Category: Tech news

Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s complete do-over of its mobile operating system, is off to a promising start with the Samsung Focus. Despite a few imperfections with usability and web browsing, the big M has polished a gem with this OS, and it truly shines through this iPhone lookalike’s beautiful display.

The Focus feels slick and smooth the first time you pick it up. It’s a teensy bit longer, wider and thicker than the iPhone 4 (4.84 x 2.56 x 0.39 inches compared with the iPhone 4’s 4.5 x 2.31 x 0.37 inches). And the Focus is lighter at 4.07 ounces, versus the iPhone 4’s 4.8 ounces. Holding it in your hand, you can tell the Samsung phone’s plastic parts are a bit cheaper than Apple’s luxury glass-and-metal components.

That’s not to say the Focus isn’t a sweet device, though: The vivid Super AMOLED display makes Windows Phone 7’s colorful tile-based interface a visual treat. Selecting a tile brings you into a “hub” containing integrated experiences for different features. For example, the Marketplace hub displays the four different software stores where you can purchase media: third-party apps, games, music and Samsung Zone, a separate app store serving software made by Samsung.

You can move tiles around on the home screen to suit your preferences just by holding your finger over them and dragging.

The tile interface is plenty intuitive, so you probably won’t need an instruction manual when you’re setting up the phone. The People tile is pretty fun: It blends your contacts list with your Facebook account. When you dial a friend’s number, his or her Facebook mug appears next to the call. Selecting a contact brings up the person’s phone number, e-mail address and Facebook profile all in one screen. Pretty neat.

The Mail hub is especially impressive. You select your service (Hotmail, Google Mail, Yahoo! and others), enter your login info and boom — the inbox is a tile on your home screen. The e-mail app in general looks great: Facebook integration comes into play here, too, so when you load an e-mail it’s accompanied with the sender’s Facebook portrait as well. To me, this visual experience makes e-mail far less boring.

For transferring music, photos and video you can sync media from your computer to the Focus with a USB cable. I tested syncing on a Mac. The official syncing program for Mac users isn’t available yet, but I had a chance to try the beta version, and it was surprisingly smooth at syncing music from my iTunes library and photos and video from iPhoto.

(Don’t get your hopes up, though: This is a feature that Apple is most likely going to break with future iTunes updates, just like it did with the Palm Pre’s iTunes sync feature.)

As for snapping photos, there’s a dedicated shutter button on the right side of the phone to load the camera app and to take a picture. In the Photo hub, you can also enable pictures to automatically sync to a free SkyDrive folder stored online in your Hotmail account, sparing you the need to manually upload them.

Overall, this entire camera experience is a lot snappier than photo features on the iPhone and Android devices. However, the pictures shot with the Focus’s 5-megapixel camera are only passable, and are a little blurry even in good lighting conditions.

With all that said, there were a few minor gripes that drove me a bit crazy. To wake up the phone, you have to press the physical power button on the right side. It feels unnatural to have to grip the phone and push a button on the side whenever you want to quickly check an e-mail or send a text message. I wish you could power on the device just by pressing the main menu button, which is centered under the screen — similar to how you can press the iPhone’s Home button to turn it on.

And then there’s the mobile version of Internet Explorer. It’s not as bad as Microsoft’s desktop browser, but it’s not much better. The mobile browser doesn’t seem to load text properly on some websites, such as Reddit and Digg. Small text doesn’t render smoothly, which is evident even when loading Wired.com. Also, photos on some websites appear over-sharpened, making rough pixels become visible. Long story short, two thumbs down for Internet Explorer.

Oh, yeah—and just like the iPhone, there’s no support for Adobe Flash on Windows Phone 7 (yet), so Hulu junkies won’t be thrilled.

The phone seemed more reliable at holding a call than the iPhone 4, but it wasn’t any better at pulling in a signal in areas where AT&T’s coverage is weak (like San Francisco’s Mission District). My testing was hardly scientific, though.

Texting is surprisingly fast on the Focus. Hitting Send shoots out a text almost instantly. There’s no progress bar or anything. Why can’t the iPhone do that?

Overall, the Samsung Focus is a solid all-around device, and the pros heavily outweigh the cons. Most of the listed problems will probably be fixed in software updates. And with Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has largely redeemed itself after putting that bloated carcass known as Windows Mobile to rest. Rest in peace — and good riddance — WinMo.

