Archive for: February, 2008
February 29th, 2008
Same old, same old control-freak Apple: they'll be "gatekeeper" for third-party iPhone apps
Jeremy Horvitz from iLounge has been listening to some developers with apparent knowledge of the iPhone SDK due next week.
He’s gleaned that Apple plans to require that all mobile applications be distributed through its iTunes Store.
Perhaps more important, Jeremy notes his sources tell him that Apple’s SDK intends to specify that Apple has the right plan is its intention to formally approve or deny all SDK-based software releases for its devices.
“Our sources confirm that Apple will act as a gatekeeper for applications, deciding which are and are not worthy of release, and publishing only approved applications to the iTunes Store; a process that will less resemble the iTunes Store’s massive directory of podcasts than its sale of a limited variety of iPod Games,” Jeremy writes.
“Sources told iLounge that the collective impact of Apple’s decisions will be to control and stifle third-party development at a critical juncture in iPhone and iPod history, limiting what could be an open, thriving Mac-like collection of applications and accessories to a smaller, more stagnant iPod-like controlled environment,” Jeremy adds.
Apple as “gatekeeper?” Imagine that!
February 29th, 2008
Man mistakenly assigned Vonage number now has to go thru PITA of requesting it back
Yesterday I blogged about the case of reader dmuniz, who wrote to tell me that his Packet8 phone number was mistakenly assigned to Vonage- even though he is not, and never has been a Vonage customer.
Just a few mins. ago I got this update from the same dmuniz:
Yesterday I handed the whole thing over to my attorneys. They contacted both Vonage and Packet8. They were able to get more information from Vonage than me, but also got a different explanation of what happened from Vonage than the one I got from Packet8.
Packet8 now wants me to contact the actual company that received my phone#. I have to ask them to give it back to me(?). I also have to get a copy of the authorization from them to port my number to them(?).
What a mess. I’ll keep you posted.
February 29th, 2008
Vonage spent nearly $1.4 million to lobby Feds in 2007
The Associated Press reports that Vonage spent nearly $1.4 million to lobby the federal government in 2007.
Vonage’s key lobbying activities were related to telecommunications competition and consumer issues.
That’s according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 13 by the Senate’s public records office.
You are looking at selected portions of the form at the top of this post:
Much of the need to lobby seems to be directly mappable back to issues raised in several patent disputes Vonage participated in last month, as well as in 2007.
Specifically, the AP notes that in January, Vonage settled litigation with Nortel Networks, the latest in a series of multimillion-dollar patent settlements with traditional telecommunications companies. Last year, the Holmdel, N.J.-based company agreed to pay AT&T Inc. $39 million to settle a patent suit. Vonage also settled lawsuits with Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp. for a total of $200 million in 2007.
According to its most recent filing, Vonage spent more than $601,000 in the second half of the year lobbying on those issues.
Under a U.S. Federal law enacted in 1995, lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches.
February 29th, 2008
Should software be patented? This site would like the practice stopped
A new website entitled End Software Patents is attempting to galvanize public support to accomplish that goal.
Here’s the core of their argument:
Patents differ from copyright in one key manner: independent invention is a valid defense against claims of copyright infringement. That means that if you happen to write something that looks like the writing of somebody else, then you can’t be sued, unless the other author can prove that you directly copied his or her work.
Conversely, a patent holder can sue anybody who has written a composition similar to a patented composition. The holder of a software patent need only spend a few minutes with an Internet search engine to find somebody to sue—which is why “software companies” like the Green Bay Packers and Tire Kingdom are being sued: their web site evidently implements something that seems to match one out of the above-mentioned thousands of patents.
Is your company, school, or organization infringing any software patents? If it has a computer on hand, then the answer is almost certainly yes.
So software patents have created liability for everybody. But have they spurred innovation? Nobody can find any evidence that they have; see the Resources for economists page for the list of pro-software patent scholars who have searched for evidence of benefit and failed.
