Lexmark redefines the all-in-one printer
Lexmark’s latest range of all-in-one printers give users far more than they might expect.
A Lexmark Prestige Pro805 I have been testing has the usual all-in-one copying, scanning and printing functions, but there is also a kitchen sink of extras thrown in.
Wii shortages through March warns Nintendo
Shortages of the Nintendo Wii console will continue until the end of March in the US after the company was caught by surprise by December’s record sales.
In an interview at Nintendo’s Media Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, Reggie Fils-Aimé (pictured), president of Nintendo of America, told me Nintendo had been “hand-to-mouth” in supplying retailers with product in January and February after 3.8m Wiis were sold in the US in December.
First Look – Nintendo DSi XL
Nintendo is moving closer to eReader and iPad territory with the launch of a large-screen version of its DS handheld console.
Cammie Dunaway (pictured), head of American sales and marketing, unveiled the Nintendo DSi XL to a US audience at a “media summit” in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Scribd and Docstoc expand e-publishing
A new breed of publishing services on the web are rapidly expanding their offerings to fresh markets and devices.
Docstoc, which allows the sharing of professional documents, opened its DocStore to individuals on Tuesday, while Scribd, its larger rival, announced on Wednesday easier ways of making its documents accessible on eReaders and other mobile devices.
Yelp sued for “extortion”
Local reviews site Yelp is facing some unflattering reviews of its own service.
In a class action lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court, the red-hot startup is accused of unfair competition and what amounts to extorting small businesses.
The plaintiff in the suit, an animal hospital in Los Angeles, alleges that after negative reviews about its business appeared on Yelp, sales representatives from the company called and said that for $300 per month, they could make the ads disappear.
Don’t be surprised if this sounds familiar. In a lengthy article last year, the East Bay Express leveled similar charges against the company. But in an interview with the FT, Yelp chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman flatly denied the claims.
Social shopping gains steam
Last week’s announcement by Facebook that it would use PayPal as its payments provider brought together two of the most potent forces on the internet – e-commerce and social networking.
Yet for all the promise each sector holds, the two have been slow to converge. Online shopping is still a generally solitary affair, while social networking has yet to place much emphasis on buying stuff. This may soon change.
Today the chief executive of Ebay, which owns PayPal and is the world’s largest online auctions site, offered new insights into how e-commerce and social networking might work in concert with one another, and what he sees as the next big opportunities for collaboration.
Google’s EU troubles play into Microsoft’s hands
It was only a matter of time before Brussels began looking at an antitrust complaint against Google. Murmurings of discontent about the dominant search engine have been going on for several years now, and recently there has been a rash of smaller cases against the company.
Three particular cases are being considered by the European Commission. A complaint by Foundem, a UK vertical search company, one from ejustice.fr, a French legal search site, and a complaint made initially in Germany by Ciao!, a vertical search site recently bought by Microsoft.
Google faces Brussels antitrust inquiry FT news story
Committed to competing fairly Google blog post
Why Europe could prove Google’s undoing Bobbie Johnson, The Guardian
Google Hit With Antitrust Investigation in Europe Mashable
Why The Big Smile, Mr. Ballmer? Google Been Slapped With an Antitrust Probe in Europe? All Things Digital
Intel says it had “sophisticated” hacking attempt
In what may be the first of many such formal disclosures, Intel included an unusual admission in its annual 10k filing to the SEC on Tuesday: It had been subjected to a “sophisticated incident” of computer hacking that might have been an act of “industrial or other espionage”.
The top semiconductor manufacturer said that the incident in question occurred last month, around the same time Google made a startling and more detailed announcement along similar lines. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said there was no definitive link between the attempt to break into Intel and the spying campaign that targeted Google and as many as 30 other technology companies, including Adobe and Symantec.
Microsoft notches up a win in fight over Linux IP
It looks like Microsoft has won a significant victory in its ongoing campaign to exert its claims over some of the key intellectual property in the Linux open source operating system.
Late on Monday, it announced a patent cross-licensing deal with Amazon. Among other things, this will cover the e-commerce company’s use of Linux in its servers. That is a big deal: given Amazon’s ambitions to become one of the biggest operators of public computing “clouds”, this amounts to a major endorsement of Microsoft’s claims over some of the core IP in Linux.
There is a caveat, though: the announcement was short on detail. And that is sure to bring accusations that the software company is once again using FUD to scare other Linux users into submission.
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