Dan's New Blog

After a 3-month hiatus, Google has resurrected google.cn. It only offers music search and text translation, but does sport a big honking link to Google Hong Kong. Six of one, half a dozen of the other as far as I’m concerned, but TechCrunch says Google “flinched“.

The Supreme Court upheld the Fed Circuit in denying patent protection for the Bilski energy hedging business method, but they didn’t, as many people hoped, rule on business method patents as a whole. The NY Times says they stuck to the “middle ground“. (Amazon can finally exhale on this one.)

Dell sold almost 12 million computers from 2003-2005 that they knew were junk. The problem was bad capacitors on the motherboard. The Times says this epitomizes the “decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies“.

Nope. But some people will. And I leave it to ‘em.

You know the old “freebie marketing” business story of King Camp Gillette — he gave away the razor so he could make more money selling disposable blades. Apple has discovered that you can make money on both. Today it announced that the App Store — the give-away part of the equation, designed to drive iPhone and iPad sales — has generated $429 million in revenue since it was launched 2 years ago. That’s 1% of Apple’s gross profit. Nothing to sneeze at, if you ask me, especially since it’s the result of other people’s work. Is this a great country or what?

Today U.S. District Justice Louis L. Stanton ruled against Viacom in its copyright-infringement suit against YouTube. Here’s some (subdued) crowing from the YouTube blog:

“Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.”

This is only the first round. The NY Times says Viacom is already working on its appeal:

“We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions. We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible. After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis. We look forward to the next stage of the process.”

Faced with the iPad juggernaut and a dual threat from Google (Android Kindle app and the upcoming Web-based bookstore), eReader manufacturers have done the only sensible thing they could do — they’ve lowered the price. Barnes & Noble’s Nook is now $149 for the wifi-only version; Amazon’s Kindle has dropped to $189.

I say make it $99 and we’ll talk.

Even so, we’re gonna pay, one way or another. The price of the reader may come down, but the price of the books will go up. It’s the iPod/iTunes model. And we’re already seeing it.

Btw, Om Malik thinks Amazon’s gonna win the eBook wars. I have to agree.

Don’t worry, she’ll hold together!
(You hear me, baby? Hold  together.)
– Han  Solo, to the Millenium Falcon

Adobe engineers are saying the exact same thing this morning as the final production release of Flash for smartphones has been released. One boo-boo and Steve Jobs will be all over it, saying “I told you so.”

I don’t know if this is bad news or good news, but early-adopters like me are cut out — you need Android 2.2.

Via.

This case drags on and on and on. And now, Wired reports, Michael J. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota wants a settlement rather than yet another trial. I wish him the best of luck with that.

The best of the best of the best:

• John Gruber focuses on the “retina” display (pun intended):

“[Apple is] using a new production process that effectively fuses the LCD and touchscreen — there is no longer any air between the two … The effect is that the pixels appear to be painted on the surface of the phone; instead of looking at pixels under glass, it like looking at pixels on glass. Combined with the incredibly high pixel density, the overall effect is like ‘live print’.”

• MobileCrunch reminds us that iPhone 4 is more than “the extremely high resolution screen, video chat capability with FaceTime, and the sexy new form factor”, and thus obligingly tells us “Everything you need to know about the iPhone 4“.

• Finally, TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid, a fellow Android user, throws a little smack at Apple fanboys and girls:

“But despite the fact that my phone doesn’t quite match up to the iPhone 4, at no point yesterday did I consider jumping back onto the iPhone bandwagon. My Nexus One doesn’t feel much slower than the iPhone … What’s more, I’ll be surprised if Android devices don’t surpass the iPhone’s hardware capabilities within the next four months or so. We’ll probably be seeing sharper screens, faster processors, and even integrated gyroscopes (another feature launching with the iPhone 4) on the next wave of devices. And from a software perspective, Android actually seems poised to start beating Apple on some fronts, namely its connection with cloud services … In short, more than ever it looks like Android and Apple are in a dead heat. And that’s a great thing for all of us.”

In the last 5 months I’ve covered the launch of the iPad and iPhone 4. I’m getting tired of Apple’s regularly-planned obsolescence cycles. I feel like I’m suffering from Apple Fetish Fatigue. (Or maybe it’s simply that I’m currently rereading Shop Class as Soulcraft. I’m having trouble with perspective here.)

Business Insider’s Chart of the Day shows us that the Evil Empire’s desktop chokehold is weakening. Their business plan is so 1990s.

… AT&T has done away with all-you-can-eat data for new customers. As of June 7 they will offer new iPhone/iPad users (and people with other smartphones) the choice of either 200MB for $15/month or 2GB for $25/month. An additional 1GB can be procured (I really wanted to write that) for $10/month. If you already have the unlimited data plan, you can keep it even if you upgrade your iPhone.

(Lemee see if I can get away with downgrading my daughter to the 200MB plan …)

Anyway, Wired says “AT&T’s Data Limits Rein In Cloud-Based Media Services“. I have to agree.