Software developers are increasingly using Web technologies to build desktop applications. This is because modern HTML rendering engines and emerging standards provide a profoundly powerful foundation for rapid development, rich presentation, and deep Web integration.

Apple’s open source WebKit renderer has become the basis for several cross-platform application runtime environments that are designed to empower this trend, including Adobe AIR and Appcelerator’s Titanium framework. WebKit can also be used alongside native platform user interface toolkits to build software that delivers all of the advantages of Web technology but also allows tight integration with the underlying platform. In this article, we will look at how the WebKit HTML renderer can be used with GTK+ to make a lightweight WYSIWYG editor with Python.

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A new report released by the Pew Internet and and American Life Project will surely spill over into arguments over broadband penetration in the United States, not to mention other debates. It says that African-Americans access the Internet via handheld devices more often than whites, for whom an online connection is more likely to come from an ISP-connected computer. “This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account,” Pew says. Expect arguments about audience ratings systems and exclusive handset deals to be influenced by the report as well

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Twisted Pixel has already released one above-average Xbox Live title this year, The Maw. In that game you made friends with what amounts to a living mouth and, while the game was rather short, the personality and twisted humor of the game helped it to stand out. This week Microsoft kicked off the Summer of Arcade with ‘Splosion Man, the next game from Twisted Pixel. In this title you’re a man who… well, explodes. And it’s much better than simply above average. How does it feel to create two impressive games in such a short amount of time? According to the minds behind the game, scary.

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Placebo genetics: The placebo effect, in which inert pills and sham surgeries result in patients that claim they feel better is one of the most consistent confounders of medical studies: it’s always there, but can vary from experiment to experiment. Researchers have now taken a step closer to figuring out why it’s so variable, as they’ve found that genetic variants influence the response to placebo antidepressants. A number of studies have pointed to the neural reward pathways, which register positive outcomes, as being essential for a strong placebo effect, so the authors looked at genes that encode enzymes that modulate the strength of reward signals. In individuals that carried variants that lowered the effective signaling, the placebo response was weaker. It might be possible to use this both to help identify and control for the placebo effect in future studies, or to identify patients that would be most likely to benefit from a placebo.

The authors of the study, incidentally, disclose a large number of potential conflicts, as they’ve been heavily involved with drug studies in the pharmaceutical industry. Of course, given that it’s pretty impractical to patent a placebo, it seems unlikely that their corporate sponsors would influence this work.

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This week in gaming we have our official review of Wii Sports Resort, Microsoft makes sure we understand that Natal is simply another kind of experience… not a replacement for standard gaming, and we talk to the director of Scribblenauts. Here’s what people were talking about this week.

The Wii is born again: Ars reviews Wii Sports Resort: Wii Sports Resort is the official coming-out party for Nintendo’s $20 MotionPlus peripheral, showing off what the hardware can do… and where it falls short. A frustratingly uneven product that has promise, Wii Sports Resort could be the roadmap third-party developers needed to understand the Wii.

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The week gone by may be best remembered for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but that wasn’t the only big story to emerge from the world of science and technology. Here are some others:

Computer scientists at the University of Washington have come up with a scheme that allows users to encrypt data using a key that is then stored online in a distributed computing network. As nodes drop off the network, the key is eventually lost, meaning the data is essentially lost.

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This week’s top Apple news was spiked with strong third quarter earnings, flaming iPods, and various legal threats. Office 2008, Skype, and Final Cut Studio all got updates, too, and we even have a few tips for you on how to sync Google Calendar with your iPhone. Read on for the roundup:

Review: NVIDIA GTX 285 on an 8-core Mac Pro: Is NVIDIA’s GTX 285 a capable high-end GPU for professional 3D rendering on the Mac Pro? Ars takes a look at how NVIDIA’s gaming monster handles itself at work, and we also check out the performance under Windows, as well.

