The post-Jobs Apple is here, like it or not

For those looking for signs of change in a post-Steve Jobs Apple, yesterday was your day.

No, it wasn't a miss on earnings, or a product that was perceived to be disappointingly iterative instead of groundbreaking. Nor was it an ad campaign that just felt a bit off.

The changes came as part of one of the most drastic adjustments to Apple's top management since Jobs stepped down, and at a time when Apple finds itself on the defensive. The company has missed Wall Street's earnings expectations for two straight quarters and it is still smarting after a rare technology flub surrounding its foray into mapping software. Meanwhile, Apple's retail stores, a veritable money machine for the company, have been tarnished with reports of cutbacks and mismanagement.

So it was that CEO Tim Cook lowered the boom on two of Apple's top executives -- one in charge of iOS, the other in charge of retail. Recent hire John Browett is out of his retail gig immediately, while iOS chief Scott Forstall is set to leave next year.

The departures are not the first for Apple since Cook took over, though the first one was a bit of a false start that's been temporarily reversed. Bob Mansfield, who announced plans to retire as the chief of hardware for the company in June, ended up staying on at the company as part of a management shuffle in August. Yesterday Apple said he'd once again be running a group that's now expanded to cover its semiconductor and wireless efforts, the foundational lifeblood of its mobile hardware business.

What's driving curiosity, though, is Forstall's departure, which is now being reported as an ouster. Whatever the reason, the change has once again brought up Apple's succession plan, something that has not been questioned since Jobs passed away last year. In the years leading up to that event, and throughout separate bouts of sick leave, the big question was just who was going to run the show after Jobs.

Impact-sensing sports cap measures head injury

True story. A few years ago, I got a concussion at a baseball game -- and not because a ball hit me in the head. When my friend and I simultaneously turned and leaned in to talk, her head hit mine with such force I thought I had broken my nose. My doctor, however, said all signs pointed toward a concussion. Did I mention it was a Giants game? Go, Giants!

World Series aside, had I been wearing a new impact-sensing skullcap from Reebok and startup MC10, I might have immediately known whether I needed medical treatment or rest before resuming play, which in my case involved sitting on a bench trying to explain baseball to CNET's Swedish summer interns.

The sensor-laden mesh cap provides colored LED readouts that vary according to the level of impact, thus providing instant information on the gravity of the blow. It should be commercially available to consumers early next year, "essentially serving as an extra set of eyes on the ice -- or any other playing field," MC10 says.

I was just fine a few days after my head-butt, but serious head impact injuries, also called traumatic brain injuries, pose a significant public health threat, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In recent years, an increasing number of professional athletes have spoken out publicly about their own head injuries, and data increasingly suggests that jolts to the head can lead to problems such as a greater likelihood of neurodegenerative diseases, depression, and memory loss.

The thin breathable skullcap from M10 contains conformable sensors and can be worn under any helmet. It will be sold under Reebok-CCM Hockey's line of hockey equipment and related apparel.

It is not, however, solely aimed at hockey players, and is in fact meant for athletes of all ages and skill levels involved in contact or noncontact sports. Sensor-filled helmets can cost up to $1,000, but the new product will be more affordable, MC10 says, to give players, parents, coaches, and trainers a visual measurement of force of impact. The company has not revealed a price, nor would it release photos of the product at this time.

MC10, based in Cambridge, Mass., is working on a variety of high-performance stretchable electronics that can be integrated into products such as at attoolike diagnostic patch that squeezes medical diagnostics and communications technology onto one ultrathin device.

Last year, Notre Dame's football program was among the first to try a new protective mouth guard that records and reports impact data to help battle concussions. It uses acceleration and rotation sensors to gather real-time in-game data and send it via wireless transmitter to a laptop along the sidelines.

In September, the NFL said it would donate $30 million to the National Institutes of Health to support research on brain injuries and other serious medical conditions prominent in athletes.

Sprint bleeds customers; sells 1.5 million iPhones

Sprint Nextel's losses widened in the third quarter as the company prepares to shut down its older Nextel network. It also reported it sold 1.5 million iPhones in the quarter.

