Jerry Curl

Reuters reports : Apple has rejected the U.S. Justice Department's allegations that it colluded with publishers over electronic book pricing, calling the charges "simply not true". The U.S. government had sued Apple and five publishers , saying they conspired to fix the prices of electronic books. It has reached a settlement with three of the publishers that could lead to cheaper e-books for consumers. In an email to Reuters, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr confirmed the company's position, which earlier appeared in a Wall Street Journal article. "The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told the Journal . Kerris defended the current pricing structure as parallel to Apple's mobile software store. "Just as we have allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore," she told n...

Updating your Facebook status from your work computer — even if it violates your company's policy — isn't a federal crime, according to a ruling by a San Francisco federal appeals court. Sure it sounds extreme that such a question was even pondered by a federal court. But Facebooking and similar computer-based goldbricking could've been considered a violation of the the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) if the San Francisco's Ninth Circuit didn't dismiss "charges that would have criminalized any employee's use of a company's computers in violation of corporate policy," notes the Electronic Frontier Foundation: In (U.S. v. Nosal), the government prosecuted an ex-employee of an executive recruiting firm on the theory that he induced current company employees to use their legitimate credentials to access a proprietary database and provide him with information in violation of corporate computer-use policy. The government claimed that the violation o...

The U.S. Department of Justice yesterday brought a lawsuit against Apple and several publishing companies over a scheme to fix e-book prices. The suit stems from the 2010 release of the iPad, when Apple reached an agreement with five publishers to release books on its then-new iBookstore. The DOJ said Apple colluded to raise the price of e-books with CBS's Simon & Schuster, News Corp.'s HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Pearson's Penguin unit and Macmillan. European authorities are also probing Apple and the publishers for similar antitrust violations. Attorneys general for Connecticut and Texas led a handful of other states in separate litigation against the companies as well. Before the release of the iPad, Amazon's Kindle was the preeminent e-book reader on the market. Amazon forced publishers to sell most books at $9.99 -- a price that came in below the cost of the books. According to the DOJ, booksellers were unnerved by the discounted e-book price structure ...

Photo caption: Instagram founders Mike Krieger, left, and Kevin Systrom. The Wall Street Journal reports : In October 2010, Stanford University graduates Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched a new iPhone application, Instagram, yet another oddly named tech start-up in a crowded field of hopefuls. Yesterday, the two twenty-somethings said they sold their photo-sharing service—which has about a dozen employees and no revenue—to Facebook Inc. for $1 billion in cash and stock. That 18-month journey underscores the frenzied state of the tech investing game, where even the smallest Web companies can develop global followings in a matter of weeks. Only last week, Instagram closed a $50 million funding round from venture capital firms. The company's valuation: A whopping $500 million. Incredibly, such a number would turn out to be paltry in the days ahead. Shortly after that deal, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg contacted Mr. Systrom, Instagram's 28-year-old CEO, to buy the...

The Huffington Post reports : Fewer people are reading - but those that do are reading more and in more formats than ever. According to the results of a series of telephone surveys carried out by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project , funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which were published yesterday. The report showed that as of February 2012, 21% of Americans had read an e-book, and that owners of e-readers read an average of eight books a year more than people without the devices (24 vs 16). The surveys of 2,986 respondents, carried out in English and Spanish at the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012, also showed that the average (calculated by mean) American reads 17 books a year. However, 19% of respondents aged 16 and over said that they hadn't read a single book in any format, over the previous 12 months - the highest since such surveys on American reading habits began in 1978. If this figure is accurate, that means more than 5...

USA Today reports : Social networking site Twitter says it has filed a lawsuit as part of their plan to weed out spammers. In a post from their official blog yesterday, Twitter says the suit filed in a San Francisco federal court targets five of the most aggressive spammers and tool providers that make the practice easier. "We're going straight to the source," reads the statement from Twitter. "By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal." Twitter says they've also launched additional efforts to keep users' feeds spam-free, such as new measures aimed to stop spam tied to Mentions and tweaks to their link shortener to analyze whether tweeted items are malicious. "We are committed to fighting spam on all fronts, by continuing to grow our anti-spam team and using every tool at our disposal to shut down spammers," reads Twitter's statement. "Today marks an important step for...

