Last week Samsung filed an official complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) asking the government body to block the import of Apple’s iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple flipped the tables on Samsung and has filed its own complaint with the ITC asking that it block the import of Samsung’s tablets and smartphones, Bloomberg said. The move follows Apple’s request to a U.S District Court in San Jose to block the import of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, Infuse 4G, DROID Charge and Nexus S 4G. The legal battle has been ongoing since Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung in April and accused the Korean phone maker of creating copycat devices that infringed on its intellectual property. Samsung bit back later in April and said that it will do everything it can to protect its own intellectual property. Meanwhile, U.S. courts have granted Apple access to Samsung’s most recent products, but have denied Samsung the same access to the Apple iPhone 5 and iPad 3. The legal battle could place strain on Samsung’s component business, which is expected to struggle during the second half of this year — Apple is the largest buyer of Samsung’s LCD products.

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Apple has completed a cloud-music streaming deal with record label EMI, according to a report filed by CNET. Citing multiple industry sources, the publication notes that Apple, Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group are working on agreements as well; a previous report claims that Warner Music Group and Apple already signed a cloud service agreement sometime last month. “Apple will finish behind Google and Amazon in the race to the cloud, but Apple now has the freedom to offer a range of features that rivals are prevented from rolling out because of the licensing restrictions,” continues the article. Rumors state that Apple will use a technology acquired from Lala called “scan and match.” Instead of uploading a subscribers music library to Apple’s cloud-music service, the company would scan a music collection and provide access to the master track it has a license to. Apple and the music labels in question declined to comment on the report when contacted by CNET.

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The United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) on Saturday stated its intentions to limit the access its citizens have to RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. RIM said on Sunday, however, that new regulations in the UAE will impact all smartphones and not just BackBerry devices. “The TRA has confirmed to RIM that any potential policy regarding enterprise services in the UAE would be an industry-wide policy applying equally to all enterprise solution providers,” RIM said in a statement. This is clearly a touchy subject for RIM. The secure smartphone maker has been at war for years with officials in India demanding access to corporate emails sent and received with its devices, and now the fight has spilled over into other countries. RIM insists that other companies are impacted by these regulations as well, however, and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis recently stormed out of an interview when pressed on the subject. Of course India’s regulations are affecting other companies, but RIM gets the most media attention because its devices have touted security so much since their introduction, and because RIM is the only company so far that said it cannot grant India the access it needs.

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Late last month, Amazon announced that customers subscribed to The New York Times via its eReader would qualify for a free digital subscription to the paper’s website. Not to be outdone, Barnes & Noble today announced that users subscribed to The Times via the NOOK Newsstand will also have full access to the  publication’s web content, too. The famed paper made waves on March 17th when it announced that it was moving to a pay wall model for its website. Users are allowed to read twenty NYT articles each month before they bump into the new toll booth and are required to pay for access. While the publication noted that those subscribed to its traditional home delivery service would be given full-access to all online content, it was not made clear how those digesting the Times via eReaders would be affected. The full press release is after the break.

Subscribers to The New York Times on NOOK™ by Barnes & Noble to Receive Free Access to NYTimes.com

Customers Enjoy Digital Edition of Newspaper on NOOK Devices, Plus Online News, Opinion, Videos and More

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today announced that all subscribers to The New York Times through NOOK Newsstand™ will also enjoy access to the NYTimes.com website. Barnes & Noble customers can already enjoy their digital subscription to The New York Times, reading the daily e-edition content on NOOK Color™ Reader’s Tablet, NOOK™ and NOOK Wi-Fi® eReaders. Coming soon, NOOK subscribers to The New York Times will also be able to access NYTimes.com, The Times’s award-winning website, including timely news updates, opinion, blogs, video, interactive graphics and more, at no additional cost.

“We are excited to expand our long-standing relationship with The New York Times to provide NOOK customers with online access to even more great content any time,” said Jonathan Shar, Vice President and General Manager of digital newsstand at Barnes & Noble. “Our customers already enjoy access to one of the leading NOOK Newspapers™ on their favorite NOOK device, and we believe they’ll appreciate the easy access to all of the wonderful online content available at NYTimes.com at no extra cost.”

The New York Times continues to be one of the bestselling NOOK Newspapers and, as with other digital periodicals, is available for a risk-free, 14 day free trial for all customers.

