SEOUL (Reuters) – LG Electronics Inc, the world’s No. 3 mobile phone maker, on Wednesday launched a smartphone based on Google’s Android operating system in South Korea, as it seeks to boost its relatively weak smartphone line-ups.
LG, which is fighting an uphill battle against leaders Nokia, Blackberry maker RIM and Apple, plans to boost smartphone offerings with some 20 models this year, half the offerings based on the most popular Android.
The South Korean firm wants to claim a double-digit share of the global smartphone market by 2012. Currently the top three players control three quarters of the booming and lucrative smartphone market.
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By Doug Palmer
Pedestrians walk past Google China headquarters in Beijing January 26, 2010 file photo. REUTERS/Jason Lee
“We are still dialoguing not just with Google, but with other Internet providers, to make sure we fully understand what is happening in China,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in remarks at the National Press Club.
At the same time, U.S. trade officials are “trying to make our own determination whether we believe in fact this is not WTO compliant and if the best resolution is to go forward and file an appeal,” Kirk said.
A case challenging censorship practices that affect Google and other Internet providers who operate in China would be the first of its kind at the WTO.
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By Sinead Carew
A man looks at his mobile next to a Cisco banner at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 17, 2010.REUTERS/Albert Gea
The router, Cisco’s first major upgrade in six years, is aimed at helping operators handle surging Internet use driven by driven by popular smartphones like Apple Inc’s iPhone and Web services like Google Inc’s YouTube.
The company boasted that 72 of the new CRS-3 routers connected together could deliver every movie ever made in four minutes over the Internet, or connect China’s entire population of 1.3 billion by video conference all at once.
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Looks like the iPad will have some competition for the tablet wars. HP’s Slate will be able to use Adobe Flash and AIR, which the iPad will not. This I think will make it more marketable and a much better choice than an iPad.
Here are some videos from Mashable.
Men stand behind a logo of Sony Corp at an electronics shop in Tokyo in this November 20, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Toru Hanai
Sony said it would begin selling 3D TVs in Japan on June 10. The electronics and entertainment conglomerate expects a model with a 46-inch screen to sell for 350,000 yen ($3,875) and a 40-inch model to sell for 290,000 yen.
The sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar” and other recent titles have sparked massive interest in 3D movies, and electronics makers are now rushing to get flat panel TVs with three-dimensional visual effects to the market.
Panasonic Corp has announced plans to launch its 3D TVs in the United States on Wednesday, and cooperate with top U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy Co in promoting them.
Last month Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world’s No. 1 TV brand, launched 3D TV sales in South Korea and said it would launch globally in March with the aim of selling at least 2 million 3D TVs this year.
Sony said it planned to launch its 3D TVs overseas around the time of the Japan launch.
Prior to the announcement, shares of Sony closed the morning session in Tokyo up 0.5 percent at 3,310 yen. The benchmark Nikkei average fell 0.3 percent.
($1=90.31 Yen)
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
A photo of the Google Inc. logo is shown on a computer screen in San Francisco, California July 16, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
The paper said the service runs on TV set-top boxes which use elements of Google’s Android wireless operating system. It allows users to search content from Dish as well as websites such as YouTube, and to personalize the lineup of shows.
More set-top boxes and TV sets with Internet access are becoming available to consumers including a new Web enabled device from TiVo Inc, the set-top box maker. Dish’s sister company EchoStar also makes set-top boxes but together with Dish has been caught up in a long and potentially expensive patent dispute with TiVo.
The Journal said Google hopes to link the new service with its fledgling TV ad-brokering business, allowing it to target ads to individual households based on customer data.
A spokeswoman for Dish declined to comment while a spokesperson for Google was not immediately available.
(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Richard Chang)
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Internet was built on freedom of expression. Society wants someone held accountable when that freedom is abused. And major Internet companies like Google and Facebook are finding themselves caught between those ideals.
Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively “safe harbor” from prosecution over user-generated content in the United States and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions.
Such may have been the case when three Google executives were convicted in Milan, Italy on February 24 over a bullying video posted on the site — a verdict greeted with horror by online activists, who fear it could open the gates to such prosecutions and ultimately destroy the Internet itself.
Journalist Jeff Jarvis suggested on his influential BuzzMachine blog that the Italian court, which found Google executives guilty of violating the privacy of an autistic boy who was taunted in the video, was essentially requiring websites to review everything posted on them.
“The practical implication of that, of course, is that no one will let anyone put anything online because the risk is too great,” Jarvis wrote. “I wouldn’t let you post anything here. My ISP (Internet Service Provider) wouldn’t let me post anything on its services. And that kills the Internet.”
A seemingly stunned Chris Thompson, writing for Slate, said simply: “The mind reels at this medieval verdict.”
Legal experts have been more sanguine, saying the verdict in Milan will most likely end up an outlier — unable to stand the scrutiny even of the Italian appeals courts, never mind setting legal precedents elsewhere.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. officials said they were allowing U.S. technology companies to export chat and social media software to Iran, Sudan and Cuba, with the hope it will help their citizens communicate with the outside world.
The decision by the U.S. Treasury Department followed a request by the State Department to provide waivers under existing sanctions, allowing companies like Google Inc and Microsoft Corp to export free mass market software.
“Today’s actions will enable Iranian, Sudanese and Cuban citizens to exercise their most basic rights,” Treasury Deputy Treasury Secretary Neil Wolin said in a statement.
The waiver would allow downloads of software for Web browsing, blogging, email, instant messaging, and chat; social networking; and photo and movie sharing, the Treasury said.
In a December 15, 2009, letter to Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, the State Department said it had asked Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to loosen export rules, citing a U.S. national interest to allow people in those nations to have access to the programs.
(Reporting by John Poirier; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Is the Federal Housing Authority heading towards its own financial cliff because of its efforts to prop up the nation’s shaky housing market? Andrew Caplin, professor of economics at New York University, explains his concerns on Bloomberg Television:
Caplin believes the FHA is systematically understating the risk in their loan portfolio. For example, when they restructure a loan, they immediately treat it as a success – i.e., it’s removed from their book of troubled loans. But there is a possibility that the borrower will fall behind on that loan as well, and of course the risk is intensified by the recession, and the fact that the borrower was often a shaky credit in the first place. But the FHA does not reserve for this.
Caplin believes that the need for an FHA bailout is a near certainty. This would continue the “waterfall” phenomenon we have seen throughout the financial crisis. As each segment of the system gets stressed, the problem is not adequately measured and is only partially alleviated to avoid the immediate pain of drastic surgery. In effect, the regulatory powers allow it to flow downstream until it stresses another part of the system. The taxpayer picks up the tab multiple times, prolonging the crisis.
A visitor uses a computer at a showroom of Samsung Electronics at the company's headquarters in Seoul January 7, 2010. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak
A poll of 27,000 adults in 26 countries for the BBC World Service showed 78 percent of Internet users believed the Web gave them greater freedom, while nine in 10 said it was a good place to learn.
Respondents in the United States were above the average in believing the Internet was a source for greater freedom and they were also more confident than most in expressing their opinions online.
However, others felt concern about spending time online, with 65 percent of respondents in Japan saying they did not feel they could express their opinions safely online, a sentiment that was also felt in South Korea, France, Germany and China.
The issue of Internet freedoms hit the headlines earlier this year after the world’s largest search engine Google Inc threatened to quit China, the world’s biggest Internet market, over strict censorship rules.
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