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A friend pointed me to news that Magento, a leading open-source commerce platform, has cracked 500,000 downloads, not to mention its 44,000 community members that have translated the project into over 60 languages. That is progress that money can’t buy, or at least not cheaply.

Earlier this year I talked up Varien/Magento as a company and project to watch. I was speculating at that time, but today its success seems relatively sure. It’s now a question of “how big?” for Magento, not “will it take off?”

The Magento project, founded by Varien in 2001, hasn’t been around long, but it’s already disrupting the e-commerce market. It’s also getting attention from The Wall Street Journal, among others.

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But that’s only half the story. It has been said that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and the real story behind Magento’s success is that it’s breeding copycats. Several proprietary competitors, like Oxid eShop, are throwing in the towel and open sourcing their code, too.

So far Qualcomm has only made MediaFlo available in the U.S. And expanding into Europe could be a challenge, since the European Commission seems to be pushing the rival standard DVB-H used across Europe.

Qualcomm may be preparing to launch its MediaFlo mobile TV service in the U.K.

“Qualcomm considers that the L-band spectrum represents at this stage an opportunity to develop, test and explore a variety of emerging business models, innovative wireless services and technologies,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “However, we have not taken a decision on spectrum use.”

Qualcomm has been working with broadcasters on channel 55 to make the switch earlier so it can deploy its TV service. And the company already has 55 markets up and running. The company also acquired more spectrum in the recent 700MHz spectrum auction that will also be used to expand capacity for the MediaFlo service.

So far the demand for live broadcast of mobile TV has been disappointing, according to Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs. But the company is hopeful that it will improve as more cities get the service.

So far the company is keeping mum about what it will do with the spectrum. For now, the company plans to use it to test new services and products.

The company this week said it has won 40MHz of wireless spectrum in the U.K. that would be ideal for mobile TV and broadband services. The spectrum is in what’s known as the L-band, which is between the frequencies 1452MHz and 1492MHz.

Ofcom, the telecom regulator in the U.K., auctioned off the spectrum earlier this month. And Qualcomm, a wireless chipmaker and mobile patent holder, came away the big winner spending 8.3 million British pounds, or $16.1 million.

But if the company’s spectrum strategy in the U.S. is any indication, Qualcomm could be preparing to build a mobile TV network in Europe. A few years ago, Qualcomm quietly began acquiring spectrum licenses for the analog TV channel 55, which by law must be vacated in February 2009 when broadcasters must switch to digital transmission.

MediaFlo resells its TV service to wireless carriers. Verizon Wireless has offered the MediFlo mobile broadcast TV service for more than a year. And AT&T just started offering MediaFlo for TV service last month.

We already know that Apple sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs in the first weekend it went on sale around the world, and Piper Jaffray believes the company has added another 4 million units to that total since then, according to a research note released Monday. Apple will reveal the formal totals in about a month when it reports earnings for its fourth fiscal quarter.

The main number to watch is 10 million: that’s the number of iPhones Apple has consistently said is its target for 2008. That number appears easily within reach if the 5 million estimate is accurate: Apple sold around 2.5 million iPhones during the first six months of 2008 as it ran out of the original model.

Despite several launch day glitches and widespread bugs in the iPhone’s 2.0 software, enthusiasm for the phone seems high. The other big factor this time around, as compared to the iPhone’s early days, is the huge increase in the number of countries that are now officially selling the iPhone.

Piper Jaffray is estimating that Apple will have sold 5 million iPhone 3Gs during the current quarter.

(Credit:
Apple)

One Apple follower is putting a guess on the number of
iPhone 3Gs Apple will have sold during the current quarter: 5 million.

Those of us who were not quick enough to grab the app while it was available on the App Store seem to be out of luck for now. Links to the application now pop up with an error message that reads, “The item you’ve requested is not currently available in the US store.” It’s not exactly clear what happened with NetShare, how it slipped through the cracks, or why it was pulled. The app may have accidentally gotten through in the avalanche of new applications that are being added to the store, however it seems unlikely that someone at Apple would have signed off on this app, not knowing what it did. It would appear that either Apple, AT&T, or both had cleared the application, then quickly reconsidered. Apple has not yet responded to a request for a comment on the issue.

