Anyone who's going to work at Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
has to come to terms with the fact that the company is generally very secretive about anything having to do with new products.
I once heard that at their headquarters, they keep lower-level employees away from the research and development wing by making them wear those electric shock-collars people use to train dogs. They only stopped because OSHA was going to look into it. I don't know for sure, just something I heard.
Anyway, Apple staffers who create the company's latest stuff are used to keeping their lips sealed tight. But then Apple tried to restrict third-party iPhone software developers by requiring them to sign off on a very strict nondisclosure agreement.
What couldn't developers do? Well, they couldn't talk to anyone about anything having to do with their projects -- not even if their projects were rejected by Apple. So even if Apple told a developer no thanks, and told him why, that dev couldn't tell anyone else why.
Not a great learning environment, and not a great time to start aggravating software developers, what with Android just around the corner. So they dropped the NDA, and now developers can speak freely.
Listen to the podcast (13:33 minutes).
iTunes Spared From Death
Looks like Apple called the Copyright Royalty Board's bluff. The company once again held its breath and threatened to turn blue if the board approved a proposed six-cent royalty increase.
Apple has been, one might say, intransigent about the 99-cent price tag on the songs it sells through its iTunes service. It's not raising prices, not ever, no how. Read its lips.
Even a mere 6 cent royalty increase would have erased the company's slim profit margin, and Apple is just as determined to make money as it is to hold that 99-cent line. So, the company threatened to turn off the lights at iTunes rather than to change its own tune.
And rather than upset the No.1 music seller in the world, the copyright judges did nothing. That's right -- the per-song royalty rate remains at nine coppers for the next five years, and Apple gets to exhale.
Money Phone
Android may not have much in the way of looks, but what does that matter when you've got money?
Visa wants to jump-start the idea of mobile payments and mobile commerce, concepts that retailers have been dreaming about for years but haven't really caught on in the U.S.
It's developing payment and payment-related services and applications for Nokia (NYSE: NOK) phones, as well as phones running the Android mobile operating system. With the apps currently in the works, users will be able to do things like monitor their Visa card's transactions on a smartphone or use the smartphone itself as a credit card. Of course, this is all assuming that the whole concept of credit still exists by the time they get this stuff out the door.
Reviving Motorola
Motorola (NYSE: MOT) is another company eying Android, though it's being a little more cagey about what exactly it intends to do with it. Reportedly, Motorola is looking to up its staff of Android developers from 50 to 350.
The Motorola spokesperson ECT spoke with, Charles Kaiser, wouldn't confirm or deny the report, but he did have nice things to say about Android -- "powerful," "flexible" and "excited" were some of the choice words he used.
Motorola at this point is starving for a hit. The Razr was the hottest clamshell in the world three years ago; now it's the quintessential free-with-two-year-contract phone. Motorola's smartphones have just not captured the public's attention the way iPhones and BlackBerries have, and the coolest thing about the Razr 2 was the ad campaign.
But if Motorola really is pinning its hopes on Android, that might be pretty risky -- I mean, it's not even available to consumers yet. Eh, what have you got to lose?
Congressional Action That Matters
While taking a breather from working out a bailout plan for Wall Street, Congress took a side trip into the Internet radio fray, and it actually might have helped.
The House, and later the Senate, approved legislation that basically rubber-stamps any royalties deal that might be worked out between the music studios and Web radio providers such as Pandora.
The parties have been making progress in negotiating a deal, but they needed the OK from Congress before it went on break, otherwise a new royalty scheme would have gone into effect -- and that potentially could have been fatal to providers such as Pandora. It's just a good thing that stupid bailout didn't get in the way of the really important issues.
China, Skype Busted
A group of Canadian researchers is blaming Skype for allowing China to filter, monitor and even block some communications between users that touch on topics frowned upon by the Communist party.
The group, Citizen Lab, found a bank of servers that -- aside from being a wide-open gap in security that anyone could basically walk through -- contained intercepted Skype messages. Among the phrases found in the messages: "Falun Gong," "Taiwan independence," "quit the party," "Olympic Games" and "milk powder."
Maybe the shorter list might have been things you are allowed to talk about in China.
Skype denies it allowed the snooping, but the researchers say the incident ranks right up there with Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) helping Chinese authorities arrest a blogger.
ISPs, Regulate Thyselves
AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Charter are joining forces to protect consumers from the evil marketers invading their privacy.
