Apple Computer said on Wednesday it would pay -million to Creative Technology to settle all patent litigation over Apple’s popular iPod music player. The agreement gives Apple a license to use a Creative patent in its music player and other products and settles all legal disputes between the two companies, Apple said.
Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal picture of six World War II fighting men raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, died on August 20. He was 94. Rosenthal died of natural causes at a retirement home in the San Francisco suburb of Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.
SanDisk Corporation introduced the world’s highest-capacity flash-memory MP3 player on Monday and priced it to take a bigger bite of the market dominated by Apple’s iPods. The player features eight gigabytes of flash-based memory, expandable to 10 gigabytes, which translates into the potential to store as many as 2 500 songs.
Apple showcased its Leopard operating system, due out next year, to the cheers of software developers gathered for a major conference in San Francisco on Monday. With its trademark theatrical flair, the maker of Macintosh computers and iPod music players demonstrated new Leopard features.
Key internet freedoms are under threat in a legal battle between online search leader Google and pornography publisher Perfect 10, a prominent internet rights foundation said on Wednesday. At issue is whether Google infringed on copyrights by creating links to Perfect 10 pictures copied from its website and posted elsewhere on the internet.
United States internet search engine Yahoo and software security giant Symantec Corporation launched a joint service on Tuesday to protect people online from hackers, viruses, spyware and spam. Norton internet security provided by Yahoo was billed by the companies as an all-in-one security service that blocked intruders, identity thieves and malicious software.
Microsoft on Friday confirmed rumours it planned to launch an "iPod killer," saying its challenge to Apple Computer’s dominant MP3 player would hit the market this year. Microsoft’s new "music and entertainment project" was called "Zune," the software giant’s general manager of marketing, Chris Stephenson, revealed in a statement.
Google’s second-quarter profit seems likely to erase any lingering doubts about which internet company rules the web. While rivals eBay and Yahoo! merely matched analysts’ earnings expectations, Google on Thursday soared well beyond Wall Street’s financial hurdle — just like the online search engine leader has done in all but one quarter since it went public nearly two years ago.
A singer who wore a police uniform to front the Village People disco-era band pleaded no contest to cocaine possession charges on Wednesday, according to prosecutors. Victor Willis, who led his costumed band mates in dance-club hits such as Macho Man and YMCA, faces a maximum sentence of two years in prison as a result of the plea bargain.
World-renowned mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson has died in the American state of New Mexico after a years-long battle with breast cancer, opera officials said there on Saturday. Lieberson was known internationally as a captivating "arch-maverick" of an opera singer.
Microsoft on Wednesday was calling on users of its Windows and Office 2000 software to install security patches that prevent hackers from taking over their computers. The Redmond, Washington, software giant also made available monthly installments engineered to remove malware.
Yahoo! and Microsoft released software on Wednesday that built a bridge between their previously exclusive online instant messaging (IM) systems. The move fulfilled a promise the United States internet titans made late last year and marked the first time rival global messaging service providers arranged to co-mingle members.
The <i>MySpace</i> website deemed a virtual clubhouse where teenagers bare details of their lives has eclipsed internet oldster <i>Yahoo!</i> as the most popular website in the United States, a research firm said on Tuesday. Yahoo! rejected the claim as "misleading" because it ranked the search engine’s domains such as search, news, and e-mail separately instead of adding them together.
A Silicon Valley judge is being asked to stop an aviation designer from gabbing about a plan by high-flying Google’s founders to convert a wide-body passenger jet into a globe-ranging party plane. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Joseph Huber scheduled an August 7 hearing to resolve the dispute.
Intel’s attempt to stanch the loss of market share to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), its smaller rival in the computer microprocessor business, appears to be working and may allow it to gain lost ground over the next six months. AMD on Thursday warned second-quarter revenue would be about .22-billion, or about 9% below the previous period.
Online search giants Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are not doing enough to combat fraud that cost United States advertisers $800-million last year, a study released on Wednesday claimed. "Pay-per-click" advertising is a core revenue source for search engines and has come under attack by those concerned about fraud.