The company, which is being bought out for $20 billion by Japan's Softbank, reported today that it lost $767 million, or 26 cents per share, compared with a loss of $301 million or 10 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago. Net operating revenue was up for the quarter to $8.76 billion from $8.33 billion during the third quarter last year. Analysts had expected revenue of around $8.8 billion.

The carrier added 410,000 new contract-based customers on its Sprint network, but lost 866,000 on the Nextel network, which the company is closing as part of its Network Vision program. About 516,000 of the old Nextel customers, were converted to Sprint. This means that Sprint actually lost customers for the quarter. The company reported a total loss of 456,000 contract customers during the quarter. Still, the company managed to gain prepaid customers. And it actually reported its best quarterly postpaid and prepaid churn rate, which is the rate at which customers leave its service. The prepaid churn rate was 2.93 percent, compared to 3.43 percent last year. And the contract customer churn rate was 1.88 percent, compared to 1.91 percent a year ago.

Also, on the customer front, Sprint said that it concentrated much its resources this quarter to recapturing Nextel customers. As the company winds down its older 2G iDEN Nextel network to use the 800 MHz spectrum for CDMA and LTE services, the company says it's been focusing on retaining those customers.

During the conference call with analysts and investors, Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO said this was a much more cost-effective way to gain new customers for the Sprint network, rather than going out to acquire new customers. He said the company has been successful in this effort, and Sprint reported that it has recaptured 59 percent of its Nextel customers and put them on the Sprint network. This is in comparison to a 27 percent recapture rate for Nextel customers the company had reported in last year's third quarter.

Sprint said it sold a total of 1.5 million iPhones during the quarter. That compares with 4.7 million new iPhones that AT&T activated during the third quarter and 3.1 million sold by Verizon Wireless. Sprint says that 40 percent of its iPhone sales were to new customers.

Hesse noted the importance of the fact that nearly half of the new iPhone additions are new customers, because this means that Sprint is adding valuable new customers to the network. iPhone customers may be more costly to obtain due to the high subsidy cost associated with the phone, but Hesse noted that they tend to spend more and have fewer service issues. They are also loyal customers. And he expects this to pay off for the company in the future.

A good portion of the financial losses that Sprint reported can be attributed to the shuttering of its Nextel network, which it acquired when it bought Nextel in 2005. The company has had to ramp up spending to transition customers off the Nextel network and to build its new infrastructure that will include support for 4G LTE service. As a result, it's been racking up losses in recent quarters as it prepares for the shutdown of iDEN network. Sprint has also been struggling to make up for the cost of offering the iPhone. The company has committed to buying $15.5 billion worth of iPhones over the next several years.

Earlier this month, Japan's Softbank offered to buy 70 percent of Sprint for $20.1 billion in cash. The deal, which is expected to close in 2013, is expected to boost Sprint's chances in the U.S. against rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Softbank, which has already rolled out 4G LTE in Japan, is expected to make an aggressive push with the technology in the U.S. on Sprint's network.

Even though Hesse declined to speak specifically about the Softbank deal during the company's conference call, he noted that the additional financial support that Softbank will likely provide will help the company compete with rivals AT&T and Verizon. In particular, it should help Sprint acquire more spectrum either through auctions or via private deals to ensure it has the resources to compete in the new 4G LTE market.

"There are scale advantages that we have had to mitigate (when it comes to AT&T and Verizon,)" he said. "We have been constantly playing catch up. And we've been good at that. But with the additional financial resources, we'll be able to do it even more quickly."

Sprint currently has 32 markets covered with 4G LTE and it has construction of LTE going on in 200 cities around the U.S. But the company is far behind competitors, Verizon, which now covers 400 markets with LTE and AT&T, which operates in more than 60 markets.

Updated 6:49 a.m. PT:This story has been updated with details and comments from the company's third quarter conference call.

Facebook shares soar in response to better-than-expected Q3

Facebook investors finally have something to celebrate.

The social network's shares have soared in early trading today, jumping 23 percent to nearly $24. Facebook closed the day yesterday at $19.50.

