On Our Desk - Mionix Propus 380

As you can imagine, we get lots of natty little bits and pieces sent into the bit-tech offices. Annoyingly, though, much of it is just a little too small or a little too silly to write about in a full page review. As a result, I?m trying to resurrect the On Our Desk series of articles that we used to cover all these little bits of gadgetry.

So without further ado I?ll tell you about the Mionix Propus 380 mouse mat, on which my CM Storm Inferno has been happily sitting for the last few days.

The first feature that grabbed me about the Propus 380 is that it looks good. It was actually its unusual shape and sleek, unfussy design that prompted me to pick it out from the pile of gaming mouse mats we?ve got sitting in the labs in the first place; it certainly looks like it means business.

On Our Desk - Mionix Propus 380

Once out of the packaging, I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality on show. The edges of the Propus 380 are very precisely cut, with no rough edges in sight. The upper tracking surface is also very firmly bonded to the rubber base of the mat; it certainly doesn't feel like the Propus 380 would suffer from the kind of delaminating or edge-peeling you may have seen on older mouse mats.

The surface of the mat is made from extremely fine-grained plastic, results in some very quick mouse movements. In fact, I was actually able to move my mouse almost too quickly compared to the cloth covered mat that the Propus 380 replaced, with very little drag or friction between the mouse and mat. Once I was used to it, though, the lack of friction meant that my mouse movement felt very precise, and that fatigue was less of a problem during long gaming sessions.

Measuring 380 x 260mm, the mat is wider than it is tall, but this means there?s plenty of room for large sweeping movements if you run your mouse with low sensitivity. If you don?t need all that width, though, then you can rotate the mat through 90 degrees. What's more, in this orientation, the indents in the upper and lower edge of the mat help it to butt up nearly with your keyboard.

On Our Desk - Mionix Propus 380

If you?re into your LAN gaming, then the fact that the Propus 380 doesn?t roll up could be an issue. It does have a degree of bend in it, but it'll crease if you push it too far. For most people, though, this is unlikely to be a problem, and it also means the edges of the mat won?t curl with time.

Of course, a gaming orientated mouse mat is a luxury; most decent mice these days will track quite happily without any mouse mat at all. The Propus 380 is a great piece of kit, though. It feels well made, and has a surface that provides very smooth and quick tracking for a laser mouse. At £17 it couldn?t be called cheap, but at least you feel like you?re getting £17 worth of kit; it?ll definitely be staying on my desk for the foreseeable future.

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Huduma crowdsources reports on government effectiveness in Kenya

Renowned Kenyan crowdsourcing site, Ushahidi is set to launch a new site that will help monitor government effectiveness. The new site is called Huduma.

Huduma (which is a Swahili word for ?service?) enables people to submit reports on the performance of services in their district by text, e-mail or Twitter. The reports are then mapped on the Huduma site for public viewing.

The service is a modification of the Ushahidi platform, an open source technology that crowdsources crisis information via SMS and the web and then maps the reports for viewers. Ushahidi is estimated to have been deployed about 12,000 times across the world including notably during the earthquakes in Haiti where it proved to be invaluable.

In a recent conversation about Huduma with UK newspaper, The Guardian,  Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi said:

?There will be a dashboard which will compare one district with another. We will also layer in other information such as aid flows from, say, the World Bank. So, for example, if you pull up the profile of a school or clinic, you will have information about what aid it may have received as well as local reports on whether the teachers are turning up to work.?

International donors are reportedly excited about the service because it can serve as a useful tool for tracking international aid and ensuring that it is being put to good use. According to Hersman, the service will be launched in five constituencies and then spread to various parts of Kenya. The team plans to initially focus on the health and educational sector and later expand to include infrastructure, governance and water.

Huduma joins the growing number of technologies and tools dedicated towards solving African problems using African solutions.

For more information about the service, visit www.huduma.info.

