Just a thought for the day. In the old days, when you bought a book, you read it, then maybe you loaned it to some friends to read, then perhaps you sold or swapped it for another.

With E-books, the price is not that different from the physical book, but you are not supposed to loan it and it turns out you can’t sell it either.

Ditto with digital music and movies.

Except for the whole piracy thing, (which as it turns out may actually help sales.) content producers (not artists or authors, but rather production companies, recording companies and publishers) must be in a delirium of joy. Finally they are able to take away rights that physical goods provided, while not really needing to discount those goods. That is in addition to the fact that they no longer need to pay printers, distributors and physical media costs.

Worth keeping that in mind next time you hear them bleating about piracy stealing their livelihood. I’ll bet little if any of the money they are saving actually make it back to the artists who actually generated the content.

Frank

Very revealing considering that most of the technology in the iPhone wasn’t invented by Apple.

The court case between Apple and Samsung just got more interesting. Apple are always touting their innovation and Samsung has just pointed out in court that the iPhone would not exist had it not been for Samsung Technology. I have covered the non Apple innovations that the iPhone takes for granted before, but it’s nice to see others have noticed too.

I badly want to see Apple lose this case big time, and I want to see Microsoft’s license agreement with Samsung come to light in this case too. I also want to see Microsoft lose their case against Motorola. I want all of this for the same reasons. Apple and Microsoft want to use Patents to hold back competition so people have to accept less impressive technology for more money just so these two companies can profit more. Samsung was developing phone technology before either of the others and shouldn’t have to pay now just because they didn’t think it made any sense to patent crazy and simplistic ideas and designs. (Samsung could have patented music playing phones had they wanted too.) My message to Microsoft and Apple is a simple one, compete on your products merits and stop gaming the court system to get ahead.

I’ve recently been reading the Oracle verses Google court case at Groklaw and I must say I am surprised at one thing. Apache Harmony (an Open Source Java SE.) has been around for a very long time, Sun has known for many years exactly what was in Harmony and who put it there and why (by their own admission) and Apache has been hassling Sun to certify Harmony as Java compliant without having to pay for a TCL. (Apache give it away for free so non free terms are difficult for them). Because Apache were not able to get a free TCL to certify Harmony was fully Java compatible, they never stipulated that it was. That doesn’t mean it’s illegal because the Java language is free, it just means that without the certification they couldn’t claim it was Java compatible, or use trademarks owned by Sun.

Not only did Sun never go after Apache Harmony (which contains ALL the API’s that Oracle is suing Google for), the then CEO of Sun (Jonathan Schwartz) is actually on record as saying Harmony was fine to be released as it was. Since Sun also knew that Harmony was under an Apache license (which is the same license that Google used for that part of Android), How can this not be viewed as anything but an implied license?

It goes further than that even. The same CEO is on record as saying he approved of Android and they welcomed the Java language being brought to a lot more people. In fact he will be testifying at trial that Android had his full approval a the time.

If the boss of the company who actually made Java (as opposed to Oracle who just bought Sun after all was already said and done) said on more than one occasion that Harmony was fine and legal as is, and that Android is welcome and they’d like to help however they can, again, how can this not be seen as an implied license?

Sun tried to make a popular mobile OS and failed, Oracle looked at it themselves and realized that they didn’t know enough to pull it off. Someone at that point appears to have decided “stuff it, this is too hard, lets just take a slice of Google’s pie.”

Simple facts (as I understand them),
Sun had no issue with Apache harmony with all the API’s in question under an Apache license and said so publicly and on the record.
Google uses those same Apache harmony API’s in Android under the same Apache license.
Sun (prior to Oracle buying them) also publicly endorsed Android on more then one occasion.
Oracle came and bought Sun after all of this happened and started looking for ways to monetize their investment. (In fact I believe ex Sun employees have said that Oracle were already looking for dirt on Google prior to the Sun sale even completing.)
Oracle are now claiming that Harmony is infringing and that Google is too as a result.

Is it even legal for a company that buys another company to retrospectively contradict their previous CEO’s public announcements when they don’t agree with them? I’d love to hear some explanation of how that is possible.

A great read if you write or promote websites.
Google search.  Details how Google tune their search engine to remove trash sites and improve result quality.

It seems pretty certain that our future is going to involve mobile internet devices if it doesn’t already. By that I mean tablets and smart phones. We already have phones with resolutions higher than the 800×600 that I used to code for back a few years, (the new Google Galaxy Nexus has 1280×720 resolution). Between Apple and Google, about a million of these devices is sold a day now, so if you are not already testing your site/webapps at smart phone resolutions, you’d best be starting.

Anyway, all that aside, I’ve been reading about how Steve Jobs from Apple was determined to destroy Google Android Linux because he viewed it as stolen product. He was also prepared to blow all of Apple’s money and kill himself to do it.
So I started wondering. What in Android was stolen product from Apple?
* Was iPhone the first touch screen phone? (Nope, IBM Simon did that in 94.) There were others too, like the Motorola Accompli 008.
* Was multitasking what Google stole from Apple? (Nope, the first Iphones had no multi tasking and it was added in much later than Androids arrival which had it from the start.)
* Was iPhone the first B/G/N wireless connected phone? (Nope, this Accton page shows they were already selling Mobile wireless chips in 2006 and PDA’s with wireless were already about.)
* Was iPhone the first phone with a browser? (Nope, that happened in 1997.)
* Was iPhone the first phone with an icon based layout? (Nope, lots of phones were doing that before the iphone)
* Was iPhone the first camera phone? (Nope, Phillipe Kahn did that back in 97)
* Was iPhone the first music playing phone? (Nope, that one goes to Samsung back in 1999)
* Was iPhone the first GPS phone? (Nope, people were doing that back in 1999.)
So, what did Apple “invent” that was so ground breaking? Pinch to zoom maybe? because it seems to me that all they did was combine the functionality of a touch screen PDA with a GSM phone. And they were not the first to do that either.

So, the “invention” that Apple made that was so worth defending, was actually taking everyone else’s ACTUAL inventions, and putting them in one device and marketing it really really well.
Doesn’t seem revolutionary enough to blow 40billion dollars trying to defend though, because if you removed all the shoulders that Apple were standing on to make the iphone, you’d be standing on the ground holding a Nokia candy bar phone from the 90′s.

Steve Jobs said he’d fight to his dying breath to destroy Android, and in the end he did exactly that. He is dead and Android has never been bigger than it is today. The shame is that if he’d innovated instead of litigated he may actually have gone down in history as an real inventor rather than just a marketing/stylist/CEO guru. As it is, they are no more revolutionary as innovators than Microsoft are, and that is precious little in this persons mind. So guys, forget what everyone else is doing, and concentrate on thinking of new things you could be doing. Then you can call yourself innovative inventors of revolutionary products. (A little humility with regards to mentioning the people who’s innovations you are using wouldn’t go astray either.)

Regardless of which company you give your loyalty, the mobile future is here. If you are not targeting them in your development, you are going to lose customers because this a growth industry that will very likely soon outweigh desktop browsers.

While Franki and I seem to be having a contest to see who can post least frequent on here, my daughters are trying to go in the other direction. They want to win a trip to Greece given away by a tour agency — all they need are votes.

You can vote for them here: http://getonthecontikibus.com/the-short-bus-4. It could be their trip of their lifetime — so far — if enough of you can help them. So what do you say? Takes two seconds to vote.