Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Google Code Blog: Check out Google’s latest cloud technologies at Cl...
Google Code Blog: Check out Google’s latest cloud technologies at Cl...: "There’s an exciting new event happening December 6th dubbed the “Woodstock for Cloud Developers.” We’ll be participating at Cloudstock, an i..."
Google Code Blog: Edmunds partners with Google to make the web faste...
Google Code Blog: Edmunds partners with Google to make the web faste...: "Note: This is a guest post from Ismail Elshareef, who is the Principal Architect at Edmunds.com. Thanks for the post and for making the web..."
Google Code Blog: Random Hacks of Kindness #2 - Come hack for humani...
Google Code Blog: Random Hacks of Kindness #2 - Come hack for humani...: "On the weekend of December 4 and 5, hackers will gather in cities around the globe to create software solutions that make a difference. G..."
Google Code Blog: HTML5, browsers, and books, twenty years later
Google Code Blog: HTML5, browsers, and books, twenty years later: "Update: Thanks for all the interest and feedback on 20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web! We hope to open-source the code in the c..."
Monday, November 22, 2010
A First Look at iOS 4.2 on the iPhone (screenshots)
It's not out for the public yet, and we still don't know when it will come, but the Gold Master for Apple's iOS 4.2 became available this week. Apple is still mum on the official features list, but we found a lot of new goodies after we downloaded and installed the developer version on the iPhone 4. The iPad will get additional changes from iOS 4.2, which we've covered in a separate photo gallery.
Nothing is particularly Earth-shattering, but we welcome the updates in any case. You'll find interface tweaks, new personalization options, and added functionality.
First, off is a new master volume control that's accessible from the Home screen. To get there, double tap the home button to get the standard multitasking menu. Then, if you swipe all the way to the left (past the iPod controls), you'll see a new master volume control.
Nothing is particularly Earth-shattering, but we welcome the updates in any case. You'll find interface tweaks, new personalization options, and added functionality.
First, off is a new master volume control that's accessible from the Home screen. To get there, double tap the home button to get the standard multitasking menu. Then, if you swipe all the way to the left (past the iPod controls), you'll see a new master volume control.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Should Gmail Be Worried About Facebook?
You've no doubt heard or read about Facebook's new messaging announcement this week. If not, the company announced a new messaging system to combine email, SMS, IM, Chat, and other forms of online communication, bringing them into one inbox. Along with this comes @facebook.com email addresses. CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the system as "starting from scratch" as opposed to being a Facebook email product.
Pat Matthews, SVP of RackSpace's cloud computing business, which includes business email, shared some thoughts with us about the impact Facebook's new offering will have on the email industry. RackSpace itself powers business email for over 2 million users.
"I don't think Facebook will encroach on business mail, at least not anytime soon, mostly because of the security and privacy implications," Matthews tells WebProNews. "Facebook is very consumer oriented and I don't see this crossing into business anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg has specifically stated the company is all about consumers. His focus is leading them to greatness."
"I do think consumer mail is at risk," he adds. "Consumers live in Facebook, not on Google. I think that Gmail and AOL should be worried."
Still, Google has Google Apps going for it, which it has now expanded to encompass most of the company's offerings. That could play a significant role in keeping businesses using Google, though Gmail has always been a part of Google Apps. I have to wonder if Google's news wasn't somehow spurred by Facebook's.
"Facebook users will use Facebook mail as an extension of their already popular messaging services," says Matthews. "I have no doubt this will be extremely popular."
"Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the planet," he adds. "I think that they will influence all types of applications, business and consumer."
It's no secret that businesses are already placing a great deal of emphasis on reaching Facebook users, and it will be very interesting to see the impact the new messaging system has on their strategies. I've already speculated that we'll start seeing more businesses utilizing personal profiles to try and get into Facebook users' primary inboxes (as the system filters messages that aren't from "friends" into a secondary inbox).
Social media and email have been getting closer and closer with one another for some time already. "In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, who predicts 20% of employees will use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014.
"Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles," she said. "However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”"
When asked what Facebook's new system means for the larger trend of social networking and email converging, Matthews told WebProNews, "Consumers want one view for many things but they also want very different views for their personal and business lives. This is why I really think Gmail should be worried."
It is worth noting that our conversation with Matthews took place before Google's announcement, so I'll have to find out if this changes his opinion on that.
What do you think? Should Gmail be worried?
Pat Matthews, SVP of RackSpace's cloud computing business, which includes business email, shared some thoughts with us about the impact Facebook's new offering will have on the email industry. RackSpace itself powers business email for over 2 million users.
"I don't think Facebook will encroach on business mail, at least not anytime soon, mostly because of the security and privacy implications," Matthews tells WebProNews. "Facebook is very consumer oriented and I don't see this crossing into business anytime soon. Mark Zuckerberg has specifically stated the company is all about consumers. His focus is leading them to greatness."
"I do think consumer mail is at risk," he adds. "Consumers live in Facebook, not on Google. I think that Gmail and AOL should be worried."
Still, Google has Google Apps going for it, which it has now expanded to encompass most of the company's offerings. That could play a significant role in keeping businesses using Google, though Gmail has always been a part of Google Apps. I have to wonder if Google's news wasn't somehow spurred by Facebook's.
"Facebook users will use Facebook mail as an extension of their already popular messaging services," says Matthews. "I have no doubt this will be extremely popular."
"Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the planet," he adds. "I think that they will influence all types of applications, business and consumer."
It's no secret that businesses are already placing a great deal of emphasis on reaching Facebook users, and it will be very interesting to see the impact the new messaging system has on their strategies. I've already speculated that we'll start seeing more businesses utilizing personal profiles to try and get into Facebook users' primary inboxes (as the system filters messages that aren't from "friends" into a secondary inbox).
Social media and email have been getting closer and closer with one another for some time already. "In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only," said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner, who predicts 20% of employees will use social networks as a main business communication tool by 2014.
"Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles," she said. "However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”"
When asked what Facebook's new system means for the larger trend of social networking and email converging, Matthews told WebProNews, "Consumers want one view for many things but they also want very different views for their personal and business lives. This is why I really think Gmail should be worried."
It is worth noting that our conversation with Matthews took place before Google's announcement, so I'll have to find out if this changes his opinion on that.
What do you think? Should Gmail be worried?
Friday, November 19, 2010
SIM cards to grow beyond mobile phones
The world's largest mobile phone network operators today revealed an effort to expand the GSM wireless communications technology to navigation devices, cameras, handheld gaming systems, music players, and more starting in 2012.
The GSM Association, the consortium overseeing the widely used mobile phone network technology, said a task force of members including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, China Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom has begun working on adapting SIM cards so they can be embedded in many more devices than phones. SIM cards are small, removable chips that provide phones an identity on GSM wireless networks, but the embedded SIM will be more an intrinsic part of devices and will be able to be activated remotely, the GSMA said.
GSM technology began its life as a technology for phone calls, but with today's 3G and just-arriving LTE incarnations, it's used for data transfer as well. The embedded SIM effort signals a further growth of the GSM lineage beyond just voice needs.
So far, SIM cards haven't made it far beyond mobile phones, though some tablets such as the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab and some laptops include them. But it's easy to see why mobile phone network operators would be interested: mobile connectivity is ever more important, Wi-Fi networks are an incomplete patchwork, WiMax at least thus far hasn't lived up to its promise of bathing large areas with network access, and there's abundant subscription money to be made in connecting new devices to the Net.
"As our industry moves from connecting phones to connecting a wide range of devices, it is apparent that the embedded SIM could deliver even greater flexibility," GSMA Chief Executive Rob Conway said in a statement.
One trick will be to get new devices onto wireless networks without overtaxing the networks even more. A camera uploading 100MB worth of photos from the trip to the zoo or a media player downloading the new tunes and TV shows has the potential to bring new, heavy data demands to networks, which today are struggling to keep pace with new-generation smartphones. Still, it is possible that those new devices would use the network more sporadically, helping ultimately to bring more subscriber fees to fund carriers' network construction and upgrades.
Another issue is battery life. Power concerns have helped keep Wi-Fi out of many devices, such as cameras, since transmitting and receiving radio signals requires energy. Adding wireless network connectivity also increases the cost of the device along with whatever flat-rate or subscription plans.
Finally, there are carrier issues that could play a role, depending on how the wireless networking is implemented. Customers might not like buying a wirelessly connected camera if it's locked to a particular carrier's network, for example.
One specific use case the GSMA mentioned: electronic payments using near-field communication (NFC) technology, in which payments can be made by holding a device close to payment station that communicates wirelessly. Presumably a network connection would help considerably in processing the transaction in conjunction with a person's financial institutions. A mobile phone, not some wirelessly connected music player, would seem a more likely candidate for becoming an electronic wallet. But not everyone has a phone, and embedded SIMs could make it easier to make an e-wallet out of a device such as a child's iPod that doesn't have telephone abilities.
Near-field communications are a hot area right now. Google CEO Eric Schmidt touted an upcoming Android phone that supports near-field communications, and there are rumors that next-gen iPhones could have NFC abilities, too. And U.S. carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are building a mobile payment network called Isis to enable near-field communication payments.
"The embedded SIM will provide assured levels of security and portability for consumers, as well as provide additional functionality for enabling new services such as e-Wallet and NFC applications," Conway said.
On the embedded SIM task force to develop the technology are representatives from some of the world's largest carriers: AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom Orange, KT, NTT Docomo, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone. They'll cooperate with with SIM manufacturers, and plan to release an analysis of market requirements by the end of January, the GSMA said.
The GSM Association, the consortium overseeing the widely used mobile phone network technology, said a task force of members including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, China Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom has begun working on adapting SIM cards so they can be embedded in many more devices than phones. SIM cards are small, removable chips that provide phones an identity on GSM wireless networks, but the embedded SIM will be more an intrinsic part of devices and will be able to be activated remotely, the GSMA said.
GSM technology began its life as a technology for phone calls, but with today's 3G and just-arriving LTE incarnations, it's used for data transfer as well. The embedded SIM effort signals a further growth of the GSM lineage beyond just voice needs.
So far, SIM cards haven't made it far beyond mobile phones, though some tablets such as the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab and some laptops include them. But it's easy to see why mobile phone network operators would be interested: mobile connectivity is ever more important, Wi-Fi networks are an incomplete patchwork, WiMax at least thus far hasn't lived up to its promise of bathing large areas with network access, and there's abundant subscription money to be made in connecting new devices to the Net.
"As our industry moves from connecting phones to connecting a wide range of devices, it is apparent that the embedded SIM could deliver even greater flexibility," GSMA Chief Executive Rob Conway said in a statement.
One trick will be to get new devices onto wireless networks without overtaxing the networks even more. A camera uploading 100MB worth of photos from the trip to the zoo or a media player downloading the new tunes and TV shows has the potential to bring new, heavy data demands to networks, which today are struggling to keep pace with new-generation smartphones. Still, it is possible that those new devices would use the network more sporadically, helping ultimately to bring more subscriber fees to fund carriers' network construction and upgrades.
Another issue is battery life. Power concerns have helped keep Wi-Fi out of many devices, such as cameras, since transmitting and receiving radio signals requires energy. Adding wireless network connectivity also increases the cost of the device along with whatever flat-rate or subscription plans.
Finally, there are carrier issues that could play a role, depending on how the wireless networking is implemented. Customers might not like buying a wirelessly connected camera if it's locked to a particular carrier's network, for example.
One specific use case the GSMA mentioned: electronic payments using near-field communication (NFC) technology, in which payments can be made by holding a device close to payment station that communicates wirelessly. Presumably a network connection would help considerably in processing the transaction in conjunction with a person's financial institutions. A mobile phone, not some wirelessly connected music player, would seem a more likely candidate for becoming an electronic wallet. But not everyone has a phone, and embedded SIMs could make it easier to make an e-wallet out of a device such as a child's iPod that doesn't have telephone abilities.
Near-field communications are a hot area right now. Google CEO Eric Schmidt touted an upcoming Android phone that supports near-field communications, and there are rumors that next-gen iPhones could have NFC abilities, too. And U.S. carriers AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are building a mobile payment network called Isis to enable near-field communication payments.
"The embedded SIM will provide assured levels of security and portability for consumers, as well as provide additional functionality for enabling new services such as e-Wallet and NFC applications," Conway said.
On the embedded SIM task force to develop the technology are representatives from some of the world's largest carriers: AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom Orange, KT, NTT Docomo, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless, and Vodafone. They'll cooperate with with SIM manufacturers, and plan to release an analysis of market requirements by the end of January, the GSMA said.
