Microsoft vs. Google in...Belgium???? Part 2

Indeed, Microsoft ran afoul of this very regulation when it prevented open-source software developers access to interoperability information for its Windows server software.

Rogue Android app texts humiliating messages Part 2 of 2

This is a continuation on a post published yesterday.
Tanmazov, Walk and Text's developer, has denied any connection to the Trojan, and has threatened to sue AVAST Software, a Czech Republic-based security company that first blogged about the rogue version of his app more than a week ago.
In a message posted on the Web, Tanmazov accused AVAST of publicizing the Trojanized version of his app to promote their mobile security software.
"We wonder why only anti-piracy companies have interest in writing blogs about pirated apps they find on illegal sources and are trying to spread fear among the normal 'Android Market' customers," said Tanmazov.
In an e-mail reply to a request for comment, Tanmazov again denied any link to Android.Walkinwat and elaborated on his frustration that criminals had hijacked his reputation. "This is not the way we fight against piracy," Tanmazov said.
"[And] we have absolutely no control over anything other than what is on the Android Market. This file is all over the place now, Torrents, forums, and there is nothing we can do about it," said Tanmazov.
The real Walk and Text app on the Android Market does not contain the malicious code and features of the Trojanized Android.Walkinwat, Google confirmed today.
This isn't the first time that malware-filled Android apps have cropped up. Earlier this month, Google was forced to yank more than 50 infected applications from the Android Market.

Zeichick’s Take: If you can’t innovate, litigate By Alan Zeichick

Zeichick’s Take: If you can’t innovate, litigate

 

By Alan Zeichick

  March 31, 2011 —  The lawsuits flying around Silicon Valley are getting ridiculous.

• Microsoft is suing Barnes & Noble because Microsoft says that Android infringes Microsoft patents, and B&N’s Nook e-reader is based on Android. Thus, B&N must be forced to license Microsoft patents.

• Oracle is suing Google because Oracle says that Android’s Dalvik Java Virtual Machine infringes some of Sun’s JVM patents.

• Apple is suing Amazon.com because Apple says that “App Store" is an Apple trademark, and thus Amazon must not use “Amazon Appstore” for its Android, well, app store.

• Microsoft is suing Apple because Microsoft says that Apple's “App Store” trademark uses generic English words, and thus shouldn’t be trademarked. Of course, Microsoft has rigorously defended its trademarks of Windows, Word and Office.

• And, yesterday, Microsoft filed a European antitrust complaint against—guess who—Google.

The latest Microsoft complaint is fascinating, as it reveals that as worried as the company's been about search, it’s also concerned about Windows Phone. According to this post by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel, there are six allegations:

1. Google’s search engine has an unfair advantage over Microsoft’s Bing and other search engines when it comes to crawling YouTube content.

2. Google refuses to allow Windows Phone to access YouTube metadata, but allows Android and iPhone devices to do so.

3. Google is attempting to block access to content owned by book publishers by seeking exclusive rights to scan and distribute so-called orphaned books: those still under copyright, but for which the copyright owner can’t be found.

4. Google unfairly restricts its advertisers’ ability to use data and analytics in an interoperable way with competing search platforms, specifically Microsoft’s adCenter.

5. Google contractually requires European websites that use a Google search box from also using a competing search box. Microsoft says this not only freezes out Bing directly, but also blocks Web publishers from using Windows Live Services, which embeds a Bing search box.

6. Google discriminates against its own competitors (like Microsoft) by making it very expensive for them to buy good ad positions using Google’s ad tools.

Is there any truth to these allegations? That’s for the European Commission to decide. But what it all comes down to is: Microsoft can’t compete, so it’s going to the courts. The company has the right to sue, of course. But I hope that if Microsoft succeeds in overturning Apple’s “App Store” trademark, the decision is broad enough to overturn Windows, Word and Office as well. Fair is fair.


Written by:  Alan Zeichick; SD Times

April Fool's Day Gags

Google Motion-  You don't need a google account to see this gag

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Google-April-Fools-Day-Gags-from-2000-to-2010-a-History-734820/

Thinkgeek.com-  As always, thinkgeek.com has announced some new 'products'.

Several March 30+2 Day Jokes can be found at:  http://www.zippycart.com/infographics/april-fools-2011-pranks-online.html

Youtube has a 1911 mode for most videos.

This post will be updated throughout the day.  If you find some that I haven't, please feel free to post it in the comments for this post.

Nokia bought out by Google???

After a turbulent ride for Nokia in recent months, with share prices falling rapidly due to uncertainty about its future, it seems the deal between Nokia and Microsoft is officially off.

