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Motorola Mobility handsets infringe Microsoft patent.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has found that several Android handsets made by Motorola Mobility violate a single patent held by Microsoft. A trade panel announced on Friday that Motorola Mobility smartphones will be barred from import into the United States.

The order has been sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days in which he can decide to overturn it.

The ITC has gotten many cases related to the import of smartphones, as manufacturers fight to get their slice of the growing pie.

The ITC did not say which Motorola Mobility handsets would be blocked from import into the country. Microsoft had requested that the following devices be stopped at U.S. borders: Atrix, Backflip, Bravo, Charm, Cliq, Cliq 2, Cliq XT, Defy, Devour, Droid 2, Droid 2 Global, Droid Pro, Droid X, Droid X2, Flipout, Flipside, Spice and the Xoom tablet.

"We hope that now Motorola will be willing to join the vast majority of Android device makers selling phones in the US by taking a license to our patents," a Microsoft spokeswoman said.

Android.Opfake rips off mostly Russian users.

Symantec reports hundreds of fake websites, some which appear to be websites dedicated to specific popular apps, while others pretend to be app market sites.

When a user downloads an installation file, it appears to install the app on the device, but then redirects the user to Google Play, where they can download the app for free. By this time, the first installation - which was the malicious software - has already sent off a premium SMS message and the user will be charged for it.

Symantec has repeated its call (and that of all security software peddlers) for users to install apps only from trusted sources, and also to read the permissions that are requested by app.

It points out, as an example, that a game usually would not require the ability to send SMS messages. If you are uncomfortable with the permissions required by any apps, from any source, you should opt not to install them.

Serious questions raised about Nokia's future.

The Finnish mobile phone giant has been working to try and stabilize its finances. Over its past five quarters, it has wiped out €2.1 billion (about $2.7 billion) of its cash reserves. In a couple of years, it may burn through its total €4.9 billion reserves, analysts warn.

The cost of Nokia's debt has been rising, as questions about its ability to service its debt have been raised. "In our opinion, the company's ability to repay even its shorter-term 2014 bond could be an issue," said Societe General credit analyst Juliano Torii.

In 2007, Nokia had €10 billion in cash reserves. In 2014, it has €1.25 billion of 5.5 percent bonds maturing, followed by ?500 million of 6.75 percent notes due in 2019. Both are junk rated by Fitch and Standard & Poor's.

It is also getting increasingly expensive to insure against a Nokia default.

The company had hoped its Lumia handsets would help it to gain a larger share of the smartphone market, as it attempts to catch up with Apple and manufacturers of Android handsets. "Nokia's Lumia was an attempt to catch up, but it was simply too little too late," said Nancy Utterback, credit strategist at Aviva Investors.

Official warns Facebook investors.

Thilo Weichert, the data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, was quoted as saying that if European privacy protection authorities have their way, that Facebook's business model will "implode."

He warned potential investors that Facebook's high valuation is based on practices that are in violation of European regulations that govern how business can utilize user data.

He is quoted as saying that it is possible Facebook will be ordered to stop transferring European user information to the United States.

In Facebook's own IPO prospectus, it warned potential investors that it is subject to complex and evolving laws and regulations regarding privacy, in both the United States and in foreign countries.

Zynga's stock plunges on Friday.

The social gaming company saw the value of its shares drop sharply at times on Friday, prompting two automatic halts in their trade. A 13.3 percent drop to $7.17 a share followed Facebook's IPO. After trading restarted, the stock rose to $7.80 per share but trading halted again.

It was speculated that the drop was due to Facebook's stock not shooting up in value immediately as had been previously expected, or that Zynga shareholders were dumping their shares to invest in Facebook instead.

Zynga relies heavily on revenue generated by Facebook users. It was not the only company that was effected on Friday by the Facebook IPO. LinkedIn, Yelp, and China's Renren (social network) saw some significant drops throughout the day too.

Zynga's stock finished the day at $7.16 per share (down 13.4 percent), it's lowest level yet.

vKontakte loses copyright case appeal.

The earlier ruling had found that vKontakte's peer to peer integration, which allowed users to share all kinds of media files, breached copyright laws in Russia.

The P2P abilities have made vKontakte very popular in the country, providing it with an edge over competitors in the social networking space. The case was brought against vKontakte by the EMI Group, which complained that vKontakte users were sharing their music without authorisation.

"This judgment sends a clear signal to those in Russia that seek to build their businesses on the back of other people's content. We urge vKontakte to take immediate steps to stop its service being used to infringe copyright on a massive scale," said Frances Moore, chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

"Widespread digital piracy is preventing Russia from developing a thriving legitimate digital music sector and this in turn denies Russian artists a chance of success and starves them of investment by producers."

vKontakte is a business that has been valued at between US$1.5 and US$3 billion

Anonymous attacks Indian government, anti-piracy organization.

Anti-piracy group Copyrightlabs won a court order that forced Indian ISPs and mobile carriers to block websites which allowed users to download Bollywood titles 3 and Dhammu. The order led to Vimeo, DailyMotion and The Pirate Bay being blocked in the country.

The order came into force in mid-May, prompting Anonymous to attack 14 separate government and political sites. Targets included the Indian telecoms department, electronics and IT ministry, supreme court and sites used by the BJP and INC political parties. The Copyrightlabs website was also forced offline.

Anonymous used Twitter to explain that the actions were retaliation for the censorship enforced in India.

The tactic had only partial success as most of the sites targeted soon recovered and were only offline intermittently.

Twitter says it will honor users' request not to be tracked.

