If the file format does not become a standard, some governments could shy away from using Open XML — and therefore, potentially, Microsoft Office.

By J. Nicholas Hoover InformationWeek March 31, 2008 05:25 PM

After years of wrangling, Microsoft’s Office Open XML file formats are set to gain or lose approval as international standards. The ballots are in and being counted, but the world won’t know the verdict of the International Standards Organization until Wednesday.

The voting ended over the weekend, and it’s not clear exactly what is delaying the results. A total of 87 national standards bodies are voting. In at least one case, Steve Pepper, chairman of Norway’s committee on the approval of Open XML is reported to have filed a formal protest with his country’s yes vote, citing “serious irregularities” with the vote.

The voting process has been marked by jostling and sometimes open hostility on both sides of Open XML’s standardization, with Microsoft competitors like IBM repeatedly coming down hard on Microsoft and with reports of Microsoft’s heavy-handed lobbying for its format, including promising “marketing contributions” in exchange for votes in Sweden — a move that Microsoft later said wasn’t company approved.

If the file format does not become a standard, some governments could shy away from using Open XML — and therefore, potentially, Microsoft Office — in favor of something like Open Document Format, (ODF) which has already become a standard. However, Tom Robertson, Microsoft’s general manager for interoperability said in an interview, “most governments will come down on the side of choice.” The state of Massachusetts along with the countries of Switzerland and Denmark are among those that have said they’ll use either format.

Either way, Microsoft is pushing forward to get its formats used in more places. With Microsoft’s large market share in productivity software, Open XML isn’t likely to decrease in importance anytime soon.

Last week, for example, Microsoft announced that it would contribute to an Apache project that would let Open XML be used in Java apps. The formats have already been employed or supported in Apple’s iWork productivity suite, a productivity suite for Symbian mobile devices and a range of IBM products despite IBM’s efforts with its own ODF.

As Open XML moves forward, a few vital missing pieces need to be put into place. For example, there are no standard interoperability test suites available for Open XML. “It’s a real need,” said Robertson, who pointed out that Microsoft recently launched a Document Interoperability Initiative aimed at creating test suites and templates for forms that would be optimized for interoperability between Open XML and ODF.

Currently, Microsoft’s Open XML is a standard of ECMA International, where Microsoft is chair of the technical committee leading the standard’s development. However, Microsoft anticipates significant changes in the future course of the standard’s development if passed. Control of the standard will shift to ISO, where groups representing larger constituencies than in ECMA will be represented.

Microsoft has not yet said whether it will continue to use the standard version of Open XML for future releases of Office, and Robertson wouldn’t confirm its use in the upcoming Office 14. “I don’t know that there’s a company on earth that would say, into the future, we’re going to do X, Y or Z,” he said.

Article source- http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207000830&subSection=All+Stories

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Opera Software (News - Alert), a vendor of Web browsing products, has announced that Ten by Orange has launched its unlimited mobile Internet service, Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini.

Using Opera’s compression technology to process and compress Web pages by up to 90 percent before sending them to mobile phones, the Easy Web service is billed as letting Ten by Orange customers access the full Web, surf sites, mobile blog and social network on the go. Easy Web, powered by Opera Mini, will be made available on the HTC (News - Alert) Touch, Samsung SGH-F330 and fifteen other handsets in France.

A subsidiary of the Orange Group, Ten by Orange develops offers and services designed to bring mobile Internet products to the French marketplace.

“By partnering with Opera, we are able to provide our customers with a true Web browser which is fast, robust and keeps our delivery costs under control,” said Thierry Coilhac, COO of Ten by Orange.

Opera Mini officials claim over 39 million cumulative users. The tailor-made Opera Mini product for Ten by Orange uses a customized home page with full brand integration of the User Interface, home page control including search, modification of menu items, pre-installation, bookmarks and more.

Bringing the desktop experience to mobile, Opera Mini’s Small Screen Rendering reformats the Web page to fit inside the screen width, eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling. Alternatively, a new “Desktop mode” gives users a wider view of the page.

Orange is the key brand of France Telecom (News - Alert). FT serves more than 170 million customers in five continents as of December 31, 2007, of which two thirds are Orange customers. The Group had consolidated sales of 52.9 billion euros in 2007. As of December 31, 2007, the Group had 109.6 million mobile customers and 11.6 million broadband internet (ADSL) customers.