To read more examples of ways in which Africans are putting tech to good use on the continent, check out this post.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/05/22/huduma-crowdsources-reports-on-government-effectiveness-in-kenya/

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New Mexico Judge Charged in Bribery Case, but Former Governor Draws a Mention

Prosecutors accuse Judge Murphy of advising a judicial candidate several years ago that if she wanted to increase her chances of getting a judgeship, she should deliver cash in an envelope to a Democratic Party operative, who would pass it along to Mr. Richardson, who was in his second term as governor. Judge Murphy is quoted in court papers as saying that the practice was commonplace and that he paid $4,000 to win an appointment from Mr. Richardson in 2006.

Mr. Richardson said in a statement that suggestions that he appointed judges based on campaign contributions were ?outrageous and defamatory.?

His supporters call the case politically motivated, pointing to the involvement of two prominent Republicans, including Gov. Susana Martinez, who succeeded Mr. Richardson in January. ?That speaks volumes about this prosecution,? said Gilbert Gallegos, who was Mr. Richardson?s deputy chief of staff.

In 2009, Ms. Martinez, who was then a district attorney, received a complaint from one of Judge Murphy?s colleagues. Because her office appeared before the judge, she referred the matter to another prosecutor, Matt Chandler, who was the Republican candidate for state attorney general.

?This is not about one party or another,? Mr. Chandler said in a telephone interview, pointing out that five of the witnesses are Democrats and the sixth is an independent. ?It?s about a judge who put a price tag on a judgeship.?

A grand jury recently indicted Judge Murphy on felony charges of bribery and witness intimidation. On Friday, Judge Murphy pleaded not guilty at his own courthouse in Las Cruces and was released after posting $10,000 bail, handing over his passport and agreeing to stay away from witnesses in the case, avoid the courthouse and turn over any firearms.

?How absurd to suggest that any governor?s selection of a state judge would be altered for any price, especially for a handful of dollars directed to a political party,? Michael Stout, Judge Murphy?s attorney, said in a statement on Saturday.

In an interview, Mr. Chandler indicated that Mr. Richardson might be questioned as part of the investigation.

?At this time, the investigation is directed at Mr. Murphy, but I can assure you that law enforcement are following leads involving other suspects,? he said. ?No one is off limits to get the truth.?

Ms. Martinez released a statement earlier in the week saying the charges were serious and needed to be pursued. ?The indictment of a sitting judge on charges that he paid bribes for his judicial appointment and solicited bribes from another judicial candidate is deeply troubling,? Ms. Martinez said.

Judge Murphy has been suspended without pay by the State Supreme Court. A retired magistrate, Leslie Smith, was appointed to handle the case.

The matter dates to 2007 when Beverly Singleman, a former state appeals judge, contacted Judge Jim T. Martin of State District Court to discuss a vacancy on his court. She said that Judge Martin, a Richardson appointee, invited Judge Murphy along to a lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Las Cruces and that he stayed largely silent during the meal as Judge Murphy laid out how political contributions were an essential part of the process. Judge Martin has not been charged, but was removed from hearing criminal cases last week.

After the meal, Ms. Singleman, a onetime Democrat who changed her registration to independent, took the matter to Judge Lisa C. Schultz of State District Court. Judge Schultz, a Richardson appointee, later confronted Judge Murphy about the accusations, once while taping the conversation.

Judge Schultz said she was hesitant to take the matter to the Judicial Standards Commission, which investigates ethical complaints, because most of its members were appointed by Mr. Richardson.

Eventually, she took the complaint to Ms. Martinez, who was criticizing Mr. Richardson?s tenure as ethically challenged in her campaign against Diane Denish, a Democrat who was Mr. Richardson?s lieutenant governor.

New Mexico has a hybrid system of elected and appointed judges that is designed to reduce the role of politics. The governor picks judges from a list submitted by a nominating commission run by the University of New Mexico School of Law. Appointed judges then must face nonpartisan elections to keep their posts.

?I appointed judges through an extensive process, including a thorough vetting first by the judicial nominating commission and then by my legal staff of the candidates that were nominated to me,? Mr. Richardson said in his statement.

