Chief Executive Meg Whitman has , however , asked for patience . He said : “It took us a while to get into the situation in which we find ourselves. It’s going to take us a little while to get out.”

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This is the second time that Amazon has took the drastic step of removing the books from its site to pressurize the publishers. Two years ago , it did the same with Macmillan in a price dispute . However , Amazon finally ceded to Macmillan. But this time , Amazon has picked up a smaller publisher and may get its way .

Readers expect ebooks to be cheap , which Amazon is aiming in this case , but traditional publishers worry that if ebooks are priced too low , they might eventually disappear from the scene . Amazon , especially would love to do away with the middle parties like distributors and talk directly in terms of reader and author .

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Microsoft has alleged that Motorola Mobility tried to “block” sales of its products by overcharging for patent licensing instead of charging a fair price . All standard essential patents are required to be licensed on fair and reasonable and non discriminatory price to other companies.

Microsoft has said in the complaint : “We have taken this step because Motorola is attempting to block sales of Windows PCs, our Xbox game console and other products.” Microsoft is basically trying to nudge Brussels into action after it raised concerns of patent abuse by big players.

Google has already announced to license the patents of Motorola Mobility on fair and reasonable price to other companies . It has also committed to cap the licensing fees at 2.25 cents . Google responded to the complaint by saying : “We haven’t seen Microsoft’s complaint but it’s consistent with the way they use the regulatory process to attack competitors. It is particularly ironic given their track record in this area and collaboration with patent trolls.”

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The site has announced on its Facebook page that it will be discontinuing torrents from Feb 29 and switch to magnet links . The magnet links would make it possible for users to carry full copies of the site on their thumb drives . This will make the distribution of links even easier for the users . This is in comparison to torrents which users download through their internet browsers .

“Not having torrents will be a bit cheaper for us but it will also make it harder for our common enemies to stop us (which they can’t. But everything that makes it harder for them brings more lolz [laugh out loud] to our lips). So please get used to magnets, cause they are here to stay.” , the Pirate Bay said in its statement. The site has been using magnet links since November 2009 but this is the first time that the site has announced that it will completely abandon torrents . The incumbent owners of the Pirate Bay are not known . The four founders of the Pirate Bay were convicted guilty of copyright infringement in 2010 . The Pirate Bay has changed its domain to Swedish extension .se earlier this month in an effort to avoid seizure of domain by the US authorities.

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Nook Tablet running Google’s Android OS can run more apps than Nook color . The price drop clearly has been made to be more competitive with Amazon .

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Kim Dotcom was all smiles and told reporters : “I am relieved to go home to see my family, my three little kids and my pregnant wife. And I hope you understand that that is all I want to say right now.” He said that he would fight his extradition to the United States . Responding to a question about how he had been treated in custody he said : “Well, it felt a little bit like an audition to American Idol.”

Kim Dotocom is a citizen of Germany as well as Finland and was granted New Zealand residency in 2010 . He has also been residing in Hong Kong where Megaupload is registered as a company .

via Telegraph

The new upgrade gives the PlayBook ability to run apps designed for Android OS , which is a silent admission that there are not enough RIM-specific apps around. RIM sold just 850,000 units of PlayBook tablet when 15.4 million iPads were sold during last quarter.

Even this upgrade misses two important aspects : BlackBerry Messaging application and the inability to integrate with existing enterprise server software of RIM. RIM has said that the upgrade would also add thousands of apps to its store.

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Twitter and Google had signed a similar deal in 2009 which was believed to have valued at $20 million . However the deal ended last July and negotiations between Twitter and Google on renewing the deal have not proved fruitful. Twitter’s CEO told at the Web 2.0 Summit in last October : “We [Twitter and Google] just can’t agree on what the appropriate value exchange is. And I don’t mean that in terms of dollars…There are all sorts of details that we couldn’t come to grips with.”

The deal was an improvement for Google search results which were kind of outdated with the advent of Twitter and the real time information it brought with it.

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The $2.1 million High Court case relates to overcharging of commission by a broker named TFS Derivatives who denied the charges and said that the funds should be recovered from Mr. Ahmad and Mr. De Biase , who worked for the petitioners. The claim was served by TFS at last known address of Mr. Biase of TFS Derivatives but  also requested court to allow to serve the notice through Facebook because there were doubts if the defendant still lived at that address. The court , after making sure that the Facebook account was still used by De Biase , allowed the notice to be served through Facebook.

A judge had also allowed an injunction to be served through Twitter in 2009 where the defendant in a case was known by only his Twitter handle .

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IE 9 has implemented a web standard named P3P which stands for Platform for Privacy Preferences . This standard is designed to help users gain some control over the privacy settings of the browsers  and regulates which sites could install cookies on their computers. However , P3P relies on sites to explicitly identifies themselves . However , the loophole is that any site refusing to identify itself as advertising site is granted a cookie by default .

“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: Is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Microsoft  wrote in a blog post. “We’ve discovered the answer is yes.”

The loophole is not something new though. It has been known for many years but Google as well as Facebook maintain that P3P standard is outdated and they do not abide by it.

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