The High Court has ruled today that UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay.
Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media most now block all access to the Swedish file sharing site. The BPI praised the move, as expected: "Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists."
BT, the last ISP in the region, said it needs a "few more weeks" to consider their position on blocking the torrenttracker.
Adds the BPI CEO Geoff Taylor: "The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. This is wrong - musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else."
Microsoft has announced a $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble's digital and college businesses.
As part of the deal, the companies will likely spin-off the businesses to create a completely new subsidiary. Additionally, the companies will have a Nook application available for Windows 8 at launch.
"Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We're on the cusp of a revolution in reading," said Andy Lees, president at Microsoft.
Barnes & Noble, which has been struggling, will get the cash it needs to survive thanks to the deep pockets of the Redmond giant. For its $300 million investment, Microsoft will get a 17.6 percent stake in the new subsidiary with Barnes & Noble keeping the rest of the share.
Struggling mobile phone maker Nokia is allegedly in "advanced talks" to sell its luxury unit Vertu.
The buyer would be private equity group Permira, says the Financial Times.
Nokia will likely raise over 200 million euros from the sale, although the potential deal is not set in stone set.
Vertu makes the most expensive phones in the world, with some costing over 100,000 euro due to their crystal displays, diamond trim and keys made of sapphire.
Check some of Vertu's devices in action here: Vertu
Former Apple executive Tony Fadell has revealed this week that the company considered adding a physical keyboard to the original iPhone.
Of course, the company ultimately decided on the multitouch design that changed the entire smartphone market.
Fadell, who was dubbed an "iPod guru" during his time at the company, says in 2007 the company narrowed down designs to three prototypes. He eventually left the company in 2010 to start Nest, a company building smart thermostats.
The three designs were one of an iPod/Phone hybrid, an iPhone with keyboard and then the final model. Before the iPhone, the general market trend was full QWERTY keyboards, with BlackBerry dominating America. The iPhone was also one of the first with a capacitive touchscreen, moving away from the resistive touchscreens on previous devices that required a stylus and made virtual keyboards almost useless.
It is clear the company made the right decision, as the market is now entirely dominated by touchscreen phones, with some majors, like HTC, announcing they will be retiring QWERTY keyboards for good.
According to none other than Nintendo, the PS Vita is being outsold by pretty much everyone in Europe.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata says the data is "based on sales information by market research companies in each European country" and includes consoles and handhelds.
The Sony PlayStation 3 came out on top, followed by the 3DS and Xbox 360 fighting for second. The Wii came in fourth as sales reach almost complete saturation, while the aging Sony PSP beat out its upgrade, the Vita.
Sony is only selling 25,000 Vita per week, compared to 70,000 of the 6-year-old PS3.
Analyzing the data, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata had this to say: "The UK market is virtually the only market in Europe where the Xbox 360 has a strong presence. In fact, it dominates the PlayStation 3, and it is in stark contrast to the other European markets. The top-selling titles for the Wii tell us that dance games continue to be popular this year. Although there are six titles for the Nintendo platforms, the two Mario titles for the Nintendo 3DS have the smallest presence in the world. We need to promptly improve this situation."
Mozilla has officially "retired" Firefox 3.6, forcing users to upgrade next month.
The browser will be automatically upgraded to Firefox 12, two years after its initial release in 2010. Mozilla made a similar move to kill Firefox 3.5 last year, updating it to 4.0.
Mozilla says the decision was made to keep users safe while they browse. Security updates for the old browser ended in January, leaving 3.6 users open to vulnerabilities found after that date.
If users do not want to upgrade to Firefox 12, they can also update to Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR), a new release that Mozilla has created to soothe customers (especially IT admins) who do not, or cannot update every 6 weeks when Mozilla updates.
FESR is based on Firefox 10 and only receives security updates for one year with no need to update.
Of course, if you are enamored with Firefox 3.6, you can keep it forever by removing updates totally. To do so, head to Tools->Options->Advanced->Firefox/Automatically check for updates and uncheck it.
Knowyourmobile has posted an unconfirmed picture of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III, which they claim will have a 4.8-inch screen.
If accurate, the screen will be one of the largest seen yet on a smartphone, larger than the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy Nexus but smaller than the massive Galaxy Note and its 5.3-inch screen.
Earlier this week, Samsung showed off the processor that will run the next phone. Called the "Exynos 4 Quad," the chip runs at 1.4GHz per core and is based on the ARM Cortex A9 SoC. The processor will be first seen in the upcoming device, and is currently being sampled by other major phone makers for phones into the future.
According to the latest data by comScore, the Amazon Kindle Fire now accounts for 54 percent of all Android tablets.
The data is accurate as of the end of February, and the Kindle is far above the next closest Android tablet, the Samsung Galaxy line (with multiple devices) which came in at 15 percent.
Amazon takes about a $10 loss on all Kindle Fire sold, but it is clear that there is a significant demand for low-priced alternatives to the Apple iPad. Amazon is willing to take the loss as they expect to make up the difference (and then some) through content sales via their vast ecosystem of music, movies, apps, ebooks and cloud storage.
Additionally, the name "Kindle" brings significant loyalty and recognition, just like the iPad.
Amazon's time on top could be cut short in 2012, however, as Google is expected to release their "vanilla" Nexus Tablet in June, at a price that undercuts even the $199 Kindle Fire pricetag while bringing top features like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Nvidia has announced this weekend the availability of the world's fastest consumer graphics card, the Geforce GTX 690.
The card is powered by dual Kepler architecture-based GeForce GPUs and has a new "industrial design."
CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang made the announcement at the NVIDIA Game Festival in Shanghai, and it came as a surprise to many who expected the card to be released later in the year.
The company notes the "exterior frame is made from trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, providing excellent strength and durability and the fan housing is made from a thixomolded magnesium alloy, which offers excellent heat dissipation and vibration dampening."
Overall, the GTX 690 is powered by 3,072 NVIDIA CUDA cores and the card can deliver close to double the frame rates of the closest single GPU product, the GTX 680. The card is also said to be more power efficient and certainly quieter than its predecessors.
Adds Brian Kelleher, senior vice president of GPU engineering at NVIDIA: "The GTX 690 is truly a work of art -- gorgeous on the outside with amazing performance on the inside. Gamers will love playing on multiple screens at high resolutions with all the eye candy turned on. And they'll relish showing their friends how beautiful the cards look inside their systems."
Amazon reported strong quarterly earnings this week, thanks mainly to strong digital sales.
Net income for the quarter was $130 million, a decline from last year but well above what analysts were expecting from the company. Earlier this year, Amazon itself said it could see a large loss of $200 million as it continues to spend on a digital expansion and new centers to ship goods.
Revenue grew 34 percent to $13.18 billion, continuing its trend of strong growth.
CEO Jeff Bezos would not apologize for his company's expenditures, which seem to always depress profits while planning for the future and a growing audience.
Digital, for its part, seems to be paying off. Revenue from media, including ebooks, music, movies and apps grew 17 percent to $2.2 billion.
As is their policy, the company did not reveal how many Kindle Fire tablets have been sold, although that number is expected to be above 5 million.
Over the past few months, it has been rumored that the upcoming generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft will block used games from playing, a move that would kill the entire second market and likely bankrupt retail companies like GameStop.
Rasmus Hojengaard, the director of creative development at Crytek, seems to feel that rumor should become fact: "From a business perspective that would be absolutely awesome. It's weird that [second-hand] are still allowed because it doesn't work like that in any other software industries, so it would be great if they could somehow fix that issue as well."
If not completely banned, the exec appears to at least want the used game sales truncated.
"The worst thing that can happen is they [console makers] make something that's very complex for developers, regardless of how awesome it might theoretically be. So getting hardware that allows you to quickly get prototypes up and running, and any kind of scalability they can offer will be great as well, as long as everyone has that scalability and not just a select few."
Microsoft, who was long a supporter of the CISPA bill, has now done an about-face.
The software giant has said they can only support laws that allow "us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers." Additionally, the company wants to "ensure the final legislation helps to tackle the real threat of cybercrime while protecting consumer privacy."
In November, when CISPA was introduced, Microsoft VP for government affairs Fred Humphries publicly stated they wanted to "commend CISPA's sponsors and Microsoft applauds their leadership." He later added: "This bill is an important first step towards addressing significant problems in cyber security." Clearly they are no longer as excited by the law.
"Microsoft has previously stated support for efforts to improve cyber security, and sharing threat information is an important component of those efforts. Improvements to the way this information is shared would help companies better protect customers, and online services in the United States and around the world from criminal attack. Microsoft believes that any proposed legislation should facilitate the voluntary sharing of cyber threat information in a manner that allows us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers.
According to multiple sources, Apple has been in discussions with Epix in an effort to bring the streaming movie channel to Apple TV users.
The talks are ongoing and are in early stages.
If the deal were to be signed, Apple TV set-top box owners would be able to stream films through a new Epix app. Additionally, you will have to have an Epix subscription, which depends on your cable service. Dish, Cox and Verizon are amongst those that offer the service.
Epix is a joint venture between Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lion's Gate.
Netflix currently has a deal where they can stream Epix films 90 days after they first air on the pay-TV premium channel and that deal is until the end of 2012.
In just one year, the battle between Apple and Samsung has now reached 50 lawsuits in 11 countries.
The word comes via Florian Mueller who has kept a detailed list of the "massively escalated, planet-spanning dispute."
Perhaps even more notably, Mueller believes the number will go even higher: "After an initial filing, lawsuits can be consolidated (which effectively happened to the first two lawsuits the parties filed against each other in California) or, which happened far more frequently, split up into multiple lawsuits by the courts. For example, German courts usually look at only one patent per litigation, and sometimes assign more than one case number per patent if there's a delay with serving the complaint on one of two or more defendants. Also, these parties tend to appeal each and every decision, and the list below doesn't contain cases before appeals courts."
This will be negated if the two companies can come to an agreement, as at least one judge hopes. Earlier this month, Federal Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple and Samsung's CEOs must meet in a mandatory mediation session to try to settle their handful of smartphone patent disputes. The judge gave the execs 90 days to meet in a conference with Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero.
Google has taken time to respond to the criticism that it takes too long for the company to roll out stable updates for its Nexus devices.
The Nexus devices, such as the Nexus S and newer Galaxy Nexus, are the only pure "vanilla" Android phones, meaning there are no carrier or manufacturer interface overlays installed.
So far with Ice Cream Sandwich, there has been issues with the update, which has angered owners who purchased the phones to have "timely" updates. For the Nexus S, which was supposed to be the second device to get 4.0, the update still remains elusive to most, 5 months after its release.
Even the Galaxy Nexus has not been getting the updates as quickly as most would hope, after Google makes it available.
Google engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru explains why: "I'm very glad that Google is back in the business of selling phones directly without any middlemen to interfere, and I'll be even happier when I see that program expanded to more countries. Writing the software doesn't mean that Google can deploy it immediately, there are operator approvals for devices that are sold and/or supported by operators."
Workers at a Foxconn factory in China have threatened jumping off the roof in protest over wages just a month after the company signed an agreement to improve working conditions.
200 workers from the plant in the city in Wuhan were protesting concerned workplace adjustments for new workers to the plant.
Foxconn says the situation has been handled: "The dispute has already been settled after some negotiations involving the human resources and legal departments as well as the local government."
The recent agreement to improve working conditions came together after years of worker suicides at various plants. Apple, whose products were being built at many of the factories, took a stand with the manufacturer, leading to the deal.
Even before the deal, Foxconn workers were seeing raises regularly, with salaries jumping 21.2 percent in 2011, alone.
Yahoo has added two patents to its lawsuit against Facebook.
The expansion of the suit will now equal to 12 charges of intellectual property theft of Yahoo patents.
Notes Yahoo: "Today's filing underscores the breadth of Facebook's violation of Yahoo's intellectual property."
Yahoo sued the social networking giant last month. At the time, Yahoo said the patents were related to methods and systems for advertising on the Internet. "Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court," Yahoo said in a statement last month.
The web portal company said it began by seeking licensing fees from Facebook over the patents relevant to the case, and pointed out that other companies had already agreed licensing terms with Yahoo. Talks were held between both firms but quickly collapsed, leading to the original suit.
In response to the expansion, Facebook added: "We remain perplexed by Yahoo's erratic actions. We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously."
A leaked internal HP document has showed off the company's plans for business tablets based on the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
The HP Slate 8 will have a 10.1-inch display, "enterprise level docking," and Windows 8 Professional.
In the slide, the tablet is shown next to an EliteBook, suggesting the tablet will be part of the Elite line products, the highest-end models available by the company.
Slash explains the tablet will have "HP ProtectTools, TPM embedded security, and support for Computrace incase you lose the unit in a strange place."
Additionally, the tab will have the ability to use a capacitive pen tool for notes and drawing.
On the spec side, the Slate 8 will have 8-10 hours of battery life and weigh 1.5 pounds with a thin 9.2mm full aluminum body.
According to iSuppli and Strategy Analytics, Samsung topped mobile phone shipments for the Q1 2012, beating out rival Apple.
Samsung controlled a massive 30.6 percent market share for the quarter, up from 12.2 percent in the same quarter in 2011. Apple saw strong growth, as well, to 24.1 percent from 18.1 percent.
Overall, global smartphone shipments grew 41 percent year-over-year to reach 145 million units in the Q1.
Says Strategy Analytics of the data: "Samsung and Apple are outcompeting most of their major rivals and the smartphone market is at risk of becoming a two-horse race. Samsung's global smartphone shipments rose 253 percent annually...as demand surged for its popular Galaxy models such as the Note, S2 and Y."
Nokia saw a striking decline, from 23.5 percent to just 8.2 percent as they discontinued their Symbian devices and only just began offering Windows Phone 7 devices. Adds the research firm: "Nokia's new Microsoft Lumia portfolio has recently gotten off to an encouraging start in the critical United States market, but shipments there are not yet large enough to offset the firm's tumbling Symbian volumes in the rest of the world."
According to multiple third-party estimates, Apple's Mac App Store has hit is first major milestone, 10,000 available applications.
One source, Macrumor's Appshopper site, has the total at 10,334 while France's MacGeneration had a similar figure.
Apple opened the store in early 2011 to have a centralized area for applications available for the Mac OS X operating system. Last December, the company said they had reached 100 million downloads by users, making the store the "fastest growing PC software store in the world."
By comparison, it took Apple's iOS App Store 6 months to reach the milestone, along with 300 million downloads. Of course, the iOS App Store is the only way to "legally" get apps on iPhone/iPad devices while Mac users can download the software from a plethora of sites, include the software maker's own site (usually).
Nintendo has announced today a significant expansion to its digital games business.
Beginning in August with New Super Mario Bros. 2, the gaming company will release most of their first-party games via retail packages and as digital downloads in Nintendo eShop.
The company says "the majority of Nintendo-published Nintendo 3DS games will have the same dual-distribution strategy" into the future. Additionally, the majority of Nintendo-published Wii U games will be distributed the same way when the console launches in November before the holidays.
Furthermore, the downloadable games will be available for purchase at retail stores and via retailer's websites. Gamers can purchase the product in store and then be provided with a 16-digit code to download the game in the eShop.
In 2008, Apple applied for a patent for ad-supported operating systems in which users would receive the operating system at a largely discounted price (or even free) in exchange for having to watch occasional advertisements.
Steve Jobs was listed as the lead inventor on the patent, which eventually surfaced in 2009.
Ken Segall's new book, "Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success," reports that Jobs looked to originally implement the OS starting in 1999 with the release of OS 9.
At the time, the Mac OS cost $99 to upgrade, but Jobs had the idea to sell the full price upgrade alongside a second version which would be free and supported by ads. Apple would win either way as it would generate money through advertising whilst also gaining market share as more people moved to Mac due to the price. If a free user ever wanted to get rid of ads, they could update to the full-price version.
