• The publishing industry has got plenty of worries about the ebook market - just witness Simon & Schuster's decision last week to delay electronic publication of new titles by several months - but perhaps the biggest threat is now materialising: best-selling business author Stephen R Covey has signed an exclusive deal to let Amazon sell digital versions of two of his books, sidestepping the publishers completely. Covey, author of the massive The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has signed a year-long, experimental deal which should give him a higher cut of the profits and bypasses his publisher (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, Simon and Schuster).
• Microsoft is in hot water after it was accused of stealing from Canadian startup Plurk. The service (think of it as a bit like a version of Twitter that's popular in Asia) claims that a new MSN China service, Juku, uses not only a very similar design - but the code too. "Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery," they wrote. "But blatant theft of code, design, and UI elements is just not cool, especially when the infringing party is the biggest software company in the world".
• Oh, and if that wasn't enough... for several years, Microsoft has been making something called COFEE - a suite of forensic tools for law enforcement agents, that helps them grab encrypted or password-protected data. But a group of hackers have given the company a virtual wedgie by releasing a program that effectively makes COFEE redundant. It's not the biggest of deals, given that the tools themselves are not the most complex on the block, but it's not good news for Microsofties.
• Oh yes, and just in case you didn't notice the absolute flood of promotion we did yesterday... the Guardian now has an iPhone app, with which owners of Apple's handset can get the news delivered in a nice little package. It took a while, but hopefully it's worth the wait and the price - £2.39 in the UK, and $3.99 in the US. Other countries should be coming soon.
You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.
