Latest news

OEM contractors receiving new parts.

According to a DigiTimes report, Apple will make its next generation iPad available within about three or four months. The report cited sources in the supply chain, as OEM contractors are being sent new parts and components for the next iPad.

OEM production of the next iPad is expected to reach between 9.5 million and 9.8 million units in Q1 2012. Through 2011, Apple hopes to sell over 40 million iPads, having passed the 25 million mark after the first three quarters of the year.

Production of the iPad 2 tablet will remain high with about 14-15 million units in Q4 2011, but will drop to between 4-5 million in Q1 2012. Foxconn is set to begin production of the next generation iPad in January.

U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle has delayed C Spire and Sprint's lawsuits against the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

The same judge delayed the Justice Department's lawsuit against AT&T, as well.

Proceedings will continue on January 18th.

AT&T is still weighing its options, but the $39 billion proposed deal is likely going to fail, due to the overwhelming support against it.

If the deal does not close, AT&T owes Deutsche Telekom $8 billion dollars in cash and spectrum as a break-up fee.

VisionMobile's latest 'The Open Governance Index' report has called Android the "most closed" open source platform.

The report looked into Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse, with Android coming in last and Qt coming in first.

Reads the report:

Android ranks as the most closed project, with an Open Governance Index of 23%, yet at the same time is one of the most successful projects in the history of open source. Is Android proof that open governance is not needed to warrant success in an open source project?"

Google has made Android available at 'less than zero' cost, since Google's core business is not software or search, but driving eyeballs to ads. As is now well understood, Google's strategy has been to subsidize Android such that it can deliver cheap handsets and low-cost wireless Internet access in order to drive more eyeballs to Google?s ad inventory.

The three type-written pages that are Apple's founding documents have sold for $1.59 million today at Sotheby's.

On April 1st, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne all signed the documents which are headlined "Apple Computer Company Partnership Agreement."

No one has heard of Wayne because he withdrew as a partner just 10 days into the new company, losing a 10 percent share of the company that is now worth over $350 billion.

Wayne, later in life, said of his decision: "If I'd stayed with them, I was going to wind up the richest man in the cemetery."

Pencom Systems CEO Wade Saadi is the current owner of the documents.

Sotheby's says the winner was a phone bidder. The anticipated sale price was $150,000.

Intel has said this week that hard drive shortages caused by the major flooding in Thailand will lead to lowered revenue for the company in the coming quarter.

The floods in the nation have shut down factories, killed hundreds of citizens, and caused billions in losses for companies.

Additionally, the lack of supply has lead to a huge cost for consumers, where the average hard drive now sports a price 80-100 percent higher than before the floods.

Says Intel SVP Tom Kilroy (Reuters):

In the last two weeks, as the supply became more apparent, we saw a substantial change in our order rate. Most of our customers are concerned the shortage will continue -- especially through the early part of the first quarter.

Carrier IQ, the much maligned rootkit installed on over 140 million smartphones around the globe, is back in the news today, but this time with potentially even more dire consequences than the past.

Michael Morisy, a journalist who founded an organization called MuckRock, requested knowledge of what the FBI was doing with the Carrier IQ data via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) but was completely denied by the agency.

Carrier IQ has the ability to record every keystroke, search item, and phone call made from the device, so seeing if our government is using the data to spy on citizens is of paramount interest to everyone.

The FBI says any data they received from Carrier IQ "is exempt from disclosure laws" because it is part of a file "compiled for law enforcement purposes" and "could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."

Carrier IQ, for their part, has responded that the company has not provided any info to the FBI. However, that data could have been acquired via the wireless carriers that use the software, as well.

When Apple introduced iAd with the iPhone 4 it was hailed as their answer to Google's AdMob. Both services provide in-app advertising for mobile devices.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple's pricing and strict control over ad content have relegated iAd to third place in the mobile ad space, behind both Google and Millenial Media.

However, The Journal reports, they are trying to change that with new pricing options and free mobile marketing training. The biggest change is reportedly in the cost per tap and minimum spending level.

Advertisers will continue to pay $2 per tap, but the cost will be capped now. Just as importantly, rather than requiring a minimum commitment of $500,000, advertisers will be able to spend just $400,000. This amount had already been reduced from the initial requirement of $1 million when the platform first launched.

Apple is also offering marketers training sessions in their Cupertino, California headquarters. Advertisers meet with designers and product teams to learn more about creating ads suitable for Apple devices.

The European Commission has temporarily suspended their review of Google's plan to buy Motorola Mobility.

The deal to purchase Motorola's mobile devices and set-top box division for $12.5 billion was announced in August. Before it can be finalized regulators from both the US and EU will have to sign off on it.

According to Bloomberg, a spokeswoman for the commission told them the delay is to allow more time to get more documents related to the deal. Their review was originally expected to be completed early next January.

Google's Al Verney wrote in an email (via Bloomberg):

We're confident the commission will conclude that this acquisition is good for competition and we'll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

Wikipedia co-founder Jim Wales has posted a straw poll asking whether there is support for a "community strike" to get the word out about SOPA.

