Wikileaks caused a huge stir when it posted thousands of classified American documents from the Afghan war, despite warnings that it could endanger American lives. So it’s intersting that the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was hit with a rape and molestation charge by Swedish prosecutors as he was seeking legal protection for his web site in Sweden.
A prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for Assange on late Friday. Then, a day later, a higher-ranking prosecutor rescinded the warrant, saying there was no grounds to suspect Assange of rape. The prosecutor who took over the case yesterday had more information and that was why the earlier prosecutor was over-ruled, according to a spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority.
This may be a simple case of an alleged crime in Sweden. But it reeks of politics. Wikileaks is preparing to release a new set of documents from the Afghan war. Assange called the allegations “without basis” in a Twitter post and questioned the motive behind the original allegation. He remains under suspicion for a lesser charge of molestation.
“I don’t know who’s behind this but we have been warned that for example the Pentagon plans to use dirty tricks to spoil things for us,” he told a Swedish publication. “I have also been warned about sex traps.” In the age of digital evidence, and the ability to manipulate it, it wouldn’t be that hard to pull off such dirty tricks against enemies. Assange built his reputation for complete honesty in publishing classified documents on the web. Could he be brought down by the web as well?
Google is developing a new kind of search capability that delivers the results instantly as you type the letters.
The new experiment was discovered by search engine optimization (SEO) consultant Rob Ousbey, who noticed the results being delivered instantly and then recorded a video to show it. Google confirmed to TechCrunch that the video is real. It will be interesting to see if the new capability is launched as a standard part of Google’s search engine. It could save us all time as we type familiar searches where we know that the instantly-delivered search result is most likely the one we want to click upon.
You’ll notice in the video that the search results change as more letters are added and the terms of the search become different. But it may not be for everyone, as limited CPU power or bandwidth is likely to slow live updates down for searches such as this kind.
Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman, told Techcrunch, “At any given time we are running between 50-200 search experiments. You can learn more on our blog.”
Ever wish you could strike up a conversation with that cute redhead on the commuter train? Well, a startup called Bumped.in may finally give you the courage.
The service is a social network for daily commuters and travelers that shares similar features to the other social networks for travelers, like Dopplr, WorldMate and TripIt. It is especially similar to a service called SubMate, which is a social network for people taking the subway in various cities around the world. But Bumped.in specifically targets people who take the same ride often, ie. on a daily or a weekly basis.
When users sign up for Bumped.in and upload their profile (or hook up their Facebook profile, as the service uses Facebook Connect,) they can find other people who share similar interests on their journey, or at the destination.
Kiran Patel, CEO of Bumped.in, says the service was born out of personal experience. He commutes daily to New York City’s Penn Station from New Jersey and sees the same people on the train every day. “These people are familiar strangers to me, and I’m always eager to know more about them and interact with them. And I’ve seen many times two people sitting next to one another, reading a book by the same author, sharing the same interest but not talking to each other because they lack a medium which would allow them to connect,” Patel explained. Right now the service is intended for people taking train rides and flights, the idea being that there’s plenty of time to kill.
It seems the obvious thing would be to put down the book and actually talk to a person instead of fiddling with a phone or a laptop, but the service has many more use cases than just hooking up on the Caltrain, according to Patel. The service could be used to find people to assist passengers who are not used to traveling or don’t speak the language of their destination, or to help business travelers connect while on their way to a conference. In addition, the service provides a means for users to share media like photos while they’re traveling, get information on their travel destination, browse hotels and so on.
Patel has bootstrapped his one-man startup to date. He founded the company in New Jersey in December of 2009 and is now launching the service as a web application. An iPhone app is in the works, he says. Patel plans to make money through advertising, tie-ins with brands and sponsorships from the travel industry, such as airlines.
The company has applied for a patent that covers a variety of security measures to automatically protect iPhone users from thieves and other unauthorized users. But one of the uses of the patent would be to protect Apple’s interests, which may be in conflict with those of users.
The patent appears to cover technologies that would detect and circumvent “jailbreaking,” which refers to running software that lets a user gain access to wider capabilities than Apple allows. With jailbroken phones, users can unlock their phones so they can use carriers that are not authorized by Apple. Jailbreaking is often the only resort for users who want to use iPhones in countries where Apple doesn’t have an authorized carrier. Jailbreaking was recently deemed permissible in the U.S. as a fair use right for users.
The application was published Thursday. Apple filed it in February. It describes the identification of “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking or removal of a SIM card” so that measures can be taken to counter the user. Responses to such actions could be to activate the iPhone’s camera, geotag the image, and then uploading it to a server. Or it could transmit sensitive data to a server and then wipe it from the device. This is effectively a kill switch, but Apple describes it as a way to protect users from unauthorized users.
