Bluetooth bye-bye and none too soon

By Stephen Pate

A new tech standard endorsed at CES (PC World) promises to replace Bluetooth which has been too long promising and too little doing it. Yahoo Tech reports

“TransferJet wireless capability is getting closer to reality. The technology, which is being developed by major camera makers Sony, Olympus, Canon, Kodak, Nikon, is intended to make it easier for to transfer your images between devices wirelessly. Now Toshiba is getting behind the wireless standard showing off a laptop here at CES that uses the technology.”

Motorola cell biz going almost gone

By Stephen Pate
with stories from Phone Scoop and Bloomberg

Motorola, the original handset manufacturer, is getting read to exit the biz. Phone Scoop reports they may be laying off half their workforce.

“Phone Scoop has learned that Motorola’s handset division is expecting a large round of layoffs as soon as this week, according to someone familiar with Motorola’s plans. The layoffs are confirmed to be significant and may amount to 50% of the entire handset operation.”

iTunes Songs Don’t Have DRM, But They Contain Your Email Address

from the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dept

From TechDirt

Apple got a lot of press last week when it announced that it was going to remove the DRM from songs it sold through the iTunes Music Store. That’s a great thing in itself, since it removes the barriers legitimate customers faced in playing back music they purchased on the device of their choice. But details are coming out, and it’s not all good news: the songs are watermarked (via Slashdot) with the email address of the iTunes account used to purchase them.

Time For Journalists To Take A Lesson From (Smart) Musicians

From TechDirt

These days there are a few types of stories we see and write about consistently: (1) the legacy recording industry’s troubles in adapting to a changing market, (2) the ability of a bunch of motivated, smart musicians, bucking the old way of doing things and finding tremendous success and (3) the legacy newspaper industry’s troubles in adapting to a changing market. Given (1) and (2), you would think that (3) might lead to the obvious (4) of a bunch of motivated, smart journalists, bucking the old way of doing things and finding tremendous success.

And, in fact, that is happening, particularly with upstart blogs, but it’s not getting as much attention. Romenesko points us to what should be a must-read essay over at the Columbia Journalism Review, highlighting the fact that worried journalists should be studying up on the success stories of musicians who are succeeding even as the legacy recording industry struggles.

Saving emails, is it the law?

A post on Dan James’ CEO Blues got me thinking – is it the law to save your emails?

The answer is yes, if you get sued.

It is a requirement of civil law to retain all documents including electronic docs like email. A Canadian authority on this, with some US links, is Alan Gahtan. He has an interesting blog and encyclopedia of cyberlaw. Makes good reading on long winter nights. Gahtan also has a book published by Carswell called “Electronic Evidence” which makes scintillating reading anytime.