Boot up: 1-Click patent rejected, more open data, why Ballmer is at CES and more

A click to buy doesn't win a patent in Europe, even if it does in the US. Photograph: Muntz/Getty Images

A burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Nice try, Amazon: 'One-click' payment too obvious to patent >> The Register
"A payment system devised by online retail giant Amazon is too obvious to patent, the European Patent Office (EPO) has ruled. "Amazon had hoped to patent the way its customers pay for products through the click of a single webpage button. The company was previously granted patent rights to the payment system in the US.
"An appeals board at the EPO ruled that the "one-click" method was too obvious as it relied on existing inventions, called "prior art" in patent law. Inventions must be new, take an inventive step that is not obvious and be useful to industry to qualify for patent protection."
Perhaps we could hire the EPO out to the US to get their patent system into shape?

Cameron unveils the transparent society >> UKAuthority
"Data on the performance of GPs, schools and details of sentences passed by individual courts is to be released in open, standardised format under the government's latest transparency initiative, to be announced on Thursday. "A letter on the new Number 10 Downing Street website, launched on Thursday, promises 'the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world.'"
Other events may have overshadowed this, but it's very significant.

A Pun About Google Plus and The Circles of Hell >> Terence Eden
"This is something Nik Butler and I have discussed. "Google needs to let people choose which circles to follow. "I imagine a UI which allows me to set a circle as private ("Work", "Family", "Political ranting") and set some circles as public ("Kitten pictures", "Industry News", "Political thoughts"). "When you follow me, you can say "I hate kittens, but I love politics – I'll follow one circle and ignore the others." "At the moment, I don't have the time to categorise 200 people into what I think they're interested. And they don't want to be bombarded with QR codes when all they really want is LOLCATS. "So, come on Google, sort it out – let people choose which circles they want to be in. "Please RT!"
The irony of that final request being offered for Twitter not lost, we hope.

DNA is now DIY: OpenPCR ships worldwide >> OpenPCR
"The price of a traditional PCR machine is around $3,000. So, do people in garages have great PCR machines? Not really. Howabout high school or middle school teachers? Nope. Howabout smaller medical testing labs or labs in India or China? Nope. Even some big bio labs try their luck on eBay. We set out to change that. "Josh and I prototyped OpenPCR over about 4 months — it was a lot of fun. Last May we unveiled the first OpenPCR prototype to all a bunch of crazy people on Kickstarter, 158 people gave us a total of $12,121. With that we designed and manufactured a repeatable, works-all-the-time device — it took a lot of hard work. Now we're done and ready to share!"
PCR is polymerase chain reaction - the method by which you magnify a small sample of DNA. Now, anyone can play.

Currys.co.uk and the missing phone call >> Sarah Parmenter
The strange case of how an oven couldn't be bought because the confirmation calls kept not coming through to her iPhone. Stranger than it looks at first glance.

This is why Steve Ballmer keynotes at CES >> CES Twitter account
The CES notices what we speak of, and provides its explanation.

China-based white-box vendors expected to ship 8 million tablet PCs in 2011 >> Digitimes
"China-based white-box vendors have launched many models of low-price tablet PCs mainly equipped with inexpensive ARM processors developed by Qualcomm, Nvidia and VIA Technologies for domestic sale and exports to emerging markets, with total shipments estimated at 2m units for the first quarter of 2011 and expected to reach 8m for the year, according to sources from Taiwan-based makers.
"White-box notebook players started cutting into China's tablet PC market in early 2011, targeting mainly the entry-level segment with price levels below US$250. [Even though] their operating system choices of only Android 2.2/2.3 or Windows 7 are rather weak compared to the mainstream operating system choices in terms of software or applications availability, their low prices still attract demand from some consumer groups."
Not quite the "50%" market share that DisplaySearch was talking about, and Digitimes does seem to know the suppliers.

Browse your Oyster travel and fare history >> GitHub
Requires you to have your own server, and written for Linux (or Mac OSX). Clever, if you have the chops to make it work.

