Google bids $900 million for Nortel's patents to protect against litigation trolls

Nortel, once one of the biggest telecoms company in the world but now in the death throes of bankruptcy, has selected Google's $900 million bid for its patent portfolio as the stalking horse bid. This doesn't mean that Google will automatically win Nortel's massive array of telecoms patents, but it does mean that Google is the preferred buyer.

Google, which has a history of lobbying for patent law reform, has been the target of many patent litigation suits. Google's relative infancy means that it has a lot less patents in the vault than big-hitters like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, and buying Nortel's portfolio of 6,000 patents could provide better protection against patent litigation in the future. It's worth noting that both Apple and RIM have showed interested in the portfolio, too.

Mashable speculates that the patents -- which are nearly all telecoms-related -- will be used to defend against Oracle's attacks on Android's use of Java. We reckon that Google is simply looking to cover its future endeavors in the world of networking. In the absence of patent law reform, and continued threats to net neutrality, owning a bunch of telecoms patents sounds like a very sensible move.

Google bids $900 million for Nortel's patents to protect against litigation trolls originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/google-bids-900-million-for-nortels-patents-to-protect-from-li/

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Talking to Yourself Makes You Smarter [Science]

Talking to yourself is the preserve of mad men, right? Not according to a new study, which reveals that the seemingly irrational act of chatting to oneself actually improves cognitive function. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Sm2jjo5le2s/talking-to-yourself-makes-you-smarter

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New iPad Quad Core Graphics

Prior to the unveiling of the new iPad 3, there was a lot of speculation and rumors about what processor would be on board and what features the new tablet. The older iPad 2 came with an A5 processor which included a dual core graphics processor and 512mb of RAM. The graphics processor takes care of all the display functions whilst the main processor handles all of the other functions. A lot of the rumors prior to the new iPad [...]

Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/new-ipad-quad-core-graphics/

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Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5%

Firefox 4 usage share graph
Using some early numbers from both StatCounter and Net Applications, Mozilla's noisiest hominid, Asa Dotzler, has illustrated Firefox 4's meteoric rise to around 5% of Web browser global usage share. Internet Explorer 9, which launched two weeks ago, seems to be enjoying a much more casual stroll in the park with just 1.5% of the global Web usage share.

Interestingly, we can see IE9 dipping between March 20 and 21, just before the 'Important' Windows Update rolled out. It's hard to say whether IE9 is only growing because of the installed-by-default Windows Update, but that small dip definitely sticks out -- did excitement peter out? Did people download IE9, try it out, and summarily uninstall it? Perhaps, given their close proximity, the stats show an attention shift from Microsoft to Mozilla?

Numbers-wise, if the bottom left corner of the graph shows 2.3 million downloads for IE9, we can guesstimate that that it has now been downloaded 5 million times. Firefox is clocking in at 37 million downloads after five days of public availability.

We wonder whether Microsoft knew its release schedule would coincide so closely with Firefox 4. Internet Explorer 9 -- a great browser by almost every metric -- was never going to do well against anything emanating from the maws of Mozilla. The main thing, though, is that Microsoft has now shown that it's serious when it comes to the Open Web. If Internet Explorer 10 is good, and 11 and 12, then we might finally see it compete with the zealous Mozillan horde.

Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5% originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/28/firefox-4-rockets-to-5-global-usage-share-ie9-wallows-at-1-5/

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Acid House: A Warm, Organic, Hallucinatory Place to Call Home [Design]

The artist Doug Aitkin built his Venice, California, home as a shrine to what he calls "Acid Modernism," a warm and organic space that is also "perceptual and hallucinatory." Its rooms feature high-concept design incorporated in livable, functional ways. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/K4uy5QfpX50/

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Corel VideoStudio X4 giveaway

corelvideostudiox4giveaway
This morning, Corel released VideoStudio X4. We've already published a quick overview and hands-on of the application, and now is the moment you've all been waiting for: We're giving away ten full licenses of this new version, each worth $99.99!

To enter our random draw, you just have to leave a comment. Full terms and conditions are after the break.

Continue reading Corel VideoStudio X4 giveaway

Corel VideoStudio X4 giveaway originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/22/corel-videostudio-x4-giveaway/

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CloudFlare Is In Talks to Raise Funding At Near A $1 Billion Valuation

Screen Shot 2012-04-17 at 2.44.52 PMCloudFlare, a San Francisco-based startup that protects web sites from security threats and speeds up their load times, has been in talks to raise funding at a valuation that's around $1 billion, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. Apparently on the back of the company's growth, there was inbound interest during the last three to four months with at least one firm agreeing to north of a $1 billion valuation. A few other venture firms have given pushback, saying that a $1 billion post-money valuation is too high. The company itself says it has no need to raise funding, with the majority of its last $20 million round still in the bank. (And no, they didn't plant this story because I heard about it through other backchannel chatter about Sand Hill deal flow.) "Cloudflare's team is working to address some of the Internet's hardest challenges. We're literally building a faster, safer, smarter web," the company's chief executive Matthew Prince told me. "We're in a fortunate position where we don't need to raise capital and have no immediate plans to do so."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/-Z6HlEhahQo/

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TWC TV Android app finally updated with live TV streaming

TWC TV Android app finally updated with live TV streaming

Time Warner Cable users who prefer Android to iOS can finally enjoy live TV streaming on their Ice Cream Sandwich-enabled tablets and phones. As we learned when it debuted, DRM requirements are making live TV streaming an Android 4.0-only (devices that have been rooted however, are not invited) affair, but at least it's here. Subscribers can snag TWC TV 2.0 from Google Play at the link below, although they are encouraged to try uninstalling if they experience any glitches after upgrading. There's a blog post linked below with more details, but we're pretty sure a TV screen you can take to the can with you explains itself.

TWC TV Android app finally updated with live TV streaming originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/17/twc-tv-android-app-finally-updated-with-live-tv-streaming/

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Canon shows off prototype 30-inch 4K reference display, won't put a price tag on love

Image

With 4K cameras suddenly popping up everywhere we look at NAB 2012, it's little surprise that Canon is showing off this matching 30-inch prototype intended for the very professionals tasked with mastering video shot by its latest hardware. Like the retina display, it produces an effect where no matter how close you're standing it's still impossible to pick out the individual pixels, and easily matched what we'd seen from a prototype 20-inch 4K LCD from Panasonic at CES. The people we spoke to who handled some of the work on Canon's demo footage preferred it to their 2K projectors for the clarity and ability to get pixel accurate representations of the source material, plus it probably fits more easily into a production suite. The big question from all who see this in person is when will it be available and for how much, and while Canon says it's due to ship this year, we're on our own to speculate about the (surely astronomical) price.

Continue reading Canon shows off prototype 30-inch 4K reference display, won't put a price tag on love

Canon shows off prototype 30-inch 4K reference display, won't put a price tag on love originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/C64YChylxoQ/

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iSuper Helicopter (Large) for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad only $89.95 [Daily deal]