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Google takes down Shoot View, the Street View shooting game
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Google, Video Games
Gamers are not averse to first-person shooters—Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, for example, earned $1 billion in just over two weeks. But what about when the targets are real, unsuspecting people on the sidewalks rather than cartoon soldiers?
That's the approach taken by Amsterdam-based ad agency Pool Worldwide, which used Google's Street View API to create "Google Shoot View," a game that lets players take aim at those who appear in the street-level, 360-degree images captured by Google's Street View cars.
"Google Shoot View. Explore the world at street-level... and fire a M4A1 assault rifle," Pool Worldwide said in a Dec. 9 tweet announcing the game (preview below).
Google was apparently not thrilled by the idea of having its technology used as the backdrop for a street-level killing spree. The search giant this week pulled Pool's access to its API—the code that allows developers to use the technology.
"Unfortunately, Google has killed the API so at the mo we can't run shoot view," Pool tweeted yesterday.
Click to continue reading Google takes down Shoot View, the Street View shooting game
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Apple gets big win against HTC in patent battle
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News
HTC has been dealt another blow in its ongoing patent battle with Apple. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled Monday that Apple's products don't infringe on patents held by S3 Graphics, a company in the process of being acquired by Taiwan-based HTC, ending the commission's investigation into the matter.
Last month, an ITC judge issued an initial judgment that Apple did not violate four HTC patents related to functions like power management and phone dialing. The Monday ruling concerned S3 patents for texture compression which relate to applications for things like 3D gaming.
HTC is in the process of closing a $300 million deal for S3 Graphics.
An HTC legal representative told The Wall Street Journal that the company was "disappointed" with the ITC ruling but would weigh its options, including an appeal of the decision.
Click to continue reading Apple gets big win against HTC in patent battle
Apple looking to get Samsung banned from selling Galaxy devices
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Corporate News, Handhelds
If Apple gets its way with a California court, Samsung Galaxy devices could be removed from shelves within two months.
As patent blogger Florian Mueller noted on Saturday, Apple is pushing for a an injunction over Samsung devices to take place on September 8, claiming they rip off the look and feel of Apple iPhones and iPads. Meanwhile, Samsung has proposed a hearing date of October 14. Apple's original request for an August 5 hearing was denied by the judge as too soon.
Apple's aggression is an obvious way to make things as difficult as possible for Samsung, since the injunction would force Samsung to cease sales of four products: the Infuse 4G, Galaxy S 4G, Droid Charge, and Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Mueller thinks presiding Judge Lucy Koh will choose a hearing date sometime between the two proposals, skewed towards Apple.
Click to continue reading Apple looking to get Samsung banned from selling Galaxy devices
Apple secures iPhone patent that could be huge blow to rivals
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Editorial
Apple has been awarded its long sought-after patent on the iPhone. Intellectual property experts say it's so broad and far-reaching that the iPhone maker may be able to bully other smart phone manufacturers out of the U.S. market entirely.
Some three-and-a-half years after filing for a patent on the iPhone, Apple on Tuesday was awarded U.S. patent number 7,966,578 for "[a] computer-implemented method, for use in conjunction with a portable multifunction device with a touch screen display, [that] comprises displaying a portion of page content, including a frame displaying a portion of frame content and also including other content of the page, on the touch screen display."
That's just the beginning of the abstract for Apple's iPhone patent, which the company filed back in December 2007. It gets quite a bit more technical in its full form, but there's one thing patent experts consulted by PCMag agree on—Apple has been awarded an incredibly broad patent that could prove to be hugely problematic for other makers of capacitive touch-screen smartphones.
Apple's patent essentially gives it ownership of the capacitive multitouch interface the company pioneered with its iPhone, said one source who has been involved in intellectual property litigation on similar matters. That's likely to produce a new round of lawsuits over the now-ubiquitous multitouch interfaces used in smartphones made by the likes of HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Research in Motion, Nokia, and others that run operating systems similar in nature to Apple's iOS, like Google's Android, said the source, who asked not to be named.
Click to continue reading Apple secures iPhone patent that could be huge blow to rivals
Tennessee may throw you in jail for sharing your Netflix password
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Home Entertainment, Internet
Have you shared your Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Rhapsody password with a friend? While it might seem harmless, this type of activity could now land you in some legal trouble in Tennessee.
Gov. Bill Haslam this week signed a bill that would make it illegal to share your password on subscription-based entertainment services like Netflix, Pandora, or Hulu Plus. As the AP explained, the bill is intended to stop hackers who sell batches of passwords, but it could extend to the average user who lets friends or family members watch a movie using their Netflix login or listen to music streams on Rhapsody.
