BGR has posted an open letter from a high-level RIM executive, one that touches on the conditions within the company as its share price, morale and brand reputation all fall to multi-year lows.
The letter in itself is kind of long, but a must read if you have been following the fall of RIM from grace starting in 2008 with the launch of the iPhone 3G and the start of Android.
In his letter, the exec posts a number of "bullet points" on what the company should do in the short-term that will lead to long-term results for the smartphone maker.
Afterwards, I have posted RIM's official response to the letter, which comes off as weak. It is clear the top executives are comfortable with their plan for the future, which practically calls the last 3 years a "transitory period" and little else.
A few numbers to keep in mind before reading:
- RIM's stock price has fallen to $28.80 a share, down from their all-time high of $144 in June 2008.
- RIM's U.S. market share (its bread-and-butter market) has fallen from over 60 percent in 2007 to 21 percent, as of yesterday.
The letter:
To the RIM Senior Management Team:
I have lost confidence.
While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.
There are now over 100,000 native iPad apps available in the Apple App Store, an impressive milestone for the tablet whose first generation model launched just 14 months ago.
By comparison, it took 16 months for the App Store to reach 100,000 apps after the launch of the iPhone.
Additionally, the figure is at least 100 times higher than Android's tablet-optimized Honeycomb which is said to have near 1000 native apps.
Apple announced earlier this year that 10 billion apps had been downloaded since July 2008, and the store now has over 350,000 apps.
The Android Market has 250,000 apps while RIM has 17,000. The quickly expanding Windows Marketplace has over 20,000 since its launch last November.
According to BI, the FTC is investigating into Twitter and how it deals with the many companies that build clients, services and apps for the platform.
The company began rolling out "official" services for its platform last year, getting into an area that was dominated by third-party apps like TweetDeck, TwitPic and bit.ly.
Nowadays, the official Twitter client is dominant, and the company has purchased up rival clients like TweetDeck, while shutting down others for various "offenses." The company also banned third-part ad services and fully redesigned the desktop version of Twitter so that video and photo sharing links did not re-direct away from the site.
The investigation may be a relief to entrepreneur Bill Gross, the founder of TweetUp. TweetUp was supposed to be a Twitter ad network, and Gross started buying up Twitter apps and services and even raised money to make a bid for TweetDeck, before Twitter outbid them. The company then shut down a few of Gross' apps for good measure.
TDL-4 rootkit is another major upgrade to notorious TDSS family.
The TDSS rootkit family (also known as Alureon or TDL) is something of an admired worst enemy of security researchers and vendors of anti-virus products. They hide deep in the Windows operating system, using and manipulating low-level instructions to avoid detection by anti-virus suites, and using encryption to protect their communications with command and control servers.
The latest TDL-4 version of the family is used (like the others) as a stealth backdoor installer of malware, and it has some huge advantages over its predecessors. It can infect 64-bit versions of Windows now by bypassing the Windows kernel mode code signing policy, and it creates ad-hoc DHCP servers on networks giving it new propagation powers.
Another major step forward for the malware is the ability to use the Kademlia P2P network for communications. This helps to keep the rootkit stay alive if legal action in the real-world takes down command and control servers.
TDL-4 is also protective of its control over an infected PC, and does not want to share power. It has its own built in anti-malware abilities, finding and killing ZeuS, Gbot and Optima malware infestations on systems it compromises. It even blacklists addresses of command and control servers used by rival malware.
Cisco has announced the price for its Cius tablet with the ambiguous "under $750" price point.
Adding to the confusion, the company says added options can bring the price to "below $700 for some customers."
The company will release the tablet on July 31st, coinciding with the end of their fiscal year. The device is aimed at corporate customers.
Cisco's 7-inch Cius will runs on Android 2.2 and weighs 1.5 lbs. Under the hood, the device has a very power-efficient Intel Atom Z615 chip at 1.2GHz.
The company has confirmed the device will be upgraded to Honeycomb but no timetable was provided.
Finally, the company has created "AppHQ" applications native for the Cius and says enterprise customers have shown interest. AppHQ will help "companies create private app storefronts where their employees will be able to find, publish and buy applications for business use," says CW. The store will also let IT managers have control over which Android Market applications can be installed on the device.
Research firm highlights rise of mobile and digital purchases.
Consumers in the United States will dish out over $21.6 billion on gaming software this year, according to research firm Newzoo. In its report, Newzoo also says that half of the tally will be made up of games purchased on mobile phones and through digital distribution.
The overall figure will be slightly lower than 2010's take for the industry, but Newzoo predicts a 3 percent increase in 2012. "We expect console game spending to seriously recover in 2012 pushing the overall market back to growth. But that year will also witness App Stores and Cloud Gaming making a serious attempt to conquer the living room TV screen," said Peter Warman, Newzoo CEO.
"A new battle for the biggest screen is about to begin and will involve all big names from the digital space as well as exciting newcomers."
Action-packed games pushing up against console performance ceiling.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 console will have been on the market for six years this November, and the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been around just one year less. That's a very long time in the world of consumer technology, and resource demands for games are only increasing.
Bodycount game director Andy Wilson spoke about how the limits of the current generation of games consoles are being reached. He spoke to CVG about the complications of developing Bodycount for the console platforms.
"It takes a huge amount of effort to get all of that to even work on current consoles, because it takes sh*t-loads of memory, it sucks up performance out of the consoles like you wouldn't believe,"he said. "It's been an unusually long console cycle and it's going to run on for some time yet,"
He continued: "You find the ceiling by building engines, tools and middleware which mean the next game you do on the current generation you've already done all of that stuff, so you can then push it even further."
Xbox 360 will join PS3 with morphological anti-aliasing features.
Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) console can take advantage of morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) operations when rendering HD graphics. By removing forms of "jagged edge" pixelation, this can help to make high-detailed graphics look as smooth and as realistic as possible (though it does have its problems too).
Modern PC graphics cards can also take advantage of MLAA, which can go far beyond multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) found in games consoles too. Sony's utilization of MLAA can be seen in rendering of God of War III. While the effect it has on the graphics can be observed as positive, it is expensive from a computational perspective.
The MLAA used with the PS3 requires 3-4ms of rendering time spread across five SPUs. Still, the technology would benefit the Xbox 360 console greatly as the fight goes on to squeeze as much as possible out of the current generation of games console hardware.
Two developers, Jorge Jimenez and Jose I. Echevarria, are working on a GPU-based implementation that repoertly works very well on the Xbox 360 and the PC. "On the Xbox 360 we run at 2.47ms, with still a lot of possible optimisations to try," Jimenez told GamesIndustry.biz.
Web sales tax in California may force Amazon to dump affiliates.
The gigantic e-commerce entity has over 10,000 affiliates in the wealthiest state of the union, and it warned them on Wednesday that it may have to sever ties with them if the state forces Amazon to collect web sales taxes.
Amazon affiliates are paid a fee when they direct traffic to the Amazon.com website and generate sales. They are in the middle of a stand off between Amazon (and other e-commerce sites) and California legislators who say Amazon has a duty to collect sales taxes when affiliates operate within the state.
California's state legislature passed a bill on Tuesday that establishes such a tax, and Governor Jerry Brown signed it on Wednesday.
Traditional retailers such as Sears and Best Buy have voiced concerns in the past that online outlets have an advantage by avoiding sales taxes in states where they have no corporate presence. Amazon claims that such tax laws will kill jobs and lead to income losses for affiliates and the states.
"We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," Amazon said in an email sent to Californian affiliates Wednesday.
Flaws could undermine Google's focus on security of Chrome-powered devices.
Since Google's Chrome operating system is built to be used connected to the web, users' files and work will mostly be saved in the cloud. Using Google Docs applications for example, automatically stores the work on Google's servers so you can access it from anywhere across a variety of devices.
Google believes this is the future of computing, and its Chrome OS is designed specifically for Cloud-based use. It also allows Google to talk up security, as your documents are stored and well protected in the Cloud, whereas if somebody were to steal your Chromebook, they won't find all of your files on your HDD like they will if they steal your notebook PC.
However, researchers at an independent security firm say that Chrome's reliance on web computing also makes it vulnerable in other ways. WhiteHat Security researcher Matt Johansen was paid $1,000 by Google for reporting a flaw in the Chrome OS note-taking application that he successfully exploited to hijack a Google Mail account.
Since then, Johansen has said he found the same basic flaw with many other applications (or extensions). "This is just the tip of the iceberg," he told Reuters. "This is just evolving around us. We can see this becoming a whole new field of malware."
Speculation about the upcoming iPhone 5, its specs and its release date has begun to go rampant this month, with multiple analysts fueling the rumor flames.
Last week, Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank said he believed Apple would release a "mid-range" iPhone 4S (with pre-paid calling and data option) alongside its new iPhone 5.
Keith Bachman of BMO Capital says there will be no iPhone 5, just an iPhone 4S, which will be Apple's updated new smartphone.
Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein notes that Apple needs to offer a cheaper a iPhone, in general, and could possibly do so this year.
Finally, Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital added to the fun this morning saying he expects Apple will drop the price of the iPhone 3GS to $0 with contract and the iPhone 4 to $99 with contract, when it rolls out the iPhone 5, whenever that is.
"While a $49 iPhone is already available (AT&T), psychologically a $0 iPhone provides a compelling offer," adds the analyst (via Barrons).
Abramsky also believes that Apple will release a smaller, pre-paid iPhone, as well, but sometime later in 2012.
Hitachi wants to be part of combined LCD panel producer.
According to the Nikkei business daily, Hitachi Ltd is interested in joining on-going talks between Sony Corporation and Toshiba Corp to combine units that produce small and mid-size LCD panels. Sony and Toshiba reportedly kicked off the talks earlier this month.
The combined unit would make small and mid-sized LCD panels for use with smartphones and tablet PCs. A combined entity made up of the manufacturing units of Hitachi, Toshiba and Sony could be launched as early as this year, according to the Nikkei report.
Reuters also reported earlier this month that a stake in the new combined entity could be sold to the Japanese government for about $1.2 billion.
South Korean firm brings case to U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Samsung has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban the import of Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPad and iPod products. The filing alleges that Apple Inc.'s products infringe on five of Samsung's patents related to telecommunications standards and user interfaces.
Back in April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court for "slavishly" cloning the iPhone and iPad in its smartphone and tablet PC products. Samsung countersued Apple in California in response. Last week, Apple filed a lawsuit against Samsung in its home territory of South Korea.
If the ITC agrees to investigate Samsung's allegations against Apple, it could lead to a lengthy process to determine if import of the popular products should be banned.
While being a rival to Apple in smartphones and tablet PCs, Samsung also provides Apple with a large amount of microchips, including the A4 and A5 SoC's. Rumors this week suggest that Apple is looking to dump Samsung for the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the production of the A6 SoC to be used in the next generation of Apple devices.
Advertising Standards Authority rules in favor of BT and Sky.
A Virgin Media website setup to criticize broadband services offered by rivals in the UK has been targeted by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The website accused its competitors of "conning" customers in the claims they made about their broadband services.
The website contained a letter from Richard Branson that claims their rivals are not keeping their promises to customers. It also offered a speed test service and linked to material published by the UK communications regulator Ofcom. A video on the website also parodied Sky broadband advertisements.
BT and Sky complained to ASA over the campaign, and Virgin Media defended it, saying it is merely highlighting widespread dissatisfaction among consumers about the advertising of broadband speeds.
Ofcom has tackled the issue before. UK customers who had services advertised as "up to 20Mbit" were found to be generally receiving much lower speeds. In only 14 percent of cases, customers received over 12Mbit, while 58 percent averaged speeds of 6Mbit or less.
Virgin Media had encouraged users to share the information, and after it went viral, the complaints were made to the ASA, which sided with BT and Sky.
After the release of the latest Firefox web browser last week, questions had been raised about the new rapid release schedule for the web browser, and the negative consequences it had for business users. In a blog comment, Mozilla executive Asa Dotzle surprised business users in the tone used to reply to concerns about the schedule.
"Enterprise has never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours. Until we run out of people who don't have sysadmins and enterprise deployment teams looking out for them, I can't imagine why we'd focus at all on the kinds of environments you care so much about,"Dotzle stated.
Both Google and Microsoft picked up on the comment and posted their commitments to commercial customers and their concerns. Mozilla waited a few days and then finally decided to attempt to patch things up with business users.
"The Mozilla Community has focused our efforts on the needs of the individual user, and prioritized the product roadmap and features accordingly. However, as is the case with many technologies, loyal Firefox users and their IT departments have sought to bring Firefox into their places of work." the blog entry reads.
Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) published Certification-ready Specification.
On Tuesday, WiGig announced the publication of the 1.1 specification addressing enhancements identified by member companies during the product development process. WiGig pushes the adoption and use of 60 GHz wireless technology.
The WiGig specification allows for communication between wireless devices at multi-gigabit speeds, with WiGig tri-band devices capable of data transfers at rates up to 7 Gbit/s. That is an improvement of more than ten-fold over the 802.11n standard.
Soon WiGig members will be able to test their WiGig-based products to ensure interoperability within the ecosystem and provide end users with reliable solutions at product launch. "We are marching toward enabling the fastest wireless technology for practical applications such as Wireless Docking, Wireless Display and Wireless Networking," said Dr. Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance president and chairman.
"Our continued diligence in the MAC-PHY specification development process and collaboration with the Wi-Fi Alliance to build an interoperable multi-gigabit wireless solution based on our latest specification will soon provide an unprecedented user experience that changes people's lives."
FAQ is mixture of good and bad news for users of the software.
Apple unveiled the new Final Cut Pro X software last week, the successor to Final Cut Pro 7. The new version was built from the ground up and fundamentally changed some details about the program. The response from some professional users was very negative, as they felt the software is inferior to Final Cut Pro 7.
One of the biggest concerns for users is that Final Cut Pro X cannot import projects from past versions of Final Cut Pro. Apple addressed this issue in the FAQ, and the news is not good.
Can I import projects from Final Cut Pro 7 into Final Cut Pro X? "Final Cut Pro X includes an all-new project architecture structured around a trackless timeline and connected clips. In addition, Final Cut Pro X features new and redesigned audio effects, video effects, and color grading tools. Because of these changes, there is no way to 'translate' or bring in old projects without changing or losing data."
It goes on to say that you can still use Final Cut Pro 7 after installing X, and that Final Cut Pro 7 will work perfectly with Mac OS X Lion. It then also states that you can still import the media files used in past projects, which should have been completely obvious. The problem is not the media files, it is the editing information stored in saved project files that has pro users upset.
Kazuo Hirai to hand over day-to-day running of gaming unit.
Andrew House, 46 from Wales, will take over as President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI) from September 1. Kazuo Hirai will become chairman of the video games unit as he continues to wait to get Sony's Howard Stringer's job.
A Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. spokesman has denied that the gaming united reshuffle has anything to do with the April PlayStation Network (PSN) hack that leaked details on 77 million customers.
Kazuo Hirai is considered the favorite to replace 69-year-old Howard Stringer as the Chairman, President and CEO of Sony Corporation. "He's in pole position to head the whole company, so he needs to focus on that, which is probably why they sought out a successor for the videogames business," said analyst Nobuo Kurahashi of Mizuho Investors' Securities.
Tuesday court filing says Paul Ceglia's lawyers will be replaced.
Two law firms representing Ceglia in a lawsuit over ownership of Facebook Inc. have reportedly withdrawn from the case. Paul Ceglia claims that a contract he signed years ago when Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard student entitles him to a large chunk of Facebook.
Tuesday's court filing did not give a reason for the change in representation. The lawsuit gained widepsread attention because of the involvement of DLA Piper, an international law firm that touts 4,200 attorneys which commonly represents corporations.
Dennis Vacco, a former New York State attorney general, a law firm that also represented Ceglia, declined to give any comment on Tuesday's filing. Facebook has branded Ceglia an "inveterate scam artist," and claims that the contract is a complete forgery.
The case was originally filed in July of last year. Ceglia will now be represented by attorney Jeffrey Lake.
Twitter co-founder's mobile payment service gets 9-figure investment.
In the financing round, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Jack Dorsey's Square service secured $100 million. Square enables people to use their mobile phones to accept credit card payments from others. Visa has previously invested in the company (though the sum was never disclosed).
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers sits on the Square board.
Mobile payment services are starting to roll out and everybody wants to get their share of the pie. Square is in a business where it has many competitors, and plans to use the new financing to accelerate its growth, according to Dorsey, who acts as CEO.
To use Square, you need to sign up to get a free Square card reader (shown in picture). The card reader attached to your phone or iPad. A free application is available for iOS (iPhone) or Android devices. There are no contracts, monthly fees or merchant fees, when you use a card with Sqaure there is just one 2.75 percent fee.
AT&T has revealed the first ever "Facebook phone" this week, the HTC Status.
The device is dubbed so because it has its own Facebook button underneath the keypad which will give users a chance to use a deeply integrated Facebook app.
For example, if you are listening to music, by hitting the Facebook button you can instantly share what song you are playing, and same goes for Web browsing and pictures. Simply hit the button to share the site you are on or upload the picture you just took.
When a friend calls, you will see their Facebook picture and current status on the home screen.
HTC Status brings a Facebook experience to people who want to share their experiences with their friends faster and easier than ever before. With a dedicated Facebook share button combined with the hallmark HTC Sense experience, HTC Status makes it easy for people to stay connected to the things that are important to them.
The device itself will run on Android 2.3 with HTC Sense overlay, have a 2.6-inch touch screen with 480 x 320 resolution, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, dual-cameras and an 800MHz processor.
MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million, ending the failed News Corp. era for the social networking site.
Specific Media is a large Ad-targeting firm that should make use of MySpace's remaining traffic.
As part of the deal, News Corp will keep a small equity stake and CEO Mike Jones will step down within the month.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased the company for $580 million in 2005 and quickly saw it disintegrate. From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Initial reports had News Corp. wanting to keep a 20 percent stake but it appears now that Murdoch wants the struggling social network off his books by the end of the year and will keep a much smaller stake, perhaps under 5 percent.
The company put itself up for sale earlier this year asking for $100 million.
One analyst is very bearish on the future prospects of 3D movies.
Analyst Richard Greenfield of BTIG has sent a note to clients this week, urging them to begin to sell any shares they may have in RealD, the company behind the 3D tech seen in most movie theaters.
Greenfield believes that RealD's projection of "75 percent of movies in theaters being 3D" is completely "disconnected from reality" and impossible.
The analyst believes that "consumers will increasingly reject 3D" and ticket sales will fall.
A main problem Greenfield sees with 3D films is how dim they are, especially when adding in special glasses. It has even been reported that Paramount asked exhibitors to brighten up their projectors for Transformers 3, but given that the request will cost more for exhibitors, it is doubtful we will see brighter 3D movies anytime soon.
Google gives social networking another blast with its most ambitious Facebook-killing attempt yet.
Google's failure to capitalize on the growth of social networking online has been notable over the past few years. Google's Buzz service, a sort of Twitter-mimic, was a failure and only seemed to annoy most GMail users. Google's position as the web's heavyweight giant is under threat as Internet users change the way they use the web, and the reasons why they do.
The failure of the search giant to really tap the new resource has been a put off for investors, and a frustration for a company that is accustomed to success. Enter Google+! Google revealed detailed information on its new social network experiment this week on its blog, and in a few videos which I've included here (warning: prepare for some cheese!).
The Google+ project aims to make it easier to connect with other users online, while maintaining the subtlety of real-world interaction. "In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it,"Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering at Google, wrote in the company's official blog.
Google+ targets your relationships and interests in an intuitive way. It recognizes that not all relationships we hold with other people are the same. The information we share with certain friends and family can be vastly different to what we'd consider appropriate to share with others.
Hacktivist group 'Anonymous' has released data stolen from Viacom's computer networks as well as user data taken from a Universal Music Group affiliated website.
Furthermore, the group released data from various governments around the world.
The news comes just days after the LulzSec group posted its farewells, after 50 days of hacks that included multiple strikes on different Sony entities and the FBI, SOCA and other authorities.
LulzSec then moved to join Anonymous, with the combined group calling themselves "AntiSec," aimed at taking down "corrupt governments" and "corrupt" corporations, which they argue are all of them.
The group had faced some heat recently from other Web-based groups like "Web Ninjas" and "The Jester," each of which promised to reveal the personal details of the group just like the group did to many innocent users.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer came under intense scrutiny at the company's recent shareholder meeting, with the masses demanding he resign after three years straight of mounting losses.
The CEO of course did not resign, but did note that he took a 16 percent pay cut for the fiscal year, down to $4.27 million.
PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai, long expected to be Stringer's eventual successor, explained that the company's top priority is to reverse the losses in its TV business, which has now lost money for seven straight fiscal years with an anticipated eight straight next year. Sony's fiscal year ends on March 30th each year.
Despite taking the pay cut, Stringer was awarded about $3.5 million worth of Sony stock options, as his usual bonus.
The company posted a loss of $3.21 billion for the most recent fiscal year, mainly due to the tsunami and earthquake disaster in Japan in March. The hacker attacks on the PSN also cost the company $170 million, mainly thanks to security updates and compensation packages it offered afterwards. It is unclear how much revenue they lost in the weeks the service was forced offline.
