For all the talk about how Apple http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070111/005550.shtml">patented so many different aspects of the iPhone, it really http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071203/191306.shtml">hasn't stopped a ton of iPhone-related patent infringement lawsuits against Apple. Bill Squier writes in to let us know of the latest. Someone is suing Apple over a patent http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/02/26/lawsuit_claims_iphone_infringes_call_display_patent.html" target="_new">on the iPhone's caller ID feature. Yes, apparently, the patent covers matching up the phone number of an incoming call with a local contact database to display who is calling. Of course, the patent also talks about a two-line LCD display and a separate receiver, which aren't exactly a part of the iPhone these days.

damienhunter notes a Wired story on the power-hungry ways of the first generation of Blu-ray players coming soon to a laptop near you. "With the Sony-backed HD format emerging victorious from a two-year showdown with Toshiba's HD DVD, many laptop manufacturers are now scrambling to add Blu-ray drives in their desktop and notebook lineups. Next month, Dell will even introduce a sub-$1,000 Blu-ray notebook… But the promise of viewing an increasing variety of HD movies on your laptop may be overshadowed by ongoing concerns over the technology's vampiric effect on battery life. Indeed, if the first generation of Blu-ray equipped laptops are any indication, you might not get more than halfway through that movie before running out of juice completely, analysts say."

dforristall alerts us to an odd move by Microsoft: cutting the price of retail boxes of Vista in many markets. Analysts didn't see this one coming, and they are scratching their heads a bit over it; one called it "very unheard of." The price cuts vary by country — they're largest in the developing world where piracy levels are high — and they don't apply to OEM copies of Vista, which account for 90% of sales. "Gartner analyst Michael Silver said the move… is puzzling… [He] noted that the market for such upgrades is fairly limited. Those who bought XP in the fourth quarter of 2006 got a coupon for a free Vista upgrade, while most of those who have bought systems since then have gotten Vista. Machines purchased prior to 2006 probably aren't all that attractive as candidates for a Vista upgrade… 'The whole notion of upgrading PCs has sort of fallen by the wayside.'"

Markets were spooked by a report Monday that showed click-through rates on Google advertisements dropped 7 percent from December to January. Buth that decline may have been due to deliberate changes Google made in its ad system, aimed at improving the quality of customer leads that its ads produce.

coondoggie writes "Even with its increased hiring estimates of 1,200 patent examiners each year for the next 5 years, the US Patent and Trademark Office patent application backlog is expected to increase to over 1.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2011 the Government Accounting Office reported today. The USPTO has also estimated that if it were able to hire 2,000 patent examiners per year in fiscal year 2007 and each of the next 5 years, the backlog would continue to increase by about 260,000 applications, to 953,643 at the end of fiscal year 2011, the GAO said. Despite its recent increases in hiring, the agency has acknowledged that it cannot hire its way out of the backlog and is now focused on slowing the growth of the backlog instead of reducing it. This too is but one of the goals of the Patent Reform Act currently making the rounds in the US Senate."

Fewer people are clicking on internet ads, the main source of Google's profits, and the online leader's stock falls to an 11-month low.

Social networking site Facebook is preparing an update which simplifies the user interface of its website. The changes are an obvious nod to the site's mobile-optimized version, which is already popular with iPhone users.

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Last week at GDC, Sony showed how the standard PlayStation Eye camera connected to a standard PS3 does well at tracking face and body movement, even at some distance. As you can see in the above video starring my good friend Stephen Totilo, it works great, and would be brilliant for duck-and-cover maneuvering in first-person shooters. However, as you might guess, support for games has yet to be announced.

One of the recurring trends in high-tech markets is that as information goods get cheaper, they're increasingly sold as all-you-can-eat bundles rather than as individual units. This has been true of land-line telephone service for decades. In the late 1990s, we saw the http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070911/194749.shtml">same transition occur in Internet access. In this decade, we've seen the explosive growth of Netflix, which is an all-you-can-eat plan for video. Now it appears that cell phone companies are http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/business/21place.html">inching in that direction too, as Mike http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080220/011924301.shtml">discussed last week. For $99/month, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile will let you talk on your cell phone as much as you want. Sprint is apparently considering adopting a similar plan. This isn't actually all that new.

There are two fundamental economic forces at work here. First, metering imposes costs, both on consumers and on carriers. For carriers, there are the obvious expenses of keeping track of billing information, as well as the attendant support costs when an angry customer calls to complain about unexpected charges. For the customer, metering imposes the mental overhead of having to keep track of whether it's currently "peak" or "off peak" time, how many minutes are in his plan, whether he's currently "roaming," etc. A lot of customers are happy to pay a little bit extra for the peace of mind of knowing exactly how much they're going to pay each month without having to keep track of their calling activity. Second, the wireless market, like the phone, Internet, and DVD markets, is capital-intensive. Unless the network is already fully loaded, the marginal user costs wireless carriers close to nothing. As a result, metered pricing often causes under-utilization of the network because minutes are priced far above their marginal cost. Switching to a flat-rate plan can be economically efficient because it encourages greater utilization of the network without undermining the carriers' ability to recover their fixed costs. That has always been the rationale behind the free night and weekend minutes offered by a lot of cell phone companies over the last few years. They're just expanding it so it applies 24/7.

The New York Times Saul Hansell takes a look at the http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/the-chumby-is-open-but-not-for-business/">business model behind the Chumby, an Internet-age replacement for your alarm clock. Apparently, the plan is to keep the price of Chumbies low and make money by demanding a cut of any ad revenue generated by third-party applications. Hansell seems skeptical of this business model, and so am I. Chumby did the right thing by making its device relatively open and trying to provide a http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041214/1837206.shtml">platform that other companies will build on. But its plan to demand a cut of other firms' advertising revenues seems like it might undercut that strategy. Especially when it's still trying to get the platform off the ground, it should want to make it as easy as possible for third-party developers to participate in the Chumby ecosystem.

Requiring third party developers to license access to the platform both increases the red tape required to enter the market for Chumby applications and reduces the potential profits from doing so. Potential third-party developers are going to think twice about betting on a platform whose owner may demand a bigger cut in the future. Obviously, there needs to be a way to recoup their investments on the Chumby platform. But if the Chumby becomes a hit, there will be all sorts of ways to monetize that success. Most obviously, the company can raise the price of the Chumby, or sell premium Chumbies with extra functionality. It can install its own applications by default and sell ads with those. It can sell accessories, or create a certification program for accessories like Apple's http://www.news.com/Apple-seeks-tax-on-iPod-accessories/2100-1041_3-5620959.html">"Made for iPod" program. It can offer seminars and consulting services to people wanting to develop Chumby applications. It's never difficult to monetize a successful platform — especially when you're selling the hardware. Putting up roadblocks to the development of new applications is a mistake, even if it generates a bit of extra revenue in the short run.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the http://www.insightcommunity.com/">Techdirt Insight Community.