The patent application suggests that Apple could detect unauthorized users by voice-printing the owner and activating an accelerometer to see if a phone thief is in transit. Essentially, the system allows Apple to wipe out the memory of a phone from afar if it deems a user is under attack. But the system may not be able to distinguish thefts from cases when a user is simply trying to escape from Apple’s rules about jailbreaking.
Here’s our roundup of the week’s tech business news. First, the five most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:
Why getting 10 customers is all that matters — Angel investor and entrepreneur Jason Cohen has a simple message for entrepreneurs: If you can’t find ten people who say they’ll buy your product, your company is bullshit.
8 things I wish I knew before starting a business — In another Entrepreneur Corner column, Grotech Ventures’ Don Rainey offers advice like “Items that do succeed tend to do so quickly” and “People will let you down.”
Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley: Still deciding on Facebook Places — With Facebook’s announcement of a check-in feature dubbed Facebook Places, we’re all wondering how it will affect location-based services like Foursquare. So we went ahead and asked founder and chief executive Dennis Crowley.
And here are five more articles we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:
Google’s social czar picks a location fight with Facebook — Google’s timing can be peculiar — but rarely coincidental. A day after Facebook launched its first location feature, the search giant revealed in a blog post Thursday that more than 100 million users check Google Maps on mobile devices.
Foursquare’s record check-ins aren’t because of Facebook — When Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley disclosed that his service had a record number of signups on Thursday, a lot of people rushed to declare Facebook the cause. VentureBeat’s Owen Thomas argues why that’s wrong.
Are Apple’s iAds stumbling? — Back when Apple announced its iAds platform for creating and placing high-quality ads in iPhone apps, we wondered whether smaller ad networks might get crushed. But early signs suggest that Apple hasn’t mastered this ad thing yet.
It’s no secret that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is not a fan of the idea that a major Hollywood film may go on to define his life on celluloid. But “The Social Network“, which comes out next month in film festivals and nationwide October 1, is exactly that — a Hollywoodised version of the Facebook founding story, complete with Zuckerberg at its helm as the hacker-traitor antihero.
It must be a perplexing time for the company, as The New York Times reports, in deciding whether to ignore the movie and hope that it dusts into oblivion, or to fight back — legally or otherwise — to prevent it from misrepresenting the company and its CEO as it sets out to become the cultural sensation that it promises.
But with names like David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin attached, a trailer that’s received a fairly positive response, and a marketing campaign that makes it clear that the movie is no made-for-TV HBO documentary, the bets are against the former.
So far, the talks between the producers of the movie and Facebook have been glum. As a part of its privacy policy which prevents advertisers from using the Facebook brand name, the movie is barred from advertising on its platform, though it has been permitted a low-profile fan page. On the flipside, the producer of the movie, Scott Rudin, has shown it to top executives Elliot Schrage and Sheryl Sandberg, and admits candidly that “they did not like it.”
Zuckerberg himself has been open about his distaste for the movie. In a recent onstage interview at the Computer History Museum, he wrote it off as being fiction, and admitted that he wasn’t planning to see it, just like he hasn’t read “The Accidental Billionaires”, the book on which its screenplay is based on.
“They had two choices of books to base it on, and they chose to base it on a fiction book,” he stated in the interview. “I wish that when people try to do journalism or write stuff about Facebook, that they at least try to get it right.”
David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect”, thinks that there is a chance, given how many details in the movie are distorted, that the company might be “forced to deliver a forceful rebuttal once the film has its premiere, especially if it turned out to be a hit,” according to the New York Times article.
The idea of this is obviously appealing to Kirkpatrick, who is behind the ‘other’ non-fiction book Zuckerberg cited in the statement and has been open about backing — he permitted Kirkpatrick to interview him for the book and has given joint interviews with Kirkpatrick himself, such as the one at the Computer History Museum, to promote the book.
If there is ever another ‘Facebook movie,’ there is little question that it would be based on Kirkpatrick’s non-fictional and heavily researched account of the story; one he has crafted based on actual interviews with the people involved rather than legendary folktales and fictional fillers.
So, one wonders: If “The Social Network” turns out to be a “Wall Street” — and not just a “Pirates of Silicon Valley” — could the company want to clear the air and make its own version of the tale?
Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner.
Beware the trappings of liquidation preference– If you’re working on your initial round of funding and don’t know much about liquidation preference, look out. It’s the second most important deal term you’ll negotiate and it could have big implications on what you earn if your company is sold. Attorney Scott Edward Walker explains the term and its importance.
