MacRumors

Financial Times reports that talks between Apple and a number of newspaper and magazine publishers have encountered several hurdles that have slowed the deal-making process as the periodicals publishing industry attempts to understand how the move to digital distribution will affect its business.

One of the major concerns publishers are reportedly having pertains to Apple's policy of sharing only limited customer information with its content partners. As the report notes, publishers have long mined data on their subscribers in order to develop marketing efforts and evolve the focus of their publications over time, but Apple's reluctance to share that information is reportedly making publishers uneasy.

Apple's practice of sharing with its partners little consumer data beyond sales volume is a problem. "Is it a dealbreaker? It's pretty damn close," said one senior media executive of a US metropolitan daily newspaper.

Publishers have spent decades collecting information about subscribers that influence marketing plans and, in some cases, the content of the publication itself. Apple's policy would separate them from their most valuable asset, publishing executives said. "We must keep the relationship with our readers," says Sara hrvall, senior vice-president of research at Swedish publisher Bonnier . "That's the only way to make a good magazine."

Another concern for newspaper and magazine publishers is Apple's proposed revenue sharing arrangement, which involves Apple taking a 30% share of revenue for handling distribution. The arrangement is the same as that being used in dealings with book publishers and already in effect for application developers in the company's App Store. Periodical publishers are reportedly unhappy with being asked to give up 30% of revenue on an ongoing basis and argue that their recurring charges for continuing content should be treated differently than single-payment content offerings.

Despite the hurdles, the report notes that the talks are "considered friendly and continuing", suggesting that deals are still likely to be made as publishers remain excited about the platform and new potential revenue streams available through it.

The New York Times reveals that Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is about to participate in an authorized biography of his life. The biography will be written by former managing editor of Time magazine Walter Isaacson.

Jobs' participation is noteworthy in that he has never been cooperative with such efforts in the past. In fact, Jobs has reportedly been angered by previous unauthorized biographies that have been published about him:

Mr. Jobs has reacted angrily to some of these books, and in some cases has directed Apple stores to temporarily remove other books from the same publishers from their shelves.

The new biography is only in the early planning stages at this point and would cover his entire life from youth to present day.

Boy Genius Report claims to have received information from a source at AT&T claiming that the company will be offering the Wi-Fi+3G models of Apple's iPad for sale in its stores. According to the report, AT&T will be dedicating substantial display space to the forthcoming device.

One of our AT&T connects down south just hit us up with some pretty interesting info... According to them, AT&T stores will be selling the 3G version of the Apple iPad, complete with built-in display. We're told that the general plan is to convert one or two existing netbook display sections in each corporate AT&T location into a pretty substantial iPad display area.

Apple has not yet offered information about what retail channels will be available for iPad distribution. While the device will obviously be carried in Apple's own online and retails stores, the iPad could easily be carried by third-party retailers such as Best Buy and AT&T.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted during the iPad's introduction late last month that 3G service for capable iPad models can be activated directly on the device due to the contract-less prepaid data plan being offered by AT&T in the United States, simplifying distribution by not requiring purchasers to interface with AT&T's systems to enable service while at the point of sale. AT&T would of course be well-served by offering the 3G iPad models in its own locations as a means to spur customers to sign up for the carrier's data service.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Apple is planning to bring back its FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology for use on eBooks made available through its iBookstore for the iPad.

Veteran iTunes customers will recognize the locks as FairPlay, a digital rights management software that once limited how many times digital songs can be copied onto different computers. (Apple phased out FairPlay a year ago, and now sells unfettered tunes.)

Next month, Apple will be dusting off those digital cuffs for books, according to sources in the publishing industry.

According to the report, many but not all publishers are likely to take advantage of the FairPlay technology in order to combat piracy of their content. O'Reilly Media, publisher of technical books and an outspoken critic of DRM, is one publisher likely to eschew such an implementation. Apple has remained silent about its DRM plans for its eBook content, although it is clear that control over content usage is highly desired by most publishers.

Apple's iBooks application and iBookstore will take advantage of the open EPUB standard for electronic books, but such files can also include a wrapper such as FairPlay to restrict usage of the material. Adobe has also deployed a DRM solution for EPUB content known as Content Server, but Adobe's and Apple's solutions would not be compatible with each other, allowing Apple to pursue its own integrated eBook ecosystem much as it did with FairPlay-wrapped iTunes music and the iPod before making the shift to DRM-free music last year. FairPlay continues to be used, however, on TV show and movie content available through the iTunes Store.

