Author: Marc Perton

MagicJack inventor Dan Borislow is pissed. And who can blame him? After all, he’s made a fortune selling a plastic dongle that lets you make calls over the Internet for $20 a year, and now he has to deal with upstart competitors like NetTalk, which is offering unlimited lifetime calling for $99.

What does Borislow have to say about NetTalk? In a recent interview, he told Laptop magazine:

It’s a piece of shit. It has static. The call quality is pathetic. There’s no phone numbers available, and it’s run by a bunch of fly-by-nights with no assets. They’ll be bankrupt soon. We’re a real company with the best network and best software.

Not surprisingly, NetTalk founder Anastasios “Takis” Kyriakides, has responded. Unfortunately, he doesn’t rise to Borislow’s challenge, and basically says that his company is great, his executive team is experienced and his product is a “is a best-of-all-worlds communication device.”

Come on, Takis! We know you’re just itching to get back at Borislow. You can at least call him a poopy-head or something. Just speak the words into your Nexus One, and text it out to him, uncensored.

magicJack Head: Femtocell Device “Definitely Legal,” Standalone Phone and Apps Coming Too [Laptop magazine via Engadget]

Early adopters of Google’s Nexus One phone just can’t catch a break. First, some of them overpaid. Then customers reported iffy 3G connectivity. And at least one had problems getting a dead phone replaced. It’s enough to make you scream obscenities at your phone. Don’t bother. Google has included an odd feature as part of the phone’s voice-to-text function: When it transcribes your speech, it automatically censors any curse words you utter. F*&k!

Reuters was first on the scene, and commented that “the phone is a bit of a prig.”

Try uttering a curse word into the Nexus One, and the well-mannered device will automatically replace the offensive expression with a string of # symbols.

Thus, a jocular text message inquiring about a buddy’s whereabouts is transcribed as “Hey #### where are you?” on the Nexus One; A spirited rejoinder to a dubious assertion becomes “that’s bull #### and you know it.”

Reuters spoke to Google, and the company responded in a statement that the enforced bowdlerization was indeed intentional:

“We filter potentially offensive or inappropriate results because we want to avoid situations whereby we might misrecognize a spoken query and return profanity when, in fact, the user said something completely innocent,” said Google.

“Ultimately our goal is to return results that show exactly what you said, and we’re constantly working to improve the technology to better fit our users’ needs,” the statement continued.

Until the technology improves, if you want to send a text message about that f*&king awesome band you saw, or call bulls&#t on a bogus informercial, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, with your fingers. Just not the middle one; we hear Google has a way to block that too.

Google’s Nexus One muzzles the foul-mouthed [Reuters]

Two not-very-sharp thieves walked into a Chattanooga Best Buy toting three PCs, and asked one of the resident Geeks to help override the passwords on the boxes. Instead, the Geek, who had heard that a local school had been robbed the previous night, tried logging in, and saw that the username on the PCs was the name of the school. The store confiscated the computers, and the the alleged perps were arrested. The lesson here: reset the password yourself at home, using open-source cracking tools, instead of paying Best Buy to do it for you. Just kidding! We salute this agent for his vigilance, and hope he gets snapped up for a career in forensic PC security.

As reported by the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

A Best Buy employee got suspicious when Justin Hill, 26, and Ivan Hill, 19, brought in three computers to the Hamilton Place store and asked him to override passwords on the machines.

The employee’s sister teaches at Normal Park Museum Magnet’s Lower School campus, so he knew of the Tuesday night burglary in which thieves took computers and vandalized the school, said store manager Tom Huskin.

And sure enough, when the employee logged into the machines, the username was “Normal Park,” said Mr. Huskin, who was working at the time. The machines were confiscated.

“This is definitely a headline for the dumbest criminals,” Mr. Huskin said.

Of course, if you’re a legitimate user, you really can do it yourself at home instead of paying Best Buy. But don’t tell the crooks that, OK?

Geek Squad solves school burglary [Chattanooga Times Free Press]

Is wishful thinking driving dozens of telecom pundits to conclude that Apple will announce that the iPhone is coming to carriers other than AT&T this Wednesday? Or are they just tired of reporting the same tired iTablet rumors?

Regardless, the internets are in a frenzy about the potential for a non-AT&T version of the iPhone, after a reporter for BusinessWeek ran a quote about the possibility from Tim Horan, a telecommunications analyst at Oppenheimer & Co.

T-Mobile USA Inc. will get the phone this summer, followed by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. in the fall, and Clearwire Corp. in 2011, Horan wrote in a note yesterday. AT&T Inc. has been the exclusive carrier since the iPhone debuted in June 2007.

“We believe AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity arrangement with Apple will be expiring by mid-2010,” Horan wrote. “For wireless carriers, customers are demanding the device and they need to remain competitive.”

In a game of tube telephone, this was quickly translated into claims that the Verizon version would be announced at Apple’s big press stunt this Wendesday — and even some suggesting that some non-AT&T versions would be available this week.

We have no idea who’s right, but we do plan to listen in on Apple’s announcement, and play along at home with the Apple Tablet Game from Nick Bilton at Bits. Bilton clearly has an inside track at Apple, since his bingo card includes such options as “it’s only designed to work on the toilet” and “subsidized price: $99 with a lifetime contract.” Steve may have a hard time plugging this leak.

