C. Enrique Ortiz reports on a Patent Law blog which may have major ramifications for the ability of software to be patented (in the US; as far as I know you cannot patent software in the EU). The basic thrust of the argument is that programs run on 'general purpose' computers; i.e. they are not specific, 'particular' machines that have been created solely to run the software in question. It then follows that software is unpatentable if they can be run on any general machine. Of course, for any such change to patent law to be made, there will be counter-arguments from the huge patent players (Microsoft, Qualcomm, etc) that (for example) cars are general purpose machines but it is still possible to patent features for them....an interesting topic, and worth keeping an eye on.

The BBC reports that a US court has ordered Google to provide a list of all videos on YouTube , and every user who has watched them. Importantly, this includes user name and IP address. Activists have claimed that this is an illegal request by the judge as it broaches user privacy. Meanwhile in the UK, The Register has an article on how the broadband ISP (and multimedia/multi-sector) company Virgin has written to 800 customers to inform them that p2p filesharing of copyright content is illegal, and some suggestions on how to get copyright music legally. For this to happen, the British Phonographic Institute (representing rights holders) has worked with p2p network monitors to harvest the IP addresses of sharing users and (presumably) to identify that the content they are sharing is (a) music and (b) copyright. Meanwhile, a UK civil (not criminal court) has awarded punitive damages to a games manufacturer who paid to see who was sharing their new game online: once again the IP address of the sharers was made available to the court. The privacy of personal data in the EU and US is an evolving regulation, expect to see much more coverage of such events in future, and a debate at national and international level on the legality of mapping user behaviour vs. copyright.

W3C are producing an online training course for mobile Web developers: "An Introduction to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices" which will run from May 26 to June 20 2008:

W3C is organizing an online course to introduce Web developers and designers to W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices.

In this course you will

• learn about the specific promises and challenges of the mobile platform
• learn how to use W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices to design mobile-friendly Web content and to mobilize existing content
• discover the relevant W3C resources for mobile Web design

Participants will have access to lectures and assignments providing hands-on practical experience with using W3C's mobile Web Best Practices. They will have direct access to W3C experts on this topic who are the instructors for this course. Participants will also be able to discuss and share experiences with their peers who are faced with the challenges of mobile Web design.

More information at
http://www.w3.org/2008/03/MobiWeb101/Overview.html

Register now at
http://www.3gwebtrain.com/moodle/

Boarding.no reports that Lufthansa has introduced mobile boarding 'cards' for passengers. Basically when you check-in online, you have the option to have an SMS sent to your phone - this SMS contains a URL that brings up a Web page featuring a 2D barcode with, presumably, authentication details to let you on the flight. I imagine these other options would have been considered too: Lufthansa could send<br><br> (1) a one-time hash in an SMS, which would provide a mapping to the customer information. <br> (2) a QR code: these were originally used to track automotive parts in a supply chain and so are a good fit for processing a boarding queue.<br> <br><br>I would have guessed the first option is cheaper both for the airline and for the user (no additional data charge for pulling up the Web page), however it requires manual (human) authentication at the boarding gate; this slows down processing so is no good.<br><br>Option 2 could provide a benefit in terms of metadata about the customer (4,296 alphanumeric characters), but I would have thought that the tools to read the QR code are more expensive than for barcodes, simply due to the greater market competition and lifetime of the latter. Also customer metadata could simply be held in a backend system with the barcode reference simply used as a lookup.<br><br>But one final option I like is NFC (Near Field Communication; pass your phone over a reader to buy a paper, use the metro etc.). It seems particularly suited to airplane boarding since it has the potential to work with the phone either in flight-mode, or even with the phone turned off. This is beneficial given the number of times I have to turn my phone on and off going through two security checkpoints (inconvenient and uses power). <br><br>Provisioning the NFC card with boarding details would seem to be the way forward, resulting in a faster user (and queuing!) experience than watching everyone try to reach a URL: turn on phone, access inbox, select Lufthansa SMS, go to URL. <br><br>-- Kevin Smith, Vodafone Betavine<br>

Hot on the heels of the iPhone/iPod touch, BBC's iPlayer is being made available for the Nintendo Wii. The iPhone version is terrific, with the BBC having converted their digital video to the high-quality MPEG-4 based H.264 codec, and the results are excellent, at least over WiFi. Any rumours of a 3G iPhone would therefore be welcome as it would allow watching last night's TV on the train to/from work.

The Wii support, meanwhile, is just as welcome, because the Wii is plugged into your TV. So, unlike mobile TV, when you sit down in front of your TV set, it is more likely you will be able to watch hours of TV without having to worry about battery, coverage and cost. The Wii has been able to play Motion JPEG/.mov video since launch, however the ability to watch video via SD card has been constrained by a 2GB SD Card limit and pretty low quality. Hopefully the iPlayer will address this and provide it's own control interface (the Wii photo channel simply has, erm, 'Play').

Now, of course, the USP of the Wii was it's Wiimote: the gesture-based controller. Point, drag, twist, thrust; and the moves are picked up by a sensor bar and translated to an on-screen action. So why not use this for unintrusive advertising? Imagine the scenario:

You start the iPlLayer on your Wii and pick last night's Delia Smith cookery show. During the show, Delia makes good use of a blender to make a cake, chop vegetables etc. You like the look of this, so you point the Wiimote at the blender on the screen. A press of a Wiimote button then brings up a small contextual popup: what the blender is, options for purchase, etc. Since the Wii is WiFi connected, you could make the purchase there and then. Or why not buy some of the books on Delia's shelf while you are there?

This form of advertising would be unintrusive, and intent-based, as opposed to broadcast. Other examples could be pointing on a film star's clothes to see the brand, point at cars in driving scenes, etc etc. Hollywood productions already use product placement to subsidise shows; allowing viewers to interact seems a logical (and technically feasible) step for Web-based video delivery.

--Kevin Smith, Vodafone Betavine