“The Times’s digital subscription plan was designed to offer access to our high-quality journalism across a variety of platforms,” said Yasmin Namini, senior vice president, marketing and circulation, and general manager, reader applications, The New York Times Media Group. “We are pleased be able to offer online access to NYTimes.com as part of the subscription experience for our loyal readers on NOOK devices.”

Barnes & Noble customers with current subscriptions to The New York Times through NOOK Newsstand™ will be notified via email in the coming weeks with more information on how to enjoy free access to NYTimes.com.

For more information and to order The New York Times for NOOK, visit www.bn.com/nytimes or visit any of NOOK Boutique or display in one of Barnes & Noble’s more than 700 bookstores (http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com) to learn more.

In what may be one of the largest digital security breaches in United States history, millions of customer email addresses have been exposed as a result of a breach at Epsilon. BGR reported on Saturday that TiVo customer email adresses had been compromised as a result of unauthorized access to online marketing company Epsilon’s servers. Following that report, several other companies have come forward to confirm that their customers’ email adresses may have been exposed. Those potentially affected include customers enrolled in Best Buy’s Reward Zone program as well as customers of Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, TiVo, Barclays, Walgreens, U.S. Bancorp, Capital One, HSN and College Board, which represents almost 6,000 different U.S. colleges and universities. “A subset of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system,” Epsilon said in a statement last week. The company insists that only names and email addresses may have been compromised, and that sensitive information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers and passwords were not accessed.

Not a ton of good news this week for Samsung handset owners awaiting software updates. Just three days after a highly-anticipated, Android 2.2 update began flowing to Epic 4G handsets, the code has pulled from update servers. Citing increased support calls, Sprint is looking to find the root cause of several, pesky problems.

“The issues being reported are related to data connectivity following the upgrade and SD card issues when attempting to access photos, music, etc,” reads a moderator forum post. “If you are experiencing these issues, a hard reset has been reported to resolve the problems.”

Hard reset?! Ouch. No word on who/what is at fault or when the update might be ready to download again.

[Via Android Central]

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If you’re a Google Apps user, you’ve had the ability to delegate access to your email account for quite some time. Now, Google is giving all users of its Gmail web-base email service that option. Via a blog post, the Big G announced the email delegation feature for all users of its popular email platform. The new functionality can be found in “Settings” by clicking on the “Accounts and Import” tab. From there you can add another Gmail account that you would like to grant access to your inbox; delegates will not be able to change settings, passwords, or chat as the user. “Each account will open in a different browser tab or window so you can view both accounts simultaneously, all while signed into your primary account,” writes Google. The new feature is immediately available to all users.

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Just a quick follow up to an article we posted last week. It looks like Apple’s iOS 4.2 gold master candidate, which was pushed out to developers last night, closes the security loop hole that allowed the iPhone’s lock screen to be bypassed from the “Emergency Call” function. We’ve been trying, unsuccessful, to replicate the issue with the latest iOS pre-release.

If you’re not a member of the developer community, and wondering when you can get your hands on iOS 4.2, know that iOS 4.1 GM was released to developers one week before it went live to the general public.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that its updated OS X productivity suite, Office for Mac 2011, is now available. Office for Mac consists of Microsoft’s class-leading productivity applications including Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint. For the first time, the suite also includes Microsoft Outlook, which replaces the less popular Entourage email client. Mac users have been waiting for Microsoft to replace Entourage with Outlook for years now, and this switch alone is likely worth the price of admission. And as far as pricing is concerned, Office for Mac 2011 breaks down as follows:

• Microsoft Office for Home and Student 2011 (single license): $109.99 – $149.99
• Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business (single license): $174.99 – $279.99

As is often the case, third-party retailers such as Amazon.com currently offer the best pricing on Microsoft’s new Office for Mac 2011 suite.

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What do you get when you combine Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online? According to Microsoft, you get the “next generation in cloud productivity.” The Redmond giant’s much awaited cloud-based Office suite launches today as a limited beta spanning 13 countries. Those lucky enough to sample the offering at this stage will enjoy much of the functionality that makes Microsoft Office the global standard with none of the local software keeping the rest of us tethered to our PCs. Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft, had this to say:

Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service. With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.

Microsoft’s Office 365 site will go live today at 3:00 p.m. EDT, and customers can sign up there to learn more. Microsoft hasn’t announced a firm public release date for Office 365, though it did say that the suite would be generally available in 40 countries next year. Hit the jump for the full press release.

Microsoft Announces Office 365

New cloud service brings together Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync for organizations of all sizes.

