95. Apple's Newly Awarded Patent Shows Cracks in a Broken System

[Article first published as Apple's Newly Awarded Patent and a Broken System on Blogcritics.]

If you read my stuff with any sort of frequency then you know how I feel about the current state of the American patent system as it’s applied to software and technology.  The people that originally developed the patent system had no way of knowing what it would mean in today’s explosion of technological advance. 

The result, in my humble opinion, is that the system is broken for the modern age and in need of an overhaul.  Over the last few years I’ve seen patents, which were originally developed as a form of protection for an inventor, become a corrupted version of its original intent.  Instead of protection they’re now used primarily as strategy and legal weaponry against competition.  And the reason is the pure power behind it – a patent grants exclusive rights on the technology in question for 20 years.

Outside of basic patent trolling, there are a number of examples that can be cited here that illustrate the shambles that our patent system is now plagued with, but it was the most recent one that set me off this week.  Just recently Apple, which is a perennial member of the patent lawsuit club, was just awarded patent 8,046,721 (7,657,849 is the same thing just older) by the good ol’ USPTO, entitled “Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image.”  I’m going to let that one sink in for a second and let you read some of that patent I linked before the tirade that’s about to follow, divided cleanly into three (3) parts for your convenience.  And before I get to it, let me put a disclaimer out there that I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have any formal legal education or professional experience.

You good?  OK.

1.  On the grounds of ridiculousness and greed

A lot of the big sites that are covering this are making a big deal that “Slide to Unlock” has now been patented, and that any other system, as in targets, i mean devices running Android or Windows Mobile that uses a sliding system as a means for device unlock are now all immediately infringing on Apple’s patent rights.  But they’re missing the bigger point, and/or they didn’t actually read the patent before they excitedly posted it as news.  But I’m not going to leave you in the dark like that.  I like you guys.  You read my stuff.  So the link I have above goes to the actual text of the patent on the official US Patent and Trademark Office website.  Search the text for “slide to unlock.”  Can’t find it, can you?  That’s because that phrase isn’t mentioned once in the entire text of the patent.  What is mentioned is “gestures.”  This means that not only sliding, but as the patent says (I’m paraphrasing), any continuous touch motion following a predefined path on a predefined unlock image for means of unlocking a device is covered.  Even if instead of a slide, your device requires you to sketch the Mona Lisa over a specified unlock region to unlock your phone, it’s still infringement on Apple’s new patent in the United States.  As most smartphones today have a full touch screen in a “candybar” form factor, what does apple suggest we do to unlock our devices?  The only option left is a series of hard button presses.  Oh right, or keep the gesture unlock, and pay apple a few bucks for every unit sold.

2. On the grounds of prior art

OK, so “ridiculousness and greed” wasn’t really much more than just my chagrin articulated in text, but prior art is a legitimate thing when it comes to evaluating patents and intellectual property.   Based on my perusal of patent rules and the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the MPEP for short, and man is that thing complex) the nutshell definition of prior art is that “it’s been done before.”  Now while people were marveling over the iPhone when it was released in the summer of 2007, no one seemed to recall the Neonode N1m, a Windows CE device released in 2005, almost 2 years prior to the iPhone.  The N1m was a touchscreen device that had one very relevant feature to this story:  you slide your finger from left to right on the screen to unlock it.  There’s a video review of the N1m on YouTube that was made around the time of the iPhone release (via Android Central).  You can skip the beginning and start at the 4:00 mark.  It clearly shows the sweeping left to right motion over a visibly marked lock area to unlock the device and get back to the functional menus.  This case was dismissed by Dutch courts for this very reason.  While Apple and Samsung are taking shots at each other across the pond, the N1m came up, forcing the judge to rule that Apple’s patent claim as “non-inventive” and likely invalid.

3.  On grounds of “for the good of the game”

When it comes to software and especially mobile tech, it’s relatively easy for large corporations to either file trivial patents for the sole purpose of extracting money from others or to acquire smaller companies and get ownership of their patents, again for the sole purpose of extracting money from others.  Weaponizing a practice that was originally meant to protect an inventor from unjust theft changes the game.  With this new strategy, fear of a lawsuit creates a huge new barrier to entry for small startups and inventors, who could be forced with a horrible decision between huge licensing fees and closing up shop.  And as for patent wars between tech giants, why invest in R&D and engineering to try to come up with something new and inventive for consumer-generated revenue streams when you can buy or bully a startup for less and charge licensing fees?  Take a look at the recent Microsoft-Compal deal.  Now Microsoft collects licensing fees from over half of Android device manufacturers.  So instead of tech teams trying to innovate, surprise!  A new patent troll comes screaming and kicking into the world.  Look at all that wasted talent.

I don’t know exactly how to fix the system; I just know that a system that let this through needs to be fixed.  Software and tech aren’t really “things” the traditional way most static or mechanical patentable things are, which means that a traditional system can’t work. 

94. Hacking, Social Engineering and RSA

[Article first published as Hacking, Social Engineering and RSA on Blogcritics.]

More than occasionally people will come to one of my tech friends or me with a computer problem.  No longer an uncommon occurrence with the ever-present digital influence in our lives, we’ve all grown accustomed to the fact that this will, in fact, never end. 

If what they say is true that knowledge is power, it’s kind of our duty as computer nerds – versions of “keyboard cowboys” if you’ll allow me to make a reference to Hackers, to help people when it comes to all things technical.  But we’ve all noticed a sharp shift in what people come to us for – when a few years ago it might have been basic OS reinstalls or simple virus cleans, today it’s a lot of security and protection of personal data.  And the reason for that is the evolution of the development of viruses and other pieces of malicious software. 