Last week Oslo, Norway-based Opera made Google (News - Alert) the default search engine in Opera’s mobile Web browsers. Opera Mobile or Opera Mini users can access Google’s mobile search directly from the browser start page.

Because Opera Mini targets feature phones that have traditionally possessed limited browsing capabilities, company officials say, users choose to download and install Opera Mini to their phones. These consumers tend to use the mobile Web more frequently and actively than consumers with more static, less dynamic mobile Web browsers.

Every month, Opera Mini users browse more than 1.7 billion pages, with much of that traffic generated through the search function in the browser.

Google has been the default search option on Opera’s desktop browser for seven years. This new mobile collaboration covers all global territories except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and includes all of Opera’s standard mobile Web browsers.

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera, said 2008 is “poised to be the year the mobile Web goes mainstream.” He noted that Opera Mobile has shipped on more than 100 million mobile phones so far, and that in 2007, more than 55 new phone models were launched with Opera Mobile pre-installed as the default Web browser.

Opera Mini is available completely free from http://www.operamini.com/. Opera Mobile is also available from http://www.opera.com/ in a free trial on select platforms. Google will appear as the default search engine for new and current users of Opera Mini as of March 1, 2008.

Earlier in February Opera Software announced the commercial release of Opera Mobile 9.5, its Web browser for phones.

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Microsoft has launched a bid to capture a segment of the growing market for rich web content on mobile phones.

The software firm has signed a deal with handset manufacturer Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones.

Silverlight is seen as a competitor to Adobe’s Flash, which is already used by popular websites such as YouTube.

The software will first be available on Nokia’s high end smart phones running a Symbian operating system.

Flash phone

Nokia’s S60 platform, which uses Symbian, will be the first to take advantage of Silverlight.

S60 is used in handsets built by LG and Samsung as well as Nokia and is the most popular smart phone software platform with more than 53% market share.

It is used in Nokia’s latest N96 phone, the successor to its popular N95.

Other handsets and internet tablets running different software will follow at a later date, according to the firm.

Silverlight allows designers and developers to produce rich web applications that are independent of browser, operating system and handset.

Microsoft has stressed its value for developing Web 2.0 applications that would work on a computer, but also on any other device including mobile phones.

The software enters a marketplace already dominated by Adobe’s Flash, and its recently launched Air product.

Flash is already on millions of mobile phones.

Adobe has agreements with 18 of the top 20 device manufacturers worldwide including Nokia.

And, according to Adobe, 450 million devices have been shipped with the cut-down version of Flash, known as Flash Lite.

Microsoft will hope to compete with this presence.

The firm is currently working on a version of Sliverlight for its own Windows Mobile software.

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By Esteban Panzera on the 05-02-2008

If you are looking to become a pro social media marketer or you are already one wanting to know more about it, I have compiled a list of 23 blogs that talk about social media marketing and are great places to learn. Of course mine is a must read too! (:P)

1.       ViperChill

2.       CopyBlogger

3.       Techipedia

4.       Social Media Optimization

5.       NowSourcing

6.       Soshable

7.       10e20

8.       SocialDesire

9.       Collective Thoughts

10.   ToprankBlog

11.   WignutSEO

12.   97thFloor

13.   SearchEnginePeople

14.   BlogStorm

15.   DoshDosh

16.   IgniteSocialMedia

17.   SearchEngineLand

18.   CornwallSEO

19.   SocialMediaTrader

20.   SocialNewsWatch

21.   SearchEngineGuide

22.   Muhammad Saleem

23.   ProNetAdvertising

This blog post was inspired by the “25 websites every seo should know” post by SEO Unique

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By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, February 5, 2008; Page D01

Microsoft has begun lobbying Congress even before its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo has been accepted, while Google, the real object of Microsoft’s concern, has started to raise objections on Capitol Hill.

Top Microsoft executives, including General Counsel Brad Smith and Jack Krumholz, head of the company’s Washington office, contacted the offices of key lawmakers on Friday, one day after the unsolicited bid for Yahoo was announced.

The company’s approaches, made by e-mail and phone, were largely informational, according to congressional aides. The executives explained what the bid was and what advantages they saw in its completion. They also said they wanted to come in later to talk about the transaction at greater length, especially in advance of any hearings on the subject.

In lobbying parlance, this is known as “checking the boxes” — meticulously informing powerful congressmen and senators about a transaction they might want to weigh in on down the road. Lobbyists live by the rule that when it comes to senior government officials, surprises should be avoided at all costs.

