17
June
2009
|
19:55 PM
America/Los_Angeles

Newswatch: Wireless Marketplace Competition is White Hot -Reuters

Thursday 8am Silicon Valley news report:

U.S. wireless providers debate about competition -Reuters


The issue of exclusive agreements among some of the biggest companies like Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone and service provider AT&T Inc (T.N) is at the center of some lawmakers' concerns about whether such practices hinder competition and innovation.


Keep writing those Moore’s Law obits and you’re bound to be right someday -SiliconValley.com


Most of the predictions are based on running up against fundamental physical limitations, but in its own new calculation of the law’s expiration date, market research firm iSuppli cites not the size of the transistors, but the size of chip makers’ budgets.


I.B.M. to Invest $100 Million in Cellphone Research -NYTimes


I.B.M. said it hoped its research would serve “the millions of people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing the Internet and instead use their mobile devices for managing large forces of enterprise field workers, conducting financial transactions, entertainment, shopping and more.”


Intel to rebrand some chips, phase out "Centrino" -Reuters


The company plans to repackage its Core family of microprocessors with a simpler naming scheme -- the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 -- describing basic, mid-range and high-end features within the Core line, respectively.


Top senator: NSA not violating surveillance law -AP


"Everything that I know so far indicates that the thrust of the story - that there are flagrant actions essentially to collect content of (American e-mails) - is just simply not true, to the best of my knowledge," Feinstein said at a Senate hearing Wednesday.


Google agrees to Germany's terms regarding Street View -SFGate


Germany has given Google the green light to launch its Street View mapping service in this country, but only after the company agreed to comply with German authorities' privacy concerns.


Amazon Acquires Software Maker SnapTell -WSJ


The SnapTell purchase is Amazon's latest move to beef up its mobile capabilities. In April, the Seattle company acquired Lexcycle, the maker of a popular application called Stanza for reading books on the iPhone. Amazon has continued to develop Stanza as a separate program from its own Kindle e-book reading application for the iPhone


Identity Battles Come to Facebook -NYTimes


Social media sites give companies new ways to promote their brands, said Howard H. Weller, a trademark lawyer at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp in New York. But he added that “these are all new avenues for abuse, and it’s more resources trademark owners need to devote to policing and enforcement.”


Sophisticated online crime ring detected -SFGate


"This is the most advanced network we've found," said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, the chief technology officer of Finjan, a venture-funded security company based in San Jose that found the network two months ago. "They're trying to combine all the elements together and enable more people to participate in this crime."


S.F. techie helps stir Iranian protests -SFGate


But for the past few days, Heap, an IT director in San Francisco, has been on the virtual front lines of the crisis in Iran, helping people there protest the presidential election, which opponents of the incumbent regime maintain was fraudulent.


Guessing game: How much money is YouTube losing? -AP


RampRate reasons the perception of large losses at YouTube helps Google negotiate more favorable contracts with movie, TV and music studios licensing their video. What's more, copyright owners also are less likely to go to court in pursuit of unpaid royalties and damages if they believe YouTube is a big money loser, according to RampRate's thesis.


Apple Implements App Ratings/Restrictions for iPhone, iPod Touch -GigaOM


In addition to a rating, each app also receives a brief description of how it earned that classification, so you know Apple reviewers weren’t just choosing at random because their eyes are bleeding from reviewing thousands of apps.