He said he interviewed every candidate and based his appointments on merit. ?I appointed 113 judges, including several Republicans, and the general consensus in the legal community is that we selected excellent judges who had to prove themselves to voters in elections,? he said.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7fa7a9bfa75283840023a007841e87b7

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Huduma crowdsources reports on government effectiveness in Kenya

Renowned Kenyan crowdsourcing site, Ushahidi is set to launch a new site that will help monitor government effectiveness. The new site is called Huduma.

Huduma (which is a Swahili word for ?service?) enables people to submit reports on the performance of services in their district by text, e-mail or Twitter. The reports are then mapped on the Huduma site for public viewing.

The service is a modification of the Ushahidi platform, an open source technology that crowdsources crisis information via SMS and the web and then maps the reports for viewers. Ushahidi is estimated to have been deployed about 12,000 times across the world including notably during the earthquakes in Haiti where it proved to be invaluable.

In a recent conversation about Huduma with UK newspaper, The Guardian,  Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi said:

?There will be a dashboard which will compare one district with another. We will also layer in other information such as aid flows from, say, the World Bank. So, for example, if you pull up the profile of a school or clinic, you will have information about what aid it may have received as well as local reports on whether the teachers are turning up to work.?

International donors are reportedly excited about the service because it can serve as a useful tool for tracking international aid and ensuring that it is being put to good use. According to Hersman, the service will be launched in five constituencies and then spread to various parts of Kenya. The team plans to initially focus on the health and educational sector and later expand to include infrastructure, governance and water.

Huduma joins the growing number of technologies and tools dedicated towards solving African problems using African solutions.

For more information about the service, visit www.huduma.info.

To read more examples of ways in which Africans are putting tech to good use on the continent, check out this post.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/05/22/huduma-crowdsources-reports-on-government-effectiveness-in-kenya/

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Weekend Open Forum: 2011's game failures, triumphs and beyond

As some of you may recall, we kicked the year off with a compendium of widely anticipated PC games expected to launch in 2011. For better or worse, many of those titles have come to fruition over the last five months with varying degrees of success. While long-presumed blockbusters like Crysis 2 and Dragon Age II failed to deliver, gamers have greeted lesser-known titles like The Witcher 2 and Section 8: Prejudice with open arms.

Zero Punctuation review of Dragon Age II (semi-NSFW)

Given that we're less than two weeks away from June, we thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on 2011's many unexpected turn of events. Have you been burned by a half-baked new release? Pleasantly surprised by an undervalued gem? Has your most anticipated game been delayed? Waiting for one of Steam's mega sales to see what all the fuss is about? No matter the case, let's hear your midyear gaming progress report.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43897-weekend-open-forum-2011s-game-failures-triumphs-and-beyond.html

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Freshman Democrats in the House Bond Over Policy and Egg Rolls

You dive deeply into policy, plowing through a 300-page briefing book on the Department of Homeland Security on a Friday night. You find an issue you can work on with a member from the other side of the aisle and dig in. You eat a lot of Chinese food.

In the sprawling class of 96 House freshmen, just nine are Democrats, dubbing themselves ?the noble nine.? Their marginalization ? in a chamber obsessed with party control and seniority ? is all the more acute vis-ą-vis the 87 Republican freshmen, whose sheer numbers and ideological intensity make them the most visible novices in over a decade.

But the Democrats, a cheerful coterie, have learned to embrace small victories, work hard and keep their eyes fixed firmly on their districts, from Southern California to Delaware, where they maintain a powerful role.

They all remain keenly aware that a wave election, like the midterms last November, can sweep a relatively new member into power, a la Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a Republican first elected in 2006 and now No. 3 in his party?s leadership.

The Democrats also view themselves as a much-needed countervailing voice against the majority in the huge policy disputes that have engulfed the Capitol this year (even if this can often feel like using a garden hose on a wildfire).

?Our role is to fight for what we think is the right agenda,? said Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, ?and hopefully in some way influence the agenda. We are not just here as observers.?

