Finally!  Palm is finally (almost) going to turn on the video recording and editing capability in Palm Pre’s.  The Pre has been out for a year and they expect to send this out in an over the air update in February.  Sure you might ask why the delay until February.  Well ask away, it was silly to wait this long, no point in expecting rationality at this late stage. 

Palm will be pushing out and over-the-air update to all webOS devices (Pre and Pixi) that will enable video recording and editing without the need to purchase additional hardware. This is a feature that has been sorely lacking on webOS.

The recording feature works nearly identically to that of the iPhone’s on-device video editing tool. It lets users crop a video and reduce the size of the clip. Users can then upload to sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace with a single tap. Uploads will occur the background. Once uploaded, webOS will alert the user and give then the opportunity to send SMS links or MMS messages to the video to their friends.

The update will be free and will be available in February.

Informationweek

Not Really?

There have been several major updates for the Palm Pre since it was launched last summer.  One update made the camera function a bit overly complicated, and another one fixed it.  In general that is rather representative of the 2 steps forward, steps back results that your typical user experiences with Palm Pre’s.  Completely absent still today is any video recording capability in the Palm Pre 1 year after it was announced at CES 2009, and over 6 months after it was launched in the US.  That’s rather extraordinary considering Palm has offered video recording capabilities in Palm devices for about 5 years or more, yet the Palm Pre designed to save the company doesn’t offer this basic standard functionality, following in the Apple iPhone tradition of releasing a very advanced phone with a very noticeable flaw (the same exact flaw no less).

So today, as I went to pick up my phone and make a call, I was call blocked with the news that an update was destined to be downloaded and installed on my phone.  Its been my experience that whenever one of these bad boys is coming down the pipe, NOTHING really works until you bring it in.

So I proceeded to download the update, which I later learned was about 13 mb in size.  I brought it in while at home, where my Sprint network bars on my Pre fluctuate from 0 – 3, even though my wife’s Sprint phone consistently shows 2-4 (not a Palm).  Maybe someone is curving up the bars on her phone, or maybe my Pre gets crappy reception, I don’t know.  I tend to think its partly the update from 1.3.4 and partly the Sprint network, which does not seem to broadcast at a steady strength despite the fact that we are just a few miles from the 4g rollout in Charlotte.

It took about 25 minutes to download, then I got the opportunity to actually ‘install’ it.  That took another 30 minutes.  Ironically, I was helping my wife pull in about 35 updates and one Office Service pack at the same time.  Crazily, the updates and the service pack downloaded faster!

Even though my wifi was turned on on my Pre, it didn’t help speed things up either.

OK, so complaining about the lack of progress (or benchmark maintenance), here’s what you do get with this update.

webOS 1.3.5

Version information

Version: webOS 1.3.5

Release date: 28 December 2009

New applications

NONE

Feature changes to existing applications

App Catalog

• App Catalog significantly improves the application download experience.
• A user can now download multiple applications simultaneously.
• Downloads continue in the background if the user moves away from the download screen.
• A user can manually pause, resume, and cancel downloads.
• A user can also download all available updates for the user’s downloaded applications with a single tap.
• App Catalog automatically resumes downloads in cases where a download was paused because it was interrupted—for example, if a user moves out of network coverage and then moves back into coverage.
• Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.
• App Catalog lists search results based on an improved search algorithm.
• Locations from which users can purchase paid apps from App Catalog now include U.S. territories.

Calendar

• In Day view, switching between days happens more quickly.

Date & Time

• When the user has network time zone enabled, a city and country are no longer displayed.

Device Info

• A user can perform a full erase by pressing and holding Sym + the orange/Option key + power for 10 seconds.

Email

• A user can now edit forwarded text for all email account types.
• When the user sets up more than one Yahoo! email account, the account names displayed in Account List view include the associated email address so that the user can distinguish them.
• If an account mailbox is too full to send messages, after the user frees up space in the mailbox on the server, the user can send the messages successfully.
• The default email signature no longer includes the macron over the “e” in “Pre,” so that the product name shows correctly on a recipient’s phone.

Messaging

• If a user deletes a conversation with a contact, new conversations with that contact are now correctly displayed in Conversations view.

Screen & Lock

• When the screen is locked, the time displays in a new font.

Sprint Navigation

• A user can launch Sprint Navigation from an address in an open contact entry in Contacts.

System

• Users can now take advantage of the full storage capacity of the phone for downloading applications. This gives the user more control over how to allocate the phone’s storage space across applications, music, photos, and other media. Downloaded applications are now stored on the phone’s USB drive.
• This update improves battery life in areas of poor wireless network coverage.
• If the user is working in an application that supports landscape mode (such as Web or Videos), notifications now appear at the bottom of the landscape screen.
• After a user signs in to an existing Palm profile, applications the user installed from App Catalog are restored in the background. The user can use other features of the phone while the apps are being restored.
• Swiping to delete a list item that contains a link no longer causes the link to open in the web browser.

