News written by Rich Fiscus (April, 2010)

The war of words between Adobe and Apple over the latter company's apparent campaign to dethrone Flash as a standard web development technology continues to escalate.

Besides declining to work with Adobe to bring Flash to the iPhone OS, Apple has recently changed the Terms of Service for the iPhone SDK to disallow development with unauthorized tools like Adobe's new Creative Studio 5.

Earlier this week Adobe's Mike Chambers indicated that due to the new restrictions in the iPhone SDK TOS, Adobe won't contine development of tools to create iPhone apps in Flash CS5. Chambers wrote that Apple wants to "make it difficult for developers to target other platforms."

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller shot back in a statement pointing out that the iPhone OS supports common open standards like HTML5, CSS, Javascript and H.264, calling Flash "closed and proprietary."

But does support for open standards actually make the iPhone OS itself open? After all, Flash also supports H.264, but as Muller correctly points out that doesn't stop it from being closed.

The FCC will, for the first time ever, be collecting data about the performance of consumer broadband internet connections across the US.

In the past data has been provided by ISPs, and FCC officials have admitted it was worthless while still releasing reports based on it.

In order to get some real world data the FCC has contracted with SamKnows, a company who has worked with UK telecom regulators at Ofcom for similar purposes. Their most recent work showed that users of the most popular UK broadband services were only getting about half the speed advertised.

After soliciting volunteers who have broadband internet service from across the US, SamKnows will be providing specially modified routers which will analyze various aspects of each user's connection. In addition to providing the data and analysis to the FCC, SamKnows will allow participants to view data about their individual connections.

Details on the methodology to be used for the study will be released by the FCC within the next few days.

According to SamKnows' website they will begin taking applications from the public to participate in the study "in the next couple of weeks."

Last year in the US the PRO-IP bill was signed into law. It created a new head of copyright enforcement in the Justice Department and called for public input on ways to address intellectual property infringement.

It also mandated that the GAO (Government Accountability Office) identify and quantify the presumed harm to the US economy from IP infringement. In a report issued on Monday they were critical of both government agencies and industry groups for promoting facts and figures.

On the government side they looked at three figures which have been widely used to argue in favor of increased IP enforcement. According to the GAO, none of the numbers stand up to scrutiny because they, "cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology."

These include a FBI estimate that US businesses lose $200 to $250 billion annually due to counterfeiting. These figures were originally found in a FBI press release, but the agency, "has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate."

Other reports from US Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Trade Commission were similarly criticized for being short on facts, and even discredited by the agencies themselves.

As we predicted last year, it appears Google is preparing to turn On2's VP8 video standard into an open source project.

The purchase of On2, which was finalized earlier this year, is part of a larger campaign by Google to include open source, and therefore royalty free, standards in HTML5. As you can see from ChromeOS, Google's web browser-based netbook OS, they are clearly focused completely on web-based computing and even traditional applications using web technology.

NewTeeVee is reporting that Google will make their plans for VP8 official at a developer's conference next month.

This development is part of an ongoing debate between web browser developers about what video format(s) should be supported by HTML5's <video> tag. Supporters of the two leading candidates, H.264 (aka MPEG-4 AVC) and OGG Theora (aka VP3) primarily disagree about royalty models.

In remarks at a Q&A session for the Council on Foreign Relations, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg characterized the entire net neutrality debate as a false dilemma invented by software companies to protect them from competition.

He said, "I think people who... fashioned this Net neutrality argument did it for competitive reasons."

Seidenberg continued, "their view was anything that Verizon, or AT&T, or any of the carriers did was an encroachment on the software business. So the best thing is to come up with a strategy that defines "network" and segments it away from software, and therefore you create a whole argument around Net neutrality."

Today Apple gave a sneak peek of the next generation of their iPhone OS software. This is the operating system that powers the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters at 10AM and began by talking about the success of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Then he moved on to the changes in version 4 of the iPhone OS.


Multitasking
As expected there will be multitasking available for third party apps. That functionality is currently only available to the built in iPod software.

Jobs said, "we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste."

Demonstrating the multitasking capabilities on an iPhone, he double-clicked the phone's Home button and a list of running apps appeared above the Dock at the bottom of the screen.

The US Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia has ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to enforce network neutrality rules for broadband internet providers.

The ruling came in Comcast's appeal of the that agency's 2008 ruling on the cable giant's practice of throttling P2P traffic.

Although the court's decision means the FCC doesn't have the authority to punish Comcast for their "network management" practices, their legal problems aren't over yet. In fact it clears the way for lawsuits pending in federal court which have been held up by the question of FCC jurisdiction.

There's also the potential for action by the Federal Trade Commission over alleged false advertising of their service.

What makes things more complicated is that the FCC may still be able to establish jurisdiction over net neutrality by revisiting a 2002 ruling on the nature of internet service. At that time it was determined that broadband internet was merely an information service, and therefore not subject to the same level of regulation as common carrier service like traditional phone lines.

Apple may have more than one version of the next iPhone planned according to some hints found in the iPad file system.

The first clues about the new model of iPhone, expected later this year, first appeared last year in version 3.1 of the OS. But at that time there was only one listing.

Boy Genius Report has published a screenshot from the latest iPhone OS update, version 3.2, showing two new phones listed which should have essentially the same hardware.

The original iPhone and iPhone 3G are noted as 'iPhone 1,1' and 'iPhone 1,2' respectively. This indicates that the general platform is mostly the same in terms of hardware.

The iPhone 3GS is listed as 'iPhone 2,1' which is logical since the hardware in it is significantly different than the previous two models.