Google’s lobbying, on the other hand, was unusual because the company is not involved in the proposed acquisition. Still, lobbyists for the Internet search engine, which has raised its misgivings in public pronouncements, spotlighted those objections for lawmakers and their aides over the past few days, congressional staffers said.

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is an effort by the software giant to compete for search and online ad dollars with Google, which dominates both forms of advertising.

Washington decision makers are gearing up for what could be a major policy and legal battle over Microsoft’s surprise offer. Technology industry executives and consumer advocates are pressing officials to think hard about the merger, which may have major antitrust and privacy implications.

In response, congressional committees are preparing hearings, and administration officials are making plans to investigate the transaction. The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing for Friday on “The State of Competition on the Internet.” In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee expects to hold a hearing if the deal goes through.

Should the companies agree to the transaction, the Justice Department has made clear it would review the merger for potential anticompetitive implications. “We’d be interested in looking at it,” said department spokeswoman Gina Talamona.

Yahoo has not yet made its presence felt in official Washington circles, according to congressional aides. A spokeswoman for Yahoo would say only, “Yahoo’s board is carefully and thoroughly evaluating the Microsoft proposal in the context of all of the company’s strategic alternatives.”

Spokesmen for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

Consumer groups, however, were getting ready to speak out against Microsoft’s bid. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said his group and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups plan to complain to the Federal Trade Commission that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo poses a risk to individuals’ privacy rights. He said the groups will also urge Congress and the Justice Department to block the buyout.

“The danger is that by combining their platforms, the companies will be able to have a vast storehouse of information, of detailed dossiers on users that they can access without an individual’s consent or awareness,” Chester said.

The groups made a similar objection to the merger of Google and the online advertising company DoubleClick, but the FTC approved the merger in December.

Microsoft, aware of the consumer groups’ wariness on the privacy issue, began a campaign to win them over. After the bid was announced, a Microsoft executive sent an e-mail Friday to several consumer advocacy organizations.

It read in part: “Some of you have raised privacy concerns and may have questions about how consumer data might be treated. We’d be happy to discuss any issues you may have related to this deal. Microsoft has been at the forefront of privacy over the last few years, including support for a federal privacy bill. . . . Our strong views that privacy is important and needs to be protected have not changed. We will work to ensure that consumer privacy continues to be protected moving forward.”

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I’m going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment.

Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you’re searching the Internet for information on that topic.

The first article you come across is related to the topic you’re researching, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of value. It’s too general and full of pointless “fluff.” It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources.

The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject.

If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right?

You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It’s an easy choice, and that’s because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development — the value factor.

5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content

This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:

1. It keeps people on your website longer.

2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.

3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.

4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.

5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and visibility.

All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind of small business website content? Here are the top five guidelines for creating high-value website content.

 5 Steps to High-Value Web Content

1. Choose the right author.

2. Choose the right topic.

3. Address all sides of the topic.

4. Add supporting graphics, pictures, etc.

5. Link to related resources, both on your site and elsewhere.

Let’s look at each of these steps in greater detail.

1. Choose the Right Author

I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake. If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay. But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So when these people encountered online instructions such as “Validate parameters before advancing” … the customers would often become dead in the water.

This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web writing. Sure, the programmers’ input is important. After all, they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability experience) would have “translated” these instructions to say something like “Please fill in all required information before moving to the next screen.”

Here’s the key to this. The best author for your small business website content is not always the person who knows the most about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often, it’s best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between role of “consumer advocate,” getting the information from one group and translating it for another group.

 2. Choose the Right Topic

If your small business only offers one product or service, then that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case, I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don’t tell people what you want them to know — this is an outdated way of thinking about public information, especially when it comes to small business website content. Instead, find out what people want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your web content to address those questions or concerns.

If you are writing web content for a company that has many products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is product ‘A’ >> And this is a web page that explains product ‘A’ in detail.

3. Address All Sides of the Topic

Whether you’re writing about one of your products, or you’re creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the angles. There’s nothing worse than website content that leaves the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is important but not pursuing that lead.

When you are close to a certain topic — as is the case with people who create a product or service — it’s easy to assume everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic when you write content for your small business website.

Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You can do that while still offering complete information. That’s what hyperlinks are for!

4. Link to Related Resources

Here’s the key to developing great content for your small business website. Try to create authority documents that others in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty of supporting information, both on the same website and elsewhere on the web.

In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your website. This adds to your link “popularity” and can further improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.

