Google gifts Nexus 7 prime advertising spot on homepage

Google really wants you to buy a Nexus 7 tablet. No, I mean really really. So much so it has gifted the device a prime advertising spot on its homepage.

The Nexus 7 is Google’s first own-branded tablet. Built by Asus, it’s a 7-inch powerhouse running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It’s not perfect, but the reviews have been very positive thus far. This isn’t surprising as it only costs $199, half the price of the iPad 2, and a full $300 less than the entry-level, Retina Display-boasting new iPad.


Google has already been promoting the Nexus 7 through television commercials and ads across the Web, but it has now brought it home. Literally. As first noted by CNET, the Nexus 7 is now popping up on the Google homepage for some people. This is prime advertising real estate, being one of the most-trafficked pages on the Web.

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Google has sought to promote its own products by utilizing its homepage, that distinction goes to the Motorola/Verizon Droid. The Nexus phones and Chrome have also appeared on the Google homepage in previous years. However, these efforts were primarily text-based, while the Nexus 7 enjoys an eye-catching animation.


Google usually keeps its homepage free of clutter in a quest to retain its minimalism. This is excluding the iconic Google logo and the doodles which take its place at random times throughout the year. But advertising is usually off-limits, especially advertising of a visual nature. The Nexus 7 pops its head out of the page several times before emerging under the tagline, ‘The playground is open. The new $199 tablet from Google.’ This links to the 8GB version on Google Play.

The timing of the ad is interesting, coming some time after the Nexus 7 originally launched, at the same time as it became available in several more countries, and just a matter of weeks before Apple is expected to unveil the iPad Mini. It’s at that point that the real battle of the tablets will begin.

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Samsung Windows 8 machines come with free Start key

Samsung has unveiled three new Windows 8 machines with the innards fitted in a touchscreen monitor rather than a desktop unit. We’d say it’s reminiscent of an iMac, but that might be a touchy subject at the moment.

The three computers will debut in October and come with a mouse and keyboard but no touchpad: users will have to rely on the screen to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch features. They are technically part of two different ranges, the Series 5 and Series 7.


The Series 5 machine is 21.5 inch and costs $749. The Series 7 options are 23 inches for $1,099 and 27 inches for $1,699. (Yes, that’s the same 27″/$1699 as the iMac, but seriously, don’t go there.) The specs scale appropriately: the 23 inch has 6GB of memory while the 27 inch has a better processor and 8GB.

Innards aside, the thing that may stand out the most is actually a tweak Samsung has made to Windows 8 itself. Right there at the bottom of the screen is a custom “widget” officially known as the S Launcher.

The widget has two parts. One icon labelled “Start menu” is indeed a replica of the feature that’s disappeared with the “new and improved” Windows 8. As with the old Microsoft feature, you click on this, start typing a term, and the relevant settings and applications show up. The second icon is a gear and brings up settings options, making it the equivalent of the control panel.

You can also drag application icons to the widget. They’ll then remain there until you remove them, allowing the widget to act as a launcher. That’s a launcher and definitely not a dock, OK?

So yeah, Samsung has indeed tried to turn the potential hybrid mess of Windows 8 into a usable and practical machine, and wouldn’t you know, the results don’t half have an appley taste. Let’s hope for Samsung’s sake that this time the lawyers take it as flattery.

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Robotic Shark looks for lost ships in the Arctic

A University of Victoria (UVic) team will use an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to look for ships lost 167 years ago in the Arctic. The ill fated Franklin expedition went down in 1845 looking for the Northwest Passage.

According to the University of Victoria in Canada, the two missing ships are called the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. All 129 crew members were lost. According to the CBC, the ships were outfitted with advanced technology for their time period.



Franklin’s vessels, the Erebus and the Terror, were outfitted with steam engines, desalinators, iron plates over their wooden hulls, and propellers and rudders that could be retracted to prevent ice damage.

Fast forward to 2012 and UVic will be using some of the most advanced technology of our time to look for the doomed vessels. The AUV is called “Mano” which means shark. It has a side sonar which will help its handlers identify items on the sea bottom and chart the region.


“Among the challenges, will be navigating the torpedo-shaped vehicle in the northern waters where the magnetic field is erratic,” says research engineer and team leader Alison Proctor. “That’s an integral part of our navigation system and these are uncharted waters, so we are uncertain what to expect.”

The Mano will be controlled by team members in a “16-foot boat that will be launched daily from a Canadian Coast Guard vessel and a research vessel provided by the Arctic Research Foundation”. They will spend 12 to 14 hours a day in the boat. The actual sonar pictures won’t be seen until the end of the day when the AUV resurfaces and the pictures can be downloaded from the Mano’s onboard computer.

No one knows exactly where the two ships went down so this years expedition may not be successful, but even if it is not successful, it will rule out at least one section of the Arctic for future trips. If the trip is successful and one or both ships are found, this is just the beginning of the exploration.

Once the ships are located by sonar, another expedition will set out to get actual footage of the ship or ships using another type of submersible equipped with a camera. The final step will include sending divers down to the wrecks for a closer look.

Best of luck to the researchers. May seas be calm and the wind always at their back.



The above photograph is of:

UVic Research Team
A team of UVic researchers are traveling to the arctic this summer to help Parks Canada locate Sir John Franklin’s lost ships. Pictured from front to back are UVic research engineers Emmett Gamroth, Alison Proctor and Jeff Kennedy.
Photo by: UVic/Bluefin

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Joel Tenenbaum pays for music piracy

Joel Tenenbaum, one of the few people caught sharing copyrighted content online who decided not to pay up to make it all go away, has been told to, well, pay up.

According to BBC News, in 2005 Joel Tenenbaum, then 16-years-old, was accused of file-sharing and hit with a fine of $5,250 for seven songs. He offered $500 but was declined. In 2007 the case went to court for the first time. Damages of $675,000 were eventually awarded to the music labels who sued Tenenbaum for the 31 songs he now admitted to having downloaded, but he requested a new jury trial.


Today that request was denied, with District Court Judge Rya Zobel affirming the penalty. The judge also saw fit to add an extra verbal admonishment, stating in the judgment [PDF link], “There was ample evidence of willfulness and the need for deterrence based on Tenenbaum’s blatant contempt of warnings and apparent disregard for the consequences of his actions. In spite of the overwhelming evidence from which the jury could conclude that Tenenbaum’s activities were willful, the award of $22,500 per infringement not only was at the low end of the range – only 15% of the statutory maximum – for willful infringement, but was below the statutory maximum for non-willful infringement.” Well, that makes it OK then, I guess.

Should Tenenbaum have stopped doing what he was doing when he was warned against it? Yes, of course. But does that continued infringement on copyrights, willful or otherwise, justify such a huge cash amount in damages? Most right-thinking people would say no. It doesn’t matter that it’s a lot less than the maximum that could have been awarded, it’s still too much for the crime that has been committed.

The maximum is absolutely ludicrous, as Tenenbaum would have been hit with a bill for several million dollars had the jury truly taken against him. But $675,000 is still a sum of money that means Tenenbaum will be in debt for the rest of his life, barring some miraculous lottery win. And all for downloading and distributing just 31 songs.

