Theft Fail: Stolen iPhone Had Beta of GPS Tracking Software

iPhones are one of the most commonly stolen mobile devices according to crime statistics. But for 31-year-old Horatio Toure, he found out you better hope the iPhone you steal isn’t a test for a new type of tracking software.

He found this out the hard way after allegedly stealing the phone from Jordan Sturm, an assistant to Covia Labs CEO David Kahn. Kahn was at the company’s San Francisco office providing a demo of his company’s latest software, Alert & Respond. To simulate how it worked in real life situations, he asked Sturm to take his phone on a walk around the block.

This may have been a little more than they were bargaining for.

According to police, shortly after Sturm left the bulding Toure rode by on his bicycle and snatched the phone from the young woman. Seeing the phone moving at a high rate of speed down the street must have intially made Kahn thing it was malfunctioning, but it was actually Toure pedaling as fast as he could from the scene of the crime. Sturm ran back into the building and alerted her boss as well as the police as to what had just happened.

Police stayed on the line with Sturm as she relayed the position given by the device. It took police about ten minutes to finally track Toure down, who was arrested for grand theft and possession of stolen property.

Alert & Respond apparently has other capabilities such as remote microphone activation and picture taking, but Kahn said they didn’t want to give the robber any clue of how he was being tracked.

“What are the odds that you would grab someone’s cell phone during a demonstration of the ability to track the phone’s location in real time?” he told SFGate.com. Maybe Toure doesn’t know of the Ten Commandments: one of them being “thou shalt not steal.”

Amiga: 25 Years Later

Twenty-five years ago today, a new personal computer was unveiled at a black-tie, celebrity-studded gala at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. It debuted to rave reviews and great expectations–heck, InfoWorld said it might be the “third milestone” in personal computing after the Apple II and the IBM PC.

The computer was Commodore’s Amiga. In an era in which the most common form of microcomputer was an IBM PC-compatible system with a text-only display and a tinny internal speaker, the Amiga had dazzling color graphics and stereo sound. Its Intuition user interface looked like the Mac, but offered an advanced feature known as “multitasking.” The machine was a stunner, especially given that it came from a company previously known for rinkydink home computers such as the VIC-20 and Commodore 64.

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The Divine Apple, Examined

The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal found a few media and business scholars who have thoroughly examined the relationship between Apple enthusiasts and religious devotees. Yes, Apple has a resurrection myth, and Bill Gates is Satan.

THQ and the Death of Mediocre Video Games

Quotables from video game industry executives are usually not interesting to me, but I want to dwell on a comment from Ian Curran, THQ’s executive of global publishing, on why the company won’t be releasing sub-par video games anymore:

“[W]e can’t afford anymore to bring mediocre games to market,” Curran told CVG. “There’s no room for them. You’re either a standout, best in class, or you die. We won’t bring bad games to market anymore. You can’t spend $30, $40, $50 million on a bad game and expect to make a return.”

The point here is not Curran’s promise of better games from THQ, but the idea that anything less than the best is simply not worth developing. Review aggregation site Metacritic notes that average review scores in the first half of 2010 are up from the same period last year, even though overall game sales are down. Even a steady stream of top-notch games, such as Mass Effect 2, Red Dead Redemption and Super Mario Galaxy 2, can’t lift the games industry from its current rut.

The upshot, according to conventional wisdom, is that game publishers will take fewer risks and we’ll be subject to an endless cycle of mindless sequels, but that hasn’t proven totally true. Original games like Heavy Rain, Alan Wake and last year’s Demon’s Souls are still available to those who seek them. Meanwhile, Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network and WiiWare have provided a refuge for less expensive game development, and we’ve seen some great stuff in those download stores. This week’s Xbox Live Arcade release of Limbo, a critical darling, is a great example.

In light of so many great games with budgets big and small, Curran is saying that the middle ground — games from major publishers that aren’t highly-anticipated — has eroded. Publishers will either have to try harder to create the next blockbuster, or focus on low-cost, low return development instead. I’m fine with either.

