Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Anonymous Chinese Bloggers May Become Extinct Very Soon
"Don't spread rumours online. Delete bad comments immediately. Don't write about porn. Be sensitive to other nationalities, races, religions and cultural customs." - if you agree to all these conditions, you are welcome to write a blog in China.
The Chinese Government has asked blog companies to sign a "self-discipline pledge" that encourages bloggers in China to register using their real name, email, phone number and other contact information.
This directive is likely to become effective very soon as most blog providers in China have already agreed to sign the pledge meaning if any blogger in China were to use their service for writing a blog, he or she will be have share his contact information.
Surprisingly, China already has over 30 million registered bloggers.
Posted by Augustine at 4:36 PM
Seagate patent decision could prompt more settlements
Source: Financial Week
The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears most of the country's appeals of patent litigation, provided a new precedent for attorney-client privilege in patent lawsuits late yesterday. The decision is likely to make it more difficult for plantiffs to prove infringement and thus lead to more settlements, according to patent attorneys.
The ruling came in a closely watched intellectual property case involving a suit filed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and private technology company Convolve against disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology in 2000 for patent infringement.
The decision was not about the underlying patent and whether or not Seagate infringed on it, but rather the definition of willful infringement and the extent of attorney-client privilege in patent cases.
When the court agreed to take the case in January, it announced that it would hear it "en banc." In other words, all ten judges on the appeals court would hear the case as opposed to the customary panel of three. "The court recognized that this was a very important issue, and they had to consider it as a full court," said Charles Barquist, a patent litigation partner with Morrison & Foerster, based in Los Angeles. Mr. Barquist, along with several colleagues, filed an amicus brief in support of Seagate's position.
The issue was whether Seagate should be forced to hand over communications with its trial lawyers to the plaintiffs in the case. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District ruled that the company did have to, which prompted Seagate to file its appeal.
The appeals court indicated it would also review its 1983 decision in a case known as Underwater Devices that established a standard for individuals and companies regarding patent infringement. That decision stated that parties had a duty of care to make sure that they weren't infringing on a patent. If they didn't meet that duty of care, they could be charged with willful infringement, which carries treble damages. In practice, that meant getting a legal opinion.
In the Seagate case, plaintiffs argued that Seagate waived its attorney-client privilege by turning over the opinion from separate counsel on the matter in question. It demanded that all communications between the company and its trial lawyers on the matter should also be disclosed. The district court agreed, at which point Seagate appealed.
The appeals court not only overturned the lower court's decision on the waiver of privilege issue, it also raised the bar for proving willfulness on the part of the defendant. Plaintiffs must now prove "objective recklessness" by defendants rather than just a failure to take due care.
"The new standard won't change the frequency with which willfulness is alleged, but it will be harder to prove," said Mr. Barquist. "It may facilitate more settlements too, as plaintiffs develop more moderate expectations."
Posted by Augustine at 9:13 AM
Google Adds Embedding To Google Maps
Google Map mashups have been popular for a long time now, however for the non-programming inclined including a Google Map on a blog or website hasn’t always been easy. The new embed feature (as above) now provides an easy way for anyone to include an active map on their site.
Embedded maps can be customized in terms of size and can also include driving directions, search results, or a user generated map.
Posted by Augustine at 8:10 AM
Labels: embed google maps
BlogMusik To Go Legit; Launches Free & Legal Music On Demand
Back in September last year Michael suggested everyone check out BlogMusik quickly before it was shut down. BlogMusik is a service born in France that lets you search for mp3 files on the web and listen to them in streaming mode for free. At the time the service was young and had no particular licensing agreements. A few months later, the SACEM, the organization in charge of collecting payments for artists’ rights sent them a cease and desist letter with a view to stop the service. A lot has happened since (beyond a rather nice site redesign and addition of sharing features).
BlogMusik will announce tomorrow that they came to an agreement with the SACEM, clearing the service of copyright infrigement accusations. The details of this agreement are not are not being disclosed, but other deals suggest it is based on a revenue sharing mode. BlogMusik’s business model is relying on advertising and affiliate revenue coming from the sales of songs on iTunes and Amazon. This agreement should cover BlogMusik for any music they host wherever the music is listened from. However they still have to come to an agreement with organizations representing majors and labels (Pandora had to face new webradio rates imposed by the RIAA). This is being taken care of according to the CEO of the company and new agreements should be announced soon.
