CH IT News

Computerworld - Microsoft bragged Thursday about growth in its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) developer community one year after its birth, but immediately got blasted for not disclosing developer revenues.

Windows Phone now has 36,000 members who have paid $99 to join the community, although free WP7 tools have been downloaded 1.5 million times, Windows Phone Senior Director Brandon Watson wrote in a blog. Another 1,200 developers are being added every week, he said.

Watson also said there now 11,500 paid and free apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, and he took a swipe at other app stores who he said inflate their numbers by including wallpaper apps or double count apps that appear in two languages.

"Our ecosystem generated 10,000 apps faster than anyone else, without padding the stats," Watson said.

Admitting that "most developers we speak to are concerned with making money," he added that "many are telling us that they are seeing more revenue on our platform than competing platforms despite the fact we cannot yet match the sheer number of handsets being sold."

Windows Phone 7 devices have only been on sale about four months, he noted.

Without specific revenue numbers, a few registered developers criticized Watson's missive. "Hate to say it (and I appreciate the effort), but there is only one number that actually matters: REVENUE," wrote lstroud in a comment on the Microsoft blog. "You could talk about units sold to end users or paid apps downloaded.... If the revenue for developers does not come...the OS will die. The real question is how long do people continue to invest in the platform without revenue numbers."

Several developers also praised the WP7 developer tools and Watson's update, but one worried that Microsoft isn't moving fast enough with Windows Phone innovations and seems to be working at a slower pace than Microsoft is accustomed to using with products for enterprise users.

"It seems like Windows Phone is being handled much like other enterprise products are handled [with] yearly or half-yearly cycles," wrote usctrojan98. "Those just don't cut it in consumer-land. We need fast, frequent updates and we always are ready for changes, unlike enterprise. Please tell me/us that there is something to look forward to between [now] and the end of the year. Otherwise, I am pretty close to giving up on this exciting platform and go with the tried-and-tested iOS."

Watson said he's most excited that 40% of registered developers have published their apps, although he recognized another 60% have not.

(The number of apps, at 11,500, when compared with the number of registered developers, at 36,000, would indicate the registered developers who have published apps is less than 33% -- below the 40% that Watson claimed. Microsoft officials could be reached to explain the contradiction.)

Noting the 40-60 split on developers who have published or not, Watson added, "That's incredibly exciting when you consider the amount of creativity which is still forthcoming."

Reff:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215404/Windows_Phone_apps_now_total_11_500_without_padding_Microsoft_says

Computerworld - A malicious Android app that shamed users for pirating software transmitted personal information to a URL controlled by the legitimate app's developer, a security company said today.

The developer of "Walk and Text," the app whose code was recompiled and re-released on unauthorized online stores, denied the claim by AVAST Software, an anti-virus firm based in Prague.

Walk and Text, which costs $1.54 to download from the official Android Market, uses the smartphone's camera to show what's in front of users as they simultaneously walk and text, theoretically preventing them from slamming into signposts or stepping off curbs into traffic.

The Trojanized version of the app includes malicious code that texts an embarrassing anti-piracy message to each contact in the phone's address book.

"Hey, just downlaoded [sic] a pirated App off the Internet," the message reads. "Walk and Text for Android. Im [sic] stupid and cheap, it costed [sic] only 1 buck. Don't steal like I did!"

The rogue app -- which Symantec yesterday named "Android.Walkinwat" and identified as a Trojan horse -- also pilfers personal data from the phone, including the phone number and the device's unique identifier, and sends it to a remote server.

According to AVAST, that data was sent to a URL controlled by Georgi Tanmazov, the CEO of Incorporate Apps, and the developer of Walk and Text, as well as other Android apps.

"It was very obvious that the information went to his URL," said Vincent Steckler, the CEO of AVAST in an interview Friday. "Was there something receiving the information? [Tanmazov] said there was not. But from what we could see, yes, there was something there receiving the information."

Tanmazov flatly denied that he created the malicious version of Walk and Text.

"AVAST has indeed claimed there is a link to our servers, but there was no such file on our servers, and logs could probably prove this," said Tanmazov in an e-mail interview, also on Friday. "There is also no personal information being saved on our servers and this could also easily be proven."

Steckler said that he has yet to see that proof, and called on Tanmazov to share his server logs.

When asked if he would share the logs, Tanmazov agreed, but said he wasn't sure that such logs exist.

"The Web site is on a really cheap shared server and they delete stuff after three days I think," he said. "You understand that if we do have logs those are text files that could be altered so this will also not prove anything."

AVAST and Tanmazov have been at odds for more than a week, when AVAST blogged about the malicious version of Walk and Text that researchers found on the Internet.

Since then, Tanmazov has threatened to sue AVAST and accused the company of publicizing the Trojanized version of his app to promote its mobile security software. "We haven't heard from any lawyers," said Steckler. "But it's a common threat against security companies."

Today, Tanmazov said he was "still looking into options" that included a lawsuit, but acknowledged that the route would be expensive. "It is a very sorry situation that AVAST is trying to provoke us in such a way," he said.

