There’s been some hubbub lately about Secure Boot, a hardware-verified, malware-free operating system bootstrap process that aims to improve the overall security of computers. Part of the UEFI specification which is slated to replace the aging BIOS with which many of us are familiar, Secure Boot can forbid the loading and execution of unsigned operating systems. Microsoft is requiring that Secure Boot be activated and enforced for any OEM systems that want to use the “Designed for Windows 8″ logo. The nature of the technology, and Microsoft's recommended implementation of it, could remove control of the overall system from the end user, and in this configuration Secure Boot may prevent Free Software operating systems from loading.

After some initial hysteria on Slashdot (where else?), calmer minds have prevailed, and have reviewed the UEFI Secure Boot specification in some detail. It’s a pretty marked change from the old BIOS: the use of public key cryptography makes the whole thing considerably more complex. But there’s nothing about Secure Boot, prima facie, that specifically locks out Free Software operating systems.

The Linux Foundation has released a paper titled “Making UEFI Secure Boot Work With Open Platforms” written by Technical Advisory Board members James Bottomley, CTO, Server Virtualization at Parallels and Jonathan Corbet, Editor at LWN.net. Concurrently, Bottomley has collaborated with Canonical’s Technical Architect, Jeremy Kerr, and Red Hat’s Senior Software Engineer, Matthew Garret, to develop another paper titled “UEFI Secure Boot Impact on Linux“.

The former document is a pretty high level analysis of the situation (only four pages), with some overall recommendations on how OEMs can ship hardware that will work with both proprietary and Free Software operating systems. The latter document is a little more technical (eight pages!), with some slightly more specific recommendations for OEMs.

The whole thing can be a little confusing if you’re not already familiar with some of the basics of public key cryptography. Platform Keys, Key Exchange Keys, signature databases. Is this all more trouble than it’s worth? I fired off a few questions to the Linux Foundation for clarification, and James Bottomley responded.

TechCrunch: First and foremost, what’s the real-world effect to end users? If SecureBoot is as complicated at the document makes me feel it is, won’t many people just decide to leave their systems in “Setup” mode and avoid the whole thing?

James Bottomley: Leaving the system in setup mode is equivalent to the current state (no secure boot). However, we know from the microsoft blog that Users who accept the Windows 8 preinstallation won’t be given the option and their systems will be locked down. The idea for users who wish to install open source is that they will be given the option of moving to the more secure user mode or remaining where they are. The point of shipping in setup mode is that handling the complexity of this choice becomes the job of the operating system install or ignition system, which we believe to be the best place for this. We anticipate that the problems potentially caused by first ship of secure boot will be resolved over time and the benefits of booting securely will outweigh the initial teething troubles.

TC: Propping up a full public key infrastructure is a great idea, but well beyond the technical prowess of many hardware manufacturers. It’s not their core competency, so who is to say they’ll do it right?

JB: It wouldn’t be done by the Hardware Manufacturers, and indeed given the security implications, it should be outsourced to an entity for whom it is a core competency. The current effect of the Microsoft Windows 8 logo proposals is that the OEMs are required to manage a list of key exchange keys, which is also not their core competency, so offloading key management to an entity whose core business it is should make the whole process less error prone.

TC: We know that Certificate Authorities are not beyond compromise, as the DigitNotar business has recently pointed out. If a security-lax hardware manufacturer gets compromised, what’s the result to end users?

JB: So this is a problem. The UEFI system contains a mechanism for revoking certificates (which is the same mechanism used in the internet to remedy the DigiNotar intrusion). However, a system which relied on a revoked key in the path of trust would refuse to boot and would either have to be switched out of secure mode or have its UFI updated to remedy the situation. However, such a compromise isn’t really any more likely (and is possibly less likely since it would be a core business interest of the CA) than an OEM key being compromised, so the problem is the same or less troublesome than the situation where there’s no CA.

The promise of “initial teething troubles” doesn’t sound particularly fun, but as with any new technology adoption it’s largely unavoidable. I do look forward to seeing Secure Boot prove successful.

