I was about as impressed with attempts to integrate mobile with this year's Super Bowl as I was with the Green Bay Packers’ effort during their NFC divisional playoff loss to the New York Giants. I was even more prepared to take advantage of the mobile cues than most. I had my iPhone 4S in hand. I had the Shazam app downloaded. I had a QR Code reader downloaded, and I was sitting right next to the TV.

Alas, I was truly amazed at how unrewarding and generally annoying it was to hold my phone up to the television in hopes of getting a little more information about what television spot I was watching, or perhaps the title of a particular song playing during a commercial. Fulfilling an advertiser's call to action while sitting in a room full of friends and family is just not natural and actually takes away from the experience of being at a party. Not to mention, everyone in the room thinks you're an anti-social idiot.

Regardless of what the advertisers say about mobile having reached maturity as a channel, it's a long way from playing any meaningful role during events like the Super Bowl.

It's also immature in other ways. I was amazed to find that my niece and nephew, both teenagers who can usually be found glued to their Android smartphones, didn't have a clue what I was doing when I “shazamed” a commercial. I actually had to show them how to get the free download of Madonna's new song. When I'm ahead of the teenage crowd in these matters, something's just not right.

And if I wasn't shazaming a spot, I was supposed to be scanning a QR code while my father tried in earnest to have a conversation with me about what kinds of moves the Packers will make in the off season. I came to this conclusion: If advertisers one day convince us that scanning a little code on the TV with our mobiles is more important than being courteous and present with those around us, then we will have lost some little bit of our souls. Not to mention, we'll be really boring people.

So should Madison Avenue just give up on integrating mobile with television? After Sunday's game, I'm not sure, but I will say that should they choose to continue on this current route, there will have to be more incentive to act and a heap more innovation to ensure an effortless experience for the end user.

What I saw on Sunday was a point of diminishing returns for a particular technology. I'm usually amazed by what I see from developers and gadget makers. Heck, even the carriers come up with something interesting every now and again. But this year's Super Bowl reminded me that as much as the big brands wished it were not true, there really are limits to the amount of distractions that our central nervous system can manage.

By halftime, I had given up, plugged my phone into the wall and returned to the party feeling lighter and more able to enjoy myself. Later when a GoDaddy ad or some other such commercial came, a QR code displayed in the bottom left-hand corner, I was glad to be able to just sit back and enjoy the cheese dip.

I could be completely off here. According to an InMobi survey of 1101 iOS and Android, nearly 40 percent of respondents used mobile devices in response to TV ads during the game.

InMobi claims the survey “confirms that consumers significantly utilized their mobile devices during the biggest advertising event of the year.” However, I’d like to point out one key point. Apparently twice as many respondents used their mobile devices during the first half of the game compared to the second half. So I’m not the only one who threw up his hands in the despair at half time, and not because of the score.

Perhaps the only true gauge of how this year’s mobile engagement plans went will be found in the extent to which advertisers increase or curtail their campaigns next year.  

If you’ve been following the LightSquared-vs.-GPS-Industry saga, you might be ready for the whole thing to end. Put a fork in it already and get on with something else.

That’s very tempting. A headline earlier this month said the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee (heretofore referred to as “PNT EXCOM,” stretch as that might be for an acronym) determined that “there appears to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significant interference with GPS.” Finally, a “final-sounding” statement. It looked as if someone had put the brakes on it once and for all. If nine government agencies, including the FAA, are saying this isn’t going to work, you need to go to Plan B.

The problem was, LightSquared said those tests that showed no “practical solutions” were based on faulty and rigged testing. The GPS industry folks are in cahoots with the government, if you believe LightSquared. Why? According to LightSquared, it has to do with several things, but up near the top is the GPS industry’s desire to continue using spectrum that is really in LightSquared’s domain. That’s right – the GPS receivers are using spectrum designated for LightSquared and they’re getting a free ride to boot. (Oh, and LightSquared wants to remind you that thanks to all the smartphones in use today, the personal navigational device market – where the GPS industry historically made a lot of money – isn’t what it used to be. Just keep that in mind.)

As for where LightSquared fits in, the company’s Executive Vice President for Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy Jeff Carlisle uses an analogy to mining. If you get a license to mine on federal property, spend millions building the mine and getting ready to extract minerals, then you’re told that you can no longer proceed with your operations? Not a good way of doing business, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Government.

What about that government-mandated space that is supposed to serve as a buffer between spectrum users? Oh yeah, the “guard bands.” Apparently, they’re not working here or somehow got dropped. Not sure what happened there.

