Google is looking to standardize its Android 3.0 mobile operating system and may also be looking to standardize Android with the ARM architecture products available in many smartphones and tablets.

By standardizing Android 3.0 Honeycomb, Google will be looking to eliminate most of the drawbacks of the OS, says Digi including a buggy UI and lack of native apps.

While there are over 250,000 apps in the Android Market, only under 100 were built for 3.0 specifications and run "perfectly" on tablets.

Additionally, the report says the "plans to standardize their platforms should significantly improve ARM architecture's major drawback of having difficulty upgrading, while can significantly reduce the development time of downstream partners as well as maintain quality."

Google recently announced it would not be releasing the Android 3.0 open source code:

"While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. "We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready."

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According to Digitimes, Apple has agreed to eat any and all production cost increases caused by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disasters.

In return, upstream component suppliers will keep shipments running "smoothly."

Many of the component suppliers buy components from Japan, but Apple's move should help them remain fully profitable in the foreseeable future.

The move should also help Apple see little supply issues for its iPad and iPhone devices.

Additionally, other tablet vendors will likely be squeezed out if they cannot make a similar move, giving Apple an even bigger edge in the market.

Apple currently has over $50 billion in cash.

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Verizon Communications has confirmed today that it will upgrading backbone pipes to 100Gbps capacity in some parts of the U.S., planning for a streaming/cloud future.

The routes being upgraded include Chicago to New York, Sacramento to L.A. and Minneapolis to Kansas City, Kansas.

Says the company:

We've already successfully deployed 100G on a portion of our European network, and now we're preparing to expand this technology to our U.S. network. Advancing to 100G is a significant step in strengthening our global IP network to handle the bandwidth demands of our customers – whether it's large enterprises or the average consumer. Besides greater scalability and network efficiencies, we also expect 100G deployment to improve latency on a route-by-route basis.

Verizon began its rollout of 100G in November 2007 and was the first to successfully complete a field trial of 100G optical traffic on a live system.

A standards-based, multivendor 100G Ethernet link for an IP backbone was deployed to their European network for the route between Paris and Frankfurt earlier this year.

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Google has kicked a PSX emulator for Android devices out of the Android Market.

Citing its Content Policy, Google pulled the PSX4Droid application from the Android Market. Developer of the application, ZodTTD, suspects that the real reason for the removal of the app is down to Sony, with the launch of the Xperia PLAY, known often as the "PlayStation Phone", imminent.

ZodTTD announced the removal of the application on Twitter, and said he was trying to determine what to do. "Sony's Xperia Play must be coming soon," ZodTTD wrote on Twitter.

"Google just suspended all my legal Sony PSX emulator app ids from Marketplace. They locked me out of their service. Fair enough, but no specific reason. The timing is suspicious with no remedy." Google has provided no specific reason for removing the app.

A similar application on the Android Market, FPse for Android, is still available to buy however. The Xperia Play is expected to go on sale in the U.S. in mid-April, featuring a 4-inch touch screen and slide-out controller. It is powered by a 1GHz ARMv7 processor and runs Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

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Director promises to push up to 48 or 60fps at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.

"When you author and project a movie at 48 or 60, it becomes a different movie. The 3D shows you a window into reality; the higher frame rate takes the glass out of the window. In fact, it is just reality. It is really stunning," Cameron said.

Jon Landau, James Cemeron's production partner, said the higher frame rate will provide for a better audience experience. He said it would remove a strobing effect caused by a "3D artefact".

With the shutter closed for less time, you also get a bright image as a result. This could help with 3D movies, as glasses can reduce the amount of light that a viewer is supposed to see of an image.

Cameron was joined at CinemaCon by George Lucas and Dreamworks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, as they were "championing the digital 3D movie revolution."

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Microsoft-led effort to decapitate Rustock botnet significantly reduces global spam volume.

In a detailed report from Symantec's MessageLabs, it emerges that global spam volumes dropped by one-third in the days following the action taken against the Rustock botnet. Rustock seemingly went quite on March 16, prompting security firms and spam monitors to ask questions about its lack of activity.

Rustock is/was one of the most technically sophisticated botnets known, and it still remains to be seen whether its operators can regain control over the million-strong herd again. It has been active since 2006, quite a lifetime for a botnet.

