Donald Trump thinks about 2012 presidential bid - Reuters

Property mogul Donald Trump holds a golf club during a media event on the sand dunes of the Menie estate, the site for Trump's proposed golf resort, near Aberdeen, north east Scotland May 27, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/David Moir

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 5, 2010 5:46pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump looks in the mirror, he is starting to see the possibility of a U.S. president staring back at him.

Trump did a round of TV interviews on Tuesday to talk about the possibility of making a presidential run in 2012.

"For the first time in my life, I'm actually thinking about it (running for president)," Trump, who declared himself a Republican, told Fox News Channel.

Asked by MSNBC when will he make his decision, Trump offered little.

"Well, I'll make it over a period of time," he offered.

The 64-year-old, thrice-wed tycoon is a larger-than-life figure in the United States whose company operates a string of resorts and casinos.

Trump, sometimes known simply as "The Donald," nurtures his celebrity status by hosting a popular reality show on NBC, "The Apprentice," as well as "The Fabulous World of Golf" on the Golf Channel.

Trump told MSNBC "I'd love not do it," meaning run for president, but that the country has so many problems, such as the erosion of the manufacturing base to foreign competitors.

"The United States doesn't really make things anymore," he said.

The Republican Party is looking at a dozen or so potential candidates for the right to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012, such as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Trump did not rule out the possibility of running under the banner of the Tea Party, the conservative movement that so far is seen as a sub-group of the Republican Party but which some experts think could emerge as a third party.

"I am a Republican but have great respect for what the Tea Party has done because they have brought to light what's going on. I mean, we have trillion-dollar deficits. ... The country is going bankrupt, let's face it," he said.

(Reporting by Steve Holland)

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Windows Phone 7 Rumors, Android Lawsuit, Reorg Marked Microsoft Week - eWeek

Microsoft?s busy week centered on mobile?not only its upcoming Windows Phone 7, but also legal action related to one of its biggest rivals: On Oct. 1, the company announced it had filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Motorola over the latter?s Google Android smartphones.

?The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola?s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone user experience,? Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft?s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing, wrote in an Oct. 1 statement, ?including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.?

The lawsuit suggests that Microsoft is becoming more aggressive about its patents with manufacturers of Android phones. In April, HTC acknowledged it would pay royalties to Microsoft in exchange for the use of ?patented technology? in its Android-powered devices.

When news of the HTC agreement first went public, a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to eWEEK that ?Microsoft?s policy is one of mutual respect for IP and we are committed to licensing our IP on reasonable terms.? Phone manufacturers such as HTC, they added, ?are sophisticated businesses that have a track record of licensing patents to secure the necessary IP rights for their products.?

For Microsoft, such intellectual-property battles offer two potential benefits. First and foremost, it earns royalties from a rapidly expanding Android market. Second, it could theoretically slow manufacturers? rate of producing Android-powered devices, an important strategy when you consider that Microsoft?s own Windows Phone 7 is due to hit the market in October. 

And Microsoft is gearing up to push those Windows Phone 7 devices in a major way. On Oct. 1, the company announced that Andy Lees would remain in the top spot of the company?s Mobile Communications Business, while Don Mattrick would remain head of its Interactive Entertainment Business?formalizing the men?s roles originally established back in May. Both Microsoft?s mobile and interactive-entertainment businesses were previously grouped under the umbrella of the Entertainment & Devices Division; and the assumption is that, by separating them into two autonomous subdivisions, the two product lines can receive more focused energy and attention.

Given how Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Kinect are central to the company?s overall consumer strategy, that move seems logical. (Microsoft also announced Kurt DelBene as president of the Microsoft Office Division.) Microsoft is betting that the smartphone?s unique user interface?it aggregates Web content and apps into a series of subject-specific ?Hubs,? such as ?Office? or ?Games,? instead of the iPhone?s or Android?s grid-like pages of individual apps?will allow it to regain market-share traction against those competitors.

Microsoft?s previous misfires in the mobile arena have come back to haunt the company?s executives in more ways than one. According to the company?s 2010 Proxy Statement, the demise of its Kin phone earlier this year?on top of that eroding smartphone market-share?prevented Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from receiving his full potential compensation for the year.    

