Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Today, we finally welcome Windows Mobile 6.5 and the “Windows Phone” platform from Microsoft. As a part of today’s Windows Mobile 6.5 debut, the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store has opened for business, the new Bing for Mobile app has been unveiled, the My Phone sync and security service has been launched, the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices have been announced, and the list of Windows Mobile 6.1 devices that can be upgraded to 6.5 has been published.

Microsoft is fully in mobile mode today.

The list of devices shipping in the US with Windows Mobile 6.5 pre-installed is somewhat small, including only three HTC devices (Pure, Imagio, Tilt 2) and one Samsung device (Intrepid, due in less than a week on Sprint). But Microsoft has also unveiled the full list of devices which can be upgraded from Windows Mobile 6.1 to 6.5, which adds eight more devices to the list: HTC Dash, Ozone, Snap, and Touch Pro 2; Samsung Jack, Mirage, and Omnia Pro; and the Pharos Traveler 137.

Worldwide, Microsoft will have Windows Mobile 6.5 on more than 30 phones in 20 countries before the end of 2009.

My Phone, which has been in beta since May is Microsoft’s free cloud-based sync service that automatically backs up a user’s contacts, photos, video, text messages and calendar data to a password-protected site and also lets users directly upload content to Windows Live, Facebook, MySpace or Flickr.

The $4.99 premium My Phone package includes features that help users who have lost their device. It also includes Web-based GPS location of lost phones, the ability to remotely lock a device with an “if found…” message, or remotely wipe all data. It can even blast a loud location alarm in case the device has been misplaced, has fallen between the couch cushions, or has otherwise disappeared without actually being lost.

Windows Mobile 6.5Finally, the Windows Marketplace rounds out today’s offerings in Microsoft’s mobile environment. The new marketplace app is only a part of the greater plan for mobile software distribution. Right now, it only includes free and for-pay apps (up to around $30) directly downloadable to a user’s phone, but will eventually include a PC-based app catalog and mobile carrier side billing. The complete service will be tied together with a user’s Windows Live ID and will let apps be installed on as many as five devices.

The meat of today’s announcements actually has very little to do with Windows Mobile 6.5 itself, which is simply a finger-friendly incremental update to a largely unchanged operating system. In fact, though the mobile operating system ties all of these services together, the most important thing to take away today is that Microsoft has built a complete consumer mobile experience that strives to be as comprehensive as its enterprise experience.

Today, Verizon and Google announced their partnership on the Android mobile platform, a collaboration that has long been expected, but has recently been bereft of new developments. Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam today said that the discussions between Google and Verizon began some 18 months ago but the timing of this announcement is in no way a reflection of “whatever’s currently being discussed on the Hill.” (i.e. The FCC’s investigation of Apple’s Google Voice rejection.)

Through this new partnership, Verizon Wireless will debut its first Android devices in the next couple of weeks. The carrier promised today they will provide “the best possible form factors from [Verizon's] partners in the hardware space, to bring those apps and services to market…there will be different form factors appealing to different audiences.”

Google has already partnered with T-Mobile and Sprint in the United States, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt today had glowing praise for Verizon. “I think everybody knows…it’s absolutely a fact that Verizon’s data network is the best in the US by far,” Schmidt said. “And I’m not talking ten percent here, I’m talking about many multiples: their reach, the scalability, and the performance…there’s no question.”

Schmidt continued, “Certainly from the standpoint of working with Verizon, we had known of that reach. We did not know — until we spent a lot of time getting to know each other — that they’d also take a leadership position in openness; which was frankly enormously surprising given the history and the old line nature of telcos. Verizon, somehow, the leadership has decided to embrace a different philosophy, which works very, very well with the Internet. We also learned this is a network engineering company that makes it work, that they sweat the details, that they understand scale in a way that’s very consistent with the way Google would like to work.”

So the two companies sound like they have truly clicked. Naturally, this raises a huge question: Given the recent controversy surrounding Google Voice, AT&T and Apple, is Google Voice going to be part of this collaboration?

In a word, yes. Verizon Wireless’ Lowell McAdam said, “You have either an open device or not, and this will be open and we expect to bring that application to market when we bring the first device out.”

