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Inventor of PDA Files More Suits, Now for Voice Mail
08/27/2008 06:49 PM
Klausner Technologies, a patent-holding company, is at it again. The New York-based company said late Tuesday that it has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Verizon Wireless, LG Electronics, Google and a long list of others.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Texas said Verizon Wireless' visual voice mail and LG's Voyager phone infringe on Klausner's patent that covers the ability of a user to view and retrieve voice mail via a menu.
"We anticipated Klausner's action," Robin Nicol, a Verizon Wireless spokesperson, told us in an interview. "We filed a declaratory judgment action in New York federal court on Aug. 13. We are seeking a declaration that Klausner's visual voice mail patent is invalid and that Verizon's system does not infringe the patent in any event."
Citrix Systems Inc., Cox Communications, Comverse Technologies, Embarq Communications, RingCentral, Phone Fusion and Grand Central, purchased in June 2007 by Google, are also named in the lawsuit.
The company is known for its lawsuits against other tech giants for infringement, including AT&T, Apple, Skype, Comcast, Simulscribe and Cablevision. Skype's Voicemail, Cablevision's Optimum Voicemail, and Comcast's Digital Voice all violate Klausner's IP rights, it says.
Klausner sought $360 million in damages from Apple, claiming the inbox display featuring the ability for a user to retrieve voice mail on the iPhone infringed on Klausner's patent. The inventor also sought $300 million from each of the other companies listed in the suit.
Time Warner AOL, however, was the first to be sued by Klausner, for $200 million. Since the 2006 lawsuit, AOL has settled and is currently a licensee of Klausner's patent.
To date, all of the companies have settled accept Cablevision, according to a company spokesperson. Sprint was the only company to proactively license technology from the company and avoid litigation, said the spokesperson.
Judah Klausner, the inventor of...
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Firefox Plug-In Simplifies Interactions with Web Pages
08/27/2008 06:56 PM
Mozilla Labs has rolled out an experimental Firefox plug-in that promises to streamline the way Web surfers manage the mountains of information online. Called Ubiquity, the proof-of-concept prototype is an experiment with two parts -- it's both an interface and a development platform, notes the plug-in's developer, Aza Raskin.
"Ubiquity 0.1 focuses on the platform aspects while beginning to explore language-driven methods of controlling the browser," Raskin said.
The main goal of Ubiquity is to simplify the time-consuming interactions that Web surfers typically perform on the Internet today, Raskin said. "It's even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible," he added.
Browser users now must use cut and paste along with a separate Web site such as Babel Fish to translate foreign-language content on the Web. With Ubiquity, however, users simply highlight the text they wish to translate, then right-click to open a menu of commands that includes the "translate" option. The text is then automatically converted into English and inserted right onto the original Web page.
The same technique can be used to initiate a wide range of other commands, such as defining an unfamiliar word or technical term, access weather information, or even Twitter friends with the latest news. Moreover, Web developers eventually will be able to build customized Ubiquity commands to which online visitors can subscribe.
Ubiquity also features a separate command-line box that opens in the upper left-hand corner of any Web page whenever a user presses the Ctrl and spacebar keys simultaneously. The command line, Raskin said, empowers users to control browsers with language-based instructions.
"Let's say you're arranging to meet up with a friend at a restaurant and you want to include a map in the e-mail," Rankin said. "Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message...
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Nvidia Sees Smartphones as a Second PC Revolution.
08/27/2008 06:51 PM
It will come as no surprise that Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jen-Hsun Huang believes in the future of graphics processing. As he pointed out in a two-and-a-half hour presentation at the Nvision 2008 conference, today's GPUs have the equivalent of 1,000 times the processing power of a Cray supercomputer from 30 years ago.
What's less obvious is that Huang also sees Nvidia's future in smartphones.
"Few technologies have made the leaps that the GPU has over the past 10 years. Years ago, the GPU was really just an accelerator, an application-specific integrated circuit. Now it's a general-purpose parallel computing processor," Huang said in his keynote.
