The World Trade Organization panel has upheld a ruling that China is obstructing trade by forcing foreign suppliers to distribute movies, music, and books through state-owned companies. The original ruling did, however, allow the government to continue reviewing products for objectionable content, noting that the state-owned distributor restriction was not necessary to protect public decency standards. “The Chinese side feels regret about the appeals panel’s other rulings.” the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a statement. The original complaints about China’s restrictions came from U.S. movie, music, and publishing companies, who claimed the rules cost them millions of dollars each year in lost business.
China’s restrictions have also been pointed to as a reason why there is no iTunes Store in China, despite the local popularity of the iPod and iPhone. [via AppleInsider]
Apple has announced that developers can now search through their iPhone and iPod touch applications in its iTunes Connect portal. The update from Apple says developers logging into the Manage Your Application module will now find a summary of their last 10 modified apps, the new search area that allows for queries by name, Apple ID, or status, and a new application detail view that provides the ability to preview the app in the App Store and provides Crash Reports. [via Mac Rumors]
Tasmanian police officers are utilizing a new system that works both in patrol cars and on police-issued iPhones to check vehicles against a database of unregistered vehicles and unlicensed or disqualified drivers. Previously, officers has to contact Radio Dispatch Services to run the check for them.
The iPhone application, used primarily by motorcycle officers, lets the officer simply take a picture of the vehicle to be checked, can can also search for outstanding warrants and other offenses. According to The Mercury, 167 unregistered vehicles have been found and 107 disqualified or unregistered drivers caught in just 10 days of operation. [via MDN]
Epic has demonstrated a new Unreal Engine 3 tech demo running on a third-generation iPod touch. The Unreal Engine is used to display the 3D worlds in some high-profile modern video games, including Gears of War 2, and according to AnandTech, the demo also runs on the iPhone 3GS, but is unable to run on older hardware due to its reliance on OpenGL ES 2.0. Although the company isn’t currently planning to release its own iPhone games, it does plan to make the iPhone engine available to licensees at some point in the near future, which would allow other companies to use it in their own App Store releases.