In Jobs' visions, the ad-supported version of Mac OS 9 would have displayed "a 60-second commercial from a "premium" company at startup, with the ads occasionally being automatically swapped out for new ones over the Internet." Targeted ads were also expected, such as one from Epson whenever a user's printer ran low on ink.
In 2006, two years before the release of the grandfather of Android, the T-Mobile G1, Google had concepts down for the original "Google Phone."
Google was going around showing off the concept device to carriers, looking specifically at T-Mobile and their unlimited data plan.
The designs are now public thanks to the ongoing Oracle lawsuit against Google over Java patents. In Google's original presentation for the Google Phone, one slide blatantly says [we plan to] "Leverage Java for its existing base of developers. Build a useful app framework (not J2ME). Support J2ME apps in compatibility mode. Provide an opTMobileized JVM (Dalvik)."
What Google had in mind for the original phone was an ARMv9 processor running at a minimum of 200MHz, GSM (3G preferred), 64MB of RAM and ROM, miniSD external storage support, a 2-megapixel camera with a dedicated shutter button, USB support, Bluetooth 1.2, and a QVGA display with at least 16-bit color support. In 2006, these specs would have been very close to top of the line, but seem quite laughable now.
Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of security company Kaspersky Lab, had some choice words for Apple and its recent malware woes.
The CEO says the Cupertino giant is "10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security" and predicts that cyber criminals will create "more and more" malware for the operating system in the near future.
Kaspersky's words come after the Flashback trojan infected over 600,000 OS X users using a Java vulnerability.
Furthermore, the CEO says Apple will have the "same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They [Apple] will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software."
Apple, for its part, knows that it will be an uphill battle against malware writers. As a strong step, the company has added a "Gatekeeper" feature to its latest OS X iteration, Mountain Lion. Gatekeeper blocks apps from running unless they are from identified developers or downloaded from the Mac App Store. You can enable all apps, of course, but the restrictive version is default out of the box.
Four members of the popular IMAGiNE scene release group are facing up to thirty years in prison for criminal copyright infringement.
The group was busted last year by ICE, and the four defendants, aged 27-57, now face jailtime. Although obviously unconfirmed, there have been rumors for months that the group was sold out by a rival scene release group with a grudge.
Jeramiah Perkins, 39, of Portsmouth, Va., Gregory Cherwonik, 53, of New York, Willie Lambert, 57, of Pennsylvania, and Sean Lovelady, 27, of California were each charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.
Perkins, Cherwonik and Lambert are also charged (via Freak) with two more counts of criminal copyright infringement while Perkins and Cherwonik are charged with a sixth count of criminal copyright infringement of a work being prepared for commercial distribution.
Each count brings up to five years in prison.
A few of the films listed as being reproduced and distributed by the group were "The Green Hornet," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "Yogi Bear" although they released hundreds.
Google has announced today that it has sold the popular 3D modeling software SketchUp to Trimble Navigation.
Financials of the deal were not posted.
Says John Bacus, Product Manager, SketchUp, in his blog post: "I'm sharing today that the SketchUp team and technology will be leaving Google to join Trimble. We'll be better able to focus on our core communities: modelers who have been with us from the beginning, as well as future SketchUppers who have yet to discover our products. Designers, builders and makers of things have always been the heart and soul of SketchUp. With Trimble's commitment to invest in our growth, we'll be able to innovate and develop new features better than ever before.
For those of you in the architecture, engineering and construction industries, the knowledge and experience Trimble will add to the SketchUp effort are obvious. Together with our new colleagues at Trimble, we plan to continue making our tools for the building professions as innovative, intuitive and (dare I say) fun to use as we always have."
Trimble will offer all new versions of Sketchup and will remain partnered with Google for the "SketchUp 3D warehouse," a repository online where fans can collaborate on models.
In a scary development, the US House Of Representatives has passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a margin of 248 to 168.
Despite the passing, the nightmare bill is still stalled in the Senate and President Obama has indicated he will veto the bill no matter what, regardless.
What is Cispa?
The new Act is intended to protect out Internet interests by updating the National Security Act of 1947 and follows the failed SOPA and PIPA acts, which were publicly flogged over how the invaded our privacy. Additionally, the Act is meant to protect companies from the likes of hackers in other nations like China and Iran, who routinely try to break into networks of American corporations.
CISPA would allow the government almost infinite power by telling private companies to hand over all personal data it has collected on you over to any government agency that ask, before it is handed off to the Department of Homeland Security. This data includes all emails, all social network posts, all blog comments and everything else you do online.
In the bill itself, it says the companies will not have to pass on the info unless there is a "cyber threat," which is defined as "efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy government or private systems and networks." That means, for example, that someone writing the term DDoS on a forum post, can technically be eligible to have all their personal data handed over to the government.
According to sources, Spotify is creating an Internet radio service that will rival Pandora directly in the U.S.
The new format will launch by the end of the year and will be supported by advertising. Pandora is cheaper to operate than Spotify currently is because the royalty rates are lower and standardized by Congress.
Spotify currently has 10 million registered users around the globe, 30 percent of which are paying subscribers. Pandora, which launched just a year earlier than Spotify did in 2006, has 150 million registered users in the U.S. alone, with 50 million active.
How Pandora works is users can choose an artist, genre or specific track and the service will identify songs with similar melodies (and more) and create a playlist. Just like traditional radio, you cannot choose the tracks you hear. With Spotify, the entire catalog is available to you along with the ability to creat playlists from the tracks you want.
Differentiating the services is the fact that all music is available on Pandora, from all artists, while Spotify is missing music from artists like the Beatles and others. Spotify is also at the whim of the labels and artists, who can withhold new releases if they want to, or delay them.
AfterDawn is expanding to Norway with its own brand and with its Nordic franchise, Tom's Hardware Norway. To achieve our goals, we're hiring one staff writer to Norway.
Samsung has showed off their latest processor, the quad-core unit used in its upcoming Galaxy flagship.
The tech giant is revealing the phone next week on May 3rd at its much-hyped "Next Galaxy" event.
Called the "Exynos 4 Quad," the chip runs at 1.4GHz per core and is based on the ARM Cortex A9 SoC. The processor will be in the upcoming device, and is currently being sampled by other major phone makers.
Samsung boasted about the 32nm High-k Metal Gate technology, power management, and per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (via Verge). The chip is also capable of "full 30fps 1080p video playback and recording, includes an interface for HDMI 1.4 and also an embedded image signal processor interface."
Sony has confirmed it is looking to expand the PlayStation brand further into the mobile market.
PlayStation Digital Platforms senior director Jack Buser showed off the company's new development platform, dubbed PlayStation Suite, which will be available to devs looking to work on "PlayStation Certified" Android phones and tablets.
Explains nseek: "The idea is that binaries written for Vita can be adapted to run on such devices without porting, meaning developers using the PS Suite software will also be able to write games for Vita."
The amount of Certified devices is extremely small, as of now, with only a few Sony and Sony Ericsson devices having the distinction.
Sony hopes to expand the Suite and its capabilities to HTC, Motorola and Samsung in the near future.
According to a Digitimes report, HTC is building a new Facebook phone.
The device will be Android-based, and unlike past devices, there will be more than just a "Facebook button."
HTC's Salsa and ChaCha each offered a dedicated Facebook button that allowed for quick access to the site including chat, uploading photos and more.
The new device, which will launch in the Q3 will be "a platform exclusive to Facebook," however, with much deeper integration.
Digitimes speculates HTC is picking a side with Facebook, as Google is expected to begin creating its own Nexus devices into the future, leaving other Android makers in the dark.
Lenovo has announced today it will be recalling 28,000 more ThinkCentre M70z and ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs.
Last month, the Chinese PC maker stated it would be recalling 160,000 of the devices.
The move came in conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for computers sold between May 2010 and January 2012.
Due to a failure in the power supply, the system has a small chance of overheating and being a fire hazard and is therefore being recalled. The company received two customer reports in the last year of fires that resulted in damage to the computers in question.
All affected systems can be identified by machine type and serial number here at the Lenovo support page and if yours is affected Lenovo says "you should immediately stop using the affected desktop PC, and unplug the power cord."
Effective as of last month Lenovo is sending free power-supply replacements for all affected ThinkCentre M90z and ThinkCentre M70z.
Yesterday, search giant Google announced the launch of the oft-rumored Drive cloud service.
While the announcement was a large success, there was a small group of vocal critics; Linux users for whom the service was not supported.
Google Docs Community Manager Teresa Wu has come to the rescue today, pronouncing: "We're working on Linux support--hang tight!"
As it currently stands, Linux users cannot sync files automatically, like their Windows and OSX counterparts can, making the service nothing more than a cyber locker with less appeal than the Ubuntu One service for Linux users. Ubuntu One offers 5GB free storage, as well, and sync capabilities.
Intel, during an interview, has stated it has grand plans to be a "big player" in the phone market within 5 years.
Noted CFO Stacey Smith: "Intel doesn't go into markets to be a small player. It's a billion-unit market, so there's huge opportunity for us."
Intel has been trying for years to compete with Qualcomm, who dominates the smartphone market for chips. The company has signed deals with 5 customers this year, with the first device to feature an Intel chip going on sale in India next week.
Says Smith: "As of a week ago, we had zero share. As of this week, it's zero-point-something, because the first phones are selling." The company expects to have "meaningful" phone sales by the Q2 2013 and "five years from now, we want to be a significant portion of the market."
Orange, Motorola, Lenovo, ZTE and India's Lava International each signed deals to build Intel-based phones.
Intel has announced its purchase of supercomputing assets from Cray Inc.
The final price is $140 million and should give the company a leg-up in the ultra high-performance computer market.
74 Cray employees will join Intel when the deal closes at the end of the quarter which Cray says will also lead to cost savings for the company in the next few years.
Additionally, the Cray Chief Executive Peter Ungaro says the agreement "dramatically strengthens our balance sheet and increases our options for further growth, profitability and creating shareholder value." Intel made a similar comment, saying "interconnect is another area in high-performance computing that's ripe for innovation. Cray has the best-in-class personnel and IP to do that with."
Cray's assets will help Intel which has been moving quickly into supercomputing. The assets will help the company reach "exascale" computing performance (quintillion operations per second) by 2018, says Intel.
The software company Micro Focus has accused the Australian police department of using its ViewNow software without authorization.
Micro's software gives access to the COPS criminal intelligence database. Additionally, the company is accusing the police of sharing the proprietary software with third-parties, all without licensing it. The company is demanding $10 million in damages.
This is not the first time the New South Wales police have been accused of piracy. In 2008, IT members of the department were found to have hundreds of pirated movies on their hard drives.
Micro Focus says (via TF) they used to license the software but have not in the last two years while the police used it and shared it with Ombudsman's Office, the Department of Correctives Services and the Police Integrity Commission. All without permission from the software company.
Says managing director Bruce Craig: "When someone pirates your software you think who am I gonna call, the police? In this case, they're the pirates. This is potentially a crime that has to be handled as a civil matter because everybody's got their hands dirty. The victims can't go to police - it's the police who are doing the stealing."
Samsung has listed all their devices which will be updating to Android 4.0 ICS in the coming weeks.
Notably, however, is the fact that those with T-Mobile as their carrier will not be getting the stated update until the future.
T-Mobile devices that will not be getting the update are the Exhibit II 4G, Galaxy S Blaze 4G, and the Galaxy S II.
Says the company of its talks with the carrier: "We are in close communication with T-Mobile to ensure that eligible devices are upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in the coming months and will provide updates as we have additional details to share."
An updated RAZR smartphone seems to be on the way.
The new model will feature a 720p screen, while most of the rest of the specs will remain similar.
If accurate, the phone will also be adding Android 4.0.3 ICS, which the RAZR has not added yet.
Outside of the screen and OS, the rumored HD will have a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor, 16GB internal storage and likely include a large 3000mAh battery for extended battery life.
Although no one seems to like it, Slash says the new device will launch with Motorola's overlay interface "Motoblur" in its latest iteration.
China's ZTE has noted today it expects to ship over 100 million smartphones by 2015.
The phone maker began selling very low-end feature phones in Africa in 2001 and has evolved into a smartphone maker that is popular in Africa and Asia but not in the U.S. or western European nations.
Despite a drop in margins on their phone sales, the company sold 15 million smartphones in 2011 and expects to sell up to 50 million this year. The company is the world's fourth-largest handset producer and is also a popular telecoms gear maker.
Overall, 472 million smartphones were sold in 2011, with Samsung and Apple being a few of the top sellers.
The company will look to take bigger share in Europe with their first quad-core phone, the Era. The phone runs on Android 4.0, has a 1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, a nice 4.3-inch 960 x 540 qHD display and a thin form factor that is only 7.8mm thick. Additionally, the phone has 8GB internal storage, 1GB RAM, quad-band support with HSPA+ 42, Wi-Fi, UMA (Wi-Fi Calling), Bluetooth 3.0, HD Voice capability, Dolby-engineered sound, and DLNA.
As part of their earnings report this afternoon, Apple announced its revenue from China, which is exploding on a daily basis.
iPhone sales were up 500 percent year-over-year thanks to the release of the iPhone 4 in the last quarter of the year.
Revenues jumped to $7.9 billion for the quarter and is now at $12.4 billion after six months. The last fiscal year, the company only made $13.3 billion revenue from China, so it is clear they will smash that figure very soon.
Says CEO Tim Cook: "It is mind-boggling that we can do this well. For China - the sky's the limit there. I've never seen so many people rise into the middle class who aspire to buy Apple products. It's quickly become #2 on our list of top revenue countries."
Early last year, Voltage Pictures filed a lawsuit against 24,583 defendants for allegedly downloading and sharing pirated copies of the Oscar-winning picture "The Hurt Locker."
In October, the studio let nearly all of those defendants off the hook, voluntarily dismissing them "without prejudice."
This week, the same studio has come back for round two, filing a new suit against 2514 defendants who allegedly shared the movie via torrents between April and July of 2010.
All of the defendants are IP addresses from Charter Communications in Florida but they remain anonymous for the time being, as the ISP has not sent names or addresses of those accused.
The studio has filed a motion to expedite discovery of the IP addresses, and that could lead to names being revealed and settlement letters sent.
North American gamers can download the app now, but anyone in Europe and Asia will have to wait tomorrow to download their region-specific version of the service.
Using the app, users can make free calls to Skype numbers or purchase credit to make calls to all other numbers via 3G or Wi-Fi depending on what Vita you purchased.
Probably most important for fans, the app can remain in the background while you play a game. You can also use either the front or rear cameras to make video calls.
After years of rumor, the cloud-based Google Drive is finally here.
Google has announced the service via their blog as "A place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff."
The cloud service will be similar to others where you can upload all your videos, photos, Google Docs, books and more.
Features:
Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere?on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We're also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
As they have done for the last few years with regularity, Apple has smashed their earnings expectations for the quarter.
The company posted profit of $12.30 per share, up from $6.40 year-over-year. $12.30 per share equates to a profit of $11.6 billion.
Revenue jumped 59 percent to $39.2 billion, up from almost $25 billion last year during the same period.
Says one analyst of the result: "Apple once again surprises on the upside despite expectations that iPhone sales would lag. Clearly iPad results are driving results, as well as international sales. This is consistent with Apple continuing to capture market share against Android."
Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, 88 percent growth year-over-year. iPad sales exploded to 11.8 million, 105 percent growth. While Mac sales were expected to fall, they instead grew 7 percent to 4 million.
Following its long-term trend, iPod sales fell to 7.7 million, a 15 percent decline.
Facebook reported its quarterly earnings today, reaching a milestone of 900 million users.
