Nintendo to replace Wii classic controllers that triggered patent suit
Last May, Texas company Anascape won $21 million from Nintendo in a patent infringement suit regarding the video game giant's "classic controller" for the Wii. The analog stick architecture of a number of Nintendo's controllers infringed on a patent held by Anascape, and the future of the Wii classic controller became uncertain.
Predictably, sales of the controller saw a brief 207% explosion after the ruling.
Where have you gone, Joe Nacchio? (Jail, possibly.)
The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday reinstated former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio's 19 insider-trading convictions. He's appealing the 5-4 decision to the Supreme Court, but unless the Supremes grant a stay within the next couple of weeks, Nacchio's on his way to federal prison.
The appellate court ruled that the judge in Nacchio's trial, US District Judge Edward Nottingham, was within bounds when he excluded a particular defense witness. It sent the case, its six-year sentence and its $52 million forfeiture back to a three-judge panel for review, but it also chucked an earlier ruling that Nacchio could be free on bail during the the appeals process and lifted a stay on his prison stint.
Dell Studio XPS 435 goes up for sale
Dell's newest performance desktop is now available for purchase online. Geared toward the "power user," the XPS 435 has six DIMM slots, and three drive bays for a maximum potential of 24 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz Tri-Channel memory, and 4.5 TB of storage.
The XPS 435 is powered by Intel Core i7 processors -- for the base configuration priced at $1,099, a 2.66 GHz i7-920. For an additional $470, that can be upgraded to the i7-940 that runs at 2.93GHz. The top speed i7 processor available in the XPS 435 is the 965 which hums at 3.2 GHz but tacks on an additional $1,170 to the overall cost.
Can Lenovo afford to take the Dell route for product support?
Just like every other major player in the PC industry these days, Lenovo is having to rethink the way it has already rethought its short-term business plan. After already having shuffled its executive ranks earlier this month, the company's reassigned CEO Yang Yuanqing announced yesterday an additional 450 job cuts, in addition to the 2,500 the company already decided to make, with the new cuts affecting workers in Lenovo's native China.
But the part of Yang's message that rang the loudest bell yesterday was this: "While our business in China remains very strong, many of our global support functions have employees based in China," an indication that the latest round of additional cuts will impact Lenovo's product support team first.
Digital Music Forum: Age matters, but how much?
According to conventional wisdom, teens are the ones actively downloading all the hot new tunes from the Internet on to their iPods. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, hit the shopping mall once or twice a year to lazily fill in missing pieces in their personal CD collections of Golden Oldies.
In reality, though, a lot of under-20-year-olds are scouring the Web for information on the Beatles, while their parents trade songs with their own peers on Facebook or MySpace, according to participants in this week's Digital Music Forum in New York City.
Asus Eee drops $100 in price
Asus ushered in the netbook craze with its Eee PC in 2007 by hitting a sweet spot in price, features, and aesthetic appeal. When all of those aspects are in harmony, and the timing is right, the overall value of the product soars. We could be seeing a jump in value right now.
The 8.9" solid state, Linux-driven, Eee PC 901is being sold with a $100 rebate from Asus until March 8. It is equipped with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB of Ram, 20GB of solid state memory, a 6-cell battery that promises up to 6 hours of use, and the Xandros Linux operating system.
Microsoft sues TomTom over Linux kernel
This week, Microsoft issued a copyright infringement suit in US district court and with the US International Trade Commission against Dutch PND maker TomTom, claiming the company has violated eight of Microsoft's patents.
From Microsoft's filing with the USITC, the company says, "The portable navigation computing devices in question run a version of the Linux operating system, which is a general purpose operating system capable of supporting a wide variety of software applications. For example, the Linux operating system on the portable navigation computing devices executes a navigation application that uses the GPS data provided by the GPS receiver to generate driving directions. The Linux operating system used in the personal navigation computing device and/or the software applications supported by the operating system also provide the devices with additional functionality such as file system support for long and short file names, memory management for flash memory commonly used on such devices, and a platform for integrating and controlling various electronic components used with the portable navigation computing devices, such as other components in a vehicle."