Investors are responding favorably to Facebook's better-than-expected third-quarter earnings report that came out yesterday. The company revealed that its adjusted earnings per share hit 12 cents during the period ended September 30, beating analyst estimates by a penny. Facebook's revenue rose 32 percent over the same period last year to end the quarter at $1.26 billion.

The big news, however, was that Facebook did a better job last quarter monetizing the mobile market. The company revealed that 14 percent of its revenue now comes from mobile devices, indicating that things are finally picking up in that critical business category.

"People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday. "At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company."

Poor mobile monetization has stood at the center of Facebook's troubles over the last several months since it went public at $38 a share. Soon after investors learned of Facebook's mobile woes -- the company wasn't even generating revenue from smartphones and tablets until March -- its shares plunged. Zuckerberg has gone out of his way to allay fears, but until yesterday, those efforts did little.

It appears now that investors are starting to believe Zuckerberg, who also announced yesterday that the company's mobile active users hit 640 million at the end of September, jumping 61 percent year-over-year.

How Steve Jobs' 7-inch flip-flop worked to Apple's advantage

It doesn't rise to the level of "read my lips, no new taxes." Still.

With the announcement of a "mini" iPad with a 7.9-inch screen, Apple trotted out a smaller version of its best-selling iPad to help it compete more directly with rival 7-inch tablets offered by Google and Amazon as well as an 8.9-inch tablet computer sold by Barnes & Noble.

It also contradicted everything that Steve Jobs ever said publicly about smaller-sized tablet computers as Apple embraces a category that its former CEO told us was a loser from the get-go. I'm not exaggerating for effect. Here's Jobs speaking in October 2010 about why 7-inch screens would never cut it:

 While one could increase the resolution to make up some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size. Apple has done expensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff.

There are clear limits of how close you can place physical elements on a touch screen, before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.

But as we learned during this summer's Apple-Samsung trial, what Jobs told the rest of us and what he believed weren't always the same. This revealing January 2011 email from Eddie Cue, head of Apple's Internet software and services, to current CEO Tim Cook, iOS software chief Scott Forstall, and marketing chief Phil Schiller presents Jobs as anything but dismissive of the concept:

 Having used a Samsung Galaxy, I tend to agree with many of the comments below (except moving off the iPad). I believe there will be a 7" market and we should do one. I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, facebook and video very compelling on a 7". Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable.

So was Jobs lying to throw Google et. al off the scent? Maybe, maybe not. Take a gander at the full text of his 7-inch screen rant:

 I'd like to comment on the avalanche of tablets poised to enter the market in the coming months.

First, it appears to be just a handful of credible entries. Not exactly an avalanche. Second, almost all of them use seven-inch screens, as compared to the iPad's near 10-inch screen.

Let's start there. One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately this is far from the truth. Screen measurements are diagonal. So that a seven-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad's 10-inch screen. You heard me right: Just 45% as large.

If you take an iPad and hold it up in portrait view, and draw a horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on seven-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the iPad display. This size isn't efficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion.

While one could increase the resolution to make up some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size. Apple has done expensive user testing on touch interfaces over many years, and we really understand this stuff.

There are clear limits of how close you can place physical elements on a touch screen, before users cannot reliably tap, flick or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.

Third, every tablet user is also a smartphone user. No tablet can compete with the mobility of a smartphone-its ease of fitting into a pocket or purse, its unobtusiveness when used in a crowd. Given that tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious display area to fit a tablet in their pocket is clearly the wrong tradeoff.

The seven-inch tablets are tweeners. Too big to compete with a smartphone; too small to compete with an iPad.

He had legit concerns over so-called tweeners -- Jobs described them as "too big to compete with a smartphone; too small to compete with an iPad." In time, though, he had a change of heart because enough consumers liked the smaller, less expensive units. That was the sign of smart management. Jobs did not need an epiphany, but when the data tell a story which contradicts intuition or informed hunch, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind. Over the course of the last three decades, there is no shortage of product flops like Microsoft Bob or theAudrey web-surfing machine, borne on little more than guesswork about what people wanted, which never ought to have seen the light of day.

The same could be said for product ideas that might have worked -- if only companies had the courage to revisit their assumptions and try something different. If the iPad Mini works out for Apple, the company and its investors will have one more thing to owe their company's co-founder.