Profit for the quarter fell to $205 million, down 12 percent year-over-year, even though revenue grew 45 percent to $1.1 billion for the period.
As expected, the company increased operating systems for marketing, sales and research and development. Money went towards mobile efforts as well as new advertising services and acquisitions.
Reported earlier, Facebook also purchased 650 patents from Microsoft, adding to the 750 they purchased from IBM in an effort to fend off a large Yahoo lawsuit.
Analysts expect Facebook to have $6.1 billion in full-year revenue, compared to $3.7 billion last year.
As has been rumored since the iPhone 3G, sources are reporting today that Apple will launch an "iPhone Nano" this year to takeover the entry-level market.
The China Times (translated by BGR) is reporting that Apple is working on the low-cost iPhone, citing sources within the supply chain.
Apple's smartphones retain their value extremely well and the hugely outdated iPhone 3GS from 2009 still sells for $200 or even more if it is "unlocked" to work with multiple carriers. The number is too high to compete with entry-level Android devices, and subsidized Windows Phones.
If accurate, the report states Apple will release the low-cost model at the same time it unveils the iPhone 5 in October.
Once again, just like every year, consider this rumor for now.
Microsoft has announced their fully revamped SkyDrive cloud storage platform today, offering new users 7GB free space if they have never tried it.
Anyone who signed up for the beta of SkyDrive, which lacked many features and has been around for over three years, will still be able to get 25GB (as before), with the links provided at the end of this article. Maximum file size is now 2GB, up from 700MB, a welcome change.
The new update adds the bonus ability to create and edit Microsoft Office documents right in the Web interface on Windows or Macs. No app installation is required.
What's new:
SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage as their needs grow.
Microsoft and Facebook have announced today a deal in which Facebook can purchase some of the patents the software giant recently acquired from AOL.
Facebook can purchase the portion of patents for $550 million. Microsoft just acquired the whole portfolio for $1 billion.
Earlier in the month, Microsoft secured the rights to own or assign 925 patents and patent applications while licensing another 300. After today's agreement, Facebook will own 650 of the patents and applications plus licenses on the other patents purchased by Microsoft.
Says the Redmond giant: "Today's agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction. As we said earlier this month, we had submitted the winning AOL bid in order to obtain a durable license to the full AOL portfolio and ownership of certain patents that complement our existing portfolio."
Dropbox has announced today that users can now share their videos, pictures and documents with the public. The other users do not even need Dropbox accounts.
Says the company: "Dropbox links allow people to easily view documents, photos, and videos in a beautiful full-browser display without any setup. Business presentations, home movies, and even entire folders can be opened and viewed instantly without having to sign in, download anything, or open files separately."
In the mobile application, as well as the web-based and desktop versions, there will be a new "Get Link" button which will give users the ability to create unique links to the desired file or even folder.
If you are a Dropbox user, you will have the option to save the file to your own Dropbox locker or to your computer/mobile.
"Anyone with the link gets access to a snazzy page where they can view (but not edit) your stuff," adds the company's blog post. "Our gallery pages give your photos, videos, and even docs the gorgeous, full-browser view they deserve. This means that people who follow your link can see pictures, look at presentations, and watch home videos without having to download and open them separately."
Samsung has upped the ante for its next Galaxy smartphone with a teaser trailer taking aim at other smartphone makers.
The company will unveil its new device at an event on May 3rd in the UK.
While the device is not expected to be called the Galaxy S III, the nickname is as good as any for the device which will be a successor to the popular Galaxy S II flagship.
In the teaser trailer, the company says: "Truly smart technology becomes a natural part of life. Where a galaxy fits perfectly into your hand, your view of the world grows ever wider as you gain the power to explore it freely and swiftly. With technology that fits in this easily, you can now standout from...everyone else."
The "everyone else" is an overlay over pictures of sheep.
Like its CDMA counterpart on Verizon, the flagship Android 4.0 phone will have LTE support but unlike the Verizon version, the Sprint model will give access to Google Wallet, an NFC app which turns the phone into a virtual wallet.
The device will sell for $200 with contract, and is available now.
One catch with the phone being LTE, however, is that Sprint does not actually have an LTE network yet. The company is transitioning from WiMax to LTE and the network will only be available in 10 cities over the summer before rolling out more widespread in 2013.
In terms of Google Wallet, the mobile payment system is fully supported and Google will even give you $50 for activating within a week of buying the phone.
The FBI has made it clear today that all Internet users should check their PCs for infection by the "DNSChanger" malware, which is expected to leave 350,000 people without Internet past July 9th.
The malware is a DNS redirector, and at its peak infected over 4.2 million computers.
Last year, the FBI took down an Internet "fraud ring" via a sting operation dubbed "Operation Ghost Click." Six Estonian nationals were arrested after the operation, with the malware allegedly bringing them $14 million in revenue.
As DT explains, the malware worked as follows: "When you click on a link to a website or type in its URL, your computer sends a request to a DNS server, which translates the URL into the appropriate IP address. The IP address is sent back to your browser, which can then find the website in question. The DNSChanger would hijack the requests of infected users and redirect the requests to their own DNS servers. Their DNS servers would then translate the URLs into an illegitimate IP address and trick the browser into displaying a different website. Essentially, trying to access YouTube could send you to a porn site."
Inmarsat has confirmed it received a long overdue payment from LightSquared and will in turn suspend further payments until 2014.
The payment of $56 million will give the company some time as it hopes for regulatory clearance. LightSquared is looking to create a mobile network using Inmarsat's spectrum.
In February, LightSquared's plans took a huge hit when the FCC proposed that the new network would interfere with important GPS services used by the military, airlines and even truck drivers. The statement came after a year of testing.
The company is backed by Philip Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners, which invested $2.4 billion of the company's $4 billion in assets into LightSquared. Falcone is likely to file for bankruptcy if clearance is not given, soon.
Inmarsat will now defer $129 million in payments until 2014, to give the company a reprieve.
Nokia has lost its German court case this week, another blow to the company's reputation.
The court in Mannheim found the Finnish-based mobile giant violated patents owned by IPCom, the German patent firm.
Overall, the ruling is quite useless, however, as Nokia no longer uses the methods or the phones affected: "We respectfully disagree with this decision, but almost all of these phones predated the grant of the patent in February 2011 and our products today use different methods. The judgment does not rule whether Nokia's current mobile devices infringe the patent."
The news comes on the heels of the company's quarterly earnings, which were terrible. For the Q1, Nokia posted a net loss of $1.2 billion on revenue of $9.72 billion. Revenue fell 30 percent year-over-year and the company had a profit of $451 million in the same quarter last year.
Most harsh for the phone maker was smartphone sales, which dropped by 55 percent to $2.23 billion. Overall mobile phone device sales fell 40 percent to $5.5 billion.
Speaking during his company's earnings call, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said the carrier is committed to the Windows Phone platform.
The CFO believes the company can help Windows Phone grow as a platform, in the same way it did with Android when it was in its infancy.
Verizon currently only offers one Windows Phone device right now, but they are planning to offer a plethora, soon.
Says Shammo: "We helped create the Android platform from the beginning and it is an incredible platform today, and we are looking to do the same thing with a third ecosystem." The CFO's comments hold weight since Verizon did not get the iPhone until last year and had already been moving away from BlackBerry, leaving Android as the system it pushed the hardest.
Verizon will likely do something similar with Windows Phone, although the situations are different. The carrier offers the market leaders, which consumers have grown comfortable with. Windows is still the "new kid," despite strong marketing from Microsoft.
RIM has hired two firms this week to take care of a restructuring plan that will likely include asset sales.
Additionally, the BlackBerry maker is likely looking into seeking joint ventures or patent licensing.
To help turnaround their struggles, the RIM board of directors will look to boost revenue from the BlackBerry 10 operating system and potentially open up its proprietary network to others. At one time, RIM was looking to add up to $4 billion in revenue from deals with carriers.
Says a source (via Reuters): "This is a very mature strategy and RIM was very far down the road with a lot of those discussions with carriers."
RIM has seen an accelerating decline since 2009, when it controlled over 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. The number is now just above 11 percent, as consumers have moved past the outdated hardware and software to the greener pastures of iPhones and Android devices.
Until 8PM today, French politicians and citizens are forced to remain quiet, by law, about the presidential race.
The candidates can not give speeches or interviews, distribute fliers or update their campaign Web sites or Facebook pages, says the NYT.
Media outlets, citizens, or anyone else in France are also banned from publishing any data, including exit polls. Anyone caught doing so can be fined 75,000 euros/$99,000 USD.
Of course, the polls and other data have been released on Twitter and elsewhere since the quiet period began on Friday. French president Sarkozy has been a critic of the outdated laws, as well, saying: "We're not going to prohibit people from going on the site of The New York Times to learn the results. Are we going to put up a digital border? Are we going to jam computers? What world are we living in, ultimately?"
ExtremeTech is reporting today that porn is the biggest driver of Internet traffic.
The site surveyed data pulled from Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner and found that the top adult site on the Web, Xvideos, brought in 4.4 billion page views each month.
Reddit, one of the most popular non-adult sites on the planet, brings in 2.8 billion views each month.
Additionally, porn surfers stay on the site longer than they do on average sites. Assuming a video resolution of 480x200, ExtremeTech estimates that 50GB of data is being downloaded every second from that site, alone.
Overall, the site estimates 30 percent of the data transferred across the web is due to porn sites, beating out warez sites, cyberlockers and streaming sites like Netflix.
Dr. Web, the Russian firm which first broke the story of the Flashback botnet running rampant on Macs, has said this weekend that the infection is not shrinking as claimed, and is instead growing.
Several security companies, like Kaspersky and Symantec, had claimed this week that the botnet is shrinking but Dr. Web says that number is still around 650,000, at least.
Symantec, makers of Norton, confirmed Dr. Web's figures later in the day despite their earlier miscalculation. On Wednesday, Symantec said the botnet had shrunk by 60 percent to 140,000 machines infected, while Kaspersky said 30,000. After discussions, Symantec had this to say: "We've been talking with them about the discrepancies in our numbers and theirs. We now believe that their analysis is accurate, and that it explains the discrepancies."
Apple has already patched the Java vulnerability that led to the exploit and is working on a "Flashback removal tool" to help those already infected.
YouTube has lost a case in a Hamburg court this week over music video clips.
The ruling states YouTube is now responsible for the content users post to the site. Additionally, the ruling wants Google to add filters to the site that will identify content users post whose rights are held by GEMA, the German royalty collection group.
YouTube's response: "Today's ruling confirms that YouTube as a hosting platform cannot be obliged to control the content of all videos uploaded to the site.
"We remain committed to finding a solution to the music licensing issue in Germany that will benefit artists, composers, authors, publishers and record labels, as well as the wider YouTube community."
GEMA represents 60,000 German song writers and musicians.
PCW has posted their latest smartphone data speed tests, and AT&T and T-Mobile were the clear winners.
Taking measurements of service from 13 cities - Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., the site took average 3G and 4G speeds.
AT&T's 4G LTE network had the fastest downloads speeds and its 3G speeds came in second. T-Mobile's HSPA+ 21 3G speed was far and away the fastest while its HSPA+ 42 4G service was competitive against Verizon and AT&T.
Verizon had the widest service but its LTE could not keep up and its 3G certainly could not, either.
At the lower end, Sprint performed awfully, having fractions of the speeds of T-Mobile and AT&T and Verizon in all categories.
Once Governor Martin O'Malley signs the bill, Maryland will be the first state to ban employers from asking prospective employees for their Facebook login details.
The bill takes into account all other social media sites, as well, including Twitter.
State lawmakers passed the bill almost unanimously earlier in the month and the bill is now on the Governor's desk awaiting a signature.
Once the situation came to light earlier this year, Facebook made it clear that no one should ever give access to their Facebook page. Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said at the time: "If you are a Facebook user you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends...As a user, you shouldn't be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job."
The social networking giant has been working with lawmakers since and has threatened legal action to protect its user's privacy.
Nine other states have proposed similar bills to Maryland's but none have passed yet. On a federal level, Senators have called upon the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to see if the employers are breaking any type of law.
Verizon has confirmed it will launch its shared data plans "by midsummer."
Announced last year, the offer will let subscribers with more than one device pay a single monthly fee to get access for all their gadgets.
"We believe that [the shared data] plan, the way we have it designed, will enable our customers to easily connect other devices to that plan," Executive Vice president and Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said.
A prime example of who could benefit from the service is iPhone and iPad owners, who currently have to pay twice for data for their two iDevices and may use one device more than the other, wasting bandwidth every month.
The company did not give a specific date or price on the plans.
The hacktivist group 'Anonymous' are currently developing a social music platform that promises to allow free and anonymous streaming.
Anontune, as the service has been dubbed, is about 20 percent completed.
The service will aggregate songs from YouTube, Soundcloud, Yahoo Music, Pandora and more and not host even one track on its own servers.
Additionally, the site will allow you to create playlists and share tracks while streaming anonymously using identity masking techniques.
For anyone worried about using an app coded by hackers known for stealing personal information, the group says: "Why would we harm our users? That would really be a little counter-intuitive to our cause."
Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have made scientific discoveries that should allow future devices that are capable of seeing through objects.
Professor of Electrical Engineering Dr. Kenneth O and his graduate team made the discoveries.
"We've created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications,"says Dr. O. "The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all."
The terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum has wavelengths of energy that can go through objects, similar to X-ray machines. With the new discovery, images can be created in the terahertz band without using several lenses inside a device.
Explains the doctor: "CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips. The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects."
The team is working on a distance range of less than four inches, in order to avoid privacy concerns.
LG has announced this week the creation of "3D World," a premium content service available to owners of the LG Cinema 3D Smart TVs.
3G World will be available to TV owners in 70 nations and is an upgrade to the company's 3D Zone app launched last year.
The tech giant says the service will have a "diverse" range of 3D content including entertainment, sports, documentary and lifestyle programmes, along with kids' television. Search functionality is built-in for easier access to shows.
Says LG: "3D World is a critical part of LG's long-term strategy which includes controlling more of the 3D ecosystem that CINEMA 3D owners experience. With the global roll-out of 3D World, LG is demonstrating its commitment to providing diverse, high quality 3D content."
Furthermore, the company announced a partnership with digital sports media company Livesport.TV which will offer live and on-demand sports including football, snooker, tennis, rugby, pool, snooker and mixed martial arts.
HTC has announced this week that it has no more plans to create phones with QWERTY keypads.
While the company has been focusing on touchscreen designs for years now, there were the occasional devices with full keyboards for those who are fans of hitting actual buttons rather than simulated versions.
The company's last QWERTY-sporting design was the "Facebook phone," the ChaCha, which failed miserably despite its deep integration to the social network.
As a struggling smartphone maker, HTC recently released their quarterly earnings for the Q1 2012, and they were not pretty. For the quarter, revenues were NT$67,790 million (about $2.3 billion), a full 35 percent decrease year-over-year. Quarter-over-quarter, the company saw an equally bad fall, down from NT$101.42 billion ($3.43 billion) in the Q4 2011.
HTC recently launched their One line of smartphones, each of which has come with rock solid reviews. The new devices, along with the company's recent purchases of Beats Audio, SyncTV and MOG give hope the smartphone maker can regain some footing in the ever-competitive mobile phone market.
A 15-year-old Australian hacker has been arrested this week for allegedly attacking over 250 websites in just three months.
Starting in January, the unnamed suspect began hitting an average of 3 sites every day for 3 months until he was stopped.
The student scanned sites for vulnerabilities and software bugs that he then exploited to gain access.
Australian authorities have charged the youth with unlawful access to a computer system.
Outside of leaking stolen info, the student also defaced company websites and bragged of his use of anonymizing software to evade detection. The suspect's luck ran out when the software failed him and police tracked his IP address.
