started pushing its users to modern browsers. The search giant has now given a specific kill date for old browser support on the video website via a page on Google.com titled Solve a Problem: Upgrading your browser:
Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won't work in older browsers.
As you can see in the screenshot above, YouTube will have an interstitial appear when users on older browser try to watch a video on YouTube. Google says the interstitial will show up indefinitely every two weeks until the user upgrades to the most recent version of their browser. Google deems anything below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0 as an "older browser." Users on these browsers will still be able to watch YouTube videos, but additional features that Google plans to roll out may not be supported in these older browsers.
Late last month, Google announced it will end old browser support for Google Docs and Google Sites on March 1, 2010 and earlier this month, the company announced it would start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar by year end. Google is pushing both enterprise and consumer users towards newer browsers on all its Web properties.
Google's stance on IE6 varies from Microsoft's because the search giant does not need to support Windows XP, the operating system with which IE6 first shipped, as long as Redmond (which will support XP and IE6 until April 8, 2014). Microsoft, on the other hand, which has stated time and time again that it wants to see IE6 disappear as much as anyone else, refuses to force anyone to upgrade (though it's worth noting that the software giant's Office Web Apps won't support IE6 either, just like Google Docs) and says the decision is ultimately up to the user.
Microsoft is trying to push users to upgrade by touting IE8's many features over IE6, particularly in the area of security. So far, this has worked relatively well, as IE8 is the most popular browser, although IE6 is still used by about 20 percent of surfers worldwide, according to NetApplications.
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feature: Case closed: why most of USA lacks 100Mbps 'Net connections
Excitement about the approach of the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, due March 17, is inspiring ever more dramatic calls for greater high-speed Internet connectivity in the United States. This month, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski declared that the agency wants 260 million Americans hooked up to 100 Mbps broadband by 2020. Not to be outdone, the Media and Democracy Coalition says that by that same year consumer access to "world-class networks" should equal the present rate of telephone adoption (90%+).
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First Bioshock 2 DLC detailed, more planned
2K Games has postlaunch plans for Bioshock 2 it refers to as "aggressive," and the first set of content will be an expansion of the multiplayer portion of the game. Coming in March, the "Sinclair Solutions Test Pack" will give fans even more to do online.
The content will raise the maximum rank to 50 with new Rank Rewards. It will also introduce two new playable characters, 20 new trials, a third weapon upgrade for each weapon, and five additional masks. Some of this content will only be available to players above rank 41.
The cost for all this content? 400 Microsoft points, or $5. If you're more of a fan of the single-player game, don't worry: you'll get new content as well. "In the coming months, 2K Games will also be publishing downloadable extensions of the single player experience that provide new insight into the world of Rapture," 2K Games announced. "These packages will include more narrative, new tools and new challenges that extend the lore and fiction of the failed Utopia under the sea."
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NVIDIA's Optimus is primed for new Apple MacBooks
Launched earlier this month, NVIDIA's Optimus is a clever solution that could, and probably will, completely turn around NVIDIA's fortunes in the mobile space. It's also extremely likely that, as a new rumor suggests, the technology will make an appearance in the next revision of Apple's MacBook line of portables.
In a nutshell, Optimus allows seamless, invisible switching between Intel's still-anemic integrated graphics processors (IGPs) and NVIDIA's popular discrete mobile GPUs. On an application-by-application basis, the NVIDIA graphics driver decides if the app can benefit from GPU acceleration and, if it can, it hands off the rendering work to an NVIDIA GPU that sits on the PCIe bus. This behind-the-scenes handoff happens without any user intervention, and without so much as a flicker on the display.
It's likely—actually, I would say it's certain—that Apple will adopt Optimus across its MacBook line as it updates the portables to include the latest round of Intel mobile processors, which feature an IGP and northbridge chipset in the same package as the CPU. Apple's alternative would be to ditch Intel and go with an AMD/ATI platform; this is beyond unlikely.
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