ITC to Hear Samsung's Case Against Apple

On Wednesday, July 27 the International Trade Commission decided that they would hear out Samsung’s patent case against Apple.

The commission "has voted to institute an investigation of certain electronic devices, including wireless communication devices, portable music and data processing devices, and tablet computers," the ITC said in a statement. What Samsung wants is for the commission to block all U.S. imports of iPhone, iPods and iPads.

At the end of June, Samsung filed a complaint against Apple just two months after Apple sued Samsung. Apple claimed that Samsung had copied the look and feel of the iPhone and the iPad with its Galaxy S smartphones and tablets. That’s when Samsung turned right around with a countersuit that claimed that Apple was infringing on five different patents that were related to some of Samsung’s wireless network technology.

Apple then came back with some more complaints at the beginning of July. They attempted to block the import of Samsung Galaxy S phones as well as the Galaxy Tab tablets.

Apple recently was informed by the ITC that its Mac OS X operating system is in violation of patents from S3 Graphics related to graphics chips; however, its iOS is fine. Bloomberg said that the ruling on the case could possibly lead to a U.S. ban on the imports of certain Macs.

FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller mentioned the fact that S3 is in the middle of being bought out by HTC, another company that is dealing with patent issues involving Apple. He did say, however, that he did not think that the S3 ruling would help HTC out at all.

"It looks like HTC is going to have to use patents other than the four at issue in that proceeding in order to put Apple under serious pressure," Mueller wrote.

"Right now it seems that the validity of those four S3 patents is uncertain, and even the worst-case scenario for Apple may just come down to a need to equip its Macintosh computers with Nvidia chips."

"The iPhone, iPad and iPod product lines aren't even affected at all. Against that background, Apple can apparently keep pursuing its multiple lawsuits against HTC," he said.

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Heavy Data Users to be Throttled by AT&T

AT&T is putting into effect a new policy that is said to affect customers who are heavy users of their data plans. This new policy will only affect customers who are still on an unlimited data plan and only the top 5% of that customer base. AT&T will be throttling these users beginning on October 1. Throttling is when a carrier slows down the connection of a device in order to keep it from consuming more data. At the moment, AT&T hasn't specified what exactly the "limit" will be, though the company says the amount of data that would trigger throttling will vary from month to month.

This isn't a new idea from AT&T, however, AT&T is just the most recent carrier to do this. Throttling is the newest way for carriers to deal with the explosion of wireless data users. Throttling is just the move that illustrates the difficulties it faces, and signals that the era of unlimited data plans is almost at an end. However, if unlimited data is coming to an end, I fear that a lot of users will stop using smartphones all together; I know I might.

AT&T is stressing, however, that this move would only affect a small minority of its customer base and, furthermore, that it is designed to improve the experience for the rest of its users. On the other hand, this move is definitely going to receive a strong reaction from users who are quite used to, and quite attached to, their unlimited data. According to a statement from AT&T, "These customers on average use 12 times more data than the average of all other smartphone data customers."

In a kind gesture, AT&T did say that it would send several notices and offer a grace period to the carrier's heaviest users before throttling them. In addition to that, the users will have their speeds restored at the beginning of each billing cycle. AT&T moved to tier pricing last month in order to deal with the capacity crunch. This capped data usage at 2GB of data, though customers who had an existing unlimited data plan were grandfathered in and kept their plans.

These actions were taken primarily due to the changing way in which AT&T customers have begun to use the iPhone. The iPhone clogged up AT&T's networks and resulted in years of crappy service, especially in areas like New York and San Francisco. In addition to that, data usage has seemingly exploded, especially considering the new Android phones the carrier has added.

It is rumored that Verizon may go to throttling as well. The carrier has already switched to tiered data plans just like AT&T. Sprint is currently the only carrier to offer truly unlimited data plans though it too has suggested jumping on board with everybody else.

Source: CNET - AT&T says it will throttle heavy data users

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Critical to Download Apple's iOS Security Patch

Recently, there has been news flying around about some issues with Apple’s mobile operating system. At first it didn’t seem like a huge deal, but according to Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, it is much more critical than was first believed that iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users download Apple’s recent security patch for iOS.

