Web creator rejects net tracking

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system.

Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy.

Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited.

"I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books," he said.

Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him.

Endangered Monkey Species Thriving in Cambodia

The monkey tally, announced today, represents the largest known populations of these species in the world.

Scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society counted 42,000 black-shanked douc langurs and 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in Cambodia's Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, which is about the size of Yosemite National Park.

BlackBerry Bold Delayed Again?

Arg. If you believe the Boy Genius Report, it looks like the BlackBerry Bold will be delayed again in the United States until Oct. 2. If true, this is truly disappointing news.

Continue reading "BlackBerry Bold Delayed Again?..."

Wireless Connectivity On The Rails

Train passengers going to and from Beijing during the Olympics had access to wireless connectivity, thanks to systems that were installed to ensure connections even with the huge increase in usage.

Andrew Wireless Solutions, a division of CommScope Inc., supplied wireless networking systems to improve coverage and add network capacity for Beijing Metro's subway lines during the Games.

Andrew deployed its RADIAX radiating cables and ION-M repeaters in the subway system to support private, public and security wireless communications. Passengers with GSM (Global System for Mobile), CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access), or GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)-enabled mobile devices had access to the enhanced signal capabilities, and emergency personnel and railway employees had access to dedicated networks.

Procter & Gamble Chooses IBM ISS for Cyber Security

Under the deal, a Virtual Security Operations Center will be established to mange P&G's four existing IBM ISS Proventia SiteProtector management consoles used in Asia, Europe and North America.

Scam Reported to Fleece Americans

BBC News reports it has unearthed a plan in which fraudsters with stolen credit-card information would clone the information onto the magnetic strips of other cards, then use them in UK supermarkets to strip money from unsuspecting Americans.

One gang said it accessed the accounts of more than 2,300 Americans in one month and planned to make fake cards to be used overseas. It claimed to have acquired the information from gangs in the United States that say they have tapped the phone lines between banks and cash machines.

Central to the plan was to use the cards at supermarket self-service checkout stands, bypassing the risk that a store employee might spot the forged cards

Number Potentially Affected in Bank Breach Soars

The Bank of New York Mellon now says information on about 12 million people might have been on computer tapes that were lost, according to the Hartford Courant.

The bank announced in May that the tapes disappeared while being transferred to storage by a third-party courier, but put the number at that time at 4.5 million. The data included names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, though the bank says there is no indication any of the information has been accessed.

Trade Panel to Investigate Microsoft’s Mouse Technology Patent Complaints

The U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to look into Microsoft's patent complaints against rival mouse manufacturer Primax, reports The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Microsoft wants to prevent Primax from selling its products in the United States. More often the target of patent lawsuits than the plaintiff, Microsoft reportedly filed the complaint after being unable to reach a licensing agreement for two years.

Comcast to Impose Bandwidth Cap

Starting Oct. 1, Comcast will impose a 250-gigabyte cap on the amount of data subscribers can upload or download each month, reports The Associated Press in a story in The Washington Post.

The company will contact those who go over that amount and ask them to curb their use. Though in May, when the company floated the idea, it talked about a possible $15 fee for every 10 gigabytes they go over, but there was no mention of the fee in its announcement of the cap.

Cloud Data Accidentally Deleted

It's the most basic fear for users of cloud services: Losing your data.

An engineer for UK-based XCalibre, in "tidying up" before upgrading to address capacity issues, deleted one of the main storage volumes used by the FlexiScale cloud, reports The Register. It was down for at least two days before restoring "read only" access to it from backup files. But there wasn't enough capacity to create a complete duplicate, so the company is in the process of creating a new disk structure.

IE8 Privacy Feature Not So Private?

A security researcher says it's not hard to retrieve a user's browsing history despite the much-ballyhooed InPrivate Browsing feature in Internet Explorer 8, according to ITworld.com.

The feature, often referred to as "porn mode," might keep your browsing history hidden from a spouse or nosy boss, but tests by two European security companies found it easy to crack.

Said Christian Prickaerts, forensic IT expert with Fox IT:

The privacy option in this beta is mainly cosmetic. For a forensic investigator, retrieving the browsing history should be regarded as peanuts.

