Kevin was recently asking where his Palm Pre information was that he’d signed up for way back when. I signed up for it, too, and I can now answer that the information just came in via email:

Yep, that’s it. It’s time for Palm and Sprint to fire the PR firm they are using for the Pre launch.

The growth of location-based services (LBS) makers perfect sense, given how much potential they provide to the end user. Having a phone or computer that can determine where you are and provide thoughtful information based on what’s nearby can be leveraged in ways that are only just now being fully explored. This could come crashing to the ground, however, given suspected problems with U.S. GPS coverage.

A recent report (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) points out that the U.S.-run GPS system responsible for providing worldwide GPS services is so far behind schedule that services may begin dying as early as 2010. This decay of service could have far-reaching implications for both the military and civilian sectors.

We think very little about the GPS system and how it works because it is “just there.” The proliferation of cheap GPS devices has pushed this technology into the mainstream and as usually happens with such a push,we stop thinking about the technology behind it and simply expect it to work. We’ve seen this with radio, TV and cellular phones.

GPS service requires a “constellation” of satellites to be in orbit in order to provide the coverage needed to maintain viability of the GPS net. Satellites have a limited lifespan, which requires replacement satellites to be launched continually to maintain the status quo as older satellites die. This has not happened, according to the report.

It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption.  If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected.

It’s frightening to think of the GPS satellite system failing to provide the service we have come to take for granted, and further digging into the GAO report makes it even more so:

Based on the most recent satellite reliability and launch schedule data approved in March 2009, the estimated long-term probability of maintaining a constellation of at least 24 operational satellites falls below 95 percent during fiscal year 2010 and remains below 95 percent until the end of fiscal year 2014, at times falling to about 80 percent.

This statement becomes very real when you look at their timeline for predicted lack of coverage:

The impact of a loss of GPS coverage would be widespread and the report details just the major services likely to be affected. Intercontinental commercial flights may have to delay, cancel or reroute their flights due to the lack of accurate GPS coverage. The enhanced 911 service that uses GPS to pinpoint callers on cell phones would become less accurate, meaning that emergency workers would not know exactly where you are when you need help the most.

Given the impact on crucial services that the report covers it’s a safe bet that making sure your iPhone knows where you are won’t be high on anyone’s list. LBS services would likely take the first hit with a GPS degradation and that TomTom in your car likely won’t work very well, either. The GAO is basically telling the U.S. government to get its act together in regards to this situation, and soon.

(Thanks to the Register for pointing to this report)

Have you ever received a letter notifying you that you’re involved in a class-action lawsuit and that your rights may be affected? Usually it involves the fact that you purchased something from a list of companies who’ve been sued and a proposed settlement has been made that will determine what your damages will be. I got one of these letters yesterday that involves a suit against Motorola, Plantronics and Jabra, concerning Bluetooth headsets they sold. The suit was filed because these companies allegedly did not warn consumers of a “risk of hearing loss and that Defendants acted wrongfully when they did not warn consumers of the risk (if it exists).”

I had to read that part twice, how they are being sued because they didn’t warn about a risk that might not exist. That’s what it says and that’s what it means. Can you say frivolous lawsuit? I knew you could. This is what’s wrong with this system in the U.S. Why bring a class-action suit like this in the first place?  The answer is money. Millions of dollars are being pursued from these big, bad companies and all under the guise of trying to protect us, the unknowing public.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not railing against the ability to take recourse against companies that wrong us as consumers. It’s important that we have an avenue for redressing wrongs. I’m no legal expert, but from all that I’ve seen of these class-action suits, I can’t say I’ve ever seen any consumer get fairly represented when the redressing takes place. It seems to me only the lawyers involved get any redressing. And they deserve it; you can never have enough Armani suits.

This becomes glaringly obvious when you read through the aforementioned document above. The defendants in the suit “deny their Bluetooth headsets are unsafe or that they did anything wrong. Defendants are settling only to avoid the risk and expense of trial.” In other words, the law firms representing you and I bullied these companies into accepting a class-action settlement to keep their potential risk as small as possible. This is how class-action suits work and what’s wrong with them.

If my best interests are being served by those who brought this class-action suit against these companies, what does this settlement mean for me and the other millions who bought headsets? Nothing, it turns out.