Lawsuit alleges Apple helped Mafia to send threats via iPod: There’s no shortage of conspiracy theories, but rarely do we see one that involves the police, the FBI, the DOJ, an auto repair shop, a private investigator, and Apple all conspiring with the Mafia to harass one individual.

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Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news:

Microsoft: Windows 7 is done, on its way to manufacturers: Microsoft announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing milestone. MSDN and TechNet subscribers will be able to get it on August 6. Consumers will have to wait until October 22.

Microsoft aims at VM market with Linux kernel code offering: Microsoft has contributed Hyper-V drivers to the Linux kernel in order to improve the performance of running virtualized Linux guests in a Windows host environment. Microsoft has also opened its Linux Hyper-V drivers under the GPL.

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Although Intel may have been hit with a bigger fine, the multi-year saga of Microsoft’s fight with the European Union’s Competition Commission may have run up larger legal bills, given its longevity. The most recent point of contention between Redmond and Europe has been the browser; Microsoft bundles its own with its operating systems, but the EU views that as using monopoly power to the detriment of potential competitors.

Earlier this month, word came out that Microsoft was looking to make this matter go away, and it may have succeeded; the European Commission has just announced that Microsoft has agreed to proposed EU remedies and is willing to offer a “browser ballot” to new users.

When the two adversaries squared off some years back over a similar issue, the bundling of Microsoft’s media player, the EU ordered Microsoft to offer OEMs a version of Windows without the media software. None of them bit, which made the order rather toothless. So, it wasn’t a shock that Microsoft first tried to preempt EU action in the browser market by offering more or less the same thing: Windows would ship without a browser in Europe, and OEMs could choose to add whichever one they would like.

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Microsoft has given the press a limited preview of some of the new features that will be coming to the Xbox 360 dashboard, and while the Twitter and Last.fm functionality has yet to arrive, what is there points to a rosy future for the 360 as a media box… not to mention a more friendly platform for advertising. Let’s take a look at the changes coming to the system.

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Who needs “three strikes” before disconnecting Internet users? Not UK ISP Karoo, which has voluntarily resorted to beanballing its own users after receiving just a single copyright infringement allegation from rightsholders. And, since Karoo is the only ISP in Hull, Hullsters (as I’m going to assume they like to be called) can’t do much about it. But media pressure can be a wonderful thing, and the company now says it will change the policy.

Protecting users

Karoo’s terms of service make it clear that users are not to “infringe the copyright, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights of others,” and the company reserves the right to “suspend the Services We provide to You, for any reason whatsoever.” Users may also be required to pay a reconnection fee, and Karoo asks them to sign a document promising not to infringe copyright again.

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Palm passive-aggressively fired back at Apple in its 1.1.0 update to the Pre’s webOS Thursday night. Among the handful of changes that came with the point update, the software restores syncing functionality with iTunes after Apple unceremoniously “fixed” the “problem” last week. The move is the latest in this high-profile cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Palm, and Palm seems to be willing to keep poking the fate bear—but to what end?

webOS 1.1.0 isn’t all about iTunes compatibility, containing a number of useful updates to the Pre, including better timezone support in the Clock application, improved syncing with Google when you edit a Google contact, and the addition of emoticons in text, multimedia, and instant messages. The software also gained some enterprise features in the form of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) support that allows for remote wipe, PIN/passwords, inactivity timeouts, and improved certificate handling. 

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The Linux platform is beginning to gain mainstream acceptance on low-cost netbook devices. The growing popularity of netbooks presents a major opportunity for the open source operating system, but it also comes with some challenges. One of the most significant problems is that much of the open source software that is available today for the desktop is not designed to deliver an optimal user experience on small screens.

Linux distributors and application developers are exploring alternate user interface concepts that will work well at low resolutions without compromising productivity. There is also a clear need to boost usability as netbook devices are broadly intended for the regular consumer market. The KDE desktop environment has recently gained a new specialized netbook interface that leverages the strengths of KDE’s unique Plasma technology. Ars tested it on Kubuntu to see how it compares to the conventional KDE desktop experience.

