The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) began the talks on net neutrality after Google and Verizon said they wanted to see faster access speeds for websites that paid extra for the privilege.

“Any outcome, any deal that doesn’t preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet for consumers and entrepreneurs will be unacceptable,” said FCC chair Julius Genachowski.

Google and Verizon both deny that they were close to agreeing on how they would lead a “two-tier” Internet with Google saying “We remain as committed as we always have been to an open Internet”.

Further, Google’s founder Eric Schmidt said ”We have been talking to Verizon for a long time about trying to get an agreement on what the definition of what net neutrality is.  We are trying to find solutions that bridge between the hard core ‘net neutrality or else’ view and the historical telecom view of no such agreement.”

Net Neutrality would mean that no one type of traffic could be prioritised over another.  Failure to maintain this would mean that small businesses and individuals could see their services and websites harder to access than those owned and operated by large commercial businesses with advertising and products to sell.

The move by Google and Verizon would be a big blow for the common man and the general freedom of the Internet.  It has been a thorny issue for the FCC.

A recent court case limited the agency’s powers to police what happens to data when it ruled that the FCC did not have the power to sanction Comcast for throttling some traffic.As a result the FCC said it would reclassify broadband under a more heavily regulated part of the telecommunications law known as Title II. Cable and phone companies claimed the move would stifle investment in next generation broadband.

With the fear that these companies would resort to legal action, the agency began holding what critics termed “secret negotiations” aimed at forging a consensus on how to treat Internet traffic.

The FCC’s move to end these talks with firms such as Verizon, Google, Skype and AT&T suggest they broke down without reaching a decision.

Some public-interest groups believe, probably correctly, that such a move to a two-tier system would end the Internet we know and love today.

It remains to be seen what will happen from here on in.

Now Engadget are reportingthat AT&T’s “most valuable customers” in the US can get a free femtocell to help with their 3G signal coverage.

femtocell

Customers who receive an invitation letter can collect their femtocell, called a “3G MicroCell” from their local AT&T store.

Not all mobile phone companies are offering femtocells yet but there’s a great push for them to do so as this is an extremely valuable technology for those people who simply don’t get a good signal.

In the last couple of years AT&T has been heavily criticised for its 3G coverage, a problem highlighted by when Apple’s first iPhone came to the network.  These free femtocells are no doubt an attempt to smooth over relationships with some annoyed customers.

Let’s hope that other mobile phone companies follow suit and give femtocells to their customers who cannot get a decent mobile phone signal.

As reported by Neowin some customers have begun to receive email notifications that their handsets have shipped, with the first 600,000 supposed to be in customers hands by June 23rd.

Other customers though haven’t been so lucky and have received an email that says…

“Dear Customer,

We were unable to complete the authorization process for your iPhone order. As a result, we had to cancel your iPhone order. To complete the purchase of your iPhone, please visit an Apple Retail Store or an AT&T company-owned retail store.

 

We apologize for this inconvenience.

 

Sincerely,

Apple Online Store Team”

And, over on the AT&T side of things, it doesn’t get much rosier with some customers getting this email:

“Your iPhone order has been cancelled.

Your credit card has not been charged.

If you believe you have received this email in error, please return to the AT&T store where you placed your order.

 

Sincerely,

AT&T“

This doesn’t appear just to be a problem with people’s credit ratings either as some customers who have called AT&T are reporting being told that they are “not eligible” for a handset.

This has upset quite a few people who all went through the pre-order process properly and received email notification that their order(s) had been received and that all was well.

Whether the problem with this lies with AT&T or the customers has yet to be made clear but it would seem to be yet another problem that the iPhone has brought to the AT&T network.

Apple say it’s the largest number of pre-orders they’ve ever taken in a single day and AT&T say it’s ten times the number of iPhone 3GS handsets that were pre-ordered.

Here is where I’d like to offer a little calm and raise the point that this is not all down to the fact that the iPhone 4 is the best thing since sliced bread.

Obviously the popularity of the iPhone is as strong as it ever has been and, as such, a new version of this handset is only going to make hundreds of thousands of people (Facebookers and teenagers mostly) go weak at the knees.

Apple’s achieved something much better though that is making the iPhone 4 stand out for other reasons.  Since the launch of the original iPhone Apple have been extremely successful in popularising the smart phone.  This has reached such extremes now that almost every new phone that comes out is a smart phone and the task of finding one that actually looks like a traditional mobile phone, with buttons and the like, is becoming increasingly difficult.

So rather than slag off the iPhone 4 I would suggest that a great many people  are buying it simply because it’s got the Apple badge on it and they’re now ready to make the jump from a traditional mobile to a smart phone.

This is a great result for Apple as it means they will no longer have to always offer the best hardware in a market where standing out is becoming increasingly difficult.  Their name and reputation are now enough to carry them through and this will probably be the case for a good few years yet.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 has an enormous mountain to climb in this regard and while other companies may claim to be doing very well with smart phone sales, if you consider that they’re really only producing smart phones these days the answer why is fairly clear.

This is still an enormous number of sales for a product that’s not even out yet (perhaps I should put the Apple branding on my new book?) and both Apple and AT&T can be extremely pleased.

