Sounds a lot like the Gizmodo/iPhone 4 prototype debacle, doesn’t it? But it’s not. This time, the consumer electronics company is Nokia (NOK), the journalist is Eldar Murtazin, editor-in-chief of Moscow-based mobile-review.com, and the authorities are the Russian police.

Claiming that it’s been unable to recover the prototype N8 that Murtazin previewed unfavorably earlier this year, Nokia has turned to Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs for help.

“We have asked Mr. Murtazin for the return of all Nokia property in his possession,” Nokia said in a post to the Nokia Conversations blog today. “As he has declined to reply, we asked the Russian authorities to assist us. We leave it to the Russian authorities to determine the most appropriate course of action.”

The company insists its decision to pursue Murtazin isn’t a response to his criticisms of the N8, but rather an effort to protect its trade secrets in an increasingly competitive smartphone business.

Murtazin claims he hasn’t violated Nokia’s trade secrets and says he made repeated attempts contact the company over the past few months with no success. “Nokia says there has been a trade secret infringement,” he wrote in a post to his blog. “But we have never signed any non-disclosure agreements with them and Nokia knows that very well.”

So says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who doesn’t expect the WWDC to have much in the way of big “Oh, One More Thing” moments. According to Munster, Apple will probably announce a fourth-generation iPhone at the conference, and the device will probably look a lot like the prototypes we saw earlier this spring.

“Consistent with recent media reports, we expect the new iPhone to feature a front-facing camera for video conferencing, along with a new, thinner design, an improved rear camera, and better battery life, with higher capacity (32GB/64GB) at the current $199/$299 price points,” Munster writes. “We expect the new version to be popular among current iPhone 3G owners (a 2 year-old device) with a significantly different design and feature set (unlike the 3GS).”

The company is also likely to offer an update on iPad sales. Since that device’s launch in April, Apple (AAPL) has announced iPad sales figures three times. WWDC would be a perfect time to do so again.

And Apple may offer a peek at the next version of Mac OS. “Apple may choose to provide a limited demo of the next version of Mac OS X (10.7) at WWDC,” Munster says.

“Software is a key differentiator for Apple but the Mac OS has not seen the same level of innovation as iPhone software in recent years,” the analyst adds. “With the next version of Mac OS X, we expect Apple to bring some of the same innovation to the Mac platform. Multi-touch technology, for example could be a key feature of Mac OS 10.7.”

But beyond these offerings, don’t expect much. As for rumors that WWDC will see the announcement of a Verizon (VZ) iPhone: Don’t pay them much heed.

Certainly, Munster doesn’t put much faith in them. “We believe it is unlikely that the next generation iPhone will be available at Verizon (or Sprint) at launch,” he says. “Rather, it is more likely that it remains exclusively available at AT&T in the US at launch.”

If it’s true that Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally monitors the list of employees who have permission to take pre-release versions of the company’s products off campus, he might want to raise his standards for inclusion a bit. Because the company seems to have lost yet another next-generation iPhone prototype.

Photos of the intact device and a teardown were posted to the Vietnamese forum, Taoviet, yesterday, and they look genuine, though obviously, there’s no way of knowing for sure.

The prototype is nearly identical to the one lost in a German ale house and subsequently purchased by Gizmodo, though it’s a bit more polished. It features the same iPad-esque glass and aluminum design and a chip with an “APL0398″ designation–the same one found on the iPad’s A4 system-on-chip. It lacks the two screws so prominent on the Gizmodo device, which suggests it may be a near-final production model.

Again, there’s no way to be certain. But I imagine we’ll find out for sure during Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address, the traditional venue for introducing new iPhones.

Below, photos and video of the device.

[Image/video credit: Taoviet.nv]

Here’s a video that is sure to go rocketing around the Web today: A smackdown by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” of Apple for its behavior related to the stolen iPhone 4G prototype.

It’s titled: “Appholes.”

That’s gotta hurt.

There’s not much more to be said than Stewart does in a tough attack on the recent door-bashing police raid of a reporter from Gizmodo, which bought the smartphone from the person who allegedly found it in a German beer garden in Silicon Valley.

Stewart began the opening monologue by saying he was a huge fan of Apple (AAPL) and its products, but soon was lacing into the company and blaming it for the messy legal morass.

There are a ton of great lines, although it’s the easiest jibe at iPhone wireless carrier AT&T (T) that is still the funniest: “If you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone!”

He ended with a plea to CEO Steve Jobs: “C’mon, Steve, just chill out with all the paranoid corporate genius stuff. Don’t go Howard Hughes on us.”

Then, of course, Stewart asked for Jobs to send him the new 4G: “It looks totally sick.”

Enough said, here’s the video:

The Santa Clara County district attorney’s office is investigating gadget site Gizmodo’s purchase of the device, according to a report by News.com. Sources tell News.com that the effort is being headed up by the office’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team.