Nagging Capital One credit card commercials ask, “What’s in your wallet?” Perhaps for the connected age, the question should be “What’s in your digital wallet?” If the answer is a password used at Windows Live Hotmail and pretty much everywhere else online, your wallet may have been stolen.

As reported earlier today by Neowin, on October 1st someone briefly posted online thousands of Hotmail (e.g., Windows Live) account passwords. The number of pilfered accounts could be much higher. The source of the accounts information remains uncertain, although Microsoft claims they were gathered through phishing expeditions. I decided not to wait to find out.

I spent about four hours today scouring the Web to change my account passwords everywhere. MY GOD! Where did all these fraking accounts come from? Last count, my total is 35, and more of the little buggers are popping up as I search my memory and email archive.

Three Windows Live IDs, three Gmail accounts, two bank accounts, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo are among the many. The number would be even higher if not for some connected accounts, such as Yahoo to Flickr or Gmail to YouTube.

I’ve got to ask: How many places do you have online identities? Please answer in comments. I’m remembering more as I write, putting the number at 40 since I started this post. It’s really a nightmare of management. What ever happened to the promise of one online identity for everywhere?

I assumed there was no imminent threat of identity theft, but wondered, “Why be reckless?” So I treated the situation as a real threat, which meant performing some triage — which accounts to change first, meaning those with the greatest risk. I present my choices for discussion and also perhaps to help other people to manage their password changes.

My problem — and perhaps yours, too — my identities, name or email address, are pretty much the same across the Web. The point of the social Web is to be found by people you know or want to. My similar identities can easily be found across numerous Websites. One password could unlock many of them.

I mainly use a variation of two passwords, with 13-19 characters. The third password is shorter and less complex, for those stupid sites restricting passwords to no more than 12 characters. Days gone by, I would mix symbols with numerals and letters, but an increasing number of sites won’t allow them. Idiots!

This new set of passwords separates Windows Live from the other 40 or so online accounts. I also increased the number of passwords across different sites. If I’ve got to change them all, I might as well make the effort worth something.

I started the password changes with the three Windows Live accounts, seeing as how the Microsoft service is Patient Zero. From Hotmail the password malady could spread. That’s really a denial attitude. Someone already leaked the passwords. Gulp.

I next shifted my attention to email accounts and others where my name is the username. Next: My blogs. I then moved to accounts where money could be lost: Amazon, banks, PayPal and utility services, among others.

PayPal was a real pisser. Perhaps because I changed the email address, too, PayPal required my authenticating the password change with either the credit card or bank account number on file. PayPal presented partial numbers and other data as assurance of legitimacy. I got pissed because the verification process reinforces the kind of behavior phishers exploit. PayPal shouldn’t request this information. If the service doesn’t ask this kind of information, well, I got phished from the PayPal site using Internet Explorer 8 (which I doubt).

After the money accounts, I moved onto others where I pay something, such as Netflix (subscribed February 1999) and Wall Street Journal Online (subscribed in autumn 1996). Lastly, I started working through some of the social media accounts. But there are so many I signed up for — at least to test — I may never uncover them all.

If someone had asked me last week how many online accounts did I have, the answer would have been 15 to 20. Certainly not 45, which is the current count since starting this post. The accounts just keeping adding up — and I’m not a heavy forum user, which could really jack up the numbers. The new Web siren call is registration. “C`mon over here for our free stuff, but you have to register first. Don’t worry, we’ll protect your privacy.” Yeah, right, but will you protect my identity if I use the same password at your site and 20 others?

I’m done griping, but don’t you stop. I really want to generate a gripe session in comments about online identity and the shortcomings of managing who you are across multiple services. Please, let’s dispense with any snotty comments about my whining. I’m not. This post was purposely written to generate discussion and for Betanews readers to vet their solutions.

The weakness of the social Web is simply stated: You are too many places.

How would you make it better?

As Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, they enacted a strategy of shifting the authority for implementing and regulating so-called net neutrality to the Federal Communications Commission, where Republican opposition was less likely to forestall it. Now that the FCC itself is under Democratic control, and its new chairman Julius Genachowski comes into the job already having been recognized as the nation’s leading net neutrality advocate, Republicans in Congress have little else to do but voice their opposition from the sidelines.

That’s exactly what they’re doing today, in a concerted effort whose timing is curiously in sync with the publication of a position paper on net neutrality from leading service provider Verizon.