To satisfy Wall Street, Netflix's streaming service must grow

The Netflix skeptics on Wall Street have been out in force.

Plenty of analysts doubt that Netflix can reach its goal of adding 7 million new U.S. subscribers this year to its streaming-video service.

Netflix is due to report third-quarter earnings after the close of trading today and everybody will be watching the progress of that domestic-subscriber number. In July, Netflix said it expected to add 1 million to 1.8 million new streaming subscribers during the period. That would give the company a total of between 24.9 million and 25.7 million domestic subscribers.

But CEO Reed Hastings has also said that unless the company reaches the high end of that estimate, it would struggle to hit the 7 million subscriber target. Count Youssef Squali, an analyst with Cantor Fitzgerald, among those who think the company will come up short.

Squali predicts that the Web video rental company will finish the year with 5.8 million new streaming subscribers.

Domestic subscriber growth has always been an important data point in determining the health of Netflix's business. The number is even more important now. Investors are trying to determine whether Netflix can add subscribers while the company's streaming library continues to offer few new movies.

Netflix's streaming service once offered relatively newer films from Sony Pictures and Disney through a deal with Starz, the pay TV service. Attempts to renew the contract failed and the rights expired earlier this year. Of the top six Hollywood film studios, Netflix only offers relatively fresh fare from one: Paramount Pictures.

That said, Netflix still streams scads of titles from indie and foreign studios as well as thousands of TV reruns and documentaries for the rock bottom price of $8 per month.

If you believe content is king, then you likely expect U.S. viewers to snub the service. But if you believe that Netflix, with its convenience and unparalleled recommendation engine -- which often helps to dig up something interesting to watch -- is still a value for the price, then you're probably sitting back and buying more Netflix shares.

Netflix shares were down $1.08 to $66.80 in morning trading.

AMC programming returns to Dish with lawsuit settlement

Dish Network subscribers will get their AMC programming back tonight thanks to the settling of a lawsuit between the two companies.

Satellite TV provider Dish has agreed to pay $700 million in cash to AMC Networks, and in turn will receive licenses for wireless multichannel video distribution and data service in 45 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Under a separate multiyear agreement, Dish will resume broadcasting the AMC channel tonight on channel 131. Programming on Sundance Channel, WE tv, and IFC will resume on November 1.

"We are glad to have settled the case and reestablished our long-term relationships with AMC Networks and Cablevision," Dave Shull, senior vice president of programming at Dish, said in a statement announcing the deal. "This multiyear deal delivers a fair value for both parties and includes digital expansion opportunities for AMC Networks' programming."

Dish dropped AMC's channels from its lineup on June 30, claiming that the network's programming, which includes "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men," didn't justify the increased fees the TV network was demanding.

However, AMC countered that fees were never an issue and that the channels were dropped "in retaliation for an unrelated lawsuit" over Dish's 2008 decision to drop the lightly viewed Voom Networks, an independent subsidiary of AMC.

The deal brings to end a dispute over whether Dish breached an affiliate agreement by terminating AMC's Voom HD Network in 2008. At a trial that began in late September, AMC sought some $2.4 billion in damages from what it believed was Dish's improper termination. Dish had defended itself by saying that it had the authority to cancel the Voom deal based on a contractual clause requiring Cablevision/AMC to invest $100 million per year on the channel. The parties disagreed on whether that money had to go to programming or whether overhead could be included.

As part of the deal to cut short the weeks-long trial, and on top of the $700 million cash settlement, Dish has also reached a new carriage agreement with AMC, bringing theWalking Dead network back to the satellite distributor along with IFC, Sundance, and WE TV. The return of these channels comes months after they were dropped by Dish, leading to relentless commercials from AMC telling fans of Breaking Bad and Walking Dead to abandon Dish.

As part of the agreement between the parties, Dish is also paying an additional $80 million to receive certain wireless spectrum licenses.

“We are glad to have settled the case and reestablished our long-term relationshipswith AMC Networks and Cablevision,” said Dave Shull, senior vice president of programming at Dish. “This multi-year deal delivers a fair value for both parties and includes digital expansion opportunities for AMC Networks’ programming.”

