7 Ways Windows Phone 7 Is Better Than the iPhone (And 

5 Ways It Isn’t)

We kicked the comparisons off with Windows Phone 7 vs Android. Next up? Apple's venerable iOS, or the artist formerly known as iPhone OS. How does Microsoft’s latest mobile incarnation stack up against the mobile platform that shook up the game about three years ago?

Here’s how:

1. It's Alive
Windows Phone 7 brings information to your lock and home screens by way of its “live tiles” and notifications bar. Apple’s iOS gives you little numbers on icons and “Stop Everything!” notifications panes, but it can’t really stack up to WP7’s dynamic, colorful, customizable system for at-a-glance updates. And then there’s Xbox Live, which had darned well better kick iOS’ “Game Center” right in the pants, lest Microsoft lose all credibility in the gaming community.

2. It Comes in Multiple Form Factors
Some people like touchscreens, others like keyboards. Some like sliders, others like slabs. Apple offers one iPhone form factor: the full-touch slab. Microsoft and its partners have announced ten WP7 phones for its initial launch, including touch-only phones in a few sizes, touchscreen phones with slide-out QWERTY boards, and even the faux-ghetto blaster HTC Surround with its slide-out speakers. Variety, they say, is the spice of smartphones.

3. It’s Got Office Hub
All Windows Phone 7 devices will ship with a mobile version of Microsoft Office that features Sharepoint support. Office and Sharepoint, along with the obligatory Exchange support, promise a level of Enterprise-class utility for WP7 users that iOS simply can’t match—even with third-party business software like DropBox, Google Apps, and QuickOffice.

4. It’s Got Hardware Camera Buttons
This is a standard attribute of all WP7 devices. Love it.

 5. It Supports Zune Pass
Yes, iTunes is the current Gold Standard in digital music stores. And yes, iOS users have their choice of subscription-based music apps including MOG and Rdio. But Zune Pass gives you more for your $10 per month than any iOS app does simply by allowing you to sync music across your mobile and desktop/laptop devices. That’s our biggest complaint with MOG: there’s no way to sync iOS tunes to a laptop.

 6. It Syncs Contacts Across Social Networks
Set up a Windows Phone 7 device and sync it to your Facebook and/or Google accounts. Lookie there, on the home screen! It’s a live tile with rotating photos of your contacts! Drill down to the People hub and you’ve got names and photos and contact info and social networking updates right there on your phone. We know, we know. All modern smartphone OSes do this…oh, wait, not all of them do. Apple’s iOS doesn’t.

 7. It Works on Mutliple Carriers in the U.S.
Yeah, the Verizon iPhone rumors are hotter than ever. But that doesn’t change the current reality of using an iPhone in the United States; It’s AT&T or bust. WP7 will launch on AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, with the HTC 7 Pro set to hit Sprint early next year.

Okay, now let's take a look at the other side of the coin: 

1. It can’t…
WP7 can't cut and paste, play Flash/HTML 5/Silverlight videos, unify your inbox, show threaded email or do a bunch of other things iOS can. To be honest, Windows Phone 7 launches with a “can’t” list that more or less mimics the one iOS launched with. Problem is, the original iPhone hit three-plus years ago and brought a ton of revolutions with it. Microsoft has a bunch of catch-up work to do. Immediately.

2. It Lacks iOS’ Ecosystem
Love it or hate it, the iTunes/App Store ecosystem rules when it comes to mindshare and revenue. Add to that the enormous “Made for iPhone” cottage industry of cases, speaker docks and earphones, and you’ve got a full-blown mobile way of life that exists in Apple’s real and virtual stores across the globe. You know Microsoft aspires to such heights with WP7, but can they get even half of the way there?

3. It Won’t Have Many Apps
The handful of WP7 apps I’ve seen thus far have been gorgeous; Microsoft did a great job of insuring that third party devs adhere to WP7’s overall look and feel in designing apps. Thing is, iOS offers literally hundreds of thousands of options in its App Store. That’s a big, bad number to stack up against.