While the debate is still ablaze over whether cell phones actually cause damage to the brain and/or body, San Francisco recently lost patience and went ahead passing legislation requiring cell phone shops to display posters that warn customers of the potential risks their beloved cell phones may impose. Along with the posters, retailers would also be required to put warning stickers on window displays, as well as hand out fact sheets to customers.

But, in predictable fashion, the CTIA has filed a lawsuit opposing the ordinance (just like it so successfully did the last time San Fran tried to pass the bill). This time around, the judge seems to side more with the CTIA than the city, giving a firm “No” to the sticker and poster ideas, while revising the fact sheet with his own edits.

According to Judge William Alsup, “the overall impression left [by the fact sheet] is that cell phones are dangerous and that they have somehow escaped the regulatory process. That impression is untrue," he wrote. Though all the facts are true, Judge Alsup still feels it’s necessary to make a couple changes, including the addition of a note about the FCC: “Although all cell phones sold in the United States must comply with RF safety limits set by the FCC, no safety study has ever ruled out the possibility of human harm from RF exposure." The amended fact sheet must be given to each customer who purchases a phone.

As far as those posters and stickers go, Alsup definitely isn’t on board. With regards to the posters, he said they are “not reasonably necessary and would unduly intrude on the retailers' wall space,” while the stickers would “unduly intrude upon the retailers' own message,” reports MacWorld.

Flash sales giant Gilt Groupe is acquiring the troubled daily deals startup BuyWithMe, which recently saw over half its staff laid off after the company failed to raise the funding it needed to survive. Beginning November 1st, BuyWithMe will officially become a part of Gilt, according to a report from BetaBeat, which has been covering the BuyWithMe saga for the past couple of weeks.

The remaining sales staff left at the end of last week’s layoffs (staff who already took at 25% pay cut), will be let go, reports BetaBeat, which has been speaking with current and former BuyWithMe employees about the matter. Gilt will then gain BuyWithMe’s technology, customer email list, merchant partners and a few executives.

Employees questions about unvested stock options were not answered on a company-wide conference last night, says the report.

Gilt Groupe declined to comment on the matter.

BuyWithMe laid off half its workforce last week, after having been unsuccessful in its attempts to buy its way to growth by acquiring other daily deals players. The company made its sixth acquisition in September, with its purchase of San Francisco-based TownHog . It previously acquired NYC's Scoop St, Chicago deals site DealADayOnline, San Francisco deals site Swoop, loyalty company Edhance, and deals site LocalTwist. It raised $30 million from Bain Capital Ventures and Matrix Partners.

Matrix Partners is also an investor in Gilt.

Google just announced the major refresh of Google TV. It adds a bunch of new features to the platform including Android Market and a TV & Movies. I’m not entirely sure this new coat of paint will help sell the house per se, but it will certainly make the current owners happy.

The update will slowly hit existing Google TV units starting with the Sony models on Sunday with the Logitech boxes getting it shortly thereafter. As with most mass roll outs, you might be waiting in line awhile until a spot opens on the server. Thankfully Google released these demo videos that show off a bunch of the new features to pass the time.

Google TV is finally ready for prime time a year after it officially launched. Starting on Sunday, the update will first roll out to the Sony Internet TV units with the Logitech Revue units getting it shortly thereafter. Existing users will probably love the update as it brings a redesigned interface and a selection of the Android Market. It seems to be exactly what the platform should have been when it launched last year. But for everyone else, either those looking to cut the cord or supplement pay TV with Internet video, it’s still a tough sell. All the downfalls associated with Google TV a year ago still exist. While the system might not be half-baked anymore, I’m still not sure if Google TV deserves a place in your living room.

A Fresh Coat Of Paint

The first version of Google TV was a mess. The user interface was inconsistent between screens and often slow in operation. The search screen used a completely different interface and the home screen wasn’t designed for TV. Like most first generation Google products, it felt like a beta.

The Google TV team started anew and used Android as a design template. I can’t speak to its operation as I’m waiting for the update myself, but from the screens and demos I’ve seen, the new interface is completely different and it finally looks like a proper 10-foot interface. The home screen now features just a single row of customizable icons. It houses the most used apps along with a handy clock and link to notifications. The app screen now uses a more natural grid arrangement rather than a list and the Android Market looks straight out of Honeycomb. But with all the UI changes, the Google TV engineers spent the most time on improving content discovery.

