Time Warner Cable scales back iPad app channels

Time Warner Cable's iPad app.

(Credit:Time Warner Cable)

Justtwo weekson the App Store and Time Warner Cable is once again scaling back the number of channels available on itslive TV applicationfor theiPad. But unlike thelast time this happened, this crop could be gone for good.

Bowing to legal pressure from News Corp, Viacom, and Discovery, Time Warner Cable has removed 11 channels from the application, cutting away at the 32 it had offered before. Though a scant number when compared with home cable packages, which can number in the hundreds, the app represented the step toward taking that same lineup on the go.

The channels being cut this time around are: Animal Planet, Black Entertainment Television, Country Music Television, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, FX, MTV, National Geographic, Nickelodeon, Spike, and VH1.

Ina statement, the company said it would fight the move:

We believe we have every right to carry the Fox Cable Networks, Viacom, and Discovery programming on the iPad app. But, for the time being, we have decided to focus our iPad efforts on those enlightened programmers who understand the benefit and importance of allowing our subscribers--and their viewers--to watch their programming on any screen in their homes.

In the meantime, we will pursue all of our legal rights against the programmers who don't share our vision. The enthusiasm of our customers and the programming partners who have embraced the app, rather than those who are solely focused on finding additional ways to reach into wallets of their own viewers, has convinced us more than ever that we are on the right path.

We will continue to fight to ensure that our customers have access to the content they pay for, no matter which screen in their home they choose to view it on.

Part of that fight is bringing additional channels to the application in the near future."We will be providing replacement channels as quickly as we can, perhaps as early as tomorrow,"the company said on itsdedicated application site."You won't need to change anything or update your app in any way to receive these or the additional channels."

Reports that Time Warner Cable was being pursued with legal action by networkscropped up last week, with offense being taken that the communications company was overreaching by distributing content through something other than its set-top boxes.

"Our iPad app is colossally popular with pretty much everyone except for the management and legal teams at Fox Cable, Viacom, and Discovery networks,"Jeff Simmermon, Time Warner Cable's director of communications, saidin a poston the company's blog earlier today.

Despite the service only working for customers of Time Warner Cable TV and Internet services, as well as requiring Wi-Fi , Simmermon said more than 300,000 users have downloaded the application. In fact the initial influx of users was too much for the company to handle, forcing it tocut 17 of its channelstemporarily to cope with demand.

"While we've received our share of customer complaints about the app on Twitter and in the App Store, none of them have said 'We really wish this thing had fewer channels on it. It's just not fair to the programmers,'"Simmermon said.

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Gaming sites game Reddit, get caught

Reddit's gaming subreddit, where the efforts took place.

(Credit:CNET)

A trio of gaming sites has been caught getting users to vote stories into popularity on social-news siteReddit.

The effort, which had been run by a Reddit user called"MasterOfHyrule,"made use of multiple accounts to submit, vote, and comment on stories from gaming sites GamePro, G4TV, and GamrFeed. Those stories would then have a greater chance at making it to the front page of the site's gaming subcategory and possibly onto the front page of the site where even more traffic could be had.

After beingcalled out in a postby Reddit user Deimorz earlier today, all three have since issued apologies to the Reddit community owning up to the efforts. The legitimacy of G4's has been verified, however GamePro and GamrFeed's have not. CNET has reached out to both companies for independent confirmation.

Inits statement, G4 said that the company had originally found a Digg power user who also had other social networking accounts, including one on Reddit. G4 had traded games, then later money to this individual in return for them submitting stories to the social-news site.

"However, we didn't know the full extent of how he was achieving success on Reddit,"the company wrote."We had no idea that he had 20 accounts under his control. We also didn't know that he was using the other accounts to comment on his own submissions. That's on us 100 percent, we should have paid more attention to his methods."

Based on data pulled up by Deimorz, the first of the companies to begin the practice was GamePro nearly a year ago, with G4TV following three months later. Deimorz pegs GamrFeed to be the most recent, beginning four months ago. Out of that data, there is no determination of how many stories were affected, though user MasterOfHyrule was said to be"by far the worst"with"hundreds of submissions,"according to Deimorz' data.

Gaming the system on social-news sites is nothing new though presents a particularly challenging problem to site owners. Thesite's growthhas made it an increasingly lucrative target to sites that want to get a boost in traffic once stories are elevated to a promoted status. Reddit rival Digg faced similar challenges several years ago while trying to cope with an influx of users and groups that attempted to game its voting system. The company responded bychanging its algorithmto penalize group voting, thereby encouraging stories to be voted on by a more diverse group of users before getting promoted.

The site's spam filter can catch about 97 percent of submitted posts that are determined to be spammy, though the company is not able to go into specifics on its methods for fear of helping spammers bypass it, according to Erik Martin, Reddit's community manager.

"This is a little different because some of these sites have content,"Martin told CNET."It's not quite the same as someone who puts up a crappy infographic with a bunch of back links to their furniture site. These are Web sites that are publishing content."

"Usually the other thing that helps is that our users smell it,"Martin explained."But it's harder to smell it in gaming. I hope nobody in gaming gets offended by that. It's just much easier to smell it in other Reddits. Gaming has articles about commercial products with reviews, leaks of screenshots, conversations with marketing people and developers."

"What constitutes spam in the gaming Reddit is not the same as the cognitive psychology Reddit,"Martin continued.

Martin says the Reddit team still has to go through some of the data collected by Deimorz and its own filters to determine what to do next, though he made it clear that just because the sites in question are big media companies, Reddit won't pull any punches on taking action.

"If they have broken the rules, they'll be treated just like a mom and pop operation,"Martin said.

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Rebecca Black passes Bieber as YouTube's most hated video

Sometimes, you find things just when you're not looking for them.

I was amused for at least five or six secondsby the revelation thatJustin Bieber's"Baby"was the most disliked video on YouTube--yes, more than 1 million people with nothing better to do than register their hate--when I discovered that Rebecca Black had almost caught her hero.

Despite only being on YouTube for six weeks,the 13-year-old who achieved famebeyond her wildest musings had already registered the magic 1 million.