Somewhat related to that “buffer” zone and often overlooked or dismissed outright is LightSquared’s offer to move farther away from GPS, to the other side of its designated spectrum, so it’s no longer interfering with about 99.75 percent of GPS devices. That last quarter of 1 percent of devices? Carlisle says that does not include aviation, so anyone who wants to say that “99 percent” non-interference is not good enough when you’re talking about airplanes, well, that doesn’t really fly. Yet that’s exactly the type of thing people remember from last year’s hearings on the matter.  

The horse has left the barn. Once you put the fear into people’s minds that somehow LightSquared’s network is going to interfere with aviation or anything that even remotely has to do with “life and death” – which is exactly what the GPS industry has been doing – you’re done. So why are we still talking about this?

LightSquared keeps trying. Immediately after that PNT EXCOM report, the company called on the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to re-evaluate the government/GPS industry tests and conduct another round of tests on high-precision devices at an independent laboratory.

There’s a lot of finger-pointing and worse going on, and it’s impossible to know, without a thorough investigation, everything that has gone down. In what’s possibly the oddest turn of recent events, Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley made allegations  of some kind of bride involving LightSquared and a potential call center (which LightSquared wouldn’t need under its business model) in Iowa. Odd, all of it. It’s very reminiscent of the first iteration of Nextwave Wireless, whose license predicament finally was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

LightSquared’s investment by hedge fund manager Philip Falcone is well documented and frequently cited (just say “hedge fund” and see how people react). But LightSquared’s history is hardly fly by night. Remember ARDIS, Motient, SkyTerra? They’re all part of its history, and LightSquared’s chairman and CEO, Sanjiv Ahuja, is a well-respected executive who spent several years as CEO of Orange. How do you explain how LightSquared got from A to B?

An earlier iteration of the company, American Mobile Satellite Corp. (AMSC), was awarded spectrum back in 1989, before the spectrum auctions, so it didn’t actually pay for it. Yet the company did go on to create a satellite business and invested a lot of money in the proposed LightSquared terrestrial network. So if it can’t use the spectrum it was awarded for LTE, does it deserve some compensation?

I am not always the first to suggest public hearings be held in Washington, D.C., but in this case, it seems justified. Last week, Rep. Greg Walden, (R-Ore.), leader of the House Subcommittee on Communications & Technology, said the subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine the FCC’s handling of LightSquared’s proposed service. Walden told reporters last week  that he’s “trying to figure out how the cart got so far ahead of the horse,” i.e., why did the company get spectrum only to be told later on that there are interference issues?

So far, I haven’t found a date certain for such a hearing, but it’s a good idea. If the government can’t figure out how this mess happened, it’s more than a little directionally challenged.

Today's appointment of Thorsten Heins to the position of president and CEO is not the equivalent of Nokia hiring Stephen Elop. In fact, this isn't even the equivalent of Meg Whitman coming in to repair the damage left in Leo Apotheker's wake. Rather, RIM appears to have adopted a business-as-usual attitude with the appointment of Heins, and in case you were wondering, business hasn't exactly been booming over at RIM in the past few years.

Consider that shares of RIM were trading at $70 a little less than a year ago, in February of 2011. As I write this, RIM is trading at $15.91 per share, down 6 percent since the announcement of Thorsten Heins yesterday. This is to say nothing about RIM's plummeting market share, nor the established competition that is no doubt applauding RIM's decision to stay its treacherous course.

Remember Elop's famous memo about the man hanging from a burning oil platform above the frigid waters of the North Atlantic? Elop's first order of business was to explain to everyone that Nokia, as a company, was about to let go and brave those harsh waters. Nokia did let go of MeeGo (and in part, Symbian) and appears to have found a life raft in the form of Windows Phone 7.

I wonder if RIM thinks it is so different than Nokia that it can continue to hold onto a platform on fire?

Perhaps it's just that RIM thinks it has the fire under control. Perhaps the new hardware under wraps, when combined with the impending release of BB 10 and PlayBook 2.0, along with a few Android apps, really will re-inspire the BlackBerry faithful. Perhaps we're about to see the exact opposite of what Nokia did.

I have a hard time believing that’s what we’re going to see, if only because RIM’s previous recent attempts to really impress have largely failed. BlackBerry 7 was supposed to be the next evolutionary step for RIM, and still it hemorrhaged market share. The PlayBook was supposed to be the next stop in tablet computing; it was released sans 3G or native email, an embarrassing apps catalog and is now seeing deep discounts.

