Seth Weintraub

In case there was any doubt in your mind that the Samsung Nexus Prime existed and was on its way into consumers’ hands, Samsung’s legal team appears to be confirming it with a Cease and desist letter.  The letter says that the Nexus Prime Firmware is exclusive property of Samsung.  Interesting.

The Nexus line has traditionally been the phone which Google works with manufacturers to build a “pure Google phone”. These phones don’t have crapware or overlays and generally are the first phones to get updated to the latest version of Android.

Speaking of that, this phone is supposed to be the first with Ice Cream Sandwich which is due in October.

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Update: Oh, damn, they pulled it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrPKCZLbPck&hd=1]

Thanks to Sony Pictures UK, you can now watch the original Godfather for free at YouTube (and sites like this that embed the almost 3 hour classic).

Description:

Uploaded by SonyPicturesUK on Aug 23, 2011

via TNW

Wired‘s got some good news for Amazon, Google, Dropbox and anyone else who stores music in the Cloud.  The practice is legal and doesn’t infringe on record company rights.  Additionally, Cloud companies need not store multiple copies of the same song, so long as each users file is the exact same copy, including MD5 hash (same bit rates, album art, etc).

 In a complicated federal court decision Monday (see Threat Level’s write-up), a New York federal court judge ruled that the practice was legal — but only insofar as the single storage method is done for exactly unique copies. So for instance, all people who bought “Stairway to Heaven” as an MP3 from Amazon would have the exact same file (as determined by an MD5 Hash) and MP3tunes could just store a single copy.

However, the ruling makes clear that if MP3tunes scanned a customer’s music collection and found “Stairway to Heaven” ripped from a CD with a slightly different file size, the company could not simply substitute a master copy. Instead, that customer would have to upload the file.

The decision also said that allowing “sideloading” of songs was legal. That was the feature of MP3tunes that let users add songs they’d found on webpages, such as music blogs, directly to their online locker.

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From Gigaom:

“We see a number of major vendors very seriously considering Windows Mobile as a core platform and therefore we are following their lead and examining it as well to complement our work in Android to date,” said Frank Meehan, chief executive officer (CEO) of INQ, the Hutchison Whampoa company that came up with a Skype phone and a Facebook phone….

“The advantages with Windows Mobile is that the legal issues and resulting costs seem to be much less,” Meehan said. He thinks the quick growth of Android — almost 600,000 activations a day — has made it a big target. But if Windows Phone 7 grows as quickly, then who knows if that will be hit by similar legal troubles, Meehan argued.

So serious that he hadn’t heard ‘Windows Mobile’ died last year and Microsoft re-launched ‘Windows Phone 7’.

These words don’t sound like they are from the Motorola deal, but in the larger trend of getting lost in the Android world and trying to find a differentiating point.  Also, there is obviously the concern of Microsoft’s legal arsenal descending on poor little INQ — something that should be allayed, not intensified, with the pickup of Motorola and their Patent trove.
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The smoke has cleared on Google’s $12.5B purchase of Chicago-based Motorola and now that almost everyone has had a chance to speak, I think we’re starting to understand what went down.

Google purchased Motorola (MMI) for $12.5B, a 63% premium over its weekend closing price.  Motorola, however, has around $3B in cash and securities, which makes the real purchase a slightly more reasonable $9.5B for Google.  For instance, if Google wanted to slice and dice Motorola, they’d take the cash and patents and sell off the cable box and device divisions for a couple billion dollars each and come away with about what they would have paid for Nortel – and get double to triple the patents. On sheer numbers of patents alone, it seems like a good buy. Obviously some patents are worth more than others.

If the deal doesn’t go through, Google owes Motorola $2.5B for the trouble, so Google is dead serious about this play.

But back to what Motorola does: They have IP, they make smartphones, they make tablets and they make cable top boxes.  It seems like almost too good a setup for Andy Rubin’s Android to just want to sell off piecemeal.

But did Google want to pick up a hardware company?  I reported earlier this year that the Android Hardware division that Andy Rubin had started up with former Danger Co-founders had intentions to build physical devices, not just Operating Systems.

