Lawsuit Says Microsoft Illegally Tracks Customers

Microsoft allegedly tracks the location of its mobile user even after customers request that tracking software be turned off, according to a new lawsuit.

The proposed class action, filed in a Seattle federal court on Wednesday, states Microsoft intentionally designed camera software on the Windows Phone 7 operating system to ignore customer requests that they not be tracked.

A Microsoft representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit comes after concerns surfaced earlier this year that Apple’s iPhones collected location data and stored it for up to a year, even when location software was supposedly turned off. Apple issued a patch to fix the problem.

However, the revelation prompted renewed scrutiny of the nexus between location and privacy. At a hearing in May, U.S. lawmakers accused the tech industry of exploiting location data for marketing purposes — a potentially multibillion-dollar industry — without getting proper consent from millions of Americans.

The lawsuit against Microsoft cites a letter the company sent to Congress, in which Microsoft said it only collects geolocation data with the express consent of the user.

Sprint To Be The First To Offer Galaxy S II

Sprint will be the first U.S. mobile carrier to offer Samsung’s Galaxy S II, starting Sept. 16, but T-Mobile and AT&T said Tuesday they also will sell the phone.

A follow-on to the popular Galaxy S, the phone will be the thinnest available at all three operators.

The largest mobile carrier in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, notably has decided not to sell the phone. Verizon recently said it already has an extensive portfolio of Android phones and so would not offer the Galaxy S II.

All models of the Galaxy S II will work on the 4G networks of the respective operators and will run Android 2.3, or Gingerbread. The phone will have a 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which uses technology developed by Samsung. It will have an 8-megapixel rear camera, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video conferencing.

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Will HP Temporarily Resurrects The TouchPad?

Hewlett Packard Co plans to produce “one last run” of TouchPads, days after declaring it will discontinue a line of tablets that failed to challenge Apple Inc’s domination of the booming market.

A day after the chief of HP’s personal devices division told Reuters the TouchPad might get a second lease on life, HP announced a temporary about-face on the gadget after being “pleasantly surprised” by the outsized demand generated by a weekend fire-sale.

HP slashed the price of its tablet to $99 from $399 and $499 the weekend after announcing the TouchPad’s demise on August 18, part of a raft of decisions intended to move HP away from the consumer and focus on enterprise clientele.

That ignited an online frenzy and long lines at retailers as bargain-hunters chased down a gadget that had been on store shelves just six weeks.

“The speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning,” the company said. “We have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand.”

HP may lose money on every TouchPad in its final production run. According to IHS iSuppli’s preliminary estimates, the 32GB version carries a bill of materials of $318.

“We don’t know exactly when these units will be available or how many we’ll get, and we can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone. We do know that it will be at least a few weeks before you can purchase,” HP said in a blogpost.

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Was Apple’s Victory, Really A Victory?

As we heard this week Apple had won an injunction barring Samsung from selling some of its Galaxy smartphones in Europe.

However, it is likely that an update from Android 2.x to Android 3.0 will resolve the patent issue, which concerns the way photos are viewed on a touchscreen.

According to OS news, only the Gallery application infringes the patent in question, and Samsung has confirmed it will update the software to get around the problem.

“The injunction has been granted due to the method of scrolling in the Gallery. If that’s replaced, there is no more reason to uphold the injunction,” said Bas Berghuis van Woortman, one of Samsung’s lawyers.

The injunction doesn’t come into effect until mid-October, giving the Korean phone maker plenty of time to change the software. OS news points to evidence showing that although Apple entered into battle with three patents and a community design, all but the Gallery patent were thrown out by the judge.

The swipe-to-unlock patent will likely be declared invalid, the judge wrote, specifically referring to the Neonode N1m mobile phone as prior art, which has the exact same unlock method as the Iphone.

Apple’s complaint about the design of Galaxy smartphones was also thrown out, with the judge citing numerous cases of prior art, including the LG Prada. And in the case of the Android GUI patent, the judge cited the Nokia 7710 as prior art.

Although Samsung’s PR firm in the UK hadn’t heard anything about an Android update, Samsung said that it expects only the Netherlands to be affected by the ruling. It said, “[The] ruling is an affirmation that the GALAXY range of products is innovative and distinctive. With regard to the single infringement cited in the ruling, we will take all possible measures including legal action to ensure that there is no disruption in the availability of our GALAXY smartphones to Dutch consumers.

“This ruling is not expected to affect sales in other European markets. We will continue our plans to introduce new products and technologies that meet and exceed consumer expectations. And we will defend our intellectual property rights through the ongoing legal proceedings around the world.”

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iPad Expected To Dominate Until 2013

Apple’s iPad will maintain its dominance of the tablet market through at least 2013, research firm IHS iSuppli said today.

El Segundo, Calif.-based iSuppli bumped up its iPad sales forecast for 2011 from an earlier estimate of 43.7 million to 44.2 million, citing Apple’s ability to solve its supply issues and the blunders by rivals, including Hewlett-Packard.

“Apple has resolved the iPad supply issues,” said Rhoda Alexander, senior manager of tablet and monitor research in an interview today. “It was never a demand problem.”

Earlier this year, Apple struggled to produce enough iPad 2 tablets to meet a surging demand for the new device. Those problems have been addressed, and Alexander said that Apple is in the cat bird’s seat for the second half of the year.

“All the momentum in the media tablet market is with Apple right now,” she said. “The competition can’t seem to field a product with the right combination of hardware, marketing, applications and content to match the iPad.”

iSuppli also boosted its forecast for overall tablet sales this year from 58.9 million to 60 million units, meaning the iPad will account for nearly three-fourths of all tablets sold in 2011.

