RIM Aims to Reel In Devs With BB10 Preview

Research In Motion will give developers a chance to take BlackBerry 10 for an early spin. The company will soon give software makers the opportunity to use prototype devices featuring an unfinished version of the platform, a finished version of which is slated to go into general release later this year.

Research In Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) will soon give software developers prototype devices that run an early version of the BlackBerry 10 platform.

RIM is hosting a BlackBerry 10 event in Orlando in May to coincide with its annual BlackBerry World user conference. There, a limited number of developers will have the chance to tinker with the product.
The Canada-based tech company said the prototype, labeled "BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha," is not the finished smartphone intended for consumers.
"Although the device and the software that developers will see are not indicative of what BlackBerry 10 will be at launch, it's a great chance to get building and see how their BlackBerry 10 apps will run in real life," Victoria Berry, senior manager of PR and social media, developer and apps at RIM told TechNewsWorld.
The company has already encouraged developers to grab one of the 2,000 developer spots, Berry said.

A Fresh BlackBerry

The revamped BlackBerry line is expected to launch in late 2012.
"It's a great way for us to once again show our commitment to the developer community and to recognize the importance of that community to a successful launch," said Berry.
The smartphone maker is facing stiff competition from competing platforms like Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) iOS and Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android. RIM is expected to release its latest quarterly earnings on Thursday, and that data will be indicate how it's fared against those rivals over the past three months.
"A lot of people aren't expecting them to have good earnings; they're on a major downslide," Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, told TechNewsWorld.
RIM didn't respond to our requests for comment in time for publication.

Need a Winner

Since RIM bought the QNX software it needed to develop the new BlackBerry platform, the company has been counting on the new BB10 line to win back some of the marketshare that competitors have grabbed. At the end of 2011, the company announced that the product launch was going to be delayed until the latter part of 2012, a setback that gave some lukewarm customers an even bigger reason to turn away from RIM.
"The delay has been a key part of competition being able to gain," said Bajarin.
Giving prototypes to developers so far in advance of its consumer release, then, is a way to make sure that developers and customers remember that there's a device on its way from the company.
"The bottom line is they need to make the market aware of this new product, even if it's early," said Bajarin. "Competitive pressures from not only Apple but what Google is doing with Android, and the recent moves with Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) by Nokia (NYSE: NOK), all of those competitive issues are putting pressure on them to get their spec up, and early designs up in hopes they can still garner some attention," said Bajarin.

Too Little, Too Late?

While the prototypes might generate some buzz for BlackBerry 10, especially among developers, Bajarin worries RIM has already lost crucial parts of some of its originally core markets, including the corporate market.
"There's still a very loyal base of BlackBerry users who will be interested in the product," he said. "But so many of the BlackBerrys out there are being replaced in corporate accounts with iPhones that the only way you can look at this is that it's probably too late for them to really salvage the market in light of the competition."

Iran Still Stuck With Stuxnet

Stuxnet, the computer malware that's wreaked havoc with Iran's nuclear program for nearly two years, may be curable, if an antivirus program the country claims to have developed is effective. "If the Iranian software can do that, I would love to see it," said Tofino's Eric Byres. "But I would not hold my breath on that. This may strictly be a morale-building announcement inside Iran."

Iran apparently has developed an antivirus program to neutralize the notorious Stuxnet virus that put a kink in the country's nuclear development program in June 2010.

Iran has vowed to distribute the antivirus program for free in about a month, according toTrend, a publication that describes itself as a private media outlet in Azerbaijan.
The announcement may be intended to buck up the spirits of Iranians, according to Jeffrey Carr, CEO of Taia Global and author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld.
"They'd been struck with what is now one of the most famous viruses in the world, probably still have residual fallout from it, and may now have a way to demonstrate to the public that they aren't victims," he told TechNewsWorld.

Stuxnet Is Old Hat

The world has moved beyond Stuxnet, maintained Eric Byres, CTO and vice president for engineering for Tofino Security Products.
"Stuxnet is definitely a quaint artifact in most of the world, but it might still have some life inside Natanz," he told TechNewsWorld.
Natanz is where Iran's uranium enrichment facility is located.
An antivirus program that countered Stuxnet would be less interesting than one that could also neutralize Stuxnet's successors, like Duqu.
"If the Iranian software can do that, I would love to see it," Byres said. "But I would not hold my breath on that. This may strictly be a morale-building announcement inside Iran."

Verizon, Symantec Breach Studies

2011 was a near-record year for cybersecurity breaches, but the cost of the breakins appears to be going down.
Those were two of the key findings in breach studies released last week by Verizon and Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC).
More than 174.5 million records were compromised in 855 companies studied for Verizon's 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report.

Last year's breach number is the first rise seen by Verizon researchers in two years and more than half (58 percent) of it is tied to hacktivist activity.