Acer America announces forthcoming U.S. launch of Acer AC700 Chromebook.
The AC700 (pictured) is the first in Acer's planned line of products that will run Google's Chrome operating system. The company says its first Chromebook is ideal for savvy mobile consumers, educational institutions, and business people that spend most of their time on the Internet for cloud computing such as using web-based email, uploading photos to sites like Flickr and Picasa, and keeping up-to-date on the latest news and events.
Powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor, the AC700 boots up to Chrome in less than 10 seconds, and resumes almost instantly. It features an 11.6-inch HD Widescreen CineCrystalTM LED-backlit LCD, and a HDMI output to watch content on high-definition televisions and other displays.
The Intel Atom N570 dual-core processor and 2GB of DDR3 memory provide the performance to speed through the web, access files, enjoy video and more. It has a 16GB SSD for storage, has two USB 2.0 ports and a 4-in-1 card reader that accepts popular flash storage.
Acer InviLink Nplify 802.11b/g/n Wifi Certified will keep customers connected to the Internet. To support this always-on connection, the Acer AC700 provides excellent battery life of up to six hours with its 6-cell battery.
Zynga, the social gaming behemoth, is filing for an IPO that will value the company at upwards of $20 billion, a new record for "social" media sites and a high for U.S.-based game companies.
The company is behind hits like CityVille, FarmVille, Live Hold Em Poker Pro and Empires & Allies, each of which have multi-millions of active users. CityVille, for example, has 88 million monthly users on Facebook and Zynga games have a total of 271 million active monthly users.
Last month, the professional social network LinkedIn IPO'd and saw huge gains its first day before falling 50 percent over the next three weeks. Having since recovered some, the company has an $8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit. Streaming music service Pandora IPO'd earlier this month and now has a $2.8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit, either.
Zynga is looking to raise about $1.5 billion with its IPO, which would value the company somewhere between $15-$20 billion, higher than Activision Blizzard ($13.26 billion) and Electronic Arts ($7.5 billion).
The company is insanely profitable, already, and made $400 million net profit on $850 million in revenue in 2010. Analysts expect the company to make around $500 million net profit on revenue of $1.5 billion in 2011. The company primarily makes money from the sale of virtual goods (upgraded farm equipment in FarmVille, millions of poker chips in Live Hold Em, etc) since their games are all free.
'Re-built from the ground up', but professionals are not impressed.
Applerecently released Final Cut Pro X, the newest version of its mega-popular Final Cut Pro series of video editing software. After its unusually low-key announcement, reviews started to flood in with many of them painting a less-than-rosy picture of the new 64-bit video editing suite.
The $299 Mac App Store product is just not as good as the previous version, Final Cut Pro 7, for many Mac users it seems. Various claims of Apple providing refunds to unhappy customers chave surfaced online since. AppleInsider documents one such case where an Apple customer sent an e-mail to the company saying that Final Cut Pro X does not meet the standards set by its predecessor.
An Apple adviser responded and admitted that Final Cut Pro X, "does not contain properties that were highly regarded in the last version." The customer was granted a refund for the sale.
Google had revealed in December of last year that about 300,000 Android devices were being activated daily. That number jumped to 400,000 by May 10th. On Tuesday, Google's Andy Rubin announced that customers are activating half a million Android devices daily.
He said that Android's weekly growth rate is around 4.4 percent, but did not split the growth into smartphones and tablet PCs. Android smartphones are more popular than iPhones because handsets from Apple's biggest rivals, including Samsung, pack Android.
Similarly, the same handset makers are using the Android operating system for their tablet PC devices, and the mobile OS is only likely to grow in use.
On Tuesday, the graphics chip-maker announced the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M, the fastest graphics processing unit (GPU) for notebooks. It is featured now in the Alienware M18x (pictured).
"The best game support. The best gaming features. The best gaming performance available anywhere. That's the essence of the GeForce GTX 580M," said Rene Haas, general manager of notebook products at NVIDIA. "With power like this, you can turn all the knobs to 11."
The Alienware M18x provides the option to use two GeForce GTX 580M GPUs in a single system, using NVIDIA's single link interface (SLI) technology. Also, the soon-to-be-launched Alienware M17x will pack NVIDIA Optimus technology which helps to boost battery life by intelligently tinkering graphics based on use (so a five hour full charge on Facebook, yet 100 frames per second for Call of Duty: Black Ops).
"Gamers aspire to experience games at their highest settings," says Eddy Goyanes, product marketing manager for Alienware.
"Alienware activates the technology designed to enable those aspirations. With the launch of the GeForce GTX 580M on the Alienware M17x, and a dual card option on the M18x, that synergy continues -- Alienware delivers the ultimate gaming experience."
New boards for AMD Llano A8 and A6 Accelerated Processing Units (APU).
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. launched its latest series of motherboards supporting the new AMD A75 series chipsets, and the latest AMD A-Series APUs. Gigabyte A75 based motherboards offer DIY PC builders and integrators a new world of 3D and multimedia performance with the most scalable, and best value upgrade path imaginable.
The new boards features an AMD A75 "Hudson" chipset supporting the latest 32 nanometer AMD A-Series APUs. These processors are the first ever to combine a DX11-capable, high performance graphics processor with a choice of a dual or quad core CPU in one silicon die.
Using Gigabytes's Easy Tune 6 utility, users can overclock the AMD A-Series APU to gain further performance enhancements over stock settings. The AMD A75 series platform showcases AMD Dual Graphics technology, allowing users to further boost 3D graphics performance by adding an additional discrete AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 series graphics card to the system.
The boards feature Hybrid EFI technology (for booting from disks over 3TB), 3 Power Boost USB ports (speeds up charging times for connected devices) and High-end 108dB HD Audio.
1plusV sued the U.S.-based web search giant for €295 million, or about $418 million.
The lawsuit comes as the European Commission is probing Google for alleged anti-competitive practices. Google has been accused by several companies (including Microsoft) of abusing its dominant position by giving preferences to its own services at the expense of potential rivals in its search results.
In the United States, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also formally notified Google that it has opened an investigation into its business practices. 1plusV, which operates the ejustice.fr legal website, filed its claim with the Paris Commercial court on Tuesday.
"Between 2007 and 2010, no less than 30 vertical search engines created by 1plusV were blacklisted, some of which showed significant business potential," the complaint reads.
Google has not commented specifically about the case, only confirming that it just received the complaint itself.
British price comparison site Foundem, along with Microsoft, German price comparison service Ciao and 1plusV really kicked off the complaints against Google's practices in Europe.
PayPal has confirmed this week that the service has reached 100 million active users.
Additionally, the company notes that it expects total payment volume for mobile payment transactions to double in 2011 to $3 billion.
The service adds around 1 million active users per month, apparently, as it finished 2010 with 94.4 million.
What PayPal did not elaborate on, is how many transactions need to be completed per month for the company to consider a user "active."
PayPal, purchased by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, now accounts for 39 percent of the auction sites total revenue.
Mobile continues to be a big winner for the service, with the company reporting that 8 million users now actively use the transaction service from their mobile devices, up from 6 million just a few months ago.
Multiple sources are claiming that MySpace will fire 150 of its remaining 400 employees this week, as part of the deal to sell off the company.
One source even believes a few of the employees are eagerly awaiting their pink slips as "I think the management owes the employees severance because of the terrible management mistakes they presided over."
In January, the company laid off 550 employees in the U.S. and internationally, in an effort to cut costs and look more attractive to a buyer.
Since early 2009, the company has laid off 1500 employees.
The two companies looking to buy MySpace for $20-$30 million are Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, and Specific Media, an ad network.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. originally purchased the company for $580 million in 2005, back when Facebook was still in its infancy but traffic has begun to crater, with the service seeing a drop in traffic of 14 percent per month in 2011.
News Corp. is just about ready to part with the death spiraling social network MySpace, at a price at least 70 percent smaller than their asking price.
The two companies looking to buy MySpace for $20-$30 million are Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, and Specific Media, an ad network.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased the company for $580 million in 2005 and quickly saw it disintegrate. From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Initial reports had News Corp. wanting to keep a 20 percent stake but it appears now that Murdoch wants the struggling social network off his books by the end of the year.
The company put itself up for sale earlier this year asking for $100 million.
Excellent Infographic spells out major points of history in both companies.
Manolution has created an infographic (about 3MB) that chronicles some of the major points in the histories of Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc., from their formation in 1975 (officially) and 1976 respectively, right up to the launches of Windows 7, Windows Phone 7 and OS X Lion.
Alone the timeline it gives information on stock value, while giving little nuggets of information alongside product launches of major changes in a company.
(If viewing this on news homepage, be warned that the image you are about to download is about 3MB in size, so remember that before you click Read More.)
Launch geared toward small- to medium-sized businesses.
At a media event in New York, Microsoft officially launched Office 365, which has been in beta phase since last year. Over 200,000 organizations signed up and began testing the service after it was announced. At the core of the demo was need for collaboration between users, and how Office 365 can deliver it across distance.
Office 365 is now available in 40 different markets, with more expected, bringing together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service. It is available at a predictable monthly subscription.
More than 20 service providers around the world announced today plans to bring Office 365 services to their customers. Among them are Bell Canada, Intuit Inc., NTT Communications Corp., Telefonica S.A., Telstra Corp. and Vodafone Group Plc.
Unpopular Sony Chief Executive asserts connection between anti-piracy measures, and hacks targeting the company.
Howard Stringer told a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday that the company was targeted by hackers because it tried to protect its content against piracy. "We believe that we first became the subject of attack because we tried to protect our IP (intellectual property), our content, in this case videogames,"Stringer said.
In April, the PlayStation Network (PSN) service was breached and details of up to 77 million user accounts were leaked. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Stringer finds motive in Sony's protection of its own corporate assets.
"These are our corporate assets, and there are those that don't want us to protect them, they want everything to be free," he said.
You have to wonder if Stringer includes the removal of the OtherOS feature from the PS3 under the umbrella of "protecting corporate assets", because of everything Sony has done in past years, that is clearly the move that riled up more tech-savvy PS3 users than any other.
Eric Schmidt tells summit in Dublin that ongoing unrest in middle east might put employees in danger.
The Google chairman was speaking at the Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin on Monday, in which he warned about the desire for oppressive regimes to crackdown on the Internet as it helps to fuel and sustain uprisings and resistance movements in the middle east.
"The reason is that as the technology becomes more pervasive and as the citizenry becomes completely wired and the content gets localised to the language of the country, it becomes an issue like television,"Schmidt said. "If you look at television in most of these countries, television is highly regulated because the leaders, partial dictators, half dictators or whatever you want to call them understand the power of television imagery to keep their citizenry in some bucket."
Wael Ghonim, a Google executive, was previously detained and blindfolded for two weeks during the protests in Egypt that eventually led to the fall of Mubarak from power. Schmidt pointed out that Google has staff in countries where it is illegal to do things that Google actually encourages.
Dennis Durkin, corporate Vice President and COO for Microsoft Corp.'s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), wouldn't switch places with Nintendo or Sony in the games business.
In an interview with IndustryGamers.com, he revealed that Microsoft feels in no way pressured to develop a portable games console. "I'm not sure I would want to be launching a dedicated portable device right now into that market. I think the DS - if you look at the 3DS, certainly versus people's expectation's it's not been as successful as people would have thought," he said.
"So that's a very crowded market and a very, very red ocean right now with a lot of change happening. So I’m not sure it's a good idea. You only have a certain number of bets you can make as a company and you have to decide what you want to put your wood behind and I’m just not sure that that’s a place that I would put mine."
Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been on something of a high since the launch of the Kinect peripheral for the console in late 2010. Durkin thinks that Microsoft's position in the industry now is pretty good compared to the competition, to the point that he, "certainly wouldn't want to trade hands with either of them."
Report says high profile attacks could have been avoided easily.
Mitre, a US federal contract research laboratory, released a security analysis on Monday that addressed some of the high profile Data Breach incidents over the past year. It says that the attacks were carried out using mostly well-known software flaws, and could have been prevented with adequate testing.
It pointed to the attack on Sony Pictures as an example of an SQL-injection attack. It called SQL-injections the most dangerous flaw for web services, as it can allow outsiders to gain access to possible sensitive information or resources on servers.
The sixth most dangerous flaw it identified as "missing authorization," and pointed to the theft of records of credit card users from Citigroup in May. Identifying and fixing the flaws has a "low to medium cost", according to the report.
Complaints about flawed programming and architecture have gotten noisier in recent times. Programmers are generally not blamed for bugs in their software, and the process of reviewing their work is "uneven", according to Alan Paller, Sans director of research.
Motion Picture Association trying to force BT to block NZB site.
The trade group is going to court, applying for an injunction forcing BT to cut off access to Newzbin, a popular Usenet-indexing website. Newzbin hosts NZB files, which can be combined with a newsreader software to locate content on Usenet binary groups.
The MPA is targeting BT because it is the largest service provider in the UK, and it also supplies the "Cleanfeed" website-blocking system to other Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country. The MPA is arguing that BT should block access to Newzbin the same way it blocks access to sites hosting child sex abuse images.
The MPA originally took action against Newzbin in the UK in 2010. Since then, Newzbin went into administration and sold its assets to new owners who launched a fresh version of the website.
"Newzbin has no regard for UK law and it is unacceptable that it continues to infringe copyright on a massive and commercial scale when it has been ordered to stop by the High Court," said Chris Marcich, European president of the MPA, in a statement. "We have explored every route to get Newzbin to take down the infringing material and are left with no option but to challenge this in the courts."
Chief Executive Steve Ballmer will show Office in the cloud.
Taking on Google Inc., VMware Inc. and others, Microsoft is putting Office services into the cloud under the name "Office 365." It will be launched at a New York event on Tuesday. Microsoft's popular Office products have generated enormous revenue for the company, with nine out of every ten office computers running the software.
Microsoft is now going to try to convince users to make a switch to the cloud and do their work online from anywhere. Of course, launching products for the Cloud makes sense, as the market for Cloud-based services is projected to grow 27 percent annually over the next five years, reaching $73 billion in 2015 (IDC figures).
Like other services, Office 365 services can be bought based on demand. For example, a small company can subscribe to Office 365 and pay as little as $2 per month for each worker for the very basic levels of service. That charge can scale up to $27 per month for the equivalent of an enterprise user acessing the entire Office 365 suite, which won't be necessary in most cases.
A new trial was launched in Cambridge, England today, to tackle a growing global issue. The phenomenal growth in Internet connected devices is fueled a demand for bandwidth that the currently allocated spectrum cannot continue to sustain while the technology evolves.
Congestion has become a big problem in some areas, leading to annoying dropped mobile phone calls and other service outages. The problem cannot be fixed by simply adding new call towers or building new fiber optic networks to take the load off.
Talk of changing how wireless spectrum is allocated has been getting louder for years, and now some in the industry think its time for that change. The Cambridge TV White Spaces Trial has a lot of industry names associated with it, including BBC, BSkyB, BT, Cambridge Consultants, Microsoft, Neul, Nokia, Samsung, Spectrum Bridge Inc. and TTP. Adaptrum.
A new generation of radio technologies might provide the key for the congestion problem by utilizing the (often unused) white spaces, and to avoid interference with licensed broadcasts and other primary uses. Wireless networks using the TV white spaces can provide connectivity similar to Wi-Fi, but with coverage areas measured in kilometers instead of meters.
Entertainment Merchants Association reacts to Monday's Supreme Court decision.
On Monday, the United States supreme court shot down a California law signed in 2005 by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger than banned the rental or sale of "violent video games" to minors. The law also mandated an age rating system, even though industry self-regulation already provides a rating system.
The Supreme Court decision (7-2) designates the content in video games to be protected free speech under the First Amendment to the United States constitution. The decision brings an end to the case that has dragged on for almost six years.
Bo Andersen, President & CEO, Entertainment Merchants Association, applauded the Supreme Court's decision in a statement issued by the trade group.
GSV Capital Corp adds Facebook shares to its portfolio.
GSVannounced on Monday that it had bought 225,000 shares of Facebook, the world's largest social networking website, at a cost of $29.28 per share. Facebook, which by one estimate hit 750 million global users recently, is threatening the Google / Yahoo / Microsoft establishment online as its worldwide traffic continues to climb.
This year, it will overtake Yahoo Inc. in revenue from online display advertising, with more than $2 billion. The company has roughly 2.4 billion outstanding shares, and executives have admitted that it is inevitable that the company will be taken public.
GSV's $6.6 million investment in Facebook shares represents about 15 percent of the California-based investment firm's portfolio.
A group of Facebook shareholders were reported to be trying to unload $1 billion of stock on the secondary market, in a transaction that would also set a $70 billion value on the company. With that valuation, Facebook would sit just below Amazon Inc., HP or Cisco.
When Finns buy a new phone, they love it long time!
Finland is a country of about five million people, so you really couldn't blame the population for much of Nokia's problems directly. However, according to research conducted byRecon Analytics, Finnish mobile users replace their handsets at a much slower rate than most others.
In the UK, mobile phone users replace their handset every 22 months, while in France they wait about two and half years. In the United States, handsets are replaced on average every 28 months. In South Korea, it is 26 months, and so on.
In Finland, the home of Nokia, which dominated the global mobile phone market for the majority of its life (well, since it got in the business), mobile phone users wait six years on average to replace a handset. "Maybe it's no accident that Nokia is having a tough time developing smartphones given that in their home market so few people are replacing their handsets,"Roger Entner, founder of Recon Analytics, said.
Entner accepts that the research conducted by the firm cannot categorically prove a correlation between Nokia's recent decline particularly in the smartphone market, and the rate at which Finns replace their mobile phones. He does think however that the weak demand for new handsets may have dulled any sense of urgency for Nokia to keep up in the market.
According to new figures from Pew Internet Research, e-reader ownership is moving at a blistering pace, outpacing tablets.
E-reader ownership among U.S. adults has jumped from 6 percent to 12 percent in the last six months, while tablets are now owned by 8 percent of U.S. adults, up from 7 percent six months ago.
The leading groups of e-reader ownership are, according to RWW: "Hispanic adults, adults younger than the age of 65, parents of children below the age of 18, college graduates and households with and income of at least $75,000."
Pew's survey was for the period started November 2010 and ended May 2011.
The growth can certainly be explained by the pricing difference between a tablet and an e-reader, with most tablets priced at or around $500 and e-readers priced down as low as $114 but with an average of $140.
The company will update the software making it impossible to downgrade the firmware, says the iPhone Dev Team, the group behind many successful jailbreaks and unlocks.
Members of the iPhone Dev Team saw the change in a recent unlocked developer's version of iOS 5.
For current iPhones/iPod Touch, if you want to restore your device to an earlier firmware, you can use SHSH blobs which timestamp specific times and allow for third-party apps to restore the device.
In the new iOS, the group says "Apple will re-assign your phone a new SHSH blob each time your reboot your device in jailbreak mode, making saved blobs irrelevant since Apple can just reject ones that were saved."
The 19 year old was arrested last week on suspicion of being involved with attacks on several websites, including the UK Serious Organized Crime Agency. Prosecutors had been opposed to bail for Cleary in a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London.
He now gets to go home but under certain conditions. He is electronically tagged, has to observe a curfew and cannot leave his home without his mother Rita. His PlayStation 3 (PS3) console, iPhone and computers were reportedly confiscated by police, and he is prohibited from using any device with Internet capabilities.
Cleary spent the past week undergoing interrogation from UK police and FBI agents, who had cooperated in the investigation that led to his arrest.
"Ryan Cleary is very relieved to be granted bail and to be home to his mum, his cats and his books. He has cooperated with police and will continue to do so. Ryan has last week been diagnosed with Aspergers... He will now be provided with the professional support he needs. His obvious intelligence can now be channelled into a worthwhile pursuit," Cleary's lawyer said outside the court.
Facebook jumps to #2, Microsoft pushed to third place.
Traffic to social networking site Facebook overtook that of Microsoft websites in the UK for the first time last month. According to UKOM/Nielsen, the boost in traffic for Facebook and similar services is coming from people aged over 50.
Facebook attracted 26.8 million visitors to the website in May, a rise of 7 percent compared to last year. Microsoft websites lagged behind at 26.2 million visitors. Google still ruled the UK with 33.9 million visitors during the month.
"The growth in audiences to these social networks is now primarily being driven by the 50-plus age group. Just a few years ago, this group may have found itself out of place on these sites," UKOM general manager James Smythe said.
Twitter saw a jump in visitors of about 33 percent, to 6.1 million in the month, reportedly helped along by the revelations about Ryan Giggs' private life that took off on Twitter. LinkedIn registered 3.6 million visitors in May, a rise of 57 percent from as year earlier.
Security official confirms Kuwait pair will be put on trial.
The role that has been played by social media in the middle east in recent protests and uprisings has been well documented. It highlighted how powerful such Internet services can be in countries where free speech is stifled by the ruling powers.
However, taking to Twitter or Facebook does come with risk. On Monday, a Kuwait security official said that two Twitter users, Nasser Abul and Lawrence al-Rashidiwill be tried for using the micro-blogging website to post comments critical of rulers in the region.
