Latest news

Skype will allegedly bring video calling apps to smartphones like the iPhone at the upcoming CES event, bringing some real competition to Apple's FaceTime and other apps like Tanga and Fring.

The company will have a "series of video-related announcements" and will also be part of the "Video Calling Gets Ready for Primetime" panel at the conference.

So far, it seems that the iPhone will be the first to get the app, with Android and Symbian likely to get the video support in the near future, as well.

Skype video chat is currently supported, in a limited capacity on the Nokia N900, but you can only chat with other N900 owners.

FaceTime was launched with the iPhone 4 this summer, offering Apple users a chance to video conference with other Apple users, on Macs, iPod Touch 4s and iPhone 4s, over Wi-Fi.

Although Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg won the Time's editor "2010 Person of the Year" and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange won the online popular vote, the Financial Times had someone different in mind, naming Apple CEO Steve Jobs their 'person of the year.'

Reads their article:

"As technology colonises every area of our lives – music, films and art – so nerds are the emperors. So it has come to pass. Steve Jobs, the polo-necked Apple chief, described this week by US president Barack Obama as the 'epitome of the American dream,' is the Financial Times' Person of the Year."

Acer's upcoming Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet has been seen quickly in a few videos via Engadget this Christmas, showing off a responsive gyroscope.

There is little known about the actual specs of the tablet, but it should be powered by a dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2.

Additionally, the tablet will have a 10-inch screen and Acer's own Android marketplace for apps.

Acer appears to use the gyroscope for touch-free page turning, as well as for zooming of photos without the need for users to multi-touch, however, Engadget says that feature is still very buggy.

The videos show some internal testing of the tablet, which Acer says should be in stores by April.

Although unconfirmed, it appears that Logitech may be ordering a production freeze on its Google TV set-top box, the Revue.

Digitimes says the company has already ordered component maker Gigabyte Technology to freeze production until at least January.

Logitech says it continues to ship the set-top to consumers, but will not comment on any alleged production suspensions.

Over the course of the week, a number of reports claimed Google has asked manufacturers to delay their first Google TV devices and HDTVs until the search giant can overhaul the platform.

Google TV has seen mediocre reviews since the Revue launched in November mainly due to broadcasters like ABC CBS, NBCU and Fox blocking their content to the platform.

The Logitech Revue sells for $250.

IBM has made some technology predictions for 2015 this week, breaking out the crystal ball for its forecast.

The company surveyed its over 3000 researchers, asking which five ideas will trend in the next five years.

At the top of the list was holographic 3D phone conversations, meaning your smartphone will have the ability to project 3D images of the person you are speaking to.

Paul Saffo, managing director of foresight at the investment-advisory firm Discern says of the list: "These are all stretch goals, and that’s good. In an era when pessimism is the new black, a little dose of technological optimism is not a bad thing."

While some of the predictions will not pan out, IBM spends over $5 billion per year on R&D, 6 percent of its yearly revenue and most of the ideas on the list are for projects IBM has already started development on.

The rest of the list consists of "air- breathing batteries, computer programs that can tell when and where traffic jams will take place, environmental information generated by sensors in cars and phones, and cities powered by the heat thrown off by computer servers."

Microsoft has warned this week that a very serious vulnerability has been discovered in all versions of Internet Explorer, one that can give exploiters a chance to take control of unprotected computers.

The software giant did say, however, that it does not appear hackers have begun using the exploit.

While they continue to work on a permanent fix, the company has created a workaround for the bug.

The BBC explains the "bug revolves around the way that IE manages a computer's memory when processing Cascading Style Sheets - a widely used technology that defines the look and feel of pages on a website."

Hackers have long used IE's memory management to inject their own code, usually leading to a hijack of the vulnerable computer.

For now, IE users are being told to "use a protection system known as the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit."

Rik Ferguson, of Trend Micro says:

"As vulnerabilities go, this kind is the most serious as it allows remote execution of code. This means the attacker can run programs, such as malware, directly on the victim's computer. It is highly reminiscent of a vulnerability at the same time two years ago which prompted several national governments to warn against using IE and to switch to an alternative browser."

According to multiple reports, Samsung will sell 10 million Galaxy S smartphones this year globally, selling 3 million of the smartphones in November alone.

Additionally, the device has outsold the iPhone in South Korea, moving 2 million units compared to Apple's 1.8 million sales.

Making the last figure more impressive is the fact that the Galaxy S just launched in SK in June, compared to the iPhone which launched in November 2009.

Globally, the numbers don't compare, as Samsung has sold nearly 10 million of the Android device while Apple is expected to sell 16 million iPhones in the Q4 alone.

Samsung sells the Galaxy S on all the major carriers in the U.S, as the AT&T Captivate, T-Mobile Vibrant, Verizon Fascinate, U.S. Cellular's Mesmerize and Verizon Continuum.

Apple has been working with Cherokee tribe members to include the ancient Cherokee language as an option on iOS devices, in an effort to appeal to younger tribe members who also want to keep up with their heritage.

The ancient Cherokee language was put into writing two centuries ago, and tribe members already use Apple computers with the unique characters, explains DigitalTrends.

iOS devices have support for 50 international languages, but none are Native American.

Cherokee Chief Chad Smith contacted Apple about the addition of Cherokee three years ago, and the update should come in 2011.

There are only 10,000 speakers of Cherokee, with most younger tribe members not ever taking the time to learn the ancient language.

