Weekly tech round-up to 15 August

August 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Google sued by alleged victim of Gmail snooping!

In our August 1st blog, we let you know about Microsoft’s take on Google scanning your email before you even read it (Gmailman) so that it can display ads to Gmail users that it believes are personally relevant.

Given the litigious society we live in now, I guess it was only a matter of time before someone took this to the next level.

A woman in Massachusetts has filed a class action suit against the internet giant, seeking damages of $100 per day for each infringement (or $1,000 – whichever is higher), plus punitive damages and an injunction preventing Google from further violation.

More info can be found here on the ZDnet website.

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Google throws a punch and Microsoft fires back with a missile!

Apparently Google has been complaining that its competitors are trying to stifle competition (particularly in relation to their Android technology used in smartphones and tablets) by filing bogus patent claims.

One of the targets for Google’s complaint was Microsoft. Google claimed that Microsoft had teamed up with Apple to buy Novell’s old patents, thus keeping them from Google.

This was mentioned in a blog post by Google’s SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond.

Later the same day Microsoft came out swinging with their response, which in essence told the Google SVP to check his facts before posting, as Microsoft has specifically invited Google to bid together with Microsoft for these patents and Google knocked them back! – Oops.

Read more about this spat in the Techcrunch article.  [Read more...]

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OCD Weekly tech round-up to July 25 2011

July 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Microsoft’s Q4 earnings for the 2011 fiscal year have been posted, with revenue quoted at a cool $17.37 billion. An 8% increase over the same period in 2010, this beats their previous record of $16.43 billion in revenue, which they posted in Q3 this year. $5.87 billion in net income is a huge 30% climb over the previous year. Microsoft’s revenue broke another record for the full year, which came in at $69.94 billion – 12% higher than the year before.

Much of the growth has come from the Entertainment and Devices Division which is responsible for the Xbox 360 and Kinect hardware – this has witnessed 30% revenue growth over that quarter and circa 45% over the year.

Another major contributor to the impressive earnings has been the online side of the business, with the search engine, bing, and Microsoft’s online services increasing revenue by around 17%.

Income from Microsoft Windows has been relatively flat over the period although possibly that will change with the release of Windows 8 sometime in 2012 (likely mid-year).

Many still believe that Steve Balmer (Microsoft CEO) is the reason that the share price does not increase in the same way as it does for other companies. This is an intriguing proposition, considering the impressive performance both in revenue and profits Microsoft has achieved over the years since Balmer became CEO.

OCD is a Microsoft Gold Partner.

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New entries into the ever-expanding tablet market are coming from Lenovo in the form of the ThinkPad Tablet and the IdeaPad K1.

The tablets are aimed at companies and consumers respectively.

Each model boasts some interesting features and you can find out more from the Engadget website, which includes a review:

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet

Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet

Oh… and a late arrival for your attention is the IdeaPad P1 which is a Windows 7 based tablet. [Read more...]

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OCD Weekly tech round-up to July 18 2011

July 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

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Google+

Google launched a new service at the end of June to a limited number of people (allowing it time to iron out kinks, such as the system running out of disk space for 80 minutes earlier this week).

It’s Google’s next enterprise in social media and is made up of several different services, some of which you may already use, including:

Circles – Allows you to group your contacts together in a network, dividing people by the type of information you want to share with them. For instance, you can have groups for family, close friends, acquaintances, colleagues and so on.

Hangouts – This is basically a group video chat service where you can connect with people in your Circles groups.

Sparks – This is a little like Google Reader except it brings content to you automatically, based on your interests. Each topic (football, animals, holidays etc.) will get its own Sparks page and the service will provide links to related articles, videos and photos that it believes will be of interest to you.

Having only launched in late June, the service officially surpassed 10 million users on Thursday 14th July.

Google+ is by invitation only at present; however, everyone with a Google account will eventually have access to the service.

Google also announced during the week that its gross revenue for the second quarter of 2011 was $9.02 billion, up 32% on the same period from 2010. Its net income was $2.51 billion, up from $1.84 billion during the same period in 2010 – pretty tasty numbers which beat analyst estimates by a fair stretch!

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Microsoft – Patch Tuesday

Microsoft released four security bulletins on Tuesday as part of their regular monthly roll-out of patches and significant updates.

One fixed a critical hole relating to Bluetooth in Windows 7 and Vista, with three less important patches that fixed issues in all Windows versions and Visio 2003. [Read more...]

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RIM to dole out BlackBerry 10 test devices #itsupportglasgow #itnews http://t.co/XwxS6zE8