Back then viruses were designed for one of a few goals: humor and annoyance (i.e. Yankee Doodle and its ilk) or at worst, data destruction (remember Michelangelo?).  But once the internet age took hold, destruction of data wasn’t enough.  Now there are networks.  Now there are advanced communication methods.  Which means now there are means and opportunity.

Where there’s means and opportunity of course there’s theft.  Why just destroy data when systems are in place now to try and leverage that data for gain?  That’s the kind of thinking we need to deal with now.  And while most people may think that the biggest thing to fear on that front is a virus or worm that could steal information or holes in their security, they’re only half right.  What’s more dangerous is the blind spot they have which prevents them from seeing the human element – how those security holes are exploited and how those and trojans and malware are deployed to begin with.  And that human element is called social engineering.

In a nutshell, social engineering means bending someone to your will, whether they know it or not, into giving you their trust, and any information that comes along with that.  It’s a method for skimming information in which a human is the target, not necessarily a computer, and for that reason doesn’t even need a computer.  It can be done over the phone or even in person.  A common form of social engineering is phishing, where a user is baited into handing over information.  Have you ever gotten those emails that appear to be from Amazon or UPS linking a tracking number or purchase ID?  Yet, when you click on the link, it takes you somewhere that isn’t Amazon or UPS and starts asking for names, passwords and credit card numbers?  What the phisher is hoping is that they gain your trust by hoping to be someone you routinely do business with, then convince you to give them the information they want.  See?  A metaphorical bait and hook.  There’s a myriad of other types of social engineering that I may get into in later posts, but this just background for a specific story.

RSA, a highly respected security company who provides the popular SecurID two-factor authentication system was hacked back in March of this year, and that hack started a wave of attacks on companies that do contract work for the US Government like Lockheed Martin, L-3 and Northrop Grumman.  They’re in the news again, this time with some theories after investigating the incident with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.  At RSA’s security conference in the UK on Tuesday, their president Tom Heiser stated, based on the complexity of the attack, that “we can only conclude it was a nation-state sponsored attack.”  They believe that the hackers’ goal was to directly exploit companies that did work for our government, and of course for security reasons have withheld other information.  Scary as hell right?

So how did all of this happen to a company of such reputation in the field of security?  It’s been reported (unconfirmed by RSA) that access was gained through a phishing email targeting employees in the HR department with an excel spreadsheet entitled “2011 Recruitment Plans” and a body text of nothing but “I forward this file to you for review.  Please open and view it.”  No signature, no name, no contact information and presumably unsolicited.  All it took was for someone to trust that the mail was legitimate, open the attachment, and unwittingly let the code execute.  Supposedly in this case it was an exploit in Adobe Flash that allowed the real attack to be executed, but simple phishing provided the entry point.

So what point am I trying to drive home here?  Hackers don’t need to rely on a toolkit of scripts and exploits to gain unauthorized access to networks.  Sophistication isn’t a prerequisite for to successfully find a point of intrusion – even primitive social engineering schemes like this one were enough to break into a company like RSA.  So next time you get an email that’s asking you for personal information, or someone’s asking questions that are getting a bit too personal, do yourself a favor and don’t answer them, whether it’s over the phone, via email or on the web.  Ask your service provider if what you received was really from them and legitimate, and consult one of your nerd friends.

And go buy some antivirus software, I know too many of you are running systems without.

93. Remembering Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

[Article first published as Remembering Steve Jobs, 1955-2011 on Blogcritics.]

In my scribblings over the years, I’ve occasionally taken the pen to Apple on certain topics, namely mobile wars and the iPhone.  Make no mistake, though I do from time to time disagree with Apple’s tactics and philosophies, you’ll notice that I never once said that they made devices that were ever less than excellent.  And that’s no accident.

Yesterday Steve Jobs, one of the founders and former CEO of Apple passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.  With his notorious micromanaging and perfectionist personality, his name was synonymous with “Apple,” as people were unable to see the iconic fruit logo without seeing him.  It was after all his vision and strategies that put the company on the map as one of the leaders in technology and innovation, and changed the way we live our lives.

Throughout his life, Mr. Jobs’ philosophy was one of achieving one’s dreams – regardless of how ridiculous or far-reaching they seemed at the time.  The kind of ambitions that would invite accusations of insanity if it were any one of us.  But fortunately for him, and us, he had the tenacity, need for perfection, outright skill and passion for tech and design to make them all happen.  Even as a youth growing up in Cupertino, California, this held true.  As a teenager, he had the nerve to call William Hewlett (yes, of Hewlett-Packard) and ask him for computer chips and parts he wanted to use for a school project.  Hewlett was convinced, and ended up delivering with the parts Jobs needed, and was impressed enough to offer him a summer job along with them.

That summer job at HP led to a job at Atari in its formative stages, as well as a membership in the Homebrew Computer Club in the late 1970’s.  This was a collection of computer hobbyists, engineers and other folks who saw infinite promise in the realm of personal computing.  This club had members the likes of George Morrow, Jerry Lawson, and of course, Steve Wozniak.  The Woz designed a few computer systems just for fun, but Jobs was the one that recognized the potential of his projects – not only for business, but for something that could be used by the masses, not just nerds tinkering with chips.  After calling all of Wozniak’s family and friends to help, shall we say, he was guided to the right decision, Wozniak ended up leaving HP even though his tinkering was originally just for fun, and Apple Computer was born.  Par for the course – Jobs had gotten his way, as he always did, and always would.

Even back then he had a near-supernatural ability to see not only what was coming next, but more specifically what was important.  Shown again later in his career in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1985, he said that “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it to a nationwide communications network.  We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people--as remarkable as the telephone.”  1985.  Back when a gigabyte was a thing unheard of, the internet didn’t exactly exist, and modem speeds were measured in baud and heard in decibels.