Yahoo! will consider refunding money to thousands of advertisers dating back to January 2004 and pay ,95-million in attorney fees to settle a class-action lawsuit
alleging the internet powerhouse has been profiting from bogus sales referrals generated through a sham known as ”click fraud.”
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, said on Thursday he would give up the daily running of Microsoft by July 2008 to concentrate on his foundation’s work tackling health and education problems. The Microsoft co-founder wanted a two-year transition "to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities", Microsoft said in a statement.
A diminutive grandmother donned a cap and gown on Wednesday and fulfilled a dream she had abandoned 80 years earlier — she got her high school diploma. ”I felt like I had missed something,” Josephine Belasco said when asked what inspired her to complete the schooling she began at Galileo High School when it opened in 1924.
Internet search titan Yahoo! showed its new face to the world on Tuesday with the online debut of its revamped website. The new Yahoo! page mixes news updates and entertainment with tools for searching, connecting, sharing and communicating online.
John Thys still has not figured out how much his company has paid Google for bogus sales referrals caused by ”click-fraud” — a sham aimed at a perceived weakness in the internet search leader’s advertising network. But Thys says he has uncovered enough of it to conclude that Google is trying to shortchange his company and thousands of other advertisers.
United States computer software titan Microsoft reported on Thursday that third-quarter income rose 16,4% due to demand for its latest products. Net income for the quarter tallied ,89-billion, or 29 cents per share, as compared with ,3-billion for that quarter in 2005, according to Microsoft.
An Zimbabwean woman will receive a 000 settlement of her lawsuit that alleged abuse by United States airport immigration officials, lawyers said. The settlement agreement was filed on Wednesday in San Francisco’s federal court. Tsungai Tungwarara, then 18, arrived in San Francisco from Zimbabwe in January 2002 to visit her mother.
The renowned Michelin Guide, which rates restaurants and hotels, announced on Wednesday that it is producing its first review of the US West Coast. The guide will cover the San Francisco and San Jose areas as well as the increasingly chic ”Wine Country” of the Sonoma and Napa valleys.
Apple Computer unveiled software on Wednesday that enables its Mac computers with Intel processors to run rival Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system. Apple said that its software, called Boot Camp, was available for download starting on Wednesday, and that the application will be a feature in Leopard, the company’s next release of the Mac operating system.
United States internet search portal Yahoo! has teamed with Canada’s Research In Motion to make its services available on BlackBerry handheld devices, the companies announced on Wednesday. Yahoo! e-mail, searches and content will be available to BlackBerry users as a result of a "strategic global alliance", according to the companies.
Cyber-sex, war, and erection-inducing drugs are a recipe for a more socially inept, violent culture, according to a panel of top United States sex experts. The concern was raised as researchers discussed the future of sex at an unprecedented summit near Santa Fe, New Mexico, late last week.
Scientists at an IBM research centre in Silicon Valley have created a magnetism-manipulating tool suited to building molecular computers, the company revealed on Thursday. The development was touted as a step toward making computers based on the spin of electrons and atoms.
A purse containing a $1-million worth of jewellery was on its way back to its owner in Canada on Tuesday after being forgotten on a bench in a town near San Francisco. Shahla Ghannadian had entrusted her $2 000 Louis Vuitton handbag and its precious contents to her husband after they stopped at an ice cream parlour in the city of Sausalito on Sunday
Oak barrels are obsolete, according to United States vinters, who say aging wine in metal tanks with pieces of oak thrown in costs less and tastes just as good. Braving the stigma of being branded ”voodoo vintners” by traditionalists, oak alternative vinters have produced award-winning wines at bargain prices.
Writer Bill Cardoso, who coined the term ”gonzo” to describe the frenetic participatory journalism practised by contemporary Hunter S Thompson, has died. He was 68. Born in Boston, Cardoso began his journalism career as a sports writer for the Medford Mercury in the 1950s.
A seemingly drunken neurosurgeon was wrestled into custody by sheriff’s deputies while on his way to the operating room in a San Francisco-area hospital, officials said on Thursday. Frederico Castro-Moure (45) was also suspended from his post as head of neurosurgery at the Alameda County Medical Centre.