Square's Jack Dorsey reconsiders the term 'user'

One of George Orwell's famous rules of writing is "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

It seems Square's founder and CEO Jack Dorsey was channeling the famous "Animal Farm" writer in a Tumblr blog he penned today. Known for ruminating on concepts and ideas, Dorsey called into question the tech world's use of the word "user."

"It's time for our industry and discipline to reconsider the word 'user,'" he wrote. "We speak about 'user-centric design,' 'user benefit,' 'user experience,' 'active users,' and even 'usernames.' While the intent is to consider people first, the result is a massive abstraction away from real problems people feel on a daily basis."

According to Dorsey, the term "user" came out of the early days of computing and has since evolved into everyday use by Internet companies. "Along the way only a few criticized the term," he wrote, "calling it abstract at best, and derogatory at worst."

Well, Dorsey has had enough of the word and is now completely removing the term from Square's vocabulary. "Customer" will replace "user," and if the company wants to be more specific, it can say "buyer" or "seller."

To set this new rule in stone, Dorsey sent his Square team a letter outlining the elimination of the word "user" and why.

"This may seem like a small and insignificant detail that doesn't matter, but the vernacular and words we use here at Square set a very strong and subtle tone for everything we do," he wrote in the letter. "I expect all of you to make certain our customers are always the first and only focus of all our efforts. If there is an egregious absence of this focus anywhere in the company, tell me and we will correct. If I ever say the word 'user' again, immediately charge me $140."

The elimination of this jargony word from Square's vocabulary surely would make Orwell proud.

Wikipedia now totally free to mobile users in the Middle East

A full 25 million mobile users in the Middle East can now use Wikipedia without worrying about data charges.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) have teamed up to offer the free accessthrough a program known as Wikipedia Zero. The goal behind this initiative is to help people in developing countries more easily get information through Wikipedia. Many users in these countries surf the Internet via mobile devices, so the Wikimedia Foundation tries to work with local carriers to eliminate data charges and other obstacles.

The foundation has given high priority to Arabic-language countries but has reached out to other parts of the world as well. Almost 230 mobile users now have free access to Wikipedia through the program.

"We are thrilled that STC has joined us in removing a major barrier to accessing Wikipedia on mobile phones, Kul Takanao Wadhwa, head of mobile for the Wikimedia Foundation, said in a statement. "Improving access to the Wikimedia projects in the Arabic speaking world is a strategic priority for the foundation, and this partnership is a step forward in our mission to enable everyone on the planet to access free knowledge."

Saudi Telecom subscribers can tap into the free service in both Arabic and English viaWikipedia's mobile Web site. Though available on a mobile connection, access to the site can take advantage of fast browsing speeds. However, people on slow connections can use a text-only version of the site.

PC market much worse than expected, says analyst

The PC industry fared worse than anticipated last quarter and will continue to face rough waters ahead, according to J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz.

In an investor's note out today, Moskowitz noted that Gartner saw a drop in PC shipments last quarter of 8.3 percent from a year ago and an increase of only 2.5 percent from the second quarter. Those results trailed Gartner's estimates of a decline of just 2.1 percent from a year ago and growth of 9.4 percent from the previous quarter.

"While investors had been preparing for a letdown, the magnitude of the miss was larger than what investors were expecting, in our view, and we see limited remedies in the near to mid term," the analyst said.

Moskowitz doesn't expect Windows 8 to convince enough consumers to refresh their PCs. Sales of ultrabooks have also been "disappointing," a situation unlikely to improve due to their relatively high prices. And faced with tight IT budgets, businesses have been delaying their Windows 7 PC migrations until they see some rebound in the global economy.

Consumers and companies alike also remain drawn to smartphones and tablets, which continue to eat up PC sales.

Moskowitz believes that people are more inclined to refresh their smartphones and tablets two or three times before buying a new PC.

Better management of inventory ahead of Windows 8 could boost results in the fourth quarter. But any upturn in shipments would be "limited and temporary," Moskowitz added. J.P. Morgan's current PC shipment forecast of 0.1 percent growth this year and 4.5 percent next year may ultimately prove too optimistic.

