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Details are unfortunately light on this one, but Intel has closed out the week with one interesting tidbit of news -- it's apparently planning to bring its wireless display technology (a.k.a. WiDi) to netbooks, tablets and other mobile devices. That word comes straight from Intel wireless display product manager Kerry Forrell, who says that "we fully expect to take the technology there," but that he can't yet provide a specific time frame. Those plans are further backed up by Intel CEO Paul Otellini himself, who told investors this week that "what we'll be doing over the next few years is take the Wi-Di capability that's in the laptop today and extend that into all the Intel platforms." Intel doesn't even seem to be stopping there, however, with Forrell further adding that the company even sees the technology being built into to TVs "over time."

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic on Monday moved towards investigating Google following the internet group's disclosure that it had recorded communications sent over unsecured wireless networks in people's homes. Peter Schaar, the German commissioner for data protection, called for a "detailed probe" by independent authorities into the practice by Google. He said the group's explanation of the collection of data as an accident was "highly unusual". "One of the largest companies in the world, the market leader on the internet, simply disobeyed normal rules in the development and usage of software," he said. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission was expected to launch an inquiry as well, according to people who spoke to agency officials. Privacy advocates said an inquiry could look at whether the collection of data breached rules on unauthorised access to computers and private communications. "This may be one of the most massive surveillance incidents by a private corporation that has ever occurred", said Marc Rotenberg, leader of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. "It is unprecedented vacuuming of WiFi data by a private company. Can you imagine what would happen if a German corporation was sending cars through Washington sucking up all this information?" Google reiterated its statements from late Friday in Europe, when it reversed earlier denials that it had collected personal activity. It said it had been using a fleet of camera-equipped Street View vehicles, which take pictures for the group's imaging services, and had been at the same time using the cars to assemble a database of electronic WiFi addresses intended to improve the functioning of its maps and other location services. Google said the project leaders ignored that the vehicles were also taking in snippets of activity on the WiFi networks. "We didn't want to collect this data in the first place and we would like to dest

Flat pricing schemes for mobile internet are enticing customers to dramatically increase use of bandwidth. Interestingly enough, that is the axiom on which most operators have buidlt their mobile internet business models. Will this be sustainable in the long run?

Yesterday in Cupertino, CA, the Apple's CEO unveiled at the developers the new iPhone OS 4.0. The new OS is available to iPhone developers today, while the general public will get the update sometime this summer. Apple uses innovators and then early adopters to improve the product, leveraging on their enthusiasm. "We are not the first to offer this service, but we are the best" : Steve Jobs doesn't know moderation and understatement. Some of the OS 4.0 features, as the multitasking, doesn't represents that kind of radical innovation, just because Google did it first. But Apple is aware about giving those features to its product in the right time, according to Jobs. By the way, multitasking is only 1 of the 100 new user features announced and thanks to the early market the OS 4.0 could potentially represent the birth of new paradigms in the operating software market.

Advertising agencies and software developers also welcomed Apple's new iAd network as a potential breakthrough that could give an important boost to the small but fast-growing mobile advertising market. iAd is an OS 4.0 built-in app, which could be the starting point of a new generation of mobile adverts that would be far more engaging than current formats, which Jobs said "suck". Thanks to his company's control Apple's network would be able to serve up more creative forms of advertising to run inside the "apps" users download on to these devices. Advertising inside apps, although still small, has become the hottest corner of the mobile advertising business, prompting a race between Google and Apple. In fact, earlier this year Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $270 million signaling its intention to enter the advertising network space. Quattro is an ad network that spans both mobile websites and smartphone applications. It seems to develop a new strategy and paradigm for the advertisement and a new battle field for the two giants Apple and Google. Which will emerge?

Bloomberg takes a look at Apple's spate of corporate acquisitions over the past six months, which has seen the company reverse a long-standing policy of making very infrequent deals with its recent purchases of Quattro Wireless, Lala Media, Intrinsity, and Siri. In particular, the report points to the growing rivalry between Apple and Google, stoked in large part on the acquisitions front by Google reportedly swooping in to snatch mobile advertising firm AdMob just as Apple was looking to finalize a deal to do so. "The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift," said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. "It looks like there's an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there's an increasing urgency on Apple's part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space. One interesting tidbit included in the report is evidence that Apple has sometimes moved very quickly when looking to make an acquisition, even giving targets as little as three hours to agree to a deal. To avoid publicity and possible rival bids, Apple in some cases has offered a target only a three-hour period in which to accept the terms of a sale, according to one executive with knowledge of the situation.

Talking to people is hard, and talking to strangers? That's, like, really hard. Nokia has a better way: the Nokia Instant Community. It relies on ad-hoc WiFi connections from (Finnish) smartphones to create dynamic communities into which people can join. Once connected, trendy but introverted festival-goers can chat, exchange photos, and even download each other's bootlegs of the very show they're attending!

This is another important standards war, though few people mention it. The early entrant, wimax, didn't have the time to gain critical mass, and the latecomer, LTE, seems to have stolen the march. The technologies are  roughly equivalent but - the writer says - LTE is becoming the winner, seemingly because it is endorsed by downstream players (device makers such as Nokia), while wimax is being pushed by upstream ones (component makers such as Intel). This causal relationship is not clear, but nonetheless interesting.