According to this vnunet.com piece, there might be compatibility issues with older Web sites and advertising numbers might drop as InPrivate Blocking, uh, blocks them. IT Business Edge's Kachina Dunn notes this could bite Microsoft in the butt as well as other advertisers.

Microsoft Hopes Greenfield Buy Bolsters European eCommerce

According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft will buy Greenfield Online Inc. in a $486 million deal.

Microsoft hopes the deal will be a quick way into the European market for shopping comparison Web sites. Greenfield runs comparison Web site Ciao, which has 2,200 merchants and gets 26.5 million visitors a month.

The tech giant plans on incorporating Ciao into its Web sites to boost transactions, but will sell Greenfield's Internet survey operation, reports The Washington Post.

Firefox Extension Boosts Security

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a free
extension for Firefox 3.0 to thwart man-in-the middle attacks,
according to an Associated Press story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

When users go to a site that throws up a warning that its security
can't be verified by a third party, such as VeriSign or GoDaddy.com,
the program starts an intermediary step. It goes out to a network of
publicly accessible servers to check for discrepancies in the
encryption keys used to secure data on the site. It then either deems
the site safe or issues an additional warning.

Second Beta of IE8 Released

Microsoft has released its second beta of Internet Explorer 8, including the so-called "porn mode" privacy feature, reports Network World.

The new version comes nearly two years after the release of IE7, with the final release due out at some unspecified time later this year.

Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet focuses on what's new for business users.

Cisco Buys PostPath for Cloud Offerings

Cisco will pay $215 million for startup PostPath, which creates open source e-mail and calendaring software, reports InfoWorld. The acquisition will add to Cisco's collaboration tools.

The software, an alternative to Microsoft Exchange, furthers Cisco's move into workplace collaboration. It plans to fold the software in with WebEx, which hosts Web meetings. It bought that company last year for $3.2 million.

PostPath also has a server for VMware, which will allow Cisco to offer the services in the cloud.

Corrupt File Blamed for FAA Glitch

The Federal Aviation Administration says a corrupt file brought down its flight plan IT network Tuesday, reports eWEEK.

The problem at its Atlanta facility soon caused its backup facility in Salt Lake City to be overwhelmed. More than 600 flights were delayed, affecting about 60,000 people at 40 airports during the 2 1/2-hour outage, reports The Associated Press in a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The eWEEK story says the FAA hopes to limp along with the system until a replacement arrives this winter. It says the company that built the two 20-year-old redundant mainframes has been out of business for 20 years.

Nortel Offers Secure ‘Office on a Stick’

Nortel hopes to keep remote work more secure with a USB drive preloaded with VPN client software.

According to InfoWorld, the drive is part of the Nortel Secure Portable Office, which offers services to help enterprises set up policies and user permissions.

The "office on a stick" allows users to plug into almost any PC, enter a username and password, and away they go. The stick will check for viruses and the set up a fully encrypted remote session. All data entered or downloaded goes from the PC's memory onto the encrypted USB drive, so IT administrators don't have to worry about sensitive information getting out.

Bloomberg Files Jobs’ Obit in Error

Steve Jobs can use Mark Twain's famous quote: "The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated."

Bloomberg, in a big oopsie, sent its obituary on Jobs out on the wire, but quickly retracted it, reports Tom Krazit at CNET. The incomplete piece also suggested other people to contact for quotes about him: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and early Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki, among others.

News organizations often write obituaries ahead of time to they can quickly be updated as needed. But Jobs' gaunt appearance at a conference in June raised speculation about the Apple CEO's health, making Bloomberg's mistake all that much more eerie.

Survey: Disgruntled IT Workers Have No Qualms Taking Sensitive Info

According to a survey by Cyber-Ark, nine out of 10 IT administrators would have no qualms about taking valuable and sensitive company information if they were laid off.

vnunet.com reports that a third of administrators said they would escape with the privileged password list, as well as CEO passwords, customer databases and R&D and M&A plans. Only 12 percent of the 300 IT professionals surveys said they would take nothing, according to Contractor UK.

Cyber-Ark CEO Udi Mokady says companies would be wise to secure their privileged identities and sensitive information in a digital vault. Who has access to the vault can then be audited to keep track of the data.