The site then tries to make the case that one of the key reasons why software patents have thrived despite their ineffectiveness is because of the self-perpetuating Patent bureaucracy- namely that of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Here’s what End Software Patents has to say about the USPTO and the software patent culture:
Imagine a government agency with the scope to inspect and grant a monopoly on every line of computer code written by anyone in any part of the economy, and you’ve got the US Patent and Trademark Office.
As you can imagine, granting so many monopolies requires a lot of resources: the PTO has grown out of its buildings and continues to expand, to the tune of 1,200 employees per year for the next five years. Even so, it will still have to stretch to catch up to its backlog of 1.3 million uninspected patents
1,200 new employees over five years equals 6,000 new hires. Coincidentally, the PTO in 2000 was about 6,000 people. So the PTO hopes to grow to more than double its size in 2000.
The irony of this effort to create a federal bureaucracy to oversee everybody’s computer code is that, as above, nobody has any proof that this computer code bureaucracy has spurred innovation. Even coders themselves oppose this government ‘service’—see the what practitioners are saying page.
I’m not sure all software Patents should be abolished, but I will grant that an unfortunate culture of patent trolls has been spawned by software patents.
What do you think?
Loading ...February 29th, 2008
Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone on way; here's a peek
On his website, Asterisk developer Chris Carey posts an interesting preview of something he is building called Asterisk Voicemail for iPhone.
Chris says Voicemail for iPhone will allow you to check your voicemail messages on your house or business line from your iPhone.
“You can think of it as “Visual Voicemail”, but for your Asterisk PBX numbers instead of your AT&T cell number,” he writes. “The technology behind it is Asterisk (The Open-Source PBX), with iUI, Joe Hewitt’s UI interface for iPhone. This software can be installed on any Asterisk server (though you will want to use one that is available via the Internet) and will allow you to check messages, listen to messages, delete messages, move messages, and change voicemail settings - all from your iPhone.”
If you are looking for a download link, there isn’t one yet. Chris says that after he cleans up portions of the code, he’ll release the software under GPL or some other free public license.
February 29th, 2008
Don't want Comcast junk mailers? They'll charge you $1.99 "service fee"
Update: Comcast has contacted the customer referenced below, has apologized for the charge, has refunded it, says was applied in error, counseled the customer service rep not to do this, and said it won’t happen again.
But not before this all went down:
In addition to Comcast’s invoices- which already are too much- they’ll send you promotional mailers throughout the month. Stuff like sign up for their digtal phone service or on-demand cable.
While it is possible some of you will look forward to these mailers, here’s a shocker. Many of us, including this Comcast customer, don’t really look forward to the clutter.
Want to stop those Comcast junk mailings? Well, cost ‘ya.
Consumerist reader Ian says that when he notified Comcast that he’d really like the mailings to stop, he called Comcast to advise them of this. While they did indeed act on his complaint, Comcast added $1.99 to his bill.
Here’s what Ian wrote Consumerist:
I noticed a $1.99 “change of service” charge on my most recent Comcast bill. During an online chat, a Comcast rep explained the source of the fee:”It looks like on 2/5/08 you contacted us and requested to have all direct mailers stopped on your account. There is a one time “Change of service” fee associated with making that change on the account.”
I had in fact called Comcast a few weeks earlier and asked them to stop sending me anything except a monthly bill. They were happy to do so, but had not told me that they would try and stick me for $2. They rep removed the fee from my bill.
Your readers might want to be on the lookout for bogus charges on their Comcast bill if they’ve ever spoken to Comcast on the phone. Perhaps this is how they pay for people to fill seats for them at FCC
hearings.-Ian
Several readers wrote in, attesting to similar experiences.
My takeaway: yet another example of Comcast nickel-and-diming.
You too?
February 28th, 2008
Reader: Vonage assigned my Packet8 number, and I'm not even a Vonage customer
I’ve just received an email from “dmuniz,” who is a reader of this blog.
