9to5 Staff

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So, here are some of the more athletic staff at Microsoft’s Mission Viejo (Calif.) store basically demonstrating the do’s and don’ts of school dance doings, (with an accent on the don’ts, frankly). Something about this is, well, it is embarrassing – even to watch – so don’t miss it! (Comments plz).

A team of researchers have successfully compromised the security that protects sensitive data being transferred over WiFi networks in four phones, the Nokia N95, Windows HTC tilt, T-Mobile G1 Android and Apple iPhone 3GS.

A team from SMobile Systems managed a

Thousands of stolen iPhones will likely appear on the grey market in the coming weeks, following the heavily-planned theft of up to 4,000 of the devices from a warehouse in Belgium this weekend.

As reported by De Standaard and Gazet van Antwerpen, burglars used a fire ladder to climb the roof of the warehouse situated in Antwerp province. Proving their desperation for using Apple

Spotify has said it won’t launch the US version of its service until 2010. Company CEO Daniel Ek cited the need to explain the service better to US audiences.

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Apple has published its latest pair of iPhone ads,

Adobe has introduced pre-release beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0, making these available from Adobe Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Flash Player 10.1 is also available for x86-based netbooks, and expected to be available across a broad spectrum of smartphones and other Internet-connected devices in 2010. Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 are easily updateable across all supported platforms to help ensure rapid adoption of new innovations that move the Web forward.

Both Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 boast support for multi-touch and gestures and deliver full GPU acceleration of H.264 for smoother HD Flash video playback – though, somewhat tellingly, not on Mac OS X.

AIR 2  functionality can be updated/added to current AIR 1.0 applications. New AIR 2 features include enhanced support for mass storage devices and native application processes, as well as peer-to-peer and UDP networking alongside faster WebKit rendering

Flash Player 10.1 is the first browser runtime release of the Open Screen Project that will Adobe promises will,

Google has introduced Google Earth 2.0 for the iPhone, including the ability to view maps that you create on your desktop right from your iPhone, new language support, and improved icon selection and performance.

Introduced last year, Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch has been “one of the most popular applications in the App Store, and after only six months, was the second most-downloaded free application overall” notes Google’s Lat Long Blog.

“Browsing the world from the palm of your hand can be a thrilling experience, and viewing photos, Wikipedia articles, and place information is a great way to discover new parts of the globe. With the latest version of Google Earth for iPhone, we’ve made this even easier,” notes Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth

When you touch an icon on the map, a small glow appears under your finger to let you know which icon you have picked. If your finger touches more than one icon, you’ll be taken to a list of all icons, so you can select the one you are interested in. The software also calls in Wikipedia articles and other data concerning places you choose.

The free software is already available on the App Store.

… and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly.”

Those harsh words are the rebuttal by Verizon to AT&T’s lawsuit that was seeking to stop those now infamous “Map for that” ads (below).  As Engadget says, those words were made for the public forum not just some 50 page rebuttal (PDF).  Incredibly, Verizon says in the introduction:

AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts.

Ziiiing! 

Verizon also called AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson a hick and made fun of Wireless CEO, Ralph de la Vega’s hair plugs.  They concluded that AT&T’s orange and blue colors were dumb and clashed with each other.

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According to BGR: Yes!  We’re still not liking the raised “am” and 25% seems like very un-Apple like discounts.  Here’s Apple’s Black Friday site.

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Gizmodo is reporting that Apple has added another layer of protection/rejection to the App Store approval process.  According to some (well sourced?) developer Tweets, Apple has added a static analysis tool to look for private API calls inside submitted Apps.  According to Gizmodo, they’re looking for apps that have been developed with third party SDKs.

That might not bode well for Adobe’s next version of Flash CS5 which features exporting Flash applications to iPhone.  Apple has stated policy that iPhone Apps must be developed with the iPhone development kit, so it is a bit surprising that Adobe would build this process into their Flash software.  The fact that Adobe was secretly working with developers to get apps into the App Store that were made with Flash probably was reason enough for the move…if this is, in fact the case.

Apple also has had issues with applications stealing user phone numbers.  This type of vetting could also find applications from retrieving that information.

Things are changing in Seattle, where Mayor-elect Mike McGinn wants to chuck the Windows-based PCs out the window – to make room for the Mac.

That

The Wall Street Journal gives me a laptop with Windows XP, an operating system I found satisfying when it came out eight years ago but that lacks a lot of modern touches, like a speedy file-search function. My home computer, meanwhile, is a two-year-old iMac running the Leopard version of Apple’s Macintosh operating system. Among other virtues, it’s got a search function called Spotlight that lets me track down files in a flash. Or take email. Please. There’s a limit on how much email employees can store on the company’s system, and I routinely bump into it. So, I need to spend time hunting through old notes in Microsoft Outlook and deciding what to keep and what to delete, or risk a shutdown of my account. I’m not the only one; a colleague told me she often receives messages with large attached files that overload her inbox while she’s asleep.

The Wall St. Journal’s Nick Winfield talks about something we Mac users often face in the workplace.  Shitty, locked down Windows boxes that block sites we use and take forever to do basic computing operations.  The question is: Why? 

As the WSJ points out, the technology exists to divide work and play.  Give me the $2000 you’d pay on my Thinkpad running XP and I’ll put a Citrix client on my MacBook and maybe a VMWare partition for the 10 year old Intranet.  Meanwhile at home I’ll use a more robust Google Apps setup with 25GB of email storage.  I’ll even have some change left over if you keep those Windows Active Directory jockeys away from me.

It isn’t just desktops.  The story talks about Kraft’s experiment to give users a choice on phones.  No surprise that 60% chose iPhones.  Kraft employees were choosing Macs despite (or perhaps because?) the fact that they wouldn’t get support from IT.

The message isn’t explicitly Windows PC vs. Mac / Microsoft Servers vs. Cloud / iPhone vs. BBY, but that is how it reads.

The story is a great read and includes an audio portion as well.  Also not blocked by the WSJ Paywall for the moment.

We’re not sure what to make of this story on the forthcoming Apple tablet where analysts say things like:

According to [Laura] DiDio [principal analyst at ITIC] the tablet will have a 10-inch to 12-inch screen and a high-end graphics card that will enable stunning resolution — even more so than the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Really?  More than 480×320 resolution on a 10-inch tablet? How will they fit all of those pixels in there?  Will it be from the future?

Then:

Only 3% of people whose cell phones can play music say they use their phone as their primary music player, according to a Yankee Group study

[..from 2001?] I don’t know anyone with an iPhone that carries around another MP3 player. (Maybe a Shuffle or Nano for the gym but not as a primary MP3 player)

If true, today’s Bloomberg report that Apple approached Admob about acquiring the advertising company just weeks before Google swooped in and purchased them would be a departure from Apple’s traditional business.  It would also underscore the increasing competition between former corporate “friends” who, only a few months ago, shared board members and interests in dethroning Microsoft from its monopolistic perch atop the computer world.

Apple contacted AdMob a few weeks before Google made its bid, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations weren