All in all this is a good news for BlogMusik The company now has an opportunity to become a true free legal alternative to listen to music on the internet. Unlike Pandora this is a music on demand service where you choose the titles you want to listen to (although you have a smart playlist option to generate automatically radios out of a song or an artist).
BlogMusik.net will also change name and become Deezer.com. This is a good thing i had a hard time getting the UR/nameL right with this “k” in the middle (not mentionning the .net). RadioBlogClub, another popular french service was forced a few months ago to change hosting provider following a complaint sent by the same SACEM. The service was interupted a few days and opened again as fresh as new. To date no official licensing agreement was made with the company.
It's Full Of Stars: Google Conquers the Stars After Fully Invading Earth
Posted by Augustine at 7:45 AM
Labels: google earth, stars
gBox: Give The Gift Of DRM-Free Music
gBox is a new take on selling digital content. Instead of emphasizing sales directly to consumers, gBox is encourages you to create wish lists and buy gifts for your friends and family. To kick-start the service, they’ve sealed a pretty big deal with Universal to be the retailer for their new “Open MP3″ experiment into DRM free music. In a move that’s a snub to Apple’s iTunes, Universal will be buying Google AdWords for their music, linking people to the gBox site to buy their artists’ music. gBox will be expanding to other forms of digital content in the future.
gBox is not only a destination retail site for digital content. It also has an embeddable gift box widget to show off what you want to your friends. Your friends can then buy it for you directly from within the widget. It will be available as a general embed or specialized for 7 of the big social networks (no Facebook). Their current offering, music, will go for 99 cents per track and $9.99 per album (to stay competitive with iTunes). You have to have a gBox account to receive a gift, but not to buy one.
Considering people already pay 99 cents to send their friends virtual gifts on Facebook, I’d expect buying a real song to be an attractive proposition. It also seems like a missed opportunity for a network like MySpace, which runs on Snocap.
You can download the content after its bought for you, but need a special gBox plugin to control the downloads since some content partners (Sony, Iota) will be selling music with DRM. This makes the offering somewhat disappointing, because the plugin will only work for IE (FF on the way) and not on the Mac.
gBox was started in June as an angel funded spin-off from Navio systems. They’re a 20 person company based in Cupertino, California.
Posted by Augustine at 7:44 AM
Labels: gift of music
Toshiba's 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive: a world's best for laptops
Posted by Augustine at 7:44 AM
Labels: 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive
Sony's Bravia VPL-VW60: the SXRD black pearl with 35,000:1 contrast
Posted by Augustine at 7:42 AM
Labels: HD projector
Stanford's EyePassword helps fight "shoulder-surfing" at the ATM
[Via New Scientist ]
Posted by Augustine at 7:41 AM
Mess of circuitry unlocks iPhone, software solution next?
Posted Aug 21st 2007 1:02PM by Sean Cooper
Welp, 'tis done friends, but we're going to have to wait a week for all the gory details to be released. Geohot and his crew of trusty fiddlers have apparently found a solution for sorting the iPhone for worldwide consumption by hardware unlocking the beast. We've seen a video, and know he's been well involved with iPhone shenanigans since day one, but until we see it in our hand color us excited but not sold -- though we're stoked that they report a software based version may be on the horizon. But in the unhappy event that it ends up being hardware unlock only, you can use this week to brush up on your soldering skills. We're gonna be all over this in the coming days so know that the minute we know more, you will too. Peep the vid after the break.Posted by Augustine at 7:37 AM
Labels: unlocked iPhone
Toshiba announces 32GB, 16GB SDHC cards
Sharp's 52-inch LCD TV prototype: Just 1.1-inches thick!
from Engadget by Thomas Ricker
Like your flat panels flat, we mean, really flat? Then check this, Sharp's prototype LCD which jams a 100,000:1 contrast ratio into a 52-inch LCD display only 20-mm (0.78-inches) thick. Right, we're talking LCD, not OLED. In fact, the entire TV measures just 29-mm (1.14-inches) at its thickest point while covering 150% of the NTSC color gamut and consuming just 140 kWh/year. Shazam! Unfortunately, Sharp fails to mention the resolution but tells us to expect the new TVs sometime in 2010. See her in profile after the break with plenty more over at Japan's Impress in the Via link below.[Via Impress]
Posted by Augustine at 7:17 AM
Monday, August 20, 2007
Facebook Takes Action Against “Black Hat” Apps
Some of the most popular Facebook applications are using highly questionable tactics to spread themselves virally. Users have noticed and complained, and Facebook took action today to put stop the most egregious behavior.
