By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

December 31st, 2005 was the deadline for cellular carriers to provide E911, or enhanced 911 service to 95% of their customers. This service would give dispatchers the location of a 911 call. The FCC has proposed fines totaling US$2.8 million to three wireless carriers for failing to that deadline, the agency said Thursday.

As of the December 2005 deadline, 81 percent of Sprint’s network had E911 service capabilities, while 74 percent of Nextel’s network did, according to the FCC. The two companies merged in 2005. About 84 percent of Alltel’s customers had E911 service, and about 89 percent of U.S. Cellular’s customers did.

Alltel and U.S. Cellular have since reached the 95 percent threshold, but Sprint Nextel has not, the FCC said. As of December 2005, 15 million Sprint Nextel customers did not have E911 service, the agency said. Source: PC World

We Say: Location is one thing, but speed would be better. The last time I called 911 on my cellular phone was to report a car accident (not mine!). By the time I was connected to the CHP, I was about 10 miles past the accident, and trying to remember exactly where it was.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

NBC Universal is the number one supplier of digital video that is distributed on iTunes, with 40% of the downloads, yet it was unable to come to terms with Apple - over what else, money. Because of this, it will not be renewing its distribution contract with Apple.

The company’s contract to sell more than 1,500 hours of news, sports and entertainment programming on iTunes expires at the end of December. NBC was required to inform Apple by Friday if the contract would not renewed, said Amy Zelvin, spokeswoman for NBC Universal Digital. Source: Forbes

We Say: Note that non-NBC shows such as Battlestar Galactica (sob, this is the last season!) and Psych would also be affected. This is another example of the trouble many media companies are having with iTunes’ pricing policies. Many companies have been outspoken about wanted “more” in terms of pricing, as well as different tiers of pricing. Additionally, let’s not forget that NBC Universal will be launching a private beta of its own video service, Hulu, in October.

Update: iTunes upped the ante by saying they would drop Universal before their contract expires, just prior to the fall season.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

It’s been nearly two weeks since the last Apple iPhone battery lawsuit. How time flies when lawyers are preparing briefs.

On Wednesday, attorneys for plaintiffs Zoltan Stiener and Ynez Stiener filed a class action complaint against Apple and AT&T in federal court in Oakland, Calif.

The lawsuit alleges breach of contract, fraud, and violations of California law. It charges the two companies with failing to inform iPhone purchasers that fees totaling more than $100 are required to replace iPhone batteries and to maintain service during battery replacement. Source: Information Week

Interestingly, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs is Oakland-based lawyer H. Tim Hoffman. He also represents Sydney Leung, who filed the second lawsuit against Apple and AT&T nearly two weeks ago.

Let’s not forget the first lawsuit, filed in Illinois in July, by Jose Trujillo. Although it was public knowledge long before the iPhone was launched that the battery was not user-replaceable, the replacement plan was not revealed until after the device went on sale - and this is the crux of the lawsuits.

We Say: I’m still not convinced of the validity of these suits, although some experts say there is some legitimacy to them, at least if the purchases took place before the replacement plan was revealed. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up the same way the iPod battery lawsuit did, with Apple settling out of court.

Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Poor Windows XP gets no attention at all any more. The big news this week has been the formal announcement of Windows Vista SP1. But Windows XP will get a service pack, too - SP3. However, it’ll just be a boring rollup of all the fixes since SP2, meaning all you’ll be getting is a new “baseline” to start from. If you install a Windows XP system, or if an OEM builds one, it’ll be SP3 instead of SP2.

We Say: In a way, this is nice because they’ll be no more downloading of patches, or using Autopatcher - oh, wait, we can’t do that any longer, either.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Remember the WGA server outage of a few days ago, the one which basically resulted in everyone trying to activate - or patch - being labeled a pirate? It was caused by the one thing it’s almost impossible to guard against: human error.

According to Microsoft, as they wrote on the WGA blog:

How did this happen in the first place?

Nothing more than human error started it all. Pre-production code was sent to production servers. The production servers had not yet been upgraded with a recent change to enable stronger encryption/decryption of product keys during the activation and validation processes. The result of this is that the production servers declined activation and validation requests that should have passed.

Why did it take so long to fix?

While the response to the activation issue was quick (less than thirty minutes) the effect on our validation service continued even after the rollback took place. We expected the rollback to fix both issues at the same time but we now realize that we didn’t have the right monitoring in place to be sure the fixes had the intended effect.

We Say: Some clarity on how things are supposed to work: if the servers are down, the system is designed so that all activations are defaulted to “genuine.” In this case the servers returned an erroneous value, which answers my question in my earlier post about why the system couldn’t simply recognize a server outage - it wasn’t an outage.

While it’s nice to get a how and why, it’s doesn’t necessarily assuage my issues with activated software in general. However, if I want to use Windows, I’m pretty much painted into a corner.

Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

It’s bad enough when a data breach occurs. It’s worse when a breach that involves over a million users. But then to be told that an investigation shows it wasn’t the first time - but they just now discovered it - wow.

The theft of personal information from some 1.3 million users of the Monster.com job search service first revealed two weeks ago was not a one-time attack, the company’s CEO said today.

“The Company has determined that this incident is not the first time Monster’s database has been the target of criminal activity,” Sal Iannuzzi, the chairman and CEO of Monster Worldwide, said in a statement. In an interview with Reuters, Iannuzzi also acknowledged that the most recent breach may have been substantially larger than the 1.3 million users the company said earlier had been affected.

“It could easily be in the millions,” Iannuzzi told Reuters. He did not spell out when other attacks had taken place, or even how many might have breached the company’s security. Source: ComputerWorld

We Say: When you think about how many users of Monster.com there have been - including me - it’s frightening. Particularly since they don’t seem to be sure about just how much information and how many users have been affected. Fortunately, I have real-time credit monitoring, but that doesn’t give me - or many others - that much comfort.

Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Nuisance lawsuit? Perhaps. AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo all stand accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Texas-based Polaris IP.

The lawsuit charges the companies with implementing systems that “comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines” as described in the patent held by the plaintiff, “Automatic message interpretation and routing system.”

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against continued infringement. If granted — a remote prospect at best — the injunction would have a significant impact on the defending companies. Source: InfoWorld

We Say: Interestingly, or perhaps, tellingly, this patent has been in litigation many times, but the suits have always been settled. Looks like that’s what’s happening again.

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

After a lot of speculation, leaked builds and closed beta testing - without specific public details about SP1 - Microsoft today posted an announcement on their official Windows Vista blog detailing SP1 and their plans for it.

Now is the time and the time is now: let’s talk about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Much has been made of what will or will not be included in SP1 and when it will be released (some accurate, some otherwise). I’m here to set the story straight: we’re in the process of developing and deploying a Beta version of SP1. This post will describe for you what to expect from that effort and how you can be involved in the process.

What is SP1? What is it not?

In addition to updates we’ve previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also makes additional improvements to the IT administration experience. We didn’t design SP1 as a vehicle for releasing new features; however, some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1. Source: Official Windows Vista blog

We Say: So, they say they are targeting SP1 for Q1 2008. Based on the delivery of Vista itself, that could mean anytime in 2008.