When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as “the ultimate guide to [blank].” This is the first step to creating the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors. But it’s rarely possible to create an “ultimate guide” to anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as they are not direct competitors).

5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.

Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the reader’s job easier in two ways. First, you can format your content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers, etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful graphics.

Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you clarify your message with visual reinforcement.

Conclusion

I have a motto I use regarding website content. “If it’s not worth putting online, don’t put it online.” This is my reminder to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to create superior website content. Because that’s the kind of content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to your small business website and watch your own success increase!

About The Author
Brandon Cornett operates a web marketing firm in Austin, Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and blogs. Learn more by visiting http://www.austinseoguy.com.

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Magnetic fields produced by Apple iPods and other such portable music devices don’t interfere with cardiac pacemakers, an FDA study says. Network World Staff

Friday, February 01, 2008 3:50 PM PST

A Food and Drug Administration-led study refutes claims that the magnetic fields produced by Apple iPods and other such portable music devices interfere with cardiac pacemakers.

A report from the research team, which tested four iPod models, appears in BioMedical Engineering OnLine.

A report from a Michigan high school student — who teamed with a couple of heart doctors — is among earlier research that generated some buzz about whether iPods could muck up pacemakers and raised the idea of putting warning labels on portable music devices.

From a BioMed Central press release: “Using a 3-coil sensor, the team measured the magnetic field produced by the iPod at a distance of around 5 to 10 millimeters. They obtained readings for the magnetic field at various specific and small regions 10 mm from an iPod. The peak magnetic field strength was 0.2 millionths of a Tesla, a value hundreds of times lower than the levels capable of interfering with a pacemaker.”

Howard Bassen, a researcher with the FDA, said in a statement: “Based on the observations of our in-vitro study we conclude that no interference effects can occur in pacemakers exposed to the iPods we tested.”

One company breathing a sigh of relief: Tonicum. Last year it released a portable music device for DJs named, yes, Pacemaker.

Meanwhile, iPods continue to enjoy great success, most recently highlighted by the spate of new iPod-related offerings at the recent big Consumer Electronics Show show in Las Vegas. For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld. Story copyright 2007 Network World Inc. All rights reserved.

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Researcher is building a prototype to protect users’ privacy from Facebook ‘widgets’

JANUARY 31, 2008 | University of Virginia researchers have discovered that 90.7 percent of Facebook’s most popular applications have access to users’ private data, whether they need it or not — leaving users exposed to targeted phishing attacks and identity theft. So a UVA researcher is currently building a “privacy-by-proxy” prototype aimed at hiding a user’s private information on Facebook from these apps.

Today, a third-party Facebook “widget” or application requires full user privileges to a user’s account on the social networking site, including his or her name, address, friends’ profiles, and photos.

There’s no way to specify which apps can access which personal information. So Adrienne Felt, a fourth-year computer science major at UVA, is developing an application that lets Facebook users run these widgets while keeping their private data private. It basically works like this: The Facebook server gives the application a random sequence of letters in lieu of the user’s name and other private data.

Felt began developing the tool after studying the top 150 Facebook third-party platform applications last fall. It turns out 8.7 percent of these widgets didn’t need any personal information, she found, and only 9.3 percent required private data — the remaining 82 percent used “public” Facebook data, such as the user’s name, network, and list of friends. Felt and fellow researcher Andrew Spisak concluded that nearly 91 percent of these apps are getting access to more privileges than they actually need in order to run.

And when users install these widgets, their data gets stored on the widgets’ third-party servers. Although Facebook’s terms of service say developers can’t abuse the Facebook data they access, there’s no way for Facebook to enforce that, Felt says, because once that data leaves Facebook’s servers, it’s free game to the third-party application provider.

Privacy has always been a sticky issue for social networking sites. But Facebook’s third-party apps, which anyone with a Facebook account can develop, have been considered by some security experts as an open invitation for abuse. Earlier this month, Fortinet researchers found the first evidence of such abuse, reporting spyware disguised as a Facebook application spreading around the social networking site. (See ‘Secret Crush’ Spreads Spyware, Not Love.)

Kevin Haley, director, of product management for Symantec Security Response, says another risk with these apps is the distribution of malware. “Now that you have a platform to create programs for these sites… malware quickly follows,” he says.

Felt’s prototype is providing some hope for protecting and securing Facebook users’ privacy. “This is the first step,” says Felt, who has built several Facebook widgets herself. “Hopefully, the research findings and proposed solution will trigger more responsible privacy and information management policies from social networking sites and will better inform users.”

