Computing » Microsoft Throws a Juicy Mango to Manufacturers

Microsoft has released Mango to handset manufacturers. The new update to Redmond's Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system features new multitasking abilities, threaded communications systems, and a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9. It's a sizable update for the young OS, but will it be enough to help Microsoft catch up to Android and iOS?

Mango, the largest update yet to Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) still-young Windows Phone 7 mobile OS, was released to manufacturers Tuesday in what the software company called an "important milestone" in its fight to gain some ground in the competitive smartphone marketplace.

The update was first shown off in May and is being viewed as a dramatic upgrade from the basic Windows Phone 7 platform, released in 2010. Mango sports over 500 new features and has a much greater focus on apps and communication tasks now regularly performed on smartphones.

The first phone to roll out with the update is the ISI12T, manufactured by Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications.

The update should be available to handsets beginning this fall, but no specific release date was given. The as-yet-unreleased iPhone 5, expected to be a chief smartphone competitor, is the subject of rumors of a September release as well.

New Features

Since the platform was previewed in May, researchers and developers have had time to look over some of the new features the company is touting for Mango's release. Giving attention to data that shows smartphones are becoming mainstream methods of communication, the company has attempted to integrate social networks, business tasks and personal data needs into one platform.

Developers didn't want to tangle the different functions, however, so one of the key updates on Mango is its emphasis on multitasking. Known as "App Multitasking," the feature lets users pop in and out of different apps efficiently.

"The multitasking -- switching between apps -- UI looks to be intuitive and useful," Daniel Ashdown, research analyst at Juniper Research, told TechNewsWorld.

Another attempt at efficiency is the threading feature. Using threading, a user can put all different types of messaging into one -- combining a text, e-mail and instant message, for instance, into one, easy-to-see conversation. The option also exists to combine personal e-mail accounts into one app to cut down on going back and forth between the two.

Another feature, Groups and Messaging, is probably the most talked-about service. It allows the user to put filters on social networks such as Facebook, so if there are only a handful of News Feed updates someone cares about, those are they only ones they have to see.

Groups can also come into play with the threading feature. A user could start a conversation -- say a Facebook chat with one of the select people in their Facebook group -- then continue in e-mail without a complicated switch. The history of that conversation will then be in a profile stored in the phone.

Microsoft is also excited that the platform will debut the mobile edition of Internet Explorer 9.

"The addition of IE9 is important, as Microsoft claims it can render webpages faster than browsers running on competitors devices," said Ashdown.

Also to be added are enhanced search features with Bing. Instead of just typing in something to the engine, a user can use a feature called "Local Scout" to find information on things like restaurants and shopping near his or her exact location.

Mango comes with a visual search, wherein a user can scan an item such as a DVD and then get directed toward a list of prices or reviews for the product. With a book, the user could be directed toward the Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle app and have it downloaded almost instantly. The visual search scan can also translate text into different languages.

Even with enhanced Internet access and capabilities and the compelling search features, the focus with Mango is on integration across social networks, e-mail and apps.

"The biggest thing with Mango is multi-tasking, but it is really feature-packed and represents what an annual release might look like for this platform," Al Hilwa, program director of application development software at IDC told TechNewsWorld.

Is It Enough?

Even with the draws from multitasking and compelling search and Internet features, it's unclear whether Mango has what it takes to make Windows Phone 7 a leader in the smartphone race for domination.

"It's definitely something that will bring Microsoft back into the game, but as far as the smartphone race, there's still a lot of challenges, obviously. Android and iPhone have made it a two-man race at this point," Brent Iadarola, research director for mobile and wireless devices at Frost & Sullivan, told TechNewsWorld.

One key will be to make sure a variety of prices and models of mobile devices can support WinPho7.

"I think it will take them some time to build up the level of sales. The most crucial aspect is having a variety of devices across prices and capabilities," said Hilwa.

Drawing innovative developers to Microsoft's platform, rather than Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS or Android, is also key. Microsoft's relationship with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) could be a great draw for developers.

