Would You Pay To Make Sure People Couldn't Call You While Driving?

from the i-sense-a-problem dept

We've seen all sorts of weird or questionable applications, but here's one that we can't quite figure out who would buy. It's an application for your mobile phone that determines if you're moving, and routes the call directly to voicemail. At the very least, it tells the caller that you're driving right now and can't come to the phone, but is that really that important? And how does the app know whether the mobile phone holder is driving... or just a passenger in the car? Or on a bus? And, more importantly, why can't people just not pick up the phone while they're driving? Are people really so addicted to picking up their phone when it rings that they would need to pay for an application that stops them from doing so? If there really are such people, we've got a better solution: turn off your phone when you drive. It's cheaper.

Filed Under: driving while yakking, software

Verizon Wireless Massively Raises Rates For Text Messaging Services

from the margins?--you-have-no-margins? dept

It's no surprise that some things may be getting more expensive these days, especially as companies start dealing with the fallout from the financial crisis -- but it appears that some are going a bit overboard. There's a bit of an uproar among some, as Verizon Wireless is slapping a surprising 3-cents-per-text-message fee on top of every mobile terminated text message. That basically affects any company that provides some sort of SMS notification system or content service, massively increasing prices. As some have noted, most of those services bought text messages in bulk, where it cost around 1 cent per message. That means the cost of sending text messages just quadrupled. If you're already worried about the economy and working on tight margins, that could certainly put some companies out of business entirely.

Filed Under: cost, text messages
Companies: verizon wireless

Patent Lawsuit Silly Season: TechCrunch Sued For Patent Infringement After Critical Blog Post

from the this-will-end-badly dept

There are different levels of ridiculousness when it comes to patent lawsuits, with the lowest of the low being patent lawsuits based more on spite than on any legitimate claim. For a while, it seemed like Ray Niro's use of the infamous JPG patent, to sue a bunch companies he just didn't like, was perhaps alone in that category. But, it appears that we now have a new entrant. Apparently, some company (who we won't even name, since there's a good chance it's doing this just to get press attention) sued a more well-known competitor for patent infringement, over a location-based services patent. Looking over the patent itself it's difficult to see how it was approved. People were talking about location-based profile matching a decade ago, let alone five years ago when this patent was filed.

TechCrunch wrote a post mocking the lawsuit as a weak attempt to get press coverage (it worked!), while noting that TechCrunch itself was partnered with the sued company to provide a "co-branded community." This apparently caused the patent holder to amend the lawsuit and include TechCrunch as a defendant. Apparently, there were no threats or notification (though, the guy claims he tried to call TechCrunch). This will likely get tossed out incredibly quickly, as any judge will recognize that TechCrunch is just licensing its brand, not supplying the technology (and also hopefully question the validity of the patent itself). Already, though, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is planning to countersue, so this could get fun.

The patent holder claims that adding TechCrunch to the lawsuit had nothing to do with the original post, but that's rather difficult to believe. There's also this somewhat amusing quote from the patent holder:

"TechCrunch can say whatever they want, and I applaud them. But no one has the right to infringe on a patent that I worked very, very hard for many years to bring about -- not just on paper but in reality."

Yes, and thanks to a broken patent system, you now get to dump a totally frivolous lawsuit on a site that clearly did not infringe on your highly questionable patent. Just like Thomas Jefferson intended.

Filed Under: location-based services, patents, press, revenge
Companies: earthcomber, loopt, techcrunch

Judge Lets iPhone Antitrust Trial Move Forward

from the not-such-a-good-day-at-apple dept

Last year, we wrote about an antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple for sending an update that disabled, or "bricked," the iPhones of people who had changed the firmware to accept outside programs. While Apple tried to push for a dismissal of the lawsuit, a judge has denied the motion to dismiss and will let the case carry on. While a full-on antitrust finding seems unlikely, there are elements of the case that may get Apple into trouble down the road -- and it all comes back to Apple's Achilles' heel: its desire to control absolutely everything, even after you've bought it. Depending on how this case works out, Apple may discover that it (legally) needs to learn to loosen the strings a bit.

