As a personal injury attorney in San Francisco I’m addicted to technology. And I have been using the new Blackberry Curve 8900 for about the past 4 months or so. I’m a fan – a big fan. In fact, I am not even carrying my iPhone with me anymore.
Let me know what your experience is with this device…Cheers.
SAN FRANCISCO - As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, AT&T Inc. has filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission asserting that Google Voice is violating telecommunications laws.
Google Voice is Google’s new phone service. The service allows users to route or direct calls through a single number to multiple phones, a featured valued by many consumers. AT&T is claiming that the service violates common carrier laws requiring operators to connect certain calls.
According to the San Francisco paper, however, Google’s telecom and media counsel, Richard Whitt, through his blog has defended Google’s service and argues that it doesn’t qualify as a phone operator.
Currently, Google Voice services a limited number of users.
According to the San Jose Business Journal (September 19 edition), Facebook Inc. announced that it has settled a class-action lawsuit that alleged privacy violations by the social networking media company. Facebook will shut down the “Beacon” service, which allegedly recorded and displayed the actions its users had taken elsewhere on the web.
The class action lawsuit alleged that Facebook had violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the California Computer Crime Law. Facebook will also contribute $9.5 million towards setting up a foundation that promotes online privacy.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Google is offering up a new format (”Fast Flip”) that allows readers to flip through many different online publications just like you would a magazine. Ads will be placed around the articles but the revenue from the ads will be shared with publishers.
If you are a news junkie like me, this is great – now you can “flip” or scan through multiple papers and online magazines until something catches your eye. And if you are a publisher, you can now earn revenue due to folks reading your paper on Google, which many of us do anyway (Google Reader, Google News etc.).
I’ve tried Fast Flip and it works well: you can easily scan numerous sources and you can quickly gain a sense of what is making news. Currently, Fast Flip only displays the first page of a news story. If the reader could flip through the rest of the paper or publication without leaving the front page of Fast Flip this would be much more user friendly. However, Fast Flip is a vast improvement over standard “reader” services or Google News.
As the New York Times’ blog Gadgetwise (click here) points out, normally a merger between two Internet giants isn’t always a good thing for consumers. However, in the last three years there has been a trend coming out of Silicon Valley to deliver better privacy protections to consumers. And, the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo to work together on Web search may re-vitalize it.
According to the Times, Jules Polonetsky, director of the research group Future Privacy Forum and formerly chief privacy officer at AOL and DoubleClick, believes the agreement could increase competition for the bragging rights to who has the best practices.
What’s driving this possibility is that Yahoo currently has the most stringent privacy policy. If Microsoft matches it due to their agreement, then Google could be forced to follow suit in order to stay competitive with consumers concerned about privacy.
Currently Yahoo retains search query data for three months, while Microsoft and Google retain such data for eighteen months.
As reported by the New York Times (click here), Apple announced today that Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, was leaving its board because of “potential conflicts of interest.” Mr. Schmidt had been on Apple’s board since August 2006.
Google is developing its own operating system, Chrome, which strikes at the core of Apple’s business. And, 
according to the Times, Google’s Android mobile operating system also competes with Apple’s popular iPhone.
The Times also notes that Schmidt’s decision to leave “follows months of investigations by federal regulators into whether Apple and Google had violated antitrust laws by sharing two directors.”
According to the New York Times, Microsoft and Yahoo are joining forces in a partnership in Internet search and advertising. The partnership is intended to create competition and rival Google.
As reported by the Times, the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership is a pragmatic division of duties between the two companies. It also presents the most serious challenge to Google’s 
dominance in Internet search and advertising to date.
The New York Times takes a look at Microsoft’s new search engine Bing in its Technology section today (click here). There is also an excellent accompanying video that you should check out. The Times points out that Bing actually works pretty well and that users like it. Of course, whether or not Microsoft can actually make inroads into Google’s market share remains to be seen.
As someone who uses search engines for work and research, I am always interested in improvements to search capabilities. But I want to know what others think. So, let me know what your experience is – how does Bing compare to Google – is it better or worse, an improvement, maybe real competition – what are your thoughts?
A practical review of the new iPhone 3.0 firmware.
The video can be viewed here: iPhone 3.0 review
San Francisco Injury Attorney Reviews iPhone 3GS
Friday, December 11th, 2009So, I was shopping in San Francisco the other day and decided to get my wife the latest iPhone. Now, my reviews of the iPhone in the past have been fairly negative because I was pretty negative about the iPhone.
But this new machine is faster, smoother, and I’m impressed.
Enjoy!
Tags: San Francisco injury attorney comments on new iPhone 3GS.
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