In a letter to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Apple said the telecommunications industry lacks consistent licensing schemes for the many patents necessary to make mobile devices, and offered suggestions for setting appropriate royalty rates that all members would follow.

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The case hinges on standards-essential patents, patents which cover an area that is crucial to compliance with an industry standard, such as 3G or Wi-Fi.

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In case you missed it, last week a battle started brewing between Eye-Fi, maker of wireless memory cards, and the SD Association, which represents more than a thousand companies that set industry standards and promote SD (Secure Digital) standards acceptance.

The argument stemmed from this: At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, the SD Association announced plans for a new Wireless LAN SD standard, formally named the iSDIO specification, for full-sized and micro SD/SDHC/SDXC cards. The SD Association said this will enable consumers to send pictures, videos and other content more easily from existing digital cameras to online cloud services and other SD devices in home networks.

Eye-Fi, which has been baking wireless technology into SD memory cards for several years — many consumers are familiar with the Eye-Fi cards, which bring Wi-Fi capabilities to cameras — says that this new set of standards violates the company’s intellectual property.

While both parties have declined to provide details as to which technical specifications are in question, Eye-Fi CEO Yuval Koren has put up a blog post staking Eye-Fi’s claim in the matter.

Eye-Fi is also miffed that the SD Association went ahead and put out a public statement on the new set of specifications. Eye-Fi says the statement suggests the new standards have already been adopted, when, in fact, they were submitted for approval on Nov. 28, 2011, and the 60-day IP review process is still underway. Eye-Fi told AllThingsD that normally there’s no public disclosure during this stage, because it’s not yet a ratified standard.

The SD Association, meanwhile, told AllThingsD that it routinely announces new standards during IP review, and didn’t change its practices for this announcement.

The SD Association IP review period is set to close in two days.

So, with that out of the way: How might all of this impact consumers?

To start: It’s generally agreed upon that more options for consumers are a good thing. The SD Association is presenting more options, and it says it’s doing so to respond to market demand, as wireless accessibility becomes more important.

But Eye-Fi argues that, in this case, more options will create more fragmentation.

While the actual documents that detail the new iSDIO standard haven’t been made public yet, the SD Association has confirmed that the proposed specifications would set standards for cards that fall under two types of devices: Type W and Type D. “W” stands for Web, and that kind of SD card would support peer-to-peer wireless functions. The home network interface would be designated by a “D” symbol, and would support home network communication functions. A wireless LAN SD memory card could provide both of the wireless types, and would carry both symbols.

Eye-Fi’s Koren told us that in Eye-Fi’s view, the SD Association has the potential to confuse and set back the camera industry just as the industry moves forward with sharing. “In the name of standardization, what seems to be happening is more in the way of fragmentation more than anything else,” Koren said. He also questioned whether compatibility issues could arise as a result of the two different device types.

Kevin Schader, the SD Association’s director of communications, issued a statement, saying, “Products made using SD standards will work together, as they have for the past 12 years.”

It’s important to keep in mind that this flap is coming at a time when consumer adoption of smartphones is surging, and many consumers are using their smartphones for photo-taking — and for immediate sharing. Meanwhile, more consumer electronics makers are introducing cameras that have a variety of Wi-Fi capabilities, cloud services and apps for sharing built directly into the cameras — eliminating the need for additional, external Wi-Fi cards.

Eye-Fi already works with 10 top camera manufacturers and dozens of photo sites; it also licenses its technology to SanDisk, the world’s largest provider of flash memory. Koren points to Kodak’s new wireless camera, announced at CES, as an example of a camera maker that’s introducing more wireless sharing capabilities while still relying on Eye-Fi cards.

In some ways, Koren said, Eye-Fi’s platform has been similar to smartphones in that it is driven by operating systems, and that makes Eye-Fi technology more adaptable to changes than Wi-Fi technology that is built into cameras. As Wi-Fi standards advance and change, Koren argued, it’s easier for consumers to put in a new card — the way they might update a phone’s operating system — than it is to invest in entirely new hardware, or in this case, a new camera.

So what’s the next step? The SD Association’s IP review process is set to wrap up on Jan. 27 — this Friday. Either the SD Association will vote to adopt the new iSDIO standards, or it will narrow the scope of the specifications or rewrite them in some way.

Eye-Fi, which is a member of the SD Association, says it hopes the association comes to the right decision. Which, in Eye-Fi’s eyes, would mean no new set of iSDIO standards — and less of a chance for competition that could possibly encroach on Eye-Fi’s intellectual property.

“I think for the SD Association to proceed with this, whether implicitly or explicitly, their members or anyone adopting the specifications would be made aware of the fact that there are some essential IP claims wrapped up in that standard,” Koren said. “And they’d be operating at their own risk.”

(Photo courtesy of bfishadow/Flickr)

Of course I have something to say about the news yesterday that AOL would be a key investor in a new early-stage venture fund being started by TechCrunch’s perpetually petulant editor Michael Arrington — with a big, fat and decidedly greasy assist from a panoply of Silicon Valley’s most powerful VC firms and angel investors.

Arrington has previously called me “chief whiner” — oooh, buuuurn, although fair enough, since I have compared him to an egomaniac turtle named Yertle in the past — about my nagging him over the importance of upholding standards of fairness and ethics in journalism.

So as not to let him down, let me begin the whining.

First, my initial reaction when I first heard about the deal: Ugh. Sigh. Hopelessly corrupt. Now 100 percent more icky! A giant, greedy, Silicon Valley pig pile.

I was upset.

By early evening, after my kids told me to chillax, my dark mood had changed to accept that the transaction — however profoundly distasteful to me — was part and parcel of the insidious log-rolling, back-scratching ecosystem that has happened in every other center of power in the universe since the beginning of time.

And so it goes in Silicon Valley.

In fact, the creation of a $20 million investment kitty that Arrington has dubbed CrunchFund is simply the formalization of a long-standing arrangement that has already been going on since he founded his popular tech blog.

That is to say, in which the basic standards of journalism are first warped by calling it newfangled truth-telling and then endlessly corroded by using a wily and unusually aggressive combination of favors and threats to extract, from start-ups and VCs in need of press, both exclusive access and information.

And now, inevitably, money.

This could have been a lot cleaner, of course, by Arrington simply resigning from TechCrunch, becoming a VC and perhaps starting a new blog where his agenda is much clearer, from which he could huff and puff away as he does with much entertaining gusto at real and (mostly) imagined slights.

There is certainly precedent for VCs blogging, including Fred Wilson, Brad Feld and Ben Horowitz. And, despite my criticisms about ethics, it is clear that Arrington is a talented writer whose unique voice would be even stronger if it was truly seen as separate from what has become a news organization.

But because of his obvious need to be the center of attention — requiring the ermine kingmaker mantle and foisting his patented I’m-here-to-tell-it-like-it-is attitude on us all — that appears to be impossible.