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When Adobe released Acrobat 9 last year, the company introduced support for embedding Flash media in PDF files. This feature is now being used by attackers who are exploiting a new vulnerability in Adobe’s Flash media plugin. The vulnerability allows remote code execution, making it a potential vector for malware deployment.

Adobe’s security response team issued a statement on Wednesday, confirming the existence of a critical Flash vulnerability that is actively being exploited in the wild. The attacks are currently targeted against Acrobat Reader on the Windows platform. Adobe is working to address the problem and says that a fix will be ready by July 30.

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Paypal has announced a brand new developer API called the Adaptive Payment Platform that will allow for monetary transactions of almost any size to take place nearly everywhere there’s an Internet connection. In addition to allowing for payments outside of the web, the new platform allows for nearly unlimited flexibility in how payments are handled. 

CNET, reporting from a PayPal press conference this afternoon noted that the new API will allow developers to place themselves between buyers and sellers (and take a cut of the transaction if they like), split payments into multiple transactions, and choose which side of the transactions—buyer or seller—pays the Paypal transaction fees.

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In 2008, the Canadian government discovered a new “third rail” of politics: copyright reform. Long considered a wonky subject of interest only to legislators and rightsholders, interest in copyright has exploded in recent years, and Canadians showed a keen interest in talking about term length, time shifting, DRM circumvention rules, format shifting, mashups, remixes, the public domain, and the levies that Canadians currently pay on things like blank CD-Rs.

When Bill C-61 was introduced in June 2008, though, it was instantly clear that consensus would be hard to find. Consumers wanted rights and flexibility, while copyright holders wanted… well, I’ll let them explain it.

“We would be deeply concerned if the Bill allows people to copy artists’ work onto media devices like iPODS without compensation for creators; and, also if existing levies and royalties are affected by this Bill,” said Brad Keenan, Director of the Performers’ Rights Society and Sound Recording Division at the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA).

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The government could be building a giant map of social networks using Facebook and Twitter, scraping MySpace pages, or mining the metadata associated with cellular phone calls in order to look for communication patterns. On the other hand, all of that computer power that the NSA is aggregating at the datacenters that are coming online could just be for the limited purpose of snooping voice calls and e-mail coming into and out of the US, but such narrow use is unlikely. 

What the NSA is doing with its massive and growing capabilities is still a secret, but it’s probably an extension of DoD efforts at mapping social networks that extend back to the early part of the decade. A new EFF lawsuit filed this week could finally shed at least a little more light on the nature of these classified activities, so that we can know for sure whether some descendent of John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program lives on at the NSA.

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Ever wonder why projector systems and televisions doesn’t use laser illumination? It isn’t for safety reasons, and it isn’t for efficiency reasons—laser diodes have efficiencies ranging from 30 to 50 percent. No, the problem is green light. We have red laser diodes, and blue laser diodes turned up nearly 15 years ago. But green—where the heck is the green laser diode?

A group of Japanese researchers have answered that question: in our lab. Yes, they have the first “true green” laser diode. It doesn’t work that well yet but, based on past history, expect rapid progress from here and commercial laser diodes before the end of next year.

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At the close of trading Thursday, Microsoft announced the results for its fiscal fourth quarter. Its revenue, at $13.1 billion, was a 17 percent drop-off from the same quarter last year, and all the other financial measures—operating and net income, earnings per share—dropped anywhere from 25 to 30 percent. On the positive side for the company, there are some signs that the drop in revenue that began earlier this year is leveling out; Redmond has also managed its expenses to bring earnings per share up slightly from last quarter.

The economic slowdown hadn’t been apparent at this time last year, so Microsoft had yet to see any significant effect on its bottom line—all its major financial numbers went up between the third and fourth quarters, with the exception of earnings per share (that held steady). But Microsoft’s third quarter this year saw significant year-over-year drops, especially in earnings per share, from the year before.