Apple May Allow All U.S. Carriers to Sell IPhone [BusinessWeek]

Play Our Unofficial Apple Tablet Game! [NYT Bits]

Three top Wall Street financial firms, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, plan to cut the bonuses offered to their top executives, as part of an effort to show that they’re willing to cut back on what the White House recently called “obscene” compensation. For 2009, the three banks will award themselves just $39.9 billion, down from $44.7 billion in 2007.

According to Bloomberg, “even with lower amounts allocated in the fourth quarter, the compensation costs are enough to pay each employee at the three firms $336,843, more than six times the U.S. median household income of $50,303 in 2008.”

Some top execs, including outgoing Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, aren’t getting any bonuses. Mack’s replacement, James Gorman, will receive deferred stock grants worth $8.6 million. Bankers have defended using stock grants as bonuses, saying it keeps their interests aligned with those of shareholders. However, such arguments have tended to fall flat in Washington.

According to Bloomberg:

“There’s no question that Wall Street got the message from Washington,” said Michael W. Robinson, a senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications and former head of public affairs at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “But positioning the big banks with big bonuses as the bad guys has played well for politicians, and they are likely going to keep coming back to it. To some extent, banks are just going to have to be prepared for that.”

President Barack Obama called bank bonuses “obscene” for the second time in a week on Jan. 21. The next day, Democratic Representative Andre Carson called the industry’s practices “reckless” during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on compensation. Banks are disclosing stock awards handed out to top executives in the next few weeks.

The CFO of Goldman Sachs said the company tried to “balance the needs of the public versus being fair to our people” and that he doesn’t expect many employees to quit in protest over the reduced bonuses. That’s a relief. There are enough unemployed people out there without having to add a group of angry bankers who are down to their last $336,843.

Wall Street Firms Cut Compensation, `Buckling’ to Pressure From Washington [Bloomberg]

Some of Kraft’s South Beach Living cereal bars have been reformulated, and the new label boasts that, in addition to a “new lower price,” the bars have “twice the protein of the leading cereal bars.” That might be true, given that most cereal bars are made up of little more than corn, rice, corn syrup, rice and corn. But the new bars actually have 20% less protein than the previous versions.

In the side-by-side above, that’s the old version on the left, and the new one on the right. What else has changed? While the ingredient list appears to be virtually identical, the new bars have added 2 grams of carbs while shedding 2 protein grams, so we have to assume that some of the soy protein has been replaced by additional oligofructose and polydextrose, which are basically sweeteners and fillers.

Still want a high-protein breakfast? Maybe it’s time to switch back to bacon and eggs — though you may have a hard time tossing those into your pocket to eat on the train en route to work.

The software that controls Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch includes parental controls that are meant to block kids from buying porn apps. And it works. Sort of. While kids whose parents use the software to protect their iPods can’t purchase any of the App Store’s billions of “babe” apps (App Store porn is largely of the soft-core, pin-up variety), they can still browse it, checking out the app descriptions, reviews and, of course, screen shots. Oops.

Ars Technica spoke with Fraser Speirs, an app developer who also happens to be a teacher — and who had planned to give out iPod touches to all 100 of his school’s students to use as mini-computers.

The problem that Speirs identified is that even though Parental Controls will limit app purchases for restricted apps, it does nothing to restrict browsing restricted apps via iTunes. Just accessing the “Lifestyle” category, for instance, will list dozens of “Amateur Swimsuit” apps, as well as “A Hidden Cam Thong.” iTunes will happily display the product page and screenshots for apps such as “Movie of Sexy Japanese Girl,” “Amateur Sohot Queens,” or “Epic Boobs,” replete with graphic text descriptions and NSFW—or school—screenshots.

The problem also affects the App Store app on the iPhone as well, though it does go one step further than iTunes in keeping the content protected. It will still display a restricted app’s description and icon, but it won’t show any screenshots.

Spiers will still distribute the aptly named devices to his students, but with App Store access blocked. He’s also submitted bug reports to Apple. “I would have liked to allow the students to browse the App Store and personalise their devices a bit,” Speirs told Ars. “Or, at the very least, see new apps and suggest them for deployment.”

We suspect that a few determined kids among those 100 may just find a way around this, and turn this bug into a feature, before Apple ever gets around to fixing it.

Parental Control glitch gives kids access to App Store porn

You can get beer at Burger King outlets in Germany, Singapore and Venezuela. In Japan, you can even get some whiskey with your Whopper. And, now, the U.S. becomes the latest country where you can really have it your way, at least in one “Whopper Bar” in Florida’s South Beach.

According to USA Today, the new restaurant will open in mid-February, and could be the first of several brew-and-burger shops:

Don’t look for beer at conventional Burger Kings. That’s not in the plans. But more Whopper Bars — which offer an assortment of burgers, toppings and beer — could be on tap in tourist hot spots such as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, says Chuck Fallon, president of Burger King North America.

A brewski at the new Whopper Bar — served in special aluminum bottles to keep them extra cold — fetches $4.25. Or, order beer as part of a Whopper combo and your bill will be $7.99 — roughly $2 more than the same combo meal with a fountain drink.

If you don’t live in one of the potential Whopper Bar locations, you could try bringing your own — but don’t toss the bottle through the restaurant’s door if they kick you out.

Burger King plans beer-selling Whopper Bar in South Beach [USA Today]