NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 27 April
27-04-2009
by Emmet Cole
Bad Apple fined USD19m | Android netbook set for release
Apple has been fined USD19 million by a Texas court after being found guilty of patent infringement. California-based chip manufacturer OPTi Inc held the rather catchily titled patent for 'predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses' -- a data transfer method. Apple had argued that the patent was invalid because of its "obviousness", but this attitude apparently didn't go down too well in Texas.
In more patent news, US chip firms Qualcomm and Broadcom have finally resolved a four-year dispute, with Qualcomm agreeing to pay USD891 million in cash to its rival. Under the terms of the deal, Qualcomm will pay the money over four years, with the first payment of USD200 million due by the end of June. In return, all patent infringement claims and Broadcom's complaints to the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission will be withdrawn. Other elements of the agreement remain confidential.
Ricoh is expanding its managed print services offering to include consultancy, hardware, software, maintenance, management services, office solutions and document process outsourcing. The digital office equipment company claims its system can create cost savings, increase productivity and reduce environmental impact. Last week, Xerox launched a new version of its enterprise-level managed print services tailored for small and medium-sized enterprises, called Xerox Print Services.
The first netbook computer running Google's Android operating system will be released this summer, according to reports. Manufactured by Chinese company Guangzhou Skytone Transmission Technologies (GSTT), prototypes of the Alpha 680 computer running low-cost ARM chips are expected to be released in June. The device features a 7-inch screen, webcam, SD card reader, 1GB Nand Flash, AV out, two USB ports and an Ethernet port.
Finally, IBM has unveiled an advanced computing system that it claims has enough processing power and semantic know-how to compete with humans on US television quiz show 'Jeopardy!'. The company's 'Watson' system is specifically designed to understand complex questions at speed. Unlike conventional computing technologies designed to return documents containing the user's keywords or semantic entities, Watson is designed to make a cognitive leap and interpret the user's query as a true question and, from there, determine precisely what the user is asking for. Meanwhile, the production team at 'Jeopardy!' has announced plans to produce a human vs. machine competition on the show.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 