Skype, facing global outrage over a service outage that lasted 30 hours, has announced it will offer refunds to paying customers that have needed to make calls or video calls but have not been able to.

CEO Tony Bates said today that 90 percent of users can now make calls again, while it is still working on returning access to the rest.

"We now know what caused a number of clients to actually crash," Bates added. "We’ve been able to mitigate that crash risk and isolate that."

Bates would not say what caused the crash, but did note that it was not a malicious attack.

All current pre-pay and pay-as-you-go users will be given 30 minutes of free calling, and all current subs will get a free extra week's subscription.

While audio, video calling and IMs are still available, some features such as group calling are still down.

It's time for us here at AfterDawn to take a break, and enjoy some quality time with our friends and family.

Happy holidays to all our readers and users!

-AfterDawn.com Staff

Google has announced today the completion of their purchase of 111 Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, valuing the property at $1.9 billion.

The property is 2.9-million-square-feet and is the biggest deal in 2010 for a single building purchase in the U.S.

Google currently occupies 500,000 square feet in the building, and shares the space with Nike, Lifetime cable, WebMD and many telecoms.

The search giant is said to have won the contract because of its ability to close before the end of the year. The company has already put down a deposit in excess of $200 million.

111 used to be the headquarters for the Port Authority of NY and NJ.

Says Google of the deal:

Google New York started in a Starbucks on 86th Street with one person in 2000—a scrappy, highly-caffeinated sales “team.” After moving to a larger office in Times Square, in 2006 we relocated to our current home in Chelsea, at 111 Eighth Avenue—a former Port Authority building. In June of 2008, we took additional space in the Chelsea Market building at 75 Ninth Avenue. Now we have more than 2,000 Googlers working on a variety of projects in both sales and engineering—and we’re hiring across the board.

The patent holding group of Alcatel-Lucent has sued Apple, Canon, LG and TiVo this week, claiming each has violated patents on certain AT&T video codecs.

According to the complaint, all Apple devices and software violate the four hardware and software patents, including Mac computers, iOS devices, Final Cut, iLife and QuickTime

64 LG mobile phones allegedly violate the patents, as do Canon's Vixia camcorders and most of TiVo's DVRs and remote desktop apps.

The lawsuit even goes as far as to allege that LG's very new Optimus Android smartphone line violate the patents. Notably absent is the LG Optimus 7, which runs on Windows Phone 7. It appears that a past lawsuit brought against Microsoft may cover WP7 devices.

In early 2009, when the operating system was still in its infancy, Google was sued over the trademark to "Android" by Erich Specht, who wanted monetary damages of $94 million.

Specht had run a company called "Android Data" from 1998-2002, before liquidating assets and abandoning the mark after the tech bubble in the stock market burst.

In 2008, when he became aware that Google was using the Android name, Specht put together a website as proof that he was still actively using the Android Data trademark he had left dormant since 2002.

The judge clearly saw through the attempt, throwing out the case and canceling Specht's original trademark, saying it may now be confused with Google's legal trademark.

Reads the judge's summary (via TC):

Moving to Google’s Counterclaim, pursuant to the analysis above, Google is entitled to a declaratory judgment that Plaintiffs abandoned ANDROID DATA and the other Asserted Marks. Plaintiffs do not possess valid or enforceable rights to the marks. The Court grants Google summary judgment on Count III of its Counterclaim. In regard to Count I of the Counterclaim, a party that believes it may suffer harm because of a trademark that has been abandoned by its owner may move to have the registration cancelled. See 15 U.S.C. § 1064(3). Google became the senior user of the ANDROID mark when it began using it in commerce on November 5, 2007. Plaintiffs, however, resumed use of ANDROID DATA as the junior user after Google acquired its rights to ANDROID. Plaintiffs’ use in commerce of ANDROID DATA creates a possible likelihood of confusion with Google’s ANDROID mark pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(a), as well as possible dilution by blurring of Google’s mark under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c).

The WSJ is reporting today that Microsoft is prepared to discuss a new Windows operating system, one that will be optimized for tablets and other low-power devices.

Although the OS will be discussed next month at the CES event, the operating system will not be ready for launch until 2012.

The new Windows will be optimized for use on products that have chips from ARM and also x86 chip technology from AMD and Intel.

ARM designs have become favorites of smartphone makers as they consume the least power, giving batteries some room to breathe.

The sources say Microsoft has been working on the project for some time and it is part of "a broader push at Microsoft to make Windows more "modular" so that pieces of the operating system that are unnecessary for smaller, low-power devices like tablets can be easily stripped away to make the software perform snappily on the gadgets."

Skype, the popular Internet phone and video service, remains down for millions of global users, the second such widespread outage since 2007.

Beginning at around noon EST, many outraged took to Twitter to voice their complaints about not being able to sign in.

Skype acknowledged the outage very soon after: "Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype – we’re investigating, and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversations. Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal — thanks for your continued patience."

In 2007, the service went down for a full 48 hours, but Skype has many more users now than it did then.

Just last month the company said it hit a significant milestone, 25 million concurrent users.

For those who are interested in what took the service down, Skype blogged it here:

Skype isn’t a network like a conventional phone or IM network – instead, it relies on millions of individual connections between computers and phones to keep things up and running. Some of these computers are what we call ‘supernodes’ – they act a bit like phone directories for Skype. If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can’t find them immediately (for example, because they’re connecting from a different location or from a different device) your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them.