Hacktivists Make Their Mark

The most significant change Verizon researchers saw in 2011 was the rise of "hacktivism" against larger organizations worldwide, the report noted.
It added that the frequency and regularity of cases tied to activist groups that came through its doors in 2011 exceeded the number worked in all previous years combined .
"We were kind of expecting that based on all the news that took place this last year," Chris Porter a principal on Verizon's RISK Team, which prepares the report, told TechNewsWorld.
The report also showed a continued drop in the role insider threats play in the breaches studied by Verizon. Since reaching a high of 48 percent in 2009, the role of insiders as threat agents has rapidly declined, reaching just 4 percent last year.
"We have never had insiders above external agents in our caseload," Porter said.
"It's something we chat about every year, especially given the 80-percent-threat-is-always-due-to-insiders myth we've seen in the information security industry since the early 2000s," he added.

Drop In Breach Costs

While 2011 may have been a banner year for stolen records, the cost of losing those records went down, according to Symantec's 2011 Cost of Data Breach Study, performed by the Ponemon Institute.
For the first time in seven years, the report stated, the average cost to organizations for a data breach dropped, year-over-year, by 23.6 percent, to US$5.5 million from $7.2 million.
What's more, the cost per lost record also dropped to $194 from $214.
While Verizon discounted the role of insiders in the cases it studied, that wasn't the case with the organizations in the Symantec sample. Thirty-nine percent of them pegged their data breaches to negligent insiders.
However, the researchers also noted that, for the first time, nearly a third of the breaches reported in the study were attributed to malicious or criminal attacks.

Breach Diary

• March 16: NaturEnergy, of Romania, was breached and phone numbers and email addresses of more than 200 users were posted to the Internet.



• March 19: Email addresses of more than 8,000 students were accidentally distributed to recipients of a financial aid mailing list by Student Finance England.



• March 20: A hacker known as "s3rverexe" breached a server for International Police Association of Australia and posted server information and email addresses of five users to the Internet.



• March 21: A computer containing personal details of every city councilor in Belfast, Ireland, was seized by police.



• March 21: The large online purchasing site Dangdang.com instructed users to change passwords after account balances of nearly 100 users were stolen due to breach of database information.



• March 22: Employees of Lake Worth, Texas, school district were notified of a potential security breach involving a former employee. The district is currently investigating the incident.

Calendar

• April 28-29: Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control. Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. Sponsored by Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights. US$20-$100.

Meg Whitman vs. Tim Cook by the Numbers

While Apple is outperforming HP, Whitman is clearly a bigger asset to HP than Cook is to Apple. She is clearly improving the mess she started with, while Cook appears to still be doing the job he did at Apple while Jobs was alive and leaving Jobs' unique duties unstaffed. Momentum will only carry Apple so far. If people don't get a premium experience, the lines to buy their products will get ever shorter.

Last week was an interesting week. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced what appears to be a penis iron in the new iPad, and folks are burning through their monthly 4G data plans in a few hours. Tim's having his first Antennagate moment, and Steve Jobs he isn't.

On the other hand, Meg Whitman announced her first major restructuring since taking over HP(NYSE: HPQ), and on paper it not only looks impressive, but also is reminiscent of what Carly Fiorina attempted to do in a lot of ways. Fiorina was considered a strong visionary -- she just wasn't good with people and couldn't execute. Whitman appears to have Fiorina's vision and can execute, which bodes well for HP.
Ironically, the stock market continues to reward Apple and punish HP, which suggests the market remains consistently out of step with reality.
I'll talk go deeper into that and close with my product of the week: another book on Apple by Carmine Gallo. The Apple Experience reveals the secrets of building insanely great customer loyalty. You might want to read this book fast. The way Cook is going, that fierce loyalty could soon become history.

Apple vs. HP

Both CEOs are new to their roles, and their companies are in vastly different places. Steve Jobs left Apple at the top of its game but also pretty solidly connected to Steve, who played three critical roles in the company. He balanced the different interests (engineering, design, finance); he was the super user who assured no product went out that wasn't acceptable to customers; and he was the primary pitch man.
Meg Whitman stepped into an HP mess as Mark Hurd had so aggressively cut the company there was little more than a shell left in some places. In addition, there was an internal top executive (Todd Bradley) who was actively and publicly lobbying for her job, and Leo Apotheker, the interim CEO, had just completed making several catastrophic mistakes, killing off (granted, he may have been set up) the US$1.2 billion Palm acquisition and possibly overpaying massively for several additional acquisitions.
While Cook should have been able to hit the ground running, his position at Apple was to do the things Steve didn't want to do and to never be a threat to Steve, which means he likely is everything Steve isn't -- yet he is trying to fit into a spot custom designed for Steve. Talk about your round peg in a square hole. Whitman jumped into a train wreck in progress and immediately had to move to triage in order to stabilize the patient.
This isn't to say both roles aren't difficult. Tim may have been set up to fail even though the company was operating at a very high level of competence, while Whitman had to figure out who to trust and where the bodies were buried before she could even move.