“It is clearly critical that all users update as soon as possible, unless they only use their device for telephone calls,” Wisniewski wrote Wednesday, July 27 on Sophos’ NakedSecurity blog. He wrote that the Apple operating system is vulnerable to an updated version of a tool that is called sslsniff. It "allows users to easily perform man-in-the-middle attacks against SSL/TLS connections," he said.

He said that the new version of sslsniff can "identify vulnerable Apple devices and allows anyone to snoop on secure communications."

"This patch should be applied immediately if you log in to any service on your device, especially things like your bank or PayPal," Wisniewski writes. "Users are particularly vulnerable to this attack if they frequently use public/open WiFi."

According to Wisniewski, iOS versions 4.3.4, 4.2.9, 5.0b and earlier are vulnerable. He also said that there is no fix, even for devices that are only a couple of generations old.

"If you are using an iPod Touch generation one or two or an iPhone older than the 3GS, you will be perpetually vulnerable," he writes. "Owners of these devices should not use them for any purpose for which security or privacy is required."

"Oddly the flaw in iOS was a widespread flaw in WebKit and Microsoft's CryptoAPI nine years ago," Wisniewski writes. "It allows any valid certificate purchased from a Certificate Authority to sign any other certificate, which the client device will then consider valid.”

"This allows anyone who can capture traffic from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with man-in-the-middle techniques to intercept and read any and all encrypted SSL traffic silently and without notification to the user."

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Business Profiles for Google+ in High Demand

The demand for Google+ business profiles has reached an all-time high, which has lead Google+ leader Vic Gundotra to acknowledge that Google has indeed been caught off guard. However, Gundotra did vow to fix this and that the solution is being fast-tracked. Google+ is currently designed for personal profiles only, except in cases of companies that have been hand picked by Google to participate in the program for the development of business profiles.

Because of this, Google has been deleting unapproved Google+ business profiles which has prompted a series of critical posts from Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog. Sullivan's business profile was among one of those removed from Google+. In a comment to a post by Sullivan, Gundotra wrote that Google should have anticipated the frustration among those who want a Google+ business profile. "This is my fault. I prioritized other things first. So when Danny says Google screwed up, he is right," Gundotra wrote.

In addition to that, Gundotra added, "We prioritized making a great experience for people first. None of our internal models showed this level of growth. We were caught flat-footed. This growth is very enticing for people/brands who crave an audience. We are doing all we can to accelerate the work to properly handle this case. Please give us just a little more time."

In a post by Christian Oestlien, one of Google+'s product managers, he stated that tens of thousands of organizations applied to be in the business profiles of Google+. Oestlien also stated that Google hopes to allow for the creation of business profiles in the coming months, much sooner than originally planned. "Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait."

In the meantime, Google will continue to disable business profiles, according to Oestlien, who added that a work-around is to "find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself." For those of you who do not know, Google+ is the search engine giant's Facebook. The service is currently in a limited beta and is only allowing a certain number of users in and by invitation only. It is believed that Google+ currently has somewhere between 15 million and 20 million members already and is only growing as fast as Google allows it to.

Source: Computer World - Google scrambles to accelerate Google+ business profiles

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Amazon's New Way of Supplying Textbooks

It’s the time of year that college students start to think about laptops and school supplies and textbooks, whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, text books are something that most students cannot avoid. They are something that students need to be thinking about because they can cost you an arm and a leg, and once you shell out all the money for them, the bookstore doesn’t want to give you two cents for them when you try to sell them back after you are done with the classes. Well, this year, Amazon is offering you a new way to deal with the text book dilemma. On Monday, Amazon unveiled its new Kindle Textbook Rental service. It allows students to rent textbooks via their Kindle or Kindle apps for up to a year.

One of the great things about the new service is that Amazon promises that they can save students up to 80 percent. "Students tell us that they enjoy the low prices we offer on new and used print textbooks. Now we're excited to offer students an option to rent Kindle textbooks and only pay for the time they need—with savings up to 80 percent off the print list price on a 30-day rental," Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said in a statement.

Customers will be able to rent textbooks for as little as 30 days or as many as 360. It all depends on how long the student needs the textbook. They will be able to increase their rental period in one-day increments or have the option to even buy the book if they wish. Amazon made sure to mention that they will make sure to save all of the notes that individual users make in the margins, even after the rental has expired.