Source : Engadget

Hackers were able to intercept the email addresses because they were sent unencrypted when the iPad’s were connecting to AT&T’s network.  The mobile phone company says the flaw in it’s network that allowed this has now been patched.

In the letter the company says…

I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk. The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad. AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected.

While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website.

AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites. We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law.

…and it is signed by the Senior Vice President for Public Policy and their Chief Privacy Officer, Dorothy Attwood.

AT&T say they’re working with law enforcement agencies to try and discover who was behind the hack, and questions still may need to be asked about any culpability that Apple may have with a tablet that would allow information to be broadcast in such a manner as it could be intercepted at all.

You can read the full apology email at the Engadget website.

The group, calling themselves Goatse Security harvested the data using nothing more than a PHP script and are now in possession of some very high profile people’s contact details which include celebrities, white house officials and high ranking military officers.

So who is responsible for this, Apple or AT&T?  To be honest it’s going to be a bit of both and questions need to be asked why the hashing technique, common for exchanging passwords online, hasn’t been implemented here.

Hashing runs your password through a cipher that scrambles it.  It’s a one-way cipher so that the password can never be unscrambled.  A similar cipher scrambles the password on the authenticating computer and then both of these ‘hash codes’ are compared.  The reason for doing this is so that no password is ever put in the open where it can be intercepted.

This is clearly what happened with the iPad hack and it will come as a blow to Apple’s reputation for developing secure operating systems, the iPad OS is based on the same Unix code as their OS X desktop and server operating systems after all.

It remains to be seen if and how quickly a firmware update will be rolled out by Apple to encrypt sensitive data as it’s broadcast over 3G and other wireless networks to authenticate users.  AT&T also have questions to answer on whether this technique can be used to gather sensitive data from any other devices on their network.

Fortunately the hackers notified AT&T of the breach so they could close the hole and came clean about the hack.  The next group of hackers might not feel so benevolent.

LG GT540: Another Android From LG

They just keep on coming and leaking. I am talking about these latest Android phones. They have such a propensity to leakage that you would think multinational companies need someone to educate them about keeping a tight lid on things.

Or may be everyone wants free advertisement like Apple tends to generate with their high levels of secrecy.

The latest to be leaked is another Android phone from LG, called the GT540. We haven’t heard how well the last one is doing so far but it looks like they are already quite far ahead into the second one.

LG did say that a Snapdragon model was headed for Q2 2010 and that a non-QWERTY handset is also destined for 2010. With a screen size is 320×480, it can be any one of those. Which one do you think it is?  [read]

Dell Mini 3i Starts Selling In China

The much talked about Android smartphone from phone-newbie Dell is finally going up for sale in China. They have put up a press release that details on what exactly the phone has inside it.

The PR highlights the fact that has a 16:9 ratio 3.5” screen that displays 640×360 display. Other than that, it is a quadband GSM/EDGE phone that also has GPS on it. You get a 3.5MP with auto-focus, flash, video capture, etc. Dell is probably going to launch it in Europe and the US only when they are confident that the phone will be able to hold out in front of the fast moving competition in those markets. [read]

Sony Ericsson’s XEPRIA X10 Might Go To AT&T

A lot of us were hoping that Sony Ericsson’s new Android superphone – The XPERIA X10 – would arrive on a decent carrier. Those hopes are now dashed. Based on the intel gathered by Phandroid, the radio bands on the X10 are the same as the ones on the iPhone.

QED – even though the X10 has a lot of bands listed on the website the US version will only work with the carrier who carries the iPhone. Say hello to the blue beachball all over again – AT&T. The iPhone is the iPhone, so being on AT&T has not stopped it from going viral. Will the X10 have something similar to help it sell? Only time will tell. [read]

Spotify Exudes Symbian Love

Spotify is spreading its clout over to the mobile OS that holds the largest International market share – Symbian. Spotify has just been released for the Symbian S60 OS. In doing so, they are suddenly up from supporting only a handful of phone models to supporting a long list of phone models manufactured by different carriers. Most of them are by Nokia and others include Sony Ericsson and Samsung. [read]

Spotify, despite its critics and problems, is fast becoming a large rival for other commercial services like iTunes. Spotify has also officially surpassed last.fm in user polls – this after Last.fm was adamant about Spotify not being a competition for them. Now to wait for the true competition to break out. [read]

So here we have some of the more high profile Snapdragon phones that are coming our way.

HTC HD2

After that big a whispering campaign courtesy of the leaks and the high anticipation during the launch, there is no way you can forget this mobile phone. Arguably the first device to bring the processor to the limelight, this is the phone that in a way started it all.

If you are not too impressed by the 4.3inch screen, then you might be impressed by the custom UI made by HTC. The UI has been demoed on video and it looks really great and responsive. The acceleration, the transitions and the rendering – all look smooth and fast. That is definitely where the Snapdragon shines its brightest.

But the phone might fail to generate the traction and sales that it deserves simply because of its platform. It is a Windows Mobile device and it runs Windows Mobile 6.5 underneath that great UI. What that means is a (ridiculously) low number of apps and low third party interest, which again translates to a not-so-good user experience when compared to the fast-moving Android or the trend-setting iPhone OS.

