Six states use nearly half of all pirated software in the U.S.
Six U.S. states are responsible for nearly half of all the suspected cases of corporate software piracy, the Business Software Alliance reported on Wednesday.
The BSA, which collects piracy tips from its online reporting forum nopiracy.org, and its 1-888-NO-PIRACY hotline, said 49.3% of the piracy reports it received in 2010 were about companies in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Michigan.
FCC makes sure deafblind individuals have '21st century communications' tech
The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday launched a new initiative called the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP,) which seeks to guarantee these disabled individuals have access to advanced communications technology, including interexchange services and advanced telecommunications and data services.
The commission and the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA) have allocated $10 million for the project annually, and NDBEDP will establish an entity in each state that will distribute the communications equipment to low income deaf-blind individuals. The pilot program will last for two years, and will have the option to extend into a third year if it has not been suitably rooted for permanent establishment.
Dish's Blockbuster buy: A box office bomb?
Dish Network has won the auction to acquire nearly all of the assets of bankrupt national video store chain Blockbuster Inc., the satellite television company announced on Wednesday.
Dish Network expects to pay a mere $228 million in cash to acquire Blockbuster's 1,700 retail store locations, its brand and trademarks, and its alternative video delivery methods, such as its DVD-by-mail business, retail kiosk, and streaming video on demand services. The deal will close in the second quarter of this year.
Hotspot Shield snags 1 million users overnight, proves privacy can be monetized
Political unrest quite literally turned Hotspot Shield into an international success story overnight.
During the Egyptian uprisings against deposed president Hosni Mubarak in January and February, AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield software went from 100,000 users in Egypt to over a million over a single 24 hour period. Egyptians found they could use the desktop VPN freeware to obscure their IP addresses and access locally censored services such as Facebook and Twitter.
Texas Instruments is 'King of Analog' with National Semiconductor acquisition
Texas Instruments Monday announced it will be acquiring National Semiconductor in an all-cash transaction totaling about $6.5 billion.
National, once called "The King of Analog" has faced declining sales for four years, and had to significantly scale back its production during the recent recession, which meant closing down chipmaking facilities in both China and the United States, and shifting production to its three remaining plants.
Google puts $900M bid on Canada's 'national treasure' Nortel patents
Bankrupt Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks Corp. has selected Google as the stalking horse bidder in the auction for the company's vast and highly valuable patent portfolio.
Nortel first went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2009 and has been selling off its assets since that time. In 2009, the company sold off its Enterprise Solutions Business and shares of Nortel Government Solutions and DiamondWare to Avaya for $900 million; and its CDMA and LTE Access businesses went to Ericsson for $1.13 billion.
Countless thousands exposed in attack on e-mail marketing company
On Friday, email marketing and solutions company Epsilon announced its system had been hacked on March 30, and the email addresses and customer names of "a subset of Epsilon clients" were exposed. The company handles the permission-based email marketing campaigns of more than 2,500 major corporations and the list of companies involved in the breach continued to grow over the weekend.
TiVo, for example, sent a message to its subscribers on Sunday warning that the first names and email addresses of customers who opted into email updates have been exposed.
Technology's most blatant design copycats
Imitation, as the old saying goes, is the highest form of flattery. But when it comes to technology, imitation is sometimes more of a sad replacement for innovation. Today, it seems every tech imitator gets labeled a "killer" of the product it's imitating...be it an "iPhone Killer" a "Twitter Killer," or a "Google Killer," we hear it all the time.
Here's a look at some of technology's most blatant design knock-offs that are not likely to ever be honored with the title of "killers."
More connected machines means more non-PC IT, more contextual signage
Ericsson is the single largest wireless communications equipment company today, and nearly every hardware manufacturer from consumer devices to network infrastructure uses some piece of Ericsson's technology in their products.
The company's long-standing vision has been to create a world with 50 billion connected devices by the year 2020.
Customers abandon GoDaddy after CEO posts elephant hunting video
A video purported to show GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons shooting an African Elephant is causing controversy for the Web hosting company on Thursday as outraged customers began pulling their domains from the company's hosting service.
The video, embedded below, is titled "Hunting Problem Elephant - My 2011 Vacation." It shows "one typical night and day" in Labola, Zimbabwe which culminates in a bull elephant being shot and eaten.
Windows Phone 7 draws 1,200 new developers per week, 11.5k apps per quarter
Though Windows Phone 7 has only been available to consumers for a little over four months, developer tools for the platform have been available for more than a year. To celebrate the first full year of Windows Phone development, Microsoft's Brandon Watson has revealed a list of statistics that loosely approximate the size and scope of the platform's third-party developer community.
Developers
Google launches '+1,' search result upvoting
Google on Wednesday announced it will be testing "+1", a button akin to Facebook's "Like" that lets users show their approval for search result relevance.
The +1 feature is only available to Google profile/Gmail users who are signed into their accounts when using Google search. Once the experimental feature is activated, an animated button appears next to all search results, which lights up whenever you mouse over a particular result.
Google gets 20 years of FTC audits in Google Buzz privacy blunder
Google has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that Google Buzz, the social network launched in 2010, violated the FTC Act.
When Google launched Buzz last year, it immediately came under fire from privacy groups, who complained that the social network/microblog created a too-easy way for Google to convert Gmail contact lists into publicly searchable information.
3 years and 1 million boxes later, Roku players finally come to nationwide retail
Even though they were only sold directly to consumers, Roku's streaming set top boxes managed to become fierce competitors in the connected media player category against AppleTV, Boxee, WDTV, and countless others. Roku announced on Wednesday that the Roku XD streaming player will finally be available in retail nationwide through a partnership with Best Buy.
"Having sold over 1 million Roku players through online sales only up until now, we are incredibly excited to announce our entrance into brick and mortar retail with nationwide availability from the preeminent consumer electronics retailer," said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc.
Some things that Firefox 4 can do that Android's stock browser can't
Mozilla today released the final version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo, just one week after general availability of the mobile browser's release candidate.
It's kind of hard to believe the first version of "Firefox Mobile" is finally done. The browser that was originally launched under the name Fennec back in 2008 wasn't even available on Android until April 2010, and even then it was only a "pre-alpha" release. After the mobile browser switched names and became Firefox 4 six months ago, finalization of the browser has been rapid.
Tim's Bio
Tim Conneally was born into dumpster tech. His father was an ARPANET research pioneer and equipped his kids with discarded tech gear, second-hand musical instruments, and government issue foreign language instruction tapes. After years of building Frankenstein computers from rubbish and playing raucous music in clubs across the country (and briefly on MTV) Tim grew into an adult with deep, twisted roots and an eye on the future. He most passionately covers mobile technology, user interfaces and applications, the science and policy of the wireless world, and watching different technologies shrink and converge.
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