According to those sources, investigators are looking at “whether sufficient evidence exists to file criminal charges,” though they did not say who is being targeted–the person who found Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone protoype or Gizmodo, which purchased the device for $5,000 and revealed it to the world, perhaps in violation of California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, says it hasn’t yet been contacted by law enforcement.

That’s not really out of character for Jobs, I suppose, but it does speak to just how deeply involved he is in keeping Apple’s (AAPL) new products secret until he decides it’s time to show them to the public.

Gizmodo claims it is and it certainly appears to be a legitimate Apple prototype. “Found” in a bar in Redwood City, Calif., (reportedly running iPhone OS 4), the device boasts a number of new features. Among them: A front-facing camera, improved back-camera with flash, Micro-SIM, a screen with a seemingly higher resolution, and a new glass and aluminum design more akin to the iPad.

Could it be a fake? Perhaps, but as Gizmodo notes, the device’s build, design and internal components reek of Apple (AAPL). Beyond this, it behaves like an iPhone when connected to a computer and its internals feature a number of parts clearly labeled “APPLE.”

“We get false tips all the time,” the site explains. “But after playing with it for about a week–the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone–and disassembling this unit, there is so much evidence stacked in its favor, that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake. In fact, the possibility is almost none. Imagine someone having to use Apple components to design a functioning phone, from scratch, and then disseminating it to people around the world. Pretty much impossible.”

Indeed, my guess is that Apple is getting ready to throw the person responsible for losing this off the roof of 1 Infinite Loop. Or it’s investigating the incident as a potential theft.

Below, Gizmodo’s too-short video overview of the device. You’ll find additional pictures, longer videos and a more detailed tear-down here.

[Image, video credits: Gizmodo]

Here’s the latest stab at it, from Swedish media outfit Bonnier Group, best known in the U.S. as the publisher of specialty magazines like Field & Stream and Popular Science. This one just popped up, unbidden, in my inbox, and I’m happy to share it, because I think looking at this stuff is fun.

Unlike other e-magazine what-ifs publishers have been showing off, Bonnier isn’t even pretending this is fleshed out. So no need to worry about whether it uses Flash; it’s purely a “conceptual video prototype.”

But it’s similar in many ways to stuff we’ve seen from Condé Nast and Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc.: The emphasis is on moving the entire print magazine to the tablet, then adjusting layouts, photos and other elements to take advantage of/adapt to the device’s capablities/limitations.

And like the other two prototypes we’ve seen so far, Bonnier keeps the Web and other outside elements (Twitter, etc.) hidden unless you call them up–in this case, via a groovy radial pop-up.

That said, this one does look pretty slick, though it’s entirely possible that this is due to the video’s production qualities. And that dashing designer, Jack Schulze, looks and sounds like the kind of people who play dashing designers in movies.

There’s no sound on this clip for the first 32 seconds or so, so don’t be alarmed. And if you’re going to watch it, it’s well worth tapping on the video and watching it at full-screen size.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The show part will work better than the tell, and the Time Warner (TWX) unit will be releasing some photos and videos that I can embed later in the day. But for what it’s worth, the demo looks as nifty as, and quite similar to, what Condé showed off. Except that in this case, I actually got to play with it for a couple minutes, and it was quite a bit of fun.

UPDATE Here it is:

Both publishers are thinking along the same lines. They imagine that their digital magazines will replicate the print version, including advertising, and will include add-ons like multimedia and links to the Web.

But they’re supposed to be distinct–and more valuable–than simple Web versions of magazines, and both publishers expect consumers to pay for them.

“Nobody reads the magazine on the Website,” says Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell. “That’s a firehose. This is the opposite of a firehose.”

One distinction between the publishers is that Condé has aligned itself with Adobe (ADBE), which is working on software to create e-editions and reader software to consume them. Time Inc.’s take is more conceptual: It worked with design shop The Wonder Factory to build a prototype, but isn’t committed to any particular platform.

This may mean Time Inc. will need more time to get the magazine ready for consumption next year or it may mean the publisher has more flexibility than Condé and Adobe. Given that magazine-friendly e-readers don’t exist yet, this is all sort of vaporware for now.

On a related note, the “Hulu for Magazines” joint venture I’ve been telling you about for a couple of months may finally be ready to step out in public next week. Though as I’ve noted, I’ve been hearing that for many weeks.

Still, the broad strokes seem set: Time Inc., Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst–and perhaps News Corp. (NWS)–are creating a separate company designed to let them sell and distribute their digital editions, regardless of platform.

As many readers noted, one big problem–potentially–with the plan is that Adobe (ADBE) and Apple (AAPL) generally don’t play well together. And in the case of Apple’s iPhone, they don’t play at all: Adobe’s flash platform doesn’t work in the iPhone, which is why many video sites, which depend on flash, don’t work well on the gadget.

So what if this happens again with Apple’s tablet, if and when the thing finally arrives?