WIRED Gorgeous tile-based UI laced with large, smooth text doesn’t rip off the iPhone’s app interface. Provides a rich dose of social savvy thanks to tight Facebook integration. Physical camera shutter button is a nice shortcut for shooting quick photos.

TIRED Internet Explorer lives up to its super-lame reputation. Camera shots too blurry to be taken seriously.

Getting content from your computer to your television is hardly a new idea, but now that Apple has taken up the cause, everyone seems to want to get into the game.

The idea here is simple: Add a tiny box to your home-theater setup that can stream movies, music and photos across the network from PC to TV—and, for good measure, access Netflix, YouTube, Pandora and other cloud-based entertainment streaming services, too. Many of these devices include USB ports for hooking up a hard drive or thumb drive, so you can play less permanently stored video on an ad hoc basis.

We looked at three such offerings—including Apple’s latest—and found that, much to our chagrin, none of these were very compelling solutions for getting movies off your home network or for streaming media from the web. And yet, each is different in its own special, useless way.

Apple TV

The good news is that the Apple TV was the best product in this roundup. The bad news is we still wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Cupertinophile who can’t live without at least one of every gadget Apple makes.

There’s no complaining about the hardware. In true Apple fashion it’s a sleek and sexy hockey puck of a device, and setup is a breeze. Of course, in keeping with Apple’s other electronics, the Apple TV is useless without iTunes on your computer unless you simply want to access media directly from the iTunes Store. And Apple would really love it if you did: The Apple TV interface is overwhelmingly dedicated to selling you content, presented as a cacophony of clickable posters in no discernible order.

If you push past the come-ons to browse your PC library, the interface works well enough, although the ridiculous remote tries its best to thwart such efforts. Movies look good and audio is crisp and clear — provided, that is, that you’ve connected to your network via Ethernet. We had nothing but trouble when using the Apple TV’s wireless connection, to the point where it frequently dropped out in the middle of streaming a song and eventually lost track of our PC’s media library altogether. You’re best advised pretending Wi-Fi isn’t even an option (which it actually isn’t on the other two devices we reviewed) and simply plugging into your router.

With a maximum resolution of 720p, movies won’t look as good — in theory — on the Apple TV as they will on other streamers (both WD and Seagate support 1080p), but the reality is that heavy compression and stutter are far bigger problems than how many pixels you’re getting. We had generally good success with Netflix and YouTube streams, but searching for content with that gum-stick remote is a nightmare.

Bottom line: This is passable technology, but hardly Apple’s finest hour.

$100, Apple

By Keith Buglewicz

Since introducing its excellent Genesis sedan in 2008, Hyundai has been hitting its competition hard. The sedan was followed by two more haymakers: the sporty Genesis coupe and then the ultra-luxe Equus. Now Hyundai’s added a battery and electric motor to the already impressive Sonata. The result is a vehicle that puts the Toyota Camry and Ford Fusion hybrids in a world of hurt.

The Sonata Hybrid will deliver a devastating blow to its opponents when it rolls into showrooms later this year. It’s roomier, more comfortable and much more handsome, with a hybrid system that cleverly balances fuel economy and cost.

Hyundai’s awkwardly named Direct Hybrid Blue Drive system can run on battery power alone up to 62 mph — an impressive feat that tops its competitors by wide margins. Once the engine takes over, it delivers 36 mpg in the city and 40 on the highway, beating the Camry Hybrid and giving the Fusion Hybrid a run for the money. Surprisingly, Hyundai accomplishes this with a lot of off-the-shelf components, keeping the cost down. Best of all, the Sonata hybrid’s sweeping lines, tasteful chrome accents and slick LED lights sets it apart from the field.

Direct Hybrid Blue Drive offers the compact packaging of Honda’s Insight, but the all-electric operation of the Toyota and Ford hybrids. Like Honda, Hyundai sandwiches an electric motor – 30-kilowatts (40 horsepower) in this case—between the engine and the six-speed automatic. But unlike the Insight, Hyundai added a computer-controlled clutch between the engine and motor, allowing them to disengage so the Sonata hybrid can run on battery power alone.

