Tech news from around the web:
PayPal, eBay’s payment service, is looking to take on Groupon and LivingSocial with plans to start offering coupons tailored to users’ buying habits and mobile phone locations, according to Bloomberg. The company will launch its mobile deals in the first quarter of 2012 in partnership with several US retailers.
Tech news from around the web:
Research In Motion has run into a problem over its BBX operating system – the blending of its QNX and existing BlackBerry software, PaidContent reports. Basis International, which makes software-development tools, has sent a cease and desist letter and a threat of further legal action to RIM on the basis that the new operating system’s name is too similar to Basis’s flagship product, BBx.
Tech news from around the web:
US prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether eBay employees took confidential information from classified ad website Craigslist as it sought to build a rival service, Reuters reports. The two companies have already been fighting in the civil courts over allegations that eBay took a stake in Craigslist and then misappropriated confidential information while it secretly planned its own classifieds site. An eBay spokeswoman told Reuters that the company would co-operate in any inquiry related to the disputes with Craigslist.
The MacBook Pro’s progress
Apple upgraded its MacBook Pro line last week with faster processors, a FaceTime HD camera and a new data port called Thunderbolt.
I have been testing a 13-inch version, which makes a two-generation processor leap from a Core 2 Duo to a second-generation Core i7, for the Personal Technology column in the FT’s Business Life section. Full review is after the jump.
Tech news from around the web:
Ultra-light, but not lightweight
In the latest Personal Technology section of Business Life, we look at ultra-thin but powerful laptops:
“Sony’s Vaio line of Windows-based laptops has always managed to combine elegant design with equal measures of fun and business functionality, and the new Z Series VPCZ114GX/S is no exception.
But this new Vaio, which went on sale in the US earlier this month, also happens to be one of the most powerful 13-inch laptops that I have tested.”
Apple without the sizzle
Not much was expected from a Macworld without Steve Jobs, but it was instructive nonetheless to ponder today how an Apple no longer fronted by the tech world’s arch showman might look.
Stand-in Phil Schiller did a passable job – though nearly an hour of software demos (new versions of iLife and iWork) made this feel more like the sort of event Microsoft would throw (and probably will later this week, when Steve Ballmer kicks off the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas).
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