Mobile phone virus found in US

The world's first mobile phone virus "in the wild" has spread to the United States from its birthplace in the Philippines eight months ago, a security research firm said on Friday.

The New York Times reports (18 Feb.) that the virus, called Cabir, has spread slowly into 12 countries and marks the beginning of the mobile phone virus era, which could one day disrupt the lives of many of the world's 1.5 billion mobile phone users.

The biggest impact of the relatively innocuous virus, found in about 15 variations so far, is draining mobile phone batteries,according to Finnish anti-virus research company F-Secure.

As the NYT reports, Cabir was found on Monday in a technology gadgets store in Santa Monica, California, when a passing techie spotted a telltale sign on the screen of a phone in the store.

The mobile-virus threat will grow in the future as virus-writers become more sophisticated and phones standardise on technologies that make it easier for viruses to spread across not just specific devices but the whole industry, reports the paper.

Also, many handheld device makers have recently released new mobile phones equipped with anti-virus software, but analysts say the various features in smart phones make them more vulnerable to viruses than voice-only phones.

Unlike computer viruses that spread quickly around the world via the internet, Cabir spreads slowly because it travels only over short distances through a wireless technology known as Bluetooth. It also requires a user to restart the phone after it has been exposed for the virus to take hold.

In cases where Cabir spread to different countries, an infected phone has typically been carried by the user to another country, the NYT reports, adding that Cabir has been found in countries ranging from China to the United Kingdom.

In November, another virus program known as "Skulls" aimed at advanced mobile phones was sent to security firms, not to consumers, as a so-called ``proof of concept'' to alert them of the virus writer's capability.

Qwest to try again for MCI

As telco mergers and acquisitions continue apace in the US, Qwest Communications International has just announced that it would submit another bid for MCI, four days after MCI agreed to be acquired by Verizon Communications in a US$6.7 billion cash and stock deal.

Qwest's chief executive, Richard C. Notebaert, told MCI directors by letter that Qwest would make a modified offer and hoped that it would lead to new discussions.

The New York Times/Reuters report (18 Feb.) that Officials at Qwest are reviewing the details of the proposed Verizon-MCI merger, but they noted that the Verizon proposal was substantially less than the Qwest bid based on public comments this week from MCI's chief executive, Michael D. Capellas.

Qwest on Wednesday released terms of its failed bid, saying that the total effective value was about US$8 billion, including US$1.60 a share in dividends, which was more than US$1 billion above Verizon's offer. Qwest offered US$23 a share, consisting of US$7.50 a share in cash and US$15.50 of Qwest common stock, based on a fixed exchange ratio of 3.735 Qwest shares a MCI share, reports the paper.

Mobile phone suit involving Orange

British mobile phone company Orange has said yesterday that it would sue easyMobile, a wireless start-up founded by the entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who also founded the easyJet discount airline, in an move meant to to keep easyMobile from ever using its signature color in advertisements.

The New York Times reports (19 Feb.) that the crux of the argument is that ads for Orange prominently feature its namesake color. Its shade of orange is similar to the one used by all the easyGroup brands, and to the one that easyMobile plans to use in advertisements of its own.

Suing for the rights to a color is not as unusual as it may sound, lawyers said.

The paper says it's not completely new for such a claim to be made, and for it to succeed, accordsing to intellectual property lawyers, who also say that Orange will have to show it has built up some reputation in the color orange.

But Orange will also have to prove that easyMobile's use of the color conveys to customers that it is connected to Orange, which will be more difficult, lawyers say, reports the NYT.

The Times acquires About.com for US$410 Million

The New York Times Company has just announced that it would acquire About Inc. and its Web site, About.com, from Primedia Inc. for US$410 million.

The New York Times reports (18 Feb.) that Times Company officials said the acquisition would add a fast-growing, highly profitable web site to the company's portfolio and would increase the company's revenue from the expanding online advertising business.

The paper says by adding About's 22 million monthly users to the Times Company's 13 million monthly users - from The New York Times, The Boston Globe and more than 40 other Web sites - the company said it would have the 12th-largest presence on the internet.

About.com uses a network of about 500 experts to write online about hundreds of specialty topics, from personal finance to quilting to fly-fishing. Primedia wanted About.com as a way to provide a link with its many print publications, web sites, newsletters and video programs.

According to the NYT., The Times Company's acquisition of About.com comes after it was among the losers in a bidding war in the fall for CBS MarketWatch, the financial news web site. The site was acquired by Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for US$519 million.

Times Company officials said About.com would help diversify its online advertising base by adding "cost per click" advertising, in which advertisers pay only when a reader clicks on an ad.

Cost-per-click ads are the fastest-growing segment of online advertising. The Times Company said it also expected to market its products to About.com users.

US health industry: pressure to computerise

In the US, federal officials who are trying to prod the nation's health care system into the computer age, has delivered a warning to the health care industry: take steps soon to make it happen or the government will probably impose a solution.

The New York Times reports (19 Feb.) that across the ideological spectrum, health care experts and politicians agree that America's hodgepodge of paper medical files needs to move into the digital era, so that eventually each person has an electronic health record that can travel across networks and be read by doctors, hospitals, insurers and the patients themselves. Doing so, the thinking goes, would reduce medical errors, improve health care and save money.

Healthcare and technology industry experts have been told by government to come up with a single set of technical standards for electronic health records. This must include a method to certify that the records can be opened and read by doctors and specialists, as authorised by the patient, even when different clinics and hospitals have different computer systems.

The paper reports that once a basic standard for electronic health records is in place. experts say, it will be less risky to invest in digital records for doctors or hospitals that may now worry that the software they purchase today, and struggle to learn to use, may become obsolete sometime later.