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 19, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. today announced Microsoft Office 365, the company’s next generation in cloud productivity that brings together Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service. Office 365 makes it easier for millions more organizations to get and use Microsoft’s award-winning business productivity solutions via the cloud. With Office 365, people can work together more easily from anywhere on virtually any device, while collaborating with others inside and outside their organization in a simple and highly secure way. As part of today’s news, Microsoft is also opening a limited beta program for Office 365 in 13 countries and regions.

Office 365 is built on years of experience delivering industry-leading business cloud services ranging from the first browser-based e-mail to today’s Business Productivity Online Suite, Microsoft Office Live Small Business and Live@edu. Moving to the cloud with Office 365 means people don’t have to change the way they work, because Office 365 works with the most popular browsers, smartphones and desktop applications people use today.

“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,” said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. “With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.”

Microsoft worked closely with existing customers to develop Office 365, resulting in a cloud service that is designed to meet a wide range of customer needs.

With Office 365 for small businesses, professionals and small companies with fewer than 25 employees can be up and running with Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online and an external website in just 15 minutes, for $6 or 5.25 euros per user, per month¹.

“For a small business, Office 365 is a perfect way to start,” said Rob Nichols, chief technology officer of Allovus Design, a graphic design firm and member of Microsoft’s Customer Advisory Board for Office 365. “It has all the features we need, and we can come out of the gate with the same tools the big guys have — on day one.”

Office 365 for enterprises introduces an array of choices for midsize and large businesses as well as government organizations, starting for as little as $2 or 1.75 euros per user, per month¹ for basic e-mail. Office 365 for enterprises also includes the option to get Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop software on a pay-as-you-go basis, for the first time ever. For $24 or 22.75 euros per user, per month¹, organizations can get Office Professional Plus along with e-mail, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, Web portals, extranets, voiceconferencing and videoconferencing, webconferencing, 24×7 phone support, on-premises licenses, and more.

Office 365 creates new growth opportunities for Microsoft and its partners by reaching more customers and types of workers and meeting more business IT needs — all while cutting costs for customers.

Product Availability

Office 365 will be available worldwide next year. Starting today, Microsoft will begin testing Office 365 with a few thousand organizations in 13 countries and regions around the world, and the beta will be expanded to include more organizations over time. Office 365 will be generally available in 40 countries and regions next year.

Later next year, Office 365 will expand to include Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to provide Microsoft’s complete business productivity experience to organizations of all types and sizes. In addition, Office 365 for education will debut later next year, giving students, faculty and school employees powerful technology tailored specifically to their needs.

Today at 12 p.m. PDT, Microsoft will launch http://www.Office365.com. Customers and partners can sign up for the Office 365 beta and learn more at that site, or follow Office 365 on Twitter (@Office365), Facebook (Office 365), or the new Office 365 blog at http://community.office365.com to get the latest information.

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Reuters is reporting that the United Arab Emirates and BlackBarry manufacturer Research In Motion have resolved differences that could have potentially left 500,000 BlackBerry subscribers without data services after October 11. “The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has confirmed that Blackberry services are now compliant with the UAE’s telecommunications regulatory framework,” reported WAM, a state run news agency. “All Blackberry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010,” the news outlet continued. The UAE had threatened to shutter BlackBerry data services due to their inability to access RIM servers through legal means if necessary; BlackBerry data was handled by servers outside of the UAE which created a security and sovereignty nightmare for the Arab state. The WAM report also gave kudos to Research In Motion, citing “positive engagement” and professional “collaboration” from the Canadian company.

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Kind of… Cablevision and Time Warner are spending $10 million to provide WiFi service to over 30 parks in NYC as part of a deal to renew the cable companies’ cable TV franchises. Here is the catch though: internet use over Wi-Fi is free, but it’s limited to up to (3) 10 minute sessions a month, a total of 30 minutes of usage a person. If you want to get your SlingBox on after that, it’s going to cost $0.99/day to access the internet. Not an exorbitant amount of money, but definitely not quite free, either.

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In a press release dated July 20th, the FCC announced that between 14 and 24 million Americans are still without access to broadband internet, and that the “immediate prospects for deployment to them are bleak.” The report also goes on to define “broadband” as a connection that provides a 4 Mbps downlink and 1 Mbps uplink. Prior to the report, broadband was defined as providing a 768 Kbps downlink connection. The report goes on: “In an era when broadband has become essential for U.S. jobs, economic growth, global competitiveness, and democratic engagement, millions of Americans live in areas without broadband. Many of these Americans are poor or live in rural areas that will remain unserved without reform of the universal service program and other changes to U.S. broadband policy that spur investment in broadband networks by lowering the cost of deployment.” What do you think? Is 4 Mbps an acceptable speed? Should the government push telecoms to provide broadband access to more rural areas?