“It is not practical or economical to provide benefits directly to individual Class Members because the Class is very large and the amount each Class Member would receive is very small. Therefore, the Class Representative, the attorneys for the Class, and the Defendants agree that the cost of distributing any kind of benefit directly to Class Members would consume too much of the Proposed Settlement benefits. Instead, they believe that providing funding to non-profit organizations that focus on preventing hearing loss will indirectly benefit all Class Members”.

In other words, there are too many of us consumers, so we wouldn’t get much anyway.  That’s the reason for the part of the settlement that “will donate $100,000 to one or more non-profit organizations that focus on preventing hearing loss.”  This sounds like a drop in the bucket to me but a brilliant strategy, because who among us can complain about a lawsuit that gives part of the settlement to charity?

The full settlement agreement shows the real purpose behind this (and many) class-action lawsuits.  In addition to the $100,000 generously donated to several charities the proposed settlement will pay this:

Class Counsel will ask the court for up to $800,000 in attorneys’ fees and up to $38,000 for reimbursement of documented expenses.  Class Counsel will also request up to $12,000 total for the Class Representatives, who helped the lawyers on behalf of the whole Class.  The Court may award less than these amounts.  Defendants will separately pay the fees and expenses the Court orders.  These payments will not reduce the amount Defendants will donate to charity.

Defendants will also separately pay the costs to provide notice to the Class and administer the Proposed Settlement, up to $1.2 million.  If those costs are less than $1.2 million, Class Counsel may request reimbursement for additional documented expenses up to $12,000, which Defendants will pay upon approval by the Court.

It’s easy to see where the money will really go and who gets it — the law firms working in our best interests. No doubt the ultimate take will be in excess of $2 million as evidenced by these documents and what is really going on. To recap, the aggrieved parties (us) get nothing, a charity gets a pittance and the seven law firms handling the suit get a few million bucks. Sounds fair to me.

I win as a consumer in this suit because my best interests are being looked after. When I buy a Bluetooth headset in the future there will no doubt be a sticker on the box warning me that if I keep the volume too high I risk my hearing. That’s a big win for me. I am consumer, hear me roar.

OK, rant mode on. This morning I spent over three hours running Windows Update on the cool Viliv S5 UMPC I am evaluating. Yes, I realize it runs the older Windows XP operating system, but even so Microsoft must make the out of box experience (OOBE) better than this. I have recently experienced this process with Vista too, and it’s no better than XP. It’s time that Microsoft fix this absolutely unbearable process.

The entire Windows Update process resulted in 5 reboots and took almost 3.5 hours. That is ridiculous in and of itself, but watching it closely (something you have to do as it requires user input at inopportune moments) really got me steamed, as I realized that Microsoft could easily fix this stupid process.

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Print media is reeling, no question about it. Newspapers are closing all over the U.S. and many print publications have been shut down to go online only. I feel bad for those in the industry, but many will tell you that print media has had their collective heads in the sand for a long time while the online world has grown tremendously. A reader sent me this article from a blog of the Philadelphia Daily News that demonstrates how out of touch with the real world these folks are even today. The author is pushing the idea that newspapers should give readers free netbooks to instill loyalty, thus keeping them alive. I find the premise pretty funny in general, but what caught my eye is the picture in the article that proves how out in left field these folks are:

Yep, that netbook he’s advocating giving their loyal readers is none other than the only trademarked netbook, the Psion netBook. Someone better tell this guy it is almost 10-year-old technology.  :)

(Thanks to Scott Carmichael for sending this in!)

The frivolous lawsuits show no signs of abating with the recent suit against Apple filed in Virginia.  MONEC Holding Ltd., a Swiss company, has filed a patent infringement suit claiming that Apple’s promotion of the iPhone as an e-book reader violates the firm’s 2002 patent.

This suit seems to be in response to the appearance of the Kindle for iPhone app in the Apple App Store, as other e-book reader apps have been available on the iPhone for a while. The iPhone is hardly the first mobile device with the ability to read e-books as I have been reading them since the Palm VX in 1999. This suit will surely not stand but it’s aggravating to see these types of hassles simply designed to try to extract money out of the deepest pocket.