Senate panel approves domain name seizure bill
A controversial proposal allowing the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy is closer to becoming a federal law.
After a flurry of last-minute lobbying from representatives of content providers including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a Senate committee approved the measure today by a unanimous vote.
In the last week, support for the bill known as COICA, for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, broadened beyond groups traditionally active in online copyright disputes to include the Newspaper Association of America, which said the legislation was needed because online piracy "undermines the investments that newspapers make in journalism." Labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, argued that American workers "have suffered significant harm due to theft of copyrighted and trademarked goods."
An ad appeared in a newspaper targeting Capitol Hill yesterday signed by groups including Major League Baseball, the NFL, Nintendo, and Viacom. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce pressed Congress to move quickly, and even Rob McKenna, Washington state attorney general, signed on to the effort.
"Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from de-valuing American property," Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman, said after today's vote. "We congratulate Chairman Leahy and Senator Hatch for their leadership on this bill and to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its action today." (Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, are cosponsors of COICA.)
The sentiment is not universal: Since its introduction in September, COICA has alarmed engineers and civil liberties groups, who say that it could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger even some legitimate Web sites. Its wording says that any domain name "dedicated to infringing activities" could find itself in the U.S. Department of Justice's prosecutorial crosshairs.
Peter Eckersley, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote earlier this week that the bill will create a 1950-style Hollywood blacklist with the government deciding which Web sites are legitimate or not. The federal government will be forced "into the swamp of trying to decide which websites should be blacklisted and which ones shouldn't," Eckersley said. "And they're going to discover that the line between copyright infringement and free political speech can be awfully murky."
At the same time, a group of law professors wrote an open letter (PDF) to the Senate saying the law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment and "would set a dangerous precedent with potentially serious consequences for free expression and global Internet freedom."
Someone who knows the Internet Protocol address -- the IP address for cnet.com, for instance, is currently 216.239.113.101 -- would still be able to connect to the Web site even if the computer that normally translates a domain name into its numeric address pretends not to know it.
If all copyright- and trademark-infringing Web sites were hosted in the United States with their Webmasters living on U.S. soil, Leahy's COICA would be mostly unnecessary. A straightforward copyright lawsuit of the sort that the RIAA and the software industry have spent years perfecting would suffice.
But that's not the case. Sites like the Russia-hosted MP3Sparks.com are accessible around the world, even though they almost certainly violate U.S. copyright law. ThePirateBay.org in Sweden has not only survived what seem like innumerable attempts to shut it down, but its operators take special pains to mock copyright lawyers who write cease-and-desist letters meant to be both earnest and threatening.
A Web site is in danger of having its domain seized (or having U.S. Internet providers encounter a sudden case of amnesia when their customers try to visit it) if it is "primarily designed" and "has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than" offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. Counterfeit trademarks -- that's why Chanel, Nike, Tiffany, and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton also signed the letter -- are also included.
The wording is significant. Because the phrase "providing access" appears, that would include specialty search engines including The Pirate Bay that provide links to copyrighted works, even if the actual files are available through BitTorrent elsewhere.
If COICA becomes law, domain name registries such as Verisign, which owns the rights to .com, .net, .tv, .cc, and others would find themselves under new and uncomfortable legal pressure. The .org registry has been run by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. (The law professors' letter says: "For the first time, the United States would be requiring Internet Service Providers to block speech because of its content.")
But registries for top-level domains in other countries would remain unaffected, and The Pirate Bay, perhaps as a precautionary measure, already owns thepiratebay.se. Americans interested in free (if illegal) downloads could switch to an offshore domain name service or visit The Pirate Bay's IP address at http://194.71.107.15, which means that this congressional effort might accomplish less than its backers would like.
One open question: whether the lame duck Congress currently in session has time to enact COICA, which would mean votes in the House of Representatives as well. Even with this breadth of support, the odds are against it.
After a flurry of last-minute lobbying from representatives of content providers including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a Senate committee approved the measure today by a unanimous vote.
In the last week, support for the bill known as COICA, for Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, broadened beyond groups traditionally active in online copyright disputes to include the Newspaper Association of America, which said the legislation was needed because online piracy "undermines the investments that newspapers make in journalism." Labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, argued that American workers "have suffered significant harm due to theft of copyrighted and trademarked goods."
An ad appeared in a newspaper targeting Capitol Hill yesterday signed by groups including Major League Baseball, the NFL, Nintendo, and Viacom. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce pressed Congress to move quickly, and even Rob McKenna, Washington state attorney general, signed on to the effort.
"Those seeking to thwart this bipartisan bill are protecting online thieves and those who gain pleasure and profit from de-valuing American property," Mitch Bainwol, RIAA chairman, said after today's vote. "We congratulate Chairman Leahy and Senator Hatch for their leadership on this bill and to the Senate Judiciary Committee for its action today." (Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, are cosponsors of COICA.)
The sentiment is not universal: Since its introduction in September, COICA has alarmed engineers and civil liberties groups, who say that it could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger even some legitimate Web sites. Its wording says that any domain name "dedicated to infringing activities" could find itself in the U.S. Department of Justice's prosecutorial crosshairs.
Peter Eckersley, a technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote earlier this week that the bill will create a 1950-style Hollywood blacklist with the government deciding which Web sites are legitimate or not. The federal government will be forced "into the swamp of trying to decide which websites should be blacklisted and which ones shouldn't," Eckersley said. "And they're going to discover that the line between copyright infringement and free political speech can be awfully murky."
At the same time, a group of law professors wrote an open letter (PDF) to the Senate saying the law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment and "would set a dangerous precedent with potentially serious consequences for free expression and global Internet freedom."
Someone who knows the Internet Protocol address -- the IP address for cnet.com, for instance, is currently 216.239.113.101 -- would still be able to connect to the Web site even if the computer that normally translates a domain name into its numeric address pretends not to know it.
If all copyright- and trademark-infringing Web sites were hosted in the United States with their Webmasters living on U.S. soil, Leahy's COICA would be mostly unnecessary. A straightforward copyright lawsuit of the sort that the RIAA and the software industry have spent years perfecting would suffice.
But that's not the case. Sites like the Russia-hosted MP3Sparks.com are accessible around the world, even though they almost certainly violate U.S. copyright law. ThePirateBay.org in Sweden has not only survived what seem like innumerable attempts to shut it down, but its operators take special pains to mock copyright lawyers who write cease-and-desist letters meant to be both earnest and threatening.
A Web site is in danger of having its domain seized (or having U.S. Internet providers encounter a sudden case of amnesia when their customers try to visit it) if it is "primarily designed" and "has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than" offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. Counterfeit trademarks -- that's why Chanel, Nike, Tiffany, and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton also signed the letter -- are also included.
The wording is significant. Because the phrase "providing access" appears, that would include specialty search engines including The Pirate Bay that provide links to copyrighted works, even if the actual files are available through BitTorrent elsewhere.
If COICA becomes law, domain name registries such as Verisign, which owns the rights to .com, .net, .tv, .cc, and others would find themselves under new and uncomfortable legal pressure. The .org registry has been run by the Public Interest Registry since 2003. (The law professors' letter says: "For the first time, the United States would be requiring Internet Service Providers to block speech because of its content.")
But registries for top-level domains in other countries would remain unaffected, and The Pirate Bay, perhaps as a precautionary measure, already owns thepiratebay.se. Americans interested in free (if illegal) downloads could switch to an offshore domain name service or visit The Pirate Bay's IP address at http://194.71.107.15, which means that this congressional effort might accomplish less than its backers would like.
One open question: whether the lame duck Congress currently in session has time to enact COICA, which would mean votes in the House of Representatives as well. Even with this breadth of support, the odds are against it.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Domain Name Law's | Domain Name Guide in India | Domain Name Rules In India
The original role of a domain name was to provide an address for computers on the Internet. The Internet has, however, developed from a mere means of communication to a mode of carrying on commercial activity.
With the increase of commercial activity on the Internet, a domain name is also used as a business identifier. Therefore, the domain name not only serves as an address for Internet communication but also identifies the specific Internet site. In the commercial field, each domain name owner provides information/services, which are associated with such domain names. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes.
A domain name is an identification label to define a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS). The Domain Name Systems (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services or any resource participating in the internet. It associates different information with domain names assigned to each of the participants. Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Domain keys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).
An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally on the internet or locally in an intranet.
In simple terms, Domain name is the address of a web site that is intended to be easily identifiable and easy to remember, such as yahoo.com. These user-friendly addresses for websites help connect computers and people on the Internet. Because they are easy to remember and use, domain names have become business identifiers and, increasingly, even trademarks themselves, such as amazon.com. By using existing trademarks for domain names – sony.com, for example – businesses attract potential customers to their websites.
Domain Name & Intellectual Property Rights
Now, the question that arises is that, “how are Domain Names and Intellectual Property rights (IPR) inter-related?” The answer lies in the understanding of Intellectual property rights. So what are these rights? Intellectual property (IP) is legal property right over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. The intellectual property rights provide creators of original works economic incentive to develop and share ideas through a form of temporary monopoly.
Originally, Domain Names were conceived and intended to function as an address, but with an increasing number of cases of registered domain names being illegally occupied (cyber squatting), it has posed additional problems in how to handle trademark disputes in cyberspace. Cyber squatting as an offence relates to the registration of a domain name by an entity that does not have an inherent right or a similar or identical trademark registration in its favour, with the sole view and intention to sell them to the legitimate user in order to earn illegal profits. An address in the cyber-space is imperative in the new e-economy for companies and individuals to be easily traceable by their consumers with the emergence of the Internet as an advertising forum, recruiting mechanism, and marketplace for products and services whereby companies doing business have a strong desire to register domain names akin to their products, trade names or trademarks. For example, owners of famous trademarks, such as Haier, typically register their trademarks as domain names, such as www.haier.com. Domain names may be valuable corporate assets, as they facilitate communication with a customer base. With the advancement of Internet communication, the domain name has attained as much legal sanctity as a trademark or trade name and, therefore, it is entitled to protection.
Another issue is the registration of names of popular brands with a slight spelling variation like pesi.com and radiff.com for the sole purpose of diverting traffic to their website through typing errors. ‘A significant purpose of a domain name is to identify the entity that owns the website.’ A domain name should not confuse the consumers as to the origins of the services or products defeating the principal of trademark law. In Rediff Communications Ltd. v. Cybertooth & Another the Bombay High Court while granting an injunction restraining the defendants from using the domain name ‘RADIFF’ or any other similar name, held that when both domain names are considered there is every possibility of internet users being confused and deceived into believing that both domain names belong to one common source and connection although the two belong to two different persons. Again the website using the domain name, ‘Naukari.com’ was held to be confusingly similar to that of the plaintiff, ‘naukri.com’, with a different spelling variant establishing prima facie inference of bad faith.
Domain name protection: Legal aspect
As stated earlier, the constant increase in the use of internet for commercial purposes has greatly increased the level of cyber crimes and other internet related offences. Thus, the legal protection of such domain names is a serious issue which must be dealt with. In order to do so, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (‘ICANN’), a domain name regulatory authority, adopted a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (‘UDRP’), which is incorporated into the Registration Agreement, and sets forth the terms and conditions in connection with a dispute between the registrant and any party other than the registrar over the registration and use of an Internet domain name registered. Upon entering into the Core Registration Agreement with ICANN while registering a domain name, one agrees to submit to proceedings commenced under ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. According to the ICANN policy, the registration of a domain name shall be considered to be abusive when all the following conditions are met:
(a) The domain name is identical or misleadingly similar to a trade or service mark in which the complainant has rights.
(b) The holder of the domain name has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(c) The domain name has been registered in bad faith.
The term ‘bad faith’ does not simply mean bad judgment but it implies the conscious doing of a wrong with a dishonest purpose. In order to prove bad faith, the following circumstances, if found, are sufficient evidence of bad faith registration:
(a) When there is an offer to sell, rent or otherwise transfer the domain name to the owner of the trademark or service mark, or to a competitor of the complainant for valuable consideration.
(b) When the respondent registers the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct.
(c) When by using the domain name, a party has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to its website or other online location by creating a likelihood of confusion with the trade or service mark of the complainant.
INTA has consistently sought to protect domain names in the cyberspace in the same way as in any other media as these domain names can and often do work as trade marks. For the very same reason, INTA seeks to achieve the following six objectives:
(a) establishment of specific minimum standards for domain name registration;
(b) a publicly accessible domain name database, which contains up-to-date and accurate contact information;
(c) a uniform and easy-to-use dispute resolution policy which renders administrative – not legal – decisions;
(d) a reasonable mechanism whereby exclusions can be obtained and enforced for famous marks;
(e) a “go-slow” approach on the addition of new generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”); and
(f) a voice for trademark owners in the formulation of domain name policy.