But smartphones, he added, are no less than a "second personal computing revolution." Huang said when it comes to smartphones, Nvidia is "completely focused on Windows Mobile 7."
"Focusing on smartphones. That's our strategy," he said.
The overarching goal of Nvidia's smartphone strategy will be to set on its ear the current assumption that the devices are phones first, computers second. Apple's iPhone and iPod touch -- with full Web browser and third-party applications sold via the App Store -- have made it clear to most observers that there's a market for what are essentially mobile computers that happen to have phones built in (or not, in the case of the iPod touch.)
With cell-phone penetration clearly peaking, the opportunity is to put more computing functions in consumers' pockets. And that's where Nvidia steps in.
Toward that end, Nvidia is working to optimize its chips for VIA, a Taiwanese maker of low-power chips, and its new CPU called Nano. "We're excited about VIA; we're optimizing our entire software stack for Nano," the Nvidia boss said.
As Nvidia's fortunes have risen and those of Intel's chief rival, AMD -- which appears to have choked on its $5.4...
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Apple's 'Misleading' iTunes Ad Banned in the UK
08/27/2008 05:53 PM
There's more trouble for the iPhone. The United Kingdom's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banished an iPhone ad because it deems the content misleading.
The ad shows the iPhone in someone's hand and a finger switching it on. The menu page pops up, and the finger touches the weather icon to show the forecast for Cape Town. The finger then navigates through a Heathrow Airport area map, a Safari icon, hotels and a stock market Web page. The iPhone rings, and the hand is shown answering it.
The ad's voice-over says, "You never know which part of the Internet you'll need. The do-you-need-sun-cream part? The what's-the-quickest-way-to-the-airport part? The what-about-an-ocean-view-room part? Or the can-you-really-afford-this part? Which is why all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone."
According to the ASA, two viewers complained that the iPhone ad was misleading because the device does not support Flash or Java, both of which are key to viewing many Web pages. The ASA ruled in favor of the viewers.
The ASA noted in its ruling that Java and Flash proprietary software was not enabled on the iPhone, so users could not access certain features on some Web sites or view Web sites that relied solely on Flash or Java.
"We noted Apple's argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims 'You'll never know which part of the Internet you'll need' and 'all parts of the Internet are on the iPhone' implied users would be able to access all Web sites and see them in their entirety," the ASA said in its ruling.
"We considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a Web site normally accessible...
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Enterprises Likely To Turn Off IE8 'Porn Mode'
08/27/2008 05:04 PM
Anyone perusing porn sites at home will appreciate Microsoft's latest efforts at browser privacy, but it's not clear it will do much for the enterprise. Internet Explorer product manager Andrew Ziegler discussed the new privacy features of IE8, currently in its second beta, in an extensive blog post Monday. Users of the new software will be able to turn on Microsoft's InPrivate Browsing and Blocking features.
When what many observers are calling "porn mode" is turned on, IE8 doesn't store history, cookies, form data, passwords, URLs, search queries or visited links.
Ziegler suggested the need for such privacy is completely on the up-and-up. "Maybe you need to buy a gift for a loved one without ruining the surprise," he wrote. "Maybe you're at an Internet kiosk and don't want the next person using it to know at which Web site you bank."
While the problem of clearing sensitive passwords on public machines is real, observers say the hands-down, number-one reason most people would want to clear history, URLs and search queries is to erase signs of pornography viewing. "The most likely situation is the obvious one. Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more," said Ars Technica. "Microsoft dishes dirt on IE8 'prOn mode,'" British Web site the Register smirked.
People can do what they want at home, but enterprises need to know where people are surfing at work. Porn surfing can expose a corporation to liability for sexual harassment, and managers obviously need to know employees are working.
"The enterprise is more concerned with keeping user information guarded from untrusted Web sites than making sure your off-business Internet habits are kept secret," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, in an e-mail. "The features so far described by Microsoft seem to fall more squarely into the...
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