Sunday, September 11, 2011

Mobile » German Court Deals Another Flesh Wound to Samsung's Galaxy Tab

Posted by echa 12:34 AM, under | No comments

IT Management » German Court Deals Another Flesh Wound to Samsung's Galaxy Tab Samsung still has plenty of legal avenues to pursue in Europe to widen its distribution channels for the Galaxy Tab, in spite of a German court's intransigence over the design issue. In this case, Samsung would be best off attempting "to invalidate the Apple patent by finding industrial designs that pre-date Apple's patent and disclose similar "minimalist" design elements," suggested attorney Will Trueba.

First it gave Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) the preliminary injunction it was seeking against Samsung's Galaxy Tab. Then it suggested it might have been at least partly mistaken. Now the Dusseldorf court that has been hearing Apple's patent suit against Samsung's Galaxy 10.1 tablet, has confirmed that yes, Samsung's German subsidiary may not sell the device in Europe.

The crux of this complicated back-and-forth is Apple's contention that tablet makers Samsung and Motorola have infringed on various elements of the iPad's intellectual property, including how it is designed.

IT Management » German Court Deals Another Flesh Wound to Samsung's Galaxy Tab
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

The German court placed the preliminary injunction on Samsung last month, just as the company was getting set to market it in Europe. Days later, it hesitated over the question of whether a German court could ban a company headquartered in South Korea from selling throughout Europe.

Besides this preliminary injunction, Samsung also must contend with another issued by a court in The Hague, Netherlands, banning the company's Dutch subsidiary from selling the Galaxy or the Ace smartphone in Europe.

The parent company, Samsung Electronics, however, is not subject to either of these injunctions and is free to sell the device on the continent. Still, the injunctions are problematic, as they complicate Samsung's logistics strategy -- both the Netherlands and Germany are chief distribution points for most pan-European operations.

Such considerations, though, are just a sideshow to the main question: What will be the ultimate fate of the Galaxy in Europe?

The Many Venues to Keep Fighting

Samsung is not giving up. It plans to immediately appeal the ruling as well as aggressively pursue Apple for its ongoing violation of Samsung's wireless technology patents around the world, it says in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Kim Titus.

Samsung does have options at its disposal, albeit complicated ones, according to the Foss Patents blog.

It can appeal the preliminary injunction to a higher regional court, possibly getting it lifted in a few months.

Also, this injunction does not impact the main proceeding before the regional court, which is expected to take a year and can be appealed.

If, after the appeals process is exhausted, the regional court has decided the preliminary injunction was the appropriate measure, it stays in place and becomes a permanent injunction, FOSS continues.

If it decides it was an error, Samsung may sue Apple for damages.

Apple did not immediately return a call from the E-Commerce Times.

Community Design and Other Issues

One of the legal arguments Samsung is pursuing challenges Apple's claims that it has patented what many consider to be generic characteristics, such as the tablet's size.

"We also believe that by imposing an injunction based on this very generic design right, this ruling restricts design innovation and progress in the industry," Samsung says in its statement.

Apple owns a Community design right that covers the appearance of product design as a whole or in part, noted Will Trueba, a founding partner with the law firm of Espinosa Trueba.

IT Management » German Court Deals Another Flesh Wound to Samsung's Galaxy Tab
The iPad 2

In this case, Samsung would be best off attempting "to invalidate the Apple patent by finding industrial designs that pre-date Apple's patent and disclose similar "minimalist" design elements," he told the E-Commerce Times.

The good news, for Samsung, is that since patent rights are based on each particular country's laws, the ruling by the German court should have very little bearing on the decisions by courts in other countries.

However, the design issue is just one small piece of the two companies' legal fight, continued Trueba.

"Some of the suits filed in other countries relate to other intellectual property rights, including utility patents and copyrights," he said.

Abusive Patent Laws

In the bigger picture, this is just one episode illustrative of how easy it is to abuse patent laws on both sides of the Atlantic, Ryan Radia, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the E-Commerce Times.

"Both regimes suffer from serious problems. For example, the recent acquisition of Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) was largely a defensive move intended to better position Google to defend itself against patent litigation," he pointed out.

Patent laws exist to protect the creation of new ideas and inventions, Radia said, but at the end of the day, "there is nothing inherently novel about the shape or look or size of the iPad. I suspect Samsung will ultimately be vindicated, but in the meantime it is locked out of important markets in Europe."

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 1: Fan Sites Play Ball

Posted by echa 12:26 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 1: Fan Sites Play Ball While Internet users have been staunchly frugal about paying for online content, at least one breed of website, the fan site, has thrived using pay walls. Peddling hyper-specific information about high school athletic prospects, fan sites appeal to a particularly zealous audience. And with media companies like Yahoo and Fox investing tens of millions into these sites, the subscriptions -- and the revenues -- continue to grow.

The University of Florida coaching staff was short on selling points when it set out to recruit high school football players in early 1990. For starters, the head coach was brand new, his predecessor having been unceremoniously dismissed in the middle of the '89 season because of rule infractions.

