Microsoft hat im abgelaufenen Quartal etwas weniger verdient. Schwächere PC-Verkäufe hätten das Geschäft mit dem Betriebssystem Windows belastet, erklärte Microsoft. Der Softwaregigant verdiente netto 6,624 Milliarden Dollar nach 6,634 Milliarden Dollar im Vorjahreszeitraum.
Der Internetkonzern Google hat trotz eines Umsatzsprungs und eines höheren Gewinns im vergangenen Quartal die Investoren enttäuscht. Die Aktie rutschte nachbörslich zeitweise um mehr als neun Prozent ab. Der Umsatz war im Schlussquartal 2011 auf 10,6 Milliarden Dollar gestiegen - ein Plus von 25 Prozent im Jahresvergleich.
Handys der Zukunft sollen Daten 500 mal schneller verarbeiten als heutige 3G-Mobiltelefone und zum Beispiel den Inhalt einer ganzen CD in 60 Sekunden herunterladen können. Ohne Aussetzer werden sie nach Einschätzung von Experten der Internationalen Fernmeldeunion (ITU) selbst Fernsehsendungen in anspruchsvoller HD-Qualität übertragen.
Apples neues IPhone 4S treibt jüngsten Erhebungen zufolge seit der Markteinführung im Oktober den boomenden Markt für Smartphones an. Das neue Gerät macht dem Rivalen Android zunehmend die Kunden streitig. Während sich im Oktober 2011 noch 25,1 Prozent der Käufer in den USA für ein iPhone entschieden hätten, sei dieser Anteil im Dezember bereits auf 44,5 Prozent geklettert, teilte die Marktforschungsfirma Nielsen mit.
Xentive, Tochtergesellschaft und IT-Dienstleisterin der Publigroupe, übergibt Swisscom IT Services im Rahmen eines Outsourcing-Vertrages die Arbeitsplätze von 59 Standorten in der Schweiz. Es handelt sich den Angaben zufolge um mehr als tausend Geräte, die ersetzt und vereinheitlicht werden sollen. Der Vertrag läuft zunächst über vier Jahre.
Sechs Jahre nach der Swisscom steigt nun auch Sunrise ins Fernsehgeschäft über die Telefonbuchse (IPTV) ein. Das TV-Angebot startet am nächsten Montag. Punkten will die Konkurrentin von TV-Kabelnetzbetreibern und Swisscom-TV unter anderem mit Nachhol-TV.
Die auf Kernbankensysteme fokussierte Schweizer Softwarefirma Avaloq plant offenbar eine Massenentlassung. 115 Vollzeitstellen sollen dem Rotstift zum Opfer fallen. Dies berichtet die Handelszeitung auf ihrem Online-Portal und beruft sich dabei auf zuverlässige Informationsquellen. Das Amt für Wirtschaft und Arbeit sei bereits über die Entlassungswelle informiert, heisst es.
Sony und Ericsson schliessen ihre Handy-Zusammenarbeit nach zehn Jahren mit roten Zahlen ab. Das japanisch-schwedische Gemeinschaftsunternehmen ist im vierten Quartal 2011 mit einem Nettoverlust von 207 Millionen Euro in die Verlustzone gerutscht, wie Sony Ericsson am Donnerstag mitteilte. Der Umsatz sank im Vergleich zum Vorjahreszeitraum von 1,5 auf 1,3 Milliarden Euro.
Wissenschafter und Kunstfreunde können das umfangreiche Werk des deutschen Renaissance-Malers Lucas Cranach der Ältere (1472-1553) künftig in einer Internet-Plattform erforschen. Mehr als 400 Gemälde des Serienmalers und engen Freundes von Martin Luther sind in der seit Mittwoch freigeschalteten Datenbank www.lucascranach.org zugänglich.
Der boomende Einkauf im Internet treibt Ebay an. Der Internetkonzern konnte im Schlussquartal mit dem wichtigen Weihnachtsgeschäft seinen Umsatz um 35 Prozent auf 3,4 Milliarden Dollar (2,65 Mrd. Euro) hochschrauben. Dabei legte der Online-Bezahldienst PayPal abermals kräftiger zu als der Marktplatz selbst.
First time accepted submitter EW87 writes "Shortly after a federal raid today brought down the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers aligned with the online collective Anonymous have shut down sites for the Department of Justice, Universal Music Group and the RIAA. 'It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,' Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon."
bednarz writes "U.S. companies are locating more of their R&D operations overseas, and Asian countries are rapidly increasing investments in their own science and technology economies, the National Science Board said in a report released this week. The number of overseas researchers employed by U.S. multinationals nearly doubled from 138,000 in 2004 to 267,000 in 2009, for example. On the education front, the U.S. accounts for just 4% of undergraduate engineering degrees awarded globally, compared to China (34%), Japan (5%), and India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand (17% collectively). 'The low U.S. share of global engineering degrees in recent years is striking; well above half of all such degrees are awarded in Asia,' NSB said in its report."
zacharye writes "Federal prosecutors in Virginia have shut down notorious file-sharing site Megaupload.com and charged the service's founder with violating piracy laws. The Associated Press broke the story on Thursday, reporting that the indictment accuses Megaupload.com's owner with costing copyright holders including record labels and movie studios more than $500 million in lost revenue."
ananyo writes "A Scottish intelligence study that began 80 years ago has borne new fruit. Researchers have tracked down the study's surviving participants — who joined the study when they were 11 years old — to estimate the role that our genes have in maintaining intelligence through to old age. After conducting fresh intelligence tests on the surviving participants, the researchers tested the DNA samples they had collected for the presence of more than half a million common genetic variants, each affecting only a single letter in the DNA sequence of the genome. The team then calculated whether these variants were associated with cognitive stability — how well intelligence had been maintained over time. The sample size of 2,000 people was too small to grant the statistical power needed to track down individual genetic signatures associated with cognitive stability. But it was enough to estimate how much genetics contributes to cognitive ageing. The team found that these variants accounted for nearly one-quarter of the differences in cognitive stability."
