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WWDC banners are up: Let the guessing game begin

Apple has started decorating San Francisco's Moscone Center in anticipation of the Worldwide Developers Conference, which opens Monday morning.

And as has become tradition, when the banners go up, the seemingly round-the-clock guessing game of what Apple will announce intensifies. This year, the banners say "WWDC: One year later. Light-years ahead." Now the objective for many is parsing that phrase and poring over every image on the banner to extract some sort of meaning.

The phrase itself, plus all the application icons on the banners, indicate the centerpiece of the conference will be the App Store and … Read more

Apple, others sued for patent infringement

Apple is among 15 companies that have been slapped with a lawsuit by Actus. The company claims the defendants infringed on four of its patents.

The lawsuit, filed on May 26 in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, describes a method of using electronic tokens for e-commerce that Actus says the companies infringed on with their own systems. For example, the lawsuit claims that the Apple Store, iTunes, and the App Store all infringe on the Actus patents.

Actus claims four counts of infringement for e-commerce patents that were issued between February 2007 and May 2008.

Companies involved in … Read more

Apple App Store clone wars reach fever pitch

The big news coming out of Sun's JavaOne conference this week is that Sun (soon-to-be Oracle) is trying to outbid Microsoft as the world's biggest photocopier company. ("Redmond, start your photocopiers.")

No, Sun isn't actually building photocopiers but, like Symbian, Microsoft, and others, it is playing catch-up to Apple's App Store with its new Java Store, as The Register reports. The store is intended to be a central repository for Java and JavaFX applications, but it's unclear how it will distinguish itself.

As a consumer, I don't care if an application is … Read more

How-to videos on your iPhone

How To Videos from Howcast.com is a free app for watching and browsing through videos from this popular how-to Web site when you're away from your computer. The useful (and often funny) videos from Howcast cover everything from "How to Roast a Perfect Chicken" to "How to Clip Your Cat's Nails" to "How to Kiss Like Angelina Jolie."

The iPhone and iPod Touch app for Howcast lets you quickly search for videos or browse through playlists as well as featured, top-rated, and most recently uploaded videos. You can also add a … Read more

EMC, NetApp compete to buy Data Domain

This was originally posted on ZDNet's Between the Lines.

EMC swooped in Monday with a $1.8 billion, or $30 a share, offer for Data Domain.

The rub: rival NetApp already had a plan to buy the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company for $1.5 billion, or $25 a share.

EMC said its all-cash offer is a 20 percent premium over NetApp's stock-and-cash offer on May 20.

Simply put, EMC wants to acquire Data Domain in order to thwart NetApp's offer--or at the very least make the acquisition more expensive. Joe Tucci, EMC's chief executive, said … Read more

The 404 352: Where it's just another Friday meltdown

After yesterday's much-lauded episode with Jill Schlesinger, Jeff, Justin, and Wilson are back to classic 404 goodness today. We're glad that for once in the world we can offer some helpful financial advice. And yes, we're still offering 404k options, so please send your checks to the show.

On today's show, we've got a First Look at the new Hulu Desktop app. It kind of destroys Joost and Boxee's previous efforts. For those of you who don't know, it's an actual application like Front Row or Windows Media Center that plugs into Hulu content and can be controlled with a remote. Pretty cool.

Also, we're pretty excited about Sonic the Hedgehog coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms. Jeff and Justin don't like that the game will be controlled via tilt, but Wilson thinks that--considering you spend most of the game just hitting forward and jump--it's not really that big of a deal.

Finally, we spend the second half of the show picking up the pieces after Justin offends millions and millions of Dave Matthews Band fans, who call in to unleash their hatred. Hopefully, Justin learns never to mess with DMB fans again. They are rabid. After that, we spend the rest of the show going over the hundreds of 404 logo submissions. They are fantastic! Please continue to send them in. We're extending the contest until the beginning of next week. Have a great weekend everyone!

EPISODE 352 Download today's podcast Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

A sneak peek at Android 1.5 apps from Google I/O

Perhaps because the Google Android operating system is already a year old, because the Android Developer's Challenge will be kicked off after Google's I/O developer conference instead of before, or because the platform differences between Android 1.0 and Android 1.5 aren't as dramatic as those between iPhone 2.0 and iPhone 3.0, Android apps and the 1.5 Cupcake update failed to produce as much excitement this year compared to last.

However, that didn't stop a couple dozen publishers from showcasing their applications developed for Android 1.5, and it didn't … Read more

iPhone Web app reports what's cookin' at Apple

Update: Sometime after this post went live the site was pulled and it can no longer be viewed as shown below.

Ever wish you could live like an Apple employee? Now you can at least find out how to eat like one, according to Gizmodo's post on an iPhone Web app that reports the daily menu at Apple cafeteria, Caffe Macs.

Simply launch Mobile Safari on your iPhone and browse to menu.apple.com, select an Apple campus location, and boom: instantly see what's cookin' at Apple.

According to the app, the menu at Infinite Loop as of … Read more

International iPhone App Store distribution kaput?

Ipodnn.com is reporting an iTunes App Store problem that could directly impact iPhone application developer income. According to ipodnn.com:

The international distribution of iPhone applications is not being handled properly at the App Store, one developer tells MacNN. Having launched a title called CameraUFO, Magno Urbano says he recently visited the US App Store to verify if his software was on sale. Although not at its main intended venue, the app could be found at a number foreign stores, though still not all of them.

According to the piece, the developer has reported the problems to Apple, but … Read more