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At the close of trading Thursday, Microsoft announced the results for its fiscal fourth quarter. Its revenue, at $13.1 billion, was a 17 percent drop-off from the same quarter last year, and all the other financial measures—operating and net income, earnings per share—dropped anywhere from 25 to 30 percent. On the positive side for the company, there are some signs that the drop in revenue that began earlier this year is leveling out; Redmond has also managed its expenses to bring earnings per share up slightly from last quarter.

The economic slowdown hadn’t been apparent at this time last year, so Microsoft had yet to see any significant effect on its bottom line—all its major financial numbers went up between the third and fourth quarters, with the exception of earnings per share (that held steady). But Microsoft’s third quarter this year saw significant year-over-year drops, especially in earnings per share, from the year before.

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There are occasions on which I suspect that the entire raison d’être for The Pirate Bay is to provide content for a wacky reality TV show focused on how to create Internet drama. This week was one such occasion, as a strange lawsuit in the Netherlands brought charges against the site, its operators, and its (possible) future owners, even as Pirate Bay operators filed a defamation lawsuit in Sweden against the main Dutch antipiracy group.

BREIN, or Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland, is one of the main Dutch trade groups representing copyright owners. It has taken on all sorts of lawsuits, including cases against BitTorrent search engine Mininova and local Usenet providers. It’s also trying to convince a Dutch court to make The Pirate Bay block access to Dutch users after the Bay’s administrators were convicted in Sweden this spring of aiding copyright infringement.

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YouTube takedown drama is back this week, thanks to British musician Calvin Harris and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The organization, which represents the recording industry in the UK, apparently had one of Harris’ music videos removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim. The problem, however, was that the video was created and posted by Harris himself.

After his discovery that the video was missing, Harris had many colorful words for BPI in his Twitter stream (hat tip to The Music Magazine). “The BPI are the worst organisation to ever walk the earth and their setup is shambolic,” Harris wrote in one tweet. “There are videos up there that other people have uploaded of the same song, and they haven’t been removed!? But mine does!”

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With the proliferation of ever more capable smart phones, many security experts are predicting that the cellular world will be the new malware frontier. Always-on Internet connections and direct SMS messages do provide a lot of opportunities for external parties to inject malware into a user’s phone. But in what may be developing into the most disturbing instance in the relatively short history of cellular malware, Blackberry users in the United Arab Emirates have had a spyware package placed on their devices through the actions of their carrier, which claimed it was necessary for a service upgrade.

Etisalat is a service provider in the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, a major international finance center. Earlier this month, Blackberry users on its network received texts from Etisalat, saying that an update was available that would improve the handoff between 2G and 3G networks. Not surprisingly, many users installed the software. A number of users, however, began to have significant problems with battery drain afterwards, which caused some people to dig into the contents of the software update.

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Since 2005, California has been fighting to pass a law that would criminalize the sale of violent games to children. The bill was passed by the state assembly in 2005, only to be thrown out on constitutional grounds by the US District Court. Governor Schwarzenegger sought an appeal, but the attempt was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Governor then vowed to fight the issue in the Supreme Court, and most recently state senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of those efforts. The document contains some fascinating insights into how opponents of video games view the art form.

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The chair of the Federal Communications Commission told the Senate on Wednesday that interactive ads on television that target children should not be allowed without some kind of parental consent mechanism.

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A group of commercial open source software vendors and various nonprofit advocacy organizations have joined forces to encourage broader use of open source software and open standards in government IT. The coalition, called Open Source for America (OSA), aims to educate government officials and promote procurement policies that give open source software solutions equal priority to proprietary competitors.

The group has not yet disclosed a lot of specific details about how it will pursue its mission, but it is actively seeking volunteers who are willing to contribute to the effort. The organization’s Web site has a registration form that prospective participants can use to gain OSA membership. The registration form describes several ways that members can help, including open source software development, organizing town hall meetings, and assisting with recruitment activities. The OSA clearly intends to grow its ranks and leverage community-driven grass-roots activism as a vehicle for encouraging open source adoption.