Google TV was never designed for cord cutters. It’s designed to live alongside paid TV, but present Internet video and apps in a seamless experience. The original Google TV search app was an amazing tool, but a tool gimped after big media’s blockade of free streaming websites. That’s where the new TV & Movies app comes in.

It’s All About The Apps

Think of the TV & Movie app as a new guide. It attempts to bring together cable/satellite content with programming from the major paid streaming services. Better yet, it’s smart, presenting results based on viewing history and preferences. Say you want to watch Boardwalk Empire. The guide presents all the available viewing options: Your TV provider’s HBO channel naturally, but also HBO Go, and Netflix or Amazon if they’re available. This information is presented in a gorgeous grid view enhanced with cover art and additional information. During a chat I had last week with Google TV’s head, Mario Queiroz, he indicated that the team’s goal is to provide an API for this service with the intent to improve the search experience even more.

Android Market was missing from the product since launch and is part of the latest update. The Market will only feature Android apps that can actually work on a TV and do not require specific hardware like a touchscreen. 30 apps out of the 800 launching will be featured including CNBC, Fox News Business, Zillow, and Aol HD — so, you know, apps you probably won’t use. Mario indicated to me that HTML 5 Google TV apps are not segregated from standard Android apps since to the user, they’re still apps. Smart.

YouTube has always been a big part of Google TV and the new version launches with a completely redesigned Leanback YouTube app exclusive to the platform. Windows Media Center users should feel right at home. The app is a virtual clone of Microsoft’s aging HTPC program. Down the left side is a list of shortcuts while a clean title layout is used for the content including what appears, at least from the screenshots, to be the upcoming YouTube Channels. The new YouTube app was developed after the GTV team discovered that users used YouTube twice as much as expected (probably because big media blocked its free content).

Google + is eventually coming to Google TV and could potentially save the platform from the deadpool. Of course, Google + might need a life-preserver too. Mario explained that Google +’s social tools fit neatly within the Google TV team charter. Everything from sharing photos to TV discovery could be a social experience and the team is working closely with the kids from Google + to integrate all the functionality. When Google + hits GTV — Google isn’t announcing a timetable yet — it could become a must-have for fans of the social network. Sharing media is one of Google + strengths and could play neatly into Google TV.

The new Google TV hardware finally seems ready for consumers but I’m not sure it’s the best platform for the job. The first version was a mishmash of design elements, obtrusive interfaces and strange navigation paths. The new interface looks great, and likely feels more natural, but Google TV is still hampered by big media. The update only addresses hardware and software issues — stuff a team of engineers can control. Unfortunately Google TV didn’t take off the first time because of a larger fundamental issue that still hasn’t been addressed.

A History Lesson

Google TV was the tech media’s darling product last fall. It was supposed to be the next big thing, simultaneously beating Apple in the living room while disrupting how TV is consumed. Logitech predicted it would ship 500k of its $299 Revue Google TV units. Sony was the first out of the gate with the Internet TV (MG hated the remote) followed by the Logitech model a few weeks later.

The early reviews almost universally loved it, but then big media struck. Suddenly ABC, NBC, and CBS shut out Google TV, with FOX and the other networks following suit. Hulu, Fancast, and all the other aggregate streaming sites were locked out, too. It was never designed to be the cord-cutter’s set-top box but at least before it first launched, it seemed like the perfect Hulu streamer. Without this content, Google TV became a glorified YouTube/Netflix box, a very hard sell at $299 when similar devices where selling for $99.

Just weeks after launch, the platform that had showed so much promise was treading water, just trying to stay afloat. Google TV quickly faded into obscurity and Logitech eventually cut the Revue’s price by 2/3 down to $99. The bad press at its launch effectively burned Google TV the first time around and I’m not sure this new coat of paint will cover the ashes.