As predicted, Microsoft today unveiled Windows Phone 7, the next-generation smartphone operating system serving as the successor to and rebranding of the company's Windows Mobile software. One of the software's key features is the use of integrated "hubs", offering content views based on content rather than specific applications. Hubs will include People, Pictures, Games, Music+Video, Marketplace, and Office.

In addition, "live tiles" on the system's Start screen will offer real-time information updates, and a dedicated hardware button will provide one-click access to Bing search tools.

With Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft takes a fundamentally different approach to phone software. Smart design begins with a new, holistic design system that informs every aspect of the phone, from its visually appealing layout and motion to its function and hardware integration. On the Start screen, dynamically updated "live tiles" show users real-time content directly, breaking the mold of static icons that serve as an intermediate step on the way to an application. Create a tile of a friend, and the user gains a readable, up-to-date view of a friend's latest pictures and posts, just by glancing at Start.

A number of handset manufacturers and carriers have committed to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform, and the first handsets based on the operating system are scheduled to become available in "holiday 2010".

Samsung yesterday also announced the Samsung Wave, the first handset to be based on the company's own bada platform. The Wave offers an 800x480 active-matrix OLED screen, 5-megapixel camera, Samsung's revised TouchWiz 3.0 user interface, and 2 GB of internal storage with a microSD slot allowing for up to an additional 32 GB.

The Samsung Wave offers a Super AMOLED 3.3" display that makes the screen truly come alive, a Social Hub to bring you closer to your contacts and connections, and TouchWiz 3.0 for an intuitive and hugely customizable user interface. The Wave's high-speed CPU ensures swift, smooth application experiences and multi-tasking, making the device an always-on mobile multimedia companion. The Samsung Wave has been built to offer users an unrivalled level of performance, customization and choice in how they connect with their world. The stunning full touch mobile will be available globally from April 2010.

Capacitive Capable Gloves

At Macworld, iTouch Gloves (left) and Telefingers (right) both offered solutions for using the iPhone's capacitive touch screen while wearing gloves. iTouch Gloves offer high end leather glove styles that start at $99.95.. They offer a variety of styles in both women's and men's styles.

Telefingers' solution is quite a bit less stylish but also much cheaper. For only $15 a pair, you can get a thinner (non-leather) pair gloves with specialized tips that allow you to control your iPhone screen. Either way, it's better than using sausages.

Xserve Racking Solution

Electrorack offers a wide variety of server racking solutions, but this one caught our eye. It's a rack enclosure for Xserves and RAID configurations that happens to styled like an oversized Mac Pro.

SurfaceSound in Your Helmet

TuneBug has been offering its SurfaceSound solution Vibe for some time already. Vibe is a small device that takes an audio source and turns any surface into a speaker. TuneBug has taken this same concept and applied it to both Bike and Snow/Skateboard helmets.

Shake connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone and then transmits sound waves throughout your helmet, letting you listen to your favorite tunes without headphones. Shake is expected to ship in April for $119.95.

U-Socket - USB Power in Your Wall

Fastmac claims this is the first of it kind due to some regulatory issues they had to clear. The U-Socket allows you to have a wall plate with both USB and regular power outlets. No more hunting for your USB->Power dongle, just plug your USB cable straight into the wall. U-Socket can be installed on any existing wall socket. The price is $19.95 now, but normally $29.95.

FloTV - Live Television on Your iPhone

If you've been missing a way to watch live television on your iPhone, Mophie and FloTV have teamed up to provide just that solution in the next couple of months. FloTV is a new wireless TV service that has been put in place across the U.S. It provides 18 channels of television service with broad coverage.

In order to achieve this on the iPhone, Mophie has integrated the FloTV chips into one of their iPhone battery packs (Juice Pack TV) (not pictured above). The FloTV application will be a free download from the App Store and will interface with the FloTV chips using Wi-Fi. The end result should be live TV viewing from your iPhone as well as additional battery power from the Juice Pack TV.

Square - Mobile Credit Card Processing

Square UP was showing their new credit card processing solution for the iPhone. They are planning on offering a no-hassle way for individuals to start accepting credit card payments. Simply buy their $1 app from the App Store, sign up for service, and they will send you a small hardware dongle that will swipe credit cards (shown right). No individual merchant account is required as Square UP handles all the processing and payments and takes a 2.9% cut of all sales.

The Square service is currently in beta testing and should arrive later this year.

iV Plus - Universal Remote, Camera Flash and Battery Pack

FastMac showed of their latest creation at Macworld. The iV Plus is a combination case, IR Remote, Flash LED, and Battery Pack. The enclosure wraps around the iPhone like a case much like the other battery solutions available, but the inclusion of the IR port and Flash LED add a significant amount of functionality.

