Five minutes ago the new director of the Norwegian Data Inspectorate was announced to the press. It is no other than the same guy that went after Apple over the iTunes music store. Most know him as the now former Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman.

Why is this important ? Because the Consumer Council of Norway earlier this week accused Facebook of reselling personal information through Zynga and asked advice from the Data Inspectorate. And now the guy who went after Apple will decide if there is a problem or not. And then the Consumer Council will probably forward this recommendation to his old colleges. The very same people who put the squeeze on Apple.

Storing “especially sensitive (personal) information” in Norway requires a Concession Agreement (konsesjonsavtale) which can be canceled if the company does not protect its database. This applies to all companies which specifically targets the Norwegian marked. There has been several cases of banks outsourcing data management to foreign countries and this has triggered a more aggressive tone from regulators.

Bjørn Erik Thon blir ny direktør i Datatilsynet
Ny sjef for Datatilsynet

Posted by JP at 12:39 PM | Permalink

Apps AS, a small Norwegian company, is setting up shop in Trondheim, Norway. They already have a small development office in Oslo and are now expanding to a new city. Trondheim is mostly known as the only city in Norway that once housed Google, Yahoo, Sun, ARM and Microsoft development groups. A result of the local NTNU university which focuses heavily on math, structural engineering, shipping, architecture and cybernetics. Trondheim also has a high number of female intellectuals. Although most of them prefer medical professions and jobs that require expensive wardrobes.

Here are some pictures from Pirsenteret – a technology incubator building for start-up companies, education institutions and established businesses. Office space costs a fortune in Norway and because of this many start-ups end up next to the shipping industry since the land is cheaper there. Well, cheaper in a Norwegian context that is. Norway is basically like Alaska with inner city Tokyo prices.

What makes Apps special is that they only focus on the Norwegian iPhone marked. And since the iPad is still not available they will probably see more growth ahead. They are still not making real money, but expenses are low and the marked is hot.

These guys are not related to my other iPhone platform success story.

Posted by JP at 04:01 PM | Permalink

The Consumer Council of Norway (Forbrukerrådet) has officially complained to the Norwegian Data Inspectorate (Datatilsynet) and argues that Facebook has been reselling personal information through third party companies such as Zynga. The council believes the Facebook application platform intentionally leaks protected personal information to increase the perceived commercial value of the Facebook platform.

Facebook and Zynga reported to the Data Inspectorate

In Norway all forms of personal databases are regulated by law and reselling this information is in most cases illegal without consent. The council believes Facebook is directly targeting the Norwegian marked and can therefore not hide behind local Californian law. The council argues that Facebook is in breach of the Norwegian Data Protection Act.

Another related agency, The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman, is most famous for going after Apple and the iTunes Music Store because of their contract terms. Apple later removed all DRM from music and changed their licensing terms.

The Consumer Council of Norway is basically seeking advice from the Data Inspectorate on how to proceed with this issue. The Ombudsman is not yet involved. 1,5 million Norwegians have a Facebook account.

Apple opens up iTunes Store
iTunes violates Norwegian law

Posted by JP at 09:57 AM | Permalink

Sun removed JMediaPane from the JavaFX build a while back. Which is bizarre since JavaFX has complete support for ON2 video. So why did this happen ? Why is JMediaPane in the JRE a problem when Web Start powered JavaFX is ok ?

The German company Nero AG is telling us that MPEG LA sued them over royalties earlier this year. Basically MPEG wants cash in hand every time someone downloads a Nero video aware product. And then the question becomes. Is this why JavaFX ON2 video support is based on Web Start ? To circumvent the MPEG LA patent pool ?

Basically MPEG LA did a very naughty thing. They added a metric ton of patents to their patent pool AFTER all the developers had signed up. So now MPEG owns the entire video marked. They can become a patent troll for the next 100 years. Just look at Canon video cameras that cost $10 000 and which are, and I kid you not, NOT for professional use ! Professional use requires that you pay royalties to MPEG every time someone downloads your video.

Nero has now filed an antitrust suit against MPEG LA. So maybe some tasty information might leak out.

Posted by JP at 05:43 PM | Permalink

Some people whine endlessly on forums about how terrible the code is in project X. But these people do not get it. The terrible code is a feature, not a bug. And the reason for this is what we call the "template industry". Writing HTML with inline PHP is a million dollar industry. It is a direct result of Wordpress, Jomla, Drupal, Movable Type and Google Search. So non-programmers code in the only way they know. By copy/pasting code.

But do not make fun of PHP programming. Lots of people make hundreds of thousands of dollars from sites written in PHP. Doing the same thing in Java and C# is probably much harder because most example code is based around components, shared resources, uncoupled database layers and libraries. And a $7 shared hosting plan is less of an option.

And before you knock copy/paste programmers I should tell you a little secret. I suspect some parts of the Asian programming industry pay people based on how many lines of code they alter. Because I have reduced 2000 lines of example code to just around 250. And this makes me wonder what the heck is going on in Asian software companies. Are they trying to attract business from HTML template programmers ?

The iPhone developers copy/paste fu is also strong. And he probably started out life as a HTML template guy. And we can not make fun of them either. Because hundreds of them make more money than hardcore C++, C#, Ruby, Python and Java guys do on their personal projects. I have never understood why Techcrunch is so impressive. They make less money than a fishing boat and yet many professional developers want to go on Techcrunch. And while this is happening the PHP template guy is making money simply by being in the Google index. The - big launch - is probably overrated.

Although, today many template programmers have seen their work copyright infringed on a massive level. And after these copycats started buying traffic from Google spammers the industry has never been the same. When people start obfuscating their Javascript code you know the industry has peaked. Because client-side Javascript is worth very little without solid server code.

So today template programmers do customized work instead of just wholesale.

Posted by JP at 09:13 AM | Permalink