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The downside to opening up the US broadband plan to “public comment” is that, sooner or later, you’re actually going to get some. The FCC’s docket on this issue is stuffed with comments from individuals, most of which appear to be verbatim copies of a form letter, with the rest consisting of items like this:

One of the human current “owners” of the United States of America, I am
outraged that Government regulatory agencies, including the FCC, continue to
transfer OUR control of OUR airwaves and OUR communication over to for-profit
corporations. If you don’t start listening to the PEOPLE and OUR wants,
rather than to special interests, soon there wont be an FCC. Its not your
agency…its OURS, and you will run it OUR way, or else!

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Hackers don’t have to work very hard to steal information from people and organizations—people are pretty willing to give it away. Social networks and other Web 2.0 sites are making it ever easier for Internet users to accidentally share too much information or become victim to phishing scams, leading to security research firm Sophos to warn IT admins on how to handle employee use of these services.

A majority of sysadmins—63 percent—told Sophos that they worry about employees sharing too much information on social networking sites. This could potentially put the corporate infrastructure at risk, especially if they reveal too much about the company, not to mention details about their personal identities. According to Sophos’ research, this worry is justified—33.4 percent of business users have been spammed on a social networking site and 21 percent have been phished there. (23.6 percent and 27.9 percent, respectively, said that they had no idea either way. That should really inspire some confidence.)

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Disney’s Japan unit has embarked on an experiment at once fascinating and sad: bundling microSD cards with Hollywood popcorn fare like the National Treasure series and Pirates of the Caribbean. The cards will contain digital copies of the films meant to be viewed on mobile phones and other portable devices… for an additional ten bucks.

Beginning this fall, Disney will sell a line of its films with both a DVD and a microSD card inside the package. According to Reuters, it can be had for the low, low price of Â¥4,935 ($53)—a mere Â¥1,000 ($11) more than the DVD alone.

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Apple has officially backed off from legal threats made against OdioWorks, the operator of a wiki that hosted pages discussing how users might use an iPod with non-Apple media software. The company sent a letter to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which was representing OdioWorks in its legal case against Apple) earlier this month stating that the company had chosen to withdraw its takedown notifications. As a result, OdioWorks is also dropping its lawsuit against Apple, though this issue may not lay dornmant for long.

BluWiki, like most wiki platforms, is open to the public for the purpose of sharing information. The site is noncommercial and doesn’t run ads, and depends on its users to edit and publish articles on a wide variety of topics. Some of those topics cover how to use an iPod or iPhone with third-party software—something not possible under Apple’s normal product restrictions.

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Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have hit the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone. The software giant still has a lot of work to do, but the bigger responsibility now falls to OEMs that must get PCs ready, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are testing their new apps, and Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that are preparing their new hardware.

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With the release of its second quarter earnings yesterday, AMD now has 11 straight quarters of losses under its belt (the company was last profitable in the third quarter of 2006). Even more importantly for its share price, which is down around 14 percent after yesterday’s earnings, the company underperformed analysts’ expectations by about 2¢ per share, with losses coming in at $0.49 per share.

You would think that AMD’s position as a value player would give it an edge in this market over rival Intel, which also posted a loss due to a major fine imposed by the EU. But a combination of lower average selling prices, capacity underutilization, and inventory clearing squeezed the chipmaker’s margins from an already low 43 percent in the first quarter of this year to 37 percent (compare Intel’s margins, which are north of 50 percent).

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iPods smoking and bursting into flames: freak accidents, or more common than we think? It’s at least the former, but according to a recent disclosure by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there may in fact be far more of these incidents than previously thought. Apple’s legal team appears to have tried to keep the information under wraps, too, though the CPSC itself doesn’t yet consider the issue to be a serious one.