Abul, a Kuwaiti Shi'ite Muslim, was arrested for posting tweets critical of the Sunni ruling families in Bahrain, while al-Rashidi was arrested for posting tweets critical of Kuwait's emir. In a couple of weeks time, the pair will face charges of harming the Gulf State's interests and defaming the country's rule.
Bahrain's leaders crushed a protest movement of mostly Shi'ite Muslims in March, aided by forces from Sunni-led states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
We made money [online] before piracy was real crazy. Nobody's making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google...It's like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There's no boundaries.
Prince is known for his sometimes insane critical statements about the Internet and piracy, going as far as to call the Web "outdated" and "unhip" last year. The artist even took down a popular video from YouTube in which a toddler lip syncs one of his tracks just because his song played in the background and no one paid any royalties.
The artist even added that he was headed to the White House to talk about copyright protection.
ZDnet is reporting that Microsoft may be pushing up its Windows 8 timetable, with an RTM for April 2012, at least a few months earlier than anticipated.
The original plan was for Microsoft to RTM Windows 8 in the early Q3 2012, after betas and RCs. Additionally, Windows 8 for x86, Windows 8 for ARM and Windows 8 Server were also supposed to see similar release dates.
Citing trusted sources, it appears that Microsoft is making a lot of headway and can actually have all versions ready by April 2012.
A full beta will be released in September, in time for the Build conference, with a final RC available for testing in January.
Microsoft's Windows 8 will be optimized for tablets and touch interfaces and include built-in integration with Skype, Zune, Xbox Live and other Microsoft assets.
Capcom has taken a stab at killing the used game market this week with the release of Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS.
The manual for the game specifically states that "saved data on this software cannot be reset," meaning once the game has been finished, the save file cannot be reset to play again from scratch.
It appears that some retailers in Japan will only buy the game back for $6 (it sells brand new MSRP at $40) given Capcom's move.
Time will tell if the anti-consumer ploy will pay off in sales.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has issued a statement about today's U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors.
The case, which went on for six years since it was signed into law by Arnold Schwarzenegger, came to a close today when the highest court in the land sided with the decision of two lower courts. Video games can now be considered as protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States constitution.
Michael D. Gallagher, President and Chief Executive, Entertainment Software Association.
"This is a historic and complete win for the First Amendment and the creative freedom of artists and storytellers everywhere. Today, the Supreme Court affirmed what we have always known – that free speech protections apply every bit as much to video games as they do to other forms of creative expression like books, movies and music. The Court declared forcefully that content-based restrictions on games are unconstitutional; and that parents, not government bureaucrats, have the right to decide what is appropriate for their children.
We are very gratified that our arguments – and those of over 180 other groups and individuals from across the ideological spectrum – were heard in this case. The Court has now definitively held that legislative attempts to restrict video game content will be struck down. It is time for elected officials to stop wasting time and public funds seeking unconstitutional restrictions on video games. Instead, we invite them to join with us to raise awareness and use of the highly effective tools that already exist to help that parents choose games suitable for their children."
According to BGR, who leaked details of an upcoming Nexus device last month, the phone may be called "Nexus Prime" and be manufactured by Samsung.
The smartphone will be the first to run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which should mix the best aspects of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Google TV.
For specs, the device will feature a 1.5GHz dual-core processor (either an OMAP 4460 or brand new 28nm Snapdragon) and have a SuperAMOLED display, a hallmark of Samsung phones.
Furthermore, the device will be the first to move completely to softkeys, removing all physical menu/home/back buttons.
Adding to the "magic" of the new phone is an LTE radio, 1GB RAM, 1080pHD video support and capture, a 1MP front-side camera and a 5MP standard camera with an "advanced 5-megapixel sensor delivering class-leading image quality in addition to superior low-light performance."
Samsung made the A4 ARM system on a chip (SoC) that powered the iPhone 4 and first iPad for Apple, and also has gone on to produce the A5 processors. Now, reports suggest that Apple will drop Samsung for the production of the custom A6 SoC in 2012, favoring a partnership with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Recent media reports (EETimes) suggested that Apple was working with TSMC on the possibility of fabricating the A6 SoC using 28 nanometer process technology. TSMC is currently prodicing mobile processors for other manufacturers on a 40 nanometer process.
Samsung is currently producing the A5 on a 45 nanometer process, and so moving to TSMC could provide Apple with a competitive advantage over competitors in its next generation mobile products.
Additionally, Apple has recently swung its legal fists at Samsung over what it calls the "cloning" of its products. Its latest action against Samsung is a lawsuit filed in South Korea, Samsung's home turf, for alleged patent infringement, but Samsung has also sued Apple for the same reason. Talks between high executives at both firms are reportedly ongoing.
Supreme Court sides with rulings of District Court and Appeals Court. Video games are protected speech under the First Amendment to the Unites States Constitution.
In a case that stretches back almost six years (See: Schwarzenegger signs video games restrictions), California state law that bans the sale or rental of "violent video games" to minors, and affixes age rating labels (separate from those already affixed by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board) have been dealt a final fatal blow by the United States Supreme Court.
In a 7-2 decision, the court upheld rulings of a Federal District Court (see: Link) and subsequent ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, that found the law to conflict with the First Amendment to the United States constitution. The ruling represents the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the protection of content in video games.
The legislation was authored by California State Senator, Leland Yee (though he was part of the State Assembly at the time before being elected to his current position in 2006), who gained a Ph.D in Child Psychology from the University of Hawaii. The legislation was signed into law by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on October 7, 2005.
Hulu has reached a tentative deal to renew its rights with Disney, says sources speaking to Bloomberg.
Disney is a co-owner of Hulu, alongside News Corp and NBC.
News Corp. recently signed a new agreement with Hulu and Disney's is expected to be almost identical.
Recently, it came to light that there are potential bidders for the site, including Yahoo, and that the Board of Directors may be willing to sell the company. By having its main components re-signed, Hulu is more attractive to any buyer.
At the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) earlier this week, Intel committed to delivering a complete technological solution for ExaScale computing performance later in the decade.
The world's fastest supercomputer is the K Computer in Japan, built by Fujitsu, delivering over 8 PetaFLOP/s performance. It consumes almost 10 Megawatts of power and costs about $10 million a year just to operate. When the incomplete system is fully constructed, it will reach 10 PFLOP/s performance.
To get to ExaScale computing, we need to increase this performance by over 100 times. Clearly, that brings up some serious technological problems such as the energy consumption requirements. To put it bluntly, today's computing technology will not be able to deliver an ExaScale system with realistic costs.
High-performance Computing (HPC) has never been more in demand as it is applied to more and more problems in the real world. ExaScale computing can deliver on goals in areas such as Healthcare, Climate and Weather Research and Energy technology.
According to the latest figures from comScore, the Apple iPad remains the only relevant tablet, accounting for 99.3 percent of all tablet traffic in the world.
The figures also show Android with a measly 0.6 percent share of traffic and the RIM PlayBook at the remaining 0.1.
Acer, Motorola, RIM and Samsung have all downgraded their tablet shipment expectations for the year while Apple sold 4.69 million tablets in the last quarter, alone.
Apple may face increasing competition, however, when HP releases their TouchPad, running on webOS, later this month, and Microsoft begins rolling out Windows 8 tablets next year.
For now, it appears that the iPad is the only tablet in the world that really matters.
Last June, AT&T confirmed that 114,067 iPad 3G owners had their email information leaked to the Web, with the data being stolen by a group calling themselves Goatse Security.
The group then published the emails, which included prominent politicians, celebrities and even military officials.
Earlier this week, Daniel Spitler pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers connected to the Internet and one count of identity theft.
At sentencing, the hacker is facing up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines but will likely see fractions of those maximums.
Adds U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman in a statement:
Computer hackers are exacting an increasing toll on our society, damaging individuals and organizations to gain notoriety for themselves. Hacks have serious implications – from the personal devastation of a stolen identity to danger to our national security. In the wake of other recent hacking attacks by loose-knit organizations like Anonymous and LulzSec, Daniel Spitler's guilty plea is a timely reminder of the consequences of treating criminal activity as a competitive sport.
A few of the most notable emails breached were New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, film mogul Harvey Weinstein, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Turntable.fm has noted today that licensing issues have forced the start-up to block international users from trying the popular social music listening and discovery service.
The site, which requires a Facebook login, lets you "DJ" in a room with other DJ's while others listen on and up or down vote the track. The higher the votes, the more points you get, and credibility, etc.
Included is chat, music uploading and playlists as well as a selection of music already uploaded by other users.
The site has exploded to 140,000 members in a very short time, with venture capitalists beginning to show interest.
Anyone who is interested in a fantastic service, try it here: Turntable.fm
TechUnwrapped has reported today that infamous jailbreaker George 'Geohot' Hotz is now working at Facebook, following his Sony lawsuit.
Earlier this year, Hotz was sued by Sony after the jailbreaker created a custom firmware for the PS3 using a root key.
The custom firmware allowed users to run homebrew and Linux on their devices and Hotz condemned all types of piracy, even blocking it with his firmware. Regardless, Sony was not a fan and took the teen to court.
Hotz and Sony settled after a meaningless trial, and Hotz is no longer able to have a PSN account or ever modify any Sony devices.
The "confirmation" of Hotz' new day job comes via a Facebook post by the jailbreaker in where he says: "Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over."
Furthermore, Joshua Hill of the Chronic-Dev Team confirms it via a video:
Foursquare has raised $50 million more in a new round of funding, and the company says it will use that cash to expand internationally and build new products.
The "check-in" social networking app has just surpassed 10 million registered users.
Says CEO Dennis Crowley:
The thing that's most exciting is that we think we're inventing the future here a bit.We're doing things nobody has really done before, and to be able to raise this amount of capital will really allow us to look at the white board and accomplish the goals we have written up there -- things we've been wanting to do for awhile now.
Additionally, the company has just closed on their first major partnership, with credit card company American Express. The partnership will let users get discounts on their monthly statements when they check-in at select retailers and then use their card.
The Foursquare Merchant Platform is used by more than 400,000 merchants, and there's a lot more room to grow there. About 50 percent of our users are coming from outside of the U.S., and we believe there's a lot of room to grow there too. Right now we're seeing a lot of traction in Brazil, a little bit in India and Russia, and we want to keep that going.
comScore publishes data that suggests Google achieves an Internet-first for traffic.
The report found that Google beat Facebook and Microsoft to be the first to hit one billion unique visitors in a single month, during May. Google saw an 8.4 percent boost in unique visitors during the month, while Microsoft made a 15 percent gain and Facebook witnessed a 30 percent boost.
Microsoft got 905 million unique visitors in May, while Facebook got 714 million. comScore started tracking in 2006, and at the time placed Google at 496 million unique visitors per month, behind Microsoft's MSN network which tallied 539 million.
The data is collected using a global measurement panel of two million users. comScore receives pageview data from around 90 of the top web content publishers, though Google does not share its data.
PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) to develop the new technology under a new working group.
The PCI Express cabled standard will take on the Thunderbolt interconnect developed by Intel and Apple. It would be based on PCIe 3.0, likely supporting a maximum of four parallel lanes for throughput up to 32 Gbit/s. A further version based on PCI Express 4.0 (16 GT/s) could push up throughput even further, though cable length is likely to be limited to about three meters.
It would be used for delivering high throughput I/O to small notebooks and tablet PCs, to connect to peripheral devices. A new working group being formed will define the standard, with the goal to deliver a spec that system makers can implement in products by June 2013.
The difficult task will be to define technical requirements and a new connector. A separate cable group formed in 2005 by PCI SIG already delivered a specification for 2.5 * 5 GT/s based on PCIe 1.1 and 2.0.
"This will help proliferate PCI Express into new business opportunities,"said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG.
Xbox EMEA Vice President says Kinect provided a surge of adrenaline.
In and interview with MCV, Chris Lewis said that the Xbox 360 console - on the market since November 2005 - is enjoying an ongoing boost from the introduction of Kinect in late 2010. Some rumors lately have suggested that the Xbox 360 console might see a successor as soon as 2012.
"We see it as about halfway through. But yes you are right, Xbox is defying the normal curve you might expect. There's no doubt that Kinect put a huge shot of adrenaline into the business," Lewis said.
"What we are now seeing is massive swathes of families and younger audiences flocking to it. As you saw at the press conference, we are now in line with what we projected at E3 2010."
He said that Microsoft deliberately focused the initial Kinect software on families and children, but that now the company was looking to provide complementary experiences for core gamers too.
Nvidia makes good on promise to bring SLI to AMD systems.
At the end of April, Nvidia said it was responding to customers requests by bringing SLI to AMD-based boards. It announced that it had licensed SLI to the world's leading motherboard companies for integration onto their upcoming mothers featuing AMD's 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets.
ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI were among the first to implement the technology which had previously been limited to systems running Intel CPUs.
Earlier this week, the support was made official with the release of new (beta) Nvidia GeForce drivers. The Nvidia GeForce 275.50 BETA software suite enabled SLI on supported AMD systems.
Of course, not all boards with 990FX, 990X and 970 chipsets support SLI, only the certified boards, which will feature a logo on the packaging.
As many as 300 incorrectly accused of Internet piracy.
Up to 300 Irish Internet users were incorrectly sent "first strike" notices warning them about copyright infringement offenses. The 300 were customers of Eircom, who agreed a gradual response system with record labels that would see alleged pirates warned about their activities and possibly cut off if they persist.
Eircom has admitted that a mistake was made due to a software failure caused when the, "clock went back last October." This explanation suggests that the server clocks did not reflect Daylight Savings Time, and as a result, some innocent users were identified as the offender for something another user did with the same (dynamically obtained) IP address, at a different time.
The Data Protection Commissioner in the country is investigating the incident, which now may probe the legality of the entire system. When the High Court gave the green light for Eircom and the rights' holders to operate the system in the country, the only parties before the court had a vested interest in it being passed. The Data Protection Commissioner was not even represented.
At the time, the Commissioner was not convinced by the judgement, but until a valid complaint against the system would be made, the Commissioner could not take any action. Now that there is a valid complaint, the Commissioner has the power to issue an enforcement notice which would prevent Eircom from using personal data for the system (the Commissioner previously had said the usage of personal information in this way did not constitute "fair use").
LulzSec, the group behind many high-profile hacks in the past two months, has published their last release, and appear to be sailing off into the sunset.
The group has faced some heat recently from other Web-based groups like "Web Ninjas" and "The Jester," each of which promised to reveal the personal details of the group just like the group did to many innocent users.
Protecting critical infrastructure from cyber-attack.
Germany is the latest country to build itself its very own cyber-defense center to build a strategy to defend against cyber-warfare, a hot issue this year. The National Cyber-Defense Center is located in Bonn at the Federal Office for Information Security building.
For now, it had ten permanent employees with the German Federal Police, Federal Intelligence Service and Armed Forces to join the effort in the coming months. The Interior ministry said it recorded a record number of attempted cyber attacks last year, nearly double the number of attempts in 2009.
"At the heart of cyber-security is the protection of critical infrastructures,"said Federal Interior Minister Friedrich. "Stuxnet and the most recent example of the hacker attack on the French nuclear company EDF (Electricité de France) have shown that IT systems represent critical infrastructure in the context of cyber-attacks."
Germany's move follows other's around the world, including the UK's Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC) and the United States' Cyber Command center. Estonia, which was the victim of a country-wide cyber-attack in 2007 in a dispute over the moving of a soviet-era war monument, is also planning to build its own cyber defenses.
Popular hip-hop sites and blogs on advertisement blacklist.
Advertising firm GroupM revealed a few weeks ago that it had adopted a new anti-piracy policy. It constructed a list of websites that it deemed to be either in support of piracy, or directly offering illegal downloads. The list of sites eventually got into the hands of the media and there are some bizarre listings on it.
For example, the list includes archive.org, which has nothing to do with piracy. It also includes Vimeo, a YouTube competitor. However, the real controversial part is the music-based sites that are listed. One listed site was SoundCloud, which is one of the most popular tools for musicians to promote new material to fans. The Beastie Boys streamed their latest album using the site.
Another blacklisted website is Vibe.com, the online portal of Vibe magazine, founded by Quincy Jones. A 2009 list of the top 50 hottest rap blogs was published on Vibe.com. These websites are where hip-hop producers really want to be featured. TechDirt points out that if you check that list against the GroupM "piracy sites" list, most of them are on it (7 of the top 12 alone.)
FTC anti-trust regulators in the U.S. have given Apple approval to buy assets from the bankrupt telecom Nortel Networks.
Intel, Apple, Google and Ericsson have all expressed interest in the over 6000 patents in Nortel's portfolio and each is expected to be granted approval within the week.
Begging on Monday, all patents head to auction and will be sold.
The patents cover a wide range of topics from wireless, data and optical networking, voice, Internet and semiconductors, says Reuters.
Apple and Google will likely be strong bidders for 4G and LTE technologies, while Intel will be interested in the semiconductor patents.
Google's $900 million "stalking horse" opening bid has been approved and will be the starting point for the auction on Monday.
Ryan Cleary was arrested this week in FBI / Scotland Yard LulzSec probe.
The 19 year old was granted bail, but remains in custody after objections from the prosecution. Ben Cooper, defending Mr Cleary, said he was concerned about him remaining in custody. The court had been told that Cleary suffers from Asperger's syndrome, being highly intelligent but with social interaction difficulties.
The prosecution, which refused to reconsider the bail appeal, accuse Cleary of setting up a DDoS attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency on June 20, and attacked the websites of the International Federation of the Phonographgic Industry twice in late 2010.
He has also been accused of making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply a botnet to carry out distributed denial of service attacks against web targets.
If Cleary is released on bail, he will be banned from having possession of any device that can access the Internet. No Internet access will be permitted at his home, and he will be prohibited from leaving his home without his mother.
U.S. anti-trust regulators OK an Intel pursuit of assets from bankrupt firm.
Nortel Network Corp, a bankrupt manufacturer of telecommunications gear, has tech firms circling its carcass like vultures looking to get their hands on assets. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given the green light to chipmaker Intel to pursue the assets, competing with Apple (already given approval), Google and Ericsson to do so.
The biggest treasures to be plundered from Nortel's remains are in the 6,000-strong patent portfolio and patent applications that it wields. The patents cover everything from networking to semiconductors. Intel has been keen to make inroads into the wireless market, having purchased Infineon Technologies AG's wireless chip interests this year.
Having declared bankruptcy in January 2009, Nortel has already sold off most of its physical assets. Starting on Monday, the patents are to be sold off at auction. Apple and Google are expected to fight it out for patents relating to Long-Term Evolution (LTE), and other 4G wireless technologies.
Inability to scale the services has directed priority elsewhere.
Google announced on its official blog that both the Google Health and Google PowerMeter services will be retired within the next year. In both cases, the search giant is making it easy for users to download their data from either service in the meantime.
Google Health intended to give users access to their personal health and wellness information. "We wanted to translate our successful consumer-centered approach from other domains to healthcare and have a real impact on the day-to-day health experiences of millions of our users," the blog entry reads.
"Now, with a few years of experience, we've observed that Google Health is not having the broad impact that we hoped it would. There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts. But we haven't found a way to translate that limited usage into widespread adoption in the daily health routines of millions of people."
House democrats sent letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Attorney General Eric Holder, seemingly supportive of AT&T's proposed buyout of T-Mobile.
In the letter, the members of congress urge the pair to consider the benefits of increased coverage. They state that as part of the merger, AT&T has committed to building a next generation wireless broadband network that proposed to cover 97 percent of Americans, and that such a commitment will cost billions of dollars and create thousands of jobs.
Public Knowledge has made no secret of its opposition to the merger, and has responded to the letter from congress. Firstly, Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, notes that the letter does not specifically endorse the takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T, pointing out that it states all relevant issues including consumer prices, competition and innovation should be studied thoroughly.
However, there are claims made in the letter that Public Knowledge objects to. On the jobs creation claim, Sohn says that AT&T's next generation network proposals are only marginally better now than they were before anyway, and that a merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would cost jobs, not create them.
Baltimore man sentenced in city's first criminal hacking case.
Walter Powell, 52, of the 3800 block of Frankford Avenue pleaded guilty to charges of hacking into computer systems of his former employer, Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems Inc. He had been fired from his position there in 2009 and admitted to hacking into the computer network multiple times since.
One incident that landed him in hot water involved a powerpoint presentation made by the chief executive and intended to be displayed in front of the board of directors. Powell admitted to inserting pornography into the presentation.
Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock heard Powell's case, sentencing him to two years in prison with all time suspended, along with three years probation. He must now also carry out 100 hours of community service.
Search giant says it will cooperate with FTC investigation.
Google revealed on its official blog that it received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it has begun a review of its core businesses. "We respect the FTC's process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services," the blog entry stated.
Google states that while it is unclear what the FTC's primary concerns are at this time, the company is confident about where it stands. It goes into detail about how Google has always believed that if it focuses on the user, then all else will follow.
With that principal in mind, Google says it aims to help its users find relevant information quickly, and for free, knowing that the competition is just a click away at all times. "In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers," it states.