They plan to set up an opt-in strategy that would require user permission before any behavioral tracking could be done, and they intend to clearly communicate to their customers just how their personal data might be used.
This is what reps from three of the ISPs told members of Congress, at any rate. Since they're all volunteering to be so good, there's absolutely no need for any burdensome legislation to compel them to do any of those things, right?
Seems the big four are quivering in their boots over the possibility that hacked-off citizens will get their elected officials to clamp down on the privacy issue and make even tougher rules that they would actually have to follow.
WiMax's Belated Arrival
Broadband wireless Internet access is here -- and I'm talking to all you listeners who live in Baltimore when I say "here." If you live in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Providence or Philadelphia, it's on the way. The rest of us just have to hold our breath.
Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) kicked off its 4G WiMax service, Xohm, in Baltimore, offering competitive pricing and highly respectable download speeds of about 2-to-4 megabits per second.
Stray outside the city limits, though, and you're out of luck. But that's not the only problem with Xohm. Bubble-bursters are cautioning that it may have relatively limited appeal: Whether there's ever going to be much demand for downloading movies and such to wireless devices remains to be seen. (I'm told that back in the '80s, whether there would ever be much demand for making phone calls on wireless devices remained to be seen too.)
OK, let's assume if Sprint builds it, the market will eventually come.
Controversy Already
A bigger stickler for Xohm may be the way Sprint intends to manage traffic across its network.
In its service agreement, Sprint Nextel includes boilerplate language that reserves its right to, "use various tools and techniques designed to limit the bandwidth available for certain bandwidth-intensive applications or protocols, such as file-sharing."
The company seemed, well, hurt that so many people were immediately suspicious of its intentions. It responded to a barrage of criticism by assuring that every service and application on the Web would be accessible on its network. Plus, customers would get a trial period to use the service and cancel without penalty if they didn't like it.
But wait -- there's more. To keep all of its customers happy, it would make sure that no one user could use the network disproportionately. It wouldn't set bandwidth usage caps, but, well -- and that's the problem. Sprint didn't explain just how it would manage to achieve such splendid equity. Anybody remember Comcast's (Nasdaq: CMCSK) adventure in throttling?
DVD Showdown
Usually the software you can get for free does the kind of stuff you'd have to pay for a few years ago. For instance, OpenOffice looks like an older version of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Office. Works just fine for most people's purposes, it just isn't as sophisticated.
That process runs backward in the case of RealDVD. It's a new software application for sale from RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) that lets you insert a DVD into your computer and turn its contents into a file on your hard drive.
Rent a video, rip it with Real, keep it forever. That's not exactly a new technology -- free applications like BitRipper and Handbrake have been around for a while, and they let you do basically the same thing. But now a big company like RealNetworks is behind it -- and they're trying to make some money by charging for it. In response, the Motion Picture Association of America has decided to accept the inevitable digitization of entertainment and change those parts of its business model that technology has rendered obsolete.
Just kidding, it's suing. It claims RealDVD violates licensing agreements, and of course Real Networks is asking a California court to rule that the app does indeed comply. Meanwhile, the ghost of Betamax is getting a big kick out of this whole thing.
Can't Buy Me Love
Apparently, not enough people are using Microsoft Live Search, despite a program of outright bribery begun earlier this year. So, to reel in more search users, Microsoft is resorting to ... even more bribery.
This time, searchers will receive tickets -- kind of like virtual versions of the ones you win when you play Skee-Ball -- which they can redeem for goodies.
But there's a catch. You have to download and install a second program that monitors your search activity, reports it back to Microsoft and keeps track of your tickets. Oh, and you have to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
If anyone is actually using this thing, we'd love to hear how it's going for you. Even you, Big Steve -- give us a jingle.
Big Thinking
Can the company that transformed the way we use the Internet transform the way we use the planet? Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) says, yes it can. It has unveiled a plan to convert the U.S. to a nearly 100 percent clean energy nation.
It will take a while -- a couple of decades, give or take a year. And will come at a hefty tab: roughly $4.4 trillion. (Makes a $700 billion bailout seem downright modest.) But not to worry -- Google says we'll come out more than a trillion dollars ahead in the long run.
Naturally, there are naysayers who want to throw ice water on the idea before anyone starts taking it seriously. But we wouldn't bet against Google's algorithmic geniuses.
Those guys tend to think big.
Also in this week's podcast: Take-Two chooses a life of solitude, Google's Page goes to bat for white spaces, private rocket makes it into orbit.
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