The iPhone version of Opera Mini does indeed look promising. In true Opera form, they are offering streamlined versions of the essential features with the added speed that comes from not being bogged down with unnecessary coding. You may be asking yourselves, “Wait a second, isn't that the sort of thing that Apple specifically blocks?” Well, yes, it is the EXACT sort of thing that they have been blocking since the inception if the iPhone. However, times are changing.

The battle over carriage fees was previously deferred by the addition of supplemental cable properties, such as FX, Fox Sports, and Fox News. This strategy has become less feasible in recent years, as many providers have reached their limits on the sheer number of channels. This puts the industry back at the position of networks demanding extra cash infusions from providers, and many fear this episode will be repeated ad nauseam. Though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, it was generally considered a victory for Fox, and Time Warner subscribers will likely see their rates go up as a result.

This will probably also draw additional scrutiny from politicians and regulators, who weighed in on the Fox vs. Time Warner spat. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass), said he would request the FCC "to intervene and mandate continued carriage and arbitration." FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski then weighed in, saying "Companies shouldn’t force cable-watching football fans to scramble for other means of TV delivery on New Year’s weekend."

image courtesy of screenrant.com

The duel of Fox Broadcasting Company and Time Warner Cable seemed like a Quixotic struggle to rule obsolescence, until an 11th hour deal staved off disaster. The agreement reached in the late hours of Jan 1 prevented Time Warner Cable subscribers from losing all Fox shows, ending a protracted dispute over carriage fees. The disagreement began with negotiations for a new contract, with the old one expiring as the ball dropped on 2009. Fox demanded a rate of $1 a month per subscriber, for each of its TV networks.Time Warner responded with an offer of no more than 30 cents. An act of brinkmanship ensued, where the two mammoth corporations launched dueling PR campaigns about who would be responsible if roughly 4 million homes lost the ability to watch Fox programming.

Some business analysts feel the statements made by Amazon signal a new digital revolution, where e-book sales will maintain strong growth trends and potentially hurt the sales of physical books. Tom Taulli of Blogging Stocks writes "this is not necessarily a sign that traditional books will vanish and everyone will be lugging a Kindle. However, visionary people [...] realize that the future will increasingly be digital. So, why not get started now? What's more, this trend will be another hit to mainstream publishers. Selling books will become more about using digital marketing, not getting shelf space at the local book store. Of course, this is certainly good news for Amazon.com."

Alex Pham of The Los Angeles Times cautions that while the Kindle is selling faster than McDonald's can make Hot Cakes, consumers should wait until next year to buy any competing products. "Next year will bring a wider array of choices, fancy features and, very likely, lower prices, analysts predict. A number of companies are holding off their product launches until next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. One company, Plastic Logic, said it would show at CES a shatter-resistant touch-screen reader that's the size of a sheet of notebook paper." This is just the icing on the cake for Amazon, whose press release trumpets "The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas, was placed by a Prime member and went to Seattle. It was a Kindle that was ordered at 1:43 p.m. on Christmas Eve and delivered at 4:57 p.m. that evening."

Asian news site Khabrein also predicts a strong future for the Kindle abroad, saying "for readers E-books are easy to read and handle and thus its popularity is going pay with each passing day. With more competitors hitting the market it is expected that it will penetrate further to developing countries."

Here's a page-turner: Amazon.com's Kindle is the company's most gifted product for the American market this Christmas, and the most gifted product in the company's history.
They did not provide any quantitative sales data, but founder and CEO Jeff Bezos credits the Kindle's massive library, which contains over 390,000 titles, many of them best sellers and new releases. Bezos went on to say "We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history. On behalf of Amazon.com employees around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and happy reading!"

In a paper published by a panel of three judges, the Court of Appeals said "The district court found that Microsoft captured 80 percent of the custom XML market with its infringing Word products, forcing i4i to change its business strategy." The court documents go on to state that "after its effective date, the injunction prohibits Microsoft from selling, offering to sell, importing, or using copies of Word with the infringing custom XML editor." This injunction was originally handed down in the August 12 verdict, but was stayed upon appeal by Microsoft. It is now slated to take effect Jan 11. Ironically, the i4i website openly promotes Microsoft Word's support of custom XML.

A federal appellate court may have the last word today, regarding Microsoft Word 2007. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a ruling dating back to August 12, 2009. The ruling concerned a lawsuit by small Toronto-based software developer i4i, who claimed industry giant Microsoft violated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) on a method for reading XML. The ruling prohibits Microsoft from selling any more copies of Word 2007 with custom XML functionality, and also requires the company to pay $290 million to i4i.

Photoshop is great, but not everyone can afford to hand over a few hundred bucks to Adobe for the software.  Now, there's an online alternative for all the budding digital artists among us. It's called Aviary, and they have big plans.

Photographer Louis Psihoyos is suing Apple Inc. over the use of his 1000 TV’s photograph. The only problem is, Apple is not the one using the picture. An iPhone application, i.TV, is using the photo to market its television and movie listing services.

Well, it looks like Flickr is once again brewing up some controversy by deleting user images. The company is citing copyright infringement, but many online are crying censorship.

Now that Sotomayor has been confirmed, we are all asking the same question: where does she stand on issues that matter to me?

Well it is shaping up to be a plagiarism filled day here on the Amvona blog. Not that I'm misappropriating content (check out my sweet citation below!), but it looks like everyone else is!