Posted by Greg Mills
The auction to sell 6000 Nortel patents is over and Google, make that Android, lost. Google offered US$900,000,000 early on, but was out bid by Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, Sony and EMC which joined a consortium to buy the patents. Each of the members of the group contributed to the winning pot for rights to certain patents or a paid up license to use certain patent.
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Speculation about the features of unreleased Apple products sometimes comes from odd sources. A teardown of the HTC ThunderBolt, which has a first generation 4G chipset, was torn down by the guys at iSuppli (You build it, we tear it down).
The 4G chip set physical size and cost had Wayne Lam speculating that it would be impossible for Apple to keep iPhone small and thin enough to maintain its slim form factor and still maintain Apple’s profit margin with that chip set. The battery in iPhone hogs a lot of room.
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Posted by Greg Mills
Yesterday I got a fraudulent email warning me that my MobileMe account was expiring soon, to check my account phone number and credit card information. The email uses actual Apple MobileMe art so it looks very official, while it is as fraudulent as a 3 dollar bill. I remembered current MobileMe accounts were grandfathered in until next summer so the email alarmed me, as I seemed to remember renewal in December.

Welcome,
Just a reminder to renew your MobileMe subscription by July 10, 2011 PDT to avoid interruption of service.
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Posted by Greg Mills
Sometimes electronic devices seem almost magic. Charging pads that are sort of like a small place mat have a wire that leads off to an electrical outlet. Rechargeable electronic devices like a cellphone or iPod are simply placed on the mat, face up and the device comes to life with the battery charging screen coming on.
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Posted by Greg Mills
Security for internet connected computing devices is an ongoing thing. The recent “jailbreak” software for breaking iOS devices also breaks iOS security for all of us as the vulnerability of un-jail-broken devices is exposed in the jail break code that is now posted on line.
The fear is that remote control of iPhone, iPad and iPod touches could occur using that code. This sort of problem is much more common in the Android platform but computers are computers and the systems are only as good as the state of the art when they are released.
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