Factbox: Where BlackBerry Stands Around The World

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is facing demands for access to its encrypted data in some of its fastest-growing markets.

RIM’s encrypted traffic is delivered through its network operating centers, based mostly in Canada, though corporate clients can choose to host their BlackBerry Enterprise Servers elsewhere. RIM says it cannot access data sent via its devices.

RIM does not give usage numbers by region, but research firm Gartner estimates that, of 10.55 million BlackBerry devices shipped in the last quarter, 1.4 percent went to the Middle East and Africa, 7.6 percent to Asia and 9.5 percent to Latin America.

North America took more than half and more than a quarter went to western Europe.

Below is a factbox showing how different governments have dealt with concerns raised by BlackBerry’s encrypted data.

INDIA

The Indian government put off a decision Thursday on whether to ban BlackBerry services over national security fears after a meeting of officials, intelligence services and telecoms operators.

A government official said Wednesday that the government could ask mobile phone operators to block BlackBerry messaging and email until RIM provides access to data transmitted.

An Indian government source told Reuters last week that RIM had proposed to share some details of its BlackBerry services but security agencies were demanding full access to a messaging service it fears could be misused by militants.

Indian security agencies suspect militants used BlackBerry services to plan a 2008 Mumbai attack in which 166 people died.

3G wireless networks due in late 2010 or early 2011 are expected to boost interest in BlackBerry devices. India already has one mobile connection for every two of its 1.2 billion people and adds 16 million new subscribers a month.

CHINA

RIM’s plans to enter China in 2006 were delayed by about two years, with analysts blaming Beijing’s demands that RIM prove its handsets posed no security threat.

RIM eventually began selling BlackBerry handsets in 2008 in a tie-up with dominant operator China Mobile, but usage has reportedly been weak. In May, RIM launched a BlackBerry service with China Telecom, the smallest of China’s three mobile carriers.

China limits ownership of its telecoms networks, due in part to security concerns, and has been slow to allow foreign operators to build their own networks.

BlackBerry’s experience is part of Beijing’s broader effort to control the flow of information. Beijing often blocks websites on sensitive issues and requires Internet firms operating in the country to self-censor on those subjects.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

The UAE, where RIM has 500,000 users, has proposed a ban starting October 11 targeting BlackBerry Messenger as well as e-mail and Web browsing. It will also apply to visitors.

The Gulf state said it proposed the ban after three years of fruitless talks with RIM, which last year said state-controlled operator Etisalat had sought to install an unauthorized surveillance application on its devices.

It objects on security grounds to data being exported offshore and managed by a “foreign, commercial operation.”

Activists in the UAE say the move may have been prompted by messenger campaigns, including critiques of state officials and attempts to organize protests.

Mobile phone service providers have scrambled to hold on to half a million users by offering them a switch to Apple’s iPhone and other rival smartphones.

SAUDI ARABIA

A source close to talks said Research in Motion had agreed to hand over user codes that would let Saudi authorities monitor its BlackBerry Messenger to avert a move by the telecommunications regulator to ban the service.

Such an arrangement would effectively give Saudi Arabia access to RIM’s main server for Messenger — for communications with Saudi users, the source said. RIM made no comment.

Most users in the biggest Arab economy are consumers. Messenging is used by Saudi youth to meet members of the opposite sex in a deeply conservative society.

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The Mystery of Steve Jobs’ Plateless Benz

The Mystery of Steve Jobs' Plateless Benz

If you ranked the things in life that Apple chief exec Steve Jobs seems perfectly content to ignore, license plates would be up there with handicap parking spaces, three-piece suits and customer demands. The proof, as it were, is all … over … Flickr.

His 2007 Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG has been shot without proper attire more times than an HP marketing contractor.

The only thing more abundant than the photos are the myriad theories behind how Silicon Valley’s most notorious PL8 H8TR generates this special vehicle-code distortion field.

