In the News Archive

Yesterday, the technology world was full of this whole "market capitalisation" thing where Apple overtook Microsoft and became the biggest technology company in the world. Illustrating the futility of this stuff, the situation has already been reversed today, but before the end of the day, Apple may overtake Microsoft again. Or not. Or it may start raining unicorns. No, we're not going to keep track of this stuff. I'm just mentioning it here so nobody can accuse us of being anti-Apple. So, here it goes: for one night, Apple was the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. I hugged my Macs and iPhone.

Now this is a subject I've been tiptoeing around for a while now, not entirely sure what to do with it: the suicides at Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Instead of acting all morally smug and superior from my comfortable rural home in one of the richest countries in the world, I want to talk about two things journalists and bloggers should really stop focusing on when writing about this story: Apple, and the suicides. Wait, what?

Whatever products we use, I think we can all agree that the United States patent system and the US Patent and Trademark Office need a serious overhaul. Not only has the USPTO a history of granting ridiculous patents (massive prior art, obviousness, incredibly vague, the USPTO grants them all), it also has a backlog of about 750000 patent applications. The USPTO now has a plan to combat these issues - sadly, they once again display their utter incompetence.

Well, you can classify this under the double-you-tee-eff header. There is rampant speculation in London's financial district that Apple may be planning to buy ARM, the processor design company many of us have a soft spot for. Shares of ARM went upwards quickly when the speculation started, making it the biggest winner of London's FTSE.

I wanted to post this just because Barbara and David Mikkelson of Snopes.com are heroes of mine. Any savvy internet user knows that their web site is a great source for unraveling the never-ending stream of false internet rumors. The New York Times article also mentions FactCheck.org and PolitiFact, which are two other truth-telling sites that educated people ought to be aware of.

There is an ongoing discussion on a Gnome mailing list which points out that Gnome and KDE might collaborate for a new project: a FLOSS alternative to Dropbox.The Gnome and KDE approach is more towards an collaboration tool, but which is very close to Dropbox. The DE independent FLOSS Dropbox alternative idea came because Google Summer of Code is approaching and both Gnome and KDE have a collaboration tool on their list.

"In this article, the authors investigate the impact of DRM restrictions on the demand for music downloads. estimates the impact of DRM on consumers' willingness to pay for songs (both favorites and nonfavorites) and on the producer revenues and profits. Based on two studies of more 2000 college students, the results suggest that despite the potential advantages offered by some DRM restrictions, on balance the elimination of DRM has a net positive impact on producer revenue, profit, and consumer welfare."

And thus, our true colours reveal. Since Obama was the young newcomer, technically savvy, many of us were hoping that he might support patent and/or copyright reform. In case our story earlier on this subject didn't already tip you off, this certainly will: Obama has sided squarely with the RIAA/MPAA lobby, and backs ACTA. No copyright and/or patent reform for you, American citizens!

If you thought the growing criticism directed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office would force them to rethink their strategies in granting patents, you're most likely wrong. After a re-examination that took more than four years, the USPTO has reconfirmed Amazon's ominous one-click patent.

Cisco Systems says it will make a major announcement on Tuesday, news that the technology giant says "will forever change the Internet". Shares of Cisco gained 3.65% to close at $26.13 Monday, hitting a new 52-week high of $26.36 intraday, as some analysts speculated that the tech giant is rolling out new gear to help wireless phone companies cope with rising video Web traffic. Cisco had sent out invitations to analysts and the media for a "significant announcement" that it says "will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments". Let the speculation begin!

I figured the whole "Windows-7-ate-my-RAM!"-thing would be one-item only, but apparently, it won't be. Over the weekend, the situation got a lot murkier. As it turns out, Craig Barth, the supposed CTO of Devil Mountain Software, was actually an InfoWorld blogger/editor - who has been fired from InfoWorld over all this. Someone on the web who isn't who he claims to be? Surely you jest! Update: Ars' Peter Bright has published an article about this as well.

NetApplications has released its latest browser market share figures, and these figures show that Chrome has overtaken Safari as the number three browser worldwide, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. IE, by the way, continues to lose popularity rather fast.

It is no secret that Microsoft is doing whatever it can to eat away at Google's immense market share of the search market, with Bing being its most ambitious effort yet. Well, it seems the battle just got a whole lot dirtier, as The Financial Times has uncovered news that Microsoft has approached several news content providers, offering them money if they "de-index" their sites from Google.

InfoWorld has compiled a list of 10 not yet widely adopted enterprise technologies that will have the greatest impact on IT in the years to come. From whitelisting, to NoSQL, to I/O virtualization, each class of technology is analyzed for its potential to solve significant IT challenges - mobile app dev, power conservation, data glut - over the long haul, as opposed to how it may currently be implemented or how today's iterations currently perform.