Then came the Apple II, and eventually development of the Lisa, where his time at Xerox PARC would help him drive a system using graphical windows, “files” and “folders,” and a mouse-controlled interface.  As he found the Lisa project team wasn’t ready for that or his demanding management style, he moved over to the Macintosh team.  Energized by his passion and style, they took those technology principles and ran with them.  As Jobs told Steven Levy in 1983, while the Lisa team did want to make something great, “the Mac people want to do something insanely great.”  So came the Mac personal computer in 1984, heralded, ironically, by their “1984” Super Bowl Ad.  But it didn’t sell as well as they anticipated, and Jobs brought in Pepsi’s John Sculley to run the show.  Sculley almost immediately fired Jobs from his own company.

In retrospect, getting fired might have been the best thing that could happen to Jobs.  It allowed him to begin working with George Lucas at a small computer graphics studio called Pixar, leading them to develop successful animated films, ultimately selling to Disney for a shade over $7 billion.  Returning to Apple after Pixar was sold, Jobs took the helm at Apple again with a slightly different philosophy.  Jobs believed in the merging of art and science to create products that stood out from the rest that consumers craved.  With this philosophy he started what would be over a decade of innovative design for consumer goods for Apple, starting with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, and finally the iPad in 2010.  Of course that is to say nothing of the iTunes service and their massive App Store.  Apple has since been one of the top companies in personal computing, and has the same influence, if not more, than IBM and Microsoft on the way we live and do business today.

His fans regard him as nothing short of a God – as a central figure in their lives whom they’ve never even met.  As irritating as it can get sometimes as I hang out in the Android camp, it’s a testament to the mark Jobs has left on the world – creating products that people – not just tech nerds but civilians – wanted, no matter what… even if they might not have known they wanted it to begin with.  He created the market for modern portable music devices.  He created the smartphone market.  And most recently, the American tablet craze is all thanks to him.  His works not only affected his fans, but fostered fierce competition and helped spur innovation from other companies, in the hopes of matching or beating his product offerings.  Touch technology might not have been as ubiquitous as it is today without Apple’s iPhone fueling competition in mobile communications. 

No one was really trying to make ultra light notebooks until Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.  Countless technologies exist that may not have been invented by Apple, but have the hand of Jobs somewhere in the initial inspiration for those designs.  And that’s not even getting into entertainment and everything that evolved from Pixar and movies like Toy Story.  He helped build the computing industry and would be a face on the Mt. Rushmore of technology if such a thing ever existed, along with faces like Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee.  As personal computing evolved, so did business and enterprise IT.  And on a personal level, the industry he helped create along with other tech giants gave me a hobby as well as a career.  And all along the way we were all inspired, even if only from time to time, to “think different.”

So for everything, thanks Steve. 

92. App Ninja Sneaks one by Apple with Fake Ninja Turtles Game

[Article first published as App Ninja Sneaks one by Apple with Fake Ninja Turtles Game on Blogcritics.]

Apple prides itself on their strict guidelines and screening process for the apps that can be sold in their App Store.  They have a number of rules that cover functionality, quality, content, payment, and of course trademarks and copyrights.  Suffice it to say that there are a number of reasons that the iPhone app you’ve been working on can possibly be rejected at any given time.  So given this strict attitude towards software written by third-party developers, what happens when an app submitted breaks almost all of Apple’s rules?  Generally, the app is rejected and the developer can file an appeal with the review board.  However, certain apps somehow still fall through the cracks.

Recently available on the App Store (August 18, to be precise) was a game that marketed itself as one based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.  Now of course when one thinks of TMNT, there are a number of things that come to mind – turtles named after artists, heroes in a half shell trained in the art of ninjutsu, a healthy amount of pizza being crushed by said turtles, and an overuse of old surfer slang, i.e. “cowabunga” and/or “radical.”  Sadly, much to the dismay and outrage of many Apple customers, this game included none of the above.

The game was made by Vietnamese developer Namphuong Star, who convinced customers with a $5 price tag that it was authentic and official, even going as far as to sport a licensed TMNT logo in its app description.  Opening the app reveals a very different story.  In addition to not having any turtles, there’s no functionality, and the game sprites and backgrounds are flat out stolen from other games.  Look at the screenshot up there.  Look familiar to anyone?  Because it sure looks like Konami’s Contra to me.  I remember a pop-out cannon in that blotched out region of the cliff there, and I don’t even know where to begin with those little army men (?) that must have taken all of 40 seconds to draw in MS Paint.  

This game is horrible straight through to the core, not just on it’s ridiculous surface.  You see, in addition to lying and tricking customers into purchasing it, the developer rewards their purchase with an app that simply does not function, as well as a support site shilling Apple accessories instead of fixing the issues.  Reviews of the game reflected the plight of those who purchased it, but the following three seem to address all the problems present with this particular piece of software:

“I bought this game for my grandson, he loves the TMNT!! This game has no directions we can't figure out how to play, or even how to restart the game. There aren't any turtles in the game. A total waste of $5”

"The character immediately slides off the side of the screen. There seems to be no way to actually interact with the game. And there doesn't seem to be any way to start a new game. The use of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters on the splash screen are almost certainly infringement; the blob that slides off the 

screen during the actual game isn't identifiable as a turtle. Or much of anything.”

“Visiting the developer website and the support site both go to the same spammy, Vietnamese-language website selling iPhone and iPod accessories. There doesn't appear to be any actual support. Deleted and requested refund.”