Google releases Web site speedup software

As part of its "make the Web fast" effort, Google has released version 1.0 of a module designed to improve the very widely used Apache software that's very widely used to host Web sites.

The Apache Software Foundation's flagship project is Web server software that delivers Web pages to people's browsers when they request it. It can be extended, and Google believes its mod_pagespeed extension for Apache is ready for use, Google said in a blog post.

"Users prefer faster sites and we have seen that faster pages lead to higher user engagement, conversions, and retention," said mod_pagespeed technical lead Joshua Marantz and Ilya Grigorik, developer advocate for Google's Make the Web Fast project. And Google offers a big incentive of its own: sites that load faster get preferential treatment on its search results and in its search-ad auctions.

Though Google only took the beta label off the software today after two years of public development, it's already in use at more than 120,000 sites and offered as an option for site hosting firms at DreamHost and Go Daddy.

The open-source mod_pagespeed software that takes actions on the fly including compressing JavaScript programs into a more compact form and resizing images to smaller size when appropriate.

PETA wages war on Pokemon for virtual animal cruelty

Pokemon has begun his struggle for freeman and liberation, fighting his trainers, doling out group hugs and going to protests... in PETA's alternate universe, that is.

The animal rights group has launched a campaign against Pokemon Black and White 2, saying that the game condones animal cruelty and that its creatures are treated like abused animals.

"The amount of time that Pokemon spend stuffed in pokeballs is akin to how elephants are chained up in train carts, waiting to be let out to 'perform' in circuses," PETA wrote on its Web site. "But the difference between real life and this fictional world full of organized animal fighting is that Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible."

In addition to speaking out against the game's makers, PETA has also created a spoof video game called Pokemon Black & Blue: Gotta Free 'Em All on its Web site. The premise of the game is that the characters battle their trainers in their crusade for freedom. Players are given choices about how to "use attacks to exploit a Trainer's weakness," including group hugs, protests, quick attack, and thundershock.

"If PETA existed in Unova, our motto would be: Pokemon are not ours to use or abuse," the group wrote on its Web site. "They exist for their own reasons. We believe that this is the message that should be sent to children."

Nintendo's Pokemon gaming franchise, which is geared toward children, is one of the most successful worldwide. In what started out as simple adventures with Pokemon and Pikachu has now morphed into several video games, TV shows, toys, trading cards, and books that feature more than 600 fictional species. Pokemon Black and White 2 was released in July in Japan and is slated to hit North America, Europe, and Australia this month.

PETA has a habit of taking jabs at video games. In 2010, the group went after Zynga for having animated pit bulls as attack dogs in its game Mafia Wars. That same year, in response to anAndroid app that lets users train dogs to fight each other, it launched an iPhone app that highlighted stories about animal cruelty. And last year, in what seems like a spoof itself -- PETA went after Nintendo's Super Mario 3D Land for dressing Mario in a fur suit.

Supreme Court closes door on warrantless eavesdropping suit

The long-standing warrantless spying case ended at the hands of the Supreme Court today. After six years of working its way up through the courts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the National Security Agency -- which aimed to hold telecom companies liable for allowing government eavesdropping on U.S. residents -- was terminated.

The Supreme Court declined to review a lower court ruling on the case today, closing the door on further appeals. Its decision did not address the merits of the case.

Hepting v. AT&T was a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and EFF in 2006. It claimed that AT&T was letting the government wiretap resident's phone calls and spy on emails without necessary warrants or notifications.

"We're disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision not to review Hepting v. AT&T since it lets the telecommunications companies off the hook for betraying their customers' trust and handing their communications and communications records to the NSA without a warrant," EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn said in an email statement.

The legal tangle began when the New York Times reported in late 2005 that the president had authorized the NSA to conduct wiretaps, allegedly involving Americans' conversations and Internet communications, without a court order. The news ultimately led to proposed changes to a 1978 law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

FISA required investigators to obtain a warrant from a secret court before conducting wiretapping on international communications when at least one end is located in the United States. The NSA's terrorist surveillance program, confirmed by President George W. Bush after the New York Times report, did not receive the FISA court's approval prior to its start. However, in 2008 Congress passed a retroactive immunity law for telecom companies that cooperated with the government during that time called the FISA Amendment Act.