And then she was gone.

Suddenly, if I tried to click on her now more than infamous"Friday"music video,I was offered the newsthat the video had been taken down by the user because she had closed her YouTube account.

Could it have been that a mob of half-witted, green-eyed malcontents had driven her away, after more than 64 million views? Might it have been someone amusing themselves? Or might she not want the title of most hated YouTube video?

"Friday"'s removal seems to have happened very swiftly. Even her own new star-slick Web site,RebeccaBlackonline.com, was linking to the blank screen.

It would be rather sad, I thought, if such an iconic piece, a mere frippery of teeny amusement in a nasty little world, had been removed precisely because of the nasty little world.

But, just after I had contacted her new professional management wondering what might have happened, the video reappeared. Had there been a change of mind or a mere technical glitch?

What is clear is that the reappearance revealed that Black now stood at 1,190,767 dislikes, whileBieber's enjoyed a mere1,163,098.

I am sure it won't affect Black's career, in any other way than positively. She suddenly has so many famous friends, has appeared with Jay Leno and will soon, no doubt, find herself dueting with Bieber on some metropolitan stage. (He even sang a few bars of her song during a concert the other night in Europe.)

But still the venom wafts around like Tiger Woods' spittle. Are there really that many sad little snakes on YouTube's flat-headed plain? Oh, yes, there are.

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PS3 hacker's lawyers fire back at Sony

Round, um, 7? 8? Fight!

(Credit:Matt Hickey/CNET)

Things are getting even more interesting inone of the biggest jailbreaking cases currently in the courts. Stewart Kellar and his team of attorneys for George Hotz (aka GeoHot), on Friday filed a motion (PDFfromGrocklaw) to dismiss Sony Computer Entertainment of America'ssuit against their client--for a few reasons:

First up, they object to SCEA's attempts to establish jurisdiction of the case in Northern California. Hotz lives and works in New Jersey, and, as an individual and not a corporation, really doesn't have the cash on hand to traverse the country defending himself in a district court on the other coast.

SCEA claims (PDF)that some of the people who jailbroke their PS3s lived in Northern California and thus, it should be where the case is tried. Hotz's lawyers argue that this is an effort to stack the deck in SCEA's favor, as the U.S. District Court of Northern California has historically sided with technology companies over individuals.

On top of that, Hotz's lawyers argue that Hotz (and his fellow hackers) were working on the PS3, which is made and distributed by Sony of Japan. SCEA does not make or sell the PS3, they allege. The SCEA runs thePlayStationNetwork, or PSN. While they're both under the corporate umbrella of Sony, they're distinct legal entities. SCEA doesn't represent Sony Japan, or its consoles, the lawyers contend in the court filing.

SCEA maintains the suit is valid because Hotz logged on to the PSN under the user name"blockmanic."However, Hotz's team points out that there's allegedly no evidence blickmanic is Hotz. In fact, the machine that blickmanic used has a different serial number than any of the machines Hotz presented to the court, the filing says.

What's more, according to the court document, Hotz's team has found evidence on who blickmanic might be--and that person allegedly is not Hotz. They argue that there's no evidence that Hotz ever logged into PSN with a jailbroken PS3, which would be a violation of the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). In fact, they argue, there's no evidence Hotz ever accepted the PSN EULA at all--in fact, the EULA is part of the manuals that come with the PS3, and Hotz's were still sealed. If he didn't accept the agreement, his team says, then he couldn't possibly be in violation of it.

All of this, Hotz's side says, amounts to SCEA's lawyers overstepping the bounds of the discovery process and, thus, the case should be totally dismissed. But don't look for this to be over anytime soon. Sony, as a giant corporation, has more expensive lawyers at its disposal, so we're likely not done with this one.

We've e-mailed SCEA for comment on the latest filing, but it did not immediately respond.

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Radio Shack: Free gun with your Dish Network

Culture is a strange thing. Elements that appear normal in one culture--say, drinking a beer on the street when you're as old as 20--are reviled in another.

So one has to accept that pockets of humanity see the world in their own way.

However, a promotion by Radio Shack in Hamilton, Mont., might move one or two people to move there just to benefit from its full-bore imaginative core.

For the Ravalli Republic reportsthat the Radio Shack Super Store in Hamilton has a very fine sign of the times outside its store.

It reads:"PROTECT YOURSELF WITH DISH NETWORK SIGN UP NOW GET FREE GUN."

I know that in certain parts of America (slightly less so the rest of the world) guns are a huge incentive. They make the owner feel safer and, somehow, just a little bigger. And this isn't even the first technologically-inspired gun giveaway. A couple of years ago, a Missouricardealeroffered a free AK-47 with every vehicle sold.

Will people be shooting at flying satellite dishes?

(Credit:CC Roblisameehan/Flickr)

But somehow Dish Network is supposed to be a family-friendly value proposition. And to entice customers with guns seems not quite so family-friendly in an era in which people tend to misuse guns with such unfamily-friendly regularity.

Still, as the Hamilton Radio Shack owner, Steve Strand, told the Ravalli Republic:"I think it really, really fits the Bitterroot Valley."

Some may feel that gun ownership does, indeed, have bitter roots. But Strand, who claims the promotion has increased his business threefold since its inception in October, explained that customers do have to enjoy a background check once they receive their armored gift certificate. (Which is valid for a Hi Point 380 pistol or a 20-gauge shotgun)

He seems keen to add some cultural perspective."You'd be surprised how many women are interested in guns,"he told the Republic. Especially, it seems, women in their 60s and 70s.

He did admit, however, that Dish Network wasn't entirely armed with joy at news of this promotion.

Still, once this promotional volley is done, there will be another one coming down the pass. Yes, very soon, you'll be able to get a gun with your Direct TV purchase at this Radio Shack.

Though some might still struggle with the cultural roots of this inspiration, I am sure the Direct TV promotion will, again, be a shot in the arm for business.

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Moveable feast: iPad 2 or MacBook Air?