(By the way, I await Arrington’s usual inane rant about the fictional conflicts of interest related to my gay Google marriage anytime now in 3 … 2 … 1, always and purposefully leaving out the pertinent facts that I can only wed one person, get no financial benefit and am also a prominent critic of the scary search behemoth, while he can make a badillion questionable and grossly tangled investments.)

Personal annoyances aside, what’s most interesting here is the group of Silicon Valley power players who lined up to bow and scrape and then hand over a small pile of dough to the blogger who would be king.

They include: Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock Partners, Austin Ventures and Accel Partners, as well as individual investments from partners at Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, entrepreneur Kevin Rose and DST Global’s Yuri Milner. And, of course, the inevitable Arrington BFF Ron Conway.

Holy googa mooga, that would be, well, everyone, except Ashton Kutcher and Justin Timberlake (who will surely appear soon enough).

As one person also pointed out to me, I don’t recall this many competing VCs investing in one company, let alone another venture fund.

It goes without saying that the reasons they all decided to jump in this fetid pool with abandon are quite varied, if all entirely compromised.

One investor told me — off the record, naturally — that he thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what happened and so he wanted in, especially since everyone else was doing it.

Another well-known VC said that there is no downside to being financially affiliated, especially in attracting talent to its start-ups, with Arrington and, by extension, TechCrunch.

The well-respected Reid Hoffman of Greylock was the only one brave enough to talk on the record, explaining the reasoning pretty clearly:

“Techcrunch will get some real deal flow from entrepreneurs that we would otherwise not see, because they have established a prominent position as the SV/Tech industry information feed. As many tech entrepreneurs read it — both within Silicon Valley and globally — and view the information news feed to be their target for announcing themselves to the world, Crunchfund will have access to deal flow to these diverse and early stage companies. Some of these companies will be the kind of early stage companies with billion-dollar potential that Greylock invests in.”

There you have it: No one can afford to be out of the deal flow in these times, even if it means cutting corners.

While TechCrunch’s owner, AOL, said Arrington will no longer be managing editor, with only writing duties at the site he dominates and with no editorial control, Hoffman’s use of TechCrunch for CrunchFund was accurate, because in the eyes of many they are interchangeable.

That’s due to the fact that Arrington still breaks or is clearly the source for important stories on the site and, more importantly, is the big swinging dude who attracts all the eager entrepreneurs to the party. He is the fulcrum of that site, even as it has grown.

And so it will remain, I am guessing, no matter how much AOL insists it will not be so, because the easy questions pile up quickly:

Will Arrington keep doing what are clearly news stories, for example, even though he protesteth too much — as he did in the New York Times yesterday — that he is not a journalist?

And, if so, is it right for him to do so given his insider status, creating a nonparity of sourcing and crystal clear conflicts of interest?

Most of all, can he resist his palpable love of news-breaking and scoops, even if he gets them in ever more unseemly ways?

As if to make it all pretty, Arrington told reporters yesterday that he has put a clause in his limited partnership agreement so he can report on anything he likes, and in any way, about his investors and their companies, however confidential, except those he invests in.

O joyous day! Freedom of the press is preserved and our sacred First Amendment can breathe a sigh of relief, now that it is enshrined in an unholy blogger-VC LP agreement.

After pausing for a moment so that Thomas Jefferson and Edward R. Murrow can stop spinning in their graves, you can go down this road for many increasingly bumpy miles, which only becomes more twisted and confusing as it continues.

I finally talked to one investor in CrunchFund, who said simply and honestly: “It’s not that much money, so who cares?”

Indeed, who does care anymore about crossing what had long been very bright lines in journalism and, if you want to get all cosmic, in life?

Obviously, most of all, not AOL, or its CEO Tim Armstrong, or its head of content, Arianna Huffington. The pair, for whatever reason, decided to make a startling exception for Arrington from a rule that explicitly bars reporters at its media units from investing in the companies they cover.

That happened after he recently did a complete 180 from a previous decision to stop investing and jumped right back in, leaving Armstrong and Huffington to clean up the ethical mess.

They only made it worse, with their decision to throw journalism under the bus by letting Arrington do as he pleased, while touting how important it was for other content sites at AOL to remain more pure.

In the spirit of full disclosure, these kinds of ethical lapses are endemic these days in journalism. Case in point: The appalling phone-hacking controversy taking place at News Corp.’s News International unit in Britain.

While I cannot speak for Dow Jones, I can say that the behavior in another News Corp. property certainly takes its toll on those who adhere to higher standards at the company, especially when it comes to morale.

Thus, I can imagine how others feel at AOL — including those you-know-who-you-are silent ones at TechCrunch — who can’t and, more to the point, wouldn’t make the deals Arrington has been allowed to get away with.

It is not a good feeling, I can assure you.

And, while I have not spoken to her about it, I’d imagine that Huffington cannot be thrilled to be pushing for better journalism at AOL and trying to burnish her cred by hiring some top reporters, while also having to deal with this.

That’s okay, because Armstrong was perfectly willing to do the awkward pretzel-twist needed to explain away the controversial situation, also in an interview with the Times:

“TechCrunch is a different property and they have different standards. We have a traditional understanding of journalism with the exception of TechCrunch, which is different but is transparent about it.”

In this case, Tim, I am sorry to inform you that transparency is a complete canard and is more likely to end up covering up a lot more transgressions than it ever will reveal.

And, essentially and lazily sloughing it off by saying, “That’s just Mike being Mike,” is not going to cut it, at least not with me.

Not that any amount of tsk-tsking about it matters, I suppose, as Arrington finally gets his fervent Pinocchio-on-a-star wish to be a real-boy VC, can add yet another tainted buck to the pile of billions his venture pals already have, and just call it another typical day in Silicon Valley.

Still, when you are the designated whiner-in-chief, it is pretty much all one can do.

This morning, News Corp. CEO and majordomo Rupert Murdoch, his son James (who is also a top company exec) — as well as former employee and full-time lightning rod Rebekah Brooks — march on down to the British Parliament to answer questions from a committee there about the ever-growing PhoneGate scandal.

For those living under a rock, News Corp. is embroiled in ever more serious controversy about who knew what and when (also where, why and how much) in the hacking of phones of a myriad of well-known people in the U.K. by its News of the World tabloid newspaper.

Besides celebrities and politicians, that has included the voicemails of a murdered girl, an appalling act that has galvanized public opinion and the weak spines of legislators into action in this inquiry.

It’s sordid, it’s ugly and it makes for what could be an explosive event, starring the man who brought you “Titanic,” Glenn Beck, “Glee” and, most recently, the sale of Myspace.

There’s no question, getting the 80-year-old Murdoch on the ropes will be the aim of the committee members holding the hearing, and how one of the world’s most famous and legendary media moguls performs — or does not — will be a big deal to both interested observers and News Corp. shareholders.

By way of full disclosure, that’s not me, but this site is owned by Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp. In other words, somewhere up the corporate food chain, Murdoch is my boss.