"The largest attraction is the Microsoft-Nokia relationship. There's just such a large existing base of users globally of Nokia, that there's an instant attraction in that area. That can provide a very large addressable market without having to build it organically," said Iadarola.

The bottom line appears to be that while the updated platform features many draws, it alone may not be enough to attract a flock of customers.

"Some of the key elements of the update they talked about were threads and social network integration. Those are all definitely attractive to the platform and a great thing to highlight, and those will provide a unique differentiator, but I'm not sure it's enough to be a huge draw," said Iadarola.

Computing » Farewell, My Little Plastic Discs

The new Mac mini lacks an optical drive, as does the MacBook Air, which now holds the role of Apple's entry-level MacBook. Is the DVD drive headed the way of the 3.5-inch floppy drive? With all the content available online, from movies to software to music, most consumers probably won't miss the death of the plastic platter ... that is, unless ISPs begin changing the ways they do business.

I'm not sure that we can say Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is the barometer for the consumer tech industry, but it's been either eerily prescient or a powerful catalyst in the demise of certain technological habits.

Apple ditched the old 3.5-inch floppy drive back in the '90s and followed up by creating the iPod, which brought attention to digital MP3 players and then dominated the mobile music space, even changing how people buy and consume songs. I can barely remember Sony (NYSE: SNE) WalkMan disc players now, and I can't remember the last time I actually bought a CD that I had to fight to unwrap.

And then there's the touchscreen iPhone. Remember having physical keyboards with buttons on smartphones? Sure, they still exist, but they are surprisingly marginalized and frequently absent from lists of top-of-the-line smartphones coming from the major manufacturers.

The latest bit of Apple game-changing action: removing the optical disc from the Mac mini. So why is this a big deal? After all, the previously underpowered Mac mini hasn't been a particularly amazing seller for Apple, at least not compared to the MacBook Air, MacBook and crazily popular iPad line. Why would such a simple move in a relatively unassuming little box mean anything at all?

A Tipping Point

On the surface, it seems like a clear signal from Apple that it doesn't really believe consumers need optical disc drives any longer. Want? Maybe. Need? Not so much.

Sure, Apple's iCloud storage facilities in the sky aren't here yet, but they aren't exactly a replacement for an optical drive, are they? So what's the drive for, anyway?

Loading software? With the Mac OS X App Store, it's not needed. Downloading and instantly installing software for my Mac ... I've got to say, I like that a lot.

Creating backups? I can back up a lot of documents on a basic compact disc, and even more on a DVD disc, but for many key backups, those discs are useless. My iPhoto library alone would take a stack of burnable DVDs for a backup.

An external hard drive is a faster, better solution. Speaking of photos, what about burning them to a disc and then heading over to a self-serve photo-printing kiosk in major retail stores? You can email them in advance and then simply pick up your photos. Or print them yourself at home.

Movies! Blu-ray!

Look, DVDs are still popular with millions of people, but for those who dance around the edge of new technology, they are fading fast. I'm a Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) subscriber, but I've got to say, I have a love-hate relationship with DVDs, and it's mostly hate. I hate feeding the DVD player in the living room. I hate waiting for the mechanical action to do its in-and-out and spin thing, and I'm particularly annoyed by waiting for DVD menus to load. I just want the movie, thank you very much, not a bunch of fancy DVD menu action. And I still can't shove a DVD into my iPhone or iPad and go mobile without ripping the DVD, which, again, is a hassle.

As for Blu-ray, for me the expense isn't worth the bother to get the extra quality, which doesn't matter if I want to watch something on my iPad anyway. Besides, it seems that Apple hasn't been particularly interested in supporting Blu-ray, well, ever, and shipping a Mac mini without any optical drive just pounds a nail into the Blu-ray-on-a-Mac hope altogether. Sure, I would have liked the idea of getting a Mac mini to use as a Home Theater PC (HTPC) for my living room, but with a $99 Apple TV available, I just can't seem to find enough desire to shell out for a whole HTPC at all. If I want to surf the Web or email from my couch, the iPad is just a superior option altogether.