What's more, one of the best players in school history, Emmitt Smith, decided to forgo the 1990 season and enter the NFL -- hardly a vote of confidence for the new coach, Steve Spurrier. Spurrier was a legend in his own right when he played at Florida in the '60s, but Smith's departure cast doubt on how much that resonated with kids who weren't yet born at the time.

Further complicating things was the rise of in-state rivals Miami and Florida State. Miami had won two of the previous three national championships, and Florida State had finished in the top three for three straight seasons. The Gators, meanwhile, finished the '89 season 7-5, capping a muddling 26-21 four-year stretch.

Spurrier's first task, to assemble a recruiting class in 1990, was hamstrung by a cocktail of mediocrity, turmoil and regional inferiority. As such, if Florida was going to catch up with its in-state brethren, it would likely take a little while.

Gators Can't Wait

Gator fans, however, weren't keen on waiting, and they seemed to vent their impatience on David Stirt, publisher of a weekly UF sports magazine called "Gator Bait." In the weeks before the 1990 National Signing Day -- the day when the nation's top high school players declared where they would be attending college -- Gators were so rabid that Stirt couldn't pick up the phone.

"As we tried to gather information, we couldn't make any calls," Stirt told TechNewsWorld. "All the lines were tied up with people calling looking for recruiting news. It was crazy."

To accommodate the interest, Stirt started a 900 number. At the time, 900 numbers were synonymous with porn, but Stirt replaced seductive whispers with football banter. Every day, he recorded a three- to five-minute message about prospects, about who might be the next Florida Gator.

Each call was US$2.00 to connect, and about a buck per minute after that.

Having been launched just a few weeks prior, Stirt's 900 number received more than 10,000 calls on Signing Day, netting him something like $35,000. All because people couldn't wait until the nightly news or -- god forbid! -- the morning paper to know that Terry Dean and Lateef Travis had decided on Florida.

"There was this time sensitivity that, for some reason, mattered to the fans," Stirt said. "And it wasn't even really that great of a [recruiting] class. Spurrier had come in at the end of the season, and it's hard to establish recruiting roots that first year. So his first recruiting class really wasn't even that great, but it didn't matter. People just wanted to know who was signing."

Recruiting News and Revenues

Stirt's 900 number is now defunct, but in its stead are hundreds of websites -- "fan sites" -- pedaling the same kind of recruiting information. And despite the migration from phone lines to the Internet, people are still eager to pay.

Thus far in Internet history, the idea of paying for content has been met with incessant complaints and closed wallets. But when it comes to the latest info on America's top high school athletes -- mostly football, but basketball as well -- tens of thousands of people are ponying up. University-specific fan sites have teamed up to create networks such as Rivals.com, Scout.com and 247sports.com, each of which makes Stirt's five-figure bounty look like pocket change.

For example, there are numerous Rivals.com sites, according to Jeffrey Lee, an Auburn University grad who publishes his alma mater's page for Rivals.com, that have more than 6,000 paid subscribers, and a handful that have more than 10,000. Subscribers pay about $100 annually, so a site with, say, 5,000 subscribers can generate something like a half-million bucks a year.

All in the name of recruiting.

"The lifeblood of these sites is recruiting information," Lee told TechNewsWorld. "All the football stuff -- post-practice interviews, game stories -- people can read that stuff online for free. But what they can't read about is what recruits were at that game, and what those recruits had to say about Auburn. Our subscriber base is recruiting junkies."

As the managing editor of Florida's Scout.com site, Bob Redman is something of an heir to Stirt. Redman has never dabbled in hotlines, but his site has thousands of paid subscribers, each a varying degree of Florida recruiting addict.

Perhaps more impressive than the 3,000-plus people who scoured his page on Signing Day last spring is that his is but one of four sites that specialize in Gator recruiting.

"You're diluting the fan base when you have that many sites," Redman told TechNewsWorld, "but there are plenty of people who will join every one. Recruiting is the core -- that's our main thing. Honestly, that's what sells."

Recruitniks: Deep Roots and Deep Pockets

Networks like Rivals.com and Scout.com are so lucrative that they have been gobbled up by media giants. In 2007, Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) acquired Rivals.com for a reported $100 million, and in 2005 Fox acquired Scout.com for a reported $60 million. It turns out that football recruits are literally worth millions of dollars. (Insert Miami Hurricanes joke here.)

That Rivals and Scout and others have turned "recruitniks" into millions of dollars is in a way confounding. This business model -- generate content, and then barricade it behind a pay wall -- is something that media outlets have been almost universally unable (or unwilling) to implement. And that figures: Internet users have a well-documented Scrooge streak when it comes to paying for anything online, be it music, movies or news.

Then again, maybe the success of these sites is a no-brainer. After all, Stirt's phone rang to the tune of $35,000 in one day back in 1990, with people calling in to get the scoop on what figured to be, and indeed was, an average recruiting class.

