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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) may have just thrown a big bucket of cold water all over the Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) Pre love fest, courtesy of the U.S. Patent Office.
The company has officially secured the rights to the technology behind the distinctive multifunction touchscreen found on the iPhone and the iPod touch -- it's what gives you the ability to pinch and spread your fingers to zoom in and out of a photo or a Web page. The patent also covers certain aspects of the iPhone's hardware, the OS and the camera functions.
Apple getting a patent on something is definitely nothing new -- they patent stuff all the time, even stuff that never gets turned into actual products. But this one in particular may have a deep impact on Apple's smartphone rivals.
Other phones out there boast similar multitouch functionalities, not the least of which is the Palm Pre, which pretty much stole the show when it debuted at CES earlier this month. Rob Walch, producer of the Today in iPhone podcast, told us, "Instead of calling it Patent number 7,479,949, the Patent and Trademark Office should have called it 'Death to the Pre.'"
Apple hasn't explicitly said it has any intention of using this thing to clobber Palm. However, when asked about the Pre's iPhone-like functionalities during a conference call last week, Apple's interim CEO Tim Cook said the company will use any and all weapons it has to keep its intellectual property from getting ripped off. He prefaced that by saying he wasn't talking about anyone in particular, but the hintage was pretty thick.
Meet on the playground at 3:15, guys, there's gonna be a fight!
Listen to the podcast (16:41 minutes).
Bring the Noise
There's a ruckus on Capitol Hill that has nothing to do with the economic stimulus plan. House Republicans have fought back an effort backed by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats to delay the death of analog TV -- at least for the time being.
We're not sure who's to blame for the fact that a whole lot of Americans are still confused about the transition from analog to digital television broadcasting that's been planned for the past 10 years, but we're pretty sure that postponing it for another four months is not going to solve that problem. There are a bunch of people out there who are going to remain oblivious until their screens get snowy. Period.
If they haven't gotten the message by now, a few more months isn't going to make the dim little lightbulbs in their heads flicker on. Then there's the matter of the US$40 coupon fiasco. In its infinite wisdom, the U.S. government decided that the upgrade from analog to digital should be subsidized for everyone who didn't decide long ago to convert to digital on their own.
They say these are primarily poor people, old people and rural people who can't afford new TVs or spring for cable or satellite service. However, we're willing to bet there are plenty of poor people, old people and rural people who've been forking over extra money for years in order to join the digital revolution.
Where's their forty bucks? As if the coupon program weren't enough of an insult enough to taxpayers, the geniuses behind it couldn't even administer it properly. They ran out of coupons. Here's a partial list of the injuries rectifying that problem would cause: Broadcasters would have to keep sending out analog signals for another four months; cable and satellite companies would have to hold their breath for their expected subscriber spikes; and millions more dollars of corporate and taxpayer money would have to be spent financing coupons and educational efforts that would in no way benefit the ailing U.S. economy.
But that's OK. The important thing is that those millions of impoverished grannies in farmhouses keep getting "Wheel of Fortune" on the air -- that is, until their screens turn to snow.
Keep It Down
IBM (NYSE: IBM) obviously doesn't want to be lumped in with such economic drags as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S), so it took a different approach when it laid off some of its employees: It just didn't tell anyone.
Still, word leaked out, thanks to some workers trying to organize a union among Big Blue employees -- and a few pesky state unemployment departments with silly public disclosure laws. Jeez -- if it can't lay a couple thousand people off without the annoyance of having to deal 
with the media, how is a behemoth public company supposed to get anything done?
According to those unofficial -- but probably trustworthy -- sources, IBM is cutting between fourteen hundred and twenty-eight hundred jobs at various locations across the U.S. Colin Gillis, managing director of research at TheStreet.com, told us the cuts are relatively insignificant in scale and are probably more like routine pruning than save-the-sinking-ship layoffs.
In other words, IBM didn't really have to boot those workers -- it just wanted to fatten its bottom line a little more. Kinda makes you wonder why all the secrecy? Shame, perhaps?
New Arrival
Yahoo's (Nasdaq: YHOO) new CEO, Carol Bartz, got at least one thing right in her earnings report debut: She wasn't Jerry Yang.
That's a pretty good start, considering she's only been there a couple of weeks and really hasn't had the chance to make her mark yet. Regardless, her presentation of the company's better-than-expected fourth-quarter results led to an increase in the company's stock price.
Stock analysts probably were more interested in what Bartz had to say about her plans for Yahoo's future than her recitation of the past quarter's performance, but they walked away disappointed. She didn't reveal much about the direction she plans to take the company in, but she did say that splitting it into pieces might not be the best approach.
Well, there's a little nugget to analyze, anyway.
Withering Profits
Despite the recession, the video game industry just finished its biggest year ever -- and among the three major video game console makers, Nintendo is king, at least as far as sales are concerned. So it was pretty surprising when Nintendo blurted out that for its current fiscal year, which ends in March, it's probably going to ring up a third less profit than it projected in October.
Why such a bummer outlook? Well, the yen is gaining strength, and the dollars we spend on Wii stuff over here in the States don't translate into as many yen as they used to. Also, people may have called the video game industry "recession proof," but it's more like "recession resistant."
It's been putting up a good fight so far, but as the bad times drag on, consumers really are cutting back on anything that isn't a necessity.
Can't Compete
After 20 years with IBM, Mark Papermaster decided he wanted to go to work for Apple, but it looks as though he bit off more than he could chew. You see, Papermaster had signed a noncompete agreement with Big Blue designed to keep him from spilling any of its trade secrets to competitors -- and he would be bound by the contract's terms for a full year after leaving the company.
Because he had served as vice president of IBM's blade development unit, Papermaster may have figured that his new gig with Apple was safe. After all, Apple makes consumer products, while IBM goes after the big enterprise business.