 4. It's Version 1
Get ready for bugs. Get ready to wait for features your friends already have. Get ready to wait for v2.0. (Yes, I copied this from my WP7-vs-Android article, but hey, it bears repeating.)

 5. It Has Already Lost a Ton of Loyal Users to Apple (and Google, and RIM)
Microsoft lost a ton of its smartphone install base since announcing the death of Windows Mobile and the subsequent birth of Windows Phone. The latest figures from Canalys give MSFT a mere 3.0% share of the global smartphone market. While all of those old WM 6.x users certainly didn’t migrate to iOS, it stands to reason that a bunch of them are gone today. No matter if they fled for Apple, Google or RIM – they left Windows. The big question is whether or not Microsoft can win them back, no matter how good WP 7 turns out to be.

 by Noah Kravitz

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How a 42-Year-Old Porn Might Screw Video Games

"Censors are, of course, propelled by their own neuroses. That is why a universally accepted definition of obscenity is impossible. Any definition is indeed highly subjective, turning on the neurosis of the censor."

So said U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas in 1968, arguing against most of his colleagues who felt that selling nude magazines to minors should be a criminal offense. The courts, he said, should not decide what's suitable for people to read. That decision is best left to parents or religious groups.

As today's Supreme Court grappled with the legality of selling violent video games to minors, Douglas' dissent in Ginsburg v. New York seemed as relevant as ever.

The state of California wants an exception to the First Amendment for excessively violent video games, making their sale to minors a crime. Not surprisingly, California's deputy attorney general, Zackery Morazzini, said the case is similar to Ginsburg v. New York, except that the exception applies to violence instead of sex. (You can read the whole transcript at Scribd.)

Here's the problem: No one in court could define what level of violence qualifies as excessive. Morazzini couldn't say off-hand whether Mortal Kombat is obscene under California's law, and the state only pointed to one game as an example in its briefs, the long-forgotten Postal 2. In the end, Morazzini proposed that jurors could decide on what's passable, and that the games industry would surely figure out the answer on its own.

Read that Douglas quote again.

I don't think kids should watch porn or play violent video games. Neither did Douglas, but he felt that the government shouldn't have a role in the decision, lest the world's anti-obscenity crusaders someday decide that adults need "protecting" as well. Had Douglas' fellow justices agreed, the U.S. Supreme Court probably wouldn't have considered violent video game laws today. Instead, much of today's hearing was spent fumbling over what, exactly, constitutes "deviant or morbid" violence.

It's certainly possible that the court won't be satisfied with California's vague definition, and will overturn the law. Maybe I'm just a free speech nut, but I'm no less settled by the idea that the court would accept a line in the sand.

By Jared Newman

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ITC Staff Sides With Nokia in Apple Patent Dispute

ITC Staff Sides With Nokia in Apple Patent Dispute 

A judge should find that Nokia Corp. didn't infringe on Apple Inc. patents, staff at the International Trade Commission said.

The "evidence will not establish a violation" of any Apple patents in the case, the ITC investigative staff said Monday in a pre-hearing statement, but the judge doesn't have to follow the staff's recommendation.

Apple is seeking to ban imports of the devices from the world's largest mobile phone maker, including products that use the Symbian and S40 operating systems.

The trial against Nokia, which began Monday, is one of many skirmishes in the fiercely competitive smartphone industry. Along with its accusations against Nokia, Apple is sparring with Motorola Inc. and Taiwan's HTC Corp., makers of phones based on Google Inc.'s Android platform. And Microsoft Corp. sued Motorola last month, accusing it of violating Microsoft's patents in smartphones using Android.

The recent battles in the mobile market started in October 2009, when Nokia accused Apple of violating 10 patents with its iPhone. The Finnish cellphone giant, which earns royalty revenue from other cellphone makers, later followed up with claims against Apple's iPad.

Apple has countersued, accusing Nokia of infringing some of its patents, violating antitrust laws and breach of contract. Both companies deny the other's infringement allegations.