That scale is what attracted and the former Danger founders to get the band back together, with their goal being to build the hardware and features they want to see show up in new Android devices. It’s not enough for Google to just provide Android software to carrier — now they hope to influence what handset makers build, too.

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From 9to5toys.com:

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MacMall has a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for $429 with free shipping. That’s a few hundred off of retail and a pretty solid price for the king of the Android tablets. This wireless-only Android tablet (no 3G connectivity) features a 10.1″ 1280×800 touchscreen LCD, 16GB memory, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth, built-in GPS, 2-megapixel front camera, 3-megapixel rear camera, Android 3.1 OS (Honeycomb), and more.
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Jack Halprin, currently lists his employer as Autonomy where he was the Vice President, eDiscovery and Compliance.

But we’ve heard from a source in the know that he’s made a move to Google and will be in charge of Google’s management of electronically stored information (ESI) for both legal and information governance purposes in their Apps/Postini wing.  His background includes “managing social media for legal and governance purposes, defensible processes for managing discovery, proportionality, and the reduction of eDiscovery costs” –which will certainly help Google prepare companies who are moving infrastructure into Google’s Cloud offerings.

This follows Google’s Enterprise’s pickup of Matthew Eichner, who now manages Global Enterprise Search, earlier this year.

Halprin provides the following background in his Linked in Profile:
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As far as hints in advertising go, they  don’t get much bigger than that ‘II’ above.  We’ll be on our way to IFA in Berlin but something tells us that those anxiously awaiting the US launch of the Galaxy S 2 line on all four carriers in the US will want to mark the 29th on their calendars…that is unless Apple can block its introduction.
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This morning, Acer announced the Iconia A100 Tab A100.  The 7″ Android 3.2 tablet is the first to run Honeycomb at that size.  The screen is a Galazy Tab-like 1024×600 16:10 TFT with a 75-degree viewing angle.  The body is a bit on the beefy side  for a 7-incher at .5-inches thick and .92lbs.

All of that heft doesn’t get you as much battery life as you might expect.  The battery is a very cellphone-like 1520mA and is rated for around 5 hours of web surfing and slightly less for HD Video.  It also runs Adobe Flash 10.3 which will tax its speedy 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor.

On the backside is a big 5MP shooter with Flash.  The front side has a 2MP video conferencing camera as well.

It also has a home button which seems to indicate that Acer didn’t get Andy Rubin’s message about “no buttons”.  That’s OK, some people like buttons.

The biggie here is the price.  With a retail target of $329, this product will likely be aimed at consumers who don’t feel comfortable spending $500 and up for a tablet.  As with the Iconia A500 tablet before it, that price will likely get discounted so we’ll be looking at a mid range Honeycomb product in the mid $200 range.

This will compete well with Barnes and Noble’s Nook, the HTC Flyer and the original Samsung Galaxy Tab.  It also appears to be aimed at moms who can throw this in a purse and hold it in one hand and while on the go.

Gallery and Press release follow:
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Google today announced that the Google Plus platform is also a gaming platform.

Today we’re adding games to Google+. With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life.

That means giving you control over when you see games, how you play them and with whom you share your experiences. Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t.

Facebook stalwart and Google fundee Zynga is already on the list having built an app called Poker.  So are Bejeweled and Angry Birds(below).

As an added bonus, google today announced the Google+ Developer Platform so that other game makers can build their wares into the Plus platform.
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Gartner’s latest global smartphone numbers are out and if your name isn’t iOS or Android, the future looks pretty bleak.  While iOS continues to gain share at pace even without a new model release (up one point for the quarter and over 4 points year over year), the bigger story continues to be Android’s outright theft of marketshare from Symbian.  Just in the last quarter, 10 percent of the market shifted from Symbian to Android and for the year, the number is close to 20%

Meanwhile Blackberry continued its paced slide down another 2 points quarter over quarter while Samsung’s Bada made modest gains. In the “Other” category, Windows Phone 7 somehow lost market share falling from 2% to 1% and Windows Mobile is now off the charts.  HP’s webOS  is somewhere in the “other” as well with Meego and the ghosts of smartphone past.

