Posted 11/22/09 at 08:39:00 PM by Justin Kerr

When Rupert Murdoch announced that he was thinking of taking his News Corp web properties out of the Google search index, speculation as to Microsoft and Bing's involvement was rampant. Turns out, there might have actually been something to the rumors for once. According to the folks over at The Financial Times, Microsoft is willing to grease Murdoch palms to go exclusive with Bing, a move that newspapers will no doubt welcome.

The idea is essentially to force Google to pay for content, something it has historically never done. The news certainly came to the disappointment of Google which tends to endorse the "openness of the web", but Google's UK director Matt Brittin told a conference last week that Google doesn't need news content to stay afloat. "Economically it's not a big part of how we generate revenue" he said. In the end Google will likely still gain indirect access to the content by crawling third party websites that link to News Corp stories, but it will certainly impact Google News and start a new and possibly disturbing trend.

Steve Ballmer has admitted that he is willing to spend heavily for many years to make Bing a serious rival to Google, and Rupert Murdoch is but one of many struggling old media mongrels eager to cash in on the competition in search. If the two parties do end up inking an agreement, expect to see Bing advertise heavily as the only place to find The Wall Street Journal and possibly more deals to come.

Will this earn Bing market share? And what effect do you think this will have on the open web?

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Posted 11/22/09 at 03:25:23 PM by Justin Kerr

Anyone who follows Intel closely knows that they don’t just pump out high end CPU’s, but they actually dedicate entire teams to “pie in the sky” ideas of what future technologies might look like. This could be anything from an x86 cluster of CPU’s to render video, or in this case, using your brain to control a computer. It may sound farfetched, but its something Intel and its researchers have been actively studying for sometime now.

Currently scientists are focusing on how the brain reacts when interacting with a computer, and then learning ways to interpret this data to execute commands on the machine. The idea here is to allow your thoughts to take over for your mouse and keyboard. Intel is of the belief that an implant would make this easier, though I’m not entirely sure how many volunteers they are going to get with that idea. “Eventually people may be willing to be more committed… to brain implants" said Intel’s Vice-President of future Technology, Andrew Chien. "Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts”

You may have your doubts, and so do we, but it might interest you to know that researchers have already made significant strides in the field of reading brain patterns, and have already identified certain words such as “bear” that cause everyones brain to react in a similar manner. “I think human beings are remarkably adaptive,” said Chien, “If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said I don’t want that, I don’t need that. Now you can’t get them to stop. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think implanting chips into human brains is well within the scope of possibility”. Chien speculates we will be lining up for implants as early as 2010.

Are you comfortable with this idea?

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Posted 11/22/09 at 11:37:05 AM by Justin Kerr

Apple doesn't exactly have the greatest track record on mouse designs, and while you probably weren't going to switch platforms just for a "magic mouse" anyway, thanks to a clever new hack, you won't have to. The team over at uneasysilence.com has found a way to extract both the 32 bit, and 64 bit drivers by using WinRar on the latest Apple Bluetooth update and so far users are reporting no issues. The Apple driver, oddly enough, seems to contain all the components you will need to use the mouse on any Microsoft based machine from Windows XP all the way to Windows 7.

At $70 the magic mouse isn't as hideously overpriced as most Apple hardware, and debatably, it might actually be a decent travel mouse given the profile. Based on how easily the drivers were discovered, it also makes you wonder if Apple had planned Windows support for this mouse all along.

Has anyone tried out the magic mouse or the driver hack? Let us know what you think after the jump.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 08:10:29 PM by Ryan Whitwam

You may not be aware, but Qualcomm holds a number of patents on modern 3G cellular technology. Any company making a 3G cell phone has to pay patent royalties to Qualcomm. Analyst Sanford Bernstein pointed out in a report this week that Apple appears to be taking advantage of a licensing loophole to avoid paying all those fees for the iPhone. The loophole is estimated to save Apple $290 million in fiscal 2009 alone.

