The never-ending legal battle between Apple and Samsung enters a new phase Monday when lawyers begin selecting a jury for a new trial that will address new complaints against a different set of phones. But it could be more than simply a repeat of the previous two trials in California, and one expert noted that Apple’s victories to date don’t guarantee it another win this time around. Lawyers for Apple and Samsung will each get 25 hours to argue their case, taking the trial through most of April. Much time will likely be spent dissecting the ins and outs of smartphone operating systems, but the root of the case is the wider tussle between Apple and Samsung for share of the multibillion-dollar smartphone market.
Intel is making improvements to its smallest computer, called Edison, which is targeted at wearable devices and was introduced in January. Intel’s original Edison computer—which is the size of an SD card—had limited capabilities, which made it useful for a few wearable devices. The upgrade will make Edison usable in wearables with more sensors and wireless connectivity, said Mike Bell, vice president and general manager of the New Devices Group at Intel. “We decided to make Edison slightly better,” Bell said. “People came out of the woodwork to talk to us about what they can do with it.” Edison is intended for use in small, flexible electronics that can be worn around the body. While smartwatches, fitness trackers and health monitors are grabbing the most attention, Intel hopes Edison will be used as a launching pad to experiment with new wearable product designs. Intel is developing prototype devices wearable on the head, wrist and ankle, and earlier this week bought fitness tracker company Basis Science.
Microsoft will no longer go through email messages and other personal data that users of its online services have stored on its servers, a decision taken after being sharply criticized for accessing a person’s inbox as part of an internal investigation. “Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves,”
The latest firmware in some Philips smart TV models opens an insecure Miracast wireless network, allowing potential attackers located in the signal range to control the TV remotely and perform unauthorized actions. Researchers from Malta-based vulnerability research firm ReVuln recently published a
BlackBerry continued to struggle during the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, experiencing a huge drop in revenue and a $423 million net loss. Revenue for the fourth quarter of BlackBerry’s fiscal 2014, which ended March 1, was approximately US$976 million, down 64 percent from $2.7 billion in the same quarter in 2013. The company’s $423 million net loss for the period compares to a $98 million profit for the year-earlier period. BlackBerry’s main problem continues to be that it doesn’t sell enough phones. The company sold approximately 3.4 million BlackBerry smartphones to end users last quarter, including about 1.1 million phones running the BlackBerry 10 OS. A year earlier, the company said it sold 6 million smartphones.
Attorneys say they’re making progress toward a possible settlement in Silicon Valley’s employee poaching case, in which Google, Apple and other companies are accused of conspiring not to hire employees from other tech giants. During a hearing on Thursday in a San Jose court, attorneys on both sides said they were working daily with a mediator to resolve the dispute, which involves alleged secret agreements among the firms not to poach each other’s workers. Those agreements would violate federal antitrust laws. “From our perspective, we don’t need any rulings,” said Robert Van Nest, an attorney for Google, during a case management discussion with Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for Northern California. Discussions were ongoing with a mediator to possibly settle the claims, he said.
I’ve demonstrated the Windows Phone’s predictive, heuristic text entry and voice recognition prowess to nearly everyone who’s ever pulled up a barstool next to me, yet they still bang away at their iPhones and Android devices as if they’d never noticed. Go figure. Maybe Translator with Speech will get their attention. Not only does this app do a bang-up job of translating both text and speech input into other languages, it speaks the translations. So who cares if your translator speaks? Say you’re on business overseas and having a hard time being understood through your thick American accent. With Translator with Speech, you just type or speak the phrase you want to translate into the phone, turn on the speaker, and let the phone say it for you. Okay, it’s a bit geeky, but it works, dagnabbit. I tried this with both the Taiwanese couple who own the local coffee shop and my Spanish-speaking god-family. I possess smatterings of both languages (Mandarin, not Cantonese). All were in agreement—the phone was one heck of a lot easier on their ears than my ham-tongued linguistic efforts. I offered to make the phone their godfather.
Microsoft hasn't issued so much as a mutter about the next-gen Kinect for Windows since first announcing the device last May, but nearly a year later, the company's revealed the design of what's essentially the PC port of the Xbox One's powered-up Kinect. And, well, it looks a lot like the Xbox version, as you can see above. There are some minor differences. The PC version says "Kinect" on the top, while the glowing Xbox logo on the front of the console version has been replaced by a simpler, non-branded power indicator. The blog post also revealed the additional components needed to run Kinect for Windows: A power supply (duh) along with a power brick-like hub that accepts connections from the sensor and the power supply as well as a USB 3.0 connection for the PC itself.
Naysayers who expected It's no surprise: Demand for the touch-friendly suite has been building for years, and as senior editor Mark Hachman explained in
While NAS specialists such as QNAP and Synology pile on extras that cater to the myriad needs of small business and home users, Seagate focuses on smaller feature sets suited to workgroups, larger businesses, and users who want only simple network-shared storage. Its lean and mean Business Storage Windows Server—which runs Microsoft’s Windows Storage Server 2012 Workgroup—is a case in point. You don’t set up this box as you would a NAS box that runs on Linux, by connecting the device to your network, typing a predefined IP address into your web browser, and having at it. You must first attach a keyboard and VGA display, and then define a password using its local interface. Once that’s completed, you can remove the keyboard and display, connect it to your network, and administer the box via Remote Desktop from another Windows PC on your LAN.
Office comes to iPad, but does it matter? Also, the future of wearables and projectables, and Facebook buys a nice pair of VR glasses.