INTA believes that when the above-mentioned six objectives are achieved, it would safeguard the trademark rights, which in this case would be the domain names.
Dispute Resolution
INTA believes that a reasonable administrative dispute resolution policy is an essential element of any plan for the administration of domain names on the Internet. Discretion for domain name policy should neither reside with the domain name registrars, nor with the registries. Any dispute policy needs to be consistent across the gTLD space. A lack of uniformity and specificity will only lead to confusion on the part of trademark and domain name holders, fundamental unfairness in the unequal treatment of rights in domain names and therefore inconsistent policies and precedent, chaos in the Internet community. If the goal is to create a system which is fair and predictable, and a relief to the current confusion and uncertainty, there can only be a single uniform system. There is no division among trademark holders on this point. A global marketplace and community requires a single set of global rules.
Therefore, any dispute resolution policy should be limited, at least during an appropriate interim period, to alleged instances of bad-faith activity by the domain name registrant.
Situation in India
Domain Name Issues
With the advancement of e-commerce, the domain names have come to acquire the same value as a trademark or the business name of a company. The value attached to domain names makes it lucrative for cyber criminals to indulge in domain name infringements and the global nature and easier and inexpensive procedure for registering domain names further facilitates domain name infringements. When a person gets a domain name registered in bad faith, i.e. in order to make huge profits by registering a domain name corresponding to a trademark of another person, with an intent to sell the domain name to the trademark owner at a higher price, such activities are known as cyber squatting. The IT Act does not deal with the domain name issues. In India the domain name infringement cases are dealt with according to the trademark law. The issue concerning protection of domain names came up before the Supreme Court of India in the case of Satyam Infoway Ltd. vs. Sifynet Solutions P. Ltd (2004(28) PTC 566). The court, in an authoritative decision has held that internet domain names are subject to the same legal norms applicable to other Intellectual Properties such as trademarks. It was further held by the Supreme Court of India that:
“The use of the same or similar domain name may lead to a diversion of users which could result from such user mistakenly accessing one domain name instead of another. This may occur in e-commerce with its rapid progress and instant (and theoretically limitless) accessibility to users and potential customers and particularly so in areas of specific overlap. Ordinary consumers/users seeking to locate the functions available less than one domain name may be confused if they accidentally arrived at a different but similar website which offers no such services. Such users could well conclude that the first domain name owner had misrepresented its goods and services through its promotional activities and the first domain owner would thereby lose their custom. It is apparent therefore that a domain name may have all the characteristics of a trade mark and could found an action for passing off.”
The court further held that there is no legislation in India which explicitly refers to dispute resolution in connection with domain names. The operation of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 is also not extra territorial and may not allow for adequate protection of domain names. This does not mean that domain names are not to be protected legally to the extent possible under laws of passing off.
However, with most of the countries providing for specific legislations for combating and curbing cyber squatting, India also needs to address the issue and formulate legal provisions against cyber squatting. For settlement of Disputes, WIPO has introduced a new mechanism called ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for settlement of disputes relating to domain names. As the parties are given the right to file the case against the decision of ICANN in their respective jurisdictions, the decisions of ICANN is having only persuasive value for the domain users.
We know that a domain name is easy to remember and use, and is chosen as an instrument of commercial enterprise not only because it facilitates the ability of consumers to navigate the internet to find websites they are looking for, but also at the same time, serves to identify and distinguish the business itself, or its goods or services, and to specify its corresponding online internet location. Consequently where a domain name is used in connection with a business, the value of maintaining an exclusive identity becomes critical. As more and more commercial enterprises trade or advertise their presence on the web, domain names have become more and more valuable and the potential for dispute is high. Whereas a large number of trademarks containing the same name can comfortably co-exist because they are associated with different products, belong to business in different jurisdictions etc, the distinctive nature of the domain name providing global exclusivity is much sought after. The fact that many consumers searching for a particular site are likely, in the first place, to try and guess its domain name has further enhanced this value.
The law does not permit any one to carry on his business in such a way as would persuade the customers or clients in believing that the goods or services belonging to someone else are his or are associated therewith. It does not matter whether the latter person does so fraudulently or otherwise. The reasons are:
Honesty and fair play are, and ought to be, the basic policies in the world of business.When a person adopts or intends to adopt a name in connection with his business or services, which already belongs to someone else, it results in confusion and has propensity of diverting the customers and clients of someone else to himself and thereby resulting in injury
Thus, a Domain Name requires a strong, constant and instant protection under all the legal systems of the world, including India. This can be achieved either by adopting harmonization of laws all over the world or by jealously protecting the same in the municipal spheres by all the countries of the world.
Trademarks vs. Domain names
There is a distinction between a trademark and a domain name, which is not relevant to the nature of the right of an owner in connection with the domain name, but is material to the ’scope of the protection’ available to the right. The distinction lies in the manner in which the two operate.
A trademark is protected by the laws of a country where such trademark may be registered. Consequently, a trademark may have multiple registrations in many countries throughout the world.
On the other hand, since the internet allows for access without any geographical limitation, a domain name is potentially accessible irrespective of the geographical location of the consumers. The outcome of this potential for universal connectivity is not only that a domain name would require world wide exclusivity but also that national laws might be inadequate to effectively protect a domain name.
The defense available to such a complaint has been particularized “but without limitation”, in Rule 4 (c) as follows:
(i) Before any notice to the domain name owner/registrant, the use of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with bona fide offering of goods or services; or
(ii) The domain name owner/registrant (as an individual, business, or other organization) has been commonly known by the domain name, even if it has acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or
(iii) The domain name owner/registrant is making a legitimate non-commercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.
These rules indicate that the disputes may be broadly categorized as:
Disputes between trademark owners and domain name owners andBetween domain name owners inter se.
A prior registrant can protect its domain name against subsequent registrants. Confusing similarity in domain names may be a ground for complaint and similarity is to be decided on the possibility of deception amongst potential customers. The defenses available to a complaint are also substantially similar to those available to an action for passing off under trademark law.
As far as India is concerned, there is no legislation, which explicitly refers to dispute resolution in connection with domain names. But although the operation of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 itself is not extra territorial and may not allow for adequate protection of domain names, this does not mean that domain names are not to be legally protected to the extent possible under the laws relating to passing off
In India, the Trademarks Act, 1999 (Act) provide protection to trademarks and service marks respectively. A closer perusal of the provisions of the Act and the judgments given by the Courts in India reveals that the protection available under the Act is stronger than internationally required and provided.
Rule 2 of the UDNDR Policy requires the applicant to determine that the domain name for which registration is sought, does not infringes or violates someone else’s rights. Thus, if the domain name, proposed to be registered, is in violation of another person’s “trademark rights”, it will violate Rule 2 of the Policy.
In such an eventuality, the Registrar is within his right to refuse to register the domain name. This shows that a domain name, though properly registered as per the requirements of ICANN, still it is subject to the Trademarks Act, 1999 if a person successfully proves that he has ‘rights’ flowing out of the Act.
Conclusion
The protection of domain name under the Indian legal system is standing on a higher footing as compared to a simple recognition of right under the UDNDR Policy. The ramification of the Trademarks Act, 1999 are much wider and capable of conferring the strongest protection to the domain names in the world.
The need of the present time is to harmoniously apply the principles of the trademark law and the provisions concerning the domain names. It must be noted that the moment a decision is given by the Supreme Court and it attains finality, then it becomes binding on all the person or institutions in India.
It cannot be challenged by showing any ’statutory provision’ to the contrary. This is so because no statutory provision can override a ‘Constitutional provision’ and in case of a conflict, if any, the former must give way to the latter. This settled legal position becomes relevant when we consider the decision of the Supreme Court in Satyam case (supra) in the light of the above discussion. The various landmark judgments of the Supreme Court have conferred the ’strongest protection’ to the domain names in the world.
With the increase of commercial activity on the Internet, a domain name is also used as a business identifier. Therefore, the domain name not only serves as an address for Internet communication but also identifies the specific Internet site. In the commercial field, each domain name owner provides information/services, which are associated with such domain names. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes.
A domain name is an identification label to define a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS). The Domain Name Systems (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services or any resource participating in the internet. It associates different information with domain names assigned to each of the participants. Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the Domain keys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).
An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally on the internet or locally in an intranet.
In simple terms, Domain name is the address of a web site that is intended to be easily identifiable and easy to remember, such as yahoo.com. These user-friendly addresses for websites help connect computers and people on the Internet. Because they are easy to remember and use, domain names have become business identifiers and, increasingly, even trademarks themselves, such as amazon.com. By using existing trademarks for domain names – sony.com, for example – businesses attract potential customers to their websites.
Domain Name & Intellectual Property Rights
Now, the question that arises is that, “how are Domain Names and Intellectual Property rights (IPR) inter-related?” The answer lies in the understanding of Intellectual property rights. So what are these rights? Intellectual property (IP) is legal property right over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; ideas, discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. The intellectual property rights provide creators of original works economic incentive to develop and share ideas through a form of temporary monopoly.
Originally, Domain Names were conceived and intended to function as an address, but with an increasing number of cases of registered domain names being illegally occupied (cyber squatting), it has posed additional problems in how to handle trademark disputes in cyberspace. Cyber squatting as an offence relates to the registration of a domain name by an entity that does not have an inherent right or a similar or identical trademark registration in its favour, with the sole view and intention to sell them to the legitimate user in order to earn illegal profits. An address in the cyber-space is imperative in the new e-economy for companies and individuals to be easily traceable by their consumers with the emergence of the Internet as an advertising forum, recruiting mechanism, and marketplace for products and services whereby companies doing business have a strong desire to register domain names akin to their products, trade names or trademarks. For example, owners of famous trademarks, such as Haier, typically register their trademarks as domain names, such as www.haier.com. Domain names may be valuable corporate assets, as they facilitate communication with a customer base. With the advancement of Internet communication, the domain name has attained as much legal sanctity as a trademark or trade name and, therefore, it is entitled to protection.
Another issue is the registration of names of popular brands with a slight spelling variation like pesi.com and radiff.com for the sole purpose of diverting traffic to their website through typing errors. ‘A significant purpose of a domain name is to identify the entity that owns the website.’ A domain name should not confuse the consumers as to the origins of the services or products defeating the principal of trademark law. In Rediff Communications Ltd. v. Cybertooth & Another the Bombay High Court while granting an injunction restraining the defendants from using the domain name ‘RADIFF’ or any other similar name, held that when both domain names are considered there is every possibility of internet users being confused and deceived into believing that both domain names belong to one common source and connection although the two belong to two different persons. Again the website using the domain name, ‘Naukari.com’ was held to be confusingly similar to that of the plaintiff, ‘naukri.com’, with a different spelling variant establishing prima facie inference of bad faith.
Domain name protection: Legal aspect
As stated earlier, the constant increase in the use of internet for commercial purposes has greatly increased the level of cyber crimes and other internet related offences. Thus, the legal protection of such domain names is a serious issue which must be dealt with. In order to do so, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (‘ICANN’), a domain name regulatory authority, adopted a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (‘UDRP’), which is incorporated into the Registration Agreement, and sets forth the terms and conditions in connection with a dispute between the registrant and any party other than the registrar over the registration and use of an Internet domain name registered. Upon entering into the Core Registration Agreement with ICANN while registering a domain name, one agrees to submit to proceedings commenced under ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. According to the ICANN policy, the registration of a domain name shall be considered to be abusive when all the following conditions are met:
(a) The domain name is identical or misleadingly similar to a trade or service mark in which the complainant has rights.
(b) The holder of the domain name has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(c) The domain name has been registered in bad faith.
The term ‘bad faith’ does not simply mean bad judgment but it implies the conscious doing of a wrong with a dishonest purpose. In order to prove bad faith, the following circumstances, if found, are sufficient evidence of bad faith registration:
(a) When there is an offer to sell, rent or otherwise transfer the domain name to the owner of the trademark or service mark, or to a competitor of the complainant for valuable consideration.
(b) When the respondent registers the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct.
(c) When by using the domain name, a party has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to its website or other online location by creating a likelihood of confusion with the trade or service mark of the complainant.
