Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Microsoft has said that it has asked US officials to block Apple's attempt to trademark the words "App Store".
Apple submitted an application for the phrase - used for its iPhone, iPad and Macintosh download services - in 2008.
But Microsoft has now told BBC News that it has asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to reject the application.
The company says the term is too generic and competitors should be able to use it.
"An 'app store' is an 'app store'," said Russell Pangborn, Microsoft's associate general counsel. "Like 'shoe store' or 'toy store', it is a generic term that is commonly used by companies, governments and individuals that offer apps."
"The term 'app store' should continue to be available for use by all without fear of reprisal by Apple."
It is not clear why Microsoft has filed papers now, more than a year after the USPTO opened up Apple's original application for opposition.
However the move comes just days after Apple launched its latest App Store, for computer software.
Since the iPhone and other high-end mobile handsets emerged over recent years, downloadable applications - or apps - have become commonplace.
Microsoft runs its own application store for Windows phones, while Google and Nokia also have their own equivalents. Amazon, meanwhile, recently announced plans to open its own retail channel called Amazon Appstore.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment, but it is not the first time the company has found itself on the end of a trademark dispute.
After the iPhone launched in 2007, it emerged that technology rival Cisco owned the trademark, used for a range of internet-based telephone handsets. The two companies eventually settled and have now agreed to share rights over the name.
In addition, the Californian company took nearly 30 years to completely settle its conflict with Apple Corps, the record company founded by the Beatles.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 0
AT&T has been slow to adopt a feature that lets customers share a smartphone data signal wirelessly to other gadgets and computers.
But a mobile hot spot feature is coming to at least two new AT&T phones running Google's Android operating system. The carrier is also mulling whether it will add the ability to Apple's iPhone through a software update.
Verizon Wireless says its iPhone 4 models, which come out February 10, will have the hot spot feature.
The next version of the iPhone's operating system, iOS 4.3, will have that ability built in, say developers who were provided with access to a beta version. But it's unclear whether AT&T will allow customers to make use of the feature.
"It's something we're taking a look at," said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. He declined to comment on negotiations with Apple regarding the feature's deployment.
Once the hot spot feature is enabled, a phone creates its own Wi-Fi access point. Then as many as five devices, usually, such as laptops, iPods, Kindles or other Wi-Fi-enabled electronics, can get online. Enabling the feature generally reduces the phone's battery more quickly.
HTC's Inspire 4G and Motorola's Atrix 4G, two upcoming AT&T Android phones, will allow owners to subscribe to a more expensive data plan in order to utilize mobile hot spot.
Some AT&T phones, including the iPhone, offer a feature called tethering. This uses a phone's USB cable or a Bluetooth connection to share the internet connection to a single computer. The extra monthly fee for tethering is comparable to what AT&T will charge for hot spot.
T-Mobile USA offered a free hot spot feature on Google's Nexus One. However, a T-Mobile spokesman said in June that usage of that is "not something the company encourages." Now, T-Mobile offers the feature, with an upgraded data plan, to MyTouch 4G owners.
Sprint Nextel's Evo and Verizon's Droid phones, among others, can act as hot spots.
For Verizon's 3G phones, the internet signal is cut -- and the connected devices dropped -- when on a phone call. That's a limitation of the type of 3G network Verizon uses, but it shouldn't affect the carrier's upcoming 4G phones.
Verizon, with Mi-Fi, was one of the first carriers out of the gate to offer standalone hardware that connects to its wireless data network and shares that signal with other devices.
AT&T, which has perpetually struggled to meet data demand from iPhone customers in the last three years, began selling a Mi-Fi device in November -- more than a year after competitors.
As AT&T rolls out faster networks, including 4G infrastructure with speeds to match Verizon's later this year, the second-largest U.S. carrier by subscribers is finally ready to encourage heavier data usage. That's especially an attractive proposition for the company now that it has a tiered pricing plan in place to charge heavy users more.
Future Einsteins of the world, Google needs you. The California internet giant already has a reputation for progressive employment policies with its bean-bag culture, lava-lamp filled offices and insistence that engineers spend 20 per cent of their year working on something that interests them personally.
Now it is looking for a new breed of employee: teenage geniuses. Google has announced the launch on an online global science fair allowing any student with an internet connection and a Google account to enter a competition with a $50,000 (£32,000) prize.
Billed as the "first global online science competition", the Google Science Fair is open to anyone aged between 13 and 18. Students are encouraged to submit an idea for a scientific experiment by 4 April, with the winners being flown out to California to pitch their idea to some of the world's leading scientific luminaries.
In a blog post announcing the competition, the company said that scientifically gifted youths should be encouraged to display their talents: "How many ideas are lost because people don't have the right forum for their talents to be discovered?"