Updates

• After taking the 1.3.5 update, users can download future updates over a 2G (1xRTT , GPRS , EDGE ) data connection by opening Updates and tapping Download Now.

Web

• The web browser now supports the display of animated GIFs.
• Audio files with a .3g2 extension play correctly as audio files, not video files.

Security

This release includes a security fix to the dev portal. Credit to Kris Siegal for reporting the issue. Individuals interested in contacting Palm to report suspected security issues can find more information at palm.com/security.

source http://www.precentral.net/webos-135-now-available-download

The Senate Judiciary Committee and the House both have made moves to restrain wiretapping legislation and possibly as important to remove provisions that would forgive telecom companies that enabled the US Government to tap phone conversations for all Americans.

Its a class action lawyer’s dream case.  The federal government legislature preventing the exclusion of some of the largest corporations in the country from prosecution for illegally aiding in the wire tapping of every person in the country.  The corporations have deep pockets and the legislature wants to make a point about the abuse of power by the Executive Branch without actually having to fight directly against the Executive Branch. 

So instead by default they can allow trial lawyers to gather up a grass roots group of all Americans and file against all the major phone companies (excluding Qwest, the only phone company that apparently did not cooperate after they did a legal review of the request.)

Panel Drops Immunity From Eavesdropping Bill – New York Times

About 66 years ago the United States had to learn a serious lesson about foreign currency exchange. The United States had just been attacked by Japan and had to take drastic actions rapidly as they entered World War II.

One of those actions was to freeze all of the accounts of the country of Japan and seize all the money in those accounts.

At the time computers didn’t really exist, and it wasn’t terribly easy to stop the flow of money or seize funds from a foreign country. Someone had to invent this capability. President Roosevelt gave this responsibility to Walter Diamond and his wife Dorothy Diamond.

I had the pleasure of meeting the Diamonds back in 2001. When I was going to law school for my masters and laws, they named the LL M. program that I attended after the Diamonds.

The Diamonds didn’t have the technical capabilities that we have today. They didn’t have the computing infrastructure and they didn’t have online tools or networks to access information or even get a good idea about how to do something.

I was reviewing a new social networking site for Forex traders at FXground.com. My encounter with the Diamonds in 2001 in their story stuck in my mind as I was doing the review on this social networking site dedicated to foreign exchange traders.

I kept thinking of all of the different people and things they must’ve had to do to seize the funds from the country of Japan. Today if we were to do something like that, we would turn into a computer.

This particular site for foreign exchange traders is a good example of how to apply a social networking tool to an industry. It enables foreign exchange traders to come and share information about best and worst practices in their industry. Other traders can then review their submissions and rate them up or down and give their insights into why they think they are a good thing or a bad thing or they can identify when the right time to employ a tool might be as opposed to the wrong time.

That’s a convoluted way of saying that all technology has a purpose and it’s up to the user to make the purpose work to best advantage and not screw up!

Later I was working on a video tutorial and I utilized the mind map above to highlight several different capabilities, but the mind map shows a good breakdown of the functionality available at FXground.com.

 Several men around the country are waiting to be sentenced for selling expensive factory management software for pennies on the dollar through eBay.  In multiple different instances from Rockwell Automation was sold for pennies on the dollar.  As an example Robert Koster of Jonesboro Arkansas sold over $5 million for the software for less than $25,000.

This raises a red flag for tires of software on eBay.  If the deal looks like it might be too good to be true, odds are it probably is.  EBay does a number of things to protect buyers and sellers of its goods but it can do everything in at the end of the day you are purchasing a product from another person, if they’re selling $1 million software for a few thousand dollars odds are something is a little fishy.

Link to eBay pirates plead guilty to selling $6m software for pennies | Channel Register

A little story that has slipped under the radar involves American Express.  According to the July issue of Forbes, American Express has disclosed that they have set aside $60 million to fight off money laundering and was cooperating with the Justice Department.  The DEA has separately disclosed that it is their investigation that involves American Express and that it involves Black Market Exchange Accounts.

This involves a complex web of Colombian drug dealers for example providing American Cash to Colombian importers purchasing something that can readily be sold again any where in the world.  Like cigarettes.

They purchase the cigarettes from a US wholesaler and arrange through a middle man to pay in US currency.  They pay a middle man in pesos, the middle man swaps out the pesos for dollars and pays the US wholesaler in dollars.  The wholesaler makes a trip across the border to collect payment, comes back and deposits the funds in a US bank.

The middle man gives the pesos to the drug dealer.

Money Laundered

It has not yet been described how much American Express is involved in this investigation nor how they are cooperating.

It almost sent a substitute teacher to prison for forty years, when it triggered an endless number of pop ups that were displayed in front of a classroom of seventh graders.

Prosecutors initially relied on faulty evidence from an investigator to convice Julie Amero a 40 year old substitute teacher on four counts of risk of injury to a minor.