Ballmer?s compensation for fiscal 2010 could have potentially been $2.01 million, with a ?potential Incentive Plan award of up to 200 percent of his base salary for the fiscal year.? But the total award eventually came to 100 percent of his base salary, or $670,000, after the Board weighed the company?s recent successes?the Windows 7 launch, progress in cloud initiatives such as Azure and Office Web Apps?against a handful of fiascos: ?The unsuccessful launch of the Kin phone; loss of market share in the company?s mobile phone business; and the need for the Company to pursue innovations to take advantage of new form factors.? 

The proxy document also called Robbie Bach, the retiring president of Microsoft?s Entertainment & Devices Division, to task for the company?s underperforming mobile initiatives: ?The strong financial performance [of Bach?s division] was offset by disappointing performance in the Windows Mobile portion of the business, where the company lost share and continued to have operating losses yet made strategic progress toward the fall 2010 launch of the Windows Phone 7.?

The working theory is that Windows Phone 7 will launch sometime in mid-October. Microsoft is hosting its annual Open House in New York City Oct. 11, as well as a party that could double as a smartphone launch event. At least one analyst has estimated Windows Phone 7?s rollout-related marketing costs at roughly $400 million?before you factor in expenses related to platform development.

The first Windows Phone 7 smartphones will reportedly launch through AT&T in early November, with three devices manufactured by HTC, Samsung and LG Electronics. Samsung officially announced Sept. 30 that it was producing Windows Phone 7 devices, but declined to specify an exact number or release schedule.

Even as Microsoft prepares to face off against Google and Apple, though, those rivals?along with a handful of other tech giants?decided this week to help Redmond in its long-running patent-infringement battle against Canadian firm i4i. In nine ?friend of the court? briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, those companies?along with entities such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and SIFMA (Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association)?have joined in arguing that the standard for invalidating patents should be lowered.

Under the current terms of the U.S. Patent Act, the burden of ?establishing the invalidity of a patent? rests with ?the party [that is] asserting such invalidity.? In addition, the party must provide ?clear and convincing? evidence about that invalidity. Microsoft hopes that, if the court lowers that standard, it will give the company a legal advantage against i4i, which has won several lower-court rulings.

Those rulings found that Microsoft Word 2003 and 2007 violate i4i?s patents for custom X M L. An in-depth breakdown of i4i?s patent by eWEEK can be found here. In April, a federal appeals court rejected Microsoft?s request for a multiple-judge review of the lawsuit, which resulted in a nearly $300 million judgment.

Microsoft?s latest petition is Microsoft Corp. v. I4I Limited Partnership, 10-290, U.S. Supreme Court (Washington).

Perfect marketing
Microsoft couldn't buy this amount of media coverage for Windows Phone 7. The only reason Microsoft Windows is so widely used is fabulous marketing...Windows 7.... yawn
Microsoft has already lost the smartphone race. The only factor that guides their development is DRM and that has been a complete disaster. Now they...Posted At: 10-03-10
By: Smart UserWindow
with any thing is a bunch of junk I constantly have problems on my piece of junk Dell only 6 months old never have problem with my droid phone or my...Posted At: 10-03-10
By: Sal ScarsoA user comment on this article
I hate all of the litigation cr@p but I'm fairly excited to see what the W7 phone could do. http://TechReview.LIEconomy.comPosted At: 10-03-10
By: DexterLegal terrorism
This guy has it right, follow the link: http://planet.gnu.org/gnutelephony/?p=10Posted At: 10-03-10
By: Anonymous

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RIM Playbook an Enterprise Tablet, Not an iPad, Android Killer - eWeek

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By: Clint Boulton
2010-10-03
Article Rating: / 0

There are 3 user comments on this Desktops and Notebooks story.

RIM Playbook an Enterprise Tablet, Not an iPad, Android Killer
( Page 1 of 2 )

When rumors bubbled up last week that Research in Motion was set to unveil a tablet computer, talk turned to how the device would battle Apple's iPad and devices based on Google's Android operating system.

It turns out that the Playbook?as the world learned it was called after its launch at the Blackberry Developer Conference Sept. 27?is more of a rival to a desktop or notebook in the business sector.