Many major web browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari browser have a 'Do Not Track' feature built in. If enabled, the browsers will send code to websites that are visited, designed to alert them that the user does not wish to have his/her data tracked.

Even though the Do Not Track initiative is heavily promoted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, it is still up to individual websites to choose whether to honor it or not, under current regulations.

Facebook and Google rely heavily on user data, and so neither honor Do Not Track requests. Twitter has moved to set itself apart from others by making it policy to honor requests by browsers not to record user data.

"As always, we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience," Twitter's Director, Growth and International, Othman Laraki, said on Thursday.

"For those who don't want to tailor Twitter, we offer ways to turn off this collection."

ZTE confirms bizarre security vulnerability.

An anonymous post made to Pastebin a week ago got Android forums buzzing, and caught our attention too. It described a root backdoor that was present in the ZTE Score on MetroPCS in the United States. All an app needed was a default password and it could gain root access to the device without any user interaction at all.

"I've never seen it before," said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, describing the vulnerability as "highly unusual."

While the problem has been known about since last week, it has only been confirmed today by ZTE and reported by the mainstream media. The Chinese firm said it was working on a patch.

"ZTE is actively working on a security patch and expects to send the update over-the-air to affected users in the very near future," ZTE said in an statement. "We strongly urge affected users to download and install the patch as soon as it is rolled out to their devices."

Despite hype not seen since Google's IPO in 2004, Facebook's debut in the market has failed to impress investors with shares up just 2 percent as of writing.

Priced initially at $38, giving the company a value of $104 billion, the shares are now trading at $39, leaving the social networking giant with a $107 billion valuation.

Says one market broker: "We have got some unhappy guys out there. They were hoping for Facebook to be considerably better. I bet there are a lot of disappointed people in the market."

The stock jumped as high as $45 today but has quickly returned to earth. Popularity of the shares are certainly not to blame as 450 million have already traded and the NASDAQ is even having issues filling orders due to such huge demand.

Facebook, like other Internet-based companies in the new "social bubble" will trade at a massive premium to its earnings. While companies like Apple trade at just 14 times what they bring in, Facebook will trade at 107 times.

The site has 920 million users.

Yahoo is preparing to sell off its most profitable venture of all time.

The portal company seems finally ready to part with Chinese giant Alibaba, selling their 40 percent stake for an expected $7 billion.

If accurate, the reports say the deal could be announced on Monday.

After taxes, Yahoo will use all of the money to buy back their own stock.

On the other end, Alibaba will then move towards an IPO. Yahoo Japan (which is a separate company) will then sell 25 percent share, leaving the company on its own with the exception of a small 10 percent share owned by Yahoo Japan.

Samsung has noted that the company has seen 9 million pre-orders for its upcoming Galaxy S III smartphone.

The orders have come in from over 100 global carriers, making the device a massive success even a month before launch in most places. The device goes on sale in Germany first on May 29th.

Furthermore, the company's smartphone factory in South Korea was said to be running at full capacity of 5 million units per month.

The device has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an 8MP camera, all of which are high-end but not leaps and bounds better than previous generation devices.

However, what should differentiate the phone from others in the market is its software, which Samsung has customized and tweaked to the point where it does not feel too much like the stock "vanilla" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you may be accustomed to.

Simon & Schuster have settled their long standing ebook price fixing case.

Earlier in the year, the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Simon & Schuster and four other major publishers, as well as Apple over the alleged price fixing.

Additionally, 15 states and Puerto Rico filed their own suits. HarperCollins and Hachette quickly reached agreements to avoid court while S&S needed to "discuss" their settlement. Penguin and Apple are fighting the charges.

As of today, however, US District Court Judge Denise Cote agreed to dismiss S&S from the suit as the settlement was reached with the states and the fed.

The case stretches back to 2010 with the debut of the first iPad from Apple. The tablet quickly became a competitor for Amazon's Kindle line of e-readers. Amazon had been charging low prices ($9.99 for new releases) in order to push up purchases of its electronic readers.

Publishers were concerned about Amazon selling e-books at such low prices (often sold for less than Amazon paid for them) because consumers might become accustomed to the lower prices. Also, publishers feared being in the same situation as record labels were in when iTunes picked up stream, but Apple insisted on keeping single song costs at 99c. Amazon offering consistently steep discounts might discourage other traditional retail partners from offering e-books altogether, alleged the suit.

Earlier today, Iran's Foreign Ministry threatened to sue Google after the search giant removed the name "Persian Gulf" from its Google Maps service.

Says a Ministry spokesperson: "One of the seditionist acts taken as part of the soft war against the Iranian nation has been Google's shameless act to drop the name 'Persian Gulf' which is ... against historical documents. We have put on our agenda to make an official complaint against Google."

The Gulf itself has long been a controversial topic, with Iran calling it the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Iraq calling it the Arabian Gulf. Different descriptions offend the rival parties and it looks like Google likely just removed the name to remove a potentially offensive adjective.

This is not the first time Iran has pulled such a stunt. In 2010, the nation tried to ban any airline from its airspace if it did not call the waterway the Persian Gulf.

Amazon is looking to add advertisements to the welcome screen of the popular Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.

The news comes via an executive at an ad agency who says Amazon approached them. The ads will not come cheap, however, with an agency needing to spend at least $600,000 for any package on the tablet.

Each ad campaign will run for two months and also include inventory from the "Special Offers" product. The Special Offers section leads tablet owners to product pages for items.

For a cool $1 million, advertisers get even more ad inventory, are added to Amazon's public-relations push, and get the special offers page.

Amazon is expected to release a larger, updated model of the Kindle Fire later in the summer.