Skype's proprietary encryption technology is purportedly the bane of electronic spies at the NSA and GCHQ. But Skype owner, eBay, has quietly revealed it could rip out and replace the code at its core. Apparently the original Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who now own Joltid, sold Skype to eBay. Yet when they sold it, they held on to what they claimed was their intellectual property rights to the encryption methodology of the Skype protocal. So in order to eBay to continue to use the product they purchased, they had to license out the Encryption Protocols from Joltid on a year basis to boot. eBay has mad it clear that they believe the Skype endeavor was a strategic and financial failure. But because they could not make enough money recently, Joltid threatened to no renew their license of the Encryption Protocols. eBay, now furious, claimed that they were just being nice, but in reality didn't feel Joltid had any intellectual property rights and are now going to take them to court to prove it. In the meantime, eBay has set their internal development staff to create their own Encryption Protocols in case their legal battle fails, so that they can replace Joltid's version.

Additionally, the NSA and other intelligence agencies have put out a "bounty" to anyone who can determine a way to circumnavigate Skype's Encryption Protocols so that these agencies can "listen in" on calls.

It looks like Joltid is battling a war on two fronts...wonder if they can hold out.

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Google has done it again, or rather, they are about to do it again. Revolutionize the way we communicate...and for free! Google Wave, the next generation of collaborative communication. You have to see this new web-based application. It combines all the features of E-Mail, Instant Messaging, Status Updates, Photo & Document Sharing, Collaborative Whiteboards and more all into one place! They have also opened up API's for developers to create their own applications that can plug into Google Wave! I seriously hope they accept me into their Beta program, I can't wait to use this tool! It's all real-time too! Instant Messaging is in real time, E-Mails (or "Wave" as they call it), are done in a conversational stream, with a playback feature in case you are added to the "Wave" late in the conversation, that way you can catch up to the conversation in a linear and logical form. I know I am a geek, but I really love new toys and this one promises to be revolutionary.

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Well, this article was a little disturbing. I know we have all seen movies about comets or asteroids hitting Earth. But did anyone know that just this month, a comet hit Jupiter? We should count ourselves lucky that Jupiter and other planetary bodies have a large gravitational pull to literally defend us from these would be attackers. After reading the article though, I am not sure if I am relieved or if I am more scared them before, seeing that such an event is actually possible.

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Well...son of a gun. Here I just upgraded to the iPhone 3GS...and this news breaks out. CSR has unveiled a new GPS architecture that it says will let portable devices be constantly location-aware without draining their batteries. It does this by using an "aware" state, which "keeps the necessary information to do a very fast calculation from the satellite [and is] alive all the time but in a very low micropower mode," he explained. This approach means the device's GPS does not need to be continually turned on and off to conserve power--hence the speed with which it can get a satellite fix. "The second thing we did is [to] put in a new technology which scans for all the noisy signals that interfere with GPS, and eliminates interferers before they can hit the GPS signal," Chadha said.

Well, looks like battery consumption won't be a problem for mobile devices and GPS's any longer, shame it came out so late in the game. But then again, this is new technology and only available in sample quantities for manufacturers, sooo, we probably won't have a working model in a phone for a couple of years. Just in time for me to upgrade to the next iPhone. Hehehe

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Well, it's done. Yahoo is now officially out of the Search Engine business. The monster company, the one company that was worth billions after it's first day of public release, is now gone. Gobbled up by the Mega-Corp that is known as Microsoft. Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz, was quoted in saying that Yahoo "...is not a search company...", could have fooled me. I mean, isn't that where they started? Granted Yahoo had sprouted roots in other areas, but who honestly uses Yahoo Mail anymore? Maybe their Instant messenger is a bit popular, but they still have to compete with AIM, which is a much more well known and respected name. As it stands, seems like Yahoo just turned themselves into another AOL-ish type company. Claiming that content rich pages and information is their bread-n-butter. But alas, Yahoo search is gone, replaced with the new "decision engine" known as Bing. This daring move by Microsoft has catapulted their search engine into the # 2 position amongst all search engines. Bing is now in search combat with Google...ding ding! All-in-all I think this was a major mistake for Yahoo. In my eyes, the fact that Microsoft was branching out into the Search Engine world, to compete against Yahoo and Google should have given them a clue that "Search Engines" are the thing now. I don't know if I will ever understand their decision to sell off their Search Engine to MS. They basically committed virtual suicide for money...at least that's how I see it.

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Okay now, seriously? Apple claims that JailBreaking an iPhone can cause a crash of AT&T cellular towers, and that it constitutes a "catastrophic" threat to national security. Really? National Security? Now I know Apple is full of itself. AT&T is doing well enough on it's own screwing up cellular bandwidth by not having a robust enough network to properly manage all the iPhone traffic. They just didn't bother to spend the money to beef up their network, so excuse me, but I doubt allowing people to legally JailBreak their phone is going to cause much ruckus. As it stands, people JailBreak their phones all the time...has anything happened because of it? No... This is Apple's attempt to further lock-down their technology, that's all.

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