Here's a dilemma whose answer is potentially rife with geeky politics. Should I buy a 2010 MacBook Air or aniPad2? Both offer a veritable mobile feast of form and function.

To set the stage, you want to make the move to the 11.6-inch, 2.3-pound MacBook Air (MBA), but you have a hankering for the spanking-new 1.3-pound iPad 2, as well. Because money doesn't grow on trees, you have to make a choice. Which ultraportable device will it be?

I would submit that it's not an easy choice. Of course, the iPad 2 is cheaper, but it's hamstrung by its very essence: a glorified smartphone. On the other hand, its finely tuned multitouch interface makes it great for media consumption, and it's instantly usable anywhere because of the built-in 3G and feathery weight.

Here are a few big-picture items to consider. For the record, I have both a MacBook Air and iPad and use both every day.

3G:In this respect, the MBA is not the iPad's equal. The iPad 2 is offered with both Verizon and AT&T 3G. But wait. Apple may be addressing this. A recent patent filing by Apple shows a MacBook with an interesting 3G antenna, akin to the MagSafe connection on MacBooks (see graphic below).

MacBook Air

(Credit:Apple)

iPad 2

(Credit:Apple)

Media consumption:The iPad 2 is, in many user scenarios, superior to the MBA for browsing and media consumption because of the multitouch interface. Moreover, all of that has gotten even better with the iPad 2 owing to, among other things, the dual-core processor and improved graphics silicon.

Productivity:The iPad is not designed to be a productivity tool and does not come with a full-blownMacOS X or full-blown OS X applications.

I'll offer a few of salient examples. On the 11.6-inch MacBook Air with the full-blown OS X you can run handy little programs like Parallels, which lets you run Microsoft Windows. And, of course, you have the ability to run programs likeMicrosoft Officeand Adobe Photoshop. (Yes, the larger MacBook Pros are more suitable for Photoshop). On the iPad, you have to settle for less-than-satisfying app store productivity substitutes.

A 3G/4G MacBook may be in the works. That appears to be a MagSafe-like antenna.

(Credit:Patently Apple)

Price:The final arbiter is often price (mixed with the allure the iPad 2 now has: it seems to be sold out everywhere and everyone seems to want one).

The least expensive MBA is $999, while the most expensive iPad 2 is only $829. And most consumers, of course, opt for the even cheaper 16GB iPad 3G for $629 or the Wi-Fi only version for $499.

On price alone, it's no contest for many people.

Verdict:The quick-and-dirty verdict... on my bang-for-the-buck index the MacBook Air wins. In short, it's the best of both worlds--about as close as a featherweight clamshell laptop can get to an iPad.

You get both productivity software and great browsing and media consumption all in one device. And, lest we forget, it's a lot faster than the iPad. Intel processors crush the iPad's silicon in any performance benchmark. And this will be even more compelling when Intel's newest Sandy Bridge processors are added to the Air.

Both are great devices, but it comes down to one being more versatile than the other without being a lot more expensive.

(Note: I may be irking some readers by limiting the selection to two Apple products, but that's the scope of this post.)

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PreVue: How to watch a baby in utero

(Credit:Melody Shiue)

Let's just get right to it: This is not an article about soft porn. Neither is this man trying to eat what appears to be a seafood pasta dish out of his partner's belly.

However ill-conceived this illustration may be, it is an entirely realistic prediction of body positions if the beltlike device around the pregnant woman's belly is actually giving this man a view of an unborn baby.

Called PreVue, the concept gadget comes to usvia industrial designer Melody Shiueat the University of New South Wales in Australia, who just won a design award for it.

The device, which is supposed to fit over the pregnant woman's belly, comes with several layers of futuristic techie awesomeness (which is my way of saying I don't understand how it works, and quite possibly neither does Shiue), including an ultrasonic layer against the skin whose image is then viewed through a stretchable electronic textile layer that can actually expand with the belly.

Just press a button and presto, the fetus will be viewable in all its gooey glory.

Because this is just a concept, it's difficult to say if PreVue will actually work, let alone be popular, buthealth concerns about ultrasound exposurewill certainly make the device's path to the marketplace a circuitous one, possibly with a giant stop sign at the end.

In the meantime, we get to enjoy the illustration, marvel at the concept, and then ponder the type of humans we have become who lack the patience to wait until birth to gaze upon the little ones.

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Who is Apple's new Mac guy?

Apple's Craig Federighi, who is taking over for the departing Bertrand Serlet.

(Credit:Apple)

Craig Ferderighi is an Apple"boomerang."

Federighi, who's taking over fordeparting Mac veteran Bertrand Serlet, left Apple in February of 1999 for business software companyAriba, and wound up coming back 10 years later to help Apple build theMacOS, which ships on the company's desktop and notebook computers.

Now, according to Apple's announcement earlier this week, he's stepping into a role many are watching closely: he'll be running the Mac OS group at a time of uncertainty as to what, exactly, a computer is--what form factor it's in; what software it's using.

The Mac OS has played a crucial role in Apple's hardware strategy over the past decade. Unlike the case with Microsoft's Windows, you can only buy the Mac OS for Apple-made hardware, and the company has built a business out of trying to produce new iterations of it at a faster pace than competitors. The next step in the operating system's evolution, as unveiled by Appleback in October, is to bring some of the features and familiarities of the company's mobile iOS platform back to the Mac OS. How that integration happens, and where it's going, largely rests on who's in charge of the OS.

CNET reached out to Apple to speak with Federighi about his new role, but that offer was never taken up.

Federighi can most easily be described as a"geek god."He's a man who after buying an $8 million house in Los Altos, Calif., could still be found staying up late on community message boards,helping peopleget his company's product to work. Nearly two decades ago he was also aself-describedfan of martial arts star Jackie Chan and of bad haircuts.

Federighi's first stint at Apple began in 1996 afterApple acquired Next, the company founded by Steve Jobs after Jobs had left Apple a decade earlier. At Next, Federighi had been the Enterprise Objects Framework project manager.