The BBC reports : More than half a million Apple computers have been infected with the Flashback Trojan, according to a Russian anti-virus firm. Its report claims that about 600,000 Macs have installed the malware - potentially allowing them to be hijacked and used as a "botnet". The firm says that more than half that number are based in the US. Apple has released a security update, but users who have not installed the patch remain exposed. Flashback was first detected last September when anti-virus researchers flagged up software masquerading itself as a Flash Player update. Once downloaded it deactivated some of the computer's security software. Later versions of the malware exploited weaknesses in the Java programming language to allow the code to be installed from bogus sites without the user's permission. The firm said that once the Trojan was installed it sent a message to the intruder's control server with a unique ID to identify the infected machine.

Market Day reports : In a long-anticipated move, struggling Internet giant Yahoo said today that it would be cutting 2,000 jobs, or about 14%, of its workforce. The move is part of a major restructuring of the company, Yahoo said in a statement. The cuts announced today represent 14 percent of the 14,100 workers employed by Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Today, the company will begin the process of informing employees about these changes. As part of that effort, approximately 2,000 people will be notified of job elimination or phased transition," the statement said. The company declined to comment on severance details. "Today's actions are an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo! — smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate as fast as our customers and our industry require. We are intensifying our efforts on our core businesses and redeploying resources to our most urgent priorities. Our goal is to get back to our core pur...

Towleroad writes : Next stop for Google Street View: the interior of Obama's brain.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports : Best Buy Co. said it plans to close 50 U.S. big box stores and open 100 small mobile locations in the U.S. during the 2013 fiscal year. It will also cut $800 million in costs by fiscal 2015. The news came yesterday as the biggest U.S. specialty electronics retailer posted a fiscal fourth quarter loss partly due to restructuring charges. Despite the loss, Best Buy's adjusted results for the quarter topped Wall Street's expectations. But the company's full year revenue guidance fell slightly short of analysts' expectations, sending its stock down 6%. Best Buy, which has 1,450 locations nationwide and 2,900 globally, is focusing on closing some of its hulking stores to concentrate on smaller Best Buy Mobile outlets because of two emerging trends. Sales of TVs, digital cameras and videogame consoles have weakened, while sales of tablet computers, smartphones and e-readers have increased. And with the rise of competition from Internet rivals ...

MSNBC reports : Verizon and AT&T have agreed to stop “cramming” consumers' telephone bills with unauthorized third-party charges, Sen. Jay Rockefeller announced yesterday. The move comes after a Senate investigation revealed last year that consumers were hit with $10 billion in fraudulent charges due to the practice over the past five years. A Today show investigation in July revealed how extensive and frustrating cramming is, with maddening, mysterious $10 or $20 charges appearing every month on millions of Americans' phone bills. The investigation relied on a report commissioned by Rockefeller that found that three telecom firms - -- Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink/Quest -- earned $650 million as their cut of cramming charges levied by third-parties since 2006. "AT&T made the right decision to end cramming by August," the West Virginia Democrat’s office said in a statement yesterday. "Something had to be done. And while the decisions of AT&T and ...

The New York Times reports : Following a string of critical reports about its contracting practices in China, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, visited Foxconn Technology’s manufacturing plant for the iPhone yesterday. Details about Mr. Cook’s visit to the plant, in the city of Zhengzhou, located in the north-central province of Hebei, were not immediately available. Reuters reported that photographs provided to the news service dated yesterday showed Mr. Cook smiling and meeting workers in the facility. The plant, located at the Foxconn Zhengzhou Technology Park, employs 120,000 people, Bloomberg News reported. Apple, which contracts with Foxconn to produce iPhones and iPads, has had to confront a series of negative reports this year about labor practices at the technology manufacturing company. In January, The New York Times reported that workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker ...

CNN reports : The new iPad may be a hot item in more ways than one. In the five days since the popular tablet went on sale, Apple comment boards have filled with anecdotal reports from owners who say the back of the device grows uncomfortably warm to the touch, especially in the bottom left-hand corner when held in portrait mode. "Both my wife and I upgraded from iPad 1 to the new iPad," wrote a user named dhcwh on Apple's site. "Not happy about the uncomfortable warmth of the new iDud. Not hot, just annoyingly warm. Seriously considering returning both." "Mine is also getting pretty hot," said another user, malageno , who bought a 32-gigabyte Wi-Fi model. "It's not too hot to hold yet, but it seems to be getting hotter the more it's on." Research by Consumer Reports appears to bear this out. Using a thermal-imaging camera, Consumer Reports engineers recorded temperatures as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit -- up to 13 degrees higher...