Look for a full Google TV 2.0 review in the coming days. The significant update warrants another look at the platform. However, even though I’m sure Google TV now runs like a champ, it still doesn’t look more user friendly than Roku’s interface and the Boxee Box still access to all the free content blocked from Google TV. Then for the Apple user, an Apple TV provides an awesome unified experience. There still isn’t any notable features exclusive to Google TV.

Google TV is still stuck. This latest update brings a ton of features along with an improved interface. But it doesn’t add content and, well, content is king. Google is announcing today that new hardware is coming next year from Samsung, Vizio and other unannounced partners. The new units will use more powerful chipsets, which will probably make Google TV silky smooth. But Hulu and all the rest will likely still be blocked on this new hardware, too, leaving Google TV as… a glorified YouTube/Netflix box. Again.

Bonus! Google just posted more demo videos of the new apps. The new overview video is below and the rest are here.

This week, with support from the White House and the Obama administration, the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) announced the launch of a new startup accelerator and investment company, Gen Y Capital Partners. The new program will provide seed capital for tech startups created by Gen Y’ers (those under the age of 35).

Like many accelerators, Gen Y Capital Partners (GYC) will provide mentoring, education, and assistance with living expenses. But the best part of the program? Getting in means getting rid of your federal student loan debt.

According to the announcement, the program is the first to use the President’s Income-Based Repayment (IBR), which lowers the student loan repayment to 10% of the student’s discretionary income and adjusts the forgiveness timeline to 20 years. In addition, for those founders who apply to IBR, GYC will go a step further and pay down the student loan debt until it reaches zero (for up to three years), allowing them to exclusively concentrate on building their company.

GYC will also offer founders the opportunity to live on college campuses for up to two years, with help from collegiate partners like Cogswell College, Georgetown and Princeton. Founders will be able to access GYC’s advisors plus hundreds of YEC members and mentors. And they will be allowed to join the invite-only YEC, an organization of young entrepreneurs founded by serial entrepreneur Scott Gerber, a syndicated columnist, TV host, angel investor and author of the book Never Get a "Real" Job. 

Over the next 3 to 5 years, GYC will invest in as many as 100 startups, and over the next decade, several hundred more. The group plans to scale the fund over the next 24 months, the group says, and will begin to roll out more incubator programs on college campuses across the U.S.

To be clear, there is no government money in the fund, only that from private investors. The debt repayment the program provides is in addition to the equity investment of $15,000 to $50,000 GYC makes in the startups it funds.

Gen Y Capital Partners will begin reviewing applications on November 1st, and will announce the first class in early 2012.

I promise I’ll stop harping on RIM for a while, but I couldn’t resist — the BlackBerry Porsche P’9981‘s product page has gone live, and it affords us several new looks at the silliest-looking RIM device in recent memory.

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday is that users of the Porsche P’9981 are issued a special PIN that begins with “2AA.” It’s digital elitism at it’s worst, given that most people won’t be able to pick up on what’s so special about it.

After having slept on it and seeing these pictures, I actually find myself hating the Porsche P’9981 just a little less. It’s actually sort of handsome from the back and sides, but man — the face just seems amazingly gaudy. I think the keyboard is really what kills me, since it seems to put style ahead of usability. A handful of comments and tweets yesterday accused me of not “getting it,” and it’s with great consternation that I admit that I absolutely don’t.

Okay, I’m done. Back to business as usual, everyone.

Looking to take a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles without putting a major dent in your wallet? Ridejoy, a YC-backed startup that’s launching today, might have exactly what you’re looking for. The service allows drivers who are already planning to take a roadtrip to ‘sell’ their extra seats to other users. The net result: drivers earn money on trips they were planning on taking anyway, and Ridejoy passengers get a door-to-door lift, in some cases for less than they’d pay for a bus ticket.

You may have seen Ridejoy before, at least in an early form: it did a one-off trial for Burning Man this year with BurningManRides.com — a site that helped people coordinate their trips out to the Nevada desert. 1600 people signed up, 1150 rides were posted, and 400 rides were completed over a three-week span. In a neat twist, five pilots offered rides-by-air, completing a total of ten plane trips.

