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Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell what Nokia’s real problem is here.

Nokia, for example, has a few thousand patents dealing with UMTS alone while this one, #7,599,665, seems to deal specfically with radio hand-off between GSM/EDGE, UMTS, and WiFi.

It was another bleak quarter for the New York Times, which keeps on shrinking. The New York Times announced third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were down 17 percent to $571 million. Of that advertising revenues decreased 27 percent to $291 million, and the online advertising portion was down 8.2 percent to $68 million.

The earnings report follows yet more newsroom cuts of 100 people announced last week.

There is a ray of hope, though, that the worst may be behind the storied newspaper company. Last quarter, advertising revenues declined an even steeper 32 percent, and online advertising was down 15.5 percent. So maybe this is the first step on its way back to positive territory. Here are the year-over-year declines in online advertising revenues for each of the past four quarters.

Annual Decline In Internet Advertising Revenues

4Q08: -3.5%
1Q09: -6.1%
2Q09: -15.5%
3Q09: -8.2%

Another interesting data point is that because its print advertising revenues are shrinking at a faster rate than its Internet advertising revenues, the Internet portion is actually a bigger percentage (23.5%) of the New York Times’ total advertising revenues than it was year ago (when it was 18.6%). So nearly a quarter of the New York Times’ total advertising dollars now come from online. Depending on which type of advertising recovers faster, that percentage may continue to grow.

(Remember, the New York Times also has circulation revenues, so Internet advertising is still a smaller percentage of total revenues).

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Sportswear giant Nike has a nifty application in the App Store that allows you to create custom sneakers and order them straight away, with just a couple of taps. The app is in fact a mobile extension of NIKEiD, a program that allows customer to order personalized Nike shoes straight from the manufacturer. And an excellent extension it is.

The free app (iTunes link) has been available on the App Store since the beginning of this month, but surprisingly there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about it. Even despite this excellent video about it (embedded below).

Windows 7 is your idea, friends. That’s what this new spot – along with some 7 second demos after the jump – is trying to say. It’s basically pointing out that Windows 7 is a nice, clean update. Yes, I would agree it’s a Vista Service Pack and, in a way, it’s kind of like Snow Leopard in that it changes little in the UI but improves quite a bit under the hood. But Windows 7 is Microsoft’s big product for 2010 so let’s let them have their day in the sun.

You can also watch the Win7 launch live right here.

Microsoft has set up a Twitter account called @MicrosoftHelps and aims to provide Windows 7 customer support on the hot micro-sharing service, writes Sarah Perez over at Channel 10.

The account has been around for a week or so but hasn’t been met with much attention so far. That’s a shame, because I honestly think it’s really interesting to see Microsoft set up a customer service channel on Twitter, much like Best Buy recently amazed me with its @Twelpforce endeavors.

According to Perez, the company even talked to Best Buy to learn more about what it could do on Twitter.

The new Twitter account is English only and will initially focus solely on trying to support Twitter users who have questions about or issues with Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7, which is being debuted all around the world today. It might be expanding it to include more Microsoft products later on.

Microsoft reportedly also said that it doesn’t expect to be able to answer all queries at all times, but that’s only logical. Judging from the background image on the account, there are four people managing the account at this point.

Rumor has it Apple is considering setting up a similar channel on Twitter to assist people.
Nah, just kidding.

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Last night we broke the news that location-based mobile social network Loopt had acquired GraffitiGeo, a fellow Y Combinator-backed startup that launched only a few months ago. Neither company was willing to comment on the acqusition last night, but earlier today they finally confirmed it and opened up to share some of the logic behind the deal.

GraffitiGeo launched in August, when I described it as a ‘Foursquare meets Yelp, with a dash of augmented reality’. The service invites users to review local restaurants and other venues in a manner that’s similar to Yelp, but encourages them to leave very brief descriptions (or just thumbs up/thumbs down) instead of the longer reviews you’ll find on other sites. Alongside these reviews there’s also a gaming element similar to foursquare that rewards players with points whenever they leave a comment. There’s also a system that lets you earn more points if you team up with your friends.

Loopt CEO Sam Altman says that he came across GraffitiGeo while the product will still early on in the Y Combinator program (Loopt is a YC alum), and that he took notice of the app’s feature set which paralleled some of the areas Loopt is interested in as well. In particular, he says Loopt has been exploring location-based social gaming, local reviews, and augmented reality (which is another area GraffitiGeo has experimented in), so the company seemed like a good fit. He says he was also impressed with the team, which he describes as “super smart” — founders Nikhil Pandit, Teng Siong Ong, and Jared Tame are all joining Loopt as part of the deal. Altman wouldn’t comment on it, but there’s one final GraffitiGeo feature that Loopt is likely very interested in: a platform for local business advertising.

