Business, Financial & Legal - Page 136

There's a wind project in Texas that is capable of generating an astounding 161 megawatts of energy, enough to power 60,000 average homes across the US. Search and mobile giant Google have now invested $200 million in the project.

Google have injected the investment into the Spinning Spur Wind Project in Oldham Country, Texas, which is run by EDF Renewable Energy. This new $200 million investment is the 11th investment the search giant has made in renewable energy since just 2010. With all of Google's investments, their total output across their invested facilities is now a crazy 2 gigawatts of energy.

The Spinning Star facility begun construction in February 2012, and was opened for commercial operation in December last year. The Spinning Star facility features 70 Siemens 2.3 megawatt turbines, and the energy it generates will be pumped into a utility company named SPS, which provides for the Texas and New Mexico areas. Kojo Ako-Asare, Senior Manager of Google Corporate Finance has said:

It's not like you or I did not see this coming in this smart device heavy world, but PC sales are now dropping according to new data from analysis firm IDC. IDC's latest data from Q4 2012 "marked the first time in more than five years that the PC market has seen a year-on-year decline during the holiday season".

The analysis firm said that although Windows 8 has launched, worldwide PC shipments reached 90 million units which is 6.4% lower than what they reached last year. Jay Chou, Senior Research Analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker said in a statement:

This is what will continue to happen as we shift into a much more powerful world of smart devices. We're already using quad-core smartphones, but once we reach wearable computing with devices like Google Project Glass, where will the PC industry be then? We need more PC-exclusive games to push a new era of high-end systems. That won't happen, unfortunately.

Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the huge BlackBerry range, are already in trouble and this news is not going to help them one bit. Samsung have slowly but surely taken the consumer market into their hands after Apple's sticky hands got all over it, at least in shipment volume, and now it looks like Samsung have shifted aim to RIM's corporate users.

Samsung are investing heavily in enterprise devices that sport higher levels of security and reliability, the opposite of what consumers need badly. Various governments and corporations aren't too sure on BlackBerry 10, and are now looking for alternatives, which is where Samsung comes into play.

Chief Product Officer for Samsung Mobile USA, Kevin Packingham, said during an interview with Reuters:

CES 2013 - Panasonic's Live @ CES 2013 event is now live - and we're greeted with the prospects of multiple products being announced by the Japanese electronics giant.

14:52 US PST: And that's a wrap!

14:52 US PST: All of these products will be shown off in Panasonic's booth - which we'll report on more over the coming days.

CES 2013 - Samsung are about to start their CES 2013 Press Conference in a matter of minutes and we're here to bring it all to you live. What could they unveil? A new lineup of Ultrabooks? Some new Smart TVs? More of a tease of their new Ultra HD 4K TVs? Something completely new? We'll find out soon enough!

13:47 US PST: And that's it! A bunch of announcements and unveilings from Samsung - what did you like most?

13:46 US PST: SAFE - Samsung for Enterprise is making it safer for a bring-your-own-device to work world. On-device encryption is included, keeping your enterprise safe. Samsung are going to continue pushing into this area.

Ever since its acquisition of IBM's personal computer business back in 2005, Lenovo have done quite well for themselves, but it looks like that's not enough. According to an internal e-mail from CEO Yang Yuanqing, who admitted that despite trying, the Lenovo brand is still only doing well in the mainstream and low-end markets.

The Think brand is the company's best performer in the high-end market, and is the only brand that can compete against Apple in the high-end market. Yang has announced in the same e-mail for the sake of better brand positioning and better efficiency that Lenovo will split into two new groups: Lenovo Business Group (LBG) and Think Business Group (TBG).

The fresh start will begin on April 1st, where LBG will be headed by Senior Vice President of Mobile Internet Digital Home, Liu Jun, who will put all of energies into mainstream consumer and business desktops, laptops and tablets, as well as smartphones and smart TVs. TBG will be have current Senior Vice President of Product Groups, Dr. Peter Hortensius at the helm.

After 36 years on the job, Mike Daniels has left IBM according to a spokesperson from the company. Erich Clementi who currently serves as Senior Vice President for Global Technology Services, and Bridget van Kralingen, who is the current Senior Vice President for Global Business Services will be filling in for Daniels' spot when he leaves.