In any case, that has never stopped me or AllThingsD.com from telling it like it is, so here is the liveblog of what is sure to be a doozy of a media event:

6:36 am PT:: It all starts for the Murdochs, as soon as the former Scotland Yard head John Yates has completed questioning about the police’s obvious bungling of the various investigations over the years.

Rupert Murdoch and his son, James Murdoch, are on, looking grave and dressed in grey.

Sitting behind them are Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, and his top adviser at News Corp., Joel Klein, who is heading up the phone hacking scandal internally at the company.

The hearing — in a room that looks like a high school debate could take place there — starts off politely enough.

But the first question is directed toward James Murdoch about his clearly incomplete investigation when phone hacking allegations were first made many years ago. He begins with an apology.

“These actions do not live up to the standards of News Corp.,” says the younger Murdoch.

He is interrupted by his father, Rupert Murdoch, who notes rather dramatically: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

The questioner quickly asks the obvious query, after James Murdoch claims News Corp. was not in full possession of the facts when execs had told a previous committee there was no reason to believe there was more widespread hacking.

Were News Corp. execs lying?

James Murdoch continues to insist that the bulk of evidence came out — “real evidence” — in later civil trials. And also, that News Corp. is now investigating the situation fully.

He throws around words like “proactive action” and “transparency,” which is probably cold comfort now to those hacked when things were less clear to News Corp.’s senior management.

Now up, Rupert Murdoch, who is asked quickly about statements he made about not tolerating wrongdoing and who had lied to him at News Corp. about the phone hacking.

Apparently, he “didn’t know” a lot about the hacking that took place, while also defending the non-hacking employees of his company.

But the questioner is still on him about exactly what he did know about the situation, which seems to be — at least according to his testimony — a lot of I-don’t-knows.

6:53 am: It continues about what Rupert Murdoch knew and when he knew it and what he did. Or not.

As Rupert Murdoch keeps up with this tone of not being clued in to what have turned out to be critical events, James Murdoch wants to keep jumping in with the details, which he is eager to impart.

“At what point did you find out criminality was endemic at News of the World?” asks the questioner.

Rupert Murdoch does not like the word endemic, but stresses that he was “shocked, appalled and ashamed” by the case of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler.

The questioner seems frustrated by Rupert Murdoch’s answers, which are, for the typically razor-sharp media mogul, unusually slow.

Like a persistent terrier who wants to perform, James Murdoch is back again offering to serve up the deets.

7:04 am: Now, it is onto the closing down of News of the World: Was the tabloid shut down because of the criminality?

“We had broken our trust with our readers,” says Rupert Murdoch. “We felt ashamed for what had happened.”

A new questioner is on, with a bizarre query about why Rupert Murdoch came in the back door of the Prime Minister’s house at 10 Downing Street on a recent visit there.

It’s a cloddish effort to show him as a powerful puppetmaster to pols, but only serves as a punch line.

Back on track, with questions about whether there was hacking in the U.S., which Rupert Murdoch said he could not believe had happened.

More questions about how badly the company acted, which came down to the questions about whether he was “ultimately” responsible for the hacking.

“Nope,” says Rupert Murdoch, who keeps insisting he relied on others, some of whom apparently “misled” him.

It’s an astonishing admission and, really, excuse, given he has been chairman, CEO and a very strong leader of News Corp. for more than a half-century.

7:16 am: A new questioner, who asks who decided to close down News of the World. It was Murdoch himself, his son and other execs.

Next up, why did News Corp. pay off a victim of hacking, which James Murdoch did without informing his father or the News Corp. board.

James Murdoch essentially points out that it is typical to do this in companies of the global scale of News Corp.

These are apparently very busy, busy, busy people, who do not seem to have time to notice how such juicy and best-selling scoops might have been magically produced by News of the World.

Onto ethical conduct guidelines, which News Corp. has in a pamphlet form, says James Murdoch, but pages which some at the company have obviously never cracked.

Rupert Murdoch is asked again about his culpability in the case, which he continues to maintain he does not shoulder the blame.

James Murdoch does note that the company “will think more forcefully … about our journalism and ethics.”

Given the situation, in which every day brings a new revelation of bad acts by News Corp. employees, this promise of better behavior seems to be a case of much too little and very, very late.

Rupert Murdoch still uses the opportunity to stress the need for a free press, despite its excesses.

7:31 am: More about the payments to settle with phone hacking victims and how soon the company realized the problems were more widespread.

James Murdoch talks about how he might have acted differently had he known more then as he does now.

“If we knew now what we knew then,” says James Murdoch, “we would have taken more action and moved more aggressively.”

But what else is he going to say? It’s a could-have, would-have, should-have line of questioning that is eliciting very little in the way of true information.

Finally, a good point about “willful blindness,” which is a term from the Enron scandal about avoiding knowing about problems you really should have known about.

“Is that a question?,” asks James Murdoch. It is a statement, actually, and a decent enough one.

“We didn’t do that,” says Rupert Murdoch firmly this time.

Still, soon enough, Rupert Murdoch is insisting he was not as involved as people have imagined him to be with the management of his newspapers.

A new questioner is pressing this important point, but Rupert Murdoch is not biting on a query about his legendarily hands-on managing style.

“I’d say, ‘What’s doing?’” he explains about his conversations with editors, but adding he might not have been told about payoffs to phone hacking victims.

The questions are in the deep weeds here, but it’s still interesting that Rupert Murdoch continues to maintain that his life was too busy to wallow in the details, however controversial and important those details might be.

7:55 am: More and more don’t-knows pile up and up in a giant mountain of acts perpetrated by someone somewhere, but not the Murdochs.

“I can tell you I was surprised as you were,” says James Murdoch about certain payments to various hackers and those who were hacked.

Was it Les Hinton, who then ran News International and later Dow Jones, from which he recently resigned?

Could be! Maybe! Mistake were made! Who knows!

Well, someone does!

It moves onto Brooks, the tarnished News International exec and editor whom Rupert Murdoch does note he still trusts. Finally, some certainty!

Brooks is definitely one of the more compelling characters in this drama, although the media focus on her striking red hair color seems odd and vaguely sexist, as if she is some flame-haired she-devil from media hell. She might certainly be guilty in this mess, but her fabulous hair has nothing to do with it.

(Rupert’s mane is grey, by the way, and James’ is brown, if you really need to know.)

Fascinatingly, Murdoch’s backing of Brooks has been strong and consistent, despite intense criticism of her by many in this scandal.

The payment of legal fees of perpetrators and payments to the victims in the hacking seems to obsess one questioner, who wants News Corp. to stop doing it.

Murdoch says he’d like to if contracts did not preclude that, which essentially means News Corp. will keep up forking over the legal fees and payments.

8:12 am: The attention turns to how James Murdoch found out about the various emails that showed there was more evidence of hacking than was first thought about and what he felt about it.

He says very little, noting that the matter is under police investigation. It’s not don’t-know now, but can’t-say.

