Google's 4Q profit soars on rising online ad sales

 Google Inc. reeled in more Internet advertising during the holiday shopping season and approached $2 billion in quarterly profit for the first time, providing the strongest sign yet that the online search leader has shaken off the recession's doldrums.

The fourth-quarter earnings announced Thursday topped analyst estimates, but revenue only matched forecasts.

4 Countries Clear Hurdle for Non-Latin Web Names

 
  Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to win preliminary approval for Internet addresses written entirely in their native scripts.

Since their creation in the 1980s, Internet domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English, as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

Motorola offers Baidu search on China smartphones

 
  Motorola said that China buyers of its Android-driven smartphones can opt for local search engine Baidu instead of Google, the Internet giant behind the mobile software platform.

"Users will be able to select their search experience from a number of providers, including Baidu and others, with whom Motorola has signed strategic agreements," Motorola said in a release.

Smart mud could be the new plastic

Could a mixture of water and clay replace plastics? The desire to wean the world off oil has sparked all manner of research into novel transportation fuels, but manufacturing plastics uses large amounts of oil too. Researchers at the University of Tokyo, Japan, think their material could be up to the task.

Clinton Plans To Stump For Global Net Freedom

 
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is preparing to deliver a major speech on Thursday elevating the importance of Internet freedom and placing the influence of the United States' diplomacy behind efforts to protect it, according to multiple people who have been briefed on the speech's contents.

Apple Earnings Jump 50 Percent

Apple first-quarter 2010 earnings soared past Wall Street expectations Monday, with the company reporting a profit of $3.37 billion, or $3.74 per share.

That's up 50 percent from the same quarter a year ago, when profits reached $2.26 billion, or $2.54 per share.

Revenue for the quarter was $15.6 billion, up 32 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Google Uses Mobile Web to Bypass Apple's App Block

 

Google Inc. is trying to make its Voice application easier to use on the iPhone, whether Apple Inc. likes it or not.

In an upgrade announced Tuesday, Google revised the mobile Web site for Voice so that it's easier to display the service's most popular features on the iPhone's latest operating system.

Among other things, Voice offers an alternative dialing pad, voice mail and international calling discounts.

Apple has refused to allow the Voice program to be distributed through the iPhone's applications store since last summer on grounds that it would duplicate or alter important iPhone features. To get around that roadblock, Google is trying to entice iPhone users to rely on a mobile Web browser to access Voice.

Google says the overhaul will make the Web browser experience more like what users would get if Google were allowed to offer a downloadable app that could be installed on the iPhone.

Google already offers downloadable Voice apps for Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry phones and devices running on Android, an operating system developed by Google. The upgrade to the mobile Web site also makes Voice simpler to use on devices that run on Palm Inc.'s operating system.

The jousting over the Voice application underscores the rising tensions between Google and Apple, the two most valuable companies in Silicon Valley.

Apple's rebuff of Google's Voice application triggered a Federal Communications Commission inquiry into whether Apple and AT&T Inc., the iPhone's exclusive U.S. service provider, were trying to stifle potential competition.

Apple told the FCC that it hasn't rejected the Voice application outright, but Google says it still hasn't heard anything further on its attempts to make the program available for iPhone downloading. AT&T says it didn't take part in Apple's review of the Voice application.

Google's Voice service had 1.4 million users as of October, according to a company disclosure to the FCC.

Google search gets answer highlights and events

Google began rolling out an improved version of its search result highlighting and rich-snippet features.

Both improvements bring more visibility to kinds of data that would otherwise require clicking through to the source site. Google now does much of that work for users by bringing relevant, formatted data directly to its search results pages.

Between the two improvements, the highlighting one is the most interesting. It now highlights what Google calls "answers" within page summaries. These are matches to a user's query, so if a user looks up something like a math problem, or a semantic question such as, "what is the capital of Haiti?" the answer would be made bold right on the page.