Indeed, the 7-inch device, expected to be available in the U.S. early next year, is not a Blackberry OS-flavored version of today?s media-focused tablets, such as the popular iPad or the Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab.

RIM is not positioning its tablet as a Netflix-craving machine geared for mass video consumption, but as a device fitted with "true multitasking, high performance multimedia, and advanced security features.?

The tablet's pair of embedded cameras will enable smooth video conferencing. The Playbook is also compatible with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, enabling all manner of business apps to run on the device.

Enterprise-grade security is all well and good, but a tablet still demands content and applications. 

To wit: RIM, at the launch event, also unveiled its Blackberry Messenger Social Platform, Blackberry WebWorks Application Platform, a new Enterprise Application Development Platform, and Blackberry Advertising Services to augment its application ecosystem. Unfortunately, these are nascent platforms and products.

While RIM said it sports 35 million Blackberry App World customers?accounting for 1.5 million downloads per day?the lack of a ready-made application and content ecosystem to support the machine (the iPad launched will several content partners) is problematic.

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Apple's iPads Now On Sale at Target - PC Magazine

For those with some kind of allergic reaction to Apple's main retail stores, take notice: The company's flagship tablet, the iPad, has jumped ship to yet another retailer in the United States… and it's a big one.

Target—starting today—is the largest chain of brick-and-mortar stores to sell Apple's iPad, and it joins Best Buy as one of only two non-Apple retailers that actually sell the device, period.

There's nothing too fancy about the announcement, however, save for the fact that Apple is ever so slowly diversifying the places you can pick up its products. The same six models of iPad at Target are available for the same six price points that you'd otherwise find at an Apple store itself.

Although, there is one interesting caveat in terms of what you can actually purchase through Target. For starters, no iPads are on sale via the company's retail web site—all iPad purchases must be made and picked up in-store only. Yet, a number of iPad accessories are sold via Target.com instead of actual Target retail locations.

Target is hoping to bolster its holiday sales by using the iPad as a hook to drive more feet into its retail establishments across the United States. And given the relatively high demand for the device—sales estimates hover around 3.27 million units for the iPad's first three months of existence—it's certainly possible that "iPad fever" could work in Target's advantage.

"We hope to sell a lot more later this week, once people are more aware that we carry it," said Chetna Parikh, a Target electronics team member, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Analysts estimate that total iPad sales could jump to 21 million units in 2011.

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Steven Hayes Could Face The Death Penalty - ABC News

Steven Hayes was found guilty today in the deadly home invasion that left a woman and her two daughters brutalized and murdered, making him eligible for the death penalty.

The jury deliberated for several hours before finding Hayes guilty of 16 of the 17 counts he faced. Hayes was convicted of six capital crimes, including the murder and kidnapping of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, all of which are punishable by execution.

As the verdict was read, Dr. William Petit, the only survivor of the slaughter, clutched his sister but remained stoic. Relatives of his slain wife wept while Hayes hung his head.

Hayes, 47, was quickly handcuffed and led out of the courtroom by officers.

As he left the courthouse, Petit thanked the jury for their "appropriate verdict" and said he and his family had kept their "faith in God that justice would be served."

"There is some relief, but my family is still gone. [The verdict] doesn't bring them back, it doesn't bring back the home that we had, but certainly a guilty verdict is a much better sense of relief than a verdict of not guilty," said Petit.

Petit still faces a penalty trial to determine whether Hayes is to be executed or face life in prison. That is scheduled to begin on Oct. 18.

Petit made clear he will also attend the trial for Hayes' accomplice although he said he gets a "little nausea" each time he heads to court to hear the grisly details of his family's murders.

"If your family was destroyed by evil, you would be there for your family. It's the only thing you can do for your family," said Petit.

"Do I look foward to this every day? No," said Petit. "But I do it for my family and I think all of you would do the same thing for your families."

Rev. Richard Hawke, the father of Petit-Hawke, told press gathered by the Connecticut courtroom, ""We are pleased with the verdict… We feel justice is being served."

Hayes was not convicted of first degree arson, a charge that the jury had questioned the judge about during deliberations. Asked by the jury whether Hayes' pouring gasoline in the Petit's home was the same thing as lighting a match, the judge had answered "no."

