Yesterday, the MeeGo Project officially started its "Day 1" launch, making the baseline source code available to developers.

October should see the release of MeeGo 1.1, on Nokia smartphones.

Furthermore, the MeeGo UI team has said they are actively creating the "handset reference user experience."

Day 1 marks the final merger of Moblin and Maemo, a joint effort by Intel and Nokia.

The MeeGo Project Handset Day 1 includes:

MeeGo APIs, incorporating Qt and MeeGo Touch UI Framework (MTF)
Subset of the handset reference UI and applications
Status Bar: clock, network, Bluetooth, 3G connection, notifications, and battery charge
Home Screen
Lock Screen
Application Launcher
Virtual Keyboard
Applications: Dialer, SMS, Browser, Contacts, and Photo Viewer
MeeGo Core OS (including the middleware components)
Hardware adaptation support for Intel Atom-based handset (Moorestown) and ARM-based Nokia N900

Video, via MeeGo Project:

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RIAA President Cary Sherman recently posted a statement responding to last week's summary judgement in the Viacom lawsuit against YouTube decrying the decision as a "dangerously expansive reading of the liability immunity provisions of the DMCA." He also called it "bad public policy."

He went on to claim the decision will "will actually discourage service providers from taking steps to minimize the illegal exchange of copyrighted works on their sites."

This is nothing surprising coming from the RIAA. Like the MPAA and Business Software Alliance (BSA), they have consistently argued service providers should be responsibile for identifying copyright infringement rather than the content owners themselves.

But as Judge Louis Stanton pointed out in his decision on YouTube's DMCA defense, this responsibility falls solely on the shoulders of the content owners except in rare cases where the infringement is obvious without any investigation.

He wrote, "The DMCA is explicit: it shall not be construed to condition "safe harbor" protection on "a service provider monitoring its service or affirmatively seeding facts indicating infringing activity.""

Judge Stanton went on to explain, "the present case shows that the DMCA notification regime works efficiently," pointing out that it took less than a single business day for YouTube to remove nearly 100,000 videos once they received Viacom's takedown notices.

You can read the entire judgement below.

In his attack on the decision, Sherman claimed, "We need businesses to be more proactive in addressing infringement, not less." But the question is what do they need it for?

Clearly they don't need any such thing for their DMCA rights to be protected, which is exactly why YouTube was awarded a summary judgement.

In fact, the only reason they would "need" service providers to police copyright more closely is to avoid the expense of doing it themselves.

As anyone familiar with fair use can tell you, figuring out whether a work qualifies is fair use isn't possible for a computer. It can only be done by a human, and even then there's a lot of gray area which can only be definitively ruled on by a judge.

Additionally, there's no way for a service provider like YouTube to know whether a particular use of copyrighted content is licensed or not.

The RIAA isn't just looking for help. They're demanding the impossible.

Viacom v YouTube Summary Judgment

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Google has said today that it will purchase travel comparison firm ITA Software for $700 million, but did admit that there is a chance that regulators will not let the deal pass.

The search giant outbid Kayak, an ITA rival, for the company.

ITA is widely used by airlines, travel agents and sites such as Expedia in an effort to bring the easiest comparison of flight times, prices, and availability.

Google says the deal will benefit consumers as it gives them a "new, easier way to find better flight information online, which should encourage more users to make their flight purchases online."

Reveals CEO Eric Schmidt: "Airline tickets online is a very large business, and of course a global business but I don't know about you all, but when I do it, I find it sort of frustrating. The prices are changing constantly. The availability is changing all the time. There's so many thousands of options, even for a simple itinerary. Users are going between multiple websites and ultimately not a very good user experience, although people trying make this better. So when we looked at it, we said we still had more room for competition here and innovation."

Google plans to integrate ITA quickly into its dominant search engine.

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As of today, Finland has become the first nation in the world to make broadband Internet a legal right, with every citizen guaranteed the right to at least a 1Mbps connection.

Furthermore, the Finnish government has promised guaranteed speeds of 100Mbps for all of its citizens by 2015, a feat that will likely not be matched by most other nations.

97 percent of the Finnish population currently has access to a broadband connection.

Finland passed the legislation last year, and Spain followed in November with a similar bill.

Says Fninish communication minister Suvi Linden: "We considered the role of the internet in Finns everyday life. Internet services are no longer just for entertainment. Finland has worked hard to develop an information society and a couple of years ago we realised not everyone had access."

The British government has also committed to giving all citizens a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection by 2012 but that is not a legally binding ruling.

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The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced the shut down of nine movie piracy sites, the first sites in a major crackdown from federal officials.