INTA has consistently sought to protect domain names in the cyberspace in the same way as in any other media as these domain names can and often do work as trade marks. For the very same reason, INTA seeks to achieve the following six objectives:
(a) establishment of specific minimum standards for domain name registration;
(b) a publicly accessible domain name database, which contains up-to-date and accurate contact information;
(c) a uniform and easy-to-use dispute resolution policy which renders administrative – not legal – decisions;
(d) a reasonable mechanism whereby exclusions can be obtained and enforced for famous marks;
(e) a “go-slow” approach on the addition of new generic top-level domains (“gTLDs”); and
(f) a voice for trademark owners in the formulation of domain name policy.
INTA believes that when the above-mentioned six objectives are achieved, it would safeguard the trademark rights, which in this case would be the domain names.
Dispute Resolution
INTA believes that a reasonable administrative dispute resolution policy is an essential element of any plan for the administration of domain names on the Internet. Discretion for domain name policy should neither reside with the domain name registrars, nor with the registries. Any dispute policy needs to be consistent across the gTLD space. A lack of uniformity and specificity will only lead to confusion on the part of trademark and domain name holders, fundamental unfairness in the unequal treatment of rights in domain names and therefore inconsistent policies and precedent, chaos in the Internet community. If the goal is to create a system which is fair and predictable, and a relief to the current confusion and uncertainty, there can only be a single uniform system. There is no division among trademark holders on this point. A global marketplace and community requires a single set of global rules.
Therefore, any dispute resolution policy should be limited, at least during an appropriate interim period, to alleged instances of bad-faith activity by the domain name registrant.
Situation in India
Domain Name Issues
With the advancement of e-commerce, the domain names have come to acquire the same value as a trademark or the business name of a company. The value attached to domain names makes it lucrative for cyber criminals to indulge in domain name infringements and the global nature and easier and inexpensive procedure for registering domain names further facilitates domain name infringements. When a person gets a domain name registered in bad faith, i.e. in order to make huge profits by registering a domain name corresponding to a trademark of another person, with an intent to sell the domain name to the trademark owner at a higher price, such activities are known as cyber squatting. The IT Act does not deal with the domain name issues. In India the domain name infringement cases are dealt with according to the trademark law. The issue concerning protection of domain names came up before the Supreme Court of India in the case of Satyam Infoway Ltd. vs. Sifynet Solutions P. Ltd (2004(28) PTC 566). The court, in an authoritative decision has held that internet domain names are subject to the same legal norms applicable to other Intellectual Properties such as trademarks. It was further held by the Supreme Court of India that:
“The use of the same or similar domain name may lead to a diversion of users which could result from such user mistakenly accessing one domain name instead of another. This may occur in e-commerce with its rapid progress and instant (and theoretically limitless) accessibility to users and potential customers and particularly so in areas of specific overlap. Ordinary consumers/users seeking to locate the functions available less than one domain name may be confused if they accidentally arrived at a different but similar website which offers no such services. Such users could well conclude that the first domain name owner had misrepresented its goods and services through its promotional activities and the first domain owner would thereby lose their custom. It is apparent therefore that a domain name may have all the characteristics of a trade mark and could found an action for passing off.”
The court further held that there is no legislation in India which explicitly refers to dispute resolution in connection with domain names. The operation of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 is also not extra territorial and may not allow for adequate protection of domain names. This does not mean that domain names are not to be protected legally to the extent possible under laws of passing off.
However, with most of the countries providing for specific legislations for combating and curbing cyber squatting, India also needs to address the issue and formulate legal provisions against cyber squatting. For settlement of Disputes, WIPO has introduced a new mechanism called ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) for settlement of disputes relating to domain names. As the parties are given the right to file the case against the decision of ICANN in their respective jurisdictions, the decisions of ICANN is having only persuasive value for the domain users.
We know that a domain name is easy to remember and use, and is chosen as an instrument of commercial enterprise not only because it facilitates the ability of consumers to navigate the internet to find websites they are looking for, but also at the same time, serves to identify and distinguish the business itself, or its goods or services, and to specify its corresponding online internet location. Consequently where a domain name is used in connection with a business, the value of maintaining an exclusive identity becomes critical. As more and more commercial enterprises trade or advertise their presence on the web, domain names have become more and more valuable and the potential for dispute is high. Whereas a large number of trademarks containing the same name can comfortably co-exist because they are associated with different products, belong to business in different jurisdictions etc, the distinctive nature of the domain name providing global exclusivity is much sought after. The fact that many consumers searching for a particular site are likely, in the first place, to try and guess its domain name has further enhanced this value.
The law does not permit any one to carry on his business in such a way as would persuade the customers or clients in believing that the goods or services belonging to someone else are his or are associated therewith. It does not matter whether the latter person does so fraudulently or otherwise. The reasons are:
Honesty and fair play are, and ought to be, the basic policies in the world of business.When a person adopts or intends to adopt a name in connection with his business or services, which already belongs to someone else, it results in confusion and has propensity of diverting the customers and clients of someone else to himself and thereby resulting in injury
Thus, a Domain Name requires a strong, constant and instant protection under all the legal systems of the world, including India. This can be achieved either by adopting harmonization of laws all over the world or by jealously protecting the same in the municipal spheres by all the countries of the world.
Trademarks vs. Domain names
There is a distinction between a trademark and a domain name, which is not relevant to the nature of the right of an owner in connection with the domain name, but is material to the ’scope of the protection’ available to the right. The distinction lies in the manner in which the two operate.
A trademark is protected by the laws of a country where such trademark may be registered. Consequently, a trademark may have multiple registrations in many countries throughout the world.
On the other hand, since the internet allows for access without any geographical limitation, a domain name is potentially accessible irrespective of the geographical location of the consumers. The outcome of this potential for universal connectivity is not only that a domain name would require world wide exclusivity but also that national laws might be inadequate to effectively protect a domain name.
The defense available to such a complaint has been particularized “but without limitation”, in Rule 4 (c) as follows:
(i) Before any notice to the domain name owner/registrant, the use of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with bona fide offering of goods or services; or
(ii) The domain name owner/registrant (as an individual, business, or other organization) has been commonly known by the domain name, even if it has acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or
(iii) The domain name owner/registrant is making a legitimate non-commercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.
These rules indicate that the disputes may be broadly categorized as:
Disputes between trademark owners and domain name owners andBetween domain name owners inter se.
A prior registrant can protect its domain name against subsequent registrants. Confusing similarity in domain names may be a ground for complaint and similarity is to be decided on the possibility of deception amongst potential customers. The defenses available to a complaint are also substantially similar to those available to an action for passing off under trademark law.
As far as India is concerned, there is no legislation, which explicitly refers to dispute resolution in connection with domain names. But although the operation of the Trade Marks Act, 1999 itself is not extra territorial and may not allow for adequate protection of domain names, this does not mean that domain names are not to be legally protected to the extent possible under the laws relating to passing off
In India, the Trademarks Act, 1999 (Act) provide protection to trademarks and service marks respectively. A closer perusal of the provisions of the Act and the judgments given by the Courts in India reveals that the protection available under the Act is stronger than internationally required and provided.
Rule 2 of the UDNDR Policy requires the applicant to determine that the domain name for which registration is sought, does not infringes or violates someone else’s rights. Thus, if the domain name, proposed to be registered, is in violation of another person’s “trademark rights”, it will violate Rule 2 of the Policy.
In such an eventuality, the Registrar is within his right to refuse to register the domain name. This shows that a domain name, though properly registered as per the requirements of ICANN, still it is subject to the Trademarks Act, 1999 if a person successfully proves that he has ‘rights’ flowing out of the Act.
Conclusion
The protection of domain name under the Indian legal system is standing on a higher footing as compared to a simple recognition of right under the UDNDR Policy. The ramification of the Trademarks Act, 1999 are much wider and capable of conferring the strongest protection to the domain names in the world.
The need of the present time is to harmoniously apply the principles of the trademark law and the provisions concerning the domain names. It must be noted that the moment a decision is given by the Supreme Court and it attains finality, then it becomes binding on all the person or institutions in India.
It cannot be challenged by showing any ’statutory provision’ to the contrary. This is so because no statutory provision can override a ‘Constitutional provision’ and in case of a conflict, if any, the former must give way to the latter. This settled legal position becomes relevant when we consider the decision of the Supreme Court in Satyam case (supra) in the light of the above discussion. The various landmark judgments of the Supreme Court have conferred the ’strongest protection’ to the domain names in the world.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Free Social Media Icons, Part III: Circular Icons
There are surprisingly few free sets of plain round social networking icons (without any ‘grunge’, 3D or ‘furry’ effects) and even less good ones. This post contains a list of 7 clean and professionally designed sets of circular-shaped social icons that look good both on light and dark backgrounds and are likely to fit into various designs.
If you know any other good sets of circular social icons, feel free to drop a link in the comments.
37 social networking icons in 3 resolutions (32×32, 64×64 and 128×128) and 2 variants (clean and grunge).
License: Free for personal and commercial use. No attribution required.
19 icons “in the shape of a knob or a dial call.”
License: Free for any use.
Another freebie from Chethstudios. According to the authors “White Magik is perfect for white minimalistic sites and can be used with image hover for excellent looks!” The collection contains 45 icons in three sizes: 64×64, 100×100 and 128×128.
License: Free for any use, a backlink is required.
Each of the 39 icons is presented in 5 resolutions: 20×20, 40×40, 60×60, 128×128 and 256×256.
License: Free for personal and commercial use.
20 shiny social media icons in 2 sizes: 39×40 and 70×70.
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
27 simple circular icons in 3 resolutions: 32×32, 64×64 and 128×128. A PSD icon template is included.
Another simple set which includes icons for nearly all social services you can imagine. The package includes 63 circular icons (32x32px PNG), 63 rounded icons (32x32px PNG) and vector sources for all icons in Adobe Illustrator (*.ai) format.
License: Free for personal and commercial use without attribution.
If you know any other good sets of circular social icons, feel free to drop a link in the comments.
License: Free for personal and commercial use. No attribution required.
License: Free for any use.
Another freebie from Chethstudios. According to the authors “White Magik is perfect for white minimalistic sites and can be used with image hover for excellent looks!” The collection contains 45 icons in three sizes: 64×64, 100×100 and 128×128.
License: Free for any use, a backlink is required.
Each of the 39 icons is presented in 5 resolutions: 20×20, 40×40, 60×60, 128×128 and 256×256.
License: Free for personal and commercial use.
20 shiny social media icons in 2 sizes: 39×40 and 70×70.
License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
License: Free for personal and commercial use without attribution.
Free Small Icons For Designers
In the last 4 years or so the icons have become significantly bigger. This trend was introduced by MacOS 10, but now designers use large icons wherever they can.
But still sometimes you need a small icon, and being an icon designer myself I can say that small icons are very difficult to create. I mean, you need to work hard to make your icons recognizable, especially if they represent some not so common objects (not just another folder of magnifying glass).
But if small icons play subsidiary role in your interface, or if you work on a pilot version of some project and do not want to invest much time and money in the design at this stage, there are free sets of small icons at your disposal.
Below is the list of several such sets given in no particular order. As usual, I selected only the best sets that easily fit into various interfaces.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Programming Using Glade and Perl
Glade is a tool for designing GTK/GTK+ GUIs, and is used quite a bit by developers who work with the GNOME desktop environment. It has been around for a long time. This tutorial uses Glade 3.6.7, the latest stable version at the time of writing, on Fedora 13, as the reference platform. However, it should work with all recent Linux distributions.
Check that you have Glade version 3 installed, with the following command:
$ glade-3 –version
glade3 3.6.7
If you see something like the above output (it doesn’t matter if the minor version number is different, ensure that you have at least 3.6) then you have Glade 3 installed. If you get an error message, then either you don’t have Glade installed, or have an earlier version. Install Glade 3 by running the following command:
$ sudo yum install glade3
Getting started
Our tutorial project will use Glade to design an application with two screens—a ‘user authentication’ screen and an ‘employee information viewer’. In this article, we will simulate some of the functionality of a real project; we won’t actually use a database, since we are only demonstrating how to design the UI, and will write the bare minimum code to get it ‘working’.
Once you fire up Glade, select GtkBuilder for the project file format, and choose to have object names unique within the project. For the GTK+ Catalog option, choose version 2.16.
GTK is different from the older (pre .NET) Windows ‘fixed-position’ layout model for GUIs, where you placed controls (widgets) on a form using absolute positioning and sizing, and then had to write extra code to reposition or resize the controls – in response to events like the user resizing the window, or changing screen resolution. In GTK, controls generally try to occupy as much space as they can in their parent container. If the container is resized, the controls inside it automatically resize themselves as well. However, as a result, when you create a toplevel (an empty window) container, you can place only one control directly inside it. To get around this, you place a container control inside the toplevel window, and add other controls inside the container. You create complex layouts by nesting containers one inside the other, as we will see in this tutorial. This usually entails some planning of what you want to have in your window—though, as you will soon realise, the initial steps are almost the same for many windows.