The RIAA sees this as a glorious victory, but what does it really achieve? Tenenbaum has had his life ruined, but the money is small change to those organizations who’ll (eventually, some day, maybe) receive it. And I can guarantee this verdict won’t do a thing to put anyone else off sharing content online. It just makes the RIAA look bad, and the record companies look greedy and incompetent. Victory!

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German law firm to name and shame “porn downloaders

A law firm in Germany is to begin publicly naming Internet users it believes have infringed copyright by sharing hardcore pornography without permission. A company insider says Urmann will start by targeting those users most likely to be embarrassed by such publicity, though officially its denying that claim.

Urmann mirrors the tactics of law firms in other countries by writing to alleged copyright offenders and asking for a settlement fee to avoid court action. In this case the fee is €650 euros (approx US$815.)


Whether the recipients have genuinely breached copyright isn’t clear. In similar situations in other countries, large numbers of the recipients deny the claims. That’s prompted suggestions that law firms are unlikely to proceed with legal action and are simply relying on a proportion of recipients being frightened enough to pay up.

Urmann now says that from 1 September it will begin publishing details of some of the people on its list of alleged offenders. This list could have as many as 150,000 people on it.

Some reports quoting an insider suggested that the firm would prioritize customers whose IP addresses corresponded to a church, police station or an embassy of a Middle East country: all workplaces where being publicly linked to hardcore porn would be a particular embarrassment.

The company has said this isn’t the case and it will instead prioritize those people accused of downloading the most content.

The legalities of such a tactic are unclear. Urmann believes it is legal because of a German court ruling that said law firms to publish the names of their clients’ opponents as a promotional tactics. However, that seems to be designed more for dealing with corporations (“Hire us because we took on Megacorp!”) and might not hold up for naming private individuals.

There’s also the question of what happens if the company falsely names somebody who hasn’t downloaded any material, which sounds like a recipe for a defamation suit.

In practical terms, Urmann may only be able to carry out its naming and shaming for a few people and hope that puts fear into the rest. Once it does publicly name somebody, they’ve got much less incentive to pay up rather than sit back and wait to be sued.

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Star Wars-style speeder bike tested

A speeder bike just like those seen in Star Wars, you say? I’ll take two, and pay any price you care to name.

I would hope that, as geeks, everyone reading this will have seen the Star Wars movies at least once. The original trilogy, not the prequel trilogy, of course. Those who haven’t seen George Lucas’ opus should go do so immediately. And everyone who is left is free to get really excited over the news that someone, somewhere is succeeding at turning the speeder bike into a reality.


That someone is a company called Aerofex, and the somewhere is California. Aerofex has been developing the vehicle for some years now, but an early test in 2008 saw the contraption crashing into a tumbleweed and catching light. The brave pilot came away with burned hands, while the team decided to head back to the drawing board in order to try again.

Four years on and the test flight went a lot smoother. We know this because the company released video footage (embedded below) of what it calls the Tandem Duct Aerial Vehicle in operation in the Mojave Desert. While it’s clearly years away from production it’s mightily impressive this thing can even be maneuvered at all. And already I can see I’ll want one in the future.

Interestingly Aerofex isn’t talking these thins up as being speeder bikes from Star Wars, either now or in the future. According to Innovation Daily they’ve been conceived as unmanned vehicles, though I suspect that were they ever to become commercially available consumers and supply/demand would have the final bearing on that.

Some people are doubting the validity of the footage – understandable given the ability for anyone with even an ounce of tech-savvy to manipulate moving images in this day and age – but I believe it. And sure, there is still a lot of work to be done here, but compare footage of early test flights for planes with the reality of today and tell me it isn’t possible we’ll all be flying one of these around some day.

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AT&T defends FaceTime ban but convinces noone

AT&T has defended its block on iPhone users running FaceTime over its 3G network. It’s a decision that may follow the precise letter of net neutrality rules but certainly doesn’t pay much heed to the principle.

The comments come as the company announces it will let users run FaceTime over the phone network if they are on Mobile Share, its new plans that give a fixed amount of data across multiple handsets. Those on older plans, including those with “unlimited” data packages, are stuck with FaceTime being Wi-Fi only.


Bob Quinn, the AT&T official in charge of regulatory matters, says the block is perfectly within Federal Communications Commissions rules, meeting two specific requirements for mobile broadband firms. Firstly, he says AT&T is making its policies clear and open as required.

Secondly, he claims that restrictions on who can and can’t use an app, and in what way, are not relevant in this case because the rules only cover downloaded apps and not those that come preloaded such as FaceTime.

Whether that’s the case is highly debatable: there doesn’t seem to be any mention of a distinction between downloaded and preloaded apps in the regulations that the FCC has published.

Even if such a loophole does exist, it doesn’t change the fact that AT&T’s policy is a flagrant violation of the principle of net neutrality. If you’re on an older AT&T iPhone deal and you’re out of Wi-Fi range, you can use your Internet connection to visit Blorge as many times as you like, but you can’t make a FaceTime call. That’s a clear breach of the idea of treating all data the same and is about as valid as the Post Office charging extra to carry a letter written in French.

And while AT&T is indeed extending access to FaceTime over 3G, that arguably makes things worse. Before it was just a case of saying “Want to use FaceTime but not on WiFi? Screw you.”

Now it’s “Want to use FaceTime on 3G? Upgrade to a new contract that may well cost you more money and/or extend your commitment period.” That’s breaching the principle of net neutrality in order to make profit. And that’s bullshit.

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eBay tarot ban is on the cards

eBay is to ban users from selling tarot readings and similar services through the site. It’s been protested by more than a thousand people who apparently didn’t see it coming.

The change will take effect from 1 September and means the removal of several categories in the “Metaphysical section.” eBay has reiterated that many of the products that fit in to these categories will be completely barred from the site. They include ” spells; curses; hexing; conjuring; magic services; prayers; blessings; Psychic, Tarot, Reiki, and other metaphysical readings & services; magic potions; healing sessions.”


According to eBay, this isn’t a specific attack on all things spiritual, but rather a recognition that “Transactions in these categories often result in issues between the buyer and seller that are difficult to resolve.” That certainly makes sense given that it’s not exactly common for fortune tellers to give a refund if their predictions don’t come true.

The same logic is being used for a ban on selling home based businesses and information relating to wholesale lists and drop shipping. Anyone who persists in trying to list such services after the ban takes effect could have their accounts closed. Sellers can continue listing physical items billed as magical or spiritual as long as they have an intrinsic value such as with books or jewels.

Perhaps inevitably there’s already a petition against the changes, though it appears to be written under the impression that physical items are being banned if they contain “added value” (eg selling a jewel that has been “blessed”), which isn’t the case according to eBay. There’s also some concern among the spiritualist community that the policy could be extended to PayPal.

eBay is also dropping several advice and instruction categories such as computers, tutoring and diet. However, the relevant services can still be sold on the site, but will not longer have separate categories: instead they must be included under “Information Products” in the Classified Ad format.

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Vehicle viruses the next threat

Security firm McAfee has hired a man to break into high-tech cars. But fortunately Barnaby Jack will be working to combat rather than promote crime.

The hiring is an attempt to combat an unfortunate result of more vehicles getting high-tech automated systems: as with most computer equipment, they are prone to interference from hackers. Toyota and Chrysler are also known to be working on similar projects.