HTC Dragon/ Passion [?]

This was rumored to be the Android version of the HD2 but now it has been (almost) ID’d as the new HTC Passion. This would be more like a CDMA version of the HTC Dragon, which is a GSM phone. It has also been revealed that the HTC Passion is heading for Verizon and we could be seeing it in the flesh metal by the end of this year. Well, if they want to sell something this year they have to bring it out before Christmas.

But if this phone does materialize, this would be another Android phone that will be jostling for space at the top rung of things. Now that we have the Droid and the X10, this would likely become the third super-specc’d Android phone. [read]

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

If you still do not know about the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, you are clearly not coming out from underneath your rock often enough. The XEPRIA X10 was leaked and discussed frenetically before it was finally unveiled on November 3^rd.

It features a custom UI on top of Android and it is know as the ‘Open OS’. The features to be highlighted are the Timescape and Mediascape features, that give you smarter ways to stay connected with your contacts, communications and media. If you want a hands-on review of a pre-production unit, you can check out this post. Over all, Sony Ericsson has something that is pretty sleek and stylish. If they can deliver on their promises (Timescape and Mediascape), this might become THE Android phone to get. Hopefully it will be up to Android 2.0 when they finally get around to selling this phone in the first half of next year.

Acer Liquid A1

Acer’s Liquid A1 is the company’s venture into Android smartphone field and it has so far received a lukewarm response at best. After announcing the Snapdragon processor and the Android OS base, it became the first phone to bring those two together.

However, as we have seen and heard from the folks who got their hands on the device  – Acer is clearly lacking on the UI development. Plus, the physical design of the phone leaves much space for improvement. Acer’s inexperience in the smartphone category shows through too clearly for this to be a compelling device. Sorry Acer but it looks like you need to step up your game here. [read]

Unnamed Nokia Smartphone For AT&T

Nokia is rumored to be making a new smartphone for AT&T that will be powered by Snapdragon. It is not the N900 and it is something that will be up against the likes of the Droid, the HD2 and the X10. This is a little sliver of a rumor, so more details are currently unavailable. [read]

The search engine is indexing the contents of those websites and providing a search engine so that users can search all sites for multimedia content at once. The search results are therefor a combination of all multimedia portals. Results can be filtered by media type (video, audio, radio, games..) and sorted by factors like popularity, relevancy or rating.

Content that has been selected will be played in the main interface which uses independent blocks that can be moved around. It is for instance possible to search for additional videos while one is already playing. The multimedia content is simply embedded in the site which means that the basic controls of the site’s players is available.

One major nuisance of the multimedia search engine is that only four results are displayed per page which could mean some serious page flipping when searching for popular terms.

Registered users receive additional options like the ability to save or embed multimedia files or build a personal multimedia collection. The service is showing promise. It’s a little bit slow when it comes to displaying results to the user which quickly becomes annoying considering that only four results per page are displayed.

On the other hand: If you are looking for a way to search hundreds of sites for multimedia content you might want to give Video Crawler a try.

The User Agent of the iPhone browser is Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone. A user with Firefox or Opera could now easily change his User Agent to the one used by the iPhone to access the Internet without costs at every AT&T hotspot. One possible add-on that can be used for Firefox would be the User Agent Switcher.

User Agents are definitely not a secure way to protect a network or website from unauthorized access. The same can be said for referrer checks which are as insecure. It probably will only be a matter of time when AT&T decided to change the way the free access is granted to the iPhones only. Probably through a small application that is run on the iPhone instead.

Dear AT&T, dear Mr. Stephenson, are you aware that you can’t compare the theft of a DVD in store with downloading a DVD on the Internet. The theft of the DVD takes something away from someone while the second does not. It is not the same. But that’s not my main point of criticism, not at all.

AT&T is an Internet Service Provider which means that they provide the necessary infrastructure so that their customers can access the Internet. Let me ask you a question. What qualifies you to monitor or classify Internet traffic as copyright infringement ? Are you the police or a federal agency ? No you are not.

I’m not an expert in American law but I suppose that it is not allowed to spy on users that easily and even block traffic that has been analyzed before. Correct me if I’m wrong though.

What you are basically saying is that telephone companies should also eavesdrop on every call made because someone could plan or commit a crime over phone. What you are saying is that every letter and package send by mail should be opened and examined because someone could send copyright infringing material.

I’m sick of companies that side with the industry against their company. If you are a AT&T customer consider switching to another provider and LET THEM KNOW that what you will do if they follow this shady pass.

The free application aids you by sending you text messages or emails when you reach a defined amount of minutes that are left in a month. All that needs to be done would be to download the Watch My Cell application and configure the application once to add the login details for your cell phone provider, the minutes that are free in your account and when you want to receive a notification.

Watch My Cell supports only a few major cell phone providers at the moment and all seem to be Us-based which makes the application at its current stage useless for users from other countries. Supported companies are Cingular / At&t, Sprint / Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon. It is also possible to check the remaining minutes in your system tray by simply hovering over the icon of Watch my Cell.