The hearing is beginning to feel a little rope-a-dope, with the Murdochs apologizing and taking blows, saying very little — either claiming lack of knowledge or lack of ability to comment about the ongoing police inquiry — and tiring out the questioners.

It is a classic tactic of the boxing champion Muhammad Ali and it works in the ring.

Whether that will be the case with PhoneGate remains to be seen, but it certainly has made what could have been a more explosive hearing much less so.

Instead, it seems to have turned into a what didn’t the Murdochs know and when didn’t they know it hearing.

On questioner gets this irony. “That’s frankly unsatisfactory,” he says about the Murdochs continuing shock and surprise at the thorny situation they find themselves in.

Maybe it seems a little hard to believe, but the persistent story from James Murdoch is that they were told by their lawyers, the police and others that nothing was awry once the initial phone hacking investigation was complete and only found out about the larger problem in later civil lawsuits.

But, asks the questioner to Rupert Murdoch, should his editors and managers at News of the World have known about it?

Of course, they should have.

But, once again, the legendary media baron, who made his fortune and fame in disseminating news and information across the world in newspapers, on television, on satellite and on the Web — at least for now — can’t say.

So, was he “kept in the dark” about the situation? Rupert Murdoch acknowledges he might have asked more questions, although he noted his British newspapers were only a small part of his massive empire.

But, he adds, “Anything that is seen as a crisis comes to me.”

Well, not the phone hacking crisis, it seems.

But, they’re sorry. So sorry. And, of course, humbled.

8:54 am: Suddenly, there is a disturbance, in which someone seems to have possibly attempted to accost the Murdochs.

But it is not clear what has happened, as the hearings are suspended for 10 minutes.

James Murdoch leaps up quickly to protect his father, which he has been doing in this hearing verbally already, where the strategy seems to be to let him largely do all the talking.

Even faster on her feet and with arms raised toward a man in a plaid shirt and carrying a pie plate with shaving cream is Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi.

The man seems to have managed to get some of the foam on Rupert Murdoch, but Wendi Deng appears to have partially thwarted her husband from receiving a full pie in the face.

It’s the first striking visual of this hearing, protecting the patriarch and the king of the empire from harm, no matter what.

Here is a video of the incident:

According to Britain’s Channel 4: “As the man was being led away in handcuffs escorted by a single police officer, he refused to give his name, saying: ‘As Mr Murdoch himself said, I’m afraid I cannot comment on an ongoing police investigation.’”

9:09 am: The room is cleared, so it is only the Murdoch crew behind James and Rupert Murdoch, and now the committee is even more solicitous.

Rupert Murdoch is without his jacket and his wife is being commended for her most excellent left hook.

Still, it’s back to business and the questioner does zero in on a major disconnect over how two media execs as famously aggressive and involved as the Murdochs were so passive in this hacking situation.

It “was a terrible shock,” says James Murdoch.

The same is said about what would be even more disturbing and recent allegations of the hacking of the victims of the 9/11 bombings.

Both father and son say there is no evidence of this so far, but they were surely looking into it.

While it certainly did not come through in what have largely been feckless questions from the committee, the final questioner does correctly ask the pair if they might want to pay more attention.

The last question is for Rupert Murdoch and finally gets to the real query everyone wants to ask.

Noting Murdoch is “captain of the ship,” she asks if he has considered resigning.

“No,” answers Murdoch firmly.

“Why not?” she presses.

“People let me down and it’s for them to pay,” says Rupert Murdoch. “But I think, frankly, I am the best person do clean this up.”

He finishes up with a statement about being sorry, how he was also betrayed and how phone hacking and bribery is wrong.

“Saying sorry is not enough, things must be put right,” he says.

Finally, something we do know.

Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

Nokia, for its part, doesn’t seem much worried by the action. “[We're] confident that all of the 37 patents [we have] asserted against Apple [are valid],” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are examining the filing and will take whatever actions are needed to protect our rights.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Nokia Sues Apple
• Did Nokia Sue Apple Before Apple Could Sue Nokia?
• Nokia’s New Focus Is Mobile Services? Sure It’s Not Lawsuits Against Apple?
• Apple Countersues Nokia for Copying iPhone (Plus Disputed Patents and Full Text of Counterclaim)
• ITC Investigating Nokia Over Apple Patent Complaints and Vice Versa
• Nokia Accuses Apple of “Legal Alchemy.” Stops Short of “Chymistry” and “Heresy.”
• Apple Vs. Nokia: The Battle of Britain

Today, in a sharply worded post titled “In Defense of Standards, Ethics, and Honest Financial Reporting at Hewlett-Packard,” prominent venture capitalist Ben Horowitz took to his blog to shoot back at the plethora of critics of the Hewlett-Packard board for their conduct related to the controversial jettisoning of CEO Mark Hurd.

That came after Hurd admitted to filing inaccurate expense reports related to an outside contractor who worked closely with him, and who later alleged sexual harassment on his part. Those charges were dropped after Hurd settled with the woman, named Jodie Fisher, but before HP could complete an investigation.

Since then, the board has been under fire from Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison, who hired Hurd as the database giant’s president, and former GE head Jack Welch, who laid into the HP board this week.

Now Horowitz has fired back and here’s a taste of his ire, which is aimed at execs, the media and more:

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

And:

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

And:

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

So, what do you really think, Ben?

Horowitz does have an interest in the situation, which he discloses clearly at the top of his piece: His longtime business and now venture partner is HP (HPQ) board member Marc Andreessen.

And the Silicon Valley soap opera continues….

“I’m not afraid
To take a stand”
—Eminem

Disclaimer: my business partner, Marc Andreessen, is on the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). I note that I have no inside information, and this blog post is based purely on published material. In 2007, I sold Opsware, the company that I founded and ran to Hewlett-Packard for $1.6B. I worked at Hewlett-Packard from 2007 to 2008 as an executive in the software business.

Recently, my old company Hewlett-Packard has been in the news–and not in a good way. I’ve been watching the coverage from the sidelines up to this point, but felt increasingly compelled to join the conversation and share my point of view. So here goes.

After firing their CEO, Mark Hurd, the HP board has been accused of everything from incompetence to being prudes. The criticism comes from credible, important journalists and bloggers such as Joe Nocera from the New York Times (NYT), prominent economics blogger Felix Salmon, and former GE (GE) CEO Jack Welch. In addition, HP competitor Larry Ellison lambasted the board and even went so far as to hire Mark Hurd to be President of Oracle (ORCL).

So why in the world did the HP board fire such a high performing CEO? Don’t they care about profits and shareholder value? Aren’t those the most important things? Who cares about his personal shenanigans? Did Mark and his marketing contractor even have sex?

While I am pretty sure that there is much more going on behind the scenes than has been broadly reported, as there often is, let’s look at what has been reported:

* Mark Hurd falsified expense reports.

* The false expense reports are related to a contractor named Jodie Fisher, a former softcore porn movie actress and Playboy model with no relevant marketing experience, who HP was paying up to $5,000 per marketing event.

