Google gifts Nexus 7 prime advertising spot on homepage

Google really wants you to buy a Nexus 7 tablet. No, I mean really really. So much so it has gifted the device a prime advertising spot on its homepage. The Nexus 7 is Google’s first own-branded tablet. Built by Asus, it’s a 7-inch powerhouse running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It’s not perfect, but the reviews have been very positive thus far. This isn’t surprising as it only costs $199, half the price of the iPad 2, and a full $300 less than the entry-level, Retina Display-boasting new iPad. Google...

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Samsung Windows 8 machines come with free Start key

Samsung has unveiled three new Windows 8 machines with the innards fitted in a touchscreen monitor rather than a desktop unit. We’d say it’s reminiscent of an iMac, but that might be a touchy subject at the moment. The three computers will debut in October and come with a mouse and keyboard but no touchpad: users will have to rely on the screen to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch features. They are technically part of two different ranges, the Series 5 and Series 7. The Series 5 machine...

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Robotic Shark looks for lost ships in the Arctic

A University of Victoria (UVic) team will use an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to look for ships lost 167 years ago in the Arctic. The ill fated Franklin expedition went down in 1845 looking for the Northwest Passage. According to the University of Victoria in Canada, the two missing ships are called the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. All 129 crew members were lost. According to the CBC, the ships were outfitted with advanced technology for their time period. Franklin’s vessels, the...

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Joel Tenenbaum pays for music piracy

Joel Tenenbaum, one of the few people caught sharing copyrighted content online who decided not to pay up to make it all go away, has been told to, well, pay up. According to BBC News, in 2005 Joel Tenenbaum, then 16-years-old, was accused of file-sharing and hit with a fine of $5,250 for seven songs. He offered $500 but was declined. In 2007 the case went to court for the first time. Damages of $675,000 were eventually awarded to the music labels who sued Tenenbaum for the 31 songs he now...

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German law firm to name and shame “porn downloaders

A law firm in Germany is to begin publicly naming Internet users it believes have infringed copyright by sharing hardcore pornography without permission. A company insider says Urmann will start by targeting those users most likely to be embarrassed by such publicity, though officially its denying that claim. Urmann mirrors the tactics of law firms in other countries by writing to alleged copyright offenders and asking for a settlement fee to avoid court action. In this case the fee is €650...

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Star Wars-style speeder bike tested

A speeder bike just like those seen in Star Wars, you say? I’ll take two, and pay any price you care to name. I would hope that, as geeks, everyone reading this will have seen the Star Wars movies at least once. The original trilogy, not the prequel trilogy, of course. Those who haven’t seen George Lucas’ opus should go do so immediately. And everyone who is left is free to get really excited over the news that someone, somewhere is succeeding at turning the speeder bike into a reality. That...

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AT&T defends FaceTime ban but convinces noone

AT&T has defended its block on iPhone users running FaceTime over its 3G network. It’s a decision that may follow the precise letter of net neutrality rules but certainly doesn’t pay much heed to the principle. The comments come as the company announces it will let users run FaceTime over the phone network if they are on Mobile Share, its new plans that give a fixed amount of data across multiple handsets. Those on older plans, including those with “unlimited” data packages, are stuck with...

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eBay tarot ban is on the cards

eBay is to ban users from selling tarot readings and similar services through the site. It’s been protested by more than a thousand people who apparently didn’t see it coming. The change will take effect from 1 September and means the removal of several categories in the “Metaphysical section.” eBay has reiterated that many of the products that fit in to these categories will be completely barred from the site. They include ” spells; curses; hexing; conjuring; magic services; prayers; blessings;...

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Vehicle viruses the next threat

Security firm McAfee has hired a man to break into high-tech cars. But fortunately Barnaby Jack will be working to combat rather than promote crime. The hiring is an attempt to combat an unfortunate result of more vehicles getting high-tech automated systems: as with most computer equipment, they are prone to interference from hackers. Toyota and Chrysler are also known to be working on similar projects. Exactly how serious that threat is can be disputed: Reuters quotes one source who claims...

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Apple “most-valuable public company,” kinda

Apple has, by one measure at least, become the most-valuable publicly-traded company of all time. If you completely ignore inflation, that is. Which you cannot. Many sites around the InterWebs are today reporting that Apple has broken the record to become the most-valuable public company that has ever existed. The claim is led by MacRumors, which states that with 937,406,000 outstanding shares at the time of its last quarterly filing, and with the share price hitting $660.73 today, Apple has...

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Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end

Once mighty BlackBerry will have fewer users than Windows Phone by years end Remember the days when owning a BlackBerry phone was considered cool? Yeah, its hard but Research In Motion’s (RIMs) continued decline is getting worse. By the end of the year, it is expected that the number of phones with BlackBerry OS will be less than those sporting Windows Phone OS. That’s low. Windows Phone doesn’t even have to pick up much market share because BlackBerry is falling so fast. According to Ars...