HP Status

So what we saw last week from Whitman was by the numbers. Like Carly, she has consolidated HP's voice under people she can trust so she can craft a consistent impression of the company. This takes most marketing and communications responsibilities to the corporate level and should result in a vastly more consistent public image for the company.
She has consolidated much of the true power under David Donatelli and focused it away from technology and onto the customer set. This will allow him to better craft solutions that are designed to appeal to that defined customer set, and he owns product through sales.
Whitman had already placed her head of software, which is her fastest-growing and most-profitable unit (in terms of percentage) and made what likely is the company's biggest shift -- from thin-margin hardware to a tighter focus on thick-margin software. This is consistent with what IBM (NYSE: IBM) did some time ago but with tighter focus on the two very different skill sets.
Prior to the reorg, Whitman's three problems were Printing and Imaging, Personal Technology and Todd Bradley. The two divisions appear to be in decline, and Bradley is the executive most likely to cause problems for her because he desperately wants her job. It is believed he was instrumental in creating one of the big HP problems that got Whitman's predecessor fired.
Now those two units are merged under Bradley's leadership. This new organization will be far easier to spin out, should Whitman need to eliminate all of these problems in one pass. And the complexity of the new entity should keep Bradley out of her hair for the foreseeable future, regardless. Elegantly played.

Apple's Penis Iron

Cook has been increasingly compared to Jobs and found wanting. His last two product launches weren't very exciting, and the new iPad appears to have serious problems. People have been writing to tell me they are returning theirs.
The problems range from poor WiFi reception and WAN data plans that run through their monthly allocation in hours, to the very high temperature that the iPad operates at, whichConsumer Reports says could cause burns if held for a long period -- like, say, if a child were playing games. Let's just say when I get an ad about a product that will make me longer and harder I'm not expecting to get an iron, yet this Apple appears to be designed to take the creases out of my private part.
In short, for a device that typically is held for hours to consume online content, it sucks at being wireless -- and it could burn you if used that way. Apple's initial, and poorly thought through, response was "it is within spec," which means that all of these problems were designed into the iPad. Maybe they are features intended to make us use the device less and get a life, but I doubt that was the intent.
But back to Steve Jobs' three critical roles. One was as a proxy for the consumer, and this new iPad is heavier and has critical issues for users (connectivity and heat), which suggests someone didn't fulfill Jobs' quality-assurance role. Apple can certainly ride this out, but it does showcase that this one aspect of Jobs' execution remains missing.
We already know Cook can't present like Steve Jobs, and it is as yet unclear whether the proper balance is being maintained between design, engineering and finance. With this device alone, you could argue it is not a good balance, based on these problems (best to wait for the newer iPad).

Wrapping Up: The CEO Job Sucks

While Apple is outperforming HP, Whitman is clearly a bigger asset to HP than Cook is to Apple. She is clearly improving the mess she started with, while Cook appears to still be doing the job he did at Apple while Jobs was alive and leaving Jobs' unique duties unstaffed.
Momentum will only carry Apple so far. It has a premium brand, and people expect a premium experience. If they don't get it, the lines to buy their products will get ever shorter.
HP still has a long way to go before the company truly digs out, but you want to see progress in the right direction. In one move, Whitman has provided a mechanism to improve HP's image, put her problems in one bucket, and set up a mechanism to throw the bucket away should she later need to.
It should be pointed out that given HP's position, most roads lead up, while Apple is at a peak looking down at other companies, which suggests most of its roads lead down. Whitman is operating by the numbers, while Cook doesn't seem to fully understand that critical things Steve did for Apple are currently not being done.
Product of the Week: The Apple Experience by Carmine Gallo
This is another in a list of books by Gallo that I think every consumer product manager and marketing executive should read. Apple remains the most valuable company in the world, and it still has the most loyal customers.

It has historically done this through Steve Jobs personally ensuring that its products met his demanding needs, that the stores were the best in the world, and that the customer experience was unmatched.
In fact, a secret is that the Apple hardware often really isn't that great -- it is the overall wonderful experience that makes the company so successful.
The Apple Experience collects a series of insights from Jobs' world- leading practices to exemplify the benchmark in customer experience. Given that this is increasingly said in a historical context, I think it would do well for Apple executives to read this book as well, so they might stop degrading an experience that made Apple the most highly valued company in the world.
This book is the magic manual about Apple excellence -- and when Apple is operating at its peak, there is no company better in technology. As a result, Carmine Gallo's book, The Apple Experience, is my product of the week.