So let’s round up all of the problems and how they violated Apple’s guidelines.  Just the description breaks Apple’s rules on name and description metadata.  Using sprites and backgrounds from other games, as well as the fact that Nickelodeon owns the rights to the TMNT brand, violates the rule on use of material trademarked or copyrighted by a third party.  The fact that it outright doesn’t work violates Apple’s rules on functionality.  Granted, it may be rare that something like this falls through the cracks, but if any reviewer took any look at this app for more than half a second then this should have been caught right away.  We all remember what happened with the I Am Rich app a little while ago, right?

More than anything else though, this is just plain silly.  I hope the person who bought this for their grandson gets their $5 back. 

91. Documentary Mistakes Gameplay Video as Footage of Real Terrorism

[Article first published as Documentary Mistakes Gameplay Video as Footage of Real Terrorism on Blogcritics.]

I write a lot about the evolution of videogames from the primitive game we know and love as PONG to their being nothing short of a form of art.  Games now have the power to portray story, evoke emotion, and even have Grammy award eligible (and winning) soundtracks.  Aside from all of that, the biggest jump has been in-game visuals, with today’s graphic engines able to pump out those textures so smooth that you’d swear for at least a second or two that it was a real scene.  But for most of us who grew up watching the technology evolve, there’s an imaginary line hardcoded into our brains when it comes to stuff like this.  That line is the boundary between games and reality.  It’s how I know that the scourge isn’t actually coming down from Northrend to get us, and how I’m clear that Marcus Fenix and his COG forces won’t be rolling through my neighborhood anytime soon.  I doubt that there’s any videogame sequence given current technology (even those in a realistic earth-like setting) that I could watch and actually believe was reality.

I say this specifically to convey that events in my life have never unfolded in such a way that I have seen video from a game, took it as reality, then broadcasted it as part of a documentary I was working on.  You may be curious why I would bring up such a ridiculous premise, yes, this I know.

It’s because as ridiculous as it sounds, it’s something that really happened in the UK this week.  British television channel ITV (one of their big ones) aired a documentary called Exposure: Gaddafi and the IRA, promising to show the world evidence of a link between the IRA and famed Libyan nut Colonel Muammar Gaddafi concerning weapons and other military hardware.  At face value it’s pretty compelling stuff I’ll admit, but there were just a couple flaws with the footage.  One particular clip that was shown is labeled as “IRA Clip 1988,” and showed a British helicopter being shot down.  Not a lot in that clip really, well how do I put this... looks real.  The people are all pixilated and stiff, the fire doesn’t look like fire, and some of the vegetation has colors that just aren’t available in nature.  Go and watch it on YouTube while it’s still available.  The YouTube link shows the part as it was used in the documentary followed by the original fan edit.

This “footage” is actually a fan-made video from a game called Arma II, a tactical shooter by Bohemia.  Granted, Bohemia does pride itself on realistic military simulations, but the differences between the game and actual video footage are still pretty clear.  After the documentary aired, Arma fans took to the Bohemia forums, spreading the word on what they had seen.  On the topic, Bohemia’s CEO Mark Spanel told Gamasutra that his company was never contacted for permission to use the clip, and had no idea that it would be used in the documentary.  "We have no idea how this footage made it to the documentary,” he said.  “Our games are very open and allows users to freely do a lot of things, I see this is somehow a bizarre use of creative freedom." 

But how did it even make its way into the documentary to begin with?  That would mean that the game video would have had to be part of the media available to the editors after all of the interviews were taken and the piece was stitched together.  This clip not only made it into that media pool, but got by ITV’s editing staff and was given the final OK to air on national television.  Speaking to The Telegraph, an ITV spokesman said that that they actually did have footage of the authentic 1988 event but used the game material by mistake, as an “unfortunate case of human error” that was “mistakenly included in the film by producers.”

This just goes to show, in the age we live in, while things may slip by human editors and producers and other checks, the internet will catch everything.

90. Amazon's Tablet Poised to Take a Bite out of iPad Sales?

[Article first published as Amazon's Tablet Poised to Take a Bite out of iPad sales? on Blogcritics.]

OK we’re going to do a little bit of word association.  I’m going to say a word and then you tell me what the first thing that comes to your mind is.  The word is…

TABLET.

So what image flashed across your mind?  The Ten Commandments? The Rosetta Stone?  Nah, chances are, for the majority of you I would think, the image you saw in your head was that of an Apple iPad.  And that makes sense.  When it comes to tablet computing the iPad is in fact the most popular device currently available on the market, with 29 million sold in just the first 15 months the device was on the shelf.   

And the masses love it for a number of reasons, whether that has to do with actual user need and functionality, cool factor, Apple fandom or simply being able to say “I have an iPad.”  So it sells.  At a $499 price point for the entry level model, it’s not really a tough sell to most folks either.  But what if you wanted a tablet but didn’t want an iPad?  What were the options that were available?  Windows 7-based slates were buggy and DOA to begin with.  Android-based units like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom couldn’t compete on price.  HP’s WebOS-based TouchPad tanked and triggered a fire sale.  Other cheaper models couldn’t compete on quality. 

So there the iPad sits, atop the stack of available tablets, on its golden mobile apple-shaped throne.  All of this bolstered, of course, by Apple’s ferociously loyal fanbase in the cult of Mac.  But I won’t deny the genius of Jobs.  He created a sub-market of computing that there was no real need for by introducing a product, and letting consumers create that need themselves.  Brilliance.  So now we have the current tablet market.  Out-speccing the iPad creates a disadvantage on price, outpricing it means lower quality, and no one has figured out a way to strike that balance and see the same level of success.

As my gaming roots run deep in Street Fighter, this is where I picture “here comes a new challenger!” flying across the screen at the prospect of a new tablet officially being announced this week by Amazon in a Wednesday press event.  And this fight card is shaping up to be a good one as both companies are doing well financially and have strong customer bases.  Both Apple and Amazon have first to market titles for different devices – Apple’s iPad for modern tablet, and Amazon’s Kindle as a modern e-reader.  The real difference between the two giants is tactics and content.

