FBI raids homes, makes arrests in connection with Anonymous hacks
At least a dozen individuals were arrested early Tuesday as the FBI expanded its investigation into the hacking group Anonymous. In conjunction with these arrests, raids were carried out in three homes -- two in Long Island, N.Y. and the other in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- as well as locations in California.
The FBI was not commenting on the raids directly but sources told Fox News that the raids were related to the federal government's widening probe of the activities of Anonymous. Arrests were made in California, Florida, and New Jersey. Charges against the detained individuals were not specified.
Microsoft's Tulalip slip-up may have revealed its new social network
It's got a funny name, and it may be Microsoft's next big thing. Microsoft Research employees accidentally published this week an internal project known as "Tulalip" which appears to be some type of social networking platform. The site has since been removed, but the questions still remain.
The name Tulalip comes from the name for a group of Native American tribes that call the Redmond, Washington area home. It's not known why Microsoft chose the name as the company isn't answering many questions on it.
Microsoft adds an ounce of hacking prevention to Hotmail
Microsoft introduced a new feature within Hotmail on Thursday that it hopes will assist the company in detecting compromised accounts, as well as prevent users from locking their accounts with passwords that are easily guessed by attackers. The company's thinking is that you will know your friend's account was hacked well before Microsoft would.
"When someone's account gets hijacked, their friends often find out before they do, because the hijacker uses their account to send spam or phishing email to all their contacts," Hotmail group program manager Dick Craddock said.
Is Amazon's tablet positioned to be an iPad killer?
The Wall Street Journal shook the tech world Wednesday with news that Amazon plans to release its own Android-based tablet in October, a clear effort to take Apple head on now that it has nearly dominated the e-reader market with its market-leading Kindle device.
While the device is not a replacement for the Kindle, it's likely that the e-retailer will make it compatible with its array of services. Amazon already has a stable of offerings that could make any tablet successful: its cloud-based music service, its own music store, the Kindle e-bookstore, and its streaming and downloadable video offerings.
AT&T sponsors Kindle 3G, price drops to $139
AT&T said Wednesday that it will advertise on the Kindle 3G to allow Amazon to lower the cost on the ad supported model another 15 percent. The 'Kindle with Special Offers' with 3G access previously cost $164; it will now cost $139.
The move is a win for AT&T, who has provided the 3G data for the Kindle since its launch back in 2009. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Amazon covers the cost of providing data to its Kindle customers, unlike tablet devices where the user is responsible for those charges.
Facebook wants to be on your dumb phone, too
Facebook has successfully conquered the smartphone market, with its apps for both Android and the iPhone consistently one of the most downloaded. However, the company has done little to focus on the so-called "dumb phone" market -- that is, until now.
The company announced Tuesday that it was releasing Facebook for Every Phone, a Java-based app which will work on over 2,500 phones. With a good deal of the phones today here in the US and elsewhere now smart phones, the move appears more to increase Facebook's reach in developing markets.
AT&T's new LTE devices support T-Mobile's spectrum
AT&T introduced two LTE devices on Tuesday, while at the same time saying it was on track to roll out the next generation cellular technology in five markets later this summer. Hidden in the details is the that fact the new devices also support T-Mobile's frequency bands, showing confidence in the proposed merger.
The AT&T USBConnect Momentum 4G is the carrier's first LTE dongle which will also support access to AT&T's entire national Wi-Fi network. The AT&T Mobile Hotspot Elevate 4G will be an LTE-enabled hotspot allowing for the connection of up to five devices simultaneously with the carrier's cellular network.
Twitter passes one million registered apps
Microblogging service Twitter said Monday that more than one million applications have now been registered, representing the work of over 750,000 developers. This is a marked increase from last year, when just 150,000 registered apps existed.
With such an explosive growth rate, this means a new app is registered with Twitter every 1.5 seconds.
Microsoft sells 400 million licenses for Windows 7
Windows 7 continues to charge ahead as a successful operating system release for Microsoft. CEO Steve Ballmer revealed in a Monday keynote at the annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles that the number of licenses sold worldwide has now surpassed 400 million.
Microsoft's latest version of Windows already runs on a little over 27 percent of all worldwide computers, according to data from Net Applications. Even though Windows 7's share has nearly doubled in the past year, it still has not been able to unseat the market leading Windows XP, still running on over half (51 percent) of all PCs.
What do game developers and drug dealers have in common?
New data suggests that the "freemium" mobile game model is becoming increasingly popular, with two-thirds of all revenue among the top 100 games in the iTunes App Store coming from such games. This is a marked increase from January, when only 39 percent of revenue came from such sources.
Free-to-play or freemium games work like this. Instead of charging for the game up front, it is given away for free. The developer makes its money by extending or enhancing game play through in-app purchases, but they are not necessarily required to play the game itself.
Major ISPs strike deal with music, movie industry over copyright
In a move sure to rankle opponents of the entertainment industry's anti-piracy efforts, leading ISPs and the movie studios and record labels announced a voluntary deal to begin monitoring ISP accounts for possible piracy. Piraters would be subject to a series of "alerts," each increasingly threatening in tone.
The first alert would simply be to inform a user that their account may have been used for copyright infringement, and what the consequences are for getting caught and where to find legal material. These warnings would get more stern in tone until the sixth alert, where the user would find his or her Internet connection slowed or disrupted until the problem is addressed.
Microsoft wants $15 for every Samsung Android device sold
Microsoft is demanding that Samsung pay it $15 in royalties for every Android phone it sells, Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Wednesday. While Samsung is attempting to negotiate the royalty fee lower, it does indicate that Microsoft plans to become more aggressive in pursuing Android manufacturers over use of technologies within Android that it says it has rights to.
The Redmond company is already receiving $5 for every HTC phone sold with the Android operating system, and that has made the company some $150 million, according to reports. With Microsoft asking three times that from Samsung, the potential is there for the company to make much more from this licensing deal.
Thinner iPhone with bigger camera readies for September
Rumors continue to indicate that the next version of the iPhone is getting ever closer to launch, with the Wall Street Journal saying sources have told the paper that orders have been placed for "key components." No specifics were given on a launch date, only saying it was expected during the third quarter.
Given we're currently in the third quarter now, and that will end in September, it likely means a launch of the device is probably no more than two months away. With at least one source saying it was told to ship components in August, that seems to suggest the launch will occur in September as has been rumored over the past several months.
Microsoft pays University of Nebraska $250,000 to use Office 365
If you really are in need of some high profile clients, you can always pay them. That's exactly what Microsoft has done with the University of Nebraska. The university will receive $250,000 in incentives from Microsoft to migrate its email and calendaring system to the recently announced Office365 platform.
The school had been using IBM's Lotus Notes for these services, however that system had begun to age -- having been in use since 1997. IBM had pitched its cloud-based version of Notes to the school, but could not come close to Microsoft's offer. Google was also said to be in the running but probably lost out for much of the same reason.
Bing to power english language results for China's Baidu
Microsoft is hoping to increase its search share in China through a new deal with the country's leading search site Baidu. The tie-up partners the Redmond company with a company that holds about a 75 percent share of China's search queries.
Google pulled out of the country last year over protests of China's stringent rules on censoring search results. The google.cn website currently redirects to Google's Hong Kong-based site, and only holds about 20 percent of the market, reports China-based research firm Analysis International. Bing's search share is practically non-existant in the country.
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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