EOF was launched by Next in 1994 as an object-relational mapping tool, giving developers a way to hook up multiple databases to one another and to the Web without having to write the code to make that happen. The technology would later become part ofWebObjects, Next's object-oriented Web application server, which Apple now packs in as part of its Xcode developer tool set.

In 1999, Federighi left his role as the director of engineering at Apple to join Ariba, a business software company that had just gone public. Federighi began there as the vice president of Internet services before later being promoted to executive vice president and chief technology officer. His final role before departing back to Apple was as Ariba's"user interface technology evangelist,"with the company having given the CTO spot toBhaskar Himatsingka.

Ariba continues to be one of the survivors of the dot-com bust. Following itsIPO in 1999, which was right around the time Federighi signed on, its stockmade a dramatic jump, only to come down again following the crash. The company continues to make commerce software and tools including its Commerce Cloud platform, which it says is used by more than 340,000 companies.

Inventor, forum-goer
Federighi is credited as a co-inventor on three U.S. patents, all of which are owned by Apple. The earliest of the bunch, titled"object graph editing context and methods of use"wasapplied forin 1996 and issued three years later to Next. Federighi is listed as the lead inventor on the technology, which encompasses parts of WebObjects. Following the first, a patent that wasfiled forin 1999 deals with"distributing and synchronizing objects."The third, which dealt with graphical user interfaces wasapplied forin 2001 and was a continuation of one of Apple's patent applicationsfrom 1997.

Federighi's technology background can be traced back to college. He got his masters in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, just an hour or so north of Apple's campus. There he also earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

While at UC Berkeley, Federighi penneda technical reportpublished by the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences group at the school's College of Engineering and co-authored with Lawrence A. Rowe, who currently sits as the president of the Fuji Xerox-owned subsidiaryFX Palo Alto Laboratory. The report detailed"a design of a distributed video-on-demand system that is suitable for large video libraries."Such a system was designed to serve video locally for those on Berkeley's campus, as well as over the Internet at large. The idea was that it could be used as a means for people to pull up things like lecture videos, along with personal videos and audio.

In doing research for a report on video editing systems two years earlier, in 1992, Federighi turned to aUsenetvideo recording forum to ask for help, asking for advice on where he could find references and articles. He also used the system tohelp finda fourth roommate for the shared house he was living in at the time, where he disclosed the group's aforementioned affinity for Jackie Chan movies and bad haircuts. In another posting from 1993, Federighijumped inon a thread about connecting floppy drives to Next computers, sharing his experience of having a disk drive literally go up in smoke after he accidentally reversed the connector cable:

"I tried installing both a TEAC FD-235J 2.88 MB floppy drive in my old '040 Next Cube and ran into some trouble. Apparently one must be extremely careful to get the cable to the floppy drive put on in the right direction. When I put mine on the wrong way and then hit the power-on switch on my keyboard, I heard some funny clicking on the drive followed by a little bit of smoke, and my computer didn't power up. When I reversed the direction of the cable, the Next started up and recognized the drive, but then came up with a 'fd: DISK UNINITIALIZED' message in the monitor window during start up, and failed to work thereafter. I assume that the initial smoke exhalation experience is the cause of its failure."

Federighi has since gotten his revenge on floppy drives, returning to work for the company that is credited, in part, withhelpingkill them off.

The new spotlight
Since rejoining Apple, Federighi has made two appearances in Apple keynote presentations. The first was during the unveiling of Mac OS X 10.6 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in 2009, the same year he came back:

More recently, he could be seen briefly during Apple's Back to Mac event, where the company first took the wraps off the upcoming point release of Mac OS X 10.7, dubbed"Lion."There, Federighi went through a quick, seven-minute demo of some of the headlining features that will make their way into 10.7:

Federighi is likely to get more of the public spotlight now that he's taking over for Serlet, who had been a regular during Mac keynote presentations at the company's annual Worldwide Developer's Conference. That's when Apple has historically taken the wraps off new versions of the Mac OS. And it's when the Mac product team shows off what's new and how it works to developers who plan to build applications on the operating system. The developer's conference cycle was knocked slightly off kilter with 10.7, when Apple first unveiled the upcoming operating system at an event to press.

The public spotlight will also be placed on the Mac OS team itself, since one of the big questions that remains is where the desktop operating system is headed. Will its quick release cycle remain, or will Federighi push to change the pace? And how much more of iOS, which was first billed as an offshoot of OS X, will the Mac OS absorb? Federighi now finds himself a larger figurehead in that debate.

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Feel free to toss around FirstLook spy bot

iRobot's FirstLook can be thrown from a height of 15 feet before it starts spying.

(Credit:iRobot)

iRobot is introducing a new pint-size spybot that users can throw or even submerge in water before it starts roving around and doing surveillance.

The 110 FirstLook is a rugged little remote-controlled machine that's 10 inches long and weighs less than 5 pounds. It has four cameras and IR lights for night work, as well as a pair of flippers to overcome obstacles and right itself (see vid below).

With a top speed of 3.5 mph, FirstLook can roll around for six hours per charge or operate for 10 hours while stationary. It's controlled from a wrist-mounted touchscreen remote, seen above.

Rugged like the battle-testedPackBot, FirstLook can survive drops of 15 feet onto a concrete surface, as well as immersion in water, according to IEEE Spectrum.

The robot can network with other FirstLooks to relay information over long distances. It can also carry payloads such as thermal imagers, radiation sensors, and up to a half-pound of explosives.

Now wouldn't that be a tasty little toy to play with? We'll get more info about FirstLook as details are made available.

(ViaIEEE Spectrum)

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Netflix streaming loses current Showtime TV shows

(Credit:Showtime)

At a time when many in Hollywood see Netflix as a threat, Showtime Networks said it will cut back the content it licenses to the company's streaming-video service.

This summer, when the current deal between Showtime and Netflix runs out, the new deal does not include any of the first-run series that currently appear on the premium-cable service.

Under the new deal, Netflix subscribers lose access this summer to such as shows"Californication and"Dexter."Showtime is owned by CBS, parent company of CNET. While past seasons of those shows will be pulled, Netflix will continue to stream episodes of"The Tudors"and other series that have gone off the air, Showtime said.