"What becomes not legal is if you send your username and password to all your friends so they can get free subscriptions," bill sponsor Rep. Gerald McCormick, a Republican, told the AP.
Click to continue reading Tennessee may throw you in jail for sharing your Netflix password
Apple being sued for racial discrimination at NYC Upper West Side Apple Store
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News
Two African-American men have filed a federal lawsuit against Apple that accuses the company of racial discrimination at an Apple Store in Manhattan.
The plaintiffs, Brian Johnston, 34, and Nile Charles, 25, claim a white Apple employee in his 50s told them, "I don't want 'your kind' hanging out in the store" at Apple's retail outlet at 1981 Broadway on Dec. 9, 2010, according to court filings cited by Apple Insider Wednesday.
Another Apple Store employee allegedly approached the pair, who were wearing "baggy jeans and large sweaters with hoods" according to the lawsuit, and said, "Now you have to go. If you want to know why, it's because I said so. Consider me God. You have to go."
Johnston and Charles entered the Upper West Side store to purchase headphones, the suit said. They recorded the incident on their cell phones, according to Apple Insider.
Judge says Samsung must provide Apple with unreleased smartphones and tablets
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Cell Phones, Corporate News, Handhelds
A federal judge last week ordered Samsung to hand over several unreleased cell phones and tablets to Apple as part of the latter's lawsuit against Samsung claiming patent and trademark infringement, as first reported by Courthouse News Service.
"Apple has demonstrated good cause for some, limited expedited discovery," said Judge Lucy Koh last Wednesday in a ruling for Apple in its request for samples of five Samsung products earlier than would normally be granted in such cases.
At the time of the ruling, Samsung had 30 days to deliver product samples, packaging and package inserts pertaining to its Google Android-based Galaxy S2, Infuse 4G, and Infuse 4G LTE smartphones, as well as two tablets, the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Samsung will not be required to provide Apple with testimony from its executives.
Apple says that “App Store” does not imply a store for buying apps
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Software
According to Apple, an "app store" is not a store for apps. Right. Apple warns, the phrase "app store" is not generic and can only be used to describe their App Store, which is their...um, app store?
"Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words 'app store' together denote a store for apps," Apple said in a Thursday filing with a California district court.
Apple has been fighting several tech giants on this point lately. In March, Apple sued Amazon over its Amazon Appstore, arguing that Apple has the exclusive rights to the phrase because of its iTunes App Store. Apple has targeted Microsoft on similar grounds.
Last month, Amazon responded to the suit, arguing that the term "app store" is generic and that Apple should not be allowed to use it exclusively. Amazon cited the American Dialect Society, which recently voted "app" as the Word of the Year for 2010, noting "that although the word 'has been around for ages,' it 'really exploded in the last 12 months,' with the arrival of 'app stores' for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers.' Indeed the words 'app store' are commonly used among many businesses in the app store market," Amazon argued.
Apple is not buying it, at least not publicly. "Apple denies that the words 'app store' are commonly used among many businesses to describe mobile software download services and further denies that the term 'app store market' is used to describe the market for mobile software download services," the company reiterated in response to Amazon's filing.
Click to continue reading Apple says that “App Store” does not imply a store for buying apps
Apple, Google, Lucasfilm, Intel and more sued for secretly conspiring to fix employee pay
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Corporate News, Google
A former Lucasfilm software engineer on Wednesday filed a class-action lawsuit against a who's who of Silicon Valley tech giants, alleging a conspiracy to fix employee pay and not poach staff away from each other in violation of anti-trust laws.
Siddharth Hariharan, a former Lucasfilm employee who is the founder and CEO of game developer InEarth, is suing Lucasfilm, Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar.
Hariharan is represented by Joseph Saveri of the national plaintiffs' law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein.
The suit claims that an alleged "no-solicitation" agreement between the named companies resulted in employee compensation being reduced by "10 to 15 percent" as compared to "what would have prevailed in a properly functioning labor market where employers compete for workers."
U.S. officials seize bin Laden hard drives and data, hit “mother lode”
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Storage
"Can you imagine what's on Osama bin Laden's hard drive?"
That's the question a U.S. official posed to Politico recently in an article that revealed the government is now in possession of the deceased terrorist leader's computers.
The Navy SEALs who infiltrated bin Laden's compound Sunday, killing him and several others, also confiscated computer drives and disks that the U.S. official said was "the mother lode of intelligence." The contents of those machines are currently being torn apart at a secret location in Afghanistan.
"It's going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable," the official told Politico.
Click to continue reading U.S. officials seize bin Laden hard drives and data, hit “mother lode”
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