With that trial successfully completed, the company is now opening its doors a bit wider. You can now use Ridejoy to book trips up and down the West Coast (starting at Vancouver, ending with San Diego). There’s a new route to Tahoe, a very popular destination for residents of Northern California. And you don’t necessarily have to be starting from or heading to the same place as your driver — if your pickup and/or dropoff points are on the way for them, Ridejoy can still find the listings. Each user has a profile including a photo and basic information, and you can Connect with Facebook to see if you share any mutual friends.

Update: The company has reached out to clarify that they’re also focused on helping connect you with people you might find interesting (in other words, you might wind up making some friends).

In a fun promotion, Ridejoy is also coordinating rides to Y Combinator’s Startup School, which takes place tomorrow. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston will be offering a ride — you can sign up for his car at the site (obviously they’re going to be screening these, as there will be a lot of requests).

Ridejoy has at least one major competitor: Zimride, which works with schools and businesses to establish ridesharing networks, and also allows users to ‘sell’ a seat in their car if they’re planning to go on a road trip. Ridejoy’s founders acknowledge that there’s overlap here, but they say that they’re focused exclusively on the latter feature — a seat marketplace, so to speak. And they say they’re working hard to make their community a differentiating factor.

Ridejoy makes money by taking a small cut of each transaction (they’re still testing exactly what number they’ll settle on, and are experimenting with 15%).

In Silicon Valley, failure has been democratized. You don't need a lot of money to fail. Nor do you need any previous experience. Take, for example, Brian Wong and Roger Dickey – two young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who, in spite of their youth, are already steeped in failure. Wong, who was the youngest person ever to receive venture capital funding and is now the CEO of the mobile rewards network Kiip, once worked at Digg – the paragon of a failed Silicon Valley technology start-up. While Dickey managed to build 16 sixteen (yes, that's SIXTEEN) failed Facebook apps before getting lucky with Mafia Wars.

When I spoke to Wong and Dickey earlier this week at FailCon, they both embraced the idea of failure. It's all about "mental resilience", they told me. Every setback is a "learning opportunity", they said, and they described failure as "the ultimate rebirth". Great failures of the past include Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, they explained, while Groupon's Andrew Mason and Zynga's Mark Pincus are today's heroic failures, guys who failed so fast and frequently that in the end that had to get something right.

This is the fourth and final interview from the excellent FailCon event (many thanks to the BAMM.TV crew for filming the interviews).  Check out my previous conversations about failure with Vinod Khosla, MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe and Wavepoint Ventures GM Peter Gardner.

A class action lawsuit filed against Facebook over its FriendFinder feature was dismissed yesterday by a California federal judge. In the case of Robyn Cohen, et al. v. Facebook, a group of the network’s members alleged that Facebook misappropriated users’ names and likenesses to promote its Friend Finder service, which suggests new Facebook friends to a user who chooses to upload his or her email contacts.

The Robyn Cohen case was actually dismissed previously on June 28, 2011, but the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. Thursday's order dismissed this complaint. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not show any economic harm from Facebook’s alleged use of their names and likenesses.

Facebook had previously argued that there was no injury to the plaintiffs and that the network’s privacy policy stipulates that members’ names and photos are public information.

Facebook’s Litigation Counsel Sandeep Solanki issued this response to the ruling, “We appreciate the Court’s consideration, and we are pleased that all claims were dismissed with prejudice.”

This isn’t the first recent class action dismissal for Facebook. In September the Los Angeles Superior Court dismissed a class action lawsuit challenging the use of teenagers' names and likenesses next to third-party advertisements on Facebook, allegedly without parental consent.

Of course, when one goes away, a few new ones are bound to pop up. Earlier in October, Facebook saw three new potential class-action lawsuits filed regarding reports that it tracks logged-out users.

Listen up, fanboys, because this is one you won’t want to miss. The iPhone 4S has been officially jailbroken.

iClarified reports that the iPhone Dev-Team found a way to get Cydia running on both the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, though the jailbreak is “VERY preliminary.” There are still big pieces missing and plenty of work left to do, so unfortunately the jailbreak won’t be released to the public. Luckily, we can at least get a peek from this video.

For the uninitiated, Cydia lets users browse and install unofficial apps on their iDevice. MuscelNerd, the lead developer of the iPhone Dev-Team, says this is a userland exploit that occurs after iBoot is out of the picture.

