Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster said the company had yet to be served in the case, “so we’re not in a position to comment.”

In a suit filed July 2 in San Francisco Federal Court, Gotuit charges Silverlight infringes on several of its patents and seeks an injunction against the software maker as well as damages and attorney’s fees.

Of note, Gotuit, in its complaint, mentions specifically Microsoft’s plans to use Silverlight in conjunction with video metadata as part of its powering of the NBCOlympics.com Web site. Silverlight is Microsoft’s rival to Adobe’s Flash for Web video, among other uses.

Gotuit has a range of products used by customers like Lifetime television to make it easier to search and navigate through online video.

Microsoft’s latest legal headache is a suit from a little-known company called Gotuit Media, which charges elements of Silverlight infringe on the video metadata company’s patented technology.

Hosie declined to comment on the Gotuit case.

Microsoft plans to use Silverlight to allow visitors to NBCOlympics.com to watch multiple events at the same time, as well as view streaming commentary. Gotuit cited these plans as part of its patent infringement suit.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com )

But we had cell phones and through a painstaking process of calling people, checking email and pure luck, we ended up getting the word that we’d been waiting for.

Well, after three-and-a-half days of SXSWi, I’d say we have an uncontested winner.

A day later, even, Twitter is still the best place to find people’s evolving thoughts on the Lacy controversy, as many people are posting–including lots who aren’t even in Austin for SXSWi–about what happened, about where they can find video of the interview and about their responses to an interview Lacy later gave about what happened.

At SXSWi this year, Twitter has emerged once again as the technology everyone is using to organize themselves.

Afterwards, Lacy herself turned to Twitter to express her own feelings on the matter.

Basically, I think a lot of people must be wondering how they managed to get through SXSWi before Twitter came along. It’s like trying to imagine the days when there was no email.

It’s Twitter. Again.

But there’s also other technologies at play here, as I’m sure some will be quick to point out.

See more stories in CNET News.com’s coverage of SXSWi (click here).

And while Twitter has been a terrific source of information about what’s going on around SXSWi, it is not always accurate.

Part of that has to do with the fact that even though Twitter dominated at SXSWi 2007, it was still new to many people. This year, it is absolutely ruling this event.

While discontent was spreading rapidly throughout the packed ballroom where the keynote was being held–and through at least two overflow rooms–about Lacy’s interviewing style, those were able to get online were firing away at her on Twitter.

For example, earlier today, I saw a Twitter post from uber-blogger Robert Scoble in which he said he thought that Zuckerberg would be holding a make-up Q&A session.

Everywhere you go, people are talking about how they heard about this event, or that unofficial party or this controversy or that rumor on Twitter. People are stopping in their tracks to read Twitter posts on their phones and some of the more talked about happenings here are generating hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Tweets, all in an entirely organic and uncoordinated manner.

That turned out to be a good thing, as, in the end, Scoble had gotten it slightly wrong. In fact, Zuckerberg was taking part in a previously-scheduled Facebook developers’ event that was not open to the public and which didn’t seem to be a response to what had happened on Sunday.

All of which gave me a lesson that what happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter and that therefore, it’s worthwhile to reality-check what you read there.

Drum roll please.

In practical terms, Twitter has been terrific, particularly when it comes to the many social events that are wrapped around SXSWi. For example, as my colleague Caroline McCarthy wrote, once people began finding that the lines to get into some of the more popular evening parties were too long, they began using Twitter to find out where new, unofficial gatherings were taking place.

As SXSWi heads towards its conclusion–there is still a little more than a day left of the event–I have no doubt that Twitter will continue to be the single most influential organizing factor.

AUSTIN, Texas–After last year’s explosive arrival on the geek scene at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) of Twitter, a lot of people wondered what technology might take the conference by storm this year.

I have never seen anything like it, not even last year.

In part, however, I had been at fault for writing about the potential Q&A session without confirming it and without looking more closely at what others had Twittered after Scoble’s original posting.

Still, we all knew that if we’d simply had Twitter, we could have gotten the information a whole lot quicker.

