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Yahoo investors who are hoping to get a glimpse into the company’s legal brief filed Monday to oppose holding a trial to remove its controversial employee severance plan will have to wait for an hour or so, according to a source familiar with the filing.

Yahoo had unsuccessfully sought to keep the shareholder amended complaint under seal. The recently unsealed documents created a firestorm of controversy for the Internet search pioneer. The amended complaint contained e-mails and information from outside compensation consultants Yahoo had hired, who raised questions regarding the breadth of the severance packages that would be awarded to all full-time employees in the event of a change of control of Yahoo should employees depart the company or their duties or responsibilities change.

Update 10:30 a.m. PDT: Yahoo plans to unseal its court filing Monday.

Yahoo’s employee severance plan has been called a defacto “poison pill” by the plaintiffs, who allege it was put in place to make Microsoft’s earlier unsolicited buyout efforts more expensive, a claim Yahoo has previously rejected. The Internet company characterized the plan as an employee retention effort.

While the motion to oppose setting a trial date was temporarily filed under seal, Yahoo’s motion to dismiss the shareholder amended lawsuit–also filed Monday–was not, according to the Delaware Chancery Court, where both filings were submitted.

Yahoo’s brief seeks to oppose a motion made in a shareholder lawsuit, which asks the court to hold a trial to invalidate the company’s employees severance plans and to hold the trial before Yahoo’s annual shareholders’ meeting August 1.

But Huawei has done well in Europe, providing gear to big operators such as Vodafone and France Telecom’s Orange.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Cox deal was imminent. And it also said that Clearwire, which is building a 4G nationwide wireless network using WiMax, is also considering Huawei to provide it with gear for its network. Clearwire has joined forces with Sprint Nextel to build the new network. And it is currently selecting vendors to finish building the network. The company expects to make service available to 120 million people by 2010.

Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies announced Monday that it will provide wireless equipment to cable operator Cox Communications, which is building its own 3G cell phone network.

Cox, the third largest cable provider in the U.S., is using the $300 million worth of spectrum it bought in last year’s Federal Communications Commission’s auction to build the network. The company also plans to resell Sprint Nextel wireless service. The service is expected to launch later this year.

Huawei is providing the CDMA equipment to build the network, which the company says will be upgradeable to the 4G wireless technology LTE, or Long Term Evolution.

Huawei has tried for several years to get a foothold in the U.S. telecom equipment market. But the company has only managed to strike a few minor deals with wireless operators, such as Leap Wireless. The deal with Cox looks to be one of the largest for the company in the U.S.

Once installed, you can run Boxee right off the AppleTV's source list.

Within the next two months the software will be updated to play videos off of Hulu, meaning AppleTV owners who run the hack will be able to watch full-length TV shows (with ads) without having to purchase them from Apple’s proprietary storefront. The company is also trying to get Netflix’s freshly improved Watch Now streaming service running too.

Once installed on the AppleTV, you can enjoy the same Boxee experience that’s currently available on Macs and PCs running Linux. This includes being able to play Web video from multiple sources, and DivX- and Xvid-encoded content through your network–all without having to use any special transcoding software. You’re also able to switch back to the Apple TV interface without having to make any massive changes to the way the system runs.

AppleTV has a rich history of getting hacked for the sake of adding extra utility. Contained within its small confines is a reasonably powerful computer that’s capable of running
Mac OS X (albeit slowly). The problem is that despite this power, the system software is tied to iTunes and its sister store for movies, music, and TV shows. This hinders it from competing with devices like mini-PCs and game machines that offer a huge variety of media playback, including DVDs and Blu-ray movies.

To help solve this, Boxee founder and CEO Avner Ronen has published instructions on how to get his company’s media center software to run on the AppleTV. This system requires the use of developer Scott Davilla’s ATVUSB-Creator, a Mac-only application that lets you create special programs that boot off a USB thumbdrive. The application comes with simple tools for putting SSH,
Xbox Media Center for Mac, and its Boxee derivative on a drive with just a few clicks.

Related: Hands-on with Boxee: A gorgeous social-media viewer

(Credit:
Boxee)

Boxee is currently in private beta and limited to Mac and Linux users. We’ve been told that it’s coming for PC users within the next month, with plans to open it up to everyone come next year’s Consumer Electronics Show.

Apple’s hallmark is control: this is a company that requires an escort for reporters who want to walk 100 yards down a cavernous hallway in the Moscone Center from the media room to the bathroom in plain sight of dozens of people. That control sometimes serves Apple well, in that it can dictate a specific user experience free from outside distractions that might cause problems.

The end result of Apple's decision to drop an NDA for released iPhone software? Better software.