CBS cut a similar streaming deal with Netflix, offering only dated catalog titles such as"Family Ties"and"Star Trek"but no current shows.

Click the photo to read'Netflix spooks Hollywood more than ever.'

(Credit:Greg Sandoval)

For months, media moguls and studio executives have tried to label Netflix a threat to the TV and film industries. Two weeks ago, on a trip to Hollywood to meet with studio contacts, I was told that they would continue to supply Netflix with content but not their most valuable. In some cases not even their second-tier content.

The general message was that they simply can't afford to allow a discounter like Netflix to offer TV shows and films until the content had gone through the traditional distribution chain and all the value squeezed out. In other words, they want cable, pay TV services and local TV stations to get a crack at the shows and films first.

One studio source who wasn't as down on Netflix predicted that things would lighten up as the big studios learned how to correctly price their content for services such as Netflix. The backlash against Netflix is only a knee-jerk response to a service that grew 60 percent last year and now boasts 20 million subscribers.

More to come

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Apple sues Amazon over 'App Store' trademark

Apple is once again protecting its trademark turf, this time with a suit against Amazon that takes aim at the Web retail giant's use of the term"App Store."

The suit, which was filed last week and first reported byBloombergthis afternoon, goes after Amazon's use of the"App Store"name, which Apple filed a trademark for following the release of the firstiPhone.

The suit seeks to prevent Amazon from using the phrase on its site or in marketing materials, according to Bloomberg. Apple is also seeking damages.

Amazon spokesperson Mary Osako said the company had no comment. In a phone call with CNET, Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet said that the move was to keep people from getting confused.

"We've asked Amazon not to copy the app store name, because it will confuse and mislead customers,"Huguet said.

Amazon first announced plans to enter the world of mobile-application publishingin September, unveiling a $99 developer program and an upcoming storefront called the"Appstore"that will sell Android applications outside of Google's own Marketplace application. As part of that process, Amazon gets either 70 percent of the sale price, or 20 percent of the list price (depending on what's higher).

Besides Android, Amazon has hinted that it plans to expand into other operating systems, though that list is likely to not include Apple's iOS given the vertical nature both of the storefront, and the installation mechanism through iTunes on the desktop, as well as the App Store application on the mobile side.

While Apple plays offense on Amazon, it's been playing defense against Microsoft over the same trademark. In January, Microsoft filed a motionagainst the trademark application, saying that it was too generic. Apple's response to that was thenput to question by Microsoftearlier this month for trying to get around the font size, and length limits for legal briefs.

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Five ways the iPad 2 works on the buyer's subconscious

Apple Store at The Grove in the Beverly Hills area of Los Angeles. Lines are still forming for the iPad 2. When the line gets too long, the store truncates it by moving most of the people about a block away.

(Credit:Brooke Crothers)

Nothing succeeds like success. This maxim could be tweaked for theiPad2 to nothing sells like success. That's the opinion of a consumer behavior expert who looked at how the chronically sold out iPad 2 works on the buyer's psyche.

People crave what they can't get--another maxim that applies here. Consumers would happily pay up front to reserve an iPad 2 at their local store. But they can't. Apple isn't doing the reservation thing this time. So, they wait in long lines (which, by the way, are still forming early every morning at Apple stores in Los Angeles, where I live. And also count me as falling prey to this psychosis.)

"Why would {Apple} deny my money and a for-certain sale?"--Philip Graves,who has just published a bookon the psychology of shopping, asks in a publicist's note sent out this week.

"Whatever the cause,"Graves says,"here's why the iPad situation works psychologically:"

Heightened desirability:"It implicitly confirms the desirability of the item--it's a way of providing apparent social proof that this is a popular thing, and that's very attractive."

The adventure:"It creates discussion around each sale: suddenly buying one isn't just an acquisition, it's a story about serendipity or determination (or whatever); humans love stories, and the excitement gets attributed (and misattributed) to the product."

Loss aversion:"Perhaps the biggest win is that, when a customer does come across one in stock, his purchase mindset is completely different. The unconscious mind is running a process to protect us a lot of the time (loss aversion)--it's trying to make sure we don't feel bad in the future. Ordinarily, with aregularly available product, the process is focusing on whether we could buy the item more cheaply elsewhere, whether we really want it badly enough,whether we might find a better alternative down the line. When supply is restricted (and you see the same thing in housing booms) the loss aversionis switched to fear that NOT buying the product will result in regret: when will you see one again if you don't grab it now? You don't have theunconscious concern about finding one elsewhere because securing one at all is a result."

Wow factor:"In addition to all the other basic psychological drives that might cause us to want an iPad, you can add in or bolster several others because of the circumstances...now having an iPad (or iPad 2) has extra wow-factor, because it's less likely your friends will pull theirs out and say, 'Oh sure, I have one too.' People who have a strong competitive drive are also attracted to own one because it's a chance to be one up on other people.

The list price becomes a bargain:"Opportunists buy up stocks when they become available and sell them on auction sites like eBay. This creates the sort of price-skimming that retailers and brands could never get away with themselves (where the people with more money pay more because they can). Of course, people see this and you now have a price frame for the store item: people now see that they are getting an item that (some) people are prepared to pay $700 or $1,000 for, at the price of $499. All of a sudden the list price is a bargain."

The truth is, many people realize a lot of what Graves is saying and choose to ignore it. My advice: get in line, brother.

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Report: Digg co-founder Kevin Rose leaving Digg

Digg co-founder Kevin Rose.

(Credit:James Martin/CNET)

Diggmay have just lost one of its biggest supporters--and the guy who is credited with starting it all.

TechCrunchreportsthat Kevin Rose, who co-founded the social news site back in 2004 along with Ron Gorodetzky and Owen Byrne, has resigned from the company and is putting his energy into a yet unnamed start-up.