The anti-piracy initiative is dubbed "Operation in Our Sites," and is aimed at taking down sites that stream or offer downloads of films that are currently in theaters.

Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net were all taken down.

Each site generated revenue from ads and some accept donations. All assets from the sites were seized, including PayPal and advertising accounts.

ICE president John Morton says the amount of illegal movie sites is rising rapidly, with organized crime behind a number of the bigger sites.

Morton added that the sites taken down combined for "millions and millions of hits on a monthly basis."

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Microsoft has confirmed today that Xbox Arcade games will be easily ported to Windows Phone 7, using the XNA framework.

Says Oded Ran, head of Consumer Marketing for Windows Phone: "There are four million Xboxes in the UK compared to 2.5 million iPhones; we're now working with developers who know how to make games, and they're able to port Xbox Arcade games to mobile phones easily."

Furthermore, Ran says: "Of course we're not talking about bringing Halo 3 to your mobile phone - users want a 42-inch LCD TV and surround sound to play games like that - but our XNA framework is a big part [of the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 launch devices]."

Ran says Microsoft wants to become a leader in mobile gaming.

Moreover, TR says the "same framework is used to create games on Windows 7 PC games, so it's entirely feasible that multi-platform gaming will play an even bigger part of the launch than previously thought."

Aiming to differentiate itself from the iPhone and Android phones, which use home screens of widgets and icons, Microsoft says it has tried to blend applications together for a more "integrated experience," allowing the OS and applications to "share information with the user in a natural and seamless fashion."

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TechCrunch has reported today that Disney has purchased iOS game developer Tapulous, the maker behind the very popular Tap Tap Revenge game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In addition, Tapulous founder Bart Decrem will join Disney as a VP.

Tap Tap Revenge, which started as a game available only to those that had jailbroken their devices, has quietly become one of the most popular games in the Apple App Store, with millions upon millions of downloads. The game is billed as a Guitar Hero-esque music game, for your fingers.

There are multiple versions of the game, with some being general while others are aimed specifically at certain artists, and cost money to purchase, such as Lady Gaga Revenge.

Recently, the company introduced Tap Tap Radiaton for the iPad.

Buying the developer gives Disney a quick "in" the music game business, especially for handheld gaming.

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IBM has announced today that the company is "moving to Firefox as its default browser," mainly because the browser is "stunningly standards compliant" and not "beholden to one commercial entity."

The giant corporation has about 400,000 employees so Mozilla is likely to see a small jump in market share over the coming months, as employees move to the browser at work, and then most likely back at home, as well.

Statcounter recently reported that Internet Explorer has 55 percent worldwide market share, with Firefox in second at 29 percent. Google's Chrome continues to see strong growth, but remains far behind at 8 percent.

When asked why the company-wide move, VP of open source and Linux Bob Sutor said: "Firefox is stunningly standards compliant, and interoperability via open standards is key to IBM's strategy. Firefox is open source and its development schedule is managed by a development community not beholden to one commercial entity. Firefox is secure and an international community of experts continues to develop and maintain it. Firefox is extensible and can be customized for particular applications and organizations, like IBM. Firefox is innovative and has forced the hand of browsers that came before and after it to add and improve speed and function."

Additionally, the tech company will "strongly encourage our vendors who have browser-based software to fully support Firefox."

Just another nail in Internet Explorer's coffin.

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According to mobile phone journalist Eldar Murtazin, Android 3.0, aka Gingerbread, will be aimed only at the high-end market, leaving out a bunch of current models, and upcoming low-end models, as well.

To be able to use Android 3.0, your phone must have a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and a 3.5-inch display, or larger.

For any device with 4-inch displays or larger, 1280×760 resolution will be available.

Most importantly, Google is creating a whole new 3D interface for 3.0, one that will be like the Gallery App on the Nexus One, just as an entire UI.

Third-party UI shells, like the popular HTC Sense, and the less popular MotoBLUR, will be killed off by 3.0, but will continue on in Android 2.1 and 2.2 Froyo.

Finally, 2.2 will become the standard for low/mid-end phones, while 3.0, and its October launch date will become the standard for high-end phones.

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Giant e-tailer Amazon has announced that it will be introducing a new, cheaper version of its Kindle DX e-reader, lowering the price to remain competitive.

The updated model will also have a sharper screen.

Amazon charged $489 for the first generation DX, but the new generation model will sell for $379.

Additionally, Amazon says the new DX will handle PDFs better, including the ability to zoom, which was the top complaint for the original device.

Pre-orders on the second generation model start today and the device will ship on July 7th.

The Kindle DX is different from its brother Kindle device because it has a large 9.7-inch screen. Amazon had hoped the DX would eventually replace textbooks on college campuses.

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