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You can read more about Skype for iPhone in our hands-on review or see screenshots in our slideshow.

If Skype for iPhone seems like a big deal to you, you’re right. It’s topping
iPhone App Store charts in nine countries, Skype says.

“I’m delighted that consumers have voted with their fingertips and chosen to download Skype in such phenomenal numbers,” said Skype Chief Operations Office Scott Durchslag.

The Skype for iPhone VoIP application, which became available Tuesday after an announcement at CTIA, is now the top free app in the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Russia, and Spain.

A prototype device called the NanoTouch features a 2.4-inch screen and a touch-sensitive pad of the same size on the back, according to a video demonstration on NewScientist.

The NanoTouch is intended to demonstrate an evolving technology that focuses on making user interfaces practical on small devices. Developed by Microsoft Research and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, the technology is expected to be unveiled in April at the Computer/Human Interaction conference in Boston.

There may finally be a compromise between the world of ever-shrinking electronic devices and our ever-expanding fingers.

Researchers say tests showed that targets as small as seven-tenths of an inch wide were easy to select using the NanoTouch. Targets on conventional touch screens are typically at least twice that size.

Using the touch pad on the back, users can manipulate icons on the screen in front without obscuring the target with their fingers, creating an experience resembling transparency.

Nearly a month after unveiling a new developer platform, business social-networking site LinkedIn took the wraps off a new search platform Monday night.

LinkedIn demonstrates how the new search platform works.

Sandwiched between the platform releases was the announcement earlier this month that the company would cut 10 percent of its workforce, or about 36 jobs, as part of a restructuring to focus on its revenue-producing businesses.

The site, which has about 31 million members, examined more than a billion search queries executed by members to create new productivity tools, Kozak says.

In a summary of the new key features, Esteban Kozak, senior product manager at LinkedIn, said the new platform is “redefining the way professionals go about finding talent, business partners, customers, or a former colleague.”

Updated at 7:15 p.m. PST to correct number of LinkedIn members.

The new “In Common” feature helps locate shared connections and groups you share with selected members. Members can also save searches and receive e-mail reminders when a search finds someone that meets the specified criteria. The search tool also adds a spell checker for names.

(Credit:
LinkedIn)

LinkedIn’s new developer platform, which officially went live on October 28, includes an array of internal- and partner-created applications such as a “reading list” app from Amazon, a trip-tracking app from TripIt, file sharing from Box.net, and presentation apps from SlideShare and Google Presentation.

With the new platform, members will be able to refine their searches for other members using more than a dozen data fields, including “name,” “company,” and “school.” The new platform also increases the amount of search space presented by eliminating the need to switch tabs.

CIH
The CIH, or Chernobyl, virus targeted Windows and was discovered in 1998. The original variant was set to destroy data on April 26, the birthday of the virus writer, which coincidentally happened to be the anniversary of Chernobyl disaster. Subsequent variants have different trigger dates for their payloads, including one that was set to activate on the 26th of every month but which was not widespread.

Michelangelo
The Michelangelo virus, first discovered in 1991, was triggered to launch its payload (rendering disk unusable) on computers running MS-DOS every March 6, but by 1997 it appeared to have petered out.

Klez.e
Klez.e first spread via e-mail messages in February 2002 and exploited a hole in Outlook. It was set to activate on the sixth day of odd-numbered months and destroy files on infected Windows computers. However, it caused little or no damage because in the month between when it surfaced and when it was first due to activate on March 6, 2002, PC users were able to update their antivirus software.

Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra worm, also called Nyxem, spread via e-mail and infected Windows PCs when the e-mail, typically sexually suggestive, was opened. It was programmed to delete files on infected machines on February 3, 2006, but failed to do much damage.

Sober
A variant of the Sober Windows worm that began circulating in November 2005 was set to activate on January 5 or 6, 2006, possibly dated to coincide with the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. It had the potential to download malicious code onto infected computers and launch a new wave of viruses, but was unsuccessful.

Jerusalem
One of the first known viruses, dubbed Jerusalem, was first detected in the Israeli city in October 1987 and targeted at DOS systems. It was programmed to delete programs on Friday 13th, except in the year 1987.

Conficker, which was set to activate on April 1 but failed to cause any problems, isn’t the first virus to be programmed to take action on a certain date or time. Experts believe that worms with a trigger date can lead to panic and hype. Here are some others:

Blaster
Blaster, or MSBlast, began spreading August 11, 2003, about three weeks after Microsoft announced a serious hole in Windows. The worm exploited the hole and was programmed to launch a denial of service attack on a Microsoft update Web site on August 15, 2003, but the company killed the Internet address to thwart it. In the code, the worm writer exhorted Bill Gates to “stop making money and fix your software!!”

Updated at 10:55 a.m. PDT on April 3 to include the Jerusalem virus.

Code Red
The Code Red worm, discovered in July 2001, exploited a flaw in Microsoft IIS software and directed infected Web servers to launch attacks on other computers within a certain period of time. One of the sites was that of the White House, but the administration was able to successfully fend off the attack after moving the site from the targeted IP address.

