Corporate & legal

Authors to Google Book Search: Pay up!

Authors and publishers of tens of thousands of out-of-print books have submitted claims for compensation from Google Book Search as called for in a settlement agreement to a copyright lawsuit, a lawyer in the case said on Wednesday.

Under a $125 million settlement Google reached in October with book authors and publishers who sued over the company's book-scanning project, the search giant is required to provide notice to authors, publishers, and their heirs and successors that they may be eligible for payment.

The notice is being published in 218 countries and 72 languages, according to a statement from Boni &… Read more

Research In Motion tempers earnings estimates

Research In Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, warned investors Wednesday that it will likely hit the low end of its earnings forecast for the fourth quarter.

The news comes despite the fact that RIM also predicts strong subscriber growth for the quarter. RIM said Wednesday that it will add about 3.5 million new subscribers by the end of the quarter. This figure is about 20 percent higher than the 2.9 million new subscribers the company said it had expected on December 18.

So what does this mean? Analysts believe the fact that RIM is growing subscribers … Read more

Ballmer urges stimulus approval

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a letter Wednesday to every member of Congress urging speedy approval of the pending financial recovery bill. Ballmer has been calling for congressional action on the matter.

Here is the text of Ballmer's letter, as posted to Microsoft's Web site:

February 11, 2009

Dear member of Congress:

Microsoft strongly supports passage of the conference agreement announced today between the House and Senate on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (H.R. 1), and I urge Congress to act now. We believe the final conference agreement will help families during this difficult … Read more

IBM Pulse offers industry pulse

In between the Michael Phelps' no-show incident, Smash Mouth, and celebrity talking-head Forrest Sawyer, IBM's Pulse event in Las Vegas was a good microcosm of the state of IT today and where it is going. Here are a few of my takeaways:

IBM's "Smart Planet" initiative previews the future. Within the next few years, all kinds of stuff will be instrumented with RFIDs, IP addresses, and bountiful cheap processing power all connected by wired and wireless broadband networks. Organizations that capitalize on this infrastructure will successfully collect, analyze, and make decisions on this overwhelming global intelligence. … Read more

Cisco funnels cash to Melbourne firm

U.S. networking giant Cisco Systems has invested an unknown amount into Melbourne-based Majitek, an Australian firm primarily created by the founding members of Sausage Software, an early Australian dot-com success.

The company, which specializes in cloud computing and service-oriented architecture solutions, announced Monday that Cisco had participated in a $7.5 million round of equity financing, along with existing investor Pierce & Pierce.

Majitek will use the funds to further enhance its products and also to expand its international operations; Majitek will open a permanent office in Dubai and will work with Cisco facilities in Bangalore. The news comes … Read more

AMD extends deadline for Abu Dhabi spin-off vote

Faced with a lackluster voter turnout, Advanced Micro Devices announced Tuesday it is extending the deadline for its shareholders to vote on the proposed spin-off of its manufacturing business.

AMD, which in October announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations, failed to get a quorum of its shareholders to vote on the issue. As a result, the deadline for casting votes has been extended to February 18. A majority of the shares is required to vote to establish a quorum.

The chipmaker reported that as of Tuesday, 42 percent of the eligible shares had been cast. Of this group, … Read more

Nokia cuts production, closes R&D facility

Nokia, the largest handset maker in the world, is cutting jobs at one plant and closing down at least one R&D site, as demand for cell phones plummets amid the worldwide recession.

The Finnish company said Wednesday that it will cut production at a key plant in Salo, Finland. It also plans to temporarily lay off about 20 percent to 30 percent of the plant's 2,500 employees on a rotational basis. All workers at the plant will be affected as groups rotate through the temporary layoffs.

Nokia also plans to shut down one R&D … Read more

Many TV stations to make DTV switch next week

Despite a regulator-approved delay to the nationwide digital TV switchover, more than a third of the nation's TV stations plan to begin broadcasting completely in digital next week.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released a list of 681 of the nation's 1,800 or so TV stations that plan to make the switch by February 17. TV stations were required to notify the FCC by Monday if they planned to turn off their analog TV signal on February 17.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that moves the deadline for transitioning TV broadcast … Read more

How to predict gadget success

Sometimes even a well-designed and innovative product can still be a total dud. See the Apple Newton.

The industry analysts at Forrester Research now say they know why this happens.

In a new report released Friday, Forrester analyst James McQuivey zeroes in on what makes seemingly good products fall flat once they reach store shelves: lack of convenience. And he doesn't just mean "convenient" in that you can, for example, transfer a music device easily from your pocket to your car dashboard, but rather the entire experience using that music device--from buying the songs to putting them … Read more