There are some phone taps that are not true taps at all. They are more like bugs that only allow you to listen to one end of the conversation. While one end can be very useful, the fact is that it can also be very incomplete, leaving a lot of things to conjecture. The most effective phone taps allow you to listen to both ends of the conversation so that you can get as much context from the conversation as possible. Usually hard taps, soft taps, and advanced cell phone bugs are the phone taps that can allow you to listen to both sides of the conversation. These are taps that get you into the system,?so to speak, so that you are in the middle of the communication. The best and most advanced taps are not noticeable by the parties being listened to, and so the eavesdropper can hear whatever needs to be heard without letting the others know she or he is there. Hard phone taps are those that make use of an actual physical line. They consist of a secondary line hooked into the primary line and then bridged to another location. The person listening can be at the location of the tap, or they can use a slave?to send a transmission. This type of phone tap is extremely difficult to detect, as it is hardwired and usually at a location away from the phone, so sweeping the room for bugs will not be effective.

Soft phone taps are those that take place inside the software of the phone company. The listener gains access to the digital network by hacking in or receiving permission. Most phone companies today now incorporate digital lines into their service, even if the person has a land line. This means that the listener only needs to know which line is associated with the conversation he or she would like to listen to. These are relatively easy to find if someone knows how to look in the software, but virtually undetectable to the parties having the conversations. Cell phone taps are another matter altogether. They make use of a special cell phone that allows you to dial a secret number to activate the phone for listening. The user is usually unsuspecting and has no idea you are listening to the conversation when you use cell phone taps.

Gas fitters are often the most skillful worker in house inspection and they perfer fishing charter Auckland.

As more people move away from lucrative Windows desktops (OK, more is a relative term, but it’s definitely a countable number) folks like McAfee have to find new threats for us to fear in order to ensure that we purchase their products.

The latest scare? McAffee is warning us that HTML5 in Chrome OS will be able to hack us even when we’re not online. They have no proofs of concept, no actual data… it’s just conjecture.

That BusinessWeek picked this up with a delightfully alarmist headline is also a testament to McAffee’s success. Oh well. Folks like McAffee have to eat as well, so stay scared, web users!

Good old Harry McCracken has build up another one of his exhaustive topical examinations, this time turning his bespectacled gaze towards the iPhone. Like the iSlate or the iTablet or the iNinjaStar, analysts, journos, and bloggers frothed at the mouth for years before the product was announced. Take Kevin Rose’s exciting prediction, straight from “sources:”

* January launch on “all” providers, both CDMA and GSM
* Extremely small form factor
* Two battery design (with single charger) — one for playing music, the other for phone functions
* Flash memory: 4GB for $249, 8GB for $449
* “Slide-out keyboard”
* Possibly touchscreen

Generally, what you’re seeing here are a million monkeys at a million typewriters. They eventually get some things right but they mostly get things wrong.

Harry rolls into page three of his analysis with an with a few pertinent points to ponder when thinking about iPhone rumors. To wit:

They rehashed a gumbo of “facts” from multiple sources. The stuff that might actually have been leaked by insiders in the know got indiscriminately blended with iffy guesswork and bizarre fantasy, until it was tough to tell the difference. For instance, several stories about the iPhone rightly talked about it having a touchscreen, but nobody figured out that this was (A) true, and (B) one of the phone’s defining features.

This rehashed gumbo of facts is what’s currently clouding our thinking on the iTablet and creating a mess of conjecture and prediction that, in the end, will be wrong. But darn it if we don’t keep right on fantasizing.

Whenever companies do something inexplicable, the nerd in me always comes back to that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfus keeps building models of a mountain, culminating in a huge, muddy mess in his kitchen. Throughout it all he keeps saying “This means something.”

Well, the latest molehill into a mountain is the move by Time Inc. and Conde Nast, among others, to build a tablet-based interface for their flagship titles. This means something, but what it means is that the homes of Time and Gourmet (oh, wait), aren’t going to take the coming industrial disruption lying down.

While I don’t think their preparations will be for naught – there will be some sort of reader device coming soon that will give the magazines what they need and want in terms of interface – I think the most important aspect of this recent upswell in tablet interest is the harsh realization by publishers that the fit is hitting the shan.