If you haven't noticed, I'm trying hard here to find a reason why Apple is wrong ... or even a reason to care. In fact, I'm considering buying a Mac mini to replace my aging MacBook, and the lack of an optical disc drive barely comes into play at all. Would I miss having an optical drive enough to shell out US$79 for the MacBook Air SuperDrive, which connects with a simple short USB cable? Probably not. And burning music CDs for my vehicle? It's been months since I've bothered. I'm far more likely to use my old iPod nano or even iPhone in my pickup to listen to the music I've purchased.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that the hot-selling MacBook Air, which has never had an optical drive at all, might get a large sibling with a 15-inch display. Either way, the MacBook Air has now effectively replaced the low-end white MacBook, which has been discontinued for sale to everyday consumers. MacBook Pros, iMacs and the Mac Pro are now the only Macs that have optical drives. For how long?

Any Fallout?

There is one thing that concerns me about the seemingly inevitable death of the optical disc drive, and that's our Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Right now, Netflix's unlimited instant streaming service is so popular that the company is responsible for nearly a third of all peak-period downstream Internet traffic. If the DVD is fading in favor of Netflix, as well as iTunes purchases and rentals, might all this Internet traffic help push ISPs to really ditch their unlimited download service plans in favor of more tiered pricing? If my ISP right now started limiting my ability to download whatever I want when I want it, that would make DVDs more valuable for my movie-watching habit. And if I were a new Mac mini owner, that would be one less spot I could watch a movie from.

Of course, it seems to me the death of optical drives might help increase the ubiquity of USB-based thumb drives and lower the cost even more, making it possible to actually sell content on them in a retail form. Still, I think we're a ways away from a RedBox or Netflix or BlockBuster shipping out content on USB thumb drives.

As far as retail sales go, it's only a matter of time before the PC world becomes dominated by its own online application stores, removing yet another perceived need for optical drives in the larger PC world.

And the thing is, in another year, I don't think most consumers will miss optical drives at all.

Computing » New Initiative Aims to Stamp Out Cloud Lock-In

The Open Cloud Initiative made its debut at OSCON this week. The organization is set up to provide a common set of standards cloud providers can adhere to in order to let clients know their clouds are easy to migrate into and out of. Open cloud systems must represent all user data and metadata in open standard formats and expose all functionality through open standard interfaces.

Members of the cloud computing industry this week announced the Open Cloud Initiative, a non-profit organization to advocate open standards in cloud computing, at the OSCON 2011 open source convention in Portland, Ore.

The organization maintains a set of Open Cloud Principles, adherence to which will determine whether a given product or service can indeed bear the open cloud label.

It was set up because there is no common set of standards cloud service providers adhere to, which means data often can't be migrated between cloud service providers.

The open cloud standards seek to ensure interoperability and make it easy to enter and leave cloud services regardless of what systems they use.

This is the industry's second attempt at setting up an open cloud standard; Sun Microsystems launched an open cloud platform in March of 2009, but Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) entered an agreement to purchase the company the following month and nothing's been nothing heard about Sun's platform since.

It's not clear exactly how useful an open cloud initiative will be.

"People aren't doing as much with public clouds because they're concerned with security and other issues such as application behavior and legal issues, and you're seeing private clouds being installed," Joe Clabby, president of Clabby Analytics, told LinuxInsider.

"As far as standards go, I don't see the private cloud space being that fragmented," Greg Potter, a research analyst at In-Stat, told LinuxInsider. "I don't see the OCI as having much of an impact."

Opening Up the OCI

One of the members of the OCI board of directors is Sam Ramji, who headed Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) CodePlex Foundation briefly after it was launched. The foundation has since been renamed the "OuterCurve Foundation.

Others include Shanley Kane, who's head of developer relations at Apigee; Marc Fleischmann, CEO and cofounder of RisingTide Systems; Rick Clark, a principal engineer at Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and the chief architect for Openstack; and Noirin Plunkett, who's executive vice president of the Apache Software Foundation.