Virus Found on Space Station Laptops

Laptops carried to the International Space Station in July were infected with a virus known as Gammima.AG that steals passwords and sends them to a remote server, reports BBC News.

NASA called the virus merely a "nuisance" on non-critical laptops used for things like e-mail and nutritional experiments, reports Wired. It said this wasn't the first time computer viruses have been found there, but the space agency is trying to track how it got there and how to prevent viruses in the future.

The BBC says the agency suspects an astronaut might have introduced the virus from a flash or USB drive.

New Laptops from Dell, Asus

Dell has come out with four low-cost computers designed for India, China and other emerging markets, reports The Associated Press in a story on Newsvine.com.

The two notebook and two desktop PCs are designed for small businesses. They will be sold in 20 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

With IT spending tight in the United States, those markets are saving a lot of U.S. companies' bacon.

Meanwhile, Taiwan-based Asus has come out with a line of colorful, scented laptops. There's "Musky Black," the pink "Floral Blossom," the blue "Aqua Ocean," and the green "Morning Dew," reports Forbes. They're based on the low-end Eee line, which is a good thing, since having them all together at the office might cause olfactory overload.

Google Suggest Points the Way in Search

One of the big problems in search is trying to figure out exactly what the user is looking for. So Google has rolled out a tool to help with that.

Google Suggest is designed to help people come up with better queries, reducing spelling errors along the way, according to an IDG story in The New York Times.

Apparently it is a sort of "Did you mean" feature before you even get it typed.

According to this Reuters blog, when the writer typed "M," it suggested MySpace. When he wrote "Mic," it suggested Michael Phelps. And by the time he got to "Micr," it decided he wanted Microsoft.

The company says the suggestions are based on the most common searches across the Web, not on an individual user's searches.

Estonia Hosts Georgian Web Sites

With the cyber attacks on Georgia, the government of Estonia is temporarily hosting Web sites of Georgia's central bank and Foreign Ministry, reports The Associated Press in a story on Newsvine.com. A Georgian news portal in English is hosted there as well.

Estonia faced its own cyber attacks last year. Georgia has transferred other key Web sites to servers in countries such as Poland and France.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post profiles a University of Toronto lab that has stepped up monitoring of cyber attacks, saying Internet assaults are growing as a part of military strategy and political struggles.

China Plans Petaflop Computer

China wants to join what HPCwire calls "the petaflop fraternity," breaking free of dependence on the United States in developing the next generation of supercomputers.

InfoWorld reports it is boosting investment in its own Godson microprocessor in a bid to create machines capable of working out 1,000 trillion mathematical operations per second.

Japan and Korea also are working to build petaflop-level machines in the next few years, but China has set the ambitious goal of completing one by 2010, notes The Register. That story says China actually plans three: in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, in the Guangdong province, no doubt setting off an arms race of sorts among competing nations for the title of the fastest.

Mozilla’s Ubiquity Helps Users Create Mashups

Mozilla's newest release, a prototype called Ubiquity, is designed to help users create their own mashups, combining information from the Web browser.

InformationWeek quotes the blog post of Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, explaining it this way:

… With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.

From the command line, users can mash together tasks such as mapping, translation, shopping, or retrieving entries from Wikipedia, Yelp, or Twitter, such as suggesting a restaurant to a friend, mapping it and adding reviews in an e-mail.

CNET reports Microsoft is working on a similar feature for Internet Explorer 8.

Ubuntu Patch Fixes Kernel Flaws

Ubuntu users running versions ranging from 6.06 to version 8.04 are urged to update their system with a patch for the operating system's Linux kernel, reports ZDNet.

Ubuntu administrators say there is a vulnerability in the Linux kernel terminal handling code that could allow attacks to crash the system, leading to a denial of service. According to TechSpot, the vulnerability affects other versions of Ubuntu, including Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu.

Microsoft Loses More Browser Share

Since the numbers for Internet Explorer in the Janco/IT Productivity Center Browser Market Share and Operating System Market Share white paper are so far off the more frequent and more often cited Net Apps browser market numbers, it’s not clear whether the truth might lie somewhere in the middle, but that said, they do hold surprises — and not just for Microsoft.

