Yahoo, Facebook settle patent dispute
Yahoo and Facebook announced Friday they have settled a high-profile patent dispute with a deal that analysts said would likely be good for both sides.
As part of the agreement, Yahoo and Facebook have signed a cross-licensing deal granting access to each others' patent portfolios, they said in a joint statement. They've also forged an advertising partnership and will expand an existing content distribution agreement.
Yahoo sued Facebook in March under the leadership of former CEO Scott Thompson. It accused Facebook of infringing patents covering technologies related to social networking, advertising, privacy, site customization, and communications. Facebook's News Feed and the way it handles privacy were both in violation of Yahoo's patents, Yahoo contended. Read more...
6 ways to make mobile networks perform better
To achieve higher download and upload speeds, vendors and operators are planning to use a number of different technologies over the coming years in both HSPA and LTE networks.
At their core, many of these technologies are related to better coordination among base stations, and the introduction of smaller base stations to help networks keep up with an increasing volume of data.
However, many of these technologies will put even more strain on smartphone and tablet batteries. Another area where some smart thinking will be needed to ensure devices keep up with networks is antenna design.
"We have to trust that the technology will be improved" in these areas as well said Jan Färjh, vice president and head of research at Ericsson. Read more...
Five mobile technologies that didn’t change the world
It's an awesome time to be a gadget-happy consumer electronics freak. Multi-touch user interfaces. Huge advances in miniaturization and battery life. Cloud-based storage. Mobile computing has never been better.
But sometimes, when companies announce incredible new products or technologies, and everybody proclaims that a new era has dawned, and that culture-shifting transformations are about to take place -- nothing happens.
Here are five mobile technologies from last year that were supposed to change the world, but didn't.
Siri
Apple seemed to do everything right with its voice assistant strategy.
The company acquired the leading app maker with the best technology. It spent two years perfecting and integrating the technology, and bulking up on servers to handle the number-crunching required to deliver human-like voice interaction.
Siri was then launched to huge fanfare. Read more...
Prioritizing tech projects: How managers make a short list of long demands
As top technology dog at Aspen Skiing Co. for the last 16 years, Paul Major has honed the art of keeping multiple balls in the air.
With responsibility for all IT initiatives that support the Colorado resort's four mountains and extensive portfolio of hotels, retail and rental shops, Major has gotten pretty good at helping his staff of 20 field and prioritize requests to keep the company's 3,400 employees happy from a tech standpoint.
Lately, however, the juggling act has gotten far more intense, says Major, managing director of IT.
Thanks to the mania surrounding mobile and social technologies, Major's group is constantly being peppered with requests for new projects. A business-side executive reads about a cool mobile app in an in-flight magazine or Joe in operations overhears casual conversation about technology while on the slopes, and Major's email box starts to fill up. Read more...
Tech that should be on your radar for 2012
There are a variety of new technologies advancing in 2012 that you should investigate, if you aren't already doing so, to give your small business a leg up on the competition. These recent technologies are beginning to be widely adopted and will continue to drive business forward.
1. Tablets
Tablets are highly visible, and many users want them, if only to read books and consume media. However, from a business perspective, replacing notebook computers with much lower-cost tablets may have a double benefit of reducing capital expenditures as well as increasing user satisfaction. Security can be an issue, both protecting company data and keeping malware and other threats out. Fortunately, both encryption providers and antivirus vendors are busily creating business-focused products that can help ensure security.
Like previous versions of Windows, Windows 8 will probably not be widely adopted in any great hurry. However, the intriguing capabilities of Windows 8 -- especially with Windows Mobile 8 and Windows Server 8 to create an easy-to-use, fully capable unified communications environment -- could mean rapid adoption for highly-mobile organizations that can benefit from the access-anywhere model. Read more...
Death of the G-Cloud was greatly exaggerated – but there’s a lot of catching up to do
Early in 2010 the government unveiled the G-Cloud - its grand plan to slash £1bn from the public sector's annual IT spend by using cloud technologies to haul its tech infrastructure into the 21st century.
Soon after the initial fanfare, however, the G-Cloud was called in for review by the newly elected coalition government.
Government has fallen behind schedule on creating a central government app storePhoto: Shutterstock
Despite the review, the core parts of the G-Cloud programme - the creation of a centralised government application store to allow public bodies to find applications, and plans to reduce the number of datacentres used by government - still appear to be intact.
Martin Bellamy, who sits on the government G-Cloud delivery board, told a Westminster e-Forum event in London on Tuesday: "Anyone who thought the G-Cloud had gone a bit quiet, or that it's died - well, no it's not, it's alive and kicking."
"With a change of government it is inevitable that IT policy will be reviewed, and indeed it is a good thing because IT policy needs to be aligned to the overall government's business objectives," Bellamy told silicon.com. Read more...
Post-Novell, Xamarin readies Mono upgrade for developers
Xamarin, formed in May to take over Mono software development technologies from Novell, plans to roll out an upgrade to Mono this fall. The new version will feature a parallel garbage collector and a C# 5 compiler, as well as offer performance and programming improvements, the company says. Read more...
Photos: Can tech change your behaviour? The Open University investigates
The Jennie Lee Research Laboratories at the Open University's (OU) Milton Keynes campus is home to a number of research projects exploring how a variety of technologies can be used to shape and change human behaviour. This week, silicon.com got to take a look at some of them.
Pictured above is a PhD project utilising Microsoft's Surface touchscreen table PC to run a collaborative tour guide application, enabling up to four people to stand around the table together and build an itinerary for tourists visiting the city of Cambridge.
Its creator, PhD student Richard Morris, wanted to build an interface that allows multiple people to interact with the application at once. Read more...