Stirt didn't invent the market for recruiting news. There were a number of recruiting newsletters being published before his number went live. But he did meld recruiting fanaticism with fans' borderline irrational need to get information rightnow. And the market, for a variety of reasons, has swelled ever since.

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 2: You Gotta Have a Gimmick

Posted by echa 12:23 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 2: You Gotta Have a Gimmick "There is no mass market in pay journalism online," said Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi. "There is so much information on the Internet. The minute you put something behind a pay wall, you give an opportunity for someone else to do it for free. Human nature is that if I can get it for free, I'm going to get it for free. If a pay wall is going to work, you have to have some extremely specialized information."

Behind the Pay Wall, Part 1: Fan Sites Play Ball

If recruiting followed porn's lead into the world of 900 numbers, it did the same on the Internet. Porn was among the first and most successful industries to charge for content online, supplying a different type of fix for an equally zealous audience.

However, like so many others, the porn industry's ability to charge for content has eroded over time. The sites that charged eventually lost their monopoly on the product, and with that monopoly went the money.

News is another commodity that people have been devoutly unwilling to pay for. Even The New York Times, which touts its journalists as the best in the world, didn't dare charge for content until last spring, when it put up an exceptionally porous pay wall that can be traversed for free in about two seconds. Readers can amend the URL, punch a headline into Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) News, enter via Twitter and so on. The Times' pay wall is as much of a barricade to traffic as a twig in the road.

The failure of pay walls is simply endemic to the Internet, according to Paul Farhi, a reporter for The Washington Post, who has chronicled their plight.

"There is no mass market in pay journalism online," Farhi told TechNewsWorld. "There is so much information on the Internet. The minute you put something behind a pay wall, you give an opportunity for someone else to do it for free. Human nature is that if I can get it for free, I'm going to get it for free.

"If a pay wall is going to work," he added, "you have to have some extremely specialized information."

Specialize and Monetize

If fan sites are anything, they are specialized. In addition to himself, Jeffrey Lee's Auburn site employs two full-time writers, a photographer, a sideline reporter, and a pair of in-season columnists who deal with nothing but Auburn football and Auburn recruiting. By contrast, The Birmingham News, the largest newspaper in Alabama, has but one Auburn beat writer and one college football columnist.

Sheer logistics make the Rivals site the eminent source of information about Auburn football.

"We're going to go deeper than the paper," Lee said. "We're going to go behind the scenes, we're going to go talk to people off the record, we're going to get scoops on what recruits are saying. That's what you're going to get that you won't get elsewhere."

Getting that information is no cinch. Recruiting experts have to sweet-talk parents, spend Friday nights planted on metal bleachers, and psychoanalyze 18-year-olds whose stories are often contingent upon whom they're talking to.

What's more, college coaches are prohibited by rule from uttering a single word about recruits. So while a beat writer can indeed cover a team, covering the future -- the prospects -- is a whole other story.

"It takes a lot of legwork, a lot of manpower," said Gator Bait publisher David Stirt. "There are some newspapers who have picked up on it, but it takes manpower, and newspapers are shrinking. It's such specialized information, you have to have really strong contacts. It's something that not everybody can do."

As a writer for Counterparties, a Reuters aggregation and media analysis blog, Nick Rizzo has dissected what does -- and more often, what doesn't -- work in the world of pay walls.

While he himself is not a recruitnik, he told TechNewsWorld, fan sites comply with the tenets of lucrative pay walls.

"You need to be offering some kind of original reporting if you're going to have a prayer of having a successful pay wall," Rizzo said. "And if you don't work in a front office or on a coaching staff, there is very little information about prospects. So there is absolutely a market for it."

Hordes on the Boards

Just as the content on fan sties is hyper-specialized, so too is the community that congeals around the content.

The Birmingham News website is chock full of news about all things Alabama -- the recent Homewood City Council ruling, the closing of the Lucky Duck Bingo Hall, and so on -- and its audience is accordingly diversified.

However, sites like auburn.rivals.com have a razor-sharp focus. And while this does nothing for Alabamans who want to know about the Jefferson Country budget crisis, it is a haven for football nuts.

"It's about being part of a community," Lee said. "It's about escaping to our own little world where it's nothing but Auburn football and recruiting."

Members of this community -- Lee likens it to a fraternity -- are a social lot. When they read about a sought-after prospect from Georgia, they aren't apt to hum the fight song and shut down the computer. Instead, they take to the message boards by the thousand to discuss, to opine, and to fantasize about what this might mean for the future.

Interest is so intense that fans from the University of Alabama are loath to miss out. There are hundreds of people who pay for access to the Auburn message boards, Lee said, just so they can keep tabs on -- and throw mud at -- their cross-state foes.

Internet » Amazon Redesign: Limbering Up for Tablet Action?