Petit said he couldn't comment on the not guilty charge and whether he was disappointed by it because he wasn't sure "he understood it."

Only one individual has been executed in Connecticut since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. That execution occurred in 2005 and was of serial killer Michael Ross, also known as the Roadside Strangler.

If sentenced to die, Hayes will join 10 others who are currently on Connecticut's death row.

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Verizon Wireless to Pay Up to $90 Million in Refunds - New York Times

WASHINGTON – Verizon Wireless said Sunday it will pay up to $90 million in refunds to 15 million cell phone customers who were wrongly charged for data sessions or Internet use, one of the largest-ever customer refunds by a telecommunications company.

The company’s statement came as Verizon Wireless held talks with the Federal Communications Commission about complaints of unauthorized charges and after questions from about a possible settlement of an F.C.C. investigation into the issue.

Verizon said in its statement that 15 million customers either will receive either credits ranging from $2 to $6 on their October or November bills or, in the case of former customers, refund checks.

In its statement, Verizon Wireless said that the charges affected customers who did not have data usage plans but who were nevertheless billed because of data exchanges initiated by software built into their phones or because of mistaken charges for inadvertent episodes of Web access.

In the last three years, the F.C.C. has received hundreds of complaints from Verizon Wireless customers who said they were charged for data usage or Web access when their phones at times when their phones were not in use or when they mistakenly pushed a button that was preprogrammed to instantly active the phone’s Web browser. Beginning in 2009, The New York Times and The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, among other publications, reported that customers had been complaining of the charges but had often been ignored by Verizon Wireless.

People close to the settlement talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they expected the refunds to total more than $50 million.

“Verizon Wireless values our customer relationships and we always want to do the right thing for our customers,” Mary Coyne, deputy general counsel for Verizon Wireless, said in the statement.

The announcement of the refunds might not end the issue for Verizon. People close to the talks said the F.C.C. had been pressing the company to enter into an agreement to pay a penalty for the unauthorized charges, which would serve as a deterrent for companies that might discover similar circumstances but fail to alert customers in a timely manner.

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Microsoft Marshals Dealmakers, Lawyers to Take On Android - Wired News

As it gets ready to unveil its own operating system next, Microsoft is taking careful aim at its closest competitor: Android.

Through patent licensing deals and lawsuits, the Redmond-based computer giant is trying to cover all its bases, aiming for a situation where it wins whether a customer chooses a Windows phone or an Android one.

But it’s too soon to tell whether the strategy will pay off.

On Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he looks forward to collecting revenue from Android handset makers, including HTC, which has a licensing agreement with Microsoft.

For handset makers that don’t show HTC’s willingness to do it the easy way, Microsoft can do it the hard way, too: Microsoft sued Motorola this week, alleging patent infringement around Motorola’s Android-based smartphones. The suit charges Motorola with allegedly violating patents related to synchronizing email, calendars, contacts, scheduling meetings and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

“One reason that Microsoft is going after Motorola is that if patent infringement is found it is easier to establish damages against a company that is selling a product than Google, which is giving the OS away for free,” says Robert Sloss, intellectual property partner at Farella Braun + Martel.

In April, Microsoft announced that it has inked a patent licensing deal with HTC that would allow HTC to continue using the Google-designed Android operating system in its phones while mitigating its risk should Microsoft aim any patent lawsuits at the OS.

Microsoft and HTC did not disclose specific details of the agreement, though the two companies have said HTC will pay Microsoft an undisclosed sum for the patent rights.

Patent battles among technology companies are routine. Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google over the use of Java in Android, a claim that Google has vigorously disputed. Last year, Nokia sued Apple alleging patent infringement by Apple in connection with the iPhone. Meanwhile, Apple initiated a lawsuit against HTC over alleged infringement on iPhone related patents. In other words, its business as usual.

With the smartphone business becoming extremely competitive, the stakes are higher than ever.

In just two years, the Google-designed Android OS has become a major force in the mobile world. Android, which made its debut in 2008 on a HTC manufactured phone, has now been adopted by almost every device maker including Motorola, Samsung and LG. Android is now the most popular operating system among people who bought a smartphone in the past six months, according to August data from The Nielsen Company. BlackBerry and Apple iOS are in a statistical dead heat for the second place.