Some claim their absence is linked to certain privacy concessions. Others insist that overzealous fanboys swipe the roadster’s tags every time they’re mounted. These are usually these same folks who whisper of a special Back to the Future-style, state-issued barcode (it’s actually the vehicle identification number), secret agreements with a shadow branch of DMV (nope), and even a custom-built mechanized plate retractor. (Steve: You build it, we’ll buy it. As usual.)

The reality? Less Bond, more Occam’s Razor. Yes, the man may pay an asston of taxes to the state every year, but even a fat bank account and wizardly charisma doesn’t guarantee him (or any other celebrity) special treatment when it comes to the California vehicle code. Just ask Kim Kardashian.

So how’s Jobs doing it? By playing the odds.

The Mystery of Steve Jobs' Plateless Benz

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Net Neutrality Groups Organizing Protest At Google HQ Friday

Net neutrality group Free Press and the left-leaning MoveOn.org are taking the fight over openness rules for the internet out of cyberspace and onto the streets Friday.

Google’s street, that is.

‘We are trying to show that the public is against Google and Verizon’s plan to turn over the internet to corporations’

The groups are calling on their members in the Bay Area to head down to Google’s Mountain View headquarters Friday at noon to vent their grievances over Google’s compromise with Verizon on the issue of openness rules for the wired and wireless broadband.

The two powerhouse companies, former arch-nemeses on openness issues and now close business partners in mobile devices, proposed compromise rules on Monday. The proposal, which the companies hoped would spur new legislation, suggested imposing some basic fairness rules on wired broadband, allowing ISPs to build their own net services available only to their customers and exempting wireless providers from rules that let customers use the apps, services and devices of choosing.

Monday’s joint proposal has met with a backlash from net neutrality supporters, who were dismayed to see their biggest and most vocal corporate supporter, Google, making a back room deal with one of the nation’s largest broadband and wireless companies. (I even called Google a “Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey.”)

Google defended its pact with Verizon on Thursday, saying it was a “myth” that it sold out on network neutrality.

Free Press is e-mailing its estimated 15,000 Bay Area supporters Thursday, and MoveOn will do the same to their local membership, which is likely to be many times the size of Free Press’.

The point, according to Free Press spokeswoman Liz Rose, is to make it clear to D.C. lawmakers that this is an issue people care about and to make it clear to those who don’t know about the issue “what they are about to lose.”

“We are trying to show that the public is against Google and Verizon’s plan to turn over the internet to corporations,” Rose said. “We can’t leave any stone unturned. Can we get people out from behind their computers?”

Free Press has filed comments with the FCC, and gotten its members to write lawmakers and regulators, but the situation in D.C. still looks like the telecoms will be able to prevent the FCC from imposing openness rules on the net’s transport layer. Seventy-four House Democrats joined with nearly every House Republican telling the FCC not to try to exercise authority over ISPs.

The FCC wants to re-classify ISPs into a category that gives it a legal way to keep ISPs from blocking users from using the devices, applications and online services of their choice. While such rules were part of President Obama’s election platform, House Democrats have threatened to pull the FCC’s funding if such rules on implemented on the powerful telecoms.

ISPs had long assumed the FCC had such power, but a federal court ruled the FCC no longer had that power, thanks to a deregulatory sleight-of-hand by the Bush Administration’s FCC.

So now, Free Press and MoveOn are trying to get their supporters to close their laptops and make their voices heard in meatspace.

The groups have rented several buses that will leave from San Francisco’s Opera House at 11 a.m. Friday.

Photo: Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Credit: Håkan Dahlström

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Next Firefox 4 Beta Arrives, Now With Multi-touch

Mozilla has released the latest beta version of its Firefox 4 browser. You can grab Firefox 4 beta 3 for all major operating systems and over 30 languages from Mozilla’s beta download site.

The big addition to this beta is support for touch events inside the browser on Windows 7 machines. Windows 7 ships with built-in support for multi-touch actions on touchscreen tablets, desktops and laptops, and now Firefox is able to access that magic and let you interact with websites by touching them. The result is stuff like this:

Also new to this release is an enhancement to the JavaScript capabilities within Firefox. If you’ve been keeping up with all the latest JavaScript and HTML5 web app demos we’ve been showing you over the last few months, you’ve probably noticed that animations with many moving parts tend to be much smoother and faster in Chrome and Safari. This new version of Firefox gives scripted animation performance a significant boost, so the speed difference is less noticeable.