The CPSC sent KIRO 7 Eyewitness News some 800 pages of documentation over smoking, burning, and exploding iPods this week in response to a Freedom Of Information Act request. In fact, the request was first submitted this past December—more than seven months ago—but was continually delayed “because Apple’s lawyers filed exemption after exemption.” It’s unclear whether the 800 pages are comprehensive or whether there’s more. Regardless, they apparently reveal enough to anger a number of victims even more, because the incidents continued long after they reported their own issues to Apple.

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Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, announced this week that it has opened the source code of its Launchpad project hosting service. This will enable third-party developers to participate in improving the software and could also make it a lot more attractive as a project hosting option.

Launchpad provides much of Ubuntu’s underlying development infrastructure, including bug tracking, code hosting, project management, and localization tools. Canonical has broadly encouraged open source software developers to bring their own projects to Launchpad and take advantage of this functionality. Launchpad itself, however, was a proprietary service and the source code was not available. This became a source of friction between Canonical and the open source software community, deterring some potential adopters. Canonical’s move to completely open the Launchpad source code will largely address the concerns expressed by prospective adopters.

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Adobe has released an Open Source Media Framework (OSMF) that can be used to build Flash-based streaming video players. The framework emerged from Adobe’s Strobe initiative and is part of a broader collaborative effort called the Open Video Player project that has brought together Microsoft, Adobe, Akamai, and other key players with the aim of simplifying real-world video delivery on the Internet.

The OSMF provides a preintegrated stack of components for building a streaming video player that runs on top of Adobe’s Flash browser plugin. It includes stream loading functionality, user interface classes, and other parts that are needed to build a video player. The roadmap, which has been published at the project’s website, lists a wide range of more specialized features that are planned or under active development, such as rich playlist support and a connection plugin for streaming content from Akamai’s content delivery network.

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While gamers may think of long nights spent grinding for the next level when they hear the name Warcraft, many of us still remember the game’s real-time strategy roots… as well as the series’ sometimes overlooked story and epic cinematics. Now that world will be brought to the big screen, as Sam Raimi has officially been announced as the director of the Warcraft film.

In the official announcement, there is no “World of” in the title, the project is simply listed as Warcraft.

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Federal Communications Commissioner Julius Genachowski says that FCC staff can now access a new tool for improving the agency: reboot.FCC.gov. Its purpose is to “solicit reform proposals from every FCC employee,” Genachowski explained on Tuesday.

But don’t bother going there if you don’t work at the Commission, at least not yet. “The website will later become publicly accessible,” he promised, “allowing the agency to receive reform ideas from all interested parties.”

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The world’s number one online destination—still the main Yahoo front page—is slowly rolling out the major redesign that was first discussed last fall. US users should start seeing an option to opt-in to the new design when logging in today, while Yahoo will begin rolling out the refresh in France, India, and the UK later in the week. Yahoo’s senior vice president of Integrated Consumer Experiences, Tapan Bhat, is already patting himself on the back, calling the new design “the most fundamental change to the homepage ever.” We took it for a brief test-drive to see if it lives up to the hype.

The front page has gained a few customization features, similar to the My Yahoo page. “We want to be the center of people’s lives online and want to do it in an open, innovative way, all while providing a compelling experience,” Bhat told All Things Digital in an interview yesterday. “It marks the beginning of a renaissance of Yahoo, a renaissance where every pixel matters.”

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As users flock to web-based mail and social sites, more and more of their data is stored in cloud systems. As we’ve seen, some of that data can persist long after a user hits the delete button on it. Now, computer scientists have come up with a way to encrypt data so that it operates like the self-destructing messages in Mission Impossible. Their scheme, called Vanish, encrypts the message, and then essentially throws away the key. The trick is that the key will take a set amount of time before disappearing from view; during that time, it’s still possible to access the data.