(Credit: MacRumors.com)
Wireless carriers have almost always been opposed to tethering smartphones with unlimited data plans. Many telcos even state in your contract that if you tether your phone, you may be responsible for additional fees associated with the data that you use. Of course, for an additional cost, you can tether some phones, such as a Blackberry, but Apple’s iPhone doesn’t offer legitimate tethering at any cost.

Briefly available, NetShare allowed iPhone users to take advantage of tethering their 3G and EDGE connections to their computers.

(Credit: Mac-Addict) One of the most requested features for the
iPhone is the ability to tether the phone to feed 3G or EDGE network data to your computer. That feature was briefly a reality Thursday, thanks to Nullriver’s NetShare application. MacRumors reports that, priced at $9.99, the application seems to have, somehow, slipped below Apple’s radar, but was pulled down after about 20 minutes of availability in the App Store.

The application basically turns your iPhone into a portable Wi-Fi hotspot, giving all of your Wi-Fi-enabled devices internet, wherever you have a cell signal. There are similar solutions available for iPhone users who have jailbroken their handsets, but they are significantly more complicated than Nullriver’s offering, and since they require a hacked phone, don’t hold mainstream appeal.

The question still remains, though as to whether Ning would opt to support Facebook applications–still not compatible with OpenSocial–the way social network Friendster has.

A few OpenSocial apps had gone live on Ning in beta over the past year, including one from social music service Last.fm (which is owned by CNET News publisher CBS Interactive).

A Ning profile with the OpenSocial 'BuddyPoke' app added.

Social-network builder Ning has deployed its support for developer applications for OpenSocial, something that it has been planning to do since Google kick-started the open-source project nearly a year ago. (It is now an independent organization.)

From the Future of Web Apps conference in London, Google engineer Kevin Marks praised the incorporation of Ning into OpenSocial, which he helped build. “The nice thing about Ning is that we’re going from about 100 social networks to about 500,000 social networks,” Marks said to CNET News.

As part of the launch, a directory of 30 applications will be available for Ning members to embed in their profiles, which they use for any of the hundreds of thousands of networks created with Ning. They’ll have variable “skins” to adopt the design of the profile around them and blend in, the company has said. Incorporation into the OpenSocial app directory on Ning will be selective, so it won’t be a developer free-for-all.

You still can’t embed OpenSocial apps on Ning networks, just profiles–but that will change, CEO Gina Bianchini said to CNET News, when future versions of OpenSocial (the current one is 0.7) are developed. “In its first incarnation, it looks and feels a lot like what you’d be doing on a MySpace profile or on a Facebook profile in terms of adding apps,” she explained, “but what’s unique about us is that we have half a million social networks and they’ll want an app for their network as well.”

“We’d love to support Facebook apps,” said Bianchini, who co-founded Ning with veteran entrepreneur Marc Andreessen. “Right now, Facebook hasn’t neccessarily set it up in a really clear, programmatic way…(Facebook) has talked about it, then came back from it, and it’s a little bit in limbo right now in terms of really what and how they would want other social networks to support Facebook apps.”

(Credit:
Ning)

See also: ActiveWords.

Microsoft, too, is putting resources into a new feature that parcels out Web pages. In the upcoming Internet Explorer 8, the browser supports a feature Microsoft calls, “Web Slices,” which is the platform’s capability to take a portion of a Web page–like a stock chart on a financial page–and display it as a pop-up widget that’s called from the bookmark bar in the browser.

It means that developers will have to learn how to code pages for modularity. Conceptually that’s not that big a deal, although if coding for Ubiquity and coding for Slices is different, it’s going to be a technical mess. What I am waiting to see is how managers wrestle with the branding and revenue implications of letting their sites be mashed up and refactored into tiny pieces all over the Web, by anyone. I predict that the sites that give away the most data will reap the biggest benefits, but that will be a difficult leap of faith for many publishers.