With the upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, Microsoft hopes to attract consumers. But until then, it is trying another strategy.

“The Microsoft innovations at issue in this case help make smartphones ’smart,’ Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, wrote on the company blog.

Microsoft’s patents relate to features such as the ability to send and receive email, manage calendars and contacts. Microsoft claims it has also patented technologies that manage signal strength, battery power and memory in the device.

“The crux of the argument is that Microsoft is saying Android OS uses technology that has already been part of Microsoft software,” says Sloss.

Although the lawsuit has been filed, it is difficult to know right away how valid Microsoft’s claims are, says Sloss. Both Microsoft and Motorola are likely to go through an extensive process of discovery, which involves presenting documents to support their claims and they are likely to keep it under wraps.

“A lot of it probably won’t be public,” says Sloss. “It is standard to enter into protective order because the core of the patents and the products will be highly confidential.”

There is always the possibility that the two companies settle out of court, with Motorola going down the same road as HTC. In that case, Microsoft could gain “hundreds of millions of dollars” in royalties and further strengthen its patent claims.

“Damages calculations are very complex,” says Sloss. “There’s nothing in Microsoft’s complaint that says exactly how much it is looking for.

But if Microsoft and Motorola choose to settle, it is likely that Motorola may wind up paying a license fee for each Android handset it sells, similar to what HTC is doing.

For Microsoft that may not translate into rich profits but it will certainly add up to sweet revenge.

See Also:

Photo: Motorola Backflip (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

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WebP: Google's new attempt at speeding up the web - ZDNet (blog)

In their latest attempt to make the web even faster, Google has devised their own image format to rival JPEG. Since forever, JPEG has been doing a great job of compressing photographic images — it doesn’t support transparency, like other formats, but it does what it was meant to do very well.

Google has determined that JPEG isn’t the best format for that anymore. WebP is a new compression that achieves an impressive average 30% reduction in file size for images. Google will be proposing an update for WebKit that will make viewing those images in a browser actually possible.

Now, I’m not complaining here — anything to make the web faster is good in my books — but I have a question. Why are we worried about fractionally speeding up the web when we live in a broadband world that’s just getting faster and faster anyway? The web is speeding up far more quickly from just network speeds improving than tweaking compression on files that are usually only used to show photographs online.

Sure, Sites like Flickr might see notable speedups — with each page showing several jpeg images typically — but most webpages largely use png or gif images (when you can’t do something in CSS).

I’ll stop whining now. WebP is still cool, and like I said before, anything to make the web faster is good in my books.

Garett Rogers has always had a deep interest in computers and the Internet, which led him to a degree in Computer Information Systems. He is currently employed as a programmer for iQmetrix.

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Faster Forward: Skype (sort of) available for non-Verizon Android phones - Washington Post

The headline on Skype's blog post today reads "Skype now available for Android phones."

But if you use an Android device in the United States, that sentence may only confuse you.

First, Skype arrived on Verizon Wireless Android phones back in February, as part of an exclusive deal the Luxembourg-based Internet-calling service signed with that carrier.

Second, the seventh of eight lines of small type at the end of the post makes it clear that this new version of Skype remains subject to whatever bargain its developers struck with Verizon:

In the US, you can make calls only over WiFi.

If you want to call a pal overseas via Skype outside of WiFi range on an Android device, you'll need to use Verizon. Then again, the Verizon flavor of Skype doesn't work over WiFi; it's 3G only.

Perhaps at some point, Skype will figure out how to ship an Internet-calling app in the U.S. that's not so picky about data connections. One tip: Its Android developers could check in with its iPhone developers, whose app works over both 3G and WiFi.

Android Police's first-look review warns that the Skype app eats processor cycles during calls and needs 14 megabytes of internal storage. That last limitation may complicate installing it on phones that arrived already crammed with useless carrier-installed apps.

Meanwhile, you have other options. TechCrunch's post notes that the free Fring app can make Skype calls over both 3G and WiFi. If you can do without WiFi-only calling and have voice minutes to spare, another option comes from Google itself--its free Google Voice app.

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