I might be more optimistic if Heins did send out a come-to-reality memo like the one issued by Elop, shortly after his hiring. But alas, Heins thinks things are right on track.
“I don't think that there is a drastic change needed,” he said in a call with reporters earlier this morning.

What? Excuse me, but isn’t this the point in the movie where the incoming CEO should be seen angrily dumping a box of Android and iOS devices (heck, throw in a Lumia 900) onto a conference room table for all of his top designers and R&D folks to see, while said CEO screams, “THIS IS WHAT THE COMPETITION IS DOING! WE NEED TO BE DOING THE SAME OR BETTER!”

I think it was Albert Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I’m beginning to wonder whether this particular definition might apply to a certain OEM from the North Country.

The tech industry may have had its attention focused on gadgets this week due to the annual hullaballoo at the 2012 International CES show in Las Vegas, but at least a few people were thinking about the patented inventions that make those electronics work. 

Kodak filed complaints against Apple and HTC with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Tuesday alleging the companies had violated a handful of its multitudinous patents on digital imaging. The fact that Kodak is trying to find a buyer for its patents to save it from having to file for bankruptcy – and that successful lawsuits prove the value of its patents and raise their net worth – was not mentioned in the suits.

On Thursday, Ericsson announced it had decided to "strengthen its focus" on patent licensing and put intellectual property chief Kasim Alfalahi in charge of the new plan. Ericsson already licenses out its 27,000-strong patent portfolio to 90 companies, but its main business has always been the gear that makes networks run. 

The tone of a line at the top of Ericsson's press release said it all: "Any company using cellular connectivity needs a license." With the intellectual property market booming and the tech industry rife with litigation, why not cash in on the trend? 

Hours after Ericsson's announcement hit the wires, Openwave said it was changing the course of its business to focus on patent licensing and would pursue what it euphemistically described as "strategic alternatives" for its mediation and messaging business. In plain English, Openwave is streamlining itself to focus on its most potentially lucrative assets: patents. 

Openwave did a poor job of leveraging its patents on the mobile Internet in the past. It's now addressing that, and like everyone else in the industry, it's not above turning to the courts. It filed suit in August against Apple and Research In Motion for allegedly infringing on its intellectual property rights. 

After Openwave's announcement, the patent news kept rolling. Microsoft put out a press release announcing that it had signed a patent agreement with LG covering all of the South Korea electronics maker's Android and Chrome OS devices. 

Somehow, "agreement" seems like a bit of a misnomer given Microsoft's aggressive pursuit of licensing agreements with just about every Android manufacturer out there. I picture the talks between Microsoft and LG actually went something like this: "Sign up for a license or we'll sue you and make you pay even higher royalties, and don't bother turning to Google for help because they have patent protection like the Sahara has water." 

Microsoft says 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the United States are "receiving coverage" under its patent portfolio. Another way of putting it would be that Microsoft is gleaning royalty payments from 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the United States. 

Android may be open source, but it's being heavily taxed.

The last piece of this week's patent news – well, maybe not the last, something could break before midnight on Sunday – came from Nokia. The Finnish handset maker said it sold a sliver of the 30,000 patents in its portfolio to European patent licensing firm Sisvel. The deal included 350 patents Nokia "declared essential" to GSM, UMTS/WCDMA and LTE. You know what that means: Pay for a license from us, or we'll see you in court. 

It's not like the tech industry has never seen patent wars before. My editor rightly reminded me today that there were major legal battles between companies like Qualcomm and Nokia not too long ago. Much of what went down this week is par for the course in any rapidly-evolving field that’s still sorting out who owns ideas and can charge other people for using them – just look at the glut of lawsuits during the early years of the automotive industry.

What strikes me about the state of licensing and litigation in the industry today is the potential impact on the wireless ecosystem, particularly for Android devices.

As more and more companies seek to exploit the weaknesses of their competitors on the patent front, particularly for Android, how will that affect manufacturer's decisions about what platforms to use and what technology to include in their devices? Just how expensive will it have to get to make Android devices before companies decide to explore other, less heavily taxed options? 

Microsoft is reported to have demanded a $15 royalty fee on every Samsung Android handset while the two companies were duking it out in court last summer. HTC is estimated to pay Microsoft $5 on each of its Android devices. Then there are fees that manufacturers have to pay to other companies that hold patents used in Android – could this result in the increase in retail prices for Android smartphones that has been predicted by some? 

Google won't get significant patent protection until it closes its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility and its much-needed trove of 12,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications. I wonder how the litigation over Android would play out if Google had won Nortel's patents, instead of Apple, Research In Motion and Microsoft. 

