Looks like it may be time to update our patent thicket graphic. Another company that's not actually doing anything in the space is suing everyone who is. A company named H-W Technology apparently holds a patent (7,525,955) on an "Internet protocol (IP) phone with search and advertising capability" and has sued Apple, RIM, Google, Amazon, eBay, HTC, LG, Smasung, Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon and others for violating it. Because, you know, I'm sure no one possibly could have figured out how to put search and ads on a phone without this patent.

A month or so ago, a friend of mine asked if I could do a favor (helping point someone in the right direction for a job) for someone -- a relative of a friend of my friend, so this was pretty distant. There was an email introduction, and a request to talk by phone so I could learn a bit more about this person in order to actually help. I noted that I was busy over the next few days, but had some open time on a Thursday morning or Friday afternoon, expecting, as usually seems to happen in these cases, that they'd come back with some specific times. Instead, the person emailed "great, give me your phone number and I'll call when available." I found myself immediately uninterested. Something in the back of my brain said "if this person doesn't respect my time enough to actually set a specific time, but would prefer to just interrupt me at random, then I'm going to pass on helping here." I don't know if that's a rude response -- perhaps it is -- but it's what I felt. And it was at that point that I realized how rare it is that I'll accept or make unexpected or unplanned phone calls, with the exception of my wife and my parents (and potentially some work-related "emergency.") There are a few very close, long-term friends that I'll call every so often, but I really haven't done that in a while, and I feel a bit awkward about doing it these days. I still talk on the phone for meetings, but always at set times.

Apparently, I'm not the only person who feels this way. Many people are realizing that random phone calls are just not considered polite any more. They're somewhat interruptive and can be annoying. What strikes me as really interesting is that this isn't a case of just the "younger generation" feeling this way -- but it's actually true of many older people as well.

I find this interesting for any number of reasons, including how counterintuitive it may actually be. These days, people have phones with them at all times. In the past, when most people didn't have mobile phones, such random calls were more common. And you might assume that our greater access to telephony would mean greater desire to make calls. Now, obviously, a big part of the reason for making calls has been replaced by (mostly text-based) alternative means, such as email, text messaging and social networks. But, I'd argue that the greater access also makes us more wary in general. For example, I was thinking about calling a friend recently, who I hadn't spoken to in a while, but realized it would be his mobile phone, and what if he was out with his wife and kids, and I didn't want to interrupt that.

It's kind of an interesting phenomenon, which makes me wonder if the idea of personal voice calls was really just a temporary slice of time that is going entirely out of style. Perhaps there will be some sort of quaint revival, like the idea that people have of writing paper letters to each other these days as being more "personal," but the whole phenomenon of the random personal phone call is pretty much becoming a thing of the past.

You may remember, back in 2006, one of the DMCA "exemptions" granted by the Librarian of Congress was for jailbreaking or unlocking mobile phones, for the purpose of moving them to a different carrier. This move was most seriously fought by one company: Tracfone, which offers prepaid phones at a steep discount. Its business model only works if you can't jailbreak phones -- but copyright law was never about protecting one company's bad business model. Tracfone has even claimed that allowing such jailbreaking is a matter of national security. What they really mean is that it's a matter of protecting their business model.

Tracfone actually sued the Librarian of Congress for allowing jailbreaking but, in 2007, quietly dropped the lawsuit because it found that courts were simply ignoring the exemption. Instead, Tracfone just kept suing people for jailbreaking and many caved and settled. What was really troubling though, was that people were being put in jail for this. Now, in the first trial involving such a case, a guy (who has already spent over a year in jail for unlocking phones) has been found guilty of violating the DMCA.

This is according to a press release put out by the lawyers representing Tracfone and they sort of bury the key point: the guy pled guilty. So it's not as if a court judged the overall situation on the merits. But what's scary is that this seems to clearly go against the very exemption the Librarian of Congress made for jailbreaking phones. And we're not even talking about a civil copyright complaint here, but a criminal one... for doing something that the Librarian of Congress has already said is legal.

theodp writes "Appearing Thursday on The View, President Obama lamented that his BlackBerry was no fun anymore, noting that only about 10 people had his BlackBerry personal e-mail address. 'I've got to admit it's no fun because they think it's going to be subject to the Presidential Records Act so nobody sends me the juicy stuff,' he ruefully added. Coincidentally, the USPTO disclosed on Thursday that IBM has a patent pending for a Cellular Telephone Using Multiple Accounts, which provides multiple SIM card slots to address the problems faced by 'an elected official [who] may be under legal restraints regarding the nature of calls which may be made from a particular telephone.' Without its invention, explains Big Blue, 'an official may use one telephone for calls in an official government capacity; another for calls to a re-election committee; and another for purely personal use.' IBM ran to the patent office with details of the new 'invention' (image) just days after Obama was told he could keep his BlackBerry for personal use, but would have to use an NSA-approved phone for anything government related."