Filed Under: antitrust, bricking, control, iphone, lawsuits
Companies: apple

WiMax Finally Available... In 2008... In Baltimore

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

For years and years we used to make fun of the press and analysts for either saying that WiMax existed when it did not or for predicting huge uptake before the tech was even ready. Plenty of companies offered wireless broadband, but it was not WiMax, no matter what they (or the press) called it. Back in 2003, we even made a pretty clear prediction: WiMax would not be ready for prime time until 2008, going against plenty of analysts who insisted it would be the big thing in 2004. And 2005. And 2006. And 2007. So, it's nice to see Sprint squeeze in the launch of its WiMax Xohm service before the end of 2008, and make our prediction accurate. Of course, those analysts who predicted huge WiMax success stories in 2004 have moved on and have already declared WiMax dead, and now LTE is the huge success story to watch out for. Let's wait and see on that one as well. There's just something about wireless technologies that make the press and analysts assume that what is being talked about at the tech level will take the world by storm immediately. These things take time.

Filed Under: baltimore, wimax, wireless, xohm
Companies: sprint

Is Bell Canada Going To Purposely Screw Up GPS Signals To Harm Competitors?

from the get-lost dept

It's good to have market power, apparently. Remember how Bell Canada started throttle bandwidth to its reseller partners without telling them? And then told them to shut up and take it when they complained? Oh, right, and then tried launching its own video download store just as it was making it more difficult for anyone else's to work? Apparently, the company may be doing that again... Michael Geist points us to reports that Bell Canada is looking to purposely degrade the GPS signal on certain Blackberrys for anyone using third party mapping programs, such as Google's. However (wouldn't you know it?), Bell is promising to allow the GPS to work properly if you pay the company $10/month and use Bell's own mapping solution.

Filed Under: canada, competition, gps, monopoly power
Companies: bell canada

T-Mobile Says It Was Only Kidding About That 1GB Soft Cap On G1 Data Use

from the oh-that? dept

So after a bunch of tech sites pointed out how ridiculous it was that T-Mobile was claiming "unlimited" data plans on the new G1 "Google Android" phone, T-Mobile quickly scrambled to say that they were ditching the 1 gig limit, though they may still replace it with something else (perhaps when tech bloggers aren't paying attention, one would imagine).

Filed Under: android, bandwidth, cap, g1
Companies: t-mobile

Apple Shuts Off Loophole For Podcaster App Developer; He Switches Over To Android

from the pissing-off-developers dept

We noted that Apple had recently started banning any kind of competitive app from the iPhone App Store, saying that various iPhone developers must be eagerly awaiting the launch of Google-powered Android phones. And, indeed, that seems to be the case for the developer of the Podcaster app, who has announced that he'll now develop the app for Android phones instead. The final straw, apparently, was Apple closing the workaround he was using to get the Podcasting app to users -- and doing so with no communication or explanation whatsoever. Apple may believe it can get away with treating developers this way when there's no serious competition in the marketplace, but they may discover that pissing off your developer community has pretty long-term negative consequences when that competition actually arrives.

Filed Under: android, app store, applications, competition, iphone, podcaster, useful
Companies: apple

T-Mobile Sends G1 Android Data Users To The Slow Lane: 50kbps Over 1 Gig

from the slow-lane dept

There's a ton of predictable press coverage and reviews of T-Mobile's new G1 phone -- the first commercially available phone that uses Google's Android operating system -- but Broadband Reports has dug through the fine print of the user agreement and noticed something rather interesting. While the marketing materials scream out about a $25 "unlimited" data plan, the fine print notes that if you go over 1Gig per month, the rest of your data traffic that month may be slowed down to a piddling 50kbps. So, before you get that G1 and plan to surf away, recognize that while, unlimited, T-Mobile apparently has no intention of letting you actually surf with any reasonable bandwidth after a certain point.

Filed Under: android, bandwidth, fine print, g1, unlimited
Companies: google, t-mobile

India Claims To Have Cracked Blackberry Encryption; Proudly Spying On Emails

from the details-missing dept

Earlier this year, India demanded that RIM allow it to easily snoop on any email messages sent via Blackberry devices. The company explained that since the end user sets the encryption key, there's simply no way to provide a backdoor to snoop on the messages. However, now the government is proudly claiming that it's cracked the code and can now monitor Blackberry messages on various mobile operator networks. The details are quite vague, especially an offhand comment about how this is "wholly for non-enterprise solutions." That would suggest, then, that enterprise Blackberry messages may remain secure. It also raises questions about whether or not the mobile operators in question are simply providing access to their mail servers. Either way, the whole thing seems weird -- including the government's effort to publicize the fact that it's spying on Blackberry messages.

Filed Under: blackberry, email, encryption, india