Exactly how serious that threat is can be disputed: Reuters quotes one source who claims that it’s possible to kill drivers by causing vehicles to crash, though there’s no evidence of such an attack ever happening.

Bruce Snell, who is heading McAfee’s work on car security, refused to rule out the possibility of hackers causing a crash: “I don’t think people need to panic now. But the future is really scary”

There are three main problems beyond the simple fact that autos are increasingly reliant on computer systems to monitor performance and manage features such as lighting. The first is that, with space at a premium, many such systems use wireless communication which opens them up to attack without the need for physical access.

One example of such a “back door” for hackers that has been used in a demonstration is the RFID tags used on tires to warn drivers when the tires are getting worn.

Secondly, automakers want to offer users the convenience of plugging in their own devices. That’s fine with a basic mp3 player, but once you get into smartphones you’re effectively adding an extra computer to the picture and possibly even internet access, both of which increase potential vulnerabilities.

Finally there’s the simple issue that automakers don’t specialize in computers and — as a very generalized whole — the industry doesn’t have as much experience in dealing with viruses and other security threats.

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Apple “most-valuable public company,” kinda

Apple has, by one measure at least, become the most-valuable publicly-traded company of all time. If you completely ignore inflation, that is. Which you cannot.

Many sites around the InterWebs are today reporting that Apple has broken the record to become the most-valuable public company that has ever existed. The claim is led by MacRumors, which states that with 937,406,000 outstanding shares at the time of its last quarterly filing, and with the share price hitting $660.73 today, Apple has a market capitalization figure of $619.17 billion.


This beats the previous record, held by Apple’s arch-rival Microsoft since 1999. At that time Microsoft had 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares when its share price hit $119.94. That resulted in a market capitalization of $618.89 billion. Et voila, Apple is now the new record holder and most-valuable company trading publicly.

Unfortunately someone forgot to add inflation into the mix, and doing so changes everything. Adjusting for inflation means Microsoft’s record from 1999 would be the equivalent of $842.5 billion in today’s money. So Apple is still more than $200 billion away from wresting the title away from Steve Ballmer and co.

This does throw up a number of different points of interest however. Firstly, I don’t remember anyone waxing lyrical about Microsoft and its potential to keep on growing in 1999 the way some people are doing about Apple now. If anything Microsoft’s fall from grace, which has seen the company lose three quarters of its market cap, should act as a warning against Apple and its supporters becoming arrogant.

Perhaps it’s more to do with the turnaround in Apple’s fortunes that has occurred more than anything. After all, it has gone from near-bankruptcy to where it is today under the guidance of the dear-departed Steve Jobs. And with a loan from Bill Gates to help set the ball rolling.

Lastly, it should be noted that there are several privately-traded companies much richer than Apple. That still doesn’t take anything away from this achievement, it’s just not quite as big an achievement as some headlines would have you believe.

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Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end

Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end

Remember the days when owning a BlackBerry phone was considered cool? Yeah, its hard but Research In Motion’s (RIMs) continued decline is getting worse. By the end of the year, it is expected that the number of phones with BlackBerry OS will be less than those sporting Windows Phone OS. That’s low. Windows Phone doesn’t even have to pick up much market share because BlackBerry is falling so fast.

According to Ars Technica, BlackBerry has already fallen to three percent, down from from just six percent at the beginning of the year. Windows Phone OS is currently sitting at one percent. What is sad is that even with Windows torpedoing further sales of its Windows Phone 7.5 handsets, BlackBerry is expected to slide to just one and a half percent of the market by December of this year. Windows is expected to pick up a bit because of the expected release of Windows Phone 8 devices.


Even though RIM’s market share is currently tanking that doesn’t mean that it will go the way of Palm, which effectively ceased to exist after finally releasing WebOS and being bought by HP. Bloomberg reported earlier this month, that like Palm, RIM is pinning its hopes on a much delayed new operating system called BlackBerry 10 and based on QNX software “used in cars, nuclear plants and military drones.” RIM is also hoping to be able to license its new OS while also building its own devices, a trend that seems to be catching on.

Bloomberg also reported that RIM hopes to license BlackBerry10 to more than the usual devices.


In Heins’s vision for RIM, the company will expand the scope of its devices beyond BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablets into other areas of mobile computing and what he calls machine-to-machine communications.

ZNET reported that another RIM was also expecting its new devices to be a type of “convergence device” that would span work and personal roles. So one phone might have two different cell phone plans while allowing you to switch back and forth between your work network and personal line. That could ultimately be a nightmare. Supposedly one side would be “sandboxed” from the other so that if you left the company they would only wipe one portion of your phone leaving your personal side in tact. With the general paranoia that most corporations exhibit, I can’t see them being content with that.

Whatever RIM has up its sleeve, it had better be something pretty amazing or that slide to one and a half percent may be thought of as the “good old days.”

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‘I Have 50 Dollars’ spoofs App.net

Whatever you think of App.net, I Have 50 Dollars should give you a laugh.

App.net, for those unaware, is the pay-for-access Twitter-alike from Dalton Caldwell (nope, I’ve never heard of him either) that recently raised $803,000 to get started. Some people – Robert Scoble, Matthew Ingram – are backing App.net very strongly, while others don’t see the point and are wondering whether it’ll remain vaporware for ever.


I guess in a world in which people will give hundreds of dollars to Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for products which could turn out to be useless or bogus then App.net makes perfect sense. But I’m not interested, personally. I suspect I’m in the vast majority too; ask people whether they’d be happy to pay for Facebook and see what reactions you get. Most would walk away.

I happen to disagree with the whole concept behind App.net. It’s effectively saying Facebook, Twitter, and all other social networks that rely on advertising as a business model suck. So let’s shun advertising and get users to pay up front for the service instead. No thanks. I’m happy with advertising paying for my social networking needs, and I never notice it anyway.

I doubt very much whether App.net will succeed in any major way. Mainstream users will never pay an annual fee for a service they can get for free elsewhere unless it adds a great deal of added value. The mainstream also cares little about advertising or privacy, otherwise Diaspora – which doesn’t charge for access – would be bigger than Facebook right now. And it isn’t.

Which leads us on to I Have 50 Dollars, an excellent satirical take on the App.net Silicon Valley circle jerk that is currently taking place. I Have 50 Dollars mimics the look and feel of the App.net ‘Join the movement‘ site perfectly, with the reworded tweets from backers pitched particularly well. The big difference is that I Have 50 Dollars isn’t asking for any money, it is instead suggesting those who can afford it donate to a worthy cause. Now that is something I can get behind.

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Reuters hacked yet again with bogus Middle East reports

News agency Reuters has been hacked for the third time this month. This time the culprits posted a bogus report claiming the Saudi Arabia foreign minister had died.

The first hack came earlier this month when a Reuters correspondent blog was hijacked and a fake interview with a leading Syrian opposition figure posted. It falsely claimed the Free Syrian Army was preparing to withdraw its troops after suffering heavy losses.


A couple of days later, a Reuters Twitter account dedicated to tech news was hijacked, renamed as if it were reporting Middle Eastern news, and then used to post more fake stories suggesting things were going well for the Syrian government and poorly for the opposition.

