German courts will hear Samsung appeal on Galaxy Tab ban
Just days after a German court issued an injunction that halted sales of Samsung's 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab tablet across the European Union, the Korean electronics manufacturer won the right to appeal. The company will appear in court on August 25 in Dusseldorf to argue its case.
Apple was successful August 9 in getting the court to agree that Samsung's larger Galaxy Tab copies the iPad's design. The injunction is effective across the EU's 27 member-states save for the Netherlands, where Apple launched a separate case. The judge in that case says he expects to rule by Monday.
HTC takes majority stake in Beats by Dr. Dre
HTC continued to diversify its product portfolio on Thursday, announcing it had purchased a majority 51 percent stake in Beats Electronics, a US company that produces high end headphones and speakers. The company is a joint venture of rapper Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.
In monetary terms the investment comes to about $300 million USD, according to reports.
Gizmodo won't be charged in iPhone 4 prototype case
Bloggers with Gizmodo will escape prosecution surrounding the receipt of an iPhone 4 prototype last year, which the site paid for and ultimately reported on. Two other individuals will be charged however, as they allegedly were behind the sale of the device to the blog.
Brian Hogan, 22, of Redwood City, Calif. and Sage Wallower, 28, of Emeryville, Calif. both face one count of the misappropriation of lost property, with Wallower also charged with possession of stolen property. Their arraignment has been set for August 25 according to a statement from San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe.
Study: Mobile apps frequently disclose sensitive user data
Despite all the attention as of late on mobile security, a majority of mobile apps still have security flaws that should be of concern, warns security firm ViaForensics. The results come from comprehensive security tests for 100 apps on both the Android and iOS platforms.
Each app was given one of three possible ratings -- pass, warn, or fail -- depending on whether or not ViaForensics was able to access data it stored in each of the apps. A "pass" rating was given if the data could either not be found or was stored encrypted. For apps where the data was found but did not pose an immediate risk, a "warn" rating was assign.
British politician wants Blackberry Messenger shut off during riots
BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion has offered to assist British authorities in tracking down those participating in the riots across the UK, it said Monday. The move irked supporters of the rioters, and RIM's blog was subsequently hacked in retaliation.
It has also gotten the attention of British politicians. David Lammy, a member of parliament from the riot-stricken north London suburb of Tottenham, has called for the BlackBerry Messenger service to be shut down in the country. "This is one of the reasons why unsophisticated criminals are outfoxing an otherwise sophisticated police force," he lamented.
iPad's dominance will last through 2020, says analyst
While Apple's iPad currently enjoys a healthy advantage over its competitors presently, at least one analyst expects the bestselling tablet to enjoy its advantage for the next decade if not longer. Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf expects competitors to eat into the iPad's lead, but the device will still have a 60 percent market share by 2020.
Wolf speculates that competition among competitors will mainly cannibalize market share among those competitors, rather than affect the iPad's market share in any demonstrable way. Such a prediction may not be far from the truth: while dozens -- if not hundreds -- of new tablets have popped up in recent months, none have been able to gain any traction against the iPad.
FBI releases app to assist in finding missing children
Echoing a move made by other government agencies as of late, the FBI on Monday debuted its first in-house mobile application called Child ID. The iOS app aims to give parents a central location to store information about their children in the event they are lost or kidnapped.
The app will store information such as vital statistics and pictures of the child, which then can be easily e-mailed to law enforcement to aid in their investigations. The FBI has also included information on keeping children safe, as well as what to do if your child does indeed go missing.
Patently unfair: Google's patent half-truths come home to roost
In the matter of a few short hours on Wednesday night, Google's seemingly well-intentioned and cogent argument against its competitors vis a vis Android blew up in its face. In the fallout, the search giant now appears to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth and may have strengthened its competitors' claims against it.
See, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond argued that there's a "a hostile, organized campaign against Android" using patents he calls "bogus." This came just days after it lost its bid for a host of Nortel patents to a consortium of companies that included Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research in Motion, and Sony.
Sony's PlayStation Vita to miss holidays in US, Europe
Sony admitted Thursday that its upcoming PlayStation Vita handheld console would miss the holidays in both the US and European markets, although it still would be on track to release by the end of the year in Japan. The company had said just last month that the PlayStation Portable's successor would arrive for that all important retail season.
The Vita ships in both Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G models through a deal with AT&T. It sports the familiar Sony controller interface with an OLED touchscreen, and adds a rear-mounted touchpad and six-axis motion sensors. A quad-core ARM processor and GX 543MP4+ graphics processor support the gaming experience.
Symantec: fragmentation prevents Androids from recording phone calls
The disclosure of potentially serious malware affecting Android smartphones seemed to be tempered on Wednesday, with two security firms at odds over its threat to users. What's saving everyone from a Trojan that can record phone calls and apparently send them to a remote server? Hardware fragmentation.
CA had warned on Tuesday of the potential threat from this phone call recording app. That firm's findings caused Symantec researcher Irfan Asrar to take a second look.
UK finally makes ripping your own DVDs and CDs legal
Aiming to make its copyright laws more responsive to the realities of the digital age, the UK Government on Wednesday began efforts to update its more than 300-year-old system to better reflect how its citizens are using copyrighted works.
The plans include changing the laws so the 'ripping' of CDs and DVDs owned by UK citizens would now be legal, something that up until now would have been considered against the law. Government officials also said they had scrapped earlier announced plans to block copyright-infringing sites.
McAfee: 'State actor' behind massive global espionage ring
With hacking becoming an increasing concern as of late with the work of decentralized groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec making headlines, concerns over state-sponsored intrusions has abated. McAfee has brought those fears back to the forefront thanks to a whitepaper released on Wednesday.
McAfee says that it has uncovered a massive hacking operation that has targeted at least 72 government agencies, companies, and organizations in 14 countries since 2006. Worse yet, McAfee has reason to believe a single foreign government may be behind the attacks.
Android malware can record and upload phone conversations
With the focus lately being on the security holes within iOS, media attention on flaws within Android has subsided. That ended Monday as security firm CA revealed a new Trojan, aimed at the mobile OS, that records the details of incoming and outgoing calls as well as the actual audio itself.
There are already Android Trojans in the wild that have the capability to store call information. This Trojan in particular however stores the audio of the phone call in .amr format on the SD card within the device. Worse yet, it appears to store a configuration file in the phone's memory, complete with remote server details.
Google's Chrome 13 claims even faster Google searches
Google on Tuesday released Chrome 13, adding its Instant Pages functionality to the stable build of its browser for the first time. The feature had been part of beta builds of Chrome since June, and aims to make surfing to top search results in Google much faster.
Instant Pages works by preloading the first search result after entering a query into Google. Of course, the functionality would truly be helpful when the result is what the user is looking for: all other search results on the page would not be preloaded.
Best Buy debuts Insignia HDTVs with TiVo functionality
It has taken more than two years, but the benefits of a deal struck in July 2009 between Best Buy and TiVo are finally being realized. The retailer on Monday debuted two HDTVs carrying its in-house Insignia branding, both featuring the TiVo user interface.
Consumers will not be charged a monthly fee, as the interface is the only similarity with the company's set-top boxes: the TVs do not have DVR capability. Best Buy initially will offer the sets in 32 and 42-inch sizes, it said.
Ed's Bio
Ed Oswald is a freelance journalist from the Reading, PA area. Although he has written across a variety of subjects, Ed’s passion and focus has been on technology and gadgets. His work regularly appears on tech news sites BetaNews, PCWorld, and Technologizer, and has been syndicated to eWeek, Time’s Techland blog, VentureBeat and the New York Times.
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