TRUSTe Introduces a Privacy Seal for Apps

Privacy-certification company TRUSTe, which has long issued seals of approval to Web sites that honor its list of best practices. Now it’s going to do the same thing for mobile apps and sites on all major phone platforms, via a new service called TRUSTe Privacy for Mobile. It’s already up and running in test implementations by Apartments.com, Breastcancer.org, GoDaddy, the Weather Channel, WebMD, and Yelp.

With traditional sites, folks are concerned about what happens to personal information such as their name, address, and credit-card info. On phones, they’re additionally concerned about what happens to details about their physical location–given that virtually every smartphone can determine where they are and hand that info over to apps.

TRUSTe’s mobile certification, therefore, includes rules such as requiring that a third-party application notify the user once that it’s going to use location information. (That turns out to be a halfway point between the required geolocation practices on Apple’s iOs–which are pretty restrictive–and Google’s Android–rather la–TRUSTe CEO Chris Babel told me.)

Apps that use TRUSTe’s certification (which starts at $3,000 a year) can incorporate a slick, simple guide that lets users check out their privacy practices with a few taps. Here’s a Web-based demo.

Amazon to Offer Kindle App for BlackBerry PlayBook

Okay, the BlackBerry PlayBook will have at least one third-party app: Amazon’s already announced Kindle for it.

WebOS: HP, and HP Only

More news from TechCrunch Disrupt: TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington asked Todd Bradley, executive VP of HP’s Personal Systems Group, whether the company had any intention of licensing WebOS, which it acquired when it bought Palm, to any other company. He gave a definitive “no,” and if that decision has been publicly stated before, I’d missed it.

Bradley knows whereof he speaks: He’s a former CEO of Palm, back when it was an independent company–one that, at one point, staked its future on the idea that a company could be both a hardware maker and a licensor of its operating system to other companies. Some decent products emerged during this era–I certainly dug my Sony Clie–but overall, it seemed to be terribly damaging to Palm, and the fact that the company split into two entires (PalmOne and PalmSource) hurt rather than helped. In fact, it probably contributed to Palm being in the sticky situation that eventually led to it being acquisition bait for HP.

I can’t think, offhand, of an operating system that’s been both a successful in-house platform and a successful licensed one for any period of time. (If you can recall any, shout them out–no, Mac OS doesn’t count.)

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RIM Reveals the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet. It Looks Spectacular–So Far

It’s always dangerous to judge a new tech product from a demo. It’s even more dangerous to judge one from a canned video and a features list. But here at BlackBerry DevCon in San Francisco, RIM just showed a video of its BlackPad tablet–which turns out to be called the BlackBerry PlayBook, and which the company is calling “the first professional tablet”–and revealed some of the key specs. And from what we know so far, it looks mighty cool–like “this is the most interesting-sounding iPad rival so far” cool.

Here’s the video we just saw:

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Innocent Mad Catz Controllers Killed in PS3 Counterfeit Crackdown

A recent Playstation 3 firmware update has blocked knock-off Playstation 3 controllers, but not without taking down a few legitimate third-party controllers from Mad Catz.

The Mad Catz controllers that no longer work with the Playstation 3′s latest firmware are the 2008 Wireless PS3 GamePad, 2008 Wired PS3 GamePad and PS3 Wireless MicroCon. Mad Catz will replace the controllers if they’re within the standard warranty of five years, GamesIndustry.biz reports, so anyone who acts before 2012 should be fine.

Why Sony is cracking down on counterfeit Playstation 3 controllers now is unclear. Sony’s official line is that fake controllers have been spotted in the market, and they’re prone to igniting or exploding.

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Microsoft: Goodbye Spaces, Hello WordPress.com

Interesting news at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this morning: Microsoft is shutting down its Windows Live Spaces blogging service and helping its seven million bloggers migrate over to Automattic’s WordPress.com. Spaces bloggers will be able to recreate their blogs on WordPress or download their data so they can make other arrangements, and they have a reasonably generous six months to make a decision before Microsoft shutters Spaces. And a new integration feature will let WordPress.com users ping their Windows Live buddies whenever they’ve published a new post.

I suppose that there are some Spaces users who considered using WordPress.com and opted for Microsoft’s service instead, but I suspect they’re far outnumbered by newbies who chose Spaces simply because it’s been the default Windows Live blogging service until now. Overall, it sounds like a good move for everyone involved: Spaces bloggers get an outstanding blog platform that’s evolving rapidly (rather than Spaces, which wasn’t), Microsoft doesn’t have to try and compete in a field that’s not core to its success, and WordPress.com gets lots of new members.

(I cheerfully admit to a bias here, since Technologizer is on WordPress.com–using the VIP version of the service–and I wouldn’t swap it for Spaces or any other blogging platform on the planet.)

Would You Pay $30 For an At-Home, One-Time Movie?

Bloomberg’s Ronald Grover and Kelly Riddell are reporting that Sony, Warner Bros., and Disney are exploring the idea of letting consumers watch movies at home, shortly after they leave theaters and before they’re available on DVD and from services such as iTunes, Amazon Video on Demand, and CinemaNow. The movies might be available via cable companies and/or on game consoles, and the price the Bloomberg story mentions is “as much as $30.”