Apple has hardware, and that’s what brings in their dollars.  There’s a healthy amount of profit from hardware sales from the iPad, with Apple pulling down about $200 for each $499 iPad sold.  This contrasts sharply to Amazon’s Kindle strategy, who sells the WiFi model of their Kindle at a loss for $139.  They rely on sales from Amazon.com for their money making, which includes not only e-books, but video streams and music as well.  Logic would dictate that this is the same strategy will be used for the upcoming tablet, and with a projected $249 price tag, that seems highly plausible.

While sales tactics are at opposite ends of the spectrum, it’s going to be content that puts at least a dent in the iPad’s numbers, due in part to delivery through their Amazon Prime subscription program.  I myself am an Amazon Prime customer, and have been for a while so I could save money on 2-day shipping and get a deep discount when I need next-day air.  But over the last year, the Prime service has added a library of on-demand video streams of movies, documentaries and television programs for Prime Customers, which now makes the subscription more than worth the money in my eyes.  Recently they even inked a deal with Fox to add programs like the X-Files and Arrested Development to an already impressive lineup, making the $79/year fee a pretty good deal.  On top of that there’s a lot of potential of that kind of content paired with a mobile Android device for viewing it.  And let’s not forget that it’s sure to have a built in Kindle book reader.

Tablet users generally don’t use their devices for anything heavy or resource intensive, so after email, web, social apps and casual games, my guess is that next on the list is video and music, if my own use of my Droid X is any indication.  If that’s the case then the Kindle Tab doesn’t even have to come close to matching the iPad on specs, as long as it can deliver media content the way I think it can.  I’m not saying it will dethrone Apple on the tablet front, but it has the potential to at least pick up a decent chunk of prospective tablet buyers that were eyeing the iPad.  It’ll be priced right and have an extensive library behind it.

89. Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop

[Article first published as Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop on Blogcritics.]

** UPDATE: This article is on the Windows 8 Developer Preview from September 2011 - for more info on the actual release version, my series on Windows 8 RTM starts here. **

I had a lot of reservations about Windows 8 since i started seeing leaked PowerPoint slides detailing it ages ago.  From those leaks, it looked like it was going to be nothing more than some sort of mobile OS designed to compete with Google’s Chrome OS, and wouldn’t really be very useful for desktop users.  Old screenshots of the Metro interface made me think that it was just a larger size version of the Windows Phone, without a lot of additional functionality behind it.  As of Microsoft’s BUILD conference keynote just this past Tuesday, I’m glad to say I was wrong.  Microsoft released the Windows Developer Preview (I’m going to just call this WDP from here on out) Tuesday night, and after a number of tries just downloading the image, I finally got it dual booted with my Windows 7 on my laptop.  Now granted, running the preview on a laptop isn’t going to give me the complete mobile experience that I see this being great for, but it’s at least given me a taste.

One of the phrases that gets tossed around the web so much to describe the current state of computer technology is “post-PC era.”  With all due respect to proponents of this philosophy, what the hell is the matter with you and your technological world view?  I’m not saying mobile is worthless; on the contrary I think mobile is an extremely important component in today’s era of computing.  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to confine my gaming to casual games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja while running out to replace all my users’ machines with tablets and spend insane money on peripherals. Let’s face it, most high-powered gaming and traditional applications used by gamers and business users is still going to be run on traditional desktop PC’s.  As it would appear, Microsoft agrees with me, and Windows 8 still provides what I affectionately refer to as le olde school, namely Windows Explorer.  Outside of the new Metro interface, a very familiar setting awaits those of us that primarily compute mouse-and-keyboard style.  Users still have full access to a familiar Windows desktop, where they can peruse files through Windows Explorer, add desktop shortcuts, gadgets and pin applications to the taskbar.  Working with multiple monitors has also become a little bit easier, with the frustration of being unable to stretch the taskbar across multiple screens is now gone.  Exploring files includes common window and file commands on an optional menu in-window, pulled from their Office 2007 and 2010 ribbons.  Want to go virtual?  The preview has a built-in hypervisor for Hyper-V, which currently is only available as part of a server OS package.  And as far as compatibility, nothing is going to change for users used to running a Windows 7 environment.  I ran a guildie through Stratholme in World of Warcraft from it last night with no problems whatsoever.  The one thing that may take some getting used to is the lack of a start button similar to what we’ve seen in most Windows iterations.

Now for the other side of the OS.  There’s the new mobile half of it using Microsoft’s Metro interface.   I like it, and can definitely see how this would be a very intuitive and easy interface to use on a tablet.  Right now i’m scrolling left and right with my mouse, but on touchscreen enabled devices movement would be swipes from side to side.  The Metro interface works almost like a layer on top of a Windows 7-ish OS.  In that sense it has a very similar feel to Android device manufacturers’ custom UI’s that lay on top of the operating system like Motorola’s MotoBlur and HTC’s Sense, where users have tiles for shortcuts and instant information.  The preview includes a bunch of tiled apps that come pre-loaded that make it very easy to access basic information like weather and stock reports and social media apps for facebook and twitter.  It includes “touch” versions of your control panel and the new Internet Explorer 10, which I have to say, runs pretty nice.  Also, on the touch front, they demoed 5-finger multi-touch during Tuesday’s BUILD keynote.