Microsoft-led action against Rustock, with help from Pfizer and FireEye, led to the seizure of 96 command and control servers mid-March. The hard drives have been handed over for forensic analysis in an attempt to identify the operators.

Following the takedown, global spam volume dropped 33.6 percent by the 17th of the month. In the days following the seizures, 33 billion spam e-mails were sent a day, compared to an average of 52 billion beforehand.


During March, 83.1 percent of global e-mail spam was sent from botnets. In 2010, the average share of e-mail spam coming from botnets was 88.2 percent. Prior to its takedown, Rustock was sending out around 13.82 billion spam e-mails every single day, accounting for 28.5 percent of all global spam from botnets in March.

By the end of 2010, Rustock had been responsible for as much as 47.5 percent of all spam. Now that Rustock has gone quiet, the Bagle botnet has become more active and after Rustock it is the most active spam sending botnet in 2011. It's spam levels are at their highest since October 2009, when Bagle accounted for 12.2 percent of global spam.


Botnets are also used to carry out distributed denial of service attacks (dDos attacks), for hosting content (sometimes illegal) and for mining data from the usage of the hijacked computer, which can be anything from logins and passwords to credit card numbers.

According to the MessageLabs report, the main source of spam in March geographically was the Russian Federation, accounting for 12.4 percent of spam, followed by India at 8.8 percent, Brazil at 5.9 percent, the United States at 4.5 percent and Ukraine at 4.4 percent. For the first time in over a year, the top ten list of spam sources did not include a single European country.

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Apple pushes out supplemental update for users of MacBook Air devices.

Apple customers who bought a MacBook Air last year have been complaining about problems using the iTunes software. Using iTunes with the MacBook Air was making the ultra-thin device become unresponsive for some users. It was reported to happen after the Max OS X 10.6.7 update.

The music software would crash on launch after some users of the 13-inch MacBook Air updated the operating system to the latest version.

Apple is recommending that a supplemental update aimed directly at this issue be installed by anybody who got a 13-inch MacBook Air model in late 2010, and that has been updated to Mac OS X 10.6.7.

For more information: Mac OS X v10.6.7 Supplemental Update for 13" MacBook Air (Late 2010)

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Microsoft has reportedly started to push out early copies of Windows 8 to OEM partners, according to a report.

WinRumors reports that the Redmond-based giant is distributing build 7971.0.110324-1900, using its Connect external testing system, as the Windows 8 and Server vNext Pre-Release Program. The Milestone 3 build is now available for OEMs, such as HP, to access and test out.

Other Windows 8 details have leaked recently. One feature expected is a system reset feature that makes it much easier for an installation to revert to original OEM factory settings. Windows 8 also will reportedly go into hibernation within a few seconds.

It is expected to feature a full 3D interface that can adapt to user habits. A tile-based user interface, codenamed "Mosh", will also be available if a user should choose it.

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Samsung has announced it began mass production of a transparent LCD panel this year.

The 22-inch panels come in black-and-white type and the color type, and feature a contrast ratio of 500:1 with a resolution of 1680x1050 (WSGA+). Samsung's transparent panel boasts a transparency rate of over 20 percent for black-and-white and 15 percent for color type.

Conventional LCD panels that use a back light unit have 5 percent transparency. The transparent LCD panel has a high transparency rate, which enables a person to look right through the panel like glass, and it consumes 90% less electricity compared with a conventional LCD panel using back light unit.

The LCD panel also incorporates HDMI and the USB interface for convenience.

Samsung's press information highlights the possibilities of using the panels in advertising and such uses, hinting that these units won't come cheap for some time.

"Transparent displays will have a wide range of use in all industry areas as an efficient tool for delivering information and communication. With the world's first mass production of the transparent LCD panel, Samsung Electronics plans to lead the global transparent LCD market by developing various applications," said Younghwan Park, a senior vice president of Samsung Electronics LCD Business.

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According to unwired, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has a large incentive to make sure the recent Nokia/Microsoft Windows Phone 7 deal is a success.

The CEO's compensation package is now directly tied to the success of the deal, and Nokia's stock price in the next 20 months.

Says the source:

Here's the new revised deal Mr. Elop gets, depending on how well his strategy works:

His short term cash incentive plan has been reduced to 100% from 150% of gross salary. It means that ~1.5 Million EUR yearly cash bonus Mr.Elop was entitled to if Nokia reached it's intended targets for 2011 and 2012, is reduced by 500K Euro each year. Annual equity grants are reduced to a level below the competitive market value. Not sure what this one means, my guess is the automatic yearly share grants to Mr. Elop have been reduced. In return Mr. Elop gets an opportunity to earn a number of Nokia shares if overall Nokia share price increases.