* At the time of his departure from HP, Hurd issued a public statement saying that he’d violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct:

“As the investigation progressed, I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career. After a number of discussions with members of the board, I will move aside and the board will search for new leadership. This is a painful decision for me to make after five years at HP, but I believe it would be difficult for me to continue as an effective leader at HP and I believe this is the only decision the board and I could make at this time. I want to stress that this in no way reflects on the operating performance or financial integrity of HP.”

Let’s start with the issue of falsifying expense reports. This factor has been largely dismissed in the press with characterizations like this from Joe Nocera of the New York Times:

“When pressed, H.P. said that Mr. Hurd had fudged some expense reports.”

Nocera goes on to argue that there must have been an alternate motivation to dismiss Hurd, because clearly no CEO would be fired simply for “fudging” an expense report.

When I first read of the expense report issue, my reaction was the opposite of Nocera’s. If the Chief Executive Officer of a public company falsifies any official financial statement, he must be fired. In my mind, this is non-negotiable. We are not talking about a low-level employee tossing an extra receipt into his expense report. We are talking about a public company CEO who is paid tens of millions of dollars a year and is responsible for the integrity of the company’s financial statements fraudulently reporting his own expenses. Why is this a problem?

Every person who invests in Hewlett-Packard does so on the basis of HP’s financial statements. Every pension fund, every retiree, every charitable organization, every employee who joins and is compensated via stock options. When they do so, they trust that the statements are true and that the numbers are accurate. The person they trust to ensure accuracy is the CEO.

If the Chief Executive is willing to compromise the integrity of the company’s financials for any reason, then it is impossible to trust any statement. Every day, there are many potential reasons to falsify financial statements. Here are four examples:

* If you miss the quarter, shareholders will lose money.

* If revenues aren’t high enough, you’ll be forced to lay-off hard working, valued employees.

* If you grow slower than a competitor, you may jeopardize your job.

* A shareholder that you’ve been having an illicit affair with doesn’t want the stock price to go down and threatens to tell your wife.

If a CEO is prone to compromise for any reason, he will have every reason. This time it was his expense report. Next time will it be a marginal accrued liability? A deal that came in at 12:01 am on the last day of the quarter? This is a slippery slope that a public board simply cannot tolerate.

What reason was so powerful that it caused Mark Hurd to break his ethical standard, falsify an official financial statement, mislead the board, and ultimately be fired? It seems that this was done to cover up a “close personal relationship” with a woman named Jodie Fisher, who later accused him of sexual harassment, then subsequently withdrew her claim after Hurd personally paid Fisher a large sum of money.

Who is Jodie Fisher? According to press reports, Fisher is a former Playboy model, reality show contestant, and softcore porn movie actress with no work history relevant to her job with HP. She was hired by Hewlett-Packard and paid up to $5,000 per meeting to meet with Fortune 50 CEOs.

The mainstream press has reported these facts as mundane, ordinary, and hardly worth concern. I disagree. HP employs over 300,000 people. Every single one of HP’s employees is keenly interested in the qualities, skill sets, and behaviors that HP values most. Financial compensation and access to the CEO are the most important ways that HP communicates what it values to its employees. Jodie Fisher had more access to the CEO and was paid more than 99.9% of HP’s workforce, despite having no traditional qualifications.

It’s important to note that this was not Hurd paying for his personal extracurricular activity out of his own pocket. This was the Hewlett-Packard Corporation paying a softcore porn movie star with no relevant work experience more than it pays Harvard graduates with 20 years of industry experience. This was the company spitting in the face of the people who worked hard and sacrificed every day to help the company win in the market. It was completely and categorically unacceptable.

Finally, Hurd admitted in a press release to violating the company’s standards of ethics and integrity. So what? Why do companies have standards and ethics anyway? Shouldn’t they just be concerned with profits? Do we want choir boys or shareholder value?

There are many who take the view that business is singular in purpose–to increase shareholder value. They further take the position that constraining that purpose in any way is inefficient and counterproductive. The mainstream press seems to have broadly adopted this position in its attacks on HP. The Wall Street Journal Op Ed page even complained that businesses were being held to an unfair standard when compared to politicians.

I do not subscribe to this view. Running our companies with no moral or ethical standards is bad for society, bad for the country, and ultimately leads to criminal behavior.

Companies should not merely be thought of as money generating machines. Business can represent human society at its best. A business is a group of people working together to deliver value to the world and improve people’s lives. When done ethically, business quite literally changes the world for the better. However, if the dark side of human motivation is not mitigated with standards and ethics, business can destroy.

We saw this unfold at Enron, a company that was, in its time, celebrated for its impressive profits. Underneath the profits was a culture designed from the ground up to completely ignore any ethical standard including a dazzling display of ethically questionable sexual activity among its executives. These activities, such as promoting secretaries to executive positions in exchange for sexual favors, parallel Hurd’s behavior with Jodie Fisher. In Enron’s case, the bad behavior bled over into first line employees who conspired to create blackouts in California in the name of profits and in the absence of ethics. Ultimately, Enron imploded in a swirl of criminal behavior that bankrupted the company, but not before destroying tens of thousands of peoples’ life savings and damaging millions of innocent victims. After the fact, the press bemoaned the culture that lead to the destruction. However, the same reporters instantly forgot the cause as they cavalierly dismissed Hurd’s ethical breach.

In closing, I point out the impressive courage of the HP board of directors to ignore popular opinion and do the right thing. It is not an easy thing to fire a popular, highly successful CEO. It’s even more difficult when you know that you will be roundly criticized for tolerating that same CEO’s failure to develop internal successors. Despite those factors, Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors stood tall and protected the company, its shareholders and all of us from a dark and destructive journey. As a member of the business community and as a citizen, I am extremely proud of and grateful for their actions.

Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded Loudcloud, later renamed Opsware Inc., in 1999 and served as CEO of the company before it was acquired in 2007 by Hewlett-Packard. He was most recently vice president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s Business Technology Organization Unit.

“The planned transfer of Nokia’s wireless modem business enables Renesas Electronics to maximize the value of Nokia’s technology assets and engineering expertise in delivering advanced mobile platform solutions to the market by combining them with Renesas Electronics’ market-proven multimedia processing and RF technologies,” Nokia said in a statement.

Unloading a wireless communications hardware business as Nokia (NOK) is doing here might seem an odd move for a wireless communications hardware maker, but in this case it’s quite wise. Wireless modems are a low-margin business. Nokia is far better off dumping it and focusing more of its energy on its smartphone and Internet services businesses, which have been lagging for far too long.

Another sign that mobile ads are still in their infancy: Google isn’t using its favorite video ad format on the YouTube ads.

Boot up your Apple (AAPL) iPhone or Android handset to m.youtube.com today and you’ll start seeing ads like these:

But while you may see banner ads on YouTube’s mobile home, search and browse pages, you won’t see ads on the clips themselves.