While there is a lot I like about it, it does have its drawbacks – little things like no way to just shut down.  If I want to turn off the machine I have to switch to desktop mode and then go through the Alt-F4 menu to get there.  Then there’s the whole tiled app thing – tiled apps mean that whatever you run in Metro (social, weather, games) will always be running in the background.  Android devices work exactly the same way, and it’s the reason why apps like Advanced Task Killer are extremely popular downloads.  The Preview does have a way around it, by dropping individual background processes to use 0% CPU when not in use, but there is still memory usage there.  On my laptop I have the power to Alt-F4 an app to kill it, but that might not be so easy on tablet and mobile devices employing the OS with a virtual keyboard (also means Alt-Tabbing through everything that’s open).  And call me a traditionalist, but I still favor the full-function start button of Windows past.  But I’m going to cut Microsoft a lot of slack here – this is a developer preview, which means beta and release candidates still yet to come.  So they have a lot of time to make tweaks.

So in the end Microsoft has made a good start in making a single OS which bridges the gap between a desktop and a mobile solution for part of their single ecosystem, even though functionality still leans in favor of mobile.  As it stands now I wouldn’t buy Windows 8 to replace Windows 7 on my laptop or desktop without a little additional power on the desktop side – even though it has native tools I would normally download 3^rd party software for (I don’t need Alcohol 52% anymore for mounting ISO’s) I would at best I’d have it in a dual-boot setup.  BUT, I think slates or tablets running Windows 8 could be real winners.  The OS really seems like it would shine for casual users with its simplicity, which is one of the reasons iPads running iOS are so popular.  We'll see how they fare late next year.

I’m looking forward to what’s next.  I’d like to see how they’ll handle Xbox Live integration, since Games for Windows will be scrapped and lumped into the XBL environment.  I’m also looking forward to developers making some apps for this so we can see how the marketplace is going to flesh out.  And since this OS is targeted for both desktop and mobile, my biggest question arises:  What’s pricing and licensing going to look like?

88. Aggresive Behavior and Video Games - More Darwin than Bloody Violence?

[Article first published as Aggresive Behavior and Videogames - More Darwin than Bloody Violence? on Blogcritics.]

The effect videogames have on the human mind has been thoroughly and widely argued for years.  And that argument rests solely on one seemingly central focus: violence. 

Countless studies have been done examining a myriad of combinations – children and violent games, prolonged exposure to violent games, long term psychological effects, aggressive behavior, and the list goes on and on indefinitely.  The findings have of course been varied, and in my lay opinion, there’s too many variables involved to get a 100% accurate read on the results.  I’m not going to venture into that here, as (I) I’m not a trained psychologist and (II) it would lengthen this article to somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 words – too much for both me to write and you to read.

I just saw a study on this topic though that piqued my interest – it seemed to be a slight twist on the common “games are violent” story.  In addition to the violence aspect, Paul J.C. Adachi, a Ph.D. candidate at Brock University in Canada added a potentially important modifier.  The experiments focused on competition in games, and whether or not it was another factor to aggressive behavior in players.  It involved hot sauce too, which I’m all about. 

Using competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action as indicators, Adachi ran multiple experiments and observed the resulting behavior.  The method makes sense – he used Fuel, Conan, Left 4 Dead 2, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and Marble Blast Ultra as his field of games.  It looks simple enough.  The games on this list it do seem to cover his three categories in varying degrees.  His method on observing behavior and aggression wasn’t as straightforward, but outright genius.  In each experiment, players were asked to prepare a hot sauce sample for a “hot sauce taster” who specifically does not like spicy food using mild to very hot sauces after playing.  It’s fair enough to say that heat level equals aggression.

In the test run (42 college students: 25 men, 17 women) using only Fuel and Conan, Adachi observed that there was no real difference in hot sauce intensity between those who played one game versus the other.  By this he concluded that videogame violence alone wasn’t enough to increase aggressive behavior.  The second test (60 college students: 32 men, 28 women) is where the meat of the results come from.  The gamer guinea pigs that played games that were highly competitive like Fuel and Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe on average made much hotter hot sauce for their testers than players subjected to Left 4 Dead 2 and Marble Blast Ultra.  I’d call that pretty aggressive.  According to Adachi, based on these observations, “These findings suggest that the level of competitiveness in video games is an important factor in the relation between video games and aggressive behavior, with highly competitive games leading to greater elevations in aggression than less competitive games.”  I highly recommend you check out the full study at the American Psychological Association’s website.  It’s got all sorts of statistical models and charts and all that happy stuff for those who really want an in-depth read.

So what’s the full story then?  Well, think about the last time you saw a report of a violent crime on your local news.  Did you become aggressive watching the report?  If I show you a screenshot of the new Mortal Kombat would you become enraged?  For me the answer is no.  This study seems to line up at least with my own observation and personal experiences.  Violence has never made me (and most people i know) more aggressive on its own – it’s always been the desire to win.  In multiplayer environments that desire to win goes up tenfold.  As does the degree of trash talk and anger.  If any of you have taken part in any kind of competitive events then I would venture that you share that experience.  Whether it’s PvP play in World of Warcraft, the final table at the World Series of Poker or a title fight in the UFC, when either victory or defeat is close a competitor is going to amp it up.

Now I’m playing through Bayonetta again, and I can sit back on my couch shooting and slicing up enemies (through attacks called torture moves no less) on most enemies and my only reaction is “Wow that was fairly simple.”  It’s when the odds seem stacked and my health bar starts approaching zero that my frustration starts to rise.  I can put the controller down and walk away, but there’s always going to be that handful of people that take it too far.  If you think that’s a bad example then here’s another:  I can get just as riled up when I see my king’s inevitable demise in a game of chess.  We’re wired to want victory.  A simple will to win and survival of the fittest. 