In a letter today to Chairman Genachowski signed by leading House Republicans, including ranking Subcommittee on the Internet member Rep. Cliff Stearns (R – Fla.), Congress’ leading opponents of net neutrality regulation made their arguments clearer than at any time before. Rep. Stearns’ office shared a copy of this letter with Betanews this afternoon.

Speaking very directly to the problem, Stearns and his co-authors spoke of the FCC’s obligation to provide regulation only when the market fails to regulate itself. “You should provide a thorough market analysis prior to proposing any regulation,” the congresspersons wrote. “The FCC bears the responsibility to prove a market failure, especially since its 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2007 decisions on cable modem service, digital subscriber line service, broadband over power line service, and wireless broadband service were predicated on the notion that the broadband market nationwide is competitive and that regulation is unwarranted. In a sector this innovative and this vital to our economy, it would be irresponsible for the Commission to do anything less, especially since this is one of the few sectors that is still investing billions of dollars in the current financial climate.”

Addressing some issues that Genachowski has already spoken to — or at least, has promised to speak to — the House members advised the FCC Chairman to define the meaning of “net” with respect to the extent of his agency’s regulatory power. Does it cover cable, wireline, wireless, satellite, broadband-over-power-line, or some combination of the five, they asked. And what exactly is “broadband” anyway — will the FCC ever decide how fast is “fast?”

Only then should the FCC determine whether any one entity in the defined market, once it has defined it, has obtained “market power” — essentially the ability to set prices and control the flow of communication at will. Assuming the Commission can obtain such evidence, it should then hold a formal inquiry into the actions of the organization with such power, and address that company specifically, the congresspersons advised.

In a policy statement posted to the company’s blog last Wednesday and updated today, Verizon Assistant Vice President Link Hoewing suggested that if the FCC were to cast its “net” as wide as Rep. Stearns and his colleagues suggested, it would discover that all of the fields they mention are in fact in competition with one another, creating their own system of checks and balances that renders government regulation unnecessary.

“The dramatic innovation and investment in broadband, coupled with innovation in devices and applications, also means more choice than ever for consumers ??” not just in terms of networks but in all realms of the Internet ecosystem. Cable, wireless, satellite, traditional wireline companies, and others compete against each other for consumers’ voice, data and video communication dollars. In addition to facilities-based providers of connections, device makers and application developers also compete for customer relationships,” Hoewing wrote. “The advent of multiple broadband networks means network operators are no longer in the preeminent position with customers that they once were when they operated single-purpose networks for things like telephone and cable TV. So the field gets complex pretty quickly.”

In their letter to the FCC, the House Republicans — joined by influential Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R – Calif.) — went so far as to equate the concept of “net neutrality” with a single-flavor approach to broadband service that would border on socialism.

Stating that the cost of complying with these regulations could cost US businesses and taxpayers as much as $350 billion combined, they wrote, “Network neutrality rules would make it harder, not easier, for such investment to occur. A one-size-fits-all Internet where every entity must provide the exact same levels of service and that costs consumers more on average for slower speeds and less innovation will not be very competitive. Nor will it serve consumers will or draw much investment for further improvements. Even if there is a problem, it does no good to adopt a regulation if it performs more poorly than engineers and markets in addressing that problem. For instance, we caution against either limiting the ability of network providers to offer managed services or restricting the use of those services only to certain purposes.”

The congresspersons’ concerns appear in sync with those of the two Republicans on the FCC, Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Atwell Baker, who voiced their own opinions about the extent of the Chairman’s reach following his net neutrality speech last September 21.

“We are concerned that both factual and legal conclusions may have been drawn before the process has begun,” the Commissioners wrote at the time. “Nonetheless, we look forward to reviewing any and all compelling evidence that may be developed in the record that illustrates the palpable harms that many allege. We do not believe that the Commission should adopt regulations based merely on anecdotes, or in an effort to alleviate the political pressures of the day, if the facts do not clearly demonstrate that a problem needs to be remedied.”

When the Republicans had control of Congress and the Executive Branch, legislation they had proposed to enable service providers the ability to manage service as they pleased failed to become law, due in part to a lack of cooperation among party members. Now that control has shifted in both branches of government, it appears some clarity — for what it’s worth — may at last have been attained.