Before we begin, take a look at Figure 1, which is the login screen we intend to create. Notice that we want to have a menu bar, a notebook container control that will hold multiple ‘screens’, and a status bar. Now, let’s start creating the window.
Toplevel window and VBox
In the palette at the left of the Glade window, you should see a section titled ‘Toplevels’. If you hover your mouse pointer above each of the buttons, you will see tool-tips, one of which says, ‘Window’. Click that button, and a toplevel window is shown in the design area.
Since the toplevel window can contain only one control, we must add a container control. There are three containers that are frequently used as the first control in a toplevel window: the HBox, the VBox, and the Table. If you look at the ‘Containers’ section of the Glade palette, you will find those (their tool-tips are ‘Horizontal Box’, ‘Vertical Box’ and ‘Table’, respectively). Each of these has a number of ‘slots’ or ‘cells’ into which you can place controls. When adding (packing) controls into a Horizontal Box/HBox, the widgets are inserted horizontally, from left to right, or right to left (depending on property settings, some of which may not be visible in Glade but can be set in code). In a VBox, the ‘slots’ are stacked vertically, so the controls placed in them appear one below the other. If you look at Figure 1 again, you will realise this is just what we need: a menu bar at the top, a notebook below it, and a status bar below that. We’ll use the Table container later in this tutorial.
Let’s place a VBox in the toplevel window: click the ‘Vertical Box’ button in the ‘Containers’ section, and then click on the toplevel window in the design area. In the pop-up dialogue box, set the number of items for the VBox to 3. The upper left part of your Glade window should now resemble Figure 2.
Naming controls
Some developers insist on giving a meaningful name to each and every control placed in a window. From the practical viewpoint, this can be tedious and time-consuming. We assign a different name to a control only if we intend to access that control in code. For example, if we want to set a property of a control, or retrieve some data from a control (like the text in a text entry), then giving the control a memorable name is a good idea. The code becomes more readable, and both the code and the UI design become easier to maintain.
Since we have only one window in this tutorial Glade project, we have left its name at the default. As far as the VBox is concerned, we do not intend to manipulate it in code—hence, the default name vbox1 is good enough.
Note: To change the Name property, and other properties of a control, you would use the Properties pane, at the bottom right of the Glade window; look under the General tab for the Name property. Look at the ‘Control Properties’ box now, to read about some commonly used properties.
Next, add a menu bar control, a notebook control (both are in the palette’s ‘Containers’ section), and a status bar control (in the ‘Control and Display’ section) to the top, middle and bottom slots in vbox1. You can later experiment with different settings in the Packing, Common and General tabs in the Properties pane, selecting different controls from the object tree above the Properties pane.
Laying out the login screen
Returning to the notebook widget, we will use the first page for our login screen. We need to place several widgets and change properties. You can refer to Figure 1 for an example of the desired layout. The R1C1 notation used in the following instructions indicates which cell of the table to add a control to; for example, R1C2 means, “…the cell where the second column intersects the first row.” Perform the following steps:
1. Add a Table container into the first page of the notebook (we use it to keep the other, contained, controls aligned). In the pop-up dialogue that appears when you add the table, set it to have four rows and four columns.
2. Place a label at R1C2 of the table, and change its Label property to ‘Welcome’.
3. Place a label at R2C2, and change its Label property to ‘Login’.
4. Place a label at R3C2, and change its Label property to ‘Password’.
5. Place a text entry widget at R2C3 and change its Name to ‘login_ent’.
6. Place a text entry widget at R3C3 and change its Name to ‘pw_ent’.
7. Place a button at R4C2. Change its Label to ‘_OK, its Use underline to Yes, and its Name to ‘ok_btn’.
8. Place a button at R4C3. Change its Label to ‘_Cancel’, its Use underline to Yes, and its Name to ‘cancel_btn’.
9. Double-click the notebook’s second page. In the empty area of the page, place a single label widget. Change its Label property to ‘Authentication succeeded! You can now close the window.’ (This is a place-holder label. We will design the ‘employee information viewer’ screen in the second notebook page in a later article in this series, and we will delete this place-holder label at that time.)
10. Double-click the notebook’s first page to make it the active page again.
11. In the Glade object tree pane, find and select the notebook1 widget. In its General properties, toggle the Show Tabs property to No. This will prevent users from clicking the tab for the second page, and accessing the ‘employee information viewer’ screen without first logging in.
12. An important requirement for our login screen is that the pw_ent text entry should not display the text of the password to a casual onlooker. To mask the password as the user types it in, select the text entry, and toggle the Invisible Character Set property (in General properties) to Yes. Glade, by default, provides a dot-like masking character, in the Invisible character property, which will replace each character in this text entry. If you like, you can change this to another character, such as an asterisk (*) or another non-alpha-numeric character of your choice. Avoid using a space or other ‘invisible’ character, though; it can confuse users, who will get no visible feedback in response to their typing in the password entry.
Our login screen design is done; we leave the rest of the cells in the 4×4 table empty. Save the file, in Glade, supplying the name ‘employee-builder.glade’. This file is an XML file in the new GtkBuilder format that is built into newer versions of GTK. After setting up the required signal handlers, we will save this file a final time, and proceed to writing the code that turns our design into a running application window. Before that, let’s get some understanding of the signals.
Events, signals and GTK+ programming
The programming model that GTK+ provides is event-driven, like many other windowing tool kits. That is, the flow of the program execution is controlled by events like user inputs, messages from other programs, or some other kind of external data. For GTK+, almost all events are in the form of messages from the underlying X server. The main loop (Gtk2->main()) loops, waiting for events. When there is an event (say, a mouse click), the main loop wakes up and delivers the event to one or more widgets. When widgets receive events, they emit signals. Signal emission is the process of GTK running all handlers for a specific control object (widget) and the emitted signal. Handler functions (also called callbacks) can be bound to signals using the g_signal_connect() function, or similar ones. The signal-handling callback function can be written to effectuate the desired behaviour of the application in response to the event received. After the handler finishes, control is generally transferred back to the main loop.
It is not mandatory to implement handlers for every signal for every widget. Almost all signals are handled by default handlers. A widget inherits its parent’s default signal handlers. When a signal is emitted by a widget, first the signal ID is looked up, and all normally connected callbacks are invoked before the default handlers. If one signal callback function needs to be executed after the default handler, it must be connected using a different function (g_signal_connect_after()). This process of signal emission is repeated up the widget hierarchy, till the top-level widget is reached, or propagation is stopped by a handler (by returning TRUE).
Event handling is a complex subject. GTK+ uses GDK (the GIMP Drawing Kit) in order to abstract the underlying graphical windowing system. This makes it easier to port GTK+ to various platforms. For example, with Linux, GDK uses the XLib library by X Windowing System, whereas with Microsoft Windows, GDK uses Windows’ own windowing system libraries. In general, a developer need not be concerned about GDK, unless a new widget needs to be designed.
Finally, GTK+ signals and POSIX signals have nothing in common, except the confusing name.
Let’s add a signal handler to the top-level window:
1. Click on the toplevel window (window1)
2. Click the Properties pane and choose the Signals tab.
3. Click on GtkWidget to expand it.
4. Click on delete-event, and click under Handler to reveal the pull-down menu.
5. Choose on_window1_delete_event as the name for the handler.
6. Leave user_data blank; you do not need it.
7. Leave the ‘after’ unchecked. You do not need to make this handler run after the default handler.
8. Save the Glade file.
Repeat this procedure to set up signal handlers for the OK button-click (on_ok_btn_clicked) and the Cancel button-click (on_cancel_btn_clicked). For the destroy event of the toplevel window, you must choose GtkObject instead of GtkWidget.
As we have just seen above, the hierarchy between the GtkWidget and GtkObject classes lets us handle two different signals for the same event (the user clicking the window’s close button).
on_window1_delete_event: This is triggered when the window1 GtkWidget is deleted. The return value from the signal handler we will write controls the propagation of the signal: TRUE means ‘do not propagate the event to higher levels’ and FALSE means ‘the event should be propagated’. If the window has unsaved data, here is where you would prompt the user with a Yes/No/Cancel type of message dialog, asking whether to save the data and exit (Yes button), exit without saving (No button), and abort the closing of the window (Cancel button).
on_window1_destroy: This is triggered when the window1 GtkObject is destroyed. If this was the last open window in the application (which it is for us!), in this handler, we must compulsorily execute code to exit the Gtk2->main() main-loop; otherwise the GUI toplevel window will be destroyed, but the application itself will not exit—it will continue running. To stop the Gtk2 main loop, we call the Gtk2->main_quit() function in this handler.
Writing the glue code
First, we need the Gtk2 Perl module (and its dependencies) installed, in order to use the GUI. You can use this command to install them:
$ sudo yum install perl-Gtk2.x86_64
Note: The LFY CD this month carries the entire Perl script. Take a look at Listing 1 in this CD.
The first step in a Perl GTK program is to load the Gtk2 module, and that is done with:
use Gtk2 qw{ -init };
The next step is to create a Gtk2 Builder object, and load the XML UI definition from the Glade file which we saved earlier:
$builder = Gtk2::Builder->new();
$builder->add_from_file(“./employee-builder.glade”);
Next, we connect the signal handlers we had defined in Glade, to functions defined in our Perl script, with the following command:
$builder->connect_signals(undef);
Our signal-handler functions are deliberately given names identical to the signal handler names we defined in Glade, so that the ‘automatic’ connection of the signal to the handler function can be done with the single line of code shown just above, instead of having to write several lines of code using the g_signal_connect() function to connect each widget’s signal to the handler function for it. The signal-handler functions have the following functionality:
on_window1_delete_event: returns FALSE; as this is a simulation of an application, we don’t have unsaved data to check for, and there’s nothing for us to do with this function.
on_window1_destroy: As mentioned earlier, we must end the Gtk2 main loop, so we simply call the Gtk2->main_quit() function here.
on_cancel_btn_clicked: Prints the function name, and calls Gtk2->main_quit() to signal the main loop to exit.
on_ok_btn_clicked: This function shows how to get the user input from the login and password text entry widgets, using the get_text() function associated with text entry objects. The values are printed to show that the text shown in the password field is not the content of the text entry object’s buffer. In the real world, this code must be replaced by an authentication function.
Run code, run…
Run the script with:
perl ./employee.pl
You can now verify that the code works as expected, and you have a working GTK program window controlled by a Perl script!
In the next article in this series, we will design and write code for the ‘employee information viewer’ screen.
| Control Properties There are many widget properties that you can change, using Glade. The most important property, from a code perspective, is the Name property, accessible on the General tab of the Properties pane. We have renamed all the widgets that we are going to access from code, providing names that follow our widget-naming convention. For example, the text entry names are login_ent and pw_ent; the buttons are named ok_btn and cancel_btn. You don’t necessarily need to follow this convention, but when doing team development, it’s important that you follow the scheme chosen for the project, or used by the rest of the development team. Under the Common tab, you can change the width and height requests of widgets. You can add tool-tips, and control whether the widget is visible (shown when its container is shown) or not. Further, you can change the Sensitivity setting—whether the widget responds to user input or not. The ‘data’ property of a widget that is displayed to the user varies in name from widget to widget, and has a convention that follows the purpose of the control, and the type of data that is displayed. For example, a text entry widget has a Text property that represents the (editable) text shown to the user. A label control has the Label property, in which you enter the (non-editable) text you want the label to display to the user. Many widgets, by default, fill all the available space in the parent container when they are added. If you find this annoying, you can change this behaviour: select the widget, and in the Properties pane, go to the Packing tab. Modify the Expand and Fill settings that are available for most controls. You can change these properties from code as well. Keyboard accelerators are useful for those using large windows, such as data entry forms; they enable the user to quickly activate controls like text entries or buttons, without having to pick up the mouse and click that control. Generally, these accelerators are alpha-numeric keys combined with the Alt key—for example, Alt+S is a common accelerator for a search button. Generally, any widget with a label can have a keyboard accelerator. To add one, click the widget in the object tree; in the Properties pane’s General tab, go to the Label property. Add an underscore just before the letter you want to use as the accelerator (for example, on a search button, the label would become _Search). Toggle the Use underline property from No to Yes. When the window is running, pressing the respective accelerator will activate the widget for which you have set the accelerator key. Obviously, avoid assigning the same accelerator key to two controls on the same window! |
Black colleges look to increase online ed presence
PHILADELPHIA – When Michael Hill needed a doctoral program with the flexibility to let him continue working full-time as a Lincoln University administrator, he chose an online degree from another institution.