Those will come eventually, Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube’s director of monetization, told Advertising Age, but in the near term, it’s too difficult for the company to pull off. That’s because there are too many handsets, with different standards and requirements, to support.

That’s a bummer for the Google (GOOG) unit, since it is particularly fond of the “overlay” ads that run on the bottom third of many of its clips. Then again, mobile is still a tiny market opportunity for YouTube: The company says it serves “tens of millions of views per day,” which sounds like a lot until you consider that the main site is serving a billion views daily.

Note that YouTube doesn’t seem to be advertising yet on its specialized iPhone app. Wonder what to make of that…

Requested after Nokia accused Apple of unfairly benefiting from its wireless technology, the investigation will seek to determine whether the Finnish cellphone giant has violated 13 Apple patents and tried to copy the iPhone to maintain its status in the industry. As with Nokia’s complaint against Apple, the stakes here are quite high: A ban on importation of the products found to contain infringing technology.

News of the ITC action, which is to be completed in 45 days, comes as Apple (AAPL) steps up its legal campaign against Nokia (NOK). Last Friday, the company lobbed another court filing at Nokia, this one accusing it of antitrust violations.

Nokia, says Apple, misled industry standard-setting groups into including its patented technologies in things like Wi-Fi and then charged excessive royalty fees to license them. Apple’s position: If Nokia holds patents on technologies built into relevant standards, it has the power to raise their price and thereby exclude competition. And that’s exactly what the company did–according to Apple, anyway.

“Having suffered losses in the marketplace, Nokia has resorted to demanding exorbitant royalties from Apple for patents that Nokia claims are essential to various compatibility standards….” Apple said in the filing. “Throughout the negotiation process, Nokia blatantly attempted to circumvent its contractual obligation to offer non-discriminatory licensing terms to Apple.”

The complaint continues: “While Nokia said it was offering Apple its ‘standard’ royalty terms, Nokia repeated[ly] refused Apple’s request to substantiate that naked representation. Nokia refused to provide any information about what other licensees were for the same standards-essential patent rights and, indeed, demanded that any licensing terms between Nokia and Apple should shrouded in secrecy. Thus, despite its obligation to offer Apple non-discriminatory license terms, Nokia effectively denied Apple that opportunity.”

Apple’s legal counsel certainly seems to be earning its retainer this year.

iPhone OS 4.0. And the iPhone 4G–on Verizon (VZ).

That’s the word from Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who believes there’s “a good chance” we’ll hear about all three come next Wednesday.

“Together with our semi-conductor partners, we have ascertained that there is a reasonable chance the Asian supply chain is prepping for mass production of a new iPhone in March, for availability in late Q2, likely June,” Misek wrote in a note to clients today.

“The phone will be carried on Verizon and hence will operate on the CDMA network,” he asserts, adding, “however, it will also support European GSM and HSPA standards. An updated 4GS version that will support LTE is anticipated to arrive in June 2011.”

As to the cost, the analyst expects change. “At this moment, we have not heard about the pricing of the device, but believe it will be different from what it is at the moment. While we remain of the view that tiered data plans are imminent, our checks indicate the new iPhone from Verizon will still come with an unlimited data plan.”

Now, I have no idea how much credence to give speculation like this, nor do I have any insider insight into Apple’s carrier negotiations. But I will say this: It seems unlikely that Apple will announce a new iPhone and carrier partnership right after unveiling a brand new, and presumably revolutionary, product.

It might do so before, though. After all, the debut of the iPhone at Macworld 2007 was prefaced by the announcement of Apple TV.

[Image credit: Robert Davis / iLounge]

One good thing about taking a break between Christmas and New Year’s is getting to miss all the 2010 prediction stories out there about the tech world.

You know the tedious drill: The Consumer Electronics Show’s products this year indicate cloud computing has finally arrived; the Apple (AAPL) iSlate will bring world peace; it will be revealed that Google’s co-founders are aliens (wait, that one is true).

Oh, BoomTown will admit that I used to do them too–or, more precisely, was dragooned into doing them by weary editors when I was writing for The Wall Street Journal.

But, to be honest, they were mostly off-base in some significant way or, if by some chance I got one right, it was definitely a very lucky guess.

So, last year, I made a resolution I am keeping this year: No predictions.

As I wrote a year ago:

“But the real reason I am not inclined to go all Miss Cleo is simple: I have no idea what is going to happen and neither does anyone, even in their heedless guessing.”

Thus, I will only speak of certainties, and here is what I can absolutely promise for this column and All Things Digital in general in 2010:

* Breaking news of digital and media companies, including lots and lots of accurate scoops, such as a heap we managed to ferret out last year.

* Cogent and enlightening analysis of key trends in the online sector.

* Major interviews with important players in the industries we cover.

* More streaming video–including this Friday’s live onstage interviews with Palm (PALM) CEO Jon Rubinstein, Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings and Google (GOOG) Android guru Andy Rubin, all at our special event in Las Vegas during CES.

* An effort to get out of the tech-centric Silicon Valley weeds more and attempt to do longer reported pieces that take on big topics, showing that blogs can take up the banner of long-form investigative journalism from print publications and do this important work in new and innovative ways.

* The same strong commitment to the high standards and ethics in doing all of the above, which is perhaps the greatest and most critical compact we need to keep with readers.

* We also hope to grow our coverage, as well as produce a crackerjack eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June, and much more.

This site grew strongly in 2009, in terms of both traffic and engagement, and we hope to do even better in 2010 by providing readers with the highest-quality and most accurate tech and media coverage we can.

And while I cannot predict we will reach that goal, I can promise you that we will try our best.

“I’m absolutely of the opinion that this is a trustful deal that we’re making. I trust Microsoft,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said during a press conference this morning. “There can’t be a misunderstanding. Here is the final result of a long discussion over a long period.”

Microsoft (MSFT) was equally upbeat on the EC’s decision. “We welcome today’s announcement by the European Commission to move forward with formal market testing of Microsoft’s proposal relating to web browser choice in Europe,” General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “We also welcome the opportunity to take the next step in the process regarding our proposal to promote interoperability with a broad range of our products.”

There were, however, a few that were not so welcoming of the move. Top among them, ECIS, an industry group whose members include Oracle (ORCL), Sun (JAVA), IBM (IBM) and Nokia (NOK). “ECIS notes that the settlement does not appear to deal with the inadequacies of Microsoft’s standards compliance, unfair pricing practices or other concerns related to patent abuse or standards manipulation,” the group said in a statement.

“I’m absolutely of the opinion that this is a trustful deal that we’re making. I trust Microsoft,” Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said during a press conference this morning. “There can’t be a misunderstanding. Here is the final result of a long discussion over a long period.”

Microsoft (MSFT) was equally upbeat on the EC’s decision. “We welcome today’s announcement by the European Commission to move forward with formal market testing of Microsoft’s proposal relating to web browser choice in Europe,” General Counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “We also welcome the opportunity to take the next step in the process regarding our proposal to promote interoperability with a broad range of our products.”

