Latest Technology News

Google took the wraps off its online presentation software on Monday night, rounding out its online office suite which now matches Microsoft Office in functionality.

The company said the application is very much still in its early stages, thus much of the functionality is quite basic. However, it did say it plans to add new features in the coming months. "Presently" is available immediately in 25 languages.

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Nokia said Tuesday that the US International Trade Commission would begin investigating its claims of unfair business practices and patent infringement against Qualcomm. The cellular phone maker said there is significant evidence that Qualcomm has used its technology in both GSM and CDMA chips, and filed a complaint with the ITC on August 16. It is seeking to have the offending chips banned from importation.

The two sides have been locked in a legal tit-for-tat since April of this year, when a patent licensing agreement between the two expired. In this case, the patents have to do with technologies that improve the performance and efficacy of wireless communications. This enhancements result in lower manufacturing costs, better battery life, and make it possible to develop smaller phones.

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Just days after two Sony spokespersons flatly told Bloomberg News that no such deal had been reached, Asian press sources are saying today the company has agreed to sell its Kyushu Semiconductor facility - which produces the Cell BE CPU for Sony's PlayStation 3 - to its STI partner Toshiba for about 100 billion yen (about $863.5 million).

The deal would help scale down Sony's ongoing investment in semiconductor technology, while at the same time keeping the Cell chip in the family. Sony, Toshiba, and IBM have been partnering in the Cell's development since its inception.

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Microsoft and Sprint expanded their partnership on Tuesday, with the carrier debuting integrated GPS and search functionality using Live Search, as well as voice search through Tellme.

Sprint's local search as well as full Internet search through the carrier's mobile portal would now be powered by Microsoft. The local search would also be GPS-aware, allowing consumers to search around their location as detected by the Sprint's network.

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It actually didn't seem mathematically possible. Three is not a multiple of two, and the computer industry rarely does anything that can't be bundled as a power of two. But AMD's Triple-Core Phenom processor, which will hit desktops at the beginning of next year, may be the oddball that the CPU market never expected.

Even folks inside of AMD will admit Intel has stepped up to the plate in the last 16 months, and that AMD has ground to make up in several departments. When Intel was planning its comeback two years ago, it introduced a controversial technique called hyperthreading that enabled a single-core processor to run two threads concurrently. But after tests revealed minimal performance gains - and in some categories, performance losses - many perceived Intel's move as a kind of stopgap, to buy it some time before it could launch its first dual-core series with Core Microarchitecture.

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In a move that was successfully kept secret, for the most part, until late last week when the first rumor whispers were widely repeated, AMD is making an unprecedented, near-term adjustment to its technology roadmap. As soon as the first half of next year, the company now plans to introduce into the desktop CPU market a new line of Phenom triple-core processors, whose architecture was christened with the code-name Toliman just hours ago.

The existence of Triple-Core Phenom was revealed to members of the press this evening at a special West Coast press briefing late today. "Normally we do not make a press announcement or do analyst's briefings on a roadmap update," AMD's Desktop Division brand manager Simon Solotko told BetaNews, "but this roadmap update includes a change which we have withheld from the market primarily due to competitive reasons. AMD had an opportunity which we've known about for some time to provide an exciting product in the market, and we have decided at this point to come forward with our plan to release that product."

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Although its aim was to bring the price down, the organization behind the so-called "$100 laptop" is moving further away from its goal. The One Laptop Per Child Foundation said the device, now known as the XO Laptop, will now cost about $188. This is up $12 from the price tag the group gave in May of this year. Behind the price increase are rising costs of certain components and currency fluctuations, says OLPC, however they are committed to keeping it from rising any further.

Reports say the OLPC has commitments for about three million devices, but the group will not confirm where the devices are going until production begins in October. While the device currently uses AMD chips to power it, Intel recently dropped its efforts to deride the project and said it was working with the group to put its chips in the second version of the XO Laptop, though no release date for that has been set.

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After a ten-month delay which saw the company's own high-profile organizers ousted in a management coup that to this day remains mysterious, the ad-supported music service SpiralFrog finally emerged from beta today. It's being billed as the first free music download service to provide fully licensed, DRM-enabled music for MP3 players (though not iPods). Its catch is that it compels you to first sit through a word or two from their sponsors.

Like commercial radio, SpiralFrog is supported through advertising, though it compels users to pay attention to ads during the download process. For advertisers, the value proposition is to enable the site to target ads directly to specific listener segments; for users, it's the option to keep the songs or the videos.

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Yahoo confirmed late today its pending $350 million cash acquisition of Zimbra, an online/offline open source office applications suite. While exact details of the deal are not yet available, Yahoo's move will put it in direct competition with Google, which is also offering online office applications to both consumers and business.

Zimbra is based in San Mateo, Calif. and has secured about $30 million in funding from its investors. In August, it announced it had grown its customer base by 55 percent over the previous quarter, and boasts a community of about 10,000 contributing to the project.

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Leap Wireless, the wireless company behind the Cricket and Jump Mobile brands, said Sunday that it will reject an unsolicited acquisition offer from competitor MetroPCS.

MetroPCS is a regional carrier which has operations in the metropolitan areas of central and northern California, central and South Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and Texas. It plans to launch service in Los Angeles this week, and in New York, Philadelphia and Boston in 2008 and 2009.

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Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile USA, said Monday it had agreed to acquire Southeastern US carrier SunCom for $1.6 billion USD in cash.

The deal, announced Monday, is still subject to regulatory approval. It is guaranteed to have shareholder approval however, the two companies said, due to the fact that two investment companies owning more than 50 percent of the stock in the company have committed to vote in favor.

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In the midst of debates with his estate over charges of trademark infringement, Bob Marley's ringtones are again available from Verizon, enabling a veritable throng of users to finally be able to pick up their phones to the tune of "I Shot the Sheriff."

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of his milestone album "Exodus," Verizon announced on August 28th it would make available Bob Marley and the Wailers ringtones. The list of 28 possible tracks included such hits as "Could You Be Loved," "Buffalo Soldier," as well as recording history's most famous musical confession.

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Nokia continued its push into the Internet services industry on Monday, announcing it has acquired Boston-based mobile marketing media provider Enpocket.

"Nokia has already announced its intention to be a leading company in consumer Internet services and we believe that mobile advertising will be an important element in monetizing those services for our customers and partners," Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera said today.

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This morning's ruling from the European Court of First Instance dissects both Microsoft's and the European Commission's arguments with logical, plain-spoken precision. It makes the point that Microsoft doesn't get to decide what "interoperability," "bundling," and "evolution" mean. But neither does the EC.

As an institution unto itself, the European Union is frankly not much older than Microsoft. America has a few hundred years of legal precedent to guide it, and the EU characterizes its heritage as the combination of thousands of years of legal foundation among its 27 member countries. But in actuality, the European Commission is bound by its own principles not to apply itself to any case, even if it affects the whole of the continent, unless it can prove to its people that it can do a better job than the legislative authorities of its member states can do collectively.

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After 22 years in the Dulles/Reston area of Virginia, AOL will move the majority of its operations to New York City to be closer to the hub of worldwide advertising, which makes up a good deal of its new business model.

The company's new headquarters, as well as its advertising and programming operations, will be located at 770 Broadway, where it has leased office space. AOL said today it will continue to maintain a presence in Dulles, Va. and Mountain View, Calif., among other locations.

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