Business, Financial & Legal - Page 249

All the latest Business, Financial & Legal news as it relates to tech, gaming, and science - Page 249.

Follow TweakTown on Google News

Australian telco, Telstra, offer Android users the ability to charge Google Play content to their phone bills

Anthony Garreffa | Dec 3, 2012 11:38 PM CST

Australia's leading telco, Telstra, have just announced that they have a new way that customers can purchase Google Play store content on their Android-based devices, including apps, games, movies, magazines and books.

Starting today, Telstra customers can now purchase Google Play content and charge it to their mobile phone bills at a value of up to $20 per transaction, with a monthly limit of $100. This $100 monthly limit can be changed, so you're not locked in - it just requires a quick phone call to Telstra. The new way of purchasing content is also available to pre-paid customers, too - they just need the credit on their accounts.

Telstra have teamed up with Google for the launch of this new service, where they've offered a heap of games and apps at half price! This promotion runs until December 25 and includes:

Continue reading: Australian telco, Telstra, offer Android users the ability to charge Google Play content to their phone bills (full post)

Police ask Congress to require mandatory text message logging, keep texts for 2 years

Trace Hagan | Dec 3, 2012 7:07 PM CST

The police have asked that Congress consider adding a requirement that wireless service providers keep copies of text messages for two years. Because, after all, you never know when you may need to data mine them during a future criminal investigation. There are a few problems with a requirement of this length, however.

Consider, for a moment, the sheer number of text messages sent every single day. Got a number? 6 billion. Last year more than 2 TRILLION messages were sent, so storing that many text messages would take up a huge amount of storage. Carriers would be required to save text messages for two years, so they would be storing upwards of 4 trillion text messages.

That would be roughly 500 terabytes of data storage. Not an unheard of amount, but certainly a burden on a company. The police would like this new requirement to be added into an update of a 1986 privacy law that is currently being discussed. A new draft of the bill sees it being updated for the cloud computing era with a requirement that police obtain a warrant to read e-mails.

Continue reading: Police ask Congress to require mandatory text message logging, keep texts for 2 years (full post)

3D printing finds a new customer... in the adult sex toy business

Anthony Garreffa | Dec 2, 2012 7:34 AM CST

Normally this is reserved for the "only in Japan" type of posts - but here we are. I could pretty much just leave it as a title and blank news piece, but let's continue. Tom Nardone of MakerLove wants to be one of the first in to use 3D printing for the adult sex toys business.

Yes - 3D printers and adult sex toys - all in the same sentence. Nardone is an engineer who moved into the sex toy business, and doesn't want to make any generic sex toys - for this salesman, his 3D printed sex toys are a mix of art and science, with a dash of technology and pleasure.

The porn business has been a huge mover in technology in the years gone by, with VCRs, DVDs and now the Internet all being molded and guided by the needs, and requirements of the porn industry. 3D printing is just another factor of this - and where there's money to be made, there will always be someone there to make it.

Continue reading: 3D printing finds a new customer... in the adult sex toy business (full post)

Apple's iPad domination begins to fade, iPad share is at its lowest point since 2010

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 29, 2012 4:33 AM CST

There was a time when the iPhone and iPad were the absolute undeniable champions of the industry - breaking records on quarterly shipments, and market share in their respective fields - smartphones and tablets. The iPad pretty much created the tablet market on its own, and has enjoyed complete dominance since its launch.

Well, Apple may still lead the tablet market in terms of their share of the pie - but this number has dropped to its lowest point since the original, first-generation iPad launched in 2010. In ABI's latest estimate report, Apple's share of the worldwide tablet market dropped to just 55% in Q3 2012 - a 14% sequential decline.

Google's Android-based tablets are the main cause of this, which comes as a surprise to no one. Apple did just introduce the 7.85-inch iPad mini, but is it too late for them to claw back some of that lost market share? A quarter or so from now should tell, and we should have even more proof in the next few quarters as Apple start shipping, and selling more of their smaller slates. ABI analyst, Jeff Orr, isn't too sure on whether the iPad mini will help their market share numbers:

Continue reading: Apple's iPad domination begins to fade, iPad share is at its lowest point since 2010 (full post)

Apple may tap TSMC for A-series processors next year

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 28, 2012 11:34 PM CST

We all knew this was coming, but it looks like there's now more movement in the news department from DigiTimes' latest report. Industry sources are now claiming that Apple could move from Samsung to TSMC for their A-series production.

At first, you would think this only effects Samsung - as they'd lose Apple's huge business, but TSMC would also benefit, greatly. But remember, TSMC have some gigantic clients in NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Broadcom and more, and this move would effect every single one of them, considerably. At the moment, Samsung is the only source of production for Apple's A-series of processors, which include the A5, A6 and A6X processors.