There were, however, a few that were not so welcoming of the move. Top among them, ECIS, an industry group whose members include Oracle (ORCL), Sun (JAVA), IBM (IBM) and Nokia (NOK). “ECIS notes that the settlement does not appear to deal with the inadequacies of Microsoft’s standards compliance, unfair pricing practices or other concerns related to patent abuse or standards manipulation,” the group said in a statement.

My pal Owen Thomas, late of Valleywag, has published a piece for NBC’s Bay Area local site that suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.

That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp. (NWS), are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner (TWX) unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.

But the publisher certainly is thinking about ways to create specialized content for e-reader devices and about the best way to distribute that content.

Time Warner executives have talked about this openly for many months–see Time Inc. digital guru John Squires’s comments in June–and Thomas appears to have gotten his hands on an internal document that addresses the same topic.

Most intriguing, according to Thomas’s read of the documents: A Hulu-like spinoff that would do…something:

The presentation concludes that Time Inc. and other partners should form a new, jointly owned company. Time Inc. might spin out its Maghound service, a service which lets consumers bundle multiple magazines together into a single monthly subscription, to form the base of the joint venture. The company is also considering acquiring other businesses to jumpstart the venture.

No comment from Time Inc.

But I do know that Time Inc.’s executives have met with other publishers about collaborating on e-reader standards, etc. And I do know that Time Inc. executives  think a special version of their print products, designed specifically for e-readers, is a good idea. Most everyone I talk to in magazine publishing, in fact, believes this.

And I understand why they do. In their minds, the e-reader versions of their products function just about the same way magazines do: People pay to read them and advertisers pay to distribute their messages through them. And–this part is crucially important, from their perspective–publishers retain control of distribution and the billing relationship with their customers.

That relationship gets obliterated in Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle model: Publishers wholesale the stuff to Jeff Bezos, who deals with consumers directly. This is also one of the music industry’s big regrets about the digital age. Even though labels are selling their stuff on the Web, via Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes and others, they still don’t have direct relationships with its customers.

Which is why publishers are desperately hoping that they’ll be able to push their stuff through someone other than Jeff Bezos. On the surface, at least, it looks as though their wishes are being met: A bevy of Kindle competitors–Sony (SNE), Plastic Logic, iRex, etc.–is surfacing. Surely one or more of those will figure out how to offer publishers the terms they want.

But even if one or more of the Kindle clones succeeds, print publishers still have a core problem: They need to convince consumers that content–in any form, on any device–is worth paying for. That will work in some cases, but for many it’s going be a very hard slog.

For all the noisy hubbub over should-we-or-shouldn’t-we-publish confidential documents hacked from password-protected accounts of Twitter employees, as well as a Twitter spouse, it is actually pretty simple.

Stolen equals stolen.

But, because this is a “hot” issue and it concerns an even hotter Web 2.0 company–Holy traffic-gooser, Batman!–the debate will surely go on and on, even as the stolen information inevitably leaks its way out.

Still, let’s not pretend what it is and is not.

It is most definitely not, for example, one of those great dramatic moments in journalism.

Thus, comparing the ruminations over whether to publish egregiously obtained information–however true–to the debate over a major event like the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers is pathetic.

It is, though, a tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot.

In point of fact, my colleague Peter Kafka, who works from New York, wrote me tonight:

“Was at a fancy schmooze tonight packed with digital media bigwigs: Viacom, NBC, News Corp, plus lots of start-up guys. TwitterGate was on *no one’s* lips. I talked to one guy who has a stake in the company and he pretty much shrugged about it–several people had no idea about it at all. Total non-news.”

It is not, however self-righteously (and pompously) put forth, much of a dilemma.

As the very clever John Gruber of Daring Fireball put it: “What you may ask, is the dilemma, since it is clear that any decent human being would simply refuse to have anything to do with something so lurid?”

Indeed, it is unequivocally wrong to publish documents you know or think were stolen or hacked, because it is aiding and abetting that theft.

In this regard, then, there should be no difference between “Web” journalism and the old-fashioned journalism–acting as if the former gets a “process journalism” (what a crock!) pass at standards and ethics that should be eternal and unwavering, no matter the medium.

And it is a little like pitting “gay” marriage against marriage, in order to create a false dichotomy, designed only to obfuscate the issues.

So, it also isn’t kosher to try to take focus of your own wrongdoing by pointing to other practices, which is almost always an obnoxious reach by the willfully immature.

While comparisons to leaked company documents have been made–and BoomTown knows from leaked corporate memos–this is a lazy-man’s argument, since it simply does not track.

The Twitter docs were stolen from personal accounts, an obvious pilfer, which immediately changes the equation completely.

While you certainly can have a lively debate about whether Yahoos should pass along some widely distributed memo that CEO Carol Bartz penned to the company, it is not even close to the same thing.

And, more to the point, if someone sent me emails jacked from Bartz’s own email account, I would not need even a second to know I would never use such information.

As I tweeted earlier today: A credible source a reporter knows giving accurate info is clearly different from a thief rifling through someone’s sock drawer.

That is especially true when you use material from a person you do not know. For the record: When I post a company memo, for example, I know and check out exactly who’s giving it to me and I don’t publish stuff just because it happens to land in my email box.

And, a minor beef, blaming victims for the theft by saying they have weak or inadequate passwords is also pathetic. It’s kind of like blaming people for being robbed because they had crappy locks.

I suppose there is a point in there, but the real finger of blame should always be firmly pointed at the burglar and those who fence his nicked goods.

That brings me to my final point–thinking you can handle dirty material and then act as if your hands are clean.

How hands get dirty is a concept even my children understand.

And if my kids ever said: “Hey, this stolen stuff is going to get out anyway, so let me be the one to ladle it out as I see fit”–I’d ground them for life.

This latest version of the browser offers a number of new features. Among them: Private browsing, location-aware surfing, support for emerging HTML 5 standards such as plug-in-free video and audio playing, and better JavaScript performance. It’s that last improvement that’s most noteworthy since Mozilla claims that Firefox 3.5 is twice as fast as Firefox 3, and an astonishing 10 times faster than Firefox 2.0.

Nice features, all of them, and ones that certainly reflect the goal of Firefox’s creators at the Mozilla Foundation: To upgrade the Web. “What we’re actually trying to do,” Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker said at our D7 conference in May (see video highlights below), “…is improve the Web itself….Our main goal is to make more capabilities available, and right now, the browser is the main delivery mechanism….We’re trying to be the delivery mechanism upon which others build innovations.”

And upon which Firefox builds market share. Though it is currently the world’s second-leading browser, with a 22.5 percent share of the global Web browser market, Firefox faces some formidable competition these days from Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL) and now Mozilla partner Google (GOOG), which is bearing down upon it with its latest “don’t-be-evil” bulldozer, Chrome.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090630/mozilla-foundation-announces-your-new-default-browser/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20090623/intel-inside-nokia/ http://allthingsd.com/20090623/intel-inside-nokia/#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:42:06 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20028
“We would love dearly to win one of the big guys, that really is the smartphone game, it really is a concentrated set of suppliers,” Intel CFO Stacy Smith told Bloomberg earlier this year. “We’re lurking behind every bush and showing them our product line.”