The ITC staff said on Monday that some of the Apple patents were invalid and others weren't infringed. But the statement said that if a judge determines Nokia violated patents, he should ban some Nokia phones from being imported into the U.S.

The judge's ruling is expected in February, and Nokia's suit against Apple is scheduled for trial beginning Nov. 29. Nokia declined to comment while Apple wasn't immediately available.

"Definitely, when you're in a case, it's better to have the staff on your side," said Eric Schweibenz, a partner at Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt specializing in patent litigation. That said, determinations by ITC judges often go in other directions, he said.
By SHARA TIBKEN

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YouTube Banned In Turkey (Again)

The battle between YouTube and Turkish officials continued this week as Turkey reportedly unblocked and then re-blocked the Google-owned video site in the country over unflattering videos of the country's political leaders.

Turkey re-instated a ban on YouTube this week, days after a 2.5-year ban was lifted last Saturday, according to a state-run news agency. On Tuesday night, a Turkish court banned YouTube again, this time over an old video purportedly showing former opposition leader Deniz Baykal in a hotel room with someone other than his wife. Baykal was forced to resign over the video in May, according to The Guardian.

Scott Rubin, Google's head of public policy and communicationsstrategy for EMEA, said the company was investigating the reported ban.

"As always, we are open to discussing with Turkish authorities any concerns they may have about our services. If there are videos that they-or anyone else-believe may violate our Community Guidelines, it's easy to flag the video," Rubin said.

"We review all flag[ged] videos quickly, and if we find they do break the rules, we remove them quickly," Rubin continued. "A removal for a Community Guidelines violation is a global removal, quite different from the previous demand that we apply Turkish law outside the borders of Turkey, which, of course, we refused to do."

Turkish authorities first imposed a ban on YouTube for two days in 2007 over four videos that were deemed insulting to Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Another ban was put into place in May 2008 over the same issue, which lasted for more than two years.

YouTube refused to remove the videos from its site but made them inaccessible to users in Turkey. "We refused because we do not believe that Turkish law can or should be applied outside Turkey," Google said in a previous statement. Many Turkish people got around the ban via proxy Web sites.

A court in Ankara on Saturday lifted the ban after a German-based company reportedly used itstechnology to remove the videos from the site, Reuters said. YouTube later re-posted the videos. The Tuesday ban, imposed by another court in Ankara, related to the aforementioned video of Baykal, Reuters reported.

Turkish president Abdullah Gul condemned the YouTube ban on his Twitter page, The Guardianreported, saying he did not approve of the bans and had asked officials to examine legal ways of reopening access.

In June, Turkey inexplicably banned many Google IP addresses, mostly for apps like Google Translate, Google Books and Google Docs, the International Business Times reported.

by Sara Yin

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Facebook Uses Twitter To Address Smaller Front Size Complaints

Facebook Uses Twitter To Address Smaller Front Size Complaints

There’s a common pattern emerging for how people use Facebook and Twitter, respectively. Whenever Facebook has problems with its service or goes down for a period of time, many take to Twitter to share the news and their complaints. Such is the case with a recent change that’s swept Facebook: its decrease in font size in the news feed.

Largely, users have complained about the font now being too small, and Facebook introducing the change without warning.

But more even more interesting is how Facebook has made a concession to its rival social network on this inter-social network usage pattern, and has addressed this latest font issue solely on Twitter, as far as I can tell. “Thanks for the feedback on the font size. We’re listening and sharing it with our teams here,” said a tweet on the Facebook Twitter account.

Given that there’s been no official notification of the change, no blog post on Facebook.com and no forum for addressing user comments or complaints on Facebook regarding this sudden font shrinkage, you can see why users have taken to Twitter to talk about the change. And it’s interesting that instead of opening a Facebook.com channel of communication, the company has used Twitter for its initial response. Ironic too, in context, that the tagline on Facebook’s Twitter account is “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

So if Facebook users are so open and connected and empowered to share, why are they doing that sharing on Twitter?
by oliver chiang

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DNS – Google Rewarding Web Application Security Research

DNS – Google Rewarding Web Application Security Research

Google (News - Alert) said this week that an existing program promoting security for its open-source Chromium project has been so successful, that it’s extending it to Google Web applications.