There is a iPad Component Shortage, Mr. Cook

Apple’s chief operating officer Tim Cook said Tuesday that the iPad shortages had nothing to do with a component shortage, but it appears that’s not completely true. LG Display’s CEO Kwon Young-soo told reporters Friday that even with his plants running at full capacity, the company cannot meet the demand. Kwon estimated that it would be the spring of next year before the company could catch up.

The problem may actually get worse before it gets better: LG may ramp down production slightly next month. It is considering adding new production lines for Apple’s iPad displays, however, according to the Reuters report.

Nine new markets for the device were launched today, which means the device is now available in a total of 19 countries. About 3.27 million iPads have sold — approximately one million every month.

Apple Leads in Software (In)security

Secunia, a security service provider well known for tracking software defects, has ranked Apple as having the most reported vulnerabilities for its platforms during the first half of 2010. The majority of the flaws reside in OS X applications.

I’m not surprised. As malicious operating systems have become more hardened, exploiting vulnerabilities has required increasingly sophisticated attacks. End users are updating their systems, using antivirus programs–at least Windows users do–and have deployed firewalls. Hackers have to look for holes in applications.

Secunia reports that vulnerabilities were found in Apple applications such as iTunes, QuickTime, and Safari, and in the apps of third parties including Adobe and Oracle. Today, we reported that Safari has a vulnerability that could allow someone to delete your address book.

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Droid X Consuming 5x Data of Other Verizon Phones. Say What?

Motorola’s Droid X isn’t the only high-powered Verizon smartphone available, but it’s the biggest bandwidth hog according to one company executive.

Here’s the claim from Jennifer Byrne, Verizon’s business development executive director, made during the paidContent Mobile conference on Tuesday (emphasis mine):

“On Droid X, we’re seeing something like 5x the data usage of any other device.”

I’m skeptical. Droid X may be Verizon’s flagship smartphone at the moment, but it’s not the only one likely to consume lots of data. For Android alone, there’s the Droid Incredible, Droid Eris and plain old Droid, and I have a hard time accepting that Droid X users are suddenly way more likely to gobble up bandwidth. The only difference between Droid X and is peers is the option of becoming a mobile hotspot for $20 per month, and if that’s causing the data spike, it says more about mobile hotspot use than it does about the phone itself.

Still, the essence of Byrne’s statement is probably valid: Verizon’s seeing a huge uptick in mobile data use thanks to the popularity of Android smartphones, lending credence to the rumors that Verizon will nix unlimited data plans in favor of tiered packages.

The spike in data use also amounts to a day of reckoning for Verizon.  The carrier has said in the past that it’s equipped to handle the kind of traffic generated by an iPhone. Obviously, Verizon would be dealing with a lot more bandwidth demand if it ever got the iPhone, but think of the Android invasion as a sneak preview. If Verizon can handle this, it may have a chance at dealing with Apple’s traffic.

Microsoft: Not This Quarter, Apple

Microsoft has reported in with its quarterly earnings, posting revenues of $16.04 billion which ahead of Wall Street estimates and up 22 percent year over year. This still puts it about $300 million ahead of Apple, so Cupertino’s going to have to wait another quarter to edge Microsoft on the revenue front.

In terms of profit, Microsoft’s $4.52 billion for the quarter far exceeds Apple’s $3.25 billion, so while Apple may be near even in revenue, Redmond’s still making more money. This can be explained by the fact that a large portion of Microsoft’s business is in software, where profit margins are much higher.

“Our transition to cloud services is well underway with offerings like Windows Azure and our Business Productivity Online Services, and we look forward to continuing our product momentum this fall with the upcoming launches of Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Kinect,” chief operating officer Kevin Turner said in a statement.

The company also reported that it had sold 175 million licenses to Windows 7, and that it’s Bing search product had gained search share for the 13th straight month.

