MobileCrunch |  |
- Hands On With A Transparent iPhone
- Intel Itching To Work With Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich
- Kevin Rose Shows Me His Oink (TCTV)
- European Commission Launches Investigation Into Samsung’s Litigation Tactics
| Hands On With A Transparent iPhone Posted: 04 Nov 2011 06:51 PM PDT  Photos were a little hard to grab but I got to see a real, live “transparent” iPhone last night in Shenzhen. The kit is apparently quite easy to install – a few screws on the bottom and then you just slide off the back. I had seen kits advertised before, but this is the first time I’ve seen on in real life and, oddly enough, it’s kind of endearing. One more shot below, but it’s a clever and cool mod and it’s really striking, in a Visible Man sort of way, if you’re into modded iPhones. Click to view slideshow.
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| Intel Itching To Work With Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich Posted: 04 Nov 2011 02:36 PM PDT  Intel hasn’t been able to make much of a dent in the smartphone or tablet markets, but they’re not about to give up just yet. ComputerWorld reports that Intel is working to make Ice Cream Sandwich-powered devices a part of their future. The mobile space represents a huge opportunity for Intel, which is made all the more maddening because they’ve never really been able to crack it. Less than a handful of Intel-powered Android tabs ever saw the light of day, and most (like the Cisco Cius, which ran Froyo of all things) were geared heavily toward enterprise use. Meanwhile, if you were to peer into the innards of nearly any smartphone or tablet on the market, you would likely see an ARM-based processor. It’s a reality that can elude some, as processors can bear ostentatious names like Snapdragon and Hummingbird that obscure the nature of their architecture. Now, it looks as though Intel is about to roll their sleeves up and fight ARM’s onslaught. Intel showed off some frankly impressive smartphone and tablet reference designs at a developer event back in September, both of which ran on Intel’s Medfield plaftorm. The company has also promised that the first Intel-powered smartphone would see the a release sometime next year, so it’s apparent they’re beginning to get the lead out. Given that Intel has their eye on both the smartphone and tablet markets, their apparent zeal for Ice Cream Sandwich makes complete sense. Ice Cream Sandwich is intended to be Google’s unifying OS, one that will bridge the experience gap between smartphones and tablets alike. If Intel can ensure that Ice Cream Sandwich will run without a hitch on whatever mobile chipset they go with, they stand a serious chance at popping up in your next tablet. For the time being though, Intel is stuck playing the waiting game. According to an Intel spokesperson, Ice Cream Sandwich “includes OS optimization for x86,” so the actual work of getting ICS running may not be too difficult. Still, a concerted effort can’t begin they actually get their hands on the software, so Intel still has a little while to go before they get cracking.
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| Kevin Rose Shows Me His Oink (TCTV) Posted: 04 Nov 2011 02:35 PM PDT  Yesterday, Kevin Rose’s new mobile app, Oink, hit iTunes. You can download the app, but you still need an invite to unlock all of its features. About an hour after the launch, I showed up at Milk, Rose’s mobile lab startup, near San Francisco’s Mission District to get a demo. In the video above, Rose takes me through the app and explains what he is trying to accomplish. Oink is a location-aware app that lets you rate things in specific places and uses hashtags to identify those things. So you can rate the #sushi at a Japanese restaurant, the #burrito at a Mexican place, or a #bikepath in a park. You can rate anything, just add a hashtag or see what’s popular nearby. You snap a picture and rate the thing, then other people can add their ratings so that you can see the best #sushi or #beer ranked by location. You can gain cred for a particular hashtag if other people add their votes to yours. Once Oink learns what things you are interested in, it can start showing you the best #tea, #sushi, or #beer wherever you happen to be. If Rose can get people to use this app and collect data about the real world, there are all sorts of interesting things he can do, from real-world recommendations about the things you care about to hyper-targeted offers. Milk is a mobile development lab founded by Kevin Rose, Jeff Hodsdon, and Daniel Burka. Milk has announced its first mobile app, Oink, to be released this fall. Person: Kevin Rose Website: kevinrose.com Kevin Rose is an angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder of Milk and previously the founder of Digg and WeFollow. Rose also co-founded Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is also the co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation and founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast.
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| European Commission Launches Investigation Into Samsung’s Litigation Tactics Posted: 04 Nov 2011 12:12 PM PDT  In this week’s news from the front lines, the European Commission has decided to initiate a preliminary investigation of Samsung’s litigation tactics with regards to its standards-essential patents. While Apple’s accusations against Samsung have been centered around its own intellectual property, Samsung’s counterclaims both in Europe and here in the States are based on its own 3G wireless-related patents. Because said patents are standards-essential patents (and thus, available to any company to license under FRAND licensing terms), Samsung’s use of them in a court setting may be seen as “egregious,” or at least that’s how Apple’s putting it. The European Commission’s statement on the matter doesn’t offer up much meat, but confirms that an investigation is indeed underway:
Something worth noting is that though the wording may be misleading, Samsung is the only party under investigation here. Even though the Commission has requested information from both Apple and Samsung, the investigation is clearly concerned with “the enforcement of standards-essential patents in the mobile telephony sector.” Apple hasn’t filed any suits or complaints over any such patent thus far. In fact, as Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents points out, Apple wasn’t even in the biz when UMTS/3G was created. No, this investigation is directed at Samsung, and could be devastating to Samsung’s case. If the Commission finds Samsung guilty of abusing FRAND licensing terms, it may force the South Korean company to withdraw a large majority of its complaints against Apple. Within a court filing with the Northern California court system, Apple had this to say about it:
Well, them’s fightin’ words if I’m not mistaken. But Samsung is playing it cool, reports Webwereld.nl. They’ve denied any abuse of FRAND terms and made specific mention of the fact that this is “preliminary,” and nothing more. Well, at least not yet.
This isn’t the first time that FRAND terms have been an obstacle for Samsung. In October, a judge in the Hague Court in the Netherlands said that Samsung wouldn’t win its injunction because the patents it was enforcing were standards-essential patents. This time, however, an investigation has ensued. Samsung is one of the largest super-multinational companies in the world. It’s possibly best known for it’s subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics company in the world. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...
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