The tech that powers this comes from Google Squared, which can take data from search results, find matching sets, and chart it out automatically.

While imperfect at times, Google says the technology works well for this application, when users are looking for a single piece of data, as opposed to a broader query better served by something like a subsection of a Wikipedia entry.

The other new feature introduced alongside the answer highlighting is an additional rich-snippets format for events. This will take properly formatted event information from pages that contain events listings and put them within Google's search results. This lets users eyeball things like upcoming tour dates before ever venturing onto the site that lists more detail about those events.

In order to get the new rich-snippet style to work, site owners need to add a small bit of formatting to their content that will make it easier for Google's search spiders to take that data. It's a similar type of effort that was required to be included in the company's other rich-snippet styles for review ratings, videos, and people.

The events rich-snippets feature has been pushed live. Google says answer highlighting will be introduced to users over the next few days.

Automated Transportation (Video)

Today I found a Video in YOUTUBE about the future use of technology in transportation field. The Automated Transportation. they designed the car which covers lesser space, totally automated 5 seater no need for driver. Watch this video give me your comments

Hot gadgets at show: Wireless charging, iPhone TV

At the International Consumer Electronics Show last week in LAS VEGAS 3-D television, electronic readers and little laptops captured much of the attention.

There were plenty of other interesting ideas on display, too, from 3-D printing to a wireless cell phone tether. Here are some of the gadgets most worth keeping an eye out for this year, and some that best deserve an arched eyebrow of amusement:

TV on the iPhone — Qualcomm Inc.'s FLO TV service has been limited by the fact that only a few AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless cell phones can receive the signals, which carry about 15 news, sports and entertainment channels. Now, Qualcomm has teamed up with phone accessories maker Mophie to create an external battery pack for the iPhone that doubles as a FLO TV receiver. It's expected in the first half of the year.

Game-controller glove — Iron Will Innovations demonstrated a futuristic-looking black-and-silver glove that replaces a keyboard and lets users control games by touching their fingers together instead. Called the Peregrine, the glove includes five sensors on each finger that replace different keystrokes when touched to the glove's thumb.

Wireless charging — Last year, Powermat USA showed off a mat that charged gadgets that were placed on top of it — as long as the gadgets were equipped with special covers.

Polaroid Instant Cameras — Polaroid stopped making instant film two years ago, but a brave group of enthusiasts and former employees bought one of Polaroid's factories in Netherlands and reinvented the film. Their film is expected on the market later this year, and to go along with it, Polaroid announced at the show that it will be bringing back instant film cameras.

Cell-phone tether — Losing your cell phone is a drag, and a company called Zomm believes it can make it a thing of the past. It has a small device, also called Zomm, that connects wirelessly with your phone through Bluetooth and sets off an alarm if you walk away from it.

3-D camera — The big push from TV makers this year is for sets that show 3-D in the home. Fujifilm, betting that people will want to shoot their own 3-D movies and photos as well, is also selling a digital camera with two lenses, set apart as if they are human eyes.

3-D filter — What if you want 3-D viewing, but you don't want to get a new TV and a 3-D Blu-ray player? Real view Innovations Ltd. has it all worked out for you. The Irish company has developed a film that can be placed over a set to make it look like the flat surface of the screen bulges inwards.

3-D color printing — Shapeways has been offering 3-D printing for a few years, taking data files and turning them into sculptures with the help of a machine that lays down successive layers of a plaster-like material. At the show, the Dutch company announced that they're now offering sculptures in full color.

Mopping robot — It's the battle of the cleaning robots! The vacuuming Roomba robots will get competition this September from the Mint, a square robot that has a pad for a dry or wet Swiffer-type cleaning cloth. Guided by a beacon that projects an infrared light on the ceiling (think Batman signal), the Mint will methodically sweep one room at time.

Nexus One's hardware estimated to cost $175

Google's forthcoming Nexus One smartphone is composed of components worth about $175, according to a teardown conducted by iSuppli.