And, in a surprising turn of events, the Finnish mobile phone maker that shunned Android in favour of Windows Phone 7 has opted to merge with Google instead.

The deal is worth ‘a lot’ according to a Nokia spokesperson, but it must be completed by no later than 12pm today in order to be legally binding. Otherwise Nokia will be left out in the cold with no smartphone strategy at all, forcing the company to return to selling toilet paper.

The combined company will become known as ‘Nookle‘, after threats of legal action from Gok Wan over the other possible name, Gokia.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for people to get used to ‘Nookling it’ or finding their way around with ‘Nookle Maps’. However one long-time Nokia fan told What Mobile that the name ‘Nookle Maps’ was a far better name than ‘Ovi Maps’, which according to him: “sounded like some sort of made up joke name”.

Recycle Cell Phones - Earn money and save the Environment

How many old cell phones do you have laying around your house? They may be worth dollars if you wanted to recycle them. There are many companies that will help you recycle, including some of the phone companies like Verizon. There are also some independent companies that do recycling. Enter Phone Recyling in your favorite search engine for more options.

Microsoft vs. Google in...Belgium???? Part 1

At first, it's a bit jarring to see Washington-based Microsoft press its unfair competition claims against California-based Google in Belgium. But Microsoft picked Europe as the latest venue in its fight with Google for the simple reason that it's more likely to get quicker action from European regulators who've been more prone to reel in dominant companies.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith disclosed the filing with the European Commission in a blog post last night. Microsoft is alleging that Google is unfairly competing in European markets by rigging its search algorithms, ranking its own services higher than rival products, and impeding access to YouTube content, making it harder for alternative search engines to find videos.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith

(Credit: Microsoft)

There are plenty of reasons for Microsoft to press its case in Europe rather than the United States. To start, Microsoft filed its complaint there because European regulators have already opened an investigation into Google's conduct. In addition, Microsoft has learned from its own battles with European regulators that the burden to prove anticompetitive conduct is often lower in Europe than in the United States. That's particularly true with the kind of case Microsoft is hoping the European Commission will bring.

"Microsoft has a much better shot at this in the European market," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of antitrust law at the University of Iowa College of Law. In Europe, companies with dominant market positions have a duty to share technical data that rivals need to compete. So when Microsoft alleges that Google won't share technical data to help it examine and index information on services such as YouTube, it may very well find favor with the European Commission, Hovenkamp said.

Thunderbolt outselling iPhone

This is interesting. Research firm BTIG polled 150 different Verizon Wireless stores in 22 cities and came up with the following statistic: the HTC Thunderbolt is outselling Apple’s iPhone 4 at 28% of the locations polled. (And we’re sure they own a lot more stores than 150.)

We can’t put too much stock into their findings, though, as there are many other different ways to buy phones from Verizon Wireless. 61% of stores polled said that the two phones were neck and neck, while a measley 11 noted that the iPhone 4 was selling faster.

Even with the meager sample size, this is good news for Verizon. They’ve tested the waters and are seeing if there is room for high-end devices from these direct competitors on the same network. If these results are even a tiny bit indicative of what’s really going on then I’d immediately call the HTC Thunderbolt a success.

Rogue Android app texts humiliating messages Part 1 of 2

Computerworld - Android users face a new threat, a rogue app that tells all their friends they pirated the program, a Symantec security manager said today.

The app is a fake copy of the legitimate "Walk and Text," software that uses the smartphone's camera to show what's in front of the user while she simultaneously walks and texts.
Walk and Text is available not only on Google's official Android Market app store, but also on several unofficial e-marts. It's one of several mobile apps created by Georgi Tanmazov, the CEO of Incorporate Apps.
On the Android Market, Walk and Text is priced at $1.54.
The Trojanized version of the app includes malicious code that pilfers personal data from the phone -- the phone number, the device's unique identifier and more -- and sends it to a remote anonymous server.
That's not new, said John Engles, a group product manager with Symantec's security response team. What is new, at least on mobile devices, is the rogue app's texting of an embarrassing message to each contact in the phone's address book.
"Hey, just downlaoded [sic] a pirated App off the Internet," the message reads. "Walk and Text for Android. Im [sic] stupid and cheap, it costed [sic] only 1 buck. Don't steal like I did!"

A new rogue Android app uses a new twist: It texts an embarrassing message to everyone on the phone's contact list.