Thanks, Henry!

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According to their latest tweet, Starbucks will be opening up their Wi-Fi to everyone. No registration and it’s 100% free. Not bad, Seattle, not bad.

We’re very excited to announce that coming July 1st: Free. 1 click. No registration WIFI at all US locations! :-)

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Access has been working on v3.0 of its Linux Platform and it’s turning out to be pretty sweet. Taking a look at that shot there, and going off the buzz about the new OS, the UI will be more robust and the animations are going to be smooth. This is a very nice way to pull the Palm OS out of the dark ages and into the 21st century. In addition to ALP v3.0, Access is releasing ALP mini which is a similar OS for low-end smartphones or non-phone devices like PMPs, MIDs, UMPCs, Internet tablets, and the like. NTT DoCoMo of Japan has already taken interest in ALP and will be using the new platform as early as the latter half of 2009. There aren’t too many technical details but there is a very rich list of features for you as well as more screen shots after the jump!

Telephony and Communications

• Full-featured telephone application with speed dial,
  call forward/wait/hold/bar, & multi-party conferencing
• OMA Device Management v1.2
• Multihoming on GPRS and 3G networks
• IMPS, SMS, MMS, Cell Broadcast, IMAP4, POP3

Input and Navigation

• 12-key keypad with 5 way input and navigation support
• Stylus based touch screen input and navigation support
• Finger touch input and navigation
• Accelerometer support

Desktop Software and HotSync Software

• Manage personal information on a Windows XP or Vista desktop computer with the ACCESS™ Desktop or Microsoft Outlook to add, edit or delete contact records, calendar events, memos and tasks and synchronize using HotSync software, which now supports OMA DS v1.2 (SyncML)
• Backup and restore information between the device and desktop as well as install native, Palm OS, Java applications and media files with HotSync
• PIM synchronization over the air directly with operator synchronization services

Tools

• A complete and integrated suite of free application development tools are available to ACCESS Linux Platform application developers through the SDK provided as part of the ACCESS Developer Network program.

Wireless and Connectivity Protocols

• Telephony radios (including 3G) are easily integrated
  with the ACCESS Linux Platform telephony framework
• TCP/IP
• WiFi (802.11g)
• Bluetooth® Technology 2.0 + EDR Technology
• USB
• IrDA
• Serial

Application Environments

• Native application development for the ACCESS Linux Platform includes GTK+ and the Hiker Application Framework™
• Garnet™ VM allows properly written Garnet OS (formerly Palm OS) applications to run unaltered on an ACCESS Linux Platform mobile device
• Java VM, JV-Lite™2 Wireless Edition software, including popular JSR modules including JSR 179 (location), JSR 135 (mobile media), and JSR 185 (wireless profile)

Language Support

• English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese
  Additional locales and languages can be added

Security

• OMTP compliant security policy framework
• VPN framework

Media Framework Components

• Media selector
• RTP/RTSP streaming
• MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC, MIDI, MPEG4-SP, H.263, H.264, WMA/WMV v9
• OMA DRM v1.0 Forward lock, Combined and Separate Delivery

Hardware Requirements

Performance

• 400 MHz ARM 9 or greater

Display

• 240 X 320 display QVGA (optimized for the platform)
• 320 X 480 display HVGA
• 800 X 480 display Widescreen (maximum)
• 65k color support (minimum)
• 256k color support (maximum)

Memory

• 128MB RAM (minimum)
• 128MB Flash EFIGS (minimum); two-byte localization
  or a 3G application suite may require more memory

Native Applications

• NetFront™ Phone
• NetFront™ Contacts
• NetFront™ Calendar
• NetFront™ Memos
• NetFront™ Tasks
• NetFront™ HotSync™ Manager
• NetFront Browser
• NetFront™ HandMail™
• NetFront™ SMS+
• NetFront™ iMessenger™
• NetFront™ Music
• NetFront™ Videos
• NetFront™ Photos
• NetFront™ Camera
• NetFront™ Document Viewer
• Utilities
  – NetFront™ Clock
  – NetFront™ Calculator
  – NetFront™ Recorder
  – NetFront™ Home Screen
  – NetFront™ File Manager

[Via Access]

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