Google says that while it will cooperate with the FTC to alleviate any anti-trust concerns, it will follow the core principles that have guided it from the beginning, which it states are...
Do what's best for the user. "We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results."
Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. "Today, when you type 'weather in Chicago' or 'how many feet in a mile' into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit 'enter'. And we're always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you."
Label advertisements clearly. "Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn't."
Be transparent. "We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We've recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules."
Loyalty, not lock-in. "We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we're innovating and making our products better—not because you're locked in."
The blog entry says that Google knows its principles will stand up to scrutiny in this and any other probe.
Worldwide operation involved simultaneous raids, froze dozens of bank accounts.
Co-operating with law enforcement agencies from eleven other countries around the world, including France, the United Kingdom and the United States, Ukraine's state security service was able to identify and break up a group responsible for infiltrating banking networks.
It is estimated that the hackers stole up to $72 million from compromised networks. The group was organized and led by Ukrainians, using computer viruses to make it possible to get through network security of international banks. The Ukrainian state security service did not name the affected institutions.
"According to preliminary estimates, damage to bank customers' amounts to about $72 million,"it said in a statement.
Forty bank accounts located in Latvia were frozen as part of the investigation. Sixteen people have been questioned.
Apple removes Arabic language anti-Israel application from App Store.
"We removed this app from the App Store because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people," Apple said. The application was only made available on the App Store several days ago. Intifada refers to two violent uprisings against Israel in the past.
Earlier this year, Facebook removed a "Third Intifada" page for much the same reasons. In that case, the page was originally left online despite complaints, and then later removed. Facebook confirmed the decision to remove it came after the calls for peaceful protest turned to incitements of violence.
The application removed by Apple gave links to nationalistic Palestinian material, and listed forthcoming protests and other events. Israeli Minister of Public Affairs and the Diaspora Yuli Edelstein, wrote to Steve Jobs recently to express disappointment that the application was available.
"From browsing through the articles, stories and photographs that appear in the app, it is clear that this is an anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist application that in fact, as its name suggests, calls for an uprising against Israel,"the letter stated.
The trade group, which is backed by record labels, has been pushing the government to impose stricter rules to protect IP rights in the U.S and other countries and has also been opposing a proposal that would force mobile phone makers to include FM radio chips in all handsets.
Two quarters ago, the RIAA spent $1.5 million lobbying and $1.4 million in the corresponding quarter last year.
In 2010, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) proposed the FM chip mandate but has been met with extreme resistance, especially from the Consumer Electronics Association (backed by device makers) who believes adding the chip will just add unneeded weight and cost to devices for a feature many users will not care about.
Electronic Arts (EA) has announced today that user accounts have been breached and data like passwords and mailing addresses have been compromised.
The attack hit a server for developer BioWare, which is owned by EA.
Hackers got in through a backdoor using the 10-year old "Neverwinter Nights" user forums.
Although the compromised data is from BioWare, EA warns that your personal data with EA Games may have been stolen, as well.
EA did make it very clear that no financial data was compromised, but encrypted passwords, names, CD keys, addresses and phone numbers were all stolen. If you have a BioWare or EA Games account, it is prudent to go and change your password as soon as possible.
We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If your username, email address and/or password on your EA account are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well. We advise all of our fans to always be aware of any suspicious emails or account activity and report any suspicious emails and account activity to Customer Support at 1-877-357-6007.
Latest development in on-going dispute between both giants.
A court in South Korea revealed on Friday that Apple sued Samsung in the country, alleging that Samsung products infringe several of its patents. Samsung had previously sued Apple in South Korea, as well as Germany and Japan. Apple has accused Samsung of blatantly cloning its products.
An Apple lawyer revealed last week that top executives of both firms were in talks over the patent disputes, as they have a very strong business relationship. Apple was Samsung's biggest customer in the first quarter according to Samsung's reports, with Apple buying up enormous amounts of semiconductors.
Samsung is, however, one of Apple's biggest rivals. It's Android-packing smartphones compete directly with Apple in the mobile market, while Samsung has also emerged as the clear rival to Apple's iPad in the tablet PC market. Some of Samsung's products are strikingly similar to the iPhone, from the device dimensions, to the user interface, and even the packing.
That is no coincidence, says Apple, but Samsung has also accused Apple of patent infringement and said in a previous filing that it was seeking compensation for damages.
New boards designed to take advantage of new AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APU).
The new F1A75 Series motherboards are based on the latest AMD A75 chipset and FM1 socket, which supports AMD's new Llano APUs. This new series is also equipped with the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features, including the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM for precise power control.
The F1A75-V EVO is the world's first FM1 socket motherboard with dual x8/x8 PCI-Express for AMD CrossFireX support. The entire range of ASUS F1A75 Series motherboards are designed to support SATA 6Gbps and SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0).
AMD's new APUs include AMD Radeon HD 6000 series processor graphics. Dual Graphics support means an additional PCI-Express Radeon GPU can lead to a performance boost up to 128 percent, in Radeon Dual Graphics mode.
The new boards also feature an intuitive UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS, which features a graphical interface and support for a mouse to provide a more user-friendly experience. An EZ-Mode option built in allows for drag and drop boot priority settings, wwhile Advanced Mode allows experienced enthusiasts to tweak more intricate system settings.
If you have purchased an Android smartphone in the last year, chances are you have been stuck with a device that comes loaded with bloatware, pre-installed apps that are impossible to remove unless you root your device.
Sprint is looking to change that, however, and starting with the release of the HTC EVO 3D it appears that owners can now remove said bloatware without having to go through the hassle of rooting their device and adding a clean ROM.
The carrier says it listened to customer complaints and will continue the practice in the future.
There is no official policy on pre-installed apps from the FCC or other groups so it is at the carrier's discretion how many apps they want to add to phones being sold on their network.
One can only hope that major offenders Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile follow in Sprint's footsteps soon, giving users the freedom to remove apps that they will never use without having to resort to rooting their devices.
The LaCie CloudBox is a solution for backing up files that dramatically reduces the risk of catastrophic data loss. When you store data on the CloudBox, it is also transferred to the Cloud each day, ensuring that your data is always safe and accessible from anywhere.
If you want to recover everything, the CloudBox can restore your entire online backup. If you just want to restore certain files, the CloudBox's Online Restore application allows you to browse and restore selections of files and folders, up to 10 previous versions.
The CloudBox provides multiple levels of data security including two copies of your files and 128-bit AES data encryption. Your files are encrypted before they are sent to the cloud, meaning that nobody can gain access to your files, not even LaCie.
Two months after the PSN was hacked and personal data on 101 million customer was compromised, Sony is facing a class-action lawsuit which accuses the company of negligence and lax security.
The suit cites many "confidential" witnesses who claim that Sony's security was far from adequate and very open to attack.
Those attacks on PSN servers caused Sony to take down the service for 24 days, a time when gamers could not play online or access the PS Store.
The "smoking gun" of the lawsuit is the claim that Sony was actually firing people in their security division, prior to the attack (via Ars):
Just two weeks before the April breach, Sony laid off a substantial percentage of its Sony Online Entertainment workforce, including a number of employees in the Network Operations Center, which, according to Confidential Witness 2, is the group that is responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, and who ostensibly has the skills to bring the Network's security technology up-to-date.
PCI group doesn't see need to abandon copper interconnects just yet.
According to reports from the PCI SIG (PCI Special Interest Group) developers conference, PCI Express 4.0 is expected to deliver at least 16 GT/s when it debuts, double the 8 GT/s throughput achieved with PCIe Gen 3. The next advancement of PCI Express isn't expected to make a hardware debut for about four years.
"The initial report we got yesterday is a PCI Express 4.0 is feasible--we have to work out the details, but it is feasible," said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG. A group that includes AMD, HP, IBM and Intel have been carrying out experiments and have determined 16 GT/s is possible without having to jump to optical interconnects.
"We think we can eke out one more turn of the crank out of copper, so we are not looking at optics yet," chairman of the PCI SIG's serial communications working chair, Ramin Neshanti, said.
It has only been almost a year since their last major milestone but growth has accelerated and Facebook has now reached 750 million users, massive growth by any standard.
Facebook would not confirm the number, as it is evidently waiting for the 1 billion milestone but most active watchers believe the number is accurate, or at least very close.
Despite the massive growth, some numbers suggest Facebook has reached saturation in the U.S., where active users fell by 6 million in the last month and where new members joined at a much slower pace than in the past.
In an effort to create new revenue streams, Facebook has begun experimenting with sponsored status updates, which can be commented on by users.
Facebook is set to IPO in the next year and has a current market value of $100 billion, making it one of the largest tech companies in the entire world.
VESA announces support for longer active cables for DisplayPort standard.
VESA - the Video Electronics Standards Association - announced an extension to the DisplayPort v1.2 standard to support active cables, which can be as much as five times longer than passive cables. To achieve the extra length, active cables boost and equalize the attenuated DisplayPort signal.
The change, VESA believes, will help enthusiasts building / upgrading home theater systems, which are often strained by the short length of High-definition video cables (particularly those that come free with consumer electronics products.)
With the addition of active cables to the DisplayPort standard, cables lengths of more than 100 feet (33 meters) are possible. Because active cables are directional and require each end to be connected to appropriate devices, VESA has developed a new DisplayPort active cable logo to assist cable users in identifying the source and sink ends of the cable.
"Active cables are an important connectivity option for DisplayPort users," said Gourgen Oganessyan, vice-chair of the VESA Marketing Task Group and staff product marketing engineer at Intersil Corporation.
Apple has now released the final feature update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard this week, on the heels of the release of OS X 10.7 Lion.
With the update comes 36 patches in SL and SL Server.
Additionally, if you are still running the older Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple has released an update for you, as well, fixing 13 bugs.
If you are looking to download Lion eventually, you will probably need the new 10.6.8 Snow Leopard update, as one of the new features is "Enhancements to the Mac App Store to get your Mac ready to upgrade to Mac OS X Lion."
From now on, all updates to Snow Leoaprd will be security related only.
The update will be over 400MB, for those with bandwidth caps.
According to new reports, free-to-play games are headed to Xbox Live.
Microsoft has been rumored to be speaking with developers for some time on adding F2P titles, as well as a micro-transaction service which would allow for quick in-game purchase.
F2P games, like those found on mobile devices, rely on in-game upgrades (like new armor, poker chips, new maps, etc) or on ads to bring in revenue.
The rumor has Microsoft starting the service in early 2012.
Rival Sony has one F2P game for the PS3 and Nintendo has bluntly said they will not be starting a similar service for their consoles. Steam on the PC has support for newly added support for F2P, like the new "freed" game Team Fortress 2.
The new Xperia ray smartphone runs the Android operating system (Gingerbread 2.3), and is powered by a 1GHz processor. It features a 3.3-inch display and packs an 8.1mp camera with Exmor R for mobile and HD video functionality.
the phone incorporates a front facing camera and a scratch resistant screen with excellent resolution and brightness and integrated touch keys. Integration of Facebook inside Xperia creates a new customer experience for great social interaction with friends.
"We expect Xperia ray to appeal to consumers who are looking for a combination of beautiful design and a rich feature set. We are able to uniquely deliver this with a combination of premium materials and multimedia features provided by Sony," said Daniel Sandblom, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.
The new Xperia active smartphone runs the Android operating system (Gingerbread 2.3), and is powered by a 1GHz processor. It features a 3-inch display and 5 megapixel camera, is dust proof and water resistant. This smartphone features a corner user interface which comes pre-loaded with sports apps that enable users to easily track their fitness levels.
By using the built-in GPS, barometer and compass in combination with the on-screen heart rate & pulse monitor, and the iMapMyFitness app, users can easily monitor their day to day performance.
"Xperia active is the ultimate smartphone for an active life. Not only is it packed with all the features and applications consumers need for a worry free mobile life, it also comes with a set of accessories that make it fun and easy for them to take it everywhere, whatever their daily plans are," said Fredrik Månsson, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.
The Sony Ericsson txt is a feature phone aimed at providing consumers with specifications inspired by Xperia at an affordable price. As its name suggests it is made for peoplee who like to send text messages very frequently, and sports a full QWERTY keyboard for the task.
The 2.6-inch screen and incorporates an SMS shortcut key for easy and fast messaging. It comes equipped with a "friends" application that integrates Twitter and Facebook more into the device.
Sony Ericsson txt is Wi-Fi enabled and comes equipped with a 3.2mp camera with video recording.
"Sony Ericsson txt is the perfect phone for easy and fast messaging on the move. We wanted to give consumers that prefer a full view QWERTY keyboard an entry point into the world of Sony Ericsson," said Quentin Cordier, Global Product Marketing Manager, Sony Ericsson.
Sprint has launched its first 4G Android tablet today, the HTC Evo View.
The Evo View can connect to Sprint's Wi-Max 4G data network, but will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and not the new tablet-optimized Android 3.1 Honeycomb.
Furthermore, the carrier proudly boasts that the Evo View will be the first Android tablet to have Netflix support.
The Netflix app for Android was released for a handful of smartphones last month but tablets had not seen any love for the streaming movie and TV service.
As for specs, the Evo View 4G has a 7-inch 1024×600 screen, runs on a 1.5-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB RAM, dual cameras and a free stylus.
Although it has been unconfirmed by the private equity firms, multiple reports are claiming that KKR and Silver Lake are in deep talks to purchase domain site giant GoDaddy.com
The private equity firms are reportedly set to drop $2.5 billion for the company.
GoDaddy is the most popular site for commercial and private users to register domain names, and has regularly had Super Bowl commercials, which cost over $2 million per 30 second spot.
The company has been up for sale since September, but there were no bids forthcoming.
Reuters notes that private equity deal flow is up 42 percent so far in 2011.
In an update to our earlier story, it appears the Winklevoss twins will just not quit in their quest to make more money from Facebook.
Despite killing their Supreme Court appeal yesterday, the twins and partner Divya Narendra have launched a new motion today, one that asks the court to figure out whether Zuckerberg and Facebook "intentionally or inadvertently suppressed evidence" in the earlier (now settled case).
Rockstar Games has announced today that they have shipped 4 million units worldwide to date, with the game being a top-seller in the UK and US for multiple weeks consecutively.
Additionally, the game will be released for PC this fall at retail and digitally.
Says Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games:
L.A. Noire is a new type of game that makes players see through a detective’s eyes in 1940s Los Angeles. L.A. Noire is a new type of game that makes players see through a detective’s eyes in 1940s Los Angeles. Its unique blend of story, action and crime solving will be perfect to play on PC.
The company also confirms that the game will "feature customization, including keyboard remapping and gamepad functionality to both optimize and customize the performance and user experience."
Furthermore, the PC version will have 3D support, graphical improvements and increased fidelity.
U.S. Feds work with international law enforcement agencies to disrupt two FAKEAV peddlers.
Two Latvian individuals have been indicted, and more than 40 computers, servers and back accounts have been seized as part of Operation Trident Tribunal, which targets peddlers of fake anti-virus scams. It is estimated that the gangs involved caused more than $74 million in total losses to more than one million computer users.
Scareware works by alerting users to fake threats allegedly residing on their computers with terrifying scan results, then offers to clean up the non-existent malware if the user will pay a fee for a full version of the software, using a credit card. There are many ways scareware can show up on a victims' PC, such as being tricked into installing it from a fake alert on a webpage, or it may be downloaded and executed by an existing malware on the computer.
The first of the international criminal groups disrupted by Operation Trident Tribunal infected hundreds of thousands of computers with scareware and sold more than $72 million of the fake antivirus product over a period of three years. An estimated 960,000 users were victimized by the scheme, some paying up to $129. Latvian authorties seized at least five bank accounts that were alleged to have been used to funnel profits to the scam's leadership.
Yesterday we reported that PopCap denied earlier reports that it was being sold for $1 billion to an unnamed buyer, but TechCrunch has posted another report today claiming the deal is still very much on.
Citing multiple sources, the report claims Electronic Arts (EA) is the buyer, with the deal in late-stage negotiations.
At $1 billion, the deal will be a huge hail mary for EA, which has a tiny market value of just $7 billion.
PopCap, the company behind blockbuster games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, made over $100 million in revenue last year and is a top social/mobile gaming outfit with around 4.3 million active daily gamers.
EA lacks a strong "casual game" catalog, and the PopCap acquisition is expected to help with that.
Man pleads guilty to copyright infringement after being nabbed in raids against software piracy ring.
James Clayton Baxter of Wichita Falls, Texas, was the seventh man arrested in a software piracy ring that allegedly racked up $3 million in illegal sales from $15 million worth of pirated software goods. Baxter operated five websites that sold illegitimate products from Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft, Symantec and others.
The websites he used included Amerisoftware.com, SoftwareCB.com, Costfriendlysoftware.net, TechKappa.com, and CigTechnologies.com. He faces up to five years in prison for his crimes, and a fine of up to $250,000.
"BSA appreciates the vigorous copyright enforcement efforts of the Justice Department and ICE," said Business Software Alliance Vice President of Anti-Piracy and General Counsel Jodie Kelley.
"What is happening to Mr. Baxter as well as the rest of the Wichita Falls piracy ring should serve as a warning to other software pirates: Breaking the law has real consequences."
The BSA assisted law enforcement in the investigation, performing evidence analyses and sharing information from its member companies.
Consumer groups attack proposals to block websites that offer illegal video streams.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) revealed earlier this week that a secret proposal had been presented to UK communications minister Ed Vaizey by rights holders. Consumer Focus, the official consumer watchdog, attended a meeting on June 15 where the paper was presented.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) were not invited to attend, nor were any similar groups.
"It is unacceptable for trade groups and government to conduct policy in this way. Censorship proposals must be made and discussed in public," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group.
"Many of us will oppose any censorship that impacts directly and widely on free expression. Governments would be wise to assess the strength of our arguments, rather than waiting for trade bodies to find their narrow, commercial arguments unravel once their proposals reach the light of day."
The proposals, which were presented by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), the Publishers Association, the Football Association / Premier League and Motion Picture Alliance. The paper was titled, "Addressing websites that are substantially focused on infringement."
After being awarded the contract in November 2010, Acer constructed the supercomputer for the National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan. The 177 TFLOPS ALPS (Advanced Large Parallel System) supercomputer, nicknamed Windrider, utilizes the latest AMD Opteron 6000 Series processors. It features a total of 8 compute clusters, 1 large memory cluster and 25,000 compute cores.
As the leading research institute in Taiwan for high-performance computer (HPC), the NCHC works with enterprise and academic institutes to take part in joint research. The new system, the fastest of its kind in Taiwan, will be used for research in science and engineering, disaster simulations, alternative energy, biotechnology, chemistry and more.
NCHC's director, Kuo-Ning Chiang "The decision to build this machine was made out of necessity. NCHC provides supercomputing resources to Taiwan's many research groups and universities, and our previous machine with only 20 TFLOPS had a long waiting list for running computing jobs. The new system by Acer not only satisfies the current demand, but gives us a lot of room to grow."
Viacom has sued Cablevision today over its mobile streaming content, alleging it is unauthorized.
In April, Cablevision launched its "Optimum App," giving subscribers a chance to stream TV programs via their iPad.
Viacom claims the app violates the two company's current agreement to distribute Viacom programing only on cable TV systems.
The media company is demanding a halt on the streaming and $2 million in damages for each trademark violation.
Cablevision says the Optimum App "falls within our existing cable television licensing agreements with programmers, including Viacom," and will fight the charges.
The cable operator has 3.7 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Nvidia and VIA follow AMD out of BAPCo consortium.
The Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo) is a non-profit consortium tasked with developing performance benchmarks for computer systems based on widely used software applications and operating systems. BAPCo has been developing the SYSmark 2012 benchmark intended to be used by businesses and governments to make spending decisions.
On Tuesday (June 21), AMD publicly announced that it has left the BAPCo consortium, and said it cannot endorse the SYSmark 2012 benchmark. AMD's Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Nigel Dessau, had questioned some aspects of the benchmark in a blog post last year titled "Have you Paid the 'SYSmark Tax'?", in which he estimated that government and educational institutions had needlessly spent over $7 billion during the preceding five years as a result of the SYSmark benchmark.
According to Dessau, BAPCo's response to the blog was a threat to expel AMD from the consortium. Nowadays most of us use applications that run HTML 5, use Javascript and other elements that benefit greatly from GPU acceleration. Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Office, Windows Movie Maker and Adobe Flash are examples of applications given by AMD that benefit from GPU acceleration and are widely used.
I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years, and to bring the stories to a new digital generation.
Because Rowling has all digital rights to the series, she has waited years to release the e-books and will now bypass traditional retailers and sell them directly from Pottermore.com. Scholastic will keep its revenue share of the series.
There was no word on pricing, but the books will go on sale in October.
Seven years after they first filed suit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, it seems the legal drama between Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and the social networking giant is coming to an end.
The twins have dropped their appeal and settled the case, two months after a judge bluntly told them they must accept the deal.
Along with Harvard classmate, Divya Narendra, the twins filed suit against Facebook in 2004 alleging that the concept for Facebook was stolen from them and their early work on HarvardConnection.