At the end of the day, each of the nine Democrats said in interviews last week, their role in their own districts is not terribly diminished by their relative invisibility here. ?It just doesn?t change the focus of what the folks in Alabama sent me here to do,? said Representative Terri A. Sewell, whose district covers parts of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

While the Republican freshman class is notable for the large number of members without any prior political experience, the freshman Democrats are an experienced group, including Representative Karen Bass, a former speaker of the California Assembly; Mr. Cicilline, who was the mayor of Providence; and Representative Frederica S. Wilson, who spent over a decade in the Florida Legislature. Only Ms. Sewell had never been elected to public office.

?It?s kind of frustrating,? said Ms. Wilson, who is best known for her large cowboy hats that tend to match her outfit (well hello, lemon yellow!), which to her great disappointment were banned from the House floor in the session?s first week.

?I walked in the first time to a Foreign Affairs Committee meeting and I was told I had walked through the Republican door,? she said. ?I thought, ?Ohhhhh, I didn?t know there was a door for each party.? Being in the minority is intrinsic here.?

Some, like Representative William Keating of Massachusetts, never labored in the minority in their previous state legislative careers, and then there is Ms. Sewell, who is the only Democrat in the seven-member Alabama House delegation.

These freshmen Democrats are a diverse bunch, racially and geographically, though politically they are largely liberal. One exception is Representative John Carney, the lone representative from Delaware, where Democrats have a smaller majority than most other districts represented by Democratic freshmen. Mr. Carney won the seat that had been held by a Republican, Mike Castle, for nearly three decades.

?These nine men and women represent the best of public service,? said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, ?each bringing their own unique background and experience to the halls of Congress.?

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5471259efc6ecc6f82a56e77b7cd126b

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Thoughts on Jumping

It may seem an odd subject to focus on, as jumping doesn't seem to be very important on the face of it ? cut it out of a game, though, and it can make a huge difference. Games in which players can?t jump, or at the very least dodge or roll, can seem painfully slow, dull and static. Games in which players can jump around and use that movement to interact with the environment can seem immeasurably more fun because of it.

Take Half-Life 2, for example. It?s a game which nearly everyone would agree is well-made, decently written, fun and fast to play through. Now cast your mind back to the first scene in Kliener?s lab, where Gordon is first properly introduced to his allies, where the plot is given its first proper push and where you?re gifted with the HEV suit again. It?s a busy sequence; lots to do, lots to take in. You?d expect most players to pay close attention, at least the first time around.

Instead, every single player I know spends most of the time jumping around. Sometimes they try to jump on the scenery or knock over objects, other times they just leapfrog around the room when a simple stroll would suffice.


The same behaviour holds true in most other games too, I?ve found. When I played Beyond Good and Evil for the first time I hardly walked anywhere across the surface of Hillys; I rolled. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, any hallway that involved walking for more than two seconds would be punctuated by periodic bounding. It seems like aberrant behaviour at first, yet it seems as though everyone does it. Why?

The reason, I think, is actually more to do with player speed than actually jumping. It?s not that people always like to move fast through games or that they enjoy spending time off the ground. Instead, it comes back to the original point ? games that don?t feature jumping can feel static and slow, so we use these features if they're present to help negate this effect. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a pretty fast-paced game, but running down a long corridor can still feel dull and empty; jumping as you run lets you vary the speed of the game. It creates tiny events of player agency and interaction, which stave off that staid feeling.

At the same time, adventure games that don?t feature anything so much as a sprint button? Don?t they seem increasingly slow and dated these days?


This isn?t the only reason why jumping is important, though. It helps you practice for later. It can be used to ward off boredom. It helps you to further explore the game space away from the key features. There's an abundance of smaller reasons; not least of which is possibly the fact that some people just have twitchy thumbs.

For the best games, though ? and this ties into a more overarching theory of mine about character speed ? the act of jumping can be a joy in itself. Master Chief?s jump, for example, is pleasantly floaty, while Dante?s can last for as long as you can hammer the attack buttons. Faith?s standing jump in Mirror?s Edge, however, is realistically awkward; she?s much better with running leaps.