There are two ways application developers are breaking the rules to get new users. The first: When a user looks at an application on his/her profile the application can show something different than when other users view the profile. So a user adds an application that looks nice to them. But everyone else sees, say, a big yellow box with an advertisement that says the user wants you to add this application, too.
The second and more devious scheme is being used by many of the largest application developers. They all involve some sort of notification fraud. Generally, you add an application. Then, every one of your contacts is notified that you've "written on their wall" or "have asked them a question," even though you never did. To view the content the contact must add the application. They then find out there is no wall comment, or its a canned question like "is it ok to kiss on the first date?"
Super Wall (RockYou, 4.5 m installs), My Questions (Slide, 6.9 m installs) and FunWall (Slide, 3.6 m installs) all do this (and users complain loudly in the comments area to the apps - see here and scroll down).
Facebook Hits Back
Facebook took measures today to stop these kinds of activities. The first is dealt with in the new release (1.1) of FBML, the markup language used to build Facebook applications. Developers will no longer be able to show a different profile to friends than the one the user sees him/herself:
One of the key parts of the success of the design of the Facebook profile is that the user is always aware of exactly what their profile looks like to their friends who stop by to view their profile. This enables users to understand exactly how they are expressing themselves to others by simply deciding whether or not they like an application's profile box and the content that the developer has decided to put into the box.
Right now, we have made a few FBML tags available that are causing users to not trust the content in the profile box. Tags such as: fb:if-user-has-added-app, and other fb-if tags. These tags are currently being used to deliver content to profile boxes which users are unaware of. Content such as big yellow boxes which say "ADD THIS APPLICATION!" or "ADD SOME OTHER APPLICATION!".
Starting today, these tags will no longer be available for use in profile boxes. We will be migrating FBML to version 1.1, and adding a new set of tags called fb:visible-to-. They are:
fb:visible-to-owner
fb:visible-to-friends
fb:visiible-to-user
fb:visible-to-added-app-users
fb:visible-to-app-users
Facebook also notified developers today that they will be blocked from sending misleading notifications to users. This will stop Slide, RockYou and others from mass spamming users with false notifications:
Over the last few weeks we have noticed several developers misleading our users into clicking on links, adding applications and taking actions. While the majority of developers are doing the right thing and playing by the rules, a few aren't – and are creating spam as a result. Going forward, if you are deceptively notifying users or tricking them into taking actions that they wouldn't have otherwise taken, we will start blocking these notifications. The bottom line is that if the notifications you send are the result of a genuine action by a Facebook user and that action is truthfully reported to the recipient so they can make an informed decision, you should have no problems. If you do find some notifications blocked, it was probably because this wasn't the case and we will be happy to inform you of some best practices by other developers that have prevented this issue.
Facebook has done a great job in managing their platform since opening it up to developers of applications. They have had to accommodate application developers while at the same time protect users interests and the general security of the site. The changes that Facebook have made today, while they may inconvenience some application developers, have clearly been done to protect users from spammy tactics that some applications have employed.
Posted by Augustine at 10:00 PM
Google To Increase Investment In China
Google is looking to acquire "one or two Chinese internet companies" and will invest in five in the next 12 months as part of a continued push to increase market share in the worlds fastest growing internet market.
Google has previously focused on building partnerships in China, with Google technology powering Chinese search portals Sina.com, Soso.com and 163.com. Google also made a strategic investment in popular Chinese browser Maxthon in April.
The Chinese acquisition strategy for Google would not seem as difficult as might immediately be presumed; a number of the leading Chinese search companies are listed on the NASDAQ. Market leader Baidu sits at the less appealing (from an acquisition viewpoint) market cap of $5.73 billion, however lesser players are well within a more likely price for a Google acquisition; No 2 ranked search player* NetEase.com (163.com) has a market cap of $1.78 billion and third placed Sohu.com has a market cap of $1.08 billion.
Baidu.com currently dominates the Chinese search market with a market share of around 55%
* traffic rankings per Alexa May 2007.
(in part via PC World)
Posted by Augustine at 9:58 PM