Verizon's Cable Deal Would Widen Digital Divide, Lawmakers Say

A proposed deal between Verizon and four major cable companies could lead to consumers paying higher prices and having less access to high-speed Internet, a group of lawmakers said on Monday.

In December, Comcast, Cox, Time Warner and Bright House Networks agreed to sell Verizon a $3.6 billion portion of the wireless spectrum. The cable companies and Verizon, the nation’s top wireless carrier, also agreed to market and sell one another’s products and services.

Verizon and Comcast executives testified earlier this year that the deal would help Verizon handle an expected shortage of wireless spectrum triggered by more consumers' streaming of audio and video on smartphones and tablets.

But in a letter sent Monday to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Attorney General Eric Holder, more than 30 House members warned the agreement would have “far-reaching implications on the competitive landscape across the nation" and would give Verizon and the cable companies involved an "enormous advantage over their competitors."

The deal appears to limit competition in voice, video, Internet and wireless markets, they said. "This could lead to reduced investment in infrastructure, job loss, fewer choices, and ultimately higher prices for consumers," the lawmakers warned.

The agreements require approval by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

The agreement would also eliminate competition between Verizon and the cable companies and reduce Verizon's incentive to expand its high-speed Internet and video service, known as FiOS, the lawmakers also claimed. "This would leave many of the communities we represent on the wrong side of the digital divide," they said.

In March, community groups in Boston, Baltimore, Syracuse, Albany and Buffaloasked the FCC to block Verizon's deal with the cable providers, claiming it would ensure that they would never receive Verizon's FiOS service in their towns.

Last fall, Verizon said it planned to offer high-speed wireless in homes in Verizon's territory that do not currently have FiOS.

The lawmakers also claimed the deal would “eliminate thousands of good, middle-class jobs needed to build competing broadband networks."

Monday's letter was the latest plea for the deal between Verizon and the cable companies to protect the public interest.

In February, Sen. Al Franken urged the FCC and the Justice Department to investigate the deal, saying that “these joint-marketing agreements will turn these rival companies into partners, rather than competitors.”

Responding to those charges on Tuesday, Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden said in a statement, "Over the past six months we have addressed these issues, made a persuasive case that bringing unused spectrum to the marketplace to serve millions of consumers is strongly in the public interest, and we believe we are on track for approval later this summer."

Last year, regulators blocked AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile, which would have created the country's largest wireless company, saying it would leave consumers with higher prices and fewer choices for wireless service.

Google, FTC Near Privacy Settlement Of Record Size: WSJ

Google Inc is close to paying $22.5 million to settle charges that it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple's Safari browser, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials briefed on the settlement terms.

The fine would be the largest penalty ever levied on a single company by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Journal said late Monday.

The charges involve Google's use of special computer code, or "cookies," to trick Apple's Safari browser so Google could monitor users that had blocked such tracking, the newspaper said.

Google disabled the code after being contacted by the Journal. According to Google, tracking of Apple users was inadvertent and did not cause any harm to consumers, the newspaper reported.

"The FTC is focused on a 2009 help center page. We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies," Google told the Journal.

Google also faces potential sanctions from other governments. It is being investigated by the European Union to determine if the company complies with Europe's stricter privacy laws, the Journal reported.

An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment to the Journal.

Google and FTC could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.

Amazon Phone, Potential iPhone Rival, Could Be In The Works, According To Report

With its $199 Kindle Fire, released in November, Amazon has already taken a hefty chunk of tablet sales away from Apple. Could Amazon be planning the same undercutting strategy against the iPhone?

According to a fresh and lively report from Bloomberg, Amazon is "developing a smartphone that would vie with [Apple]'s iPhone" (and other smartphones too, presumably) and is currently loading up on the requisite patents necessary to enter the smartphone business. Amazon's iPhone (aPhone?) could be ready by the end of 2012, or about a year after its disruptive Kindle Fire hit the market, per a report from Citigroup's Mark Mahaney from November of last year.

Though Amazon does not release firm numbers, most analysts estimate it sold about 6 million Kindle Fires in the first quarter after the device's release, which would make the Kindle Fire the second best-selling tablet ever, behind Apple's iPad. The Kindle Fire was inexpensive ($199, compared to $499 for the cheapest iPad) and easy to use, two attributes that could define the success of any smartphone entry from Amazon.

Details of the supposed Amazon phone are scant, though presumably it would easily connect with the Amazon.com storefront and Amazon App Store. Amazon also recently acquired UpNext, a 3D mapping service it could use on the Kindle Fire or its new smartphone.

