RIAJ raids in Japan, 18 arrested
The Japanese police carried out raids all over the country last week. They managed to arrest 18 people who have allegedly uploaded copyrighted movies, music, games, and software to the Internet.
Anti-Counterfeiting Association (ACA) which consists of many of the influential trade groups had been monitoring the Internet use in Japan for weeks to spot the possible copyright infringements. They handed out the information to police who started the operation last Tuesday.
The police searched a total of 50 locations and found 18 individuals who are waiting to be prosecuted. One of the ACA partners, Recording Industry Association of Japan, has released details of the arrested.
Even though the operation was quite a large one, none of the accused pirates are big time crooks. Even the worst of the bunch shared only a couple games or music tracks.
Next gen iPhone, iPad to have double the power
The next generation iPhones and iPads are rumored to have Apple’s new System on a Chip, which will feature the much more powerful dual core SGX543MP2 graphics chip. It is also said that the chip would enable four times the pixel count of previous iPad. The new iPad 2 Retina display would have a resolution of 2048 x 1536.
The more advanced SoC will also add support for HDMI as well as 1080p Full HD video playback. However, it is not yet certain in which iOS devices you will see these, if any. According to AppleInsider, there will be multi-core ARM Cortex A9 CPUs in the SoC quite like in Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chip.
It certainly does sound like the new iOS devices will have a ton more horsepower than the predecessors.
Verizon will offer CDMA iPad too
After announcing a CDMA iPhone 4 available on its network in February, word also came from Verizon about an iPad that will use its CDMA network.
Verizon Communications CFO Francis Shammo revealed the upcoming iPad to Bloomberg, which will feature built in CDMA features. Verizon already offers Apple’s iPad in bundles with its MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot device, which does not come cheap.
Shammo did not reveal anything else about the iPad. He didn’t indicate whether it will be the same iPad with just CDMA support added (like the iPhone announced Tuesday) or if it will be a new rumored next generation iPad.
The revelation comes as more bad news to AT&T, who up until Tuesday was officially the only provider offering the iPhone. AT&T also sells an iPad that uses its 3G network.
Google will remove support for H.264 from Chrome
After originally pledging to support both H.264 and WebM content, Google has decided it will ditch the H.264 video codec from Chrome and go with its WebM format instead.
H.264 video is widely used, currently being the de facto industry standard for encoding digital video. It is used with Blu-ray disc and is supported by a wide variety of consumer electronics devices. However, H.264 technology is patented and adopters pay royalties to the MPEG-LA group.
Google acquired On2 Technologies in 2009 to gain access to the VP8 codec. It opened op the VP8 codec and created a new royalty-free media format called WebM. WebM gained support in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, but Apple and Microsoft declined to officially support WebM (although WebM support can technically be added to Internet Explorer).
The growing split on the Internet between H.264 and now it’s growing royalty-free competitor WebM is likely to cause problems for content producers looking to use HTML5 to display video content on the Internet.
It is unclear how Google’s removal of H.264 from Chrome will affect Google’s other web services, particularly YouTube.
Microsoft offers temporary fix for exploited IE bug
Microsoft has offered a temporary “Fix It” workaround for a bug in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 that is being exploited on some websites.
The vulnerability involves the way the browser handles cascading style sheets (CSS), triggered by recursive CSS pages where the style sheets include their own address. The flaw was confirmed by Microsoft in December, and it has updated its advisory to include a workaround due to reports of attacks that target the vulnerability.
The workaround comes in the form of a “Fix It” solution from Microsoft. To be effective, the browser needs to have all the existing security updates installed. The fix basically forces Internet Explorer to avoid importing a CSS style sheet if it has the same URL as the CSS style sheet from which it is being loaded.
Using the Fix It solution will cause a slight performance hit, adding about 150 milliseconds to the browser’s start-up time, so it should be removed after Microsoft releases a proper security update for the flaw.