Altman wouldn’t get into specifics as far as how GraffitiGeo’s features will be integrated with Loopt, but he says we’ll be seeing some changes very soon. He says he’s excited to see what happens with GraffitiGeo, which has around 20,000 total users, when parts of it are built into Loopt, which adds 20,000 in a single day.

Coincidentally, GraffitiGeo released a much improved new iPhone application today on the App Store. You can grab it here. At this point it isn’t clear if Loopt will keep GraffitiGeo as a separate application indefinitely, or if it will be rolled into Loopt, but there are no immediate plans to combine the services.

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After months of negotiations and holding both off at bay, Twitter now has agreements with both Bing and Google to give them access to its full feed of public Tweets. Both search engines have been yearning to drink directly from Twitter’s the realtime firehose of micro-messages and all that they carry. A rudimentary version of Bing’s Twitter search is already live, and it will soon add public Facebook updates to its search results as well.

While financial terms of the deals were not disclosed, full access to Twitter’s data stream is very valuable to both search engines. Depending on how much Twitter was able squeeze out of Google and Bing for these licensing deals, they are likely to provide its first major source of revenue. (Imagine, if they have to pay by the Tweet).

Tweets and other realtime data streams are valuable to Google and Bing because for many types of searches (news, events, sports, stocks, shopping, etc.), the most recent information is often the most relevant. And it’s hard to beat millions of people Tweetng out their thoughts—the “pulse of the planet,” if you will—for realtime information about every subject imaginable. Google and Bing need access to this stream of data if they want to keep their results fresh and relevant.

Up until now, they had to try to index Twitter’s site selectively by concentrating on high-profile Twitterers like celebrities. Twitter wouldn’t let their robots gobble up and index every Tweet because its servers wouldn’t be able to take that kind of pounding. But Twitter didn’t just want to hand over the feed of all of its public Tweets (the firehose) to the search engines without getting paid for it either.

Now that Google and Bing are getting the firehose, it could have a big impact on search results. For the search engines, the firehose is much more valuable than any single Tweet. They can index it and sift it, looking for patterns and spikes in keywords and shared links to get a better sense of what people across the Web are paying attention to at any given moment. This data can then be folded back into regular search results, even if the top result isn’t a Tweet.

For example, if a link to a post about healthcare reform on an obscure blog suddenly gains currency and is retweeted hundreds of times, that is a signal to perhaps rank that link higher in searches about “healthcare reform.” If people stop Tweeting about it, then maybe it goes down in the ranking. But Google and Bing can use the firehose as a rich source of signals to mine and then blend back into regular search results.

Of course, Tweets and other micro-messages will become part of results. And how the search engines display them and rank them will also determine how relevant their results are. Here is where it gets interesting because realtime search is a hard problem that has not yet been solved. Do you show the most recent, random Tweets first, or the ones with the most authority? And how do you rank a Tweet? We already have PageRank, but what we now need is StreamRank.

Many startups are tackling this problem, as is Twitter itself. And now Google and Bing can try their hand at finding the most important bits of data in the firehose. The results should be a more relevant, faster feedback loop between data appearing on the Internet and the search engines finding it.

Photo credit: Flickr/ZeroOne

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Appsfire, the service for sharing iPhone Apps with anyone, has announced that they are doing a contest called App Star Awards, in partnership with SFR/AppliStore and LeWeb.

The idea is very simple. Anyone that has a legit iPhone application that doesn’t require jailbreaking, can submit a 30 second video to the contest, even if the app is not totally finished. 30 clips will be preselected, 10 in each category — games, entertainment, utility and other. Those clips will be reviewed and rated by a jury (full list below). Three winners, one in each category, will get a check of $1,500 and a free ad campaign with participating partners.

The results will be announced on stage at LeWeb in Paris on December 9th. TechCrunch Europe is organizing the startup competition in partnership with LeWeb.

AppsFire is currently taking pre-registrations on the site, but submissions will open on November 23.

The full list of jury members:

Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Loic Le Meur (Seesmic.com)
Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb.com)
Robert Scoble
Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
Jean Francois Caillard (SFR)
Eyal Magen (Gigya)
Rani Cohen (TuneWiki)
David Sifry (Offbeat Guides, Technorati)
David Marcus (Zong)
Zee M Kane (TheNextWeb, WeDoCreative)
Patrick Jordan, Just Another iPhone Blog
Yaron Samid (TechAviv.com)
Louis Gray
Daniel Brusilovsky

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Social gaming companies like Zynga and Playdom have proven that casual/social gaming can be an extremely lucrative business. But their success can’t be solely attributed to the quality of their games — they’re also finely tuned to maximize their virality. Users are often asked to invite their friends to join them, or publish stories to their accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other services. Today HeyZap, the startup that helps Flash games get distribution and monetize effectively, is launching a new “Viral API” that helps developers integrate similar features into their own games.