The Open Cloud Principles used by the OCI require multiple full, faithful and interoperable implementations, at least one of which is open source so that users have an alternative system that they can deploy and don't have to hire developers to implement open standards for them.

About the Open Cloud Principles

Users must be able to enter and leave open cloud services easily no matter who they are and what their IT systems consist of.

Open cloud systems must represent all user data and metadata in open standard formats and expose all functionality through open standard interfaces.

Open standards must be documented in all their details, published and be made both accessible and reusable at no charge. Any patents present on parts of the standards must irrevocably be made available royalty-free.

Other requirements for open standards are that any trademarks possibly present on identifiers must be used for non-discriminatory enforcement of compliance only, and that there must be multiple, full and faithful implementations, at least one of which must be licensed under an Open Source Initiative-approved license or placed into the public domain.

Examples of OSI-approved licenses are the Academic Free License 3.0 (AFL-3.0), the Apache License 2.0, the BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" license, the Eiffel Forum License V2.0, and various GNU General Public Licenses.

OCI: A Real-World Guideline or Just Vapor?

It's difficult to discern whether or not OCI will have much of a future.

Its principle -- to make data fungible between different cloud service providers in order to avoid vendor lock-in -- may well be moot for all but the smallest companies.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has been offering both private and hybrid clouds for some years now, and June saw a slew of other vendors stampede into or expand their private or hybrid cloud offerings.

They include NTT America; HP (NYSE: HPQ), which extended its Hybrid Delivery solutions portfolio; and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL).

"I think the world will shake out into hybrid clouds," Clabby said.

Computing » The Patent World War

Apple's battling Android tablets in Europe, winning an injunction in a German court that bars Samsung from importing its Galaxy tab into most of the continent. The timing couldn't be worse for Samsung -- even if it manages to change the court's mind, its European launch of the device has already been hindered. Meanwhile, Kindle goes webby, Symbian says goodbye to North America, and Anonymous is not unanimous.

Even though Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) lawyer David Drummond laid into Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) in his public critique of their anti-Android patent lawsuits, it was Microsoft that really ended up tussling with the search giant on open ground. But that doesn't mean Apple and Oracle are easing up their own patent battles; so far, they're just saving their arguments for the courtroom.

Apple in particular is landing some big blows against one of Android's top device makers, Samsung. One of its targets is Samsung's Galaxy Tab, which Cupertino claims runs afoul of several of its patents. So far, Apple's managed to trip up an entire Samsung launch campaign. Just before the tablet was about to go on sale in Europe, Apple scored an injunction from a German court barring sales of the device across the entire continent -- except in the Netherlands, but Apple's hard at work giving it the business there too.

Apple's also said to be aiming its legal guns at the Motorola Xoom in an attempt to blockade that Android tablet from Europe as well.

In this particular case, though, Apple's claims have nothing to do with hardware or software. It's all about looks. Apple owns a Community design right on the iPad in Europe, which covers the appearance of the product. And of all the tablet computers out there, the Galaxy Tab might be the one that looks most like an iPad.

Still, when you get down to the appearance of something as simple as a tablet, how convincingly can you argue that one ripped off the design of another? If you're not talking guts or software, then you're talking about two flat, rectangular objects, glass on one side, metal and plastic on the back.

Yeah, they really do look a lot alike, because how else are you going to make a tablet? Are you going to make it circular? Tubular? Rhomboid? They might be about the same size, but that's just the size that fits well in human hands. Will Samsung be able to get out of this by just painting a racing stripe on the back and calling it a day?

Anyway, the court has issued its injunction, and regardless of how silly the argument may appear, perhaps Apple's real goal has been accomplished. For the price of its lawyers' fees, it's put a major banana peel under Samsung as it tries to capture European market share. At this point in the tablet game, that may be well worth the money.

Tunneling Under

A couple of weeks ago, various iOS apps -- like Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle e-reader app -- pushed out updates that actually removed a feature. In Kindle's case, it took away the ability to go directly from the app to a Web page where you could buy new e-books. That little button disappeared from the face of the app, and the whole Kindle system became that much clunkier to use.

