Reuters - Spanish-owned mobile phone operator O2 has yet to sign any deal to bring iPhone mobile phones -- Apple Inc.'s latest "must-have" gadget -- to Britain.

German courts have confirmed that Google's fight for the G-mail trademark has been lost. 33-year old German businessman Daniel Giersch has won a case against Google, meaning that Google is not permitted to use the "Gmail" name in Germany. Giersch had registered 'G-mail' in 2000, four years before Google came out with its web mail service of the same name.

This is the second time that Google has had to give up the Gmail name - two years ago Google handed over the rights to the name in the UK. At that time Google changed the name to Google Mail, after its run-in with research firm Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) - which used the name G-mail to refer to a part of its financial analytics software.

Indeed Google is having trouble holding its own in Europe as a whole, in the Gmail battle. Again Giersch is at the center of it, as he also won in Austria and claims to own the name in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland. Meanwhile in Poland, Google's Gmail adversary is "a polish group of poets".

Back in Germany, Giersch claims he is not cyber-squatting but has actually created a business around the name G-mail. He even issued a press release comparing himself to German entrepreneurs post-second world war:

"...the 33-year-old is putting himself in the entrepreneurial tradition of the so-called "men of the first hours," who put Germany on the road to success in the post-war years. Backbone, innovation and courage are the values that are important for Giersch."

Continuing the war motif, Giersch also declares this "a legendary victory" - noting that "for many Daniels fighting "Googliaths," confidence and financial means run out in the long course of battle."

So what is G-mail, the German version?

Giersch's G-Mail is a "hybrid mail system". He claims it "is an ingenious blend of innovative and well-tried communications solutions". Well if he can build software as good as he fights court battles, then he's onto a winner.

Giersch's press release concludes by saying that that "the confirmed, unambiguous legal situation is helping Daniel Giersch and his "G-mail" name finally go full steam ahead and realise their catchy motto: "...und die Post geht richtig ab!" ("...and the post is really taking off!")"

The court victory will certainly do no harm in promoting G-Mail in Germany.

(InfoWorld) - Four former executives with computer networking and security vendor Enterasys Networks have been sentenced to prison terms for their roles in accounting fraud at the company that cost investors millions of dollars, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

The executives were convicted on conspiracy and fraud charges during a December 2006 trial. At sentencing hearings that began last week in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, Judge Paul Barbadoro sentenced former Enterasys CFO Robert J. Gagalis to 11 1/2 years in prison. Gagalis was convicted of one count of conspiracy, two counts of securities fraud, one count of making false statements to auditors of a public company, and four counts of wire fraud.

Bruce D. Kay, a former Enterasys finance executive, was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison. The jury found Kay guilty of one count of conspiracy, two counts of securities fraud, one count of falsifying books and records of a public company, one count of making false statements to auditors of a public company, and three counts of wire fraud.

Robert G. Barber, a former Enterasys business development executive, was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $25,000. The jury found Barber guilty of conspiracy, two counts of securities fraud, one count of falsifying books and records of a public company, and one count of making false statements to auditors of a public company.

Hor Chong "David" Boey, former finance executive in Enterasys' Asia Pacific division, was sentenced to three years in prison. Boey was convicted of conspiracy, two counts of securities fraud, one count of falsifying books and records of a public company, one count of making false statements to auditors of a public company, and two counts of wire fraud.

Starting in mid-2001, the four defendants and other Enterasys executives inflated the company's revenue figures as a way to meet expectations of financial analysts and to maintain or increase the price of the company's stock, the DOJ said.

The defendants backdated and falsified documents and concealed terms of business transactions from Enterasys' auditors in order to inflate revenue, the DOJ said. The conspirators also fraudulently created false revenue by secretly investing company funds in other companies and having those companies to use the investment proceeds to buy Enterasys products.

Because of the fraudulent scheme, public investors lost at least $97 million, the DOJ said.

The four "will spend years in prison for perpetrating a fraud that cost Enterasys shareholders millions of dollars," Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general in the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a statement.

Several other former Enterasys executives, including former Chairman, President and CEO Henry Fiallo have previously pleaded guilty to felony charges in connection with the scheme. To date, eight former Enterasys executives have been convicted of felonies.

An Enterasys spokesman said the none of the four defendants have worked for the company recently. The company is under new management and ownership since the accounting fraud case was filed, and the convictions will not affect the company going forward, said Kevin Flanagan, company spokesman.

The accounting fraud case "is very much in the past" for the company, he added.

Glubble is a very impressive browser plugin that adds parental controls to Firefox. Glubble transforms Firefox into a locked down environment where kids can only surf approved sites, while parents can easily log into a restriction-free account for normal web surfing.

Glubble also re-skins Firefox with a simple and appealing kid-friendly look while logged into a child account. The browser under Glubble is a completely controlled environment, meaning all of your bookmarks and most of your other plugins are hidden while logged into a child account (some plugins, like Flash for example, will still work -- a good thing considering how many children's sites utilize Flash).

The plugin is exceptionally easy to install and set up. It's installed via Firefox's automatic plugin installation mechanism, and once you've restarted Firefox you're greeted with Glubble set up screen. From there you set up your administrator accounts and the accounts for your children. Glubble lets you set up child accounts in two flavors: for kids who can read, and kids who can't. The main difference is that the pre-read accounts, as they are called, don't display a URL and search bar, so kids instead navigate by clicking on icons and links to pre-defined sites.

The Glubble sign on screen is the first screen users see when starting Firefox.

Once Glubble is set up, every time you start up Firefox you'll see a family sign on screen. Children can set Glubble to remember their passwords, but parents (administrators) cannot. Glubble comes preloaded with a set of approved websites. These include kid friendly sites like Fisher Price, Barbie.com, Animal Planet, Disney, and Nickelodeon. It also appears that every site in the Yahoo! Kids Directory is available for kids protected by Glubble (at least, every site I clicked on worked). Yahoo! Kids lists over 57,000 web sites in its directory, so there are a fair number to get started with.

Glubble comes installed with two search engines: Google and Yahoo! It filters results from each so that only kid-friendly or pre-approved sites are shown. When a child attempts to visit a site that isn't on their list, Glubble will ask for an administrator to approve the site before the child can see it. From within any administrator account, you can also update and manage the list of sites your child can view. When adding a link, you can choose to add it to the entire family or to a specific child's account. You can also choose to only let a child view a specific web page rater than the entire site.

Children must get permission to visit unapproved sites.

Conclusion

A few caveats: The addon appeared to treat links with and without the www. separately. So when I added "wikipedia.org" to my child's list of approved links, surfing to "www.wikipedia.org" caused it to ask for approval again before showing the page. Further, even thought I thought I had approved the entire site, "en.wikipedia.org" (where all the English content is stored) seemed to still be blocked. Speaking of addons, Glubble disabled a bunch of mine even while logged in as administrator, which was rather annoying.

In all, though, Glubble is a very well made Firefox addon and a great free parental control suite. The pre-approved sites it comes installed with appear well-vetted and control over other sites is fairly complete. Unlike other parental filters, Glubble displays only content from approved sites, rather than trying to check against a list of bad ones. This is, in my opinion, a much better concept and greatly decreases the chances that bad content will slip through.

The Glubble browser skin is simple and kid-friendly.

Filed under: Internet, Photo, E-mail, Web services, P2P

Scrub down and spruce up

Deutsche Messe AG yesterday outlined the restructuring of its CeBIT 2008 trade fair in Hanover, which next year will focus more on B2B and less on novelties.…