Getting these nuances of player speed correct is one of the most subtle and important aspects of making a good game, especially for first person shooters. Trust me, I play a lot of really rubbish games and I can tell you that, if you throw all the cleverness away and boil it down to basic functionality, Half-Life 2 would still stand above Conspiracy Island 2 based solely on player speed. And the quality of the jumping.

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Thoughts on Jumping

It may seem an odd subject to focus on, as jumping doesn't seem to be very important on the face of it ? cut it out of a game, though, and it can make a huge difference. Games in which players can?t jump, or at the very least dodge or roll, can seem painfully slow, dull and static. Games in which players can jump around and use that movement to interact with the environment can seem immeasurably more fun because of it.

Take Half-Life 2, for example. It?s a game which nearly everyone would agree is well-made, decently written, fun and fast to play through. Now cast your mind back to the first scene in Kliener?s lab, where Gordon is first properly introduced to his allies, where the plot is given its first proper push and where you?re gifted with the HEV suit again. It?s a busy sequence; lots to do, lots to take in. You?d expect most players to pay close attention, at least the first time around.

Instead, every single player I know spends most of the time jumping around. Sometimes they try to jump on the scenery or knock over objects, other times they just leapfrog around the room when a simple stroll would suffice.


The same behaviour holds true in most other games too, I?ve found. When I played Beyond Good and Evil for the first time I hardly walked anywhere across the surface of Hillys; I rolled. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, any hallway that involved walking for more than two seconds would be punctuated by periodic bounding. It seems like aberrant behaviour at first, yet it seems as though everyone does it. Why?

The reason, I think, is actually more to do with player speed than actually jumping. It?s not that people always like to move fast through games or that they enjoy spending time off the ground. Instead, it comes back to the original point ? games that don?t feature jumping can feel static and slow, so we use these features if they're present to help negate this effect. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a pretty fast-paced game, but running down a long corridor can still feel dull and empty; jumping as you run lets you vary the speed of the game. It creates tiny events of player agency and interaction, which stave off that staid feeling.

At the same time, adventure games that don?t feature anything so much as a sprint button? Don?t they seem increasingly slow and dated these days?


This isn?t the only reason why jumping is important, though. It helps you practice for later. It can be used to ward off boredom. It helps you to further explore the game space away from the key features. There's an abundance of smaller reasons; not least of which is possibly the fact that some people just have twitchy thumbs.

For the best games, though ? and this ties into a more overarching theory of mine about character speed ? the act of jumping can be a joy in itself. Master Chief?s jump, for example, is pleasantly floaty, while Dante?s can last for as long as you can hammer the attack buttons. Faith?s standing jump in Mirror?s Edge, however, is realistically awkward; she?s much better with running leaps.

Getting these nuances of player speed correct is one of the most subtle and important aspects of making a good game, especially for first person shooters. Trust me, I play a lot of really rubbish games and I can tell you that, if you throw all the cleverness away and boil it down to basic functionality, Half-Life 2 would still stand above Conspiracy Island 2 based solely on player speed. And the quality of the jumping.

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What should Apple buy with their billions? A carrier.

Apple has a lot of cash. As of Q2, 2011 Apple has over $77 billion dollars worth of cash reserves. This is uncharacteristically high for a company of Apple?s size and it has led to an enormous amount of speculation as to its intended purpose among tech pundits and fans alike.

The only thing that?s for sure is that whatever it is, it won?t be small.

Over a year ago, when Apple?s cash pile was already huge, if not as big as it is now, CEO Steve Jobs justified the company holding on to all of that cash, stating, ?When we think about big, bold things, we know that if we needed to acquire something, a piece of the puzzle, to make something big and bold a reality, we could write a check for it.?

As far as I?m concerned there is only one thing that could be totally game-changing for Apple?s main business, iOS devices, at this point: total freedom from the carriers. The only way to ensure this is for Apple to create its own carrier. A carrier that serves iOS devices with an always-on data connection that allows them to take advantage of their features in a way that the current carrier system never could. Let?s call it AppleNet.1

A data only carrier

Any carrier created or molded by Apple would surely be a data-only carrier. With the increasing viability of VOIP services like Skype and Google Voice, a traditional split-carrier model that handles voice and text messaging separate from a data system is not only antagonistic to the customer, it?s officially unnecessary. It?s incredibly amusing that Apple managed to sneak the entire foundation for a service that eliminates these problems into the iPhone right under AT&T?s nose with FaceTime.