Clementi and Kralingen will report directly to the CEO. Daniels was once the head of Global Services in the Asia Pacific region, and also acted as IBM's Sales and Distribution operations in the US, Canada and Latin America. Daniels' other positions included responsibility for sales in regards to IBM's IT products, marketing and services. He was also seen by most as an economizer in regards to saving money for IBM, and secondly as a trailblazer in regards to computer management services.

Daniels missed out on the CEO position, but was passed over for Ginni Rometty just over twelve months ago. Rometty ended up becoming IBM's first female in charge of operations.

The Megaupload saga continues, this time with Megaupload complaining that the US government lied in order to get a search warrant. According to the motion, a recently unsealed search warrant shows that the US Department of Justice asked Megaupload to keep 39 copies of copyrighted movies on its servers for an investigation.

The part they didn't mention? It was an investigation into Megaupload. They then used the fact that the files were still on Megaupload's servers as primary proof that the company knowingling harbored copyrighted content:

This is just the latest in a line of accused misconducts committed by law enforcement. Dotcom continues to fight the charges and is launching the new Mega upload service on January 20.

The on-going anti-trust investigation into Google has finally been completed with a 4-1 ruling that Google must stop excluding competitors from using standards essential patents owned by subsidiary Motorola. These patents are what the FTC call the "cornerstone of the interoperability standards that we have taken for granted."

Google is also making two voluntary changes to the way some of its products work:

"The changes Google has agreed to make will ensure that consumers continue to reap the benefits of competition in the online marketplace and in the market for innovative wireless devices they enjoy," said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "This was an incredibly thorough and careful investigation by the Commission, and the outcome is a strong and enforceable set of agreements."

AMD has picked a new CFO. The internal and external search turned up Devinder Kumar, who will now be a senior vice president and chief financial officer, effective today. Kumar is 57 and will report to AMD CEO Rory Reed. Kumar has served as the interim CFO since September 2012 and as senior vice president since 2006.

"Devinder has been with AMD for more than 28 years and is a talented finance veteran with deep industry knowledge," said Read. "As we accelerate our strategic growth initiatives, Devinder will play an integral role driving the new business model in the near term and strengthening AMD's long-term financial foundation."

Kumar is well equipped for the job: He holds a bachelor's degree from University of Malaya, Malaysia, a master's degree from University of California, Santa Barbara, and a master's degree in business administration from University of California, Los Angeles.

Apple sued Amazon over its use of the term "app store" to describe its online marketplace for Android apps. In a ruling today, a judge has dismissed part of the case, the part alleging that Amazon committed false advertising by using the term.

Judge Phyllis Hamilton said there was "no support for the proposition that Amazon has expressly or impliedly communicated that its Appstore for Android possesses the characteristics and qualities that the public has come to expect from the Apple App Store and/or Apple products."

Apple has also sued for trademark infringement, though Apple does not yet own the trademark to "App Store." It has applied for the trademark, though several companies have moved to block the trademark. Microsoft has said in a motion for summary judgement that "Any secondary meaning or fame Apple has in 'App Store' is de facto secondary meaning that cannot convert the generic term 'app store' into a protectable trademark."

Polaroid will be opening up 10 retails stores in 2013 that will be called FotoBars. These locations will allow you to edit and print pictures, applying filters if your picture isn't from Instagram. The pictures can then be printed on a variety of materials, framed if you want, and be shipped to you within a couple of days.

From the image, it looks like editing will be done on Apple computers, which are probably used to make the whole experience "hip." Material options will include wood, bamboo, metal, acrylic, and canvas. Users will also have the option to print out a normal photo. According to Polaroid, a "critical aspect of the customer experience" is the ability to see and feel examples of the materials, which sounds very Appleish.

The first location will be Delray Beach in Florida, which opens in February. Further locations will open throughout the year, including New York and Las Vegas.

The patent wars continue to move forward with the latest move being LG trying to ban the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 in South Korea. LG alleges that the Galaxy Note infringes upon three of LG's patents on LCD technology used by the display panel. "Through this action, LG Display seeks to completely stop the sale, manufacture and importation of the infringing Samsung product," LG Display said in a press release.

LG has said that they would request compensation of $933,000 per day of continued non-compliance. This patent dispute started back in September when LG Display sued Samsung for infringing upon seven organic light-emitting diode patents. LG alleges five of Samsung's devices infringe, including Samsung's Galaxy S-series of smartphones.