Check out the video below, where you can see the iPad 2 running Cydia:

New figures from Facebook reveal how often the social networking site’s users are hacked. In the blog post announcing the forthcoming “Trusted Friends” feature, Facebook also an included infographic detailing Facebook’s security measures. One figure in particular jumped out at security researchers: every day, “only .06%” of Facebook’s 1 billion logins are compromised. Or, to put it another way, 600,000 logins per day are compromised.

This tidbit was first noticed by Graham Cluley of Sophos, who, apparently didn’t ignore the infographic like the rest of us. (Marketers have ruined infographics for us – we’re too often infographic-blind these days).

Crunching the numbers, Cluley noted that 600,000 compromised logins per day means one compromised login every 140 milliseconds.

Facebook revealed the figure in a section explaining how it keeps spam at bay, as the majority of the time, Facebook accounts are hacked by spammer who send out messages to the victim’s friends. (Who hasn’t seen this? “Help, I’m in London and had my wallet stolen!”)

There were some other interesting numbers shared by Facebook, too, including:

• Less than 4% of the content shared on Facebook is spam (vs. 89.1% of email is spam)
• Less than 5% of Facebook users experience spam on any given day
• 50% of Facebook’s 750+ million users login to Facebook every day (wait, aren’t we up to 800 million now? Must be an old infographic).
• The average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes on the site per month

RIM’s ailing PlayBook has seen its fair share of price cuts at your local big box retailers, but here’s a deal just for all you businessfolk out there. From now until the end of the 2011, RIM is running a buy-two-get-one-free deal on their tablets through their network of authorized resellers.

The announcement makes no mention of the specific PlayBook models that business users can pick up, but presumably all three are on the table. The deal is sweetened a bit by a secondary offer that gives away one premium PlayBook accessory per tab purchased, so those just dying to score a leather sleeve, charging pod, or a 6 ft. HDMI cable can rest easy.

It’s not a bad deal per se, but it obviously presupposes that you or your business actually wants 3 PlayBooks in the first place. Despite being a RIM product, PlayBooks seem to lack some of the business-savvy that made BlackBerrys so ubiquitous. And speaking of BlackBerrys, don’t forget to keep them handy; with the PlayBook OS’s 2.0 release pushed back until February of next year, you and your coworkers will have to lean on BlackBerry Bridge for trivial things like email and BBM for just a bit longer.

if you’re just tickled by the prospect of swimming in PlayBooks, feel free to check out RIM’s list of vendors, or see if there’s one within spitting distance.

The Kindle Fire is about to get some major competition and as early as November 7th. The Digital Reader, pretty much the best source online for ebook news, has several sources indicating that B&N will have a large announcement on November 7th. The next Nook Color is expected to headline the show.

The Nook Color set the standard late last year for enhanced ereaders. By using a color LCD screen and a highly curated Android release, the Nook Color was an instant hit and was no doubt the template for Amazon’s Kindle Fire. But Barnes & Noble isn’t just going to roll over and let the Fire steal the market it created. Enter the next-gen Nook Color.

Expect the Nook Color 2 to go toe-to-toe with the Kindle Fire. It will likely carry the same $200 price and similar internal specs. But B&N isn’t Amazon and hasn’t built a massive Android ecosystem. Where Amazon can serve everything from books to movies to cloud storage on its devices, Barnes & Noble is stuck hawking just books and housewares. But B&N might be fine as long as they can sneak Netflix and the entire Google Apps suite onto their tablet. Plus, it needs to be as hacker friendly as the original.

It was previously rumored that the new Nook Color would launch in September but that fell through. Another older rumor also states that there will be two new Nooks coming this quarter. November 7th might turn out to be a big day in the ereader world.

A few days ago, I wrote about the possibilities for Steve Jobs’ final “One more thing…” It seems pretty clear at this point that when he passed away earlier this month, he was still hard at work on a few new products for Apple. One was probably the next iPhone (meaning the one after the just-released iPhone 4S). Two other possibilities include digital textbooks and most notably, an Apple television set. All of this got me thinking.