I blogged the news–careful, however, to not state categorically that it was true.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Pownce, for one. Meebo for another.

Announcing the technology that more than anything else has governed how the thousands of attendees here are organizing themselves, finding out what their friends are up to, weighing in on the merits of keynote address interviewers and so much more.

And, believe it or not, the telephone and even e-mail.

Late last night, as some friends and I were trying to figure out where the crowds were, we found ourselves without the ability to get Twitter feeds.

On Sunday, meanwhile, Twitter became a battlefield of sorts as many people used the service to vent their frustrations at Sarah Lacy, the journalist who was interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for the day’s keynote address.

“Seriously screw all you guys,” she wrote. “I did my best to ask a range of things.”

Looking ahead, then, at what might be the Twitter of SXSWi 2009, I’m putting my money on a relatively young technology that not long ago, no one had heard from.

Yes, it’s Twitter.

Well, you’ve certainly proven that particular axiom, Roger.

And good lord, just look at Kay’s web site! The Macalope knows it’s a cliché, but 1996 really did call and it really does want its web template back. No, seriously, the Macalope just got off the phone with it. Not to judge form over substance (Kay fails at both), but would you trust the opinion of someone with a site like that?

Apple sold nearly 7.8 million Mac desktop and laptop computers in 2007. That’s a 37% gain over the number sold in 2006 and well more than double the 2001 volume. It’s little surprise then that reports of Mac viruses have been rising steadily.

The funny part of that story you rarely hear, though, is that Daedalus made a fake cow for the queen so that she could copulate with a bull and make the Minotaur. The Macalope love to tell that at parties because it really pisses off the Minotaur who will inevitably yell “My mother is a saint!” and storm out of the room.

Could someone please sit down the slower students in the class and explain to them that “hackers” who seek to alter a device’s software for the purpose of giving it more functionality are not the same as “hackers” who try to find illicit ways to compromise your data for personal gain.

People like Kay seem to forget that these are ads. They’re not white papers. They’re supposed to be funny and directionally correct.

Hackers went to town on the
iPhone from day one, opening it for service with nondesignated wireless providers and dropping applications onto it at will.

Actually, the 30% is the one thing developers (as opposed to jackasses like Kay who have no actual skin in the game but love to project their weird revenge fantasies onto Apple) aren’t complaining about. So, wrong again.

???

But now Apple is becoming a victim of its own success…

Apple, welcome to Microsoft’s world! This is an environment in which you have to support thousands of developers of varying quality, and all sorts of apps, well made or not.

As hackers pillaged Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows operating system, Apple (AAPL) stressed that its computer platform was relatively virus-free, most notably in that snarky ad campaign, “I’m a PC. I’m a
Mac.” There was Windows, groaning under the weight of its security apparatus, like some knight of yesteryear packed in heavy armor who, once he fell off his horse, couldn’t get up again. And on the other side, there was Apple strutting about, smacking its gloves together and posing for the crowd.

Ha.

But this BusinessWeek piece by Roger Kay is just 10 tons of stupid.

“Victim”? It is? Since when? Did somebody lose some data? Did anybody lose any data? Does anybody know what the hell Kay is talking about?

Anyway, that’s got nothing to do with Apple and hackers.

Well, no again. It’s exploits that make hacking easier. Wait, are we talking about hacking or hacking now? It probably doesn’t matter as that doesn’t make any sense either way.

Kay apparently believes there’s a rash of people breaking into the homes of Apple customers, installing applications on their iPhones or enabling them to be used with other carriers and then slipping away into the night.

?

If by “everyone” you mean some subset of the subset of iPhone owners who have hacked their phones. And with the coming of the App Store, that number’s going to drop.

The elegant simplicity of your platform just makes hacking easier.

Everyone is rooting for the hackers to win.

No, you would not. And you’d be right. What’s up with BusinessWeek?

Ha.

Again, eh, not so much. Which actually brings up the part of the plan people are complaining about. Apple can pick and choose which applications/developers it wants to work with.