How to take screenshots on your Android phone without rooting - Recombu
"A handful of the Android phones we've recently reviewed allow you to take screengrabs - pictures of what ever is on the phone's screen at the time - simply by pressing the power and menu button simultaneously. Finally! "Big deal, you might think. Except that it is - it's a really useful feature. As well as making our lives here a little easier when we're writing up app stories, it has plenty of potential uses. "From capturing incriminating texts from friends/colleagues/ex-partners (perfect for uploading to Facebook, if you're feeling evil) to proving that you've three starred each Angry Birds level (including all of Seasons and Rio), there's loads of ways that this can be useful."
Confirmed to work on Samsung Galaxy S II, for a start.

My Summer at an Indian Call Center >> Mother Jones
"While we idle in interminable traffic, my coworker Nishant asks where I'm from. 'America?' he says. 'I'll tell you about America.' "I must look wary, because he quickly explains that, after years of 50-hour workweeks, he's probably spoken with more of my compatriots than I have. 'America is not all honey and roses the way they tell you,' he informs me. 'Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world.'"
Fascinating insight. The comments - including one from someone who admits they would be the idiot customer from hell - are also enlightening.

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Boot up: Google+ -disks, Apple's patent poker, the tablet 'slowdown' and more

When you're the stronger player, the cards almost don't matter. Photograph: Alamy

A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team.

Also - tell us how you like the slightly tweaked look. Better? Worse? (Here's how it looked on Friday.)

"Many Google+ users saw a massive amount of notification email messages from the service this afternoon, and now Google's head of social, Vic Gundotra, has an explanation. "'For about 80 minutes we ran out of disk space on the service that keeps track of notifications,' Gundotra wrote on Google+ tonight. 'Hence our system continued to try sending notifications. Over, and over again. Yikes.'"
If you needed any confirmation that this is a rushed, half-baked product launch, then this is it. Google+ may have grown massively beyond expectations, but disk space is pretty cheap down Google way. And available - if you plan for it.

Good piece looking at the play-by-play of the mobile patents battle from Nortel.

"It was a theme picked up by at least eight other news outlets, including VentureBeat ("Tablet sales slow"), The Loop ("'media tablet' market isn't as strong as previously thought") and Forbes ("Sales Dip Hints Media Tablets Won't Replace PCs Any Time Soon").
"The source for all these pessimist headlines? An IDC report that the total number of tablet computers shipped into sales channels in Q1 2011 was 7.2 million. "At first that struck me as absurd, given that Apple (AAPL) alone is expected to report next week that it sold a good deal more than 7.2 million iPads last quarter. "Then I took a second look at IDC's report. What I missed the first time -- and what these reporters failed to take into account -- is that IDC was talking about Q1 2011, which runs from January to March, not Q2 2011, which ran from April to June. Of course tablet sales dipped after the October-to-December holiday quarter. We knew that months ago. This is news?"

"IPads are currently selling better than Android tablets to Android smartphone users. So claims Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley, who expects Apple to dominate the tablet market for some time to come. "Our smartphone and handset checks indicate iPads are selling better to Android smartphone users than the current Android tablets," Walkley said in a Friday note to clients (although he provided no numbers in support of the assertion)."

"There, you've just hidden the list of people you've chosen to follow on Google+. "My question is: If this setting is one that everyone on Google seems to feel is important for their privacy, why isn't it the default for the rest of us?"

"It breaks my heart to say this, but Mac OSX Lion's interface feels like a failure. Its stated mission was to simplify the operating system, to unify it with the clean experience of iOS. That didn't happen. "If it weren't for the fast, rock-solid Unix, graphics and networking cores, Lion would be Apple's very own Vista."
Couldn't it be Apple's Vista even with the Unix, graphics and cores?

"Has anyone noticed that this week's released screenshots of the New Xbox Dashboard conspicuously omit the Zune logo? If you look at the Music experience shot, below, you'll see some generic music note graphics, but no Zune. "The Zune brand, of course, is being phased out. This is just the latest public-facing example of this slow migration."
More like a slow eradication from Microsoft's history, Soviet-style.