Net Apps gives IE a 73.02 percent share for this month, as of today, while the Janco white paper says it has slipped to 58.5 percent. Janco’s numbers have been lower for some time, though, seeing as it had IE at 65.48 percent a year ago.

Windows 7 Dev Team Goes with the Crowd

Microsoft wants to harness the power of the crowd. It’s taking a lesson from other companies that have taken advantage of two-way communications with customers, clients, fans and detractors to fine-tune product development. The product: Windows 7. Perhaps the OS dev team has been reading about Dell’s success with the IdeaStorm project, or other customer community efforts, which IT Business Edge’s Ann All has been covering. Or more inclusive dev approaches in other Microsoft groups, like Xbox.

Getting the ball rolling is the Engineering Windows 7 blog, where senior engineers Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan vow they and their teams will apply what they’ve learned from the Vista rollout to create “an open and honest, and two-way, discussion…” as they build toward the Windows 7 release, set for 2010 (or maybe 2009). In their first post, they mention that they’ve been watching very carefully what’s being discussed so far in other blogs and plan to modify their approach to “disclosure” with an eye toward managing expectations. Remember back in February when e-mails on this very lesson between Sinofsky and colleagues were publicly circulated? Sinofsky seems to get that he’s going to have to do as much listening as writing. He’s asked blog readers to feel free to e-mail him directly with ideas and questions. The team’s aim: make the release match the promise so that unpleasant surprises for partners or customers are minimized, if not eliminated.

Convention Platforms Are Microsoft Platforms

When organizers of the 2008 Democratic National Convention came to Microsoft with their technology requests, they were so stuck in 2004. Microsoft’s General Manager of Government Solutions, Joel Cherkis, took their “standard” requests for e-mail, IM, Web conferencing and videoconferencing and spiced them up with things like adaptive high-definition video streaming, says Redmondmag. And Surface! Yes, Surface to the people. The touch interface tabletop, in this implementation, will be the convention’s “digital concierge,” with info on getting from party to party in Denver. It’ll also showcase historical documents from the Library of Congress.

Never fear, attendees at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities the following weekend will get to gather ’round the Surface, as well. The convention planners also are making sure Microsoft hits all the high points: green tech, virtual tech, secure tech and collaborative tech.

Take a couple of minutes to check out the pictures and videos on the convention Web sites, and think about the amount of preparation and money that goes into the physical setup for each. The Los Angeles Times’ Patt Morrison says with the price tag for this year’s conventions at over $120 million, we’ve reached the point where we need the virtual convention. Not virtual workspaces and collaborative tools in addition to stages and meeting rooms and bleacher seats, but instead of all that.

Technology Focused

Emphasis is placed on helping you begin to develop skills and knowledge in technical areas that can have practical value in the workplace. Besides technical instruction, the programs of study offered at ITT Tech focus on helping you develop problem solving, critical thinking, communication and teamwork skills.

Island of Niue Gives Every Child a Laptop

The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue is claiming the crown of being the first nation in the world to give laptop computers to all its schoolchildren, reports Agence France Presse in a story on IOL.

Not that it has that many. The CIA World Factbook puts the island’s size at 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., and its declining population at an estimated 1,444.

This week every primary and secondary school student was given one of the XO laptops from the One Laptop Per Child program after 500 were donated to the nation. BBC News reports Niue made free wireless Internet service available to its inhabitants in 2003.

Data on 84,000 Inmates Lost in UK

The UK Home Office has suspended its contract with PA Consulting after a memory stick containing information on 84,000 criminals went missing, reports vnunet.com.

The data was part of a program to track prolific offenders through the criminal justice system. ZDNet also reports one PA Consulting employee has been suspended and an investigation is under way to determine what happened to the lost device.

That story says the data was unencrypted, but a BBC story has Home Secretary Jacqui Smith saying the data was “held securely,” but downloading it was unauthorized. Anyway, the Tories are having a field day, accusing ministers of a “massive failure of duty.”

Apple's Ambitious iPhone 3G Plans

It intends to make at least 40 million iPhones in the next year; selling so many will hinge on global success and fixing connection glitches

Comcast Says It Hasn’t Settled on Traffic-Management Plan

Despite all the reports that Comcast plans to slow some traffic up to 20 minutes, the company said it has made no final decisions about the best way to manage network traffic, according to an IDG story in The New York Times.