Under Tim Cook and the rest of an extremely experienced and capable executive team, Apple is clearly in good hands going forward. Yes, Apple fell a bit short of Wall Street expectations last quarter, but they still destroyed their own, and next quarter promises to be a blowout. Further, all the talk of Apple’s internal university to instill the “Apple way” in employees even without Jobs is good news as well. But the truth is that Apple will not likely face their first true post-Jobs test until they release their first truly new product. That execution will shed light on Apple’s future.

In the next few months, Apple is probably going to unveil a new iPad. It will probably have a high resolution screen and a few other great new features. But the iPad is now already an established category for the company. Apple will sell millions of a new version regardless of how they handle the roll out. The same is true with the next iPhone. Unless they truly screw up the product in some way that’s very unlikely to happen (again, see: killer executive team), it’s going to be a huge hit. New Macs, same story.

But what happens when Apple sets out to unveil the Apple television? To be clear, while there is too much smoke for there to be no fire, Apple always has plenty of products in development that ultimately never see the light of day — an Apple television set is still far from a certainty. But Jobs himself saying “I finally cracked it” in his biography sure seems to signal there’s a pretty good chance it will come out eventually. It could be a year from now, it could be five years from now.

But for the sake of this argument, let’s say the Apple television is Apple’s next new product. And let’s say the plan is to release it in the next year to two years. It’s going to be vital that Apple nails it.

The seemingly obvious game plan would be simply to emulate everything from Jobs-era Apple. But perhaps that’s not the right way to think about it. It certainly seems like Jobs wasn’t thinking about it that way.

During Apple’s memorial service for Jobs, Cook said the following about Jobs to the audience:

Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. “Just do what's right."

Cook went on to note that Jobs expressed hope that these instructions would help Apple avoid the trap that Disney fell into after Walt Disney’s death.

Jobs also told his biographer Walter Isaacson that Cook wasn’t “a product person, per se” and so that would also make emulating Jobs-era Apple difficult since Jobs was a product person with the final say. Apple’s product teams are undoubtedly working towards Tim Cook reviews instead of Steve Jobs reviews now, but it’s probably much more of a team effort than it has been in the past.

Obviously, getting the product right before it’s unveiled is the most important factor, but don’t underestimate the unveiling itself. Everyone knows that Jobs was a master showman on stage and Apple’s other executives, while good in their own right, will not be able to replace that. But there’s something more subtle that Apple will be missing without Jobs around to unveil something like the Apple television:  trust.

When Jobs took the stage at Apple events to show off a new product, it was exciting not only because he was a charismatic and good presenter, but also because over time, people learned to trust Jobs. That is to say, they learned to trust that if he was on stage showing off something, you know damn well that he thought it was awesome. There were a few exceptions — namely MobileMe, but that mess up was mainly in execution post-unveiling — but the vast majority of the time, when Jobs would show off a new product, it would turn out to be great.

Apple will be missing that factor for their next big new product unveiling. Some people may transfer the trust over to Apple itself (if Apple is releasing this, you know it must be good), but many will still be skeptical initially knowing that Jobs himself did not sign off on the final product.

That’s why the next new product is crucial for Apple. Fair or not, without Jobs, the company will have to re-establish consumer trust that Jobs’ presence brought. Just doing “what’s right” is obviously easier said than done. But Jobs probably felt comfortable giving that advice to Cook knowing that Apple University would help set that gauge.

To keep the dream alive, Apple now must focus on one thing — and it happens to be Tim Cook’s specialty: execution. Jobs set a few final products on the tee, the rest of the team has to swing. If the Apple television is a homerun, they’ll be golden.

It seems factors like the smartphone gaming revolution, the rise of social games, and shrinking video game sales do have an impact on Nintendo’s business strategy after all. Various Japanese media, i.e. the country’s biggest business daily The Nikkei, are reporting today that Nintendo is planning to offer in-game virtual item sales for 3DS titles.

The background here is that Nintendo’s sales from its “digital” business (downloads of classic games, for example) currently account for under 5% of the total. This number is much higher for other “traditional” video game makers: Konami, for example, is now making more money with social games (which are very popular in Japan) than with packaged software.