5 business apps every entrepreneur should have – There are a ton of apps out there, but figuring out which are best for startup owners can be tricky. Writer Shannon Suetos runs down five you can’t live without.
Why getting 10 customers is all that matters – While there’s no shortage of people ready to launch startups, only a miniscule percentage of those have found people willing to pay for their product or service. Angel investor Jason Cohen takes aim at entrepreneurs’ lame excuses for not doing this.
8 things I wish I knew before starting a business – Startups are great adventures, but they’re also rife with opportunities for mistakes and failure. Don Rainey, general partner at Grotech Ventures, lists the eight most important things he has learned through his career.
EC Book Review: “Wired for War,” by P.W. Singer – A book on the advances in warfare might seem an odd choice for entrepreneurs, but Javier Rojas notes that this look at robotics can give startups insight into one of the fastest growing market opportunities out there.
LG played the internet like a fiddle today when its VP of marketing, Chang Ma, told the Wall Street Journal that its upcoming Android Optimus tablet “will be better than the iPad.”
Clearly, this man is a marketing genius. What better way is there to get the word out about its device — which we initially caught word of in early July — than saying it’ll be better than a highly successful Apple product.
Surely none of the other hardware manufacturers preparing Android tablets — which at this point includes Asus, Acer, and Dell — actually think their devices stand a chance against the iPad. LG, through its complex oratory jiujitsu, has declared itself the next king of tablets — despite the fact that we know practically nothing about the Optimus tablet.
All we have to go on now are vague promises. “It’s going to be surprisingly productive,” Ma said. Users will be able to write documents, edit video, and it will have some “high-end features and new benefits” with a productivity bent.
He reiterated the sentiment of many iPad critics who deride the device as something primarily meant for content consumption, rather than productivity. But while I would agree that the iPad isn’t an ideal productivity device, nothing about LG’s Optimus tablet seems to be any more productive. iPad users can already create documents, and there are existing apps like ReelDirector for video editing (Apple will certainly release an iMovie app for the iPad as well).
There aren’t any hardware details for LG’s Optimus tablet yet, but you can expect a screen around 10 inches, and enough power under the hood to run Android 3.0 (to be released later this year). LG expects to launch the tablet worldwide by the fourth quarter.
In other news, the company is revamping its smartphone line in September with the release of the Android-powered Optimus One. The phone won’t be a hardware powerhouse, but LG expects it to be a “gateway smartphone” for new users. Eventually, the company will release more powerful Android devices. LG has plans to use Nvidia’s dual-core CPU in the fourth quarter, and it’s also gearing up for 4G phones running LTE technology in 2011.
Ever since Apple released iOS 4, its latest major software update for the iPhone, users of the older iPhone 3G have complained that it introduced significant performance issues. Apple said it was looking into the issue in late July but has has been mum on the situation since then.
Now, thanks to yet another infamous email from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, it appears that the issue will soon be resolved with a new software update, according to MacRumors.
The email came in response to a customer who called their iPhone 3G experience “dog slow” and said they were having trouble with zooming, typing, and scrolling. “I’ve waited patiently through 4.0.1 and 4.0.2, looking for a fix that will make my phone work again,” they wrote. “I’ve read the forums that advise me to jailbreak my phone or use some other method so I can downgrade back to a version of iPhone 3, however I’m not prepared to use a method that is not supported by Apple.”
Jobs’ response was typical: “Software update coming soon.”
MacRumors figures he’s referring to iOS 4.1, which in preliminary testing seems to resolve the performance issues.
While it’s unfortunate that it’s taken this long for Apple to say that a fix was coming, at least now iPhone 3G users know there’s help on the way. I’ve also heard complaints from iPhone 3G S users who’ve also been experiencing slowdown issues with iOS 4, despite the fact that it’s more powerful than the iPhone 3G. Hopefully iOS 4.1 will fix those issues as well, while also bumping up the performance even more for iPhone 4 users.
Based in San Francisco, JiWire delivers ads to users of hotspots in locations like Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, hotels and airports. Because JiWire knows the location of each hotspot, it is able to target ads toward expected users, such as business travelers in airports. This week, JiWire released a report saying coupons and discounts are the most appealing location-based ads for Wi-Fi users. JiWire also reported that 55% of public Wi-FI locations in the U.S. are now free.
LG played the internet like a fiddle today when its VP of marketing, Chang Ma, 
Ever since Apple released iOS 4, its latest major software update for the iPhone, users of the older iPhone 3G have complained that it introduced significant performance issues. Apple 