The Walmart-owned streaming service Vudu is looking to expand internationally, claim sources.
If accurate, Mexico will be the first stop in the expansion, starting in June. The bigger deployment will head across Latin America and will eventually reach over 30 countries. Vudu plans to expand to Europe and Asia later in the year, as well.
Wal-Mart declined comment except to say: "We're always looking at ways to expand our offerings but we have nothing new to share at this time."
A Vudu expansion would compete directly with Netflix, which is in the middle of its own 45 country expansion. Wal-Mart, however, has some advantages given it has 5,000 stores across 26 countries. In Mexico and Latin America, especially, there have been stores since the early 90s.
Finally, Vudu will allegedly "allow consumers to make purchases off of pre-paid cards," giving it a huge advantage over Netflix, which can only accept credit cards. Credit cards are not as popular in South America and Europe as they are in the U.S.
Multiple sources are claiming today that Facebook is aiming for a May 17th IPO.
The date should be accessible as long as the SEC signs off on all the papers, including anything related to the new $1 billion purchase of Instagram.
Facebook is expected to be valued at $100 billion, making it instantly one of the most valuable companies in the world, especially in the technology world. The company wants to raise $10 billion from investors but will likely raise less.
Says a source with TC: "Investors want as high a price as possible so that the secondary market won't look like a problem." The social networking site will have 2.51 billion fully-diluted shares outstanding after IPO.
A group led by Sony has been given EU approval to purchase EMI's music publishing business for $2.2 billion.
The one condition given is that the consortium must sell the worldwide publishing rights of some artists. Sony will have to sell four back catalogs that includes the works of 12 artists.
Besides Sony, the group includes Blackstone Group, Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Development Co., Raine Group and music and film mogul David Geffen.
Says the European Commission (Reuters): "Sony and Mubadala have offered to divest valuable and attractive catalogues containing bestselling titles as well as works of successful and promising authors. I am therefore satisfied that the competitive dynamics in the online music publishing business will be maintained so as to ensure consumer choice and cultural diversity."
The catalogs that must be sold are Virgin UK, Virgin Europe, Virgin U.S. and Famous Music UK which include popular artists like Gary Barlow, Ozzy Osbourne, Ben Harper, Placebo, The Kooks, Lenny Kravitz and Robbie Williams.
After days of mystery, Sony revealed 'God of War: Ascension' early this morning with a teaser trailer.
The new game will be a prequel in the insanely popular franchise starring Greek warrior Kratos.
Sony Computer Entertainment America's trailer does not show any gameplay and offers little details or insight but a narrator states: "There was a time before Kratos became the ghost of Sparta ... a time when something other than rage consumed him. A time when Kratos would break his blood oath to an unjust god."
The game will be released for the PS3 although there was no timetable.
Sony will reveal more about the game, and possibly some gameplay footage during a live streaming event on April 30 at 11 a.m. EST.
Nokia warned two weeks ago that its quarterly earnings were going to be bad, and they certainly were today.
For the Q1, Nokia posted a net loss of $1.2 billion on revenue of $9.72 billion. Revenue fell 30 percent year-over-year and the company had a profit of $451 million in the same quarter last year.
Most harsh for the phone maker was smartphone sales, which dropped by 55 percent to $2.23 billion. Overall mobile phone device sales fell 40 percent to $5.5 billion.
Operating margins came in at a negative 3 percent, with no end in sight. Nokia says it will cut costs by another $1.31 billion by the end of 2013.
Says CEO Stephen Elop of the challenges faced by the company: "We exceeded expectations in markets including the United States but establishing momentum in certain markets ... has been more challenging. We are navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly."
Nokia has put all of its eggs in one basket, new Windows Phone 7 devices which are popular but will need a large push if they ever hope to take significant share from Apple and Android.
Microsoft will reportedly push 32 Windows 8 tablets to the market in 2012 in an effort to steal share away from Apple.
The iPad currently has 68 percent global market share, with Android accounting for the rest.
In a plan with Intel, Microsoft hopes to bring that Apple figure down to under 50 percent by the middle of 2013. A Digitimes source says they expect all these tablets to ship before the end of the year, even with Windows 8 only being released in September or October.
Perhaps more importantly more consumers is the price, which the site believes will start at $250 for entry-level devices.
At that price point, the devices will directly compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire and Google's rumored upcoming Nexus tablet. Apple, for its part, has been rumored to be releasing a $300 iPad "Mini" which will weigh in at around 8 inches.
More pictures and details have emerged on Ikea's recent Uppleva web-connected furniture set.
The four models will include 24, 36, 40 and 46 inch TV, all of which are LED backlit. Each will have Wi-Fi and come with the Opera browser installed. The TVs will also have three different benches to choose from and six different finishes.
Original article:
IKEA has announced the launch of the IKEA TV, a web-connected device that will be the centerpiece of their new UPPLEVA furniture range.
UPPLEVA, which means "experience" in Swedish, will integrate the LED TV, a sound system with wireless speakers and CD/DVD/Blu-ray players into an all-in-one self-assembly piece.
Most of the electronics will be made by Chinese manufacturer TCL while IKEA built all the furniture around it, aiming to hide all cables. Additionally, the companies have combined all the controls into a single remote. The furniture will allow the remote's signals through, thanks to its design, leaving the device hidden.
The LED TVs will be available in gray, black and blue and in four different sizes, 24", 32", 42" and 46".
AT&T has updated its pre-paid GoPhone plan to add more data.
For the same price, the carrier is doubling the data, for all tiers.
The 50MB plan costs $5 per month, the 200MB plan costs $15 per month and the 1GB plan will set you back $25 per month.
AT&T says the new data plans will take effect starting April 22.
All data plans require a GoPhone $50 per month Unlimited Talk and Text nationwide plan or a $25 per month Unlimited Text with 250 minutes nationwide plan. These plans are preferable to many because they do not require a long-term contract.
Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos has likely made some people very happy today with his update on 'Arrested Development.'
Sarandos says the fourth season of the cult classic show will debut all ten of its episodes simultaneously on the streaming service, foregoing the week-to-week standard of most broadcast and cable content.
The revelation came during NAB, where the show's creator Mitch Hurwitz and most of the cast took the stage to discuss the return of the series.
Netflix has promised the return of the show "sometime" in 2013 with some expecting a February debut.
The streaming service will have 5 original programs in 2013 and already debuted the first, Lilyhammer, a few months ago. Netflix was looking into reviving the expensive and cancelled Fox show "Terra Nova," but decided against it in March.
Late-night TV show host Conan O'Brien has announced today that he will voice a character in the upcoming Halo 4 game.
Halo 4 is one of the year's most anticipated games and Microsoft recently announced the sequel will launch on November 6th.
Besides O'Brien, his right-hand man Andy Richter will also voice another character. Both characters will be two Marines that Master Chief encounters along the way.
Franchise director Frank O'Connor says both will be "living out a real moment" although he did not elaborate.
O'Brien would say nothing more than that he is a "clerk in a loading dock," with "a gun, but I don't know how to use it."
Yesterday's Gmail outage actually affected up to 35 million people, a lot more than the 6 million that Google initially admitted to, says the search giant.
After fixing the bug, the company said the issue affected "less than 2 percent" of Gmail users. Later in the afternoon, however, Google changed that figure to "less than 10 percent."
Google first confirmed the problems at a bit past noon and finally solved the issue at 1:45 PM.
The outage was caused by a bug that Google did not specify.
Millions of users complained yesterday that they could not access their email and Google confirmed they were working on the issue via Google Apps Status Dashboard. Altogether, the outage stopped access to the service for about an hour.
Gmail has over 350 million active users, so it is assumed that the bug could have affected up to 35 million people.
Last year, Google shocked the world by purchasing Motorola Mobility for $12 billion.
At the time, the search giant said it was buying the company for one reason alone; patents.
It appears that is not entirely true, as BI is reporting that Google is instead looking to get into the hardware business, following Apple's model of offering the hardware and the software and being the seller, cutting out middle-men.
The word comes via those in Google's inner circle, who continue to be briefed on future plans.
There is, of course, one huge caveat with Google's plan; its current partners. Major Android partners like HTC and Samsung are said to be furious with the development and have even already committed more support for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 Apollo.
Oracle considered building its own smartphone in 2009 and would have purchased either Palm or RIM to do so.
The shocking news came out today during testimony in the Google-Oracle patent infringement case.
CEO Larry Ellison admitted the company looked into buying Palm in 2009 but saw that webOS was not competitive with iOS and Android. Additionally, the company looked into buying RIM, but the BlackBerry maker was significantly more expensive then than it is now.
Finally, the company considered making a Java smartphone, but wisely decided against it.
The billion dollar lawsuit brought by Oracle revolves around patents allegedly violated by Google in the Android platform. Android is partially based on Java, which Oracle acquired when it purchased Sun MicroSystems in 2009. Google openly admitted to copying some lines of code from Java but also believes Oracle is only entitled to minuscule royalties.
A federal judge has ruled today that Apple and Samsung's CEOs must meet in a mandatory mediation session to try to settle their handful of smartphone patent disputes.
Judge Lucy Koh gave the execs 90 days to meet in a conference with Magistrate Judge Joseph Spero. Apple's CEO is Tim Cook and Samsung's is Gee-Sung Choi.
Reads the order: "As the parties have indicated in their joint statement, the chief executive officer and general counsel of Apple and the chief executive officer and general counsel of Samsung shall appear and participate."
Apple first sued Samsung early last year over the Galaxy line of tablets and phones, and Samsung quickly counter-sued over patents used in the iPhone.
The current battle between the two giants is just one of the many out there between web-connected device makers. Microsoft is currently embroiled in cases against HTC, Barnes & Noble and others, while Apple is also in cases against Motorola and others. Google is facing a billion dollar lawsuit from Oracle over Android patents, in a trial that just recently got underway.
According to a new report, Zynga tried to purchase 'Angry Birds' maker Rovio for $2 billion but was obviously rebuffed.
The offer came late last year, but Rovio has much bigger plans for its future.
In a recent interview, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said his company is looking for more big-money acquisitions into the future, following the company's $180 million purchase of 'Draw Something' creator omgpop.
Notes Pincus: "We love finding great, accomplished teams that share our mission and vision. If we ever see breakout opportunities that massively accelerate social gaming at Zynga, we'll aggressively pursue those, too."
In 2010 and 2011, Zynga spent $147.2 million on buying 22 companies.
According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple's Mac sales for the Q1 may fall short of expectations.
Says the analyst: "We believe the buy side is currently looking for worldwide Mac units to be up 14 percent y/y (year over year) in the March quarter. We believe Apple could potentially miss its Mac number."
Munster used data from research firm NPD which estimated Mac sales actually fell five percent last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2010.
Macs currently account for 15 percent of Apple's overall revenue.
Munster does say he believes iPad and iPhone results will cover any deficit in Mac sales, and most analysts in the industry tend to agree with that sentiment.
Apple is the most valuable public company in the world, valued at $568.47 billion.
IKEA has announced the launch of the IKEA TV, a web-connected device that will be the centerpiece of their new UPPLEVA furniture range.
UPPLEVA, which means "experience" in Swedish, will integrate the LED TV, a sound system with wireless speakers and CD/DVD/Blu-ray players into an all-in-one self-assembly piece.
Most of the electronics will be made by Chinese manufacturer TCL while IKEA built all the furniture around it, aiming to hide all cables. Additionally, the companies have combined all the controls into a single remote. The furniture will allow the remote's signals through, thanks to its design, leaving the device hidden.
The LED TVs will be available in gray, black and blue and in four different sizes, 24", 32", 42" and 46".
As with other furniture from the company, the set is ready for assembly at home. The cheapest set will cost $955 and will be available in Sweden, France, Poland, Germany and Italy in June and worldwide by the beginning of next year.
Says the Pebble team in a note to backers: "We are the most funded Kickstarter project ever thanks to you! The Pebble team and I really appreciate your commitment and backing. It's been an incredible couple of days and we're amazed at how many people share our vision. We're working extremely hard to produce the best Pebble we can."
The Pebble currently has 26,600 backers and has raised $3,830,579 including 7 buyers of $10,000 "mega distributor" packs that entitle them to 100 of the watches in any color.
Pebble is a smartwatch that syncs with iOS and Android via Bluetooth, including the addition of apps.
Google first confirmed the problems at a bit past noon and finally solved the issue at 1:45 PM.
The outage, which affected "less than 2 percent" of Gmail users, was caused by a bug that Google did not specify.
Millions of users complained this morning that they could not access their email and Google confirmed they were working on the issue via Google Apps Status Dashboard. Altogether, the outage stopped access to the service for about an hour.
Gmail has over 350 million active users, so it is assumed that the bug affected around 6 million people.
Apple has announced today that the third-generation iPad will be hitting 12 new markets on Friday.
The new nations to get access to the tablet are South Korea, Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela.
One week later, the device will reach 9 more countries; Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.
Apple did note that 4G LTE models will only be available in North America, but all other models and colors will still be available in the new territories.
Retail pricing starts at $499 USD for a Wi-Fi only 16GB version.
After years of complaints, Microsoft has listened to its consumers and will be releasing only four different versions of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
There will be one version for home use, one for business users, one for devices running ARM chips and finally one for large enterprises who buy in bulk.
"Windows 8" is for home use while "Windows 8 Pro" is for business users, "Windows 8 Enterprise" is for bulk buyers and "Windows RT" is the final name for Windows on ARM. Windows RT cannot be purchased individually as it will come preinstalled on PCs and tablets that run ARM processors. The operating system will run touch-based apps on Windows Runtime, including touch version of Microsoft Office suite apps like Word and Excel.
There was no word yet on pricing or availability.
Microsoft's decision should be a welcome move to many consumers who were confused with all the options of, for example, Windows 7 which came with three different "Home" versions and 6 versions total.
According to IHS iSuppli, the Nokia Lumia 900 costs has $209 cost of materials, making it one of the cheaper smartphones to build on the market.
The cost of materials does not include about $8 for manufacturing and R&D costs.
AT&T sells the Lumia 900 for $49-$99 depending on where you purchase it (with contract) and $450 off-contract.
Says IHS: "For the Lumia 900, Nokia and Microsoft worked in close partnership with Qualcomm to develop and optimize the software stack in order to take full advantage of the hardware." That same strategy has been used by Apple for years now on the iPhone and the company has the highest margins in the industry.
AT&T's online store is listing both versions of the Windows Phone device as sold out.
The carrier noted last week that sales of the device were blowing away expectations and it seems he telling the truth.
Amazon also has the cyan version back-ordered, although they do have stock of the black model. Calls to AT&T brick-and-mortar stores revealed most are sold out in-store, as well.
It is unclear whether the news is good or bad for Microsoft and Nokia. If the sell out is due to large demand then certainly the companies will be excited by the prospects. However, if the sell out is a supply-side issue, there may be more problems we do not know about.
There was an early software glitch that affected handsets trying to access the Internet and AT&T has admitted that many affected users simply returned their devices, which would also have an affect on current inventory.
Journalists have been receiving invitations for a Samsung event on May 3rd, in which the company will launch the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.
The invitation simply reads "come and meet the next Galaxy" with a 2PM EST start time on May 3rd.
Samsung has still not officially named the device, but calling it the SGIII is a logical progression from its predecessors.
The alleged specs of the new smartphone are that it will be smaller and narrower than its predecessor at 131 x 64 x 8 mm. The device will weigh just 0.27 pounds, as well.
Featured specs are a large 4.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with 1280 x 720 resolution, a 1.5Ghz quad-core Samsung processor, 1GB RAM, Android 4.0.x, dual-cameras (12MP/1.3MP), 32GB internal storage and a decently sized 1750 mAh battery.