The 166-horsepower four-banger is similar to the engine in the rest of the Sonata lineup, but it runs on what’s called the Atkinson cycle, which basically leaves the intake valves open longer than usual. That increases fuel efficiency, but reduces torque. You won’t miss it, though. The electric motor puts down 151 pound-feet of torque as soon as you hit the accelerator, so the Sonata hybrid has good off-the-line punch.

Hyundai is the first automaker to use a lithium-polymer battery in a hybrid. It’s smaller and lighter than the nickel-metal hydride packs Toyota and Ford use, and it packs more energy into a smaller package. That means it can hold its charge longer while leaving a decent amount of space in the trunk. It’s also more thermally efficient, so it doesn’t need an elaborate — and expensive — cooling system.

Sedate drivers will easily see fuel economy in the 40-mpg range; hypermiliers can get more than 50 mpg. Even on hilly terrain — and with a few full-throttle starts — we managed a very respectable 38.5 mpg. You can thank the Sonata hybrid’s eagerness to drive electrically. With a full charge, you’ll go a good mile or so before the gas engine quietly kicks in to help. You can put it back in electric mode by coasting, or popping it into neutral briefly to shut off the engine. Moreover, the Sonata will stay electric at freeway speeds, a feat no other hybrid can match.

Like the Fusion Hybrid, the Sonata has a handy display that, among other things, encourages efficient driving by turning it into a game. Show some restraint and drive with a measure of eco-friendliness and you’ll earn points while watching a little globe turn green and blue. Mash the accelerator like a lunatic and it’ll turn brown. You also earn points that accumulate as long as you own the car. You won’t win any prizes, but you can brag to your Prius-driving friends about it.

With 206 horsepower from the engine-motor combo, acceleration is about the same as a regular Sonatas. Pay close attention and you’ll feel, and hear, the engine take over from the electric motor, but it isn’t terribly noticeable. The Sonata hybrid has the grabby, regenerative brakes common to hybrids, but you quickly get used to it.

Like its siblings, the hybrid is quiet at speed, and the firm ride is comfortable and controlled. It’s no sport sedan, but handling is safe and predictable, which, really is what most folks shopping for a mid-sized sedan want.

The interior features the same low-gloss plastics, soft-touch dash, plentiful storage nooks and comfortable seating as the rest of the Sonata line. There’s a standard USB port and Bluetooth, as well as power windows and doors, push-button ignition and a six-speaker audio system. The “premium package” adds leather, navi, a sunroof, a better stereo system and heated front and rear seats. This is a car you can live with daily and with all the gadgets and excellent fuel economy, it actually makes a good road-trip vehicle.

Hyundai hasn’t released pricing, if Hyundai stays true to form it’ll undercut the Camry and Fusion hybrids — both of which play in the $28,000 ballpark — by a couple thousand dollars. And that might be the final knockout punch that puts Hyundai’s competitors down for the count.

Keith Buglewicz is an occasional contributor to Wired.com and editor in chief of Family Car Review

Just in case it wasn’t clear enough, Apple’s Q4 earnings call today made it more clear than ever that Apple and Google are in the middle of an all-out war in the mobile space. Apple CEO Steve Jobs took five good minutes to trash Google’s Android platform on its “openness”, fragmentation, tablet capabilities, and a variety of other things. He also had a stat bomb to drop. Again.

According to Jobs, Apple is now activating 275,000 iOS devices a day. That stat is for the previous 30 days. He also noted that some days, they’re getting close to 300,000. Impressive, for sure. But why drop such a number? Because Google did first, of course.

Let’s recap. In May, at Google I/O, Google announced it was activating 100,000 Android units a day.  By June, that number had jumped to 160,000. And in August, CEO Eric Schmidt announced Android activations were up to 200,000 units a day. The subtle implications of each of these numbers was that Android was growing so fast that it was leaving Apple in the dust. Obviously, Jobs didn’t like that too much.

So in September, Jobs used his time on stage at an Apple event to announce that Apple was actually activating 230,000 iOS devices a day. Further, he called into question whether Google was counting upgrades in their numbers. “We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers,” Jobs said.

Within hours, Google responded: “The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

At the time, I joked that it would probably take a day for Google to announce they were now activating 250,000 units a day. Turns out it took about 30 days. In an interview with Newsweek, Android chief Andy Rubin noted that some days Android activations do surpass 250,000.