The Macalope’s devastatingly handsome and wickedly quick-witted readers know that the horny one has repeatedly asked Apple to take security more seriously. So, he has sympathy to arguments from even David Maynor that Apple is benefiting not from great technology so much as it is from being a smaller target.

See, Rog, you can’t complain that the system is closed and then say Apple’s screwed because it’s open. It’s one or the other.

???!!!!???!?!?!???!!?!??!!

Everyone makes mistakes.

The Macalope doesn’t remember that ad. Probably because it doesn’t exist. In the “Boxer” ad, the boxer was the PC, not the Mac.

As if there weren’t already enough incentive to hack the iPhone, the 30% revenue “share” Apple will require for every application sold through the iTunes Store should do the trick.

Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, for the wax holding the feathers on the wings they were using to escape their island prison would melt in the sun.

Ha.

Indeed.

But society loves to repay hubris with derisive laughter.

AOL is giving developers access to the AIM network to integrate the chat program into other applications and services, a first for the messaging service. Meebo and eBuddy are among the first partners.

The company also is rolling out a new advertising revenue-sharing platform in April called “AIM Money” in which developers of third-party applications can make money off display ads that appear next to AIM.

There are also new tools to aid developers of mobile and enterprise applications.

(Credit:
LucasArts)

SAN FRANCISCO–During the Game Development Conference, which is happening this week here, it’s rare that I, or any other journalist cover it, would leave the area immediately surrounding the confab.

But when LucasArts invites you to its famous facilities in San Francisco’s Presidio to show off what is being regarded as a ground-breaking game, you get the heck out of dodge.

That’s why I rushed across town Thursday afternoon–to see what I believe was the first public demo of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the studio’s forthcoming game, and a title that seeks to fill in the chronological gap between the end of the unsatisfactory film, Episode III and the original Star Wars, now known as Episode IV.

In this new game, the main character is an apprentice of Darth Vader, and the story line, according to Haden Blackman, the game’s project lead, centers on that apprentice’s path to redemption.

According to a recent article in Vanity Fair, the full story line of the game does a good job of letting players feel as if they’re getting to actually be in what could almost be a seventh Star Wars movie. The article insinuated that the storytelling was that good and that the graphics only helped cement the illusion.

‘Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’ features two new, ground-breaking technologies, Euphoria, a bio-feedback AI system that makes it possible to have things happen differently every time rather than looking the same each time; and Digital Molecular Matter, a new physics system that makes it possible for things to break realistically rather than in the sort of cartoon-like way they always have in games.

(Credit:
LucasArts)

Based on what I saw Thursday, I’d say the graphics were good, but not movie-quality good. Still, I got a chance to see what should be two pretty ground-breaking technologies that the game showcases.

First, is what is known as Euphoria. It is a new form of artificial intelligence software, developed by a company called Natural Motion, which is designed to make it possible for things happen just a little differently each time in the game, even if they begin the same way.

In other words, in most games, if you do the same thing twice, the result will be exactly the same both times because there’s no brain in the game allowing for a little chaos to creep in. Euphoria is meant to be that chaos. So things would turn out just a little bit different each time.

The other new technology is called digital molecular matter, from a company called Pixelux, and it is designed to bring more realistic consequences to things like a door breaking, or something smashing into a big piece of metal. That is to say, again, in most games, if you break a door down, it will shatter into a disturbingly unrealistic set of shattered pieces. If you break a door in real life, it would splinter and shatter and bend and there would be shards. DMM, as it’s known, is meant to depict that realism.

I would say that the results of DMM, as I saw them, were good. I didn’t think I was seeing real physics, or the kinds of special effects I might see in a real Star Wars movie, but it did look pretty good.

All in all, I think the game looked fun, and very complex. I’m not a big fan of the previous Star Wars games, though, so perhaps I’m missing a little context.

And only time will tell whether it really is like being in an actual movie.

My first reaction was similar to that of the anonymous music executive quoted in the FT article: dead on arrival. Listeners don’t know and don’t care about labels; they want to buy all their music in one place, and so on.