New Camera+ Packs Great Features but Still No Video

Camera+ has recently been updated to version 3, which features new sharing abilities as well as enhanced performance. The app's great original features are still there too, particularly its expansive editing options and its two-finger approach to adjusting focus and exposure. Unfortunately, video options are still nowhere to be found.

Camera+, an app from Tap Tap Tap, is available for 99 US cents at the App Store.

Camera+

Somehow, some way, I've avoided using the amazingly popular Camera+ photo shooting and editing app. My only excuse? I'm pretty rigorous about which apps I bother to download, play with and use. An apptrocious phone packed with gobs of apps tends to annoy me, so I have a habit of sticking with solid performers rather than clutter my mind with options.
But Tap Tap Tap, the company behind Camera+, just upgraded the app to version 3, and the waves of activity around it caught my attention: Maybe I'm missing something here by using my staid built-in Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Camera app on my iPhone 4.

One App, More Features

Camera+ takes the basic metaphor of the camera app and packs in a bunch of handy features. For instance, Camera+ doesn't just take photos. It contains a photo editing side of the app too, called "Lightbox."
To tap into the editing features, you start with two basic ideas for your own workflow: Classic, which is when you take a series of photos then edit them later, and Shoot and Share, which is when you take one photo and go immediately to the editing screen, which also lets you quickly share it via social network accounts like Facebook or Twitter -- or email it if you like kickin' it old school.
Back to taking photos.
The app does a pretty good job of automatically figuring out exposure and focus, but where Camera+ shines is in the ability for a photographer -- as opposed to some dude pointing and tapping a button -- to tap and hold the screen to set the focus spot ... then tap the screen with a second finger to adjust the area of exposure. If you tap a dark area, the rest of the screen will lighten up -- this is quite handy for bringing more light to a shadowy area of an image (before you take it) or toning down a very bright area, like sun glare on water or overhead light on white or shiny objects, like your uncle's balding forehead.
Apple's built-in Camera app, for example, lets you adjust focus and exposure at the same time with a single tap, but as you can imagine, that means you're only directing the app to accept the key information from one spot in the frame of the photo. Camera+ lets you set the focal point and then dynamically move the exposure around to suit your needs. This is actually pretty cool, because if you simply tap in a dark shadow, your light areas might suddenly wash out and become blinding. You can re-tap or even drag your exposure area around until you find the right balance, on the fly.
In addition, you can skip all this messing around and just invoke the flashlight mode of the flash setting and illuminate the dark areas by shining some light into them. The flash setting also lets you choose between on, off, and auto.

Zoom? Really?

Camera+ also lets you zoom in up to 6x. Of course, this is a software zoom, so it's not like zooming through the mechanics of a physical lens. Still, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. Certainly in line with what I expect out of a tiny little smartphone lens from 150 feet away.
Another handy feature is the Stabilizer mode, which automatically takes the photo after you press the shutter button once your jittery hands find an instant of calm. Click. You nabbed the photo and you can be reasonably sure that it's not all blurry.
If you want to take a group shot but you don't have a passerby to take the shot for you (or you don't trust your fellow man enough to hand over your iPhone), there's a timer option. And if you fancy yourself an action shooter, you can use the burst mode for quick photos, albeit taken with a lower resolution. In my short time of experience, these burst photos aren't all that great. But the noise the shutter makes as you tap, tap, tap away to take the shots -- nice. For all you guys out there snapping photos of your girlfriends or wannabe girlfriends, use the burst mode ... fire away and say, "Work it, baby, work it," as the shutter sound goes nuts. And add, "The camera loves you."
The first nine or so rapid-fire photos will suck, but if you time it right, the tenth one will give you an awesome smile.
As for overall quality, it's at least as good as you'll get out of the standard built-in camera app, and some iPhone photographers seem to think it's better. Either way, it's certainly more controllable, though you can safely let it do its own thing on auto and get similar results to Apple's Camera.

Camera+ Part Two: Editing and Enhancing

If the extra shooting features don't catch your attention, the built-in editing and enhancing filters ought to.
The Lightbox area of the app lets you store your photos via a metaphor of negative film strips, but once you edit a photo, it breaks out of the film strip an looks like a "developed" photo. Sort of fun. After you understand what's going on, it's visually handy.
When you go to edit a photo, you can tap into a lot of built-in editing features. You've got a bunch of crop selections, which is handy if you're sharing to specific sites or using your photos on the Web and want the same specifications each time you post. Or if you want to print the photo on paper (people still do this, right?) and put it into something like a 5x7 photo frame.
Tap "Scenes" and you've got well over a dozen presets like Clarity, Flash, Darken, Shade, Fluorescent, Sunset and Food. Pick the right scene for the scene that your shot, and boom, you might be a fast and easy fix to your otherwise marginal photo. Overall, Clarity is highly recommended.
FX Effects, for instance, is a whole separate button of adjustment effects designed to let you deviate from reality in order to stylize your photos. You can change the hue, make your photo black and white, or tap into the Magic Hour to get that soft warm glow of light you only get near sunset or sunrise. Try the special effect Faded. It's hardly ever a bad move.
If you're into sharing, Camera+ has beefed up its social networking sharing features so you can post up photos to multiple sites at one time. If you're using Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. . . or all three, you're going to appreciate the new sharing features.