Together, Ubiquity and Web Slices lead me to believe we’re entering an era of fracturing Web content. Already we have seen content separated from presentation with RSS, and we’ve given developers access to online data for their mashups via Web APIs. But the growth of Microformat-coded Web pages will make it possible for users to more easily create their own mashups–personal profile pages that have just the pieces of Web content they want, or e-mail messages made up of live maps, automatically updating weather forecasts, up-to-the-minute travel information, and so on.

Ubiquity can find and insert map images into e-mails.

Slices on Internet Explorer are part RSS feed, part widget.

But the most interesting application is Ubiquity’s capability to extract items from Web pages and insert them in whatever you’re creating, like an e-mail message or a blog post. At the moment I believe the only site you can extract data from is Google Maps, but clearly Mozilla’s direction is to build a platform that takes bits of data from Web resources and pastes it together on the user’s behalf.

Mozilla on Tuesday released a public prototype of Ubiquity, a curious command-based interface to locating information on the Web and creating compilations of information from various sources. See: Mozilla offers do-it-yourself mashups for all.

Slices are built using a combination of protocols, including Microformats, RSS, and new HTML tags that IE uses to demark Slices.

At the moment, it’s most capable as a command-line browser. You press the hot key, ctrl-space, and you can just start typing lookup commands, like “imdb Blade Runner.” Or, if text is already selected in the browser, your command will act on them. Mouse over a restaurant page in Yahoo Mail, press the hotkey, and type “yelp” for a review, for example.

“There is a lot of ad agency excitement right now about the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, and advertising possibilities on the iPhone,” said Greg Yardley, founder of iPhone ad start-up Pinch Media. “I know that inventory just on regular Web pages optimized for the iPhone is selling fast.”

“(The iPhone is) a device that’s made for ’social,’” said Bart Decrem, a veteran of browsers
Firefox and Flock who went on to found Tapulous, a start-up firm that has released three iPhone games in the App Store and plans to roll out more. “This is a device that’s always connected, that’s always on you. It knows where you are, you can take pictures with it, and you can send messages with it.”

(Credit:
Apple)

The money factor
There might be an apples-and-oranges vibe when it comes to comparing social-platform developers with iPhone developers, but the money factor could easily make some of them willing to bridge the gap.

Even if the money’s not as solid as it purports to be, the promise is there, and that’s going to be enough to make some developers shift the focus from their Facebook or OpenSocial applications to Apple’s shiny device. It’s guaranteed to shake things up, at the very least. “Not only will app developers move to the iPhone, I think we’ll see the social platforms themselves move there,” Litman said. “The iPhone is an inherently social device, in many ways even more so than social-networking platforms.”

The iPhone App Store, the add-on to the iTunes Store, made its debut Thursday in anticipation of the iPhone 3G’s release Friday.

“Buying and installing an iPhone app feels very similar to buying a song through iTunes, and that familiarity is undoubtedly going to work to the advantage of all developers on the platform.” — Eric Litman, CEO, Medialets

There’s a lot of big dreaming, but right now, the biggest priority is getting used to the new landscape. When asked what he planned to do first after the iPhone 3G launched, Yardley said, “We have to make sure our servers stay up.”

There’s still no concrete reason to believe that advertising on the iPhone will work much better than advertising on a social network, just a lot of statistics and guesswork.

The new iPhone: it’s pretty, it’s shiny, it’s versatile, and owners rarely leave it out of their sight. The implication for Facebook, as well as open-source social network platform OpenSocial, is that if developers see more compelling reasons to build software for the iPhone instead, they could jump ship.

“Mobile has been the redheaded stepchild of advertising for a long time, simply because the tracking has been really bad, and traditionally, the targeting has been really bad,” Yardley said. “Now that the iPhone is going out there, there are more interesting ad opportunities. I think we’re going to see an increase in spend, but it’s not going to be a flip of a switch. You’re always going to get a few agencies that are going to get out there and do interesting things, but those agencies were going to do interesting things, anyway.”