When the app is run, a final message appears on the smartphone's screen that states, "We really hope you learned something from this." That message is accompanied by a an offer to buy the legitimate program from the Android Market.
According to Symantec, the rogue app -- which the company pegged as "Android.Walkinwat" and identified as a Trojan horse -- is similar to other fake Android apps that host malware. "They took the legitimate app, decompiled it, added the malicious code, recompiled it and then placed it on small Android side markets," said Engles.
Although Engles said the Trojan maker's motivation was unclear, he said it was most likely created by anti-piracy vigilantes. But it's also possible that the creator of Android.Walkinwat wanted to undermine the reputation of the legitimate Walk and Text application.
Engles called Android.Walkinwat "fairly benign," in part because it doesn't appear to have elements common to other mobile malware, such as a backdoor that allows secret downloads of other code.
"And it doesn't seem to be very popular or widespread," said Engles. Symantec has classified the rogue app/Trojan as a "Low" threat.
Installing the Trojanized app could result in higher texting bills, depending on the number of contacts in a victimized smartphone, and where those contacts lived. "This could cost you some money," said Engles.

There is a second page to this that will be published tomorrow morning.

Firefox 4 for Android OS

For all the rapid improvement that both Apple's iOS and Google's Android have seen, one thing about both mobile operating systems hasn't changed much at all: their browsers. True, their technical underpinnings have been refined. But featurewise, they haven't evolved at anywhere near the pace of their counterparts on PCs, where the competition among browsers is never-ending.
That's one reason why I'm in favor of browser competition being as healthy on smartphones and tablets as it is on computers. On iOS, that's not going to happen anytime soon--Apple doesn't permit full-blown browsers with their own rendering engines in the App Store. (Ones that use the Safari engine, such as the excellent Atomic Web Browser, are permissible; so is Opera Mini, which does most of its work on Opera's servers, not on your phone.)
On Android, however, there's nothing stopping other companies from competing with the OS's built-in browser. Opera announced new versions of both Opera Mini and Opera Mobile for Android a couple of weeks ago. And now Mozilla has released the final version of Firefox 4 for Android.
I first wrote about the Android incarnation of Firefox last April, when it was known as Fennec and was a very rough draft. (In the interim, Mozilla decided to call it Firefox 4; that's more straightforward but should not be interpreted as evidence that the mobile browser is a carbon copy of its recently-released PC cousin.) It's come a long way-this finished version has a decidedly Firefoxy feel and is among the most feature-rich mobile browsers to date.
Some highlights:

• It has a clever interface that lets you swipe to the right to see thumbnails of tabls, and swipe to the left to get navigational tools and settings, thereby letting you bypass your phone's menu button (always a plus in my book);
• It has a mobilized version of Firefox's Awesome Bar that lets you type into the address bar to search your history, Google, Amazon, and other sources;
• It has Add-ons! Just as with the browser I know think of as Traditional Firefox, this one lets third-party developers build extensions that add new features and change stuff around. Among the ones already available: one that lets you change the browser user agent screen to fool sites into thinking you're using another browser, a mobile version of Adblock Plus, a text-zooming utility, and one that lets you tweet from the address bar;
• You can sync your history, bookmarks, tabs, and other settings with other copies of Firefox on other devices;
• It sports a rendering engine which Mozilla touts as being much faster than the one used by Google's browser. It did feel pretty darn snappy to me, although the browser launched slowly on an HTC Evo 4G, with a splash screen and a "please wait" message;
• You can save any page as a PDF, which is useful for salting away information you'll want to refer to later.

Stick to Mobile Phones

Firefox for Android doesn't render Google's standard browser obsolete overnight. For me, the biggest catch is that so many mobile Web sites are designed to work best on the Webkit-based browsers used by iOS and Android. If you go to Google Docs in Firefox and try to edit a file, for instance, you get a warning that your browser isn't supported. (I tried changing Firefox's agent string to claim that the browser was iOS, but that only made maters worse.)
The browser runs on Android 2.0 and above, but it's a phone app, not a tablet one; it'll work on tablets, but just scales up the interface to fit the larger screen. Mozilla says it might build a tablet-specific Firefox eventually.
Oh, and Firefox for Android doesn't support Flash, even when it's on a phone that has Flash installed. This doesn't strike me as a major downside, but you might feel differently; Mozilla says it might enable Flash later, but it's mostly focusing on making HTML5 work as well as possible.
I like Firefox for Android. I like the fact that it gives Google some incentive to add more features to Android's default browser. And maybe I'm a nutty optimist, but I think that the better browsing gets on Android phones, the more likely it is that Apple will beef up iOS's Safari. (I'm not so optimistic that I believe Apple will permit other full-fledged browsers such as Firefox onto iOS anytime soon, but you never know.)
In short, I'm glad that Firefox has finally landed on Android in a version that's ready for prime time. If you've tried it, let us know what you think...