Operating Vanish

It’s probably easiest to describe how the system operates in practical terms before discussing the technology behind it. Thanks to a FireFox plugin, it’s possible to select text on any web page—a Gmail message or Facebook posting, for example—and forward it to Vanish, which runs as a background process. Vanish will then encrypt the text, replacing it with the encrypted version if it’s in an editable field, or providing the encrypted form in a popup window if not. Users can also create a drop folder for encrypting self-destructing files.

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British men are much more willing to pirate online music and video content than women, according to the results of a new survey. UK-based IT services company Telindus has released a report that examines the attitudes of adults in the UK when it comes to music and film rights online, noting that many users are confused over intellectual property rights and believe that once content is posted online, it’s essentially a “free for all.”

According to Telindus’ survey of 2,000 UK adults, a full 50 percent of men who download various media said that they never paid for content online, compared to 38 percent of women. Don’t get too worked up over this battle of the sexes, though—neither number is particularly good for content owners. Three out of five (60 percent, for those keeping track) adults said they didn’t believe musicians should profit from their music and videos being downloaded online, and more than two-thirds said the same of TV and filmmakers.

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“People are desperate for fruitcake these days,” says The Cato Institute’s Jim Harper when explaining why he’s giving one away as a prize in his crowdsourced earmark-exposure contest.

Behind the fruitcake lies a serious purpose: crowdsource the compilation of all federal legislators’ “earmark” requests, those specific funding requests to dole out money directly to (hopefully) deserving entities in the legislator’s home district.

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As expected by industry analysts, Apple posted third (fiscal) quarter earnings that breezed past the company’s guidance of $0.95-1.00 per share. Buoyed by stronger-than-expected sales of its new iPhone 3GS, Apple reported profits of $1.35 per share on earnings of $8.34 billion. Both of those are up significantly from third quarter 2008 figures of $1.19 per share on revenues of $7.46 billion. Sequential growth was also solid, beating the second quarter’s $8.34 billion in revenues and $1.33 earnings per share.

Apple’s results in the middle of a recession are encouraging, especially given the high margins it typically enjoys. In fact, margins were 36.3 percent, a bit higher than the company’s guidance of 33 percent, and higher than the third quarter of 2008′s 34.8 percent. 

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Intel has announced two new solid state disk drives made on its leading-edge 34nm process. The two new SSDs are X25M SATA parts weighing in at 80GB and 160GB, and they’re meant to replace Intel’s existing X25M drives in those capacities, but at 60 percent less cost and with better performance. The 80GB X25-M is $225 in lots of 1,000 (down from $595), and the 160GB is $440 (from $945). That’s some serious discounting, and it may well drive even more SSD uptake in the coming quarters despite the ongoing IT spending crunch.

So what do you get for 60 percent less? In a word, speed. The new drives boast a 25 percent reduction in read latency, which was already about 60x the speed of an average hard disk; write performance has also doubled with this new generation.

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Tremendous sales of both smartphones and laptop data cards mean tremendous data surging through cell networks, and a new report says that mobile data growth grew 30 percent over the course of the second quarter 2009. But (for once) don’t blame P2P.

Allot, a vendor deep packet inspection (DPI) and other network monitoring gear, has just released its Global Mobile Broadband Traffic Report for Q2 2009, using data gathered from wireless network operators. It found that the most popular use for mobile data is HTTP browsing, though HTTP streaming is by far the fastest-growing (58 percent over the quarter).

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A year ago, it wasn’t even clear that traditional book retailer Barnes & Noble had an e-book plan. But, over the past few months, the company has picked up several small e-book companies, and on Monday it announced the end results of its efforts: dedicated readers for phone and desktop platforms, an exclusive deal with an upcoming portable reader, and a massive library of over 700,000 books, most of them free. Despite the impressive numbers, B&N is still playing catch up with Amazon in a number of areas.