That dominance will continue through 2013, said Alexander, noting that iSuppli previously expected Apple to fall under the 50% share mark in 2012.

“They’ve taken every lesson they’ve learned with previous products and applied them to the iPad,” said Alexander. “Their whole production process is a marvel to watch.”

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RIM Heads To The Cloud

Canada’s Research In Motion (RIM) will take the wraps off of a new cloud-based social music sharing service called BBM Music, as companies begin to bet on entertainment delivered over the Internet that incorporates social networking features.

Research in Motion, the maker of BlackBerry phones, said select music from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music and EMI would be available for the users.

A closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting on today in Canada, the United States and the UK, the company stated.

The music service is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year for a monthly subscription of $4.99 in a number of countries, it said.

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Radio Antennas Made Fashionable

Ohio State University researchers armed with sewing machines and computers have designed a way to weave radio antennas into clothing in an effort to give wearers more flexible and reliable communications capabilities.

Utilizing plastic film and metallic thread, the researchers are attempting to outfit American soldiers with better and less intrusive wireless technology, though they say the hands-free design could be applicable to others, including police, firefighters and the elderly.

The researchers outline their antenna design in the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. They acknowledge the concept of wearable antennas isn’t new (combine what they’re doing and some of the invisibility cloak designs that would be woven into clothing and you’d really have something!).

But the OSU researchers claim their design is an improvement over past efforts in that it boosts antenna range fourfold by utilizing a computer controller that fits on a belt and works with multiple antennas that can send and receive signals in all directions. Network coding that coordinates communications among antennas also plays a key role.

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Lenovo Tablet Hits The Market

Lenovo’s business-oriented tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet, is now available for purchase and should start shipping within a week. The 10-inch Android device, which Lenovo officially announced a little more than a month ago, boasts an impressive mix of consumer and business-friendly features that might please both the user and their IT department.

Like other Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets on the market, the ThinkPad Tablet has a 1280 x 800 multitouch display, 1GB of memory, front- and rear-facing cameras and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor. It comes in a 16GB model for $499, a 32GB version for $569 and a 64GB option for $669. Basic specs and price-wise, the ThinkPad Tablet is on par with the competition.

What sets the ThinkPad apart, however, are the enterprise-oriented tools like remote administration in case the tablet gets lost or stolen, support for Cisco VPN, and full device encryption. Free apps included like Documents to Go, PrinterShare, and Computrace underscore the tablets professional target audience.

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RIM To Launch Music Service

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is making plans to roll out its own music streaming service that will work across its mobile devices, according to people familiar with the plans.

The new service is likely part of an attempt by RIM to improve its BlackBerry Messenger service as it competes with the mobile media platform strengths of rival Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Android.

RIM is in late-stage negotiations with major labels, including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony Corp’s Sony Music, Warner Music Group and EMI Group. The new service is expected to be announced by Labor Day in the United States, September 5.

RIM has been enhancing its BlackBerry Messenger offering, popularly known as BBM, since announcing its “social platform” at last September’s DevCon event where it unveiled the PlayBook tablet computer.

A RIM spokeswoman declined comment on the report but said BBM is one of the largest mobile social networks in the world.

RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones have been hit by a sharply declining market share in the United States, even as the company has expanded sales in other parts of the world, partly because of BBM’s popularity.

Analyst Matthew Thornton at Avian Securities said he doubted the music service would attract new users but might help the company keep its existing BlackBerry customers interested.

“I just don’t think trying to replicate Apple is really going to change their situation near term,” he said.

“For RIM it’s going to be the new OS 7 product first and foremost … and then it’s about QNX and making that transition.”

RIM has just launched an updated operating system on three new touchscreen devices intended to catch up with the technical specifications of Android and other rivals. The company plans to launch the first BlackBerrys using the QNX software, used on its PlayBook tablet, early next year.

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AES Encryption Cracked

CRYPTOGRAPHY RESEARCHERS have identified a weakness in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) security algorithm that can crack secret keys faster than before.

The crack is the work of a trio of researchers at universities and Microsoft, and involved a lot of cryptanalysis – which is somewhat reassuring – and still does not present much of a real security threat.

Andrey Bogdanov, from K.U.Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), Dmitry Khovratovich, who is full time at Microsoft Research, and Christian Rechberger at ENS Paris were the researchers.

Although there have been other attacks on the key based AES security system none have really come close, according to the researchers. But this new attack does and can be used against all versions of AES.

This is not to say that anyone is in immediate danger and, according to Bogdanov, although it is four times easier to carry out it is still something of an involved procedure.

Recovering a key is no five minute job and despite being four times easier than other methods the number of steps required to crack AES-128 is an 8 followed by 37 zeroes.

“To put this into perspective: on a trillion machines, that each could test a billion keys per second, it would take more than two billion years to recover an AES-128 key,” the Leuven University researcher added. “Because of these huge complexities, the attack has no practical implications on the security of user data.” Andrey Bogdanov told The INQUIRER that a “practical” AES crack is still far off but added that the work uncovered more about the standard than was known before.

“Indeed, we are even not close to a practical break of AES at the moment. However, our results do shed some light into the internal structure of AES and indicate where some limits of the AES design are,” he said.

He added that the advance is still significant, and is a notable progression over other work in the area.

“The result is the first theoretical break of the Advanced Encryption Standard – the de facto worldwide encryption standard,” he explained. “Cryptologists have been working hard on this challenge but with only limited progress so far: 7 out of 10 for AES-128 as well as 8 out of 12 for AES-192 and 8 out of 14 rounds for AES-256 were previously attacked. So our attack is the first result on the full AES algorithm.”

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