Rather bizarrely one of the tweets claimed that Hilary “Clinton vows ‘to make Egyptian [sic] pay a heavy price’ after being humiliated with chants mentioning moniker.”

The latest hack again involved the correspondent blog, which may be running on an outdated version of WordPress that has known security flaws. As of last week, the site was still running on version 3.11, which has been outdated since July last year. Reuters hasn’t commented on whether this played a role in either of the site hacks or if the offenders found another route in.

At the time of writing the blog section, which allows correspondents to write personal opinion pieces, was offline completely. A note said that the section was “encountering technical issues.” However, Reuters staff have confirmed a false article was posted and has now been deleted.

This time the bogus report said Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal had died. Though covering a different country, this report is consistent with the previous hacks as Saudi Arabia has spoken out in support of the Syrian opposition.

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Dish Network taking satellite broadband nationwide

People wanting premium TV services have often had to choose between cable and satellite. Now Dish Network thinks that choice should apply in the broadband market as well.

The company is said to be planning to extend its existing satellite broadband service nationwide. At the moment it links up with another firm, ViaSat, to provide service in a few areas. The plan now is to run a national network using a satellite from the fleet that provides its TV services.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 makes its debut but is it worth it

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 has finally appeared six months after its initial preview at Mobile World Congress (MWC). The tablet comes complete with an included stylus and the ability to give you a split screen view. You can watch a video on one half while taking notes on the other. Both provide some novelty and value but is it enough to justify the $499 price tag?

According to Engadget’s review of the new device, it certainly isn’t worth the virtually $500 price tag for the 16GB version. Yes, the Galaxy Note 10.1 has some nifty features but it also has some serious deficiencies. Those deficiencies are enough that the price is too high.


The tablet starts out with some rather nifty specs. It is the only tablet out at this price point with 2GB of RAM. It has a very fast proprietary quad core Exynos 4 processor running at 1.4 GHz. The devices multitasking capability is so far unsurpassed and its split screen ability is fantastic. The included S-Pen is a nice touch and the tablet includes several programs that make very good use of it.

In spite of these outstanding features, Samsung severely hamstrung the device with a several inferior specs. The camera is a middling 5 megapixel rear camera that takes poor pictures. The 1280 X 800 screen resolution is not enough to compete with the same priced iPad’s retina display or the new Asus Transformer Pad TF700’s 1920 x 1200 resolution. It comes with Ice Cream Sandwich and not the latest Android OS version of Jelly Bean. To finish it off, the Galaxy Note 10.1 has a cheap plastic build with creaks and squeaks.

Meanwhile Android Authority reports that you can get the Asus Transformer Pad TF700 with its Tegra 3 quad core processor, 32 GB of memory, superior screen resolution and build quality for $499. Techradar’s review of the top of the line Asus tablet talks about its excellent build quality, aluminum back, gorilla glass, 8 megapixel camera, excellent display and overall great feature set. Well except for the speaker which is on the back. For the money, at least at this moment, it looks as if ASUS has the better 10.1 inch tablet at the $499 price point. As always, visit your local gadget store and try them both out. Like with all devices, some of it comes down to personal preference.

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Piracy site owner jailed despite hosting no content

For many years operators of questionable video content sites assumed they are untouchable if they don’t actually host any copyright-infringing material. That assumption has proved incorrect in several countries, with theUnited Kingdomthe latest example.

Anton Vickerman, who operated the website surfthechannel.com, has received a four year jail term after a private prosecution. He was not convicted of copyright infringement itself, but rather conspiracy to defraud.


Sufthechannel was a directory of links to online videos, some of which were entirely legitimate while others infringed copyright. Vickerman made an estimated £250,000 (US$400,000) a year from selling advertising on the site.

Police raided Vickerman’s home in 2009 but did not press charges. However, they were controversially accompanied on the raid by members of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), a media industry body. FACT was allowed access to Vickerman’s computer despite the police dropping the case.

FACT launched a private prosecution against Vickerman that led to his conviction. His wife was charged with the same offense but found not guilty. The director general of FACT said “This case conclusively shows that running a website that deliberately sets out to direct users to illegal copies of films and TV shows will result in a criminal conviction and a long jail sentence”

The verdict came as a surprise to many given that the same “conspiracy to defraud” charge failed to gain convictions in at least two similar high-profile cases where sites linked to videos rather than hosting it. The charge is designed to cover cases of fraud that could otherwise slip through legal loopholes, though there have been previous concerns that it could see people convicted of behavior that is not criminal.

The sentence itself has also raised eyebrows. Had Vickerman been convicted of copyright infringement, the maximum sentence he could have received would have been two years.

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FTC: Facebook scammed app developers

The Federal Trade Commission has accused Facebook of ripping off app developers with a bogus verification scheme. It says the company may have made almost a hundred thousand dollars without actually doing any work.



The alleged trickery came with a program by which Facebook charged developers $375 (reduced to $175 for non-profit groups) to check that an app was “secure, respectful and transparent” and generally something that users could trust.


Those apps which passed the review process were allowed to display a green tick logo and were given priority treatment in both search results and directory listings.

The FTC says all was not as it seemed however: “Facebook took no steps to verify either the security of a verified application’s website or the security the application provided for the user information it collected, beyond such steps as it may have taken regarding any other Platform Application.”

According to the FTC, that means that not only was Facebook ripping off app developers, but misled users about the supposed security of the applications.

The details of the alleged scam emerged in the final settlement documents covering a range of Facebook violations including previously reported details that it misled customers about the way privacy settings worked on the site.

Facebook has now formally agreed the settlement. As a result it will now have to make several changes to its policies, including not changing the privacy levels on user data without getting express permission. The site will undergo independent audits of its privacy policies over the next 20 years.

The way FTC settlements work mean that Facebook is making no legal admission of any wrongdoing. If any of the app developers affected by the alleged scam took civil action, they could not use the settlement as evidence of Facebook’s wrongdoing.

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Google+ vanity URLs for celebrities, brands

Google has started rolling out vanity URLs to the biggest celebrities and brands currently using its Google+ social network. Whether us mere mortals will also be afforded the pleasure of being ourselves rather than a random series of numbers remains to be seen.

According to TechCrunch, Google has gifted Google+ vanity URLs to a number of celebrities and brands, including Britney Spears and Toyota. This comes just days after Web comic The Oatmeal was punked with a jokey vanity URL that was character-for-character the same as the one The Oatmeal author Matthew Inman jokingly referred to in a comic mocking Google+.


The reference to “vanity URLs” is a bit of a misnomer. It suggests the only reason anyone could or would want a personalized URL is that they’re vane. The truth is very different. Although I’m sure there are some people out there who would pick a URL for those reasons, most people would choose their actual name and do so purely to make it easier sharing their Google+ profile with others.

These new vanity URLs mean Britney Spears is now reachable on google.com/+britneyspears and Toyota is reachable on google.com/+toyota. The rest of us, who haven’t made crappy pop songs or who don’t sell cars, are still making do with google.com/randomseriesofnumbers … which is just stupid.

Right now I cannot see anyone even remembering the random series of numbers that makes up their URL, let alone them sharing it with someone else who would also need to remember it or write it down. But I bet you could now find Britney Spears’ Google+ profile without sneaking a peek at the previous paragraphs, assuming you have been paying attention to this point.