And so today we have Jobs one-upping that with the 270,000 number — topped with the 300,000 number on some days.

It’s worth noting that Apple is very deliberate in announcing their numbers in terms of “iOS devices” and not just “iPhones”. Apple has never clarified this, but you have to assume they mean all iOS devices — meaning iPads and iPod touches as well.

Press conference from Google announcing 301,000 Android activations a day in 5, 4, 3, 2…

[photo: flickr/tony hue]

High-definition video calling startup Wham! announced today a $3 million dollar Series A investment lead by Santa Monica’s Palomar Ventures. While Wham! representatives have still not responded to my calls about what exactly their as-of-yet-un-launched Vuu product is (the press release says “product undisclosed”), I’m assuming it’s some kind of consumer-focused, video-call-optimized phone — based on the WhamInc.com website images and copy.

Founded by Matthew Shoemake, Wham! will be using the new financing to accelerate its product launch in 2011, pouring the money into marketing and software engineering. Whatever the final Wham! “revolutionary video product with a friends and family value proposition” is, it faces stiff competition from Apple’s Facetime and web-based services like Skype and TokBox, which already make video calling from home as simple and inexpensive as possible.

Wham! has $4.5 million in funding to date from seed investors, the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, the North Texas Angel Network and Palomar Ventures.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced the launch of a new feature called “Download Your Information”. The feature is fairly self-explanatory: hit a button, and Facebook will compile an archive of all the data you’ve ever uploaded to the site — photos, videos, messages, and more — which you can download in a handy Zip file for archival purposes. Given how much content people are storing on Facebook these days this is great news, but it’s got one catch: your archive will be missing anything that appeared on your Facebook Wall prior to mid-2006.

The Wall has long been one of Facebook’s most popular features, allowing friends to leave each other brief notes and links in a semi-public area, and in the days before News Feed it was the main way people interacted with each other on the site. I’d looked forward to reliving (or at least, skimming) the birthday greetings, lewd jokes, and awkward invites left on my profile in days of yore, so I was a bit miffed when my stroll down memory lane was cut short.

But most people on Facebook won’t care. While the site currently has over 500 million users, in summer 2006 the total was more like 10 million, so this only affects, at most, around 2% of the current userbase. And the Wall is the only feature that’s affected — your messages and photos are all intact regardless of when they were posted.

So why is Facebook cutting off Wall content posted before summer 2006? The feature is relatively ancient by Facebook standards, launching back in September 2004 when the site was still restricted to college students. It comes as little surprise that the Wall has been re-architected multiple times through the years, and it apparently isn’t trivial for the site to access content posted prior to summer 2006 (you’ll notice that even if you manually scroll down your Wall instead of relying on the ‘Download Your Information’ archive, it will still cut off around this time).

A Facebook spokesperson says that the company will “continue to evaluate this as we get more usage and feedback”, which makes me think that if enough people complain they could do the legwork to offer your entire Wall. Given that few people seem to have noticed the omission so far though, I’m doubting that’s going to happen.

Image by PYoakum on Flickr

Well, that’s that. I kind of had my hopes up for an iPad “suite” including a smaller and larger device, but no less a personage than Steve Jobs himself has dismissed any idea of there being a smaller iPad than the one currently on the market. Or rather, he suggested that they’ll work fine if they come with sandpaper to file your fingers down to the size needed to make a 7″ tablet usable. Tell us how you really feel, Steve.

Yes, he had less than kind words for the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which he derided as “tweeners,” criticism echoing my own from before the iPad’s debut. Their limited app selection also came under fire, and the conclusion was that these tablets will be “DOA.” I couldn’t agree more, though considering the many valid criticisms of the iPad, I would phrase it perhaps as Churchill might have: “The iPad is the worst tablet available, except for all other on the market.”

Continue reading…

Justin Hartfield of WeedMaps is about as ballsy as entrepreneurs get. I mean that as a compliment. Not only is he building an online business that facilitates and profits off of the recreational use of marijuana– which let’s remember is still illegal in the United States– but he’s essentially rushing his small company out into the public markets, via a reverse merger with the mostly-unknown LC Luxuries Limited, which will build a new business around all things cannabis.