Overall Nokia share price performance will be compared to a group of "relevant companies in the high technology/mobility, telecommunications and Internet services industries". To get any bonus at all, Nokia's share price performance should be "at the 50th percentile of the peer group", for the maximum bonus – Nokia should be among the top three of the peer group. Also, the minimum Nokia share price at the end of the 2012 should be 9 EUR. For maximum bonus it should be at least EUR 17.

Simply put, Elop stand to make around 13 million euro if Nokia can make a turnaround in the next couple of years. Unfortunately for the new CEO, the first Nokia WP7 devices will start shipping in 2012, giving him little time to see success.

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Redmond gets involved in EU anti-trust case against web search giant Google.

Microsoft spent nearly a decade being probed and prodded by the European Union for anti-competitive practices, so one is entitled to raise an eyebrow at Microsoft's filing of a formal complaint with the European Commission, as part of the EC's ongoing investigation into Google's Search practices within the EU.

This is the first time that the software giant has ever taken such as step, according to Brad Smith, senior Vice President & General Counsel at Microsoft Corporation. While commending Google's attempts to "organize the world's information," Smith says that Microsoft is concerned about a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping anyone else from creating a competitive alternative to Google's key businesses.

He has pointed to some recent cases in the United States involving Google. In 2008, the Department of Justice (DOJ) considered a suit against Google for attempting to tie up and set search advertising prices at Yahoo!. Google backed down following the DOJ's intervention. Then last year, the DOJ objected to what it said was Google's efforts to monopolize book content. A federal judge ruled in that case just last week.

Smith says that the situation is even worse in Europe than in the United States, and accuses Google of walling off access to content and data that competing services need to provide search results to consumers, and of course, to gain advertisement revenue, the life-blood of the business.

He objects to Google's defense that any PC user can easily navigate to a different search portal, pointing out that there are other ways that search services compete as they index content on the web. Generating good search results is important to attract advertisers and also to get websites to use your search service (you will notice, AfterDawn uses Google currently.)

With that said, Smith has detailed half a dozen examples of what he alleges are anti-competitive practices from Google that block competing services, like Microsoft's Bing or Windows Phone software, from having a fair and level playing field.

YouTube & Search Results

Google acquired the YouTube video-sharing portal in 2006 in a billion dollar deal. It is by far the most popular video source on the Internet and is a common sight in search results from Google.com in particular. Smith alleges however that competing services, such as Bing, are unable to index results from YouTube in the same way that Google can, because Google has, "put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results."

Due to the sheer size and prestige of YouTube.com, Smith feels this puts competing services at a great disadvantage.

YouTube & Windows Phone Software

Google has enabled handsets using Android software to access YouTube content easily. Going beyond just being able to play videos, YouTube Android apps can search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings and so on. It also has provided the same level of access to Apple for use with iPhones (and other devices running iOS).

However, Smith accuses Google of clocking Microsoft's Windows Phone software from getting this level of access to YouTube content, which is user-driven. Google has refused to allow Microsoft to utilize the same metadata in use by Android and iOS-powered devices, Smith says, meaning that YouTube Windows Phone applications are basically just browsers loading YouTube's mobile website.

Monopolizing Book Contents

Google has attempted to gain exclusive and unfettered access to a large volume of orphan books (books for which no copyright holder can be found). Smith says that under Google's plan, it's search service would be the only one that could return results from those books. A federal court in New York last week rejected Google's plan, saying, "Google's ability to deny competitors the ability to search orphan books would further entrench Google's market power in the online search market."

Restricting access to customers' own data

Google contractually prohibits advertisers using its services from using data they have input into Google's ad servers, in the course of managing their own advertising campaigns, in an interoperable way with other search advertising platforms. Smith argues that this makes it more costly for advertisers to run portions of their campaigns with any competitors, meaning they are less likely to do so.

"If it's too expensive to port their advertising campaign data to competing advertising platforms, many won't do it. Competing search engines are left with less relevant ads, and less revenue," Smith argues. "And while this restraint isn't visible to consumers, its effects are nonetheless felt across the Web. Advertising revenue is the economic propellant fueling the billions of dollars needed for ongoing search investments. By reducing competitors' ability to attract advertising revenue, this restriction strikes at the heart of a competitive market."