Google has repeatedly claimed that Apple and Microsoft are out to get Android and are using patents as the missile that will destroy the platform's meteoric rise. The late Steve Jobs construed it somewhat differently, saying Android amounted to “wholesale theft” of Apple’s ideas. In his biography, Jobs was quoted as saying he would "destroy Android, because it's a stolen product." It seems likely that Jobs' successors will pursue Android with the same amount of vitriol. 

If CES highlighted anything this week, it was the power of ideas. Patents are about protecting those ideas, making sure that no one steals them.

Casting aside the question of who's right – the courts can sort that out – it's clear that Google's longstanding policy of being lax on the patent front has come back to bite it. Apparently, it somehow thought that failing to properly patent its technology or secure licenses would have no consequences. 

Well, those consequences have come home to roost. Only time will tell what impact they have.

After perusing my schedule for the 2012 International CES, I decided it was probably time to put together a few thoughts (not predictions mind you) about what is always and forever billed as the "the world's largest consumer technology trade show." We can conveniently split these thoughts into "Kudos," "Duds" and "Curious." 

Kudos to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) for moving CES to the second week of January. Judging by the spike in hotel prices and airfares, I'm guessing I'm not alone in embracing this move and it will have a measurable, positive effect on attendance.

Kudos to Pepcom's Digital Experience for going with a cowboy theme this year, which seems appropriate for Las Vegas. This group always puts on a creative and engaging event, and I'm glad they're finally getting around to donning a pair of spurs.

Kudos to AT&T's Dev Con for generating some buzz this year. I'm not sure what they've got on tap, but people are talking.

Duds to Microsoft, which takes up nearly a city block of exhibit floor real estate, for announcing that this will be its last year at CES. Kind of tacky, Microsoft, considering that your CEO is giving the preshow keynote.

Duds to the fact that my ridiculously priced flight goes from Madison, Wis., to Dallas, Salt Lake City and finally, some 10 hours later, Las Vegas.

Duds to Motorola Mobility for failing to have a press event this year. The company's always classy affairs usually feature interesting product unveils with funny names (Motorola BackFlip anyone?), decent venues and above-average appetizers. Note: I hear there will be some device announcements, so stay tuned. 

Duds to the gratuitous amounts of lip balm I'll inevitably have to use while in those arid climes.

Curious to see what Nokia will be unveiling on the mobile side. I've been impressed with the Lumia 710 and 800 and am interested to see where the company goes from here.

Curious to see if Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the CEA, will go anywhere near the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger during his planned  discussion with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Shapiro usually likes to devote at least 15 minutes during his keynotes to outlining the dangers of regulatory meddling, so I’d like to hear what these two manage to scrape together for their chat. 

After this week’s Forbes article, which basically predicts the death of Best Buy, I’m curious to see what the electronics retailer’s CEO, Brian Dunn, has to say about the future of brick-and-mortar chains. 

Curious whether Steve Ballmer will devote much of his keynote to the mobile side of Microsoft's business, and whether Nokia's hardware is getting any traction since the Lumia 800 was released in Europe.

While these little nitpicky things will ultimately comprise the expected ups, downs and curiosities of the annual craziness that happens every year in Las Vegas, it’s the unexpected announcement that ultimately makes the show. On that note, I’ll leave you with a “wait and see” and a stay tuned to Wireless Week!

A lot of us who were not activating new phones (or explaining network disruptions) over the holidays are just getting back into the swing of things. In the spirit of easing back into the run-up to CES, here’s a shout-out to T-Mobile USA for its holiday video, “(There’s No Place Like) Home For The Holidays.”

The video was posted to YouTube on Dec. 5, but I didn’t see it until AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher posted it yesterday. Like Swisher, I wasn’t sure if I liked the video or was just freaked out by it. It does make you wonder what T-Mobile was thinking in paying Hollywood director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and musical director Paul Mirkovich, not to mention the singers and so forth in making this happen.

But after looking at it again and (spending way too much time) seeing how it was made, I give it a “Like.” The surprise performance of the classic song by a wonderfully choreographed flash mob of women at the Woodfield Mall in the Chicago area is astounding. 

In the end, it’s kind of bittersweet. It was made before the final nail in the coffin with regard to AT&T’s bid to acquire the company - that is to say, before AT&T announced it was pulling the plug on its proposal to acquire T-Mobile.

T-Mobile’s future is uncertain, but its identity is not going away via an absorption by AT&T. I would hazard a guess that T-Mobile, while it’s been losing customers, is not in such dire straits that it couldn’t afford to pay someone to produce that video. 