However, a baking soda volcano is unlikely to pass muster here. To give an idea about the kind of talent they are after, Google posted an example submission from a high school senior from Oregon who claims to have written an algorithm that could enable a robot to negotiate its way through a hospital carrying linen sheets.
The competition is being supported by leading scientific outlets including the magazines National Geographic and Scientific American, as well as the CERN institute in Geneva, home of the Large Hadron Collider.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Google kicked off its inaugural science fair at a global level earlier today, inviting school students from all over the world to submit their science experiments. Similar to the Children's Day Google Doodle competition, submit your science experiments to Google by April 4 and stand to win a grand prize of US $50,000. Here's how Google Science Fair 2011 is going to work.
Google has partnered with CERN, National Geographic, Lego and Scientific American with this year's global science fair initiative. Google science fair is open to students from around the world interested in science aged between 13 and 18 years. A student can work alone on the science fair experiment or within a maximum group of three.
Google science fair applicants are expected to create a 2-minute video or 20-slide presentation of their scientific idea. Students will have to come up with an original hypothesis, present a case for it, test it in an experiment, and arrive at a conclusion which they then have to submit to Google's science fair section in order to enlist their idea.
After April 4, the semi-finalists will be announced by early May, Google said in a blog post. Apart from the Google scholarship of US $50,000 awarded to the global science fair winner, there's also a trip to the Galapagos islands with a National Geographic Explorer and a five-day trip to CERN, Switzerland up for grabs, in a total of 12 prizes Google's awarding in the science fair.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 0
Google Inc.’s Android operating system for mobile devices is more vulnerable to hackers and viruses than Apple Inc.’s iPhone platform, according to security-software maker Trend Micro Inc.
“Android is open-source, which means the hacker can also understand the underlying architecture and source code,” Steve Chang, chairman of Trend Micro, the world’s largest provider of security software for corporate servers, said in an interview in Taipei yesterday. “We have to give credit to Apple, because they are very careful about it. It’s impossible for certain types of viruses” to operate on the iPhone, he said.
Google, owner of the world’s most-popular online search engine, offers Android for free and allows developers access to its code for writing software. Apple, whose iOS software trails Android in smartphone market share, requires every application to be approved before being sold in its online store.
“On all computing devices, users necessarily entrust at least some of their information to the developer of the application they’re using,” Mountain View, California-based Google said in an e-mailed statement. “Android has taken steps to inform users of this trust relationship and to limit the amount of trust a user must grant to any given application developer.”
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone carrier, said yesterday it will begin selling Apple’s handset next month. Verizon’s iPhone may cannibalize about 2 million Android shipments a year, according to Dan Hays, partner at consulting firm PRTM.
‘The Next PC’
Chang said he’s betting Android users will start to buy more security software for mobile devices.
“Smartphones are the next PC, and once they’re adopted by enterprises, data loss will be a very key problem,” he said.
On Jan. 7, Tokyo-based Trend Micro released Mobile Security for Android, software that users can install on a mobile phone to block viruses, malicious programs and unwanted calls. Trend Micro aims for the $3.99 application to help it gain revenue from the more than 250 million phones Gartner Inc. expects will run on Android by 2014.
“Apple has a sandbox concept that isolates the platform, which prevents certain viruses that want to replicate themselves or decompose and recompose to avoid virus scanners,” Chang said.
Apple’s iOS isn’t fully immune to security threats and may be hit with so-called social-engineering attacks, which trick users into authorizing the download or installation of malicious software, Chang said. Trend Micro offers a security application for Apple’s iOS, he said.
Natalie Harrison, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California- based Apple, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
Market Share
Phones using Android accounted for 26 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter, behind Symbian, used in Nokia Oyj handsets, and ahead of iOS, which had a 17 percent share, researcher Gartner said Nov. 10.
In 2014, 259 million devices, or 29.6 percent of all smartphones, will use Android, trailing 30.2 percent share for Symbian and ahead of 15 percent share for iOS, Gartner predicted in September.
Trend Micro’s 2010 revenue is expected to have dropped 1.3 percent to 95 billion yen ($1.1 billion) and net income is forecast to be 22 percent lower, at 13.7 billion yen, according to the average of eight analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
But it's a 3G version.
And because it runs only on Verizon Wireless' older CDMA network, not the fourth-generation technology, users won't be able to make phone calls and connect to the internet at the same time.
The iPhone 4 will be available in stores February 10, with pre-orders for Verizon customers beginning a week before, the two companies announced in New York on Tuesday.
"The number one question I've gotten is: When will the iPhone work on Verizon?" Apple COO Tim Cook said.
Perhaps the new question he'll get will involve an iPhone 4G. Cook got one of those immediately after the announcement, during a question-and-answer session with reporters.
"Verizon customers told us they want the iPhone now," Cook said, explaining why the carrier will begin selling a 3G version first. The first batch of chips designed for Verizon's 4G network would require Apple to rework the phone's casing and "force design changes we wouldn't make," he said.
Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Verizon Wireless said it will have 10 devices that take advantage of its faster 4G network, including four phones, by midyear.
Motorola's Xoom tablet, which is coming out in the next few months, will have only a 3G chip to start, but owners will be able to upgrade to 4G at Verizon stores later in the year.
Verizon and Apple gave no indication that the Verizon iPhone 4 can be upgraded. However, images on tech blogs Tuesday suggest that some changes appear to have been made to the phone's casing, including an extra ridge in the top corner.
Apple traditionally releases new iPhones during the summer. When asked when an upgraded version of the phone for Verizon would debut, Cook declined to comment.
By launching an iPhone with 3G first, Verizon may be playing it safe in anticipation of an upgraded phone later, one analyst said.
"Verizon has a very large, very deep CDMA network, whereas their 4G LTE network is still relatively new, not completely pervasive and somewhat unproven," said Dan Hays, a consultant for PRTM who works with major U.S. carriers but declined to say which ones because of non-disclosure agreements. "I think that this opens the door for Apple to have the iPhone 5 be a 4G device."
Apple's partnership with Verizon involves a "multiyear, non-exclusive deal," Cook said Tuesday. "We've been looking forward to today for a long time."
Verizon COO Lowell McAdam said talks with Apple began in 2008. The pair has been testing the phone for a year, McAdam said.
"We have a tremendous 3G network," Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said. He said Verizon hasn't identified a problem with the antenna, which plagued the AT&T model, on its version of the iPhone.
Like on AT&T, the Verizon iPhone will cost $200 for the 16-gigabyte version and $300 for 32 gigabytes.
Verizon did not announce service pricing or say whether customers would be able to purchase an unlimited data plan.
AT&T, which is now no longer the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, released a statement Tuesday saying Verizon's network may produce slower download speeds and poorer battery life. The statement also pointed out that you can't talk and Web-surf on the Verizon phone at the same time.
"The fact that you can't do voice and data simultaneously on CDMA gives an opening to AT&T for advertising," analyst Hays said. In fact, AT&T and Apple have run commercials touting the ability to talk and access data at the same time.
"I think that Apple and Verizon's choice of using the CDMA network for the initial launch of the Verizon iPhone was actually very much anticipated," Hays said. The first iPhone, released in 2007, could access only AT&T's 2G Edge network.
Because the hardware is CDMA-only, the Verizon iPhone may be impractical for international travelers. AT&T runs on a GSM network, which is common around the world. By contrast, CDMA is not widespread overseas.
However, the 2G network technology Verizon uses is also used in parts of Asia. Apple could sell these models to carriers there, whereas a dual-band handset might not as easily recoup the costs to make it, said Tina Teng, an iSuppli wireless-communications analyst.
Verizon Wireless sells 10 "global-ready" smartphones that pack GSM chips in addition to Verizon's CDMA. Verizon and Apple did not say whether the new iPhone 4 would have a GSM chip, but it's unlikely. Verizon says the iPhone 4 can be used to access data in more than 20 countries, though plans aren't cheap.
"I think that if there was (GSM inside), they would have said so," Hays said. "I didn't expect a world-phone version. I think that would be uncharacteristic for Apple. They tend to have very tightly designed solutions."
Monday, January 10, 2011
Apple as usual has made a business decision that could lead to exciting new features on the next generation iPhone and beyond. The company has acquired Swedish company Polar Rose, known for its mobile face recognition technology FaceLib among other similar products.
With full face detection and tracking of faces in video, the solutions Polar Rose delivers could change how you interact with your iPhone. Now that the iPhone 4 has a front-facing camera, passcode lock could end up going the way of the dinosaurs.
Imagine holding your iPhone up and the device automatically unlocking to reveal your home screen. The neat trick is that your iPhone won't do this for anyone else. If the software on the iPhone recognizes your face, this replaces your passcode. Some Apple patents have recently been revealed that could lead to iPhones recognizing the shape of your hand, which could also replace the four-digit passcode.
Other interesting uses for the technology include automatically tagging people in photos and recognizing FaceTime callers from contact information. As the photographs taken on the iPhone improve, various image analysis algorithms could also be used to automatically classify and organize photos by type or subject.
Apple's iPhoto currently recognizes faces in pictures for tagging purposes. It's possible Apple is looking to improve and expand this functionality. Polar Rose removed its free tagging services for Facebook and Flickr earlier this month, citing interest from larger companies in licensing their technology. Staying true to form, Apple has not confirmed the acquisition of Polar Rose.
Monday, January 10, 2011 0
It looks like Apple got sneaky and hid the release date for the White iPhone 4 in small print. 9to5Mac found the small print on a sign as seen above which was found in an Apple Store so it is believable. The information found on that sign is not on the Apple website as of yet. No word yet on when Apple will start Pre-orders for the new white iPhone 4, I have reached out to them for comment.