In 2008, Facebook agreed to settle, giving the trio a deal worth $65 million ($45 million in stock), with the majority in Facebook stock. At the time, the group was given $45 million in stock with Facebook valued at $15 billion. The twins filed suit again last year claiming Facebook had internally given itself a $3.7 billion valuation, and so the group was conned out of many more shares in the company.
The federal Judge, Alex Kozinski, killed the appeal in April:
At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached. The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. They made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity.
Facebook has just named Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to its Board of Directors, opening up a flood of speculation as to whether the two companies will join up in the future on content.
Says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of the move:
Reed is an entrepreneur and technologist who has led Netflix to transform the way people watch movies and TV. He has built a culture of continuous rapid innovation, something we share and work hard to build every day.
Adds Hastings:
Facebook is propelling a fundamental change in how people connect with each other and share all kinds of content. I'm looking forward to working with Mark and the rest of the board to help Facebook take advantage of all the opportunities ahead.
Facebook has 600 million users worldwide and Netflix is the top Internet subscription service in the world, with 23 million users in Canada and the U.S.
Other notable members of Facebook's Board are Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Donald Graham and Peter Thiel.
Following an investigation into their search business, the FTC is set to subpoena Google, in a move that has sent Google's share price tumbling even further.
Google has fallen another 11 points after having a rough month to $476 per share following the news.
Competitors have accused Google of favoring its own Google-backed service in search results.
Complaints have come from smaller companies like Yelp, and from much bigger companies like Expedia and Microsoft, who each claim Google's behavior "starves" them of traffic, says the WSJ.
The search giant is already under investigation by European regulators for the same anti-trust behavior.
Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), addresses PlayStation 4 (PS4) in Forbes interview.
There has already been hints that Sony is working on the development of the next generation PlayStation home console, generally referred to as the PS4. The PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been on the market since 2006, and Sony promised a ten year life-cycle for the system at the time.
The PS3 has had a mixed experience on the market so far, with early supply and cost problems, increased competition from Nintendo and Microsoft for home consoles and other notable problems such as the PSN breach. Still, Tretton thinks that the PS3 is just getting started and has warned not to get your hopes up if you are looking for a PS4 anytime soon.
"PlayStation 3 is really just hitting its stride. And technologically, I don't think it's possible to provide any advancement beyond what we have. What we've seen from the competition is trying to add features that already exist in PlayStation 3," Tretton said. "We invested heavily in that, we rolled a very heavy rock up a steep hill, through the launch period. But now I think that all pays off, and we've got a long run way behind it. So, I wouldn't look for any discussion of a next generation PlayStation for quite some time."
Mozilla hit June 21 target for the release of Firefox 5.
Compared to past upgrades to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the release of version 5 was much more muted. Mozilla said that it made over 1,000 improvements to the web browser, although most are just minor bug fixes and tweaks. The user interface is virtually the same as Firefox 4.
Among the biggest changes in Firefox 5 are improvements to HTML 5 support, and the CSS Animations standard to enable developers to build more visually-enhanced Web applications and websites.
The release of Firefox 5 comes after March's much louder release of Firefox 4, under a new rapid release strategy that has been likened by observers to Google's Chrome release policies. Security firms in general recommend that browser refreshes are carried out more often by vendors.
Of the changes to Firefox 5, there were ten bug fixes, seven of which were deemed "critical" by the company. One "moderate" bug fix was targeted at WebGL, a 3D graphics rendering standard that was recently (and very publicly) criticized and snubbed by Microsoft due to serious security concerns.
The latest reports speculate that Nokia will unveil their first Windows Phone 7 smartphones on October 26th, months after their deal with Microsoft was made public.
If accurate, the launch date should coincide with Microsoft's release of the Mango update for the operating system, which should add some much needed features.
October 26th is when Nokia World begins in London, where the company will unveil the future of its mobile handsets.
There are still no clear details on what the first Nokia WP7 devices will look like, their specs or how they will stack up against the upcoming Android "superphones" and Apple's iPhone 5.
Nokia has said they will begin mass producing Windows Phone 7 devices in 2012.
Apple rebuilds popular pro video editing software from the ground up.
Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit application designed to work on the latest Mac systems in the market. The new iteration of the popular software tours a new Content Auto-Analysis feature that categorizes content on import by shot type, media and people, and a new Magnetic Timeline that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them, while other clips instantly slide out of the way.
Using Clip Connections, you can link primary story clips to other elements such as titles and sound effects, so they stay in perfect sync when you move them along the Timeline. Related story elements can be combined into a Compound Clip that can be edited as a single clip.
The Content Auto-Analysis feature scans media upon import and tags the content with information that helps it organize the clips into Smart Collections letting you filter clips easily by the type of shot (close, medium, wide) or by the amount of people in them. An Auditions feature lets you swap between a collection of clips to compare alternative takes easily.
"Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We have shown it to many of the world's best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped."
PopCap, the company behind blockbuster games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, has denied reports today that it is being sold for $1 billion to an unnamed bidder.
Reads a tweet from Jennifer Kye of PopCap:
@MrPope Sorry, I might not have been clear. I was simply stating that @TechCrunch‘s article is not true,” Kye said on her Twitter account. “I’ll be working there next week! My boss confirmed it for me.
In the original article, speculation had been that Zynga was an early bidder but the price got too high, but Google, EA or an Asian company may have been the bidder.
PopCap has 4.3 million active daily gamers, and made $100 million in revenue last year, making it one of the most successful independent gaming outfits in the world.
For now, it appears PopCap's expected IPO is still on track for later this year.
A Competition Commission of India official has said today that a complaint was filed against Apple alleging anti-competitive practices in regards to sales of the iPhone 4 in the nation.
The complaint alleges that Apple has broken the law by only offering the phone via two carrier, Bharti Airtel and Aircel.
Speaking anonymously, the official says the Commission is looking into the complaint and whether it requires further action.
Apple says it has not received notice from the Commission yet but waved off the complaint, adding they sell the iPhone unlocked through the operators and that all data plans bundled by the operators are optional.
As long as you have a GSM SIM card, you can use the unlocked iPhone 4 in India.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced an unlimited movie and TV streaming service that is free to Amazon Prime users and would rival Netflix's Watch Instantly service.
Today the company has added 1000 new movies and TV show episodes, including a good portion in HD.
Amazon says they have added, for example, the last 7 seasons of Sesame Street, with 3 in HD, along with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in HD, as well.
Among some of the movies added (from quick glance at the list here) are Training Day, the Right Stuff and Superman: The Movie.
Amazon Prime Instant Videos are available for playback on desktops and over 300 devices including HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.
Update earlier this year halts surge of 'Autorun' malware family infections.
Microsoft released an update on February 8 for the Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms. The update targeted the "AutoPlay" feature of the operating system that let an Autorun.Inf file in removal media dictate what to execute immediately upon insertion.
The change would stop the Autorun feature from being enabled automatically on the platforms, except in the case of optical disc media. The update was sent out in response to a surge of detections of malware abusing the Autorun system to spread by removal media (USB sticks etc.)
Microsoft security products had tracked the malware under the family Win32/Autorun, and toward the end of 2010, the number of detections on systems skyrocketed past other frequently detected malware such as Win32/Conficker, Win32/Rimecud and Win32/Taterf.
Last week, Microsoft provided some statistics to show how effective the small change to the Autorun feature was at dropping the infection rate (again with data from Microsoft products, such as the Malicious Software Removal Tool delivered via Windows Update each month.)
The blog LulzSec Exposed has posted today that hacking group LulzSec has now gotten into an apparent online 'war' with long-time hacking group TeaMp0iSoN.
TeaMp0iSoN even defaced the main page of Swen Slootweg, who allegedly goes by the name "Joepie91" in LulzSec (pictured).
Sabu, the alleged leader of the group, tweeted today that TeaMp0iSoN is a joke and hit the wrong target, as Joepie91 is not part of the group.
Earlier in the day, Ryan Clearly was arrested in the UK, an IRC operator for the group, with all irc.lulzco.org chat logs being taken by the FBI, SOCA and Interpol.
Additionally, someone going by the name of "R3d_Penguin" posted a chat log between Topiary (another alleged member) and himself in which Topiary (aka Daniel) admits to being a member and being forced to deny. Topiary also plans to frame another user with the same nickname.
AT&T has announced their unlimited everything prepaid plan today, giving feature phone users a chance to pay $50 a month for unlimited, talk, text and web with an eligible GoPhone.
The plan starts on June 26th and is a 20 percent discount off the price you would be paying with a contract.
Furthermore, the plan offers unlimited texting and IM to Mexico, Canada and 100 other nations.
GoPhones and GoPhone service can be purchased at AT&T retail stores or online.
If you own a smartphone, you can select the unlimited talk and text for $50, but then you must add a tiered data plan starting at $5.
Says Judy Cavalieri, vice president, Voice and Prepaid Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets:
As summer approaches, consumers want a plan that provides even more value as they connect with their loved ones in the U.S and abroad. GoPhone provides customers a unique opportunity to experience the dependability and availability of AT&T’s national wireless network with no long term commitment.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has confirmed this week that upcoming Wii U games will be, on average, $50 per title, following the trend of its predecessor, the Wii.
The president did add, however, that established multi-platform games like Call of Duty would "likely" cost the industry standard of $60.
I think there is already some indication that the [current pricing] trend is going to stay here. When you consider some of the most popular franchise – such as Call of Duty or Madden – the publishers can afford to affix a rather expensive price tag on that because the franchise has a premium value. On the other hand, … without an established franchise, they cannot afford to keep that expensive price tag. I believe there will be a wider price range.
If that holds true, Nintendo's most popular games, like Zelda and Mario, will have a $50 price tag, which should be a relief for gamers tired of paying $60 for games.
In news that has been unanimously panned, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has said that the company may begin offering premium versions of its online content via subscriptions.
The company is also looking to partner with traditional media companies in an effort to "help create great content and monetize it properly."
I think content subscriptions on the Internet can be a very viable business.
AOL purchased the Huffington Post in February for $315 million and TechCrunch for $25 million last year, in an effort to add popular content to its portal and network.
The company is best known for being a dial-up giant that purchased Time Warner for $164 billion in 2000, at the height of the tech bubble. The merger is easily the worst transaction in the history of the industry as the bubble popped the next year and AOL never recovered, heading down from a market cap of $240 billion to its current $2 billion, even after being spun off by Time Warner in 2009.
Apple is preparing to release an iOS-powered Apple-branded HDTV this year, says an anonymous former exec of the company speaking to DT.
The company is already in talks with a "major OEM," adds the report, which they speculate to be Samsung, a long-time partner.
Apple will "blow Netflix and all those other guys away" with the HDTV, which will bundle Apple TV and iTunes in a slim, Internet-capable device.
While Samsung (and other OEMs) sell TVs themselves, the source claims it will not be an issue because "if you have to be competing with somebody, you want to be competing with yourself."
A 2011 launch is expected, but the exec does admit that Apple could wait until early 2012 to make sure everything is perfect.
BGR posted earlier this morning that Apple may be ready to unveil the iPhone 5 as early as August, a date that would break tradition from the company's normal September release of new hardware.
Apple is already "late" in releasing a new iPhone as the last few have been released at June's WWDC.
The company used this year's conference to show off Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and the iCloud.
If accurate, the new iPhone could be released in early-mid-August and will feature a fully revamped design.
The rumor (and pic) say the iPhone 5 could have a screen that stretches from end-to-end and have a "teardrop" design like the iPod Touch.
Microsoft has updated its SkyDrive cloud service this week, adding an HTML5 design alongside new features.
Anyone with a Hotmail/Live account can sign up for a free SkyDrive account, which has 25GB free storage space and allows users to collaborate on Office docs, or just share content like music and pictures.
Starting today, we are launching a new version of the SkyDrive website. We took advantage of modern browsers and HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster, easier to navigate, and more beautiful for viewing photos. The new SkyDrive will be rolling out soon, so check back if you don’t see it right away.
SkyDrive's photo sharing will also be improved, and better integrated into Windows Phone 7 when the Mango update hits.
Continues the manager:
Regardless of what screen you have, how big your browser window is, or how many photos you have, SkyDrive always arranges your photos in a clean layout that preserves the original aspect ratio
Popular cloud-storage solution experiences huge security lapse.
Dropbox founder and CTO Arash Ferdowsi used the company's blog to explain a major bug with the Dropbox authentication mechanism. On Sunday, Dropbox updated some code and unknowingly introduced a bug affecting its authentication mechanism, which potentially exposed its users data to anybody.
Between 1:54pm and 5:41pm (Pacific time), users could have logged into accounts without the correct password. Ferdowsi says that a very small number of logins were made during that time (much less than 1 percent of userbase.) After the problem was discovered, it was fixed (and was live) within minutes.
Dropbox is now conducting an investigation to determine if any accounts were improperly accessed. Upon finding the bug, all logged in sessions were ended as a precaution. If the company finds that any unauthorized account use happened during the time the system was vulnerable, it will alert the account holder immediately.
"This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.," Ferdowsi said.
"We are sorry for this and regardless of how many people were ultimately affected, any exposure at all is unacceptable to us. We will continue to provide regular updates."
Metropolitan Police arrest 19 year old man; media links case to LulzSec group.
Police officers from the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) carried out the arrest as part of a pre-planned intelligence-led operation, which included cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States.
The Met statement does not mention the group LulzSec by name, but it does say the investigation being carried out involves network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against international business and intelligence agencies by what it believes is the same group of hackers.
The Met statement comes the same day as confirmation by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONC) that it is investigating a claim that LulzSec has accessed data from the 2011 Census. "We are working with our security advisers and contractors to establish whether there is any substance to this. The 2011 Census places the highest priority on maintaining the security of personal data," the ONC said in a statement.
"At this stage we have no evidence to suggest that any such compromise has occurred."
The 19 year old suspect targeted by the e-Crime Unit was detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act, and Fraud Act offences and was taken to a central London police station, where he remains in custody to undergo questioning.
Nokia unveiled its first (and last) MeeGo handset today, the Nokia N9.
The first promotional videos from Nokia displaying the new handset were pretty uninformative, and left a lot of readers of Nokia sources asking for more details about the device. Nokia Marketing Manager Jussi Mäkinen filled the gap for a UI tour, and the most complete version of the handset specs were posted online the company.
Nokia N9 MeeGo User Interface Demonstration by Jussi Mäkinen
Nokia unveiled ealier today the company's first MeeGo touting handset. As previously leaked in the pictures the phone comes in a slate form factor and is called Nokia N9. The phone features a 3,9 inch AMOLED display with 854 by 480 pixelresolution, a single-core one gigahertz CPU, up to 64 gigabytes of storage, and runs MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan.
The slate previously dubbed as codename Lankku was indeed released under the name N9, even though rumors from months and months back had N9 in a QWERTY slider form factor. Adding to the 1GHz CPU the MeeGo phone comes with gigabyte of RAM memory, pentaband WCDMA and quadband GSM, 8 megapixel AF camera with dual LED flash, and all the necessary connectivity features including NFC.
K Computer achieve's a world-beating 8.162 petaflops.
A collaborative effort of Fujitsu and RIKEN, the K Computer is part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The system is currently in its configuration stage, featuring 672 computer racks equipped with a total of 68,554 quad-core central processing units.
It is a wholly-made in Japan supercomputer, from the R&D steps to the development of the processors and ongoing assembly. The system took first position on the 37th TOP500 list announced today, marking the first time since 2004 that a Japanese supercomputer has made it to the top of the list.
The TOP500 ranking list is updated twice per year since 1993. The K Computer's processing speed was measured by the LINPACK benchmark program, clocking up to 8.162 petaflops (petaflop == 1 quadrillion floating-point operations per second). Fujitsu and RIKEN aim to begin shared use of the supercomputer by November 2012. When it is completed in 2012, it is designed to achieve LINPACK performance of 10 petaflops.
Microsoft is allegedly porting current Zune HD apps to its Windows Phone 7 smartphone OS line.
The news comes via the latest Zune Insider podcast and transcribed here:
The apps that we have built internally for Zune [HD], we’re actually looking at porting those over to Windows Phone. Right now, our focus for the app team is, more apps for Zune [HD]. Zune [HD] owners would like to hear that there’s more stuff coming. So that’s definitely the case.
Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would be ending the physical Zune line, with the HD being the last of the company's media players.
"Zune" as a brand will live on as software in WP7, Xbox Live and on the PC.
HP has now begun selling a wireless mouse than connects to the computer via Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for Bluetooth or RF.
The HP Wi-Fi mobile mouse connects to Windows 7 computers through adhoc, meaning the mouse should not ruin the connecting PC's ability to connect to access points.
Currently, most wireless mice connect via built-in Bluetooth hardware or via dongles.
Leaked Nokia N9 press photos posted by PocketNow ahead of tomorrow's announcement.
Nokia's N9 is expected to be announced tomorrow at CommunicAsia 2011 in Singapore. The MeeGo-powered device was expected to feature a QWERTY slider, but instead the pictures show a very slim in bright pink, blue and black. No specific hardware information is available yet.
LinkedIn, the professional social network that has seen strong growth in the past few years might have its first legitimate competitor.
BranchOut, an app on Facebook that does everything that LinkedIn does, saw its userbase jump from 32,000 to just over 900,000 (and growing) in the last week, following the addition of job listings on the front page.
The app originally launched in August 2010 with $24 million in venture funding but saw extremely stagnant growth as developers worked out designs and core features.
LinkedIn recently IPOd to huge demand, with a public offering price of $45 which quickly traded up to $123 on its first day.
Since then, however, LinkedIn has fallen to $60 a share as traders and investors cool to the idea of the social network.
Eizo Nanao, the popular Japanese computer display maker has announced their DuraVision FDH3601 36.4-inch display this week.
Making the display important is the fact that it has 4Kx2K resolution (4096x2160).
Current "Full HD" 1080p monitors and TVs have a resolution of just 1920x1080.
Furthermore, the DuraVision is LED-backlit, has 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 700cd/m2 brightness, two DVI-D ports, two DisplayPorts (HDCP) and an EcoView Sense sensor, meaning the display will turn itself off given certain parameters.
Set for release on September 7th in Japan, the display has an expected life of 2 years (if on 24/7) and will cost a slight fortune at $36,000.
Two men who allegedly targeted music artists including Dr Dre and Lady Gaga have been handed down prison sentences by a court in Germany. The pair targeted e-mail accounts to mine for personal information and other content which was then leaked online.
Details that the hackers are alleged to have stolen from music stars also include private banking information and personal communications. The investigation into the activity began when music industry investigators were alerted to a larger number than usual of pre-release (even unfinished) music tracks leaking onto the Internet, and at earlier dates than expected.
Anti-piracy teams narrowed down their search to Germany and alerted local authorities to the activity. The men were found guilty of copyright theft and computer intrusion. One of them was also found guilty of an extortion charge. They had allegedly profited from selling stolen pre-release tracks for up to $1,000 each.
To get the data they wanted, the hackers used phishing e-mails and also sent trojans disguised as music tracks. They then accessed the e-mail (and other) accounts of music artists and stole a large amount of personal and commercial content.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) alleges misuse of copyright law in case involving third-party Xbox 360 memory cards.
The digital rights and privacy advocacy group filed an amicus brief with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on Wednesday. In the filing, the EFF urges the federal court to block Microsoft Corporation's attempt to thwart a competitor offering memory card products for the Xbox 360 games console.
The Redmond-based software giant is in the midst of a court battle with Datel Holdings, a British company that lists memory cards products for the Xbox 360 system among its line-up. At the heart of Microsoft's challenge is an assertion that end-users (yes, the gamers) violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) if they use third-party cards with the Xbox 360.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the DMCA was created in the late '90s to address unauthorized access to copyrighted material by non-paying customers, and not as a weapon for a company to thwart competition in the free market or as a way to police users' behavior in regards to property they have bought.
The EFF warns that if Microsoft prevails in this argument, it could have far-reaching consequences in the consumer electronics market. It would effectively allow Microsoft to control the Xbox 360 aftermarket, and would make it acceptable for consumer electronics companies to put in place technological protection measures (which you cannot break legally under the DMCA) that have the primary goal of eliminating competition (and limiting consumer choice) instead of protecting copyrighted material from unauthorized access.
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) hopes this time the U.S. Congress can bring Data Breach law to a national level.
News of major data breaches at some of the world's largest online services has been plastered all over the headlines this year. Some of the high profile cases include Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) and SEGA's ongoing investigation of a data breach that affects over one million people.
Other attacks of an even more serious nature have targeted the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Lockheed Martin in the United States and the European Union. However, what the BSA is really concerned about is how consumers will react to data breaches in systems run by the likes of Sony, and how it will effect confidence as industry and commerce moves even further into cyberspace than ever before.
The rise of cloud computing, for example, is promising for both enterprise and home customers as a low cost solution for all kinds of data computing and mass storage. The BSA is concerned that after the PSN hack saga and the increasing number of attempts to acquire consumers' personal information, a lack of confidence in data security could hurt the emergence of cloud-based services.
Across Russia, GPUs are being increasingly used for raw high-performance computation needed in research.