"Perhaps the biggest piece of news we learned from Forsythe is that in the Mac App Store, for the first time since its creation seven years ago, Growl will not be free. Devs working on the project are "still talking" about the final price, but "it most likely will be a dollar or two dollars at most," according to Forsythe. Some may turn up their noses at paying anything for the results of an open source project, but Forsythe says the reasoning behind the charge is simple: "I'm a grown adult," he says, "and my wife wonders why I spend time working on my open source project and not with my two-month old." For all the work Forsythe and his fellow devs have put into Growl, a few bucks seems little to ask."
Growl is a very fine piece of software. It's pretty hard to begrudge someone a couple of dollars.

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Boot-up: Google Android patent row hots up, online-dating-2011 and more

iPhones and Android phones send information about your whereabouts to Google and Apple. Photo: Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters

Quickly to chew over, as picked by the technology team burst of 9 links for you

"...But Android's success led to something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, led by fake patents.

"They are this put together by banding, Novell's old patents (the"Cptn"group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel get old (that group including Microsoft and Apple)"Rockstar"patents to ensure that Google are not given them;" Development of $15 license fees for all Android powered devices; Try phone manufacturers license Android more expensive make (we free make that available for free) as Windows phone 7; and even suing Barnes & noble, HTC, Motorola and Samsung. "Patents were intended to promote innovation, but in recent times is used as a weapon, to stop it."

"How is Google argument here other than simply to call for Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al. should just sit back and let Google do what it wants with Android, regardless of the patents, which hold them?" "And let us not forget be Android way for free."

A little late, but: "by the end of March 2011, Windows 7 was 20.9 per cent of the company's PCs, according to a new report by Forrester Research, turn on during Windows XP to 60% of business PCs-a year ago was down 69%."
"The report" desktop operating system and browser trends, Q2 to Q2 2011 Forrester, corporate 2010? Analysis of more than 400,000 client PCs on 2,500 companies include results for Forrester. "16 June report includes 2010 data collected by the end of the first calendar quarter 2011 12 months between the start of the second calendar quarter."

The table is interesting: that's worth clickthrough.

Simply brilliant. It is just us laugh at the image, which is "Yes!" Page Mrs Robinson "[sic], or enjoy any of it to?" "For the Cougar pairing their prey". In fact. And much more that still manages to remain SFW.

So put the DCMS from a blackened PDF. Turned from the editor easy was to undo. "The complete, unredacted version is now on Scribd." As you can see from this document, all incorrectly removed the material that was edited. "The tactics discussed, to avoid blocking all known, even to mere lawyers like me, and the revised theater seem for security reasons as more will be motivated."

Todd Bishop: "more evidence: registered AptiQuants website was on 14 July, less than a month ago, despite the company's statement that it was founded in 2006." This morning I associated with the phone number called AptiQuant of domain registration, but the man who answered running speak a different language, once I identified myself as a reporter, and he finally hung up after we were not able to communicate.
"News agencies, on the students-including the BBC, business insider, CNN, and many new - reported are now reporting it was a hoax."

Oh, hell. Who is to say that Opera users?

"Above, before Twitter and blogs, as USENET was one of the centres of net.influence, I have many, many years on the David LaMacchia case." I finally turned directly via the legal results. But I personally was not worth all the flaming about "Theft" and similar. I need experience not to this experience, I am trying to learn from my mistakes.
"""As, say started something, people haven't heard messages only to the last Friday in circulation, that in addition to the Federal Government charges in the amount of"Wire Fraud","Computer Fraud","illegally information from a protected computer"," recklessly damaging a protected computer", there are also two State Government fees".

No one knows how you stories about hacking to illustrate. In fact, they fight with stories about technology in General.

Clever: Why would you such arcane and trivial element specify "No Brown M & MS" in your contract? Think about it for a bit. (Original article, which it connects is gone, but explaining it.)

And you thought they were stupid rock musicians.

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Boot-up: Google +-disks, Apple's patent poker, the Tablet slowdown and more

If you are the stronger player, important almost not the cards. Photograph: Alamy
A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the technology team.
-Tell us what you look like the slightly tweaked. Better? Bad? (Here is how it looked on Friday.)