Posted by echa 12:17 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Amazon Redesign: Limbering Up for Tablet Action? Amazon has slowly begun rolling out a homepage redesign. The new look comes alongside rumors that the e-commerce giant is just about ready to unveil its own tablet device, and the revamped Amazon layout may fit more neatly into a mobile device's touchscreen. "This is a significant departure," noted analyst Rob Enderle.

The next time you make a shopping trip to Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), you may be in for a surprise. The Net's largest retailer will be rolling out significant design changes to its online store -- changes that some say make the site more tablet friendly.

The new design is airier than the old one. There's more white space on the home page. The navigation bar on the right side of the page is gone. The search bar on the page is larger, too, making it easier to poke with a finger on a tablet. And product photos are clickable links. Click on a pic and you're taken to its product page.

Amazon did not respond to phone calls from TechNewsWorld for comment on the redesign, but a spokesperson for the company told The Wall Street Journal that the changes would be rolled out in the coming weeks and for now was limited to a small number of users.

Redesign Overdue

According to some observers, Amazon's redesign will make it more friendly to tablet computers. Rumors of an Amazon tablet have been circulating for months, and for some, the redesign -- which resembles the design of Amazon's shopping app for the iPad, Windowshop -- is Amazon's way of making it easier to shop at the site with its future tablet.

Tablet considerations aside, a redesign of the site has been long overdue, according to Brad Cerenzia, director of consumer innovation at RichRelevance, an e-commerce services firm. Cerenzia, who has 15 years experience in the e-commerce space, used to work at Amazon, where he led an engineering team that launched dozens of new stores and features at that company's website.

Although Amazon has a history of experimenting with homepage designs with different objectives in mind, he told TechNewsWorld, "overall, the design hasn't changed much since I left seven years ago."

Rise Of Mobile Devices

Since that time, mobile devices have grown in importance for retail sales, which is something Amazon is recognizing in its redesign. "Amazon's new design is about enabling product discovery on smaller, interactive screens, such as tablets," Cerenzia said.

The redesign has definitely enhanced discovery for one user. "It takes some getting used to, but it gives me more products on the first page, and I found more things that I might not have found had I had the old interface because it gives me more to see at a glance," Rob Enderle, avid Amazon shopper and president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.

"It looks like it's anticipating a tablet. This is the kind of thing you would do if you were going to do a touch interface," he added.

"This is a significant departure," he said. "It recognizes that Amazon may be bringing out a tablet shortly, and that tablet will be focused on selling product so the interface is reflecting the move to a tablet as a primary shopping device, as opposed to a secondary shopping device."

Perfect for Tablet Jockeys

Mobile devices not only allow shoppers to discover products online, but to access information about products in brick and mortar outlets as well.

"When you're standing in front of a product in a store, you've got this tablet in your hand that can tell you a heck of a lot more than the marketing materials on the box or that tiny shelf tag that tells you three important points that someone pulled out of a spec sheet to stick on the shelf," Cerenzia observed.

While the redesign may upset some users, it will be a boon for tablet jocks, he opined.

"This radical redesign is exactly what was needed to make tablet shopping accessible to people who own tablets," he reasoned.

"It really has a catalog feel -- more emphasis on primary images, more editorial. It's a more elegant shopping experience for me on a tablet," he said of the redesign.

"The old way of shopping on a flat monitor is stale for someone who has an iPad and is looking for an experience that matches the technology," he added.

Internet » Few Doors Remain Open for Yahoo

Posted by echa 12:14 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Few Doors Remain Open for Yahoo Yahoo may be in a ditch, but it still could haul itself out -- it has a strong brand and a lot of assets. It wouldn't be easy to accomplish, though. At this point, the best bet for Yahoo would be to get acquired by a company like Microsoft, which would integrate Yahoo's assets with its own, suggested tech analyst Charles King. "If they get acquired, the company and its employees would have a chance to survive."

After the firing of Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz this week, the board is exploring a possibility of a sale, according to The Wall Street Journal, and intends to hire bankers for advice.

In coming months, there may be a sale of Yahoo's Asian investments, a purchase of a social media or content company, or partnerships that could help Yahoo get more money from its Web properties, the paper reported.

The once-prosperous company has had trouble competing for ad revenue with Internet giants Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Facebook in recent years. Yahoo's second-quarter results were its worst since 2005. Still, Yahoo has accumulated numerous assets and Internet properties since its founding in 1995 that could make it a rewarding purchase for the right buyer.

Yahoo's search engine market share sits at around 15 percent, according to Searchengineland.com. This compares with Google's 67 percent market share and Bing's 28 percent.

Three years ago, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) was interested in buying Yahoo for its search business. A purchase today could bounce Bing's search market share up 15 percent and give it a better chance to compete against Google.

Asian Assets

Yahoo's home page functions as a portal to provide access to the latest news and other Yahoo products, such as Flickr, an online photo album and sharing service. Yahoo Mail has been up and running since 1997. It is one of the few Web-based email services to provide unlimited storage.