(via AppleInsider)

The “netbook” trademark tussle will play out in court as Psion has responded with a lawsuit to Intel’s legal request that the Canadian company be stripped of their trademark.  The Intel demand (Dell has demanded it too) stated that Psion had abandoned the “netbook” trademark through non-use, that Psion had falsely claimed they were still using the term in business and that the term had become too generic for Psion to hang on to the trademark in any event.

The Psion countersuit, made available by the Save the Netbook campaign site, answers Intel’s filing with Psion’s own information including sales numbers for the (abandoned) period in question.  Psion is also (unsurprisingly) asking for damages from Intel based on an amount calculated from the profit Intel has made through sales of products under the “netbook” banner.

The Psion suit asks for Intel to turn over the netbook.com domain that was launched by Intel late last year under anti-cybersquatting laws.  They are also alleging unfair business practice on the part of Intel by promoting their products under the trademarked name.  Psion may have a hard time convincing a jury that the term “netbook” had come to be recognized by the public as the Psion laptop as it states in the suit.

It’s clear this is going to get very messy indeed.  It is of particular interest that Psion is requesting a jury trial rather than a court decision.

We have always said that HTC is innovative and prolific and seems to always be releasing another Windows Mobile phone.  They are also pushing the envelope with their own custom interfaces for WM to keep their customers excited.   Is it possible that HTC has sold 80% of all Windows Mobile phones ever sold?

The Microsoft press event this week covered the usual type of stuff, — sales numbers, kudos for our partners and the like.  Something about the numbers I heard thrown around by Microsoft and partners didn’t sit right but I couldn’t put my fingers on just why.  The mocoNews folks noticed the same thing and were able to figure out what was just out of my grasp.

At the event, Microsoft’s Andy Lees stated that the Redmond giant had sold more than 50 million Windows Mobile handsets over its lifetime.  That’s a lot of phones, no doubt, but not surprising given that Microsoft also stated they have 50 partners producing them.  This alone is nothing out of the ordinary, but one of those partners threw numbers of his own out there, which leads to our questions.

The CEO of HTC stated at the press event that HTC has sold more than 40 million Windows Mobile phones over their 12-year lifetime.  When you do the math that puts HTC selling 80% of all Windows Mobile phones ever.  Wow.  That just leaves 20% to divide up among the other 49 partners.  That just can’t be right, I think.  If it is correct, and HTC is that big a partner, then I would strongly recommend that Microsoft let HTC design the entire user interface for WM7.  I’m just saying.

Actually, thinking about it further HTC originally was the OEM for other branded phones for years prior to launching their in-house brand.  That HTC CEO is pretty sneaky claiming credit for everyone else’s phones. 

I have traveled a lot lately and after my recent trip to San Francisco I observed that the AT&T service in that fair city simply sucks.  I figured that some of the problems I observed with lousy service were due to my brief and very narrow exposure to the AT&T network in SF but that is obviously not the case.

Recently our boss, Om Malik, ditched his iPhone due to his long-term dissatisfaction with the AT&T service in San Francisco.  I know from conversations with Om that he loves his iPhone which shows just how bad the AT&T service actually is on a continual basis.

“Anyway this morning, while conducting a phone interview, the call dropped on me twice. Enough was enough. A few minutes later, I went to T-Mobile’s company store and got myself a BlackBerry Curve 8900 for email and SMS. I also signed up for a plain-vanilla voice service from Verizon Wireless. And I already have a 32 GB iPod Touch for surfing and music. They can all be charged using the USB port of my Macbook, thereby obviating the need for extra chargers.

Is this an ideal solution? Probably not — but living with spotty service isn’t worth the trouble. The dream of living with a single device, a superphone, as we like to call it, hasn’t quite worked out yet, thanks to the network. Goodbye iPhone, it was nice knowing ya!”

I’ll be the first to admit that the AT&T service I get in Houston is not bad.  How bad the AT&T service in SF must be to get someone like Om to go with a solution that is unwanted yet necessary to get on with business.  Will Apple ever send the iPhone to another carrier in the US?

You may have always wanted to have headphones with your mobile music player that provide surround sound quality but be careful, you may get what you wish for.  TubeSurround is a company about to unveil some headphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that they claim provides 5.1 surround sound.  All you have to do to get that bone-jarring surround sound from your headphones is to be willing to wear the GSMSurround in public:

I didn’t think so.