What does the
iPhone 3G have to do with the future of social platforms like Facebook and OpenSocial? A lot, actually.

When it comes to the App Store, Farmer said the first ones to the table “are the people who are really into that stuff. The Mac developers are going to be the first ones there, mostly because developing for the iPhone is going to be a lot like developing for the Mac.”

“Apple has built payments directly into the app distribution model in a way that is already comfortable and familiar to over 100 million iPod users,” said Eric Litman, whose new start-up Medialets also hopes to cash in on the iPhone developer gold rush. “Buying and installing an iPhone app feels very similar to buying a song through iTunes, and that familiarity is undoubtedly going to work to the advantage of all developers on the platform.”

Investment bank Piper Jaffray estimated last month that the iPhone App Store could be a billion-dollar business by 2009, and that nearly 90 million people worldwide could own compatible iPhone and iPod Touch devices by the end of that year. That’s a bigger audience than Facebook has now–though it should be noted that the number is probably optimistic. And the lower price point for the new iPhone 3G, just $199 for the lower-end model, means that its reputation as a geek fetish toy will probably go away soon. Charging five bucks for an application could bring in some real dollars.

It’s true that there is not an obvious path to jump from one to the other. Traditionally, the Web development space has been distinctly separate from the tight-knit community of
Mac developers, said developer Jesse Farmer, who writes about both on the 20bits blog. “There’s cultural differences and technical differences. People who develop software for social platforms tend to come from the Web world. They tend to travel in their own social circles,” he explained.

With more than 550 third-party applications available at launch, Apple’s new mini marketplace means that for the first time since the social-application craze started more than a year ago, the hottest new trend has nothing to do with Web-based networks.

And here’s the real kicker: the creators of iPhone applications can charge a fee for downloads, thus creating a way to make money that’s unheard of on free-for-all social-network platforms. Of the 552 applications in the App Store at launch, 417 of them are paid downloads, one of them costing a whopping $69.99. (That’d be ForeFlight, which provides runway and airport data for airline pilots.)

For small-time developers, it’s become increasingly tough to make a buck or two from applications on Facebook’s platform, where the easiest route to cash is ad impressions. The space has become dominated by half-billion-dollar firms like Slide and RockYou, something that Farmer has pointed out in his analyses of developer discontent.

The iPhone App Store is structured completely differently, and that might be appealing. True, there are barriers to entry: a fee to join the developer program, and selectivity when it comes to apps that wind up in the store. But that could get a thumbs-up from developers who grew tired of the saturation of Zombie Bite-type games on Facebook’s platform.

Click here for CNET News’ complete iPhone 3G coverage.

“If you’ve already succeeded on Facebook, OpenSocial, or whatever, there’s really no reason to (switch),” Farmer said of iPhone development. Thing is, there are thousands upon thousands of developers who haven’t succeeded, or who enjoyed only flash-in-the-pan success. “People who are sort of disillusioned with social networks and haven’t found a way to succeed…I can see them moving over and trying it out.”

“It’s disruptive in the way that going from DOS to Windows was disruptive,” Tapulous’ Decrem said. “That means that there are tremendous new opportunities, and entire new classes of applications and companies will come into existence.” He said that with the iPhone 1.0 software, which required a “jailbreaking” hack to be able to install third-party applications, the games released by Tapulous had already seen a million installs. In other words, people want this stuff.

It’s because of the iPhone App Store, the add-on to the iTunes Store that opened its doors on Thursday in anticipation of the new device and its iPhone 2.0 software.

Advertising industry ready to jump in
But even if a developer is committed to distributing his or her iPhone applications for free, the ad industry is already chomping at the bit. That’s in stark contrast to the debut of the Facebook platform, where many developers simply used Google’s AdSense at the start, and it wasn’t until months later that Facebook application ad networks started to pop up. (Now they’re everywhere.)