87. An Unlikely Party in HP's TouchPad Mess - Barnes and Noble

[Article first published as An Unlikely Party in HP's TouchPad Mess - Barnes and Noble on Blogcritics]

For a few different reasons, Hewlett-Packard has been in the news over the past few days. In their 3^rdquarter 2011 report, they stealthily announced two major changes that would transform the face of HP. And they seem to have taken most people by surprise: (1) WebOS and devices running it are over and done. That means not only thejust recently launched TouchPad, but the HP Pre phone as well, which will never see the light of day in the United States. (2) They’re getting out of the PC market by spinning off their Personal Systems Group (PSG for short). The focus has really been on the TouchPad with its rapid fall from grace, but yesterday shifted from HP to an unlikely target of both press coverage and customer ire – Barnes and Noble.

Really this all started when HP dropped the price of their TouchPad units to $99. As mentioned above, HP killed the TouchPad after discouragingly low sales since its launch in July, slashing the price to clear inventory. Over this past weekend, even retailers like Best Buy decided to get rid of inventory in a massive fire sale instead of sending the unsold remainder of their inventory back to HP (having only sold about 25,000 out of the original 270,000 they had). From the original $499 down to $399, the final price they sold their mountain of TouchPads at dropped to the same staggeringly low $99 for the 16GB version. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough on the draw to secure one, as they completely sold out. A 75% price cut and financial losses aren’t exactly the way most companies (I would imagine anyway) want to say they sold out a product but hey, they’re working with what they got.

The web went into a frenzy as a handful of other retailers began to follow suit. One of those retailers was Barnes and Noble. To be honest I wouldn’t even think of looking for a TouchPad at B&N if I wanted one, given the fact they are not only primarily a bookstore, but have their own B&N Nook that they push pretty hard against devices like Amazon’s Kindle and other budget tablet PC’s. But lo and behold, the $99 16GB TouchPad was listed on their website. I almost ordered one from them. Almost. But my suspicions of whether or not I would actually receive one got the best of me and I decided against it. And according to a number of miffed customers, I was right in doing so.

Of all of the eager customers that placed TouchPad orders with Barnes and Noble, I’ve yet to read anything online about anyone who’s gotten one. Instead of a tablet, the majority of customers seemed to have gotten an email indicating that their order was cancelled. Outraged customers took to the web and flocked to twitter to air their gripes for all to see. Just search for “barnes and noble” on twitter or the #barnesandnoble hashtag to see what I mean. For lack of a stronger and much more powerful phrase, B&N just straight oversold it.

Now I understand why these fine folks are upset. By overselling, Barnes and Noble customers were allowed to place an order on an item that B&N probably sold out of in an hour, if not less. And the belief that they would soon have a cheap shiny tablet came crashing down with a cancellation email in lieu of their new toy. By being allowed to place an order, B&N told customers “yes, we have this” and encouraged them to buy. I’ve seen a lot of sites pull items immediately after they’re sold out, and have even seen some retailers give shoppers warnings as to how many units are still available before stockout. With as much business as B&N does online, it seems kind of strange that they don’t have a better inventory tracking or order fulfillment system that can tell when orders placed are equal to or greater than the number of units on hand. Especially when it’s something everyone is going to jump for.

UPDATE: A colleague of mine did actually at one time work at Barnes and Noble and gave me some education on their inventory system. Their inventory system is meant for books, which can always be reprinted by publishers or delivered via custom print. End result, they don't really stock out. A system like that doesn't exactly work well with something like a tablet PC.

86. Spotify Welcomed to the U.S. with a Patent Infringement Lawsuit

[Article first published as Picking on the New Kid: Spotify Sued for Patent Infringement on Blogcritics.]

We here in the United States are a litigious sort, and have become increasingly more so with further advances in technology and more filings of patent applications. I’ve written a couple of things on lawsuits regarding technology and patents since I started writing about games and tech, and those few articles may actually only cover 0.0001% of all of the tech legal action that has occurred since 2009.

You see over the years the practice has become so farcically common that there’s no way I can keep up on the topic without giving it a dedicated blog of its own, updated daily. Actually, five or six times daily would probably be required to get it done. Tech lawsuit news almost always involves the world’s technical giants, namely Apple, Oracle, and any one of the companies that manufacture anything running an Android OS. So did Spotify, a company that provides a digital music service, expect to be part of the lawsuit club when they hopped on their boats and sailed over from Europe to the new world?

Expected or not, Spotify joined the club earlier this week, and got slapped with a lawsuit from PacketVideo, a company that produces software that allows users to wirelessly stream music and video. They are accusing Spotify of patent infringement, specifically US patent 5,636,276. The patent in question describes a “Device for the Distribution of Music in Digital Form,” which PacketVideo claims is the technology that enables Spotify’s cloud based service to even exist. But that’s not all – they insist that they informed Spotify in May about their ownership of this patent, but the complaints were completely ignored. Either as revenge of a friendly "welcome to America" gift, PacketVideo's goal is to win a judgment for willful violation and have the courts put a permanent injunction (as in the ban hammer) on Spotify in the US, unless of course some licensing fees and royalties start flowing PacketVideo’s way.

Spotify is a popular service that has been around in Europe since 2008, and after a long wait and users foaming at the mouth while they started signing US music labels, finally launched in the US last week. They already have deals with Sony and other major labels in place. They offer a free service for streaming licensed music, which is kept free through advertisements, which also allows users to listen to their playlists anywhere they have a Spotify client set up. Paid options are also available that drop the ads and allow users to stream without a web connection over a cell phone or mobile device. That last part may be where PacketVideo has some issues.

But Spotify maintains that their technologies are fully proprietary. In a statement to CNET, a Spotify representative said: "In just under three years, Spotify has become more popular than any other music service of its kind. This success is, in large part, due to our own highly innovative, proprietary hybrid technology that incorporates peer-to-peer technology. The result is what we humbly believe to be a better music experience-lightning fast, dead simple and really social.” They will naturally be contesting the accusations.

