Business, Financial & Legal - Page 286

Google have whipped out their [Google] wallet and are paying more than $120 million for construction projects at their Mountain View HQ, including work on a series of new or previously secret hardware testing labs, that are hinting at Google expanding interest in making consumer objects to combat rivals Apple, Microsoft, and more.

Included in these new secret labs, is a reported new secret consumer product under the brand name "@home", that is said to wireless stream music or data to other household devices. Google are also said to be modifying a lab for their "Project X", which seems to involve precision optical technology and be part of the secret technology projects that Google co-founder, Sergey Brin is heading.

The biggest project in this expansion is said to be a "Google Experience Center", which is at the core of the Googleplex. The 120,000-square-foot center is said to be a kind of private museum for Google's most importan clients and partners, where they plan to "to share visionary ideas, and explore new ways of working" with up to 900 VIPs and other important guests.

Microsoft have laid down some plans where they will open up four new retail stores over the next few months, with the first international stores opening up later this year.

This is all according to at least one person familiar with Microsoft's plans, says The Verge. The plans would see the Redmond-based company open up a brand new store in Palo Alto, California, and another in Austin, Texas. The funny thing about two of these stores? They will be opening during April, and they'll be quite close to Apple retail store locations in popular malls.

The same plans are said to include two new stores in the state of New Jersey, the first in Bridgewater, the second in Freehold. The New Jersey stores are said to be located in malls that also have Apple stores, and are expected to open up shop before the end of June.

We reported last year about the Steam hack, but it has now been reported that the hack was actually quite a lot worse than previously thought. The server hacked did contain data such as usernames, hashed passwords, game purchases, e-mail addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers, but Valve didn't find any evidence that led them to believe that any personal information was stolen, until now.

Valve have completed further investigation into the matter, and have stated that their preliminary conclusion was, incorrect. Newell has now said he believes the hackers obtained a copy of a backup file with data about Steam transactions made between 2004 and 2008. This backup file is said to contain usernames, e-mail addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers. One of the good things to come from this news is that no passwords were included in this file.

Even thought it's not guaranteed what the hackers did, or did not get from this file, Gabe Newell has come out and urged Steam customers to monitor their financial statements and make sure they use Steam Guard. Newell's full letter is below:

We've reported on the various Samsung vs. Apple lawsuits around the world, with a few successful wins for Samsung, and Apple not so happy with the outcomes. Today is a victorious day for Samsung, as a Duesseldorf court has just cleared the modified Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N for sale in Germany.

Several rulings were against Samsung in a never-ending battle of patent suits, where Apple succeeded in blocking the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 in September, as well as the smaller 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab 8.9 in January. It was determined that they both "resembled the iPad too closely".

Samsung had prepared a tweaked version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 dubbed Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which features a more pronounced metallic rim, relocated speakers, as well as some minor adjustments to change both the look, and feel of the device. Apple were unsurprisingly unsatisfied with the changes, and were quick to file additional injunctions to ban the updated Galaxy Tab 10.1N. Their demand? Rejected.

The world's largest BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay, as reported previously, will stop linking to .torrent files shortly and replace them with magnet links. Magnet links have a pretty big advantage over .torrent files, where they're much more portable, and easier to copy. On top of this, a new torrent link on TPB lists all titles and magnet links, where the public can download a copy that would fit onto even the smallest USB flash drive, or if you're still rocking those floppies, a few of them, too.

TPB told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages to a "magnet site" is that it requires little bandwidth to host a proxy site. A proxy site is required as TPB is blocked in many countries, and is of course, going to increase. Think it can't happen? Well, Pirate Bay user "allisfine" was intrigued by this idea, and has decided to find out just how small a copy of TPB would be. He told TorrentFreak:

I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy.

Paradox CEO, Fred Wester, is a man of important words. He has revealed the amazing growth of his companies digital distribution revenue. In his own words, he has said:

My own experience of digital distribution is that we made 1.5 percent of our revenue from digital distribution in 2006, while the digital number in 2011 was over 95%.

Did you see that? From 1.5-percent of their revenue, to a whopping 95-percent, in just 5 short years. In these 5 years we've seen retailers go from selling tonnes of retail boxed games, to the App Store opening, the Android Market arriving and more. Steam is generating more and more income, and other digital distribution methods such as GOG, and Origin.

Motorola have been stirring up some problems for Apple in Germany, where they won an injunction on iCloud and also enforced a previous ruling where it requires Apple to pull some iPhone mobiles from stores in Germany. The sales ban last just hours, after which Apple managed to win a suspension later in the day.

New details have emerged from the battle between Motorola and Apple, where they've said that Motorola Mobility's legal complaints against Apple, want 2.25-percent of Apple's sales of wireless devices in exchange for a patent license covering Motorola's intellectual property. If Motorola wins this, they could receive $2.1 billion in retroactive fees from iPhone revenues dating back to 2007, which amount to a slither under $93 billion. This is before factoring in 3G iPad sales.

Which patent do Motorola have a grip over Apple on? Its 3G/UMTS patent, has recently been declared essential in implementing open industry standards and because of that, Motorola must license it under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms to any competitor that requires it.

BTJunkie was one of top five BitTorrent sites out there, and has after 7 years in operation, decided to voluntarily shut down. This closure is sure to be in relation from the growing pressure from authorities in the U.S. and around the world, with MegaUpload taking the first big blow, as well as The Pirate Bay.

BTJunkie wasn't attacked by the authorities, so this looks like a preemptive move to avoid future legal action, and/or arrests. BTJunkie had boasted 80 million users at one point, and in its farewell message, BTJunkie wrote:

This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!

Anonymous have had an eventful 2012 thus far, with news today that they've intercepted and recorded a conference call that took place between the FBI and the British police cybercrime division of Scotland Yard on January 17.

Anonymous have now released an audio recording of the nearly 15 minutes of conversation online. During the call, the two parties discussed something quite important, a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem". What is Project Mayhem you ask? Well, it's only a strategy for bringing down Anonymous, you can now understand why this is of importance for Anonymous.

The two parties specifically talk about back arrests of members known as "Kayla" and "Tee-flow", as well as getting Ryan Cleary's indecent images which were found by the USAF who examined his hard drive and 15-year-old "Tehwongz" who has claimed to of hacked 32,000 Steam user names, logins and credit card details.

Apple don't have a TV on the market, where their biggest competitor in the smartphone market, Samsung, sure do have that market with their fist around it, tightly. The latest coming from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, has said that the Cupertino-based company has been checking out the TV component supply chain, in preparations of entering the TV market.

Munster wrote in a note to clients today:

In January we spoke with a major TV component supplier who has been contacted by Apple regarding various capabilities of their television display components. We see this as continued evidence that Apple is exploring production of a television. This latest data point follows January 2011 meetings in Asia that led us to believe Apple was investing in manufacturing facilities for LCD displays ranging from 3.5" mobile displays to 50" television displays.