With such firsthand experience, Hill is now trying to start an online program at Lincoln. It's one of many historically black colleges and universities that has yet to enter a booming cybereducation market that could be particularly lucrative for black colleges.
Blacks comprised about 12 percent of total enrollment in higher education in 2007 but were 21 percent of students at for-profit institutions — many of which are online, according to an American Council on Education report released this year.
Tom Joyner, a syndicated radio host with a largely black audience, also sees the market's potential. The longtime historical black college and unversity booster and philanthropist has invested about $7 million to start HBCUsOnline.com, an educational services venture run by his son.
"My father noticed very early on that a lot of the students doing the online education boom were members of his listening audience," said Tom Joyner Jr. "Those listeners could be better served by HBCUs."
While black colleges only enroll about 11 percent of all black students, their traditions and legacies still resonate in the African-American community. It makes sense that those schools would want to recapture students from for-profits like the University of Phoenix, said Richard Garrett, managing director of the consulting firm Eduventures.
"This is, to us, an expected and logical trend," Garrett said. "It's ambitious, the timing is right. There's a lot of opportunity there."
The Sloan Consortium for online education estimates about one-third of the country's 4,500 universities offer online degrees. But only about 10 percent of the nation's 105 historically black colleges do, according to the White House Initiative on historical black institutions. (Larger percentages offer online courses without degrees.)
"In order to keep pace and add institutional versatility, we should be in this space," said John Wilson Jr., executive director of the White House Initiative.
Part of the problem is money: Black colleges generally have small endowments and are largely tuition-dependent. Many don't have the technological infrastructure to support online education, said Marybeth Gasman, an HBCU expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
The schools also have struggled with low retention and graduation rates, partly because of students' financial backgrounds. Some officials worry that online student dropouts could further drag down those rates, possibly affecting accreditation, said Ezell Brown, CEO of Education Online Services, another company working to put black colleges online.
Also at issue is whether the nurturing campus environment often touted by black colleges can be replicated in cyberspace. To be successful online, the schools must offer strong student advising and a cultural component that somehow virtually conveys the campus ethos, Gasman said.
Dallas-based HBCUsOnline.com, which launched in September, aims to be a one-stop shop for browsing online programs at black schools. The site promises students personal guidance "from registration to graduation."
Joyner Jr. said the company is targeting adult learners 25 and older — a huge market considering only 17.5 percent of blacks in that age group had at least a bachelor's degree in 2008, according to the American Council on Education.
So far, Hampton and Texas Southern universities have signed on. Joyner Jr. expects to announce more partner schools in the coming months.
"Combining our marketing resources, we stand a much better chance of establishing a presence in the online market space," Joyner Jr. said.
Hampton is actually a online pioneer, having launched its online program 10 years ago with about a dozen students. Today, it has about 400 and hopes to find more through HBCUsOnline.com, said Cassandra Herring, dean of the college of education and continuing studies.
"Certainly having that national platform to talk about what we're doing was a huge, huge benefit for us," Herring said.
But some schools — both historically black and mainstream — choose not to be in cyberspace simply because "there hasn't been a compelling case made to them that online will serve the mission they're trying to achieve," said Jeff Seaman of the Sloan Consortium.
Gasman said while she believes undergraduates should be on campus for social reasons, online programs for older students could be a good idea for rural HBCUs like Lincoln — about 45 miles from Philadelphia — because the campus is hard to access.
Michael Hill, Lincoln's executive vice president, said the school recently upgraded its distance learning facilities and hopes to offer at least one online program within a year.
"I know the value of it," Hill said of pursuing an online degree. "For me, a person that couldn't take a sabbatical ... I had to work while I did it."
With such firsthand experience, Hill is now trying to start an online program at Lincoln. It's one of many historically black colleges and universities that has yet to enter a booming cybereducation market that could be particularly lucrative for black colleges.
Blacks comprised about 12 percent of total enrollment in higher education in 2007 but were 21 percent of students at for-profit institutions — many of which are online, according to an American Council on Education report released this year.
Tom Joyner, a syndicated radio host with a largely black audience, also sees the market's potential. The longtime historical black college and unversity booster and philanthropist has invested about $7 million to start HBCUsOnline.com, an educational services venture run by his son.
"My father noticed very early on that a lot of the students doing the online education boom were members of his listening audience," said Tom Joyner Jr. "Those listeners could be better served by HBCUs."
While black colleges only enroll about 11 percent of all black students, their traditions and legacies still resonate in the African-American community. It makes sense that those schools would want to recapture students from for-profits like the University of Phoenix, said Richard Garrett, managing director of the consulting firm Eduventures.
"This is, to us, an expected and logical trend," Garrett said. "It's ambitious, the timing is right. There's a lot of opportunity there."
The Sloan Consortium for online education estimates about one-third of the country's 4,500 universities offer online degrees. But only about 10 percent of the nation's 105 historically black colleges do, according to the White House Initiative on historical black institutions. (Larger percentages offer online courses without degrees.)
"In order to keep pace and add institutional versatility, we should be in this space," said John Wilson Jr., executive director of the White House Initiative.
Part of the problem is money: Black colleges generally have small endowments and are largely tuition-dependent. Many don't have the technological infrastructure to support online education, said Marybeth Gasman, an HBCU expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
The schools also have struggled with low retention and graduation rates, partly because of students' financial backgrounds. Some officials worry that online student dropouts could further drag down those rates, possibly affecting accreditation, said Ezell Brown, CEO of Education Online Services, another company working to put black colleges online.
Also at issue is whether the nurturing campus environment often touted by black colleges can be replicated in cyberspace. To be successful online, the schools must offer strong student advising and a cultural component that somehow virtually conveys the campus ethos, Gasman said.
Dallas-based HBCUsOnline.com, which launched in September, aims to be a one-stop shop for browsing online programs at black schools. The site promises students personal guidance "from registration to graduation."
Joyner Jr. said the company is targeting adult learners 25 and older — a huge market considering only 17.5 percent of blacks in that age group had at least a bachelor's degree in 2008, according to the American Council on Education.
So far, Hampton and Texas Southern universities have signed on. Joyner Jr. expects to announce more partner schools in the coming months.
"Combining our marketing resources, we stand a much better chance of establishing a presence in the online market space," Joyner Jr. said.
Hampton is actually a online pioneer, having launched its online program 10 years ago with about a dozen students. Today, it has about 400 and hopes to find more through HBCUsOnline.com, said Cassandra Herring, dean of the college of education and continuing studies.
"Certainly having that national platform to talk about what we're doing was a huge, huge benefit for us," Herring said.
But some schools — both historically black and mainstream — choose not to be in cyberspace simply because "there hasn't been a compelling case made to them that online will serve the mission they're trying to achieve," said Jeff Seaman of the Sloan Consortium.
Gasman said while she believes undergraduates should be on campus for social reasons, online programs for older students could be a good idea for rural HBCUs like Lincoln — about 45 miles from Philadelphia — because the campus is hard to access.
Michael Hill, Lincoln's executive vice president, said the school recently upgraded its distance learning facilities and hopes to offer at least one online program within a year.
"I know the value of it," Hill said of pursuing an online degree. "For me, a person that couldn't take a sabbatical ... I had to work while I did it."
Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns
An official with Saudi Arabia's communications authority says it has blocked Facebook because the popular social networking website doesn't conform with the kingdom's conservative values.
The official says Saudi's Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.
He says Facebook's content had "crossed a line" with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam and religious leaders have strong influence over policy making and social mores.
Pakistan and Bangladesh both imposed temporary bans on Facebook this year.
The official says Saudi's Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked the site Saturday and an error message shows up when Internet users try to access it.
He says Facebook's content had "crossed a line" with the kingdom's conservative morals, but that blocking the site is a temporary measure.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam and religious leaders have strong influence over policy making and social mores.
Pakistan and Bangladesh both imposed temporary bans on Facebook this year.
AOL cracks open door to new Project Phoenix e-mail
AOL Inc. is opening the doors to its new Web-based e-mail program, code-named Project Phoenix, for a limited number of users. Starting next year, anyone will be able to sign up for access to a beta test site.
The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire off a quick e-mail, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a "quick bar" at the top of the page. People can also send short replies right from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first. The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a glance, and lets people toggle between several open e-mails at a time.
When someone is reading an e-mail with pictures attached, the photos will also show up as thumbnails next to the message. Addresses in the body of the e-mail will trigger the system to display a map from AOL's Mapquest on the right-hand side, with the option to click for directions.
Like Yahoo and other competitors, AOL is trying to become the one-stop shop for reading messages from other providers. Project Phoenix lets people link up their e-mail accounts on services from Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. In future versions, AOL plans to pull in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn messages, too.
The early beta felt sluggish when a reporter tried it out recently, but AOL said its tests show that the Phoenix inbox page loads about twice as fast as Google's Gmail inbox.
Markedly absent from the new design: advertising. Fletcher Jones, the project lead for Phoenix, said AOL is working on other ways to make money from the free e-mail service because the old model — at least one towering, animated ad dominating the right-hand side of the screen — isn't very user-friendly. Jones would not say exactly what AOL's plan is, but one tactic is placing links to top AOL stories inside the inbox. AOL's content sites are more ad-heavy.
"We're a different company than we were a year ago," Jones said in an interview. "The prior administration had priorities on revenue versus audience growth. Our priorities are on audience growth."
About two weeks ago, the New York-based company overhauled the main AOL.com home page with more white space, hipper logo art, bolder photos and icons and a stronger focus on content from its network of websites and blogs. AOL Mail, which accounts for about 45 percent of AOL's total page views, is an important way to help users find all this new content. After all, Jones said, no matter what else is going on, people check their e-mail every day.
But AOL is juggling the need to attract new traffic with the fact that many of its users have been around since the days of dial-up Internet access. The company plans to give existing customers the option to use the Project Phoenix system, and is providing live chat and other 24-hour customer service to support the transition. AOL doesn't have a firm plan for switching everyone over to the new design.
As people are invited into the Project Phoenix beta, they'll also have a chance to sign up for a new AOL e-mail address — a gift for folks who have come to regret their early aol.com screen name choices.
The Project Phoenix inbox page was designed to make it easier to fire off a quick e-mail, text or instant message with just a few clicks on a "quick bar" at the top of the page. People can also send short replies right from the inbox page, without having to click on a message first. The new design displays thumbnails of recent photo attachments at a glance, and lets people toggle between several open e-mails at a time.
When someone is reading an e-mail with pictures attached, the photos will also show up as thumbnails next to the message. Addresses in the body of the e-mail will trigger the system to display a map from AOL's Mapquest on the right-hand side, with the option to click for directions.
Like Yahoo and other competitors, AOL is trying to become the one-stop shop for reading messages from other providers. Project Phoenix lets people link up their e-mail accounts on services from Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. In future versions, AOL plans to pull in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn messages, too.
The early beta felt sluggish when a reporter tried it out recently, but AOL said its tests show that the Phoenix inbox page loads about twice as fast as Google's Gmail inbox.
Markedly absent from the new design: advertising. Fletcher Jones, the project lead for Phoenix, said AOL is working on other ways to make money from the free e-mail service because the old model — at least one towering, animated ad dominating the right-hand side of the screen — isn't very user-friendly. Jones would not say exactly what AOL's plan is, but one tactic is placing links to top AOL stories inside the inbox. AOL's content sites are more ad-heavy.
"We're a different company than we were a year ago," Jones said in an interview. "The prior administration had priorities on revenue versus audience growth. Our priorities are on audience growth."
About two weeks ago, the New York-based company overhauled the main AOL.com home page with more white space, hipper logo art, bolder photos and icons and a stronger focus on content from its network of websites and blogs. AOL Mail, which accounts for about 45 percent of AOL's total page views, is an important way to help users find all this new content. After all, Jones said, no matter what else is going on, people check their e-mail every day.
But AOL is juggling the need to attract new traffic with the fact that many of its users have been around since the days of dial-up Internet access. The company plans to give existing customers the option to use the Project Phoenix system, and is providing live chat and other 24-hour customer service to support the transition. AOL doesn't have a firm plan for switching everyone over to the new design.
As people are invited into the Project Phoenix beta, they'll also have a chance to sign up for a new AOL e-mail address — a gift for folks who have come to regret their early aol.com screen name choices.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
How to Add Paypal to Website
Instructions
Step 1
There is no software to download to add paypal button to your website, all you need to do is copy and paste
paypal code to your website. There is no fee to join paypal, you just pay transaction fee when someone use paypal to
purchase items from your website.