MyDoom
Discovered in January 2004, the MyDoom virus targeted Windows PCs and was originally triggered to launch a denial of service attack against the Web site of the SCO Group between February 1 and February 12, 2004. The attack crippled SCO Group’s site, forcing the company to move to an alternate site. A second variant launched a DDOS attack on Microsoft’s site, but that had little impact. SCO Group and Microsoft both offered $250,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of the creators of the variant targeting their site. (Microsoft is also offering a $250,000 reward in the Conficker case.)

A number of other advisers named Friday have experience or expertise in telecommunications and other technology sectors. For instance, Susan Ness, who leads the Federal Trade Commission review team, is a former FCC commissioner. Gloria Parker, who is leading the National Archives and Records Administration review team, was the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s first chief information officer and is a director at the Computer Sciences Corporation.

Anna Gomez, vice president of government affairs for Sprint Nextel, is a leader of the United States Trade Representative review team. Gomez served as senior legal adviser to FCC Chairman Bill Kennard and held a number of other positions in the FCC, including chief of the network services division. She also briefly served as counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee’s telecommunications subcommittee.

Christopher Putala, who will lead the reviewal of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, previously served as senior staff to Vice President-elect Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Putala was executive vice president for public policy at EarthLink, an Internet service provider, from 2005 to 2007, and was vice president for congressional relations at
CTIA, the wireless trade association.

Henry Rivera, who represents the telecommunications sector for the firm Wiley Rein, is the other National Science Foundation review team leader. Rivera served as an FCC commissioner and is a past president of the Federal Communications Bar Association.

Updated November 16 to correct Mr. Werbach’s name, which is Kevin, not Ken.

Susan Crawford, a communications law and Internet law professor at the University of Michigan, is a leader of the FCC review team. Crawford was until recently on the ICANN board of directors. Kevin Werbach, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, is the other FCC review team lead. Werbach organizes the annual Supernova technology conference and formerly served as counsel for new technology policy at the FCC.

The new team members will review the agencies and offices to aid the new administration in its planning decisions. Obama’s transition group first announced the formation of the teams on Wednesday.

Jim Kohlenberger, who served as senior domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al Gore and helped pass the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is a leader of the National Science Foundation review team. He is executive director of the Voice on the Net Coalition, which represents the voice over IP industry, and is a senior fellow at the Benton Foundation, which aims to ensure media and telecommunications serve democracy.

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team on Friday announced who will lead the transition project’s review of the Federal Communications Commission, the office of the United States Trade Representative, and a number of other agencies, departments, and executive offices.

Peter Cowhey, the other leader of the United States Trade Representative review team, served as chief of the FCC’s international bureau and is now associate vice chancellor and dean of the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

commentary

The Register on Tuesday picks up on the “hard work” theme and runs with it, detailing lessons learned from open-sourcing Flex, Adobe’s Flash development tool. In addition to “treading a fine line between tipping off competitors to its Flex plans through the open-source work while coaxing the community to buy into the Flex road map,” Adobe is learning that community involvement doesn’t come cheaply…or sometimes doesn’t come at all.

In sum, open source is exceptionally hard work, but the job is made doubly difficult when one company seeks to retain control of a project.

There is a pervasive myth in the industry that “community” forms around pretty much any well-designed open-source project. The opposite is true. Most projects are devoid of community in any meaningful sense. This becomes even more pronounced in projects that are dominated by a single vendor.

I wrote at the time that open source is not a binary decision for Adobe Systems (or, really, any company): it’s hard work and not the right answer to every question.

In November, I joined a panel at Adobe Max focused on the promise and pitfalls of open source.

The difference between these and Adobe’s Flex, however, is that there are multiple counter-balancing corporate interests involved, not just one. If Adobe wants to make Flex a true open-source project (and it’s very likely that it doesn’t, and for very good reasons), it needs to put Flex into a foundation structure, similar to Eclipse, Mozilla, and others, just as many have clamored for Sun to do with Java and OpenOffice.org.

It’s not that good open-source projects are company-free. They aren’t. They’re the opposite: Linux, Apache, Eclipse, etc., are filled to the brim with companies. In fact, most open-source projects are simply amalgamations of corporate interests (vendors, enterprise IT, system integrators, etc.), including “community” projects like Linux, Joomla, and Apache.

These days, I have no time to go to church because, of course, I need to catch up with my friends online every Sunday. Yet the notion of the collection plate still lingers.

When I was little, my parents used to drag me along to a Catholic Church so that I could spiritually contemplate my day of rest.

Vanity Fair’s brilliant story about a man who claimed to be Clark Rockefeller, but was really someone far more sinister, revealed that he often sealed his deals with the well-heeled by meeting them in churches.

As Wikipedia asks for donations, as pornographers try to get themselves a bailout, churches of all denominations sit there quietly, gaze upon their chastened flocks, and continue to be a home for social networking.

(Credit: CC Au Tiger 01)

One might also argue that churches have better ads than Facebook too.

