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The MPAA Might Cut Off Google’s Internet Access

We live in a society of laws that no man- or corporation- is above. And when a company sort-of breaks the law in a virtually imperceptible way, they have to pay the price. In Google’s case, that means losing their Internet access. Over the past months, Google has received more than 100 notices of copyright infringement from MPAA-studios.

Most of these come from people on Google’s public WiFi service. At least a few of the downloads came from within Google’s Mountain View HQ though. Maybe Larry and Sergey just couldn’t wait for Green Hornet to come out on DVD?

Google has been anything but pro-piracy in the recent past. They censored a laundry list of torrent-related terms from auto-complete and instant results at the end of January. This caused an uproar from the torrent community, especially since benign and totally legal terms like “Ubuntu torrent” were included.

The MPAA also lashed out at cloud storage service Hotfile today. They accused Hotfile of openly pushing users to upload pirated media, and profiting from it by charging a monthly fee.

[Via TechSpot]

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HP Touchpad live

It feels like we’ve been waiting for the HP TouchPad ever since we first used webOS, making no bones of the fact that Palm’s platform seemed tailor-made for larger screen tablets. The wait has been worth it; we’ve just been checking out the TouchPad after HP’s launch event, and it’s a slick, solid slate on which webOS scales nicely.

The TouchPad chassis is black plastic, like the Veer and Pre3, but it’s sturdy and creak-free. The display, meanwhile, is bright and clear, with the dual-core 1.2GHz processor keeping webOS 3.0 moving swiftly. The obvious multi-pane layout comparison is Google’s recently unveiled Android 3.0 Honeycomb, and the TouchPad’s split email app – where, along with the browser, we’d imagine most owners will spend their time – is functionally relatively similar.

Where webOS shows its strength is in how it handles multitasking. Honeycomb has its thumbnails, but the TouchPad steps up the game with live thumbnails that can be stacked and juggled on the HP’s 9.7-inch screen. Palm arguably set the standard when it came to discrete notifications, and HP has pushed that in webOS 3.0, moving alerts to the top of the screen and allowing for individual or multiple dismissals. There’s also video calling, thanks to a front-facing camera on both the TouchPad and the Pre3.

Perhaps what’s most interesting is the Touchstone wireless transfer, which works when you tap the Pre3 or TouchPad against the Touchstone dock. Out of the box it will work for sharing URLs, but HP have ambitious expectations for the technology including media sharing and more. A demo works better than words, so check out our hands-on video.

Of course, while the TouchPad’s size and weight line up against the iPad, Apple is expected to launch the second-gen iPad 2 sometime within the next few months, and that could well hit the reset button on the tablet market. And, with HP telling us not to expect the TouchPad until Summer 2011, that gives Apple even more of an opportunity to set the consumer standard before the webOS slate is even out the door.

We’ll have to wait until review units are ready to know for sure, so for now check out our video (coming soon) and live gallery!

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iPod Classic Ranked 5th Most Popular Mp3 Player Of 2010

Before we start mourning the anticipated death of the iPod Classic, NDP Group offered up some sales numbers indicating that the classic device may have a longer life than expected. Ranking 5th in popularity amongst all mp3 players sold last year, the iPod Classic may have more to give if Apple decides to do a refresh.

The research ranked the players based on unit sales but also measured per unique device, meaning that even different colored devices of the same model were tracked separately. The iPod Classic 160GB 7th generation in black ended up ranking 5th most popular mp3 player based on total unit sales in 2010 beat by only its iPod Touch brothers.

The iPod Classic is Apple’s only remaining hard drive based player which makes most believe its near the chopping block. But the recent news about Toshiba’s 1.8-inch hard drives with capacities up to 220GB suggests that the player could be refreshed with increased capacity, improved battery life, and perhaps reduced weight before it’s put to rest.

[Via Apple Insider]

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Starbucks Rewards Card Mobile Payment App Has a Huge Flaw

We reported last month that Starbucks had just instituted a nationwide mobile payment plan. Customers merely scanned their gift card barcodes in to an app to activate phone-based payment. And now, this innovative system has been undone by a brutally obvious flaw.

One unnamed user reports that he has found a way to steal another user’s account information. All he has to do is pick up the user’s phone, take a screen shot of the app while open, and email it to himself. The thief can then present the picture and have it scanned by the Barista to make a purchase.

The whole process takes less than 90 seconds. The user who found the flaw notes that the My Rewards button, which offers up no private data, requires a username and password to view. But getting to the crucial barcode screen requires no input of security information whatsoever.

So yeah, as a reminder, keep your phones close and don’t trust anyone at Starbucks.

[Via Mobile Commerce Daily]

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Android 2.3.3 Adds NFC Capabilities to Developers

The world takes another baby step towards NFC ubiquity today, with the announcement of new NFC capabilities for Android developers with the 2.3.3 update. Devs will now have access to a “comprehensive” NFC reader/writer API that will allow their apps to read/write to “almost any” tag in existence.

Developers will also have access to new advanced intent dispatching. This gives the app much more choice in what to do when a tag comes in range. Also new is limited support for peer-to-peer connection with other NFC handsets.

[Via Android Central]

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