ABC News reports : "Just setting up my twttr," Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent from a service that no one had heard of exactly six years ago. It was the first tweet, or 140-character message, to ever be sent on Twitter. Twitter hasn't changed all that much since Dorsey fired off that tweet at 3:50PM on March 21, 2006. However, while the format is the same -- 140 characters to make a statement, hashtags used to sort by topic, and an @ symbol attached to a username – the service has changed the way millions of people consume information, share and communicate. "It's really been about how people have changed around the platform and they've gotten very used to conversing in these short text bursts," says Mashable editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff, who uses Twitter daily. He says people are turning to Twitter first as a way to get their news out. "It's become incredibly important in people's lives to share information first with their audience, w...

Businessweek reports : Apple is finally acknowledging that it has more money than it needs. But don't expect it to cut prices on iPhones and iPads. Instead, the company said on yesterday that it will reward its shareholders with a dividend and a stock buyback program. Apple, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, sits on $97.6 billion in cash and securities. The company has stockpiled the cash through a combination of great ideas and prudence. Apple spends money, to be sure, building data centers, buying parts for its products and pursuing ambitious projects such as a new 2.8-million-square-foot headquarters that has been likened to a spaceship. It also invests in the research and development of new technology and negotiates an occasional acquisition. But Apple simply hasn't managed to spend its earnings faster than people are lining up to buy its iPads, iPhones and other gadgets. In fact, Apple sold 3 million iPads in first 3 days of its release. The decision ...

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Mashable reports : The new iPad will be available in 10 countries on March 16 beginning at $499, Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of worldwide marketing, announced at a press event in San Francisco today. Apple will begin taking pre-orders on its website later today. Devices will arrive in Apple stores in the U.S., UK, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia on the 16th. Pricing for the device is identical to the iPad 2. Wi-Fi-only tablets cost $499, $599, and $699 for the 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB versions, respectively. iPads with 4G LTE connectivity are priced at $629, $729, and $829 for the 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB editions, not including carrier costs. The new iPad’s key feature is its 9.7-inch, 2048 x 1536-pixel “retina” display powered by an A5X quad-core graphics chip. The display has a higher resolution than your standard, 1080p HDTV, and 44% greater saturation than the iPad 2. “[It has] text sharper than a newspaper. Photos will look incredible. F...

Mashable reports : Lady Gaga has become the first person to attract 20 million followers on Twitter, blasting through that landmark number on Saturday. Gaga topped fellow pop icon Britney Spears in August of 2010 to become the most-followed person on Twitter. Currently, Spears has 13.5 million Twitter followers — roughly 6.5 million less than Gaga. While Spears occasionally posts personal tweets, her account is largely maintained by her management team. Gaga has claimed to personally maintain her Twitter account and regularly uses it to interact with fans, share original pictures and make announcements. After passing Spears, Gaga then dubbed herself the “Queen of Twitter,” and has retained the title ever since. The top 5 most-followed people on Twitter are all musicians: Lady Gaga (20 million) Justin Bieber (18 million) Katy Perry (15.7 million) Shakira (14.5 million) Rihanna (14.4 million) While Bieber tweets much more often than Gaga does, statistics from twittercounter.com suggest G...

Apple has confirmed the results of its 25 billion App Store downloads competition, with the download clock ticking past the milestone over the weekend. The 25 billionth app to be downloaded was the free version of Where’s My Water? , with the lucky recipient of a $10,000 iTunes gift card being Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China. “We’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve this historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded,” Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services said in a statement today. “When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users.” That success has been, in some ways, a double-edged sword for Apple. The company may have a well-stocked download store, but actually discovering new gems has become increasingly difficult as the catalog expands. Apple recent acqui...

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, will hold a product event on March 7 in San Francisco, where it’s said to be releasing the third generation of its best-selling iPad tablet computer. “We have something you really have to see. And touch,” Apple said today in an invitation, which features a picture of an iPad screen. The new device will sport a high-definition display, run a faster processor and work with speedier wireless networks, people familiar with the product said last month. After pioneering the tablet market two years ago, Apple is counting on the new model to beat back competition from newer devices running Google’s Android software. The company has sold more than 55 million iPads, generating at least $34.5 billion in revenue. Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire, which uses Android, emerged as the iPad’s biggest rival over the holiday shopping season last year. Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment beyond the information in the even...