Latest news

Samsung has launched a solar-powered netbook, aimed at the African market.

The NC215S is now available in Kenya, and the target market is the hundreds of thousands of consumers that are not connected to the national power grid.

Furthermore, the device is aimed at the thousands of consumers who are connected, but have sporadic outages.

The device will cost 35000 Kenyan shillings ($370 USD) and gets up to 15 hours of battery life.

Says Samsung:

With Netbook NC 215S Samsung is demonstrating its capacity to bring to the consumers technology that satisfies their needs and takes care of the environment.

Weighing in at just 2.8 pounds, the entire design is "slim" including the solar panel on the top.

Samsung says the netbook will launch in U.S., Russia, Europe and South Korea, as well, later this month.

Less than a week after being fired, former Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz has also resigned from her seat on the Board of Directors.

Says Yahoo! in a Sunday announcement:

On September 9, 2011, Carol Bartz resigned from the board of directors of Yahoo! Inc., effective immediately.

After being fired, Bartz went on to call the Board a bunch of "doofuses" who "fu**ed her over" when firing her over the phone with a lawyer-prepared script.

Regardless, Bartz gets a $14 million severance package and remains on the Board of other companies.

Twitter has sued online advertising service provider Twittad today.

The company has registered for the trademark “Let Your Ad Meet Tweets." Twitter, as it has made abundantly clear, is not a fan of third-party services using the term "tweet."

Reads the complaint (via TC):

This action arises from the registration of the mark “LET YOUR AD MEET TWEETS” by Twittad, LLC (“Twittad” or “Defendant”) in connection with online advertising services for use on Twitter. Defendant’s LET YOUR AD MEET TWEETS registration unfairly exploits the widespread association by the consuming public of the mark TWEET with Twitter, and threatens to block Twitter from its registration and legitimate uses of its own mark.

In fact, it appears that Defendant has used LET YOUR AD MEET TWEETS solely as a generic phrase to refer advertising in connection with Twitter itself, and as such it is incapable of serving as a mark, rendering the registration subject cancellation on that ground. Alternatively, if Defendant is able to establish use of LET YOUR AD MEET TWEETS as a mark, its registration is subject to cancellation based on Twitter’s preexisting rights in the TWEET mark.

Intel will be among the few companies submitting bids for InterDigital's patent portfolio, says Bloomberg.

Samsung, Ericsson, HTC and possibly Google are expected to bid on the patents and are currently reviewing confidential data.

Apple and Microsoft have also looked, but do not seem to be serious bidders.

Bids may surpass $5 billion, says analysts, based off Google's recent purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion for its patents and hardware business and the purchase of Nortel patents for over $4.5 billion.

InterDigital invested some of the tech used in mobile broadband networks and has 8800 patents on inventions currently used in smartphones.

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that AoL was looking into merging with Yahoo!, with AoL CEO Tim Armstrong looking into the CEO spot recently left by Carol Bartz.

CNBC has now reported that a "source close to Yahoo says no interest in a deal with AOL."

Original story:

Bloomberg has reported that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has been talking to Yahoo! advisers to gauge any interest in a merger of the two struggling companies.
Over the past few months, AOL has been speaking to private equity firms in an effort to go private while they complete their turnaround efforts.

Armstrong is said to have pushed a merger last year, but newly fired Yahoo! Carol Bartz had rebuffed the talks at the time.

While both companies are in similar markets, Yahoo is worth $18 billion and AOL is worth just $1.6 billion (market value) with declining revenue and losses. AOL has lost $800 million since 2009.

Concerns over data collection force Microsoft to remove app created by one of the world's most popular security software companies.

Questions had already been raised about the necessity of AVG Mobilation for Windows Phone 7. Firstly, there's no malware to be found on the platform at least yet, and the operating system automatically sandboxes all applications and restricts their access to system files and other applications that are installed.

The only files that the AVG app had access to are media files; music and photos, and so that's what AVG scanned. According to a blog post from Rafael Rivera, all it actually does is check the names of the files and see if they match a couple of strings, one in Hebrew. The app is available for free, supported by advertisements.

The lack of need for this application (at least now) is not why Microsoft pulled it from the Windows Phone Marketplace though. Justin Angel, a former Microsoft employee, examined the application more closely and found that it collects some data about the phone and sends it back to AVG.

Not likely to be a working loophole for very long.

Customers of T-Mobile in the United States might be able to browse the web on their Android phone even if they don't have a data plan. Smozzy is an Android application that lets you browse through the web without a data plan, because the content is requested and delivered entirely via SMS and MMS messages.

Of course that means your plan had better include unlimited messaging.

It has been tested only with the Nexus S and HTC G2 devices so far, and will only work with T-Mobile's U.S. service.

Use of he beta app is entirely at your own risk of course. Reviews for the app so far are mixed.

More info: https://market.android.com/...

Has four tuners, double the recording space and is THX Certified.

TiVo announced its TiVo Premiere Elite set-top box earlier this week. It packs four digital tuners and a 2TB hard drive which is says is good for 300 hours of Full HD recordings. It is TiVo's first and only DVR with four tuners allowing for simultaneous recording of four different shows while viewing a fifth recorded program.

The TiVo Premiere Elite is intended for use with digital cable systems only and does not work with analog cable or over-the-air antennas. It maintains TiVo's easy to navigate user interface, integrating Web entertainment 'from Netflix, Pandora, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, and much more.