Moscow State University is upgrading its Lomonosov system (shown in picture) with NVIDIA Tesla GPU's. The upgrade will push the Lomonosov system into the world's faster supercomputer lists, comprised of 1,544 NVIDIA Tesla X2070 GPUs and an equal number of quad core microprocessors.
The upgraded system will provide up to 1.3 petaflops of peak performance, which will put it among the fastest in the world and easily the fastest in Russia.
"Our research requires enormous computational resources, and we need to deliver this performance as efficiently as possible," said Victor Sadovnichy, academician, Rector of Moscow State University. "The only way for us to achieve these twin goals is with a hybrid GPU/CPU based system."
The University system is used for research that requires staggering amounts of computational power, such as climate change models, ocean modeling, the formation of galaxies and post-genomic medicine.
Also in Russia, the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod (NNSU) and the Scientific and Educational Center of Parallel Computing at Perm State University are exploiting the high performance per watt promise of GPU technology.
Buying the company for an undisclosed amount, Google has confirmed it has purchased DVR and CE Extender company SageTV, which will be immediately integrated into GoogleTV.
SageTV's digital recording software allows users to run media centers for video/audio/picture playback and "its Placeshifter software lets users watch TV on any device with a high-speed Internet connection."
Reads the site of the acquired company:
Since 2002, we’ve worked to change the TV viewing experience by building cutting-edge software and technology that allows you to create and control your media center from multiple devices. And as the media landscape continues to evolve, we think it’s time our vision of entertainment management grows as well. By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services.
SageTV has shut down its site, minus the splash page talking about the acquisition, but the founders of the company said all current SageTV software and set-top box owners will have nothing to worry about in terms of ongoing support for their products.
ChevronWP7, the group who released the aptly named ChevronWP7 jailbreaking tool for Windows Phone 7 devices earlier this year has posted this week that a Microsoft-sanctioned version of the software is coming soon, for a small fee.
After releasing the tool, which allows users to install homebrew on their phones, the group was contacted by Microsoft and it appears the two have worked together to create a legal way for users to get the most out of their devices.
Says the group:
As announced on the Windows Phone Dev Podcast, we will soon be launching an approved Windows Phone unlocking service as part of ChevronWP7 Labs. This will be available to developers across all skill levels and all regions.
The service will require a small fee — currently via PayPal — to offset costs but we assure you it will be more affordable than the App Hub. Those who wish to write and immediately publish apps are recommended to sign up to the App Hub instead.
PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso exploit new AMD hardware.
CyberLink has a track record of trying to keep up with hardware advances in its multimedia products. Now, the company has announced that its flagship products - PowerDVD, PowerDirector, MediaShow and MediaEspresso - have been optimized for the latest AMD A-Series Accelerator Processing Units (APU).
Keeping up with hardware evolution means CyberLink customers can benefit from available hardware acceleration for high-definition (and 3D) playback from Blu-ray, AVCHD etc., enhanced video editing and significantly faster video encoding.
"CyberLink is always striving to innovate the next generation of technology that creates the best consumer media entertainment experience possible," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink Corp.
"We are delighted to leverage AMD's high-end A-Series APUs on CyberLink's complete product lineup to deliver enhanced and ultra-fast media experiences for consumers."
The popular PowerDVD 11 application leverages hardware acceleration technology of the AMD APUs in decoding Blu-ray, BD3D and AVCHD content, providing smoother Full HD/3D playback with much lower core CPU usage. PowerDirector 9 utilizes AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology to gain 2.2x faster rendering speed in tests.
Best Buy has noted this weekend that it will be expanding its current UK-only cloud music platform to the U.S. in an effort to challenge recent launches from Apple, Amazon and Google.
The new U.S. Music Cloud service will be available for BlackBerry and Android users.
Just like its rivals, the Music Cloud will allow users to upload their collections online and play it back wherever they have an Internet connection, saving space on their devices.
In the UK, the service is available for BB, Android and iOS.
There were some media reports in the latter part of the last week that PayPal had been hacked, and that PayPal account information had been made public by attackers. The company has responded to the claims, asserting with authority that, "the PayPal site has not been breached or hacked in any way."
In reality, a group of hackers claimed to have compromized another site, which PayPal points out is "less secure." From the breached website, the attackers mined usernames and passwords of a number of accounts. Upon releasing the information publicly, the hackers suggested that people try accessing personal online accounts on websites using the same credentials, and PayPal was listed as a suggestion.
So there was no breach of PayPal's system, instead the hackers were just suggesting that some users would have used the same password as they did for the compromised website.
"PayPal's security team became aware of this particular security situation early on and proactively began monitoring a number of accounts for suspicious activity, in order to protect our customers," the company stated.
"PayPal always safeguards our customers from qualified unauthorized payments sent from their accounts. We regularly monitor for unusual activity on accounts and will work directly with customers if they suspect their accounts have been accessed fraudulently."
If you wondered why Microsoft's thrust to add more features and functionality to its Internet Explorer browser has excluded WebGL, here's an answer.
You could be forgiven to tempt an assumption that a Microsoft snub of WebGL is simply the Redmond-based giant's way of ignoring an open standard, in favor of its own proprietary Direct3D, but Microsoft engineers have put forth some real questions for the emerging standard to answer on security.
WebGL stands for Web-based Graphics Library. It provides an (OpenGL-based) API for 3D graphics within web browsers, filling part of an increasing demand for a much richer web experience for end users. Mozilla, Google and Apple have backed the technology with their browser packages, but Microsoft is not yet ready to endorse it.
Microsoft engineers analyzed WebGL and found that they cannot endorse the technology from a security perspective, finding that Microsoft products supporting WebGL would have a difficult time passing Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle requirements.
The engineers split the problem into three main concerns with widespread use of WebGL.
#1 - Microsoft: "Browser support for WebGL directly exposes hardware functionality to the web in a way that we consider to be overly permissive"
Over the last 24 hours we have identified that unauthorized entry was gained to our Sega Pass database. We immediately took the appropriate action to protect our consumers' data and isolate the location of the breach. We have launched an investigation into the extent of the breach of our public systems.
LulzSec did not take credit for the attack, and even asked the company for details so they could attack the group that did it.
ICANN is set to approve the biggest move in Internet domain awarding history, allowing brand owners to own their own brands on the web, like .apple, .microsoft and thousands of others.
Following a special board meeting tomorrow, the move is expected to be enacted.
Currently, there are 22 top-level domains such as .com, .org, etc, and 250 country-level domains like .ly (Libya) and .uk.
If enacted, the move will give major brands a better way to control their presence online, and give them better ways to add visibility to their sites in search results. If it is approved this coming week, the window to apply will start in January and last 90 days.
Applications cost $185,000 and the applicant must have full proof of claim to the name they are purchasing.
If you have been following AfterDawn for the past month, or broad technology news in general you have undoubtedly heard of the group LulzSec, responsible for multiple hacks on Sony, Sega, Cia.gov, a site for the U.S. Senate and countless others.
Over the past week, however, a group calling themselves "Web Ninjas" have posted a blog called LulzSec Exposed, with the group's main purpose being "exposing" the members of LulzSec.
So far, the group has posted numerous chatlogs from alleged LulzSec leaders and members and even "Doxed" five of them, posting their pictures, names, addresses, emails, and in one unfortunate guy's case, his social security number and IP address.
One 'exposed' member is a contributory journalist for The Huffington Post, Guardian UK and other large sites.
The FTC has approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion bid for VoIP giant Skype, just weeks after its proposal.
Microsoft plans to integrate the popular service into its Windows Phone 7, Windows 8, Microsoft Office and Xbox Live platforms.
The deal is Microsoft's largest ever and is one of the biggest deals the industry has seen in the last decade.
Skype has almost 200 million users that use the service to make phone and video calls around the world. Skype is free for Skype-to-Skype communications and costs minimal fees to call land lines and mobile devices.
Google is said to have bid $4 billion for the service, so Microsoft completely overpaid (by most accounts) but if executed correctly, the move could pay off in the long run.
Consumer Reports has reported today that the new Nook Simple Touch Reader is their highest-rated e-ink e-reader, ever, ahead of Amazon's market leading Kindle.
Barnes & Noble launched its first Nook in 2009, to strong reviews, but never better reviews than the comparable Kindle.
The latest Nook, just like its predecessor and the Kindles, uses E-Ink Pearl Tech and offers weeks of standby battery life on one charge. Differentiating the device is its touchscreen E-Ink, allowing for quick page flipping with no buttons.
CR says the Simple Touch "matches or bests—albeit modestly—its Amazon competitor in almost every aspect of performance. Among the attributes on which we score the devices equally is battery life; despite a power struggle between B&N and Amazon over which device runs for longer, we give both equal credit for a claimed battery life of five days or more."
The latest generation Kindle and the Nook Simple both cost $140 for Wi-Fi-only models.
Netflix has reported today that Sony has temporarily pulled its movies from the company's streaming library, due to a dispute with Starz.
Says the company:
You may have noticed that Sony movies through StarzPlay are not currently available to watch instantly. This is the result of a temporary contract issue between Sony and Starz and, while these two valued partners work through their differences, we hope you are enjoying the wide variety of new movies and TV shows added daily.
Some of the popular new releases like "Easy A" are no longer available, but Netflix is confident the films will be back when the dispute is resolved.
"Historically, video game products have not been available at grocery stores, drugstores or convenience stores,"added Joel Resnik, vice president of games at Redbox. "We make it very convenient by having our kiosks in front of the places people are at every day."
Gamers can reserve games online via Redbox's website.
Over a year after the launch of the iPad the device still notably lacks a native Facebook app.
Sources are reporting today, however, that the social networking giant may be prepared to launch the app in the "coming weeks."
The same sources say Facebook has been developing the app for a year now and will perfectly compliment the iPad's larger touch screen interface and UI.
It appears the app will have tablet-optimized versions of Facebook Chat and Groups, and direct integration of the tablet's cameras. The video and camera apps are allegedly "amazing, offering full resolution and full-screen images."
In 2010, a similar incident claimed the life of an Indian woman using a Chinese-made knockoff phone.
"Shanzhai" (Chinese imitation) mobile devices have become very popular in India due to their cheap prices, but the Indian government has tried to crack down as the devices usually lack IMEI numbers and have untested batteries that are considered hazardous.
It took six months, but it appears that Spotify has closed its last funding round.
Raising $100 million from DST, Accel and Kleiner Perkins, the company is now valued at around $1 billion.
After 15 months of delays, it also appears that the service is ready to launch in the U.S. in July, with an exec alluding to the date but not giving an official confirmation.
Spotify has been negotiating with the Big 4 labels for over a year now and has finally stuck deals with Universal Music Group, months after striking deals with smaller labels EMI and Sony.
Warner Music Group remains the last holdout, but sources claim that a deal is imminent within a week.
Nokia Europe VP Victor Saeijs has confirmed today that the company's first Windows Phone 7 devices will launch in at least 6 European nations, first.
Speaking at the 2011 Mobile Telecompaper conference, Saeijs noted that the Netherlands, France, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy would be the first.
The exec also says the Netherlands will be very important to the launch, as Nokia has a significant market share there for smartphones.
Saeijs would not give a timeframe but did confirm that the first devices would launch this year, and that himself and other execs were already carrying early prototypes.
RIM, the makers of the once-popular BlackBerry smartphones, has seen its stock fall to its lowest point in 5 years following another quarter of horrible earnings.
The stock is now down 62 percent from its high this year, and is trading down 23 percent today to $27.50 per share.
Two months ago, the company downgraded its own revenue forecast for the quarter, yet somehow still managed to miss its own downgraded forecast, by a significant amount.
Additionally, the company drastically reduced its earnings and revenue forecast for the entire fiscal 2012.
Adding to the misery, the phone maker noted that its new phones would not hit stores until after the start of the "back-to-school" period.
While analysts remain excited for the launch of BlackBerrys with the new QNX operating system, some have called it "vaporware," due to RIM's lack of a roadmap. The company only says the devices will hit "sometime in 2012."
PlayBook sales were a slight bright spot, but they did not even put a dent in iPad or Android tablet market share.
Sources speaking to The Daily say that funnyman Dave Chappelle may be ready to come back with a new show, but it won't be through traditional cable or broadcast but instead via Hulu, Netflix, or another on-demand streaming platform.
Chappelle walked away from his hit show Chappelle's Show in 2006, breaking a contract that would have paid him $50 million over 2 years.
The actor then took refuge in Africa for months, breaking away from the fame the show had brought him.
When asked later why he left such a massive contract, Chappelle said that Comedy Central put too much pressure on him for deadlines, etc, and it stymied his creativity.
With a new deal on a streaming platform, the actor would likely get to be "his own boss" again.
LulzSec has released 62,000 email/password combinations today, although it is unclear where the data was stolen from.
Because many users keep the same combinations for multiple sites, some users have already reported that their Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and other accounts have all been hacked.
The point of the release is to cause "chaos" and the plan seems to be working, at least for now.
Outside of the release, LulzSec has also started a war with 4Chan and Anonymous, following 4Chan's move to DDoS anything related to Lulz after LulzSec DDoS'd games like EVE Online and Minecraft. On its Twitter page, LulzSec has been giving tips on how to annoy 4Chan users:
Everybody visit this cool and edgy imageboard, they love new members!Ask them how to triforce and how to become legion.
Mozilla launched Firefox 4 earlier this year to much fanfare, but it seems that Firefox 5 is almost ready to go.
Following the launch of 4, Mozilla confirmed it was moving towards the Google Chrome model of development, where updated versions are released every few months, following time in developer and beta channels.
Each upgrade is not a complete re-haul of the former version, but rather tweaked versions with added features, sometimes major. Google Chrome is now in version 12 despite being launched years after Firefox.
The Firefox 5 RC has performance and speed boosts, as well as improved support for "future-web" tech like HTML5 and JavaScript rendering.
You can get the latest FF5 here at AfterDawn: Firefox 5
On June 16th, 1911, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) was founded, later changing its name to IBM in 1924.
The company has been an innovating force behind thousands of different products, including floppy disks, the technology behind Social Security and more recently, the AI "Watson" computer.
IBM's vice president of innovation says the company is still around due to its development of tech that contributes to society, as well as the company's openness to risky projects.
Says VP Bernie Meyerson:
We just had an incredible 100-year run because we never lost site of how important it is to innovate. The fact is, innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. We practiced diversity long before it was a legal requirement because we value it [and] it does enable us to be innovative.
When asked his thoughts on Google and Facebook, two companies that are tech giants with much less time on this earth, Meyerson says "they need to be much more diverse."
It's a long way from a cheese slicer to changing the entire infrastructure of a nation. You have to have this broad spectrum because it gives you vision. To avoid these disasters that befall companies where they literally vanish overnight, you have to have your eyes open, constantly looking about. It is possible to live that length of time, but you have to reinvent yourself on an almost daily basis.
The first official "Chromebook" has gone on sale in the United States today, via Samsung.
ChromeOS-based netbooks do not have standard operating systems like Windows or Mac, but instead run on browser-based apps via the Google Chrome browser.
Google has long claimed that ChromeOS will revolutionize portable computing as it eliminates the need for possibly resource intensive apps like anti-virus software and physical hardware like optical drives.
Currently, however, many developers have yet to create apps that are popular for Windows, Mac and Linux for Chrome OS, as the operating system is still in its infant stage.
The Samsung Chromebook sells for $429 (Wi-Fi-only) or $499 (Wi-Fi/3G).
Samsung's model will have a 12.1-inch display, 1280x800 resolution, 8 second boot time and 8 hour battery life. The device runs on a dual core 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 processor, has an HD webcam, a mini-VGA port, 2 USB ports and will weigh just 3.3 pounds.
Crunch is reporting this week that social networking behemoth Facebook is moving forward with an HTML5-based mobile platform dubbed Project Spartan, as well as a "geolocation photo swapping app."
The app will be very similar to the extremely popular "Instagram," which allows users to quickly take a pic, edit with some quick filter tricks, and share, all with a few clicks. The source says the app looks like a mix of Instagram, Color and Path.
"Project Spartan," the Facebook mobile platform being developed for HTML5, will be directly aimed at Apple users, who can currently only use HTML5 on their iOS devices with Safari browser.
Apple has unveiled its 2011 "Back-to-School" special offer, and its notably cheap compared to years past.
If a student purchases a new Mac, they will get 10 percent off the computer and a $100 iTunes gift card.
In the past, Apple gave away small capacity iPod Touch devices along with the discount, so this year's "special" is notably cheaper and less appealing.
From Apple's perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense, as Apple will sell more apps/books/music/movies, thus keeping developers happy, as well.
Additionally, Apple normally bundles the iPods when they are trying to clear out some stock for the upcoming refresh of the line, which occurs in September.
This year, however, it is unclear whether there will be new iPods coming in September as a new iPhone is expected to be the major launch at that time.
Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka has said today that the developer's blockbuster smash hit franchise "Angry Birds" now sees 1 million downloads per day.
The news comes a day after the developer said the game (in all iterations) had surpassed 250 million overall downloads.
Vesterbacka also adds that the developer is working on integrating more NFC features into its game, and that the company is set to release a cookbook, as well.
Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio are constant fixtures on "top games" lists for both Android and iOS, and the games are also now available for Macs, PCs, and even within the Chrome browser.
Vesterbacka added that he believes success has come from building a strong brand, focusing on getting fans first, consumers second.
On behalf of the whole AfterDawn staff congratulations to our very own web designer Teemu and his wife Katariina who just became parents of a newborn boy!
Toshiba and HP have jointly announced that they will team up on cloud services that include support for power, water, gas services and information technology systems.
The Japanese company says "smart community" services will increase to 900 billion yen per year by 2015, up from the current 300 billion yen. The company is under increasing pressure to move away from nuclear power following the tragic earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Toshiba purchased nuclear company Westinghouse in 2006 for $5 billion when it appeared that nuclear power projects were the wave of the future.
The company now expects to push back all nuclear reactor orders (39 in the pipeline) back 3 years as it spends the present focused on renewable energy sources and smart grids, says Reuters.
According to a new report from The Diffusion Group, a full 32 percent of Netflix users plan to cut part of their cable subscription (if not all of it), a figure that has doubled from last year's report.
24 percent cited cost as the main reason, but a full 61 percent cited the availability of online video as their main reason.
66 percent of that group specifically cited Netflix.
Netflix has about 23 million subscribers so the new report could be daunting for cable providers, which have long made it public that they do not believe Netflix and its "Watch Instantly" catalog will affect their core businesses.
The streaming service is also now available on 250 different devices and TVs.
Nintendo has made it official, Wii U games will be on a proprietary disc that is not Blu-ray or DVD.
The confirmation comes via Nintendo president Satoru Iwata following a week of confusion and speculation as to exactly what Wii U games would be published on.
In explaining the move, Iwata says:
We feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies.
BGR has reported on the upcoming Google Nexus 4G, the latest in the Nexus line of 'flagship' Android devices attached to the Google name.
The smartphone will feature a 1.5GHz dual-core processor (either an OMAP 4460 or brand new 28nm Snapdragon) and have a true 720p "monster-sized" display.
Furthermore, the device will be the first to move completely to softkeys, removing all physical menu/home/back buttons.
Adding to the "magic" of the new phone is an LTE radio, 1GB RAM, 1080pHD video support and capture, a 1MP front-side camera and a 5MP standard camera with an "advanced 5-megapixel sensor delivering class-leading image quality in addition to superior low-light performance."
It is unclear why, but the CIA's website, CIA.gov, is currently down, compliments of LulzSec, the group which has taken down Sony multiple times over the last month.
J.C. Penney has announced this morning the recruitment of Ron Johnson, Apple's current senior vice president of retail, as CEO.
Johnson will start on November 1st, taking over the position from Myron Ullman, who will stay on as executive chairman of the board.
Penney's market value rose a ridiculous $1 billion during trading on Tuesday following the news with investors and traders clearly seeing Johnson as a huge benefit to the company.
The new CEO was also given $50 million worth of warrants, which will replace the Apple equity award that would have been vested in March of next year.
Since Johnson came on board, Apple has expanded from 1 retail store to over 300, and each store brings in, on average, $34 million in profit per year.
Google's $900 million "stalking-horse" bid for 6000 Nortel patents has been approved by the Department of Justice, meaning an auction is set to begin next week.
Nortel has been selling off assets since going bankrupt in 2009 in an effort to pay off creditors. Once trading as high as $600 a share in the tech bubble of the late 90s, Nortel shares now trade for 4 cents.
Google first bid on the patents in April but met with resistance from Apple, Research in Motion, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia, each of which filed objections.
The search giant is looking to acquire the patents (which include hundreds of each for wireless, 4G, data networking, optical, voice, and semiconductors) in a defensive move as it fights lawsuits from Oracle and others over its Android operating system.
According to the NPD's latest figures, and a little bit of bragging from the console makers themselves, it appears the Microsoft Xbox 360 won the month of May with 270,000 units sold, a 39 percent boost year-over-year.
The PS3 sold 173,000 consoles, good for a 14 percent bump year-over-year.
Microsoft says it has now topped the list for 11 out of the last 12 months and that the console is expected to have its biggest year. ever, in 2011.