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‘I Have 50 Dollars’ spoofs App.net

Whatever you think of App.net, I Have 50 Dollars should give you a laugh. App.net, for those unaware, is the pay-for-access Twitter-alike from Dalton Caldwell (nope, I’ve never heard of him either) that recently raised $803,000 to get started. Some people – Robert Scoble, Matthew Ingram – are backing App.net very strongly, while others don’t see the point and are wondering whether it’ll remain vaporware for ever. I guess in a world in which people will give hundreds of dollars to Kickstarter...

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Reuters hacked yet again with bogus Middle East reports

News agency Reuters has been hacked for the third time this month. This time the culprits posted a bogus report claiming the Saudi Arabia foreign minister had died. The first hack came earlier this month when a Reuters correspondent blog was hijacked and a fake interview with a leading Syrian opposition figure posted. It falsely claimed the Free Syrian Army was preparing to withdraw its troops after suffering heavy losses. A couple of days later, a Reuters Twitter account dedicated to tech...

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Dish Network taking satellite broadband nationwide

People wanting premium TV services have often had to choose between cable and satellite. Now Dish Network thinks that choice should apply in the broadband market as well. The company is said to be planning to extend its existing satellite broadband service nationwide. At the moment it links up with another firm, ViaSat, to provide service in a few areas. The plan now is to run a national network using a satellite from the fleet that provides its TV services...

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 makes its debut but is it worth it

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 has finally appeared six months after its initial preview at Mobile World Congress (MWC). The tablet comes complete with an included stylus and the ability to give you a split screen view. You can watch a video on one half while taking notes on the other. Both provide some novelty and value but is it enough to justify the $499 price tag? According to Engadget’s review of the new device, it certainly isn’t worth the virtually $500 price tag for the 16GB version....

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Piracy site owner jailed despite hosting no content

For many years operators of questionable video content sites assumed they are untouchable if they don’t actually host any copyright-infringing material. That assumption has proved incorrect in several countries, with theUnited Kingdomthe latest example. Anton Vickerman, who operated the website surfthechannel.com, has received a four year jail term after a private prosecution. He was not convicted of copyright infringement itself, but rather conspiracy to defraud. Sufthechannel was a directory...

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FTC: Facebook scammed app developers

The Federal Trade Commission has accused Facebook of ripping off app developers with a bogus verification scheme. It says the company may have made almost a hundred thousand dollars without actually doing any work. The alleged trickery came with a program by which Facebook charged developers $375 (reduced to $175 for non-profit groups) to check that an app was “secure, respectful and transparent” and generally something that users could trust. Those apps which passed the review process...

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Google+ vanity URLs for celebrities, brands

Google has started rolling out vanity URLs to the biggest celebrities and brands currently using its Google+ social network. Whether us mere mortals will also be afforded the pleasure of being ourselves rather than a random series of numbers remains to be seen. According to TechCrunch, Google has gifted Google+ vanity URLs to a number of celebrities and brands, including Britney Spears and Toyota. This comes just days after Web comic The Oatmeal was punked with a jokey vanity URL that was character-for-character...

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NASA’s Curiosity is in day 2 of a “brain transplant”

A “brain transplant” is what NASA is calling the multi-step software update that is taking place from August 10-13. Apparently, the Mars rover was and is going to have its software upgraded as needed. This ability to upgrade the software gives NASA a way to tune Curiosity’s software to the task at hand. According to NASA during its first weekend on Mars the rover will be recovering from its own form of jet lag by having the software upgrade that should improve its driving and use of its robotic...

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Streaming music helps Warners’ bottom line

Warner Music Group recently revealed its financial figures for the last quarter, and surprise, surprise, streaming music services are a growing source of income. And they’re only going to become a bigger piece of the pie from here on in. The music industry was the first of the major content producers to be hit by the emergence of the Internet as a source for shared and sharing media files. It didn’t know how to react to this sudden threat to its business, and flopped around trying to make examples...

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Google’s employees benefit from death

Google has long been known for its very generous employee benefits. The company has from the start gone out of its way to keep its workforce happy and healthy, with the idea being that that happiness and healthiness contributes to productivity and consequently the bottom line. But it has now taken the idea a step further, in fact as far as you can take it. In an interview with Forbes, Google Chief People Officer (Head of HR) Laszlo Bock revealed that Google now sees its employees OK even in...

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Google reads the writing on the wall

Google Translate is a clever piece of technology, as is Google Goggles. Stick them together and traveling aboard just became a whole lot easier. The Goggles technology for Android handsets already has optical character recognition, meaning it can read signs, menus and other printed information, allowing features such as giving you reviews of a particular bottle of wine and food matching tips. Now Google has had the brilliantly simple (in hindsight) idea of incorporating that with its Translate...

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Gmail messages to appear in Google search results

Google is working on including messages from your Gmail account in the results when you use its main search engine. While it could be useful for some, it will need incredibly careful handling to avoid further raising privacy concerns. The company appears to be aware of the possible creepy image it could cause: even though anyone who thinks about it knows that Google is already searching your Gmail account whenever you ask it to, it could still be daunting to see the two sets of results mixed...

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Filesharing site Demonoid in triple turmoil

As with Pirate Bay, it may always be too early to declare filesharing site Demonoid completely deal. But the site is currently unavailable and its operators have suffered three significant blows. The first came last week when the site was knocked offline by a “massive” distributed denial of service attack. Who was behind the attack remains unclear: the motivation would be with law enforcement activities, though officially at least this isn’t the type of tactic normally associated with official...

