http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:49:45 -0800 Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:49:45 -0800 Mon, 09 Feb 2015 23:15:10 -0800 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro IBM has sued online travel company Priceline Group and three subsidiaries for refusing to negotiate a license to four of its patents. The computing giant has in a complaint Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware asked that Priceline be barred from using the patents without authorization, besides paying damages for the patent infringement so far and reimbursement of costs and attorneys' fees. It has also asked for a jury trial. Priceline could not be immediately reached for comment. IBM has charged Priceline and subsidiaries such as Kayak and OpenTable of infringing its patents relating to methods for presenting applications and advertising in an interactive service, a method for preserving state information on previous interactions of a user on a website, and an improved way for signing-on . To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A California aviation enthusiast will launch on Tuesday a database that promises to allow people to set up "drone no-fly zones" around their properties. The database is responding to the worry some people have of drones flying above their gardens or alongside windows and invading areas that have typically enjoyed a high degree of privacy. But at launch only three drone makers have agreed to honor the requests, which have no legal basis. Noflyzone.org is operated by Ben Marcus, a private pilot and drone operator based in Santa Monica, who said that he sees it as a "fundamental piece of architecture to preserve and protect individual privacy." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A researcher has released 10 million usernames and passwords collected from data breaches over the last decade, a step he worries could be a legally murky but one that will help security research. The data comes from major data breaches at companies including Adobe Systems and Stratfor, all of which have already been publicly released and can be found through Web searches, said Mark Burnett, a Utah-based security consultant who has written several networking and security books. Most of the passwords are likely invalid, and he has scrubbed other information such as domain names to make it unusable for hackers, Burnett said. Still, usernames or passwords found on the list that are still used should be changed. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft and Samsung Electronics have settled a dispute over payment of royalties to the software giant, but the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Samsung was sued by Microsoft last year for violating the terms of a licensing agreement. The software company holds that Google's Android operating system violates a number of its patents, and has asked makers of Android devices to sign licensing agreements with it. Samsung, HTC, ZTE, LG Electronics and Hon Hai are among the smartphone makers who have signed the licenses with Microsoft. A September 2011 cross-licensing deal with Samsung apparently came unstuck after Microsoft's announcement in September 2013 that it planned to acquire Nokia's smartphone business. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A group dedicated to averting another Heartbleed-style vulnerability is narrowing down a list of critical open source projects that will receive its funding and support. The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), which was formed last year to identify open-source projects in need of extra support, expects to name the projects that will receive its backing within a few months, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, which oversees the CII. The CII was formed after serious vulnerabilities were found last in the widely used OpenSSL security software. The disclosure caused alarm among companies whose applications make use of OpenSSL and might have been put at risk. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Wi-Fi may carry many voice calls within the next few years, but the technology required to make those calls is still young in some ways. Mobile subscribers have been talking and doing video chats over Wi-Fi for a long time using Internet-based services such as Skype. Now carriers are offering ways to call up friends and family over wireless LANs using their regular phone numbers. Wi-Fi calling made a splash last year when the iPhone 6 came out with the capability, though a number of Android and other devices also have it. T-Mobile USA and Sprint both allow Wi-Fi calling with selected smartphones. AT&T and Verizon, as well as EE in the UK, plan to follow. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Ohio has closed an antitrust investigation into Google's business practices that dates back more than three years, though a probe in Mississippi appears to be ongoing. The Ohio attorney general's office told Google this past November it was closing the investigation, Google disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday. The investigation was opened in May 2011. The focus of the investigation wasn't revealed, but Google's dominance in search and online advertising was likely a factor. Other states including Texas and Mississippi have launched investigations into Google's business practices in the past. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here NanoTech Entertainment said Monday that it had hired Petr Harmy, who created the Star Wars Despecialized Edition remastered trilogy, to help it convert existing movies into 4K resolution for its UltraFlix 4K streaming service. Harmy confirmed the move on the OriginalTrilogy website, which was first formed to petition Star Wars creator George Lucas to release a high-definition version of the original Star Wars trilogy. Instead, Harmy, working from prints of the original celluloid film, Blu-ray releases, and other sources, created the Despecialized Edition, a 720p version of the original Star Wars trilogy with the original effects intact. The current version 2.5 copy includes yet another remaster, as Harmy went through each frame and made adjustments. (It's also, technically, a bootleg copy of the film, which can be found on sites that specialize in such content.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Database company MarkLogic has extended its NoSQL data store to work natively with JavaScript and the popular JSON data exchange format, in addition to the XML format it has long supported. "All of the same features and functions we have for XML data are available for data that comes in from JSON," said Joe Pasqua, MarkLogic executive vice president for products. First-class JavaScript support could make MarkLogic Server more appealing to Web developers, providing an interface that's more easily understood than the thickets of data conversions that typically accompany XML. A precursor to the wave of NoSQL database servers that hit the market about six years ago, MarkLogic Server was introduced in 2005 as an alternative to standard SQL-based relational databases. The software used the then much-hyped XML format to store and deliver records. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Targeting the legions of SharePoint users in organizations around the globe, Incentive on Monday updated its namesake enterprise collaboration product to provide tight integration with Microsoft's platform. All SharePoint files and folders are now indexed and natively searchable within Incentive, allowing users to find and access them without the need for mirroring, copying or importing. Users can also share, like, comment and collaborate on them, and get notifications when edits or changes are made. In addition, users can include SharePoint folders as visual apps within Incentive, enabling access to the knowledge and content they contain. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here While most regions in Africa are recording significant uptake of mobile money, the West African region is lagging behind, according to a new report. East Africa in particular has recorded a significant growth of mobile money services, largely because of the expanding usage in Tanzania and Kenya, while West Africa is not experiencing any growth at all, according to "Mobile Money in the Ebola Crisis," by Mondato, a mobile financial services industry research and advisory company. In the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia less than three out of every five people have mobile phones. This situation is limiting the utilization of mobile money services in these countries, the report said. People who do have mobile phones seem to use mobile money. In Sierra Leone, the report said, more than 16, 000 Ebola response workers received their payment via mobile money. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Pro tip for any would-be online drug kingpins: Don't post vacation pictures on Facebook. Ross Ulbricht was convicted in a Manhattan federal court last week for his role operating the Silk Road online marketplace. He could serve 30 years or more behind bars. The market Ulbricht built was based on an expectation of anonymity: Silk Road servers operated within an anonymous Tor network. Transactions between buyers and sellers were conducted in bitcoin. Everything was supposedly untraceable. Yet prosecutors presented a wealth of digital evidence to convince the jury that Ulbricht was Dread Pirate Roberts, the handle used by the chief operator of the site. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here China has fined Qualcomm about $975 million for engaging in monopolistic business practices, and the chipmaker has agreed to modify some of its business practices in the country as part of the settlement. Qualcomm said it is disappointed by the results of the investigation, but will not contest the findings and will pay the fine. China's National Development and Reform Commission had been investigating Qualcomm for engaging in possibly anti-competitive behavior by overcharging device makers in the country. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips go into many smartphones, and its wireless technology is licensed for use in a majority of 3G, 4G and LTE modems. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here U.S. copyright law should allow for people to bypass digital rights management technologies as a way to tinker with a wide variety of products, including cars, DVDs and old video games, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. The EFF has asked the U.S. Copyright Office to grant four broad exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA] as the agency conducts its 2015 rulemaking related to that section of the law. Users should be able to repair, remix and tinker with products protected by access controls, the EFF said in a Monday press release. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The entire purpose of Bing Rewards is to—surprise!