Samsung counter-sued LG alleging that the latter company lured senior Samsung OLED researchers away from the former company, even though they had contracts preventing the working for a rival firm.

Most of my Facebook feed used to be filled with game requests, until I began blocking all game requests - I'm looking at you, Nanna. But, it looks like Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has started his cost-reduction plan which was announced last month.

Zynga has either shut down or pulled from app stores, stopped accepting new players to eleven games with some of those games turning off today. Zynga will reallocate resources from the games gone or cut down to the titles that are actually doing well, or put them into creating new games.

The company have had a very rocky year after bursting out of the gate to be a huge success, where their share price is down from their IPO launch of $10 to just $2.33 now. Zynga have announced huge cost-cutting measure which will see over 100 employees cut, offices shutting their doors, ceasing to renew deals with contractors, shutting down 13 games, as well as reducing investments into The Sims-style game, The Ville.

Samsung has announced plans to build a 1.1 million square foot campus in San Jose, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Global architecture firm NBBJ will be responsible for the new building, which will feature a 10-story tower, amenity pavilion and parking garage.

Samsung's R&D facility will be moving to a new campus that will feature two new 6-story class-A office buildings with about 385,000 square feet of space. This campus will feature two 5-6 story parking structures.

With the tragic Newtown, Connecticut shooting just weeks ago, it looks like EA's grand plan of marketing has failed. When EA started their marketing for the latest Medal of Honor Warfighter game, on their website you could go a step further than most games, and buy guns within a few clicks of the MoH website.

Alongside the weapons you could use in the game on the MoH website, were links to manufacturers who actually sold them. After the Newtown shootings, the Internet went on a stampede and called EA out, where the company were quick to reply that they'd forgotten of the links, sure.

The Warfighter website has been updated and one would think anything related to violence would be removed, but no - we find links to Zero Dark Thirty, the movie based around the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. You know, the one where he was shot in the head with a gun.

AMD are already going through tough times, but a 25-year veteran has just jumped ship to Samsung. Michael Goddard's last title with the company was Corporate Vice President for Product Design Engineering and Chief Engineer on Client Products has left the company after a quarter of a century.

He has been with AMD since 1988, and has changed jobs just this month according to his LinkedIn profile, where he has joined electronics giant Samsung as their Vice President and System Architect at their Austin, Texas-based facility.

In the last couple of months, AMD have seen some 26 executives leave the company - from the higher levels of power, all the way down the ranks. AMD sliced 15% of their workforce this fall and are expected to slash even more jobs when the new year arrives.

Samsung is quite the player in the mobile phone market, with an estimated 420 million devices shipped this year. Next year, it's looking to do even better by aiming to move a record 510 million mobile handsets. If Samsung manages this, they will further separate themselves from their bitter rival Apple.

"Of the 510 million handsets it plans to sell, 390 million are slated as smartphones and 120 million, feature and budget phones," according to an executive from one of Samsung's key suppliers.

"There are some possibilities that smartphone demand will slow in general. But we are seeing new demand for devices using Long Term Evolution (LTE)," said Kim Hyun-joon, an executive at Samsung's telecommunications division.

Google have slapped Universal, Sony and other music labels on the wrist by stripping them of around 2 billion fake views form their YouTube channels. The groups hit include Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, RCA records and a few others.

The hit has been called a 'black hat', as the companies were using programs or paying a third-party that would manipulate view counts on their respective YouTube videos, which are pretty much just robotic views of their videos. The purpose? To make their songs look much, much more popular than they really were, in order to entice real clicks and views onto their videos.

This ended with over two billion views combined being removed from the companies' videos. Universal was hit the most, seeing more than one billion in views stripped away from them, from a former seven billion views taken down to six billion. Sony/BMG placed second with a loss of 850 million views, bringing their total down to just 2.3 million.

Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, has introduced a bill that would regulate data caps imposed by ISPs and would only allow data caps to be instituted to alleviate network congestion. It would prevent ISPs from arbitrarily applying a data cap just because they can.

"Data caps create challenges for consumers and run the risk of undermining innovation in the digital economy if they are imposed bluntly and not designed to truly manage network congestion," Wyden said in an e-mail statement.

Not only does he want to regulate data caps, he wants to provide more accurate and granular information to consumers. His bill authorizes the FCC to regulate ISPs' methods of measuring bandwidth usage so that they will be as accurate as possible.