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Jury Rejects Oracle Patent Claims Against Google

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:36:45 +0000

Google did not infringe on the patent rights of database giant Oracle in its creation of the Android operating system, a San Francisco jury decided Wednesday, ending the long and bitter litigation between the two tech giants that began in 2010.

The jury foreman checked off "no (not proven)" eight times in answer to claims by Redwood Shores, Calif.,-based Oracle that Google infringes on two of its patents.

Earlier Verdict On Copyrights

Oracle, however, did win in an earlier phase of the trial, decided on May 7, when the jury sided with Oracle's separate claim that Google infringed on some copyrights, to a small degree. Judge William Alsup of U.S. District Court in Northern California will decide after a break for Memorial Day weekend whether any damages will be awarded in that claim. Oracle's original claim was for $6.1 billion in damages, but Alsup ordered that the estimate be revised, and in February Oracle revised the figure to $230 million. The original claim involved six patents.

The judge must also make a determination on whether copyright law applies to application program interfaces, which will affect whether damages can be awarded.

The case centered on the Java programming language that became Oracle's property when it purchased Sun Microsystems. Oracle insisted that the open-source Android, now the most popular operating system in both the domestic and global markets, could not have been created without Java, with Google even hiring engineers who worked on Java, while Google insisted it instead used a language called Apache Harmony.

The trial brought top executives of both companies to the stand, including Google CEO Larry Page and Oracle CEO Lawrence Ellison, and led to some interesting moments and revelations, such as when Judge Alsup read a memo that revealed Google's claim that it made no net income from Android in 2010.

In a statement...

Apple Dominates Global Tablet Market in Q1

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 19:06:22 +0000

Apple led the global media tablet market during the first quarter with a 62.8 percent share by shipping 13.6 million iPads and posting 162 percent year-over-year growth, according to NPD DisplaySearch. Samsung was a distant second (7.5 percent), followed by Amazon (4 percent), Research In Motion (2.3 percent) and Asus (2.3 percent).

Unlike research firms IDC and Gartner, which consider PCs and media tablets to be separate product categories, DisplaySearch regards media tablets as a product subcategory within the mobile PC market overall. Under the firm's distinct methodology, Apple also led the global mobile PC market with a 22.5 percent share.

During the first quarter, Apple shipped 17.2 million mobile PC units overall -- equivalent to 118 percent year-over-year growth. Nearly 80 percent of Apple's mobile PC shipments during the quarter were iPads.

Apple's mobile PC shipments were nearly double those of its nearest competitor. During the first quarter, No. 2 mobile PC vendor Hewlett-Packard shipped 8.9 million units and achieved an 11.6 percent market share, DisplaySearch noted Tuesday.

Excluding Tablets, HP Retains Lead

When subtracting media tablet unit shipments from the mix, however, HP stayed atop the global mobile PC market with a 16.2 percent share. Acer was second at 11.9 percent, followed by Lenovo (10.6 percent), Dell (10.2 percent) and Asus (8.1 percent).

Though Acer enjoyed robust sales in China during the first quarter, DisplaySearch noted that Lenovo was the chief beneficiary of the China region's strong shipment growth. What's more, Lenovo's notebook and mini-note sales succeeded in gaining more traction in North America at the expense of Dell, which has been shifting its focus to the commercial market segment in the region.

Asus succeeded in gaining market share across all regions after a weak fourth quarter in 2011. According to DisplaySearch, the Taiwan-based PC maker was the most aggressive of the top...

SAP Acquires Ariba for $4.3 Billion in Cloud Play

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:14:30 +0000

SAP is making a major move to expand its cloud presence -- a $4.3 billion move. SAP announced a deal to acquire Ariba, a cloud-based business commerce network.

The acquisition merges Ariba's buyer-seller collaboration network with SAP's customer base and business process expertise, with the goal of creating new models for business-to-business collaboration in the cloud.

"The cloud has profoundly changed the way people interact. The impact will be even greater as enterprises connect and collaborate in new ways with their global networks of customers and partners," said SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe. "Cloud-based collaboration is redefining business network innovation, and we are catching this wave in the early stage of its evolution."

A Cloud-Based Future

SAP is betting that adding Ariba to its mix will create "the business network of the future," while also delivering immediate value to its customers and providing another solid engine for driving SAP's growth in the cloud. Time will tell how well SAP integrates Ariba's technology.

One thing is certain: the move positions SAP in a fast-growing segment as buyers and sellers across the globe connect in new ways through the cloud. SAP's entry into the inter-enterprise business network space expands its growth opportunities and accelerates its momentum in the cloud.

SAP last week announced a roadmap for its cloud apps business that focuses on managing customers, suppliers, employees and financials. The Ariba acquisition will also boost SAP's cloud applications portfolio, which includes SAP Business ByDesign and SAP Business One. Ariba generated $444 million in annual revenues in 2011 on 38.5 percent growth. Ariba's business network recorded 62 percent organic growth in the same period.