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Cash gambling comes to Facebook

A newly launched Facebook app will allow UK users to gamble with real money rather than imaginary credits. Facebook won’t say if it is taking a cut of the profits. Bingo & Slots Friendzy is only available to players who are aged at least 18 and a credit card is needed to play. In effect the games are no different to those available on other British websites. The main practical difference is that the app will post details of users playing the game or winning a prize on their timelines....

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Anyone who has ever played one of the simulated farming games on Facebook knows that it can be hard to keep up with when you need to check back in to reap your crops or water your plants. Imagine a several thousand acre real farm with a variety of different crops in different fields and you can imagine the logistical issues that could, ahem, crop up. FarmLogs helps keep up with all the details and makes them easy to find for daily, weekly and monthly planning purposes. The New York Times reported...

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Facebook admits to 83 million bogus accounts

You’ll often hear the statistic that if Facebook were a country, it would have the third biggest population in the world. Now it turns out that only 14 countries have more people than Facebook has fake accounts. The revelation comes in Facebook’s latest regulatory filing. Since listing on stock exchanges, the company is required to tell stockholders about any mitigating factors to the measures of its success. Facebook has decided that the gap between the official number of accounts and the...

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Facebook stock hits new low

When Facebook went public with an IPO in May each share cost $42. Now, each Facebook share is being traded at around the $20 mark. That has to smart. On May 18 of this year Facebook was listed on the stock exchange with the opening price of $42.05 per share. Over the course of the day the price fluctuated between $38 and $45, eventually settling at just above the IPO price. In the week that followed its IPO the Facebook share price fell to $31, the week after to $27. There then followed a brief...

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Patent trolling could get costly

Patent “holders” who bring frivolous lawsuits could be forced to pay the legal costs of defendants under proposed legislation. A bi-partisan bill would apply to trolls and “legitimate” users alike. The proposals would, if passed into law, become the “Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act” (or SHIELD.) The big difference is that a court would be able to force a plaintiff to pay defense costs if it decides the claim “did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding.” Congressman...

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Anonymous fights trademark application

And the award for ‘Best Idea Of The Year’ goes to Early Flicker, a company trying to trademark the logo and slogan used by Anonymous. Anonymous, for those who aren’t aware, is a disparate group of hacktivists which started out fighting the Church of Scientology but has since expanded its operations to support a free and open Internet and fight against large corporations. They’re loved by the people they stand up for, and both hated and feared by those they make trouble for. Whatever your...

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Outlook to replace Hotmail

Microsoft says that a million people signed up to its new webmail service Outlook in the first six hours after launch this week. It will eventually be a complete replacement for Hotmail. The new service is designed as a hybrid of the consumer-oriented Hotmail and the business-oriented Outlook, though is aimed mainly at consumers. There aren’t any spectacular differences, simply because there’s only so many new ideas you can bring to webmail. The look and feel is based on the new Metro design...

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Apple & Samsung’s court battle begins

While many major portable gadget manufacturers have been engaged in patent wars for the past few years, most cases are either thrown out by judges, tied up in injunctions, or wind up in a pre-trial settlement. Not so for Apple and Samsung who today begin a full-blown trial in what Samsung is dismissing as a “fighting over rectangles.” This particular case involves several claims and counterclaims, but the key is whether Samsung’s devices copy the look of the iPhone and iPad. Previous rulings...

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Fish go to the ISS

The unmanned Japanese cargo ship, Kounotori3, delivered a freshwater aquarium to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday. The Aquarium known as the “Aquatic Habitat” or AQH for short, was built by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). A number of studies will be conducted on the Medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish it contains. NASA and JAXA report that several of the studies to be conducted on the fish like “the impacts of radiation, bone degradation, muscle atrophy, and developmental biology”...

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Google launches ludicrously fast broadband

Google has officially launched a 1Gbps broadband service. And that’s not a typo. So which city will benefit from this mega-fast (or rather giga-fast) service? New York? San Francisco? LA? Nope, Kansas City. That’s both Kansas City, Missouri and it’s neighboring Kansas City, Kansas. The area is currently the only planned location for Google’s gigabit service and was chosen based on submissions from people in the city. Symbolically it’s a good pick: there’s a big enough population to make it...

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Web giants form Internet Assocation lobby group

Four of the most prominent websites are among those forming a new lobbying group to promote Internet forms. Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google are the first known members of the Internet Association. The public face of the group is Michael Beckerman, who comes with connections. He was previously an advisor to Fred Upton, the congressman in charge of the committee that deals with the Internet among other issues. Officially the idea of the group is to have a more united and consistent voice...

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Google may avoid European court battle

The European Union has announced it is in serious talks to reach a settlement with Google in an ongoing antitrust case. The settlement would avoid a lengthy court case and the potential for large fines. The case is similar in principle to questions raised by politicians and officials in theUS. It centers on two points: Google has a very large market share inEurope(estimated at 90 percent of searches); and Google appears to favor its own products and services when determining the order and prominence...

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