"Normally, when you sell your print textbook at the end of the semester, you lose all the margin notes and highlights you made as you were studying," Limp said. "We're extending our Whispersync technology so that you get to keep and access all of your notes and highlighted content in the Amazon Cloud, available anytime, anywhere—even after a rental expires. If you choose to rent again or buy at a later time, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced."

Amazon also mentioned that users will be able to access all of their rented textbooks across devices. Say you start reading a book on your Kindle, you will be able to pick up wherever you leave off via your Kindle smartphone app whenever you want.

According to Amazon, tens of thousands of textbooks will be ready and available for the 2011 school year. A few publishers that will be included are John Wiley & Sons, Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. Students will really be able to enjoy great savings with this new service. For example, to buy an intermediate level accounting book on the Kindle, it will cost you about $110, but to rent it, you will put out less than $40. An organic chemistry book goes for about $100 when you buy it, but when you rent it, it is closer to around $40. That is some serious savings!

In July, 2010 Borders unveiled an online textbook market similar to Amazon’s service, and in August, Barnes and Noble also announced a Web-based textbook rental service. It’s good that Amazon is now up to speed. I think that the new service is bound to be a success.

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Apple Introduces New Volume Purchasing Program for Businesses

Apple announced this week that it will be allowing businesses to begin purchasing iOS apps in bulk. Apple has not yet revealed a launch date for the new Volume Purchase Program (VPP) for the App Store, but its website says that it is “coming soon.”

"Streamline your purchasing process and put more power and productivity in the hands of your workforce," Apple says on the VPP page. "Every paid app in the App Store is available for businesses to buy in volume through the program website. Simply search for the apps you need, enter the quantity you want to buy, and complete the transaction with your corporate credit card. Apps are available for purchase at the same price listed in the App Store."

The new Volume Purchase Program is an extension of a program that Apple already offers that allows educational institutions to purchase apps in bulk. “Any business in the US can participate in the Volume Purchasing Program,” the website states. It continues saying that to enroll in the program, all a business has to do is create a volume purchasing account with Apple. To enroll, one needs basic contact information to verify your business, a Dun & Bradstreet (D-U-N-S) number and a corporate credit card or PCard to purchase the apps with.

Now it is important to note that any of the apps that businesses purchase through this program are processed differently than normal apps which are processed through iTunes. These bulk purchases will be processed directly through VPP. Also, one disappointment would be that while educational institutions get a discount when they purchase apps in bulk, businesses will be receiving them at the regular price. Once a business has purchased apps through the Volume Purchase Program, they will be able to distribute the apps to their employees by using redemption codes.

“The website also discusses how businesses will be able to utilize custom B2B (business to business) apps. Custom B2B apps are built just for you by third-party developers and business partners to address a specific business process, integrate with a unique back-office environment, or deliver a custom interface for your users. Using the Volume Purchase Program, you can securely and privately purchase custom B2B apps for iPhone and iPad that make your business even more effective. If you are a developer who is enrolled in the iOS Developer program, you can create custom B2B apps for sale to your customers enrolled in the Volume Purchase Program.”

It sounds like there will be plenty of great things that businesses will be able to do with this new program. It is just unfortunate for businesses that they do not get a discount like educational institutions do.

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MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI Pico Projector

Pico projectors aren't really new anymore, and that's ok because they are still highly popular pieces of equipment. However, despite their commonality, finding a Pico projector with an HDMI input is still pretty rare. However, MicroVision's latest device is taking the SHOWWX+ from last year and adding an HDMI input and creating the MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI, the most perfect device to have for easy hook-ups with your laptop or tablet PC.

The device measures in at 2.3 x 4.6 x 0.55mm and uses a laser projection system. What that means is that absolutely no focusing is necessary. All you have to do is point it at a wall and you get up to a 100" display. The MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI also has a 848 x 480 resolution which won't treat your HD movies too well but should be enough for some quality YouTube videos. Brightness ranks at 15 lumens with the contrast ratio coming in at 5,000:1. In addition to that, the HDMI input is HDCP compliant for protected sources.

