Judgment calls for company accused of sending unsolicited messages to Verizon customers to pay more than $200,000 in damages.

As cell phones gear up for video and the mobile Internet, a new motto for consumers and the industry could be “dial P for porn.”
Photo: Ringing up mobile porn

One-third of U.S. Internet users have connected to the Web using a wireless network to send e-mails, check the latest news or read other things, a survey finds.

TechWeb - In a war of digital readers, Microsoft is using its Windows Presentation Foundation technology to block out Adobe’s Flash and PDF software.

TechWeb - An index of companies shaking up traditional business models.

Best Picture

• BABEL
• THE DEPARTED
• LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
• LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
• THE QUEEN

Will Win: The Departed - It’s the only film everyone can agree on. Well, at the very least, it’s the only one most people have even seen. This is the weakest crop of Oscar nominees, in terms of box office, in decades. In cases like this, I say go with the movie that has the biggest stars in it. You don’t get any bigger than Nicholson, DiCaprio, Damon and Scorsese.

Should Win: The Queen - Little Miss Sunshine is a cute indie flick, but is in NO way an Oscar movie. Especially not a Best Picture. Please, we learned our lesson with American Beauty. Once burned, twice learned (that Kevin Spacey makes bad movies). Letters From Iwo Jima is a pedigree pick, only here because of the man who directed. Know how I know that? Only twenty people have even seen the damn thing. Babel is a muddled mess of an ensemble film that wasn’t even powerful enough to get Brad Pitt a gimme Best Supporting nomination. Don’t be fooled by pundits who say this could be like Crash. Even Brad is hoping The Departed wins. As for that film, been there done that. With the same director I might add. He should have won for Goodfellas; it’s not The Queen’s fault that people liked Kevin Costner in 1990. The Queen, however, was the best film I saw all year. The most emotional film I saw all year. I learned about things I was unaware of, saw a world I’m not accustomed to seeing, it showcased the best acting performance of the year in Helen Mirren’s titular monarch (more on this later), and it managed to be captivating despite being a story EVERYONE knows. I would be proud to call The Queen the Best Picture of the year.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

• Leonardo DiCaprio, BLOOD DIAMOND
• Ryan Gosling, HALF NELSON
• Peter O’Toole, VENUS
• Will Smith, THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
• Forest Whitaker, THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND

Will Win: Forest Whitaker - The Academy tends to toe the line for the Best Actor race, and Forest has the most amount of shiny plaques. Though don’t be surprised if the Academy decides to follow the Be Old rule and give a goodbye award to Peter O’Toole. He was nominated on name recognition, so who’s to say what people actually seeing the movie could do for his chances.

Should Win: Leonardo DiCaprio, but for The Departed. I don’t know who’s brilliant idea it was to play both Leo films down the middle. He was never going to win for a movie he has to do an accent for. No one gets Oscars for accents, they get them for performances. Leo may be brilliant in Blood Diamond, but I bet the only thing people paid attention to was how well he did the South African accent. But he was brilliant in The Departed, without the help of an Oscar bait accent. The Departed was the first time I truly looked at Leo as a man, not a boy. He not only held his own in the scenes with Jack, I thought he was better. Go back and watch the scenes with Vera Farmiga to see the emotion, intensity and desperation in his eyes and words. If that’s not Best Acting, I don’t know what is. Just a monumental blunder by whoever decided to go with Blood Diamond.

Best Actress in a Leading Role

• Penelope Cruz, VOLVER
• Judi Dench, NOTES ON A SCANDAL
• Helen Mirren, THE QUEEN
• Meryl Streep, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
• Kate Winslet, LITTLE CHILDREN

Will Win: Helen Mirren - She gave the undisputed best performance of the year. End of discussion.

Should Win: Helen Mirren - Everyone else is playing for second place.

Best Director

• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, BABEL
• Martin Scorsese, THE DEPARTED
• Clint Eastwood, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
• Stephen Frears, THE QUEEN
• Paul Greengrass, UNITED 93

Will Win: Martin Scorsese - The Departed is his Scent of a Woman, so to speak. It’s not his best work, but we screwed up by not honoring him for those movies, so this is the consolation. The Departed was his most accessible film in years, his highest grossing, and was a welcome return to the mobster-genre he defined over the last few decades. And it’s also what might be the last chance to give him an Oscar. It’s a weak year, with even Clint not bringing his best work to the table. In any other year Marty wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s his time. And if he loses to Eastwood again I will never watch the Oscars again. It’ll be a joke. Martin Scorsese is not Susuan Lucci. He’s Martin fucking Scorsese. Somebody better show him some goddamn respect.