Yahoo partners with content providers in a broad range of areas including Yahoo Sports, Finance, Music, Movies, News, Answers and Games. Yahoo Mobile offers access to various Yahoo products over mobile devices.

Yahoo is also known for its international and multilingual presence. The site is available in more than 20 languages. Yahoo's Asian assets include a 40 percent stake in the privately held Alibaba Group and 40 percent in Yahoo Japan. Investors hope that an eventual IPO from Alibaba's Taobao unit would provide a barrel of cash. Yahoo's Asian assets are estimated to be worth between US$9 and $13 billion.

Good Traffic for a Web 1.0 Company

Yahoo's difficulties go back several years. The company has tried to reinvent itself a number of times with at least two different rescue CEOs.

"Two failed turnarounds under a company's belt is about as much as a shareholder can take," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times. First it was Jerry Yang and then Carol Bartz. Yet Yahoo remains one of the Internet's best known brands."

Yahoo has a sizable number of portals -- news, sports, finance -- that drive a lot of traffic, King noted. Even so, Yahoo has to fight an uphill image battle.

"On the good side, they're still drawing a lot of traffic," said King. "One of the problems is, they're considered -- like AOL -- to be an old-fogey site when compared to Facebook and other sites that are driving traffic."

Three years ago, Microsoft made a move to buy Yahoo, which was then worth considerably more than it is today.

"Microsoft offered 45 billion in 2008. That was $31 per share," said King. "Now Yahoo's stock price is just over $14 per share. A fair value now would be roughly half of what Microsoft offered."

Yahoo's assets are said to be worth about $17 billion, he noted, and "with the value of their brand added in, Yahoo could argue its value is over $20 billion."

Can a new CEO come to the rescue? It's not that simple, suggested King.

"The turnaround at this point would be really difficult. Things have changed so radically over the last couple years in how people interact with online content, it's not going to be just a reorganization to save Yahoo," he explained. "They would have to change their DNA, and they would still come up against Facebook and Twitter."

At this point, the best possible option for Yahoo would be to get acquired by a company like Microsoft, which would integrate Yahoo's assets with its own, according to King. "If they get acquired, the company and its employees would have a chance to survive."

Anybody Want Yahoo?

While Yahoo's value has slipped, the company is still a major presence on the Internet. It is very well known. It may be like the once-bruised Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) -- which was suffering before Jobs returned to leadership -- still full of promise.

"Yahoo still has brand recognition and eyes viewing it. Maybe not as many as before, but they still have eyes," Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat, told the E-Commerce Times.

As for buyers, does Yahoo have the potential to be spiffed up and set right as a standalone brand?

"From an acquisition perspective, there are many things to consider," said McGregor. "Do you want to invest a boatload of money to compete with Microsoft and Google? Or, can you combine the assets with a complementary solution, such as an e-commerce solution?"

The latter could make more sense, reasoned McGregor, because Yahoo needs to have something distinctive going for it in order to do more than just survive.

"I think another industry powerhouse or IT service provider would find value in Yahoo," he said.

Internet » Facebook Rakes In Mountains of Megabucks

Posted by echa 12:12 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Facebook Rakes In Mountains of Megabucks Though Facebook hasn't disclosed its official revenue figures, a recent report indicates the privately held social media giant took in $1.6 billion in revenue for the first half of 2011. The company's power to draw advertiser dollars has long kept it on Wall Street's list of hot IPO possibilities, but recent market volatility may delay the company's plans to go public -- if they even exist.

Despite growing competition from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), social network kingpin Facebook doubled its revenue in the first half of 2011, raking in US$1.6 billion to bolster company growth before its rumored IPO, according to a Reuters report.

Earnings from the privately held company aren't confirmed, but the world's largest social network reportedly posted a net income of nearly $500 million to start off 2011.

The company that started in CEO Mark Zuckerburg's college dorm room in 2004 doesn't show any signs of stopping. Its latest competitor, Google's attempt at a social network called "Google+," saw unprecedented growth in its first month, but the initial buzz surrounding the search engine's endeavor seems to have died down.

Even though Google+ brought in around 25 million users relatively quickly after its inception, it's nowhere near the 750 million Facebook can claim. Smaller and older competitors like LinkedIn and MySpace don't come close either, making Facebook highly attractive in the eyes of display advertisers and leading to more questions about just how much the company is worth.

Facebook didn't respond to the E-Commerce Times' requests for comment.

Ahead of the Curve

Though social network competitors have crept up as online contact becomes a primary form of communication for more people, none have had the lasting impact or widespread user base that Facebook has, thanks in part to its ability to keep updating its features and capabilities.

After opening the network to anyone with an e-mail account -- instead of limiting itself college students or faculty -- the site saw steady growth in domestic and overseas users. Facebook also began adding interactive elements like photo sharing and games to the user experience.

The company is expected to launch an interactive music playing feature on the site in a partnership with music provider Spotify. It's also never stopped aggressively recruiting talent from all over the tech world, as evidenced when Facebook picked up innovative e-book designers Push Pop Press, presumably to continue improving the interface.