Co-founder Jude Gomila says that up until now, developers have had to figure out how to implement these syndication features on their own — now they’ll be able to do it quickly using HeyZap’s APIs. To put the API to the test, HeyZap built a game called Balloon Boy Game (in honor of last week’s horror story-turned-scandal), which allows users to share the game with their friends via Facebook and Twitter. Over the course of a few days, the game saw 4 million game plays and 5,000 tweets. This was no doubt helped by the timeliness of the game, but it’s likely that the viral loop played a significant role.

HeyZap is also seeing growing support from publishers, who like to use the service because it allows them to monetize Flash games that they used to host for free — whenever a developer integrates HeyZap payments into their game and someone purchases something, the publisher hosting the game gets a cut. Recent additions to HeyZap’s client roster include College Humor and ebaum’s world.

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MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta is here at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. He sat down with Federated Media’s John Battelle to answer some questions about his company.

Van Natta clearly had a strategy for this Q&A: To say “the socialization of content” as much as possible. That’s the direction he wants to lead the social network in as it attempts to prove it can exist in a world where Facebook has passed it as the dominant social network.

So what does the catchphrase mean? Van Natta thinks MySpace has a unique position on the web because of its music deals with all the major labels and the independent ones. And because it’s a much more open network than Facebook, he believes this will work to MySpace’s advantage in helping people find content.

And that’s why Van Natta had not one, but two announcements today surrounding MySpace Music. The first is a dashboard that artists can use to see analytics about who is visiting their page and listening to their music on the network. The second is a single hub for all music video content. (We covered both more in-depth here) Again, this is possible because of MySpace’s unique music deals with the labels, Van Natta stressed.

Van Natta wouldn’t comment on the talk that Google is unhappy with the major ad deal the signed in 2006 and is set to expire next year. He did say that MySpace has always been great at monetizing its site and losing any one deal would not be a major blow.

Earlier today, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s keyword was “sharing.” That’s essentially what Van Natta is saying too, but he’s betting that his more open network and strong media ties will differentiate it.

Find the full Q&A below (paraphrased):

JB: So, did you do a deal with Twitter (laughs)? What are you doing with MySpace?

OV: What we’re doing with MySpace is what me and Rupert first talked about it. We think it can be the next generation of digital distribution of content on the web. It’s happening through people and not through portals. It’s the “socialization of content.”

JB: To the crowd: How many people have a MySpace page (maybe 20%), how many have a Facebook Page? (everyone). So how is MySpace different, why use it?

OV: We think we’re different from Facebook because you don’t have to have a real connection to use it. Maybe you use it to discover music. Music tastes get influenced by your friends. Also movies. These are touchstones in relationships. You shouldn’t have to know them in the socialization of content.

JB: MySpace Music is a very big deal. How is music playing into this strategy? Does that box competition out?

OV: Music is a great example of our socialization of content. Everyone loves music across all demographics. Our music label relationships are unique and that gives us content that other networks don’t have. MySpace is the only place you can go today to stream all the music you want. And every band out there today has a presence on MySpace.

And today we’re launching an Artist Dashboard (more on that here). This is our first example of our integration with iLike, the deal we recently closed. You can see all kinds of data. Geographic breakdowns, etc. There was a huge demand for things like this from artists. And they can use this data beyond the web – like when they think about tour dates. This will be available to all artists.

And we can extend this across other entertainment models.

JB: Will you charge for it?

OV: I think we’ll find other ways to monetize. One more product announcement is that we’re launching the full catalog of music videos from all the labels (big and independant) in one place for the first time. This is a byproduct of our relatioships with the labels.

We know that we can make the site a lot easier to use, and we’re working on that. This is one thing. This is a cleaner design than a lot of areas of the site. This will launch as I step off the stage. This will surface videos in a social way.

JB: Didn’t Google just announce that?

OV: But ours is pretty. (laughs)

JB: But seriously what do you have to say about what Google just announced?

OV: No deal news, but we have a lot of cool partner announcements. Google has been a great partner for a long time. Stay tuned.

JB: Let’s talk about Google more. They have a huge deal with MySpace, that expires next year. It’s big to have that money, but it may not have worked out that well for Google. Does your business hurt if that goes away?

OV: We’re really pleased with where are business is and where it’s going. We’ve always been good at monetizing our business. This is integrated marketing that no one else on the web does. And we’ve just scratched the surface. A key going forward is how you measure success. Our business doesn’t hinge on any one deal. News Corp believes that too.

JB: Jon Miller is your boss, and they’re building a business of their own: FIM, and MySpace is a part of it.

OV: Jon will talk more about it, but FIM is a big part of our monetization today.

JB: If Google goes away can that replace it?

OV: Again, we’re really good at monetization. There’s a lot of opportunity.

JB: Owen was an early member of Facebook. What does success eventually look like for MySpace now?

OV: We think we have all the building blocks, we just need to execute. If we do that we will realize the vision of content being socialized.

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