The idea was prompted by a similar action taken previously on the Italian Wikipedia homepage to protest a law which could potentially have forced that page to shut down permanently or risk massive fines any time someone felt their image was harmed by the site.

Last Friday Wales wrote:

A few months ago, the Italian Wikipedia community made a decision to blank all of Italian Wikipedia for a short period in order to protest a law which would infringe on their editorial independence. The Italian Parliament backed down immediately. As Wikipedians may or may not be aware, a much worse law going under the misleading title of "Stop Online Piracy Act' is working its way through Congress on a bit of a fast track. I may be attending a meeting at the White House on Monday (pending confirmation on a couple of fronts) along with executives from many other top Internet firms, and I thought this would be a good time to take a quick reading of the community feeling on this issue. My own view is that a community strike was very powerful and successful in Italy and could be even more powerful in this case. There are obviously many questions about whether the strike should be geotargetted (US-only), etc. (One possible view is that because the law would seriously impact the functioning of Wikipedia for everyone, a global strike of at least the English Wikipedia would put the maximum pressure on the US government.) At the same time, it's of course a very very big deal to do something like this, it is unprecedented for English Wikipedia.

Despite committing a huge amount of money and lining up big name partners to produce high profile handsets, Microsoft has been unable to turn Windows Phone into a serious competitor.

CEO Steve Ballmer has largely downplayed the platforms poor sales as normal growing pains, but it appears he's not as confident as his public demeanor would suggest.

Yesterday The Seattle Times reported a shakeup within the company as Terry Myerson was promoted to head the Windows Phone division, replacing Andy Lees.

It's not clear if Lees is getting a demotion since Ballmer sent out a somewhat cryptic internal memo stating he would be in "a new role working for me on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8."

The US Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile has been put on hold as the two companies regroup to decide whether to give up on the deal.

The deal, which would make AT&T the largest US mobile carrier. Over the last few months, many different parties, including competing national and regional wireless companies, public interest groups, the FCC, and the DOJ have come out in opposition to the deal.

AT&T hasn't helped their case with numerous statements which appear to be directly contradicted by their own government filings and statements to shareholders.

Howard University School Of Law Professor Andrew Gavil characterized the deal as finished, although not necessarily the end of the road for the buyout. He said (via Bloomberg):

Barnes & Noble has rolled out the latest software update for the Nook Color tablet/e-reader, which it promises is the biggest, ever.

You can either update your device manually or have it OTA in the next few weeks (if you are connected to Wi-Fi).

The biggest part of the update is the addition of streaming video, via Netflix and Flixster apps.

Nook Colors will eventually get Hulu Plus, like their more expensive brother the Nook Tablet.

Finally, the update will bring Nook Comics, which has the "largest collection of Marvel graphic novels."

The popular browser extension AdBlock Plus is likely to lose a large number of its fans soon.

Instead of blocking all ads like intended, the app will now allow "acceptable ads" to load.

The qualifications have not been finalized, but here is what we know so far for "acceptable ads," via digitizor:

Static advertisements only (no animations, sounds or similar)

Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images

At most one script that will delay page load (in particular, only a single DNS request)

Walter Isaacson's biography of the recently deceased Steve Jobs rocketed to the top of Amazon's best-selling book list and stayed there.

The book was released in late October following the death of the former CEO and founder of Apple.

Amazon's list includes digital and print copies.

Perhaps more notably were the books that came in 4th and 9th, each of which was published through Amazon's excellent Kindle Direct Publishing and therefore did not have print editions.

Full list (via LAT):

1. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson

2. "Bossypants" by Tina Fey

3. "A Stolen Life" by Jaycee Dugard

4. "The Mill River Recluse" by Darcie Chan

5. "In the Garden of the Beasts" by Erik Larson

6. "A Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin

7. "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain

8. "The Litigators" by John Grisham

9. "The Abbey" by Chris Culver

10. "Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle)" by Christopher Paolini

Two US legislators, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Darrell Issa, have fashioned an alternative to SOPA and PIPA, the draconian anti-piracy bills being pushed through the two houses. Their proposal is called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, or OPEN for short.

Rather than taking the draft of their bill straight to Congress, the two men have decided to offer it up for online discussion first. You can find the full text of the first draft below or on a new website dedicated to the discussion.

While their proposal does address most of the worst aspects of SOPA and PIPA, that mostly serves to highlight how bad the least troubling parts of those bills are. Here are some of the highlights.

The Good

• The straight censorship requirements of SOPA and PIPA are gone. There's nothing about DNS blocking or purging a website from search engine results.

• There is no right of private action. Under SOPA, a private company would be able to force advertisers to stop paying an accused website operator without ever going to court. Under OPEN, only the International Trade Commission (ITC) would be empowered to order that.

• The term 'dedicated to infringement' is narrowly defined as having "only limited purpose or use other than engaging in infringing activity and whose owner or operator primarily uses the site to willfully engage in infringing activity." Likewise, infringing activity is specifically defined as violations of the existing copyright and trademark provisions of federal law.

• US based companies may not be targeted.