I noted this yesterday, but didn’t get to talk to Adobe and Condé about it until later. Now I have their responses. The short version: They sure hope it works out.

The longer version is that both Condé and Adobe plan on running on all sorts of devices. And there’s not a lot they can do to satisfy Apple’s (AAPL) tablet requirements in advance, since Apple won’t discuss the tablet or even acknowledge that the tablet is in the works.

Here’s Adobe’s official line, provided by Senior Experience Design Manager Jeremy Clark:

Adobe has taken initial steps to prepare Adobe AIR to support mobile with performance improvements (reductions in memory usage, runtime size, JavaScript CPU consumption, and reduced CPU usage for background applications), and support multi-touch input used by mobile phones and presumably a new generation of slate devices. In fact we just announced a beta for AIR 2.0 that incorporates many of these features.

Our job at Adobe is to help create a great digital publishing platform. If publishers like Conde Nast and NY Times are delivering brand-name content via Adobe AIR, we believe that the devices that will win in the marketplace, will be the ones that support this open format. It should also be noted that Adobe recently announced plans to enable Flash applications to be brought to iPhone and indeed several are available on the iTunes store.

So we’ll continue to look for ways to enable publishers to deliver their content to the widest possible range of platforms, even on platforms that don’t yet support our runtimes.

It’s a reasonable enough response, given the alternative, which is to wait around for Apple to bring forth the wondergadget–or not. And in the meantime, the companies would miss an opportunity to help set standards for other guys’ gadgets.

On the other hand, there’s the less politic response, which you’re not going to hear from either company on the record: “Boy oh boy, are we screwed if our stuff doesn’t work with the market leader.”

But here’s one version of that take, from Time Inc.’s Josh Quittner, who is working on producing tablet-ready magazines for the Time Warner (TWX) publishing unit:

I am a hyperbolic guy, not to mention a purple writer, but I think it’s conservative to say that in the miserable publishing business, there is no greater hope for salvation that the iThing. With visions of giant iPhones dancing in our heads, all of us are working on prototypes of magazines and newspapers that will work on 9.7-inch, multi-touch screens linked wirelessly to stores. And, while there are at least a dozen manufacturers heatedly working on their own iterations, we all await the iThing because history has shown us that Steve Jobs leads the parade. Chaos will ensue, with many idiotic and competing platforms drawing precious resources from content makers who have to try just about everything until a frontrunner emerges.

Oh. One more quick item: As Quittner says, there are lots of publishers working on this stuff, and I look forward to seeing all of their efforts. And in case anyone gets the idea that I’m only paying attention to the biggest dogs, here’s what FastCompany.com’s Noah Robischon has to say about his company’s digital plans:

We’re working on delivering the magazine in several different digital formats right now, including to e-readers. Assuming the iTablet is a real product, and it uses any of these formats–and I’ve got no inside knowledge, it’s all based on rumor and guesswork–then we’ll be on the device too.

We’ve been approached by a few different companies working on e-reader formats for magazine publishers, as well as a couple that want to create digital versions of the magazine pages for online display. So we’re evaluating our options now. This space has become very active in the last 6 months, and it’s great to have so many options.

So there you go. Next?

[Image credit: clarity]

The prototype, developed by digital content security company Nagravision SA, based in Cheseaux, Switzerland, and 3D company 3ality Digital LLC, Burbank, Calif., will be shown at the 3D Entertainment Summit this week in Los Angeles. It’s called the Nagra Media Guide for 3D.

Although no cable company has yet committed to the set-top technology, the prototype offers a window into the evolution of 3D home technology, which is getting much closer to what is available in movie theaters. Consumers will be able to access 3D programming using today’s set-top boxes, but the Nagra Media version will show the information using 3D graphics.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

According to publications that include Shanghai Daily, Sun Danyong, a recent engineering graduate, jumped out of the window of his apartment last Thursday. The reports said Sun, who had been tasked with sending iPhone prototypes to Apple, had been under suspicion for stealing after one of the handsets went missing. Some publications reported that, in the days prior to his suicide, Sun had been detained and beaten by a senior official in the security department of the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing giant.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A couple thoughts: Odd, isn’t it, that we’ve seen two stories on an Apple/Verizon deal in as many days in two major news publications? They are presumably well-sourced and bullet-proof. Could be that “people familiar with the matter” are Apple execs simply using the media to put the screws to AT&T (T) in advance of the two companies’ iPhone contract renewal negotiations.

Or is it something else?

Perhaps these pieces are the first signs of the Apple’s cunning PR machine ramping up for some big announcements this summer. An Apple tablet/e-book reader is likely different enough from an iPhone that it wouldn’t interfere with AT&T’s exclusive deal on the device. And what of that “iPhone light” mentioned in the BusinessWeek story? Could it perhaps be an iPhone LTE? Or rather iPhone LiTE? A new device designed for the LTE (long term evolution) standard Verizon will begin supporting widely right around the time AT&T’s exclusive iPhone deal expires?