Deep Tech

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said today Apple is violating the Australian Consumer Law by misleadingly labeling its new iPad as 4G-capable, and it will try to get a court to impose fines and an injunction against sales.

The commission will apply to the Federal Court in Melbourne for orders tomorrow morning against Apple, it said in a statement:

The ACCC alleges that Apple's recent promotion of the new "iPad with WiFi + 4G" is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product "iPad with WiFi + 4G" can, with a SIM card, connect … Read more

Apparently Microsoft isn't content leaving one potentially important speed boost for the Web to Google.

The company last night announced a plan to improve HTTP -- the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that browsers use to request Web pages and servers use to deliver them -- with a technology it calls HTTP Speed+Mobility. Google has proposed an idea called SPDY for speeding up HTTP and won an important ally at IETF, the group that oversees the standard and that's beginning work on a new HTTP 2.0.

But Microsoft wants a piece of the action, too. It thinks SPDY … Read more

Microsoft and financial services organizations, with an escort of U.S. Marshals, seized command-and-control servers Friday to take down botnets allegedly used to steal more than $100 million using an estimated 13 million computers infected with the Zeus malware.

After raids in Scranton, Pa., and Lombard, Ill., "some of the worst known Zeus botnets were disrupted by Microsoft and our partners worldwide," Microsoft announced Sunday night in a post by Richard Domingues Boscovich, senior attorney with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit.

The defendants allegedly installed the Zeus malware and close relatives called Ice-IX and SpyEye onto victims' computers, … Read more

The Nikon D800 is the new king of the heap -- at least when it comes to DxO Labs' test of camera image sensors.

The new 36-megapixel high-end SLR got an all-time high score of 95 on the DxOMark test, which measures a variety of sensor attributes when shooting raw images. DxO Labs said it uses a sensor "with no weak points."

The score is a composite that reflects three attributes: dynamic range, which is the breadth of the span between an image's full black and complete white; color depth, which gauges the vividness and accurate color; … Read more

I have tremendous respect for two groups of engineers: Apple's hardware designers and Google's Web programmers. But when it comes to Google Maps, boy, do I wish the two got along better.

For months now, I've suffered from a problem using the mouse on Google Maps: when I'd click and drag to pan the map using the Magic Mouse, the view would zoom out when I released the button. Instead of feeling the magic, I felt hexed.

The issue stems from the fact that sliding your finger forward or backward along the Magic Mouse is equivalent … Read more

Adobe has spruced up Photoshop CS6's tool for creating HDR images--at the same time that it's updated editing tools with features that make high-dynamic range photos less interesting to me.

HDR images combine multiple shots taken over a range of bright to dark exposures. That means that the shadow detail can be taken from the bright images and the highlight detail from the dark images.

Used in a tame way, an HDR image shows more of the full range of tones the human eye can see. But plenty of people prefer the more unusual or even outrageous effects … Read more

Ordinary folks may not notice much right away from the fact that Google's Android programmers are bringing their work back into the Linux kernel fold.

But it's an entirely different situation for a smaller but important group: the programmers who like to experiment with Google's open-source mobile operating system.

So predicts Tim Bird, the Sony programmer who's centrally involved in the merge of Google's Android Linux work with the "mainline" Linux kernel project. That cooperation took a big step Sunday when Linux leader Linus Torvalds released version 3.3 of the heart of … Read more

Don't beat yourself up if you didn't know that some modest video editing abilities are tucked into the premium version of Photoshop CS5.

But expect a lot more starting today, when Adobe Systems releases an open beta version of Photoshop CS6 code-named Superstition.

The new version brings video from the higher-priced Extended version of Photoshop to the standard version, and it adds editing features such as the ability to apply Photoshop tone and color adjustments. And instead of relying on Apple's QuickTime, the new tool draws from Adobe technology elsewhere in the Creative Suite, such as the … Read more

For those of you reluctant to welcome our new robot overlords, it might be time to reconsider your stance.

Six times in the last month I've been struck by the increasing utility of robots performing tasks that a human otherwise would. I can't imagine the number will be going down, either.

The most recent example was Amazon's $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, a company that automates warehouse operations with robots. "Kiva's technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack, and stow," said Dave Clark, … Read more