Raising the level of engagement with features, the interface and apps also increases the amount of time the users stay on the site and the frequency at which they visit, making Facebook a prime spot for ads. It's estimated that the social network takes in more in display ad revenue than Google, Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) combined.

Still, the social networking phenomenon is a new one, and like other sectors of the blooming tech industry, it has room to grow.

"Social networking as a whole is still in its infancy compared to what we could possibly do with it. As this moves from being a communication tool to something more integrated in our lives, maybe combined with e-commerce, mobile devices or an augmented reality, then you can never really predict what's coming next," Jim McGregor, research director at In-Stat, told the E-Commerce Times.

Even Facebook can continue to grow. Although it's added plenty of global users, worldwide Internet usage is still sitting at just about 30 percent, so there is room for growth abroad, especially considering its loyal user base and notoriety.

"Facebook has a lot going for it. It has millions in investments from heavyweights like Goldman Sachs, it has amazing user growth and revenue growth, and it's got room for more," Lee Simmons, industry specialist at Hoover's (Nasdaq: HOOV), told the E-Commerce Times.

But it's also not too early in the networking game to count out competitors or even someone new willing to throw their hat in the ring.

"Could anybody ever top Yahoo? Could anybody top Netscape? Absolutely someone could top Facebook. That comes with transitions in the market. Maybe it would be in the form of a partnership. I wouldn't even say Google's out of it, although I don't think they or anyone else has found the ultimate formula yet," said McGregor.

IPO Whispers

Facebook's reported revenues once again raise a question Wall Street has asked many times before -- whether or not the company will go public, and if so, when.

"Facebook is interesting. It's sort of the 800-pound gorilla that hasn't come to the market yet. Other tech companies going public are the leaders in their fields but don't have the impact that Facebook does," said Simmons.

A recent market trend with tech stocks is to set sky-high valuations, even for unprofitable start-ups, but the volatile market of late and sometimes questionable business models have led to a few delays and lower valuations for tech stocks.

If Facebook's numbers are as high as reports indicate, however, its solid user base and advertising revenues should guarantee the company a huge dollar amount.

"My suspicion is that when they do decide to file, the valuation is going to be very high. If you look at some of the investments in Facebook just over the last two years, such as Goldman Sachs, that valued it at $50 billion right there. I suspect when it does decide to file, it's probably going to see at least $50 billion. It's hard to say if it will go as high as the [estimated] $75 billion, but it definitely won't be less than [$50 billion]," said Simmons.

What time frame Facebook may select to enter the market, however, is still very much up in the air.

"Right now everyone is playing it by ear. Everyone is kind of waiting to see how the market pans out, and right now it's being driven more by news and we're in for a lot more volatility. I wouldn't be surprised if the IPO gets delayed at least a year," said McGregor.

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 3: A Breed Apart

Posted by echa 12:09 AM, under | No comments

Internet » Behind the Pay Wall, Part 3: A Breed Apart Is it more than exclusivity that distinguishes fan sites from their failed pay wall peers? Any number of movie review pages or restaurant reviews have interesting and indeed exclusive content. But sports, and recruiting in particular, appeal to something more emotional than, say, the latest dirt out of Hollywood.

Behind the Pay Wall, Part 2: You Gotta Have a Gimmick

Fan sites are immune from many of the Achilles' heels that plague other media outlets.

Indeed, people don't need fan sites to be in the know. When news breaks about a player, it will within moments be splattered all over the Web. But even if fans don't need these sites for news, they need them for camaraderie.

This is one of the things that insulates fan sites from the pay wall pitfalls that have ravaged other media outlets, according to Eric Winter, senior director of sports and entertainment at Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO).

"That's where the passion comes through," Winter said. "Once you read a thousand-word article about a player, you want to talk with people about it, share your thoughts about it. That's where those boards become so important, and that's one of the reasons why these sites will continue to thrive."

Model of Success

As with most nooks of the media industry, it's no sure thing what will happen to fan sites in the future. Maybe a wave of free message boards, coupled with ever-easier dissemination of information via Twitter or some as yet unborn medium, will conspire to overwhelm this business model.

That said, these sites are thriving behind their pay walls. While Scout and 247Sports declined to comment for this story, Yahoo's Winter said that Rivals has grown each year since it partnered with Yahoo. As if to prove its vitality, Rivals recently launched a fan site for the lowly Arkansas State Red Wolves. Texas State, best known as the snake-bitten program in the 1991 film "Necessary Roughness," is launching next.

All of which makes you wonder if it's more than exclusivity that distinguishes fan sites from their failed pay wall peers. Any number of movie review pages or restaurant reviews have interesting and indeed exclusive content.

But sports, and recruiting in particular, appeal to something more emotional than, say, the latest dirt out of Hollywood.

