walterbyrd writes with news that Apple has been sending out letters to carriers and retailers who sell the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Galaxy Nexus, informing them of a court-mandated ban on sales and warning them against continuing to market the devices. The court order for the patent case on the Galaxy Tab says Samsung and "those acting in concert" with them are enjoined from selling the devices, and Apple has used the letters to point this out. Samsung, of course, disagrees: "Apple’s menacing letters greatly overreach, incorrectly claiming that third-party retailers are subject to the prohibitions of the preliminary injunction, which they clearly are not."

CIStud writes "A U.S. District Court in Massachusetts has ruled that iPod, iPad and iPhone speakers docks do not infringe on a patent owned by Bose Corp. for digital audio conversion. The ruling in the case of Bose vs. small dock speaker makers SDI, DPI, Imation and others reportedly was a test case that would have set precedent for potential patent infringement by other manufacturers... and even Apple... according to the defendant's legal team. At issue: Is an iPhone, iPad or iPod a 'computer.' The judge says they aren't."

judgecorp writes "Mobile operator O2's network crashed on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. In the aftermath it has emerged how other services rely on mobile networks. Law enforcement agencies were unable to track some convicted criminals wearing electronic tags, and the crash also disabled parts of London's network of 'Boris Bikes' — public hire bikes."

judgecorp writes "4G services could interfere with terrestrial TV in the UK, so the government plans to offer one free filter for every household affected by the issue. The analysis suggests that 2.3 million households could be affected, but many of those have cable or satellite TV, so the plan might only need a million filters (each household only gets one, even if they have many TVs)."

An anonymous reader writes "I am a systems administrator for a mid size state agency. We currently offer Blackberries to our staff, but we are migrating to Android devices in the near future. Since phones have sensative data (email, documents, etc.), what is a good choice for encrypting that data? Options abound, like OS-level encryption from Motorola and Samsung, 3rd party apps from GoTrusted and even a LUKS port for Android. Does anyone have experience managing encrypted Android devices? What are the important features I should be looking at? Many thanks in advance." (And, for that matter, are there good options for doing the same with iPhones? Other options to consider?)

Payphones have been famously disappearing from public life; cell phones and other means of communication have made them ever less important in many contexts (and for most people). Some places, it's hard to find not only payphones, but usable wireless signal as well. Still, there are a lot of payphones left in the wild (though the enclosed kind seem to be disappearing faster than on-premises ones), and now there's a plan in New York City to extend payphones' useful life by outfitting them as public Wi-Fi hotspots, beginning with a 10-phone trial already underway. It's not the first such project; we mentioned a similar multi-city wi-phone deployment in Canada 10 years ago. And in Austin, I've spotted at least one payphone fitted out as a solar-powered charging station for cellphones; probably not enough to get much charge, but at least it lets users place an emergency call with a flagging or dead battery. Covering Manhattan and the other boroughs with overlapping free Wi-Fi nodes, though, is a different beast entirely.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's hacker nemesis Charlie Miller, who the company banned from its app store developer program, apparently hasn't been waiting around for his suspension to be lifted. His latest pet project is hacking near-field communications (NFC), and at Black Hat USA in Vegas this month, he will demonstrate the dangers of using your smartphone to pay your cab fare. (But when his Apple 'sentence' is up, look out)."

Velcroman1 writes "Steve Jobs worshippers need not apply. But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet, you may want to check out Family Christian's Edifi. Billed as the world's first Christian tablet, its genesis came with the inevitable intersection of technology and religion, according to Brian Honorable, a technology supervisor at Family Christian, the group that sells the tablet. 'We wanted to be able to offer our customers the ability to use our Holy Bible application, which has 27 different English translations of the Bible,' Honorable said."

Master Moose writes "Brisbane-based entrepreneur John Lambie currently has in beta an alternative to what he calls the 'dysfunctional' QWERTY keyboard. Given the way the world is abandoning their keyboards for smartphones he sees now as the perfect time to introduce a new layout. He calls his new keyboard Dextr and believes it is the natural progression from using a number pad to enter text — This is especially so in developing countries where users have not grown up with QWERTYs on thier phones. While he is not the first to ever propose an alternate or alphabetical keyboard — Are we locked into QWERTY for familiarity's sake, or as we shift to smaller, more mobile and new devices, is Mr. Lambie's project coming at the right time?"

An anonymous reader writes "Glyn Moody writes at The H that Google's Nexus 7 tablet seems to be in a good position to shake up the market and pave the way for serious Android competition to the iPad. That said, he's worried about the potential downsides to a market full of mostly 'open' devices: 'Such customised systems are likely to be as locked down as they can be – the last thing either manufacturers or companies want is for users to start fiddling with the settings or installing their own software. As a result, the apps that run on such systems are likely to be closed source, since that's the way vertical markets tend to work. Such systems will also expose a persistent problem with the open source development methodology. While big and general projects find it relatively easy to attract interested developers, smaller, more targeted solutions tend not to thrive as free software.'"