Yet churches have managed to monetize the real estate in which you pray for a raise, for your own salvation, for a cure for cancer, and for yet another Wild Card team to win the Super Bowl.

As Procter & Gamble’s general manager of interactive marketing and innovation, Ted McConnell, put it at a Digital Media conference in Cincinnati: “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook…I have a reaction to (Facebook) as a consumer advocate and an advertiser: what in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with (his) girlfriend?”

My dad explained to me that we should always give some of what we earned to the Church. It was only many years later that I saw that the priest lived in a far nicer house than ours.

How did they do it? Perhaps by never being too idealistic in the first place.
Churches were, and often still are, the primary social-networking places for many.

Perhaps the founders of Facebook were too enamored of the social-networking movement they were creating to ever think hard enough about money. Perhaps they felt that in creating this movement, issues of money were not merely irrelevant or at best secondary, but a little too dirty–a little too ’80s.

But as Ted McConnell suggested: “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant…We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

What would Facebook be like today, if it had insisted on a collection plate from the very beginning? One of the great concerns that many of the wisest advertisers have is that Facebook simply doesn’t feel right as an advertising medium.

Now Mark Zuckerberg is acting as if Facebook is the world’s next great new medium, touting its 150 million user base.

While there was no way I could question that I would go to hell if I used a vile word like “bloody” or “damn,” there was one element of the Sunday service that always seemed odd: the collection plate.

I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg wishes today that he’d had a collection plate from the very beginning. It might have saved him from becoming an adman.

Yet for all their supposed celestial idealism, churches have always maintained a healthy understanding about money and the material world. So much so that when television came along, we were suddenly soothed by the vision of Oral Roberts and other preachers who used the visual medium to enrich their mission. (Can you believe that QVC was founded as late as 1986?)

(Disclosure: Yes, I’ve been responsible for Procter & Gamble advertising in the past. No, I don’t know Ted McConnell. No, I am not a church member. No, not even the Church of Scientology.)

Zimbra is open-source software, which means anybody can install it for free, but Yahoo also offers Zimbra Hosted as a subscription for which customers pay. The education version has a “substantial discount” in pricing over the regular commercial version, Yahoo said.

Zimbra competes not just with Microsoft’s dominant Exchange server software, but also with the Google Apps service from Yahoo’s top Internet rival.

One site using the hosted service is Kansas State University, with 30,000 students, faculty, staff, and alumni, said James Lyall, associate vice provost of IT at Kansas State University.

Yahoo acquired Zimbra for $350 million in 2007. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is using Zimbra technology for a revamp of Yahoo Calendars and, later, Yahoo Mail. Last week, President Sue Decker gave Zimbra a mention as one of the acquisitions that helped increase the company’s revenue.

Ordinary e-mail and calendar software such as Microsoft Outlook can be used to connect to Zimbra servers, but Yahoo also offers Web browser-based tools for using Zimbra.

Yahoo on Tuesday released a hosted version of its Zimbra e-mail and calendar software for educational customers.

commentary

SFLC remains committed to protecting the interests of our clients and the community. We will act forcefully to protect all users and developers of free software against further intimidation or interference from these patents.

SFLC writes:

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

SFLC, working with the Open Invention Network and the Linux Foundation, is pleased to participate in a coordinated, carefully graduated response on behalf of all the community’s members to ongoing anticompetitive Microsoft conduct. We believe in strength through unity, and we think our community’s unity in the face of these threats has helped to bring about Microsoft’s quick settlement on all issues with TomTom.

Microsoft and TomTom have settled their patent dispute, including claims related to the FAT file system and Linux. But the rest of the open-source world, which could be affected, isn’t ready to lie down and accept Linux’s possibly besmirched reputation.

This is good news because I admit I read the settlement as an implication that TomTom caved. As ZDNet’s Larry Dignan suggests, however, “the settlement doesn’t seem to answer a lot.” For Microsoft, this may well be a good thing: FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is as good as a court judgment against Linux.

This was Microsoft’s tactic in its Novell patent deal. Every press release about interoperability included verbiage about patents and Linux. I talked with Novell’s press team repeatedly during this time and was always told, “Microsoft insisted on including that language. We wanted to focus on interoperability, which is what customers actually care about.”

Red Hat, for its part, declares that “without a judicial decision, the settlement does not demonstrate that the claims of Microsoft were valid.” And Pamela Jones of Groklaw, a highly influential open-source legal blog, deprecates Microsoft’s claims (”What? You thought Microsoft’s spin on things was always gospel?”), citing the Software Freedom Law Center’s commitment to sticking up for Linux, even if TomTom quickly caved.

Microsoft may or may not have been trying to sully Linux’s reputation with the TomTom lawsuit, and this settlement doesn’t clarify things at all. Fortunately, the SFLC is on the case. It’s a more than ample counterbalance to Microsoft’s worst intentions.

The settlement neither implies that Microsoft patents are valid nor that TomTom’s products were or are infringing…The FAT file system patents on which Microsoft sued are now, and have always been, invalid patents, in our professional opinion.