FaceTime?s design is centered around being able to make a connection regardless of firewall or data network and currently only uses a voice connection as a concession to AT&T.2 That initialization of the FaceTime call with a voice connection is key though, because it indicates that a FaceTime-to-standard-voice call should be possible. This would mimic Skype?s current ability to initiate calls to, as well as receive calls from, traditional voice carrier devices.

In a stunning bit of slight-of-hand Apple has managed to cloak the obvious voice calling potential of Facetime inside the mask of a video chat service. Schmaltzy commercials about the emotional attachment that a video image brings notwithstanding, most of us are happy to communicate using just voice and FaceTime is completely capable of becoming the engine behind a Phone.app on an iPhone running on a data-only network.

Apple has effectively tested the effectiveness of just such a communications protocol on millions of iOS devices by using video chat as a trojan horse.

The iPhone experience

One of the most compelling reasons that Apple has to consider building its own carrier is the iPhone experience. I?ve written before about how removing the required connection to a computer would improve that experience. So would a simpler, friendlier carrier choice. Gone would be the need for the customer to have to consider all kinds of costly and confusing plans in order to own an iPhone. Instead they would have the ability to choose from three versions of the iPhone. One for Verizon, one for AT&T and one from AppleNet.

The Verizon and AT&T versions would of course be subject to the same carrier plans, which would seem archaic and byzantine compared to the clean, easy to understand AppleNet plan.

The price for an iPhone plan from AppleNet? $35 per month, unlimited.

The pricing is relatively easy to divine. Currently the iPhone 16GB is sold at $599 in unsubsidized form. Because of the deals that Apple has in place with carriers, part of that cost is absorbed by the carriers and the customer only pays $199. That means that the carriers pay roughly $300 worth of your phones cost for you. But do they ever make it back. If you consider AT&T?s pricing for a basic plan with data at roughly $79 the carrier stands to make $650 worth of profit per 12 month usage period on each of its iPhone customers.

Apple, by comparison, could afford to simply make what it already makes. That means, if you figure on an iPhone user purchasing 1 iPhone per year that costs Apple roughly $200 to make, that it would only need to charge $35 per month to make a full $599 on the 16GB model.3 Because any carrier that Apple creates would be functioning on a data-only model there would be no roaming concerns or other charges to cloud the issue. Regulatory taxes would most likely be added to this price.

Although the math would apparently put Apple arrears on the 32GB model, if you consider that a price of $35 is actually slightly rounded up and that the increase in cost of NAND flash memory from 16GB to 32GB is perhaps $15, this would actually place Apple ahead on the higher capacity model.

There is also certainly room for additional profit here as most people do not purchase an iPhone every year. This means that Apple would be collecting that $35 every month for an additional year or more on that device, adding several hundred dollars to the profit margin of each phone it sells.

To build or buy

Apple has several possible options when it comes to creating its own carrier. One of the ones that has been discussed extensively is the possibility of a soft carrier, a way for smaller companies to lease chunks of network from the larger carriers to provide service. This won?t work for Apple for a variety of reasons, not to mention the fact that it wouldn?t be freeing itself from a relationship with the carriers at all by doing this.

Leasing would mean that Apple would lose the pricing advantage, having to pay the carriers on top of charging enough to keep the iPhone profitable and in line with deals from the other major carriers. It would also mean that Apple would be beholden to future pricing changes and bandwidth restrictions.

This doesn?t mean that you can completely rule it out though. There is a possibility that Apple could come up with an aggressive pricing structure that was based off of usage, which would be effectively zero when any iDevice was on a WiFi network, and pay the carriers a variable rate depending upon the amount of data used by iPhone owners. This would effectively hand off the 3G (or 4G) data connections to carriers like Verizon or AT&T while taking advantage of WiFi connections wherever possible.