That sounds like a boatload of money given that you can rent Avatar for $3.99 or buy it for $14.99 right now. I suppose that the studios hope that folks will compare the $30 price to the cost and effort involved in hauling a family of three, four, or more down to a theater and paying for tickets, popcorn, and drinks.

And…well, $30 still sounds like a lot for a movie you can watch only at home, and only once.  $15 might be more in my personal ballpark.

Your take, please:

3D on an iPhone, No Stupid Glasses Required

I remain a 3D skeptic, but I’d like to see this for myself before giving it a yay or a nay.

Sharp Gets Into the Android Tablet Game

Sharp has announced two Android tablets. One has a screen that’s even smaller than the one on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab; the other has one that’s even bigger than the one on the iPad.

An Airier MacBook Air?

When Steve Jobs brandished the MacBook Air onstage at MacWorld Expo 2008, it looked amazing (at least I was amazed as I snapped the photo above). After almost three years, though, it’s just another nicely-designed Mac–and a pricey one. (Toshiba’s Portege R700 may not feel as luxe, but its starting price is $600 less and it manages to pack a DVD burner into a case that matches the Air’s three-pound weight.)

But if the rumors are right (NOT A GIVEN! NOT A GIVEN!) Apple is readying an Air that replaces the current model’s 13.3″ display with an 11.6″ one, and shaves about ten percent of the weight off. Normally, I’d be skeptical about rumors of the company making a product cooler through significant downsizing of the display–but given the new iPod Nano, the idea of a sort of MacBook Air Nano is plausible.

Goodbye, NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker!

Assuming that the government OKs Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal, network chief executive Jeff Zucker will depart.

While I’m not one to dwell on personnel changes at entertainment companies, Zucker’s an interesting figure. As CNet points out, he’s notorious for giving tech companies a hard time over NBC content. Notably, NBC tried to get a cut of iPod revenue while negotiating  iTunes licensing of TV shows, and NBC is not taking part in the 99-cent show rentals Apple TV will offer. Zucker said that price would “devalue” the network’s content.

NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage was also terrible. Event feeds were unavailable online to people who didn’t have cable subscriptions, and major events were tape-delayed and kept offline to force primetime viewing.

But when I think of Zucker, I’m reminded most of his hard line against Boxee, which tried to use content from Hulu, the web video site backed by NBC, News Corp and ABC.

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Does Microsoft Have Its Mojo Back? Can It Keep It?

Over at his personal site, Frederic Lardinois of ReadWriteWeb is comparinf the world’s biggest software company to a massive tanker that’s turned and is moving full steam ahead. He points to Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Internet Explorer, Bing, the Office Web Apps, and Windows Live Essentials as evidence that Microsoft has its act together. Not surprisingly, his post is attracting lots of comments–the majority from folks who think he’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

You can argue with Lardinois’s take on any specific product he mentions (or, if you choose, all of them). I’m largely impressed with Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9, find the Office Web Apps disappointing, and think it’s too early to render a verdict on the intriguing Windows Phone 7. Overall, I think that Microsoft is doing a decent job of making good products that address its customers biggest needs. Certainly more so than it was doing a few years ago, when too many years of monopolistic market share in too many categories had left it lethargic and out of touch. (Monopolies have a way of doing that.)

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On Xbox 360, Super Meat Boy Finds Free Level Loophole

Free downloadable content has become somewhat of a rarity for console video games. The fees for getting extra levels and multiplayer maps approved by the console maker, and the need to cover increasingly high development costs with post-release content, means you just don’t get a lot of freebies anymore.

Team Meat, developers of the upcoming Super Meat Boy, have discovered a workaround, at least on the Xbox 360. The game — a two-dimensional throwback platformer, like Super Mario Bros. with twisted humor — will store new level data under “Title Managed Storage,” a section of Microsoft’s servers usually used for non-essential data like weather, sports game rosters and other settings. By storing level data instead, Team Meat can offer new Super Meat Boy levels at no extra charge, and at no cost to them.

To boot, what a quote from Super Meat Boy co-developer Tommy Refenes (asterisks mine): “In a world where it costs $2 to unlock content in a game that you’ve already purchased it is nice to have the power to totally say ‘f*** you’ to that system and go our own way.”

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A Talk With Zappos’s Tony Hsieh

Quick reminder: I’ve been invited to watch a Webcast with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and tweet my thoughts. It’s at 2pm PT today. More information here, or go here to watch.

PARC Predicts the Future of Mobile Tech, Circa 1991

I’m spending the afternoon at PARC–the Xerox subsidiary formerly known as the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center–for a fascinating event celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the legendary research organization. Ethernet, laser printers, and much of the concepts and technologies in every modern graphical user interface  all emerged from PARC; among the many legendary alums here today are Adele Goldberg, Alan Kay, Bob Metcalfe, and Charles Simonyi. And I just shook the hand of the man sitting next to me–Alvy Ray Smith, a computer graphics pioneer and former PARC employee who cofounded Pixar.

Here’s a video I stumbled across on YouTube–it was apparently made at PARC circa 1991, and talks about ubiquitous computing, a long-time subject of PARC research that’s being discussed by panelists here even as I speak.

No, it doesn’t predict the iPhone–but it’s still fascinating and prescient, like much of the work done at PARC over the past four decades.

Office Web Apps Go Embeddable

I’m still not wild about Microsoft’s new Web-based versions of its Office apps, but they’re getting new features at a decent clip. You can now embed PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets in any Web page.