Search Boxes

Websites generally use search boxes for services provided by search portals (or they use internal search instead). Smith says that Google contractually blocks leading Web sites in Europe from distributing competing search boxes. "Google's exclusivity terms have even blocked Microsoft from distributing its Windows Live services, such as email and online document storage, through European telecommunications companies because these services are monetized through Bing search boxes," he said.

Discrimination in advertisement placement

Smith says that Microsoft shares the concerns expressed by others in this case that Google discriminates against would-be competitors by making it costly for them to attain prominent placement for their advertisements. He said that Microsoft has provided the European Commission with a body of expert analysis of how search engine algorithms work and the competitive significance of promoting or demoting various advertisements.


Google controls an estimated 90 percent of the Internet search advertising market in Europe, while Microsoft's Bing is struggling to chip away at its dominance.

Last year, British price comparison website Foundem and French legal search engine ejustice.fr alleged that Google unfairly demoted their sites in search result rankings because they were providing competing services. A third complaint was made by Ciao!, a Europe-based online shopping portal and Microsoft subsidiary, about Google's standard terms of service.

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As a headsup to our users that may have not seen it, Groupon is having a national deal today for eBay, selling a $15 gift card for $7.

Check the deal here: http://www.groupon.com/deals/ebay

Every few months, the daily deal sites have a massive sale on a popular item (see: Living Social + Amazon gift card) and this deal is nearing 300,000 purchases already.

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Contrary to reports online, the South Korean tech firm did not install spy software on some of its notebooks.

Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA and the founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services, said he first became aware of spy software installed on a Samsung R525, last month. He claimed he deleted the keylogging software (StarLogger) from the system immediately, using a "licensed commercial security software," that he failed to name.

"After an in-depth analysis of the laptop, my conclusion was that this software was installed by the manufacturer, Samsung," wrote Mr Hassan.

Just a couple of weeks later, after experiencing problems with the "video display driver", he returned the R525 and picked up an R540 instead at a different store. Once again, he was alerted to the same keylogging software as he was with the first notebook and again, deleted it.

"Again, after the initial set up of the laptop, I found the same StarLogger software in the c:windowsSL folder of the new laptop," Hassan claims.

"The findings are false-positive proof since I have used the tool that discovered it for six years now and I am yet to see it misidentify an item throughout the years. The fact that on both models the same files were found in the same location supported the suspicion that the hardware manufacturer, Samsung, must know about this software on its brand-new laptops."

In a follow-up article, Hassan describes his contact with Samsung Support. The support personnel denied the presence of any such software on the Samsung notebooks. Then, Hassan alleges, after being told the same software was found on both the R525 and R540, the staff "changed its story" and referred him to Microsoft since "all Samsung did was to manufacture the hardware."

Hassan was then redirected to one of the support supervisors. Here's where it gets very interesting. First the supervisor allegedly claimed to not be sure how the software could have gotten there. Then, after leaving Hassan on hold for a while, he admitted that Samsung did knowingly put the software on the laptop to, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."

That would seem like a damning admission, and indeed, Hassan's articles, published with some extras by Mich Kabay on networkworld.com, relates it to the Sony BMG rootkit incident and name-drops Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow (who was of Sysinternals at the time).

Kabay's final comment on the second article sums up the general tone of both articles...

We contacted three public relations officers for Samsung for comment about this issue and gave them a week to send us their comments. No one from the company replied.

Good luck, Samsung! We see a class-action lawsuit in your future…"

Indeed, if true, this would be a legal catastrophe for Samsung. Luckily for Samsung, it is not true at all and there is a much simpler explanation of what really has happened here.

The firm was surprised by the allegations and opened an investigation immediately. It turns out that there is no keylogging software on either model. Instead, VIPRE security software incorrectly reported the Slovene language folder for some Microsoft software as StarLogger. The false positive was for the c:/windows/SL directory.

Here is the full statement from a Korean Samsung site, along with a screenshot of VIPRE security software alerting the false positive.

"The statements that Samsung installs keylogger on R525 and R540 laptop computers are false.

Our findings indicate that the person mentioned in the article used a security program called VIPRE that mistook a folder created by Microsoft's Live Application for a key logging software, during a virus scan.