Should Win: Martin Scorsese - Do I even need to explain why?

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TechWeb - Taxpayers who want to do more than one thing with their refunds can divide the money and deposit it directly in up to three accounts this year.

TechWeb - Compatibility issues with some peripherals are forcing customers to take Windows XP or wait for their build-to-order PC to become Vista ready.

InfoWorld - Following Google’s announcement on Thursday that it would offer an enhanced version of its Google Apps, dubbed Google Apps Premier Edition, the company left no doubt about the direction in which it was heading.

AFP - The digital music industry could be at risk of a fundamental shake-up after Microsoft was found guilty of infringing Alcatel-Lucent patents on the ubiquitous MP3 format.

Reuters - IBM is not ready to guarantee
that its computer programs are compatible with Oracle Corp.’s
recently launched version of the Linux operating
system, an IBM spokesman said on Friday.

InfoWorld - Google's PC search software is vulnerable to a variation on a little-known Web-based attack called anti-DNS pinning that could give an attacker access to any data indexed by Google Desktop, security researchers said this week.

PC World - Google’s PC search software is vulnerable to a variation on a little-known Web-based attack called anti-DNS (Domain Name System) pinning, that could give an attacker access to any data indexed by Google Desktop, security researchers said this week.

TechWeb - Several companies are jumping on the Google Apps bandwagon because they see an opportunity to offer add-on products to the search king’s office software products.

Garmin subsidiary and Mayo Clinic are offering software to aid mobile-phone users in medical emergencies.

TechWeb - A remotely exploitable vulnerability that exists within Office’s Publisher 2007 allows a hacker to remotely execute arbitrary code as a logged-in user, security firm eEye says.

With Redmond on the line for $1.5 billion, which users of MP3 products should worry about an Alcatel-Lucent lawsuit?

TechWeb - The product lets users run on-demand scans inside archives in addition to providing antivirus protection.

InfoWorld - Veritas Software has agreed to pay $30 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle charges that it engaged in fraudulent accounting practices and aided Time Warner's America Online (AOL) in committing fraud.

Why is the Microsoft OS so much more expensive in the United Kingdom than in the United States? More than 1,250 Brits are angry.

A company called Office Live files trademark infringement suit over Microsoft’s Office Live on-demand productivity tools.

InfoWorld - Primavera Systems, a vendor of enterprise project management software, has outsourced product development using the agile development process to the Indian operation of product engineering outsourcer Symphony Services.

InfoWorld - On Friday Japan's Turbolinux begins dispatching the first batch of its Wizpy handhelds to people who ordered them from its Web site. The flash-based multimedia player contains a version of Linux, so it can be used to boot a PC into the operating system, allowing users to access their files in their own working environment on almost any PC.

PC Magazine - Just 104 software applications have been certified to run under Windows Vista, according to an update published on Microsoft’s Web site.

InfoWorld - Google pushed further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade Thursday of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.

Tonight marks the end of a show I was once lived and died for. The OC was a series that helped shape my vocabulary (“Ginormous!”), my Wednesday nights (and now Thursdays), my hatred for Mischa Barton, my drink of choice (The 7 and 7, thank you Ryan Atwood), my nighttime locked door viewing choices (thank you, Rachel Bilson), and was the catalyst for my very own Chrismukkah party.

It also perfectly satisfied by neverending need to always be watching a cheesy nighttime soap opera (preferrably of the irascible teen variety). From Beverly Hills, 90210 to Dawson’s Creek to The O.C., I’ve always been able to get my fix for pretty people melodramatically doing melodramatic things while looking and acting pretty. To honor the final episode of my former favorite show (Where have you gone The O.C. Season One, The Jay turns its lonely eyes to you. Ooh Ooh Ooh!), I am attempting my first foray into the potentially unfunny (and overdone) world of liveblogging. Let’s get right to it.

8:58 - Punk off, Rudy Cardenas! My night takes a bittersweet jump-off, as I completely agreed with three of the four people kicked of Idol. Ya’ll probably guessed my thoughts on Rudy. I was put off by Paul Kim since the start; put some shoes on, dork ass. And Nicole Tranquillo sent me to the double bloop faster than a mid-season episode of Smallville. As for Amy Krebs, she will be missed by me if only because she was the spitting image of my ex-girlfriend and I enjoyed how morbidly hilarious it was to “root for my ex” in a national singing competition. Riisa, if you’re reading this, I don’t think you sing like a candle. Simon was wrong about that. If I had to choose, I would say you sing much like an armoire. So to speak.