"Many Google + users saw an enormous amount of e-Mail notifications from the service this afternoon, and now Google has head of the social, Vic Gundotra, an explanation." "For 80 minutes we ran the space on the service, notifications, the ' Gundotra wrote about Google + tonight."Therefore our system continue to try sending notifications. Over and over again. Yikes.'""
If you confirm that this überhasteten a half-baked launch, then it is. Google + can have grown beyond expectations, but space is pretty cheap, Google way. And available-if you plan it.

Well look at the play-by-play of the mobile patents battle of Nortel.
"It was a subject of at least eight other news outlets, including VentureBeat ("Tablet sales slow"), the loop ("'Media Tablet' market not as strong as previously thought") and Forbes picked up (" sales dip notes media tablets will not replace PCs of any time soon ")."

"The source for these pessimist headlines?" 7.2 Million was an IDC report, that the number of tablet computers in sales channels delivered in the first quarter of 2011. "At first, that posted, sold me as absurd, given the fact that Apple (AAPL) alone reports next week is expected, that a good deal more than 7.2 million iPads last quarter."I also have a second look at the IDC report. What I missed first painting - and what this reporter, not berücksichtigen-- is that IDC Q1 2011, said that from January to March, 2011 leads not Q2 that ran from April to June. Course tablet sales after the October December dipped holiday quarter. We knew that months ago. "Is this news?"

"IPads be sold tablets for Android Smartphone users currently better than Android." So claims Canaccord Genuity Analyst Mike Walkley, the Apple Tablet market for quite some time dominate expected. "Walkley"our Smartphone handset review and indicate which iPads for Android Smartphone users better than the current Android sell tablets,"said in a Friday letter to customers (although he not numbers in support of the assertion provided)."

"There you have to only the list of people you have chosen on Google + follow hidden."My question is: If this setting is one that everyone on Google seems to feel is important for their privacy, why it is not the default for the rest of us? "

"It breaks my heart to say this, but Mac OSX Lion interface feels like a failure." Its stated mission was, the operating system, it with the clean experience of iOS to unify to simplify. That won't happen. "If it fast for the reliable Unix, graphics and networking cores, Lion Apple's own Vista would."

Could be not it be Apple's Vista even with UNIX, graphics and cores?
"Has anyone noticed that this week of published screenshots of the new Xbox Dashboard conspicuously omit the Zune logo?" If you look at the music experience shot below you see some generic music note graphics, but no Zune. "The Zune brand, is of course, gradually abolished." "This is just the latest public example of this slow migration."

More like a slow removal of Microsoft's history, Soviet-style.

"Perhaps is the biggest piece of news, we from Forsythe learned that is not free for the first time since its inception before seven years growl in the Mac app store." Talk devs of the project "still the final price, but"there are likely a dollar or two dollars at the most"according to Forsythe of". Some can pay their noses to appear nothing for the results of an open source project, but Forsythe says the reasoning behind the charge is simple: "I am an adult adults", he says, "and my wife wonder why I spend time working on my open source project and not with my two - month old." "For all the work of Forsythe and his colleagues have devs in Growl, a few dollars seems to ask."
Growl is a very fine piece of software. It's pretty hard to someone a few dollars below.

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Boot-up: 1-click patent rejected more open data, why is Ballmer at CES and more,

A burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the technology team
Nice try, Amazon: 'single click'-payment to obviously, patent-> > the register
"By the online-retail payment system giant Amazon patent, the European Patent Office (EPO) has decided, too obvious."Amazon had hoped for, how, who their customers for products by a single Web page-click numbers patent logged. The company was granted patent rights to the payment system in the United States.

"An Appeals Board to the EPO decided that the"one-click"method was too obvious, as it left called on existing inventions,"State of the art"in patent law." "Inventions need new, take an innovative, which is not obvious, and useful, patent protection can be applied to industry."