But how will Amazon attract phone buyers? With the Kindle Fire, Amazon seemed to be selling to those who had never owned an iPad, or could not afford one; but the tablet market was far more untapped than the current smartphone market. How does Amazon entice Android, Windows Phone or iPhone owners away from their current mobile devices of choice?

Like the Kindle Fire, expect an Amazon phone to be cheap. Amazon already has a wireless section on its website, where it sells several popular Android and Windows Phone devices at steep discounts. And we're already seeing a trend of flagship smartphones selling for less than the customary $199 with two-year contracts, with the Nokia Lumia 900 and Sony Xperia Ion starting at $99. Sprint also recently announced that it would offer the white-hot Samsung Galaxy S III for $149 after rebate. Any Amazon phone would likely continue that trend.

What else Amazon can do to seduce smartphone buyers is a mystery. A February survey from Baird Equity Research found that just over 40 percent of consumers would be interested in an Amazon smartphone, should Amazon make one (compare that to 12 percent for a Facebook phone), so the brand image is already there, to some extent. And now we play the waiting game, to see if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and company do indeed attack Apple on the smartphone front.

Samsung Gets Galaxy Nexus Sales Ban Suspended Temporarily, Scores Victory Against Apple

WASHINGTON, July 6 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics scored a partial victory against arch-foe Apple Inc on Friday after a U.S. appeals court lifted a freeze on sales of its Galaxy Nexus smartphones but upheld a lower court's decision to temporarily halt sales of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer.

Apple accused its Asian rival, the leader in global mobile device sales, in lawsuits of blatantly copying its hot-selling iPhones and iPads.

Last week, a San Jose court granted rare, temporary injunctions against the sale of the Galaxy mobile devices in question, a triumph for the Silicon Valley consumer electronics giant that had asked for the bans until their trial begins July 30.

Apple has waged an international patent war since 2010 as it seeks to limit the growth of Google's Android system, the world's most-used mobile operating platform. Opponents of Apple say it is using patents too aggressively in a bid to stamp out competition.

Apple and Samsung Electronics, the world's largest consumer electronics companies, are waging legal battles in about 10 countries, accusing each other of patent infringement as they vie for supremacy in a fast-growing market for mobile devices.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it would temporarily stay the smartphone injunction while it considers Apple's arguments, the court said in a brief order. It gave Apple a July 12 deadline to respond.

The decisions are the latest in a long-running battle between Samsung and Apple in U.S. courts but are unlikely to severely depress the Asian tech-power's bottom line since it is rolling out new tablet and smartphone models. On Friday, Samsung announced that soaring sales of its smartphones helped drive a record $5.9 billion quarterly profit.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, rejected Samsung's request to lift her June 26 order to halt sales of the tablet, which runs on Google Inc's Android operating system and goes toe-to-toe with the iPad.

Koh also slapped a pre-trial ban on sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus phone a week ago.

Apple sued Samsung last year, accusing the South Korean electronics maker of "slavishly" copying the iPhone and iPad. Samsung denies the claim and countersued.

Samsung's Galaxy touchscreen tablets are considered by many industry experts to be the main rival to the iPad, though they are currently a distant second to Apple's devices.

Apple sold 13.6 million iPads from January through March to control 63 percent of the global tablet market, according to research from Display Search. Samsung sold 1.6 million tablets, giving it 7.5 percent of the market.

The Galaxy case is U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846. The Nexus case is in the same court and is No. 2012-0630.

WotWentWrong Will Explain Why Your Date Was Such A Delinquent

There's no shortage of sites to help you find a date. But what about what comes next?

The recently-launched WotWentWrong, more break-up app than dating site, promises to help you do a post-mortem on the delinquent date who never called, never followed up, and never explained why.

WotWentWrong boasts it can "help people to find out why their relationship ended" and even assist them to improve their dating technique by soliciting feedback on all their annoying mannerisms and neuroses.

"She's okay with the fact that she won't be dating Peter or Mark again. But wouldn't it be nice if they could tell her they lost interest so she doesn't repeat the same mistakes again?" asks a narrator in WotWentWrong's introductory video. "Maybe there's a pattern she keeps repeating but isn't aware of."

In essence, the website offers to replace the friend who has traditionally acted as a go-between for a couple and that asks, after no text, email or phone call, "So, Bianca was just wondering..."

Want to know why your date never texted you back? WotWentWrong will first help you pen a "Dear John" query

 letter asking for an explanation (users choose from 11 different templates with descriptions like "flippant," "philosophical," "cool" and "historical"), then helps you incentivize your delinquent date to respond to your query by having you rate his or her appearance, kissing skills, sense of humor and style.