One Glaring Hole: No Video Recording

After all this goodness baked into a single app, can there be anything missing? There is, and it's a big one: There is no built-in video recording.
The built-in Apple Camera app has it -- a nice and easy toggle. But Camera+ does not. Don't know why, and it boggles the mind. Still, it's better to do one thing really well than multiple things poorly. And for messing around with still shots, Camera+ has that nailed.

Another iThing, Another iTempest

With the new iPad, Apple has yet another hit product on its hands. However, some owners complain that their devices grow incredibly hot during operation. Does this spell big trouble for Apple's latest iThing, or will it blow over like Antennagate and the iPhone 4S battery blues? Meanwhile, AAPL investors score a win, "Mass Effect 3" gamers call the ending a dud, and Nokia wants to tattoo you.

The debut of the latest iPad was once again an orgy of revenue for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). The company claims 3 million were sold in the opening weekend, and that certainly does sound like a lot.

But just as iPad sales are running hot, apparently so are the iPads themselves. Some users claim the devices are growing alarmingly warm in their hands during heavy use.

It's easy to see why the new iPad could grow hot. It boasts some heavy graphics power to support that super-high-res Retina display. It's got a much bigger processor than the iPad 2, its battery needs to be much larger to supply the juice needed to keep it running, and the result is you've got a nice little magazine-sized radiator to keep your lap warm on a cold winter night while you play "Infinity Blade II." For some users, that's a little worrying -- not only because their iPads become uncomfortable to hold, but also because when a device gets that hot, you might start wondering whether there's something wrong with it.

Apple says its iPads are running well within safe parameters, but if you're really worried about it, just call AppleCare.

A few outfits ran independent tests. Cnet measured temperatures at points all over the iPad and found no spot exceeding 90 degrees. Then again, Consumer Reports said it measured temperatures as high as 116 degrees.

But unless we start hearing stories of iPads causing actual burns or exploding during a fevered round of "Scrabble," this issue will probably pass by just like the iPhone 4S battery crisis before it and the iPhone 4 antenna predicament before that. Still, temperature management may require some new innovations for upcoming iPad models if Apple wants to keep amping up power in future generations. I don't know if anyone wants to hear their iPads start muttering the f-word

The Urge to Splurge

Sometimes people who lived through the Great Depression have habits about saving money and supplies that seem a little odd to those of us who grew up in more comfortable times. Steve Jobs didn't live through the Depression, but he did at one time see the company he founded on death's doorstep, financially speaking. At a certain point, Apple even had to depend on a cash infusion from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to keep going.

Jobs apparently never wanted to see Apple penniless again, regardless of whether it made a flop product, hit a major supply chain snag or got caught up in worldwide economic turmoil.

Under Jobs' second reign, Apple pulled itself out of the doldrums. It went from corporate skid row to vying with an oil firm as the most valuable public company in the world. Along the way, it amassed an incredible pile of cash, which now approaches $100 billion.

That war chest might give Apple an incredible sense of financial security, but to investors, there is such a thing as having too much walking-around money. Stagnant cash is good to have as a fallback, but having too much can be regarded as wasteful. But even though Apple could probably operate just fine with a fraction of the cushion it currently holds, demands for investor payoffs like dividends got nowhere under Jobs' watch.

But with Tim Cook now in the CEO seat, a new chapter in Apple's financial story has apparently begun. The company has decided to put its obscenely fat wallet through a round of fiscal liposuction. Starting this summer, it's promised a dividend of $2.65 per share. It's also staging a $10 billion stock buyback over the course of the next three years.

Dividends make nice thank-you notes to investors, who should already be pretty happy about the company's incredible climb in value over the past half-decade. In fact, AAPL shares recently closed above the $600 mark for the first time ever. That value actually makes the $2.65 dividend seem kind of small by comparison. You'd have to own tens of thousands of dollars in Apple stock to get even a couple hundred bucks from the dividend.

Still, to investors who've been clamoring for a dividend for months, if not years, any payout at all is a win. It may not make them a whole lot wealthier right away, but it does indicate that Tim Cook is going to run Apple his own way, at least as far as the balance sheet is concerned.