FastMac will also be providing free Universal Remote software to work in conjunction with the case. The software allows you to customize your remote settings and a more advanced paid version will include live TV guide with show searching support. Meanwhile, support for the Flash LED is also coming in the form of a free camera app that will snap a picture and also trigger the flash.

The iV Plus is expected to ship in Q2 for $130.

Navigon MobileNavigator 1.5 - Integration with Other Apps

Navigon was out showing off its upcoming 1.5 update to its MobileNavigator turn-by-turn guidance software. The update is due in March and brings several new features:

- Panorama View 3D: NASA sourced elevation data to provide 3D views of the landscape
- MyRoutes: Gives you up to 3 alternative routes with different route recommendations based on current traffic conditions as well as your personal driving profile.
- Facebook and Twitter Integration: broadcast where you are and where you're going.

Also announced was a new OpenAPI "Appinteract" for Navigon's software that will allow other App Store developers to pass destinations directly to MobileNavigator. For example, if a restaurant is found within iPhone App Where To?, a single tap can launch and initiate routing within MobileNavigator. The actual data is simply passed as a specialized URL, so the implementation should be simple for developers, but is much more convenient to the end user. The 1.5 update to MobileNavigator should arrive in March.

Tales of Monkey Island

One of the big new announcements at Macworld was Tell Tale Games' release of a Mac version of Tales of Monkey Island available immediately. The company has also committed to delivering Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures, Strong & Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, and Sam & Max to the Mac. The next game to be released is up for user vote.

Tales of Monkey Island is a 3D graphic adventure game based on the classic title Secret of Monkey Island and originally released for PC and WiiWare in 2009. Tales represents the 5th in the Monkey Island series and is the only modern version that has become available for the Mac.

Available for purchase now for $34.95 and a free demo is also available for download.

iPlayback - HDMI to mini Display Port

Want to use your 27" iMac as an HDTV? Kanex was showing off their HDMI to mini Display Port adapter that lets you connect your Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Blu-ray players to your 27" iMac. Both video and audio are transmitted across at a resolution up to 1920x1200. The retail price for the device will be $149 and its expected for release in the next couple of months.

Wireless USB A/V Adapter

That is a MacBook screen being shown on a HDTV wirelessly. Wisair announced Mac support for their wireless USB DisplayDock at Macworld.

The Wireless USB DisplayDock Set allows you to easily connect your MacBook using a single USB adapter. Both wireless audio and video are transmitted at up to 1440x1050 screen resolution. The wireless base station that connects to your TV supports VGA, HDMI, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The Windows version of the device is shown on the website, and is sold at retailers under a variety of brands. The hardware is identical for the PC and Mac, but the official Mac drivers won't be here until the end of March. Those drivers should become available on the manufacturer's pages, or you can wait until a Mac-packaged version becomes available in about April.

Consumer Reports announced this week the results of a study it commissioned assessing the monthly data usage for customers of Apple's iPhone and other smartphones. The data, obtained from over 1,000 consumer accounts linked to online bill analysis firm Validas, reveals that iPhone users consume an average of 273 MB of data per month, five times that of BlackBerry users and nearly twice that of users of other smartphones.

On average, iPhone users consume 273 MBs of data per month. That compares with 54 MBs for consumer users of Blackberrys and 150 MBs for consumers who use other brands of smart phones, the Validas study found.

The disparity in data usage is particularly evident at low levels, where 80% of BlackBerry and 54% of "other" smartphone users consume less than 50 MB of data per month while only less than 20% of iPhone users maintain such low usage.

Consumer Reports points to the data consumption of iPhone users and the strain they have placed on AT&T's network in the United States as a possible key source of discontent that led to the carrier placing last in the magazine's recent overall and city-by-city ratings.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) report that Microsoft is set to demonstrate its next-generation smartphone software, to be known as Windows Mobile 7 or Windows Phone, at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. According to BusinessWeek:

On Feb. 15, Microsoft will unveil its latest effort to get back into the game. The renamed Windows Phone operating system, set to be introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will "move the bar forward," said Robbie Bach, president of the company's entertainment and devices division.

With Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft is reportedly seeking to pursue tighter integration of its software with third-party hardware, looking to place stricter limits on the basic characteristics of devices running Windows Mobile 7 so as to ensure a more consistent quality of user experience and reduce the need for application developers to make sacrifices otherwise required for applications to run on the wide variety of hardware running Windows Mobile in its current form. From The Wall Street Journal:

New devices based on Windows Mobile 7, due out later this year, will be the first to reflect a much tighter focus at Microsoft on how its software works with hardware made by other companies. In the past, Microsoft has taken much the same approach in mobile software as it has in the PC market, licensing its operating system to nearly any hardware maker that wanted to install it on their systems.