It was done to abide a rule Apple recently began enforcing. If you can buy something through a native app, Apple insists that it's handled by way of a so-called in-app purchase -- Apple handles the transaction, payment is very easy on the customer's part because it's done through the iTunes account, and Apple gets a 30 percent cut for its trouble.

If an app maker doesn't want to go along with that, fine -- nobody's being forced to pump customers through Apple's payment system and give it nearly a third of its revenues. But app makers who shun in-app purchases aren't allowed to offer an easy alternative either. They can't drop in a convenient "buy it from the Web" button, like the one that was found on the Kindle app until recently. Instead, customers have to figure it out for themselves. It's not really that hard if you know your way around the Web, but still -- clunkier to use.

But now Amazon has found a new way to counter Apple's rules by taking a page from iPhone history. Back before the App Store existed, all iPhone apps were Web apps -- that is, Web pages accessed through the Safari browser that are designed to look and behave less like pages and more like apps running natively on the phone. As long as a Web app is coded correctly for Safari, Apple has zero control over what it can do. Cupertino's tastes, sensibilities and profit motivations are irrelevant as far as Web apps are concerned.

And that's what Amazon's done with its latest Kindle app, Kindle Cloud Reader. It's a Web app you access through Chrome or Safari on a desktop, or Safari on an iOS device. You can read all your Kindle books through it just like with the native iOS app, but you can also access the Kindle store very easily, add more books, and get right back to reading.

Of course, native apps have the benefit of being usable when you don't have Web access. But Amazon's given its Cloud Reader the ability to cache 50 MB of data, so you can access quite a lot of reading material until you get back to a data zone.

Web apps may never be quite as robust as native ones, but there's a lot you can do with HTML5, and other app makers may already be thinking about following Amazon into Web territory in order to escape Apple's requirements.

Landline Disconnect

All is not well at Verizon. The company's landline phone business is fading fast, and is it any surprise? Cellphones are more convenient, they have better features, you don't have to change your number if you move to another state, and the nicer ones are basically pocket-sized computers. Plus, wireless coverage in the U.S. is nearly universal for places with much of a population to speak of. Who needs a landline?

Yeah, I'll admit that landlines sometimes sound clearer, and you don't get that crazy-making half-second delay between the time you say something and the time the other person hears it. But the trend is clearly there. Landlines are on their way out.

That's caused Verizon to have to make some cuts to its landline business, and that includes making workers in that division make greater contributions to their pensions and health plans. But the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America say what Verizon wants to do would steamroll half a century of collective bargaining gains. No agreement was reached, and 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike.

Service-wise, the most widely affected regions will be the Northeast U.S. and the Mid-Atlantic. Verizon says it has contingency plans on hand that will keep service disruptions to a minimum. But I'd guess that it's kind of hard to lose 45,000 workers overnight without anyone noticing.

The fact that Verizon would want to adjust its business to deal with the changing ways people are using technology doesn't come as a surprise. It's a given that some kind of cut is going to happen when one part of your body is shriveling up and falling off. But from the workers' perspective, those cuts might be a little easier to swallow if the entire company was also suffering, and with Verizon, that's not really the case. Its home Internet service is doing fine, and its wireless business is the biggest in the U.S.

Those leading the strike aren't exactly leading Verizon's wireline workers down a very easy path either. They're getting people to walk away from their jobs in a recessed and very gloomy-looking economy with high unemployment. But perhaps considering the shrinkage of landline business across the entire market, it may be a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't predicament.

Unhedged Bets

Nokia's (NYSE: NOK) North American division finally got around to burying that corpse in its yard. In an interview with AllThingsD, the head of Nokia's U.S. operations, Chris Weber, said the handset maker is giving up on selling smartphones with the Symbian operating system in the U.S. market.