Wal-Mart's UltraViolet "disc-to-digital" initiative has launched today in 3500 store after being announced last month, giving disc owners a chance to have access to a digital copy of their movie, for a nominal price.
Consumers can pay $2 for an SD digital copy of a DVD or $5 to get an HD copy. If you bring in Blu-rays, you can get an HD digital copy for $2. You get to keep the disc, but the retailer will mark it with some kind of ink so that you can not get more than one digital license per disc.
Earlier this month, Variety reported that actor Ashton Kutcher will play former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an independent biopic directed by Joshua Michael Stern.
There are more details today on the biopic, which is set to begin filming next month, when Kutcher goes on break from "Two and a Half Men." The film will be independent of the Sony Pictures blockbuster that is based on the best-selling Walter Isaacson book that was released just a month after the entrepreneur's death.
For now, the working title of the movie is "Jobs: Get Inspired," which is horrendous but will be changed before final release.
The film will cover the years of 1971 to 2000, right before the company made it huge with the release of the firs-generation iPod.
Sony's movie will not start filming for another year.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings ranted to his 120,000 Facebook subscribers today about Comcast and their bandwidth caps and overall approach to net neutrality.
The rant came about because Comcast's streaming Xfinity service does not count against the ISP's bandwidth caps, while other similar services (like Netflix, for example), do.
Reads the post:
Comcast is no longer following net neutrality principles. Comcast should apply caps equally, or not at all.
I spent the weekend enjoying four good internet video apps on my Xbox: Netflix, HBO GO, Xfinity, and Hulu.
When I watch video on my Xbox from three of these four apps, it counts against my Comcast internet cap. When I watch through Comcast's Xfinity app, however, it does not count against my Comcast internet cap.
For example, if I watch last night's SNL episode on my Xbox through the Hulu app, it eats up about one gigabyte of my cap, but if I watch that same episode through the Xfinity Xbox app, it doesn't use up my cap at all.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said the entertainment industry is "shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe worse than the foot" by trying to push anti-piracy legislation.
Brin said the recently killed PIPA and SOPA legislation would have led to the U.S. becoming more like Iran and China, who censor their people.
Even more importantly, Brin hit the nail on the head in regards to piracy, saying the industry cannot understand the simple concept that users will continue to download unauthorized content as long as it remains easier to acquire than authorized material.
"I haven't tried it for many years but when you go on a pirate website, you choose what you like, it downloads to the device of your choice and it will just work - and then when you have to jump through all these hoops (to buy legitimate content), the walls created are disincentives for people to buy," says Brin.
Brin is also scared of the future of the Internet, claiming "there are very powerful forces that have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world. I am more worried than I have been in the past ... it's scary." Most of the threat is coming from governments who are actively trying to control access of their citizens, all under the guise of things like piracy.
Sony has reminded gamers today that the PlayStation Network will be down for maintenance starting tomorrow.
The Network will go down at 9AM EST, and be down for the next 13 hours.
Says Sony: "This maintenance will last roughly 13 hours. During much of this time, users won't be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management or play online. PSN enabled websites will not be able to service users, including [the PlayStation Blog]."
The maintenance will be to optimize and clean up processes and Sony confirmed nothing is "broken."
When asked for more information on the downtime, Matthew Harper, the Senior Manager of PlayStation Digital Platforms noted "Part of my job is to make sure that the lines of communication are open between our users and PlayStation. While I don't have more details to share at this time regarding the downtime, I will certainly work to include more info in future posts."
Despite past delays, the first batch of Raspberry Pi mini-computers will ship to customers who pre-ordered it starting next week.
There are only two distributors of the computer, which sells for $35. The two sites, Premier Farnell and RS Components, said they were seeing 700 orders per second, crashing the sites on the first day of pre-orders.
RSC has been inviting customers who registered interest to order, in the order they signed up: "We are delighted to have the first batch of fully compliant products in our warehouse. There has been a great deal of anticipation for Raspberry Pi since its launch at the end of February, and it is important that we provide a delivery guarantee to customers when they place their order."
Those lucky enough to have ordered first will get their device by April 20th.
For $35 you get a 3.3-inch wide board with a 700 MHz ARM11, 256MB RAM, HDMI-out, SD card slot, a USB port, ethernet, audio jack and Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU.
As of April, 16:9widescreen monitors are now the most used in the world, surpassing old "full screen" 4:3resolution devices.
Widescreen displays with 1366 x 768 are the most commonly used, just beating out 4:3 1024 x 768 resolution screens.
The full screen monitors controlled well over 40 percent of the market, just two years ago.
Following the year-long trend, the two types of monitors reached 18 percent at about the same time. Laptops and ultrabooks commonly have a 1366 x 768 resolution, which is likely leading to the quick growth in the hits.
The numbers come via StatCounter, which says both types of resolution account for 2.7 billion of StatCounter's 18 billion monthly hits.
J.K. Rowling has opened the doors of the highly-anticipated 'Pottermore' website for fans of the Harry Potter website.
Two weeks ago, the whole set of official e-books went on sale, bringing in £1.5 million in sales in just three days.
Says the release: "JK Rowling's unique online experience Pottermore.com, based on her hugely popular Harry Potter books and partnered by Sony, is opening from today, following its closed Beta testing phase."
"Many more Potter fans old and new will now be able to explore, discover and share the stories in a completely new way. At Pottermore.com, they will be able to join Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, get sorted into one of the four houses, and have a wand choose them, before starting a journey through the storylines of these extraordinary books and discovering exclusive new writing from J.K. Rowling."
The site is a haven for Harry Potter fans, and includes Rowling's notes, extra text cut from the novels and hours of additional content and thousands of words worth of text content.
For starters, Pottermore.com will begin with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, "but will rapidly grow and develop, as new content, features and functionality are added. Users will be able to share their experiences and creativity as the storylines move on to subsequent books in the series in the months following opening."
Last week, attorneys for the former top cyberlocker Megaupload came out swinging, calling the criminal prosecution of the site's top executives "unduly adventurous," while accusing the government of trying to destroy evidence in the case.
"In essence, the government has taken what it wants from the scene of the alleged crime and is content that the remaining evidence, even if it is exculpatory or otherwise relevant to the defense, be destroyed," said defense attorney Paul Brinkman at the time.
The government has openly admitted to copying "selected data" from the servers and has now cleared hosting service Carpathia to delete the rest. The data currently costs Carpathia $9000 per day to host with no one footing the bill now that Megaupload's assets are frozen. The US District Judge Liam O'Grady did not agree with the government's plans to make the information disappear, and instead is ordering the various parties connected to the case to broker a deal.
Alleged 'Anonymous' hacker Higinio O. Ochoa has been arrested thanks to a "racy" photo posted by his girlfriend.
Ochoa, aka "w0rmer" of the affiliate Anon group "CabinCr3w," posted a picture on his Twitter page with a girl in a low-cut shirt holding a paper that reads "PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w." The "pwned" part was in reference to Ochoa's involvement in a site that makes access to personal information on law enforcement officials.
The FBI took the image and checked the exchangeable image file format (EXIF data) that all digital cameras imprint onto an image. The EXIF data revealed information coming from an iPhone near Melbourne, Australia, which eventually led the FBI to Ochoa's Facebook page.
On March 20th, the FBI raided Ochoa's apartment and arrested him.
Says the FBI: "[He] created fake events on their online, posted images representing Anonymous and CabinCr3w, deleted the entire administrator accounts except the one created by the attacker."
iDEN users is down to an all-time low of 6 million as consumers run away in droves from the Nextel "push-to-talk" service. When the companies first merged in 2005, there were 20 million iDEN users.
Sprint's acquisition of Nextel is one of the bigger disasters in merger history, with Sprint having to take a loss of $29.7 billion on the deal in 2008. Nextel was purchased for $36 billion, so there was an 83 percent loss in just 3 years.
For the rest of the year, Sprint will retire 9,600 iDEN cell sites and then kill the rest next year. Anyone needing walkie talkie features will be migrated over to the CDMA-based Nextel Direct Connect service.
Google's CEO Larry Page has noted today that the company is focusing on cheap Android tablets into the future, lending credence to the unrelenting rumor that the company is releasing a $150 "Nexus" tablet later this year to compete with Apple and Amazon.
Said Page during a conference call: "[W]e definitely believe that there's going to be a lot of success at the lower end of the market as well with lower-priced products that will be very significant. And it's definitely an area we think is important and we're quite focused on."
Page praised other low-priced Android tablet makers, without naming names. Barnes & Noble and Amazon control the market for 7-inch entertainment tablets but Apple is rumored to be testing an "iPad Mini."
If the rumors are accurate, Google's Nexus tablet will be Asus MeMo 370T which includes a quad-core processor and Ice Cream Sandwich.
Security firm Sophos has announced today the discovery of another widespread malware attacking Mac computers.
Dubbed "Sabpab," the threat uses the same Java vulnerability that the Flashback botnet exploited last month in creating 650,000 Mac zombies.
Sophos says you can check to see if you have been infected by searching for the following files:
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.PubSabAgent.pfile
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.PubSabAGent.plist
Sabpab has been described as a "basic backdoor Trojan horse" which allows control servers to execute commands remotely on infected Macs.
Apple has already patched the vulnerability and the new trojan is not as widespread as Flashback was, but still remains a threat if you have not updated.
In under two weeks since its launch on Android, the photo-sharing app Instagram has reached 40 million users.
In its first 4 days of launch on Android, the service saw 5 million new users, and that number seems to be growing exponentially to over 11 million now, although undoubtedly some are new iOS users, as well.
Rakshith Krishnappa, creator of Instagram-viewer Gramfeed, says the Instagram API listed 40,026,379 users as of this morning.
Last week, social networking giant Facebook purchased the service for $1 billion in a deal that took under 48 hours to complete.
The company says Instagram will remain a standalone photo app, but it will also likely be more thoroughly integrated into Facebook into the future.
Intel has confirmed today that it has deals with 10 tablet vendors.
The companies will help Intel design Windows 8 devices that use Intel chips.
Intel China chairman Sean Maloney said there will be "numerous" Intel-based tablets by the end of the year, each of which will use the Z2460 chip, code-named "Medfield."
Looking further into the year, Intel is developing the Clover Trail chip which is designed specifically for tablets. Clover Trail chips run at 1.8GHz, making them more powerful and more efficient than previous models.
Lenovo and ZTE have already confirmed devices using Intel chips, including Atom chips for smartphones.
The Nikkei is reporting that Apple Japan has been ordered to pay restitution to a couple whose iPod Nano exploded.
Apple will pay ¥600,000 (about $7,425) in medical fees and pain and suffering after the 1st-gen device spontaneously caught fire after regular use.
The Nano has well-documented issues, and Apple even started a recall in Korea in 2009 and then in 20 more countries including the U.S. in 2010.
According to the ruling, the couple purchased the device in early 2006, and kept using it regularly. In July, 2010, the couple tried to charge the device causing it to overheat and then catch on fire. The wife suffered burns on her hand that took 1 month to heal.
The extremely popular Kickstarter project "Pebble" has raised $2 million in under 72 hours.
Pebble is a smartwatch that syncs with iOS and Android via Bluetooth, including the addition of apps.
The company only hoped to raise $100,000 before May, and the project has clearly exceeded expectations.
200 lucky backers were able to pledge just $99 to get the device, while everyone else will need to pay $115 or more to have the device. The watch will eventually retail for over $150.
There are currently over 14,200 backers of the project.
Microsoft developer Maarten Visser has leaked a roadmap for the company's software that covers the next two year's of releases.
Visser is the CEO of Meetroo, a cloud developer consultantcy.
The images show launch dates for Office 15, updates to Windows Phone and Internet Explorer 10.
Microsoft confirmed the images and responded: "We often provide forward-looking information to our partners and customers under our confidentially agreements with them. This information contains our best estimates and is, in no way, final or definitive."
Visser, a day after the tweets, released a YouTube video explaining why he "leaked" the pics, saying he did not do so with malicious intent: "I love Microsoft and the products they are producing. I have been evangelizing SharePoint since Microsoft produced the first beta in early 2000. For this reason I really hope my actions won't bring any damage to the company I love and might even have some positive effects to the partner eco-model (especially smaller ISV's who are betting their whole lives Microsoft add-ons.)"
Barnes & Noble has introduced a new version of the Nook e-reader that will have a glow in the dark screen, allowing for night time and dark room reading.
The new version of the Nook Simple Touch, which has an e-ink touchscreen, will incorporate the new light, a feature Amazon's rival Kindle devices do not have.
Says Chief Executive Officer William Lynch: "Having to clip on the light at night, there is the consumer cost of the hassle factor. The glow is the biggest revolution in the dedicated single-purpose e-reader market since the launch of the Kindle in 2007."
B&N is the world's largest bookstore chain and the company controls about 30 percent of the ebook market.
The new device will sell for $139, the same price the original Touch model launched at last year. The first-gen device (with no light) now sells for $99.
According to a new report in National Defense Magazine, airplane maker Boeing is looking into building its own Android smartphone.
The phone will be secured for government and military use and will likely be dubbed "The Boeing Phone."
Current devices, with similar military-grade encryption, can cost over $10,000 per unit and Boeing's new mobile phone will likely cost nowhere near there. Reports suggest it will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, as "the project is already near the end of its development cycle."
Android will remain mostly "vanilla," letting users keep the interface they are used to, but with an incredible jump in security. Users will not even be able to access the Google Play Store.
Chad Bartley, analyst at Pacific Crest, has noted today that his research implies Amazon Kindle products are seeing demand deteriorate.
Demand for the Kindle Fire tablet is down "slightly" for the Q2 compared to last quarter, says Bartley, citing a survey of consumers.
Furthermore, Kindle e-reader demand is down as the market heads towards saturation.
Reads the research note:
Our Q2 Consumer Technology Survey revealed a slight decline in interest and demand for the Kindle Fire. For example, 4.5% of respondents plan to purchase a Kindle Fire, which is slightly down from 4.9% in our Q1 survey.
Our recent supply checks also indicated that demand for Kindle Fire weakened in Q1. Based on our checks, we estimate that component orders fell roughly 10% m/m in February and roughly 15% m/m March and that demand will fall sequentially in Q2. We see the potential for Q1 sales of roughly 2.0 million, compared to our forecast of 2.2 million, and 2012 sales of roughly 13.5 million, compared to our current forecast of 14.9 million. We are leaving our forecasts unchanged for now, in part due to the potential impact on demand from the pending launches of the new 7-inch and 9-inch Kindle Fires, which we expect in Q3.
Nokia has announced the launch of the Lumia 610, the first WP7 device with NFC.
The device will be available through carrier Orange, across Europe.
Orange says "the device has been certified for contactless payments both with MasterCard PayPass technology, and with Visa's mobile application for payments at the point of sale, Visa payWave, which means it will work when activated and used with merchants that have linked up with this technology."
The carrier remains one of the few making pushes for NFC, saying it has sold 500,000 of such devices in France, alone. For the time being, NFC commercial services are not as widely available, making the phone's ability to use it useless.
Nokia's low-end device has a 3.7" LCD display with 800 x 480 resolution, Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, 8 GB storage and 256 MBRAM.
A new report from the NPD Group today claims the average cable subscription will increase to $200 per month by the end of the decade.
Nomura Equity Research says don't blame the cable companies, however. The research firm says program suppliers have increased their fees by 8.2 percent over the last year, alone, and those kind of increases are expected every year going forward.
Of the major media companies, Disney accounts for the largest chunk of fees, taking a massive 24 percent. ESPN, its most profitable venture, accounts for a good portion of its substantial fees, with ESPN bringing in an average of $4.69 from every U.S. cable subscriber.