Make no mistake: none of these publishers know that the Apple Tablet – or any other *Pad, *Tablet, *Reader – is coming. If they did they couldn’t talk about what they’re doing for it. NDAs are very strict and if anyone, from the publisher of Vanity Fair to the CEO of Time, Inc. sat down with Apple to talk about the iTablet and then went on to run his or her mouth about the project, we’d hear more about the lawsuits than anything else. These efforts are based on conjecture and some sort of undying hope that someone, somewhere is planning something cool that these publishers can use.

In my opinion, newspapers and magazines should band together to release a subsidized reader. This reader will include a touchscreen, WiFi, and a color display. Offer every subscriber a choice: you can keep getting the dead tree version of our rag for $X or you can get this device for the same amount, maybe less, maybe free, and have access to multiple magazines on the go in a subscription or a la carte payment model. Later you offer third party versions of the reader, dump the reader code into an iPhone app, and then wait for the profit. Even if this initial reader is the CueCat of its generation, publishers will have escaped the terminal fall into unyielding firmament.

Publishing companies want you to think they’re on top of things. Unfortunately, publishing is an entrenched world of power players with little power all jockeying for a blockbuster. That these organizations are now working together shows that they have learned a little bit from the music and movie debacles going on around them but I worry that their reliance on coming technology that may or may not exist is a bit naive. To truly survive they have to take their own destiny in hand and prepare for the worst, the worst being that Apple will take over their potential media marketplace with an iTunes Magazine Store.

I’m glad to see some of these companies are proactive in terms of future media. However, they are replicating efforts made by many before them, including Zinio, a company noticeably quiet in this transaction. After all, someone owns the patent for the “reproduction of magazine content on a web tablet” and I assure you it isn’t Anna Wintour. It was probably filed long before the end of the dot com boom, just as the captains of the media industry were dining on truffle oil and gold foil garnished duck. Sadly, those same captains are now slumming with online as their listing ships begin to sink.

Disclaimer: Jeremy Kessel has a J.D., but is still waiting for his (July 2009) California Bar Exam results. Thus, he is not (yet) a licensed attorney. Barry L. Cohen, who also shares some insights below, is a licensed attorney. Regardless, this post is not meant as legal advice or analysis and should not be construed as such.

As many of you are aware, Nokia filed a lawsuit against Apple last week in the Federal District Court in Delaware. Nokia’s complaint alleges that Apple has infringed on 10 of Nokia’s patents for various, “fundamental” GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) technologies. In particular, the patents cover wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia believes that all 10 patents have been infringed by all Apple iPhone models shipped since the iPhone was introduced back in 2007.

This brings up the question: Why wait until now, Nokia, to sue Apple? Clearly, without speaking directly to Nokia’s legal team, all of the following is pure (albeit educated) conjecture. Nonetheless, with intellectual property (i.e. copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets) becoming increasingly important and relevant to (technology) companies around the globe, it is worth taking a few minutes to explore some of the possible motives/strategies behind Nokia’s latest legal muscle flexing.

As I am not yet a licensed attorney (I find out next month), we turned to Barry L. Cohen, Esq., who specializes in commercial and business litigation and intellectual property litigation and licensing at Thorp Reed & Armstrong, for his thoughts on the Nokia v. Apple matter at large. According to Mr. Cohen, because Nokia has been successful in licensing the patents at issue with dozens of other companies, the Finnish company most likely felt confident that it would be able to reach an agreement with Apple as well. When the negotiations reached an impasse, Nokia was essentially left with no other choice but to pursue legal recourse.

Filing the lawsuit against Apple is most likely, at least in part, a deliberate strategy to put more pressure on Apple to agree to the terms that Nokia has requested with regards to licensing the patented technologies. Because the 10 patents at issue include “fundamental” cellular technologies, the lawsuit may also have been motivated by some (or many) of the other companies who are already paying licensing fees to Nokia and want Apple to do the same.

Alright, now that we have explored (somewhat superficially) why Nokia has prompted the suit against Apple, this in turn leads to another question: Why would Apple refuse to license the technologies if they are imperative for the operation of its iPhone? Again, without speaking directly to Apple, we can only speculate. It is possible that Apple has licensed similar technologies from Ericsson (who, along with Nokia and Qualcomm hold some of the largest mobile technology patent portfolios in the world), thereby eliminating the need to license the patents at issue from Nokia. Or alternatively, Apple may believe that it is not infringing or that Nokia’s patents should be invalidated. However, considering that some 40 other mobile companies have licensed these key patents, this is extremely unlikely (possibly even impossible, depending on which company holds what patents).