—reward you for using Bing. Usually, that entails earning points by conducting web searches and cashing in those points for gift cards and other goodies. But you don't have to conduct a single Bing search to claim the latest juicy offering: Through February 28, any Bing Rewards member can claim 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage for absolutely free for two years—no searches or rewards points required. The offer won't entice Office 365 subscribers, who already enjoy an endless bounty of storage space in the sky, but this is a don't-miss offer for any other OneDrive user. OneDrive's free tier offers only 15GB of data, and 100GB plans typically cost $2 per month. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here On Monday, T-Mobile essentially put the nail in the coffin for the HTC 8X and any other device on its network that wasn't already upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1. Company representatives said on Twitter that the last remaining Windows Phones to receive an update will be the Lumia 521 and Lumia 925. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here ]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2881657/t-mobile-forsakes-the-htc-8x-and-older-phones-by-killing-their-windows-phone-upgrade.html#tk.rss_all Windows Phone Mon, 09 Feb 2015 13:00:09 -0800 Agam Shah Agam Shah China is said to be close to imposing a fine of more than US$1 billion on chipmaker Qualcomm, indicating it intends to protect local manufacturers who it says have been overcharged by the dominant player. China's National Development and Reform Commission has been investigating Qualcomm for engaging in possibly anti-competitive behavior by overcharging device makers in the country. Reports emerged on Monday that China was close to imposing a fine of at least US$1 billion, although Qualcomm wouldn't confirm that. China started investigating how Qualcomm licenses its technology following complaints from local device makers. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips go into many smartphones, and its wireless technology is licensed for use in a majority of 3G, 4G and LTE modems. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Car-hailing app Sidecar is trying to make further inroads into same-day deliveries. Sidecar, which competes with Lyft and Uber but is active in fewer cities, has for the past six months partnered with companies selling food, flowers and groceries to provide same-day delivery of packages in its hometown of San Francisco. Eat24, which lets people order food online from thousands of different restaurants, is one such partner. Now, Sidecar is expanding its same-day delivery service nationwide. By "nationwide," Sidecar likely means the small number of cities in which it currently operates. Besides the San Francisco Bay Area, that includes Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and a handful of others. Lyft operates in more than 50 cities across the U.S., while Uber operates in around 280 cities in more than 50 countries. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Good news, Windows Phone fans: Windows 10 for phones will reportedly be available on several popular smartphones—including the iconic Lumia 1020. However, don't expect the first build of Windows 10 for phones to have the same sort of spit and polish as Windows 10 for desktops, according to Windows Central, which reported the story using both its own sources as well as tweets from Jesse Leskinen, a Java and PHP developer. Google has snapped up and quickly shut down photo backup app Odysee. Its team, and probably some of its features, are headed to Google+ to supercharge its photo capabilities. The service shuts down February 23rd—you can head to the company's site for instructions on downloading all your images. Google+ already backs up and stores all your photos, videos, and features some pretty good editing tools and tricks like Auto Awesome and instant image enhancement. Past rumors indicated that Google may split its photo service away from its social network. There is a hint of this on Android as there is a separate Photos app, though it's still tied to Google+ for updates from the Play Store. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Governments are becoming hungrier for Twitter data, increasing the number of requests for user information by 40 percent between the first half and the second half of 2014. "Providing this level of transparency is not without its complications and sometimes means we get tough questions and criticism about our decisions," wrote Jeremy Kessel, Twitter's senior manager for global legal policy, in a blog post Monday. Twitter received 2,871 account information requests from various governments, targeting 7,144 accounts, during the second half of 2014, and the company complied in 52 percent of the cases, it said in a new transparency report. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft wants to lock down the obvious name for a Windows subscription service, filing a trademark for "Windows 365." The trademark application now appears on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, where it was spotted by Neowin. While no Windows 365 service currently exists, the application at least shows that Microsoft wants the option to use the name in the future. A potential Windows subscription service has been the subject of speculation for years, but the idea has resurfaced lately as Microsoft shakes up its licensing model for Windows 10. In the first year after release, Windows 7 and Windows 8 users can upgrade for free, and Microsoft has promised to keep those devices up to date throughout their lifetimes. Microsoft is also offering a version of Windows for low-end devices with no licensing fees attached. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Reports that new Samsung TVs can capture personal information with their voice recognition feature has sparked concern about what critics perceive as digital spying by so-called smart devices. Nor is Samsung the only smart TV manufacturer collecting this type of data. In Samsung's case, at least, users have the option to disable the collection. That's not always the case. In November 2013, the owner of a smart TV made by LG Electronics discovered that the device was collecting information about his viewing habits, even when the "collection of watching info" feature was turned off. Worse, the TV also sent back to LG's servers the names of files stored on external media devices and even network shares. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A new standard that supports higher-resolution displays should help move 8K screens from the realm of high-end TV and into laptops, all-in-one PCs and possibly even mobile devices. The Video Electronics Standards Association's Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) 1.4a will boost image quality on screens through faster video transfer rates. The newer standard is for displays inside computers, and it will replace the older 1.4 standard that was released in early 2013. With 8K, displays will show images at a 7680 x 4320 resolution. Displays based on the new technology will start appearing in computers and mobile devices by 2016, VESA said. Screens with 8K resolution could find their way into high-end laptops and all-in-one desktops. Apple has used a modified version of the eDP standard in its iMac with 5K Display. Some high-end gaming and business laptops already have 4K displays. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Access to Microsoft's new Outlook apps has been blocked for members of the European Parliament because of "serious security issues." Microsoft launched new Outlook apps for iOS and Android just over a week ago. The new apps are basically a rebranded version of a mail app made by Acompli, a company Microsoft bought in December for a reported US$200 million. Access to the apps though was blocked on Friday by the Parliament's IT department, DG ITEC, in order to protect the confidentiality and privacy of its users, according to an email seen by the IDG News Service. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Not only is Tuesday for honoring the Roman god Mars, it's now the one day you can buy the OnePlus One without an invite. Beginning at midnight Pacific every Tuesday you can order the 16GB Silk White or 64GB Sandstone Black models directly from OnePlus, no silly invitations needed. However, if you still like jumping through ridiculous hoops to buy a smartphone, just request an invite the other six days during the week. OnePlus said it's "constantly experimenting" with how to best distribute its phone (also calling its invite system "beloved"), so while there is no indication this is a one-time offer you should probably take advantage of the opportunity if you really want one. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Owners of recent Lumia smartphones that have just 512MB of memory might not get a full-featured, smartphone version of Windows 10. Microsoft is working on Windows 10 for smartphones with limited memory, including the popular Lumia 520, the company's Joe Belfiore said on Twitter on Sunday. The goal is to make the OS available for these devices, but features may vary, he added without offering more details. This echoes a recent statement made on Microsoft's Lumia Conversations blog. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Smart TV privacy policy is raising new concerns about eavesdropping, though it's not the first example of unnerving behavior from our televisions. Some Samsung TVs now include a microphone on the remote control for entering voice commands. As one Reddit user pointed out, Samsung's privacy policy effectively warns users to watch what they say, as the TV ships off voice data to an unnamed third party—presumably for the purpose of translating the speech to text. "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition," the policy states. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Betzy's laptop has a cracked screen. She asked about getting it fixed at a reasonable price. First, a disclaimer: Neither I personally nor PCWorld are in the computer repair business. We're here to offer advice. I'm happy to answer your tech questions, but please don't ask me what I charge to fix your computer. I'm a writer; I charge by the word. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] The people who do repair laptop screens charge by the hour and the parts. Knowing the cost of a replacement screen will help you predict and control the cost. Doing the job yourself may save more money, but it may also brick the computer--and that doesn't save you anything. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Rumors of incoming Cortana integration with Office strengthened over the weekend after screenshots of the Microsoft's mysterious Work Assistant app leaked online. The prototype version of Work Assistant, a Windows Phone Store app limited to internal Microsoft beta testers and discovered by WMPowerUser on Friday, is said to integrate natural language voice commands with Microsoft's Office apps to help you find, share, and edit documents easily—and it may be the first step towards Cortana's eventual invasion of the Office suite. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:49:45 -0800 Tue, 10 Feb 2015 00:49:45 -0800 Mon, 09 Feb 2015 23:15:10 -0800 John Ribeiro John Ribeiro IBM has sued online travel company Priceline Group and three subsidiaries for refusing to negotiate a license to four of its patents. The computing giant has in a complaint Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware asked that Priceline be barred from using the patents without authorization, besides paying damages for the patent infringement so far and reimbursement of costs and attorneys' fees. It has also asked for a jury trial. Priceline could not be immediately reached for comment. IBM has charged Priceline and subsidiaries such as Kayak and OpenTable of infringing its patents relating to methods for presenting applications and advertising in an interactive service, a method for preserving state information on previous interactions of a user on a website, and an improved way for signing-on . To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A California aviation enthusiast will launch on Tuesday a database that promises to allow people to set up "drone no-fly zones" around their properties. The database is responding to the worry some people have of drones flying above their gardens or alongside windows and invading areas that have typically enjoyed a high degree of privacy. But at launch only three drone makers have agreed to honor the requests, which have no legal basis. Noflyzone.org is operated by Ben Marcus, a private pilot and drone operator based in Santa Monica, who said that he sees it as a "fundamental piece of architecture to preserve and protect individual privacy." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A researcher has released 10 million usernames and passwords collected from data breaches over the last decade, a step he worries could be a legally murky but one that will help security research. The data comes from major data breaches at companies including Adobe Systems and Stratfor, all of which have already been publicly released and can be found through Web searches, said Mark Burnett, a Utah-based security consultant who has written several networking and security books. Most of the passwords are likely invalid, and he has scrubbed other information such as domain names to make it unusable for hackers, Burnett said. Still, usernames or passwords found on the list that are still used should be changed. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft and Samsung Electronics have settled a dispute over payment of royalties to the software giant, but the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Samsung was sued by Microsoft last year for violating the terms of a licensing agreement. The software company holds that Google's Android operating system violates a number of its patents, and has asked makers of Android devices to sign licensing agreements with it. Samsung, HTC, ZTE, LG Electronics and Hon Hai are among the smartphone makers who have signed the licenses with Microsoft. A September 2011 cross-licensing deal with Samsung apparently came unstuck after Microsoft's announcement in September 2013 that it planned to acquire Nokia's smartphone business. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A group dedicated to averting another Heartbleed-style vulnerability is narrowing down a list of critical open source projects that will receive its funding and support. The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), which was formed last year to identify open-source projects in need of extra support, expects to name the projects that will receive its backing within a few months, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, which oversees the CII. The CII was formed after serious vulnerabilities were found last in the widely used OpenSSL security software. The disclosure caused alarm among companies whose applications make use of OpenSSL and might have been put at risk. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Wi-Fi may carry many voice calls within the next few years, but the technology required to make those calls is still young in some ways. Mobile subscribers have been talking and doing video chats over Wi-Fi for a long time using Internet-based services such as Skype. Now carriers are offering ways to call up friends and family over wireless LANs using their regular phone numbers. Wi-Fi calling made a splash last year when the iPhone 6 came out with the capability, though a number of Android and other devices also have it. T-Mobile USA and Sprint both allow Wi-Fi calling with selected smartphones. AT&T and Verizon, as well as EE in the UK, plan to follow. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Ohio has closed an antitrust investigation into Google's business practices that dates back more than three years, though a probe in Mississippi appears to be ongoing. The Ohio attorney general's office told Google this past November it was closing the investigation, Google disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday. The investigation was opened in May 2011. The focus of the investigation wasn't revealed, but Google's dominance in search and online advertising was likely a factor. Other states including Texas and Mississippi have launched investigations into Google's business practices in the past. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here NanoTech Entertainment said Monday that it had hired Petr Harmy, who created the Star Wars Despecialized Edition remastered trilogy, to help it convert existing movies into 4K resolution for its UltraFlix 4K streaming service. Harmy confirmed the move on the OriginalTrilogy website, which was first formed to petition Star Wars creator George Lucas to release a high-definition version of the original Star Wars trilogy. Instead, Harmy, working from prints of the original celluloid film, Blu-ray releases, and other sources, created the Despecialized Edition, a 720p version of the original Star Wars trilogy with the original effects intact. The current version 2.5 copy includes yet another remaster, as Harmy went through each frame and made adjustments. (It's also, technically, a bootleg copy of the film, which can be found on sites that specialize in such content.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Database company MarkLogic has extended its NoSQL data store to work natively with JavaScript and the popular JSON data exchange format, in addition to the XML format it has long supported. "All of the same features and functions we have for XML data are available for data that comes in from JSON," said Joe Pasqua, MarkLogic executive vice president for products. First-class JavaScript support could make MarkLogic Server more appealing to Web developers, providing an interface that's more easily understood than the thickets of data conversions that typically accompany XML. A precursor to the wave of NoSQL database servers that hit the market about six years ago, MarkLogic Server was introduced in 2005 as an alternative to standard SQL-based relational databases. The software used the then much-hyped XML format to store and deliver records. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Targeting the legions of SharePoint users in organizations around the globe, Incentive on Monday updated its namesake enterprise collaboration product to provide tight integration with Microsoft's platform. All SharePoint files and folders are now indexed and natively searchable within Incentive, allowing users to find and access them without the need for mirroring, copying or importing. Users can also share, like, comment and collaborate on them, and get notifications when edits or changes are made. In addition, users can include SharePoint folders as visual apps within Incentive, enabling access to the knowledge and content they contain. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here While most regions in Africa are recording significant uptake of mobile money, the West African region is lagging behind, according to a new report. East Africa in particular has recorded a significant growth of mobile money services, largely because of the expanding usage in Tanzania and Kenya, while West Africa is not experiencing any growth at all, according to "Mobile Money in the Ebola Crisis," by Mondato, a mobile financial services industry research and advisory company. In the West African countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia less than three out of every five people have mobile phones. This situation is limiting the utilization of mobile money services in these countries, the report said. People who do have mobile phones seem to use mobile money. In Sierra Leone, the report said, more than 16, 000 Ebola response workers received their payment via mobile money. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Pro tip for any would-be online drug kingpins: Don't post vacation pictures on Facebook. Ross Ulbricht was convicted in a Manhattan federal court last week for his role operating the Silk Road online marketplace. He could serve 30 years or more behind bars. The market Ulbricht built was based on an expectation of anonymity: Silk Road servers operated within an anonymous Tor network. Transactions between buyers and sellers were conducted in bitcoin. Everything was supposedly untraceable. Yet prosecutors presented a wealth of digital evidence to convince the jury that Ulbricht was Dread Pirate Roberts, the handle used by the chief operator of the site. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here China has fined Qualcomm about $975 million for engaging in monopolistic business practices, and the chipmaker has agreed to modify some of its business practices in the country as part of the settlement. Qualcomm said it is disappointed by the results of the investigation, but will not contest the findings and will pay the fine. China's National Development and Reform Commission had been investigating Qualcomm for engaging in possibly anti-competitive behavior by overcharging device makers in the country. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips go into many smartphones, and its wireless technology is licensed for use in a majority of 3G, 4G and LTE modems. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here U.S. copyright law should allow for people to bypass digital rights management technologies as a way to tinker with a wide variety of products, including cars, DVDs and old video games, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. The EFF has asked the U.S. Copyright Office to grant four broad exemptions to the anti-circumvention provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA] as the agency conducts its 2015 rulemaking related to that section of the law. Users should be able to repair, remix and tinker with products protected by access controls, the EFF said in a Monday press release. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The entire purpose of Bing Rewards is to—surprise!