Don't count on anything too personal, though you can customize the text. Here's what WotWentWrong's "philosophical" template for its "feedback request" looks like:

The person you're pumping for information will receive an email alerting them that "Bianca B has sent you a personal feedback request from WotWentWrong" and "Bianca is hoping to understand WotWentWrong with your dates." In order for your dates to find out how you've rated their looks, sense of humor, and kissing prowess, they'll have to first explain what it was about your personality or relationship that "bothered" them. WotWentWrong helpfully provides 12 categories of feedback, such as "Something's missing" or "It's about how you treat me," within which there are more specific explanations.

Clicking on the "lifestyle" category presents the feedback-giver a dropdown menu of more than a dozen choices, ranging from "You don't earn enough money for the lifestyle I want to have" to "You don't like pets." The "Physical/Sexual" category gets even more personal ("Too hairy?" "You finish sex too quickly?" Ouch).

WotWentWrong's pitch is that its service offers a "portal to finding out the truth in a socially acceptable way," and maintains that "calling or emailing an Ex for an answer can be so -- stalkery."

"Stalkery?" Really? Well, we have to wonder then how they'd describe "getting a third party website to pen an email for you and communicate with your ex in your place."

"Disturbing" was how one person characterized the sample WotWentWrong email he received, noting it looked like spam. Another said that if a girl sent him such a "feedback request," he'd "think she was a psycho."

Pumping an old flame for information isn't all WotWentWrong will do. The site also gives you the ability to offer "Proactive Feedback" -- or tell your date everything they did wrong.

The press release explains. "In the spirit of helping an Ex put their best foot forward, users thinking 'For their own sake, I really wish someone would tell them that' can do exactly that -- without having to receive a request first."

This calls to mind another site, ExRated, that offers a Yelp for exes: a place for people to anonymously review their former lovers' behavior, habits, and overall datability for their future flames to find (Read more about it here).

Twitter Buys Dasient Security Startup To Combat Spam

Twitter's made another big buy, its second in the past week.

On Monday, TechCrunch reported that the microblogging site will acquire Dasient, a security startup that offers malware protection for businesses.

A post on the Dasient blog confirms the purchase, which is "effective immediately." The company's staff will work exclusively on Twitter's revenue engineering team and will no longer service new clients.

Founded in 2008 by Neil Daswani, Ameet Ranadive and Shariq Rizvi, the company has been "solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse," according to the company blog post.

"In 2010, Dasient launched the industry’s first anti-malvertising service to protect ad networks and publishers from the scourge of malicious ads," the post went on to explain. "Over the last year, we have been very active in securing the ads and content of the some of the industry’s largest ad networks and web sites."

It is exactly this kind of ad security that caught Twitter's eye. As the popular social network ramps up its monetization effort with new advertising strategies, it will need additional security to weed out malicious advertisers who may pay for their content to infiltrate Twitter's network.

A Twitter rep emailed the following statement to The Huffington Post:

Neil Daswani, Shariq Rizvi and Ameet Ranadive have created technology that provides network security and malware prevention service for some of the largest ad networks in the world. Their team has an excellent understanding of advertising platform-related security issues and will be a valuable addition to the revenue engineering team.

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Liquipel Will Waterproof Your Phone With This Invisible Film

What's white and wet and still works all over? A white iPhone! If it has a Liquipel case, that is.

This "case" consists of a waterproof "nano coating"that permanently bonds to the phone's surface to keep it functioning normally even underwater, according to Liquipel.

That's right.

According to Cult of Mac, Liquipel doesn't just protect your phone from rain or random splashes, it permeates every nook and cranny in the hardware to for total H2O immersion without any damage. On their website, the folks at Liquipel are quick to point out that this doesn't mean you can take your phone swimming. The coating, which is 1000 times thinner than a human hair, is meant to protect against "rain, spills, baby drool and short term submersion such as the sink or toilet."

We haven't actually tried it, but if it works this could be huge, and not just for our wallets. Liquipel will likely make a bundle, if the company succeeds in its reported goal of licensing its technology to smartphone makers, a move that would undoubtedly be applauded by consumers, as it would be mean that phones could be waterproofed during assembly and not as an aftermarket add-on.

As it is, you have to send your phone to Liquipel in order for the coating to be applied. Waterproofing costs $59 and takes 1-2 days. At the time of this writing, the store was down due to "overwhelming response." Liquipel is offering 15 percent off as an apology for the inconvenience. The coating can currently be applied to certain models of the iPhone, as well as some phones from HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.

