January 2010

Tempted by Google's new Nexus One phone but having second thoughts? If you're going to break your two-year contract on the subsidized model, make sure you do it in one of two ways: within 14 days of acquiring the phone or after four months of phone usage. Canceling at any point between 14 days and 120 days subjects you to a set of terrific fees, payable both to Google and T-Mobile. And these go far beyond just paying back the device subsidy.

In this terms of sale document, Google makes clear that "you agree to pay Google an equipment subsidy recovery fee (the 'Equipment Recovery Fee') equal to the difference between the full price of the Nexus handheld device without service plan and the price you paid for the Nexus handheld device if you cancel your wireless plan prior to 120 days of continuous wireless service." This Equipment Recovery Fee will run US users $350 under the currently available T-Mobile subsidy plan, and Google will charge it to the credit card used during the device purchase. Well, fair enough; if a phone is subsidized by a two-year service contract, one could argue that it's only right to pay back the remaining subsidy when you cancel. But Google goes on to note that "the Equipment Recovery Fee is imposed by Google and not your chosen carrier and is in addition to any early termination fees that may be charged by your chosen carrier in connection with termination of your wireless plan prior to fulfillment of your chosen carrier's service agreement term." It also stresses that this fee is not a "penalty." A look at T-Mobile's terms and conditions makes clear that you'll be paying a hefty second fee if you cancel within those first four months.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Consumer Protection Chief David Vladeck question whether the Internet had evolved past privacy policies. Both have signaled to Internet publishers and advertisers that they expect the commission to take a more active role in safeguarding consumer privacy.

Previous commissions looked at privacy under the framework of whether consumers were harmed, and with the basis that companies must advise consumers about what they're doing and obtain their consent, Chairman Leibowitz said. But companies "haven't given consumers effective notice, so they can make effective choices," he said. Advise-and-consent "depended on the fiction that people were meaningfully giving consent," Vladeck said. "The literature is clear" that few people read privacy policies, he said. While first-party uses of data were generally within consumers' reasonable expectations, he said, more questions arose around data brokers, data aggregators, social networks, cloud computing and mobile marketing.

Media heavyweights are supporting an effort to toss out a subpoena for notes and grades of Northwestern University journalism students, their professor and an investigator in the case of a Harvey man the students believe was wrongfully convicted of killing a security guard.

The Cook County state's attorney's office also is seeking unpublished videos, grading criteria and e-mails from the Medill Innocence Project investigation in the case involving Anthony McKinney, convicted of the 1978 shotgun slaying of the guard in south suburban Harvey. Northwestern attorneys have fought the subpoena, saying the students, professor David Protess and private investigator Sergio Serritella were working as journalists when they gathered affidavits, documents and videotaped interviews. On Monday, an attorney representing the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, CBS News, the Washington Post and the Hearst Corp. -- in addition to a dozen other news-gathering organizations -- filed a brief in Cook County Circuit Court opposing the forced surrender of the material.

Of all the hype generated by the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, few products generated more headlines and heat than tablet PCs. Personal-computer industry officials showed off their newest table wares to varying degrees of excitement. But the main question facing any company looking to get into the tablet-PC market is whether the hype coming out of CES will amount to acceptance among consumers and translate into real sales. It's an issue that has dogged tablet PCs for years.

"Every couple of years it seems like everybody tried something new with tablets," said J.P. Gownder, vice president at Forrester Research. "So, why is there so much interest now?" Analysts say that while it is too early to tell how much traction tablets will gain among potential buyers, the state of technology is such that there might finally be the right mix of applications, hardware and mobility available to make tablet PCs more than just a niche device in a market already crowded with gadgets designed to deal with almost any computing need a person may have. Gownder estimates that devices that could be considered tablet PCs date back to the Toshiba Dynapad, released in 1992. The latest era of tablets can be traced to late 2002, when Microsoft released the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition operating system.

While tablet PCs have found some market niches such as medical, government and military applications, other devices -- smart phones, digital music players, netbooks and, most recently, e-book readers -- have take precedence among mainstream consumers, effectively turning the tablet into a novelty rather than a technological necessity. That could be about to change, as a combination of better applications and mobility has made tablet PCs more feasible, according to Stephen Baker of NPD Group.