Despite Hepting v. AT&T coming to a close, EFF is working on a similar case called Jewel v. NSA. That case targets federal agencies and government officials who were involved in warrantless wiretapping.

"We continue to try to stop the spying in our suit against the NSA itself, called Jewel v. NSA, which is set for a hearing in mid-December," Cohn said in the statement. "The government still claims that this massive program of surveillance of Americans is a state secret, but after eleven years and multiple Congressional reports, public admissions and media coverage, the only place that this program hasn't been seriously considered is in the courts -- to determine whether it's legal or constitutional. We look forward to rectifying that."

Google nudges developers to build Android-optimized apps

One of the most familiar knocks against Android tablets: They simply don't have enough apps to be viable.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly mocked Android tablet apps onstage. And while there are more that are tablet-optimized than there were six months ago, it's still tough to say how many more -- Google won't say. (The company instead highlights the total number of Android apps available, including those for smartphones -- it was 675,000, at last count.)

But Google is putting more effort into promoting Android as a platform for tablet apps. Today, with the holiday shopping season nearing, the company posted a "tablet app quality checklist" highlighting best practices for building for the Nexus 7, the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and their peers. It's all aimed at developers, particularly those who may have previously only developed for Android phones. ("Take advantage of extra screen area available on tablets," one of the more obvious suggestions goes.)

A checklist isn't going to build a platform, of course. But alongside the post today Google also shared what amounts to a sales pitch: "developer stories" that help Google make its case that software makers should build tablet apps.

In its post, Google makes three points:

• Bigger screens lead to more engaged users. More engaged users make money for developers, either by purchasing goods inside the app or by having their eyeballs sold to advertisers. 
• It's easier to retain users on tablet apps. Game maker TinyCo. told Google that players of its games are more likely to return than users of smartphone apps. As a result, they are able to generate more revenue per user over time. 
• Android tablet sales are increasing, and users are following. In a savvy move, Google highlights Instapaper -- an app that was long a darling of the iPad set, and moved to Android earlier this year when original developer Marco Arment hired Mobelux to port it. 

 Mobelux tells Google that of people who have downloaded Instapaper for Android, half have downloaded it for a tablet. We'd rather know how many downloads it has, of course, and how those compare to downloads for iOS. But the point to developers is clear -- popular apps like Instapaper are getting on board with Android tablets, and so should you. 

Time will tell how many developers take Google up on its pitch. The iPad remains far and away the market leader in the tablet space. But Google, Amazon, and a host of others are doing their best to lure more users to Android tablets. And the more developers who take Google's advice on best practices, the easier that will be.

YouTube expands original programming push to Europe

YouTube is cranking up its original programming effort with an international push that includes new channels in Europe.

The video-sharing site announced this evening it was adding 50 channels on top of the 100 it has introduced in the past year, along with the launch of country-specific channels in France, Germany, and Britain.

"From local cuisine, health and wellness and parenting to sports, music, comedy, animation and news, this new lineup of original channels will have something for everyone," Robert Kyncl, YouTube's global head of content, said in a company blog post this evening announcing the new programs. "They are backed by some of the biggest producers, well-known celebrities and emerging media companies from Europe and the U.S."

Since announcing $100 million investment in original programming last October, YouTube said it is already harvesting the fruit of its labor. The video portal says it is averaging more than a million views per week from its top 25 original channels, and that more than 800,000 people are watching 4 billion hours of video every month -- up from 3 billion hours earlier this year. It also said the number of people subscribing has double over last year.

Google is investing an additional $200 million into marketing and production costs, The New York Times reports. The company expects its investment will help attract a greater number of YouTube users to its channels.

"I believe that every interest will, at some point, have a channel serving that interest," Kyncl told the Times. "People are building channels and creating audiences, which is something they couldn't do before in such numbers."

The expansion comes as competition heats up for consumers' entertainment dollars. Video platforms such as Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu are also touting original programming in their competition to attract viewers and advertisers.