Maybe could we give the EPO at the US patent system in the form to come?
Cameron is the transparent society > UKAuthority
"Is pass data about the performance of GPs, schools and information about sets of individual courts, in the open, standardized format under latest transparency initiative of the Government on Thursday announced to be released."A letter about the new number promises 10 Downing Street website, on Thursday, "the most ambitious data open agenda of every Government in the world." "

Other events may have overshadowed this, but it is very important.
A pun on Google plus and the circles of hell > Terence Eden

"This is something Nik Butler and I discussed."Google must follow, so that the people choose the districts. "I can imagine a user interface that allows me to set a circle as a private ("working","Family",)"political rant") and some quarters as public (" kitten pictures "," industry news "," political thoughts ") set."If you follow me, you can say "I hate kittens, but I love policy - I follow a circle and the others ignore." "At the moment, I don't have the time, categorize 200 people in what I think that they are interested in." And she bombed want not with QR codes are, when all they really want is LOLCATS. "" So, come on Google, sort it out let people who select circles they want its inch "Please RT!"

The irony of this last application for Twitter are not lost available, hope we.
DNA is now DIY: OpenPCR ships worldwide > OpenPCR
"The price of a traditional PCR machine is around $ 3,000." So, do people in garages have large PCR machines? Not really. Howabout high school or middle school teachers? Nope.

Howabout of smaller medical test labs or Labs in India or China? Nope. Even some large bio-labs try their luck on eBay. We set out to change. "Josh and I OpenPCR a prototype in about 4 months ago - it was a lot of fun." In May we the first prototype of the OpenPCR all a bunch of crazy people on Kickstarter introduced, 158 people gave us a total of $12,121. With, that we developed and produced a repeatable, works all-the time device - it has a lot of hard work. "Now we are ready and willing to share!"
PCR is polymerase chain reaction - the method you use to enlarge a small sample of DNA. Now, everyone can play.

Currys.co.UK and the missing call > Sarah Parmenter
The strange case of how could not oven are purchased because the confirmation calls do not come through their iPhone kept. Strange as it looks at first glance.
That is why keynotes by Steve Ballmer at CES > CES Twitter account
CES noticed, what we are talking about and makes his statement.
China-based white box vendors expected to send to 8 million Tablet PCs in 2011 > DIGITIMES

"China-based white box vendors have developed mainly equipped with low-cost processors many models of low-cost Tablet PCs by Qualcomm, NVIDIA and via technologies for domestic sales and exports to emerging markets, with total shipments estimated at 2 m units for the first quarter of 2011 and expected 8 m for the year reach sound sources from Taiwan-based makers started."

"White-box laptop players targeted in particular the entry-level segment with price level than US$ 250 started cutting in China Tablet PC market beginning 2011. [even if] their weak operating system options only Android 2.2 / 2.3 or Windows 7 as compared to the mainstream operating system choices for the availability of software or applications are still demand from some consumer groups consider their low prices."
Not quite the "50 %" market share that said DisplaySearch, and DIGITIMES seems to know the suppliers.

Browse your Oyster travel and fare history > GitHub
Requires that you have your own server and written for Linux (or Mac OS X). Clever, you have the chops to make it work.

How to take screenshots of your Android phone without roots - Recombu
"We have reviewed recently a handful of Android phones allow you to screen Tomb, photographs of what also always on the phone display is currently simultaneously, through the power and menu button - simply press." At last! "You might think, a big deal." Apart from the fact that it is - it is a really useful feature. As well, our life here a little easier if we write app stories, it has many uses. "Conquer incriminating texts from friends/colleagues/ex-partner (ideal for the upload in Facebook, if you are feeling angry) to prove that you have three each angry birds level played (including all seasons and Rio), there are plenty of ways that this can be useful."
Confirmed that the work on the Samsung Galaxy S II, for a start.
Mein summer an Indian call center > Mother Jones

' While we in endless traffic where idle, I am of my colleagues Nishant asks. ' America? "he says.""I'll tell you about America." ' I must carefully, look, because he quickly explains that after years of the 50-hour WorkWeeks, probably spoken with more of my fellow citizens than I have. "America is not all honey and Roses which they say way" he informed me. ' " Truth is, that 90 percent of the people there find you, she'll do the dumbest things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are generous people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. "This is, why they the world prevail.'"

Fascinating insights. They - including one from someone who admits that she comments the idiot customer from hell would be - are also enlightening.
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