But surely EMI’s digital team, led by former Googler Douglas Merrill, is smart enough to realize that it can’t take on Apple’s iTunes with a label-specific store.

I suspect that this is more of a cross-marketing play instead. Users will google an EMI artist like–just to pick an example at random–A Perfect Circle. Instead of directing them to a boring alphabetical list with a link to the band’s MySpace page, users could land on a label-owned page with actual songs and videos and CDs, both free and for sale. Once there, EMI might intelligently discern that a fan who likes A Perfect Circle might also like Korn and Iron Maiden, two other metal bands with recordings on EMI, and offer those recordings for sale as well.

And now, just because I haven’t linked to it in a while, here’s the Sex Pistols.

(Credit:
CNET Networks Inc.)

Dell updated its XPS line of laptops earlier this month with Penryn CPU offerings, and now it’s sharing Intel’s latest mobile processors with its wholly owned subsidiary, Alienware. The Area-51 m15x now offers three Penryn chips, the Core 2 Duo T9300 and the T9500 and the Core 2 Extreme X9000. Pricing starts at $2,149. If you’re scoring at home, Dell’s 13-inch and 17-inch XPS laptops have received a Penryn update, skipping over the XPS M1530. Meanwhile, Alienware’s 15-inch laptop has the Penryn and its 17-inch model does not.

Also with Penryn: Gateway P-171X FX

(Credit:
CNET Networks Inc.)

Elsewhere, Gateway has made its first Penryn update. The 17-inch P-171X FX is a $2,000 fixed configuration that includes the Core 2 Duo T8300. For more on this laptop, read our recent review of the $3,000 P-171XL FX model, which includes a last-generation Core 2 Extreme X7900 and a suddenly outdated HD DVD drive. Gateway tell us it will be adding Penryn to an M-series laptop “in a few weeks.”

For more on Penryn, read our coverage from CES.

Handset manufacturer Nokia decided to take advantage of the fact that no official FOWA parties were on the books for Thursday night by throwing its own soiree at an awkwardly named Miami Avenue bar called Dolores, But You Can Call Me Lolita (if it’s going to be literary, can’t the name at least be a little shorter?) as a promotion for its S60.com smartphone software.

The party was appropriately timed in conjunction with the gathering of many developers because the Symbian-based S60’s hallmark is the fact that it accepts third-party applications.

We tried really hard, but BricaBox's Nate Westheimer and I couldn't find a way to make the pink Nokia S60 hats look tough.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

The highlight of the party, besides the free drinks, was a screaming contest. Yes, a screaming contest. Attendees were divided into groups based on the color of a smiley-face sticker on their badges, and each group was given an S60-equipped handset with an application installed that measured the volume of whatever was getting spoken or shouted into the phone. The group that could raise the volume highest by screaming into the handset was awarded with a Bluetooth headset for each member.

My group didn’t win. After the screaming contest, I spent a bit of time talking to entrepreneurs from a few local tech companies, such as Grooveshark and Scrapblog. Then I went to sleep. The end.

In Nokia’s swag bag? A memory stick (OK, I can deal with that), an extra-large T-shirt (beach cover-up!), breath mints (do they really think FOWA-ers are going to be making out?) and a pale pink baseball cap. Um, hello? The S60 party was about 95 percent male. Heck, even your average female wouldn’t put on one of these hats.

And despite our valiant efforts, as you can see in the accompanying photo, even BricaBox founder Nate Westheimer and I couldn’t make those hats look hard-core.

Open source has clearly gone mainstream when religions start requiring it on employment applications.

It does my heart good to see my church putting its tithing dollars to work in an inspired cause: open source. A friend just sent me a job posting on the LDS Church’s website calling for a Linus Torvalds-like figure to lead open-source development efforts for the LDS Church and its IT projects.

You may not want those missionaries knocking on your door, but you’ve got to admit that every religion needs at least one Linus Torvalds.