The LTE Challenge

Sprint (NYSE: S), the distant-third runner in the U.S. wireless race, took a big gamble when it signed on with Apple to be an iPhone provider. Apple demanded some heavy terms for the agreement -- namely that Sprint put itself on the hook for billions of dollars worth of iPhones over the next several years.

The carrier is offering subscribers plenty of incentives to make it stand out from its iPhone rivals Verizon and AT&T (NYSE: T) -- unlimited data plans, for one. But Sanford C. Bernstein doesn't seem to think that will be enough for Sprint to avoid disaster. It downgraded Sprint to underperform recently, and one of its analysts, Craig Moffett, expressed concern that the wireless carrier might go bankrupt.

Shortly after that news was released, Sprint investors chewed almost 5 percent off its share value.

Going all-in on iPhones is proving to be especially burdensome for Sprint, according to Moffett, and the carrier's sizable debt level doesn't help matters either. But that's not the only problem Moffett sees on the horizon.

Perhaps more worrisome is that Sprint could let technology pass it by. Verizon has so far led the charge into super-fast 4G LTE networks. AT&T is on the LTE bandwagon too, and both are spending big to get more LTE access to more of the cities they cover.

But it's an area in which Sprint is lagging. It sells WiMax service, but that's not a protocol next-generation smartphones are trending toward. New handsets now often feature LTE support, and Sprint's plans for that technology are proving slow to take off. It tried tying up a deal with LightSquared, but that effort ended in flames after the FCC repeatedly stuffed LightSquared's network proposal. Apparently its technology interferes too much with GPSsignals, though that's something LightSquared continues to deny.

Without a sizable LTE network, Sprint could begin to lag even further behind. The latest iPad includes LTE support, meaning there's a very good chance the next iPhone will too. If that comes to pass before Sprint can whip up some respectable LTE coverage, the company will have assumed billions of dollars in obligations in order to sell a product that can barely work to its full potential on its own network. And with T-Mobile announcing layoffs and call center shutdowns this week as well, it looks like Moffett's fears that the U.S. wireless market is beginning a slow fade into duopoly may prove true.

Tingling Tats

An inconvenient incoming call on a cellphone means different things in different situations. For moviegoers, it's a dirty look; for classical music concertgoers, it's social death; and for ninjas, it's actual death. Turning off the phone isn't a perfect solution either, if you really want to know that you're being called without being a pest to everyone around you. Vibration mode? Sometimes too loud, sometimes unnoticeable.

There has to be a way to silently find out that someone's calling without alerting anyone sitting nearby. Sight and sound alerts are out. Taste and smell alerts ... are not going to happen. What's left is the sense of touch, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) seems to have figured out a way to do it. The solution, of course, is a tattoo, which is always an excellent idea under any possible set of circumstances.

The company has filed a patent for a magnetic tattoo that would silently alert the wearer to notifications coming from a mobile device he or she was carrying around. So instead of irritating other people in the movie theater or missing a call entirely, you'd presumably be able to step outside and take a call once you felt a tingly feeling on your arm. Or ankle. Or your lower back if you're saucy. Or your face and neck if you're just that hardcore.

It might sound a little ridiculous at this point to get needled with ink over a cellphone. And there's no telling whether Nokia will actually go through with something like this at any point in the future. It's just a patent application the company's filed, and large tech firms constantly patent weird ideas they never end up using.

Then again, the idea of implantable personal tech isn't completely out of left field, at least not to sci-fi fans. And it's impossible to say what future technology users will be willing to put up with for the sake of convenience. Far enough in the past, the idea of carrying a phone around with you all day might have sounded like some kind of twisted punishment for misdemeanors.

Mass Reject

The "Mass Effect" series of games features one of the most developed and deeply imagined sci-fi worlds ever created for a video game. Its biggest fans will favorably compare it with "Star Wars" and "Star Trek."

But it seems the wrap-up to "Mass Effect" has stumbled into a hole that's all too common for popular, long-running science fiction sagas: The fans hate the ending.

It happened with "Battlestar." It happened with "Lost." "Indiana Jones" too, if you count that as sci-fi.

This time, though, superfans are doing more than hanging their heads and commiserating on message boards. Instead, they're lodging a complaint with the FTC about the game's makers, BioWare and Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS). They've also started a petition demanding a change to the ending.

It's one thing when a once-great artist loses the edge and puts out a finale to a long-running series that turns out to be kind of limp. Or when several talented writers paint themselves into a corner and end up tying things off with a bunch of nonsense for lack of an exit strategy. But in the case of "Mass Effect," some fans of the series claim the ending wasn't just bad -- it was false advertising.