An anonymous reader tips an article about comments from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer regarding Microsoft's attitude toward Apple. It seems Microsoft is tired of being behind the curve in most areas of the tech market, and will be trying very hard to prevent Apple and other companies from beating them to the punch in the future. From the article: "In a recent interview, Ballmer explained that the company had ceded innovations in hardware and software to Apple, but that the-times-they-are-a-'changin. 'We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,' Ballmer explained. 'Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.' ... An admirable goal, but it's fair to argue that attempting to innovate everywhere results in innovation nowhere. A big part of the reason Apple has been so successful is that they devote the bulk of their attention to only a few select market areas. By trying to innovate everywhere, so to speak, Microsoft runs the continued risk of spreading itself too thin and not really having a fundamental impact in any one market."

An anonymous reader writes with this bit from ZDNet: "It's cool to have a keyless BMW, until you no longer have a keyless BMW. Hackers have figured out how to break into such cars with ease. BMW has acknowledged there is a problem, but is not doing enough to protect its customers (video)."

judgecorp writes "Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology is suing Apple in China, claiming Siri infringes its voice technology patent. Zhizhen claims to have 100 million users for its Xiao iRobot software which responds to voice questions and commands. From the article: 'The move came only days after Apple Inc paid $60 million to Proview Technology (Shenzhen) to end a protracted legal dispute over the iPad trademark in China. Zhizhen's patent covers "a type of instant messaging chat robot system", according to the database of the country's State Intellectual Property Office. It was filed on Aug 13, 2004, and got approved on Feb 15, 2006. '"

MojoKid writes "Samsung has some great news for Galaxy SIII smartphone owners. As it turns out, your mobile device isn't at risk of overheating to the point where it catches on fire and burns through its casing, as a forum member at Boards.ie claimed was the case with his Galaxy SIII a couple of weeks ago. [Note: And has since retracted.] Fire Investigations UK (FIUK), an independent third-party organization, assisted Samsung with looking into the matter, and here's what they concluded: 'The energy source responsible for generating the heat has been determined as external to the device... the device was not responsible for the cause of the fire,' FIUK said in a statement. 'The only way it was possible to produce damage similar to the damage recorded within the owner's damaged device was to place the devices or component parts within a domestic microwave.'"

Stirling Newberry writes "The New York Times reports: 'In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a daunting 1.3 million demands for subscriber data last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.' One stinging statistic: AT&T responds to an average of 700 requests per day, and turns down only 18 per week. Sprint gets 500,000 requests per year. While many requests are backed by court orders, most are not. Some include 'dumps' of tower data, which captures everyone near by at a certain time."

New submitter Doctor_Jest links to a recent I, Cringely column, in which Cringely "is speculating how the world will look when the 'Post-PC' era is in full swing." He makes the case that in just a few upgrade cycles, extensible phones and other devices, coupled with remotely stored data, could replace most of today's conventional PCs — but also admits he thought this transition would have already happened.

beefsack writes "Miniand have demonstrated how to control Linux using a Samsung Galaxy S2. Using an MK802 with the ARM build of Droidmote server bundled into an MK802 Lubuntu image with uinput enabled, Miniand demonstrates (video) using an Android phone as a keyboard, mouse, and gamepad over Wi-Fi to the device." Update: 07/10 00:07 GMT by U L : reader ancienthart pointed toward Premotedroid, an (possibly, I could find no license in the code but the code is there) open source alternative.

Snirt writes "A group of ex-Nokia staff and MeeGo enthusiasts has formed Jolla (Finnish for 'dinghy'), a mobile startup with the aim of bringing new MeeGo devices to the market. According to its LinkedIn page, Jolla consists of directors and core professionals from Nokia's MeeGo N9 organization, together with some of the best minds working on MeeGo in the communities."

walterbyrd writes "The latest in the ridiculous saga of the patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, which has resulted in Samsung phones and tablets being banned from sale in the U.S. is that Samsung, with the help of Google, has been pushing out an over-the-air software update to make its phones worse. Yes, the OTA update is designed to take away a feature, in an effort to convince the judge that the phones no longer violate Apple's patents. The feature in question? The ability to do a single search that covers both the local device and the internet."

judgecorp writes "Telefonica has added some detail to the Firefox OS picture, following the announcement of phones by two manufacturers earlier this week. The Qualcomm-built handset shown by Telefonica in London ran the HTML5 OS and showed multitasking as well as a range of HTML5 applications. Firefox-maker Mozilla receives a lot of funding from Google, but Telefonica sees Firefox OS as a way to achieve independence from Google. It will be more open than Android, and will run on lower-specification hardware, according to the company's director of products." A common reaction to Firefox OS over the past few days has been to say that it's doomed from the start. But Mozilla's stated goals are to 'promote openness, innovation, and opportunity on the Web for users and developers,' rather than to compete with Android and iOS. What do you think they need to do in order to achieve that in a meaningful way?