The Short Names

Steve Balmer’s plans went really wrong with recent Linux patent auction. Instead of patents ending up with patent trolls, as Microsoft wished, AST acquired the patents, which was later sold to OIN, Open Invention Network. 
Up your Bolder
“Allied Security Trust is pleased that Open Invention Network had interest in acquiring the Open Source patent portfolio. OIN’s purchase ensures that these important patents will not be used by patent trolls or others seeking to disrupt Linux and the many companies and individuals advancing this important technology,” said Dan McCurdy, Chief Executive Officer of Allied Security Trust.
Following is the complete press release by OIN;

Durham, NC (September 8, 2009) – Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source, today announced the acquisition of 22 Linux-focused patents that were marketed and sold by Microsoft. The patents were recently purchased by Allied Security Trust (AST) from Microsoft to ensure the patents did not fall into the hands of non-practicing entities (more information on non-practicing entities is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll, among other sites) that could seek to assert the patents against Linux products. OIN subsequently acquired the Microsoft patents from AST.

“Today’s announcement evidences OIN’s continued commitment to acquire patents that may be relevant to Linux,” said Keith Bergelt, Chief Executive Officer of Open Invention Network. “We are pleased to have purchased these patents and view this as a model of successful collaboration among defensive patent organizations that share a common goal of creating freedom of action for practicing entities across Linux and the broader technology sector. The prospect of these patents being placed in the hands of non-practicing entities was a threat that has been averted with these purchases, irrespective of patent quality and whether or not the patents truly read on Linux.
“Allied Security Trust is pleased that Open Invention Network had interest in acquiring the Open Source patent portfolio. OIN’s purchase ensures that these important patents will not be used by patent trolls or others seeking to disrupt Linux and the many companies and individuals advancing this important technology,” said Dan McCurdy, Chief Executive Officer of Allied Security Trust.
About Allied Security Trust
AST is a Delaware statutory trust currently with 15 member companies headquartered in North America, Europe and Asia. The Trust provides opportunities to enhance companies freedom to sell products by sharing the cost of patent licenses. To date, the Trust has invested $40 million in patent purchases over its 30 months of operations. Through such purchases, the Trust provides an excellent opportunity for patent holders of all sizes to generate a return on their rights by selling patents to the Trust.
AST is not an investment vehicle. Its purpose is freedom of operation and cost reduction. It generates no profits and does not engage in patent assertions against other companies. AST maintains a catch-and-releas; commitment that returns to the market in a timely manner patents acquired on behalf of Trust members after licenses are secured. The Trust also addresses the increasing need for innovative companies to defend against costly patent law suits. For more information, visit www.alliedsecuritytrust.com.
About Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network is a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux by acquiring and licensing patents, influencing behaviors and policy, and protecting the integrity of the ecosystem through strategic programs such as Linux Defenders. It enables the growth and continuation of open source software by fostering a healthy Linux ecosystem of investors, vendors, developers and users.
Open Invention Network has considerable industry backing. It was launched in 2005, and has received investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. For more information, visit www.openinventionnetwork.com.
Media-Only Contact:
Ed Schauweker
Ketchum for Open Invention Network
ed.schauweker@ketchum.com
(703) 963-5238

Motorola’s biggest success to date was when it released the thinnest and sexiest device the world had seen. Since then, the handset-maker has struggled to produce anything like it.

Yesterday, everyone was prepared to see Motorola’s latest form factor that would bring it back from the brink. Instead, what we got was an announcement about an innovative new user interface, or skin, that runs on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. In fact, the big unveiling had little to do with the hardware, and in many ways, the upcoming CLIQ phone looks like any smartphone with a slide-out Qwerty keyboard. The interesting stuff is the Blur technology running under the hood.

This marks a huge cultural shift for the company, which in the past has always been driven by hardware design. While we didn’t get the entire story, the picture we gleaned during yesterday’s announcement and during a hands-on demo showed that much of transformation had to do with new Motorola (NYSE: MOT) management—and leveraging assets the company already had.

When Sanjay Jha was appointed CEO of mobile devices, he fast tracked a project being worked on by former employees from Good Technology, an enterprise email service that Motorola acquired, and then sold off in February. So, while other divisions back in Illinois were slashing staff, the Sunnyvale office was quietly picking up employees from Apple and Google in what has become a long two and a half year process to get to market. Rick Osterloh, Motorola’s VP of Product Development for Android Products, couldn’t help but talk about the project, which had been kept under tight wraps for the past year so well. He said it originated with Jha, who was interested in what the former Good employees were working on. “He liked what he saw and he gave it resources.”