Facebook started offering vanity URLs in 2009, and pre-empted the rush by allowing its high-profile users to stake their claim in advance. I can only assume this is a similar move on Google’s part, but the company has yet to reveal its plans for mainstream users of the service.

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NASA’s Curiosity is in day 2 of a “brain transplant”

A “brain transplant” is what NASA is calling the multi-step software update that is taking place from August 10-13. Apparently, the Mars rover was and is going to have its software upgraded as needed. This ability to upgrade the software gives NASA a way to tune Curiosity’s software to the task at hand.

According to NASA during its first weekend on Mars the rover will be recovering from its own form of jet lag by having the software upgrade that should improve its driving and use of its robotic arm. Since the update will need to occur on both of Curiosity’s redundant internal computers, the upgrade will occur in a series of steps over the four days.



"We designed the mission from the start to be able to upgrade the software as needed for different phases of the mission," said Ben Cichy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., chief software engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. "The flight software version Curiosity currently is using was really focused on landing the vehicle. It includes many capabilities we just don’t need any more. It gives us basic capabilities for operating the rover on the surface, but we have planned all along to switch over after landing to a version of flight software that is really optimized for surface operations."

One of the main upgrades will be to its ability to “see” obstacles and choose a safe path around them. This will give the rover more autonomy.

While the rover is getting its current upgrade, scientists back on earth will continue to pour over the first photos from the rover to decide what parts of the Gale Crater to explore. Of course the first few weeks scientists will be testing out the various equipment on the rover to make sure that it is working properly. If not that could lead to more software changes.

Curiosity contains its own internal laboratory. The robotic arm is equipped with a drill and a scoop for taking samples of soil and rocks. The samples can then be separated into smaller samples for analysis on its different “analytical laboratory instruments”.

There is evidence that Mars was once a wet planet. According to Gizmag one of Curiosity’s primary goals is to search for any evidence of life that might once have existed on Mars.

Who knows, if this Mars rover longer than its original mission, as many of NASA’s projects have, then “brain transplants” could be occurring for quite some time to come.

Photo: Curiosity’s Self-Portrait, is courtesy of NASA.

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Streaming music helps Warners’ bottom line

Warner Music Group recently revealed its financial figures for the last quarter, and surprise, surprise, streaming music services are a growing source of income. And they’re only going to become a bigger piece of the pie from here on in.

The music industry was the first of the major content producers to be hit by the emergence of the Internet as a source for shared and sharing media files. It didn’t know how to react to this sudden threat to its business, and flopped around trying to make examples of certain websites and certain individuals in the hopes of scaring off everyone else. That didn’t work out so well.


It has now become clear that the music industry should have plowed all its time and effort into increasing the range of legal options open to consumers. If they had done so earlier then things would be much rosier for all concerned right now. It took the industry a long time to embrace these other options, especially streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora, but it finally gave in and accepted the inevitable.

Now, as the figures clearly show, the music industry is getting rewarded for its gamble, with Warner Music Group claiming 25 percent of its digital revenues from streaming services. This works out to around $54 million, roughly 8 percent of Warners’ total revenues for the period. This does include YouTube, but even so the numbers being touted are impressive.

The bottom line is that the way people consume music is changing. Less of us are buying CDs in stores, but a growing number of us are choosing to either purchase whole albums or individual tracks in digital formats, or listening to music legally on demand through subscription-based offerings such as Spotify or Rdio.

And then there is file-sharing, which will always exist no matter how much money and energy is wasted trying to curtail it. Give consumers fair legal options and they will likely take them. Those that don’t aren’t worth worrying about.

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Google’s employees benefit from death

Google has long been known for its very generous employee benefits. The company has from the start gone out of its way to keep its workforce happy and healthy, with the idea being that that happiness and healthiness contributes to productivity and consequently the bottom line. But it has now taken the idea a step further, in fact as far as you can take it.

In an interview with Forbes, Google Chief People Officer (Head of HR) Laszlo Bock revealed that Google now sees its employees OK even in death. If a U.S.-based Google employee dies while working for the company, his or her spouse of partner continues receiving a pay check – for 50% of their annual salary – for a further 10 years.


Furthermore, all stock held by the employee at the time of death is immediately vested, and any surviving children receive $1,000 every month until they reach 19 (23 if a full-time student). All of this comes without any special requirements, so the majority of Google’s workforce qualify as soon as join the company.

The writer of the piece suggests that this doesn’t offer any benefit to the company, but that isn’t strictly true. The biggest and brightest employees are hard to find and even harder to retain, especially in the cut-throat world of tech giants where companies will do everything they can to lure even the most-loyal worker away to pastures new.

In this context the motive for the after-death benefit becomes clear: it’s another way of Google tempting its workforce to stay put for the longterm. Interestingly the older employees are more likely to be swayed by such an offering, so we could see the mean age of Google’s workforce increasing. Either way it’s one hell of a good deal: giving Google another weapon to retain the best and brightest, Google’s employees enviable peace of mind.

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Google reads the writing on the wall

Google Translate is a clever piece of technology, as is Google Goggles. Stick them together and traveling aboard just became a whole lot easier.

The Goggles technology for Android handsets already has optical character recognition, meaning it can read signs, menus and other printed information, allowing features such as giving you reviews of a particular bottle of wine and food matching tips.


Now Google has had the brilliantly simple (in hindsight) idea of incorporating that with its Translate application. That means users can simply point their phone camera towards a sign or menu, click the camera icon then click screen, and finally use a brushing motion to highlight the text they want translated.

The translation is then available in both text and simulated speech forms. It’s also possible to have the text spoken out in the original language, the idea being this will help people who, for example, want to order something from a menu in the local language but aren’t sure how to pronounce.

At the moment the OCR function is available in Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. Aside from Russian, those all use the same Latin alphabet, albeit with a few additional punctuation symbols.

Google says it is working on other languages, so it will be interesting to see how quickly it can start recognizing Arabic and Chinese writing and how accurate and extensive that recognition is.

It’s not the first time Google has married other technologies with its translation tools. The company has previously worked on combining speech recognition, speech simulation and translation. The idea there is that eventually the whole thing will work quickly enough that two people could have a phone conversation without the need to speak the same language.

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Gmail messages to appear in Google search results

Google is working on including messages from your Gmail account in the results when you use its main search engine. While it could be useful for some, it will need incredibly careful handling to avoid further raising privacy concerns.

The company appears to be aware of the possible creepy image it could cause: even though anyone who thinks about it knows that Google is already searching your Gmail account whenever you ask it to, it could still be daunting to see the two sets of results mixed together.


Because of that, Google appears to be testing the user reaction as much as the technology in introducing the feature. For now at least it is an experimental feature that users must specifically go out of their way to activate. It’s also going to keep the Gmail results somewhat separate for now: they’ll appear in a column to the right of the main search results. The list will only show the sender and subject line, with the user clicking on this to open up the full message.

In time Google wants to add specific tools for particular type of information and display the results at the top of the main column. The first of these will be for flights: carry out a Google search related to flights and the system will check your Gmail messages for flight bookings, then list the flights along with any updated status information from the airlines such as delays or cancellations.