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

Fortinet Inc.

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Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent guardian.co.uk, Tuesday January 29 2008

Mobile network O2 has overhauled the cost of using Apple’s iPhone handset just two months after it went on sale in the UK.

The mobile network today announced that iPhone owners who are currently paying its lower-rate tariffs of £35 and £45 per month would get a substantially improved package, and simultaneously introduced an expensive “super-tier” contract costing £75 per month.

The new deal will give up to three times as many free calls and text messages for the same price, with £35 tariff customers – who form the bulk of the user base – receiving 600 free minutes per month instead of 200. The company also said it was phasing out its existing £55 per month deal, moving customers to the equivalent £45 per month contract instead.

The high-end tariff, costing £75, will give users 3,000 minutes and 500 texts. The £269 cost of the iPhone itself remains unchanged, and the length of all new contracts will remain at 18 months, said the company. It also confirmed that the iPhone’s free access to wireless internet provided by Cloud will stay in place.

Whiirl of publicity

O2 has exclusive British rights to carry the iPhone, which launched last year in a whirl of publicity. The new tariffs bring the costs of using Apple’s handset into line with many of O2’s other deals, but some critics will undoubtedly be concerned that the new offers are being launched as a remedy for poor sales - particularly in light of press reports that the handset has not met O2’s sales targets.

Apple has yet to release UK sales figures, although chief executive Steve Jobs said earlier this month that 4 million iPhones had been shipped worldwide since the gadget first went on sale in the US last summer.

In a statement, O2 said that it was happy with the performance of the iPhone and existing customers would be pleased with the changes.

“The iPhone is already our fastest-ever selling device and this added value will allow us to appeal to an even greater segment of the market - it is an unbeatable proposition,” said UK marketing director Sally Cowdry.

However, the Financial Times has quoted sources suggesting that the handset had sold 190,000 units in the run-up to Christmas, falling narrowly short of O2’s public expectations of 200,000 in the first eight weeks.

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A number of iPod owners have discovered that their recently purchased iPods won’t work with Apple’s new iTunes video rentals, even though the iPods have video playback capabilities.

As of Tuesday, the issue had been raised multiple times in Apple’s support forums. So far the company’s only response has been to confirm that movie rentals work only with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic and the third-generation iPod nano. Earlier iPods, including fifth-generation iPods sold before the September 2007 release of the sixth-generation iPod classic, are incompatible with rented videos.

“This is false advertising,” says Raymond Blanchard, a disgruntled iPod owner. “I demand an upgrade or fix.”

Others were more upset over the apparent randomness of Apple’s decision.

“Why on earth would they not make this service available to fifth-generation iPods?” one forum poster notes. “Mine is less than six months old! If all of the other services are available for the fifth-generation video iPods, why not rentals? I have a tough time believing it would not be technically feasible.”

Indeed, Apple has recently boosted functionality in certain products with firmware updates — while offering no upgrades (or charging for upgrades) for other products. At the recent Macworld exposition, Steve Jobs elicited cheers from Apple fans by announcing a completely reworked AppleTV and saying that the upgrade would be free to previous AppleTV owners. Similarly, iPhone users received a free firmware upgrade that allows them to use new features like webclips, multiperson text messaging and enhanced Google map functions. Owners of the iPod touch, on the other hand, have to pay $20 for those same features, a fact that likely has to do with Apple’s accounting and revenue realization practices.

Apple did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment, and the company has yet to provide any definitive reason why its fifth-generation iPods won’t work with iTunes movie rentals. But that’s not stopping the speculation.

Some analysts, like Forrester’s James McQuivey, say the issue could be related to digital rights management or a planned obsolescence strategy — encouraging people to buy the most current generation iPods.

For now, the most likely suspect has to do with what some have deemed the “analog hole” present in 5-G iPods. Previous generation iPods have an analog video output that works with standard video cables. As some have observed, this theoretically makes it easier to copy rented movies, by plugging the iPod into a camcorder or other video-recording device.

In the most recent iPod classic and iPods nano models, the TV-out port no longer works with older, third-party video cables and docks — most likely in order to close the analog hole, according to The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Christina Warren.

“I guess it would just be too much of a risk for Apple (and the movie studios) to allow 5-G customers (to) connect their iPods to a TV via an open TV-out cable so that the (standard-definition) content could then be captured using the analog hole,” Warren concludes in a recent post.