To wit, Gator Bait publisher David Stirt once received a call from a Florida alum who was working for an oil company and wanted to get the latest recruiting news. That's not striking, but this is: The guy was calling from Saudi Arabia.

"Fans have such an intensity of interest, and it means so much for them," Stirt said. "And that's been the culture of sports in this country forever. People are gung-ho about the teams they follow, and crazy as it sounds, it means more to some of them who will be playing in the future than who is playing now.

"It's always this looking forward," he said. "'Who's the next guy? Who's the next big thing?'"

Investing in the Future

Maybe that's why Gator Bait was falling over itself to get scoops on recruiting back in 1990. Sure, things weren't going all that well at the time; Miami and FSU owned the state, and Spurrier wasn't yet a known coaching commodity (his only head coaching stints had been with Duke and the Tampa Bay Bandits).

But instead of tempering interest, these might have been the very reasons that Stirt couldn't make an outgoing call, or that people were phoning up from the Persian Gulf. Because even if things aren't going well in the now, there is always the future, and recruiting is all about the future.

Indeed, the future was bright down in Florida. Spurrier spearheaded a football renaissance, leading the Gators to conference championships in six of his 11 seasons in Gainesville, including a national championship in 1996.

The members of the 1990 recruiting class were the foundation for all of this, the first building blocks. And the people who called Stirt's 900 number were, in a vicarious way, part of the construction. They were architects bound by football and optimism. That, and a willingness to fork over money to see what Terry Dean and Lateef Travis had decided.

Computing » FSF's Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 2

Posted by echa 12:07 AM, under | No comments

Computing » FSF's Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 2 The people and companies ... who disregard the Internet "don't be a dick" rule ... need more incentive to comply. However, even they don't lose the right to use the code permanently unless they decide to "be a dick" permanently. In those cases, it doesn't matter how many copies of the code they get -- each new license for each new copy would be terminated as soon as they attempted distribution outside the terms of the license.

FSF's Star Turn in the Android FUDathon, Part 1

Mr. Smith was kind enough to reply two days later.

Hi Barbara,


Thanks for your feedback. I've responded to some your specific points below.


I'm aware that a license change in Linux would require significant effort. However, that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. I wish it was easier for them, but we think they stand to benefit from upgrading even in this current situation.


You're right to point out that most parties that enforce the GPL are happy to let violators continue distributing during the compliance process. The article itself makes this same point, even explicitly observing that -- to the best of our knowledge -- the copyright holders of Linux follow this policy. I agree that this is an important consideration for companies that are considering using or distributing Linux, which is why I spent a whole paragraph on it.


At the same time, GPLv2 section 4 says what it says: when you violate the license, you immediately and permanently lose the rights it grants you. Saying so is not implying something false; it's stating plain fact. We don't like this. If we could go back in time and change it to use GPLv3's termination policies, we would. Unfortunately, we can't. And so it's fair to point out that, while the legal risks of using or distributing Linux are already very low, they could be reduced even further if it upgraded to GPLv3.


The people spreading FUD about Linux have seized on this one small true fact to make much more outlandish claims. We disagree with them about almost everything, but we're not going to let the fact that they're saying this one true thing cower us from saying it too. I feel confident that open-minded readers will understand the distinction between what we're saying and what they're saying.


Best regards,


Brett Smith
License Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation

My follow-up the same day --

Hi:


Thanks for your reply.


There are two issues, one being the difference between past non-compliance and current and future compliance.


The way I read it, non-compliance terminates the license, as per clause 4. Any code or product containing code during the non-compliant period is a problem, and needs to be fixed or begged forgiveness or whatever.


However, that is a separate issue from the question of whether someone can, in the future, obtain a new license under clause 6 with a new copy of the software, and abide by the new license instance. After all, it is a license, not a contract.


Example: TV manufacturer ships TVs without the source for busybox, and doesn't extend an offer for the source of busybox to buyers. They have breached the GPL, and the products are without question infringing. Obtaining a new license doesn't "fix" those non-compliant products -- that has to be negotiated with the license holder.


However, for future shipments, clause 6 allows them to obtain a new license for future shipments by downloading a new copy of busybox, and complying with the license. The text is quite clear -- each time you receive a copy of the program, you receive a license from the licensor, and no further limitations beyond the license can be applied. So, if the TV manufacturer is currently in compliance (they now distribute the source and/or make it available for 3 years to everyone who buys a TV), they have that right.


What they don't have a right to do is claim that their previous TVs are in compliance retroactively. The new instance of the license only covers the new copy of the code, not the old one, for which the license has been terminated. No "white-washing" of previous infractions without the agreement of the licensor, because that instance of the code was distributed without complying with the license that was granted with it, and as such, violates the licensors copyrights.


They could be forced to recall all those TVs, since they didn't have a license to distribute copies of that instance of the code, or they could negotiate some other settlement ... but that doesn't affect their current status with the new copy of the code and the new license grant. Attempting to void the new license instance when they are in full compliance with it is an attempt to impose additional conditions.


