FedEx begins shipping iPhone 5 pre-orders
The first batch of iPhone 5 handsets began shipping on Tuesday to people who ordered them online last week, according to FedEx tracking notices delivered the same day.
Receipt of the notices was widely reported on the Twitter microblogging service. One of the notices seen by IDG News Service showed the phone being shipped from a FedEx facility in Memphis, Tennessee, for delivery on Friday. The phone was ordered through Verizon Wireless.
Verizon, Sprint and AT&T opened their websites to preorders last Friday at midnight Pacific time -- timing that disadvantaged those on the U.S. East Coast because it was 3 a.m. local time there. Read more...
Just linking could get you 10 years in jail
So you live in another country, say somewhere in Europe, maybe, oh I don't know, England. In your perambulations around the Internet you find a load of stuff that interests you and you think "Hmmm, other people might be interested in this, I'll share it online."
You build a Web site that just lists the links ... and links are the only thing on the site ... and you turn it loose.
Next thing you know, your domain name is seized by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the various United States government agencies are trying to extradite you so you can be prosecuted for "violations of Federal criminal copyright infringement laws", a crime that could send you to prison for 10 years! Read more...
Fans can watch every Olympic event live online
Usain Bolt could be defending his Olympic 200-meter title on a Thursday afternoon in the United States.
Fans will be able to watch the race live online for the first time during this summer's London Games, but what they'll see is very different from the tape-delayed, prime-time package that will still air a few hours later.
NBC executives decided to shift from their longtime philosophy and make every event available as it happens, convinced that the plan will build interest in the Olympics and not siphon off viewership from the traditional nightly broadcasts. That means the Internet streams will be fairly minimalistic, a move aimed at tempting fans to re-watch the competition in a more stylized presentation on the network that evening. Read more...
Foxconn said to have been hacked by group critical of working conditions
Hackers claimed to have stolen internal data from Apple supplier Foxconn, and leaked the information online, in response to media reports of poor working conditions at the electronics manufacturer's factories in China.
The hacker group, Swagg Security, announced the attack in a Twitter message on Wednesday, and also leaked data stolen from the Foxconn site to The Pirate Bay. It said the data included user names and passwords. "The passwords inside these files could allow individuals to make fraudulent orders under big companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, and Dell," the hackers said in a message on Pastebin. Read more...
Obama confronted on H-1B use during Google+ hangout
President Barack Obama faced perhaps his toughest and most direct question ever on the H-1B program by a Texas woman during an online town hall Monday.
The woman, Jennifer Wedel, was polite and direct but tenacious in getting the president to reveal some of his views about the H-1B program whe she asked: "Why does the government continue to issue and extend H-1b visas when there are tons of Americans just like my husband with no job?" Her husband is a semiconductor engineer.
Weddel succeeded in getting Obama to acknowledge that there should be limits to the H-1B program.
The visa "should be reserved only for those companies that say they cannot find somebody in that particular field," Obama said.
The H-1B program is also heavily used by offshore outsourcing companies that transfer IT work overseas. See: The top 10 H-1B visa users in the U.S. Read more...
PayPal to announce online shopping login service
PayPal, eBay's online payment service, plans to announce a new service Wednesday that aims to make it easier to shop online by cutting down on the number of accounts consumers have to create with various Web retailers.
Called PayPal Access, the service will be unveiled at eBay's X.commerce developer conference in San Francisco. It will be launched with X.commerce, a new eBay Inc. business launching Wednesday geared toward developers and merchants that encourages developers to integrate eBay's technology into mobile commerce apps. X.commerce merges the software developer communities for eBay.com, PayPal and eBay-owned e-commerce software company Magento, which together include 850,000 developers.
EBay spokesman Anuj Nayar said PayPal Access will let users log on to participating retailers' sites and pay with their PayPal username and password, rather than creating a separate account as many online retailers currently require. As it stands now, shoppers on some sites have to set up an account even if they're paying with PayPal, the details for which they don't enter until near the end of the transaction. The service would keep a user's personal details within PayPal, Nayar said. Read more...
Adobe snarfs up electronic signature automator
Adobe Systems has acquired the online electronic-signature and signature-automation provider EchoSign.
"We're extremely pleased to announce that EchoSign is now part of the Acrobat family," enthused EchoSign CEO Jason Lemkin and Adobe Acrobat headman Kevin Lynch in a post on the just-acquired company's blog – and, yes, that's their own ebullient emboldening.
In his own blog post, Lynch explained that EchoSign will be "integrated with Adobe's other document services including SendNow for managed file transfer, FormsCentral for form creation and CreatePDF for online PDF creation." Read more...
eBay buys Magento to boost its e-commerce developer tools
In a move that could help eBay improve its tools for online store developers, it has acquired Magento, the maker of an open source e-commerce platform.
The online auctioneer last year acquired a minority stake in Magento, which is based in Los Angeles and has about 290 employees and tens of thousands of merchant customers.
The deal is expected to close in this year's third quarter. The plan is for Magento to remain in Los Angeles and continue supporting its partners and customers, as well as keep developing its product roadmap, while leveraging eBay's additional resources and helping eBay develop X.Commerce, according to an FAQ about the deal (PDF) Magento posted on its site. Read more...
‘Project Triforce’: How Facebook Tested Its New Data Center
When Facebook built its first company-owned data center in Prineville, Oregon, designing and managing the facility was only part of the challenge. In a blog post Monday, the company explained how it had to stress-test its entire software infrastructure by commandeering a giant cluster of production servers on the other side of the country.
The Oregon data center marked a change of tack for Facebook, which had relied exclusively on two leased facilities in Northern California and Virginia. The Prineville data center was the first to be designed and built from scratch Read more...