After a public outcry, The Federal Communications Commission ordered the company to stop doing what it had done in the past, which amounted to throttling BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic.

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said the company has been testing “protocol agnostic” network-management techniques since May.

The FCC voted earlier this month to bar broadband providers from blocking or slowing specific applications.

Island of Niue Gives Every Child a Laptop

The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue is claiming the crown of being the first nation in the world to give laptop computers to all its schoolchildren, reports Agence France Presse in a story on IOL.

Not that it has that many. The CIA World Factbook puts the island’s size at 1.5 times the size of Washington, D.C., and its declining population at an estimated 1,444.

This week every primary and secondary school student was given one of the XO laptops from the One Laptop Per Child program after 500 were donated to the nation. BBC News reports Niue made free wireless Internet service available to its inhabitants in 2003.

U.S. Wants to Extradite Brazilian Charged in Botnet Scheme

The U.S. is hoping to extradite Leni de Abreu Neto, a Brazilian man the U.S. claims tried to rent out a botnet that would be used to send spam.

InfoWorld reports that a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has indicted Neto on one count of conspiracy to cause damage to computers worldwide.

The FBI helped the Dutch High-Tech Crime Unit catch Neto in the Netherlands, along with Nordin Nasiri, and Nasiri’s 16-year-old brother. Nasiri used social engineering to create a botnet that consisted of some 100,000 hacked computers. Neto allegedly tried to rent it for 25,000 euros ($37,290).

IBM Brings Green Theme to Retailers

IBM’s been changing from “Big Blue” to a shade of green due to eco-friendly moves. During the last year, IBM has rolled out the second phase of its Project Big Green initiative, opened a green data center and launched a green consulting service, to name a few.

IBM is now applying its green thumb to the retail sector. The company’s Retail Store Solutions is aiming to provide retailers with environmentally friendly products, reports TradingMarkets.com. Highlights of this push include IBM’s energy-efficient flagship point-of-sale system, which consumes one-third less energy than its predecessor, and unpainted products composed of 80 percent recycled materials.

STMicroelectronics, Ericsson Team up

STMicroelectronics and Ericsson have announced they will merge their semiconductor and mobile-phone platform activities, reports Agence France Presse in a story on Yahoo News.

The joint venture will be based in Geneva and will employ 8,000. The world’s largest maker of wireless networks and Europe’s biggest chip maker will be “an important supplier to Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Sharp,” the companies said in making the announcement.

Site Keeps Tabs on Microsoft Blogs

Microsoft has so many company blogs, now there’s a site to help you keep up with them, reports Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Daniel Good, a Microsoft technical account manager, promises headline updates on BlogMS, which will cover activity on more than 130 blogs by Microsoft product, support and specialist teams.

The P-I also has its own Microsoft Blog Directory, which also includes blogs about the Redmond software maker, not just those by the Microsofties themselves.

Initiative Urging Workers to Power IT Down

Next Wednesday, Aug. 27, is Power IT Down Day. The initiative, being driven by HP, Intel and Citrix, is encouraging workers across all industries to power down their PC, monitor and printer at the end of the work day.

This Network World podcast with Citrix Federal VP Tom Simmons says the aim is to get 1 percent of the government’s 1.8 million civilian employees to participate. According to Simmons, if 18,000 civilian government employees power down those three devices at the end of the work day, the federal government will save approximately 234,000 kilowatt hours, or about $23,400.
Next Wednesday, Aug. 27, is Power IT Down Day. The initiative, being driven by HP, Intel and Citrix, is encouraging workers across all industries to power down their PC, monitor and printer at the end of the work day.

This Network World podcast with Citrix Federal VP Tom Simmons says the aim is to get 1 percent of the government’s 1.8 million civilian employees to participate. According to Simmons, if 18,000 civilian government employees power down those three devices at the end of the work day, the federal government will save approximately 234,000 kilowatt hours, or about $23,400.