The confusion arose because VIPRE mistook Microsoft's Live Application multi-language support folder, "SL" folder, as StarLogger.

(Depending on the language, under C:windows folders "SL" for Slovene, "KO" for Korean, "EN" for English are created.)

Samsung will continue to respect customer needs by providing the highest quality products and services.

So while it is a great thing for customers who own these R525 and R540 products to know its a false positive, how much damage has potentially been done to Samsung? A Google search today of the directory in question (c:/windows/SL) pulled up the first result as "How to Find and remove StarLogger from Samsung Laptops" (they have since put a note on the page reflecting Samsung's denial and the explanation for the false positive, but perhaps the best course of action would be to remove the page entirely or at least change the title?). Perhaps more worrying is that (at the time of writing) a Google search for "Samsung R525" displays the networkworld.com article, titled "Samsung installs keylogger on its laptop computers", in the first 10 results.

It is a tad surprising that with the credentials listed for Mr Hassan, as well as the fact that he is founder of NetSec Consulting Corp, a firm that specializes in information security consulting services, he didn't suspect a false positive on the grounds that he has used the same commercial security software for six years and didn't get one yet? And why wasn't the VIPRE software mentioned (in the networkworld article) so other IT consultants could see for themselves if it was false positive by simply creating the c:/windows/SL directory on their clean systems?

This all just seems to be a mistake/embarrassment that could have been completely avoided by some simple research. It's hard to see how Mr Hassan's "in-depth analysis" of his laptop led him to the conclusion that one of the biggest consumer electronics firms in the world would be so stupid as to pre-load spying software into customer's laptops. I mentioned the name dropping of the respectable Mark Russinovich for a reason, his Sysinternals tools contain a bunch of tools that would have been very helpful in checking for such spying software, such as Process Monitor, Process Explorer or Autoruns, none of which require any kind of specialist IT skills to use.

Perhaps this is all just a big misunderstanding that got blown out of proportion. The good news is it is not true. We have not yet entered the terrifying world of pre-installed spy software on our OEM products just yet.

UPDATE: I am a tad bit surprised that networkworld.com is still running this as a top story and has yet to even mention Samsung's statement clearing the issue up (14:15pm, GMT+1). The top news story on the site right now is "Samsung investigating report of keylogger on its laptops", while a graphic (shown on the right and sourced on networkworld.com homepage) still asserts that "Samsung is pre-loading keyloggers on its laptop computers."

This issue has been corrected almost everywhere online except networkworld.com. What's going on guys? It's a two page article and it still doesn't even link to Samsung's latest response? Oh and that second page actually doesn't have any relevant content on it at time of writing either, it simply declares that "IDG, the parent company of the IDG News Service, also publishes Network World."

Comments published to the article seem to be from pretty underwhelmed users. "Wow, amateur hour here at Network World. I hope Samsung drags your asses into court. Your software reports a false positive and you don't confirm with other software or your own analysis? Good luck." posted by Anon on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 7:24am.

"I found disturbing all the blogosphere is all ready posting Samsung reaction on the storing about a some guy making false claim based on crappy anti spyware, this guy should not touch windows again. Beside, Network World fail to covert the whole story and fail to come back with update to correct their mistakes." another comment from an "Anon" source reads, posted By Anon on Thu, 03/31/2011 - 8:59am.

UPDATE 2: NetworkWorld seems to be caught up with the rest of us now. Along with the new news item, the first article that was attributed to Hassan and Kabay has been updated to reflect the change.

"Samsung has launched an investigation into the matter and is working with Mich Kabay and Mohamed Hassan in the investigation. Samsung engineers are collaborating with the computer security expert, Mohamed Hassan, MSIA, CISSP, CISA, with faculty at the Norwich University Center for Advanced Computing and Digital Forensics, and with the antivirus vendor whose product identified a possible keylogger (or which may have issued a false positive). The company and the University will post news as fast as possible on Network World. A Samsung executive is personally delivering a randomly selected laptop purchased at a retail store to the Norwich scientists. Prof. Kabay praises Samsung for its immediate, positive and collaborative response to this situation."

Immediate, positive and collaborative response? That is quite a tone change compared to the "class-action lawsuit" predicted for their future in the second article. At least Samsung is being cleared of any wrong-doing, as with today's ruthless competition in the media, it is quite easy for reputations to be destroyed needlessly.

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