The YouTube battle for Number 10
Apr. 28 – Britain is renowned for its innovative advertising campaigns, but attempts by UK political parties to replicate digital strategies which were so successful during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign have largely failed to ignite enthusiasm. (02:43)
Robot child gets upgraded
Apr 27 – A robot designed to learn like a child is getting some new legs and smaller hands. The iCub was originally designed to resemble an infant but had hands of an 8-year-old child because of difficulties making them any smaller. Stuart McDill reports. (01:41)
Microsoft and HTC signed a patent deal for mobile phones.
EDMOND, Wash. — April 27, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC’s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC.
The agreement expands HTC’s long-standing business relationship with Microsoft.
“HTC and Microsoft have a long history of technical and commercial collaboration, and today’s agreement is an example of how industry leaders can reach commercial arrangements that address intellectual property,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with HTC.”
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A lot of people use Firefox as their main browser for the internet. Now it is coming to the Android. It is in a pre-alpha version so there will be some bugs, but it will be nice to have it for the Android. I downloaded it and will check it out
It is actually called Fennec
We’ve only really tested this on the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One.
It will likely not eat your phone, but bugs might cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot.
Memory usage of this build isn’t great — in many ways it’s a debug build, and we haven’t really done a lot of optimization yet. This could cause some problems with large pages, especially on low memory devices like the Droid.
You’ll see the app exit and relaunch on first start, as well as on add-on installs; this is a quirk of our install process, and we’re working to get rid of it.
You can’t open links from other apps using Fennec; we should have this for the next build.
This build requires Android 2.0 or above, and likely an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable device.
Edit: This build must be installed to internal memory, not to a SD card.
There also aren’t yet any automated nightly developer builds or automated updates to this build; it’s even more of a pre-nightly build (even earlier than pre-alpha). But, it’s usable enough that we wanted to get some feedback on it as we continue to develop. —Vladimir Vukićević
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs speaks about an application for the iPad at a special event at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California April 8, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
The company on Tuesday reported net income of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share, in the fiscal second quarter ended March 27, up from $1.62 billion, or $1.79 a share, in the year-ago period.
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A Yahoo! billboard is seen in New York's Time's Square January 25, 2010. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Shares of Yahoo were down about 1 percent after closing the regular Nasdaq session nearly flat at $18.38.
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Customers line up to purchase the Apple iPhone 3GS at the 5th Avenue Apple store in New York June 19, 2009. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
The unreleased iPhone unit later resurfaced on Gizmodo, a popular gadget website, which promptly splashed photos and details of it all over the Web and touched off a storm of publicity and speculation in the technology blogosphere.
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By William Maclean, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) – Investors should urgently diversify the web of undersea cables that serve as the world’s information and banking arteries to address soaring demand and piracy concerns and reduce the risk of catastrophic outages.
So says a report by a multinational research project that calls for the building of global backup routes for the submarine network that carries almost all international communications, including financial transactions and Internet traffic.
The report’s main author, Karl Rauscher of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an international professional body, told Reuters changes should be made “before we have to learn the hard way.”
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By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission unveiled revised antitrust rules on Tuesday allowing luxury brand owners to block online retailers without a bricks-and-mortar shop from distributing their products.
In a bid to counter criticism from online retailers such as eBay and Amazon as well as consumer groups that the provision could restrict user choice, the European Union competition watchdog said it would monitor developments.
“The Commission will be particularly attentive to concentrated markets to which price-discounters either online only or traditional may not have access,” the European Union executive said in statement.
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A customer works with an Apple iPad during an iPad launch event at the Apple retail store in San Francisco, California April 3, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
The popular touchscreen device has sold more than 500,000 units of its Wi-Fi model in the U.S. in the week after its April 3 launch. Demand is expected to remain high with the launch of the version that connects to AT&T’s third generation — or 3G — wireless network.
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