News and Analysis Results
Google target slips ads into iPhone apps
AdMob - the self-described "world's largest mobile advertising marketplace" that was recently snapped up by Google for tidy $750m - is introducing a new in-app advert and product-purchasing system for the iPhone. Reports scurried across the web yesterday about Apple being in talks with AdMob about a possible acquisition before …
Amazon may plug in-book advertising into Kindle
Amazon may embed advertising in e-books for the Kindle as well as paperbacks sold through its on-demand book publishing service. A pair of US patent applications point to the online retailer's vision of plugging modern tat through classic lit with advertisements custom-tailored to the content. The patents are titled "On-Demand …
Display maker spends $215m on E Ink
E Ink has been bought by the company that makes most of the displays based on its technology. Taiwan-based Prime View will buy E Ink for $215m. E Ink will use the funding to further its R&D efforts. It'll be demo'ing a prototype colour display this week at the Society for Information Display conference in San Antonio, Texas, …
Amazon patents hideous Kindle 1 design
On the eve of Amazon's Kindle DX announcement, the online storefront was awarded a US design patent for the awful, terrible look of the Kindle 1. Newer Kindle models may be looking much better, but the e-reader's debuting aesthetic left quite a lot to be desired. Presumably before the USPTO granted its boon, the Kindle 1's look …
Tree huggers will confuse shoppers, says Amazon
Amazon.com is an immensely popular online storefront that sells everything from books and groceries to virtual timeshares of its extensive data center infrastructure. Amazee is a Switzerland-based, social "collaboration website" made for social activists and protestors to organize, promote, and fund their public uprisings and …
Sun packs 150 billion web pages into meat locker
If you believe the Gospel According to Robert J. Cringley, Google pilfered its top-secret modular data center from the Internet Archive. In a now-famous 2005 online expose, Cringley puts Google co-founder Larry Page at a pitch meeting where the Internet Archive's Bruce Baumgart considers the advantages of stuffing a full-fledged …
Apple sued over iPhone e-bookiness
A Swiss company has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the iPhone infringes upon its patent for an "Electronic device, preferably an electronic book." The plaintiff - one Monec Holding Ltd of Berne, Switzerland - was founded in 2000 and describes itself on its website - which might most kindly be described as minimalist - as …
Amazon sued by cable TV giant over Kindle ebooks
Life-science-obsessed cable TV giant Discovery Communications has sued Amazon.com over its Kindle ebook devices, claiming patent infringement. Discovery filed suit today in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement of a patent filed by the company in September of 1999. Describing an "Electronic …
Microsoft's R&D chief: the people problem with innovation
Rick Rashid, leader of Microsoft's R&D operation, said he could foresee cloud computing some years back. The challenge as a technologist, though, has been in anticipating the finer details of how the cloud and its related technologies - the data center, replication, and synchronization - will be adopted by people and …
Microsoft eyes metered-PC boondoggle
Microsoft hopes to charge you for PC hardware and software in much the same way wireless carriers charge you for text messages. As detailed in a patent application recently unveiled by the US Patent and Trademark Office, Redmond seeks exclusive rights to a "Metered Pay-As-You-Go Computing Experience." This would involve saddling …
US court blocks Amazon-style patent trolls
A US court has made the task of getting patent protection for software and business methods a la Amazon's "One-Click" a whole lot more difficult. The ruling means businesses and individuals with a penchant for patenting trivial or abstract concepts, and suing over infringement, may soon receive a swift kick to the intangibles. …
Amazon patents 'customer review incentives'
The self-described patent reform advocates at Amazon.com don't seem to have broken their habit of putting legal hooks on just about anything they dream up. Last Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for "creating an incentive to author useful item reviews." The patent describes a method of "rewarding the authors of reviews …
MS woos Yahoo!, bugging investigated and fraud costs skyrocket
EU likes patents, hates patio heaters The cost of European patent protection is to plummet on May 1, when full English translations will no longer be required. Translations will, at most, have to be available in English, French and German. The EU is gunning for patio heaters, which have proliferated massively since the …
Microsoft, antitrust and blogtards
When Eben Moglen tore Tim 2.0'Reilly to shreds onstage at OSCON in July, it marked a turning point in the Web 2.0 mania. There were clear differences of principles at stake, and simply blowing some feel-good Californian empowerment rhetoric around couldn't disguise them. Actions have consequences, Moglen seemed to be saying: …
Microsoft funds object of IBM's mainframe fury
Microsoft has put its loaded name behind PSI - a Silicon Valley-based start-up currently at war with IBM in the mainframe market. PSI (Platform Solutions Inc.) this week revealed Microsoft as a new investor participating in its fresh $37m Series C funding round. Redmond joins companies such as Intel, Goldman Sachs and InterWest …
Amazon narrows patent after 1-Click reverse
Amazon.com has made a concession to reality in the defence of its 1-Click patent. Last month, an examination of the validity of the patent succeeded in having the patent rejected. That was the result of a reader-funded campaign by Peter Calveley, a Kiwi film technician who was frustrated that Amazon's patent had held back …
Start-up aims nanotube memory at iPods, phones and servers
The thought of introducing filthy carbon nanotubes into an ultra-sensitive fab has blocked the rise of so-called NRAM or Nano Random Access Memory. Thanks, however, to a refined cleansing process and relentless browbeating start-up Nantero thinks it has mainstream semiconductor players close to giving NRAM a try. In fact, the …
Only the iPhone can save mankind
Identify yourself, on the cheap The cost of the UK government's planned ID card scheme has dropped to a bargain £5.6bn the government's latest six monthly report into the project's progress reveals. The newly slashed figure covers the total cost of providing ID cards and biometric passports to UK and resident Irish citizens, …
Mac users get a new OS, and a Trojan for good measure
Before we begin with the round up of this week's news, can we politely direct your attention to the eSymposium we're hosting? It will take you on a journey from the desktop to the data centre, and is to be hosted by our lovely (and very clean shaven) US editor Ashlee Vance. You might like to sign up. Elsewhere, news happened. …
Sun sues NetApp, California style
Sun Microsystems has spanked Network Appliance with another lawsuit, as relations between the two vendor continue to deteriorate at speed. Just last week, Sun revealed a counter-suit to NetApp's Sept. lawsuit against Sun. NetApp thinks that Sun's Zettabyte File System (ZFS) infringes its patents, while Sun contends that most of …
Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
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