Twitter has decided to offer the Do-Not Track (DNT) privacy option as this news was first announced by FTC Chief Technology Officer Ed Felten at a Thursday conference in New York.   Confirmation of the statement was made on a microblogging site along with a Tweet that said: “We applaud the FTC’s leadership on DNT.”  Going forward Twitter will abide by user requests to withhold tracking of their online behavior, which standouts from Facebook and Google which regularly track user data as part of their business models.    The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, along with Mozilla, and privacy advocates have been strong supporters of the DNT initiative.   

As Verizon expands its 4G LTE wireless network, customers that wish to move from their existing 3G to 4G LTE will need to leave their unlimited plans behind as they are offered data plans with limits. "As you upgrade in the future, you will have to go onto the data-share plan," Fran Shammo, CFO of Verizon Communications said. "A lot of our 3G base is unlimited. As they start to migrate into 4G, they will have to … go into the data-share plan. And that is beneficial for us."    In July 2011, Verizon no longer offered its $30 unlimited data plan to new customers, choosing instead to reserve the unlimited data plan to current 3G or upgrading 4G LTE customers.

As Research in Motion (RIM) stock falls at the precipitous rate of 80 % over the last 24 months, the company still believes that there is still a place for BlackBerry in a market dominated by Apple iPhone and Google’s Android.   Even though many have predicted an unpleasant ending to RIM’s story,   some industry watchers maintain there is still a place in the Enterprise for BlackBerry.  “Everyone is chasing Apple at the moment, [but] RIM is really the only company that might be able to supply a complete alternative to the iPhone clones the market is awash with at the moment,” technologist analyst Rob Enderle said to FoxNews.com.     The road ahead is filled with challenges for the company as it posted its first quarter loss in March, which was a significant $125 million.

The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is consuming lots of digital ink on blogs, IT managers are wrestling with the problems created by it, and a growing number of vendors are addressing the issue with innovative new solutions.  But when we talk about the “Device” in BYOD, what do we really mean?  I contend that BYOD should really be BYODA:  Bring Your Own Devices and Applications (remember, you saw it here first!).

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s time as the company’s chief executive was cut short after Yahoo took steps to regain creditability after Thompson’s biographical information came into question.   Thompson listed two degrees in both accounting and computer science from Stonehill College, however it was later discovered that the computer science degree was never obtained.    Yahoo initially referred to the biographical discrepancy as an “inadvertent error”, however an outcry was heard from key investors, employees and governance personnel and the company then took steps to set up a special committee review. After a full investigation, the circumstances regarding the fabrication were brought to light.   "Yahoo has a circuitous way of getting to the right answer, but I believe they have gotten to it," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan.  Thompson submitted his resignation over the weekend.

Microsoft announced big changes to its Bing search engine which gets data from both Facebook and Twitter.   Industry analysts say the changes in the latest Bing revision represent perhaps the biggest changes since the service was launched about 3 years ago.   The newly defined search results will be folded into three columns as the new revision will be unveiled during the next few weeks.    The left column will display standard search results, while the middle column is reserved for tasks such as maps and restaurant reviews. The right hand column, which is being labeled as the “social sidebar”, tracks friends likes and dislikes on a topic such as restaurants, if you happened to search for restaurants.   There are also some new interactive features that allow users to ask questions and friends can post responses from Bing or Facebook. The social sidebar will give opinions on a range of topics with comments from both enthusiasts and experts.

This week Symantec introduced its mobile application management technology based on technology that came with its recent Nukona acquisition.   As part of its endpoint-protection portfolio, the newest Symantec product has been designed to seal the corporate application inside a layer of code that safeguards against data leaving a phone without complying with corporate IT policies.   With this application protection layer, people can use their mobile phone for personal use without putting the corporate data at risk.   This product is seen as being especially timely as corporations are challenged with protecting corporate data assessed by personal mobile devices which are commonly referred to as bring-your-own-device (BYOD). "Malware on mobile devices right now is a pretty minor consideration for companies," Jack Gold, analyst and founder of J.Gold Associates, commented. "What is a problem is data leakage and the ability for people who have mobile devices to lose corporate data."   Symantec will make the technology available for on-site software and software over the internet enabling organizations to manage HTML5, Google Android, and Apple IOS applications.

After regulators pressured AT&T to abandon its T-Mobile acquisition plans, some analysts wondered if it could stay competitive going it alone. Now America’s fourth largest carrier has disclosed plans to make its network iPhone compatible later this year, as well disclosing investment plans for its infrastructure to deploy high-speed LTE in 2013.   As part of the failed acquisition, AT&T had agreed to pay T-Mobile’s parent company Deutsche Telekom $4 billion cash and assets, including a $1 billion wireless spectrum.    The company said it intends to “refarm” some frequencies allowing the iPhone to perform at 3G speeds in many major markets by the end of 2012.   Currently T-Mobile is carrying about one million unlocked iPhones on its network running at first generation iPhone 2G levels.   All signs seem to indicate that T-mobile is preparing for the next iPhone launch in the fall.

Although the partial jury decision indicates that Google infringed upon Oracle’s copyright of Java APIs during its development of the Android operating system, however it also determined that Google did not trespass on Oracle’s Java documentation copyrights.    The incomplete verdict came down after the jury had trouble developing a consensus on whether Google’s usage of Oracle APIs was actually fair use.   Allowable fair use hinges upon the purpose of the copying, the creativity of the work copied, copy quality and quantity, and market impact. 

 Those who believe that email is on its way out are both wrong and right:

• Wrong, in the sense that email continues to be used more today than it was last year as its ubiquity and ease of use make it an invaluable utility for most users. Despite the fact that young people are supposedly abandoning email in favor of text messaging, social media and other, newer forms of communications, the corporations that will hire them are not

• Right, in the sense that email is changing (or at least needs to change) as a communications tool in its own right to something of a portal for a wide variety of communication modes.