From a philosophical standpoint this doesn?t seem like a dramatic enough option for Apple. If it came down to creating an Apple-only carrier, its most likely moves would be to purchase an existing network or to build its own from scratch. Both options pose unique problems and costs that would be prohibitive without nearly $80 Billion in the bank.

Used Sprint, for parts or repair

The only carrier option that?s really on the block for Apple now is Sprint. Its stock is down, making Sprint more affordable than ever, it has an extensive 3G network and a growing WiMAX 4G network in the shape of Clearwire. Currently Sprint is trading with a market cap of $16B and Clearwire, in which which Sprint owns a simple majority, is hovering at $5.5B. Apple would only have to spend roughly $22 Billion to scoop up both at once. This would give it an extensive 3G network and a solid, if not expansive, 4G network.

Unfortunately this would also bring a lot of baggage with it. First of all, Sprint isn?t exactly the spryest of the major networks and, aside from its unlimited offerings, has been falling behind technologically and monetarily since the merger with Nextel in 2005. Of course, Apple then has to cast off the cruft of the prepaid divisions including Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Assurance Wireless, not to mention the dozens of affiliate MVNO?s and the paleolithic iDEN PTT network.

Apple would never migrate 46.1 million users, none of which are iPhone users, to its new service. There are too many hardware devices, too many variables and too many competing manufacturers that would be up in arms. Instead Apple would be likely to spin the data service off as its own product. This way Sprint would keep its doors open for its customers, it would be able to offer them its existing unlimited plans with a 4G connection leased from Apple.

Essentially Apple would be cracking open the shell that is Sprint to get at the fleshy fruit of Clearwire and its 4G coverage.

In the end I think that the biggest barrier that exists for a purchase of Sprint by Apple is the messy nature of its non-data networks. There is years of legacy technology at work here and a convoluted mess of voice services that Apple just isn?t interested in. If Apple does indeed go this route and purchase Sprint outright then it will be interesting to see how the network is carved up and which pieces Apple decides to keep for itself.

The more exciting question is what happens if Apple decides to just go after the tasty fruit in the first place, buying Clearwire outright to build its own network from the ground up.

AppleNet is magical

What if Apple was to purchase Clearwire outright for $5.5B, thereby laying the groundwork for its own brand of WiMAX-based 4G coverage?

Clearwire has spent nearly $5B since 2009 building out its 4G coverage and it?s nowhere near done. Currently the network reaches in the ballpark of 120 million people. If Apple was to base AppleNet on WiMAX technology it could be expected to spend easily three times that continuing to build out coverage to reach a much larger percentage of the 300+ million residents of the US. Thankfully Apple has this kind of cash in spades.

The biggest cost of building any modern wireless network isn?t the hardware of the towers or broadcast antennas themselves, not that they?re cheap, it?s the land rights to place those towers. If Apple wanted to build a truly game-changing data-only network and have that network be robust enough to challenge AT&T and Verizon in the next couple of years, it would need a significant boost in the amount of coverage offered by AppleNet.

That boost could come from a place where millions of us get our boost every day. Starbucks.

Starbucks has over 8,800 company owned locations, not counting licensed stores. Apple had dealings with Starbucks in the past. You may remember the relatively unspectacular deal for free access to the iTunes Music Store for iPhone users. Every Starbucks location already has a WiFi router, sponsored by AT&T, that offers free access to the internet. This covers any iPhone user on AT&T within spitting distance of a Starbucks.

Apple could significantly expand this coverage by augmenting these Starbucks locations with WiMAX antennas powered by Clearwire.

This could be accomplished by a partnership or long-term leasing arrangement that would allow Apple time to expand Clearwire?s network out to cover more area. The main reason that Clearwire has had difficulty expanding their coverage is lack of funds. Fortunately this is one problem that Apple doesn?t have.

If Apple leveraged those funds to first use Starbucks locations as its own massive WiMAX hotspots, then build out the Clearwire network, it could have itself a data only carrier within a relatively short span.