Yankee Group’s Carl Howe offers another likely reason for 5-G iPod-rental incompatibility.

“The other factor is whether you have a secure real-time clock,” Howe explains. “Why do I want a secure clock? Because you don’t want people messing with the time code since (iTunes) rentals are only supposed to last 24 hours after you start viewing them.”

This was almost certainly a requirement imposed by the movie studios, he concludes. Indeed, some users recently discovered that by setting back the clocks on their PCs, they could temporarily extend the duration of their iTunes movie rentals, and movie studios probably wanted to limit their exposure to that hack.

In short, Howe says, iPods don’t fall under the growing trend of “hardware as a service,” whereby hardware receives continuous upgrades via firmware updates.

“(The iPod is) ‘hardware as hardware’ instead of ‘hardware as service,’” Howe says. “Not that that’s going to be very consoling for iPod owners.”

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Ian Williams, vnunet.com 28 Jan 2008

The US market for mobile games will rise from less than $800m in 2007 to more than $3bn by 2012, according to analysts.

A report from Juniper Research suggests that around 18 million Americans download or rent mobile games at least once a year, and that this number is expected to increase sharply over the next five years.

Juniper attributes the rise to the introduction of free trial periods for subscription-based games, as well as improvements in the user interface of mobile phones and all-you-can-eat data packages.

“This ‘try before you buy’ strategy makes the customer more comfortable about purchasing a particular title,” said Dr Windsor Holden, the report’s author.

“But it also makes the customer more familiar with mobile gameplay and will provide further encouragement to seek out additional titles in the future.”

The research also predicts that around 30 per cent of mobile game downloads in the US will be ad-funded by 2012, and that the increasing sophistication of high-end games combined with improved form factor in handsets should enable publishers to increase retail price points.

However, growth in the US will still lag behind China, the Far East and Western Europe over the next five years.

The report also warned that the poor marketing of mobile titles means that many customers are frequently unaware of new releases.

Juniper urges publishers to focus on enhancing their portfolios of ‘lifestyle games’ as a means of expanding the mobile gaming demographic.

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Skyfire’s free mobile browser is meant to support everything a PC browser can, including Flash, QuickTime, JavaScript, and AJAX

By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service January 28, 2008

A growing set of developers is setting to work making Web browsing on a phone match the experience on a PC.

Skyfire, a startup in Mountain View, Calif., joined the fray on Monday when it unveiled a free browser intended to support everything a PC browser can. That includes Flash video, QuickTime, JavaScript, AJAX, and more, though not everything may be there right now, according to Nitin Bhandari, Skyfire’s CEO. The browser is now in a private beta test for U.S. users only. The software was demonstrated at the Demo conference in Palm Desert, Calif.

Apple’s iPhone changed the mobile browsing world last year when it drew a huge following with its Safari browser. Unlike most browsers for phones, it lets users view a full, standard Web page all at once and zoom in to make up for the small size of the screen, though it doesn’t support Flash video and some other standard Web features.

Meanwhile, more opportunities have opened up for third parties to get any sort of application onto a consumer’s mobile phone. Parts of Google’s Android development environment are already available to developers, and Apple is preparing a software development kit for the iPhone. Both Verizon and Sprint Nextel, two of the biggest U.S. operators, have outlined plans to allow any device and any application on mobile networks.

“The iPhone has pretty much settled the debate. People want a rich, full Web experience,” Skyfire’s Bhandari said. “There’s a lot of consciousness that that’s the bottom now, and everything now has to be there or above it.”

Since the phone’s June debut, Mozilla has started developing a mobile version of Firefox, which looks somewhat like mobile Safari in screenshots on Mozilla’s wiki. However, Mozilla has been vague about when that software will come out. Norwegian browser vendor Opera has its own mobile browser, Opera Mini.

Skyfire’s product will be set apart from Opera Mini and others by supporting the full browsing experience, Bhandari said. It does so by relieving the phone from some of the heavy lifting of presenting a Web page. In fact, a server transcodes every page into an efficient protocol that Skyfire has developed over the past 18 months, he said. The additional exchange of packets between phone and server to make that possible isn’t a problem, because the server can carry out tasks much faster than a phone, according to Bhandari.

“The delay added by the server is actually such a small percentage of the time we’re actually saving … that it’s actually a huge benefit in the end-user experience,” Bhandari said. Skyfire operates the servers in its own datacenter.