After enduring patent infringement lawsuits from AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint in 2006-2007, Vonage lost its commanding position in Voice over IP telephony (also known as digital voice) to cable companies such as Comcast and Qwest. Today, the company looks poised to make a comeback with its new Vonage Mobile app for iPhone and BlackBerry.

The free application lets subscribers place packet-based calls over Wi-Fi or circuit-based calls over cellular networks. It ends up being similar to the Skype iPhone application in that it will only use VoIP if the mobile device is within range of a Wi-Fi signal. Otherwise, it will make traditional wireless calls over AT&T’s GSM network. Furthermore, when connected to a Wi-Fi signal for a VoIP call, and a call comes in through the cellular band, Vonage Mobile reportedly drops the VoIP call.

As Vonage’s PR associate Michael Zema said in the company’s official Twitter feed today, “The current Vonage Mobile app uses your existing cell phone number to place calls. It’s a pay-per-minute application…The Vonage Mobile app uses your existing cell phone number, not your home Vonage number.”

Vonage claims this prepaid service can save users as much as half on international calls.

While cable companies have embraced the VoIP phenomenon, telephone companies like Verizon and AT&T have been somewhat more apathetic in pursuing the technology (unless of course, you’re talking about in court, where they’ve pursued it with fervor). Both Verizon’s FiOS digital voice and AT&T’s U-Verse Voice are only available in select markets, for example.

However, with a service such as Vonage Mobile, users are afforded a tiny bit more freedom when placing costly international voice calls, even if operators continue to block VoIP from their mobile data networks.

I’ve decided I won’t be part of the 100,000 or so special folks who are already rolling up their sleeves and digging into the guts of Google’s newest uber-desirable online application, the private beta of Google Wave. This will give some poor fellow extra opportunity to troll eBay, bidding $100 or so for an invitation.

It’s not like I’m eschewing some exclusive community. Like Gmail before it, Google Wave accounts will eventually be freely available to anyone with a pulse. But unlike Gmail — which remains in the limelight with regular updates delivered to a widespread base of users who passionately use the service — Google Wave’s lifespan likely won’t be as charmed.

Wave is no Gmail

I’ve been happily using Gmail since 2004, and just don’t see Google Wave becoming as central to my workflow. For all the Wave hype, I just don’t believe users are willing to throw their work into an open playground for the sake of being more collaborative. Frankly, collaboration isn’t the holy grail of productivity.

Pick your jaw up off the floor, please, and hear me out on this one: I appreciate the power of collaboration. I recognize how valuable it can be when people whose heads should be together are instead scattered across the surface of the planet. I completely understand the limitations conventional productivity and communication tools place on this process because I live with them every day. I rail in frustration when multiple team members chime in out of sequence in disjointed e-mail threads, forcing me to spend countless hours reassembling their feedback.

I know that the current application-workflow model is broken and needs fixing. I’m just not convinced that Google Wave is it. Or that we’re even ready for it.

Perhaps Google Docs has colored my point of view already. I started using this service regularly because I liked the concept of productivity apps that didn’t die when my PC did. I appreciated the ability to jam out ideas in a Web-based document, then access them later from any device for review. I liked the way it always saved my stuff so I could pick up where I left off after a system crash or power outage.

I also liked the way it allowed real-time sharing with other Google Docs users, and hoped colleagues would eventually recognize the benefits. No such luck: To this day, the world of document-based deliverables in which I live continues to rely on standard Microsoft Office documents e-mailed back and forth, using tracked changes and embedded comments as “collaboration” tools.

The problem with granting everyone access

Despite the productivity benefits of moving to common, Web-based files that anyone (with permission) can access and edit, getting people to give up the tried-and-true is a virtually impossible task. Part of the reason involves corporate security. It’s one thing to implement a collaborative solution for your own enterprise. When the network and client infrastructure is centrally controlled, it’s relatively easy for corporate IT to dictate who uses what tools and how they generally should use them.

But it’s a completely different story when businesses are deploying open collaboration among themselves. E-mailed attachments are separate and distinct from the repositories where the files themselves are created and edited. So organizations willingly allow employees to shift data out of the repository and into e-mail for external sharing. Sharing in this instance means not changing, which is the opposite of the Google Wave model. As much as Wave’s concept of open access streamlines group productivity, allowing others to directly edit data in the repository violates every principle of data security and integrity. And that explains, in large measure, why we all haven’t already switched to full-on collaborative solutions.