In the library department, B&N’s 700,000 books dwarfs Amazon’s capacity, which the company claims includes over 300,000 works (minus two from George Orwell). But all of Amazon’s offerings are commercially-produced works that are still in print. B&N has gotten to its figure by partnering with Google, gaining access to out-of-copyright works that have been scanned as part of the Google Book Search service. On the plus side, these are available for free; readers who have been itching to catch up on the classics will love this service. On the downside, B&N may end up paying for a lot of bandwidth to satisfy a user base that won’t be paying them anything.

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The European Union is adding to the Google Books settlement scrutiny by reviewing the deal to ensure it won’t stifle competition. A hearing is scheduled for September 7, at which time the EU plans to let US regulators know what it thinks of the settlement terms. Google apparently doesn’t feel threatened by this latest development and seems to believe that everything will continue to move ahead.

Google Books has been dealing with legal issues since its inception, first due to a legal battle with the publishing industry and later in a battle with regulators due to its settlement with the publishing industry. The Authors Guild had originally accused Google of “massive copyright infringement” because the company digitized numerous copyrighted books and offered the text online for free. However, in October of 2008, Google agreed to allow libraries free and unfettered access to the entire contents of the books, while universities and other large organizations could get access by paying a subscription fee.

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The Federal Communications Commission’s investigation of BusRadio is in its second month. A commercial WiFi music stream for school buses, over a million kids listen to BusRadio en route to or from classes. The company says that its service offers a “superior, age-appropriate alternative to AM/FM radio programming,” in which the students “are engaged and entertained in the safest way possible.”

BusRadio haters see the matter differently. “It is a disgrace that our children are subjected to such manipulative marketing tactics such as bus radio,” declares one comment to the FCC. “Keep commercial radio OFF SCHOOL BUSES!” says another. “Our kids lives are being hijacked by the media and its onslaught of advertising.”

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Copyright-focused industries have been booming in recent years, seeing growth rates that are more than double that of the US GDP. That’s the conclusion of a report prepared on behalf of the International Intellectual Property Alliance. The study relies on data from the US Department of Commerce and methods adopted by the World intellectual Property Organization, so nobody is questioning the numbers, but a number of groups are questioning the author’s conclusion: that the numbers highlight the necessity of combating piracy.

The report (PDF) was prepared by an intellectual property consulting firm at the behest of the IIPA; its author helped develop the methods of analysis, which have since been adopted by WIPO. It covers the years 2003 to 2007 (the most recent year that data is available for) and breaks things down into two categories: core copyright industries and related industries. The core includes things like movies, music, publishing and software. Related industries include things like design (furniture, toys, etc.), distributors, and the production and performance industries, like electronics makers.

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Public radio’s existing iPhone app was already cool—it allowed listeners to hear public radio stations from across the country on their phones, live. But the new version of the Public Radio Player, released this weekend, adds an incredible new set of features that provide a glimpse at the future of “radio.” Welcome to the on-demand, in-your-pocket future, today.

The upgraded app adds the two most-requested user features: station schedules and on-demand access to past shows. Dialing in my local station (WBEZ in Chicago) starts the stream and displays the currently playing show, along with the schedule of the next show. Users can also tap to see the station’s complete lineup for the day; because the app allows access to streams from across the country, it’s possible to hear just about any show at any time.

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It’s worth going back and playing the original Wii Sports before you play Wii Sports Resort, in order to give the new game some context. Wii Sports came packed with the hardware in the United States, and did more to sell the system than any commercial ever could. It felt like Nintendo was bringing in a new era of gaming, complete with a brand-new way to interact with our games; the possibilities seemed nearly limitless, and we waited for the flood of games that would take advantage of the Wiimote technology.

The competition-crushing sales numbers sure came, but the games didn’t. I can name a dozen great Wii games with no effort, but if you asked me to name six games that showed off what the system could do as well as Wii Sports, I would have to stop and think. I’m not sure if there are six. Nintendo sits on a hollow throne: the company may have won this generation, but the revolution never came. Not in the way we had hoped.

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