What’s done is done, and we can enjoy one last bright spot from T-Mobile from 2011. Here’s to hoping it has a new game plan for 2012 and that its promotions along the lines of “Magenta Saturday” will add up to a lot of green.

If you had not heard of Carrier IQ before this fall, surely you know them by now. Since before the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s been at the heart (or dagger?) of all kinds of accusations, prompted by the initial exposure by security researcher Trevor Eckhart. Even Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is quoted by The Telegraph as calling the company’s software a “keylogger,” a description the company disputes.

(If you heard Brian Williams tease it on NBC’s Nightly News a while back, you’d think someone was spying on every keystroke and phone call you make. Why? Because you and I are so very interesting, of course. And gobs of space and people exist to pore over these jaw-dropping events that we create. Just sayin’.)

I don’t mean to make light of people’s concerns. OK, maybe I do, in a way. Anyone ever heard of Google or Facebook? Also, I am not a network engineer, but I think your carrier needs to know your location if you're going to need the assistance of 911. They might even need to know the telephone number that you dial. Maybe. But that’s just if you want to get a message through, like, you know, to another party.

Snarky comments aside, security is a very real issue and we don’t need to make it any easier for hackers to get to our private information. So in that sense, anything that makes our information vulnerable to the bad guys must be fixed. But I’m not sure that’s the issue that has been really front and center here. It seems that the “spy” accusations have a lot more legs than the keep-our-information-secure-from-hackers angle.

Back to Carrier IQ. I’ve been mulling this over for some time now, trying to make heads or tails out of the situation. For a while, it sounded like everyone was pointing the finger at everyone else, and no one was accepting responsibility. But now I commend Carrier IQ for stepping up to the plate. Yesterday, the company again released a document in response to the furor raised over its existence. It’s worth checking out if you want to know the ins and outs of what its software does and doesn’t do in terms of network management and customer care.

I caught up with Carrier IQ’s vice president of marketing, Andrew Coward, who was in Washington, D.C., today to sort through some of the recent goings-on. Consistent with the recent messages I’ve seen from the company so far, he said they’re trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, in this latest show-and-tell, the company probably sacrificed competitive secrecy for the sake of transparency – and we all know how protective this industry is when it comes to intellectual property.
At one stage of the game, Carrier IQ executives issued a cease-and-desist order because they didn’t know who Eckhart was or what kind of competitive issues might be in play, but they rather quickly backed down and apologized profusely for jumping the gun. The company has since worked with Eckhart to reach a common goal – versus what I interpreted as a pretty antagonistic relationship on both sides in the early days of this fiasco. I have not been able to speak with Eckhart to see if he’s satisfied with the results thus far.

Since the whole thing started, it’s interesting that such a wide spectrum of the Web-o-sphere was so quick to jump on the carriers and their vendor(s) and assume they were up to nefarious deeds. Maybe this should not come as a surprise, but when I think of a start-up company with just 112 employees trying to make a go of it – and Carrier IQ has repeatedly said its software is designed to help carriers improve the service they provide to consumers – I have to wonder what’s going on.

Carrier IQ supplies its software to carriers and OEMs, who in turn carry out the policies and procedures. And really, when you boil it down, the responsibility rests on the carrier, not anyone else in the chain.

Are people fed up with paying their carriers and therefore they’re ready to get angry regardless of how much vetting has been done to a blog or news story? Does everyone assume your private information is private unless the government has a warrant to look at something? Do you send emails even if it contains information that could land in the wrong hands? Is there a “forward” function on email that could enable your correspondence to be shared with someone you didn’t intend to share it with?
There was a time when I thought the only way to get to the bottom of the Carrier IQ brouhaha was to hold public hearings, although you have to wonder if the situation warrants that kind of time and expense. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is among those who voiced concerns about Carrier IQ’s software. He asked AT&T, Sprint Nextel, HTC and Samsung executives to get back to him by Dec. 14 (tomorrow) on a list of questions about what the software is collecting. According to Franken’s office, he hasn’t yet received their responses, but he’s expecting them by the deadline. It’s not clear whether his office will make the responses public or what will happen after that.

Today, some headlines are questioning whether the FBI is using Carrier IQ software; the company insists it hasn’t received any requests from the FBI and besides, that’s the carrier’s responsibility.

With just 112 employees, 6-year-old Carrier IQ considers itself a startup. It had a pretty low profile before Eckhart exposed his video on YouTube for all the world to see. Now, it’s not only famous but possibly infamous. How’s that for getting to know your vendors?