On the downside, however, software sales were down 20 percent year-over-year for the month thanks to a weak release month, comparatively. The top game, easily, was L.A. Noire, with strong sales for the 360 and PS3.
Total industry sales fell 14 percent YoY to $743.1 million, with hardware down 5 percent to $228.9 million and accessories down 6 percent to $114 million.
According to FT, Apple has settled with Nokia over their long-standing iPhone patent dispute.
Apple will now pay Nokia a royalty payment for each iPhone sold.
Following the settlement, Nokia confirmed all patent litigation between the two companies has been withdrawn, as well as the complaints to the US ITC.
Nokia nor Apple detailed the financials of the deal, but most industry specialists say the royalty payments will end up being 1.5 percent of the iPhone's $600 average selling price. At an average of 18 million iPhones being sold each quarter, payments to Nokia will be over $640 million per year.
However, because Apple brought multiple patent complaints against Nokia, as well, the royalty payments could be much lower to take that into account.
Concludes Nokia CEO Stephen Elop:
We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees. This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.
The latest report from Asymco says it now costs Apple $1.3 billion to run iTunes on a yearly basis.
Horace Dediu used the numbers from Apple’s latest quarterly earnings and then cross referenced them average prices for music and apps to get a “content margin.”
The numbers used were:
15 Billion iTunes song downloads
130 million book downloads
14 billion app downloads
$2.5 billion paid to developers
225 million accounts
425k apps
90k iPad apps
100k game and entertainment titles
50 million game center accounts
Dediu estimates the monthly content margin now comes in at $113 million, which the editor believes all goes back into running the store and paying for traffic/payment processing and increasing storage capacity.
After 15 years on top, Nomura has said today that both Samsung and Apple will surpass Nokia to become the world's largest smartphone makers, as early as this quarter.
Says the research firm:
Nokia looks set to relinquish its smartphone crown to Samsung and Apple. Further emphasizing the shift in power to Asia is our forecast for HTC to almost match Nokia during 2012.
Samsung will take the top spot, with Apple in second.
Nokia started the smartphone market in 1996 with the "Communicator" but has seen massive struggles in the past few years as Android and iOS pick up steam.
The company has one last chance to regain market share when it begins releasing Windows Phone 7 devices later this year.
Small computer communications company iCloud Communications has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company's new "iCloud" service infringes on its trademark.
The company wants a full injunction that will block Apple from launching the service.
iCloud Communications says they have been using the trademark for "identical to or closely related" services since 2005. The suit claims that Apple has damaged the trademark with its iCloud launch and "ensuing saturation advertising campaign."
The complaint is asking for "all profits, gains and advantages as well as all monetary damages sustained." Additionally, it asks for the end of the name and for Apple to "deliver for destruction all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material" with iCloud on it.
Apple officially filed for the trademark in the U.S. and Europe last week.
Facebook has not confirmed the news, yet, but their COO did call an IPO "inevitable" just last week.
Perennial money losers Groupon and LinkedIn have filed for IPOs in the last month with massive valuations and gaming behemoth Zynga is expected to go public later this year, as well.
The Cupertino mayor has said this week that there is little to no chance that city officials will reject Apple's plans to build a new 3.1 million square foot "Spaceship" campus.
Says the mayor: "There is no chance that we're saying no."
Jobs appeared before the city council earlier in the week to show off plans for the new campus that will hold 12,000 employees.
The plans will first have to pass environmental checks and pass a public hearing (likely in 2012). Jobs wants to complete the Spaceship by 2015.
Adds Mayor Wong:
In my mind, one of the city council's most important challenges and accomplishments has been to make sure that companies like apple can grow and thrive. While other cities are struggling ... we can grow.
The building will be four stories, be circular in shape and have a large 150-acre interior courtyard. Apple's new architecture will be in addition to the company's main campus.
20-year-old Trevor Harwell, a Mac repairman for Rezitech in Orange County, California has been arrested today and charged with installing software on computers he was fixing that would rig the webcams to capture video of the owners.
Harwell would plant software on the computer that would take control of the computers's webcam and send pop up messages reading: "You need to fix your internal sensor soon." A second pop up error then said: "Try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor."
Following the advice of the error messages, some women would take the laptop into the bathroom with them while they showered, letting the hot water run for a few minutes beforehand.
Apple has stepped up to the plate and will put some of its $60 billion in cash to work defending app developers being attacked by "patent troll" company Lodsys.
In May, Lodsys began sending letters to app developers demanding a 0.575 percent cut of all revenue, due to the fact that they own a patent relating to in-app purchases.
Apple has now filed a motion to intervene on behalf of the developers, which may have not had the resources for a court battle. Apple has also filed a counterclaim against Lodsys, saying itself and all developers can use the tech.
Apple has an interest in property that is at the center of this dispute, namely, its license to the patents in suit and its business with the developers, which depends on their use of products and services that Apple is expressly licensed under the patents in suit to offer them.
Both Lodsys's complaint and its threats to other Apple developers adversely affect the value of Apple's license and its business with the developers.
Apple has confirmed today that a small number of Verizon iPad 2 tablets have duplicate mobile equipment identifier (MEID) codes, causing issues with accessing the company's 3G network.
Duplicate MEID codes were flashed onto an extremely small number of iPad 2 units for the Verizon 3G network.
Any user having problems accessing the Verizon 3G network are asked to come into Apple stores and replace their defective devices for unaffected ones. Apple seems to be giving $50 store credit as compensation, as well.
Unique MEIDs are harcoded into all smartphones and tablets, so duplications will cause a loss of connectivity to cellular and data networks.
IBM has confirmed this week that it will be providing the microprocessors for the upcoming Nintendo Wii U console, and that the technology will be the same used in the "Watson" supercomputer.
Earlier this year, "Watson" defeated the top earners of all-time on Jeopardy (Ken Jennings and Bruce Rutter), handily.
Watson is able to calculate thousands of algorithms at the same time, while searching its massive database for the right answer. The behemoth computer runs on ninety 32-core IBM Power 750 Express servers and has 16TB of memory and was over 20 feet high.
The all-new, Power-based microprocessor will pack some of IBM's most advanced technology into an energy-saving silicon package that will power Nintendo's brand new entertainment experience for consumers worldwide. IBM's unique embedded DRAM, for example, is capable of feeding the multi-core processor large chunks of data to make for a smooth entertainment experience.
IBM plans to produce millions of chips for Nintendo featuring IBM Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology at 45 nanometers (45 billionths of a meter). The custom-designed chips will be made at IBM's state-of-the-art 300mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, N.Y.
On May 23rd, Lady Gaga released her much-hyped album "Born This Way," and Amazon quickly dropped the price of the digital album to 99 cents, bringing a huge amount of press to the company's MP3 store.
In fact, the deal went so well that "Born This Way" sold 1.1 million units in its first week (massive by 2011 standards) with 662,000 of those copies being digital.
There was so much demand that Amazon's normally unflappable servers experienced some downtime, adding to the media coverage of the promotion.
Amazon and Lady Gaga were certainly happy, but it appears that the labels and some independent distributors were not.
Merchants have already told Gaga's label, Interscope (part of Universal Music Group) that they will need to return physical CDs, and UMG already shipped 2.1 million CDs before the street date. The label will likely see 400,000 returns, says THR, a rather large number given Lady Gaga's popularity.
Says one independent distributor:
This was a really bad move. Ninety-nine cents is almost free.
Damn, somehow it seems that it was only yesterday when we launched our site, but in fact, it has been 12 years since that day. Twelve years is a long time, but in "Internet time", it feels like an eternity -- Facebook, for example, wasn't born until 2004 (and made its breakthrough years later), Google became the most popular search engine 2-3 years after our site's launch, etc.
Of course, our site has gone through tons of changes during all these years, too, but the basic set up is still the same; we aim to provide good quality tech news, along with tech forums and tons of other stuff that should help the average Joe to get a grasp of things like video editing, console technology and more.
The past year has been quite unusual for us, as our site hasn't gone through any dramatic changes recently. Instead, we've focused on making the site more robust, to improve usability, etc. Biggest changes for our company have actually involved "non-English-and-non-Finnish" properties of ours. In February, our Dutch site went properly live, when Plankje joined our ranks and started working for the service. Furthermore, we launched a localized version (courtesy of our licensing deal with Bestofmedia) of Tom's Hardware in Finland.
According to a Digitimes report, Microsoft may be releasing its own branded Windows 8 tablet next year.
Says the report:
Xbox 360 is currently the only own-brand product line that Microsoft has achieved success [with], while Zune media player, Kin smartphone and own-brand TVs all had unsatisfactory performance. However, Microsoft is still considering to launch an own-brand tablet PC and is proceeding on a low profile.
Microsoft began selling branded Tablet PCs 12 years ago, but the market was not ready and sales were light.
With the creation of Windows 8 however, Microsoft is building an operating system that works for desktops, but has many features optimized for tablets, which have exploded in popularity since the launch of the Apple iPad.
It appears that popular European music streaming site Spotify has signed a deal with Universal Group, meaning it is one step closer to launching in the United States.
Over the past few months, Spotify has signed deals with Sony and EMI which means just Warner Music Group remains as a hold out from the Big 4 labels.
Most in the industry believed Universal would be the toughest of all the labels to negotiate a deal with so a Warner deal seems imminent at this point.
Spotify offers unlimited free streaming music. It is unclear what the business model will be in the United States.
It's a little like a spaceship landed. There is not a straight piece of glass in the building. We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use.
The building will be four stories, circular in shape and have a large 150-acre interior courtyard. Apple's new architecture will be in addition to the company's main campus.
That's rather odd, 12,000 people in a building, in one building. But we've seen these office parks with lots of buildings, and they get pretty boring pretty fast, so we'd like to do something better than that. I do think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world.
Google has acquired the large advertising optimization platform for publishers AdMeld for $400 million in cash this week.
The company launched in 2007 with $30 million in venture capital.
Thanks to their initial investments, Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments are set to make a large windfall.
CEO Michael Barrett was fired in 2008 from News Corp., after he failed to get MySpace to an unreasonable $1 billion revenue target.
MySpace has since continued its decline, losing $165 million last year alone.
Authorities in Spain have arrested three members of the hacking group Anonymous, each of which was allegedly part of the attack on the PlayStation Network where a file was found on the server with Anonymous' calling card.
The arrests follow a plot by the group to attack Spain’s Central Electoral Board website, among other Spanish sites.
Police have posted pictures of IRC chatlogs in which the suspects detail their plans of attack.
The authorities also note that those arrested "have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks," and were actively involved in the attacks on the PSN, Egypt, Chile, Iran and Colombia.
This week's arrests come just days after NATO declared Anonymous a cyberthreat that would be "persecuted" and "infiltrated."
Anonymous responded in kind:
Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent.
(Pic of Spanish police with Anonymous 'V' masks via TNW)
Following weeks of speculation, HP has officially announced that the TouchPad tablet will launch on July 1st in the U.S.
The tablet will hit the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Canada within a week of the US launch.
HP is selling the 16GB model for $500 and the 32GB version for $600.
"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS," added HP's Jon Rubinstein (via IW). "The platform's unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with webOS."
TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.
According to a number of reports, an investor group has now become the front-runner in the bid for struggling social network MySpace.
News Corp, the current owner of the service, is looking to sell a majority stake by the end of the fiscal year, June 30th.
The group would take over full operational control and take an 80 percent ownership stake, leaving News Corp with the rest.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick added that he had been approached to join the investor group but has not made a decision.
Outside of the investor group, the small social networks Tagged and myYearbook have also expressed interest.
News Corp. threw away $580 million in 2005 to purchase MySpace and has swiftly seen traffic, revenues and profits plummet.
From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Citing a huge drop in sales from Nokia, Texas Instruments was forced to cut its revenue and earnings forecasts last night.
Outside of the mobile phone business, however, TI said all other sectors of their business were performing up to expectations.
TI warned that revenue from its wireless baseband chips were hurt thanks to Nokia, its biggest client, which continues to struggle and has fallen so far that it has become the source of takeover speculation.
The numbers will prove to be a temporary blip, regardless, as TI has already said it will phase out its baseband business by the end of next year.
While baseband was still a significant amount of overall revenue (6 percent), it was a steep fall from the 12 percent it represented last quarter.
Nintendo's Katsuya Eguchi has confirmed today that games for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console will be on single-layer 25GB "proprietary" discs.
The PlayStation 3 uses Blu-ray discs, mainly single layer, but some games have been put on dual-layer 50GB discs.
When asked, Eguchi denied to comment on the expected 8GB of internal flash memory in the Wii U, but did confirm that external USB drives would be supported.
At E3, Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.
The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. There are two circle pads, a regular d-pad, shoulder buttons, rumble, a camera/speaker/mic and gyroscope/accelerometer sensors.
The Wii U controller offers gamers a chance to use the second screen for many activities, including catching/pitching the ball in Wii Sports, or even playing hide-and-seek with other controllers.
Last week it was reported that Microsoft was set to drop $9 billion to purchase struggling phone maker Nokia.
Nokia denied that claim outright but there is a new rumor in town; giant mobile phone maker Samsung is looking to buy Nokia's phone business.
Samsung did not deny the latest rumor however, nor did Nokia, with both companies just declining comment "on rumor."
The new reaction is a far cry from Nokia's immediate dismissal of word that Microsoft was prepared to purchase the phone business of Nokia.
Nokia's share price has seen a brutal take down, falling 50 percent in the last 4 months to $6.30 and a full 85 percent from its peak in 2008, before the market collapsed. The stock was as high as $16 per share last year, however.
The company continues to see its market share fall, dropping 14 percent year-over-year alone from 36.1 percent to 31 percent as HTC, Apple and ZTE continue exponential growth.
According to multiple reports, Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S II smartphone will go on sale next month for major U.S. carriers.
The device was first unveiled at the MWC in February and is on sale in Europe and Asia.
It has been dubbed the world's thinnest phone.
Samsung's new "superphone" has a 4.27-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, Android 2.3.4, a 1.2GHz Samsung dual-core processor, an 8.49mm thin chassis (at lowest), an 8MP camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, NFC support, a 2MP front-side camera and HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.
Furthermore, the device will run on Samsung's updated TouchWiz UI and weighs just 4 ounces.
Samsung said there are already over 4 million pre-orders of the device, which should be a huge seller for the company.
Although unconfirmed, the latest rumor surfacing is that HP's TouchPad tablet will be released on June 22nd.
The date comes via Synnex, and IT equipment company, who has the tablet listed with a 6/22 date.
HP's base 16GB model will sell for $500 and the 32GB for $600.
The company has confirmed a "late June" launch so the date is certainly plausible.
TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.
Additionally, the tablet's virtual keypad will have a full number row, come with QuickOffice installed, Google Docs support, Dropbox, Box.net, VPN and wireless printing support.
Nintendo had arguably the best E3 keynote of the major gaming companies, unveiling the Wii U console and a plethora of Nintendo 3DS games, all of which should be released by the end of the year.
Nintendo 3DS
The gaming company confirmed the availability of the 3DS eShop and web browser. As a free gift to all gamers, the company is giving away Pokedex 3D and a 3D version of ExciteBike.
Pokedex 3D, which should excite Pokemon fans, let's you scan AR markers to add Pokemon, trade with friends and superimpose any Poke into your pictures.
Access to the Virtual Console is also available now, for $20, for GameBoy and GameBoy Color games.
Wii U
The highlight of the show, of course, was the launch of Project Cafe, for now on known as Wii U.
Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.
The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. (Pic via ZD).
Viewsonic has unveiled its latest Android tablet, a $250 'budget' device dubbed the ViewBook 730.
Running Android 2.2 on an ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz processor, the tablet will be released later this month.
Smaller than most of Viewsonic's other tablets at 7-inches, the tablet has an 800x480 LCD LED backlit display, 8GB internal memory, a small VGA webcam, a mini-USB port, a mini-HDMI port and a microSD slot.
The ViewBook 730 also has RiteTouch, for writers who want to use a Stylus.
"We recognized a need for a tablet device that offers users an excellent multimedia experience with a very affordable value proposition," adds Michael Holstein, ViewSonic's vice president of business development. "From the pre-installed Amazon Kindle eReader to full Amazon app integration and Flash 10.1 support, our new ViewBook 730 enables consumers to do all the fun things that they want to do on a tablet without the added cost for features they don't need."
LulzSec, the hacking group that has hacked multiple Sony sites over the past week, is at it again, this time releasing source code from the Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network.
Furthermore, the group released internal network maps of Sony BMG. In separate attacks from different groups, Sony Pictures Russia was taken down after an SQL injection and Sony Music Brazil was defaced.
Reads the confirmation post from the group (via Cnet):
Today is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company is expected to launch iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud.
Mac OS X Lion
The company says there are now 54 million Mac users, globally. Growth has beaten the market for 5 years now, "thanks to products like MacBook Air."
Notebooks like Air, Pro are now 73 percent of all Apple PC sales.
With OS X Lion, Apple has added 250 new features including: Multitouch Gestures (momentum scrolling, multitouch taps, pinch to zoom); Full Screen Apps (quick control to toggle apps to FS); Mission Control ("a single unified interface accessible via a gesture that offers a bird's eye view of whats going on at your Mac.") Launchpad, Resume and Autosave are now added, like iOS.
Best of all, the download will only be 4GB and cost just $30.
iOS 5
Apple says there are now over 200 million iOS 5 devices, with iOS being the top mobile operating system on the market (44% share).
25 million iPads have been sold since launch in 2010. iTunes hits 15 billion downloads, top retailer for music in the world.
iOS 5 Beta will be released for Apple TV, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPod Touch 3Gen, iPod Touch 4Gen and all iPad models.
Microsoft's E3 keynote went off today with none too many surprises, but the company did show off some very interesting new uses for the Kinect motion control system, among other new launches.
Bloomberg has reported this weekend that Nokia has lost so much value over the past few years that its stock is now worth 50 percent less than if the company was sold and broken up.
At its peak, Nokia was worth $300 billion before Apple and Google introduced their smartphone operating systems but is now worth just over $25 billion.
If you were to separate its mobile, infrastructure equipment, mapping software and accounting businesses, Bloomberg says the company would be worth $39 billion, based on current comparable valuations of patents.
There has been speculation that Microsoft is willing to buy Nokia's mobile phone business, but Nokia has denied the rumors.
Nokia's stock currently trades at $6.65 per share, the lowest it has since 1998.
As of yesterday, Sony has made their PSN "Welcome Back" program available to all 100 million affected users, offering numerous games and services as "compensation" for the security breach.
The Welcome Back program offers users two free games (from a list), Ooblag’s Alien Casino (PSN game), free 30 day subscription to PSN+ and virtual items for PS Home.
Earlier this week we reported that the hacking group that took down PBS had hacked Sony and posted the info online, adding another chapter to the long saga of security breaches that have plagued the company since April.
"LulzSec" posted that they had broken into the servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment websites and stole personal info for 1 million customers.
The group then posted names, addresses, emails and passwords for 150,000 customers on the Internet, bashing Sony in the process.
Sony Pictures has admitted the attack occurred, and apologized for the inconvenience.
Says CEO Michael Lynton:
The cybercrime wave that has affected Sony companies and a number of government agencies, businesses and individuals in recent months has hit Sony Pictures as well. We have confirmed that a breach has occurred and have taken action to protect against further intrusion.
Media Create has said that Nintendo Wii sales in Japan have fallen dramatically for the week ended May 29th, ahead of Nintendo's launch of the "Project Cafe" Wii successor at E3 next week.
The console only sold 7438 units for the week, good for 4th in hardware sales.
Last month, the company announced it would show off the oft-rumored Wii 2/Project Cafe at E3 alongside playable demos.
Although unconfirmed, the controller will likely be able to stream content from the console, and the console will move to Blu-ray and 1080p support.
Sales (and profits) have been falling for Nintendo over the past year as the console reaches almost peak saturation worldwide. 86 million units have been sold since launch.
The rumored specs of the upcoming console after the break.
According to security firm Trend Micro, Gmail isn't the only email service under attack, with Yahoo and Hotmail/Live users seeing some of the same issues that Google's users have in recent weeks.
Google claimed the attacks on its service, mainly to steal account details and emails of prominent US government officials, Chinese political activists and journalists came from China.
It is unclear whether the attacks on the other major email services came from China, as well.
Google contained the phishing campaign, accounts had their security beefed up and the authorities were notified.
The attacks on Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail showed "significant similarities," to the Google attacks, notes Trend Micro in its report.
While the attack on Yahoo seemed a run-of-the-mill attack to steal cookies, the Hotmail attack was much more malicious.
Unlike other email-based attacks that require users to open the message and to click an embedded link or to download and execute an attachment, this attack's execution merely requires users to preview the message in their browsers.
Beginning next week, Nintendo will begin offering 25,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots for 3DS gamers, giving them a chance to download from the eShop or play online games even when not at home.
Thanks to a partnership with Simon Property Group, a massive real estate owner/developer, the free Wi-Fi will go live at 200 Simon shopping malls in the U.S. on June 7th.
With the new 200 hotspots, 3DS gamers now have access at over 25,000 spots, including 1000 Best Buy stores and 24,000 AT&T hotspots.