These chips are baked into the latest and greatest iDevices, such as the iPhone 5 and iPad (new, new one - the fourth-gen, yes it's confusing). Rewinding back to the A4 and A5 processors, which were designed by Intrinsity, but had input from Samsung in terms of their design. Apple acquired Intrinsity in 2010 - but they may have had some interesting intellectual property that Apple couldn't take over to share with TSMC, forcing them to make a custom-designed processor which materialized into the A6.

Continue reading: Apple may tap TSMC for A-series processors next year (full post)

Samsung busted for pushing employees for 16-hour workdays with just a single day off per month

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 28, 2012 4:33 AM CST

Apple aren't the only ones that get mixed up in the news over work practices, as Samsung have come under fire from a rights group on Tuesday over illegal work practices at its Chinese suppliers. The company admitted just 24 hours previous, that excessive overtime and fines for employees in China.

The New York-based China Labor Watch have said that employees working at Samsung's suppliers sometime work a crazy 16 hours per day, with just a single day off per month. Samsung said on Monday, after a review of 105 of its Chinese suppliers, which involved more than 65,000 employees, that illegal work practices were found. But the South Korean company said that the companies involved would be given two more years to change their ways. Two more years! Samsung said in a statement:

Continue reading: Samsung busted for pushing employees for 16-hour workdays with just a single day off per month (full post)

Google hires thousands of people to manually rank search results

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 28, 2012 1:35 AM CST

If you ever thought that Google just waved their fingers and had magical algorithms working their search results, you'd be flat out wrong. The Register has opened up the Google 160-page guidebook, which is a reference manual for human "raters".

This has revealed that there's a big human involvement in the results provided by Google when a user runs a search. Google actually outsource to a few different crowdsourcing agencies - Lionbridge and Leapforce, where they use real people and their real-life opinions on search results. The Register refers to one Leapforce job ad, where they employ around 1500 search assessors which is a great work-from-home job.

Before landing this glorious work-from-home job, a potential employee must first pass an initial examination. After this, search assessors will receive periodic Google evaluations to ensure they're doing a standup job on grading search results. The 160-page manual also informs raters about how to rank search results basic on multiple metrics, such as quality, relevance and spamminess. Google's search assessors will judge the results for various queries and choose from different tiered grades, including "Not Spam", "Maybe Spam", "Porn", "Off-Topic", "Unratable", "Vital" and more.

Continue reading: Google hires thousands of people to manually rank search results (full post)

Samsung gets hit by another lawsuit, this time Ericsson is the plaintiff

Trace Hagan | Nov 27, 2012 6:15 PM CST

Samsung just can't seem to escape being sued lately. After losing to Apple to the tune of $1 billion, Ericsson has now filed a lawsuit against the South Korean electronics giant claiming that they have refused to sign licensing agreements for some of Ericsson's patents, even after two years of negotiations.

Ericsson issued the following statement on their website:

Continue reading: Samsung gets hit by another lawsuit, this time Ericsson is the plaintiff (full post)

Google settles with Immersion over haptic technology, licenses it for use in Motorola devices

Trace Hagan | Nov 27, 2012 4:09 PM CST

Google has settled with Immersion just nine months after it was sued by Immersion, a company that develops touch feedback systems. The deal sees Google licensing the patents for use in future Motorola devices, along with compensating the company for using the technology in prior Motorola devices.

The lawsuit was filed against Motorola before Google officially acquired them in May 2012. The original lawsuit alleged that Motorola infringed upon six of Immersions patents and was filed with the US ITC, which has the power to block imports should a device be found to be infringing. CEO Victor Viegas:

Continue reading: Google settles with Immersion over haptic technology, licenses it for use in Motorola devices (full post)

Amazon says Cyber Monday best day for sales of Kindle ever, doesn't provide numbers

Trace Hagan | Nov 27, 2012 3:03 PM CST

Amazon is touting that Black Friday and Cyber Monday were the best days for the Kindle family in terms of sales. They say that Cyber Monday more than doubled last year's numbers for the Kindle family, which puts this at the single best day. These sales were certainly helped by the fact Amazon put the Kindle Fire on sale.

Amazon provided the following as the milestones for the holiday shopping weekend:

"Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fires have held the top 4 spots on the Amazon worldwide best sellers list since launch, and that was before the busiest shopping weekend of the year," said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're excited that customers made this Black Friday and Cyber Monday the best ever for Kindle worldwide-Cyber Monday was the biggest day ever for Kindle sales, and we're looking forward to millions of customers opening a new Kindle this holiday season."

Continue reading: Amazon says Cyber Monday best day for sales of Kindle ever, doesn't provide numbers (full post)

Newsletter Subscription