According to Mr. Cohen, it is more likely a money issue. The longer that Apple goes without paying licensing fees, the cheaper Apple can sell its iPhone and the bigger market share it can build up. Alternatively, Apple may not have wanted to pay or could not agree on the amount of the royalty rate that Nokia was requesting. Given the scale (i.e. millions of devices), even a tiny discrepancy in price could result in hundreds of millions of dollars, going one way or the other.

Regardless of the actual motivation behind the lawsuit, considering that less than 1% of cases go to trial, it is most likely that Nokia is using the suit as a bargaining chip. Both companies, whether they actually like it or not, can afford to see cases like this through to the end, as the legal costs, even in the mutltiple millions of dollars, are relatively insignificant in the big picture for Nokia and Apple. Rather, suing Apple will provide Nokia more leverage in obtaining some variety of settlement (i.e. receiving royalties for its patents), and on the flip side, might even help Apple save a few bucks if a third-party mediator is brought in to help resolve the dispute.

Some may argue that Nokia is a total hypocrite, given its recent expensive and drawn-out legal clash with fellow mobile big shot, Qualcomm. But, as Mr. Cohen points out, Nokia is clearly no dummy (yup, that is a legitimate legal term). Nokia has clearly weighed the pros and cons of filing the lawsuit and what it will mean to their licensing strategy. Whether or not the strategy works, will depend in part on Apple, who is also not a fool.

Finally, I do not believe (as John does) that this suit was directly motivated by Nokia’s recent financial struggles. As someone who has studied intellectual property and has a general sense of the value that a company’s IP assets hold, I agree with Mr. Cohen and everyone else who thinks that this is ultimately a negotiation. Nokia is an enormously powerful mobile technologies company. Sure it is facing increased competition from the likes of Apple, HTC, Samsung, etc, but I do not believe this lawsuit signifies some sort of last gasp, or in the words of John (no disrespect, of course), a “mercenary approach, [a way to] cash in on some of the iPhone’s success.” For better or for worse, this is the new way of the technology road. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing and obtaining IP assets, and at the end of the day, they will continue to do whatever it takes (i.e. sue each other on an endless merry-go-round) to protect and enforce their IP rights.

What could be better? A short workweek, an Apple event tomorrow, and all is right with the world. But what can we expect from Big Cupertino tomorrow and what won’t we see at the event of the summer? Read on.

First, just a reminder that we’ll be covering the event live tomorrow starting at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern. We’ll be using our liveblogging platform so you won’t have to go nuts refreshing the page.


Now, for the meat. Here is what we know:

1. There will be iPods with cameras. The Nano and the Touch should get cameras, we’re not certain on the iPod Classic. The camera is believed to be the 3.2-megapixel model inside the iPhone 3G.
2. There won’t be a tablet. The iPad isn’t ready and this isn’t the event for the iPad launch. This should happen before the holidays.
3. Steve will probably be there. He’s doing OK and this is a good way to rally the troops. He could be a “One more thing” surprise, thereby building the tension and causing an orgasm of fanboi adulation.

Here’s what we can conjecture:

1. A new version of iTunes should appear with some sort of social networking built in along with cloud-based playlists you can share with your friends.
2. The iPods won’t be available immediately due to their complexity. We suspect they’ll be available a few weeks into the future. They’ve done this before, notably with the Touch.
3. There won’t be updates on any other hardware. This isn’t a line show but an iPod show.
4. The iPod Classic could be dead or may not receive an upgrade and still stagger on through the line. The classic is fast becoming a storage device rather than the go-to MP3 player for many.
5. There might be some Beatles stuff.

Here’s what won’t happen:
1. They won’t release iPhone OS 3.1. There’s no reason right now.
2. To reiterate, there will be no iPad.
3. Steve Jobs will not land in the Yerba Buena Center in a large silver spacecraft and take three chosen humans on board, all women, where the group will float serenely in space, repopulating the universe with Jobsian clones grown in utero during balletic space orgies and then sent hurtling through space in tiny pods shaped like the Mighty Mouse.