Notes Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime (via 24/7):
With thousands of free Wi-Fi access points through our alliances, Nintendo 3DS users across the country can instantly enjoy one-of-a-kind entertainment experiences wherever and whenever they like.
In addition to a strong lineup of games and the ability to view 3D content without special glasses, the system makes it easy for people to connect with their surroundings and each other, even when they’re away from home.
As the popularity of the drives increase, unsurprisingly more manufacturers are trying to get into the game, with Lite-On IT being the latest to join in.
The company says that beginning in the Q3 it will begin manufacturing SSD, starting with smaller 32-64GB internal models for PC OEMs.
Lite-On IT is currently a maker of optical disk drives but has factories that can be adapted to the now much more effective manufacturing processes of building SSD.
The company believes 70 percent of its revenue from the market will come from notebook PCs, with retail, server and industrial PC markets accounting for the rest.
Marvell HyperDuo tech will also be utilized for the drives, adds the company.
Starting on August 1st, Google will drop support for old browsers.
Such browsers include Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5 (or lower).
If you choose to not upgrade (or cannot), Google says unfortunately:
In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.
Figures from StatCounter and NetApplications seem to imply that about 17 percent of the world will need to upgrade their browsers, mainly thanks to a huge number of IE6 users in China (over 25 percent).
Venkat Panchapakesan, VP of engineering at Google, says the move is necessary for the future:
These new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds. For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers.
Malaysian social activist Fahmi Fadzil has agreed to apologize on Twitter 100 times after losing a defamation case brought by BluInc Media, a magazine company.
In January, Fadzil tweeted that one of his pregnant friends had been ill treated by her employers at the magazine.
Within a week, BluInc Media had sent a letter accusing Fadzil of defamation.
Marking at least the 7th time now, Sony has had another database hacked, this time with 120 users having their info (including passwords and mobile phone numbers) compromised.
Lebanese-based hacker "Idahc" hacked a small database of Sony Europe and then released the data on all the users.
Each of those users now has their username, password (in plain text no less), mobile numbers, work emails and websites available for all to see.
Idahc says he used a very simple SQL injection to access the database, which housed the user's data completely unprotected.
The hacker also hit the Canadian Sony Ericsson site last month, using similar methods.
In what amounted to little more than a botched robbery attempt, a man dressed in a white shirt and a white hooded mask crashed a stolen car through the front of an Apple Store in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A security guard described the man as white, and wearing a full "white ninja suit."
Nothing was taken from the store after the crash, and the guard says the ninja vanished from the scene immediately.
There was no other comment except to say that the car was a stolen Honda Accord from somewhere in the state and that the crash took place at 4:40 AM.
UK communications regulator warns that growth of 4G will cause TV reception problems for some Brits.
Ofcom will conduct a research program to figure out just how many people are likely to be affected. Currently, it puts the estimate at about 3 percent of people in the United Kingdom, but says using filters will solve the problem in most cases.
The problem has arisen becayse the chunk of spectrum reserved for 4G communications is next to that used for broadcasting digital terrestrial television. The 800MHz band is due to be auctioned off in 2012 and 4G services are expected to roll out in the country shortly after.
Signals from base stations might disrupt television viewing for as many as 760,000 people to some degree, Ofcom has warned. The regulator is considering running a public educational campaign to alert viewers that they may be affected, and how to deal with it if they are.
Firms that win licenses for the 800MHz spectrum will have to contribute to the cost of the campaign.
For the vast majority of affected viewers, filters should easily solve the problems, but in very very few cases, viewers may need to find alternative ways to watch digital TV.
Cisco has said that the proliferation of Tablet PC devices, smartphones and other gear will boost the number of Internet-connected devices to over 15 billion by the year 2015. This, in turn, will drive up Internet traffic to an astonishing 966 exabytes (one quintillion bytes) a year.
Consumer video content will dominate this Internet traffic. According to Cisco, by 2015, one million minutes of video content will be watched by Internet users per second. About 40 percent of the world's population will be online by that time, Cisco predicts.
If this outlook is correct, it brings up some worrying concerns that experts and industry insiders have warned about for many years now.
"What you are seeing is this massive growth in devices, the way devices are being used and are connected to the internet and what users expect them to do," said Suraj Shetty, Cisco vice president for global marketing.
"All this is putting a lot of pressure on the internet and the next generation internet faces issues handling not just the proliferation of these devices but how they are going to grow and be intelligent enough to be connected to you. The most important question we face is how to manage all this traffic intelligently."
Speculation has begun to crop up that Sony may be looking to buy Netflix or IMAX, two extremely high-profile companies, in an effort to boost revenue.
Reports claim Sony is already negotiating a bid for IMAX, but others believe Netflix would be an equally attractive acquisition.
IMAX, while a cash cow, would be hard to integrate to Sony's existing products (outside of Sony Pictures) whereas on the other hand Netflix better integrates into the PS3, HDTVs and other Web-connected devices that have become Sony's bread and butter.
According to merger arbitrage specialist Sachin Shah, Sony has:
A lot of cash on their balance sheet to put to work if they wanted to. They could do multiple deals and it could start becoming exciting for shareholders.
It’s hard for me to believe that these guys have destroyed that much value in such a short time. Stringer really has to do something to revitalize the company. For Sony to continue to compete, they’re going to have to start doing deals.
Microsoft has confirmed that it will be killing off support for Windows Mobile 6.x phones starting on July 15th.
Developers can still create apps for the WM6 marketplace and users will be able to download them forever, or until the marketplace is shut down.
Those same developers are angry however, as Microsoft pulling support of the devices leaves little reason for users to download new apps if they will be upgrading their devices in the near future.
Some have questioned the move as recent data suggests WM6 is still selling better than new Windows Phone 7 devices, at least in the last quarter.
Police return MacBook to man who kept tabs on thief's activities.
Joshua Kaufman, of Oakland, California, had his MacBook stolen from his apartment after a break in on March 21. When he realized the MacBook was gone, he took advantage of an anti-theft application called Hidden which let him see images from the webcam, as well as content on the screen.
He originally took the evidence to the police, but due to resource restrictions, they were unable to help him even though he had photos of somebody using his MacBook.
Kaufman then took his campaign online to a blog, where he posted several images he had gotten back from his MacBook. Oakland police got in contact with him soon after and got to the task of attempting to track down the individual in the photos, which didn't take long with the mountain of evidence Kaufman already had.
"Update: (May 31, 8:37 PM PST) ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA! The police used my evidence (email which pointed to a cab service) that he was a driver and tricked him into picking them up. Nice work OPD!" he posted to his blog.
DVD rental and video streaming heavyweight expects large price tag to retain TV Shows and Films.
A deal between Netflix and Liberty Media's Starz network is set to expire early next year. It was originally struck four years ago, costing Netflix $30 million. Starz has the online distribution rights to content from Walt Disney Co and Sony Corp's Sony Pictures.
Netflix now has more than 23 million customers in the United States. It's video streaming service has gained considerable popularity, largely due to its integration with many different platforms (game consoles etc.).
To renew a deal with Starz is certainly going to cost considerably more than $30 million. When asked if the deal could cost up to $200 million, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that would not be shocking.
"We are paying more for content every time we renew,"Hastings said about striking new content agreements. "We view that as a positive." Netflix is aggressively pursuing content deals to keep customers happy, targeting popular content such as Glee.
Google halts effort to access content in hundreds of GMail accounts.
Google Inc. revealed earlier this week that an attack on its GMail service originated from Jinan, Shandong province, China. Hackers attempted to break into hundreds of different GMail accounts, held by senior U.S. Government officials, Chinese activists and others.
Google said it detected and disrupted the attempts. "We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing,"Google said on Thursday. "The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails."
South Korean officials also appeared to be targets of the campaign.
Google's announcement comes a year after it disclosed a cyberattack on its systems in China, an event that led to Google downsizing its presence in the market.
"Investors would like to see Google figure out a way to operate in China, and capitalize on the growth of the country," said Cowen and Co analyst Jim Friedland. "It's been a tough relationship. And this highlights that it continues to be a tough relationship."
Chief Executive says door is open to licensing operating system to other companies.
When Hewlett-Packard Co acquired Palm, one of the biggest factors in that decision was the WebOS rights. The mobile operating system has been repeatedly praised for what it offers to the market, and its acquisition by HP gave the consumer electronics company a weapon in the mobile space.
Instead of just putting WebOS on HP products, the company is open to licensing its use to other companies too. "I happen to believe that WebOS is a uniquely outstanding operating system," said HP chief executive Leo Apotheker. "It's not correct to believe that it should only be on HP devices."
HP is preparing to launch its 9.7-inch TouchPad tablet, which is based on WebOS software. It hopes that WebOS will become the third most used operating system software in the space, behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS.
"Right now we are focused on getting it out in the market to gain the credibility,"Apotheker said. "WebOS will also be adopted by many partners who provide services to small and medium businesses."
Groupon has filed for an IPO today, looking to raise $750 million in its first sale.
Trading under the ticker "GRPN," the gigantic daily deal site will likely go public within weeks.
The company has raised $1 billion from private investors after being founded in 2008 and has seen explosive growth since then.
CEO Andrew Mason did note, however, that the company has seen massive losses in the last two years and the losses will continue into the foreseeable future as they "continue to invest in growth."
In 2010, Groupon had revenue of $713 million and recorded a net loss of $456 million. For the first quarter of 2011, revenue exploded to $644.7 million, but losses remained, with a net loss of $147 million for the quarter.
Adds the CEO:
We anticipate that our operating expenses will increase substantially in the foreseeable future as we continue to invest to increase our subscriber base, increase the number and variety of deals we offer each day, expand our marketing channels, expand our operations, hire additional employees and develop our technology platform.
The hacking group that took down PBS earlier this week has hacked Sony and posted the info online, adding another chapter to the long saga of security breaches that have plagued the company since April.
"LulzSec" posted that they broke into the servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment websites and stole personal info for 1 million customers.
The group then posted names, addresses, emails and passwords for some customers on the Internet, bashing Sony in the process.
From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING. Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?
At 6 serious attacks and 102 million user's info stolen in 2 months, Sony has become a massive target for hacking groups and it has hurt the bottom line. The company said last month that the attacks would lead to a $170 million writedown in the current quarter.
The Shanghai Daily has reported today that 17-year-old teenager Anhui Province Zheng sold his kidney to be able to purchase an Apple iPad 2.
Zheng sold his kidney for about $3000 USD, but says now that his health is worsening.
"I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan," says the teen.
The hospital in which his surgery was performed did not meet safety qualifications for organ removal/transplants but claimed they knew nothing of the surgery after police probed them.
After selling the kidney, Zheng bought an iPad 2 and an iPhone but when pressed by his mother as to where he got them he explained the surgery.
According to the June 1st stats from Net Applications, Internet Explorer continues to see their global browser market share fall, mainly at the hands of Google's Chrome.
IE, in all variations fell to 52.87 percent market share, with Internet Explorer 8 being the largest part of that share at 31.28 percent. Microsoft's latest, IE9, jumped to 4.19 percent despite not being available to Windows XP users.
Newly launched Firefox 4 already beat out Firefox 3.6, at 10.08 percent to 9.14 percent. Altogether, Firefox accounted for 21 percent share.
Google's Chrome moved to 11.86 percent share, with Chrome 11 leading the way.
This afternoon, Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, the upcoming operating system that should be a complete overhaul from Windows 7, released in 2009.
The goal of the OS, Microsoft says, is for users to have the same great experience whether they are on a tablet or on a desktop.
Microsoft showed off a new start screen that looks reminiscent of the tile-based UI of Windows Phone 7.
All programs can be viewed as tiles, and clickable with a mouse, or with the touch of a finger.
Windows 8 will also run two types of apps. The first are standard Windows apps while the others are HTML5/Javascript apps and should be optimized for tablets because they are "web-powered."
The OS will bring a touch interface, an app market, backwards compatibility, and an easier way for developers to share in revenue.
For those with lower-end systems, Microsoft says W8 will use less resources than even Windows 7.
The Pentagon is set to publish a report on measures to tackle and respond to cyber warfare.
A cyber-attack last month targeting U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin has hastened the Pentagon's steps on the cyber-warfare plans. A report, due in a matter of weeks, is expected to deem cyber-attacks as an act of war, and to suggest whatever measures necessary to defend the country's infrastructure.
"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.
Areas of great concern include the already-strained power grid in the U.S., or systems that emergency response networks rely on. Attacks against systems particularly in urban areas could have devastating consequences for the civilian populations in the worst case.
"We reserve the right to use all necessary means - diplomatic, informational, military, and economic - as appropriate and consistent with applicable international law, in order to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests," states a White House statement put out on May 16.
She is the first person in Scotland to ever be convicted of illegally sharing music content on a P2P file sharing network. Muir admitted to distributing £54,000 worth of copyrighted music files over an unnamed file sharing network.
Her case began with complaints from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) as part of an investigation into heavy sharers of music. A formal complaint was made to Strathclyde Police, and Muir's home was searched.
Computer equipment was seized from the 58 year old's residence, and investigators found 7,493 digital music files and 24,243 karaoke files. The content has an estimated street value of £54,792.
Her lawyer said that Muir did not financially benefit from her illegal activities, and called the court's attention to Muir's ongoing state of depression, for which she is receiving psychiatric help.
Mac users feel the pain of Windows users caught in the middle of a cat and mouse game with malware authors.
It only took a few hours after Apple released an update to protect Mac users against recent MacDefender scareware attacks for a new variant to show up that is immune to the current targeted protection being offered by Apple.
A sophisticated social engineering attack that targets Google search results and Facebook has led to thousands of Mac users installing scareware products under the MacDefender umbrella. The scareware, like its Windows lookalikes, prompts users with a phony list of detected threats on the machine, and tries to scam credit card and other information from the user.
Apple had promised a fix for Mac users, and delivered one on Tuesday. The OS X update detects MacDefender variants and removes them, as well as detecting them before they can be installed by the user.
However, it is being reported that within eight hours of the update going live, a new variant was already doing the rounds that is "specifically formulated" to get around the security update.
Review of previous studies and evidence prompts group to call for further research.
The group of 31 scientists working under the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said that a review of all the available scientific evidence and data from previous studies led it to a conclusion that use of mobile phones is "possibly carcinogenic."
Specifically, the group formally classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as Group 2B carcinogenic agents. The decision to do so came from a suggestion from previous research that mobile phone use increased the risk of a glioma, a particularly deadly form of brain cancer.
It is important to note that other agents listed under Group 2B include pickled vegetables and coffee, but also have unnerving agents such as lead, which shows the broad scope of "potential risk" that mobile phone use now fits in to.
Industry groups were quick to play-down the classification, pointing out that the IARC group did not do any new research in its findings. "This IARC classification does not mean that cell phones cause cancer," said John Walls, VP of public affairs, CTIA.
He also pointed out that other health organizations around the world had come to different conclusions, with the FDA in the United States finding that the weight of evidence suggests no link between mobile phone usage and brain tumors.
A privacy group that complained about being left out of Google's Buzz settlement gets a share.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had complained about being left out of a proposed settlement in a privacy dispute involving Google services. EPIC had complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last year about the Buzz social network, saying it threatened the privacy of GMail users.
Google has since settled that case with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and moved to settle a separate proposed class action lawsuit brought to it by a GMail user. The proposed settlement would include $6 million for groups that advocate digital and privacy rights for consumers.
The list of groups did not include EPIC, which pointed out that the majority of funds would be given to groups that "receive support from Google for lobbying, consulting, or similar services." Google dismissed the argument, but a U.S. District Judge James Ware found that there was no reason to leave out EPIC and awarded the firm $500,000.
"EPIC has demonstrated that it is a well-established and respected organization within the field of Internet privacy,"Ware wrote. EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said that the group appreciated the court's recognition of its important work.
Chinese firm will buyout German rival to increase presence in Europe.
Lenovo has agreed to buy German PC and notebook maker Medion in a deal worth about $900 million. The deal will double its market share in Germany to 14 percent. Germany has the largest economy in Europe, but it is a slow-growing market which has prompted some analysts to question the decision.
"Lenovo probably wants to add to its presence in mature markets," said Vincent Chen, an analyst with Yuanta Securities.
"The question is why Germany, because that's a very slow growth market and it raises questions on how much benefit this will bring to them."
Medion offers low-priced computer and electronics devices in Europe, and its affiliated with German discount retailer Aldi has given its name a boost in the European market.
At the same time as Lenovo was spilling the details on the Medion deal, Acer announced it would write down excessive inventory and cover potential losses in Europe with a $150 million charge. It will also layoff 300 employees in Europe.
Some Hulu users will be able to watch popular films from Miramax' library.
Internet video streaming company Hulu has signed a multi-year agreement with film studio Miramax, which will see some of its subscribers gaining access to films from the studio. Hulu Plus subscribers will have access to titles such as Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting.
"Making our films available via premium digital distribution channels is extremely important to Miramax,"said Mike Lang, CEO of Miramax.
Miramax recently stuck a similar deal with Netflix. Hulu is owned by Comact, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co., offering streaming videos of movies and TV shows.
No financial details of the deal with Hulu were disclosed.
Nokia has moved to dismiss rumors being reported early on Wednesday.
The Finnish mobile phone giant has described rumors suggesting that Microsoft would buy its phone business as "100 percent baseless." The news being reported said the Windows-maker would acquire the business in a deal worth around $19 billion.
Earlier this year, Nokia agreed to start using Microsoft software in its upcoming handsets, as opposed to its own Symbian operating systems. Also, Nokia's recently appointed chief executive, Stephen Elop, is a former Microsoft executive.
These facts made it easy for such a rumor to spread online, and even pushed shares in Nokia Oyj up on Wednesday. "These rumors are 100 percent baseless," a Nokia spokesman told Reuters.
Nokia's shares have taken a hit during the past couple of days after the company failed to deliver on recovery targets it had previously set.
HP has now added more batteries to its recall list, with each being a potential safety hazard according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
So far, HP has recalled 162,600 lithium ion batteries from HP and Compaq notebooks sold between July 2007 and July 2008.
The CPSC says the batteries in those 31 models of laptops can possibly "overheat and rupture, posing fire and burn hazards."
Overall, there have been 40 incidents of overheating/rupturing since May 2010, with 7 customers being burnt. There were 36 counts of property damage, as well.
HP notebook owners are encouraged to check this website to see if your model is part of the recall. HP replaces the batteries for free.
The latest rumors claim that Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox 360 next week at the E3 event.
A sponsored ad from Target on the official E3 site shows an Xbox 360 250 GBKinect bundle for $299.99, $100 lower than current retail price.
For now, however, if you click-through the ad you get led to a product page with the full $399.99 price so it could possibly be an error.
If the price drop does occur, it is reasonable to assume the rest of the line will see similar cuts, with many expecting the low-end 4GB Xbox 360 to hit $149.99.
Microsoft is also expected to launch an enhanced version of the Kinect motion control system.
Last week we reported that Sony CFO Masaru Kato implied the PlayStation 4 was already in development after saying increased R&D costs in Sony's books were largely due to next generation console development.
Today, the CFO has cleared up the statement, saying it was misconstrued.
"As for home consoles, the PS3 still has a product life," said Kato originally. "But this is a platform business, so for future platforms, though I can’t say what we are going to release when, our development work is under way."
Those costs were mainly because of the PS Vita (NGP/PSP 2) he confirmed today, adding:
This is a good opportunity to clarify this. Some people misread what I said.
Any time we launch a product, from that day we already start thinking about the next one. This is just a general statement.
The massive blockbuster that is Rovio's Angry Birds franchise is now headed to your TV.
Roku, the company behind many popular streaming set-top boxes has confirmed that the game will be part of a wider launch of casual games for the platform.
In July, Roku will make Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio available to set-top box owners.
Additionally, Roku will start an Angry Birds "channel" which features animated shorts and sell merchandise via the Roku Channel Store.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood also added that more announcements on casual games for the boxes were upcoming in the next weeks.
This is complete rumor, but the story is picking up steam around the Web.
Eldar Murtazin has Tweeted today that Microsoft is set to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business for $19 billion cash.
Murtazin said two weeks ago that the software giant was in talks with Nokia about purchasing the unit, but a Nokia spokesperson shot down the report saying "Eldar’s rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment."
Reads the latest Tweet:
One small software company decided last week that they could spent 19 bln USD to buy a part of small phone vendor. Thats it.
Nielsen has revealed the latest U.S. smartphone market share, and Android continues to lead the pack.
Overall, 37 percent of Americans now have a smartphone, with 36 percent of those users running Android.
Apple held second place at 26 percent with its iPhone, while RIM held third with 23 percent for its BlackBerry devices.
Windows Phone 7 moved into 1 percent share, months after launch.
As for data usage, Nielsen pored over 65,000 monthly bills and saw that Android users run about 582MB of data per month, compared to 492MB for iPhone users.
BGR has posted an open letter from a high-level RIM executive, one that touches on the conditions within the company as its share price, morale and brand reputation all fall to multi-year lows.
There are now over 100,000 native iPad apps available in the 
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