Instead of throwing off the competition, the NDA merely angered developers who wanted nothing more than to help make Apple’s latest baby even better: they just needed a little help from their friends.

Apple’s justification for applying the NDA to released software (it still applies to unreleased software under development) was that competitors might be able to glean insights into the iPhone from the technical details shared among developers.

Software development is complicated enough, even when you can ask for help.

Apple is never going to be Google, or even Microsoft, when it comes to placating developers. But developers are drawn to the iPhone because of the product itself, rather than the promise of freedom to tinker or a tight integration with IT. All Apple has to do to keep them happy is to give up the tiniest bit of control.

Apple’s decision to let its nondisclosure agreement on released iPhone software expire had an effect just hours after it was formally announced: developers such as Craig Hockenberry started sharing ideas for iPhone code.

The iPhone is without a doubt a hot topic among other mobile-software development companies, such as Microsoft, Symbian, Research In Motion, and Google. However, if those companies really wanted to figure out how the iPhone works, it’s not much of a stretch to assume that they have ways of making that happen.

Communication has not been Apple’s strong suit this past summer. But with just four paragraphs, developers are now looking at the company in a new light. Imagine what a full-time iPhone developer evangelist could accomplish.

That’s what Apple did Wednesday. Now all the company needs to do is set clear guidelines for what constitutes a kosher iPhone application and what is too similar to Apple’s own plans to be released.

But when you make the decision to take the training wheels off the iPhone, you have to let go a little. I’m in the camp that believes that Apple always intended to open up the iPhone to outside development–despite telling developers in June 2007 that Web apps are the coolest thing since widgets–but Apple clearly has had control issues, when it comes to how its technology is tinkered with by outside forces.

Before Wednesday morning, they simply couldn’t do such a thing in public, for fear of getting booted out of the iPhone Developer Program. Of course, in this era of ubiquitous communications, it’s pretty hard to keep people under wraps, if they have something they want to say, but Apple’s decision to apply the iPhone SDK’s NDA to released software forced developers to go underground simply to share tips and tricks they discovered when working on a freely available application.

That was a ridiculous state of affairs, and it did nothing to further the mutual goal of Apple and iPhone developers: the continual improvement of software on the iPhone in order to boost sales. It would sort of be like if CNET forbade me from explaining to readers and colleagues how I developed my thoughts during the writing process for an article that had already been published.

A heavily moderated mailing list for Cocoa developers (Apple’s user interface technology) rejoiced at the prospect that they could discuss tips for
iPhone development the way they discuss
Mac development.

It’s also a sign that Apple–whose relationship with developers has been somewhat more strained than that other major operating-system company–is listening to the outside world.

This move is a win-win-win, a rare time in which that cliche actually rings true. Apple will benefit from a vibrant developer community’s excitement over developing for the iPhone. The developers will be able to make their applications better and more reliable, which will make them more popular and profitable. And iPhone users are the direct beneficiaries of developer innovation.

(Credit:
Apple)

Watch CBS Videos Online

The VP nominee was the evening’s marquee speaker at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. For many attendees, and for much of the country, it was the most thorough introduction yet to Palin, who currently serves as the governor of Alaska.

Other speakers included two men–former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani–who had contended early in the primary season to get the nod as the GOP’s presidential nominee, and two women who’ve earned their stripes in Silicon Valley: former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman.

Sarah Palin had her first big moment on the national stage Wednesday night, as she sought to show why she should be the next vice president of the United States.

To help you catch up on Wednesday night’s happening, we offer you this recap by Katie Couric of CBS News:

If you are already a Quickbooks Online user, these new web interfaces for Blackberry and iPhone are nice perks. I’m not sure that the introduction of these apps would be the deciding factor in jumping to Quickbooks Online, but it might help the decision.

Quickbooks, one of the leading accounting packages for small businesses, has just released web interfaces for Blackberry and
iPhone. The iPhone version, seen to the left, sports a very slick UI and allows easy, at-a-glance access to all of your financial information, entered into Quickbooks Online.

You can try it out for yourself, before signing up by going to https://accounting.quickbooks.com/m and tapping “Demo.”

Even though this seems to be a killer app for referring to your financial information, I have to point out some points where they have missed the mark. First off, a standalone app, available through the App Store would have been nice for the iPhone, but it’s not completely necessary. The largest oversight here is not being able to edit or add data. In my opinion, this would be one of the primary usage scenarios for this app. That said, this is version one of this app and we may see this sort of functionality being added at some point down the line.

At first glance, the web app provides a simplistic view of things. Features included are looking at who owes you, who you owe, vendors, employees, and bank accounts. Despite the initially simplistic look, as you drill down, you uncover a whole new level of detail.