Now, if they are still not in compliance after they get the new copy of the code and start distributing, their license is once again terminated, so there is no question of them just downloading 1,000 copies of the code and trying to distribute 1,000 tvs that are out of compliance, so this is not some "loophole."


Additionally, they can't just say that because the new code is identical to the old code, that the new license covers the old code -- it does not. They would have to physically replace the old code with the new code -- kind of expensive if it's burned into rom, even if we ignore the substantial costs of shipping ... so the incentive would be to negotiate a settlement, as per current practice.


The important thing is that a license is not a contract. You're free to have multiple licenses, one per copy (I have several separately licensed copies of a commercial compiler, for example). If one of those copies one day falls into non-compliance, I don't lose my rights to the use of the other copies, since there is no contract -- the grant of a license is strictly one-way, from them to me. I'm either in compliance with the license wrt that individual copy, or I am not.


IF it were some volume license contract, that would be a different case, but that would be a single license instance that would cover multiple copies. Then, the right to use all copies COULD be terminated when the single license is terminated for non-compliance. But even then, issuing a new license and new copies, allows the new copies to be used. What happens with the old copies? Unless the licensor agrees to relicense them, they can't be used, since they are not licensed.


Under the GPLv2 section 6, each copy automatically comes with a license, which makes things both more complicated and simpler at the same time.


Most infringements fall into one of several categories:


accidental infringement -- example: the server went down so they are not currently honouring their committment to make the source available;


stupidity or honest mistakes -- example: a build script was reverted to an older version, and included the wrong source tree in a shipping product;


greed -- example: someone intentionally didn't comply with the license


For the first two, most people would agree that "stuff happens" and not demand that they be lined up against the wall and shot, or the software equivalent -- permanently revoking their right to use the code. A simple and honest apology when it is brought to their attention, and an offer to immediately get to work fixing the problem going forward and remediating past problems by, for example, getting a copy of the right source into everyone's hands who got the wrong version, is what most would see as more than reasonable.


It's just the people and companies in example 3, who disregard the Internet "don't be a dick" rule, who need more incentive to comply. However, even they don't lose the right to use the code permanently unless they decide to "be a dick" permanently. In those cases, it doesn't matter how many copies of the code they get -- each new license for each new copy would be terminated as soon as they attempted distribution outside the terms of the license. They're the ones that would, in effect, be permanently terminating their rights.


How does this all apply to Android?


Well, first, the attempt to get manufacturers to put pressure on linux to switch to the GPLv3 because of the non-existent threat of a permanent loss of rights under the GPLv2 license, even if they conform in the future and get a new license grant when they get a new copy of the code, is ill-advised.


Phones need to be licensed by the FCC in the US, and other bodies elsewhere. This means that they must provide reasonably provable guarantees to the FCC (or other) that they will operate within the parameters of the law. Different countries have different rules regarding the number of frequencies that phones can operate at, as well as power levels and behaviour when the phone receives a signal to terminate a call. Manufacturers control this using code that is (hopefully) protected from end-user tampering, often to the point of running it on a separate cpu, because it's simpler, cheaper, and less buggy than making 100 different versions for 200 different countries.


Switching Linux to the GPLv3 would render making any sort of demonstration of the manufacturer being able to enforce compliance with FCC rules impossible. That would make Linux toxic to phone manufacturers, who would quickly switch to a *BSD kernel (I wouldn't be surprised if a certain company doesn't have that waiting in the wings "just in case" -- it would be foolish not to, and it wouldn't be all that hard). Forget the FCC -- just the legal liabilities of phone manufacturers to mobile operators if they ship such easily-broken phones would kill any thought of using Linux on phones and tablets. They don't want cracked devices compromising their network's usability.


One further note: Section 5 of the GPLv2 is inaccurate when it states "However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License." Sections of the program that are non-copyrightable can be used in derivative works. There is nothing to prevent someone from stripping out all copyrightable sections of the program and distributing the result, and doing so without even the original copyright notice (since there is no copyrighted material in it).


The same mistake occurs in the GPLv3 license, sections 5 and 9, and the AGPLv3 license, sections 5 and 9, wrt modifying a copyrighted work and then distributing it.


We saw this play out in the "Linux headers" dust-up. Copyright only protects copyrightable subject matter, and copyright law, not any license grant, gives the right to strip out all copyrightable material and then redistribute the result.


Licensing kind of reminds me of the quote "The more complicated they make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." I've always been a fan of the old Borland "like a book" license for its simplicity and ease of understanding, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.


Some things to think about, no?


TTYL


Barbara Hudson

Please note that when I wrote "a license is not a contract," I did so only in the sense that it's not an agreement negotiated between parties. Also, the question of whether old code needs to be replaced if it's byte-for-byte identical actually isn't that simple -- it hinges on whether code is fungible -- a different can of worms that I felt would be more of a distraction at this stage.

More than a week has gone by with no further response. Read into it what you will.

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