An anonymous reader writes "The Pentagon plans to fork over $32 million to develop 'fun to play' computer games that can refine the way weapons systems are tested to ensure they are free from software errors and security bugs, according to a Defense Department solicitation. The goal is to create puzzles that are "intuitively understandable by ordinary people" and could be solved on laptops, smartphones, tablets and consoles. The games' solutions will be collected into a database and used to improve methods for analyzing software, according to the draft request for proposals put out by the military's venture capital and research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."
natecochrane writes "Father of the web Sir Tim Berners-Lee called for Americans to protest SOPA and PIPA, laws he says violate human rights and unfit for a democratic country. Sir Tim's condemnation came on the day an editorial in Australia's leading broadsheet newspapers pointed out that although the laws ostensibly applied to US interests they could overreach to impact those in other countries."
The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers have found what appears to be a planet so hot it's literally vaporizing, boiling away from the heat of its star. KIC 12557548b was found using the transit method, periodically blocking some light from its star as it orbits around. But the amount of light blocked changes every transit. Given it's less than a million miles from the surface of the star, astronomers interpret this (PDF) as the planet itself turning to vapor, and the expanding cloud of rock-laden gas is what's blocking the starlight. The planet is most likely somewhat bigger than Mercury, but losing 100,000 tons of matter every second it'll only be around another few hundred million years."
Zothecula writes "You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives — after all, if someone who doesn't want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That's why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person's body. The NYPD announced the project this week."
nonprofiteer writes "The New York Times claims that the hot new trend among teenagers in love is to share passwords to their email and Facebook accounts, as the ultimate form of trust. According to Pew, 33% of teens surveyed say they do this. One expert says the pressure to share passwords is akin to the pressure to have sex. Forbes says don't do it! 'There is something pure and romantic about the idea of sharing everything, and having no secrets from one another. But it's romantic the same way that Romeo and Juliet is romantic, in a tragic, horrible, everyone-is-miserable-and-dies-at-the-end kind of way.' Sam Biddle at Gizmodo writes about which passwords are okay to share (like Netflix), but says to stay away from handing over email or Facebook passwords. 'We all need whatever scraps of privacy we have left, and your email is just that.'"
redletterdave writes "At the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Apple announced on Thursday it would update its iBooks platform to include textbook capabilities and also added a new platform called iBooks Author, which lets anyone easily create and publish their own e-books. Apple's senior VP of marketing, Phil Schiller, introduced iBooks 2, which has a new textbook experience for the iPad. The books themselves display larger images, and searching content is made significantly easier: all users need to do is tap on a word and they are taken straight to an appropriate glossary or index section in the back of the book. Navigating pages and searching is also easy and fluid, and at the end of each chapter is a full review with questions and pictures. If you want the answers to the questions, all you need to do is tap the question to get instant feedback. Apple also launched the iBooks Author app, which lets anyone easily create any kind of textbook and publish it to the iBookstore, and the new iTunes U platform, which helps teachers and students communicate better, and even send each other materials and notes created with iBooks Author. All of the apps are free, and available for any and all students, from K-12 to major universities."
Orome1 writes "After having first claimed that the source code leaked by Indian hacking group Dharmaraja was not stolen through a breach of its networks, but possibly by compromising the networks of a third-party entity, Symantec backpedalled and announced that the code seems to have exfiltrated during a 2006 breach of its systems. Symantec spokesman Cris Paden has confirmed that unknown hackers have managed to get their hands on the source code to the following Symantec solutions: Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton Utilities, Norton GoBack and pcAnywhere."
itwbennett writes "Would-be cellular carrier LightSquared claims that the company's LTE network was set up to fail in GPS interference tests. 'Makers of GPS (Global Positioning System) equipment put old and incomplete GPS receivers in the test so the results would show interference, under the cover of non-disclosure agreements that prevented the public and third parties from analyzing the process,' LightSquared executives said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning."
bonch writes "Microsoft has introduced a gamification plugin for Visual Studio that lets users win achievements and badges as they compete on leaderboards by writing code. The full list of achievements includes gems like 'Go To Hell' for using goto, and 'Potty Mouth' for using five different curses in one file. This is another example of Gamification, one of the latest trends to hit social media."
Snirt writes "Following up on a story previously discussed here, it now appears Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The move, according to Kodak's news release, gives the company time to reorganize itself without facing its creditors, and Kodak said it would mean business as normal for customers. The company has recently moved away from cameras, focusing on making printers to stem falling profits."
Hugh Pickens writes "Stargazing skies all over the world are disappearing, as the sky above New York City is Class 9 on the Bortle ranking and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. But some places are making an effort to preserve their skywatching heritage as Exmoor National Park was granted International Dark-Sky Reserve status in November and people in the Exmoor town of Dulverton were challenged to switch off their lights as part of the BBC's Stargazing Live, demonstrating that you don't need special equipment to see the stars more clearly, if you have a decent pair of binoculars. 'The whole idea is to show that even a small town, which is still quite dark, can give off quite a lot of light,' says astronomer Mark Thompson. The event in Dulverton gained a lot of support from local residents and businesses. 'It needed a bit of organization to get everyone to say yes,' says town mayor Chris Nelder. 'We want people to just enjoy the night sky, to treasure the fact we have them and to look after them,' adds Claire O'Connor from Exmoor National Park Authority."