Between the anticipated closing of the deal, which will make WeedMaps essentially a publicly traded company on the Pink Sheets and California’s vote on a proposition to legalize marijuana, the next month will be huge for Hartfield– one way or another. Meanwhile revenues are soaring. WeedMaps was making $20,000 a month a year ago, made $300,000 in August and $400,000 in September– all off of just 50,000 registered users.

Obviously, the money-making potential is huge, but is there a greater moral issue here? Hartfield doesn’t see one. Hartfield was the guest on NBC’s Press:Here this week, where he discussed a unique dilemma in Silicon Valley: Having a $120 billion market to yourself in which no VCs want to invest. It’s a reality that’s driven him to this odd, back-door IPO.

It’s also helping make his company a cause. “We want to make buying a share in this company like buying a share in the legalization of marijuana cause,” he says. Hartfield — so unabashedly libertarian he could make Peter Thiel swoon– thinks markets are better ways of assessing public opinion than media or political polls. So, he argues, if people vote with their money for WeedMaps, it’ll be a proxy for how people feel about the practicality of legalization, which he sees as an inevitability. (Morality aside, I take issue with his certainty in this clip. Even in gung-ho California, some medical marijuana advocates oppose recreational legalization.)

But the deal is about more than just finding a way to go public. The new company will acquire and roll-up several smaller companies, likely also around the cannabis issue. Meanwhile, Hartfield is doing a weed/Web landgrab, taking nearly every business model that’s worked on the Web and building a weed version. His core site is like Yelp for weed, containing a database of more than 25,000 strains, where they can be found and reviews on dispensaries and headshops. He even offers an “elite” status.

The company has another site called WeedVote.com that helps get out the legalization vote, and the newly launched WeedMart.com is an online headship and he’s about to launch a new daily deals site for pot– that’s right, yet another Groupon clone, this time to get high. There’s also a feature called “Weed or Skin”– like Hot or Not but where you vote for scantily clad women or pictures of pot. I’m not kidding. While Hartfield isn’t the first to try to make money off of a vice, he revels in it more than most. “We don’t like to be hypocritical, and we don’t think there should be arbitrary differences between recreational and medicinal,” he says. This is clearly as much about the cause as it is about the company for him. Agree with his stance or not, you have to respect the conviction.

In the clip below, Hartfield talks about America’s “chronic fear of freedom” and the challenges he’s faced building this business. Go here for the full episode, which includes his rebuttal to medical marijuana advocates that say recreational legalization is bad for those who need the drug for medical reasons

Clearly the most interesting part of Apple’s Q4 earnings call today was a surprise visit by CEO Steve Jobs. Just prior to the Q&A portion of the call, Jobs went into a 5-minute rant about the state of both the smartphone and tablet markets. Notably, he went directly after Google and their “open system” and he laughed off the idea that the iPad will have any real competition. We already have a post on why Jobs thinks “open systems don’t always win“, but below, find the full audio as well, as captured by SAI.

Amazing stuff. Open versus closed, the idea of “open“, fragmentation, tablet price points, etc. Jobs doesn’t mince words here — it’s a must-listen.

More:

• Apple Q4: $20B Revenue, $4B Profits, 3.89M Macs, 14.1M iPhones, 4.19M iPads — All New Records
• Steve Jobs: Apple Has Already Sold Over 250,000 New Apple TVs
• Steve Jobs: “Open Systems Don’t Always Win”
• Steve Jobs: “The iPad Is Clearly Going To Affect Notebook Computers”
• Apple And Google: The Activation Pissing Match Continues

[thanks Alexander]

Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page management tools to brands, has just raised $23 million in Series C Funding led by Institutional Venture Partners with SoftBank Capital, Greycroft Partners, and Bay Partners participating in the round. This brings the company’s total funding to over $33 million.

Buddy Media offers brand marketers and agencies and all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a variety of languages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don’t need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily.

While Buddy Media also offered a Twitter Management System, it appears that the company is moving away from other social networks to focus its resources on Facebook.

Buddy Media is profitable, and growing 15 percent each month in terms of revenue. Buddy Media’s main revenue stream is from licensing its SaaS platform to clients. And a number of well-known brands and organizations are using Buddy Media’s platform including Budweiser, NBC’s iVillage, designer Tory Burch, the NHL and the Dallas Cowboys. Currently, 300 brands and agencies are using Buddy Media, which is up from 100 clients earlier this year.

