Cuppacafe

Yep, that's right, just when you think that we’re on the verge of brand-spanking new technology (say, a smartphone revolution) than someone else steps to the head of the line and slaps everyone silly with a lawsuit. Yep, Just as Google announces the roll-out of its entry into the field, the Nexus One phone at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), and it’s Google-based Android operating system gets picked up as the operating system by both AT&T and Dell, than the heirs of noted Sci-Fi Grandmaster Philip K. Dick throw a legal wet blanket over the entire field.

As Google Inc. launches its Nexus One phone, one call that the company hasn't made is to the family members of science-fiction author Philip K. Dick, who complain the device's name infringes on one of Mr. Dick's most famous novels.

"We feel this is a clear infringement of our intellectual-property rights," said Isa Dick Hackett, a daughter of Mr. Dick and the chief executive of Electric Shepherd Productions, an arm of the Dick estate devoted to adapting the late author's works.

"Our legal team is dealing head-on with this," she said Tuesday. An attorney for the estate declined to elaborate on what legal steps it has taken.
[BLADE] Warner Brothers/Everett Collection

Philip K. Dick's novel, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,' was the basis for the 1982 film 'Blade Runner.'

Mr. Dick's 1968 novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," which served as the basis for the 1982 cult film "Blade Runner," follows a bounty hunter chasing androids known as Nexus-6 models.

Ms. Hackett believes Google referenced that work in coming up with the name for its new phone, but the company never called her family or attorneys for permission to license the name.

A Google spokesman declined to comment.

In other tech-savvy news, you might soon be able to access the Internet from your car’s dashboard.

To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.

Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.

You can get a good look at these here (vie NY Times). Talk about your Internet superhighway, eh?

Still, not to be outdone, Skype, has an app that is coming to a Living Room near you.

Now how cool is that?

The (Tech-savvy) Perfessor

Yep, you heard that right, Google is (apparently) setting itself up to embed itself even further into our lives., as it is getting set to issue it’s own phone to compete directly with Apple’s iPhone. Sure, sure, we already know that Verizon has recently issued the Droid, that is powered by Google, so we are sort of wondering why the search giant would take the next step and issue its own phone to compete with, well, its own phone?

Apparently we are not alone in that thought.

Does Google want to change the cellphone industry? Is it worried that Android adoption will stall? I would say no on both counts. The Google phone is necessary because the company feels an Apple-like need to control the user experience.

We have seen this from Google already in its introduction of the Chrome browser and announcement of the Chrome operating system. Both were created to load web pages and applications faster and make them more central to the user experience, thereby benefiting Google’s search-advertising cash cow.

Google also likes end-to-end control of its own processes. It has made its own hardware for its search business - it thinks it knows best in putting together the servers that process search queries.

Interestingly enough, rather than selling their new phone (dubbed “Nexus One”) through a wireless carrier — Google is planning to sell the phone online. Speculation is that at some point down the road, the company may choose to seek wireless partnerships in the future, which means that —at least initially — users would be required to buy their wireless service separately.

While the move gives Google flexibility to distribute software services such as email and maps without playing by wireless carriers' rules, Google risks making new enemies among companies whose trust it has tried to win.

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment on how the phone might be received. In a blog post Saturday, Google said it was testing a new device running Android with its employees to "experiment with new mobile features and capabilities."

Our observation is that Google is attempting to use the phone to help redefine itself in much the same way that Apple used the iPod to redefine itself several years back. This could get very interesting.

The Perfessor

According to Nielsen, Microsoft's search engine, Bing, is growing eight times faster than Google.

More consumers are Googling with Bing. According to the latest stats from research firm Nielsen, Microsoft’s (MSFT) new search engine is growing faster than its archrival’s.

Which (according to the report) makes Bing the fastest-growing search outfit around. The new search engine has a growth rate more than eight times greater than Google’s. Which is quite an achievement given Google’s de facto monopoly over search coupled with the fact that Bing launched just a few months ago. According to some, this clearly makes Microsoft’s new offering the new hot ticket in town, as it is picking up momentum despite Google’s repeated dismissals of it.

Still, given that Google is all but a monopoly (with “Google it” virtually becoming a short cut to “look it up on the Internet” in much the same way that “Xerox it” is shorthand for “make a photo copy” one could argue that Bing has no place to go but up).

Still, even though this seems pretty impressive, I’m still utilizing Google as my engine of choice.

The Perfessor

Unless you were living in a cave yesterday you missed the prelude to the end of all things.

I kid you not.

Twitter went down for several hours (and no, that isn’t code for some sexually-deviant thing) Settle down, Walt. What I mean to say is that the self-serving, ego-centric electronic posting service Twitter was unavailable to its subscribers for several hours yesterday.

According to The Financial Times, what might have been no more than a teenage prank completely knocked Twitter offline for over two hours yesterday.

The micro-blogging firm, whose service allows text and web posting of messages of 140 characters or less, said it was hit by a denial-of-service attack, in which thousands of personal computers attempt simultaneous connections, slowing the target site’s response to a virtual standstill.

According to The Wall Street Journal it was more than just Twitter that was hit, but Facebook as well (which jives with this blogger experienced, as I was having some difficulty posting, which ticked me off to no end).

Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. were working together with Google Inc. to investigate what happened, according to a person familiar with the matter. Another person familiar with the attack said it may have been targeted at a single Russian activist blogger with accounts across the impacted services.

The New York Times indicated that Google was also targeted:

Many of Twitter’s 45 million legitimate visitors were unable to use the service for hours. Analysts characterized the disruption as a denial-of-service attack, in which hackers overwhelm a Web site by sending it a deluge of junk requests, and one suggested the attack might have originated in Russia or Georgia.

While it is still not clear where the attack originated, or who was behind the digital assault, it is clear that someone out there was looking to jam the rest of us up.

Oh, and that isn’t even the the worst news; apparently stats confirm that teens don’t tweet:

If you’re under 25 and use Twitter, you’re not the source of the site’s tremendous growth. While we recently questioned the findings of a largely anecdotal report from Morgan Stanley written by a 15 year old, Nielsen has now produced figures that confirm the trend: young people don’t Tweet.

So stay wary my friends.

The Perfessor

Good news boys and girls, it appears that your boss probably won’t discover that you are screwing around on company time updating your FaceBook page and blogging what an A-Hole your boss is because he’s apparently doing what he is getting paid to do.

Worried about bumping into your boss on a social media service, then having to explain some indiscrete comment you made in cyberspace? If you work for the world’s biggest companies, you can relax: Your CEO isn’t spending time on the social Web.

A survey of Fortune 100 CEOs finds that almost none of them are using Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn. Reuters:

Go figure...

You can read the rest of that report here.

The Perfessor

Well, given that Walt has been off playing with his new friends and leaving us to our own devices, I think that it is time that we have a little bit of fun in these pages. A few weeks ago, I got turned on to a new search site that seems to be looking through the Web in a brand new way.

The site is called SearchMe, and well, you really need to click that link, open the window, and then see it for yourself. The site is currently in Beta Test, and It would be extremely premature to say that it will overtake Google, Yahoo, Ask, or even any of the other existing search engines of choice, but it is certainly a way-cool way to look at the web.

Check it out, you’ll be pleasently surprised. and, well entertained.

The Perfessor