Time Warner (distributor of HBO, TNT, TBS and CNN), controls 21 percent of the fees, followed by Comcast (Bravo, USA Network) at 16 percent and News Corp. (Fox) at 14 percent.
Furthermore, the analyst firm says "re-transmission fees paid to broadcast network affiliate stations totaled nearly $400 million in 2011 and should reach $750 million this year."
According to well-connected Microsoft reporter Mary Jo Foley, the company has only sold 3.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices, to date.
That number would be extremely low if true, given that Google activates over 800,000 Android devices every single day.
Other reporters have disputed the figure, claiming the software giant has sold 11 million units since launch early last year, but Folley stands by the number.
Nokia, for its part, sold 2 million Lumia phones in the last quarter and is expected to do much better thanks to stronger sales of the Lumia 900.
Microsoft will not comment on WP7 sales or shipments.
With its latest update, the Google Chrome browser has added the ability to sync open tabs between all devices.
Reads Google's post: "Imagine you've looked up directions to a cool new restaurant on your home computer. Later, when you're leaving work, you realize you can't quite remember how to get there. If only you could quickly pull up the same directions on your office computer with one click!
Well, with the latest Chrome Beta, you can. When you're signed in to Chrome, the tabs you have open on one device are available on all your other devices-just click the "Other devices" menu on the New Tab page."
Additionally, the tab's back and forward history is also saved so you can literally start where you leave off on any connected device you have.
The update also works with the Chrome browser beta for Android.
Verizon has announced today that it will start charging an upgrade fee for users upgrading to new phones.
The carrier was the final "holdout" among the American majors, who each already charge for upgrades.
Verizon will begin charging $30 on April 22nd, more expensive than T-Mobile but cheaper than AT&T and Sprint, who each charge $36.
T-Mobile charges $18, which was the standard until last year when Sprint doubled its fee and AT&T followed suit.
For its part, Verizon says the fees will "continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect." The company also notes that trading in older handsets through Verizon's own trade-in program can help "offset the cost" of the new upgrade fee.
Spotify has created their new "Play Button' which will allow bloggers and other sites to embed songs from the company's vast catalog of streaming music.
The widget will let users listen to songs, playlists and even entire albums without having to leave the site their visiting.
Says Spotify: "The Spotify Play Button is a simple yet extremely powerful music widget that makes it easier than ever to deliver all the world's music to fans of your website or blog." In case anyone had any qualms about the new widget and its pricing, the company says its "Totally free. Totally legal. Totally awesome."
If you install the button, you can "simply click on songs on the site, then copy them onto their own site. It will work for people who use Spotify's free service as well as premium users who pay a monthly fee for ad-free, unlimited listening," explains CNN.
Finally, Tumblr announced a partnership with the company, incorporating the button directly into its blogging platform.
The U.S. government has suedApple and the major book publishers today on claims of collusion and anti-trust in the ebook market.
Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster were all sued in New York district court, with Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins already settling their suits.
Apple and Macmillan have refused to settle with the Justice Department and deny they had any part in colluding on the price of digital books. Both have agreed to argue "that pricing agreements between Apple and publishers enhanced competition in the e-book industry," an industry which used to be ruled by Amazon totally.
The Justice Department is looking into how Apple got publishers to change the way they charged for e-books. Before the iPad, Amazon sold ebooks for a lot cheaper than they currently sell for and prices were mixed whereas they are now standardized with little flexibility. This new model is called the "agency model," which only gives publishers, not the vendors, the ability to set ebook prices.
Last week we reported that over 500,000 Mac computers were infected with the BackDoor.Flashback trojan, which had turned the computers into a major botnet.
Apple has already patched the Java vulnerability that led to the exploit and is now working on a "Flashback removal tool" to help those already infected.
Additionally, the company says it is working with ISPs across the globe to disable any existing command and control centers, networks that tell the zombie computers what to do to victims.
Doctor Web, the Russian anti-virus company, first brought the trojan to the public's attention with a report.
The vendor said that the systems are infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 "after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system." JavaScript code will then be run with the exploit. Doctor Web said at the time that there can be thousands of compromised web-pages.
The rumor lived and died last year, but it has resurfaced today; Microsoft is looking into buying a stake of Research in Motion.
Today's rumor comes via Benzinga, who suggests Microsoft would be willing to pay up to $3.5 billion to buy a large stake in the struggling BlackBerry maker.
The rumor comes weeks after new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the company is "exploring partnerships and other strategic opportunities."
Earlier in the week, it was rumored that Samsung was interested in buying a $1.5 billion stake in RIM, although neither RIM, Microsoft or Samsung have commented on the stories.
The investments make sense, because even though RIM's market share has dwindled in the last four years, the company has an extensive collection of patents, the popular BlackBerry Messenger platform and numerous enterprise contracts around the world.
The latest rumor for the Xbox 360 successor is here.
Microsoft's upcoming console, code-named Durango is rumored to be powered by a 16-core processor, says Xbox World magazine.
The magazine says devkits have already been sent to developers, following "secret" meetings held in London. Of course, the Durango kits will not resemble the final device, but the internals should match (at least similarly) what is expected to be in the final console.
All rumors point to a holiday 2013 release and the sources claim the devkits have "a 16-core IBM Power PC CPU with a graphics processor on par with AMD's Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards."
If accurate, the console will certainly be forward-looking, as the business market saw its first 16-core processor (from AMD) just last November. Adds the magazine: "It's a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine - too much power, even. But remember, Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it'll need a lot of power."
Microsoft has reminded its customers this week of Windows XP's impending end of life.
Support for Windows XP SP3 will be dropped on April 8th, 2014, as will support for Microsoft Office 2003.
Marketing director Stella Chernyak says the end-of-life means Microsoft will kill off all security updates, non-security hot-fixes and technical support after that date.
Says the director: "Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases in their time, but the technology environment has shifted. Technology continues to evolve and so do people's needs and expectations."
Microsoft has always supported a policy of a minimum of 10 years of support and has given Windows XP extra time despite the release of Vista, Windows 7 and soon, Windows 8.
If you are an enterprise, the company recommends switching to Windows 7 and Office 2010 rather than waiting. To help the move, the company is offering free deployment toolkits.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced today that their Raspberry Pi computer has been cleared for delivery in Europe, Canada and Australia.
After passing compliance testing, the device gained Conformité Européenne (CE) quality-control marks without need for modification in the EU. For the other nations, the device complied with FCC regulations.
Reads the blog post: "We just received confirmation that the Raspberry Pi has passed EMC testing without requiring any hardware modifications. There is still a mountain of paperwork for us to sign, and that then has to be looked over by RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell; but that's a piece of cake compared to what we've been doing all week."
Because of the completion of the process, distributors Premier Farnell and RS Components can finally begin to deliver the $35 mini-computer to customers who pre-ordered last month. The first batch should hit customer's hands in 10 days, says the company.
For $35 you get a 3.3-inch wide board with a 700 MHz ARM11, 256MB RAM, HDMI-out, SD card slot, a USB port, ethernet, audio jack and Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU.
According to initial sales indicators, the AT&T Lumia 900 is off to a solid start, a good sign for Nokia and its partner Microsoft who have put a significant amount of money into the Windows Phone project.
The sales are strong especially since the company launched the phone on Easter Sunday, when many AT&T stores were closed.
On Amazon's mobile list, the Lumia 900 took the top spot, beating out the Galaxy Nexus and Droid Razr Maxx. In fact, the black model of the Lumia 900 was in first place while the cyan model took second. On Amazon, the device is selling for just $50 with contract, while AT&T has similar promotions for the device which has a retail price of $100 with contract.
Even though the device was not available in stores on launch day, Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says "the advertising campaign coordination will be the most important factor to its longer term success."
Attorneys for the former top cyberlocker Megaupload have come out swinging, calling the criminal prosecution of the site's top executives "unduly adventurous," while accusing the government of trying to destroy evidence in the case.
"In essence, the government has taken what it wants from the scene of the alleged crime and is content that the remaining evidence, even if it is exculpatory or otherwise relevant to the defense, be destroyed,"says defense attorney Paul Brinkman.
A hearing on the court case, which is the largest copyright case ever, will focus on over 25 petabytes of data seized from 1100 servers in January.
The government has openly admitted to copying "selected data" from the servers and has now cleared hosting service Carpathia to delete the rest. Brinkman is accusing the government of "cherry picking" relevant data "to support its theories of criminal misconduct."
Megaupload and Carphathia set up a deal where the host would retain the data for an indefinite period for $1.5 million but the government will not unfreeze the $50 million in assets taken from CEO Kim Dotcom and other executives. The data currently costs Carpathia $9000 per day to host.
Netflix has announced the addition of a few 80s cartoons to its streaming library.
Among the shows coming to Netflix instantly are "My Little Pony," "Transformers Prime," "GI Joe: Renegades," "Pound Puppies," and "The Adventures of Chuck & Friends."
Additionally, "JEM & The Holograms," "Transformers: Generation 1," "G.I. Joe: Real American Heroes," "Transformers: Beast Wars "and "Transformers: Rescue Bots" will hit the catalog later in the year.
Financial details for the deal with Hasbro were not disclosed, and neither was the length of the contract.
Each of the shows will be hosted in the "Just for Kids" section, which launched last year.
Netflix has made many moves in the recent past, including getting exclusive first rights to the "The Artist," 2012's Academy Award for Best Picture.
Sony has forecasted a massive $6.4 billion annual net loss, well above their previous forecast of $3 billion.
The company will have to write off deferred tax credits leading to the loss, which is Sony's fourth in a row.
For the fiscal year ended March 2013, the company says it intends to have a profit of $2.2 billion, a number investors should surely appreciate.
Another Japanese-based titan, Sharp, posted a similar loss for the year this week, $4.67 billion.
New CEO Kaz Hirai has stated publicly that he is willing to take "painful steps" to return the company to profitability and has already announced 10,000 job cuts. The bane of the company is its TV business, which has lost $10 billion alone in the last decade.
Jack Tramiel, founder of the company behind the Commodore 64, died on Sunday. He was 83 years old.
Tramiel founded Commodore as a typewriter repair business. Eventually the company began selling their own typewriters and later branched out into adding machines and then calculators. As plummeting pocket calculator prices in the 1970s put pressure on companies like Commodore who had to buy their microchips from competitors like Texas Instruments, Tramiel decided to acquire integrated circuit manufacturer MOS Technologies.
MOS Technologies also provided Commodore with a new lead engineer who convinced Tramiel to get out of the calculator business in favor of home computers and the Commodore PET was born. Lacking color graphics or sound, the PET failed to attract home buyers but was fairly popular in schools. It also led to the development of the VIC-20 and later the Commodore 64.
The low prices of these new computers propelled Commodore to the top of the microcomputer market for several years. According to data compiled by Jeremy Reimer, which doesn't include VIC-20 sales, the Commodore 64 outsold the Apple II from its second year on the market in 1983 until both models ceased production in 1993.
28 companies have revealed support for the new "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (H.R. 3523)."
The act was introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and will "allow companies or the government free rein to bypass existing laws in order to monitor communications, filter content, or potentially even shut down access to online services for 'cybersecurity purposes,'" says the EFF. Furthermore, "companies are encouraged to share data with the government and with one another, and the government can share data in return. The idea is to facilitate detection of and defense against a serious cyber threat, but the definitions in the bill go well beyond that. The language is so broad it could be used as a blunt instrument to attack websites like The Pirate Bay or WikiLeaks."
CISPA is similar enough to the recently defeated SOPA and PIPA bills, both of which had good intentions for copyright holders but severely missed the mark in regards to privacy and censorship.
The 28 companies are:
AT&T
Boeing
BSA Business Roundtable
CSC
COMPTEL
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Edison Electric
EMC
Exelon
Facebook
The Financial Services Roundtable
IBM
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Intel Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
Microsoft National Cable & Telecommunications Association
NDIA
Oracle
Symantec
TechAmerica
US Chamber of Commerce
US Telecom - The Broadband Association
Verizon
Former Intel engineer Biswamohan Pani has pleaded guilty to stealing over $1 billion worth of internal information from the company in an effort to advance his own career.
Pani has plead guilty to five federal fraud counts for "stealing valuable computer chip manufacturing and design documents from his former employer" before moving to a competitor.
In May, 2008, Pani gave his two week's notice at Intel, and started working at AMD while retaining access to Intel's data system at the same time.
Reads the DOJ statement: "Unbeknownst to Intel, Pani had started downloading from Intel computers numerous secret documents about Intel's manufacturing and design of computer chips." Intel valued the documents stolen at almost $1 billion combined.
RIM will soon remove the ability to sideload apps on the BlackBerry Playbook in an effort to block piracy.
The future firmware update to the operating system will block all installation of apps not directly from the BlackBerry App World.
BlackBerry VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders, tweeted"piracy is a huge problem for Android devs, and we don't want to duplicate the chaotic cesspool of Android market" in response to a question about the update.
Saunders did note there would probably be a solution for devs who need to test their apps.
The exec also claimed that some developers have refused to work with RIM until sideloading is banned.
T-Mobile looks like it will be getting the HTC One S on April 25th.
The highly-anticipated device's release date is seen via an internal T-Mobile training document which explains that employees are already training on the Android device.
Additionally, the document says pricing and availability will be announced on the 16th. The device will be prominently placed in most retail stores, reads the page.
HTC's One S has a 960 x 540 Super AMOLED 4.3" screen and is powered by the extremely speedy and powerful Qualcomm S3 1.5 GHz dual-core processor.
Furthermore, the phone has integrated Beats Audio, a 8MP/1.3MP dual-camera setup, Android 4.0, HTC Sense 4.0 and a 7.9mm thin profile.
It appears that many readers were not fans of Mass Effect 3's unsatisfying ending, and many even accused the company of "disrespect."
Reads the Consumerist article: "Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank."
"There have even been numerous accusations that EA and its ilk deliberately hold back game content with the sole intent of charging a fee for it at a later date."
In response, EA had little to say: "We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."
EA beat out numerous other companies, taking a massive 64.03 percent of the vote and beating out Bank of America, AT&T, Facebook, Comcast, PayPal and Ticketmaster.
Sony has announced it will be cutting 10,000 jobs, 6 percent of its global workforce, in an effort to return to profitability.
The company has seen yearly losses for four straight years but new CEO Kazuo Hirai seems prepared to do anything to make sure the company turns its fortunes around.
Yen strength not seen since the 1940s and competition mainly from Samsung and other Korean manufacturers has led to the demise of Sony and other Japanese cos. like NEC. TV production in particular has been hit hard and Sony, Panasonic and Sharp are expected to have lost $17 billion during the last year alone, mainly on TVs.
The new job cuts will mainly "come from consolidating the firm's chemicals and small and midsize LCD operations."
Microsoft has announced today that they will purchase AOL's portfolio of patents for $1 billion.
The 800 patents will be purchased in full while 300 others will be licensed into the future.
Says AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: "We continue to hold a valuable patent portfolio as highlighted by the license we entered into with Microsoft. The combined sale and licensing arrangement unlocks current dollar value for our shareholders and enables AOL to continue to aggressively execute on our strategy to create long-term shareholder value."
AOL says it will return most of the sale to shareholders, likely in the form of a special dividend.
The company confirmed last week that it had received numerous buyout offers from private equity firms, with the firms wanting to take AOL private. Starboard Value, a hedge fund that owns 5 percent of AOL, had valued the patents at $1 billion and it appears they were right.
The massively popular photo-filter and sharing app has been sold to Facebook for the purchase price in cash and stock, just a week after becoming available on Android.
Says CEO Kevin Systrom of the move:
When Mike and I started Instagram nearly two years ago, we set out to change and improve the way the world communicates and shares. We've had an amazing time watching Instagram grow into a vibrant community of people from all around the globe. Today, we couldn't be happier to announce that Instagram has agreed to be acquired by Facebook.