It was only after her conviction in January after a 4 year legal battle that security experts and bloggers came to her rescue forcing the disclosure of evidence that her computer was infected with spyware that caused pop-ups.

She was granted a new trial and the prosecutors have indicated that they will not move forward with that new trial. 

The problem is that she has lost four years of her life fighting this problem, four years of legal bills. four years of slander against her reputation.  All of this due to Pop Up Porn from spyware.

Something like this could easily happen to almost anyone that works with minors, but it could also create serious problems for anyone whether they are at work in an office or even in the privacy of their own home, where their own children happen to witness a bombardment of pop up porn hell bombs.

Please do scan and clean your computer, but remember at the end of the day, anyone is still susceptible.  To me this means that prosecutors and the public at large has to become a little more tolerant of the fact that we are all victims of this software.

Link to Teacher’s porn conviction overturned – Security – MSNBC.com

Last year the US Congress passed a number of laws that cracked down on online gaming sites.  This has not slowed down the industry and probably shows the impotence of US law to impact an internet industry all by itself.  US authorities were obviously influenced in part by established brick and mortar gambling institutions when they crafted the laws that were not friendly to the online community.  This coddling of brick and mortar institutions that have long histories of problems makes the moral stance that the US took online seem hollow.

More and more sites that were once dedicated solely to carefree online games are moving into the virtual big time offering people the opportunity to gamble online.  Playing games is a social aspect of life that goes back many millenia.  The internet is almost a perfect tool for enabling people to socialize from all around the world and when you bring the two together you get an online gaming industry that really can not be stopped or slowed down. 

The internet has long had the potential to flow like water around physical jurisdictions and that is exactly what is happening with gaming online.

Case in point is BackgammonMasters.com, they have historically provided people with the ability to play backgammon online at BackgammonMaster.com and at a sister site for backgammon, called gammonish.com.  They have now opened up poker rooms on their site where people can gamble for real money.  They even have setup an incentive where the house will not take a commission on the games played by members against other members.

The bottom line is that online gambling is legal throughout most of the world.  The United States has established a law that is only partially enforceable against businesses in the US and against persons in the US playing games.  The concern of the US government is that these sites and the people that gamble on them could use the site to launder money, collude or a number of other activities.

Online gambling sites do have this potential, but the nasty truth is that any business that operates online has the same capability.  If someone really wants to launder money, they do not need to attract attention by establishing an online gambling site, all they have to do is establish an online business.  In fact, the law has probably done more to hide money laundering activity than to prevent it.  It has probably also served to clear money launderers out of a large segment of the online gambling industry.  Why would money launderers choose to perform their illegal activities where they know the authorities will be watching when the world wide web is infinitely large and offers many other rocks to hide under.

EMI, the third largest record company with acts such as the Beastie Boys and the Beatles, has been considering scrapping its use of DRM on downloaded music tracks. EMI has been in talks with more than one online music store. Despite Steve Jobs recent plea to anyone that would listen to end DRM, EMIA and Apple have not spoken yet, but that could change as a result of their now publicly mutual interest in moving away from DRM.

It would appear according to a Wall Street Journal article today that Steve Jobs was not aware that EMI was shopping around. The article goes on to elaborate that Jobs started his letter as a result of European Union pressure for Apple to make its products work on other devices.

CD sales fell this year by 20%. They account for 85% of US sales of music and such a big drop in sales has music companies working hard to catch up and get their cash flows back on track. The new question for the music companies will be, “Is it too little too late?’

Technorati tags: EMI, Apple, DRM

This week Steve Jobs came out with a letter to the world expressing the concept that he thinks that Digital Rights Management DRM is essentially a waste of time inspired by a reactionary Music Industry. He published his letter on his website and laid out the case against DRM and as a side point against the record industry that requires DRM.

Just a couple months ago Bill Gates invited a number of bloggers for a one on one personal dialogue. He intimated his distaste for DRM then as well. Recommending that music shoppers should burn music from CD’s as opposed to buying music with DRM, like the music offered at his Zune online music store. He essentially said the same thing that Steve Jobs is saying now, but a little eloquently.

With all this talk from the head of two of the companies that are so much at the heart of DRM through their media player software and now also through their physical media players, it seems as if they are starting to publicly state their opinion and acknowledge their agreement.

In private if they were to sit down and choose a course to act together or against individually the music industry, even when consumers benefit this would be considered collusion. However, free speech is still allowed in many forms throughout the US, and so both leaders are allowed to express their opinion publicly, even though it allows them to confirm with each other that they are publicly on the same sheet of music. The end result is the same as they can choose their direction knowing the move of the other, but the record industry also benefits from seeing the telegraphed signal as well.

This might be the beginning of the end of DRM as we know it and that can definitely be a good thing for consumers wallets, what it will do to and for the record industry and the TV and movie industry remains to be seen.

Technorati tags: apple, steve jobs, bill gates, DRM, digital rights management, collusion