Skyfire can deliver full versions of popular Web sites, such as YouTube and ESPN, as demonstrated in a YouTube video. The zooming function, the critical tool for viewing full-size Web pages on a small screen, is different from the iPhone’s “pinch” and “unpinch” gestures. A gray box appears over part of the Web page, and users can size that box to cover the area of the page they want to see full-screen, then tap on it to zoom in, Bhandari said. The browser also features a search bar and a tab with featured links in categories including news, sports, and video.

The browser is available only for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 today, but a version for Symbian, as well as an international beta test, are coming later, Bhandari said. Skyfire might also develop versions for Android and for the iPhone once Apple’s SDK becomes available, he said. It is talking with handset makers and mobile operators about having the browser built into phones, but also sees search and advertising as possible revenue sources.

In addition to invited testers, a limited number of public users will be allowed to participate in the beta. They can sign up at Skyfire’s Web site.

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Rumours are emerging that Nokia is in talks with Facebook to port the generally still-in-favour social network to its range of handsets. Sources have suggested that this could be as prominent a placement as the “YouTube” button is on Apple’s iPhone.

Facebook could benefit from Nokia’s advertising campaigns in retail outlets, and there’s even the possibility of Nokia “doing a Microsoft” and buying a stake in the young company.

If these rumours are based on even a smidgen of truth, then it marks another expansion of Nokia’s empire.

A senior Nokia executive is reported as saying, “There is talk of a partnership in the works… it’s safe to say we’re testing the waters and things still have to be worked out,” but, unsurprisingly, no official word from either company.

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By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

AT&T and the iPhone have gone corporate. Despite the opinion of many analysts, AT&T is now labeling the iPhone an Enterprise-class device. My question, as with my earlier AT&T SIM-only story is, why is this all that great again?

The reason I say this is because if you compare the data plans between the consumer and corporate plans, you’ll pay $25 more a month. Oh, wait, if you read the fine print, here’s the answer:

Qualified Corporate Responsibility Users and other corporate-liable users who activate an Enterprise Data Plan for iPhone by March 31, 2008 may be eligible to receive a service credit in the amount of $25 per month through December 31, 2008.

Waitasec, AT&T, that’s only until December, and I’m signing up for a two-year plan, right? Sigh. My guess is the reason for this announcement of “corporateness” may lie in the upcoming announcement of Lotus Notes on the iPhone.

At any rate, they needed something really exciting to talk about since there was no 3G iPhone at Macworld, right? Follow the links to compare the corporate and consumer plans.

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Raanana, Israel (PRWEB) January 7, 2008 — CellAdmin, a developer of mobile content management solutions for operators and digital media providers, today announced the launches of Jagango, its advance and easy-to-use mobile internet sites creation tool with an inherent hosting and publishing facilities. People strive to share with others their ideas, photos, videos and music; and the notion that this user generated content should be available also to people on the go, is now resolved through Jagango, the ultimate tool for creating and hosting advanced mobile internet sites. No programming experience is required whatsoever and…it’s free!

With wealth of preset designs, in 5 simple steps and less time than one can imagine, anyone can create a personal mobile web site, accommodating multimedia content, as desired by site owner. After creating the site it is automatically stored on Jagango servers ready to be viewed by anyone who holds a mobile phone with Internet access (GSM, GPRS, HSDPA, etc.). So all is left to do is to invite people to visit the site created, by sending an SMS through Jagango sharing tool.

“Jagango is available through Jagango.com and soon will also be available through various online social networks site wishing to give their members a mobile presence,” said Pini Shmilovich CellAdmin’s CEO. “Jagango will also be offered to the members and subscribers of mobile network operators and media companies, who wish to have clearer role in the user generated content and social networking domains; while increasing their stickiness, customer satisfaction and revenues.”

“We are proud about Jagango, we succeeded to meet our nearly impossible goals - to develop a mobile sites development tool, to none developers,” said Barry Bazini, company’s founder and CTO. “I invite everyone to go to Jagango from any PC and see how easy and intuitive it is to create new site.”

CellAdmin will showcase its groundbreaking new product Jagango at the Mobil World Congress 2008, 11-14 February 2008, in Barcelona, Spain.

About Jagango
Jagango is a new cool mobile social networking platform for creating and sharing digital content such as photos, music and videos on mobile devices, by building free and easy-to-use mobile internet sites. To build your own mobile site, go to www.jagango.com.

About CellAdmin