Step 2
Paypal transaction fees range from 2.9% + 0.30 USD and down to 1.9% + 0.30...
Step 1
There is no software to download to add paypal button to your website, all you need to do is copy and paste
paypal code to your website. There is no fee to join paypal, you just pay transaction fee when someone use paypal to
purchase items from your website.
Step 2
Paypal transaction fees range from 2.9% + 0.30 USD and down to 1.9% + 0.30...
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Nokia 6600i unleashed in India
The Nokia 6600i has just been launched in India and it establishes itself as the smallest 5-megapixel phone in the market. The 6600i has a slider form factor with an extremely impressive design and style.
The camera being the phones USP promises to deliver crystal clear imaging with its 8x zoom and auto focus functionality. It also comes with a dual LED flash for enhancing image quality.
Other features include FM radio, playback for all kinds of media files/formats, stereo headsets and bluetooth v2.0. A microSD card slot capable of holding a 16GB card fits perfect for this phone.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
War - Nokia N96 vs Apple iPhone
We realise that we have been going on and on about the iPhone and the Nokia N96, but thats all what we can do since this is our job and specially when the two iconic phones launched together in the same week in India.
Price Comparision:
The Nokia N96 will cost you around Rs. 36,000 while the Apple iPhone 3G with 8GB memory will cost Rs. 31000 and 16GB about Rs. 36,100. On price points even though they are hugely expensive we give them equal rank.
SMS Forwarding, FM Radio:
These two features are the darling of any mobile phone user in India. Since Texting messaging is really cheap in this part of the world forwarding SMSes is a very normal thing for all users. FM Radio is the life of people whilst traveling this is your one source of entertainment on the roads of the Indian metro cities. The lack of both these features on the iPhone is a big minus as far as its Indian market is concerned.
Battery Life:
Nokia N96 wins on this hands down. There have been lots of problems with the battery drainage of the Apple iPhone and these don't seem to stop. You will have to charge your phone everyday or twice a day for that matter if you are a heavy user.
GPS:
This is not a huge factor for the Indian market, but still a talking point. On the GPS front Nokia again wins this pretty easily.
Video Calling:
Video calling is not possible on the iPhone and the Nokia N96 is pretty good at it.
Data Transfer and Bluetooth usage:
A major , major talking point regarding the iPhone. The bluetooth on the iPhone can only be used for hands-free calling. No data transfer allowed between handsets or even with a computer with bluetooth enabled.
Storage:
You thought the storage factor will play in for the iPhone ? That isn't true. The Nokia N96 comes with 16GB of internal storage plus you have the luxury of adding a 8GB memory card giving you a whopping storage of 24GB. The iPhone again loses here.
Design:
There is no beating the iPhone, as simple as that!
All in all, if you are looking for more bang for the buck, go for the Nokia N96. Lookwise and as a fashion symbol, we still say there is no beating the iPhone!
New cyber attack linked to Nobel Peace Prize
Appearing to come from the Oslo Freedom Forum, a group with no direct Nobel ties, the email includes a PDF attachment containing a so-called "Trojan horse," allowing hackers to take control of victims' computers, reported the Contagio Internet security blog (http://contagiodumb.blogspot.com).
"Dear Sir/Madame. I enclose a letter from Oslo Freedom Forum founder Thor Halvorssen inviting you to join him in Oslo for the December 11th (sic) prize ceremony. Let me know if you have any questions," the email reads.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, which was attributed in October to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, much to the distaste of Beijing, is to be handed over at an official ceremony in Oslo on December 10.
"We don't know who launched the attack, or who the target was," the F-Secure computer security group said on its website.
According to daily Aftenposten's online edition, Nobel Institute director Geir Lundestad has meanwhile been the target of a cyber attack through an email that appeared to come a technician at a IT company working for the institute.
The email reportedly contained a link requesting him to type in his user name and password, but Lundestad had become suspicious and alerted Norwegian data security authorities.
"There is someone trying to infect the Nobel Institute," the head of the Norwegian Computer Emergency Response Team, Christophe Birkeland, told the paper.
"There is a lot to indicate that the same person is behind these attacks," he added.
The Nobel Peace Prize website (www.nobelpeaceprize.org) was also the target of a cyber attack two weeks ago, with the last IP address used in that attack belonging to the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
However, there is no way of knowing if the attack actually came from there, since hackers often used many computers to hide their traces.
Future of IT Is Multiplatform and Mobile, Dell Says
Once upon a time it was nice and simple. If you were in charge of corporate IT, you bought Microsoft. Serious quantities of computing power required a different solution, but for everything from mid-level enterprise down to desktops, Microsoft did the job. When it came to smartphones, Microsoft's products have never been great but always integrated neatly and were favoured by some although not all organizations.
How times change. Yesterday Michael Dell took to the stage at the KACE conference to discuss not only a pocketful of Android phones (apparently he made a show of pulling them from his pockets), but also to talk of a future where he anticipates the workplace is full of Apple, Android, and Microsoft computing devices. Dell also briefly confirmed a planned 10-inch tablet running Android.
Dell acquired systems management vendor KACE back in February. KACE's appliances allow remote management of computing devices, allowing managers to do things such as patch computers, enforce security policies, and generally keep an eye on things. KACE specialises in a multi-platform approach--Microsoft, Apple and Linux are all supported, as are mobile devices such as iPhones.
But what is the earthquake that's causing a once-homogenous IT landscape to became so broken up?
Linux tried to attack the desktop but didn't succeed. Many companies tried and failed miserably. A different approach was required and therefore several companies attacked Microsoft's Achilles' Heel: mobile devices.
The amount of money Microsoft has invested in mobile computing since the late 1990s could clear the debt of a smaller European country. However, it was RIM's BlackBerry that was arguably the first true smartphone success. It snuck under the door and hinted at a world free of Microsoft. RIM hasn't been having the best of times recently but the lubrication it left behind makes it easier for the likes of Google Android and even Apple's iPhone to squeeze into the workplace.
Google Android is now the biggest threat to Microsoft. To try and displace Microsoft on its home territory, Google took the attack vector of mobile computing but ensured their mobile operating system was scalable. Clever Google. Sure, we want you to use Android on mobile phones, Google might say, but it works equally well on tablet computers and netbooks. And, you know, if one day you want to use it on your desktop computers, it wouldn't take much to make it fit. Things will be easier to manage if Android is on all your devices, and Android is a touch-friendly, Internet operating system from the ground-up--unlike clunky old Windows.
But that's in the future. Possibly.
Microsoft is a one trick pony that's shackled to another pony called Intel. Whenever it tries its hand at computing not built around x86, its failures are more numerous than its successes. It's had success in the gaming arena, but that's the exception rather than the rule (and its big trick there was extend its PC knowledge into manufacturing consoles--the first Xbox was nothing more than a PC you could plug into your TV).
The danger posed by Android for Microsoft comes not only from the fact that it's a new operating system that's fast gaining ground. The chief danger is that Android is platform independent. Like all versions of Linux, Android is equally at home on ARM-based processors as it is on Intel or AMD chips. Google is not only churning up the operating system landscape, but digging deeper to turn-over system infrastructure too. x86 is no longer the sure bet it used to be. We might soon be seeing ARM-based server devices as part of the movement into the cloud.
It remains to be seen how much of a corporation's IT structure will be infected by the virus that is Android. I don't believe Windows will be getting wiped from desktops or file servers any time soon. However, we are undoubtedly experiencing the most diverse computing landscape in perhaps 15 or 20 years. This brings with it challenges but also plenty of opportunities for those able to spot the trends.
How times change. Yesterday Michael Dell took to the stage at the KACE conference to discuss not only a pocketful of Android phones (apparently he made a show of pulling them from his pockets), but also to talk of a future where he anticipates the workplace is full of Apple, Android, and Microsoft computing devices. Dell also briefly confirmed a planned 10-inch tablet running Android.
Dell acquired systems management vendor KACE back in February. KACE's appliances allow remote management of computing devices, allowing managers to do things such as patch computers, enforce security policies, and generally keep an eye on things. KACE specialises in a multi-platform approach--Microsoft, Apple and Linux are all supported, as are mobile devices such as iPhones.
But what is the earthquake that's causing a once-homogenous IT landscape to became so broken up?
Linux tried to attack the desktop but didn't succeed. Many companies tried and failed miserably. A different approach was required and therefore several companies attacked Microsoft's Achilles' Heel: mobile devices.
The amount of money Microsoft has invested in mobile computing since the late 1990s could clear the debt of a smaller European country. However, it was RIM's BlackBerry that was arguably the first true smartphone success. It snuck under the door and hinted at a world free of Microsoft. RIM hasn't been having the best of times recently but the lubrication it left behind makes it easier for the likes of Google Android and even Apple's iPhone to squeeze into the workplace.
Google Android is now the biggest threat to Microsoft. To try and displace Microsoft on its home territory, Google took the attack vector of mobile computing but ensured their mobile operating system was scalable. Clever Google. Sure, we want you to use Android on mobile phones, Google might say, but it works equally well on tablet computers and netbooks. And, you know, if one day you want to use it on your desktop computers, it wouldn't take much to make it fit. Things will be easier to manage if Android is on all your devices, and Android is a touch-friendly, Internet operating system from the ground-up--unlike clunky old Windows.
But that's in the future. Possibly.
Microsoft is a one trick pony that's shackled to another pony called Intel. Whenever it tries its hand at computing not built around x86, its failures are more numerous than its successes. It's had success in the gaming arena, but that's the exception rather than the rule (and its big trick there was extend its PC knowledge into manufacturing consoles--the first Xbox was nothing more than a PC you could plug into your TV).
The danger posed by Android for Microsoft comes not only from the fact that it's a new operating system that's fast gaining ground. The chief danger is that Android is platform independent. Like all versions of Linux, Android is equally at home on ARM-based processors as it is on Intel or AMD chips. Google is not only churning up the operating system landscape, but digging deeper to turn-over system infrastructure too. x86 is no longer the sure bet it used to be. We might soon be seeing ARM-based server devices as part of the movement into the cloud.
It remains to be seen how much of a corporation's IT structure will be infected by the virus that is Android. I don't believe Windows will be getting wiped from desktops or file servers any time soon. However, we are undoubtedly experiencing the most diverse computing landscape in perhaps 15 or 20 years. This brings with it challenges but also plenty of opportunities for those able to spot the trends.
Motorola fires back at Microsoft with patent suit
LIBERTYVILLE, Ill. – Motorola is returning fire in a legal battle with Microsoft, suing the software maker for infringing on 16 of its patents.
Motorola said Wednesday that Microsoft's PC and server software, Windows mobile software and Xbox products infringe on its patents. The complaints were filed by its Motorola Mobility unit in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin.
Last month, Microsoft Corp. sued Motorola Inc. for infringing on its smart-phone patents. It also filed a claim with the International Trade Commission.
Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, said the company is reviewing Motorola's filing but was not surprised by the move. He said Microsoft will move forward with its complaints.
Motorola said Wednesday that Microsoft's PC and server software, Windows mobile software and Xbox products infringe on its patents. The complaints were filed by its Motorola Mobility unit in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin.
Last month, Microsoft Corp. sued Motorola Inc. for infringing on its smart-phone patents. It also filed a claim with the International Trade Commission.
Horacio Gutierrez, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, said the company is reviewing Motorola's filing but was not surprised by the move. He said Microsoft will move forward with its complaints.
Build Facebook Apps in Ruby with New Heroku Package
Heroku, the new platform-as-a-service hotness in app creation, has recently announced a partnership with Facebook.
Heroku's Ruby-focused platform is already more than 99,000 apps strong. The startup's new Facebook App Package will help companies large and small create Facebook apps with ease, using the Facebook Graph API in Ruby.
Some of the Facebook apps already using Heroku include Clobby, the Facebook-based group chat app, and Cardinal Blue, a suite of social games.
Heroku places particular emphasis on its platform's ability to scale rapidly -- something anyone with a Facebook app idea should take into consideration. After all, when you're launching to a network of 500 million users, you need to be prepared for the admittedly unlikely but nevertheless possible eventuality that your app will be a huge success.
Heroku also claims its platform allows for more productive development, smoother deployment and access to system components such as NoSQL databases, asynchronous workers and memcache -- elements the company says "are often critical components of successful Facebook apps."
Mike Vernal is Facebook's director of platform. He said in a release, "Heroku makes building and scaling Facebook applications easier than ever. Developers can focus on their app, getting it in the hands of millions of Facebook users quickly."
