Appletell

In a sensible ruling from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Dell has been denied the trademark of “cloud computing,” based on the grounds that it is a general use term. The ruling is “not final” and Dell has six months to appeal before the application expires.

“Cloud computing” refers to any service delivered over the web from remote servers. Examples include Google Docs, Amazon’s S3, and Apple’s own MobileMe.

Why Dell wasted time on this one, I’m not sure. Pretty much every company involved with cloud computing has been using the term since… ever. I’m sure this was an ill-thought-out way for Dell to raise its value by forcing every company to pay royalties or find a new catchphrase for cloud computing. In reality, all this is going to do is hurt its brand perception.

Via [Macworld]

Apple’s market value today rose above that of Google, whose CEO, Eric Schmidt, sits on Apple’s board of directors.

This makes Apple the third most valuable computer services out there behind IBM and the goliath Microsoft.

Check the numbers after the break.

MORE »

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Microsoft is now seeking big-name partners such as NewsCorp or Time Warner to take another run at Yahoo! This time, however, it seems Microsoft is only interested in Yahoo!’s search business, with the partner in the deal likely absorbing the rest of the company.

This comes about five months after Microsoft sent Yahoo! an unsolicited bid to buy the entire company. Yahoo! rejected the deal, feeling Microsoft was not willing to pay a high enough price for the company that runs the Internet’s most visited website, according to Alexa.

This news comes on the heels of the reports that Yahoo’s new search advertising deal with Google is under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Justice because of concerns that it is anti-competitive.

Via [The Wall Street Journal]

Yesterday, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, who just happens to be a member of Apple’s board of directors, detailed the fine line on which he is walking. This line has to do with the relationship between the iPhone and the mobile operating system currently being worked on by Google. Although the Google OS, named Android, has required Schmidt to miss a number of Apple board meetings, he says the increasing amount of competition between the two companies has not brought him to consider leaving Apple quite yet. In an address in San Francisco, Schmidt also made a point of pointing out how different the iPhone’s OS and Google’s Android system will be. Although no details of the system were given, he did say they “...will likely be quite different.”

But with the recently announced 3G iPhone and iPhone 2.0, the extent of Android’s competition for the iPhone is really called in to question.

Via [Market Watch]

The Google Application Engine Team and the Google Mac team have released a new App Engine Launcher made specifically to run on Mac OS X. For those not in the know, Google App Engine is Google’s way of providing users a platform to run their web applications on Google’s infrastructure. Developers don’t have to maintain any servers and are provided with some Google hosted storage and bandwidth for free. Just by uploading their applications to Google’s server, developers can let their users access their applications on the web.

With the new Google App Engine Launcher for Mac OS X, Mac application developers can improve their App Engine development experience by managing their list of applications. Developers can run, browse, deploy and view logs for their applications with few simple clicks. Even better is the the App Engine Launcher’s drag and drop, editor integration and quick links to local developer console features. Developers will also have their own live application dashboard.

The Google App Engine SDK can be freely downloaded from http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html.

Via [The Apple Blog]

So you just switched from a PC to a Mac and you’re completely lost on what to do.  Fortunately, there is plenty of options available to learn about your new machine.  The best part?  Many of these options are free!  Here they are:

1) Apple Store Sessions:  If you head on over to you nearest Apple Store’s Calendar of Events, you will find a whole schedule full of free sessions they offer.  These sessions are made to help you get to know your computer and the software on it and are usually one hour in length.  A small price to pay for how helpful and smart some of those Apple employees are if you ask me.

2) Podcasts:  Podcasts are a great way to learn about anything, not just Macs.  However, if you want to use these free audio/video services to help you, I recommend it.  Apple even offers it’s Quick Tip of the Week (note: iTunes link) video podcast.  The advice that comes from most of these feeds is extremely high quality.

3) Application Help Menus:  In almost every application on your Mac there is a “Help” menu item.  Filled with FAQs, these are a great place to read how to do a certain task.  Just type in what you are looking for and you will most likely find a few options to help you.  I, to this day, still find myself using these sometimes.

4) Google!! Google is your friend.  Always.  Anything that is on the internet is on Google.  Just type in your question and you will instantly have numerous ways to go about answering it.

5) The Community:  Join a social networking site and make some friends.  Your bound to find someone who knows how to do what you are trying to.  The internet is a great place to meet new people and get advice from them.

According to BusinessWeek and the Boston Consulting Group, Apple is on the top of the heap when it comes to innovation.  “The publication states the list is based on companies who nurture cultures that value creative people in good economic times and bad, as well as those that develop a diversified stock portfolio, and display independent though for corporate strategy, despite “finger-wagging” from analysts.” says a MacNN report.  The statistics were compiled by the Boston Consulting Group, and the ratings were based on the opinions of hundreds of Business Executives.  Although the results were based almost entirely on the survey, 20% of the results were calculated based on the company’s stock return, margin of growth, and their three-year revenue.  In second and third place, respectively, were Google and Toyota, with General Electric, Microsoft, Tata Group, Nintendo, Procter & Gamble, Sony, and Nokia accounting for the rest of the top 10.  This is the fourth year in a row that Apple has received this honor.  Also of note, Apple came in second and fourth place in the Entertainment and Retail categories, respectively.

Via [MacNN]

YouTube has been quietly re-encoding some of its videos, users have found. Where possible, they have increased the videos’ resolution from 320x240 to 480x360. They have also made improvements to the sound, including AAC audio instead of the mono sound on previous encodings. These up-conversions are happening mainly to newly uploaded videos, but they are also selecting older videos, such as the skateboarding dog video, to re-encode.

YouTube, though the biggest and most prevalent of video sharing sites, is falling behind in features, and this re-encoding might be an attempt to catch up with other video sharing sites that have begun offing 720p HD video options. It might also be influenced by Apple, who was behind the conversion to H.264, allowing for iPhone playback without Flash.

Via [Electronista]

Everyone has been seeing more and more iPhones these days, and Google has been seeing 50 times more searches on the iPhone than any other mobile handset device. More searches mean more revenue for the world’s largest search engine, Google. This is only good for the popular search engine, as they just lost a contract with T-Mobile to Yahoo. This lose will result in Yahoo’s search engine being featured on the T-Mobile mobile internet site. These stats about the number of searches on the iPhone were so surprising, Google’s head of mobile operations asked the engineers to recheck the logs!

“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again”

In the second half of this year. Google plans to launch a competing OS for the mobile phone, Android. In the meantime, enjoy your iPhones and stayed tuned to Appletell for the latest in Apple news.

Via [FT.com]

Yesterday Yahoo! Inc. made official the widely expected declination of Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid.

The Yahoo! board of directors unanimously declined the bid, saying that it undervalues the internet search company. The reputation connected with Yahoo!, it’s users, services and ad base, seems to be worth a lot more than Microsoft’s offering, according to the statement.

Yahoo is working with financial institutions to determine the fairness of the deal, and is rumored to be looking for a Google buyout.

There has aso been murmurs around the Mac online community about how nice it would be for Apple to buy Yahoo. While it would drastically expand Apple’s online market, it doesn’t seems like the type of place Apple should go right now.

Via [Electronista]