That’s the problem from a corporate perspective; from a personal perspective, it’s not much better. Having colleagues and clients edit work in real-time is the kind of thing that always sounds better than it is. After I’ve spent half the night updating a white paper draft, for instance, the last thing I want is three remote contributors completely restructuring my work before I’ve had a chance to sign off on it.

Although vendors can and should make it easy to snapshot documents at specific version levels, the current state of popular tools like Google Docs is nowhere near that reality. I either trust my fellow collaborators to respect the integrity of my work and not muck up the baseline document, or I revert to form and save the last major update to my hard drive where no one can touch it. Either way, it falls far short of the Utopian world depicted by collaborative suite vendors.

Stick with what’s comfy

As much as I applaud Google for pushing the bounds with tools like Wave, I can’t help but feel that the world isn’t ready to abandon methods that, while hugely inefficient and resource-intensive, are perceived as the most comfortable and safe alternatives. Software developers are bubbling with excitement over ever more open and powerful means of allowing everyone to roll up their sleeves and work simultaneously and richly on a given chunk of data or deliverable. Software users, meanwhile, remain locked into a much more mundane reality.

In his column last week, my colleague Scott Fulton concluded that, for now at least, Google Wave may be a solution in search of a problem. His point is well taken, and makes me wonder if we’ve been so hyped up by the collaboration marketing machine that we’ve forgotten how all of this is supposed to improve the way we work. To a large extent, most of us rather enjoy the relatively disconnected tools that allow us to singularly focus on getting work done without being constantly interrupted. We also enjoy having full control over our work until such time that we wish to share it with others — and we’re willing to put up with the requisite inconveniences of previous-generation communication technologies.

Only when this paradigm changes will tools like Google Wave make more sense than they do today.

Two months ago, Google announced its intention to purchase On2 Technologies, the producer of the technology behind the Ogg Theora codec that was the prime candidate earlier this year to become the open video solution for HTML 5. Google’s engineers had come out in opposition to Ogg Theora, and that fact was cited by the HTML 5 working group as reason for its suspending efforts to incorporate open video for this version.

Whatever Google’s reasons may have been for purchasing On2, not everyone in the company appeared to be interested in advancing the format. Today, that sentiment appears to have been made official, with the announcement during Adobe’s MAX conference in Los Angeles that Google is joining Adobe’s Open Screen Project, established last year.

It was definitely worth noting that while Research in Motion also joined OSP today, RIM and Adobe issued a joint announcement, while Adobe deferred to Google’s blog for the requisite excitement from that camp. There, Google SVP Bill Coughran described OSP as “an initiative established a year and a half ago to help developers more easily design content for the Web across multiple screens using the Flash Platform.”

While certainly that’s one objective of OSP, the others — as openly stated on the Open Screen Project Web site — are to present Flash and its AIR functionality platform as the runtime environment for rich applications, as well as to distribute Flash. “To reach these goals, it’s expected that Open Screen Project partners will commit to: distributing the next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and AIR on Internet-enabled devices; implementing Flash Player and AIR in a manner that is consistent, updatable, and addressable by third-party developers; [and] publicly supporting the Open Screen Project,” the Web site reads.

Certainly Google’s YouTube may have done more than any organization outside of Adobe to promote Flash — by some estimates, YouTube supplies nine out of every ten user-generated streams, thus necessitating the role of Flash in the browser. If the OSP’s expectations apply to Google, then to meet Adobe’s obligations, it seems likely that the Flash plug-in will become a part of the Chrome Web browser — perhaps as a plug-in, and perhaps as Chrome’s built-in video codec.

Developers responded to today’s news with varying levels of support mixed with skepticism, with some calling into question Adobe’s somewhat mystified use of the word “Open.” Flash isn’t exactly free, although access to anyone wanting to become a Flash developer is technically free. Certainly Adobe’s Flash and Flex development tools are not free, though the specifications for the platform and its underlying technologies are…freely available, insofar as downloadable SDKs are concerned.