"We are pleased to announce the TiVo Premiere Elite at this year's CEDIA show as this product was designed specifically for the high-end custom home theater integrator or enthusiast looking to complete their home entertainment system with a best-in-class TV experience. Only TiVo Premiere Elite seamlessly combines digital cable programming with the best of Web entertainment, in full 1080p HD, and with 300 hours of HD recording space," said Doug Bieter, Vice President of Retail Sales for TiVo Inc.

Nvidia's CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says the company will power the first quad-core tablets on the market.

Confirming a leaked roadmap from earlier this year, Huang says Nvidia will be the first, beating out heated rivals like Qualcomm, whose quad-core Snapdragon processors will only go into production later this year.

Says the CEO (via Forbes):

We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm. We’re really the only two active players [in the high-end mobile processor market].

While there will be quad-core tablets before Christmas, Huang seemed much less sure about its availability for smartphones by the end of the year.

Huang says Nvidia has 70 percent share of the Android tablet market and 50 percent of what the CEO calls the "superphone" market.

Intel VP sees company as leader in software as well as hardware.

Doug Fisher, Corporate Vice President, General Manager of the Software and Services Group's Systems Software Division, Intel Corporation, was speaking at Intel's Software Media Day on Thursday in San Francisco. He said the company had a challenge to get people to recognise it as a software company as well as a hardware company.

He singled out the consistency of Intel's architecture in the chipmaker's close relationship with industry partners who develop for everything from high-end servers to mobile platforms. Servers and high-performance systems can rely on Intel's Xeon microprocessors, while Intel's Core products power most of the world's PCs and laptops. For mobile users, there's Intel's Atom line.

MSI presentation discredits Gigabyte claims about PCI Express Gen3-ready motherboards.

On August 8, 2011, Gigabyte issued a press release that announced their entire range of 6 series motherboards are ready to support the next generation Intel 22nm CPUs (LGA1155 Socket) as well as offer native support for PCI Express Gen. 3 technology, delivering maximum data bandwidth for future discrete graphics cards.

In total, it listed more than 40 motherboards that it said were Gen3-ready. Gigabyte rival MSI investigated the claims made by the Gigabyte press release and published its findings in a presentation. It seeks to discredit the claim that all the boards listed are Gen3-ready, and instead insists that only one of the Gigabyte boards is technically Gen3-ready.

The motherboard-manufacturer based its argument around the claim that if not all Gen3 components are available on a motherboard, then Gen3 will never be enabled. Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs with PCI Express Gen3 can deliver double the bandwidth (32GB/s Max) compared to Gen2, if the board is truly Gen3-compliant.

MSI made its points clear through a presentation (click to enlarge/browse images):

Component maker Hon Hai Precision has reportedly upped its projected shipment figures for the iPad 2.

Due to strong demand, projected shipments have been increased for the Q3 by 42.8 percent.

Apple sold 9.25 million iPad 2 units in the Q2, after a slow Q1 with 4.69 million sold.

Despite the tragedy in Japan, Apple says their supply chain has not been affected, and if they could have built more, the demand was so high they would have sold out of those, as well.

Research group iSuppli, including Hon Hai's updated estimates, now assumes Apple will sell 44.2 million units in 2011.

Apple has about a 70 percent share in the tablet market.

Northern Ireland man says Facebook put his daughter at risk.

The 12 year old girl posted what are being described as "sexually suggestive" photos of herself on the social networking site. It is this material, and the fact that she also revealed where she lived and attended school, that he claims has put her in danger from sex abusers.

At the core of the case is Facebook's own age limitation that bars under-13s from using the service. "It relies on children stating their correct age and it doesn't have any checks in place," his solicitor, Hilary Carmichael, said.

"My own personal view is that Facebook isn't suitable for under-18s, but the company isn't even able to uphold its own policy of keeping under-13s out. An age check, like asking for a passport number would be a simple measure for Facebook to implement."

The writ, lodged in Belfast High Court earlier this week, deems Facebook is guilty of negligence, and as such, has created a risk of sexual and physical harm to the child. Also, since the girl was in the voluntary care of the Northern Health and Social Care Trust when the images were posted, the trust was named as a defendant.

Apple insists it is only clearing stock of the old software.

Last week, an older version of its Final Cut video editing software became available again amidst ongoing complaints that its successor, Final Cut Pro X, is not good enough for professional editing.

Final Cut Studio is available to order (by phone) selling for £834 in the UK, as Apple insists it is only clearing out old stock. Final Cut Studio includes the Final Cut Pro 7 software. "It's really good news all round. I don't know what people would have done over the next year otherwise," said Ben Franklin, head of post production at London-based Spectrecom.

"Final Cut Pro X just doesn't seem to fit within the way we work, so we have to make the decision, do we stick with it or do we look elsewhere like Avid or Adobe Premiere Pro." Apple has also reportedly been pushed by some major customers and broadcasters to do something about what are seen as major issues with the new software.

Reviews for Final Cut Pro X were mixed, but particular attention was paid to the removal of key features from previous iterations of the software, and the inability to import projects from older versions.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D drive family is now shipping worldwide.

After becoming the first to ship a multi-disk 1TB hard disk drive back in 2007, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies can now also boast that it has squeezed 1TB on a single disk in a new series of its HDDs. The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.D drive family has begun worldwide shipments.

"The areal density race continues and while having the highest capacity is appealing, reaching 1TB per platter is equally important as it serves a full range of applications and opportunities across the industry's largest market volume," said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST.

"As we ship our first 1TB per platter drives, we know we’re delivering capacity, reliability and value to a broad customer base. Not only are we shipping our 1TB per platter drives to our own Branded Business, but we are shipping to our channel partners as well, enabling them to design affordable HDD-based solutions at attractive price points."