In a recent interview, CEO of Viacom Philippe Dauman, spoke about such things as the digitization of television and his controversial decision to pull both The Daily Show and The Coblert Report from Hulu. All in all the man doesn’t necessarily seem to be against the merging datastreams of television and internet, but he does seem to have a fair amount of dissatisfaction with Hulu. Namely, he isn’t getting enough money from them. He spoke of the internet television phenomenon as more of an experiment. They were testing out whether profitable web tv is possible, and apparently it is… just as long as you get rid of all the middlemen. He spoke of both increased traffic and content on Comedy Central’s own streaming broadcasts of the aforementioned shows, he just doesn’t like handing over the control of the ads to someone else.

It has been said that if HP wants WebOS to be a major player in the operating system market, then they will have to seriously step up their game.  The OS was already on cusp of blinking out of existence, and it was only HP’s buy out that kept it afloat, but they can’t even seem to keep their app portal fully operational.  However, they do seem to be making a real effort to get the OS actually out there in the public eye as a viable option: as of today, there is at least one smartphone with WebOS as the default option available on absolutely every major US 3G/4G carrier.  The only other operating system that can make that claim right now is Android.

It has been almost a year since the program was launched, so the great folks at Berkeley decided to put together a preliminary report. What did it find? Well in a nutshell it described where the funding went and mentioned that the program aided job growth within the sector. As of March 1, 2010, nearly $2.6 billion were distributed to a variety of projects. The big winner was wind powered projects, which received 86% of the funding. Other noteworthy areas which received funding included geothermal (6%), solar (4.5%), and biomass (2.8%).

Ever since the iPad came out, everybody and their dog decided that what they needed to do was create the next big device type between smartphone and laptop.  It looks like Sony has just jumped on that bandwagon with their new Vaio P.  The real draw that they seem to be pushing is the new accelerometer interface.  Essentially it has the best of both worlds; it has enough of a functioning keyboard that it can function as a computer, and enough of a touch-screen that it can function as a smartphone.

In one of two ways, the Nokia vs. Apple case is representative of the end of modern tech patents.  On the one hand, this is a quintessential example of the frivolous patent infringement suits on the part of big tech companies that have been plaguing the industry  for years.  Everybody is always infringing on everybody's patents.  It’s a universal fact, but that means that everybody is always vulnerable to a major multi-million dollar lawsuit from any number of their competitors.  While they are being sued by Nokia, Apple is still suing HTC over their equally broad patents.

Nokia has decided to once again take Apple to court over patent infringement.  They’ve already done this before, but this time they are including the iPad into the mix of devices that infringe on their intellectual property.  The two big deal patents involved in this particular case that are likely to be the big players are: digitally enhanced speech and the use of GPS positioning data in apps.  Given that there hasn’t been a smartphone put out in the past five years that didn’t have apps using GPS data or digital speech, this could set up some dangerous legal momentum.

At first glance the Second-life real estate case seems to be nothing more than a frivolous lawsuit initiated by people who care way too much about their MMOs, and it sort of is, but it is also an important case in that it has the opportunity to set some landmark precedents.    While it is certainly more concrete than it was a decade ago, the legal status of digital property is still a legal grey area.  Sure you can buy it, sell it, and own it (people do every day), but this case finally asks the question as to what exactly it is that you own when you buy digital property.  So what exactly IS digital property?

It finally happened.  Lo and behold, someone in Washington has the chutzpah to question Apple for their monopolistic business practices.   For now just an investigation (in all likelihood will never actually make it to trial) , but someone with authority finally pointed it out.  The crux of the investigation is Apple’s restrictions on developers making apps for the iPhone and iPad.  As of right now, they are required to use only Apple’s programming tools, which makes porting them to other platforms exceedingly difficult.

We all know Palm has been struggling to barely stay afloat in the modern Smartphone market.  CEO Jon Rubinstein even assured that the company would be able to remain profitable as an independent company.  This must have been little more than hot air. Barely a week later HP has officially announced their final purchase of Palm.  Only one question remains as to the fate of the sinking ship that is Palm: Will HP be able to salvage it or will they be pulled down by WebOS’s dead weight?

As most of us know, Nokia has a habit of pretty much making some of the best smart phones out there; at least from a hardware perspective.  The problem is that they also have an unfortunate habit of not playing nice with the major cellular carriers when it comes to their really nice toys.  Just look at the N-900, it surpasses all the standards for portable computing hardware, and has been running an actual Linux (as in desktop Linux) OS for over a year now.  Unfortunately it ONLY comes unlocked, and as such is prohibitively expensive for most western markets. Despite this, it seems that they have found a means of releasing their high end phones to the world more efficiently.  Nokia just announced that they will be releasing their X5 and C5 phones into the Chinese mobile market.

As we all know Apple has decided to be rather stifling in its regulation of what will and will not work on the new OS4.  Yeah they are offering multitasking regardless of developer, but getting the Apple seal of approval is going to be an arduous process.  Perhaps the most strict of their new regulations is the carte-blanche ban on self-executing code in apps, and a limitation on languages.  This prevents any sort of Flash based app from being allowed to run on OS4, and effectively cuts Adobe out o the iPhone loop (and soon to swell ad profit).

That new iAds feature of the upcoming OS4 sounds very Hulu-esque: finally letting us enjoy apps that need money to function without having to directly pay for them.  We all love Hulu right?  But what exactly will it accomplish and change for the mobile world?  Is it a true “game changer” for apps and mobile marketing, or is it just another crazy experimental Apple side project?

If there is any silver lining in the giant storm cloud that is the recent net neutrality case, it is the effect that it may have on the financial direction of web TV.  Yes, Comcast and its competitors now have the authority to give preferential download status and speed to whatever company tickles their fancy, but it may be in their best interest to keep certain Web sites that they have a vested interest in as popular as can be.  Specifically Comcast, through its shares of NBC, has a direct stake in the rise or fall of Hulu.  In the same way that they can block or slow sites they don’t like, Comcast can speed up sites that they do like.

Do you want to know what the real kicker behind the fact that Comcast just won their net neutrality case?  Despite how important neutrality is to the continued development of the internet (and its continued existence as a leveler of playing fields), the DC court of appeals weren’t technically in the wrong when they ruled in favor of Comcast.  Yes this was a landmark case, but as some critics point out, from a raw logistically legal perspective, this case is rather cut and dry.  As of right now there are so few laws about what can and cannot be done that it’s basically still the wild west.  As such, this west’s rail barons still get away with anything they want. 

Net neutrality has been on the lips of the web savvy for over a year now.  The net has become the great equalizer. From social interaction to start ups, the internet has given everyone with a computer the chance to play on an equal (or at least more equal) playing field .  If we want this playground to stay egalitarian in the future, someone needs to keep the gatekeepers “neutral.”  Unfortunately, the federal appeals court does not agree.  Yesterday the court ruled in Comcast’s favor in a landmark case, setting the precedent that the FCC cannot enforce net neutrality on internet service providers.