Now that’s a coincidence, if there ever was any: Earlier this month, Amazon filed for two trademarks for extended warranty and servicing under the Kindle brand. Turns out that the description of these services was lifted verbatim from Apple’s AppleCare trademarks. Read more »
At a good time for both involved parties, Nokia and Research In Motion have settled all current patent litigation, just in time for RIM to debut BlackBerry 10 devices. Details are confidential, but RIM will make a lump-sum payment and pay ongoing royalties to Nokia. Read more »
Amazon’s Data Pipeline, which promises easy, automated consolidation of data from many sources, is now available — or at least you can sign up for it. Amazon also unveiled a new instance type for data-intensive applications. Read more »
While charging stations are becoming more common, Brightbox hopes to differentiate itself by providing a secure box. It’s charging kiosks, which are popping up all over New York City, let you leave your phone unattended while you shop, eat or drink. Read more »
David Drummond and Peter Fleischer, as well as former CFO George Reyes, had all been convicted over privacy offences relating to a bullying video. Their convictions have now been overturned on appeal. Read more »
Amazon is bringing Kindle Singles — “compelling ideas expressed at their natural length” — to the United Kingdom. The U.K. store will include new e-singles from popular British authors, as well as many from U.S. authors. Read more at paidContent »
The year 2013 may bring real disruption to the mobile industry. Upstart carriers are embracing noncellular technologies to provide cut-rate services, third-party developers are gaining traction with cheap (or free) alternatives to SMS, and a major U.S. operator is preparing to drop handset subsidies. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Earlier this morning, Adobe Systems, the San Jose-based creative software giant announced that it was buying New York City-based design-oriented community, Behance. Since then, many have been wondering how much did Adobe shell out? Now we have the answer. Read more »
Instagram released a few updates to its iOS and Android apps Thursday evening, adding a new filter called Mayfair and making some changes to how users can sign up add photos. The company has noted a bug related to privacy displays, which might concern some users. Read more »
Facebook announced a new set of privacy tools and features last week, and those updates will begin rolling out to users in the U.S. starting Thursday night. One of the most significant coming changes is users not being able to hide their profiles from search results. Read more »
Instagram announced in a blog post Thursday afternoon that it would be entirely reverting to the language from its original terms of service in regards to advertising, following several days of concern from users over the updated language in its terms of service. Read more »
RIM posted better than expected results but it’s still facing an uphill battle as it looks ahead to the launch of BlackBerry 10. RIM’s got cash but its subscriber base slipped in the most recent quarter. Read more »
As the year winds down, Instagram just can’t stay out of the news. In this week’s podcast we talk about its Terms of Service tiff, as well as Netflix’s massive encoding, and how to find a good co-working spot. Read more »
IFTT has raised a $7 million Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The site allows users to make connections between actions on different sites, adding connectivity on the web as services become more individual. Read more »
A WSJ report indicates Apple, Google and Microsoft are having acquisition talks with a small home automation company. The talks may not go anywhere. But that this company is interesting to these major players shows how crucial the battle for the living room is becoming. Read more »
Adobe has bought up designer portfolio site Behance. The move is the latest example of how tech companies are rapidly embracing the designer community and good design. Read more »
Confused by the glut of new NoSQL, NewSQL, post-SQL, structured, unstructured database options that came out over the past year? 451 Research’s Matthew Aslett maps it all out for you. Read more »
Does every social network eventually become so large and noisy that it turns into a broadcast-style platform instead of something truly social? And is the desire for monetization and revenue part of what drives social platforms to look out for their own interests instead of users? Read more »
There’s been a flood of boxes coming from Asia that bring Android to your TV. Some of them simply blow up a mobile phone UI on the big screen. The Cloud TV Box from Sungale instead uses a dedicated TV UI, but is that enough? Read more »
Facebook announced some tweaks to the Facebook messages inbox and filtering on Thursday, allowing a small percentage of users to test out a feature that would allow them to pay to have a message delivered to another user’s primary inbox rather than the secondary one. Read more »