And there’s a big reason: money.

The legislation still must go through the House of Representatives before being sent to the president.

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of providing parents with more control over the content their children receive through various technologies.

The bill defines “advanced blocking technologies” as technology that enables parents to protect their children from “indecent or objectionable video or audio programming, as determined by the parent, that is transmitted through the use of wire, wireless, or radio communication.”

The Child Safe Viewing Act, introduced last year by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., requires the Federal Communications Commission to issue a notice of inquiry to examine what advanced content-blocking technologies are available for various communication devices and platforms. It also calls for the FCC to consider how to develop and deploy such technologies without affecting content providers’ pricing or packaging.

While the bill does not empower the FCC to do anything other than to produce a report on its findings for Congress, it is one of a handful of steps Congress has taken in recent weeks to address threats new technologies can expose children to.

It really doesn’t matter if Android is “all it’s cracked up to be.” It also doesn’t matter if Microsoft doesn’t like it. Palm isn’t exactly thriving with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform (nor is Microsoft, for that matter). Palm is a walking corpse and needs to associate with living, breathing human beings again.

The answer is “Yes.” An emphatic “Yes.”

Fortune writes:

…[I]t may be time for a drastic change of strategy. If Android is all it’s cracked up to be, Palm may be better off scrapping its OS plans, and throwing in with Google instead….

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Fortune makes the suggestion that Palm should focus on Google’s Android mobile operating platform, and then ZDNet follows with a question, “Should Palm drop their Linux plans and embrace Android?”

Certainly, Palm would be taking a risk by betting on Android. Any embrace of Google would bring the wrath of Microsoft, which could make it more difficult for Palm to produce its most profitable handsets, its Windows Mobile-based Treos.

Android lets Palm bet big on the future. Windows Mobile is a bet on an operating system that has failed to make much of a dent on the market in its 10 years of struggling to do so. Palm was right to bet on Linux two years ago, but it has done little with the strategy. It’s time to try its luck with Google. Android is no panacea, but it’s better than popping Advil while its arms, legs, and neck get amputated by the market.

The letter, which was made public earlier Monday, also informed the SEC of the company’s plans for its 2008 shareholder’s meeting: “The company’s 2008 annual meeting is scheduled to be held on June 10, 2008. Yahoo intends to file its definitive proxy materials with the Commission on or about April 21, 2008 and to commence mailing those materials to its stockholders on or about that date.”

In a letter dated Feb. 1, the same day that Microsoft announced its unsolicited bid for Yahoo, the Internet pioneer sent a letter to the SEC. The letter, from Yahoo’s associate general counsel Christina Lai, asked the agency to clarify whether Yahoo had to include in its proxy a shareholder proposal, which requested that Yahoo establish a new policy for doing business in China regarding aid to the civil rights movement there.

Full coverage
Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo Click here for the latest on the software giant’s attempt to buy the Net pioneer.

Yahoo said Monday afternoon that it has not set a date for its shareholders meeting after all, contrary to the timetable that had been described in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission two months ago.

On Saturday, Microsoft set a deadline for Yahoo, urging the company to start and conclude a merger deal in the next three weeks. On Monday, Yahoo responded by saying, in essence, raise the bid or we’re not interested.

A Yahoo spokeswoman on Monday now says that the company does not plan to hold the shareholders meeting on June 10 and has not set a date for when the meeting will be held.

Updated version, with rewrites throughout, of a story originally posted at 9:39 AM PDT.

Up to this point, Yahoo has been coy in stating when it will hold its shareholder’s meeting, other than to note that once it sets the date, Microsoft–or any other shareholder–will have 10 days to nominate an opposition slate.

At the extreme, if Yahoo has not held the shareholders meeting by July 13, Microsoft can go to the Delaware Chancery court and ask a judge to force a meeting as soon as possible. Should a judge fast-track a shareholders meeting, it wouldn’t happen any earlier than 30 days beyond a court hearing, say proxy solicitors.