Are you ready for another Vonage horror story this Thursday afternoon?
K, well, then, here’s what he wrote:
I don’t subscribe to Vonage, I use Packet8 for my VOIP. Somehow Vonage assigned my Packet8 phone no. to one of their new customers. I called Vonage and they told me that since they had a request to “port” the number, they did it.
I called their customer that received my phone # and advised them that Packet8 was in the process of taking back the #. They advised me that they didn’t ask for the #, Vonage gave them a random phone #. Today is Wednesday. I have been without phone service since Monday. When I called Vonage today, the rep advised me that they won’t be taking any further action on the matter.
FYI, in California, the Public Utilities Commission doesn’t regulate VOIP phone providers.
Truly a bad customer service experience and I’m not even a customer of Vonage.
Has anything remotely similar to this happened to any of you readers? If so, how did you deal (or not deal) with it?
February 28th, 2008
Google offers free voicemail, phone number to ALL SF homeless
Google said today it is giving a free lifetime phone number and voice mail to every single homeless person in San Francisco who wants one.
The effort, which part of Project Homeless Connect, will enable a homeless person to check his or her messages from any phone.
Examples of this could be calling in for messages from prospective employers, or even checking in with their families.
One homeless man interviewed by San Francisco’s KNTV-TV said:”
“Having your family, friends and loved ones being able to say ‘here I’m thinking about you, I love you, I want you to know you’re mine, and I miss you,’ can have a monumental change in one’s behavior.”
Well, I for one think this is an amazingly compassionate move on Google’s part.
Yes, I know Market Street and other main SF avenues are crowded with the homeless. But although many are there because of poor choices, others will say that they would work, but they don’t have a way for potential employers to get ahold of them.
Maybe this will help those who have yet to help themselves?
Do you think so?
Loading ...February 28th, 2008
Here's my problem with many rogue coders, hackers, Open Source cultists
I’ll call a spade a spade here.
Too many hackers, coders, and 
open source religionists are elitists. They think they know better, and are better, than you and me. But they are not.
I’ve been carrying around this ‘tude for a long time, but it’s really been bubbling in my brain since yesterday when I read a comment on my post about Ubuntu not really mattering that much now.
Commenters such as that guy, and others, like to hurl back a bunch of initials, acronyms and jargon to describe why their work- and sometimes just benevolent mischief- is so important.
Yes, but to whom?
In that vein, let me expound on my elitist charge.
For starters, let’s take cellphone or PDA users.
The vast majority of them simply want to make calls, text, maybe snap and send a picture, maybe email, IM or even Twitter.
When it comes to unsactioned hacks, third party apps, and devices that can- to quote “The Dukes of Hazard,” do “a little bit more than the law will allow,” most users could give a rip.
Let me ask you a question. Stop 100 cellphone users and ask them, “what’s Ubuntu?” Maybe 1 in 100 would know.
Truth is, the other 99 don’t need to know, because they carry around their cell to do the basic tasks their carrier and OEM have determined they need, and have taken the time to install on those devices. And busy with everything from saving up for their kid’s college to staying ahead of the mortgage crunch, one of the last things they could give a poop about are some cool new hacks for their mobile.
The same general principle exists with notebooks and PCs, especially on the consumer (as opposed to enterprise) side. Ubuntu-powered Dell? Well that’s OK, but do you think even 10% of consumers care? In the read world, it is more like give me Microsoft Office, Outlook Express, maybe iTunes, some games. Don’t give me hacks or alphabet soup utilities, remedies or solutions.
Back again to my elitist charge.
To many of you rogue open source cultists, hackers and coders will look at the 1 in 100 opine I have constructed and say either or:
The other 99% will love all this new stuff when it is made available to them, or;
The other 99% are idiots, because they haven’t heard of, or don’t “get” the technologically transformative import of what we digerati are working on.
Well, dude, they don’t get it because they have lives, and your alphabet soup of a solution doesn’t matter to them.