Rose relinquished his post as Digg's interim CEO in August of last year after filling in for four months following thedeparture of Jay Adelson, the company's CEO for five years. Rosewas replacedby former Amazon executive Matt Williams, who continues to run the day-to-day operations at the start-up.

Digg spokesperson Erin Walsh effectively denied TechCrunch's claims in an e-mail to CNET, saying Rose's role is the same as it has been since Williams came on as CEO."Matt Williams joined Digg as CEO more than 6 months ago and Kevin stayed on as founder and board member, nothing of which has changed."

Digg staffers also offered their 2 cents on a thread about the story on Digg.com, saying"don't worry, we're not slowing down any time soon,"and"Not to sound dramatic butthis news means pretty much nothingto people working on the site. Nothing is changing, we are working on bringing you guys more cool stuff."

During an on-stageinterviewwith Rose by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington at the blog's Disrupt conference in September, Rose dodged a question about whether he planned to remain at Digg for the next six months, saying only that"you get a little burnt out over time."

Along with Digg, Rose was also co-founder of Pownce, which closed down shortly after being acquired by Six Apart. Rose also holds investments in a number of companies, including Twitter, Gowalla, Foursquare, Ngmoco, Square, Zynga, and Facebook. One of Rose's most recent ventures has beenFoundation, a private newsletter and video service that subscribers can pay $3.99 a month to receive.

Digg, which lets users vote user-submitted news stories up or down, had originally been on the trajectory for a number of buyout deals. One$100 million offerfrom former Vice President Al Gore would have made Digg part of Gore's Current Media, and another from Google in 2008 would have put the company somewhere in the ballpark of $200 million. Google reportedlywalked away from that onein its final stages.Other suitersat the time were said to be Microsoft and two unidentified media companies.

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Microsoft and feds bring down spam-giant Rustock

It turns out that Rustock, purveyor of more email spam than any other network in the world, was felled last week by Microsoft and federal law enforcement agents. A lawsuit by Microsoft, unsealed at the company's request late today, triggered several coordinated raids last Wednesday that took down Rustock , a botnet that infected millions of computers with malicious code, in order to turn them into a massive spam-sending network.

"This botnet is estimated to have approximately a million infected computers operating under its control and has been known to be capable of sending billions of spam mails every day,"Richard Boscovich, Senior Attorney, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, wrote in ablog posttoday.

The Wall Street Journalfirst reportedthat it was Microsoft's digital crimes unit, working in concert with U.S. marshals, that raided seven hosting facilities across the country and seized the command-and-control machines that ran the network. Those are the servers that send instructions to the fleet of infected computers to dish out spam message hawking such items as phoney lottery sams and fake and potentially dangerous prescription drugs.The take down was known internally as Operation b107.

Hard drives seized yesterday at a hosting facility in Kansas City, MO.

(Credit:Microsoft)

Shutting down Rustock could put a huge dent in spam worldwide. Tech security giantSymantec estimatedlast year that Rustock was responsible for 39 percent of the world's spam. Global spam levels dropped 12 percent after Dutch authorities took down a large Bredolab last November.

Rustock's demise surprised the cybersecurity community last week, which often works in unison to corral spammers. According to an earlierJournal blog post, spam monitors didn't know why the botnet's activity halted. It was clear at the time that the effort was coordinated and complete.

Microsoft's digital crimes unit has long worked with law enforcement to track down and eliminate spammers, botnet and other malicious code creators. Government authorities rarely have the resources to spend on the investigations, something Microsoft willingly finances since it has a vested interest in keeping people emailing.

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Huge global pedophile ring busted, officials say

Police have arrested 184 people accused of participating in what authorities are calling the largest global pedophile network ever uncovered--and more arrests are expected, Europol said today.

Authorities infiltrated an Internet child pornography forum that was the center of the network and had as many as 70,000 members at one time, Europol said ina statement. About 670 suspects and 230 children have been identified in the investigation, officials said, adding that the children have been"safeguarded."

The Web site, which has been taken down, was traced to a server in Holland in 2009. Europol got a copy of it and rebuilt it offline to conduct a forensic investigation and gather digital traces that would lead back to the members.

The site operated as a"discussion only"forum to protect members from prosecution. People would make contact on the site and then use e-mail to exchange photos and videos, which has been found on seized computers, according to Europol.

The scale of the operation"broke new ground,"Peter Davies, a U.K. police chief who leads that country's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, toldThe Wall Street Journal."These offenders felt anonymous, but everything they did online was tracked using the digital footprint."

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Facebook to test Groupon-like deals service

Facebook will soon begin testing a service that will provide its members local discounts, a move that will put it in direct competition with daily-deals giant Groupon.

The service will be tested in Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, San Francisco, and San Diego, and will expand on the social-networking giant's Deals program, which offers users deals to members when they use Facebook Places to check in at local business, the company said. Members will be able to buy deals and share them with their friends on the network.

"Local businesses will be able to sign up to use this feature soon and people will be able to find deals in the coming weeks,"the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said in statement today.

Facebook plans to sell the deals through its own sales team, as well as working with partners such as Gilt City, Home Run, Pop Sugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, Reach Local, Zozi, and Open Table.

With 500 million members, Facebook will bring a sizable user base in its challenge for dominance in the deals market, which brought in $873 million in revenue last year and could bring in $3.93 billion by 2015, according to aprojectionfrom consulting firm BIA/Kelsey.

Chief among those competitors is Groupon, which has been riding meteoric growth with half-price massages, discounted restaurant meals, and travel bargains. Chicago-based Groupon, with 60 million users and more than 39 million deals sold in its two years in business, is expected to beef up its muscle with an initial public offering later this year.

In addition to Groupon, Facebook will have to contend with a host of"Groupon clones,"including deals site LivingSocial, which announced a$175 million investmentfrom e-commerce giant Amazon.com late last year.

Facebook will also face competition from Google, which over the past couple of years has been losing employee talent to the social-networking giant. Just a month after being rebuffed in a buyout offer of Groupon, Google confirmed in January that it's preparing tolaunch its own social-buying competitorcalled Google Offers.