If you're a U.S. resident and you happen to notice this change take effect, then I guess you're paying really close attention, because it's already hard to spot a Symbian phone in the wild in this neck of the woods. The OS has been big in other parts of the world, where people are used to paying the full cost of a phone up front. But in America, customers are used to the service carrier footing most of the bill for a pricey phone and locking the buyer into a contract. Until recently, Nokia hasn't been very comfortable playing that game. Especially since iPhone and Android came around, Symbian has been in the shadows in the U.S., and now it's just going to fade to black.

But Weber didn't stop there. He also said Nokia's abandoning feature phones in the U.S. too. "Feature phones" is a nice way of saying "dumbphones" -- phones that work just fine as phones but don't have the guts or brains to run a wide selection of apps or handle the other kinds of tasks smartphones can. It's all a matter of degree, I guess, but you kind of just know them when you see them.

For example, most prepaid phones are feature phones. And Nokia has sold a fair amount prepaid feature phones in North America. But it's backing out of that game too, because selling cheap, prepaid phones was another way Nokia did business without the involvement of carrier subsidies, and starting now, Nokia needs carriers to be its friends.

Its focus on selling very expensive and very cheap phones, all without pushing buyers toward a carrier contract, was not a hit with the likes of AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint (NYSE: S). Those guys want customers locked in, and Nokia has decided it can't make gains in North America without appeasing them.

With this decision, Nokia's placed a very large bet on Microsoft. It's going all in on Windows Phone 7, and it'll need that platform to catch fire fast if it ever wants a real foothold in this corner of the world.
Remember, Remember the 5th of November ... or Just Go Ahead and Forget About It

Facebook has been speaking up more lately about the perils of online anonymity, stating that people usually are kinder, gentler Web users when they're made to use their real names during online interactions. This was probably not a welcome message to the hacker group Anonymous, for obvious reasons.

But certain members of Anonymous have bones to pick with Facebook that lie much deeper than the social network's stance on using an alias. Last month, a video was posted on YouTube by someone claiming to represent Anonymous, and it accuses Facebook of selling personal information to government agencies and clandestine security firms in order to help them spy on users. For that, Facebook must be destroyed, according to the video's narrator, who then goes on to explain a big Facebook attack will be coming on Nov. 5.

That's Guy Fawkes Day. And Anonymous members always run around in those Guy Fawkes masks. So this is totally legit, right?

Maybe not so much. The way that video came to public attention was a little odd. It was originally posted on YouTube over a month ago -- only this week did it start gathering widespread attention. It was promoted via a Twitter handle called "Op_Facebook," and as of Wednesday, that handle had posted exactly one tweet during its entire existence.

That's different from the way Anonymous usually makes its pronouncements. It's a pretty amorphous group without much in the way of a hierarchy, but when it wants to make a big all-points bulletin like this, it usually speaks through a mouthpiece like the AnonOps Twitter handle. And whoever was in charge of that handle this week didn't much care for the idea of attacking Facebook. Messages were posted on AnonOps stating that the so-called OpFacebook plan is being organized by some Anons, that not all of Anonymous agrees with it, and that attacking the messenger is not Anonymous' style.

One AnonOps message stated that the group prefers to face the real power, not the media it uses as tools.

Later it was reported that OpFacebook was actually an old Anonymous project intended to bring attention to what the organizers saw as the network's privacy deficiencies. But nothing ever got rolling on it, people got bored, and they gave up. But they forgot to clean up after themselves, that video was left hanging around, and suddenly there was a big panic over it.

But what if some part of Anonymous really did want to blow up Facebook? How would they even do it? The logistics would be really tricky. The site's highly fortified against DDoS assaults, so it would take an incredible amount of resources to knock it out cold. But there are other ways to screw around with a social network, including hacking into lots of users' profiles, or breaking into the site's own corporate servers and stealing inside intel.

So on the off-off chance this attack really does happen and it results in anything worth talking about, will it be fair to call it an "Anonymous" attack? If anyone can declare themselves a member of Anonymous and instigate an attack in its name, then perhaps technically you could. But it seems some Anonymous actions are more anonymous than others.