The Oracle Threat

Meanwhile, SAP points to industry stats to bolster its reasons for the multibillion-dollar acquisition. SAP's homework shows the current size of the cloud-based enterprise network and procurement segment...

Study: Fake Malaria Drugs Common in Asia, Africa

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 17:58:19 +0000

More than a third of the malaria-fighting drugs tested over the past decade in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were either fake or bad quality, seriously undermining efforts to fight the disease, a study said Tuesday.

With up to 1 million people -- mostly children in Africa -- already dying every year from malaria, bogus drugs and those containing the wrong chemical makeup could upend a decade of progress fighting the mosquito-transmitted disease, the U.S.-funded review said.

International efforts to combat drug counterfeiting -- much of it believed to take place in China -- are urgently needed.

Fake drugs with no malaria-fighting agents can lead to deaths when patients rely on them, and those containing some active ingredients -- but not enough to fully kill all parasites -- are also problematic because they promote resistance that can eventually outsmart medicines and render them useless.

Alarm bells have sounded in recent years over signs of increasing resistance in western Cambodia on Thailand's border with Myanmar among artemisinin-based drugs, the only effective medicine now widely used to cure the disease.

Studies show the drugs are taking longer to work there, and experts fear the emerging resistance could eventually spread to Africa as has occurred previously with other malaria treatments that now are worthless against the disease.

If artemisinin-based drugs stop working, there is no good replacement and many people would ultimately die. Currently, malaria kills an estimated 2,000 children every day in Africa. Some 3.3 billion people worldwide are at risk of getting infected.

"We feel a sense of emergency considering the impact these medicines can have," lead author Gaurvika Nayyar, of the Fogarty International Center at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in an email.

The study says more labs are needed worldwide to test for fake drugs -- only three out of 47 malaria-plagued countries in Africa...

Alcatel-Lucent Aims at Juniper, Cisco with New Core Router

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:11:19 +0000

Alcatel-Lucent is aiming straight between the eyes of Cisco and Juniper with its latest family of Internet core routers. The new routers intend to address the major shifts happening across global networks.

Dubbed 7950 XRS, the new routers allow network operators to go with the flow of rapid adoption of cloud applications, the explosion in video traffic and the mainstreaming of smartphones and tablets and prepare for the next decade of growth.

Basil Alwan, president of Alcatel-Lucent's IP Division, is using some aggressive words that Cisco and others in the Internet core router space would likely dispute -- words like "revolutionizing the network core." But Alwan is right about one thing.

"Core networks are evolving at an unbelievable pace, with IP backbones and 'metro' cores facing a host of new requirements," he said. "The core router platform of the future needs to be able to efficiently deliver enormous capacity, and do so without sacrificing the intelligence and capabilities needed to support an expanding variety of content and applications."

A Future-Minded Router

The 7950 XRS is based on a compact system design that Alcatel-Lucent said is built with the future in mind. The flagship of the family, the 7950 XRS-40, supports 32 terabits per second (Tbps) capacity and 160 100-gigabit Ethernet ports. The router taps the latest techniques in silicon and system design to drive down power consumption by more than 66 percent compared with typical core routers, according to the company.

Alcatel-Lucent is pushing one message with its new product: traditional core routers have lacked performance and 100GE density, and recent alternatives have compromised on features and flexibility in an attempt to improve performance and density. With 100-Gbps links increasingly serving as the foundation of IP transport networks -- and with 400-Gbps and 1-Tbps links on the horizon -- the firm said 7950 XRS helps respond...

Say What? The Odyssey of Kraft’s New Brand Name

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:02:58 +0000

"MONDEWHAAAAT?" The sarcasm was palpable in the one-word headline that appeared in The New York Post on the day after Kraft Foods revealed that it planned to name its new global snack business "Mondelez," an interpretation of a mash-up of the Latin words for "world" and "delicious." But that wasn't the only dig.

One blogger teased that she would've been "stifling giggles" if she'd been in meetings to determine the name. A Forbes contributor suggested a trick for remembering how to say it: "Just think Bush Administration Secretary of State. You know, Mon-de-leza Rice." Crain's Business Chicago tittered that it bears close resemblance to a vulgar Russian term for a sexual act.

Michael Mitchell, a Kraft spokesman, said executives took all the joking in stride, and he's quick to point out why the Crain's observation didn't alarm the company: "The name has to be mispronounced to get that unfortunate meaning."

The made-up moniker, pronounced "mon-dah-LEEZ," became a punch line after it was unveiled in March. On Wednesday, Kraft shareholders will decide whether to approve the name for the company's business that sells global snack brands such as Oreos, Fig Newton and Cadbury.

The four-month odyssey of how "Mondelez" was picked -- and how it was received -- illustrates the great pains companies take to come up with powerful names for their businesses, products and services. For them, it's akin to parents obsessing over a name for their newborn: it's a moniker that sticks for better or worse, so it better be good.

"You have to generate thousands of ideas, even if it's just for a cookie," said Nik Contis, the global director of naming at branding company Siegel+Gale.