The galled gamers say they were led to believe that various decisions they made and actions they took while playing the game would result in a wide variety of different endings to the series. Win the war, lose the war, save New Vegas from the Kilrathi, destroy Metal Gear's Triforce, whatever. I don't know the details; I've never played "Mass Effect." But the idea of multiple, very different endings based on in-game decisions isn't uncommon in role-playing games, and these players say "Mass Effect" did not deliver as advertised. They want EA and BioWare to make downloadable content that will serve as a more satisfying, multi-faceted coda.

But what is the FTC going to do about it? That's very hard to say. On one hand, it may just decide that all those promos and previews that led gamers to believe there'd be multiple endings don't reach the threshold of false ads. And with agenda items like cracking down on unsafe products that could actually physically hurt people and make them die, the commission might not have time to talk about the ending to a video game.

On the other hand, it is the FTC's job to stand up for aggrieved consumers, including gamers, and nothing aggrieves gamers more than when you mess with their games

Facebook on Passwords During Job Interviews: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Facebook has responded to reports of employers who insist on gaining complete access to prospective employees' Facebook accounts. Users, the network said, shouldn't be required to give up their logon info. Facebook warned employers that accessing a job seeker's account under such conditions violates the network's policies, infringes on the privacy of the user's friends, and could expose the employer to legal risks.

Reacting to recent reports that some organizations are demanding that job seekers turn over their Facebook passwords, the social network on Friday criticized the practice for undermining members' privacy expectations and security.

It also pointed out that such a move could expose employers who ask for passwords to dangerous liabilities and vowed to take action to protect the privacy and security of its users.
However, some observers have expressed skepticism about Facebook's motivation.
For example, "Facebook has in the past not been the best custodian of the information entrusted to it by consumers, and they've gotten a black eye for many things they've done," Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told TechNewsWorld. "I believe this provides them with an opportunity to be the savior of privacy."
However, John Simpson, consumer advocate at Consumer Watchdog, applauded Facebook's action. "I am often critical of Facebook's policies in many areas, particularly its all too often cavalier approach to users' privacy," he told TechNewsWorld. "They are completely correct here, and I support their position."

What the Brouhaha's About

Reports that some organizations and schools have been asking job seekers and students, respectively, for their Facebook passwords in order to closely monitor their social networking activities have made headlines recently.
For instance, Maryland's Department of Corrections is reportedly asking job seekers to log into and scroll through their Facebook accounts so their interviewers can see what topics they post messages about and who their friends are.
Some schools are either requiring student athletes to give coaches or compliance officers a degree of access to their Facebook pages by "friending" them or turning to software from social media monitoring companies such as Varsity Monitor to monitor them.
The resulting outcry over these practices has led Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal to begin drawing up a bill to ban employers from asking job seekers for access to their private Facebook accounts.
"I support [Sen.] Blumenthal's intention to explicitly outlaw the practice," Consumer Watchdog's Simpson said.

What Facebook Said

Facebook said users should never have to share their passwords, let anyone access their accounts, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of their accounts or violate the privacy of their friends.
It has made the sharing or soliciting of Facebook passwords a violation of its statement of rights.
Facebook also warns that employers may not have the proper policies and training to let reviewers handle private information, and that even if they do, they may have to assume liability for the protection of the information the reviewers have seen.
Further, Facebook pledged to take action to protect the privacy and security of its users, by engaging policymakers or initiating legal action.
Facebook representative Johanna Peace pointed TechNewsWorld to the company's blog poston the issue in response to a request for further comment.

No Suspension of Disbelief

"Ironic would be an understatement," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld regarding Facebook's announcement about protecting users' privacy. "It seems a classic example of do as I say, not as I do, especially coming close on the heels of the controversy earlier this week about Facebook changing its official language around what used to be its privacy policy."
Facebook last week posted proposed changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, substituting the term "data use" for "privacy policy" in a move that has privacy advocates in the United States and the European Union up in arms.
"The elephant in the room here is Facebook's coming IPO," King continued. "I've ... noticed a concerted effort to recast Mark Zuckerberg and company as mature, concerned leaders instead of the callow misfits [portrayed in the film] 'The Social Network.'"
Facebook "gains nothing from this invasion of privacy, so it's in its interest that this practice stop," Justin Brookman, director of the consumer privacy project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told TechNewsWorld

Great sling shot games that aren't named Angry Birds

Angry Birds Space is the big mobile game release this week, but there are plenty of slingshot games worthy of your iOS device

With the incredible success of the original Angry Birds, few iOS gamers were probably surprised that Angry Birds Space would rocket to the top of the iTunes App Store. I've been playing the game quite a lot over the past 24 hours, and though I've noticed some bugs (kill all pigs with one bird to get one star, anyone?), the new gravity fields, interesting levels, and new bird types definitely add something new to the game.

Angry birds isn't the only game in this genre, however. When Angry Birds took off at the iTunes App Store, several developers came out with their own version of the sling-shot game mechanic and many brought new elements to add to the fun.