I remember a few decades back, when I was in high school, our principal announced that her biggest concern and top focus was stopping kids from bringing walkmen cassette players to school. This was in a school where there were all of the more typical high school issues, including drugs, weapons and violence. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous. But, apparently, little has changed. We've seen lots of stories over the years, of course, about bans on mobile phones and iPods and the like. But, apparently, banning mobile phones and iPods from schools is becoming government policy in the UK. At that link, Bill Thompson notes the incongruity between things like mobile phones and iPods compared to other things that are banned (such as weapons and fireworks). But, of course, the reasoning is different. The thinking on phones and MP3 players is to keep kids from getting distracted, and to help teachers keep the attention of kids. In theory.

In a rather apt analogy, Thompson calls the whole thing "discipline theater," akin to "security theater" found at airports:

It will do nothing to improve behaviour in schools where teachers are not respected by their students.

However, it could have a negative impact in other ways, as it enforces the idea that schools are places where "technology" is something out there, a word processor or spreadsheet on a desktop PC to be used for a particular purpose, instead of something that permeates all aspects of our daily lives and is becoming increasingly important.

He also points out that many schools are currently using such mobile devices in innovative ways within the classroom, and setting up a process to keep them out seems backwards. It's too bad that the first reaction of so many people is just to ban such technology rather than (a) looking at ways to use it in a helpful manner or (b) understanding why the technology sometimes acts as a distraction.

The TV industry has been totally downplaying the idea that people would ever "cut the cord" when it comes to TV. While it may be true that it's a very small minority of users today, it would seem that those in the TV industry might want to look over to their friends in the telco industry. They used to scoff at the idea of cord cutters as well... and now 25% of all households have dumped their landlines entirely. And, among younger folks, it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landline at all. Things change. What was unthinkable not so long ago can become reality pretty quickly.

If you have an old Nokia 1100 phone, maybe it's time to dust it off and try selling it in Germany where hackers claim to have figured out a way to use certain Nokia phones to steal authentication codes for bank transactions. There are a few reports that these old phones (if they were made in a very specific factory, not just any old model...) are selling for ridiculous amounts -- ranging from $700 to $30,000 -- presumably because the handsets are so hard to find and are valuable to hackers prone to crime. So far, Nokia says it can't imagine any way for these old phones to be hacked for banking fraud. But not surprisingly, security vendors are quick to point out the plausibility of this type of phone hacking -- since security firms can obviously benefit from unfounded fears that encourage consumers to buy security software regardless of the actual need for it. Is it really that hard to ask a security vendor what the likelihood would be for a criminal to actually succeed in such a scam? Hopefully, the odds of actually stealing any money with these ancient phones are approaching zero -- especially now that the tools to implement the fraud are known and apparently getting quite expensive. Perhaps the real suckers in this story are the gullible hackers who are buying old phones in shady forums for prices that are well more than the phones are worth?

A former Miss Britain who posed for Playboy is suing UK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse after one of its employees copied some "very intimate" pictures from her phone and tried to sell them to some newspapers. The woman, Danielle Lloyd, left her phone at the shop so employees could transfer data from it onto a new phone, and is seeking 50,000 pounds in damages for her stupidity the employee's actions. It's slightly ironic that the woman would be upset about the photos getting out, seeing as she once had a flourishing "glamour model" (Britspeak for soft porn) career, but the episode goes to show how easily privacy can be undermined these days. There's a presumption of privacy when people take a picture on their phone, or put something online on their private or semi-private space; but as we capture and share more and more of our lives, the presumption that the content we capture will remain private should probably diminish.

Faced with stagnating sales as consumers upgrade their computers with less frequency, several PC makers are eyeing the smartphone market as their next growth target. It makes sense to them: their technology is getting smaller and smaller, while demand for more powerful handsets is growing. And smartphones are basically becoming tiny laptops, right?

Well, not exactly.

Smartphones and computers might be sharing more components and technology these days, but just as the PC hardware market became a commodity one, the handset hardware market is moving that way, too. The hardware is the easy part: there are dozens of ODMs around that are more than willing to design and build handsets for anybody with the cash. The real innovation these days is in software -- and designing great mobile user interfaces, as well as applications and services, will determine who wins in the market. Consider the iPhone: its tech specs, perhaps beyond its touchscreen, aren't head and shoulders above other high-end handsets, and are surpassed by a number of competitors' devices. But what's won so many fans is its software, in particular its user interface, its web browser and the App Store. Making the leap from PC to smartphone isn't an easy one -- just ask the likes of Microsoft, whose dominance of the desktop hasn't lead to a similar position for Windows Mobile.

We've seen video game execs freaking out about the second-hand sales market, and apparently that may be expanding to other arenas. The Register has an unnamed source (so make of that what you will) claiming that Motorola is asking people to sign contracts on a new phone that ban the buyer from reselling the phone to anyone, other than back to the manufacturer. Of course, this is an economically dumb argument. The resale market helps add value to the primary market, and allows the company to charge more for its product initially. As Mathew Ingram points out, some are suggesting that this move would violate the first sale doctrine, though that could depend on a variety of factors. I would imagine that the terms could establish the situation as a "lease" of the phone rather than a purchase, but that might be difficult to get the courts to accept. Also, my understanding of first sale doctrine was that it only applied to intellectual property -- not physical goods, so I'm not sure it would really apply here. Either way, it would seem to be dumb, whether or not it's legal. If you want to decrease interest in your product, adding such a clause seems like a reasonable way to do so.