Microsoft's 'green dashboard' manages energy costs and consequences
Once, businesses were interested in green computing mainly as a matter of corporate responsibility. But now, increasing regulatory pressures and skyrocketing fuel prices are spurring companies to want to take a very hard look at both their carbon footprints and energy costs, according to Jennifer Pollard, a senior product manager at Microsoft.
Earlier this month, Microsoft released the first edition of a tool aimed at taking the heavy lifting out of measuring the environmental impact of business activities and tracking your company's expenditures on oil, gas, and other forms of energy.
Nokia 'looking very actively' at making laptops, says CEO
Convergence is happening on all sides. PC makers Acer and HP pushed their way into the smartphone market this month, and now we await the push by a phone maker into the PC business.
Statements from Nokia's President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo yesterday affirmed his company's interest in making notebook computers, if nothing else. Kallasvuo told Finnish broadcaster YLE that Nokia is "looking very actively" at producing a PC.
Digital Music Forum: State of the industry in 2009
Although music enthusiasts are out there online Googling for downloads and information, a lot of musicians still find it tough to connect with fans and to sell their music over the Web, said speakers at the Digital Music Forum here in New York City today.
A big part of the challenge is that those likely to buy music online constitute a small and elusive bunch. "In the US, 50 to 65 percent of people don't buy any music at all," noted David Card, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Nokia's Comes with Music to launch in both US and Australia this year
Nokia will introduce Comes with Music in the United States later this year, disclosed Tom Erskine, director of global sales in Nokia's Music Division , during the Digital Music Forum in Manhattan on Wednesday.
Comes with Music offers subscribers unlimited downloads of millions of tunes in the Nokia Music Store.
Apple Safari 4 beta raises the bar for speed, compliance
Download Safari for Windows 4.28.16.0 Beta from Fileforum now.
We've been hearing quite a lot from every browser manufacturer, including Microsoft and Mozilla, about the incredible speed increases that eventually, pretty soon now, right around the corner, will be realized the moment one of them bites the bullet and installs a new, faster JavaScript interpreter. Well, consider the bullet officially bitten. Betanews tests of Apple's new beta of Safari for Windows, using a freshly cleaned Windows Vista SP1 virtual machine "white box," demonstrates significant speed improvements even over previous Safari versions, which were already quite fast.
The future (and several alternatives) on display at Microsoft's TechFest
If you like fresh new algorithms, dream of hanging sticky notes in mid-air, or have always wished your e-mail looked a little more like a beach ball, Microsoft Research's annual TechFest event will restore your faith in technology -- or, at least, the benefit of giving smart people room to run with ideas that aren't immediately profit-center-ready.
The yearly gathering of researchers from Microsoft's six research labs (Beijing, Bangalore, Mountain View, both Cambridges, and Redmond) is mainly a chance for the far-flung members of the group to present their ideas to colleagues at the mothership, but for a few hours, journalists are allowed to venture in.
Verizon takes on fuzzy-bunny robo-dialer
Like most current and former children, the lawyers at Verizon presumably have nothing against the Velveteen Rabbit. They do not, however, care for the Utah-based telemarketer that apparently made nearly half a million calls to Verizon Wireless subscribers on behalf of Family 1 Films, which is distributing a movie version of the beloved book.
The suit, filed in US District Court in Trenton, NJ, states that a Utah telemarketing outfit called Feature Films for Families made nearly 500,000 calls over several days in early February -- an average during some one-hour periods of a call every .32 seconds. Calls consisted of either a prerecorded voice message or a live human reading a script promoting the movie. (An IMDB commenter wasn't wowed by that script, describing it as "it's about a wonderful rabbit who goes on an adventure....blah blah blah....for every dollar you spend at the box office we will give you a credit for a DVD in our video library.")
DirecTV and DISH Network want compensation for carrying local channels in all markets
Before January 1, 2010, Congress must reinstate SHVIA (the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act of 1999), the pro-competition law that lets satellite television companies carry local broadcast TV stations, so a rare opportunity has been presented to change the law in its period of review.
Congressman Bart Stupak (R-Michigan) proposed a bill this month that would ultimately require satellite TV companies to provide local TV signals in all of their markets. Stupak proposed H.R. 927, or the "Satellite Consumers' Right to Local Channels Act," because two of the thirty satellite markets that cannot receive local TV broadcasts are in his district. Satellite coverage in the U.S. is comprised of 210 market areas.
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