Microsoft's new strategy addresses the level of integration possible in the iPhone, with Apple making both hardware and software, and Android, where Google has taken a more active role in handset design to improve the Android user experience. Microsoft has seen growth of its Windows Mobile user base stagnate, with Apple calculated to have passed Microsoft in U.S. sales as long as ago as late 2007 and moved beyond Microsoft in installed U.S. user base late last year.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry today released a report revealing trends seen in its user data for the month of January. Among the more interesting developments discussed in the report was a nearly three-fold surge of new App Store applications registered with Flurry to integrate its analytics into the applications. Such increases have typically been seen in advance of new device launches, and thus Flurry hypothesizes that the growth was the result of excitement surrounding Apple's iPad despite the fact that the device was not formally introduced until the very end of the month.

Developers integrating Flurry analytics into iPhone OS applications in January increased by nearly three times over December. This represents the single largest spike in Flurry history, with over 1,600 new iPhone OS application starts for January. Historically, Flurry has measured surges in new application starts within its system in anticipation of new device launches, including for the Motorola Droid and iPhone 3GS. As such, we hypothesize that excitement generated by Apple's iPad event in January is driving this growth. For developers who get a jump on customizing their applications for the iPad, there may be an opportunity to stand out early on, and earn more downloads.

Similar data for the Android platform has demonstrated steady growth ramping up over the past six months, with only a 25% jump in new project starts between December and January, substantially lower than that seen for iPhone OS. Consequently, the proportion of new starts dedicated to iPhone OS applications compared to Android rose to its highest level since last July.

Macworld Expo San Francisco 2010 kicked off yesterday with a presentation by The New York Times' David Pogue and guest appearance by actor LeVar Burton. While the Pogue keynote was a huge departure from Steve Jobs' traditional keynotes, it was infused with music, humor, theatre, and even an interview with the team behind AutoTuneTheNews (who happen to use Macs).

Here's a short clip of the beginning of Pogue's presentation which mocks Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

Best of Show

Also new in this year's Macworld was a Best of Show DEMO session held immediately prior to the opening of the show floor featuring six of the best products at Macworld Expo.

The video embedded below shows off Ten One Design's Mac software which allows you to use the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air's multi-touch trackpad as a pressure sensitive trackpad when using a Pogo Stylus:

The full list of "Best of Show" DEMO products are listed here:

- Ten One Design's Inklet- use your multi-touch trackpad as a drawing tablet
- Microvision SHOWWX Laser Pico Projector - Laser-power pico projector
- Canson's Papershow - Take hand written notes that appear on the screen in real time
- Carina's Skyfi and Sky Voyager - Spot stars in the sky with your iPhone and control your telescope with a Wi-Fi to serial adapter.
- Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite - Access, view, edit and share Microsoft Office documents on your iPhone
- Yapper - Easily build an iPhone App based on an RSS feed.

Impressions

The Macworld show floor was contained in a smaller space this year, but the early foot traffic seemed particularly busy on opening day. It was genuinely difficult to make your way through portions of the hall due to the number of attendees.

Impressions from both vendors and long time attendees were quite positive, given the number of visitors.

Virtualization developer VMWare was present showing off version 3 of Fusion which was released in October. Version 3 had brought Windows 7 support, Snow Leopard optimizations, and more to Fusion. VMWare Director of Personal Desktop Products Pat Lee seemed optimistic about the strong early showing at the event.

Macworld continues on Friday and Saturday, and dates for next year's Macworld Expo have been set for January 25th-29th, 2011.

Apple today unveiled a "Countdown to 10 Billion Songs" promotion via the iTunes Store, offering the contest winner a prize of a $10,000 iTunes gift card. A counter on the main iTunes Store page and Apple's home page currently displays in excess of 9.8 billion downloads.

According to the official contest rules, participants may make up to 25 entries per day either by purchasing/downloading songs from the iTunes Store or by filling out an entry form on Apple's web site. The contest begins today and ends once the 10-billion-song milestone is reached.

The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through a song download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 9,999,999,999th song. The potential winner will be determined by the order of the entries received. In the event that more than one entrant would be a winner based on the simultaneous timing of entries, one entrant will be randomly selected from those entrants as the winner. Each entrants chances of winning are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

Apple has periodically offered similar contests in the past, such as its One Billion Song contest in 2006 and a One Billion App contest last year.