Well, the ambushes to which Smith referred appear to have finally paid off: Intel (INTC) has landed a deal to develop chips with Nokia (NOK).

During a conference call this morning, Intel senior mobility VP Anand Chandrasekher announced a deal that will see the two companies developing something they ambiguously describe as a “new mobile platform beyond today’s smartphones, notebooks and netbooks.” Under its terms, they will work together on several open-source mobile Linux software projects and Intel will license Nokia’s high speed packet access technology.

“This Intel and Nokia collaboration unites and focuses many of the brightest computing and communications minds in the world, and will ultimately deliver open and standards-based technologies, which history shows drive rapid innovation, adoption and consumer choice,” Chandrasekher said in a statement. “With the convergence of the Internet and mobility as the team’s only barrier, I can only imagine the innovation that will come out of our unique relationship with Nokia. The possibilities are endless.”

The deal is a big win for Intel, whose last dalliance with the cellphone market ended in ignominy. The computing landscape is shifting from PCs to mobile devices and Intel must shift along with it in order to grow its business. And right now, 90 percent of its sales are PC-related. With the global market for cellphones at 1.2 billion units per year and growing, according to ABI Research, the chipmaker must figure out a way to dominate cellphones the way it has PCs. Allying with Nokia is one way of achieving that. But when will we see the first Intel-powered Nokia device? Intel and Nokia won’t say. “This is about technology collaboration and a licensing agreement,” Chandrasekher said in reply to repeated questions on the matter. “We are not commenting on specific products today, I’ll leave it at that. When we are ready to talk about products, we will.”

Incidentally, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was a speaker at our D7 conference. A video highlights reel of his appearance, below.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090623/intel-inside-nokia/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090330/open-cloud-manifesto-up-in-smoke/ http://allthingsd.com/20090330/open-cloud-manifesto-up-in-smoke/#comments Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:11:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15606 The debut of IBM’s Open Cloud Manifesto has proven more pratfall than grand entrance. When the controversial “standards” document–which calls for the cloud, like the Internet itself, to be open–finally went live this morning, it did so without a number of important signatories. Among them: Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT)–the three largest providers of cloud computing services, and the Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum–a group that helped draft the document. Seems that in the end, the process through which the Open Cloud Manifesto was created was too closed even for some of its co-authors.

“When the Open Cloud Manifesto is officially released on Monday, March 30, the CCIF’s name will not appear as a signatory,” Reuven Cohen, a CCIF founder and co-author of the manifesto, said in a message to CCIF members last night. “This decision comes with great pain as we fully endorse the document’s contents and its principals of a truly open cloud. However, this community has issued a mandate of openness and fair process, loudly and clearly, and so the CCIF can not in good faith endorse this document.”

The CCIF’s withdrawal of its endorsement comes a few days after Microsoft publicly trashed the manifesto as flawed. “We were admittedly disappointed by the lack of openness in the development of the Cloud Manifesto,” Microsoft manager Steve Martin wrote in a post to a Microsoft blog. “What we heard was that there was no desire to discuss, much less implement, enhancements to the document despite the fact that we have learned through direct experience. Very recently we were privately shown a copy of the document, warned that it was a secret, and told that it must be signed ‘as is,’ without modifications or additional input. It appears to us that one company, or just a few companies, would prefer to control the evolution of cloud computing, as opposed to reaching a consensus across key stakeholders (including cloud users) through an ‘open’ process. An open Manifesto emerging from a closed process is at least mildly ironic.”

Indeed, but perhaps to be expected given its leading proponent. IBM (IBM), after all, doesn’t really have a cloud offering of its own. Which is why the company is so keen on pushing this standard–and controlling it. As ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn aptly notes, “While [Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com] are selling cloud services, IBM is going into the business of building actual clouds. Open standards would benefit IBM, giving its customers assurances they are future-proof.”

Those who can, do; those who can’t, propose standards…

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090330/open-cloud-manifesto-up-in-smoke/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8/ http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:20:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8/ Microsoft is serious about its newfound commitment to interoperability–serious enough to make Internet Explorer 8 Web standards-compliant out of the box.

In a complete reversal of earlier policy, the software giant has decided to make IE8 default to a standards-compliant mode of rendering Web pages that favors interoperability, rather than an IE7 rendering mode that favors Microsoft (MSFT). “Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a post to the IEBlog. “Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting Web content in the most standards-compliant way possible is a better thing to do. We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action.”

Quite the change of heart. Guess a record $1.35 billion in antitrust fines changes your perspective on these things. Certainly, Hachamovitch implies as much in his post. Writes Hachamovitch, “While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue.”

It certainly does. And if you don’t believe Hachamovitch, just ask Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel. He said exactly the same thing, using exactly the same words in a company press release announcing IE8′s Web standards compliance.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8-3/ http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8-3/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:20:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8/ Microsoft is serious about its newfound commitment to interoperability–serious enough to make Internet Explorer 8 Web standards-compliant out of the box.

In a complete reversal of earlier policy, the software giant has decided to make IE8 default to a standards-compliant mode of rendering Web pages that favors interoperability, rather than an IE7 rendering mode that favors Microsoft (MSFT). “Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch wrote in a post to the IEBlog. “Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting Web content in the most standards-compliant way possible is a better thing to do. We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action.”

Quite the change of heart. Guess a record $1.35 billion in antitrust fines changes your perspective on these things. Certainly, Hachamovitch implies as much in his post. Writes Hachamovitch, “While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue.”

It certainly does. And if you don’t believe Hachamovitch, just ask Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel. He said exactly the same thing, using exactly the same words in a company press release announcing IE8′s Web standards compliance.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20080304/ie8-3/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071213/opera-microsoft/ http://allthingsd.com/20071213/opera-microsoft/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:01:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20071213/opera-microsoft/ Looks like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may have a shot at a second dinner date with EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

Less than three months after agreeing to comply with key elements of the European Commission’s 2004 antitrust order against it, the company is facing new accusations of monopoly abuse. Norway’s Opera Software ASA said today it has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer Web browser to Windows and hindering interoperability by not implementing widely accepted Web standards.

“We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them,” Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said in a rather here-I-come-to-save-the-day statement. “In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we’ve brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide.”

And reminded the world that Opera is not just a drama set to music, but an unpopular Web browser, as well.

Opera asks that the EC’s competition division force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows and require the company to follow fundamental and open Web standards, which is an interesting twist on the old antitrust classic. And one that may have some legs, given IE’s inability to pass the Web Standards Project Acid2 test. “Microsoft often participates and even promises to support these standards, but we find it often isn’t the case,” Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie told ZDNet. “We find bugs and programmers have to code around (Microsoft).”

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