Liquipel isn't the only company attempting to win the war on water. Utah firm HzO won the 2012 Innovations Design and Engineering Award at CES for its WaterBlock technology which, like Liquipel, is applied via vapor deposition. Basically, a phone is placed in a sealed chamber and a gas is introduced into the chamber and builds up on the phone in a film. The thickness of the coating is controlled by the amount of gas that is let into the chamber. WaterBlock is not currently available to consumers.

Waterproofing was huge at this year's Consumer Electronics Show where liquid friendly offerings included a bevy of smartphones and tablets, including AT&T's Pantech Element, which can reportedly spend 30 minutes underneath one meter of water without any ill effects.

Google 4Q 2011 Revenue Disappoints As Ad Prices Sink

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google's moneymaking machine misfired badly in the fourth quarter as its advertising prices fell during the holiday marketing season.

The results announced Thursday fell way below the lofty expectations of stock market analysts. That caused Google's shares to plunge more than 9 percent after the numbers were released.

Google Inc. earned $2.7 billion, or $8.22 per share, during the October-to-December period. That's just a 6 percent increase from $2.5 billion, or $7.81 per share, at the same time in 2010.

If not for certain items, Google says it would have earned $9.50 per share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected $10.51 per share.

Revenue climbed 25 percent from the previous year to nearly $10.6 billion.

After subtracting ad commissions, Google's revenue totaled $8.1 billion. That was about $300 million below the average analyst forecast.

The disappointing performance stemmed from a surprising downturn in the prices that the Internet search leader collects for each click. The average price declined 8 percent from the same time in 2010.

The erosion reversed what had been happening earlier in the year. The year-over-year increases in Google's price per ad click had ranged from 5 percent to 12 percent increase in the first three quarters of 2010.

The fourth quarter marked the first time Google's revenue surpassed $10 billion for any three-month period in the company's 13-year history.

Reaching that milestone wasn't enough to impress investors. Google shares shed $58.56 to $581.01 in Thursday's extended trading.

Apple Introduces iBooks 2, iBooks Author, iTunes U App In Push To Transform Textbooks, Education

Apple's latest initiative is characteristically ambitious: the reinvention of the textbook.

At an event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City Thursday morning, Apple executives introduced two new applications that the company hopes will revolutionize the way textbooks are created and consumed: iBook Author, a brand new application for Mac intended for textbook writers and publishers to create iPad-optimized textbooks, and iBooks 2, an update to the iBooks app with several new note-taking and study features.

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller characterized the current state of textbooks and classroom learning as bleak, outdated experiences.

"One thing we hear louder than anything else is student engagement, inspiring kids to want to discover and learn," Schiller said, according to MacWorld. "That's why we get excited to see student reactions to iPads in the classroom.'

Textbooks on the iPad, Apple hopes, will replace the physical textbook, which Schiller labeled as too heavy, expensive, not portable, not durable, and not interactive. Though modern textbooks have "great content," according to Schiller, they are "clearly not the ideal learning tool anymore."

With that, Schiller introduced iBooks 2 and all of its new enhancements for studying. The free application comes with the ability to highlight important passages, view 3D models, videos and images, make flashcards, look up words in the dictionary within the application, search through the book and more. The application is free to download in the iTunes store

With iBooks 2, Apple announced that its first textbooks would be available immediately for $15. The high school texts will initially come from publishing partners Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin, representatives of which were all in attendance at the event.

Apple also introduced iBooks Author, a content creation platform for authors of both textbooks and other works. At the event, Apple focused on textbook authoring, displaying a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get application for Mac computers, one that enables writers and publishers to create content-rich books in an application similar to the company's Notes and iWork apps. That app is also free and will be available in the iTunes store.

In addition to the textbook-centric apps, Apple also outed an iPhone and iPad app for iTunes U, which will allow teachers to create syllabi, share videos of their lectures, and publish class notes for their students.

"There is no reason that kids today should use the same tools they did in 1950," said Schiller (via Engadget), re-emphasizing that Apple views its entry into textbooks as a new era in education.

Giving the teacher an Apple just got a whole new meaning.

Consumer Electronics Show: Recycling Grows With E-Waste Spread

LAS VEGAS -- Inside the mad hum of the convention center, an overwhelming array of gadgetry confronts attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show, a showcase for much that is new in the technology world. The products seem impervious to the workings of time, as if the latest smartphones and tablet computers -- so shiny and sleek -- are permanently tethered to the future.

Yet 10 miles to the west, on a patch of reddish desert beyond the high-rise casinos of the Las Vegas Strip, a building the size of an airplane hangar serves as the final resting place for old electronics. This is where gadgets go when they are wanted no more. Typically, they are refurbished and sold anew. Sometimes, they are stripped down to their basic elements and recycled into plastic, steel and precious metals.