As one commenter on Reddit put it today, “[As far as I know,] the FLA [Flash file] spec isn’t open at all. That is one piece of proprietary information. You can build SWFs [Shockwave files] using open source tools, but I don’t know of any tools other than the Flash IDE that operate on FLA’s. This makes sense since the money maker is the the Flash IDE, the only application capable of creating and consuming FLA’s.”

That prompted this response: “The spec is open. That doesn’t mean the technologies used to implement the spec are open.” And another Reddit contributor argued that Adobe’s ongoing transition of the FLA file-format to an XML-based schema makes Flash, at least in concept, “completely open” — exemplified by the capability for someone outside of Adobe to build a competitive IDE for Flash.

Maybe, but the Open Screen Project certainly sticks a brand name on the technology it expects its members, including Google, to both distribute and promote: “Content providers and developers are encouraged to create content and applications targeting multiple devices using the Adobe Flash Platform.”

With a network that is already overloaded with data traffic, AT&T has enlisted the help of Opera Software’s server-side compression technology to help bring mobile Web access to even more subscribers.

Today, AT&T debuted four new feature phones, two from Pantech (Reveal and Impact) and two from Samsung (Mythic and Flight) which the company touts as “Full Web Browsing Phones,” equipped with a new att.net branded HTML browser that “utilizes advanced data compression from Opera Software, allowing for much faster delivery of HTML Web pages.”

Though AT&T did not specify which compression technologies the new browser uses, Opera Turbo is the likely candidate for AT&T’s compression technology of choice. Opera Turbo is a cross-platform solution that can compress network traffic up to 80% to reduce network traffic and increase the browsing speed on the user’s end.

This is the same technology used in Opera Mini, which counted 26.5 million users and 10.4 billion page views in June 2009, which had then grown to more than 30 million users and 12 billion page views in just one month’s time. Opera Mini has increased nearly 225% in page views year over year.

Opera’s servers were close to processing two petabytes of raw data in August, and Opera Software’s CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner said he expected that number to be passed in September. Opera has not yet released its updated “State of the Mobile Web” address to show if this feat was accomplished.

In a unanimous vote this morning, the US Federal Trade Commission has decided to enact changes to federal code regarding truth in advertising and in product endorsement, including the first such extensions to regulate the activity of bloggers. Acknowledging that bloggers may be individuals who publish their opinions online without compensation, but with a wide audience, the FTC voted to enact new regulations beginning December 1 to compel bloggers to reveal all material connections that may have led them to endorse a product, even if that endorsement honestly reflects how bloggers feel about it.

The amendments will come in the form of changes to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, last amended in 1980. During a public comment period, the FTC acknowledges it received several comments from unnamed citizens arguing that the nature of new online media makes it impossible to draw a distinct dividing line between, say a “blog” and a “publication,” or a “commercial blog” and a “personal blog” (both may include advertising).

But commissioners openly disagreed with what it admitted was a large plurality, if not a majority, of comments: They concluded that the nature of new media does not fuzzify any connection that may exist between a person whose published comment states a product is good, and the manufacturer who may have supplied that person with the product (and perhaps something else) with the expectation that the person would publish an opinion of that product one way or the other.

“For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself,” reads this morning’s public notice of changes to the FTC’s Guides (PDF available here). “In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an ‘endorsement’ within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be ‘endorsements,’ as are postings by participants in network marketing programs.”

A positive review becomes an endorsement, according to new FTC guidelines, when a blogger receives something from the manufacturer. It does not have to be in exchange for the endorsement — there’s no underlying “tit-for-tat” or back scratching involved. In an effort to draw a clear distinction of when an endorsement happens, commissioners offered three hypothetical situations: If a blogger makes a positive comment about a product and never received anything of economic value from its manufacturer (e-mails or press releases don’t count), then it’s not an endorsement. On the opposite extreme, if a blogger makes the same positive comment and the blog is capable of advertising the product to such an extent that it can even generate coupons for potential buyers, it’s not an endorsement if the blogger still didn’t receive anything of economic value from the manufacturer.

If the blogger did receive something, it’s an endorsement.

What if the blog is an internal one for a company or organization that employs the blogger, and not meant for the general public? It’s not an endorsement yet, says the FTC. If the manufacturer is able to quote from that blog in its own marketing, and the blogger enabled the manufacturer to do so, however, then it’s an endorsement.