According to the reports, Nintendo is planning to enable the micro transaction system on the 3DS as early as next month, via a firmware upgrade. Games supporting the system are then expected to be released in 2012: these titles will offer features (like additional stages, extra characters, etc.) that can only be unlocked if the buyer pays a certain fee to Nintendo.

My guess is that the new payment system will also make it possible for the company to offer subscription-based game play models, for example for RPGs, in the future. Nintendo repeatedly said it won’t offer smartphone games, a lot of which are monetized via virtual item sales.

Design sales site Fab.com is growing fast; adding nearly 200,000 new members the past 30 days alone, and processing ten thousand plus orders per week. That’s impressive for a startup that started an entirely new business centered around online flash sales of design items from scratch in June. Of course to mitigate this growth, the company has to make a few key hires in operations and finance.

The company has named Beth Ferreira as its new COO. Prior to joining Fab.com she was a an operations consultant to a number of startups including Birchbox, Pixable, JOOR, Nestio, RedRover Networks, fundedbuy, ofakind, and postling. Before that, Ferreira was VP of Operations & Finance at Etsy and a member of the investment team at VC firm Flatiron Partners. She has also held positions at The Boston Consulting Group and at the Union Bank of Switzerland.

New CFO David Lapter has joined Fab.com from Kit Digital, which acquired his previous company, KickApps. Lapter also held positions in the VC world prior to Kit Digital.

The startup has already attracted some celebrity attention with Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary as investors. But today, a celebrity in the design world, Rob Forbes, is joining the company as an advisor. Forbes is the founder of design-focused furniture and accessories store Design Within Reach.

Fab.com recently raised another $8 million in new funding, and launched mobile apps for iOS and Android. And the company is nearing 1 million members.

Before the Samsung Galaxy Nexus even goes on sale, Samsung has managed to take the lead against Apple to become the largest mobile phone maker by revenue in the third quarter of 2011. Nokia still holds the crown for mobile phone sales by volume, while Apple has dropped behind both to take the number three spot in terms of revenue.

While Samsung didn’t release its exact numbers, the Guardian spoke to Daiwa Securities technology analyst Jae Lee, who estimates that Samsung sold around 28 million phones in the third quarter. In the same period, Apple only sold 17 million phones, though it’s a tough comparison to make since Apple releases one phone a year while Samsung releases quite a few more than that.

With the help of the Samsung Galaxy S II no doubt, Samsung’s telecommunications business broke records this quarter with sales of 14.9 trillion won (US $13.5 billion), up 37 percent from last year. While declining to offer sales figures for handsets, a Samsung spokesperson said that smartphones sales had quadrupled from the previous quarter, with overall handset shipments increasing by more than 20 percent.

Pulling from Gartner research, the Guardian calculates that 20 percent increase to be shipments of about 86 million handsets between July and September. All the while, Samsung is still wrapped up in a massive legal spat with Apple and has still managed to grab the crown. Hat tip to you, Samsung.

Then again, Apple CEO Tim Cook has big plans for Apple’s upcoming quarter, predicting record iPhone and iPad sales. Only time will tell.

Japan-based Murata caused quite a splash in the tech world with their awesome unicycle humanoids a while back, and now the company is applying the robot technology used in those machines for something that’s not just entertaining to watch. The advanced balancing system in particular is what makes their newly developed “assistance car” so special.

As you can see in the video embedded below, the car stands upright on its own without falling over. Thanks to the built-in power assist system, it just takes one finger to make it move forward or back “automatically”, making Murata think of turning the prototype into a walking aid, baby carriage, or some sort of shopping cart in the future.

Diginfo TV‘s video (in English) shows the assistance car in action:

Here are some of yesterday’s Gadgets stories:

Redbox Raises Price On Rentals To $1.20

Microsoft Patents Manipulation Of 3D Virtual Objects, Throwing Gestures

Gunnar Optiks Intros Glasses For The Call Of Duty Obsessed

Microsoft's Vision Of The Future Includes Touch-Sensitive Everything (And Beautiful People Only)

Charted: Android Fragmentation