Free Software Linux

Qik, the popular mobile video streaming service, has excited BlackBerry users by releasing a client for the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Pearl. Having Qik on your mobile phone turns your phone into a mobile video streaming device. Qik users can employ the service to show videos from conferences and events, as well as to reach out to friends and colleagues.

Although I've written elsewhere about the recent court case of Symbian v Comptroller General of Patents, noting that it was bad news, I hadn't realised quite how bad the news was until I went through the complete judgment. It's plain that the judges in question, who to their credit tried their level best to understand this mysterious stuff called software, failed to grasp the central issue of what software is. As a result, they have passed down a judgment that is so seriously wrong it will cause a huge amount of damage in the future unless it is revoked by a higher court....On Open Enterprise blog.

Why is there always this Jesuitical casuistry when it comes to software? We have the following: what goes on inside a computer can be said to be closer to a mathematical method (which is, of course, not patentable by virtue of art 52(2)(a)) than what goes on inside other machines.But before that the same judge has said: It can also be said in favour of Symbian's case that it would be somewhat arbitrary and unfair to discriminate against people who invent programs which improve the performance of computers against those who invent programs which improve the performance of other machines.

Handango, a provider of smartphone applications for various mobile platforms, has recently released its First Half 2008 Handango Yardstick, a trend report about smartphone content and applications. Games and entertainment applications are the big winners so far this year, as people turn from productivity to time wasting. The games category leaped from fourth place at year-end 2007 into the second spot behind the entertainment category -- for the first time in Yardstick's history.

On Open Enterprise blog.

TechCrunch IT are reporting that Nokia has bought Symbian Ltd, the software development company famous for creating the proprietary operating system for mobile devices, Symbian OS.