The new phone, which Google unveiled , offers an inside designed by Google and an outside designed by HTC. The primary interface is a 3.7-inch AMOLED display. The Nexus One runs Google's Android 2.1 operating system, and the WVGA display can show 3G graphics.

While Google has priced the Nexus One at $179 with a two-year T-Mobile service plan ($529 without a subscription plan), the phone has a bill of materials of $174.15, according to iSuppli analysis, which was posted Friday. The report notes that its estimate does not include other expenses such as manufacturing, packaging, and software.

"Items like the durable unibody construction, the blazingly fast Snapdragon baseband processor and the bright and sharp Active-Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display all have been seen in previous phones, but never before combined into a single design," Kevin Keller, senior analyst for iSuppli, said in a statement.

The most expensive of the 17 components in the HTC-built phone is Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which rings in at $30.50, or 20 percent of iSuppli's estimated bill of materials. Snapdragon debuted in February 2009 in the Toshiba TG01, which is based on Windows Mobile. But iSuppli found the ARM-based processor to be better utilized in the Nexus One.

The Android 2.1 operating system used in the Nexus One better capitalizes on the Snapdragon's fast performance, making the user interface and applications run very quickly," Keller said. "This processing muscle also gives the Nexus One some advanced capabilities, most notably high-definition 720p video playback."

The next most expensive component is Samsung's 3.7-inch AMOLED display, which lists at $23.50. iSuppli notes that the AMOLED technology appeared previously in Samsung's Android-based I7500 with a 3.2-inch AMOLED touch screen.

"The 3.7-inch AMOLED display on the Nexus One delivers a stunning picture," Keller said.

Rounding out the top three most expensive components in the Nexus One is Samsung's 4Gbit (512MB) of DDR DRAM, which costs $20.40, or about 11 percent of iSuppli's estimated cost. iSuppli notes that comparable smartphones generally contain no more than 2Gbits of DRAM, but that the extra memory allows for better application performance.

Apple Changes App Store Review Process

Apple has changed the way it deals with iPhone app developers letting them now keep closer tabs on how their software is proceeding through Apple’s strict App Store review process. Many see the move as yet another step by Apple to keep app store developers from defecting to competing mobile platforms namely Android.

As first reported in Wired in November, a software developer can now see precisely when an app is “Ready for Review,” “In Review,” and “Ready for Sale,” Before that, developers only got vague status bulletins from Apple giving the “average wait time” around finding out whether or not Apple has okayed an app.


Software developers began complaining loudly about Apple’s review policies late in ’08, after Apple offered a hodgepodge of reasons for banning apps ranging from the Murder – drome comic book to the “Pull My Finger” fart joke app and Alex Sokirynsky’s “Podcaster” app.

Spammer Ordered to pay Facebook $711 million

    Facebook was awarded US$711 million in damages from a convicted spammer, but the social networking site is hoping a separate criminal action will eventually send him to jail.

     Facebook in Fabruary sued Sanford Wallace with Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw for allegedly obtaining the login credentials for accounts. These were then used to send spam to those users’ friends starting around November 2008.



        The spam either linked to other phishing sites that sought to collect more Facebook accounts or linked to other commercial sites that paid spammers fro referrals.
         Facebook “doesn’t expect to receive the vast majority of the award,” according to a company blog. According to court filings, Wallace filed a bankruptcy petition earlier this year, although this was dismissed.
       
          However, a California court has sent a request to the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute Wallace for criminal contempt. The court came up with the $711 million figure by awarding $50.00 per violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.
       
           Wallace is alleged to have violated a temporary restraining order as well as an injunction both granted in March ’09. The orders banned them from phishing and spamming on Facebook.
        
           “In addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time,” wrote Sam O’Rourke of Facebook’s legal team. “This is another important victory in our fight against spam.”
        
           Facebook is not pursuing claims against Arzoomanian and Shaw. The company may choose to close the file once the default judgment is entered against Wallace, the court filing said.