This week's collection of iOS apps are all Angry Birds-like destruction games, but each have an interesting twist on the original game mechanic. The first offers a heavy metal theme as you smash monster trucks into structures. The second lets you blast ragdolls through intricate levels towards a target. The third mixes game genres to add liquid physics into the equation making for unique challenges.

You get to fire some fierce looking trucks into structures, each with their own abilities.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Trucks and Skulls Nitro(Free) is a heavy metal-inspired sling shooter where you'll need to launch trucks into structures in order to destroy each levels allotment of scary skulls. The somewhat cheesey distortion guitar audio provides the perfect backdrop for the action. Big explosions add to the excitement as you try to efficiently destroy everything on screen using the least amount of trucks possible.

The control system is only slightly different than Angry Birds in Trucks and Skulls Nitro. The truck sits on the launcher, and you touch and drag a button backwards to launch the truck through the air. Different trucks have different attributes, and as you go through the challenges you'll need to choose your shots wisely to get the most destruction possible out of the available trucks.

The real charm behind Trucks and Skulls Nitro are the big explosions that occur, well, pretty much all the time. Hitting one of the required skulls gives you a huge mushroom cloud, and hitting barrels of TNT only adds to the onscreen mayhem as you chain together more explosions. It's as though director Michael Bay got ahold of Angry Birds and decided to add his own infamous spin to the game.

Trucks and Skulls Nitro comes with several aptly named worlds like Hell's Highway, The Haunted Wastelands, Industrial Armageddon, and Demon Town, for a total of over 200 levels of action.

If you're a fan of the Angry Birds games and want a little more electric guitar and fire in your gameplay, Trucks and Skulls Nitro will keep you busy for a long time.

This level requires a precise shot to get to all the coins and hit target.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Ragdoll Blasters 3 (99 cents) is the third installment in the popular physics puzzle series, and this sequel is a solid offering with plenty for puzzle gaming fans. Like the first two Ragdoll Blasters, the game concept is simple: on each level, aim your cannon and fire the rag doll to hit the target. Of course it's never quite that easy; you'll also want to grab buttons for extra points, and maps provide plenty of obstacles to make it hard to get a perfect three-star score.

As the third game in a popular series, you would expect the game to have some polish, and Ragdoll Blasters 3 does not disappoint with sharp graphics, precise controls, and well-thought-out level maps. Along with trying to arc your shots to get as many buttons as possible, you'll need to use machines like pulleys and levers in certain levels to open up access to other parts of the map. Several levels have you tipping boulders off of platforms to activate pulley systems, and other levels require you to find other creative ways to clear your path to the target. The early levels are fairly straightforward, but as you progress you'll need to really look at the level and think to try to get all the buttons and the target in as few shots as possible. You also have the option to watch your replays--extremely handy when you're going for the perfect score and brainstorming new ways to finish a level.

Ragdoll Blasters 3 comes with five unlockable worlds, each with 20 levels, different themes, and unique obstacles. You can use your collected buttons to buy new rag doll types with special abilities like the Ice Ragdoll that glides across icy surfaces, or the Pudge Ragdoll that uses its extra weight (and girth) to knock down obstacles. These different rag doll types are particularly handy as you play through the later levels, with some requiring you use a specific rag doll to pass certain areas.

If you like the popular physics games like Angry Birds or Cut The Rope, Ragdoll Blasters 3 offers similarly simple controls, but a unique gameplay concept and plenty of extras will keep you coming back for more rag doll shooting action.

In this level called Belly Flop, you want to land in the middle of the chocolate milk to cause the biggest splash.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Coco Loco (99 cents) is another solid title (for bothiPhone and iPad) that seems to mix elements from hit iOS games Angry Birds and Where's my Water to make a fun game that's visually stunning while offering unique challenges.

In this game, it's not birds, ragdolls, or monster trucks, but instead you take control of a team of marshmallows (Marshies). The surreal premise in Coco Loco has you freeing marshmallows from the clutches of evil chocolate guardians, often by using hot cocoa to wash captured marshmallows to safety. The liquid physics play a huge role as you'll often knock something loose that sends liquid (cocoa) through the level. There's also gel-like obstacles where you'll need to fire an exploding marshmallow in and then set it off to clear it out in an explosion of bright pink liquid.

That's where Coco Loco really shines is in the visuals. There are four worlds currently, each with its own theme and each with 15 levels to conquer -- all of them extremely colorful with high res graphics. Like the other games in this genre, being efficient pays off, giving you three stars if you can finish in the least amount of shots.

If you want a really unique take on this sling shot puzzle genre with beautiful visuals and precision liquid physics, I can't recommend this game enough. This well-polished and silly game adds something more to the genre and is a great fit for any Angry Birds fan.