9:01 - Hello, final episode of The O.C.! I’m rocking the Atwood wifebeater, got my honorary glass of 7 and 7 by my side, and have Death Cab cued up on iTunes. I am officially ready to liveblog.

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Reuters - A U.S. federal jury found that
Microsoft Corp. infringed audio patents held by
Alcatel-Lucent and should pay $1.52 billion in
damages, the No. 1 software maker said on Thursday.

(NOTE: This is an updated version of a column I ran last year before the Oscars. CLICK HERE to read that piece.)

As the saying goes, there are two things you never want to see get made, laws and sausages. Whether that’s true or not I won’t speculate, but if I could add one thing to the expression, it would be Academy Awards. Now I know what you must be thinking, “You can’t see how the Oscars are made!” Ah, but you’re wrong. Of all the awards, positions and accolades given out by a body of people, the Academy Awards are easily the most transparent. Even the Mtv Movie Awards have more suspense these days (How could Jennifer Carpenter in The Exorcism of Emily Rose beat Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds? I can’t believe Spielberg didn’t rig this. Or that Dakota and her preternatural precociousness didn’t have Carpenter killed so as to blunt the awards glut of arch rival Abigail Breslin. No joke guys, I’m afraid of Dakota Fanning.)

The problem isn’t with the nominees, who more often that not are right on the mark. The problem is that the winners are so pre-ordained that if you don’t win your office Oscar pool every year, you just aren’t paying attention. This isn’t like the NCAA tournament where the weird girl from the smelly cubicle can randomly throw darts on her bracket, picks George Mason over Connecticut, and steals your money. For the Oscars, there are real ways to determine who will win. For example, merely keeping an eye out to the state of affairs in Hollywood will cue you in on the Best Picture race.

(The Departed will win because Hollywood is actively shifting back into a period of BIG, story driven movies. After successive years of divisive, small-in-scope, actor-driven winners, the last thing the Academy needs is for the depressing, manipulative Crash-wannabe Babel to take Scorsese’s glory. They want Marty on that wall. They NEED him on that wall!)

The directing Oscar generally matches the Best Picture, and the two writing Oscars are determined mostly from the WGA, and thus are beyond obvious come Oscar night. And absolutely no one cares about the technical awards. Even the costume designers don’t care about their category. The eight awards given to civilians are very much like throwing darts at a bracket, they don’t affect the Oscars in any real historical way, and besides, doesn’t John Williams win every year anyway? For all the arm-chair critics that decry the Oscars for being too long, how about making it like the Golden Globes and only give out awards where the winner is someone we recognize.

So that covers pretty much the entire show, except for the acting. And that’s what this column is going to cover. Over the next 2000 words or so, depending on how many “Little Miss Sunshine, Really?” tangents I go on, I will teach you how to predict the acting Oscar winners. There is a proven formula that I will share with you today.

Some think that the acting categories are merely a popularity contest, the High School student-body president race of the Oscars. Those people are wrong. I know this, the Academy knows this, and most importantly, actors know this. Actors are well aware that there are ways of manipulating the Academy into giving you an Oscar. Ever heard the phrase “Oscar bait” when someone is talking about one of those pretentious December movies that Miramax used to put out? Career decisions are often made not by money, but by how it will affect their relationship with the Academy. It’s a dance, you see. Some are good at it, and dip their way into Oscar gold before their feet even hurt. Others take so long to learn the steps that when they finally figure it out, they can barely do a box-step waltz. But make no mistake, every actor knows the way, and now you will to.

There are six ways to absolutely guarantee an Academy Award for acting. Any one way on its own gives you the edge in your category; any combination of the six will give you front-runner and likely winner-status. Any three put together, and the other four nominees shouldn’t waste their time writing one of those “I’m so humble about all this” speeches that Kate Winslet cries herself to sleep with. Now there are exceptions to this rule, as there are for anything, but these six ways are tried and true.

The Six Ways to Win an Academy Award for Acting

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Document management company hopes license change will mean more outside programmer involvement.

Net phone company is pushing for rules that would let consumers decide which devices and software they use on cell phone networks.