Even if there seems to be sufficient evidence for the lawsuit based on how long PacketVideo’s been in business and the fact that they were one of the biggest startup companies of their time, there is some counter evidence to be taken into account. First off, this patent wasn’t something they even made themselves. They bought the patent a few years ago when they acquired a Swiss company called Basel, and actually developed nothing themselves. Based on that, it doesn’t seem right for PacketVideo to claim infringement against Spotify, especially when that claim is so sweeping and unspecific. Then again, this isn't about what's right, it's about money.

Spotify is actually a very innovative service, which they developed themselves and have been executing well across the pond for a while now. If this infringement was actually something serious enough to warrant a permanent injunction, why wait until now to sue? The Basel acquisition meant that PacketVideo now operated in Europe, in the same neighborhood where Spotify planted its roots. They could have filed suit anytime since 2008. It seems a little suspect that the timing lines up with when Spotify started expanding their service area across the Atlantic - lines up to the tune of about 2 weeks for those keeping score.

This is just another entry in the long line of lawsuits rooted in old, ridiculously broad scoped patents. This is the type of activity that potentially punishes those who truly innovate and come up with new things by holding them subject to infringement suits from archaic patents that shouldn't have held any water to begin with. Filing a patent for an idea (which is all that this was) that has no meat, method of execution or even technological means at the time will ultimately stifle future technological creativity for fear of legal action. Even the FTC has recognized that patent lawsuits similar to this are a problem in today's marketplace (kinda large-ish PDF). So does PacketVideo's case hold water? Or does it all smell a bit too much like another troll's moved in under the bridge? You decide.

In the meantime I'm just going to be over here filing a patent application for a device that provides glasses-free, fully immersive, touch sensitive virtual reality. I have no idea how it'll work, and I don't think we even have the means to do it right now, but when we do, my lawyer will be suing the hell out of someone.

It was my idea first.

85. The Great Chinese Apple Store Swindle

[Article first published as The Great Chinese Apple Store Swindle on Blogcritics.]

Anyone who follows consumer tech can argue about what Apple really excels at and where their success comes from. But to me it’s one thing above all else. More than their technology and even more than their sales numbers (well sort of), what Steve Jobs’ company cares about most is the Apple brand and image. That iconic apple chunk that as evolved into their silver fruity visage since the days of Macintosh has become a beacon to Apple’s customers, even driving more serious fans to buy their products for no justification other than “Apple made it.”

That’s truth – I’ve known people and of people in the past that on more than one occasion would forego doing anything fun because they didn’t have any cash. They did however have a shiny MacBook Air. My little cousin wants an iPhone for no other reason than “Apples are cool.” She hasn’t the first damned clue about what it does aside from make calls. As much as I can’t stand hardcore Apple fanboys and fangirls though, they exist because the Cupertino King is just that damn good at managing his brand, and owning the customers’ sou... I mean creating the customer loyalty that goes with it.

They take great care in playing cloak and dagger to keep new products veiled in shadows and pushing the image that Apple stands for innovation, imagination and a sense of cool. As such, they monitor and control every aspect of that – from apps available the App Store to developers to swearing business partners to secrecy. So it would be fair to say that they treat, oh I don’t know, cheaply made knockoffs bearing the apple logo with disdain and lawyers, right? But what if the knock-off wasn’t just an iPad or iPhone, but an entire Apple Store?

That’s exactly what blogger BirdAbroad stumbled into near her home in Kunming, China. She mentions the influences of western culture taking hold there, with stores like H&M and fast food restaurants like KFC have been cropping up around that area. But an Apple Store in Kunming? Apple definitely has a Chinese presence, but in larger cities like Shanghai and Beijing. I’ve never even heard of Kunming before today, have you? It would be like a blogger in China writing about anywhere that's not New York, DC, Chicago, LA or Philadelphia. Her blog has a lot of pictures of the store, which does actually look like a legit Apple Store complete with legit Apple gear.

As she says, “They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks.” But things still didn’t sit right with her – things like lower quality paintjobs and staircase materials raised her suspicions, along with the fact that Apple never prints the phrase “Apple Store” on their storefronts as this place had.

But it didn’t stop there of course. After some further investigation speaking with the staff, she found that they not only believed they worked for Apple, but were trained to “protect the brand,” meaning no one was allowed to take pictures. Apparently the Chinese words for “brand” and “fake store’s ass” are the same. Her final verdict – “A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). “ She includes pictures of other knockoff stores just around the corner as well. None of them are this good.

The Wall Street Journal’s China Realtime Report was able to get in touch with one of the staff members of the store in question, who was under no impression that Apple was in charge of signing his checks. His statement was that “I just care that what I sell every day are authentic Apple products, and that our customers don’t come back to me to complain about the quality of the products.” He goes on to almost brag about how their store is one of the best around, even though they openly lie about any affiliation with Apple.

Apple has not commented as of yet, but I’m extremely curious to see how this is handled. Will they see this as a personal affront to the mighty fruit and lawyer up with some force? Or take the highroad and have them apply for authorized reseller status? With Apple Stores themselves being one of Apple’s golden arrows in their quiver of marketing tricks, my money’s on option #1. Remember the lost iPhone 4 that ended up in a fight with Gizmodo? When it comes to product secrecy and their brand, Apple doesn’t mess around.

STORY UPDATES 07/25/11: 2 of the stores found by BirdAbroad are being shut down by Chinese authorities. The store described as a "beautiful ripoff" is not one of them - according to Reuters, it is currently in the process of becoming an authorized Apple reseller.