Graph via PED, cross posted on 9to5Mac.com
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5uqvcrmJCQ]

Dear Beats Army:

Today marks an incredible day for sound and Beats by Dr. Dre.  We are announcing a partnership with HTC, one of the world’s leading wireless manufacturers. With this announcement, our two brands are coming together to redefine the smart phone category and redefine the way that sound is heard.

Over the past year, Beats by Dr. Dre has continued to evolve from a headphone company to a  cultural movement that is redefining the way sound is heard. We have strived to take studio-quality music into the hands of you, our consumers, across the globe.  This partnership with HTC represents the next phase of our vision, placing the utmost importance on giving smart phone fans the opportunity to hear the highest-quality of sound possible.  The Beats team, still led by Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine, will continue to manage Beats autonomously.

There will be a lot more exciting news to come and we will continue to keep you on top of all of the wonderful things happening within the Beats World. This is truly an incredible chapter for Beats and we are proud to have you with us.  Let’s Go!

THE BEATS TEAM

Via

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Following the report that the iOS version of Facebook messenger had a video chat hidden within, we’re now seeing the same files in the Android app.

Finally some cross platform video chat options for phones not up to Google Chat snuff?

From the “I would be shocked if it was successful” department (literally – a quote from one of the execs near the situation), comes news from CNN that Tribune Company is exploring the idea of building a tablet that would compete against tablets from other manufacturers including Apple’s market leading iPad.

Tribune owns a handful of major US daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun, along with 23 television stations.

Tribune aims to offer the tablet for free, or at a highly subsidized price, to people who agree to sign up for extended subscriptions to one of its papers and possibly a wireless-data plan with a partner cellular carrier, said five people briefed on the project.

The report states that this is the pet project of Eddy Hartenstein, Tribune’s chief executive, and they are working with manufacturing partners which may include Samsung.

The Tribune has faced threat of bankruptcy woes in recent years but it is noteworthy that only 8% of the US currently has a tablet, perhaps leaving the door open for other players.
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BGR posts a quick report on the launch of the next “Google Phone” which is said to carry Android 4.0 dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich”.  According to their sources, Google is planning to launch the new device in the same window as the iPhone 5, which we’re hearing is slated to start pre-orders in early October.

We have been told that Google is looking to push up the release of Ice Cream Sandwich devices as Apple’s iPhone 5 is expected in September or October, and the Mountain View-based company doesn’t want potential customers coming out of contracts (especially original DROID owners) and “drooling over the iPhone 5.

While ‘Droid’ owners are on Verizon, which hasn’t traditionally carried the Nexus devices, Google will likely want to keep people from leaving its platform.  Also with the iPhone 5 in its crosshairs is the Galaxy S2 from Samsung which is said to be coming to all four big US carriers in the coming months.  
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Really fast
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Ars has a lovely story of how a man was able to install an app called Plan B wirelessly to his missing Droid using the Android Market’s remote install capabilities, activate it and (eventually) find his phone.  He was able to install the application over the air from the Web Android market.  It activated and alerted him to its location, rather than having to have been enabled on the phone before it was stolen.

Just another case of where remote application installation saves the day.
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The floodgates are officially opening this weekend as Google is giving everyone 150 invites to Google Plus.  Pop them into your Twitter and Facebook streams to get your friends signed up.

Here’s an invite link for our readers not yet signed up (looks like ours are going pretty fast!
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You knew this was going to happen at some point.  A Google automated car with that spinny thing at the top was in what looks like a minor rear ending incident near Google HQ in Mountainview.  While it doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt (even the two Prii above), it isn’t exactly a vote of confidence for the fledgling product that Google hopes will materialize into a useful product within a decade.

Before we pass judgement based on a tipster’s photo – we’ll wait for Google’s post mortem.

Update: As we thought – human was at the wheel for this fender-bender.  Google sent over this statement:

“Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”

Via Jalopnik

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8HnmpIFUPk]

No need for a Ticket Restro in the Google Paris Office where they work on YouTube and Chrome mostly.

Get in line behind us here.

Via Elgan
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