Jha explained the importance of BLUR to GigaOm’s Om Malik at Mobilize and how it compares to Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry. He said the platform melds Apple’s idea of having access to tons of applications with BlackBerry’s niche of integrating the apps—like email—deeply into the phone. Together, they have the apps and the integration: “The iPhone has one, BlackBerry has the other, but we have combined them in a meaningful way for social networking.”

Essentially, the BLUR technology enables users to get all of their messages, status updates and other social networking components pushed to them. Motorola’s director of product marketing Dan Rudolph told me during a demo at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art that in order to accomplish this, there’s a lot of server-side technologies playing a role. All of the messages are compressed and then sent to the device. The process should help save on bandwidth and battery life, while the consumer will have all the information without having to go out and retrieve it.

Osterloh said the original idea stretches back as far as 2007 when Facebook and MySpace were just taking off. “We had all these people from Good…we thought we could really solve something.” He said the two keys were that messaging services on devices had gotten complicated. (Users had multiple email addresses and also SMS and MMS.) The other thing they looked at was making a consumer-friendly service that would be used by people who didn’t have support from an IT staff at work. “We redid everything. It was focused on business and this is 100 percent focused on the consumer.”

Some of the key services include an online portal, where users could log in and manage their device. If it’s lost, they can ping it and see where it’s located on a map. If it’s been stolen, they can wipe off all of their information and data. Likewise, if you get a new phone, all you would have to do is re-enter a BLUR user name and password and all of the consumer’s settings and preferences would be restored from the wallpaper to which widgets it has on the home screen—a significant time saver. Osterloh: “There was a big hole between what was happening with applications and what was happening with services on the BlackBerry. We see that there’s a need for both…The strategic part is the BLUR part.”

Motorola’s strong software platform may have increased its chances of making a comeback. But form factor is important, too. And, so far, it’s something that’s been neglected on the Google Android platform. To date, most of the devices are bulky, and while some have gotten sleeker, nothing still compares to the iPhone. Motorola’s new CLIQ also falls into this category. While solid and full of the latest hardware, it too is large and strays from Moto’s design background. INQ Mobile’s CEO Frank Meehan announced yesterday that his company was going to start building phones on Google Android’s OS, but pointed to one of the challenges with the platform: “Currently, Android phones on networks that are selling against the iPhone have not performed well. You need to get the experience better.”

So far, Motorola has announced that its first handsets will be sold via T-Mobile in the U.S. and also Orange, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) and America Movil. How will it do? We’ll have to wait and see.

This is the moment in which Motorola (NYSE: MOT) shows us whether they have what it takes to turn the company around.

At GigaOm’s Mobilize in San Francisco today, Motorola’s CEO of Mobile Devices Sanjay Jha took the stage in front of a packed and energized auditorium, to say its answer to its problems is “Moto Blur,” a social-networking platform that the company has developed to run on top of the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android operating system. The first phone will be the Motorola CLIQ, which will be sold exclusively by T-Mobile USA. Jha: “The Android operating system gives us the platform to mobilize the internet. The bottom line is that it’s a modern, well-architected platform written from the ground up.” (Release.)

T-Mobile’s Cole Brodman joined Jha to announce that they will sell the phone exclusively starting in the fourth quarter. No word on how much it will cost. “Our customers are used to seeing innovation from T-Mobile and getting the must-have devices.” He stressed the network will be prepared to handle the additional traffic the device uses, which might become a determining factor going forward as consumers use data and weigh down networks. “Our network is equipped to handle increase in traffic. We have spent $9 billion on the network in the last four years. We have a modern 3G network that will reach 200 million people in the U.S. and reach 250 cities. It is a great time to be introducing a product like this.”

More on how BLUR works after the jump…

The Moto Blur concept aggregates all of your social networks, and then distributes the information into various widgets that are available on the phone’s home screen. Messages get one bucket and status updates in another. The address book also draws from all the networks, providing options for how you contact someone—via SMS, Twitter, email, etc. The phone is linked to a portal online that allows people to track a phone when its lost or from there you can wipe it clean. A user online only has to log back in to a device with a username and password to pick up where they left off.

Pricing for the device was not announced and its unclear what kind of data plan it will require, or whether there’s additional costs involved for the online back-up (Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) charges for a similar service, called MobileMe.). Clearly, the starting price for smartphones as of recently is $200, so to even have a chance at being competitive, Motorola will have to beat that—and better yet, they should beat it.