The new $20 million plant, which officially cut the ribbon here Wednesday afternoon, is the second such facility opened by U.S. Micro Corp., a business whose very existence illustrates the extent to which the world is increasingly contending with a surplus of unwanted electronics. Even products that seem intrinsically part of the modern age eventually become waste, presenting a growing threat to the environment and the sanctity of the data stored on electronics of every type.

Back in 1995, when the company’s chief executive and founder, Jim Kegley, opened the first plant in Atlanta, recycling old electronics was at best a niche business. Cell phones were still in their infancy, and a long way from the current fashion of trading up for a slicker model every two years. Popular computers remained on sale for three years and longer, eons by contemporary standards.

But last year, U.S. Micro -- a privately held company -- estimated that it processed about 1 million technology products, relying solely on the Atlanta plant. With the new facility here, the company foresees processing 1.5 million products this year. The company harvests old devices owned by major American companies across the industrial landscape and disposes of them, refurbishing and reselling about 90 percent of them, while recycling the rest.

"Typically, we find that our customers don't have a good outlet for their old equipment, and they are worried about their data, so they stockpile," Kegley told The Huffington Post during a visit this week. "We like to say, 'Storage is not a solution.'"

The growth of the electronics recycling industry sits at the confluence of two intensifying concerns -- the vulnerability of companies whose data is stored on myriad electronic devices, and awareness that huge volumes of old gadgets are landing in troubling places. Many take up space in landfills. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that 70 percent of heavy metals landing in municipal waste disposal sites are the result of electronics being discarded. And many are shipped to China and other developing countries, where poor people laboriously harvest their innards using crude and dangerous methods, often polluting waterways and sickening communities.

The marketing pitch from U.S. Micro is predominantly focused on the threat posed by unwanted data lying around in discarded machines -- credit card and Social Security numbers left in the hard drives on computers of major banks; legal documents cached in the memories of copy and fax machines operated by publicly traded corporations; stray thumb drives and memory cards forgotten in old computer bags.

"Today, we see data everywhere," said Kegley. "People just don’t know what to do with this stuff."

But the plant here is also aimed at preventing so-called e-waste from sullying landfills in suburban American landfills or rivers in southern China, where whole towns are now engaged in the gritty work of melting down old circuit boards to extract copper and other precious metals.

The 10 percent of the electronic equipment that technicians deem unfit for refurbishing is fed into a series of conveyor belts and then into the guts of machines that break them into pieces. A large magnetized chamber separates the metals from the plastic, depositing each into industrial-size cardboard boxes to be trucked off to plants that can absorb them.The precious metals are sent to a plant in Europe that separates them into their base elements, Kegley said, while the plastics and steel are sold to domestic users, including the auto industry.

The company touts its ability to fully process all of the equipment it removes from its customers' premises as insurance against having any of it landing in the wrong hands.

Many e-waste recyclers promise to responsibly dispose of old gadgets, only to sell them off to middlemen merchants who export to low-grade operations in China, India and other developing nations, according to environmental watchdogs. Advocates assert that e-waste recyclers must gain accreditation from bodies that audit their operations to verify their compliance with proper practices -- a step that U.S. Micro says it is now pursuing.

"There really aren't any legal standards for e-waste recycling," said Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a San Francisco area non-profit watchdog group. "If you don't have any certification, and you're not audited, then we really don't know what you're doing with the material."

A Seattle-based non-profit, the Basel Action Network, oversees one such certification regimen, the so-called e-Stewards program, publishing a list of approved e-waste recyclers located in many communities.

Here in Las Vegas, U.S. Micro said it is pursuing accreditation from a competing regimen, the R2 standard, which includes participation from the EPA. The company said none of the equipment it handles winds up in a landfill or overseas, something it can guarantee by maintaining full control over the process.

On a walk through the concrete hangar earlier this week, the the volume of goods pouring in was unmistakable. Several dozen boxloads of gear sat stacked on wooden pallets in the loading dock, a trove trucked in from Phoenix and the Seattle area.

Here were boxes of Dell computer monitors, Cisco routers, a Hewlett-Packard laser jet printer, and a Canon copy machine. A Fujitsu scanner was tagged with a yellow sticky note bearing black magic marker: DO NOT MOVE JESSICA'S SCANNER.

Not that many years ago, Jessica's scanner had presumably sat inside a shrink-wrapped box, waiting to unleash new possibilities. Now, it was something else -- a modern form of detritus.