Every day that passes, we see more experiences being shared through Instagram in ways that we never thought possible. It's because of our dedicated and talented team that we've gotten this far, and with the support and cross-pollination of ideas and talent at a place like Facebook, we hope to create an even more exciting future for Instagram and Facebook alike.
It's important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We'll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We'll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience.
The Instagram app will still be the same one you know and love. You'll still have all the same people you follow and that follow you. You'll still be able to share to other social networks. And you'll still have all the other features that make the app so fun and unique.
We?re psyched to be joining Facebook and are excited to build a better Instagram for everyone.
The European Union (EU) has proposed a new law that will criminalize hacking tools.
While the production or sale of certain hacking tools should certainly be banned, civil liberties advocates are up in arms over the proposed move, claiming that the law will make legitimate security researchers into criminals.
If passed, the law will impose a 5-year maximum jail sentence for hacking into a site or using a botnet of zombies for denial of service attacks, much stiffer penalties than what are currently allowed.
For the time being, the proposal has only passed the European Commission's Civil Liberties Committee and still has a long way to go before being signed into law.
Says EFF international rights director Katitza Rodriguez of the proposal (via Wired): "There are times when security researchers need to access systems without permission with no criminal intent. The language in these proposals could undermine legitimate research." Rodriguez believes that intent should first be taken into account before criminalization.
After just a couple of months since the company purchased Beats Audio and began bundling headphones with all new smartphone releases, HTC has decided to scrap the idea.
Says one HTC exec: "An accessory like the headphone doesn't factor in when someone is buying a smartphone. If they want a Beats headphone, they'll buy it directly."
HTC spent $300 million last year to acquire the majority stake in Beats. Beats has been panned by many as a gimmick, and real audiophiles say the software and hardware is no better than the regular audio seen in most smartphones.
The company does include Beats Audio support into all their new devices, and the tech is integrated into the music apps.
HTC says starting with the launch next week of the One X, there will be no more bundling for the immediate future, although execs have not completely shut the door.
Struggling smartphone maker HTC has released their quarterly earnings for the Q1 2012, and they were not pretty.
For the quarter, revenues were NT$67,790 million (about $2.3 billion), a full 35 percent decrease year-over-year. Quarter-over-quarter, the company saw an equally bad fall, down from NT$101.42 billion ($3.43 billion) in the Q4 2011.
The company at least remained profitable, with an after-tax NT$4,464 million ($151 million) net income. That profit was a 70 percent decline compared to the Q1 2011, a shocking fall.
HTC recently launched their One line of smartphones, each of which has come with rock solid reviews.
The new devices, along with the company's recent purchases of Beats Audio, SyncTV and MOG should help the smartphone maker regain some footing in the ever-competitive market.
Just a couple of weeks after Encyclopaedia Britannica decided to discontinue its print editions, the company was overwhelmed by orders of the final edition of the set.
The company says it is down to just 800 copies left, despite the set's $1395 price tag.
Says a company spokesman: "The size and duration of the spike has been a little bit stronger than we expected. The first couple of days, our phone lines were overloaded. The people who take the orders were here one night past 10 o'clock... the senior executive in that area was answering phones."
Over 1000 orders have been placed in the last two weeks, compared to an average of 60.
Original story:
Encyclopedia Britannica has announced it will stop producing its classic multi-volume book sets after 244 years in print.
The company printed a new set every two years but has announced there will be no 2012 edition, leaving 2010 as the last in the series. Into the future, the company will continue to update the encyclopedia digitally and produce education tools.
Says Britannica president Jorge Cauz: "Everyone will want to call this the end of an era, and I understand that. But there's no sad moment for us. I think outsiders are more nostalgic about the books than I am."
Last week, Microsoft announced that Xbox Live owners will be getting access to even more TV and movies, via partnerships with HBO Go, Comcast's Xfinity TV and Major League Baseball's MLB.TV.
Comcast has announced today that gamers will get access to HBO Go "early next week," finally, months after other ISPs made it available. Before this, Comcast users could only get HBO Go shows via the Xfinity on-demand service.
Each app will also be controllable with gesture or voice controls if you are using a Kinect device.
Microsoft recently noted that entertainment usage had actually surpassed multiplayer game usage on the Xbox 360.
MLB.TV will supply 2430 live games over the next baseball season, along with archives including all of last year's games. HBO GO, just like the desktop service, will bring HBO's entire catalog of original programming.
The Xbox 360 has 35 million Xbox Live users who pay for their subscriptions.
While the rumors of Apple releasing an "iPad Mini" with 7.85-inch screen have been around for years, notable blogger John Gruber has finally weighed on the rumor, confirming it.
Gruber is well-connected in the Apple world, and has been very accurate in the past.
The blogger says that Apple is indeed testing a prototype of the device, but has not yet decided on whether to release it.
If accurate, the prototype has 1024x768 resolution (equal to the first two iPad) and will likely run on the same A5X processor seen in the third-gen iPad just released last month.
While the rumors have persisted for years, there is little reason to believe Apple will ever release a smaller iPad. To get to their $199 price point for the Kindle Fire, Amazon had to cut a lot of corners and that is apparent with the tablet, despite its popularity. Apple's motto has always been to keep functionality at the highest level, even if the components in the device are outdated compared to other devices in the market. A "cheapened" iPad is something Apple will likely not stand for and unless they are sacrificing a lot of their margins and brand, there is little way they can compete on price.
According to an internal Apple document uncovered by 9to5mac, the new iPad is having some Wi-Fi issues.
Users have complained about slow download and upload speeds, dropped connections and a complete inability to find Wi-Fi networks to start.
There is also a thread in the official Apple support forums that has 715 responses about the Wi-Fi issues with the new flagship tablet.
The site does note that the 4G LTE models are likely without issue 'due to the extra network power allowed by the black rubber cut on the top of the unit."
The group behind the CyanogenModAndroid custom ROM has unveiled a new mascot for the operating system.
Dubbed CID (short for Cyanogen ID), the mascot represents "each user's unique place in [the] community."
Over the past few years, CyanogenMod has grown from a small project run by a handful of people to a full blown AOSP that is available across dozens of devices in various versions.
Says the group: "THIS NEW MASCOT WILL BE UNIQUE FOR CYANOGENMOD AND PROVIDE AN IDENTITY AND ATTITUDE BY WHICH THE PROJECT CAN CONTINUE TO DEVELOP A MATURE ANDROID OS."
In its latest CyanogenMod 9, which is based on Android 4.0 ICS, the group has created its own Trebuchet launcher instead of the third-party ADW, and created its own Music app. There are also rumors that the group will have their own app store which will offer apps that are not allowed or have been banned from the Google Play Store.
Doctor Web, the Russian anti-virus company has concluded this week that over 500,000 Mac computers are infected with the BackDoor.Flashback trojan and are now part of a botnet.
Most of the Mac OS X devices infected are in Canada and the U.S and should refute the claim of Apple fans that Macs cannot be hit by malware.
The vendor says that the systems are infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 "after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system." JavaScript code will then be run with the exploit. Some of the sites that will infect the computers are godofwar3.rr.nu, ironmanvideo.rr.nu, killaoftime.rr.nu, gangstasparadise.rr.nu, mystreamvideo.rr.nu, bestustreamtv.rr.nu, ustreambesttv.rr.nu, ustreamtvonline.rr.nu, ustream-tv.rr.nu and ustream.rr.nu.
Those are just a few of the sites, and Doctor Web says there can be thousands of compromised web-pages.
The spread of the Trojan began in February, and Apple only just closed the vulnerabilities this week.
For a more technical look, check here: Dr Web news
Last year, a historical flood in Thailand left 13 million people homeless and a significant amount of factories with over 3 feet of water.
Many of those factories were used to produce hard drives and the flood has led to a industry that has huge demand and small supply equaling bad news for consumers. In fact, over a few months, average prices on HDDs rose 47 percent, taking Western Digital's margins from 19 percent to a healthy 32 percent, even more than Apple makes on some of its devices.
Today, research firm IDC says that although supply is coming back quickly, the HDD makers are in no rush to drop the prices back to pre-flood times.
Says IDC: "HDD vendors are taking advantage of this opportunity to reset prices and recover some of the excessive price erosion that began in 2009." John Rydning of IDC says the higher margins will let HDD makers create new tech into the future, but the R&D now will likely not be seen in consumer products for another two years.
The accused LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger has plead guilty today to charges related to the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Kretsinger plead guilty to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in his deal.
The hacker had previously pleaded not guilty.
Kretsinger was arrested last September, months before the recent raid on the "leaders" of the group. The hacker had been charged with conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer and pleaded not guilty at the time for both counts.
Known as "recursion," the hacker admitted to hacking Sony Pictures via SQL injection.
Jeffries analyst Peter Misek has put out a new Apple note today to clients, with his expectations for the highly-anticipated Apple television set.
In his note, the analyst raised his stock price target to $800 per share, specifically citing the television set in his forecast.
Misek believes Apple will call the TV "iPanel," wish would be a rather bland name but follow the naming scheme of its other iOS devices. Many had expected the set to be called iTV but the company ITV has already let it be known there will be a lawsuit if Apple chooses that route.
The analyst believes the TV will sell for $1250, leaving Apple with a 30 percent gross margin. He has forecasted 2 million unit sales for the holiday period.
Apple has still not confirmed the TV, but before his death Steve Jobs told his biographer that Apple "had finally cracked it," in regards to the set. It is expected to run iOS, have Siri, voice controls, an a la carte channel offering and integration to all other Apple offerings.
A company called United Vision Marketing Firm has offered to acquire struggling BlackBerry maker RIM.
Dr. Nono Pearson (pictured), a former DJ and someone who claims has "the copyrights to prove that he is the owner of what he calls 'Corporate Hip Hop,'" is behind the offer.
How the offer will work is as follows: In an all stock swap deal, UVMF will acquire RIM assets and then leverage that by swapping shares in UVMF's upcoming IPO.
The company is currently working on the "Pearson Education Tablet," which we can only assume is a tablet aimed at high school or college students.
"In past bubbles we have seen many firms receive high valuations without having a true business model for sustainable growth. This model is what caused the final domino to fall in 1929 to create the great depression, shortly after a temporary credit fix that eventually came to an end. We are continuously hyping economic predictions in sectors such as education, technology, and finance; in which there are little to no real sustainable growth strategies for the future. Most of our youth are unengaged with many of these products or simply just can't afford them. Soon the bottom will fall out of that trend if we don't face the truth. United Vision Marketing Firm has the innovative business model to help create real sustainable growth for our clients. Our most valued asset is having the human capital that has the passion to actually go out and develop the markets. We fully understand having that kind of leverage alone is priceless," says Dr. Nono C. Pearson of the move.
The well-connected blogger has said today in a tweet that the upcoming device already has 10 million pre-orders around the globe.
Making that number notable is the fact that it took Samsung about 5 months to sell 10 million Galaxy S II, and the device is a huge success in the smartphone world.
The alleged specs of the new smartphone is that it will be smaller and narrower than its predecessor at 131 x 64 x 8 mm. The device will weigh just 0.27 pounds, as well.
Featured specs are a large 4.7-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with 1280 x 720 resolution, a 1.5Ghz quad-core Samsung processor, 1GB RAM, Android 4.0.x, dual-cameras (12MP/1.3MP), 32GB internal storage and a decently sized 1750 mAh battery.
Music identification app Shazam has been updated for iOS this week, with version 5.0 bringing significant upgrades and features.
The app can now take just 1 second to successfully tag a music track, and can also find TV content.
Older versions of the app took as long as 30 seconds for tagging.
Along with the new speed boosts, the app has "improved" sharing with social networks while also adding Brazilian Portugese, Korean, and Spanish to the language support.
"We are committed to continually enhancing the Shazam App to ensure we deliver an industry-leading experience," said Alex Musil, EVP Product for Shazam. "With the release of Shazam 5.0 for iPhone and iPod touch, Shazam fans will be able to get the information they're looking for almost instantaneously, giving them lightning-fast access to content and a deeper experience surrounding the song, TV show or TV advertisement they have just tagged. Shazam delivers the fastest and most exciting way to discover, explore, purchase and share music, access more content about television shows, and get more information and even buy products and services from the world?s leading brands."
MetroPCS has announced that its unlimited-everything plan will be getting a price hike, and others will get throttling.
The plan, which used to cost $60, will now cost $70 per month. For $70, users get unlimited voice calls, texting, 4G LTE data, email and Rhapsody and MetroStudio video on-demand. The music or video services are new additions, and may be worth the extra price as they normally cost $10 per month, each.
Metro's $60 unlimited plan, which removes the MetroStudio, will begin throttling data after 5GB. The $50 unlimited plan will throttle after 2.5GB and removes both Rhapsody and MetroStudio. A $40 plan is available but speeds are throttled after just 250MB.
Says the regional carrier: "Even though 4G LTE speeds may be reduced, because of the 'always on' nature of our 4G LTE network, the experience for the majority of what a customer does on a daily basis, like Facebook, web surfing, etc., should continue to be solid."
The U.S.' third-largest carrier, Sprint, has confirmed today that its 4G LTE network will remain unlimited to subscribers, just like their 3G and WiMax networks are.
Rep Nichole Cappitelli confirmed the fact that LTE data plans would still have an unlimited option.
Sprint is rolling out their LTE network starting next year, after a failed experiment with the 4G-esque WiMAX.
The carrier remains the only of the majors to have a truly unlimited experience, as Verizon and AT&T have moved to tiered pricing and T-Mobile throttles data after 2GB of monthly usage.
Grooveshark has confirmed today that it has terminated its licensing contract with EMI, leaving the music streaming service with an uncertain future.
Says the company (Cnet): "Grooveshark was recently forced to make the difficult decision to part ways with EMI due to EMI's currently unsustainable streaming rates and EMI's pending merger with Universal Music Group, which we consider monopolistic and in violation of antitrust laws. To date, Grooveshark has paid over $2.6 million to EMI, but we have yet to find sustainable streaming rates."
The company has now lost support from the Big 4 labels and there is a pending lawsuit from each of them, as well. EMI also claims Grooveshark owes the label over $100,000.
While Grooveshark will now have to take down EMI's original recordings, but the music will most likely remain since user contributions are allowed on the service and not taken down until a DMCA notice is received by the service.
Google and Paramount Pictures have signed a licensing agreement for 500 films, bringing the movies to YouTube and Google Play in the U.S. and Canada.
With the deal, Google's catalog will jump to 8950 movies available. Most of the movies will be available for rental immediately, but some will be added over the next few months.
Says Malik Ducard, director of content partnerships at YouTube (via THR): "Paramount Pictures is one of the biggest movies studios on the planet. We're thrilled to bring nearly 500 of their films to movie fans in the U.S. and Canada on YouTube and Google Play."
Google currently has deals with Disney, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and 10 indie companies.
Making the deal somewhat funny is the fact that Paramount is owned by Viacom, who is currently in the appeal stage of a billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement.
Last month, Yahoo sued Facebook over patent infringement. Today, Facebook has returned the favor.
Says the social networking giant: "From the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo's lawsuit, and today we filed our answer as well as counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing ten of Facebook's patents. While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo's short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation."
Yahoo, in their original suit, said the patents are related to methods and systems for advertising on the Internet. The new suit accuses Yahoo of infringing on patents relating to its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service and advertising.
Yahoo's response to the suit: "We have only just received Facebook's answer and counterclaims, but on their face we believe they are without merit and nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract from the weakness of its defense. As we have made clear from the outset, the unauthorized use of our patented technology is unacceptable and must be resolved appropriately. Other leading companies license these technologies, and Facebook must do the same or change the way it operates. We have proposed that Facebook join us in discussions to resolve the matter, but our overtures have been rejected. As a result, we are prepared to continue to seek redress through the courts."