The industry group that is supposed to develop the electronic health record standard, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, was formed last year, with members drawn from large medical centers, technology companies, insurers, physicians, nonprofit groups and consultants.

By now, says the paper, the need to computerise a health care system that is choking on paper is beyond dispute. Health experts say that moving to electronic records, which would reduce paper handling and eliminate unnecessary or duplicative tests, could cut 10 percent or more from the nation's US$1.7 trillion a year in health care spending. And a digital system should sharply reduce medical errors, which are estimated to be responsible for 45,000 to 98,000 deaths a year - more than breast cancer, AIDS or motor vehicle accidents, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

The NYT adds that the electronic patient records could also open the door to a national health information network in which patient information, stripped of personal identification, could be used for national health research projects, impartial assessments of drugs' effectiveness and other data-mining possibilities.

Plan for patenting software stalls in Europe's parliament

In a rare move, the European Parliament has demanded that a controversial proposal for a law on software patents be scrapped and that the debate begin anew.

The New York Tes reports (18 Feb.) that the proposed law is intended to harmonise the patent rules of the 25 countries in the European Union. Current laws do not permit software patents, but some have been registered in recent years.

The decision was roundly welcomed by opponents of software patents, who assert that patent protection hinders innovation by software developers.

Groups representing patent holders, who see patents as a way of ensuring that inventors are rewarded for their efforts, were divided over the latest development in the often heated, three-year-long debate over the proposal.

Until recently, Parliament, which favors tightly limiting the scope of patent protection for software-related inventions, appeared at loggerheads with the 25 national governments of the union.Those countries agreed in principle in May to a version of the proposed law that would have permitted a more liberal software patent regime in Europe.

The NYT says that in the last four months, however, some countries have backed away from the May agreement, with finance ministers scheduled to adopt that agreement on Thursday, but the vote was called off as more and more countries raised doubts about the text.

The European Commission, the union's executive body, must now decide whether to accept Parliament's decision to start over or risk a confrontation by ignoring it.
Interactive viral campaigns ask consumers to spread the word

During the early days of internet advertising, skeptics often argued that web ads would never sell prosaic packaged goods effectively.

However, as the New York Times reports (18 Feb.), as more Americans become comfortable with the web, though, major marketers are increasingly asking agencies to produce elaborate, interactive online campaigns - even for grocery store goods that hardly anyone researches or buys online.

The paper says that one of the shiniest lures online is the developing field of viral advertising, in which companies try to create messages so compelling, funny or suggestive that consumers spontaneously share them with friends, often through e-mail or cellphone text messages. The goal is the exponential spread of ads that are endorsed by consumers' own friends.

The best-known viral success may be the offbeat "Subservient Chicken" site, created to promote a Burger King chicken sandwich. The site, which shows a person in a chicken suit who seems to follow typed commands from web surfers, has drawn 13.9 million unique visitors since it went live in April 2004, according to the agency that created it, Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami.

Thus far the energetic rise of viral marketing has been fueled largely by such bizarre creations, along with young, hip and technology-savvy web surfers.

TiVo's success brings new competition, product

TiVo's days as the coolest TV technology on the block may be over, as the pioneer of digital video recorders begins to look more and more like an acquisition target as bigger electronics players start moving onto its patch, accordng to a report in The New York Times (18 Feb.).

The paper says the changes ahead could chill some consumers as they wait for the arrival of new products. A similar change occurred in 2003 when DVR (digital video recorder) maker ReplayTV saw its commercial-skipping feature was unplugged after it was acquired by Japan's D&M Holdings.Tivo brought DVR technology into the mainstream of consumer products. Recently it hit three million subscribers for its fee-based service, which lets users pause live TV, skip ads and record dozens of hours of shows. Now bigger electronics rivals, seeing its success, are expected to bite into TiVo's prospects, and as a result, its revenue and chances at turning a profit anytime soon.

Industry watchers say that rival DVR makers like NDS Group, which is controlled by News Corp., and Scientific-Atlanta , will in the next 6 months debut a new generation of boxes that could exceed TiVo's technology.

Like Apple Computer's iPod digital music player, TiVo is still the big name in the burgeoning DVR market, which is expected to grow to about 31 million in 2008 from 8 million in 2005, according to indusyry watchers.

The NYT says Tivo, trying to keep its cutting-edge lead, will be unveiling still more ways to grow its subscriber list, possibly when it discloses its earnings next month. It will either continue to subsidise, via rebates, the price of TiVo models sold at retail or perhaps announce a new distribution partner.

TiVo is also still talking to cable and telecoms companies about new distribution channels that will grow TiVo's subscribers, sources close to the company say.

Publisher aims at mobile phones

Stepping into the rapidly expanding business of providing information for wireless hand-held devices, Random House has announced that it had acquired a minority stake in Vocel, a San Diego start-up company that offers educational content to subscribers over mobile phones for a monthly fee.

Random House said it had also agreed to license two product lines - Living Language, a series of foreign-language self-study programs, and Prima Games, which publishes video-game strategy guides - to Vocel for use with its cellphone technology, reports The New York Times (18 Feb.).

Under the agreements, Vocel will adapt language-study guides and video-game tips from Random House for delivery to cellphones beginning sometime this summer. While most information will be in the form of text, the Living Language service will also permit users to hear the correct pronunciations of foreign words, says the NYT.

Since last year, Vocel has offered SAT preparation materials from Princeton Review to subscribers, who pay US$5.75 a month to have interactive SAT tests, flash cards and other study materials delivered to the display screens on their phones.