Online video advertising is hot, and attracting some serious venture capital: Video ad platform Tubemogul just closed a $20 million Series C round of funding to pay for more hires and and expand internationally. The round comes after Tubemogul decided to focus exclusively on advertising. Read more »
Kickstarter project POP, which promised a fast-charging, high capacity charger for mobile devices, is refunding backers their money after Apple rejected the project. It’s one of the biggest projects to issue a refund on Kickstarter. Read more »
While not all of the picks are focused on clean energy — one’s an enhanced oil recovery company — they all have early stage technology that could break through next year. Read more »
T-Mobile saved the biggest cities for the end of the year. T-Mobile revealed that it has completed its HSPA+ network upgrade in 14 more cities including metropolises like New York, Boston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. In those cities iPhones can now tap into T-Mo’s 3G network. Read more »
Facebook’s hackathons have generated some cool ideas. Facebook shared the top hacks from 2012 that range from silly (3-D printed globes showing where and how people use Facebook) to serious (calendar views for you upcoming events on the site). Read more »
From a further fragmented iPhone, to smart watches, Jony Ive’s heightened influence and defusing the thermonuclear patent wars, we take a look at the people, themes and products to watch for from Apple in the coming year. Read more »
Path is adding its own version of search to your Path moments and check-ins on Thursday, implementing a search bar that lets you look through your posts for memories with a particular friend or restaurants that are popular nearby. Read more »
Kickstarter is not a store, but many people who back technology, design and game projects sometimes think that way, which can be a problem when projects gets delayed. Here’s my suggestion for how to fix this issue. Read more »
Tools like Pocket help you manage a flood of online content by zapping it into a personal box to view later on. The company showed the stories and videos that we’re storing the most — but the tech-heavy nature of its Top 10 lists suggest these tools still await widespread adoption. Read more at paidContent »
Berg Insight believes mobile content companies are going to figure out how to monetize mobile traffic. Berg’s analysts predict that ads and marketing won’t just become a much bigger part of the online ad market, but also a sizable segment across all advertising. Read more »
Android users of Flipboard have a tablet-optimized version of the popular newsreader now. Instead of a scaled-up version of the popular news reader, Android tablet owners get a magazine-like experience similar to that of Flipboard’s 2010 debut on the Apple iPad. Read more »
Toyota’s 2013 Avalon Limited has an integrated charging pad that fills up a phone battery simply by placing the device on the pad. Hopefully, other car manufacturers follow and this jump-starts a wireless power movemet because the scenario is perfect for charging without wires Read more »
In a holiday promotion, customers who go to a Barnes & Noble store and buy an ebook from a list of 20 qualifying ebooks can “instant-gift” another ebook on that list for free. The list includes new and bestselling titles from big-six publishers who settled in the DOJ’s ebooks case. Read more at paidContent »
Amazon Studios, Amazon’s film production division, will produce pilots for six original comedy series, the company announced Thursday — including shows from the Onion and “Doonesbury” writer Garry Trudeau. Read more »
Nuance continues to revamp its semantic search app Dragon Go into a full-blown mobile assistant. New features on the app allow you to open third-party apps, access your music and even set alarms. Nuance also added support for Gingerbread, but there’s no iOS version yet. Read more »
Given his recent remarks suggesting frustration at the strictures of working in a large telco, it is not surprising to see Obermann go. His successor has wide knowledge of the German giant, though, and is apparently keen to emulate Obermann’s entrepreneurial streak. Read more »
For its $871 million buyout of Eloqua, Oracle will get more marketing automation expertise and access to more than 1,000 customers. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2013 and continues Oracle’s fourth quarter buying spree. Read more »
Trip planning is getting a little easier with the launch of Dcovery, which uses a bookmarklet to help people save their travel research and create guides that are synced to their iOS device. Read more »
It will soon become legal in the UK to copy music from a CD to an iPod, show copyrighted texts on an interactive whiteboard and use copyrighted works in a parody. In other words, this reform was sorely needed. Read more »
As companies search for an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform that fits
their unique business needs, three main elements must be considered: flexibility,
transparency and customization. While many cloud providers deliver one of these elements, CloudSigma’s solution offers all of the above. Learn more here. Read more »