Then there is a listing for 'iPhone 3,1'. This is reportedly the model which Apple began testing last November. References to it first showed up in version 3.1 of the iPhone OS.

The two other models listed, 'iPhone 3,2' and 'iPhone 3,3' are new in iPhone OS version 3.2. Based on the numbering used for the first two iPhones it's almost certain they share the same basic hardware as the previously discovered new model.

Less than a week after the iPad went on sale in the US it seems that Apple is getting ready for a preview of the next version of iPhone OS.

Like both the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad uses this stripped down version of OS X as its operating system.

Engadget has reported getting an invitation to a press event which promises a "sneak peek of the next generation of iPhone OS software." It will be held this Thursday (April 8) at 10AM Pacific Time.

As with every version of the iPhone OS, there has been rampant speculation about what features will be added in version 4. The iPad, with it's increased emphasis on apps similar to what you might use on a laptop or desktop, has only added to the rumors.

Perhaps the hottest rumor right now is the introduction of multitasking. The current version of the OS doesn't allow applications other than the built-in iPod software to run in the background.

With other smartphone vendors, particularly Nokia and Microsoft, making a big deal about their upcoming phones featuring multitasking superior to the iPhone this would make a lot of sense.

US broadcast network ABC is ready to take advantage of the iPad when it launches tomorrow.

Their new iPhone app is already available in the iTunes Store. It's only compatible with the iPad and won't work on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Like many internet video sites, ABC's website uses Flash to stream video, which isn't supported by any version of the iPhone OS.

The ABC app allows iPad users to stream full episodes of shows like Lost and Grey's Anatomy. It can also be used to get details of ABC's broadcast schedule.

Based on the description in the iTunes Store it will work only on Wi-Fi, and not across 3G. This isn't surprising given AT&T's history of objections to streaming video applications for the iPhone.

Microsoft's latest appeal of a $290 million patent infringement judgement over XML editing in Word has been rejected by a federal appeals court.

They were requesting that all 11 judges sitting on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit review the case. The appeal has already been denied by a panel of 3 judges.

Loudon Owen, Chairman of i4i, called the decision, "a powerful reinforcement of the message that smaller enterprises and inventors who own intellectual property can and will be protected."

Despite Microsoft's apparent prior knowledge of the patent, held by a Canadian firm called i4i, the judgement against them seems generous to say the least.

The award was based on the number of users estimated to have used Word for editing XML documents, which seems reasonable. The problem is the valuation of the feature, which was set at $98 per copy.

Even if you were to buy Word by itself you wouldn't pay more than $230. If you get it bundled in one of the many versions of the Microsoft Office suite, as most Word users do, it amounts to no more than about $100 of the total price.

Adobe recently showed off a new feature from the upcoming Photoshop Creative Suite 5 called Content-Aware Fill. Besides saving a lot of time for experienced Photoshop users, it also promises to make serious photo editing operations much more accessible for less skilled users.

Content-Aware Fill can be used for everything from simple photo retouching operations like getting rid of artifacts like lense flare to creating entire new areas of an image based on existing elements.



Photoshop CS5 will be officially unveiled later this month. So far no actual release date has been announced.

Blaming illegal file sharing and streaming, Sony Pictures is hinting that they may stop selling DVDs in Spain.

In reality this appears to be just posturing, perhaps intended to put pressure on the Spanish government to criminalize all illegal copying. Under current Spanish law copyright infringement is only illegal if it's done for profit.

According to the LA Times, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton said, "Spain is on the brink of no longer being a viable home-entertainment market for us."

Spanish Minister of Culture, and former filmmaker, Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde appears to be firmly on the side of movie studios. He's currently backing legislation that would make it possible for the government to shut down websites for even providing links to unauthorized movie or music downloads with no judicial oversight.

He also apparently believes the people of Spain are simpletons who don't understand the concept of intellectual property. He has said "in Mediterranean countries, it's hard for people to understand that immaterial things can be worth as much as material things."

A handful of tech journalists and bloggers have been given iPads to try out and the first reviews have appeared. They are overwhelmingly positive.

Most reviewers praised the iPad's speed. That's understandable considering it has a much faster CPU than any generation of the iPhone or iPod Touch, while most of the apps available for it now were actually designed with those devices in mind.

The user interface also got its share of kudos. The Houston Chronicle's Bob LeVitus calls the on screen keyboard "eminently usable," adding that in landscape mode he can almost touch type on it.

Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times called the iPad "a computer that’s designed for speed, mobility, and tactile interaction above all other considerations."

But that leaves us to think about what other considerations might be important. Perhaps the biggest is what consumers will expect from a device priced about the same as a budget laptop.

As all the reviewers make clear, the iPad is no substitute for a laptop.

Everyone was quite pleased with its multimedia playback and e-book reader capabilities. But they were equally unanimous about its unsuitability for things like working with word processing or creating spreadsheets.

As part of an effort to update patent law, New Zealand legislators have proposed a bill which would make it impossible to patent software. If it becomes law it would no doubt cause friction with US ACTA negotiators, who are pushing to make software patents standard internationally.

Currently they are recognized in just a few countries, including the US and Japan. Ironically there is a good chance that the court decision which started the software patent mess in the US has recently been reinterpreted, potentially invalidating nearly all of them.

Along with business processes, software has been the most controversial patent subject matter for several years. It's also behind much of the current smartphone patent war. If you own a phone with a touch screen, but not multi-touch, you can thank a software patent for it.

Other notable software patents include Amazon.com's infamous one-click patent for e-commerce websites and Netflix's patent on their queue system.