ConnectU founders appeal $65 million settlement with Facebook
After reaching a $65 million settlement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg back in 2008, ConnectU founders Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss are now appealing the settlement.
The twins agreed to a settlement in 2008 that got them $20 million in cash and $45 million in stock, valued at $36 per share. Now, the pair are alleging that they were misled about the real value of Facebook stock in 2008, and have brought the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
A skeptical three judge panel began considering today whether the Winkelvoss twins have a case. They scrutinized the argument put forward by the twins through attorney Jerome Falk. “The (ConnectU) founders are pretty smart people themselves, the twins also have a father from Wharton School who is very bright,” Judge John Wallace said.
“If you have all these people to advise you, isn’t it difficult to say this is one of those things where you were taken advantage of?”
Wallace was pointing out that the settlement was reached by teams of lawyers and a top mediator. The Winkelvoss brothers had valued the Facebook stock based on a news report that Microsoft had bought a small piece of the social networking site in a deal that valued the stock at around $36, and the company at $15 billion.
MySpace dumps half its staff
Social entertainment website MySpace.com is dropping almost half of its staff in an ongoing transformation of its services.
Once the King of social networking, MySpace lost out to the phenomenal growth of Facebook over the past few years. News Corporation gave MySpace a limited time frame to turn around its loss-making services. The result was a relaunch as a “social entertainment” site aimed at “Generation Y”, which would be users aged 35 and younger.
The “restructuring” affects about 500 employees, representing 47 percent of the company. “These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product,” Chief Executive Mike Jones said.
News Corp has repeatedly indicated that it is open to selling the relaunched MySpace service to any interested parties, but reports just last week suggested that there are no ongoing talks.
Nintendo denies DSi phase-out rumors
Nintendo has denied that it is planning to phase out its DSi handheld console in anticipation of the release of the Nintendo 3DS over the coming weeks.
Kotaku.com had translated a report from Japan that suggested Nintendo would stop making and selling new units of its DSi handheld, although it would keep manufacturing and marketing the larger-screen DSi XL model alongside the new 3DS.
“We plan to still manufacture and supply DSi consoles in a range of colours in the UK in 2011,” Nintendo said in a statement to the media. “On an on-going basis, continuing supply is based on retail and consumer demand.”
The Nintendo 3DS handheld console will launch in Japan on February 26th and will follow in North America and Europe in March. Nintendo is to ship 1.5 million units of the device to Japan to avoid supply shortages that were experienced with older iterations of the console.
The 3DS will sell for ¥25,000 in Japan.
Motorola Xoom tablet wins CES 2011 ‘Best in Show’
The Motorola Xoom tablet has won the Cnet CES 2011 Best in Show award today, beating out a plethora of other tablets, smartphones, HDTVs and more.
Motorola’s powerful tablet will ship with a 10.1-inch display, 1280×800 resolution, a Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 32GB onboard memory (expendable via SD), a 5MP dual-LED flash standard camera and a 2MP front-side camera for video conferencing.
Furthermore, the tablet has a micro USB 2.0 port, HDMI-pout, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and run on the tablet-optimized Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
Battery life has been rated at 10 hours (peak) for video playback.
Motorola has allegedly already ordered 800,000 units of the device for the Q1 2011.
The 3G-supporting device will launch in February or March while the LTE 4G model will launch in the Q2.
16MP cameras headed to smartphones soon?
Japanese chip maker Renesas, which merged with electronics maker NEC in 2010, has announced it will be integrating 16MP cameras in future handsets.
The CE150 image-processing system chip “will make it possible to produce 16MP phone cameras for the first time, up from the maximum 13MP that are currently available,” explains Crunch.
Users will also be able to use the cameras to shoot 1080p Full HD video.
Renesas showed off a phone camera processor capable of such a feat in December 2008.
The company will begin mass-producing in March, with up to 1 million units being produced each month.
Sample units are available to handset makers for $48, now.