Licensees must pay 5% of the wholesale price of a 3G device to the patent owner. Qualcomm’s website lists over 145 companies that have licensed their 3G technology. The list includes all major makers of 3G handsets. The one notable exception? Apple. One surprise on the list is Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the iPhone.

The Bernstein report says that Qualcomm is being paid royalties not on the price Apple charges (average $590), but on the unit price Apple pays Foxconn, a mere $244. So instead of making $23.60 per iPhone, Qualcomm is only seeing $9.70. Apple is able to get away with this because the entire manufacturing process is done externally. Qualcomm seems fine with the arrangement. After all, $9.70 per iPhone is pretty good considering how they fly off the shelves.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 07:00:42 PM by Ryan Whitwam

An interesting Microsoft product roadmap has turned up. The document shows the year 2012 as the tentative timeframe for a “major release” code named Windows 8. This would put it at about three years out from the release of Windows 7. The interval between Vista and Win 7 was also three years. This could signal a new regular release cycle for Microsoft. No indication if the “code name” will stick, or if Redmond will decide to change naming schemes once again.

Vista was pushed back three years from its original release date after much of the code was scrapped. If this image is to be believed, Microsoft is confident in its ability to avoid such delays again. The timeframe fits with previous rumors we’ve heard, so there’s no reason to be overly skeptical.

Is the three year plan reasonable? We’ll have to wait and see what Microsoft can cook up in another three years.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 06:36:43 PM by Ryan Whitwam

In the wake of a major service outage a few weeks ago, fourth place US carrier T-Mobile may be shopping around for investment money from another US cell provider. Compared to the other US carriers, T-Mobile has a very small 3G footprint. Recognizing a need to expand, rumors indicate that parent company Deutsche Telekom is courting the likes of MetroPCS, Clearwire, and even AT&T.

Any of these investors would receive a small stake in T-Mobile in exchange for investment to expand their network. MetroPCS is of particular interest as the smaller carrier uses the same odd 1700Mhz 3G frequency that T-Mobile does. Collaboration with AT&T would be risky due to possible anti-trust allegations. AT&T is the only other GSM carrier in the US.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile UK was recently forced to merge with Orange UK. Could their US arm be headed in the same direction?

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Posted 11/20/09 at 05:56:39 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Just recently an American man accused of robbery was exonerated after a Facebook status update posted at about the same time as the robbery became his alibi. But Nathalie Blanchard, a 29-year-old Canadian woman, witnessed a different side, a much darker side, of using Facebook. Her rather jaunty Facebook alter ego has cost her dearly.

This IBM employee has been on sick leave for the last year and a half after being diagnosed with major depression. As if her long-drawn battle with depression wasn't enough, her insurance company, Manulife, withdrew her monthly sick-leave benefits this fall, using her happy Facebook pics as a pretext. Pics of Blanchard partying and holidaying were enough to convince the insurance company that she was back to normal.

The fun she was having, or trying to have, was strictly therapeutic - just what the doctor ordered, says Blanchard. She is also miffed at Manulife's meddlesome ways: the insurance company accessed her photos despite the fact that she has chosen to limit her profile to only friends. "My client was diagnosed with a major depression. And there were pictures of her on Facebook, in a party or having a good time. It could be that she was just trying to escape," Blanchard's lawyer Tom Lavin told CBC News.

The insurance company admits using social networking sites to keep a tab on clients. But it claims that it does not terminate claims "solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook."

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Posted 11/20/09 at 05:42:38 PM by Pulkit Chandna

As one of the leading developers of games for mobile phones, Gameloft wields considerable clout. The France-based games developer has decided to cut back on the development of games for Google's Android platform just like other developers. According to Gameloft finance director Alexandre de, the Android Market is not all that conducive to paid applications.

He revealed that his company sells "400 times more games on iPhone than on Android." But with the number of Android-based phones growing with each passing day, it will be difficult for games developers to completely ignore the platform. However, there are a lot of issues that Google will have to address, if it wants Android to be taken seriously as a games platform.

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