These new features join the enhancements already introduced in previous pre-release versions of Firefox 4, like the new tabs-on-top interface and the addition of App Tabs.

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JetBlue Breaks Odd Social Media Silence on Steve ‘Take This Job And …’ Slater

When JetBlue flight attendant Steve Slater slid down that yellow plastic slide and into the nation’s heart, he created some serious turbulence for his presumably-soon-to-be-former employer.

JetBlue, one of the earliest proponents of transparent online communication with customers via Twitter, Facebook and blogs, mostly kept quiet online as millions upon millions of its potential customers discussed the incident using those same networks.

As of Tuesday, the company’s Facebook page lacked any reference to Mr. Slater, and as AdAge noted,  its handful of tweets on this red-hot topic consist mostly of terse statements like “an investigation is ongoing” and “we will not comment.”

That article pointed out that the FAA, Homeland Security, and possibly other agencies are investigating the incident, leaving JetBlue with precious little to say. However, Ad Age’s article apparently coaxed a more direct mention from JetBlue of this incident on Wednesday, indicating that it probably could have said more, earlier, than it did.

The following post appears on a company blog that typically covers “weird” news related to flying:

It wouldn’t be fair for us to point out absurdities in other corners of the industry without acknowledging when it’s about us. Well, this week’s news certainly falls into that category. Perhaps you heard a little story about one of our flight attendants? While we can’t discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet. (The reason we’re not commenting is that we respect the privacy of the individual. People can speak on their own behalf; we won’t do it for them.)

While this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you’ve come to expect of us.

Wait, so why couldn’t JetBlue say even that until now? The important thing is that the company is now at least talking about how it can’t really talk about this, which is a big improvement on just not talking about it. The first of 115 comments on that post, when it finally appeared, reads, “I love you JetBlue.”

But if JetBlue really wants the love of the online masses, who continue to fete Slater through online groups like “Can Steven Slater Get More Fans Than Justin Bieber?” it only has one option, assuming the guy doesn’t end up in Guantanamo over this: giving its errant flight attendant a stern talking-to, letting him keep his job, and putting him in charge of a new Politeness In The Skies initiative targeted at passengers and crew alike.

We excoriated BP a while back for failing to address its catastrophic oil spill on social networks for a full month, missing out on a chance to explain itself to an irate public, or at least to apologize. Compared to BP’s public relations nightmare, JetBlue’s issue is so trivial that the company might yet spin it around into an epic win, harnessing the sympathy millions have shown the air rager. As of now, this story has a hero in search of a villain, and JetBlue doesn’t want to be it.

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Social Marketing Doesn’t Have to Suck

Last month we bemoaned the way some marketers offer cash or other rewards in return for lying to one’s friends, while other dodgy companies sell bundles of 10,000 Twitter followers to help a particular brand look well loved, among other funny business.

However, the ongoing collision of marketing and social networks doesn’t necessarily have to involve trickery or deception.

Picture this: You’re sitting next to the pool at a Vegas resort, when you decide to tweet a picture of where you are to your friends at their fluorescent-lit day jobs, just to, you know, assault their sanity. A few minutes later, a waiter shows up with an ice-cold beverage on the house, explaining, “thanks for the tweet.”

Guess what your next tweet will be about? Staying at the BEST HOTEL EVAR!!

That’s more-or-less the scenario proposed by Marc Heyneker, co-founder and of Revinate, part of a new generation of tools that help companies monitor what people are saying about them on social networks and review sites in detail. Revinate bundles it all into a simple cloud-based dashboard that lets one employee do the work of five or so, when it comes to monitoring a given company’s reputation.

