From Technology Review: The Personal Computer Is Dead Power is fast shifting from end users and software developers to operating system vendors. By Jonathan Zittrain The PC is dead. Rising numbers of mobile, lightweight, cloud-centric devices don’t merely represent a change in form factor. Rather, we’re seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users […]

IR-transmitted metadata. Last week, Apple filed for a patent on an iOS camera that can detect infrared in addition to visible light. If a user aims the camera at an object that is sending out additional information about that object in the IR band, the camera transmits that information to the device, and potentially also […]

Smartphone tracking data. Two researchers reported last month that Apple has been storing time-stamped location information on users’ iOS devices since June. An unencrypted file with these data is saved onto a user’s computer each time she syncs her device with it, as well. Apple appears to have good reasons for collecting the location information, […]

A few months ago it looked like there’d be no action on net neutrality in the US by the FCC or Congress.  After some momentum gathered during both the Bush and Obama administrations, a federal court ruling had cast doubt on the FCC’s ability to regulate in the area, and a rancorous election season suggested […]

The NYT Bits blog broke the story of an Android app called the “SMS replicator.”  This odious piece of spyware is described here; unless it’s a prank, the idea is that a stalker type with momentary access to someone else’s Android phone can install it.  It doesn’t show up as an icon, but runs quietly […]

T-Mobile gives its G2 Droid amnesia. The G2s appearing on T-Mobile shelves this week come with an extra piece of hardware, and it’s not a free car charger. If G2 owners teach their Droids (either by coding or downloading software) to do something that interferes with T-Mobile’s business model, the company-installed rootkit will induce short-term […]

Earlier this month, Apple announced changes to its iOS Program License for app developers. This move happened “suddenly” and was “surprising” to the tech community. Some e-news sites speculated that Apple was bowing to FTC pressure; this spring, the agency launched a probe into whether Apple’s ban on third-party app development tools constituted an impermissible […]

This week there’s an online symposium at Concurring Opinions about the Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It. I’ll be blogging there; in the meantime here’s my opening entry.

In March, a panel of the Federal Circuit affirmed a Texas district court ruling requiring EchoStar to remotely disable the DVRs of innocent customers as part of its damages for infringing on TiVo’s DVR patents.  At the time, Elisabeth and JZ predicted that we would see an increasing number of similar cases as companies — […]

Game on. A featureless update released recently by TI blocks a hack that allowed owners to write their own programs for the company’s Nspire calculator. It’s not immediately obvious what rationale TI used to justify the block. It isn’t under pressure to protect the commercial interests of a partner service provider. And worst case, a […]