According to a Google blog post from the company’s security team, the Chromium open source project was launched in January 2010, and it has become a well-received vulnerability reward program.

In the ensuing months, researchers reporting a wide range of great bugs have received rewards. The company has seen a sustained increase in the number of high quality reports from researchers, and their combined efforts are contributing to a more secure Chromium browser for millions of users.

Motivated by the success, Google has announced an experimental new vulnerability reward program that applies to Google Web properties.

“We hope our new program will attract new researchers and the types of reports that help make our users safer,” according to the Google blog post.

Any Google Web properties that display or manage highly sensitive authenticated user data or accounts may be in scope. Some examples could include .google.com, .YouTube (News - Alert).com, .blogger.com and .orkut.com

For now, Google's client applications (e.g. Android, Picasa, Google Desktop, etc.) are not in scope. Google may expand the program in the future.

It's difficult to provide a definitive list of vulnerabilities that will be rewarded, however, any serious bug which directly affects the confidentiality or integrity of user data may be in scope, Google says.

It anticipates most rewards will be in bug categories such as XSS, XSRF/CSRF, XSSI (cross-site script inclusion), bypassing authorization controls (e.g. user A can access user B's private data), and server side code execution or command injection.

These categories of bugs are definitively excluded: Attacks against Google’s corporate infrastructure; social engineering and physical attacks; denial of service bugs

non-web application vulnerabilities, including vulnerabilities in client applications; SEO blackhat techniques; vulnerabilities in Google-branded websites hosted by third parties; bugs in technologies recently acquired by Google

The base reward for qualifying bugs is $500. If the rewards panel finds a particular bug to be severe or unusually clever, rewards of up to $3,133.7 may be issued. The panel may also decide a single report actually constitutes multiple bugs requiring reward, or that multiple reports constitute only a single reward.

By Ed Silverstein

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James Cameron Tells Hollywood To Stop Making Trash 3D Movies

James Cameron Tells Hollywood To Stop Making Trash 3D Movies

Proponents of 3D movies often point to Avatar, saying, smugly, “Well, look how great that movie turned out!” Yeah, that was the only one, and it was directed by James Cameron. Your typical Hollywood dross isn’t, in fact, directed by Cameron, nor does it take very obvious cues from Sega’s Panzer Dragoon series. Cameron has hit out at lazy Hollywood studios that think they can make a quick buck by converting their 2D movies into 3D at the last minute—Clash of the Titans being the worst offender. If you want a good 3D movie, he said, it has to be shot in 3D from the word go. Otherwise, don’t even bother.

You’ll recall that Avatar was planned as a 3D film from the very first days of pre-production, the result being a reasonably OK movie, but one where the 3D effects didn’t look tacky or rushed. Like with anything else, Hollywood saw that something worked once, and then ran it into the ground. How many vampire and/or zombie movies and TV shows have been produced in the past few years following the success of the Twilight books and movies?

Too many, exactly.

So maybe we really should thank Christopher Nolan for not bothering to film the next Batman movie in 3D?

Rather than waste time (and money) trying to tack on rubbish 3D effects, Cameron says that movie producers would be best served either A) leaving 3D to movies that are 3D from the beginning or B) converting old, classic movies into 3D.

Not movies like Casablanca, obviously, but Cameron suggested movies like Jaws and Indiana Jones.

These movies are actually good, and you can take your time, maybe work with the director, and see how you can make it a 3D wonder. At least then you’re not working under an artificial deadline, and you’ve already made money on the first run of the movie. Theatrical release, home video, DVD, Blu-ray, etc. Now, take a careful eye and apply a 3D effect and you’ve got another run out of the film.

I’m not sure how much diehard Indiana Jones fans will like that, but it’s not like Hollywood ever goes out of its way to please diehards anyway.

by Nicholas Deleon

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