Latest Technology News

Google's license to offer search services in China has been renewed after months of restructuring and negotiations with the Chinese government.

In 2005, Google first won a license to operate within China, but to remain available, it had to adhere to strict government oversight and censor search results. Queries related to human rights topics, or to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, for example, would redirect searchers to Government-run sites.

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Six companies were sued by patent holding company NTP on Friday, claiming infringement on the same patents that successfully earned the company a $612.5 million settlement from BlackBerry maker RIM in 2006. The lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va. Thursday afternoon.

NTP said it filed the suit against Apple, Google, HTC, LG, Microsoft, and Motorola to force the companies to pay licensing fees for their technology. The patents include methods to deliver e-mail over wireless connections.

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Facebook's privacy issues have come to a head as it has been sued over its handling of users' private information. The class action suit was filed on July 2 in the Queen's Bench Court in Winnepeg, Manitoba. Merchant Law Group LLP filed the action on behalf of Donald Woligroski, a Winnepeg Facebook user.

The suit accuses the social networking site of misappropriating Woligroski and others' personal information and intentionally using it for commercial purposes. It also says Facebook was careless and dishonest in alerting users to how the information would be used.

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Android's unabated growth has been a hot topic recently, and comScore's smartphone market share breakdown released today shows that from February to May 2010, it was actually the ONLY major mobile platform to experience positive growth.

Among this growth, a complaint about the Android platform has persisted: it has no good games. While this may be a bit of an overstatement, users frequently compare the Android platform with Apple's iOS in terms of functionality, features, and apps; and iOS simply has more high quality games.

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Mobile Web consumption is growing at an explosive rate according to reports from both the PEW Internet and American Life Project and Morgan Stanley, and in as few as five years, our mobile devices could be our primary connection to the Web.

To address this explosion in mobile Web consumption, YouTube last night unveiled a new mobile site with all the features of the traditional YouTube.

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The National Security Agency is launching a new effort to detect cyberattacks on infrastructure and private companies, sources told the Wall Street Journal Thursday. Raytheon has been awarded the contract for the first phase valued at some $100 million.

"Perfect Citizen" is an application that would be installed on a computer network and look for suspicious activity, although it apparently would not monitor the network continuously. When it detects a possible cyberattack, it would alert the proper authorities.

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If the answer is "Yes," you were laid off, I'd like to tell your story. Please e-mail joewilcox at gmail dot com. I must confirm your identity, but your story will be anonymous to protect your severance package. I must reemphasize: All current or former employees' identities will be kept anonymous. Journalists protect their sources; I am especially protective of mine. You can speak freely, as did the former employees who shared their stories for my February five-part series.

I'm also looking for contractors who Microsoft recently sent packing. I've been hearing some strange things about Microsoft's use of contractors, such as the surprising number, the even more surprising number recently let go and that numerous employees sacked during the last round of layoffs returned as contractors in similar roles. I'd like to tell your story, too.

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The mobile Web isn't a future event. It's here today, at least in the United States, according to a 25-page report PEW Internet released this week. The study's findings are hugely significant to companies like Microsoft, which is largely invested in the PC, and Apple or Google, which embrace mobile devices and cloud services.

"Fifty-nine percent of American adults now go online wirelessly using either a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51 percent of Americans who did so at a similar point in 2009," according to the key findings. Some of the numbers will seem low, such as 38 percent accessing the Internet from their cell phones. Just the opposite: PEW looked more broadly at cell phones -- not just smartphones, which in other studies ranked higher for Internet and applications use. PEW captures demographic data that is startlingly revealing, though unsurprising. For example, 65 percent of 18-29 year olds access the Internet from their cell phones.

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Today, Research in Motion's middleware for managing BlackBerry devices in enterprise networks, BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), was upgraded to service pack 2. The upgrade directly addresses the problem presented to IT when an increasing number of users are using their personal BlackBerries for corporate communications.

"People are buying smartphones for that rich personal experience, but then looking to bring that smartphone into the office to take their work with them as well," Santiago Carbonell, Handheld Software Product Manager at RIM said two weeks ago. "What we're working on is building a platform of coexistence between these two lives on one device...However, this means that in the interests of corporate security, some BlackBerry smartphone users can't add their personal email accounts, access Facebook or download third party applications."

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An issue with how the software on wireless equipment provided by Alcatel-Lucent handles advanced 3G data connections is responsible for slower upload speeds on AT&T's network, the two companies admitted on Wednesday.

Speed issues have been reported in several cities including Philadelphia, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. It's not everywhere though: earlier this week, BetaNews' Joe Wilcox reported he was unaffected in the area surrounding his residence in southern California.

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Today, just shy of a month after the first functionally complete version of Symbian^3 was released, the first complete Symbian^3 Product Development Kit (PDK 3.0.0) is available for download, including the full build of the platform and complete source code under the Eclipse Public License.

PDK 3.0.0 contains all of the APIs of Symbian^3, and is the first release to support a full UI ROM execution on ARMv5 platforms.

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Borders said Wednesday that it had launched its own branded e-book store, offering about 1.5 million titles in a variety of formats. The move follows the successful launch of the Kobo and Aluratek e-readers, which have surpassed sales expectations.

The e-book store will be powered by Kobo, which also has created Border's iPhone and iPad apps. Versions for the BlackBerry and Android platforms were also made available Wednesday. All three platforms are free downloads from their respective application stores.

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Google's Android mobile operating system has been released on many different types of devices, but since it is a touch-based OS, pretty much every device has been a so-called "touchphone," a device built around its screen.

But Motorola has been thinking outside of the box with Android, and has released several models that break out of the traditional touchphone form factor. Today, it has ventured even further outside of the touchphone realm and announced a new device that looks very little like any other Android device, the Charm.

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Vancouver-based telecommunications software company CounterPath today announced the availability of Bria 3.1 for both Windows and Mac OS, the latest edition of the company's desktop softphone capable of voice calling, high-definition (1280x720p) video calling, and instant- or SMS-based messaging.

Today's update improves Bria's usability in enterprise settings in a number of ways. Firstly, by including support for a much broader range of infrastructure equipment from major vendors like Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and NEC. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, support for multiple accounts has been added, and users can now select on the fly which account to use for voice, IM and HD video calling.

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Download Firefox 4 Beta 1 for Windows from Fileforum now.

Mozilla's popular Firefox web browser has just been released in Beta 1, which introduces a new graphical design for Windows users, support for the HD HTML5 video tag using the WebM format, a new Add-ons manager for all of your Add-ons, Plug-ins, and Themes, improved crash protection and security fixes, and an overall performance upgrade.

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