On Thursday, Facebook unveiled its Connectivity Lab, the technology incubator by which Facebook plans to bring Internet connectivity to the developing world. In a video (embedded below), one executive explains how the company plans to use satellites to bring access to rural areas, as well as drones to connect users in suburban environments. And it will all be connected via a laser backbone tying it to the Internet at large. Facebook’s quixotic quest is being routed through Internet.org, the organization that Facebook, Opera, Qualcomm, Samsung and others
A little-known U.S. space plane quietly broke its own space endurance record this week as its current unmanned mission surpassed 469 days in space. Much of the information about the X-37B and its mission is classified, but the little that is public points to it being a development vehicle for new Air Force space capabilities while serving a secondary role for the U.S. military and intelligence community as a testbed for new space-based surveillance technologies. The current mission, dubbed USA-240, is the third for the X-37B and began on Dec. 11, 2012, atop an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft is taken into orbit on a rocket but lands like the space shuttle by gliding down to Earth.
The £99 (US$160) price for U.K. carrier EE’s smartphone Kestrel without a contract gives a glimpse of a future with low-cost LTE devices, and is also an aggressive move by Qualcomm as competition in the chipset sector increases. Smartphones such as the Motorola Moto G and the Lumia 520 from Nokia lack LTE support, but a burgeoning chip war and the technology’s growing popularity will help improve their successors. The introduction of Kestrel is an early sign of that development. In addition to LTE with a theoretical download speed of 150Mbps (bits per second), it has a 4.5-inch screen with 960 x 540 pixel resolution. The phone is made by Huawei Technologies and has a quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor from Qualcomm. It uses Android 4.3 and will start shipping at the end of April.
Microsoft's announcement that it's bringing The debate is partially semantic. Diehards will tell you "PC" refers only to a traditional Wintel computer. But most of us extend the term to encompass Mac OS X, Linux, and Chrome OS, as well, and the defining characteristics have more to do with how we use them.
It's a scary time to be a parent. First, Activision's Skylanders franchise created this wallet-murdering nightmare confluence of collectible toys tied to video game characters where each physical toy you bought unlocked a new part of the game. Then Disney looked at its vast holdings and said, "Well hey, we can do that," releasing Disney Infinity unto the world. Now it's Lego's turn. Yes, Lego Minifigures Online adapts the same buy-toys-use-in-games model to those adorable yellow Lego people. Call it insidious. Call it genius. Either way, Lego is coming. The game is being developed by Funcom (makers of The Secret World) and is an action MMO that plays more than a bit like Diablo; you have one standard attack mapped to Left Mouse, one special attack mapped to Right Mouse. This is an MMO-lite clickfest, where you just kind of mash on those buttons until everything is dead, but in a deliciously fun way.
The Turkish government has followed through on a threat to block YouTube from within its borders. The action, which comes a week after the country blocked Twitter, was “another desperate and depressing move by Turkey,” according to Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission. It began on Thursday in reaction to the posting of a conversation apparently between Turkey’s foreign minister, intelligence chief and a senior member of the armed forces that concerned a possible or theoretical attack against militants in neighboring Syria. “It’s like the first wave of the Twitter blocking that happened last week,” said Doug Madory at Internet monitoring company Renesys. The company said several of its remote systems in the country were unable to access the Google-run website several hours after Turkey’s telecommunications authority said it would block the site.
Ubisoft hat einen neuen Trailer zum kommenden Action-Highlight «Watch Dogs» veröffentlicht. Im Game spielt man einen Hacker auf Rachefeldzug.
Seit Facebook die Oculus Rift gekauft hat, sind virtuelle Realitäten in aller Munde. Tatsächlich wird VR das Gamen revolutionieren, wie der Test eines Vogelsimulators zeigt.
Microsoft-Chef Satya Nadella hat Office für Apple-Geräte vorgestellt. Mit der Gratis-Version können Word-, Excel- und Powerpoint-Dokumente geöffnet und gelesen werden.
Der Zuckerberg-Konzern plant ein System aus Drohnen, Satelliten und Lasern, um Internet-Zugänge in entlegene Regionen zu bringen.
Der japanische Spielehersteller veröffentlicht im April acht Games, die seinerzeit auf dem Game Boy Advance für Furore gesorgt haben. Die Titel werden via Download erhältlich sein.
Nach «Nintendinitis», dem «Wii-Arm» und dem «iPad-Nacken» soll in Spanien nun der erste Fall von «WhatsAppitis» aufgetreten sein.
Lausanner Forscher haben eine Art Bodyguard für Handys entwickelt: Das Tool soll dereinst für uns entscheiden, welche persönlichen Informationen weitergegeben werden.
In «Infamous: Second Son» rechnet ein junger Rebell mit dem Überwachungsstaat ab. Aber auch sonst macht das Actiongame Spass.
Eine amerikanische Applikation für Alkoholkranke löst Alarm aus, wenn der Nutzer sich einer Bar nähert und bietet Online-Beratungen an. Erste Tests verliefen erfolgreich.
Der Testbetrieb mit dem kostenlosen WLAN-Netz in St. Gallen ist ein Erfolg. Deshalb soll das Angebot noch in diesem Jahr auf die ganze Schweiz ausgeweitet werden.
«Eine Schande»: Auf der Plattform Kickstarter kritisieren ehemalige Geldgeber des Projekts Oculus Rift die Übernahme durch Facebook. Anspruch auf Entschädigung gibt es nicht.
Wer sich beim Spielen der PC-Version des Shooters «Titanfall» des Schummelns schuldig macht, wird hart bestraft - indem er nur noch gegen andere Cheater antreten kann.
Smarte Schloss-Systeme machen Drahtesel nicht nur sicherer als je zuvor, sie könnten auch das Teilen von Velos in der Schweiz revolutionieren.
Spiel mit Suchtpotenzial: Ziel bei «2048» ist es, so lange Kacheln über den Bildschirm zu schieben, bis darauf die Zahl 2048 steht. Ein Mathe-Genie muss man dafür nicht sein.