Go to the LDS Church’s employment site and type “open source” into the search box. You’ll find several requirements for open-source savvy engineers (including someone familiar with Hyperic - got something to tell me, Javier? Is my tithing paying for your
Wii addiction?), but this is the one that I find fascinating (and encouraging):

Technical Program Manager - Community Development

Description:

This person has the exciting responsibility in leading the Church’s efforts to establish community software development efforts. The Community Development Program Manager will work with key stakeholders to identify opportunities to leverage community resources to design, develop and maintain software applications that can be made generally available. Success in these endeavors will greatly accelerate the development and proliferation of technology that can be used by church members and local leaders.

The Community Program Manager will work very closely with executive and senior leadership throughout the Church to identify opportunities suitable for community development. This person will also work with internal developers to identify, design and develop tools that can be leveraged by community developers. These tools may include APIs, Web Services, publishing or hosting platforms and documentation.

Additionally, this person will lead efforts to establish the development community. This will require initiative and creativity to identify and coordinate volunteer developers who are willing and able to contribute to Church software development initiatives.

The person filling this position must be a self-starter, and willing and excited to pioneer the use of volunteer developers in the creation of Church software applications. The job will be challenging — but the potential impact is enormous.

You bet it is. As just one example, I’m a genealogy enthusiast. Think of how cool it would be if genealogy worked upon open-source principles rather than the klugey, time-intensive way that it currently does? (I’m not just talking about the research side of it, but also the LDS Church’s old-fashioned database architecture it uses, i.e., a big Oracle server rather than clusters of MySQL servers. Stop wasting my tithing on Larry Ellison’s jets when Google et al. have demonstrated that clustered MySQL can spank Oracle.)

All that said, the real news in this is that open source must be mainstream when it is being promoted from the, er, pulpit. If the LDS Church starts requesting open-source development expertise in its job openings, how long until your school district, fire department, etc. all start to ask for the same?

I’d hazard a guess that many already are. If they’re not, they soon will.

So, if I were you, given that you’ll be much happier if you code for open-source projects, as Jon Williams of Kaplan Test told the OSBC audience earlier this week, and you’ll be much better paid as an open-source developer, put down that C++ manual and start writing some open-source code. I’m happy to be tithed to pay you.

If you haven’t yet, take a few minutes to watch the second set of highlights from Walt Mossberg’s and Kara Swisher’s interview with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates at the All Things Digital Conference. As the interview opens up to audience questions, Tim O’Reilly asks Gates and Ballmer a very pointed (and poignant) question:

Microsoft has been playing “me too” these past few years, following the lead of other innovators. Do you have any “big, hairy [audacious] goals” now, he asks, or do you need to?

In other words, where did all the famous Microsoft ambition go?

Bill Gates blundered through a response about “Quests” and such, and then honed in on putting a tablet PC in the hands of every student in the world. Ambitious? Perhaps. Inspiring? Not even close. It’s just a tired extension of Microsoft’s current dominance, without a thought for interesting new vistas for computing (pun intended).

But where things got really odd was when Tim followed up with a question about why Microsoft spends so much time talking about search and the web when these weren’t mentioned by Gates as Microsoft’s goals.

The response? “You’ve been paying too much attention to the press.” In other words, Microsoft isn’t super-worried about winning in search/beating Google.

I’m sorry, but this might make Ballmer feel better on stage amongst his peers, but he spends an inordinate amount of time talking about “killing Google”. I’ll believe he’s unconcerned when he starts displaying the nonchalance of someone that is unconcerned.

But he should be concerned. “A tablet for every student” is a very pedestrian, circa 1990 sort of vision for Microsoft. It may well make the company more cash, but it’s not going to guarantee its future. The web does, and Microsoft continues to flail on the web.

Microsoft does need ambition on the web. It has been playing catch up there. It needs to change. Part of that change will come from a public recognition that it is losing badly, with a complete corporate focus on winning.

Until yesterday I thought the company was stumbling toward this sort of a response, but Gates wishy-washy answer about tablets makes me think the company has too much cash to be able to see a future where it’s largely irrelevant, awash in tablets but a nonentity on the web that stitches them together.