After the initial announcement this morning, Jha explained in a chat with GigaOm’s Om Malik the idea behind BLUR in terms we understand today—Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry. He said the platform melds Apple’s idea of having access to tons of applications with BlackBerry’s niche of integrating the apps—like email—deeply into the phone. Together, they have the apps and the tight integration. “The iPhone has one, BlackBerry has the other, but we have combined them in a meaningful way for social networking.”

A similar Motorola phone called DEXT will also be distributed internationally with Orange in the UK, Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) in Spain and America Movil in Latin America. Motorola will not stop there. Jha said a second Android phone using Blur will be announced shortly and will be launched in time for the holidays.

I’m currently en route to Facebook’s Mobile Media Mixer in Palo Alto, and what should happen to appear in the Android Market? The social networking company has finally launched its first application for the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) mobile-phone operating system.

So far, it sounds like a fairly simple application with initial feedback calling it more of a Twitter client, and many saying it’s light on features. The one noteworthy feature is the widget, which provides information directly on the homescreen. It is apparently gigantic and nearly takes up two-thirds of the page, reports AndroidandMe.com.

I’m sure I’ll hear more about it this evening, so I can provide an update later. UPDATE: Just met a handful of the 15-or-so people from the Facebook Mobile team on the company’s rooftop deck. Head of Mobile Henri Moissinac talked about the company’s momentum in mobile. Last week, they announced they have 65 million active monthly mobile users, and that’s mostly before updating the recent iPhone app, launching the Android app and adding location-based services to Nokia’s Ovi app. He said the momentum will continue with two new applications for devices coming soon. The reason for the company’s interest in mobile is clear: they say users are two times more engaged with Facebook if they use a mobile version.

The Facebook Android app does a good job at what Android does well. It alerts you to new comments on the Android notification drop-down window. It also allows you to click on a link from a browser and send it to your Facebook page—without ever loading the app. Pictures are also easily uploaded. The widget is big, but it does allow you to see the most recent status updates and place a call without loading the heftier version. However, as the critics have already said, it’s light on features—but the team promises more in future generations.

This is truly shaping up to be a big week for Android. First, the Facebook app launches, which is important because it has been one of the most popular downloads on other devices, such as the BlackBerry. And on Thursday we’ll hear more from Motorola (NYSE: MOT) at GigaOm’s Mobilize about its Android strategy.

Loopt, a location-based mobile social network, is launching a new service today that will allow users to automatically update their location on the iPhone and be alerted to when their friends are nearby.

While Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) prohibits applications from running in the background, Loopt has side-stepped the problem by partnering with AT&T (NYSE: T), which holds the iPhone exclusive in the U.S. (and clearly is an obvious candidate for knowing where its subscribers are at all times). Loopt is claiming on its web site to be “the first service for the iPhone to do this.”

Without AT&T’s help with real-time location information, Loopt’s experience on the iPhone is a very manual process. A user must open the app and check in when they’ve changed locations, likely resulting in lower adoption levels. After all, who’s going to do that during a 15-minute trip to the dry cleaners? Alok Deshpande, Loopt’s co-founder and chief software architect, told mocoNews: “It’s been a really popular request from iPhone users. We think the real-time element adds a lot to the service.” The service will be available to 5,000 users during the initial trial. After 14 days, it will cost users $3.99 a month.

While Deshpande was willing to talk about the service broadly, he was not willing to detail exactly how it will work, other than to say it was possible through the help of a number of partners. But after visiting the web site for the service, it’s clear that AT&T is the one providing the magic behind the curtain (although there could be other partners, too). While Apple mostly owns the user-experience on the iPhone, this demonstrates that the carrier still has some control and AT&T is willing to leverage it. According to the web site, a person’s location is based on the nearest cell tower, and the accuracy could range between a few hundred yards to a few miles. The location will be updated every one to two hours, and users will pay for the it via their AT&T bill.

Deshpande is clear in saying that while the location is updated without any help from the user, the app is still not running in the background. “We don’t have any info about that specifically. This is a different, and something we’ve worked with a number of companies to provide.”

One of the benefits to the service is that users will also be alerted via text message or email that a friend is in their close proximity, once again, making the use of the application a more engaging. That’s key. While Loopt got out ahead of many other location-based social networks on the phone, and is on about 100 phones and works with several carriers, there’s no shortage of competition. More traditional social networks, like Twitter and Facebook, are constantly adding location services, and there’s other mobile-focused apps, like Foursquare.