We name-dropped Heroku in a recent post about IDEs. As we noted, the Ruby language is growing exponentially in popularity these days, and more and more developer resources are devoted to Ruby.
For more information on how Facebook development via Heroku works, check out the documentation. The package's suite of tools comes to $1,500 per month, a special introductory price that includes a $300-per-month discount.
Image courtesy of Flickr, rishibando.
Heroku's Ruby-focused platform is already more than 99,000 apps strong. The startup's new Facebook App Package will help companies large and small create Facebook apps with ease, using the Facebook Graph API in Ruby.
Some of the Facebook apps already using Heroku include Clobby, the Facebook-based group chat app, and Cardinal Blue, a suite of social games.
Heroku places particular emphasis on its platform's ability to scale rapidly -- something anyone with a Facebook app idea should take into consideration. After all, when you're launching to a network of 500 million users, you need to be prepared for the admittedly unlikely but nevertheless possible eventuality that your app will be a huge success.
Heroku also claims its platform allows for more productive development, smoother deployment and access to system components such as NoSQL databases, asynchronous workers and memcache -- elements the company says "are often critical components of successful Facebook apps."
Mike Vernal is Facebook's director of platform. He said in a release, "Heroku makes building and scaling Facebook applications easier than ever. Developers can focus on their app, getting it in the hands of millions of Facebook users quickly."
We name-dropped Heroku in a recent post about IDEs. As we noted, the Ruby language is growing exponentially in popularity these days, and more and more developer resources are devoted to Ruby.
For more information on how Facebook development via Heroku works, check out the documentation. The package's suite of tools comes to $1,500 per month, a special introductory price that includes a $300-per-month discount.
Image courtesy of Flickr, rishibando.
Indonesian minister all a-Twitter over Michelle Obama
JAKARTA (AFP) – The Indonesian media and blogosphere lit up Thursday with condemnation of a conservative Muslim minister who expressed embarrassment about shaking hands with US First Lady Michelle Obama.
Critics accused the minister of lying about the "hand-shaking incident" and bringing shame to the mainly Muslim country, which President Barack Obama held up as a model of tolerance and diversity during his brief visit this week.
The First Lady became the unwitting focus of an online debate over religious tolerance and women's rights when Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring messaged his thousands of Twitter followers that he had reluctantly shaken hands with her at a formal reception on Tuesday.
Sembiring is a conservative Muslim who refuses to touch women he is not related to, and has previously outraged liberal society by suggesting AIDS funding is a waste of public money and linking natural disasters to immorality.
"I tried to prevent (touching First Lady Obama) with my two hands but Mrs Michelle moved her hands too close to me, then we touched," he Tweeted on Tuesday, sparking a firestorm on the hyperactive Indonesian blogosphere.
Video footage of the meeting suggested otherwise, showing Sembiring reaching out to shake Michelle's hand, like the other dignitaries had done.
Rather than call a press conference to face the media in person, Sembiring defended his beliefs by posting comments on Twitter and Facebook on Thursday.
"I still stand by the position that I will not shake hands with women who are not related to me," he wrote in a series of 14 numbered Tweets to his 110,000 followers.
He added that "some situations happen suddenly, or I meet people who don't have any idea about my beliefs".
"Usually in state-related events, or sometimes after praying, there are ladies who scramble to shake hands."
He claimed that his encounter with Michelle Obama was such a moment, even though they met as she followed her husband down a long line of assembled officials, shaking hands with each in turn.
"I offered my two hands in a Sundanese-style greeting (held together as if in prayer)... And then the hand-shaking incident occurred," he explained.
Most Twitter users were scathing in their condemnation of the minister.
"Of course, the communications minister is stupid, naive and inconsistent," wrote one.
"It wasn't about shaking hands. It's the lying!!!!" wrote another.
One user wrote: "He's just embarrassing".
Critics accused the minister of lying about the "hand-shaking incident" and bringing shame to the mainly Muslim country, which President Barack Obama held up as a model of tolerance and diversity during his brief visit this week.
The First Lady became the unwitting focus of an online debate over religious tolerance and women's rights when Communications Minister Tifatul Sembiring messaged his thousands of Twitter followers that he had reluctantly shaken hands with her at a formal reception on Tuesday.
Sembiring is a conservative Muslim who refuses to touch women he is not related to, and has previously outraged liberal society by suggesting AIDS funding is a waste of public money and linking natural disasters to immorality.
"I tried to prevent (touching First Lady Obama) with my two hands but Mrs Michelle moved her hands too close to me, then we touched," he Tweeted on Tuesday, sparking a firestorm on the hyperactive Indonesian blogosphere.
Video footage of the meeting suggested otherwise, showing Sembiring reaching out to shake Michelle's hand, like the other dignitaries had done.
Rather than call a press conference to face the media in person, Sembiring defended his beliefs by posting comments on Twitter and Facebook on Thursday.
"I still stand by the position that I will not shake hands with women who are not related to me," he wrote in a series of 14 numbered Tweets to his 110,000 followers.
He added that "some situations happen suddenly, or I meet people who don't have any idea about my beliefs".
"Usually in state-related events, or sometimes after praying, there are ladies who scramble to shake hands."
He claimed that his encounter with Michelle Obama was such a moment, even though they met as she followed her husband down a long line of assembled officials, shaking hands with each in turn.
"I offered my two hands in a Sundanese-style greeting (held together as if in prayer)... And then the hand-shaking incident occurred," he explained.
Most Twitter users were scathing in their condemnation of the minister.
"Of course, the communications minister is stupid, naive and inconsistent," wrote one.
"It wasn't about shaking hands. It's the lying!!!!" wrote another.
One user wrote: "He's just embarrassing".
Motorola Retaliates With Lawsuit Against Microsoft
Motorola's mobile phone subsidiary has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft alleging the world's largest software maker has infringed 16 of its patents in PC, mobile and server software, as well as Xbox products.
The lawsuit comes just a day after Microsoft filed its second lawsuit against Motorola in recent months. Last month, Microsoft took aim at Motorola for the alleged infringement of nine patents in Motorola handsets that use Google's Android mobile software. On Tuesday, Microsoft filed suit against Motorola over licensing terms for technology Microsoft uses in its Xbox game machines.
Motorola Mobility filed the current lawsuit in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin, it said in a statement Wednesday. The patents are related to a number of technologies, including digital video coding, e-mail technology including in Exchange, Messenger and Outlook, and Windows Live instant messaging software. Motorola also directly attacked the Xbox patents in question in the recent Microsoft case, which are related to video coding and Wi-Fi technology.
"Motorola Mobility has requested that Microsoft cease using Motorola's patented technology and provide compensation for Microsoft's past infringement," Motorola said. "Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology."
Motorola also noted the lawsuits filed by Microsoft, calling the actions "unfortunate," because, "Microsoft has chosen the litigation path rather than entering into comprehensive licensing negotiations, as Motorola has mutually beneficial licensing relationships with the great majority of technology companies industry-wide."
Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.
Motorola has been involved in a lot of high profile litigation recently. The company also recently sued, and has been sued in return by Apple over technologies in a range of products, including smartphones and touchscreens.
Analysts say much of the lawsuit activity is competitive and aimed at Android because the mobile software has gained popularity so quickly.
Motorola's smartphone sales rose to 3.8 million in the third quarter from 2.7 million in the second quarter, partly due to the success of its Droid X smartphone, an Android-based handset.
The NPD Group recently noted that Android-based smartphones outsold iPhones in the U.S. by almost two-to-one in the third quarter. The market researcher said Android handsets accounted for 44 percent of all consumer smartphone sales in the period, while Apple's iOS, the software in the iPhone, took 23 percent. Research in Motion's portion of the market was 22 percent.
The lawsuit comes just a day after Microsoft filed its second lawsuit against Motorola in recent months. Last month, Microsoft took aim at Motorola for the alleged infringement of nine patents in Motorola handsets that use Google's Android mobile software. On Tuesday, Microsoft filed suit against Motorola over licensing terms for technology Microsoft uses in its Xbox game machines.
Motorola Mobility filed the current lawsuit in the U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Florida and the Western District of Wisconsin, it said in a statement Wednesday. The patents are related to a number of technologies, including digital video coding, e-mail technology including in Exchange, Messenger and Outlook, and Windows Live instant messaging software. Motorola also directly attacked the Xbox patents in question in the recent Microsoft case, which are related to video coding and Wi-Fi technology.
"Motorola Mobility has requested that Microsoft cease using Motorola's patented technology and provide compensation for Microsoft's past infringement," Motorola said. "Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology."
Motorola also noted the lawsuits filed by Microsoft, calling the actions "unfortunate," because, "Microsoft has chosen the litigation path rather than entering into comprehensive licensing negotiations, as Motorola has mutually beneficial licensing relationships with the great majority of technology companies industry-wide."
Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.
Motorola has been involved in a lot of high profile litigation recently. The company also recently sued, and has been sued in return by Apple over technologies in a range of products, including smartphones and touchscreens.
Analysts say much of the lawsuit activity is competitive and aimed at Android because the mobile software has gained popularity so quickly.
Motorola's smartphone sales rose to 3.8 million in the third quarter from 2.7 million in the second quarter, partly due to the success of its Droid X smartphone, an Android-based handset.
The NPD Group recently noted that Android-based smartphones outsold iPhones in the U.S. by almost two-to-one in the third quarter. The market researcher said Android handsets accounted for 44 percent of all consumer smartphone sales in the period, while Apple's iOS, the software in the iPhone, took 23 percent. Research in Motion's portion of the market was 22 percent.
New Gadget Connects iPod Touch to Sprint's 3G Network
Own an iPod Touch? The dream of having a contract-free, data only iPhone is finally here, thanks to Sprint's new Peel device.
iPod Touch owners may not be able to connect to AT&T's 3G network, but, starting this Sunday, they'll be able to plug into Sprint's.
Sprint announced Wednesday that it will begin selling a gizmo called the "Peel" on November 14 for $79.99. The Peel, manufactured by ZTE, is a case for second- and third-generation iPod Touches that connects to Sprint's network and acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to two devices (phone services are not available through the Peel).
To go with the Peel, Sprint is offering a month-by-month (no contract) 1GB data plan for $29.99.
The Peel requires no software installation for use, and is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OSX. The Peel also offers advanced WEP security for its hotspot functionality.
Sprint is encouraging iPod Touch owners to try out the Peel by including a 30-day no-commitment, money-back guarantee--within 30 days of purchasing the Peel, users can return the hardware and be reimbursed for both the purchase and the activation fee. Restocking fees will also be waived, and monthly service charges refunded.
"When combined with Sprint's 3G network, ZTE PEEL turns an iPod touch from a portable device limited by the availability of WiFi to a mobility tool free to browse the web and use applications anytime, anywhere while on Sprint's 3G network," said Sprint's VP of Product Development Fared Adib, in a statement.
The Peel will be sold in Sprint retail stores, as well as directly on Sprint's website, starting November 14. And for those of you wary of Sprint's service--PCWorld's network tests, conducted earlier this year in 13 major cities across the United States, showed that Sprint's network has excellent reliability rates.
iPod Touch owners may not be able to connect to AT&T's 3G network, but, starting this Sunday, they'll be able to plug into Sprint's.
Sprint announced Wednesday that it will begin selling a gizmo called the "Peel" on November 14 for $79.99. The Peel, manufactured by ZTE, is a case for second- and third-generation iPod Touches that connects to Sprint's network and acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to two devices (phone services are not available through the Peel).
To go with the Peel, Sprint is offering a month-by-month (no contract) 1GB data plan for $29.99.
The Peel requires no software installation for use, and is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OSX. The Peel also offers advanced WEP security for its hotspot functionality.
Sprint is encouraging iPod Touch owners to try out the Peel by including a 30-day no-commitment, money-back guarantee--within 30 days of purchasing the Peel, users can return the hardware and be reimbursed for both the purchase and the activation fee. Restocking fees will also be waived, and monthly service charges refunded.
"When combined with Sprint's 3G network, ZTE PEEL turns an iPod touch from a portable device limited by the availability of WiFi to a mobility tool free to browse the web and use applications anytime, anywhere while on Sprint's 3G network," said Sprint's VP of Product Development Fared Adib, in a statement.
The Peel will be sold in Sprint retail stores, as well as directly on Sprint's website, starting November 14. And for those of you wary of Sprint's service--PCWorld's network tests, conducted earlier this year in 13 major cities across the United States, showed that Sprint's network has excellent reliability rates.
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