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Sony mulls plans similar to Facebook-Warner deal

ASony Picturesexecutive said today that the film studio is"looking into"new Web distribution methods similar to the one announced yesterday by rival Warner Bros. Studios.

John Calkins, Sony Pictures digital exec

Warner Bros.' home-entertainment division said Monday that it will start renting movies via Facebook, starting with the 2008 hit"Batman: The Dark Knight."The offer is among the first attempts by a major media company to test the social network's potential as a distribution outlet.

Speaking on a panel during the Media Summit conference in New York, John Calkins, executive vice president of Sony Pictures' digital division, said distributing films through Facebook is a"great first step"in testing the power of social networks to sell films.

"Our view is that Facebook is certainly a viable pool for people interested in media content,"Calkins told the audience."If you can have fans do the marketing, that's a great idea...we're looking at things like that."

The reaction to the Warner Bros. announcement was similar to that in the forehead-slapping"could've had a V8"commercials. To some observers, the idea of trying to sell films to Facebook's 600 million worldwide monthly users is so obvious and logical that one of the big questions raised is why it hadn't been tried before.

The deal even inspired some pundits and Wall Street investors to question whether Facebook could threaten Web-video services from Netflix, Amazon, and Apple.

Calkins seemed hesitant to put Facebook in Netflix's league just yet, as did some of his other panel members. Some on the panel, which included executives from Yahoo and MTV, said that they doubted the studios would risk distributing $100 million films on a social network for a long time to come. One person called Facebook a"backstop"to more traditional distribution means.

John Penney, executive vice president for strategy at Starz, the pay TV channel that was one of thefirst to license contentfor Netflix's streaming content, said he sees the studios renting and selling movies through Facebook and other Internet services following the initial period when DVD sales are hottest.

"For the post-DVD window, that's where these new platforms {such as social networking} are becoming interesting,"Penney said."Batman is a library product. These will be mechanisms to offset the drop in DVD sales."

Sony's Calkins got the audience laughing by responding:"Why so negative?"

In truth, the six major film studios, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Disney, Sony, Paramount, and Universal are sensitive about all the media attention around waning interest in discs.

Last week, somestudio executives met with CNETand they conceded that DVD sales are in decline. That only tells part of the story, they said. There are lots of challenges facing them as they try to navigate the transition from DVDs to Internet distribution. This isn't an easy time for them. It's a walk on a razor's edge trying to give consumers the wide access to content and lower prices they now demand while maintaining healthy revenue and profits.

Consider that the music industry has been fighting the same Internet battle for much longer than the film sector, for over a decade now, and the results are mixed at best. Nonetheless, the studio managers I spoke with said they believe they can find profitable Internet-distribution models but it will take time.

At Wednesday's conference, Calkins joked that he attended on the condition that he be allowed to talk about UltraViolet. That's the technology standard that all the major studios are backing save for Disney.

By creating standards, such as common file formats, for participating consumer-electronics manufacturers and distribution services to follow, the studios intend to provide consumers with a means to play their films across a wide range of devices and services, just like the DVD does today. The No.1 priority is to entice film fans to start buying and collecting movies again.

Sony is one of the studios leading the UV charge."You'll have seamless access to your content, Calkins said."You can make the argument that it's better than the DVD because you can watch your movies from a hotel in Taipei and you didn't have to travel with your discs."

Hopes are high for UV, but the studios aren't marrying themselves to any one Internet distribution service.

They still plan to directly pipe movies into homes while the films are still in theaters with Premium Video on Demand (PVOD). They will distribute through the Internet services of the cable companies, theXbox, and thePlayStation. They will sell and rent films through services such as Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Vudu, and yes, Facebook.

The fact that Warner Bros. was the first to stick a toe into Facebook waters wasn't an accident. The studio is among the most aggressive of the big six to test and adopt new technologies. In 2006, the studio was the first to sign a distribution deal with the creators of the BitTorrent software. Last year, Warner Bros. struck a groundbreaking agreement with Netflix that gave the Web's top video-rental service access to more streaming content in exchange for a 28-day moratorium on rentals of new releases. The move was designed to protect Warner Bros. DVD sales.

More recently, the studio began making some catalog titles available as iPad andiPhoneapps.

Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner's digital distribution and the man who approved the Facebook project, is a big booster for making content available online. Some of his ideas were likely shaped by his experiences at Sony Music, where he worked before moving to Warner Bros., in 2007.

During a speech he made in 2008, Gewecke said that when he started in music, CD sales were healthy and piracy wasn't a factor."He added:"We know how that changed."

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To cut LED lighting costs, Bridgelux rides silicon

To get the same economics of the computer semiconductor industry, the LED lighting world needs to start manufacturing on the same equipment, says Bridgelux CEO Bill Watkins.

The LED light source maker said today that it demonstrated the production of LED light chips on silicon, a transition that will cut production costs by 75 percent and ultimately result in cheaper, energy-efficient light fixtures. Bridgelux intends to start making LEDs, which will be fitted into bulbs made by other companies, with the process in two or three years.

An 8-inch gallium nitride on silicon wafer.

(Credit:Bridgelux)

Light fixtures with LEDs use semiconductors made by growing Gallium nitride (GaN) on a substrate of sapphire or silicon carbide. Using GaN on silicon, Bridgelux engineers have been able to get the same light quality and comparable efficiency to today's commercial products, the company said.

Silicon Valley-based Bridgelux is now making its LEDs on 2-inch and 4-inch wafers. But the silicon process technology will allow it to get higher yields by contracting with silicon chip makers, which will lower production costs.

"We can partner with a semiconductor company to take advantage of their fully depreciated fab and manufacture at 8-inch scale, which you probably can't do on sapphire, with very minor tweaking to existing machines,"Watkins said."That's why the semi companies are all over this space--they want to put this on silicon."

Bridgelux has been able to get about 135 lumens per watt, which is about what the efficiency of GaN was on sapphire two to three years ago. For a light bulb with the color temperature of a typical halogen, that translates to about 85 lumens per watt, said Jason Posselt, the vice president of marketing.