Aside from the HDMI, this device has your usual component input for use with a standard television output from a laptop, DVD player or iPod. You can also hook it up to a VGA connection if you have the right hookups though that probably won't be necessary since many laptops have HDMI already these days. The battery, which is user replaceable, is also good for around two hours of use.

If you are looking for a good Pico projector for your laptop or tablet PC, the MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI is the device for you. You can pre-order the MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI projector now and pick it up when the device is expected to ship soon. Price is slated at $369.

Source: Slash Gear - MicroVision SHOWWX+ HDMI pico-projector adds HDMI input

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Acer Finally Rolls Out Android 3.1 Update for Iconia Tab A500

Have you recently purchased or been given a new Acer Iconia Tab A500? If so, are you lamenting over the fact that many other tablets have Android 3.1 and you don't? Well, if any of that rings true for you, don't fret any longer because the Iconia Tab A500 from Acer is the next device in the long line of products to get the Android 3.1 upgrade.

While it was a little later than consumers had first imagined, Acer did manage to start rolling out the Android 3.1 upgrade for the Iconia Tab A500 on Wednesday. This recent update has all the nifty little features we saw at Google I/O including a deeper multitasking system, resizable widgets and support for USB host devices like a camera.

In addition to adding new things, this update also removes some things. A number of quirks have been removed like respecting the orientation lock when the tablet is at the lock screen, among other things.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was the first tablet to receive the Android 3.1. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 had the fortunate experience of shipping with Android 3.1 out of the box. A few select Xoom users are also getting the upgrade as well.

Acer has yet to say how quickly the owners of the Iconia Tab A500 will get the upgrades. Usually, in terms of upgrades like this, the update pushes out over the course of a couple of days to a couple of weeks. A lot of the time the update will automatically show up but a manual check of your tablet may allow you to receive the update earlier.

Source: Electronista - Acer Iconia Tab A500's Android 3.1 update goes live

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Sliding Tablet Reportedly Coming from Acer by Holiday

Tablets are some of the hottest new pieces of technology out right now and just about every technological or computer company is dipping their toes in the market to see if they can somehow muster up a product to top Apple's juggernaut, the iPad 2. Now even though tablets are great pieces of tech and lot of companies are trying to aim them towards business professionals, they don't seem that useful to me. Actually, I should say they do not seem more useful than a laptop in terms of business professionals.

A lot of tablets, including the iPad, are a bit pricey. So much so that the price you would pay for an average tablet would be around the same you would pay for a pretty good laptop. Both would be lightweight, have good hardware that would work well with your business travels etc., but the laptop has one thing that a tablet does not, something that I would think is very crucial for business professionals who constantly find themselves working on the go... a keyboard.

Granted nearly every big name in the tablet universe these days has its own version of a detachable keyboard that you can buy separately from the tablet, but that is just extra money you have to spend and an extra piece of equipment that you have to travel with and take care of. To me the hassle doesn't seem worth it. However, Acer appears to have solved this problem by introducing one of their newest products, a slide tablet.

Acer is said to be releasing a slide tablet in the fourth quarter of 2011 with their crosshairs focussed on the year-end holiday season. This new product will adopt a 10-inch touchscreen and ARM-based processor and will be manufactured by Compal Electronics, who declined to comment about its clients. What sets this device apart from other tablets is that instead of having to buy a separate keyboard for your tablet, the Acer slide tablet will have one already built in. All you will do is slide the screen out and flip it up and you have yourself a fully functioning laptop clone.

Acer is holding back details on this device as the company is still currently trying to clear its inventory of notebooks. Acer has recently reduced its 2011 tablet PC shipment forecast from 5-7 million units to only 2.5-3 million. In addition to that, with more and more Android tablets starting to pop up in the second half of 2011, most of non-Apple tablet vendors' estimated shipments are slightly optimistic.

Either way this new tablet from Acer may be the better choice for on the go business professionals, especially due to the slide out keyboard. However, we will not truly know until all the specs on this device are out, so keep checking back as we will have updates about Acer's sliding tablet PC as they arise.

Source: DigiTimes - Acer reportedly planning to launch slide tablet PC in 4Q11

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