Flipboard Launches, Gets Overwhelmed, Regroups

Flipboard, the “social magazine” which I wrote about on Tuesday, remains a really cool, clever application–but its servers are struggling to keep up with all the iPad owners who want to check it out. For awhile, that resulted in some users simply being unable to get the app to work at all. Now the company has instituted an invite system: It says that the app’s standard content streams should now function smoothly, but that it’s letting people get access to their Facebook and Twitter feeds in groups.

If the standard hot-Web-startup scenario pans out, Flipboard will beef up its servers enough to make the app function well pretty quickly. It’s fascinating, though, just how hard it seems to be for companies to get this stuff right before they launch..

Walt Mossberg on Samsung’s Galaxy S Phones

Looks like HTC and Motorola’s duopoly on interesting Android smartphones is over: The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg is impressed by Samsung’s multi-carrier Galaxy S models.

Gaping Safari Security Hole

Okay, this is the most disturbing Apple security weakness I’ve heard about to date: a fairly straightforward Safari exploit that would let a hacker silently swipe information from your address book. Embarrassing, too: The guy who discovered it says he alerted Apple last month, and got only an automated reply.

Jason Fried Webcast is Iminent

The Webcast of an interview with Web guru Jason Friend of 37signals is about to start. I’ll be watching and guest-tweeting about it for the next hour…c’mon by!

Good (But Confusing) News for New York Times Fans Who Own iPads

Barnes & Noble has released a Nook application for Android and is (logically) rebranding all its other e-reader apps with the Nook name. But it has another piece of news today that’s more intriguing: iPad owners can now use Barnes & Noble’s app to subscribe to a full-blown digital edition of the New York Times. Cool–but I’m more confused than ever by the Times’s own iPad app, which is beautifully and intelligently designed but which offers only a smattering of content.

Buy.com’s New Return Policy is Ridiculous! In a Good Way!

I’m used to most revisions to retailer return policies being bad news: shorter periods, more exceptions, heftier restocking fees. But Buy.com has just extended the period during which you can return most of the items you buy to an amazing forty-five days. I hope it sets off a return-policy war among e-retailers. (Amazon.com’s standard period is thirty days, and many merchants stick you with shorter periods and/or a gaggle of gotchas.)

Microsoft Might’ve Killed Xbox 360 vs. PC Gaming

Ever wish you could play Gears of War for Xbox 360 against someone who owned the PC version, or vice versa? Microsoft reportedly did too, but might’ve killed the concept of PC vs. Xbox 360 gaming because console controls just aren’t accurate enough.

That’s the rumor coming from Rahul Sood, the founder of Voodoo PC and chief technical officer of HP’s gaming business. He cites “reliable sources” who say Microsoft was working on a way for PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers to play together, but problems arose during testing. Mediocre PC gamers were able to wipe the floor with even the best console players, because the PC’s mouse-and-keyboard combination was so precise.

Sood doesn’t say definitively that Microsoft killed the project because of the accuracy issue, but he lays heavy blame on Microsoft for not seeing the project through. The rest of his blog post is a ramble on the decline of PC gaming, the threat from Apple and a strange plug for WebOS game development (“and while it may take time for new devices to start showing up, you can rest assured that the wait will be worth it”).

If Microsoft was working on a way to connect Xbox 360 and PC gamers, control differences seem like a petty reason to ax the project. Why not require PC gamers to use an Xbox 360 controller in order to dive in with the console crowd? Or limit connected play to cooperative games such as Borderlands, instead of competitive ones in which the PC gamer has the advantage?

I hope Microsoft revisits (or visits) the issue some day, especially with Windows Phone 7 presenting its own opportunities for gaming. If Microsoft really wants to unify the PC, television and phone, there needs to be a way for gamers to interact across all three platforms.

The HP Slate Lives. Maybe. At Least It’s Not Dead

Engadget is reporting that HP will “make a determination soon on the next steps” for its Windows 7 slate PC–the one that I declared dead a few weeks ago. It’s not entirely clear what that means, but it’s the most the company has said about the product in several months.

I’m not going to eat my words until it’s on the market, or HP at least announces a price and release date…