The new funding will be mainly used towards additional product development and hiring of more sales and marketing employees, says CEO and founder Michael Lazerow. While he declined to give us any revenue numbers, he did tell us earlier this year that the the company is on track to make $20 million in sales this year.

Lazerow says he believes strongly in the Facebook platform; and will soon be launching a designated Places product to allow businesses to create customized Places pages.

There has been some debate in recent weeks whether or not the tablet industry has been or will be affecting the sales of notebook computers. Perhaps you recall Best Buy’s CEO saying this was happening recently — then saying he didn’t mean to say that. Or something. Well, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was much more clear today on Apple’s Q4 earnings call. “The iPad is clearly going to affect notebook computers,” Jobs said.

Seeing as the iPad is practically the entire tablet industry right now, it shouldn’t be hugely surprising that Jobs is so bullish. But remember that Apple is still very much in the computer business — especially the notebook computer business. But this past quarter represented the first quarter in which iPad sales overtook Mac sales (4.19 million versus 3.89 million). And remember, this is only the second quarter the iPad has been on sale (and it actually almost beat the Mac in its first quarter). “I think the iPad proves it’s not a question of ‘if’ but a question of ‘when’,” Jobs continued.

Jobs went on to say that the ecosystem is going to continue to change over the next few years. He noted how surprised the company already is by the interest in the iPad among businesses. “It’s being grabbed out of our hands,” he said, despite Apple not making a big push in that area just yet.

“The more time that passes, the more I am convinced we have a tiger byt he tail here,” Jobs said. He credited the millions of people being trained on the iPhone with the quick transition to this new form of computing that is already starting to take place. We agree.

Of course, we’ll see what happens when a certain new type of notebook hits the stage in a few days.

The thing about Scamville is, whenever all the bad press about ripoffs dies down everyone in the ecosystem just jumps right back in. There’s just way too much money to be made by everyone from Facebook on down to the guys actually performing the swindle.

Tatto Media is behind this most recent scam (they were also a protagonist in the original Scamville). But the offer aggregators, including our old friends Offerpal and SuperRewards, got in on it too.

Last year it was mostly about mobile subscription scams and Video Professor. But these things always evolve. The newest scam is this: Free movie/tv posters.

You can see the offer at a site called Wazo.com at http://www.wozo.com/movies/v1/promo.php. Just don’t sign up. I did, to test it, and I’ll probably need to cancel my credit card and get a new one issued now.

Here’s how it works. You are offered social currency on a Facebook app (or MySpace, etc.), and all you have to do is sign up for a free poster that is normally $10. There’s a $0.99 shipping charge that they’re very upfront about, but no other charges are ever mentioned.

I chose a Jacob poster from the Twilight movies. Edward is just too emo for me, and I think if I frame the Jacob print just right it will look great in my living room.

Step two is adding my shipping address. It autofilled my email and phone number, which is creepy. Step three is the credit card info, and it still just says $0.99. Step four is the end, a confirmed purchase and a promise the print will be shipped out shortly. I’ve put screenshots of the purchase flow below.

Here’s what happens next – I get charged $30 per month forever on my credit card. The terms and conditions go over this in the fine print and there’s a phone number to call to cancel. I waited 20 minutes on hold and then hung up.

Here’s a link to complaints about the offer on Facebook, and a Ripoff Report note on it as well.

The company behind the scam is Adapp Solutions, which has some affiliation to Tatto. Although Tatto isn’t very forthcoming about it all.

Here a fairly funny series of emails on this.

From source:

I know you wrote a lot about Scamville. One of the worst players at that time was Tattoomedia (http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/scamville-the-social-gaming-ecosystem-of-hell/), who later had to pay 500k in a law suit because they continued running one of their scam offers (http://www.atg.wa.gov/pressrelease.aspx?id=22284).

They are in the game again, this time with a new offer called ‘Wozo Poster’ (http://www.wozo.com/movies/v1/promo.php?afid=150431). I know Tattoomedia runs this one, because the owner of Tattoo contacted me personally to run ‘his offer’. At Wozo people can ‘get a poster for only 0.99 cents’. A few days later people are charged 30 bucks, a small ‘detail’ listed somewhere in their T&C which as always is impossible to find. People that want to cancel their subscription told me that there is no phone number. Emails are completed ignored. In other words: There is just no way to cancel and being charged. A simple search on ‘Wozo scam’ on google will tell you enough. Thousands of scam reports.