Congratulations Apple, you made the iPhone less stable than Windows Mobile

After a couple of weeks since the iPhone 3G launch, I gave in and picked up a device at the Apple store just over a week ago to personally give it a try. It is a good device, but the only two improvements over my original iPhone are the 3G support and GPS. The 3G has been very spotty, especially compared to the solid reception I am seeing on the Nokia E71-2, N95-3, and HTC Advantage. I saw 3G at work for the first couple of days, but for the last four days all I get is an EDGE connection. GPS is nice and I have actually used it twice to help me quickly navigate around traffic jams and in an unfamiliar area, but I could have just used Google Maps and the approximate position on my original iPhone to do the same thing. Recently the device has almost ended up going airborne across the room because of the constant instability with both 3rd party and native applications and I am strongly considering a return of the device this week.

Kindle E-Book Reader: ‘The Apple iPod Of The Book World’

We’ve never been particularly wowed by its clunky, mid-90s appearance, but we’re certainly digging the functionality of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and according to CitiGroup analyst Mark Mahaney it may prove to be a bigger smash than first expected.

Apple's MobileMe mail, Google's Gmail go dark

Apple's MobileMe and Google's Gmail online e-mail services suffered hours-long outages Monday, leaving millions of users unable to access their accounts.

Google restored service within about two and a half hours, but it took Apple approximately seven hours to restore full access to its online mail service.

Apple users first reported trouble accessing the service's servers from their desktop mail clients around 2 p.m. Eastern, and in the next several hours, posted several hundred messages on the MobileMe support forum about the outage.

I hate that I like Apple products

Okay, I'll admit it. Like many of you, I'm easily impressed by shiny, beautiful objects. Apple products typically fit that description to a tee.

So far, I've done my best not to buy Apple products, for the simple fact that Apple doesn't trust me to do what I want with Apple products that I pay for and own. (Note: My wife owns an iPod and I borrow it from time to time). I still find it shocking that Apple can get away with such a closed stance.

[ Read Tom Yager's Ahead of the Curve for more about Apple's closed stance for developers. ]

Lenovo quarterly sales climb in weak market

Lenovo Group reported a 10.5 percent increase in its fiscal first quarter revenues, despite a weakening global economy.

The computer maker reported revenues climbed to $4.2 billion in the quarter ending June 30, up from $3.8 billion a year ago. Shipments of PCs climbed 14.6 percent for the quarter.

"Despite a softening global economy, we delivered solid gains in worldwide sales," Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo chairman, said in a statement.

Yahoo earnings decline, miss estimates

Yahoo's earnings for its second quarter came in 1 cent lower than expectations, with net income declining 19 percent and revenue a bit light as well, but the company called the quarter "strong."

Using generally accepted accounting principles, the company's net income decreased 19 percent from $161 million in the year-earlier quarter to $131 million. But excluding various charges, the Internet pioneer reported earnings of 10 cents per share, less than the 11 cents per share that analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected.

Revenue increased 8 percent to $1.346 billion, excluding commissions called traffic acquisition costs that are paid to advertising partners. Analysts had expected $1.37 billion.

Jobs on iPhone apps: $30 million in 30 days

In a variation on the new math, 2.0 plus 3G equals $30 million now and about $360 million next summer.

Or in plain English: Apple has raked in about $30 million in sales of iPhone applications in the one month since the company opened its App Store and brought the iPhone 3G onto the market, CEO Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal. Jobs also sees big numbers ahead if Apple continues its current pace of selling an average of $1 million worth of applications per day.

Motorola surprises Wall Street with profit

Motorola surprised Wall Street Thursday by reporting a small profit and steady market share in its beleaguered handset business for the second quarter of 2008.

The key to Motorola's success for the quarter was cost-cutting and strong performance from businesses other than its handset division. As a result, the company was able to squeak out a $4 million profit, or less than 1 cent a share, which helped turn the tide on a year-long trend of losses. Motorola had actually forecast that it would lose about 2 cents a share.

T-Mobile USA struggles to keep up with competitors

T-Mobile USA is adding new subscribers, but the No. 4 wireless operator can't seem to catch much ground on its larger competitors.

Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile USA's parent company, reported second quarter earnings on Thursday and gave some detail on its U.S. operations. While T-Mobile USA increased revenue for the quarter by about 14.3 percent compared to a year ago, the company is not adding as many new customers as it has in the past. Total revenues rose to $5.47 billion from $4.78 billion in the prior-year quarter.