Personally I’ll be avoiding the feature as much as possible because there’s a major flaw in the way it works. At the moment, I’m happy for my wife to jump on my computer when she’s passing my office wants to check something quickly and it’s easier than firing up her own laptop or digging out a portable device.

Naturally I trust her not to take advantage of the fact that she could access my Gmail account if I’m still logged in (and frankly she doesn’t have much interest in its contents.) The problem now is that if she’s still dreaming of diamond earrings and carries out a search for the phrase, Google now seems intent on bringing up results that include the confirmation e-mail from the jewelers for her birthday surprise.

And yes, that is a hypothetical example. Sorry love.

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Filesharing site Demonoid in triple turmoil

As with Pirate Bay, it may always be too early to declare filesharing site Demonoid completely deal. But the site is currently unavailable and its operators have suffered three significant blows.

The first came last week when the site was knocked offline by a “massive” distributed denial of service attack. Who was behind the attack remains unclear: the motivation would be with law enforcement activities, though officially at least this isn’t the type of tactic normally associated with official bodies.


The site itself was physically located in Ukraine. It’s now confirmed that the second blow for the site came when the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs asked ColoCall to close down the site following contact from Interpol.

ColoCall says it complied with the request and allowed officials to take a copy of all data on the server for evidence purposes. It says it gave Demonoid several warning in the past that it had received complaints and might have to close the site.

The third strike comes with the news that Mexican authorities are engaged in a criminal investigation involving the operators of the site, one of whom is believed to have been based in Mexico at one point. One person has previously been arrested in Monterrey in relation to the site. Since the site closure, it’s emerged that it was this investigation that triggered the Interpol alert and in turn the Ukrainian shutdown.

There appears to be a political element to the events behind the shutdown. It doesn’t appear that Demonoid broke any laws within Ukraine itself and it made a point of blocking residents of the country from accessing the site. However, the Ukrainian government appears to have taken the tough stance to help shake the image of Eastern Europe as a harbor for piracy, most likely with the aim of boosting trade relations with the United States.

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Cash gambling comes to Facebook

A newly launched Facebook app will allow UK users to gamble with real money rather than imaginary credits. Facebook won’t say if it is taking a cut of the profits.

Bingo & Slots Friendzy is only available to players who are aged at least 18 and a credit card is needed to play. In effect the games are no different to those available on other British websites.


The main practical difference is that the app will post details of users playing the game or winning a prize on their timelines. This feature has been set up so that any posts relating to the gambling will not be viewable by people aged under 18. (Well, except for those who’ve lied about their age at some point in the past in order to get on Facebook in the first place.)

With no dispute that the operation is perfectly legal in the UK (albeit subject to regulation), launching the app but restricting it to British users should be an effective way to test whether the concept works on Facebook.

If it’s a hit, there’ll clearly be temptation to spread it to larger markets such as the US, a move that’s already under consideration by Farmville developer Zynga. The problem is that online gambling within the US itself is illegal and it’s still unclear exactly whether and how it’s possible to legally run a gambling site from outside US shores but allow American players.

Running via Facebook would add an extra layer of complication. At the moment Facebook is pointing out that it is simply offering a platform for the cash bingo game and has nothing to do with its operation. However, even if app developers found a legal workaround offering US gamblers gaming from offshore, Facebook might get cold feet about having any association with it, particularly now it is a publicly traded company.

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Anyone who has ever played one of the simulated farming games on Facebook knows that it can be hard to keep up with when you need to check back in to reap your crops or water your plants. Imagine a several thousand acre real farm with a variety of different crops in different fields and you can imagine the logistical issues that could, ahem, crop up. FarmLogs helps keep up with all the details and makes them easy to find for daily, weekly and monthly planning purposes.

The New York Times reported on the new program FarmLogs created by Jesse Vollmar, 23, and Brad Koch, 22, both graduates of Saginaw State University. Vollmar grew up on a farm in Michigan and decided their IT consulting firm could come up with a better way for farmers to organize all of their statistics, inventory, and crop information.


While computers have been used in farming for years, this program allows farmers to more easily coordinate necessary tasks. The program keeps up with what crops are planted where and when something happened to that particular field or crop. For instance, you can check with FarmLogs to see when was the last time you sprayed a particular field or spread a particular type of fertilizer.

The program is all kept in the cloud so you can access and modify information from anywhere. When visiting various fields, you can use your laptop, tablet or smartphone to access the program and update data. When you get back to the office you don’t have to worry about transferring the information on various field activities into the computer because it is already there and ready to use.


In one view, a farmer can see rectangular representations of what is planted on each field. A click leads to a log of what was done when on each field: tilling on this date, fertilizing on that date, spraying on another.

With the data stored in one place, it can be combined with information from other sources and used by the farmers. If they need, they can also share it easily with consulting agronomists, crop insurance agents, the Agriculture Department and others.

You can also get the latest weather report, locate farm equipment and note where it needs to go next all within the same program. You don’t have to worry about creating spread sheets because the program keeps everything organized and easy to find. You can also generate a variety of reports so that you can keep up with year over year comparisons.

Color coded schedules can be kept to keep up with what has been done and to plan what needs doing. If your farm staggers different crops for different times of the year, this calendar feature will allow you to keep up with what crops need what attention, which fields to lay fallow, where the next seasons crops need to be planted and when to plant and harvest each crop. FarmLogs might not revolutionize farming, but it certainly improves on the record keeping and organization. I wonder if there is a fantasy version for use on Farmville.

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Facebook admits to 83 million bogus accounts

You’ll often hear the statistic that if Facebook were a country, it would have the third biggest population in the world. Now it turns out that only 14 countries have more people than Facebook has fake accounts.

The revelation comes in Facebook’s latest regulatory filing. Since listing on stock exchanges, the company is required to tell stockholders about any mitigating factors to the measures of its success. Facebook has decided that the gap between the official number of accounts and the actual number of human users is significant enough to list here.


The shortfall is made up of three main categories:

4.8 percent of accounts (around 45.84 million) are believed to be duplicates where people have breached the site’s conditions by having two personal pages.

2.4 percent of accounts (around 22.92 million) are miscategorized, meaning that they are not for a human user and instead are for an organization, product or even a pet.

1.5 percent of accounts are dubbed “undesirable”, meaning they are used primarily for spam and similar purposes, rather than by a person wanting to represent themselves in a social network.

Facebook notes that these are only estimates, extrapolated from a limited sample. It also points out that calculating their figures involves a great deal of judgment in identifying a bogus account.

The company found there was a significant difference in the distribution of bogus accounts, with comparatively fewer in developed countries and comparatively more in developing markets. That backs a BBC investigation earlier this year that found clearly bogus accounts were far more prevalent in Egypt and the Philippines.

The real problem isn’t so much Facebook boasting about the size of its membership, but rather the threat of advertisers paying to get a certain number of clicks or “Likes” from users, only to discover a high proportion of them are from bogus accounts and thus won’t ever lead to sales.

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Facebook stock hits new low

When Facebook went public with an IPO in May each share cost $42. Now, each Facebook share is being traded at around the $20 mark. That has to smart.