Steckler denied that AVAST will shortly release a security app for Android, or warned users of the malicious edition of Walk and Text for publicity. "What we care about is malware out there that takes personal info and incurs costs to users," he said.

Installing the Trojanized app could result in higher texting bills, depending on the number of contacts in a victimized smartphone, and where those contacts lived. "This could cost you some money," John Engles, a group product manager with Symantec's security response team, said in an interview yesterday.

The back-and-forth between AVAST and Tanmazov is unusual, Steckler admitted.

"There's still a lot of private pushback from adware and spyware makers, which remains a very gray area. But this is the first case we know of where a developer of a legitimate app has gotten so angry. What makes this different is that data was being sent to his URL."

This isn't the first time that malware-filled Android apps have cropped up. Last month, Google yanked more than 50 infected applications from the Android Market. In that case, no complaints from the legitimate developers of those purloined apps surfaced publicly.

According to Google, Walk and Text on the Android Market does not contain the malicious code and features of the Trojanized copycat.

Hackers have turned to the tactic of taking a legitimate app, then recompiling it to include malware or malicious features because of Android's success, said Steckler.

And the practice won't stop anytime soon.

"This isn't a security deficiency of Android, but a philosophical choice by Google," said Steckler. "What makes Android so successful is also what makes it vulnerable here. Unlike the Apple ecosystem, Android is pretty much wide open, and users can get apps from almost anywhere."

Reff:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215437/Rogue_Android_app_sent_personal_info_to_legit_version_s_developer_claims_AVAST

(CNN) -- The giants of the tech world have worked themselves into a tizzy over the term "app store."

Everyone wants to use it. Apple wants to own it.

On Tuesday, tensions escalated when Amazon launched an online "Appstore" for Android applications. Note how the online retail company carefully deleted the space between the words "app" and "store," a sort-of-sly way to differentiate its online marketplace from the Apple App Store, which launched in July 2008. Apple filed a complaint on Friday against Amazon over the matter.

Back at the time of the App Store's launch, Apple also requested a trademark of "app store," but that filing is currently being appealed by Microsoft, which, in lieu of being able to use that snappy and sought-after term, has been left with this clunkier moniker: "Windows Marketplace for Mobile."

Other app-store alternatives don't roll off the tongue any easier. Google has the "Android Market" and, for its browser-turned-operating-system, the "Chrome Web Store." BlackBerry has "App World." And Nokia has the "Ovi Store." Use "Ovi" three times in a sentence this week. Report back on how that goes.

Who wins the "app store" war may be determined by trademark attorneys. But some of the big questions they'll consider are fairly obvious: Is "app store" so common that it no longer refers only to Apple's App Store but also to online stores for applications more generally? How common is the term "app"?

Where did it come from? And will consumers confuse the Amazon Appstore for Android with Apple's App Store, as Apple claims is the case?

It's impossible to know what exactly will happen, but CNN turned to a few linguistic experts for some insight on this feud and on the origins of the word "app."

Here's what we learned:

1. "App" is a really old term

Like 1980s-old. Ben Zimmer, chairman of the new words committee for the American Dialect Society, which chose "app" of its word of the year in 2010, says he found a reference to computer apps that dates to 1985.

" 'Killer apps' back in the old days could refer to a spreadsheet program -- that would be the app that would really drive people to buy some software," he said.

2. The way people use "app" today is pretty new

These days, apps aren't any computer programs; they're lightweight applications that you download from the internet.

"If you ask people what an app is now, they probably would say, 'Oh, it's something you download for your smartphone,' " Zimmer said. Apps also are increasingly coming to other computerized devices, such as tablets and TVs.

"It could be a game, or it could be some clever little piece of programming someone wrote. It's not thought of as a big, cumbersome thing, like people might think of the applications that they run on their PC."

3. Apple did popularize "app" and "app store"

Apple launched its App Store in 2008 and followed up with a prominent marketing campaign claiming "there's an app for that." Both of those events, the linguists said, led to the popular use of the term today.

"They did not create the word 'app.' They did create the phrase 'app store,' as far as I know. And app store, the combination (of words), is what they're trying to protect in the court," said Bill Kretzschmar, a professor of English at the University of Georgia. "They can't own 'app,' because that's a term" that's used commonly, he added.

4. Tech companies are particularly trademark-happy

Perhaps because the tech industry moves so quickly, tech companies have a penchant for trying to own new words and phrases, linguists said.

"There are new technological developments all the time, and we have to call them something," Kretzschmar said. "A word like 'app' is not a new technological development so much as a new way of talking about something that already existed, an application. This change in language is always bubbling all around us."

5. Success leads to trademark fights

Bottom line: So many people use the terms "app" and "app store" because they're catchy and popular.

"Maybe the dispute is an indication of the success," Zimmer said. "There wouldn't be a dispute unless 'app' was a very sexy term in the marketplace."

"My personal impression is: I don't want to be sued by Apple," joked Wayne Glowka, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Reinhardt University in Georgia. "My daughter has an Android, and everything she has, she calls apps."

Asked what she calls the website where she buys those apps, Glowka said he couldn't think of anything, other than this very disputed phrase: "An app store."

Reff:http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/03/22/app.store.fight/index.html