Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, charging that its Android phone software infringes on Oracle patents and copyrights related to Java, Oracle said on Thursday.
“In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement,” Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement.
Read more »
Premium programmer, HBO, has launched a free iPhone/iPod touch application in the Apple App Store. According to the company, the app, which was designed by Atimi Software, is designed to provide an “in-depth, interactive experience” that incorporates a range of branded entertainment, including video clips and in interactive episode guide. “We think the HBO App for iPhone and iPod touch will quickly attract both HBO’s loyal fans as well as new consumers,” HBO’s VP of brand strategy, Alison Moore, said in a prepared statement. “With the most up-to-date content and information about our programming, schedules, stars, and more, the HBO App will become a key entertainment resource for our consumers.”
Read more »
Microsoft has finally convinced Yahoo to use its search engine (Bing) in the web’s most trafficked property. For Microsoft, this will be a great way to show its search engine, Bing, to a large internet audience. Yahoo will be able to stop spending in search-related items, including R&D, and expects the deal to boost its annual profit by $500M. Yahoo will continue to sell ads for the Bing-powered Yahoo Search, but also for Bing.com.
If Yahoo stops its efforts on search, will it be able to come back in 10 years, when the deal ends? It seems unlikely, but Yahoo still has the option to use a core team of engineers to research the subject, without any operational hindering.
Read more »
Google has confirmed a massive outage that affected multiple services, including search, Docs and Gmail. The company attributed the downtime to a data “traffic jam” in Asia.
“An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14 percent of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions,” Google explained in a statement. “We’ve been working hard to make our services ultrafast and ‘always on,’ so it’s especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. We’re very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we’ll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won’t happen again. All planes are back on schedule now.”
Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee, told CNET that Google had attempted to alter key Internet routing numbers as part of a transition to the IPv6 networking standard. However, an unknown “bug” inside Google’s network reportedly prevented ISP’s from locating Google’s new ASNs on the Internet.
Unsurprisingly, the downtime was quickly reported on Twitter’s #googlefail channel, where participants offered various theories as to why certain Google users had experienced an outage.
It should be noted Gmail users faced a 20 minute outage on May 8 and an extended period of downtime in February. Other outages occured in April, August and October of 2008.
Adobe Flash, a platform for integrating animation and video into web pages, is making the jump to a television near you. Adobe’s newest take on Flash is slated to usher in a new era of enhanced living room gadgets – converting web-enabled TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes into web video-ready, widget-friendly powerhouses.
To date, Flash has mainly been used to make video from sites like YouTube viewable from within the browser. With the rise of the smartphone market, Adobe also rolled out a mobile version of Flash designed for online video viewers on the go. However, today’s announcement will allow developers to leverage Adobe’s Flashruntime to deliver similar rich-media apps — like dynamically updated online video players, and animated widgets — to a slew of HD-ready living room devices.
Ideally, widgets created with the runtime would let developers seamlessly integrate apps into the user interfaces already built into a device. So, for instance, users of a web-enabled HDTV could hypothetically access a plethora of rich media widgets right from the television’s existing menu system.
Of course, sucessfully rolling out a platform of this scale across myriad devices takes a number of partnerships. For the launch, Adobe is announcing an A-list group including cable operators, content providers, and device manufacturers like Intel, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Netflix, Atlantic Records, and the New York Times Company. When we asked Anup Murarka, Adobe’s director of technology strategy, to name a couple devices we could expect to find Flash on in the near future, he predictably shied away. However, he said that hardware manufacturers are planning on holding their announcements until their Flash-enabled product lineups are ready to go.
Muraka also told us that today’s announcement is less of a land grab for Flash, and more of a natural progression of the platform. Given the prevalence of Flash enabled web video (and the coming onslaught of web-enabled televisions) this actually makes a lot of sense. According to a recent report from comScore, roughly 80 percent of online videos worldwide are viewed via Flash. On the smartphone front, comScore says more than a billion mobile devices will have shipped with the Flash runtime embedded by the end of Q1 2009. These stats are especially crucial because the new framework is also backwards compatible with pre-existing Flash apps.
Will this be enough to fend off Flash competitors like Microsoft’s Silverlight? It certainly appears so. As if Adobe’s stellar numbers weren’t enough, its partnership with Netflix — who currently uses Silverlight for its movie streaming service – should be a harbinger for further dominance. Ultimately, the proof will be in pudding when Flash starts popping up in living room devices later this year.
Microsoft Corp.’s move to let users cripple Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) isn’t enough to solve its newest antitrust problems with European Union regulators, according to the head of the company that filed the original complaint.
“That’s one possible step,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software ASA. “But it doesn’t really change much, does it?”
Opera’s December 2007 complaint to the European Commission prompted the antitrust agency to charge Microsoft in January 2009 with stifling competition by bundling its browser with Windows. Specifically, the commission said that Microsoft “shields” IE from competition by distributing the application with its operating system.
Two weeks ago, when Microsoft confirmed that it would allow users of the upcoming Windows 7 to block IE from loading, some, including von Tetzchner, speculated that the option was prompted by the recent antitrust action.
“I would not be surprised if it was linked [to the charges],” he said.
Microsoft has declined to comment on whether the decision was connected to the commission’s move.
Although the commission has not spelled out what it might demand if its charges stick, it has hinted that Microsoft might be forced to disable certain portions of IE and/or offer users the choice of other browsers.
Read more »
Microsoft Corp. today confirmed that it will sell what it calls “upgrades” for Windows 7 to users running the aged Windows XP operating system.
Those users, however will have to do a “clean” installation of Windows 7, meaning that all data on the machine will be lost.
“Regarding XP, customers can purchase upgrade media and an upgrade license to move from Windows XP to Windows 7,” a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail this morning. “However, they will need to do a clean installation of Windows 7.”
In a follow-up reply to questions, the spokeswoman fleshed out what Microsoft means by upgrade. “The ‘upgrade’ part is referring to the license,” she said. “You will be able to get the discounted ‘upgrade’ license, but it will include full bits.”
That’s how David Smith, an analyst at Gartner Inc., interpreted “upgrade” in Microsoft’s description of what it would offer XP owners. “They’re talking about the upgrade price,” he said, pointing out that most software vendors use the term upgrade to designate a lower-priced version aimed at existing customers.
Although Microsoft today spelled out the six planned versions of Windows 7, it declined to provide pricing for them, or for the XP upgrade licenses.