Apples and oranges, right? That wasn't the way IBM saw it. Big Blue sued to protect its intellectual property rights, and Apple backed down.
At least, that's the way we interpret a settlement that requires Papermaster to certify in court that he will not be using any of IBM's proprietary information, check in with Big Blue in the event any of his activities might be questionable, and abide by his former employer's unilateral decisions in each case.
He'll lose the leash in October, when the noncompete agreement expires. Until then, Papermaster will probably be spending a fair amount of time practicing his putting game.
Piracy Still Perilous
Three hundred years ago, piracy was a fairly dangerous career choice. Even the entry-level positions had you losing a leg, a hand, an eye. Did I mention scurvy? Nowadays, you can be a pirate without getting your feet wet -- just deal in illicit software on the Internet. That's a whole lot safer physically, but you still have to deal with little things like the law. And disease.
Computer security researchers have spotted malware hiding in illicitly traded copies of Apple's iWork '09 suite. Some illegally downloaded versions of the software contains a trojan that could open a back door to the user's Mac and let all sorts of bad stuff in.
It could turn your computer into a botnet zombie, let someone spy on your whole system, whatever. So you've been warned: Don't steal iWork '09. Of course, this whole thing may have been started not by someone looking to actually hack computers, but by someone who just doesn't want people ripping off Apple software.
If that's the case: well played.
Showdown a Dud
It was supposed to be a legal showdown between the people who bring you The New York Times and the people who bring you community news; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists at the Gray Lady covering wars, presidential campaigns and Wall Street corporate meltdowns vs. low-paid reporters telling you about neighborhood zoning disputes, school district elections and reviews of new local restaurants.
The whole journalism world was watching to see what would happen when a scrappy local outlet took on the big guns, claiming that its content was being stolen. Instead, Gatehouse Media settled its beef with the New York Times Co. over linking of its Wicked Local stories on Boston.com.
Neither company admitted any wrongdoing and no one gets any money -- but some people, apparently, got an attitude adjustment out of the deal. Having your content "stolen" might be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you're a Web site trying to build traffic.
The settlement doesn't actually settle any of the big questions about expressions of link-love on the Internet, but it seems the parties have agreed to agree that technology -- not lawyers -- may provide the best answers.
Throttling the Throttlers
You know how you have to pay more for fast broadband than slow broadband or, God forbid, dial-up? You're also probably used to the idea that you have to pay more if you want a whole bunch of channels on your television programming list besides the major networks. That's tiered pricing, and it seems to make sense -- until you try to apply it to Internet content, that is.
ISPs have no business putting speed bumps in front of some kinds of traffic, while waving other kinds through -- especially if they're sneaky about it. That's what Net neutrality advocates believe, at any rate, and they're fighting hard to keep the Internet an open, all-content-is-created-equal zone. Otherwise, the information superhighway will become a sleek, expensive tollway for the big spenders, while the rest of the world gets to slog along on bumpy back roads.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is leading the Net neutrality charge, and it just released a set of tools that will make it easier for ordinary people to see how their ISPs are managing traffic -- and a whole lot harder for the service providers to play favorites on the sly.
Through its Measurement Lab initiative, Google is giving away a network diagnostic tool, which tests connection speeds and diagnoses the problems limiting speed; Glasnost, which tests whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled; and a network path and application tool that diagnoses common problems affecting last-mile broadband networks.
Hub of Activity
Traditional landlines are going the way of the crank phone. Take Verizon's latest numbers: Over the last year, the company's lost over 12 percent of its residential home phone subscribers, yet wireless users are growing steadily.
Now, some of those former landliners might just be going to other providers, but I'll bet you a lot just decided they can live off their cell phones. People who don't want to eat into their cell minutes but also don't want to have anything to do with the horrendous long-distance charges you get on regular landlines are looking to VoIP Internet phones.
They're the ones Verizon is chasing with its new Hub, a big tabletop phone that looks like what would happen if that old cordless set in your kitchen mated with an overgrown iPod touch.
You get VoIP service, as well as a bunch of Internet doo-dads -- weather, movie info and ticket buying, Yellow pages, calendars, traffic, etc. You can also control some of the hub's functions remotely. Unlimited service will cost about $35 a month, and there will be smaller units available for other rooms in the home.
Policy Reversal
It didn't take the Obama administration long to start reversing the policies of the Bush administration that came before it.
Two days, in fact, was all the Obama FDA needed to give its approval to Geron Corp. to begin testing the effectiveness of human embryonic stem cells as a way to heal spinal cord injuries.
During the trial, researchers will inject stem cells into the injury sites of patients who have spinal cord damage. The idea is that the stem cells will develop into spinal cord cells, repairing at least some of the damage the injuries caused.
One of the biggest challenges will be managing expectations. As stem cell researcher Chuck Murry told us, "The wonder with working with embryonic stem cells is that they can turn into anything -- and the hardest thing with working with stem cells is that they can turn into anything."
Enough, Already
If the backstabbing remarks and death threats weren't enough to give Michael Arrington pause, certainly the flying loogies were.
Arrington, the founding blogger of TechCrunch, decided to take a break from all the craziness for a while after someone spat at him during a conference in Germany.
Known for his critical style, Arrington has made his share of enemies over the years by calling crappy products what they are and being pretty much uninhibited with his opinions -- and he's got plenty of those.
Even his announcement was greeted with a fair amount of blogosphere snark, with people saying he couldn't take the heat or wasn't tough enough to handle a taste of his own medicine.
I'm sure glad we run a more civilized forum here at the ECT News Network Weekly Recap. Otherwise, who knows what we'd be dodging. 
Also in this week's podcast: Gmail now available offline; Twitter discovers its self-worth; study finds crossing street, talking a bad combination.
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