Business

Is Apple to blame for hearing loss as a result of listening to one's iPod too loud? No, says a federal appeals court. The decision came this week and upholds the original dismissal of a lawsuit that claimed Apple's popular digital media device and ... the headsets sold along with it were defective and could cause permanent hearing loss -- without warning of such a possibility. Original Suits Filed in 2006 The original suit was filed by a disgruntled Louisiana iPod buyer and then supported by a similar claim in California in 2006. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, judges found that neither ... (view more)

As we reported yesterday , Microsoft has lost a federal appeal over a copyright case involving the MS Office program, MS Word. In short, Microsoft breached a patent on a technique for opening XML (Extensible Markup Language) documents in MS Word. ... What is XML? XML is something of a sequel to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which is the language used for creating the layout of a webpage. Whereas HTML "tags" decide how text appears on screen, XML tells a computer what the text is about. This effectively turns web content into a type of database and makes it easier to organize and manipulate ... (view more)

Microsoft has lost another appeal to keep Microsoft Word 2007 on store shelves in its current form. An appeals court on Tuesday found that the company had infringed on Canadian firm i4i's patent for a built-in XML editor. Microsoft and i4i aroused ... much attention back over the summer , when a U.S. District Court judge in Eastern Texas found that the Redmond-based software giant had infringed on the much smaller Toronto company's patent for an XML editor that is a critical part of the Office program Word. Rather than immediately set about changing the program to avoid the patent conflict, ... (view more)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently filed a lawsuit against Intel Corporation, alleging that the computer chip manufacturer waged a systematic campaign to shut out its rivals by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In doing so, ... the FTC believes that Intel deprived consumers of choice and innovation, and that Intel's anti-competitive tactics were designed to stop competitive products that threatened its monopoly in the CPU (Central Processing Unit) microchip market. (Source: ftc.gov ) Success at the Expense of Consumers According to the FTC complaint, Intel's strategy ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced their involvement in the war against illicit child photos by creating a new software tool that will give those looking to abolish such unethical material an upper hand. The software, which is somewhat similar to an antivirus ... program, will identify signatures in content to find images of those being abused. Microsoft researchers worked alongside Dartmouth College computer science professor Henry Farid to produce PhotoDNA. The software is able to accurately pinpoint certain characteristics in digital images that computers can scan online. Said Farid, "The basic idea is ... (view more)

Microsoft has apologized after a contractor appeared to copy code from a rival company to use in a microblogging service. But Plurk, the company claiming its material was stolen, says it is considering taking the matter to court. Juku, a ... Twitter-style blogging feature on Microsoft's MSN site in China, was taken down this week after the complaints. Plurk's staff had written that Juku's design had involved "blatant theft of code, design, and user interface elements." As Much as 80% of Code Stolen Not only did Plurk staff believe Juku's look and feel was remarkably similar to its own site, but ... (view more)

Whether you are a university student using your laptop in residence or an employee surfing the Internet at the office, closely controlling your online history is crucial in keeping your identity safe and your privacy intact. According to Sree ... Kamireddy, Program Manager for Microsoft Bing, very few people are actually aware of the Bing Search History control options that are offered through the "decision engine". The switches offer a safer level of privacy control which is particularly useful if your PC or laptop falls into the wrong hands. The On / Off Switch Online search history ... (view more)

Microsoft is being sued by a small tech firm for using a part of its name, Bing! Information Design, as the moniker for its new search engine. Bing! Information Design says it's been using the name for almost ten years, far longer than the ... seven-month-old Bing search engine. St. Louis-based Bing! Information Design filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in its home city. The company claims that Microsoft's search engine violates its trademark on the word 'Bing'. Bing! Information Design says it has had rights to that name since 2000. Specifically, the suit alleges Microsoft is guilty of "trademark ... (view more)

Reports suggest Google will soon unveil its own smartphone running Google's own Android operating system. However, analysts are split on how significant the move is and whether it will have a major impact on the market. Rumors of a "Google-phone" ... have been rampant ever since the company launched its open-source operating system Android, which now appears on a growing number of handsets, most prominently Motorola's Droid phone. Blog Posting Drops Strong Hints Officially, the firm has only said "We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative ... (view more)

Microsoft will ask all European users of Internet Explorer whether they want to try out a rival browser. It's an unexpected result in a long-running dispute with European Union officials. It came as no surprise when the firm announced today that it ... will include a "browser ballot" screen on all Windows PCs sold in Europe from January 2010, and on. The scheme, which Microsoft had proposed some months ago, will mean that during set-up users will see a list of leading browsers and have the option to install some or all of them, rather than simply getting Internet Explorer by default. Ball Screen ... (view more)