According to the latest figures from comScore, Android now controls over 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.
Up 17 points from last year, Android is now on 50.4 percent of all smartphones in America. The research firm says there are now 104 million smartphone users in the nation.
iPhone ownership has grown, as well, now taking 30 percent share, up 5 points from last year.
RIM, the maker of BlackBerrys, fell to 13 percent share, and Microsoft took 4 percent share. RIM has seen the largest decline over the years, falling from over 40 percent in 2008 before the launch of the iPhone to its 13 percent today.
Microsoft, with a new partnership with Nokia, is looking to take more share of the smartphone market and the Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T is the group's first flagship for the U.S.
Amazon has announced that its Prime Instant Video streaming service is now available on the PlayStation 3.
Says the e-tailer:
Good news -- Prime Instant Video is now available on PlayStation 3. Since launching a year ago, we've more than tripled our library, including titles such as Sons of Anarchy, Downton Abbey, Lost, Glee, 24, Deadliest Catch, SpongeBob SquarePants, Office Space, The Graduate, The Last Emperor, The Thin Red Line, The Last of the Mohicans, and Brokeback Mountain.
Prime members get unlimited instant streaming of these titles and 17,000 more. If you're already a Prime member, just register your PlayStation 3 and start watching now. If not, start your one-month free trial of Amazon Prime today.
Amazon Prime is a $79 per year service offered by the company to customers who want to take advantage of free 2-day shipping and $3.99 same-day or overnight shipping on all items sold or fulfilled by Amazon.
You can also rent or buy 120,000 movies and TV episodes.
Citing an email obtained by the editor, the launch is expected for November 18th in North America, with a Japanese launch a week afterwards.
The email was sent to Japanese retailer Media Land's employees.
Nintendo has remained very quiet about the Wii U since its big splash during last year's E3 event. The company confirmed a 2012 release but this is the first we have heard of a more concrete date.
In 2006, the gaming giant released the Wii on November 19th so the rumor at least makes sense. However, the company almost always releases its consoles in its home nation of Japan before the U.S. so take this with a grain of salt.
In an interview today with CNBC, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has said he believes RIM is "going out of business."
The analyst was asked whether he thought there was room in the market for the BlackBerry maker, which he flatly answered "No."
RIM recently had a terrible earnings quarter, showing a loss of $125 million compared to a profit of $1 billion in the same period last year. The company's new BlackBerry 10 devices have been delayed for so long that they are already outdated and are still months away from release.
Additionally, the analyst says Apple stock shares will head to $1000 a share, making the company close to being worth $1 trillion.
On the Windows Phone front, Munster says Nokia and Microsoft are strong together but the market has become a "two-horse race between Apple and Samsung."
Late last month, Instagram, the massively popular photo-filter and sharing app, made a signup page available for would-be early adopters of the application for Android.
As of an hour ago, anyone who signed up to be notified has received an email to download the application.
When demoing the app, co-founder Kevin Systrom noted that "in some ways, it's better than our iOS app. It's crazy." The app will give Android owners a chance to share their filtered photos on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and other social networks in addition to email and messaging.
Despite not being on too many devices as of yet, Android 4.x Ice Cream Sandwich is being adopted more quickly.
For the two-week period ended April 2nd, ICS jumped to 2.9 percent share, compared to 1.6 percent share beforehand.
ICS was only at 1 percent as of February, thanks to being available only on the Galaxy Nexus and the Asus Transformer Prime, but a consistent rollout is making the distribution of the OS pick up quickly.
The number is of course, still tiny, but the jump is promising for Google's biggest update of the operating system.
Android 2.3 Gingerbread remains the leader, at 63.7 percent, followed by Froyo (2.2) at 23.1 percent.
According to sources cited by VG247, the Xbox Next (codenamed Durango) will launch in time for the holidays of 2013.
Additionally, the console will come standard with a Blu-ray drive, say the sources.
On a darker note, however, the sources say Microsoft will require an "always-on" Internet connection in an effort to block out piracy. The DRM scheme, which has been seen on PC games from Ubisoft, requires gamers to have an active Internet connection, even if playing in single-player mode.
More notably are the specs expected for the upcoming console. The sources says the machine will have two GPUs, be variants of the AMD 7000 series, but not run in an SLI/CrossFire formation. Instead, the GPUs "will be able to work independently, drawing separate items simultaneously."
Additionally, the new console will have "four or six cores," with one devoted to Kinect and one reserved for the OS.
If you scroll to the bottom of the "General" tab in the Windows 8 settings page, you can choose one of two actions if your computer is running sluggishly or has been taken over by malware.
The first option is a PC "refresh," which will re-install Windows 8 without removing your system data or files. The option will even leave some of your apps unaffected.
A second option is to completely start fresh, with a "reset," which will remove all data from the PC and restore it to its factory state. The Reset option is very similar to what is available on ultrabooks, which have custom versions of Windows and protected partitions to allow for quick reformats to factory "out of the box" condition.
The new options will be similar to how Android and iOS smartphones/tablets allow you to quickly wipe your data and start fresh with just one or two clicks.
In the U.S., the different colors will be available at exclusive retailers. GameStop will have Blue, Walmart will have Red and Best Buy/Microsoft Stores will have Silver.
Despite their report that the new third-generation iPad has overheating issues, Consumer Reports has rated the device its top tablet.
After testing competing devices, including Android tablets like the Galaxy Tab 10.1, the site says the higher temperatures was common and should not be a cause for concern, unless you are playing a processor-intensive game on full brightness.
The group says at maximum brightness, playing a game like Infinity Blade II, on a hot day, the tablet will top out at 122 degrees, higher than predecessors and Android competitors, but not by much.
Apple has sold over 3 million units since launch in March, and the company is the clear market leader in the 10-inch tablet market.
In its report, the group recommended the tablet along with some others, including the Sony Tablet P and the one-pound heavy Toshiba Excite 10LE.
Earlier this year, tech giant LG Electronics introduced the world's first 55-inch OLED HDTV.
The TVs finally have a release date, at least for Europe, where they will go on sale on May 16th.
LG has priced the TV at nine million won ($8000), and the TV will have an unveiling party in Cannes where they will hold a movie premier at the much-heralded film festival.
"Starting in Europe, the company plans to advance marketing activities of its OLED TVs worldwide," said LG in a statement. The company had originally planned to release the TV in the fall but management believes a launch now will give the company the benefit of seasonal demand before the London Olympic Games from July 28 to August 12.
Said Beom Han, CEO and Executive Vice President of LG Display when the devices were introduced: "Our objective has always been to actively define and lead emerging display technology markets. Although OLED technology is seen as the future of TV display, the technology has been limited to smaller display sizes and by high costs, until now. LG Display's 55-inch OLED TV panel has overcome these barriers."
Even though the consoles had been restored to factory settings, security researchers at Drexel University and Dakota State University were able to easily find credit card and other personal info.
Ashley Podhradsky, Rob D'Ovidio, and Cindy Casey of Drexel University, along with Pat Engebretson at Dakota State University purchased a refurbished Xbox 360 from a Microsoft-authorized retailer and used a very basic modding tool to gain access to the previous owner's credit card info, even though the hard drive had been wiped and the console restored to factory settings.
Says Podhradsky: "Microsoft does a great job of protecting their proprietary information. But they don't do a great job of protecting the user's data. A lot of them already know how to do all this. Anyone can freely download a lot of this software, essentially pick up a discarded game console, and have someone's identity."
Microsoft says it is investigating the case: "We are conducting a thorough investigation into the researchers' claims. We have requested information that will allow us to investigate the console in question and have still not received the information needed to replicate the researchers' claims. Xbox is not designed to store credit card data locally on the console, and as such seems unlikely credit card data was recovered by the method described. Additionally, when Microsoft refurbishes used consoles we have processes in place to wipe the local hard drives of any other user data. We can assure Xbox owners we take the privacy and security of their personal data very seriously."
Although AT&T and HTC have kept quiet on the launch date of the new One X flagship device, Best Buy has let slip that the device will be released on May 6th.
The leak comes via a customer who pre-ordered the device and received a confirmation email with the stated date.
For now the date is unconfirmed, but it fits into HTC's timeframe given when the phone was introduced.
The device has a large 4.7-inch display with 1,280x720-pixelHDresolution and Gorilla Glass. The phone runs on Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, and the phone maker has decided to keep three buttons, one for back, home and running/recent apps. Due to its large screen, the device is 0.36-inches thick, putting it on par with the Windows Phone-powered HTC Titan.
Microsoft has proudly announced that their Internet Explorer browser gained market share in March, one of only a few times in the last five years they have showed a gain in that area.
The figures come via independent research firm Net Applications, who produces reports each month.
On a smaller scale, Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7, which the company calls a "core metric," increased significantly, with over 50 percent of all Windows 7 users now running that specific version of the browser.
For the month, IE moved to 53.83 percent global share, up from 52.81 percent in February.
Firefox and Chrome each lost share, and remain neck-and-neck on a global scale. Firefox fell from 20.92 percent to 20.55 while Chrome fell from 18.90 to 18.55 percent.
TalkAndroid is reporting today that Google's upcoming "Google Drive" cloud service will give users 5GB of free storage, right from the start.
Last week, we reported that Google's oft-rumored service would finally be launching, in April, with just 1GB for starters.
The new rumor suggests the Drive will be launched on April 16th, free to everyone with a Gmail or Google login.
Market leader Dropbox offers 2GB of storage and easy ways to gain more. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft also offer cloud solutions with free storage, although each have their own pros and cons.
Although unconfirmed, the Google Drive API is expected to allow third-party apps to store data to your Drive, which would be a fantastic addition for Android owners. If accurate, you could back up all your apps and data right to Drive and restore it from another device when you log in, similar to how Titanium Backup uses Dropbox if you have a rooted device.
According to Variety, Ashton Kutcher will play former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an independent biopic directed by Joshua Michael Stern.
The film will follow Job's teen life up until his time as CEO of the world's most valuable company.
Kutcher will begin filming in May while the actor is on break from 'Two and a Half Men.' Five Star Institute's Mark Hulme is financing and will produce the movie.
The film will be independent of the Sony Pictures blockbuster which will be based on the best-selling Walter Isaacson book that was released just a month after the entrepreneur's death.
Given the date for the story, many believed it must be a hoax, but the story has since been confirmed.
The Nokia Lumia 900 has gone up for pre-order through AT&T and Wal-Mart.
AT&T's new flagship Windows Phone device will be free for new subscribers through AT&T and just $49.99 through Wal-Mart with contract.
The device will be released on April 8th in the U.S. Nokia said the phone is the first to be designed specifically for the North American market.
With 2-year contract (for existing subscribers), the Lumia 900 will sell for just $100, well below the price of other 4G LTE smartphones, which sell for $200 with contract on AT&T and up to $300 with contract on Verizon. The Lumia 900 is also the first LTE Windows Phone smartphone to reach the States.
Black and blue models will go up for sale at launch, while a white model will go on sale on April 22nd. Pre-orders begin on Friday.
The Lumia 900 has 4.3-inch AMOLED display, 1.4GHz single-core processor, Nokia's ClearBlack technology, LTE support, an 1830 mAh battery, 512MB RAM, 16GB internal storage and an 8MP Carl Zeiss camera with large aperture (F2.2) and wide angle focal length (28mm). The phone also has a 1MP front facing camera.
Just months after the shut down of the world's top cyberlocker Megaupload, Paramount Picture's has sent the MPAA and U.S. DOJ a list of 5 "rogue" file-sharing sites that should be shut down next.
The lucky handful are Fileserve, MediaFire, Wupload, Putlocker and Depositfiles.
Sites like Fileserve and Filesonic (which did not make the list) almost immediately shut down their affiliate programs and sharing capabilities after the raid on Megaupload and other lockers cut off access to U.S. visitors.
The MPAA defines a rogue cyberlocker as such: "Rogue cyberlockers aren't just distribution hubs for stolen movies and TV shows - both the users who upload content and the operators who run the sites can earn money from doing so. As Internet video traffic grows, the threat from rogue cyberlockers that profit from stolen content is rising rapidly."
Paramount says the 5 cyberlockers in question receive a massive 41 billion page views every year and are "criminal" in nature. Each of the sites have been referred to the Department of Justice but it is unlikely that any action can be taken until the government can get through its case against Megaupload.
So called "white-box" phone makers are being shut out of the Chinese market, as large player like ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei release smartphones for under 1000 yuan ($150 USD).
Other big players, like Samsung and Nokia, are also reducing their prices in the nation in an effort to take market share.
"White-box" handset makers, who create un-branded phones that clone popular Android (and other smartphone OS) devices, will likely see a 30 percent drop in their sales in 2012, says Digitimes. A few hundred are even expected to go bankrupt over the next year.
Not helping their case is the fact that Chinese carriers are aggressively subsidizing Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei phones, allowing them to compete price-wise. Brand recognition has also increased exponentially in the nation, leading to more demand for branded phones from big-time smartphone makers.
A week after filing for bankruptcy, the UK-based retailer Game Group has been sold to private investors.
On March 26th, GAME's UK and Ireland operations were turned over to Pricewaterhousecoopers, the massive accounting firm.
The company is behind the brands of GAME Group plc, Game Stores Group Limited, Gameplay (GB) Limited, Game (Stores) Limited, Games Station Limited, Game (retail) Limited and Gamestation Limited.
Baker Acquisitions Limited, backed by private investment company OpCapita, has purchased the rest of GAME's UK assets, saving all 333 remaining GAME and Gamestations in the UK and 3200 jobs. 277 of the company's 610 stores had already been shuttered while 2,104 employees got laid off. Baker will also re-hire a "small number" of executives who were laid off last week.
The acquiring company is said to have purchased GAME for just £1, as the group will have to pay off £85 million in debt.
Says a Baker rep: "We have assembled a strong team of experienced industry operators to implement the programme of operational change that is needed. There is a huge amount to do but we look forward to the challenge of restoring GAME's fortunes in partnership with its employees and suppliers."
Rovio has announced today that it will be creating an animated series based on its popular Angry Birds game.
The series will be weekly starting in Autumn, with 52 episodes planned. Each episode will be about 2.5-3 minutes long.
Says Rovio animation boss Nick Dorra: "We're going to roll out a weekly animation series later this year of shortform content. We're going to roll it out on all possible devices."
"We're looking at building a video app for that, and we're also looking at partnerships and so on... We want to be on all screens."
One such partnership is the deal Rovio announced at CES with Samsung to have a Rovio channel on all new Samsung SmartTV web-connected TVs.
The new announcement comes six months after the developer purchased Finnish animation studio Kombo.
Dorra also hinted that an Angry Birds movie is coming, but not until after 2014.
Last week, AOL hired Evercore Partners to help it sell its 800-strong patent portfolio.
The company confirmed it has received numerous buyout offers from private equity firms, with the firms wanting to take AOL private. Such firms include Providence Equity Partners Inc, TPG Capital and Silver Lake. At the time, Starboard Value, a hedge fund that owns 5 percent of AOL, said the firms believe AOL's patent portfolio could bring in over $1 billion in licensing income if used correctly.
Today, the patent advisory firm M-Cam has said the patents are worth about $290 million, a significantly smaller figure than the hedge fund hoped for.
AOL was once valued at over $100 billion but now has a market cap of just $1.75 billion thanks to slowing advertising growth and the decade-long decline of dial-up revenue.
Stupid purchases, like $800 million for Bebo, certainly has not helped the company's fortunes either.
The High Court has ruled today that UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay.
Struggling mobile phone maker 