On May 18 of this year Facebook was listed on the stock exchange with the opening price of $42.05 per share. Over the course of the day the price fluctuated between $38 and $45, eventually settling at just above the IPO price. In the week that followed its IPO the Facebook share price fell to $31, the week after to $27. There then followed a brief resurgence through the end of June and beginning of July before it once again started to drop. CNBC has all the gory details.


And so we come to today, Aug. 2, when the Facebook stock hit a new low of $20 per share. That’s a fall of 47 percent from the IPO price, and many analysts think there is more misery to come for early investors. The question now is how low will the price of Facebook stock fall before it bounces back?

There has been much mocking at the prospect of Facebook soon being worth less than the $44.6 billion Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for back in 2008. If the stock price hits $16 then Facebook’s market cap will be less than that. Oops. But that is just an aside to the main story, which is if and when you should invest in Facebook.

It all depends how you think the company is going to fare in the longterm. If you think it will flourish in the years to come then that sub-$20 share price could look very appealing. Some analysts claim Facebook will reach IPO levels again around the end of 2013, so if you can hang on that long there could be money to be made.

In the meantime there is more scope for a freefall in the price, with the number of shares in Facebook multiplying as lock-ups on stock sales by company employees begin to lapse. They will do so in August, October, November, and December of this year, before a final one in may 2013.

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Patent trolling could get costly

Patent “holders” who bring frivolous lawsuits could be forced to pay the legal costs of defendants under proposed legislation. A bi-partisan bill would apply to trolls and “legitimate” users alike.

The proposals would, if passed into law, become the “Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act” (or SHIELD.) The big difference is that a court would be able to force a plaintiff to pay defense costs if it decides the claim “did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding.”


Congressman Peter DeFazio said the bill was aimed at patent trolls who buy up patents and effectively scare legitimate businesses into making a settlement because they fear risking a million dollars or more in legal costs by defending themselves in court: “Patent trolls don’t create new technology and they don’t create American jobs… My legislation would force patent trolls to take financial responsibility for their frivolous lawsuits”

However, as ArsTechnica spotted, the precise wording of the bill doesn’t appear to restrict the measures to patent trolls. Even companies that are actively producing the product covered by their patent would still be affected if they brought a case deemed frivolous. That could risk deterring small firms who have genuinely been ripped off by major competitors from taking action.

Realistically there seems little prospect of the bill becoming law. Even leaving aside the struggle any bill faces to make it through the legislative process, SHIELD opens a tricky can of legal worms.

The bill is designed to cover software patents, but there’s some dispute about whether software can be patented rather than it simply being a case of code being copyrighted. As a very rough rule of thumb, lower courts are perfectly happy to hear software patent cases, while on the very rare exceptions that a case gets to the Supreme Court, it’s not yet established that software patents will hold.

That’s led to some awkward wording in SHIELD, which tries to define what a software patent is, without taking any legal responsibility for establishing that a software patent is indeed valid. If SHIELD did take effect, that would likely be a red alert for more creative lawyers.

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Anonymous fights trademark application

And the award for ‘Best Idea Of The Year’ goes to Early Flicker, a company trying to trademark the logo and slogan used by Anonymous.

Anonymous, for those who aren’t aware, is a disparate group of hacktivists which started out fighting the Church of Scientology but has since expanded its operations to support a free and open Internet and fight against large corporations. They’re loved by the people they stand up for, and both hated and feared by those they make trouble for.


Whatever your personal feelings towards Anonymous and their activities, it’s hard not to side with them in their latest fight. According to Forbes, a company called Early Flicker has applied to the Institut National De La Propriété Industrielle (INPI) for the trademark to the Anonymous logo (seen above left) and the slogan, “We are Anonymous, We do not forgive, We do not forget. Expect us.” Which is surely the height of both arrogance and madness.

Early Flicker has no hold over either of these Anonymous properties, and yet it’s trying to claim ownership in order to sell all manner of different products with the well-recognized logo and slogan on. The company is in fact already selling Anonymous-branded clothing, and I guess this trademark application is intended to stop any other company from doing the same in France.

Unsurprisingly this hasn’t gone down too well with Anonymous, which has launched Operation AnonTrademark in retaliation. Anonymous has vowed to shut down any online activities of Early Flicker and get the trademark application halted in its tracks. In a video posted to YouTube it also warned:


“Their [Early Flicker's] arrogance and ignorance of what they have done will not go unpunished. Anonymous will take down any business they have going on the internet and the ninety nine per cent will not stop until the registration has been revoked and a public apology has been made. The name of Anonymous will not be the whore of the world.”

I’m no expert on the rules regarding trademarks but you’d assume that someone seeking ownership over a name or logo would be required to, I don’t know, prove that they have a legal right to do so. This has to be classified as a mistake on all counts, and I fear the punishment meted out to Early Flicker will be harsh.

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Outlook to replace Hotmail

Microsoft says that a million people signed up to its new webmail service Outlook in the first six hours after launch this week. It will eventually be a complete replacement for Hotmail.

The new service is designed as a hybrid of the consumer-oriented Hotmail and the business-oriented Outlook, though is aimed mainly at consumers.


There aren’t any spectacular differences, simply because there’s only so many new ideas you can bring to webmail. The look and feel is based on the new Metro design that is the default look of Windows 8, which is certainly cleaner and more professional than Hotmail.

It’s integration with other Microsoft software where you’ll notice the most difference. For example, if you get an attachment with a Microsoft Office document, you can automatically bring up the web version of the relevant application. That means you’ll be able to open, view and edit documents without leaving the Outlook site.

There’s also a free hookup with Microsoft’s online storage service SkyDrive, with all new account holders getting 7GB of storage. And there’s integration with a range of social media services so that, if you really want to, you can make Outlook your one-stop shop for checking on updates from contacts and friends.

At some point Outlook will also integrate with Skype meaning you can, for example, respond to an e-mail by opening up a video chat without needing to open the Skype application and track down the other person in your contact list.

For now nobody is being forced to abandon Hotmail, though that day does appear to be in the plans. In the meantime, it may be worth making the switch by clicking on the new “Upgrade to Outlook.com” choice in the Hotmail Options menu. Doing so will give you first dibs on switching your existing user name from Hotmail to Outlook.

Unsurprisingly, the new service will be selectable as the default mail application in Windows hardware, including Windows 8 computers and tablets and Windows Phones.

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Apple & Samsung’s court battle begins

While many major portable gadget manufacturers have been engaged in patent wars for the past few years, most cases are either thrown out by judges, tied up in injunctions, or wind up in a pre-trial settlement. Not so for Apple and Samsung who today begin a full-blown trial in what Samsung is dismissing as a “fighting over rectangles.”

This particular case involves several claims and counterclaims, but the key is whether Samsung’s devices copy the look of the iPhone and iPad. Previous rulings have seen mixed results: Apple got a temporary sales ban on the original Samsung Galaxy Tab in the US, but its claims were tossed completely by a British judge (albeit with the logic that there’s no confusion because the Tab isn’t as “cool” as the iPad.)


The US case will now go before a jury that was selected yesterday. The case judge has already ruled that although the injunction made worldwide news, Apple lawyer’s can’t bring it up as an argument to persuade the jury that there’s something to their claims.

The matter at stake here isn’t simply whether Samsung violated Apple’s patents, but whether those patents were valid in the first place, and how they should be interpreted.