Anyway, the sad thing is that Wozo contacted ALL affiliate networks. Even the larger networks have picked up the offer, and are promoting it like crazy. I got at least 10 different networks contacting me if I want to run this offer on my website. With a crazy high convert rate (‘wow, only 99 cents for a poster’), and 15 dollar payout for the networks, it’s big bucks for them. Meanwhile they lots of people are caught in the scam, as there is no way to cancel for them.

So I emailed Tatto to ask them. CEO Lin Miao responded:

No we don’t own Wozo.com, we’re promoting it though through another network. I am not aware of the complaints, can you forward them?

I emailed Lin links to the complaints and this email from Tatto cofounder Andrew Bachman, originally sent on September 9, to a potential partner:

From: Andrew Bachman

Hey its Andy Founder of Tatto. My partner and I have recently founded a poster subscription offer called Wozo. Check out the LPwww.wozo.com/movies/v1/promo.php
PERFECT for incentivized traffic, and GPT sites like [removed].

Currently the top performing offer on Offerpal and Superrewards. Sign up at http://affiliate.wozo.com and shoot me an email when you have done so, and we can do whatever paperwork is neccessary for you.

Lin responded:

Andrew left Tatto Media few months ago. We have taken down his offer from Tatto Media.

You can contact him for questions at [email protected]

Ok. Except Brachman says he’s still an employee of Tatto. And anyway it doesn’t really matter. Because Bachman, Lin, Offerpal, Superrewards, the apps developers and Facebook are all getting a cut. And as long as the money is flowing and there are no laws to stop this, people will continue to get ripped off.

I did send just one more email though.

To: [email protected]

You are such an asshat.

No response to that one yet.

Apple is often criticized for building products which aren’t as open as they could be, and competitors like Google make a point about how much more open Android phones are than iPhones. But Steve Jobs is unapologetic about Apple’s approach, which is to tightly control how everything integrates from the chips to the software to the industrial design. During Apple’s earnings call today, Jobs pointed out that “open systems don’t always win.”

But he also tried to reframe the debate. “Open versus closed is a smokescreen,” he argues. “Google likes to characterize Android as open and iOS as closed. We think this is disingenuous.” The real difference between the iPhone and Android is, he says, “integrated versus fragmented.” Depending on the carrier and manufacturer, different Android phones runs different versions of Android. Developers are left having to create multiple versions of their apps to work across different Android devices. “The user is left to figure it out,” says Jobs “Compare that to iPhone, where every app is the same.”

The real question, says Jobs, is: “What is best for the customer—integrated versus fragmented? We think this is a huge strength of our system versus Google’s. When selling to people who want their devices to just work, we think integrated wins every time. We are committed to the integrated approach. We are confident it will triumph over Google’s fragmented approach.”

Jobs sees Android as the iPhone’s biggest, and only real competitor. At the beginning of the call, he dismissed RIM (maker of the Blackberry phones) out of hand: “We’ve now past RIM, and I don’t see them catching up to us in the near future.”

In terms of competition with Android, he acknowledges that Android pulled ahead in the June quarter while Apple was transitioning to the iPhone 4. But he almost sounded gleeful when anticipating this quarter’s tally. He complains that there is “no solid data on how many Android phones are shipped each quarter.” While we’re still waiting for the numbers from analyst firms like Gartner, he pointed out that 275,000 iPhones and other iOS devices (iPods and iPads) are activated every day, compared to the last update from Google, which was 200,000 Android activations a day. Reading between the lines, Jobs seems fairly confident that the Gartner estimates for the quarter will show iPhone shipments once again taking the lead. Otherwise, why bring them up?

More:

• Listen To Steve Jobs Rip Into Android And The Upcoming Tablet Competition [Audio]
• Apple And Google: The Activation Pissing Match Continues

This week “Ask a VC” is heading back to the burgeoning power base of East Coast Web 2.0 investors with Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital answering your questions.

Spark is a young firm built to capitalize on new media before that was a well-worn buzz phrase. They must be doing something right because they just secured their second $360 million fund last week. Sabet has been a big part of that with investments in Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee and others.

Send in your questions now to AskaVC(at)TechCrunch(dot)com.