A final thought. There’s a lot in common between the reality distortion field too many rogue technological elitists live in and the reality distortion field of Ron Paul fans.
Just as the rogue coders, hackers and Open Source cultists overlook the daily concerns of the common folk, Ron Paul fans often overlook the fact that his platform professes little if any need to help common folk who are struggling to, say, avoid foreclosure.
Oh, but it is the common person’s fault they are about to be foreclosed on.
Oh, but it is the common person’s fault they don’t realize that we rogue hackers, coders and open source cultists are trying to make their devices- and lives- better.
Common thread: lack of feel for the common person, and lack of respect for their life’s priorities.
Poll now.
Loading ...February 28th, 2008
Is Apple going to ease up on iPhone jailbreakers? Based on what COO said yesterday, kind of sounds like it
In remarks at an investment conference yesterday, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook said that because the demand for hacked iPhones exists, there would always be a level of hacking.
That type of hacking could be taken to be the type of jailbreaking that when performed successfully, can “free” iPhone from its tethers to geographically exclusive carriers such as AT&T Mobility in the U.S.
Since no one at Apple speaks about such sensitive matters without Steve Jobs’ OK, I wonder if Cook is sending some sort of a signal that Apple may ease up on jailbreaking-throttles in successive decimal iPhone firmware updates.
At some point, either Apple or the jailbreakers will get tired of the arms race. Not that the jailbreakers won’t keep trying to free up the iPhone, but Apple may decide it is time to move forward and concentrate on making the iPhone an even richer experience and stop their preoccupation with matching the jailbreakers’ moves, tit-for-tat.
I am convinced that this evolving attitude will then be followed by Apple buying out its five-year iPhone contract exclusivity with AT&T.
February 27th, 2008
Attn. Stanford students, Palo Alto street peeps: FCC Comcast Torrent-thwart hearing to Stanford?
Valleywag is hearing that a “do-over” of yesterday’s net neutrality-overlayed FCC hearing about Comcast’s thwarting of Torrent packets may be headed to the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto.
I wonder how happy Comcash will be to face the citizenry’s champion of net neutrality and reasonable copyright. I am talking about Larry Lessig, praise be unto him. Being a Stanford prof. he presumably could walk to such a hearing.
BTW at yesterday’s hearing Comcast admitted they hired several dozen people off the street to pack the seats.
I wonder if Comcast will try that stunt in Palo Alto. I often glimpse plenty of unemployed grad students walking and cycling along and hear University Avenue.
February 27th, 2008
The music business is dead. Or dying. Or morphing. Or all of the above
Five hundred music business execs gathered today at the Digital Music Forum East conference in New York.
To read Nate Anderson’s account in Ars Technica, attendees differed on the matter of the importance of record labels.
Sentiments were expressed that because the record companies do all this vetting before they sign artists and put them out there for the marketplace to decide on, that a built-in screening process involved in this vetting helps the music consumer save time by not having to wade through schlock.
Others at the conference seemed to say that between social media sites, direct download on artist-run sites, 
and music recommendation software, music consumers have oppty to make their own choices, around and apart from those made for them by label A&R folks and least common denominator focus-research driven radio station program directors and their consultants.
Despite the Venus-Neptune gap in those two viewpoints, Nate does identify some commonality among the camps in attendance at the event:
- DRM on purchased music is dead
- A utility pricing model or flat-rate fee for music might be the way to go
- Ad-supported streaming music sites like iMeem are legitimate players
- Indie music accounts for upwards of 30 percent of music sales
- Napster isn’t losing $70 million per quarter (and is breaking even)
- The music business is a bastion of creativity and experimentation
The last point is correct, but IMHO primarily because of the social media and recommendation engine resources I’ve alluded to.
But the question must then be asked, if a growing number of recording artists sell their downloadable tracks or CDs from their own sites, can we refer to that activity as a new music business functionality?
Or, are such sales not so much “music business” as “band business,” with bits that carry music?
What do you think?
Loading ...Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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