Up until now, many have questioned whether the FTC should have or claim the authority to regulate what they consider to be individuals’ free expression. In an effort to draw the appearance of a clear black-and-white issue, the commissioners this morning explain that it’s not free expression that they’re trying to regulate — instead, they’re trying to curb the use of deception in the marketplace.

To do this, the FTC clearly place bloggers in the realm of “consumer-generated media” — which is a risky choice given the fact that even major media publishers, quite obviously, produce online publications that they call “blogs.” By equating bloggers with consumers, the FTC takes steps to point out that any consumer activity done under the influence of a marketer, is subject to federal regulation and guidelines. This way, a manufacturer or vendor cannot use its influence upon a blogger in place of influencing a commercial publisher, under the premise that guidelines that regulate major media don’t apply to minor media.

Would major media publishers be suddenly disinclined to refer to their products as blogs, now that federal regulations regarding liability for fraud and deception will apply to them as well? No, it would appear from the FTC’s notice this morning, because the same laws that applied to them in 1980 will still apply to them today, whether they call their publications “blogs” or “scrolls” or “smoke signals.”

So what must bloggers do? Would they be allowed, for instance, to post boilerplate disclaimers mentioning the fact that they tend to receive the products they review? Yes, the FTC decided, under the notion that if such disclaimers were factual and well-written, it can’t and shouldn’t do anything to stop them from being posted.

But any disclaimer should be clear and conspicuous, not hidden. The FTC acknowledges it can’t do much about the fact that disclaimers used in advertising are typically ignored by viewers (which is a big problem in the case of pharmaceuticals), but bloggers can do something to make their material connections to the products they write about more obvious.

In an amendment to an example the FTC has used before, commissioners outlined a case where a hypothetical game reviewer actually receives a video game system from its manufacturer, and posts a positive review about it on his blog: “Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product,” commissioners write, “and given the value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. The manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance.”

It’s quite easy for Adobe to throw around statistics about Flash, and you’ll frequently hear members of the Adobe team say such things as “Adobe Flash is installed on 99% of PCs,” or “75% of all online games are built in Flash,” or “80% of all Web video is encoded in Flash.” Though these statistics are dubious, there is little doubt about Flash’s ubiquity.

But as mobile Web consumption has dramatically increased, mobile Flash technology has been struggling to deliver the full Web experience to resource-constrained devices. As Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously commented in mid-2008, the full version of Flash was too big, and Flash Lite was too small. What Flash lacked was a product “in the middle” that could fully deliver rich Internet content without also consuming a lot of CPU cycles.

Today at Adobe MAX 2009 in Los Angeles, Adobe announced the upcoming beta of Flash Player 10.1 — the first full version of Flash to run on mobile operating systems such as Windows Mobile, Palm webOS, Symbian S60, BlackBerry, and Android as well as Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. Not a separate mobile Flash, but one Flash to rule them all…at least on the surface.

“The browser-based runtime leverages the power of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for accelerated video and graphics while conserving battery life and minimizing resource utilization,” the company said this morning. “New mobile-ready features that take advantage of native device capabilities include support for multi-touch, gestures, mobile input models, accelerometer, and screen orientation bringing unprecedented creative control and expressiveness to the mobile browsing experience.”

Yet it’s not going to be the magic bullet that brings all rich Internet content onto the mobile platform just yet. As Flash senior product manager Justin Everett-Church said in the ADC blog today, “The majority of improvements going into this release are ones that you will never directly reference, but from which you will benefit all the same…For video content, this means hardware acceleration…For vectors and images, Flash Player is similarly going to take advantage of hardware capabilities whenever possible.

“We have made many more subtle improvements that are all geared to make your content run well,” Everett-Church continued, “but there are going to be cases where we will run into the reality that some content simply needs more memory than a mobile device can deliver. No matter how well optimized the system is, Flash Player is still a platform that lets developers write whatever type of application they want. In the end, each data type consumes a certain amount of RAM that can’t be changed. For complex applications, there simply may be a need for more memory than is available.”

It’s certainly a step in the right direction, however, and early demos like the following video really show off the possibilities in the mobile realm:

A public developer beta is expected to be released on Windows Mobile, webOS and desktop operating systems by the end of this year, and the first smartphones shipped with the new runtime will be coming in mid 2010. A beta of Flash Player 10.1 for Palm Pre is expected to be among the first versions available.