Tim Conneally

Following yesterday's announcement that Nokia-Siemens would be acquiring Motorola's wireless infrastructure business for $1.2 billion, Nokia Siemens turns around and announces a $7 billion agreement to deploy, install, operate and maintain the U.S.' first wholesale LTE network from the newly formed company LightSquared.

LightSquared is the name of the multi-billion dollar network Harbinger Capital partners has been planning to build as an alternative for network operators who cannot afford to build an LTE network of their own, like T-Mobile USA. The company will build the network, and then lease it to operators. It will not directly offer services to consumers.

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As powerful chips are being made physically smaller, cheaper, and significantly less energy consumptive than previous generations, they can be used in places where computers hadn't gone before. More tasks can be automated and measured, more systems can be networked together, and machines can generally get a lot "smarter."

This is perhaps the main idea behind Marvell's plug computing initiative, where an entire system as powerful as a netbook can be built into a housing only marginally larger than a "wall wart" style power adaptor.

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In the midst of a Summertime e-reader price war, initiated by Borders, matched by Barnes and Noble, and escalated by Amazon, e-books are flying off of their virtual shelves.

Today, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced second quarter Kindle sales are fully accelerated, with each month outselling the last. But since cutting the price in June, sales have massively spiked.

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Microsoft has finished the Technical Preview of Windows Phone 7, the absolute earliest build of the new mobile operating system that is ready for field testing, and is shipping it out on prototype devices from Asus, LG, and Samsung, the company reported today.

As Microsoft noted last week when it released the updated Windows Phone Developer Toolkit, devices with a pseudo-beta version of Windows Phone 7 have begun shipping to developers, carriers, and partners. The new mobile operating system is still quite a few months away from being ready for release, and there isn't yet a version for consumers to check out, but this marks the "home stretch" for platform development. The company expects the first Windows Phone 7 devices to be released in time for the holiday shopping season this year.

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European telecommunications giant Nokia-Siemens announced today that it will acquire the majority of Motorola Inc's wireless network infrastructure business for $1.2 billion.

Nokia Siemens announced this morning that it will acquire Motorola's GSM and CDMA infrastructure business, while Motorola will keep its iDEN business, potentially all of its intellectual property related to the wireless network infrastructure business, and "other selected assets."

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Today, Google sealed the fate of its former flagship Android device, the HTC Nexus One, by announcing that the smartphone will no longer be available online from the search company's own site.

This announcement finalizes Google's plan to shut down its Web-based smartphone store after it failed to live up to expectations. Customer support will still be available in the U.S., and the device will continue to be available to Android developers. Additionally, the Nexus One will be sold through carrier partners in Europe, Asia, "and possibly others based on local market conditions."

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In a short-notice press conference today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressed the iPhone 4 reception issues that have been at the top of tech news for several weeks.

In short, users complained of a significant drop in wireless signal when they touched a certain area of the iPhone 4 chassis with as little as the tip of the finger. Videos were posted, opinions were aired, and in short, the typical furor around Apple products was whipped up in practically no time at all. But this time it was very negative.

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Computer company Dell today issued a statement announcing that it has proposed settlements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "on terms consistent with the settlement framework described in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for its fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2010."
The company has been under investigation by the SEC for nearly five years for suspicion of negligence, fraud, and misconduct in the company's deals with Intel Corporation.

Dell's 10-Q document (.pdf here) was filed in late June. It says:

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There is no shortage of file sharing services out there, and most offer a free tier that lets users upload and download very limited quantities of data, followed by a couple of subscription tiers for users interested in sharing more data. Typically, the first level of these subscription services runs $10 per month and charges work their way up from there.

Gygan, a new file sharing service recently launched in public beta, is challenging services like RapidShare, Megaupload, Dropbox, and YouSendIt by offering fewer limitations on sharing and hosting, and a cheaper point of entry to their subscription tiers.

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Download MaxiVista iPad for Windows from Fileforum now!

Windows users can now use the Apple iPad as a wireless display extension with a software package released in beta today called MaxiVista from German software company Bartels Media.

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Today, Ford announced that its Sync in-car command, navigation, and entertainment system has improved its voice recognition interface by increasing the vocabulary by more than 100x, allowing system commands to be much simpler and more direct.

The Sync system was developed through Ford's partnership with Microsoft, and launched in 2007 on twelve 2008 Ford vehicles. At first, the system was very limited in what it could do, and included the ability to operate USB media players hands-free, connect to mobile phones via bluetooth, and export diagnostic data. The voice interface launched with around 100 commands, which reflected more or less the menu structure of the system.

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Today, Motorola's latest Android superphone, the Droid X, is available for purchase through Verizon Wireless for $199 after the $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service contract.

Billed as the sequel to Motorola's breakthrough Droid smartphone, the Droid X has a much larger 4.3" screen, a 1GHz TI OMAP 3640 processor, 512MB of DRAM, and 8GB of onboard memory with support for microSDHC up to 32 GB.

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Today, a select group of PlayStation Plus subscribers got access to the first preview version of Hulu Plus on the PlayStation 3.

Hulu Plus is the new subscription tier for the popular streaming TV website which lets U.S. subscribers watch their favorite programs on connected TVs, Set-top boxes, mobile devices, and now video game consoles for $9.99 per month.

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According to tax documents submitted for the years 2006 through 2008, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has recovered only a tiny fraction of its total legal expenses through "Anti-Piracy Restitution."

The documents, hosted here, here and here by p2pnet and highlighted by New York attorney Ray Beckerman, show the RIAA's top five most highly compensated independent contractors for these three years. This included the law firms Holme, Roberts, and Owen, LLP, Jenner & Block, and Cravath, Swaine and Moore, who received a total of $17,614,901 in 2008 alone.

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Market research firm comScore released its U.S. search rankings for June 2010, and though the search business is still soundly dominated by Google, both Microsoft and Yahoo increased their market share where Google actually lost some ground.

According to comScore, Google's market share for June was 62.6 percent, down from May's 63.7 percent. Microsoft and Yahoo each increased their search shares from 12.1 to 12.7 percent and 18.3 to 18.9 percent.

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