Tools similar to this are commonplace, and typically pick up on keywords on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and so on, but Revinate is different in that it specializes in a single vertical market: the hotel industry. Individual hotels and chains can sign up in order to see how they stack up to their competition in all sorts of ways, and respond to individual or overall-trending gripes and praise.

Heyneker says the hotel industry has been “sitting on the sidelines” as their business has been disrupted by the double-edged sword of online travel agents and the reviews sites people check before booking — but hotels are often “clueless” as to how to deal with the new landscape. According to ComScore, online reviews influence a full 87 percent of people looking to book hotel rooms. This isn’t just about feelings, it’s about dollars — lots of them. (And it’s not just about hotels either, of course.)

The clean, tightly-designed Revinate dashboard lets subscribing hotels and chains easily see, for example, if lots of people are mentioning their swimming pool in negative reviews, tend to talk a lot about their restaurant in positive reviews, and things like that, in addition to pulling in just about everything people are saying about the place in the usual online forums. And, it displays the same information for a hotel’s competition, so you can see if customers like your pool more or less than the other guy’s.

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How Spies (And Counter Spies) Are Using The Cloud

How spy technology is taking to the cloud

Secret agents have long been at the cutting edge of technological developments. By studying how different spy agencies use technology, it’s often been possible to glean an insight into the future. Pocket camera or hidden mic anyone?

‘Being able to turn stuff on and off from thousands of miles away, the other side of the world, is a key thing’

But in recent years technological growth has outpaced spy innovation, and so their latest gadgets haven’t been coming from a Q figure, but instead from the outside world. Speaking to Wired.co.uk, Dave Thomas, a former SAS operative, explained exactly how spies are using the same type of technology that you’re likely using right now to write your emails, host your photos and remotely access your PC.

“Whereas before you would have a camera that would be the size of a quarter of a matchbox that could store maybe half an hour’s worth of data video or footage, nowadays the same size device can literally contain weeks of information,” Thomas said. “What has changed is the ability to remotely access that information, rather than having to retrieve it from tapes or hard drives. Being able to turn stuff on and off from thousands of miles away, the other side of the world, is a key thing.”

But anti-spying organizations are also employing the same tricks, says Thomas, by stuffing miniaturized communications equipment into their bugging tools, as well as loading up equipment known to be used by spies with keyloggers and other tools normally associated with cybercriminals.

“If two spies are looking to transfer information between one-another, whether through coded messages or phone conversations, anti-spying agencies have employed technological advances to jam these mobile phone, but also monitor them at the same time.

“There are various technology and software programs out there that you can download to mobile phones and computers that literally will be able to monitor something and make an exact copy of the email that you’re making or the text that you’re sending.”

So with technology being employed on both sides of the divide, is it easier or harder to be a spy today? “I would say it definitely makes the job easier with the technology that we have,” says Thomas, adding, “I remember first starting surveillance operations in the early 1990s and the technology then was literally by a pager. You’d get the info by a pager then run to a phone box to make a phone call. It was only then that time went on that you’d get the brick Motorola handset come through to give you immediate access.

“In the past if you took a picture of someone you’d have to get it developed, then scanned, then possibly send it by email if you were lucky enough to have a computer. Nowadays of course you can take a picture on very high quality definitions of mobile phones and can immediately email the images, audio or video to the other side of the world.”

Finally, perhaps the biggest influence on the industry has been a generation growing up with Bond movies, the Bourne trilogy, or films such as From Paris With Love, which was recently released on DVD and download. “Films have also made spying much more accessible, particularly with regards to how they have recently portrayed spies using technology like the iPhone,” said Thomas.

“It certainly makes people think about the world of spying and what it would be like to be a spy.”

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Broadband Should Not Be a Government Priority: Pew Internet Study

While the digerati debates the fine points of net neutrality and whether Google has lost its way out of that thicket by seeking its own third way with Verizon, a new poll has found that a majority of Americans don’t even think the U.S. should use much bandwith trying to increase access to affordable broadband.

This study, released Wednesday the Pew Internet and American Life Project, also found that broadband adoption slowed “dramatically” over the last year — perhaps not so surprising after years of double-digit growth and now 66% penetration.