That's just what Kraft did after it decided to split into two publicly-traded companies -- one for its North American grocery business that makes products like Oscar Mayer...

Microsoft Opens Bing Search-Sharing ‘Experiment’ as Social Network

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:27:47 +0000

Coming a few days after Facebook's Wall Street debut to mixed reaction by investors, Microsoft's new social network had been widely seen as a possible rival to Mark Zuckerberg's juggernaut.

"Is this the next Facebook?" asked Fox News as the network, So.cl (pronounced Social), was opened to general users after a long beta-testing period.

A Bing Bulletin Board

But the fledgling network, geared toward students, as was Facebook initially when it was conceived in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room, seems to be more akin to a hybrid of search engine Bing and Pinterest, the upstart topic-based content-sharing network.

"Express Yourself," So.cl implores potential users on its homepage. "With So.cl you can share your search and express your ideas through beautiful collages of content." When a user enters search topics, a field is instantly populated with images related to the topic to be shared with the user's contacts. They can also connect through chat and video parties.

"Video parties let you search, and quickly assemble a list of movies to view together with friends," reads the site's FAQ. "You can view any existing party collection created by any other So.cl user, or create your own, and easily chat with other So.cl users."

All posts are visible to other users by default unless they are marked private.

"We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools," Microsoft tells visitors on the FAQ page. "We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives."

For now, users can only sign in through their Facebook or Windows Live accounts. Facebook's phenomenal success has launched a slew of new sharing initiatives from the successful Twitter to the failed Google Buzz...

Sidecar App Extends the Mobile Calling Experience

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:36:19 +0000

Start-up Sidecar has taken the wraps off a new smartphone app that enables users to share live video and other multimedia content with friends, family members and fellow workers even as they are talking on their phones.

Sidecar makes it possible for users to share photos instantly or deliver the entire contents of an album stored on their phones while chatting with the recipient. Interconnected Sidecar users also will be able to simultaneously view other content, such as an interactive street map.

With Sidecar the goal is to help handset users break out of today's voice-calling silo, said Sidecar CEO Rob Williams. Until now, people who wanted to do more than talk "had to toggle back and forth between voice calls and whatever else they wanted to share with the person they were calling," Williams said Tuesday.

There has been tremendous innovation in smartphones in every area except the basic phone call, Williams observed.

Sidecar tears down these barriers and lets people easily share live video, location, photos, and contacts while they talk," he said. "The result is a more fun, engaging, and expressive conversation."

Connecting Users Worldwide

Among other things, the new Sidecar app enables live videos to be shared with others even as they are being captured by the user's handset camcorder. The service is free whenever both the user and the recipients have Sidecar installed on their phones.

By instantly sharing maps, Sidecar makes it easy for commuters looking for rides to visually inform drivers just where to pick them up and drop them off. Sidecar is already geared up to serve the commuting needs of the communities of passengers and drivers around the world, said the company, which is based in San Francisco and Seattle.

The new Sidecar app also gives users the ability to swiftly pass along and integrate...

Motorola In the Middle: Big Success or Failure Could Hurt Google

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:12:20 +0000

It's official. Google has closed on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. But what does this mean for the merged company? There are still more questions than answers.

In a Tuesday morning blog post, Google CEO Larry Page opined about how the phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. He pointed out how it's now possible to do things we used to think were magic -- or only possible on Star Trek. Things like getting directions on the spot, watching a video on YouTube or taking a picture and sharing it instantly with friends all over the world.

"Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone," Page wrote. "We all remember Motorola's StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google."

Motorola Gets New CEO

Although Page didn't offer much insight on what Google will do with Motorola, he did announce that Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. Long-time Googler Dennis Woodside has taken the reins.

After extolling Woodside's virtues in the blog he turned his attention back to technology, indicating that Motorola would still make mobile phones, saying: "It's a well-known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term.

"Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound -- as will the ability to just...

Anonymous Hacks U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics

admin — Tue, 22 May 2012 14:59:37 +0000

Monday Mail Mayhem. That's how Anonymous is describing its latest hack. The "hacktivist" group broke in to a 1.7-GB archive of data it says "used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now."

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal e-mails, and the entire database dump," Anonymous said in a statement. "We Lulzed as they took the Web site down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened."

Why the Bureau of Statistics?

Anonymous apparently also uploaded a BitTorrent file of the stolen data to Pirate Bay. That's a potentially serious leak, considering that the Bureau of Justice Statistics' stated mission is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. The bureau describes the data as "critical to federal, state, and local policymakers in combating crime and ensuring that justice is both efficient and evenhanded."

With that in mind, why is Anonymous targeting the Bureau of Justice statistics? Anonymous answered that question with a mouthful of hacktivist-speak reminiscent of WikiLeaks.

"We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information. We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard, and to know the corruption in their government," according to the Anonymous statement. "We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free."

The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the breach and published reports say the government is investigating the hacks. In a statement, a spokesman said the department is looking into the unauthorized access of a Web site server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from...