Apple?s One Ring: Retail Stores

So a single model of iPhone, using data only, that works across all three carriers in the US: AT&T, Verizon and AppleNet. This is a dream scenario for consumers as it gives them the freedom to choose from any of the major carriers. But it?s not like this hasn?t been attempted before.

This is originally what Google intended the Nexus One to be. An unlocked, carrier agnostic phone that consumers could purchase for one low price. Unfortunately that experiment failed when Google gave up on their plan due to lackluster online sales and the realization that it would have to play ball with carriers in order to ensure Android?s success. But Google doesn?t have one major thing that Apple does.

The Retail Stores are Apple?s One Ring that will bind all of these possibilities together. Currently Apple has 236 stores in the US that sell millions of iPhones independent from the carrier stores.

Apple could conceivably sell the AppleNet compatible iPhone from its Retail Stores and existing partners like Best Buy without breaking a sweat. These Retail Stores already drive the bulk of iPhone and iDevice sales and could continue to do so, becoming the primary distributor for devices running on AppleNet. The fact that additional devices, designed to run on the other major carriers, would be sold alongside them would just be icing on the cake.

Carrier parity at last

Apple having their own carrier would signify a significant leap forward for consumers when it comes to carrier parity. For the first time consumers that felt comfortable leading a data-only lifestyle would be able to migrate to the iPhone on AppleNet and those who for one reason or another feel more comfortable doing so, can remain on AT&T or Verizon. That is, until their contracts run out.

This is just considering it from a present-day position as well. When (I don?t think anyone is still saying ?if?) Apple announces its new iCloud service at WWDC in a couple of weeks we will get a better picture of how the cloud fits into Apple?s roadmap for the coming years. This could enable phones that could switch freely from one carrier to another with a set of over-the-air instructions, fulfilling prophecies of a carrier-agnostic SIM card.

There are many things that Apple could spend the billions of dollars of cash reserves that its currently sitting on, but there are few things that could be bigger and bolder than a carrier designed from the ground up for their devices. A carrier that, if implemented properly, could give its customers the freedom that they?ve been looking for.

1Apple enthusiasts of old may remember this internal codename for AppleBus, one of Apple?s early forays into networking. A more apt choice would probably be Samwise as Apple Token Ring precedes AppleBus and was code named Frodo.

2The fact that FaceTime ?requires? a WiFi connection to work is also a concession to AT&T. FaceTime works perfectly fine over 3G connections using jailbroken iPhones or 3G hotspots.

3$33.3 repeating, of course.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/05/22/what-should-apple-buy-with-their-billions-their-own-carrier/

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Tracking How Mobile Apps Track You

Third-party apps are the weakest link in user privacy on smart phones. They often get access to large quantities of user data, and there are few rules covering how they must handle that data once they have it. Worse yet, few third-party apps have a privacy policy telling users what they intend to do.

That was the message delivered at a hearing of the U.S. Senate committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held yesterday. Companies and regulators are struggling to find ways to ensure that user data is handled properly by apps installed on smart phones, but the way apps are designed makes this difficult.

Mobile privacy has come under extreme scrutiny since revelations that Apple's iPhone and Google's Android software collect and store users' location data. Last week, a U.S. Senate subcommittee questioned those two companies on their handling of personal data. This week, Facebook joined Google and Apple on the hot seat.

But all three companies run platforms that support thousands of third-party developers, and how to make sure those apps respect users' privacy, and explain their rules, is a major question. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas) said at the hearing, "It's not clear that Americans understand how their information may be shared or transferred."

The hearing also highlighted several reasons why it'll be difficult to control what apps are doing with user data. It's not clear which laws should be used to regulate third-party apps, and, in some cases, it's hard to design proper technical requirements. "There's no privacy law for general commerce whatsoever," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts). "Data collectors alone are setting the rules."

A major initiative designed to improve consumer privacy on the Web?the proposed "Do Not Track" bill?could be hard to apply to mobile devices, regulators said. The bill would allow consumers to opt out of having their online activity tracked.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=c08d17a1235509bc10a4058bcd13314e

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