But the really surprising finding was that 53% of the 2,252 American adults polled by telephone (744 interviewed on cell phones) said the spread of affordable broadband should not be a major government priority. Only 41% said it should be. People under 30 and African-Americans were most likely to be in favor, but the 21% who said they were currently not online were “especially resistant to government involvement in broadband promotion,” according to the researchers.

“It could be that the recession is causing Americans to prioritize other issues, or it could be general anti-government wariness,” Senior Research Specialist Aaron Smith, author of report, said in a statement. “It could also stem from the fact that not many non-users are anxious to see government promoting technologies that they view as difficult to use and offering uncertain benefits.”

The entire report, and survey questions, can be accessed here.

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Meet Treesaver, a New HTML Magazine App

A startup called Treesaver has developed a slick presentation framework for digital magazines that runs in the browser. It has many of the features you’d expect from a clean, reader-friendly content wrapper (like Instapaper or Readability) but it couples that functionality with a way-cool user interface.

Pages can be navigated by swiping from side-to-side, and you get helpful ghost images on either side of the page you’re reading, which aid in signposting. Also, the pages within the web app dynamically resize for different screens — and it even resizes on the fly as you make the browser smaller and larger. It’s all HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

Here’s the demo video for Nomad Editions, the first of Treesaver’s launch partners using the company’s framework to make a public announcement (Treesaver is still pre-launch right now):

Nomad also got some love from The New York Times Wednesday.

With digital magazines all the rage, everyone’s racing to get their traditional paper-and-ink publications onto the iPad. There are two routes — the native app, which requires the use of Apple’s tools and adherence to its rules, or the web app, which lets you do just about whatever you want as long as it works in a browser.

If you build a native app, you get some impressive performance with the swipey-swipey stuff, and you control both the ad revenue and your kerning pairs. But you’re also locked into a specific device’s platform, distribution is a pain, and you’re disconnected from the internet unless you bother to build it in.

The webby route has its own advantages, of course. Filipe Fortes, one of the founders of Treesaver, has posted an excellent list of all the ways the web wins — a wider audience, a wider range of compatible devices, easy access to social networking tools, real hyperlinks, search indexing, content embedding.

Treesaver will be entering beta testing in a few weeks, and the code will be released under an open-source license soon after that.

This article originally appeared on Webmonkey.com, Wired’s site for all things web development, browsers, and web apps. For more from Webmonkey, follow the links below.

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Mass Romance Novel Publisher Going All In On E-Books

E-books are becoming more popular by the minute thanks to devices like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, but major dead tree publishers have been hesitant to go all in—until now. Dorchester Publishing, which describes itself as the “oldest independent mass market publisher in America,” has decided to ditch its mass printing business to go digital- and print-on-demand only.

Unsurprisingly, Dorchester had a little nudge in that direction: the publisher said that sales of its books had declined a whopping 25 percent in just the last year, while its e-book sales are expected to double in 2011. The company specializes in romance, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels and sells directly to major retailers like Wal-Mart.

“It wasn’t a long, drawn out decision, because we’ve been putting in the effort but not getting the results,” Dorchester CEO John Prebich told the Wall Street Journal.

Amazon recently said that Kindle book sales had surpassed the company’s sales of hardcover books in the last three months—a trend that many expect to continue now that the Kindle is even cheaper than before. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos even made the bold prediction that Kindle book sales might eclipse paperbacks within the next year.

Though some consider that prediction to be just short of delusion, it’s clear that e-books are (at least) on a positive trajectory. Whether that trajectory will enough to overcome the apparent drop in traditional media sales for Dorchester is another story, but the company says it expects to make big savings from cutting out printed books.

It’s unclear, however, whether that expectation includes some of its partners walking away: “It’s been a good run, but if they aren’t publishing mass-market paperbacks, we’ll have to decide what to do,” said Charles Ardai, owner of Hard Case Crime, which distributes its books through Dorchester.

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