General lighting play
Researchers for years have tried to put GaN on silicon, but there are challenges in making thetwo materials work together, notably the differences in thermal expansion. One of the common problems is defects or cracks that occur on the chip.

Rather than a single breakthrough, Bridgelux engineers have made a few changes to the manufacturing process, Posselt said. There still are engineering challenges, but the company is confident it can make the transition to GaN on silicon.

The move to silicon, which other companies are pursuing, could significantly knock down the price of LEDs for general lighting, since the LED light sources are about half the cost of a consumer bulb, said Posselt.

Because they are efficient and controllable, LEDs are already being adopted by retail outlets and other commercial customers. In the past year, LED bulbs designed for home use have come out as well, but at significantly higher prices than traditional bulbs.

There are 40-watt and 60-watt equivalent LED bulbs sold at large retail outlets, such as Home Depot and Lowes, with prices in the range of $18 to about $40. Lighting manufacturers expect prices to go down steadily for the LED bulbs, some of which are rated to last 25 years and are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs. But in the near term, the purchase price will still be higher than existing technologies.

Moving to a cheaper manufacturing process, coupled with ongoing efficiency improvements of GaN, will help push LED lighting into general lighting based on purchase cost, Posselt said. Watkins, the former CEO of disk driver maker Seagate, said the manufacturing technology means LED companies can lower prices faster.

"The quantity and quality of light you can now get out of an LED source has really dramatically improved,"Watkins said."Now the issue is cost and how to get the cost lower."

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YouTube makes Next New Networks buy official

(Credit:Next New Networks)

Video host YouTube today announced that it has acquired Web video production company Next New Networks.

YouTube says that the newly-bought production team will be on the forefront of testing new YouTube technologies, as well as acting as an incubator for up and coming video talent.

"Within YouTube, Next New Networks will be a laboratory for experimentation and innovation with the team working in a hands on way with a wide variety of content partners and emerging talent to help them succeed on YouTube,"wroteTom Pickett, who is YouTube's Director of Global Content Operations on the company's blog.

"We are thrilled with the new capability the team brings and the positive impact it will have making our YouTube partners more successful,"he continued.

Along with the acquisition news, Pickett also outlined the company's new"YouTube Next"program, which he described as"a new team tasked with super-charging creator development and accelerating partner growth and success."Those efforts, Pickett said, included outreach programs like meet-ups and community events alongside training and education programs.

Reports that YouTube was eyeing Next New Networks as an acquisition target were first reported by The New York Timesback in December, though new tidbits on the sale had all but dried up since then. Pricing details of the deal have not been disclosed.

Other Google acquisitions that have been YouTube-related include annotations toolOmnisio in 2008, online video platformEpisodic in Aprilof last year, and sentiment analysis and recommendation engineFflick just last month. Out of all those, this is by far one of the boldest moves in turning YouTube into an original content creator of its own, something competitors like Microsoft are saidto be cooking upto challenge existing TV content networks for viewership on Internet-connected TVs and set top boxes.

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Beating a robot at rock-paper-scissors

editor's notebookSince you've all no doubt shut off your smartphones for the"National Day of Unplugging"and hence can't rely on Angry Birds to help you procrastinate on doing your taxes (you have just a little more than a month, you know), I'll gallantly help you shirk (with an assist from the illustrious New York Times).

The Times' Web site is proudly making it difficult to get anything constructive done today, by offering up an interactive feature in its Science section that lets you try out yourroshambochops against a computer opponent.

OK, it's not"Jeopardy"versus a mainframe, but this digital version of rock-paper-scissors is still a whole lot of fun (and more addictive than even--shall I say it?--Charlie Sheen could manage). Especially since the Times' art department has created a great robot hand that lets you conjure up images of your frustratingly smug android rival, getting you that much more involved.

After being pulverized far too often by The Times' Watson wanna-be (I played the"Veteran"robot, not the"Novice"), I suddenly hit on a brilliant strategy (with a little help from the note that's perched innocently above the robot opponent's window). Almost immediately things began to change: Three games to one in my favor, with no ties. Take that, youHAL-9000reject.

So, here's the deal: If you want to avoid my"spoiler,"jump over tothe featureand play a few games. Do your best. (Good luck.) Then come right back and read the next paragraph. I'll even put a great big image right here so the 'graph will get pushed down the page and you won't be able to peek. OK: bye for now. Be sure to come back soon, or I'll get busted for driving traffic away from our site.

Neck and neck with C-3PO.

(Credit:Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

Ah, you're back. Good. I was afraid you'd be gone all day. In case you didn't figure it out on your own, my brilliant strategy--the secret to success in robo-roshambo--is simply this: Cover everything except your Rock, Paper, and Scissors buttons and play totally randomly. In other words: Be completely brainless. Then the droid's statistical database of several hundred past games and the patterns that emerged from them becomes totally useless.

So there it is: Don't think.

As for my brilliant strategy when it comes to writing blog items? I'll leave that one for another time.

Thanks for playing.

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Google buys German security firm Zynamics

Zynamics CEO Thomas Dullien, aka"Halvar Flake"

(Credit:Zynamics)

Google has acquired German security firm Zynamics, which was founded in 2004 by respected security expert Thomas Dullien, better known in the hacking community as"Halvar Flake."

"We're pleased to announce that Zynamics has been acquired by Google!"read a short statement provided onZynamics' blog."If you're an existing customer and do not receive our e-mail announcement within the next 48 hours, please contact us at info@zynamics.com. All press inquiries should be sent to press@google.com."

Asked for comment, a Google representative provided this statement:"We're delighted to have the Zynamics team aboard and hope their tools and skills in fighting malware will help us better protect Google's users."

Details of the deal were not disclosed.

Zynamics sells software, including BinDiff, BinNavi and VxClass, that allow companies to learn about and prevent security weaknesses and analyze malware.

Dullien often speaks at security events in the U.S.In 2007, he was scheduled to present a talk at DefCon, but was denied access at the border after U.S. Customs agents found his security research materials in his luggage and claimed he was subject to H-1B visa regulations.

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