The Apple claim in the case certainly seems ambitious. For example, it complains that Samsung copied its design of having a black rectangular border with rounded corners and a flat upper surface, with minimal adornment on the border.

The problem is that while Apple’s design is always distinctive, what stands out is its simplicity and lack of unusual features. An Apple design is defined more by what it doesn’t feature than what it does.

It’s always hard to predict how a jury will react to a case, or exactly how the judge will rule on the interpretation of law. But in terms of real-life justice, it’s hard to see how anyone will have bought a Samsung Tab genuinely believing it to be an iPad, which in turn makes it hard to see how Apple has suffered substantial damage.

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Fish go to the ISS

The unmanned Japanese cargo ship, Kounotori3, delivered a freshwater aquarium to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday. The Aquarium known as the “Aquatic Habitat” or AQH for short, was built by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). A number of studies will be conducted on the Medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish it contains.

NASA and JAXA report that several of the studies to be conducted on the fish like “the impacts of radiation, bone degradation, muscle atrophy, and developmental biology” may lead to better understanding of human health issues back on earth.



"We think studies on bone degradation mechanisms and muscle atrophy mechanisms are applicable to human health problems, especially for the aging society," said Nobuyoshi Fujimoto, associate senior engineer at JAXA’s Space Environment Unitization Center.

According to Gizmag, the AQH actually has two chambers and has an advanced life support system that will circulate water, remove waste, and maintain constant pressure and temperature. The system even feeds the fish so the astronauts only need to watch the fish.


“In order to keep water quality in good condition for the health of the fish, we had to do many tests on the filtration system, especially the bacteria filter," said Nobuyoshi Fujimoto, associate senior engineer at JAXA’s Space Environment Unitization Center. "The special bacteria filter purifies waste materials, such as ammonia, so that we can keep fish for up to 90 days. This capability will make it possible for egg-to-egg breeding aboard station, which means up to three generations may be born in orbit. This would be a first for fish in space."

The Medaka fish is found in rice paddies in Japan. The fish and their eggs are transparent which makes studying the effects of zero gravity much easier. The experiment will take 90 days. Within that time frame it is anticipated that the fish will breed and the eggs will hatch. The genome of the fish has been mapped which will make it easy to tell if there is any genetic variation due to conditions in space.

The AQH is actually very versatile. While it is starting out as an aquarium, it can also be used as an amphibian habitat. For the foreseeable future, it will only be used to study fish. Amphibian experiments will be much further down the road.

Fish have previously been to space in rockets but never on the space station. This 90 day sojourn will be the longest fish in space study conducted. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, “So long and thanks for all the fish.”



Above photograph from NASA: The above image shows an Aquatic Habitat, or AQH, specimen chamber housing Medaka fish for study. (JAXA)

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Google launches ludicrously fast broadband

Google has officially launched a 1Gbps broadband service. And that’s not a typo.

So which city will benefit from this mega-fast (or rather giga-fast) service? New York? San Francisco? LA?


Nope, Kansas City. That’s both Kansas City, Missouri and it’s neighboring Kansas City, Kansas. The area is currently the only planned location for Google’s gigabit service and was chosen based on submissions from people in the city. Symbolically it’s a good pick: there’s a big enough population to make it viable, but it’s still got that heartland, anytown feel that suggests the service isn’t just aimed at major cities with existing tech communities.

The new service, Google Fiber, costs $70 a month. There’s a $300 installation fee, though it’s waived if you commit to a two-year deal. Customers also get 1TB of online storage.

Those who don’t want the high speeds can get a free 5Mbps service; with this deal the $300 is mandatory but can be paid in installments.

Customers can also opt for a combined internet and cable TV package for $150, again with either a two-year commitment or a $300 installation fee. Those who opt for this package get a DVR and a Nexus 7 tablet thrown in.

The services aren’t available to everyone in the cities right away. Instead customers can pre-order now and Google will begin installation in an area of the city (dubbed a fiberhood) when a certain level of the local population is on board. The working plan is that half of all areas (those with the most interest) should have the service by the middle of next year.

Of course, most customers won’t literally be downloading at 1Gbps right away. Those who use wireless networking around their home will hit Wi-Fi’s upper speed limits, while even those with Ethernet cables all over the place could hit barriers. (One solution may be using existing power lines around the home to carry the signal.) Users will also likely experience more situations where the speed they can download at exceeds the speed the server of the site they are visiting can deliver information

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Web giants form Internet Assocation lobby group

Four of the most prominent websites are among those forming a new lobbying group to promote Internet forms. Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google are the first known members of the Internet Association.

The public face of the group is Michael Beckerman, who comes with connections. He was previously an advisor to Fred Upton, the congressman in charge of the committee that deals with the Internet among other issues.


Officially the idea of the group is to have a more united and consistent voice when lobbying for Internet firms, with a principle of promoting ” public policy solutions that strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet.” Unofficially it may also be an attempt to cut costs or spend cash more wisely by avoiding the need for two firms to lobby hard on the same argument.

Beckerman says a full list of the Internet Association’s members and policies will be ready for September. At that point it appears the lobbyists will turn their attention to electoral candidates including potential congressmen.

All four firms known to have joined have increased their lobbying spending recently, with year-on-year rises between 10 percent (eBay) and 90 percent (Google), with a total spend of just under six million dollars between April and June.

It’s certainly true that the clout of these major firms may well lobby for measures that will be welcomed by many web users. For example, Beckerman has already indicated that such a group would have been better placed to fight proposed legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. The firms could also take on cable companies and other internet providers that want to limit net neutrality.

On the other hand, until we see a full list of members, it’s hard to know how representative this will be of the web as a whole. There’s a danger it could simply be a big boys club that becomes preoccupied with staving off any antitrust measures that stop major firms abusing their market position at the expense of smaller challengers.

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Google may avoid European court battle

The European Union has announced it is in serious talks to reach a settlement with Google in an ongoing antitrust case. The settlement would avoid a lengthy court case and the potential for large fines.

The case is similar in principle to questions raised by politicians and officials in theUS. It centers on two points: Google has a very large market share inEurope(estimated at 90 percent of searches); and Google appears to favor its own products and services when determining the order and prominence of search results.


Neither of these points is illegal in itself. The argument is that the combination of the two may constitute unfair, unreasonable or even unlawful behavior under European Union trading rules.

There are also claims Google took content from review sites without permission, that it blocks some rival companies from advertising on Google, and that it puts up technical barriers to make it harder for Google advertisers to take their campaigns elsewhere.

Google has now put forward a proposed settlement. The EU says there’s enough substance to the proposals that it is ready to discuss the technical details of how they would work. That, and the fact that the EU has gone public, suggests it is happy with the general principle of what Google’s offering.

There’s no word whatsoever on what the settlement might involve, other than the fact that it’s probably going to involve Google changing its policies rather than paying large penalties. The chances are it won’t formally admit to any wrongdoing as this could open it up to legal action from companies who believe their sites have been unfairly downgraded in Google rankings.

While it’s clear that Google would benefit from avoiding a formal judgment and potentially heavy penalties, the New York Times also notes that a settlement might be in the interests of the EU as well. It argues that by the time the case concluded, any changes the EU ordered might be irrelevant because the Internet world changes so rapidly.

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