—reward you for using Bing. Usually, that entails earning points by conducting web searches and cashing in those points for gift cards and other goodies. But you don't have to conduct a single Bing search to claim the latest juicy offering: Through February 28, any Bing Rewards member can claim 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage for absolutely free for two years—no searches or rewards points required. The offer won't entice Office 365 subscribers, who already enjoy an endless bounty of storage space in the sky, but this is a don't-miss offer for any other OneDrive user. OneDrive's free tier offers only 15GB of data, and 100GB plans typically cost $2 per month. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here On Monday, T-Mobile essentially put the nail in the coffin for the HTC 8X and any other device on its network that wasn't already upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1. Company representatives said on Twitter that the last remaining Windows Phones to receive an update will be the Lumia 521 and Lumia 925. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here ]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2881657/t-mobile-forsakes-the-htc-8x-and-older-phones-by-killing-their-windows-phone-upgrade.html#tk.rss_all Windows Phone Mon, 09 Feb 2015 13:00:09 -0800 Agam Shah Agam Shah China is said to be close to imposing a fine of more than US$1 billion on chipmaker Qualcomm, indicating it intends to protect local manufacturers who it says have been overcharged by the dominant player. China's National Development and Reform Commission has been investigating Qualcomm for engaging in possibly anti-competitive behavior by overcharging device makers in the country. Reports emerged on Monday that China was close to imposing a fine of at least US$1 billion, although Qualcomm wouldn't confirm that. China started investigating how Qualcomm licenses its technology following complaints from local device makers. Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips go into many smartphones, and its wireless technology is licensed for use in a majority of 3G, 4G and LTE modems. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Car-hailing app Sidecar is trying to make further inroads into same-day deliveries. Sidecar, which competes with Lyft and Uber but is active in fewer cities, has for the past six months partnered with companies selling food, flowers and groceries to provide same-day delivery of packages in its hometown of San Francisco. Eat24, which lets people order food online from thousands of different restaurants, is one such partner. Now, Sidecar is expanding its same-day delivery service nationwide. By "nationwide," Sidecar likely means the small number of cities in which it currently operates. Besides the San Francisco Bay Area, that includes Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and a handful of others. Lyft operates in more than 50 cities across the U.S., while Uber operates in around 280 cities in more than 50 countries. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Good news, Windows Phone fans: Windows 10 for phones will reportedly be available on several popular smartphones—including the iconic Lumia 1020. However, don't expect the first build of Windows 10 for phones to have the same sort of spit and polish as Windows 10 for desktops, according to Windows Central, which reported the story using both its own sources as well as tweets from Jesse Leskinen, a Java and PHP developer. Google has snapped up and quickly shut down photo backup app Odysee. Its team, and probably some of its features, are headed to Google+ to supercharge its photo capabilities. The service shuts down February 23rd—you can head to the company's site for instructions on downloading all your images. Google+ already backs up and stores all your photos, videos, and features some pretty good editing tools and tricks like Auto Awesome and instant image enhancement. Past rumors indicated that Google may split its photo service away from its social network. There is a hint of this on Android as there is a separate Photos app, though it's still tied to Google+ for updates from the Play Store. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Governments are becoming hungrier for Twitter data, increasing the number of requests for user information by 40 percent between the first half and the second half of 2014. "Providing this level of transparency is not without its complications and sometimes means we get tough questions and criticism about our decisions," wrote Jeremy Kessel, Twitter's senior manager for global legal policy, in a blog post Monday. Twitter received 2,871 account information requests from various governments, targeting 7,144 accounts, during the second half of 2014, and the company complied in 52 percent of the cases, it said in a new transparency report. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Microsoft wants to lock down the obvious name for a Windows subscription service, filing a trademark for "Windows 365." The trademark application now appears on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website, where it was spotted by Neowin. While no Windows 365 service currently exists, the application at least shows that Microsoft wants the option to use the name in the future. A potential Windows subscription service has been the subject of speculation for years, but the idea has resurfaced lately as Microsoft shakes up its licensing model for Windows 10. In the first year after release, Windows 7 and Windows 8 users can upgrade for free, and Microsoft has promised to keep those devices up to date throughout their lifetimes. Microsoft is also offering a version of Windows for low-end devices with no licensing fees attached. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Reports that new Samsung TVs can capture personal information with their voice recognition feature has sparked concern about what critics perceive as digital spying by so-called smart devices. Nor is Samsung the only smart TV manufacturer collecting this type of data. In Samsung's case, at least, users have the option to disable the collection. That's not always the case. In November 2013, the owner of a smart TV made by LG Electronics discovered that the device was collecting information about his viewing habits, even when the "collection of watching info" feature was turned off. Worse, the TV also sent back to LG's servers the names of files stored on external media devices and even network shares. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here A new standard that supports higher-resolution displays should help move 8K screens from the realm of high-end TV and into laptops, all-in-one PCs and possibly even mobile devices. The Video Electronics Standards Association's Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) 1.4a will boost image quality on screens through faster video transfer rates. The newer standard is for displays inside computers, and it will replace the older 1.4 standard that was released in early 2013. With 8K, displays will show images at a 7680 x 4320 resolution. Displays based on the new technology will start appearing in computers and mobile devices by 2016, VESA said. Screens with 8K resolution could find their way into high-end laptops and all-in-one desktops. Apple has used a modified version of the eDP standard in its iMac with 5K Display. Some high-end gaming and business laptops already have 4K displays. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Access to Microsoft's new Outlook apps has been blocked for members of the European Parliament because of "serious security issues." Microsoft launched new Outlook apps for iOS and Android just over a week ago. The new apps are basically a rebranded version of a mail app made by Acompli, a company Microsoft bought in December for a reported US$200 million. Access to the apps though was blocked on Friday by the Parliament's IT department, DG ITEC, in order to protect the confidentiality and privacy of its users, according to an email seen by the IDG News Service. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Not only is Tuesday for honoring the Roman god Mars, it's now the one day you can buy the OnePlus One without an invite. Beginning at midnight Pacific every Tuesday you can order the 16GB Silk White or 64GB Sandstone Black models directly from OnePlus, no silly invitations needed. However, if you still like jumping through ridiculous hoops to buy a smartphone, just request an invite the other six days during the week. OnePlus said it's "constantly experimenting" with how to best distribute its phone (also calling its invite system "beloved"), so while there is no indication this is a one-time offer you should probably take advantage of the opportunity if you really want one. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Owners of recent Lumia smartphones that have just 512MB of memory might not get a full-featured, smartphone version of Windows 10. Microsoft is working on Windows 10 for smartphones with limited memory, including the popular Lumia 520, the company's Joe Belfiore said on Twitter on Sunday. The goal is to make the OS available for these devices, but features may vary, he added without offering more details. This echoes a recent statement made on Microsoft's Lumia Conversations blog. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Smart TV privacy policy is raising new concerns about eavesdropping, though it's not the first example of unnerving behavior from our televisions. Some Samsung TVs now include a microphone on the remote control for entering voice commands. As one Reddit user pointed out, Samsung's privacy policy effectively warns users to watch what they say, as the TV ships off voice data to an unnamed third party—presumably for the purpose of translating the speech to text. "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition," the policy states. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Betzy's laptop has a cracked screen. She asked about getting it fixed at a reasonable price. First, a disclaimer: Neither I personally nor PCWorld are in the computer repair business. We're here to offer advice. I'm happy to answer your tech questions, but please don't ask me what I charge to fix your computer. I'm a writer; I charge by the word. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] The people who do repair laptop screens charge by the hour and the parts. Knowing the cost of a replacement screen will help you predict and control the cost. Doing the job yourself may save more money, but it may also brick the computer--and that doesn't save you anything. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Rumors of incoming Cortana integration with Office strengthened over the weekend after screenshots of the Microsoft's mysterious Work Assistant app leaked online. The prototype version of Work Assistant, a Windows Phone Store app limited to internal Microsoft beta testers and discovered by WMPowerUser on Friday, is said to integrate natural language voice commands with Microsoft's Office apps to help you find, share, and edit documents easily—and it may be the first step towards Cortana's eventual invasion of the Office suite. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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